Apparently Grace Kelly Used To Call Stephanie Her Wild Child Or “enfant Terrible”

On of the less intuitive things about love, I've found, of any kind, is the importance of needing things.

I didn't realize it until recently, but I've always seen love as something requiring sacrifice, selflessness, patience, and generosity- to ask for nothing is to be the best person I can be, small and quiet and never in the way, always happy and helpful, self-sufficient and present when desired.

It's only as an adult, now, that I'm beginning to see the selfishness of wanting nothing.

I cut my friend's hair in my kitchen the other day. They wanted a trim and I had the skills, so I offered, and was genuinely excited when they stopped hesitating over "bothering me" and took me up on it. It was a peaceful afternoon, and we had tea and chatted for an hour or more.

My brother and I shared popcorn at the movies a while ago. When I came time to pay, I pulled my card out like a wild western sheriff and slapped it on the machine before he could fight me for it first. The satisfaction was delightful.

Someone called me crying on the phone the other day. Kept apologizing for disturbing me at work, talking about how they were bothering me on my lunch break. I was telling the truth when I told them that really, I was flattered and honored and relieved, knowing that if they were hurting I would know, that I didn't have to worry in silence. It felt good to hear them slowly come down, and to know that they knew it would be better soon, and to hear them laugh wetly on the other end. We're getting together for a visit next week.

It's hard to need things, if you've trained yourself not to. It's hard to want things, when you don't know how to want anymore. Trusting people is difficult, and so is relying on them, but I don't know where I'd be without the people who rely on me.

I've heard a lot of people say, "Nobody will love you unless you love yourself". I've had a lot of thoughts about it. It's not right, but it's not wrong, either, I think.

"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... I've always taken that to mean, "You will not be lovable until you develop a positive view of yourself as a person".

Now, I think it's sort of inside-out.

"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... because nobody can show their love to you in a way that you can accept until you treat yourself kindly, and learn what you need, and what you want, and how to ask for it, and then give that vulnerability away.

Love, for me, is someone I ask for a ride to the airport. Whether they end up doing this or not is irrelevant.

It's not needy, or selfish, or taking up energy. It's giving the gift of being wanted, and needed, and thought of. It's giving someone the security of being part of someone's life.

had to google it too after reading that post and you are totally right: this car is the most british thing to ever exist but it also just screams Skulduggery

i jsut googled what a bentley 1954 r-type looks like and they look so british wtf

You really would think they’d have realised by now that having a group of seven really isn’t working for them.......

What do you think China’s childhood was like? Every book, her view on it seems to change..

tbh it’s actually quite interesting seeing China’s different takes on her childhood, because in a way I don’t think she’s ever really recovered from it unlike Bliss, who got out at such an early age. Indeed, often when discussing her past, China always compares herself to her brother, portraying herself as weaker, slower in escaping - but the interesting thing is, she never really mentions what it was they escaped from, rather than just the mentioned indoctrination of all believers.

But the first time she really mentions her opinion of her childhood, and not just her general experience as a worshipper, she brushes it off, saying:

It had been a happy childhood. Completely insane, but happy. - MC

What’s even more interesting is through the rest of this extract, China keeps making jokes about her questions of faith + the general situation

True, she had generally had more fun in the old days... and she didn’t have to spend half her day praying. She’d never been able to understand why the Faceless Ones weren’t praying to her. - MC

But then, what I find interesting is the subtext in any of her memories of her childhood - they’re awful and yet she almost normalises them. And even when she admits to some of her troubling memories, they’re pretty watered down:

All though her childhood she’d had trouble sleeping, plagued as she was by the stories her parents would tell her of the Faceless Ones.

Doesn’t that make you feel happy? And China had said, No, Mother, it gives me bad dreams, and her mother’s face had changed in an instant and China had spent the next three days on her knees, praying to the Faceless Ones, begging for their forgiveness. - B

It’s a pretty horrifying image, a young girl (which China is very much implied to be in this extract) being forced onto her knees for three days straight because she dared to voice her fears.

Idk if it’s a coping method or something, but in a way, I see it as China almost blocking out the trauma of her childhood - we see her mention it occasionally, but most of the time she just laughs it off (which is really worrying)

I think something people often forget is that unlike some worshippers of the Faceless ones, China didn’t choose to be one, she was born into it - she had no choice, she was practically indoctrinated and it’s clear that some traumatic things happened behind the scenes that enforced her to stay obedient

What’s even more interesting is that when China leaves the church of the Faceless Ones, she doesn’t go straight to the good guys, she isolates herself and she also has some very interesting conversations about myths/fantastical elements in the world, with this being one example:

“I’ve heard nonsense. I’ve heard something that doesn’t even deserve to be called a rumour. - SP

Seems like another one of her coping methods up until TFO is to deny the existence of these gods, these legends, because in a way China never got over the indoctrination of the Church - if she fled and the gods were real, she’s damned. So if she brushes it off, just like her childhood trauma, pretending it’s not real, then she can cope - she’s not damned, which seems to be a prominent fear of her childhood

untroubled by half-remembered visions of doom and damnation + she had hidden her fears from her parents and suffered those nightmares in silence. - B

It’s interesting to see the relapse of faith in this most recent book - I’ve discussed my predictions for China in this post but I think it’s pointing towards an unraveling mind in many ways, as we also see China having a lot of flashbacks to her past as if she’s starting to relieve a lot of her repressed trauma - that could be because of Solace’s influence or something else, who knows..

This is canon 😭😭😭

so I know that you hc Nat as being the one to pickup Tony from Siberia, do you think there's any other reason beyond keeping the avengers together as to why she came back? Just found your fics and I'm loving what you do to their characters :)

omg i love that you guys send me asks like this! literally send them anytime (and i promise i'll get to everyone's prompts!)

so, the hc that nat saves tony is really just a vehicle for nat and tony being able to speak without not knowing whether rhodey will be okay hanging over their heads. the more i think about ironwidow peri and post cacw (and i have been thinking about it since 2016 haha) it's tony's emotional state that causes him to reject natasha so thoroughly in that scene. he's scared and furious, but more than that, it's not his best moment because he's indignant. that's why nat's comment about his ego hits. he's not in a good enough place to evaluate nat's actions objectively; he only sees the betrayal. and natasha is more vulnerable and hopeful than we've ever seen her too, causing her to take him at his words instead of digging deeper. (i'm midway through my im2/cacw ironwidow parallels meta, where i think i explain this better!)

but after 'he's my friend' 'so was i'? tony has spent all of his anger. i imagine he sits there on that cold floor, not angry, but numb. how did i get here? how did we get here? what do i have left? and if nat shows up there, he goes, well, i have natasha. i'm upset, but i have natasha. the avengers are ruined, but natasha is here - whatever her intentions are, she came.

i know it might seem like i'm focusing on tony a lot given your question is about natasha, but i think it's important because natasha knows her team. she knows that steve has come away from this upset and worried about the future, but he did not thoroughly break the way that tony did. i stick by my assessment that natasha's overarching goal is to keep the team together. they're really (other than yelena) all she has, and they give her a purpose. if natasha saw tony in siberia, her endgame would require her to adjust her plans to make sure he's okay, because tony stark and steve rogers are both indispensable to the avengers. steve has backup and moral support. tony has nothing, or at least he feels that way. so she stays because tony needs her. it's as simple as that.

in delicate, i suggest there are other reasons, because of course there are. one, natasha would want to have a say in the accords. two, her skillset aka pulling the strings is better served in nyc than in wakanda, where all she can really do is make sure the others are protected. for example, i imagine she likes ensuring that the un is not wise to steve's activities, whatever they may be. three, i think there's a possibility that she's more upset with steve than tony about the events of cacw - though i doubt she lets her personal feelings enter into the equation, and though i don't like "choosing sides" in the traditional way in cacw, i think she perceived steve's motives as more selfish than tony's.

all of this, however, is secondary to my earlier point. tony needed natasha. natasha goes where she is needed, because her whole psychosis is about being needed because she doesn't see how someone could want her for herself. and when natasha realizes she starts relying on tony as much as he relies on her? that tony sees beyond what she presents the world, that she wants him to (queue the 'you let them go' scene, where she's the most vulnerable we've seen her at that point imo)? that's what creates the perfect conditions for ironwidow.

did a study of that one ahsoka pic

Wanted SP Baddies

I had the faceless discord decide which characters to draw for the bottom row since I’m indecisive as ever, and full credit to @scrubblet for the ‘being too handsome’ charge for Billy-Ray bc I loved that idea lmao

Top: Baron Vengeous, Nefarian Serpine, Mevolent Bottom: Billy-Ray Sanguine, Tanith Low, Spring-heeled Jack

Irish Sanctuary : Don't worry, we've sent out our finest team to find Nefarian Serpine.

The Dead Men :

I am not the divine masculine or the divine feminine I am the divine comedy and you will address me as such