#watching wrestling was my coping mechanism

[schreckensbleiches-nervenbuendel]

ich hab meine Liebe für Wrestling wiederentdeckt und die Nostalgie kickt gerade so rein 😭

[plainblackcanvas56]

(Inspired by the gifset linked below)

[asha-mage]

Assorted Thoughts From Forcing My Friends to Watch all of WoT as a birthday gift, Season 2 Edition-

When taken as a whole unit, the show actually completely conveys what's happening with Lan's bond from the jump, it's just that several characters are incorrect or working with incorrect information- as was often the case in the books. Lan thinks he's just been blocked out, but in reality Moiraine has released his bond entirely (as she floated she might do to Alanna back in season 1) and you can see the moment he realizes this in episode 2, when saddling the horses- he realizes that he didn't sense the Fade and what that means, and then Moiriane realizes he has realized.

The show in general is a lot more subtle, and a lot more willing to delve into the idea that often characters are just...wrong, or uninformed, or lying, without holding the audience's hand to explain that fact then I think people give it credit for- which is very in line with Jordan's ethos. For example, Ishamael's telling of Perrin 'the more wolf you become the more you are mine' is a blatant manipulation attempt to scare him into being afraid of his Wolfbrother powers and Perrin, who is going through hell, just buys it- and that makes sense he's already wrestling his own anger issues and fear. He doesn't question why Ishamael would tell him this, or what the effect would be (i.e not trusting the wolves, and thus maybe making himself more vulnerable to the Shadow) he just accepts it because it plays into his existing fears and biases about himself.

Anvare also raises this point really well when she gives her 'ask yourself- is it true?' speech to Moiraine. Moiraine is operating at that point under a lot of assumptions that aren't true- not just that Lanfear is going to hurt or capture Rand, but also that she really was stilled, that she can't trust Lan with her fears and doubts, that her presence is a threat to Barthanes and Anvare (when really Barthanes's presence is a threat to her)- and this moment, is meant to cast doubt not just on that, but on a lot of the assumptions the audience has likely been making too, which characters their taking at face value and which characters their thinking off through the lens of their own biases.

Continuing the trend of Moiraine displaying many of the bad coping mechanisms that will later dog Rand/Rand will internalize from her- @ofthebrownajah pointed out recently Rand's consistent issues with food and eating, which made it stick out to me how frequently in the show Moiraine has a similar problem. People repeatedly try to reach out to Moiraine via food/encouraging her to take care of herself, and she repeatedly rejects them. Lan's attempt to get her to come down for dinner, then to bring dinner to her in her rooms, Barthanes's sandwich, tea with Anvare- Moiraine has her walls raised so high she rejects this basic form of self-care and attempt to reach out hand in hand. This is especially notably because their is a repeated emphasis on food this season. Every major character gets at least one scene eating or drinking this season (Egwene and Elayne doing bootleg, Rand grabbing flatbread on his way to work, Mat with Liandrin's honey cakes, Nynaeve preparing dinner in the arches world, Lan sharing dinner with Alanna's family at her farm) but even Moiraine's eventual forced tea with Anvare goes deliberately unshown.

On rewatch I think that, while I really really love the moment where Renna and Seta are left to the mercy of their own culture by Nynaeve and Egwene in the books, the moment of Egwene killing Renna just makes the most narrative sense for the show- and I think will be a change that they are going to walk out through it's consequences.

The point of that sequence in the book is that Nynaeve understands that Egwene's bloodlust and anger are valid- but that the fact of killing will not help her in the long run. "It's okay to hate them. They deserve it. It's not okay to let them make you like them." I suspect, especially given how thoughtful the show has been about violence and death (and how clearly hollow the experience of actually killing Renna is for Egwene) that the show will take the plank of 'she deserved to die- but killing her did not undo everything you went through or heal you'. Which, again makes sense both Egwene's oncoming Aiel arc, and the fact that the books do spend a lot of time focusing on Egwene working through the trauma of her captivity.

The arches are another thing I've come around on after initial trepidation about their changes. I think each manages to still cut at the heart of Nynaeve's character arc and her struggles. The last one was my biggest concern, the shift from Nynaeve deliberately rejecting a perfect life with Lan for the sake of going back for the other Emond's Fielders to Nynaeve going back after realizing that such a life lived with Lan, as much as it might give her joy for a time, would still be hollow in the end. She can't turn her back on the struggles of the world and her friends without consequence- she can't just go back to life in the Two Rivers. She has to keep fighting for what she loves.

I think the choice itself also works when put in the context of the steady removal of Nynaeve's charges one by one. She thinks Rand is dead (and is probably blaming herself for his death as pops up in her interaction with Tam), Mat ran off, and Perrin is safe with the Shinearans. Her main charge left is Egwene- and hering that she's not helping Egwene but hurting her, overshadowing her- removes the final reason she really had for being at the White Tower, staying on the adventure. If the people she left home to save don't need her- then why is she there?

I continue to really think people are over hyping how bad the show supposedly makes Siuan look- my friends despite being largely uninitiated in the book series immediately groked that Siuan and Moiraine where just doing what they felt was right, in a complicated situation. They both are trying to save the world, and they love each other- but the world is more important.

Moiraine also brings a lot of the trouble on herself by not telling Siuan she was stilled and damaging the trust between them- leaving that detail out is the first crack in Siuan's ability to trust Moiraine still be honest with her, her partner in all this, and then her seeming to have either lied or regained that power, right at the moment she's allied with Lanfear, is the final blow any hope they where still standing together.

Despite stopping frequently to talk at even minor moments, we ran through almost the entire finale without pausing and then collectively all just sat there speechless. Man is the battle of Falme and everything around it so good.

Quote one of my friends re: Moghiden "Oh she's a little freak."

Also shout out to Lanfear for making one of my MLM friends doubt his sexuality with her 'short hair pirate t shirt look'.

That entire scene in the dream world bedroom cased a collective meltdown and one of my other friends to say 'oh I see why you where insane about this'

The effects continue to be killer throughout the season and god I can't wait to see season 3.

[miitgaanar]

Whumptober prompt! Requested by @editoress!

No. 6: NOT REALISING THEY’RE INJURED

Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms | Healed Wrong | “It’s not my blood.” for Zack

This is probably the most self-indulgent thing I've written so far. A very specific AU in which the Jenova cells took root in Zack, and a Sephiroth who knows what is to come decides to get a jump on things.

**********

He could feel it inside him.  Squirming, pushing, prodding—driving him forward.  Through the Wasteland.  To Midgar.  To the church.

To Aerith.

He stumbled through the streets of the Sector 5 slums, kicking up dust and dirt with each shuffling step, his body moving of its own accord.  This is wrong, he thought, even as the church steeple came into view, even as an end to his torment seemed to be within reach.

But still it pulsed within him, pulling at his limbs with the precision of a master puppeteer.  It whispered to him at times, the words nonsensical, but its tone soothing.  Alluring.  There was a promise of freedom somewhere in its sweet nothings, the chains that bound him to Shinra’s might rusted and brittle with this newfound power coursing through his veins.

And yet still he resisted, tugging at the strings that drove him ever forward, wrestling for control over his own body.

A pain like a dagger piercing flesh lanced through his skull as he yanked at those strings, causing him to cry out.  He nearly fell to his knees, his already hazy vision going white—but it wouldn’t allow him even a moment’s reprieve, locking his limbs in place to keep him from tumbling face first into the dirt.

This is wrong, he thought again.  The burst of white dulled to black spots that danced before his eyes, but even then he could see the droplets of blood that had soaked into the ground beneath his feet, the crimson streaks that lined his bare arms.

Huh.  It was the only word to break through the fog engulfing his mind.  Had he fought something on his way into the city?  Had a monster taken him for easy prey?  His memories were a muddled mass of snapshots, and to try to parse them only made that dull ache in his head flare to a searing agony

It wasn’t until he stood before the church doors, his hands pressed against its sturdy wooden surface, that a sudden clarity overtook him.  The shroud that had so encased him lifted, and as he stumbled through the doorway and over the threshold, found himself staring at the one person he had so yearned to see again.

“Zack?”  Aerith came to her feet with a start, her bright green eyes wide in disbelief.  The front of her dress was smeared with light brown stains.  Dirt, from her garden.  The flowers always did love her so.  “Zack, is that you?”

His eyes came into focus, gaze intent on her dress.  On the jacket she wore.  On the ribbon in her hair.  Pink, he thought.  Just like she promised.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, his voice weak, though with a forced note of levity.  He lurched forward, leaning heavily against one of the empty pews.  “Guess I got tied up at the office.”

Aerith ran toward him, her arms shooting out to catch him before he could topple over onto the hard stone floor.  Funny, he didn’t feel this unsteady before.

“Are you all right?”  Her voice was even, composed, though he could hear the tinge of panic beginning to color each word.  She was always so calm, so brave.  Even when the worst came barreling through her front door.  One of her hands fell away from him, and he watched as she stared at it.  Watched as her brows shot up in alarm.  “You’re bleeding.”

“Not my blood,” he bit out, swallowing down a coughing fit that threatened to rack his body.  Even as he said it, he realized it was a lie.  He could feel where a bullet had ripped through his abdomen, where a rib had shattered.  Maybe he’d gotten into a fight after all.  “You know how it is, being a First Class SOLDIER and all.”

“Zack,” she tried again, slowly lowering him to the floor.  Her hands were shaking.  “I’ll go get help.  Just stay here—”

“No.”  He grabbed for her wrist, holding her in place as he knelt before her.  “Please, just wait.”

“You’re hurt,” she pleaded, her voice cracking slightly.  He could see the tears welling in her eyes.  A terrible ache that had nothing to do with the blood soaking his uniform tore through his chest.  “You need help.”

“Just—just wait a minute.”  He reached out for her face, his gloved hand cupping the soft flesh of her cheek.  “Just let me say something real quick.”

Her free hand came up to cover his, her gaze fixed on him.  He’d always loved her eyes.  As green as the lush jungle that surrounded his hometown.  A reminder of what he’d left behind for the gray, industrial monstrosity that was Midgar.

Maybe that was why he’d always felt so at home at her side.

“I—”  A pained yelp erupted from his lips, his eyes wrenching shut as he doubled over.  It pulled at him again, wresting back control of the strings it had allowed to go slack.  He had thought it gone, banished to whatever corner of his mind it called home—but now he felt himself slipping away, his vision narrowing as it pulled him under the black abyss that had birthed it.

And that voice—once so strange, yet so comforting and beguiling—was suddenly all too familiar.

Let me take it from here, it said, a rich and deep timbre flooding his mind.  His eyes shot open, a mocking chuckle echoing in his ears.  The briefest flash of slitted, venom-green eyes overtaking him.  You’ve played your part.

“Aerith.”  He forced her name out through gritted teeth, panic like he’d never felt before sparking to life in his gut.  “Aerith, I—”

She leaned over him, tears spilling forth with abandon.  He vaguely noted that he had smeared blood on her cheek when he’d touched her, and a wave of shame washed over him.  

“Zack, what’s wrong?”  Her voice was pitched slightly higher, her hands searching his body for some wound she had missed.  The strings tugging at him pulled taut.

He reached out to her, his body moving of its own accord.

I love you, he thought desperately.

His hand inched toward her. A hair's breadth from the delicate curve of her neck.  The burn of fresh tears stung at his eyes, her angelic features becoming nothing but a faint blur.

I love you.  I love you.

IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou

“Aerith,” he ground out, his vision narrowing to a pinprick.  And Zack Fair felt as the creature within him finally dragged him under.  “Run.”

[hannahbarberra162]

Got you another one to make you think about, regarding the rebellious reader. What happens if the reader realizes they bit more than they could show with their rebellious acts. Is there going back on Marco’s trust? Not trust but you know, he says “it dosen’t have to be this way” and “lets see if you’re more agreeable after this” so what if they are more agreeable and spouting apologies and whatnot would they ever be able to go back to more privileges like not having to be restrained or having legs 😂

Marco knows that you’re going to be on the ship for a long time, even if you won't accept it. You're going to be working together for a while, so he’s willing to forgive (not forget) if you can show him you’re sorry. Talk is cheap, be a good patient and you can have your books back. Or be unrestrained. Or have legs (lol). The book idea came from @luarsunny

It was the end of your second day being strapped to the chair with nothing to alleviate your boredom. After the end of the first, you’d apologised profusely to Marco and he’d allowed you to be gag-less today. You were still in full restraints but at least you weren’t drooling for hours on end. Marco didn’t have to wrestle you into them, you’d meekly sat down and allowed him to strap you in. Your ankle still hurt but had been set in a rigid cast. Marco said you didn’t deserve to have him heal it for you and that you’d have to wait for it to heal the regular way. At least you could be sure it would heal correctly. 

“How’s my favorite patient yoi?” Marco had come for your end of session healing and to let you out of the chair. You tried to hide your wince but weren’t successful. Marco frightened you, you’d underestimated his resolve and paid the price. Marco held his hand over your arm and the familiar blue flames burned through your veins as you hissed in pain. You knew Marco could choose to make it painless, but you held your tongue. 

“Good job today,” he remarked, taking the IV out of your arm. “What, nothing to say yoi?” Marco said with a smirk. You shook your head. You were going to do anything Marco told you to get back on his good side. Marco had taken away all your books after your outburst, saying you needed time to think about your actions. It was humiliating being put in time out but you really wanted your books back. Being strapped to a chair for hours without anything was torturous. Just like in your childhood, you used your stories of action and adventure as a coping mechanism. Having them ripped away from you made you unable to engage in as much escapism and left you depressed, watching the trajectory of the ship hour after hour. Marco took off your binds, and you rubbed at the areas that had been compressed all day by the straps. The returning blood flow was painful but bearable. 

“Isn’t this way much nicer for both of us? Calm and easy?”” Marco gripped your chin in his fingers, tilting your face to look at his own. “Answer yoi.”

“Yes,” you whispered. Marco’s eyes were half opened but he was acutely aware of what you were doing.

“Be a good little thing for one more day and you can have a book to keep you company yoi. Would you like that?” You nodded, grateful for Marco’s mercy.

[twig-tea]

Love in the Big City Part 3: Kylie Recontextualizes Everything

I have waffled all week about what to write about this chapter. There have been some great essays about HIV and the stigma in Korea by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings here, as well as how antiretrovirals and pre-exposure prophylactics work and when they were available from @wen-kexing-apologist here. This context was all critical to understand everything Young doesn’t talk about in this section of the book. 

I’ve been stuck on so many parts of this section of the book. The way stigma holds people back from care, from maintenance, from life-saving treatment and knowledge, from understanding their condition and preventing them unnecessarily from living a full life, which @doyou000me had me thinking about with their comments about Young’s coping mechanisms of minimization and emotional distance that possibly worked in conjunction with the Korean government healthcare policies and social stigma to keep Young from being informed about his own condition. The way Young holds himself back from happiness, and how it’s so heartbreaking to watch him open up to it slowly in this section and then, as @my-rose-tinted-glasses wrote , he let the shame and self-loathing take control again. The way this relationship feels so real; @lurkingshan wrote so eloquently on how this section describes the details of a relationship as it started to settle. The relationship with Hyung was entirely ephemeral, in the liminal period of time between when Young was visiting his mother in hospital and before everything opened again for the day. There is so much that Young and Hyung never talked about–more than was obvious in chapter 2, because he never told Hyung about Kylie. In contrast, as @bengiyo pointed out, his relationship with Gyu-Ho started with honesty and was rooted in the physical presence of their apartment, which as a beautiful metaphor was grounded and improved slowly over time through the work they put into it but was also too small for them. 

I keep thinking about how Part 3 is bookended by Young disappointing Gyu-Ho with his absence. How he leaves him at the airport both times, thinking he’s doing Gyu-Ho a favour actually–he characterizes Gyu-Ho’s trip to Japan without him as much more fun, and he imagines Gyu-Ho’s future in Singapore will be better. In both cases, Gyu-Ho was only going because of Young, because Young wanted to, and Young planned it. But our narrator cannot get past seeing himself as something that brings Gyu-Ho down, and so he sabotages his own future. I feel for Gyu-Ho, being shepherded onto a plane alone when he was envisioning his future with the man he loved. It must have been devastating to be pushed away. 

This is not related to anything but I just love the detail of Young’s split lip and how he tastes blood when he kisses Gyu-Ho while drunk at the club and not yet knowing his name, and then panics, and we as readers don’t yet know why. Brilliant storytelling. 

I can’t stop thinking about how this reveal recontextualizes everything in parts 1 and 2. How the “incident that earned me a medical discharge” means Kylie was already in Young’s life as he took the engineering student he was seeing with him to get an STD check; as he was screamed at by an ex who prophesied that Young would get sick from being promiscuous and called him a ‘dirty rag that could never be cleaned’, which Young took with stoicism. I loved @bengiyo ‘s observation in his post linked above that Kylie’s presence likely coloured his reaction to Jaehee outing him to her fiance. 

Kylie was present as he watched his coffee be stolen by Hyung, when he thought about introducing Hyung to his mother, while he was wrestling with how Hyung (and, I think the narration makes clear, how he) was ashamed at how Young couldn’t ‘pass’ and was ‘obviously gay’, when he choked Hyung in his mother’s kitchen and it was seeing his tears on Hyung’s face that made Young let go. Kylie was part of him when he drank pesticide and tried to die, while he sat by his mother’s sickbed and had her head in his lap in the park, when he said “disease can turn anyone into a completely different person”, when he said he would “hope that she would die without having known.” 

Mostly, my brain keeps getting stuck on how familiar Young is to me. His choices, his self-loathing, his refusal to take anything seriously because at his core he’s terrified of facing what his reality means. And that fear ironically gets in the way of him understanding that his reality is not as scary as he thinks it is. He functions like he has to be alone, and so much of that comes from his internalized homophobia and his HIV diagnosis. He’s been told he’s dirty, something to be cleaned but irreparable, by so many people in different ways through his life. The man he claims as his greatest love barely even liked him as a person, and didn’t fully know him. I think that’s why he was able to feel more fully with Hyung, because in a way that relationship felt safer..Gyu-Ho, the person who knew all of him, and who wanted to build a life together with that complete and full knowledge of him, must have been terrifying, and I’m not surprised it felt easier to push him away than to fight for their future together. But it breaks my heart. 

There’s something rattling in my head about the T-aras that I don’t really know how to get out onto the page. In this chapter it’s revealed that the T-aras have been around the whole time, but they weren’t mentioned in parts 1 and 2. I think the fact that Young’s life feels more rounded, filled in with other people, and rich, than in parts 1 and 2 speaks to his emotional state in this part, as well as to how his time with Gyu-Ho wasn’t obsession but was more grounded in the mundane and the everyday. The T-aras themselves feel like familiar friends. Like with Hyung and JaeHee (at first), Young is drawn to people who he can remain emotionally distant from and who remain emotionally distant from him. People who will buy the story of “ruptured disc” for why he left military service early. People who joke about being poz and won’t ask questions and who hear the news about his new boyfriend as an ‘in’ to their favourite club. People who don’t take things seriously (or in Hyung’s case take things so seriously that Young can’t take him seriously). I was so glad to find out they existed because up to this point Young felt so isolated most of the time, with his world circling around one obsession in each part. But he had the T-aras the whole time; I’m choosing to read this as he just didn’t hold their importance to him in the same way in parts 1 and 2. As was already clear in the narrative but this makes even more obvious, Young’s isolation is not only self-inflicted but it’s in some ways a lie he tells himself to feel safer. He has friends, he just refuses to acknowledge their presence or importance, or to let them in to be more important, because he is so braced for being rejected for core parts of him that cannot be excised.

[attorney-anon]

Bug on the Windshield

One of my former bosses often said “sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug.”

The practice of law can be great for your self-esteem. A big win can make you feel like you could wrestle God and win. Even a small victory can make you feel like a rockstar and a genius. But the practice of law is also hard, and painful, and soul-crushing. It’s not a profession that easily allows for traditional coping mechanisms; even self-care is just an item on your list that has to be prioritized appropriately.

I went to court today. I was pissed, because I didn’t have time for the hearing due to multiple appellate briefs and a mandamus that all need to be drafted and filed in like a two-week time span, and it wasn’t supposed to be my hearing, but it wasn’t a big hearing. A discovery dispute and a motion to bifurcate a complicated child custody case form a straightforward divorce.

What happened, instead, is a surprise trial-by-ambush on the key issues in the child custody case that robbed my client of EVERYTHING. Over my objections that I had no notice that this was a trial. Over my objections that, because this was supposed to be a short legal-arguments-only hearing, my client wasn’t even THERE. Over my objections (supported by citations to authority) that opposing counsel was LYING about the law.

The court didn’t care. He just wants this case over and done with. He just wants this case off his docket so his stats look better, and this gets him what he wants faster.

When you lose, as an attorney, you have to practice a level of detachment. You can’t cry or scream, you can’t panic even as you’re trying to figure out what to tell your client who is going to lose her child out of nowhere. You have to keep calm and focus on each task at hand as it comes, even if that means explaining why this order needs to be worded differently in order to make things clear for you on appeal, because make no mistake you WILL be appealing. You have to be polite to the opposing counsel who’s only too happy to fuck your client out of a fair trial, because eventually you have to come back to this judge.

Once you leave the courtroom, you can cry in the car but then you have to keep moving. You have to go back to the office and get your next task done, because your other cases don’t stop existing just because one client’s life is in upheaval. You have to keep functioning no matter how many times you are asked to recap the whole shitshow for your boss and coworkers. You cannot tell them to leave you alone and let you process, because the grief you feel isn’t only yours and you owe your client a team that knows what’s going on.

Sometimes, you’re the bug on the windshield. And you don’t get to deal with that, not fully, until the work day is over and your tasks for the day are done.

But once the day is done, then you do have to take a breath and process. You do have to have a drink, read a book, watch your favorite show. Eat something that’s bad for you but that you love. Have the cry you couldn’t have because the drive back from the courthouse was too short. The evening after a hard loss, you cannot work late into the evening. You have to be something other than an attorney, something that fills you without taking just as much, if you want to survive being an attorney.

And then, tomorrow, you have to go back to work and fight the next fight.

[officialfoxsquadron]

shiny happy people

7.2k words | my ao3

rating: mature

cw: discussions of starvation and eating disorders, vomiting and emetophobia, general bad coping mechanisms for trauma

summary: Cassian Andor does not know Pazima Reynard, except to know that they are one and the same; cold, cruel and calculating spies. When the asocial woman-and Cassian's sometime barber-returns to Rebel Base with a fourteen-year-old girl, he finds himself wrestling with the realities of being young during wartime.

“Would you like to hear the news?”

K-2SO’s clipped voice, typically so flat and emotionless, sparkled with a bit of excitement. Cassian Andor, Rebel spy, was sick to death of news. The Rebel droids were worse gossips than the organic beings. Besides, his whole damn job was news and gossip.

“I am going to hear it anyway,” Cassian grumbled, flipping the switches for the landing cycle. Crait, the home of the new Rebel base (and, Cassian supposed, his home), was a desolate, salty planet. The surface ran red as soon as you stepped on it. It made him uneasy.

K prattled on, some nonsense about the Senate and who was sleeping with who and who died. No one Cassian knew or cared about. But he let the droid talk as he watched the Rebel base grow larger, a bloody wound on Crait’s salt-white flesh. 

“Oh, and Pazima Reynard is back at base. She is married to Wedge Antilles and has a sister now.”

That caught his attention. Not necessarily Pazima Reynard’s personal life-frankly, he didn’t give a fuck-but it did remind Cassian he needed a haircut.

“What did we bring back to trade?” He looked over his shoulder, making a quick mental intake. Booze, cigarras, nudie holos, food from off-world–some combination of those would be enough to trade for a trim. He had not looked in the mirror since stitching up a blast wound back on Daiyu, but he knew that his hair had grown far too long. It fell sometimes, greasy and dark, in front of his eyes. 

A shame I cannot see the back of my own head, Cassian mused. Then I could just take care of it myself, and be done with it.

“Perhaps something for the girl,” K suggested, his voice surprisingly light. “She is fourteen.”

Fourteen . He sniffed. What madness had possessed Pazima to bring a teenager into an army base?

He shot K a dark look. “I don’t care,” he declared.

“As you say.” The droid paused. “Do not worry, Cassian. They will send you away again soon enough.”

He grunted, but said nothing. The voice of some traffic controllers crackled onto his comms, and Cassian responded in kind. He landed the ship without incident, and braced himself for the next few weeks in the cesspool of doomed young people he called home.

“I brought you something to trade.” He held up a holotape, something he had found stashed away.

Pazima Reynard, tall, stern and statuesque, stood blocking the doorway to her bunkroom. He had not seen her for more than a year. He had almost forgotten how beautiful she was. Almost. Pazima, who wore her black hair in tight knots, complementing her angular face and tattooed copper skin, was not the type of woman to let you forget.

She eyed him skeptically, lifting an eyebrow. “You said whisky.”

“This is better. Music from before the Empire,” he said, stepping forward. He knew music was her great weakness. She snatched the tape from him, examining it.

“Where’d you get it?”

“Don’t remember.”

She sniffed, looking over the tape, and then down at him. “Fine,” she said haughtily, waving her hand and turning her back, “but only because you look pathetic, like a wet runyip.”

Cassian allowed himself to laugh and followed her into the bunkroom.

The bunkrooms on Crait are small, claustrophobic, dreary things, more like the prison cells on Narkina 5 than comfortable homes. At the very least, they had windows into the cavernous hallway, the artificial light providing a facsimile of normal family life. There was barely enough space for a chair and table, smushed into the back of the room. One of their four bunks was overflowing with junk. Above it sat Pazima’s new sister, curled into a ball and staring at him.

The girl was fourteen, according to K, but hunger had stunted her growth. She looked healthy enough now, if a bit pale, but Cassian saw the signs of past malnourishment. Limbs too short, skin covered in scars and stretched too taut, bones jutting like knives beneath her skin, threatening to pop at any moment. He was probably close to her age when he saw them in his own reflection, older still when he truly understood what it meant.

Still, he had grown into his looks. He wondered if she ever would. She bore a scar on one eye, red and angry and unsettling, making the pupil cloudy and gray. A shock of curly orange hair erupted from her head, messy and unkempt, falling to her shoulders.

A one-eyed ginger. What a catastrophe.

“Lottie,” Pazima said, gentler than he ever imagined her speaking, her deep voice the comforting rumble of thunder. “This is a colleague of ours, Cassian Andor.”

“Hello.” It came out shorter than he expected. It’s not that he disliked children, he just didn’t know what to do around them.

She blinked at him, then tilted her head, sizing him up like a fighter in the ring. Then, quick and quiet as a ghost, she scurried down the ladder and out of the room.

Pazima sighed wearily, watching her sister flash by in a red blur, shutting the door. “She hasn’t been talking much,” she said absently. “We thought she made some progress, but-” She turned to him abruptly. “You don’t care. Sit.”

She was right, of course. He respected Pazima, which was kind of like caring for someone, when respect is all you are allowed to feel.

“Colleague?” he teased lightly.

“What would you call it?”

He pondered that. “Hunters who sometimes chase the same prey.”

She grinned with approval. “Sit,” she insisted, gesturing again to her chair.

He breathed in and out, steadying himself. As much as he needed to be on base, to check in and regroup with his allies, he hated it. It was too banal, too domestic, too structured.

Relax, Cassian. It’s just hair.

Maarva cut his hair once. She was very bad at it, chopping roughly and chiding him to sit still through gritted teeth. Eventually, she gave up and outsourced it to an old man down the road. His name was Jossam, and he always had a sweet for him.

He sat in the chair and allowed Pazima to wrap an old blanket around his shoulders.

“Where did you learn to do this?” he asked, something he is sure he has asked her before.

“I went to an all-girls school,” she replied, as if that explained everything.

“Is that true?”

She snorted. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

The scissors snipped at his hair lightly. It was uncomfortable, yet somehow relaxing to have someone touch him so matter-of-factly. Not insistent or passionate, like a lover, nor rough and feral like an enemy. The kind of touch that just is , and it’s enough to lull Cassian into a kind of madness.

His eyes fixed on the empty bunk where Pazima’s sister once was. Was he ever so young?

How old were you when you first killed someone? Do you even remember?

“I didn’t take you for the type,” he said quietly.

Pazima groaned like a teenager. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Judge.” Her eyes narrowed in warning when he turned to meet them.

“I’m not judging, I just thought-“ Thought you were too cold-hearted for that. That’s what we are, after all. Automatons made of stone and ice, sent to kill without thought, without question. He focused forward again, looking at the door. “Does she know what you are?”

“Of course she does, Cassian. Better than you .”

“And so what, so she will be-“

“Why do you care?”

It’s a sharp question, and a good one.

“I was a soldier too young.”

“So was I. I gave her a choice. I didn’t just take her.”

He woke up on Maarva and Clem’s ship with a deathly ringing in his head. Their voices, speaking frantically in hushed tones, grated on his ear. Worse, he couldn’t understand a thing they were saying-Galactic Basic was still harsh, discordant gibberish to him then.

I didn’t have a choice. 

Then again, Maarva would always say she didn’t have a choice either.

Pazima, ever the observant spy, snipped the scissors decisively. She twisted her mouth into the idea of a smile. 

“Perhaps we’re just getting old, Cassian. Bail Organa has brought his daughter to base.”

Yes, he knew that too. It was hard to miss the stalwart column of a girl standing next to her father, going from meeting to meeting in a pristine white dress, large brown eyes observant and calculating. 

“She isn’t much older than Lottie,” she suggested. 

She is looking for absolution, Cassian realized. Absolution from me.

He was sure he had woken up in the underworld that day. It was like they always told the younger children on Kenari, when the sun fell and the flickers of the campfire elongated their fingers into long shadows. Wander too far from the group, and you’ll end up in the world below ours. The one the off-worlders found when they dug too deep.

“Will they be my new allies? This…flock of teenage girls?”

“Believe it or not, Cassian, I wasn’t thinking of you when I found her.”

“Then what were you thinking?” There it is, the kill shot, the question Cassian really wanted to ask. He wanted to grab her and scream it in her face. What is it, that compels you to rip a child away from their home, teach them a new language, force them to fight for the galaxy?l

Pazima stopped, taken aback by his fervor, before stepping in front of him. The sound of her boots echoed on the cave floor. She gripped the arms of his chair, one, then another, her pair of scissors balled into a fist. Cassian felt himself leaning back, and watched as that facsimile of a smile twisted into something uglier, meaner, as she leaned forward, filling the empty space with herself.

“You’re in my home, Cassian.” Her voice was soft, but sharp, a velvet glove concealing a steel fist. The muscles in her long tattooed arms twitched in anticipation, as if her body itself hungered for a fight. She lifted an eyebrow, brown eyes delighting in his physical disadvantage. She was stronger, taller, and had him practically trapped beneath her. 

In other words, he was prey, and she the predator, deciding if she would devour him. If it was anyone else, any time else, Cassian would have reached for his blaster.

But regret slowed his hand. What was he doing? He hardly knew this woman, only that she was dangerous, and he had questioned her, threatened her, pushed his own past into her present.

“Mind your tone.”

It was an order. He nodded.

Quickly, and as if nothing had happened, her hands left the chair and she walked back behind him, trimming his hair again.

They passed a few moments of silence, enough for Cassian to continue wallowing in remorse. She takes another strand of hair, and before cutting, decides to speak.

“Do you remember the Jedi?” she asked.

What a strange question. He had been alive when the Jedi were active-or so he thought. Kenari was far away from such things, and the idea that there was any sort of power in the galaxy besides the Empire was a distant fantasy. 

“No.”

“They took children away from their parents. There was a Jedi general in the Clone Wars who was twelve .”

“I didn’t know you were religious.” 

“I’m not. I just remember.” Pazima ran two of her fingers through Cassian’s hair, snipping away again. “This galaxy has always forced children to grow up too fast. With me, at least she will have steady meals and a bed.”

“She will be in a war.”

“She always was.”

The conversation lulls, and the monotonous sound betrays the electric charge in the air. Both of them knew what was happening; they were digging and digging, getting dangerously close to something honest.

Neither of them liked honesty. Honesty is what kills you. Lies kept you alive.

Yet honesty was irresistible, a gravitational pull. How many times had Cassian seen it–one truth spilled out, then another, then another, until you were weeping, telling your life story to someone you barely knew? How many times had he exploited it?

Pazima knew that too. They were liars, both of them.

When she spoke again, he wasn’t surprised to find the truth pouring out of her. Her voice was distant, quiet, as if it came from someplace far away.

“You and I won’t be alive to see the galaxy we hope to build. Surely you understand that.”

“Yes.” Wars were fought by teenagers, twenty-somethings. Pazima was in her thirties, Cassian not far behind. Young by peacetime standards, practically elderly in wartime. The clock had never ticked louder.

“What are we doing it all for, if not for them?”

That’s just love. Nothing you can do about that.

“I suppose you’re right,” Cassian admitted, his eyes on the empty bunk. “But I don’t remember ever being so young.”

Pazima sighed, long and weary, following Cassian’s gaze.

“Neither do I.”

A week goes by, maybe more, and the next time he passes the Reynards’ bunkroom, it’s a muffled roar of sound.

Cassian can’t help himself. Ever the spy, he slips into the shadows and looks through their window, curious at what he will find.

Wedge Antilles, Pazima Reynard’s husband, was the very model of a Rebellion pilot. Young, cocky, brash, and handsome. The type of man other men with too much adrenaline love to idolize. Not exactly who he thought Pazima would go for, but then again, he barely knew her.

He observed Wedge with an attempt at cool disinterest, though in truth, he found himself jealous at the easy way he flitted in and out of the window’s view, the winning smiles he gave the men gathered around him.

Laughter rose and fell, and then rose again, the sharp noise growing louder as Wedge opened and closed the door.

“Lottie! Where the hell have you-” Cassian made to scurry off, but it was too late. Wedge’s eyes locked onto his. “Oh, hello. Cassian Andor, right?” He stuck his hand out. “Wedge Antilles. Pazima said she cut your hair.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” he said, shaking his hand, searching quickly for an escape.

“This what you like to do?” Wedge said, flashing that smile and stepping forward, a bit of a sway in his walk. “You like to watch?”

Cassian snorted, the side of his mouth twitching despite himself. “I am an intelligence officer. It’s my job to be curious.”

“Well, you’re welcome to join us.” He gestured to the door with a beer bottle in his hand. “It’s a tight squeeze, but you’ll fit.”

“That’s alright,” he said. “Crowds make me uncomfortable.”

“Suit yourself,” Wedge said, shrugging. His manner was easy, but Cassian saw something in the young man’s eyes, a fierce intelligence. He knitted his thick black brows together, darting his eyes up and down the hallway. “Have you seen Pazima’s sister, by the way? Short, redheaded, one-eyed. Very hard to miss.”

“No.”

“Worth a shot.” He clapped Cassian on the shoulder, before pointing a finger at him. “Don’t be a stranger. I’m serious.”

Cassian wanted to curl up in a hole. This was exactly the type of social interaction he hated. What an embarrassing thing it was, to need people.

Still, he nodded. Wedge seemed to be a worthy ally. 

“Good night, Captain Antilles.”

“Night.”

The door closed, and Cassian walked away, determined to get back to his ship and sleep alone. He hated it here-all of them crammed into bunks carved into a cave, He longed to get a mission, any mission, fly with K2 somewhere shady and seedy and terrible, away from this prison of domesticity.

A sound from the shadows pricked at his ears, pulling him out of his reverie.

He knew the sound of drunken retching far too well, and someone was heaving, little gasps coming in between deep eruptions of sound.

He wanted to turn away, but something told him to stay. He should at least try to be a part of a community again.

“Hello?” he called, stepping towards the sound. “Do you need a medic?”

Two eyes peeked out from the shadows, the cold artificial light causing them to sparkle like stars.

Then Lottie Reynard stumbled forward, and promptly vomited onto Cassian’s shoes.

“What the fuck,” he groaned, shaking his foot and recoiling in disgust.

The girl blinked, scanning Cassian’s face as she wiped spittle from her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked truly pathetic, gripping the neck of a liquor bottle with white knuckles, chunks of vomit intertwined in her ragged red curls.

He almost pitied her, until he found himself slammed against the wall, a shriek ringing in his ears and a blade digging into his skin.

This is what you get for being kind, Cassian. Puke on your shoes and a knife at your throat.

He looked down at her, this tiny, savage animal.

“I could reach for my blaster and kill you,” he whispered. 

Her eyes flitted towards the weapon, then back to him, jutting her chin. “You would hesitate,” she reckoned, eyes narrowing as she scanned his face. Pazima said she didn’t talk, and perhaps it was better that way. Her voice was squeaky, so high-pitched it was almost grating, with a nearly indecipherable accent. “You are the type of man who hesitates to kill a child.”

“Am I?” He looked down at the weapon at his throat. Its wavy edges were sharp and fine, the blade decorated with etchings he could not quite see. “Your knife is very beautiful,” he said calmly. The tip pricked the skin of his neck, drawing blood. He groaned and held his hands in the air, a gesture of peace, but his irritation was clear. “I am only trying to get back to my ship.”

“You startled me,” she said in a much smaller voice, before withdrawing and sheathing the knife against her thigh.

“You shouldn’t draw a weapon on strangers here. Not everyone is as kind as me.”

“You kill children,” she hissed, closing the gap between them once again. He could smell her sickly-sweet breath, see how her mismatched eyes shook with nervous energy.

He leaned closer, keeping his voice even.

“So do you.”

That was enough to get her to back away, working her jaw, wiping her mouth again before taking a swig from her bottle. 

It was jarring to watch a teenager drink from a bottle like one born to it. His heart, stupid thing, spoke before his brain. “I was like you once.”

The girl scoffed, face twisting in disgust as she rolled her eyes, tossing her messy hair. “So what does that make you? My daddy?” She said the last two words with such mocking disdain, and he found himself laughing in spite of himself. 

“I am too young for that.” I hope. “I meant I was very hungry once. Did you eat something today?”

“I-” She blinked, shaking her head, turning into herself. “No. I forgot.”

“You should,” he said. He pulled a ration bar from his pocket. “Especially if you plan on drinking half a bottle of gin.”

She looked at the bottle in her hand, before taking the bar and devouring the way only starving children could, crumbs falling onto her shirt. “I shouldn’t, I know, I just…I don’t sleep so good anymore.”

“So well.”

“What?”

“So well. Basic wasn’t my first language either.”

“Oh, great. A Basic lesson as well as a fucking lecture.” Her words slurred together, and she slumped against the wall.

Cassian shook his head, getting up. “Good night. I’ll tell Wedge where you are.”

“No-wait, Cassian.” She reached out, trying to tug at his jacket, his leg, before falling and stumbling again. He turned around.

“I’m sorry,” she said, something startlingly honest and pleading in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that. I think I’ve forgotten how to trust people,” she added quietly, folding further into herself.

“That’s alright,” he said, as gently as he possibly could. “I have too.”

Quicker than lightning, she stood up and swiped at the blood on his neck, collecting it onto the tip of her finger. He watched her, stunned, as she observed it dripping on her fingers, illuminated by moonlight.

Then, she closed her eyes, swaying just a bit, before nodding.

“You will die on a beach, in the arms of the woman you love,” she said, quiet and assured. She opened her eyes and smiled, a sincere attempt at comfort. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

She shook the blood off of her hands and disappeared. They never spoke again.

The years have changed them all.

Cassian is still sullen, but then there is Jyn Erso, all fiery hope and determination, and she pierces him straight to the core. She makes the world come alive again, and with her, Cassian feels that there might be a future. Not for him, maybe, but for someone.

Scarif is a beach planet, and there is very little time for goodbyes.

Pazima Reynard is not a part of the Scarif mission. Whoever she is off of base, on base she is a mechanic. Even with a welding mask over her face, she was easy to spot. Her hair was now dyed a bright greenish-blue, locs piled onto her head, adding even more height to her tall frame. Sparks flew around her as she worked, illuminating her tattooed skin.

He was not a loud man, but he called her name. She lifted the mask, running her sweat and oil-slick hands into a towel.

“Your hair is very bright,” he observed.

“Cassian.” Her face remained passive, but her voice was rich with warmth. “Got bored on a stakeout.”

“A stakeout? Funny place for a mechanic to be.”

“Yes, well,” She abandoned her thought, crossing her arms. “I hear you’ll be leaving soon.”

“Keep it quiet.” he said, voice dropping to a semi-serious, conspiratorial whisper. “If we need it, can we rely on you to rally the pilots?”

“Of course. I’ve roped Bail in as well. You’ve got people here rooting for you.”

He took a look around Rebel Base, maybe for the last time. This one, built out of an abandoned temple on Yavin IV, is much better than Crait. There’s something freeing about Yavin, like the Rebels have carved out a slice of the jungle, hidden away just for them. For a year or so, it felt like nothing could touch them.

Then Jyn Erso, and the Death Star. 

Time waits for no one. He won’t inherit the galaxy they’re building.

I’ll miss this, he thought, surprising himself. I’ll miss being on the outside of this, the great concentric circles of people, orbiting around each other. He had not had a home for a very long time, but Rebel Base was as close as he could get. 

A chorus of shrieking giggles interrupted his thoughts. He turned to see Lottie Reynard laughing with a Mirilan medic, the two child-women passing cards between them and the droid mechanic K loved, some teenage boy with thick glasses. 

Their eyes met, very briefly, before Lottie ducked her head down, hiding the bright pink blush creeping up her skin.

Her words have rattled around in his head. They were easy enough to pass off as the drunken, nonsense ramblings of a half-mad fourteen year old.

Then he met Jyn, and saw the Death Star’s destruction.

“Sorry,” Pazima said absently, putting a hand on her hip. “I have tried to tell her she laughs like a Kowakian monkey-lizard. You can imagine how that went.”

Cassian shook his head. Truthfully, he took some kind of comfort in the fact that despite everything, teenage girls will always giggle too loud.

Then it hits him. Lies require time. The truth is something immediate, something to do when there’s no time left.

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “You’ve done a good job with her.”

It was like watching a mask come off, seeing the confusion on Pazima’s features. Her brows knitted together, and then a smile. She had dimples when she smiled. He had never noticed before.

“I thought you didn’t care,” she said, after a moment.

“I don’t,” he said. “So you can trust me. A neutral observer. A former skeptic, even.”

She crossed her arms, shaking her head, looking at Lottie, then her boots, tapping her foot absently. “Well, glad you’re convinced,” she mumbled. “I’m still not.”

“I don’t think parents ever think they do a good job,” he said. “My mother thought I had too many women, too many secrets. She still loved me, though. And that was enough.”

Pazima hummed, and he watched as she looked over at her sister again, before turning to him, sighing deeply.

“I’m not good at this kind of talk,” she admitted.

He shook his head, trying to dismiss her worries. “Then I’ll let you get back to work. But…” He looked at her, really looked, noting the deep-set inner corners of her eyes, her flat, straight nose, her full lips, her high cheekbones, her square jaw, the freckles dotting her cheeks. He let himself take in the sight of a supernaturally beautiful woman, for no other reason than he could.

“Can I ask you for a favor? You’re the only one I can trust with it.” He reached for her hand, not caring about the oil and grease staining them, only caring for a desperate moment of connection.

If Pazima was confused before, she was even more so now, shocked at his sudden display of emotion.

“Cassian-“

“There is a woman, her name is Kerri. She’s from Kenari. She’d be twenty-nine, maybe thirty by now. If…if you hear about her doing whatever it is you do, look into it for me, okay? She’s probably dead, but someone has to.”

Pazima squeezed his hand, nodding like one taking a solemn vow. “I will.”

Lottie has always been an awful sailor, which is one of her more irritating qualities.

Pazima had thought, when she first found her, that she would take to it. She had hoped the ocean could be a mother to Lottie, the way it is to her. But she didn’t-her fingers so deft with a blade were clumsy with a knot, and she couldn’t remember half of the things she needed to.

Just follow the wind, Pazima. Chart your course, but follow the wind.

It was a rare opportunity for them, this trip to Ethamaia. One day, Wedge and Jax had announced proudly that they had swindled Wedge’s own parents out of the place. One of their ridiculous schemes, but it had paid off. Like so many times before, the Rebellion splintered after the battle of Yavin, scattering and hiding until a new, safer base could be found.

But for the first time in many years, this didn’t feel like hiding. It felt like resting. It felt like exhaling.

They needed this, fuck , did they need it. The battle of Scarif was a bloodbath, a litany of dead allies, dead friends. Alderaan was worse. And then the battle of Yavin, a desperate last stand against total annihilation…

Bail Organa used to tell her this was a war of a thousand cuts. Well, Bail, she wanted to ask him, do you still think that will work? Because we’ve all been cut a thousand times, and yet here we are, bleeding out.

Of course, Bail was dead now, blown up by a superweapon, and she could hardly rage against his nineteen-year-old daughter, showing up to command armies in her soiled white dress.

She exhaled and looked out at the sea, bundling rope in her hands. This was the last part of her past she allowed in her life. She was someone else once, someone with parents and brothers, and the sea was a part of her very blood. No matter how much she tried to forget–and she did–the sea still remembered. It still called to her, the vast expanses of blue, broken up only by white, sparkling sands. She looked over at her sister. She perched on the rail of the ship, swinging her legs absently as she smoked. Did she pick up that habit on Coruscant, or from Pazima? She couldn’t remember, and had never cared to stop it. You had to deal with the war somehow, and it was either that or the bottle or bad, weird sex. Pazima had tried all three, and found a cigarra the least destructive.

There was something striking about Lottie-not always the best quality in an assassin, Pazima would admit, but it drew her in. Her face was that of a brutalized doll. It was heart shaped and sweet, with something bullish about it too—a missing eye, a crooked, broken nose, round cheeks that went from cute to jowly depending on her mood. The sun was setting, which made her orange-red hair more brilliant. A bit of fire amongst the endless waves. It was her one truly beautiful feature, and Pazima watched as it twisted, blown by the salty sea air.

She is a woman now, Pazima lamented. Lottie has been for a while, but sentiment-stupid thing-stopped her from seeing clearly.

Cassian Andor once asked her why she had taken Lottie in. The answer still eluded her. There were some ready made ones, of course. Lottie was a sad young girl who Pazima helped to safety; the sob story she gave the Rebellion. Lottie was prodigiously talented at killing with a finely tuned survival instinct, able to move between man and woman, innocent and cunning in an instant; the reasons she gave Wedge, and the reasons why Lottie made such a good assassin.

But none of them sufficed. None of them were right.

There was an idea the Creidye had, the lower-level Coruscanti cult that had spawned Charlotte Reynard into the galaxy. They thought families could be forged, built by durasteel knives and blood bonds. Pazima despised most of their ideology, their fanaticism, their slavish devotion. But the Creidye had helped her when she needed it. She owed them a debt, like it or not.

So when she found herself in the lower levels, after a decade away from the planet that raised her, and found it filled with feral children, what choice did she have?

“Stop looking at me.” Lottie had eyes in the back of her head sometimes–something Pazima had trained her to have, an acute awareness of her surroundings. She felt a blush of pride at her sister’s perception.  “Or at least tell me what you’re thinking about.”

“Just thinking we’re the same, you and I.”

“Oh?” She turned to her, exhaling smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Well, I would think so, we’re sisters.”

Pazima snorted out a laugh. A secret smile passed between them.

Lottie spoke again, hopping onto the deck with a dancer’s flair. “Cassian Andor said the same thing once.”

She crossed her arms. “That you’re sisters?”

“That he and I were the same.”

“Huh.” She was fairly sure Cassian held a personal grudge against Lottie for existing. The things you learn after people die. She took the cigarra from her sister’s delicate fingers and inhaled, before croaking out a response. “I didn’t know you talked to him.”

“I didn’t. I put a knife to his throat once.”

“ Charlotte! ”

“I was drunk, it wasn’t a good decision,” Lottie shrugged, as if that was an excuse.

Pazima pinched the bridge of her nose, inhaling the cigarra again, feeling the smoke choke at her lungs. “Please tell me this was an isolated incident.”

“If it wasn’t, one of us would’ve died a lot earlier,” Lottie pointed out.

“That-” Pazima exhaled, in and out, attempting to find patience. It was a hard thing to find around Lottie, even harder when she was right about something. “You are aggravating.”

“Yes.” She paused, blinking. “But you have to admit it’s kind of funny.”

“I once was under Imperial torture nonstop for a week. Guess what I admitted?” She bent over, curling her lip in triumph. “Nothing, little sister.”

Lottie blinked, taking the cigarra from her. “Only you could find a way brag about surviving Imperial torture.”

Do you know why I chose you, Pazima? His voice, the Fox assassin that had taught and trained her, the one she had held in her arms as he died, rose from the whirlpool of memory. Because you, dear one, can endure.

“Just trying to impart some wisdom. A lesson for you.”

“I’m bored with lessons.” Lottie slouched onto the side of the railing, tossing her hair. She could be quite glamorous when she wanted, curls of red hair and curls of smoke intertwining, a budding femme fatale.

She could also be supremely annoying.

How many times had Pazima heard that particular complaint? Trying to teach her to read was the worst. It’s so booooo-ring, Pazzy. All the letters switch up and dance in my mind.

“You will be the only Fox left after I die,” Pazima said. The Fox, an ancient line of assassins, reduced now to two women on a boat. The history of whatever they were was gone. “Someday, you’ll miss my boring lessons.”

“No, that’s not right,” Lottie said, scrunching her nose and shaking her head. “We’re both meant to bear witness.”

There she was, the priestess, spouting inane prophecies. Lottie saw time differently. They all did, the Creidye, giving up individual Force sensitivity for something different, something communal. Something borne of a world with no moon and no sun and no seasons. Something kept hidden and locked away. Something even the Jedi feared. Something that it took an entire city-planet to bury.

How does one stop the tide , Pazima wondered. How does one stop the rain?

“You have to stop saying odd shit, Lottie. Especially when you’re not around me.”

“Luke says odd shit,” Lottie pouted, tossing the stubbed cigarra with deadly accuracy to a trash can.

Pazima groaned, throwing her head back. Luke this and Luke that. He was Lottie’s most recent obsession, the Jedi descended from the very heavens to save them all. 

“Luke blew up the Death Star.” And he’s a man and a fucking Skywalker, she wanted to add. Two advantages we both lack.

“Everyone remembers the Jedi more than the Coruscanti,” Lottie said.

“He’s as green as they come,” she countered. Greener . “He’s from the Outer Rim, things are different there. And you’re not just Coruscanti.” Pazima smirked. “I’m sure you tell him quite a story about your homeworld.”

“And what of it?” Lottie hissed. “Am I forbidden from even speaking of them now?”

Pazima scoffed, but shook her head. This was the hardest thing to articulate to her, the kind of  wisdom that only came with age. Pazima was old by Rebel standards-thirty-five-but so damn young compared to real people. 

The things Lottie had survived created only two things. Cynic, and zealot. Lottie had latched onto religion, despite Pazima’s objections. Now this kid, this son of Skywalker…

This is a war for the zealots now, fought by idealistic, traumatized teenagers. She looked up at the stars, just beginning to wink at her as the sun dipped below the horizon line. She found the light of Alderaan, still blazing bright, a beacon from a better time.

Endure, Pazima, endure.

“You are still dreaming of a world that does not exist.” Or maybe it did once. Perhaps the brilliant under-levels of Coruscant, with its boundless love and fiery magic and theatrical trickery, the one Pazima knew filled Lottie’s head, perhaps it still existed, burning alongside Alderaan.

“You don’t like Luke,” she observed, tilting her head.

“My personal feelings have nothing to do with it,” Pazima said, grateful for the change in topic. “He’s dangerous, we’d all do well to remember that.”

“Yeah, but he’s kind,” Lottie insisted. “Like Cassian.”

“Yes,” Pazima admitted. Which made him all the more unpredictable. What happens when the kindness burns away, and only the ashes and his raw power remain? He’s already killed millions, they just happened to be on the wrong side. 

Perhaps someday I will be done with grief , she thought. She could have all the time in the galaxy, and it still wouldn’t be enough to list those she had lost. It’s hardest to mourn someone like Cassian, someone who she barely knew yet knew better than anyone. They were too similar, the two of them, too intense and brooding.

Cassian was giddy when he smiled, like a little boy. It was so rare and it always made Pazima’s heart stop for a very brief moment. She did not love him, she hardly knew him. Yet it was enough to remind her of all she had lost.

“Why did Cassian say you were the same?”

“I dunno,” Lottie shrugged, voice quiet. “Something about being hungry.”

“Hm.” Lottie had been hungry, that was true enough. The Creidye were rich in revolutionary ideas and dusty legends, but very poor in any real resources. She hadn’t known Cassian was hungry. But then again, she never asked. Pazima had long ago learned to live with regrets, to let them wash over her like waves.

“Everyone always sees what they want in me,” Lottie muttered. “No one ever sees me for me.”

Her brow furrowed. Her sister was as prone to fits of melancholy as she was to vague prophecies. As far as Pazima was concerned, one had as little value as the other. She couldn’t have Lottie fall into despair, any less than she could have her go mad.

“I see you.” She petted a hand over her sister’s hair. Pazima knew she was bad at this. She was too direct, too cold, all of the warmth burnt out of her long ago. 

It’s a wonder Lottie’s only a chain-smoker.

“No,” Lottie said, tracing a finger over a scar on her arm. “No, you don’t.” 

A small crack formed in Pazima’s heart. I’m sorry, I’m sorry , she wanted to say. I hope I gave you enough time to be young.

Then Lottie shrugged, easy and languid, so much like Wedge–the warm brother and father Pazima never quite could be, the one Lottie so desperately needed. “That’s okay. I don’t think I see you clearly either.”

Pazima huffed out a laugh, relieved that the gloomy spell seemed to have passed. 

“By design,” she said. “A blank, beautiful slate, for idiots to see what they want.”

“Are you saying I’m an idiot?”

She wrapped an arm around her sister, pulled her to her, and kissed the top of her head.

“Yes.”

She stood up, walking over to where she had set up a little holotape player. Pazima was done talking. How foolish she had been, so many years ago, thinking spycraft would be all blasters and fast ships and fabulous dresses. It was mostly just talking, navigating the asteroid fields of wit and words and agendas. 

At the very least , she thought, looking over at Lottie, she’s better at that than I am.

She thumbed through her box of tapes, finding the one she was searching for.

Cassian had swindled her out of a haircut for it. She had high rates–after all, along with being the best mechanic and the best shot in the Rebellion, she was the best, and for a while the only, hairdresser. Still, she had let him pay with just this one little holotape, big brown eyes, and a sob story. 

Your enemies must think you are strong. Only you, Pazima, can know you are weak.

“Cassian gave me this,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Lottie, holding the tape between two fingers. “On Crait, after we got back to the Rebellion from Laakteen.”

Lottie scrambled to her feet, snatching the tape from Pazima’s hands, wrinkling her nose as she read the title. “Chaos Theory by Senators of Rhythm. What is this, jizz? Gonkrock?”

“Nah, more…electro-twang, I’d call it, but a little funkier than that. I never thought this would’ve been Cassian’s thing.”

“The kind of music you used to sing?”

Pazima smiled, allowing herself a bit of wistfulness. “No, little sister. But a good kind of music nonetheless.”

“Won’t the neighbors hear?” Lottie asked. They had docked on a little inlet, far enough from any real trouble, but still close enough to see the tops of the shell-white mansions peeking over the horizon line

She smirked. On Ethamaia, their neighbors were arms dealers and Imperial swine.

“Fuck ‘em.” she declared, and Lottie giggled giddily. 

Pazima could’ve admonished Lottie for the laugh-it was loud and wild, much like her, and certainly too attention-drawing for any assassin-but how could she? If there was anything that drew the sisters together, that drew all Coruscanti together, it was music. 

Pazima wasn’t a Coruscanti in the way her sister was. She wasn’t born under the city, nor even in one of the skyscrapers of the wealthy. Her home planet, Xuhiri, was vast and blue and sparse in a way someone like Lottie could only imagine. But like all of the female scions of great noble houses, Pazima was shipped off to Coruscant to learn how to smile and please, to host dinner parties and flatter the egos of wealthy men. It was in that great orchestra of a city, a symphony of speeder horns and conversation, that she first knew what love was.

Love was the sound of a Bith soprano at the Galaxies Opera House. A street busker strumming their double viol on the streets of Uscru Entertainment district, nodding and smiling as Pazima tossed a credit their way. And love, well, of course it was the Creidye performance troupes, emerging from the lower levels, soaking up the meager sun as they beat their heavy drums, their long hair swaying in time with the music and their dancers twirling their swords, the blades running over scarred skin and somehow never drawing blood.

She pressed play on the holotape and closed her eyes. She heard the familiar beat of a song long forgotten, a drum kit cuing in the singer and the backing band.

Her sister was already fidgeting in time with the music when Pazima reached out her hand, as if the music coursed through her very blood.

She took her hand gladly, and Pazima spun her sister around, watching her beautiful red hair twirl around her.

Dancing with her, on the deck of this ship that was somehow theirs, feet remembering steps she had learned long ago on Coruscant, to the music given to them by a dead man, Pazima couldn’t help but feel like this was all a dream. It was too nice, too sweet. The laughter came to her unbidden, flowing like a stream from her belly to her breath.

She watched Lottie, seventeen and hopelessly alive. Their two bodies moved in time as they danced, one scarred, one tattooed, both wearing their histories on their skin.

She felt again that prick of guilt, the one that threatened to consume her, the one Cassian had found so long ago, when Lottie was still half-mute. She was dancing now, and Cassian was dead.

There was no room for guilt, not anymore. The cause was still a hopeless one when Pazima brought Lottie to base. That had all changed now, thanks to the sandy-haired Jedi’s son from Tatooine.

He could win them the war. And Lottie, well…

Pazima sent a silent prayer to the waves.

If she dies, let her die young. Let her become a martyr and stay young and wild and beautiful forever.

And please, please, please, let me die before her.

[local-lesbrarian]

Lilith here. So...Cass just dragged something dangerous off to somewhere far away, and had to go with it to keep it from coming back. A manifestation of some of our worst impulses. With big claws. Thought we got over them, but I guess we just banished it to the woods. Or maybe ran away from it, and it found us again a week ago. Cass has been fighting it off and on since then, keeping it from hurting us, sometimes trying to negotiate or lay down rules, but it doesn't seem to want anything except maladaptive catharsis.

Well, a little while ago, she must have been resting at a bad time, because it got past her guard. It's fronted before, but always under watch, and this time it had full control of the body. I can't fight like Cass can. It hurt us. All because we got overstimulated and it has no other coping mechanisms. So after another round of failed negotiation, Cass tried to kick it out, but that didn't work either. Last I saw of them, she was wrestling it down into an ocean trench.

She promised she'd be back. I think she's waiting for it to tire, or some other sign that we can relax. I can still feel both of them, distantly, but I'm trying not to call Cass back early even though I feel incomplete without my closest partner. The rest are here, but...

Fuck, okay. I called her back. I didn't mean to

But you wanted to. It's okay, pup. I couldn't be without you, either. So that didn't work. It followed me back. It is PISSED. Pacing out at the edges of our headspace. Stalking like a predator. I think it really hates me because it knows I'm stronger than it. Even when I'm this fucking exhausted. Goddammit, I don't know what we're supposed to do about this. I thought it was getting better--slowly--but then it hit us like that. It's upset that we don't throw things or break things...like...we have before. It doesn't care that we'd drive people away and be alone. It wants what it wants. And I don't know how to reason with something that says "Fuck reason" to the prospect of it. Doesn't seem like it even wants to be loved. I hope we're all wrong about that, including itself, because I don't know how else we integrate it. I'm so fucking tired. I'll never stop fighting when needed, but I'm so fucking tired of these fucking psychic duel ass confrontations with a problem we made. --Cass

[gcthvile]

Brixton Thompson

"My father is the worst man alive

and I'm his only son."

Name: Brixton Thompson

Age: 20

Height: 6'2

Sexuality: unlabeled

Powers: mind control (the ability to control another person's mind through literal verbal commands and make them completely obedient to him)

Backstory

Brixton's tale begins with a dark legacy intertwined with the infamous Kilgrave, the man with the power to control minds with a mere whisper. Born to this villainous figure and an unwitting victim, Brixton's life was ensnared in a web of manipulation and despair from the moment he took his first breath.

From a young age, Brixton exhibited signs of inheriting his father's cursed ability. His innocent commands to play or be comforted twisted the wills of those around him, leaving a trail of unwitting subjects in his wake. But unlike Kilgrave, whose control was wielded with callous intent, Brixton recoiled from the realization of his power's potential for harm.

Growing up under Kilgrave's watchful eye was a suffocating experience. The weight of his father's expectations bore down on Brixton, a constant reminder of the dark path laid out before him. Kilgrave, ever disappointed by his son's reluctance to embrace his villainous legacy, sought to mold Brixton into his image—a ruthless manipulator capable of bending the world to his will.

Despite his inner turmoil, Brixton yearned for his father's approval, a longing that drove him to suppress his own moral compass in a desperate bid to please Kilgrave. He found himself committing acts of cruelty and coercion under his father's command, each action a betrayal of his own values.

But beneath the surface, a spark of defiance smoldered within Brixton. He harbored secret dreams of breaking free from Kilgrave's influence, of forging his own path untainted by his father's dark legacy. Yet, the fear of disappointing Kilgrave and facing his wrath kept him shackled to his fate.

As Brixton matured, so too did his resolve to resist his father's control. He his escape from Kilgrave's grasp, knowing that the road ahead would be fraught with danger and uncertainty.

Haunted

Even after breaking free from his father's immediate influence, the specter of Kilgrave continued to cast a long shadow over Brixton's life. The echoes of his father's commands lingered in the recesses of his mind, an indelible imprint that colored his every thought and action.

Haunted by the memories of the sinister deeds he committed under Kilgrave's control, Brixton found himself wrestling with guilt and self-doubt. Nightmares plagued his sleep, vivid visions of the past playing out in a cruel loop, a constant reminder of the darkness he sought to escape.

The fear of inadvertently inheriting Kilgrave's malevolence tormented Brixton, driving him to question every impulse and decision. He became hyper-aware of the potential harm he could inflict with his powers, tiptoeing on the edge of paranoia to ensure he never became a mirror image of his villainous father.

The psychological scars ran deep, affecting Brixton's ability to trust and form meaningful connections. Afraid of being a danger to those he cared about, he kept others at arm's length, creating an emotional distance that served as both a shield and a prison.

Even as Brixton attempted to forge a new identity, the legacy of Kilgrave's malevolence seemed inescapable. The world, too, was quick to judge him based on his infamous lineage, making every step toward redemption an uphill battle.

Personality

Brixton's upbringing under the oppressive influence of Kilgrave, coupled with the weight of his own internal struggles, left him emotionally stunted and withdrawn. From a young age, Brixton learned to suppress his emotions as a coping mechanism to deal with the trauma of his past. The guilt and shame he felt over his actions under Kilgrave's control led him to bury his feelings deep within himself, afraid of the darkness that lurked within.

Growing up in an environment where trust was a luxury and vulnerability was a weakness, Brixton struggled to form genuine connections with others. The fear of inadvertently manipulating or harming those around him kept him at a distance, leading to a profound sense of loneliness and isolation.

The weight of his past and the constant struggle to reconcile his own identity with the legacy of his father's villainy took a toll on Brixton's mental health. He battled with feelings of hopelessness and despair, trapped in a cycle of self-loathing and doubt that seemed impossible to break.

Brixton's lack of emotional expression and social isolation contributed to his shyness and awkwardness in social situations. He found it difficult to engage with others on a meaningful level, preferring the safety of solitude to the unpredictability of human interaction. Brixton's quiet demeanor stemmed from a reluctance to draw attention to himself, fearing the repercussions of revealing too much of his true self to the world. He became accustomed to keeping his thoughts and feelings guarded, speaking only when necessary and often choosing silence as a form of self-protection.

The intentional isolation imposed by Kilgrave, driven by his desire to mold Brixton into a mirror image of himself, further exacerbated Brixton's challenges in developing social skills. Brixton's restricted interactions with the outside world deprived him of the normal social experiences crucial for the development of healthy social skills. His father's control-fueled isolation left him ill-equipped to navigate the complexities of human relationships.

The absence of diverse social interactions during his formative years hindered Brixton's ability to understand social cues, norms, and dynamics. As a result, he found himself ill-prepared to engage with others in a manner that felt natural or relatable.

Having experienced the manipulative power of his own abilities, Brixton harbored a deep-seated fear of inadvertently manipulating those around him. This fear acted as a barrier, preventing him from fully engaging in social situations and creating a self-imposed isolation to protect others from his perceived threat.

Kilgrave's attempt to create a copy of himself through Brixton led to a fundamental distrust of others. Brixton struggled to discern genuine intentions from potential manipulations, making it challenging for him to form authentic connections based on trust and mutual understanding.

The lack of exposure to social settings and the fear of judgment due to his father's legacy fueled social anxiety in Brixton. He felt a constant pressure to conform to expectations and worried about the consequences of his interactions, making each social encounter a source of stress.

The saviour

The relationship between Brixton and Jessica Jones is one forged in the crucible of shared trauma and redemption. Jessica, having her own history with Kilgrave, becomes a beacon of understanding and support for Brixton as she rescues him from the clutches of his malevolent father. Jessica assumes the role of a guardian, breaking the chains of Brixton's past by liberating him from Kilgrave's influence. In doing so, she becomes a warden of sorts, not only safeguarding him from physical threats but also guiding him through the treacherous terrain of emotional recovery.

Their connection is rooted in the shared trauma of Kilgrave's manipulation. Both survivors of his mind-controlling powers, Jessica and Brixton find solace in the understanding that only someone who has faced such darkness can truly comprehend the depth of their pain.

Jessica, having navigated the aftermath of her own entanglement with Kilgrave, becomes a mentor to Brixton. She imparts wisdom gained from her experiences, helping him navigate the complexities of his powers, identity, and the challenging journey toward self-acceptance. Jessica's presence serves as a catalyst for Brixton's redemption and healing. Through her guidance, he begins to confront the shadows of his past, gradually learning to forgive himself for the actions committed under Kilgrave's influence and working towards a brighter, self-determined future.

Jessica provides unwavering support for Brixton, recognizing his struggle to break free from the legacy of his father. In moments of doubt and darkness, she stands by his side, offering a steadying presence that encourages him to face the demons within and emerge stronger. Their relationship evolves into a bond that goes beyond the conventional definitions of family. Jessica becomes a pillar of support, and together they form a found family—one forged not by blood, but by shared resilience and the determination to rise above the scars of their past.

Hobbies

Despite his isolation, Brixton manages to find solace and expression through hobbies that allow him moments of escape from the weight of his past. Having limited exposure to the outside world, might find solace in books. Reading becomes a means for him to explore different perspectives, escape into fantastical realms, and gain insights into human emotions and relationships.

Whether through drawing, painting, or other forms of artistic expression, Brixton channels his emotions into creative outlets. Art becomes a silent language through which he communicates the complexities of his inner world.

In the quiet moments of his isolated existence, Brixton might discover the power of music to evoke emotions and provide a sense of connection. He could develop a passion for playing an instrument or curate playlists that resonate with his feelings.

Brixton might immerse himself in self-education, using the resources available to him to learn about a variety of subjects. This intellectual pursuit becomes a way for him to broaden his understanding of the world beyond his confines.

Seeking an outlet for the pent-up frustration and a desire to reclaim control over his body, Brixton could take up martial arts or engage in physical training. This not only serves as a form of self-discipline but also empowers him in the face of his traumatic past.

Brixton may find solace in putting pen to paper, whether through creative writing, poetry, or journaling. This becomes a private space where he can express his thoughts, reflections, and aspirations.

Engaging in puzzles, whether they be intricate jigsaw puzzles, crosswords, or strategy games, could appeal to Brixton's analytical mind. These activities become a mental escape and a challenge that distracts him from the haunting memories.

well, hope you like him!

@missstrawbs2001 @jackiequick @blueboirick @cherrysft @meiramel @gaminggirlsstuff

[fierceawakening]

So It's been a long time since I watched any content critiquing HAES, but then I watched those YT vids the other day about piling on that one woman for celebrating that she'd lost enough weight she could wipe, which seems to me a perfectly normal thing to be excited you can do when you couldn't before

and it really struck me the way the creators who saw her as a sellout talked about intentional weight loss vs how I experience it. They seem to see it as a tool of control, a punishment, a way of denying yourself fun and mocking others for wanting fun

Where for me, it has always felt very different. Society surrounds me with the message that chocolate and sweets and processed foods will make me happy, will give a kind of high, will distract me from the sadness my mental illness wrestles with. Food is pleasure is distraction is it's not so bad really.

Trying to eat less of those foods feels, for me, not like "you are forbidden to like things," but rather like, "you are relying on the supposed pleasure properties of these items so much that they can't possibly make you feel as better as you need to feel. Try ingesting less of them and noticing with more care and thoughtfulness what is making you sad and why, and thinking of ways to directly confront that sadness that involve your mind, where the problem is, and not your body."

I don't doubt other people have other things going on but it's so weird to me. I watch them and I feel like "yeah! yeah! I want to be happy! CHOCOLATE!" and then the chocolate fails to make me happy and I just wonder what they're talking about.

Like, when I'm thinking less like that I'm losing weight, but I'm also generally... less upset, because I'm not hoping desperately that something I've already learned doesn't always work is going to work TODAY?

So the idea that it's social acceptance that is making me feel better is just... strange.

I have good coping mechanisms and bad coping mechanisms, and when I'm thinking more rationally I can see that that's not a great one, and that it's much more likely to work when I'm using it sparingly enough that tasty food tastes like a treat.

[hopeandharmonizing]

Pain Into Power

Briar + Ruby Rose ( @silveredruby​ )

“My dear girl,” Briar leans forward; hands grab around the ankles of leather combat boots to hold her weight, as if it all reaches out towards Ruby to get as close as possible, until barely below tipping right over, “Wherever did you get the notion that power equals anger? Do you believe monsters are the only creatures which have power?”

“Power from anger is toxic. Power doesn’t equal anger, but I won’t let it be what motivates me to take action.” Ruby’s attention shifted back to Briar, “...The misuse of that power is what slowly turns people into monsters. The motivations for using it… the intent and the impact... I don’t want to lose what makes me a person just for being strong. I’m here to protect and help people. Things will make me angry, but that won’t be my drive for my actions. It will be something else.”

Ruby’s close, so close, but a person cannot be whole without accepting both the light and the dark in themselves. Just as Briar accepts others in their entirety, she holds back nothing either. Always saying the words no one wants to hear, “…you’re wrong.”

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

“ Turn the pain into power. ”

An uncomfortable shudder crept up her spine when she thought about those words. Would it be a coping mechanism? Something to ease her hesitation?

“NO. I don’t want to.”

How was she supposed to do such a thing in a healthy manner? The girl couldn’t figure it out. Her last drive of agony let her commit an action that would be seen as heinous, even if it was to a psychopath. Her eyes were meant to be a power for preserving life. Had she known that a year ago perhaps that would have helped keep those lives from being lost to the beyond.

“I’m not going to become a monster just because I hurt. I’m not going to give myself the opportunity to.” She explained through gritted teeth. “I know what happens when I truly get angry. I know what I did and what I can do when I’m pushed…”

And Ruby had been pushed many, many times.

“I’m not going to let a breaking point, break me.”

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

Curiosity cants Briar’s head, eyes blinking, lips parting with a loose jaw as if to say something, but she thinks twice; shuts her mouth; lets Ruby continue. So far removed from when she once was just as young and angry, and with how the girl carries herself, sometimes it’s tough to remember how young she still is.

Sometimes it’s tough to know what goes on in that girl’s head at all.

Not that she has much room to talk.

Many times she says something, and someone hears another. Talking over their perspective solves nothing, reveals nothing, teaches nothing to either. She remains seated at a distance, ripped-skinny-jean covered legs criss-crossed on the floor, arms poking out from sleeves of a cropped t-shirt resting relaxed and open behind her, tail in a gentle curl around one side. Calm. Grounded. Watching. Listening.

Never pushing. …Well, sometimes pushing. Knocking up against. Nudging forward, more like. But never shoving. That’s how people hit those breaking points.

Shoulders square with pride for Ruby’s recognition and determination to avoid that boundary.

For all the young one has achieved, for how much she most certainly walks the right path, she still stumbles through the beginning, at the beginning. Getting angry is good, but only one step of the process. It fuels the fight, but only when recognized, wrestled with, honed, focused. Not raw and let lose to wreak havoc like a rebel without a cause. Is this how she’s been using her gifts thus far?

“My dear girl,” Briar leans forward; hands grab around the ankles of leather combat boots to hold her weight, as if it all reaches out towards Ruby to get as close as possible, until barely below tipping right over. Her chin tilts up to add just a little more length, and concern laces the lashes she looks through over her cheek,

“Wherever did you get the notion that power equals anger?” she shakes her head, black hair swaying along, “Let me ask this. Do you believe monsters are the only creatures which have power? …or are there others?”

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

There were many questions thrown her way, but Ruby intended to answer every one of them. Remembering how her own actions were fueled by rage caused her fists to clench and her gaze to shift away for a moment.

“Power from anger is toxic. Power doesn’t equal anger, but I won’t let it be what motivates me to take action.” Her attention shifted back to Briar, eyes a bit darker but still with a trademark gleam. “I’ve done a despicable thing out of fury, when I snapped and couldn’t take it anymore. When I wanted it to stop.”

The important fact of it being against someone who was a psychopath would have factored in very heavily to her argument, but Ruby decided that detail was, in fact, unimportant right now.

She continued with conviction. “Everyone has power. It’s up to them to find it, and to learn how to use it. It doesn’t come to everyone the same way… it’s like if and when people find their semblance. Some people don’t, others do, and it’s a matter of how or when. The misuse of that power is what slowly turns people into monsters. The motivations for using it… the intent and the impact… that’s what can make someone a monster. Make people lose the humanity that makes us different from monsters.”

“I won’t give up on that idea. I don’t want to lose what makes me a person just for being strong. I’m here to protect and help people. Things will make me angry, but that won’t be my drive for my actions. It will be something else.”

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

Gold gaze latches on to the hazy clouds and flashes of light within stormy silver, hoping to offer the steadiness and warmth of a sun waiting beyond the gray. Regret saps away Ruby’s typical beaming demeanor, braces her body against a wrenching pain Briar knows no details about, but wishes she could take it all away, all the while knowing she cannot. Both of them helpless puppets to the present, their current shape carved by a past now written in stone. Eventually Ruby turns her head away and closes her eyes, retreats into her own head, but Briar refuses to shy away from any of it. People are free to be their open and honest selves around her, fearless, shameless, limitless.

Facing these struggles for one’s self never looks or sounds pretty, but cleaning the gunk away is an act of beauty in itself. Briar cannot direct how to clear her mind, what the final picture should look like, but she can be a tool in the process, give her some ideas, plant some seeds.

She lets her finish before she speaks with a nod, “Everyone has power. That’s a very wise answer, Ruby. And I’m glad to hear you’re so determined not to lose your heart. For everything else, however,”

She’s close, so close, but a person cannot be whole without accepting both the light and the dark in themselves. Just as she accepts others in their entirety, Briar holds back nothing either. Always saying the words no one wants to hear, “…you’re wrong.”

She pulls her tail over her lap like a blanket of comfort, eyes finally falling to follow along with palms stroking soft fur. Is that how she sees it? Briar’s technically not even human, to have any ‘humanity’ to hold onto. Frequently named a monster. Often wonders if she indeed aligns closer to the latter than the former because of the effect she has on people, no matter her reasons.

One would think that Ruby growing up with her uncle Qrow - enough good motives for her to deem a role model, yet wholly unintentional misfortune after misfortune trailing each of those footsteps she follows - would have taught her the disconnect possible between intention and impact.

Are we both monsters in some way, then?

But that’s perhaps semantics, and certainly an argument for another day. Briar acts as example, and sits with these thoughts, contains herself from lashing out in word or action just yet, looks beyond her own hurt but transmutes it into further conviction to help people understand. Hands settle flat, and she lifts her head high once more, features firm.

“Just as every person has power, so does every emotion. Anger must be one of your drives, Ruby. Anger tells us when something’s wrong. As you said - when something needs to stop. Anger is useful - it wakes our body up, heightens our senses, sharpens our mind, gives us all the tools we need to stand and fight. If you try to deny it, if you do not make it part of your power, …then it will continue to have power over you instead.”

Now Briar’s fists clench from terrible flashbacks, “and if you ask me, that is when a person can become a monster.”

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

Being told she was wrong was a very common occurrence. It didn’t make Ruby angry, but something about the idea of someone blatantly telling you that what you were saying was incorrect brought out a brief flare of annoyance.

Perhaps she got that from her family.

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree then.” She didn’t see a point in arguing. “From my experience, relying on anger as a drive can lead to the opposite: rage, blind fury, a lack of common sense… sure it’s a good survival tool, but it’s a very risky one. A lot of people don’t know how to change it into something more useful.”

Her gaze wandered to some surface, she couldn’t recall. Unfocused eyes were lost in thought, trying to find the right words to explain her side of her perspective. Ruby couldn’t also help but wonder, wasn’t this a more appropriate topic for Yang to be having?

Her words were soft and almost shameful. “The last few times I let myself just… go by way of anger… I look back on those actions and hardly recognize myself. I’ll always be upset by them. I’ll always be unhappy that I wasn’t quicker, smarter, wiser… but I’m not going to let a constant idea of feeling like I’m owed something make me hurt other people who don’t deserve it.”

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

Nip it in the bud, they say. Briar never one to mince or waste words. Sometimes you had to use them to shake someone loose from their own head before they can see straight. Ruby, too stubborn to fold at simple statement.

Yang has already learned to turn her anger and pain into power. It’s little sister’s turn.

She-wolf shakes her head in disbelief at these excuses!

In Ruby’s experience? As a teenager?! All of maybe a year’s worth of field practice under her belt?! Just beginning to see the world!

Briar has every respect for those who would stick it to authority, but… to not listen to the elders standing on the same side? Nothing but petulance. She, an expert in spirit, walked her path to figure all this out alone, asked to be here to share her wisdom and experience so Ruby wouldn’t have to make the same stumbles along the way, only to be snubbed for what she teaches?

How did this girl ever make it through school? Oh, that’s right. She didn’t.

Ruby waived so many steps, tossed forward like a skipping stone each phase along the way. Extra combat lessons early on, allowing preemptive entry into Beacon; an early license based on merit alone, without completing the process of passing lessons. The girl, shot through life like a canon, for better or worse, and only keeping up because speed is so much of what she does.

Briar stands and steps closer, looming, “No,” insistence holds firm, “There is no agreeing to disagree. This is not a philosophical debate. This is training.”

Furrowing brows above narrowing gold eyes edge out some of their sympathy. If pressing a passive smothering semblance atop Ruby’s is what it takes to get her to slow down enough to listen, so be it.

“A lot of people don’t know how, and they get away with it, sure. You are not most people, Ruby Rose. …You. Must. ”

Hands open out to her sides, head tilts to the side and back, tail hangs straight behind her, “How many more times will you let that happen, then? How many more regrets before you can recognize those actions are as much a part of you as any other and claim them, combine them with other emotions and motivations so you don’t act so blindly? You cannot learn to see if you look back and then turn away from the truth.”

Boot heels dig in, “Face your mistakes, learn from them, and then let them go. Train and master your power, your whole self. Not just the pretty parts.”

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

This felt like circles of conversation that wasn’t getting anywhere. Ruby knew she wasn’t the best at explaining her thoughts, but she couldn’t have been this bad, right? Perhaps something had been lost in translation.

She made a T formation with both of her hands. “Okay, let’s just- time out for a second here.”

Training or no, they were having a conversation, and Ruby years ago might have backed down and just taken what they could and went. No, not after everything she had been through. Ruby crossed her arms and stood her ground despite Briar advancing and becoming frustrated herself. She could feel it as well, and the proper thing to do was be diplomatic.

Everyone got their one.

“Let’s clear something up: what do you think I’m telling you? How are you interpreting what I’m saying? We aren’t making any progress here, so why don’t we figure out where this circle started?” No amount of grumpy adult was going to have her falter this time, anxiety be damned.

“Then we will go from there.”

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

Gold eyes widen and blink double-time at unexpected response. Ruby neither frightens nor flees, nor counterattacks. She calls a halt, a stalemate, cuts a showing short with simple, assertive hand gestures, and makes Briar all-too aware of her penchant for getting carried away.

Not very good at knowing when it’s too much or too loud or when to stop, even as she preaches anger as a good sign and has her mind set on slowing someone else down. Even when she promised herself to remember what it was like to be young and stumbling. Not everyone is as practiced with their words as she.

Sturdy shoulders sink in shame as Briar takes both a literal and figurative step back. A glance to the ground and then back up to the girl the only glimpse of an apology to show.

Ruby should not have to be the adult in this situation. Pride, a sin which too often gets the better of Briar.

“No… no,” she says softer, with a sigh, and settles her hackles, “I’ve done enough talking for the moment, I think.” To the point of talking over Ruby, perhaps.

“I said to you, turn the pain into power. …Why don’t we start again with me asking instead of telling… Ruby, what do you think that means?”

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ 

The sudden sinking into a quieter tone gave Ruby a moment for pause. The adamant attitude had faltered. At least there was no more aggression, and a quiet was left for them to review. A temporary flickering of doubt flashed in the girl’s chest, but Ruby had the resolve to keep her stance.

Learning didn’t have an age limit.

Closing her eyes, Ruby thought of a calm and concise way to communicate her thoughts. “I’m not my sister, so I can’t turn pain into power literally. All I can do is take the pain, and change it into a drive. That drive to motivate your will, to turn it into the ability to do what you want. Not what the anger wants.

“Anger is a feeling of telling you that you’ve been wronged. It’s a reminder to not be walked over, but it can flare up for the wrong reasons… other negative things get attached to it. It can become toxic, and harmful to more than just yourself.”

Don’t think about it, she would always tell herself since that day. It failed every single time.

“It’s an emotion that is felt. I can’t ignore it, but I won’t let it consume me. It will be a fuel to protect, not to destroy.”

[bandofchimeras]

the muteness of the beast

PDA - pathological demand avoidance/AuADHD self disclosure rant related to Mel Baggs' self advocacy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc

with long covid, autoimmune shit, repeated traumatic experiences, and autistic burnout....i'm at this point where masking is hardly accessible. its the most i can do to barely keep on top of "boring adult stuff" and texting back a few days later. picking up my phone and making words hurts my brain. i don't know how to tell my friends this without losing them again. i know my friends' interests, but not enough energy to gift them things or bond. occasionally i send a meme that reminds me of them. its all very surface. i don't really have any interests of my own, well i do but nothing i can say i know much about, or things i do. i haven't joined a class or stuck to a hobby in years. i don't understand how people deep dive into things, my brain won't let me hyperfixate on anything besides my own fears or other people/living beings, or a singular thing I like at the time ( like a jazz song, but not jazz as a genre or playing jazz).

reading about PDA was the first time i've felt my experience with this superficial social connection was accurately described. PDA kids can be observed pretending to play on a playground, masking that they are part of the game while not understanding.

i'm not doing this masking because i'm a narcissist who thinks i'm better than everyone, its that i truly do no understand the mechanics of how most people bond and have friendships. what comes naturally to some feels foreign to me. i don't know what the bonds are made of. if i wanted to bond with others we would touch eachother, touch things around us, listen to the world together, bite, pounce, and wrestle. we would squawk and make up our own language together and look at pretty objects together. we would not talk about our jobs or hobbies.

the best i can do is pretend and as a consequence a fair amount of people like me, but i don't feel like we really connect, like its real. in fact, nothing feels real and it hasn't most of my life.

i live in a kind of permanent dissociation, and touching down into reality is excruciatingly emotionally painful. the only way i can cope is by having my adrenaline triggered, or playacting, or throwing a fit so i can discharge enough of that pain to follow directions. or by being so in my body with pleasure and joy, i can only smile and wriggle and flop like an idiot. dancing also helps, but only if its emotionally expressive. i've yet to meet another person with the same level of avoidance to their knowledge and interests aside from other hopelessly lost adults on PDA forums, and my own brother who has similar difficulties.

most people have a few things they love to do or are interested in that don't change, that they come back to time and again, and build on with discipline. without that i don't know how to build my self esteem, so its extremely low. i don't want others to boost it with words, as that feels fake. i would like to find a way to create my own, but struggle with many basic skills like transitioning between tasks, social understanding, staying with a routine, staying present, reading comprehension. i assume some of this is trauma-related and will improve with therapy but some of it is inarguably part of my personality. honestly, i want and need to be trained like a horse, or a bear, with lots of treats and love. i have to be kept, but still respected as a dangerous thing. (the movie Nope really jiggled my jimmies on this concept). i like the concepts of many things but can't engage beyond that lovely feeling of infatuation with a concept, or a possibility, or if i do, none of it "sticks" to my memory recall. i like the emotional 'tone' of things, their atmosphere and the emotional impression they leave on me, and their specific characteristics feel elusive to remember. for instance, if i love a movie, the actors and actresses don't stick in mind, or the composer for the soundtrack. i just love that movie a LOT and want to stay in its experience. same with songs. from what i understand, this is a very childlike manner to navigate the world. aka underdeveloped.

i can feel a tree's presence and communicate with her, and feel patterns in rocks and surfaces. i am less like a human than a finely tuned seismograph of surrounding energy, a barometer. again this could be trauma, but i've always felt like a vessel or an instrument, something to be filled or played, yet only for very specific usage. i behave terribly for people who do not know how to read or play me, like a violin being attacked by a toddler.

so yes, i am fussy and picky and difficult but can't help and imagine, played well, i would make beautiful music, its a matter of meeting someone who can learn me, who i can trust to handle me with care and appreciate my tones. i am trying to learn how to play myself but i don't think that's how it works, i need to be part of a community and have a role, be set free to do whatever this mysterious thing i am shaped for is, or else i feel scary, useless, evil, abominable, like an alien technology dropped into a backwards society that fears and abuses it, or leaves it to rust in a field. i don't enjoy any learning that gets routed through my conscious mind, it is painful and scary, all i can think about is how much i do not know, how all the words feel like knives carving strange symbols into my forehead, like viruses, intruders into my quiet singsong mental processes. when i do things or remember things, its through an unconscious process of my body remembering them, its emotional.

i do not know the names of stones, or plants, or birds, or how strawberries grow or how geology works, or how the body works, though I'd like to. i don't sew or design or make art consistently or read anymore, or write, or bake, or sing or dance except when in the spur of the moment i feel emotional weight towards doing so.

it can't be fear of commitment, because I'd really love to be committed to something, some fandom or book or even my own creative process. i want to connect. but something in me always stops. its happened so many times i am legitimately suicidal, and exhausted.

i don't think i will ever be able to live the kind of life i want to live, my actions are emotional and impulsive, and to act against them requires almost complete dissociation. it is a little easier to do things on ADHD meds but then my body is filled with anxiety and i don't enjoy food or sex or colors or anything that makes me me. anything that feels real and enjoyable exists in a silent, energetic plane - why psychedelics are so pleasurable, they bring me deeper into that place of Experiencing.

i can get things done sometimes if i am completely allowed to do it how i want - make breakfast naked playing music, dancing at sporadic occasions, putting my face close to the food to smell and taste it. as i grow older i have less and less control over my body - dyspraxia - in situations that aren't inherently motivating. i think this is because fear-based motivation has exhausted my physical body to a point of permanent burnout. its like selective mutism, which really isn't selective so much as situational. my body takes back control, it says you will not speak, or you will not act, now.

i can, or used to be able to, experience incredible sensual sensory details. i can experience unadulterated, distilled joy from the smallest things.

sharing this joy through art, however, is a minefield of processes that stop before they start.

i wish i could just touch people and they could experience the beauty and joy and emotion i sense in the world.

i wish i was not trapped in myself by whatever this monster is that keeps me from coming out and completing tasks, from teamwork and cooperation and humanity itself. i wish i could find someone to grok and understand life together, who did not see me as a project to improve or an insult to their desire to be known and loved.

i wish i could be an amoeba, or a fern, or something that simply feels and grows. it is so painful to be a human being, i don't understand cruelty and mind games, but i do understand blind rage, animal instinct, avoidance, fear, i understand how to lock on to a target and never let it go, i understand how to pounce and bite and growl and fuck and the raw, terrifying power in my body and yours.

i don't know if i am less than human, or more animal, but i do know that when a therapist says to be yourself it does not make sense because my self is a lunging, deadly, lawless animal that feeds and fucks and fights without forethought, and it is that animal that has been caged, prodded, neglected, and starved while my mind grew out of bounds like a cancer. you see i think most people's minds and bodies connect, somehow, they control their body by thinking and they do things that they are told, or that are good for them, by willpower. there's a malfunction in mine, the mind is a mask, a parasite, an AI parroting back what others say. its not connected o my real self except in rare, divine occasions where the monkey mind experiences a stronger force that goes SHUT UP and a poem or a drawing come out of me. my ego and conscious mind have little ability to control the languid beast that is my body, and resort often to manipulate, or interceding with other people to manipulate it for us. see, there is that split, that lack of identification.

i've made a conscious choice not to date anyone for awhile because i can't handle the guilt of not remembering their birthday, special occasions, their favorite color, and so on unless i develop an unhealthy dependent obsession with them that is kind of scary. like an eldritch beast dragging a dead deer out of the forest to lay on the lap of their terrified human they've decided to love.

otherwise the knowledge will not click.. i know that they will not feel loved or cared for no matter how my heart wants to love and care for them, to do so will require a fixation that, if not reciprocated, drains me of every ounce of willpower i need for basic survival.

i don't think i am alone in feeling this way, but being on social media feels very lonely because it is so much engagement with our minds, words, favorite media....it overwhelms me. think having said all this, it is my desire to belong to the pack that causes so much mental anguish. i am scared to love any craft, hobby, fandom with the full force of my emotional body because i have been so often judged for being over enthusiastic while having little depth of understanding. no matter what i will likely feel silly, and alone. to summarize this self-narrative, i feel like a non-human. I feel like an overexcitable, clumsy beast being ridden by an anxious little mosquito like Remy from Ratatouille, who constantly chatters trying to distract travelers on their path from the hulking reality of the Beast. very clever yet they always spot him and scream and shout and run away or he gets mad and they sense he is a great Threat and a danger and an evil they must drive from their town.

of course when people see me they see a normal dude for the most part and this makes it even odder because i feel expected to perform Normal Guyhood and simply Do Not Want to so severely my instinct is to run and Hide

[thatinsufferablenerd]

Sassy For Some Reason

It’s gotten cold at night. Like, hovering just above freezing while it’s dark out cold. It’s still sunny and fairly nice during the day, I like that. Our dogs have taken to sunning themselves on the back porch, laying on the vents or climbing into our laps to share body heat in our poorly insulated house. Our smallest dog is 40 pounds, but I don’t mind. The street dog we took in a couple months ago is thriving on spoiled couch time and the twins have always been like this. All that’s left of the bug I caught is the cough I can’t kick. My energy is back, my motivation, the aches gone, getting better sleep. Today I opened the box for the STEM advent calendar my mom sent to my kids, they’re over the moon at the idea. 

We’re still fucking broke, though. My husband is just as stressed as I am, even if he’s not having literal nightmares about bussing tables for brunch on Mother’s Day. We’ve agreed that I’m going to try to look for remote work first, something part time just for supplementary income. If that fails, then I’ll look for something in person. I haven’t worked since 2015, so learning the modern job market and updating a resume is going to be…a trip. I hate all of this so much. I wish I didn’t feel my heartbeat pick up in pace every time I think about working or get an email from Linkedin. I wish I didn’t have stress-induced nightmares about a job I haven’t worked since before I moved out of my mother’s house. 

Sometimes it feels like escape is all I have. Other than hitting ‘play’, anyway. Diving into a story puts some distance between me and the bullshit, so I do it. Whether I’m reading it, writing it, or watching it, it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s some form of distraction, something to take my mind off THIS. I know it’s not healthy. I know I spend way too much time on YouTube and I know this is not a great coping mechanism. What options do I have?

I’ve had Bleach on the back burner while I got through Aaron’s two published books. Now that I’ve finished both Ruins of Ivy and Forgotten Steel, I can pick that back up in the coming week. Forgotten Steel has some slightly different themes from the first and expands its world a lot. He set out to write an entertaining book, and I had a good time. By coincidence, his book touched on an idea that my series does, albeit in a very different way. Three of his main characters are called monsters and have to wrestle with whether or not that label is deserved, if they can go back from it. He’s not doing anything new with it, but in tandem with some other concepts he has juxtaposing that one, it’s keeping my attention.

I had to renew that Tchaikovsky book at my library this week, so I did that and picked up two more volumes (4 and 5) of Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe while I was there and finished them both in an afternoon. I’m aware of the criticisms of age-gap relationships and the slippery slope of depicting toxic relationships, as well as the ‘it’s not accurate’ detractors. I really could care less. I like it. I like the art, I like how every character feels like an individual that keeps moving and doing things when they aren’t on page, I like the leads and how they’re drawn to each other. I like that Persephone is allowed to be angry sometimes, and Hades isn’t exactly a model for morality either. Sue me, I’m going to read the whole series. I think I have pretty solid media literacy skills. Plenty good enough to tell that it’s a little weird for the eldest of the Olympians to have fallen head over heels for a twenty year old. Don’t care. I’m a sucker for sun and moon dynamics.

I’m hoping to get through Bleach by the end of the month. I might not make it, I’ve got about 240 chapters left (the Fullbringer Arc and the TYBW for anyone keeping score), but I am going to do my best. I’m really excited about reading the Dan Da Dan manga. I can’t do that if I’m still hung up on Bleach. I’ve been pretty busy with other stuff, so I might need to go back and read the last ten, twenty chapters just to refresh myself. We’ll see. My notes might be enough. I might post my ramblings here when I do finish. I’m looking forward to getting into the TYBW. The anime is so good and there’s a lot of hype to keep me trucking along. 

I know I keep promising myself I’m going to spend time in front of my whiteboard and not doing that, but I did something better this week! I’ve been working out exactly what’s left to cover in this volume of the story. The exact chain of events that leads to the plot point I want to be at when I move on to volume three. Hitting the books is not going to be the most fun time, and some of this is just going to be me and a map making shit up. That’s just how this goes. But I am going to get to it. Now that I’ve finished those two books I have a little more breathing room to get some of my own work done. 

I also slotted a pretty important piece into the overall puzzle that is my current project. Since I’ve been doing so much reading it back over while Aaron makes his way through what I have, I noticed a pretty consistent tic that my POV character remarks on her memories A LOT. So much that it feels more important than context or characterization, it’s getting into theme territory by accident. We’re going to run with that in conjunction with a decision I hoped I wouldn’t have to make. Aaron asked me if ghosts exist in this world based on a couple offhand comments POV characters makes. I wanted to keep it vague since I didn’t want to say anything about the afterlife or mortality, but it’s fine. It all fits together just fine with the connections I’ve been making with the other plot points and themes I’ve been doing. 

Writing is both a romantic solo venture and a highly stressful collaborative effort. I can sit in front of my whiteboard for ages and not know if what I’m coming up with is any good. Then again, entire writer’s rooms have ended up with crap too. Sometimes we need someone else to bounce ideas off of, and sometimes it’s just too many cooks in the kitchen. Even though I am still very much going through my existential crisis, I’m glad he said that. It forced me to think it through, to make a decision, and that decision will ultimately benefit the story. He also told me that my rough draft is one of the top ten books he’s ever read. 

I thought I was having a heart attack. I hyperventilated, felt like I was having palpitations, and it’s still such a surreal thing. In moments I’m flattered, in others I’m numb, and yet others I’m wondering what books he’s read that MINE could be considered that good. I’ve had so much trouble getting anyone else to give me a chance. I’ve handed out the link like it’s candy but no one who’s gotten the link has managed to get past the prologue. I don’t blame them, obviously. Everyone is busy and it’s a huge investment of time. I understand that. My biggest worries revolve around if I’m doing too much, if what I have makes sense, if it’s any good. That kind of thing can only be determined by readers. So without them, I just…panic. Forge on bravely, but still panic internally. My mom told me when I told her “I wish you believed in yourself as much as the rest of us do.” Bitch, WHAT? You don’t even like fantasy, you read five pages a year ago, so much has changed in that time. You’re my MOM, you can say whatever you want. 

You see what my brain does when I get praise? Try living with this shit. 

Here’s a list of some of the good shit I watched on YouTube this week: 

-Why Accuracy is Overrated: Spinster’s Library

-Fashion Doesn’t Matter (like it used to): Nicole Rudolph

-Do Modern Writers Remember How to Write Fantasy?: dan doug

-Why is NCIS Obsessed With Israel?: Skip Intro

-The Twisted World of Dark Romance: Mina Le 

-M.A.P Walsh is Hiding Something: Foreign Man in a Foreign Land

-How Potatoes Changed the World: Religion, Rebellion and the Industrial Revolution: OTR Food & History 

-Edgar Allen Poe’s Obsession with Death: Lady of the Library

-Gendered Reading in Fantasy, the Decline of YA and More: Johanna Reads

-Can TV Change the Way We Speak?: Otherwords on Monstrum

-In Defense of Cozy Fiction: Tale Foundry

-Brat and the Culture of Addiction: Alexander Avila 

-Girl Eats Boy: Cannibal Women in Horror (Raw, Yellowjackets, Bones and All): elle literacy

-How YouTube Dethroned MTV: Polyphonic

-Did the Coroner Make This Disaster Worse?: Caitlin Doughty 

-Everything You Think You Know About Thanksgiving is Wrong: Abby Cox

-Sympathy for the Villains: Princess Weekes

I hope I have more good news next week and that my emotional crisis passes, because I’m tired. I hate being like this. Sitting around worrying and being flattered and trying to think but also stressed out of my mind at the same time. It’s exhausting. I only have so much RAM and I have other things to worry about. The world is about to get much worse. I have things to protect here. I just hope I’m the one worrying too much and it’s not warranted. 

Stay safe out there <3

[heartshapedbunnynose]

💌The drive to Chicago really isn't that bad honestly! It's taken us 3 hours to arrive but I was caught sleeping at the last hour after eating chicken nuggets lol We both knew it would rain but neither of us expected it to POUR. My gf and I always overdress ig and soon as we got out the car I'm like, "we need an umbrella! I can't do this!" Lol so we stopped into Chinatown and the whole time I'm like "WHOA! WOW! LOOK AT THAT!" . I've been to Chinatown in NYC,Cali, and now Chicago. And I think they're all pretty cool.

🩷We went into a cute store full of plushies,keychains, and knick knacks getting easily distracted lol Once we got our umbrellas we got some brown sugar,cinnamon, tea boba that was very delicious! The shop was super cute too! They had lil panda plushies all around🩷 afterwards, we needed to burn more time. So there was a kpop store we stopped into. I was there for a minute because there was so many choices of albums and knick knacks I wanted. I finally decided to get the Ten album thanks to my gf lol and we also got a pack of exo photo cards that were going to split. I already know we might wrestle for the Kai photo card lol.

🍄Right after we left the store we stopped to go back into the cute shop for some things we overlooked. I got a cute hello kitty thermal mug(? Idk what they call them but I got it for my coffee/tea), a hello kitty handheld fan, and a lipgloss in the shape of a wine bottle (I'm easily impressed) .

🍭On our way back to the parking garage I had no choice but to walk in this ankle deep puddle with my loafers on. I was crying inside. Seething with rage. But lucky me I brung my demonias for the concert lol so it all worked out. Now I'm watching the trains pass by in awe lol just waiting until 7 pm or at least whenever the rain stops!!

🖤During the concert I was so ALIVE. I couldn't believe after the many years of being into visual kei I could FINALLY see a band I loved LIVE! I was head banging, shouting, flailing, I even fangirled 💀 but here me out...I was basically in the front row and they were so close!! Also ,they KNEW what TF they were doing. In a room full of women they were acting up 💀 surprisingly the venue didn't stink either😂I kinda regret not getting vip since it wasn't that expensive but I did blow bands on the merch. I lost my voice and hearing afterwards and even got a cold after the second concert.

🦇 The second concert was my other fav, the garden 🖤 the whole room felt like it was shaking from everyone getting hype. I even got to see the rest of the vada vada gang live,which I dreamed of for awhile now. The venue smelled so damn awful y'all 😭the rumours were right! It was so bad I had to move and clear my throat. Had a stank face and everything 😂

✨I realized I stopped having anxiety for the 2 concerts I attended. I just get sucked into the music and moment that all that anxiety melts away. I danced so much that night,and even had a watered down strawberry lemonade vodka lol but I stocked up on merch again and was sick badly for like a week. My immune system is horrible but I'm afraid I did it to myself many years ago 🤡 terrible coping mechanism will catch up to ya boys and girls. But I'm healthier now! And my cold has passed! And I shall return to girl blogging. Hoping to catch more concerts in 2025!

[jjtheresidentbaby]

what about will figuring out that mike regresses bc of a storm?

OR

byler as cgs hcs?

Little Baby | Mike Wheeler x Will Byers

a/n: anon you are amazing, Will finding out about mikes regression will never not mean the most to me

warnings: storms, anxiety, mentions of the upside down/monsters

~

Mike rocks against Wills headboard, trying to focus on his even breaths instead of the lighting striking outside and thunder shaking the house.

Normally he’d just run to Nancy’s room, tug on her shirt and let her shuffle them both under her covers with a movie going to drown out the storm. It’s been like that since Mike was little, that stopped while the monsters were happening, but once he shared his regression with her it became normal again.

“Mike? You okay?” Today isn’t normal though, Mikes staying the night at the Byers for the first time in what feels like years, aside from his trip to California.

“Uh- yeah. I’m okay.” His headspace is pulling at his brain, it always helps when storms happen, definitely in one this bad. It’s just so loud and the rain is pouring heavily like it could drown Mike if he stepped outside.

“Don’t lie to me Wheeler.” Will has a smile on his face as he shifts up to in front of Mike, the sweater he has on consuming Wills entire body, or it looks that way, Mike smiles at the sleeves falling past Wills hands.

“Okay what? You’re staring.” He probably is, he always forgets staring’s rude when he’s little.

“Sorry, nothing. Nothings wrong.” Though the words sound firm and sure, Mike still jumps at the thunder booming across the tree line outside Wills window.

“What the storm getting to you?” Wills brow quirks up, he’s grown far more comfortable with teasing since Mike asked him out. It’s one of Mikes favorite things, just not right now when he really is scared of the storm.

“Oh little baby scared of the storm, can fight off a demon but can’t handle a little rain.” Mike would usually play off the banter, teasing Will right back, it would end in play wrestling, only Mike stills.

‘Little baby’ can Will read right through him? Is he already acting that regressed? Maybe he should just run home, sure he’d be soaked and freezing but maybe Will really is upset that Mike is scared of a storm. Oh god this could be the end of them, six months and Mikes stupid anxiety getting in the-

“Mike? Hey, hey, I’m sorry, I was just messing around, it’s okay. Storms aren’t my favorite either and you’re not a baby.” Wills hands are gentle against Mikes cheeks, cupping his face with a soft tone in his voice and assurance all over his words.

“M’not?” He can’t even stop himself, there wasn’t a single thought before Mike spoke but Will chuckles lightly.

“Unless you wanna be? You wanna be baby tonight?” He nods, again, zero thoughts beforehand.

“In that case, I might have to go tell Jon and mom we need to dig up our old baby stuff.” Wills head tips to the side, rubbing his chin with his fingers, as if he’s really considering going to get his brother and mother, it has Mike giggling before leaning to grab at Wills fingers.

“Nance already knows.” Will hums, nodding, allowing the black haired boy in front of him to fiddle around with his fingers.

“She does? What exactly does she know?”

“Sometimes- like with storms and stuff- I feel kinda smaller, baby like- she calls it something but I don’t know what the name is.” Mike doesn’t look up to his partner and instead pulls Wills other hand up to play with.

“Age regression?” Will heard Joyce and Hopper discussing El using it as a coping mechanism, he’s even watched over the girl a few times while she was little.

“Yeah that. You- you still like me if I do that, right?” Wills mouth falls open at Mikes big eyes blinking at him.

“Of course darling, I’ll always like you, no matter what.” Mike blushes furiously, tugging Wills hands til he has no choice but to fall forward into Mikes chest.

“You protect me through the storm?” Will nods very seriously.

“What are wizards for?”

“You the best wizard.”