Mercury

Where I post stuff regarding my Ao3, because nobody knows I'm who I am on Tumblr and I need it to stay that way

[mercurycyllene]

Not good enough at singing to be a singer

Not good enough at drawing to be an artist

Not good enough at writing to be an author

So instead now I'm here learning science while trying to vibrate out my skull.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I think a lot of people were raised being told that things are bad with no explanation as to why they’re bad and I don’t think I know enough about psychology to make any big statements about that

but anyways I think a lot of people see cheating on your partner as bad because they were just told that sex outside of your partner is bad or something but really cheating on your partner is bad because you had an agreement based on trust with them and you broke that trust so like why should they trust you with anything else now

[what-even-is-thiss]

The thing about taboos related to sex as well is that there’s a lot of diseases that can be transmitted through sex and in a world without condoms or antibiotics or super effective birth control it kind of makes sense to discourage people from sleeping around a lot because like. Abstinence only sex education is stupid but if you choose abstinence for yourself it is in fact very effective at preventing disease and pregnancy.

And if you have sex with someone other than your partner without telling them, well, then you’ve just exposed them to whatever diseases that other person might’ve been exposed to. That’s a risk they didn’t consent to.

But see explaining this to people makes too much sense I guess. Instead a lot of people are just like “sex bad” with no elaboration as to why they might be telling you that.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I can’t believe I have to say this but this not a pro cheating on your partner post you absolute troglodytes

[mercurycyllene]

Had a bit of an epiphany regarding how much we affect strangers and how little we notice.

I'm in college now, a fast-track pre-university program thats quite coveted. After the orientation closing ceremony, I was at the stairs next to the backstage entrance playing the guitar I borrowed to fiddle with when one of the backstage crew asked me all of a sudden, "I feel like I've seen you from somewhere."

Of course, I said no. I looked him up and down and found nothing that jolted my memory. i have never met him at all, and told him so.

He hummed, uncertain now that I didn't know what he was talking about. His friend laughed. "I think it was some education fair or something."

That didn't exactly narrow it down. I've been to multiple education fairs, all organised in stuffy halls, the queue for prestigeous universities a mile long. "I've been to so many, which one?"

"The one where you asked the lady at the counter for [program I'm in] about chronic illnesses or about foundation. I was in front of you in line."

I remember the exact conversation he was referencing, and maybe a vague notion of a boy standing before me in the queue, but I was surprised he remembered me. It was just a chance meeting in the middle of a huge hall and he remembered the girl who walked up to the lady at the side and confidently asked everything she needed answered.

And just a week ago, I was called to a lecture hall for a meeting when the girl sitting two seats over mentioned offhandedly, "You look kinda familiar, from some program, I think."

She looked vaguely familiar too, so the recognition was more solid this time. Program, program…

"The chemistry one? With the learning segment and teaching segment?" I guessed wildly. I wasn't a very active student, and most of my participation marks pummeted in my last year of high school, but that program was so memorable it might as well have seared itself to the back of my eyelids. Teaching chemistry to students of differing language programs meant teaching them in an entirely unfamiliar terminology. Theoretically I could speak the language fluently, but I learnt science in english and the words didn't translate as well as I hoped.

"Yes, yes!" She lit up with incandescent joy. "Exactly!"

"Were you in part 1 or 2?"

"Both! I remember you were presenting chemical bonds and you covered the title, and told us you write that wrong and laughed."

I didn't remember that. I remembered drawing many electron shells and ions, but that scene in particular slipped my mind. But she remembered it. She remembered this random meeting with a stranger she hadn't even talked to, because I laughed off my mistakes and gesticulated very passionately about ionic bonds.

The same is true in inverse. There are people whom I remember for no other reason than they were memorable. There's the girl with the gorgeous curls, or the boy who's always the loudest in a room, and the shameless sweet-talker who convinced me to buy sushi I didn't like.

[mercurycyllene]

Lewis had been fresh out of high school, young, naive and dumb, when Agatha accosted him at his part-time job with an offer he could not refuse. In hindsight, he really should have politely refused, faked his death and fled the fucking country. He never should have let Agatha sink her claws into the young impressionable version of him, the one with aspirations of the future and saw good in people.

He is at crossroads. He has always been at crossroads, the cusp between one thing and another, meandering up and down the ledge of a precipice, like he would jump if given the chance.

"I am of no consequence."

A nobody forged of sorrow and fear and the staggering weight of regret, constantly living in pursuit of mediocrity but falling short each time.

He wants the Lewis in her memories to remain the perfect role model, untarnished by his own cowardice and the weight of begotten truths.

"Why won't you come back--"

"I left for a reason, Charlotte!" He says, curling into himself, fingers gripping the table hard enough to bruise. His breath comes too quickly for comfort. "I left because I became a liability. Because I tried to kill myself, do you understand?"

The silence hangs in the air, strung up and displayed, bleeding between them like a flesh wound.

He had inherited an ability that has grown too big for the confines of his soul, screeching and hissing and fighting him for dominance, refusing to defer to his authority. It is unbelievably exhausting, having your soul rebel against your flesh and blood like a parasite -- to know that someday he will be an empty husk ripe for the picking. He would rather kill himself than surrender his body to Alice.

"This is my penance. My fucking Greek tragedy." Lewis slams the glass of wine on the table, cracking it down the middle. Wine seeps into the clean tablecloth, staining it reddish-purple. His anger burns him from the inside out.

They say that in times of great crisis if you pray with enough fervent devotion and desperation, god will take pity on you and give you the power you need at that moment. That is a lie of epic proportions.

[mercurycyllene]

A collection of summaries I wrote for my series, just for some insight.

It's a MHA x BSD Reincarnation AU so stay if you're interested in that...

I'm in ao3 with the same username

[mercurycyllene]

People seem to think I read rpf for the famous people depicted.

No, I read rpf to see the same two ppl with excellent fictional chemistry fall in love over and over again. I don't even know how half of them look like. I just think the dynamic is nice. I couldn't care less if you changed the names as long as it felt the same

[mercurycyllene]

I love how my aunt banned romance books in her house because my cousin was reading smutty novels.

Meanwhile my physical books are all decent, lots of nice old classics and murder mysteries, but my online books are the filthiest things you can ever read.