#post-pandemic life
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Thoughts On The Post-Pandemic Era And My Life After That
I’m going to keep this post straightforward. Right now, I feel like ranting about my current situation in this post-pandemic life, one that I actually find worse now that my life has been drastically changed by it with absolutely no way to revert to the pre-pandemic days. Life sucks, isn’t it?
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The post-pandemic era? I call it worse. The pre-pandemic era is a hundred times better.
Call it selfish, but…
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I Clean Houses and Write Stuff (sometimes)
Blog Post #2 1/9/2023
I'm not writing right now, and I'm not okay with it.
Technically you could argue that I haven't written regularly in a long time. It wouldn't be much of an argument, given that it's absolutely true.
Sometime in that 2018-2019 pre-pandemic era I wrote what would be the final draft of the book I've been working on since I was 12 years old. And when I say final I don't mean "complete;" I mean final as in it would finally leave my head so that something new could take its place.
Because 15 years is a long-ass time to be working on a book. Especially when it isn't very good.
And something new did take its place, once my those guys were free of the gothic feary world my angsty teen brain concocted. The Something New would be drafted three times, many hours spent pouring over laptop and notebooks, doing the thing I'd loved doing for so long it was beyond a hobby, it was part of who I was, like being right-handed or strawberry blonde. The third draft of this Somethibf was even something that would be one step closer to "finished," maybe even publishable...
But then, it was March of 2020. The weird "Chinese virus" we'd kept hearing rumbles about in the news would reach the shores of the US. Suddenly you could die by breathing the air outside your front door, and every media outlet had a field day with headlines listing death tolls, hospitalozation numbers, and repeating the phrase "nothing will ever be the same again" over and over and over.
I didn't sleep for three months.
I cried -sobbed- and screamed for several weeks straight.
I suffered a back spasm that was so painful I physically couldn't lay flat on the floor, my spine seemingly permanently arched. I was able to get that to let go after hours of yoga videos, but then it moved to my foot and I could barely walk. I stopped being able to eat real food because everything made me sick, and would in turn get dangerously close to becoming pre-diabetic because you aren't actually supposed to live off of cheap protein bars.
And during it all, all I could do was read the news.
And read the news.
And read the news.
That story that I spent so much time with was gone, dead and buried with the first 100,000 people in the US to die of COVID-19 no thanks to our screaming lunatic of a 45th president who was elected into office the year I graduated from college. (Talk about a slap to the face to those looking to enter the world and make something of themselves, especially if you were a woman, queer, Black, an immigrant, trans, pretty much anyone not a straight white male.)
I could barely focus on the books in front of me - I read entire novels that I'd forget the second I closed the back cover. Soon I stopped reading books all together.
A small bright spot emerged when a story idea came me, one that had been rolling about the back of my head for some time. I hammered out a draft in record time in the Fall of 2020 and then... That was gone, too, regardless of how I tried to go back to it, how I tried to work on it, edit it, turn it into something for the world.
"Maybe making more money will help," I thought as I picked up more hours at my then-job.
"Maybe having my own space will help," I thought as we emptied our savings account and liquidated every asset we had so we could buy the house of a dreams in September of 2021, big enough for all our animals and for me and my husband Tim to have our own office spaces. Mine was even painted a delightful shade of purple, complete with overflowing bookshelves and a massive window overlooking the street below behind which my mint green sauder desk sits, waiting.
I don't think I've spent more than 24 hours in here, my office, this space that we purchased with everything we had so it could be mine. We've been here for 16 months now.
Mind you, buying the house was not the plan. At least not yet. Ever since the credit cards got taken care of from pandemic aid (the one good thing that came out of those dark months of death, tears, fear and grief), we'd been planning to move out west, somewhere in Colorado where we could see the mountains and be in a not-red state (news flash: Ohio sucks). But then we found our now house, a beautiful thing that's a hundred-and-some years old with real wood trim, badly finished rooms and generations of stories right in what's become our favorite, artsy district of Cleveland. Lots of mental creative energy has been spent planning: how do we make this ancient place that's been through so much ours? How do we heal it, fix it, honor it's history while bringing it to our modern era?
It's stressful as all hell, not to mention expensive and time consuming, but I've loved it. We have it all planned out; wooden countertops in the kitchen, black tile in the bathrooms, an attic library, a basement game room, a second shower.
I try to tell myself that I haven't been writing because that part of my brain that longs to make things has been making our house our house. Constantly working, picking, problem solving the way it does when I'm drafting.
Part of me believes me.
Part of me wonders if I will ever write again.
After all, writing up until the pandemic was such a part of who I am, it was hard to call it a hobby.
But, is it still?
I don't know.
I don't like not knowing.
***
Flash forward to now, 2023. I've stepped away from the ever demanding customer service desk I've been chained to since I was 17 and am now working for myself, quietly cleaning houses, alone with my music, my thoughts, and the home owner's pets.
It's good work; I'm making more money, and have a lot more time now.
But do I have Grass is Always Greener Syndrome, too?
Am I just thinking, "maybe this atmospheric change will fix my internal problems, because I don't even know where to begin on those?"
It makes me sigh heavily. Perhaps that's why I spend my free time sitting in the living room under a blanket watching true crime docs on Hulu.
#writeblr#writing#writing community#blog post#personal#post-pandemic life#not writing#bloggers of tumblr#blogs of tumblr#pandemic#2023#mental health#I Clean Houses and Write Stuff Blog
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sure it was a perfect storm of a pressure cooker but i promise destiel was about destiel
#like 2020 was all building towards something. the isolation the pandemic the general uncertainty of day to day life#toss in the heated election and counting process. sure it *couldve* been anything else. but it *wasnt*.#it was destiel. that night there were even other rumours circulating about other shows. another show even had a huge reveal!#but the most widespread and known was destiel because of course it was! because thats what everyone was losing their mind over!#look at the statistics chart of a history of destiel interest over time! i promise the destiel interest is about destiel!#were people all equally invested? no! were some people memeing? yes! but by and large nov 5th became a juggernaut bc of destiel#as someone who literally was refreshing for election news and developed mania from seeing destiel go canon. it was about destiel#sure the intersection of destiel and election results was fun. but i posted way more destiel than election stuff. cause it was about destie#anyway. idk why im on a soapbox#char speaks#destielputinelection#destiel
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having one of those mid-20s moments where you're like well damn. im really not a teenager anymore i dont hate myself anymore actually. like its insane
sorry i gotta ramble but this feels too silly to post anywhere else
#kk.txt#not snz#like for a while even the thought of like admitting i didn't hate myself felt like.. like i was being full of myself#idk what clicked in my brain a few years ago but it felt like i started to see myself more and like understand myself as a person#like i would a friend. and i just didn't think like that before i guess lmao#but like idk i dont talk about my personal life much but ive been recovering from post-pandemic agoraphobia#and i just went on my first big trip alone and im like. god its barely there anymore its just a little shadow in the corner of my mind#that only spreads occasionally now instead of overwhelming me#like im still terrible at a lot a lot a lot of social interaction type stuff but im like.. doing better than i thought id be able to#a few years ago. like idk im not good at.. change and especially conceptualizing myself as someone who can change and be fluid#like i really do think a majority of my person like my core morals and demeanor havent changed that much. and i like that#it makes me feel more secure to be that way#but at the same time its like my mental image isn't nearly as self hating as it used to be#like i used to picture myself as coming off basically the same way as that girl from watamote lmao like#ugly greasy awkward offputting weird#but now im like.. im just some guy... like yeah i have less experience putting effort into my appearance and i slouch and i have acne#but i am also capable of looking good occasionally. i dont need to do it all the time#ok i got off the bus and my train of thought died goodbye
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I watched Jacks stream oh my gosh...
I thought I could handle a Dsmp stream in 2024 but nope. just- that felt SO much like just a stream that would happen in like 2021. the wandering around falling into random creeper holes, chat telling jack to get philza to help him, and to find michael, the mobs interrupting and how unplanned it all was. unscripted lore my beloved forever and ever.
the way that it's like in tommy and jacks conversation- they're talking about things in character that also relates to (presumably) their feelings in real life. just gosh...
when jack and tommy said their goodbyes and jack looked back at technos house to see the sun rising- like its so perfect in a way that the incidental roleplay always was. Like in the way I know I'm reading into it but it still works and it feels like real life when something happens and you find yourself in that moment and life looks almost like a movie- everything in it's proper place for the scene- but it's all just coincidence. the sun didn't rise because a writer wrote that it would. the sun just rises and falls and the conversation just happens to end at that exact moment.
idk just- I really felt it. It captured the feeling of peak dreamsmp that I've missed so much.
I don't even have a problem with nuke ending personally I think it's perfectly fine as an ending. How I've always seen it is: Everyones been hurt by everyone and violence begets violence so the great final act is nukes that will kill everyone that have all ready been launched so it can't be taken back. Then in the prison tommy sees the early parts of the server through Dreams pov and sees the good that was there at the start and how much that has been corrupted since and he wants that simplicity again (he and dream were even friends at one point) before everything went terrible for everyone. Dream turns his back on his plan that he's been building up to for so long cause what he really wants is the same thing as tommy. for things to be simple like at the start. but it's too late- its too far gone. the nukes have already been launched there's no going back. just the hope that maybe in another world things could've been different.
(also the added context of nuke ending being an elaborate character/relationship/map reset to setup a season 2 that never happened.)
So there's my nuke ending defense lol. I know it wasn't very popular with a vast amount of people and that's okay too.
I think ending something like dsmp was never gonna be easy or satisfy everybody, with how many individual povs there are and storylines. I always expected there to be things left unfinished. (unfinished symphony ;) Even if that's pretty unsatisfying for us viewers. (there's a particular stream I really wish had happened with foolish, dream, and eret)
idk there's a post I always remember when thinking about the ending that was like: "Maybe they couldn't write a happier ending at that time in their lives." (super paraphrasing) obviously talking about techno's passing. it's a bit assumptive but the CC's have talked publicly about how much that has affected them (of course it did). With something like that I imagine giving your minecraft server/roleplay character a happy ending is the last thing on your mind.
Todays stream felt like grief and nostalgia and complicated feelings for a time that has passed but still left it's marks on you:
“are you happier?” “I'm getting there”
like, that just says it all.
#dreamsmp#jack manifold#tommyinnit#dreamsmp finale#I don't really make my own posts on here- especially not like this (giving my thoughts/opinions on stuff lol) I made this acc to-#-look at and reblog dsmp posts and fanart. To see ppl on my dash lore posting the daily streams- it was truly a time.#please excuse my dsmp nuke ending analysis- I'm sure it reads a bit clumsy it isn't really something I have ever written before.#lore discourse in this fandom has always been kinda terrible so I never wrote out my thoughts on the ending when it happened#so it was nice to finally do so ^_^#this entire post was written very stream of thought#anyways the dreamsmp will always be something that I love! Thinking about it and these streams and these characters has brought me so much-#-happiness. (and gave me something to do during the pandemic lol)#part of my missing the dsmp is just how all these creators would talk with each other all the time end up on each others streams and collab#-but when it ended it felt like they all just went their own way. I get that people drift away and stuff thats pretty normal.#I guess with how long dsmp went for I just didn't expect it.#(obviously so much has happened between the dsmp ending and to now irt the ccs and everything. idk I just didn't expect that dsmp would be-#-the last place so many of them would ever interact publicly again. I expected to be able to watch them on other servers or collabs)#but such is life#okay- time to never post again for a year! byeee#text post#long post#pizzainator post
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By implying that children are too stupid and rude to learn about the world and learn how the world works and how to interact with others, you are casting responsibility away from the people who are responsible for that child's upbringing and placing the blame on the children (who don't have the autonomy given to them to be allowed to decide what they want) who can't help what they do and do not learn, often.
If the children aren't okay, then investigate why before turning to thought-terminating clichés of, "Well, the kids are just stupid and dumb and aren't even worth the effort because they're lazy!"
#youth liberation#i was really bothered when i saw this clip where this person was saying almost verbatim that...#...'kids [these days] are too STUPID and they're teachers are scared!'...#...why is the blame placed on the kids who have no control over school curriculum and what their home life is like or if they have money...#...it's because when you place the blame on the people with no power or control you don't have the responsibility to change circumstances..#...you essentially keep the status quo while simultaneously belittling a group of vulnerable people...#...and thus you feed into the cyclical nature of the broken education system#the kids these days AREN'T okay but it ISN'T THEIR FAULT...#...it's the fault of late-stage capitalism and poorly-funded education and a world that wasn't even built with them in mind...#...they had NO PART in the creation of the world which is hostile to their entire existence#don't mind the incorrect usage of their in the second tag i was so focused on how pissed i was#also remember how a good chunk of these kids lived through *checks notes* the fucking PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN#which was a clown show in terms of supporting kids and their parent/s#some places handled lockdown in the US better than others but holy fuck in my area at least it was a nightmare#what do you expect from parents who are now working full-time and teaching part/full-time and parenting full-time?#what support exactly are you expecting they recieved? because you'll likely find they got either a little or NONE#hilarious that i used the wrong their in a post subtweeting about education LOL#look i was focused on how PISSED i was lol cut me some slack here
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Anybody else ever get really really messed up with the whole "identity" stuff ? Like i know my name, my age, sexuality, birthplace, what i look like, what i do academically, the music i listen to, what i do in my free time and yet
It never seems enough. Like i dont know what makes me *me*. I dont know exactly who i am. Its weird to think that other people perceive me as someone who acts like x and has y personality traits, to me im just a shell with an inner monologue.
Maybe i should go back to identifying through fandom tags. Hogwarts house is out because reasons but i still have my nen type , Camp half blood cabin, devil fruit and the list goes on.
Anyway happy pride yall
#lgbtq#mentally fucked#identity crisis#self awareness#gen z culture#post pandemic#mid life crisis (at 18)
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I just realised that my sister is a post-covid child and that is like, not just a time description, like i knew it yk, but it really is different
She's going to Spain with her school in march and a spanish student is coming at home. Aside from being privileges of us going to nice schools, its stuff I should have done, but covid striked right at that time, and now that it's gone, my sister is doing it, and i am no longer in high school
I mean, how many life changing school trips i could have done but never could because of the pandemic? How much did it affect an entire generation of kids and teenagers by just happening those specific 5 years of school
#it already ruined my mental health for the rest of my life#covid#pandemic#post covid#school#vent#mental health
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did she specifically make 34 versions of TTPD because shes 34 years old
#barry.txt#taylor swift#also to make money and keep her char position long term obviously but she can never just make money it has to be some numerology bullshit#what a swiftian concept#her relationship to capital and product as an aspect to her art is endlessly interesting to me#also how she sells every album like its gonna be the last one before everyone gets sick of her and her career ends forever#she sells like its the end of the world. mulling. whatever#if she drops another fucking varant then this post means nothing#this is maybe the most interesting headspace that taylor has ever been in during an album cycle and i hope it gets less interesting soon bc#honestly i am a little worried for her#and also a little sick of her shit. She needs to get out of the eras tour/career second wind bubble that shes been in for like 3 years now#im glad that leaving bmr means shes not trapped in the strict 2 year album to tour cycle that she was in technically until rep#but actually until the pandemic forced her to stop bc rep was 2017 tour was 2018 and lover was 2019 w loverfest being 2020#but i hope she knows that that doesnt just mean dropping multiple projects a year but also...not dropping anything for a bit#chilling...taking a breath...mb honing her directing skills on other artists MVs or short films before diving into a full feature projects#working on stuff and not releasing it. writing for other people. Enjoying a beautiful sunset etc#i just want her to enjoy life when she isnt charting#i always make a very simple post and then go crazy in the tags like this could just also be a post. alas
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So you have an au about damen being abusive with laurent ?????
Please let me know more?? Any hcs or thoughts or anything pls
The capri fandom needs some dark aus fr
~🦌🌺
hello my darling!
I've been gone so long that I have no idea when you sent this and I'm deeply sorry for that!
I came up with the idea for an AU in which Damen's abusive way back in 2019/2020 (2021?) and to say I was a different person altogether back then is an understatement. I also haven't re-read the books in a long while so I can't say I recall everything I had imagined for this fic to begin with BUT!, I've got some fuzzy thoughts stored in the back of my mind that may satisfy some of the crave for Dark Damianos (a concept deeply slept on in my honest opinion but with how much people like to hate on him for free, it's best if we keep it sleeping lol).
DISCLAIMER: in my very private opinion, Damen has a natural darkness to his character that I find appealing (or would be appealing if I wasn't a coward) to explore. Those are the lenses through which I approach the abusive patterns he could come to develop in a relationship with an already emotionally/psychologically vulnerable Laurent. And also in my very private opinion, Laurent is a vulnerable character (for all reasons we as a fandom dwelled on to the point of exhaustion, but, most of all, in relation to how he sees and thinks of Damen — in terms not only of admiration but almost adoration, just as he did with his brother).
We all rememeber the scene at the end (?) of PG when Laurent is stepping on Damen's toes by saying bad things regarding his family and how Damen loses his temper and hits Laurent hard enough to draw blood. The guards step in to arrest Damen for hurting the prince and Damen takes full blame for doing it without showing a single bit of remorse whatsoever. Laurent is the one to talk his guards down from arresting Damen by pinning the blame of being assaulted on himself and that is it.
This idea (of an AU that never came to be) was forged mostly on the side of Damen's character that has a tendency to jump believe he is always right in the assessments he makes and proceed to never question the truth behind his own reasoning. And on the side of Laurent's character that always blames himself for every bad thing that has ever happened to him despite his own helplessness, and nurtures an unhealthy need for a role model to hold on to — once his brother, now his lover.
I'm going to leave all my thoughts for this AU bellow the cut, in case some people may find the matter too upsetting to read about. Trigger warnings for domestic, physical and psychological abuse, obviously! Proceed at your own accord and don't come whinning later🫰
so putting two and two together:
Damen is prone to angry outbursts or just violence in general. We see in more than one occasion that it doesn't take much for his 'bad side' to come out, which is a characteristic a lot of aggressors in this very patriarcal society we live in also showcase. And as their universe is ALSO incredibly patriarcal, this would check out.
As aforementioned, one of the most significative intances of Damen's violence is the day (after he had already slept with Laurent, after he admitted to himself he was in love with Laurent) where he he baits into Laurent's provocations and hits him.
Laurent's edge, I personally believe, though attenuated as it may be by the end of the cicle of abuse he endured all the way from his late childhood throughout his adolescence, will continue to be in place. It was wired into him as a survival mechanisms and old habits die hard. Whenever he is overwhelmed or any of his emotions slip from his iron-cast grip, he will likely spit fire and try and hurt whoever is within his reach.
Honeymoon phase being over, let's say the kingdoms were in fact merged (not going to get into any of that). Let's say Damen is the king of Vere as much as Laurent is the king of Akielos. Let's say their troups, their guards, palace servants — they are all unbiased and answer to both Laurent and Damen as their true kings equally.
Let's say Damen and Laurent continue to get at each other's throats. Lets's say they still got plenty to disagree upon and that their personalities continue to make them butt heads. Let's say their grudges, though they have agreed to leave the past be in the past, hold and come up again. An underlying resentment inate to their love. There's a lot of tension that I can see surrounding L/D's relationship. If you don't believe that it's fine, if you don't see it, that's more than okay. But I'm asking you to bear with me here.
They are having a heated argument in their palace about something that wasn't (shouldn't be) personal, but all of a sudden is. Damen says something that offsets a chain reaction in Laurent and he becomes a boy in selfdefense mode resorting to the good old habit of pushing Damen's weak spots just for the pleasure of making him angry and miserable. Damen has had a long day, he is weary, he is fed-up with all the kyroi, all the councelors making demands and telling him how to do his job. Laurent says the wrong thing at the wrong time and a moment later he is on the floor, with his hand on his cheek touching the burning spot where Damen slapped him. He bit his tongue in the impact and he can feel the blood in his mouth which he swallows.
There are no guards that come in this time, because they know better than to step into their king's quarrels. Damen tells himself it was Laurent who pushed him too far, he didn't mean to do it. Laurent agrees — Damen would never have done that if Laurent himself hadn't asked for it. Damen was good. He's only ever been good. He doesn't do anything without a good reason. Laurent is the one who fucks things up and pushes people too far. They make up.
Next time isn't that different. Nerves were high for a thousand different reasons. Laurent maybe got up from the wrong side of the bed. They argue. Damen pisses him off so he goes on to piss him off in return — just to give him a taste of what that feels like. In the back of his mind he remembers what happened last time they argued but he brushes it off as a mistake. Damen wouldn't dare to make the same mistake twice.
Then Damen does. And just like the other time Laurent loses his footing from the strength of the blow. His eyes tear from the pain but they don't fall. Damen is fumming over him, telling him how Laurent pushes him over the edge. Damen, who is such a just, charming, fair king. A much better king than Laurent is, with his head in place at all times in a way Laurent's own never is. If he lost his temper, it was because he was forced into it.
Laurent is the one who went too far again; Damen simply reacted to it. He stands and tells Damen he was wrong for saying the things he said. He shouldn't have. Damen agrees; Laurent shouldn't have. They make up.
Every time Damen is forced to loose his temper with Laurent he get angrier with Laurent and becomes a little wilder. Laurent should not make him keep doing it! He doesn't mean to do it! When the anger subdues, after they make love, in the morning after, Damen shows Laurent the tokens of the love he still has for him — a new mare of an excellent breed for Laurent's private stables, a new imported book he would like for his personal library, a new delicacy their cooks learns to make as sweet as a human can handle just the way Laurent likes it.
Damen is a good lover. Most of the time. If only Laurent stopped bringing out his bad side.
Laurent understands how every time Damen hits him it's his own fault. He tries to stop himself from causing their arguments but he can't. He always ends up saying the wrong thing, he always disappoints Damen somehow and though he can keep his stance straight and his face void, deep down he's terrified he will eventually drive Damen away.
After the loss of his entire family, after the death of Auguste, of living so many years under the sadistic regime of his uncle, Damen is everything Laurent has. And Laurent, warped as he is by nature, tainted and wrong and bad at his very core, doesn't deserve him. He knows he doesn't deserve Damen, who is so honorable, so good a leader, so righteous and mighty. But he wants Damen and he wants him to stay. He wants to be good for him and for Damen to think he is good.
So when the slapping evolves into punching, Laurent searches his own words, his own actions for where the fault lies. And always he finds it. The exact word he said in a meeting with their kiroi and councelors that undermined Damen's authority. The exact moment he stopped to speak with an ill-intentioned courtier who flirted with him and he must have unintentionally flirted back. The provokation implied in a comment he thought was innocuous. And the fact Damen only found more and more of reasons to be dissatisfied with Laurent, despite him becoming evermore self-aware and trying so hard, so much of the time, to please Damen, meant nothing more than the fact that Laurent was a man full of flaws. It wasn't on Damen.
They both agree Damen's assessment and his morals could never be wrong. He is too good and honest a man for that. Laurent is causing all of it.
The oldest members of their guards notice the slow, steady shift. Those that used to compose the old Veretian prince's guard are worried. They whisper among themselves when they see a new bruise blooming in their king's fair skin or hear the shouts coming from inside the royal chambers. But no one dares to raise a voice against king Damianos. Jord or Lazar (or whichever of the prince's guards you like best) goes to Laurent to raise their concerns and ask if everything is all right between him and Exalted. If there is anything Laurent needs. Anything at all. They will stand by him come what will. But Laurent berates them and tells them to keep their noses out of royal business.
Damen is approached by Nikandros and inquired about it when one day Damen unintentionally leaves Laurent with a black eye. Damen finds that is the perfect opportunity to lament about all the ways Laurent has been driving him insane and making him miserable. That he is getting worse with time where Damen had hoped he would have settled and his temperament improved. That years after the events they lived through, he keeps holding Damen accountable for things that should be left in the past. That Damen doesn't blame Laurent for killing Kastor, or torturing him in Vere anymore, so why should Laurent still resent him for Auguste.
Nikandros understands. He feels sorry for Damen, that Laurent makes his life so difficult. He has witnessed their quarrels before, had seen the way Laurent evokes Auguste's name as a dagger to dig into Damen's heart.
Then it becomes common knowledge all around their court: Laurent is as unbearable and hard to reconcile with as he'd ever been, prideful and resentful and cruel. And Damen is the poor man who has to handle him atop a whole kingdom he has to rule. There is no soul in their kingdom that doesn't feel bad for Damen's situation.
What no one seems to notice is that Laurent has taken to flinch whenever Damen lifts his hand. That he tenses when he raises his voice. That he is much more succint and careful with his words whenever Damen is around, because he doesn't want to upset him.
All they notice is Laurent's worsening moods. His renewed bouts of broodiness and anger. That he takes anything and everything out on everyone — the servants, the guards, officials, nobles of the court, the walls and the furniture. Nothing seems to please him anymore. Everything sets off his rage. Which is something else Damen has taken to punish him for, in the privacy of their chambers.
Laurent never cries. Not when Damen tell him how difficult he is, how impossible he makes to love him. Not when he sees the several shades of new and healing bruises all over his body, not when he gulps mouthfuls of his own blood. Laurent hasn't cried since he was thirteen. But he gets more and more hopeless each day that passes and he is proven again no good man could ever truly love him because nothing good and pure remains so in his presence.
Laurent always brings out the worse in people, no matter how he tries to get things right.
But he keeps on trying. Because maybe one day he can. And maybe Damen will see there is good left in him to love even though he makes his life hard and harder every day. And maybe one day Damen will love him easily.
Because all he really wants is to be worth it of Damen's love.
And that's all Damen wants too. He already loves Laurent so much. He would never, ever hurt him again if only Laurent would stop provoking him into it.
#to be COMPLETELY CLEAR#the author doesn't believe a single word the author herself has said in this thing#the author is an avid defender of Lovey-Dovey Lamen#of: Damen treats Laurent like fine porcelain and Laurent basks in it#of: Laurent learns what it means to be truly loved in Damen after so many years of pain#but you ask and you shall receive my loves my children my darlings#Pandemic version of me was in a dark place#captive prince#i'm not going to get into any potential grapey themes regarding L/D in this post sorry not sorry#because though canon would back me up good just writing what i wrote already cost me many more years of life than i'm willing to sacrifice#alright now#dark ficlet-ish#damianos of akielos#dark damen#laurent of vere#and all the other tags idk i don't remember how tumblr goes#i'm begging you to never ask me to write this fic#but if you're brave enough please go ahead take the prompt and run with it#just credit me and etc i think it's more than enough#i ain't gon read it but i'd like to know it was written in case one day dark gabe returns and SHE wants to read it#kinda meta but not really#kinda fic but not really#kinda character study but not really#what is this really? the frankenstein monster probably#any typos are the beauty marks of the text i refuse to read it again to extinguish them
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had my every-other-week lazy dinner party yesterday and before it i was feeling a little like "oh, maybe people just come because they pity me" (insane thought, i would never hang out with people whose presence i don't enjoy unless they were like, a lonely unpleasant elderly relative). but one of my friends who came over was like "you can't stop me, i am GOING to do your dishes because i'm invested in these gatherings being unstressful for you so you keep having them." wrow. friendship
#personal#i was so :)#im allowed to post about my life going well since I did my time in the salt mines (posting about pandemic unemployment and not having any#friends in my city) lol
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I love space SO much. And it absolutely terrifies me too. If I wasn't terrified of space, and I was good at math, I'd be working at NASA. But even then I won't ever get to explore the galaxy in my lifetime, because we are nowhere near travel that equals the speed of light, and even then, lightspeed is still painfully slow on the cosmic scale.
Did you know that, no matter where we are in humanity, our sun will begin to die billions of years from now? We may all be dead and gone, or we may have evolved into something unrecognizable, or we may still be around. But one day, the Earth will be engulfed by the sun. Or it'll be thrown out of orbit. It'll be the end for Earth. We may have figured out how to go beyond the speed of light by then. We could have discovered that the Einstein-Rosen Bridge theory - wormholes - is real, and we could have used that to bend spacetime to our will and find somewhere new to call home, potentially even new universes.
But we don't know. Earth will likely become uninhabitable before the natural lifespan of our sun can engulf it, as a result of our very human mistakes and actions and impacts.
And... this is just a longwinded way of me saying, that's what Starfield is about.
It's about being human in the face of the divine, in the face of being so so so small in the universe. It's about conflict, the tragedy of it, how it can so easily destroy our humanity before time itself has the chance to. It's about looking at the petty wars between the UC and the Collective and going, "what are they doing? There is plenty of space for us all. This is only our galaxy, what about beyond?" It's about humanity pushing forward for answers about the universe and how they will always resort to the same petty violence over those answers. It's about how you can decide what you do with those answers. It's about looking in the eye of sure destruction that will certainly come one day, and say, "I will live and love in spite of it."
You can certainly become like the Hunter. You can continuously perpetuate the cycle of very human violence because that is all that is left to you, because you have embraced the uselessness of it all. Or you can become like the Pilgrim. You can settle down and bring love and kindness to others, and bring them knowledge, despite the fact that everything is pointless.
We are just starstuff. We come from the stars, and back to the stars we will eventually go, one way or another. And it's up to you to decide if you will embrace that as the only meaning in the universe, or if you will reject the simplicity of that, and embrace humanity, embrace love, embrace compassion, embrace meaning in spite of it all.
That is what Starfield is about. That's what it is about to me. And I love it.
#starfield spoilers#starfield#stfu cloud#starfield has made me go back to those SEA videos that i linked in the post#and i just. yeah. i have a lot of feelings about this game#ive immersed myself in the worlds bethesda has made#i have dived into the deep end of the elder scrolls lore#i have written fanfics for fallout and i've studied the themes and their reflections of our world#and yet starfield is just... something so special.#i mean they are all very special don't get me wrong#but i just. i think starfield came out at the perfect time in my life and perhaps that's the same for many others#here i am trying to get my life together after the pandemic#convinced that the world is too harsh for me to function as an adult within it#and then starfield comes out and it's such a comfort to me#i am right where i need to be. and i have the ability to live and love and move forward despite the world's harshness#i love this game. so much.
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God I miss when Supernatural trended daily, can we just start making up new shit every day so we can relive that time?
#my days of tumblr fame (sort of)#that was the light of my life in the pandemic#jack’s posts#spn#destiel#supernatural#castiel#dean winchester
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I need people trying to convey the seriousness of COVID to stop dismissing the flu because the flu absolutely kills people, triggers chronic illnesses, and causes brain damage.
#A family friend cannot speak because of a high fever he had as a child.#The only people who get my narcolepsy medicine in Britain are people who got a specific flu shot during the 2009 pandemic.#Vaccines are good but they do trigger your immune response and sometimes that response is a life-long chronic illness.#Research on Post-Viral Syndrome/Post-Infectious Fatigue Syndrome predate COVID.#personal
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[Additional Image Description: On a grey background, there are five small black line art illustrations lined up across the center. The first is a sword with a hooked blade pointing upwards, the second is a hand with magic curling up out of it, the center is a castle with wavy lines extending from it into a dark sky, the third is a beaker with steam curling up from it, and the last is a shortsword pointing downwards. The sword has a few dark red shading lines. In the lower right corner of the fanmix cover is the title, "heart of my own," in dark red medieval calligraphy font. End Additional Image Description.]
HEART OF MY OWN - A FANMIX FOR CASSANDRA DE ROLO IN THE TIME OF THE BRIARWOODS
Overgrown - machineheart // Edge of the World - Within Temptation // Ashes and Rust - Wynnie Stone // Take Me Home - The Paper Kites, Nadia Reid // Nobody (Live) - The Crane Wives // The Tangled Tree - Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker // Heart Of My Own - Basia Bulat // Don't She Run - I Draw Slow // Murder City - Abigail Lapell // Until the Fire - Ladytron // Control - Halsey // Lament - Mount Moriah // Catch the Light - Haroula Rose
Fanmix on YouTube
Fanmix on Spotify
#cassandra de rolo#cr1#music#fanmix#id in alt text#described#remember how i was like i spent $8 or whatever it was on paint from cvs because i wanted to make the cass fanmix a painted cover?#l + ratio + i did not have time + my camera isn't working so i can't even do a minimalist painted version#so here's literal clipart (not actually clipart its free use images from pixabay but lets be real. stylistically. its clipart)#you can see what my Vision would have been (i wanted to paint the above in medieval manuscript illustration style on a black#background where instead of the (very nice) castle in the center it would have been the sun tree/tree from the de rolo crest#with curling branches and roots filling the whole paper above and below as well#honestly i think artistic vision clip art edition turned out good! captured the vibe. even found a sword that looks like craven edge.#this is another thing i never made a follow-up post about and i'm going to do that rn (pandemic talk incoming)#i'm stepping away from the fandom by the live show because i can't watch them do a live show in a pandemic#like friends are staying in the fandom and i don't judge/care!! i don't *want* to leave i just can't watch or do art and fic for a#work of fiction after it gets real life human beings killed#thats my uncrossable line#its an incredibly sad and fucked up situation#and this week i'm trying to finish up some fanworks (this and another mix and two fics) that i had done or over half done pre-announcement#so i can get that out of the way and focus on. i guess irl is not the word but keeping in touch with fandom bros and practical stuff for#what i think will be a shitty last couple of weeks before the live show itself
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I have this one friend who's like 7 years older than me and I met during my undergrad while he was doing a PhD (probs not his first) but he's not creepy don't worry, and people would make fun of him because he's never had a real job and literally just jumps from one academic discipline to another, but like I've come to realise he's actually living the best life and I'm so jealous
#he's probably rich but also he got a ton of scholarships Somehow because he's really smart#even though he literally was doing a phd in german literature and then went on to study music#famously not the kind of degrees they give you scholarships for i would know 😭#but anyways he texts me once every six months maybe I'm not exaggerating he's even worse than me#but he writes his messages like a postcard and then he sends pictures!!! agdjjekd what a man#i was really starting to make friends at uni right before the pandemic it was so sad I can't think about it nono pls don't#erola.txt#i just replied to his biannual check-in and I'm also having a life crisis hence the post
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