#such sad lost dog energy that its hard to believe he was ever meant to be a lion ranger lmao

[mo-ok]

please enjoy these screenshots of Hyuuga being dragged through the trenches

[herstarburststories]

He didn’t make it to 42

Pairing: Dean Winchester x reader

Summary: it’s Dean’s birthday, you go to visit him with some news and things that need to be said.

A/N: Happy bday, De.

Warnings: so much angst, mentions of sex, hopeful/happy ending (?)

Dean’s dead. It’s Dean’s birthday and he’s dead. You can’t argue much.

Sam denied the demon blood inside him, and that didn’t stop its evil nature from growing and gasping for his fresh air to the point he was almost shocked alive. Dean denied his dad’s destructive methods’ results for the longest time, and that didn’t stop the cicatrixes in every emotion he had ever shown. You denied the absence of Dean and that didn’t stop the bricks cracking in your soul. There’s only so far you can go with your eyes closed.

So here you are. Standing in front of an empty grave. You are bigger than the dull tombstone, yet you can’t help but not to feel tall, at all. How can you even start to talk? Talking to Dean used to be easy even when it got hard and now you’re feeling like a lost kid in a supermarket. Your snide thinking spells out his name with venom, saying it isn’t easy for you to open your barmy mouth and spill out contrarian shit because this isn’t Dean, just another meaningless symbolism that Sam promises that will help. The real Dean died almost a year ago, he was burned in a hunter’s funeral, the flames dancing over his body as the smell of burnt meat invaded your nostrils. Whenever you try to remember his fragrance, that manly aroma which you loved to scent each morning, all your brain can come up with is the odor of his skin and guts burning. The smell lingers like bad perfume, it doesn’t matter how many times you wash yourself with his soap-- that only broke your heart worse.

But today is Dean’s birthday. He deserves a visit, even if it’s not him. Then you go and attempt to deal with the desolation, push it away just a little, and pick up something from the enormous pile of things you wish to tell Dean. You glance at the cold tombstone: Dean Winchester. 1979 - 2020. Beloved son, big brother, and husband. Hunter. A hero. Simple definitions that can never make it up for who he was and what he meant. You purse your lips and cough a little, a gentle wind touches your cheek so tenderly. If you were still a believer, you’d think this is some sort of sign, Dean’s presence or some other pious hoax. All you do now is to remain in quietude, a deep breath. Ultimately, your voice comes:

‘’You didn’t make it to forty two, huh?’’ You scoff humorless, reminiscing to the multiple days that Dean said he wouldn’t go past 35. He did live each year like it was the last--- you aren’t sure if it's such a good thing. If you carry on like your days are outnumbered, you are silently entertaining yourself until death's knock on your door. ‘’I always hated when you were right. Let’s be honest, you had the words of a pessimist and the wants of an optimist. Still, if you were to be right about something, it would be about a bad situation. A nest with too many vampires, how crappy the motel’s bedroom would be, or how that third glass of wine would make me tipsy. So yeah, I always hated when you were right. And look at you now! You aren’t right, you aren’t wrong. You are dead! And I’m the crazy girl screaming at an empty tombstone.’’

You let out a laugh empty of joy. That’s how a hunter’s life is: you die and people stop talking about you because it’s too sad or too long gone to hold any pity, meanwhile the ones who recall about you go loud with all the spirits in their heads. You put your hand in the pockets of the heavy leather jacket that once belonged to a green eyed man who would be turning 42 today, some strange force causing you to speak again.

‘’Wow.’’ You shake your head to the blue way you paint the scene until you notice that you never greeted him. ‘’Hey.’’ The simple word adds a comical insult to injury. ‘’Guess the dead don’t care about manners, huh?’’ You arch your eyebrows with a grin that demonstrates anything but happiness. ‘’Miracle died. Sam digged a hole next to the bunker and buried him there. He isn’t the same since you died, you know? Not the deceased dog-- Well, he wasn’t the same either. Always whining and scratching your door like a fucking cat, and sniffing your old boots. He made me company in your bed and I whined as much as he did when you didn’t come back home that day. He stood by the door most days, waiting for you to appear. I can’t judge him, I did the same.’’ You shrug, not caring about how risible that confession may look. It's true. You became as irrational as a loyal dog at some point in this sorrow. ‘’And Sam, your baby brother… I think he died with you right there, Dean. He didn’t try to bring you back as he promised, but I shouted and screamed so much. I said I would burn the bunker and throw Baby over a cliff if he didn’t-- if he didn’t let me try. I lived up to the mad woman title.’’

You are crestfallen, pacing on top of where the eldest Winchester - Sam’s brand new nomination -  supposedly was buried. You know your boots barely touch an infected land, there's no deceased man under your steps. The dead thing is in you.

‘’I spent days dragging your body everywhere and nowhere, anywhere I could catch a crumb of relief in hope to bring you back. But I couldn’t. Jack could, but that ungrateful idiot doesn’t wanna follow his grandpa steps and get too attached to mere humans, the creation or whatever. As if we are just some skin and bone to him, as if you are just another human.’’

You sit down on the tombstone, some tender solace in being close to a thing that's supposed to represent him, like sleeping hugged to a pillow or waking up to a photograph of his. Your nails sink against the gelid concrete at the thought of screaming into the sky for the new God that seemed as deaf as the last one. His calm answer to your burning pain. How he dared to tell you he knew what he was doing— as if he was the original lord and not a three years old. You can't make him do it, so you hold on the fury of some overthrown nation.

‘’Anyway, I couldn’t bring you back. Your body, well, you know how human anatomy works. Your body started to smell like death. We tried to stop with human and magic ways, and it wouldn’t work because you were dead. You should’ve seen the doctor’s face when we got you in that fancy hospital tha night. I think we traumatized the doctor with so much violence and trauma. She didn’t even give us a false hope or anything, you know? She just asked about organ donation of what was left. She just wanted to take every little thing out of you, as if you were just another accident on a Tuesday night.’’ Your shake your head as the memories and your points start to mix, it's hard to discern things and keep a straight line when you have an open wound in your insides. ‘’Well, they couldn’t bring you back to life, and neither could Rowena or whatever I looked for. Don’t be mad because I tried, Winchester. You know I’m too stubborn for my own good. I had to try.’’ you refuse to apologize, yet adds the playful words in his eulogy. ‘’But then your body started to stink and God, how could I continue to be so violent to your corpse? That was when I decided to listen to you for the first time and to Sam, so I let you go. I hate you for asking that.’’ What an ambiguous, contradictory truth to bare. You are glimpses of a person for months because of Dean Winchester, still have the energy to argue his selfless logic, just to love him even more. He's got your devotion, but man you can hate him sometimes. ‘’I hate you for going on that stupid hunt. I hate you for being dead, you giant idiot that I love so much.’’ You can't bring your mouth to say loved. "I was always telling you to let the past go and now I’m in love with a dead thing. What a comic way to end our history. I told you that Miracle died, right? I don’t know if dogs go to heaven, but I hope he’s in there with you. I wonder what your heaven is like. I bet it has Whiskey.''

Your dry chuckle makes your notice the tears in your eyes, glistening your orbs as they go like a waterfall to be absorbed by the thirsty land after leaving your cheeks.

"Sam and I-- We tried to make some sense out of this cruelty, but we can’t. You are dead and I can’t seem to put it past me. I still sleep in your bed, and I can still taste your body burning on the roof of my mouth in the quiet nights. I cried this morning because someone asked for a burger, can you believe that? It was so stupid since I used to shake my head and argue with you about cholesterol. Suddenly I was crying at lunch in a restaurant because some stupid kid asked for a burger with extra bacon. They sang Happy birthday to this dumbass child, and I interrupted with my awful crying, and wished that you were celebrating your birthday and not that kid. I guess you could say I wish death upon an innocent child with a problematic eating routine.’’ That was a whole new level of low, as if you are the one wrapped with the sentiment of laying six feet under.

‘’Everyone tells you about how grief is singular and particular with similar emotions that bring people who went through this together. They even have that crap stages thing and all that. You know what they don’t tell you?’’ Your mouth shuts for a moment, like you are waiting some response. You nod as if whatever you were expecting is handed to you. ‘’Grief can be fucking ridiculous. Who cries because of a burger full of oil and cardiac diseases? Who cries because they found a grocery store recipe under her dead boyfriend’s bed? Who falls on the ground screaming in the middle of the mall because they saw a flannel? Who? Those things are so stupid.’’ You smile like there's no tomorrow and the laugh leaving your lips is a treacherous tone. Perhaps you just aren't build up to express joy anymore. ‘’You see it in the movies and in the books and you think, you know, you think to yourself that grieving is being sad on special dates and randomly remembering the loved ones because of some screaming memory, like a flannel or their perfume. Thing is, it’s not just that. All your body seems so small, so tight for all the ache and agony inside it. Your senses go wild, you are not just one person in one place. You’re just the pain everywhere, like being pulled apart and you beg to jump in the fucking grave with them. At least you would be together, at least you would feel like one person and not suffering edges of a broken earthy thing. And--And you start remembering things you didn’t even know you had mesmerized. I look at the ceiling and remember you saying you’d paint it someday. I look at the kitchen and remember me screaming at you for giving Miracle the rest of the food. I smell Sam’s clothes and started crying because hey, they don’t smell like alcohol. You don’t iron them while drinking anymore, so of course they don’t smell like cheap beer.’’ You are chuckling through the tears and it only makes it more monstrous. ‘’Everything is you now that you are gone. Every man has something similar to you, every garden is green as your eyes, and each step sounds like you are coming home. They didn’t prepare me, not for this.’’ You said breathless. A soft single follows. The knife cuts both ways; the empty breeze and the words hurt. Where's the middle term? Where's the limbo? Where's the only safe place for you to rest your weary head?

Out of nowhere, you blurt out, ‘’I can’t masturbate,’’ I know it’s something stupid and even selfish to say, but I think you’d like to know. I can’t masturbate. That’s a part of the whole losing someone process that people are too ashamed to discuss, or maybe they don’t have the urge to be touched anymore because after someone you love dies, after someone-- the hands who touched are dead and cold, you become a haunted object. That’s how I feel most days, like I’m a haunted house because you touched me and now you’re dead and some days I believe I am too.’’ You look around the places. It's beautiful. It's lonely. It has trees and flowers and green. Not as green as Dean's eyes, but it doesn't matter anymore. He doesn't even have eyes at this point. ‘’Well, I can’t masturbate. I can’t touch myself. And I can’t ask someone else either. I tried and ended up punching the guy, Dean. I swear. I panicked when he was between my legs and just punched his nose. You’d have liked it, you were always the jealous kind. I won’t admit that, but I thought it was kinda hot. Especially when you got possessive in sex.’’ A dirty grin appeared on your lips, the echoes of luxury lasting in your eyes for a brief moment. ‘’I don’t think I can be cared for anymore, honestly. Sam tried to hug me when Miracle died and I… It was like I wasn't there. I got frozen in time, and I live in my sleep. In my nightmares you are alive. I  dream about the day you died every week and I used to wake up screaming, but now those nightmares are the only proof you were alive now that you’re as dead as the police report says this time. It was the most painful, calamitous moment for you and I swear it was a nightmare for me, but then I realized that at least I had you there, egoistical or not, I made my nightmare into a dream.’’ You aren't sure which opinion Dean would have on that. Would he understand? Would he shake his head? You wish you can ask him just this one more thing, just beg him to write it down for you on how to be without him here.

You raise on your feet, glaring at the name craved in the concrete. The tears go by still, although they're as usual as the blood in glir veins at this point. ‘’Death is so silly. What it takes, anyway?" Each word conquers more inches of pure wrath. ''People die because they stumbled on their own feet and hit their head somewhere, or they drove their car too close and too fast to the cliff, or because they were giving birth, or because they dated the wrong person, or because they were hunting a fucking vampire and got impaled. What are the chances? How stupid, and idiotic is death? Always creeping and waiting to bite and chew a piece of you-- Taking every scrap of you from me like that’s its right.’’ You are screaming, starting to kick and punch the tombstone with any piece of straight you have. Your limbs hurt and the blood is visible, but you keep going. ‘’YOUR STUPID DOG DIED, DEAN! AND YOU DIED! AND I DIED! SAMMY DIED! YEAH, IS SAID SAMMY! GO AHEAD, TELL ME ONLY YOU CAN CALL HIM THAT.’’ Another punch, your knuckles are ripped. Another kick, your boot as a hole. ‘’DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.’’ Kick. ‘’SAMMY, SAMMY, SAMMY!’’ A punch to each name. Anything to get a reaction, to get comfort. Anything. ‘’YOU CAN’T BECAUSE YOU ARE DEAD.’’ Gasping for something you don't need anymore, sweet oxygen, your eyes are on the tombstone again. And the definitions. And the trees. Your body is sore and aching. It is the kind and coercion no person wants which you needed; the freedom of feeling outside the exact pain that was inside. ‘’You can’t because you are dead. I’ve been playing some sick games in my mind, you know? Sam stopped hunting and had his closure. He was always better at letting go than you and I, but he’s still hurting. I never saw him hurting so much. I think he knows you won’t come back this time, how could you make us promise something like that?  Well, my twisted game is a bunch of misleading what ifs. What if you hadn’t gone after John? What if you hadn’t gone on that last hunt? What if you had stayed with Lisa? At first I didn’t like her much. Jealous, I admit that. But she grew on me. She gave you something I couldn’t back then and I’ll always be thankful for that. And even though it would rip me apart, I’d rather you to die at sixth after living your suburban dream with her. Have another kid besides Ben, maybe a girl this time, and just have that apple pie life. You and Sam would live close and your kids would always play. They’d be as close as brothers. Maybe I’d get a guy and bring my own kids and we could’ve a barbecue and everyone would be happy. But we don’t get soft epilogues here. It ends how it starts, right? Bloody and desperate. I thought maybe, maybe Lisa could understand what’s going through my head now. I drove to her new address and parked close to her house. I must have spent hours there, thinking if I should come in or not, If she somehow remembered after Castiel died or if I could make her brain work again if I told her the truth. But then I just drove back home and fell asleep wrapped in that stupid lumberjack flannel of yours. The one I always mocked, yeah? She may understand me, but I know you wouldn’t want that. You want her, you want me and Sam to be happy. I don’t know if I can do that, Dean. It’s like myt brittle soul shrewd and my body is just waiting to collapse.’’ You signed, overwhelmed by the battle without an anthem. The victory with no triumph. Is it still a win when you don't have someone to come home too? ‘’Your dog died, it’s the first birthday you didn’t live to see, and I bought all the things you told Mrs Butters you wanted for your birthday because it’s your birthday. I just don’t know how to celebrate it with you dead. People stop counting after they die, right? They just say he’d have been 42 or he died at 41. They give melancholy smiles when they wake up and check the day on their phones and a woe atmosphere swallows them for the rest of the day. Then they get better the next day. I think everyday is your birthday.’’ You attempt to wipe away your tears, which only causes your pulsating hand to stain your face red. ‘’Dean, for the first time, what died stayed dead! Congrats.’’ Once again, a hysterical laugh. ‘’I wish but no. What died didn’t stay dead, you are alive, so alive in my head. I swear you are there some days. I wake and watch the door, so sure you’ll come back. Sam says I’m living in delusion and I have to wake up and keep going since that's what you would want. That's enough to make him keep going, but it only makes me angry. Everyone we know and some strangers looks at me like I'm a house on fire and no longer a warm home, like I'm a car accident. They think I don't notice but I do.’’ You look at your boots, the whole is rolling out blood like your hands. You feel closer to Dean. How sick.

‘’Help, I’m still right where you left me." You plea, his love lingering like a bruise. ''I think gravity is overwhelming and it keeps me here. Sometimes it’s like I’m one of those dusted books Sam used to read. Or those Bukowski ones that you hid, so we wouldn’t see how smart you’re. You tried so hard to hide your intelligence because you didn’t think you were entitled to it. You saw yourself as the protector and never the valuable one for protection. You, the man who made an EMF out of an old radio, who rebuilt the Impala from the ground multiple times, and who knew patterns better than any detective. The man who showed me I could rely on someone other than myself. The dude with a lopsided grin, tough hands and a heart of gold. I miss you so much. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were singing all those classic rock songs and Taylor Swift pop hits, while I drove here. I would think you were home, smelling like guts because you wanted to eat before taking a shower after a hunt. I would think that you are in the Deancave, waiting for me to curl up on your lap to watch Scooby Doo or Doctor Sexy MD until we aren’t watching anymore. If I didn’t know better I would think no death could take you from me. There would be no tear us apart in our vows.’’ The only thing that keeps your organism working is that Dean died knowing how much you loved him. You never let this talk for later or never. No tomorrow is promised. That's a nice comfort, maybe that's what will help you to let go in the future. ‘’But yesterday your stupid, skink dog died and I lost the last living thing that I had from you. You know what’s more angerting? I cried and Sam cried and I noticed we were the living things you left behind and all we have is each other. All your closets of backlogged dreams were left for us-- so yeah. Sam is done hunting and he’s met a lovely girl, and they are moving in like in your domestic dreams. I’m taking care of the family business like your other contradictory dream and making sure Sam is safe enough to be normal. Because I have to, we have too. Stupidly enough, I still wait for the day you’ll burst out the door and tell us to hit the road again. I still watch every episode of your dumb tv shows to make sure I’ll know everything that happened when you ask. I still drive around in your car and close my eyes when the street is calm, only picturing you driving as Baby’s engineers go wild but those are my hands on the steering wheel. If I didn't know better, I’d think you are still around. But I know better. I still feel you all around. I love you.’’

Your monologuing ends as astutely as it stated. You get up, press a kiss to your ruined for the next weeks hands and place it on the rock with writings. You turn around and walk back to the car that you parked near, only in case of Dean wanting to see Baby. How knows? You and your clandestine faith. You lick your lip and get in the car.

You swear you the AC/DC cassette wasn't there before, but when you turn on the car and the radio it starts playing. It's the first true smile that comes to your mouth, it's bloodstained and you look like a shameless woman. With that you can deal.

It hurts a bearable hurt for now. You didn't think it was possible. Maybe someday.

The end.

(she takes a little longer to arive in heaven than sammy. his baby brother says that women are most likely to live around six years more than men. it doesn't ease him up, though. dean waited sam for too long, his platonic soulmate. and now he has to wait his romantic one too? the eldest Winchester considers it the best earthly present when the he sense you around, that smell of orange and apples. it's you, he knows before even turning around. he can't wait to love you again. your name rolls off your tongue so naturally, as if you had seen each other just yesterday: ‘’hey, y/n.’’)

But then again, nothing ever really ends, does it?

REBLOG AND COMMENT. Feedback is magic and helps me!

Starburst's footnote: It just didn't feel right to make an author's note on the top. I wanted it all only to be an arrow to the story. So, this is my side note: it's six am and I'm up writing this after inspiration kissed me with a bruise in the middle of the night. Or more like grabbed my throat. Anyway, I had to write and finish this one to post today, even pushing sleep aside. Hey, we are writers, that's what we do! I've been watching the show since I was eleven and I cried like a baby with the finale. This series was just so important and crucial to molde aspects of relationships for me. The song marjorie by Taylor Swift was used here, and so was the line "you got my devotion/ but man, I can hate you sometimes" by Harry Styles. I told you guys I would use it somewhere! A special thanks to @msmarvelouswinchester​ who helped me with her encouraging and opinon. You are the best! And with all of this I wanna say: Happy bday, Dean Winchester!

REBLOG AND COMMENT! Feedback is magic! Especially about this fic, I’d like to know your opinion. Tags in the reblog! Send an ask or dm to get in the taglist.

[watch-glass]

Fictober - Regency Era edition

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34202902/chapters/85210993

Day three (3/10/21)

Prompt “I’ve waited for this.”

This was it. 

Jonah had won. 

He stood in his Panopticon and looked out on the world that he had worked so hard to achieve and he smiled. He smiled more than he had in years. Two hundred years of hard work had finally paid off for him. This is what he had wanted for so long and finally, he was given what he rightfully deserved. 

Power.

That’s what Jonah wanted. What he needed. It was the thing that had helped keep him going for all of these years. His pride and ambition were there as well, in full bloom now that he had achieved all of this. Oh how he wished that his old acquaintances could see him now. He knew that a few of them would most likely look at him with shame, hurt, and disappointment, but that did not bother him. Their opinions did not matter now. They are all also long gone. Lost to the flowing river of time. 

Jonah missed those men sometimes. After all, they had been who he chose to acquaint himself with. He wasn’t ashamed to be shown by their side. They were all people with respectable lives and fair amounts of wealth; Jonah had taken advantage of that quite a lot. None of them were truly supportive of his ambitions though. They always said that he was “thinking too big.” How wrong they were. 

The man who stood in the Panopticon was not the same man that had lived so many years ago. He had changed. Both in appearance and in sense of self. It had been a change for the better, of course. He was so much more confident of himself now. He always had been, but in his earlier days, doubt had been a constant thing that would swirl around his mind. Not anymore though. He was sure of himself and his status in this world that he had worked to create. 

He couldn’t take all of the credit though, after all, his Archivist had been the one to read the incantations. He had been the one who went through all the Fears. But at the end of the day, Jonah had been the one who dedicated multiple lifetimes to his cause. And he wanted to be in The Eye’s favour. He had done so much for it and it had given him all the knowledge that he could ever want. 

Jonah was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice a light blue figure flicker in and out of view. It was almost like a hologram. But how could such a thing be here? A few moments passed and it made what had happened seem like a strange anomaly, but eventually, it appeared again. It was clearer this time and you could make out the shape of a person. The blue was a light, misty colour that was slightly translucent. 

As the figure stood there, it began to stretch and move different limbs. It was like it had put all its energy in trying to get here and now it needed to stretch all the effort out. Jonah saw the glow of the figure out of the corner of his eye and turned to face it. He immediately recognised who it was. The slightly disheveled curls on its head; the way it wore its corset slightly higher up than any regular person would; the gentle curve of its face. He knew all these features well.

The figure that stood before him was the figure of Barnabas Bennett. The first man he had loved...and the first man that he had betrayed for his ambitions. A gentle sadness could be seen on the man’s face and Jonah couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt in his chest. The feeling caught him off guard as he had moved on from Barnabas so long ago. But he knew that he was not mistaken about what the feeling was. The ghostly man was looking around, seemingly trying to avoid making eye contact with Jonah, but he inevitably did. There was a rage in his eyes that Jonah had never seen before and he almost felt scared. Neither of them had said a word in the few minutes that passed and it was apparent that they were both waiting for the other to talk. 

Jonah didn’t even know if the ghost could talk. Was the ghost even there? Or was he just hallucinating? No. No he was definitely there. He had been moving around. And Jonah had a sound state of mind; he could not be going crazy. 

“Why are you here?”

Jonah could not hide the quiver in his voice as he spoke. It was very apparent and the ghost seemed to notice it. 

“I do not really know why I am here.”

His voice.

It really was his voice.

Jonah had not heard that gentle voice for so long and he wanted to hear it more. He had not realised how much he had missed it. Barnabas had always been a man with a gentle voice. Words came easy to the man whenever he set his mind to thinking about what he was going to say. Jonah remembered that he had always been one for poetry. That was why he was good with words. However, when it came to regular conversation, especially with people that he wasn’t familiar with, he stumbled with his words often. He would stutter and struggle to figure out what he wanted to say. Jonah had always found that particularly attractive in Barnabas. He could be like two different people sometimes. 

The silence that had filled the room while Jonah reminisced was deafening. The ghost had folded its arms and was waiting for the other man to say something else in response to him. Jonah tried to move past his thoughts so he could focus on the conversation at hand.

“Did you choose to come here?”

Jonah figured that that would be an appropriate question to ask. He wanted to figure out if his ex-lover had been forced here or if he had chosen to come here of his own free will. Well, whatever free will you have when you are dead.

“I...I think that I chose to come here. Everything that came before this is quite vague.”

There was one of Jonah’s questions answered. It was as vague as an answer could get, but at least it was a start.

“Were you really that desperate to see me again, angel?”

“Do not call me that.” Barnabas’s answer came quickly. He didn’t even seem to think about that. He just answered. Jonah felt a stab of pain in his chest. It wasn’t physical pain. It was emotional. He knew that Barnabas had loved being called that and to see him reject the name upset him. 

“Why ever not?”

“We are not together anymore, Jonah.” Another remark. Another stab of pain for Jonah. Barnabas had been so devout to him all those years ago. He was like a dog. He never left Jonah’s side and would fawn over him at any chance he could get. To hear that he didn’t want to be with him anymore shocked him in a way.

“Who said that we are not together anymore? You chose to come to me. Clearly you could not resist the chance to see me again.” “Do not be so full of yourself. I came to tell you that I do not love you.”

Jonah had to stop himself from immediately trying to yell at Barnabas in protest. Why would he still love him? Jonah had left him to die. But he had been so head over heels for him. He hated to feel so confused but he would not let the ghost know that he was getting to him.

“Oh Barnabas, you aren’t still caught up in what happened so many years ago, are you?”

“Of course I am! You left me to die after I begged for your help, Jonah!” “I would have helped you if I could have.” “I know you could have helped me! So do not try and lie to me!”

Barnabas shouting was not something that Jonah was accustomed to. He didn’t think that he had actually heard Barnabas yell before. It was something that he wished he could have continued to go on without hearing. His voice was wracked with pain and hurt and it threatened to break as he yelled.

“I am not lying to you, dear. I am simply trying to make you understand that I had other things that I needed to achieve and I could not help you.” “Are you saying that letting me die was something to- to help further your research?”

“I am.” Jonah tried his hardest to keep his voice calm and smooth as he spoke. He knew that this would probably just anger Barnabas more but he was not going to let his true emotions show. The look of pain that was plastered on Barnabas’s face was as clear as day and Jonah hated to see him like that. But he knew that nothing that he could say would change what he had done, so he may as well be as truthful as he wants.

“You- You bastard! I hope you rot!”

“Come now, love. You do not mean that.”

“Yes I do! I mean that more than anything I have ever meant before! I cannot believe that I loved you! You are the worst man to have ever set foot on this earth!” Barnabas’s figure had begun to flicker again. It was clear that he didn’t have long left here and Jonah was glad about that in a way. Barnabas deserved to rest. Free of all the troubles that were clearly making him so angry. But Jonah also wanted the man to stay. He had wanted to see him again for so long and to see him on the verge of having to leave again crushed him.

He knew that nothing lasts forever though.

“And all of this...how do you feel about this, Jonah?” Jonah took a moment to think about how to phrase his answer and spoke again once he had figured it out.

“I have waited for this for a long time, Barnabas.”

That was all he could say in response. By the time he had finished speaking, the ghost of his lover was gone. Jonah did not try to hide the tear that ran down his cheek at this. But there was no point in being sad. Barnabas was simply a memory. He was another thing that had helped Jonah get to where he was now.

And Jonah appreciated that.

He turned back to look at the world below his tower and smiled again. It was beautiful. 

He just wished that Barnabas could have seen its beauty with him.

[veliseraptor]

You might've answered this already but what are some of your favorite Loki quotes? Also, you are wonderful and don't let anyone make you think otherwise

I really thought I’d written one for this! But if I did I can’t find it. (Just a favorite scenes post, which, there will be some overlap.)

But sure, I’ll go for this one. As usual, I wrote an essay! What else do you expect from me, a person who does this on a regular basis.

1. “Satisfaction is not in my nature.”

I have talked before (a lot!) about how this is, to me, one of the most character defining quotes for Loki - because it is so much of his issue. Loki is someone who is always wanting, always hungry, and sometimes he doesn’t even really know what he wants. He doesn’t know what will make him happy, just that he’s unhappy. And even in a positive way, he’s never fully satisfied - driven, ambitious, curious. 

And also there’s the aspect of how even when he gets what he wants it’s very, very hard, if not impossible, to accept it, or believe in it. To trust that it’s real. Not to poke and prod and look for the holes and traps and deceptions in it. Never satisfied. Never settled.

Loki’s not someone who does stability very well, if at all. It’s all constant motion, constant change, constant seeking, never standing still.

2. “I never wanted the throne! I only wanted to be your equal.”

I wrote a little recently about how I think this line is not...untrue, but it’s qualified truth. And in this moment it’s very interesting - falling during the fight with Thor, where he is in a lot of ways trying to provoke Thor’s anger and force a fight. But here he is speaking something that on the face of it could be conciliatory - it’s explicitly saying ‘this isn’t about me usurping your rightful place, this isn’t about me wanting to be King, this is about me wanting to be your equal” - with the implication, never really addressed, that he isn’t. 

That Loki’s understanding of his standing is fundamentally as less than. As inferior. And while I understand why not, it is a little sad that no one says something to the effect of ‘you are.’ (Which, while there’s objections to be made about how that’s expressed, at least opens a conversation about those objections rather than just breezing on by them as though there’s no merit to that emotional response or assumption that, well, he’s just right. But anyway. Communication! This family ain’t good at it.)

This is definitely a line that gets lost a lot, I think, in peoples’ understanding of Loki - that his desire for power is only secondarily for its own sake, and first and foremost for a goal of meeting a standard (Thor) that he’s set himself. (And also as a means to safety, but that’s another thing.) 

But boy is it potent. And, like the satisfaction line, so central to an understanding of who Loki is, and why he does what he does.

3. “If I am for the axe, then for mercy’s sake, swing it. It’s not that I don’t love our little talks, it’s just…I don’t love them.”

I wrote some meta a while back about the opening scene between Loki and Odin in The Dark World that I found while looking for something else, here and also here, which doesn’t surprise me that I did that because I have a lot of feelings about that scene. Like, as many as I have about the Vault scene in the first movie, probably.

There’s just so much going on in the whole thing, but this line specifically has stuck with me, because it’s an instance of Loki being flippant while also…not being that at all.

I talk in the linked post about how Loki walks into this scene expecting this to be a death sentence. He’s pretty ready for that, and he’s just going to go out with a bang with the verbal equivalent of a backflip with two middle fingers in Odin’s direction. 

So here he’s basically like “if you’re going to bore me like this you might as well just kill me, because you’re boring me to death, get it, because you’re going to execute me eventually so let’s just get there already” which is just…yeah, it makes me feel things. 

4. “Are you mad?” “Possibly.”

I know I wrote about this at one point when I was talking about Loki’s relationship with his own sanity/instability, but I can’t find that post, so I’ll just have to talk about it again. Good thing I can do that.

Like, this is a flippant response to Thor, but on the other hand there’s an honesty to it (like his flippant response to Odin, above). Is he mad? Maybe. Hard to say, even for Loki - he thinks maybe he is, a lot of the time, and that’s something he’s just kind of rolling with right now. It also fits with Loki’s generally manic energy throughout the scene after Thor springs him from prison, which also gives me a lot of feelings - it’s like…oh, this is a terrible comparison, but it’s like when you have a dog with a lot of energy who has been inside all day and then you take them out and the reaction is like. Running in wild circles because oh finally finally finally. 

And that’s…I mean, ouch, works with my headcanons about how putting Loki in a space where he can’t do much but think is one of the worst things for him. 

I just generally have a weak spot, too, for Loki making jokes about things that really aren’t funny.

5. “You know, it all makes sense now, why you favored Thor all these years. Because no matter how much you claim to love me, you could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard!”

This whole scene is A Lot, and this whole exchange is A Lot, but I settled on this specific line, because woof there’s so much here. There’s the bit about favoring Thor, there’s ‘claim to love me’ (instantly, doubt of that love, it’s not real, none of this has ever been real, his entire identity is thrown into doubt and therefore everything else is too), there’s the feeling of ‘I’ve been set up to fail all along and you never meant me for anything else.’ And the implicit, in the idea of ‘could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne’ bit, affirmation of his worthlessness but also of his inferiority (monstrousness) on the basis solely of his origins.

I’ve talked before about how after this reveal Loki pins a lot of everything that’s gone wrong in his life, and everything that’s wrong with him, on his being a Frost Giant. That it becomes a focal point for all his self-hatred and self-doubt. (That’s here too - ‘it all makes sense now.’ This, this one truth about me, explains everything that’s bad about me and my life.’) That’s where the idea comes from that, well, if I can only wipe out this part of me, completely disown it, prove that it’s meaningless and I am a true son of Asgard...then everything will be fine. 

(Even while he knows, I’m sure, that isn’t true. He needs it to be true, because or else...well, we see what happens when he loses that lifeline.)

This line is very much...everything comes down to this. It is the essence of Loki’s breaking point, of what breaks Loki, where the downhill slide that began with the Frost Giant grabbing his arm on Jotunheim completes and he tips over the edge. This line, right here. And when Odin drops without responding...there’s no going back, because Loki’s is the last word.

6. “You’re my brother and my friend. Sometimes I’m envious, but never doubt that I love you.”

I feel like sometimes people read this line with the knowledge that Loki is literally setting Thor up to fail as he speaks and therefore it’s not true, or is somehow disingenuous, but I genuinely don’t think that’s the case. I think Loki does mean it. That he does love Thor, more deeply and intensely than basically anyone else.

I mean, I have talked before about how there is no contradiction in loving and hating your sibling, not really - and definitely no contradiction in loving your sibling so much and at the same time feeling a deep, burning resentment of their place in life and in the family. 

And to the question of Loki’s motivations - whether he does this initially because he genuinely believes Thor is going to be a disastrous ruler for Asgard or because he wants to ruin Thor’s coronation and take him down a few notches (though never, I think, intending to either a) actually reach Jotunheim or b) get Thor exiled), and I think my answer to that question, as with so many of Loki’s motivations, is ‘can’t it be both?’

But none of that negates how much Loki does care about Thor, in a desperate and often horrifyingly codependent way. And I think on some level Loki says this knowing he’s setting Thor up for a fall, because he’s doing that - because he wants Thor to know that, even when everything collapses around him (as it is going to do), Loki still cares about him. 

And also affirming it and reminding himself of that, too, as I figure he does when the envy and resentment gets too strong: remember you love him. Remember he’s your brother. Remember that makes it worth it. 

I read this as a very genuine moment, which also makes everything that comes after that much more painful.

7. “I didn’t do it for him.”

Mostly here it’s the contrast - at the end of Thor Loki’s last line is “I could have done it for you! For all of us,” spoken to Odin, before he attempts suicide. And here, before he (believes he) dies, he says this in answer to Thor’s saying he’ll tell Odin that Loki died with honor. 

He could mean either Frigga, or Thor - I lean toward Thor, in this case, because it was Thor’s life he sacrificed himself saving - but regardless, he doesn’t mean Odin. It’s a shifting of his priorities, and whose approval and/or love he cares about most. Odin is no longer the priority. 

And it just…hurts, too. This whole exchange does (I considered using ‘see you in Hel, monster’ because of what it says about Loki’s expectations about himself), but this line especially is…and also what a gut punch for Thor, too. Having this glimpse of the Loki he knew and loved only for him to be snatched away again.

8. “It hurts, doesn’t it? Being lied to. Being told you’re one thing and then learning it’s all a fiction.”

This is another line I’ve written about before because of the way it’s so double-edged and so very Loki. It is simultaneously pointed and mocking (”see how it feels now, huh? I did this years ago and you didn’t care then”) and also, tacitly (and especially as Loki goes on to offer Thor a way out), a kind of sympathy (”I know how this feels, I’ve been here”). And there’s a certain pleasure in being able to be that kind of magnanimous, and a certain pleasure in the spite as well.

It’s both, at the same time. The satisfaction and the compassion. And that’s what Loki is like, in a lot of ways: those contradictions, the push-pull of conflicting emotions and motivations, always in tension. Which is what makes him such a fascinating character, but is also part of what makes his life so hard. 

[dinoswrites]

The Emperor, Reversed

The Arcana, Role Reversal AU. Pre-Relationship Asra x Apprentice.

Based off this post by @cedarmoons. 

Content warnings in the tags

[Previous |  Masterpost | A03 | Next]

You may feel powerless when the Emperor reversed appears in a reading. Dealing with authority is fraught with difficulties at this time and... you do not seem to be making any headway. [x]

The count’s laughter follows Kai as she races through the palace gardens, ringing in her ears and hounding her steps closer than the snarling jaws of his dogs ever could.

Prove to me that you can find my beloved wife’s murderer. Find the guard with the good doctor’s sketch, and return him to me. And I’m sure Dr. Devorak has told you, but I do not tolerate failure.

Might want to hurry, little assistant. I’ve already given your quarry quite the head start.

She stumbles, finally, and has to catch herself on a tree. The few bites of the outrageously extravagant breakfast she’d eaten for politeness’ sake turn in her stomach as her heart races, and she attempts the monumental task of catching her breath while also trying not to vomit.

She does not quitre succeed—her heart races with far too much terror at the thought of what the count will inevitably do to her if she fails.

Seeing as the only sounds surrounding her are the calls of pale birds, and the rush of leaves in the wind, she doesn’t think she is meant to succeed.

When it seems like her heart simply will not calm, she pushes herself from the tree and takes a look at her surroundings. To her left, a path leads into a hedge maze—a good, if somewhat predictable place to hide. To her right, she can see a wooden wall in the distance, and an open gate with a path leading down a hill, away from the palace and towards the city.

There are no footprints in the grass, no broken branches or disturbed trees. No clue as to where the guard might have gone.

If he even exists, she thinks, remembering Dr. Devorak’s horrified expression as the count relayed his instructions to her.

In the distance, she hears the barking and snarling of dogs.

She takes off for the gate, leaving the overgrown hedge maze behind her.

-

Kai has always found the streets of Vesuvia to be cold and unwelcoming, but as the sun begins to set and she leaves the palace further and further behind, she’s almost relieved for their too-dark shadows and the huddled figures who hurry along the uneven stones.

She only has a few hours before the curfew now. She knows she cannot go back to the clinic to get Cinis, that is the first place they will look for her. (If they’re not already—and isn’t that a sobering thought.)

This is a side of town she’s never been to before—she’s been on a few calls with the Doctor in recent months, as her own condition improved, but there’s only so much of the city he feels comfortable bringing her to. Judging by the size of the rat that scampers across her path, this is… definitely not one of them.

The Doctor… Her gait slows just thinking about him. How worried he must be right now—he can be so protective of her. What must he be thinking right now? She can’t imagine the count involved her in this whole mess because he actually believes she can find that magician. She knows there’s no love lost between Dr. Devorak and Count Lucio—was she brought to the palace to punish the doctor? And for what reason?

Not to mention the magician Asra showing up at the clinic scant minutes after the Count, demanding to see the doctor… what could his game possibly be? The man must be insane, coming back to a city where the ruler wants him dead.

Well. Possibly as insane as sending someone on a wild goose chase after a single guard. How is she supposed to find him? Ask around? Hello, anyone seen a guard wearing a rabbit or a deer costume? Also was he carrying an anatomical sketch of a cross-section of a human brain? Oh, you don’t know what that is? It’s basically a bunch of squiggly lines…

“Great,” she mutters out loud, “now I’m starting to even think like him.”

“Like who?” says someone walking a step beside her, and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

Kai stumbles sideways, losing her footing on an uneven stone, and finds herself falling ass-first into a rain barrel. A thankfully empty rain barrel, she muses as she stares up at the cloudy evening sky, so at least she’s got that going for her.

She hears soft, warm laughter, and as she flails a little as she tries to get herself out, the person in question says again, in between chuckles, “Hold on, let me help you out of there.”

It’s… a familiar voice. One she’s heard recently, she realises with a growing dread, as Asra the magician peers over the hole in the barrel, his purple eyes gleaming with amusement, and his disguise falling from his face as he stoops over her.

Of. Fucking. Course.

“Have you always been this clumsy?” he asks as he reaches in. His sleeve catches on the barrel and rolls up his arm, exposing shining bangles on rich, golden skin.

She hesitates a moment—weighing trusting an awful murderer and being stuck in a barrel next to an awful murderer—but her options here are excessively limited so she takes his hand, and braces herself on the barrel as he pulls her up.

She braces a hand on the first solid surface available to her as he gets her back on solid ground—which is, horrifyingly, his chest. Her fingertip slides past layers of the softest fabrics she’s ever felt in her life, and touches the warm, smooth skin underneath.

For his part, he only smiles down at her, as if they aren’t standing too close together for comfort. Still holding her hand, and looking for all the world as if he is trying to memorize something in her eyes.

Magician, she remembers, and as her cheeks start to burn she yanks her hand away, and takes a few cautious steps back.

“I—thank you,” she manages to stammer as she makes a poor attempt at straightening out her clothing.

He simply stands there and watches her with an expression that is more amused than anything else. He just keeps looking at her, all fond and warm, which just makes her feel baffled, honestly.

“My name is Kai,” she ventures, when his staring gets uncomfortable.

He blinks, as if that answer is somehow surprising.

Kai?

It’s her turn to blink—she looks over her shoulder, frowning, but there’s no one behind her in the cramped, dark alley. She’s about to write it off as hearing things, but then it happens again—a bright, friendly voice saying her name, that she doesn’t quite hear so much as… feel.

When she looks at Asra again, his heavy dark scarf rustles, and his snake pops its head out of his clothing—it flicks its tongue at her repeatedly before turning its head upside down, blinking at her with wide, confused red eyes.

Kai? it asks a third time, before Asra starts in place, looking over his shoulder before trying to stuff the snake back in his clothing. Why Kai?

“Oh,” Kai says, a little too loudly, “your snake can talk?”

“Of course she can,” he replies, his voice low. “To people who can hear her.”

He pauses to murmur apologetically to the snake—she catches him saying, “I know, I think it’s itchy too,” as he runs two fingers over the snake’s head, which finally seems to mollify her into hiding once again.

Asra adjusts his clothing, securing his scarf around his face once again. His eyes crinkle as he meets her gaze once more.

“We should get moving,” he says, his voice purposefully low. “The curfew will be starting soon, and we don’t want to draw any attention to ourselves.”

He slips his arms in hers, and leads her out of the alley with brisk, even steps. She follows—not like she has much of a choice—while she mulls over his words, and tries to ignore the feeling of his snake slinking down his sleeve, and running along her arm under his clothing.

“What do you mean, people who can hear her?”

He picks a burr off her shoulder. “Hm?”

She glances around uneasily—there are a few people walking the streets, but no one is close enough to listen in. So she whispers, “Your snake. She… only talks to certain people?”

He gives her a serious look—probably the first she’s seen from him. His eyes narrow, and he seems to be studying her eyes intently. It’s… different than his earlier attentions, and it almost makes her want to pull away.

Faust!

She jerks in place a little at the sudden not-sound ringing in her mind.

Asra’s eyes crinkle, and that strange scrutiny vanishes from his eyes. “Her name,” he clarifies, and he speaks so low that it’s hard to make out but he sounds… impossibly sad. Then he inclines his head, and suddenly they are cutting across the street, into a narrower side lane.

His hand on hers is warm, and her steps follow his without question.

“Faust is my familiar,” he explains. “She can speak to me, and those she shares a strong bond with.”

“I have met you and your snake once.”

He hums thoughtfully. “Anyone with strong enough magic can understand another familiar, you know.”

Her stomach twists. She stops in her tracks, and immediately yanks her hand from his. He turns and studies her, his expression patient and smooth save for the amused gleam in his eyes.

She can’t help but look around them, wildly—but they are alone here, no one around to overhear their conversation.

“I don’t have magic,” she hisses, “and even if I did—it’s illegal! They hang people for… for tarot card readings!”

Asra laughs—low and dark, with a bitter edge that gives her pause. “Whatever Lucio says, whatever he—decrees from on high… Magic is the essence of life, Kai. It’s in me, it’s in Faust, it’s in Ilya whether he likes it or not… And in you?” He draws himself closer, and something in his eyes lights up as he regards her. His voice softens as he says, “Kai, there’s magic in you, so much that you that you shine so bright, even the misery of this city can’t disguise you.”

He’s… very close. So close that she finds herself lost in his eyes, for a moment. In the energy of him, in the slow curve of his smile as he regards her.

They are… certainly very pretty eyes. For a murderer.

She hears footsteps approaching—someone running, she thinks. And she starts, but Asra only sighs and takes her arm in his once again.

“This is where we part ways for now,” he says.

“What?”

He winks at her, and then adjusts his scarf to cover his face once more. “Don’t be afraid,” he says. “Trust your instincts, they won’t lead you astray.”

“I don’t—”

They step forward together—passing from side lane to street—and he holds her arm and leads her in one heartbeat, and has vanished into thin air in the next.

She’s so busy gaping at the magician-less space next to her, that whoever is running down the street plows right into her.

They tumble over one another, hitting the stones hard before Kai immediately shoves the man off her. She almost curses at him, and goes to look for the magician once again—until she sees a guard uniform, and a rabbit mask askew on his face.

She stares at him. He gapes up at her.

That continues for a while, before he reaches into his pocket, and produces a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket.

Julian’s sketch.

She snatches it from him. She tries to smooth it out, and scowls at the mess his sweaty palms have made of the charcoal lines. “This was important,” she hisses.

He does manage to look a little guilty, even though they both know it’s not his fault.

Behind the guard, Kai hears the clatter of hooves on pavement. She looks up, and coming around the corner is the count himself, barrelling down the street on a white horse and a full guard contingent riding hard behind him. Kai and the guard both scramble out of the way, only for the count to draw his horse up beside them. The beast whinnies, chomps at his bit, and snorts, shifting in place restlessly as the count looks down at them.

The horse looks at Kai—and she doesn’t know much about horses, but she can see something wild and frantic in its red eyes, and sweat streaking its flank. The poor thing is exhausted. Every horse is—they are all breathing heavily, run too hard for too long with burdens on their backs.

Have they been running their horses so hard since the palace?

Kai glares up at the count, and he stares back at her unflinching.

She thinks of Julian, and grits her teeth.

The rabbit guard seems to remember to bow, after a long moment. And that movement catches Lucio’s plague-reddened eyes, and without even skipping a beat he reaches into his belt, pulls out a gun, and shoots the guard dead between the eyes.

It is easily the loudest sound Kai has ever heard in her life. She must scream, or react, or something—but all she is aware of is her own sudden intake of breath, an impossibly loud noise, and a ringing in her ears.

When she looks over, the guard is still standing next to her—with a hole in his forehead, and powder burns all over his mask.

Lucio holsters the gun, and the guard falls sideways to the ground.

“Let that be an example for those who might fail me,” Lucio barks back to his guards without once looking over his shoulder. His gaze doesn’t flinch from Kai even once.

She stares back, stunned.

She loses track of how long they stay like that—Lucio on his miserable horse, glowering down at her from on high, and herself just standing there and honestly trying not to throw up. Her heart hammers in her chest, her stomach turns, and she wonders if she’ll have time to make it through the narrow side streets before Lucio reloads his pistol—

“Guards,” the count says with a grin that nearly splits his face in two, “arrest this woman for the use of witchcraft in my city.”

She gapes up at him. He turns his horse and urges it back up the hill—at a full gallop, the poor thing—and the guards close in around her. Their horses all exhausted, breathing hot heavy breaths into her face.

She doesn’t even react—doesn’t fight it as one of them reaches down and grabs her by her collar, yanking her up onto the horse behind him. The guards don’t spare a glance for her or anything else—they turn their horses and begin the ride up the road to the palace looming on the horizon.

Kai, however, does look back—and she stares for as long as she can at the dead body of the guard, simply left where he fell in the street, before the road curves, and she loses sight of him around the bend.

[likeathunderbolt]

jasmine; what mythical creature do you wish actually existed? the fée, I'd go live with them in the forest and dedicate my life to practicing supernatural hijinks and fucking shit up for the humans.

lavender; soundcloud or vinyls? I suppose soundcloud gives artists an easier method of sharing with the world.

primrose; what book does everyone right now need to read? The Cooking Gene by Michael W Twitty.

lunar mist; do you like wearing other people’s shirts/jackets? They're always too small for me because I am a frost giant.

bird of paradise; what was the best thing that happened to you this month? I went to see one of my all time favourite artists with one of my oldest friends. 

gardenia; what’s a promise you’ve recently made to yourself? To really mean it this time.

lion’s fairytale; would you rather be the sky, the ocean or the forests? The Ocean.

whirling butterflies; would you kiss the last person you kissed again? Sure, why not?

marmalade skies; do you plan your outfits? Not really, I just make sure my clothes are washed and ironed.

apricot drift; how do you feel right now? Gross from eating too much junk food.

everlasting daisy; what’s the last dream you remember having? My friends at a barbecue and for some reason everyone had superpowers but it was completely normal and no big deal so we just had this full on X-Men cook out.

queen’s cup; what are you craving right now? Water and a clear head.

lavender dream; turn ons/offs? On: Confidence, inner peace, knowing what you want. Off: Control, agendas, “white” lies. 

water lilly; when was the last time you cried? why? I was given a gift and a note both of which were very very heartfelt, referencing years’ worth of actions I had no idea had left such an impact.

lily of the valley; did the one person who hurt you most in your life apologize? The person who hurt me most is me, being self sabotaging fool, I practice my apology every day by trying to be better.

winterberry; do you bite or lick your ice cream? Lick, biting ice cream sounds very odd to me.

honey perfume; favourite movie ever? I love the Ghibli films, ハウルの動く城, 千と千尋の神隠し, 魔女の宅急便, 風の谷のナウシカ, etc.

desert rose; do you like yourself? I'm working on it.

snapdragon; have you ever met or seen in person a celebrity? I'm not sure if this counts but I had lunch with Carla Bruni once, and twice I shared a fruitcake with Kofi Annan.

night owl; how many countries have you visited? I have actually genuinely lost count and don't want to miss anyone out.

heliotrope; have you ever been in a castle? I'm British, we can't move for castles.

creams and sky; what’s the craziest/bravest thing you’ve done? Moved to Toulouse on my own? Decided to actually look at myself and how much I was contributing to my own unhappiness? Trying to take responsibility for my self and be a better human?

lantana; what’s on your mind right now? I left my peppermint tea at work but water was a close second anyway.

pumpkin patch; what’s your zodiac sign? Earth sign, Taurus.

tulip; name 5 facts about yourself. 1. I love water; I'm a water baby, island child. Water is my favourite beverage, swimming is my favourite exercise, I love lakes, rivers, streams seas, oceans and waterfalls. Rainy days make me feel calm. Water is in my soul. 2. I love cooking; when I was a wee child my nan had a lodger from Hong Kong who was a chef, and he used to let me "help" him in the kitchen. So I grew up learning how to cook authentic HK/Cantonese cuisine. He actually runs a quite successful restaurant now too. 3. My first job was a Junior Librarian in a Grade 1 listed building; it had a variety of secret passageways and hidden rooms that I still think about a lot. Taking a hidden staircase up to a secret turret to repair books in the dusty sunlight is soul therapy. 4. I'm quite ambiverted; almost painfully shy with people I don't know very well, especially if I'm not feeling very confident that day. I have known this shyness to be mistaken for rudeness on occasion which has spurred me on to be more open a friendly even when I feel vulnerable, which has gone a long way to helping deal with the shyness. 5. As of the day after my birthday this year, I am now an uncle.

daphne; do you believe in karma? Yes, karma or the karmic rose by any other name. queen of the meadow; ever been in love? With humanity, life, the future.

wisteria; whom do you admire and why? Kind people. Anyone who has kept a warm heart through the hard times.

angel’s face; what was your favourite bedtime story as a child? The Jolly Witch.

remember me; did you make someone laugh today? My cats made me laugh, not too sure if I returned the favour just yet.

iris; do you believe in ghosts? Yes, or something of the sort we don't fully understand.

lilac; if you could go back in time which time period would you visit? Pre-Roman Britain.

caramel kisses; would you want to live forever? why/why not? No, I want to eventually move on.

primula; what makes you sad? Missed opportunities, being unable to help, misunderstandings, injustice.

rain lily; was today typical? why/why not? Yes and no, I spent a lazy Sunday with my family playing games so it was fun, but a typical day usually involved more work, working out, etc.

queen anne’s lace; who do you trust the most? My loved ones.

lady’s slipper; what did you have for breakfast today? Boiled rice with shredded veg & chilli sauce.

forget me not; do you have any regrets looking back in your life? I would like to have learnt certain lessons sooner and I am sorry for upsetting people.

lunaria; what’s your favourite fictional universe? I love so many, I think Tolkien's Middle Earth just  wins it for me though, I have so many great memories both reading alone and playing or discussing with friends as a child, a teen and even now.

violet; favourite telly show? Of all time: I have a soft spot for the OC in all its ridiculous glory.  Of the last year or so: Ugly Delicious. Honorary mentions: Supernatural, Springwatch, Summerwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch.

sunflower; share a favourite quote. Again, so many: "You're as good as you reciprocate." from Light's Everybody Breaks A Glass. "To be rather than to seem." is also one that means a lot to me, I think the good people of North Carolina may agree with me on that one too.

snowdrop; what does your ideal day look like? Waking up in a bright, comfy room, good hearty breakfast, swimming, spending time with loved ones, working on passion projects, cooking for everyone, relaxing under the stars.

tiger lily; do you have any hobbies? Swimming, cooking, reading, yoga, painting, writing, and outdoor activities. I love skating either board or blades and ju jitsu too, but I can't really do impact stuff anymore.

peony; share a small random book passage that means something to you. So many from Terry Crews Manhood and Anna Akana's So Much I Want to Tell You. I don't have the energy to go get them and type them out though because it would take me half an hour to even pick which passage to use. I'm already thinking of more books that mean a great deal to me.

tea rose; what’s something you always wanted to do but were too scared? I really wanted to move to Japan for a while to be with my friends, who are from Osaka, I went as far as to get necessary qualifications, studied Japanese and secured a job before I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that meant I needed ongoing treatment at home, I was terrified of moving to Japan because it is literally the other side of Eurasia but once the opportunity was taken away after all that work, I was devastated. I always imagined that doing these things that scare me would make me a better person and now I'm scared I'll never have a chance to right that missed opportunity.

honeysuckle; do you usually date people your age or older/younger? I operate on the 5 year rule usually; no older or younger than fiver years from my age, but I suppose I'd waive that for the right person?

sweet pea; who means the world to you? why? My loved ones, because friends really are the family you choose and there is no greater blessing than having friends who are your family and family who are truly your friends.

love in the mist; best books you’ve ever read? Again, too many, off the top of my head: Mineko Iwasaki's Geisha of Gion, Jung Chang's Wild Swans, Anhua Gao's On the Edge of the Sky, Jo Rowlings Harry Potter series, Tolkien's Entire works, particularly Beren and Lúthien. I also really love Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I also read Nigella's cookbooks like novels. I literally just sit and read them. I could write whole books on books I love and why.

foxglove; who is your favourite cartoon character? The entire cast of Pokémon is my childhood.

magnolia; coffee or tea? Tea please.

crown imperial; would you rather be extremely rich or extremely loved? Love is richness.

snowflake; are you a dog or a cat person? Why is the word or in this sentence? Unless your allergic or afraid I don't trust people who don't like animals.

bell flower; what is your biggest addiction? Junk food. Easily.

cosmos; do you ever think about the galaxy? It fascinates me endlessly, I love watching Professor Brian Cox.

moonflower; what’s your favourite colour? Brown, blue and orange.

freesia; do you have a good relationship with your parents and siblings? why/why not? I think we communicate well and they are some of my best friends.

sundrop; are you a morning or a night person? Learning to be a morning person, definitely still more of a night person. I was born with starlight in my eyes and that was my first love.

poppy; have you ever dealt with a mental illness? Yes, from both a point of view of concern for loved ones and from the point of view of not even realising how bad my own mental health was. If you want to talk about mental health either yours or that of a loved one, no matter who you are please feel free to reach out. I'm here.

clover; how would your friends describe you? You'd have to ask them, but I really hope they'd say kind.

dandelion; do you consider yourself and extrovert or an introvert? I'm an introvert that has learnt to be ambiverted.

lilly; what’s something you love watching/reading but you are too embarrassed to admit you do? That's hard, I don't really feel ashamed of things like that anymore. Two people I feel are criticised a lot, sometimes rightly so, but who I still love because I'm aware humans, including myself, are fallible (and those throwing the stones are invariably living in glass houses) are Taylor Swift and Jo Rowling.

anemone; describe yourself in 3 words. Striving for better.

lotus; best memory as a child? Any time I was having fun with my loved ones.

angelonia; what is your eye and hair colour? Blue and a really dark auburn.

dahlia; do you like crystals? They're pretty I suppose? And they feel nice and cool.

buttercup; if you could change one thing in the world, what would it be? More love and compassion.

baby’s breath; what’s your Hogwarts house? Slytherin according to Pottermore. My friends had me pegged as a Ravenclaw in the pre Pottermore days.

calendula; biggest pet peeve? When people give it that "Gotcha!" thing as  though they're irrefutably in the right, but they're still completely wrong and then they proceed to act like you just can't let an argument go, when all you are doing is refusing to be walked all over.

blanker flower; would you rather go to a cocktail party with your best friends or stay home and read a book/watch a movie with your pet? Both of these sound like great nights, I'd say the latter most of the time and the former for a change every now and then. Friday night I didn’t get home until 2am I wound down by sitting in bed with my cats watching The X-Files and eating chicken nuggets.

blazing star; share a secret. If I did, it wouldn't be a secret.

carnation; would you rather live longer or happier? Happier. Happiness is such and important thing to share.

petunia; who’s story is your biggest inspiration in life? why? So many people; I really admire my loved one because I know their struggles and still see first hand their kindness and compassion every single day.

bluebell; do you wear glasses? I do not.

nymphea; forest or river? I love both but I'll go for river.

orchid; do you like exercise? Exercise releases endorphins, for which I am very grateful.

pansy; do you like poetry? Poetry is great. I love it.

morning glory; any special talent that you have? You mean other than eating two entire tubes of pringles to myself in a single day? I can make icing flowers from scratch and bake a cake to put them on, thank to my nan.

[arplis]

Arplis - News: The 50 Best Alt-Rock Love Song

s Not all love songs are romantic. Not all love songs are even happy. It all depends on your definition of the term. For every “My Girl” or “Your Song,” there’s at least one track with a nuanced take on the darker, more complicated sides of love — the drama of a long-term relationship, the fear of losing a partner, the void left in love’s wake. Many of those songs fall under the admittedly broad umbrella of “alt-rock.” So to mark Valentine’s Day, we decided to gather 50 of our favorite “love songs” in the genre — both conventional and otherwise. Throughout this list, you’ll find lines about blooming romance and marital bliss. You’ll also find nods to drug addiction and car crashes. There’s something for everyone. – Ryan Reed   50. that dog. – “I’m Gonna See You”   You take the good, you take the bad. You settle in for the longest haul, one that’s meant to end whenever one partner or the other passes away. Sunny, glossy and droll, “I’m Gonna See You” fairly tingles the spine; there’s an underlying optimism about marriage and domestic life here that’s leavened by level-headedness and firm realism. that dog. set the controls firmly to mid-tempo, as placid frontwoman Anna Waronker serenades an unknown subject who might as well murmur every verse and chorus right back at her: “I’m gonna see you in the morning / I’m gonna see you when you’re uptight / I’m gonna see you when you’re boring / I’m gonna see you every night.” – Raymond Cummings     49. PJ Harvey (featuring Thom Yorke) – “This Mess We’re In”   PJ Harvey didn’t need Radiohead’s enigmatic frontman to sell this bleakly beautiful 2000 duet. But it’s chilling — and slightly dislocating — to hear these worlds collide, resulting in a hall-of-fame-caliber swirl of romantic misery. “I’d long been interested in the idea of somebody else singing a whole song on a record of mine, to have a very different dimension brought in by somebody else’s voice,” Harvey told the Los Angeles Times. “It adds so much dynamic within the record to have this other character coming in.” And while it’s still hilarious to hear Yorke, master of the abstract, sing lines this nakedly sensual (“I dream of making love to you now, baby”), he inhabits that character with ease, his falsetto offering a ghostly counterpoint to Harvey’s measured spoken word. – Ryan Reed   48. Yellowcard – “Ocean Avenue”   There’s love, sure, but “Ocean Avenue” is also an anthem of youth, recklessness and pop-punk. Something about the chugging riffs, infectious chorus and cliche lyrics made it an instant classic destined to soundtrack every Emo Nite. The highlight is, of course, the sentiment that’s as predictable as everything else: “If I could find you now things would get better / We could leave this town and run forever.” Just like Boys Like Girls’ later pop-punk gem “The Great Escape,” “Ocean Avenue” is built on one of rock’s most reliably romantic images: running away with a vague lover from a dreary hometown into life’s endless possibilities. – Danielle Chelosky   Credit: Capitol   47. Future Islands – “Walking Through That Door”   This is Future Islands in the key of “I Want to Break Free.” Of all the underdog anthems the synth-pop trio churn out, this gem — from 2010’s overlooked In Evening Air — is their most pure. The beauty lies in Gerrit Welmers’ quivering keys, which sound like they landed on Earth from a ’50s sci-fi flick. They spiral higher and faster, as singer Samuel T. Herring absolves us of the shadows we cling to; all the lonely nights that “fall oh-so-slow.” “I want to be the one to help you find those dreams,” Herring sings, eerily calm, like a mountaintop shaman who’s become enlightened in the rugged terrain. “Walking Through That Door” has a mystical vibe that takes whatever’s in your heart and makes you believe in it harder. – Sarah Grant     46. Liz Phair – “Supernova”   Liz Phair is in devotion mode, packing more similes into one rock love song than an entire book of Shakespeare sonnets. “Your eyelashes sparkle like gilded grass,” she sings, “and your lips are sweet and slippery like a cherub’s bare, wet ass.” That’s just the first verse. “Supernova” was Phair’s rollicking first single from Whip-Smart, the follow-up to her murky masterpiece Exile in Guyville. With its trampolining guitars and Phair’s heart wide open, it signaled a whole new Liz dimension — her romantic period — where we could pour out our hearts with fists held high, shouting “and you fuck like a volcano, and you’re everything to me.” A declaration that would only occur to an ineffably cool 27-year-old in 1994. – S.G.   Credit: Matador / Atlantic   45. The Stranglers – “Golden Brown”   The stately, baroque-pop jangle of “Golden Brown” diverged from the English band’s core sound: prototypical pub-punkers stumbling into the electronics section of the local music store. The Stranglers slowly matured into the New Wave outfit of their pinnacle — but, in this case, take a deviant direction. A harpsichord plays the central melody as a luminous phased synth corresponds: dropping and rising in octaves, overall creating an enthralling quasi-waltz (with periodic bars in 7/8 time). It’s a ballad to his beatific (and lyrically ambiguous) “golden brown,” a finer temptress arranged in a seamless weaving of verse into bridge into the chorus — all executed in a timbre echoing John Lennon. Such a gorgeous song from a band with such a contrary name. – Logan Blake     44. Nine Inch Nails – “The Perfect Drug”   The doomed romance of Trent Reznor’s lyrics can often make love sound like a desperate chemical dependency — or make actual drug addiction sound like an irresistible seduction. “The Perfect Drug,” written for David Lynch’s 1997 film, Lost Highway, muddies the waters even more than usual, particularly with Mark Romanek’s absinthe-themed video. Reznor has performed the song live sparingly and reportedly admitted in 2005 that it “probably wouldn’t be in the top hundred” of the tracks he’s written. Still, it’s hard not to get caught up in the adrenaline rush of one of the fastest, most drum’n’bass-influenced songs in the Nine Inch Nails catalog. – Al Shipley   Credit: Nothing   43. Pulp – “Something Changed”   “Something Changed” is a prayer for those of us whose love language is canceling plans. Over rolling guitars and heavenly synths, Jarvis Cocker sings about the precious, random decisions that we make every day, having no idea of what’s at stake. “I could have stayed at home and gone to bed … you might have changed your mind and seen your friend.” In a Melody Maker interview, Cocker said that the song’s retrospective lyrics came from trying to remember why he wrote this song in the first place back in 1984 — years before releasing it as a single in 1996. Twenty-five years later, amid the doldrums of quarantine, “Something Changed” is like a redemption song for those of us who took the outside world for granted. As Jarve wisely said: “The worst thing about having a schedule and a timetable is that there’s less chance for unexpected things to happen.” – S.G.   Credit: Island   42. Buzzcocks – “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)”   If the answer to the question posed in the song title is “no,” check your pulse. You’re not alive. Or perhaps you’re extremely lucky. Just wait — as Robert Plant once sang, “Your Time Is Gonna Come.” The gist of the lyrics: “You spurn my natural emotions / You make me feel like dirt and I’m hurt” is as plainspoken as the song itself, written in 1978 by Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley. Flaunting a perfect, dysfunctional lyrical kicker (“And if I start a commotion / I run the risk of losing you, and that’s worse”), “Ever Fallen in Love” becomes a hooky package of pop-punk energy and precise, pithy lyrics. This “pansexual punk anthem” (as one critic coined it) was the Buzzcocks’ biggest hit, and very rightly so. – Katherine Turman   Credit: United Artists   41. Morphine – “In Spite of Me”   Boston trio Morphine was known for the low, sonorous sounds of Mark Sandman’s two-string slide bass and Dana Colley’s baritone sax. But Sandman would occasionally throw in a spare acoustic track like “In Spite of Me,” the side one closer to their 1993 magnum opus, Cure For Pain, featuring beautifully fluttering mandolin by Jimmy Ryan. “In Spite of Me” is a bittersweet paean to someone who left the narrator behind long ago, but Sandman’s half-whispered vocal radiates with the fond memories of a shared history: “Last night I told a stranger all about you / They smiled patiently with disbelief.” – A.S.     40. The Breeders – “Do You Love Me Now”   “Does love ever end?” That’s the central question of “Do You Love Me Now,” Kim and Kelly Deal’s meditation on the often open-ended nature of past romance. Just when you think you’re finally over a relationship and have completely moved on, those familiar feelings slowly sidle back up to you like Josephine Wiggs’ slinking bass line. Pretty soon you might find yourself reaching for your phone, scrolling through photos and wondering what your old flame is doing right about now. If that happens, don’t worry — it’s perfectly natural. Here’s a helpful piece of advice from your friends at SPIN: Don’t text your ex. – John Paul Bullock     39. Pearl Jam – “Last Kiss”   By 1998, Pearl Jam had left radio behind. Sure, “Given to Fly” was a hit and Yield ended up one of their best albums, but the mainstream was mostly in the rearview mirror until this throwaway cover. During a Seattle show that May, Eddie Vedder told the crowd that he found an old single for $.99 the previous day and stayed up listening to it all night. Then the band debuted their take on “Last Kiss,” the Wayne Cochran ballad popularized by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers in 1964. The song is so breezy and catchy, many fans are still oblivious to the sad lyrics, which chronicle a car accident that kills the narrator’s girlfriend (“Oh where, oh where can my baby be? / The Lord took her away from me”). Pearl Jam recorded a version during soundcheck before a Maryland gig, releasing it for Ten Club members. But that recording spread like wildfire and eventually peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Strangely, this left-field cover wound up the biggest hit of Pearl Jam’s career. – Daniel Kohn Credit: Epic   38. Bloc Party – “Blue Light”   “I still feel you in the taste of cigarettes,” sings Kele Okereke over divine splatters of guitar reverb and the heartbeat click-clack of a snare rim and kick drum. Bits of this person — seemingly a former lover — linger in the minute sensory details of everyday life. Reminders are everywhere: “You’ll find it hiding in shadows / You’ll find it hiding in cupboards.” The emotional centerpiece of Bloc Party’s debut LP, 2005’s Silent Alarm, “Blue Light” conjures the feeling of being fully adrift in sadness — you’ve become so accustomed to melancholy, it’s now your home. Just as Okereke croons about a mysterious “gentlest feeling,” the song ironically becomes un-gentle, guitars and drums spiraling upward into a sonic and emotional crescendo. – R.R.     37. Lifehouse – “Hanging By a Moment”   Lots of love songs have a spiritual component: Peter Gabriel was inspired to write “In Your Eyes” — perhaps the greatest slice of pop romance ever written, but not really “alt-rock” enough for this list — to reflect that common ambiguity in African music. With Lifehouse’s “Hanging By a Moment,” frontman Jason Wade landed at a similar duality. “I knew at the end of it that it was a love song, and I kind of come from that world, so it can be interpreted as a spiritual song or a love song,” he told Billboard in 2017. “I feel like people have just been taking it for whatever they want it to be through the years.” Both interpretations hold water: The narrator is “starving for truth,” perhaps in a religious sense. But on the chorus, they’re “standing here until you make me move” — an image that, coincidentally, calls to mind the “In Your Eyes” boombox scene from Say Anything. Either way, it’s a tearjerker. – R.R.   Credit: DreamWorks   36. Alabama Shakes – “Gimme All Your Love”   Lyrically, this one’s as cut and dried as it comes: Brittany Howard, the powerhouse singer of Alabama Shakes, wants the full relationship experience — no emotional shortcuts. “So much is going on / But you can always come around,” she sings gently, her voice somewhat muffled amid the glitchy drums and gleaming keys. “Why don’t you sit with me for just a little while? / Tell me, what’s wrong.” Then on the chorus, she sounds enraptured in contrast, screaming the titular phrase between some “woo”s that sound like a soulful Ric Flair. Is complete commitment so much to ask? – R.R.     35. A Flock of Seagulls – “Space Age Love Song”   New Wave music, particularly synthpop, tended to be lyrically cold, detached and unsentimental — more concerned with pessimism than romance. But “Space Age Love Song,” A Flock of Seagulls’ 1982 hit, is one of those unique exceptions. Amid Mike Score’s wistful singing and atmospheric synths and Paul Reynolds’ soaring guitar, the lyrics are direct and tender rather than aloof, accompanied by its recognizable melodic refrain: “I was falling in love.” In a 2018 PopMatters interview, Score said the song was about intimacy: “When you meet somebody there is an instant eye contact if the chemistry is right. If everything is right, you catch their eye…that whole ‘across the crowded room/caught your eye’ thing. The lyrics explain that: ‘I saw your eyes and you made me smile.'” Sci-fi and love never sounded so good together. – David Chiu   Credit: Jive   34. The Pretenders – “Talk of the Town”   “I had in mind this kid who used to stand outside the soundchecks on our first tour, and I never spoke to him,” Chrissie Hynde once recalled, detailing this Beatles-y New Wave anthem from 1980. “And I remember the last time I saw him, I just left him standing in the snow. I never had anything to say to him. And I kinda wrote this for him.” That backstory adds more intrigue to her already-fascinating lyrics, which seem to channel youthful longing for a person outside one’s grasp. “I watch you still from a distance then go / Back to my room,” she quivers over the bright guitar changes. “You never know I want you.” – R.R.     33. Incubus – “Dig”   Few alt-rock frontmen have embraced heartthrob status more naturally than Incubus singer Brandon Boyd, who helped transform the California nü-metal band into multi-platinum crossover stars with his washboard abs and a propensity to flirtatiously ad-lib the word “girl” like an R&B singer. But there’s always been a philosophical bent to Boyd’s most romantic songs, and “Dig,” as he explained in the band bio for 2006’s Light Grenades, “speaks to the importance of forgiveness and compassion.” But the song’s headier lyrics don’t get in the way of the lighter-waving catharsis of Boyd belting out, “We’ll always have each other when everything else is gone.” - A.S.     32. Beach House – “Lazuli”   If “Harvest Moon” had an alien twin from Baltimore, it might sound something like “Lazuli” — Beach House’s most romantic song, which highlights their 2012 album, Bloom. Alex Scally begins with a loping arpeggio and spray of synth as the story unfurls. “In the blue of this life, where it ends in the night / When you couldn’t see, you would come for me,” Victoria Legrand bellows, sounding warm, wise and oddly reminiscent of Nat King Cole. The lyrics float in and out of abstraction, like twisting a kaleidoscope. The synths form little ripples around her voice. In this vein, “Lazuli,” feels like an ode to communing with nature; a testament to every tiny particle that we can’t see. Who knows? Being in a perpetual state of wonder is the Beach House way, and it’s the true magic of this song. As Legrand reminds us in her dreamy warble, “you can’t be replaced.” – S.G.     31. Weezer – “Perfect Situation”   From the dramatic intro — which this Fearless-era Taylor Swift song oddly resembles — it’s clear what this one is about. Then again, it’s usually what Weezer songs are about: desperation, longing, love gone wrong. “Perfect Situation,” though, is less lyrically specific than many of the band’s tracks — they keep the words simple and carefully chosen here, with Rivers Cuomo just enunciating “Singing oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh” on the chorus. The instruments do most of the talking, and the most Cuomo reveals is on the kind-of-hot lines: “Get your hands off the girl / Can’t you see that she belongs to me?” – Danielle Chelosky     30. The Temper Trap – “Sweet Disposition”   First off, who gives a fuck that the echoing guitar sounds like the Edge’s best unused riff? And so what if the song itself is still a go-to for dumb TV ads and rom-coms? It’s easy to poke fun at this Australian quartet because they unashamedly swing for a grand slam with almost every at-bat, but “Sweet Disposition” is the kind of heart-tugging big-chorus rock song only the most jaded among us can brush aside. Part of it’s the expressive delivery of frontman Dougy Mandagi, who wrangles maximum earnestness from each falsetto swoop and hint of vibrato. And the words are perfectly bare and unpretentious. “Just stay there / ‘Cause I’ll be coming over,” he sings. “While our blood’s still young / It’s so young, it runs / Won’t stop ’til it’s over.” – R.R.   Credit: TIME   29. Band of Horses – “No One’s Gonna Love You”   Few “love songs” open with the image of a mutilated body part: “It’s looking like a limb torn off / Or altogether just taken apart,” Ben Bridwell yelps over rippling electric guitars. “No One’s Gonna Love You” feels romantic — the atmospheric arrangement, the pained way Bridwell sings throughout. And certain lyrics, like the titular phrase, sound deceptively sweet. But this one’s complicated: The narrator seems to be still helplessly in love (“And anything to make you smile”), even with the relationship “tumbling” through an “endless fall.” Play this one for your “first dance” wedding song and scan the crowd for puzzled faces. – R.R.   Credit: Sub Pop   28. The White Stripes – “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself”   Can we trust a love-lost song from a man who pretended his one-time wife was his sister? Why is said sister-wife, Meg White, crying on the cover of 2003’s Elephant? And why is Kate Moss pole-dancing in the video? No matter the answer to these rhetorical questions, ”I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” is a great song, and as sung by Jack White, the definitive version. (It was written by Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David — and previously, most notably covered by Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick and Issac Hayes, who drew it out to seven minutes.) White’s spare, angsty voice and guitar reflects the song’s desperate, edgy feeling of painful limbo as two are wrenched into one lonely leftover. The tune was written in 1962, but it’s still timeless — and especially gut-wrenching when White delivers it with all the (hurt) feels. – K.T.   Credit: XL   27. My Morning Jacket – “Steam Engine”   Jim James digs deeper than superficial attraction on this dreamy, seven-minute ballad from It Still Moves. “So I do believe / None of this is physical / At least not to me,” he sings, his voice bathed in barn reverb. He is human, admitting later on, “Your skin looks good in moonlight.” But like the band’s slow-building sway, his definition of love is still admirably cosmic. “It’s about falling in love with someone because of the way they make you feel, as opposed to them wearing tight jeans and being hot,” he told Nude as the News in 2003. “I’m just trying to escape from the fuckin’ constant, physically driven fashion show that the world has become.” – R.R.     26. R.E.M. – “At My Most Beautiful”   Gently affectionate, direct and indelible, the standout third single from R.E.M.’s first post-Bill Berry LP revels in romantic mundanity. A sigh calibrated to elicit endless sighs, “At My Most Beautiful” adopts orchestral-era Beach Boys as its guiding muse, with guitar, piano, organ and cello forming a warm, pastel whorl. The sincere tenderness in Michael Stipe’s vocal scribbles extra feelings between the lines of his actual lyrics, which adore but stop short of the saccharine. “You always say your name,” he purrs, “Like I wouldn’t know it’s you, at your most beautiful.” – R.C.   Credit: Warner Bros.   25. Siouxsie & the Banshees – “The Last Beat of My Heart”   Siouxsie Sioux sings nature metaphors (“In the sharp gust of love, my memory stirred / When time wreathed a rose, a garland of shame”) over a slow-climbing swell of accordion and muted tom-tom thump. A perfect marriage of words and atmosphere, each drawing out romance from the other. “It’s one of my favorite Siouxsie and the Banshees songs, and [DeVotchKa] covered it very well,” the Decemberists’ Colin Meloy told Pitchfork in 2006.”It kind of bums me out that they got to that cover before I did. Very smart choice.” – R.R.   Credit: Wonderland / Polydor   24. Blink-182 – “All the Small Things”   For Valentine’s Day 2000, there had to be at least one guy in a Hurley T-shirt and Dickies who wrote this in a card to his high school girlfriend, thinking it was so sick: “Keep your lips still, I’ll be your thrill, the night will go on, my little windmill.” Blink’s biggest hit has its goofy, sappy moments: “She left me roses by the stairs, surprises let me know she cares.” But there’s some uncertainty there too: Tom DeLonge knows this girl will be at his show, watching and waiting, but also…commiserating. Did she feel pity for him? Maybe we shouldn’t think too much about “All The Small Things,” considering DeLonge wrote it specifically to be played on the radio, with all those Ramones-y “na-na-na’s” filled in so he wouldn’t need to write more lyrics. – Bobby Olivier   Credit: MCA   23. Arcade Fire – “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”   Here’s something I’ve never understood: So…Win Butler is singing about digging a tunnel between his and his lover’s homes — underground romance, adorable — but then he wails, “You climb out of the chimney and meet me in the middle, the middle of the town.” Why dig the fucking tunnel when she’s just gonna use the chimney to meet up? And another thing! When he sings, “Then our skin gets thicker from living out in the snow” — couldn’t they have sought shelter in the tunnel during inclement weather? Listen, I know it’s the band’s debut single and revered as one of the greatest indie-rock songs of the last 20 years, blah blah. It’s a sweeping, bouncy tune, sure, but I need answers, damn it! – B.O.     22. Smashing Pumpkins – “Luna”   In the liner notes of the 2011 Siamese Dream reissue, Billy Corgan writes that this blissful dream-pop ballad chronicles his love for “someone [who] doesn’t love me.” He doesn’t directly specify this person, but he did famously date Courtney Love, who once claimed that almost all of the album was written about her. We’re not going to draw any conclusions. “I sing a love song in an empty room,” Corgan continued, detailing how he wrote the tune. “It is for the moon. It can never be for the one you love.” Regardless, “love song for the moon” just sounds cooler. – R.R.     21. Mazzy Star – “Fade Into You”   During the mid-’90s alt boom, a bunch of bands on the peripheral had their moments of mainstream success. Mazzy Star’s biggest song, the moody and melodic “Fade Into You,” blends dream-pop and alt-country twang, led by Hope Sandoval’s luscious vocals. The singer’s lyrics, a touchstone of peak Gen X, seem to document a relationship with a narcissistic person who can’t be reached. And that dichotomy between romantic longing and melancholy is what makes “Fade Into You” so relatable. – D.K.   Credit: Capitol   20. The Cardigans – “Lovefool”   You likely know the hook by heart from incessant radio airplay. Released in the mid-’90s, it’s one of those songs that summons its zeitgeist, and it’s since remained one of the most timeless (and bittersweet) pop-rock palliatives. Lead singer Nina Persson both coquettishly and wistfully begs for her love to be requited. It’s all voluptuous rouge lips and batting cat eyes, soft around the edges with sharp guitar chops and velvety synth concords. It’s the marriage of a cold, haphazard lament in a catchy pop structure with a New Wave undercurrent all held together in kitschy saturation. Nothing comes closer to the platonic ideal of pop. – L.B.   Credit: Stockholm   19. Jeff Buckley – “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over”   “Maybe I’m too young to keep good love from going wrong,” Jeff Buckley sings with understated drama on the first verse of “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” before patiently building to a climactic falsetto showcase. Buckley wrote the smoldering, seven-minute ballad after the end of his relationship with musician Rebecca Moore, and he opens the epic version on his only proper studio album, 1994’s Grace, with a gorgeous harmonium instrumental that sounds like an otherworldly funeral organ. It became the most widely covered song Buckley wrote in his brief career, but nobody can possibly sing it like him. – A.S.     18. Elliott Smith – “Say Yes”   Smith clears his throat and begins the acoustic-strummed ballad to a girl who made his world a vicarious idyll, the one “who’s still around the morning after.” An electric guitar glitters the track with sprightly, jazzy chords, letting out a melodic melancholy solo and syncing with Smith’s sotto voce singing as he sulks over their month-ago breakup. Now he longs for her to come back, optimistically musing that maybe he’d be “an exception to the rule.” Smith once told SPIN he penned the offhandedly beautiful song in five minutes while watching a muted episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. Whether a moving palliative for others mourning a love lost too soon or a heartrending tale of post-breakup realism, it utterly impales you. – L.B.     17. Roxy Music – “Avalon”   Across eight albums in 10 years, Roxy Music evolved from an avant-garde glam-rock band to a sophisticated pop group. Avalon, the group’s swan song, was their most commercially successful record and indelibly romantic. Along with “More Than This,” the album’s title song — with its tropical and reggae-like rhythms — has become one of Roxy’s most popular songs.  Its lyrics evoke the magic of love at first sight: “When you bossa nova, there’s no holding / But you have me dancing, out of nowhere.” Ferry’s debonair crooning is seductive and sincere, complemented by backing vocalist Yanick Étienne. The “Avalon” video is equally elegant, with a white tuxedo-clad Ferry dancing with his paramour. Almost 40 years later, this song — like the whole Avalon album — remains one of the definitive Valentine’s Day soundtracks. – David Chiu   Credit: EG / Polydor   16. Tegan and Sara – “Nineteen”   Some of the best rock tunes swim simultaneously in streams of “love song” and “breakup song,” welling up your eyes until everything blurs. “Nineteen,” a devastating anthem from Tegan and Sara’s fifth LP, The Con, is one such moment — entangling sex, heartbreak, romance and butterflies-in-your-gut angst into a compact, three-minute blast. It opens with a jarring admission: “I felt you in my legs before I even met you / And when I laid beside you for the first time, I told you / I feel you in my heart.” We don’t get all the details, but the relationship quickly sours, resulting in a bummed-out plane trip home — but also glimmers of hope. “I was 19,” the duo sing over the distorted downstroke riffs. “Call me.” – R.R.     15. Paramore – “Still Into You”   A power-pop ode to everlasting love, “Still Into You” should surge in popularity around 2063 by soundtracking all those scene kids’ 50th wedding anniversary parties. In terms of Paramore lore (Para-lore?), “Still Into You” introduced the band’s departure from pure pop-punk — more charm, less angst. Written about Hayley Williams’ then-solid relationship with New Found Glory guitarist Chad Gilbert, it offers some great lines about making love work: “It’s not a walk in the park to love each other / But when our fingers interlock, can’t deny, can’t deny, you’re worth it.” And it’s such a sweet sentiment, reminding your S.O. that after all their bullshit and the stupid Netflix shows they make you watch, you’re still into them. Unfortunately for Williams, “still” didn’t mean forever — she and Gilbert split in 2017. – B.O.   Credit: Fueled By Ramen 14. Stone Temple Pilots – “Interstate Love Song”   Only Stone Temple Pilots could write a “love song” that explores lying about heroin use. In his 2011 memoir, Not Dead & Not For Sale, Scott Weiland said he wrote “Interstate Love Song” partly from the perspective of his girlfriend: “She’d ask how I was doing, and I’d lie, say I was doing fine. Chances are I had just fixed before calling her. I imagined what was going through her mind…” But there’s poetry in these dark images, as Weiland taps into relationship matters of trust and deception. The music only amplifies the song’s windows-down grandeur, from Weiland’s booming vocals to Dean DeLeo’s signature, twangy guitar riff. It remains STP’s finest hour. – D.K. and R.R.   Credit: Atlantic 13. Patti Smith Group – “Because the Night”   A highlight from her 1978 LP, Easter, “Because the Night” has become the punk poet laureate’s most well-known track — and also one of the most recognizable love songs of all time. After modest piano notes form a calm before the storm, Patti Smith bursts into her signature mode of elated, operatic singing — roleplaying the besotted lover in this impassioned hit co-written by Bruce Springsteen. Although the vocal delivery propels the song beyond itself, the lyrics detail the wanton desire just before the flight of the erotic at sundown “…because the night belongs to lovers.” Unlike most other subtler love songs, this is an unabashed entreaty. No more foreplay. On second thought, it’d be more apt to call it a “lust song.” – L.B.   Credit: Arista   12. Coldplay – “Yellow”   Who would have thought that a poor Neil Young imitation would spark Coldplay’s breakthrough hit? That’s what happened with their signature tune, “Yellow,” which focuses on an emotional devotion to…someone or something. Singer Chris Martin found the initial chords and lyrics during a live soundcheck, and he immediately started channeling the Godfather of Grunge with the lyric “look at the stars.” Then came the title word, which gives the song a slight element of mystery: “The word ‘yellow’ came out, and I was like, ‘No one’s gonna know what that means,’” he told Howard Stern in 2011. “It was a feeling more than a meaning.” But that feeling led to an entire career. – D.K. and R.R.   Credit: Parlophone 11. Say Anything – “Alive With the Glory of Love”   You can’t leave out “Alive” from any conversation about essential emo love songs. What opening lines are more gripping than “When I watch you, want to do you, right where you’re standing, yeah”? Then the chorus is irresistibly endearing and seemingly sincere: “No, I won’t let them take you / Won’t let them take you / Hell no, no!” Even if you start out listening as a joke, you gradually fall into its surprisingly romantic arms. But the song reveals a deeper meaning as it plays: The line “Should they catch us and dispatch us those separate work camps, yeah,” reminds us that “Love” is based on the story of Max Bemis’ grandparents, who are Holocaust survivors. So yeah…there’s a lot to unpack. – Danielle Chelosky   Credit: J Records / Red Ink 10. Radiohead – “All I Need”   “I’m an animal trapped in your hot car,” Thom Yorke croons during this divine meditation on romantic fixation. Aw, how sweet! Radiohead never write conventional love songs — but when they do explore the subject, few do so with such intensity. “All I Need” spends most of its run time at a low simmer, Yorke spitting out similar images (“I am a moth who just wants to share your light”) over Phil Selway’s trip-hop-y drum groove and a booming synth-bass. But the song’s climax, lyrically and musically, crashes in at full volume: “It’s all wrong!” Yorke yelps. “It’s all right!” – R.R.     9. Talking Heads – “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)”   David Byrne famously wrote a lot of songs about “buildings and food,” so his first real “love song” doesn’t, um, sound a lot like the others. “I try to write about small things: paper, animals, a house,” he noted in the Stop Making Sense bonus interview. “Love is kinda big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.” That song is “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” on which Byrne embraces romantic matters with surreal wordplay and, seemingly, confusion. “I guess I must be having fun,” he sings over the clanging percussion and woozy synths. But few songwriters tackle love with such zen, understanding that relationships are living organisms. “The less we say about it the better,” he yelps. “Make it up as we go along.” – R.R.   Credit: Sire 8. The Cure – “Friday I’m in Love”   Robert Smith doesn’t exactly do warm and fuzzy in his lyrics, and that’s exactly why “Friday I’m in Love” is one of the Cure’s signature hits. The song’s peppy, melodic jangle perfectly matches Smith’s innocent words about falling in love — he told this very publication that it’s a “dumb pop song” and “very optimistic and really out there in happy land.” Discounting Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the song also captures the wide-eyed joy of that Friday feeling, with the possibilities of the weekend ahead. “Friday I’m in Love” ended up being the Cure’s last Top 40 hit — what a way to go off the charts swinging. – D.K.   Credit: Fiction 7. Joy Division – “Love Will Tear Us Apart”   The intro is a tease, seemingly previewing a forgettable song. Then it debouches into one of the most iconic, nostalgic riffs ever architected, launching an ‘80s anthem from year zero of that halcyon decade. Weirdly, it’s the most identifiable (yet least representative) of an eerie discography mostly inaccessible to casual listeners — and not only instrumentally. The post-punk dignitaries conjured a dark sound around themes of mental illness and hopelessness. And they didn’t totally sacrifice that dark aura in “Love Will Tear Us Apart” — it just underwent aesthetic osmosis. They saw the thorns of the rose, where the rest saw only the bud. – L.B.   Credit: Factory   6. Tears for Fears – “Head Over Heels”   Before their breakthrough LP, Songs From the Big Chair, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith weren’t known for love — let alone happy — songs. Their debut, 1983’s The Hurting, was an emotionally turbulent record inspired by the work of American psychologist Arthur Janov. The mood lightened up somewhat on Songs From the Big Chair, especially with the majestic “Head Over Heels,” distinguished for its relatively upbeat lyrics and ecstatic Beatles-like “la-la-la-la-la” chorus towards the end. Adding to the romantic atmosphere is a humorous music video that depicts Orzabal trying to catch the eye of a bookish librarian. “Head Over Heels” is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a love song,” Orzabal remarked for the 2014 Big Chair reissue. “It’s a love song that kind of goes a bit perverse at the end.” – David Chiu   Credit: Mercury 5. Oasis – “Wonderwall”   The Gallagher brothers tug at our heartstrings with their signature hit “Wonderwall” — even as we question what they’re actually singing about. Most fans can belt all the words, starting with the opening lines: “Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you / By now you should’ve somehow realized what you gotta do / I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now.” But we don’t hear that mysterious titular word until the fourth stanza. So what exactly is a wonderwall? In 1996, Noel Gallagher reportedly told NME he wrote the song for his then-girlfriend, Meg Matthews. Six years later he switched gears, telling the BBC, “The meaning of that song was taken away from me by the media who jumped on it, and how do you tell your Mrs. it’s not about her once she’s read it is?” Sooooo… “It’s a song about an imaginary friend who’s gonna come and save you from yourself,” he explained. Your wonderwall can be whatever you want it to mean, for whomever you love. Just hope the recipient understands your word choice. – Jason Stahl   Credit: Creation   4. Foo Fighters – “Everlong”   That initial rush of romantic ecstasy never lasts as long as we want it to. The strongest relationships persist in spite of this. On 1997’s “Everlong,” Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl can’t live in the magic moment. The future hasn’t even happened yet, and already, it’s haunting him: “And I wonder / When I sing along with you / If everything could ever feel this real forever / If anything could ever be this real again?” By the time of The Colour and the Shape, he was rocking with a band instead of accompanying himself in studio pastiche — and “Everlong” reflects that energy, a ballad-qua-anthem where the sting of recent divorce is flipped into innocent, emotional longing. – R.C.   Credit: Roswell / Capitol   3. The Flaming Lips – “Do You Realize??”   “Whenever I analyze the scientific realities of what it means to be living here on Earth — in this galaxy … spinning around the sun … flying through space — a terror shock seizes me!!!” Wayne Coyne once wrote of the Flaming Lips’ symphonic-sized staple. “I’m reminded once again of how precarious our whole existence is…” Existential dread is an…unusual…starting point for a “love song.” And you might argue that “Do You Realize??”, the centerpiece from 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, falls outside even the vast umbrella of our list. The harsh realization here, after all, is that “everyone you know some day will die.” But there’s hope in that epiphany! As Coyne tells us, every glimpse of death is a reminder to live: “Instead of saying all of your goodbyes,” he sings over Steven Drozd’s cartoonishly massive arrangement, “Let them know you realize that life goes fast / It’s hard to make the good things last.” Really, “Do You Realize??” is a love song to the entire universe. – R.R.   Credit: Warner 2. The Smiths – “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”   The Smiths’ “angry young man” anthem perfectly captures the confusion and drama of teenage lust: Johnny Marr’s timeless, jangling guitar has given rise to countless solemn YouTube covers. Morrissey’s hyper-literate lyrics were influenced by Karel Reisz’s 1960 film, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, written by Alan Sillitoe, whose short story “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” inspired everyone from Iron Maiden to Belle & Sebastian. “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” makes an excellent choice for any road trip playlist — just watch out for those double-decker buses. – J.P.B.   Credit: Rough Trade / Virgin 1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”   “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you” is such a perfect line, especially from one fawned-over musician to another — in this case, Karen O to Liars frontman and then-boyfriend Angus Andrew. Bittersweet desperation runs throughout the beloved track, as Karen O tries to play it cool, keeping her voice to a measured warble, even though she’s essentially begging her partner to return her affection. “My kind’s your kind,” she sings, another heartrending dagger-like “Dude, I see you! See me, too!” Almost 20 years later, this song resonates even more thanks to numerous covers and interpolations, most notably Beyonce using the hook for her Lemonade cut “Hold Up” in 2016. If Beyonce samples you, you’re doing something right. – B.O.   Credit: Polydor   Listen to all of the songs below:   #Oasis #TheFlamingLips #TheBreeders #TheCardigans #Weezer

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/the-50-best-alt-rock-love-song

[tryingtofeelanything]

Do not wake me again

English Bungou Stray Dogs One shot Mostly SFW (but blood and injury + implied major character death depending on interpretation)

Hello, it’s been a while ! I’ve been so busy recently, I apologize for my inactivity. I still have some headcanons to come, I just need to actually stop and sit down to write them. Anyway, about this work. This my modest contribution for the @skkficexchange​ event, and my gift for @lenin-it-to-win-it (I really hope you’ll like this small thing !). I used their headcanon “elegical” for this one. So for once, the English version is posted first. I’ll post the French one soon. So, Merry Christmas if you celebrate it !

He was hot. Way too hot. At least too hot compared to the still quite chilly, spring temperature, making a slight breeze running between the high buildings of Yokohama. His heart, beating way too fast for the pace of his steps, could not deny the considerable responsibility it had in this reaction. It was frustrating. He was feeling like he was getting embarrassing teenage passions back, some that should only belong to the past. But well, this incontrollable emotional frenzy well and truly originated from his teenage years…

Keeping a blank expression happened to be something particularly intricate and the mere thought that everything was certainly displayed on his face with a traitorous sincerity only heightened the heat, located right between his cheeks. At least, the frustration caused by all of those unwilling reactions would be shown to everyone’s eyes. With a bit of luck, he could pretend it was a lack of consent to the current situation, as he was trying almost desperately to make others believe it. Foolishly. For two reasons. On one hand, because he was here willingly and had entirely agreed to the said situation, which was not deviating from what it was supposed to be for now. On the other hand, because it was not to Dazai he could hide the deepest truth of his thoughts.

The street was in a constant state of hustle and bustle, in front of their eyes, then behind each one of their steps. Right in between, some sort of enclosed but porous, transparent space, like a bubble, held a world apart for the two of them. Dazai’s hand was meeting his intermittently, a voluntary accident, an irresistible encouragement to entwine their slightly moist fingers. Their eyes were meeting each other regularly, following a wavering tempo ; with each time, surreptitious glances, inevitably attracting the other, like some pure instinct. Dazai sent him a smile full of gentleness every time. Chuuya did not know what to do with all of this tenderness ; no one had taught him how to receive so much at a time, and definitely not Dazai.

His ex partner’s hand broke the few resistances remaining between them and wrapped around his. His voice pulled him out of all of his questions with a not so familiar gentleness :

“Let’s make a stop here.”

In the space of a few seconds, he forgot to keep a pout on his face. His eyes stopped, attracted, as if under the yoke of a parallel force of gravity, in a chocolate-like ocean, before he realized he was supposed to follow the brown-haired head’s gesture, pointing a small, welcoming-looking cafe out. A new wave of warmth covered his chest, leaving a myriad of heady sensations there, just like some foam. All of them rushed to spot the perfect moment to steal one, or two, kisses between nosy eyes.

They reached his rib cage and stabbed right through his chest. A strong pain blinded him completely.

He calmly opened his eyes again under white sheets. Dazai’s body was pressed against his, their naked chest, hips, legs slowly gliding against each other to the rhythm of their breathing. Brown strands of hair gently tickled his cheek as lengthy kisses were continuously washed up on the pleasantly sensitive skin right under his ear. A bandaged hand slid its fingers between long, tawny-colored curls, stroking them, wrapping them around a loving forefinger, cherishing them like precious goods. His partner’s deep and warm voice whispered loving words between kisses. He could not understand their meaning, but he felt so peaceful, so… loved and loving, that he could not worry about it.

Despite his heavy and tired body, Chuuya turned a bit more towards Dazai. Seeking more warmth, more comfort… no, even, more fusion, he hunched even closer to him, nestling against the body, covered in slightly loose bandages. An arm welcomed him, sneaking around him. Rocked by the continuous whispers still going on right against him, he closed his eyes. His fingers could not stop from fiddling with the ring, warmed by his skin, and put around his left ring finger. The moment felt surrealistic, in the range of those one would not even dare to dream of. Maybe for the first time in his life, the young man felt contented, fulfilled.

Yet, on this moment, all he could acknowledge was nausea.

His knees crashed on the tough mattress of a hospital bed. The whiteness of the wall in the room blinded him. He closed his eyes, to avoid it as much as to fully enjoy Dazai’s lips that were submissively letting him devour them. He tilted his head, slid his hands on each side of the face framed with brown curls to keep it still, forced him to open up, to discover him again as if he did not know him inside out. A muffled moan vibrated against him. He did not let them catch their breath.

Dazai was shaking weakly between his fingers, still out of strength. He should probably act with more restraint. Chuuya could not. His partner, his cruel life companion, his… Dazai was panting right against him, was shuddering on his own because he was alive. His hands were still cold but not frozen. He had been afraid to touch them ; he was now holding them in his fingers, with enough strength to get sure they would not slip away from him anymore.

With the anxiety now subsided, he felt relief engulfing him with slow, successive waves. His kisses were getting less invasive, less hungry, were changing into stroking lips, into silent admissions. “I was so afraid”, on reddened lips ; “I thought I lost you”, on one of their corners ; “don’t ever leave me alone again” against a prominent bone of the jaw. The way the young man’s body sank back into the too hard pillow, the way he closed his eyes, the way he just let all of those gestures be, meant as many “I was too” “I did too”.

And yet, in this room that should smell like disinfectant and body heat, he only perceived the smell of blood.

The violent pain running through his rib cage made him open his eyes again, for good this time. He could hardly breath ; the oxygen was stuck halfway between his lungs and the outside. The blood flowing along his body was sticky and soaked him in a feeling of heat and frozen coldness in the same time. Except from the truly living body standing against him, this body that did not have to suffer from its strength pouring away like red water, burning against him as his own strength left him here and there. Dazai was holding him tightly while his muscles were getting gradually paralyzed because of this tremendous weakness ; his body heat was as unbearable as a wrenching flame, as his body could not find the needed energy to warm up anymore.

Ah, he was not hallucinating anymore. His diminished mind could not even grant him those last moments of break. He should probably blame Dazai’s presence on this brutal call back to reality. This Dazai was a bit less ideal. That had never stopped him from letting himself get attracted every single time, like a magnet, one too natural to be true.

The bullet in his thigh was causing the most important damages. Numbness from Corruption was destroying all hopes of recovery. It had blackened his guts, perverted his organs. The gentle effect of No Longer Human, like a lukewarm wave spreading its effects on every ability users, was giving him the last source of comfort. He had accepted it early in their partnership : like some light relentlessly attracting a moth, it was an enchanting feeling, a release from the devastating weigh of his own power cramming between his innards ; a momentary treatment, with illusory, but oh so comforting, results. Now, however, his body could not react to it anymore, and gradually escaped from his control, slowly extinguishing the flames of his consciousness.

A laugh, in which few traces of humor easily hided, shook him weakly. This mere shadow of a shudder immediately heightened the pain submitting his whole body to its mercy, forcing him to stop soon. With some difficulty, he could raise two eyes, with a slowly fading blue color, through eyelids that could not open fully anymore. Dazai’s dark irises looked almost too colorful to hold his gaze. The distress emanating from them was well and truly unbearable, though. The shadow of a question crossed them when faded blue met intense brown.

For split second, he could not tell if he was half lying on muddy ground, soaking in his blood, or in sheets vaguely smelling like Dazai’s perfume. It was this fragrance, he was smelling in a particularly strong way in a mix of death, violence and firearm, that granted him one last rush of lucidity, one enough to make him speak, whereas he could no move a muscle anymore.

“In the end… I’ve never been able to tell you that I love you.”

A strange light crossed Dazai’s eyes. He looked at him with a blank face for a while, before a sad smile appeared on his face, like a veil sliding from his head with gentleness, revealing a bit of honesty along his features. He whispered in his turn, not louder than Chuuya. As if he was loosing his ability to make physical efforts too.

“But you just admitted it, didn’t you, Chuuya ?”

“No. I never did. Genuinely. Not genuinely.”

Silence fell on them again. Speaking was getting far too difficult. The detective had understood what he meant. That’s what mattered. The embrace around him tightened even more. It made him feel dizzy ; but, in the same time, nothing else was holding him anymore, either his body, nor his consciousness. It only needed to drop him, and he would faint with it. Dazai was not allowing release that easily. For once, he was persisting on staying. For the first time. But as usual, he let him suffer until the end.

“It’s not important right now. You’ll still have time for that. You’re already halfway there.”

A few seconds were needed for Chuuya to realize who had just spoken. The young man’s voice was shaking so much that it was almost unrecognizable. And he was loosing his ability to perceive his environment more and more. He would have probably thrown up part of his guts, if his body had still been able to be shaken by spams.

Halfway ? Too far. No. He was almost there. So little time would have been needed…

Dull sounds and vibrations. Ah, some footsteps were coming their way. Allies, enemies ? Could they end his suffering instead of Dazai who would have never shown mercy until the end ? Finally, someone has came to release him. From Osamu Dazai’s shackle. From his physical embrace. From his mental embrace ? Would someone be able to cut those ties ? No, probably not. He should not get vain hopes.

Only a few steps away. It was so close. Was he about to reach it ? Right at this moment ? What ? For who ? Why ?

His head fell back against a scorching chest. It lifted to a rash rhythm. Panic ? Anxiety ? Or was that a normal rhythm he had just forgotten ? Darkness surrounded him. Ah, he could not keep his eyes open anymore.

Dazai always had cold hands. Yet, he suddenly felt so warm.

His lips moved on their own in a final delirium. In the very end, maybe Corruption should get the upper hand on Nakahara Chuuya.

“O grantors of dark disgrace,

do not wake me again !

I will endure my solitude,

Arms seeming already useless.”

“O eyes that open doubtfully,

Open eyes that stay motionless for a while,

Ah, heart, that believes in others more than itself,

O expectations, stale and dismal airs,

leave, leave this body of mine !

I enjoy nothing anymore but my wrecked dreams.”

[suchastart]

If it isn't too personal, what happend with your husband? (feel free to ignore this if you aren't comfortable, sorry!)

sigh

real talk, I guess?

very long answer behind the cut

So. I got got married to the guy I loved in college, and we’d been together for a few years, and I was 22, and that was the natural progression of things? Graduate and then marry? I’d graduated with my mostly-so-far, STILL to this day ugh useless degree in Creative Writing and English, and we both had jobs and an apartment and were happy? I think we were happy. I thought we were. We were doing Life together and you know, we were living, but. But I think I was struggling with things even then; drinking a little almost every day, not as much then, and for two years we were okay, and then we moved to GA to be closer to his family–while mine was far-flung, in PA and England and Washington state and then Germany.

I missed them. It was hard. It was so hard. I grew up with the super-close unit that was my mom, dad, and brother for my whole life, because my dad was in the military and we moved around so much and they were all I had, so like, I am my family? I don’t feel myself if I don’t have them, I guess. Long distance from them was terrifying and hard and debilitating. But I was married now! So I had my husband, and his family was my family now so, naturally, of course we would move to be closer to them. 

So I found a new job when we moved to GA, and it was like 30-35 hrs a week and I had a lot of time at home and I am Shy and self-deprecating and I always think I am awful and I was in a new place and felt alone and so I had absolutely no friends where we were living, and absolutely no family around–it was just me, and my husband, and his family. Which was okay–his family are (still, I’m sure) such great people, and we got along great, but. It’s not the same? “What’s mine is yours” and all, sure, but it wasn’t my family, who know me inside and out, who raised me and grew up with me and just. know me, to my blood, to my bones; I didn’t have anything that was MINE. And you need that, I think, as a person???? You need stuff that is yours. Even when you’re “in Love” and married–you still need stuff that’s yours?? And everything seemed to be his? We moved there for him and his job and his family, and we hung out with his sister and his brother and his friends, and drove his new car, and travelled his roads, and visited his family, and just. 

I felt like I was drowning. I drank more. I drank so much. I went into work hungover, and I pretended to be “sick” or cramping and went home early because I was aching in my heart and my head and my whole body, and I was dehydrated and depressed and fucking just kind of dizzy and wanted to puke and sleep forever. I got into bed and cried. I drank so much. I worried about absolutely everything. I didn’t go anywhere. Secretly I resented him for taking me away from my family (which wasn’t fair to him, or to me, or to anybody). I don’t think we communicated any of this well. I cried so much, and told him that I hated myself, and I wanted to go home, or to die.

I just very, very much wanted to die. 

We grew distant? It felt different than when we both lived in NC and away from our families, both of us together. Maybe he knew. He tried to help, I think, how he felt like he could–he was so nice to me, and I never doubted his kindness, and he tried to get me to hang out with his family and friends, and to go do things, tried to pretend I was still his Dream Girl who liked video games and his favorite shows and was really chill, but I think I made it worse by preferring to stay home and cry. I just didn’t have the energy to pretend, and I was sad and angry and exhausted. I wanted to die. I was suffocating, and I missed my family. I never tried to restrict him going anywhere–it was truly so great that he was visiting his sister, or his mom and dad, or going out of state to visit his college friends. I was genuinely happy for him, I was always supportive of him and encouraged him to go, because I wanted him to have fun and I was happy that he was happy, and I never wanted my issues fucking up his good time. Sometimes I would go, too! But sometimes he would ask that I go, and I just–couldn’t. I physically couldn’t make myself. Once, we drove a whole hour and a half, maybe, to his sister’s place, and we were going to play some board game and I had a panic attack and he drove me all the way home an hour and a half there in Atlanta traffic, and then drove back. And I felt like such a terrible burden, and a terrible wife. And he told me, once, that he cried on the way there, that he was so upset when he went to visit and I didn’t go with him, that he wanted a partner and it was supposed to be me–and that was just… I know it was probably hard for him, having a wife who was depressed and anxious and lonely and. Well.

We didn’t really communicate any of this well. He was always kind to me–he was supportive, and made me my first doctor’s appointment when I felt like I couldn’t call, and I started my antidepressants because of that, and I’m still alive. Sometimes that in itself still feels like an achievement. Like: hey! At least I haven’t killed myself yet! Even though it’s come close a few times? Like, listen. Once this year I called the suicide hotline everybody posts about? Because I was just done. And it’s a fuckin’ automated system????? And just. That was so disheartening, like–the last thing I want to do when I truly am just miserable and Ready to Go is like, fucking go through a god damn automated machine system to press 2 if I wanna die? Like?? Jesus. Why am I going to call an automated system when I’m ready to just down my whole bottle of pills to press through fifteen buttons of a machine?

Anyway. So that didn’t work out well but. I don’t know. I just really don’t know. I still have a lot of feelings about everything. I felt like things were (slowly, very, very slowly) getting better after I started taking medications. I had future plans with my previous job (at the next year! the next two years! it was such a novel thing, making career plans for actually building my own place in a company, I would’ve had a Place, I would’ve done something that mattered in a company that I believed in), I was talking to my mom again, I was feeling like I could breathe, just a little, taking antidepressants and medications that might help my anxiety and sleeplessness. I knew things weren’t The Same with my husband, but I thought we could work toward it? We were rarely physically intimate anymore. I was miserable, and he was trying to help. I was trying to live, and to pretend that I was alive. I was raised to think that we shouldn’t Give Up on my promises, that marriage has its ups and downs and that things can go way south sometimes but you can keep going, keep working, not giving up.

We were growing apart. I know it, and I knew it. He came home one day in September, and I was washing the dishes and asking him what he wanted to do that day, or that weekend, and he told me that he just couldn’t do it anymore. He didn’t love me, and he hadn’t loved me for the past two years. He left that night, and took our dog, and left me alone in a state by myself with my mom, my dad, and my brother, my whole heart family, in Europe. I had literally nobody. He was my person, and he left.

So that’s what happened.

I called my dad, and he booked a very fuckin’ expensive immediate ticket from England to come help me pack up my stuff. I was sick for days until he got there. I was vomiting, and couldn’t sleep, and lost so much hair. I couldn’t eat. I called my husband and told him that I was sick and didn’t know what to do (because who else was I supposed to call?? any semblance of family that would help me being literally hours away from me at that point), and he told me that he was at his sister’s house an hour and a half away and that I should just go to urgent care?? So I just. Waited. I waited for my dad, my best friend, to get there. I hired a lawyer. My husband wanted to just do everything Online and get rid of me easy–but my parents helped me hire a lawyer and my father and I went to meet one while we packed all my stuff in a U-Haul. We drove all my stuff to PA, and they renovated the whole attic to give me a little suite up here. I haven’t talked to my ex but maybe once since then. I’m still friends with his family on Facebook, which most days still feels a little weird. We don’t talk at all, or comment on each other’s posts, and it kind of feels like a stalemate? It’s very awkward. I still love them? And miss them?? But it feels a little displaced, like–I’m still super angry at him, but his family has been nothing but kind and welcoming to me, so–?

I don’t know. I don’t know? I’m angry, and sad, and accepting, and thankful, and tired. I want this to be over. My parents and I have spent so much money in attorneys fees. I am tired. I am terrified of being alone. I am terrified that I am broken, and unlovable, and unfixable. I don’t want to see his last name on mine anymore. I am mad that he gave up on me, and silently accepting that he did, because of course he did, why wouldn’t he give up on me? I am bitter. I don’t want to believe in love, mostly because I don’t believe I will ever have it again. My new friends at work are getting married. I keep telling them that it’s not too late to turn back–poking fun while torn between being happy at their happiness and bitter about it, too. I’m jealous, and angry, and scared.

People grow apart. Maybe we weren’t meant to last forever. Maybe I still have a person out there. Right now I feel hopeless. I had an email from my lawyer this morning about sending a final decree to the judge. We’re approaching the last stages of this divorce. 

Maybe this is a learning stage? Maybe I’m supposed to learn things about myself. Maybe this is meant to be. Maybe everything happens for a reason. 

But I’m still terrified. I don’t want to be alone. I am terrified of being alone. I want somebody to love–I want to make a family with somebody, to join theirs to mine, to share myself with someone, to make a family. I don’t want to feel so torn, or regretful, or resentful, or angry. I want to have someone.

I want to feel love. And I am so, so scared that I won’t ever get another chance.

So that’s the story. And I just–I want you to be careful? Whoever is reading this. Please be careful with your heart. And despite how bitter and angry I am, and how much I hate saying it–I want you to believe in love. 

So maybe do both?

And if you need someone to talk to, please remember that I’m here, and I believe that you are so great and beautiful and worthy of whatever your heart desires ♥

[hiddendreamer67]

ch. 4- Jacksepticeye and the beanstalk

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

“Almost...there…” Jack huffed, seeing the clouds just above him. He had learned better than to look down. Finally he broke through the cloud layer and returned to the land of Giants. The sun was almost setting already when he arrived. “Oh thank frickin’ Jesus this is the last time.” Jack sighed, collapsing onto the land in relief. Then again, Jack wasn’t feeling very thankful. He couldn’t believe this was his last time here. Of course he’d listen to his Ma, but it was a bit sad how much Jack wouldn’t get to explore. This world was terrifying, and Jack kinda liked it. “Goodbye, freakishly long blades of grass.” He said, running his hand through it. He began to say goodbye to everything he passed. “Goodbye, ladybug pretending to be a dog. Goodbye, dragonfly that could be an actual baby dragon.” His voice was a little sore by the time he reached the castle stairs. “Helloooo, annoyingly tall stairs.” He greeted, starting the process one last time of pulling himself up. This time, Jack was surprised to see the giant door slightly ajar. Cautiously, Jack walked through the opening into the castle, keeping an eye out for the Giant. Now that he had been spotted, Jack would have to be more careful sneaking around. Not that he was that good at sneaking around the first time. “Holy balls.” Jack gasped. Inside the castle, he saw more than another bean. There were hundreds more of the sweets littering the floor, except these beans weren’t just green. They were every color of the rainbow, leading off in a trail. It was if they had been laid out just for him by the Giant. “Hmm, I wonder if this is a trap?” Jack pretended to ponder, rolling his eyes. Now Jack debated in his head. Should he follow the trail? He still had no clear idea what to bring back as proof. This was obviously a trap, so logically he should head in the opposite direction. But, the other doorway was blocked off and the stairs to the second level would be a lot of effort. And Jack had to hope he was smart enough to outwit a trap set for a rodent. The path was at least a clear lead, and Jack was known for being curious…. “No.” Jack shook his head. “Now that’s just stupid. Who in their right mind would walk straight into a trap?” He sighed, facing the stairs. “Alright, just think of it as climbing another beanstalk.” He made it up about four steps, before hearing a noise that made him freeze. A loud bark coming from upstairs, followed by what sounded like whining and pawing at the door. Jack glanced up in fear, knowing the dog was up there somewhere out of sight. “Trap it is!” Jack decided immediately, dashing back down the steps. Between the trail and the dog, he’d choose trail. But Jack decided to play it safe. Instead of following the beans directly, he stuck to the wall of the room where he wasn’t right out in the open. “How convenient for all these doors to be open!” Jack chuckled. This had to be the least subtle trap ever. As the trail wound through a few rooms, Jack kept an open eye out for his elusive proof. The sun had fully set as Jack journeyed on, and by the time Jack found the end of the trail he was traveling by moonlight alone. “Jesus this thing goes on forever.” Jack yawned. Jack stopped before entering the next room. The trail of beans continued in, until about halfway when it abruptly led to a cup on its side, as if Jack was meant to walk straight in. “Really?” Jack raised an eyebrow. What an idiotic trap! Even if Jack were to walk into the cup, how did the giant expect him to stay? Jack could just walk right back out.   “God, this is almost sad.” Jack said, approaching the cup. “I mean, c’mon- there’s no even any bait in the cup.” Jack glared at it, getting angry. “Are you freakin’ kidding me?! I took practically all my precious time to get here, and there’s nothin’.” He gave the cup a hearty kick, only to regret it a moment later when his foot flared up in pain. “OW! Screw you, ye deceivingly hard cup! Well this was a stupid idea anyways. Maybe there’s something outside that could work.” A loud sound like snoring made Jack’s spirit plummet. With a growing sense of dread, Jack turned to face the sound to his left and had to bite down hard on his knuckles to keep from letting out an unmanly scream. Not fifty feet from Jack was the Giant, snoring away peacefully on the floor. Jack scrambled back in an instant, before realizing this Giant was fully knocked out. Hesitantly, Jack took a step closer. “Woah.” Jack whispered softly as his heartbeat returned to mortal rates. He hadn’t realized just how big the guy was. Jack knew he should run far away in case the giant woke up, but he couldn’t help taking the opportunity to get a good look at it. After all, if Jack was never going to return anyways, what was the harm? It was impossible to get a view of the whole thing without walking several hundred yards around. A hand twitched as Jack passed by, causing his heart rate to skyrocket once more. He continued his journey after a moment, but this time at more of a distance. The sheer amount of this creature just blew Jack’s mind. What could possibly need so much muscle? Soon enough, he reached the face. The giant had slight stubble, and hair that fell over its face in an unnatural shade of red. With a rugged chin and proportionately large muscles, the view was intimidating. Jack shrunk back as the teeth could be viewed when it yawned. What if this was some sort of man-eating beast? Still, the most surprising fact to Jack was just how...human the giant looked. Jack’s hesitation seemed to lessen the more he observed. “I bet you’re a big softie, aren’t ‘cha?” Jack teased, stopping in front of its nose. The Giant made a slight groaning sound as it shifted in sleep. And then, the unthinkable happened. The Giant woke up. Huge, confused and sleepy brown eyes stared into Jack’s terrified blue eyes. Jack froze in terror. He felt trapped in the enormous gaze. Maybe if Jack stayed absolutely still, it would just go back to sleep. But that was not the case. As the giant became more awake, the eyes began to focus more on Jack in shock. The two were in a moment outside of time, stuck in a staring match with enough tension in the air that you could feel it. “AAAAAH!” Screamed both the giant and Jack in shock. Jack winced in pain as he plugged his ears, feeling as though he might just go deaf. As the Giant scrambled to get up, Jack stumbled backwards as the ground shook. Jack came to his senses and looked around for a place to hide. He dashed under a massive chair, praying the Giant had looked away long enough to not know where he was. Jack felt faint. He could hear nothing for almost a full minute. He wasn’t sure if he really had lost his hearing or the Giant was just staying still. “Dang it.” The Giant’s rumbling voice shook Jack to the core. “Where’d it go?” Jack sat in the dark between the leg of the chair and the wall, trying to steady his breathing. He covered his mouth with his hand to try and keep silent as the ground shook again, but softer than before. It was almost as if the Giant was trying to be quiet. Jack could do nothing but wait anxiously as the footsteps got louder. The Giant was getting closer. What sounded like the shifting of fabric could be heard, and Jack imagined the Giant crouching low to the ground in front of the chair. Though it was pitch black, Jack was sure if he moved into view those massive brown eyes would be staring right at him. He could just imagine the Giant reaching his colossus hands under the couch, searching for him by touch alone. Jack closed his eyes, imagining the fingers getting closer and closer to his hiding place. Any second now he would be in their inescapable grasp…. The footsteps began once more, heading away from Jack and into the next room. Jack let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding in. “Oh thank god.” Jack sighed, sinking down onto the ground. “That was WAY too close.” With the adrenaline fading away, Jack was feeling incredibly tired. He yawned, realizing he didn’t have enough energy to go searching further tonight. He certainly wasn’t planning on going anywhere with a Giant looking for him. Giving in to his exhaustion, Jack pulled out his blanket and tried to get some shut-eye.

[everydaymamaof3]

2018

Reflecting on 2018...

As I sit here reflecting on 2018...I’m first and foremost so grateful for this place in my life!

It was a great year, filled with amazing memories, but it also had its hard times...many suffered loss and heartbreak and my heart goes out to them...

Our Waterpark project came to life, a memorial bench was put in place for my beautiful friend who is always on my mind, as well as a bench for our family and our friends who built the park. My youngest daughter started school, middle daughter started intermediate grades, and oldest started her last and final year of nursing!And the best part, she got engaged to a young man who we already love like our son. I became a bit more hard core in my vegan journey, and really started to understand my body and its needs, and the impact of our actions on our planet. That’s as far as I’ll write about that,the planet that is. What started me on the vegan journey, was learning about what exactly my body needed. Debunking things we’ve always been told, protein only comes from meat (false) humans are made to eat meat (false) humans are the only species to drink milk after infancy (made me think) what is in our food (not good things) what is it doing to my body.

I started eliminating different things and paying attention to how I felt. Dairy is mostly gone from my diet and I eat seafood and the occasional bite of chicken which I’ll eliminate entirely. I’ve never been more toned or lived with less soreness in my back, my knees. To each their own, but all I can say is don’t knock it until you try it! I hear so many say, it takes more time, it’s more expensive...it’s not. It’s the fear of the unknown, change, that deters many. Humans are creatures of habit, and we get scared when venturing into new territory, so we make ourselves believe it’s unattainable, or too difficult. But it’s not. It’s no different than learning a new skill at work, or entering a new phase with our children, or preparing a dinner of burgers and fries. It’s all in our minds. What we believe we can achieve.

In my social life, I went to more yoga classes, tried to make more time for friends, but thankfully everyone who is in my circle knows I’m always there for them in any way at any time, but I’m terrible with committing to dates as my children’s schedules and time with them is what I focus on, as do they. The years of having them want you around, or want to be around you go by in a flash, and then they’re moved out.

A pivotal moment in 2018, I spoke to a girl who was struggling in recovery...it was a moment in my life, in this year, where I was looking at this young woman, and thinking to myself, this was me in my 20’s, I have to find a way to use my recovery to maybe help others? Nearing my 12 year mark, I feel I owe it to others to share what helped me in hopes of helping them. I’m still working on how I wanna do this in the future. Year after year of clarity, I see people struggling, and the triggers are always the same. Angry at a spouse. Angry at family. Needing someone to blame. Feeling insecure. Feeling lost. Needing a crutch to escape. To feel numb. It’s always a battle of the mind. And I always think, how did I get so lucky to change my life and get everything I ever wanted.

Someone asked me “I don’t know how you do it without meetings or a sponsor etc”. I guess it’s because I just do it on my own and it works, which might be somewhat selfish, but I honestly feel overwhelmed and unsure when someone struggling asks me what to do, because I don’t have the answers, I can only tell you what worked for me. I do have a woman who lives far away, who’s words will always be in the back of my mind. So she is somewhat like a forever sponsor. Kella, I’ve never forgotten you and your wisdom is still with me. One thing I will say to people reading this....please don’t say addicts don’t have a disease. They do. It’s no different than someone struggling with mental health.

I started blogging...a goal I’ve had for a long time. Started running more. Committing to everyday after work, just a short, 14 minute run, and a morning workout of only 35 minutes.

Physically and mentally I feel amazing. I want to feel amazing, so I do everything in my power to feel that way. I don’t want to look back one day and just feel like I glided through life the way society expects us too. Work ourselves to the point of exhaustion. Feel lousy, think lousy thoughts about ourselves, no thank you.

Sure anxiety and stress is a real part of everyone’s life...but I try and handle it as best as I can.

Losing my dog Sydney recently was hard. It was so hard, I couldn’t breathe when I sobbed for her. A huge part of my heart was broken when she passed away, but now in thinking back, I asked the Universe to take her on her own time. I begged to please not make me have to do it, after I had to do the hardest thing with my dog Hunny. I couldn’t bare it. And the Universe did. She died peacefully, on her own time. I started paying more attention to the “gifts” from the Universe around me this year...I guess feeling more grounded. Before she died, one night on a run, I stood in front of two deer....one on one side of the road, one on the other. The one on my side was maybe 10 feet away from me and the traffic was flowing so I knew if it leaped, it would die. So I stopped in front of it and just softly spoke to it until I saw a break in the traffic, where I then, clapped my hands for it to go! It made it across. I feel like the Universe was repaying me with Sydney’s peaceful passing for my sparing a life. Maybe, maybe not. But isn’t it nice to at least believe in things like that? This year I really started to see that beliefs are a huge part of our problems in society! People share a belief or perspective, and others tear it apart on social media...it’s so sad to read. Just accept people. Accept what they believe. If it’s not affecting your life, why does it matter?

I’m not spiritual...I just don’t have the mindset yet to be spiritual or meditate..I try...trust me I try so hard, but my mind is ON, all the time and has no off switch. So trying to meditate is like fighting with a wet cat. Doesn’t work out for me. It’s a goal of mine for 2019. My poor yoga instructor, she’ll be saying “free your mind of all thoughts” and I’m there, with my eyes closed thinking about what I need for groceries the next day! Just a technique I don’t have yet.

Actually I’m lying, I am somewhat spiritual. Being spiritual isn’t being religious, it’s connection. And I feel connected. To the moon, to my surroundings, to people...I feel people’s energies like nobody’s business...I can tell how someone’s feeling just by standing next to them...so maybe I am spiritual. Or weird. Either is fine with me.

My business is thriving and wonderful and busy, and I’ve gotten to a place in my business where I have earned the love and respect of families in the community, by caring for their children and introducing them to new things, exciting things, while teaching their little minds at the same time! I’m still very happy in my work...and that tells me I have more child caring years in me! As long as I continue to love it. That is my promise to myself year after year, when I no longer love it, it’s time to move on. But that time isn’t here, I still love it, and each year is just as hard saying goodbye to kids that move on, I put my heart and soul into my time with them, but I rest easy knowing I sent them on their way with skills to be confident little humans.

2018 was a busy year...my girls schedules were busy, Von was officially promoted and I’m so proud of him as he so deserved it. He earned it. It meant a lot of travel time, one or two nights away a week, and we’ve learned to flow with it. It’s not easy sometimes, but that’s marriage and supporting each other’s careers. It’s all part of the package, and it takes work.

Coming into 2019, I have a few goals. Look further into pursuing my dream to expand my daycare. Not take anything personally, or analyze anything that doesn’t need analyzing. Just. Let. Things. Be.

Take things as they come and roll with it. Something I’m learning from my husband ❤�� Third, I’m thinking about making some of my vegan and raw snacks available to the public maybe at a Farmers Market or two? Toying with the idea..we’ll see.

2018, I had some aha moments of feeling grateful lately too. For silly things, but things that all of a sudden really matter to me. Like the fact that I am so incredibly thankful to my parents for giving me a good childhood! For giving me skills like skating, skiing, summers swimming in Cultus Lake at the cabin, playing baseball, volleyball, learning how to chop wood, be a confident driver, have an insanely strong work ethic, they might not seem like things that really matter, but now as an adult, they really do. They’re things I can teach my girls! Things I can do with my girls. And I thrive on being active, so thank you!

I know when I write, it’s a lot about my life and what I personally am doing, but my motive with writing is always to maybe resonate with another person who is going through something similar, to connect, to share life’s experiences and maybe help another feel normal.

2019 I hope we are all more present, and less disconnected.

Be happy, be healthy, make the best of every day. Live your best life, simply ❤️

[smol-pilots]

code: calico

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

You: role play fuck my brains out bc i just virtually sucked someone's cock and got nothing in return

Stranger: why did you do that?

You: that's not a bad question

You: idk i thought i'd get something in return

Stranger: i guess so. some reward :D

You: yeah exactly

Stranger: it's like in movies, why girls are sluty

Stranger: they want something in return

You: hah i mean it's only fair isn't it?

Stranger: i think its kind of self deception

You: that's also not a bad remark

You: i always blindly believe men

You: i mean not blindly but

Stranger: we believe what we want to believe.

Stranger: so the important thing is what we want

Stranger: i mean, people want to "live happily ever after"

You: tru

Stranger: they imagine family, love and so on

You: but what do i want

You: i don't really fit into that tbh

Stranger: o.k., so what do you want

You: i mean i don't want family

You: i guess i wouldn't mind love but i don't expect it

Stranger: o.k., maybe you want relationship?

You: i don't even know what it feels so

You: i can't really feel any romantic feelings towards people?

You: it's kind of

You: sad actually

Stranger: do you feel like life is meaningless?

You: yeah

Stranger: maybe out of boredom you just try to have some "fun"

You: i mean exactly

You: i don't expect anyone to love me because i know i probably won't love anyone so

Stranger: oh

Stranger: by the way

You: yes?

Stranger: one good song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voi-aQlvP68 heard it yesterday in a movie

Stranger: stange movie, "Calico Skies"

Stranger: strange

You: i'm listening to the song and i really like it, thank you!

You: noted, i'll put it on my to-watch list :)

Stranger: what you said reminded my of the lyrics of this song

Stranger: she's kind of sad because she knows a man will love her, be she will not so much

You: okay i really like the song??? the voice is so nice also i rly like this type of music

Stranger: do you watch Game of Thrones?

You: i watched like 2 season but then i stopped hhh you?

Stranger: i watch it. yeah, 2 season was impressive. the red wedding, isn't it?

You: yup

You: i see there's so much drama now hahah

Stranger: :) yeah, they lost it, i guess

Stranger: the beggining was building impressive,

Stranger: anyway

Stranger: you are f or m?

You: f

You: you?

Stranger: m

Stranger: so why girls suck cocks, it quite nonsensical

Stranger: gross acitivyt

You: i mean tru but i guess it's for the dude's pleasure? also it's kinda fun to have so much power over someone

Stranger: yeah, but this is zero sum game - pleasure for the dude, but for the sucker what?

Stranger: nah, it never appealed to me

You: it's a lot of work actually but i guess all of this is just giving and receiving

Stranger: i think physically it's quite troublesome

Stranger: for a woman

You: i mean it usually takes time??

You: and then everything just starts to hurt bc the dude can't come that fast and it's just

You: uh

Stranger: yeah. crazy stuff

Stranger: but people do many crazy things :)

You: hah that's true

Stranger: what's your country?

You: uk

Stranger: old good uk :)

You: hahahahh

You: you?

Stranger: russia

You: oh nice!

You: ive never been there but i rly want to go to moscow

Stranger: come sometimes, we'll drink a lot of vodka together

You: oh my god no vodka always kills me

Stranger: :D

Stranger: it kills everyone

You: that's like my top three worst drunk moments all involved vodka it's the devil

Stranger: ha ha ha

Stranger: wine is also tricky, it is very intoxicating

Stranger: try a lot of red wine

Stranger: you'll see :D

You: i love wine tho

You: but yeah it also hits pretty hard hahahah

You: how old are u tho?

Stranger: 28

You: ah i'm 24

Stranger: vow vow, we would make a perfect pair :D

You: hahahh we really would :)

Stranger: anyway, why people always try to pair at all?

Stranger: natures call?

You: i have no idea

You: i mean is it really tho

You: i don't think it's nature, it's the culture

You: the society

You: everyone is always shocked when i tell them that i'm single and i don't want kids because they're like??? but how??

You: everyone expects things according to the society they live in and it's kinda annoying sometimes

Stranger: yeah, it's quite strange. everyone want to live by that stream: family, kids, happy life. no alternatives

You: exactly

You: it's like i'm obliged to live my life by this rule

You: and i'm weird if i don't follow

Stranger: but even if people remain single, they want to get romantically involved

Stranger: that is also strange

Stranger: it's like some software inside of us,

You: tru. i sometimes catch myself wishing i'd have a boyfriend and a house and two kids and a dog bc i remember i wished for all that when i was a child. and then once again i see that my parents told me that this is how it is? you get older, you get married, have kids, a house, a job and that's what i also wished for when i was younger

You: i was raised by these values

You: and now that i'm older and i don't want that anymore but i feel like at the same time a part of me maybe still hopes that one day everything would just go the way a young me dreamed it to be

Stranger: when i was younger, i also had dreams about family. and all people about 20 yo i know have the same. almost all.

You: really?

You: what do you want?

Stranger: with time i have seen that this is very big struggle, family, kids, relationship, and "you do not get what you imagine". so i drop those young dreams. they were not realistic. it was illusions of young person. i did not know life and did not know the world.

Stranger: i want to rise above the problems of this life. to get free.

Stranger: not to get entangled more and more

You: the first part!!

You: i really believe that this is what contributed to the majority of crap i had to go through as a teenager and up to this day

You: u see but how does one get free

You: i feel like time to actually! enjoy this life is running out and at the same time i feel there's just sooo much left of it and i'm just passing by, doing things that don't make me happy

You: (bc i don't really know what makes me happy)

You: (imma go brush my teeth and shit i might be gone for about ten minutes okay?)

You: (and shit does not mean take an actual shit i just meant it as "and other stuff")

Stranger: o.k., yes, please do the needful. i'll have some time to reflect. :)

Stranger: i see it like this: I want to be happy just by existing. To rise above my own mental structures, that don't let me feel happy, don't let me feel light and content. I think, if one in his soul "takes everything very easy", not burdening himself with so many false ideas about why he is this or that, and just tries to be, to exist authentically, as a being that is free, then it is good state of consciousness.

Stranger: just to feel that lightness.

Stranger: do i need to do something for that, some big projects of life? I dont think so. Just need to give up some mental stuff. It's all in the mind.

Stranger: if man will simply change his mind, he can be happy. And so many jobs, responsibilies and relationships will not make him happy. It will be just a lot of troubles.

Stranger: anyway, we are all after happiness. the only question is, where is that real happiness

You: that's actually a very interesting perspective that i do find myself agreeing to but at the same time i feel like in theory it sounds ideal and simple but it's really hard to just let go of what's in your mind

Stranger: you are right :) it not easy

You: i was very hung up on the happiness thing as i felt unhappy all the time. and i wondered whether or not you're ever really happy in life. and i asked my mother (u know the older the wiser or smth) and she said that happiness isn't really a long period of time but rather a moment here and there that makes you happy to be alive

You: and that thought made me really sad at the time because i always felt like happiness is something that comes in time - when you get older, wiser, more experienced etc but now i'm discovering my mother wasn't really wrong?

You: at least that's how i experience life

You: my colleague tho, she lovES life. literally loves it. the most positive bright cheerful happy person i have ever seen w my two eyes. and it's just weird bc what did she do how did she achieve this bliss how can she see this life so full of good things

You: it's just

You: so weird

Stranger: it depends on what we do. I think, it's real assessment of ordinary life - happiness are just rear and fleeting moments. but i my life there were some periods where i felt very happy for considerable periods of time. no i do not feel so happy. and with age, happiness diminishes, i think, because the body begins to make a lot of problems. then one is not as energetic as before. and you have to work and survive with less and less energy to accomplish that.

Stranger: i thing technologies, computers, internet steal a lot of happiness

Stranger: i went to asia for some time, and after few months i revived the joy of life

You: that's true but it's also what made it really tough to keep living - that it won't get better in time. i was really sad and depressed for the majority of my teenage years so being alive while people kept telling me it's only gonna get harder wasn't really a good thing for me i guess. but at least my expectations weren't that high hahah

You: that's true but at the same time i depend on them to distract me from life so it's really in contradiction

Stranger: it can get better

You: ohh where did u go

Stranger: it must

You: i mean that's what i want to believe but like someone give me idk an age at which it gets better hh

Stranger: with good strategy, there is way. i think so. because I experienced it for a while. I does not depend on the age

Stranger: i may be unhappy for the rest of my life, if i do not try, and stay as i am

Stranger: but if i will apply whatever i learned about happiness, i may achieve something, as i had before.

You: that's a really nice and positive thought

You: i'll keep it in mind

Stranger: if there is hunger, there must be food. so if we are hungry for happiness, it must be out there. or inside of us.

Stranger: oh my god, it's 1 am here

Stranger: forgot myself while talking this stuff :)

You: but it's just so annoying my time is ticking?

You: hahahah

You: i really enjoyed it tho

You: it's rare to find someone to have this kind of conversation with

Stranger: o.k., lets think of a keyword by which we can find each other on omegle again.

Stranger: :)

You: okay

You: :)

Stranger: i know. "Calico". you'll find me by this.

You: good one. i'm going to write it down so i don't forget :)

You: also so i don't forget to download the songs

[shammyb]

"I want to be happy again. I literally can't comprehend or focus on anything anymore. I feel like I just exist and nothing more. I don't feel joy...ever. The last time I genuinely felt happy was after the breakup and being with friends and feeling a connection with my brother, my mom, my friends...even having crushes on people that things didn't end up working out with...those were real genuine feelings and the feelings felt really good. I felt like I was finding my place in life again and then I fucked Brian---someone I had feelings for and someone who had feelings for me---and then I became awkward and didn't know how to be anything more than a fuckbuddy from there. I didn't know how to communicate/was afraid to communicate my feelings after that. I started becoming quiet again at work and at home, even though I was quite the opposite between the breakup and fucking Brian. All of these fears and bad thoughts started building up and I didn't and still don't know how to handle them. Brian went off to Guatemala for a couple weeks, Chris and I hadn't talked for a while but he had just got home from Costa Rica and it was Christmas and it felt empty and materialistic as fuck with just my parents and my brother there. I texted Chris that night because I was such a mess and all I could think was how much j missed him and how I missed the way things used to be and the holidays were just totally depressing this year. We were gonna try working things out and turns out Chris finally got over me though he says he'll always be there for me. We've made the mistake of having sleepovers and sleeping together a few times which has fucked with my head as well. I feel like a leech that is attached to my past and Chris and I can't detach myself from it all as much as it's causing me pain and I want to. We talk every day and it seems to feel comfortable but make me feel worse at the same time. I. Want to move on a be able to feel good and loving and happy and angry and have energy and drive and all of the above, but I'm being held back and j don't know what it is exactly that is holding me back. It's hard to get out of my house anymore. Today was the most times I've thought about just wanting to die that I've ever had, and I just got off the phone with Chris and I want to just fall asleep and never wake up though my body doesn't want to sleep probably because I haven't used any energy barely at all today and drank too much coffee. Idk I feel like I'm just a body that's floating and I can't make any decisions and I can't stand up for myself and I don't know what I want and I don't know how to get better and I'm trying but I seem to just keep failing and I don't like setting goals for myself anymore because even the simplest ones I can't seem to complete. I want to fucking die I want to fucking die, like why can't I just sleep forever? Dreaming forever sounds a lot better than my reality. I don't want people feeling sad or sorry or worried about me either. My physical health seems to be getting worse and worse along with my depression. I'll have okay moments like when I have a good climbing day and like last night I went out for a beer with an old coworker and he opened up to me about personal things and it was nice but 95 percent of the time is shit. I honestly feel like if I didn't have ibs then a good chunk of my anxiety and depression could be vanished. I have the hardest relationship with food, not to mention being vegan which makes it even harder. I love food, I'm passionate about the food I do and don't eat, and my body responds to any food I consume with bloating, cramping, pain, and gas. I know the only person that can solve my problems is me and I just feel so lost and confused so it's hard for me to make choices and I wish I could just be guided through my paths of choice and have everything laid out for me instead of constantly feeling unsure of what to do. "In time you will feel better" are the words I'm trying to hold on to but as he months go by its getting harder and harder to believe. I'm writing this in hopes that one day I'll look back at what I wrote and smile with a tears down my face remembering how much pain I felt and being so happy I pushed through it because everything got better. Like that's the only reason I'm still here you know. Idk, I'm ready for the sun to shine again and to get back on my bicycle and ride to new unknown places and step outside my comfort zones and face my fears and learn from others and allow others to learn from me. We'll see, we'll see. I want to be a good dog owner and to make others laugh." -march 2016 Wow. I am so glad I write to my future self. I just found this not in my phone from march of 2016. I was crying a little before I found this thinking about how it's likely I may never get to catch up with my ex and hear about how much we've both grown and discovered about ourselves since we last saw one another. Finding this after those thoughts made me start to bawl. It took me right back to feeling ever last bit of energy sucked out of me, every single day, and how the smallest of tasks seemed too difficult to accomplish. I remember how difficult it was to put on a fake smile at work, let alone to get there in the first place. It took every last bit of me to get out of bed. I remember feeling so lost and so numb that death sounded so much more peaceful than life. I remember my hope diminishing day by day, but still being held onto by a string. I remember trying so hard to keep something that was held together by insecurities: someone I loved but someone I think was afraid to love me for being my authentic self. I remember being in a void of confusion, stuck with my family who didn't speak to one another. Parents, holding onto their relationship also by a string, hoping that their church and god would fix all their problems (which they're still doing). I remember hurting to the point I no longer felt anything. And not feeling anything was what hurt the most. I remember trying so hard to hold onto chris, even when that meant completely disregarding someone else who was stuck in the back of my mind--someone I couldn't forgive myself for how I ended things with--brian. I remember receiving a text from him one night, late at night, when I was laying in bed with chris, telling me he heard I was still climbing and hoped I was doing well. I remember that was the moment I could no longer ignore my feelings. I started listening to my feelings and my intuition from that point on. I've discovered and rediscovered a lot about myself since. I have and still am learning how to be completely alone again. I've loved. I've hurt. I've danced. I've fallen. But most importantly, I'm feeling, and I'm allowing myself the right to feel. I'm a scientist and philosopher by nature, taking life as an experiement. Learning through trial and error. Sometimes over and over again. I'm learning how to build my own support and community. How to give myself what I need, not necessarily alone, but being solely accountable to find the recourses and tools to do so. Something else I've learned is that without couple privilege, without privilege of an emotionally supportive family, without the privilege of job stability, a liveable wage, or a car, it makes finding the tools and resources more difficult to attain, buuut they're still there. It sucks when I look into the past and think about the people I miss and would love to hear from the most, but knowing also it's not my place to invade their space and dealing with the feelings of emotional abandonment. It sucks knowing there is so much privilege to those who couple up, because there is a committed, and consistent support system in that sort of dynamic. That romance and sex seem to be deemed as more important to a relationship than platonic intimacy. When a platonically intimate relationship has been kindled or rejoiced with a friend, it is only temporary until they've coupled up with someone who meets their romantic needs. I am constantly at battle with my own wounds, reminding myself to stay tender. And I am learning. Always learning. Rant over for now..//2&;$-@;!2