Request 04/10 From Twitter.

Theo “I adore you with every fibre of my being. I would give everything for you. Every penny I have the shirt off my back the shoes off my feet, everything I have I would give just to see you smile. I love you like I have never loved anything or anyone, which is why I cannot marry you, I cannot lock you in to a life of poverty, a life of fear and doubt. You deserve to have everything you’ve ever dreamed of everything you’ve ever wanted. You deserve to live a life of comfort, free from worry about where your next meal is coming from, or how you’re going to afford this months rent. And when your health fails you, in the hardest hours of your life, you deserve a doctor by your side. I can’t give you that life, miss Eloise, so you should go, now. Go and find someone who can, a gentleman who can allow you to live the life you want in comfort and peace. And I will love you, silently from the sidelines. I will watch you walk to your love on your wedding day, and tell everyone that asks that the tears I shed are those of joy.” Sharpe

and

Eloise “perhaps you are right. Perhaps I do deserve better than this life, but doesn’t everyone? Why am I so special and different that I deserve more than everyone else, no. I may deserve a better life than the one you can give but I do not want it. I am a woman, Theo. You know as well as I do that there are a very limited number of decisions I get to make for myself in my life. Who I marry, where I choose to begin this part of my life, the person I choose to have by my side until the day I die is one of the ONLY decisions I get to make. One of the ONLY decisions I get the final say in and I’ll be damned if I allow you to take that choice away from me. You may think I deserve better but I do not want better. I want you. I want this life. Because I would rather struggle through with you than live a comfortable life in a big house with some gentleman, and on my deathbed realise I have never truly lived, never truly loved. I deserve to die without regrets, with the man I love by my side, so I do not care if you think I deserve better Theo, because you are what I want. I deserve the life that I want. Please do not deny me that. I love you Theo. And I will never marry anyone else so I suggest you meet me here in agreement, so we can finally begin building the life we both deserve.” Bridgerton

Random things. What happens when you protest in Russia? You are immediately arrested. It’s not a game of chance, it’s a guarantee. All protests are forbidden. We are not allowed to call the war – the war, you’ll be fined at best, arrested at worst if you do. In fact, as of today, if you’re caught at an anti-war protest, you’re considered a member of a radical extremist group and are facing 6 years in jail. People “detained” for protesting are invariably beaten. Concussions, contusions, broken bones. Men more so than women, though women can’t rely on it. You can be asked to strip since they “need” to check your underwear. You’ll be verbally abused and threatened the entire time. And yes, of course, it doesn’t stop there, since they now know you and your family and where you all work and live. In this country, there is nothing truly independent, there never was. If the words “1937” mean nothing to you, you are very, very fortunate. For us, it’s this again, only a thousand times worse because now it’s empowered by technology.

The other day they arrested a bunch of kids. Literally kids, four of them, aged seven to eleven. They, along with their mothers were carrying flowers to the Ukrainian embassy and a small simple poster “No to War”. They were all detained and immediately separated, kept locked up for the night. We don’t know how the kids were treated. Mothers had their possessions confiscated, not allowed to call anyone, stripped, yelled at, threatened. The harshest threat was to be stripped of parental rights on the spot, never see their kids again. The kids were released closer to morning when a lawyer from a group that helps people in these situations arrived. I have no idea how these lawyers are still allowed to function. Small mercies. (Support them here: https://donate.ovdinfo.org/)

But it’s not just the pain of punishment or jail sentence. It’s the utter uselessness of it all. He won’t care if half the population comes out to say “No to War”. He won’t care if it’s all of us.

A few days ago, every school in the country received instructions to hold special classes to explain to kids why “the liberating military operation” was necessary and what happens now. The teachers have been given manuals on what to say and how to answer the kids’ questions. Some of the answers include: “Don’t worry if you hear that some countries don’t want to be friends with us anymore. There are other countries who do, and besides, Russia is a very big country, so we have everything you can possibly need right here.” By “other countries”, my guess is, they mean North Korea. After the class, the kids are supposed to take a test. It’s electronic, entered through a QR code, and the answers are automatically logged in. Questions include: “Explain why the liberating military operation was necessary” and “Expand on what the Russian government is doing to help people of Lugansk and Donetsk.” The results of the test are tallied, and if some kid doesn’t give the right ones, their parents are called in for “a talk”.

We will either end up with a bunch of really smart kids or another generation of completely deluded people. The last time something like this had happened was in 1991, when the Soviet Union was falling, and my classmates and I were asked to make a choice of do we want to pledge allegiance to the communist party or not. I was ten. My class, as I remember, was split roughly in two. The kids who voted “yes” looked at the rest of us with teary eyes and whispered “our parents told us to do it, they are too afraid.” And we got it. We all got it. Nobody hated anybody for the choice, because we all knew that fear and we all knew what it was like, to be hostage of the regime. We who voted “no” knew what we were risking. At ten years old, we were more politically savvy than a lot of full-grown adults across the ocean. It’s not a good thing.

For roughly twenty-something years, we lived in the illusion that we were out of that prison. Sure, our democracy was not perfect, but whose is? It was maybe incredibly naïve of us, but can you blame us that we wanted to believe it? That we still desperately want to, which is why there are a lot of really confused people in the country right now who still can’t grasp that their leadership has betrayed them?They will, in fact, believe anything but this. They will sooner believe him and ignore the facts, because a) they’re not getting the facts, and b) the truth is terrifying.

Nothing has changed. We’re still in the USSR. Yesterday, in Nalchik, students of the local university were ordered to go out and express their support for the president. They had no warning. At some point the university staff members entered their classrooms, handed out banners and t-shirts, and ordered them to go outside “to stand in solidarity” with the president. Refusal was not an option on pain of expulsion. Among other statements, they were made to hold up banners saying #wearenotashamed which should tell you everything you need to know about how the Russian people really feel.

I’m not going to talk about the independent media, because the last survivors of this extremely rare breed are being shut down as we speak. Meduza is still holding up by some miracle, but their turn can be any hour. They have been declared “a foreign agent” some years back, which means that they can no longer be properly financed and have to preface every single post and article with a huge all-caps statement that this information was created by a foreign agent, presumably to turn “loyal citizens” away. They have been subsiding on crowd-funding this whole time, can’t imagine how, since all transactions are now traceable and giving them money is not without consequences. (Support them here: https://support.meduza.io/)

The world has turned away from us, and I get it, but they don’t understand what they’re doing. Or maybe they do but don’t care. I don’t mean this on an emotional level, but purely practical. The more they punish the Russian people, the more, unfortunately but sadly naturally, the Russian people will unite in their support of He Who Must Not Be Named. He will feel even more legitimate in his actions and he won’t stop. Not that I can imagine anything that could make him stop now but… It’s not helping. It might make a lot of people out there feel better about themselves, but it’s not helping.

Worst of all, we can’t help Ukraine. So much as saying that we’re fighting a war or that we are losing that war can earn you up to 15 years in prison for “spreading misinformation.” It’s impossible to send over money, and as for supplies we can only gather those for the refugees that are fleeing to Russia. Our economy is on the brink of collapse, and the people that are running from the war and come here will have to share it with us. We’re doing what we can for them. It’s not enough.

And personally… My mornings these days start like this. I wake up. I don’t want to get up. I do eventually. Splash water on my face etc. Take my heart medication. Wait for it to take effect. Then I open Telegram and see if Meduza is still broadcasting. Read the overnight update. Learn that the horror continues in a multitude of fresh new horrifying ways. Remind myself that I have no right to sympathy or feeling sorry for myself or any of that. I was not the one who spent the night in a bomb shelter. I was not the one whose house was destroyed. I wish I was but I’m not. I’m just a useless spectator who’s too chickenshit to even go get beaten up and who rationalizes her cowardice any way she knows how. I want you to know this about me before you decide to continue knowing me. I am unaccountably grateful having known all of you.

I don’t know what else to say except maybe this. Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.

I worked so hard on this stupid little video. Sorry about the tags, I’ve had this account for six years and I’m just now posting lol

System Of A Down performing (and Rammstein watching) @ PinkPop 2002

I seem to have fallen out of love with reading and I don't know how to get back into it. I want to support all these new creators coming into the fandom but I just; Don't have the energy to engage in something new, even when it's fanfic so I already know the source material and can hit the ground running. I still write and update my WIPs, but that makes me feel even worse for not reading others story's as I know how important comments are for motivation. How can I fall back in love with reading?

First of all: hugs. Take a deep breath in. Hold it. Let it out. 

You don’t have to do everything. 

Life is busy. Life is stressful. There’s a lot of stuff going on and that’s all a lot to deal with. If you don’t have the energy to read fic right now, then don’t read fic. I’m at a point where I’m dipping back into fandoms I read literally twenty years ago because that’s what my brain can handle right now. I’ve accepted that, and I’m giving myself what I need. 

Reading takes energy, just like writing does. Commenting takes energy too. All of it requires focus and concentration and mental processing power that you might or might not have a lot of. 

It’s not that you’ve fallen out of love with reading. It’s that your brain can’t handle new information right now. It might be a good idea to unplug a bit, if you can. Step back from social media. Ignore the news for a week. Reconnect with yourself and the people around you without thinking about everyone online or out in the world. If you’ve been stretching yourself too thin, take some time to contract again. 

The other day, I redid a stress inventory that I did when I was working full time while in graduate school and buying my first home. I’ve got more stress now than I had then - and that’s saying something! But when you look at that list and you think about the world we live in currently, you can see how much we’re all going through. 

Forgive yourself for not being able to do what you used to be able to do. Rethink what your “normal” is. Your best is going to be different on any given day because some days are better than others. You’ll get back to reading again when you have the energy for it, so do what you can to take care of yourself and get some of your energy back. ❤

Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny photographed by David LaChapelle

The boooys :>

touching grass is not enough i must psychically connect to a mushroom colony