#whether out of spite or righteousness

[faunandfloraas]

Saw a video of Han apologetically being like I cant throw Hanquokka out bc I will be scolded :( so now seungmins repeated thievery is even more enjoyable to me

[qiu-yan]

Serious Bitch Opinion: lan wangji...would be a terrible chief cultivator. yes, he is righteous and honorable and has a stalwart moral backbone. however, when you are given the responsibility of leading others, the impeccability of your own moral character must come second to what tangible results you can actually achieve for your people. and if you want to actually achieve any tangible results, instead of getting deadlocked forever or getting done in by your political enemies, you have to learn to compromise on some of your ideals. instead of freezing out the people you find morally despicable, you must learn to cooperate with them; otherwise, you will not achieve anything. and in order to achieve your goals, you must learn that not all of your goals are achievable--that, in order to get the more important of your desired measures passed, you must give up on some others.

now, this is almost the polar opposite of what MDZS as a text champions. arguably one of the central thematic thrusts of MDZS is the importance of not compromising on your ideals, even when it would be far more pragmatic to do so. thus, if lan wangji wanted to become a leader who could actually achieve things, he would have to directly contradict one of the most important messages of the very text that valorizes him.

the moral framework employed by MDZS to evaluate its characters and convey its themes is much more focused on ideals than on results. what matters to MDZS as a narrative is ultimately not the results of one's actions, whether one's righteousness led to joy or to ruin, but rather that one attempted to be righteous even in the face of almost inevitable failure. attempt the impossible, after all. the text of MDZS does not follow utilitarian ideas; it does not condemn wei wuxian for ultimately failing to save almost anyone. rather, wei wuxian's stalwart moral character is celebrated in spite of his failures because he, unlike everyone else, tried.

unfortunately--while someone who is only responsible for their own life can attempt the impossible, someone who is responsible for the lives of millions must instead achieve the achievable.

[charmingcherrypops]

stomach all in knots

a story about phoenix wright and his dreams.

inspired by lacy by olivia rodrigo

a/n: my first fan fiction, how exciting! hope you enjoy..!! spoilers for the trilogy!!

as for warnings, there’s nothing TOO graphic or scary, but there are descriptions of panic attacks like symptoms, which could be distressing to some. there are also descriptions of phoenix eating the necklace. hurt/no comfort .over all it’s pretty sad and agnsty and maybe considered heavy. No happy end. Sorry folks

as always put yourself first and keep yourself healthy.

story below ⬇️!

phoenix wright was never a stranger to strange dreams. (they were almost prophetic in a way, foreshadowing how he himself would bring upon his own undoing. whether that be out of loyalty of others or in spite of himself, it was a fact that his self righteousness destroy him.)

most of his dreams were with miles. by the blood that flowed through his veins and the nerve pathways that cascaded throughout his body, by god, he would save miles edgeworth in these dreams. he never remembers how he does actually save him in these dreams, (maybe that’s on purpose) but he does. he always does. they end the same, with a reunion of the two parties, with a feeling that could only be described as pure light. when they come together, in these dreams, it was as if the sun and moon, with all the stars and star dust in the sky — everything made of light — gathered together. phoenix felt that all was right with miles by his side, even his dream self muttering one night ,

“this is everything i ever wanted.”

and then phoenix would wake up. he would wake up cold, and alone, stomach void of the light that was once there just 15 minutes prior. and then phoenix had to go about his day, like nothing ever happened. walks to the courthouse filled his head with a fog that never really left. he’s getting restless, biting his nails, thinking about what he could have done differently to save miles. really save him.

tonight was different.

tonight he dreamt of dollie.

and she’s beautiful as ever.

she’s got the world in her eyes, roses on her cheeks, and a familiar heart on her chest. her voice is sickly sweet like honey, and with open arms embraces phoenix. just like old times. and a part of him wishes he could stay like this forever. so naive to the world. so trusting in others. so trusting in that inherent goodness in people.

especially in those he cares about.

she gives him a little peck on the cheek, and runs off, in a rush like she’s late to class. or late to other important affairs she’s got to deal with.

he doesn’t know. he can’t tell — or rather, he never was ABLE to tell.

so she’s gone, parting with her kiss of betrayal. in the exact opposite manner of the dreams with edgeworth, he begins the dream in a pair and ends up alone. and that light he once felt is now stomach pain. it feels like a growing nightmare he can’t escape , and his jaw , his jaw aches from chewing. and his throat feels like it’s closing in on itself

and then phoenix wakes up. he wakes up cold, and alone, with a stomach ache. shivering. he’s about to get sick.

phoenix wright calls out of work for the day.

but unfortunately he spends the day thinking about what he could have done differently to maybe save dollie. really save her.

before he goes to bed that night, he prays for the first time in a while, that something like this, or someone like dollie, never enters his life again,

closes his eyes,

and then he dreams of miles.

[justanotherlifeff]

Possession

[Some of ya’ll wanted an alternative ending to “Love is meaningless” and guess what? There you go. Is it happy? Hell no. I just like watching the world burn lol. There will be a 3rd part with actual smut cause now Im invested in this sooo yeahhh. But yeah, there are spoilers and Sukuna is an asshole cause he’s literally evil incarnate. I put the smut tag cause there are some mentions of sex, even if there isn’t any actual sexual description]

Love is meaningless to Sukuna precisely because he knew it. It was the epitome of weakness. How else could one describe the need to put someone else above themselves? To look for validation, praise, acceptance… those are concepts that the weak search for. The strong doesn’t ask others to bow down. The strong simply kills the ones who don’t. Not because of a fragile ego but because its fun to kill. Its fun to see these miserable humans with their ridiculous beliefs of righteousness crumble apart. He knew first hand the fickle and hypocritical nature of humans after all since he was the same once. Enlightenment to him was understanding that he needs to be above that wretched nature.

However, after a thousand years, he saw something that made him laugh at the absurdity of it. He is the king of curses, the evil incarnate, the most cruel thing to exist. And yet, reality’s idea of cruel jokes seemed to surpass the king of curses himself because there you were, going to the same Jujutsu School as the brat he was possessing, or atleast, it was your reincarnated form. How did this happen? He had some idea since you were pregnant with his child after all before you died. That child must have had immense cursed energy, which made this miracle possible a thousand years later. The timing was awfully convinient too, it almost made him wonder whether this was planned by someone to subdue his reincarnation.

It was foolish, he thought. Subduing him with some fickle idea of love? How laughable. He stopped being that person the day you died, and its not like this cheap copy even had those memories. This version of you had the same personality, the same looks, and yet, it wasn’t the same because this time, he was your enemy. Not that it mattered ofcourse. He still felt the need to own you. To have you all to himself. No, it wasn’t love. It was simply his extreme desire to take what was his. His obsession with taking everything he wants.

It did occur to him, to kill you just to spite on whoever thought it would be a funny idea to make fate play out this way. However, while he never regretted a single drop of blood that was on his hands, for some reason, deep within his twisted heart, he felt as if he would regret having your blood on his hand. Besides, you were more useful alive. He could have his fun taking you, making you remember that past whether you like it or not. No one takes away his belongings from him and he wasn’t losing you, his most precious possession, again. So he waited patiently.

He decided it would be best to not create suspicion on his obsession with you. It would be best to lull you into a false sense of security by feigning a lack of interest in you. That way, you wouldn’t stay away from Itadori, that way he can keep an eye on you, watch you through the brat’s eyes. He waited for over 1000 years, he could wait a few months more. It was difficult for him, as every time you smiled at Itadori, he wanted to kill the brat. How dare you smile at a lowly human like that? How dare you smile at anyone that wasn’t him? How dare you wear that promiscuous skirt, showing your beautiful legs to the world when it was all his alone? How dare you wear makeup to look beautiful for anyone that isn’t him? Your life didn’t belong to you after all. You were reincarnated because you beared his child back then. So how dare you pretend to have freedom when you were nothing more than a filthy human that he owns?

Sukuna is evil incarnate, but despite his many vices, he also had many qualities, patience being one of them. Despite his desire to take over Itadori’s body, bend you over and fuck the freedom out of you, he stayed calm, waiting for the perfect opportunity to take you for himself for good, without having sorcerers come after him to take you away. Would a sorcerer wish to save you if he made you a cursed spirit too? If he killed you, took your humanity from you, made you immortal and tied to him with the proper rituals, would they even want you back? Perhaps he should show you how little value you have to those jujutsu sorcerers. Perhaps, he should show you that he is the only one who sees your value, the only one who wouldn’t abandon you. No, its not out of love, ofcourse not. Its simply because he owns you, he convinced himself.

[shizunitis]

Tell me about Thousand Autumns and why I should read it. (I think that’s the thing you reblog a lot of with the guy with the white stripe in his hair?)

Aside from the fact that Yan Wushi, the love interest of the novel and Danmei’s cuntiest dilf, is my deadbeat father and legal guardian, and thus should inspire you to read it for his role in my life?

Basically: Read Thousand Autumns? Please? For me? 🥺

Actual answer under the cut since this is getting longer than I expected (I’m too tired to actually try and be concise about it, so sorry.)

It features: lying and deceit, sect politics, jianghu fuckery, a temporarily blind and depowered MC, political intrigue, awesome fight scenes, a wonderful cast of supporting characters, interesting takes on the cultivation system, social commentary, an incredible dynamic between the main couple that isn’t front-and-centre, dramatic not-confessions, and the sweetest little sex monster of a woman you’ll ever meet. (She’s my favourtie character. She’s like if Sha Hualing was in love with Shen Qingqiu. Do you see?)

It’s a much more mature relationship than what we see with SVSSS, by virtue of happening between two people whose identites are, in spite of their circumstances, on sturdier foundations.

Now, then, the circumstances:

Shen Qiao, who must start from the ground up in every possible way, while he’s suffering from amnesia—something which Yan Wushi takes full advantage of, the bastard—is the true embodiment of an enlightened daoist. He’s a former sect leader and an honest, hard-working, good person; he is also not a pushover, and the moments he decides to bother standing up for himself are more satisfying than if he retaliated with fury and vengeance. He is relentless in how fairly he treats the world in spite of its rejection of him.

Yan Wushi: villain-love interest, leader of a demonic sect, and a jaded man convinced of the world’s cruelty. He believes it an ugly, vicious place that will snuff out all light by force. He attempts to break down Shen Qiao’s righteousness and honesty by being very gay Disney villain about it, and tries to get him to join him and see the world theough his eyes. He’s cunty, and an asshole, and makes horrible decisions to prove his own convictions, and he pushes, and takes, and betrays, and does everything but lay down his arms and accept defeat, even in the face of certain death.

They have a convoluted, twisted road ahead of them from the very beginning of the story. And yet, they gravitate towards each other even when they renege each other, falling back into each other’s orbit not with ease, but ruled by a profound understanding of their differences. How they navigate them, how they make space for each other, how they interact— Wonderful. Beautiful. Excruciating. I adore them.

Whether by design or coincidence, their lives tangle so much that they become inextricably linked, and the longer the story goes, you begin to see the cracks in both of their resolves to try and change the other. Their dynamic is gripping.

It is, however, not the main plot of the novel. Arguably, their relationship features as an accessory to the plot, rather than its focus. It plays a big part in how the plot unfolds and it does affect both Shen Qiao’s and Yan Wushi’s relationship and interactions with the world, but it’s—

I kind of felt, you know, like it was being preserved away from the world in a way. Like it was kept for them. Don’t know exactly why, or how I could give arguments to support this idea without spoiling some stuff, but. They have married bickering couple energy. You know?

There’s some CW’s, for sure. If you need a list I can definitely lay them out, so shoot me another ask in that case. Otherwise, I hope my deeply sleep deprived attempt at listing off why Thousand Autumns is worth reading works. If not, I got to call Yan Wushi a gay Disney villain, so I got my needs met for today!

Also: Do I reblog Thousand Autumns that much? I know it’s more than Erha, but. Hm. Maybe I should make it a bit more clear exactly how I feel about Mo Ran. Wouldn’t want the hierarchy to be destabilised.

[columboscreens]

I hope it isnt rude or presumptuous of me to barge in and vent, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on Columbos family. I just finished "no time to die" and I can't get over how bad that episode was. Maybe its me and my headcanons getting in the way but No Way is he from a family of cops. And not a single one of them sounds like they're Italian or new yorkers the blasphemy! To me that mans from an Jewish immigrant family, and proud of it.

combined with:

yeah the whole "family of cops" thing in no time to die came off as cheesy, contrived 90s copaganda, so i just kind of ignore it. it's hardly canon, so feel free to do the same! i picture columbo with a big, loud, italian family myself, in which he's just about the only cop.

I will say though, i actually totally agree that he comes off as more jewish than not. columbo is, in canon, a good little italian boy married to a catholic woman, so the natural assumption is that he, too, is catholic. but peter falk was a very organic, naturalistic actor--as a student of sanford meisner, his primary acting imperative was to live and behave truthfully to the self under imaginary circumstances. so for someone who was barely religious himself in the way "cultural jews" tend to be...

what i'd pay to hear the words "had the fuckin bar mitzvah'" come out of that man's mouth

...to me, falk's "truthful self" is just so jewish to his core that, because he puts so much of himself into the character, it bleeds clean through to columbo, and we get all these jewish mannerisms out of the supposed catholic! (jews, of course, have a rich and historic presence in italy, so there's no preclusion on that front.)

once you notice the little things, you can't stop. his phrasings, his gestures, the ways he interacts with others, his boiled eggs, his gastrointestinal sensitivity, even his sense of humor.

chag pesach sameach

there are, of course, more substantial pieces of evidence than ordering chinese food for his extended family or needing an antacid every time he eats too quickly. i'm not jewish myself, but i grew up in a very jewish neighborhood, had more jewish than gentile friends growing up, and my partner of seven years is jewish. to me, what really codes columbo as a jewish man is how well he embodies many aspects of specifically jewish ethos.

being honorable, sensitive, and humble, he's the ideal mensch. one tenet strongly prioritized in judaism is tzedek, or one's ethical obligation to righteousness, equity, and compassion. he is both moved by suffering and tenaciously committed to justice.

jews hold the deepest respect for both religious and civil law, and you will note that columbo is neither an outsider nor a vigilante--he is a sanctioned agent of the legal system respecting and following the process of the law in his pursuit of murderers. he functions within it, sometimes in spite of it, but not outside of it. when he gets creative, he toes, but never quite crosses the line.

he thinks for himself and thus has a strong moral compass; he treats everyone with kindness and empathizes readily with individual struggle. he is patient, courageous, and clever--all particularly valued qualities in judaism.

(rakish semitic looks aside)

paramount is columbo's intellectual curiosity, love of learning, and propensity to question, which is, too, seen as fundamental to a faith built entirely on asking questions. whether he's gently yet methodically poking holes in a suspect's alibi or wondering how much a random stranger paid for his shoes, he never has a shortage of them. he's a little guy bursting with chutzpah, perfectly at home both asking a prime suspect if he can have a closer look at his hand, and God Himself to spare sodom and gomorrah if he can only find a few good people...

if you really needed any further evidence that he's God's Chosen...

[beevean]

47 Macula, mwah. ❤️

…out of spite.

"You are sick. What you're doing is sick."

Dracula merely raised an eyebrow at Mathias' childish outburst.

"Now, what are you blabbering about?"

"Everything!" the little Lord shouted, hands moving in a frenzy. "This... senseless slaughter, carried on by inertia! The way you use the knights in your care as slaves, when they look up to you as a mentor! You are a disgusting creature, and those poor boys don't deserve you."

Dracula wrinkled his nose, annoyed at the smell of anger in the man's blood. Oh, so he was serious, wasn't he.

"And I am supposed to heed your words why, precisely?" he asked, not caring whether or not the man answered - he was merely wasting his time. "You don't actually care about the blood I'm spilling, do you, Mathias? Not when your own hands are covered in it."

"It's different and you know it." Mathias didn't even have the strength to look at him in the eye, the coward that he was. What a pathetic worm: he filled Dracula with shame for what he used to be.

"Why? Because you kill in the name of an uncaring God while I spite him?" Dracula rose to his feet, relishing in the shudder that shook Mathias' body; he reserved no gentleness for him when he grabbed his chin and forced his head upwards. "Little Mathias, you are not angry at me. I know you more than you know yourself."

Those green eyes of his burned with hypocritical righteousness. "Don't you dare compare yourself to me--"

"And that is the crux of it, isn't it?" Oh, he knew alright. His human memories were fading away, slowly but surely, but Mathias was doing everything in his power to remind him of the person he used to be: weak, fragile, scared, and with an inflated sense of self-worth. Of course, such a man would despite what he was fated to become. Well, too bad for him.

"Mathias Cronqvist, let me give you some precious advice, from someone older than you can fathom yet." And with that, he claimed Mathias' mouth and bit his tongue, to shut him up at last; his struggles were feeble and human against him, and it took no effort to remind the man of who was in charge, who had the right to speak, and who exactly he was deep within his heart.

He licked his own blood as he said: "Make peace with yourself posthaste, or you will suffer."

[swordsandarms]

Sometimes people make too much a fuss of what Robb Stark was and what he could have been, because I feel the point of him is he was always doomed: he was THE Ned 2.0 some sometimes try to write Jon as (which HE isn't) and Ned Stark's fate only heads one way. 

But there's also an opposite obnoxious kind of posting about "capable know-it-all Catelyn and her dumb teenage son" or "lol who let this highschooler put his mother in jail" etc etc. Because that's a whole other bad reading. 

Catelyn was not the remarkable advisor Robb should have always listened to (though she does have her moments, of course), nor was anyone better off if she was THE man. 

Catelyn and Robb are a doomed duo. She wants to be seen by him as a just as respectable King's advisor, but she puts even more pressure on him with motherly scolding about being a bad brother. She wants to be seen as much as one of his advisors by Robb's men, too. But she takes fully advantage of being "just a woman and mother" and hence being treated with double standards about messing around with important Lannister by hostages, although the Karstarks also act out of grief - but THEY receive the capital punishment for treason. 

Robb is a young, inexperienced King AND Catelyn is not a rational, capable pillar of an advisor for a King. Although Robb is also too young, there's really a common factor here for both of them. In this very patriarchal world, the wife/mother and the heir are both subservient to the patriarch of the family for as long as the patriarch lives. No matter how many years Catelyn stood or would have still stayed by her husband's side, even privately giving her advice to him, she has not the real deal experience of (or) competent capacity of calling the shots or leading negotiations. The results of the negotiations with Walder Frey are almost mocking, and she herself walks out a kind of defeat - the position she'd led in life is of having to capitulate after battling without success against male self righteousness and confidence in what they're due. She also never got over her estrangement in the North and doesn't fully understand the people she's meant to be working with, and in that quarter Robb does a better job by default. And had Ned lived into old(er) age, Robb would have continued into this 40s or 50s still never in a position to speak or act over his father. Stepping into the position of the patriarch after a long time of obeying would still be shaky, unknown grounds. 

All in all, it can be argued that they were doomed either way, of course, whether they were THE King or THE advisor. Walder doesn't exactly respect women - to be promised a son of his as being handed Riverrun (and the head of the Riverlands) beats having a daughter married to a powerful man only any day. The Boltons have retained their old spite over being subjugated by the Starks  (from being Kings) and even having also failed in in raising in Rebellion against them in the past - the temptation was there. But Catelyn and Robb were, again, also a failed duo working together, with double sided lackings. But by all means, this is not something as straightforward and one-dimensional as the extremely capable and ever wise mother who has real experience to lead (especially the North) better following this completely fool of a child around. 

[forasecondtherewedwon]

The Ladies Whistledown - chapter three

Pairing: Eloise Bridgerton x Penelope Featherington Rating: T Chapter: 3 / ? Word Count: 2423

read on tumblr: one | two

Eloise did not know what to think. Or, rather, she did, but the thoughts were so plentiful that she was not sure upon which it might be best to bestow her concentration. Because she was not yet ready to follow Penelope, there was no struggle between whether she ought to rise from her swing or stay put. Instead, Eloise got right to the pages Penelope had left with her, eagerly unfolding them in spite of herself. Of course, once she had them open, she looked up and sighed before she had read a single word. Her shoulders drooped. She would rather have liked a cigarette. Pity.

It felt a bit of a cruel trick, that Penelope had thrust these fraught words upon her and then absconded post haste. Not exactly thrust, perhaps, because Eloise’s curiosity had played a role. She had simply been unprepared. After their shouting match, she had assumed her next non-encounter with Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers would be when they were offered to her to read and she turned up her nose, loudly and passionately and, most of all, self-righteously declaring she could never again be prevailed upon to read such twaddle. She blushed to think of this smug fantasy self of hers.

When the primary emotion she had been feeling about Lady Whistledown’s unveiled true identity was anger, it had all seemed so dreadfully straightforward. Penelope had done wrong and so she, Eloise, an intelligent woman with more important things to read, would shun the work and its author indiscriminatingly. After seeing Penelope—not Lady Whistledown, the unfeeling troublemaker, but Penelope, her closest friend—it had become complicated. It had been impossible to repeat last night’s declarations before Colin; Eloise had wanted to privately injure Penelope, not publicly slander her. And then Penelope had had to go and look pretty and behave charmingly, teasing Colin about his wretched state just as Eloise had been doing before Pen arrived. It was so unfair. It was so difficult to hate one’s friends when they took one’s side in mocking one’s irritating brothers.

And this was the problem precisely, Eloise found: how Penelope managed to be at once so perceptively mocking and so sweet. Now that Eloise knew about Whistledown, she found that the distinctions she had once drawn between that woman’s behaviour and the behaviour of her best friend were no longer so clear. When once she had complained to Pen about Whistledown’s faults, it had been because they seemed all the starker against Penelope’s obvious goodness. Every complaint Eloise had seemed justified when Penelope was taken as the model for how a lady ought to be. All along, the fault had been her own; Pen had never asked to stand on the pedestal upon which Eloise had placed her.

She gave the pages a second look. She would see what sort of reader they made of her, since she seemed temporarily incapable of determining what sort of writer had created them.

A stirring beginning, Eloise allowed. Serious, almost chastising. People will not like this, was her immediate thought, which she was then forced to pause and examine. The thought presumed these pages would be published. It assumed she cared what people liked, and that she cared how they reacted to Whistledown. Not only this, but that she cared for Whistledown’s sake, feeling somehow protective of this observer of society who too often set out to deride her subjects. Dash it, Eloise cared nonetheless. Though the paper contained cheap smears of character, there were moments of what she felt tempted to consider genuine bravery. She lowered the pages to her lap. Bravest of all was that Pen had written them last night, almost certainly after they had argued. She must have felt so alone, Eloise realized. She must have wagered she had little left to lose.

That explained why Penelope had come to her—partly. Perhaps a show of defiance was something Eloise could learn to expect from Pen as she knew her now. But surely such a thing would have been accomplished just as well if not better by actually printing the words and haughtily presenting Eloise with the finished sheet? Why share the manuscript? Why include her?

But that was it, of course, Eloise grasped. Delivering the pages was Penelope’s effort to include her. She recalled Penelope’s words and understood that she was included already, a consequence of being part of Pen, as Whistledown was. The honour (the word came to her with decaying scorn) of the invitation, though entirely unasked-for, was monumental. It was an olive branch, in its way. In another way, it was horribly insulting to assume Eloise would wish to participate in a practice she had so vocally, thoroughly reviled. The nerve of Penelope… And that thought, vexingly, elicited a smile. Eloise groaned loudly in frustration.

Come over and play, the pages singsonged up at her. Can’t you, El? Do not say you are a proper young lady now and all our games are done. Will you make me play alone?

Eloise did wonder at the stakes of Penelope’s offer. Was the fate of Lady Whistledown to be with Eloise or else never publish again, or would Pen go to the printer without her if she did not respond favourably—or at all? Did the clock tick away even now as Penelope awaited some predetermined hour at which she would embark for Chancery Lane? Eloise did not like to be hastened to action; she had been perfectly successful at acting with foolish impulsiveness on her own in the past.

Gathering the papers in one hand, she batted them against her other palm as she thought.

No. No. Penelope, Lady Whistledown, whoever, would not rush her. If the offer of inclusion was sincere, then Eloise expected to be permitted time to consider it. That was as far as she could make her mind up at present: she was certain that she required more time to be certain.

“What is the matter with you?” Benedict inquired later.

Eloise, sprawled in a chair in the drawing room, scrunched up her face and replied, “Penelope and I have fallen out.”

Benedict laughed.

“No, you haven’t.”

Eloise, cross, sat up straighter.

“We have,” she insisted. “This may be the end of our friendship.”

“Oh, really. What’ve you done then?”

Affronted, she shot her brother a frown.

“You will not even take my side?”

“Of course. Forgive me.” He strode over and leaned his arms on the back of the chair in which she had been thinking (sulking). “But what have you done?” he hissed, peering down at her.

Eloise sighed heavily and slumped once more.

“Shouted at her. Judged her. Criticized her. And all, perhaps, without ever having truly seen her at all.”

“You have been a horrid little beast, haven’t you?” Benedict teased. He frowned exaggeratedly at her self-inflicted misfortunes then reached down swiftly and tweaked her nose. She swatted at his hand and missed.

“My treatment of Penelope was not unprovoked,” Eloise said defensively.

Now her brother sighed and, pushing her arm out of the way, perched on the arm of the chair. She could feel him observing her and met his eye with a sullen reluctance.

“I am sorry,” he surprised her by saying. “I am sorry your friend let you down. It is an unfortunate truth about friends that they can sometimes be disappointing.”

“And the better the friend, the more disappointing they can be, evidently.”

“Maddening but correct.” There was a pause, and then Benedict asked, “Was Penelope aware that she was disappointing you before the shouting?”

“I…”

Although Eloise had believed she had an answer to this, now she had been asked the question directly, she struggled to respond. Surely Pen had known Eloise would strongly object to the treatment of herself and her family in the gossip sheet, but she had also put forth the argument that Eloise should have been impressed by what she had achieved, that she had tried at all to have some say in a world that preferred their mouths stay silent and hidden behind a fan. Eloise’s ransacking of Penelope’s bedchamber had clearly (and reasonably) panicked and enflamed her friend, and so it had been impossible to ever, after such a beginning, conduct the conversation towards a level-headed end. She had forced Penelope into a position of defending herself. The very circumstances under which Eloise had discovered the truth supposed Penelope to be wrong. Had it been different, had Penelope trusted and come to Eloise of her own volition, would it have been with the expectation of disappointing her?

Eloise pictured a copy of Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers torn cleanly in half between warring possibilities: Penelope would never have told her, suspecting Eloise would consider her influence on the Bridgertons’ lives a personal betrayal, or Penelope would have divulged all, entrusting Eloise with this secret so they might share in Penelope’s triumphs as a canny businesswoman and societal rebel.

“I have yet to determine that,” Eloise stated honestly.

Looking up at Benedick’s playful yet sympathetic expression, it was tempting to tell him all. However, lest he too think she was in the wrong, she could not. She changed the subject instead.

“How is Colin faring?”

Benedict smiled, evidently prepared to permit this redirection.

“Better. I instructed him to swallow the yolks of three raw eggs.”

Eloise made a sound of disgust.

“That is your cure for overindulgence?”

“Certainly not. I just wanted to see whether our dear brother would do it. He was sick again at once, so, in a way, I have helped to purge what ails him.”

“Whatever would he do without us?”

“Likely something excruciatingly boring. Like get married,” Benedict suggested in a pained whisper.

“From what I have experienced in a single season of balls and dance cards and callers and empty flattery, he owes us a great debt,” Eloise pronounced.

“And you get to do the whole thing again next year! I can hardly bear the wait!”

With a flap of her hand and a sour expression, she sent away her brother and his false enthusiasm. After he left though, she dwelled on what he had said. Another social season lay before her, even as her first was still waning, and there would be another after that, and another, and another, until she was betrothed to one of many seemingly interchangeable gentlemen. That was a frustrating inevitability Eloise did not know how to meet in this moment. Instead, her thoughts turned to how she would pass the time while she remained free to do more or less as she pleased. She thought of the Whistledown pages stashed in her bedchamber.

Her days, absent Penelope, would be long. When Eloise had banished Penelope from her sight, from her life, it had been in haste. She had said she would not see her, but of course she would see her. She had said she would not speak to her, yet they had already spoken. She had declared that she could no longer trust Penelope, but clearly she could not trust herself either! Was it all the fault of manipulation, as Eloise had accused during the party, or had Penelope merely come to the garden because she had missed her? Pen had said—she had undoubtedly said—that she had given Whistledown up. A lie. She had stipulated that the giving up of Whistledown had been done for Eloise. Possibly a lie, but impossible for Eloise to prove on her own. The motive would have had to be loyalty. Penelope’s sense of loyalty was very much in question at the moment, as far as Eloise was concerned, but then, again, there were the pages.

Eloise went to her bedchamber so she might hold the pages once more in her hands. They were in every way regular: folded with neither excessive care nor excessive haste, on plain cream paper, scribbled in Pen’s familiar hand. There was nothing at all alarming here, except for the beginning (“Gentle reader”) and the end (“Yours truly, Lady Whistledown”), and everything bracketed in between. To be in possession of pre-printing Whistledown was still deeply strange; it was, in matter of fact, undeniably thrilling. Eloise felt as though she could see into the future. She could guess which turns of phrase would tickle readers and which may be quoted by the Queen herself. Here, people would gasp. There, they would exchange knowing looks over a suspicion confirmed.

Eloise could not immediately put a name to what she was feeling, but after a minute or two, she decided it was power. Gossip was knowledge—sometimes trivial, sometimes damning, but knowledge. And she might aid in the decision of who got to know what and when. All it would take was sending Penelope a note containing a single word: Yes.

But Lady Whistledown, as she currently operated, was a meddler and an opportunist. No, Eloise decided, she did not wish to hurt people. She could not say yes. No one deserved to be tugged about on Whistledown’s puppet strings, all of their secrets exposed and examined. Eloise paused as it occurred to her that exposing some secrets (say, that a man was a rake, or known to be violent) was beneficial (say, to the naïve young lady he might try to court). Well, now she was muddled. She cast the pages aside and paced the room.

The thing was to print what was interesting enough that people would read, but not harmful to the readers who should be protected. It must be engaging and truthful, and when it could not be truthful directly, then it must be cleverly implicit while resisting a descent into tawdriness. The more Eloise considered the issue, the more she realized she had quite a lot of thoughts on how a gossip sheet ought to be composed. In the past, she had applied herself to tracking down Whistledown, to putting herself into that lady’s mindset in order to uncover her identity, but she had never sufficiently considered what, as Whistledown, she herself would write. Certainly, with each new instalment, she had shared her critique with Penelope, but that had been a kind of talking back to Whistledown (little had she known precisely how literally), not a talking as her. To be Whistledown from the start…

The prospect filled Eloise with ideas and defiance and interest and some anger yet, but she certainly did not feel nothing, and so she failed to dismiss the possibility quite as assuredly as she had planned.

[cdyssey]

One Bed

Summary: When Barbara and Melissa get to their conference hotel room, they're unduly shocked that there is only one bed. [Post-2.16]

CW: Alcohol, Drunkenness, Emotional Infidelity/Infidelity, Sexual Innuendo/References

AO3

—

It’s a mistake, of course.

A clerical error most likely.

Perfectly reasonable given all the administrative duress that the hotel must be under since it’s hosting PECSA.

When Barbara and Melissa get to their shared room, huffing and puffing and ready to park their tired asses down—having lugged their suitcases all the way down a long hallway that looks like it could have come straight from The Shining—they quickly realize that instead of two queens, there’s only one king-sized bed that’s clearly made for two. 

Barbara reacts as she’s supposed to, as is to be expected of her, a zealous woman of God—scandalized and righteously bewildered, stopping dead in the middle of the doorway, clenching the handle of her makeup bag far too tightly…

(… battling unsolicited images of Melissa’s beautiful hair splayed across a white pillow.)

(And she isn’t wearing a shirt in this vision for some inexplicable reason either, the contours of a black lace bra doing absolutely nothing to contain those creamy, voluptuous—)

“Oh, almighty God in Heaven,” she exhales with shuttered breath, blinking rapidly. Melissa nearly runs into her, the tip of her shoe clipping her heel as she also tries to teeter to an abrupt standstill with all her luggage.

It’s almost funny.

The way that Barbara barely feels the ensuing sting.

“What?” The younger woman grunts as she peers over her shoulder. “Is the room not clean yet or somethin’ because I swear to God, I ain’t carrying all this crap down aga—“

But she stops short, clearly sees the dilemma.

That one bed.

“Ah,” she only says, temporarily rendered speechless, which is a damn near feat for Melissa Schemmenti, who has strong opinions on pretty much everything, from the starting lineup of the Flyers to which Wawa hoagie is the best.

(The Gobbler obviously.)

“We should call downstairs,” Barbara suggests weakly, her throat strangely dry. Maybe it’s just the Allentown weather, and her sinuses are acting up, as they’re wont to do in strange environments.

Because surely, it’s not the prospect of sharing the same bed with her dearest friend in the entire world.

That would be ludicrous to be bothered about. 

Absurd even.

It’s merely a bed, and she’s a grown-ass woman who is perfectly capable of cohabiting a bed with another grown-ass woman.

If it has to come to that.

(She doesn’t think it would be a particularly good idea for it to come to that.)

“See if we can get it changed,” she continues, attempting a smile that stretches across her lips like rusted wire.

“What?” Melissa teases, having regained her composure far more quickly than Barbara. Her chin is nearly touching her shoulder, and that makes the kindergarten teacher feel some kind of way too, as though there’s a tightness coiled just behind her navel. She also blames this on her incredibly sensitive allergies, inwardly lamenting that she forgot to pack her Sudafed. 

“You scared to sleep in the same bed with me? ‘Fraid I have cooties?”

She receives an accompanying smirk and an elbow nudge at this, pinned down by twinkling eyes that remind her of both hearth and home, and Barbara can’t help it; she laughs in spite of herself. 

Because it never really matters in the end. 

Not with Melissa Schemmenti.

Whether she’s irritated about paperwork, stressed after a long few weeks of fearing that her husband has prostate cancer, or experiencing inconvenient sinus symptoms, the younger woman always knows how to tease a smile out of her. She’s a menace and one hell of a saint; she absolutely delights in doing so. 

Barbara used to hate that when she was a younger woman, loathed that there was apparently one person who could sneak past her well-constructed defenses and disarm them all with a sly wink and a shit-eating grin. She used to nag at Melissa all the time for being facetious.

It was utterly inappropriate.

All the jokes and games and innuendos that would make a preacher blush.

They were supposed to be adults. 

But now, nearly three decades down the line, she’s forever grateful to Melissa for continually reminding her of how to play.

“No, of course not,” she insists vigorously. “I just know that you and I would both be more comfortable if we had our own beds. Our backs are more twisted than those kids who won at the end of Footloose.”

“Pssh, that’s the moral you took at the end of Footloose, Barb?” Melissa snorts incredulously, shaking her fiery head. 

“Yes!”

No, it absolutely was not, but she isn’t going to admit to spending an inordinate amount of time admiring Lori Singer’s toned arms. 

As inspiration for her own exercise regiment, naturally. 

“God bless ya,” her friend chortles fondly, “but hell yeah, sure. We can grab our swag bags from the ballroom and swing by the front desk afterwards. And then it’s—“

“—pool time, baby,” Barbara finishes with delicious zeal, unable to contain herself, affecting a theatrical, little shoulder shimmy. 

She’s been looking forward to PECSA for at least a month now, anticipating all the best parts in advance: the long car ride with Melissa and the inevitable hours in the pool with her too, luxuriating in the sauna with Melissa, boozing it up with Melissa, staggering back to the room gloriously drunk at 2AM with Melissa, (wondering why life isn’t always as lovely as this in a tequila-soaked daze).

Waking up to Melissa as the first sight she sees in the morning.

Nursing a nasty hangover.

Thinking it’s an appropriate and welcome punishment for ever daring to be so perfectly happy.

(With Melissa.)

These are the traditions that they’ve threaded for themselves in all these years upon years—their rituals of unbecoming, of leaving school and family chaos and the consummate professionals that they always have to be behind. And, of course, what happens at the conference stays at the conference. That’s their maxim anyway—maybe even their chosen excuse—for the ways they tend to act when they’re alone.

“Well, I was gonna say booze time,” the younger woman grins, “but I guess the two aren’t mutually exclusive the way we do it.”

“No,” Barbara easily returns the smile, affectionately knocking her hip against Melissa’s own. “Not at all.”

—

An hour later, they’re stretched out side-by-side on lounge chairs by the pool—pre-gaming for PECSA-geddon with piña coladas—when Melissa gets a call from the concierge; they’d stopped by the lobby before heading upstairs to change into their swimsuits and made the manager aware of the error, leaving with a promise that he’d look for another room and get back to them as soon as check-in rush was over.

But to no avail.

There are no doubles left in the inn.

“He said they’ll send us a complimentary bottle of champagne for the trouble, though,” the second-grade teacher shrugs as she tosses her phone into her beach bag again. “So that’s a plus. I’mma need copious amounts of alcohol to cope with seein’ my sister’s ugly mug.”

Barbara, who had been stuck on the fact that she is in fact going to have to share a bed with Melissa tonight—(again, not that it discomfits her at all! she’s a grown-ass woman!)—is a little late registering what she just said, but when it hits her, when she remembers that they’d run into Kristin Marie before leaving the vendor ballroom, she sharply recalls the way the two sisters had so viscerally sparred.

As they always do when they encounter each other in the wild—claws out, hackles raised, their words like sharp teeth at the edge of the other’s exposed throat.

Barbara frankly thinks that their estrangement has gone on for too damn long. She’s seen enough of their fights to know that beneath all the name calling and cooking-based insults, they clearly love and miss each other, even if they’re both too stubborn to ever admit it. But all the same, she hadn’t appreciated Kristin Marie’s remarkably low blow about Joseph.

Hell, she may have even said something herself had Melissa not gotten there first.

“About that…” She begins, biting her plump lower lip. It tastes like pineapple. She briefly prays—perhaps inappropriately—that the rum will give her liquid courage. 

Barbara is well-aware that they have an implicit but long-established rule not to bring their personal lives with them to conferences. Last year, for instance, they did an exceptionally fine job of not talking about the fact that the Howards had been in unhappy straits, their marriage strained by Gerald’s recent promotion. His long hours exacted a toll from them; his frequent out-of-town trips caused an abyss that neither of them knew how to functionally bridge.

They didn’t argue necessarily—they just constantly disagreed with each other in their normal tones of voice—but that was somehow the exact same thing and possibly even worse.

(Maybe they were too apathetic to even muster themselves to fight.)

They persevered and made it through that dark time, though.

(Mostly.)

They tentatively reconciled.

(They never directly spoke about the thousands of tensions between them, steamrolling over and through them instead, affecting a normality that neither of them looked like they could wholly feel.)

Of course they did. There was no other option. Divorce was synonymous with quitting, and quitting was in neither of their vocabularies. 

But things had been complicated there for a while.

Life had been.

And this time last year, Melissa didn’t have to ask if something was wrong. Attentive to every microgesture, she just capably knew and didn’t press Barbara about any of it. 

Just kept plying drinks into her open hand.

And Barbara Howard had loved her for that—for her discretion, for her clear sensitivity to the delicate situation, for all her innumerable and wordless acts of care—the drinks, her purposefully inane chatter, the way she would sometimes rub circles into the side of the kindergarten teacher’s wrist when they sat at the bar, and every tall man with a sad smile unfailingly reminded her of Gerald.

She’s too something or another—(Involved? Hypocritical? Christian?)—to ever extend her the same courtesy.

“Don’t,” Melissa warns, sucking on the straw of her drink rather petulantly. “I don’t wanna hear it. I ain’t makin’ up with her.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest that,” she replies patiently. (Well, she is. Eventually. If the two of them keep it up this weekend. Both for Melissa’s sake and her own. She’s not willing to play referee to the Schemmenti sisters’ knock-down-drag-out fights again. She’s been there, done that, and every attempt has unfailingly ended with her needing to imbibe copious amounts of wine for doing so.) “I was just going to ensure that you’re okay—see if you wanted to talk about it.”

It isn’t entirely lost on her that Melissa had said the exact same thing to her just two weeks ago when she’d nearly set the school on fire, distracted and undone by the stress of Gerald’s health scare. It isn’t beyond her grasp of irony that they’d concluded that same conversation on a laughing agreement that neither of them believe in the necessity of advertising their stressors.

But still.

It’s them, and they talk through these things when they’re ready or just on the verge of being so. It’s them, and they both implicitly know when the other needs a little push off the terrifying ledge. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be them if they didn’t—push each other and need to occasionally be pushed, that is—always challenging each other in their relationship in some way or another, more than willing to be what the other lacks. 

Melissa immediately averts her eyes, staring at the water mere feet away from them, how it rhythmically laps against the side of the pool, and Barbara stares at her, intransigent and yet so gentle, knowing it is a form of love to not let the moment go.

“What’s there to talk about?” She eventually shrugs. Her green cover-up slips at the gesture and the magenta strap of her swimsuit briefly becomes visible, her slightly freckled shoulder exposed.

Barbara blinks rapidly, forcing herself to concentrate, briefly unspooled by a sudden desire to kiss the creamy skin there, to sample the anatomy of her all the way down…

She coughs into her free hand, briefly choked.

Damn sinuses.

“Kristin Marie’s a little shit,” Melissa goes on, oblivious, still looking away, now idly swirling the colorful umbrella in her cocktail glass. “End of the story. Same old, same old.”

“A little shit who is also your sister,” Barbara parries back with a knowing smile as her friend just as deliberately scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest. “Which is what makes it so complicated, sweetheart—the people we love know how to wound us far more effectively than any knife.”

“Did ya get that off a Snapple lid, Barb?” Melissa retorts. Melissa jokes. Melissa capably deflects. Always, always, always. It’s one of her less aggressive defenses against unwanted vulnerability, the one she tends to wield most in conversations with Barbara. 

(With other people—outsiders—she’d just bark and perhaps even bite.)

But Barbara solemnly shakes her head, unwilling to let her get away with it, thinking of her best friend’s kindness in these last few weeks—how, ever since the fire, not a day has gone by that she hasn’t made sure that she’s okay. Gerald even told her the other night—as they laid in their sheets after yet another round of celebratory relief sex—that he was glad that she’d finally told Mel. 

Mel.

He called her that because he loves her too.

Not in the same way Barbara does, of course…

… whatever way that happens to be.

That’s too complicated for her to ever fully—or at least, audibly—define.

Messy even.

And she despises mess, especially within the immaculate temple of herself; she scrubs it clean at the altar every Sunday, asking God’s forgiveness for a sin that she can’t even name.

She thrilled at her husband bringing Melissa’s pervasive specter into their shared bed, relieved that she didn’t have to be the one to do so; and yet, her hand splayed against his bare chest, she could not bring herself to interrogate the root cause of her own pleasure.

“I was worried about you,” he went on gently, his warm knuckles skimming her forearm as he held her in the dark, “keeping it all on the inside.”

“It was the only thing I could do,” Barbara returned, perhaps a little too quickly, echoing the same sentiment that she had said to Melissa. She could only pray and not talk about it; she had desperately wanted to talk about it, had almost dared to—several times, in fact—as she and Melissa sat at the same table that she’d later burned, as was their habit, as was their decades long norm. But the words remained lacquered on her tongue; the weight of them rendered her incapable of speech; she was convinced that speaking her fears to Melissa would make them all real.

I’m afraid my husband is sick, she could not bring herself to say.

And if he is—if this is our lived reality—then I am devastated, Melissa.

I am so, so guilty.

Our marriage is not what it once was.

She loves Gerald Howard; she always will—he has been her best friend for thirty-seven beautiful years—but she secretly wonders if their renewed closeness in these last few weeks is just mutual and desperate apology, a last-ditch attempt to mend what has certainly been disrupted between them.

They’ve been distant from each other for a long time now.

And it hasn’t been anyone’s fault, really.

All their polite disagreements aside, Barbara is more than aware that Gerald’s promotion was not the fundamental breaking point in their marriage; it was just the easiest grievance to turn into an excuse, the tangible obstacle that they could both offload their hundreds of insecurities into without delving further into any single one of them. They could blame the promotion because it was there. It kept them from having to confront each other, which was far more complicated than having an impartial something to unite against. This lack of introspection allowed their middling reconciliation to be easier to swallow than it probably should have been, and yet, conversely, it made Gerald’s irregular prostate exam results all that much harder to bear three weeks ago. After the fact, they both became alive to the reality that their marriage has long been broken, and they’ve done everything since then to try and bandage the festering wounds.

The sex has been passionate.

Has been sensational even—(they’re both overachievers)—and yet, strangely controlled, as though both of them are seeking atonement from the other’s satisfaction. Barbara appreciates the intimacy; she deeply fears that it is compensating for something that they can never, ever get back. 

“You’re happier now that you’ve told her, though,” Gerald continued, and his voice was so kind as it wound its way down to her in the quietness of their room, and yet, she could distinguish that his eyes were shrewd… and perhaps even a little sad.

That had scared her a little.

And maybe a whole lot.

What was there to be shrewd (and perhaps a little sad) about when it came to her relationship with Melissa?

What did he know?

Was it something that she didn’t? Was it the unspoken thing that she could not force herself to articulate—the twinges in her gut that she sometimes experienced when she looked at Melissa, the recurring visions of the woman in her underwear, the thrill that she just experienced when he had only said her name? Was Melissa the unnamable sin that she kept committing—over and over again—without ever fully acknowledging that she was doing so?

“Gerald—” She started, the slightest plea in her voice. She curled her manicured fingers into the dividing line of his sternum and wished that he had said something that she could truthfully deny.

But he cut across her; he enveloped her hand with his own and lightly squeezed.

“—I like it when you’re happy, Barb.”

And somehow, in their nearly four decades long marriage, that was the cruelest thing he had ever said to her because of what it indirectly and yet so clearly implied.

She was not happy with him.

She found, even in the rawness and the immediacy of that moment, that she could not wipe her hands free of blood and cleanly refute this assertion either, and so, only one ruinous fact remained.

She and Gerald love each other deeply and so much.

They’re hurting each other all the same.

“Be serious, girlfriend,” she tells Melissa, frowning firmly, her mind full of her husband, her chest aching because of her best friend. “I’m not talking about Snapple lids and you know it. I’m talking about lived experience.”

I’m talking about your sister.

I’m talking about Gerald Howard.

I’m talking about us.

(She always is in some way or another.)

We both know what it’s like to be hurt by loved ones.

And equally, what it means to hurt them back.

Maybe she and Melissa—without ever really realizing it—hurt each other every blessed day, just by inhabiting the same spaces and fooling themselves into believing that they are careful about never crossing any of its dutifully articulated lines.

“And I don’t wanna be serious, Barb,” Melissa huffs, the playful smile slipping sideways from her mouth. “I want to drink my piña colada and inhale so much chlorinated water that I accidentally get high. Is that so much to ask for PECSA weekend?”

The answer, of course, is no—it’s not a demanding request at all, and if Barbara is any sort of friend, she’d drop the conversation right here and right now, and allow them to return to their various attempts at self-medication… but she can't entirely help herself, a little reckless under the influence, freer here in Allentown from the facade which circumscribes her in every other given context.

PECSA Barbara has a lot in common with Sea Barbara.

They’re both almost truthful.

“Perhaps not,” she admits grudgingly, watching as Melissa places her drink down on the table between them and starts to take her cover-up off, clearly about to make a run from her feelings by diving into the pool. This is yet another one of her friend’s go-to diversionary tactics, the one she commonly resorts to when joking about her pain doesn’t work.

(It never really works on Barbara.)

“But you miss her, Melissa, and she’s here,” she continues, now dry-mouthed and overwhelmed at the sight of the younger woman in just her bathing suit: the ample exposure of her cleavage, the powerful silhouette of her thighs, the thin pink fabric that stretches tightly over her belly. “Perhaps God is trying to tell you something.”

Her chest bruises even as she utters the words.

She probably shouldn’t be invoking God when she can’t keep her eyes off of Melissa Schemmenti’s ass.

“And maybe it’s just a coincidence,” her friend says bluntly, suddenly standing up and kicking her sandals off. One nearly flies into the water.

Barbara winces at the tone, knows that she provoked it and hates that she did—(why can’t she ever leave well enough alone?)—which Melissa immediately catches, her green eyes softening, her entire expression, a conciliatory smile rising to her lips. It’s as crooked as the necklace of saints nigh perpetually strung around her neck.

“But, uh, enough chit-chat,” she says, jerking her head towards the pool, her messy ponytail violently swinging from side-to-side. “You comin’, hon?”

Barbara quickly decides that she’s pushed her luck far enough in this conversation and nods emphatically, slowly tugging her own cover up above her head, revealing her sky blue bathing suit underneath. It doesn’t escape her notice that Melissa’s cheeks have slightly reddened at the sight, that her pupils have dilated, that she’s rubbing at the hollow of her throat with three fingers. Indeed, thoroughly aware of all these reactions, she swallows thickly, suddenly self-conscious. She makes a meal out of neatly folding the garment and placing it in her bag, giving both of them time to recompose themselves.

“After you,” she eventually says in a voice that’s not her own.

And so, when Melissa wades into the water, Barbara dutifully follows, drawn siren-like by the fiery undulations of the other’s hair. 

—

Barbara showers first, and Melissa follows. 

Afterwards, of course.

Separately.

That’s probably the one thing that they’ve never shared—well, besides a bed, but even that’s about to change in the course of a few hours.

The entire time that she’s getting dressed, blow-drying her hair, smartening up in a green dress and turquoise blazer, meticulously applying her mascara, she’s thinking about that damn bed. She can’t escape it no matter where she moves in the room. It’s too big. It invades the entire space and all her rational senses. Even as she was showering, rinsing off the sharp stench of the pool, she could not escape the inexorable pull it had on her, the sensual thoughts that it engendered…

Red hair on a pillow.

Lace bras that don’t do their one and only job.

Hands touching hands.

Verdant eyes peering out of the darkness, pulling her inwards into the jungle of the night, a beautiful kaleidoscope of revolving bodies… scarlet curls, plum-colored lips, thighs like creamy taffy, skin like smoky quartz.

She can’t remotely blame any of this on her sinuses, so she rationally concludes that she should stop drinking for the evening—

—a resolution she almost immediately gives up on when a bellhop knocks on the door and delivers the hotel’s apology champagne. 

She pours herself a glass in one of the red solo cups she and Melissa had brought with them for the trip and unslowly drinks it, sitting on the edge of the bed that she and Melissa will eventually share. Some paint-by-the-numbers procedural show is playing on the television. She stares at it without really comprehending it and idly wonders if Melissa is the big spoon or the little spoon.

But then that particular line of thought makes her remember that her best friend has a boyfriend, and her stomach unpleasantly lurches at the thought of Gary the Vending Machine putting his hairy arms around her waist, pulling her in to his chest, working his undeserving fingers beneath the elastic band of her undergarments…

She’s never entirely liked the man.

(Yes, she absolutely pushed Melissa to date him in the first place.)

He’s good, he’s fine, he’s perfectly okay—but those are the same sorts of adjectives that one might apply to a functional kitchen appliance, not a romantic partner. 

She takes another distracted swill of her drink and doesn’t clock the precise moment when Melissa apparently steps out of the en-suite bathroom in a white robe, her vivid hair wrapped in a towel. But when she looks over and apprehends this dizzying sight, Barbara can only stare.

“Forgot my bra in here,” she chuckles, which is precisely the worst thing she can possibly say because Barbara’s eyes immediately roam upwards to the v-shaped divot of the robe, where little is visible except for curving shadows, the tantalizing suggestion of something more. “Kinda need that.”

“Yes,” she hears herself agree in a pathetically small voice, squeezing her plastic cup as Melissa saunters past to her suitcase, which is resting on top of the armchair in the corner of the room. It’s all very hypnotic, the pendulum-like swing of her hips, the graceful coordination of all her white-clothed limbs.

Barbara wonders if this effect is intentional, if Melissa knows exactly what she’s doing to her.

But she doesn’t give the thought too much air lest she accidentally name the animal of an emotion prowling around her gut for what she thinks it might be.

(It’s certainly nothing her fellow brothers and sisters in Christ would sanction, that’s for sure.)

(Happiness, her own husband might call it in the dead of night, in the sanctum of their shared bed.)

Melissa bends down to rummage through her suitcase, which doesn’t help matters much either, and Barbara tugs at her layered necklace, thinks she may have clasped it on a little too tightly.

“Listen, Barb, I’ve been thinkin’ about what you said earlier,”' Melissa starts falteringly, clear reluctance in her low voice. “About Kristin Marie. Y’know, at the pool.”

After Melissa had so firmly put a stop to that conversation, Barbara hadn’t brought it up again, and within minutes, they had returned to their jovial selves again—or, perhaps more specifically, the selves who they were at PECSA—hedonists, only thinking about the next physical pleasure. They laughed. They played. They were both experts at compartmentalizing, well-versed in the art of drowning out the noise with a facsimile of a smile. They dried off, finished their piña coladas, and enthused about the party tonight like it was the only pressing matter in their two-person world.

“Oh, do allow me to apologize for that, Melissa,” she frowns deeply as the other teacher finally straightens up with something in her hands. “I know your sister is a sensitive subject for you, and I… I shouldn’t have brought her up… we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

But Melissa vehemently shakes her head, a few damp curls falling from her towel, and finally turns to face Barbara again, a sad smile crooked at the corner of her mouth, a silky black bra dangling from her fingertips.

One hand still gripping her solo cup, Barbara buries the fingers of the other into her right thigh.

“Good, yeah,” her friend laughs, though the gesture doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She shifts uncomfortably, rolling her weight from foot to foot. “That works for me… but, uh, I also just wanted to say thanks, Barb.”

Barbara can’t pry her gaze away from that damn brassiere; Melissa’s own is darting anywhere but her: the ceiling, the carpeted floor, the empty space just over her shoulder. What a pair the two of them make.

“For what?” She asks in a constricted voice, and the oddness of it must draw the other’s attention because suddenly, they're finally looking at each other in the face again. They’re staring, mutually constituting each other in the wordless interaction.

Seeing and being seen.

It is all that they have ever done.

It is all that they seem to want to do.

“For bein’ there for me,” comes an equally charged reply, freighted by that which neither of them can openly name. “I know you were just trying to help out, and I appreciate that.”

“Always,” Barbara breathes immediately, so glad that there is space between them—some six feet and something even more intangible than that. The elaborate ring on her fourth finger digs into her thigh too. “You’d do the same for me.”

A slight beat; she smiles so widely that it almost hurts.

“You have done the same for me,” she adds passionately. “I don’t know who or where or what I’d ever be without you, Melissa Schemmenti.”

But she does in fact know—maybe they both do. Maybe even her sweet husband does too. Maybe it's the most horribly kept secret in the whole wide world.

“God, you’re such a sap,” Melissa laughs because it's easier than actually engaging, and Barbara allows her the indiscretion this time, even joining along.

“Girl, you’re one to talk!”

“Hey!”

She is more than dimly aware that it’s probably better for them both if they continue to treat their relationship like it’s some huge joke.

Because isn't it, though?

They love each other, and they can never actually say it aloud.

Isn’t that the funniest punchline in God’s almighty world?

They love each other, and they can never act upon this reality in any meaningful way.

They live with this crucial fact every single day and spend so many of their waking hours dangerously straddling the borders that they've so carefully articulated to keep themselves apart.

But, of course, that's only when they're sober.

—

With each math-a-rita that they guzzle at PECSA-geddon, the more liberal with their affection that they get, all of their studious inhibitions subsumed beneath the ministrations of tequila. 

One drink in, they start with little gestures.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Innocuous even.

Forgivable.

Barbara places a guiding hand on the small of Melissa’s back as they weave their way through the throng of nicely dressed people, looking for a table with room enough for two. The younger woman is wearing a leopard-print dress.

And she never wears a dress.

And she thinks about this, much longer and more sinfully than she probably should.

Melissa curls her fingers into Barbara’s wrist when they realize that they’re sitting with the Dawn Nichols, whose school supplies are legendary amongst educators. The second grade teacher gives her a knowing look, the kind that clearly says, Holy shit, there’s an opportunity here. 

We can make something happen.

And Barbara shivers with quiet delight as their ankles accidentally glance beneath the table, as the expression in those green eyes does something to her, unloosing her at her tightly knotted core.

Two drinks into the night, they’ve run into Kristin Marie by this point, and Melissa’s entire body is wound so tightly that Barbara thinks that to touch her is to break her.

But she does it anyway—touches her, that is—a little reckless with her head buzzing so pleasantly, the sermonizing voice who often tells her no locked outside her personal church for the night. She interlinks their arms together as they revolve around the ballroom, and Melissa vents about her younger sister being a total puttana—whatever that means—and a shithead—which is perfectly comprehensible.

She gets a little tired of this after a couple of revelations, though, her feet aching in her heels, and she doubles back on her initial resolve to not interfere with the Schemmenti sisters, suggesting the impossible in the same breath—that they try to make up with each other. 

And she touches Melissa’s arm when she says as much.

She presses her thumb into the crook of her soft elbow.

And when they look at each other—really look at each other—less than two feet between them, an island unto themselves in the middle of this crowded room, Barbara somehow knows that they’re both thinking about their conversation in the hotel room earlier—about the fact that they’re always there for each other, and it's not just a trite thing that either of them have unthinkingly said.

It's the truth.

Trust me, Barbara tries to say with just her eyes. I’m here for you.

If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be there to catch you if you fall.

Fuck you, Melissa all but communicates with her own, though with the deep sigh that comes shortly afterward, she just as immediately intimates, Okay.

Yeah.

Sure.

I believe you.

Trust has been hard won between them in over twenty years of companionship.

(It is a part of the love that they can never fully say.)

Two plus one math-a-ritas in, they’re back at the round table with Dawn Nichols and Kristin Marie—the Schemmenti sisters have finally made up!—and they’re all tipsily laughing about a story that Melissa is telling. Something inappropriate, of course. Something crass. Something about a wild escapade that she’d had when she went to France with a few of her friends for her college graduation trip, where she somehow became very close friends with a young Parisian couple she met at a bar.

“So we go back to their place and I’m thinkin’ that we’re just gonna throw back some shitty European wine,” Melissa carries on, simply exuberant, her cheeks suffused with a rosy glow, “and the guy, God bless him, he was flippin’ hot, but he didn’t have a thought in his head.” 

“Just your type,” Kristin Marie snorts, but the quip doesn’t have any real bite to it anymore. She grins at her older sister lopsidedly, with a reluctant tenderness that makes the striking resemblance between them all the more apparent.

“Yeah,” Melissa acknowledges cheerfully, nodding once, and Barbara is just happy to see her friend so happy, even though she’s not exactly sure where this adventurous story is going. “So his girlfriend’s in the bathroom, and he starts jabberin’ away at me, askin’ if I wanted to take my jacket off." Her eyes twinkling with mischief, she affects a spectacularly bad French accent. “Do you need to use ze restroom? Would you like some… lotion, mon chéri?”

She switches back to her normal voice, snickering at herself.

“Only he didn’t say lotion, y'know."

Dawn Nichols and Kristin Marie must arrive at similar conclusions at the exact same time because the former claps an amused hand over her mouth, while the younger Schemmenti sibling goes, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph."

“What?” Barbara purses her lips, pouting a little, feeling left out, as she stares between the three women. She’d gotten sidetracked by the leg brushed up against hers beneath the table and perhaps lost the nuance in the conversation as her companions laugh raucously. “What am I missing?”

“It was lube,” Melissa proffers without the slightest modicum of reserve, shrugging her nearest shoulder. “They wanted to fuck me, Barb.”

Barbara can't recover her face fast enough; her mouth falls open where she sits, and she can only blush and suddenly be assaulted with a thousand new images pirouetting through her head—all of which have to do with Melissa and none of which are remotely acceptable to God.

“And did they?” Dawn asks in a hushed voice, her own features delicately feathered with pink, as she leans forward in anticipation of an answer.

“Oh, hell yeah,” her best friend smirks as Kristin Marie guffaws at Barbara, who is now currently choking on air.

Melissa, unshaken and unfazed, takes it in stride, though, rhythmically patting her on the back.

“Oh, shit, ya’ve broken a woman of God,” Kristin Marie snorts, wiping at her eyes.

“Nothing new,” Melissa says charmingly and she leans over to press a kiss against Barbara’s cheek as though to prove a point. 

Barbara cradles her burning face in her hands.

“Lord,” she exhales into her palms, fully incapable of looking at the woman next to her, “I don’t know why I’m even still friends with you.”

Melissa just laughs and laughs, and she continues to massage the spot between her shoulder blades, and she laughs.

Four drinks in, and they’re having a math-a-rita drinking contest with Derek, a bellhop whom they’ve become friendly with over the years. 

Well, Melissa has a drinking contest with him, while Barbara uses the barest sliver of common sense and sobriety that she has left to cajole Dawn Nichols into working with Abbott for at least a year.

“Thank you,” she enthuses, briefly squeezing the other woman’s arm where it rests on the table. “You don’t know how much this will mean for our students.”

“Of course,” Dawn says, warmly observing the drinking game happening a few feet away. Melissa has nearly polished off another glass to Derek’s growing chagrin and Kristin Marie’s violently loud delight. “It’s clear to me that you and your partner are excellent educators; I know you’ll put the resources to good use…”

In her unadulterated surprise at the word used to describe hers and Melissa’s relationship, she nearly forgets to be gracious.  

“Oh, we aren’t—“ She suddenly starts and then stops herself, reevaluating mid-sentence. 

Partner isn’t necessarily a romantic term. Partner simply implies companionship and association with another, inseparability and togetherness. And they have absolutely been those things.

Inseparable.

Together.

A united front.

Partners.

Yes, of course they are and have always been.

“I mean, thank you,” she amends herself politely. “Melissa is truly one of a kind.”

The second grade teacher’s ears must be burning because she apparently hears this and turns back to face them with a radiant smile on her lips, as red as the blush that enlivens her soft cheeks.

“Damn straight I am,” she jests, comfortably resting her chin on Barbara’s shoulder. “What are we talkin’ about again?”

Barbara naturally leans into the touch as Dawn briefly turns away, now engaged by Kristin Marie asking a question about supply packages.

“Oh, nothing, sweetheart,” she muses in a low voice, suddenly feeling herself pulled into the other’s mischief, even wanting to play along; she's simultaneously breathless, intoxicated, by her intimate proximity and the scent of her orange blossom perfume. “Just about how you and I are partners. It’s a rather lofty descriptor for the shenanigans we get up to, isn't it?”

“Yeah, it’d be far easier to just say gay.”

“Melissa Schemmenti!” She nearly chokes. 

Again.

“I kid, I kid! Jesus, Barb! Get a sip of water!”

But there’s not one ounce of water to be found on their table, and so Barbara has to compromise with another hearty swill of margarita.

Tragic.

But she'll cope.

An ungodly amount of alcohol later—(Barbara has lost track of how much either of them have consumed)—they finally stumble into their room around 2AM, supporting one another as best as they can with their altered equilibriums, giggly and utterly euphoric, triumphant in their respective conquests. 

Melissa has outdrunk Derek for the fifth year in a row, and Barbara has secured a contract with Dawn Nichols.

And they are both so drunk and so exhilarated and so unbelievably alive in the moment, that they don’t entirely know how to extricate themselves from each other in the come down from such an exquisite high; they fall into bed—that one, singular bed—in a tangle of loving limbs, still in their dresses, only just capable of kicking their shoes off into the semi-darkness of the room. They didn’t close the curtains all the way before they left for PECSA-geddon, so moonlight intrudes upon the moment, silver and stunningly bright, catching both of them in the simple act of being happy.

Frankly, though, at this current junction of time, as compromised as they are, it’s beyond either of them to fully care. 

“Shit, fuck,” Melissa laughs so hard that she shakes the mattress beneath them. “Your ring’s caught in my hair, Barb.”

“Oh, sorry, girlfriend,” Barbara apologizes and attempts to unravel her fingers from that mass of scarlet waves, but her ring is caught in the wilderness of it, snarled and apprehended. Somehow, in the incredible dysfunction of her mind, she thinks that raising herself above Melissa as she lies vulnerable on the mattress is the best way to set herself free, but all this does is give her a proper aerial view of her prone best friend.

All this does is nearly place her on top of her, their heaving chests inches apart, threatening to collide every so often by the force and desperation of their breathing. Barbara’s slender hands are splayed on either side of Melissa’s head. 

Her face.

She can see every pronounced lineament in the younger woman’s face. Its dramatic height and angular proportions. The complicated expression in her eyes: the profound tenderness of them and something else too. Hunger. Reverence. Melancholy. She can trace the crow’s feet that gather beneath them and at the very edges of them. The redness of her slightly parted lips and the parentheses which enclose them. The slope and the playful upturn of her sharp nose. 

She is beautiful, so unspeakably gorgeous.

Melissa Schemmenti.

Her very best friend.

Her partner.

Maybe even the love of her life, the opportunity who has always eluded her, the what if? just beyond her reach. But, at long last, there is no barrier between them, no insurmountable wall. There is only them and their bodies and the chemistry that electrifies them both whenever they so much as look each other. There is this feeling in her stomach that has been building all day, a tension that she cannot swallow, a queerness that she cannot properly digest. It erects itself in her like a monument, scaffolding its way up the column of her spine.

It will reach her tongue finally.

Those three glorious words.

Fuck me, Melissa. 

(Because I love you is something she still won't be able to say.)

(I love you would make all of this so very real.)

(And precisely none of it can be real; these are the fantasies; these are the fairy tales.)

(The delusions.)

“Ouch,” Melissa murmurs as her hair is pulled. 

By Barbara Howard’s diamond encrusted wedding ring.

It shines in the irradiated light of the moon, glinting harshly, in clear and damning reprimand, and Barbara flinches viscerally, as though stricken. The ring becomes a token again, symbolizing something else besides its own beauty.

Gerald is a good man.

She loves him so much.

She isn’t in love with him, though.

But even still, what gives her the right to ever hurt him?

She straightens up into the air so fast that her head spins, that her stomach lurches, that all the booze she has consumed in the past few hours nearly crests within her and outside of her. She frees her hand; she undoubtedly tugs some more of Melissa's hair. She almost reels backwards into the TV, unable to recapture her balance. She covers her mouth with the hand that always reminds her that she is a married woman, a taken one; the silver band firmly scolds her lips.

“Shit, Barb,” Melissa breathes, abruptly sitting up in the bed, concern in her eyes, such tender and evocative care. “You okay?”

She nods mutely, incapable of trusting herself to speak without expelling all of the accumulated pollution inside of her. Tears form in her eyes and leak over her lower lashes anyway. 

“No, you’re flippin’ not,” her friend readily supplies, standing up herself on rather wobbly feet, but she takes a step towards Barbara anyway, as though to bridge the gap between them, the untenable, omnipresent distance.

And Barbara equally takes a step back, her lower hip hitting the wardrobe that the TV sits upon. 

“Don’t,” she hisses painfully, finally uncovering her mouth.

“Why not?” Melissa challenges, at once defiant and wounded, her brow furrowed over her eyes. The recognition of this makes the kindergarten teacher want to scream. In not hurting Gerald, she’s surely plunging a knife into Melissa. She’s proving her own point from earlier.

Love is a weapon.

It maims and occasionally destroys.

“Because I would kiss you,” she admits, and it feels good to finally say it aloud, to give shape and dimension to these feelings that have seethed inside of her for so long, for so many of the years upon aching years that they've taught at Abbott Elementary side-by-side.

“… and that would make a monster out of me,” she quickly adds because this is also true, and it needs to be said aloud.  

It needs to injure, push away, and deter; she doesn't want to do it; necessity drives her on.

“Oh, yeah?” Comes a reply gentler than it has any right to be. Kind. It Is far less than what she deserves. “And what would that make me then, huh?”

One too.

Complicit. 

Just like me. 

She could say any of these three things but doesn’t; it was clearly a rhetorical question; she can see in Melissa’s darkly lashed eyes that she is willing to accept every wayward epithet if this is the price, if this is the blood sacrifice of their communion.

They can be monsters with each other; they can be so totally in love.

Barbara swallows; thoroughly inebriated though she is, she is not insensible to the magnitude of this offer, the knowledge that all she has to do is say the word and down they’ll descend into hell, hand in monstrous hand.

Alone.

Together.

“I can’t,” she rasps anyway. She swipes angrily at the tears still slipping down her face. She sniffs noisily and loathes herself for it.

“I know,” Melissa returns, her own eyes suddenly overbright. 

But then Barbara Howard leans down and almost does it anyway, gathering the silky hair at the back of Melissa’s neck in her fist, her knuckles softly scraping the skin there. And their noses brush. Their boozy breaths gather in hot pockets in the barest space between them. 

Their lips never touch, though.

Sacrilege remains uncommitted.

“You can’t,” Melissa echoes as a singular tear spirals from the corner of her eye and down the tall plane of her cheek. It collects calmly on the vertex of her chin and remains there.

Barbara brushes it away with her thumb before completely letting go.

“No,” she agrees hoarsely, stepping back for good, and there is a finality to the act that saves and devastates them both.

—

They take turns showering, rinsing the night off them, the copious amounts of booze. Melissa goes first this time, and Barbara follows. 

Afterwards, of course.

Separately.

And when Barbara eventually stumbles back into the bedroom, wearing pajamas that she’s pretty sure are inside out, she sees that Melissa is already in bed, covers pulled up to her face, clearly asleep, lightly snoring.

She’s erected a pillow wall between the two halves of the one bed. 

It’s a smart move.

And an incredibly isolating one.

But smart moves usually are.

Barbara accepts this for what it is and staggers to her side, slipping beneath the sheets as quietly as she can, briefly tossing and turning to get comfortable, which eventually means facing the two feet tall chastity belt, staring at it as her eyelids begin to droop.

Loving it.

Hating it.

Eternally grateful to it.

Disappointed at its necessity, disappointed with herself.

She is so weak in a thousand myriad ways; maybe that, too, is love…

… she doesn’t exactly know what compels her to in the end—(weakness, loneliness, monstrosity, love)—but before she entirely drifts away, she reaches underneath the pillows and is relieved to find a hand waiting for her there.

A concession.

A forgivable compromise.

And so, Barbara allows herself this one pittance too. She intertwines their fingers beneath this latest boundary that divides them, understanding that this—yes, this—is the sole degree of happiness that she can afford without too high of a moral cost.

She falls asleep haunted by the way that the striations of their fingers so perfectly align.

[literally-noone83]

Learn to Take a Break

Justin Russo × Fem!reader

About: Justin is know for his intelligence and ceaseless academic success. As his girlfriend you have become mindful of when his "effortless efforts" become a little too much. You just hadn't realised he'd do the same for you...

Word Count: Short and sweet (in my opinion).

Warnings: None.

Author's Note: It's been too long. I have just finished exams and currently still working on outside projects. I already take a long time to write and with extra things on top, leisurely writing has been little to none. This Justin fic is an old one I wrote. I was going to do more with it but the scenario was small and I thought where it ended was fine; concise and sweet. So, why not post it. I have other fics lined up and started, hopefully I'll be able to finish a few of them over the weekends.

OK enjoy!

Justin always seemed to excell in everything with ease.

Wizarding homework? Done.

High school assignment? All good.

Extracurricular activities? All planned.

Secondary wizardry studies? On the job.

Yes, there were mornings—most mornings—he'd announce the immense importance of an upcoming task; exam, project, paper, competition and of its integral part I plays for him a student, a wizard, a student body president and most significantly, as himself. His parents would nod thoughtfully or sigh at their son's dramatisation though nevertheless glad. Max would be clueless, until Alex makes her groan or snide comment diminishing the entire fiasco and then he'd agreeing.

You knew this was the routine. It was just how things worked. But when lucky enough to be present, bored enough to have shown up just a little bit earlier just to see him and walk with him, you'd ask what's it about. Whether he told you with lit eyes or stressed creased over his complexion, you'd grab his hand discretely in front of his family—always a little shy from public affection—gliding your thumb over his knuckles before assuring him it'll be great...

Becoming his girlfriend, you've been allowed to see different sides to the perfect Russo member.

Despite the prestine and perfect image he's built himself, and despite true to his confident and at time self righteousness, to get there was built of stress and the crippling fear of failure.

The hours he'd spend quizzing himself had worried you the moment you found his asleep at his desk, palm cards stuck to his face. At most times, you'd notice he'd get so caught up in a particular project fixation he'd forget to eat in spite of his advocacy for healthy balances. One day building a diorama of a play and you visited to hang out, a casual question of what he had to lunch revealed he hadn't even eaten a proper meal all day—frighteningly casual and perpetually distracted. There were times you'd have to spend a large amount of time at the edge of his bed reminding him—face down on his pillow, wallowing after a day of outrage and devastation—that a B is still great!

Justin wasn't a child, he could mane his own decisions and his drive and ambition is admirable. But it grew as a habit; anytime you'd notice he was a little too focus on a task, meaning hasn't moved in hours kinda focus—his eyes narrowed, brows forever wrinkled tightly, lips thin or a tongue poked out in concentration—you found a small peck on the cheek brought him back. Soft and quick, the small action made him sit back or hum to let you know he's still conscious. Gently asking him how's he going, to remind him of the present. Not to push so hard or be so constraint on himself.

Almost second nature. When you'd rant to him about something that happened that day, the weird interaction with some stranger, or the banter with his siblings, or some frivolous topic or hobby you wanted to vent about your fascination with it—when you realised he'd gone silent. Without even meaning to, he'd drift off on something bugging him or weighing on his mind, you'd approach him casually before pecking him, "What are you thinking about?" you'd whisper. He'd always blink a few times before answering. Quick to apologise and explain. Other times you'd walk in on him studying or what not and you'd duck down to him and plant one on him. "Have you taken a break yet?" and he'd lie before giving in from the innate guilt then promising he would in about 10 minutes.

His vacant, distant eyes, he always appeared to be in a different world. So vastly out of reach from you, at some point you believed he hadn't even noticed you were doing this. You thought he couldn't even feel your lips. He probably didn't even notice.

Late afternoon, the sun hung low. The rays if sunset, it's warmth slowly seeped out from the windows. Drawing away from your never moving figure on the couch. The loss of light prompted the dawning of loss fall over your mind and stomach. The day was coming to a close and it churned your insides painfully.

You had an assignment you had to finish. You were never as pedantic or forward as Justin, so today was the day you spent majority of sun light working on it. It always took longer than it ever needs to be, and it didn't help that time was clearly escaping you.

Hasty steps to the light switch to grant sight, hasty steps back amidst all the papers and text books laid over the coffee table and floor.

Suddenly the door clicked open. It was Theresa and Jerry, Mrs Russo bantering this time about the very questionable hygiene of her husband after witnessing him eat a chip from the ground. Of course, realising your presence they chimed a polite 'Oh hey Y/n' before resuming in the kitchen. Max walked in joyed to see you, glad informing you of some new strange encounter he had with some stranger—made a bet with some guy in a fast food mascot suit and now he's his 'mortal enemies' he plans to show up with his own hot dog costume. Alex and Harper wondered it, only for Alex to groan at your studious state, 'ugh not you too', accompanied by the red head's unrelenting chipper greeting, before following her friend to grab a snack.

Last was Justin. You heard his voice you missed too much to say—he was eager to see you, going about how in their wizard lesson he had progressed another level, his joyous one upping on Alex and so on. You could only hum as you did with the others, eyes still strained on your paper, your hand still cramped from continuously running the led along the page. He stopped, noticing your distance.

"Y/n, have you... been doing this all day?"

Sat on the couch, he stared at the back of your head, just catching your answering hum.

"Babe," he said seriously, leaning forward to see your face, "have you even taken a break?"

Your small pause before making another noise, he already knew that meant you hadn't.

He stood up to walk around you, "You need to have periodic increments of rest, or you'll exhaust yourself." He said mindfully, picking up a strayed textbook.

You scoffed at him, and he looked at you. Eyes still gliding over the blocks of texts, chaste and frantic cross-checking as you wrote. "So hypocritical." You said loud enough for him to hear and Justin rolled his eyes admittedly.

He closed the book and placed it down. He carefully shuffled some books out of the way, conscious in making sure you still can see the pages you left open. Then moved to sit beside you on the floor, criss crossed, his knee nudges yours softly. Justin waits. He looks back at his family too absorbed in their own conversations before resting on your concentrating self. Brows furrowed, thined lips and darting distant eyes. You're stressed, you're tired. He could see it, he could feel it.

He leans in close, and his breath fans your face and his lips are pressed against your cheek softly. His ever so fleetingly gentle his lips is sudden against your skin and your pulled from your work. He moves away just enough to see your face, "You're right, I am." He's smug, smiling as he finally greets your gaze. "But someone told me it's not good to push yourself so hard."

You wiped your cheeks and let out a breathy laugh to cover up your redness. The method was much more effective than you thought. "They sound smart."

"She is, very smart. But she's also tired and stressed."

As his voice grew serious you finally faced him. He was centimetres apart, and each of you let your eyes dance around your complexions, soaking in your presence.

"Didn't realise how effective that..."

"It's very effective."

The chatter in the background, the aroma of the beginning of dinner. It felt like a blanket was over the two and you couldn't help but indulge in just being there with him. A long awaited break—the hole in your chest seemed to relent, dissipating as you drank in his warmth. So this is how it felt. You didn't realise how much you needed it till that moment with him.

"I missed you."

The peaks of his lips tugged, smiling at you as his eyes landed briefly on your lips.

"Me too." He said before connecting his small smile to yours.

[olipopsoda]

Hey, don't exactly know why I'm submitting this here but since people tend to ask you these things anyway, might as well try the 5¢ Molly Van Pelt psychiatric service.

I think I'm a bad person, and I don't know what to do about it.

I'm an abrasive, spiteful, wrathful, and vindictive person, getting intensely angry at anything I see as unjust, cruel, or untruthful. Someone who yells so much that their words lack any meaning to others besides being angry nonsense. Still, I tried to use my anger and vindictiveness as a force for good, use it as a way of improving the lives of others, or at least thats what I told myself. Knowing that I was too much of an abrasive loud asshole to directly change peoples ways or offer assistance, I manipulated people and made schemes to achieve my goals, telling myself the ends justified the unsavory means. I lied to my friends, mending a pair of brothers by conjuring up a fake shared enemy to unite them and stop one from going off the deep end, I held someones irreplaceable item hostage to save my own hide from their wrath after I was an asshole to them before, I tormented and tried fundamentally deconstructing the flaws of people I didn't like right to their face. Yet I still somehow believe that what I was doing was for good, that the ends justified the means.

And then someone (who I will call "Mr. E" in lieu of his real name) appeared. I HATED Mr. E, thought he was the absolute worst a person could be. The reason I hated him so much was probably because he reminded me so much of myself. The same hairpin trigger temper, the sense of self righteousness, same love of the same specific type of creature, same use of a facade to hide the cracks, same ignorance that allowed us to be manipulated. So I tried to blackmail him, to gain leverage over him so that I could try to sand away the aspects of him I so thoroughly despised. But I was stupid and careless, accidentally hurt all of my friends in the process. But instead of apologizing I dug myself deeper as another person egged me on. I wanted to completely any ties Mr. E had to my friends and others, I wanted him to suffer. Now everyone I care about despises me and its all my fault. Turns out Mr. E was a better person than me this entire time.

So now I am left with no idea how to continue. Apologies only work if your words hold weight to them, and mine don't, a life of screaming, lying, and manipulating made sure of that.

- 93e807

Hello, 93e807.

I would like to preface this by saying that I am not in any way a psychiatrist or mental health professional, so take my advice with a grain of salt. Now, onto the actual answer:

First, the fact that you're aware of your mistakes and want to make amends shows that you're not actually a bad person. You're a person with flaws, but that doesn't mean you're bad; everyone has flaws. I think very few people are truly, fundamentally bad, and those who are do not care about whether they've hurt people.

Viewing yourself as an inherently bad person can actually be counter productive and stifle any attempts at self-improvement. If you believe something like "I'm a bad person," then there's nothing you can do to change that; that's just the way you are. But if you reframe the thought, it becomes more helpful: "I've done things that I regret in the past, but I can learn from my mistakes and do things differently moving forward."

As for fixing things with your friends, an apology is a good place to start. I know you think that your words won't hold any weight, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. They might not accept your apology right now, or believe that you're being genuine, but apologizing never hurts. Are there any actions you can take that would back up your apology and show your sincerity?

Also, showing them what you've written here (or something similar) might help them understand where you're coming from.

Feel free to ask for more advice if you need it! (But remember I'm not actually qualified for this sort of thing.)

[piquira]

Shakira gets revenge ... and she gets paid!

"Shakira's claim to her autobiography makes a moralist society very uncomfortable. It finds itself today questioning whether there should be limits for somebody to showcase their pain over an infidelity. Make no mistake, the pattern of pitiful jilted women is part of a long-gone macho past.

If revenge is a dish that is served cold, especially when it originates from a love disappointment of a colossal dimension, with what moral authority or intellectual superiority do inquisitive upstarts of the 21st century dare to tell a grown woman that she has suffered the offense of betrayal, who knows for how long, how she has to manage her emotions correctly or what she must do to overcome her suffering in private so she doesn't inconvenience those who had no compassion or pity on her? Both their impertinence and arrogance are directly proportional to their lack of empathy or understanding to recognize and identify with those who have been able to rise up against pain, lies and humiliation.

It doesn't matter if it's Shakira, a world-renowned artist, or the anonymous daughter of a neighbor. Those who claim the right to act as members of a police of good customs or elegant ways to tell women who are heartbroken, how to express their sadness or anger in accordance with conventional norms are wrong. They should find out once and for all that the times of self-righteousness in which dirty laundry was washed at home are long gone. If the shoe fits, let it fall on the foot it fits on the best. Neither cheap prudery nor submission should be tolerated to the machismo of a society that cancels women.

Hours were enough for the powerful feminist manifesto from Barranquillera, materialized in a song without its own name, but identified as BZRP Music Session #53, to rise up as an unprecedented social phenomenon that exceeded its musical dimension in itself. Phrase after phrase, each one more scathing than the last, the song demonstrates how Shakira, through what she does best: artistic creation, has fitted in with admirable resilience, but also with anger, sadness and frustration – what woman in her situation wouldn't feel them?– the betrayal of your most loved one and the one you fully trusted: former soccer player Gerard Piqué, a teammate for the last 12 years of your life and father of your 2 children. Yes, the rookie whom she was too much for.

Judge her, as some did after listening to the song, appealing to bombastic speeches in which she is accused of objectifying herself and her ex-husband's new partner, Clara Chía –the one with the name of a good person–, for comparing herself to watches and cars or for allegedly exceeding in offensive epithets against him, it is an irrelevant matter of double standards. Although they have every right to do so, it seems that the artist's inspectors have never felt firsthand the savage grief of lack of love, nor have they experienced the need to express it with poetic cruelty. Good for them. While they pontificate, unaware of the healing power, absolutely cathartic, of singing a few truths to those who have destroyed your life, Shakira gets paid and in what way. Not only does she literally sing her spite without any restraint, but she is also strong, almost heroic, licking her wounds in the depths of her mourning to vindicate how humiliated women are also capable of getting up, even carrying the weight of their own corpse.

Shakira's autobiographical proclamation is uncomfortable. It's what artists do and she is. Don't forget. Piqué damaged the wolf that now howls against him. This relentless diva breaks the mold about the convenient silences around the breakups of famous and wealthy couples, lectures other women on how to empower themselves after being scorned and publicly displays her heart broken into a thousand pieces with extraordinary dignity. Nothing more epic than taking revenge with talented fury after loving without limits and being betrayed. End of story. Why the subtleties when there are plenty of reasons to free oneself from the oppressive corset of the pitiful scorned woman. Shakira pointed out a path that it is difficult for many of her followers to retrace."

[buggie-hagen]

Sermon on Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (9/29/24)

Primary Text | James 5:13-20

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            James writes, “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective” (Jas. 5:16). Indeed, Jesus himself says “Whatever we ask for in his name we will be given” (para. Mark 11:24). And so we too can speak of the power of prayer. God, in fact, wants us to pray continually. When things are going well, we pray in the form of singing God’s praises. When things are not going well, we earnestly submit our requests to God and not lose heart. When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray he taught them the Lord’s Prayer which begins, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” “Our Father in heaven.” The same God who is his Father is also our Father. Just as he confidently prayed to God, so we too are free to have the confidence before our Father in heaven.

Now, I say this because we might have a notion that God does not want to hear our prayers. It could be we don’t think we are good enough for God to hear us. Perhaps we’ve lost the heart to pray. On the other hand, for the more proud among us, it could be that we don’t think we even need to pray. We think day-to-day it makes no difference whether we pray or don’t pray. Yet, whether we like it or not, the Lord commands us to be people of prayer. Each one of us. To turn to God in thanksgiving and in need. If anything, it shows that we are not self-sufficient. We are needy. And we must look to Another for our need. If the Lord withdrew his hand even for a moment, we would not last the minute—it is the LORD alone who sustains us. James says, “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” What does this mean? Who are the righteous? Does this mean that God only listens to good people? Is it only holy people whom God expects to hear from? What if you’re an alcoholic, does that mean God has shut off your phoneline to him? Who is a righteous person anyway? Dear people, this question you must know because it is a matter of the gospel. The answer to this question is the difference between death and life. When God makes us righteous, he does not consider whether we are good people. This I’ll tell you. Be wary of someone who says they’re not a sinner. Beware of someone who says they need no forgiveness. As one put it, “The Christian life is a struggle between the Holy Spirit and the evil spirit” (Leopoldo A. Sánchez M.). It is not holy and good people whom God redeems. He saves sinners. Real ones. True, rot-in-your-gut sinners are the ones God is after. This way we are saved by grace—not by anything good we have done. Through faith we are made to be righteous. Again, faith is not your own power. It is the gift of God. So that nobody can boast. Your righteousness before God is not your own either. Instead, the only righteousness you have—the only thing you got going for you—is that Jesus died for your sins and has been raised from the dead. You are saved because out of all the people in the world God in Christ chose you by his sheer grace to belong to him. So your prayers matter. They are powerful and effective. God hears you when you speak to him. And you have the promise that in spite of what your eyes may tell you—you will be saved in both soul and body. God is faithful. And he will bring about everything for your good. Amen.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

hopping in with bits from the text to support your points! I'm a helper 💪

it's not specifically nmj's field promotion of meng yao, but his intervention when he and meng yao both overhear the other nie sect cultivators talking shit about meng yao's parentage and how hard he is working to gain his father's recognition:

Without any hesitation, Nie MingJue scolded, “Drinking the water he brought you while speaking such spiteful words! Did you join my forces not to kill the Wen-dogs, but to make idle talk?!”

The entire cave was in a muddle. Everyone knew ChiFeng-Zun’s personality—the more one tried to explain, the angrier he was. Seeing that they probably couldn’t escape punishment and would have to tell the truth, nobody dared to speak a word. Nie MingJue laughed coldly. He didn’t walk inside the cave either. Instead, he turned to Meng Yao, “You, follow me.”

He turned around and walked toward the foot of the mountain. Meng Yao followed. As the two walked, Meng Yao’s head hung lower and lower. His pace had slowed as well. He only spoke after some hesitation, “Thank you, Sect Leader Nie.”

Nie MingJue, “A proper man should carry himself with proud righteousness. There’s no need to care for the talk of those idlers.”

Meng Yao nodded, “Yes.”

Although he answered as such, his face still bore a streak of worry. By lending him a hand, today Nie MingJue was able to hold the others down for him. In the future, though, the cultivators would definitely make him pay a price tens or hundreds of times greater. How could he not be worried?

-EXR translation pg 470-471, bolded emphasis is mine

jgy's feelings about what he did for jgs, which includes working with xue yang:

Lan XiChen shouted, "A-Yao!"

Only after the word came out did he remember that he’d already one-sidedly broke off with Jin GuangYao, and thus he shouldn’t call him like this. However, Jin GuangYao seemed as if he didn’t notice it, his expression collected, “Brother, don’t be surprised that I can call him such dirty things. To this father of mine, I once had hopes as well. In the past, as long as it was his command, whether it be to betray Sect Leader Wen or protect Xue Yang or remove anyone who disagreed, no matter how foolish it was, how hated I’d be, I’d obey regardlessly..."

-EXR translation pg 992

I also think jgy's body language and demeanour in the 'villainous friends' extra (oft cited as evidence of his inherently evil nature) really should be taken into account when assessing how comfortable he really is with what is happening around him. from when he and xy first arrive on the fierce corpse training grounds:

When they approached the corpse training ground, two fierce corpses were currently engaged in a fight in the center of the square. These two were evidently different from the other walking corpses. They were perfectly clothed and had white eyes, holding blades. As the two swords clashed, sparks were sent flying everywhere. Before the steel fence were positioned two chairs. The two sat down at the same time. Jin GuangYao fixed his collar, and a quivering corpse shifted over, presenting a tray.

Xue Yang, “Tea.”

Jin GuangYao glanced at it. A purplish, peculiar object rested sunken in the bottom of the teacup, swollen from the soak, whatever it was. With a smile, he pushed the teacup away, “Thank you.”

Xue Yang pushed the teacup here again, asking affectionately, “This is tea I made with my own hands. Why don’t you want to drink it?”

Jin GuangYao pushed the teacup away once more, explaining in a kind tone, “It’s precisely because you made the tea with your own hands that I don’t dare to drink it.”

-EXR translation pg 1089, bolded emphasis is mine

jgy often does the things I've emphasized in bold--adjusting his clothes, responding to people/situations that frighten, unsettle or leave him humiliated with a smile and courteous behaviour--when he is gathering his composure. (when he does not have the time or the strength to gather his composure, his behaviour is different; see the guanyin temple quote above.) to avoid nesting quotes-within-quotes here, I'll just refer back to 1) the dafan mountain hunt banquet where jin zixun (or as I like to call him, cunt-gongzi) throws liquor on jgy's clothes, and lxc immediately comes forward to help him put his appearance to rights; and 2) dusting off his clothes and straightening his hat immediately after nmj has kicked him down all 50 of the jinlintai steps (you know, when he's got a gaping head wound and has blood pouring down his face. normal guy stuff).

also, this is how jgy responds when xy throws the tingshan he to the fierce corpses: (tw for blood, gore, and canon-typical xue yang behaviour)

Over there, the members of He Su’s sect cried and cursed. It was utter chaos, but no matter how chaotic, it was firmly subdued. Standing before the collapsed He Su, Xue Yang tossed something bloody in his hand, snapping at two of the walking corpses beside him, “Shut him in the cage.”

Jin GuangYao, “You shut them in alive?”

Xue Yang turned around, curling his lips, “Wei WuXian never used live humans, but I wanna try.”

Under his command, the two corpses dragged the legs of He Su who was still screaming and threw them inside the steel cage in the middle of the corpse training ground. As they watched their elder brother bang his head madly against the bars, the boys and girls rushed over wailing. Their cries were so sharp that Jin GuangYao reached up and rubbed his temple, seeming as though he wanted to pick up the tea and have a few sips to steady his nerves. Yet, he looked down only to see the purplish, bloated object at the bottom of the cup. He then looked up at the tongue that Xue Yang was tossing around in his hand. After some thought, he finally realized, “This is what you make the tea out of?”

Xue Yang, “I have a whole jar. You want some?”

“...”

-EXR translation pg 1093, bolded emphasis is mine

I think it is completely reasonable to point out how much control over the tingshan he's fate actually belongs to xy rather than jgy. yes, jgy is the one who has brought them to xy's demonic cultivation playground knowing full well that they are going to die, but the means of their death is not his choosing--and he's obviously shocked enough by it to address the issue with xy directly. no, he doesn't intervene to prevent this from happening, but I would also like to point out that he doesn't have that much leverage; like... would you like to get between xy and his enrichment?

re: jgy's feelings about his relationship with qin su and jin rusong, plus a fun bonus anecdote about just how terrified he was of wei wuxian:

Lan XiChen shook his head before continuing, “Second, your... wife...” As though he couldn’t say it, he immediately changed his phrasing, “Your sister, Qin Su, did you really marry her while knowing what blood relationship you had with her?”

Jin GuangYao stared blankly at him. Suddenly, tears rolled down his eyes. He answered with pain, “...Yes.” Lan XiChen took in a deep breath. His face was almost ashen. Jin GuangYao whispered, “But I really had no choice.”

Lan XiChen scolded, “How could you have no choice?! It was your marriage! Would it not have been fine as long as you chose not to marry her? Even if you hurt Qin Su’s heart because of it, it would have been better than destroying a woman who loved you and respected you with all her heart. A woman who had never treated you badly!”

Jin GuangYao, “Did I not love her with all my heart?! But I had no choice, that’s all there is to it! Yes! It was my marriage, but could I really not have married her with just my word?! Brother, there has to be a bottom line to your naivety—I spent so much effort, went through such lengths for Qin CangYe to answer my proposal, and as the wedding day approached, I finally satisfied both Qin CangYe and Jin GuangShan, but now you’re telling me I should have called off the wedding just like that? What reason should I have used? What should I have told the two of them?!

“Brother, do you know how I felt when Madam Qin came to me to secretly reveal the truth, just as I thought everything was perfect?! It wouldn’t have scared me more if a streak of lighting sliced through my skull! Do you know why she didn’t go to Jin GuangShan and instead begged me in secrecy? It was because she was raped by Jin GuangShan! That good father of mine, he didn’t even let the wife of the a subordinate who’s been with him for so long go. He didn’t even remember he had a new daughter! For so many years, she didn’t dare tell this to her husband, Qin CangYe. If I suddenly broke off the engagement, they would have noticed what was going on and Jin GuangShan and Qin CangYe would have fallen out with each other. Who do you think would be the one that was shunned by both sides and met the worst end?!”

EXR translation pg 982, bolded emphasis is mine

also from the same general part of the text, just a little bit further down:

Suddenly, Jin Ling screamed, “Why?!” He stood up from beside Jiang Cheng. Eyes red, he rushed toward Jin GuangYao as he shouted, “Why did you have to do this?!”

Nie HuaiSang hurried to pull back Jin Ling, who seemed as though he wanted to fight with Jin GuangYao. Jin GuangYao returned the question, “Why?” He turned to Jin Ling, “A-Ling, then could you tell me why? Why is it that even if I face everyone with a smile, I might not even receive the lowest form of respect, while even though your father was extremely arrogant, people flocked to him? Could you tell me why we were born from the same person but your father could relax at home with the love of his life playing with his child, while I never even dared be alone for long with my wife, shivering out of fright at first glance of my son? And I was ordered to do such a thing by my father as if it was natural—to kill an extremely dangerous figure who could flip out and conjure up a bloody massacre with his corpses anytime!"

-EXR translation pg 983-984, bolded emphasis is mine

I know that none of these quotes will sway people who are already committed to the jgy anti bit and believe he absolutely 100% for sure was down to fuck his relatives for both fun and profit, but the text really does speak for itself on these points. in short, you're so right about everything you stated in your original post, and the text backs you up: jgy was clearly anxious about the consequences of nmj singling him out on the hejian front; he was not comfortable with the work he did with xue yang for jin guangshan; and his marriage to qin su was clearly something that left him deeply traumatized and incapable of even being alone in the same room as her and jin rusong.

thinking about how often certain sections of fandom describe JGY enjoying or revelling in things the novel explicitly describes him as being frightened of or even disgusted by.

I don’t have citations at the moment, but off the top of my head I’ve seen this done with

- his promotion by NMJ

- working with Xue Yang

- his relationship with Qin Su

the wish to suggest that he wanted/enjoyed/asked for the incest is obviously the most disturbing of the set (and I suspect there are more examples I’m forgetting), but it’s a very distinct pattern in anti-JGY discourse. he can’t just do bad things, he must like them, because he’s fundamentally poor twisted

[curtklingermanposts]

Being Slow to Anger is Better

Is Anger Powerful?

Those who desire power over others, often use anger as a means to control them. One reason is that it gives them a sense of dominance to act, or speak in ways they might not do otherwise. In short, it empowers them to be aggressive. They’ve noticed people tend to pay more attention to them when they are angry. At least, that’s how they see it. How many threaten others with their anger? “You might want to do as I say, you don’t want to see me angry,” or “You’re going to make me angry if you do that!” Have you ever been in settings where people walk on egg shells around some central figure? Yea, the one who garners center stage by blowing up in front of everyone. “You don’t want to make him mad!” It makes for a toxic environment. The question is, do they respect the individual, or are they afraid of him? There’s a big difference.

Anger May be a Sign of Insecurity

Here’s a point of clarity in regards to those who practice anger. Some grew up with fear, and anger came to their rescue. They found they could rely on it to push fear out of the picture, even if it was temporary. Face it, any reprieve from fear is welcome, especially if it’s a constant nemesis. Those deeply wounded rely on it to keep from getting hurt again, since it tends to keep others at bay. In essence, they use it for self-preservation and manipulation. It is their cover for insecurity. Angry people are not powerful people, in spite of what some might think. To state it differently, using anger is a sign of pain, and insecurity. Moreover, it reveals a lack of love, both in the giving and receiving of it. As stated, it is often attached to fear, which is the antithesis of love. Perfect love casts out fear (see 1 John 4:18). If we can think in these terms, it might be easier to have compassion on angry people: they are tormented by pain and fear. They need healing; not disdain and avoidance.

True Sign of Strength

Proverbs 16:32 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. While anger has a proper place in relation to such things as injustice, or protecting others; it has no place in terms of interacting with others. Especially, when it comes to weaponizing it. We are exhorted to put it away. Ephesians 4:31-32 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. It is a strength to be slow to anger; in fact, it’s part of our new nature. Galatians 5:22-24 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.   Love is not easily provoked, nor keeps a record of wrongs suffered by others (see 1 Corinthians 13:5). The joy of the Lord is our strength, while peace is to rule in our heart (no anger there). Meekness is strength under control, and temperance is self-control. We do have a choice as to whether we allow anger to control us, or we control it through submission to Holy Spirit. The flesh would have us be reactive by nature. Quick to blowup, without considering all things. However, the Word says otherwise. James 1:19-20 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

perfectfaith.org