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trias-tiny-time · 4 years ago

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TRIA TRIA TRIA

—❤️❤️❤️—

COR COR COR

STATUS: in and out right now.

General Info!!

What is age regression?

The literal definition of regression is “a return to a former or less developed state”. Age regression, then, is when a person mentally returns to a “less developed” state - a more childlike state. They feel little. They describe the way they feel often as “fuzzy” or “small” or “tiny”. You would interact and treat them how you treat an actual child: coddle them, encourage them, praise them, love them. Regression is a very vulnerable headspace and is completely safe for work for that reason.

Read more on age regression here

Before you follow

I’m an age regressor myself and this is my safe space! This blog is strictly SFW and Non-sexual. If you wouldn’t show it to a kid, please don’t show it to me! I block people on my own discretion but I really don’t like blocking people! I am also 18, but I am fine with minors as I ran this account as a minor myself. Again, to reiterate - NOTHING SEXUAL OR NSFW.

DO NOT INTERACT IF…

You are anti-agere/petre/dreaming, DDLG/variants/petplay/k!nk blog, ABDL, anti-neo/xenopronouns, anti-LGBT, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, misogynistic, anorexia/ED, MAPS/pedos, TERFS

You will be blocked if…

You disrespect any form of regression, are homophobic/disrespectful of my pronouns and boundaries, generally rude, bring nsfw/sexual content into this space.

Gore/graphic blogs can interact just know i wont interact with you much! I find your blogs really cool just sometimes if im really regressed they scare me :(

Get to know me!!

About me ♡

You can call me tria, for my old username tria cor, or what is roughly “three hearts” in latin. Three lives, like when you have three tries in a game? Or like how octopi have three hearts?! 🥰 You can call me tria, t, some variation of tria cor, bubs, or sis! Please don’t call me mama/papa though, I’m not a caregiver.

I am 18 AFAB, I don’t really prefer to put labels on myself but I am non binary and pansexual (she/they/it). I have a platonic long distance cg, so please no offers to be a cg for me!! I will gladly take babysitting offers!! I love having little and big sibbies !!!! ♡

My little age ranges from around 2 - 6, I’m rarely younger or older. My headspace is very unstable, I cry easily, I’m very clingy, and I can be pulled out of headspace quite easily. I’m currently curious about pet regression and I think I may puppy regress? I don’t know, I’m very curious and nervous about it right now (any advice would help!!)

Boundaries

Please do not call me mama/papa/variants. I am not a caregiver. I’m also not a huge fan of masculine nicknames but some are acceptable (please just ask it won’t hurt!). Please respect my pronouns and anyones pronouns for that matter. I respect neo-pronouns and you will too if you’re staying here. Furries, therians, kins, are accepted and respected here. I respect padded regression, not ABDL. No ABDL in this blog - nothing sexual. No bullying or harassment will be allowed. I try not to swear, but no promises when I’m big.

What I post

My biggest posts are playlists and daily reminders! I try to post a daily reminder once per log in, and my playlists are from a while ago, but I plan on making more! I also want to do moodboards but I have no motivation to learn :\

Tagging

I’m usually between headspaces when I post, and I saw a few other blogs set this up, so I’m gonna do it too! I’ll have four different tags for the four headspaces I could be in!

#🥰❤️: completely big, just on here to relax/I have a headache

#☺️❤️: want to feel little/babysitter mood

#🫠❤️: little, 4 - 6 ish

#🫶❤️: little, 2 - 4 ish

#❤️❤️❤️reblog: reblogs

#❤️❤️❤️babble: me just talking

#❤️❤️❤️reminder: daily reminder

#❤️❤️❤️playlist: my playlists (both mine and ones I’ve found)

I might in the future get rid of this and switch to what I saw another blog do which was use a specific color on their text for a specific headspace!

Likes and dislikes

I like anime (death note, bleach, ouran high school host club, yuri!!! on ice, kill la kill, devilman crybaby, Jojos bizarre adventure) star wars, MCU, drawing, extinct animals, minecraft, faith: the unholy trinity, stuffies, marine animals, and music (sleep token, deftones, chevelle, joji, Billie marten)! My favorite color is baby pink!!

I dislike loud noises, scorpions, big spiders, meanies, anyone who violates my DNI

Extra!

Wanna talk to me on discord? My user is marya.pampli, I’m in a few Agere servers too, so you might see me there!

Wanna follow my Spotify or see my playlists? My user is fartooyoungtosigh! Here’s the link

I find it quite hard to regress on my own, and when I do it’s usually very much impure or at the least involuntary. The best way I can slip purely and voluntarily is to be on here while talking to my mama.

Also if you ever see “🪞” anon thats probably me!! I know I use it for @/scary-caregiver, @/pumpkzsafeplace, @/kitty-playroom and @/cloudscaregiverservice, but there might be other people who use it so beware. On those four blogs it’s me! ♡

I am here for everyone! I love talking to people and making new friends, and I’d love to have you stay a while! Please, you can stay as long as you’d like. I’m a shoulder to cry on if you need it!

I have a NSFW account, and I will not name it, but if you would like to follow it, please DM me asking for it. I state it on that account, and I’ll state it here, I do not feel comfortable linking my SFW and NSFW together. This is a safe space and I don’t want that ruined for me or anyone else!

Be kind to yourself, you are worth it! I love you!

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thedancefloorsilly · 4 years ago

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Hi! Congrats on 300 that's amazing!🎉 can I participate in the f/o's event please? I choose Chrollo and Kurapika (seperate). I don't have any absolutely necessary hcs for the relationships that I need to mention, except for that both are loving of course.

I'm really sorry if this is too long or too much! I tend to be open to a horribly obnoxious extent. I just overshare a lot. I had to reread this multiple times and shorten it as much as I could make myself.

Basic about me: I'm an aries sun w/ a gemini moon and leo rising, personality type is INFP. Hobbies I like are writing (normal fictional stories and fanfic), reading, drawing, painting, digital editing, walking around in nature (not quite hiking), Minecraft, and adventuring to places near me.

I get attached to random things and get really excited whenever I see them. Some examples are flowers, moths, shiny/pretty rocks or crystals, and anything similar to bottle caps/can tabs, safety pins, and other little shiny thingies.

While I tend to pride myself on how mature I can be and just how intelligent I am- normally in unique critical thinking, language skills, and imagination/creation, I'm also just a little kid at heart. I have wildly exaggerate reactions to things I like no matter how small or big they are, and due to rejection sensitive dysphoria I can be a little childish in turmoil no matter how many big words I use.

I actually like that I express joy so much and can romanticize any scenario + fall in love with insignificant objects. It took me a while to realize I even liked to do this because I didn't realize I had been masking my entire life. Due to other things being masked and whatever I have issues connecting the image of myself now to the image of myself when I was little to an alarming amount, yet still have a connection to her on the inside because I know she would be similar to now if she could.

I have ADHD and maladaptive daydreaming issues, possibly autism but I'm still doing research.

I really like praise and I need someone telling me good things about me, and I have envy problems. I wouldn't call it jealousy because I never act on anything, nor do I wish bad for the people who are doing good. My main issue, I guess, Is the "never enough" kind of thing. That's the only way I can describe it. When I'm upset, the only way to describe how I feel about myself is that I'm never enough, and no matter how much I try people won't like me as much as healthy me likes me...does that make sense? It's like I blame other people but I aim the hate and hurt feelings towards myself?

The words I'd use to describe myself are creative, intelligent, sensitive, affectionate, exaggerative, wondrous, and open

I kin Gon. Other characters are: Reki (sk8 the infinity), Anne (anne with an e), Coraline, Syd (I am not ok with this), lance (voltron), and Kaido (saiki k)

Very random details that don't matter: •I have wavey-curly hair but it can change wildly. It can be really curly, fluffy and insane, or completely flat without much at all. I've never used curling product or whatever to get it curly I just have to tightly braid it for a day and it's completely there. •I wear basic clothes but extra af accessories everywhere and somewhat crazy eyeliner. I like little trinkets as accessories like safety pins, paper clip necklaces, or hair ties on my wrist. Also some normal ones like rings, chokers, and bracelets. •I am definitely a spiritual bitch and I'm all for the moon and crystals and herbs (very basic I know), of course actual witchcraft work, but a little basic romanticizing doesn't harm nothin'

Let me know if i didn't do something right! I'm happy to be one of your 300 followers <3

Hi!! Thank you so much and ofc!! Ah don't apologize the more info the easier it is (I liked reading all of this, and plus I got so many ideas bc of it :D) !!! I also have that habit LOL. you did everything right so dw (and omg thats so nice the at the end mah heart :,)). Have a great day and enjoy <333

Event: Closed

Kurapika

- It’s not a surprise on why Kurapika loves you so much, as there are many things about you guys that make such a great fit. Having you as his lover just makes Kurapika appreciate one more thing about his life.

- Lets start off with the fact that you romanticize the scenarios and objects in your life. To Kurapika, he views this as you having an appreciation for the little things in life. For someone to express joy through the seemingly “insignificant things” is such a beautiful thing to him, and to Kurapika, he also thinks of it as a reminder to enjoy life’s little gift’s.

- This also reflects off his own way of thinking. For someone who has lost almost everything, Kurapika reminds himself to be grateful for all the things life has to offer. When life gets tough, he remembers some of the big and small things that he is appreciative for: seeing the sunrise each morning, his friends, how he’s able to wake up to see another day, and one of the most important things of all, you.

- There is not a day where Kurapika does not remind you how important you are to him, how much you’ve changed part of his outlook on life, how you’ve gave his little dark and grey world some color. For that, he’s just so exceedingly grateful, and his heart is full of this everlasting love for you. Having said that, those days where you feel as if you’re never enough always make him upset to hear.

- Though Kurapika might be a littleee uncertain with his advice, he tries to solace you the best that he can. With his calm voice, he’ll try and reassure you that you are enough, even if you might no see that in your eyes. One thing Kurapika wishes for you is to one day view yourself the way that he always does.

- Kurapika and you also share your love for nature, which was one thing you later learned about him. Growing up in a beautiful forest in the Lukso Province as a kid, he was surrounded by nature almost all through his life. He has such an appreciation for the beauty that the naturel world has. Kurapika and you sometimes set up dates where nature is most present, such as in a forest, or maybe in a field of flowers at night when the two of you can stargaze in each others arms.

- These have to be one of his favorite kinds of dates with you. The serene atmosphere that the environment brings Kurapika puts him at such ease, and having you by his side the whole time just perfects everything. While these moments can be filled with exchanged laughter from your conversations, or a calm silence from taking in the presence of your surroundings and each other, you guys always have such a wonderful time out of it. The ending to these dates can be topped with a heartfelt kiss from the two of you, as a reminder that your love and appreciation for each other is so deep-hearted and sincere.

Chrollo

- As the leader of an infamous group of thieves who can steal as much as they desire, Chrollo knew that he couldn’t just ‘steal’ someone’s love. You intrigued him from the start, and being that you guys seemed to be very different in personality, Chrollo was willing to know more about you.

- In his eyes, you were like this divine gem that somehow ended up in his grasp, except without the use of “stealing” it. Now that you and him are dating, there’s not a day where Chrollo doesn’t try and show how much he loves you. Let’s start with how every time he call’s you, it’s with the use of an endearing name. He usually goes back and forth between calling you “my love”, “my dear” and “sweetheart”.

- Every time you feel envious, or have those feelings of inadequacy, Chrollo pulls you close to him, and tries to comfort you with the sweetest of words. Now usually if he would ever say something this heartfelt to someone, it would be for personal gain in return. But, whenever he pulls you into his arms and whispers his own advice, it’s because it’s genuine. All the praise you hear coming from your mouth is something that Chrollo truly means, and wants you to understand.

- He also really enjoys your personality in which you romanticize everything. Chrolo finds it very cute to him, and loves seeing how you get excited with the smaller things. As someone who could steal almost anything for you (large jewel, rare items, etc.) Chrollo finds it funny that you just like to pay attention to the little things. With that being said, anything that he finds that reminds Chrollo of you, whether it be out on his missions or a daily stroll), he’ll always bring back. He loves seeing the visible excitement on your face, the way your eyes bright up and that lovable grin to follow. He just can never get enough of it.

- Knowing that you also love these, Chrollo will always gift you with a bunch of rare flowers that he saw. He will usually give you about three or four of the most prettiest flowers you’ve seen, and he’ll tie it with a small ribbon just for you. While you’re expressing your love to how beautiful these flowers are, of course, he’ll sneak in some lovey compliment (“yes they look nice, but they don’t look as amazing as you”. Normally these are very cheesy, but Chrolllo says it in a way that just works).

- Reading dates are very common with you and him. Chrollo is an avid reader, and going on a date based on his interest next to someone he so deeply loves would just be perfect. You guys could just cuddle on the couch or bed, maybe light some nice candles around, and just... read next to each other!! It might not sound like much, but it’s very enjoyable when you’re around each other.

- All in all, the love Chrollo has for you cannot so simply be described in just words. Even though there might come danger from his own role, he will promise to protect you. Chrollo is just so happy to have met you, to be with you, to call you each other’s, and to develop this mutually genuine love that you and him have.

a/n: this was very very fun to write nd I rlly hope u like it :D ty for participating again !!

#hm you know #reading some of the things u said reminded me of me #lol #reki kinnie wavelength :')#I wish u the best and only the best bc u deserve that <3 !!#300 followers event #kurapika #f/o #selfship

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chelsfic · 5 years ago

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Moonbeam - Firbolg x Reader -TAZ fanfic (Part Two)

Part One

A/N: Holy shit. This is, without a doubt, the cutest frickin’ thing I’ve ever written.

Warnings: Fluff overload, irresponsible spellcasting

The firbolg lets out a mighty grumble and buries his fists into his wild mane of hair as he considers the answer.

“C’mon, big guy,” you encourage him, swinging your feet up onto the edge of the table between you. A distinctly soporific throat-clearing from the stacks catches your attention and you drop your feet back onto the floor at a glare from the librarian, Sabour. You flash a sheepish smile in his direction before returning your attention to the open text book in your lap.

“Liquidity Ratio,” you repeat.

“Li-qui-di-ty….ratio!” he echoes in a voice that sounds borderline-pained. “This is the ratio of a firm’s liquid assets to their...li-a-bil-i-ties! It measures the ability of a company to fulfill its...financial...obligations.”

You let out a delighted whoop that has Sabour shushing you again, but you don’t care. You reach across the table and grab the firbolg’s hands, your face lit up with a dopey grin.

“Yes! You got it!” you cry, slamming the book shut with finality. “No more studying! Tonight your name is...One Who is Going to Ace His Accounting Exam!”

“Is...a bit of a mouthful,” the firbolg jokes and it feels like he’s conjured a warming flame in your chest.

You squeeze his forearms with your slender fingers, looking up (up, way up--gosh, your friend is tall) and meeting his eyes with a smile that dimples your cheeks.

“Well, then, I’ll call you, Makes Me Smile.”

Your cheeks burn with embarrassment as soon as the words leave your lips but the firbolg’s eyes crinkle with his own grin as he responds, “Is nice...to have friends. You. Fitzroy. Argo. I...feel like... I have found a new clan.”

His words send another wave of warm affection to your heart. Even if he only ever thinks of you as a friend...even if there’s no chance of him ever returning your secret feelings...it’s worth it to make him smile.

---

“Well...it doesn’t compare to the luxury vintages I’m accustomed to--The Maplecourt Estate boasts a truly magnificent vineyard, have I ever mentioned?--but it is...potent. I’ll give you that,” Fitzroy eyes the amber liquid in his cup, the fizzing bubbles of the champagne glowing in the firelight.

“Aye, it’s good stuff!” Argo pipes in from across the fire, downing the last few drops from his own cup and leaning over for a refill from the leather skein.

“Well, we needed something worthy of the celebration!” you exclaim, sipping from your own cup and shyly leaning into the bulk of your study partner as you cast a happy, prideful glance up at him. “We passed!”

The firbolg smiles down at you from his place beside you on the fallen log. You’re in your spot--a clearing on the edge of the Unknown Forest where the four of you have taken to meeting on the weekends when you’re not out on real-world assignments. The champagne bubbles fizz merrily in your stomach and you feel the pleasant, giddy lightness of alcohol diminishing your inhibitions. You let your head fall against his arm, angling your body toward him and snuggling into his warmth.

He ducks his head to catch your gaze with an inquisitive grumble from deep in his chest.

You take a long gulp of your drink before explaining, “It’s a little chilly.”

The firbolg turns to look at the roaring fire in the middle of the clearing with a quizzical expression. He catches Fitzroy’s knowing, smirky gaze from across the flames.

“The lady has a chill, Bud! Don’t be ungallant--put your arm around her!” Fitzroy winks at you and you might burn up at being so transparent. Apparently everyone can see right through you. Everyone except...him, of course.

You lean away a bit as he shifts, wrapping one, massive arm around you and gently resting it over your shoulders.

“Like...this…?” he mutters, eyes flicking from you to Fitzroy to Argo, seeking guidance. Your friend has learned so much about living with those outside his own kind...but he still has moments of wobbly uncertainty. He leans down to speak into your ear in an approximation of a whisper that is--actually--perfectly audible to everyone in the clearing, “Is this...okay?”

For a few seconds you’re incapable of speech. His face is an inch away from yours, your breath mingles and if you were to lean forward just a tiny bit your lips would touch. His eyes--the same muddled bluish-grey as his skin--flick over your face as he awaits your answer.

You clear your throat and offer him a shy smile, “Yeah, this is okay.”

“K-I-S-S-I-N--Hey!!” Argo’s teasing singsong is interrupted when Fitzroy launches a fireball that misses hitting him in the face by mere inches.

“Aaargh!--sorry, my man, that was supposed to be a snowball. I’m still--um--centering myself within my magic, as Festo says.”

Argo gives him a mutinous glare, muttering under his breath, “Wasn’t the crab supposed to take care of that?”

“It’s a JOURNEY!!” Fitzroy shouts with a dramatic swish of his velvet cloak.

You snort into your cup, dissolving into giggles that you try to muffle by finishing off your drink. Fitzroy rolls his eyes and lets out an aggrieved huff.

You cut the tension before this can devolve into one of Fitzroy’s hissy fits, “Hey, I get it, Fitzroy. Everyone knows I suck at magic. I can’t even focus a cantrip let alone rip out an awesome fireball like that!”

The noble barbarian preens at your praise and--feeling charitable--gestures towards your mountainous companion, “If you want to see something impressive you should ask Bud, here, to cast Moonbeam! He took out two floors of imps with that little beauty.”

You feel the rumble of the firbolg’s laughter before any sound falls from his lips, “Mmm...you are...flattering me, Fitzroy.”

It’s not long before the three of you are chanting in sync, “Moon-beam! Moon-beam! Moon-beam!”

The firbolg finally stands, moving to the edge of the clearing with a groan of assent.

“In...corrigible!” he calls back to you.

You watch as the lumbering giant kin turns inward, bowing his head and holding his hands before him, palms upward. There’s a moment of utter stillness. Even the fire’s flames seem to freeze for a split second as the air around the firbolg quickens with the promise of magical energy. Pale blue sparks appear floating above his palms and in the next second a silvery cylinder of pure moonlight appears in the air in front of him. He raises his head, meeting your gaze with the smallest hint of a smile on his lips when he catches the look of wonder on your face.

Fitzroy and Argo clap their hands and yell praise, but you’re struck silent by the beauty of the firbolg’s magic. You stand, walking over to his side without taking your eyes off the silver light.

“It’s beautiful!” you remark, reaching out a hand and tracing the air around the cylinder.

The firbolg grabs your wrist, his meaty fingers wrapping around your forearm easily. He pulls you back against him and away from the beam of light.

“Beautiful,” he rumbles over your head, tucking you into his chest protectively, “but dangerous.”

You turn in his arms, leaning back to catch his gaze. His eyes reflect the moonbeam’s illumination as he looks back at you.

“Moonlit Eyes,” you murmur, taking a breath for courage before reaching up to trace his rounded cheek with the tips of your fingers. He leans into the touch, nuzzling his face against your small palm.

“Mmm?” he questions, closing his eyes to your touch.

“That’s your name tonight,” you answer, tugging at the collar of his homespun tunic until he bends down to your level. “Moonlit Eyes.”

You’d thought that maybe a firbolg’s kiss would be rough and overwhelming, judging by the intimidating bulk of your dear one. You should have known, though. Bud, Moonlit Eyes, Makes Me Smile, One Who Comforts Pegasi...his kiss could only ever be as soft and gentle as true moonlight.

Distantly, you catch the buzzing laughter of Fitz and Argo from the other side of the clearing.

“K-I-S-S-I-N-G!!”

Want to be tagged in future TAZ fics? Drop me an ask or DM!

@aliveandkickingsstuff

#taz firbolg #master firbolg #master firbolg x reader #taz firbolg x reader #firbolg x reader #taz graduation #fitzroy maplecourt #argo keene #taz #the adventure zone graduation #chelsfic

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floraisondiadem · 4 years ago

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vanessa kirby . cisfemale . she/her . wasn’t that ofelia avita markoviæ walking the palace grounds ? it’s nice to see the lady in waiting out and about on such a fine day as this. I’ve heard from the court spies that they are notoriously taciturn, whilst also managing to be quite protean. the thirty year old is eager to find out who exactly is behind the killings from what’s being said at court. I heard that they themselves are vrajiit ( malleable anatomy & vocal replication ). it’s funny, whenever I think of them, I think of spiderweb cracks swiftly branching out across a surface, rows upon rows of faces lined up on a shelf ready to be borrowed and the porcelain reticence of a doll. great to see the mannequin around, isn’t it ?

⇢ 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂 𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍;

full name: ofelia avita markoviæ meaning: ❛ advantage | life, son of the god of war ❜ nickname(s) | aliases: ophie, lia | avita markoviæ, ekho occupation; current | former lady in waiting | academy graduate, theater puppeteer home: danruba martial affiliation: unattached. pansexual. affiliation | alignment: herself | neutral chaotic, neutral neutral disposition { positive }; protean, courteous, discerning disposition { negative }; taciturn, abrasive, possessive notable physical traits: silver ear cuff piercing on left ear in the form of three rings intricately weaved with runes, a precautionary measure countering her guises. the faint scent of freesia.

tw: death, tw: body horror, tw: blood, tw: murder

✧ the twins ofelia and odysseus entered the world one dreary, wintry—she will never forget the cold, how it cradled her nor the flakes of snow that kissed her cheeks—morning in danruba to vrajiit wise woman solveig whom practiced the art of anthropomancy with eyes the color of glacial ice and her wife the elusive as the tide willonia; a boat maker turned bone carver, from animal bones to the bark on the skeletal trees does her touch reach and twist with a voice that demanded a bent knee from the seed of a man named alasdair.

✧ to fill any other spaces, any leaking cracks were the weaved tales solvieg told of the old gods, a heavy presence in the shape of another member upon the family tree or the presence little ofelia swore she could feel in those moments of her mother brushing her fingers through her hair to make a braid. she dared not look in the mirror, ofelia’s fear keeping her fidgety frame stilled.

✧ willonia called them her little minnows as age progressed; brushing a hand across their cheeks the two didn’t understand why there was tears in their mothers’ eyes one day, the other parental no where to be seen not even a shadow, threatening to spill over nor the meaning behind such raw display of emotion. frantic were they to make it go away, wrapping arms around her in an embrace she did not return—but oh ofelia would understand later, on the battlefield, bloody and tired and so so cold as she buried the blade in her brothers throat—I’m sorry little minnow—leaving her lips in their mother’s voice, the hot gush of blood warmed her quivering hands briefly, odysseus’s look of shock blending with her gaze of animalistic fear and tracks of tears. cowardice, her mind hissed, a desire to live, she chokingly responded. fingers pressing against her brothers’ dead frame—that suddenly mirrored her own.

✧ a drawn out tear soaked sigh, then she picked up the jagged rock.

✧ the two entered the academy together, hand in hand, only knowledge under their belts was the rough play they’d grown used to with the other children in the village. the fights ofelia would get into occasionally gifting the other party with a broken nose. inexperienced. but they knew how to bite at least. were quick on the feet. devouring gazes that ate up their lessons in spite of fumbles, in spite of ofelia’s revulsion towards the reason for the preparing. they grew apart there, different connections different interests different reasoning's for being here. for wanting to stay. ofelia nearly loosing herself within it’s walls. they exited the academy separately when the time came. ofelia’s only glimpse of odysseus is cursory.

✧ was it divine punishment? this memory, this crime that crushed her with guilt, twisted itself like her gift did to the flesh and left her voice a mock of what it used to be. two toned. as if another resided there in her throat, could be peered at if one dared close enough. a darker whisper nearly swallowing her own voice trapping her in that cycle of would she ever be her own again.

✧ connections, a recommendation, well oiled by honey dripping from tongue, praises the glacé. you’ll sing for another now little minnow. the abuse of her mother’s title, the blood that tied itself to her veins in which she hardly ever spoke of got ofelia placed in the position. a proper decoy. protection against assassination's. big words and a heavy duty placed upon shoulders that could easily let it crumble however the vrajiit are kin. she’d remain.

⇢ P o w e r s & A b i l i t i e s;

malleable anatomy; user can modify the physiological features of oneself and others, including face, body, skin, or size (to a limited degree) to disguise or look like another person. while removing/concealing a body-part, like a finger, eye, etc., is possible, the user can't actually add anything new to the body-shape. they can, however, shift the flesh to a remarkable degree, although the changed being will always be recognizable as a member of their species.

vocal replication; user is able to mimic the voices of others or imitate sounds such as animal noises and explosions. any sound the user hears they can replicate with perfect clarity along with any manner the sound was made in.

⇢ W e a k n e s s ( e s ) | L i m i t a t i o n (s);

✧ the process to alter, to redesign, her features is rightfully so an agonizing one no matter the tolerance built. likened to pressing your face up against a gravel road and dragging. leaving the vrajiit vulnerable to attack while she redresses herself in the appearance of another using long nails to rip the skin revealing the new face underneath the gore.

✧ limited to hands, face, hair length and color. she has yet to attempt full body transformations. same goes for altering other people but their transformations don’t extend for a long period of time like hers does.

✧ tries not to use this ability too much due to the pain it causes unless required of her.

✧ sounds that are too high or too low in sound frequency may be impossible to replicate or cause considerable strain on the user's body.

#warborn.intro #tw: death #tw: murder #tw: blood #tw:body horror mention #ˡᵒᵒᵏ ᵇᵉʰᶤᶰᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜᵘʳᵗᵃᶤᶰ˒ᶜᵃᶰ'ᵗ ᵖˡᵃʸ ᵖʳᵉᵗᵉᶰᵈ ᵗᵒ ᵉᵃˢᵉ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᶠᵉᵃʳˢ | ofelia’s headcanons #aaaah it was lowkey rushed #I'll fix this mess later

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btsqualityy · 6 years ago

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BTS Toddler Series #2: First Words and First Steps

Kim Seokjin

Kaiden had been standing up on his own for the past few months, so you and Jin both knew it was only a matter of time before he started to walk on his own.

“Y/N-ah,” Jin called, making you look up from your phone at him. He pointed down at Kaiden, who was loosely hanging on to his pants leg. “I think he’s gonna do it.” You set your phone down and moved to the edge of the couch, watching Kaiden intensely.

He moved to take a step but he stumbled slightly. Thankfully, Jin was quick enough and caught him before straightening him back up. Kaiden looked up at Jin wearily and Jin nodded in encouragement.

“You can do it Kade, I’m right here,” he promised. Kaiden then looked over at you and you smiled while nodding. He then looked at the ground and kept his gaze there as he slowly took a step away from Jin. Both you and Jin kept quiet, not wanting to scare him or distract him in any way. He let go of Jin’s jeans before he kept taking small steps. He eventually made it over to the coffee table and you felt tears welling up in your eyes.

“You did it Kade!” You cheered, getting up and moving around to the other side of the table. You picked him up and hugged his tiny body close to yours. Jin walked over to you both and set his hand on top of Kaiden’s head.

“Great job K,” he praised, making Kaiden giggle in response.

Min Yoongi

“All I’m asking is that you come home an hour earlier than you do now so that you can put Kins to bed,” you said as you dipped the small baby spoon inside of the jar of baby food. You then brought it up to Kinsley’s mouth, and she happily slurped it up.

“And you know I can’t do that,” Yoongi groaned. “You know me and the boys are trying to finish the new album.”

“It’s literally only for a week. I have to finish this big project at work and I’d like for us to remain the ones who put her to bed,” you explained. “Why can’t you just do it for a few days? Isn’t Kinsley more important?”

“Don’t fucking do that,” Yoongi warned and you glared at him.

“What did I tell you about cussing around her?” You scolded as you looked down at Kinsley, who was trying to reach for the baby food in your hands. You quickly dipped the spoon again and fed her.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Yoongi smiled sarcastically. “I mean, my wife only just told me that I don’t care about my kid and that’s not fucking cool.”

“I didn’t fucking say that!” You exclaimed.

“Fuh!” Kinsley squealed, making you and Yoongi both look down at her. She smiled widely as you placed your hand on your forehead.

“Great, parents of the fucking year,” Yoongi grumbled.

“Fuh!” She screamed again.

“Stop!” You and Yoongi exclaimed.

Kim Namjoon

“Mason, give me that,” Namjoon groaned as Mason toddled away from him with Namjoon’s phone in his hands. Namjoon caught up to him and plucked his phone out of Mason’s hands. Mason looked up at him with a pout on his face and Namjoon’s eyes widened.

“Please don’t start crying,” Namjoon pleaded. “I’m sorry but I can’t let you break daddy’s phone.” The tears started rolling down Mason’s face as he sniffled loudly. Just then, the front door of the house opened and you walked inside. Namjoon looked over at you and sighed in relief as he watched you take off your shoes and set your purse down.

“Thank god,” Namjoon exhaled as Mason paced over to you. You bent down and picked him up, wiping the tears off of his face once you set him on your hip.

“What’s wrong Mase?” You cooed, pressing a kiss to his nose.

“He was upset because I took my phone from him,” Namjoon explained.

“Aw baby,” you giggled. “We can’t let you break another one of daddy’s phones.”

“Mama,” Mason mumbled, making you gasp. You looked over at Namjoon, who looked as surprised as you.

“You heard that too right? I’m not losing my mind?” You checked, making Namjoon chuckle.

“Nah, I heard it too,” Namjoon confirmed. You grinned widely and kissed Mason’s forehead, while Namjoon watched the both of you with a matching smile on his face.

Jung Hoseok

“Come on Berk,” you called, looking behind you as Berkeley started to walk with you again.

“Ma,” Lennox pats your shoulder and you look down at him. He points towards the door and you know what he’s trying to say.

“Daddy will be back in a second,” you assured him. Sure enough, the front door opened and Hobi stepped inside. After shutting the door behind him, he walked over to you and smiled.

“The car’s warming up now,” he announced, making you nod in response. Hobi grabbed Berkeley’s hand and led her over to the front door, where he started to help her put on her shoes. You set Lennox down on the ground, and he held onto your leg. He looked over to where Hobi and his sister were sitting and pointed at them as he looked up at you.

“You wanna go with Daddy and Berk?” You asked and he made a noise in affirmation. “Walk over to them then. You can do it Len.” He looked back at Hobi and Berkeley before slowly taking a step away from you. You stood still, watching him as he made cautious steps over to them. Hobi looked up from putting on Berkeley’s shoes and gasped when he saw that Lennox was right in front of him.

“You walked baby boy!” Hobi cheered, grabbing him and smothering him in kisses. Berkeley, not liking being left out, tapped Hobi’s leg with her hand a few times.

“Kiss,” she pouted, making you giggle. Hobi looked down at her as he laughed and shook his head.

“All we had to do to get you to talk was make you jealous?” He wondered, leaning down and blowing a raspberry into her cheek, making her giggle.

Park Jimin

You pushed open the door to the boys’ practice room, a sleeping Noah sitting on your hip. You stepped inside, taking one hand off of Noah to wave at Jin, who smiled at seeing you. He turned to Jimin, who’s back was to the door, and murmured something to him. Jimin turned around quickly, a smile spreading onto his face upon seeing you.

“Hey jagi,” he greeted as he walked over to you. You quickly kissed him and smiled as he leaned down and left a soft kiss on Noah’s cheek. “What are you two doing here?”

“Figured I’d give Noah a treat and let him come watch you guys rehearse,” you explained and Jimin nodded. “I didn’t expect him to fall asleep on the way here though,” you chuckled. Suddenly, Namjoon called out for Jimin to come back to the group and with another kiss to your cheek, he ran back over to them. You walked over and sat down in a chair that was up against the wall, laying Noah against your chest so that he could sleep comfortably.

As the music started and the boys started to dance, the loud noises managed to wake Noah up, which was fine since he didn’t need to nap for too long anyways. He pushed himself off of your chest and looked around the room as he rubbed at his eyes. Once he recognized where he was, he smiled and started to point down to the ground. Knowing what he wanted, you picked him up and set him down on the ground, where he set his hands on your thigh to keep himself steady.

“See daddy?” You asked, pointing to where Jimin was dancing. Noah grinned and pointed towards him, babbling loudly. He then took a step away from you, letting go of your thigh as he stood on his own. You watched him carefully, wanting to make sure that he didn’t fall. Slowly but surely, Noah took steps over to where the boys where, making you smile widely. The song ended and Jimin looked behind him, only to see Noah standing right behind him.

“Did he walk over here?” Jimin gasped, looking up at you. You nodded and stood up, waling over to them. Jimin picked Noah up and kissed his chubby cheek a few times, making Noah squeal.

“I’m so proud of you Noah,” you beamed.

Kim Taehyung

“Come on baby girl,” you coo, holding your hands out towards Spencer. Tae was kneeling behind as he held her up, setting her feet on the ground. “Come to mommy.” She babbled loudly, spit bubbles coming out of her mouth.

“Spence, come on,” you called again but she just stuck her fingers in her mouth, sucking on them. You sighed dejectedly, glancing up at Tae. “You wanna try? She’ll probably walk to you,” you grumbled, making Tae chuckle lightly. He picked Spencer up before standing up straight and walked over to you. He kissed you lightly before handing Spencer off to you.

“I doubt it but we can try,” he shrugged. He moved back a few steps before kneeling down once again and you did the same. You set Spencer down so that her feet were touching the ground as you helped her stand upright.

“Munchkin,” Tae said and she immediately looked up at him. He held his hands out to her and waved towards himself. “Come to daddy,” he said. She took one step and you gasped lightly. She took another step and you slowly took your hands off of her body, once she seemed steady on her feet. Without your support on her back, Spencer seemed a little unsure but with another call of her name from Tae, she hesitantly took another step. Tears welled up in your eyes as she took three more steps before falling into Tae’s hands. Standing up straight, you ran over to them and pressed multiple kisses onto Spencer’s cheek.

“Great job Munchkin,” Tae praised, kissing her on the forehead.

Jeon Jungkook

“What’s cooking good looking?” Jungkook murmured as his arms slid around your waist. You giggled and turned your gaze away from the stove to glance at him over your shoulder.

“First off, don’t ever say that again,” you laughed. “Secondly, spaghetti.”

“Mm, good,” he nuzzled his nose against the back of your neck, making you squirm.

“Kook, where’s Ava?” You wondered as you turned the stove off.

“In the living room, playing with her toys,” Jungkook whispered as you felt his hands start to creep lower.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” you shook your head as you grabbed his wrists. He groaned loudly and set his chin on your shoulder.

“Why not? You know you miss me,” he purred.

“That’s debatable,” you chuckled. Suddenly, the two of you heard a loud clanging noise. You looked towards the entryway to the kitchen and saw Ava standing there, her bottle laying on the ground in front of her. Gasping, you pulled away from Jungkook and looked at him.

“Did she just, walk in here by herself?” You wondered in disbelief.

“Looks like it,” he laughed as he knelt down so that he was level with Ava. “Come here Angel,” he called as he held his arms out for her. She happily toddled over to him, grabbing his hands.

“Wow, she didn’t even need to us to help her walk for the first time,” you smiled, kissing the top of her head. “Such a smart girl.”

#bangtanarmynet #bts #bts reaction #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts jungkook #bts jimin #bts jin imagine #bts rm #bts rap monster #bts namjoon #bts suga #bts yoongi #bts v #bts taehyung #bts jhope #bts hoseok #bts x reader #bts toddler series

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clawabiding · 6 years ago

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X’yaza Tia

X’yaza shifted uncomfortably on the saddle, earning him a literal side-eye from the chocobo. He hated the leggy birds at the best of times: too smart, too tall, too strong. Also, no one should have an aetherically-talented mount, that was obscene. Given that these were far from the ‘best of times’ he had even less patience for a surly horsebird. The agitated chocobo narrowed its eye, as if it had both heard and didn’t care for X’yaza’s thoughts on the matter. If Yaza didn’t know better, he could have sworn the bird was walking stiffly on purpose, exacerbating the discomfort to his backside.

X’yaza tried his bonds for the hundredth time since being picked up near old Nym. The leather around his wrists sung an ugly little song but there was no appreciable movement from the manacles. They had at least bound his hands in front so he could steady himself against the pommel of the chocobo’s saddle, but the cuffs around his ankles were another story. They were heavy; had to weigh a good ten ponze each. They were pulling him down against the unsupple hide of the seat, like his captors were attempting to (very slowly) wishbone his pelvis over the course of the journey to Limsa Lominsa. The more he thought about it, the more agonizing the seated posture became and he tried shifting his posture again.

“WARK!” protested the bird, startling X’yaza so fiercely he lost all train of thought.

“You know, my kin have been known to eat your kind,” growled X’yaza, which felt silly immediately. Even if the bird did know what he was saying, which did seem more and more likely, the miqo’te was in no position to make good on any threats.

“Koo-kweh,” replied the bird, fearless and unimpressed.

From the head of the small formation of chocobo, the lead rider turned around in his seat. Clad in leather and the distinct yellow of the Yellowjacket, there was no mistaking what the pale hyur did for a living. Nor what the other three bird-mounted figures (two women, both Sea Wolves, one hyur male) did. Yellow all the way down. That is, except for Y’zara, who wore the polished red of his impractical “traveling” mail from foot to throat. There was muddy black boot mark on the breastplate about the same size as the lead man’s boot. Exactly the same size, in fact.

“Hey, quiet down!” said the man in the lead, “Got no problem pullin’ that fat tongue outta your head.”

X’yaza pushed his tongue around in his mouth, momentarily distracted and self-conscious. Did he have a fat tongue? Vanity thy name is Tia. Clearly satisfied by the miqo’te’s sudden silence, the lead man turned forward. Almost as soon as he did, X’yaza remembered what he was thinking about.

“Ser Jacket? Before I’m silenced, do you mind explaining something to me?”

“I got this, Rigbill,” said one of the two Sea Wolves. X’yaza couldn’t remember her name, but it was something like ...Swishfish? Close enough. She tugged the reigns of her chocobo and fell back to flank X’yaza’s beleaguered mount.

“He said shut your face, crook!” barked Swishfish, slapping X’yaza across his bare cheek. And not gently. His head jerked to the side as if stricken with a club and he tasted copper. At least Swishfish had leather gloves on, not the steely gauntlets of her boss, but still. X’yaza shut up until the Sea Wolf returned to her position in the meager formation.

“Why…” began the bound miqo’te, making the decision to get his concerns out quickly to avoid the most facial injury, “...didn’t you incarcerate me at Aleport? Or Swiftperch? Seems Limsa is a proper distance to take one looter, don’t you think?”

This time both Sea Wolves slowed, putting one on either side of X’yaza. They were waiting for the okay to strike him, he knew, but to his surprise Rigbill turned around again. This time he was grinning. Four of the teeth X’yaza could see were dull and metallic, probably lead.

“Oh, that’s easy enough to answer. You know of Master Lacurico, scofflaw?”

Now, it was X’yaza’s turn to grin, “I might’ve heard the name…”

“Well, maybe you did and maybe you didn’t, but he pays well for able-bodied martial types. My commander has a pretty good gig sellin’ him, uhh… what’d we call em, Thissero?”

A mousy man in uneven spectacles, the second hyur, looked up for the first time since X’yaza had been caught and blinked the drowsiness from his eyes. The huyr’s brown-tan chocobo looked as lethargic as its rider.

“Labor-capable Detainees…” said Thissero without hesitation, before yawning and closing his eyes once more.

“Selling him Labor-capable sorts,” finished Rigbill, “Like you.”

“And these capable criminals are compensated fairly for this labor?” asked X’yaza.

Everyone but Thissero laughed. Thissero startled awake, grinned, and closed his once again. X’yaza himself was nodding in understanding.

“And this is legal in Limsa Lominsa, despite the very clear prohabition against slavery?”

“With the right paperwork,” sing-songed the Sea Wolf without a name -- Fyshmish, X’yaza decided -- much to the amusement of those compatriots that remained awake. X’yaza waited for the chuckles to pass, his own grin missing from his face.

“Alright. Does this count, Montresor?” asked X’yaza.

“These guys are gross,“ said Montresor, whose voice came from nothing and nowhere, “Teach them a lesson! K--!”

X’yaza’s bindings shimmered and split! First the feet, then the cuffs, all while he waited patiently on the uncomfortable saddle. Scraps of leather and chain peppered the hard-packed dirt under his chocobo’s claws. The audible POP of leather mad Swishfish’s mount rear and Fyshmish struggled to hold the reigns of hers.

“KUHHH--!”

A shimmer in the air panicked Thissero’s passive mount. Thissero himself jerked awake just in time to wrap his arms around his startled steed’s neck. They went to the ground spectacularly, becoming a shrieking, warking obstacle that the distracted Fyshmish couldn’t quite avoid. Fortunately, Swishfish was regaining control of hers when her fellow roegadyn ate complete shit. She wheeled her steed toward X’yaza, struggling to pull a shortspear free.

“--KUPO!”

A small, white ball of fluffy, puffy aerial rat manifested less than two yalms in front of Swishfish -- much to the surprise of both Swishfish and this newly-extant moogle. Oddly, it had an acute right angle bent into the antenna leading to its pom. Odder still, it had both of its little arms wrapped around the hilt of an impractically long sword it was obviously struggling to keep from dragging on the ground.

The crash was an unexpected result of the moogle’s sudden appearance, but not an unwelcome one. Chocobo, Sea Wolf, moogle, and shortspear went down in a wild skid that left talon-marks in the hard earth as long as roegadyn forearm. The sword, as red and absurd as X’yaza’s brightly colored armor, flew through the air in a wide arc. X’yaza snapped it out of the sky before his own chocobo’s patience ended.

“WARK!” said the chocobo.

“Yeah,” said X’yaza, resigned to what came next, “Wark indeed.”

That X’yaza landed on his feet is a testament to the ownership of a well-balanced tail. That the scared chocobo’s mad sprint to freedom didn’t catch his crimson sollerets on the saddle and drag him through plains, well, that was a miracle.

In the seconds-long duration of this whole event, Rigbill had managed to: bring his mount to halt, see his companions thrown to the ground by their own steeds, and draw a plain but functional sword. Seeing X’yaza’s approach with a much bigger, much more ostentatious sword concerned him enough to put the spurs to his horsebird.

“Monty?” sighed the miqo’te.

“One sec…” groaned the bent-pom moogle, waddling free of the mess of unconscious roegadyn and chocobo feathers. It wiggled its crooked little pom with purpose.

Something shimmered in the small space between Rigbill’s chest and his chocobo’s neck. The invisible force hit the hyur in the chest so hard he lost the grip on both sword and reins and landed on his back in the dry grass. Loyal to no man, his steed kept going, leaving Rigbill breathless and at the mercy the approaching miqo’te. Something heavy and indistinct sat on the hyur’s chest.

“Fortuna, good of you to join us…” and just like that, a moogle twice the size of the first appeared on Rigbill with its oddly muscular arms crossed over its burly little chest. It had a skullcap on that pinned its pom mostly over one eye.

“Was that good, boss? I didn’t have much time to plan, Monty just woke me up!” said the child-like voice of the large moogle.

“It was perfect, Fortuna,” praised X’yaza, remembering to be gentle with the big, sensitive sack of kuponuts. He walked as menacingly toward Rigbill as two-ish yalms of miqo’te could reasonably be asked to walk. The massive sword did help.

X’yaza stood with his feet on either side of Rigbill’s head and stared down into the man’s face. He let the tip of his wine-red blade rest persuasively against Rigbill throat.

“Now,” began X’yaza as a twisty black smog rose from the sword in elaborate tendrils, “Let’s have another chat about Lacurico Curico.”

#ffxiv mateus #miqo'te #ffxiv roleplay #yaza

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jaceyourself · 6 years ago

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End of Year Wrap-Up 24/12/2018

Happy Merry to all you readers!

I’ve had a great year but all us music fans have had an even better one! Streaming services mean that now more than ever we can experience the musical output from all corners of the globe (though overwhelmingly the English-speaking parts of it) to understand different points of view, learn of the goings on in other parts of the world and most importantly indulge ourselves in a bit of a boogie. All the moods, genres and feels you could think of are out there, so over the holiday period perhaps try and listen to something new. Who knows it might break the tension with that younger/older relative round the xmas table when you find they also happen to like k-pop/jazz-funk/grindcore or at the very least you can bicker about the tragedy of the current album charts (Greatest Showman: 21 weeks!). To aid you in your quest for knowledge/excitement/small-talk I have spent almost 30 minutes curating a best-of for both albums and singles in the year of 2018.

(NB even with my album-a-day policy, there’s no way I can get through everything I want to within the 365, so if your fave appears ignored, let it be known that I probably haven’t heard it yet. The full list of everything I’ve listened to this year is at the bottom)

So in no particular order:

Albums

Jinx Lennon- Grow A Pair!!!

The Beths- Future Me Hates Me

The Pistol Annies- Interstate Gospel

Travis Scott- ASTROWORLD

Mount Eerie- Now Only

Cardi B- Invasion of Privacy

The 1975- A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

The Aces- When My Heart Felt Volcanic

Singles

Confidence Man- Out The Window

Cardi B- I Like It

Janelle Monae ft. Grimes- Pynk

Lori McKenna- People Get Old

SOPHIE- Immaterial

Marie Davidson- Work It

Car Seat Headrest- Stop Smoking (We Love You)

BLACKPINK- AS IF IT’S YOUR LAST

The 1975- It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)

https://open.spotify.com/user/jaceyourself/playlist/1kFex3QLVv0l3cCqjVC6dT?si=_GqTJXrOSoSXYaMC9ra_lg

Have a great festive period and I’ll see you in 2019 :D

2018 Albums what I listened to

Floating Points- Reflections – Mojave Desert

James Elkington- Wintres Woma

Miguel- War & Leisure

Ride- Weather Diaries

Sidney Gish- No Dogs Allowed

Emperor X- The Orlando Sentinel, Oversleepers International

Broken Social Scene- Hug of Thunder

MC5- Kick Out The Jams (Live)

Public Service Broadcasting- Every Valley

JJ Doom- Key to the Kuffs

HAIM- Something To Tell You

Camila Cabello- Camila

Sheer Mag- Need To Feel Your Love

Taylor Swift- reputation

Shabazz Palaces- Quazarz vs The Jealous Machines

This Is The Kit- Moonshine Freeze

Japanese Breakfast- Soft Sounds From Another Planet

Tune-Yards- I can feel you creep into my private life

Jupiter & Okwess- Kin Sonic

Various Artists- The Passion Of Charlie Parker

Waxahatchee- Out In The Storm, Great Thunder

Offa Rex- The Queen Of Hearts

Dizzee Rascal- Raskit

Alvvays- Antisocialites

Childhood- Universal High

Marmozets- Knowing What You Know Now

Declan McKenna- What Do You Think About the Car?

Paul Heaton- Crooked Calypso

Lana Del Rey- Lust For Life

Charles Lloyd New Quartet- Passin’ Thru (Live)

Rip Rig & Panic- Circa Rip Rig + Panic

Avey Tare- Eucalyptus

Justin Timberlake- Man Of The Woods

Rio Mira- Marimba del Pacifico

Oddisee- The Iceberg

Aimee Mann- Mental Illness

Katie Von Schleicher- Shitty Hits

Arcade Fire- Everything Now

Girl Ray- Earl Grey

Ezra Furman- Transangelic Exodus

Randy Newman- Dark Matter

Dead Cross- Dead Cross

Chronixx- Chronology

Mondo Cozmo- Plastic Soul

Kesha- Rainbow

Lal & Mike Waterson- Bright Phoebus

Steve Reich- Pulse / Quartet

Orchestra Baobab- Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng

Ratboy- SCUM

Prince- Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, Purple Rain, Parade, Sign ‘O’ The Times

Stanley Cowell- No Illusions

Oneohtrix Point Never- Good Time Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Downtown Boys- Cost Of Living

Screaming Females- All At Once

Rob Luft- Riser

Sibusile Xaba- Open Letter To Adoniah

Jen Cloher- Jen Cloher

Everything Everything- Fever Dream

Grizzly Bear- Painted Ruins

Bob’s Burgers- The Bob’s Burgers Music Album

Superorganism- Superorganism

Maren Morris- HERO

Courtney Marie Andrews- Honest Life, May Your Kindness Remain

Stefflon Don- Real Ting Mixtape

Ghostpoet- Dark Days + Canapés

Young Fathers- White Men Are Black Men Too, Cocoa Sugar

Queens Of The Stone Age- Songs For The Deaf

Thurst- Cut to the Chafe

John Moreland- Big Bad Luv

Aruan Ortiz- Cub(an)ism [Piano Solo]

Mount Eerie- Now Only

The War On Drugs- A Deeper Understanding

Various Artists- Pop Makossa

Liane Carroll- The Right to Love

Fickle Friends- You Are Someone Else

Nadine Shah- Holiday Destination

Various Artists- Howsla

George Ezra- Staying at Tamara’s

The Doors- The Doors

Filthy Friends- Invitation

Susanne Sundfør- Music For People In Trouble

LCD Soundsystem- LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver, American Dream

Mogwai- Every Country’s Sun

Kacey Musgraves- Golden Hour

The National- High Violet, Sleep Well Beast

The Klezmatics- Wonder Wheel

Hercules & Love Affair- Omnion

Mount Kimbie- Love What Survives

The Aces- When My Heart Felt Volcanic

Matthew Bourne- Isotach

Finished- Cum Inside Me Bro

Forced Into Femininity- I’m Making Progress

Heron Oblivion- Heron Oblivion

Hamell On Trial- TACKLE BOX

Confidence Man- Confident Music For Confident People

Swet Shop Boys- Cashmere

Princess Nokia- 1992 Deluxe, A Girl Cried Red

Steely Dan- The Royal Scam, Aja

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard- Nonagon Infinity

Sparks- Hippopotamus

J. Cole- KOD

Fat Tony- Macgregor Park

L’Orange and Jeremiah Jae- The Night Took Us In Like Family

Little Simz- Stillness In Wonderland

Lady Leshurr- Queen’s Speech

RAY BLK- Durt

Brand New- Science Fiction

Janelle Monae- Dirty Computer

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever- Talk Tight

Fred Thomas- Changer

Myra Davies- Sirens

Laraaji- Sun Gong

The Killers- Wonderful Wonderful

Descendents- Milo Goes To College

Frank Turner- Be More Kind

The Horrors- V

Moses Sumney- Aromanticism

Arctic Monkeys- Whatever People…, AM, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

Oxbow- Thin Black Duke

Dee Byrne’s Entropi- Moment Frozen

Mike Stern- Trip

The Vampires- The Vampires Meet Lionel Loueke

Gogol Bordello- Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike, Super Taranta!, Seekers And Finders

Umphrey’s McGee- Zonkey

Hard Working Americans- We’re All in This Together

Courtney Barnett- Tell Me How You Really Feel

Jllin- Black Origami

Various Artists- Rough Guide to the Music of West Africa

Wolf Alice- Visions Of A Life

The Young’uns- Strangers

Fever Ray- Fever Ray, Plunge

CHVRCHES- Love Is Dead

Oumou Sangaré- Oumou, Mogoya

Charlotte Gainsbourg- Rest

Daniel Avery- Song For Alpha

Daphni- Joli Mai

Kanye West- ye

Cécile McLorin Salvant- Dreams and Daggers

Trio Da Kali, Kronos Quartet- Ladilikan

Kelela- Take Me Apart

Bob Dylan- The Times.., Another.., Bringing.., Highway.., Blond.., John.., Nashville.., New.., Blood..

Lily Allen- Alright(,) Still, It’s Not Me(,) It’s You, Sheezus, No Shame

Fanfare Ciocarlia- 20

Wolf Parade- Cry Cry Cry

SOPHIE- OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES

Zara McFarlane- Arise

St. Vincent- MASSEDUCTION

Margo Price- All American Made

Bebe Rexha- Expectations

Motörhead- Under Cöver

Orchestre Les Mangelepa- Last Band Standing

Drake- Scorpion

Various Artists- Gentle Giants: The Songs Of Don Williams

Noga Erez- Off The Radar

Baxter Dury- Prince of Tears

John Maus- Screen Memories

Lankum- Between the Earth and Sky

Shamir- Revelations

Years & Years- Palo Santo

Converge- The Dusk In Us

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino- Canzoniere

Fred Hersch- Open Book

A. Savage- Thawing Dawn

Big Thief- Capacity

Kelly Clarkson- Meaning Of Life

Dirty Projectors- Lamp Lit Prose

Robt Sarazin Blake- Recitative

Shed Seven- Instant Pleasures

Spinning Coin- Permo

Call Super- Arpo

Laura Perrudin- Poisons & antidotes

Ellen Andrea Wang- Blank Out

Lori McKenna- The Tree

Wu-Tang Clan- Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Lee Ronaldo- Electric Trim

Deer Tick- Vol. 2

The Paranoid Style- Underworld U.S.A.

Youssou N’Dour- Set, Joko- From Village To Town, Nothing’s In Vain, Seeni Valeurs

Gaika- BASIC VOLUME

Kasai Allstars- Around Felicite

Carly Rae Jepsen- Emotion

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds- Who Built The Moon?

Anna Ternheim- All the Way to Rio

U2- Songs of Experience

Mônica Vasconcelos- The São Paulo Tapes

Travis Scott- ASTROWORLD

Nabihah Iqbal- Weighing of the Heart

Van Morrison- Versatile

Jim James- Tribute to 2

Criolo- Espiral de Ilusão

Maciej Obara Quartet- Unloved

N.E.R.D- NO ONE EVER REALLY DIES

The Beths- Future Me Hates Me

Maryam Saleh- Lekhfa

Naomi Bedford- Songs My Ruiner Gave to Me

Jens Lekman- Night Over Kortedala

The Spirit of the Beehive- pleasure suck

Tom Rogerson- Finding Shore

Paul Jacobs- Pictures(,) Movies and Apartments

Ariana Grande- sweetener

Rina Sawayama- RINA

Marcel Khalife- Andalusia of Love

Gunter Hampel- Bounce (Live at Theater Gütersloh)

BAYNK- Someone’s EP

Omar Souleyman- To Syria(,) With Love

Blood Orange- Negro Swan

Open Mike Eagle- Brick Body Kids Still Daydream

First Aid Kit- Ruins

Shame- Songs of Praise

Homeboy Sandman- Veins

Playboi Carti- Playboi Carti

Eminem- Kamikaze

Troye Sivan- Blue Neighbourhood, BLOOM

Joey Bada$$- ALL AMERIKKKAN BADA$$

Priests- Nothing Feels Natural

Rhiannon Giddens- Freedom Highway

King Krule- The OOZ

Django Django- Marble Skies

Bon Iver- For Emma(,) Forever Ago

Calexico- The Thread That Keeps Us

Mary Gauthier- Rifles & Rosary Beads

Hookworms- Microshift

Aphex Twin- Collapse EP

Rae Morris- Someone Out There

Field Music- Open Here

Rhye- Blood

Shopping- The Official Body

MGMT- Little Dark Age

Christine and the Queens- Chris

Alela Diane- Cusp

Sonic Youth- Sister

Brigid Mae Power- The Two Worlds

Deafheaven- Sunbather

Various Artists- American Epic: The Collection Disc 1, 2, 3

Rich Krueger- Life Ain’t That Long

Lil Wayne- Tha Carter V

Modern Mal- The Misanthrope Family Album

Rejjie Snow- Dear Annie

U.S. Girls- In a Poem Unlimited

The Orielles- Silver Dollar Moment

Tal National- Tantabara

Marie Davidson- Working Class Woman

Superchunk- What a Time to Be Alive

Brandi Carlile- By The Way(,) I Forgive You

Car Seat Headrest- Twin Fantasy

Loma- Loma

Quavo- QUAVO HUNCHO

Marlon Williams- Make Way For Love

Nipsey Hussle- Victory Lap

Insecure Men- Insecure Men

Kendrick Lamar- Black Panther

Rapsody- Lalia’s Wisdom

Khalid- Suncity

Tracey Thorn- Record

Anna von Hausswolff- Dead Magic

Jinx Lennon- Grow a Pair!!!

Gwenno- Le Kov

Judas Priest- Stained Class, FIREPOWER

Robyn- Robyn, Body Talk, Honey

The Magic Gang- The Magic Gang

Essaie Pas- New Path

Bob Dylan and The Band- The Basement Tapes

The Decemberists- I’ll Be Your Girl

Pistol Annies- Interstate Gospel

BCUC- Emakhosini (Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness)

Jack White- Boarding House Reach

Yo La Tengo- There’s A Riot Going On

Sidi Touré- Toubalbero

Lil Peep- Come Over When You’re Sober(,) Pt. 2

The Breeders- All Nerve

The Vaccines- Combat Sports

CZARFACE- Czarface Meets Metal Face

Laurence Pike- Distant Early Warning

Chopteeth Afrofunk Big Band- Bone Reader

Leo Kalyan- The Edge

Hayley Kyoko- Expectations

Tristen- Sneaker Waves

Thelonious Monk- Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Brad Mehldau & Mark Guiliana- Mehliana: Taming The Dragon

Amy Rigby- Til The Wheels Fall Off, Little Fugitive, The Old Guys

BLACKPINK- BLACKPINK IN YOUR AREA

Rose Cousins- Natural Conclusion

Nora Jane Struthers- Champion

Lilly Hiatt- Trinity Lane

The Rolling Stones- The Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones No. 2, Out of Our Heads, Aftermath

MAST- Thelonious Sphere Monk

The 1975- A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

Jhene Aiko- Trip

Don Bryant- Don’t Give up on Love

EMA- Exile in the Outer Ring

Small Believer- Anna Tivel

Vera Sola- Shades

Cardi B- Invasion of Privacy

Darkthrone- A Blaze in the Northern Sky

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers- Years

Goat Girl- Goat Girl

Vic Mensa- HOOLIGANS

Unknown Mortal Orchestra- Sex & Food

Alasdair Roberts, Amble Scuse & David McGuiness- What News

Kali Uchis- Isolation

Wye Oak- The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs

Migos- Culture II

Hinds- I Don’t Run

DRINKS- Hippo Lite

Alexis Taylor- Beautiful Thing

Jenny Wilson- EXORCISM

#music 2018 #music #best of #christmas

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binsofchaos · 5 years ago

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‘I Believe in Love’: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Final Year, In Her Own Words

Introduction by Garance Franke-Ruta. Jump to the start of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s essay here.

The late Elizabeth Wurtzel was best known for her memoirs and essays, especially Prozac Nation and Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, but after attending Yale Law School in her late 30s she also enjoyed having a voice in the political arena. She was as much an original there as everywhere else, and between 2010 and 2012 she wrote a series of pieces for me at The Atlantic.

A feminist and a New Yorker who had really lived, she looked at the world in a different way from all the boys on the bus in Washington. And she was funny. She would send long text messages written on her smartphone while she was walking through Washington Square Park, an emissary from a more vivid and creative world than the boxy K Street buildings I would pass en route to my office in the Watergate. Sometimes her stories would come in like that too, texted in graf by graf, and I’d knit the passages together in what seemed like the right order and ask for some connective language. The thoughts were always razor-sharp; the understanding of human nature acute.

Over time our editing relationship moved into a long-distance friendship. We met for dinner at a restaurant in Chelsea, outside of course so her dog could be nestled at her feet. She had somehow managed to find a lipstick with my name on it — Guerlain’s Garance — and purchased us two tubes encased in elegant silver that sat heavy in the hand. She wore hers to dinner, and when I went to the restroom, I changed my color too, making us lipstick twins. It was how she was and in many ways the secret to her success: In addition to being wildly talented, she overcompensated for being so difficult and never totally in control by being astonishingly thoughtful, and kind, and, well, seductive. She was a seductive personality; hard not to love even as she could be hard to be close to.

When I started working at GEN this fall and living in New York full time, I reached out to her. “I’m in remission!” she’d said brightly when we first reconnected, three years after last seeing each other and nearly five years after she first learned she had the BRCA gene and breast cancer. We drank red wine on her balcony overlooking a giant earthen pit in the ground: The future NY offices of Netflix. We went to dinner at Il Buco on Bond Street (her suggestion); I could feel she was lonely. She and her husband Jim Freed had separated and were in the process of divorcing, a not so happy ending to the happily ever after story she had been astonished to stumble into in 2015, and something she was still figuring out how to write about. She started sending me things she had written as we talked about her writing a piece about Gen X politics and the 2020 race.

“I am intimate with the dirt,” she wrote of the Netflix pit. “It has infiltrated everything. It is all over me and under me. It is Love Canal, sewage from the Mississippi, cigarette butts, marijuana ash, slave remains, rats, mice, Three Mile Island, Mount Etna, Mount Saint Helen, Dust Bowl, Adam, Eve, serpent, Satan, Chernobyl, Berlin Wall, acid rain, asbestos, uranium, geraniums, 9/11, 7/11, Donner Party, bird beaks, pigeon claws, squirrel tails, gerbil puke, hamster wheels, insulation, Saran Wrap, Mason Pearson bristles, dental floss, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Mafia hits washed up from the East River, syringes, works, the residue at the bottom of the empty bag of dope, coal waste, cookie crumbs, broken bottles, rusty nails, Bataan Death March, Manila massacre, Boston Tea Party, frog legs, goldfish, mutant ninja turtles, alligators from Florida, red algae, yellow fever, Agent Orange, bubonic plague, gold teeth, silver spoons, copper wires, iron ore, Crest with fluoride, whitening strips, stripper tips, dollar bills, twenties laced with cocaine, subway tokens, expired MetroCards with unused fare, tickets to see Star Wars in 1976, bicentennial souvenirs, gutta-percha, cat guts, doll parts, golf balls, tennis racket strings, cashmere socks, polyester, rayon, pylon, nylon, Mylar, warped vinyl, scratched CDs, crispy leaves, shredded lettuce, tarnished keys, queen bees, xerox paper, pepper spray, Prozac pills, poppers, pooper scoopers, hula hoops, leis, fecal matter, aborted fetuses, snot, rot, cots, bots, shot glass shards, broken windows, chimney smoke, dice, playing cards, poker chips, lollipop sticks, toothpicks, used tissues, dirty handkerchiefs, bandanna threads, kite pine needles, kite strings, toilet water, wolf fangs, sunburn peel, hangnails, cavities, skin, scabs, split ends, fur balls, chicken bones, dissected cadavers, wisdom teeth, crash test dummies, Big Bang, Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Rip Van Winkle, bog wood, petrified forest, oyster shells, freshwater pearls, blood diamonds, Star rubies, asteroids, primordial ooze, love letters, promises kept and broken.”

Very soon the piece she’d wanted to write about Gen X politics started to slip. The cancer was back. There were so many tests and scans to undergo. I told her not to worry about writing it and was surprised when she filed. She said it was a good distraction from having cancer. She badly wanted to interview Beto O’Rourke, but by the time he arrived in New York City where they might have had a face-to-face — the Gen X skate-punk candidate and the Gen X icon — he was already getting ready to drop out of the race.

She sent me a long piece about her past year, about her impending divorce and her marriage and her mother and Donald Trump. It was from something longer she was working on, she said.

We talked about her writing an additional passage when she recovered from brain surgery and running the piece on Medium. “I suppose I have to add something about this, since so much of the piece is about cancer,” she texted. “You know, of all my failures of imagination, I never wondered what a brain tumor is like. So I could not have guessed it was this atrocious, the dizziness and the pain.”

Her recoveries from the relentless march of the disease during her final, dreadful month would prove to be brief.

After her first brain surgery — she had two to cope with her metastatic breast cancer and subsequent complications — which she described as a “brain resection,” she was astonishingly herself. She was funny and poetic and articulate and in good spirits. Still dizzy and unstable — the tumor had impacted her balance center and left her clutching the furniture as she walked during her last night in her own home — but also still herself. She laughed with her mother, who took video and pictures of her in the hospital and helped coordinate, along with Jim and some of her oldest friends from college, a parade of sun-up to way past winter sundown visitors so that she would never feel alone.

And the night before the surgery, Jim was the one she stayed with. He was the one who took care of Alistair, her dog, and her black cat, Arabella. When I saw him in the hospital, he was entirely attuned to her and what she might need so that she could recover and have, in the unspoken best-case scenario, another year.

“I can’t get over how great my husband has been with this. He has made it possible for me to get better and not worry about anything,” she wrote in mid-December, after the surgery. “He loves you so much it’s clear,” I texted back, thinking of how attentive he had been, how he was arranging visits with so many people, that look on his face that you cannot fake. “I think so,” she texted back. “It’s good you see. I love him so much.”

But the past year had been a hard one. This is what she had written about it. She had shown it to Jim too, and he agreed, as did a number of her oldest friends, that she’d want it published. She loved to be published.

I Believe in Love

By Elizabeth Wurtzel

Greetings from the chaotic land of marriage come undone.

The caravansary is dismantling, toothpicks flying everywhere, the bubblegum that held it together is unstuck.

Everything is falling.

My husband moved out at the end of December [2018], as the calendar flipped from last year to this [2019], while I was in Miami Beach, strolling the walkways in the shocking morning sun and under the nighttime Van Gogh sky, away from it all.

I knew he was moving out, but still: I was surprised.

I did not see that the game was over. I did not know the clock was running. I never lose, but I do run out of time. It turns out this was basketball and not baseball.

While I looked away, my marriage fell apart.

I fell off my keel. I lost my kilter. I was a kite without a string.

Maybe it’s better.

It is a peaceful purple without him here. But psychedelic with disarray.

Marriage is an organizing principle. It is flow. It is coffee in the morning. It is who walks the dog. It is HBO at night.

And love. Don’t forget that.

Now I am an ombré mess of a person. I am missed appointments and canceled meetings. I am the thing I forgot to do. I am hanging on by a strand of Drybar dry-shampooed hair.

All day long I have to ask people to forgive me, I am flailing and failing at it all. Forgive me, I beg, as I hope my untweezed eyebrows will. Maybe soon, I will even tug at a few strays.

Or maybe wild is the way.

🖤🖤🖤

I still think of Jim as this sweet person I married. He is my trust fall. He is my emergency contact. He is my next of kin. He is my valentine. He is my birthday dinner. He is my secret sharer. He is my husband.

I do not know him anymore so I do not know myself. Who are my friends? Where is my family? I have fallen into a crevasse of nobody nowhere.

I am estranged and strange, strangled up in blue.

I do not want to feel this way. I am going through the five stages of grief all at once, which Reddit strings have no doubt turned into 523. They are a collision course, a Robert Moses plan, a metropolitan traffic system of figuring it out.

I feel bad and mad and sad.

Is this a festival of insight or a clusterfuck of stupid? I change my mind all the time about this and about everything else.

I got married because I was done with crazy. But here it is, back again, the revenant I cannot shake. I feel like it’s 1993, when my heart had a black eye all the time.

26 is a boxing match of the soul.

I did not expect bruises at 52.

🖤🖤🖤

I have blamed myself. I have blamed my husband. I have blamed cancer. I have blamed marijuana. I have blamed sexism. I have blamed Charlottesville. I have blamed my in-laws. I have blamed several men named David. I have blamed my mother who lied to me my whole life about who my father is.

Who would I be if I did not blame Donald Trump?

I am angry all the time since the election of 2016, like it happened to me, like I was gang-raped by Michigan. I don’t want to be angry, but so there, I am.

Who don’t I hate?

Who won’t I blame?

If you are standing there, I blame you.

It is not conservative against liberal.

It is everybody against everyone. Here we are, in it together, alone.

The problem is not arguments I have with people who voted for Trump, who I don’t know anyway. The trouble is the way all of us who agree about everything are bickering. Oh, the narcissism of small differences.

I remember not that long ago when the world was not political. I was part of landmark litigation that was all about a team of Republicans and Democrats working together. I loved everybody. We were all on the same side.

What Alamo did I not forgive? What Masada did I not get over?

Now there is no microaggression too small for me to scream about so the next four neighborhoods can hear.

My husband does something and I am affronted like it matters.

I am sure he does not know how I feel.

And maybe he doesn’t.

But what does any of this have to do with why we got married? We got married to be in it together. Polarization has even invaded love.

I have anger fatigue. I am sick of sick. Like everyone.

The emotional toll of the world we live in is going to do all of us in.

But politics is not about conflict.

Politics is about making the world a better place.

🖤🖤🖤

How could my mother keep a secret for 50 years? What makes someone do that?

She buried herself in it. She grew a wild Victorian garden with thorny bushes of rose and purple larkspur and red snapdragon. There was a lush meadow of lavender that gave a whiff of Aix-en-Provence en été. The dandelions ran rampant and the daffodils glowed yellow like Big Bird.

But underneath it all, beneath the lilies of the valley and the rows of geranium, there is dirt.

There is a secret.

I am a bastard. I am her bastard daughter.

There are things that come along that are a shock.

I believed something for nearly half a century. It was a lie.

I was conned.

I was wrong about myself.

I did not know who I am.

My mother told no one.

It was a lie she told for so long it became true and the secret faded to no-memory. She misremembered who my father was. She did not think it mattered.

When it all came out in 2016, not long after I got married, just after my real father died, my mother could not see what my hysteria was about. She did not understand why I was stunned.

All the while I was trying not to feel the worst way ever, trying not to be overwhelmed by the explosion, my mother could not figure out what was bothering me.

After all, she is the nuclear physicist.

My mother is like everyone else. She thinks she is normal. She is sure her behavior makes sense. She believes she does the right thing. Since she cannot imagine that this is not the case, she is surprised to find out that, yes, she makes bombs.

I scream at my mother, “What’s wrong with you?!”

I do that and she does not know what I mean.

She says, “Oh get over it.”

Her eyes widen until they look like goggles on an herbivore. She is put upon. She cannot believe we have to discuss this yet again.

“Omigod yet again!”

When will I quit badgering her?

I say, “You lied to me.”

She says, “It wasn’t a lie.”

“Then what?”

“It was a decision!”

Any relationship founded on a lie is doomed. Or not a lie, according to her, which is another lie, a lie about a lie.

That is how it is between us. We are living in the doom.

And yet, we are still at it. My mother and I refuse to give up. She is my only parent. She is all I have.

She made sure of that.

This is the most painful thing ever.

She has made so many inexplicable decisions over the years that I know about, and now I see the ones I did not know.

And yet I love her more than anyone else in the world.

She is it for me. She is in the way of everything. I should be interested in my husband, but how can he compete with how much I want to figure out the Once that started all that is upon a time?

🖤🖤🖤

I was a welter of emotions.

I was so emotional.

When I found out that my father is not my father, that my mother lied to me my whole life, that there was so much I did not know, a bomb dropped in my life. Bombs, really, aerial bombardment. It was the Battle of Manila: bazookas, flamethrowers, grenades, tanks, cannons, howitzers, banzai charges, kamikaze tactics, I was shocked and stunned with feeling.

I did not know what to do.

I became a raging lunatic.

I was a mettle of rage.

My rage is my retinue. My rage is a filthy velveteen train I drag around with me, carelessly. It is my ruby tiara. It is my rainbow and my pot of gold.

My rage is cream. It makes Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee that my grandmother brewed in a percolator on the breakfront in the dining room taste not half bad.

It is the coloratura harmony to my singsong days.

My rage is my conscience. I insist on my right to feel.

But I got caught in a Möbius strip of emotion. I was gone round the bend of scream.

It was stuplimity.

🖤🖤🖤

My marriage is crushed beneath the weight of so much. It is delicate, like all relationships. It is not one of those fine elms that blows with the gusts and does not snap.

We are a scattering of branches on the lawn. We are deadwood.

Oh, there is a lot that holds us together, the love and the hours. We got married during chemotherapy. We are bound.

But my husband is not who he was.

Yes, I know: It is always like that. The sorrow of unraveling is the stranger you are facing. What happened? I want to scream. Where did you go?

My husband had a softness. I will not compare it to the feel of cotton balls or the touch of silk charmeuse, because it is better. He was new to love. I could tell. I could see. He was surprised. He did not see me coming. He did not know I was interested. He was alone in a room. His life was small. He had the same six friends he always had. He was shy. He was not brave. He had no expectations.

He was lovely.

The beginning is always like honey, liquid and sweet.

But he was open.

He was not wounded by a million heartaches.

He had not been through it all.

He did not have a wretched past.

He was 34, which is not young. Younger than I was, but a lot could have happened by then.

It had not.

He was fresh.

There was nothing I would not do for him.

There was nothing I did not want for him.

We met in October and got engaged in May.

We knew.

And now he knows he has had enough.

It has been too much.

🖤🖤🖤

Most of all, it is not easy to be married to someone with cancer.

I feel for my husband.

Cancer is so big. Everyone is prostrate before its deadly enormity. It is the answer to every question. It is the reason why. Is it an excuse or is it real? Who is anyone to argue? Cancer is a bully. It is an elephantine disease of body, mind, soul. My husband moved a half a mile away from it. I would love to do the same.

I am stuck until the end.

I do not know what he expected when he married me when I was ill. I am sorry that it has not been what he wanted. I am sorry that I hurt him.

After I got cancer, I was not the same.

I wanted to be.

I wanted my life to go back to what it was.

I was so lively. I was so lovely.

I was so busy. I was so social.

But I could not do it.

No surprise, I changed.

I was withdrawn during chemotherapy and my world became small. It contracted like starvation. It is hard to get back what is lost. It is more difficult still to begin anew.

I tried. So hard. I called. I emailed. I texted. I showed up.

But there was a diminishment.

Cancer is an ecosystem. It is a crime spree.

Things broke. My radius. My fibula. My tibia. My spirit.

My cancer came back a year after it went away.

You think people are nice about it? No.

Cancer is misunderstood.

Everyone says the wrong thing. Which is what they do so much anyway.

Then I say the wrong thing back.

There we are, bumper cars of mismatched words.

I can’t believe the stupid things people tell me in an effort to be kind, about something hard they had to deal with that is not the same as having cancer.

The worst thing anyone can do is tell me they are sorry about my cancer.

I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. About anything. Don’t apologize unless you have done something wrong. It is nasty to feel sorry for anyone for any reason because it pushes her away.

Mostly sorry is just a thing to say. Anything else would be better, including I don’t know what to say.

It is always people who are the problem. What else? Our suffering is small compared to our misunderstandings with others, how they fail to give us a break, know what it’s like, judge us fairly, see the world the way we do. It is not even cancer or especially cancer. It is especially this and even that. If you are looking for absolution, you are going to have to forgive yourself.

I have chainmail from years of frustrating conversations, of people who think something bad has happened to me.

I don’t see it that way.

You could tell me everything that’s bad about cancer, like that it’s cancer, but you could not convince me that cancer has been bad for me.

Cancer has made me optimistic.

These are the days of miracles and wonders, of biopharma fireworks, of immunotherapy wow.

I have been saved.

I am miraculous me.

I will skate figure eights into infinity.

I am all claws I am all fangs.

I am not afraid of cancer. I think cancer should be afraid of me.

This past October [2018], I had a tumor in my shoulder bone that was 5 inches: big! It was threatening to break it.

And worse.

My cancer antigens were at 205, when 25 is as high as the level can go.

I had meetings in the World Trade Center while all this was going on. I hate it down there. Skyscrapers as grave markers. It is an ominous place.

When I went for help in Philadelphia at the Basser Center for BRCA at the University of Pennsylvania, only Alistair, my service dog, was with me.

My husband said he had to work.

My marriage had already come undone.

I had stereotactic radiation at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It took only three sessions to zap the tumor away. The treatment saved me, but I have a five-inch hole in my bone that looks like a cave in the Thai jungle.

When my husband moved out, I was still healing. I have a rotator cuff tear and pain from the long way home.

🖤🖤🖤

This is a love story.

Every marriage is a love story.

People who run off to Vegas after knowing each other for 10 days and find a drunk outside the Sands casino to be their witness — they really mean it. Marriage is a big gesture. There is no reason to do it except: love.

It is effusive.

I am sorry I failed.

I am sorry for this confederacy of catastrophe.

I am sorry for it all.

I think that my husband can’t believe I hurt. I know what I’m like: I have a powerful personality, it’s true. But he got me.

He made a vow to love me in sickness and in health.

There was great love between us.

And love is hard to stop.

We made a commitment for when we could not remember why we did.

He decided enough.

I am a monotheist. I am in it for life. I am in everything for life. If you don’t stop me, I will not stop myself. I have the kind of faith that you can only have if you have talked your way out of trouble all along.

I feel so much and too much. Deep in my radiated bones.

I cannot believe it is like this with my husband and not like it was that long ago on Halloween, our first date, which he did not know was a date, maybe it was maybe it wasn’t, he showed up at my door not knowing anything at all.

We were resting on our future arms, we were like people who have never read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, have never seen City of God, have never heard Exile In Guyville, oh what lay ahead.

I remember my husband in the beginning, I know the man I married, I insist he is still there somewhere.

I keep peeling for the pentimento.

Or has this all been a fraud?

Love gone wrong feels like a confidence crime.

That is the worst of it.

Do I have an electron microscope or am I blinded? Do I see more clearly now or is this a distortion? I could ask that about the whole wide world.

Sex and race look different since Trump was elected. We know all the things that we never knew. We were living in a world of trust, we believed we were on a righteous path, that things were incrementally improving, so we did not look so hard into sunlight.

All anything ever is is another way of seeing.

I thought my husband was on my side.

I thought I knew him.

I did.

I don’t.

He changed.

I do not know how to help him.

I do not know how to reach him.

Anything is possible.

I believe in so much.

I am just that way.

I believe in love.

What matters more in this crazy world?

Shame on Casablanca’s ending! I will take the hill of beans.

(This is Garance again.)

Love. Sometimes in our lives when we feel most bereft it turns out that we are not alone at all. It is the kind of cloying Disney sentiment Lizzie might have scoffed at, but it was also the truth with her. She affected a toughness that was both real and a coping mechanism, but which also led her to downplay how sick she was. Even as she was telling me she was in remission in September, spots of cancer had already returned, I have since learned.

“The people who know us when we are not our best selves — what would we do without them? I am so grateful right now for even my mother coming through for me,” she wrote after her first surgery in December. Her mother Lynne Winters and she had a famously complicated relationship, but it was Lynne who took her home to recover both times she was released from the hospital, and who had the difficult burden of having to bring her back, and who sobbed in the sparkling clean MSKCC neuro ward hallway where other parents of too-young-to-die adult children paced forlornly.

“Jim has been the best,” Lizzie texted after the surgery. “I wish you a great first husband. That might be all you need.”

They had, in fact, not divorced. The papers were signed, but not filed. He was her husband until the end, during the final days after it was clear no further interventions would work, when she lay still in bed in what was by then her at least fifth different hospital room, for all the world the image of a big-eyed Renaissance pieta looking heavenward.

“Neurology takes a positive view toward god and prayer,” she had texted after the first surgery. “And relinquishing, which is what god and prayer is about. It is always turning your will over to a higher power and letting the will of the world and not your extraordinary manipulations lead you to your desired result. I always say that, it is my constant prayer: god, if you are out there, watch over me and your will, not mine, be done. That is what will happen anyway, but I pray for release from the dreadful fight.”

She spent her whole life fighting — fighting her parents, society, the patriarchy, social conventions, addiction, depression. But man, did she live big. She had a gift for building love into her life and at the end, her friends built a cocoon of love around her.

And on the morning of January 7, 2020, she was, as she had prayed, released.

#Elizabeth Wurtzel #i believe in love #love #garance franke-ruta #medium #writing

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