#this is how you lose her

[quotespile]

She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.

Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

[red1culous]

This Is How You Lose Her

“Ok fine” you groan setting the bowl of crisps on the coffee table.

“Ok fine what, Y/N?” she smirks as she sits down beside you on the double seater. Her drink sloshes dangerously in her glass and if it was anyone other than the Black Widow you would have been worried about it spilling. 

“I admit it ok. I ain’t over her yet” you say before covering your face with your hands.

“Andddd—“ she pushes.

You groan even louder this time turning in your spot to face her. You fold your arms over your waist. “And I need help.”

Natasha smiles victoriously while raising an eyebrow at you.

She watches as your mouth tightens noticing the muscle in your jaw twitching as if you had plenty more to say but was holding back the words. 

“I need your help. So help me, Oh Wise One!” you finally say. She takes it as a win and lets out a little chuckle.

It took a couple of seconds, but finally Nat puts her glass down and tips her head to the side. “I’ll ignore the sarcasm and put it down to your head not being in the right place.”

“Sure.” Your answer means nothing but Nat doesn’t push it. You grab a chip and toss it into your mouth and crunch down on it loudly. 

Your throat feels dry and tight. You reach for her glass and take a large gulp sputtering as the liquid burns its way down your throat.

Of course it was Vodka, you think as your eyes water from the sting. 

She takes the glass and places it back onto the middle table. Looking down at her own empty hands she says in a remarkably serious voice. A contrast to how she sounded just seconds ago. “There was a time I was convinced my phone was an extension of my arm. I just felt the need to have it near me. I needed to be available for any situation, any problem, anything really. Every waking minute revolved around keeping up to date. That’s when it hit me.”

“What?” you ask.

She breathes out a sigh. “That not only did I want more, but I deserved so much more. And you do too.”

“I— Nat how does this actually help with my situation?”

“Because you can’t stop checking your phone.”

“This is because I check my phone?” you scrunch up your nose perplexed.

Just then your phone dings and you instinctively reach for it, then stop. You retract your hand knowing she’s watching your every move. You curl your fingers into your palm and lock eyes with her. 

“You check your phone obsessively thinking that she’s going to text you when you know in reality she won’t. She never will. She dumped you Y/N.”

“Wow,” you breathe. “That’s one way of just ripping off the bandaid.”

“Someone’s gotta tell it like it is” she takes a swig from her drink. She again watches you. Her face betrays no emotions and you wonder if she has any tastebuds left. How does anyone drink vodka straight?

After a few minutes of silence you sigh and slap your hands on your thighs. “50 bucks.”

“Seriously…?” she says.

“Natasha Romanoff do I look like a woman who jokes around?” you question faking your best offended look.

“Dating Yvonne was a huge fucking joke” she quips and you suck air in through your teeth making a hissing sound as you clutch at your chest pretending like her words had truly wounded you. 

“You’re just pure savagery today aren’t you?”

“If you’re serious about the 50 then—“ she extends her hand for you to shake, “—only if you can go the rest of the day without checking your phone.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal” you say taking her hand in yours and giving it one good shake. 

The instant her fingers close around yours you feel a rush of heat that races up your arm and settles in the middle of your chest emanating heat right through to your shoulder blades. 

You think Natasha feels it too as she holds onto your hand a little longer than is needed. 

You find it impossible to look away from her. The cool, green depths of her eyes draw you in like a moth to flames. You knew this was dangerous. But with her hand in yours you didn’t much care about caution right now.

When you finally let go of her hand Nat can still feel the warmth of your touch. She clasps her hands together in her lap to hang onto the feeling a little longer.

“What do I get when I win?” you ask reaching for her drink again. This time you don’t cough.

Natasha gets lost in the way your voice sounds a little deeper, a little more seductive than it was before. Quickly she grabs her drink from your lops and takes a quick drink before answering.

“50 bucks. If you win. Which you won’t.”

“Sure.” You say it again and Nat hates how stupidly cute you look as your mouth curls up into a tiny smile.

“When I win. I’m going to need more than just 50 bucks as a reward” you continue.

“Oh, is that so?” she answers with a teasing smile from behind the rim of her glass. 

[litsnaps]

[allloversbetray]

From This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

[mythoughttherapy]

“She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.”

—Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

[litandlifequotes]

The half-life of love is forever.

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz

[prouvaireafterdark]

listen I know it's heartbreaking that Claudia dies and it's understandable to wish she didn't, but let's please not accuse the writers of fridging her. to do so is a fundamental misunderstanding of the story and is frankly insulting to the intelligence and skill of the writers of the show.

Claudia's death, and the overwhelming grief and regret her parents experience because of it, is quite literally the point of the entire story. she dies because Anne's daughter Michele died of leukemia when she was five years old and there was nothing she or her husband could do to prevent it.

writing IWTV was how Anne coped with the unimaginable loss of a parent losing her child. she created a story about a little girl that could not die and then killed her anyway. Claudia's death is a senseless, unavoidable tragedy, just like Michele's was. the grief that haunts Louis and Lestat for the rest of their lives is the same grief that haunted Anne and her husband.

so when you're accusing people of killing Claudia off to benefit a story about two men, please remember that in real life sometimes parents lose their children. please remember Michele Rice.

she's the reason Claudia exists.

she's also the reason Claudia cannot be saved.

[puddlereads]

This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Díaz

⭐⭐⭐⭐_

This was an interesting one. My friend had read the last short story and it made her want to read the whole book so we started it for our book club. The writing style is strange to get used to. Diaz writes in a way that utilizes exactly zero (0) quotation marks or dialogue indications besides line breaks or a "said" once in a while. By the end of the third short story, I had adjusted to the writing style and was able to follow. It's really not that bad if you read smooth and quickly. It comes off as just a guy telling a story. And for some of the stories, the POV even changes and it's difficult for a page or two to adjust to who is speaking and which characters are involved. However, I found that the changes in perspective really went well with each story. It's not like he was switching POVs just for fun, but it added to the context of each story.

First three short stories was the first reading assignment and I really could not get hooked at first. In these first stories, we get a sense of the main character and basically learn that he sucks, a lot. I was kind of dreading continuing this book but it's a short book so I pushed through that first meeting and agreed to the next section. The next week we read the next three short stories. Let me tell y'all, the 5th short story is just beautifully written. On its own, with no other context from the previous stories, it feels like the main character is just a guy with unfortunate timing. It's written like a love letter to a lost love. If someone wrote me a letter like this I'd definitely probably swoon. That story alone kindled an excitement to keep reading.

The last week we read the last three short stories. It's a very short book, although these last stories took the entire second half of it. I liked how it wrapped up some loose ends about some characters that were introduced earlier and not given much context. I learned more about the main character and, while I don't think he was justified in anything, I could now understand more about him.

I think the order of the stories is really well done. At first, jumping around a timeline made me nervous and confused, but in the end I think it worked really well. Diaz knew exactly the way I'd be feeling before, during, and after each story. This is not a book that I would have chosen myself, and honestly I don't know if I'd recommend it to people unless I knew for sure this writing style was enjoyable for them, but I'm glad I read it.

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

given cass's canonical love of reality tv, I am absolutely certain that every year babs has to go into cbs's recruitment email and delete her survivor audition video

[ofswordsandpens]

I fear that "fire bending didn't come easy to zuko" and "zuko isn't a prodigy" (both true) has somehow snowballed into "zuko is a bad or at best average fire bender".... which simply isn't true, especially by the end of book 3

[novelconcepts]

Keep seeing people confused by Agatha letting the world believe she traded her son instead of telling the truth, but…kinda tracks, tbh. Not for the rational mind, of course. Not if you’re looking at it clearly.

Which Agatha isn’t.

She did the worst thing, in her mind. She fell asleep. She fell asleep, knowing Death had bookmarked her son for later, and when she woke, found him snatched out from under her. She failed him as his mother. She let go. And all the power in all the world wouldn’t be enough to bring him back.

So does the wildly grieving woman who has just lost her only child (to presumably her greatest love, but that’s a city-sized suitcase for another day) let herself go through the process of coping with and adapting to that grief? Fuck no! What is she, common?? She goes on a power bender! Even though the kid she prized in her heart of hearts seemed less than into that very thing! Even though that kid may have been able, given enough time, to convince her to stop! So now, not only did she fail him, but she also opted to speed race down Murder Road! For power! That she still won’t ever be able to use to get him back!

It gets muddled, after decades and centuries of this feeling. It grows teeth. In a way, she did trade him for power. In a way, she’ll always have that sitting on her chest. Never mind that it’s not true. Never mind that she wasn’t a bad mother at all (in this respect, anyway). Never mind that he was sick, and this was always coming. For Agatha, who has been stewing on this story she’s been telling herself for centuries, it is what happened. She traded her son. She did the unforgivable. She fell asleep.

[frogs-in3-hills]

hi does anyone else think about april throwing herself over leo to shield him in the shredder strikes back despite having no weapons no way to defend herself and probably assuming she was going to die. does anyone think about that all the time. every day. uncontrollably

[ID: Digital fanart of Ninja Turtles 2003 depicting a scene from The Shredder Strikes Back part 2. April kneels over an injured Leo, cradling his head and looking back over her shoulder to snarl viciously at the camera, though there is obvious fear in her eyes. Her hair has partially fallen out of her bun, the loose strands sticking to her face with sweat. She has a cut on her cheek. Only a portion of Leo’s face can be seen from behind her shoulder. He looks up at her with a sad, pained expression. He has a swollen, bloody shiner on his cheek in addition to other cuts and bruises on the rest of his body. They are on the wooden floor of a dark attic. End ID.]

[each-uisge-enthusiast]

the modern villainisation of demeter will never cease to enrage me bc it wasn’t ENOUGH to just take a story of a girl being torn from her home from everyone who loved her and dragged away to be forced into marriage and twist and corrupt it until it was a romance story about female empowerment that wasn’t ENOUGH they HAD to take the original hero of the story the mother who went to every length to find her daughter again to bring her home and demonise her character until she was this horrific overbearing unloving mother. overprotective controlling without love. they turn the story of her grief at her YOUNG daughter being torn from her without her knowledge into the story of a misunderstood bad boy and a horrible cruel mother who won’t give him a chance and i really find it sickening. it’s ironic, that the ever misogynist age of hellenistic greece, has a better grasp of how disgusting and horrifying this situation was that a modern, self proclaimed ‘feminist’ era.

[theindefinitearticle]

Sick of dating apps and hook up culture, I want to meet someone the old fashioned way: as super soldier agents on opposing sides of an endless battle across time and space leaving each other elaborate puzzles that, when decoded, reveal flirtatious letters.

[bet-on-me-13]

Steph's Year of Recovery

So! Danny noticed that a new face had made it's way into town. Two new faces actually, an older lady known as Dr Leslie, and a girl about his age called Steph.

He first met them when he was at the hospital for one of his parents. They had stood too close to an explosion again, and he met them while he was in the waiting Area.

Dr Leslie was a strict but obviously caring older woman, who seemed to be the one taking care of Steph as a kind of maternal figure, or maybe more like an Aunt. She greeted him simply and then walked away to talk with the Secretary, leaving him to talk to Steph.

Steph was a blond girl in a Wheelchair, and he could see bandages piking out of her clothes as he talked to her. She explained that she had been in an Accident a few weeks ago that left her wheelchair bound for a while, and that she had come to Amity for their surprisingly good Medical Centers.

He and Steph got along really well, and by the end of it he asked her for her Number so they could continue talking later. They stayed in touch, and when she was finally permitted to leave the Hospital, he introduced her to his friends. They all got along like a House on Fire, both figuratively and in one memorable case very literally (Vlad had pissed them off okay!)

Eventually Steph recovered enough that she moved from a Wheelchair to Crutches, and their shenanigans got even more chaotic (Vlad hadn't even pissed them off, this time was just for fun)

The only thing Danny could complain about was the fact that Steph was hiding something from them.

She said that she had been in an Accident a while ago, which was why they had come to Amity in the first place. But Danny knew it was more than that.

He could sense lingering traces of Death coming from her after all.

...

Steph honestly loved her current life.

Sure she had lost everything, her home, her health, her friends, her life, but she had gained new things too! Like Danny and the Gang! They were honestly some of the best friends she had ever had, and for some reason they just clicked with her instantly.

Danny was interesting and funny, Sam was vegan and a badass, Tucker was smart and witty, they all fit with her personality perfectly! It almost felt like she bad been friends with them for years. (She ignored the way her heart skipped a beat when she saw them)

But she still couldn't shake the sense that they were hiding something from her.

She knew it had something to do with the Ghost Problem in the town. And wasn't that a kicker, there was a whole Supernatural Ghost Outbreak in this Town and nobody knew about it. Dr Leslie had said that Amity was off the map enough to hide from Bruce, but she hadn't mentioned it was hidden from the Justice League itself!

Danny, Sam, and Tucker definitely knew more about it than they let on however. Whenever a Ghost Attack would happen, at least one of them would rush off with some practiced excuse and return after the Ghost Attack was over all dirty. She could guess what was going on, and she really didn't like it.

(This had killed her, she had died doing what they were doing, she didn't want to lose them)

Eventually she had to confront them, coincidentally on the same day they decided to confront her.

"Are you Vigilantes?" / "Did you die?"

"..."

"What?" / "What?"