#ALL OF IT is deeply emotional in a way that is difficult to describe
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breasts and eggs by mieko kawakami is so uniquely woman. not in a feminine sense, or a gender-identity sense, but in the sense that i can feel the soul of womanhood in it, which i have rarely ever felt in other books.
it captures the experience of being labelled “woman” so precisely that it’s startling and there were several times in the novel i had to put it down and take really deep breaths.
natsuko, a 30 year old and unmarried woman living in tokyo, experiences the challenges of female bodily autonomy and questions what it means to be a woman and what it means to have children. the novel raises questions about family, sexuality, child-rearing, and womanhood through the eyes of its protagonist who, 10 years later and at the age of 40, grapples with wanting to have a child of her own without a partner.
in the novel, natsuko, while working on her book, begins to question what it means to raise children, as well as the possibility that she would like to have a child of her own. however, she faces roadblocks on account of strict social norms in japan and the lack of bodily autonomy of women.
the novel, deftly and beautifully, traverses across women’s reproductive rights while posing questions about not only the ethics of anonymous artificial insemination, but of having children in the first place. posing it as both delight and misery, natsuko navigates her way through conflicting ideas about life, death, and birth as a single woman.
the story deals a lot with natsuko’s own ideas of romance, sex, and loneliness, as well as her own image of herself. she questions her own family and history, reminiscing often on the time she spent with her mother, grandmother, and sister in her childhood, as well as what it meant for her to grow up poor. she considers cycles of poverty, as well as the cycles of mother and daughter, through the lens of a woman with no desire for a longterm partner or sex.
natsuko, is asexual and sex repulsed. it’s a large part of the story, though it’s not a defining trait in who natsuko is as a person. still, she experiences the desire to have a child. she calls her own womanhood into perspective, doubting it on account of her lack of sexual attraction, detailing it as it “being as if the sexual part of her never grew up”. she states often that she has breasts, that she gets her period, that she is as woman as any other woman, yet still feels that some part of her womahood is missing because of her lack of sexual attraction.
the novel raises challenging questions of self discovery, as well as details the frustration in being labelled “woman” in society. it beautifully captures the thoughts and burdens that come with womanhood, as well as gender identity and bodily autonomy.
there are so many aspects of this book i could go into. i truly could not get enough of it while reading. not just because i found the protagonist to be both relatable and interesting, but because kawakami’s voice as an author is so gripping and emotionally real. reading the book, it felt as if natsuko’s thoughts mirrored my own and often, after finishing reading, i questioned whether i had actually read lines in the book or if i had thought of them myself as part of my own inner dialogue.
it’s so beautifully layered, to the point that i think it would take me multiple posts just to cover what i’ve picked up on the first read-through, and reads like you’re looking back on a life i could have lived at some point. it’s delightfully human but also, uniquely woman. it touches on many of the unspoken (and often unaddressed) trials of being a woman that otherwise would go unheard about.
i don’t think i’ve ever read anything like it. it touched me in a way no other novel has and detailed an account of womanhood that i felt in a very deep part of my being. this may sound cheesy, but in a way, i felt a large kinship with a lot of the women in the story. whether it was their experiences with men, their experiences with children, or their experiences simply moving through the world, i found connection in all of them.
#breasts and eggs#mieko kawakami#i could go on for a while summarizing and giving my opinions on my favorite parts about this#it's so beautifully written#and such a fantastic glimpse into the mind of a woman who feels the burden of societal pressure but has no desire to participate in what's-#considered 'the norm'#natsuko is FIERCELY independent but experiences a very human loneliness that's both relatable and slightly frightening#ALL OF IT is deeply emotional in a way that is difficult to describe#i wish i had a better way to put this in words#and i may come back to talk about and break down certain aspects of it#but here is my review <3#gonna make a new tag for book reviews#review.breasts and eggs#cal.gen#book.breasts and eggs#author.mieko kawakami
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Who will appear in your life soon and why?
Attention! This reading is for entertainment purposes only. This tarot reading does not give a 100% guarantee that all the described situations will occur or being ultimate truth. You build your own life and destiny and only you know yourself best.
✧ Masterlist ✧ Paid readings
Pick a pile. Choose one or more pictures. Trust your intuition.
Pile 1: An optimistic and cheerful person will soon appear in your life, who is looking for the pros and positives in everything. By themself this person is calm, reacts calmly to difficulties and problems in life because he believes that everything can be overcome. This person is able to adapt to sudden changes but prefers a stable life without impulsive changes. They can also be called moderately emotional, they do not dramatize and do not react sharply to anything but they are not stingy with feelings. By the way, they are very good friends, loyal, always ready to support and help, ready to help with solving any problem. They can also be generous, constantly give gifts, can pay the bill at the store / cafe for you, can get tickets and invite you to an event, to a movie, etc. Next to this person, there is a feeling as like a stone wall, you can always rely on them, you feel calmer with them. But this person can be very picky and categorical at times as they may have a peculiar taste and therefore it is difficult to make a choice. This person can also fall into melancholy, apathy at times and at such moments becomes uncommunicative, talks little, shares something, generally closes themself in. During such a period it is important to support them the same way they do and then they will be able to return to their former state soon.
This person will appear in your life as support and help in order to fulfill your goal. They can either directly participate in achieving the goal (for example, motivate, work with you on, be in the role of your coach, etc.), or morally support. To a greater extent I see that this person will play a role in realizing your desires but this does not mean that they will do everything for you, they will inspire you to take action.
Pile 2: A very emotional and sensitive person will soon appear in your life, to some extent i can say that they like to romanticize a lot around them, like to create aesthetics and a certain atmosphere, look beautiful, dress up, decorate a room or something like this. I see that they like to create something with their own hands and their activities have creative features, for example, they can draw, write, create something from clay, they can create compositions from flowers, do scrapbooking and everything like that. As I said earlier, they are very sensitive, they may have developed high emotional intelligence, their facial expressions are very emotional, they may have competent speech in which it is very rare to hear word-parasites. They deeply appreciate the connection with loved ones and if you can get closer and trust each other, then such a person will remain in your life for a long time. They also work a lot of time, they are purposeful but they need to see the result, otherwise their work will come to naught without it. They can become very attached to things because for them it is something memorable and associated with significant events in their lives.
This person will come into your life as an employee, a work partner, you can work on a project with him, make a deal, you can come up with ideas for creating something (here you can also include the creative sphere, for example, you will write a song together, you will work on creating a book, a series of short stories, you will do the feat). Cooperation with him will be painstaking, very saturated, sometimes difficult, as it is difficult to get along with them or you may not agree on some nuances but the result of the work done will definitely please you two and your efforts will pay off, bear fruit.
Pile 3: A somewhat mysterious, cold, detached and introverted person will soon appear in your life. They do not really like to talk about themselves, show their intentions and attitudes to a person not through words but through actions and deeds, through their behavior. This person likes to spend time with himself, they generally may not consciously make many friends, acquaintances, like to be alone, they value their personal space very much. They are also anxious individuals, constantly immersed in their thoughts, they may have low self-esteem which they hide very much behind their behavior. It is difficult for them to make a choice, they are very indecisive and very easily give in to pressure from the outside. They probably have as many complexes and fears. But at the same time, they are very smart, hardworking and diligent, erudite, they like to act according to a plan, they have everything clearly thought out and calculated. They are also passionate about a lot of things and have a lot of knowledge, know a lot of facts, can support almost any topic with this knowledge. They are curious, inquisitive, like to learn new things, explore something.
Speaking of why such a person will appear in your life... To be honest, I don't see any positive aspects here. They play the role of a person here, a third person who spoils relationships with people and they can negatively affect your relationships with friends, family or acquaintances in the company which will cause a strong quarrel between you. So for the most part, this is a warning, be careful! Perhaps these people will want to "take revenge" on you in this way or frame you because they dislike or have a personal dislike for you. They could also be offended by you because of some trifle but for them this trifle looks like a whole tragedy.
Thank you for reading! I will be glad of any feedback 🖤
#tarot#tarot cards#pick a card#pick a card reading#pick a pile#pick a pile reading#tarot reading#pac#pick a picture#pick a photo
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pixeljade: #it IS very much a complex issue and I feel like saying that has been pissing off a lot of folks on both sides #one fact i would add to the table is that the current actions against palestine DO constitute a genocide by definition #its a word i hear pro-Israel people get very upset by because they think it is inherently comparing this to the holocaust #but its not. some people DO and thats its own discussion. but calling it a “genocide” is simply accurate and undeniable
Speaking as someone who was that pro-Israel person in her teens and very early 20s, the reactions you're describing are 800% cognitive dissonance freak outs. Most of these people, like me, received either directly or indirectly from their Elders in the Jewish community a very trauma-induced and deeply emotional information about the history of this situation, which boils down to: "They tried to kill us all once and they didn't now we finally have returned to the Promised Land, the only place we have to shield ourselves against It Happening Again. Israel's detractors hate that Jews can defend themselves now, and if any of them, including the Palestinians, were to have their way, they'd see us all dead. We must defend ourselves at all costs, and not let anyone ever put us in existential danger as a people ever again."
And then to have some rando 19 year old who knows jack shit about your or your community or your community's trauma to get up in your face and start screaming at you about genocide? It's only going to trigger that intergenerational trauma, and cause the party being screamed at to dig deeper into their defensive, cognitive-dissonance fueled response. Which, if we were to boil that response down to a thought process, looks like "This person hates me and all Jews. They think we're a hive mind who don't deserve to live. Thank G-d for Israel."
What's complex, is that not everything in that trauma response is wrong, and not everything the dumbass 19 yo who has no interest in unpacking their own learned anti-Semitism was wrong.
Israel's actions towards Palestinian Arabs since 1948 does fit several definitions of genocide and/or ethnic cleansing. And many of the Westerners who scream about it the loudest are fairly openly anti-Semitic.
Now, as someone with big Holocaust intergenerational trauma in her family, I am sympathetic to the Jewish kid in this scenario. But cognitive dissonance is just that: the domain of a child. Adults understand that cognitive dissonance is a little voice in our head telling us "Hey comrade our discomfort with this is a little much. Maybe this is a learning opportunity?"
I mean, that's what I did. But it's difficult. Its uncomfortable, and that scares people. It's much easier to believe that "They call it the Naqba because they hate us and think our survival and access to national self-determination is a disaster,"* than it is to understand that "They call it the Naqba because it was the near total dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arab populations from their generational homes and properties."
And again, everything I'm saying here is a result of my journey from a hardcore Zionist-in-the-contemporary-sense child (though always left in terms of domestic US Politics), to a grown Holocaust historian who understands that Israel is no better and no worse than all the other nation states (for new readers, I understand the nation-state as a political entity, the logical end point of which is genocide and/or ethnic cleansing), and openly criticizes it on those grounds.
*A rabbi in a youth group I belonged to told me this almost verbatim when I was 15. And when you're 15 and somebody tells you they love you you're gonna believe them.
#this post is clunky but i have a fever so w/e#i have great love and compassion for my community as an american jewish woman#so much of how american jewry remembers the history of israel is shaped by our collective trauma#sometimes in ways that we ourselves don't understand#i'm not here to shit on them#but i am here to compassionately call them in#and the only groups who i don't expect that compassion from#are actual palestinians
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scarlett love
pairing: sanji x fem!reader
summary: you forgot him, chose to let Sanji go, but was that enough? would the universe leave you alone and let you live in peace?
word count: 4.1K
warnings: cursing; spoilers (?) just mention of a character from the whole cake island arc, it’s a modern!au so I don't mention anything about the actual arc!
tags: angst; fluff; hanahaki disease; modern!au; reconciliation; second chances; unrequited turned requited; slight self-hate; happy endings
author’s note: okkkkay here it is. so many of you guys asked for it so here’s pt 2 to eternal snow! I initially wanted to post the mihawk fic first that i'm working on but I can’t finish writing it for the life of me so I decided to work on this one instead lol.
like I mentioned before, this is part 2 to this fic so obvi read that before you read this one!
˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
They say people who have the surgery are doomed for life.
How could they choose to never love again; how could they deliberately go through with the surgery knowing they would never have those emotions again?
But in actuality, it was the choice of forgetting about that love.
People don’t know the grievances and the strength it takes to choose to forget the love of your life. They don’t know the despair of being in love with someone wholeheartedly knowing they don’t love you back.
That you would never remember those emotions for whom you loved.
You saw it as this: if you couldn’t live to love your person, you wouldn’t bear to love at all.
So in that way, you won.
You gained the power to no longer grieve for your love because you simply couldn’t remember him.
Since hanahaki disease was rare, there weren’t too many recovery patients to base knowledge on since many of the victims chose to die rather than to be saved.
So you were honestly going in blind.
Nami would sometimes ask you if you could remember anything, a nervous look on her face, you knew she remembered your past love, but the doctor had told her to not mention anything to you in your recovery period. You think she asked out of curiosity.
Or maybe fear?
But every time you’d just tell her that you couldn’t, your head would hurt if you thought too hard and too long about who you had lost.
If you could remember specific memories, they weren't fully visualized, they were static, like when an old TV was out of range from the signal and would struggle to picture the channel.
All you could remember was his silhouette, his figure blurry and his name was always on the tip of your tongue but you could never place your finger on it.
You remember during your first check-up, the doctor had asked you if you could describe your past love,
“I'm not sure.”
Your voice had been wobbly like you were on the verge of crying. Tears had pricked your eyes, along with the feeling of not being able to breathe even though those damn flowers were gone.
Not being able to understand why?
That feeling went away a week later.
You laugh at yourself now, chiding yourself for being ridiculous back then.
At what point could you have allowed yourself to be so deeply in love with someone that it was killing you? You could never understand.
It was an absurd, abysmal idea that you had ever gotten to that point.
While the doctor said the following months would be difficult getting used to your new life of having one less emotion, you were fine.
It had helped that Nami had stayed by your side, and when she couldn’t Sanji would.
Sanji was an angel.
He tended to your every need, always made sure you didn’t lift a finger even after you told him multiple times you could do it yourself.
But he always reassured you he didn’t mind.
You were sad to hear that he stopped seeing Pudding. It was honestly too bad because she was good for him, he deserves someone who can love and care for him just as much as he cares for others.
Nevertheless, you were glad he was here for you.
The sound of music playing softly in the background comforts you as you shuffle through your kitchen making dinner.
You and Sanji have recently started having weekly dinners with each other, an idea he came up with.
“We can update each other about our lives, good ole fashion face-to-face interaction.”
“I don’t think my life is going to change too much in the week we don’t see each other, Sanji”
The sound of the door ringing pulls you from your thoughts, drying your hands with a towel, you walk over to the front door.
The cool November breeze greets you as soon as you open the door, Sanji’s figure fills your view.
The coat he’s wearing to protect himself from the wind encapsulates him in a way that makes you smile instinctively, you can see his red ears peeking from under his blond hair.
“Come in, come in, I was just finishing up dinner.”
“Oh, can I help you with anything else?” he offers while shrugging off his jacket and hanging it on the coat rack beside the front door. “Or are you not allowing me into your kitchen again?” he smirks toward you.
You roll your eyes and scoff, “It’s my turn to make dinner, you cook for a living, it's my time to shine now, dude.” He chuckles and begins to set the table for the two of you.
The warm food fills the plate in your hand, placing it on the counter, you grab another plate. “So, how’s work?”
Sanji grabs both of the plates and brings them to the table, setting them down, he looks back at you. “Ah, the old man’s got me working late most days.”
You smile softly at the scene; since you can remember you and Sanji have been able to work in tandem. Back when Nami first introduced you, it was like a pull connecting the two of you, also guiding and leading the two of you in perfect harmony.
It was nice.
Finishing your dinner, Sanji grabs his cup, “That was delicious, thank you.”
“Well I did have a decent teacher,” you say into the glass smiling, gulping down the liquid you set it back down and look at Sanji.
He goes to say something before he’s interrupted by a cough.
Sanji turns his head and coughs into a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, he quickly wipes his mouth before looking back at you, “Sorry ‘bout that.”
Shaking your head in acknowledgement you begin cleaning up the dinner table.
“Oh I forgot, I bought flowers, they’re in the living room let me grab them real quick.” Sanji stands quickly.
Turning, you watch him walk away, not catching the lone petal falling out of his pocket.
♡‧₊˚
Vinsmoke Sanji has done a lot of things.
Some of which he regrets, but others he stands by, but there was one that met both criteria.
And that was you.
He was glad he met you, that he was able to spend time being with you, loving you, and knowing that you loved him back.
But he regrets hurting you. He regrets letting himself be temporarily infatuated with Pudding. Sanji had laughed in the face of fate, and in return, he got what he deserved.
His impending end.
The petals had shown up the day you went into the hospital.
While you were given a second chance at life, Sanji had just signed his away.
He remembers the memory of Nami telling him what had happened. He had it permanently seared into his brain, never allowing himself to forget the moment.
Her eyes were red, face hot with anger when she pulled up to his house.
“You absolute idiot.” He hadn’t even fully opened the door before she was swearing at him, cursing him to the ends of the earth over what he had done. “You did this. You caused that pain…if I hadn't found her…,” her hands had started punching his chest.
“She would have been gone, all because of you.”
A part of Sanji died that day.
So when he got the same disease you had, he knew he deserved it.
Wasn’t it only right that he got the same death sentence that almost took you away?
It was slow at first, from what Nami had told him about your situation, Sanji knew this was how it started.
The first few weeks were bearable, he could go about his daily life without causing any suspicion. No one would ask if he was okay or anything, just simply being able to cough into a tissue and discard it quickly.
Then the blossoms came.
After one terrible night of constantly coughing up blood and flower blossoms, Sanji did some research. He knew the full blooms were next along with the finishing blow of the roots. It had only been a month since you had your surgery, and yet his hanahaki was a lot more accelerated in comparison to yours.
A month since he had realized he was deathly in love with you.
But he could bear this burden. Who was he to complain about his death trickling closer than it normally should?
Sanji remembered the moment he realized his disease would finish him more swiftly, that he was faster along than he typically should be; whether it was because the universe knew you could never love him back or it was simply his punishment for what he did.
Probably both.
Even though he knew he could easily fix the problem, he didn't have the right to get a second chance.
How could he?
How long did you spend hiding your condition away, not even when he had broken things off, before then? How long were you hurting because you knew he was lying when he said he loved you?
The gall he would have to have to go through with the surgery?
Absolutely not.
But deep in his heart, he also couldn’t bring himself to forget you. He’d rather be a coward and a liar than choose a life undeserving of him.
He would rather die than forget you, to never be able to love you again would be death itself.
He hated himself for what he did to you. The insolence he had to hurt someone as caring as you, why did he take advantage of that?
He himself every day.
If he had to live with constantly coughing up blood and bending over the toilet puking up flower petals just for you to live your life? Yeah, he could do that. He could live with the pain of knowing that you would never love him back.
That you could never love him back.
It quite literally was in human nature that he would never be saved unless he did the surgery, since you couldn’t even love anyone anymore.
Sanji’s hand lifts his handkerchief up to his mouth, his body heaving with a hard cough of petals.
He sighs.
♡‧₊˚
The TV light shines on both you and Sanji’s forms as the movie comes to an end, the ending credits miniaturizing as the screen recommends a shitty Christmas movie that has the both of you turning to the other.
“That was an unnecessarily long movie.” Sanji’s comment makes you laugh.
“Right? God, it was dragging on for a really long time.” Shaking his head he stands up to place the popcorn bucket on the kitchen counter.
You follow him holding the cups that held lemonade two hours ago. “It’s getting late, I should probably go.”
“Yeah, probably, oh wait-I bought something for you, meant to give it to you when we had dinner at your place but I forgot.” Sanji’s voice trails as he goes off to his bedroom.
You stand there for a couple of minutes before checking the time, “Yo, Sanji, did’ya get lost?” laughing to yourself, you walk over into the bedroom. Your eyes immediately meet Sanji’s form hunched over on the ground.
A gasp falls from your lips as you rush over to him. “Sanji, oh god, are you okay what’s wrong-”
You cut yourself off when you bend down to look at him, there you see a pool of blood on the hardwood floor, petals scattered around the scene with a full flower bloom sitting in his hands.
“What?” you can’t breathe.
Sanji says your name but you don’t hear him, your brows knit together as you look up at him. “I don’t understand why are you coughing up petals?”
No? This couldn’t be happening.
Your heart breaks.
Who did Sanji love so dearly that he was cursed with the same disease that had you in its chokehold not long ago?
You would never wish this on anyone, no one deserved to live through the hurt of having unrequited love.
“You weren’t,” he wipes his mouth, “you weren’t supposed to find out.”
“I don’t-why wouldn't you want to tell me? If anything, I’d be the only person able to understand. Sanji, who is it?” your eyes scan his face.
Sanji’s ragged breathing fills the air between the two of you. “I can’t.”
You furrow your brows even more, shaking your head. “Please just tell me so I can help-”
“You can’t.”
“What do you mean, I can’t? You’re not making sense.”
Sanji closes his eyes. “It’s you.”
You stop breathing, the figure in your memory rushes to the forefront of your brain like a tsunami.
In the past the figure was always blurry, never in frame in your mind, only being able to trace his silhouette, but now it was different.
It was like he was right in front of you like you could smell him, feel his hands in yours, his warmth. Feel his lips against your lips when he-
“It was you.” your voice was quiet, “You were the one I loved.”
His eyes snap at yours, a gasp falling from his lips.
“The person I loved so deeply… that it caused me so much pain.”
And there it was, the fog had been lifted.
“How could I have forgotten?” How ironic the entire thing was.
“Why would I ever forget about my love for you, Sanji?” you look at him, “What grief did you cause me?”
A tidal wave of emotions, affections, all poured out of your soul and into your memories. The months of coughing up petal after petal till they turned to full flower blooms. The fear that a root would pop up once you pulled your tissue from your face.
The pain and the hurt that Sanji had caused you.
The pain of knowing that he didn't love you anymore.
It all came rushing back.
“Why would you keep this from me?” you were getting angry, but was it for the right reason?
Hadn’t you done the same with him? Hadn’t you kept it from all the people you loved as well?
“You know why I went through with the surgery? It wasn’t Nami who made me, well not partially, but why I allowed myself to let her drive me to the hospital was because I didn't want you to suffer.” your eyes were burning, the tears threatening to fall.
“I don't understand?” Of course, he wouldn’t.
“You were obviously unhappy, Sanji. If I removed myself from the equation, it would solve everything and at…at first I thought dying was the solution I really did.” your eyes drop, “And maybe Nami finding me was a saving grace but, I originally wasn't gonna do anything.”
“Week after week, Sanji, I was drowning. I wanted to yell at anyone who would listen and ask why I couldn't have anything, why couldn’t I be happy? That the universe had some sort of fucking vendetta against me.”
“So I decided to let you go, to choose to live a life of unknown heartache, and when I finally thought I had accomplished that. The universe just spits in my face by cursing you.”
“Don’t you see it? We don’t belong together, Sanji.” The anger was gone now, all that was left was emptiness.“We have the signs, we need to heed them and move on.”
Sanji says your name with a plea, but you ignore him. “Just get the surgery, stop hurting the both of us.”
“It does us no good if you're dead.” And with that, you walk out of the bedroom and out the front door.
♡‧₊˚
The quiet murmurs of the newscaster talking about the weather for the week could barely be heard from the running water you were using to wash the dishes.
You haven't seen Sanji in a couple of weeks, not since he announced that you were the one whom he was in love with.
And definitely not since you remembered he was the one whom you had loved before.
And while at first, you were angry. Angry at him for lying and keeping such vital information from you.
It later turned to guilt.
Guilt for getting angry at him. Guilt for causing him pain.
But it wasn’t your fault, it’s not like you chose not to love him, you physically couldn’t anymore. You signed that ability off months ago.
But you also missed him. Since you weren’t talking to him, you weren’t having your weekly dinners or your impromptu movie nights anymore.
You missed just talking to him. You missed the lame jokes he’d tell in hopes of hearing your laugh, that smile he’d get whenever he spoke about a new recipe.
You missed him.
But you were also confused.
After he had revealed that he loved you and you had remembered that your past love was him, it became too much for you to handle.
Glancing at the moon, you dry your hands on a towel and walk into the living room. The weatherman was currently informing you of a chance of rain tomorrow during the already cold late January weather.
Sighing you go to sit down before something catches your eyes. A picture frame that hangs on your wall glints as you walk toward it.
It was a photo of you and Sanji looking at the camera with wide smiles on display from Sanji’s birthday two years prior. On top of your heads sat a birthday hat colored blue for the sea theme your friends had thrown together as a joke for the blonde that year.
You remember how you felt that day, the anxiety of wanting to get Sanji the perfect gift and when he finally opened it, he had hugged you which had you blushing like crazy while you swatted his “thank yous” away.
God, where did this deja vu come from?
It was weird, you weren't sure what it was.
It felt like your entire being was full. Full of intense and overwhelming emotions, an emotion you shouldn't feel. An emotion that was eradicated from your life when you stepped out of that hospital.
But here it was, rearing its big ugly face once again.
For Sanji.
You stumble back as if you had been shocked with electricity.
Looking around your apartment you close your eyes.
How could this happen? Why were you still being punished again?
You had endured the pain, chose to get rid of it and now you’ve been having to live with knowing that Sanji also was experiencing the exact same pain.
Sanji.
How could you have been so cold? Telling him to do the surgery? What was wrong with you?
You missed him. You missed your love for him. The feelings you’d get when he’d look your way. Sanji was your ambrosia and you needed him to survive.
But you didn’t miss how you felt when he chose another over you. Those feelings you wished you hadn’t remembered.
You weren't sure how you were still able to feel Sanji's love. But here you were.
An anomaly that you were.
Guess that shows how deep your love truly was rooted.
How could you have allowed yourself to forget?
The drive to Sanji’s apartment was quiet, opting to not play music or turn the radio on so that you could think clearly with your new (re) developed emotions.
Pulling up to the driveway, you step out of your car. The jacket you have on trapping your heat from the cold winds of the night.
The few steps to the front door felt like a lifetime. The moonlight provided a little comfort to your restless self.
Exhaling, you bring your hand to knock at the door, a small part of you hoping Sanji wasn’t home so you could go home and pretend like nothing happened.
The door swings open revealing Sanji. His eyes were wide like he couldn’t believe you were standing in front of him.
“Hey…can I come in?” you look up at him expectantly.
“Yeah, yeah come in.” Sending him a quick smile you walk past him and into the living room.
He shuts the door and faces you, you turn and finally get a good look at him in the light.
He looked worse for wear, his eyes had bags under them, a sign he hadn’t been sleeping if at all. Whether that was because of your argument or his condition, you didn't know. One hand was in his pocket and the other was fiddling with his handkerchief.
“How are you…” signaling your hand at him, “I mean physically, how are you? What stage?”
He looks away, “well…I’m still living,” he chuckles quietly.
You sigh.
God the two of you were truly messed up.
“It all came back.”
“What?” he questions.
Your eyes begin to glaze over, “My memories, everything.” you wet your lips, “All of it, Sanji.”
“It just-all came back…on top of our argument, of you telling me you loved me.” Tears fell down your cheeks. “Of how I felt when you were-when you were with Pudding.”
He says your name.
“And I hated it, I hated remembering how I felt, Sanji. I remember pitying myself, wondering what I had done wrong, why you hadn’t loved me anymore,” he says your name again, “but I also remembered how I felt loving you.” you look up at him with your tear-streaked face.
“And I will never regret loving you, not then, definitely not now. I also don’t regret forgetting, because I understand why I did it. I loved you enough to be able to let you go. To be able to know you’ll live your life happily, whether that’s with me or someone else. I didn’t care. Just that you were happy.”
“But I wasn’t-”
You cut him off, “I knew you didn't love me how I loved you, but I still knew you cared. So if I had died, even from death, I would have hated myself for hurting you. So I chose to forget.” you wipe your cheek, “I just wish you had never gotten that godforsaken thing as well.”
“Sanji I…I love you wholeheartedly. You encompass my entire existence. I live for you. Even now, when I didn't remember how I felt for you. It was there. My love for you was still inside. And it always will be. I think even if you hadn’t told me you loved me now, I would have remembered anyway. Simply because that’s who I am, I am my love for you, you consume my entire soul.” You probably looked like a mess.
“You look beautiful.” Did you say that out loud?
You smile softly, “So when you admitted that you loved me, that I was inadvertently hurting you, I couldn’t take it. I had been the monster I sought to eliminate. So I pushed you away.” you sigh, “I pushed you away because I didn't want to go through the same pain again. I was selfish if you had just done the surgery, I'd be able to forget about this again and you wouldn't even remember.” you walk toward Sanji. “I’ve learned that I can’t run away from you anymore. And I’ve realized that I don’t want to lose you again.”
“So let me save you.”
Sanji’s face was red, his eyes were blurry with tears, his fist clenching his handkerchief filled with petals and blooms.
“I’m so sorry.” Sanji’s voice trembles, “I am so sorry, I caused you so much pain, if I could take it back I would. And I don’t even deserve you, I’m not worthy of your love, but if you allow me, let me make it up.”
You close the gap between the two of you and pull his lips toward your own. They’re slightly chapped and both of your guy’s faces are wet but you don’t care. You feel his fingers carding through your hair, pulling you deeper.
This kiss was different from any others before, this one was filled with desire and want but it was also filled with joy and love.
You were finally happy.
You pull away first, breathing heavily and your face flushed, “You already are.”
“I love you so much, please never forget.” you wipe a stray tear, cradling his face.
You want to commit this memory in your brain. No more forgetting, no more letting go. To make sure that for the night, no cough was to be heard, no petal was to be hidden,
just two lovers finally with one another, forever.
#astraariel♡#one piece#vinsmoke sanji#sanji x reader#sanji x y/n#sanji x you#vinsmoke sanji x reader#vinsmoke sanji x y/n
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random astro observations pt. 2🍡
this are only a bunch of observations based on my friends and family, so take what reasonates and leave what doesn’t
Highlights: cancer, moon, gemini, rising, 4th house, scorpio, mars, saggittarius (a lot), stelliums, 8th house, virgo, aquarius, taurus, pisces, leo
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Cancer moons are NOT crybabies, they are so strong and give up a lot only for other people. They tend to feel anything and everything at the same time, extreme sensitivity. They have a special ability comforting their special ones.
Gemini rising often find people commenting about their eyes, they’re absolutely all the focus of their face. Whether big or small, they are VERY beautiful. (My mom and I are Gemini rising and people always comment ‘wow, what big eyes!’ it’s a bit weird sometimes)
Mars in 4th house is one of the most difficult placements. It means anger or issues around the family and home life. Lots of them are awfully honest abt life and I get kind of a vibe of daddy issues
Scorpio Mars can hurt very deeply only with words and their anger is often is accompanied with a lot of pain. It depends of how you hurt them but they can resent you for years and even take revenge but that also depends of the rest of their placements
Saggittarius Mars are… argumentative? I say it in a good way. If you don’t agree with them, prepare for a 5 hour ted talk, they’ll give you a list of hundreds of the facts they support and why they’re the best way to think
Venus in Virgo people over analyze their relationships A LOT. They want people who see small details in them and help them to be better in the interior. They might not be most romantic sign but they really put effort in relationships so they get to know you better and give you the love you need
Sagittarius Placements cover their feelings with laughter and humor, they don’t want to be seen as emotional or well, as humans. They try to be optimistic against all problems so they don’t fall into sadness. People describe them as funny but they really need a hug
Taurus Mars they always react calmly and understating to any argument or situation, their patience is also very strong so they usually don’t get angry. Very good parents and communication although their stubbornness might get them lost
Pisces Stellium have a strong bond with spirituality and dreams. A lot of their lessons come from dreams. They have a special connection with music and express themselves artistically. They almost always are good with instruments especially drums.
Leo Moons are usually the center of attention without trying. Whether you are good at school, arts or sports but they’re definitely the spotlight
Libra Venus they have really a kind heart. When someone catches their eye they’ll do whatever they need to do for impressing them. They are HUGE flirts and dream of a love book relationship. A friend has her libra in venus and a guy took advantage of her making her do things she didn’t wanted but it was “a proof of your love”. So people often take advantage of their passionate love
Hope you liked it!
I appreciate comments and questions ❥
-Lua
#astrology#libra#astro notes#astro observations#astro chart#stellium#pisces#cancer#moon signs#gemini#mars#gemini rising#4th house#scorpio#saggitarius#witchy#baby witch
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Hiiii!!! I’m relatively new to ALNST (as in I watched it all in one go in one night and cried) and I was wondering if you have any opinions or information about this,
What do you think about Till and Sua’s relationship? Do you think they’d share anything in common? Do you think they’d like each other? I’d like to think there’s at least one thing they share in common that’s led to be on good terms.
Sorry this is a bit long, thank you!
First of all, thank you anon. I've had thoughts on this for a while! Thanks for giving me a chance to talk about it!
Till and Sua don't often interact in canon, so it's pretty easy to assume that Sua would hate Till's guts because of his crush on Mizi (especially since that art of Mizi playing with Till includes Sua looking jealous on the side, sulking in the next page).
But something to note about the characters in ALNST is that they're actually quite respectful of each other despite the crush conflict (further seen by Ivan and Mizi being very friendly despite Ivan knowing Till loves Mizi). Everyone in the garden knew Till had a crush on Mizi, the goodbye notes state that it was very obvious.
Yet despite that one instance of Sua pouting at Mizi and Till together, Sua is never shown to dislike Till. In fact, she seems to be more conflicted with Ivan instead. In the few official arts we have of them together, they seem pretty neutral.
(Sua's collar is green, showing she's comfortable/doesn't mind Till. Till's collar is orange most likely because he's a little nervous/awkward.)
In the official Anakt Kit goodbye letters, Till and Sua write messages to each other. They're short and seem more of a polite gesture than an actual goodbye between friends, but nothenless it shows that they're pretty amicable. Till writes that Sua has a nice voice and that he hopes she gets a high score in Alien Stage, while Sua tells him to take care and that she'll see him there.
I think that Sua and Till actually have the potential to be pretty good friends, strangely enough.
As for similarities, there are quite a few!
The most significant similarity I see between Till and Sua is that they're both deeply sensitive. Due to this, they've developed different defense mechanisms in order to protect their feelings.
Till is actually known to be timid, rather closed off and "cold" to others. In an early stream, he's even stated to be the most timid character of the cast. He only reveals his energetic and fiery side when he's putting his full passion into something like performing his music, when he's provoked, or whenever Mizi is involved (she makes him "strong", the creators say). Of course this standoffish and aggressive behavior is a front for his softer, more vulnerable feelings. He was heavily mistreated as a child, which led him to become distrustful of most people. This plus other factors regarding his rebellious nature and more eccentric personality result in him being a "friendless idiot". Of course, once people get to know him they'll find that Till is actually quite the sweetheart, albeit a bit awkward.
Sua is quite similar in this way. The creators describe her as soft-hearted, which is why she tears up so quickly in the IvanSua comic and the aforementioned art of Till and Mizi playing together.
Sua, just like Till, seems to be mistreated by her alien guardian. Although to a less violent extent than Guardian Urak, Sua's parent is seen to aggressively handle her without care, grabbing her by the head and shoving her forward. She's also placed in uncomfortable clothing and neglected without consideration for her own feelings. It may be due to this cold and lonely upbringing that Sua learned to hide her emotions as a coping mechanism.
It's been said that getting to know more about Sua is very difficult, as she's closed off and only ever opens up to Mizi. She seems cold on the surface, but the truth is she is hiding her sensitivity so that she won't get hurt. Sua is also very timid in nature, seen in how she only writes in the corners of people's yearbook pages with small font, putting in extra effort to not take up too much space.
But just like Till, Sua has her bolder side. Occasionally she's known to say very blunt and suprising things that other people would not expect of her, and she feels very deeply for the people she cares about. Sua may be the more cool and collected half of MiziSua, but we must not forget that she was tender-hearted to the point where she could not imagine living a life without Mizi in it, thus her sacrifice.
Both Sua and Till's original colors are white, and both are the only characters in the main cast who have ear piercings/earrings. They're both prone to tears and play the role of "god" in their respective relationships.
Something I really like about the ALNST offrec/actor AU is that among all the characters, Till and Sua were chosen to be the seniors!! I found it really cute! Sua, who is the most petite and smallest of the cast + Till, who in canon is the youngest in age. These two are actually the experienced seniors of the actor AU! It's so fun to me lol
Anyways, sorry for all of this, maybe it was a bit much, haha. Till and Sua are my two favorites, and I've always seen similarities between the two of them. I think there's similarities across several of the characters in ALNST, actually, which I hope to talk about in the future!
Thank you for the ask!!
#ANYWAYS THIS IS THE START OF MY IVANMIZI/TILLSUA BESTIES AGENDA#alnst#alien stage#alien stage till#alien stage sua#asks
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Yandere! Tooru Oikawa General Profile
Yandere! Tooru Oikawa x fem! reader
Tw: kidnapping, mentions of stalking, non-consensual touching, mentions of non-con, possessiveness, mentions of murder, threats, one brief mention of eating/eating enough, extreme dependency, allusions to neglect, this one's a little sad because I think Tooru could only become yandere for someone he's known for quite a while like a friend, brief mentions of physical violence, manipulation, Tooru is mean to a fan so reminder to never meet your heroes, fem reader, MDNI
I do not condone any of the actions described in this post - this is fiction and should be treated as such. If you or a loved one is in a similar situation to anything contained in this post or my blog in general, please seek help. You're in charge of your internet consumption; please make responsible choices. With that, enjoy!
WC: 10K
DARLING PROFILE:
Sweet
First and foremost, while Tooru deeply respects and loves Iwaizumi, his teammates and his often insulting banter with them, there’s nothing that melts his heart more than genuine compliments from those he cares about.
Of course, he’s used to women fawning over him; telling him how handsome he is, how talented he is, how wonderful and amazing and rich he is.
And it feels nice in the moment, making his ego swell and a smirk slip onto those pink lips of his, but Tooru wants more.
He wants real compliments, praise for things that are more personal, things that only a true companion could know about. He’s tired of false flattery, of people telling him such sweet words just to get close to him for his status, his wealth, his pretty face.
He wants someone who is kind just to be kind – someone who means what they say when they compliment others.
It makes his heart race in his chest, something about their sincerity making him freeze up when his darling tells him how dedicated and passionate he is for putting in so much effort into volleyball.
It makes his breath catch a bit when they smile and sigh and tell him how proud they are when he cuts off his practice early, so that he isn’t spending hours afterwards serving and hitting until he breaks down.
He wants a darling that will be sweet and feed his somewhat precarious ego, and he’ll eagerly return the favor. He’s pouring compliments on them left and right, drowning them in kind words designed to get them flustered and bashful and so fucking adorable.
He just finds it endearing, and it’s a nice break from the usual women he meets. His darling is different, special, perfect, after all.
Perceptive
Although time has helped Tooru become more comfortable with himself, he’s still a bit hesitant to show his true self to others.
He’s worn a persona for most of his adult life, even starting way back in high school – he’s charming and smooth, always acting happy and suave.
And for the most part, he doesn’t mind – but with a select few of his friends and close companions, the world doesn’t get to know the real Tooru Oikawa.
His darling, however, is one of the very few who are on this list – and having a perceptive darling would make him fall much, much quicker.
His darling needs to be someone who is capable of catching clues as to the man that lives behind the mask; the one that still doubts himself, the one who needs constant encouragement, the one who just needs to be wanted and loved and appreciated for his hard work and his actions.
His darling needs to be able to help slowly push past the façade that he’s crafted over the years, and while they don’t need to see everything, they need to be able to make Tooru feel comfortable enough to actually be himself.
Someone who is able to pick up on his emotions, even when they aren’t terribly obvious, would be immensely attractive to him. It makes him feel seen and heard in a way that’s difficult to come by as a famous athlete, and the moment his darling showcases this ability, it’s only a matter of time before Tooru’s feelings are developing in full force.
It’s just refreshing to not have to pretend to be someone he isn’t – he’s just Tooru, not Oikawa the athlete.
It only further proves to him that his darling is made for him – they’re able to read and understand him like most people don’t, and what other possible sign could there be that they’re perfect for one another?
Honest
While Tooru’s darling must be kind, they must also be someone who isn’t afraid to tell him the truth.
All the women he meets in his daily life want to use him – whether it be his money, his fame, his looks, very few are honest about their intentions with him.
And while it makes him feel good to be wanted by so many people, Tooru often finds himself exhausted from all the effort and analysis he must undergo in order to really understand someone’s intentions.
And so, a darling that’s upfront about how they’re feeling and what they want is very, very attractive to him.
He tends to overthink and hyperfixate on things, and having a darling who leaves nothing unanswered calms his anxiety monumentally.
He doesn’t have to guess with them – he knows he can trust their word, that they won’t easily lie to him, that what they’re saying is exactly what they’re thinking.
It makes his heart flutter when they tell him that his hair looks good today, or when they tell him that they want to catch lunch sometime and hear about his latest game.
It makes him feel wanted and understood in a way that’s rare in his daily life, only furthering his obsession and fixation on his darling.
Calm
Tooru can be a bit childish. Even well into his twenties, this still rings true – he gets jealous easily and feels challenged by small comments and doubts of his ability.
His anger can get easily sparked by the right person, and having a darling that balances out these characteristics is a necessity for him.
A calmer darling helps keep him grounded, making sure that he keeps his head and doesn’t make any rash decisions.
They act as a sort of grounding rock for him – they’re able to bring him back to Earth with just a few words and a light touch to his shoulder, reminding him that some things aren’t worth his time or effort.
It’s useful, of course, but Tooru also finds it incredibly attractive when his darling is able to handle situations calmly on their own – he likes how confident they seem, how they’re able to logically think their way through a situation and not allow their emotions to get the better of them.
It’s awe-inspiring, if he’s being honest, and with every situation and interaction they successfully navigate with a smile and an even tone, Tooru only finds himself growing more and more impressed, becoming more and more interested in them until eventually it becomes all too much, their calm nature becoming something he grows dependent on in order to regulate himself.
Having his darling around becomes a necessity rather than simply a pleasure – and thus, his dependency is born, his reliance on his darling becoming one of the main facets of his obsession.
How lucky for his beloved.
GENERAL YANDERE TRAITS:
Possessive
It’s no secret that Tooru has never had to seriously work to get women. He’s attractive, a professional athlete, wealthy, famous – all in all, he’s a catch to countless fans, any of whom would be more than willing to be his partner.
And while he’s dated around, had a few serious boyfriends and girlfriends, he’s never really found the one.
For a long time, he seriously wondered if there was something wrong with him; he’s nearly 30, meeting countless new people everyday, going on dates every weekend with someone new, and he still hasn’t found a worthwhile connection with anyone long term. So why have all his friends begun slipping pretty rings onto their partners’ fingers, inviting him with a too-wide smile to attend their new house-warming party, or even posting a baby bump photo with far too many emojis?
He’s skeptical, and so while his confidence in his attractiveness doesn’t diminish by any means, Tooru slowly becomes less convinced that he’ll end up with a long term partner, a spouse, anything beyond a summer fling or a good, few month spark.
However, once his feelings for you develop, a sudden ray of hope is placed into his life. Suddenly, the prospect of dying alone doesn’t seem as imminent – how can it be, when you’re around?
How can he feel sad about his future when you’re so sweet and smart and pretty and god, that fucking smile –
He’s fallen head over heels before he even knows it, and while he exists in a somewhat honeymoon state for a while after the realization of his feelings, full of longing and dreamy smiles with red tinged cheeks and erratic heartbeats when he lays his eyes on you, quickly other feelings accompany. Ugly, disgusting feelings that Tooru hasn’t felt to such extreme degrees since high school, and never in the context of romance.
Namely, every time he sees you out in public, the adoration for the way the sunlight reflects off your hair is diminished by the coursing jealousy in his veins as he watches other men ogle you.
When he’s got you laughing at some joke he’s telling over your weekly lunch, he can’t fully enjoy the lilting sound because that damn waiter keeps coming back and asking if you want water, his body way too fucking close to you to be truly professional.
He’s suddenly acutely aware of just how beautiful and stunning you are, and how much male attention that gives you. He doesn’t blame you – no, of course not – because you’re simply perfect, and how are you supposed to know everyone wants a bite of you? No, Tooru sees you as much more helpless than that; you’re naïve, and it’s really only a matter of time before another man attempts to steal you away from him.
He knows it’s inevitable that you’ll be approached by someone else, and while they probably won’t be as handsome, wealthy, or athletically gifted as Tooru is, would you be swayed?
Is it possible that another man could win your heart, even with the setter right there in front of you all but begging for your adoration and love?
As time passes, Tooru slowly begins believing that it absolutely could happen, that any day now you could be pried away from his iron clad grip, no matter how hard he fights it. And so, he more or less panics.
He’s never really had to worry about keeping girls before, and how does it even work?
What should he do?
What should he say?
How short a leash is too short to keep you on?
He’s lost, quite frankly, and extremely embarrassed about it, because only immature, insecure men get jealous over their partner. Only men not confident in themselves panic over the thought of their beloved leaving them, and Tooru hasn’t felt crippling insecurity like this in years.
And yet, just one thought of you smiling in the direction of another man has him gritting his teeth, his arms flexing as his nails dig deeply into his fisted palms.
And so, Tooru decides that to keep you his, he’ll just have to show the world – through extravagant gifts, of course.
Suddenly there are bouquets of flowers arriving for you nearly everywhere you go – you wake up to deliveries at 8:00 sharp, a bouquet of sunflowers with a small note written in looping letters as these flowers grew, so did my dedication to you.
Necklaces with chains you’re fairly sure are made of real silver have the initial T and O engraved into them, winding around a heart and what almost appears to be a knife, though you’re not sure. Anklets, too, arrive, with sayings like angel or darling (one even featured babygirl, though you were quick to throw that particular piece of jewelry to the back of your closet, half amused at the – presumably – joke, half disturbed at the prospect of his sincerity).
You’re not sure who these gifts are coming from initially; you don’t know anything off the top of your head that would do something like this, until very suddenly it all clicks – the way Tooru looks so smug when you receive flowers while you’re out at lunch with him, the tulips your favorite color while the delivery man reads off the card Tooru had instructed him to. It pieces together when you see him sign legal forms or checks, that familiar signature and those initials jogging your memory. You only put the pieces together after Tooru’s need for your focused attention grows to new heights – physical touchiness, particularly in public spaces.
He’s always been clingy as a friend, but suddenly his hand is always at your waist, fingertips pressing in too tight for comfort.
He’s always liked hugs, but now his hugs feel strangely intimate; he’s pressing against you, burying his nose into your neck and audibly inhaling, a sigh falling from his lips as he periodically squeezes your body in his arms.
His hand is resting at the small of your back when you’re standing next to him, a steady palm to guide you through crowded spaces – though sometimes he ‘forgets what he’s doing’, as he tells you, and his hand ends up cradling the curve of your hip, dipping down to the flat of your tailbone, or jumping up and almost seeming to lightly, oh so airily trace the outline of your bra straps through your top.
(He hasn’t quite mustered up the courage to actually grope you in public, if only because he’s scared that you’ll be put off by him, and although he deeply, desperately wishes to touch you in such an intimate way, he’s a bit nervous that once he begins, he’ll never be able to stop.)
The physical affection grows extreme, his hands never leaving your body, reaching the point where it’s difficult to simply explain it away as platonic, as Tooru just being Tooru.
And yet, when you bring it up to him, those brown eyes go all wide, his mouth tilting down into a frown as he tells you he’s sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable! If you want I won’t touch you at all, I’d never want you to be unhappy around me; although, haven’t you noticed how all those creeps that used to hit on you don’t bug you anymore when I’m with you? Maybe it’s a good thing – I can be your hero and keep all the freaks away from you!
(The sincerity and conviction in the pouting of his lip and the creasing of his brow will have you swaying immediately, merely brushing off his words as being an attempt at humor rather than the truth.)
He’s not trying to be purposefully manipulative, but the words are falling out of his mouth before he can stop it, your face slowly changing as you consider his point, slowly nodding and smiling lightly, telling him he’s absolutely right, thank you Tooru, I don’t know what I’d do without you.
And just the sound of his name alone has him doubling down, touching you more, his possessive streak only growing exponentially with every permission you give to his tendencies, with every smile and giggle and fleeting touch.
How can he be expected to control himself when you look at him like that, all doe eyes and beaming smile and fuck, your hand is on his chest, if you’d just slide it down ever so slightly, following the thin line of dark brown hair you’d find a place that really, truly can’t resist you. God knows he’s tried.
Obsessive
Tooru’s always had a tendency to hyperfixate.
He’s a bit of a perfectionist, wanting to become the master at whatever he chooses to invest his time in, and once his feelings for you solidify, you are suddenly at the top of the list, very narrowly beating out volleyball.
Suddenly, Tooru finds himself yearning to learn every bit of information about you he can, every scrap feeling precious no matter how insignificant.
Sure, maybe it’s not the most important thing, but knowing how you like your toast makes his chest swell with pride.
(Do you like it lightly toasted? Darkly toasted? With butter? With jam? With peanut butter? With or without the crusts? It’s all important, so that one day when he’s routinely surprisingly you with breakfast in bed you’ll smile at him and exclaim how it’s just so perfect, giving him a soft, loving kiss and feeding him a bit of the toast, wiping away the jam from the corner of his jaw and licking it off your thumb, telling him to join you in bed because it’s so big and lonely without him and you’d been dreaming of you, Tooru, and you’ll never guess what we were doing…)
He’ll admit that maybe knowing the order you get dressed in the morning isn’t the most imperative piece of your daily life, but he’ll still recite the order in his head every night as he lays in his bed, staring at the ceiling and imagining if your routine to get undressed is the same.
He’s not picky with the information he learns, approaching every opportunity with enthusiasm, excitement, and a disturbing amount of eagerness.
And the way he goes about collecting this information isn’t limited, either – he’s not particularly partial to stalking you, if only because he’d rather you be acknowledging him and aware of his company, and because it’s difficult to simply blend in as a well-known athlete.
Rather, he falls back on some equally morally gray methods – it’s not hard to get his hands on a few for-hire personal hackers, his money spreading like water as he gets into every internet browser you’ve ever used, the history in every app you frequent, your camera roll, your documents, your notes apps and reminders.
Hell, even your settings are at his fingertips, eager brown eyes flicking through the different ways you have your backgrounds, profiles pictures, even the way you group your apps.
It’s all so interesting, his thumb endlessly scrolling through the information over and over until time starts to blur, four hours having passed without him even noticing.
He’s pouring through your watch history on all your favorite streaming platforms, compulsively watching your most viewed shows and movies over and over until he can nearly recite every line, eagerness and excitement lacing his voice with every word that leaves his mouth.
He’s analyzing anything he can get his fingers on, endlessly fascinated and entertained by anything and everything that even remotely pertains to you. You’re like some drug he’s found himself addicted to, his body physically craving you, the desire to always be thinking of you and with you nearly suffocating.
But he’s a busy man, and he doesn’t want to scare you off, so he can’t just constantly be around you, constantly following you or pressing for your attention – it would scare you, he’s sure, so he settles for almost living vicariously through you.
By watching your favorite shows and looking at your search histories, it’s almost like he’s next to you, like he’s spending time with you, like he’s an active part of your life. It’s almost like you’re together, the thing he yearns for more than anything.
And even once you’re under his roof, stolen and kept soundly by his side, Tooru’s obsessive tendencies don’t disappear – now that you know, now that you’re aware of the depth of his infatuation, why should he bother hiding just how much he knows about you?
Why should he take the time and effort to mask just how expansive his knowledge on you goes? Sure, it may scare you a bit, but he simply can’t hold himself back anymore – you have to let him show you just how dedicated he is to you.
You must let him cook you your favorite meals (perfectly done, even strange flavor combinations you don’t remember mentioning to him), let him rub your back (with that one exact movement he knows you love), let him play music for you (your favorite songs, of course), and let him buy new clothes for you (they’re the perfect sizes, your favorite colors, your favorite styles).
He just wants to please you, to get you looking at him with admiration, fondness, joy, and he’s willing to put every scrap of information he’s gleaned about you to use.
He wants to spoil you and make you the happiest you’ve ever been, all so you’ll smile at him and compliment him, so that you’ll praise him and kiss him and tell him that he’s perfect, you’re everything I could ever want Tooru.
He craves your validation, so please, please let him please you – let him stare at you for hours at a time, taking in every detail of your face, every mannerism of your movements, every inflection of your voice.
It makes him happy, makes him feel needed, wanted, like he’s actually contributing something, like he's treating you like a good, loving, loyal man – please, let yourself need him.
Because he needs you more than you could ever know.
Clingy
Of course, while Tooru’s jealousy and obsessiveness regarding you is certainly not an easy load to bear, by far the hardest part of being the center of his devotion is the touching.
He’s always been clingy, even back before his feelings for you had developed �� as friends, he was texting you near constantly, all kinds of stupid videos and jokes making your phone light up with notifications at the most inconvenient times.
He’s always been physically affectionate with you, whether it be hugs or ruffling your hair or lighthearted shoves, the actions never feeling forced or unnatural or strange. But once his feelings develop, things change.
The clinginess doesn’t change – no, if anything it just gets stronger, the urge to be around you and have your attention and feel you growing more and more pressing by the day.
No, the thing that changes is the atmosphere that comes alongside his growing desperation.
What used to be a small, casual hug of greeting when you meet up to eat becomes a very tense three second hug, his hands settling firmly at your waist and his brown hair tickling your neck with how deeply he buries his face against you.
(Often you think you can hear him sniffling, as if he was smelling, as if he was breathing you in, but the moment passes too quickly for you to really be sure.)
What used to be a casual holding of hands when he guides you through a crowded space becomes him snaking his fingers between yours, his palms clammy and sweaty, his fingers gripping onto yours tight, tightly enough to sometimes be painful.
What used to be flirtatious comments with very little meaning that he’d occasionally throw your way just to tease you become real, all traces of a joke erased from his tone as he tells you that you’re more beautiful than any flower after you mention how lovely the nearby flowerpot is.
Things slowly begin feeling different the longer his infatuation carries on, to the point where you will have to actively start dismissing these changes as merely being in your head – of course Tooru isn’t acting weird when he pulls you against his hip so that you’re walking side by side down the street.
Why would that be weird?
Sure, the street is nearly deserted so there’s no chance of running into anyone, and sure there’s no cracks or holes in the walkway to warrant you having to be careful, but it’s not weird.
(Just don’t look down – the dress pants he’d donned for the occasion – your date, he likes to think – do a very poor job of hiding just how your body heat is affecting him, of just how the way you fit against his side is making him feel.)
You’ll slowly get the feeling that Tooru is pushing your boundaries, every day finding a way to poke and prod just a bit more, to blur the lines of friend and boyfriend just a hair, just to see how far he can get without you calling him out for his behavior.
And when you eventually do reach your limit, wherever it may be, don’t breath too heavy a sigh of relief – because while he’ll try to tone it down as much as possible (he has to, because when you look so upset with him it makes his heart physically ache, the words of agreement already slipping out of his mouth because he’d do anything to get you smiling at him again), his clinginess is nothing compared to how it is once he’s stolen you away.
Once you’re living under the same roof as him, things will very, very quickly get out of hand. Any semblance of personal space and boundaries you may have are merely a suggestion to him, something of the past that can be plowed right past because now you’re his, and he’s yours.
Now there’s no reason to try and hold himself back – you know how he feels now, the level of desperation with which he wants you, so why should he bother trying to save his decorum or keep things platonic? He’s waited for so very long to touch you as he pleases, and while he won’t force anything too extreme on you, you will be subject his physical affections.
He’s constantly got a hand on your body, whether that’s resting on your shoulder, your waist, your thigh, your cheek, your ass, anything at all. He’s always hugging you, letting his long arms wrap around your shoulders as lets out a sound much too similar to a moan to be comfortable, pressing his body directly into yours so that he can feel every inch of you against him and feel more connected to you.
He’s always pressing kisses against your hands and legs, letting his lips travel from your fingertips up to your elbows, down over your shoulders to your belly button, down the slope of your thighs and finishing on the curve of your ankle, those brown eyes half lidded in far too much passion as you shiver in disgust.
He’s always trying to get you to return his affections, too – it’s great to hug you and sit you in his lap, but he wants you to want it, to want him, to want his touch.
He tries to keep all the affection pleasurable for you, to have you happy and smiling and craving the human contact, because the only thing worse than you rejecting his love is you rejecting his touch.
And so it’s not uncommon for him to whisper to you as he’s got his arm hooked around your waist, lying on his side with you spooned up to him if you’re enjoying this, does this feel good for you?
(His voice is unsure, hesitant, almost afraid, your response the difference between his heart breaking or beating out of his chest.)
He’s incredibly vulnerable when he’s touching you, his desperation and the raw need he feels for you bleeding out of him in ways that make it absolutely impossible for you to ignore. How can you? When he’s mindlessly playing with your fingers as he tells you about the upcoming game this weekend, he can’t stop marveling at the softness of your fingers against his calloused ones, his skin brushing yours even as you try to pull away.
When he’s clutching onto the shirt – his shirt – adorning your figure as he holds you against his chest on the couch, you’ll notice how his grip doesn’t falter for even a moment, staying steadfast and firm and strong. Frankly, even with all the rage and betrayal you feel towards Tooru, his touchiness and clinginess will likely be the source of the growing pity you feel for him.
Because really, isn’t he just so pathetic? He’s an absolute mess unless he's touching you – anxiety overwhelms him, panicked thoughts about whether you actually love him, about whether he’s even worthy of your love, whether he’s a talented player or an number of other insecurities that suddenly come racing to the surface.
So really, while it’s not ideal, you’d best get used to his handsiness – it’s intense, to say the least, and while he’ll never force himself onto you, he will force his affection onto you.
It’s better for you to simply let it happen – enjoy the human contact while you can, because when he leaves for the long, long trips for series of away games, you’ll find yourself missing your captor’s touch.
Isn’t it all just so sick?
DEALING WITH RIVALS:
Tooru is, unfortunately, a naturally jealous man. He’s always been both envious of others and painfully aware of his own shortcoming in every aspect of his life. Volleyball, friendships, even his own love life have left him with a bitter taste in his mouth, always acutely aware of what other people do better, what they have, frustration eating him alive because why can’t he be better or have what they have?
It’s unhealthy and as he’s gotten older he’s gotten better at keeping the jealousy at bay, but he’s still victim to the green-eyed monster much more often than he’d care to admit.
And where you’re concerned, this natural tendency only gets worse, his possessiveness flaring to worrying degrees when another man so much as looks at you.
(His jealousy is actually one of the major reasons why he even realized that his feelings for you transformed from platonic to romantic, his love for you changing from laughing at your jokes to wanting you gasping and writhing and needing him.)
Though, while desperation guides Tooru in most ways regarding your relationship, he still has enough of a grip on his lucidity to know that being jealous of every man that interacts with you is neither reasonable nor attractive to you.
Surely, other men must want you – you’re gorgeous, after all, sexy and perfect and everything he could ever want. Other men must see these qualities in you too; if they didn’t, they’d be stupid in Tooru’s opinion.
And yet, particularly in the beginning of his obsession, Tooru tries desperately to fight the rising jealousy he feels for you.
It’s not normal to want to throttle the man you make eye contact with on the street – you didn’t even speak, just merely catch eyes for a brief moment. So, instead of marching up to the man and socking him in the face like he wishes, Tooru just grits his teeth, pulling you closer to his side and asking you a question, hoping to distract you from ever even thinking of that stranger again.
Instead of yelling at the waiter that smiles just a beat too long at you after you order your meal, he just squeezes his hand into a fist, smiling tightly and asking you about coming to the important game he’s playing this weekend, emphasizing that he always plays much better when you’re there.
He’s always trying to play off his jealousy, but the result of his constant bottling of his emotions means that when the bottle finally fills, it overflows – Tooru isn’t normally scary to you, but when the jealousy finally explodes, you’ll find yourself unnerved by one of your closest friends, the man he becomes seeming utterly unfamiliar to you.
The volleyball stadiums are always loud after Club Atletico wins, and you’re sure no matter how many times you come to these games you’ll never get used to the noise.
It’s not hard to slip out of the bleachers and navigate back towards a hallway deep in the bowels of the stadium, the winding halls leaving anyone else surely confused. But you’ve met with Tooru after these matches enough times to know the path like the back of your hand – which is why the presence of another person makes you immediately cock a brow.
The man’s looking at his phone, his face visibly confused, and as your footsteps catch his attention, he looks up at you with relief. He’s quick to ask you how to get back to the main seating area, because he’d wandered off to find a bathroom and now he was truly lost.
The explanation and the exasperated expression he wears gets you chuckling a bit, a smile forming on your lips as you explain the directions to get back upstairs.
He looks lost merely three directions in, and immediately you’re laughing a bit again. He's pocketed his phone by this point, a hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck sheepishly, his voice shy as he asks you to repeat the instructions.
You only get about midway through before a hand places itself at your waist, a sudden pulling motion sending you stumbling back slightly and knocking into something firm and tall. Immediately you jump, looking up to be met with the strong jaw of Tooru, his lips set into a thin line and his brown eyes narrowed on the stranger.
The stranger immediately sucks in a gasp and splutters something out about being a huge fan, I’ve even got your jersey on! You were so good out there, those sets were insane –
He’s cut off a harsh laugh from Tooru, and your confusion only deepens. Tooru turns to look at you, a soft smile quirking up his lips.
Will you go get a towel for me? I’m awfully tired.
You blink but slowly nod, unsure where this sudden request was coming from. As you walk off, Tooru watches you, all the while ignoring the nervous fiddling of the man in front of him.
As soon as you turn the corner towards the training rooms, Tooru’s smile drops and he turns back to face the man. His voice is cold and condescending as he sighs.
Are you always this irritating to talk to?
The stranger’s jaw drops a bit, his nervousness back in full force as he takes a step back, one hand playing with the hem of the jersey.
Oh, uh, sorry, I was just getting some directions from your friend but I’ll be going now…
His steps are quick and rushed as he tries to take off down the hallway, but he freezes when Tooru’s voice calls out again.
Next time, you should save yourself some time and not bother talking to someone so obviously out of your league. It makes you look awfully pathetic, just so you know. Get going, I’m sure your mom’s worried that you haven’t come home to her basement yet tonight.
At that, the man starts moving again, and Tooru notes with a distinct sense of pride that his shoulders are shaking slightly, no doubt both his confidence and idolization of Tooru shattering.
Tooru takes a deep breath and looks up towards the ceiling, letting his eyes close briefly.
It’d been an extreme response, he’ll admit – you’d been standing a good three feet away from the man when he’d happened upon the scene, the man visibly thankful for the directions Tooru could hear you giving, but it didn’t matter.
It couldn’t matter, not when the adrenaline of the game was still rushing through his veins, not when the excitement and giddiness of seeing you was still potent, not when he’d been looking forward to hearing your praises and maybe even getting a hug, the jersey of his that he’d insisted you wear making you look particularly alluring today.
(Seeing the lettering of his last name across your back certainly didn’t hurt, his uniform feeling too tight and too hot.)
The jealousy had just sudden hit him in the moment, a rushing sort of anger that left him only barely able to realize that he needed to get you away now, that the words he’d be spewing at the unfortunate man who’d stolen your attention would surely leave you pissed beyond repair.
He breathes deeply, the anger still swimming in his veins, though releasing it out onto that poor fan was probably not the best choice.
Soon your footsteps are echoing in Tooru’s ears, and his eyes immediately fly open to watch you walk down the hallway, towel in hand and a worried expression on your face.
Are you okay, Tooru?
Your voice is an angel’s, he’s sure of it, and when you look at him with such worry and sincerity, it nearly makes his knees buckle. You’re so damn pretty, and as he gulps and nods, thanking you for the towel, he can’t help but feel a bit smug.
You’re his, damnit, and while telling the man off and losing a fan probably wasn’t the best price for this feeling, Tooru wouldn’t trade it for the world.
And when you go in for a hug, pressing yourself against him (pressing all of yourself against him), Tooru can only wrap his arms around you and return the hug, keeping his grip tight even as you try to pull back.
He’s a jealous man, yes, but when you smell and feel and look this good, can he really be blamed?
TAKING HIS DARLING AWAY:
Stealing you away isn’t something that immediately occurs to Tooru. He’s got a bit of a hectic schedule; being a professional athlete means an absurd amount of time away from home, an odd sleeping schedule, and a high amount of security needed to ensure his safety.
And frankly, he just doesn’t want to kidnap you – he’s a control freak in many ways regarding you, what with his extreme clinginess and the jealousy constantly eating him alive, but he doesn’t get any pleasure from the idea of controlling you.
And so, he holds off for as long as physically possible to keep from snatching you up for himself – there’s something incredibly alluring about you when you feel free and happy, and he’s terrified that if he were to kidnap you, all those smiles and your pretty laughter that gets his heart racing would disappear forever.
He’s not particularly delusional, and he’s sure you wouldn’t reciprocate his feelings if he were to drug you and have you wake up in pretty, lacy chains.
He’s not stupid, and he likes the concept of being able to go out with you far too much to really desire kidnapping you. He likes showing you off too much; his jealousy is all consuming, sure, but being able to parade you around on his arm and show the world that you’re with him is enough to stroke both his ego and his pride, making him suck in an uneven, stuttered breath.
He likes being able to take you out for spontaneous luncheons and dinners, swinging by your modest apartment (one he insists you could do better than, if you’d just let him pay your rent like he keeps offering) in his fancy black car, winking and telling you to hop in, pretty girl, we’re getting Italian! And if you eat the whole pasta bowl I’ll be so impressed I’ll even buy you some of that fancy gelato I know you love.
(Really, he’ll buy it for you no matter what, but he likes the idea that you’re eating enough, that you’re truly feeding yourself, that you’re healthy and safe and still alive and still his his his -)
He likes that he can just shoot you a text and tell you to pack for a tropical destination, requesting your presence at the nearest airport in less than an hour because he just got an extra ticket to the training camp his team is attending in the Caribbean.
He likes the excitement of it all, the way your eyes always get so big and wide and cute when he tells you about the latest adventure he’s dragging you along with or the latest thing he’s planning to buy for you.
He likes the way you always get so bashful and starstruck, utterly shocked and so grateful that you struggle to get your words out, because god the attention feels good.
Seeing you smile at him like that will never fail to send shivers racing across every inch of his body, his fingers trembling and a lump forming in his throat because oh please please please never stop looking at him like this…
It’s just too good for him to willingly end, and he’s terrified that the moment he makes a move towards keeping you in a more secure location, the magic of your happiness and fondness towards him will disappear, leaving you bitter and spiteful towards him.
And really, that’s the worst possible scenario for him – with the exception of one very, very large scenario that could actually convince him to fully kidnap you. That is, when you tell him gently one evening over cocktails and a platter of cheese, meats, and olives that you’re leaving Argentina, he goes very still and very pale.
It’s a mixture of terror, rage, and genuine panic that envelopes him, that leaves him scarily quiet for the rest of the evening, that gets him gripping the steering wheel of his car so tight that his knuckles turn white.
It’s that same horrible, gut-wrenching mixture of emotions that compel him to drive back to your apartment late that same night, his face blank as he uses the spare key you’d given him a while ago to quietly enter, already holding the chloroform soaked rag in his pocket and approaching your bedroom fast, his footsteps almost eager enough to wake you up.
All too soon he’s got your limp body in his backseat, brown eyes glancing frantically between the road in front of him and your form in the rear view mirror, a new mix of foreboding and excitement making his gut twist and turn.
You’ll be angry, surely, but Tooru knows this was his only choice – you were leaving him. What else could he have possibly done?
Being Tooru’s captive will often leave you feeling disoriented, as if you’re walking along a familiar path that’s been left to decompose and rot. Everything feels different and alien and wrong – leaving you with a false sense of comfort that’s shattered at every turn.
It’s strange, because you know Tooru – he’s been your friend for years, but as you come to terms with the extent of his obsession with you, the man you thought you knew slips away from view, leaving you with this husk of him, looking the same but acting nothing like him.
There’s still traces of him – in how he talks to you late at night, curling your body up beside his as he plays with your fingers, his voice a murmur in your ear as he rants about his teammates, the topic feeling so normal and familiar that it almost makes you cry.
There’s traces of him when he puts his hand on your back to guide you into another room, the familiar curve of his palm making your body want to relax and lean into him only for the sudden squeeze he gives you to jolt you right out of that comfort, to remind you that no that isn’t his phone corner poking into your hip like you’d always thought.
There’s traces of him, but by and large Tooru just becomes too much – he’s too touchy, too demanding, too insistent that you be looking at him and only him. He’s always got his hands on you, pressing into your skin or playing with your hair or tracing the shape of your lips and cheeks.
(It’s more of a comfort for him rather than a sexual desire – of course, he very much wants to have you naked and trembling and moaning his name like a prayer, but when he pulls your body against his or rests his forehead against your back, it’s mostly just to make sure that you’re still there, his anxiety about being away from you and losing you calming down just a hair because you’re right fucking here.)
He’s always got those eyes trained on you, watching your every move like a hawk, making shivers roll up your spine no matter how much you get used to the feeling of being observed.
(Being watched while bathing was, admittedly, the most difficult adjustment. He hasn’t forced himself on you – something you’re beyond thankful for - but it’s still jarring to be running the soapy water over your body while he watches from beside the bathtub, his cheeks tinted pink and his voice soft and worryingly husky as he tells you that he’s always loved the scent of your soap, did you know I could smell it back when I used to hug you? That’s why I always put my face against the right side of your neck – you always put extra there. Did you do that for me?)
He’s always talking to you, his voice alternating between teasing with comments that are just a tad bit too sincere to feel like a joke and low and heady, like there’s something on the tip of his tongue that he desperately wants to tell you but just can’t quite force out.
(The compliments he gives you remind you of the old Tooru, but there’s always a certain level of detail added to them that makes your skin crawl – he’ll tell you that you’re so beautiful, your face is perfect, when I sleep it’s all I see…)
It’s scary and weird and his clinginess will have you wanting to scratch your eyes out and claw at him just to get a bit of space, but the reality is that as time passes you’ll slowly grow more and more conflicted about your feelings towards him.
He’s kidnapped you, stolen you away and locked you up away from the rest of the world, and he’s spent countless months collecting fragments of your hair and your old toothbrushes and taken photographs of you and countless other things you’ve yet to discover.
But he treats you well, all things considered, and the more time passes from the kidnapping, your rage slowly cools until all that’s left is an overwhelming pity for the man who claims to love you more than he loves himself.
Because really, isn’t Tooru awfully pathetic?
Isn’t it sad that he needs you so badly that he can’t function unless you’re around, unless he’s felt your touch, unless he’s heard your pretty voice say his name?
Isn’t it pathetic that he keeps you clutched so tightly to his chest at night that you can hardly breath?
You’ll be feeling sorry for him before you even realize it, some part of you desperate to recognize him as your Tooru, as the man you’ve come to love and care for as friends.
Eventually that part of you will win out, and while Tooru feels a bit guilty for having essentially conditioned you into accepting him, it doesn’t really matter – because you want him now. You’re choosing him, accepting him, needing him like he needs you, and that’s really all he could ask for – he just wants you to love him, and while the methodology may be a little dirty, Tooru’s only ever cared about results.
Because when you smile at him again and hesitantly press your lips against his, he swears he’s died and gone to heaven – because you finally, finally want him too.
PUNISHMENTS:
Similarly to his feelings regarding kidnapping you, Tooru isn’t the biggest fan of punishments.
His dependence on you is so strong and so deeply inlaid into his person that harming you just feels wrong, carnally evil in every form of the word. The concept of physically harming you makes him feel sick and his hands immediately rush out to clutch onto you, to tuck you against his chest, to lift a finger to your pulse point to make absolute sure that you’re still with him.
He’s terrified that you’ll somehow die or abandon him, and even just a simple scratch or a light bruise would be too much for Tooru to handle. And so, punishing you is absolutely off the table – his ultimate goal is for you to develop positive feelings for him again, to maybe even love him, after all.
But Tooru is only human, and so while he won’t ever physically lash out at you or force you into any severe, serious punishments (or humiliating ones, luckily enough), he will fall back onto something more subtle, something more purposeful – he’s not necessarily manipulative with you in your day-to-day life, but he’s not embarrassed to play every single card in his favor in order to get you feeling positively disposed towards him, even if he doesn’t deserve it.
It starts off genuinely unintentional - because he really values honesty in your relationship. He wants you to be honest when you’re telling him that you love him, that he’s pretty, that you need him.
He wants things to be real and raw – except, you’re still so angry with him, your eyes so betrayed when you look at him, and it makes him want to rake his nails into his skin because that pain would feel so much better than how your hatred feels.
And so, after the first few times you try to escape the nice penthouse he’s gone through the trouble of decorating with things he knows you love, Tooru starts getting a bit desperate.
Can’t you see that he only stole you away because it was his only choice?
Can’t you understand that he didn’t want to do this, but there was no other way to keep you safe and secure and his?
He starts panicking, terrified that despite all his efforts to be kind and inviting and spoil you (both with material goods and constant affection, though you haven’t asked for either), you still won’t ever return his feelings, or even harbor positive feelings towards him ever again.
And so, with furrowed brows and a sinking feeling in his gut, he turns towards fake tears and only half-true words to get you feeling bad for him, to get you wanting him like he wants you to. Like he needs you to.
Tooru’s initially not sure what to say when he walks through the front entrance of the penthouse.
It’d only been a weekend tournament; a simple Friday, Saturday, Sunday round-robin type event that was a few hours away – nothing horribly long. And yet he’d been so, so eager to return to you, to feel your body against his and hear your voice and smell your scent and just see you that he’d literally sprinted from the car, all the way up fifteen flights of stairs to his apartment.
And this is what he walks in on?
You, with a dull butter knife in your hands, the metal bent and warped while you stare at him with wide eyes and a heaving chest?
It’s painfully obvious what’s going on – you were trying to get the door open, pushing and pulling so hard with the knife that you’d nearly broken it.
You’d nearly broken it trying to get away from him, in other words. His duffel bag drops to the ground, his fingers frozen and trembling as he stares wide eyed at you.
Angel? What – what’s going on?
You don’t respond, too nervous and scared of how he’ll react to make a move. But Tooru recovers first, rushing forward and swatting the knife out of your hand before pulling you into a much too tight hug.
His hands are still shaking as one rubs up and down your back, the other situated on the crown of your head.
Were you trying to leave me?
You start to answer, your lips moving to speak against the fabric of his shirt, but he cuts you off.
Were you trying to get rid of me? To run away from me?
And there’s something in his voice that makes your shoulders shake, a sudden bout of rage simmering through you.
Yes, Tooru, I’m trying to get out of this stupid fucking apartment that you keep me trapped in! Please, you have to let me go, this is wrong! This isn’t right – this isn’t healthy! You have to understand! How do you not-
He cuts you off with a small sob, and although you know you shouldn’t, some part of you pauses for just a fraction of a second. Your voice stalls for just a moment, but Tooru jumps into the brief moment of silence.
Stop it! Stop it, please, don’t say that.
He’s sniffling, pressing his cheeks against your head and clutching you even tighter.
You’re right, I know you’re right. I’m a monster and a freak for doing this to you. I know that, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Please, you don’t understand – I hate that I’ve done this to you. I hate that I’ve made you sad and forced you to stay with me, but you have to understand that I can’t stop.
He sobs again, and you notice his voice is wobbly and something wet is touching your ear.
I can’t stop myself – I can’t stop wanting you and needing you, and I think I would die if I never saw you again. Please understand, I’m pathetic but I need you to stay sane – just, just let me love you like we used to, okay? Please, I promise I can take good care of you – I can make you happy! Just give me some more time…
Something in your chest feels tight at his words, and before you know it you’re reaching around his torso yourself, your movements hesitant as you loosely hug him back. He gasps lightly against your hair, and you can feel him swallow.
I hate you. Your whisper is soft and quiet, and although the words make his chest ache, Tooru smiles.
I love you, he tells you, pressing a kiss against your hair.
You both stay like that for a while, only the distant sound of traffic from many stories below you filling the empty air of the entryway. You don’t know what to say, or even what you could say – Tooru’s a monster, yes, but there’s something about the rawness of him in this moment that makes you yearn and ache for the old Tooru, the one you knew before he started developing this ‘love’ he claims to have for you.
Something about him feels familiar and unbearably sad, and when you pull back and he stares at you, those brown eyes puffy and tear-stained, you can’t find it in yourself to fully pull away.
Because isn’t he still Tooru Oikawa? Isn’t he awfully pathetic? Isn’t it sad how badly he craves you, how his every touch and word and look make you feel as if you were the most precious thing on Earth, as if you were the most prized woman he’s ever met?
It’s wrong and you can hate yourself for it all you want, but as he sniffles and bites his lip and lets his fingers dig into your sides, you won’t be able to deny it: you couldn’t leave him, even if the door was wide open. He’s a monster, sure, but maybe so are you for liking the way you’re so unconditionally needed by someone as famous, beautiful and successful as him.
Meanwhile, Tooru can’t help but internally rejoice at the feeling of you in his arms, at the feeling of you hugging him, and at the knowledge that he can literally see your walls breaking down, getting one step closer to you truly accepting him – to you truly loving him.
Even if the tears he’s manufactured are fake, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is you.
And after the next tournament, when he comes home and you’re lying on the couch reading the same book for the tenth time rather than picking at the locks, Tooru decides that perhaps the show he’d put on (or rather, exaggerated, as he truly was desperate for you to not leave him) was worth it.
Anything for you is worth it – as long as you keep looking at him and touching him and wanting him.
OVERALL DANGER:
6/10
What makes Tooru dangerous is the fact that he’s absolutely dependent on you in every sense of the word. Over time, his self-worth becomes intertwined with your opinion of him, with your presence and role in his life.
He’s not exaggerating or being obnoxious when he tells you that he absolutely needs you – he can’t go for more than a few hours without feeling your skin against his, otherwise he gets anxious and jittery and on edge, snapping at others and pacing and worrying so much that it makes his chest physically ache.
He can’t go more than a few minutes without hearing your voice, otherwise he has to see you and be near you to make sure that you’re still with him, that you haven’t left him or abandoned him or any number of other things. He just needs you, so much so that it honestly scares him.
He’s not particularly violent or condescending, and aside from the kidnapping and forced touching, life with Tooru honestly won’t be so terrible. Sure, he hugs you too tight and kisses you too hard and clings to you in a way that makes your skin crawl, but eventually you’ll grow to become just as dependent as he is on you.
Because when he’s your only human contact, can you really afford to be so picky? When he’s the only one you can see and speak with and feel, you’ll slowly become complacent and even happy when he’s around.
Stockholm Syndrome will eventually make you a willing captive, and Tooru couldn’t be happier – you’re finally treating him as a lover, embracing him and letting him dote on you and care for you, and what more could he really ask for?
You’ll eventually just give up the fight – he’s a pathetic, sad man with such deeply rooted insecurities about himself and his abilities that the pity will nearly drive you mad.
And all the while, Tooru will welcome you with open arms – you can pity him as much as you like, as long as you stay with him.
Please.
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What is Sobriety?
What does it mean to be living a sober life? What is sobriety?
I know what it is not. It is not a destination or something that we achieve and no longer have to work at. Simply not drinking or not using, for an addict, seems impossible in the beginning. When we choose to get sober, we begin the battle with cravings, withdrawals, temptations and a lot of pain. Whether we fight this on our own, with the help of a physician or end up in a detox program, it is all the same. We get our drug of choice out of our systems. Then the real work begins.
Many of us have been through this multiple times. I have quit drinking more times than I can count. I stopped drinking for about 10 years at one point. I would not describe this time of my life as being particularly sober. I was a deeply unhappy and angry person. I was basically white knuckling the ride of emotions on a daily basis. I had no insight into my suffering. I blamed myself for being a bad person, difficult to deal with and just not capable of being a good mom, wife, daughter etc. I was unhappy and full of self-pity. During this time I saw my children graduate and leave for university, I went through a divorce, changed jobs and began a new life on my own. I did believe at the time that I was making it and that I was strong. Until it all came crashing down.
I hesitate to call what happened over the next five years as a relapse, because I had not been living a life in recovery, I had merely stopped drinking. When I picked up the drink again I had made no real progress and found myself in a deeper hole than I had ever been. I had no control of my drinking, no self-respect and no hope for any kind of a future.
With the persistent help of some beautiful people, I went into a 60 day rehab program, which was the beginning of something brand new. I began the painful process of facing myself, my anger, my trauma and began to learn a new way to live. A life of sobriety.
This new lifestyle is ongoing and is something that requires daily maintenance. It is easier some days than others. The tendency to gravitate towards anger and isolation is always there, just as the potential to take that drink again is always there.
While I strive to maintain emotional sobriety, it is not a straight line. There are successes and failures. The failures do not negate the work we have done and do not take away the good we have accomplished. We continue to try and move in a forward direction, celebrating our wins and showing ourselves love and compassion when we are struggling.
Sobriety is a way of living.
#addiction recovery#mental health recovery#positivity#sobriety#encouragement#self help#self care#blog
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Armand surgical malpractice meta (spoilers for TVA)
It’s, at least from what I’ve seen, a pretty popularly agreed upon conception that Armand’s mutation of Claudia b4 her death as described in TVA didn’t actually happen..partly bcus it’s such a drastic and grotesque retcon from her death in interview with the vampire so lots of ppl don’t want to address it as canon, and partly bcus it’s so bizarre and seemingly unprompted in context that it just seems more plausible that Armand would make this up as some sort of twisted shock value rather then actually do it. I used to buy into this theory and never rlly thought about it beyond that, and today for the first time I thought about it deeply and realized. Damn I rlly disagree! I think that Armand 100% canonically chopped Claudia’s head off and sewed it onto an adult body. I believe it happened as told. And I have many reasons !
First and foremost I don’t think that Armand is actually capable of lying so deliberately in this context. Interpreting most tvc narrators as potentially lying to our faces and intentionally twisting events to suit a narrative and a purpose of dictating our perception of them is, I think, accurate and justified, and smth I love about this fandom. Everyone is not to be trusted 100%, especially Louis and Lestat, who are said and implied many times to have completely fabricated some events in the books for the sake of painting a picture. Tvc serve as this over arching plot about multiple conflicting characters manipulating events of their lives to suit a narrative that we as the audience can pick apart and discover the truth within. Very much “this bitch said WHAT about me?? that dumb cunt is always spreading lies smh, it actually happened LIKE THIS” (they r both not telling the full truth). Armand however is very much an outlier here, and it’s part of what makes TVA so unique as a chronicle. It’s a big part of his character throughout the series, in TVA and leading up to TVA, that Armand’s way of thinking is so dysfunctional and his memory is so flawed (bcus of all his trauma) (and neurodivergence) (imo) that he isn’t able to fully conceptualize the events of his life as chronological and meaningful in the way that one would need to do to be able to write a memoir.
He can’t describe events in broad strokes, or wrap his head around a vast emotional impact in a way that is explanatory or intentional. Think of that conversation he has with Daniel in queen of the damned, where he explains that he isn’t capable of telling Daniel what his life in the past “was like” because that’s a concept incomprehensible to him. He only knows what happened, not what it was like, not how it affected him or how it shaped his personhood, what it means etc. It’s a form of dissociation almost. The vampire armand is the first time in Armand’s vampiric life that he self reflects beyond acknowledging events and his emotions in that moment, it’s the first time he attempts to make connections and understand himself in a way that is narrative and structured and not fragmented bits of history and A names. Part of this requires further dissociation. I definitely get the impression that since Armand is being so vulnerable in a way he is so unused to, yet is so significant, he is unable to register while he’s talking that not only David, but millions of people including every vampire in the world, will know what he says. He’s just laying himself completely bare, he’s talking and talking and only once he finishes realizes oh. Oh. everyone’s going to read this huh. It’s so cathartic he doesn’t consider that in the moment. It’s the first time he’s ever been capable of reckoning with his life in a self reflective way, of looking at it and explaining it and reasoning with it, structuring it in order, not fragments, etc, seeing the cause and the impact and touching on an overall conclusion (tho he never entirely gets there). These baby steps are so difficult for him already, and considering this part of his character I really think it’s a stretch to say that Armand would be capable of the thought process in his book of pure venting to go “maybe I should twist the truth here or change this or add this or lie about this so people will think of me this way or so Lestat can see this, etc” TVA is unreliable, more so bcus of how mentally ill armand is and how little he understands his own life and emotions, but not deliberately like iwtv and tvl. Armand even says that the book was for Benji and Sybelle, but it’s so unfiltered and horrific and vent-like that this sounds ridiculous. He doesn’t even have his stated audience in mind while he’s telling his story, let alone his broader audience. The audience was a complete afterthought, a barely registered consequence. So why would he lie about Claudia? How would he be capable?
it’s another common piece of conversation around this part of TVA where we go, Armand discusses how he never would want to tell this to Louis bcus he knows how badly it would hurt him, so why did he describe it so graphically? Well, cause of all I mentioned. It seems pretty clear to me that armand is almost haunted by the affair with Claudia, and he has no way of lying about this, so his descriptions seemed very much to me like a desperate bit of venting. He has never told anyone how horrific it actually was and it’s always been in his mind, so he just lets it all out. Makes sense, but the broader question is, if Armand wasn’t lying…why did he do that at all?? This I think is so interesting.
To understand this I had to think a lot about Armand’s motivations for killing Claudia at all, which is well, simply, revenge against Lestat and claiming of Louis without barriers. If Claudia dies Lestat will be sad and Louis will be mine and mine alone 👍👍 etc. but Claudia’s mutation was not rooted in either of these motivations, which is part of why it’s so shocking. He didn’t do it to hurt Lestat, lestat never found out. It just seems so odd and unprompted. But once I thought more about why Armand hates Lestat, and why he wants to hurt him by killing Claudia, it started to fit into place. Armand’s hatred for Lestat is rooted very much in his twisted resemblance to Marius that he perceives as being very strong and basically mocking. When he first sees Lestat in tvl he’s repulsed by him instantly bcus he sees him as this parody of Marius, this beautiful blonde man in striking red robes who boldly and carelessly defies the laws of vampires established by the children of Satan as if they are meaningless to him, revels in the indulgent world of humans like he belongs there, shamelessly as armand devotes himself to miserable repression. It strikes a nerve for armand, feels very personally offensive to him, like the embodiment of the traits that got Marius’s destroyed r coming back to mock him in his face. And then as he gets to know Lestat more deeply he only hates him more, bcus Lestat is not only bold and careless, but he’s immature and stupid, and he knows nothing. Armand in his horribly traumatized mind set registers Lestat as “like Marius” and takes this to mean “maybe he can save me, maybe he will teach me and free me from this hell, guide me and give me the purpose I need to be given.” But Lestat does not do this, lmfao. He actually destroys any sense of purpose armand had, rips him from his safety net, and when Armand begs for guidance, asks to be allowed to travel alongside Lestat so he can learn to be a person again, Lestat denies him. The only purpose he bothers to give him is the scraps, symbolic of his perverse indulgence that Armand despises, and fucks off. Lestat is grotesquely reminiscent of Marius, in the worst ways. It’s like his presence alone opens Armand’s eyes to how badly Marius has ruined him. He was the sun, the purpose, the guiding light, and then it was ripped away, and there was nothing else without him. Just a void.
So Armand hates Lestat for this very personal mockery of his own plight, and this hatred spirals into unbridled rage when Lestat returns to him and expects Armand to give Lestat the assistance that he denied him. Not only this, but Lestat found Marius, found marius and was granted guidance and love that Marius refused to give Armand after his indoctrination into the children of Satan. And Marius told Lestat to never ever do what he did, never make an Armand, because Armand was a mistake, he was too young to be a vampire, and now he’s a mistake he will never forgive himself for. And with this immense privilege that Armand spent a huge chunk of his life yearning for, guidance from Marius when he was his most lost, Lestat decides to disregard it. He decides that since Marius said it was bad to turn a child as young as Armand, he’d turn a child even younger then Armand, just cuz. He is once again the embodiment of Marius’s sins, the grotesque parody. Marius turned a teenager, Lestat turns a five year old. It’s almost cruel in how mocking it is, almost intentional in how personal. So Claudia is this child, this deliberate mistake made by someone who knew her turning would be harmful to her but was selfish enough not to care, then went on to regret it when he has to reckon with the consequences. Seem familiar? Armand sure thought so. So I imagine that being alone with Claudia, looking this deeply sad reflection of his own agony in the eyes, knowing she is about to die for justice against a warped parody of his Maker, for the sake of punishment for her own existence, I imagine this struck a cord of insanity in Armand’s fucked up mind, caused him to loose his absolute shit for just long enough to go what if I can fix her, what if I can turn this narrative around, give her the remarkable ending I know deep down that she, I , will never be granted. What if I can give her a body that will reflect her mind? What if I can make this abomination into a miracle? No wonder he pulled out the surgical tools 😭 No wonder he was so horrified by his own actions when he came to his senses, no wonder he refused to share this, kept it to himself for so long, until he finally broke and confessed it all in a desperate moment when he was too caught up in the dam breaking to realize he’d be exposing this horrific action to the world.
Armand sees Claudia as a repulsive mistake that should’ve never existed made by Lestat to deliberately mock him up until the surgery, when then for only a moment lost to time ended in blood she is another child who had her life taken from her too soon by an egotistical blonde man who thought he could play god with someone’s life. “They were done for anyway, he was going to starve to death in a brothel, she was going to die as a street orphan, the blood would be a service to them, a chance they never had” But they both know that’s a lie they tell themselves to justify the act of taking a child and molding it into what they please for fun, for pleasure, for companionship, just to see what would happen. Armand sees this for a moment and wants to give her a chance, give them both a chance, wants to see her as an adult, as someone who could have a life. And then of course, we know how that turns out 😭
#Bursts into tears#I have a concussion and I’m supposed to be resting my brain but fuck it armand more important then healing god damn it#tvc#the vampire chronicles#vampire chronicles#vc#armand#lestat de lioncourt#iwtv#interview with the vampire#claudia iwtv#Claudia tvc#Armand iwtv#Armand#armand tvc#marius de romanus#the vampire lestat#the vampire armand#tvl#tva#tvc meta#iwtv meta#louis de pointe du lac
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Milton Erickson and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar... (Essay)
Finally, I've finished this essay about connections I'm finding between hypnosis, Judaism, magic, and intimacy. It's ~4.5k words, extremely "me," and I'm really thrilled to share it. Enjoy!
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My weakness is getting deeply invested in very niche topics.
Hypnosis was my first and most lifelong obsession. It was my confusing, shameful sexual fetish that I eventually took by the horns and -- through my desire to learn as much about it as humanly possible -- turned into a job. But not a normal sex work job where I do hypnosis for money -- a weird job where I just teach about it. The kink community, and the further-specific niche where people want to hypnotize each other during intimate experiences, became my home.
But the value of study doesn't really come from the quantity of people I'm able to engage with. It comes from the way it enriches my life. It creates and benefits from the capability to see overlaps between all of my various interests.
On the surface, it may appear that two skills have no relationship. But the deeper you get into each one, a synthesis appears.
At a certain point when you are learning hypnosis, all seemingly-unrelated information seems to fit effortlessly into your hypnotic knowledge. You can listen to a song and suddenly you learn something new about how to hypnotize someone. Maybe it was a lyric that gave you an evocative emotional response; maybe it was a pattern in the music that you thought about replicating with the rhythm of your hypnotic language.
Over a decade into my own hypnosis learning, I got very lucky and found a second passionate home in communities of Jewish text study about a year ago. I started from almost zero there and found myself again to be a greedy novice, obsessed with digging into it.
Of course, as I got further, it became that I read a page of Talmud (a text of rabbinical law and conversation) and suddenly I learned something new about how to hypnotize someone. And as I progress, it is starting to go the other way: I learn about Torah study by reading about hypnosis and intimacy.
There are two directions this essay can be read. “How can intimacy and hypnosis teach us about Jewish text?” And, “How can Jewish text teach us about intimacy and hypnosis?” One half is of each part written by me as an authority, and the other half is by me as an avid novice. The synthesis of these two parts of me -- just like any synthesis between concepts -- may perhaps create something new.
Models
I’m sure most communities have a version of the idiom, “Ask three people a question and get five answers.” For a long time, this was a source of frustration for me in the hypnosis community. Is hypnosis a state of relaxation and suggestibility? Kind of, but also no. Is it more accurate to say it is based on unconscious behaviors and thoughts? Well -- kind of, but also no.
So what is it? Well, it’s probably somewhere in the overlap of about 20-30 semi-accurate definitions and frameworks for techniques -- what we’d call “models.” Good luck!
Why is hypnosis so impossible to define and teach? How have we not found a model that we can all agree upon yet? I think many people share this confusion, and it's complicated by the fact that most sources for hypnosis education teach their model as the model. It makes sense -- it would be difficult to teach a complete beginner a handful of complex frameworks with which to understand hypnosis when that person is just trying to muddle through learning “how to hypnotize someone” on a practical, basic level.
…Or would it be? By the time I got involved with Jewish study, I had long given up on chasing the white whale of some unified theory of hypnosis. I was firmly happy with the concept that all ways to describe hypnosis are simply models -- and all models are flawed, while some models are useful. I was delighted, when entering Jewish community spaces, to hear the idiom, “Three Jews, five opinions.”
This concept is baked into Jewish text study, in my experience. You can look at any single line in Torah and find innumerable pieces of commentary on it, ancient and modern, with conflicting interpretations. Torah and other texts are studied over and over -- often on a schedule -- with the idea that there is always something new to learn. And this happens partially by the synthesis of multiple people's perspectives adding to and challenging each other, developing new models. My Torah study group teacher always starts us with a famous line from Pirkei Avot, a text of ethical teachings from early rabbis: “If two sit together and share words of Torah, the Shekhinah [feminine presence of God] abides among them.”
The capacity to develop and hold multiple interpretations at once enriches your relationship with the text. So too do I believe that being able to hold multiple interpretations of what hypnosis is and how it works enhances your skill with it. It is not a failure of the system -- it is the best thing about it.
Intimacy
It is intentional to make the distinction of “relationship with the text” -- not “relationship to the text.”
My job on the surface is to teach hypnosis, but the meta goal is to simply teach something that helps people develop profound intimacy with others. I think that hypnosis is a kind of beautiful magic that is well-suited to this, but it’s not the only path to take.
One of my favorite educators, Georg Barkas, describes themselves as an intimacy educator who teaches rope bondage. Their classes and writings are highly philosophical and align closely with my own ideas about intimacy -- as well as my partner’s, MrDream, from whom I’ve learned so much. I frequently cite Barkas when I talk about hypnosis because I feel the underlying ideas they have about rope bondage are extremely applicable to all kink and intimacy -- and I will continue that trend here.
Barkas recently published an excellent essay looking in detail at the concept of intimacy itself. They posit that our first thought of intimacy is usually about a kind of comfort-seeking and familiarity. That’s contained within the etymology of the word, and socially it’s what many of us think of when we define our relationships as “intimate”: settling in to engage with a partner who we love, know, and understand.
But, Barkas asks, what if we place this word into a different context? They talk of how in scientific endeavors, the goal of “becoming familiar with” is unpredictability and discovering things that are surprising and unexpected. This perhaps offers a different view of intimacy: intimacy where you do not engage with your partner as though you know everything about them; intimacy where being surprised by them and learning something new is the goal.
My partner MrDream teaches about this often in hypnosis education: approaching a partner with genuine curiosity and interest -- “curiosity” implying that you don’t know what to expect, with a positive connotation. There is a kind of delicate balance between being able to anticipate some aspects of what is going to happen hypnotically -- to have a general grasp on psychology and hypnosis theory -- versus holding tight to a philosophy that neither you nor the hypnotic subject really knows how they are going to respond. The unexpected is not to be feared, but celebrated and held as core to our practice. Hypnotic “subjects” (those being hypnotized) who can relax their expectations will often have more intense experiences.
Thus we come to the first time in this essay where I mention Milton Erickson, my favorite forefather of modern hypnosis. Erickson was a hypnotherapist active through the 1900s and is famous (among many things) for presenting a model of hypnosis that wasn’t necessarily an authoritative action done to a person, but a collaborative and guiding action done with a person.
In his book “Hypnotic Realities,” he talks about how his view of clinical hypnosis is defined by how the therapist is able to observe each individual client and directly use those observations to continually develop a unique hypnotic approach with them. The client’s history, interests, and modes of thinking are utilized for the trance, as well as any observable responses they have in the moment. For example, a client with chronic pain may have the frustration they express over that pain incorporated into the trance. This is in deep contrast to hypnosis where the therapist comes in with any kind of “script” or formula to recite ahead of time.
It’s important to Erickson’s model that the therapist doesn’t know exactly what to anticipate, and it’s also important hypnotically that the same is true for the client. A common “Ericksonian” suggestion is, “You don’t have to know what is going to happen, and I don’t know either.” In order to develop the most effective approach with each patient, Erickson would enter into a session with some presumed knowledge, but ultimately learning -- not assuming -- how to best hypnotize each individual person.
We circle back to the phrase, “a relationship with Jewish text.” In my opinion, engaging with Torah is exactly this kind of intimacy. Torah is something we come into in order to poke and prod at it, to interact with it and to see how it interacts back at us. The teacher of my study group always cites a model where Torah itself is a participant in our partnered learning and group discussions. We ask it questions, we push its boundaries, we strive to glean something new and yet unseen. A line that may seem simple on the surface can reveal much more when we explore its context or put it into a different context entirely.
This is easier for me to say as someone who is coming into learning Torah for the first time, but I am able to look ahead to when I will be fully familiar with the text and still be able to take this expanded definition of intimacy with it. Not coming to it without a sense of comfort, but still engaging with curiosity. MrDream teaches a model for hypnosis that is based on the idea of exploration -- exploring your partner no matter how long you have been with them. You are always coming to them as a different person, shaped by your ever-growing experiences and identity, and your partner changes as a human as well. I believe Torah is also dynamic in this way, as the context within which it exists -- and the way we interpret it -- is constantly shifting.
Ritual
I have been engaging with spiritual ritual on and off for as long as I’ve been learning hypnosis. The concept of magic has always been alluring to me -- not from a motivation to meet specific goals, but for something more difficult to pin down. I like that ritual, in an esoteric framework, is about looking at various metaphors between ingredients and actions; a candle representing an element of fire which may in turn represent intensity, or purity, or something else. Drawing meaningful connections between concepts like this is a skill I’ve developed in parallel with hypnosis, as well.
I was recently talking with a friend of mine who is also interested in esotericism -- we were sharing our frustrations with various books on magic and ritual. We wondered why so many sources would go on to teach prescriptivist formulas and associations, and not much else. Do this, and that will happen. This symbol represents that. My friend and I agreed that the ritual value of ingredients comes from how you personally assign meaning to them -- but why was everything always trying to teach us their meaning, as opposed to teaching us how to cultivate our own associations?
A week or so later, I happened to go to an excellent class that explored whether or not there was a place for smudging and smoke use in modern Jewish ritual. The teacher first took a careful, measured approach towards looking at indigenous smudging practices and the concept of appropriation. What followed was 30 minutes of history and text exploring examples of smoke in early Judaism, and then 30 minutes of a handful of interpretations of what “smoke” could mean and represent with relation to Jewish ideas -- directly practical to modern ritual. It was utterly excellent and immediately profound for me, as someone who has been yearning to blend my experience with esoteric ritual with my relationship with Judaism.
Observant readers will note that through this essay I speak passively about Judaism -- I am a patrilineal Jew, which for better or worse means that it is not a simple matter to say, “I am ‘fully’ (or ‘not’) Jewish.” (I am in the beginnings of working with a Conservative rabbi -- who affirms that I’m Jewish -- to make my status halachic [lawful], which is deeply exciting.) Opinions on that aside, a relevant piece of information is that the Jewish holiday we celebrated most consistently when I was growing up was Chanukah. While a lot of Jewish practice has been something I’ve been striving towards as an adult, Chanukah has always been “mine.” It was fast approaching after this class, and I felt motivated to use my newfound knowledge to make more ritual out of lighting the candles.
I was deeply surprised when all I did was light a stick of incense before saying the blessings over lighting the menorah, and my experience transformed into something intense. I smelled the incense and couldn’t help but think about what I’d learned about the Rambam’s commentary that incense in the time of the Temple was about making the Temple smell sweet to pray in after the burning of sacrifices. I thought about what I’d learned about the presence of God being smoke and clouds to the ancient Israelites. I thought about things I’d learned from other places -- hiddur mitzvah (the value of beautifying a practice), and a midrash (parable) about God loving the light and rituals we do in a very personal way simply because they are from us.
Esoteric ritual has often felt to me like exerting effort in making the associations of ingredients work for me. But this was effortless. I was doing something that was entirely my own, solidly founded by the broad and deep study I’d done, by my personal relationship with the concepts, by my identity.
In other words, the power behind this ritual came from knowledge, and the knowledge came from my intimacy with it. And that intimacy was not just with the study I had done -- it was also the process of being surprised in real time by what I was learning through the ritual itself.
Hypnosis gains “power,” in so much as we let ourselves use the term, through these same acts of intimacy towards knowledge. It operates directly based on various ingredients: how much we know about hypnosis theory itself, general psychology, the person we are working with, and ourselves. Hypnosis is a ritual -- it is setting aside special time to do something with a collection of ingredients that you have personal associated meanings with. If you can’t connect to those deeply enough, it won’t reach its full potency.
Knowledge, Perception, and Unconsciousness
One of my favorite concepts to teach in hypnosis is, “A change in perception equates to a change in reality.” This is derived from Erickson by MrDream, and it’s something he and I have had a lot of conversations about to refine. The implication of this is not something as trite as hypnosis having the power to change a person’s perceived reality. It is the concept that if you look at something from a different perspective, you gain various different capabilities.
For example, when you are feeling stuck in a situation and you think about what a close friend of yours would do if they were in your shoes, you gain the capability to see more options, to change your actual view of the reality of the problem and therefore change your actions towards it. In hypnosis, this could be the difference between simply telling someone to relax their legs versus another perspective of telling them to imagine what it would be like if their legs just started relaxing. It could be the idea that when a person does feel relaxation from a simple suggestion, their perception changes on what is happening -- they build more belief in hypnosis, and that belief in turn makes the next suggestions easier to buy into.
Erickson’s model of hypnosis is predicated on the idea that hypnosis itself matters, that hypnosis is a time within which someone’s reality changes. In his ideal hypnotic context, the subject feels like they no longer can expect things to behave as they usually do in their “waking” reality. They are thus opened to many different kinds of new experiences and capabilities. To Erickson, perception matters -- by itself, it’s a primary driving force behind literal change and response.
This ties back to our idea of intimacy -- just as I aim to approach my partners with this profound curiosity, just as I aim to approach Torah, I want to have this intimacy of the unexpected with trance itself. I want to allow myself to be surprised by hypnosis, by the things I don’t yet know about it even after more than a decade and thousands of hours of trance. But more than this, in an Ericksonian sense, simply changing my perspective to this motivation is one of the things that lets me get there.
I went through a guided study class about Shabbat (Judaism’s weekly sabbath of rest) with a partner, and so much of the class was in the abstract that it at times felt difficult for me to latch onto. We were learning all of this background context about a view of Shabbat where instead of spiritually striving and reaching on that day, you come in acting as though your spiritual work -- like your other work -- is “finished.”
In one session, we spent a chunk of time parsing through how we could interpret that as actionable. It felt like it just wasn’t clicking for me -- the midrashic texts weren’t offering enough for me to feel like I could make judgments on questions like, “Does this imply I shouldn’t meditate on Shabbat in this context?”
It wasn’t until I slept on it that I found a very simple piece of the puzzle: putting aside the questions of concrete actions, in an Ericksonian sense, the internal act of shifting my perspective would absolutely change the way I behaved and interacted with the day. It would become more indirect and unconscious -- instead of carefully analyzing my actions as I might with other Shabbat prohibitions on work, I could simply let myself act in ways that fit that perspective of “spiritually resting.”
The abstraction of the class made more sense -- perhaps it wasn’t trying to give us direct answers, but rather create a psychological environment for us that was well-suited to this more unconscious processing. Or rather, in addition to the sort of typical conscious halachic interpretation. If I allow myself an opinion here, I’d say that I care about halacha as actionable, but as always, I tend to care more about feelings and what’s internal.
This also lent credence to ways this class and the class on smoke and ritual changed my experiences. I was not given a set of actions to take, but rather a variety of perspectives that unconsciously made me think and behave differently. The concept of “knowledge is power” is both true and alluring in many different contexts, and yet had often fallen through for me in most ritualistic frameworks. The way that it succeeds, I believe, is when you develop a relationship with knowledge that actually changes your internal perspective and perceptions.
Limitation
With this we return to the concept of models and interpretations. It is serendipitous to be going through these experiences at a time where I am avidly working on my next book -- the thesis of which is that in order for us to progress as hypnotists, we must get comfortable moving fluidly between many differing definitions and frameworks (models) of what hypnosis is and how it works.
It is as the Ericksonian principle would say: If you take a perspective on hypnosis that boils down to “hypnosis is about relaxing the conscious mind,” you will do hypnosis according to that perspective. You will use relaxation-based techniques and make an effort to get someone to think “less consciously.” If you instead take a perspective that is “hypnosis operates based on activation of the conscious mind,” you may do hypnosis that causes someone to think and process in a more stimulating way.
Both and neither are true, and they can coexist. I believe that most models can be useful -- some more useful than others. But the best thing you can do is to not assume that one model is the most correct one -- instead, it is to develop the capacity to work within many at once even while being aware of their boundaries.
Jewish text, in my experience, provides models -- perspectives that themselves give guidance on how to understand things and act. I think especially about midrash and stories that are explicitly intended to fill in the gaps or give an alternate view on something. The question of, “Is there one correct way to do/see things” is more complicated here, but there are areas -- especially in those subtle shifts of mindset for ritual or interpreting text -- where the answer is still “no.”
My time so far in Jewish study supports this in a different way. There is a human element of collaboration and challenge. Learning as we do with a chevruta (study partner) adds another person to the relationship -- it is no longer just between you and the text. There is another human who you are building something with, and it is “intimate” according to our exploratory definition in an even clearer way.
The purpose of a “scene” inside of kink (a “session” of kink play) is to operate in a semi-limited framework -- limitations exist on who is involved, where it begins and ends, how partners communicate, and what themes/topics/activities are involved. These limitations -- though they may be quite broad -- are partially what allow for intense experiences. A scene needs to exist in a different “space” than our daily lives, and it needs to operate by different rules and involve different ingredients. Here, we also see overlaps with the definition of a “ritual.”
This doesn’t just facilitate intensity (and safety) -- it facilitates learning something new about your partner. By taking your relationship and putting it into a limited context, it allows you to observe it in a more careful way, where novel changes can be more obvious.
Studying with a chevruta is much like this. I have had study sessions where my chevruta and I are meeting for the first time and the only thing we are aware of sharing is our desire to dive into a piece of text. I’ve also had chevrutas where we know each other outside of study, and some of our time is schmoozing and catching up. But in all cases, we are limited in scope, and that limitation creates ease of access towards the common goal of expanding our knowledge and relationship with the text. We are focused; we are motivated. We are creating something that we can only create through who we are as individuals and what we are doing as avid learners.
This has surprised me at times with its tenderness and intensity. Building well-founded interpretations with someone is in and of itself very intimate -- not sensually, but humanly. It has given me something I have always wanted -- an intimacy that is pervasive not just in application of knowledge, but in the development of it. A feeling of sacredness and joy from being able to see so many different perspectives.
I long for this connection, this alchemy. Yes, all models are limited. But within those tight, restricting limits is the potential energy of creation.
“And I Must Learn”
There is an infamous story in the Talmud, in Berakhot 62a, where Rav Kahana hides under the bed of his friend Rav Abba. Rav Kahana hears Abba and his wife giggling and starting to have sex, and remarks out loud that Rav Abba is acting like someone who is famished. Rav Abba, mid-sex, understandably says, “Kahana, why the fuck are you under my bed listening to me fuck my wife?” Rav Kahana replies, “It is Torah, and I must learn.”
There was a version of this essay that began with this tale. I am enamored with the vast overlaps I can derive from its briefness: that intimacy can be studied sacredly both as a general concept and specifically with your partner; that we are obligated to learn ourselves, our partners, and general human desire; that there can be a thread of wholeness in every action of your life if you give every action sacred attention.
Even this, though, is a limited-context interpretation. The rabbis of the Talmud were certainly not sex-positive, especially not as we currently use the term. The surrounding triptych of conversations is similarly humorous but seems to comparatively describe sex as dirty or gross, and this bit of text cannot really exist separately from all of the places where there is halacha derived about sex that is about controlling women’s bodies or preventing queer and trans people from being able to live authentically.
But -- we are allowed to interpret like this. We are allowed to play with context and see what we discover.
For me, this is about finding the connections between my actions and my interests; parts of me that synthesize the whole. It is about developing intimacy with Torah, with my learning partners, with my romantic partners; with the people within the writings, with the authors, and with the readers.
Reading Torah is the same as hypnotizing someone is the same being intimate with someone is the same as doing a ritual. All things on a broad enough scale overlap this closely. There is value in this “zooming out” to a wide enough context to see the connections that exist -- just as there is value in celebrating the limitations that arise, models nestled alongside each other, when you “zoom in.”
We need both to be able to treat our learning -- all forms of it -- as something special.
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PAC~ Let Me Hype You Up! Why are you so amazing? Why are people drawn to you?
Pile 1~
Hi there pile 1’s! You are the kind of person who does not tolerate B.S of any kind. Straight off the bat, you are someone who can be peaceful and blunt. There are two sides to you that everyone may get, and you know it. You are not afraid to speak your truth! This does not mean you are argumentative or combative, rather you are outspoken, and honest. It may irk others because they aren’t ready for what you have to say, and they project their ego onto you. Know your truth regardless! I also see you may put a lot of effort into yourself physically, and people are drawn to that. You appear high maintenance, or there is a fairy vibe to you. Even so, people know you’re not one to mess with! You are still a kind person with boundaries, its up to people to decide which side they get from you. You have a very interesting and unique way of appearing to others, you may find that people describe you differently every time. It’s because you blend with energy so well that its difficult to describe you, adding more mystery! You may be into a cyberpunk, cottage core aesthetic, or have a lot of aesthetics that you enjoy! Zodiac Signs: Pisces, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius.
Pile 2~
Why are people so drawn to you my pile 2’s? Let’s find out. First of all, people pick up an intense aura to you. It’s very much ride or die, and all or nothing. It’s deep, intense, and encourages others curiosity about you. It’s easy for people to get lost in your eyes, especially your voice. You may have a reserved energy at first, which intrigues others, but when they really know you, you are funny, down to earth, and full of wisdom. You may overthink a lot, but I’m seeing that people admire that. What’s admirable about that ability is your intellect and ability to see all sides, all perceptions. Although its difficult to manage, people find that amazing, almost like ‘’I never would’ve thought that if they didn’t say it.’’ There is such a ‘’I want to get to know you but I know there’s this intensity, I’m intimidated.’’ So a lot of people may want to talk, but find themselves hesitating easily. What’s amazing is your intellect as said earlier, and your emotional depth. There is so much to learn from you, and your emotions have the ability to connect you deeply to the world and yourself. You are your own ride or die, and many people want you as their ride or die. They may try to please you. Zodiac signs: Scorpio, Leo, Taurus, Aquarius, Libra. P.S. I think you know how intimidating you can be, and you love it.
Pile 3~
Hi there pile 3’s! How many of you all have dreams of being wealthy and being financially savvy? I see you. What’s admirable is your ambition, drive, and earthy presence. You are like a rock on the outside, committed, loyal, and steady. But what people don’t see right away is your drive, ambition. That’s your secret, that’s how you move. You may like keeping it a secret: your hustles, your drive, dreams. Only those closest to you know. I’m getting a ‘’secret circle’’ kind of vibe. Many people want in on your plans, but you don’t give easily because you know they’re important to you. You have a select group you hang around with, and people want in on this. People want to know what you’re working on, and they are attracted to your mindset about money. I see your dreams are attractive too. You think big and allow yourself to reach those goals. People may come to you wanting help a lot, because you radiate this ‘’I know it all,’’ energy, even if you don’t. A lot of people place you on a pedestal because you carry yourself to high standards. Keep it up. You are not afraid to rock the boat in relationships when it comes to your needs! This doesn’t mean you being argumentative, you are honest and open. You know what you deserve and that’s attractive.
🌃Decks Used:🌃
Queer Tarot by Ash and Chess
Thank you all for the support, please like, comment, and reblog! Have a blessed day/night.
#tarotcommunity#astrology#devi post#divination#tarot deck#astrology community#tarot#tarot reading#witchcraft
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Not to mention if he had shown Tang, a scholar who lived and breathed JTTW, his memories... I'm pretty sure Tabg would have straight up attacked him for trying to describe what happened to Wukong while he was held captive by Heaven had been anything less than what it was: Torture. For example, at this point, Sun Wukong is more than a fairytale or storybook character. He's more than just some demon who lived thousands of years ago as a footnote in a history book. He's a person, not only that, but he's someone who has since become part of Tang's family! He's a flawed but still wise master who is impulsively self sacrificial to the point of unintentionally hurting the people who care about him, he's temperamental and tends to be forgetful about the limits of normal mortals because he's never had a baseline, he's petty, but ultimately... Sun Wukong is someone who cares deeply and honestly about the people who manage to get past the ironclad walls he has erected around his heart, someone who is selfless at heart even when his actions seem selfish, someone who has had a very difficult life and is still learning to let other in and trust them. Tanghas read Wukong's story a hundred times over, analyzed his written actions a thousand times, out of everyone he is probably the one who knows the ksot about Wukong's past besides the Demon Bull King and Macaque, the person who pribavly raised Wukong the most besides the Sentinels and his mate respectively. He recognizes how much Wukong has changed for the better, how he's still learning after all these centuries, and how he's trying so very hard to be a good mentor for MK and teach him the lessons he never had so he doesn't suffer the same way he did even while his own past comes back to bite him.
So no... Tang would absolutely be offended by Azure's narrative
YUP. referencing.
Tang about to bust out his Bachelors in ancient Chinese history and literature to poke a million holes in Azure Lion's whiteashed narrative:
(In the Scroll of Memory as Azure is showing his memories of the Rebellion):
Tang, suddenly appearing in the memory: "Where is Erlang Shen?"
Azure, startled: "How did you get in here?"
Tang: "As someone who lives for this era in history - I can poke so many holes in your story. Sun Wukong was strong enough for the Jade Emperor, but fell to his nephew Erlang Shen, his Plum Hill Lads, and Lao Tzu's binding ring. From there he was tossed into the Trigram Furnace and was forced to endure 49 days of the Samadhi Fire to extract his immortalities."
Azure, pleasantly impressed: "You know your stories well monk-"
Tang, interupting: "AND-! I am not finished. The great Tang Monk, aka Tripitaka, did not yield to the Taoist gods! Only to the Buddha and his diciples! To call him an Agent of the Oppressors greatly overlooks how many times he helped his fellow mortals, even at the threat of being executed for his faith!"
Azure: "You're becoming overwhelmed-"
Tang, angry tears: "And I know Wukong! He wouldn't have targeted you guys at Camel Ridge unless you did something warranting his anger! How can you call him a traitor when YOU left him to burn!?"
(*Azure's memories dispate, instead showing Wukong when he was with the Pilgrims - from the perspective of Tripitaka. Wukong is laughing along with his brothers Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing, and Ao Lie*)
Tang, volume increasing: "Wukong didn't stay with the Pilgrims to hurt people. He stayed because he knew that his mind and emotions needed healing after such a tremendous amount of pain. They cared enough for him to address this pain and help him towards being a true sage. Something your *Brotherhood* obviously never bothered to do! HE DIDN'T BETRAY YOU AS MUCH AS YOU BETRAYED HIM!!"
(the memory scroll completely disapates back to reality. the entire MKrew + the Brotherhood are staring shocked at Tang's show of power*)
Tang: *breathing heavily and angry crying*
MK, wide-eyed and impressed: "...whoa"
Pigsy, proud: "Yup. Don't try to twist what happened back then Azure. My Tangy knows his history."
Peng, whispers to the others: "The Golden Cicada lives on. I knew I wasn't mistaken."
Yellow Tusk: "I suggest we retreat for now. Once the Celestial Realm senses our escape, they are sure to have increased their defences."
Azure, eyes narrowing: "No. We go forward with our plan. No matter what this monk-"
Tang: "I'M NOT A MONK!"
Tang: *casts Magic Missile*
Because at the end of the day, Azure understimated the receipts that Wukong's new dad-friend would have on their political movement.
#lmk theories#lmk tang#lmk azure lion#jttw#journey to the west#lmk the brotherhood#lmk yellow tusk elephant#lmk golden winged peng#lmk#lego monkie kid#lmk s4 spoilers
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Oh, you cruel, cruel author! I was so sure I'm going to romance ????, but then you had to add No-eul in the game and lead me astray! How dare you!
Obviously, I'm joking. Love them both, but seriously, could you maybe describe each RO and their route in a couple of words for me and others who wouldn't know whom to romance first? No spoilers, of course, just a little peek on what to expect from the routes, their vibe, I guess? If it's not a bother and wasn't answered before. Have a nice day and thank you!
the way neither noeul or ???? have appeared in the story 😂
some of the themes of the routes do depend on the allegiances that you choose in the story, but here are some route descriptions without any explicit spoilers!
hansol: loyal, steady and morally upright, hansol can be your best friend or your greatest supporter in the imperial haeian army. generally a sweet and vanilla RO, but his route can later turn very very tragic if you make certain choices (i'm very excited to reach that point)
wooyoung: playful, affectionate yet flighty when things get too serious, wooyoung is easy to like but difficult to get close to. his route is very deeply intertwined with hansol's, and can result in quite a few outcomes based on your decisions! you can romance both separately, but there's extra drama if you choose to take a love triangle route :D his route is SAD
yongsun: charming, benevolent and impossible to read. if you pursue their route, you'll uncover the many masks of your ever smiling master and their hidden intentions. their route has a range of outcomes, from unhealthy co-dependency to enemies, depending on your loyalties. the very imbalanced power dynamic between master and slave also come into play in their route. it's like sitting on a roller coaster trying to fling you off the ride. there mightttt be a love triangle route between yongsun and ????
raon: a soft heart protected by a ruthless tongue. raon wants to be ordinary and live a boring, uninteresting life doing what she enjoys, but circumstances tend to disrupt those plans - and you are the biggest of them all. whether that's a good or bad thing remains to be seen
noeul: confident and reckless with the emotional regulation of a glass cannon. an emotionally turbulent route with high highs and low lows. there's not much space in their mind or heart for anything other than their own goals and desires, but if you manage to get them to notice you... high investment and high returns
????: a charismatic revolutionary with unshakeable resolve. you will have a complicated relationship with them. that's all i'll say for now 😙
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After my presentation of the Secret Garden and CEN paper, someone in the audience asked about applying the lens of CEN to other children's book from the same era. I thought about it afterward, and the best example that came to mind was Anne of Green Gables.
Anne Shirley, before her arrival at Green Gables, has experienced CEN. It has played out in a much different way for her than it does for Mary and Colin in TSG, due to differences in social class, but the principle has been the same. As an orphan raised in homes that viewed her as an inconvenience and a sort of unpaid servant, she has never had an adult in her life who prioritized her emotional well-being, who took the time to be kind to her, to listen to her, to teach her how to function in the world beyond basic survival. She is aware that no one wants her after her parents' death, and she is made to feel guilty by her caretakers for having the audacity to exist and need to be "brought up by hand." It's difficult for Anne to even talk about these experiences when Marilla asks her. She's relieved to get relating them over with, because "Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her."
And then there's this exchange:
“Were those women—Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond—good to you?” asked Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.
“O-o-o-h,” faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. “Oh, they meant to be—I know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when people mean to be good to you, you don’t mind very much when they’re not quite—always. They had a good deal to worry them, you know. It’s a very trying to have a drunken husband, you see; and it must be very trying to have twins three times in succession, don’t you think? But I feel sure they meant to be good to me.”
Anne has clearly been mistreated, but she's describing--and pointedly not describing--suggests less of aggression and physical harm and more of something missing, an emptiness, a lack of love--CEN. Likewise, she herself exhibits some signs that can be associated with this type of maltreatment. Difficulty with emotional regulation, attachment problems, extreme sensitivity to rejection, negativity toward herself, excessively immersing herself in imagination (a mild dissociative tendency), anxiety around social situations (regarding how to behave correctly and whether people will like her), etc.
And in a way, the entire first book of the series deals with how she finds healing from her past of CEN, through gaining the love and acceptance of her new family, of friends, of an entire community.
From what little I know of L. M. Montgomery's life, CEN was likely a factor in her own upbringing, and it repeatedly features in her novels (The Blue Castle and Jane of Lantern Hill, for instance, in particular feature heroines who have experienced CEN) with poignancy. Montgomery paints moving portraits of how badly children can be scarred by a lack of love and affirmation.
Anyway, situating Anne's backstory as rooted in CEN helped me put my finger on one of the reasons that I felt that the recent series Anne With an E--at least the first season, which is all I've seen--misunderstood the nature of Anne's past. In this version, we see flashbacks to Anne's past, in which she is being viciously bullied by other children for her talkativeness and imagination. They even go so far as to stuff a mouse into her mouth, and the show suggests that Anne has PTSD as a result of this kind of treatment.
And yeah, Anne's childhood in the book isn't great and clearly has hurt her deeply, but this interpretation felt off to me. What Anne has to say--and not say--about her past in the book suggests not that she was targeted as an object of others' aggression but that she was disregarded. No one was giving her a second thought. That's not as dramatic and shocking as vicious bullying, but it's another, more subtle, insidious kind of maltreatment, just as hurtful in its way but harder to pin down. It's easy to portray a quick, sensational scene of our protagonist being obviously, overtly, grandiosely mistreated, but how do you show the gradual piling up of years' and years' of being treated like you don't matter? All the tiny incidents that chip away at one's sense of self-worth? The building of a worldview in which you must earn love and acceptance but somehow you can never manage it and of course it's your own fault?
And I'm reminded how recent adaptations and retellings of TSG shift the narrative toward grief, which is easy to dramatize, big and impressive and full of obvious pathos. It's an easy way out of depicting a subtler kind of suffering, and the same way, Anne With an E replaces Anne's CEN with bullying and PTSD. There is a place for such stories, but Anne's isn't one of them. It's almost as if there's an inability to understand or a reluctance to depict any kind of suffering that isn't big and grand and shocking. There are many ways that people can be deeply hurt, and it doesn't always look like a major traumatic event that's easy to pinpoint. Sometimes the hurt isn't a tidal wave that engulfs in a single devastating event; it's a slow drip that erodes oneself away little by little. That's closer to what is depicted for Anne, and Montgomery's other protagonists who have experienced CEN, and it's important to recognize what exactly is going on because this sort of thing still happens every day in the real world, in many forms, and it needs to be seen and combatted. And seeing this form of maltreatment play out in literature helps us recognize it and empathize with and reach out to those whom it has impacted--or possibly even to identify it in our own histories and search for our own healing.
#I apologize if not everything is phrased perfectly - I'm just working through some initial thoughts on this#but I hope the point of what I'm trying to communicate will get through
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The Bad Sanses somehow ended up in the Backrooms. №10
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This is the translation of the another post from Russian to English. I understand English, but it is very difficult for me to write in English, so I asked chat GPT to help me. I have corrected some parts, but there still may be mistakes.
I think I'm getting lazy: they're so small on such a big space, Nightmare and Error are hidden. But I'm happy with the picture I made.
And haha, a little celebration. 10 pictures!
I really hope my English skills are enough to properly convey what's happening here=)
After some time, the group had to leave the hospitality of Temmy (Nightmare could finally breathe out with relief. The positive energy that was so overwhelming for him was finally bearable). The level 4 was safe enough, just like the level 0, with the exception of natural light sources like windows. The weather on the other side of the glass would sometimes change. No monsters or people were met on their way. No people or monsters were met for most of the time.
As always, Error sent his strings ahead of the group to know what was waiting for them. Nightmare's sensitivity to auras of negative emotions was decreasing, which was unpleasant. But this could be explained by the distortion of space in this place and, what was even more worrying, the absence of refreshment. Thanks to the group and occasional negative coming through the pipes, Nightmare didn't have to worry about his survival. But this was nothing compared to the refreshment of the whole multiverse. He was already feeling less aggressive and egoistic. At first, this was part of the survival strategy, and now it was starting to sink in deeper.
All these small external changes. All these internal changes. He was a little concerned that he didn't notice anything similar in the others.
During the time they were idle, Error started knitting himself a new scarf. He was deeply wounded by how foolishly he had lost his previous scarf, unable to stay focused for long and appearing even more agitated after his attempts. The tangled yarn was thrown away in a long drawer of one of the computer tables.
Killer was hiding. His absence looked very strange, but Error was keeping an eye on him (thanks to the blue thread in his zip-up jacket, Error knew that Killer was actively crafting something ).
Dust Horror and Cross were systematically organizing the records. From time to time, Error joined them (observing how Destroyer could do creative teamwork was quite fascinating). Nightmare checked the work done. While doing this, he even managed to recognize some unsigned maps from the notebook he had bought from Temmy.
At last, the paperwork was finished. Nightmare tried to map the route, but was disappointed by some contradictions in the information he had received. Some levels were reached through a mysterious "noclip". (Even after the explanation from Error, this way of moving seemed unreliable). Sometimes the exits and entrances on some levels didn't match what was indicated on other levels. He concluded that it would be much easier to find ways to freely move to levels-crossroads than to move one level after another.
However, it was clear that in this place, there were familiar things to all the Sanses "shortcuts": people who couldn't control this phenomenon, described it as touching objects that would take them to some levels or places. This was useful. It seemed that this dimension had taken some pieces of AU or a couple of original timelines. (It seemed artificial.)
Also, it was worth reconsidering one's attitude towards supplies. Previously, all the Almond Water was collected for Horror, Cross, and Killer, who needed food the most. Even though Dust didn't feel hungry (which worried everyone), he sometimes took water from Cross. According to new data, they all should drink it from time to time. This became a problem. But so far, there were no issues with finding Almond Water.
They lingered long enough in one place, it was time to continue their journey. Their goal now was
to find the old staircase and reach level 5.
Just simple wandering as before. The bad guys bid farewell to the Temmy store location.
Along the way, they encountered worn rooms with flickering lights, spacious coworking spaces with the constant hum of computers and the ghostly sound of keys clacking, empty rooms flooded with light from panoramic windows. On one of the local nights, they even saw a full moon. The journey seemed safe.
Until Error's strings stumbled upon what they all didn't want to find.
A warm, tall body containing a human soul. Reflexively, Error pulled on the strings towards himself, as he had done before, but almost immediately stopped, alerting the group to his discovery. Almost immediately, the strings touched several more people, apparently drawn by the cries for help from their captured comrade.
Error rarely encountered adult people (children were enough of a hassle), so he didn't overreact to Nightmer's suggestion to observe their opponents for the first time and then disappear.
The room where they were looked empty at first glance, but Nightmare and Error found a hidden place behind decorative panels on the ceiling. The rest of the group hid in the shadows of columns and the room wrapped in blue strings.
For a while, no one showed up. Then, cautiously emerging from around the corner, heavily armed men appeared. They carefully scanned the area, gradually moving along the room. The group of people maintained silence and communicated through gestures, unseen by the skeletons. Only the faint creaking and metallic clinking of their gear gave away their presence.
During this time, Nightmare studied the emotions of the people. They fed him fear with a bitter taste of hope. They were scared of the new and unknown, yet somehow it also made them hopeful for something. Digging deeper, Nightmare sensed their very light and delicate madness, similar to Error's madness when he first emerged from the Antivoid. However, people seemed to handle it much better or had grown accustomed to this state. Nightmare realized that their group could potentially exploit this in the future.
Fortunately, there was no trace of magic in these people. Their DETERMINATION was no greater than usual for humans. Yet there was still something inexplicable about them... In the multiverse, there were AU's consisting entirely of humans. This dimension-killer was made up of AU's in part. But these people. There was something absolutely off about them. They seemed denser. It reminded him of Horror, whose bones were mostly made of real bone tissue, not magic like the others.
Error observed the movements of the people, not to pay attention to thoughtful Nightmer. He really wanted the fight to begin. T0 h3 W1N aga1n.
T0 r1s3.
Th3y w3r3 ju5t a p1l3 0f r3j3cts.
Th31r s0ul5 W3r3 n0t r3d. H3 c0uld g1v3 th3m a nICE blu3 m0m3nt. M4K3 th3m u53ful. 1f th3 ab0m1nabl3 an0mal13s ar3 1nd33d R̶̛͇̖̊rcccce̷͔̝̭͛eǟ̴̢͙l̸̡̰͒ḯ̵̤̊̚еtttt̵͖͈͝͠yyyy̴͔͑,~-----
Error went into reboot. Nightmer removed his hand from the face of the Destroyer. It seemed like the only right decision. Quite rough, but effective. He failed to notice the escalation of Error's mental problems and should have left this place as quickly as possible while they all still had time. Now definitely was not the time to provoke a fight.
The piercingly loud screech from Error caused a flash of fear in the frozen group of people. And Nightmare fanned this flash into a flame of panic. Someone among human group screamed, dropping something. Someone ran with a loud sound. Someone pressed against the glass, from where the "sun" light poured, wildly surveying the room. Bustle began, in which Nightmare's subordinates slipped forward, and he, taking Error with him, teleported.
Fragments of blue threads swayed behind them, causing another flash of horror at their backs.
Nightmare belongs to Jokublog
Killer belongs to RahafWabas
Dust belongs to Ask-DustTale
Horror belongs to Sour-Apple-Studios
Error belongs to CrayonQueen
Cross belongs to JakeiArtwork
#bad sanses#cross sans#dust sans#error sans#horror sans#killer sans#nightmare sans#the backrooms#au#undertale au#bad guys in backrooms#bad sans gang#art#underverse#undertale#level 4#utmv
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show me; m.mn
(moved to isanggayfrog)
warning: none
"I want to know how much I mean to you," Mina, my friend of 4 years, said. I stared at her for a moment, not fully comprehending what she had said. We had met during high school, when I bumped into her and sent her books sprawling on the floor. Cliché, I know, but that was what happened. Ever since, she stayed by me, reminding me of things I had forgotten or inviting me to hang out somewhere. She was the main reason I passed with impressive grades, what with her constant tutoring. She was - and is - also the sole reason I tried. I plastered a smile on my face.
"You know already. I love-"
"Love is just a word. If you can say it so easily, then you must not mean it," she cut me off. I could not read her body language, nor her eyes. I hated the fact she knew how to hide her emotions so easily while I was the polar opposite. Shifting uneasily on the table where I habitually sat, I tried again. "You're my best friend."
I hoped that it was the answer she wanted, but to my dismay she frowned. "Is that all I am to you?"
If I'm being honest, no, it's not all she is to me.
Mina is the very reason I wake up in the morning when all I want to do is dive back under the covers. My day brightens when I see her smile no matter what happens. Her infectious laugh sounds like music to my ears. I melt at the way her usually strict gaze turns gentle upon meeting my eyes. Her hands are so soft I had to make the excuse that "I need you to know 10 reasons why today is a good day" just to hold them.
But I can't tell her that. She means a lot to me, but she probably doesn't see me as more than a friend.
"Well?"
I played with the hem of my sweatshirt, trying to find the proper words to tell her without lying nor giving anything away. It proved to be difficult, the words were already in my mind but I couldn't catch them, the words were at the tip of my tongue but refused to leave my lips.
"Y/N? You still there?"
I sighed harshly, forcing myself to look into her eyes. I tried not to drown in their soft brown hue, pulling me in and whispering at me, telling me to just let go of reality and stare into them forever. I tried to show my emotions through my eyes.
She did not seem to see.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" she demanded, huffing and crossing her arms. "Why don't you just answer me and be done with it?"
"Why do we need to talk?" I retorted. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise at my outburst. I decided to continue. "You said it yourself. Love is just a word. All the words in the world simply describe something, but words aren't enough to describe what I feel for you. You know what they say, 'actions speak louder than words'."
Mina took a step forward. "Okay," she said quietly. "Show me then."
I turned red. This wasn't what I expected would happen. "Should I?"
"Yes."
"But..." I trailed off. How should I do it without making her uncomfortable?
She walked forward, stopping between my legs. Her hands trapped me in place, making me turn - if possible - even redder. "Kiss me," she breathed.
"Are you sure?" I had to make sure. I can't make a mistake as grave as this.
But I didn't have to worry. Mina nodded impatiently, prompting me to lean forward until our noses touched. I felt her hot breath fanning against my lips. I admired every detail of her face, taking advantage of our close proximity. Screwing my eyes shut, I pressed my lips on hers, feeling them cushion mine.
Her hands made their way up my body, stopping to rest around my shoulders and tangling themselves in my hair. Mine snaked around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer.
Unfortunately, air became an issue. Both of us reluctantly pulled away, putting our foreheads together and staring deeply into each other's eyes. Slowly, we both smiled.
"I think I know how much I mean to you now, because that's exactly how much you mean to me."
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