#ponder kno-name

[nameless-bizzyboy]

{…}

{You wish you were back in your city.}

{You miss the starless night sky. You miss the horrendous traffic.You miss the metro,no matter how crowded it could be.}

{You miss, you miss, you miss.}

{…You can’t go back there,though. Not ever again.}

{…}

{The vines wrapping you are starting to look like veins.}

{You hope you get out soon.}

[moraysoiree]

homesick

Just my idea of what it feels like to be far away from home.

characters: Floyd Leech x gn!reader (platonic, could be read as romantic), mentions of Jade and Azul word count: 1134

Ramshackle dorm prefect’s life was in no sense easy. Sitting through classes and thinking how you can’t even put all this knowledge to good use because of your ‘magiclessness’ was, for lack of a better term, pure torture. Thank god the classes ended, finally granting you some freedom to wander off in hopes to lift your spirits by hanging out with one of the strange people that were in abundance here.

To your glee, on the way to the first floor you noticed a familiar figure on a terrace just a flight of stairs below: one of the eel guys was standing there, leaning against the guardrail with slumped shoulders. Given the idleness, figuring his current mood was no big feat. The chance was worth taking, though.

‘FLOOOOYD!!’ you started skipping down excitedly, not even bothering to get to the floor and jumping off the middle right onto the unsuspecting victim. ‘Shrimpie!’ wide-eyed, Floyd still managed to catch the falling anvil and laughed, spinning from the momentum. ‘Ye gonna kill us one day,’ he grumbled. ‘I wish I could kill you that easily,’ you pinched his cheeks, causing the displeased eel to click his teeth in a mock threat. ‘A point. You little fishies, on the other hand…’ he trailed off. Both went on to lean onto the banisters, laziness afloat in the sunny spring air. The mood wasn’t as bad as expected. Or, rather, improved rapidly, for that matter. ‘Sup with the classes,’ you tugged on the lilac ribbon hanging from his forearm. ‘Skipping, huh? What would Azul say?!’ you covered your mouth, appearing to be scandalized. Theatrical jests usually amused him, but not today for some reason. Or was it Azul’s name that got on his nerves? Either way, Floyd wasn’t really in the mood for talking, so the clue was taken and both stared off into the distance silently. And was there a lot to stare at, as college’s balconies had the best view onto the sharp cliffs, mercilessly slicing the rumbling waves into white foam.

Something occurred to you, and you asked, fidgeting with the very same ribbon still: ‘Say, don’t you ever get homesick?’. Floyd tore his eyes off the sea and gave you a thoughtful glance, ‘Mm-hhm… not really. There are a lot of things on land. I think Jade got it worse’. ‘Jade?! How come?’ It was hard to believe that Jade, who navigated human society better than the majority of humans, was, in fact, facing some trouble adapting. ‘S’ not like he doesn’t love it here, too, I mean. But y’know how he goes to wander by himself and chew on his plants or whareva-you-call-it. That’s different from me. Gets melancholic ‘nd all.’ Floyd sighed and stretched, crossing arms behind his head. ‘And you don’t? Like ever’. ‘Don’t think so? Lotta interesting things just keep happening around. This school is kinda special tho. Many fishies to squeeze, and jumping right into my jaws, too,’ he shut his eyes in delight, but his general expression shifted into something more sinister, something ascending from the murky depths, prowling and lurking. ‘Kinda like home. Ya kno’ it’s crazy down there. You can never stop or rest. Unless you wanna be eaten, ‘course. Same here,’ he waved at the Night Raven College’s walls. ‘So your bloodlust is what keeps you going? Should’ve known better,’ you scoffed, and Floyd rolled his eyes. ‘Mean! I like many of your things, like clothes, and phones, and the strange food you have. S’ not like I only care about beatin’ up some krill,’ you eyed his messy uniform doubtfully and pondered whether the eel really liked clothes as much as he claimed to.

‘But you’re like Jade, aren’t you, little Shrimp?’ Floyd snapped you from your thoughts forcefully, and you noticed he was staring at you sharply. ‘You get those sour moods and sigh a lot’. Look who’s talking about moods!? But he was right, although it came as a surprise that such things didn’t escape him. He’d always seemed too caught up in his own emotions. Or was it precisely because of it that Floyd had noticed the way his friend was a bit too quiet on one day and a tad too distant on the other... ‘I love you all, but I didn’t really choose to be here, and I don’t even know if there’s a way to go back. Even if there is, will I survive with people overblotting left and right and making it everyone’s problem?!’ Floyd laughed. ‘Nothing to laugh about in my life’, you sighed. ‘You would be shocked how hard it is to live without the little things, like my favourite songs, or the trinkets I’d collected, or the bakeries I’d always visited’. He was listening silently, letting you get it all off your chest. ‘I had friends back home, too. Will I ever see them again? Do they miss me, I wonder.. Maybe I died in my world and got isekai’d here so there’s not really a place for me to return to at all?!’ Floyd scrunched his face up at your outburst. ‘Now you sound just like Firefly Squid.’ Then, however, his expression became serious. ‘You know, Shrimpie. There are a lot of things in this world that are out of our control. You can have a down-to-the-minute detailed plan, covering the next forty years, but what use will it be if a shark gobbles you up tomorrow? You should value the ‘now’, or ya risking to miss all the fun n’ regret it later,’ his hand ruffled your hair. ‘I get that it ain’t easy for ya to be all gung-ho about it all the time, but that kind of thinking is just a waste. Say what, how ‘bout we go make Crowley get his game up with your homeworld instead? I can squeeze him real tight if ya wanna.’ You thought about it for a solid moment, seriously considering the offer. ‘I’m good. Spare the unfortunate soul, he’s got his plate served to him from people throwing hands last week’. ‘And who’s to thank for that ya think?’ Oh. Of course. ‘What a spectacular friend I have, rushing to avenge me before I even ask!’ The phrase might have been a joke, but you put your genuine gratitude for the so much needed reassurance into it. To that display of emotions, Floyd’s eyes glinted mischievously. ‘So you saying you owe me one?’ You regretted your choice of words instantly. ‘Come ooon, ain’t gonna eat ya, Shrimpie. Not yet, anyway. Speaking of food… What a rad way to repay me, huh?’ ‘Mostro Lounge?’ Floyd groaned. ‘Heell naaah if I see Azul today I’ll punch smn. Hard.’ So it WAS about Azul, in the end. ‘Canteen it is then. Takoyaki?’ ‘Ya know me best, Shrimpie.’

[revasserium]

hq headcanons with gyaru s/o?? PLS IM BEGGING tysm!!!!

ギャル! 超かわいいー (gyaru! chou kawaii ー !)

ft oikawa; suga; bokuto; hinata; tsukki

oikawa:

obsessed! asks u to send pics of ur new manicure designs, knows ur manicurist by first name, sends her his love every time u go

chides you not to spend too long tanning cause the uv isn't great for your skin but loves how u look; tells u that it makes your eyes stand out and your hair look nice and has mastered the art of taking selfies from that #45degreetopdown angle

has a pic of u as his phone bk bc this man is whipped and he's not afraid to admit it; will buy you trinkets and hair clips and earrings or send u pics of cute ones sees

always holds ur hand in public and brags about u to his friends u__u

sugawara:

kisses you with your flavored lipgloss bc he is an agent of chaos and he likes the way he can mess you up a little; he's secretly not so secretly super happy that u have a whole string of phone charms that are just presents from him -- tiny volleyballs, bejeweled cupcakes, random little animals, a giant fluffball just cause it's soft

helps u pick out circle lenses cause he thinks they're so so pretty and can't stop staring at your eyes whenever u wear a new pair

honestly kinda fell for u the first time he saw you cause of the way you tied up ur school uniform shirt and he caught a glimpse of your bellybutton ring and thought it was like... the hottest thing ever but;;;; we don't have to talk about that

tells u every day how beautiful you are, just bc u__u

bokuto:

honestly doesn't rly get it but boi if he aint supportive! and he cares so much; will sit and listen intently to u when ur talking about all the different clothing brands u like or ponder out loud how ur so good with ur hands cause if he had nails like urs he'd break them immediately

would let u paint his nails in glitter tho

will tell u just to go outside w/out sunscreen if u wanna tan more (like him!!!) but after u tell him about uv and sun protection now he actively slathers sunscreen on himself before going outside and preaches it to all his friends and teammates ("akaashi! did u kno it causes premature aging of the skin!??!! wait -- what do u mean everyone knows that?!")

loves your weekend outfits so much u__u honestly he's shooketh at your eye for style, thinks you should become a fashion designer, a model, actively advertises to the world that you already are one basically; swells!!! with pride when someone on the street asks to take a pic of your outfit -- "see?!?!? told u u should be a model!!! ur pics belong in magazines!!!"

hinata:

is just so so awestruck at all the sparkly/pretty things; and you're the sparkliest, prettiest of all so i mean -- that tracks!

gets just as excited as you do about new clothing lines and is super eager to spend entire weekends walking through various shops, carrying all your stuff, praising the way you look in every single outfit u try on

the blushiest!!! if u dress him up too so you guys match! holds your hand so tightly and can't stop grinning to himself so that at the end of the day his cheeks hurt but that's okay bc he got to spend the whole weekend w/ you and he wants to do it again all the time!

loves ur long nails bc it feels nice when you trail it along his arms, down his back; it makes him feel loopy and sleepy and shivery and all sorts of good, and on top of that -- they're just gorgeous to look at arent they? everything about u is gorgeous and he's so, so glad to have u

tsukki:

will never admit it outloud that he actually likes it; pretends it's just another level to all the "girly things" that normal girls like -- so u like more of it -- so what

but BOI if he doesn't feel his chest get all tight when you get all dressed up for your dates, when your lashes are perfectly mascaraed to set off those gorgeous new circle lenses u bought the other day that he totally, totally isn't into cause that color is just so pretty against your skin --

constantly tells u that ur nails are kind of a hassle and he doesn't understand how u get anything done with them but will wait for u outside ur salon with ur bags and grab u icecream and sigh and begrudgingly admit that the nail art is cute this time...

is secretly super fucking into the fact that u have a pic of the both of u has ur phone background and it makes him happy every single time ur phone goes off and the screen lights up; and yeah, the fact that you have a volleyball phone charm that you told him reminds you of him makes him rly, rly happy too u__u

[vshthestmpede]

Hello ✨ requesting a how knives would react to reader showing him interest and affection 🤍 based on the manga, he’s always wanted a deep connection with humans as a kid so does this make him feel any specific kind of way ? This precious plant baby is hard headed im sure 🥺

knives + a whole new feeling

word count; 610

warnings; awkwardness, but overall adorable dorkiness

note; tysm for requesting!! i'm currently reading the manga and all of the characters are growing on me, especially knives! he really does seem like he's just super misguided n just wants to do the right thing in his mind. still getting a feel for writing knives so please feel free to critique <3

cross-posted to ao3

you were tentative to approach knives lately and he had picked up on this. usually you were always trying to get his attention, to spend time with him even when he pushed you away. at first, he kept pushing the feeling of worry away and told himself that it was nothing.

as one quiet day turned into a week, knives found himself growing more worried about you and pondered what could've caused this sudden change in behavior.

have i been too mean to them? did i say the wrong thing?

he would try to cut the thoughts before they got too out of hand, reminding himself of who he was and what he should be focusing on: the plants. however, it was almost impossible not to notice how lonely it got without you constantly around.

maybe that's why he found himself gravitating towards your room and maybe that's why he was staring at the closed door, fist frozen inches from it.

is this a good idea? he faltered for a second, then regained his posture. it won't hurt to ask them what's been going on. humans love talking about their feelings. just a few minutes and then back to normal. right? yeah, great, so just kno-

knives almost screamed when you opened your door suddenly, stumbling backwards. you jumped at the unexpected presence, covering your heart with your hand as you let out a shaky sigh.

"jeez, you really scared me," you managed and knives gulped, a sudden nervousness washing over him. "is there something you needed?"

fidgeting with the long sleeves of his cloak, knives couldn't seem to shake this odd feeling no matter how he tried. you raised an eyebrow and looked up and down the hallway before stepping back into your room, offering the haven of privacy to him as well.

"thank you," he murmured as he slipped by you into your room, watching you as you closed the door and took a seat on the edge of your bed.

"c'mon, sit." you patted the spot next to you, to which he obliged silently. "now, what's bothering you?"

knives cleared his throat, avoiding your gaze as he spoke, "well, i haven't really. . .seen you around and i, um, have been wondering what you've been up to."

you snorted into your hand but as soon as knives turned to furrow his brow at you, you burst into laughter. he stared at you as you fell back onto the bed, gasping for air.

"i'm sorry? what's so funny, (name)?" knives peered down at you and you wiped your eyes, regaining your composure. "did i say something?"

"no, no," you assured, "i'm just laughing at myself. i thought i was annoying you, knives, with all my affectionate advances so i decided to take a step back."

"affectionate? you -"

he stopped short, all the pieces in his brain clicking into place. the little gifts you've been bringing, the times you'd stick around late to listen to his rambling, the way you would go out of your way to spend time with him?

"oh my god, why didn't you say something sooner?" an embarrassed warmth spread over his cheeks rapidly and you sat up, poking him in the face.

"because i wasn't sure you felt that way about me," you admitted, pinching his reddened cheek playfully. "so, now that it's out in the open, is everything okay?"

"i'd like you to keep doing the affectionate stuff," he admitted meekly. "it makes me feel. . .warm inside. wanted. a feeling i didn't know existed. please, continue?"

"gladly," you responded quietly, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "expect more than what i've done before, okay?"

[vivisandg]

Hi so I rarely request anything but I’ve fallen back into the httyd rabbit hole again and the lack of eret son of eret content on here is criminal. I came across your eret x pregnant reader and OH. MY. HEART... it’s beautiful! I was wondering if you could write some fluffy Eret x reader who is a dragon nurse? Like a vet for dragons who’s really gentle and compassionate but takes some time to trust him because of the whole ex trapper thing? Thanks and hope you’re enjoying your day and staying hydrated :)

Love thank you sooo much! And yes, I’m trying to stay hydrated, so all of YOU🫵 get some water and drink it RIGHT NOW. Anyways, this is a really good ask and the lack of eret content is, in fact, criminal. I will try my best on this, feel free to criticize and ask for more!

Healing takes Time

Pairing: Eret son of Eret x (g.n/fem)reader

Summary: As a healer for Berk’s dragons, you meet a lot of new dragons in different situations… but nothing prepared you for a certain ex-trapper asking for your help.

     You are one of Berk’s best dragon healers, spending almost 24/7 in the “dragon infirmary” as most call it. To you, it was home. You had been doing this job since Berk made peace with the creatures that you grew to find beautiful, feeling they needed to be treated as equals. You had always loved to help people and were known as one of the kindest Vikings in the archipelago.

     Of course, when the evil Drago Bludvist came about and practically demolished your home, you had a change of heart. You became a bit colder to newcomers and strangers, a bit, but a noticeable bit. After Hiccup and Toothless had successfully taken the madman down, it came as a shock to no one that many dragons needed healing and care for a while.

     One day, as you were releasing a Snafflefang named Muds back to his family, you were greeted by a slightly beat up Skullcrusher with none other than Eret son of Eret, the famous ex-dragon trapper at his side with concern painting his face. It dimmed your heart to see the tall man and not Stoick, the only father figure you ever had, at Skullcrusher’s side, but you would have to get used to it. You had always been skittish around the young Viking, as his tribe killed your dragon before your eyes. You weren’t sure if Eret was there when it happened, you didn’t care, all you saw was your beautiful Raincutter, Sinkah, get beheaded and thrown into the boat next to her.

     It was time to stop thinking about that and face the problem in front of you. “What brings you and Skullcrusher in, Son of Eret?” You ask with more malice than you meant. “He flew through a good 7 trees while finding boulders to rebuild, tore the beast up, they did.” You pursed you lips a bit when he said ‘beast’, but that’s the only way to describe the dragon. “He looks like he got scratched a bit, I’ll have him out of here in about and hour,” you say while examining the slashes on his green wings. “Alright. Thank you, (y/n),” Eret says as he starts to walk away.

     To your surprise, he turns back around and asks you “is there anything that I can help you with? Finding herbs or stuff to help?” This takes you aback, as you expected him to be arrogant, as he seems all the time. You look at him questionably as you ponder why he asks. “If you could get me a few perch from the lake in the east side of the island, that would be great,” you say as both you and Skullcrusher were hungry. Eret says nothing, but nods as he hurries away. That was a bit odd, you thought.

     Eret gets back in a good 30 minutes with a basket of perch, just as you had asked him. You watch as he returns, putting the last few bandages on Skullcrusher, and heading towards him. “Thank you,” you say with sincerity, as you hadn’t eaten in about 5 hours. “No problem, thanks for helping Skullcrusher,” he says back. He then asks a question you weren’t expecting: “ Do you hate me or something?”

     You are taken aback, again, by him. “Why?” You ask this because you don’t even know. “You glare at me every time you see me, specifically the markings on my chin because that’s about as high as your eyes can reach,” he says blankly. “If you must know, your tribe killed my dragon in front of me and threw her into a nearby boat and dumped me into the ocean,” you say, frowning at the memory. Eret looks appalled, he had seen those men that day, sure he was younger, but he saw how heartbroken you looked. He had sabotaged those men’s work so that Drago punished them; he never saw those men again.

     Telling you this, you realized why he always looked at you like you were familiar, why he looked at you with a look of ‘I will protect you’, rather than sympathy. Finally, shocking Eret, you hug him and mutter a thousand ‘sorry’s. He hugs back and says it’s ok. Maybe you can heal dragons in an hour, but for people, healing takes time.

That’s it for this request. Again, wonderful ask, I wrote this in 2 hours💀😭 bc I loved it soo much. Again also, feel free to request stuff in my ask box, have a good day!❤️

[helloanthy]

tbh i was kind of expecting vriska at the end of the colors of utena

idk if this is python sending this anon because what a coincidence it would be ! but either way ill take this opportunity to share our conversation about hs/rgu from 2 days ago

🐒 munke [10:20 PM] on my last helloanyhy i drew anthy as kanaya mayhaps i should terezi her this time [10:20 PM] not character parallels .jus anthy cosplay things

🐍 python [10:20 PM] terezi [pog]

🐒 munke [10:21 PM] terezis ur rose bride

🐍 python [10:21 PM] anthy cosplays all the homestuck trolls

🐒 munke [10:21 PM] (makes u into bug cannibal)

🐍 python [10:21 PM] om nom nom nom [me turning myself into a bug and also you so i can cannibalize you] [10:22 PM] terezi's name is razor gillette and shes an orchid mantis

🐒 munke [10:22 PM] my brain is getting chemicaliszed so i cabt mental exercise but bow do u think anthy n vriska would get alkng oe not

🐍 python [10:22 PM] ummm… i imagine something similar to how anthy and nanami get along

🐒 munke [10:23 PM] did u kno ladbugs hav to drill a hole thru the females exoskeletob to creat an orifice to mate [10:23 PM] wohldnt that be heinous [10:23 PM] rips u a new asshole

🐍 python [10:23 PM] vriska: does not agree with anthy's submission so she comes in with a lot of bluster [10:23 PM] anthy: 🙂

🐒 munke [10:23 PM] omg. vrisknami ?+ [10:24 PM] nariska

🐍 python [10:24 PM] nanami is not A vriska, i think, but she feels very adjacent to me [10:24 PM] i need 2 ponder that one more [10:24 PM] i do know i consider wakaba and jade to be similar though [10:25 PM] i think vriska considers anthy to be very boring. so she might provoke her a lot. like how she was w aradiabot [10:25 PM] but also that was bc vriska considered aradia a friend… so idk with a stranger she might just be rude

🐒 munke [10:26 PM] wait ur wakajade parraleld [10:26 PM] i would like to hear defensr

🐍 python [10:26 PM] theyre both sidelined by the plot very heavily [10:26 PM] w wakaba its like lampshaded but w jade less so [10:26 PM] they both couldve been the protag in another comic

🐒 munke [10:27 PM] ahhhh [10:27 PM] rebound girlies ……..

🐍 python [10:27 PM] theyre both aware of how distant they r from the canon… and hate it [10:27 PM] yeas… [10:28 PM] i think the difference is that jade was sidelined bc she was too powerful for the plot. like she is the most involved in sburb of the beta kids (her life does not truly begin until they enter the game) but shes also the least involved in all the big battles bc shes too strong [10:28 PM] the hand of god taking her off the table… [10:28 PM] i think wakaba is just sidelined bc its not her story LOL [10:29 PM] like she HAS her own plot she can be involved in (shes the princess of that other world or whatever and she literally found her prince) but she doesnt want it ‼‼ she wants to be in this one. [10:30 PM] thats all i have maybe theres another utena character who jade is a closer analog to idk [10:33 PM] i think in terms of like… placement irt the plot? vriska's thing is that the story is always trying to sideline her but she (and also the hand of god very transparently) keeps putting her back in. and also terezi did that once too lol. but nanami and vriska share a similar role of … being subjected to a lot of humiliation (plot wise) but also their backstories are a trauma dump. and also ofc the personalities

and today

🐒 munke [1:13 PM] did u send me an anon on hehlloanthy about vriska

🐍 python [1:13 PM] not at all [1:13 PM] what does it say ⁉️⁉️⁉️‼️⁉️‼️⁉️

🐒 munke [1:13 PM] 🤨

🐍 python [1:13 PM] BELIEB ME

🐒 munke [1:13 PM] ok well im ghonna post our conversation about rgu/hs parallels then [1:13 PM] just to share 💜

🐍 python [1:15 PM] okay addendum to what i said before [1:18 PM] for homestuck, rheres a difference between hussie the self insert joke and hussie the wielder of the hand of god. re: vriska remaining relevant via the hand of god. like hussies self insert is an allegory for the narrative going off the rails and out of their control. but ofc like theyre the one still writing and arting for it, so they arent truly divorced from the narrative decisions jn the real world. DOES THIS MAKE SENSE

🐒 munke [1:22 PM] yes

🐍 python [1:22 PM] i just want to circumvent the haters 😈

🐒 munke [1:22 PM] HSFJDFJSKDHFOKDSJ

[psychreviews2]

The Presocratics: Parmenides

Parmenides of Elea

"With all eyes the creature sees

the open. Only our eyes are 

reversed and placed wholly around creatures

as traps, around their free exit

What is outside we know from the animal's

visage alone. ~ Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke - The Duino Elegies: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Rilke.php

Parmenides was an important Presocratic who's thought bears a lot of resemblance to Nagarjuna and his Diamond Slivers meditation. What follows can be a western angle on how to challenge the concept of time, subject, and object. You can review similar ideas in my review of Nirvana.

Nirvana: https://rumble.com/v1grcgx-mindfulness-nirvana.html

Parmenides & Nagarjuna discussion: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7207/nagarjuna-and-parmenides-comparison

Thankfully, many lines of Parmenides's On Nature have survived, and there's enough for readers to ponder over. Little of his life is available, but according to tradition, he was from Elea, modern-day Velia in Italy, was a politician who passed successful laws for his native city, and he met a man named Ameinias, who "converted him to the quiet life." He was influenced by the Pythagoreans and possibly Heraclitus and Xenophanes, but whether he was influenced directly by them or not, he nevertheless moved in his own direction, which was to explore Truth in a more holistic way than what the majority of people operate under.

Proem (Introduction)

At the beginning of the poem, Parmenides is summoned by an unknown Goddess, possibly Aletheia the Goddess of Truth. Converging from the path of the night, Parmenides meets up with the path of the day at the gates of Justice. His chariot is led by daughters of the Sun, Helios, who persuade Justice, possibly Goddess Themis, to open the gates. Here the symbolism of day and night existing at the same time foreshadows what's to follow.

The Way of Alētheia (Reality/Truth)

Parmenides is instructed to listen well and to pass on what he has learned about the correct way of knowing. "The one – that exists, and that is impossible not to be, is the persuasive path (for it is based on truth); The other – that exists not and that cannot be, that I point out to you to be a path wholly unknowable, for you could not know what-is-not, nor could you point it out."

This passage goes along with the understanding that you can only experience what actually happens and much of our thoughts dwell in possibilities that are more or less dim and unrealistic. In fact, a lot of psychology, meditation, and especially Heideggerian philosophy pounce on this as an avenue for therapy. Wanting to change the past or thinking that one has enough information to predict the future is a prescription for stress. Where it gets a little more complicated is that we can hold possibilities in our minds at a certain level of accuracy, but instead the Goddess emphasizes how we cannot even know or point out what-is-not because somethings are even more hidden for us. The example of day and night and how they can bleed into each other demonstrates how our concepts of day and night don't hold complete detail. If we go around looking for certain details based on our rigid beliefs, we can easily ignore details that eventually interfere with our predictions. Even further, our human capacity for learning humbles us precisely because we don't know what we don't know. Currently, there are many things that could exist, and many scientific realities that we haven't discovered yet. It's very easy for each age to think that what they know is mostly all that we need to know. We laugh at how backward past civilizations were precisely because we don't know how funny or contemptible we will look to our descendants. So in this case, strange things like unicorns can exist as part of a fantastic story, but what we do not know at any point in time is truly unknowable. This includes not yet invented technology, undiscovered science, and surprising turns in our life-stories.

One of the famous fragments has been translated many ways, but a common translation matches well for those who like to meditate, and it also includes all fantastical things that aren't real but still can be thought about: "Thinking and Being are the same thing." Essentially, we cannot think without objects to think about, and those objects trigger us to make future predictions on how those objects may turn out. Now, one can ask, why is it bad to make predictions if we need to be prepared for the unexpected?

"Necessarily, what is there to pick out and ascertain is real; for it is there to be real, whereas nothing is not."

When we talk about unknowable things the problem is in our positive concepts that try to speak for the negative opposites. Like with Xenophanes's comparisons, and how we learn through comparison, our positive concepts of reality bleed over into opposite experiences that are ignored, but vitally interdependent. When we speak of night or day, the dawn will have people calling it day or night at slightly different times depending on their subjective opinions. When is the day exactly turning into the night? Even if we use the word dawn when does dawn start and end? Again, people will have subjective time periods. Our concepts of reality can conceal part of reality.

Like a Buddhist description of ignorance, the Goddess admonishes: "For never shall this be forced: that things that are not, exist."

When one believes in our abstract, or over-simplified ideas, our sense of reality  can be shaken with every unpredictable event. The reality that under-girds our experiences is always partially unknowable because the edge of our concepts always gives way to an interdependence that we tend to ignore.

Milton Friedman - Pencil interdependence: https://youtu.be/R5Gppi-O3a8

"One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that it is; on this path, there are many signs: that what-is is ungenerated and imperishable; Whole, [non-diverse], steadfast, and complete; Nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, One, continuous; for what coming-to-be of it will you seek? In what way, whence, did it grow? Neither from what-is-not shall I allow you to say or think; for it is not to be said or thought that it is not. And what need could have impelled it to grow later or sooner, if it began from nothing? Thus it must either be completely or not at all."

Typical of meditation instructions, when one looks for permanent edges to our concepts, we always find them give way to more realistic detail, and an endless interdependence unfolds. If it was always night, it would be called something else. Day and night are labeled because of the differences we perceive, and how we use those perceptions to help us guide our decisions. Seeing the interdependence of diverse perceptions helps to zoom out of the diversity into an essential Oneness. In a relative way, all things couldn't exist without all other things. We hit the limits of our perception and there's a momentary relief from loneliness and separation.

"Nor is it divisible, since it all alike is...It is all full of what-is...It is un-beginning and unceasing, since coming-to-be and perishing have been driven far off, and true trust has thrust them out. Remaining the same and in the same, it lies by itself and remains thus firmly in place; for strong Necessity holds it fast in the chains of a limit, which fences it about. Wherefore it is not right for what-is to be incomplete; For it is not lacking; but if it were, it would lack everything."

This oneness is empty and full and predicts future preoccupations on how to achieve equanimity in Pyrrohism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. This equanimous state was called Ataraxia by the Greeks. Pyrronists tried to achieve this by reducing judgment, which matches so many other therapeutic modalities. Judgment, and even subtle discernment, involve some stress. Adjusting one's attitude towards equanimity was called Epoché and was influential with Heidegger's teacher Edmund Husserl.

Heidegger's Alētheia

Martin Heidegger was very interested in the Presocratics and focused on layers of truth that may have been lost as Greek thinking changed over time and influenced the West for centuries. In his Parmenides, Heidegger studied the type of primordial thinking of the past to show us how different it was, but also to recover the incredible richness that was forgotten or Concealed as will be outlined later. "Not every thinker at the outset of Western thought is...a thinker of the beginning, a primordial thinker. The first primordial thinker was named Anaximander. The two others were Parmenides and Heraclitus."

If you take a look back at my prior reviews of those thinkers, Anaximander was credited for bringing in the view of limited objects in an unlimited space, which was also partially supported by Pythagoras. Heraclitus's view emphasized oneness, and Parmenides advanced on both concepts with an exploration of the ephemerality of time and the hiddenness of certain possibilities.

Translations are so important and much of what a translator brings betrays their anachronistic cultural interpretations. In the case of Heidegger, this is especially why his translations are controversial and look so different. He looked at the history of Greek thinking and translated the original Greek into what he felt Greeks actually experienced. Part of his tactic was to look at other ancient Greek writings before Plato, like Hesiod, Homer, and Pindar, and compare them to the Presocratics.

The Goddess's advice to Parmenides is translated by Heidegger this way:

"...The appearing (in the need) remains called upon to be apparent, while it shines through everything and (hence) in that way brings everything to perfection."

For Heidegger, the primordial ground of our experience of being human, Being with a capital B, is something to be excavated to find more and more primordial underpinnings. One of the areas most ignored in modern thinking is the problem of not knowing what we don't know. Heidegger helps us to understand by making a comparison between what is concealed and what is un-concealed. Truth or Alētheia, for Heidegger, is the unconcealed. It's the "persuasive truth" in the poem above, but with a lot more layers than one thinks of at first. It is also connected with the concealed, but it is progressively veiled from us all the way up to non-existence for our minds. Jungians would look at this as another version of The Shadow, where you have completely unconscious psychological skills that remain dormant with partially developed skills that are progressively conscious for us, except here we are talking more about possibilities than just skill development.

Heidegger looked at Unconcealment as a "Well-enclosing unconcealment," because of how fitted together it is with what is concealed, or unknown at varying levels. Unconcealment happens "when an understanding of the being or essence of everything that is, shapes all the possibilities for comportment (behavior) in the world." Heidegger likes to use the terms "essence" and "comportment" a lot, which can confuse readers. A good way to define essence is to look at common qualities that allow us to label something as a particular thing. Comportment is how we behave, habituate, and react to those essences we are aware of or are unconcealed to us.

A quick guess at unconcealment might provide images of an abrupt happening or surprise while one stands there, and it does include those events, but also the realm of time and different possibilities and ways we can react or behave. The typical way to look at what is unconcealed is that it includes what is real as well as what we are aware of. Heidegger wants the reader to take note of another level, what is concealed. "...Every endeavor to think Truth in a somewhat suitable manner, even if only from afar, is an idle affair as long as we do not venture to think the Concealed to which, presumably, Truth refers back."

The unconcealed for Heidegger is an activity of "disclosing" and is a "non-dissembling letting appear." So a full unconcealment allows for an understanding that isn't misinterpreted, deceitful, or disguised. This hints at the struggle between what is veiled and what is understood. Heidegger defines concealed in many different ways. It is "conserving, preserving, holding back, entrusting, closing off, closedness, and appropriating." You have to wrest truth from concealment like an investigator. "In the essence of truth as un-concealedness there holds sway some sort of conflict with concealedness and concealment...Unconcealedness stands in some sort of opposition to concealment."

A great example is at the beginning of the above poem. Dawn is appearing along with the remainder of the night. There's a period where day and night are partially co-existing and progressively unconcealing and concealing each other. How we can misinterpret this experience happens naturally as we try to communicate our concepts of experience. We can be caught in a life where we jump from one thought to another to the point where it's very difficult to experience anything ambiguous without this conceptual overlay that forces certainty. "Word and language have become for us a conveyance and a tool for communication, one among others, to speak of 'dealing with words' produces at once a fatal impression. It is as if, instead of mounting a motorcycle, we would remain standing before it and make a speech about it with the intention of learning in this way how to ride it." Another common example would be to be in school for so many years, learning endless concepts, and then to only find out later that you learn much more with actual work experiences.

This is a key to Heidegger's goal of getting us to "think" in his way, which is looking at the experience that the concept is pointing to and to really understand the concept more robustly. We don't want to lose those important layers of understanding because of a superficial reception of communication. "We must hear the literally taken word in such a way that we heed its directives in their pointing to the dictum. In such heeding we then hearken to what the word is trying to say. We exercise attentiveness. We begin to think." What are instructions trying to tell us about the experiential world?

Heidegger provides an example of how something we don't know can have such an affirmative impact on our lives, and this is because it's like a photo negative of an event. It's a non-event that prevents possibilities and potentials from arising in our lives. Also because we don't choose to hold back our predictions of the future, because we habitually believe that what is unconcealed is the only thing that exists, the stress of surprise is much greater. This can happen when we know too little, are in deep forgetfulness, or if we don't remain humble about what we may still not know. The picture negative effect is that we cannot "comport," behave, or react to what we don't know. We can have a sense of loss if there's a partially veiled unconcealed notion of what we have lost, but in thorough concealment, we don't even know what is lacking. "In forgetting not only does something slip from us, but the forgetting slips into a concealment of such a kind that we ourselves fall into concealedness precisely in our relation to the forgotten." Modern examples would be censorship. Dictators don't just rely on repetitive propaganda, but also censorship of competing views. How do you behave towards competing views that aren't available for you to study?

Some of the concealments are also quite complicated and include what is considered by the Greeks as false. False can be "incorrect, dissembling, misleading, covering, veiled, fools gold, distorting, off-path, [sheltering], cache, haven, ensconced, mysterious, secret, absence, destruction, conspiracy, and not yet known." Even further, this review is an unconcealment of the term concealment. If a person is completely unaware of Heideggerian philosophy before reading this, then they were concealed about concealment before reading.

As we learn about truth in the Greek way, Heidegger prefers Logos, over Ratio. Logos in Heidegger's book isn't completely certain about things. It's an assertion we can follow through links of interdependence with other things and without too much conceptual overlay to force things: "The letting appear of the unconcealed." Rationality is "to take something as something. Counting, calculating, calculus. Ratio is a self-adjustment to what is correct." What makes Ratio different from Logos for Heidegger is how it can quickly turn into Certitudo or certainty. Here we can feel the stress of having a lot of certainty, which is practical for many reasons, but is already forgetting some of the understanding of concealedness. Heidegger wants to drive home the fact that no matter how much we think we know with our technical know-how, there's always some uncertainty that our rationality ignores.

Certainty blocks out concealedness which also blocks out mystery and awe. People who are certain about everything are quite bored because nothing surprising is expected to happen, and when it eventually does, even if it's small, it's traumatic. Eg. Heated arguments in the workplace, in intimate relationships, or in political debates. It really helps to hold back certainty, or "position-taking," until there's more investigation. Eventually, if we investigate enough so that we can make a good decision, then we have something more solid to rest our certainty. Certainty involves judgment, and judgment always harbors a certain amount of stress. Removing needless stress is therapeutic. Heidegger said, "the inception of the metaphysics of the modern age rests on the transformation of the essence of veritas into certitudo. The question of truth becomes the question of the secure, assured, and self-assuring use of ratio. Attaining, with certainty, what is right. (Justice)." Wanting to be right and resting security on one's certainty can easily turn into insecurity when the rationale is proven false. "In this epoch, as a consequence of a peculiarly concealed incertitude, certitude in the sense of unconditional certainty counts as what is most valuable, and therefore ascertaining becomes the basic character of all [behavior]. Ascertaining is not a merely subsequent corroboration but is rather the aggressive making secure in advance for the sake of certitude."

How thought moved from the Greeks to the modern age was summarized by Heidegger as a Christian attitude of wanting to behave justly, to Kant, where people fervently want to be right in the end. With Nietzsche, Heidegger predicts a desert in his form of Truth. In Nietzsche's notes, Heidegger found this quote: "What is just = the will, to perpetuate an actual power relation..." This can easily be seen in arguments and fights over leadership. The will to power is to be in a power position where one can command. That intense certainty is often intense because there's a strong need to find a power position to feel secure, or to avoid feelings of helplessness. In the 20th century, and even in the 21st, this problematic form of truth influences the public towards a terrible narcissism that lays waste to mystery, awe, and appreciation. For Heidegger, we are starting with Nietzsche first and excavating backwards to try and regain a deeper sense of truth from the ancient Greeks. "The field of the essence of Alētheia (Truth) is covered over with debris."

The typical modern way is to quickly solve mysteries so we can earn money to consume and continually believe that all mysteries are solved for the time being, except for those mysteries that can provide more consumption if we solve them as well. The "desert" in where we lose the sense of awe and appreciation is that we ignore how concealedness will always be with us, unless we are a God and know everything. It ignores our death with escapism and ignores the value of our life when we lack the power to consume as much as others. Consumption is important, but it can easily turn into repetitive consuming leading to extreme boredom and further concealing that it's a wonder that we are alive at all. It takes training to look at what exists without thinking of its utility, or how we can consume it. "The openness of the open mystery does not consist in solving the mystery, thus destroying it, but consists in not touching the concealedness of the simple and essential and letting this concealedness alone in its [non-appearance.]"

Heidegger wants his "thinking," a kind of meditation, to replace these historically more concealed forms of certitude and wills to power. "We are here only broaching a realm who's fullness of essence we hardly surmise and certainly do not fathom, for we are outside the mode of experience proper to it."

Like in Buddhism, Heidegger sees that we get alienated by our sense of subject and object. There's a special stress there with our need to control objects for our security, even if in the end we are mortal. He wants to reintroduce to us what was already there. "Man is the being that emerges from itself, emerges in such a way that in this emerging, and for it, it has the word. In the word, the being we can call man comports itself to beings as a whole, in the midst of which man himself is." We are part of the universe, and the sense of separation is an illusion. "The 'living being' is [nature, reality,] a being whose Being is determined by [nature], by emergence and self-opening."

When we are going through a "sojourn" through this life we have to realize that our being is being affected by what we don't know, but still exists. Our interconnectedness can't be made into a label or an experience. We have to intuit it to realize that at all times we can't always be so certain in our belief in perfectly delineated chunks of reality. "Disclosedness and concealment are a basic feature of Being...The forgotten is, in the experience of the Greeks, what has sunk away into concealedness, specifically in such a fashion that the sinking away i.e. the concealing, remains concealed to the very one who has forgotten...The forgetter is concealed to himself in his relation to...the forgotten. [Oblivion]." Part of this concealing could be explained in an example by looking at all the ancient books that only remain to us as a reference in others because they have been lost through time. For example, the books destroyed in the library of Alexandria. What knowledge, reactions, behaviors, or comportments have been missing for generations because that knowledge was destroyed forever?

How we can cope with this problem of not knowing our potential, is an acceptance of both the unconcealed and the concealed in our lives. This coping involves us allowing a sense of awe with discovery. Awe for Heidegger connected with Truth and Virtue in the mentality of the Presocratic Greeks. "Awe as the essence of Being conveys to man the disclosure of beings. But opposed to awe there holds sway the concealment we call oblivion." Awe is connected with appreciation and we tend to be more virtuous when we are in a state of awe. One of those simple virtues is just a preservation of what happens, and that comes through our ability of language to signal what we witnessed. That signal has an urgency that is already in the sound before we complete an assertion. Ahhhh! "The proper essence of the word is that it lets beings appear in the Being and preserves what appears, i.e., the unconcealed, as such. Being manifests itself primordially in the word."

Heidegger tries very well to bridge the gap between our concepts of "things, facts, matters, and issues," with his understanding of the The Word. Speaking for us isn't just annunciation. We also use our hands to communicate. The bridging of communication and experience traditionally came through the hand, and even with The Word, the hand is involved in writing. What is lost with modern technology is the ability to attach our individual stamp when we use keyboards instead of handwriting. Our personal character is blunted a little. Action for Heidegger is that human intention that can involve handing things. "Things 'act,' insofar as the things present and at hand dwell within the reach of the 'hand.' The hand reaches out for them and reaches them: action, the reaching arrival at something, is essentially related to the hand."

Darkness can happen when the intention of the hand is separated from the word in our modern mechanical experience. We can become mechanized and alienated from our humanness in an unexpected way. "Mechanical writing deprives the hand of its rank in the realm of the written word and degrades the word to a means of communication. In addition, mechanical writing provides this 'advantage,' that it conceals the handwriting and thereby the character. The typewriter makes everyone look the same." We can lose that sense of awe with our individual contribution to reality. It's just a boring means to an end. "Insofar as the veiling clouds bring gloom, the way providing the view lacks that clarity which would lead it straight away toward the unconcealed. Therefore the cloud, within action, leads the way astray, leads outside of what the thinking ahead, the reflecting, and the commemorating provide when they are guided by awe. Transposed into concealment, as such a darkening, man stands in a certain way outside of what is unconcealed." Our communicating loses character, personality and maybe even some sympathy. If you look back at an old diary, you can easily feel a sense of care towards a past self. If those same words were put into a typeface, it could easily appear our history has been depersonalized, or obliviated, even if we can't say exactly how. By making ourselves look the same as others, and not just in typeface, we can limit our individual possibilities. "The cloud is signless; that means it does not show itself at all...All darkening leaves behind a brightness. In the fact that the cloud of forgetting concealment conceals itself as such, the uncanny character of forgetting comes to the fore. Forgetting itself occurs already in an oblivion. If we forget something, we are no longer with it, but instead we are 'away,' 'drawn aside.'"

More deeply than using typeface instead of a pen are the limitations we get with deeper concealment which not only clears away possibilities in the present, but also how what is concealed in the present can narrow future paths. When we think of our future goals, they often look like wild fantasies precisely because of what we are currently unaware of. We may project fantastical elements into our wishes with no preparation for limitations we can't foresee. It's rare to have the energy to always make a Plan B. A healthier way with goals is to look at spheres of possibilities as opposed to narrow all-or-nothing options. "What shows itself, the unconcealed, the indicator, can subsequently also mean 'goal.' But the essence of the 'goal' for the Greeks is the limitation and demarcation of the direction and range of [behavior]. Thought in the modern way, a 'goal' is only the provision of an 'intermediate' stage within the limitlessness of the ever increasing successes and concerns." The modern way freezes goals and creates a lot of attachment and pain when those goals are thwarted by what eventually becomes unconcealed. In a way, those rigid goals often ignore timelines which can signal to us that we need to change our goals to something else. "Concealment here does not only touch what is past but also what is present and, above all, what, in thinking ahead, is approaching man and what befits his [bearing] by providing an assigned direction." What we don't know can eventually provide an assigned direction when unconcealed, and send us into unexpected life paths, including the unpleasant ones we don't want, but fortunately, we can also wander into pleasant paths. Our individual stamp as we walk along our own path maintains a zest and character when we stay more present and humble with what we don't know and we react with a sense of awe with changes and surprises instead of entitlement to a pre-prescribed life story. Perfectionist life stories imitated from culture are particularly prone to creating stress and panic when a person holds to their ideal goals and is too inflexible to allow natural twists and turns to change them.

For Heidegger, the ultimate alienation in modern culture is a mechanized communism where personality is effaced and life is completely planned. He quotes Lenin: "'Bolshevism is Soviet power plus electrification.' That means: Bolshevism is the organized, calculating conclusion of the unconditional power of the party along with complete technization." Individual appreciation is moved into a concealed oblivion which deadens the sense of self that cries out for recognition and emotional attunement from others. Achievement is labeled as "exploitation" and then punished to bring people back into conformity. The only way out is rebellion.

Stalin votes in Russian election: https://youtu.be/qfEsvAfme_Y

English tutor Nick P quotes (2018): Stalin: https://youtu.be/k5qAUB6AkoY

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall: https://youtu.be/-cwfomUrOLU

"The essence of veiling consists in this, that it relegates things and people and both in their relation to one another to the abode of concealment...Above all, oblivion tears things and man away from unconcealedness, in such a manner that the one who forgets dwells within a realm in which beings are withdrawn and man himself is withdrawn from beings; and even this reciprocal withdrawal, as a relation, is withdrawn from unconcealedness." So we lose opportunities and our emotional relatedness with those opportunities, and in deep concealment in that we don't know what we're missing. A massive repression. This didn't start with Marxism for Heidegger. It was already at the beginning with Plato, and they even had a name for it, Techne: "...a sign that procedural processes are lording it over experience." Another stress from techne is how workers often fight exactly on those grounds of certitude when so many cogs in the machine aren't communicating and working well together. The unexpected creates a lot of stress in work environments. This is especially so with social engineering when unexpected consequences blow up in the faces of the elite Philosopher Kings.

Dave Portnoy - Politicians are stealing the right to earn a living: https://youtu.be/DxEtwJaLPnc

So as we move on our path in life, Heidegger wants us to relax the tension of thinking with certainty by looking at consciousness, which he names many different things, and to primordially peel back layers of extraneous concept. "The pole lets beings appear in their Being and show the totality of their condition. The pole does not produce and does not create beings in their Being, but as pole it is the abode of the unconcealedness of beings as a whole." We "emerge, [and] rise up into the unconcealed." As we deal with what we do know we can now detect the friction between what we are experiencing and what we don't know, as we bump into obstacles for further unconcealment in our environment. "Every unconcealment of beings stands in conflict with concealment and accordingly also with dissemblance and distortion." In this conflict, we settle into what IS, which Heidegger calls The Uncanny.

"It is what comes into presence always already and in advance prior to all 'uncanninesses.' The uncanny, as the Being that shines into everything ordinary, i.e., into beings, and that in its shining often grazes beings like the shadow of a cloud silently passing. The uncanny is the simple, the insignificant, ungraspable by fangs of the will, withdrawing itself from all artifices of calculation, because it surpasses all planning. The emergence and the concealment that dwell in all emergent beings, i.e., Being itself, must therefore be astonishing to common experience within the everyday dealing with beings...The astounding is for the Greeks the simple, the insignificant, Being itself. The astounding, visible in the astonishing, is the uncanny, and it pertains so immediately to the ordinary that it can never be explained on the basis of the ordinary." Our Being is like a light that shines on only a part of the absolute reality of everything, and also what we accurately remember or can accurately predict. What is outside of that sphere of existence is more or less concealed.

What Heidegger is pointing at is when we are in our presence and we negate that presence by jumping into the conceptual subject-object duality we move through unconcealedness in a limited way and forget a greater self that is aware that there is always some concealment. For those who like Advaita Vedanta meditations, the Great "I" is what he is targeting. It's what appears before we get lost in our narrative concerns or our representations of ourselves. It's our consciousness of what IS, and what is concealed from it. The reason why this is so important is the stress related to the regular attention we provide to a subject-object being. We feel stressfully alienated from a particular field that will be described below: The Open. But in the meantime, what Heidegger is saying is that for the ancient Greeks, overthinking and forcing a sense of self onto the field of awareness was not as much a compulsion back then as it is for modern people today. A common discipline that meditators like Eckhart Tolle recommend is to try to think when you need to think and to not think when you don't need to. For modern people, this is a gigantic challenge: to dwell regularly in the primordial Being. "For the Greeks, disclosure and emergence prevail in the essence of every originarily emergent being. Insofar as Being comes into presence out of Truth, there belongs to it self-disclosing emergence...All post Greek humanity, have for a long time been so deflected that we understand looking exclusively as man's representational [subject] self-direction toward beings [object]. But in this way looking does not all come into sight; instead it is understood only as a self-accomplished 'activity,' i.e, an act of re-presenting. To re-present means here to present before oneself, to bring before oneself, and to master, to attack things. The Greek's experience looking at first and properly as the way man emerges and comes into presence, with other beings, but as man in his essence. Thinking as moderns and therefore insufficiently, but for us surely more understandably, we can say in short: the look, is not looking as activity and act of the 'subject' but is sight as the emerging of the 'object' and its coming to our encounter. Looking is self-showing and indeed that self-showing in which the essence of the encountering person 'emerges' in the double sense that his essence opens itself to the look - opens itself at any rate in order to let come into presence in the unconcealed at the same time the concealment and the abyss of his essence. [Loss of ownership of subject.]"

How do we break the habit of excessive thinking? - Eckhart Tolle: https://youtu.be/dTFDfR47dl4

A more simple way to look at it for experienced meditators is that consciousness can only exist if there are objects to be conscious of, so Heidegger wants us to see this kind of "self-showing" before we get lost in the conceptual "me" and "my concerns." The "me" and "my concerns" conceal bare consciousness. This consciousness can't really be labeled, but Heidegger tries to. "Luminous self-disclosure shows itself as the shining. What shines is what shows itself to a looking. What appears to the looking is the sight that solicits man and addresses him, the look." Essentially The Look IS. What is looked at IS. The Look proves our existence. Awareness, aware of itself.

Collapsing the Separation Between Awareness and the Objects of Experience - Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/gK0arUFvU8c

Awareness is Self Aware - Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/h0ZoNA9y4QA

The Nature of Awareness - Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/R-IIzAblVlg

Why this is so important to Heidegger comes more from the actual experience of meditation. You can use many different kinds of meditation, but what is often missing from most types is a healing attunement and resonance between The Look and the narrative self. When one is always jumping from one thought-concern to another, the natural stress creates a sense of trauma and separation that can become habitual and essentially a permanent fixture of life experience, where The Look is covered over. What is healing here is a kind of earlier version of what Eugene Gendlin called "Focusing." Instead of looking for a therapist, or a parental figure to soothe oneself, one can see that a lot of the pain we have is our unrealistic narratives that keep finding the surprises coming out of the concealed and emerging into the unconcealed in haphazard ways. It shocks our life stories and what we hope for them, because they are so unrealistic. Stepping back from the narratives of successive subject-object conflicts, creates an emotional distance that is healing. The judgments and stresses decrease. We don't have to get caught in how things SHOULD be, because if we rest in Being we can assess how realistic our thoughts are towards beings. How Gendlin instructs students to practice Focusing is to go into the body, which gets us much closer to bare consciousness, and ask questions to bring out feelings and to resonate with them. We are creating what Heidegger calls a "life sympathy."

Briefly, Eugene would instruct us to ask questions and ask "how is my life going? What is the main thing for me right now?" We are to wait for a physical response instead of getting lost in narratives. It's more important to let the complete feeling of all the problems show up as a cluster of feelings and then to apply accurate labels or images to the feelings. "This is what makes it feel like that." Resonating happens when there's a back and forth between different images and feelings that gradually become more accurate. The higher awareness is able to listen to the feelings and resonate with them. It can elevate being, which gets lost in concerns, towards Being. You feel more interconnected and it becomes easier to maintain presence the way that Heidegger wants us to, to Think in his particular way as opposed to over-conceptualizing. He even has the common complaint that Buddhist teachers have with people who have conceptualized their practice too much. "Philosophy, as the heedfulness to the claim of Being on man, is first of all the care for Being and never a matter of 'cultural formation' and knowledge. Therefore it is possible that many persons may possess a great amount of learned information about philosophical opinions without ever being 'philosophical' and without 'philosophizing.' Then again, others may be touched by the claim of Being without knowing what it is and without responding to the claim of Being with appropriate thinking."

When we continuously practice Thinking, we can gradually unconceal objects and experiences while at the same time realize that we are only unconcealing certain angles and preserving those points of view. "...A being only is insofar as at the same time and in opposition to this concealment and in this withdrawal there also prevails an unconcealedness in which the unconcealed is conserved...All dwell to a certain degree within the essential region of concealment...The Greek thinkers speak of 'to save what appears'; that means to conserve and to preserve in unconcealedness what shows itself - that is, against the withdrawal into concealment and distortion. He who in this fashion saves (conserves and preserves) the appearing, saves it into the unconcealed, is himself saved for the unconcealed and conserved for it." In a way, ignorance is the concealment around us, and as our light of unveiling illuminates the darkness of concealment we can save our possibilities that are preserved in what we unconcealed. We can preserve beings and our ability to behave or react in different ways to them, which is preserving our sense of possibilities, and a form of learning.

This points to Heidegger's focus on the edge between the concealed and the unconcealed and how utterly instant and interdependent both are. As we move away from experiences, objects, and possibilities, there is a fading, and in many other cases, an instantaneous disappearing. If possibilities are permanently shut off, then the concealment is also permanent. As we explore more, there is a brightening, we learn new skills, and possibilities open for us. Concealment is a "withdrawal of what appears in its appearing..." Unconcealment on the other hand, "is directed to the region of withdrawing concealment. This is the one and only thing necessary, since Truth, which is what is to be experienced, is itself by essence founded on forgetting. Between these nothing mediates and there is no transition, because both in themselves pertain immediately to each other by their very essence. Whenever a belonging together is an essential one, the transition from one side to the other is 'sudden.'"

I emphasized above the understanding that experience is founded on forgetting because it will pertain to Heidegger's description of The Open, which is a constant reminder of our interdependence with the universe. But even with these insights, a slowing down to notice appearing and disappearing helps to develop a skill that benefits from this kind of meditation: Poetizing. "...The essential beginning of poetry, i.e. the primordial free salvation and preservation of Being, without which poetizing would even lack what it is to be poetized." This paying attention helps with a sense of wonder, but also putting words to those primordial experiences can help to preserve them for the future in the primordial way, like in Haiku poetry. "We must think dis-closure exactly the way we think of discharging (igniting) or dis-playing (unfolding). Discharging means to release the charge; displaying means to let play out the folds of the manifold in their multiplicity...Dis-closure is equally for the sake of an en-closure as a sheltering of the unconcealed in the unconcealedness of presence, i.e., Being." As people meditate and poetize they see that the bleeding of interconnectedness is something being shined on by consciousness, but in actuality, it was always there. The beginning. Except this beginning never ends and it's a constant discovery, even a violent discovery, of interconnectedness that was always there. "Truth is against concealing closure, and through this 'against' it is for sheltering enclosure. Truth is against concealing because it comes to presence in the unconcealed for the sake of a sheltering...[It marks] the conflict out of which Truth is unified in its essence, and out of which it begins."

Zen Haiku: https://rumble.com/v1gpga3-zen-haiku.html

As time passes, Heidegger departs from Parmenides, and Nagarjuna for that matter, by not emphasizing the emptiness of time, because time can't be caught, frozen or examined. Instead of eliminating calculation of time, he reduces it. There is still a calculation but it too primordial to be considered a scientific calculation. "Time is something that in its way bears things, releasing them and taking them back...Number has no power in relation to it. That which dispenses to all beings their time of appearance and disappearance withdraws essentially from all calculation." Time as a strict calculation is where all the rushing and deadlines create all the stress. "Modern man therefore always 'has' less and less time, because he has taken possession of time in advance only as calculable and has made time something of which he is obsessed, though he is presumably the ruler whose rule masters time. For primordial Greek thinking, on the contrary, time, always as dispensing and dispensed time, takes man and all beings essentially into its ordering and in every case orders the appearance and disappearance of beings. Time discloses and conceals. Thus time can hide back into itself, only what has appeared...Beings, coming into presence and becoming concealed in absence by the 'sweep' of time, are understood here in terms of appearance...Something must therefore be present letting the appearance emerge (coming forth, out of concealedness)." For Heidegger, time is more based on events rather than units of time. For example, sayings like: "'time will bring it out into the light of day; everything needs its time.'"

Now that we've reached the edge of withdrawing concealedness, the sense of interdependence increases. What is more primordial allows our narrow perceptions and thoughts but is interdependent with many other things that are concealed, as Heraclitus intimated. Our existence touches other existences and they also do to others infinitely. "The free is the guarantee, the sheltering place, for the Being of beings. The open, as the free, shelters and salvages Being. The open and its extension into the vastness of the unlimited and limitless are zones without stopping places, where every sojourn loses itself in instability. The open provides no shelter or security. The open is rather the place where what is still undetermined and unresolved plays out, and therefore it is an occasion for erring and going astray." There are so many interconnections with nature that stretch beyond our comprehension, basically the entire universe, but we can't deny their pertinence in our lives when they begin to influence us. The Open includes both what is concealed and unconcealed. "In speaking of unconcealedness (Truth), Nature (emergence into the unconcealed), (appearing and letting appear), (concealing), and (being-hidden), what is always named is that which stands out into the open and therefore is the open." Now this open is not just a non-emotional equanimity at all times. Being includes our relationship to beings, and we can resonate with those feelings in real-time. Rüdiger Safranski in Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, says that "Heidegger immerses himself in 'experiencing' in order to discover our 'Being in situations,' and...he knows very well that in our scientific theorizing and in the large canvases of ideologies, we invariably miss it...We must be able to wait for high-tension intensities of a meaningful life." The difference here is that we are "thinking" in the Heideggerian way by letting "beings be in the open what they are as beings." We are allowing more possibility for beings, and also allowing for concealments. We rest in the groundless instead of resting in a wobbly certitude. Like a Yin and Yang, The Open includes also what is unconcealed as a kind of light. The light of consciousness. "The lighted and the lighting, and this in turn the shining of the light that provides brightness...The light is the determining radiance, the shining and appearing." What is different from this automatic shining and appearing is our regular thinking which is more goal oriented and ravenous.

The Presocratics: Heraclitus: https://rumble.com/v1gst93-the-presocratics-heraclitus.html

In Early Greek Thinking, Heidegger translates "Thinking and being are the same thing," as "thinking and thought 'it is' are the same." The interesting twist here is what the overall Being can see of being related to thinking. Here we label a static noun, Thought, out of a verb or activity, Thinking. Delving further into past philosophy, Heidegger finds even more angles to flesh out of our typical sense of being that gets overlooked. He attributes where he got his idea of our typical mode of re-presenting. Famously it was explained by Descartes as "I think, therefore I am." With Leibniz he saw "percipere is like an appetite which seeks out the particular being and attacks it, in order to grasp it and wholly subsume it under a concept relating this being's presence back to the percipere (repraesentare). Repraesentatio, representation, is defined as the perceptive self-presentation (to the self as ego) of what appears." The Latin percipere, sounds a lot like a passive perception in modern English, but it's anything but. If one meditates, one can catch this process of self-representation in our daily goals and acquirements. An example would be looking at something you want in a shop window and getting a flash of a self-representation enjoying the product bundled with anticipation and urgency to buy. After we consume the product, it's now labeled and shelved in memory to be available for future reference. An image of self is represented as if in front of oneself to be viewed and assessed. This is like an ambition to create a lifestyle so that the self can measure itself as progressing in one way or another. Self-narratives build so quickly! In a way, we are also consuming ourselves as we measure how we are doing in our life story and consume the pleasure of the narrative. If you are feeling pleasure, there is consumption. This includes times when we look back at our great successes and positive events with pleasure as we look at diaries or old photos. The problem for Heidegger is that this making the lower being into an object to imagine, label, and measure, leads eventually to a subject-object alienation found in most conceptions of the self in the West. We label-ize ourselves and put the overall Being into concealment. It creates that stressful sense of separation again, and because there are varying amounts of pleasure, the conditioning makes us repeat this cycle, again and again, making it hard for modern people to relax the stress of striving to endlessly increase consumption, and also the tendency of the mind to want to create ever-better self-narratives. What brings people to meditation, or other forms of psychology, is when the consuming goes into addictions and or conflicts because of a Will-to-power to dominate territory against others. This is why it's important to notice feelings along with thoughts.

The activity of thinking is full of moods and that's what becomes unconscious for us when we are thinking quickly or being deeply engrossed in thinking. Like in Psychoanalysis, there are many wishes, goals, and intentions that go by unnoticed. Heidegger wants to make a global label for the type of intention in thinking. The general emotion that Heidegger points to is the mood of Care. It includes both the bare awareness and the concern over objects. It happens quickly without much effort. "The look of Being, which looks into beings, is the Greek "View." The grasping look in the sense of seeing is in Greek "To-watch-with-care." As one develops the sense of Care, there is a connection to the Greeks of Awe and Virtue, which is a desire to be prepared, but also open to what emerges. The Open is "an unclosed and unoccupied extension prepared for the reception and distribution of objects." The danger here of course is making The Open into a conceptual container. We have to remain in the experience which is interdependent infinitely. "We will never arrive at the open, as the essence of truth, simply by stretching the open in the sense of the 'extended' or in the sense of the free as commonly understood, stretching it into a gigantic container encompassing everything...To think Being is very simple, but that the simple is for us the most arduous...All that is needed is simple wakefulness in the proximity of any random unobtrusive being, an awakening that all of a sudden sees that the being 'is'...It is as the groundless that the free comes to light, and that is how we name it, provided we think nothing more of a being than its 'it is.'"

How we can return to feeling separate and a sense of lack is falling into endless concern over individual objects within the open and losing the perception of their actual interdependence. "...Only unconcealed beings can appear and do appear in the open of Being. Man adheres, at first unwittingly and then constantly, to these beings. He forgets Being and in such forgetting learns nothing more than the overlooking of Being and alienation from the open...Being, the never [independent], is the groundless. This seems to be a lack, though only if calculated in terms of beings, and it appears as an abyss in which we founder without support in our relentless pursuit of beings. In fact we surely fall into the abyss, we find no ground, as long as we know and seek a ground only in the form of a being and hence never carry out the leap into Being or leave the familiar landscape of the oblivion of Being. This leap requires no digressions or formalities. For everywhere and always and in the closest proximity to the most inconspicuous beings there already dwells the openness of the possibility of explicitly thinking the 'it is' of beings as the free, in the clearing of which every being is liberated as if to it's freedom, is Being itself. Everything unconcealed is as such secured in the Open of Being, i.e., in the groundless."

Now, this freedom has to be couched in the same manner as Buddhism. Because we have to calculate in order to work and take care of ourselves, we will always have some, narrowing, focusing, mental processing, and stress somewhere. The value of these practices is the gaps between mental processing where we can reconnect with the Higher Being of awareness. We can save energy and apply it to our priorities. We also need to develop skills to continue unconcealing truth, and that always requires some strain of mental processing. There is also energizing and enjoyable mental processing activities in the form of Poetizing, which helps to preserve respect for primordial experience. Heidegger pits poetizing of our experiences of the open against modern mechanization and dehumanization of man to a mere animal made up of parts. "The metaphysics lying at the foundation of the biologism of the nineteenth century and of psychoanalysis, namely the metaphysics of the complete oblivion of Being, is the source of an ignorance of all laws of Being, the ultimate consequence of which is an uncanny [animalizing] of man."

In the end, the Goddess for Heidegger is Aletheia, Truth. "Aletheia is the disclosedness that in itself shelters all emergence and all appearance and disappearance...It is the essence of all essence. Essentiality." In the simple resting in what IS, a wonder can sneak up on a meditator. Safranski describes this as "the wonderment at the 'naked' That. That anything exists there at all. The relation between direct experience and its objectification had been characterized by Heidegger as a process of de-experiencing - the unity of the situation is dissolved, and experiencing turns into the self-perception of a subject confronted with objects. One has dropped out of direct Being and now finds oneself as someone who has 'objects,' including oneself as an object, called the subject. These objects, as well as the subject, can then be examined for their further characteristics, connections, causations, and so on; they are analytically determined and eventually appraised. In the secondary process the neutralized 'objects' are once more built into a world-connection, or, as Heidegger puts it, a dress is put on them so they do not have to stand about naked...This astonishing Something that Heidegger has in mind and that he calls before-worldly is the realization of the miracle that something exists there at all...An astonishment as if one had just been born into this world."

John Smith and "King Lear" - Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/xywCcndsxQQ

Why is there anything at all? - Victor Stenger - Closer to Truth: https://youtu.be/FJY-irMl_50

Why is there anything at all? - Bede Rundle - Closer to Truth: https://youtu.be/bkjJduwa608

Why is there anything at all? - David Albert - Closer to Truth: https://youtu.be/0D7Pbh-6k7o

One is left with an endlessly looping question of Why, which can never be answered, except with more presence with what IS. Another method I like to use to create that Uncanny sense of IS, is to ask "why does anything have to have the particular shape, look, and feel that it does? Would a different planet with life on it look radically different?" Answers invariably involve scientific laws, but why can't those laws be different? The ultimate answer is that "it just is." You can also ask "isn't it amazing that our technology allows us to do this?" Repeated practice points to letting go of discursive thinking that jumps around and leads back to a presencing of what is present. It's a recovery of the wonder that a child has but with the benefit of adult experience that one can return to at any time. Analytical thinking has the necessary importance of helping us find out how to survive, but watching stressful thoughts like "this is too hard! Why does it have to be this way?" can lead to areas of relief when they aren't allowed to play out, because it's ultimately self-inflicted. The IS-ness answers all those questions that make us feel stuck. Because it IS, therefore it can be. All our stressful thoughts that can't except that must retreat to some form of fantasy. The hint here is that there is still quite a bit of thinking within sensation, and one can practice trying to do activities with as little self-representing as possible. Imagine that!

The Miracle of Experience - Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/_oWHbsHO2-0

By looking at anything your ego didn't create, those things can be viewed as a gift, and The Open, which includes your entire being, and your being can be viewed as a gift as well because your ego didn't create it, doesn't need certainty with the answer to the question why I exist or why anything exists. The therapeutic answer is just: Gift-ness. The feeling of being gifted allows one to explore different comportments, or behaviors so that you can play in your gifted life and develop beyond rigid, conditioned, self-narratives you exercised in the past with all your repeated re-presenting. This re-presenting includes a conceptual self based on measuring how well it's doing at survival. It's the basis of our glee or depression depending on our stories of success or failure. A finite limited self-concept is naturally terrified of annihilation and contorts the body with tension. Like in my past reviews on Psychoanalytic views of how a conceptual self can expand in territory beyond the body and get into conflicts with others and oneself, it's the exploration inwards to find a concrete self that dissolves the expansion and the tension. Rupert Spira aptly says that when "we look for this entity, we don't find it. When we look for the 'I', we find the I of Awareness, not the 'I' of the separate entity...There's only one thing the tiger cannot stand, and that is to be looked at." Part of the problem of survival is the inevitable conflicts over scarcity that make people feel estranged from The Open. Scanning for a concrete version of the conceptual 'I' leads to an unexpected relief in unfindability. I find the relief isn't described very well by many meditation instructors. They say it's love with a big 'L.' I would say that missing definition of that type of relief is Belonging.

As you walk on your path, there may be boulders that you have to dodge or debris blocking your way, but that sense of preparedness for what comes out of the unconcealed, a sense of belonging with The Open as well, and playfulness to be creative, makes for a life that feels fresh. You sometimes have to share the trail with others when they appear out of concealedness, but the preparedness that is undergirded by an awareness of interdependence, can step out of alienation and self-accept with a healthy self-value because you belong with The Open. You're not estranged. You can feel the mind click when alienation turns into belonging. Obstacles are what IS and the only solution is to improvise and cope, instead of staying imprisoned in narrow self-possibilities that are untested and that you stew over in your mind. This self-respect can spread to the environment and project respect there as well because of this belonging. Even heavy processing in thinking, that people often avoid with meditation, is benefited in that one realizes that energy can be saved in rest and expended when appropriate, and there's no need to eliminate all stress. Not all thinking is intense high processing. Thinking shouldn't be feared and it also belongs. Seeing the varying levels of alienation and pain in thoughts should be enough to discern which thinking is needed and when it can be replaced with stillness, or healthier improvisational thinking. Improvisational thinking has the healthy feeling of opportunity as opposed to an imprisoned fate. It's also a form of healthy self-esteem because it's based on concrete reality and doesn't require inflation, self-deprecation, or an authority figure to balance itself out. Doing good or bad depends on actions, and future actions don't have to be fated. As long as there are real opportunities, then self-esteem can be developed in reality and realistically. The ups and downs then come from realistic situations and aren't intensified by distorted thinking. The emotions make sense and reflect reality. There's a release valve of tension when errors and mistakes are used for learning instead of being looped in endless distorted self-criticism and excessive shame.

Rupert Spira - "The eye of awareness": https://youtu.be/Q8udmHvoLII

The Ego and the Id - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html

Narcissistic Supply - Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gveop-narcissistic-supply-freud-and-beyond-wnaad.html

Mindfulness - How to avoid intellectualizing your practice [Anatta]: https://rumble.com/v1gr0w5-mindfulness-how-to-avoid-intellectualizing-your-practice.-anatta.html

Integration After the Recognition of Our True Nature - Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/MIpvGcosHuk

Brain Dysregulation: How To Know If it's Happening (and What To Do About It) - Crappy Childhood Fairy: https://youtu.be/8LNxy035NsU

The danger of The Open also has an added benefit in that one doesn't have to be a solipsist and believe everything is in the mind, like many meditators can get caught in. The outdoor world can bring events tumbling into unconcealment. This way of thinking can smoothly integrate with The Open without the fear of total alienation. We have to except the limits of our senses and it's healthy to believe there's a reality that can affect us eventually, when situations ricochet out from the concealed into our sphere of shining. For example, one can be in a blissful meditation retreat, and then come home to a house that has been invaded. There's a mess left by thieves rifling through your belongings. You were blissful while this was happening and the mood only changed when you finally unconcealed information about the crime. The alienation is only a problem when one is almost completely preoccupied with rumination and thoughts about controlling what can't be controlled, leaving us stuck in the stressful lower being. This is being stuck in the particular and in the entitlement of our limited beliefs. It's that problem of Aletheia again, where we posit truths and expectations onto realities that conceal important information. We then have trouble processing and accepting the news. Our meditative love and equipoise is gone.

This problem prompted Heidegger to ask, "...does self-concealment reign at the heart of disclosure?" Another way of asking it is, do our explorations require that we narrow from Being? His answer is that we need to see the big Being in all beings as a resting place for thinking. The exercise of thinking is simply a muscle that gets tired and needs rest in Being. There's also a thinking that is a form of rest when we connect the dots of cause and effect. Some of the dangerous causes and effects help us to understand in ways that can lead to future progress. Through learning and mastery, or progressive unconcealment, what is frightening can lead to a stable understanding. It's a type of thinking that can aid our survival, fight back when necessary, but also through investigating the particular, it can pull us back to interdependence. In The Orange Book, Shantanand Saraswati describes this form of thinking. "The sugar cube comes from sugar; sugar comes from sugar cane; sugar cane comes from soil, water, air, light, etc. Carrying on the argument 'this comes from that, that comes from that. . .', we ultimately trace the origin of the sugar cube to [Unmanifest Nature]." This connects the narrowing of our attention when we explore the particular back to a widening and supports the belief in seeing consciousness everywhere, but also to see that our exhausted researches always give up at certain unknowns, or concealments. It's humbling, but it unites the concrete with the abstract. The abstract is our current understanding of the whole that is subject to change with further unconcealment. "Thus to get to the abstract we take the help of the concrete..." This is also another pointer to a healthier self-esteem when we can scan cause and effect with our own body and mind. "I came from here. I was influenced this way or that way. I learned from this or that. I can't live without food or oxygen just like a tree requires light, water, soil, and CO2. The tree belongs and so do I."

Awareness Veils Itself with Its Own Activity - Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/9Ba96sAY61A

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Parmenides of Elea - David Gallop: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780802069085/

Parmenides - Martin Heidegger: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780253212146/

Heidegger and Unconcealment - Mark Wrathall: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780521739122/

Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil - Rüdiger Safranski: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780674387102/

Early Greek Thinking - Martin Heidegger: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780060638429/

The Presocratic Philosophers - G.S. Kirk: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780521274555/

A Presocratic Reader - Richard McKirahan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781603843058/

Focusing - Eugene Gendlin: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780553278330/

The Poetry of Rilke: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780374532710/

The Orange Book - Dr. Francis Roles, Shantanand Saraswati: Kindle: https://amzn.to/3a3zemb

Nirvana: https://rumble.com/v1grcgx-mindfulness-nirvana.html

Philosophy: http://psychreviews.org/category/philosophy03/

[pervysenpaix]

Can you do something with Kaminari? Really anything, I’ve been feeling shitty and I need a distraction

Hello, nonnie. I’ve been having a tough time too; wanna talk about it ? m’all soft and sad and normally when i’m like that i wanna write boys being mean cause ✨trauma✨. So how about I continue my little bully!kaminari au minus the piss kink cause i dunno if you’re into that. I hope terribly written psuedocomfort porn makes you feel better; if it tickles your pickle pls let me kno cause praise kink 🥺

Pairing | Denki Kaminari X Black Reader

TW!DubCon, Bullying, Degradation, Praising, Comfort , Chubby Reader , College AU— so quirks exist but UA is a university. , All characters 22 (senior year).

18+ NSFW content- MDNI

Denki Kaminari is alot of things. He’s incredibly handsome. He’s super popular. He’s a future pro hero.

He’s also bullied you since freshman year.

Typical bully stuff— pulling your hair , bumping into you, making you do his homework, having you bend over so he can fuck your thick thighs since you you’re being so stingy with your virgin cunt.

You know, the usual.

The man is high key obsessed with you but he’s shit at having conversations with girls that go past whether they’re on birth control or not. That’s why he always ended up teasing you until tears pricked the corner of your eyes just to “make it up to you” later.

But there was something different this time.

Usually it’d take a lot more than a whispered “ hey chubs” with a squeeze to the tummy to get the water works started.

“You cryin’?” He spins you around to get a better look at you when he hears a sniffle. Both hands on your cheeks to to pull your face closer to his. You whine in protest as you try to get away but he holds you steady. “Asked you a question, right dummy ?”

His tone holds no malice. Golden eyes brimming with concern. It’s almost tender the way he brushes the tears from your face.

“Just not feeling very good about myself, Kami” you hiccup, locked in place by his crystalline glare.

Denki pouts, hands dropping to your shoulders as he ponders something. Then he repositions one on the back of your neck and pulls you up for a kiss. Soft and sweet making you chase after him when he pulls away.

“Wanna show you something…”

It’s so embarrassing the position that he has you in. Sitting in his lap with your legs thrown over his. Him resting against the headboard with one hand placed on your tummy and the other moving between your thick thighs. He pumps fingers in and out of your heat at a steady pace, pausing ever so often to lap at the sheen coating them. His name falls off your lips in breathy chants, begging him to let you cum. He tsks, pulling his fingers out to slap your cunt. “No, dummy” he sneers, “I’m gonna keep teasing this fat lil pussy until you do as I say”. You groan in aroused frustration— out of all the torturous things he’s done to you, this has got to be the worst. Slowly, you open your eyes and your cheeks are immediately set ablaze as you meet your reflection. You look wrecked. Hair frizzy. Shirt unbuttoned. Panties slipped to the side with pale ringed fingers swiping through your slick. Arousal bloomed in your midsection and you’re panting—desperate for release. “P-please , Kami. I wanna— I need to-..” He shushes you with a kiss behind your ear. “You know what you have to do, babe” he cooed, voice syrupy sweet. “All you have to do is say it”. You bite your lip, stomach churning from the mixture of embarrassment and arousal. With a deep breath you lock gazes in the mirror and whisper “ I’m b-beautiful, smart and capable. Denki’s perfect little chubby b-bunny. The only ….” You pause, thighs trembling as he rolls his thumb over your bundle. “Keep going, dummy” he growls, pinching your clit for emphasis. “T-the only thing that should make me cry is Denki’s fat cock”.

“Good girllll— now cum”.

[duckymcdoorknob]

I’m not sure if ur still doing emergency requests bc I’m new here but I have one,

My mom died when I was pretty young and my family had never really recovered since her death and as far as im concerned my house is always filled with fights, could u please do headcanons with the hq boys with s/o’s with toxic/abusive family members? (Include osamu pls 😭 he’s my biggest comfort character)

Of course my love.

Please talk to me whenever you need it I’m ALWAYS open.

I’m very happy that you’ve come to me today.

CW UNDER THE CUT: Toxic family, death,

𝑂𝑠𝑎𝑚𝑢 𝑀𝑖𝑦𝑎

When ‘Samu was met with a deluge of excuses, after wanting to pick you up for a date at your house for the umpteenth time, he finally became suspicious of your home life.

He soon faced the conflict of: Do I let them suffer but come to me? Or do I pry and take the chance of them lying to me?

With pain in his heart, he decided to take the first option.

It absolutely killed him to see you pretended everything was normal.

He had nothing to go off of. You always came to school happy as a clam, never showing any sign of trouble.

Maybe he was reading too far into this.

Or maybe not.

Osamu’s phone dings gently, the screen illuminating your name with a few heart emojis next to it.

“Yes sir, I’ll be home soon. I’ve truly tried my best this quarter, but I’m sorry to report that I did not meet your expectations. I know how hard losing mom was, so I want to keep things stress free at home. I will not disappoint you again.”

Oh this can’t be good.

When the next day comes, Osamu sees you leave the car that dropped you off.

You were visibly shaking, face flushed and eyes blearing, as if you were desperately trying not to cry.

He immediately made a subtle beeline to your side.

“Hi darling. Care to join me after school at home? I’ll send ‘Tsumu to the kennel for the day.”

“I really shouldn’t. My dad-“

“(Y/N) love, please. Your health isn’t safe at home. At least not your mentality.”

“I can’t, Osamu. ‘It’s not safe for me to leave..”

He cupped a hand on your cheek and nodded with a smile. “I understand. Please stay safe, dove.”

The school day passed and evening followed. Osamu was absolutely torn about how to address the situation.

He had vaguely explained to Atsumu and his parents, at least the extent of his own knowledge. He needed anyone else to help him figure out what to do from here.

Mid chat with the family, Osamu’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion as a gentle knock echoed from the door.

He went to open it and his eyes met your own leaking ones. A suitcase stood at your side, it’s handle in your trembling hand.

“ ‘Samu I can’t... I can’t take it there anymore you have to help me.”

He wordlessly pulled you into his chest, resting his chin on your head and rubbing your back.

“Everything will be alright, my precious love. You’ll stay here. We’ll figure it out, okay?”

You nodded as you wept quietly in his embrace.

To both Osamu’s delight, and your own, Atsumu had taken care to bring your bag inside and place it on the guest room bed.

He also brought forth three blankets and set up the television to stream a movie.

The three of you made your way to the couch, with you in the center of the Miya brothers.

“Say, (Y/N)? Do you want me to kick anyone’s ass? Cause I totally will.” Atsumu pondered our loud, not moving his head from the back of the couch.

You chuckled out a “no” and snuggled in closer to Osamu.

He plants a kiss on your temple.

“You’ve got me and ‘Tsumu in your corner. No one can get you here, and no one expects anything of you.”

“Take time to relax, you’re not going anywhere if I have any say in the matter.”

𝐾𝑒𝑖𝑗𝑖 𝐴𝑘𝑎𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖

Quiet, but attentive, Keiji picked up on your cautious behavior.

He noticed how every word that escaped your tongue was said ever so carefully.

How you would correct yourself if you said too much

How you’d stop talking the instant your opinion was challenged.

How you’d just give up.

But for why, he didn’t know. Could it be fawning? Maybe you’re just afraid of conflict.

He felt it best not to pry.

Since you basically tell him everything already, why should he be worried that you’re keeping secrets from him?

You are his partner after all. You said it yourself that honesty is the best policy.

In the near future, the day he heard it was the day he took action.

He had started by calling to check up on you, offering to video chat to do homework with each other.

Akaashi frowned upon receiving a text from you stating that you had “dropped phone in pool.” And that the “microphone’s busted”

He wasn’t born last night, he figured out that you muted yourself because he heard popping on the other end, instead of dead silence.

A lump rose in his throat as he watched your door swing open, and your phone falling from the force.

Keiji’s not entirely sure how it happened, but the call unmuted and he heard everything that was said on the other end of the line.

His heart sank as he heard a specifically selfish comment from your family member.

He didn’t know if he wanted to rush over to your house and kidnap you, comfort you over the phone right then and there, or punch your relative through the screen.

So, he acted upon what his burning gut told him: rescue you.

Rescue you, rescue you, rescue you.

Akaashi’s mind sang at him as his feet pounded mutely against the pavement.

He shot you a text, telling you to pack an a few nights of supplies in a bag.

Refusing to check the likely deluge of confused protests, he shook his mind off of them and kept running toward your house.

When he arrived, he texted you once again, not wanting to alert his presence to your family.

When you opened the door, he wordlessly grabbed your hand and walked with you back to his house.

The walk back was quiet but sincere, his fingers never Un-intertwining from your own.

Upon arrival at his place, he sat you on his couch and held onto both of your hands.

“My beautiful baby.” He muttered sweetly, “Would you like to tell me what’s happening? Or do you just want to forget?”

Hesitantly, your voice cracking with every few words, you explain how home life hasn’t been the same since the passing of your mother.

You explain how you don’t even feel like their baby anymore, just a person they have to take care of.

Letting tears slip down your face as you continue to dump and dump on your boyfriend.

When you’re finished, he nods with a sympathetic smile and lays flat on the couch, resting your head on his chest.

“Why don’t we watch a movie, yeah? We can figure things out later.”

——————✞♡︎✞♡︎✞♡︎✞♡︎✞♡︎✞♡︎✞♡︎✞♡︎✞——————

[nameless-bizzyboy]

[Alright!! Text to inspekta sent!!]

[…]

[…What do you do now?]

[…You kind of wish that you could see yourself!! You want to see if the weird…screen on your face really looks that bad.]

[Thank gods you have your-]

[!!!]

[You hear a rustling coming from the trees.]

[A…large mirror rises up from the trees???]

[Uh??? Hold on??? How????]

[…Actually,you think you might go insane if you try to comprehend this at all! Never mind! Thank you,All-mighty-and-knowing pantheon!]

[…Ah. It’s… not TOO bad? It….does look really weird though. And kinda gross!! Ew!!]

[You don’t want to look at your face anymore. Yucky!!]

[…]

[You wonder where that mirror came from.]

[You lean over the cloud and stick your head through the branches of the pine trees.]

[C-Cold???]

[A strong wind whips at your face. You stare at fog and mist.]

[You push through.]

[You find that you’re staring down…at Milldread?? And that you are INCREDIBLY high up.]

[Eek!! You pull your head back up and stumble backwards! Scary!!]

[…Wait. Does this mean that you’re dead. Is this heaven??]

[You stare at your phone.

….You should probably text someone OTHER than a god who might have a connection to the afterlife.

…And if your memory isn’t failing you,you should also apologize,because you….

….

Just!!! Apologize!!]

[pan-fangirl-345]

Meeting the Team

Summary: You’re out with your boyfriend, Tsukishima, when you run into his team unexpected. You were not prepared for this.

It was supposed to be a calm walk through the park. You really weren't expecting to be introduced to your boyfriend's entire team at once.

You and Tsukishima had been walking through the park after spending the day window shopping. You had finally managed to convince him to go shopping with you. Even though it was something that neither of you particularly enjoyed, you need some new school supplies and maybe a few new sweatshirts and Tsukishima liked to point out the weird things that people bought so you could ponder what they were using it for.

It was a nice day, the skies were clear, there was a nice breeze, and it was cool enough that you weren't overly hot.

Kei had told you about his team before, obviously, and you and Tadashi had known each other since middle school.

"Hey, (Y/F/N), heads up," Kei murmured, nudging your side as a group of boys headed towards you.

"Isn't that your team?" you asked, letting Kei, nudge you behind him slightly. Kei's hand slid into yours, giving it a small, reassuring squeeze. You wrapped your arms around the arm Kei was using to halfway shield you from the rest of the boys.

"Yes, unfortunately," Kei muttered.

"Oh my god! Is Saltishima with a girl?!"

The small red-head that had spoken was clearly Hinata, and he was just the way Kei had described him.

"What else would she be, dumbass?"

That was Kageyama then, if the stoic face and the dark hair were anything to go by.

"It's good to see you again (Y/F/N)," Tadashi said, giving you a small smile.

"Who's your friend Tsukishima?" the silver-haired male asked, giving you a warm smile. That must've been Suga.

"This is (Y/N), she's my girlfriend," Kei admitted, glancing back at you warily.

"I-I can go," you whispered to him, starting to back away from them all. It wasn't that you or Kei were ashamed of your relationship, if either of you were it wouldn't have gotten this far, but neither of you were ready to tell his entire team at once.

One of the first things that you had told Kei was that you and crowds didn't tend to mix. You sometimes got overwhelmed when you had to remember so many names and faces. And Kei had told you enough that it was better if you met the team in groups or one-on-one.

"How did Tsukishima get such a pretty girlfriend?" You looked to see a short boy with spiky hair and a blond tuft. That would be Nishinoya then.

"Guys, let's give them some space, she looks like she might puke." That was an older boy, with short brown hair. That was probably Daichi.

"Damn, she's almost as pretty as a Kiyoko and Yachi. You never told us that you were a player Tsukishima." Loud, buzzcut, looked like someone you would avoid in an alleyway. Tanaka then.

The three standing back and watching looked like Narita, Ennoshita, and Kinoshita.

"It's nice to meet you."

Tall, long hair, looked like a tough guy. Asahi then.

"It's nice to meet you too Asahi," you murmured, giving him a shy smile.

"Y-You know how I am?"

"Kei's told me about all of you," you admitted. "I think I can name all of you. Maybe."

Kei glanced back at you, running his thumb over your hand softly.

"Aw, so Saltishima does care about us!" Hinata chirped, practically vibrating.

"Hinata's as enthusiastic as you said he was Kei," you murmured, stepping out a little bit.

"You got my name right!" Hinata said, giving you a bright smile, one you returned slowly.

"It's nice to meet you (Y/L/N), I'm assuming you're the reason Tsukishima is always smiling at his phone during practice lately," Suga said, smirking at Kei, who glared at him.

"You told me you weren't doing anything!" you hissed, pinching Kei in the side lightly.

"I said that what I was doing wasn't as important as talking to you," Kei replied, wrapping his arm around your shoulders.

"I-I'm really n-not that important! You should be paying attention to practice," you told him, glaring at him weakly.

"Good to know you'll call this stick out on his shit," Nishinoya mumbled.

"Noya, language," Suga hissed.

"It's alright Suga, that doesn't bother me."

"You should hear her when we study together," Kei muttered, pushing his glasses up his nose again.

"You aren't any better baby," you informed him.

"You really aren't Tsukki," Yamaguchi pointed out.

"Baby? Never knew Tsukishima would be into pet names," Kageyama said.

"You're never gonna here the end of this, are you?" you asked Kei, who shook his head.

"This is one of the reason I was hoping to delay telling them," Kei confessed.

"Hey, (Y/L/N), do you want to play with us?" Hinata asked, throwing a ball into the air.

"I . . . um, I don't really play. I come to your games and everything, but I'm more of a softball person."

"You likes hitting things with a metal bat, you mean," Kei said. "Since you can't legally do it to the idiots in our class."

"Maybe, but I also like the feeling of a ball hitting my glove, the sound it makes, the way it feels when you catch a pop fly no one thought you could catch and the ump yells 'you're out'!"

"What position do you play?"

"Outfielder, I have an arm apparently."

"She's one of their strongest batters," Kei boasted.

"What's the point in you boasting about my abilities, Kei?" you asked.

"Because you won't do it yourself."

"I do too!"

"No, love, you don't."

You pouted, but it was true. You never really saw a reason to boast about how hard you could throw a ball, or how far you could hit one.

Your phone ringing saved you from any comments.

"Mom?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm out with Kei, I told you that I was going out with him today. What's wrong? What happened?"

"Nothing, I guess I just forgot where you were."

"Do you need anything while I'm out?"

"No, just be home before dinner."

"I always am," you reminded her.

She hung up, making you tear a hand through your hair.

"I need to leave a note or something next time," you muttered.

"Your mom?" Kei asked.

You nodded, intertwining your fingers together.

"Need me to take you home?"

"No, I just have to be back by dinner, so I'm good until about five-thirty."

"Wait, were you on a date?" Daichi asked, raising an eyebrow.

You glanced at Kei. 

You were definitely dating, but you had never really labeled the outings that took place. They didn't feel like dates.

"Yeah. I told you guys I was going out with my girlfriend," Kei muttered, pushing his glasses up his face.

"We thought you were joking man!" Tanaka bellowed. 

"Yeah, we just thought you were trying to get out of team hangouts."

"You should've gone, we could've done this another day," you told Kei.

"I wanted to spend some time with my girlfriend, is that too much to ask?" Kei asked, tightening his grip a little bit.

He was clearly getting exasperated with everyone, and the lines on his face said that he was getting irritated too.

"No, but don't you guys have your tournament coming up?" you asked. "You should be practicing. I can wait."

Kei frowned, and then you realized your choice of words.

"That's not what I meant and you know it," you muttered.

"Love," he whispered, a low warning.

"Look, all I'm saying is that you should be practicing. We can go on all the dates you want when your tournament is over."

"If you don't go out with her Tsukishima, I might," Noya teased.

You couldn't help the heat that flushed to your cheeks.

You had never thought of yourself as particularly pretty, you were intelligent, sure, but you weren't what most people would describe as crush material. It was one of the reasons it took you and Kei so long to get together, you had thought it was a prank.

Kei sighed, deep and long-suffering and you stifled a giggle.

"I think we better get going guys," you admitted. "I think Kei might pop a blood vessel if we don't."

"Or commit murder," Kei grumbled, but he shot you a grateful look.

"You love them too much for that and you know it."

"End me now."

"Imagine how bad it'll be when I finally meet your brother," you pointed out.

The blood seemed to drain from Kei's face and Yamaguchi snorted into his hand as he tried to suppress his laughter.

"We're breaking up," he deadpanned.

"Not until I meet your brother," you told him, shaking your hands for emphasis.

"Yamaguchi, help me out here." He must've been desperate.

"Video tape it for me so I can see how it goes," Tadashi replied, making you laugh.

"This is why we're friends," you told him, fist bumping him.

"They're plotting against me I swear," Kei muttered, tearing a hand through his hair.

"Okay, let's go then Grumpy Pants," you said. "It was nice to finally meet all of you," you added, heading for the train station so you could head home.

"Did . . . did you like them?" Kei asked.

"Of course I did, honestly, with some one-on-one time with them, I would probably like them a lot more."

"I'm sorry that it happened like that," Kei admitted, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

"It's alright, I handled it a lot better than I thought I would. I think it's because you told me so much about them. I felt like I knew a lot about them before I even met them."

Kei nodded, kissing the top of your head.

"Why are you so different around me, Kei?" you asked after a while.

"What do you mean?"

"I see how you act around the others. I know that everyone else sees the- what did you call it?- bastard act. I rarely ever see that. I know it's only been a few months and this phase," you pointed out every point of physical contact, "will probably wear off eventually, but . . . you don't act like that around me."

"I act like this around you because you're different," Kei muttered. "You seem to have the ability to read me like a book. It's aggravating, but it also means that I don't have to put up the wall. You see everything, and you seem to like it anyway."

"Does . . . does it bother you? That I know you so well?" you inquired, taking a not-so-subtle step away from him.

"Get back here," Kei muttered, tucking you neatly into his side again. "I said it's aggravating, and I said that because you know how much I don't like talking about things. And you always know when I'm hiding something that's bothering me."

"You don't always have to talk to me. You could talk to Yamaguchi," you suggested.

"I talk to you because I trust you. If I didn't want to talk to you, we wouldn't be dating," he told you. "We wouldn't be dating if it bothered me that you knew me so well."

"I just . . . I've never really been in a serious relationship with someone who actually liked me."

"What do you mean?" He paused, and looked down at you, frowning.

"I've gone on dates and everything before . . .  but most of them were dared by friends to ask me out." You shrugged, toying with your hair. "It's just that I want to do things right."

"You are," Kei assured you. "Have . . . have I ever made you feel like you weren't?"

"No, baby, you have never made me feel like that," you promised him, turning so you could cup his face, stroking his cheek with your thumb. "I would have told you if you had."

Kei nodded, bumping foreheads with you.

"C'mon, let's get you home before your mother has an aneurism," Kei muttered.

You snorted, covering your mouth with your hand as you walked together.

"I would literally pay to see my mother pop a blood vessel," you told him, smiling at him as he smirked.

"Your parents don't like me, do they?" he asked after a while. "That's why she keeps pretending she doesn't know where you are."

"They just have a hard time trusting anybody. The last couple of times I tried to bring a boy home they confessed that it was just a dare," you admitted, attempting to hide your face with your hair.

"They don't know what they're missing," Kei snapped, stopping you. "You are amazing, and beautiful, and you're smart, and you know me well enough to know that it's just the bastard act. Anything they told you about how much you are worth is wrong."

"I know that," you answered, the silent 'sort of' not needing to be addressed. "But Kei, you have to remember, it takes a toll on a girl when the only reason she gets asked out is because of a dare. Why do you think it took me so long to get together with you?"

Kei frowned, but you knew he got it. Didn't mean he was happy about it though.

"We got off track," you muttered. "My point, is that they don't trust you yet. I do, and they'll come around eventually, I did, didn't I?"

Kei nodded, giving you a small smile.

"Do you think your team liked me?" you inquired as the train bumped along.

"I wouldn't be surprised if they asked you to start managing," Kei muttered. "Yeah, they liked you. A lot."

"Don't go getting jealous Kei," you teased, wrinkling your nose at him playfully.

"'M not," he grumbled, but the slight flush on his cheeks told you otherwise.

"You know you'll always be my favorite volleyball dork," you said, standing on your tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

PDA was never something Kei had ever really been against, the most he usually went with was an arm around your shoulders or waist, holding your hand, but other times he would allow things like this.

He always had a protective arm around you when you were on the train since he knew there were all sorts of creepy people, mostly men, that might try something.

"Kei, you know you don't have to introduce me to your brother right? You seem a little on edge about it."

"No, I want you two to meet," he admitted, toying with a small piece of your hair absentmindedly. "It's just going to be chaos when you do. Akiteru can be . . . a lot sometimes."

"And your team isn't?" you asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"You . . . have a fair point," he confessed.

"I tend to," you teased.

"Okay, don't get too cocky, that's my job," Kei replied.

"I thought it was your job to be pessimistic."

"I'm a realist," he retorted.

"Keep telling yourself that babe," you said, patting his shoulder lightly.

Kei snorted, wrapping his arms around your waist.

You loved bickering like this with Kei, it was never hurtful, it was playful teasing, and it made you both smile. You were both very good at it too, which meant sessions could go until someone stopped you.

Many people had asked if you guys were having an argument the first time you did it in school, and you had just giggled and said it was how you communicated.

When you got off at your stop Kei slipped his hand into yours, interlacing your fingers together.

"Text me when you get home alright? There's been some sketchy stuff going on," you tell him as you walked down your road.

"I will," he assured you, kissing your forehead before you slipped inside.

"Bye Kei," you called, waving.

"Bye (Y/F/N), I'll see you tomorrow."

You smiled as he strode down the street toward his own home.

Yeah, he was definitely different from the others.

(A/N I’m such a simp for this boy! Oof.)

[countessofravenclaw]

The 2022 writing Advent calendar: Day 7

7. Watching a Christmas movie

Funnily enough, I have not yet written a purely Gastina story during this calendar… lets fix that!

So, if you have seen Princess Switch one and two, that will greatly benefit your understanding of this, but that is not required.

“I can’t believe you convinced me of this,” Gastón said to Nina as he opened Netflix on their TV. “We could just watch Infinity War and Endgame again.”

Nina had somehow made him promise that when their 2021 Christmas exam season was over, they’d do a Netflix hallmark movie marathon. Apparently there were many trilogies of different Chirstmas movies on Netflix that he had never heard off. They had really similar taste when it came to media and in general nerdiness, but this was something they really differed.

“Not happening,” Nina said as she sat down on the sofa next to him, “We can rip apparent storytelling methods and motifs of future Emmy nominations later. The Boba Fett show is coming out in January after all.”

“I am still a bit confused why they are making a show about him.”

“Me too, but at least we will learn about tusken raiders and how he actually made it out of that Sarlacc Pit,” Nina said, “But, don’t change the subject. We are watching these holiday movies, you promised…” she ran her finger on his chest, pretty outrageous move on her part because she knew what it did to him.

“Why can’t I ever say no to you?” Gastón groaned, trying to keep himself from losing focus. “Okay, you win. Where do we start?”

“I think the Princess Switch franchise had their third movie come out this year.”

“That name already sounds stupid.”

“I know,” Nina laughed, “But that is the point of these. They are bad by design. They are not supposed to be cinematic masterpieces, but just fun time.”

“With two Vanessa Hudgenses?” Gastón had finished scrolling through Netflix and had the movie up on the screen. “Well, she has gone far from the High School Musicals.”

*

“Okay, that was not half bad,” Gastón said as the credits rolled. 

“See, I knew you would like them,” Nina smiled at him.

“Well, I guess you were right. It was nice, like in a cheesy way. But this would never happen in real life.”

“Yeah, genetics don’t work that way,” Nina laughed, “What did you think about the romance between the duchess and the normal guy? I felt like it was bit off.”

“Yeah, I agree with you on that,” Gastón pondered, “I guess the problem is in the fact that the guy, Kevin was it, though she was his best friend, who he had known since high school. He was never in love with the duchess, but her as his best friend.”

“Thats right. It was more about him seeing a new side of Stacy, which made him fall in love with her, and not about him falling for this completely different person. If I would be writing this, that would cause so many problems in the future.” Nina continued, “Counter that with the actual Stacy and the Prince, who did not know that duchess, I think her name was Margaret, beforehand at all. He fell in love with her as herself.”

“And I thought you could not get anything deep out of these movies,” Gastón laughed, “But the ending was a bit odd, I will stand by that. I have heard of impulse proposing, it actually happens, but after you have known each other for two days? This isn’t Vegas.”

“Christmas magic I guess, you have to admit it was kind of cute.” Nina tilted her head toward him, “So you are you are not going to do that?”

“Propose on impulse?” Gastón eyed her varily. “I mean, do you want me to?”

Silence loomed over them for a moment, before they both burst out laughing. 

“Maybe give it couple more years.” Gastón brushed a hair out of Nina’s face, “finish the degrees and such, and I know I have made some impulsive choices, but I think Matteo has taught us that you need to think things over in life. ”

“And in love?” Nina asked him with a raised eyebrow, “Now you are just quoting Frozen. Speaking off, could we still be able to get tickets to that before Christmas, or will they all be sold out?”

“I don’t know,” Gastón shrugged, “I’d imagine it can be hard, but we can try. But let's look at that tomorrow.”

“Anyways, we got totally off topic,” Nina suddenly noted, “We have more movies to watch. Princess Switch has a sequel.” 

“Of course it does,” Gastón sighed and clicked the remote to put the second movie on. 

*

“Well, that plot was so much more convoluted than the first one,” he commented after the second movie was over. 

“Well, yeah, I have to agree.” Nina agreed with him. “It was good, but the first one was much more simple. You can only get so far with no villain.”

“My problem is with that Margaret again,” Gastón continued, “Their romance was on shaky ground, to begin with, but now she became the Queen. That kind of defeats the purpose what the first movie tried to do with her.”

“She is never going to be a normal girl,” Nina noted, “You would not think she would want to rule a kingdom from the first movie, and I don’t think she and Kevin can ever make it work now.” 

“But they did… with an impromptu wedding at an airport.” Gastón shaked his head. “Like half of the things in these movies would never actually happen.”

“I thought you, as a person who feels in love with someone without ever seeing them, would have a bigger liking for these cheesy tropes,” Nina teased him. 

“Only because I was already in love with you in the first place,” Gastón countered while slipping his arm around her waist, pulling her closer. “even if it took me a year to realize it.”

“Well, you got there in the end,” Nina put her arms around his neck, “There’s still the third movie left, we’ll just have time to watch it before it is midnight.”

“Actually, I have a better idea,” Gastón suddenly smirked and pulled her into a heated kiss.

“Is this your way of trying to talk me out of watching that third one?”

“Maybe, is it working?” He said before moving his lips to her neck.

“Yes.”

So, I absolutely adore the first two Princess Switch movies, and yes, they are not perfect and I have complaints (like I always do), but they are exactly those bad Christmas movies that I love. But I actually despise the third one, since it absolutely missed the point that made the first two, especially the first one so good. That's why, they do not end up watching it, before getting distracted.

Also, side note here: I just threw that brief proposal conversation there, because even if this is happening, like established, in 2021, so Nina is in her last year of bachelors and Gastón his first year of masters and the actual proposal is three years away (By to way, go read it), they definitely still had open conversations about getting married. I firmly believe that once they got back together at Oxford, they pretty fast knew that they were IT for each other. I mean Gastón definitely knew it during SL as well

Geez, you can tell this is about Gastina, when I write full manifesto here in the notes

[100layersofdaddyissues]

Angel - Chapter 2

Here is chapter 2 of angel, i hope it satiates you fiends.

Warnings: smut, conspiracy around death, swearing

this was co-written and edited by my main bitch @bonjour-je-mappelle-fuckyou

  It had been days and you’d neither seen nor heard from Maxwell, you were beginning to worry that he had forgotten you in this big apartment, worrying that you had quit your job and left your home just for him to forget that you’d agreed to an arrangement with him, but hey, at least he forgot you in this apartment, and not your old one. He wasn’t asking for rent, Darius had brought you groceries the morning you had gone to your apartment to get the rest of your belongings, you reckon you were good for at least a few weeks before you ran out of food.

             As you pondered how long it would be until someone kicked you out or you starved you heard a short knock on the door, well it looks like you might last a few more weeks than you’d anticipated.

            You opened the door to see Darius standing there, tall and proud, “good morning Miss, I’ve been instructed to take you shopping for some new clothes, it seems Maxwell has anticipated your start at his Lord Industries this coming Monday and I’ve been told to show you the dress code of such a company, though with us both knowing Maxwell like we do I’m sure you could assume.” Ahh so he hadn’t forgotten you, that’s a good sign. 

 “Darius please, if you keep calling me miss, I'll start calling you sir and I don’t think either of us would prefer that. Y/N is a fine name and I think I would like to hear it more often. And yes, I’m sure I could assume the dress code Max ‘requires’ though I’m sure most of my clothes would suit that.”

            Darius let a short puff of air out of his nose, what you had come to know as him laughing apparently. “while that is true miss- ahh sorry Y/N, the man is loaded and quite frankly a scoundrel, let’s go load up for the sake of it, I’m sure you would appreciate a new pair of boots, the ones I met you didn’t see you have any arch support.” He had a slight smirk on his face as he spoke to you. 

 “Darius that’s scandalous, also leave my Docs out of this, they might as well be vintage, my mother bought them in the UK in the 60s” you said looking down at your cherry red docs, which had obviously seen way more than they should have. 

 “Ahh so they’re definitely provided no support, your poor feet, we must amend this. Come on, get dressed in the next ten minutes or I’m going to drag you out of this door by those frayed laces.” 

 While it sounded harsh, the tone of his voice and the expression accompanied let you know that he was joking with you, he could be quite cheeky as you’d noticed the first night you met him, although he acted quite different in front of Max, in fact he didn’t act like anything in front of Max, he was silent, if you couldn’t see him you’d assume the car drove itself. The demeanor change between them concerned you slightly. 

 “Alright no need to get violent, I’ll be just a sec.”

             When Darius told you that you’d be going shopping you’d assumed you’d be going to a mall, so it confused you completely when you drove past the mall you’d shopped at so many times, only for him to drive into the rich side of town, the streets were lined with high end fashion stores and boutique cafes, and oh look at that, more illegible French on restaurant windows.

             Walking around this part of town in a miniskirt and a boxy blouse felt wrong, you really didn’t fit in here. Darius led the way, practically pulling you into stores, seemingly knowing every sales assistant in each shop, it made you slightly insecure, how many times had Darius brought someone like you to go shopping, you weren’t used to being one of many. Most of the men you previously had arrangements with had only been involved with you, and the occasional wife, (yes they know don’t look at yourself with such disdain), it didn’t sit well with you that you might be sharing Max’s affections.

             You tried on dress after skirt after blouse after horrible blazers with those horrible shoulder pads. God you missed the trends of the 70s. You really didn’t know what you were looking for, thankfully Darius had been leading the expedition, telling the assistants which clothes you would be requiring. Each time they took the item to the checkout you felt a sense of guilt, it was really starting to pile up, finally after a particularly hideous ensemble consisting of cheetah print, neon green and you guessed, shoulder pads, Darius called time, deciding that you had both racked up quite the amount on Max’s card, (though you really don’t think you could take any of the credit, or blame.)

             “Y/N I don’t mean to intrude but you’ve been uncharacteristically quiet through the last few stores, is there something wrong?” honestly you didn’t know if there is although you couldn’t deny your silence was out of place. “yeah of course I’m fine, I just get overwhelmed when shopping, that’s all, it's no big deal, it was nice that you knew everyone.” You paused for only a moment contemplating whether you should ask your next question but before you could even stop yourself our mouth was spewing out the words, “how did you know everyone by the way?”

             “Before I was Mr. Lord’s driver, I was a driver to Mrs. Lord. No, no it's not what you think. Maxwell and marriage aren’t two words that go in the same sentence. Mrs. Lord was his mother. She was quite the shopper and not the talker. So, while she was trying on clothes, I made friends with the clerks. It made both our times much more pleasant around her Highness.” somehow and for some reason it eased you to know that it was Maxwell’s mother that made the connection and not a line of women preceding you. 

             “What is Mrs. Lord like?'' Maybe the person who raised Max is an indication as to who he is now. 

 “Was, actually, she died when Maxwell was 17, along with her father, it was terrible really, their private jet went down over the triangle, it's such a shame, Max really needed his parents around that time, after that the house help and I remained the only thing close to family he had, he shut off and down, became ruthless and cold, he used to be such a bright and kind young man, I saw the life leave his eyes the day he found out that it had left his parents. I'm sorry Miss I’ve probably already said too much, I’m not really sure I should be speaking with you about this, it's not that I don't trust you but Maxwell is very private, if I hadn’t have been there to see it I would never know, he has never spoken about his parents, to anyone.” 

             Somehow what Darius said about Max and his parents really stuck with you, even after you’d gotten back to the apartment, you couldn't stop thinking about how horrible it must have been to grow up without parents, especially through such important years like his 20s, they’d miss every milestone he has in his adult life and he’ll miss having his parents there for them. You didn't have much time to think on it, you'd only been home about 30 minutes before the phone starting ringing on the nightstand next to you, you picked up the receiver to hear a breathy voice on the other side, “angel, I’m gonna need you to open the door,” and then the call was dropped.

             Maxwell. You rushed to the door, when you swung it open you noticed a slightly disheveled Maxwell staring at you with darkness clouding his eyes, “you know you could have just kno-” but you were cut off when he pushed the door closed and slammed you against it, his lips smacking straight into yours in a fit of heat and passion, you weren’t sure where this was going but you weren’t going to complain, “just shut up, I’m pissed and I wanna fuck you. Now. go to the bedroom, make sure you’re naked, face down. Do you understand?” you just nodded, looking up at him with what he assumed to be excitement, you basically sprinted to the bedroom, quickly undressed and headed his note to be face down. As you anxiously anticipated what he was going to do to you, all thoughts of his parents had been replaced with possibility. 

             “God you're such a good girl for me aren't you” he was standing at the door staring at you, eyes raking over your naked body. You heard his footsteps get closer to the bed and then suddenly you were hit with a sharp smack to your ass, “god this ass is fucking incredible, I can’t wait to see how it looks in all those new clothes you bought, wanna give me a private show of them?” “yes, sir I’d love to” your voice was high and almost pathetic sounding, Max had done nothing more than briefly spank your ass and suddenly you're already so out of breath. “Not now angel, you’re going to let me fuck you good, and then you’re going to show me how well you can walk afterwards.” 

             You heard him undo his belt and then clothing hit the floor, the bed dipped either side of your thighs and suddenly both his hands were on our hips and he was pulling up to him in one swift lift, “god this pussy, is fucking beautiful, and you’re already so wet, is this what I do to you? You like being manhandled like this doll?” you just whimpered at him praying he would touch you. “Come on angel with your words, tell me how this is affecting you.” you could hear the devil's patented smirk on his face as he spoke, knowing how riled up he was getting you. “Yes sir, I love it, I love when you throw me around, you're making me so needy sir please I love it please do more” you could barely pause to take a  breath you felt so needy and so pathetic that he was affecting you in this way but after the last night you spent together you thought you were right to be. 

             “There's no time to play around tonight angel, I need you now.” His voice was harsh and low, it made you cower away from him, but his grip on our hips was strong and tight and he wasn't letting you go anywhere, he spanked you, one, two, three more times, “are you ready angel” you could tell he was impatient and so were you. “Yes, dear god yes please, please just fuck me.” and with your words, he slammed into you, his hips hitting your ass with the force of a freight train. For someone who sounded so desperate he was going admirably slow, every thrust into your pussy was forceful almost calculated, as he rammed into you. You felt frustrated at his pace, like he was holding back and that is not what you needed right now, you needed him to fuck you, rough, hard, fast. Now. “Please, Max don’t make me beg for it please just fuck me, use me, I need you to go faster, be rough with me please.” 

             “My pretty girl so whiny,” he quickened his pace, pistoning into you sending your brain into a frenzy, your legs already turning to jelly, “is this how you want it princess? Me fucking you like a little whore? Hmm?” his words were almost enough to drive you over the edge already, you had barely even started, and you felt like you were already close. “Please Max it’s so good fuck so good sir I love it when you use me.” 

             Max pulled out of you, and before you even had time to protest he had flipped you over, he shoved three fingers deep inside you, looking down on like he was ready to eat you whole. “You filthy little girl, you're ready to cum, aren't you? I've barely even gotten started and you're ready to finish? No that's not how this is going to work. Let's see how many times you can cum for me, let's see how many orgasms I can pull out of this beautiful cunt.” his words were as vulgar as the way he was fucking you with his fingers, if you both hadn’t been breathing so hard you’d be able to hear how wet you were, every thrust sending like heaven to his ears. He removed his fingers and lined himself up once again, no time for teasing he thrust back into you, resetting the fast pace he had previously set. “Tell me how rough you want it doll, tell me what you want from me.”

             Your mind swirled with the possibilities, all you could choke out was, “choke me, and smack me, I’m your whore please please please just use me.” immediately one hand flew to your throat, grasping it tightly but not enough to cut off your air supply. He kept ramming into you and you could feel yourself starting to get close as you moaned so loudly “Sir please, please, I’m so close, please let me cum” “do it doll, come all over my dick I want to feel your pussy cry for me.” and with his words you did just that, the hand around your throat tightened as you fell into sick bliss, your brain was experiencing an orgasm 100 times better than it ever had and you couldn't tell whether it was the lack of oxygen or Max’s dick that was making you feel higher than any drug could take you. As you came down, Max was still fucking you, slower than before but not as excruciating as originally.

             “I think if we had any neighbours up here you would have just earned us a noise complaint.” he smirked down at you. Yu were still dazed, pathetically smiling up at him when a harsh smack hit your face waking you up. “Already so fucked out baby how cute,” he knew just how to get you going, his lips were back on yours as he kept fucking into, drilling his cock deeper and deeper. You were whining and moaning not caring at this point if half of the city heard you, you were getting the fuck of a life time and as you screamed out Maxwell’s name you’d hoped everyone would hear how well the most important man in the city was fucking you. 

             “You ready for one more baby doll coz I’m getting close and I don’t wanna leave you behind.” he didn’t give you time to respond when his thumb flew to your clit rubbing it in circles almost as fervently as he was fucking you, and just as Max had planned you started to feel like you were on the edge again. 

             “Max please I’m close again.” you warned him, he sped up, quickening his pace even more somehow, “not without me doll you hold it until I say you can come you understand me?” you whined out a breathy yes, hoping you could head his orders, it felt like an eternity before he finally whispered, “Cum” in your ear and you did just that. Both you and Max were a moaning screaming jumble of limbs as you milked his cock dry and he pounded into you savouring the sweet release. He fell on top of you, both sweating profusely as you laughed out. “I don't know if you'll be getting that fashion show, I don't know if I can't even stand on these legs let alone walk. 

             He laughed as well, it was a nice laugh, you quite liked it. 

Max got up, helping you to the bathroom and sitting you in the shower, he told you to sit and wait for the water to warm but you told him it was no problem, your hot water got cut off a few times at your old apartment so cold showers were almost the norm for you. As you sat in the shower trying to regain what little focus you had, you had expected the door to close and for Maxwell to leave, but when you finally emerged from the shower you saw him sitting on your bed, well his bed.

             “Have a drink or you'll get dehydrated.” he said, pointing at the glass of water on the nightstand. You never expected Max to be so caring after sex, you’d fallen asleep after the last time, so you guessed he just didn’t care about aftercare. 

             “I think if you keep this up, I may be paralysed, my legs don’t work properly, if you want me to make it to work.” 

             “Yeah, I think I would rather see you at work on Monday, might fuck you on my desk to make up for lost time this weekend. How does that sound, angel?” God did that sound good, you wanted him to absolutely rail you if you were being honest, you had no concern as to whether anyone would hear you or not. 

             You woke up in the early hours of that Saturday morning, alone once again in bed, your legs felt like jelly and they were almost torture to walk on. You trudged your way into the kitchen, hoping to find something you could eat, when you saw Maxwell sitting on the counter, not on a chair at the counter, on the counter with his legs dangling like a little kid. “Good morning Maxwell.” your voice made him jump a little, clearly not expecting to see you there, he didn't move from his position on the counter though. You walked towards the emptying fridge and picked out an apple, placing yourself between his legs has you took a bite, “good morning to you too angel, we have got to get that fridge stocked up.” he must have seen how little you had in there, you'd spent so much on clothes and yet you spent less than 50 on groceries, where were your priorities?

             “Oh no it's okay, I’ll just buy some next week after I get paid. It's no big deal. I'm used to not having a lot to eat. I'll be fine.” you were telling the truth; you never had a lot of money to buy food after utilities and rent. “Well, be that as it may angel, I’m not letting you starve until then, you can just take one of my cards, we have a specific arrangement here and I know I got you a job at my company but I’d like to know you're living up to your own tastes and requirements, I have plenty of money to burn and this is an offer I will not let you refuse, do you understand me? 

“Yes sir, I understand.” 

                         “Don't you dare get me all riled up right now I don't think you could handle another round, or three.” he was right. You couldn't. But god did you want to. “Do you have any plans today or tomorrow?” he asked you, you weren't sure why, but now that you thought about it you did have plans. 

“Yes, actually I do. I've got lunch with my friend jade today and then we're going to see that new movie, Footloose. I think it's called, anyway, Kevin Bacon is in it and he's totally rocking so I don't care what it's about.” you couldn't be sure but you thought you saw Max tense up a little at your comment on Kevin bacon. Eh, who knows what goes on in that man's head. Who cares? 

           Meeting Jade that afternoon seemed to be a lot harder than it should have been, Max did not let you leave the bed until you were at least three orgasms deep and your voice was hoarse. “Maybe next time we can do it on that kitchen counter.” he says to you after he finally catches his breath. “Max! People eat there!” you were shocked at his remarks but honestly you thought it kind of hot. “Yeah and I want to eat there too.” his smirk was so heavy on his voice your pussy actually quivered at the thought of Max eating you out on the kitchen counter. 

           “Well I need to get dressed and meet my friend, so you better let me get up, or do I need another orgasm to get permission for that?” Max just laughed and waved you off, silently telling you to go get ready. 

Jade had been one of your closest friends since you moved to the big city you now called home. She was sassy and brilliant, an amazingly talented person, you were honestly jealous of her at times, she was an incredible writer and she was almost done film school, she was killing it and you felt like you were lagging behind in life, but that doesn't mean you couldn't be happy for her, (and gather potential black mail so she would put you in one of her movies when she becomes a big amazing director.) 

           “Hi, why haven't you called me in a week and a half?’ “well hello to you too Jade, and it's none of your business but it happens to do with a shared interest of ours.” you hadn't realized that you haven't spoken to her in that long, you can't believe it had only and yet already been a week and a half since you met Max.

“You’re fucking Maxwell Lord, aren’t you?” she deadpanned. You couldn't tell if she was psychic or just pulling a fake out, but alas you put her mind to rest with a (slightly) shouted. “HOW DID YOU KNOW?” okay, fake out, you put your foot in it now. “Yes, but oh my god you can't say anything to anyone okay?” your voice was much quieter now with a lot more stress laced in it. “Oh my god I have to tell everyone. OW! Okay I won’t tell anyone but hold fuck how?” and so you told her. You told her about the bar with the sticky floor, the sex you had in his apartment that night, his car, Darius, the fact that he didn’t want him living at your house so he gave you one of his to live in, the sex you had this morning and the job he gave you. 

“So, you're telling me you gave this guy such a good blow job he made you head of accounting? Your power of sex never ceases to amaze me. Hey when you’re rich can you buy me a house please I’m dying in that apartment, if my brother doesn’t find his own place soon I may actually fucking kill him, and you’re going to have to help me hide the body and I know you don’t like hiding bodies but this is my murder to-” “oh my god shut up, first of all, you say that like he’s gonna give me enough money to buy myself a house let alone you.” you cut her off, it was true, you didn't really anticipate him giving you that much and if Halo’s paycheck was anything to go by you won't have enough to buy yourself a house on that salary, you'll barely be able to afford rent when Maxwell, inevitably, tells you to move out. 

“Oh please I give it a month, two tops, before he's in love with you and asking you to move into his big fancy apartment on the other side of town.” you did like the sound of the big fancy apartment, but neither you nor Max seemed like the type to want a relationship out of your arrangement. “no, this is just sex and money.” you weren't sure if you were telling her or yourself, but you said it with enough conviction that she seemed to believe it. 

“Okay but if you do end up dating the bachelor boy be careful, from what I hear he's bad news and not just business wise. Rumour is that he killed his fiancée a couple years back, they got into a car crash in England and no one has seen her since. He said she lived and left him, but who goes to England and just leaves?” 

You weren't sure how, but you'd never heard that rumour before, sure you'd only moved here 3 years ago but you'd think something like that would be hot news around town for ages. “I’m sure that’s just a rumour Jade he really doesn't seem like the type to be involved in something like murdering his fiancée.” 

“I'm just looking out for you, I could be wrong, but if he tries to take you to England, I'm kidnapping you first. Deal?”

“Deal.”

to be continued...

tags: @mandoalorian-mainblog​ @mrschiltoncat​

[jafndaegur]

Noise of Rain | Chapter Five

These are Two Different Worlds, She Walks the Borderline—

Sesskag

a/n: we're coming to the close of the first half! Yay! I think this will probably have about five or so more chapters. Thanks for reading this guilty indulgence of mine~

...

Sesshomaru had taken Rin to a village about a day's worth of travel from the Burial Mounds. They had happened to be in the area, and while his ward went to shop for her supplies, he thought about their next step of travel. Particularly because a bothersome idea had crept into his mind ever since they arrived.

He wanted to go visit the miko in the mountains.

Since the last time he had checked-in on her, he'd noticed they were still struggling to put together their little crop fields. Humans, so fragile and needy that if they could not somehow pertain the correct soil for their crops, they would die. Hah.

So he'd provided lotus pods out of his magnanimous generosity… he was starting to sound too much like Jaken. 

Maybe he should leave the little imp behind for a while, refresh his mind and ears from the presence of the squawky toad.

Going to the miko's would generate that reprieve—

Before he indulged the thought any further, he squashed it with the sharp pinprick of his claws against his palm. 

Since her sudden change, something drew Sesshomaru to her. Curiosity is what he would like to name it, a strange girl with the power to suddenly obliterate the most dangerous hanyou this world had seen; obviously despite his anger that he wasn't the one to kill Naraku, her actions had caught his eye. Perhaps it was the sheer brutality of her powers, a miko easily and without pause tearing apart a living creature. While he enjoyed the sight with a great deal of satisfaction, that was uncharacteristic for the young miko. The daiyoukai huffed, if he didn't know any better, the resentful energy that the miko claimed to use was drastically changing her temperament.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. The girl should feel so lucky that he graced her with the constant barrage of thought. Under normal circumstances he would have never cared. Which ultimately brought him full circle again to the main question at hand.

Why did he care, now?

"Lord Sesshomaru!"

Rin's voice cut through the air as if she were standing right next to him. She knew better than to call him when in a town unless it was something important. He sped through the street, chasing the child's delicate scent like a marked path. Damn the humans staring at him, he didn't care. If someone had dared to cause a single scratch upon Rin's flesh. Well.

It'd been a long while since he'd razed a village to cinders.

Sesshomaru halted immediately though. 

Rin walked ahead with a skip, her arms full of gauze, salve, and food. She didn’t look for him however, she looked to the side—where a figure accompanied her. Not just any figure, the miko. 

He took in the sight of her, his eyes narrowing. Her hair was shaggy and unkempt. Her clothes too big and overly wrinkled, they hung off her body with an almost scandalous air to them and he wondered if she knew how to actually properly tie her yukata. It was her eyes though, that dawned the answer to his question.

Because a small smile worked its way on her face as she talked with Rin before eyeing her attention to him. And it was those blue wonders that had been so alive and vibrant before that were now dull and tired, hollowed by sleep circles and darkened bags.

The miko who'd had twice as much liveliness as Rin, the miko who stared everything down with joy and easy-going laughter, was now a husk of a human. And that bothered him.

Because there was no explanation for her change.

"Sesshomaru!" She waved with the hand holding her fife, and he had the sudden urge to grab it and chuck it into the heavens.

"Lord Sesshomaru! You came!" Rin pranced up to him with a proud grin. "Lady Kagome mentioned how nice it would be to see you."

"Rin." He narrowed his glance. "This one is not here for your beck and call."

"I know!" She chirped eagerly.

"I wasn't sure when the next time I could see you would be. It's already been quite some time." Kagome admitted with a sheepish look. "And Rin assured me you were nearby."

Sesshomaru hummed.

"Would you like something to eat?" She continued hurriedly, squeezing Rin's hand gently before pulling away from the child. "My treat."

He wondered if she should really be making such an offer. Still the youkai inclined his head.

His ward cheered and the miko seemed to relax. They wandered down a small path in the town that led to a patio restaurant. Fried fish and pork could be seen on the grills, and the smell of rice and soup filled the air. It was homely.

"Tea, sweet soup for the girl, and two spicy plates!" Kagome ordered before ushering them to a table at the corner. 

It was obvious the other diners were wary of the little group. The rumored Edo Matriarch and a daiyoukai certainly did not make for pleasant clientele. And yet Kagome seemed to brush aside the tense atmosphere for chatter. This was the first time in a long time that Sesshomaru had heard her so carefree and well...like her old self. He indulged her.

Their food was brought out quickly, a small bowl of soup and sweet smelling fruit was handed to Rin. Two bowls of rice topped with red-sauced beef were placed in front of him and the miko. She looked ecstatic.

"Things are slow going in the Burial Mounds but what can I say. That place is pretty inhospitable. It's taken a lot of energy to set up our living there, but it's coming along."

The demon lazily ran his fingers through his hair before giving his tea a delicate sip. "This one has noticed depleted demonic presences in this area. Would that be your doing, miko?"

She hid her giggle behind the back of her hand. "I have created a new tool to draw in and horde resentful energy. Without any malicious or evil just floating around willy-nilly, there's no place for lesser youkai to feed on that negative aura."

He felt a nerve twitch. Could she really do such feats without corruption? There were reasons why meager demons fed on prevalent evil atmospheres.

"Don’t look so concerned," Kagome's smile thinned and she went to absentmindedly twirl her fife. "I've got it under control."

He wondered.

She picked up her chopsticks, laughing when Rin eagerly thanked her for the soup, and started to eat the food with gusto. Sesshomaru felt a small twinge in his chest. Maybe he pondered ceaselessly over nothing. 

He would have thought that if it weren't for the sharp blast of yellow light that flashed from the folds of the miko's robes.

She hissed and withdrew one of her yellow talismans. The red writing glittered before the paper combusted. a curse flew past her lips and she stood immediately from the table.

"Sorry Sesshomaru, this is an emergency." She bolted then, haori fluttering as she fled from the patio. 

The daiyoukai pinched the bridge of his nose, gaze sliding to Rin. "Do you have any money left over?"

"Rin saved a few silver pieces," her little mouth twisted with concern. "Is everything okay my lord?"

He rose as well. "Pay for the meal, find Jaken. I will return later."

She nodded. "Be safe Lord Sesshomaru."

The wind seemed to bend around him as he sped after Kagome, ignoring her startled yelp as he wrapped his arm around her waist and sent them flying for the Burial Mounds. Her hair whipped around like tendrils of ink.

"Miroku is waiting outside of the cave at the center." She urged him. "You'll have to wait there if you want to stick around. There's going to be a massive lash of resentful energy and I cannot handle you transforming into your true form."

"Doubt in my self control is not a good look for you," he growled.

"Nonetheless," she muttered. "Two out of control powerhouses may be beyond my reach if that were to happen."

He wanted to ask what she meant. But the monk came into view and they touched down before he had the chance. Miroku rushed to them. Roaring could be heard from the cave along with the frantic shouting of the demon slayer.

Kagome shot a panicked look to the man before running inside the cave. Sesshomaru followed her without question or care to the monk's protest.

She had been right.

The amount of evil aura permeated the small space like a fog, and it weighed heavily on his baser instincts. He clutched Tenseiga, allowing the serene energy to calm his raging inner-self.

Kohaku fought his sister in a fit of rabid rage. His eyes completely rolled back and white, and hair strewn from his usual ponytail. Unlike pass times as Naraku's puppet, he had an unnatural and unrestrained power about him that thrummed like a barrier. Sesshomaru snarled.

Kagome's music filtered through the air and the dark energy flooded towards her, which she accepted with open meridians. Kohaku's fury diverted to her and he rushed her without mercy. Sesshomaru’s temper snapped and he'd enough. He lunged forward, claws intent on putting the whelp in its place.

The music stopped. "Don't hurt him Sesshomaru, he doesn't kno—"

That hesitation. One moment. And the mindless boy rushed past the dog demon and attack Kagome front on.

To her credit, she defended well. Her fife parried his first punch, body whipping around as she stoutly kicked him in the chest. He recovered quickly and barreled straight into her, head and shoulder pushing into her torso. Slamming her straight into the wall. The miko gasped out, blood flying from her mouth as she fell to the ground with a stagger. Sesshomaru yanked the boy back and sent him spiraling across the cave. He helped the miko up, eyes widening as the light in the cave flickered.

Her eyes bled red and her balance wobbled. The resentful energy seaped into her body in torrents and in that instant Sesshomaru realized that there was nothing he could do to stop the stream.

Kagome reached into her robe and drew forth a dark grey amulet in the shape of a phoenix. The energies spiraled into it. Her eyes flashed bright crimson, and the daiyoukai loathed to admit that his control waivered. But Kohaku fell to the ground, immobile and screaming. Kagome threw the amulet into the air and caught it with a chant. The dark energy stopped its movement and it became stagnant again. Sango ran to her brother's side, cradling him close while sobbing his name.

Kagome sagged.

"I thought," Sesshomaru grit his teeth. "You said everything was taken care of."

The miko looked at him with a bloodied and tired smile. "I've lied to you before, haven't I?"

"You will stop immediately." He growled. 

She hid the phoenix amulet back in her robes, and leaned against his side. He had the strongest urge to push her off and storm away. And yet even now, he found himself gravitating to her side.

[faelune-home]

A Blade of Fallen Petals

(A/N: Sometimes it’s the major story NPCs, and sometimes its the smaller ones. They were only around for so long, but their death still hits like a brick. ;-;

That’s Wilred here. A little story about missing him, and coping with that. I used Lyse as a bouncing off NPC for miqo!Fu partly due to location (since the mini questline that acknowledges him and gives him a resting place in Stormblood goes into the Lochs) but also I find Lyse an interesting character to discuss death, just because for as much as its not presented in game, she’s lost a lot. She’s probably quite familiar with it.

I want to write more of these NPC remembrance stories, and I’ve already done a few prior - one for Minfilia, and two as part of FFXIV Write 2020, both actually featuring Lyse incidentally - but I’d like to do more.

Didn’t do too much editing after I finished writing, so apologies for any iffy errors.

@ffxiv-writers)

Cracking bones pierced the air as Lyse stretched, finally freed from the stuffiness of the castle meeting room. It felt like she’d been up and moving and chatting since dawn had broken, but she could rest at last. Spying the sun in the sky, seeing it just hovering above the walls of the Quarter, she let out a breath of relief. It would be nearing meal time, and she was starving. And she’d have to consider collecting a plate for Fordola as well…

“Well well, if it ain’t Lyse? I figured you’d be busy till sundown,” a voice called, snapping the woman from her thoughts. Gundobald approached with a wave, an affable smile on his face, which she gladly returned.

“It’s getting close enough though, isn’t it? So technically I have been,” she countered, nodding in the direction of the lowering star. “But it’s good to see you, especially after so long.”

“Likewise, lass, likewise. And it's good to be back in Ala Mhigo, even if it's only for a day,” the elder man hummed contentedly, looking around the city with pride in his eyes. Lyse couldn’t help but smile at his reaction.

“Right, you said you’d stay behind for those that couldn’t make the trip,” she mused, remembering the arrangement one of her soldiers - his own nephew - had made to transport the Ala Mhigans home, “So what brings you all the way here then? Just seeing the sights? Taking back stories for the older folk back in Thanalan?”

Gundobald tilted his head. “Aye, I suppose I could do that for them. Rhalgr knows even in their last few days, everyone back in Little Ala Mhigo gains a bit of new life being reminded that their home is free now.” Then he shook his head. “But that wasn’t the main reason I came. It was to pay some respects to some old comrades. The ones that couldn’t be here even to hear the news.”

Lyse lowered her head upon hearing this. “I see. I did learn about the old mercenary monument up north. Probably still fitting for everyone else that uh...passed beyond these lands.” Looking back at him, she asked, “So you’re returning home now? Would you like an escort?”

“Nah, I’m not so enfeebled I can’t handle myself on the return trip,” the highlander shook his head, though there was a friendly glint in his eye as he said it, “Better to keep your men here where they’re needed more, Commander. But if you want, you could send someone to go check on the Scions’ Warrior girl by the monument.”

At this, the woman perked up. “Fufu is here? There, I mean?”

“Aye, I figured you would’ve known, that she would’ve told you. She was up there before I arrived, and she’s still there now.” Lyse shook her head, surprise still colouring her features. Gundobald frowned, but he didn’t sound worried when he added, “Well, I’ll let you look into that on your own. Suppose you’ve been so busy you could do with a catch up with your friend. I’ll get started on my way back.”

He waved, wandering off down the cobbled streets, leaving a pondering Lyse to her thoughts.

~*~*~

The woman didn’t wait long before making the decision to venture to the old tomb, leaving behind an order to deliver food to the resistance’s prisoner should Lyse not return in time to do it herself. A bread roll haphazardly stuffed in her own month would do her until then.

The sky was turning a shade of purple by the time she reached the monument, the clouds painted orange and pink in the fading sunlight. A sole figure sat on the quickly chilling stone in front of the pillar, the only other source of light coming from a small lantern mounted on the saddle of a sleeping chocobo nearby.

“Hey,” Lyse called out, making the miqo’te jump and spin around. A hand hovered over the chakram by her waist, however Fufu quickly relaxed at the sight of her old friend. Her flickering tail settled.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Fufu said as Lyse joined her. The hyur gave the Scion a friendly nudge, lightly scolding her by saying, “Of course you weren’t, ‘cos you never even told me you were here.”

The miqo’te winced, a sheepish smile on her face. “I’m sorry. In my defense I did show up at the palace gates, and I thought about it, but everyone said you were busy pretty much all day. They offered to take a message, but I didn’t want to interrupt or make you take time out if you were doing important stuff.”

“You’re never interrupting,” Lyse chucked, “I’ll always be happy to make time for you or the other Scions if I can. If anything,” she groaned, rolling her shoulder, both girls wincing at the loud crack it let out, “I’d appreciate having an excuse to take a break.”

Fufu nodded. “Alright then, noted.” Both women fell into a comfortable silence, enjoying the quiet as night fell, the sounds of the salt waves lapping at the shore behind them, and Fufu’s noble bird snoring softly next to them, the lantern swinging gently on its hook with each breath the chocobo took. Their faint shadows shifted ever so slightly against the stone structure.

“Who are you here for?” Lyse finally asked, the question having been sitting on her tongue since she’d arrived. Fufu didn’t answer immediately, but Lyse didn’t expect her to. In the meantime she added, “I met Gundobald in the Quarter, he said he came here with you. Or more like you arranged to meet here, I suppose, he said you were already here when he arrived from Little Ala Mhigo.”

Fufu’s tail twitched, managing to brush against the hyuran’s arm.

“Someone I knew once.” Was all she said.

“Did I know them?”

“...Kinda.”

They sat again, Lyse willing to wait for her friend to talk, or even if she didn’t at all. But after a moment, Fufu took in a breath.

“You remember one of the first reports I wrote on my own? For one of my first missions without another Scion watching me.” With a sly smile and a side eye toward her friend, she added, “After the whole thing with the sylphs.”

Lyse inadvertently spluttered as she burst out laughing. “Oh gods! I remember that! Your penmanship was awful, and it was so plain!” 

Lyse was already near falling to the floor from hysterics, however the miqo’te shoved the other woman over with an exaggerated pout all the same, though unable to hide the amusement in her voice as she argued, “Excuse you, I’d never done much writing before then, never mind for a fancy mission report. And what am I supposed to even put in one? ‘Went to Little Ala Mhigo, nobody liked me, I had to save some kids from the amalj’aa’? And it's not like you or Papalymo or anybody else was around to help me write it.”

“I kno- gods,” the hyuran gasped, finally trying to bring her laughter to an end. Given their location, things were sure to take a turn, even if Fufu had started the moment of levity. Indeed the woman in question had turned sombre once more. Lyse coughed, trying to stem her chuckles. “Alright, I’m done.” 

Another breath out to calm herself, then Lyse said, “I mean, really, it was plain, but that’s fine. It did the job it was meant to do - say what happened, what you did - and you were still new to it all. And teaching you wouldn’t have helped, you probably don’t need to write those anymore. So nothing to dwell on anymore. Right?” Fufu shot her a grateful look. Then she looked up at the stone beacon in front of them.

“Well, one of those kids involved in that whole thing, he’s here now.” Lyse flinched, eyes glancing up at the tomb.

“The one that didn’t die in the amalj’aa attack...but he died later as a Brave,” Fufu said, her face eerily straight, yet her eyes already beginning to water. Lyse herself found her eyes drifting to the foggy horizon, a faint memory of a bright eyed, hopeful looking young man dressed in blue coming to mind.

“His name was Wilred,” the miqo’te added without prompt, “And he meant every word of the Braves’ original creed.”

She shook her head, letting out a shaky breath. “I know a few of the folk that believed in what the Braves were meant to be still stuck with the Scions after that whole mess, but Godsdammit, I wish he could’ve been there as well. He just disappeared one day and then h-he was...he’d been left to rot in Urth’s Fount! He d-didn’t deserve that, h-he…”

Her words caught in her throat, and despite pressing her hands against her eyes to stem the oncoming flood, a sob broke from the warrior. Without hesitation, Lyse pulled the miqo’te into her shoulder, letting her friend weep freely. Fufu’s chocobo nearby stirred, letting out a small chirp at the sound of its mistress’ crying. A glance from the monk let the bird settle again, although the tenseness in its haunches betrayed its worry.

“He should’ve been here, I know,” Lyse mumbled gently, rocking to try and calm the other woman. She bit her lip, trying to think of what she could say to soothe her friend, but coming up short. She didn’t know the boy that well, only recognising him as a passing face in the Rising Stones...and one that eventually stopped showing up.

“It’s more than that,” Fufu hiccuped, lifting her head. Her eyes were already red raw. “He started out so angry and desperate, desperate enough for the ascians to notice him and his friends and...and he was the only one to make it out alive. And that changed him, and he wanted to do good after that. And the Braves were supposed to be his second chance to do that and-- By the Twelve, Lyse, he was younger than us.” Her voice cracked, and Lyse winced.

Still, the woman leaned her head forward against the other’s in a reassuring gesture. Fufu sniffed.

“I know I can’t go back and change things. I can wish and hope and say what I could’ve done instead - and I wish I’d watched him more now, I wish I’d taken Riol worries to heart, and I wish we’d never crossed paths with Ilberd, that I had cut him down where he stood if I knew then what I do now - but I know that won’t change anything about what happened before.” She let out a heavy sigh after her rant, finally seeming to calm. “I wish for a lot of things Lyse.”

“Me too.”

“I wish he had a chance.”

“I know. I wish all the time that Papalymo was still here to help me. He’d keep the resistance in line better than I could.” At that, the keeper chuckled.

Another sniff. “It’s moments like this...losing people I feel like I could’ve saved, it makes me try harder. So I don’t have to lose anyone else. So normal people can have a chance after hardship.”

“For those we have lost?” Lyse said, a small smile on her lips. Fufu smiled back, nodding.

“I wish they didn’t have to die, but I won’t let their deaths be in vain. But...but I guess it all feels like so much sometimes. And I need to be alone to deal with it. I know I could stay with the other Scions and they wouldn’t judge me for it, but just every now and then...” She trailed off.

“I get that,” the hyuran chuckled, ruffling Fufu’s hair, “And that’s fine, good even. It shows that you care. That the whole Warrior of Light title isn’t just for show. Better that than coming across like some soulless killing machine.” 

“I’m proud of what I do, since I can help so many people, but sometimes it can feel like a weight,” Fufu pouted. 

Lyse sighed. “I know the feeling.”

The highlander stood, her knees cracking, offering a hand to Fufu as well. The chocobo finally woke after a whistle from its rider, stumbling to its feet.

“We’ll go back to the Quarter together, and you can spend the night with me. I can send a soldier or call Tataru’s linkshell to let the Scions know,” Lyse suggested. Too worn down by her emotional outburst to argue, Fufu nodded, the idea sounding appealing at that.

“And in future,” the woman continued, “if you come here again, I insist you let me know. I won’t let you sit here on your own. This sort of thing is better with a little support, isn’t it?”

Fufu looked up at the stars above, the shimmering dots reflecting in her wide watery eyes. She smiled, looking back at her friend.

“I’d appreciate that.”

[of-muppets-and-men]

Penumbra

Just an Ichiruki canon divergent type story I’m taking a crack at.

This takes place a few years after the Quincy war.

Chapter One: Waning

Winter in the Seireitei was arguably even more frigid than it was in the real world. The chilling air seeping into every crack and crevice, freezing the citizens to the bone. Lower districts suffered the most, its poor residents struggling to keep warm. Huddling together like penguins to stave off frostbite and lost toes. And years of enduring it as a boy left a bad taste in one Renji Abarai’s mouth.

The restless lieutenant walked silently through the upper echelons of the Seireitei, Zabimaru tout by his side. His stride long and somber as he moved through the fortunate streets. The posh smiles of other souls sickening him to some degree. Their whisperings and hushed voices undoubtedly about him. The lieutenant adjusted his heavy cloak so he could avoid meeting their gaze. Renji had been to and seen hell, while these people hid and scattered like roaches. But he would ultimately pay their judgement no mind. After all, he had a more pressing concern; like finding his fiancee.

At long last, the shinigami reached his destination: The Shihouin estate.

Its gates opened before him, grandiose as always. A slew of servants filed out, forming symmetrically at the edge of the path. The respectfully bowed toward him, a Noble formality he'd come to hate. The head servant, a woman who’s name he hadn’t bothered to remember, guided him inside to meet her mistress. Renji followed the diminutive woman inside to a decadent living room where an old friend sat lazily.

“Mistress, you have a guest.” the servant spoke.

Yoruichi looked up to see who had interrupted her midday snacking, only to see Renji give off his familiar scowl. The reinstated head of the Shihouin clan fired back with a coy smile, then continued to nibble on a pocky stick.

With a wave of her hand, the attendant left the room, leaving Renji and her alone.

“Well? What are you waiting for? Sit.” Yoruichi coaxed “You are my guest, no?”

With a heavy sigh, Renji waltzed over, propping his zanpakuto against an adjacent pillar. He removed his thick cloak, laying it beside him as he made himself comfortable. Yoruichi’s sofa was soft, almost too soft as he felt his body sink into the cushions. In an attempt to start the conversation, Yoruichi pointed the open pocky box in Renji’s direction.

“Want one?” She asked with a purr.

“Where is Rukia?” Renji barked.

“Wow, straight to the point. Oh well, more for me.”

“Yoruichi…”

The Lieutenant eyes spoke volumes. He clearly wasn't in the mood for games. The Shihouin head rolled her eyes at his seriousness, laying her beloved snack on a nearby table. She refined her posture, crossed one leg over the other as she often did and spoke truthfully.

“I haven’t seen her in weeks, Renji. No one has.” Yoruichi answered his looming question.

Renji then slouched down, angrily muttering profanities to himself. Anyone could see he was distraught; he’d proposed to Rukia a mere 3 months ago. Now she just drops off the face of the Soul Society without telling anyone. Not Byakuya or any of the other captains, Not Kisuke or Yoruichi, and certainly not him. His only clue was a note reading 'don't look for me'. It was mind-numbingly frustrating to say the least.

Renji was so deep in thought, he hadn’t noticed Yoruichi scoot beside him. The forlorn Shinigami only broke his trance when she put her hand on his shoulder.

“Renji, I’m sure she’s fine.”

“But what if she’s been kidnapped?! What if she needs my help and I’m just sitting on my ass doing nothing?!”

“Renji… You, Rukia and Ichigo have faced down every person that has threatened the Soul Society. There’s no one left strong enough to even pose a challenge. Yhwach is gone. The Wandenreich are gone. So stop fussing over her safety. Rukia probably just needs some time for herself. And.. if that’s the case, she‘ll come back.”

The Shihouin Head’s words just barely set him at ease. With a quick jolt, he rose from his seat, fists clenched tight. The worry on his face or his heart hadn’t diminished as much as she had wanted. Slightly defeated, he made his way for the gate.

“Sorry but I can’t stay. It was good to see you, Lady Shihouin.”

An obvious and poor attempt to jab at her. At least he was trying.

“Have you talked to Ichigo yet?” Yoruichi asked curiously.

“No, but I’m headed to Karakura next.”

“Okay… stay safe.”

A nod was all she got in response. She walked him out; all the while surrounded by her entourage of servants and attendants. The lot of them bowed diligently as the lieutenant wearily made his way off the estate. As the old friends waved each other off, the gates cut off their view of one another.

Her many servants dispersed, leaving her to saunter back to enjoy the rest of her snacks. Before she could even take off her sandals however, a voice came from beyond the foyer.

“Is he gone?” the diminutive voice asked.

“Yes. He is.” Yoruichi responded.

“Good.”

The owner of the little voice traipsed out of the darkness. Illuminated by the light of the afternoon, a very nervous and also very pregnant Rukia met eyes with her confidant. A disappointed Yoruichi crossed her arms at the expecting mother. Rukia smiled timidly only to wince in pain, grabbing hold of her ever-growing baby bump. The Flash goddess was by her friend’s side in the blink of an eye, fearing the worst.

"Are you okay?" Yoruichi frantically asked, helping Rukia maintain her balance.

“Yoruichi, stop. I’m fine… really. She just kicked.”  Rukia explained, trying to calm her old friend.

“Wait. She?” She exclaimed in bewilderment.

“Mhmmm. Isane said it was a girl. Here, Wanna feel?”

Rukia calmly guided her friend’s hand to the spot her little one had made herself known. Yoruichi pressed her palm gently over Rukia’s stomach; to feel a tiny foot press back. The moment was precious, the both of them nearly began to cry. Using what strength they had, they forced it into a teary eyed chuckle instead.

“Alright, no more fooling around. You should be resting Okaa-chan.” Yoruichi chided.

Rukia chucked, rolling her eyes as they walked back to the guest room she’d been secretly staying in. But the manner of Renji’s visit had both of them troubled. Renji did love her enough to go looking for her, but how long until Ichigo came looking as well? He was Ichigo after all. Nothing on heaven and earth could stop him once he was invested in something. As Rukia pondered, Yoruichi had some questions of her own.

“Do you plan on telling Ichigo about his child?” She asked, her voice solemn and rigid.

Rukia looked up into her friend’s golden eyes “I don’t know if I can…”

“Well, one of these days, you’re not gonna have a choice.” Yoruichi once again lectured.

“I kno-”

“Do you? Rukia, I’ve lied to everyone I could for you. Hidden you away from your family, friends and your fiance. All so you could keep Ichigo’s child. Do you really understand the ramifications of what you’re doing.”

Caught in her frustration, Yoruichi hadn’t realized Rukia had become to cry. Tears streamed from the expectant mother’s eyes as she slumped to her knees. She buried her swelling eyes into her palms. The petite woman continually wiped at her cheeks, only for more tears to take their place. Knowing she’d said too much too soon, Yoruichi comforted her as best she could.

“Rukia, I’m sorry. That was exce-”

“No… you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I’ve asked so much of you. All for the sake of my child that I'm not even sure I'll get to see grow up. Yet I can't bring myself to get rid of it because it’s the only proof I have that he loved me.”

The small woman continued to bawl in the middle of the hallway, the noise of her sobs echoing off the walls. The deafening silence of the manor made Rukia’s sobs even more poignant. Yoruichi had fully embraced her by this point, stroking her hair to help calm her. Rukia’s relationship with Kurosaki had always raised Yoruichi’s attention, but she never would’ve guessed how far they went. That this whole fiasco was a sign; a sign Rukia was still hopelessly in love with Ichigo. Even though her child would likely never know her parents, Rukia had every intention of bringing her to term. A resolve Yoruichi would have to match.

“Okay. As your friend, I will help you through this. No matter what. But I do have one last question. Why haven’t called off your engagement? Or talked to Byakuya?”

“Because I’d be disowned. What future would my daughter have then?”

“Ichigo would take you in. I’m sure he would.”

“I’m not so sure. We haven’t spoken since… well, y’know. And if I suddenly went back with our child my arms. There’s no telling how he would react. Not to mention his engagement...”

Rukia had been plagued by uncertainty ever since Isane did her ultrasound. Every question her mind created led to more stress. Stress that threatened both her daughter and her. So Rukia had stopped thinking about it altogether. And it showed.

The elder shinigami doled out a heavy sigh, unsure of what to be more baffled by; that fact she willingly let herself get caught in this debacle or Rukia’s surprising lack of a plan. Well she’d already come this far with Rukia, she would have to see it through to the end.

“Oh dear, what did I do to deserve this.”

(Repost cuz Tumblr is wack)