#this poem was one that just absolutely wrecked me as a teenager. I was in my sad lesbian yearning hours 24/7

[sentientsky]

“Belovéd,” Yves Olade

[haveamagicalday]

My reads of 2020

My top ten is in a separate post but here are the rest of my reads!

5 Stars

If You Tell by Gregg Olsen 

This is a memoir about the Shelley Knotek case. It focuses heavily on the relationship and struggles of her three daughters that were just children when Shelley’s tortures started. This book was fantastically written for such a morbid tale but be warned, it is not for the faint of heart. Trigger Warning: Abuse, torture, murder

Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom by Louis Sachar 

The Wayside school books were some of my favorite growing up. I made sure to reread them all before reading this one. It felt like no time had past at all. This is a great blast from the past that won’t disappoint old fans of the series. 

4 Stars

All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban

A group of seemingly unrelated students are invited to a scholar dinner that turns out to be a trapped. Once all the students arrive, they are locked in with a bomb and the the option to choose one person to die or they all die. As the night slips away, we learn the secrets and connections the students share that brought them to their predicament. Surprisingly not as suspenseful as you would think it would be and the secrets/bad things the students had done in the past really weren’t that twisted. Still it was very fun with an explosive ending.

Beyond the Shadowed Earth by Joanna Ruth Meyer

This is a sequel to Beneath the Haunting Sea and actually focused on the hero from the first’s books antagonist, Eda. Eda overthrow our hero from the first book as heir to the throne, blamed the king’s death on her and had her wrongfully banished to an island that launched the story of the first book. After that we never visited Eda again as the book focused on a different story instead of getting her kingdom back. So in this one, we see what happened to Eda after she took over. She is not a good person and the author isn’t afraid to make her unlikable at first, but also redeemable through her adventure and misfortunate. 

Break Your Glass Slippers by Amanda Lovelace

Another book of poetry from Amanda Lovelace that delivers profound and touching poems.

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier 

A classic retelling of The Six Swans. This story takes place in a medieval/fantasy version of Ireland. Marillier is one of my favorite authors of fairytale retellings. This book is definitely a slow read but is gorgeously written and rich in character development. The story follows the fairytale with little variation. Trigger Warning: Rape (graphic depiction).  

Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer

Nonfictional account of female serial killers. I liked that this wasn’t written like a wikipedia page and took a more narrative approach. After the first few women, they all start to blend together though. Lots of poisoning happens. It would have been nice for some variety. 

Malorie by Josh Malerman

The sequel to Bird Box that we probably didn’t need but was still good nonetheless. This one focuses more on Boy and Girl (now named thankfully) as teenagers and their view and challenges of the world they’ve grown up in. This book introduced new concepts that were interesting and creative. Somehow this managed to have a relatively happy and satisfying conclusion.

The Monstrous Feminine by Barbara Creed  

A look at horror films through a feminist and psychological lens. I absolutely loved this book and the ideas it presents. The first half of the book takes a look at certain horror films (such as Carrie, the Exorcist, Alien, ect.) and “challenges this patriarchal view by arguing that the prototype of all definitions of the monstrous is the female reproductive body.” I liked the first section of the book more than the second part where I felt it focused too much on Freud and his findings and challenging them through horror films.

No Judgements by Meg Cabot

A cute, fluffy romance that takes place on a small island preparing for a category 3 hurricane. Bree finds herself forced to shelter with the island’s resident heartbreaker and they don’t get along. At first ;)

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Alicia, a famous painter and wealthy wife, shocked the world when she killed her husband and then stopped speaking afterwards. Now committed to a mental institute, Alicia is still refusing to speak. Theo is a therapist who jumps at the opportunity to work with Alicia and discover what really happened with her husband. Some of the twist was easy to pick up on at first but there was plenty that kept me guessing. This was a real page turner.

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

Alexis and her group of friends have one very big thing in common; they are able to preform magic. One night, Alexis’ magic causes an accidental death of a classmate and the friends have to ban together to make things right. This was a creative and moving read. There’s plenty of magic but it almost comes secondary to the friendships and blossoming love between two of the friends. 

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

Immanuelle lives in. a patriarchal society where the prophet’s word is law and the town is bordered by the evil and forbidden Darkwood. In the Darkwoods lurks four witches that seem to be calling out to Immanuelle. This book had fantastic world building and the story was unique and engaging. Sometimes it felt like we were just skimming the surface of possibilities and I felt that the book could have been longer or divided into a series. While the story wraps up in the end it does turn out there is going to be a sequel so I’m excited for that! Trigger Warning: Mentions of Rape

3.5 Stars

The Cousins by Karen M. McManus

Jonah, Aubrey and Milly never knew their rich grandmother. Her children were all cut off ominously with a note simply saying “you know what you did.” Now their grandmother is reaching out to the cousins and inviting them to work at her island resort for the summer. Lots of secrets and twists await them! This book was a lot of fun and probably my favorite of this author’s so far. Some of the twists border on zany but the overall tone of the book is a little zany so it works.

Horrid by Katrina Leno 

After her father’s death, Jane and her mother are forced to move across the country into Jane’s mother’s childhood home. The manor has many secrets hidden within that Jane must face. The book was well written and intriguing. The books deal with grief and mental illness with a touch of the supernatural. I felt that the overall pacing felt off though. Very little happened in the beginning and then a lot happens in the last 30 or so pages and then it ended abruptly. It was a great concept though and I'm interested in more from this author!

One of Us is Next by Karen M. McManus

A sequel to the hit novel, One of Us is Lying. This book focuses on one of the character’s from the first books little sister and two of her classmates. The stakes in this one didn’t feel quite as serious as the first book but it was a fun read with interesting twists!

The Return by Rachel Harrison

Julie went missing, leaving her 3 best friends grappling with tragedy. Then, exactly two years later, she comes back with no memories. The four friends decide to spend a weekend together but something is not quite right with Julie. This book was creepy! However, it focuses more on the relationships of the four characters and dealings with grief with a touch of supernatural sprinkled throughout. It’s a gripping novel from start to finish that will keep you guessing.

3 Stars

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

Nicolette returns to her hometown for the first time in ten years after the mysterious disappearance of her best friend. Shortly after arriving another girl goes missing, forcing Nicolette to relive what happened years ago. What made this book a page turner was that it tells the story backwards. Once she gets to her hometown it starts on her 10th day and works backwards to what happened on the day of her arrival. Unfortunately, while the concept works at first it builds up to a lackluster and disappointing ending. If you were to put the book in the correct order, it wouldn’t work as there are stuff that is found out in the first few days that the reader doesn’t know about but the characters do that wouldn’t make sense in a narrative sense.

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris

From the outside Jack and Grace come off as the perfect couple but behind closed doors, everything changes. No twists here, Grace is Jack’s prisoner and she is desperately trying to get away. The book alternates between past and present about her current situation and how she got there. This involves a lot of suspension of disbelief. Jack is a cartoony type of villain with no real motive and he would never be able to get away with what he was doing. Grace is also not the smartest person, there were a lot of different ways she could have escaped but for the sake of the story she doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, this was still a suspenseful and fun read but also questionable and some points.

The Blue Salt Road by Joanne M. Harris

A quick, fairytale like story about a selkie who was tricked into becoming human and now longs to return to the sea. I feel like there was a message being preached in this story, but I can’t really pinpoint what it was. Regardless, this was a magical little read.

Clown in a Corn Field by Adam Cesare

Clown in the corn field is a slasher film put on page. It starts off like a typical YA novel and sets up a mystery as to who the clown is, but then the clown attacks at a party and the rest of the novel is that one night as the clown wrecks havoc and the teens have to escape. I think I wold have preferred and more drawn out mystery but fans of slasher films would really enjoy this!

Coral by Sara Ella

A sort of retelling of the Little Mermaid. Sort of. This book focuses on strong themes of mental health. The mermaid/fantasy side is minimal and almost completely disappears in the 2/3rds in to the novel. It was a slightly confusing read but had a powerful depiction of depression. Trigger Warning: Suicide

The Doll House Murders by Betty Ren Wright

A sad but sweet little mystery novel about a preteen girl who discovers a dark secret via an old dollhouse and its mysterious moving dolls. The subject matter was dark but the story was written for middle graders and thus mystery is handled with simplicity and strange charm to it.

Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson

The sequel to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. This book hasn’t been released in the US yet but you can still get the British/original version on amazon which is what I did. This novel requires a stretch of disbelief and I didn’t think the mystery was as good as the first one. However, if you are a fan of the first one, you will still want to check this one out as well!

I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney

You definitely have to suspend your disbelief when you read this one. It's gripping and while some twists were easily guessed, the final one took me for a surprise. It's equal parts dark/chilling and cheesy/silly. I'm still left with a lot of questions after the ending. It makes the book fall apart when you think about it but if you just take it for what it is, an entertaining but cheesy thriller, you'll enjoy it.

The Harp of Kings by Juliet Marillier 

This book features the children of the main characters from the Blackthorn and Grim series but you don’t need to read that series in order to read this one (though you should!). The book features three teenagers that are training to be warriors that are selected to go undercover in a nearby kingdom to find the stolen Harp of Kings before the new king’s coronation can take place. It was slow in the beginning and I felt there wasn’t much character development but it was an enjoyable read.

In Darkling Wood by Emma Carroll

Alice’s sick brother is getting a lung transplant and Alice is forced to stay with an estranged grandmother. Her grandmother lives on the edge of darkling wood, a place rumored to be filled with fairies. This book reminded me of a less dark version of When A Monster Calls. It deals with some of the same themes but this is more aimed towards children with a feel good ending.

The Lost Girls by Heather Young

In the summer of 1935, six year old Emily disappeared leaving her two older sisters and parents devastated. Sixty years later, both sisters are dead but one of them left behind her house and a notebook detailing what happened that summer for her grandniece, Justine. This book wasn’t so much of a thriller but focused more on Justine’s current issues with her daughters and ex boyfriend. I found the chapters with the notebook pages in between chapters more interesting than the modern story.

Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli 

I read the first Stargirl years ago but reread it before reading this one. This sequel doesn’t manage to capture the same charm as the first one did. The book is a series of letters that Stargirl writes (but doesn’t send) to Leo from the first book following her over the course of a year. I found it surprisingly boring at times and Stargirl seemed far to normal as compared to the first book. It was neat to see what she was up to after the first book but overall I didn’t think it was a necessary sequel. 

A Psalm for Lost Girls by Katie Bayerl

Callie’s older sister was considered a saint in her small town before she tragically passed away. Now the city is trying to have her canonized, but Callie knows her sister wasn’t a saint, and the pressure is what ultimately killed, so now she’s on a mission to prove that her sister was just a normal girl. This book involved a missing child that Callie’s sister was supposed to find before she died but couldn’t. The mystery there was very predictable and was kind of on the back burner to Callie’s story. I think this would have been a more interesting story if it had been from the sister’s perspective and how it felt to be a teen saint while she was still alive.

The Rose Without a Thorn by Jean Plaidy 

The story of Katherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry. I was looking for a novel that painted Katherine as sympathetic, as most adaptations make her out to be a seductress. This novel was strange as it read as a wikipedia entry in a narrative form. It was all telling and no showing and lacked real emotion. From the minor research I’ve done, it seems to be pretty accurate in terms of events that happened. Trigger Warning: Sexual Abuse featuring a minor (but isn’t presented as such)

Sadie by Courtney Summers

Sadie’s sister was murdered and she is determined to bring the killer to justice. In between each chapter about Sadie is a the transcript for a podcast that is covering the case, as well as Sadie’s future disappearance . This is a very popular book but to be honest, I'm not sure what the point was? The podcast was an interesting idea but it basically just rehashed everything we already knew. Not much was added by it. The ending just fizzles away and the story tended to drag in places. It was very well written though and I think I was just not the right audience for it.

The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher

A creepy retelling of Bluebeard. It reads like a YA in some places but Adult in others. It was definitely unsightly and out there but I found it confusing in some places. It has some great creepy imagery and slight body horror to it.

The Supervillain and Me by Danielle Banas

Abby’s brother is a superhero beloved by the whole crime ridden town. But when a supervillain comes into town, Abby finds her paths crossing with him again and again. Okay, so the supervillain wasn’t even a villain and the reason for wanting Abby to help him was not a very good one. The book is mostly about the romance between the two which was nice but nothing spectacular. I found myself more interested in the musical Abby was starring in. It was about a cannibalistic royal family whose oldest son falls in love with a servant and he has to save her from being eaten by his family. Now THAT sounded interesting!

Winterdream by Chantal Gadoury

A Nutcracker retelling. This was a sweet retelling of the story. It didn’t add much to the original tale or the ballet but it was a good winter read to get into the spirit of Christmas.

They Wish They Were Us by Jessica Goodman

Freshman year, Jill’s best friend was killed by her boyfriend., Graham Now it’s senior year and Jill is the president of an elite school club but someone keeps texting her about Graham’s innocence and she can’t keep herself from diving deeper into the mystery to unearth what really happened to her friend. Gripping and twisty, this book was a solid teen mystery!

Not Rated

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

I read this almost a year ago and I still don’t know what to think about it. I can’t decide if the story was genius or simple shock value. Did the twist make sense? I don’t know honestly. I read this before I even knew there was a netflix adaptation coming and I while I read this book in one sitting, I only made it halfway through the movie. I personally don’t think it translated well to screen. If you are looking for a quick disturbing read with an ending you WILL NOT be able to guess, then I highly recommend this one.

The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Mallory Ortberg

There’s a pretty popular post on his webiste that has a link to a horrifying retelling of Curious George. This is a collection of retellings/unrelated short stories by the same author. I didn’t read all of the stories in this because some of them were just too difficult to get through and confusing. However, the dark retellings of fairy tales and children books were really enjoyable. I particularly liked the retellings of The velveteen rabbit, the frog prince and the six swans. I think they can all be found online and not just in this collection.

Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer

Is it good? No. Is it garbage? Yes. Did I still read it any way? Yes. Team Edward for life.

[alice-in-wonderart]

Could you do marriage proposal headcanons for the junior quartet (Sizhui, Jingyi, Jin Ling and Zizhen), pretty please?

Oof, I apologise for the wait, dear. This got much longer than anticipated- regardless, I hope you enjoy me clowning the juniors. After all, proposing isn't easy.

Jin Ling

Panic. Panic. Panic. Panic. Panic. Panic.

"Why do I have to propose?! Can't she?!"que angry whailing from the Juniors.

No, in all honesty, Jin Ling would be utterly out of it. The moment he realizes he wants to spend his life with you hits him in the face like a brick. And suddenly he doesn't know what to do with himself... So he turns to his friends, who of course, tease him like hell for it.

Ultimately, they help him set up some sort of plan - the plan of taking you out and proposing. The whole idea was for him take a day off from being a sect leader to spend it with you, which turned into an impromptu mini trip to Yunmeng. And so the plan is set in motion.

But nothing ever goes as planned, does it? For the most part - it went okay. He took you around Yunmeng, showing you anything and everything interesting, reminiscing even. But you knew something was off - Jin Ling was jittery, much more unruly and quick to anger than usual.He was blushing like crazy at the simplest of touches. In fact, he was a walking time bomb ready to explode any second. And- it did.

It did, when work found him anyways. Urgent business he had to discuss with his uncle, apparently something which couldn't wait. He wasn't even listening to the logistics of it, his mind was on you - who was going to have to wait for him patiently. Not only that, but because of said work - you'd have to stay longer than expected. (Maybe he should have warned his Jiujiu about his plan, but such smart decision-making doesn't run in the family)

And, you see, usually this wouldn't bother him much, but when he had meticulously *tried* to plan a PROPOSAL, things were very different. So, coming out after a few hours of endless work, he's pissed - at himself, at work, at life...and he yells at you. He yells at you for asking why he's been acting strange all day, frustration falling from his lips like a sinner's confession.

"Strange?! You have no idea what is going on, do you!? No, of course you don't! Ugh. My entire plan got ruined!! This is a disaster!!"

And you'd have to calm him down, that no - nothing was a disaster, you had fun, Yunmeng was lovely, you'd love to stay a bit more. And once again it was proven to him, that there is nobody in the entire world he'd rather spend his days with.

"Okay, look. I know I'm not perfect. I can be rash, hot-tempered, bad-mannered. I'm a sect leader, I'm always busy. And even now, when I tried to make everything perfect for you, it still failed. And here I am, standing in front of you, feeling like an absolute lovestruck moron, like you're my first crush and I just lose my train of thought around you. And-

Goddamn it, I love you, I love you with all of my heart. And I want to show you that everyday. I want to give you everything, I want to give you the world and - I just want to know if- you'dwanttomarryme?"

Lan Sizhui

Sizhui knew very well, that one day he was going to marry you - after all, you were his light, his soulmate. His first love, his world. You stayed with him through thick and thin already, you were his support, his treasure. And he simply couldn't imagine a world without you.

But proposing didn't come as naturally as he'd expected. After having witnessed WangXian in its full potential, having been a part of their wedding, and knowing fully well how it should go down, he still felt a tad too lost and decided to ask for advice.

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian were very supportive, albeit teasing. Ultimately they were of little help outside of support, suggesting (WWX) all kinds of crazy proposals, from poems, to serenades, to fireworks, wild animals, crazy adventures. Lan Wangji suggested simply asking, which also didn't quite sit right with Sizhui. He was never one for the extravagant show-off performances, but a little more care would never hurt anybody.

Ultimately, he decided to ask you during one of your occasional evening walks around Gusu. He'd told you to wait for him outside a tad later than expected. That of course caught your attention, since Lan Sizhui was never one to break rules, but the little night date was set in motion regardless.

Walking around the back mountain and near the pond with the bunnies, he felt his hands sweat a bit, while waiting for the right moment. He seemed much more distracted than usual, a light pink dusting his cheeks. Soon he found himself kneeling next to you, as you were holding one of the white fluffballs in your hands, lovingly petting it.

"I could stay like this forever" he'd hear fall from your lips. Or perhaps it was something else? He wasn't listening.

"You can..I mean- we can. Just you and me." he'd mumble, gently taking one of your hands in his. He took a deep shaky breath. The bunny jumped off you and he gently caressed the palm of your other hand, before pulling it slightly to his heart. The questioning look you gave him made his heart skip a beat..or two. He smiled warmly at you.

"I..called you out here for a reason actually. I've never actively looked for love, never thought I might find it, yet here you are. And I love you very much, much more than I have the words to express. And you see, everytime I look at you, I can't help but imagine a bright future with you, together, as partners. Even now, my heart beats so fast around you, I fear it might jump right out of my chest. No amount of eloquent poetry or masterfully crafted music can contain everything that I feel for you."

He stopped and moved to kiss your knuckles. "And through it all, we stayed together. You know me better than I know myself. And I know now, that I can't imagine a life without you in it. With all the love and respect I have for you, I'm asking you if you'd like to marry me?"

Lan Jingyi

Let's say your cultivation level isn't the best for the sake of the scenario lol

Panic. Panic. Panic. Panic. Panic - Part 2

Oh wow, something scarier than ghosts - commitment love.

Jingyi is lost. He knows he loves you more than anything and he's pretty sure you love him too but- marriage?! He's never had to deal with...that!? Out of desperation, he'd turn to Lan Xichen, who would give him the unhelpful advice of "Follow your heart and see where it leads you." thx m8, rly helpful.

At the end, he'd simply decide to ask you outright. And he was going to propose to you after the upcoming night hunt. He'd imagined it so romantic - him, returning to you, adrenaline-high and sweeping you off your feet with a proposal even the gods would envy.

But then you just HAD to request joining the night hunt. And Lan Xichen had the audacity to agree!

Each time he'd look at you, his heart would skip a beat, his face would flush and he'd forget his own name. It wasn't fair - that you decided to accompany him on his night hunt, since now he had a constant distraction. And of course, he'd complain about it. Not only did he have to look after himself, but now you too? Why was life so cruel?!

And of course, you'd just giggle with your perfect melodic voice and assure him you'd be perfectly fine, and that if something were to happen, you'd be safe and sound next to him. And of course his heart would do a 360 and run an entire marathon. Who needed sanity anyways? Not him, nope.

But night hunts aren't always safe. And that night, resentful energy had seeped much deeper within their hunting grounds than usual, bringing about an army of spirits to roam the dark forests. And when a few decided to sneak-attack, things took a turn for the worst, quicker than expected.

The ambush, of sorts, left you vulnerable, when everybody else ran in all directions, dealing with the spirits at hand. And as much as Jingyi was keeping an eye on you, in the dark of the night, amongst the resentful ghosts, he lost track of you. And panic struck over unlike anytime before. At once his fear of ghosts was utterly deminished and a single thought flooded his mind - where are you?

He stopped in the middle of the battle ground, looking at every direction imaginable. And surely enough - there you were, about to be attacked by a spirit.

And Lan Jingyi saw red. In the blink of an eye, he was in front of you, dead set on protecting you until the very end of time. And that he did.

Once the threat was taken care of, he turned to you, no disregard whatsoever about the others around him, and pulled you into a bone-crushing hug, asking over and over if you're okay, if you're hurt and if you needed anything.

After having to assure him, that you are in good health, he pulled away from the hug, only to grab you by the shoulders and leave a quick kiss on your lips. Lan be damned, he nearly lost you.

"Forget anything, what if I wasn't there on time?! I just realised how unpredictable this life can be and now how do you expect me to rest peacefully, without you safe by my side? I almost lost you just now! How could I live with myself if that happened? God, this job is so dangerous! We live a life where any second could be our very last and I can't stand that thought! Let me protect you for all eternity and marry me!"

*cue dead silence from half of the Lan clan and a severely amused Wangxian.

Ouyang Zizhen

I call him - a modern day teenager in ancient China, which applies to his idea of marriage as well.

Out of all of the Juniors, he'd be the most set on actually proposing the "right way" - whatever that meant.

To him, a day meant for a proposal was a day meant for spoiling. It was a "show my love I'm ready to do anything for them" day. Was he an absolute nervous wreck? Yes. Was he showing it? ....well. That's arguable. Did you absolutely know something was off with him? Of course. You'd spend enough of your life with Zizhen to know him like your own name.

So, when he came up to you, gingerly asking if you'd like to go downtown for a little walk, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck, you knew you were in for a wild ride - after all, that's one of Ouyang Zizhen's many charms - the adventurous spirit. ( ugh, he's such a Sagittarius. Don't @ me, we don't know his bday)

Upon setting foot in the middle of the town, he turned to you and smiled brightly. "Anything you pick today is all yours. Anywhere you want to go, we go. Anything you want to eat - will be given to you." And he meant it.

He didn't expect you to, however, disregard all of that, instead choosing to spend the day with him, simply walking around and talking. Perhaps drinking a cup of tea. And he followed your humble request, of course.

Yet he still wanted to spoil you - from the freshly baked goods further down the street, to some pretty hair ornament he absolutely insisted would look lovely on you. He just wanted to show you how much you meant to him. Alas, he just wasn't sure how.

He proudly strode by your side, hand in hand, despite his bashfulness, loving every minute spent with you. You ran around, enjoying each other's company, listening to the funny gossips, petting all kinds of animals in the streets, all until you got to a street musician. (I swear those have existed back then - I've seen a documentary, but if I'm wrong, do correct me ✌️ )

He ran up to him and whispered something you couldn't hear, then payed him. The musician in question smiled in return to him and changed the song to one you both recognised and loved. Turning to you with the most bashful of smiles, Zizhen spoke in a fairly hushed tone. "And this - this is for you."

Through a painfully big smile, you couldn't help but ask whether you were forgetting an anniversary, or if it was your birthday and you hadn't realised. The slight worry that you had forgotten some important day threw him off immediately and he frantically waved his hands. "Oh no, no, no. You haven't forgotten anything!" Then he grabbed your hand and turned to you fully.

"Today isn't an anniversary, but I was hoping it could be in the future... We've been together through so much and I wanted to repay you for all of the kindness, understanding, and love that you're giving me. And before you argue that repaying isn't an option, let me finish first. Sometimes I lie in bed at night, wondering what I've done to deserve you, what wonderful hero I must have been in a past life to have you here next to me. And then I always hear your beautiful voice in my head, reminding me, that you're here to stay and I just can't believe it. I wanted to make this day special for you, because I love you and I appreciate everything you've done for me. And well..there is one more thing. I've thought long and hard about this and... Well... I can't help but wonder, if you'd want to stay with me until the very end and marry me?"

Thank you for reading~

[all-pacas]

4, 10, 19, 29!

4 - favorite shade of green

OH MAN THIS IS HARD WEIRDLY, but definitely on the warm/yellow end of the green spectrum and not the blue end. i like a nice medium tropical green, but also you can’t go wrong with a dark, dark green. actually, i’ve been thinking of painting my bathroom a dark green. something like this. i have a fair amount of plants in my house, and i’m always looking for more, so green is kind of an accent color or something. might be nice to just go for it and have my bathroom join in.

10 - favorite sad song?

you know, i was literally just talking about this with a friend earlier today, but i’m gonna go with ‘the rotting strip’ by crooked fingers. i guess it’s not actually the saddest song, but it’s just so bleak, just about two people telling themselves their lives will get better and slowly sinking into nihilism. no song has ever quite captured the feeling not of heartbreak or loss but of giving up so well as this one does for me. i mean — some may say the price you pay is far too much to spend/but they don't know the cost is fair if for a while/it keeps your heart from crumbling

19 - favorite poem

i am admittedly not really a poetry person, so instead let me quote you some motherfucking homer, because i am obsessed with the emily wilson translation of the odyssey, which is a story i have weirdly been obsessed with since i was a kid, and i just love the directness, the modern language, the directive at the end of the opening lines:

Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginning.

oh god i just unironically said i was obsessed with the odyssey does this make me pretentious

29 - favorite book longer than 500 pages

GOD I READ SO MUCH THO okay a few sprung to mind, for different reasons:

a) stephen king and peter straub’s The Talisman, which i highly recommend even if you don’t typically read stephen king, it’s highly underrated, it’s literally his take on a YA adventure novel except he wrote it in the 80s. it’s about a boy named jack who finds out that his dying mother is the queen in a parallel world, who travels across it and the US to try and save her. it has fantasy and mild horror and all of stephen king’s cheesy and unironic sentimentality — the song happy days are here again is a plot point, and an unironic one — and i read it for the first time when i was 12 or 13 and it really stuck with me, i still have that copy of the book, which i stole from my dad’s stack of stephen king novels in the attic.

b) killing commendatore by haruki murakami 

i mean look, any of murakami’s books can go here, and it’s not my absolute favorite of his, although i do love it. i picked it because murakami novels are fucking weird, but always in the same ways — obsession with music, cooking, art, dreams, surrealism, cats, ears, strange teenage girls, a meandering dream quality — and this one manages to be somewhat less out there than his other novels and still really good. i can just read this and like, relax, almost, just let the story carry me without worrying about the details.

c) beauty is a wound by eka kurniawan

okay it’s only 470 pages I CHECKED but look. if the murakami book was an acquired taste this one is EVEN WORSE, but it’s also one of those books i literally could not put down. it’s vulgar, dark, funny, crude, has a weirdly high incest quotient, and incredibly gripping. the opening line is: One afternoon on a weekend in March, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years. it is a modern history of Indonesia as told through the life of dewi ayu, a famous prostitute, and her three beautiful daughters and her hideous fourth. i literally could not put it down, the translation is so weird and smooth and pithy, i really do adore this weird-ass book, even if it isn’t quite 500 pages.

[fragiledewdrop]

High school Newspaper Shenanigans

I don't have a lot of good memories about high school, but today I found a dusty copy of what passed for a "newspaper" in my school and it brought me back to when I was 16.

The girl who had been running the school newspaper for as long as I could remember was graduating that year, so she had to prepare for the final exam and university and she did not have time to edit anymore. My friends B., C., and I, in what was probably a fit of madness, decided to try our hand at it. And so I found myself co-editor of a newspaper. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it would be one hell of an adventure.

The paper was called "Up!", after the Disney movie, for...some very creative reason I cannot remember. The first thing we did was change the title to "Up patriots to arms!"

One of the first things we had to cover was a very important, popular, yearly student strike,which would have been fairly easy, if not for the freaking tension between the two student organizations in our city. The biggest one, the "Rete" , was basically left wing - although many people didn't know or care about their affiliations- and they constantly butted heads with the student block, a group of self proclaimed neofascists who dressed in all black, used smoke bombs during protests and were always surrounded by the police.

We decided it would be a grand idea to interview the respective leaders to get both opinions on the matter.

The president of the "Rete" came to meet us after school. The highlight of the interview was when he said that his was a "non political organization", at which point we looked at each other in disbelief and asked him:"Really?"

The answer was "Yeas, although of course many of us are registered in different parties along the whole spectrum, such as..." and he started listing all left wing parties in the country, from communists to centrists, because apparently that's what he meant by "variety". Anyway.

It was time to interview the leader of the Block. He told us to wait in a square until someone would come get us.

B. and I were getting very nervous.

A guy with a shaved head and a black leather jacket came towards us. "You the journalists? Follow me"

We followed him to the lair. I mean headquarters.

(By the way, we realized we knew this guy. He was a lamb. I had no clue what he was doing there.)

The headquarters' walls were legit covered in swastikas and pictures of Mussolini. Yikes.

The leader was also very nice. Didn't stop me wanting to throttle him when he said that poor Mussolini was just misunderstood.

I had to ACTUALLY stop B. from doing something rash. No picking fights with the fascist dudes in he fascists's lair, please.

They straight up told us, I shit you not, that they were a brotherhood and, as a very effective bonding experience, they put on music and danced in a circle while whipping each other with leather belts. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. Maybe they were, but it didn't seem so. That didn't make it into the article, but it's forever etched into my brain.

I was shaken, but the double interview turned out great. #journalism

A while later we were sitting at a school assembly in the local movie theater. Everybody was complaining about the fact that our gym's roof had collapsed the year before and nobody was doing anything about it. We were taking the bus every week to a public gym, but we had to pay for it and were Officially Not Happy About It.

It was then that B. went : "You know what would be great? If we could interview the mayor about this"

I lit up. "Oh my god! We could ask him so many things! And not just about our school, but about the Linguistic High school that had to be evacuated and about [all the other schools that were literally falling to pieces. You know, Italian things]"

But the consensus was that, while we could try, it would be almost impossible for us to get an interview. So we sighed and sat back.

C.cleared her throat. "Guys." "Yes?" "You know how the mayor is a lawyer?" ".... Yes?" "Well, my dad is a lawyer. He knows him."

We dragged her to the bathroom

"We are not leaving here until your dad gets us an appointment" (poor guy)

He did

For that same night. At the town hall. At 8 pm.

We cleared our afternoon to come up with pertinent questions and practice and freak out.

At 8 we were at the town hall.

There was a red banner on the balcony with a slogan on it, that would be there for months afterwards, because...

... that same night a group of workers had occupied the town hall to demand better pay and better working conditions

Good for them

Bad for us

We were about to leave, but they assured us the mayor would be with us shortly

We waited three whole hours

During which, obviously, an old council member came to talk to us about how, if we wanted to do some real journalism, we should investigate the presence of the Illuminati in our town

Not gonna lie, we were kinda interested at that point

Around 11, the mayor called us in

I am going to concede that he must have been tired

But he was still a slimy son of a bitch

Extremely condescending

When we brought up our problems, he told us our schools were the Province's responsibility

(the Province would of course later tell us we were the Mayor's responsibility)

It was a train wreck

But eye opening

The article we wrote was extremely passive aggressive

He told C.'s father that he really liked it

I don't know if he was impermeable to sarcasm or just a politician.

Fast forward a few months. While our math teacher was talking, a giant piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, missed her by millimeters and crashed on the floor. We went on, business as usual, but that was kinda scary. And it was not the first incident of that kind to happen in our school.

We decided to do a reportage

Armed with notebooks and a camera, we went from classroom to classroom, asking students and teachers about problems with the building.

It was like opening a can of worms.

We got everything from "Oh yes, don't you see those huge holes in the ceiling and in the floor?" to "Yes, every time it rains the classroom gets flooded" to "See this giant wooden piece of tent rod? It fell on my shoulder last week. We don’t even have tents!"

Everyone had something to complain about. The teachers. The janitors. It was scary, to be honest. Especially considering we were repeatedly told ours was the safest school structure in town (what with having been standing since the end of WWI and all)

One day, while we were trying to get on the roof to evaluate its conditions, the headmistress called us in her office.

She said that she had gotten wind of what we were doing (duh)

And she hoped that we wouldn't give a bad impression of her "to parents and important people"

Because after all her hands were tied

It was the responsibility of the Mayor and the Province

(Just who the fuck was responsible for us?)

She smiled sweetly, leaned in towards us and whispered "You'll be careful now, won't you?"

She looked at me and said my name

Hoping I'd be the responsible/most easily intimidated one

(I had beef with that woman, mmmkay? But that's a story for another day)

I smiled and I told her: "Of course. We are just taking pictures of what we see. We'll let the truth speak for itself"

We did

No commentary

Just very objective descriptions and pictures

We really felt like heroes of the free press and free speech, at the service of the people despite the threat of power. (Yes, it sounds dramatic. It's because we were teenagers)

And then there were the other, less momentous adventures:

That one time when, after days of editing, we had to fill a little blank space at the bottom of the last page and nothing fit. We were frantically searching through our notes, the articles other students had sent us, drawings, everything, and we were slowly losing hope, until B. unearthed one of my notebooks and said : "What is this? 'Requiem. In memoriam termosifoni malati, ego ista verba pronuntio..." I was horrified. "NO" I yelled. "That's just a joke. We are NOT publishing that. NO WAY!" It was really a silly thing, you see. There was a radiator in our classroom that didn't work very well. Sometimes it was scorching hot, sometimes (on the coldest days, obviously) it was icy. So my friend E. and I had decided that the radiator was "sick", and we wrote its last will, its epitaph, parodies of famous poems like "La fontana malata" (The sick fountain) by Palazzeschi or "All'amica risanata" (To the healed friend) by Foscolo (can't find translations, sorry). It was fun. B.had found my silly attempt to write a "Requiem" in...kinda dog Latin I guess? But the grammar was correct. In any case, IT WAS NOT MEANT TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. But we were desperate, so I relented. On one condition: it had to be ANONYMOUS. And that was the best decision I ever made in my entire life, because when we distributed the newspaper I saw a bunch of Latin teachers analising the fucking thing in front of their classes. "Mmmmhhh I am not sure an accusative was the best choice here. I would have gone with a dative." Then write your own pastiche poem, Marta! One of them had even copied it on the blackboard and was trying to figure out the metric! That was the equivalent of a 3am shitpost, not fucking Catullus, people! I have never been so embarrassed in my life! At least my friends were having a field day with it. Oh, and my Latin and Greek teacher figured it out. She read it and told me : "This was you, wasn't it?" I wanted to disappear. But she said it was funny, and that was the end of it.

All the times we had to edit what other students gave us and it was WILD, you guys. The grammar alone...The choice of topics....We got quite a few articles about UFO sightings over our town, so that was a thing. (We got to see a lot of really interesting and creative stuff, though)

The times we absolutely lost our cool, because it was hard work, okay? "Federica, your Isabel Allende analysis is a bit too long. Maybe if we cut the Scheherazade comparison..." "YOU ARE NOT CUTTING THE SCHEHERAZADE COMPARISON, B." "But.." "That is the backbone of the whole thing. The structure would collapse without it." "It's only a metaphor!" "No! I won't sell myself and my principles for a chance to be published" "Guys! CALM DOWN! It's just...essentially a book report." "SHUT UP C."[........] "I think we need to eat something" "Yeah. Should I make pancakes? With chocolate chips or without, B.? "

The time we got stuck at school because it was snowing, and C. wrote a beautiful piece called "The agonizing mesmerism of snow", and our friend P.,who was a wizard with a pencil, made an earie and amazing drawing for it that almost made me cry. Coincidentally, it was the day pope Ratzinger resigned. We thought it was a joke while still at school, then later on agreed that it was the reason it had been snowing in the first place. None of us wanted to write about the pope, so we asked the guy who was always sending us articles about the occult and arcane symbols hidden in churches. It turned out great.

The time a bunch of our more "troublesome" classmates started making hilarious dirty jokes based on Catullus' double entendres and B. promised them we would publish them (anonymously) if they wrote them down. They did, and the result was a page titled "Surrealism" full of the dirtiest "poetic" stuff in existence that made everybody laugh themselves unconscious, with the exception of some teachers who somehow didn't get the jokes.

The time we interviewed our student representative (a classmate of ours), whom B. had always thought was too full of himself and needed to be brought down a notch. So we "accidentally" misspelled his name in the article. Nobody noticed except him. He was fuming and it was glorious (not my proudest moment, but what can you do)

The time another brilliant classmate wrote a piece called "The pathologic mysoginist" that absolutely enraged some of the guys in our school. I stan her to this day.

That time I wrote a long article for Woman's day about the abuse and mistreatment of women in our country and across the world. I thought it was nothing special, really, but then Maria the janitor (the sweetest lady in existence) stopped me in the corridor and teared up a bit and said that she hadn't known about a lot of the things I had discussed, but she thought it was important to talk about them and that she felt represented as a woman and that she wanted to bring the paper home to read it to her husband. It touched me so deeply I still get emotional when I think about it.

Anyway, all of this and more happened in one year. Then we, too, had to worry about university admissions and exams and we passed the burden on to "aliens and occult" guy (who was amazing too)

But I remember the passion we poured into it, the willingness to take risks, the feeling of defying authority for the "greater good". We were idealists, all of us, and so full of hope and a will to change things in every way we could. Maybe a high school newspaper means nothing in the great scheme of things, but it meant something to us. It made us brave when we didn't think we were. It made us defiant. I wonder if that part of me is still sleeping, somewhere deep inside.

[lightbluesunflowersandvodka]

Dear Zachary,

When I seen this picture it reminded me of you and the rollarcoaster of emotions my teenage hormonal self went through. There are so many different ways I wanted to start this letter out but I can't word it the way I pictured it in my head.

I am irrevocably in love with you Zachary John and this is why after 10 years, I am still here.

I remember days like this when I was a young, clingy, annoying, un-experienced, emotional, immature, pain the ass and crazy in love with you teenager when I swore that first break up was the absolute death of me. Now I am a clingy, annoying, experienced, emotional, immature, pain the ass and crazy in love with you adult who is fighting to spend the rest of my life with you.

I'm writing this epistle is for you because (my corny ass is in love with you and how amazingly perfect you are and you are everything I could ever need, you always have been.) I want you to know how grateful I am for you and I don't know how else to tell you. I am terrible when it comes to any basic human function and the only thing I know how to do is write poorly worded poems and letters. Here's to you, Zachary, and why I love you. I would like to apologize in advance that I made this unnecessarily long, poorly worded, and I'm sure you will find most of this funny.

⦁ Let's go back to the beginning You, my dear, have certainly made the most incredible impression on my life. You knew exactly what you were doing when you made me fall in love with your ridiculously adorable laugh and the most entrancing ocean blue eyes. You are the most eccentric and anomalous person I have ever met and I'm the most blessed girl to ever exist. The first 3-4 years I knew you was definitely a learning experience. I felt everything so intense when it comes to you. You have broken my heart in ways that I can never explain but sometimes it would turn out to be for the better.  I thought you were so perfect that I hated who I was because I didn’t feel like I was good enough for you. You were too incredible to have someone ordinary like me. I tried so hard to be who I thought you would like. You were so different. I didn't know how to handle it so I literally over thought everything I did and ended up making things a lot worse than needed. I messed up a lot and I’m sorry. I was young, innocent, immature and full of what we could be. I was desperately in love with what I saw in you. I would torture myself when I lost you. No matter how much it hurt and how badly I wanted to pretend that I never knew what you felt like, I couldn't stop thinking about you. You made me grow a lot, I don’t think you know how much of an impact you have made on me. I’m not sure if I am explaining this the way I am trying to. It seems weird talking about all those years when now we are here. After a couple years, I think it got easier and that's how I learned to let things go and tell myself that you are just you and to not take everything so personally. No matter how difficult or confusing or heartbreaking it was to be in love with a man who I thought would never love me, it was all worth the risk if I could have you.

And I was right. You are worth it all.

⦁ How I learned to love you, literally. "That's just Zachary." What I had to tell myself allllll the time. This is how I learned to love you, excuse you and accept you for who you are as a person. I wouldn’t change a thing about you even if I was given the option. Besides, I literally have no choice but to take opportunities when you give them to me soooooo I'm doing good about just letting it happen instead of complaining.. You have to admit, I'm getting better. ;)

⦁ I want you for all of eternity You have no idea how much of an impact you made on my happiness... You took everything bad away and you still do after 10 years... Every single day for the longest time I thanked God for you and I was hopelessly in love (I mean I still am)... We had a lot of ups and downs and weird/awkward times but no matter what happened I still wanted you... I knew with no doubt in my mind or my heart that you were the one that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, grow, change, learn and share with.. I don't think either of us have a good example of what a "normal" or "good" or "healthy" relationship is and I think we are who we are because of the things we have been through and that's how we know what we want. I do know that I still believe that there could be a happy ending.. I am not my parents or their mistakes. It is possible to be happy with someone for the rest of your life... but you have to fight for it... You give me hope in a way that doesn't make sense because we are the complete opposite of "normal" but I honestly would not have it any other way... Even if you don't believe me because I complain and bitch about not seeing you, etc (I have gotten better with my bitching because I realized you don't give a fuck and if we are going to do this then it's going to be your way... Plus when I do bitch I think it takes you longer to see me and i think you do that on purpose to punish me because you're an asshole like that but I have no proof to back up my theory) and there's the "normal" part for you... I don't know if I believe in soulmates but I have never felt the feelings that you give me and after 10 years it's still there. I swear to God I didn't realize it was possible to still get nervous or butterflies (or whatever you wanna call it, maybe it's just anxiety) but being around you makes me weak and I feel completely vulnerable in a good way (if that makes any sense to you).. There's something unique about you. I can't tell you what it is but you are magical. (I literally can't think of a better word, I'm sorry I know this letter is terrible but I'm trying to tell you something so bear with me...)

⦁ Change is good (it turns out) For 10 years you are the only person who has made me look at myself and WANT to fix the things I don't like so I can learn to love me and be happy with who I am.... ( I see you and as weird as that sounds, you give me inspiration and motivation to change a lot of my self issues?? Instead of complaining that nothing ever changes???) I look at you and your little personality traits that I admire and you make me want to change... You give me motivation to become a better person... It gives me hope that maybe if I fix this or change something that it will help make everything work out.. If there is an "US" in the future it gives me hope that if you see that I got me and I have goals that maybe I'll be good enough for you??? It's like trying to impress you I think. You make me want to be the best person I can be and you don't even know it... I fuck my life up sometimes. I learn lessons the hard way so once again I'm doing this on my own and this time I plan on not fucking it up. I'm so exhausted I just want to put myself first for once.

⦁ Love, maybe The only thing that I know about love is that it's supposed to help us grow for the better in a lot of ways (or at least that's what I got out of it) but maybe that's just me... I feel like love is accepting, enduring, being patient, understanding, forgiving, selfless, respectful, thoughtful, learning, changing, and putting things into action.. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails...

⦁ What I've learned The past 10 years I have watched our relationship grow tremendously. I think we have to just learn each other and if we don't like something, accept it and the fact that we can't change anyone, and learn to love it about them even if we don't like it... And if we want to change whatever it is to make the other person happy then that's okay too, ya know? Basically don't expect anything but also accept anything. I feel like you do a lot for me that you don't normally do. (Wow I sound ridiculous, I'm trying entirely too hard)

(That Everybody loves Raymond episode came into mind, I don’t know if you remember what I'm talking about.. Where after so many years they should know each other.. They had an argument over something)

I'm trying to learn you because I love you and I will do whatever it takes to keep you... And I want you to be happy...

⦁ Soooooooooo (the boring and awful part) I am very very stubborn and most of the time I don't like change.. I'm set in my ways because I have lived on my own for so long I have my own routine and I don't like people mixing it up or messing with it. In some ways I understand why you are the way you are and it's okay. I actually love it about you; In some ways I just want to know what made you who you are... Some days I'm emotional and I want you (comfort??) so sometimes I don't understand why I can't do this or that (and it's okay because women are emotional!!) but I know the world doesn't revolve around me (even though it should in your eyes 💁) and you are your own person... I respect that. I think I crave comfort when I'm emotionally or mentally a wreck and when I'm with you everything disappears and I feel so safe and content.. I don't even have to talk about anything, being around you makes everything okay. You make me feel like no matter how big or small my problems are, they're irrelevant and everything is going to be okay. (Like I'm being over-dramatic) I think that's what I crave... I think it's like I feel safe... (I feel like I'm not explaining this the right way)

⦁ In conclusion

I want to be someone you need in your life, like you are for me. I hope you always choose me because I will always choose you.

[mlmichaelharrison]

Dark Secrets - Damien Nazario x MC (Kai)

Outline: gender-neutral MC (called Kai as it's the default name) and Damien start their traditional viewing of A Battle of Crowns together when Kai finds one of Damien’s deepest, darkest secrets… Warnings: swearing, slow burn relationship, mentions of alcoholism Word count: 2,681 (I'm so sorry haha) Hope you like it!

As Damien opened the door to his apartment, you’re greeted by a man you hardly recognized. ��Whoa… who are you?” You asked with a slight laugh, and Damien looked at you, confused before he realized what you were referring to and took his thin-framed glasses off instantly. “You saw nothing.” He rushed and stepped aside for you to walk in. “Were those reading glasses?” You teased and pried and he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled. “We don’t all have perfect eyesight like you.” “Aww, you said I’m perfect!” “That was absolutely not what I just said, but sure.” He said, shaking his head as he locked his door up. “You really are secure, aren’t you?” You said, watching him slide bolt after bolt over the door. He shrugged. “I’m a P.I, what more do you expect? People have wanted me dead before, I’m not taking any chances!” he chuckled as you slumped onto his couch, looking at the TV which wasn’t on. Odd, he almost always has the TV on. “I bet you’re hiding some really dark secrets in here…” You teased and he rolled his eyes. “Legal case files and documents lying around, handgun in my drawer, all of my personal details; my apartment is definitely not one for any random member of public.” He responded, sitting down next to you and turning the TV on, the channel currently on a radio station. “Oh, what station is that?” You asked excitedly and he smiled, unmuting it and letting You Really Got Me Going by The Kinks play through his sound system. He looked over at them, tapping his foot lightly as he recited the words to himself. You really got me going, you got me so I don’t know what I’m doing now. Yeah, you really got me now, you got me so I can’t sleep at night. “One of the only good stations out there. Rock classics. Mostly from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. I say rock, but they also play punk, punk rock, some metal-” “Wait.” You interrupted and he looked abruptly at you, cocking an eyebrow up. “You have a handgun?” You asked in shock. He shrugged and nodded. “Well, yeah. As I said, I’m a private investigator and I’ve had my life threatened more than once. Self-defence.” You looked at him a little longer and he rolled his eyes. “Of course I have a licence, Kai, I’m not an idiot.” He said as if reading your mind. You breathe out a sigh of relief, and then the curiosity crept back. “That’s so cool, can I see it?” “Of course not. I'm not an idiot, but you sure are.” He responded with a smirk playing on his lips. “Oh, please, D. I just want to see it!”  “If you can find it.” He said, turning back to the screen and starting to flick through channels. You took this as a challenge, jumping up and opening drawers frantically. Damien rolled his eyes at you but was still smiling. You rummaged through some drawers, finding pens, torches, paper clips and huge abundances of paper, but no gun. Feeling a little defeated and not wanting to invade his personal space more, you start to close the drawer, before your eye caught something. A small, biro drawing of some flowers. You smiled a little and reopened the drawer, scanning the slightly crumpled piece of paper.

Flowers of the fields What do they know? How many lovers have they seen Tumble through the snow?

Though they struggle through Winter They always make it through, And in Spring they are reborn Into something beautifully new.

You smile to yourself at the amazing discovery you had just made. Damien writes poetry. You can’t help yourself from moving that sheet aside and eagerly try to read the next piece.

Good people are a rare thing, So hold on while you can- They’ll be there for you through everything And they’ll be your biggest fans.

Good people are a rare thing, But you have somehow found them. This is me reminding: Don’t fuck this up, Damien!

You grinned more and looked at the small, printed photo of you, him and Nadia paper clipped to it. You took a look at the next one.

“The whiskey only speaks so loudly And it never says enough, But it’s the only comforter On nights that are too rough” - d.n.

You frown a little upon reading that one and turn cautiously towards Damien. You can’t help but feel a little guilty. Firstly, you were definitely invading his privacy, but then you remembered that that’s his job, so you shouldn’t feel guilty doing it back. He also managed to find all of your diaries and read everything from your teenage years, luckily narrowly avoiding the more recent ones, so this was payback! Secondly, this showed that he does have emotions, and he doesn’t have a great way of dealing with them. He bottles it all up and downs bottles of alcohol. Not exactly healthy. You stare at his face as it’s illuminated by the flickers of the TV. His dark brown eyes seem glued to the screen and his hair has started to overgrow a bit. He rested his head on his fist and had his legs curled up on the couch where you otherwise would have sat. He smiled a little and you heard canned laughter, smiling a little to yourself as his face changed. He was beautiful.

You turned back into the drawer and noticed that there were so many more- a huge clump of paper all with stanzas scattered across them. There must have been nearly 100 pieces there. As you skimmed your hand over one, a bit of wet ink smudged under your fingertip. You were surprised at how recently it was written, and couldn’t keep your curiosity at bay.

Insp: Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) - The Buzzcocks

I’m trapped And you could never know. I’m wrapped Up in fantasies. Too slow.

You frowned again, assuming that this was about his ex-partner that he very rarely talks about. He’s only ever spoken about her when drunk or as a truth or dare question, never on his own accord.

I’m out of the picture, A dirty wreck living in reverse Because if I say, I risk losing you And that is far worse.

I’ve fallen in love with someone I shouldn’t have- I’m lost for words and -

“Oi! Out of there!” Damien snapped suddenly, making you jump and drop the papers. “Sorry, but those are strictly forbidden!”

“But D,” you whined softly.

He hadn’t realized how out of it he was. He hadn’t slept all night, instead working on a case, and he was going to catch up with sleep now. But, of course, he had planned to watch the new episode of A Battle of Crowns with Kai; it was their tradition. They always came early, though, so they could catch up or watch shitty comedies, but he hadn’t realized that during the shitty comedy he was watching that he forgot that Kai was even there. When he looked up at them from the TV screen, he was horrified to find that they were standing at the chest of drawers that he kept his work in. He didn’t mean to snap, he just panicked.

“No, Kai!” He whined back, his face growing redder. “I had no idea you wrote poetry!” He visibly cringed as they said it aloud. “Sh, keep your voice down, someone could hear you.” “Damien, what are you ashamed of? They’re beautiful!” He rolled his eyes, but actually felt a small sense of pride. No one had read any of his work before, so hearing that it was actually good from someone was really nice for him. But, of course, he’d never show that. He looked at the piece on top of the pile and his eyes widened. “Whoa! Not that one! That one is definitely off limits!” He said, panic setting in as his heart rate increased and palms started sweating. He reached to take it but Kai picked it up first and held it up high. “I thought that they were all ‘strictly forbidden’?” Kai said, smiling. They didn’t quite realize the weight of the work they held or why it was so important that they didn’t see it. Damien sighed. “Well, yes, they are, but that one in particular-” He cut himself off with a grunt as he reached for it. Kai laughed lightly and leaned further back, their back resting on top of the cabinet as they held it at arm's length upwards. Damien started to panic more, because if Kai doesn’t realize who the poem is about now, they’re damn going to know by the end of the poem when it says their name. He pushed Kai further against the cabinet and pressed his entire body against theirs, trying to reach the piece of paper. Every inch of their bodies were touching, and their faces only a tiny distance apart, and they could feel each other’s breaths on their skin. Damien took a moment to look down at Kai’s face as they tried to read the weirdly angled sheet of paper. He could stare at their face for hours, sometimes has. Every now and then, if they see a movie, he’ll spend most of the time watching their reactions and how their emotions change their face and- seriously, hours. He stared at them now, their smile wide as they squirmed. He imagined keeping them pinned down and catching their lips in his. He imagined wrapping his arms around them right now and kissing their lips over and over and over again. He licked his lips quickly and leaned a bit closer before gaining control over himself and reaching up higher, but to no avail. Kai snorted at him and he squinted his eyes in response. “I will win.” They mumbled and Damien shook his head. “Not on my watch.” He moved his body off of theirs and instead climbed on top of the cabinet, snatching the paper from their hands and sitting on top of the chest of drawers, leaning his back against the wall and sighing with relief. He let his legs dangled over the edge and he folded the paper up into a tiny size before putting it in his back pocket. Kai huffed and folded their arms and Damien, breathless, stuck his tongue out in response. He looked at them for a moment, seeing the disappointment in their face, and felt guilty. “Fine…” He said after a moment of silence. He rolled his eyes and jumped down, rummaging through the pieces of paper and handing his friend one of them. “That’s one I’m okay with you reading. But if you dare tell anyone about these…” He trailed off as Kai’s smile widened and made him love fall in love with them again. He felt the familiar warmth and tightness in his chest and his throat felt as though it had constricted. Heat started to rise to his cheeks and he quickly looked away. “Yeah, don’t tell anyone. Out of the two of us, I’m the one with a gun.” He said quickly, feeling a stabbing pain in his chest when they laughed. Just as he moved to close the drawer, Kai wrapped their arms around him tightly. He froze and clenched his jaw closed before wrapping one arm around them. They had no idea what they were doing to him. He closed his eyes and sighed before moving to shut the drawer. “I’m getting locks on this tomorrow. I’m not joking.” He said, whilst Kai’s eyes scanned the page he gave them.

He’ll never be okay again - Not by the Spring, When the flowers bloom, Nor by the Summer, [...]

Damien watched Kai’s eyebrows furrow as they read it through. He stared at their perfect features illuminated by the small amount of light in his apartment. He appreciated the silence they gave and how respectful they were of his work. He had to look away again and gave himself something to do as they continued to read. He changed the TV channel back to the radio station he was playing earlier when he wrote about Kai, Astro Zombies by The Misfits playing now. He played the radio station earlier for some nostalgia- and as he was dancing through his apartment, the Buzzcocks’ song stuck out to him as something he could relate to. Something… inspiring. He got his glasses and a biro and started scribbling out the poem.

Kai was still silently reading this one, one written about his partner from years ago, rewritten recently. He hardly related to it anymore, but was determined to make it better.

[...] When the radios boom, Nor by the Autumn, When the clouds loom, Nor by next Winter,

Never again.

Kai bit their lip as it quivered a bit. He’ll never be okay again. Kai wished they could make him okay. They wished they could just say it and for once he would actually believe it. They longed to be able to come home to him and be able to hug him and to be able to count his drinks and tell him to slow down and to be able to tell him when he’s overworking himself- “Shit, are you okay?” Damien asked, a little panicked by the tear that dripped down their face. They smiled a little and nodded, unconvincingly, dropping down onto the couch. “I’m sorry, perhaps I should have found a more uplifting one for you-” “It’s about you, right?” Kai asked, taking Damien by surprise. He looked down and simply shrugged. “He? He is you, right?” They asked again, more insistent. Damien sat up on the sofa, muting the TV. “Yes, but it’s okay now.” “Are you sure about that?” Kai turned to him and he looked around, avoiding eye contact. “Yeah, why not?” He said in a lighthearted tone. Kai just stared at him. “Okay, well I’m better about the subject, at least. It doesn’t weigh me down as much. I’m fine, honest, I’m fine.”

Kai stared at his face a little longer. They just wanted to lean into him, cup his face and kiss him to say I know you aren't alright but I want to help fix that. He wanted the same, and subconsciously leaned towards them in anticipation. He wondered if their lips would feel as soft as they looked. He wished he could find out, just lean a little closer… He moved back again. “Anyways, let’s never mention my… writing… ever again, and let’s watch this show.” He said, changing the channel back and unmuting it. The title credits were rolling and he rested his chin on his fist again, glancing over at Kai who wiped their eyes clean and settled down to watch. The words in his pocket felt burnt into him as the darn song repeated in his head.

I’m trapped And you could never know. I’m wrapped Up in fantasies. Too slow.

I’m out of the picture, A dirty wreck living in reverse Because if I say, I risk losing you And that is far worse.

I’ve fallen in love with someone I shouldn’t have- I’m lost for words and spend every night alone Thinking about how they smile And how their arms feel like home.

But if I were ever to say that, I’d break everything. And if I stay silent, I break myself. There really is no winning, So, I guess I’ll just stay stealth

About how I’ve fallen in love with you And I know that I shouldn’t have- But the way you say my name Makes me wish you’d feel it back.

And when I look into your eyes It makes me feel like dirt, Because you are everything perfect And there is so much more that you deserve.

You deserve this “perfect match” And you deserve to have a good friend. And though, holy fuck, Kai, it hurts, I’d never want it to end.

A/N: Hi! I've never ever publicly posted fanfiction before so I guess this is new? Anyways, I'm a writer and poet, so if you want to request anything just let me know and I'd be glad to write you something when I can! I've currently only played Perfect Match and The Freshman/Sophomore/Junior (what a disappointing start to the Junior am I right lmao), and I'm playing a few more (currently developing a love for Drake 😍). If you're interested in other writing/poetry let me know and I can link my wattpad???

Thanks for reading if you did! - Cj

[saintheartwing]

Songtale, Part 6

Bonnie Hatfield-McCoy was barely clinging to life when Neil found her in the cell. She was slumped against the wall, her head bowed, panting and heaving with her chest slowly rising and falling. Her breath was hoarse and ragged, her tone almost a raspy whisper as she slowly raised her head, and then turned to look to the side ever-so-slightly. "Mah...hat..." She mumbled out to Neil. Neil Elliot blinked stupidly. What the heck did she mean by-oh. OH. He realized her cowboy hat had fallen off, and she wanted it back on her head, even though her skull was matted with dried blood. He carefully placed it back atop her head, apologetically smiling up at her. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed preteen looked into the brown-haired teenager's eyes, blue into green as she chuckled a bit, letting him help her up and try to stagger towards the cell door. "I'm awfully sorry puttin' y'all through this." She apologetically admitted to Neil. "Y'all had to go through so much just to get to me."

"I'm getting you to Frisk, and then we're going to destroy the door to the Ruins. Nobody will be able to get to you, or ever get any more human souls." Neil insisted quietly as he "oofed" with every step, the two getting closer and closer to the cell door, now inching their way down the hall...as the lights suddenly turned off, and a string of floor lights flooded on, illuminating a path. "...oh hell. I think we've been spotted." "Correct." A voice rang out from the PDA system as Neil inwardly groaned, hearing Dr. Gaster's voice ringing out, calm and collected. "Did you really think I WOULDN'T notice you breaking into my laboratory? My boy, for all your finesse and skill I see in your ballet moves, you've got the stealth of a very loud mountain goat." The skeleton monster intoned, and Neil was SURE that the doctor was rubbing his temples and shaking his head back and forth, scarcely able to get out the words he was saying. "I mean, the only thing you weren't doing was literally humming the James Bond theme."

Neil deeply blushed. "Well, the first time I went through the lab about a year ago..." He muttered under his breath. But Dr. Gaster had overheard that. He steepled his bony fingers, Neil continuously moving across the hallway floors, taking Bonnie with him. "How many times have you ever RESET?" "Lost count." Neil snapped. He did not want to talk about this. He did not want to be psychoanalyzed. He didn't like the idea of this scientist looking at him like something under a microscope. He had to get Bonnie some magical food. What they needed, without a doubt, was to get to the kitchen, and he could smell coffee coming up on his right. One of the doors had to lead to an employee lounge, if he could just see which one...

He pushed doors open again and again as W.D Gaster spoke up again. "I imagine the first time you learned of your abilities, it was fascinating to you. A power nobody else had. An entire world opening up before you. I remember when I first gained mastery over multiple magics, and my parents were proud as could be. Yet they couldn't compare to the sheer joy I felt at knowing I could do things nobody around me could. That I could COMBINE magical spells. I felt a sense of furtive, dark delight, like knowing I'd found a hidden treasure and not wanting to tell anyone."

Neil pushed open another door. A broom closet. Another door. A bathroom.

"I of course began to exploit this little gift. I'd use it to beat others and win bets. I tested the limits of science and magic in my laboratory. "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair"." At first, I thought that saying meant others would despair in knowing they couldn't compare. Then in my foolishness, I became the Ozymandias of the poem. "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay, of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away."

Another door. A supply closet. Neil was trying very hard not to listen, but it was becoming difficult. Chara's whispering was getting louder. A resentful anger was building in him, rising higher and higher.

"Everything I did amounted to nothing. What went up came down. Because I began using my gifts to experiment upon humans. I used it to discover the infamous "LOVE". "Level of Violence". To discover "EXP". "Execution Points". I learned the limits of monster and human souls. I learned what happens when a monster claims a human soul. Because I was the one that sparked the war. Humans found out about my experiments, found out I had absorbed human souls into myself to test what would happen. And we were cast down, down, down...into the Underground." "Oh, I feel so BAD for you. Wallow in self-pity you child-killing sons of!-" Neil began to angrily say. "Do you expect me to feel SORRY for you?! After everything you've done to the missus here? To the other children? To ME? Do you know how many times I died down here in the Underground? Against Asgore alone? When you've died over 89 times, then maybe we can talk about how much we've both suffered, how much we have in common!"

He shook his head back and forth, finally reaching the last door on the right, opening it up. Coffee!...on a desk, next to some monster versions of "Oreos". It wasn't an employee lounge, it was a small employee office, and...an absolute wreck. There were papers littering the ground, posters half-heartedly stuck up on the wall, the PC was a mess, a dozen different applications were turned on and various scribblings and doodles were left on a nearby whiteboard...and Neil knew it was Sans's. The scribbler was supposed to analyze velocity, and to do so, he'd drawn a cannon firing. The cannon had then turned into a pirate firing said cannon at a fort as he sat on a tiny island, sharks circling around his nearby pirate ship as he cried out "Yar, Yar, Gimme Yer Treasure", the Fort defiantly firing back and yelling "Never" as a crab scuttled on the beach it laid upon. Yep. It was definitely Sans's scribbling. He hobbled Bonnie over to the desk as she took the Oreo cookies and downed them with the coffee, her wounds healing a bit before his eyes, her skin no longer looking quite as gaunt, her bloodied wounds being more scabby and less flowing, more color coming to her cheeks.

"Your kind killed many, many of us." Gaster explained softly over the PDA. "And we so dearly want to leave this place. Don't make this difficult. I have enough blood on my conscience, and do not want to cause more needless suffering if I can avoid it." "You want to go up and kill more people on the surface. That's not okay. I don't care what you endured in the past, it doesn't justify you being jerks in the present." Neil snapped. "It's the same sort of nonsense my dad used to buy into when he was on that big Confederate kick for a while. He got over it because he realized what you haven't yet. You wanna remember? Fine. REMEMBER THAT YOU LOST. Then maybe the days of glory past stop looking so awesome."

"Don't antagonize the guy who can shoot lasers outta giant skulls. Cuz he'll use 'em. Repeatedly. Many, many times." Bonnie grunted, shaking her head back and forth as she led HIM out of the room, down along the dark hallway as the air seemed to get humid and intense. Further and further along the dimly-lit hall they went, approaching the only door out, the other locked and barred by thick, steely grates as Neil forcibly tug it open...

He deeply frowned. This place.

He was in the middle of a part of the lab he'd not enjoyed being close to at ALL the last time he'd gone through the Underground, in what seemed like another lifetime ago. This was where the Amalgamates were. Deep, ugly green floors, a rotten wall color to match, what sounded like a thousand fans all running at once as he and Bonnie kept moving forward, through darkness and a hazy mist that spread through the room, enveloping all nooks and crannies. It was almost icy cold inside this tomb-like section of the lab, and Neil shuddered, somehow this place felt even more inhospitable to his tutu-wearing frame than SNOWDIN had!

And then the mist parted enough to reveal Dr. Gaster who was standing with his hands in his lab coat. His head was lowered as he quietly sighed.

"I will ask you politely only once. Please return to the cell with her, and this will not be painful." "I'll ask YOU once. Move out of the way, or I move you." Neil said, getting in front of Bonnie as he parted his legs a bit and struck a fighting pose, crouching a bit, ready to spring forth.

Dr. Gaster sighed. "I didn't want to do this. My green energy's rather spent from my earlier fight with the teenager behind you. I had hoped you'd just cooperate, but you humans are so...DETERMINED, aren't you? As long as you keep moving forward, trying as hard as you can, you believe everything will work out." "DETERMINATION?" Neil grinned, flexing his legs. "Nah! I was all about INTEGRITY. Owning up to what I do, to be honest and true. You'll not get any lies out of me, doc. So believe me when I say I REALLY am not gonna hold back against you after what you did to Bonnie!"

Chara's whispering had never sounded so seductive. Gaster and Mettaton had hurt Bonnie. They deserved to be punished for this, for hurting an innocent human. For hurting one of his friends. For trying to keep a mother from her child. They refused to own up to the wrong they did, excusing it as a "greater good". He HATED that excuse. And they were going to find out just how much he hated it. He shot forward, Gaster sighing as his head shot up...and distinctly glowed a deep blue. Neil was caught off guard, blinking a bit in surprise, the leg that was about to slide into Gaster's face flopping a bit in midair...

Before Neil flopped to the floor, now covered in a blue aura as Gaster chuckled a bit. "In the words of my adorable younger brother...you're blue now. That's my attack. Nyeh-heh-heh-heh!"

Neil inwardly gasped as Dr. Gaster swung his finger through the air, spinning it around and around as Neil was swept to and fro through the air, Bonnie gaping in alarm and staring in shock. Neil was taking a beating, his young body slamming hard into the wall as Dr. Gaster frowned. "I suggest you surrender before I'm forced to-"

RESET

"As long as you keep moving forward, trying as hard as you can, you believe everything will-"

Neil's leg shot forth as he tried to knee Dr. Gaster straight in his face with a THWA-THWACK...only for Dr. Gaster to freeze him in midair, Neil stiffening, halting in place, now looking positively idiotic as he hung there, Gaster chuckling. "You're blue now! That's my attack! Nyeh-heh-heh!" "Oh COME ON!" Neil cried out angrily.

RESET

"I will ask you politely only once. Please return to the cell with her, and this will not be painful-"

"Oh trust me, this is gonna be real painful!" Neil roared out, barreling down the hallway, only for to be slammed into the wall, his body engulfed by blue light. "Don't tell me. I'm "blue" now. That's your attack. Nyeh-heh-heh?"

Dr. Gaster blinked stupidly. "Wait, how-oh. Of course, your unique ability. Resetting again and again, I imagine? I've experience in these matters. You're not the first time-fiddling human I ever met. It would seem you're going to be the last, though. Believe me, I am very sorry for your death." He insisted, holding a hand up.

RESET

Neil was now in the hallway with Bonnie and he halted in place, panting. "Wait. WAIT." He insisted firmly. "If we go down this way, Dr. Gaster will cream me. I can't beat him." Neil groaned as he clutched at his head, shaking it back and forth. "What am I going to do?! I can't think of a way to attack him and there's no other way out of here!"

Bonnie laid against the wall, folding her arms. She quietly bobbed her head, thinking...thinking. "Listen. I got me an idea. Can he handle the both of us?" "He's got two hands, so I imagine "yes"." Neil grunted with a shake of his head.

"Then we need another way out. We need to blow our way out, if need be." She reasoned. "Isn't there a laboratory door near here? Someplace with stuff that goes "boom"?" "The only place that has that stuff is in that big misty section of lab up ahead, and GASTER'S in there."

"...then follow my lead." Bonnie whispered, inching towards the doorway...then getting low, low...and sloooowly pushing open the door. She began to crawl along the ground as the mist began to seep out and fill the hallway. Neil held his breath harshly, his heart pounding in his chest as they inched slowly along the floor, hearing a thoughtful humming noise filling the air as they inched along the right-hand wall. Not a word. Neither of them would say one...single...word.

Silence reigned over them, the mist filling every nook and cranny of the laboratory as Dr. Gaster looked around, seeing nothing. The mist hung low all around him, obscuring the floor and a good two feet above it as he frowned slightly, displeasure on his skeletal face. "Child, you can't hide from me forever. It would be better for you to come out. I want this to be over with quickly, so as to ensure there is less suffering."

Neil felt that anger rising in him. He felt he was being condescended to and he hated that. That awful muttering of Chara's was rising in his soul, that urge to lash out, to hurt, to make this hypocrite standing on a false moral pedestal SHUT UP. But he had to listen to Bonnie, she knew what she was doing, if he could just stay quiet long enough...

Then she stopped him, putting a hand on his arm. She pointed forward, across the floor. There, sure enough, was a large, flammable mixture of chemicals with the obvious warning signs on it. And if they could just move it over towards a window on the far side of the lab...

Nodding quietly in agreement, they slunk towards the big jar of chemicals, one of many, and Neil got an idea. Taking in a deep breath as he heard Dr. Gaster speak again, ensuring what he wanted to do would be muffled by the talking, he took another jaw and placed it on its side on the floor, then...

"Come out, child. I'll try to be as gentle as I can when I take your soul, the touch of death need not be cold-"

RATTLE-RATTLE-RATTLE. Gaster wheeled around, seeing something rolling across the floor at a swift speed and he quickly moved after it, picking it up as Bonnie kept pushing the chemical jar. Neil, meanwhile, had snatched up several other bottles and was now rolling them around the floor of the lab from different parts of the room, all in different directions, barreling away and scurrying across the ground like a lab rat, hidden by the mist. All of this was providing a misleading picture for Gaster, making him unsure which direction they were, which direction the rolling vials of chemicals were coming from.

Closer and closer to the wall with the window came Bonnie and the big vial of chemicals as she finally put it against it and tilted it up. Now they just had to blow it up. They needed fire. Luckily...she kept a lighter in a hidden pocket in her boots, along with a tiny knife. They'd taken her gun. Taken her bullets. But they hadn't done a full search of her. Heck, she would have hidden something in her PANTIES if she hadn't considered herself a "classy gal".

Smirking a bit, she turned back to Neil and nodded. Time for a distraction. She began to caaarefully rip off a piece of her undershirt, to make a makeshift wick as she uncorked the chemical vial and eased the wick into it, Neil scurrying as far away from her as possible, waiting for Gaster to speak again, waiting for him to be fully distracted.

"Okay, Gaster. Let's talk." Neil said quietly, rising up, fists resting on his hips as the skeletal monster faced him down and blinked slowly.

"So, human. At last you feel up for a more civil discussion?" Gaster inquired.

"Do you know what it feels like to die?" Neil asked quietly. Quiet, with an edge. Gaster felt a sense of unease on him as an almost...red glint...came to Neil's eyes. "It was agonizing. A horrific, sudden stabbing. Your organs bursting, filling with fire from inside. You just want it to stop. You'll give anything for it to just...stop. And it doesn't stop. So you scream. And you scream. And then even after that, after your voice is hoarse and your throat raw and you're sobbing endlessly, it doesn't stop until the very...last...breath...comes from your lungs. It was hell."

Gaster was silent for a long...long time, it seemed. Unaware of the wick getting burned up...of Bonnie slinking from the wall...

"That was how it felt to die. The first time. Imagine that over and over." Neil muttered. "And I have tried SO hard not to be...mad." Neil grumbled out. "To...to not give back as good as I get. Because I 'got' a lot. A lot of it I earned, for I hurt a lot of monsters that didn't deserve it, but I also saw plenty of other children die in the other timelines I watched. Kids who didn't deserve to die, who just wanted to go home, and wanted you monsters to stop hurting them, but you wouldn't listen." "We all believe our greater good is the greatest, I suppose." Gaster confessed. "It is no excuse. I just wish for you to understand." "I understand. But you want to kill us, and..." Neil held his head in his hands. "...I am SO angry with what you did to Bonnie. I want to make things right, Dr. Gaster. I'm getting her out of here and taking her and her son home. Where they belong. And you're not going to stop me." "Oh?" Gaster looked a bit amused. "My dear child, however do you think you are going to stop me? I'm getting a sense of deja vu. You and I have spoken before, and I imagine you didn't beat me then." "I don't need to beat you. I just gotta distract you." Neil said, gesturing at the wall behind Gaster as the skeletal doctor whipped around, eyes wide as he finally noticed the burning wick falling into the chemicals.

With a loud, raucous SHA-KOOOOWWW, the wall and the large canister and the chemicals exploded in fire, Dr. Gaster being thrown back as an opening was blown forth, Gaster flying across the lab as Bonnie and Neil ran through it, along the dark reddish/brown ground and towards a catwalk, eager to get to the elevator, to race back to the river, away from Hotland, off towards Snowdin and the Ruins!

The elevator was only about fifty feet away. Neil began to press the button summoning it as Bonnie looked back, seeing something that filled her with shock. Her eyes went wide. The entire laboratory was quickly catching on fire. The explosion had cracked a very weak section of ground and...it was falling into the lava. "We can't just leave them there!" She cried out, her eyes full of alarm. As horrific and cruel as they'd treated her...she couldn't leave them to die. Before Neil could stop her, Bonnie had barreled off towards the burning entrance and he groaned, covering his face.

"Tug her back. Force her to come back with you."

"...noooo." Neil murmured. "Sans can teleport out fine, I'm sure but...Alphys is still in there and my dad would never forgive me if I just let a girl get hurt." He confessed, barreling after Bonnie, seeing her lifting up a moaning, barely-awake Dr. Gaster. "I'm going to go find Alphys." He insisted to her as she nodded, making for the exit they'd formed, racing along the halls as the laboratory shook and shuddered, and the fire began to rise. Bits of flames were licking along the walls as he saw Sans escorting laboratory experiments along down another hallway, turning down a left path...

There she was! She was dragging Mettaton's robot body...rather poorly. It was clear she couldn't carry him. "Come on, we need to go!" Neil yelled out, racing at her. "This place is collapsing!" "Are you kidding me!?" She snapped, looking angrily at him. "This is your fault, isn't it? I'm not going with you! You probably did this to Mettaton too!" She added, pointing back at the unconscious robot, the heat in the halls rising higher, higher, higher...

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Horrific, soul-crushing laughter. Suddenly vines wrapped around Alphys and Mettaton's forms, Mettaton's robotic body shuddering and shattering, leaving a stunned-looking pinkish GHOST now trapped inside the vine tendrils engulfing her as Neil stared in alarm, seeing a smug, smirking flowery face looking down at him. "I knew I was right to follow you around. Knew that if I just waited, I'd get my chance. And while all of you were trying to escape the mess this idiot and his stupid friend made..." Flowey sniggered, looking at Neil, then at Alphys and Mettaton. "I got the human souls you had! My, my, my, I feel WONDERFUL with them inside me. Of course...I could use more." He added darkly, sneering at Neil. "Thank you so much for blowing a nice hole open for me. Now do me another favor..."

He held up a spiked vine and launched it at Neil, who's mouth fell open in a gasp as he barely rolled away, the burning flames blocking off his exit back, the only way forward now blocked by a huge swarm of vines, Flowey and horrific spiky shrubbery...

"AND DIE!"

[milk-shy]

i’m... exhausted.  woke up at 4:40am to find a pointlessly nasty message that i really didn’t need.  i’m doing well i guess, more productive than i’ve been in months and months, working out but not obsessively, being sensible about breaks and routines and self-care and all that, sitting down to work in the morning with a clear head and a to-do list.  but i’m so aware of how fragile a tightrope i’m walking.  swinging wildly between blissful optimism, and a terrible bottomless fear that it’s all getting away from me.  and the loneliness always hiding around the corner to ambush me at the worst times.

trying to do my best, regardless of whatever shitty things i’ve done (to myself, to others) in the past.  living rather desperately in the moment, not thinking beyond my schedule for the next few hours.  the next coffee, the next library.  and there really are moments when i’m reading a poem or an article and i make some connection or have an idea and there’s that little mental firework that i so missed.  i’ve forgotten, over the last year, how to be a human.  i’ve been so caught up in things (circumstances, feelings, my own head) that i’ve just barely been scraping through the work, and even if no one else sees that, i certainly feel it.  i could have done so much better with my dissertation.  i could have done so much better in all those collections that i muddled through desperately with 65s.  i’m sure no one leaves oxford without regrets but i wish, i really wish i’d had more sense and taken the time that i needed and been able to make the most of it.

i’m so good at picking up after myself now.  i’ve developed a sort of big-sister therapist persona in my head that knows what’s good for me.  and i don’t always listen; but i’m making some of the right decisions, i’m plodding if not resolutely forging ahead, i’m trying to face every day with some resolve.  inevitably spending a lot of time alone but at least trying to exist on the same plane as other humans.  it’s hard when the slightest thing can shake me - when going out for dinner and a beer caused a minor ED crisis just a couple days ago, when a message can ruin everything, when i’m always this far from disintegrating into a total trainwreck.  i remember when i’d show up at hall for lunch already drunk, wander down the towpath chain-smoking in the dead of night, sneak away from social interactions so i could binge eat, right there and then, to quash the anxiety.  that all feels very far away now but it’s not, is it?  if i fall off this laser-focused path it is all right there.

just fully realising how miserable i was last term and trying, belatedly, to pull myself together.  i can’t eat normally right now but i’m at least being a little kinder to myself.  trying to strike the right balance; because i honestly think that gaining weight would make me feel much, much worse than restriction will.  i know that’s not the right thing to do for me, but it’s the only feasible thing in the short run.  i still weigh something like 92 pounds i think.  it doesn’t matter.  i will have to deal with all of it eventually.  maybe this enormous mental block i’m having with the post-graduation void is trying to tell me that.  i’ve been long, long overdue some psychiatric attention.  it’s hard to sit in front of some nice middle-aged woman and say “yes i’m an immaculately put together overachiever and... please help me”, but at some point i will have to.  i am always doing just well enough on the surface that i think “oh, i’ll just kick it down the road”, but if i’m going to have any hope of being a functional adult i cannot do that anymore.  i’m trying to do the right thing.  

i’m only 20 and i have so much deeply rooted terror that i’ve fucked it up irreversibly already.  to think - little perfectionist overachieving teenage me, now a skittish neurotic wreck with my immaculate life resting on a knife edge.  it just all feels like such a terrible waste of the last few years.  after so long jumping through hoops and chasing the next thing, and the next, i’ve finally arrived at this impasse where i have absolutely no idea what’s on the other side, and i’m too tired and anxious to really force that mass of time into submission.  but from now to june, that’s manageable, i can do that.  just getting through one thing at a time.

[mathematicianadda]

Books I Loved in 2019

Before it gets too deep into 2020, and this new decade swallows me like a whale ingesting krill, I want to take a moment to tell you about books I enjoyed this past year.

All of these books are certified 100% great and you should read them so we can chat about them, like a little two-person online book club.

(Note that my attention span favors books which are (1) written with a distinctive voice, (2) intellectually dense, and (3) short. Your tastes and mileage may vary.)

  Math Books

I read a lot of books about math, for the purpose of stealing the authors’ ideas and, eventually, their identities drawing inspiration.

The Weil Conjectures, by Karen Olsson. Beautiful, subtle reflections on the elusive nature of modern mathematics. Composed from an outsider’s vantage, yet with an insider’s ear and finesse.

Humble Pi, by Matt Parker. Riveting, wide-ranging exploration of mathematical mistakes. Includes clever “mistakes” of its own – e.g., the pages are numbered in reverse.

Euler’s Gem, by David Richeson. Dave’s two books – this one on topology, and his new one on impossible problems such as squaring the circle – are superb. His selection and presentation of mathematical ideas is exquisite: an unmatched combination of accessibility and depth.

Tales of Impossibility, by David Richeson. My back-cover blurb: “The story of a mathematical treasure hunt, and a treasure chest in its own right.”

What Is the Name of This Book? by Raymond Smullyan. A classic collection of great puzzles, including those about knaves who always lie, and knights who never do. I especially loved the pages of anecdotes, jokes, and stray thoughts.

Infinite Powers, by Steven Strogatz. In contrast to my book on calculus – a silly, literary, personal affair – Strogatz’s is epic and sweeping. It weaves together historical storytelling and surprising accounts of modern applications.

Mathematics for Human Flourishing, by Francis Su. My back-cover blurb: “Francis Su believes that math can make us better humans—and he leads by example. Every page is a work of generosity and compassion. Plus, the puzzles will haunt you for weeks.”

  Sci-Fi Short Stories

My pleasure reading. A good one gives a quick, stimulating burst of “whoa.” The four authors below – some of my absolute favorite writers – deliver fireworks.

Exhalation, by Ted Chiang. The most carefully crafted and rigorously imagined sci-fi in the business. The final story, on parallel universes, is worth the price of admission.

How Long ’til Black Future Month?, by N.K. Jemisin. A collection of extraordinary diversity, from distant-planet exploration to a prose-poem meditation on NYC to a spy caper set in an alternate, high-tech 1800’s New Orleans.

Changing Planes, by Ursula Le Guin. Stimulating, funny thought experiments about imaginary civilizations. Silent people; perpetually migrating people; people with wings…

Sorry Please Thank You, by Charles Yu. Witty and wildly imaginative meditations on relationships, meaning, and capitalism.

  Gorgeous & Heartbreaking

I guess sometimes I want to be sad? I read all of these before my daughter was born. Having an infant now, I don’t lack for strong emotions in my diet.

Night, by Elie Wiesel. This Holocaust memoir was required reading for 9th graders at the first school where I taught. Ten years later, I’m finally caught up.

Alex: The Life of a Child, by Frank Deford. I love Deford’s sportswriting; this is a memoir about his daughter, who died of cystic fibrosis. Sat on my shelf for years; had to read it before my own daughter came along, lest it wreck me even more than it did.

The Best We Could Do, by Thi Bui. Graphic memoir of a family’s journey from Vietnam. Full of hurt and compassion, with colors so beautiful they register as music. One of the best books I read all year.

  Literary & Comic

Not coincidentally, those are adjectives you might use to describe my 2019 book, Change is the Only Constant.

The Lonesome Bodybuilder, by Yukiko Motoya. Short stories; a Japanese sort of magical realism. One of the strangest books I read this year.

Romeo And/Or Juliet, by Ryan North. A choose-your-own-path version of Shakespeare’s classic. North is one of my favorite humorists, and he explores every corner and permutation of his delightful premise.

Love Dishonor Marry Die Cherish Perish, by David Rakoff. A short novel written entirely in verse – and what struck me, given the sardonic edge of Rakoff’s essays, entirely in earnest.

Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger. Two linked novellas. I still don’t understand why Catcher in the Rye gets all the glory; Salinger’s other stories are deeper, funnier, and more virtuosic.

Tenth of December, by George Saunders. Incisive, witty short stories, ranging from pedestrian to sci-fi fantastical. Saunders has a keen and devastating eye for the flattering lies that we tell ourselves.

To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. A time travel romp through Victorian England. Leisurely yet propulsive, full of fun moments. To say nothing of the dog!

  Illustrated & Ingenious

These books, for me, push the bounds on what books can be and do. All three are full of serious, interesting ideas – and all three are playful in presentation.

The Dialogues, by Clifford Johnson. The author, a physics professor, drew this series of cartoon dialogues about science himself. Clearly a multi-talented fellow.

How To, by Randall Munroe. I write in Munroe’s shadow, and it’s a big, beautiful shadow. This book shows off his chops not just as a humorist, but a researcher; he has a nose for the quirky and fascinating.

Basketball (and other things), by Shea Serrano. I wound up giving this as a gift to every basketball fan I know. A mixture of meticulous argumentation and delicious pop culture lunacy.

  Modern & Insightful

Usually I read stuff that’s years or decades old, but in 2019 I actually read some modern nonfiction about modern concerns that might be relevant to a modern person! Go me!

Because Internet, by Gretchen McCulloch. Whereas oral speech has always had formal and informal registers, writing had only the former. Until the internet. This bestseller thoughtfully unpacks how we write online.

Hacking Life, by Joseph M. Reagle, Jr. An affectionate but unflinching critique of the form of self-help known as “life hacks,” and its obsession with optimization.

How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm, by Mei-Ling Hopgood. Every chapter, more or less: “Here’s a question about child-rearing. Here’s a society that does it totally differently than the US. And guess what? Both have their ups and downs.” Formulaic but immensely reassuring for the new parent.

Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman. Polar opposite of Hopgood’s book; celebrating the Parisian style of child-rearing as lower-effort and superior. Probably right on food; maybe insightful on discipline; dubious elsewhere, but well-written.

  Literature for and About Teenage Girls

I went on a brief kick of this stuff, and it’s great! Good job, teen girls! I mean, not that you wrote these books, but you created the market demand for them, which is the highest form of virtue in a capitalist society!

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. Tear-jerking mega-bestseller. I borrowed it from a friend because I fell in love with Green’s podcast, The Anthropocene Reviewed, which I recommend fanatically.

Catfishing on Catnet, by Naomi Kritzer. Charming YA thriller, based on a Hugo-winning short story about an AI that gains sentience… and demands cat pictures.

Grace and the Fever, by Zan Romanoff. After years of obsessing over a boy band, what if you got to meet them? Half the joy is sheer wish fulfillment; the other half is the surprisingly delicate character study of our guarded narrator.

from Math with Bad Drawings https://ift.tt/36ttwp5 from Blogger https://ift.tt/2T4D6dQ

[oldworld-chaotic]

deer for pretty animal asks!

deer: name all the books/movies/shows/songs you have cried over.i rambled, so to spare those who don’t care, i’m just gonna

\ - pretty animal asks - /

oh man... well. for starts, i’m not a crier. but even on top of that, it’s very rare that books can make me cry because i need to be in the right frame of mind to read in the first place. i have issues with concentration and doing anything for myself unprompted (even if i enjoy it) so really i’d never be caught off guard? i think i’m more likely to cry if i’m overwhelmed or caught off guard by something (or if i’m extremely angry) rather than just by... sadness?

booksso for books? eh... some of the poems from milk & honey might have been tear jerkers for me, but i was on a train whilst i was reading it so there was absolutely not a chance in hel that i was going to be anything less than stoic.

moviesfor movies... well, this one’s a little easier to answer but it’s not very common for movies to make me cry either. going back to when i was younger gives a much more emotional me to poke fun at for crying over pokemon.- pokemon heroes: the movie (>7, my mother came rushing into my room when she heard me bawling my eyes out for seemingly no reason, when she asked me what was wrong i (begrudgingly) confessed that i was crying because pokemon aren’t real which i guess was the baby me version of people getting depressed after avatar)- princess mononoke (todder-ish age, my father put it on for me to watch. now, i was a very... wimpy child. vegetarian, unable to handle natural predator/prey relationships, etc. so when my father put this on and it was just meant to be another ghibli movie like all the others i’d watched, i wasn’t prepared for anything darker. i looked up from colouring first when nago is decomposing and i was really upset by it so i like... aggressively concentrated on my colouring, but then when i did look up again? it was the scene where moro bites off lady eboshi’s arm -_- little me was too scared to watch it again for years. this wasn’t helped by me, honestly. because i used to watch all the extras on ghibli dvds for the commercials and in the princess mononoke one, there’s also the scene where san and ashitaka hold up the head of the shishigami... so yeah, i was spooked out of that one and robbed of that beautiful fucking movie for so long. it’s now one of my absolute favourites)- nausicca of the valley of the wind (7-10, made me cry because of how overwhelmingly beautiful and meaningful it is? it was around the end of the week+ where it was the only movie i’d watch, and i had it on loop from when i came home from school until i went to sleep. definitely think me crying at it was a sign of a spike in my maturity, though.)- mean girls (there’s no explanation for this one beyond weird teenage hormones at a weird point in my life)- thor: the dark world (moma witch. that’s all. nobody fucking touch me)I’m sure there’s another few here or there, but nothing that’s coming to mind. I was just a big wimp as a kid. also I think a good amount of ghibli films have moved me one way or another at some point, they grow with you when you start watching them from such a young age. definitely 

showsthis is difficult because absolutely nothing will come to mind. like, really. i guess when i was a toddler there was this one thing that made me cry and made me scared of the muppets / big puppets but beyond that absolutely nothing is coming to mind???whilst writing filling out another part of this, i remembered that anime is a fucking form of media lmfao.so,- elfen lied (watched it far too young, but that’s what happens when my father explicitly tells me that i’m not old enough to watch something. i binge watched it under the sheets for two nights and polished it off and was a wreck after it. certainly wasn’t mature enough for it, or for higurashi, which i was watching alongside it. i must’ve been around... 11/12.)- black cat (fucKING SAYA. NOBODY TOUCH ME.)- shingeki no kyojin (few character deaths, we’re not getting into it. i’ll leave you *cough* stumped... and... i can’t think of any puns for the others... the stumped thing works for two of them, shh.)

songs*coughs in bjork’s direction* so - a lot more?so most of bjork’s music can make me cry if i sit and concentrate on it and feel it properly. not all of it, i don’t think. but her music does seriously move me in an incredible way i have never experienced with any other person, never mind a form of media.but like... the anchor song, unravel, joga, hidden place, cocoon, it’s not up to you, undo, (esp the live versions, which i’d heard before fully listening to the album myself, i was sobbing like a bitch whilst watching that), mutual core (more from fuck i love this woman than just emotion), stonemilker (esp the 360 video, made me bawl), lionsong, notget, arisen my senses, blissing me, body memory, sue me (same with mutual core), are all ones that have definitely made me cry just on their own. but I’m sure others have too, just those are what come to mind when I scroll through her spotify (which is killing me, btw, I’m on a bjork break until i get the cassette tapes so i can indulge in listening to them with a fresh pair of ears)but bjork is not the first musician to have brought me to tears. she’s just able to do it frequently, consistently, and in a way no other artist has been able to. though i’m sure there’s a bunch of songs by tool, nine inch nails, the cure, radiohead even, and a bunch of other bands i like (especially back from my emo days) that have made me cry.

I feel like my answers are fucking boring because it takes so much to actually make me cry, most of my answers are cop outs / from my childhood. but kids cry all the time. 

idk. sorry if my answers were very empty rambly. if i do happen to think of any others, i’ll reblog this with those additions. but a lot of them will be from when i was younger so idk how much that counts ‘cause kids cry a lot anyway.

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/the-first-time-i-had-sex-i-contracted-hiv/

'The first time I had sex I contracted HIV'

Image copyright Nathaniel Hall

Image caption A teenage Nathaniel Hall at about the time of his HIV diagnosis

The first time Nathaniel Hall had sex, he contracted HIV. He was 16 years old and had only recently come out as gay. Fear, shame and self-loathing caused him to keep his diagnosis a secret from his family for the next 14 years.

He “came out” for the second time in his life last year and took back control by writing a play about his experience. Nathaniel, a 32-year-old theatre practitioner from Manchester, hopes his one-man show will spark a conversation about representations of HIV in popular culture.

Nathaniel explains how he coped with learning he was HIV positive while he was still a child.

Image copyright Nathaniel Hall

Image caption “He told me that he had been tested and that he had a clean bill of health… at 16 you don’t really have the capacity to challenge that”

The ‘summer romance’ with an older man

I knew I was gay from around 13 or 14 but in 2003 it was a very different time. It wasn’t even an option in school. It was all secret… to sort of find out who else was gay.

And then this guy… I was 16, he was older than me – in his early to mid-20s. All of a sudden this older gay man gave me some attention and almost validated me – it was very intoxicating. So we started seeing each other.

That relationship didn’t last long; it was only a couple of months, really. It all happened in the summer – between school and college – a summer romance, as it were. And then we kind of went our separate ways.

When I told him [about the HIV diagnosis], I got messages from his friends – bearing in mind they were older than me – saying I was just a silly little boy and I was making it up and worse than that.

So I just really wanted him to get tested and get the treatment required so that he wouldn’t pass it on, because most infections come from people who don’t know they have the virus.

But I never found out whether he knew. He told me that he had been tested and that he had a clean bill of health… at 16 you don’t really have the capacity to challenge that.

Image copyright Nathaniel Hall

Image caption Nathaniel, pictured when he was a teenager and more recently, is now in long-term relationship

‘It felt like being hit by a bus’

I had just turned 17 when I got the diagnosis. I remember them being very, very kind to me in the clinic and I don’t really remember much else, other than getting the news. Then going back home and having to make this decision… I made the snap decision to go into my bedroom and close the door, instead of going and saying what had happened.

It felt like being hit by bus… because when I try and recall it, it’s almost a physical sensation of being hit quite hard. I remember crying. What I was told was very different to what you get told today.

It certainly wasn’t the era of the Aids epidemic… medication was around and they were good and improving, but I was told the prognosis was around 37 years. So to actually have a figure put on that at that age was quite a heavy thing to deal with.

I did have counselling through my college and did have support and I kind of thought I was OK until late last year when I had a bit of a breakdown.

‘I think that shame really controlled me’

I think shame is the big one… it’s really the only disease where there is a moral judgement attached to it and even – to a certain degree – a self-judgement.

I was gay… but you grow up in a straight world. You hear that you are morally wrong, or what you do is dirty and you should be ashamed of it. So I was becoming really acutely aware of that.

Then you hear those kind of warnings – “oh, you are going to be punished”. So it was kind of like those prophecies were coming true, right at that moment, and it was a very powerful – and that was the shame that I put on to myself.

When I was at school the only sex education we had about a gay relationship was a video that we watched in which a gay man was dying from Aids.

It was completely out of date and so these messages that I was getting – that I was somehow secondary or that what I was doing was wrong or immoral or whatever – they weren’t coming from my family but they were coming from all around me.

They sink in over time and then all of a sudden, I kind of became that stereotype. So I think that shame really, really controlled me.

‘I didn’t recognise who I was’

I think the key moment was when I was still up two days after a party and I had not really slept at all. I looked at myself in the mirror and I didn’t recognise who that person was.

I realised at that point that drugs and alcohol had… not necessarily taken over my life… but I had abused them in a way that was not good for me any more.

It was in no way a heavy addiction or anything like that but I was self-medicating through alcohol. I was just trying to get rid of this low-level anxiety and stress that had built up over the years.

I realised that if I didn’t do something about it then, it could escalate into a real and serious problem. Something had to change.

Image copyright Lee Baxter

Image caption Nathaniel in the First Time

‘They were sorry I felt I had to keep it secret’

I needed to tell my family. I had tried many, many times before but it never happened and never came out. So I started on the journey of making the play and I started to write stuff and make sense of things through my writing. Then I decided to write a letter to my parents and brothers and sisters.

I gave myself an afternoon to write everything down that I wanted to say. I told myself that I didn’t necessarily need to send it, I just needed to get it written down and then see how I felt about it.

But after writing it, I actually felt quite calm so I just put them in envelopes straight away and got them posted before I could change my mind.

I did it that way because I had tried so many times to say it and I couldn’t. And I also didn’t think I could do it four times in a row without just being an emotional wreck by the end of it.

The response was quite underwhelming, to be honest! It was a little bit like how I know a lot of gay people feel before they come out. This fear of what might happen but… everyone sent me text messages and called me and they were absolutely fine. They were just sorry that I felt I had to keep it secret for this long.

My mum came over the next day and we had a chat. My big thing was that they would be upset that I had not told them and kept this really big thing from them. But my mum said: “I’m just upset my son was struggling with this for so long on his own.”

It was the fear. There was some internalised homophobia that lots of gay men have and then this other layer of shame and the fear builds on top of that, and all of that is really powerful. Even if you have a really loving family, you struggle to tell them.

Image copyright Nathaniel Hall

Image caption Nathaniel is looking forward to the future

‘I used to wake up every morning with a knot in my heart’

It’s not like all of a sudden everything is fixed. But writing and working on the show has taken me to some difficult places and that’s been hard.

But I have felt a lot lighter and a lot more able to deal with things and some of the anxiety that had built up. I used to wake up every morning with a knot in my heart, in my chest.

I never used to think that it had affected me but after I told my family it released a little a bit and I thought, “oh my gosh, you lived with this almost crippling anxiety”. Every morning, the first thing I felt was fear in my chest, tightness – and I can feel it now as I’m talking about it.

But since I’ve gone on that journey, admitting about that breakdown and some of the bad choices I have made and making peace with that, I don’t need to be the perfect person I was trying to be – and that was very freeing and very liberating.

Told through a series of personal letters, poems, confessions and Nathaniel’s drag alter-ego, Sue, First Time is about growing up gay and HIV positive.

The play is part of a series of events at Waterside Arts, Sale to mark 30 years since the first World Aids Day.

Held in conjunction with the Greater Manchester PaSH Partnership (Passionate about Sexual Health), the weekend will also feature creative workshops, a gallery exhibition, free HIV testing and a “coming out” party to raise money for HIV charities.

As told to Paul Keaveny

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[drabblesfromthemoon]

Fighting the Fight

The quote I uploaded is from Sherlock, a TV Series from BBC about another adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. It’s a great series, but I will not talk about a review.

I want to talk about what Sherlock and most people in my timeline talk about these days: depression & being suicidal.

First of all, I am not a clinically proven as depressed. Depression is not being sad once in awhile, we need to set this straight. It is not something that you can just “snap out of it”. Depression is not equal “galau”. It needs serious assessment because it is a serious mental illness. You can’t know how depressed you are from random quiz from Buzzfeed or Vonvon.

That being said, all depression-related things that I am saying here might not be clinically reliable, you will need to speak with professional.

Now, what is a depression?

Depression, quoted from American Psychiatric Association is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. The symptoms are as followed:

-         Feeling sad or having a depressed mood

-         Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed

-         Changes in appetite — weight loss or gain unrelated to dieting

-         Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much

-         Loss of energy or increased fatigue

-         Increase in purposeless physical activity (e.g., hand-wringing or pacing) or slowed movements and speech (actions observable by others)

-         Feeling worthless or guilty

-         Difficulty thinking, concentrating or making decisions

-         Thoughts of death or suicide

That last bit about thoughts of death or suicide is something that you will see in every depression test. That’s the turning point when your increasing sleeping habit – one you think you do because you’re tired – now turned to an escape of all shit that happens in your head. That will slowly turned to a devil’s whisper: why not sleep forever, then?

Let’s talk about being sad.

Let’s make this personal so you can understand better. I tried it before, suicide, when I was in high school. Do you know how much guts it takes to raise a knife towards your wrist? No God matters when you do it, just so you know. It’s one of the blank moment in your head when you just want to do it, how tempting it is to just drop dead than sleeping in constant nightmares, wake up with massive migraines and feeling absolutely worthless afterwards.

Now what lead me to that path?

It started years before when I just graduated elementary school. My parents apparently, decided to get a divorce (I am not going to tell the detail about how it goes.) I had to be one of the daughter who must keep it inside, because my sister was in emotional roller coaster as well. One must become strong for the other, and at that time it was me and my brother. It was pretty bad, a lot of shit happened, and I was in emotional wreck for years all the way until high school.

The self-harm started during that divorce happen, I start to 'clawing’ myself to stop myself from crying (no one noticed because I did it on my upper leg). Soon it become hard to cry and my body won’t stop shaking until I calm down. Someone (who supposed to be my support) witnessed it, and he just said that I’m behaving like an insane kid, borderline crazy, and just let me shake. In the morning, I am that girl who laughed a lot at school. It happens on and on until I finally released myself from that place.

I was like in my senior year of middle school when I got out from there with my sister after 2 years. Then I moved to Depok. Everyone is ultra nice, my place is great, we have a little garden with a bunch of lele in a pond, lol (god damn that was so many lele). I make lots of friends, and we have this group called Miss Universe (stfu, we are just as fab as Miss Universe). Life is a teenage drama, all so fucking cheesy but it was fun laughing out loud all the time.

But the ghost came haunting every night and I can’t even explain how you can feel worthless in that kind of environment. I don’t even know why I’m sad, or if it’s related to the divorce. (Because let me tell you, I’m accepting the divorce whole-heartedly). I start writing sad poems about being alone and losing sleep for days, and then cry a bit. And then nightmares came following with massive headache.

I can’t talk to anyone, can’t talk to someone when you can’t even explain what happened to you. If you do it anyway, they will tell you to “be patient”. Oh, how stinks that words are. I’d rather curl up and die than hearing it again.  Soon enough, I can’t even cry. That cycle happens for 2 years.

And then it was just… happen.

At that time, I raised the knife because that’s the only suicide method I know. And let me tell you, as I told above, nothing else matters. That God you are talking about does not matter then. I was just physically and emotionally tired, that’s all I know.

(“Oh but God is everything, how could you forget him omg do you go to church omg omg” Shut the fuck up)

The one that stopped me was something that my brother said years ago about the divorce and being a broken home kid in general, which I doubt he still remember by now. The words are exactly like this:

“Kamu beruntung dari anak lain, kamu punya kesempatan lebih cepat untuk jadi dewasa.”

“You are luckier than other kids, you got the chance to mature faster than kids your age.”

Those words made me release the knife and finally after months of inability to cry, I cried then. Days after, I cried in front of my friends until I lost ability to walk home. I think ‘those friends’ know who they are. Some are crying with me, the other one is now a doctor, who apparently can’t forget his experience in high school about how terrifying the mix of emotional breakdown and stomach ulcer is, lol

For those who have a sad friend, console them. You don’t have to talk much, just listen whenever they need you. A few pat on the back, and a hug. If they don’t cry, you cry for them. Drop that “be patient” and “just pray to god, lol” bullshit please. You are one of God’s way to make them feel better, do your damn job. Your friend is extremely tired beyond imagination, he is fighting a fight that he possibly can’t win, and he’s clenching really hard to live.

Depression is a fight in a Colosseum. You can have hundreds to cheer for you, but you are alone in this fight. The weapon probably isn’t as big as you think. Maybe it’s just how you like to see something in the future, maybe it’s that delicious cake you want to keep eating, maybe it’s just simple words, maybe it’s people you want to protect.

What it takes to win for me?

Let’s go back to the Sherlock quotes.

People who are sad, depressed, and all things similar – us – are creatures who crave love. All those façade we have been wearing is to make sure people we love don’t know, because they don’t have to. Let them live in their sparkling life, they won’t understand, they don’t have to understand, that’s what I thought.

These ‘people’ are of course whose who important to us, who we want to protect. The one that protect me from the knife are my brother’s words, and how devastated my family and my friends who cried with me if I die. They will cry in a condition when they know nothing, regretting and blaming themselves. And the depression cycle shall ensue again.

Now, after years, I can tell you, I am still a worthless piece of shit. If I have a worth, it is just because they will be devastated when I’m gone. I live for them, not for myself.

I can’t tell you that’s it’s a happy life, it is kind of empty. But it keep me breathing until now, that’s all that matters.  And it is a life when you cherish every second of laughter with your loved ones. I am willing to fight, no matter how crazy and painful the ride is. To win, you have to live. This is the battle of endurance, take all you need to keep breathing, claw your hands through the walls to stay sane.

Lastly, condolences to all friends who left us. They did well, they fought well. We will continue the war on earth, please be one of the angels who remind us of people we love whenever the urge comes up. Again.

[tanmath3-blog]

For anyone that doesn’t know Toneye Eyenot you are missing out on an amazing writer and a truly wonderful friend. I have loads of love and respect for him. He is a man of many talents but his passion for writing just blows me away. I have yet to read anything he has written that I didn’t like. Toneye is a lover of wolves and his Facebook family are his pack with lots of wolfbrothers and wolfsisters. Some of the best people I have ever met. He is always ready to help another author and lend a hand giving feed back or help with editing a story. My best advice is for you to make sure to pick up his books. It will not be a decision you will regret. Please help me welcome Toneye Eyenot  (my wolfbrother) back to Roadie Notes…….

    1. It’s been awhile since we talked what new books do you have out now? Latest release?

Toneye: Hi, wolfsis, It has been! A whole year since our last little pow wow and in that year, eye have only released the before-mentioned Blood Moon Big Top, which was awaiting release last time we talked. That dreaded anthology addiction eye mentioned last time, and my resolve to curb it, failed miserably hahahaha. So, 2016 saw several more short stories released in a variety of anthologies, with a hefty handful still yet to be released. But speaking of anthologies, eye did release one which eye ran called Full Moon Slaughter through JEA Press. It was a massive undertaking which culminated in a near 400 page book, 35 authors with 37 ‘tails’ of lycanthropic madness in which eye was honoured to have the esteemed Sisters of Slaughter – Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason as our feature authors. It was a highlight of 2016 for me. It did really well on release and continues to be quite popular. So much so, that eye am now on the verge of closing the call on Full Moon Slaughter 2: Altered Beasts. This one expands on the werewolf theme into the realms of Therianthropy, which is open to include a myriad of werebeasts. We have a wereoctopus, a werehedgehog, wereants, among many other strange and bizarre creations. There is also still a healthy dose of werewolf amongst the submissions as well. This one is gonna be a real killer! 2. If you could pick any author alive or dead to have lunch with who would it be? Why?

Toneye: Oh, that’s easy! Why, Dawn Cano, the Baby Cooker, of korpse!! There’s the ‘who & why’ right there hahahaha!

3. What is the strangest thing a fan has ever done?

Toneye: Y’know, eye thought this one would be easy, but honestly, eye can’t come up with an answer. There’s probably hundreds of things, but eye myself am a little bit strange, so the strangest things everyone does are completely normal to me. Maybe this, from my fellow author and wolfbrother Matty-Bob Cash might qualify. He sent me this portrait of me and him hahahahaha

4. What is the one thing you dread to do when writing?

Toneye: Run out of coffee or lungrots. Eye always make sure eye have enough to get me through the night, after the shops are closed.

5. Did you have imaginary friends growing up? Tell me about them

Toneye: Didn’t we all? Mine was my favourite teddy bear. His name was Robot Teddy because he had pointy, square shoulders, and he used to talk to me. He told me he liked KISS, so one day eye got a black texta and gave him the Gene Simmons makeup. He didn’t like his ears either, so eye cut them off for him. He was very grateful.

6. Do you go to conventions? If not why?

Toneye: No, not yet. Despite my somewhat colourful online presence, in real life eye am a bit of a hermit. Just recently discovered a con here in Sydney, but it was after the fact. Maybe next year, or if eye find out about more in my area before they happen. Eye really should get out more. The conventions eye see on farcebook over in the U.S. and U.K. look like a lot of fun and a good way to meet other authors…maybe even score some new readers.

7. How many times did you have to submit your first story before it was accepted?

Toneye: Only once. Funny and ironic that the acceptance would be for a certain anthology which goes by the name of REJECTED For Content hahahaha.

8. Ever consider not writing? If so what made you continue?

Toneye: No, never. Been writing for over 27 years now, if you include poetry. Since 2011, writing stories has become my obsession. Although there were a couple of years, during a train-wreck of a relationship, that my writing suffered greatly. That’s why it took me 3 years to write The Scarlett Curse, but giving up was never an option. Married to my writing now and that works best for me eye think.

9. Ever thought about writing in a different category?

Toneye: Absolutely. That children’s story eye mentioned in our last interview…well, eye am still trying to find my inner 6-year-old haha. That one hasn’t made any progression, but it’s still on the cards.

10. Any new additions to the family?

Toneye: No. Still just the one son, who eye would kill and die for. My writing family continues to grow though J

11. What is coming up next for you?

Toneye: Full Moon Slaughter 2: Altered Beasts is the next thing eye will be releasing with JEA Press. Then once eye clear my current commitments of anthology submissions, eye am steering clear of anthos altogether and getting Book 3 in The Sacred Blade Of Profanity series finished once and for all! It’s been far too long since Joshua’s Folly was released and eye have readers waiting to continue that journey. Eye have been a good wolf this year though and stuck to my guns. My problem is eye hate saying ‘No’ to people, but eye have turned down several invites to anthologies this year. Maybe there is hope for me yet hahaha. Eye have been involved in a massive and secret project for the past year though and that is nearing completion. All will be revealed with that very soon.

12. Do you do release parties? Do you think they work?

Toneye: Yes, eye have done a few. They are great and they do tend to work, despite Fuktbook making it difficult every step of the way. It’s not uncommon for event organisers and guest authors to be locked out of their own event because Fuktbook thinks they’re ‘going too fast’. If you’ve ever organized one, or even just been to one, you’ll know just how crazy they can get. ‘Going fast’ is the only way you can keep up, especially if you are hosting the event. Eye always come away from them mentally exhausted but eye love ‘em! J

13. Do you have crazy stalker fans? Have you ever had one you wish would go away?

Toneye: Yes hahaha, they’re ALL crazy! My kinda crazy, of korpse. They’re not all stalkers though. Eye do have a couple who get a bit freaked out and worried when eye disappear for more than a day, but they are special to me and eye love ‘em. They can stalk me for as long as they like hahaha.

14. Do you still have a “day job”? If so what do you do?

Toneye: No day job. Eye do help my brother out every now and then though, but that’s only very occasionally. Installing floors.

15. What is your process for writing? Do you have a voice in your head?

Toneye: First and foremost…COFFEE! Once that has been taken care of, eye might sit with my characters for a while and throw some ideas around until we can all come to some kind of agreement on which way the story will go. Depending on the story, the characters can either be a breeze to work with, or they can be real troublesome bastards. Take Marnard for instance. He came into The Sacred Blade Of Profanity series during book 2 – Joshua’s Folly. Eye like Marnard, we get on well and for the most part, he goes where eye tell him. Halfway through book 3 however, and the stupid kid goes n falls in love with some wolf girl in Mellowood Forest! Eye don’t write Romance, so this has thrown me a curve ball and caused me all kinds of distress. So to refer to your earlier question about writing in a different category, Marnard is forcing my hand to include a romantic element to my otherwise dark and horrifying story. Eye will be taking every step in keeping this element to a minimum, but yeah. To say eye am not impressed by his rampant teenage hormones is a massive understatement.

16. Is there a book you want to make a sequel to you haven’t yet?

Toneye: Yes! Book 3 in The Sacred Blade Of Profanity series hahaha. Book 2 being the prequel, this one really, REALLY needs to be finished.

Fangs so much for having me back, wolfsis! Eye hope eye have given you and the readers a little more insight into what makes me tick! As a treat, and a thank you, here’s a poem eye wanna share with you. It’s from Rejected For Content 3 by JEA Press and is my fave poem that eye have written so far. Enjoy, and until next time, Kopulater Desekraters!

Thank you Toneye for coming back and giving us an update! It is always a pleasure and honor my wolfbrother!!

FRED, THE DIS-EMBODIED HEAD Written by Toneye Eyenot “Well, fuck me dead!” exclaimed poor Fred, the freshly dis-embodied head. Rolling off the foot of the bed, he saw his body twitch. “I shouldn’t care but this ain’t fair! You psychopathic bitch!” As he hit the bedroom floor, his killer bolted for the door. Her hatchet, bloody, in her claw. Her vengeance justly sated. “You got what you rightly deserved and no more,” Dolores stated. She swung the bedroom door ajar, ran from the house and to the car as sirens sounded from afar. There had been some commotion. She slammed the gears and threw the beast into a forward motion. Tearing ‘round the corner wide, the car performs a sideways slide. She near collects a passer-by, who hollers as he dives, “My god, I can’t believe I’m still alive!” Back in control, Dolores starts to breathe again. Her pounding heart now skips a beat, beside her on the seat sits Fred…The freshly dis-embodied head. “Hey Dolores, look at me! In killing me, you set me free! Free to do most anything. I think I might just sing.” His ghastly chords and horrid tones chilled poor Dolores to her bones. She cast him from the window to the swiftly passing road. Not a soul in sight, she was once again alone. Shaken, Dolores speeds towards her home. Once inside with bolted door, Dolores falls onto her floor. On her homeward ride, she was terrified and stunned by what she saw. Guess who rolls out from her bedroom door? “Hey Dolores, fancy that! You threw me out, thought that was that. Well, here I am to prove you wrong. How ‘bout another song?” Dolores screamed and held her ears. Fred began his jests and jeers in off, discordant baritones that rattled poor Dolores’ bones. She hastily scrambled for the telephone. “What is your emergency?” The voice enquired indifferently. “Help me, please!” Dolores screamed. “He will not leave me be! I’m on Flinder Street. Eleven sixty three. I don’t care how, just get here now. You have to understand, he’s killing me!” As sirens wailed, her sanity failed whilst Fred the dis-embodied head assailed. He sang of times of happiness. Of times they’d felt their lives were blessed with the truest love, through all things, would prevail. His voice carried the agony of ripped and broken nails. Bursting through her bolted door, reached the long arm of the law and grabbed Dolores off the floor, her mind destroyed, in tatters. Fred the dis-embodied head lay silently and surely dead. Dolores’ bloody hands are all that matters. Taken into custody, she was labelled with insanity. Her life was spent in deep repent, never to be free. Left without hope to atone, in her padded room alone, with Fred, the dis-embodied head to keep her company. © Toneye Eyenot 2014

  You can connect with Toneye Eyenot here:

https://www.amazon.com/Toneye-Eyenot/e/B00NVVMHVA/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3?qid=1494147021&sr=8-3-spell

Twitter: @ToneyeEyenot

    Some of Toneye Eyenot books:

Getting even more personal with Toneye Eyenot For anyone that doesn't know Toneye Eyenot you are missing out on an amazing writer and a truly wonderful friend.