#teen canon event

[anhed0nia-ang3l]

⋆˚ 𝜗𝜚˚⋆ Portrait Of A Ghost Part 2b⋆˚ 𝜗𝜚˚⋆

જ⁀➴ content warnings જ⁀➴

Not all of these themes are in part 2b but these show up in the whole story!

Depersonalisation

 Depression 

Drowning 

Death of a teenager/young person

Emotional isolation

Existential crises

 (implied) EDs   

Saviour complexes

Suicide 

self harm 

please stay safe <3

In hindsight, that day specifically wasn’t the certain doom that the 3 of clubs had foretold but what happened after. The incident with the pen was only the beginning, the sunset that lights the sky up in amethyst and citrine before the darkest nights. Was that day the sunset or was the in-between of that day and another day the sunset. Maybe it was all darkness, maybe the two of us were intertwined in a permanent night, blinded by shadows as constellations formed between us. 

For the rest of the day after the pen incident, I could feel my insides squirming around inside me. Butterflies didn’t do the feeling justice as it was more like someone had released centipedes inside me and they were crawling around, threatening to crawl up my throat and out of my mouth to let people know what was missing and what had replaced it. Was I really filled with insects or was It something else more powerful, was I being corrupted by an ungodly entity far beyond the understanding of anyone and once it burst out of me I knew whatever was within me could destroy and corrupt the lives of everyone around me. 

I am nothing but a vessel for an outbreak of hostilities.

I kept up the act, I tried harder and harder although I knew it was all for nothing, eventually Eri had to do what they had to. All I could do was delay it for as long as possible, like cutting off the circulation to a snakebite. I knew I had to somehow make friends with them and convince them not to tell anyone, it’s what “Rhiannon” would do, she’s perfect after all, she’s just perfect with nothing else below the surface. Her smile is plastered and plastic. But still I would keep playing her, no matter the cost. 

I dressed my face in soft smiles , holding my hand out like a false prophet, telling futures too good to be true. Looking back at what happened, it was  too good to be true in its own sick, suffering way. I’m not sure if ‘happiness’ is something I’ll ever truly understand but the rush of that year could’ve been the next best thing. I may never understand people but for those brief shining moments the sensation of it blew me about like falling leaves in the wind or how it feels to stand next to a passing train. I grew closer to them, closer and closer like how two plant’s  vines can tangle together into a knotted web of thorns and blossoms. 

I remember one day we were walking home together with Elliot, he was friends with Eri as well but for different reasons- the right ones, . The car park was empty, so we just sat next to a stream and talked about everything and nothing all at once 

“so what bands are you into- please say My Chemical Romance, I swear, I’m the only fan in this class” pleading jokingly as I clasped my hands in a prayer, looking up at Eri with puppy dog eyes

“ Hey- I know Welcome To The Black Parade !” Elliot rebutted, laughing at how ridiculous I looked

“Everyone knows that one” I joked- doing my best impression of a middle aged man when he sees a woman wearing a band T-shirt in public 

“No thanks to you”  he playfully snarks 

“Yeah, I love them,” Eri pipes up “what’s your favourite album?” 

“Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, you?”

“Okay not gonna lie I could tell from English class” They laugh, playfully nudging my shoulder “Mine’s Danger Days”

My heart dropped for a second but to be fair, pretending to cough up blood in an English lesson is a pretty strong first impression. 

“Can I get a  translation please?” says Elliot

“Basically Rhiannon’s about  as dramatic as her eyeliner and I had unrestricted internet access at a concerningly young age,” 

“I’m not even gonna ask,” Said Elliot, staring at the two of us, his eyes moving back and forth as Eri and I just about died of laughter. 

Little did I know, this was the calm before the storm. It was also one of the few times I’d ever felt normal, like how a person should be, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever feel like that for a long time. What happened next definitely wouldn’t help, if anything that next year was nothing more than the knife of  irony twisting itself deeper into my chest. In my efforts to act as a human, I’d become even more separated. Some people might say that I’m no longer a human being because of that year, because of them. 

Gradually I grew unsure what it was that drew me to Eri, what was born out of a desperate urge to get by and avoid being found out had changed, at first I wasn’t sure why, when or how I’d grown to be true friends with Eri but I assumed it was a sort of reverse-stockholm syndrome on my part and extremely morbid curiosity on theirs. Sometimes I look back at that and wonder whether I should’ve just let it happen, let myself be found out, or whether I did the right thing. I think it changes every day really, I’m not even sure if there’s any point in thinking about it because of that- it would only make me worse, if that’s even able to happen at this point. I mean I could’ve been less selfish when I could still think of myself as a human being but would it change anything? I didn’t think it would, maybe I’d die with a sense of false martyrdom, that I’d made the right choices leading up to this point, it would stay the same for everyone else but maybe I could’ve stopped all of this from happening. 

Regardless of anything like that, Eri and I were pushed together through some unseen force , like we had been tied together and now we were destined to intertwine with one another. We were meant to happen and I could never imagine a universe where it didn’t.I’m not one to believe in fate but in this case fate seemed to be the only explanation for what was happening.

To this day I can’t understand how what happened that year actually happened, what led me to that point. It was awful and it’s one of the reasons I am where I am now but looking back at it feels like looking at a car accident on the road.That urge to observe suffering but never to be a part of it yourself, that was something unique to people. They wanted to see blood without cutting themselves , I know one thing for certain, all of them would enjoy a funeral with no death. Although maybe that desire for suffering with no real consequences wasn’t a uniquely human experience- I’d heard of crows gathering around their dead  in mock-funerals while magpies pecked at the corpses, urging their dead to wake up. I knew that I experienced that urge as well, so maybe it wasn’t as human as I thought. The difference between myself and them was that I wanted to feel that pain, the wet blood on my neck, the ecstacy of knowing that this would all end soon. I was in love with the idea of death and wished that I myself would meet with a violent end but I couldn’t quite put myself through the pain of it all. 

Regardless of anything like that, Eri and I were pushed together through some unseen force , like we had been tied together and now we were destined to intertwine with one another. We were meant to happen and I could never imagine a universe where it didn’t. I’m not one to believe in fate but in this case it was  the only explanation for what was happening.

All the while I was slowly changing, My act was becoming a part of me, growing inside my body like a parasite - where it had been exhausting, it was as simple as blinking. Was I turning into another person? I didn’t know what I was becoming but I welcomed this almost-metamorphosis in the hopes I would grow into someone who understood those around them, who could care, who could be cared about. Unfortunately, some of my wishes came true in the worst way they could. My dream of being anyone but myself had become a sick prophecy, one that devoured and corrupted my very being. 

I remember one day vividly. A rainy afternoon that was so dark it looked like night had fallen during our second period maths class, when almost everyone had decided to stay inside during break. Eri and I decided to go out into the forest, we were bored out of our minds in the classroom and rain didn’t bother us, besides the trees could shelter us from the worst of it. As we left, I remember looking up at our classroom window and how the sickly yellow light shone feebly out of the window like an eye that stared down  constantly but looked away for the two of us. 

“This is how horror films start” I laughed as a gust of icy wind blew the old wooden gate open. 

“ We’d be the first to die, 100 percent”  Eri answered as we walked through the gates hoping it wouldn’t slam into us

“For sure” I smiled at them for a second, as their deep scarlet hair began to come loose from the two messy  buns on top of their head.

 As we walked through the woods, the trees towered above us like evergreen umbrellas but the wind was unrelenting, and I could see the way their branches wavered above our heads and threatened to be dropped at any moment. I wasn’t sure if I minded that, or if the thought ever crossed my mind at the time. The rain thundered , tapping on the rickety wooden bridge like a million tiny footsteps rushing to come home to the river. 

I gave up on trying to keep my hood up, it kept blowing down anyway and I wasn’t sure if I cared about getting wet if it meant I could spend time with Eri. We slipped up on tree roots and leant on each other for support, tripping over our feet and shrieking with laughter. I didn’t care that I slipped in front of them, because I knew  they’d catch me or I’d pull them down with me. 

Trust feels like a foreign concept to me. I could never tell who to trust or distrust where it came so easily to every other person I could see. But then again, every other sentence they spoke seemed to be a lie or a half-truth. Even then I felt that this was why the world was so out of sorts, those who ran it were liars and those lies spread and evolved like a virus that could kill. But who was I to judge, I myself was a liar, but I knew what I was doing was for my survival. What they did was for selfish gain, not that I was above that either. 

Eri and I stand under the tallest tree, whose arms stretch to the heavens and shield us from the rain. The wind grew stronger, shaking  the parchment leaves from branches which flew helplessly through the fake night sky like discarded pages from a notebook.Eri spoke a lot of languages, I never if they  moved a lot or if it was a hobby. They spoke seamlessly while I stumbled over any syllables besides the Spanish for beginners we were taught in class. They tried to teach me how to say some phrases

“I love you in dutch is jeg elsker dig, try it” 

“ jeg elsker dig” I say, laughing in confusion afterwards

There were so many phrases Eri could’ve tried to teach me but they chose ‘I love you’, why would they even think that about me. They found me out within hours of knowing me, how could anyone love someone like me. If anyone ever loved me, it was because they fell for the fake face I pushed out into the world like an empty shop that still had the window display. 

My train of thought was derailed by a large wet leaf flopping onto my face, in an attempt to flick it off me the leaf landed onto Eri’s shoulder , they successfully took it off, and tossed it into a stream. We just stood there for a second, staring at that leaf as it ran its course down the stream. At the start it sort of curved itself to fit the way the stream, now fit to burst with rainwater . Once it widened the leaf got stuck against rough gravel and the harsh, rapid streams of water that it had once fit into cut into it as sharply as a razor. If Eri and I  were characters in a novel, maybe this would’ve had  some deeper meaning but we were just two teenagers in the right place with the wrong thoughts watching a dead leaf get ripped to shreds when we should’ve been walking to class.

Elliot sometimes joined us, the three of us became our own private worlds, constellations of dappled sun, freckles and branches held us together and for a while I felt like it would all be okay, I felt happy. This word, happy,  stood out like a red scar on unmarred skin or perhaps it stuck out like flowers in the cracks of city pavement. I guess it stands out so much because maybe for this short time it was the only time I came close to what you’d call happiness. 

Although that day was rainy and dark, it felt like the warm gaps of sunlight on a carpet and even though Eri and I returned to class drenched and freezing it was the warmest I would ever feel. 

“Where were you guys” Elliot whisper-shouted to us over the documentary

“You know that stream outside the boundaries” Eri Started, trying not to sound nervous about breaking the rules. 

“Yeah…” 

“We drowned in it together” 

I finished, clasping my hand to my forehead in a dramatic stage faint at my desk, trying to lessen Eri’s obvious nerves. If we had tried to drown in the stream, we’d done a pretty rubbish job, seeing as both of us were alive then. 

“ you could’ve told me, I’d rather drown than watch this” Elliot feigned disappointment while drawing something in the margin of his notebook

“I know it’s dead boring” Eri whispered softly 

I laughed quietly while nodding in agreement, while the teacher’s back was turned. 

Later that year I decided to enter an art contest run by the school. I wasn’t sure whether I actually liked art but it was my best subject at school so it was worth a shot. The last thing I can clearly remember was Eri looking at my entry for the contest ; the portrait was of a girl who looked like me but something about her felt almost wrong. She looked exhausted, almost like she was fading against the vivid scarlet camellias that surrounded her. 

‘It’s amazing” Eri exclaimed, as they ran their fingers across the painting as if they were feeling around for something deeper in it, something more about me. 

“The girl you painted looks like a ghost, is this a picture of a ghost?” 

“Yeah I guess so, do you want to keep it after the competition” 

“Sure”

Everything was blurry for a while, as if my head was filled with the kind of static you get  from sleeping on your arm. I’m not sure when but at some point Eri needed to move schools, I can’t recall the reason why. I was older than when I first moved so I didn’t think it was because they knew the meaning of ‘suicide’. Something about them always seemed older even though we were the same age, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. But I didn’t think they’d leave, they would’ve said something. It all happened so suddenly, the empty desk next to mine felt full of something heavy and dark. 

We stayed friends and texted everyday but something about school felt strange and empty, even though I had friends besides them like Zoe and Elliot. Zoe just happened to be taking the same exam subjects as me , we both decided to take GCSE geography and misery loves company. A part of me always knew Elliot would always be with me in school. It was strange, the way I was friends with people, I felt as though it was all an act, the other girls would pretend to like me while we were together but never outside those times,although we were all 14 we still seemed to play pretend. It was different though, instead of pretending to have superpowers or pretending to be teachers in a school we all pretended to be friends.Though  I think everyone pretends to be something they aren’t for different reasons , to keep a job, to keep friends , to make friends, to make themselves. 

Privately I thought this was ridiculous though I knew I was one of the unlucky few who could never stop pretending to be something they weren’t. I had no other choice and at this point I wasn’t sure what was left beneath this mask I’d put up, I imagined that it had all withered up like a limb in a plaster cast, it was there but it was no longer able to do anything but hang limply and aimlessly. I wonder if this is who I am now and if who I was is really gone forever. Is she dead now, did I kill her? 

I imagine this is how it feels to have someone you don’t like suddenly die.  You’re not sure how to feel and you can’t ask someone how to feel because for some reason that’s something you should always know.

I  find it strange how other people know exactly how to feel and there’s always a right way to feel in different situations. There are so many rules about how a person should feel that I’m shocked that nobody I know has gone completely off the rails. I’m not sure if I have real feelings anymore, or if I ever did. That’s the problem with all of this, I can’t feel shit. Sometimes I wonder if I’m even a human being, everyone seems to have something that I’m missing .I wonder if I have missing pieces and I’m just supposed to fill in the holes with whatever comes to me. I hope that someday I can be filled in by people and I hope that they all stay. 

Everything inside and outside me changed so rapidly that I could’ve sworn it all happened overnight. I got taller but still looked the same as I always had but what had really changed was the way my acting had turned from something that had come naturally to me into an arduous task, putting it on everyday felt like I was carrying invisible rocks in my backpack. I knew that eventually my back was going to break, I imagined the  splintered china of my ribs  peering from underneath red satin and poking from the back of my shirt like an undeserving  angel’s wings as my spine contorted into impossible angles under the weight of who I knew I was supposed to have been for everyone I knew or would have known.

Although this was painful to me, what was worse was the way that everything before that was more vivid like how old photos are always more saturated. I never seem to realise when something matters until it’s already done and it’s too late to change it anymore.  

Another change that I noticed wasn’t in me but in Eri, their texts had gotten darker and more serious. We’d gone from chatting about our days to finding out yet another thing we both had in common; however, this one left a pit in my stomach. The kind that spreads and feels like your insides are dissolved and sloshing around inside you, waiting to leak out. They were the same as me.

 I wasn’t sure how they knew how I felt. I thought I hid it well, over my 14 years of life I’d become a brilliant actress (or so I thought) . Some people can just see through others. Eri was what I’d call a genius at knowing people, for better or for worse. 

Eri was similar to me in many ways, this wasn’t news to me. We liked the same bands, watched the same TV shows and dressed in a similar style. It was deeper than that, I knew something about them made me feel like we were one and the same. I’m not sure quite what it was about them, but something made me feel different than how I felt about anyone else I was friends with. The superstitious part of me thinks we were meant to know each other, like the parts that both of us were missing somehow were completed. My head swam in the sunset clouds when I was with them, I remember the way my heart felt like a rollercoaster that only went up the day they held my hands. I no longer care what is forgotten as long as I remember how those days felt. 

We obviously didn’t see each other that much but the long chains of texts and calls that drew on into the late night continued. I’d never noticed how much things seemed to change until I remembered what was going wrong, it wasn’t anything big, at first they were just little red flags in the distance like the kind you see driving past a beach. Red is a beautiful colour but in this case it signalled the tides of whatever was slowly but surely drowning the two of us.  

Drowning isn’t so bad when it’s with someone like Eri, because at least you’re drowning together. 

From this point onward, it’s all downhill (‘mine has been a life of much shame’ or whatever) but I have one truly happy memory from this time. Me Elliot and Eri went to a theme park. I think it was one of our birthdays. The rest of the day was fun but nothing truly stuck out to me like what happened when Eri and I had to sit together in a carriage on a carousel, leaving Elliot slightly behind us on a slightly menacing looking horse. 

We waited for the ride to start and started playing never have I ever

‘Never have I ever… drank” 

‘No”

Elliot laughs 

“yeah but it was nasty, did you know beer tastes like straight up dish soap”

“Do you eat dish soap?”  

“I think you’d drink it”

“You eat soup, and that’s a liquid”  

“Elliot… don’t eat or drink soap” 

The music starts and the carousel starts spinning slowly, I remember the gentle back and forth rock of the carriage, Elliot had stopped playing but we kept going until Eri asked a question that honestly floored me 

“Rhiannon, never have I ever been kissed” 

I pause for a second, imagining the music to stop as they asked 

“Umm do  my parents count?” 

“No, like by someone” 

The emphasis on ‘someone’ made more sense to me and I shook my head in surprise 

“Would you like to?” 

I nodded, unsure of what it was really like or what I was supposed to do. 

I lifted my head up for a second, squeezing my eyes so tight I could see flashes of blue and purple behind my eyes, until I felt Eri’s lips gently pressing on my cheeks.I can never truly know how I feel and this was no exception, but in that moment I felt flowers blossoming inside of me, once again my head was all the way up in candyfloss clouds. For a second I could’ve sworn  we were spinning in slow motion. 

Until Eri moved away, then all I could feel was a hot red blush rushing its way up  from my heart to my cheeks. I paused for a second then put my hands over my face in the best panic I had ever felt.

“Cute”

I looked up and burst out laughing in confusion and realisation

Uh.. sorry that was a shock-laugh” I stuttered as we got up. 

I wasn’t sure if what happened had actually happened. It felt almost dreamlike, in my head I felt the sun set and in my heart I felt a sense of finality, like this would be the last time something like this would ever happen. At that moment My heart was half right.

We never really saw each other after that day, not in real life anyways. Life seemed to move slowly,  trickling molasses into a black puddle that never stopped growing. I sat in class watching the clock just ticking away for some indefinite age, that was one half of it. The other half was just too fast, a mad panicked dash like the rush of doing work the night before a deadline.

The painting I was halfway through lay half finished somewhere in my room, it was supposed to be for a self portrait contest. I copied an older photo of myself in front of a bush blooming with the deepest scarlet camelias. The flowers themselves were beautiful, especially with the way they can just fall to the floor when they pleased.I’ve been told I’m ‘pretty’ or ‘cute’ before but I personally can’t see it, I don’t mean that because of any features. I mean it in the sense that something about me seems so wrong, as though I’m staring into the face of a doll or a mask rather than that of a human being.

 Even in this photo from god knows how long ago,  you can see there’s something wrong in the way my head tilts at an odd angle, at the way my fists are clenched so much you can see my knuckles are white as bone, at how I didn’t really know how to smile so just bared my teeth in the manner of  a stray dog. I then realised something important, this wasn’t a picture of me, this  was nothing more than a picture of a ghost. If it had once been alive I couldn’t remember anything of it. 

I was consumed in my entirety by anxiety that grabbed at me and clawed at my throat. Part of me hoped they would sink deeper and deeper into me, until camelia rivers sprung from my neck, hoping to drain me of whatever life I had. Of course they never did because they were all in my head and unfortunately, if that were to happen I’d have to do something about it and every time I tried to think about it that was blocked by what my dad had said all those years ago, I wasn’t sure where I stood in terms of humanity but I knew for sure that if I tried but survived I would never hear the end of it, that was for sure. 

The picture came together while everything around me seemed to fall to pieces. Life felt wrong somehow, I was living through a fever dream I could never wake up from and although dreaming felt realer than anything I'd known while awake, I could never remember anything once I woke up. Every day I could feel something dark and heavy, like the depths of the ocean press down on my chest.  I thought to myself Is this what it feels like to drown? I scared myself once I realised that maybe I wouldn’t care if I drowned. I shook the thoughts out of my head sometimes, hoping that they would eventually go away. They never did. 

The calls with Eri grew fewer and further between, hearing their voice was like seeing stars in the city at night;beautiful but all that surrounded it was darkness. They spoke of darker and darker things. They were drowning too and I felt responsible for it

 had I pulled them into the water with me? 

In our own secret language had ‘I love you’ really meant ‘let’s drown together’ 

I didn’t know about this other meaning and all I could think was one thought that scared me more than anything ever could: 

What if they drown and I’m saved?

I knew this meant I was a bad person, though I’m not sure why this is. I’d read about it online and I was sure that I could save them somehow, maybe I’d be their saviour and that would finally be what made me feel like a human being. No, that definitely made me a bad person. I tried to use someone else’s suffering from my own gain, would an actual person think like that? probably not. 

 In the short space of a few months these calls pushed my heart from the height of the sun to slamming inside of my throat. It was an all consuming sort of fear, not the kind you get from horror films. it was the kind of fear that comes from waiting… waiting for some great inevitability to occur then watching it all crash down onto everyone like a great tidal wave that fully submerged everything I had ever known or ever would know. In a dream world I would be taken away with it all. 

One moment I was on the phone laughing and talking like nothing was wrong and the next, I’d be acting as the therapist their parents couldn’t or wouldn’t pay for. However, while they couldn’t see that they deserved to be helped or whether they knew they needed help, I was also the same age as them. 

“Eri, what have you eaten today?” 

“Not much” they paused and for me the world stopped for a second

“Just your mum’s-” they paused, gasping with laughter over the phone 

“Not the time dude, really not the time” 

I could feel my face turning red once again, if Eri was good at one thing it was making me blush, scarlet as the camellias I painted in one way or another.

“Please eat something, especially not that’

The call stopped suddenly. I wasn’t sure how to feel, as always. 

After that call I realised that maybe I did have a purpose, being a self- appointed saviour gave me a reason to live and having that made a change. I would’ve preferred it if in order to have a reason to live , someone else didn’t have to suffer. That was the worst part, I thought- in order to deserve to live, other people had to suffer. 

 ‘But anyone would rather die than have someone suffer for their own gain’

I can imagine people thinking or even saying this, gasping as they clutch at their imaginary pearls. I don’t know if they’re unaware of how wrong that statement is, or if it’s just another thing people know but will always ignore, drowning out cries with music. I knew that thought was wrong, I  knew that some parents made their children sick to the point of death in order to get attention and money. I truly think those are the two things anyone would do anything for: attention and money. As you can see, reader, In that way I was no different from any other person at one  point..

The days wore on and on, my camera roll was filled with increasingly concerning pictures, fingers wrapped around bony wrists which were slowly resembling the silver birch trees on my drive. My voice grew from calling and sometimes crying, fake laughter turned to an almost sickly wheezing and everyday I was being drawn deeper into something I never fully understood, I was made of  lead , sinking into a dark and murky lake as I hoped to disappear into nonexistence. 

What if I died I thought, I wouldn’t be able to do my job if I was dead.

 What if I indirectly kill them if I can’t help them 

 So the thoughts went on and on twisting into spirals like the ones I’d count out of the car window on car rides. I find that you can see spirals anywhere if you look hard enough or if whatever the driver’s ranting about is dull or offensive enough.

“I think there’s something seriously wrong with people who don’t want to have children” 

1… 2: a pattern in someone’s glass panelled door and on someone’s hoodie

Guess I’ll be adding that to the list then

“It’s because they don’t want responsibility, Rhiannon” 

3,4: a petrol spill on the pavement, circles on a tree stump 

For the love of all that’s good in the world… please shut the fuck up I thought to myself. I clenched my teeth, nodding in agreement as I tasted blood from biting the insides of my cheeks. I knew all I had to do was say yes in whatever way I saw fit and not to ask questions to avoid further ranting, this time directed at me specifically instead of the so-called ‘snowflake generation’ that I was a part of, looking back , that always seemed the best thing to do however I could’ve got myself into serious danger. 

The calls and texts from Eri had stopped suddenly, at first I thought it was because they had exams at their new school so did nothing about it for a few weeks. Even now that was probably my worst mistake, cementing what I did afterwards as a certainty rather than a possibility. 

I remembered the look on my teacher’s face in the hallway when I came to class that day. Human faces have always been a mystery to me, but on that day I knew what was going to come up during morning announcements and I knew that I just had to keep up the act though I'd never had to do it during something like this. A dark pit burrowed its way into my stomach so I clutched my stomach to the point that Sophie, one of the other girls noticed.  

‘Hi, Rhiannon what’s up?” she looked down at my arms, crossed over the Nirvana logo on my t-shirt, “oh”

“Oh god, it’s not that,”  I laugh awkwardly  

‘I’m good , my results on that chemistry test however… yikes” 

“Oh god, we get it back today, don’t we?”

‘ Yeah, but don’t even worry, you probably got like a 7 or something,” 

“I wish, I’d be happy with a 4 on that” 

We waited for our class to start, some of us rushed to finish late homework while the rest of us found a way to get past the school wi-fi and took turns playing some sort of game on Xander’s laptop. I sat cross-legged on the side of a desk, pretending to wait my turn but really staring into nothing, sick with worry for the inevitable. 

Eventually, the teacher I saw in the hallway came to class. Everything faded to black, I was sure she just stood at the front of the classroom and pretended to be sad as she told us all that someone our age, who used to be in our class had gone and fucking killed themselves. The teacher had the same look of nothing in her eyes that I saw in my own, could I really be mad at her when I was just the same? 

I tried to be the same as I always was but it fell to bits, at least I could use my dead friend, no soulmate (could I be sure of that though?) as an excuse for everything like this wasn’t how I’d always been. 

I wasn’t even sure how to feel now that they were dead. Of course I did, I was the sort of person who didn’t even know how to feel when someone died. 

As for the portrait, it was no longer of the ‘me’ people would recognise. Two ghostly figures stood listlessly in front of a slowly dying camelia bush. Beforeit  stood two shadowy figures, they both looked as though they had drowned together, bound by a red ribbon that conjoined the two by their wrists. There were some differences though. One had bandages spiralling up their arms while the other figure’s were wrapped around her neck tightly enough to choke her. The first’s head was bowed in shame as they stood uneasily, only being held up by the other  while the other stood with a sick sense of pride, half of her face was   covered by an elaborate mask. It was the one picture of me, of us that I could see who i truly was and yet it made me feel vaguely sick every time I saw it

On the day everyone saw the contest entries, mine was ignored.Everyone walked past it, never giving it a first look. I waited and realised that maybe it was for the best they hadn’t noticed, after all this was my real face, our real faces. I stared at the other projects and the groups of people gathered around them as my face burned in caustic shame, then at the emptiness before me. I hadn’t told my parents about the art show, it was during class time anyway and I wasn’t sure they’d like the painting or worse, they’d find me out and stop liking me and I couldn’t face that idea even if they only liked me because of some unspoken law that said that they had to.  

I swear I saw someone whip their neck rapidly before turning to their friend, a cold sharp breeze of dread blew coldly down my back, in all my years of performing, these two incidents were the only ones I was sure had happened. I can’t remember the rest of what happened at school that day. What I do remember, unfortunately, is what happened afterwards. 

I told my parents some fake story about what a good day I’d had. 

“We did high jump in PE today”

“Really, how did it go?” 

“Brilliant, except for falling in front of the whole class” I let out a small laugh, praying it was convincing before leaving the car, running up to my room. I felt myself choking on tears as I ran up the staircase, my mask had slipped and I couldn’t let anyone see my real face , the one picture of which is probably still rotting in a store cupboard at the school - I’ll end my days before I take it home anyway. 

As I locked the door to my room I had a horrific realisation, I truly wasn’t safe anywhere. There was always something, someone out there hoping to find out who or what I really was. Most people feel safest when they’re  at home, they can be themselves while I didn't. I knew that my parents were good and I knew other parents could be worse therefore this had to be  a problem with me, I couldn’t love properly and the only one I had experienced what I thought was love for had died and it was my own fault. 

Maybe I’d done it on purpose, I think I was the sort of person to lead someone to die for my own gain, for attention. I’m sick  but I wasn’t sure if I could ever be sorry for what I'd done as I hadn’t technically killed Eri, they had killed themselves but I had let them do it. Sobs wracked my body as I felt something for the first time in a while, if this was what it meant to be human then maybe I was blessed with the possibility of otherness . I balled up my fist and shoved it in my mouth, a gag in case my parents heard me. I could feel the metal of my braces dig into the skin on my knuckles, I tasted a metallic sourness and I wasn’t sure if it was from my throat or my hand. 

My mouth tasted like blood when I cried. 

I heard a car pull out of the driveway, I was alone now and I would be for a long time. I snuck down to the cupboard and pulled out a bottle of something clear and expensive looking, when I opened it it smelled like a waiting room. I read in a book somewhere that if you drink enough you can forget everything for a second and this was the best time to try it. 

Dear god, the idea of never remembering anything , being a blank slate and as innocent to myself as I was to anyone I had never known  sounded better than anything ever could. I scrunched my nose and took a big gulp of whatever was in that bottle, my mouth and throat rung with pain, I thought I was dying of an allergic reaction but didn’t care and kept going drinking more and more until I stopped for a second, and felt my head spin around the room like I’d stood up too quickly. Looking at the considerable dent I’d made in the contents of that bottle I rushed to the kitchen sink in a panic, I felt like Alice In Wonderland as I clutched the bottle and ran through my house that was changing from big to small with each frenzied step and sterile breath I took. I hadn’t seen anyone drink this and I was pretty sure it was for cooking so nobody would notice if I added water. 

I felt a suggestion of a person standing behind me, I didn’t know who they were, only that they were there, and I wasn’t in danger. I was home alone, nobody had come over- I didn’t feel like this around my parents. Was I hallucinating 

  Am I going insane?

They gestured for me and I followed them up the stairs into the bathroom, I didn’t care that they weren’t real. I was just happy to see them again.I remember asking myself  Why did they need to go here? 

I also don’t remember taking a small but sharp knife there. Unfortunately, I can fully remember what happened next. I  sat on the cold tile floor ,looking up at the sun out of the window as it dyed the clouds a candyfloss pink.

I wondered what being dead or dying would feel like. Would all of this stop,  I was sure there was nothing afterwards, that or some terrible incarnation of hell waiting for me. I thought back to a late night  conversation I could only half remember. Eri and I were talking on one of our calls, I had the bright idea of distracting them from our collective suicidal thoughts by asking what they thought being dead was like. (genius, I know) 

“I guess Being dead is kind of like sleeping with no dreams- I guess that’s the best way I’d describe it”

“So it’s like sleeping normally for me , I don’t dream, I’m not sure if I ever told you that” 

 I could never dream, I remember a lesson we had about dream analysis. I didn’t dream so I used a scene from a comic I was reading at the time. The teacher then made some comments about “humanity’ and ‘identity” then asked if I was in hospital a lot when I was younger. I wasn’t but in a way I always felt like I was diseased, corrupted even.

“I guessed from that lesson but yeah, it would feel like you were going to sleep- at least that’s what I think” 

Another thought passed me by like the moon on a late night car journey- bright,momentous and impossible to ignore despite being so far away. 

We were in yet another English class, this time we were told to write a love story. Eri, Elliot and I had a competition with these types of lessons: whoever wrote the most disturbing or ridiculous plot won. I was usually the winner of these, I could write exactly what I was thinking or feeling at the time and everyone  would just see it as another joke, rather than a look into my head- red ink as opposed to blood streaming from my mouth. This time I was writing about a suicide pact between 2 people.

“Rhiannon… that was certainly original … a love suicide?”  The teacher said, I’m sure we did her a favour, reading 12 of the same generic love story must’ve been dead boring (pun intended).

As I kept doing what I was doing, with the feeling that someone safe  was behind me. I imagined them watching me, loving me, killing me. Something about their presence felt final for the both of us.Was I living out this specific story, my very own love suicide? The act itself  was a lot prettier when I wrote about it. I'd styled it to be a way for the two of them to be in the afterlife together, I think. I can’t remember now…  

I pressed it in harder this time, I could’ve sworn I hit bone at one point. 

Another line. My head spun and spun. Is it wrong to be forced to live? surely choosing to die  should be allowed if we don’t have a choice in being born. The ledge of the sink was slick and slippery, gears  spun wildly in my head, how would I explain this if I was found, if I lived - who cares anyway, I’ll be dead then. 

I’m so cold now, it’s too cold to sleep, why is it so cold? 

could this be the uneasiness that lies in being loved? 

The sun had set, it was dark and my eyes were only seeing blurs of what I prayed were passing car lights.

 It’s warmer now.  

I’m  …. I'm so sleepy.

Everything went black as I crumpled in a heap on the bathroom floor, everything was right for a second. I did the right thing, everyone would be okay now. 

That’s what I thought at least.

[biboomerangboi]

Need a word for not shipping but like I know a situationship happened like it’s canon to me that these people did something romantic with each other this is a fact to me no matter how positively or negatively I feel about it, it did in fact happen.

[ftm-dick-grayson]

Holy 1,000 likes Batman. Lmao. I started this blog on a whim a few days ago because the mental illness needed somewhere to go, glad to see people liked my shitposts and transgenderisms.

[kvthgok]

Your Canon Event | Miguel O’Hara x Teen Spider Reader (Platonic)

Warnings- none I think??

Summary- You were fighting and your canon event was going to happen

Side note- SORRY FOR STARVING YOU GUYS ERM THIS IS KINDA DOOKIE SHIT I WAS IN THE CAR WHILE WRITING THIS 😭😭😭 not proofread btw

“Hey Miguel incoming canon event heads up.” Lyla said on his watch then disappearing.

“Thanks Lyla” Miguel said.

You and Miguel and the others were currently fighting an anomaly in your earth.

I was doing the most of the fighting cause it was my earth.

My people I had to protect.

While fighting I saw a building falling and a kid was standing there crying and seeing my father the police captain running towards her my heart dropped.

Chills ran through my body. My hairs were standing up.

I knew this was my canon event…

No no no no I kept repeating to myself while trying to fight off the anomaly.

I had finally gotten done with them not even a second later. I quickly swung over to where my father was. Trying to attempt to save him.

I had heard multiple faint yells in the background clearly from the others,

“Don’t it HAS to happen!”

“Kid I’m sorry it has to happen!”

“You’ll disrupt the Spider-verse!”

I was so close to him I was about to use my webs and grab them when I felt and web around my ankle yanking me back.

Then I heard it. I heard the building crash onto the ground.

My canon event happened. My dad was gone.

I got up in a panic moving the debris out of my way. I could sense the others behind me. But that didn’t matter.

What matter was my dad. I got to the last debris throwing it. My world word was gone. I saw my dads dead body lying there limp.

It felt as if all the colors in the world had been drained. I bent down to his level, crying shutting his eyes.

I put his head on my lap stroking his hair starting to cry uncontrollably. I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry kid but it had to happen it’s Your Canon Event.” Miguel said in a low voice.

Skip time-

For the rest of the day I was silent. Miguel had told me I should sit out for the rest of the day. Which was exactly what I did.

[solysthesia]

me when me me me when when me

[ccatgiri]

imo the fact that hermie was born a teenager but also didn't know he was adopted implies that scam gave him false memories of having a childhood (and maybe he lost them/realized they were fake after finding out his true nature?? origin of the 'the man who stole my childhood' line and why hermie suddenly hates scam so much??? but i digress)*

which in turn makes me think he gave hermie's adoptive parents false memories of having raised him all his life. because 1) come on, it's scam and 2) i doubt they would've deemed it necessary to hide hermie's adoption from him if they'd adopted him as a full teenager

which IN TURN makes me think what if hermie's parents lost their memories of him after the original hermie died and then hermie2 comes 'back home' but his parents don't know who he is? there doesn't seem to be a trace he ever existed in this house, even? what are we thinking gang

[crownsofesha]

One ~ Red

Earrings/Shirt*/Undershirt/Skirt/Tights/Shoes

Two ~ Blue

Earrings/Shirt/Skirt/Socks/Shoes

Three ~ Orange

Earrings/Shirt/Bracelet**/Skirt/Socks/Shoes

Four ~ Purple

Earrings/Shirt/Undershirt/Skirt/Socks/Shoes

**TSR

*paywalled :( (*cough cough*)

[apollos-boyfriend]

absolutely no one asked for this but. divorceverse timeline for ur viewing pleasure <3

mianite s1 takes place when jordan is 17 to 18, mostly sticking to canon, although with two exceptions: capsize doesn’t die, and the void-hopping works, landing them back in their proper universe.  the heroes semi split from there. after saving the world, jordan decides the logical next best decision is to seek higher education. obviously. 

the two end up at the same college. jordan’s there for chemical engineering; schlatt’s there for business.

they meet at a houseparty, with jordan having been invited over by antvenom, a mutual friend of theirs. they don't exactly hit it off, but they don't not get along, either. jordan becomes schlatt's weed dealer, become a couple a week after, then break up two weeks after that. this cycle repeats indefinitely.

schlatt gets pregnant at the end of their first year. at that point, jordan was already considering dropping out, as college was Not as filling as he thought it’d be, so fatherhood gave him a perfect escape. he had plenty of riches from ianite, and his upcoming clothing company was looking prosperous, so he jumped ship. 

both of them had off-campus housing, but schlatt lived with roommates, while jordan lived alone. they decide to have schlatt move in with jordan for the time being. 

tubbo's born when the two of them are 19. schlatt lives with them until he graduates three years later, although he ends up crashing on jordan's couch more often than not, at least when the two are actually together.

when the two are 24 and tubbo is 5, ianite calls jordan for a favor. a young godling somehow stumbled into their reality, and while she'd been looking after them since they were found, her increasing duties have made it harder and harder for her to be a good parent. the pirates are busy, and jordan is the only person she trusts with such a task. jordan accepts, and crumb joins the family.

(this is why the void-hopping worked, btw. crumb's quintessance mixed with what remained of dianite in tom was enough to balance out the scales, so there was no need for the other heroes to intervene)

the two are 37 when adam is born. tubbo is 17 going on 18, and age is hard to calculate with crumb, but it's Somewhere in its teens. schlatt once again moves back in with jordan after adam's birth for the first few years of his life.

[starrynightarchive]

my sister is having her first hyperfixation and it's fucking chess. why tf did she have to watch queen's gambit and not like naruto or smth.

[heroesriseandfall]

Regarding your post about the Titan’s Tower thing, I think it’s a little irritating how many people treat it in fanon. In canon, Jason beats Tim up badly but doesn’t do anything too extreme, so it makes sense that it wouldn’t be Tim’s biggest trauma at the time. Fanon ramps it up to 11 and often makes so that Jason gleefully tortures Tim to the point of it being irredeemable. But then they double back and try to make us feel bad for Jason and try to make both of them reconcile by saying “it was the pit that made him do it”. I find it tasteless and honestly a little triggering.

Yeah, it’s a little bit backwards because in fanon it seems like a lot of people are writing about Titan’s Tower to try to...fix Tim and Jason’s early relationship, I guess, while still keeping it angsty? But without reading Teen Titans #29 or the surrounding comics, there’s no context for what they’re trying to fix. I think a lot of them don’t realize that the throat-slitting thing was in Batman: Hush, for example, not at Titans Tower. So they make this particular attack worse just by adding that in.

I’ve also noticed a lot of confusion over ages, making Tim much younger than he was (like 13-14 instead of 16) and Jason a bit older (he should be 18, but fics often seem to have no idea--and tbh that’s fair because the comic artists didn’t seem to know either lol). Which, like with the Tim vs Damian issue, it does change the dynamic of the fight when they have a larger age gap.

Also IMO Jason wasn’t even trying to leave Tim for dead, like I don’t think that was the point of the fight for him. It honestly seemed like the fight itself doesn’t last long and it was mostly Jason venting and seeing what Tim is like, along with kinda sending a message of “I’m here and I’m different than I was before; I did this.” Which doesn’t excuse Jason, I just don’t think people really get what the motivations were. If Jason wanted to kill Tim, he could have, but I honestly don’t think that was the point of the fight for him.

And yeah, the mischaracterization of pit madness is a big part of it. Not that Jason couldn’t have been affected by the pit at all (Ra’s seemed to think there was some influence), but he DOES have full autonomy over his actions, the pit can’t take full control of Jason and make him do things against his will—in comics, pit madness is not really an embodied force of the pit with an autonomous will to control peoples actions so they do specific things it wants (can a vat of mysterious chemicals even want anything?).

Jason is not really being mind controlled or possessed by the pit...because the pit isn’t an entity that can do that, at least not in any comics I’ve read. But fanon does treat it like it almost has a mind of its own, giving him glowing green eyes when its influencing him most (even though Jason wasn’t even dumped in a green pit, it was orange; and his eyes were still blue because the pits don’t usually change your eye color...).

I understand people like the supernatural element of all that, but there’s already a supernatural element to the Lazarus Pit, just not in that way, and adding all of this would require reworking a lot of other things. Jason was absolutely the one who chose to go after Tim, even if his psyche was changed from being healed by the pit. And while Jason very much needed help because he was traumatized and mentally unstable, his need for help doesn’t absolve him of responsibility over his harmful actions—and it was his responsibility, not the pit’s or Talia’s.

Honestly, creating a new excuse for Jason’s actions does a disservice to his character and to every other character he hurt at the time. It doesn’t actually change anything Jason did, it just shifts the blame and autonomy of his actions away from him, even though he canonically did it of his own accord. Which then makes everyone else’s reactions look less reasonable just because they correctly recognize his autonomy in the harmful choices he made. If you don’t like what Jason chose to do in canon...maybe change his actions, not his responsibility over them?

It also completely undermines Jason’s point, which is that he is the one who did it. He set up the whole elaborate plot specifically because he wanted everyone (especially Bruce) to know it was him doing it. If you make the pit do it, that defeats the point. There are so many good ways to make Jason’s return kinder to his character, without changing nearly every feature and context of his story (and everyone else’s).

[nekousagisstuff]

Yooooooooooo @wildartsstuff Edit: I forgot to Say...I GOT RISE OF P ENDING!!!

I Really need to Say this: when I was investigating about witches I found SO MUCH information of rituals...But yeah, like the image says, they're really disturbing...And Yeh, Alyssa suffers about that, and for not be worst her own aunt offers her father to the Evil witch whom tries to kill her...and used her father's blood to torture her...Yeh, she was forced to grew up faster. (I promise to respond your art of My last question, so fast as I can)

[aranaboricua]

Spider-Man 97/98 Rio includes

Wearing a leather jacket and a backwards cap with her Spider-Woman disguise.

She would love Pokemon, DBZ, and Sailor Moon.

Playing Sonic and Mortal Kombat in the arcade constantly.

All of her crushes will consist of Brandy Norwood (Moesha) and Jaleel White (Urkel/Stephan)

Her aesthetics are inspired by Aaliyah and TLC.

Singing Tevin Campbell songs to herself constantly.

Watching Titanic on a date.

Going apeshit when the Yankees won the World Series.

Ultra fangirling over Blackstreet and Boys II Men.

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

‘The point is not “is bftc good Jason characterization”’

Actually the point can be anything that the op of the post wants it to be. Oh you mean that is not your point. Um …. Cool. Nobody asked.

[buckybarnesss]

spicy hot take: it's fine to not like scott. the writing for him can at times be fucking ridiculous and no one has to like every character but some fanfics really go out of their way to do gymnastics to be self-righteous and demeaning towards scott.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[randomtheidiot]

God, I fucking hate Red.

[aiura-stan]

tbh i think it’s so funny that if Kusuo were real, he’d be a year older than me