quotes that i think are very trobed coded:
“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.” - Richard Siken
“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.” - Richard Siken
“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.” - Richard Siken
“If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.” - Richard Siken
“I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.” - Richard Siken
“You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything's okay and you tell them
you're just tired.
And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.” - Richard Siken
“He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.” - Richard Siken
“When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?” - Ocean Vuong
“I miss you more than I remember you.” - Ocean Vuong
“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.” - Ocean Vuong
“What were you before you met me?”
“I think I was drowning.”
“And what are you now?”
“Water.” - Ocean Vuong
“You love him. The story still ends.
So please, I beg you,
he is all that I have,
and you have so many heroes,
and the world has so many more.
Let him be soft. And let him be mine.” - Pencap
“Yes, yes, yes, I do like you. I am afraid to write the stronger word.” - Virginia Woolf
“I’m always soft for you, that’s the problem. You could come knocking on my door five years from now and I would open my arms wider and say ‘come here, it’s been too long, it felt like home with you.’” - Azra T.
“Good news, I love you anyway. All the mess and fuss of you. All the stray hairs and uneven smiles. I love your laugh and your sigh and the way you sing along with the music. It’s all lovable. It feels so good to love you.” - Redinkskinned
“Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway.” - Sade Andria Zabala
“There is something wrong with you. There is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me.” - Hera Lindsay Bird
“I’m afraid of a lot of things, but mostly, most sincerely, I am afraid of being completely unraveled by you, and you finding nothing you want in there.” - L M Dorsey
“And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn’t matter.” - from “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
“I just want you to know that you’re very special. And the only reason I’m telling you is that I don’t know if anyone else ever has.” - from “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
“You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.” - from “All The Bright Places” by Jennifer Niven
“You make me lovely.” - from “All The Bright Places” by Jennifer Niven
“You know what I like about you? You’re interesting. You’re different. And I can talk to you. Don’t let that go to your head.”
“…You know what I like about you? Everything.” - from “All The Bright Places” by Jennifer Niven
“I love you.”
“It’ll pass.” - from “Fleabag” (2016-2019) by Phoebe Waller-Bridge
“I sit here on the couch, waiting.
Waiting for this to pass.
Days go by and I’m still here. Waiting.
You sit there, nothing changes.
I wait with bared teeth.
I wait.
I wait.
I wait.
I wait for you.”
“I’ll take care of you.”
“It’s rotten work.”
“Not to me. Not if it’s you.” - Anne Carson
“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” - Jane Austen
Every time I see mxtx fandom discourse about how villains and antagonists “had no choice” in doing evil and how we should feel sympathy for this cowardice because “it’s not like they (actual factual ruling class) had the real power to break the mold,” I think of:
Si Xiyan, imprisoned disgraced cultivator, being told that she can be accepted back as the most beloved disciple of one of the most powerful cultivation sects in the world if only she would kill her baby, and her choosing to ingest the poison on her own so that her child could be born safely at the cost of her life.
Gongyi Xiao going against his entire sect to rescue Shen Qingqiu from the Water Prison despite already having an increasingly tenuous relationship with the sect leader and his daughter.
Shen Qingqiu, certified scum villain, risking his life over and over again to do right by Luo Binghe even though he is certain that Luo Binghe will repay his kindness with death.
I think of:
Lan Wangji, a clan heir, fighting his own beloved family to protect one of the few people in the cultivation world willing to stand up for what’s right, and accepting being whipped for it.
Jiang Yanli, a clan heir’s widow, running onto a battlefield and giving her life for her little brother.
the Wen siblings, labor camp escapees and remnants of a reviled clan, sacrificing themselves so that their protector wouldn’t be killed for the crime of self-defense.
Mianmian, a servant only just elevated to becoming a disciple, publicly defecting from her sect in protest of them slandering a hero.
I think of:
Yin Yu, a banished god, choosing death over regaining his godhood by harming Quan Zizhen—the shidi he’s always been told to had “stolen his rightful status” in life.
the street performer, a poor man who could only make money performing humiliating entertainment for the well-off, choosing death over saving his own life by harming the man who for all intents and purposes stole his business.
Mu Qing, a staple god for about 800 years who had betrayed friendship for the approval of other gods, finally choosing to make an enemy out of the ruler of the heavens over betraying his former friend again, even if it meant that said former friend would never believe that he didn’t betray him again.
Of all of these characters, some of them were people of privilege, but many of them were the very bottom of their social hierarchies. Some are staring down the edge of the knife with their only hope of survival and living well being to make the immoral choice. Nevertheless, they chose to be moral people by putting themselves on the line rather than sacrificing others for personal gain, a choice that no antagonist—all of whom are people of power and means even if they didn't start out that way—makes in an mxtx novel. “But everyone would have hated them!” is not an excuse for participating in evil. “But they would have died otherwise!” is not an excuse for participating in evil. If other characters of less means could do it, if their peers could do it, then why didn’t your fav?
I watched "blue eyed samurai" in two days in one breath....
My Instagram.
graves grow no green that you can use.
gwendolyn brooks
An interesting demonstration of how the human brain works.
But also something of a lesson regarding perception, and the unreliability of subjective perspective versus objective reality.
You can be extremely certain about how you perceive the world, your "lived experience," that which you "feel it in my heart." But that doesn't mean it's actually true. And it doesn't mean we have to endorse it, or ignore or outright deny objective reality.
That's a "you" thing, not a "we" thing.
kim dokja and bihyungs dynamic before they get used to each other is so funny. me and the guy i keep trapped in my torture dungeon for entertainment (he keeps torturing himself and the others in new and creative ways i hadn't thought about before. hes actually kind of better at this than i am. im kinda scared)