#so that’s good at least! learning things about myself and growing yadda yadda yadda

[recareels]

I KNOW that if you ever go around playing genshin again and go to Fontaine you will like Wriothesley

i am playing genshin again!!! i’ve talked a bit about wriothesley on my main blog (@inkykeiji) and how he’s soooooo so so sexy (and if i’m being entirely honest when he was first shown in the story i almost did come back for him!!! bcoz ur right! visually he is 100% my type!) bUT he’s also such a wet sandwich of a man!!!! 。ﾟ(ﾟﾉД｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡ he’s so boring!!! maybe once i meet him in game i’ll change my mind and look like a total fool in the process but from his voice lines alone i just find him so bland as a character ._.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Good afternoon Sex Witch!

I was hoping you could help me figure out how to change how I think about sex and unlearn some prudishness/ disentangle it from more genuine concerns and red flags.

Yadda yadda conservative small town childhood, classic backstory. I definitely got a sense of… I guess, safety and rightness by being very “these things are always bad”; not just sex things but sex was, of course, still one of the big things. Of course, then came puberty, and getting out of my comfort zone, and realizing how toxic purity culture was. Growing up meant, in part, my learning to do better by re-examining things I’d taken for granted.

That’s why I’m asking: there’s a lot of… lingering discomfort with a few things. I realized I still feel pretty… uncomfortable around people who have a lot of sex with multiple partners, along with the topics of polyamory and open relationships. I’m monogamous and I’m not ashamed of that, and of course I keep my opinions to myself when around friends who are happy in non-monogamous relationships. Cuz like, this is ABSOLUTELY a me-problem. I would just like to not feel like this and be unambiguously happy for people I otherwise love living their best lives.

(I’m also single and shy; I strongly suspect that envy over people who can attract multiple partners when I can’t seem to even attract one is a polluting variable.)

Regardless, do you have any links to point me to or thoughts to help me dismantle this ugly bigotry protoplasm? Cuz I know I’m wrong; I’d just like to get the bit of my brain to stop sending these stupid alarm signals.

hi anon,

okay, so, first I just want to say congrats to you on the obvious massive amounts of work that you've done to identify the biases you were raised with and work to uproot them. I know you're here because you feel you still have work to do, and I respect that completely, but I think it's also important to recognize that you've clearly come very far from what you were raised with. being able to recognize when something is a you-problem is HUGE.

I also want to say, as gently and with as much love as possible, that it may not ever be possible to totally 100% possible eradicate thoughts that we don't like. in a way, the idea that we can and should be able to control our impulsive reactions to things is still very conservative, right? it's the idea of "thought crime," except now instead of being upset at yourself for having a sexual thought it's being upset for having a thought that's not sexually open enough.

while I understand wanting to eradicate that unpleasant little "yuck" response out of your brain forever, I also believe very firmly that your thoughts alone don't define you or your values. okay, so your knee-jerk reaction to someone you love announcing that they're in an open relationship is discomfort. but what are your actions? what are you saying and doing? are you lecturing them about their immoral lifestyle, or are you pushing that discomfort aside and doing your best to be supportive of someone else's happiness even if you don't personally get it?

your actions and how you're treating the people you care about matter a lot more than the thoughts that you can't help.

having said that, it's still nice to have some framework for how to work through those feelings of discomfort to at least see if it's possible to diminish them and change that line of thinking. luckily, sex educator Nadine Thornhill just wrote about this in her latest newsletter, which I definitely recommend checking out - Dr. Thornhill is gem.

so, with full credit and hoping that she would forgive me for borrowing, here's an excerpt from Dr. Thornhill's newsletter:

Like all humans, I have a judgey little mind that is constantly observing, assessing, assuming, inferring, and drawing conclusions based on random stimuli. That’s always happening, even when I’m in sex-educator mode. But what I can do (and you can, too, if you want) is practice being mindful of my judgements, especially negative judgements. The most critical part of the practice has been getting curious about my body signals. When someone makes a sexual decision I don’t like, a question I try to ask myself is: What does that feel like in my body? Sometimes, I’ve struggled to maintain that level of in-the-moment mindfulness when working with real people and consequences.Movies and TV have helped me explore some of that stuff. It’s a safe place to judge fictional folks and their fictional sexual choices freely. Meanwhile, being able to pause, rewind or replay a provocative scene lets me take the time to take stock of my physical reactions. With time and practice, it’s become easier to recognize the specific muscle tension and rapid breathing that signals disapproval. Why is this important? We may not be able to stop ourselves from forming judgements about other people’s sexual choices. But if we understand and acknowledge them as judgements rather than facts, we can work to avoid imposing our will on other people. One way we might do so is by asking ourselves the following questions: Does this person’s decision affect my body, relationships, or autonomy? What would have to be true for me to want to make this same choice? What might make this a positive choice for this person right now? How might my own experiences or situations be affecting my opinion? How can I express kindness and compassion while still respecting their right to make their own choice?

much appreciation to Dr. Thornhill for putting this so succinctly; I'd definitely recommend checking out her work for anon and anyone else!

[frustrated-researcher-diary]

#1 Introductions

Hello everyone,

It seems a little bit strange to write my thoughts and make them public, but here goes.

Ever since I started university back in 2012, I sort of knew that I wanted to stay in academia and become a researcher. The thought of studying and learning being the main tasks of my job made me feel very privileged. That, and also the possibility of being a teaching assistant and helping students out. All of this has led me to pursue a PhD. Boy, I did not know what I was going on in for. Doing PhD and a Master of Science are two completely different things - and I really underestimated the challenges that were ahead of me.

In the latter, you are basically walking on a threaded path, so to speak. You get assignments, study on textbooks you are given, pass exams that you need to take within specific deadlines, and the grades should give you enough of a validation of the good job done. Everything has been organized for the students, whose sole requirement is to ... """basically""" (I am using many quotes to stress the fact that I know it is not easy - been there, folks) follow the path laid out for them and study, I guess.

On the contrary, when you start a PhD, you are walking in uncharted territory. Of course, your supervisors make sure that you do not fail spectacularly, but at the end of the day you are the master of your fate. (Almost) Nobody gives you a schedule, a list of things to do, or a set of deadlines. You need to build them on your own and stick to them. You need to work on your research, devote some time in the middle to side activities (teaching, projects, contracts with industries), publish papers, and yadda yadda yadda.

Although it was pretty rough, I actually managed to finish my PhD in January 2022. Then, my supervisors (I also call them bosses from hereafter) asked me to my surprise if I ever considered pursuing a post-doc. My instantaneous reply was that I had to think about it.

And I really did. It took me some months to actually convince myself that research was "still" the path for me. I am using the quotes because, sure, during the PhD you learn a lot and build many useful skills, but you also grow to hate what you do from time to time. This can happen for different reasons. In my case, sometimes the research was too complicated, and I realised I was not as smart as I hoped I was. Oftentimes, imposter syndrome kicked in, and I believed that everybody but me had what it takes to deserve to stay in academia. In multiple occasions, I just wanted to know where Reviewer #2 (who heavily criticized the n-th paper that I submitted to a journal) lived, reach their house and hurt them with every fiber of my being. Other times, I just thought that I could have avoided the hassle of doing the PhD in the first place and started working right away in the industry to save enough money to get a house - or save myself at least multiple headaches and recurring episodes of me questioning my life choices.

I knew that becoming a post-doc implied accepting an unsteady job that might not lead to me becoming a professor. I also knew it meant having a lower wage than the one I would have gotten if worked in industry, which inevitably makes the purchase of a house much harder. I also knew it meant mostly anybody around me among my friends and family would have understood what I really do for a living. Nonetheless, I decided to go for it. Despite all, I felt that I was a somewhat decent teacher and that I could have improved in the research department in the future.

So, I applied for the post-doc call in November 2022, which I luckily ended up winning. And boy, even in this case, despite me thinking about it for months, I did not expect it was going to be so hard. Just as a Master of Science is different from a PhD, also being a post-doc is different from being a PhD candidate. During the Phd, my bosses made sure that research was going well, that it was scientifically sound and feasible. On the contrary, during this first year as a post-doc they have given me more freedom in this regard - perhaps because they expect me to become independent and learn that I will not always have them by my side. I think their "experiment" failed. Very much. Indeed, it is almost the end of my first year as a postdoc now, and I can not stop feeling unmotivated and disappointed. I am also afraid that my bosses, who put so much trust in me, feel the same.

I submitted two papers to different journals. One of them got rejected: reviewers said that the paper was not novel enough, which is ironic, considering that it required me one year to actually finish it. I think the other paper is doomed as well. Some might think that, after a Phd, I should be accostumed to paper rejection, but it sadly seems that I have not reached that level of maturity. Now I just think that whatever I do is pointless and will get rejected anyway, so why bother?

To make things worst, there is this constant reminder that in order to have good chances of becoming a professor I need to have as soon as possible a good H-index, get awards, do some side activities (that I could not be less interested in). There is a conundrum. On the one hand, you are privileged to do research, and people understand that research is a risk-related activity - meaning that its outcomes may not always be valuable. On the other hand, you are expected to give valuable research results to become an academic.

As you might understand from this excruciatingly long rant (sorry), I am not feeling very well (and you may also believe that I am overdramatic - which may be true). I am questioning my choice of pursuing a post-doc and my whole life as well (I said I am aware of being overdramatic). I am 30 now, and I hoped that by this age I had everything figured out, from my working life to my romantic one (which is a whole other story). Instead, I am none of the sort. I still live with my parents trying to save enough money to eventually get a house, still trying to find a partner, and still trying to figure out what I really want to do in the future. A true testament to this is the fact that I am writing this on a Saturday night, as if I had nothing better to do.

I wanted to talk with someone about my feelings over this last couple of weeks, but I could not find somebody who could relate that much. As I said before, friends and family do not exactly understand what I do. I could talk to my bosses at Uni, but I am afraid of their reaction. There are my colleagues, but I feel everybody has a lot on their plate, and I do not want them to give them another issue. In any case, I do not want to give up. I need to find by myself the spark that pushed me to go on with this job. Eventually, I will find again the motivation and excitement that convinced me (and also my bosses, apparently) that becoming a post-doc was not a bad idea after all.

I decided to write this post (or should I say rant?) for two main reasons. The first one is to use this as a reminder in the future of the things that I felt. Maybe this post could be followed by other ones on a regular basis as an entry for a diary to keep track of my progress, I don't know. The second one is to be hopefully of aid to whoever reads it. If you, too, are a frustrated researcher (be it a PhD or a post doc) you are not alone. It may sound cheesy, but I believe that there are not enough posts and websites dealing with this. Everybody in academia goes through similar struggles and if they say otherwise.. they are lying. Hardly nobody has everything figured out, even in their 30s.

D.

Ps: English is not my mother tongue, so I apologize for any mistake. Doing my best here 😅

[ationless-motive]

In so many ways I envy trans people. I envy their certainty in who they are, no matter how tenuous it is they at least have it, and god damn do I want that too. I want the euphoria of learning and working towards being myself. I want to give meaning to the gnawing ache of my hollowed out identity and fill it with the beauty of life and color.

I wish I could say I lay awake at night wondering and pondering and philosophizing about some aspect of transhood, yadda yadda. But I don't. I curl in bed too scared to ever experience the too-full silence of night where both crickets and my thoughts live, in a safe bubble of noise and dim light created by GeminiTay videos and Game Grumps compilations because god forbid I face the dark. Because it hurts to think about transhood. It hurts to imagine the joy trans people when they find comfort in themselves, hurts to imagine the joy transfemmes find when they can finally look at themselves in a mirror, hurts to imagine the certainty and strength transmascs find in the masculinity I've always resented, hurts to imagine how freeing letting go of being one or the other must be for those in between or outside the binary. It hurts, because I can't help but rejoice in and be happy for the beauty of personhood I see from them and what they feel, but I'm crushed by the envy of wanting to feel it all too.

I want to love myself. I want so desperately to be happy with my personage, with my identity, with my body, with whatever desiccated fucking heap my gender is. I want it. I want it, and they have it, and it's so hard not to feel like it's not fair. I bury myself under the shame of knowing I'm in some way romanticizing a struggle I know nothing about, all because I'm so lost in my own bullshit. I have no place in glorifying the very real lived experiences of others just to create some imaginary greener grass for me to yearn for. I have no fucking right to the trans experience.

Because I'm not trans. How could I be? I can't even figure out gender. Even a fucking decade after highschool I'm still frozen in the same spot, with the same confusions and self loathings, only made more rich and nuanced with the passage of time. I keep my head down, I make no waves, I take up no space. I don't grow. I don't change. I stay the same inert dead thing that doesn't age, only weather away. Being trans is about change isn't it? It's about a transformation of being? It's gotta be something. It's gotta be. Because how could it be this? This fucking impossible indefinable inescapable fear-thats-not-even-fear-anymore feeling that is constantly fucking suffocating me!? How in the fucking hell is it this!? Why can't I fucking name it why does it hurt and why can't I move past it or recognize it or name it like everyone else!? Why am I the only one still fucking confused? Why the hell was I born like this? Why? Why?

Why?

Why do I keep telling myself I'm not trans? When a part of me yearns for femininity. When I can't escape the memory of the time I tried to paint my own nails and spiraled and cried and doused my hand in nail polish like water onto a fire because I messed up and got the polish on my skin. Because I didn't know you could use cotton swabs to ease away any fumbles and slips. Because no one taught me, because I was too scared to learn, because I was a fucking idiot for thinking I deserved to have beautiful nails or to feel good about how I look. But it's not like I'm trans or anything. Because if I was it'd make all of... Everything so much harder, I guess. And god of it's not hard enough already.

There's so much more in my life that makes me feel like I should be more certain. Even if I know uncertainty is par for the course, and that it's silly for me to wish for the binary black-and-white yes-or-no certainty of "Am I Cis or Am I Trans?". I should be sure by now, shouldn't I? For god sakes I'm almost 28.

So I just lay here curled up crying in bed typing this out. Alone in this stew of my own self loathing and confusing feelings and envy towards trans people who have figured at least some parts of themselves out.

But I'm pretty sure I'm just being an idiot. Maybe the reason I don't feel trans is because I in some way 'other' transhood, make it into something external and outside of myself because I see it as a community of people I'm not a part of. I see queerness in general as a community I'm not a part of, because how can I be a part of it? How could I possibly belong to any group? I've spent so much of my life balancing between being discarded and "tolerated".

[piracytheorist]

Yes, I hate Kizuna too! It's such a bad movie and I've been meaning to make a video essay about it. One of the thigns that annoys me is that in Tri, Joe's whole arc was Kizuna but better! He had to learn that growing up didnt mean leaving behind the people or things you care about or erase your old responsibilities or relationships!

What you say about growing up is exactly what pissed me off in Kizuna. Digimon re-entered my life now, where I've genuinely been independent and living on my own for the first time, and I'm slowly finding myself and realizing that I want to reconnect with the kid in me that I've tried to suppress all these years. Rewatching Digimon helped a ton in that; finding something I adored as a kid and looking at it from a new lens and appreciating it even more.

So those feelings of mine were very influencing while watching Kizuna, and not in a good way. Kizuna basically told us to let go and move on, that staying trapped in your childhood is bad, yadda yadda. But that's not what growing up should be about; nothing is "too childish" as long as you keep being a responsible adult. If you work 9-5, pay your bills, cover your needs, who's to say you're "immature" if you decide you want to sit down and eat chocolate milk cereal while you're not bothering anyone? But no, the film promotes the idea that once you grow up you've grown up, you have to leave what connects you to your childhood behind and move on to other, "greater" things.

And that's what you said about Jou's arc in tri. A lot of people hate tri. and it does indeed have a lot of flaws, but in my opinion it's as flawed as Kizuna is. At least it doesn't try to push a narrative that the characters have to reluctantly fit into, if anything, shit happens in tri. because the characters refuse to conform, Kizuna is the opposite (character-driven plot vs plot-driven characters, hmm...).

And yeah, as I said, I've got a long list of things that annoyed me in Kizuna, and honestly, as someone who just got back into Digimon in my late 20s, at a point in my life where I want not just to appreciate but to also re-embrace the things I liked in my childhood, it felt like it was telling me "STFU and let it go, you're too old for this shit lol" which like... okay. Y'all keep making Digimon shows and films to make money but I'm the immature one here. Okay.

That said, if you make the video essay, send it my way! And don't hesitate to send more asks about it, I haven't actually seen anyone else mention not liking Kizuna so I've felt kinda alone in sharing that view.

[anxietyjedi]

Taking Back Happiness

Hooray, my first post here gets to be about something good. Well, it will get good, but first there's quite a bit of backstory to get through in order to help people understand the perspective. I will preface this with to some this may not seem like such a big deal, but on a personal level this is huge and ever since I finally realized what I had done I've felt fantastic! So, to start, I had a fairly happy childhood. A Mom, a Dad, a little brother, and pretty much had it good as far as life at home. In terms of quality of life, things weren't bad; cable TV, air conditioners in every bedroom (which growing up in Southern California, that was a premium thing to have in the summertime), and so on. Through childhood I was developing a taste for things that I both liked and disliked, and as with most people I would have an inclination to do the things I liked more and the things that I disliked as least often as possible.

I mention likes and dislikes because a lot of that sets up the meat and potatoes of this whole thing. Anyway, moving right along, living in Southern California had the advantage of the "Happiest Place on Earth" being right there in Anaheim. Given that, I did manage to go there every once in a good while and just like many before me enjoyed the experience. Mostly. When it was my parents, my brother, and I going it was always great; we spent time together as a family having fun and establishing memories that would last a lifetime. Pretty standard fare, right? Believe it or not there were times when I really did not find a whole lot of happiness at the "Happiest Place on Earth". Every couple of years my relatives on my Mom's side of the family would come in from out of town for Christmas, staying with us to save money, yadda, yadda, yadda. Part of that was taking a trip to the "Happiest Place on Earth", and going with them was anything but happy. You see, I learned pretty quickly that I hated the sensation of dropping. I know, for some it is a thrilling feeling to experience but for me at the time it was horrible. The sensation of dropping felt as though the world had fallen out from under me. Being of an age to voice my absolute displeasure of that feeling, I made it known that I did not like it. It didn't do any good. The first few times I would protest I would eventually give in. I hated it. As I got older I would push back a little bit longer, and that's when things got not-so-happy at the "Happiest Place on Earth". I can still recall their below the belt comments like "Oh, they're looking for a bribe" like I was some kind of spoiled brat. I wasn't holding anybody back, I wasn't saying "Let's not do this" just "I don't want to do this", but it didn't matter. Me not wanting to do something that I had an absolute dislike of somehow made them so unhappy that they had to make me miserable. Then I would hear about it for the rest of the day, once again at no point did I demand that nobody do it, just that I not do it. That's it. As I got older, reaching an age where I could look after myself I would continue to try and find a way to get out of it. At the age of 15, and being six feet tall, I really had to argue in my defense over something that they could do without me but for some reason it was SO important that I go despite how miserable of an experience it was for me. Of course all of their bullish behavior resulted in them cutting in line for one of the rides, being called out by the people who were cut in front of and I being a teenager decided I had enough. I didn't want to go, even more so if we were cutting in line. It didn't matter how much I argued, they absolutely wanted me to go. I still didn't understand what was so important about me going. It turned into such an argument that I could no longer find happiness at the "Happiest Place on Earth". Imagine that. Something that makes people happy no longer making you happy in the slightest because you had so much negativity wrapped around it.

If that was the only time I had ever experienced their negative behavior, that would be one thing. That was not the case. At the age of 16 my parents separated and I ended up moving to the state where these relatives were from. Over time they demanded I change one thing or another about me. I've been an avid user of sentence enhancers (see "swear words") since late elementary school, at the very latest early middle school, but I've always made a point to curb it around my parents and relatives by watering it down. Instead of "bullshit" I would say "BS", as an example. I guess that was too much because I got a lecture about choosing a better way to express myself, ugh. Then, a conversation involving an elderly relatives care had come up, or the lack of care would be more accurate. This conversation was happening right in front of me, with no preface that I was not to take part. I offered one comment. Just one. "That's messed up" is all I said, and holy shit you'd think I demanded the sacrifice of a first born child. They, as they usually would gang up on one person like a pack of wolves and pretty much verbally beat them into submission. In this instance, I was met with a chorus of "Sit down, shut up, and stay out of it". So even though it was regarding a relative, I couldn't say anything. If you haven't figured it out by now, I do not carry a relationship with them at all. I tolerate them, but only for the sake of my Mom. That's it. In simple terms, it's like I've been in a Cold War with them since 1999. I don't really interact with them, if they start the interaction I'll be cordial but it stops not long after because I don't care to keep it going. The aforementioned examples are just a few in an exceedingly long list.

This last week I took a trip to Southern California where I had time to think about a few things. For the first time ever I was able to come to terms with what really happened. Emotional abuse. Since I was in Southern California I decided to take the opportunity to go back to the "Happiest Place on Earth", this time on my terms and alone. I wanted to see if maybe I could find happiness again. I woke up early, made the drive there, and no sooner did I cross into the park did I find myself thinking back on happy memories. I could literally feel the emotions welling up as I took in the atmosphere as I thought back to seeing the various costumed characters, hearing the music play, and everything else. I set out doing the things I wanted to do, and didn't do anything that I didn't want to do. I got to enjoy things, experience things as I wanted, and before I knew it I realized something very important.

All of the happiness that they had taken from me, I was taking it back. All of the snide remarks, all of the hurtful comments, none of it mattered anymore. I took my happiness back! Not only that, but I knew that they would never take it from me ever again. For the entire day it was the "Happiest Place on Earth" again. I know that to some this may not seem like a big deal, but for me it was a momentous occasion. Taking back happiness can feel empowering.

[monkey-network]

Why Shrek IS The Best

Tastes can change, you know? And it’s less about “What’s good about this now compared to before”, more of “Why would you like this now as opposed to before”? Unless allergic, you didn’t get why dark cola or hot chips tasted bad to you as a child, but when you grow up you can come to understand and appreciate it. Shouldn’t pressure yourself, that makes things worse, but things can certainly align in helping this newfound respect you get for something you’d believe you would never want again. That really is where I stand with Dreamworks’ Shrek. As a kid, while Toy Story left me traumatized for a while, Shrek left me side-eyeing with how crass and ugly it looked and I never wanted to think of it. But, as I grew up to respect animation a lot more, 2018 was where I looked back at Shrek and soon come to understand how wrong I was and how much greatness it has that I now consider it an all time great. And with it getting inducted into the Library of Congress, I thought it was finally time to present what I see in this film. Let’s do this right with...

The SOMEBODY

Now this frame has been meme’d to death. If there’s anything iconic about this film, ‘bout the franchise as a whole, it’s the exact moment when our main character charges out of his outhouse as Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’ gets going. But this honestly just says a lot about Dreamworks’ direction from its previous films where compared to Disney that’ll take their time making the setup before getting into the hype point for its lead, Shrek gets going in one minute if we don’t count the logo intro. Not even The Emperor’s New Groove, which was going for the same tone before Shrek even released, took more of it’s time with the fairy tale aspect of it in its intro. Shrek literally wipes his ass with the fairy tale aspect before giving us the SOMEBODY, all around a minute. This frame really shows that this is sticking to the Disney formula in some way because it’s wasting no time getting into it. It represents the more brisk pace Shrek has with pulling you into what it’s gonna be about. This overall frame works in its thematic and parody aspect and I’ve yet to see anything top this exact moment, not even the greatest films I’ll ever remember.

But enough about the fact that I made a whole paragraph about this one frame of the movie. Let’s dive into what I say is a piece of the heart for this film.

The Earnestness

Speaking of Disney, you probably notice that their films have some cushioning in their presentation, like they generally don’t show things with a straightforward lens; there’s some theatrics in the way their best movies present themselves. That’s not a problem, mind you, but that helped me understand how Shrek does things very differently whether you consider it parody or not. While it throws mockery at the played out conventions associated with fairy tales, especially its most subtle jab at copyright, it doesn’t full on say fairy tales are annoying and bad. Hell, the film IS a fairy tale adapted from a fairy tale about a fookin’ OGRE that can eat lightning and kills with farts. But, it’s an accurate and earnest way to view a fairy tale from a somewhat realistic lens. Let’s take Shrek’s journey for instance.

Typically, the main character would want to experience something more; explore new horizons, prove themselves, find their calling. Shrek off the bat doesn’t need or desire any of that. He’s content with his life, beside the angry mob he casually scares off, and throughout the film he’s not interested in anything else outside getting the squatters out his swamp. He happily makes a deal with the villain of the film to exile those innocent refugees off his land so he could then build a wall to keep everybody out. Bringing up Emperor’s New Groove again, Shrek and Kuzco are the few characters I know that are actively antagonistic even when they’re forced into their situation from outside forces. However unlike Kuzco that gets to be emperor again but learns humility, Shrek is in the same spot as before but learns that there are people out here that can love him for who he is. I can’t say there’s anything grand about that, but it doesn’t need to be unlike the many Disney or any film that tries to shower you with the grandest themes. The relationships Shrek has with Donkey and Fiona are the most grounded I’ve ever seen because they’re not only natural, they’re hardly dolled up with the bells and whistles made to either drum up the biggest laughs or tug the heart strings viciously. When I think about it, I honestly could see myself in Shrek. He isn’t made to be a legend, he isn’t some secret genius or lost prince, he’s just an every-man ogre that wants to live peacefully or meet SOMEBODY that doesn’t treat as someone to be feared or disgusted at. Everything Shrek says is something anybody could or would say if they were his shoes because he, and the film in general, is the most grounded without making it all distractedly meta or genre-savvy. This is generally helped by...

The Dounkaey

Everyone’s talked about how Donkey is the best confidant for Shrek and Fiona. How he’s most true to himself to where he’s the most openly musical character in the film, and how he’s the most balanced here with his comedic vs serious moments. But I gotta say it too: Donkey is one of the greatest sidekicks ever. He’s a motormouth, but is never annoying to where you wish he left the film. The couple times he is purposefully annoying, not for a joke, is when he knows Shrek isn’t being truthful. He truly gets to know Shrek on this journey, and is the character Shrek gets to capacity to actually loosen up to, so it’s fitting that he’d be the one to push Shrek when the ogre’s sounding more vague than usual. Even when he’s harshly insulted, Donkey doesn’t take it as bad as when Shrek kept trying to shut him out again in the 3rd act after the Hallejulah sequence which is the scene in every Shrek movie where’s there a super sad song because Shrek is alone and yadda ya. I’ll get to it in a bit, but he is as much responsible in providing Fiona that seed of doubt that Shrek wouldn’t love her as the ogre she is. Donkey is the greatest friend because he wants to be there for those who are okay with him being around, and while you could give and take sidekick animals in your notable films with them in it, this film really wouldn’t have happened without him. Speaking of Fiona, I won’t retread what’s been said before like with Donkey but I did want to bring up something I haven’t seen many talk about,,,

The Love for An Ogre

I’ve seen many say the scene where Shrek overhears Fiona talk about “Who could love an ugly beast?” and misinterprets that as her talking about him as a cliched or contrived downside to the film, but I feel that a defense can be made. It personally makes sense that Shrek would misinterpret that and take it personally because 1) Who else would Fiona be talking about? 2) How would he know she was talking with Donkey? 3) Why would he just barge in on her? 4) Has no one considered that this moment is parallel to when Fiona overhears Shrek’s conversation with Donkey the night before?

Fiona is very much the antithesis to Shrek’s character where she can very much be open about what she wants but is scared at the idea of anyone figuring out who she really is. She’ll gladly be gross, kick ass, eat the young of a bird she let explode, but won’t let anyone see her true face. That’s why her curse makes sense, and why Shrek would take a fondness to her despite her initial disdain of him rescuing her. Fiona’s a character where the surface level beauty is her weakness as opposed to Shrek where it’s internal. Which is why when she overhears Shrek open up to Donkey about his societal isolation, she’s soon more comfortable around him. And it’s why when she opens up to Donkey about her looks, Shrek would unfortunately take it personal enough. I ask again, why would Shrek barge in on a conversation he wasn’t aware of or who she was talking about to not take it about anything else but him when what he heard such a cut so deep, especially from a character that bears his similar issues? It also helps that Donkey was in on it, as Shrek feels reasonably betrayed by the only other person he’s come to appreciate in his life. Contrived as it seems, it’s thematically important and appropriate to the conflict of Shrek’s character and the film overall. Don’t know how this could be conveyed any other way because it adds up at least.

I just wanna know how Shrek got to Faarquard’s and back by sunrise like did he run cuz that looked like a huge distance to travel on foot but anyways...

I’m sure things could’ve worked out if Shrek knew, either by barging in that night or through Donkey, but I think it’s fitting that the climax takes place at the wedding. After Shrek and Donkey understand their friendship, after Donkey reciprocates the Dragon’s love (more ways than one), and when Shrek grasps the mistake he made to charge over to Fuccquad’s chapel, we get to...

The End

After everything, we get to the moment where Shrek and Fiona get to share their first kiss, Fiona permanently transforms into an ogre, and we get this exchange. One of my favorite exchanges in the whole film:

Shrek: “Are you all right?” Fiona: “Well yes. But I don’t understand... I’m supposed to be beautiful.”

Shrek: “But you ARE beautiful”

We don’t need any other vows to understand their relationship was built up to this. This moment where Shrek can reaffirm Fiona’s feelings of being able to be herself in every way, because she allowed him to be himself in every way before. That’s that mutual love, baby, that just gets me every time and makes this film one of the best romance stories I know as well, even when it isn’t solely about the romance. This is Shrek’s story, and there’s nothing more touching than seeing this outcast not only get another to view him as a friend, not only someone to love, but people, if only a couple, to actually wanted to get to know him. I know Shrek 2 expands on this more, and it’s considered a golden sequel, but I will always cherish the first movie for how much it tells us off the bat while appearing as a “Take That” to Disney films. This is the genesis of Shrek feeling more accepted for himself and society and it just bears so much good commentary while being a good adventure nonetheless. Like you could say this film indeed has... dimensions? “You were trying to meme about la-”

The Conclusion

Mentioning it, I always had this thought with the conversation Shrek and Donkey had of why Shrek didn’t just “be an ogre” and pillage Fuccnut’s fortress. It’s possible Shrek could’ve taken out Faarquid himself, but that would mean being the beast he knows people have shunned him for, grabbed the torches and pitchfolks for, made him feel worse for. Shrek enjoys being an ogre, but he doesn’t like how society makes him feel lesser as an ogre. That really is what the four films have been about for him and what I’ve come to appreciate about these films personally. It can be easy to love yourself even when there are others out here that stand against you, but it’s hard to consider that anyone else could love you for who you are in spite of how you try to present yourself. But if there’s anything Shrek showed me, it’s that it’s possible. There can/will be people out here who appreciate the real you, will be there as much as you want to for them, and can help you realize more about yourself as opposed to suffering to silence eternally. Generally ideal, I know, but this film in the least offered me that thought in the most balanced way possible. It’s incredible how much of a tightrope this film has in its parody and sincerity and that makes its induction in the National Film Registry and being the first ever Best Animated Award winner pretty justified all things considered.

I know this film, the character, has been a meme over the years. As Schaffrillas mentions in his video, the direction Dreamworks made because of Shrek’s success kinda turned it into a heel people clowned on because, in theory, it was nothing but a joke with the onions and the swamp and IT’S NEVER OGRE. Then again, like I said in the beginning, tastes change. I’d say with Schaff’s masterful analyses on the film series and 3GI’s Shrek Retold and Shrekfest, the perception of the film sure enough shifted like the perception of Megamind. It’s one thing for a movie to blow people away or leave them thinking it’s horrible beyond belief, it’s another to take the time to then look back and see how those feelings have changed. For Shrek, it’s a film that was able to trudge out of the meme era to be a film many consider a strong, rewatchable, and unique. Like the beauty of Spongebob, Shrek is a considered a classic because as in the times as it appeared when it released, this film actually stood on its own with the most enjoyable and meaningful timelessness, exploring the desired love for the self, that deserves to be recognized. What else can I say, people?

It’s The Best

[slytherin-team]

On Petunia Evans Dursley, or how I imagine & re-imagine her character

So, I re-read HP and Snape’s memories of Lily and Petunia really stood out to me. 

Since re-reading the whole series, I’ve become a bit obsessed with Snape and Petunia.

I want to talk about Petunia’s character.

Now, I like starving-her- nephew- and -locking- him -in- a- cupboard Aunt Petunia as much as the next person (which is to say, not at all)

However, Petunia’s character has to be one of the things that bothers me most about HP or one of the things that I see as the biggest missed opportunity on JKR’s part.

Now, I don’t entirely blame JKR for making Petunia a one-dimensional villain. HP started out as a children’s book and the Dursleys are very much like Matilda’s family. They’re just there to be entirely awful and also to contrast muggle “ordinariness” with wizard “specialness.” Additionally, everyone is familiar with the fairytale evil stepmother and Petunia fills that cliched trope as well.

But as the series becomes darker and less for children and as we learn more about the complicated history between muggles and wizards, the presence of only one-dimensional (Dursleys, at least the parents) or barely present (the Grangers) muggles becomes rather irksome, considering how the war is all about prejudice towards muggles and muggle-borns.

These things didn’t bother me or even occur to me so much as a kid reading the series and that’s why I can’t entirely blame JKR on this one thing. She knew her target audience (kids) would identify with the witches and wizards, see the muggles as boring and dull like the adults around them, and not care so much about the broader picture. 

I don’t know if my new way of looking at the series comes from simply re-reading it, or more specifically, from being an adult re-reading it, but I find myself super interested in examining what it means to be a muggle who is aware of the magical world and this what draws me to Aunt Petunia.

If I could make any change to the series, I would make Petunia a more gray, nuanced and fleshed out character, much like Snape (who I actually think she is very similar to and I’ll get into that). She would still give preferential treatment to her own son, but she would not outright abuse Harry by starving him or locking him up. She would ensure he’s well-fed and healthy but she would not be affectionate with him, but rather cold and distant, so similar to how she already acts but minus the serious abuse. 

 I would pepper in moments where Petunia stares at Harry with empty eyes or glances at him while he’s not looking. I would have Harry notice these small moments from time to time and wonder why his Aunt takes care of him yet is so cold towards him. He would unravel this mystery of her behavior, just as he unraveled Snape’s and Petunia would get a redemption arc, like Snape. I haven’t thought of all the details but I like the idea of her getting more involved later in the series and being a useful muggle character. Eventually, she would open up about Lily as well and reveal her regrets. She would also have a heart to heart with Harry and wish him luck before going into hiding.

Vernon would still be a jerk but not outright abusive because Petunia wouldn’t allow for that. Dudley would still get away with his bullying, particularly when Petunia is out of sight, but maintain the growth he did show in the series, perhaps taking it a bit further.

As much as I prefer my version of Petunia, the actual Petunia we get, while not a good or redeemable person by any means, is still really great as a character and as a villain, she has a good origin story.

Hate adult Petunia all you want, but child Petunia, in my opinion, is nothing but sympathetic and probably one of the most relatable characters in the series, and I will go through this.

We all wish the HP world was real, but of course, if it was, we’d all want to be witches and wizards. We all want to go to Hogwarts. 

Severus tells Lily, “It’s real for us, not for her.”

He’s right and he’s wrong. It’s real for Petunia, she just can’t be a part of it.

Now, personally, I think being a squib would feel a lot more unfair than being a muggle with muggle parents whose sibling just happens to be a witch and even if Petunia’s parents did favor Lily for being a witch, they can’t be prejudice towards Petunia for her lack of magic when they lack magic themselves. 

But squibs might actually be looked down upon by their magical parents and they seem to have no choice but to enter the muggle world even though they grew up in the magical world, and if they do stay in the magical world, they’re seen as lesser and I can’t imagine there’s much for them to do. Maybe they could work in Muggle relations but that’s not given much prestige (even though it should be an important thing) Petunia feels barred from the magical world but at least she doesn’t have to leave her own world. 

Still, Petunia is just a kid and she doesn’t know about all the intricacies of the magical world or about squibs. She just sees that her sister has abilities that she doesn’t and access to a really exciting world that she doesn’t. So, her jealousy and feelings of inferiority are totally understandable. 

Of course, in her jealousy of Lily, lack of knowledge about the intricacies of the magical world, and overall myopic view because of her youth, I think there’s something that Petunia doesn’t realize.

Lily is also in a difficult position, perhaps in some ways more difficult than Petunia. At least Petunia has a clear line. She’s a muggle and can fit into the muggle world.

Lily is a witch, so despite being born into the muggle world, she’s different, but that doesn’t mean she can fully integrate into the magical world. In some ways, the prejudice against muggle-borns and the specific slur for them makes them seem more hated and distrusted by certain segments of the wizarding world than even muggles themselves. 

And Lily graduated Hogwarts at the time of Voldemort’s rise and we’re told that the first wizarding war was much more intense than the second. Marlene Mckinnon and her entire family were killed. Voldemort had a bunch of creatures on his side. Petunia could be blissfully ignorant of all this and cocoon herself in her safe “ordinary” world at least. Safety didn’t seem like a choice for Lily, although she certainly had agency and chose to fight for the Order. But it seems that muggleborns would be hunted regardless.

Perhaps if Petunia had realized this, she would have had more sympathy for her sister and also realize that she herself  is lucky in some regards. Maybe she could have cultivated her own talents and focused on them instead of putting all of her energy into being jealous and petty.

I also have this other idea I like, of Petunia developing healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her jealousy and then finally embracing the magical world - instead of turning away from it entirely to be as “ordinary” as possible- and then becoming the muggle version of Arthur Weasley- that is, a muggle who is a bit of a “magicphile” 

Getting back on track, Petunia’s ordinariness could be her strength, at least as a character, it makes her relatable. Young Petunia, like young Severus, is the underdog, and that sort of makes you want to cheer for her or at least see her get a slice of the cake at least once in her life.

While I’ve grown to like Lily as a character more because of my re-analysis of her situation - which makes her an underdog too- I used to really hate her, for the same reason Petunia hated her. Like really? This girl has powerful magic, is beautiful, gregarious, kind, brave, strong, loved and desired by everyone...yadda yadda yadda...gimme a break! 

And so many fans who love Lily don’t realize that they’re probably Petunias, not Lilies.

Even looking at the flowers themselves- petunias are actually really beautiful and come in such a wide variety (the night sky petunia is my favorite) - and yet they’re often overlooked because they’re so common.

James is an awful bully but at least that counteracts his perfectness in every other area (looks, school, sports, etc) What are Lily’s flaws? What does she struggle with other than being muggleborn? It seems that maybe both she and James were too naive and trusting (not to victim-blame her for her own death or anything) but what else? We’re not told and so she just seems perfect, not very interesting for a character.

A lot of the things Petunia says as a child that fans interpret as mean or revealing of her hatred of magic from a young age, are actually things she seems to regurgitate from the adults around her. 

For example, when Lily is flying from a swing, Petunia chides her by saying, “mom, told you not to do that!” Although we know Petunia’s parents favored Lily, I get the sense that their favoritism and even awareness of Lily’s magic didn’t come until after the Hogwarts letter, which is when a representative would have come to the family to explain things. Before then...I’m not sure but maybe her parents didn’t realize what was going on and just didn’t want her jumping out of swings? Anyway, I think Petunia is just trying to be the responsible older sister and is repeating her mother.

I’m pretty sure when Lily makes the flower grow, Petunia gets a bit freaked out and maybe also says something about how she shouldn’t be doing that but she’s also described as asking Lily how she does it, with “longing” in her voice. So she’s juggling trying to be the responsible older sister with being totally weirded out because how the heck is her sister making flowers grow in her hand, to being curious, and this is when her burgeoning envy (totally understandable) starts to emerge as well.

Then little Snape enters the picture to unintentionally erode the sisters’ relationship even further. It’s also here that Petunia makes another comment that fans point to as proof of her snobbery and cruelty from a young age, but actually, it’s just proof that she took what adults told her to heart, and since she was older than Lily, she probably heard more gossip and knew more about their town in general.

After Snape pops out to tell Lily she’s a witch and that he’s a wizard, Petunia is the first of the sisters to speak.

Here’s the direct quote from Petunia: “Wizard! I know who you are. You’re that Snape boy! They live down Spinner’s End by the river,” 

This little statement is endlessly fascinating to me, it raises so many questions.

Why does Petunia know who Snape is? Why does she recognize him? How does she know his name and what he looks like? We know adult Petunia is nosy and loves watching all the neighbors. Was child Petunia snooping around, if so then how close did Snape live to the sisters? How close is the sisters’ house to Spinner’s End and the river? 

If she was snooping around, then it’s kind of ironic that she was spying on Snape while he was spying on her and Lily ( he says he’s been watching Lily but Lily is always with Petunia outside so even if it’s not intentional, he’s watching Petunia too) Even if she was snooping around, why would Petunia wander to Spinner’s End? Does she share Harry’s deathly curiosity and adventurous streak? She says “they” so does she know what Snape’s parents look like? How much does she know about the family and his home life?

My first thought actually wasn’t that she was snooping around but rather, that she was regurgitating the nasty things that adults had said. But this raises another question, which adults? We’re told later that Snape and Lily sneak into Petunia’s room to read her letter to Dumbledore, which means that Snape was in the Evan’s family’s home, and we also know that the Evans parents are impressed by witches and wizards, so it would seem that they approved of Snape. 

So then, who would have told Petunia about the Snape family? Did she just hear rumors and gossip about them from older townsfolk? I always imagine Lily as either 9 or 10 and Petunia as either 11 or 12 in this scene, only a two year difference between them but at that age, it’s enough for Petunia to be more involved in what adults are saying and for Lily to be oblivious.

From here, Petunia asks Severus why he’s been spying, and again, she seems like the protective sister. I really like her in this scene. I don’t interpret her as snobby or classist. She’s too young. I see her as a kid influenced by the adults around her and as sort of a gryffindor/slytherin hybrid, bravely stepping between her sister and the strange boy calling her a witch, while also being judgemental of outsiders.I think she possesses a lot of the qualities of both Lily and Severus.

This scene is also when Sev spitefully calls Petunia a muggle, a word she had never heard before but immediately recognizes as inferior. 

“Haven’t been spying. Wouldn’t spy on you any. You’re a muggle.”

It’s shown later that all three of these kids love to spy and snoop around (not unlike the golden trio - except they’re not spying with each other but on each other) but Sev and Petunia definitely share a heightened nosiness, a certain degree of haughtiness, a superiority complex coupled with an inferiority complex, and a strong sense of self-preservation and pride that is very slytherin. Opposites may attract but I think it’s the couples with common ground that last, and enemies-friends-lovers will never go out of style, so the potential set-up for Snetunia is just too good to pass over and plays a big role in why I love shipping them together.

Okay, and after this, Petunia then spies on Lily and Sev. The “she’s jealous. You're special. She’s ordinary” line is in the movie not the book but I love it because it encapsulates Petunia’s insecurities perfectly and also shows how Sev puts Lily on a pedestal, and the magical world as a whole on a pedestal. It’s sad that he gets abused at Hogwarts after being abused at home but it also just goes to show that wizards, witches and muggles are all just people and not necessarily inferior or superior to one another.

Petunia overhears Sev telling Lily about the dementors and that’s when she loses her footing and gets caught spying. Sev then shouts, “Who’s spying now! What d’you want?” I find it interesting how Sev and Petunia mirror each other so much.

This is when Petunia insults Sev by saying “What are you wearing anyway? Your mother’s blouse?” She obviously has nothing to say in regards to the spying accusation because she was so obviously spying, so she tried to deflect it with an insult. She’s just as defensive as Sev. After she says, the infamous tree branch incident happens, in which Sev gets revenge by making a tree branch fall over her head. This is what prompted Petunia, years later, to refer to Sev as “that awful boy” when she reveals to Harry that she knows what the dementors are because she “overheard that awful boy talking about them.”

Okay, onto the Hogwarts letter, which raises many questions as well.

“You shouldn’t have read – ”  Petunia had whispered, “that was my private – how could you – ?”.

Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where Severus stood nearby. 

Petunia gasped. “That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!” 

“No – not sneaking – ” Now Lily was on the defensive. “Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn’t believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that’s all! He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of – ”

Okay, so this is soooo interesting. 

Adult Petunia is presented as a woman with a long neck who always has her nose in other people’s business and she’s not much different as a child. But despite this trait being used to amplify her villain role, it seems the “good guys” and the “grey guys” love meddling in this way as well. 

I really feel for Petunia in this scene. I think that Hogwarts letter and Dumbledore’s reply rejecting her (even if it was kind) was one of the biggest moments of failure, disappointment and embarrassment in her life and remember, she’s probably about 2 years older than Lily so she would be 13 here and that’s just not a nice age either and I think that makes losing her sister and being rejected hurt even more. Privacy is such a big deal when you’re 13 too, that’s like peak private diary age, so to have your little sister and her gross friend sneaking into your room at that time, what an invasion that must feel like.

But��.what the heck was going through Sev’s mind?!?

I doubt Lily suggested that she and Sev sneak into Petunia’s room. Why would Sev want to go into Petunia’s room? She’s just a muggle after all. He sees the letter, but how? After going into her room?

He couldn’t believe a muggle contacted Hogwarts? Was he secretly impressed by her? He thinks there must be wizards undercover in the muggle postal service...well we’re never told how Petunia sends the letter but it’s often said that there’s more to her than meets the eye. I like to think she was cunning, determined, smart and slytherin enough to find out how to send the letter on her own and that’s probably what made Dumbldore even reply. I think she’s someone who always had a lot of potential but was crippled by feelings of inferiority and self-doubt, much like Severus.

Petunia and Severus both obsess over Lily to the point that it destroys them. Petunia, in her jealousy, deep down worries that Lily is better than her and compensates for this by calling her a freak. Sev never takes Lily off the pedestal even as they begin to grow apart and just as Petunia sinks deeper into her “ultra ordinary” prejudiced persona, Sev sinks deeper into his half-blood prince persona. He hates muggles because of his father, while Petunia hates magic (or pretends to) because of her sister. Sev and Petunia are two sides of the same coin then. They both also never go on to reconcile with Lily and they go on to resent her son while also protecting him.

I said it at the beginning of all this rambling, but I’ll say it again - I wish Petunia had been as layered and grey as Sev, instead of just the bland evil stepmother figure.

So, just to be clear, the adult Petunia we get in the actual books is deplorable but I still love her character because I love how many more satisfying ways there are to re-imagine her and what she could have been. Snape’s memories - the only time we see Petunia’s past - are so rich and revealing and just have me endlessly fascinated about Petunia’s potential.

This was super long but I’ve been dying to word vomit about this character - and I’ll probably do some more word vomit meta about Snape & Petunia later on ~

Oh and regarding what it means to be a muggle in the magical world or adjacent to the magical world - don’t even get me started on the statute of secrecy! Maybe one of the reasons Petunia did turn out so awful was because she had to bear the burden of knowing about magic but not being part of it all by herself, like she couldn’t just tell her friends her sister is a witch and vent. So, maybe she had to bottle everything up.

She also mentions in the book, her sister bringing home frogs and turning them into tea cups - to an outsider maybe that looks like animal abuse or raises ethical questions.

Obliviating muggles certainly seems unethical to me and the ministry does it with great abandon.

I wish this was explored more in the series.

Petunia has a right to be skeptical it would seem, and naturally fearful as well.

[goron-king-darunia]

Annon-Guy: Marta has her flaws, don't get me wrong. She was definitely pushy at the beginning. I just don't agree about her being manipulative. She does grow as a character in my opinion, she's just hampered by poor writing, miscommunication with her unchanged Post-Battle Quotes and putting her character development in the Journal. (Crossover Titles do Marta good though.) People who defend Marta make good points personally. But, I'm sorry for disagreeing on the subject of Marta here.

I mean, that’s very fair and she’s definitely not done any favors by having all her (alleged) development happen in the journal and she DEFINITELY got the shaft for poor writing. Her main arc could have been finally having the courage to face Brute, and then they did that and then just completely forgot to develop her at all and then were like “Whoops, game’s not over, let’s do the romance thing now real quick” and then they 100% fell flat with it. I think it depends on the crossover title. Rays I think did a good job, but from what I’ve seen in Crestoria (I haven’t played yet.) she’s, like, SUPER selfish. Emil goes through some shit and he’s just like “Okay so... this is Ratatosk.” And Marta’s just “Haha, great WHEN CAN HE LEAVE?” Like... In that one moment, Crestoria basically undid all the good faith I’d built up for her. Marta in Rays? 8/10. Actually has decent interactions with everyone else and isn’t so pushy with Emil since they’re post-game and just yadda yadda’s over the important shit and just starts with her and Emil basically being a couple and Emil seems fine with it so it’s WAY less uncomfy. Marta in Crestoria (just what I’ve seen, maybe she gets better) is like -1/10 for me because they somehow made me like her less. She literally treats Ratatosk (who in Crestoria LITERALLY EXISTS WITHOUT HIS CONSENT, HE JUST FUCKING APPEARED) as a COCKBLOCK. Her main concern seemed to be NOT what Emil went through, NOT what Ratatosk must be going through, but the fact that Ratatosk lives in Emil’s body so it throws a wrench in her being able to do kissy kissy things with Emil. DotNW canon Marta is, like, 3/10 for me. Cute design, has some good moments, had great potential, and was COMPLETELY MISHANDLED. Like, obviously this is to taste so I’m not trying to shit on anyone that likes Marta as is, but I think she could have been done SO much better if they dialed that clinginess down from an 11 to an 8 and actually gave her a consistent arc instead of waffling over it. What they did early on with her and Colette? That was good. Appropriately casting Colette as Marta’s “villain” and then having Marta learn that, no, Colette’s a genuinely good person. It works well with the overall themes that sometimes good people (Richter, Ratatosk, Lloyd, Marta, Colette, Emil) make terrible mistakes and that doesn’t make them bad people. Like, I don’t think Marta is a terrible person. I just absolutely HATE how she’s written and she’s NOT someone I can see myself being friends with if I met her in real life. But then Marta’s later arcs did her so dirty. Her arc that should have been about standing up to her dad got absolutely kneecapped by Emil’s man-pain and the arc that should have been about Marta learning to accept Emil and Ratatosk as they are was completely reversed as soon as it was over because she went right back to showing Emil preferential treatment and nothing about her DEMONSTRABLY changed. We’re told she changed but the fact that this change doesn’t carry through in the battle quotes or any subsequent interactions is just... terrible.  And the manipulation bit? I’m getting that 100% from the hot springs scene. In ToS, Zelos is framed as being a sleeze who’s taking advantage of a situation and Lloyd gets punished for his crimes. DotNW tries to do a call back to that but WAY WORSE because Marta LITERALLY ORCHESTRATES THE CIRCUMSTANCES by making Emil think he’s going in for a soak with the other guys, WAITING UNTIL HE’S ALONE, putting up a sign so no one comes looking, and then sneaking in to be alone with him. She’s not a manipulator of people necessarily, but she’s DEFINITELY a manipulator of circumstance and that does NOT vibe well with me. I get that the game was trying to make it cheeky and cute and they do try to make Marta look good by having her trying to take the blame for it, but the fact that she didn’t think about the consequences before doing it, or the fact that she DID and decided they were worth it anyway just... makes me hate her for doing it. And I think the scene could EASILY be fixed if, like. Marta had ASKED Emil to go to the hot springs alone with her and he agreed and they got discovered a different way (Too loud cheeky giggling might have been enough) If Emil had been part of it consensually and then everyone accused him of being a letch and then Marta tried to take the blame like “No, it was my idea, I talked him into it.” That would have been SO MUCH BETTER TO ME. Same fundamental interaction but makes Marta look a LOT better because she’s not being a puppeteer trying to get Emil alone. She’d instead just be a hormonal, slightly pushy teen girl trying to do grown up things with the boyfriend she’s trying to woo and Emil would be doing it willingly because he likes her back. Instead Marta’s just... ambushing him and he clearly wasn’t 100% into it. This wasn’t like a welcome surprise because when he finds out she’s in there with him he SCREAMS.  Like if we saw the same scene play out but with the gender reversed: A man orchestrating a situation where a woman is in a hot spring bath alone, then putting up a sign so he can sneak in and be alone with her and she was not expecting it and her first instinct is to SCREAM? Yeah, we’d view that situation as pretty gross. Putting it in context does help because the game is trying to establish that Marta is trying to court Emil and Emil’s at least shown to not be 100% opposed. But if Emil had been a girl and Marta a boy, Marta would rightfully have gotten the blame. So I just hate it on two vectors, because the characters are low key sexist for acting like Marta couldn’t possibly have been the one trying to be a letch (even though it was DEFINITELY EMIL THAT SCREAMED so maybe high key sexist...) and Marta’s just pulling strings instead of thinking about what Emil would want. Like, even if Emil was 100% down for a sneaky hotspring couple’s bath, I think he would have liked to know about it first hand instead of being surprised by it, because even if you think Emil was 100% down for it and only screamed because he was surprised, HE STILL SCREAMED. If Marta wanted to surprise him, she could have put up the sign FIRST, and then told Emil “Hey, so, I put up the cleaning sign so the hot springs are available for just the twooooo of ussssss~” instead of what she actually did.  Maybe I’m just putting too much importance on scenes that are meant to be funny, but even if that’s true, the writers are seriously hiding some very uncomfy messages behind a veil of humor and I DO NOT LIKE THAT.

[comix-by-chloe]

What Kind of Woman?

“What kind of woman am I going to be?”

That was never a question I asked myself, neither before, nor after, I realized I was trans. There was too much riding on the “Oh gosh, I wish I were a girl” thing, or the, “Jesus Christ, just pump me with hormones NOW” thing, to the point that the consideration of who I would become never really entered my head. The major reason I never questioned it is because I KNEW what I would look like and what I would wear (and for me, the whole of one’s character was involved in what one wears), and so why even stop to consider alternative? I mean, at least I THOUGHT I knew.

If you go back in time, back into little four year-old Chloe’s head, you’ll see a vivid picture of a kid getting obsessed with a certain type - namely, the Bad Girl, and, in particular, the bad girl who rocks a leather jacket and who could cut a man just by looking at him. This image was given to you by way of POWER RANGERS, and then by way of THE SECRET WORLD OF ALEX MACK, and then by way of the animated series BEETLEJUICE - all three include an episode in which a wonderful heroine gets somehow magically transformed into an alternate version of herself (or in the case of Alex Mack, an alternate bad version splits off from her gooey self and then traps the real one in a sewer). Also, all three rely very heavily on this alternate, “bad” version of each character to don a killer fit, accentuated (as almost always seems the case in this kind of rep, at least for the early nineties) by a leather jacket.

So, okay, you were very like INTO IT. But you were also like four. So what do you do? Well, you dream about it, aaaaand you want to talk about it but you can’t because this type of thing is literally labeled as “bad” (and, for a kid who lived her life with no intention of ever breaking the rules, something “bad” was inherently wrong, which meant you would NEVER EVER PARTAKE GOSH DARN IT!!!).

Over time (and by that I mean eleven years), you finally kiiiiind of talk to your sister about it (not about the gender thing, which hasn’t even truly shown up yet), and that gives you the courage to at least draw the things you want (tho not the courage to show said drawings to literally anyone else). And so you draw and draw. And you draw and you draw and you draw. Just…leather jackets and babes - that’s what you do. One day your mom finds your drawings. And like…the shame. The agony. THE HUMILIATION. In all honesty, the drawings weren’t even anything “bad.” They were just…unexpected, and the last thing you want people to know is that there are unexpected things to be learned about you, because that could clue them into… SOMETHING else.

Later in your teenage years you finally discreetly purchase your first leather jacket, and it’s pretty cool. Do you wear it outside the house? Nah, people could see you and TALK. You just wear it in your bedroom, constantly listening in to the other rooms in the house, forever being conscious of every other family member’s or roommate’s location in case they decided to rush the door (honestly what?). Eventually the guilt (oh yeah, there’s that whole “I believe in God, and he would NOT be happy with this” thing going on, too - that’s pretty important) drives you wild and you actually tear the jacket to shreds. And then the loss makes you so sad that you buy another! And then yadda yadda yadda, you eventually go to school and start wearing them all the time and it becomes your THING and people who you become friends with tell you that they were so intimidated by you at first because you looked so COOL and INTENSE (their words, not yours [well, kinda yours; you would definitely describe someone seeing you and not saying something to you as being because you looked COOL and INTENSE]) and then on and on and on and then HOLY SHIT WHAT YOU’RE TRANS??? AND YOU DIDN’T TELL ME (YOU)!?!?!? ALL THESE YEARS!!!!! WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

So like, it was already there, right? You were already DOING IT. What you could not have anticipated, though, was just how wrong you were about everything.

For starters, personality and personal aesthetic ARE NOT mutually exclusive. This has always been tough for me to reconcile (and even now still is), because it’s created in me an inability to see these Bad Girls as reasonably human. And so, despite my incredible interest in them, I’ve never really been able to write a character I could define as a badass, especially as a protagonist, because she actually lacks all humanity (like, how could someone who looks so cool have like REAL PEOPLE problems?).

I also recognize that my OWN personality and aesthetic don’t mesh in the way people might expect - sometimes it’s been simple things, like people assuming I’m not into girls (?????), or assuming that my music taste is something that it isn’t (the discussion I had with a former boss about how my favorite genres are rap and pop still sticks in my mind); other times, unfortunately, it’s put me in more dire, even scary, circumstances, like the guy who gave me his number and wouldn’t stop overtly sexualizing and fetishizing me while I was checking him out at my register, or the dude who propositioned me for sex in the back of his Uber.  

While it’s always been a nice idea to gain a wild amount of confidence by being myself, the truth is that I’m a neurotic mess: I think too much about everything, over-analyzing this and that, whether it has to do with me or not; because of this, it’s hard for me to ever believe I’ve actually gotten to the place I wanted to be. Am I a babe who wears siccc fits like 100% of the time? Sure, but do I genuinely FEEL like it gets me to the mental state I desire? Oh, absolutely not! My overriding fears kind of still pedestal this idea of some kind of “Unattainable Cool,” and disallow me to ever achieve it.

It would definitely be better to rid myself of this idea at all - people are just…people! We all make mistakes, we all look dumb sometimes, we have our silly moments along with our serious ones; and so, trying to achieve something that is virtually impossible, and which, if achieved, would rid one of her humanity, isn’t even a goal worth having.

So what does this boil down to? Essentially, this expectation that I had of just becoming this cool girl with no thought put into it at all has kind of proven to me that these images I had of someone cool are NOT what actually makes someone cool. A lot of perceived coolness in this world is created as some kind of mystique to pique others’ interests. If I read as unapproachable, I am “cool,” but like being fun and friendly and goofy and caring and all that good shit somehow is NOT cool? NAAAAH, that’s fuckin bullshit. The coolest people I know are those who’ve been welcoming and approachable, and who were willing to be there and help myself or others when they could. There was no true mystique about them: that’s not what it was about! If a true “Bad Girl” person exists, she’s probably just a piece of shit, because living your life on mystique alone is nothing.

So what kind of woman have I become, then? Well, not this picture of the purest form of badassery I had ever seen, because that’s not something even worth attaining. Honestly, I was even wrong about the fact that I “knew” what I would look like. For a while, I thought I didn’t really have that awkward, early transition phase where you wear wild fits until you find something that really works for you, mainly because I thought I kinda showed up fully-formed; obvs, that was DEFINITELY not the case, but never could I have anticipated that I would 1) retire like all the clothing I bought at first within a year or two, 2) grow out of a lot of my clothing fairly quickly (those ‘mones, man!), 3) stop wearing jeans, and 4) start wearing skirts. This last one was the biggest, because it ended up taking my style from androgynous-butch to girly-cute/hot (depending on the skirt). But what does this style and fashion-sense say about me? Whelp, if there’s anything I’ve learned, it just shows that your style doesn’t dictate much of who you are - or at least, not with regard to a lot of the traits that really matter.

[displacedcreativity]

When I was little, I used to love Barney, like most kids in the early 90′s. At one point, I even had a stuffed Barney that was very close to the design of the toy in the show. I knew mine would never come to life, but the extra detail made it feel so magical and for a variety of reasons, it was very sentimental and I loved it dearly. I often played alone so obviously toys and stuffed animals played a big part in my imaginary adventures and this stuffed Barney was no exception.  And then while at preschool. In between arriving and naptime. Someone stole it. And I never saw it again. I was devastated, to say the least.  My grandmother got me a new one, but it wasn’t the same. Literally and figuratively. The new one was wearing a shirt for some odd reason, and it’s mouth was sewn shut and overall it looked very odd. There was no charm, no magic. By second grade, I loathed Barney. Between losing the stuffed toy and having one of the lessons I had learned from the show backfire in a painful way, I wanted nothing more to do with it.  I carried that hate for years, and eventually it turned into a neutral feeling to hardly ever thinking about it. Obviously, I knew all the words to the mean version of the ending song from the show...the “I hate you, you hate me, let’s team up and kill Barney.”  I think that’s still a thing that people start singing when they hit a certain age.  I sang it so much I actually forgot the words to the actual song. Regardless, Barney! Not something I’ve really put much thought into lately. And lately, I’ve been burned out - prior to Covid, though Covid definitely didn’t help. And while burned out I was crushed in all the worst ways possible and if I were the Doctor I would’ve died and struggled to regenerate.  Whatever spark or light I had been holding onto prior to recent events is snuffed out, gone, and it would take an impossible miracle to get it back or at least a similar spark back. Like. That person is *gone* I might as well change my name and face at this point.  Needless to say, my dreams have been various flavors of awful, and while that’s not unusual they’ve definitely ramped up in the awfulness more recently.  Last night was no exception, but the ending took a bit of a turn. I was at a school, like a mix of schools I’ve been to or seen and weird stuff was going on and I’m not sure how old everyone was? Like we were all kids, teenagers and adults all at the same time cause you know. dream logic. But then for a moment, Barney was there. Which is a first, I think. I genuinely don’t remember any dreams with Barney in it before. But. He was there! But then he wasn’t. Turns out the only people who could see him were people who still believed in the power of the Imagination. (Very Hook).  And of course, I stood there in disbelief that I couldn’t see him because  I write and draw characters all the time and imagine things, I love imagining stories and dreaming and this was even MY dream why could I NOT see him? I was kind of insulted and spent the rest of the dream trying to prove to myself and everyone that there was nothing wrong with my imagination.  Except that there was, or, is. As I was saying, that sparks been pretty much gone. The skill to create hasn’t vanished, and when I have the energy I can still make the art and write. But that spark that makes me enjoy what I made or gets the creative juices flowing. That’s gone. It’s all ash, there’s no re-igniting that flame. When I realized that in the dream I was instantly upset because it meant that I’ve failed my inner child, if I even still had one, and myself and everyone there because it meant that I couldn’t see Barney even though I knew he was there. I even went on a rant about how growing up doesn’t equate losing your imagination, losing that spark, and adults aren’t crazy for wanting to play with their imagination as a way to have fun and relax.  But everyone nodded and agreed with me, I hadn’t made any sort of realization I didn’t already know or at least, deeply understand. Like, I was right but it wasn’t what my subconscious was trying to process and deal with. And someone, I don’t know who, asked me if I loved my imagination. As it’s something that has actually plagued me many, many times and well I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve pretty much got 0 self love.  I think I said yes, or that I wanted it back, I’m not entirely sure. But it was this general acceptance that one of my strengths has always been the ability to see the magic in the mundane and to share that magic with others by creating something, be it art or a story or whatever I think is the best medium for the magic. I often squish this down in an attempt to fit in or to not look weird, but.  It doesn’t stop at stories, because I was also thinking how in general I see the potential in things, in people, in stories.  And yeah, that magic can often backfire, and it can hurt, and it can make you feel completely, totally alone when no one else see’s what you do. But that’s what I needed to say. That I can see the magic in the mundane and the potential in every person. Even though I’m burnt out and the spark is gone and I have no real creative juices and no real self love and honestly every year I survive is honestly a surprise and I still can’t promise I’ll make it to 34 for a variety of reasons, (my physical health is rubbish and yadda yadda tomorrow is never guaranteed) but. That’s part of who I am. I see the magic. I see the potential for good, and the potential for bad. And there will be people who will never see what I do, and there will be people who will! And there will be people who don’t see it, but they will believe me - some may see what I do eventually, and there will be those that will never see it even if it’s slapping them in the face and they will take that out on me in negative, awful ways and it will hurt every time. But that’s okay. And it’s okay to be hurt, and it’s okay to lose that spark because the spark is just an energy source. When the batteries die for good you don’t recharge them you throw them out and get new ones! Hell, even dead batteries that are kept in for too long can still explode acid everywhere and eat away at the insides.  So yeah, my batteries are dead, and have exploded acid everywhere, and it will take a long time to pry them out, clean up and repair the damage and get fresh batteries. And it’s always possible that I’ll never make it that far.  But when I realized this, in the dream. Magic from the mundane and the batteries...Barney popped up again. Though more of a strange dream version of Barney this time, and actually to be completely honest I couldn’t see the face because it was taller than me so all I could really see was a colorful torso but REGARDLESS.  I hugged the dream dino and for the first time in YEARS. I remembered the actual lyrics to the ending song from the show. “I love you, you love me. We’re a happy family. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, won’t you say you love me too!” What a thing to forget.  And I realized, that that’s generally my response to when something I love ends up hurting me in someway shape or form. Ever since I was a small child that’s how I learned to react to a lot of my trauma. The logic of...”It can’t hurt me if I hate it.”  Like I’ve known for a while that I’ll avoid something if there’s too much negativity attached to it, and obviously there are lines that will always need to be drawn but. Love won’t always make  you feel good, and that’s okay. But replacing love with hate isn’t always what you should do, and hate with always make you feel like crap.  Anyways, I’m kind of losing my train of thought but ultimately. I woke up feeling... lighter, in a way. There’s still a lot of bad and I’m stull hurting and broken, etc etc etc but I woke up with no hatred for Barney or sour neutrality and generally my feelings for the show (I’m assuming it’s still on) is that I think it’s a great show that encourages kids to be imaginative and to be loving.  And my inability to remember the original lyrics of the song has been replaced with me genuinely struggling to remember the mean lyrics, and I don’t even feel bothered to look them up, because why? Why waste energy I don’t have hating something for unintentionally hurting me, especially when it was something I loved so much and helped me get through other dark, traumatic events that I was exposed to at a very young age? I mean, I’m not about to go out and start buying a whole bunch of Barney merchandise and start watching show, but I can allow myself to enjoy my memories of it from when I was a kid and also forgive myself for hating something just because I was a kid in pain who wanted to protect themselves when no one else would.  This sort of thing is more complicated when it comes to people, but, baring exceptions, it’s okay to love the good memories. It’s okay to still love a place, or a thing, or a food you enjoyed alongside a toxic ex, and it’s okay if you can’t do that.  It’s okay to never want them in your life ever again, and it’s okay to hope that things can heal and mend and the two of you can reconnect in a healthy manner and the second time around is positive and healthy.  It’s okay to grieve a death for as long as you need to, and it’s okay to move on and find love again.

But whenever possible, chose love. Because love will let you know when to change your batteries, hate will make you keep those dead batteries till they explode acid everywhere and corrode you from the inside out because you hate being alone, afraid, or whatever negative thing is eating away at you but I can garuntee it’s not love that’s making you keep the dead batteries, it’s the deep desire to avoid something negative you hate or are afraid of and that’s perfectly understandable and a reasonable response and everyone works at their own paces.  And if you think it will help, write a sticky note that says “change the batteries” or whatever and stick it somewhere you can look whenever you need a reminder. Start with small things! Or don’t! It’s completely up to you! Just whenever you can, remember to chose love, and look for the magic in the mundane and the potential in people. Love can take you everywhere, hate will get you nowhere. 

[near-seth-experience]

This is a long, personal, 3 in the morning kind of ramble. Writing as if I'm explaining things to others tends to help me get my feelings out. Don't feel obligated to read this, but you're welcome to. I'm mostly just thinking out loud here. I'm on mobile, so sorry if this gets long. I don't know if Keep Reading cuts are possible on the app, and if they are I havent learned how to insert them. I'll probably delete this later so whatevs.

I think this topic could apply to a lot of selfless people out there, so I think putting some things into words might be helpful to others.

Anyways, I've thought about this before, and I'm not sure if I've ever talked about it, but I'm pretty sure I've pinpointed a pretty massive reason why I feel lonely and incredibly dissatisfied all the time:

I've always felt that I was considerate to a fault. I'd never put my needs ahead of the needs of others. To this day, I still have lots of difficulty when it comes to looking after numero uno. I learned early on that I needed to keep others appeased in order to feel safe. My siblings frequently butted heads growing up, and one of them often had these big fights with my dad. Lots of tears, yelling, a rare hole in the wall, that kinda thing. It fell on me to keep tempers from flaring. Ultimately, I became the kid my dad always called when he needed help with yardwork. I became the kid who would hand my mom a soda after a heated phone call with a high-maintenance sibling, and I'd sit and let her vent to me. I became the kid who would unload the dishwasher or take out the trash without being asked to do so. Whenever things got heated, I would shift into the role of family de-escalator. Point is, I've always lived for others, and no, this isnt one of those posts talking about living for yourself, yadda yadda yadda. I'm thinking in a different direction, but it'll wrap back around.

Recently I've been trying to think of this in a positive light. As shitty as things might have been, I've grown up to be incredibly considerate. It's one of my better qualities, the beginning and end of my list of good things I can confidently say about myself as a person. It was always out of necessity or fear. It was always pretty damn unappreciated. It always kind of felt like I was everyone's bitch. But it was good of me all the same.

Now that I'm my own person, I've realized two things. Firstly, I love helping out. I love knowing that someone is better off for having me by their side. It's kind of why I loved proofreading in my college English courses. I loved being thanked and feeling valued and wanted for my efforts. I loved the gratification of knowing that someone's story or essay received better marks thanks in very small part to my help. I love knowing I made a mark in someone's life for the better in some way. My personal golden rule is essentially to ask yourself at every turn if there's some little thing you can do to ease another person's burden. If the answer is yes, and the means are within reason and your comfort zone, do it.

The second thing I realized was something that is said a lot: relationships flow both ways. Nobody in my life— not my 2 or 3 superficial friends, not my family, literally nobody— has deserved the amount of effort I have spent for their sakes. I'm burnt out. I'm dissatisfied with my life because everything I do for the sake of another person feels like a chore. I am constantly taken for granted, and the only reason I still bother is because it's even tougher to go against my nature and do nothing. It's not like I'm asking for recognition, but just once I'd like to hear sincerity when someone thanks me. Even better, I'd like someone to legitimately care enough to look into my eyes for a change, see how not-okay I am, and ask themselves if theres anything they could do.

I can only think of one time that has ever happened, and the circumstances are still a trigger of mine so I'm gonna keep the story brief.

(TW Death & Animal Death. Skip this next paragraph if you need to)

My senior year of high school, a freshman was found dead in the school swimming pool. No foul play suspected, people just didn't see him go under during or between gym class. Real tragic. So the school goes on lockdown while they look into things, and then they cancel the rest of the day. I go home, and I find my dog dead. She was old and losing vision, and she fell into our backyard swimming pool. It was partially drained for the winter, so she didnt drown, we think falling down four or five feet onto the concrete of the shallow end while blind may have just been a massive shock. Heart attack, or she hit her head or something. Who knows. Anyways, my mind connected the two events. Two pool-related deaths on the same day. For the first class on the following day, my teacher arranged the desks in a big circle and it was honestly a really good hour-long discussion about loss and grief, but it hit me so hard that people thought I knew the freshman student. The teacher, and a friend of mine both came up to me after class, I told them what happened, got a hug from the friend, and sent home for the day by the teacher.

(/End TW)

That was the only time in memory where someone has ever looked at me and knew I wasn't alright, and I imagine it must have been very obviously written on my face. Now, back to the point. The amount of times I've seen the troubled faces and heard the troubled voices of those I care about and did any little thing to help is severely disproportionate to the amount of reciprocation. It's like I actively look to see if people need me, but they never even care enough to consider looking if I need them.

So, here are my takeaways:

I'm dissatisfied with life because I'm tired of bending over backwards for people who don't even deserve to have me, and that's basically all I'm doing with my life.

I'm lonely because that covers literally everyone I know personally.

So fuck 'em.

I feel like I have some kind of void inside me, and don't think I'll ever have true fulfillment in this regard unless life throws me a cheesy series of events that results in me finding my soulmate or at least something mutual. (Lmao, yeah right. Press X to doubt).

People often say "live for yourself" or "you dont need others to be whole" in regards to this kind of thing. While that's generally sound advice, people do have different natures. Living for others is how I live. There's no way around that, it's who I am, so my interpretation of "living for myself" is choosing for myself who to live for.

[raven-moon33]

concept

In Journey to the West, nearly every time Sanzang gets captured by demons, it is due to him wholeheartedly believing the half-baked sob stories disguised demons give him while simultaneously ignoring Wukong’s warnings on what these demons really are. (Despite the fact it’s been proven time and again over the course of nearly two decades that Wukong has Sanzang’s back and no reason to lie about demons-in-disguise).

I think (and correct me if I’m wrong here) that it can generally be agreed that even the most gullible and stubborn amongst us would quickly grow to trust Wukong’s judgement on these things by the third or fourth could’ve-easily-been-avoided encounters with bloodthirsty demons.

Now, keeping this in mind, we must also remember that, in order to attain Buddhahood, Sanzang had to undergo 81 tribulations. In fact, many of the group’s misadventures were the direct results of celestial interference in order to ensure Sanzang faced the neccessary number of trials.

Taking both of these facts into account, I would now like to submit before the jury that a conversation along these lines likely occured between Sanzang and the Bodhisattva Guanyin either before or very early on in the journey:

(Guanyin)G: What’s that you’re packing?

(Sanzang)S: This? It’s my long staff. My elders have trained me in the art of self defense so I will be sufficiently prepared for any dangers I may encounter on the long journey ahead of me.

G: Oh, you won’t be needing that. I have arranged it so that you’ll be getting four powerful disciples who will protect you on your journey.

S: That’s very kind of you Bodhisattva, but shouldn’t I be able to defend myself in case I get captured by demons or rogues? I don’t want to be helpless after all.

G: Yeah, about that...You remember that the journey to enlightenment involves overcoming obstacles?

S: ...Yes...?

G: Well, in your case it’s going to take 81 life-or-death type trials, so it’ll make things easier if you just let things happen y’know? So no weapons or self defense for you mister.

S: That...that seems a tad...excessive...must I really undergo 81 trials involving such danger? Is that a prerequisite for all monks looking to become Buddhas?

G: Well no, typically you just have to relinquish all worldly attachments and strive to do good in all things to become a Buddha, but see, I’m looking to redeem a few spirits- your future disciples fyi- and one of them in particular is going to have to save you A LOT in order to redeem himself for his past crimes. :)

S: ??! And who have you chosen to be my disciples exactly??

And, in no particular order, a few more similar conversations/events throughout the journey west:

S: There’s no way in heck I’m eating this chick’s food. She’s clearly a demon and that rice is definitely poison. I better yell for Wukong before Wuneng chokes on his own saliva or Wujing and Bailong try her food-

G: (Speaking directly into his mind) No wait! This is a perfect opportunity!

S: For what??

G: For one of your trials! We have to squeeze a lot of them in, so might as well start early. And this one wasn’t even planned!

S: But Bodhisattva, I’m pretty sure she’s trying to eat me.

G: That’s the idea.

S: ...Are you really trying to help me or were we enemies in a past life?

G: Great just like that. Okay now tell him you want him gone and to never both you or your disciples again.

S: But he’s only trying to protect me!

G: Oh don’t worry, he’ll ‘convince’ you to let him stay. It’ll take at least two more times before he actually leaves.

S: Don’t we need him to stay on the journey??

G: Well of course we do silly! We’ll just give him a few days to realize how he misses you lot and once you, Wujing, and Bailong get captured or immobolized by a demon we’ll send Wuneng back to get him. Wukong learns the power of friendship and Wuneng gets knocked down a peg. Win-win!

S: Is this demon really powerful enough to capture the three of us and make Wuneng desperate enough to beg Wukong for help?

G: Oh not a chance. I’m talking about the other one up the road.

S: WHAT-

S: Oh yeah, random child tied to a tree, supposedly for days yet showing no sign of dehydration or bodily damage. That’s not suspicious or anything.

G: Now Sanzang-

S: I know, I know. 81 tribulations yadda yadda yadda.

G: Atta’ boy! Oh, before I forget, it might be hard tied up and stuff, but could you try to make sure Wukong doesn’t do too much damage to this one? I’m liking the looks of him and think I might want to make him my disciple.

S: ...why- I don’t- WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?

(Wukong)W: Master they’re demons! If you go with them they’ll eat you!

S: (Cringing internally) Now Wukong, how could you say this slander about such honest, hard-working souls?

(Wuneng/Pigsy)P: Yes yes, such kind souls! You should listen to Master, eldest brother. Never could such fine-featured ladies harbor any sinister intentions!

W: But Master they’re tricking you! 

S: (Internal pained sigh) Enough Wukong. I won’t listen to such stories. Go, get us fruit or rice before we leave for today’s travel.

W: But-

P: You heard Master! Go get some food for him!

S: Why do you do this Wuneng? I am THIS CLOSE to whacking you upside the head. This is difficult enough without you antagonizing him, so get your head out of your OH FOR THE LOVE OF BUDDHA QUIT DROOLING! JOURNEY OR NO JOURNEY I WILL SMACK YOU.

S: (Fighting the urge to bang his head into the nearest wall) Wukong how could this elderly woman possibly be a demon?

W: SHE HAS FANGS MASTER! FANGS!

S: She’s already explained about her family’s curse-

W: WHY DO YOU NEVER BELIEVE ME?!

S: Trust me Wukong, this hurts me WAY more than it hurts you.

S: They didn’t even tie the bonds properly. If I wiggle my wrists in a certain way I can probably get them off with no trouble-

G: No Sanzang stay where you are. Wukong’s going to be there soon. 

S: They are debating whether to bake or boil me and escape is literally RIGHT THERE-

G: But I have a thing planned! It’s going to be awesome!

S: (Screams in frustration)

S: (Tied up and hanging from the ceiling with his disciples in similar positions) (Deadpan) Oh wow. They turned out to be demons. Who could’ve possibly seen this coming?

G: Stop it! Do you want your disciples to catch on?

S: OH WELL NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT-

And such is our favorite monk’s life throughout the journey west. :)

BONUS:

(Wujing, Bailong, and Wuneng are currently captured by demons while Sanzang and Wukong are figuring out a plan to rescue them)

W: Master, my brothers’ lives are in danger. I know that you don’t trust me, but-

S: Alright you know what? No. That is it. I’m done with this.

W: Wh-

S: GUANYIN GET DOWN HERE!

W: ...Master, Guanyin is a holy Bodhisattva, you can’t just-

G: (Appears) Sanzang-

S: Oh no, don’t you ‘Sanzang’ me! I’ve been doing this for 13 Buddha-forsaken years! No more!

G: You know how much planning I’ve put into this?

S: I don’t care! I’m sick of playing the idiot!

G: But this was going to produce the perfect amount of angst and character development!

S: Angst?! CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?! Are you serious?!

G: This story is going to become legend and be passed down for hundreds of generations, we might as well throw in some drama for the younger demographic!

S: YOU’RE PUTTING MY DISCIPLES THROUGH THIS FOR ENTERTAINMENT VALUE??

W: What are you-

S&G, in unison: NOT NOW WUKONG!

(Wukong sits quietly and watches the continuing argument in a mixture of growing confusion, amusement, and anger)

S: I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS MY DISCIPLES ARE IN DANGER!

G: Is that any different than usual?

S: YES because my first disciple THINKS I DON’T TRUST HIM!!

W: Wait, you trust me?

S: Of course I do! I trust you with my life!

W: (With a gobsmacked expression) ...Oh.

S: (Distressed noises) (Gestures frantically at Wukong) Do you see Guanyin?! Do you see what I’ve done to him?!

G: (Relunctantly) Yes but, be that as it may-

S: No! We’re telling him! If you don’t want me to tell the others fine, but he at least deserves to know!

G: Sanzang we can’t just-

W: (Now a little less shell-shock at all the plot twists suddenly developing) Actually...(casually twirling staff with a sharp-toothed grin)...I think you’ll find you can tell me whatever it is you’re hiding. Wouldn’t want me to get bored of this argument and go looking for entertainment elsewhere- (significant glance heavensward) -would we?

G: (Nervous sweat) Well y-yes but your crown-

S: Which can now only be controlled by me. (Raises eyebrow and gives Guanyin a deadpan look) Correct?

G: ...

W: Wait, so you’ve really known right from the start when we’re dealing with a demon? Every single time?

S: It’s not as if any of them even TRIED to be halfway convincing. At least you’ll get into character; most of the demons we’ve encountered don’t even prepare their cover stories before they try fooling us! Quite frankly it’s insulting, even when I’m playing the idiot.

W: So when you take the pig’s word over mine...?

S: DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THAT TROUBLEMAKING LECHER-

When several days later (after Wukong has rescued the other disciples of course) they come across a beautiful young woman who’s been robbed by a group of bandits, Sanzang is at least able to take comfort in the quick look he shares with Wukong before they listen to her flimsy rambling tale. (And quietly laugh together in the moments they go unnoticed by the others over her very obvious tail).

[birdscreeches]

Breathing Exercises || Aisha R.

My father had given my siblings and I his asthma. Not on purpose, sure, but that didn’t matter as much as the fact that now we had to live through the curse. Childhoods were bright with afternoon sun and asphalt dust, but at the end of the day it was a room of wheezes, inhalers, and nebulizers.

I remember sitting with my younger sister in my grandparents’ room. We watched TV with the volume up real high so we could hear the cartoons over the loud buzz of the nebulizer. When she’d laugh, the vapor pouring from the mask strapped on her face would puff out in billows like a dragon. When it was my turn, I blew air out, like a silent kind of whistle, and watched the mist spill out while I wheezed from the exertion. I didn’t feel like a dragon so much as completely breathless and disappointed. Even more so when I got scolded for wasting the mist I was supposed to be breathing in and given a mouthpiece attachment in what I assumed was punishment. Back then, I hated the thing, but if I could go back, I’d tell seven-year-old-me, come on, dude. You deserved it. I deserved it. We both did, didn’t we?

The neat thing about the asthma was that when we reached a certain age, it disappeared. My siblings and  I grew out of it. We grew a little taller, a little smarter, a little stronger. We grew up and mastered the art of pushing air in out of our lungs, unaided and unassisted. It was almost as if our bodies were telling us that it was kid stuff, really, to have trouble breathing. When my siblings reached twelve, the inhales and exhales were steady and sure.

When I was twelve, my breathing just got worse. My breaths were quiet and shallow. Not so much a rise and fall of my ribs but instead miniscule shifts every half seconds. I refused to take deep breaths, afraid that maybe, I’d rip at the seams. My asthma attacks got worse. They seemed to go past my lungs, now also tremors in my hands and the pounding in my chest and the buzzing in my head. I found my asthma in moments where I couldn’t stand people looking at me, or when the noisy classroom got too loud and so I banged my head against my desk once, twice, thrice, four times in quick succession, again, then again, or when the jacket I always wore for comfort now hid scratch marks and welts I gave myself to shut up the noises that followed from school and now lived in my mind, jeering and heckling constantly.

I called it all asthma until I learned what an anxiety disorder was a year later.

An anxiety disorder is a whole lot of things, but over the years, I’ve cultivated my own metaphor that I used for myself. It goes like this: in every person’s head, there’s the fear dial. You can turn it to tick from the numbers zero to ten. There’s an employee who lives in your head and it will turn the dial when danger is present. Maybe a two for when you drop your phone. A five for sound in the dark. A nine for a shadowy figure in the corner of your eye as you’re commuting home. The dial is important. It’s supposed to be there. Fear keeps us alive. It triggers the fight or flight response, releases hormones that promote fast reactions, and other things that makes me think of gazelles running from cheetahs while David Attenborough’s voice croons in the background.

“A second is all it takes between life or death,” Imaginary David Attenborough says. The gazelle makes a mistake, and claws sink into its thigh. Or the gazelle escapes and lives to prance another day. The gazelle needs fear to run as fast as it does, and we need fear too.

Anxiety is what happens when the employee in your head dies from a heart attack, or something. With its final breath, it scrambles for purchase, grabbing the dial and turning it, one, two, three, ten, past that to a section under it labeled You’re Gonna Die.

I’m now essentially Always About To Die at any given moment. The fear is a constant thrum under my skin with everything I do, and since humans can’t exactly be screaming twenty four seven, it manifests in things like paranoia and over thinking. When I can hear my head past the shallow wheezes of my lungs, I hear the constant litany in my head. Every day, it plays like a PA system in grocery store. Calm, cool, and as a matter of fact, it goes: you’re walking weird you need to fix that because you’re doing it wrong no you can’t eat in front of people they’re all watching you and you’re being greedy you’re not very smart are you you’re not very good at anything really are you you need to leave you need to be gone you need to be quiet everybody is speaking you need to speak louder speak softer speak slower speak faster you need to go to sleep you’re not needed right now go to sleep go to sleep. Good night. Insert grocery theme song here. A part of me knew the words were either wrong or magnifying small things into huge things, but logic didn’t mesh with anxiety. There’s dissonance and then there’s a disconnect. What I knew refused to make amends with what I felt. Here I am in my grocery aisle, screaming at a speaker in the corner. “You’re wrong, I know you’re wrong.” I say.

All the PA says, calm, cool, and as a matter of fact, is, Good morning shopper, did you really have to wake up today or are you just being greedy?

Greed was a word my anxiety loved to throw at me. An intense, selfish desire. Growing up in a Catholic school, greed was taught to me as one of the seven cardinal sins, one of the real bad ones that got you in those VIP hell sections. Greed is when you want too much. When you want for what’s no longer your share. What you don’t deserve. Greed was, apparently, in everything I did. Waking up. Eating. Sitting. Talking. Laughing. Smiling. Crying. Existing. All the other -ings of life. Breathing. If this was anxiety or something else in my head that maybe just wanted an excuse to finally come crawling out, I don’t know. What I did know was that by twelve years old, I started looking at every second I lived in regards to the questions like did I earn this? Did I deserve it?

When I was maybe seven or eight, my parents had signed me up for a summer swimming class, just like the rest of my siblings had when they turned seven or eight in hopes of alleviating the constriction of my airways. Every day for two weeks, I’d spend two pathetic hours in a pool. I was awful at swimming. The water was liquid fear and every inch I submerged was an inch of terror. I was graceless in a pool, and I did so awfully that I had to be taken out of the main class and taught, one on one, how to do something as simple as hold my breath. I didn’t actually get the whole concept that you were only supposed to do it when you were out of the water. Constantly, I was sucking water into my throat and lungs. It was in this class I taught myself the intricacies of drowning. It was here where I learned how to fear it. But it was in my senior year of high school I learned that maybe I deserved it.

I tried my best to avoid pools, but it was inescapable in twelfth grade. Our required PE class was swimming, and if I wanted to graduate, I had to get in the water. For two hours every week, I would drown. The moment I was in the water, my mind went loud with the mumbles: your limbs are moving in all the wrong ways you’re making a fool of yourself you’ll never get better Ma'am is yelling at you just stay under stay under stay under, the usual yadda yadda yadda. I wouldn’t have such a hard time if ten years prior, I just bucked up and learned how to swim. This pain I felt as I gulped chlorine water into my throat, as I cried tears nobody would see, as I flailed and breathed in something I wasn’t supposed to, was my punishment for once being the scared and useless little kid who didn’t want to get into the pool. Stay under. You didn’t deserve to breathe air. Stay under.

I did eventually surface, but it wasn’t my choice so much as my body’s survival instincts. It can’t seem to get with the program. What if, sometimes, I didn’t deserve to survive?

It’s a little capitalistic to subscribe to the concept of deserving things. Of having to work to deserve things. In a lot of contexts, earning things is important. Rewards only come to those who work hard, afterall, but things start to get odd when you apply the same principle to things people just inherently have. Case in point: life, living, and all its permutations. Sure, one could work hard to improve the quality of their life—and if they succeeded or not will not always be because of them, things like privilege and circumstance mucks up the entire system of deserving things even more—but you didn’t have to work to earn the right to live. Nobody asks to be born, and we’re all just here because we are. If somebody gets told they need to reach a certain quota to be alive, that’s an injustice. Prejudice, in extreme cases. Ascribing the concept of having to deserve to live brings up the corollary of who deserves to die. That’s called playing god, and over the course of history, it’s generally frowned upon.

I figure I can play god when it’s just in the confines of my head since the only one frowning is me. One of the ways I cope with the constant stream of noise that sometimes makes sense and sometimes doesn’t, is to use a solid system of deserving. Worth. It filters the noise down to what’s true and what isn’t. If I recited well in class, I earned the right to hang out with my friends and laugh for a half hour or so. If I got a high score in an exam, I earned the right to eat dinner later that night. If I wrote at least five hundred words every weekday of a week, I earned the right to sleep in til noon on sunday. If I didn’t do something right, if I didn’t do something enough, if I got through a day without having done anything to justify my living it, I’d take away things I could do or indulge in. Food. Sleep. Contact. Those were things I had to earn. If I went even further in the wrong direction, I deserved punishment. A punch to the wall of our bathroom for every slip up I did. The next day, I fail a test because I can’t hold my pen correctly, my fingers bruised and shaking. I make up for it with the left hand, and so it goes. This is what I deserved. By ascribing achievement with worth, I silence one voice in my head that tells me I’m selfish for doing one thing. In this, finally, I can breathe. All I have to do to keep on living without the voices suffocating me is to work hard and work right and everything will be okay. 

Or it wouldn’t be.

On a given day, I’ve either deserved to live or not. One of the easiest breaths I’ve ever taken was on the top floor of a retreat complex in Antipolo. The building had five storeys along with an open roof and no railing. Just a meter tall concrete barrier. It was seven in the morning. I was seventeen. I was standing on top of the barrier. I walked it like a catwalk for a few minutes before I stopped, looked out into the dawn.

I dangled my foot forward then I did the same but back. I remember thinking about my skull crushing upon hitting the ground below. I remember standing and wondering about myself as a scale. On the end above the safety of the roof would lie all the days I deserved. On the other, the one that hung above a drop that maybe I’d survive if I was lucky, if I earned it, were all the days I didn’t deserve. I never got around to learning what the verdict was because a teacher found me right then. I had to explain with words pouring out like chlorine water that I wasn’t thinking of jumping, which technically wasn’t a lie. I was thinking of falling. 

My moment was cut short, but I swear, I felt the scales tip forward. I swear I almost followed it. I swear I would’ve deserved it. I still think I do.

From an objective perspective, my deserving-things system works in keeping me functional and productive. From another perspective, it’s apparently abuse. I understand this, but deny it when it comes to myself. If anybody were to do this to another person, I’d think them evil. When it’s just me, I call it motivation. In my defense, people who are abused never deserve it. Everything that happens to me is something I had coming. Or something I tell myself I had coming. I’m lying to myself, but I’d rather believe in motivation than the possibility I have a problem. It’s not like I deserved to even say this was all real anyway.

Nothing particularly bad has ever happened in my life to have caused this. No traumatic experience at twelve, no definitive history of bullying, no nothing. One of the worst things anxiety has ever done to me was rob me of a reason, and I’m not even sure if the anxiety is real or not. I don’t even want to know. I refuse to see a counselor or a doctor because the prospect of having an answer terrifies me more than having a question. What if I get diagnosed and it’s real? I actually have a problem. What if my cartoon metaphor isn’t just for kicks, but my brain is genuinely wired differently in a way that causes me trouble not everybody else goes through? The implications of it being real would mean things like treatment, therapy, medication, expense. Anxiety never existed past my own body and so the thought of it becoming tangible and real has me crawling back to the safety of uncertainty.

On the flipside is the possibility that really haunts me though; the one I can’t decide on whether or not it’s better or worse. What if I go to a doctor and there’s nothing wrong? What if I’m fine? Every single thing I had gone through was a fabrication. Every terrible thing in my brain was something I made up. I’ve been lying this entire time, and I didn’t even notice. I was a fraud in every sense of the word, not just to everybody I know, but to myself.

Maybe I deserved that; the death sentence of knowing if it was yes or no. But this wasn’t the type of deserving that set my mind at ease. It was the kind that scared me. The kind I’ve been shying away from. It’s this fear that hinders me from moving forward and even beginning to recover. How do you get better from a sickness you don’t believe is there?

My maybe-maybe-not anxiety has plagued me for years and it’s made my life worse. In spite of this, I refuse see if it’s a real issue and I refuse to seek help for something that might be a fake one. I assume that maybe there’s a part of me—perhaps the survival instinct that never got the memo—that wants to get better, that wants whatever the hell this might be out of my head. But then I wonder if there will be anything left behind.

My anxiety dictates how I function. How I sleep, eat, talk, breathe, live. Take that away, and I’ll be years late in the game of figuring out how to exist in a world I never had to earn to live in. Eighteen is young still, so maybe I have time, but it’s daunting. Fear is sometimes a warm blanket to hide under. Something, something about dogs and old tricks. The usual excuse. My guise of I can’t do it actually just a farce to hide the scared shaking, terrified kid who didn’t want to go swimming saying, over and over again, I don’t want to do it. The difference, I guess, is that it’s not as hopeless as I’m making it out to be.

A month ago, urged by a week of monumental stress punctuated by a panic attack each day, I started smoking. My lungs aren’t asthmatic anymore, so physically, I can take it. Every other day I’d pull smoke into my mouth, wait til I could inhale it into my lungs, hold it until I was ready to breath out, like a silent kind of whistle. The dragon of my childhood dreams.

It was the perfect compromise. A smoke was a punishment because I knew it was messing up my health, but it was also a reward because it shut my mind up for a blissful few minutes, the voices steadily trickling in. I liked smoking. It was quiet, it was bad for me, and, ironically, my lungs felt lighter each time.

Maybe, after years of wheezing followed by years of frantic, shaking rasping, I got tired of not doing this whole air thing right. Maybe I started smoking to teach myself how to breathe again. It’s not much but, however misguided, it’s still a step. I figure if I can take one, I can take another. Then another. Then another.

[chelfierambles]

long venting rambling under cut. sry just needed to get it out. 

Ok but seriously, people wonder how fundamentalist Christians can possibly think the way they do and I have a hard time telling them I know *exactly* how they think the way they do because I fuckin grew up with it and still live with it.  And you wonder why I have a hard time trusting and believing in myself and being confident in my own opinions.  Because I was fuckin brought up with my dad sayin how the rest of the world has been brainwashed to accept a non-natural way of living as something normal.  Fundamental Christianity is pretty much saying there is only *one* right way to believe. And that’s even within the sects of Christianity because apparently the Church itself has been infiltrated by socialist/communist/liberal/whatever you wanna call em to tear down the traditional values from the inside.  (traditional Catholics hate the current pope btw. a guy who I for once actually like.) Christians.. or maybe specifically Catholics (iunno I can only talk from my own personal experience), are the ones being persecuted with their way of life being shunned by the rest of society. Because they believe in the natural law, and something about only a specific way to receive God’s grace and whatnot.  I can’t even recall all the words but I know the feeling all too well. But basically the Catholics are the ones who appear strange with their beliefs but really the rest of society is being brainwashed. The rest of society is what’s stupid for not understanding what’s natural. Anyone who aligns or sympathizes with that has been brainwashed. And if you think that’s where it ends, wait til I get started in the fuckin prophecies they’re all into and how the devil is involved in all of this. Growing up hearing this basically says “you can’t trust what anyone else says except for me. you can’t trust your own experiences because the rest of the world has already been infected with this thinking.” But only now after dealing with the aftermath of an abusive relationship involving a close loved one and learning about what happened, I’m just learning now how the same tactics were done to us (siblings and myself) in other ways in my own family by my own parents.  It’s fuckin gaslighting. And I have such trouble being firm in my own opinions because I’m scared what others will think. It’s so much easier to go with the flow, not say anything, or just agree with the other person. I wonder why. I fucking wonder why.  

This is what my dad thinks of lgbt rights and transgender issues. That it’s the stupid masses being brainwashed to accept it. This is what comes from his very own words. This is what he thinks of me. And I’m going to fuckin hell.  I know how ridiculous this sounds. And how those who actually do care about me try to tell me I’m not going to hell but it’s so hard when all of this is part of me too (but pls keep doing so. it’s silly but I need to keep hearing it and reassurance in this part.) That was my upbringing and regardless if I agree or not, it still binds me. I try to make judgments from my own experiences but a part of me is still terrified that I’ve already done fucked up my eternal soul yadda yadda and nothing else is gonna matter even if I do my best to do what I believe is right.  A part of me is terrified to be my own person because I’ve been taught not to trust the world. I can’t trust where I’m getting my information to make my judgments. I looked up to my parents as role models until very recently where my worldview was shattered that they would support Drump, a disgusting excuse of a human being, as the herald for Christian beliefs. That I’ve started seeing inconsistencies with what I was taught, what they were saying, and how they viewed and treated others (particularly those who live differently than them). It’s all very hypocritical.  And now I have a distaste for something I once felt fondly toward. It’s heartbreaking. I still love my pantheon and the teachings but now I can’t even trust the people who are supposed to be the good studious examples of the religion.  And I carry the guilt with me that I don’t even feel safe in a church anymore. They don’t want me if I am to go by my parents’ example.  I can still hear the sadness in my mom’s voice in her last feeble attempts to get me to go to church, and I don’t know how to say that’s it’s actually because of them that I don’t go anymore. (or at least for the time being while I sort my own feelings on the matter. I just need some time away from it.)   Anyway, I’m doing a whole lot of rambling here because i need to vent. Was having a great time drawing before I overheard my dad talking on the phone and hey that just sets off all this shit all over again. Funny the things you learn when they talk loud and think you can’t hear the shit they say.  I just need to get the ick feels out so I can go back and create some awesome shit again.  (P.S. as I’m trying to drown out my own feels in escapist fandom shipping feels to mask over it, I can’t help but wonder if somewhere in all of this is why I feel a close relation to Yuu. On a surface level, I’m not really like him at all, but something about him rly pings at me, probably at a subconscious level.  And a possibility crossed my mind that him being called a demon by his parents might be one thing that’s hit me on them sub layer fears. Maybe. iunno. I still don’t really get why I relate to him so much, I just feel it. ignore me I do a lot of introspection on myself and find it interesting.) 

[just-jordie-things]

Like She’s Mine (part one) - Stiles Stilinski

so this is my new stiles series!

warnings: heavy mentions of sex (but not smut), swearing, this is a non supernatural fic (so scott isn’t a werewolf lyd isn’t a banshee allison isn’t dead fuck you jeff davis fuck you you piece of shit and yadda) 

“Al-Allison stop there’s a customer!” I hissed, but she continued throwing seeds at me.

“You deserve this!” She said, borderline yelling.  I gave her a mock angry look, bracing my hands up in front of me while she continued pelting me.

“I made one comment!” I whisper screamed, and eventually snatching the bag of seed from her.  “Would you cut that out grow up!” Allison giggled as I zipped it back up, and put it back on the shelf in the back room.

“Yeah yeah.  You go get those out of your hair and I’ll help the customer” Allison said, rolling her eyes.  I flipped her off just before she walked out of the room.

I re situated the blue apron tied around my neck and waist, with the ironed on Lou’s Flower Shop patch on the front.  I pulled your hair out of it’s ponytail, and at least twenty seedlings fell onto the ground.  A mental note was made to kick Allison’s ass later.  I made my way back to the employee bathroom, finger brushing my hair as more seeds came out until I seemed to be clean of them.

“y/n!” Allison called.

“Yeah?” I called back, and pulled my hair up into a perfectly messy bun.

“Customer wants to speak to the manager” My brows furrowed as I made my way into the shop.

“What?” She pointed, and I walked further in, seeing who our customer was.  “Stiles!” I grinned ecstatically, and raced towards him, jumping up and hugging him tightly.  His arms caught me immediately, as they always did.

Stiles, my bestest friend in the whole wide world, had been out of town for a lacrosse tournament for the past week.  Sure, we FaceTimed every night, and texted every day, (seeing that he didn’t actually play lacrosse) but it was weird not having him around.

“I missed you so much” I breathed, and his arms stayed wrapped around me as he set me back down.

“Yeah I missed you too” He responded.  “Thought I’d surprise you instead of picking you up for Lydia’s party” You grinned sheepishly.

“This was much more fun” I said, shrugging my shoulders as he smiled back at me.

“When does your shift end?”

“Now, I’ll cover for her” Allison said.  I turned to look at her.

“You don’t have to Alli, I’ve only got-”

“You’ve only got fifteen minutes left, so I got it” Allison said, waving her hand dismissively.  “Go out for lunch or something, you’ve been moping all week” My body wiggled slightly as he squealed and clapped my hands.

“Allison I owe you a big one!” I said, untying my apron faster than ever and hanging it up behind the counter.

“I know.  I’m the best” Allison said, fluffing her hair.  I danced across the floor, kissing her cheek quickly before grabbing onto Stiles’ hand.  

“See you tonight!” 

“You too!” She called back as Stiles and I walked outside.  He swung out hands wildly between us as we walked towards his Jeep.

“I liked the surprise” You said to him with a big smile while buckling in.

“Good” Stiles responded curtly.  “Now, where to for lunch?”

“I don’t care, somewhere we can eat outside though because this weather is amazing.  It’s actually sunny and not hot, what a strange day in California” Stiles chuckled as he pulled out of the parking lot.  When I looked back to the store, Allison was going outside to water the rose bushes.

“You still like working there?” Stiles asked, catching my gaze.

“I love it, it’s a perfect little job” I responded.  He seemed to like my answer.

“And here from any colleges yet?”

“Still just Berkeley” I responded with a shrug.  Not that I minded Berkeley, it’s just I applied for an assortment of universities that appealed to me, and Berkeley wasn’t really my number one choice.  “You?” Stiles shook his head, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

“But I also haven’t seen the mail in the past week, so there could be something there whenever I get home” I nodded in response as he continued drumming.

“Ever get to play?”

“Thanks for asking, but it really just hurts my feelings more” Stiles said, and I chuckled.

“Well I was thinking you could teach me some things, over the summer, and we can practice together” 

“You wanna play lacrosse?” Stiles chuckled, and parked on the side of the road.  I looked out the window to see the old cafe we used to go to.  Usually we would just order a coffee and a pastry.  but we always talked about eating an actual lunch there.  But... those crepes just always looked so good...

“Yeah” I finally answered.  “Why not? Maybe it’d help you, and it could be fun” I said, shrugging a shoulder.  Stiles smiled over me, and we unbuckled our seat belts.

“Alright, well if you say so then sure. but you’d learn more from Scott” I shrugged again.  “You pick a table and I’ll go get menus” He squeezed my shoulder and I nodded, making my way over to an empty table with an umbrella.  I pulled back the metal chair, and set my purse on the tabletop as I sat down.  Just as I’d pulled my phone out, checking Insta and Snapchat, a shadow fell over me.

“Stiles” I smiled when I looked up, but it wasn’t Stiles standing there.

“Hey, your table was empty you look like you needed company” I stared wide eyed at the boy in front of me.  He was attractive, to some standards anyways, but he held a smirk that made me shift in my seat.

“Thanks that’s very kind, but my boyfriend is coming back in a moment” I said promptly.  Thankfully Stiles came outside at that moment.  “Hey babe” I said with the biggest smile I could muster.  He was confused for a millisecond before his eye line cut to the boy in front of me.

“Hey y/n, I got the menus” He said with an equally large smile, then sat down across from me.  “Who’s this?” He asked.

“I’m- uh leaving” The guy walked off before anything else could be said.  I sighed in relief and leaned over the table, putting my hands flat on it.

“God bless you Stilinski” I breathed, and he smiled again.

“No prob, babe” I rolled my eyes and took a menu from him.

“I’ve got other plans” I said cheekily, opening it up.

“Like getting into Theo Raeken’s pants tonight at Lydia’s party?” I raised an eyebrow at Stiles.  “You eye fucked him all year y/n.  I figured tonight was the night” My questioning glance turned into a smug one, and I winked.

“As a matter of fact, tonight is the night.  And it’s going to be amazing” I said.  Stiles looked down at his menu, hiding his face.

“I think I’m gonna try a Paganini” He mumbled.

“You wanna help me with my outfit? Lydia was gonna do it but she’s prepping for tonight” But he continued to keep his face buried in the list of foods.  “Stiles?”

“Or maybe..no.. no a sandwich sounds good?”

“Stiles” I snatched the menu from his hands and he opened his mouth to protest.  But I was faster.  “Do you want to help me or not?” He sighed in defeat.

“Yeah, yeah sure y/n” He said, and I smiled, and looked at my own menu.

We ended up ordering two different sandwiches, and switching because we didn’t like our own.  We talked more about his tournament, my job, ideas of things we could do over the summer, pretty much anything that came to mind.  That;s just the way our friendship was, we did whatever whenever.  It was easy really.  I don’t think anyone in history had a friendship as great as Stiles’ and mine.  We were unbreakable and irreplaceable.

When we finished lunch, we headed over to my place so I could get ready.

“You have no idea how excited I am” I said excitedly.  I was in a bikini at the moment, going through my closet to wear something over it.  Stiles was sat on my bed, watching every time I held up a possible outfit to wear over it.

“Too skimpy” He said as I held a pair of shorts and a strapless crop top.

“That’s sorta the point Stiles.  I want to wear something easy to take off when I’m with Theo tonight” Stiles rolled his eyes.  “Well? Do you think it’ll be good?”

“Why don’t you try the black leather skirt” I grabbed what he was referring to from my dresser, and pulled it up.  It fell to my mid thigh.

“With what top?” I pondered, wandering over to my closet now.

“The white tank top with no sleeves and the collar” Stiles said.  I pulled it out and buttoned it up, tucking it into my skirt.  I smiled at the outfit I’d pulled together.  Well, Stiles did.

“Wow, this actually looks good” Stiles rolled his eyes.

“Now sit down and braid your hair” He said, shaking his head with a slight smile.  I sat down on the bench in front of my vanity, surveying my reflection.

“Thanks Stiles, you are literally the best” I blew a fake kiss while tying my hair in a loose ponytail braid down my back.

“I know” He said cockily and pulled out his phone.  He took a picture of me, and from the typing he did I figured he was Snapchatting.

“Who to?” I asked, tying a hair tie at the end of my hair.

“My story.  I’m crediting myself for your stunning outfit” He said.  I gave a curtsy before pulling out my eyeliner.

“Cat eye right?”

“Girl you know it” I laughed, having to drop the wand as not to smudge as my shoulders shook.  He got up and looked at me through the mirror, standing behind me.  “You look great y/n” I smiled sweetly and he dropped a light kiss to my hair, squeezing my shoulders.  “I’m getting a drink, be right back” He said, and I nodded, going back to my makeup.

When he left the room, and I finished applying the sharp black wing, I checked my phone.  Instantly going to Stiles’ story.  There was a picture taken from the front seat of the jeep, an open road in front of it.  Then a video of Scott singing Hello way off key, with the caption HACKED on it.  At the end you could hear Stiles yelling at him to get off his phone.  After the video was a photo of the flower shop I worked at, and below it said surprising my favorite y/n today.  I smiled big at that one.  Lastly was the photo of me, grinning sheepishly as I was looking at Stiles rather the camera.  It was exceptionally candid, and Stiles had written she’s beautiful on her own but I think I did an excellent job for tonight.  I accidentally blushed, and shut off my phone.

“I'm back” Stiles hollered, walking into my room, and plopping back into his spot on my bed.  “Eyes look great” He said, giving me an okay sign as he drank from his glass of water,

“Merci” I said, posing for a short moment.  Then began to tidy up my vanity.  “Are we going to your house for anything? Are you gonna swim?” Stiles shook his head.

“No that pool’s gonna be crowded and I want no part of that” I chuckled, closing up the drawers and standing up.  I smoothed out the non existent wrinkles on my skirt, and looked over my room.  

My eyes landed on a necklace on the top of my dresser, and I wandered over to it.  My fingers looped into the chain, and I attempted to link it behind my neck.  After a minute of this attempt Stiles chuckled and came over, linking the hook and the ring together.  I looked down at the locket, and turned around.  Stiles smiled at it, opening it up, revealing a picture of him and I that Scott had taken last year.  We were at school, in science.  I was obviously sleeping, my head on Stiles’ arm, lying on the desk.  He was trying not to laugh, but was unable to suppress the goofy grin as he looked at the camera.  Allison had been sat in front of me, and tilted her chair back to give my sleeping self bunny ears.

“I’ll never understand why you chose that one, of all the pictures to put in a necklace” I said, whilst giggling and closing the locket.  It didn’t really look like one.  It was a metallic circular medallion.  A few swirl engravings over it.  When you weren’t standing right in front of me, it just looked like a plain necklace.  But to me it was beautiful because of what it held on the inside.  Stiles shrugged in response, and walked back to his glass of water on my desk.

“I don’t know, I guess it’s just one of my favorites” I looked down at the locket, still held in my fingers, then placed it neatly and centered on my collarbone.

“Yeah me too” I said with a smile.

“Are you nervous?” Stiles asked, parking in the street near Lydia’s house.  I pondered the question, unsure of how to answer without being totally sure of myself.  In a way, no of course I wasn’t.  It was at Lydia’s house, all of my friends would be there, I was slaying the look Stiles had picked out for me, and to top it all off, I was wearing my lucky necklace.  But on the other hand… well maybe a little.  Big crowds wasn’t exactly my strong suit.  If I was left alone in them for more than 15 minutes I began to get a little claustrophobic and self conscious.

“I don’t think so” I responded, and pulled down the sunshade to look in the mirror.

“If you’re nervous about how you look, you really shouldn’t be” Stiles said.  “Because you really do look beau-”

“y/n!” A bouncing and grinning Allison skipped up to the passenger's door, pulling Scott behind her.

“Hey!” I said, getting out of the car to hug her.  Scott took her drink from her hand, probably so she wouldn’t spill it all over me.

“You look fantastic! Whose hips are you grinding on tonight?” Allison asked.  I could almost hear Stiles’ teeth grinding.  I put a hand on his arm as I replied.

“Theo’s” I answered with a simplistic tone.

“Ooooh” Allison batted her eyelashes.  “Well it’s ‘bout time.  I’ve been watching you two check each other out since last spring” She chuckled, and I rolled my eyes a little bit, biting my cheek so I wouldn’t smile too wide.  Stiles was clearly set off by the idea.  “Plus he’s like, mega hot” Scott coughed, and Allison giggled, her eyes darkened in drunkenness. When she turned to him, Scott smiled at her tightly.  “Don’t worry babe, you’re like… you’re… you’re… super mega hot times infinity” Scott laughed, and handed me the red plastic cup he’d previously taken from his girlfriend.

“Time to get you some water” He said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.  “Good to see you y/n” He waved slightly, and I returned it.“See you in a bit McCall” I said, watching as he and Allison walked off to a more secluded area outside.  It was then I realized my hand was still on Stiles, to which I dropped it to my side.

“Wanna go in and find Lyd?” He asked, and I nodded, taking in a deep breath.  “You’re going to be fine.  Great! Besides, I’m not leaving your side until you tell me to” I smiled weakly in a silent thanks, then tucked my hand under his arm as I walked with him inside.  My eyes had fallen down to land on our shoes.  I was in black flats, and he was in old converse.  I smiled at them, how they’d somehow provided a comfort.  I’d seen these shoes a million times.  If it wasn’t these, it was Star Wars socks, or lacrosse cleats.  “You good?” Stiles asked me.

“Yeah, I think your feet just made me feel better” He chuckled, shaking his head as I looked up at him through my lashes.  “Tonight’s gonna be fun” I said, mostly to hear myself say it.  He nodded curtly.  “And we’re going to have a great time” Stiles nodded again, smile growing.  “Let’s go get a drink first”

“One, then we loosen you up in a few dances, then you go find your dream boat” He said the last part in a more sarcastic tone, but I giggled and agreed to the plan.

Three cups of beer later I was looser than the brakes in Roscoe.

I was cheering and dancing, swinging my hips and waving my hands up in the air.  Here and there Stiles would laugh and spin me around, dancing in funny ways to make me laugh then saying no no, this is my best move.  Every new one worse than the last.  But it made me laugh, and I knew that’s what he was going for.  While twirling, my eyes landed on a certain brooding boy that had been catching my attention lately.  I curled back into Stiles, one hand in his, the other on the back of his neck as I leaned in close to his ear.

“Theo’s watching” I whispered to him.  I could hear him swallow, and pulled away to see him looking for the dirty blonde boy.  “Dance sexy with me” I said quickly.  Stiles’ wide eyes shot to mine.

“What!?” He whisper screamed.“Dance sexy with me, we have to peak his interest” I said quickly, squeezing both of his hands.  “Please?”

“y/n” He whined, giving me a pouty look.“It’ll only be for a second I promise” I told him, and pressed my chest to his, slowly setting my elbows up on his shoulders, my hands in his hair in moments.  His own hands landed on my waist in no time at all.  I smirked at his reaction, looking down at my feet as they barely moved, but the whole rest of my body did.

“This will not end well” Stiles whispered, his lips barely brushing the shell of my ear.“No” I responded in agreement, and I’d never admit it, but it was an accident when I grinded against him, pure instinct.  “It’s gonna end great” I giggled at the feather light ticklish feeling of his hands wandering up to my waist.

“He’s looking for sure now” Stiles said, pulling away abruptly.

“Uh Stiles-” I clamped a hand over my mouth, trying not to look down.  His eyes lowered to his khakis.

“Damn it y/n you gave me a boner!” I laughed, I tried not to I really did but i couldn’t help it.

“I am so so sorry” I said between giggles.  “I mean that I really am” I said.  He was red with embarrassment.

“I’m gonna go and… fix it?” Stiles scratched the back of his head.“Do you need help-?”

“No definitely not” He chuckled.  I nodded, giving him an apologetic look.  I suddenly felt really bad… “It’s fine y/n, trust me, taking care of it will not be bad, for me anyways.  Anyone trying to get into the bathroom’s just gonna be grossed out-”

“Ew Stiles” My face contorted into one of disgust, and he just laughed.

“Okay well, call me if you need anything, enjoy lover boy and,” He stepped closer, putting a hand on my shoulder as he lowered his voice and looked directly into my eyes.  “Just remember you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.  If at anytime something goes wrong, or you don’t like something, or literally anything, call me, find me, anything you have to do y/n and I’ll be there in a second” I smiled softly at the protective side of Stiles.

“I know.  I know how to take care of myself” I snuck a secret glance to Theo, who was looking at his phone for the moment.  I took his downcasted moment to press he lightest of kisses to Stiles’ cheek.  He gave me a look of surprise.  “I would’ve hugged you, but I didn’t want to strain lil Stiles” I pointed down to his khakis, and he groaned, rolling his eyes.  Though it didn’t really seem like it was a ‘little’ Stiles stuck in there at all.  I blushed, and coughed.  “You go fix yourself, and I’ll go fix myself” I said, walking backwards towards where Theo was standing against the wall.  He gave me a thumbs up and turned around, swiftly making his way to Lydia’s bathroom.  I spun on my heel, confidently waltzing up to Theo.  His eyes caught me, and shameless wandered my body.“Well hello” He said in an amused tone.  “Where’s your little partner?” He asked, raising a brow.  I gave a slight pout.“He got bored of me” I said.  “Do you want to dance with me instead?” From the look on is face, I knew his answer was a yes, and that his mind was reeling with images of me dancing on Stiles.  I tugged on his hands.  “Come on, come play with me” I said, smiling cheekily as we were on the dance floor, again surrounded by people.

His lips were hot, and his kisses were hard and needy.  Mine were all the same, and I let his hands run down my sides.  We’d somehow gotten ourselves up the stairs and into Lydia’s room without breaking skin contact once.  I wasn’t sure how it wasn’t already occupied (poor Lyd she was always buying new bed sheets) but as soon as we’d come in, I kicked the door shut and locked it for extra precaution.

I finished unbuttoning my top, the first four had been ripped open, but I wasn’t in the mind to care about it.  In seconds I had it peeled over my head, and his hands had yanked open the back zipper of my skirt, hastily shoving the fabric down my leg.  His hands splayed around my hips, gripping tightly.  He mumbled a barely coherent “jump” against my mouth and I obliged, legs winding around his waist as his hands dropped to my ass.  I squealed, and giggled, and we fell back on Lydia’s bed.

“You’ve got… right?” I panted.

“Of course babe”

It was a night to remember for sure.  But not the way I wanted it to be.

I woke up alone in Lydia’s bed.  And instantly, my head ached and my legs throbbed.  I groaned loudly, the light from the windows making my brain pound against my skull.  I wanted to gouge my eyes out they hurt so badly.

“Thought you’d be up soon” I sat up slightly, just enough to see Lydia’s figure leaning against the doorway.  I whined, taking in my surroundings slowly, trying to remember the past ten hours.  “I brought you water and advil” She announced, and I thanked in with a breath of relief.  I took them quickly, licking my lips and blinking quickly.  My eyes landed on the empty space next to me.  “He left around two am” Lydia said.  I rubbed my hands over my face, still unable to form a proper sentence.  “Stiles is in the guest room, and he’s probably got a worse headache than you” She told me in a soft tone.  Lydia’s fingers ran through my hair gently.  “Need anything else?” I shook my head.  “Alright, well I’ll leave you be” She said, and left the room as quietly as she could.  

After continuing to rub my eyes, willing the pain to be gone, I forced myself to stand.  Tears brimmed at the dizzy feeling, which only made me hurt more, but I managed to walk into the guest room.  Stiles announced his presence by moaning.  Through the black spots of my vision I could see him lying face down in a silky pillow, under one comforter.  The ceiling fan was turned on medium, which made me relieved.

“ ‘m joining you” I mumbled, dragging my feet through the carpet as I made my way to his bed.

“y/n y/n y/n” Stiles mumbled when I crawled in.

“How much did you drink” I whispered so quietly my voice was a breath.

“Too much” He mumbled back, eyes clenched shut.  “I’ve been puking all morning”

“I can tell” I whispered.  “Your breath smells like mint and you never brush your teeth till after breakfast”

“Don’t mention food I’ll get sick again” He groaned, and I whispered an apology.  I curled my legs up to my chest, hugging my shins.  “You’re night sounded good” Stiles eventually spoke.

“I don’t remember it” I mumbled back.

“That’s too bad” He said sarcastically.  I laughed gently at his voice being muffled in the pillows.  “You came in afterwards, told me he fell asleep and wanted to talk”

“You were here all night?”

“When the party became a bust and people left, I came up here to chill out.  You came in a few hours later, maybe one thirty” He said, eyes remaining closed, but I watched intently as he spoke.  “Told me he fucked you so good you thought your brains came out of your ears” I groaned softly, putting my hands over my face in embarrassment.

“God…”

“You don’t remember any of it?” He asked again, and I shook my head no.

“Nuh uh” I said, eyes slipping closed.  “But I know it happened” He hummed in question.  “Man cause it hurts.  I think he was like… super sloppy” Stiles made a sound in the back of his throat.

“Are you trying to make me puke”

“Sorry” I said for the millionth time.  Stiles chuckled, wrapping an arm over my legs and chest, hand landing on bare skin and the back strap of my bra.

“Are you not wearing clothes?” He mumbled.

“No” I hummed back, becoming drowsier.  He didn’t say anything else on the subject, just kept his arm over me loosely.

“When we wake up later, like.. Way later… let’s stay in all day and eat ice cream” Stiles said, and I nodded, head pressed against his chest.

“M’kay” Was all I could manage, before yawning, and falling asleep.Besides the throb behind my head and between my legs, the whereabouts of my clothes, and the scratchiness in my throat, everything was okay in the world.

haha.... baby you know what’s coming ;)

tagged: @morganschiebel and @bunnyboo10154 bc Stiles imagine

i know it’s been a while, but if you wanted to be added or removed from tag lists just let me know.  I tag for certain characters + series :)

side note: practice safe sex! xoxo ~ jordie