#you have no right to speak honestly
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maladaptvs · 7 months ago
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if you hate daisy fay buchanon shut the fuck up i never want to hear shit from you.
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findmeinthefallair · 13 days ago
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It can't be overstated how powerful the catharsis is when a scene of a character connecting with their wounded inner child is done right. The key poses...the expressions...the timing...storytelling like this can help to provide some healing for so many people in the audience.
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letsplaythermalnuclearwar · 3 months ago
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Homer!Odysseus and Epic!Odysseus would try to kill each other if they ever met
#Homer!Odysseus: you sacrificed your men to save yourself? Detestable coward! How I wish I was never born if it would ensure you had not the#Epic!Odysseus: you’d understand if you *loved your wife.* But I guess a guy who stayed with Circe for a year wouldn’t know that!#H!Odysseus: do not speak of things you know nothing about! I long for my return to sweet Penelope but I have a duty to my men#E!Odysseus: A YEAR. A WHOLE YEAR. I WOULD KILL ANYTHING AND ANYONE TO GET A HOME A YEAR FASTER#H!Odysseus: that was clear when you served Scylla six men like they were cattle!#E!Odysseus: it was them or me! And don’t keep talking about my friends like you did any better. you’ll go home alone too#H!Odysseus: they doomed themselves when they ate Hyperion’s golden cattle. I am not responsible for their suffering. But you could have ens#H!Odysseus: Now Eurylochus’s body lies at the bottom of the sea where there can be no burial and no honour#E!Odysseus: AND I’LL GO HOME TO MY WIFE. MY BEAUTIFUL PERFECT LOVELY LOYAL WIFE WHO’S BEEN WAITING FOR ME FOR TWENTY YEARS.#E!Odysseus: and when I go home and she asks if I came back as fast as I could I’ll be able to answer honestly#H!Odysseus: WE HAD BEEN THROUGH MANY TRIALS. THE MEN NEEDED TO REST#E!Odysseus: FOR A YEAR???? DID THEY NEED TO REST FOR A YEAR??? AND DID THEY NEED THAT REST RIGHT AFTER A MONTH’S LONG REST WITH AEOLUS??? S#H!Odysseus: IF YOU WISHED FOR ITHACA SO DESPERATELY WHY DIDN’T YOU OBEY PALLAS ATHENA AND KILL THE CYCLOPS#E!Odysseus: *drawing sword* I WAS HAVING A ROUGH DAY#Epic the musical#Epic odysseus#The odyssey#odysseus#Homer#Greek mythology#Jorge rivera-herrans#nuclear war speaks
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benevolenterrancy · 2 months ago
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~ Extremely Unwilling Magical Protagonists Attempt To Outrun The Plot And Not Fucking Die ~
(@takofukkatsumi this tag is from a while ago but it hasn't left my brain -- L-Space got very weird all of a sudden)
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horror-aesthete · 9 months ago
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Twin Peaks, 1990, dir. Tina Rathborne
SE01E04 Rest in Pain
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sskk-manifesto · 4 months ago
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Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me
#bsd#bungou stray dogs#About: Dead Apple. Watched this a while ago with a friend and it was a lot of fun!!!#If you're reading this: thank you so much for hanging out with me I had such a good time (ㅅ´ ˘ )♡#Next to general considerations: wow they were right that Bungou Stray Dogs movie sure can Bungou Stray Dogs#It's always nice to see the detailed animation and elaborate backgrounds of movies. The animation quality compared to the manga is–#definitely noticeable and it's nice to see. That said... I still like the season 2 art style more? And I'm speaking strictly of art style.#The s2 one looks more soft and smooth while the da one is so much more rough.#The plot is... Very bsd-esque I don't think there's anything to add.#In my opinion Kyouka's arc is the one that turned out best tbh. I really like her narrative development and personal growth in this movie.#I like the complexity of her state of mind. how full of contradiction she is. I especially appreciate the recurring small changes of–#expression that indicate how she thinks differently from Atsushi even if she doesn't voice them. The fight between her cynicism and her–#kind nature. It's all very interesting.#Atsushi's development is interesting too. Although all the open questions about his ability we still have kind of leave me frustrated#I don't feel very strongly about Akutagawa in this movie? I mean‚ he's there. The ss/kk scenes are always great and in character and a joy–#to witness no matter what they do. He just doesn't shine particularly? Or at least personally I dont find the “proving my strength against–#myself” narrative arc to be particularly interesting. Imo it was a lot better flashed out in the da stage play! With the complexity that–#the dialogues with Chuuya added to the character. Dazai attacking him. And especially Aktgw understanding that Rashomon wasn't testing Aktg#but rather only expressing that unstoppable rage that is also Aktgw's own. About that I checked out the play and I really liked it!!#I only watched highlights (aka: ss/kk and chuu/aku scenes) but there's some stuff I really like. I like the conflict between Aktgw and–#Chuuya and how Chuuya messes up with Aktgw at first maliciously and then amiably. It's interesting how Atsushi himself observes that Kyouka#and Akutagawa get along. And especially the sskk almost-handholding and Atsushi saying Akutagawa has a nice profile were cute akjdhbsawhjb#Next. Da really is shipping paradise (╥﹏╥) Sorry but... It is. oda/zai. daz/atsu. ss/kk. s/kk. fuku/mori. chuu/aku. It really has everythin#and the moments are so good!!!! What else. Wish we'd see more of Tsujimura. And Christie. And women in general tbh.#Also‚‚‚‚‚ Atsushi's tiger form in this movie is ATROCIOUS. I've said it before but it's crazy how a franchises that relies so heavily on–#fanservice came up with something this hideous. Man the movie overall was pretty but Atsushi sure wasn't. Firmly stand by the belief–#that only Akutagawa would find that form attractive.#Oh last note. honestly if we're ready to accept a movie where an antidote has effect AFTER the person has effectively died then we really–#can't complain about any kind of insanity the manga brings up#random rambles
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thegreatcaptainusopp · 11 months ago
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Water 7 was like specifically engineered to hit on every single sensitive spot Usopp has and honestly he almost under-reacted with how nuts the circumstances were for the moment that he snapped:
1. They just came off a fight where Aokiji knocked them around like it was nothing, where he had this realization:
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So he’s going in already feeling super inadequate, more than he usually does (which is a lot already).
2. Relatedly, up to this point fixing the Merry was his job because they didn’t have a shipwright yet. Her being unfixable probably felt, to him, like a personal failing because he was the one in charge of fixing her
3. The Merry was most like another crew member to him because he’s the one who worked on her most, AND he was the only one who saw her klabautermann at this point
4. The big elephant in the room here is that Kaya was the one who gave them Merry. So, you know, he’s attached to her most for this reason too
5. There’s also the fact that this probably hit on the very specific trauma of his mother’s death, because she also got sick enough that everyone deemed her unsavable.
6. On top of all that, it also hit on his trauma regarding his dad and abandonment: he doesn’t want to repeat that and feel like he abandoned a crew member who needed him.
7. Speaking of abandonment, seeing a situation where, in his mind, the crew leaves someone behind who is now deemed useless probably touched on a lot of his own fears about his place on his crew and own perceived usefulness
8. He had also just been brutally beaten twice on the same day and is pretty badly injured, compounding both feelings of usefulness and aligning him with the merry in his mind in terms of physical state.
9. He had also just lost the money they needed to fix the Merry, again compounding the feeling that he was useless AND he was responsible for the Merry not being fixable
10. He woke up to the crew, who had already processed the news, telling him about it AND that a decision had been made, which made him feel like it was a him vs them thing
There’s probably more I think but yes, it is completely unsurprising that he fell apart so spectacularly
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rickybaby · 9 months ago
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Mekies: “On one hand, we have Daniel who brings race winning experience to the team and OUTSTANDING technical capabilities and sensitivities for what the car is doing. You have the incredible energy that he brings to the whole team and it helps all of us to deliver 101%”
Daniel: “I feel good. I feel like it’s early days of my career again. I have that enthusiasm and that real love for the sport again. I just feel like a better version of myself.
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evermoredeluxe · 7 months ago
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hangryyeena · 7 months ago
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SquidgeWorld refusing to even talk about Palestine and other genocides happening because "this a fandom space" is wild and severely disappointing
#squidgeworld#// rant#'death threats' are not an excuse to stay silent!!!!#yeah they're not cool but you made it clear you wouldn't say anything either#stop allowing to look away by giving them a space where they can#what about palestinians or sudanis or congolese folk who are being genocided-#-who want the privilege to read fics on your site?? they don't matter??#'you wouldn't ask google 'what's your stance on x' you are not google!!! you are *one* person!!!!#'fandom spaces are sacred' sacred enough to turn a blind eye to genocide?? the fuck???#fuck your 'escapism' you are encouraging people to look away#that's not escapism that's ignoring the world in favor of your happiness#the LEAST you COULD'VE done was making a post saying you want a free palestine/sudan/dr congo/etc. or express SOME form of solidarity#'yes the world is unjust' then speak up bitch!!!!#so ao3 are zionists and squidgeworld is refusing say anything#maybe it's better for nobody to use your site 🤷🏾‍♀️#if you can't even stand in solidarity with people of color then you don't actually care about fandom#because the people being genocided that you don't care about are the same people in these 'fandom spaces' you claim to care about!!#honestly feel like a damn fool for even suggesting people migrate there from ao3#people who look away are not allies. they're cowards who don't want to lose support for being on the right side of history#anyways free palestine/sudan/dr congo/haiti/hawaii/tigray and other countries and nations experiencing genocide!!!#by refusing to speak up you have chosen the side of the oppressor.#long post
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mantisgodsdomain · 4 months ago
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More notes for Roach conlanging. Roach has grammatical gender, in which only Male, Female, and Object are grammatical genders, whereas Worker uses feminine grammar, Queen and King use a slight variant on feminine grammar, and Drone, and Queen-Alate use masculine grammar. This is because King is derived from Queen, due to their similar positions in a colony, and Queen-Alate is derived from Drone, as both are forms of alate.
Queen is an alteration of feminine grammar that functionally just adds a handful of extra syllables to it, and King is an offsprout of Queen that uses the same grammar with different pronouns. Queen-Alate, despite the name, is derived from Drone, as they are both for referring to different types of alate ant.
Most Roach dialects are intelligible to speakers of Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach, but Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach is not entirely intelligable to speakers of Roach dialects due to a mix of the excessively specialized vocabulary caused by the specific needs of its speakers, the fact that its speakers do not necessarily have Roach mouthparts and thus may not pronounce syllables in a similar way, and due to the fact that Inanimate Object is a full grammatical gender that does not exist in any other dialect of roach and replaces a decent chunk of terminology for things that previously had Other Words For Them.
#we speak#conlang#bug fables#please excuse us if we're mangling the terminology here btw. we cannot for the life of us remember the proper terms for half of this#and every time we try to google things it winds up turning up nothing#probably because we're googling shit like “the term for the thing where self reference is different if youre a guy or a girl”#and like. “part of speech that you use to refer to other people that isnt pronouns or a name that has title associations”#if we reread some textbooks we will probably remember but unfortunately these are not our textbook reference posts#they are our “what if we told you about the cool ways that we did grammar in here” post#god we love grammatical grammar (<guy who doesn't have a strong enough sense of gender to remember der and die properly)#(because we are the specific type of speaker where we're half operating based on what Feels Right with the word and we are)#(so fucking bad at remembering how gendering words is meant to go)#(the secret reason we hate phonetics is because we have to contend with both figuring out how mouthparts would work and like)#(Working Out A Reasonable Collection Of Sounds To Have In Our Language. which means we have to actually like. name things)#(cruel and unusual that we have to make actual words rather than loosely tossing building blocks on the floor. honestly.)#anyways snakemouth den roach is one of those dialects where it's on the verge of becoming a language on its own#where it's very debatable on if it's Actually A New Language or just a very specific dialect of an old one because. well. boxes#picture it as like. trying to speak to someone who you Think is speaking french but they have an extremely thick regional accent#and they keep using like ten-syllable words that you probably don't know but that seem to refer to things that could be referred to#way more concisely?#and also rather than just le and la they have added an entire new lu to the mix and you are unclear if its the accent or a new word entirel#(note: we are not a specialist on french as we primarily know it in the “we've been around it long enough to vaguely know what's being said#way and are not currently caught up enough on whatever they have going on to know about any major grammar stuff going on over there)#(but we are terrible enough with remembering the grammar of the german that we do speak that we do not trust ourself to not be Worse there)
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queenlucythevaliant · 10 months ago
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Tell Your Dad You Love Him
A retelling of "Meat Loves Salt"/"Cap O'Rushes" for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves event
An old king had three daughters. When his health began to fail, he summoned them, and they came.
Gordonia and Rowan were already waiting in the hallway when Coriander arrived. They were leaned up against the wall opposite the king’s office with an air of affected casualness. “I wonder what the old war horse wants today?” Rowan was saying. “More about next year’s political appointments, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“The older he gets, the more he micromanages,” Gordonia groused fondly. “A thousand dollars says this meeting could’ve been an email.”
They filed in single-file like they’d so often done as children: Gordonia first, then Rowan, and Coriander last of all. The king had placed three chairs in front of his desk all in a row. His daughters murmured their greetings, and one by one they sat down. 
“I have divided everything I have in three,” the king said. “I am old now, and it’s time. Today, I will pass my kingdom on to you, my daughters.”
A short gasp came from Gordonia. None of them could have imagined that their father would give up running his kingdom while he still lived. 
The king went on. “I know you will deal wisely with that which I leave in your care. But before we begin, I have one request.”
“Yes father?” said Rowan.
“Tell me how much you love me.”
An awkward silence fell. Although there was no shortage of love between the king and his daughters, theirs was not a family which spoke of such things. They were rich and blue-blooded: a soldier and the daughters of a soldier, a king and his three court-reared princesses. The royal family had always shown their affection through double meanings and hot cups of coffee.
Gordonia recovered herself first. She leaned forward over the desk and clasped her father’s hands in her own. “Father,” she said, “I love you more than I can say.” A pause. “I don’t think there’s ever been a family so happy in love as we have been. You’re a good dad.”
The old king smiled and patted her hand. “Thank you, Gordonia. We have been very happy, haven’t we? Here is your inheritance. Cherish it, as I cherish you.”
Rowan spoke next; the words came tumbling out.  “Father! There’s not a thing in my life which you didn’t give me, and all the joy in the world beside. Come now, Gordonia, there’s no need to understate the matter. I love you more than—why, more than life itself!”
The king laughed, and rose to embrace his second daughter. “How you delight me, Rowan. All of this will be yours.”
Only Coriander remained. As her sisters had spoken, she’d wrung her hands in her lap, unsure of what to say. Did her father really mean for flattery to be the price of her inheritance? That just wasn’t like him. For all that he was a politician, he’d been a soldier first. He liked it when people told the truth.
When the king’s eyes came to rest on her, Coriander raised her own to meet them. “Do you really want to hear what you already know?” 
“I do.”
She searched for a metaphor that could carry the weight of her love without unnecessary adornment. At last she found one, and nodded, satisfied. “Dad, you’re like—like salt in my food.”
“Like salt?”
“Well—yes.”
The king’s broad shoulders seemed to droop. For a moment, Coriander almost took back her words. Her father was the strongest man in the world, even now, at eighty. She’d watched him argue with foreign rulers and wage wars all her life. Nothing could hurt him. Could he really be upset? 
But no. Coriander held her father’s gaze. She had spoken true. What harm could be in that?
“I don’t know why you’re even here, Cor,” her father said.
Now, Coriander shifted slightly in her seat, unnerved. “What? Father—”
“It would be best if—you should go,” said the old king.
“Father, you can’t really mean–”
“Leave us, Coriander.”
So she left the king’s court that very hour.
 .
It had been a long time since she’d gone anywhere without a chauffeur to drive her, but Coriander’s thoughts were flying apart too fast for her to be afraid. She didn’t know where she would go, but she would make do, and maybe someday her father would puzzle out her metaphor and call her home to him. Coriander had to hope for that, at least. The loss of her inheritance didn’t feel real yet, but her father—how could he not know that she loved him? She’d said it every day.
She’d played in the hall outside that same office as a child. She’d told him her secrets and her fears and sent him pictures on random Tuesdays when they were in different cities just because. She had watched him triumph in conference rooms and on the battlefield and she’d wanted so badly to be like him. 
If her father doubted her love, then maybe he’d never noticed any of it. Maybe the love had been an unnoticed phantasm, a shadow, a song sung to a deaf man. Maybe all that love had been nothing at all.  
A storm was on the horizon, and it reached her just as she made it onto the highway. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Rain poured down and flooded the road. Before long, Coriander was hydroplaning. Frantically, she tried to remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. Pump the brakes? She tried. No use. Wasn’t there something different you did if the car had antilock brakes? Or was that for snow? What else, what else–
With a sickening crunch, her car hit the guardrail. No matter. Coriander’s thoughts were all frenzied and distant. She climbed out of the car and just started walking.
Coriander wandered beneath an angry sky on the great white plains of her father’s kingdom. The rain beat down hard, and within seconds she was soaked to the skin. The storm buffeted her long hair around her head. It tangled together into long, matted cords that hung limp down her back. Mud soiled her fine dress and splattered onto her face and hands. There was water in her lungs and it hurt to breathe. Oh, let me die here, Coriander thought. There’s nothing left for me, nothing at all. She kept walking.
 .
When she opened her eyes, Coriander found herself in a dank gray loft. She was lying on a strange feather mattress.
She remained there a while, looking up at the rafters and wondering where she could be. She thought and felt, as it seemed, through a heavy and impenetrable mist; she was aware only of hunger and weakness and a dreadful chill (though she was all wrapped in blankets). She knew that a long time must have passed since she was fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering beside the highway in a thunderstorm, slowly going mad because—because— oh, there’d been something terrible in her dreams. Her father, shoulders drooping at his desk, and her sisters happily come into their inheritance, and she cast into exile—
She shuddered and sat up dizzily. “Oh, mercy,” she murmured. She hadn’t been dreaming.
She stumbled out of the loft down a narrow flight of stairs and came into a strange little room with a single window and a few shabby chairs. Still clinging to the rail, she heard a ruckus from nearby and then footsteps. A plump woman came running to her from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and softly clucking at the state of her guest’s matted, tangled hair.
“Dear, dear,” said the woman. “Here’s my hand, if you’re still unsteady. That’s good, good. Don’t be afraid, child. I’m Katherine, and my husband is Folke. He found you collapsed by the goose-pond night before last. I’m she who dressed you—your fine gown was ruined, I’m afraid. Would you like some breakfast? There’s coffee on the counter, and we’ll have porridge in a minute if you’re patient.”
“Thank you,” Coriander rasped.
“Will you tell me your name, my dear?”
“I have no name. There’s nothing to tell.”
Katherine clicked her tongue. “That’s alright, no need to worry. Folke and I’ve been calling you Rush on account of your poor hair. I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself, but it looks a lot like river rushes. No, don’t get up. Here’s your breakfast, dear.”
There was indeed porridge, as Katherine had promised, served with cream and berries from the garden. Coriander ate hungrily and tasted very little. Then, when she was finished, the goodwife ushered her over to a sofa by the window and put a pillow beneath her head. Coriander thanked her, and promptly fell asleep.
 .
She woke again around noon, with the pounding in her head much subsided. She woke feeling herself again, to visions of her father inches away and the sound of his voice cracking across her name.
Katherine was outside in the garden; Coriander could see her through the clouded window above her. She rose and, upon finding herself still in a borrowed nightgown, wrapped herself in a blanket to venture outside.
“Feeling better?” Katherine was kneeling in a patch of lavender, but she half rose when she heard the cottage door open.
“Much. Thank you, ma’am.
“No thanks necessary. Folke and I are ministers, of a kind. We keep this cottage for lost and wandering souls. You’re free to remain here with us for as long as you need.”
“Oh,” was all Coriander could think to say. 
“You’ve been through a tempest, haven’t you? Are you well enough to tell me where you came from?”
Coriander shifted uncomfortably. “I’m from nowhere,” she said. “I have nothing.”
“You don’t owe me your story, child. I should like to hear it, but it will keep till you’re ready. Now, why don’t you put on some proper clothes and come help me with this weeding.”
 .
Coriander remained at the cottage with Katherine and her husband Folke for a week, then a fortnight. She slept in the loft and rose with the sun to help Folke herd the geese to the pond. After, Coriander would return and see what needed doing around the cottage. She liked helping Katherine in the garden.
The grass turned gold and the geese’s thick winter down began to come in. Coriander’s river-rush hair proved itself unsalvageable. She spent hours trying to untangle it, first with a hairbrush, then with a fine-tooth comb and a bottle of conditioner, and eventually even with honey and olive oil (a home remedy that Folke said his mother used to use). So, at last, Coriander surrendered to the inevitable and gave Katherine permission to cut it off. One night, by the yellow light of the bare bulb that hung over the kitchen table, Katherine draped a towel over Coriander’s shoulders and tufts of gold went falling to the floor all round her.
“I’m here because I failed at love,” she managed to tell the couple at last, when her sorrows began to feel more distant. “I loved my father, and he knew it not.”
Folke and Katherine still called her Rush. She didn’t correct them. Coriander was the name her parents gave her. It was the name her father had called her when she was six and racing down the stairs to meet him when he came home from Europe, and at ten when she showed him the new song she’d learned to play on the harp. She’d been Cor when she brought her first boyfriend home and Cori the first time she shadowed him at court. Coriander, Coriander, when she came home from college the first time and he’d hugged her with bruising strength. Her strong, powerful father.
As she seasoned a pot of soup for supper, she wondered if he understood yet what she’d meant when she called him salt in her food. 
 .
Coriander had been living with Katherine and Folke for two years, and it was a morning just like any other. She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee when Folke tossed the newspaper on the table and started rummaging in the fridge for his orange juice. “Looks like the old king’s sick again,” he commented casually. Coriander froze.
She raced to the table and seized hold of the paper. There, above the fold, big black letters said, KING ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT. There was a picture of her father, looking older than she’d ever seen him. Her knees went wobbly and then suddenly the room was sideways.
Strong arms caught her and hauled her upright. “What’s wrong, Rush?”
“What if he dies,” she choked out. “What if he dies and I never got to tell him?”
She looked up into Folke’s puzzled face, and then the whole sorry story came tumbling out.
When she was through, Katherine (who had come downstairs sometime between salt and the storm) took hold of her hand and kissed it. “Bless you, dear,” she said. “I never would have guessed. Maybe it’s best that you’ve both had some time to think things over.”
Katherine shook her head. “But don’t you think…?”
“Yes?”
“Well, don’t you think he should have known that I loved him? I shouldn’t have needed to say it. He’s my father. He’s the king.”
Katherine replied briskly, as though the answer should have been obvious. “He’s only human, child, for all that he might wear a crown; he’s not omniscient. Why didn’t you tell your father what he wanted to hear?”
“I didn’t want to flatter him,” said Coriander. “That was all. I wanted to be right in what I said.”
The goodwife clucked softly. “Oh dear. Don’t you know that sometimes, it’s more important to be kind than to be right?”
.
In her leave-taking, Coriander tried to tell Katherine and Folke how grateful she was to them, but they wouldn’t let her. They bought her a bus ticket and sent her on her way towards King’s City with plenty of provisions. Two days later, Coriander stood on the back steps of one of the palace outbuildings with her little carpetbag clutched in her hands. 
Stuffing down the fear of being recognized, Coriander squared her shoulders and hoped they looked as strong as her father’s. She rapped on the door, and presently a maid came and opened it. The maid glanced Coriander up and down, but after a moment it was clear that her disguise held. With all her long hair shorn off, she must have looked like any other girl come in off the street.
“I’m here about a job,” said Coriander. “My name’s Rush.”
 .
The king's chambers were half-lit when Coriander brought him his supper, dressed in her servants’ apparel. He grunted when she knocked and gestured with a cane towards his bedside table. His hair was snow-white and he was sitting in bed with his work spread across a lap-desk. His motions were very slow.
Coriander wanted to cry, seeing her father like that. Yet somehow, she managed to school her face. Like he would, she kept telling herself. Stoically, she put down the supper tray, then stepped back out into the hallway. 
It was several minutes more before the king was ready to eat. Coriander heard papers being shuffled, probably filed in those same manilla folders her father had always used. In the hall, Coriander felt the seconds lengthen. She steeled herself for the moment she knew was coming, when the king would call out in irritation, “Girl! What's the matter with my food? Why hasn’t it got any taste?”
When that moment came, all would be made right. Coriander would go into the room and taste his food. “Why,” she would say, with a look of complete innocence, “It seems the kitchen forgot to salt it!” She imagined how her father’s face would change when he finally understood. My daughter always loved me, he would say. 
Soon, soon. It would happen soon. Any second now. 
The moment never came. Instead, the floor creaked, followed by the rough sound of a cane striking the floor. The door opened, and then the king was there, his mighty shoulders shaking. “Coriander,” he whispered. 
“Dad. You know me?”
“Of course.”
“Then you understand now?”
The king’s wrinkled brow knit. “Understand about the salt? Of course, I do. It wasn't such a clever riddle. There was surely no need to ruin my supper with a demonstration.”
Coriander gaped at him. She'd expected questions, explanations, maybe apologies for sending her away. She'd never imagined this.
She wanted very badly to seize her father and demand answers, but then she looked, really looked, at the way he was leaning on his cane. The king was barely upright; his white head was bent low. Her questions would hold until she'd helped her father back into his room. 
“If you knew what I meant–by saying you were like salt in my food– then why did you tell me to go?” she asked once they were situated back in the royal quarters. 
Idly, the king picked at his unseasoned food. “I shouldn’t have done that. Forgive me, Coriander. My anger and hurt got the better of me, and it has brought me much grief. I never expected you to stay away for so long.”
Coriander nodded slowly. Her father's words had always carried such fierce authority. She'd never thought to question if he really meant what he’d said to her. 
“As for the salt,” continued the king, "Is it so wrong that an old man should want to hear his daughters say ‘I love you' before he dies?” 
Coriander rolled the words around in her head, trying to make sense of them. Then, with a sudden mewling sound from her throat, she managed to say, “That's really all you wanted?”  
“That's all. I am old, Cor, and we've spoken too little of love in our house.” He took another bite of his unsalted supper. His hand shook. “That was my failing, I suppose. Perhaps if I’d said it, you girls would have thought to say it back.”
“But father!” gasped Coriander, “That’s not right. We've always known we loved one another! We've shown it a thousand ways. Why, I've spent the last year cataloging them in my head, and I've still not even scratched the surface!”
The king sighed. “Perhaps you will understand when your time comes. I knew, and yet I didn't. What can you really call a thing you’ve never named? How do you know it exists? Perhaps all the love I thought I knew was only a figment.”
“But that’s what I’ve been afraid of all this time,” Coriander bit back. “How could you doubt? If it was real at all– how could you doubt?”
The king’s weathered face grew still. His eyes fell shut and he squeezed them. “Death is close to me, child. A small measure of reassurance is not so very much to ask.”
.
Coriander slept in her old rooms that night. None of it had changed. When she woke the next morning, for a moment she remembered nothing of the last two years. 
She breakfasted in the garden with her father, who came down the steps in a chair-lift. “Coriander,” he murmured. “I half-thought I dreamed you last night.”
“I’m here, Dad,” she replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Slowly, the king reached out with one withered hand and caressed Coriander's cheek. Then, his fingers drifted up to what remained of her hair. He ruffled it, then gently tugged on a tuft the way he'd used to playfully tug her long braid when she was a girl. 
“I love you,” he said.
“That was always an I love you, wasn’t it?” replied Coriander. “My hair.”
The king nodded. “Yes, I think it was.”
So Coriander reached out and gently tugged the white hairs of his beard. “You too,” she whispered.
.
“Why salt?” The king was sitting by the fire in his rooms wrapped in two blankets. Coriander was with him, enduring the sweltering heat of the room without complaint. 
She frowned. “You like honesty. We have that in common. I was trying to be honest–accurate–to avoid false flattery.”
The king tugged at the outer blanket, saying nothing. His lips thinned and his eyes dropped to his lap. Coriander wished they wouldn’t. She wished they would hold to hers, steely and ready for combat as they always used to be.
“Would it really have been false?” the king said at last. “Was there no other honest way to say it? Only salt?”
Coriander wanted to deny it, to give speech to the depth and breadth of her love, but once again words failed her. “It was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know how to heave my heart into my throat.” She still didn’t, for all she wanted to. 
.
When the doctor left, the king was almost too tired to talk. His words came slowly, slurred at the edges and disconnected, like drops of water from a leaky faucet. 
Still, Coriander could tell that he had something to say. She waited patiently as his lips and tongue struggled to form the words. “Love you… so… much… You… and… your sisters… Don’t… worry… if you… can’t…say…how…much. I… know.” 
It was all effort. The king sat back when he was finished. Something was still spasming in his throat, and Coriander wanted to cry.
“I’m glad you know,” she said. “I’m glad. But I still want to tell you.”
Love was effort. If her father wanted words, she would give him words. True words. Kind words. She would try… 
“I love you like salt in my food. You're desperately important to me, and you've always been there, and I don't know what I'll do without you. I don’t want to lose you. And I love you like the soil in a garden. Like rain in the spring. Like a hero. You have the strongest shoulders of anyone I know, and all I ever wanted was to be like you…”
A warm smile spread across the old king’s face. His eyes drifted shut.
#inklingschallenge#theme: storge#story: complete#inklings challenge#leah stories#OKAY. SO#i spend so much time thinking about king lear. i think i've said before that it's my favorite shakespeare play. it is not close#and one of the hills i will die on is that cordelia was not in the right when she refused to flatter her dad#like. obviously he's definitely not in the right either. the love test was a screwed up way to make sure his kids loved him#he shouldn't have tied their inheritances into it. he DEFINITELY shouldn't have kicked cordelia out when she refused to play#but like. Cordelia. there is no good reason not to tell your elderly dad how much you love him#and okay obviously lear is my starting point but the same applies to the meat loves salt princess#your dad wants you to tell him you love him. there is no good reason to turn it into a riddle. you had other options#and honestly it kinda bothers me when people read cordelia/the princess as though she's perfectly virtuous#she's very human and definitely beats out the cruel sisters but she's definitely not aspirational. she's not to be emulated#at the end of the day both the fairytale and the play are about failures in storge#at happens when it's there and you can't tell. when it's not and you think it is. when you think you know someone's heart and you just don'#hey! that's a thing that happens all the time between parents and children. especially loving past each other and speaking different langua#so the challenge i set myself with this story was: can i retell the fairytale in such a way that the princess is unambiguously in the wrong#and in service of that the king has to get softened so his errors don't overshadow hers#anyway. thank you for coming to my TED talk#i've been thinking about this story since the challenge was announced but i wrote the whole thing last night after the super bowl#got it in under the wire! yay!#also! the whole 'modern setting that conflicts with the fairytale language' is supposed to be in the style of modern shakespeare adaptation#no idea if it worked but i had a lot of fun with it#pontifications and creations
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corrodedcoughin · 2 years ago
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Thinking about steddie future where they're both just average guys. No rockstars, no basketball players just two Normal men living a normal life because honestly? they deserve it. They deserve soft domesticity and happiness.
They both have jobs they like but don't love and they're happy with that. Eddie maybe becomes an electrician, working for someone else's company. His coworkers are chill, he gets to get out and work with his hands and that's more than he could have asked for. Steve is a physical therapist, or a manager in some business. He likes his team and the steady hours. He's not working for his dad which is a plus.
They buy a house together, that's not a mansion but it's not a trailer either. Steve does a lot of the dishes because Eddie hates it, hates the feeling of old food on the plates and cutlery. So Eddie will kiss Steve on the cheek and does the laundry because Steve fucking hates laundry. And sitting on the floor watching TV while he folds clothes is honestly sort of relaxing?? Love is doing the chores your partner hates.
Steve and Robin go out for brunch at least once a month, where they catch up and gossip for hours and hours and Steve comes home lighter with updates on Robin and Vickie. Eddie will have nightly phone calls with Wayne, where they talk and laugh and Eddie will eventually hand the phone over to Steve so he and Wayne can talk sports together. When he's in town Dustin will come over and stay in their spare room and they laugh and joke so much it's just like old times. They go over to Jeff's house for dinner on a semi regular basis, and it's nice having normal friends.
They adopt a very annoying cat who will climb all over them in bed and meow in their faces when they don't wake up to feed it breakfast in time. Steve will go for jogs on a Saturday morning, coming home to Eddie reading in bed. Some old western book Wayne recommended to him. There's a steaming cup of coffee waiting on their bedside tables that Eddie's prepared.
They take time off of work and go on a week long vacation because they can do that now. They do dorky touristy things and Eddie buys a mug to send to Wayne. Steve takes a lot of dorky photos of the two of them.
Idk they deserve to be normal and alive and happy with no upside down anymore <3
Oh I love this! I had actually been thinking about tradesman Eddie for a little bit I am so, so glad you’ve come up with this!
I can so completely see him learning a trade and just getting employed and put through his time by a small local employer! He has to go through his exams and that part of it worries him when he first gets the job but his team end up being really supportive and Steve stays up late with him, practicing circuits and wiring and quizzing him on currents and volts. Eddie returning the favour, letting Steve mark up his muscles and be a living anatomy dummy. Sure it gets a little sexy from time to time but more often than not it’s just them testing each other as Steve identifies bones and Eddie talks about parallel circuits.
The monthly brunches mentally and physically revive Steve after working extended hours with patients that he really does want the best for but a jobs a job and it can get pretty tiring. They joke that they rebalance each others chakras but they really do feel realigned after their meet ups. Eddie can see it to, sometimes he’ll come pick them up when it’s been a boozy brunch and delights in seeing them happy and light, clambering over each other to tell Eddie something about one of the waiters or an especially good dish they ordered. When he drops Robin home Steve sits in the front and looks at peace and Eddie feels the same way.
Their weekends are for them, sometimes that means staying home and cleaning the whole place between ordering food in and sometimes that means going on a day trip and taking Wayne around all the antique spots around the county and seeing what horrors they can uncover. Top spot currently sits with Wayne’s find of a doll whose limbs had been replaced with horse legs and had the head of a fish. Of course they bought it.
Every time they go on a holiday they make sure to send postcards to everyone, including themselves, seeing if they’ll get home before the postcard does. Steve keeps them in a photo album, each with a Polaroid of them next to it. Sometimes taken by a stranger, sometimes just a close up of their faces squashed together. It’s Eddie’s favourite thing to go through on their anniversary, or any day really, just loves being reminded that this is the life they get to have.
It’s mundane, dare say even normal, but they love it. Steve comes home every night, happy to put his scrubs in the washing machine next to Eddie’s uniform, happy to be where he feels loved.
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taxi-boi · 3 months ago
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free my man! he did all that shit but he was [stigmatized disorder] coded and all of his actions were the result of ableist/sanist writing decisions made by the author.
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benevolenterrancy · 2 days ago
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@fluffypurpleglitterdemon hey. hey. i just want to talk.
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write-it-motherfuckers · 1 year ago
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I almost forgot to update you all, sorry Darlings, it's been a very long day.
Thankfully I do have some good news! Both Bug and Bunny are doing surprisingly well, though they are both noticeably anxious still. They will be on some medication for a few weeks that I have to give them at set intervals, and I will have to take them back in for a check up a couple of times too, but other than that, they are both doing shockingly well all things considered.
The vet staff was even kind enough to give them both a bath and help remove some of the mats I was unable to remove myself, as well as handle the injuries to their paws and mouths from the neglect they dealt with in their former home.
It took a while to get them to come out of their new carrier, but once they did, they pretty much went into hiding immediately. I was eventually able to lure them out with a promise of treats and an old documentary about birds so that I could give them more meds, and thankfully they both stayed in view long enough for me to get a photo of the two of them watching it together to share with you all! (Please forgive the mess, they think they're smaller than they are, so playtime clearly results in a lot more chaos than I was really prepared for.)
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(Bug is the chonkiest boy, holy shit. Him Round.)
Once again, I'm incredibly grateful for the support and understanding from all of you, it really does mean a lot to me. I don't know if I'll be able to jump right back into posting just yet, but I will do my best to get back to it again soon.
Please stay safe Darling ones, and try to be kind to yourselves 🖤
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