#Give me proper bottons | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oncerpotter2018 · 4 years

Text

DAY 2 - IT'S THE TROLLEY PROBLEM // Pick Who Dies

It was the choices that made his heart break the most. Charles couldn't choice between either of the options presented to him for they were both too painful to pick from. Each one was just as worst as the last and Charles had no time to mess around for lives were at stake. The man in the computer screen eyed him carefully as though he was the examinar and he was the student sitting an exam. The man didn't talk as he waited for his response; he only gave him two options, two simple choices that could easily kill a person. Charles swollowed air into his lungs trying to make the right choice. After a few more minutes of silence the man on the other side sighed and spoke for the first time in ages.

"Oh dear Charles, here I am thinking you graduated from Oxford University, getting a deploma in ethics and psychology, am I correct?"

He asked smugly knowing all too well where this was going. "I assume you are aware of the Trolley Problem dear Charles" he spoke with a smile on his face despite the darkness covering most of it.

"Yes. I remember it" Charles replied not wanting to show the waver in his voice.

"Good because if you have noticed you just entered the exact dilemma. The choices I gave you were part of that experiment. Decide who you are to sacrifice and who to safe. Is it your precious students and stuff within the walls of your school or..." he paused adding to the already nerve racking tension in the room.

"your precious husband" he said snapping his fingers and there on the screen was his Erik. His body strapped to a chair, a bag over his head concealing his face, hiding the tears that came down his eyes, muffling the terrified crying that he desperately tried to silence.

Charles held back his own tears as he watched other men torture the life out of Erik on glorious HD. Charles wished he didn't bought a new laptop as he bit his tough to stop himself from screaming.

"The choice is simple really, who are you willing to safe? Who do you love the most? Who will you sacrifice?" the nameless figure on the screen taunted at Charles as he tapped at his old fashioned pocket watch signalling that time was ticking away.

"No... No I don't have to choose. I can save them all. Save the students and Erik. There is always hope" he said back, his voice breaking as he watched Erik being beaten and battered over and over again. His lungs tightened with each punch. The man shook his head and laughed.

"I'm afraid that's not possible Mr Xavier. You see there is a bomb placed somewhere around the school. There simply won't be time to disable it even with your fastest, most clever students. Even young Jean Grey won't able to stop what is about to come. Now decided, Erik or your students" he pressured Charles in making the choice, he pressed him on wanting to figure out what he should do.

"I don't know what to do" he whispers as he looked back at the students, their lives that still awaits them. Some too young to die, some still have dreams to profill..

He couldn't take that away from them, he couldn't rip them from their hopes and dreams when he told them that they were safe. He was better than that. But on the other hand there was Erik.

He watched for some time as he looked at the screen and so nothing both blood and wounds on what used to be his skin. Charles turned away and held back his own lunch. He asked himself how he got into this mess, he will never know. But for a while he looked on trying to cope with his pain and his own but soon after the sound of broken bone filled the room Charles couldn't hold onto his cries. He screamed and didn't care who should listen in.

"Stop... STOP IT! I DON'T WANT TO CHOSE" Charles screamed for the top of his lungs as he longed for this nightmare to end. How he wished this was just a bad dream but it wasn't, it wasn't a mind trick that his telepathy was playing on him. This was real and this was happening. It was only when Hank came to the door wondering what was happening.

"Charles what's the matter? Is everything alright?" he saked with concern. Charles wiped away his tears as he said confidently:

"I'm okay, everything is fine"; he waited as Hank replied with an okay and left him alone. Once he heard his footsteps faded away, he looked back at the screen and realised the pain that he was feeling rise bakc up again. Erik was trembling now as he was no longer tied to the chair as they took off the berlap sack from his head. Charles could so clearly everything, from his hair that was not in its neat condition, his clothes tattered and torn and much like the rest of his body, his face seemed unrecognisable.

"Whabe they done to you?" Charles cried his his head as he touched his screen knowing it was not going to work. The man was becoming impatient, he was lacking the fun in their little game.

"I'm sorry Charles but I must continue. The more you waste my time I might as well kill them both. Now you don't want that do you Charles?" he said pressing his fingers on a small hiding botton on the desk. On his other hand was a ready loaded gun. Charles eyed bakc and forth between the gun and the botton and then at Erik's broken body. He knew the pain he must have gone through, the struggle he fought so hard to escape from. Seeing him so frighted and looking for an escape formed Charles' decision.

Charles looked back at the times he and Erik had. The places they went and the mutants they saw. Charles even remembers their first kiss which still stayed with him all those many day and nights. He still remembers the I love yous and the dreams of getting married which finally came true. Charles bowed his head and whishedered faintly.

"Erik"

"What was that Charles?" he was taunting him again, even mocking his choice as he knew who he chose to pick. Charles, with his eyes closed took a deep breath again and said the name.

"Erik... I chose... I chose Erik" he said muttering the words, struggling to say his name. The man smiled even thought you couldn't see it. He snaped his figured again and the men from the room lifted Erik up to his feet and lead him to the main room.

"Well done Charles, I see your knowledge of the Trolley Problem had paid off after all. Being a Oxford University graduate must have paid off after all" he said as Erik in the hands of the two men entered the room. "And by the way Charles, there was no explosives in the school, I just wanted to see your face when I killed your husband" he remarked and with barely any time for Charles to comprehend what he had just said a explosive bang from a gun fired into the air. A pained scream and then a thud filled the air instead. Charles covered his mouth with his hands when the man stepped away from the camera and saw the site of what used to his friend, love and husband. "I'm sorry it had to be this way Charles. I'm sorry for tricking you this way but a threat to me is a threat to the world, I hope you understand" he said before speaking in a different language that Charles didn't quote understand. "Oh and by the way Charles, I'll send over his body to you to give him a proper funeral. Once again I'm sorry it had to be this way, it was for the best and just a reminder this was your choice, you killed him Charles, I just gave you the choice" he said before leaving the room.

He was right though, in a few weeks Erik's body was brought to them, and for the first time Charles saw every mark, every wound and the bullet hole up close and personal. He buried his husband the same day. There was no time to dress in proper attire as he wheeled himself to where he was buried, and now Charles could only think of the words that still haunts him at night in his lonely room as he fiddles with his wedding band.

"just a reminder this was your choice, you killed him Charles, I just gave you the choice"

Charles looked at the pile of dirt on the ground, the flowers on top.

"I miss you already and I'm so sorry, I didn't know what to do. He forced me to chose. I couldn't see you suffer any longer. I'm sorry, I love you" he said placing the roses onto his grave.

7 notes · View notes

d-p-f-m · 4 years

Text

Take it easy |🥁|💕|📌|✔|

Seokjin x Reader |🥁|💕|📌|✔|

I love love love writing Seokjin prompts, so thanks again @btsfangirl1999 for requesting it!

Sorry for taking so long but I promise I'm working on everything as soon as I have time and inspiration!

Also thanks to my lovely beta for reading through this mess I call my writing. I'd be lost without you, girl❤🔥

Hope you enjoy!💞

Prompts:

A.) 94. Why the hell are you on the floor? + 95. I'm so tired, it hurts when I close my eyes

Word count: 5783

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

The distant ringing in the back of your mind has you writhing underneath the comforting cover of your blanket. In a silent act of protest you instictively wrap the soft fabric tighter around your body, burying your face in your pillow in hopes of drowning out the annoying noise. Obviously though, the torture doesn't magically stop on its own.

About three more minutes in and you finally admit defeat. Groaning in dispair you rip the sheets off of you in one swift movement and slowly roll on your back to extend one arm in the general direction of where your phone is supposed to be.

Without actually being able to see what you're doing, it takes you a few seconds to locate it and press the power botton on its top to cut the alarm off for good. Sighing in content at the peaceful moment of silence you allow yourself to simply lie there a bit longer before you eventually sit up straight, so you won't be tempted to just fall asleep again.

Forcing yourself to pry your eyes open you blink against the blinding screen of your phone to check the time. There is still about twenty minutes left before you have to leave for university, thank God. With all the willpower you're able to muster you heave yourself out of bed and waddle through the corridor leading to your bathroom to proceed with your usual morning routine.

Examining your puffy face in the mirror while brushing your teeth you make an unsatisfied noise in the back of your throat and grimace at your reflection. You don't have time or motivation to conceal your sleep deprived expression with make-up and usually you don't care much about things like that anyways, but seeing the dark circles under your eyes you really wish you could just crawl back into bed and hide from your responsibilities until you're finally well rested for once.

Hearing your phone buzz on the side of the sink you look at the message that popped up on screen and sigh. With finals week coming up there is usually no space for personal life already and you knew it was a stupid idea the moment you agreed to help one of your friends to plan the project for one of their classes but you just didn't have it in you to tell them no. They'd do the same for you when you need them someday. ... right?

While rinsing your mouth you brush your hair absendmindetly and stare blankly at your reflection, thinking about your plans for the day. You'll need to meet up with your friend after classes and then you have to work the evening shift at the café before rereading your notes for the first exam coming up next Monday. You can do this. No problem. You've gone through worse things in your life.

Still, as you set aside your hairbrush and reluctantly make your way downstairs to the kitchen, you can feel how every muscle in your body protests with just the tiniest movement. Walking down the circular shaped staircase has somehow made you a bit dizzy and you have to take a moment to lean against the nearest wall for support when you feel a light headache spread from your neck upwards all the way to your forhead. Probably because you've pulled an all-nighter last night again.

Seokjin would definitely scold you if he found out, he always tells you to slow down when you get like this. Of course you never listen. Good thing you didn't actually see each other the last few days even though you live together, because you're both too busy with your own lives. The only time you would have the chance to talk to each other is either in the morning before heading out, or on rare occasions at lunch break when you don't meet up with anyone else.

It seems like you've missed your chance for today though because it's so silent around the house that you assume the acting major is already out and about again and even though you don't want to admit it, you're starting to really miss having him around all the time.

It's not common for two university students of the opposite gender to be roommates and you often have to endure judging stares or rude comments about your undefined relationship with your handsome friend.

You don't mind, though. If they're nice enough to ask you about what's going on between Seokjin and you, you'd gladly explain that you're just very close friends, for the time being at least, and if they prefer side-eyeing you from afar then you'd simply ignore them. It's not their business anyways.

Yawning, you turn on the coffee machine and then make your way to the fridge to search for something to eat that will hopefully get you through most of the day. To your surprise there's a box with food placed right in the middle for you to see, with a bright blue sticky-note attached to its lid and you instantly pray that it's what you think it is.

You take the box to read the note to make sure the contents are really meant for you and not reserved for your roommate since he's the only one who could have put it there and you don't want to risk getting into a fight over food with Seokjin of all people. You only tried to get away with stealing his food once and decided right after that it wasn't worth the eventual consequences ever again. You actually value your life, thank you very much.

One look at the note is enough to tell you that the food is in fact meant for you though. It's even your absolute favorite and at the thought of your roommates' skilled cooking, your mouth automatically starts watering. Maybe your day won't turn out to be as draining and horrible as you originally thought it would. Seokjin made apparently more on purpose so, and quote: 'your lazy ass doesn't starve before you pay me back for the last seven months of living at my apartment for free'. His choice of words makes you let out a huff in amusement.

When he had taken you in after you got kicked out of your old dorm in favor of someone else without any warning beforehand you both had come to a silent agreement that you wouldn't speak of how much you owed him, since you can't effort even half the rent to his apartment. It's clear to you that you'll pay him back as soon as you have the chance and Seokjin knows this too, even though he probably doesn't actually expect you to.

Silenty thanking him for his life saving food you pack it into your bag and then grab your phone to thank him via text as well so you won't forget. After hesitating for a short moment you also decide to ask him when he's going to be home today. If there's even the slightest chance you're going to be able to see him for dinner or at least a few hours of lazing on your couch just talking while watching some random movie, you're sure that it'll give you enough motivation to get through the day.

Seokjin immediately opens your message and you can't help but smile when you see that he's already typing a reply. He's always been like this. Always quick to answer your texts or calls, always down to go with every single one of your random ideas that tend to pop up in your head at the craziest of times, just... always there for you when you need him.

Being close friends for so long you know that's just who he is, of course. You know he's a good person and a really loyal friend but still, that little voice in your head keeps whispering that maybe, just maybe, he's so considerate because it's you. That it's not just your wishful thinking and he actually cares about you as much as you care about him. That he'd somehow realize how whipped you are for him and return your feelings instead of trying to let you down gently like he does with all the girls that confessed their crush on him in the last three or four years.

Shaking your head to get rid of your cheesy thoughts you stumble back to the coffee machine to get your mug while still squinting at your phone screen where Seokjin's message just popped up. As expected he's pretty busy today as well and he doesn't know how late it's going to get until he gets home. He tells you not to wait up for him with dinner if it starts getting too late but that he'll try his best to make it on time.

Sighing you brush your hand through your hair before finishing your coffee and putting your mug down on the kitchen counter to clean it later. It wasn't a 'no'. So it could happen, ... right? You decide it's not going to be of any good to think about it too much and instead make your way back upstairs to change into some proper clothes. It's almost time for you to leave for university anyway. You try to think positive and tie your hair into a ponytail before putting on your shoes.

You'll just have to survive the next 11 hours, then you'll finally be able to rest. And maybe you'll even see Seokjin again and have dinner with him tonight. So with this promising thought in mind you eventually step out the door of your apartment to get on with your day.

Stepping inside your own four walls you almost start crying in relief when you're finally able to get out of your shoes. You're burned out. The only thing on your mind right now is to sleep for at least 12 hours straight before even thinking of anything else. Unfortunatly though, you still got a few things on your to-do list for today, so you'll have to settle for a quick power nap.

Shrugging out of your jacket you just drop it on your way to the couch, not caring about anything else other than your well deserved rest. You grab the remote and turn on the TV with low volume to let the background noises lull you to sleep and then drop yourself backwards on the couch. Or that's what you thought.

Having misjudged the distance between you and the soft cushions you only scratch their surface before your fall continues and you land on the hard floor with a loud thud. The impact has you holding your breath in shock and while your mind is trying to catch up with your body you instinctively reach up to hold your head in your hands a few moments before the pain even kicks in.

You let out a pathetic groan and slowly roll over to lie on your back, swinging one arm over your face without moving a second time, too tired to try and get up again. It's what you deserve for not being more aware of your stupid surroundings anyway. And the ground's not even that bad, you tell yourself. There can't go anything else wrong if you don't move, right?

Allowing your heavy eyelids to finally rest for a while you stretch your legs out completely in an attempt to get more comfortable and huff, a little disappointed, because it's not working. The noise of the show that plays on TV is actually stressing you out more than helping you relax so you just press the power button on the remote that's still in your hand since you fell down to turn it back off before you finally admit defeat and just wait for sleep to take over.

That's how Seokjin finds you.

You don't know how much time has passed since you first slipped and fell to the ground just to stay there without moving a muscle when suddenly the front door to your apartment opens, accompanied by the very familiar jingle of keys and a heavy sigh sounding almost as tired as you're feeling.

The urge to stand up and greet your roommate comes up for a moment but the second you try to even so much as shift a bit your headache gets worse and a scorching pain shoots through your neck causing you to let out an almost inaudible groan in defeat.

You pray to every entity your brain comes up with that Seokjin won't find you like this, that he'll just grab a snack from the kitchen and then go upstairs to his room to study or whatever. But of course, like most of the time when it comes to Seokjin, it doesn't go the way you want it to. 'Hey y/n, you there? I'm home!' You can't help but cringe at the loud noise coming all the way from the other side of the room.

It's not because of his voice, you love his voice and on any other day hearing him say your name with so much hope and anticipation coloring his words would have caused your heart to go into a frenzy. Right now, however, you just want him to go away and leave you there to suffer alone until you're feeling better.

As much as you want to call out and tell him where you are, you can't bring yourself to actually answer him. The incredible pain in your neck and the merciless pounding of your head aside, the potential humiliation of him seeing you like this, completely vulnerable and pathetic has you biting your lip as if that would help you to make as little sound as possible.

There's a moment of heavy silence in the room before you can hear him let out a disappointed sigh, probably because he's assuming you aren't there and you immediately feel bad. It's the only choice you have to protect your dignity though, so there's no way around it. You decide you'll make it up to him with breakfast tomorrow instead.

His footsteps seem to lead him in the direction of the kitchen, away from you and you're starting to relax a bit but then he suddenly stops, presumably in the middle of the room. It's silent again and you furrow your eyebrows in confusion. Your brain is trying to come up with an explanation for what could have made him pause like that and when you hear the shuffling of clothes it suddenly clicks. Your damn jacket.

You dropped it on the ground on your way to the couch. Cursing yourself you press your arm tighter over your closed eyes and bite the inside of your cheek while anxiously waiting for Seokjin to move again. After a few seconds the rustling of clothes picks up again and your instincts scream at you to curl into a ball so he won't be able to find you.

You can pinpoint the exact moment he sees you by his surprised gasp of horror coming from almost right beside you and you can't help but to click your tongue in defeat. 'Y/N?! Oh my fu- ... y/n, are you alright?!' He's by your side in an instant, kneeling at your feet and touching one of your legs oh so delicately to check for any signs that you're alive and well.

Even in your hazy state you're still able to appriciate how careful he's being with touching you. 'Shh... shut up, Seokjin.' Hearing your raspy voice he pauses his attempts to softly shake you awake and even though you don't open your eyes to look at him you know he's probably staring at your covered face like a confused puppy.

'You're alive?! Why the fuck- Do you think it's funny scaring me to death?!' Groaning at the volume of his voice you move one of your legs to kick against his knee softly. 'Unfortunatly, yes. But could you please be quiet, my head hurts like crazy.' Amused by his overly dramatic reaction your voice automaticly takes on a softer tone to show him you're fine and it's then that he finally relaxes a bit.

You can feel his hold on your thigh become weaker and you immediately miss the warmth of his touch when he shifts to get a better look at you. 'Well... I mean I've been told my looks are able to bring girls to their knees and while I'm aware of how easy it is to fall for my handsome face, I'm pretty sure I'm not the reason why you're wiping the floor with your shirt. So why the hell are you on the floor?'

It's kinda funny how he's trying to lighten the mood without even knowing what's going on, you think. His voice is barely above a whisper though and you let out a soft hum to let him know you're going to answer in your own time. He still hasn't moved and you're wondering if he just doesn't know what to do in this situation.

Sighing, you move your arm from your face and reach out to search for him. Once you can feel the rough fabric of his jeans under your fingertips, you pat his thigh reassuringly while thinking of what to say next. 'Mhm... it's nothing, really. I just thought it'd be nice to get to know my surroundings better. You know? Bond with the floor, so it doesn't get lonely. Turns out it's really nice to talk to. Found my standards here so I didn't feel like getting up again.'

The amused snort he gives you as an answer is enough to get a content smile out of you as well. You give his thigh another friendly pat and subconsiously lick your dry lips. Something to drink would be nice. You make a mental note to go to the kitchen the moment your body is ready to function again. 'Give me a few minutes, yeah? You can go upstairs and I'll be there in a bit. Honestly, I'm so tired, it hurts when I close my eyes.'

There's silence for a while, like your roommate is contemplating what to answer and if it wouldn't be for your hand still touching his leg, you couldn't even be sure if he's with you anymore.

Suddenly, you feel him shift away from you and your heart squeezes in your chest at the thought of him actually leaving you here to go upstairs. There's still no way you'll open your eyes to confirm your suspicions though. The throbbing right behind your temples got worse while you were talking and you won't take the risk of provoking a full-on migrane just because your stupid feelings tell you it's absolutely necessary to look at your etheral being of a roommate right now.

You don't know what you were expecting at this point but the sudden noise right beside your ear was definitely not it. Feeling your head being lifted carefully you make a confused sound in the back of your throat but before you can actually react, it's already over and you're lying on something far more comfortable than the cold linoleum of the floor.

'You're an idiot. You know that, right?' Seokjin's voice is just a hushed whisper against your ear and you can feel him wrap his arm around your waist when you try to get up on instinct. 'Wha-' You don't really know how to react to his sudden proximity but as you open your mouth to respond he just pulls you closer until your cheek is pressed against his shoulder and hums quietly to effectively shut you up.

'You could have just said you weren't feeling well. There's nothing wrong with taking a break when you feel like you can't keep up anymore, you know?' His words make you let out a resigned huff. He always says that. And he's right, of course. Theoretically. But thinking back to the pile of notes on your desk you've still got to rehearse to be able to pass the exams next week, you can't help but disagree with him.

Seokjin seems to know what you're thinking because he sighs in an almost frustrated way, like a parent trying to reason with his stubborn toddler and leans his forehead softly against the top of your head, burying his face in your hair while stroking your back with his free hand as if trying to soothe you. He has you pretty much caged in his arms and even if you wanted to, there'd be no way to get up now. You're not complaining though. It does soothe you.

It feels nice to have him hold you like this. Like he actually wants to be here, with you. Like he wants to protect you from anything that's trying to harm you in any way. Like... you mean more to him than he says out loud. From time to time, the fingers caressing your back find their way up to absentmindedly play with strands of your hair and you can't stop your heart from jumping a bit when you feel him subtly shift closer.

You're so close you can hear Seokjin's heartbeat and while the steady rhythm calms you, it's still kinda strange. It's not like you never cuddled before. The actor's a pretty affectionate person and so it's actually common for you to be constantly hugged or held in his arms or pulled into his lap when you two hang around each other. Still, there's something about the way he's holding you right now. It's so loving and gentle, as if he's scared he'd hurt you if he isn't careful enough. You've never felt so at ease before.

Seokjin suddenly stops playing with your hair and after another moment of silence lets out a small huff. 'Don't think I didn't notice that you weren't feeling well for a while now. Still... I didn't exactly stop you from letting it get worse, so I guess I'm a bit at fault as well. I should have known you'd strain yourself... you really are an idiot.'

The tone of his voice is a mix between cockiness and genuine worry, so instead of complaining about him calling you an idiot you just grumble into his chest and murmur something that's supposed to sound like an apology. A small laugh escapes his lips at your childish behavior. 'What was that, princess? I couldn't hear you.' He gives your shoulder a soft push to get you to lean back and look at him and not able to resist any longer you comply.

You carefully blink open your tired eyes and when they finally adjust to your surroundings you see Seokjin smiling down at you so fondly your breath hitches. The words you wanted to say won't come out and you clear your sore throat when you see him raise an eyebrow in question. He casually licks his slightly opened lips and you can feel the blush creeping up your face when you realize your eyes followed the movement without your consent.

You're pretty sure he saw you staring for a second and not being able to look into his eyes after that, you press yourself up against him and wrap one of your arms around his waist as well to cuddle into him more. 'I missed you,' you whisper instead. The words come out of your mouth before you can stop them and they're so muffled through the fabric of his shirt that you hope he couldn't understand you.

It's kind of embarrassing how needy your voice sounded just now and when he tenses against you, you immediately regret saying it, scared he'll take it as a joke and laugh at you for being dramatic or worse, understand what the real meaning behind it is and reject you for good. But instead of teasing you like you expected he just hugs you closer to him and lets out a sigh. 'I missed you too, y/n.'

Maybe it's because you're feeling so tired and vulnerable or maybe it's the tender way he just answered you in but hearing him say it back has a wave of pend up emotions suddenly crashing down on you all at once. Your eyes well up with tears and before you know it you're sobbing into his chest, gripping onto his shirt like a lifeline. 'N-no, you don't get it. I missed you, I always miss you and it's so stupid because I know I shouldn't but I can't help it. I'm stupid, so stupid.'

You don't care if you're crossing the invisible line you had drawn from the moment you started living with him right now. You're tired and cold and you can't think straight with that fucking headache drumming against your skull. All you can think of is how warm Seokjin is and how good it feels when he tightens his arms around you in an attempt to calm you down.

Not really knowing what else to do Seokjin slowly sits up and pulls you into his lap. You bury your face in his neck and clasp at his shoulders while he hums a low tune and rocks you from side to side, one of his arms securely wrapped around your waist to hold you in place. 'Shh... it's fine, you're fine.' For the past eight years you've know him, Seokjin always tried to avoid emotional confrontations by cracking a joke or playing dumb but right now he seems completely serious and you're thankful that he's not withdrawing himself from you even though seeing you like this probably makes him uncomfortable.

Somewhere in the back of your mind you know how dramatic you're being and usually you'd be embarrassed to let him see you like this, but the way he's cradling you in his embrace like you're something precious to him has you melting against his chest without a second thought. You're allowed to be weak sometimes too. Seokjin is always here to remind you of that and it makes you love him even more. So maybe, just maybe, you can allow yourself to show him what's really on your mind from time to time.

Your roommate hushes you for a while until you're not crying anymore and as soon as he's sure you've calmed down he turns you in his arms so he's able to stand up. 'Come on, let's get you in bed. The floor's going to make me get sick and if my handsome face gets all puffy because of you, you're going to pay.' The comment makes you snort in amusement and glancing at him from out of the corner of your eyes you see him smiling at your reaction. Would it be too much to tell him that his puffy face looks extremely cute? Probably. Better not take a chance after what happened just now.

He carries you up the stairs as if your body weighs nothing. The actor isn't even the slightest bit out of breath when you arrive in front of your room and you're reminded of how build he actually his, despite him joking about becoming fat all the time. You silently study his face while he lets you down on your bed carefully. His eyebrows are furrowed in thought and he's looking down at the mattress instead of at you.

You can't really tell if it's out of respect for you or because he can't bring himself to look at your miserable state, and you actually don't want to know if you're being honest. Sighing in bliss at the feeling of your soft covers being pulled over you, you snuggle deeper into the fabric and look up at your friend through heavy eyelids to see him give you a warm smile. 'I'll be right back, don't fall asleep on me already, hm?'

You let out a quiet hum in agreement and watch him leave your room to go somewhere downstairs. His absence gives you time to think about what happened in the last few minutes and your heart squeezes painfully when you remember what exactly you told him while you had your little outburst. Is that why he was so stiff and quiet just now?

Does he understand your feelings towards him and needs time to think about a way to reject you without making things awkward? Fuck. You really don't know if you're ready to hear him say it. Suddenly you can hear his footsteps coming back up the stairs and on instinct you close your eyes to pretend you're asleep. He can reject you all he wants tomorrow when you're emotionally stable enough. Right now you just want to fall asleep and pretend today never happened.

Your roommate comes to a stop beside your head and just stands there for a moment, probably looking at you. After a few seconds the mattress sinks down at the level of your waist and your breath hitches when you realize he's now sitting on your bed, softly brushing your hair from your forhead. 'I know you're awake. Nobody blushes in their sleep, not even because of me. Now open your eyes and let me feed you, so I know you're not going to die in your sleep.'

Clicking your tongue in annoyence you comply to his order and blink your eyes open. He's holding a glass of water out to you and you let out a short hum to thank him, eagerly accepting it while you sit up and lean against the headboard of your bed. You empty it in one go and hand the glass back to Seokjin for him to place it on your nightstand. He offers you a slice of an apple but when you try to take it from him, he lightly presses it to your lips instead, the look in his eyes daring you to refuse him to feed you.

Your face starts burning again but you know he won't take no for an answer so you just open your lips and let him slip the slice into your mouth without complaint. Seokjin makes a content noise in the back of his throat at your obedience and pats your knee over the covers with his unoccupied hand to reward you.

'You want some more?' Shaking your head at his question you lie back down and pull your blanket up to your chin before he can press another slice to your lips. 'Wanna sleep, 'm sorry,' you manage to croak out and thankfully he relents right away. 'The plate's right here if you change your mind. I'll be in my room if you need anything, yeah?'

He makes an effort to stand up and leave but you immediately shake your head and grasp the sleeve of his shirt to stop him before he can get away. 'Stay, please? I could use your cuddles right now.' Your roommate blinks at you a few times as if unsure of how to react but when you silently lift your blanket in invitation, he finally gives in and gets under the covers next to you with a small sigh.

Pressing your body against his you shift two or three times and then yawn happily once you're comfortable. Neither of you talks for a long time, Seokjin just lets you lie with your head hiding in the crook of his neck and affectionately brushes through your hair to help you fall asleep.

You're just about to let his breathing lull you to sleep when he suddenly smiles against you as if he remembered something and whispers in an amused but husky voice. 'Your actual confession is going to be a bit more romantic, right? I'm thinking something like a restaurant or a movie night with take out and lots of cuddles to set the mood.'

Tensing up a bit at the sudden question you slowly pull away to look at him with your eyes already bleary from how tired you are. 'Who said I liked you?' Seokjin grins cockily at your terrible attempt to play dumb and the mischievous glint in his eyes tells you that whatever happens next, everything is going to be just fine.

'Oh please, it's so obvious you're whipped for me. I mean, who wouldn't be? It's me we're talking about.' You roll your eyes at him and grin back but you can't come up with a sly response right away since what he says is one hundred percent the truth, so you settle for not answering at all until you know what he's getting at for sure.

Seokjin looks into your eyes for a moment longer, the content smile still prominent on his face. Then he's shifting forward until his nose brushes against yours and a shiver runs down your spine when you feel his breath on your lips. 'So how about that dinner? I think I deserve something fancy for our first date. It's what first comes to mind every time I think about how to ask you out, you know?'

By now your heart is already threatening to jump out of your chest from how wildly it thumps against your ribs. He already thought about asking you out? More than once? So he actually likes you too and it's not just your hopeful mind playing tricks on you?

When you think you're finally able to form a coherent sentence and tell him you'd gladly go out with him, Seokjin suddenly closes the remaining distance between you both to press a loving kiss to your slightly opened lips. Gasping in surprise against his pillow like lips you don't even get the chance to return the kiss before he's already leaning away from you again.

He's smirking at your dreamy expression and wraps his free arm around your waist to pull you as close to his side as physically possible before speaking up again. 'Movie night would be fine by me too, though. Tell me tomorrow, yeah? You gaping at me like a deer caught in the headlights made me kinda sleepy and you need your beauty sleep. Let's get comfy, hm?' Wow, the nerve of this guy. As if you'd be able to get any sleep now.

'You're an idiot,' you say amused and cuddle into him further to get comfortable again. He pulls a funny face in response and sticks his tongue out to you before he chuckles. 'That's my line, idiot.'

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

#kpop #bts #jin #seokjin #kim seokjin #bts jin #seokjin masterlist #seokjin scenarios #seokjin fluff #seokjin humor #seokjin crack #seokjin request #best friend!seokjin #roommate!seokjin #seokjin x reader #seokjin x y/n #seokjin x you

41 notes · View notes

longdistancelovesux · 4 years

Text

05/28/2020

Dear Elliott

i am going to start this off by saying i find these " book reports " quite therapeutic and i feel like a giant book nerd, my grade 12 English teacher would be proud of me.

Alain De Bottons book " Essays in love" was a big surprise honestly . this man gave me a very in depth and intimate look into a mind set of love i knew very little about . my polar opposite in many ways , you could say . his ability to put some of our most tender thoughts and feelings into words is an impressive and touching skill , and reading this novel was quite the emotional roller coaster ride.

the first quote that struck me was this:

"lovers cannot remain philosophers for long, they should give way to the religious impulse, which is to believe and have faith as apposed to the philosophic impulse , which is to doubt and enquirer . they should prefer the risk of being wrong and in love to being in doubt and without love”

this quote stood out because its telling me my philosophical quest should be replaced with belief , the word faith seems to pop up a lot in regards to love. its one of the first op-positional views iv read to my crusade and its intended purpose.

while the author and i took different approaches and views to love in most areas of this story , there was one major section of this novel i resonated with very deeply:

" Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone there who can understand what we are, in essence , we are not wholly alive until we are loved"

he expands on this thought by saying :

" without love , we lose the ability to possess a proper identity, within love , there is a constant confirmation of our selves, to be seen is to be assured that we exist. the person who loves us for more or less the things we deem ourselves to be lovable for , who understands us for more or less the things we need to be understood”

when i read this i suddenly understood an important part of my connection to you . THIS was the gift you gave me all those years ago , and the gift you continue to give me when we speak. you were the first person to see me , truly , and validate everything i was . you understood me , and then loved me for all the things you found . you made it okay for me, to be me , simply by being yourself.

Not only did you do these things by accepting me , we also shared many similarities that helped me feel like i belonged somewhere , like i wasn't the last of my kind . we were different people , but in many ways the same.

the quote from wedding crashers comes to mind: " true love is your souls recognition of its counterpoint in another " and you were my counterpoint.

(p.s. i love the definition of the word "Counterpoint " : is the relationship between voices which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and contour".. so damn romantic..god im gross).

while i have enjoyed reading many different versions of love and ways of interpreting such things, i cant help but feel slightly defeated . so far i seem to have only high lighted and validated reason for loving you ,which was not exactly my goal ..

#alain de botton #essays in love

2 notes · View notes

nottruebutwellfounded · 4 years

Photo

From Nabokov to Woolf to Coetzee, novelist Jonathan Gibbs selects the best imaginary lives presented as the real thing.

Fictionalised biographies – novels based on the life of a famous person – are ten-a-penny. And why not? They’re easy enough to turn out. Other people – the actual biographers – have done the hard work. All the novelist has to do is to twist the “facts” to suit their own interpretation of the life in question, and away they go.

In writing a novel based on the Young British Artists, I decided I wanted to do something different: write the biography of a made-up person as if they were real. The trick would not be to fool the reader into thinking they had actually existed (see William Boyd’s Nat Tate, below) but to access that special kind of reading we slip into when reading something we assume is factual – by which I mean, basically: gullibility. Where a reader might ask, of character in a novel, “Now, would they really do that?” of a character in a biography the question would be, “Wow, why on earth did they do that?”

Here then are 10 “fictitious biographies” (Nabokov’s term) that I’ve found particularly inspiring.

1. Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann This slow, stodgy, quite wonderful novel gave me the template for my own fake memoir. Mann’s book is the story of the modernist composer Adrian Leverkühn, as told by his childhood friend Serenus Zeitblom. The pathos of the book comes from dull, plodding Zeitblom’s realisation that he can never hope to catch the mercurial personality of his genius friend, but that he must try nonetheless.

2. Orlando by Virginia Woolf Woolf’s light-hearted “escapade” is a satirical romp through the very idea of a biography, with its portrait of a nobleman who lives from the Elizabethan era right through to the 1920s, somehow changing gender along the way. Its sentence-by-sentence delight in evoking past times offers a model that few “proper” historical accounts can hope to follow – not least because it’s skipped on a decade before they’ve tied their bootlaces.

3. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov It’s no surprise that many “fictitious biographies” include a fair bit of the biographer in their narrative. The model for this is surely AJA Symons’s The Quest for Corvo, with its detective story premise, which came out shortly before Nabokov started writing this, his first English language book. It is the tale of celebrated writer Sebastian Knight, told by his half-brother, V, though as you’d expect with this author the elusive quarry retreats even as the befuddled hunter advances, and by the end we’re as uncertain about the one as we are about the other.

4. Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle This almost uncategorisable book takes the form of a critical biography of the fictional German Romantic philosopher Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, who saw clothing as the governing metaphor of human existence. If that makes him sound rather like Roland Barthes avant la lettre, then the comparison ends there. It’s a tough read, not least for the difficulty in getting a handle on the tone. Carlyle’s style is a heavy-handed parody of academic prose, yet he’s using the figure of Teufelsdröckh to give us a disguised autobiography.

5. Nat Tate by William Boyd Boyd’s benign art-world hoax presented itself on publication as a serious monograph on a real but little-known American abstract expressionist painter, who supposedly threw himself off the Staten Island Ferry at the age of 31, after destroying nearly all his paintings. The book is far more than a prank, however – it’s a melancholy treatise on the limits of biography. We know scarcely more about Tate at the end than at the beginning. The gaps and absences are all.

6. Kiss and Tell by Alain de Botton This early novel by the pop philosopher turns the central idea of biography on its head by taking as its subject not just a non-celebrity but someone wholly unremarkable: one Isabel Jane Rogers. De Botton has great fun with the paraphernalia of the genre, including an index, and various photographs of quite staggering banality: you could swap about the shots of Rogers’ boyfriends, and the book would be changed not one jot.

7. An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay Fictitious biographies, left to their own devices, will tend to drift towards the novelistic (fictitious autobiographies, from Robinson Crusoe onwards, are too common to be of use here). That’s something that happens with Kay’s book, though at least she covers her back by having the biography of abstract painter Jennet Mallow written by a poet (and family member) who is quite open about imagining his subject’s thoughts and feelings “when I could not have known them”.

8. The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn This is more “fictitious memoir” than “fictitious biography”, but is far too interesting to omit. Gunn plays the Carlyle trick of acting as supposed editor for a set of “found papers”, detailing the history of Scottish bagpipe player and composer John Sutherland. The “papers” read like fiction, yet come with notes and appendices. Gunn is not playing the parody game, though: it’s the music she’s after, and it’s the music she gets. A seriously good book.

9. DooDaaa: The Balletic Art of Gavin Twinge by Ralph Steadman Authors, composers, artists: it’s no surprise that writers like picking other creators for their fictitious biographies – no politicians, footballers or royals here. As you’d expect, Ralph Steadman’s biography (“by” Ralphael Steed) of Doodaaaist Gavin Twinge is a full-throttle, rambunctious satire that writes an alternative history of British and international art, with plenty of original art and illustration to liven up its pages.

10. Summertime by JM Coetzee Another anomaly: after two volumes of semi-fictional autobiography (Boyhood, and Youth) Coetzee’s third entry in the genre produced this, which could perhaps be best described as: a memoir in the form of a novel in the form of notes towards a fictitious biography of an invented character modelled on the author. It is largely made up of transcripts of interviews conducted by Coetzee’s surrogate author with people who knew “John Coetzee”, though they repeatedly fail to give the biographer what he is after. Point taken, John.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/27/top-10-fictitious-biographis-jonathan-gibbs-nabokov

#writing #identity

1 note · View note

kismet-at-the-library · 7 years

Text

A-Z BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

I’ve seen a few of these lists floating around as per @macrolit‘s idea (you can find their original post here) and obviously I had to spend the past few hours compiling a list of my own. It’s definitely harder than it looks! I was trying to go for some less obvious choices while also paying homage to all the books that have struck a chord with me, but I must admit I had to cheat a little by including a few titles from my TBR pile. In my defense, I have an excellent feeling about all of these – plus, what better motivation to finally get started on reading them? (If only grad school weren’t in the way... but a girl can still dream.)

A - Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)

A superbly well-written and incredibly touching novel, featuring one of the children characters I’ve related to the most in my reading life. (Yes, I relate to Briony! Not for what she does, of course, but the way she experiences and describes the world is just so so familiar to me.)

B - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)

I think I’m still a little heartbroken over this one. It wasn’t always perfect, but it’s stayed with me in a way that other books I’ve read in the past few years haven’t. Plus, I still can’t get over a narrator using footnotes to explain historical details about the Dominican Republic. If you’ve read Díaz before, you’ll definitely fall for Yunior’s voice all over again. And if you haven’t, what are you waiting for?

C - La casa de los espíritus (The House of the Spirits) by Isabel Allende (1982)

I already got one for H (this list was not compiled in alphabetical order) so I’m “cheating” by using the title in the original language (which is also the one I read it in).

D - Du côté de chez Swann (The Way by Swann’s) by Marcel Proust (1913)

...because lately I’ve been mildly (she says) obsessed with Proust and you should be too <3 This is the first volume in the monumental In Search of Lost Time. I went in knowing hardly anything about it other than ~Proust~ and was incredibly surprised by how accessible it was. (If you’re still feeling intimidated, I definitely recommend reading Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life to help break the ice!)

E - Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes (1981)

A poetry collection by the author on whom I wrote my bachelor’s thesis. Lorna Dee Cervantes writes about growing up as a working-class Chicana in the U.S. Southwest. In her poems as in her life, gender, race, and class intersect to make up the experience of a powerful woman and gifted poet who uses incredibly lyrical language.

F - Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant by Michelle Cliff (1993)

Now, if you want some good, kickass, well-researched alternative historiography featuring Black historical lady figures, then this is the book for you. It’s an account (fictional, yes, but in no way less significant than the ‘authorized’ history) of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and the women that took part in it (for non-U.S. readers, John Brown was a white abolitionist who tried to start an armed slave revolt). One of those women was Mary Ellen Pleasant, a black woman and entrepreneur who helped fund John Brown’s raid. So, yep, you should definitely get to this one straight away. It’s not the most accessible kind of writing because it moves across time, space, and characters, but if you pay enough attention you’ll have no problem following it until the end, and you’ll be immensely enriched because of it. <3

G - The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. That’s the first line of the book, by the way. If you like unreliable narrators and morally-dubious characters, you’ll definitely enjoy this one.

H - Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

Adichie is very well known right now because of her booklet We Should All Be Feminists (and with good reason), but this is the one that made me fall in love with her. I don’t even remember what led me to buying this book when I basically knew nothing about her, but I’m so glad I did. I love historical fiction and this novel about the Biafran War just broke my heart in all the right places. One of my best on-a-whim purchases.

I - If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio (2017)

This is one of the latest books I’ve read but more importantly one I’ve been excited to read for at least two years. The stakes were high but wow, did it deliver. It’s been marketed as a mystery/literary thriller but I get the feeling that this kind of description could turn away readers who are not into mysteries but who would have plenty of other reasons to enjoy this novel. Yes, there is a mystery (and the pacing is excellent!) but the story is really about the characters, who are really well-developed. Rio ( @m-l-rio) has the incredible ability to set a scene with great economy of words and make each of them count. And, oh, that ending was absolutely perfect.

(Special mention: If This Is a Man by Primo Levi.)

J - Jacques the Fatalist and his Master by Denis Diderot (1796)

A novel about subverting the reader’s expectations (and I mean that). I read this one some 6 years ago but I still think about it as one of the funniest novels (or non-novels?) I’ve ever read and I can’t wait to read it again one day. It gets very, very meta and I remember lots of (subtle or not-so-subtle) criticism on the art of the novel as practised by Diderot’s contemporaries.

(Special mention: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Because, do I even need to explain? <3)

K - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

Well, this one is a bit obvious. Didn’t have a lot of K-titles to choose from... But also, this was one of the first books I read in English, at a time when my love of literature fully-blossomed, and that makes it even more special.

L - The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon (1956)

I loved the writing in this novel about the life of West Indian immigrants in London in the 1950s. Such a strong narrative voice. Its only flaw is that it only focuses on the male immigrant experience, but that’s no reason not to love it anyway.

M - Manual of the Warrior of the Light by Paulo Coelho (1997)

The book that made me get into Paulo Coelho quite a few years ago. I’m less into him now, but this is still among my favourites <3 A book one can turn to in times of hardship, always ready to offer much-needed words of wisdom.

N - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (1855)

I think @dukeofbookingham once described this as “Pride and Prejudice with a social conscience” and I don’t think I can top that description. If you’re still unsure about this, why not watch the 2004 BBC adaptation with Richard Armitage?

O - Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)

Sometimes a bit difficult to get through, but so beautifully written that it makes it totally worth it. Also, such an imaginative read!

P - Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (1913)

Maaaaan I love this play. My inner linguistic nerd can’t resist Higgins’s endavours to train Eliza to speak like a “proper lady”, and the feminist in me is ever in awe of Eliza’s strength of character. (Don’t trust the ending they gave her in My Fair Lady. Shaw was much smarter than that.)

Q - Regina di fiori e di perle (Queen of Flowers and Pearls) by Gabriella Ghermandi (2011)

Now this is a double cheat because 1) I’m using the translation to make it work, and 2) I took it from my TBR pile, but this is one I’m really excited about, and it’s by an Italo-Ethiopian author, so... <3

R - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (1966)

There were plenty of more obvious choices for this one and I’ve actually only ever seen the film adaptation, but I love the idea for this play so much I couldn’t resist. Plus, I’ve been meaning to get my hands on a copy since forever...

S - Sillabari (Abecedary) by Goffredo Parise (1972-1982)

Going again by the title in the original language. Honestly, I keep trying to recommend this wonderful book to my English-speaking friends but it’s so frustrating because only the first part of this (...novel? collection?) has been translated into English. “Collection” doesn’t seem like the right word because there is such a strong thematic unity to this book, but it is certainly made up of vignettes, each of which is meant to describe a human feeling, something that is achieved with great economy of words and often in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Incidentally, this is a particularly fitting title for this list because the vignettes are organized in alphabetical order (Abecedary, anyone?) –the first one is “Amore”, love. If you can read Italian, I cannot recommend this enough!

(Special mention: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde.)

T - The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)

This doesn’t look like cheating but it feels like cheating. :P There were plenty of other titles to choose from but none that was giving me as strong a feeling. Plus, it feels good to pay homage to one of the books that started it all for me <3 (and I actually first discovered Tumblr by looking for LOTR-related content, so it's even more appropriate.)

U - Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid by Nikki Giovanni (2013)

I was trying to go for something that wasn’t Ulysses (which I haven’t read yet, by the way). Now, I haven’t read this whole collection, but I remember reading some of Nikki Giovanni’s poetry in one of my American literature classes and I definitely liked her work. Plus, I love that title! I had kind of forgotten about this one, so now might be the right time to go and actually check it out from the library.

V - Il visconte dimezzato (The Cloven Viscount) by Italo Calvino (1951)

Wow, was it difficult to find a worthy V-title! (Or one that is not in my TBR pile.) I haven’t read the books in this unconventional ‘trilogy’ in so long, but I still remember liking them a lot (although my favourite was always The Nonexistent Knight).

W - Waiting in the Twilight by Joan Riley (1987)

This is a more obscure title and probably not as easy to get a hold of (AbeBooks would be your best option) but this immigrant story about a Jamaican woman and her dream of building a better life for herself told from the perspective of her disenchanted old self is incredibly powerful and just... my heart breaks for Adella.

X/Y - I got nothing. :(

Z - Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde (1982)

Another one that I haven’t read (yet), but this is Audre Lorde, so. <3

2 notes · View notes

castaliareed · 7 years

Text

Why JonSa?

So a JonSa hater comment and a blog post on love inspired me to overanalyze the Jon x Sansa dynamic. Enjoy!

This is JonSa fic. The point is that they have feelings for each other. They are confused by these feelings. Finally, they decide they've been through so many horrible things, it's winter, it's cold, and YOLO...

Was the beginning of my response to a commenter on one of my JonSa chapters that felt Jon would not lust after Sansa, his sister.

Fans who ship JonSa often receive these types of comments. Commenters consistently state the impossibility of the ship. Citing that these characters especially Jon would not feel this way about a woman he was raised with whether or not he ever discovers she is really his cousin.

The default response of JonSa shippers is that they were not close as children. Followed by a list of book examples, show examples, and character analysis of why they have both been foreshadowed and could work together.

There are plenty of examples in the book when seen through a JonSa lens that can be used to support the ship. From, Jon saying Sansa is "radiant" at the feast for King Robert to Ned telling Sansa that Joffery is "no Aemon the Dragonknight" and that he will find someone "brave, and gentle, and strong" for her. Both of Ned's references fans believe foreshadow Jon. Later, Sansa's character development in the Vale as she poses as the bastard daughter of Littlefinger has clear references to her bastard brother. Jon's first love, Ygritte, is "kissed by fire" or red-haired similar to Sansa, who has auburn hair and sings like Sansa as well. There are more examples throughout the books.

Then Season 6 happened and even people who most likely have never heard the word "ship" in their lives were asking if Sansa and Jon would have a romantic future. Text and shows can be interpreted many different ways. Until the story is finished, it is all just speculation and up for debate amongst fans. No matter how many times you re-watch the clip of Jon telling Sansa he likes the "wolf bit" after giving her the full body once over it still is just speculation. Brothers check their hot sisters out all the time. (me giving side-eye..) At least in Game of Thrones, they do.

What is discussed less in the justifications for JonSa is the emotional journey they are on. In a few posts it has been mentioned that a relationship between Sansa who looks like her mother Catelyn and Jon who looks like their father* would go a long way to healing their childhood wounds.

In my response to the commenter, I also stated: "I hope I can show how that (JonSa) is possible for both of their characters based on the facts that they haven't seen each other for years, they have both grown significantly due to trauma, and that their core personalities have always been very similar in nature (inward, romantic, compassionate, etc..). I personally believe that they were both kept distant as children by the adults in their lives and because well they were actually quite alike underneath the surface gender differences placed on them by a patriarchal culture."

Their emotional journey becomes multifold, a need to heal old wounds, a need for the familiar, and a need to overcome gender constraints. Jon was treated horribly by the only mother-figure he ever knew, Catelyn, who saw him as a reminder of the honorable Ned Stark's one failing. He was also a threat to her sons and her political power via her sons. Conversely, Jon was close to his "father". Spoke with him often and wanted to be like him. It was the one thing he wanted to be and could not be due to his status as a bastard.

Sansa looks like her mother and wanted to be a proper lady. This meant seeking her mother's approval. It could be said that Sansa is less like her mother than she wanted to be liked by her mother. Being the second child and a daughter in a patriarchial culture this was a natural response. Sansa at heart is very much her father's daughter. Inward, observant, compassionate, overly concerned with appearances. Sansa wants to be seen as a lady as much as Ned wants to be seen as honorable. Another failing she shares with her father is a highly questionable relationship with the truth. Sansa lies more often but Ned lies bigger.

Part of Jon's journey as depicted on the show is Sansa telling him he is a Stark to her. She is the only person who could give this to him in a manner he would accept. Part of his healing is feeling he is fully accepted as a Stark. The ultimate irony is that he is also a Targaryen. His mother being a Stark not his father. Bringing us to the gender expectations of their world.

They are in the process of overcoming these expectations. Jon believes that Winterfell is his sister's by right. He, aside from her mother, is her only family member that does this. Her full-brother Rob was more than willing to disinherit her. Jon accepts a woman's right to rule even over his own. Given his acceptance of her as a Stark, despite her past marriages, and as rightful Lady of Winterfell. We are left to hope that Sansa will return the favor and still accept him as a Stark once his parentage is revealed. This will be the key to their relationship together. JonSa shippers hope that it draws them closer especially romantically. Others worry it could push them apart. They must overcome what their world tells them about the primacy of male succession. They must believe you can inherit from the female line or inherit as female. Making them both legitimate.

To fully understand why JonSa is an exciting possibility for their emotional journey, we must think bigger, outside the world of Westeros. We must think about the nature of love itself. A recent article on The Brainpickings blog discussing Alain de Botton's writings on love captures the idea.

"We are constrained in our love choices by what we learned of love as children. Adult love is in central ways a search for rediscovery of emotions first known in childhood. In order to prove exciting and attractive, the partner we pick must re-evoke many of the feelings we once had around parental figures, and these feelings, though they may include tenderness and satisfaction, are also likely to feature a more troubling range of emotions." - Alain de Botton

Jon and Sansa can find the familiar in each other. Sansa as a representation of both Catelyn in her looks and Ned in her character can be this type of love for Jon. For Sansa, Jon is said to look like her dead father. His nature is also very Stark-like. He follows the old gods which for her represent her northern roots. The familiar can go even farther beyond the positives and reveal their failings.

"It seems we are fated either to seek out the fault of a parent in a partner or to mimic the fault of the parent with a partner. Either way, the fault of the parent remains central to our love choices. Without it, we may simply not be able to feel passionate and tender with someone. We might imagine we would only be attracted to admirable traits — to perfection, to very positive things about another — yet just below the conscious radar, it is the failings that lure us in." - Alain de Botton

Jon for his part is more than willing to see Sansa as the proper lady, the Princess, she wants to be. In fact, he wants to see her that way. While Show!Sansa resists somewhat by attending the parley and claiming that no one can protect her. Jon has the ability to both respect her growing political nature and wholeheartedly believe in the lady-like facade she presents to the world. In the books his last thoughts of her are of her singing and brushing her direwolf, Lady.

However, one must ask could it be her failings that lure him in. Show!Jon tells her they need to trust each other after she apologizes for not telling him about the knights of the Vale. Instead of being furious with her, he seems to accept her apology kissing her on the forehead before gazing into her eyes and lips. Subconsciously, could he be reminded of Ned here? Ned the father he misses and admires. And who unbeknownst to Jon lied to him every day of his life supposedly to protect him. While, it's unclear why Sansa lied, fear the Vale would not arrive in time, fear Littlefinger would betray her, or as a battle strategy. The lie saved the day, saved Jon, much as her father believed he was doing.

In Jon, Sansa can find both a hero and at times a bit of a literal bastard. Someone who wants to protect her wants to fight for her. Who, at the same time, can be a bit of jerk when arguing with her. Is this a dynamic she saw in her parents that happened off-screen and off-book? Catelyn Tully certainy showed her less than kind sides to Jon.

As Show!Jon and Show!Sansa work together to restore their home. Here is hoping that Book!Jon and Book!Sansa will reunite at Winterfell, too. In the World of ASOIAF and GoT, their collaboration is and will be central to their character growth. They could further their emotional journies through an intense sibling relationship that never ventures into the romantic realm. While much to the consternation of JonSa shippers, myself included, the romantic relationship may or may not be necessary for these characters. Because in Westeros, the family relationships, the sibling relationships, are primary.** We are presented again and again with sibling relationships that push and pull characters even when those siblings are not directly interacting. In our modern world it hard for us to relate to this. Today, primacy is placed on romantic partnerships. However, in a medieval world where one often had very little choice in their marriage partner, giving the sibling bond priority makes perfect sense.

Further, it is the emotional journey, not the romantic one that is central to each character in ASOIAF or GoT. Seen in this light on the show at least, JonSa has already begun. Sexual intimacy while possible was not necessary to secure their bond because it is an emotional bond, not a romantic one. It is easy to imagine them being affectionate with each other while at Castle Black or while traveling the North beyond what was depicted on camera. In this world, even sibling cuddling could have been seen as not out of the ordinary. Affection, flirting, and arguing the hallmarks of modern romantic relationships, become very much a part of Jon and Sansa's medieval emotional relationship.

At the core of it, ASOIAF and Game of Thrones are telling us a story about family. They are telling us a story about ourselves via complicated and flawed characters. So, to answer again the commenter's complaint that Jon would not lust after his sister. Of course, he could. In fact, they already do lust after each other emotionally. This is Game of Thrones, in this world attraction emotional or physical is not reserved for appropriate romantic partners as it is in the modern world. Dynamic emotional relationships that push characters along on their journies is very much the purview of brothers and sisters.

*Yes, R+L = J and Ned is really Jon's uncle but neither character on the show or in the books is aware of this.

**This could be the subject of another meta entirely.

#jonsa meta #jonsa #whyjonsa #jon x sansa #jon snow #sansa stark #meta #asoiaf meta #alain de botton #game of thrones meta

151 notes · View notes

twistednuns · 7 years

Text

August 2017

"Das Leben ist nur interessant, wenn wir unseren Willen nicht kriegen." - Haruki Murakami, Kafka am Strand // I loved reading Kafka on the Shore. Murakami seems to be an ass and I don't care much about the German translation (or has Japanese just a really weird language structure?) but I loved the story and the magic realism, the Shinto-influence. The talking to cats part. The food descriptions. The (more or less pretentious) insights and life lessons. I've even ordered two more Murakami books, in English this time. Maybe I like the style better in another language. That's why I hate reading German books that weren't originally written in German. Bad style is so much more noticable in your mother tongue.

Dreaming so so much lately. Whole stories, actually. Does that come from reading more books?

Labertal Festival! Großstadtgeflüster! A rather good talk with Claudia.

Listening to a loaf of bread. Sounds weird but I had a hollow (the soft part is too yummy not to eat first) loaf of olive ciabatta, put my ear to it and listened to myself ripping off crumbs from the inside. Great ASMR-sound!

After reading Kafka on the Shore I had to think of Japanese microseasons again. Great rains sometimes fall at the beginning of August. Pretty shitty microseason if I dare say so.

Watching the big yellow full moon rise behind the trees, still hiding behind a weak cloud.

Frauen, lernt endlich verhandeln!

Rookie mistake: drinking a really STRONG batch of iced coffee in the evening. And since I hardly ever drink (strong) coffee it was such a new experience for me to feel so alert and awake! I might be a convert now. Gonna keep experimenting.

Miranda would be the true Sex and the City heroine if the show came out in 2017.

Sally Rooney used to be a debating superstar and has written a very smart novel - Conversations with Friends - which I read in one sitting and liked a lot. There is a very interesting and entertaining interview with her in Literary Friction in which she says: "I get into a real magical thinking phase when I'm writing where if something comes to me easily I attach a huge amount of significance to it, as if it augured something about the novel." Is it weird that I have that, too? I mean, in life? With coincidences, decisions? It always gives me the feeling something is supposed to be. Which might be stupid but graces your existence with a spark of magic, doesn't it...

Rolf Dobelli's column in the NZZ - Die Kunst des guten Lebens.

A video of geckos. With Yoshi-sounds. #nintendogirl4life

Alain de Botton says that we are always looking for a partner who makes us suffer in a familiar way. So my interpretation is: whenever I say about someone that he is too nice I feel like he can't make me suffer appropriately. I mean, I always knew that, but it's nice to have confirmation about my wicked ways.

Cutting off the soft, moist, stringy outsides of a ball of mozzarella and eating them straight away.

Baking cheesecake with Anna.

The little birds playing catch in the big bush right outside my balcony.

The open box of veggie fingers has such a clever way of closing after you've taken out a few of the sticks - you just slide the parts into each other! It really works!

Proper outfit inpiration. A denim shirt knotted over a bright red dress. I'm convinced!

BERLIN: Deichkind playing in Wuhlheide / Teledisko! / watching Mulholland Drive at the open air cinema in the RAW area / Photoautomat sessions / stand-up comedy and a poetry slam at Lido / an exhibition about kisses (and my drawing being featured on the museum's Facebook page a few days later) / the Vietnamese market and pretty good spring rolls / matcha latte, a new purse, earrings and excellent ramen noodles at the Maybachufer / Fräulein Frost ice-cream and super cheap late-night pizza in Friedrichshain //

FRANCE: Ramatuelle (what a gorgeous city), taking selfies with Lexi in front of a huge, open valley with a sea view, drinking frappé on the town square, buying a shopping basket, walking through the streets filled with beautiful flowers / a three course dinner at a very nice restaurant / Rexi-licious picture action (and leashing him to my bad on a windy day at the beach) / the underwater camera / Pampelonne, a beach near St. Tropez. White sand, crystal clear water. Tiny fish, following us, trying to nibble at our feet; the moon over the hills at sunset / cooking together (I loved Lena's oven veggies with orange juice and burger night) and having decadent breakfasts every morning / French hypermarchés / crisps with chèvre and piment d'Espelette / the best dessert I ever had at a McDonald's - raspberry parfait with noisette sauce / driving down to Spain with Anika; walking along the Cap de Creus, having dinner in the shade on a town square surrounded by white buildings; all those winding mountain roads - the view! / L'Auberge de Fréjus, one of my favourite places in the world. Looking up to the starry sky, sitting on the bench near the hill in the middle of the night with a bottle of cidre, talking. Oh, and Violette, the goat. I LOVE goats. / the camera obscura effect in Lena's and Obi's room / drawing quite a lot, inventing sketchy zombie characters and taking in the landscape / Musée Picasso in Antibes, getting a book about all of his animals / playing Kubb in our garden / the perfume museum in Grasse, especially the afternoon in the museum's gardens near Mougins - I loved the Mimosa trees / whole days at the beach / getting to know Alex from New Zealand and Julie from Toulouse / reading five books in two and a half weeks //

#personal #august #2017 #august 2017 #things i love #present perfect

0 notes

loveandlighthunter · 7 years

Text

Essays In Love by Alain de Botton

What is so frightening is the extent to which we may idealize others when we have such trouble tolerating ourselves -- because we have such trouble...

Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity.

Faced with ambiguous signals, what better explanation than shyness: the beloved desires, but is too shy to say so. The seducer who wishes to call his victim shy will never be disappointed.

My sense of inferiority bred a need to take on a personality that was not my own, a seducing self that would respond to every demand and suggestion made by my exalted companion.

Silence was damning. A silence with an unattractive person implies they are the boring one. A silence with an attractive one immediately renders it certain you are the tedious party.

Behind such clumsy questions (with every one I asked, I seemed to get further from knowing her) rested an impatient to get to the most direct question of all, 'Who are you?' -- and hence 'Who should I be?'

Few things are as antithetical to sex as thought. Sex is instinctive, unreflexive and spontaneous, while thought is careful, uninvolved, and judgemental. To think during sex is to violate a fundamental law of intercourse. But did I have a choice?

I wasn't thinking anything cruel while I ran my hands and lips across Chloe's body, it was simply that Chloe would probably have been disturbed by news that I was thinking at all. Because thought implies judgement, and because we are all paranoid enough to take judgement to be negative, it is constitutionally suspect in the bedroom. Hence the sighing that drowns the sounds of lovers' thought, sighing that confirms: I am too passionate to be thinking. I kiss, and therfore I do not think -- such is the official myth under which lovemaking takes place, the bedroom a unique space in which partners tacitly agree not to remind one another of the awe-inspiring wonder of their nudity.

Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a private pain that is bitter-sweet as it is self-induced. But as soon as love is reciprocated, one must be prepared to give up the passivity of simply being hurt to take on the responsibility of perpetrating hurt oneself.

Theorists of love have tended to be rightly suspicious of fusion, their scepticism stemming from the sense that it is easier to impute similarity than investigate difference. We base out fall into love upon insufficient material, and supplement our ignorance with desire.

Only after we have undertaken a thorough exchange of opinions on parenting, politics, art, science, and appropriate snacks for the kitchen should two people ever decide they are ready to love each other. In the mature account of love, it is only when we truly know our partners that love deserves the chance to grow.

I'm no expert on love, but I'll tell you something. In the end, I've found that it doesn't really matter who you marry. If you like them in the beginning, you probably won't like them in the end. And if you start of hating them, there's always the chance you'll end up thinking they're all right.

I felt a primitive nostalgia for familiar surroundings, recognizing the disruption that every relationship entails -- a whole new person to learn about, to suggest myself to, to acclimatize myself to. It was perhaps a moment of fear at the thought of all the differences I would find in Chloe, all the times she would be one thing, and I another, when our world views would be incapable of alignment.

But if the terms have been linked, it is always in an implausible marriage, for it seems it is impossible to talk of love and letting live, and if we are left to live, we are not usually loved.

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it . . . the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized society against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. * * On Liberty, John Stuart Mill (Cambridge University Press, 1989)

With an inability to laugh comes an inability to acknowledge the contradictions inherent in every society and relationship, the multiplicity and clash of desires [...]

Does beauty give birth to love or does love give birth to beauty?

Every one of our lovers offers different solutions to the problem of beauty, and yet succeeds in redefining our notions of attractiveness in a way that is as original and as idiosyncratic as the landscape of their face.

The most interesting faces generally oscillate between charm and crookedness. There is a tyranny about perfection, a certain tedium even, something that asserts itself with all the dogmatism of a scientific formula. The more tempting kind of beauty has only a few angles from which it may be seen, and then not in all lights at all times. It flirts dangerously with ugliness, it takes risks with itself, it does not side comfortably with mathematical rules of proportion, it draws its appeals from precisely those details that also lend themselves to ugliness. As Proust once said, classically beautiful women should be left to men without imagination.

Was my sense of being in love not just the result of living in a particular cultural epoch? Was it not society, rather than any authentic urge, that was motivating me to pride myself on romantic love?

Because only the body is open to the eye, the hope of the infatuated lover is that the soul is faithful to its casing, that the body owns an appropriate soul, that what the skin represents turns out to be what it is. I did not love Chloe for her body, I loved her body for the promise of who she was. It was a most inspiring promise.

Delusions are not harmful in themselves, they only hurt when one is alone in believing in them, when one cannot create an environment in which they can be sustained. So long as both Chloe and I could preserve the yolk of love intact, what did it matter quite what the truth was?

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone there who can understand what we are saying, in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

Without love, we lost the ability to possess a proper identity, within love, there is a constant confirmation of our selves. It is no wonder that the concept of a God who can see us has been central to many religions: to be seen is to be assured that we exist, all the better if one is dealing with God (or partner) who loves us.

It was a reminder that the labelling of others is usually a silent process. Most people do not openly force us into roles, they merely suggest that we adopt them through their reactions to us, and hence surreptiously prevent us from moving beyond whatever mould they have assigned us.

However happy we may be with our partner, out love for them necessarily hinders us from pursuing alternatives. Why should this constrain us if we love them? Why should we feel this as a loss unless our love for them has already begun to wane? Because in resolving our need to love, we do not always succeed in resolving our need to long.

Because happiness is so terrifying and anxiety-inducing to accept, somewhat unconsciously, Chloe and I had always tended to locate hedonia either in memory or in anticipation. Though the pursuit of happiness was our avowed goal, it was accompanied by an implicit belief that it would be realized somewhere in the very distant future [...]

Why did we live this way? Perhaps because to enjoy ourselves in the present would have meant engaging ourselves in an imperfect or dangerously ephemeral reality, rather than hiding behind a comfortable belief in an afterlife.

Most of the time, the present is too flawed to remind us that the disease of living in the present imperfect tense is within us, and nothing to do with the world outside.

The strength of the accusation we made, their sheer implausibility, showed that we argued not because we hate one another, but because we loved one another too much -- or, to risk confusing things, because we hated loving one another to the extent we did. Our accusations were loaded with a complicated subtext, I hate you, because I love you. It amounted to a fundamental protest, I hate having no choice but to risk loving you like this.

It is easiest to accept happiness when it is brought about through things that one can control, that one has achieved after much effort and reason.

At the height of love, there appeared a temptation to end the relationship prematurely, so that either Chloe or I could play at being executioner, rather than see the other partner, or habit, or familiarity end things.

The desire is that I be loved even if I lose everything: leaving nothing but 'me', this mysterious 'me' taken to be the self at its weakest, most vulnerable point. Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you?Everyone loves strength, but Do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test. Do you love me stripped of everything that might be lost, for only the things I will have for ever?

What have I done to deserve love? asks the humble lover; I can have done nothing. What have I done to be denied love? protests the betrayed one, arrogantly claiming possession of a gift that is never one's due. To both questions, the one who hands out love can only reply: Because you are you -- an answer that leaves the beloved dangeously and unpredictably strung between grandiosity and depression.

Certain things are said not because they will be heard, but because it is important to speak.

You must love me, says the romantic terrorist, I will force you to love me by sulking you or making you feel jealous, but then comes the paradox, for if love is returned, it is at once considered tainted, and the romantic terrorist must complain, If I have only forced you to love me, then I cannot accept this love, for it was not spontaneously given. Romantic terrorism is a demand that negates itself in the process of its resolution, it brings the terrorist up against an uncomfortable reality -- that love's death cannot be arrested.

What use was it to live if it was without love and without being heard? What was freedom if it meant the freedom to be abandoned?

The arrogance of wanting to be loved had emerged only now it was unreciprocated -- I was left alone with my desire, defenceless, beyond the law, shockingly crude in my demands: Love me! And for what reason? I had only the usual paltry, insufficient excuse: Because I love you . . .

What curse did I labour under? Nothing other than an inability to enjoy happy relationships, possibly the greatest misfortune known to man in modern society.

Only by my death could I assert the importance and immortality of my love, only through self-destruction could I remind a world grown weary of tragedy that love was a deadly serious matter.

It was not a question of being or not being. My answer to Hamlet was to be and not to be.

The physical world refused to let me forget. Life is crueller than art, for the latter usually assures that the physical surroundings reflect characters' mental states.

My identity had for so long been forged around 'us' that to return to the 'I' involved an almost complete reinvention of myself.

We start trying to be wise when we realize that we are not born knowing how to live, but that life is a skill that has to be acquired, like riding a bicycle or playing the piano.

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

Though love might never be painless and was certainly not wise, neither could it be forgotten. It was as inevitable as it was unreasonable -- and its unreason was unfortunately no argument against it.

#quotes #books #Essays in Love #Alain de Botton

0 notes