‘Screams Into The Void’ It Laughs At Me

It was not the dead Miles needed to talk to, in the dark, he realized. It was the living. Useless to confess to the dead; absolution was not in their power. But I'll trust your Speaking, Harra, as you once trusted mine.

they both use full names to emphasize sternness or exasperation (Neil says "Matthew" and matt goes "Neil Josten")

when Neil is being An Asshole to him, Matt will call him "a little shit" with emphasis on little to piss Neil off

they eat a lot but can't cook for shit and have a terrible relationship with their smoke alarm and many a fox has skidded into their apartment in a panic to find matt stood on a chair, furiously flapping a towel at the smoke detector while Neil waves a textbook at the smoke billowing from the stove

that being said, they are pro snackers

they frequently sneak out at all hours of the night to get mcflurries and fries from McDonald's

Matt tries to teach Neil various video games but Neil generally doesn't care enough to get good at most of them

however, matt convinces Neil to buy them a foosball table for the dorm and they are both obsessed with it (they have custody battles over it when Neil moves out and Matt somehow wins with very transparent motives of keeping it so Neil will be forced to visit him)

speaking of, when Neil does move out matt is very dramatic about it with sarcastic monologues about how "it feels like just yesterday..."

"I'm literally moving down the hallway, matty"

*loud exaggerated wailing*

Neil becomes that bitch that takes a million water bottles and leaves them half- finished everywhere and matt has to start putting his on high shelves so he can remember which one is his

there's this one moldy lemon in the fridge that neither of them claim responsibility over and it just fucking sits there

kinda feel like Neil is one of those people that just reads random things from like Google alerts or reddit headlines and then he updates matt on the weirder things

Neil subconsciously walks really quietly and that just leads to him scaring embarrassingly high pitched sounds out of Matt on a regular basis

they go to IKEA to get some new piece of furniture idk and Neil insists on using a "hack" to build it and it ends with matt scratching his head with a screwdriver as they look at the eight leftover screws that they were supposed to have used (they decide to let Kevin test it out first)

like proper College Kids, they have a drawer full of menus for all different kinds of takeout

they are both Exy Bois ™ and they have and will play Pass across the apartment with Exy balls and smaller sized racquets

(they also used to put on knee and elbow pads and either clear out their furniture or use it as obstacles to play a more physical game of a combination of Exy and rugby until Dan banned them from it for "disturbing the peace")

Matt always smells amazing and Neil will steal borrow his cologne

them trying to study together is always futile because, though they may start productively enough, they'll end up spending an hour with their feet propped up and talking about random shit

there's like a little a panel/door thing in their bathroom wall that isn't in any of the others and it rattles regularly and sounds spooky as shit and when Matt tells Neil that there's a demon living in their bathroom and that it controls the lights occasionally, Neil (like the brave dumbass boy he is) decides to investigate it and Matt tells him no and that it doesn't open anyway- he and Seth tried- but Neil is defiant so Matt insists on going as backup and he brings a spatula (which they have never once used) for defense ("what the hell are you gonna do with that, saute the demon?" "shut up") and they go and sure enough they can't loosen it but then it rattles and they both jump back and right then the lights in the bathroom go out and Neil swears and Matt brandishes his spatula and from then on they give the demon it's due respect

they have one of those miniature basketball hoops that you attach to the back of a door

Matt gets Neil on his music

also matt watches basketball regularly and although Neil isn't totally opposed to it, he likes to antagonize matt just to be a little shit and so they'll like be watching the allstars and it'll be basically the best players in the league getting judged and Matt will get excited every time a player does something interesting but Neil will just be sat next to him eating carrots and going "eh i would've given that a four"

Matt is always offhandedly telling Neil that he is going to fall because he uses literally everything in the flat except for the stepstool to precariously climb on to reach things higher up

(Neil: *wobbling on a stack of books on top of a large pot on top of a rolling chair, trying to reach something on top of the refrigerator. Matt: *watching as he eats cereal* do you want me to get that for you? Neil: no. Matt: ... k. but if you fall and break any bones right before practice then, as far as Kevin is concerned, i was never here)

when one of them falls asleep on the couch or at the table or something, they either get a sharp poke and a more considerate "go to bed, matty" or they get a blanket thrown over them

a patch of white anemones

the iliad, tr. emily wilson / electra: a tragedy, tr. anne carson / the lathe of heaven, ursula k. le guin / @insomniac-arrest / the first bad man, miranda july / what resembles the grave but isn’t, anne boyer / rabbit heart (raise it up), florence + the machine / burrows end, @dimension20official / the burglar of babylon, elizabeth bishop

[Image Description: Ten images of text. The first image is a photograph of a book page but the rest are black text on a pure white background.

1: “You already know this story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand the unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time.”

2: “Electra / And I know there is something all wrong about me - believe me. Sometimes I shock myself”

3: “The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”

4: “The first rule of tragedy is to be yourself. The second rule of tragedy is to be literally anyone else. The third rule is that however much you try there is no escaping being yourself forever.”

5: “Then I realised that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.”

6: “Always falling into a hole, then saying “okay, this is not your grave, get out of this hole,””

7: “I must become a lion hearted girl / Ready for a fight / Before I make the final sacrifice / We raise it up, this offering”

8: “i think for myself, when I go back to that time, the number one emotion associated with it is tremendous shame and embarrassment which is the emotion it would take to never mention that to anybody”

however. when the only thing under all the scarring is more scarring. when there's nothing of the before self left at all. when there was a precipice, and they tumbled over it, and even if they got back up they'll never heal right.