vibes only

something needs to change here

this is urgent

I don’t know how to do it

death is the ultimate metaphor for drastic change. it’s a general specific. whatever your problems are, it is very likely that dead people don’t have to deal with them. a real solution to your problems may demand a very narrow range of action that’s likely to be out of reach at this moment, but death is sold on every street corner, so it feels like a more realistic fantasy than happiness.

you don’t really want to die per se but it’s also not completely random chemicals swamping your brain for no reason. you want the pain to stop, you want to be somewhere else, you want to be someone else. it’s urgent. you don’t know how to do it. the end is not the end but a means that feels within your reach right now.

I (32F) recently got a gig as a live in housekeeper for a haunted mansion. I'm like 85% sure the job posting was a scam to try and feed me to the house in order to stave off its eternal hunger for another decade or so. But it pays alright and I don't have to pay rent as long as I'm living here.

One of the ghosts (~250M(?)) possessed my body a few nights ago, but instead of, I don't know, making me climb onto a blaustrade or something, he got real quiet. I don't think he ever possessed a trans woman before and he just kinda spent the whole night staring at my hrt pill bottles.

Since then, he's still been wandering the halls at the stroke of midnight, shattering all the mirrors that mysteriously regenerate by morning, but it seems like his heart hasn't been in it.

(Are the mirrors symbolic of something???)

I've never seen a haunted house die before. I half expect the whole house to implode or something, that'd be neat.

But it doesn't.

I guess the flames are blazing a little more hungrily than they should given the thunderstorm that is currently drenching me.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Well... not really, I'm relieved that this stupid house isn't going to be trying to kill me any more. I'm not looking forward to starting parallel apartment and job hunts tomorrow. I guess I kinda feel bad to see it burn for Minerva's sake (it's a working name, she still hasn't quite settled on any, but I can't just go around calling her "the ghost" now, can I?).

I'm not actually sure how she's feeling about this. It was her house, both living and dead, so there's a ton of baggage there. Maybe she's in shock. Maybe she's afraid of what happens next.

I don't know. I'm not afraid. I'm mostly tired. As far as I can tell, our little plan worked, so that's good.

I pull my eyes away from the house and squelch through the muddy lawn to my car. I pull the door closed behind me with a sigh and sit heavily.

I glance in the mirror where my face looks back at me with eyes that are the wrong color. That's going to take some getting used to...

"You okay?"

My reflection nods. She isn't okay, but that's expected.

I pat my own leg reassuringly.

She's free now. This whole shitty misadventure was worth it just to have had the opportunity to meet her and get her out of that place.

evui

valid animal placement

What I mean here is that, so often I see pairings enacting romance tropes to the point of heavily altering or downright replacing their original dynamic - as if the people behind it only understand romance as a series of checklists to tick off. Couples like to kiss and sleep in the same bed and flirt with each other, so it doesn't matter who the characters are, if they're a couple then naturally they'll do those things, right??

And that's where the whole thing starts to lose me, because I would assume that the appeal of shipping characters is, y'know... the characters? Rather than just, the idea of a couple? If I'm thinking about how it'd be cool for them to be in love, my first thought is always "so how would they show it," because just like everything else about a person, the answer is going to be different on a case-by-case basis.

Maybe the characters involved aren't really into kissing, but they like arranging date activities. Maybe they aren't committed to the structure of dating at all, and just want to be around each other whenever they can. And even if they are the types to like doing traditionally romantic things, that doesn't suddenly erase whatever else they had going on before they started adding that on top of it.

Edit: