#135 words

[rarebloorose]

hi!! prompt for a edroy: confession!

Here ya go! I'm not sure if you meant that you wanted EdRoy, but I guess it can be seen as that. I tried to go with something that wasn't the traditional meaning of confession and ended up with something silly. Hope you enjoy, Anon!

“What?” Ed said in disbelief.

“I said I hate bugs, so get that thing away from me.” Roy was cowering from the other side of his desk as Ed held the harmless spider in his open hands. The spider wasn’t even trying to escape. It was as if he was just as weirded out about Roy’s fear of something ten times smaller than him.

“Roy, look—” Ed took barely a step forward when his boyfriend brandished his pen like a sword in front of him. Did he forget that he was wearing his gloves? That made fire?

“Edward Maruice Elric, get the fuck away from me!”

“That’s not even my middle name!” Ed laughed. “I don’t even have one!”

“You will if you don’t keep that thing away from me!!”

“What does that even mean??”

[intimacy-in-virtuality]

“Sometimes a photo/video/message isn't enough. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but how could any of that compare to catching someone's eye in real time”.

Post 3

Many of my virtual interactions were fulfilling and fostered connection, though there was also an underlying parasociality to them. Not receiving a response or failing to see a post for a while quickly led me to thoughts of rejection/neglect; ‘Have they blocked me?’ ‘Was it something I did?’. As Turkle (2013:10) notes, “longed for here is the pleasure of full attention” – something I found is never truly achieved in the virtual world. Due to the nature of SM algorithms, focus is constantly being diverted online, which impedes intimacy and connectedness. This elucidates the agency SM exercises as a technical object, and the relative inferiority I felt when at its mercy.

[thewritehag]

Feeling better today, which is good because it was my last day of bereavement and I have to go to work tomorrow. Still out of pain meds, but my cycle is petering out. WiFi’s been going in and out, which is fandamntastic, and I’m thinking I might need to sell my car so I can actually breathe.

I got my motivation back, but I’m paranoid because of the lousy WiFi connection and my backups are all on drop box. So! Long hand until tomorrow.

[soundofez]

Wings

She can feel them.

They’re not there, of course, not actually— but she senses them hovering behind her, and when she concentrates she can flex them.

Sometimes feels like she can fly.

She rejects death.

She didn’t know it was possible, actually, to simply say no and keep going, to push on and reclaim herself, and now she has them. She has wings.

She has wings, and this time she can fly.

She takes to the sky a lot, floating in the air, hovering just over buildings, letting the breeze take her where it will. Slowly, slowly, she starts exerting her own will, a feeling she comes to learn is Magic, and soon it speaks to her, and there is a push and pull of where she wants to be and where she is wanted.

[soundofez]

I don't know who or what or how only that I am and that I can choose to be happy, to continue, to find out where the end of the road goes or to be sad, to cease, to lay down and forfeit my sense of self choices, choices, always choices choices deferred, a silently growing pressure, waiting until you can't wait any longer the dam breaks, and the waves are upon you, washing you away eventually you might float back to the shore or maybe you kept your footing and watched everyone else get swept away and maybe you stood aloft and maybe you left the waves behind but maybe you struggled through the waves to bring others back and to you I say: struggle on to all of you, I say: struggle on

[iwriteasiwrite]

Halupi #1: Like Water Like Country

One distinct feature of most pre-Hispanic pagan Filipino cultures and societies is an affinity for water. We loved water then and it still shows today in our fiestas and daily lives. Our pagan brethren's repeated daily bathing even scandalized early Catholic missionaries. We already believed in ablutions. To that was added absolution by baptism. It was...natural.

Philippine society was built through waterways. Our connection to water is enshrined in "barangay", a term derived from the historical balanghai which were the hollowed out boats that our migratory ancestors used to travel to the Philippines. We did not come in waves of migration. Far from it.

Instead, it was slow, but not so steady. It was dangerous and it was intrepid. We are descended from explorers and adventurers. It's in our blood.

Sail on, sailor.