Lazyfestivalheart - Brave Soul

Nathan stands at his left. Mary stands at his right.

Neil doesn’t turn to look at them, but he can feel them there—one carved into his ribs, the other burned into his skin.

He is made of them.

Of his father’s brutality, his mother’s desperation. Of bruises layered over bruises, of fists and sharp words and the lesson that pain was the only thing he could count on.

Nathan’s voice is smooth, proud, as it murmurs in his ear.

"You were built for more than this, Nathaniel."

Mary’s whisper is sharp, urgent, dripping with every frantic mile they ever ran.

"You don’t understand what it means to survive."

Nathan had tried to shape him into something ruthless. Mary had tried to strip him down to something weightless.

And neither of them had ever asked what he wanted to be.

Neil closes his eyes.

Nathan’s presence is heavy, all iron and control and the scent of blood that will never wash away.

Mary’s is lighter, but just as cruel—a ghost that lingers, a reminder that even love can leave bruises.

They will always be here.

Because Neil is made of them.

Of a father who saw him as a tool, and a mother who saw him as a liability.

Of a life spent running, and a body full of evidence that he was never meant to survive this long.

His shoulders ache under the weight of them.

And no matter how far he goes, they will never leave.

saw a video abt how the “toxic boy mom” thing is just emotional incest/enmeshment and i was like yeah correct. then i looked at the comments and it was all ppl blaming the sons??? mocking them, saying they should just get over it, saying no woman should ever date them, that if their mom is like that then it’s their fault for “allowing” it and like. y’all i do not know how else to explain that a parent abusing their child (bc that’s what emotional incest is) is not the child’s fault. if you realize your partner is a victim of enmeshment/emotional incest, you should handle it the same way you would with any other abuse victim, with care and tact and offers of support. not mockery and blame. jesus christ.

i know an engineer-type dude who said fiction bored him, because fiction is mostly-formulaic and tropey, and you can generally guess what’s gonna happen next, and yada yada

so his solution for this problem was… to solely read serial web novels in languages that (1) he did not speak, and (2) for which there was no actual translation, fan or otherwise

apparently, the combined forces of “trying to figure out WTF is going on via the power of Google Translate" + “cultural differences in storytelling conventions” + “the inherent randomness of where the hell amateur authors are gonna take their plots”—those all mashed up to make stories that were unpredictable enough to keep him guessing all the time

then he described to me this totally batshit-sounding Hungarian story he’d been obsessively reading once a week for years

and god i think about him all the time.  like.  that is the most wild way to process fiction that i have ever heard of, but also, i’ve gotta admire the sheer chaos energy of it

This is insane

he doesn't deserve this

Look, Max will use 100% of the track and George will use 100% of the FIA sporting regulations and who are we to say which one is more fun

*comes online*

*reblogs 30 things within 5 minutes*

*fucks off again*

🦊Neil my boy🦊

s/o to this skeleton babe from 1936