#the amount of times i’ve been called genuinely vile things (by people who have absolutely room to talk no less) is appalling

[flowersnax]

[tailorvizsla]

You didn't think I wouldn't ask for some Boba Fett though now did you? (Of course not, he is the new shiny for me iuwhei) ✨ HC Of my Choice... What about having your first kiss with Boba and he doesn't #know it is your first one till part-way through or after? Am I projecting? Yes, yes I am.

Title: HC – Boba Fett and First Kiss Pairing: Gender neutral Reader x Boba Fett Word Count: ~1700 Rating: PG-13 Warnings: Boba Fett is a grumpy bastard, but you hold your own against him. Boba also gets injured, but there aren’t any graphic descriptions of the injuries. Author’s Notes: Okay, my Angle, I’ve been thinking about this one for as long as it’s been sitting in my inbox. I’m not familiar with Boba Fett’s character, so I wanted to make sure this was good for you. So, without further ado, here we go with the Big Green Grumpy Jerk who has somehow inexplicably charmed his way into my heart with a few gruff comments.

Tagging @princessbatears because chaos? :>

📚 My Master List 📚

Boba Fett isn’t a man of many words. It’s not that he’s shy or anything – he just doesn’t like talking to people beyond what is necessary. He has worked alone his entire life, so the sound of others’ voices just sort of grates on him. He especially does not like being crowded by people.

So, one day, while doing his thing, he ends up injured. It’s not even due to combat. His jetpack just…sputters out. His beskar’gam turns what should have been a fatal fall into a very painful one. He knows he has broken a lot of bones, but Boba refuses to die like this. He crawls his way back to his bike, calls for medical aid, and prays to the Maker that someone in town will come help him.

You are the only person who does come to help him. Most other people are too afraid of the Imperial remnants to work with a Mandalorian. Others are too afraid of Mandalorians to work with a Mandalorian. You? You are not afraid of much. He is not sure if you are brave or stupid. After splinting the worst of the damage, you get him onto the bike and get him back into town. It is at this point that Boba finds himself leaning toward thinking you are stupidly caring and trusting.

You inject him with bacta – the good kind that makes him giggly, sleepy, and numb – and get to work. When he wakes up, he’s wrapped in an annoying number of casts and splints, but at least he’s still alive. However, you then give him the bad news: the fall has damaged many of the delicate nerves in his back. If he fails to undergo physical therapy, there is a real chance he may never walk again. He’s no medical expert, but when he looks at the scans you took, he knows you aren’t lying.

So, Boba resigns himself to having to deal with you on a regular basis. The first physical therapy exercises are simple, yet they exhaust him to the point where he just passes out. As the days go by, he starts putting up the walls to keep you out. (Spoiler alert: you manage to find your way through the cracks in the wall, annoying him with barely any effort on your behalf.)

Now, under ideal circumstances, this shitshow would end with Boba Fett getting back on his feet, paying you handsomely for the amount of time you have spent getting him put together, and going back to bounty hunting, never to think of you again. But of course, the universe throws an even bigger wrench into his carefully thought-out plans. Someone finds out that you’re taking care of him and a whole bunch of angry townspeople converge on your little clinic. He grabs you and the two of you run. The last thing you see is your clinic going up in flames. (Boba can’t believe the shortsightedness of these people – they’ve driven off their only competent medical professional. What are they going to do next? Kill their only competent mechanic? Di’kute, every last one of them.)

And so, the two of you go off on a merry adventure, annoying the absolute shit out of each other on a regular basis. Boba especially is concerned at how easily you have managed to find every single weak point in his defenses – physical, mental, and emotional. You are a fair shot with your blaster, so when he got fresh with you that one time, telling you that your ass looked downright edible in the trousers you had borrowed from him, you drew your blaster and fired a shot off at his feet. He laughed so hard his bucket nearly fell off. (You are not sure if you are disturbed that he finds being shot at amusing. He does scold you a bit, but you do notice that he does not talk about your ass anymore.)

With your knife? You’re lethal, and he learns that the hard way when he fails to announce his presence behind you. One moment Boba is reaching to touch your shoulder and the next moment, he’s got your elbow in his face and your penknife embedded in his flak vest. Fortunately, the blade’s too short to cause serious damage, but he does not let you forget that you kriffing stabbed him when he was only trying to ask you what you wanted for dinner.

Even though Boba would rather cover himself in tiingilar sauce and crawl back into the sarlacc pit headfirst than ever admit it, the two of you make a damn good team. He goes off to hunt bounties, you stay in town to provide your medical services for a fair fee. Sometimes, when your services are not needed, you’ll hang back at the ship and do some basic accounting to keep him within his budget.

Boba grumbles when you ask to accompany him on a hunt, but he figures you really do need to learn how to defend yourself if anything should happen to him. When the two of you were surrounded by goons, you naturally fell into place behind him, your back to his, covering his shebs while he provides the heavy firepower. When the numbers are thinned to something more manageable, he sets you loose on them, letting you practice your knife skills. And by the Maker, he is impressed with how much you have improved since the last time you stabbed him.

Between hunts, you get his shebs back into fighting shape. Hell, he thinks he’s even better than he was before. The exercises you insist on forcing on him have made him more flexible than he was before, and his bones no longer creak first thing in the morning. One particularly hot, muggy day, you try to make him drink that vile green vegetable concoction you call a smoothie. Smooth his shebs, there are chunks in that liquefied animal feed. Sometimes he wonders if you’re trying to kill him on purpose.

(You don’t know this, but Boba has already arranged for everything in his possession, ships and banking accounts included, to be transferred to you in the event of his death. Hell, he has even started negotiating with a friendly Tribe to make sure you have a home to go to and your pick of their warriors for marriage, should you be interested. Boba justifies it this way: the last time his jetpack mutinied, he ended up several hundred thousand credits in debt to you by his estimation. By ensuring you have a safe place to go, and a family ready to welcome you, he can offset the immeasurable debt he owes you. It hurts to think of this, but Boba genuinely cannot bear the thought of you being alone in this cruel galaxy, the same way he had been when he was a child. So, if he ever does piss you off to the point where you off him in his sleep, you’ll be fine.)

You keep pushing and pushing, insisting that he needs B-vitamins or some other bantha-shit he’s sure you’ve made up for the sole purpose of annoying him. When you start going on about macronutrients and essential vitamins, Boba loses it. He tosses his cutlery down and goes stomping off toward the cockpit. You follow him, blathering on and on about the last blood panel you had pulled – HDLs, LDLs, and a whole slew of acronyms later, he loses it. Rather than snap at you, he shuts you up the only way his poor sleep-deprived brain can come up with.

Boba pushes you up against the wall, gently to avoid hurting you. You don’t seem at all phased. In fact, you start waving the paper at him as you try to draw his attention to his sodium levels. Boba leans in and presses his lips to yours. You finally stop talking, your entire body going stiff in response. He takes a moment to nibble along your lower lip before parting your lips with his, tongue probing a bit deeper in, and you still aren’t responding. Boba draws back and stares down at you. You’re wide-eyed and clearly in shock.

He leans in again. This time you respond clumsily, your hands clutching at that stupid piece of paper. He gently wrestles it out of your grasp and crumples it up. Then he tosses it over his shoulder, not caring where it lands. He cups the back of your head and deepens the kiss. Still, you’re not responding the way he wants, so he draws back.

“What, never been kissed before?” he asks.

Before he can say anything else, he realizes that that was your first kiss. While Boba has never wanted to be anyone’s First Anything, he realizes that he wants to make an exception for you. There’s no one in this entire galaxy who can annoy the shit out of him in one breath and then worry about his health in the next. You are his little baar’ur. After you have wormed your way under his plating and so selfishly made yourself a fixture in his life without his permission? Oh, no, no, you are not going anywhere.

He cuts off your stammering with another kiss. He takes this one slow, moving your hands to where he wants you to touch him – one at his nape, the other at the small of his back, right over that spot that makes his knees weak.

This time, you respond. Slowly, hesitantly, but as you grow more confident, your hands begin to stray. You worm your fingers up the back of his shirt and dig your nails into the sensitive skin there, making him gasp in pleasure. Then you dig your fingers into his long hair and tug lightly, earning a low growl from him. You freeze and stare up at him with wide eyes until he leans back in.

Fortunately, your big smart science brain learns his likes and dislikes very quickly. When he finally pulls away, he finds that he really likes what he sees – your shirt’s rumpled, your hair is sticking up, and your lips are red and swollen from his kisses. Then and there, he makes a vow to make sure you always look like a mess.

(Spoiler alert: quite a few more of your firsts happen right here in the cockpit.)

[scope-dogg]

Super Beast Machine God Dancouga: Final Thoughts

“It’s complicated” can be a big of a copout when you’re weighing up whether to recommend something or not. In the case of this show and its trio of follow-up OVAs, it genuinely is kind of complicated. There was a lot I already liked about Dancouga even before I started watching - several of its soundtracks have had pride of place in my music playlists for years now, while the robot itself has been one of my favourite super robot designs for just as long, that being mostly fuelled by the machine’s status as a long-time Super Robot Wars stalwart. The same series made me a fan of the head pilot Shinobu Fujiwara and his trademark warcry of “YATTE YARUZE.” That said, I already went in with my expectations tempered by other opinions I’ve seen the generally weren’t quite so favourable as my expectations might have been.

Well, now I’ve seen it. In many ways, I really did enjoy it - the music is even better in its proper context, it’s cool to see where all the moves that Dancouga busts out in SRW came from, and Shinobu and the rest of the cast are as entertaining as I might have imagined in the primary material. Above all else, it surprised me by throwing in some ideas that were pretty original by the standards of its time, and some that are unique even compared to the rest of the genre as a whole. I really did enjoy a good amount of genuine enjoyment from the experience.

That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m going to recommend it. In fact, I just straight up don’t.

You see, there’s a lot of bad to go with the good in the show’s original anime run, to the degree that calling it “a mixed bag” would be too disingenuous. A promising start with some pretty great animation and production values quickly gives way to a level of quality that ranges from mediocre to shockingly poor, not only by today’s standards but those of the time. I don’t know the behind-the-scenes story of the show’s production, but it’s blatantly obvious that they found themselves out of money hilariously quickly, and they end up limping along on a shoestring budget. Stock footage abuse, animation errors, and just cheap and shoddy-looking artwork in general pile up until the result is a production that looks genuinely amateurish at times.

It’s a shame, because it’s a disservice to a show that’s actually fairly interesting in a lot of ways. The premise of Earth being invaded by an alien empire isn’t new, but typically shows of this setup from this era of anime follow a predictable pattern - a squad of hot-blooded youngsters is promptly assembled, thrown into the show’s resident giant robot, and sent off to fight off the aliens for as many formulaic monster-of-the-week style episodes as necessary. Here things aren’t so simple - there is the requisite squad of plucky youngsters, but it takes time for the team to properly assemble and to master their machine - in fact, they don’t even combine into Dancouga until the show’s halfway in. That’s actually more interesting than it sounds, because it means that the individual machines that make up Dancouga get a lot more screentime than they otherwise would in a show like Combattler V, for instance, which is cool because each of the four different ones has a vehicle form, a bestial animal form, and a humanoid configuration. 

It also allows for the setting to be more interesting - humanity’s war against the Muge Zorbados invaders is more interesting than conflicts of this nature tend to be in old super robot shows. Instead of sending one gimmicky monster or robot at a time, the invasion comes in force, and the enemy takes over much of the world while the heroes of the Cyber Beast Force are still building themselves up. The war ends up being more of an asymmetrical war of resistance involving all of mankind rather than hinging solely on duels between the protagonists and the monster of the week. The invaders themselves are more interesting than usual as well, as the egos of each of the invading generals clash with one another. By far the most interesting villain is Shapiro Keats, a fellow member of the academy that the leads Shinobu, Sara, Masato and Ryo attended, whose megalomania leads him to betray mankind and defect to the aliens in a bid to elevate his own power and prestige and fulfil his own delusions of godhood. A lot of the challenges that the CBF face in the early parts of the show come more from Shapiro’s treachery and clever planning rather than gimmicky alien technologies.

However, while it has interesting ideas, the show never seems to be able to pull them off to their full potential. Ironically it’s Dancouga’s long-awaited and heavily-hyped arrival that heralds the death of much of the interesting elements to the story. In addition to being the biggest casualty of the show’s animation budget, Dancouga’s not implemented in a very interesting way in the show’s original anime run - whereas before battles were a test of the protagonists’ skill and strategy, Dancouga’s overpowering nature trivialises much of the action. It doesn’t help that its repertoire is limited to punching, shooting lasers, and on special occasions shooting a really big laser. As a result, the show loses momentum as it enters its final stages, as Dancouga just bulldozes over Muge Zorbados’ armies. It’s also around this time that the writers lose touch with what makes Shapiro Keats an interesting villain. He was compelling because of his sheer lack of redeeming features and total megalomania, yet more and more focus gets pushed onto his past romance with Sara, the show’s female co-protagonist. It seems like we’re meant to sympathise with him and her because of this lovers-to-anime arc, but Shapiro never ends up being anything less than a vile piece of shit with no redeeming features that leaves you boggling at what Sara could have ever possibly seen in him, and rolling your eyes whenever she’s shown to be struggling with having to fight him. Ultimately, the plot culminates in what must have been an awfully unsatisfying cliffhanger at the time.

However, that wasn’t the show’s real end, because it went on to spawn several OVAs. The first is Requiem for Victims, which portrays the final confrontation with Muge Zorbados. This is an immediate improvement in many ways, getting many things right that the show got badly wrong. First of all, the animation is far superior, as you might expect from an OVA - the difference is beyond night and day. Furthermore, it gives Dancouga some more interesting weapons and attacks to work with, and explores more of what makes it special as a machine beyond just being big and powerful. In spite of this, it also features the most fraught and exciting fights that it ever takes part in. Overall, it’s a massive improvement.

The peak, however, is probably the next OVA in line, God Bless Dancouga - taking place some time after Requiem, it’s got the best production values of anything with the Dancouga named attached. The story isn’t anything to write home about if I’m being honest, but it’s not bad either - if all you want is to see the characters interact with one another, then it ticks all the boxes. The animation is absolutely superb the whole way through, and while Dancouga doesn’t actually have a great deal of screentime, it makes it count big time when it does - chances are if you saw it use a cool attack in an SRW game, it got used first in this OVA.

I was really hoping that the OVAs could go three for three and pull off a great conclusion that’d make the time spent worth it, but that sadly wasn’t the case. Blazing Epilogue is a 4-parter that starts off promisingly plot-wise, but the production values are for the most part not up to the standards set by God Bless Dancouga or even Requiem for Victims - it’s not as bad as the original series, but it’s not especially good by the standards of 1990 when it was released. Worse is the fact that while the plot’s pretty good in episodes 1 through 3, it lets itself down for the finale, wrapping things up in an abrupt way that ended up making the whole exercise feel fairly pointless. It’s a total anticlimax and a weak way to wrap things up.

Of course, that wasn’t the absolute end, as the show got a modern sequel in the shape of Dancouga Nova in the 2000s, but I’m saving that for another day - it features all-new characters and is by all accounts very different from the original. As for the original Dancouga saga, like I said to open - it’s complicated. Personally, I think I enjoyed myself more than I didn’t - but I also don’t think that’d hold true for most people. I came to this already endeared to the robot, characters, and certain aspects of its presentation to the degree, and that helped me to power through a lot of the rockier moments in this so that I could see them in their original incarnation. For other people who aren’t super robot addicts like me, I just think the lows are too low and the highs aren’t high or numerous enough to warrant it being worth most people’s time.

[straight-into-the-animus]

You Might Need It Someday (French Fryes AU)

Part Five of the French Fryes AU!

Read on Ao3 here

Read part 4, or start from the beginning

Jacob tried not to make Arno wait too long as he closed the door and hurried back to his bedroom, grabbing a bleach-stained pair of tight black jeans and throwing them on. He squeezed into his cramped little bathroom and snuck a glance at himself in the mirror, knowing it was mostly all for naught as Arno had already seen him. His beard wasn’t as finely defined as it had been when they had last parted, sideburns already grown in well past a point where he was comfortable with it, but in the past few days, he hadn’t found it in himself to care since there was no one to impress or have swoon over him. He rubbed his eyes at the very least and made sure they looked somewhat alive before deeming things somewhat in order and heading out.

Arno was leaning against the wall near the front door, arms crossed tight in front of his chest and gaze downward, but he gave a small smile when Jacob opened the door and gestured for him to enter. He took his fill of a look as the man entered, seeing that he hadn’t changed all that much except that he was dressed much more casually than their night together. He had the same red scarf that both clashed with his outfit and worked with it, but with his somewhat clunky black boots, denim jacket, and the overall look he passed with, a person could be forgiven for thinking he was a yard worker instead of someone with an actual education.

With some hesitation and after Jacob’s slight nod of approval, Arno took off the boots and left them near the front door, still opting to keep his jacket on. There was something here, now. Jacob had existed in Arno’s space, now Arno was to exist in his for even a small amount of time. The man’s eyes danced around the small space, Jacob noting the slight way his nose curled in disgust at whatever smell was emanating in the flat that the other couldn’t make out.

“How are you feeling?” Arno spoke up.

“What?”

“You have your ‘stupid fucking’ pants on. You said we could talk after that endeavor was accomplished.”

“Can’t even let me be a halfway decent host and offer you something to drink, hmm?”

“Well… I wouldn’t mind that.” He admitted and Jacob, despite knowing he shouldn’t be stretching things out, left and bridged the small gap in the doorway between his living room and kitchen. Arno trailed behind him, seeming to make his home in one of the corners near the garbage bin. Things were still quiet as Jacob filled up a kettle with water and set it on the stove, letting it start to get hot before steeling himself and turning to face the man who quietly gave off nervous energy from his little corner like it was radioactive material.

“Still can’t believe you actually hunted me down.”

“I didn’t have the plan to. It was… My car was out of the shop and I thought, well… It’s my day off, I was sort of in the neighborhood. Relatively. There’s a market not far from here that sells some nice-”

Jacob sighed, a bit louder than necessary. “If you’re trying to bullshit me, please don’t. I’ve been doing it all my life.”

“I’m not bullshitting, really. I mean… I won’t lie and say I haven’t been thinking about you. A lot.” He crossed his arms and steadfastly looked at the boiling kettle of water. “And I was going to stay away. But I said it before. I don’t do one night stands. Especially when I know they could’ve… gone better.”

Jacob was silent for a while before shrugging and speaking with a brighter tone that he felt. “I thought it went really well. It felt nice. If you wanted me to leave a sticky note with a rating, sorry that I didn’t, I’d be happy to change that-”

“You’re not stupid. You know that’s not what I mean.” His arms uncrossed quickly and made some vague annoyed gesture, though he didn’t raise his voice despite the look on his face.

“Are you upset I didn’t stay behind for breakfast? ‘Cause-”

“Fine. I am. Upset about breakfast, if you want to call it that.” Arno cut him off. “Not because my feelings were hurt that you didn’t feel in the mood for eggs and toast. It was because you looked absolutely… The minute you stepped out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, it wasn’t… how I pictured things would end.”

“And how did you picture it ending?” Jacob tried to put some bite into his words, maybe mock him, but he found he couldn’t put anything but actual curiosity into the question, maybe hope for an answer he was unsure to feel about. Arno seemed to search himself, somehow trying to find the words for an answer that Jacob could hold onto.

“Not with you looking like you were ready to throw up and run.”

A somewhat startled laugh tore itself from Jacob’s throat, a bit muffled in his mouth, and he watched as Arno’s arms tightened across his chest and a faint blush took over his dark cheeks.

“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, I promise. I’ve just… It was funny to me. A very poetic description of my mind after a shag.”

Arno tried to give him a glare but it was compounded by the small smile curling the corners of his mouth upwards. “And I find ‘shag’ a very poetic description in and of itself.”

“It fits well.” Jacob shrugged a bit. “Lots of uses.”

“Really?”

“Sort of.”

That one gathered a huff of air out of Arno’s nose in the faintest form of a laugh, and his posture seemed to relax slightly. The tension of the room had been lost somewhere in the awkwardness and pure-mindlessness of the whole situation, but Jacob knew it was ready to rear its head. It lay in wait until the water finished boiling and Jacob made sure to busy himself with preparing the tea to ready himself.

“You still never answered my question. How are you feeling?”

Jacob knew that when a person asked how you felt, that there were a few ways they meant it.

The main way was to make conversation. The thing you would ask a friend or acquaintance you haven’t seen in some time to make them feel appreciated, or at least seen. Sometimes it was genuine, other times people used it as a leap pad to speak about themselves as soon as pleasantries were out of the way.

Another way, a little less common but still there, was when they wanted to make sure you were still on board with whatever event they had dragged you to, or whatever situation they had shoved you into. It was sort of a way for them to relieve any guilt they might feel about hoisting their obsessions onto someone who might be unwilling.

The final way was when they actually wanted to know. Where they cared, not for conversation or to ease their conscience. Where they saw a person and thought Shit, maybe he’s having a bit of a rough day. Or a rough week. Maybe a shitty life in general, and decided they wanted to get involved. His sister was one of those people, sometimes, when it came to him. Jacob stopped the repetitive motions of preparing drinks and half-turned to take in Arno, still near the bin. Maybe, Jacob foolishly hoped, this one could be one of those people as well. He had shown it, yeah, but now…

“The same. Not good, not bad, just… the same. Not much has changed since that night. To be honest, if I can be,” Jacob rubbed his eyes, an excuse to finally look away, “I half forgot the days. They all sort of… mesh together after a while, you know?”

“In what way?”

“I dunno. Kinda weird to explain…” He slid the small teacup of hot water and the tea bag on the counter away from him and towards the man, earning the first trace of movement from him. “Just… You sleep, and then you wake up, and do fuck all. Then it starts over.”

Arno slowly nodded and began to steep his tea. “Have you left the apartment? Since you got back?”

“Not really. Haven’t had the need. Or the drive to do it, more like.”

“That’s not good.”

“No shit.” Jacob rolled his eyes a bit. “But it’s fine otherwise.”

“Doesn’t sound it, if I’m being honest. I, um…” Arno’s eyes darted from his cup to Jacob a few times. “I would offer to take you out, get you out of the apartment and we- No, not like that,” Arno was quick to add at the way Jacob’s body stiffened, “that’s not even important to me right now. I just… When’s the last time you even let the light in here? Or even got some?” He half-heartedly joked, barely brushing the thin curtains away from the window above Jacob’s sink. “I can tell Britain doesn’t exactly get the best weather, but-”

“No, Arno, it’s… It’s fine. Wasn’t you. Really. Just…” Jacob was quick to settle him once everything came back to him, but he hesitated. “Am I able to be honest right now?”

“Of course.” The conviction that came after a second was enough to make Jacob almost lose all hesitation. “If you can’t tell, that’s all I’ve wanted since I tracked you down here.”

“Nice to see you admit you hunted me down. But never mind, we’ll get back to that. Before you came, there was… My ex. Or, not ex anymore. Something. He swung by for a visit. You probably stepped by him on the sidewalk and didn’t even realize. But he knew I was here and let me sweat shit out for the past few days after I bailed with you outside the club.”

“Oh.” Arno slowly nodded, taking a long sip of his tea before speaking again. “And… did he do anything to you? Hurt you? Threaten you?”

“Not overtly.” He finally said, deliberating on everything, before glancing over at Arno for his reaction. At first glance, the man seemed unaffected. His face almost seemed a mask, or something set in stone to look impassive. But the longer Jacob looked, the more detail he found himself noticing; the subtle clench of a set jaw, holding back what he could only imagine were vile words. The beginnings of a fire in previously bright hazel eyes that seemed to darken in mood.

The younger man was faintly fascinated at how someone that had seemed to barely take up any space at all not even ten minutes before in the corner of the room could completely switch on what seemed like a dime. Jacob knew he himself was capable of such a feat on most days, but that was because it was him. It sent the smallest chill down his spine to see such a look on someone who seemed to either be too bright for the world or much too relaxed for it.

“I promise he didn’t get physical or hit me-”

“That doesn’t make things better. Shit, it- Just because he- I’m not mad at you. Believe me.” Arno set the cup down on the counter quickly, and the blaze in his eyes settled marginally into something softer. “I just- I deal with this a lot at work.”

“You’re an attorney.”

“One who works with families. Couples. A lot of times… I also deal with what goes wrong with them. And just because he didn’t hit you doesn’t mean he’s not a dick.”

“I could’ve been just as much of a dick back. Lot of assumptions you’ve got going on there, Monsieur Dorian.”

“I’m paid pretty well to know what I’m doing.”

“Fuck, why are you so weird?” Jacob asked, instead of offering a decent rebuttal. “Just because you happen to be a fancy big lawyer doesn’t mean you’re the end all-be all of relationships.”

Arno held his gaze for a while, and it was as steady as his voice as he finally spoke, quiet but firm. “We all have a past with something, Jacob Frye.”

The look knocked some of the wind out of Jacob’s sails, and he realized that, however unintentionally, he hit a soft spot. And while some small part of him, the part he really hated, felt some vindictive happiness at jabbing him before he could truly jab first, the rest of him just felt bad. So, instead of giving either part a leg up, he continued.

“Anyway. He didn’t get physical. But he did let me know everything. Reminded me about… the ‘details’ of our relationship.”

“Which are?” Arno’s voice returned to normal as he picked up his cup again.

“He owns me, for lack of a better term. When I said I was ‘between jobs’, it wasn’t a lie. I hadn’t been when I first started out with him, but… The past year, I just become complacent. And fucked myself. I still take jobs around London, mostly gigs that don’t last more than a week or so at a time. But nothing permanent.”

“So all this…?”

“He pays. Pays for my heat. Electricity. The very air I fucking breathe. Name it.” Jacob finished the tea, bitter on his tongue even after filling it with shit, and went for another cup.

“I take it he’s rich then.”

“Owns some businesses around the little shitty areas of town that he builds up, pushes competition out while he does it. And then he was some actor before that. Never ask him, or he’ll never shut up. Isn’t even that good at it, if I’m honest.”

“Good thing I never plan to meet him. At least, not without caving his face in with my briefcase.” The frank manner of his words made Jacob blink in shock, but the man continued on as if nothing happened. “ I get the situation is shitty, really. But… you can try and get out of it. You don’t need to feel like you belong to someone. Especially since it seems like you’re not exactly happy in it.”

“I get where you’re coming from. Really. But… it’s fine. It works.”

“Pardon what I say, but it doesn’t work. You’re being used.” Jacob didn’t have it in him to point out that, in the right circumstances and from certain viewpoints, he was using Roth just as much, but Arno was a few steps away from him without even thinking and he could hardly bring it in himself to speak as he stared the man right in his eyes. With a voice that surprised Jacob with how much it lacked intensity, he spoke again. “And no one deserves that.”

“Arno…” Jacob had to take a subtle, deep breath, one of his hands gripping the counter behind his back just slightly as he unconsciously leaned back. “I dunno how many times I gotta tell you. We had one night together. Hardly anything to justify worrying over me like this.”

“I know. I know, and I’m sorry. Sorry for all this. I just- I guess I…” Arno’s eyes darted away to something behind Jacob, and suddenly he found he missed the gaze, “I missed you. And I was worried. And I saw a lot that I thought I could fix and make better for someone I-” He stopped in his tracks suddenly and took a step away, still not looking at Jacob, but without thinking Jacob’s hand shot out and just barely grasped the front of his jacket. It was a weak one, something with his fingertips that could’ve been easily left without so much as a tug, but it was as if someone had attached something to Arno and pulled him back with how quickly and intensely he stopped his movement.

“Someone you what?” Jacob asked, all of this very important to him all of a sudden. Because he wanted to hear this, wanted to know what it was. He moved his head, searching his face until he finally caught Arno’s eye again, and spoke again with a desperate insistence he really did try to hide… mostly. “Tell me.”

“If you can’t already tell, then someone I care about,” Arno spoke quietly, but with an honesty about him like the kind of a man who would lose everything would display. “Care about deeply. Even if it was one night that ‘hardly justifies’-”

He was cut off as Jacob closed the distance and kissed the words from his lips. There was no reaction for a second before he felt arms wrap around his waist, pulling him close. His hand was still holding onto Arno’s front and it was smushed between the both of their bodies, but Jacob quickly freed it and grabbed whatever part of Arno he could to pull him closer. He could taste the sugar and milk Arno had loaded into his drink, but beyond that, he could taste desperation and a sort of reverence, something gentle edging in despite how intense they both held each other. It was wrong, and it was right, and that was everything that Jacob needed. It continued on for a time Jacob couldn’t name, but it ended much too soon when a moan escaped from one of them and Arno pulled back quickly as if he had been hit. A flush was high on his cheeks and his eyes looked blown, even as concern edged in on them and overtook whatever breathless pleasure he was coming down from.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I-”

“I kissed you. Don’t worry about it.” Jacob was just as breathless, grip still on the Frenchman; he was pleased to see and feel that he was still being held as well despite how apologetic Arno looked; it meant he wasn't sorry. Not really, on some base level. He was as human as Jacob was.

“Still. You’re- It- Shit . I thought you didn’t want this. You’re giving me very mixed signals, and I’m not exactly…”

“You’re so fucking good, Arno,” Jacob murmured, coming down from some of the haze. “I want it, alright? Roth is just… complicated. I’m complicated. We’re somehow a really good match like that. But you’re not complicated. And you care. Dunno the last time someone cared.”

“You… want me because I care,” Arno spoke slowly, hands leaving Jacob’s waist just a bit to go where Jacob’s biceps were and stayed there, holding onto him. For a second Jacob thought he was going to break them apart, but he just stayed there.

“Maybe. I want a lot of things that have to do with you. Especially now that I can tell you obviously aren’t going anywhere, if actively searching for me after remembering an address I mentioned in secrecy  is anything to go by.”

“Are you ever going to drop that?” Arno sighed, good-natured, before growing serious. “I would leave if you wanted me to, though. Really. If you just said the word, I’d leave you be. And I wouldn’t come back.”

“I know you would. It’s why I want you to stay.”

“May I ask for how long?”

“For long as I can have you.”

“And Roth? Your… ‘something’?”

Jacob felt himself hesitate, trying to think of what to say. There wasn’t judgment in Arno’s tone, only… caution. Which Jacob could hardly blame him for, all things considering.

“I’m thinking about that. About… getting out of the ‘shitty situation’. Just… not now. I need to- To try and make something before I can-”

“I understand.” Arno cut him off, and Jacob really hoped he did as he was pulled closer, away from the counter, and back into Arno’s arms. “It’s a lot. I still don’t think I help matters-”

“You do. Trust me.” Jacob cut him off. Arno studied him for a long time, until Jacob almost became uncomfortable with the scrutiny before he felt the man begin to pull away. Panic gripped tight at him, a quick fear that he had done or said something wrong, but it was gone in a flash as Arno spoke again.

“Do you have any plans for today?”

“Well… no. Not exactly.”

“Good. Then, if you please, take a shower. Get yourself ready. We’re going out.”

“You’re serious?”

“It’s breakfast time. You need food and actual air to breathe and think. Not secondhand stuff from cigarettes. Please.” He quickly interjected, noticing Jacob beginning to open his mouth. “I don’t want you neglecting yourself.”

Jacob almost deflated, but somewhere in himself knew Arno was right.

“You’re not just gonna up and leave.” Not a question.

“I’ll stay and wait.” A promise.

Jacob nodded and decided to believe him, going back to get closer with him and leaning in, almost questioning before it was answered by Arno closing the distance and kissing him chastely, hands gently holding Jacob’s face and thumbs running across his cheeks and the unkempt bristles. It wasn’t a long one and left Jacob a bit upset as he felt it end, but he opened his eyes and nodded at the encouragement he saw.

“Right. Won’t take too long. Make yourself comfortable.”

“Take your time. We have time.”

Jacob really wanted to believe him on that last point.

I hope you enjoy! If you do I have a Masterpost here and more ideas for writings and prompts here, so feel free to request!  If you’d like to support me, I have a ko-fi here! Safety and peace!

[takaraphoenix]

This may or may not be a touchy question (I guess it depends?), but how do you deal with hate with people who don't particularly like your work or the pairings you like? Because I've seen a fair amount of people stop creating content they want to make because of the backlash or hate they get simply for shipping something, so I do wonder... How do you do it? After all these years, how are you still standing, head held up high? – Much love! <3

I suppose a huge part in that is... personality? I mean, what type of person one is. Some people are very sensitive and negativity gets to them heavily.

Which, is ironic, because I am normally that type of person. I always overthink what other people may think of me and in real life I am easily deterred.

But something about the internet changes the dynamic for me.

If it’s in person? If someone looks me in the eye and criticizes the things I like? That has me fuming. But ain’t nothing more unpersonal than getting an anon and having this round fella with the sunglasses stare at you, or having a “guest” on AO3 comment something nasty.

Because they’re cowards. And the cowardice of the other party tells me that, so a certain degree, they themselves know they’re full of shit. Because if they were confident in what they’re saying, if they knew they were right with whatever they’re claiming, there’s no need to go anon. They could tell me “to my face” - as much as the internet allows that; by being logged in and starting a dialogue.

But someone who hides behind the grey round fella with the sunglasses to tell me I’m morally wrong? Makes me  genuinely laugh. Because if I were, you had no reason to hide.

(At this point, I’d like to add, since you’re on anon too, that there’s different reasons for going on anon. Sometimes, it’s shyness. But if you think yourself morally superior to someone and want to ring the bell of shame behind them, you can’t hide behind anonymity. That’s different.)

I just really can’t take people seriously who hide in the shadows of anonymity to scream at me about how wrong I am. You’d do that with confidence if you knew you were right. But they’re wrong and full of shit. Because they are.

There is no “right” or “wrong” about taste. A ship ain’t only valid for being morally upstanding, pure, canon, whatever. And a person ain’t inherently vile for shipping something that’s unleathy, or toxic, or whatever buzzword they throw around.

Which is another part. I just... absolutely can not take anyone seriously who throws buzzwords around wildly and with no foundation, because they lack any common sense.

Yeah, they’re brothers and it’s incest, what do I care, they’re also fictional characters, I ain’t telling two real life brothers to bang and get married, what’s wrong with the people who can’t tell fiction apart from reality. That’s just pitiful.

I’ve also seen the other side of that. I’ve seen antis ship the exact thing that they’re judging, insulting and harrassing other shippers for. From incest to abuse apologism to just plain toxic canon dynamics. All the things they find a justification to harrass others about, but they ship things of that kind themselves. But their ships are ““different”“ from the ones they hate.

It all boils down to taste and it boils down to a bunch of morons who can’t grasp the concept of “taste” and the fact that... you can like something without it being pure and you can dislike something without it being every shade of morally corrupt.

They bend over backward to find justifications for why the ships they dislike are inherently bad, while they also bend over backward to justify why the exact same things they judge other ships for are actually wholesome and pure in the ships they like.

And at that point, I just genuinely feel bad for those people and am terrified for them. Because I am fully aware of what I ship. I know every deprived nook and cranny of my ships. I know the exact level of toxicity of the canon dynamics. I’m just also aware that they’re fictional characters. But the moment you start reaching to justify why abuse isn’t technically abuse, that’s when it becomes worrisome. And that’s what they do, to justify their own ships.

Now, I’m not gonna lie, this isn’t an attitude I always had and it’s not something I just woke up with one day.

I’ve been in fandom for 15 years now. I’ve seen a lot and I’ve dealt with a lot. I’ve seen when shipwars were primarily reserved to the canon straight love triangles. I’ve seen it devolve into “your ship isn’t valid the gays are getting in the way of the CANON STRAIGHTS”. I’ve seen the number of canon gays grow in media and how it affected these ship wars, invalidating ships where a canon gay ship was split up. And now this shit-show of antis.

My attitude grew out of seeing and experiencing a lot. I was lucky to be “raised” in a safe fandom environment, where the fandom olds took us youngsters under their wings and guided us, taught us how to improve our writing, helped us establish connections in a community.

And that last part, that’s important. Important in dealing with hate. Maybe the most important part, really. You have to find your community. Don’t let yourself be sucked into a circle of hate. Find the people who love the same things as you - the same show, the same characters, the same ships. Form friendships, find that community of positivity.

Fandom is what you make it. Even when other people try to make it something else, try to turn it into a hateful, gross place filled with harrassment and fear and moral policing. Regardless of how hard they try; your fandom is up to you.

Find the people who bring the positivity, who will come into your fics and leave reviews of love and positivity. And weed out the bad. Block them. Block the antis in your fandom, avoid them. Sometimes, preemtively going into an anti tag and just going on a block-spree can be really helpful already. You can block anons on tumblr too! Granted, only their ID, but at one point they’re gonna run out of devices to post anon hate from.

That much to my personal attitude toward it. Now to the act of actually dealing with it.

Many adivse, rightfully so, to ignore it. AO3 allows you to delete comments. On tumlr, you can just delete an anon and not answer it. Especially when you’re the type who is affected by it, not engaging is the best solution.

Personally, I like arguing with people. Everyone who ever talked to me might have noticed that. I live for a good argument. And I’m really bad at letting something just stand. So I usually argue back. I do that, because I am very bad at keeping my mouth shut, but also because it brings me a certain amount of glee to mock their nonsense.

I do it here. I have my “Dear Anonymous Shithead” tag where I address anon bullshit and anon hate from FFNet and AO3 - because FFNet doesn’t let you answer to anons. And then I delete the original comments on my fics, because I don’t like shitstains on my fics.

I call that approach meeting them on your own terms. Because they think they are doing something grand somehow by publicly leaving their vile comments on your fics. Delete them, take their voice away. Put it somewhere else to argue their nonsense on your own terms, mock them if you want, it’s fun. Fight your battle, the way you want to fight it - and that does include just deleting them and not engaging at all; that’s not running away, that’s self-care.

Like I said, my attitude’s not always been like that. It got me before too. Way, way back - and I really do mean way back, it’s been surely over five years ago - there was a tumblr account on here that spent an unreasonable amount of time openly hating on me. It’s the reason I avoided getting a tumblr, because back then I was not in a mental state to openly engage with such a hateful place.

And it’s still a hateful place; all those anti communities here. People proudly proclaiming they’re antis in their biography. People taking screenshots of other tumblrs or artists to mock them and make fun of them. The thing that changed isn’t tumblr, it’s me. I waited to engage with this place until I was ready to engage with it. I got my tumblr account when I already had the attitude of scoffing at anon hate.

I do think that only getting actively involved in a website when you are ready for it is another important part. The thing you mention in your ask, the people who stopped creating because of anon hate. It breaks my heart, it absolutely does, and I hate losing creators to it, but I do think that if those creators made that judgment call for themselves and their own mental health because they knew they couldn’t handle the harrassment, then they did the right thing. Even if they themselves may hate it, because they want to create. But sometimes, taking a step back is the right thing to do. I do hope that they will find it in themselves to overcome this and come back stronger, but constant harrassment and bullying can have severe consequences on a person and removing yourself from that kind of environment can sometimes be a last resort that needs to be taken.

I’ll also admit that I’ve been calculating what fandom to interact with to what degree ever since I got a tumblr account and started to see just how deep the hatred goes. Some things I might have created for, but I saw just how nasty the antis in the fandom were and... it wasn’t worth the fight for me.

Percy Jackson and Shadowhunters are my loves. My ride-or-die fandoms. I can, and will, fight for them. No one will chase me out of these fandoms, regardless of what kinds of insults and bullshit they throw at me. I’ve been here years longer than most of these newbie antis and I will be here long after they moved on to other things.

New things that I don’t have attachment to, I will weight if my level of interest in the thing will be worth engaging with the fandom nonsense with. Sometimes, it’s not, sometimes I make the judgment call for myself to step a way from a thing.

I admit, that happend with Teen Wolf too. Back when I did my last rewatch and enthusiastically engaged with it on here on tumblr, live posting about my rewatch and it... showed me startling, ugly sides of this fandom that I hadn’t known before, back when all my engagement had been to read fics and to write that one fic I had. That rewatch could have dragged me back into the deep end - but the brand of hate I encountered here... genuinely got to me. It really messed with my head, a lot, I’ve never been threatened before, I’ve never been insulted and constantly harrassed to such a degree. It was the first time I ever turned off anon on here, it put me into a sense of dread for just coming online for a while. I didn’t expect that, neither that it’d happen nor the extend of it or that it’d get to me like this. I still love Sterek to bits and pieces, it’ll be one of those ships I will always be attached to, but that experience with the bad side of the fandom made me recoil from getting involved with Teen Wolf again.

But in the Percy Jackson fandom? I’ve stood here for ten years now. I’ve gotten shit thrown at me about pretty much anything. I’ve also created over five hundred works for this fandom. I have received love and excitement in comments. I have received fanarts. I have received fanfiction to my fics. I’ve gotten fics dedicated to me by people who liked my work and wanted to write something nice for me. I’ve met one of my best friends and I’ve met my girlfriend in this fandom. Sure, I’ve been called names and been mocked, but I also know what I have.

I know I’m a damn good writer. I may not have much self-esteem, but what little self-esteem I have is located here, in the very thing they think they can attack. The thing is, I have no insecurities in this. This is the one area where you can’t attack me. And on top of that, I have that community of amazing people who love the same things as I do. I have the support, the friends, the shared hype. What do I care about some pitiful little fool hiding behind anonymity to whine about how wrong and gross I am? Their opinion weights nothing compared to that of the people who leave me anon love, who leave me squealy and excited comments.

To sum it all up:

Someone who has to hide behind anonymity is aware they don’t have the moral high ground.

Their definition of the “moral high ground” is so pitiful that it makes me feel bad for them.

I know the difference between fiction and reality and I pity the fools who don’t.

Find a positive fandom space for yourself and claim it.

Either delete anon hate, or meet it on your own terms.

Sometimes, I don’t. Sometimes, I lose and the hate does get to me.

You need to make the judgment call for yourself, if you can mentally handle a situation or not, and do what is best for you.

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

You are awfully judgemental and opinionated and seem to think you know all about Corey and the reason for his problems. It doesn't show any respect to him at all and just adds the the negativity of what is already a messed up world at the moment. You collect all these articles of awful things celebrities have said. Maybe you should practice what you preach.

I’m awfully opinionated and judgemental? Sorry, anon, I just don’t like racist assholes like Lea Michele, if that makes me “awfully opinionated” then great, I’d rather be called “awfully opinionated” and NOT stand by racism than watch it happen and keep my mouth shut.

I’m not going to pretend I have the biggest platform on any social media but I do have some form of a platform here because as of writing this, I have just over 1.5k followers on this blog. It’s nowhere near what some celebs have, and I don’t kid myself, but as a white young woman with any amount of following, the best thing I can do right now is to use my privilege and try to raise awareness by spreading information, calling out other white people for their racism, and spreading links/petitions. If even one of my followers sees a link or something I’ve shared, then that makes a difference.

I don’t claim I know/knew Cory (not “Corey”) or any of the cast, I live in the UK for fuck sake and I was 15 when he died, you think I knew any of them personally? Nah, I was a fan and nothing more. On that note, I was not the one who brought up Cory into this ordeal regarding Lea and her disgusting racism/diva tendencies in the first place - I recieved an anon who mentioned Cory, and I responded. If you read what I said, I said that NO, she is NOT to blame for his addiction or death - at the time, I was extremely sorry for her. No one physically forced Cory to overdose or take drugs the day he died; he had an addiction and needed help, and I mean it in the nicest way possible but no one is to blame for him overdosing because it’s not like anyone physically forced him to take drugs, he made that decision himself.

As I said in my post, the reason Cory took drugs is because he said so himself that he had a VERY turbulent childhood and he was 13 when he started taking them. He was very open about his addiction and his upbringing, and so I’m absolutely not saying Lea is responsible for his drug addiction because she’s not, his drug addiction was a thing long before he was on Glee. I think I made that VERY clear.

What I meant by my response is that we know the Glee set was extremely toxic for EVERYONE. Cory was fighting his drug addiction and would have been in a vulnerable place because of that - the toxicity on set would have really been horrible for him to deal with, I imagine, especially since we know none of the other cast members could speak up against Lea because Ryan would have fired them or reduced their roles. So yeah, being on a set like that, it definitely wouldn’t have helped him in the slightest.

As for my respect for Cory...frankly, you don’t know about my feelings regarding Cory. I was 15 when he died, a huge Gleek, and like a lot of Gleeks, I was inconsolable and absolutely heartbroken. None of us knew him personally but he was so open and honest and genuine that it felt like we lost a big brother - sure, us fans didn’t go through nearly the same amount of pain and distress that family, friends and the Glee cast/crew did, but if you ask the Glee fandom as a whole, they’ll probably say either the same or something extremely similar. His death was the ONLY time I’ve seen the Glee fandom actually stop fighting and come together to mourn; I’ve spoken before about how horrible the Glee fandom was, and we all acknowledge how toxic the fandom was due to all the ship wars, anon hate, etc., but when Cory died...we all stopped that. We all came together and mourned and cried. Not a single Gleek alive was unaffected by Cory’s passing. So please don’t tell me I have no respect for Cory or his struggles because you don’t know how hard it was for this fandom, especially for those like myself who looked up to him and took inspiration from how hard he fought his demons/problems.

You seem very angry about me reposting screenshots of tweets that Lea’s co-stars and Glee extras - as well as other people who’ve had a bad experience - have made. Why? Why should we ignore their voices? Why should we ignore what Sammie, Amber and Alex (who are all black) have said when right now black people are fighting for their rights? Why shouldn’t I post and share information about how absolutely vile this woman is, especially to her black and POC co-stars?

I’m sorry if you’re a Lea Stan and this is all upsetting for you, but frankly when this many people have come forward to share their stories about how a) racist and b) generally horrible she is, her feelings are no longer a concern. She didn’t care about Sammie’s feelings when she threatened to “shit in her wig”, didn’t care about the extras who she referred to as “cockroaches”, didn’t care about Daubier when she said “you can’t sit at our table” even when numerous other cast members said they wanted him to. Why should I or ANYONE ELSE be nice to her right now, anon?

I agree that we should all be kind, love over hate and all that but honestly? Why should I or anyone else spare her any kindness when she doesn’t have any respect for anyone else but herself? Ignoring that she did so many vile things, especially against black people, especially right now while black people are dying and fighting for their own rights, misses the point completely of the movement. Her being pregnant doesn’t mean we should go easy on her*, neither does the fact she lost her boyfriend years ago - her grief over losing him does NOT excuse her racism or how horrible she was, especially since there are MULTIPLE people who’ve said she was that horrible and vile BEFORE Cory died and before she was even on Glee.

I’m sorry, anon, but I have to disagree with you on this.

*While her being pregnant doesn’t mean we should go easy on her, I am absolutely against bringing her baby into this. The baby hasn’t done anything, they haven’t even been born, so everyone please don’t drag the unborn baby into it or make hateful comments about them.*

[lala-baby]

just to keep track of this

verbal

insulting things she knew I liked or was insecure about as a “joke”, especially my body

constantly insulting my intelligence and saying that she’s never met anyone as stupid as me, including saying that nobody else did things I did (e.g choking on spit occasionally)

speaking to me in a demeaning way (“go be a good little bitch and do X” “you can give me £xx for that since you’re using it” “know your place, bitch”)

Angrily criticizing me for things that weren’t my fault (and in a lot of cases were actually her fault)

telling me she doesn’t want control of me despite her actions completely contradicting that

calling me a nympho if i showed any kind of sexual interest, and occasionally telling other people that i was to try to embarrass me (like veda/stacey)

yelling at me for petty things like if I got water on the worktop after washing up

calling me a man or saying I was manly to me/others, or referring to me as a troll or a hog

saying i was too sensitive if i said i didnt like her shouting at me/calling me names etc and she was just being “brutally honest” because i wouldnt listen to her otherwise

calling me a narcissist

calling me arrogant if i didnt listen/disagreed with her

saying i had selective hearing when i genuinely didnt hear her say something (she may not even have said it and just been fucking with me)

bringing up ancient grievances at every opportunity (e.g when i gently tried to suggest that she might be a hypochondriac because its not normal to constantly want to go to the hospital)

making threats about hitting me if i did something she didnt like

shouting at me for crying if she’d upset me

deliberately saying nonsensical shit to win arguments since it cant be argued with (word salad)

having to win at absolutely everything and generally being adversarial

telling me that i can do things/that she wont stop me but then getting jealous and angry making it too difficult to continue

calling me arrogant and saying i was deliberately ignoring her if i didnt hear her because i was concentrating on something on my phone, usually followed by threatening to smash it

Telling me I was a cunt

Being deliberately transphobic to try and upset me

Saying my haircut made me look like I had downes syndrome

physical

hitting me for fun and then telling me it didn’t hurt and I was a pussy, even if bruises formed afterwards and were pointed out to her (she just continued to deny doing it or laughed at me)

holding me down and forcing medication into my mouth, giving me a panic attack so severe she thought i was having an anaphalactic reaction and called 999

Forcing me to drink herbal cough medicine that tasted vile because she said it was the only one that worked for me, even when I didn't really have a cough

using her security training to restrain me for no good reason other than to demonstrate her strength, while telling me I was weak

not allowing me to, or making it too difficult for me to make my own food choices leading to me putting on a huge amount of weight

controlling my medication/using it as an excuse to gaslight me (“these meds are making you act like a cunt, im taking you to get them changed” if I said no or disagreed with her, dictating when i took them/what dose i took, telling me certain medications wouldnt work for me because they didnt work for her and that the prescriber didnt know what they were talking about)

picking her stank-ass belly button and holding me down and forcing her fingers up my nose (what the fuck)

biting me hard enough to leave marks

controlling when i was allowed to sleep and getting angry and calling me lazy if i was tired, but also often waking me up throughout the night insisting that i was snoring and had to turn over /go sleep on the couch

forcing me to sleep under a duvet even though i sleep badly with them and making a big fuss if i refused

“jokingly” burning me with a lighter (though not inflicting actual burns)

Sitting on me to the point of restricting my airways

Pulling my hair

sexual

holding me down and sucking/biting my neck painfully hard even when I was yelling at her to get off of me and had warned her beforehand not to do that because i hated it and it hurt me (and insisting that it wasn’t hurting me, then mocking me/being angry afterwards)

deliberately giving me love bites against my will in places i couldn’t hide them, especially if i was due to see my family to try to embarrass me

telling me that it was my own fault for not being relaxed enough if I wanted to stop penetration because it was hurting and continuing despite my discomfort; getting angry/frustrated if I continued to say no/still didnt enjoy it to the point where i had to wait until I couldn't take it any more to get her to stop

saying that the reason I couldn’t orgasm from sex with her was because I masturbated too much and “banning” me from it for months at a time, then accusing me of not following orders and lying to her if i still couldnt orgasm

putting me on a “sex ban” if I didn’t do what she wanted in day to day life

saying inappropriate things to others, including my parents, alluding to our sex life

having inappropriate conversations about my body with the elderly man we were caring for in front of me, despite knowing that he had sexually assaulted me in the past

angrily insisting that she knew what she was doing and I didn’t have to tell her if I tried to communicate about how things felt

insisting that she had brought me to orgasm when she hadn’t, and that she knew because she could “taste the difference” and I must just not have felt it because my body didn’t work right, to the point that I believed her and thought there was just something wrong with me

insisting that “all /none of the other girls I’ve been with were like that” to try and guilt me about things I had no control over (genital appearance etc)

financial

making me spend the weekends (friday to monday) with her but complaining that I used all her electric/water/etc. when challenged about how much it was actually costing she said i didn’t know anything about how much things cost because “mummy and daddy had always paid everything for me”, and wouldn’t stop being nasty/aggressive until I gave in

making me buy her food shopping with my savings /using my savings as a free resource to be dipped in to at any time when she had spent her own money

making me buy her things or contribute towards buying things for her flat (hundreds regularly) through guilt /empty promises of repayment/getting me stuff when i moved out

telling me that I only give a shit about money and that I’m obsessed with it if I tried to say no to any financial demands

pressuring me to pay for holidays for us on the understanding that she would provide the spending money, but using her benefits payment instead of saving up for it so I ended up having to give her more money after the holiday so she could still eat/pay bills

not bothering to pay her bills/debts, knowing that it would worry me and that i would end up paying them off for her

buying me presents I didn’t want or need as a way to control me (either through guilt or just buying me things like tracksuits that she knew i didnt want to wear but would feel obligated to because she wanted to control how i dressed), but then getting the money off of me for them to pay for her bills etc as she had run out

becoming angry if I tried to donate anything she had bought for me, including things like children’s toys that she insisted I needed for my “autism”

pressuring me to buy ostentatious gifts (e.g nintendo switch, televisions) for her niece and nephew, usually in the range of hundred of pounds, and then taking credit for it as if she had spent her own money (her justification for this was that she had already spent all of her own money on presents /food /etc for me)

refusing to save/claiming she couldnt save and was “happy as long as she had a fiver in her pocket” because money didnt matter to her, to the point that she had no savings and my family and i had to help her buy furniture etc for her flat

psychological/emotional

being nasty about aspects of my appearance until I gave in and changed it (e.g piercings, hair)

pretending that she had no control over her temper, to the point that she claimed to have “blackouts” of rage where she would come round having seriously injured someone but have no memory of it

telling me it was creepy that I kept my pets ashes and threatening to get rid of them/saying i wasnt bringing them with me when i moved in with her

accusing me off loving my pets more than I loved her, despite causing me to be unable to bond with them properly due to the constant stress I was under

telling other people embarrassing /personal things about me that she found funny, usually in front of me, to try and embarrass me

smugly telling me “I know you better than you know yourself” at every opportunity and generally eroding my sense of self

belittling my likes /interests and replacing them with what she wanted me to like /be interested in - everything from clothes to food to shower gel to music to who I was friends with

trying to convince me to use sperm donated from a fucking facebook page like some kind of insane person

planning to use me to have a child and then send me off to work so she could stay at home on her arse for the rest of her life but framing it as “you can go have a career and ill take care of the baby :)”

accusing me of cheating on her constantly with anyone she perceived as a threat to my obedience (e.g regan, sophie), despite her being the one constantly texting her exes (which i never had a problem with because i trusted her for some goddamn reason)

not allowing me to make friends with anyone she didn’t like and lying to me about them/their motivations to turn me off of them (she claimed to be a good judge of character) - again, regan and sophie

lying constantly in general but making it so that disagreeing with her or calling bullshit would make my life hell and it would get brought up weeks or months down the line

constantly telling me my breath stank (nobody else has ever said that and my dentist literally said my teeth are perfect last time i went), claiming it was because i only drank water and that wouldnt hydrate me (????) and constantly forcing me to drink tea or lucozade (neither of which i would drink given the choice) in large quantities

constantly talking about her work history and forensic history with a sense of pride(assault with intent, gbh, abh, criminal damage, etc etc) and about how badly she’d hurt people in the past, I think to leave me in no doubt as to her capabilities

warping my perception of reality by aggressively denying that things had/hadn’t happened, to the point that I didn’t know what was real and became dependent on her to tell me

using love as a means of control (“you’re meant to love me, I’m your girlfriend” if I tried to assert boundaries/did anything she perceived as insubordinate etc)

bagging up any belongings (except the stuff she wanted to keep for herself) I had at her flat and saying we were over and to come get my shit if I wasn’t obeying her enough

getting suspicious/irritated if I tried to take a bath or use the toilet with the door closed

constantly accusing me of hiding things from her

forcing me to strip naked to allow her to check my body for evidence of self harm

making me use her dirty bath water if I needed one, to “save water” (despite already taking money from me for the water bill)

trying to make me suspicious of the mental health professionals in charge of my care and make them seem untrustworthy or that their opinion was worthless (e.g saying they were wrong about my Dx, therapy won’t work for me, “you don’t have to do every little thing your care coordinator tell you to do it’s just SUGGESTIONS, they’re just trying to control you” etc)

insisting on coming to all my appointments with me so i didnt get to speak to anyone on my own

trying to control my family relationships, e.g making me phone my parents but ensuring that she was there to witness whatever was said, to the point that my family were afraid to voice their concerns about the relationship in case i cut contact with them

constantly posting cringey “romantic” bullshit on Facebook, including buying flowers etc for the sole purpose of showing off what a great girlfriend she was, and becoming angry if I didn’t respond in exactly the right way (not enough kisses etc) for “making her look a cunt ”

getting her niece and nephew to call me auntie lauren and constantly referring to me as her wife from only a few months into the relationship so that i would feel more committed than i was and less able to leave

blaming me and getting angry if the flowers she bought me died too early

getting angry if I didn’t sleep with the multitude of teddies she’d brought me/have them on display at all times and angrily demanding to know why she had wasted her money

constantly telling me that I was doing the things she had to me to do like an idiot, e. g hanging up washing, and taking it down and redoing it in a way that was not discernibly different

always threatening to break up with me if I didn’t toe the line, saying there was no point in us being together and that she didnt need me and wouldnt miss me, and that shed finally have less stress and a tidy flat

saying i was hard work and belittling my intelligence if i asked her how she wanted me to do one of the really specific chores she would make me do

badly neglecting her fish by not performing water changes or removing dead fish to the point that they would literally all die before going out and getting a load more, but not letting me care for them instead despite me pleading her and buying things to make it easier for her to do (e.g an expensive water testing kit that would have lasted her years); getting angry at me if i went behind her back to try to care for them by waking up early to do a water change etc and accusing me of being a smartarse for thinking i knew more about fish than she did when i literally studied animal management at college and actually did know more than her

using me like a slave to clean up her flat/do her washing up/take her mountains of rubbish out by angrily telling me that I had made the mess the previous weekend so she had left it waiting for me (this eventually lead to her having nearly 30 bags of months old rain soaked waste on her balcony one winter that she made me take down myself because “the rubbish is YOUR job and it’s your rubbish too, Ive only ever asked you to do one thing for me and you’re so lazy you won’t even do that blah blah blah”)

telling me to do important things “later” in a way that was framed as her being nice but was actually just more convenient for her /she knew would result in the thing not getting done because she didnt want me doing it

repeatedly breaking my toilet in Nelson House by insisting on flushing her tampons down sand saying that thats what you’re supposed to do, to the point that the toilet was eventually removed, then telling everyone I broke it by having a big shit. as sharing toilets was a mental health difficulty for me I had to suffer for months before being able to move rooms because of this

washing one of my outfits in with her own washing, acting all nice and then later saying that because she had done that for me I had to do a mountain of housework for her

making me go to a&e with her constantly (multiple times a week sometimes) and getting very angry at me if I tried to point out that she didn’t need to go; expecting me to go along with whatever lies she told people about what happened (e.g saying her blood pressure was extremely high and dangerous when it had come back completely normal)

forcing me to spend the weekends at her flat whether I wanted to or not, to the extent that my housing benefit and tenancy at nelson house was put at risk

alternately praising and demeaning my support worker depending on what she had advised me about our relationship (she was leas friend/flying monkey and would switch between saying lea was abusing me and that she was good for me)

making false accusations to the police and sanctuary about me “watching videos of babies being raped” on the darkweb in an attempt to get me to kill myself because i was starting to break away from her control

breaking up with me because i sent someone she didnt like a text after being banned from talking to her all weekend

banning me from talking to people and constantly checking to see if i was or not

taking an “overdose” (it was 25mg of diazepam lol) to try and get me to go crawling back to her

saying that I snored and forcing me to use all kinds of expensive and extremely uncomfortable anti snoring medication /devices, and then usually waking me up in the middle of the night and kicking me out anyway (but getting offended if i suggested sleeping separately from the start)

acting indifferent to my presence and alternating between saying she loved me and that she didn’t need me and wouldn’t miss me if i was gone

forcing me to disclose traumatic things even if I said i wasn’t comfortable speaking to her about it (guilt trips), and then using those things against me/miraculously having the same thing happen to her but ten times worse

gossiping about me with one of my support workers and using that support workers opinion to give legitimacy to her attempts to control my decisions

making me sleep next to the open bedroom door (in her usual spot) when i was unwell despite knowing it terrified me

blaming my behavior on diagnosis she had given me herself (“it’s your autism/bipolar” etc) and insisting i didnt have bpd because “thats just what they diagnose you with when they dont know what to do with you”

making me give her massages/wash her hair and body/squeeze her back spots/shave her legs /cut her toenails for her more or less every night and getting aggressive/sulking if i didnt want to

blaming physical ailments (that she demonstrably didn’t have and who’s severity /presentation changed on a very convenient basis) as an excuse to make me do things for her

putting me under huge amounts of pressure to perform “correctly” for her at all times or be harshly berated, ultimately driving me to attempt suicide several times because there was no escape from her nastiness

telling me that her family didn’t like me /disapproved of our relationship if she couldn’t get her own way and saying they wanted her to leave me because I was x y or z

Repeatedly telling a story about her dad (who has a violent history and had been in prison for attempted murder) threatening to burn down an ex girlfriends workplace and finding it hilarious that her ex was too scared to go to work for weeks

dismissing my concerns about anything as not a big deal or getting angry about me bringing them up, even serious things (e.g a sexual assault)

deliberately provoking me when I had told her to stop because my mental health was bad and i didnt feel able to control my reactions, because she enjoyed the drama /going to the hospital /getting attention from playing the long suffering loyal girlfriend role

only ever treating me with kindness if I had made a suicide attempt/done something dangerous to myself, and then using that against me later (”you put me through hell and im still always there for you so why cant you x y or z”)

blaming her being “in crisis” on me/my poor mental health (and not even being in crisis to begin with)

never saying sorry for hurting me, ever, even when proven “wrong” about something in front of impartial third party who insisted she should apologize for it

getting angry at me for googling any of the ridiculous things she said if I wasn’t sure it was accurate

making me go to a&e/doctors /mental health team when I didn’t want or need to be there because she enjoyed the attention she received as my partner

being angry at me for bring “constantly” on my phone and accusing me of texting other people instead of paying attention to her/whatever was on tv

getting angry if I didn’t want to watch whatever she was watching on tv (she would still be watching it but would get angry if I didn’t pay enough attention)

constantly trying to one-up me with her mental health/dismiss my concerns about how i was feeling and calling me self-centered because she had everything so much worse but was still “getting on with it”

demanding that i always answer the phone to her, and calling multiple times a day to keep tabs on me, usually keeping me talking for 2-3 hours daily whenever i wasnt staying at hers. it got to the point that it was pointless for me to try to do anything because i would start and then she would interrupt. if i didnt answer she would continually call the office claiming to be worried about me

trying to stop me from drinking, going to the extent of telling my parents she thought i had a drinking problem (i objectively didnt) because she didnt want me to spend time with a housemate she was jealous of because we actually had fun

expecting me to drop everything even when I was unwell to help care for an elderly man (who at one point sexually assaulted me), including regularly cleaning up urine/feces from the walls/floor because she didnt want to do that part, despite me saying that we werent trained and didnt have the correct ppe, and if we kept going above and beyond for him social services werent going to put a proper care plan in place for him. includes countless hours at hospital etc

buying me a shirt with a a swear word printed prominently on it and getting angry when I said it would be inappropriate to wear to a care home in case they kicked me out, and forcing me to do it anyway because she wanted brian (old man) to see it

lying about the value of gifts she’d brought me as a means of control/guilt (e.g earrings that she’d told me were £60, getting angry when i accidentally damaged one but when i went to get one fixed the guy said they weren’t worth more than £10 and would cost more to repair than replace)

insisting she couldn’t wait to rehome our cats (and taking the money for them despite the fact that i paid for them and their stuff) and giving them to a stranger despite knowing it would be a matter of weeks before i would be in a position to take them myself, because she couldn’t be bothered to look after them

deciding that we were getting guinea pigs (i wanted something else) and saying that caring for them would be split equally with one belonging to her and one to me, and that she would take them with her when she moved out, but only ever cleaning them once and then leaving me to care for them exclusively

complaining and calling me needy whenever i tried to show any kind of affection

accusing me of not trusting her when i did implicitly like an idiot

blaming all the problems in the relationship on me and whenever i brought up something that was upsetting me telling me that i did it to her too but worse

taking credit for me “getting gobby”/becoming less introverted and saying she was a good influence on me, despite having nothing to do with it (and that not being true, I was just settling in to the house)

having to sit in darkness because she wouldn’t let me open the blinds because she said having them open would damage her tv

if i was ever angry/irritated saying i was “hangry” and taking the piss, encouraging me to comfort eat and then acting smug when it calmed me down

saying that she hopes my friend dies and that she deserves to die when she was in a coma

trying to turn a mutual friend against me after she broke up with me, to the point that the friend refused to repeat what she'd said but told me she was dangerous and to stay away from her

expecting me to drop everything and make her cups of tea whenever she wanted, and making me remake them if they weren’t perfect /getting angry if I said i was busy

particularly saying i had to remake tea because it tasted like soap because i hadnt washed her cup up properly (she would use the same mugs continually until they were absolutely filthy and then leave me to wash them when i was there), often after I definitely had washed them properly but she just wanted to keep me in my place

playing on my fears (of guilt, abandonment etc)

convincing me to change my mind about what i wanted through compliments etc (e.g saying i looked much better wearing whatever she wanted me to wear)

expecting me to know what she wanted at all times without being asked and generally to be able to read her mind, and getting angry and claiming that i should know what she wanted because i was her girlfriend and that she always knew what i wanted and did everything for me blah blah blah

getting angry when i suggested couples therapy and saying it would be pointless because i would just blame everything on her

accusing me of “thundering around” and having heavy footsteps when i was just walking normally so I got so paranoid i had to tiptoe everywhere

refusing to clean up to the point that she got cockroaches, then refusing to acknowledge that it was because she kept leaving dirty dishes etc out and blaming it on her neighbours or on me, and then refusing to do anything about it so i had to pay for the poison and put it out repeatedly etc and make sure I cleaned up after her every time I came over so they wouldn't keep coming back

getting extremely frustrated when trying to accomplish simple tasks (usually diy related) but getting really angry and me when i offered help and accusing me of thinking she was an idiot (she was being an idiot a lot of the time, not reading instructions/using powertools in dangerous ways etc). it was scary and she would sometimes break things that i had bought out of frustration if she couldnt get them to work right (the cat cage & ball track toy for example)

refusing to prepare at all for when she moved out of nelson house so i had to do it, and then refusing to unpack her stuff at the other end in the hope that i would do that too

refusing to let me report an incidence of child abuse that happened in a neighbouring flat to hers because she was friends with the father and said the child deserved it

refusing to let me take the bus at times (she did pay for taxis for me but given the amount of money she took from me i might as well have been paying for them) even when i wanted to and acting like by not giving me a choice she was doing me a favour. in retrospect i think she wanted to know that i was going straight home

always asking me where i was, who i was with and sometimes accusing me of lying about it, either way trying to make my life hell

trying to encourage me to stay on my own and ignore my housemates but phrasing it in a cutesy way (just make a cup of tea and shut your door and have a nice night to yourself without any drama) so it sounded less like she was trying to be controlling

ringing me every night to confirm that i was in bed when i said i would be and making me video call her if she didnt believe me

telling me gossip about mutual friends that wasnt even true because she loved the drama (e.g saying venetias children had died because they had been born deformed)

constantly slagging off her exes and telling fantastical stories about how they broke up/stalked her/abandoned her/abused her and about the triumphant ways she got back at them

generally always telling incredibly unbelievable stories that made her look either “good” (e.g “taking down a squaddie in front of his mates”, sleeping with a nurse while both on duty) or made her out to be the illest (claiming to have had a psychotic break, coughing up a kidney stone)

virtue signalling with brian while also being controlling towards him/explaining things to him in a way that he would do what she wanted/saying “oh he won’t mind, he’d tell us to do it if he were here” when she used his card to buy us lunch etc (yeah he probably would have but that isnt the point)

getting angry if i ever discussed our relationship with anyone else, saying it was none of their business/i was trying to make her look like a cunt; telling me not to tell anyone after she did horrible things

promising things about the future and then never delivering any of it

saying that she wouldnt be the one carrying our children, trying to tell me that getting sperm from facebook was safe and generally treating me like a walking uterus

ending lies/false promises with “you know i will/do/am” to try and enforce to me that she was telling the truth

telling me to cancel holidays id paid for/not come over/generally throwing her toys out of the pram when she couldnt get her own way

forcing me to watch murder documentaries, usually about women being murdered by their partners, and getting way too in to it in a way that was a bit creepy

telling me my menstrual cup was disgusting and trying to force me to use tampons instead

making a big fuss about how she used to ~be an alcoholic~ and that she cant drink because it makes her a nasty person, and then buying a load of beer and vodka when the relationship wasnt going well and saying shed fallen off of the wagon because of me

constantly telling me i had BO to the point i was really paranoid (nobody else has ever said anything about it)

bullying me into letting her smoke in my room

throwing her rubbish on to my floor constantly because she was too lazy to pick it up, so i had to

constantly talking about how against domestic violence she was, saying she'd never hit a woman and how she had been a victim of it to make me think what she was doing wasnt abuse

doing small things for me that I found difficult because of my mental health (e. g phone calls) and then holding it over my head

telling me that i was incapable of love, and that the only person i loved was myself because of how selfish i am

deliberately killing two bees that I was enjoying watching by stomping them into the pavement then laughing at me when I was upset about it

[rainybookshop]

From Top to (Cauldron) Bottom

Pairing: Pansy Parkinson x Percy Weasley

Words: 1529

Summary: Somehow, she finds herself in a secluded alcove listening to Weasley prattle on about cauldron bottoms, of all things, but worst of all, she thinks she might be enjoying it.

A/N: Other titles I considered for this fic include: "(Cauldron) Bottoms Up", "A (Cauldron) Bottom Full of Hot Strong Love", "Started from the (Cauldron) Bottom Now We Here"

Read it on AO3 here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11551263

They meet at a ministry function at which Percy Weasley is uncharacteristically drunk.

Well, to be fair, at the start of the night he’s as stuffy and impossibly proper as she remembers, but between the free-flowing wine at dinner and the rather excessive amount of brandy in the dessert and the champagne the minister had insisted on toasting with, Percy is a tad flushed and just the tiniest bit dishevelled, red curls falling over his eyes on one side and tie slightly askew.

She has no idea how they ended up sitting next to each other, but between her mother’s careful social calls to her ministry contacts – which she’s sure have taken the form of at least one large “anonymous donation”-  and Weasley’s job as assistant to the Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, they’ve ended up at a table with six extraordinarily dull but undoubtedly important young ministry employees. She has absolutely zero interest in the controversial new broomstick legislation or Hermione Granger’s absurd house-elf charity – which has somehow received support from the Minister himself – but she also knows, with her father in Azkaban and her own reputation rather badly tarnished - that she’s in desperate need of a fresh start.  

So she fakes interest, and nods politely, and sips her wine, and pretends not to notice the fact that she’s had eyes on her all night, and she knows it’s not just because her dress is doing truly incredible things for her cleavage. She tactfully ignores the way two of the ministry employees glance sidelong at each other when she sits down, or the way the rest of them have either summarily ignored her or leaned forward with inane questions that are clearly a horribly transparent excuse to stare at her chest.

The self-important idiots don’t seem to realize that she’s already let go of her prejudices – the important ones anyway, she’s not above thinking she’s better than Granger simply because of that awful bushy hair. But from the vicious “character pieces” that vile cow Skeeter still publishes in the Prophet and the thinly veiled but unmistakably cool reception she’s been receiving all night, it’s clear that the rest of the wizarding world isn’t necessarily ready to do the same.

So she’s taken aback the first time Percy Weasley turns to engage her in conversation. He’s stiff as a board but perfectly polite, blue eyes fixed firmly on her face. She doesn’t really have an opinion on the new requirements for apparition licenses, but he clearly does, and she’s not a Slytherin for nothing.

“I’m not sure I know enough about it to really give my opinion,” she demurs. “Have you given it any thought, Weasley?” she asks, ignoring the badly-concealed whispers on the other side of the table.

“Well it’s a rather promising step forward for the Department of Magical Transportation,” he responds enthusiastically, freckled face lighting up, “both to help decrease the completely unacceptable number of splinching incidents among young wizards and to ensure fewer violations of the Statute of Secrecy. Honestly, the amount of wizarding resources wasted on memory modifications due to apparition in front of Muggles is appalling, not to mention the liability of unreported Muggle apparition sightings…”

And he’s off, reciting statistics and quoting previous policies, and it’s surprisingly easy, after that, to let the conversation flow – he has a frankly ridiculous amount of interest in ministry politics, and absolutely zero idea what constitutes scintillating conversation, but he also seems to genuinely consider any opinion she ventures. He nods thoughtfully when she mentions the ludicrous rules surrounding property inheritance that Draco had been whinging about all last week, and he actually huffs out a surprised laugh when she makes a dry remark about the Head Auror’s choice of robes, eyes crinkling in a way that some people might consider attractive.

She’s sure her mother’s aspirations of her finding a respectable job at the Ministry are going up in smoke, and she knows the hour she spent carefully curling her hair was a waste of time, considering no one but Weasley has shown any genuine interest in her all night, but she’s also not having as miserable of a time as she expected.

The next hour passes in a blur of long-winded speeches and a generous second helping of wine and a blatantly political toast to diversity and equality and doing away with antiquated notions of blood purity. And somehow, she finds herself in a secluded alcove listening to Weasley prattle on about cauldron bottoms, of all things, but worst of all, she thinks she might be enjoying it. There’s something rather intoxicating about having his attention so singularly focused on her, even if he likely just needs an outlet for his boundless enthusiasm and she’s cultivated a rather impressive ability to sit through long-winded tirades after being friends with Daphne for the better part of a decade.

She’s never going to tell a soul this, but she also thinks he stands tall in a way that draws attention to the way his shoulders have filled out a little since school, and he has an attractive dimple at one side of his mouth when he smiles, and he’s wearing cologne that she thinks might be Muggle and actually smells quite nice. And she’s sure it speaks to some deep-rooted psychological issues but she kind of likes how prim and proper and overwhelming put-together he tries to be, carefully enunciating his words and making sure his eyes rest firmly on hers, even if she swears she sees them flick down to her mouth for a split-second once.  It’s – intriguing, almost, and she would break her wand and go live with Muggles before she admitted this, but it might be a little bit endearing, too. She should probably be more concerned about this, but she fancied Draco Malfoy for seven sodding years, after all, and at least Weasley shows promising signs of actually being interested in women.

“It makes perfect sense, you know,” she tells him once it seems that Percy has finally run out of steam. “My grandfather was a potions master and he was absolutely livid the day a nearly-finished experimental love potion ate right through the cauldron and leaked all over his workshop. He had to shut down his lab for a week until the assistants stopped professing their undying love for each other.”

She narrows her eyes slightly at Weasley, who is staring at her, wide-eyed and apparently speechless. She’s a little worried that he’s more drunk than she realized.

“It’s…a good idea, Weasley, really,” she adds, just in case that will stop him from standing there gaping like a fish. “A ministry policy on cauldron bottom regulations is long overdue,” she adds, watching his eyes glaze over and wondering if he’s about to have some sort of fit.

She certainly doesn’t expect him to suddenly lean down and press a firm kiss to her lips, one hand clumsily cradling her cheek and the other resting tentatively on her waist.

She just has a chance to taste the champagne and chocolate cake lingering on his lips from dinner and to appreciate just how nice his tall, lanky body feels pressed against hers before he abruptly pulls back, looking horrified with himself.

“I’m sorry,” he sputters, blue eyes wide as saucers and face the same colour as his hair. “It’s just – no one’s ever said that before. And, um,” he continues, and she watches as he somehow manages to turn even redder than he already is. “That was terribly improper - I don’t know what came over me, I’ve likely had too much champagne, and you’re beautiful, of course, but you were just… so, so interested in my work and I …I’m sorry.” He finishes, avoiding her eyes, and tugging nervously on the edge of one of his shirtsleeves.

A year ago, she would have been horrified with herself at the idea of kissing any of the Weasleys, let alone the pompous Head Boy who used to glare at her disapprovingly every time she giggled too loudly in the halls. But everything’s changed, now, and there’s no blueprint for what to do when the world falls apart. It might be ridiculous to think about kissing Percy Weasley, but she already tried to hand Potter over to the Dark Lord, after all, so she really doesn’t think she can make things any worse.

“Weasley,” she begins. He still won’t look at her. She can’t believe she’s doing this.

“Percy,” she says, and he finally meets her gaze. She darts her tongue out to lick her lips, and watches, satisfied, when his gaze drops to her mouth. She wants to savour this, a little. She takes a slow step closer, swaying her hips and biting down a smirk when his eyes rake over her from head to toe. She tilts her head up to meet his wide-eyed gaze, keeping absolutely still for one deliciously tense, charged moment.

“If you’re going to kiss a girl at a party, you need to at least do it right,” she tells him, reaching up to pull him down by his tie so she can kiss him again.

[anexperimentallife]

Going through some of my older work, and started re-reading the first story I ever sold...

There are some embarrassing things about it (the obligatory cishet romance is unnecessary and comes off forced, for one thing, and I tied things up into much too neat of a package at the end, plus there are some other aspects I think I need to redo), but overall it reminds me that yeah, although I need to up my game, I DO have chops. I can do this. This isn’t bad at all, IMHO, but I can do SOOOOO much better now. If you want the entire anthology it’s in, grab yourself a copy of The Crimson Pact Volume 2. (It’s also available at Amazon and so on, but when you buy directly from the publisher, you get all formats, DRM-free--whether you buy the hardcopy or just the ebook version--and I get a bigger royalty cut.)

And I am going to do better. Now that I have  the rights back, I am going to rewrite the fuck out of this,,especially now that I have better ideas about how to fit it into my revised Quiet World setting.

I’ve posted a little of the beginning before, but here’s a much bigger chunk:

Karma (story excerpt)

by D. Robert Hamm

We hit the interstate like an unguided missile. Needles of frozen rain and jagged blades of wind beat my face numb and turned what was left of my dress into a full-body ice-pack. Even with the heater on ‘incinerate,’ I couldn’t stop shivering, but the outside air was all that kept me from gagging on the smell of my own puke and the rusty stench of blood, so the window stayed down. Between the black pavement and blacker sky, the air was wet and gray. It sucked the vitality from my headlights well before their natural time, but that was okay. I wasn’t paying much attention to the little they revealed anyway.

The man in the passenger’s seat either didn’t feel the cold or was too stoic to show discomfort. The dashboard glow turned his short white beard to green and deepened the age lines in his face. Gods, I’d loved that face growing up. It was my grandfather’s face. But right then, I could barely look at it, because this wasn’t my grandfather, just a sad, confused spirit wearing his body. And even though he was one of the good guys, that didn’t mean it was easy to take.

“You’re going to catch cold,” Not-Grandpa shouted over the storm.

“I’m . . . what?”

Since last night I’d been shot at, whipped, and electrocuted. I’d watched a good man beheaded and disemboweled before my eyes, and learned things about myself, my family, and especially my past, that had already driven other people into padded-room territory. I was marinated in a vile concoction of blood and various other body fluids, quite a bit of it my own, and had spent the last however-many hours fighting horrors that should never have existed. In the middle of all that—because I’m an overachiever—I took time out to kill a man I loved.

And this guy was worried that I’d catch a fucking cold?

Once I started laughing, I couldn’t stop. The kind of deep, full-body laughter that doubles you over and makes your stomach muscles ache for days afterward. The kind that shreds the lining of your throat and rises in pitch to rapid staccato squeaks, like sneakers on a hardwood floor. I held back the worst long enough to wrestle the car onto the shoulder, then let go. The laughter turned to howling, the howling into screams, the screams into sobs, and the sobs into a quiet whimper that finally, gods finally, tapered off, and I could breathe again, in great, ragged gulps. I wiped away a rope of snot hanging from my nose and sat hunched over with my eyes closed and my forehead against the steering wheel, shaking, while the rain pummeled my back with tiny, ice-cold fists.

In shock? Probably. Hysterical? Definitely. Look, I make sandwiches at my family’s restaurant for a living, okay? Sandwiches.

Not-Grandpa waited until I quieted down before speaking. “I’m sorry,” he said. It was the dozenth or so time he’d said it. The line of his mouth stayed hard, but his eyes and his voice were soft and broken. I believed him. Had to believe him.

“I know.” I didn’t mean for it to sound bitter. He’d saved my life after all, and he deserved better than that. I just didn’t know if I could forgive him for not being who I wanted him to be.

* * * * *

A little too “in media res” for you? Yeah, me too.

So here are the vitals: My name is Karma Miranda Rodriguez. I’m twenty-three years old, five foot six, with brown eyes, light brown skin, and dark brown hair that I keep boy-short. I claim to be a size five, and I dare you to say otherwise. I like strawberry daiquiris, support equal rights for supernaturals, am indifferent toward long walks on the beach, and . . .

And oh, yeah—Apparently, I kill demons.

* * * * *

Eli’s Borderland Station, my family’s restaurant, has been the only twenty-four hour eatery on the Kansas City Plaza since back before the Jasonites outed the supernatural community (aka, “The Quiet World”) and we had to coin the term ‘daylighter’ to differentiate plain vanilla humans from those touched by the paranormal. During the riots that followed the Jasonites’ little party, and all through the Apocalypse Wars, my Grandpa Eli and Uncle Garston kept the restaurant open as a free kitchen-slash-aid-station for refugees and emergency workers, and turned the upstairs apartment—which is mine, now—into a de facto headquarters for various peacekeeping forces.

So alongside our Absolutely Killer Turkey Sandwich (made from, according to the menu, genuine killer turkeys), we serve up a mean side-order of history. Obviously, a lot of things have changed since the AWs; for instance, the Plaza, always an upscale shopping district, is now a level four Private Patrol Zone with the best law enforcement money can buy. As you’d expect, our main business is well-heeled shoppers whose sidearms are more fashion statement than personal defense, but we try to keep prices reasonable enough for the average college student, too.

No amount of money will buy you a table or a bar stool in our VIP lounge, though, even if every other seat in the house is taken. The lounge is permanently reserved for veterans, proxies, bounty hunters, elites, and so on. It’s where people with code names like Halloween Jack, Lucy D.T., HalluciNathan, and so on come to catch up with one another, trade information, or just relax. Grandpa and Uncle Garston are technically civilians now, but a lot of the VIPs still use their call signs from way back when, so if someone in armored leathers with notched weapons and a stare that looks like they’re counting the ways they could kill you with one finger says they’re going to see The General and Body Mass, they’re not talking about some secret mission, it just means they’re headed our way for the lunch special.

On Tuesday nights we lock up for a few hours of uninterrupted cleaning with my special patented Karma Rodriguez closing procedure. This involves, among other things, lots of dancing around with brooms and mops, and other Weapons of Mess-Destruction, and me in a casual dress singing along with loud music at the top of my lungs. It’s effective. The more I can make work feel like play, the faster and more efficiently I get things done, and as proof of that, what used to take three people on Tuesday nights now requires only two.

At thirty seconds to zero-dark-thirty on a drizzly February evening, when my grime-fighting partner Jayden and I were the only ones left in the restaurant, I locked the front door and hit the music. My mix for the night was weighted heavily in favor of pre-Apocalypse rock—music that was old before I was born. It was a minor tragedy when it cut off about ten minutes into the shift, right in the middle of David Bowie’s Rebel, Rebel. Jayden and I both trailed off a cappella.

“I didn’t hear you singing if you didn’t hear me,” Jayden said. “We stick together, and nobody can prove anything.” He fixed me with what would have been a deadpan stare if not for that quirk at one corner of his mouth that I thought of as his, ‘our little secret’ smile.

I put on my best film noir ‘tough dame’ voice. “It’s always secrets with you, isn’t it? Fine, I’ll play your game.” Staying in character, I headed upstairs with an over-the-top hip-swaying sashay, to reboot the router while Jayden kept cleaning.

I can’t be objective about Jayden, so I won’t try. He was one of a kind. Literally. Part Aosidhe, part Graealfinsidhe, and part daylighter, Jayden was a medical miracle, and he got the best from each branch of his ancestry. Six and a half feet of lean muscle, flawless skin, hair like pale gold silk, and . . . you get the idea. His ears were only slightly pointed, and with his hair down, he could pass for an exceptionally pretty daylighter, if not for his eyes. Whiteless, and bright turquoise in color. They suited him.

And yeah, I know. If only I wasn’t his  boss. Jayden had something of a ‘mystery man’ air about him that only added to his status as local lust-object. Among other things, the way he dressed like a wastelander (only cleaner) but acted like a gentleman fueled speculation. He kept his past and his private life just that, though—past, and private. It was like the world was in love with Jayden, but Jayden wasn’t sure how he felt about the world and didn’t want to lead it on.

When I got back from confirming that the router was indeed fried, those exotic eyes of his were fixed on the big screen in the main dining area. I came up behind him and stopped, gaping. “What the . . . ?”

Just north of us, people were fighting in the streets and looting, while Rushville—Jayden’s neighborhood—burned.

“Short version?” Jayden said without turning around, “They busted the wrong guy for the Taylor murders, so they released him. He lasted a whole three hours.”

“They didn’t give him police protection?”

“He was under police protection when it happened. Now everybody has a conspiracy theory, and apparently with every conspiracy theory this week, you get a free Molotov cocktail kit. Speaking of which . . . ” He rewound a few seconds and paused on a burning apartment building that I recognized as his. “Great firebomb, huh?”

“Wow. I’m sorry.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

He shrugged, his back still to me. “I carry everything really important with me.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Want me to leave you alone?”

He paused, as if considering. “No.”

“Okay. But know what? Fuck cleaning. Help me get the trash out, then haul your duffel bag upstairs. You’re staying at my place tonight.”

Jayden turned and looked at me as though I were speaking Swahili. “Your place?”

“You just lost your apartment to a xenophobic asshole with a fire fetish, and you need crash space. Friends do that kind of stuff for each other.”

That earned me a confused look. “No, I just . . . Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.” He seemed utterly bewildered. So much for his famed stoicism and unflappability. Ah, Jayden. Such a strange, strange boy. I ran up to get my coat and pull on a pair of jeans under my dress, and Jayden and I dragged the first can out into the alley.

I remember the air tasted of cold grease and wet pavement. I remember the electric buzz of the street lamp, and the way its dirty light turned the drizzle into sparse gray streaks like anime rain. I remember the exact cadence of the trash can’s scraping and banging as we dragged it toward the dumpster. How screwed up do things have to get before taking out the trash is a fond memory worth replaying in your head?

We didn’t hear the patrol team until they entered the mouth of the alley, running hard toward us, shouting at us to get inside. The woman’s name was Lawson. She’d lost her helmet, and a sheen of blood covered the left side of her face. Her partner, Hall, had a crack running down the side of his faceplate, and his body armor was shredded in places. They both carried their weapons at the ready, scanning the roofline as they ran.

Before they’d even finished their warning, a clot of shadow and sickening angles detached from the rest of the dark. The Kasu-Hurun slaughter-spider—How did I know that?—dropped from the roof and—The Kasu-Hurun and the bad people are making us walk a long way again. I don’t say how tired I am because I am almost eight years old, and that means I’m a big girl, and because it would make Mommy feel bad that she can’t carry me that far. Mommy and me are in our nightgowns because we were asleep when they—Where were these images coming from?—landed in the alley behind them. It was an impossible thing, eight or nine feet tall, all mottled ochre-and-black chitin, with eight spiked and bladed spiderlike legs from which it took its name, serrated mandibles beneath great protruding compound eyes, and short, thick, writhing tentacles suspended from the underside of a bulbous, misshapen central body.

I shouted my own warning, but Hall was already emptying his magazine at the thing as he backed toward us. Lawson either tripped or dove in our direction, twisting in mid-air to land on her back. She raised her shotgun, and—grabbed us, and it was really late because both moons were out, but they let us put on our boots before they made us start walking. Mommy tried to fight them and she shot one of them but they beat her up and cut her cheek really bad. But she is still the prettiest lady in the whole wide world. It was real people, not Kasu-Hurun, but they don’t act like real people. Mommy says they have bad things inside them called Qlippoth. I think they are telling the Kasu-Hurun what—made it roar as she hit the pavement.

The monster’s cry was like a foghorn made of cats and feedback, a spike that shoved through both eardrums. Lawson had hurt it, taken out one leg, in fact, but it wasn’t enough, and Hall’s automatic gunfire cut off with a sickening, meat cleaver sound as the spider sliced through his neck. Hall’s head flew from his shoulders and bounced against the alley wall while the spider eviscerated his body before it could hit the ground, as if he weren’t–to do. A man tried to run away today, but they caught him, and instead of shooting him a Kasu-Hurun stuck one of its sharp arm/leg things in him and cut him open and played with his insides until he stopped screaming, and I cried, but I won’t cry anymore, because I’m a big girl, and—dead enough already. Even as far back as Jayden and I stood, hot, sticky wetness splattered our faces.

The monster tried to leap toward us, but its missing leg threw it off balance. Lawson’s shotgun was out of ammo, so she fumbled out her .45 and taunted the slaughter-spider while edging toward the side of the alley opposite the door. Sacrificing herself—big girls don’t cry. The demons usually kill everybody, but now they only kill people who try to run away or stop walking before they tell us to stop or people who fall down and can’t walk anymore, but sometimes when somebody falls down they let somebody else make a travois, which is a kind of sled thing that you drag—to give us a chance to get away. My gun was in my purse inside, but even if I’d had it on me, I couldn’t loosen my grip on the trash can, let alone force myself to move.

I caught Jayden’s eye. I’d never before realized–when I feel like crying I think about Daddy. Daddy is a general, which is a kind of soldier who tells other soldiers what to do. He is a long way away fighting other Kasu-Hurun, but when he comes to save us, the Kasu-Hurun and the bad people are going to be sorry. I am going to be a soldier like Daddy when I grow up and—how much he and I communicated without speaking, but with that look, I knew we’d done the same math. One of us might—just might—make it to the door. If we left the other one to die along with Lawson.

Fuck that.

Once I’d made the decision, the tension drained from my body—I am nine years old, and I have been in the prison camp for a over a year. They tell me it is time for the laboratory again, but if I pick someone else to go, they will leave me alone today. If I choose my mother to go they will leave me alone for a month. They seem surprised when my answer is to hold out my wrists for the cuffs. I am the daughter of a general and a hero. I do not run, or let others take my pain. And no matter what they do to me, I won’t let them see how scared I am—the way the fear had, sublimating into the night and leaving me perfectly relaxed. Jayden gave me that ‘our little secret’ smile, and I knew he got it. He understood. Not just what I was about to do, but why.

When anything you do will end in death, make your final act one of defiance.

And so it was that we, about to die, in the most futile and ridiculous gesture in the history of futile and ridiculous gestures, screamed our defiance in the face of death, and charged the monster that would surely kill us.

With a fucking trash can.

We slammed into the slaughter-spider and fell hard, with the trash can bouncing between those giant legs and spilling its slippery contents out onto the already-slick blacktop. The slaughter-spider screamed at the impact, even louder than when Lawson had shot it, and nearly toppled. A serrated leg missed me by inches, and I rolled away, but I’d only be able to dodge for so long. My only regrets were that since I hadn’t properly prepared this body, I would die along with it—again, where the hell did that thought come from?—and that so many things would go unsaid between me and those I cared about. Including Jayden, if I was being honest.

Something hard in my coat pocket bit into my side as I rolled. I’d forgotten about the taser I almost always took with me when I left the restaurant. Even if it was still charged, it wasn’t salvation, but at this point salvation wasn’t an option. Victory was what mattered, and victory was nothing more nor less than continuing to fight until the inevitable happened. I pulled out the taser, flipped off the safety, and sent 50,000 volts into the center of that mass of tentacles, along with all the fury I could muster. The slaughter-spider jerked momentarily, and Lawson took advantage to pick up a piece of steel rebar from the junk pile in the alley and plunge it glove-deep into one of the slaughter-spider’s faceted eyes. Jayden followed with a sharp piece of broken two-by-four into the other.

And as though someone had flipped a switch marked ‘alive/dead,’ the slaughter-spider fell . . . in slow motion, like those television broadcasts of building demolitions. After one final spasm, it was still, and the alley was silent for several seconds except for the buzz of the streetlight. After barely long enough to begin to accept that we weren’t dead, answering cries to the spider’s death scream split the night.

We staggered inside the restaurant as the first new creature hit the pavement, and got the bars across the door just before another slammed against it. I slapped my palm against the ward sigil and spoke the syllables to activate it, then ran to the front and did the same there. After grabbing my gun and other weapons from upstairs and activating still more wards, I hit the ‘dim all’ switch and met up with the others in the kitchen. Lawson used a cabinet as cover, her shotgun aimed at the door, and Jayden . . .

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I’d been gone perhaps two minutes, but when I returned, Jayden stood transformed, a grim-faced cross between a modern wastelander and a wild warrior from legend, in a combination of armored biker leathers and Fay armor. The hilts of two matching blades extended over his shoulders, and his jacket sleeves were pushed up to reveal Sidhe archery gauntlets—the real kind, not the department store knockoffs. Other weapons clung to various parts of his body, strategically placed so as not to impede movement—blades, throwing disks, bolas, and quivers and bandoliers of bolts and arrows for the quick-load mini-crossbow in his hand and the compound bow housed in a slender case across his back. He shrugged bashfully—Jayden? Bashful?—when he caught me staring. So this was what he meant when he said he carried everything important with him.

The booming of another hit on the door jerked my attention away from Jayden. After a few more tries, though, the spiders seemed to realize that it was futile, and ceased their efforts.

Now that we had stopped racing time, time slowed to let us catch up. Whether from the endorphin rush or something else, I felt disconnected, an observer watching from inside myself. In the dimness, Lawson and Jayden were pale, oh so pale, and heartbreakingly beautiful against the gray and charcoal shadows. I stood with chest heaving alongside them, seeing and feeling and hearing everything as though for the first time, in love with it all. Because we, who moments before had been dead, were alive and more than alive, were filled with life until we could burst from the pressure as it strained against the insignificant scraps of skin and flesh that could barely contain it.

A single glossy drop of blood formed at the tip of Lawson’s finger, creating itself until it was real enough to float downward and finally join its comrades who had already emigrated to the floor to form a puddle, and Lawson was falling, falling, falling behind it as if to join the puddle herself.

I shook out of my trance barely in time to help Jayden take Lawson’s weight. She was conscious, but weak. “It’s okay,” I told her, “We’re going to get you taken care of. Did you call for backup?” Lawson shook her head weakly, closed her eyes, and made a sound between a chuckle and a sob. “Nobody left to call. Even if the radio worked, nobody left to . . . ” she trailed off and seemed to fold in on herself. I’d seen what that thing did to Hall. I didn’t need her to tell me what had happened to the rest of her squad.

[ruleandruinrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, SIDNEY!

You have been accepted for the role of RITA JAKOV. Admin Bree: The competition for Rita was tough, and our attention-loving tailor would smile to know it. But not as much as I smiled while reading your application, Sidney—really, it only got better with every word you wrote. It was your para samples that really sold me above all else, though, the way you portrayed her insecurities, vanity, and constant pursuit of perfection, ever-elusive. It was so intriguing to look inside her pretty little head and see what goes through it every time she looks in the mirror, and where it all began. This application was beautiful, so genuine I felt as though my Rita might jump off the page. Congratulations! You have 24 HOURS to send in your account. Also, remember to look at the CHECKLIST. Welcome to Ravka!

OUT OF CHARACTER ALIAS: Sidney! PREFERRED PRONOUNS: She/her. AGE: Twenty. TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: I’m in EST for the summer! I’ll have a lot of free time this summer since I’m home. I do have a part time job this season, but it is just that: part time! So it really shouldn’t interfere and I’ll certainly be able to check in daily and I’m usually always around to plot. As for when the fall semester starts, I go full time and work part time, but I’m usually pretty good at keeping up with things. I can usually respond to threads within 1-2 days and am usually always lurking lol. On a numerical scale, I’d say 7-9/10 in the summer and 6-8/10 during school semesters!

 IN CHARACTER DESIRED CHARACTER: Rita Jakov. Rita - Short form of Margherita. In many languages, it translates literally to pearl, but most notably black pearl in Persian. Antonia - A name of Roman origin given to the women of the Antonius family. Literally translated, it means priceless, praiseworthy and beautiful. Jakov - A family name of many different origins, but most commonly referred to the Hebrew origins supplanter, or “to trip up or overthrow.”

 WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS CHARACTER? To be perfectly honest, Rita stole my heart from the moment I read her teaser. But I will admit, I was hesitant back then because there were so many lovely teasers being released and once bios dropped, I was swept away by so many different characters! But I’ve come to the conclusion that I was wrong to be apprehensive! She’s everything I could have wanted in a Grisha character. And there’s already so much development in her past that I’m really excited where the current events in the plot will take her! What stood out for me most was this quote: “—the type of woman who was loved by all who knew her but understood by none.” I’m not sure if I see a little of myself within Rita or if I’m simply one of the many who love her, but I want to explore her nonetheless. She’s soft and kind and gentle underneath it all—which is deeply rooted in her home life and the way she was raised—but her time at the Little Palace and around fellow Grisha has really shaped and molded the tough exterior she now sports. 

A walking puzzle, doe-eyed and hopeful, she entered the Small Science late to the game, picked from the bunch last and she’d been treated as such. But it didn’t take her long to find her footing, to live greedily, to choose beauty above all else. And I think that’s what I find so interesting about her! Most characters who want to paint the world in watercolors, who want to remove all of the Earth’s blemishes, have a selfless ambition. They have a mission and it is to make the world a better place for everyone, but that simply is not Rita. She’s been spoiled rotten by her own abilities and so have those who dare to cover up their indiscretions with the flick of her wrist or the tug of her finger. And though some may call her obsessive, or shallow, or downright empty and see those qualities as a sign of weakness, I see it all as unprecedented and true strength. Even after years of trying desperately to offset and ultimately fix such savagery, with her delicate hands capable of contorting even the ugliest of beasts into magnificent beings (in other words, putting a mere bandaid onto a gunshot wound), the world has revealed itself for what it really is, ugly and wrought with pain. But if her time at the Little Palace has taught her anything, it is that the beauty she so wishes could cure disease and heal the wounded can corrupt just as wholly as darkness can.

There’s something so appealing to me about her. She’s a gentle soul with an affinity for the finer things in life, from what she reads to what she wears, and most importantly, how she looks. But waging a war against all things odious and vile and egregious, and claiming her cause as righteous one has left her disappointed, hollow, rotten. Perhaps it is time for her to embrace these monsters and this darkness; time for her to find the beauty in the pain and the elegance in destruction.

 WHAT FUTURE PLOT IDEAS DID YOU HAVE IN MIND? ONE: Nothing gold can stay. It has taken Rita years to understand that beauty is temporary. It is a quick fix, a vain indulgence to cover up what truly lies beneath: rot. She was not raised to believe this; in fact, she was raised to be that quick fix, that vain indulgence. She was meant to be admired, but never really touched for all things lovely and charming seem to be the most vulnerable; they seem to bruise as easily as does a peach. And so she remained unattainable, just out of reach. Not out of fear, but necessity. Beauty is temporary, this she’s learned. But to those around her, it is demanded. I really love this quote from her bio: “monsters so love to be made to look as though they’re anything but.” It really resonates with me and gives me lots of thoughts on Rita as a person. I don’t want to change her; I love her the way she is: magnificent and dangerous with beauty literally resting at her fingertips, ready to be put to use, but she’s grown so much and not all for the better. In a way, I think she attributes a lot of the cruelty and pain she’s come to witness as her fault because what she offers does not last. It is almost as if she herself has become a drug, one she is not only addicted to (of which she will most likely never recover), but especially to those she’s tweaked and toned and tailored. And it is that very reason that I believe she’ll struggle with continuing on as this so-called magic wand of Ravka. They demand she erase their deformities away, but monstrousness always has a way of creeping back in even bigger and badder than before. So I’d love to explore the inner turmoil she will inevitably have. Simply put, all she’s ever wanted was to beautify all the ugliness she’s seen, only to discover beauty, something she can control, offer, and give willingly, can corrupt even the purest of things. And perhaps, it is time she take a good look in the mirror. Does she still see the same little girl who turned a village into a kingdom? Can she even recognize the face staring back at her? And more importantly, I want to find out what it means if the answers are no. 

TWO: Superficial, at best. Shallow, vapid, vain—she has been called it all, and much, much worse. Hatred follows around the conventionally beautiful like a lion stalks a gazelle, strategically and thirsty for blood. Rita has always prided herself on her looks, that much is clear. Even before she left her home to join the Second Army, she saw beauty wherever she went. Whether it was pure imagination or wishful thinking, it did not stop her from charming elegance out of everyone and everything around her. Don’t you want to be beautiful? A young Rita would ask and the adults would laugh, tossing their heads back in admiration for the wildly imaginative Jakov girl, with long golden hair and perfectly sun-kissed cheeks. I would love to explore what lies underneath. There are so many layers to a girl like her, each one more complex than the rest, but she’s changed herself so much over the years, claiming each adjustment—each nip here, each tuck there—was done in the name is seeking absolute perfection. And she found it for a time. She became so achingly attractive, so superbly beautiful people almost feared her. They gazed at her from afar with a look one can only describe as wonder. And maybe that’s why she turned her efforts outward instead of in, choosing to perfect those around her as best she could. She’ll claim it was selfless, but a part of me wonders if she only did that so she’d be surrounded by beauty as well. But what are her true motivations? Does she even have any? Or are all her desires, her wants, her needs really that hollow? Some say beauty is skin deep and what matters is on the inside, but Rita has tweaked and remade and even created her skin more times than she can count, over and over, and each time is somehow more beautiful than the last. But what if that’s all she is? What if that is all she’s good for? As her bio states, she’s never fought in a real fight, never wielded a real weapon. I want to see her amount to more than just outer appearances. I want to know what’s underneath it all because, if one day, she is called to fight and she isn’t prepared, her treasured beauty will be the first thing to suffer. So I’d love to explore her maybe getting more physically strong, and learning a little about beauty as a strength within. 

THREE: A lonely person. I hate to be that person who keeps going back and quoting the bio, but I can’t resist! “She became so beautiful it hurt.” This sentence alone, if it were all I had to describe Rita, I think it does it perfectly. If you throw away all the cliches—most notably: beauty is pain—and you focus on the meaning behind it, I think you’ll find Rita Jakov. I see her as a strike of lightning, wondrous and loud and capable of decimation. People look to her and gape; they stare; they lust after her; they long to have her, to own her, to be her. But for all the effort she puts into making other people happier with themselves, she cannot find happiness within. It is a lonely road, this one she’s walking down. It may be beautiful and pristine and lathered in honey and sweet-little-nothings from passersby, but at the end of the day, she is still alone. The moments she relishes, the ones she wishes would last an eternity are inevitably fleeting. So I would love to explore her desire for friendship, love, etc., wherever it may be found. And furthermore, I think her desire to find love, to be loved could be preyed upon, if you think about it. Rita has never been desperate; everything has come easily to her simply because of the advantages the conventionally attractive receive, but I believe she is the perfect candidate for some hardcore manipulation. She could easily get swept away in the affection from a person, believing it to be true. Deep down, I think she hopes for all the glances and stares to mean that people truly love her, but there’s such a monumental difference between love and adoration. The latter has kept her fed for so long now; for years she took praise and pocketed it. She held it close and revisited it any time the decay began to creep in. Perhaps it kept her sane, perhaps it is what drove her mad. But either way, it is all she can see now—in everywhere she looks, in everyone she sees. I would love to see and explore her lack of ability to relate to those around her. It is almost as if she has been wearing goggles since the day she was born. And for a while, all they showed her was the magnificence and grandeur she was capable of. But her vision has changed. Or more importantly, the world has demanded she see its truth. Her goggles have been forcibly cracked and putrefaction has settled in; and it is ravenous, this decay. It isolates her; makes her second guess herself; steals her confidence like a thief in the night. People: they have always been what she has loved most, but now they seem to only cause her pain and heartache. But I believe that longing companionship will remain. In fact, I think it is what will keep her grounded in these new uncharted waters of despair. As of right now, she seems to be trapped in a cage of destruction, alone and incapable of connecting with anyone, provided with only one weapon to defend herself: beauty. And so many others demand she use it constantly, and with reckless abandon. And they will take until nothing of her is left.

 WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO HAVE YOUR CHARACTER DIE?: Yes. It would probably depend on muse mostly, if I’ve lost it or something. And if it would help further along the plot!

 IN DEPTH IN CHARACTER PARA SAMPLE(S): She watches her closely, taking note of her every move: the way her hand sits perfectly still as her fingers do all the magic; the way her mouth points downward, slightly agape whenever she touches up her eyes; the way each and every little thing she does makes her more perfect than the moment before. Rita has always thought her mother was beautiful, with hair as silky smooth as honey and perfect, unblemished olive skin. She has always been a sight for sore eyes, turning head wherever she goes—men, women, it made no difference. All eyes were on her. 

“You’re beautiful, Mama,” a tiny little Rita gushes atop her mother’s lap, elbows resting atop the counter, eyes trained onto her face through the mirror. Her hands gently cupped at her tiny chin and she watched her mother, absolutely mesmerized. 

“Thank you, baby,” she smiles, eyes never leaving her own reflection. She has a tiny jar resting between the index finger and the thumb of her left hand, and she dabs her middle finger into the maroon concoction. It stains her fingertip and Rita’s brows furrow with confusion. 

“What’s that?” Disbelief is apparent in her tone, but it only elicits a light-hearted chuckle from her mother and a small shake of her head.  

“Shadow. For the eyes,” she raises her arm and sweeps the tip of her finger gently along one of her eyelids, then does the same to the other. The color is now smeared along her skin and she pauses for a moment, only to wipe away the remaining color from her fingers. And then she returns to her lids, spreading the shadow smoothly, evenly until all that remains is a soft glow of red. Her green eyes pop against the contrast of the colors and Rita gasps. 

“How did you do that?!” She whips her head around and gazes up with absolute wonder at her mother and her appearance, jealous of her beauty and wishing she could take it from her. Turning back, she faces the mirror and leans in, observing her own face and takes note of at least three shortcomings—something no nine year old girl should ever do. 

“Here,” her mother interrupts her thoughts, gesturing for her to hop up onto the table. Rita does as is suggested and her mother leans to her left and rummages through her trunk. It’s filled with at least thirty jars of all different small shapes and sizes, each one a different color and texture, but all are complementary to her mother’s skin tone, of course.  

“Let’s try…” she trails off as she searches, clinking and clanking within the box until she clicks her tongue and looks back to Rita, “this one.” It’s magenta, but more purple than pink and it’s reminiscent of Rita’s favorite dress in the way it shines when it hits the light. 

Slowly and carefully, her mother executes the same routine she had done on herself, dipping her finger into the now uncorked jar and then sweeping it gently along Rita’s eyelids. She wipes away the remaining shade, but quickly returns to spread it out evenly. Rita sits as patiently as any child can when far too excited and her mother has to scold her at least three times before she finally does sit still. 

They follow the same routine. First, her mother applies on herself, then chooses the perfect color for Rita. It is never a match, never the same colors. “Each woman has a different palette,” her mother grasps her wrist lightly and holds her arm up side-by-side to her own. “Your skin is much lighter than mine,” this time her tone hurts; it’s edgy and clipped and filled with a hint of jealousy. But Rita quickly excuses it away. Perhaps all women are jealous of one another, she thinks. Just as I was jealous of her moments earlier. 

But it is a very dangerous thought, a dangerous way to excuse the bad behavior of a parent. No mother is ever supposed to resent their child, let alone scold their daughter for having fairer skin or being prettier. But Yekaterina Jakov was no ordinary mother, and she will do anything to make sure her daughter is no ordinary girl.  

“Now, Rita, you mustn’t let anyone see you without your face.” 

“Without my face?” The girl stares up at her mother, wide-eyed and quizzical. “But I always have my face.” 

“No, Rita. This is your face,” her mother holds up her arm, encompassing the girl’s face entirely with her hand as she speaks. “This is what you show people. Nothing less than perfection.” 

Rita turns back to look into the mirror, her eyes scanning every perfect corner of the visage staring back at her. She takes note in the purple on her eyelids, at the rose petal pink lacquered onto her plump lips, at the dark charcoal black outlining her azure hues. She didn’t look like herself; she was nearly unrecognizable, but at least she was beautiful. 

—————

She sits in front of a mirror, her mirror, the one she uses every single day. And today is a day like any other. She rises early despite her protests, bathes and begins her morning routine, though it seems more like a ritual—like she’s praying to a deity. The god of beauty, but Rita is painfully unaware of the sacrifice Aphrodite demands: nothing too extravagant, only your soul. And so it starts with a tug here, a lift of her brow to give her more of a perfect arch, and it ends with a face she barely recognizes. But it’s one they will demand to see. They’ll gawk and stare and whisper as she walks past, secrets of lust or promises of hatred, it makes no difference. At least they will be discussing her. They’ll be envious of her beauty, of her grace and everything in between.

Tentatively, she reaches into the familiar wooden chest. It was her mother’s; a gift for her eighteenth birthday. She’d spent a fortune to send it to Rita, even left it filled with supplies, and now it was her most prized possession—aside from its contents, of course. But the sentiment behind the gift was left unanswered. Her letter had been left unanswered as well. It wasn’t that Rita couldn’t find the words; she knew exactly what she wanted to say to her mother if she had the chance. She wanted to yell and cry and scream. She wanted to blame her mother for it all, to rest the weight of the world’s transgressions atop her shoulders so Rita would no longer have to bear it alone. But the solution lies at the surface, not within. Simply, Rita did not want to waste her time. There would be no use in writing a nasty letter to the woman who left her ill prepared to face life; her efforts could be put to far better use. Her time was precious, highly sought after and she needn’t waste it on those she no longer cares about. As far as she’s concerned, both her parents have died.  

Slowly, she twists the cap off of her new favorite shade: a subtle pink sherbet. But as she places the finishing touches atop her lids, a tiny thought pops into her head. This would look better if my eyes were green today. And it takes no more than that mere suggestion. She sets down the tiny jar, twists the cap back on and then focuses her fingertips attention toward her blue hues. But in time, and with a few blinks, the ocean calmly morphs into a beautiful pasture—subtle and serene and most importantly, green. That’s better, she thinks, a smile forming along her rosy lips. But there’s a tiny wrinkle in her nose whenever her reflection squints back at her. Quickly and with wild determination, she brushes away the small crease in her skin with the pad of her finger, a look in her eye as if she’s an artist laying magnificent waste to a fresh blank canvas. A few swipes of her paintbrush and the wrinkle vanishes completely.  

It’s an uphill battle, this war against imperfection, but it is one she’s spent what feels like a lifetime waging—and winning. But it is dangerous, this ability she possesses. The ability to erase, to change, to intensify. Beauty lies in wait atop her fingertips, never truly admitting the immense power that comes along with such a form of defense. And those around her, those who wish to erase, wish to change, wish to intensify; they submit willingly, and Rita obliges them with absolute delight.  

But what of herself? Who defends her against this beast she has created, this monster that lies within? No one ever warned her that the most dangerous enemy is yourself. It doesn’t show in the way she looks, the way she dresses, or even the way she carries herself. All they see is beauty, is perfection, is transcendence—so that is all she sees, too. She sits in front of this mirror, day-in and day-out. She adjusts, she tweaks, she changes completely. Each morning she rises, each day she is reborn anew. What remains? Nothing, she thinks. I am no one. 

She sucks in a sharp breath and closes the box in front of her, locking it tightly and setting it into the drawer on her left. But she isn’t finished. She realizes this when her eyes land back on her reflection. Her hair, it glistens in the morning light; it shines as the trees whip in the wind, blocking the sun every now and then. But it doesn’t look perfect. Not with these brand new green eyes. Brown looks best with green, she thinks. Maybe a light chestnut. Slowly she reached into the top drawer to her right and retrieved a small brush made of bone. With the other she pulled out a familiar tiny jar filled with crushed cinnamon. Bringing the jar up and over the crown of her head, she tapped the side of it lightly, letting the light brown flakes descend atop her blonde hair. She follows this by running the brush through her curls, and the color bleeds from the flakes. It blends and molds into her natural hair color, changing right before her eyes until every last strand has been made anew.  

Perfect, she thinks, but takes note of her brows once more, too light and mismatched to the color of her hair. A frustrated sigh escapes her slightly parted lips. And therein lies Rita’s biggest and longest lasting problem. Her work is never finished, and there always seems to be room for improvement. Perfection—which her mother always told her is of the utmost most importance—does not last. There will always be far more ugly than there is beauty. 

 CHARACTER HEADCANONS: 1. Rita is a Libra. Born September 27th on the precipice of fall. Strengths of Libras: cooperative, tactful, kind, giving and highly sociable. Weaknesses of Libras: Prone to self-pity, detest confrontations and/or fights, can carry a grudge and harbor unmentioned hatred quite easily. Being born under the air sign of Libra, it has bestowed upon Rita a great love of people, especially those who pique her interest. She loves when things go smoothly and appreciates the gentler things in life such as peace and harmony. She whole-heartedly detests violence and consequently injustice. Seeing those around her suffer has always brought her great pain and perhaps this is where her love of beautification and tailoring stems from.

2. Rita’s personality falls under that of the ENFP type, which makes her The Campaigner. “You can change the world with just an idea.” While this applies to many different people who fall under this same personality type, for Rita, it happens to be true. Her idea: douse the world in elegance and decadence. And for a while, she did just that. ENFPs are sociable creatures; they strive being the life of the party and the center of attention. Rita loves to be both. She must grab the attention of an entire room when she enters. And each person within that room must take an interest in her. Otherwise she has not succeeded. ENFPs struggle to connect with those around them, despite their craving for social interaction. This stems from their inability to see the world as anything but complex, like the hardest puzzle known to man, and Rita is determined to put it together—piece by disgusting piece. Rita also struggles with their emotions and compassion; deep down the two conflict immensely. But most importantly, ENFPs like Rita, spend so much time looking for a deeper meaning to life, to their existence, that they forget to enjoy what is happening around them. Though in Rita’s case, perhaps she’s spent too much time noticing, and therefore learned too much and lost a touch of her innocence—of her beauty—along the way.

3. Rita’s character alignment falls under that of neutral good. People that fall under such an alignment are people pleasers; they enjoy helping out those around them, from king’s to peasants, but remain indebted to none. Rita is exactly that. She has always believed, like most like-minded neutral good characters, that law & order are important just as chaos & order are too. And she believes one cannot exist without the other, but rather enjoys in indulging in any of  them. Whether it be following the rules, or bending them to her whims; succumbing to an irresistible desire or denying one’s urges for the greater good, Rita has done it all. And she will again. What she does value however, is freedom above all else. She is a bird, meant to fly and to soar and to roam the earth passionately. But being the true neutral that she is, she always seeks to find a balance. To work hard and play hard. 

4. A girl’s first true love is her father. Papa’s little angel, he would whisper softly. Even today, if Rita closes her eyes, relaxes her thoughts and takes a deep breath, she can almost feel his lips as they graze along her temple. She can feel his strong arms hook under her arms and lift her high above his head. If she concentrates hard enough, she can remember him. The way he smelled, like a gentle rain on a warm, sunny day. The way he felt, like a protector with arms made of steel. The way he loved, with his whole heart. But Rita can never remember his face; she can never see it when she closes her eyes. He is more of a blur rather than a memory, not a complete picture, but a perfect trope of a loving and caring father, if there ever truly was one. He died when she was very  young, around four or so. And I attribute most of her issues, even if she claims to be and seemingly looks perfect. They say a father’s love is like no other, especially when it comes to men loving their daughter’s. A girl needs her father; she needs one man in her life that she can trust. If not, pretty little angels with hair as bright and as yellow as the sun do not turn riper with age. They turn rotten. 

5. I am what you made me. Some say a girl’s best friend is her mother, and if Rita were asked, she would probably say just that. She’d claim she learned everything from her: how to dress, how to act, how to be. Her mother was her teacher, her guide post, and it was her responsibility to shape Rita into a fine young woman. And instead, she created a monster. A beast instilled with the belief that beauty is paramount and should be held in higher regard than anything else. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that she had to raise her all by herself, but something tells me Yekaterina Jakov couldn’t and wouldn’t have done any better. She sees Rita as the perfect girl; mysterious and beautiful: everything it took her far too long to figure out how to be. But everyone knew just how easily Yekaterina collected pretty things, hung them on a shelf and only admired them from afar. And after her father died, this left Rita with no other way to receive adoration or praise or love. One could single-handedly blame Rita for her vanity, her shallow heart, but they’d be remiss to overlook how big a hand her mother played in the woman she became. What sort of woman—what sort of person can you become when your mother treats you as if you are just another collectible? It has been years since she’s even seen her mother, not since she moved to the Little Palace, but still, she’s developed a strong hatred for her the more ugliness she sees, and distantly, if she spends too much time lingering on the fleeting thought of her mother, she wishes Yekaterina had better prepared her for the world instead of handling her with gloves meant to only hold delicate things; it didn’t prepare her for reality.

6. Likes: Rita loves the smell of fresh flowers, the taste of a sweet wine and the warmth of the afternoon sunlight on her face. She has an obsession with lace and silk, specifically the way the latter feels against her skin. Her favorite color is purple, especially when paired with greens and yellows. 

7. Dislikes: Rita detests waking up early, favoring as much beauty sleep as she can get. She hates the way it sounds when people chew with their mouth open, even more so if they begin to speak. Getting dirty, sweating and the stench that follows are just a few of her least favorite things, as well as any sort of physical training or activities. Not to say she’s lazy, but over exertion is not something she enjoys. And lastly, she cannot stand cheap fabric or bad fashion sense. 

8. Romance & sexuality: I know it has been explicitly stated that Rita is pansexual, and while I love that despite her vanity and obsession with how things look, she can look beyond a person’s looks and decidedly find someone attractive based on pure personality, I still think Rita’s sexuality and her experience regarding sex is something that should be explored. Has she ever had sex? I don’t think she has. She may have had encounters of sexual nature, but they have never reached their full potential, so to speak. Perhaps it is difficult for her to give herself wholly to someone the way one must while having sex, or maybe she’s saving herself, waiting for the right person to come along. And in reference to my last plot point, I think it’d be interesting if her first time was given to someone under the ruse of love. Yet another piece of her stolen and tarnished and given back mangled: her heart. And furthermore, Rita’s heart is severely entangled with her sexual desire, and quite possibly cannot engage in one without the other.

 EXTRAS: I didn’t have all the time in the world, but I’m just gonna put a few quotes and things here that remind me of Rita! I would have made a mockblog, but again, not enough time. :/

Quotes that inspired me for Rita: “Her eyes were pearls, which gave her great beauty, but meant she was blind. Her world was the colour of pearls: pale white and pink, and softly glowing.” - Neil Gaiman (x)

“Beauty is transformed over time and not without destruction.” - Terry Tempest Williams

“How soft and gentle her name sounds when I whisper it. It lingers on the tongue, insidious and slow, almost like poison, which is apt indeed. It passes from the tongue to the parched lips, and from the lips back to the heart.” - Daphne du Maurier (x)

“It’s hard to show people everything, you know? You never know what they’ll do with it once they have it.” - Nick Burd (x)

“They won’t tell you fairy tales of how girls can be dangerous and still win. They will only tell you stories where girls are sweet and kind and reject all sin. I guess to them it’s a terrifying thought, a red riding hood who knew exactly what she was doing when she invited the wild in.” - Nikita Gill (x)

“I burn, I freeze; I am never warm. I am rigid; I forgot softness because it did not serve me.” - Catherine M. Valente (x)

Gifs and such that inspired me for Rita: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

 ANYTHING ELSE? Thank y’all for even reading ANOTHER app from me tbh! Love + appreciate y’all so much and I’m just so happy I got to dive into Rita as well. Oh, also! My fave book is Catcher in the Rye.

[atrayo]

Jewels of Truth Statements & Favorite Quotes of the Month

Hello All, Since I skipped this segment last month I really needed to get it done this month of July. Much like I mentioned in my last Vlog entry on Empathy my mother has Parkinson's and as her only caregiver. Her needs got acute and my angelic channeled spiritual wisdom as a clairvoyant took a backseat. Otherwise, things are somewhat regular although still not back to normal for the home life. Thus I'm here back to my inner calling of sharing these missives from the Angels of the endless heavens. I have another announcement before I begin my main blog portal at Google's Blogger service on July 24th will be turning 12 years online! That's a personal feat for myself when I first started back in July 2005 I had no idea I would make it this far. Although I have cross postings of this blog site at "Tumblr, Temple Illuminatus, and at Niume". This main site at Google's Blogger portal as "Atrayo's Oracle" is a bastion of angelic channeled spiritual wisdom. With over 650+ freely available "Jewels of Truth" statements across these dozen years. On top of that value, there is also over 212+ "Gems of Opportunity" inspired eclectic conceptual designs as solutions. Akin to an inventor for ventures in commerce, charities, and governmental policy. All of it freely available as angelic channelings as a bonafide muse of an oracle. (any Venture Capitalists paying attention?) Today's trio of "Jewels of Truth" statements are from recent material I've channeled by automatic writing from the middle of this month. To mix up the eclectic content I share being recently new rather than something from several years ago being offered for the first time as well publicly. The topics are on the Anti-Christ 2,507; Absolute Forgiveness 2,505; and Inner Healing 2,503. Following several notable quotations from other authors at the tail end of this blog posting as customary for this segment. Enjoy and may you each find it interesting and uplifting. Namaste. Anti-Christ:

2507) Those that lust for centralized power seldom shares it wisely for good reasons. Investing in others is a foreign thought reserved for altruistic fools as idealists in their horrible opinions. These are the taskmasters and the slavers of the world not caring if one drops dead from exhaustion. Mercy isn't in their vocabulary they are the demons of hell reborn as the great horde. Legion personified as a fallen brigade seeking vengeance to all except to their own kind. Locusts as voracious consumers as thieves and takers raiding what isn't nailed down. To call them pirates is to bestow a compliment they do not deserve. These are the men and woman of the world narrowly minded and destructive in ideologies of woe. Promoting a few of their own ranks as the winners and the masses as sore losers by design. Anywhere in the world and by any walk of life can one find the fallen as laid bare as cited above. These are the tricksters that deceive the naive and the righteous to destroy each other by their own moral idealistic compass. The masses become fodder in such bouts of drama as a regime of plenty built long ago by dead forefathers. This becomes the age of decline as unregulated capitalistic plunder is expressed without freedom, liberty, or fairness. Attacking one ethnic group pitting it against another because they can and will delight the policy makers by deceiving the masses from the gigantic pink elephant in the room. All figureheads as titans of industry and governments will join the chorus of talking heads rattling debate points as the innocent and the guilty alike suffer into oblivion. This is the poster child of the Anti-Christ standing before you as the savior but is actually a devil in disguise. Apologists will circle the wagons around their false champion not able to see much less perceive the shenanigans afoot. Almost all will be plundered by such a cadre as the forefathers turn in disgust in their graves for what remains will lay as ash and ruin. A war of choice will be the last straw that breaks this nations back so the masses are rallied around a false cause to remain distracted from the common plight of the people. A classic tactic of misdirection to look here as the power brokers are doing something despicable in secret over there. It will take two to three generations after these monsters are driven from power until this once great nation recovers its mojo from such prior autocratic rule by means of a trojan horse politics. Those that invite saviors to power always get devils in return. For genuine saviors never seek to rule the masses due to the conviction of God's open inclusive beautiful truth in their heart as a living paradise of miraculous grace. Amen.   ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo. Absolute Forgiveness:

2505) Forgiveness on the Earth operates in a similar fashion as it does in Heaven and Limbo, otherwise known as purgatory. However, forgiveness in the afterlife is always unconditional in harmony for all that accept it inclusively. With all supplicants in need of a great embrace of the affection of God. The absolute love of God transfers easily to many virtues and graces instantaneously. Such as a constant abiding peace and reconciliation in terms of healthful well being by the Holy Spirit of God. All absolute forgiveness of God is final and never is there a need of repetition for another just treatment of absolution. The faithful in the benevolence of God have the absolute forgiveness immediately as they obey the merciful Will of God every time. This is the chief rule or decree as a heavenly mandate for all the inhabitants of the Earth much as the Golden Rule is spoken of in truth. Of doing unto all others as you wish to be treated with care and utmost dignity in life. Any spiritual entity of God has equal access to God's Absolute Forgiveness. Even the accursed souls in hell although their great false pride denies them such an immaculate resolution as a gift by God for them. Their free will is warped completely as it is in hell itself a polarized reality against this beautiful mercy and affection by God for them all inclusively. So they persist in torments of their own vile making for an eternity. There have been instances that once fallen angels as daemons have prayed earnestly to God for absolution in complete forgiveness. Whereby they have instantly been redeemed since their prayer was true and without deception allowing the Almighty God to intervene within hell in truth and conviction. Such once damned souls have instantly been spirited away into purgatory as a metaphysical cooling off period within eternity as the neutral realm of an enlightened Limbo. Where good and evil reside in harmony akin to a neutral zone of God's beautiful healing truth forever more. Amen.  ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo. Inner Healing:

2503) When we feel deeply choked off by life we suffer by having dread feel like the tightening of the screws on us. What was once safe and prosperous now feels claustrophobic and darkening. We become less than our best nature of what we are to God as precious much less to each other. We negate our mercy and by choosing self-preservation within dysfunctional patterns we suffer yet deeper still in the world. Where once we yielded with goodness now we sink into an emotional quagmire of our very own making. Anxiety, frustrations, and depressing disappointment become our cellmates in a prison of our very own design. Instead of all that horrid self-inflicted pain whether caused by outside events and people at large. Pause for a moment and renourish your spirit silently in the ever present eternal now. Press onward metaphorically ahead by recentering to an inner vibe of loving compassionate peace. Begin with self-acceptance led by positive examples of your past and present actions. Followed by a sincere purging of all your recriminations against yourself and that of those that have pained you deeply with compassionate forgiveness. Such a letting go is a heavy lift at first emotionally and mentally but it evokes courage to be firmly planted in your heart and mind to proceed with convictions worth keeping. This is the process of the humble and the brave of the Soul of God in each of us. That can recall our divinity is far greater than our present or future humanity could ever be in the world. We need to just yield to our guardian angels and those Earth angels in disguise all around us willing to help when asked sincerely with gentleness seeking nothing in return. Be mindful of the pain that was once nearly catastrophic begins to melt away gradually as the throbbing heart begins to mend responsibly. It isn't an overnight process all cures begin as treatments taking repeated applications layer by layer of healing. With ample amounts of patient loving understanding all along the way to wholeness if not in body then certainly in spirit. The tears of sadness must give way to smiles of peace and health overall. Do no harm to yourself in seeking quick fixes just take the restorative steps of least resistance. By showing up nourishing yourself with good rest, good food, exercise, good people, and certainly pursuing creative outlets as hobbies revealing your inner bliss to your heart. This becomes your sacred truth as your divine birthright from heaven right here instantly through your practice of unconditional love of self and of others in time. Always lived in moderation and never to sudden extremes just follow your inner tempo. All the rest that nags at you just surrender back to God and the Angels. Live well by these precepts and go with the blessed gentle flow as the magic of grace is revealed to you one step at a time. Amen.   ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo.

Fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.  = Shirley Maclaine. In the stillness of the quiet if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair. = Howard Thurman. Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past. = Lama Surya Das. Remain true to yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie. = Marion Zimmer Bradley. Happiness is not what makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. = Brother David Steindl-Rast. If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. = Pema Chodran. The miracle of gratitude is that it shifts your perception to such an extent that it changes the world you see. = Dr. Robert Holden. The sacred is not in heaven or far away. It is all around us, and small human rituals can connect us to its presence.  = Alma Luz Villanueva. Be the most ethical, the most responsible, the most authentic you can be with every breath you take, because you are cutting a path into tomorrow that others will follow. = Ken Wilber.

Ivan "Atrayo" Pozo-Illas, has devoted 21 years of his life to the pursuit of clairvoyant automatic writing channeling the Angelic host. Ivan is the author of the spiritual wisdom series of "Jewels of Truth" consisting of 3 volumes published to date. He also channels inspired conceptual designs that are multifaceted for the next society to come that are solutions based as a form of dharmic service. Numerous examples of his work are available at "Atrayo's Oracle" blog site of 11 years plus online. Your welcome to visit his website "Jewelsoftruth.us" for further information or to contact Atrayo directly.