#Read-Once Object Pattern
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midnight happenings
gojo satoru x fem!reader
summary: satoru wakes up and looks for you
warnings: references to things that none of us will understand (kidding), little angst, mostly fluff, nightmare and such
last part | next part
*
year three
"satoru?" you whisper, blinded briefly by flashing white hair.
your door has been creaked open--like you usually keep it in the dead of the night--but the hallway light is on, illuminating the body in front of you like a ghost.
you could be dreaming, still, but your head hurts from the sudden interruption, so you know you're not.
he's like a monster lurking in the dark. waiting for a moment where you're vulnerable before he attacks. he's always been better at patience, remaining in one spot for a millennium, than you have.
but still, you sit up, because you've never been afraid of him. you blink, trying to recognize his cobalt-aquamarine eyes in the dark. they are still so bright, it's a bit shocking.
he inches closer, not saying a word.
there is no smile on his face that you can see. no hint of mischief in his movements. usually, when he creeps into your bed this late, he's looking for something unobtainable. something you know he won't take and you won't give.
but tonight his eyes are brief matches in the dark, lighting and flickering out, waiting for you to understand.
and you do.
"are you okay?" you whisper, not wanting to break the hesitation between you two. you don't know where it goes next, once that bubble pops. your voice is groggy and slightly dry.
"sorry," he responds, the only real answer you need.
satoru doesn't apologize for anything except his sheer audacity.
you sit up even further, flicking your light on.
the both of you flinch at the intrusion of your lamp. but you don't look away from him, brows furrowing. "can't sleep?" you ask, instead. as if it will get you somewhere.
he shakes his head.
you watch him for a moment more, long and lanky in your room, his throat bobbing as he swallows.
then you pat the space next to you, folding your legs underneath your body, trying to remember how to read him this early in the morning.
satoru doesn't say anything, but he's quick to respond, crawling into bed next to you without a look at you. clearly, he doesn't want you to change your mind on this.
it's the quickest you've seen him move in a week.
you watch as he curls himself under the expensive bedsheets--ones he bought--probably scoffing at the color choice internally, but he doesn't look back.
his eyes are stuck on the duvet like the pattern is going to jump out and attack him.
you don't have a single thing to say. no question to ask to put the two of you at ease, no witty remark to keep you afloat when satoru seems to be dredging through the water.
and still.
"you look tired."
"yeah," he murmurs.
"did you--" you shake your head. "did you finish the rest of the sesame cookies again? sugar rush?"
his head lulls over to you, and there's a brief, anxious smile. "of course not," he says.
"then why are you still awake?"
"missed you. it's lonely in my room."
"it's been..." you turn towards the clock. then back. "four hours."
"too long."
you smile, slightly, understanding this deflection better than anything else. "you're like the kids," you muse, "coming to cuddle in the middle of the night."
"smart ones, those two."
you lean closer to him, eyes falling to his hands, which are raking through the covers like he's going to discover that you've hidden something in them. you can almost see them shake. you swallow. "do you need to talk about something?"
his eyes dart towards yours. "what? no."
"okay."
"do you need to talk about something?"
you shake your head. "no. i'm good."
"okay. good."
you bite your lip as he looks away, focused again on any inanimate object you have in here. the floor, the ceiling, your dresser, or the bouquet he bought you rotting on it. you sit there, watching his hands trail over the sheets, his eyes flick over the walls, his mouth move like there's something stuck inside--something he can't quite say.
so you do it for him. "i couldn't sleep, either."
his brow raises. "i heard you snoring from across the hall."
"i do not snore, satoru, please don't insinuate ridiculous things."
his lip quirks.
you sigh, making a show of rolling your eyes. "anyway, i get it. how come it's always so cold in this house?"
"because you told me that i shouldn't install a different furnace in every room."
you hum. "could've gone with a fireplace, though. some ambiance. spice this place up a little, you know?"
"i don't think i'll be taking your interior design advice," satoru answers, looking at you--all of you, finally--his smile a slight thing.
a hint at the boy you're used to, his frustrating demeanor.
"another mistake you're making," you tease, smiling back.
and you watch it--as his face shifts, momentarily, like 0.2 seconds is enough for him to process every emotion that's ever flooded through his body. his eyes dart away, his mouth folds, and satoru goes back in on himself.
and you know it was the wrong thing to say.
"hey," you whisper, words coming out before you think about them. "i like it here. even if it is cold."
"yeah?"
"yeah. with you and the kids. and this giant bed that serves no purpose for one person."
"that's why i'm here," he says.
"oh, of course."
"have to make sure you're respecting all of the mattress space."
"well, i wouldn't want the mattress to be unappreciated," you lean your shoulder against his, sighing when his head falls on yours, stepping stones leading to one another. "would i?"
"you're welcome."
"very observant, satoru."
"it's the eyes."
you laugh hard enough for him to feel it, for your body to shake against his--like it might ground him back to the world. pull him from the water and shake him off.
you don't quite know who this satoru is, because he's not really yours. but he's not the man who could wipe everything out in an instant, if he just wanted a little break. and he's not the man who's dealt with that alone, without any person to help, no one to ask any questions.
maybe he's a child, again. one you never got to meet.
but it feels a little impossible.
you swallow, after a moment. then you move your head back, shifting so you can properly look at him. "you sure you don't want to talk about it?"
satoru looks back, his eyes an expanse of sky and pain, mirroring some parts of you. he doesn't shake his head, doesn't nod. "i..." he whispers, like an answer.
"was it a nightmare?"
this time, he nods.
"i get them, too. sometimes."
"yeah?"
"why do you think i end up in tsumiki's bed every couple of nights?"
"i thought that was a girl thing."
you smile, leaning to nudge your forehead against his. "nah, tsumiki's just a good cuddler."
"how 'bout megumi?"
"please. i think he'd probably dislocate my shoulder in his sleep if i even tried. at least now that you showed him the hand-to-hand stuff i told you not to."
satoru raises a brow. his eyes are close enough that you can feel his eyelashes fluttering. "everyone needs a little protection from ruthless midnight cuddlers."
"who's going to protect me from you?" you ask.
this time, you get a full-blown grin. a satoru special, just for you. "no one," he says, "you're stuck with me."
"don't i know it."
you tilt your head back, remaining a couple of inches away, but breaking the contact.
satoru watches. his eyes are so focused on yours, that it feels like some sort of manipulation.
but you know it's not.
or, at least, not any sort of manipulation he can control. you've dealt with satoru's sweet eyes and addicting smiles since you were a teenager, and there's no escape.
"you know," you whisper, blinking rapidly, trying to fall away. "it helps to talk about it. sometimes. remind yourself that it's just a dream, and nothing more."
satoru looks down, watching your lips as they move. he could be asleep with how still his face is. so unlike the usual expressions you dread to watch, the neverending shifts in behavior. the quirks and quips falling from his horrid mouth.
"it's not..." he shakes his head, leaning back. "it's not really a dream."
"what do you mean?"
"it's--it's always things that have already happened. memories, i guess. it's not a nightmare."
or maybe it is, goes unspoken.
"oh."
"so, i don't think... i mean, i can't wake up from real life, or whatever."
your body stills. you want to tell him that if he talked about it, it might go away. that his memories are pushed so far back that they're intruding on reality. that he needs to let it go, let the past fade like a scar. still there, but unburdening.
but you know that satoru won't listen. if you know anything about the man--anything from the seven years that you've spent with him, watching him react to the constant battle of living--it's that.
he's not going to listen to you. he never does. and you shouldn't expect him to. not when he knows that you can't understand, that you never really will.
still, the words rest on the tip of your tongue, like a dagger ready for the plunge.
"it's okay, though," satoru shrugs, suddenly. brushing his entire existence off as if it's removable. "it's fine."
"it's okay if it's not."
he blinks. "i know," he says, almost defensively. "but it is."
"okay."
satoru swallows, his fingertips brushing on the bare skin of your leg. you haven't been this close to him for a couple of months, since he stopped coercing you into staying the night. it's strange, the environment of the two of you. an inadaptable habitat.
"sorry," he whispers.
"it's okay. it's fine."
"okay."
"i have nightmares about megumi a lot," you say, short. "he's always doing something stupid. something you would do."
satoru tilts his head. "like what?"
you roll your eyes. "forgetting to turn off the stove and setting us all on fire. drinking out of the milk carton. or bringing home a curse just because."
"i only did that once. i wanted your opinion on something."
"'do you think it's eyes are green or brown? maybe hazel?'" you mock, shaking your head.
"it was a dire question," his lip quirks.
you shake your head some more. "but when i wake up i always remember that megumi isn't stupid like you. he thinks things through."
"hey," satoru chides, but he doesn't really care.
"and sometimes," you say, again, even softer. "i have dreams about you. about you doing something stupid, like always, but..."
the rest goes unsaid. it's not an idea that needs to be verbalized. not a belief you hold in the pit of your heart, a fear you've experienced too many times.
satoru leans closer to you. "i know," he says, instead of an apology, or some type of comfort. "i get those too."
so you wrap your arms around his shoulders, almost unconsciously, leaning in as you let satoru hold you up for a moment. like he's done all of those other late nights. you hug him close, unsure if you'll ever really break the distance between the two of you.
but you can feel it as satoru's arms wrap around your waist, squeezing with you, differently than he usually does. his breath is soft against your head, a break in the dark.
"i know," you whisper to him, an echo, and it should be enough.
but you're not sure that it--that this, the proximity between the two of you--will ever be enough.
that thought fades into the night, though, like every other sleep-deprived whisper you've shared with satoru. it won't be worth it to bring it up again in the morning. so you won't, and neither will he.
but you'll hold him now. like a promise you can keep.
*
when you wake up in the morning, your fingers are curled around satoru’s.
every part of you feels achy. like just being this close to him has infected you with another disease—some curse you won’t be able to shake off.
and you only realize this when two heads are standing above you, watching you closely.
“are you awake?” tsumiki asks you, like your eyes are not an indication of anything.
“doesnt that hurt?” megumi frowns, immediately after. “gojo is heavy.”
he’s referencing the man that’s partly on top of you, his mouth leaving a sure mark on the skin of your neck, breath hot and wet.
you blink rapidly, trying not to flush under the feeling of him there (literally under).
“you guys hungry?” you say, wincing at the sound of your own voice.
they both nod.
“okay, just—“ you sigh, hands raking through satoru’s hair. “gimme a minute to wake him up. go get your backpacks and i’ll make breakfast.”
tsumiki nods and steps back. megumi’s brows furrow at you. “we have to leave in thirty minutes.”
you roll your eyes. “i know, megs. i’m up.”
he shakes his head. “not you,” he nods. “don’t crush her. i have school.” he tells satoru, sternly, and then walks away, dragging tsumiki along and out of the room.
satoru, who’s eyes are wide and open, so close to yours that they are almost nothing.
“hey,” he whispers, grinning.
*
next part | series masterlist
a/n: for all of you that think i hate satoru, he's my baby
#jjk gojo#gojo satoru x reader#gojo satoru#gojo x reader#jujutsu gojo#jujutsu kaisen#satoru gojo#gojou satoru x reader#jjk satoru#gojo satoru x you#gojo satoru x y/n#satoru gojo x reader#satoru gojo x you#satoru gojo x y/n#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jjk fanfic#jjk fluff#jjk x reader#a typical family
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INTERVIEW 013
with. finnick odair
includes. fem!reader, husband finnick, filming, kitchen sex, domesticity, oral (fem receiving)
→ kinktober masterlist
It started out as the definition of domesticity.
There was a package in the mail, sent from Katniss and Peeta, addressed to ‘The Odairs’ in Katniss’ handwriting. Seeing the joint name made you giddy, but reading the letter from your closest friends made you giddier.
They’d congratulated you on your recent marriage, praised the ceremony once more, and had enclosed an old video camera for both of you to document your newlywed endeavors on.
While you had cooking and home decorating selected as ideas for ‘newlywed endeavors’, Finnick had gone a different route.
The camera sat in his hands as he kissed at your neck, his free hand teasing at your waist.
“C’mon, sweetheart. It’ll be fun,” came his promise, spoken lowly and close to your ear in an attempt to get you to give in. You were closer to doing so than you would like to admit, just the thought almost enticing enough to make you put the knife down, slide the vegetables out of the way, and give Finnick what he wanted.
Almost.
You refused to give in without making Finnick plead just a little more.
You hummed, fauxing disinterest as you brought the knife down in another audible slice against the wooden chopping board.
Finnick continued. “We could look back on it. You could see what I see; How pretty my wife is.” The term made your heart flutter, still not used to being the wife of Finnick Odair. His hand at your waist circled around to your front, pressing flat against your stomach and pulling you flush against him so you could feel the semi he was sporting beneath his joggers.
You couldn’t help it anymore, your head lolling back to rest against Finnick, your skull connecting with the taut muscles all along his body.
“What d’you say?” You could hear the self satisfied smile in his words.
You end up on the counter top, any food you were prepping pushed all the way to the side to make room for you. Your legs spread, Finnick’s head between a pair of plushy thighs, your abdomen tensing and relaxing as you controlled your breathing. You caught it all on camera, the object pointed down at your husband who licks and sucks along your cunt like it’s his favorite pastime in the world.
Which, he’s told you as such.
The muscles in his shoulders flex as he nudges the back of your legs with them, arms circling around your thighs to press his fingertips into the flesh.
Your legs have lifted a bit, spreading you open even more.
Finnick presses his tongue flat, letting it relax over the expanse of your cunt as much as the muscle can reach. He licks a long, slow stripe from your entrance to your clit, repeating the pattern back and forth until you can’t take it anymore. When you whine, the sound desperate and pathetic, he gives you more.
The interlude of teasing has completely passed, Finnick going back to devouring you like he knows how. He releases one of your legs to use two digits inside of your greedy walls, cunt swallowing them up as Finnick pumps in a fast paced rhythm.
He focuses on your clit and the surrounding area with his mouth, eyes opening to look up at you. Through the camera, the green is a little grainy, slightly dulled, but you can see the intensity behind his gaze all the same.
His cheeks flushed, the tip of his nose glistening, blonde wavy hair all over the place from your grip. Your hand finds the strands again as your orgasm approaches, the camera leaning off to the side just a little.
Finnick pulls away from your cunt and you cry out as you stare down at him in shock.
He tuts, jerking his head towards the camera. “Keep it on me, baby.”
You quickly bring it back, taking Finnick’s smile as a form of praise as he goes back down. Just as quick, you’re close again, back arching and muscles tightening.
Your hand slips from Finnick’s hair, nails scratching at his shoulder as it flails around. Finnick, always knowing exactly what you need, offers his own hand to ground you, both of your fingers quickly interlocking like opposite ends of a magnet.
When you cum on Finnick’s tongue, it’s so loud that the tiny microphone in the camera struggles to pick it up.
Watching it back, Finnick teases you for it, his cock sliding in and out of your walls as he fucks you from behind, lips against the shell of your ear as he promises he can make you cum louder here and now than he did then.
#🕸️ 𝐌𝐔𝐑𝐃𝐑𝐓𝐎𝐁𝐑#finnicksworld!#finnicktobr!#finnick odair x reader#finnick odair x you#finnick odair smut#finnick odair
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one of the aspects of rgu that can get overlooked, I think, once you finish that first watchthrough and start looking at the story in a new light, is that anthy — at the very least — has already started caring for utena by the time she loses her duel to touga.
which, in fairness, is the natural and arguably correct response. because when you learn anthy has been all but omniscient the whole time, and that each act by utena to “save” her is just another diminishment of anthy’s autonomy, you begin to understand that in those early episodes, utena is a tool to her. an object of disdain or pity, maybe, if you’re going to argue that anthy thinks anything of her at all. utena is a means to an end.
and somehow, that has to coexist with the fact that anthy missed utena when she’s touga’s bride.
anthy is a tough character to read, but I think the simplest break down of her relationship with utena is that the more emotion she shows, positive or negative, the stronger their bond in anthy’s eyes. poisoning her cookies is an act of care. stabbing a sword through her chest is a love confession. because for a character like anthy, who’s natural state is ambivalence, any deviation is an expression of affection the only way she knows to express it.
And the easy to grasp, natural progression, is that she starts at zero on the scale of caring utena exists, and moves towards the other end of the spectrum as the show continues, coming to a head in the finale.
but it doesn’t work that way. by all accounts, anthy shouldn’t be missing utena by the end of the first arc. utena has steamrolled her the entire time, deciding what she needs without consulting what anthy wants. it’s not dissimilar to any other duelist.
it’s fascinating that their interactions during that arc meant something to anthy. it’s necessary, of course, for utena to realize she cares for anthy but it didn’t have to be reciprocated.
but it is, and in that we find fantastic juxtaposition: anthy does not care about utena as much as utena cares for her — not at this point. she’s not even really at a point that she’s frustrated with utena. if she feels guilt over how upset utena was after the duel, she doesn’t show it. and knowing what we know about the rest of the show, we can’t really blame her. utena is another cog in the system and anthy sees right through it.
and, at the same time, she’s grown to care for utena. she’s become accustomed to her presence and when it’s gone, she misses it. she’s never missed a duelist before. so, somewhere in all of utena’s misguided actions and sometimes outright disregard for what anthy wants, anthy sees something.
It’s not as simple as anthy not liking or caring about utena at the start and then they come to understand each other over time. there are interruptions in the pattern — moments of connection that occur regardless of where they are on the path to mutual understanding. and that’s what makes it so complicated and so interesting. there are no absolutes. there’s no saying that utena’s aim to be a prince and save anthy was hopeless, because somewhere in the midst of all that they were bonded together. perhaps in spite of it, perhaps because of it, perhaps a bit of both — that’s the sticking point.
their relationship is a melting pot of contradictions, but none of them can be removed and still lead to the same ending.
there is no pinpointing the moment anthy began to care for utena. she always does, in a fractured sort of way. you see it throughout, in bits and pieces.
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April, 2024 | Shetland lace shawl
Hi there! It’s been a while. I’ve been kept busy by all my university work…and this shawl.
The shawl is knitted to celebrate the wedding of my friend (now friends, I should say). A wedding is really the perfect excuse for all the heritage crafts and heirloom projects that might seem too serious to gift in other occasions. I did ask the recipient beforehand if she would like it, though, and I was so, so honoured that I got an enthusiastic ‘yes’. I’m sure this sentiment is shared by many makers, whatever gift they are making.
Shetland fine openwork, a knitted lace, seems to have emerged with the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria, who championed and popularised the craft. It was probably spread from the Isle of Unst to other parts of Shetland. What surprised me the most when I first read about it was that Shetland shawls and other lace pieces were largely exported as luxury items and rarely worn by islanders themselves. Women bought yarn from spinners and knitted mostly in their homes. They then took them to local merchants and exchange the finished objects for goods or (commonly after the 1880s) money to supplement the household income. The ‘supplement’ nature of this work probably means it was not compensated as much as a job outside the home would be for the same hours and skills. Besides, it was not always easy to spin an even 1-ply yarn at 1600 metres per 100 grams. For a piece of knitting with a large ‘plain’ area (i.e. only knit stitches), the unevenness was impossible to hide but could only be discovered after the area was worked. Then the maker had to either frog (unravel) the area or continue with the risk of the whole piece not being able to sell.
Whilst it is very reasonable to point out that Shetland ladies did not usually wear this type of lace (I’ve been to the Scottish Highlands once, in summer, and it was not fine lace weather), I imagine that at least for some, it wasn’t just about making money. Some sort of fulfilment must have been from the satisfaction of having a piece ‘properly done’ by continuing and adapting a traditional pattern, technique or material. I think this sort of satisfaction is also why many modern knitters are willing to spend hundreds of hours on lacework.
Intricate handknitted lace items can still be bought today (a quick search on Etsy would show many are form eastern European countries with a long and prominent craft tradition), but many are knitted for friends or family members. It always makes me so happy to see people share the gifts they have made, whether big or small, simple or complex. I joke with my online craft friends that no handmade fibre project can claim to be so unless they have a hair or two woven into it. It is the proof of existence for the maker, who tries to go against the irregular nature of handicrafts and, at the same time, accepts it. It is about wrapping up hours, weeks or months in one’s life, along with the songs they have listened to and the perfume they have worn and the memories they have made, and putting it squarely in someone else’s hands and saying: ‘All this, for you.’
A Wedding Shawl
I have not read anything about there being a standard form of ‘wedding shawl’ in the Shetland tradition. However, there is definitely a category of square shawls with similar sizes and a few construction methods. The samples I’ve seen mostly measure 1.5-2m on one side and have three parts: a central panel, four borders and a strip of edging. It is worked flat in garter lace from centre out.
Neither is there a standardised yarn weight. A widely available yarn is the Shetland Supreme Lace Weight 1-ply by Jamieson and Smith, which weighs at 400m/25g. The Queen Ring Shawl examined by Sharon Miller used a yarn at 700m/25g. From my experience, if you want the shawl to be a true ring shawl (i.e. you want to be able to pull the shawl through a ring) at the size of the Queen Ring Shawl (210cm on the side), go for 700m/25g or finer.
I chose a rectangular shawl because I had very limited time, but I did enlarge it because for me, an abundance of fabric does mean an abundance of cozy happiness.
Pattern
Shell Grid and Spider Webs Puzzle, pattern No.19 in the book Shetland Knitting Lace by Toshiyuki Shimada.
The names of the motifs are confusing. One motif (or two highly similar motifs) might just have two different names if they are produced in two different regions. Names do not mean everything, but I’ve had fun trying to match the motifs with names according to this article by Carol Christiansen at the Shetland Museum.
The double yarnovers (YO's) in the diamonds were called Cat's Eye, but perhaps the 'Spider Web' in the pattern name is referring to the three rows of double YO's in the centre panel. It has a really simple but effective edging.
Yarn
Mermaid Lace, in colourway #naturel, sold by Great British Wool in the Netherlands. This yarn is 75% merino and 25% sea algae silk. ‘Sea algae silk’ seems to be a semi-synthetic plant fibre like viscose, with algae involved as part of the raw material. (At this price point I don’t think it has anything to do with sea silk, which is fibre produced by actual shells.) The brand name for the most popular product of its type is probably Seacell.
I bought the yarn, because I had never worked with this fibre before and was curious. What I like: it was a little cheaper than a wool/silk blend and has blocked very well. The whole skein was continuous so I didn’t have to deal with a single yarn joint. What I do not like: it lacks the sheen and smoothness of real silk and doesn’t feel as strong, although it doesn’t shed. In conclusion, I’d rather use a traditional Shetland 1-ply or another natural fibre yarn.
It's also worth mentioning that whilst I prefer to support small businesses, it was disappointing to have received a 93-gram skein when I had ordered 100 grams. It was one of those days between Christmas and the New Year and I somehow did not contact the customer service, but I really should have.
Needle
2.5mm 80cm circular needles. See modification below.
Modification
This Japanese knitting book follows Japanese sizing for knitting needles. The suggested size was no. 1=2.4mm. I figured that I could use a 2.5mm since I knitted on the tighter side, and in any case it was probably okay to make the lacework a little more open by going up a needle size.
I am not going to give out the pattern, but it is probably necessary to explain the structure of this shawl. The centre is knitted first, and then an edging is knitted onto it by picking up either live stitches or the vertical edge of the centre as you go (see schematic below). The four ‘corners’ of the edging have short-row shaping to help it lay flat. I know that traditionally people can achieve this by other methods, but I haven’t tried any of those yet.
I enlarged the pattern by increasing both the width and the length. I casted on 133 stitches instead of 101 for the centre panel and knitted Part B 8.5 times instead of 5.5. The spider web pattern in Part B requires the stitch count to be (something dividable by four) plus two, so I made one central increase before the spider web to get 134 and a central decrease after it to get it back to 133. Due to the openness of the lace, the change of one stitch is not visible.
The enlargement meant I had to recalculate the edging as well, because the number of stitches available for pick-up changed. Originally, at each corner you do two repeats with four short-row shaping each. I did 1.5 repeats following the original placement of short-row shaping in order to make the total number of repeats fit the number of edge stitches on the centre panel.
The pattern says to Kitchener-stitch the last row of the edging to the provisional cast-on. It just didn’t make sense because that would be two rows too much (the Kitchener stitch row plus the provisional cast-on row). To make the number perfectly fit, I knitted only ten rows of the last repeat (there were usually twelve in each repeat). Then I Kitchener-stitched the end to the provisional cast-on, following the lace pattern. I am quite proud of this solution because it is completely invisible.
Somewhere in the pattern it said to purl (looking from the right side). It seemed strange because the rest of the lace was entirely garter. I knitted those stitches and so far I haven’t sensed a ‘mistake’.
The pattern originally calls for 45 grams of yarn. I estimated (based on the increase of stitches in the centre panel) to need about 80 grams. I ended up using 86 grams. Besides the inaccuracies in my estimation, it was probably also because I knitted much more loosely than expected as it was difficult to tension the yarn tightly at such a weight. Like I've point out in the Yarn section above, I was lucky not to have needed more than 93 grams.
The original finished size is 53*118cm. I ended up with approximately 70*170cm.
Conclusion
This shawl took about three months of my craft time i.e. one full day every week for three months and many mornings before I had to leave for university. Knitting outside my room just didn’t work because I was a) engaged in some other activities that made it difficult to steady my hands, and b) worried about putting a white shawl on any public surface.
The pattern itself is relatively straightforward. The first difficulty was, of course, to understand the instruction written in Japanese. Google translate was horrible so I had to rely on my knitting experience. Fortunately, much of the text description was also found in graphs and charts. Then I had to get my hands used to the tiny yarn. After that, it was only fiddly when I did the edging, because I had to turn about every twelve stitches, and by that time I was handling a giant cloud of stitches on my lap. It did give me a lot of time to go over my favourite documentaries and films, and the last bit of edging was surprisingly quick!
Traditionally, Shetland shawls could be sent back to the maker for maintenance. I think it only fair for me to offer that too because I don’t want a gift to become a trouble (same as how you do not use non-machine-washable yarn for baby knits).
In general, I am very pleased with this shawl. It does pass the ring test, despite not being a traditional wedding shawl size or thickness. I do have a whole lot of actual Shetland 1-ply in my stash, so I am really looking forward to taking my Queen Ring Shawl project out of hibernation in the near future.
Reference list for Introduction
Christiansen, Carol. Shetland fine lace knitting: Recreating patterns from the past. Marlborough: Crowood, 2024.
Mann, Joanna. 'Knitting the Archive: Shetland Lace and Ecologies of Skilled Practice'. Cultural Geographies 25, no. 1 (January 28, 2017): 91–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474016688911.
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your attention on me, please!
summary: despite a spotless academic career, your poor athleticism makes the upcoming school sports day a nightmare. but when you spot the school slacker, nagi seishiro, pull off a crazy feat of flexibility, you think you've found your ticket to success. The one thing you didn't account for, though, is the way nagi wrecks everything you thought you understood.
notes: 7.5k words, fic, author's notes (read for some cultural context too), no blue lock au, fluff, romcom vibes, soccer is called football, this starts before nagi meets reo but covers a canon divergent vers of their meeting
Everything in the world can be categorized.
This is something you’ve come to learn in all your years of living on the planet; it’s something you’ve come to expect, even. That there are certain patterns to interactions, that people can be dissected into simple pieces, and the world moves neatly along set routes you can predict. You’ve mapped out a path to success with your knowledge: graduate at the top of your class as student representative, test into a prestigious university, and work for a successful company.
But there are some people who, despite your best efforts, wreck your neat understanding of the world, strange outliers who are more like aliens rather than fellow residents of the same planet. Nagi Seishiro, a classmate you’ve never paid particular attention to before, is one such example of an alien. Because despite your best efforts, you can’t help but find him incomprehensible.
Your first meeting with Nagi Seishiro is less of a meeting, and more of a chance encounter. The roof, which is often forbidden to students, is easily accessible once you pick the lock. And because of that, it’s also the one place you can go to relax outside of the view of your classmates.
At least, you used to be the only one who knew the roof was accessible. Because on a balmy day during your second year of high school, you find someone lounging on the flat tiles, a phone raised in front of their face.
You pause, squinting at the intruder. It takes you a few seconds, but eventually you recognize who it is: your classmate, Nagi Seishiro, who’s perpetually napping in class, or pretending to read while he plays video games.
But he doesn’t look up once from his phone, so you carefully skirt to the opposite corner of where he lies, taking your textbooks out of your bag to study. The next few hours pass in silence, and it’s only when the roof door bangs open that you look up to see Nagi disappearing down the stairs.
Easy. Simple. Uncomplicated. You two orbit each other for the next few weeks, sharing space on the roof without talking. Maybe it’s because the rooftop has made you aware of his existence, but you start seeing him around school, too. Dawdling in the classroom after school as everyone flies past him, getting reprimanded for overdue library books, or buying bread from the cafeteria long after everyone else has already stolen the best pieces.
Nagi lives in a world of his own and moves along at his own pace, and makes absolutely no effort in anything at all. Your paths will never intersect, because the way he lives is an antithesis to everything you believe in.
But that all changes a few weeks before the school sports meet. Exercise is the one thing you can’t seem to improve in; unlike your grades or your sociability, you simply can’t practice enough to overcome your lack of coordination. But simply giving up isn’t an option; you can’t accept anything less than first place after embarrassing yourself last year.
On the opposite side of the roof from Nagi Seishiro, where you’re accustomed to studying now, you happen to glance up at the exact moment he trips over his own untied shoelaces and drops his phone… before he sweeps his free foot to catch the falling object and twists his arm to use his hand to push himself back into a standing position, all in the span of a few seconds.
“That was dangerous,” he mumbles, kicking his phone back into his grasp, but your heart is pounding. You might have found a solution to your sports day problem.
“Nagi Seishiro,” you say, flying across the roof to plant yourself in front of him before he can move back to his usual lounging spot.
He blinks at you sleepily, as if trying to place your face in his memories. “Who’re you?”
“Your classmate. I saw that stunt just now,” you continue. “You… you’re really athletic.”
“I guess?”
“Help me become a better athlete.” you raise one hand. “I don’t expect you to do it for free, though! I promise I can help you raise your grades in return. The teacher chews you out a lot in class for not paying attention, right? It’d be a good deal!”
His reply is immediate. “Don’t want to.”
“Why not? I mean, if you don’t like the terms of our deal, I could come with something that’s more favorable to you–”
“I don’t care about all of that,” he says bluntly. “It sounds like a lot of work.”
Huh. Huh? You try to maintain a smile, but you feel as if he just threw cold water on your face. “What do you mean, it’s a lot of work?”
“It just sounds like a pain. I don’t want to do it,” he says. He glances down at his phone screen. “Ah. I died. Guess I’ll need to restart that level.”
“Wait!” you say before he can move around you. “It won’t be a lot of work. I just need to know how you pulled off that stunt– I mean, didn’t you practice to get that good?”
“Not really? I just sorta did it. It’s like…” He waves one arm vaguely. “You sorta go fwoosh. And then fwaah.”
“... What?” Was he just naturally gifted, then? You don’t think you’ve seen any of your friends on sports teams act as flexibly as he did.
“If you don’t get it, I can’t explain it,” he says. “Why are you trying so hard? Can’t you ask someone else?”
He didn’t mean it negatively, not with the spacey expression in his eyes and the lack of malice in his tone. Still, a jolt of anger runs down your spine as you grab onto the lapels of his jacket, wrenching him to look down at you. “No. It has to be you. Don’t run away from me, Nagi Seishiro,” you say furiously. “I can’t pull off anything you just did, but I want to get better anyways. So you’re going to help me, because you don’t have a choice. I won’t let you go.”
“... What a pain,” Nagi mumbles. “But it’d be more of a pain to refuse, huh…”
You frown. “What was that?”
“Nothing, boss. But I’m ranking in an event right now, so can we wait until–”
“I’ll help you rank,” you say immediately. “So no more excuses.”
Nagi puts up his hands in surrender. “Okay.”
After your (one-sided) agreement, Nagi starts to stick to you like a burr. Or it might be more accurate to say that you refuse to let him out of your sight, because the second you stop paying him an ounce of attention, he goes back to dozing, gaming or lying around doing nothing.
Sure, your deal was only limited to sports training, but seeing the state of him, you couldn’t just let him be. Seriously, how on earth has he survived until now? He has all the energy and drive of a sloth.
“You need to brush your hair more,” you snap, running a comb through his soft hair as Nagi dozes at his desk. “It’ll get tangled otherwise.”
“Too much work.”
“Everything’s too much work with you. But you know, you only create more work for yourself in the future if you neglect doing basic routines like this now,” you emphasize.
“Is that why you always work so hard?” he says.
“Well, yes. I want to do my best at everything, because I want to be successful. That’s the best path to happiness, you know. Doing your best and achieving great results because of it.”
“Huh.” Nagi takes out a smushed piece of melon bread from his pocket. “You’re weird.”
“You’re the weird one,” you grumble. “Is that the only thing you brought to eat?”
“Yeah.”
You put down the comb, and, rummaging around in your bag, pull out your lunchbox. You slam it down on Nagi’s desk. “Eat half of this. You can’t survive off of just bread.”
“Okay.”
After school, though, is when you hustle Nagi to the nearby park in your gym clothes, ready to start training. Nagi is an unmotivated teacher, but from his limited and vague explanations, you’ve managed to at least work out that you need to be more observant of your limbs, and the space around you.
At the park, you force him to run laps with you, and go through a few exercise routines you’ve looked up online. By the end of it, you’re panting and sweating, but Nagi looks as unruffled as ever.
“Water,” Nagi says, tapping the side of your head with a water bottle.
“Thanks,” you mumble, but he’s already messing with his phone again.
“Log on,” he says. “I want to rank again.”
“What? Let’s go for a few more rounds,” you protest.
“But you promised to help me.”
You groan, fishing your phone out of your bag. You weren’t particularly interested in games, but after realizing it incentivized Nagi more than any of your pleading, you’d brushed up on your skills, watched tutorials and practiced strategies, and soon found yourself battling side by side with Nagi in a virtual world during most of your evenings.
“... You’re good,” Nagi mumbles as your fingers tap across the screen, clearing a row of enemies.
“That’s because I practice. Okay, done!” You bounce up, stretching your arms. “A few more laps, Nagi. Come on!”
Nagi groans but lethargically raises himself up, and you run around the park until night falls.
You don’t know what to think of your classmate, to be honest. He’s a genius at sports, but he never practices or utilizes his talent. How can he just let it go to waste? Taking the easy route is a foreign concept, and you still can’t quite fit the pieces of Nagi Seishiro into a coherent design. Spacey, unmotivated, lackadaisical… you’d even start keeping spare supplies in your bag because Nagi is always forgetting his notebook at home, or needs to borrow a towel. But despite how pushy you act, he never acts bothered by it. Nor does he mind listening to you, or doing what you say, or following you around, though you thought he would have long thrown in the towel by now.
You’re friends, and you’re fond of him. The idea surprises you when you realize it, but it’s not an unpleasant thought.
The next few weeks fly by in a routine of school, training and home until the day of the anticipated sports meet. You’ve signed up for the relay race, and you jump up and down to keep your energy up. You chatter away with your classmates until the appointed time, all your friends teasing you and trying to pat you on the head.
Mikage Reo is no such exception, and your oldest friend finds you in the crowd while fighting back a gaggle of fawning admirers.
You’ve been friends with Reo since middle school.
Maybe you naturally gravitated towards each other because you’re both always surrounded by people, or because your grades are neck and neck, or because his philosophy in life is similar to yours. The only difference between the two of you is that Mikage Reo is a corporate heir, and you earned a scholarship to attend school. The worst part about being his friend, though, is that you’ve heard whispers of people around school calling the two of you “the school’s flowers,” a nickname you hope never, ever catches on.
“Good luck,” Reo says, flicking your nose. “Don’t trip out there.”
You pat Reo on the shoulder. “Be amazed, Reo. I’m a new and improved athlete.”
He snorts. “Yeah? I’ve heard you dragged some kid into being your personal trainer. You never let up, do you?”
“That’s the only way to succeed, Reo! I have to keep my eyes on the prize!”
You make your way down to the starting line of the track, but a familiar head of fluffy white hair catches your gaze. You run behind Nagi and poke him in the sides.
“Oof,” he says, but he doesn’t look surprised to see you. “You’re going to run now?”
“Yes. And I’m going to bring us to victory!” You raise your arms. “I’ve practiced hard for this moment, so keep your eyes on me, Nagi.”
A gaggle of boys in red jerseys passing by snicker at your declaration. From the class across from yours, you recall distantly. “Loser,” one of them calls. “Who gets worked up over a school event?”
For once, you see a spark of anger in Nagi’s eyes, an emotion you’ve never seen cross his face before. He frowns, opening his mouth, but you place a hand on his elbow. He relaxes at your touch, glancing lopsidedly at you.
“Don’t pay them any attention,” you say firmly. “It’s not worth it.”
“... Okay.” But Nagi’s eyes remain narrowed at their retreating backs.
“It’s nice of you to worry, though. Thanks.” His concern is a warmth you carry in your chest all through the race; so he does have emotions other than apathy and faint annoyance. Yet another puzzle piece to the mystery of Nagi Seishiro.
You get into position, the whistle blows, and the first runners of the race set off. You’re running the last leg of the relay, and your class is already behind when your classmate dashes up to you, slapping the baton in your hands. You sprint, all those weeks of dragging Nagi out to train working their magic as you pass one person… then another… but you’re still too far from the finish line with one person just ahead of you. Your legs pump. Your lungs burn. The wind whips past your face. You won’t make it like this. Reo cheers your name in the distance. And there’s a shock of white hair out of the corner of your eye, and you know he’s watching, the slacker, and he probably doesn’t see what the big deal is if you come in second… Keep going. Keep going… and, in a burst of speed, you strain your legs to the limit as you dash past your last competitor, your foot touching the finish line as your classmates erupt into cheers.
You can hardly process what happens next, your blood still pumping from the race, but you slow to a jog as your classmates swarm you, shouting praise.
“Great job!” Reo says, and you high five him.
But your eyes are already searching for Nagi, who sticks out of the crowd like a sore thumb, towering over the majority of your classmates.
“Did you see that?” you ask Nagi as you dash up to him.
“Yeah. You won. Congrats,” he says simply. “All your work paid off.”
“Do you have a different opinion on working hard now, Nagi?” you say, elbowing him in the side.
“Dunno. Still seems like a lot. But… you looked like you were shining,” he says seriously. “I couldn’t stop watching you.”
You pretend to cough into your elbow, hiding your warming cheeks. “Thanks. Anyways! You’re up next, right? What did you sign up for? Ping-pong?”
“I asked someone to switch with me,” he says. “I’m playing football now.”
“Foot… ball? Are you sure you can pick up on all the rules in a short amount of time?” you say, surprised. “Why would you do that?”
“Just because.” But the way Nagi avoids your gaze makes you wonder if he’s hiding something. Still, it wouldn’t be fair of you to pry, and the victory is still racing through your blood.
“All right. I’ll go cheer you on, then.”
The two of you make your way to the football field, where the rest of the team is warming up. Someone throws Nagi a blue jersey, and you turn to size up the opposing team. They’re wearing red jerseys… and they’re the same boys who had made fun of you, just a few moments ago. You glance at Nagi, but he’s lazily stretching one leg.
“Good luck,” you say to Nagi.
“Hm. Won’t need it.” For once, you can’t tell if it’s confidence or lethargy in his voice.
The ensuing football game isn’t a game at all. It’s a one-sided slaughter, with Nagi leading the charge. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Nagi move so fast or fluidly. The ball never leaves his side, and the other team can’t even touch him. One goal. Then another. And when it’s clear they can’t do anything to stop him, the enemy team starts frantically swarming Nagi, breaking formation. But not even a pile-up can save them from their fate, because Nagi simply dodges and kicks the ball into the goal in a series of complicated maneuvers that you can barely track with your eyes.
The timer runs out, and no one can say a word. You start clapping, and like they’ve woken from a daze, your classmates start cheering, a roar so loud you can hear it reverberate in your heart.
“Did you see that? I didn’t realize Nagi could move like that,” one of your classmates murmurs.
“I know! Where has he been hiding that talent? It’s so unfair!”
On the distant field, you see Nagi talk to one of opposing team members, who turns an ugly color at his words. You make your way down to the swarm of your excited classmates, but Nagi is already scanning the crowd, lazily waving off compliments from the people around him, and his droopy eyes perk up when you approach.
“What did you say to that boy?” you whisper, and Nagi leans down so you can cup your hand around his ear. “He looked upset.”
“Just told him he shouldn’t be calling other people losers when he doesn’t even know how to play the game right,” Nagi says. “That’s all.”
“Did you…” The sudden thought feels ridiculous and self-centered. And yet, Nagi Seishiro, the guy who hates activity, who hates effort, who never seems to have particularly strong feelings… “Did you do that because of what he said to me?”
Nagi shrugs. “You worked hard for your goal. He shouldn't have said that.”
There’s a strange fluttering in your chest, and you clamp down on it with all your might. You aren’t going to go there. Because it’s absurd, and impossible, and simply doesn’t make any sense. It would ruin your perfectly aligned plans and wreck your understanding of the world. You’re barely even friends with Nagi; why would he go through all of that trouble for you?
Instead, you elbow him, more roughly than you intend to. “Thanks, but I told you it was okay. People say stupid things all the time.”
“But I didn’t like it,” he says firmly. “You shouldn’t have to put up with that.”
Who is this guy? Did an alien abduct the real Nagi Seishiro and replace him mid-game? It’s hard to look at him, all of a sudden, so you glance down at your shoes instead, trying to calm the pounding of your heart.
The next day, Nagi Seishiro is the talk of the school. His one-sided destruction during sports day gets passed around in whispers and rumors, and a few of your classmates now tell him good morning when he walks through the door. Still, his attitude and manner is enough to put most of them off… all but your friend, Mikage Reo.
“Play football with me!”
It’s a declaration made when you and Nagi are walking through the halls after school, Reo skirting to a stop just in front of you. He strides up to Nagi, his eyes shining in the golden afternoon sunlight.
“Don’t wanna,” Nagi says immediately.
“Why not? You have the talent, the genius… we could take the world by storm. You… could become the best player in Japan… no, the best player in the world! Be my football partner!” Reo says effusively.
Nagi glances at you. “I already have a partner.”
The term “partner” trills down your spine, but you hold up your hands at Reo’s crestfallen look. “Our deal was only for the sports meet. We’re not really partners anymore.”
Did Nagi look disappointed, or was it just a trick of the light? Either way, he shoves his hands in his pockets. “I still don’t want to.”
“Why not?” Reo demands.
“It sounds boring.”
“He thinks everything is too much work,” you say, and Reo throws you a stare that screams “how did you even convince him to work with you?” You grimace in response.
“Come on, Nagi Seishiro. I’ll show you a whole new world. It won’t be boring for even a second. Play football with me!” Reo tries again, but Nagi only stares at him silently.
Nagi glances at you again (why does he keep looking at you?) and Reo, ever observant, throws his pleading in your direction.
“Please convince Nagi for me,” Reo begs. “He’ll listen to you.”
“What– I don’t–”
“We’re friends,” Reo wheedles. “Come on.”
Well. It wasn’t as if you wanted Nagi to go back to his old slacker ways, and maybe spending time with Reo would open up Nagi’s narrow world, just a bit more. “Nagi, why don’t you try it? You did really well at the sports meet. It’d be a waste to do nothing with your talent.”
“... Is football fun?” Nagi asks.
“Really fun!” Reo replies.
“And… it’s something that people have to try hard at?”
“Most people! You might be able to skate by without even practicing, though, since you’re a genius,” Reo says. “Not that I’m going to let you slack on the field, or off it.”
“Huh… no wonder the two of you get along…” he mutters, before turning the full force of his attention on you. “Is working hard, and doing your best at something… is it really that fun?”
“Huh? Well, yeah! I want to be the best I can be, and winning the relay race felt really good,” you say. “Didn’t you feel anything when you won the football match?”
“Dunno, but… hm…” You can see the rusty gears turning in his head. “I’ll go with you,” Nagi says finally to Reo. “I’ll try joining your team… but…” He points at you. “They have to come with me.”
“Huh? I’m not even good at sports,” you say defensively. “I have too much on my plate to–”
“Deal!” Reo interjects. “They can come to all our practices and games, even if they don’t join the team! Don’t go back on your word, Nagi Seishiro.”
And to your utter bafflement, you find yourself attending Nagi and Reo’s football games. Nagi, whose attitude you’re just starting to crack, suddenly turns back to an utter alien. Why did you have to attend their practices? Nagi seems content just to have you there, and Reo calls you a “lucky charm,” because apparently Nagi is more motivated when you’re around.
Sure, you pick up on enough of the terminology and mechanics of the game to bounce strategies with Reo, but you doubt you really need to be there when they have a seasoned coach. Why had Nagi really accepted Reo’s offer, too? So many mysteries surrounded him.
When you ask, Nagi only says vaguely that he accepted Reo’s offer because “he wants to learn what it means to try his best” and you have to be here because “he needs you around.” And then he failed to elaborate when you pressed him.
Truly, Nagi’s behavior doesn’t fit with anyone you’ve ever met before. How can you start to untangle the threads of his random whims? It’s impossible… which is why it leads to odd moments, like during the latest football game Reo organized.
“Nagi, what are you doing?”
Reo's exasperated voice rings out across the field. And, with the screen flashing a score of 5-0 overhead, and curious audience members staring at you and Nagi at the bench below, you can't help but find yourself echoing his sentiments. The star of your school's most recent football match is standing right in front of you, bent at a 90 degree angle so he's looking straight at the ground, his fluffy hair shoved right in front of your face.
“Nagi, what are you doing?” you say, hands still clasped together mid-clap.
“I won the game,” he says matter-of-factly.
“You did! Congratulations!”
But Nagi still doesn't move. In the distance, Reo raises his eyebrows at you, and you shrug your shoulders helplessly. Nagi, with his alien tendencies, is incomprehensible at this moment. As soon as Nagi had scored the winning shot and the timer counted to zero, he dodged all his cheering teammates and made a beeline straight to where you were sitting, bending into a strange position. And he’s been like this for the past three minutes, without any explanation.
“I won the game,” he repeats.
“I know. I was watching.”
“So you should compliment me,” Nagi says patiently, as if he were explaining a math equation to a small child.
“Huh? But I did,” you protest. “I congratulated you.”
“You should compliment me,” he says again.
This conversation could run around in circles all day. Your eyes drift to Nagi's hair, white strands sticking up in all directions. It's always messy because the only time a comb touched his head was when you were the one using it to brush his hair. Then it hits you out of the blue. No way. Did he want you to…? There’s only one way to find out.
Your hand sinks into his hair as you pat him on the head. It's just as soft as it looks, if not a bit sweaty from exercise. One pat, two pats, and then you quickly extract your hand before you lose yourself in the addicting feeling of stroking his hair. “You did a good job, Nagi. I'm proud of you.”
Nagi finally looks up, satisfied, even if the expression on his face doesn't change a bit. He tilts his head when he sees you shaking your hand slightly. “What are you doing?”
"You're sweaty," you inform him. "Next time, you only get head pats if you take a shower first."
A frown grows across Nagi's face before he drops his chin on the top of your head, arms wrapping around you and draping himself over you as if he had no strength left in his body. You shriek at the sudden, sweaty contact, nose crushed right against his jersey.
“Nagi! Cut it out!”
“Don't wanna. Too much work.”
“And it's not too much work to lean on me like this?” you ask, voice muffled from being pressed against his body.
His arms tighten around you. “Nope.”
"Nagi, you're suffocating them," Reo says, his voice startling close. He must have moved across the field while you were caught up with Nagi.
“They're okay,” Nagi says.
“No, he's right. I can’t breathe right now,” you say dryly.
Nagi loosens his grip around you, but his chin still rests on your head.
“Nagi, we need to talk about our next game,” Reo says expectantly.
“Don't wanna.”
Reo shoots you a pleading glance from around Nagi’s back. “Nagi, go with Reo to talk about your next game,” you order.
“Do I have to?” Nagi shuffles back just enough for you to see his unhappy expression, your head finally freed from his touch.
“Yes,” you and Reo both say at the same time.
“Fine,” he replies. Reo, triumphant, grabs Nagi's arm before he can make a sudden dash, and mouths a thank you before hauling Nagi away. Nagi, for his part, throws you forlorn glances as Reo drags him away, but you only wave at him, smiling.
When the two of them are gone and most of the audience has dispersed, only you and the chilly autumn sunshine remain. The wind, which hadn't been quite so cold before, is strong enough to make you pull your coat tighter around yourself.
Nagi Seishiro is the human equivalent to one of the world’s unsolvable math equations. Though the formula looks simple in theory, there’s simply no way of understanding it– or understanding him. His lackadaisical method of communication doesn’t make it any easier, either. You can’t tell if he’s genuinely obtuse, or if he doesn’t notice that other people can’t track his thought process without communication– or maybe he thinks it’s too much of a bother to try.
But you’re used to his strangeness, though– or at least, you thought you were used to it, until your classmates approached you with wide eyes and giggly whispers one day, asking if the rumors were true.
“You’re dating Nagi?” they’d asked. “The guy who’s winning all our school’s football games?”
“What?” you hissed. “Who told you that?”
“Nagi himself,” one of the girls said excitedly. “I heard someone ask him why he’s been hanging out with you so much, and he said that was because he’s your partner! Is it true? Are you two dating?”
“It’s not,” you said firmly. “It really isn’t!” you added when the girls looked at you doubtfully. Your heart sank, because if these girls were approaching you, then that’d meant the rumors had spread around the entire school already. If there’s one thing your classmates liked to do, it was gossip.
That’s how you end up dragging Nagi to the roof after school, running up the empty staircase and through streaks of lazy sunshine until you’re back where it all started, the space you onced shared like two planets orbiting the same sun, never interacting.
Now, standing across from the culprit of all the rumors, you tilt your head at Nagi, who tilts his head in the same direction as a response. His sleepy eyes bore into your own, tracking your movements like a puppy.
“Nagi, have you been telling people I’m your partner?”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because it’s true,” he says.
“But…! People have been saying we’re dating!”
Nagi tilts his head. “Oh. It was too much of a pain to correct them. I said we were partners, and then they started giggling, saying stuff like ‘I knew it! They’re dating!’ and left before I could say anything else. Is it bad that they think we’re dating?”
“It is! Because it’s not true at all!”
“We study together and game together ,” he says. “And help each other out. And spend all our time together. So aren’t we partners?”
“Well… this and that are two different things… Being someone’s romantic partner and being someone’s platonic partner are… they’re not the same. I’m just saying, you only date someone you like romantically!”
“Oh. Well, I like you,” he says simply. “So then it’s okay for us to date.”
You feel like someone has just shot you into outer space without a map, and you’re floating around, trying to get your bearings without gravity for the first time. “Huh?”
“I like you,” he repeats. “So, then it’s okay for people to think we’re dating, right? Oh. We could start dating for real, and then that would also clear up the rumors.”
Dating… Dating Nagi? He looks satisfied, nodding to himself as if he’s figured out a particularly complicated equation, but you’re more lost than ever. Romance? Love? Those thoughts have never even crossed your mind. You figured you’d get to them eventually, but the most important thing in your life was success. You weren’t ready yet! You don’t have a plan prepared! Besides, why would he like you? When did feelings have time to grow? If anything, shouldn’t Nagi be annoyed with you for interrupting his peaceful lifestyle?
You can’t map this situation at all. You have no previous references to draw back on other than the girls and boys who asked Reo out throughout the years. Romance should be simple, you’d thought as Reo chased his admirers off. Romance should be simple, and easy, something you can chart and track and understand. There should be a formula to it, just like everything else in life.
“I don’t have time to date,” you say. “I have to focus on my priorities, like… like getting into a good university.”
Nagi shrugs. “Oh. We can date when we’re in university, then.”
“But…!”
“Do you not like me?” he asks seriously.
You open your mouth, but you can’t think of any of a proper rebuttal. You should just say no, but… did you really not like Nagi? Not at all? Not when he went along with your plans, defended you during sports day, wanted you at all his games, and told you he liked you, no games, no pretense, no calculations?
“... I can’t answer that,” you say lamely.
“Then take your time,” he says.
“But…”
“I like you,” he says. “But if you don’t like me or you don’t want to date, then I’m okay with just being by your side.”
Why couldn’t such a simple answer ever come so easily to you, like it does to Nagi? “It’s weird,” you say quietly, looking down at your feet, “It’s weird not understanding my feelings. I want to understand everything. I wish it were easy.”
“But isn’t it tiring thinking so hard all the time? Sometimes, you can’t think through something. You just have to deal with it,” Nagi says slowly. “But… I like the part of you that tries hard and wants to do everything you can.”
Maybe it’s the sunlight, or the bright blue sky behind him, but Nagi is so brilliant your eyes are drawn to him. Is this what he meant, back during sports day, about shining so brightly he couldn’t look away?
“Stop telling people we’re dating, though,” you grumble.
“Yes, boss.”
—
Mikage Reo, someone you once thought was your friend, is laughing at you. He’s laughing at you, and everytime you think he’s stopped, he takes one look at you and bursts out laughing again. Mercifully, at least, there’s no one in the classroom to witness your humiliation.
“You really think you could make a plan for your love life, like how you plan for classes?” he snickers. “You know, relationships are a lot more complicated than you give them credit for.”
“Hey! In most cases, there is a set pattern to romance.”
“A pattern? Set by who?” Reo asks, raising his eyebrows.
“Well… in the books I’ve read… and video games I’ve played… I think there’s a common–”
“From stories! Not from real people? Do you know real life is different from books?” Reo cuts in. “Emotions don’t operate on a cut and dry principle.”
“But there is rationality behind emotions,” you argue. “The way people react to certain situations, according to their personality and environment, and–”
“You’re a nerd,” Reo says bluntly. “You can’t predict everything, you know.”
“I can try,” you say blithely, but Reo rolls his eyes.
“Poor Nagi,” Reo says with a sigh. “This is what happens when he actually tries hard at something!”
“Poor me. I can’t believe he started telling people we were dating without asking me first,” you grumble, and Reo starts laughing again.
“The two of you are hilarious,” he says, wiping away the tears forming in his eyes. “I haven’t laughed so hard in ages.”
“At least someone is enjoying this.”
Reo pats you on the back. “But don’t you think you’re underestimating Nagi?”
“What do you mean?”
“You keep trying to quantify him, but are you really listening to what he’s saying?” Reo asks. “Can’t you just accept that there are some things you won’t understand?”
“But–”
“Do you really not know how you feel about him?” Reo presses. “Don’t string him along. Reject him, or go out with him, but you can’t make him wait to sort out your feelings forever.”
“I know! I know that. But…” You scuff at the floor with your shoe. Reo is right, as loath as you are to admit it. It’s not fair to Nagi to make him wait. And… maybe Nagi isn’t the alien here. Maybe you are, because you’ve tried so hard to turn everything into precise data points so you can understand the human beings around you and the planet you inhabit. Maybe that’s your only option to stave off the fear and the vulnerability the complete randomness of the universe creates.
“I’m not trying to be a jerk to you,” Reo says, placing a hand on your shoulder. “I don’t want you to get hurt either, you know. But you can’t keep running forever.”
“I’m not running,” you say.
Reo hums, but then nods to himself, as if coming to a decision. “Do you know why Nagi joined the football team?”
“Because we pestered him into joining?” you grumble.
“No. He told me it’s because he wanted to be more like you.”
“Like me…?”
“He admires you for having goals,” Reo says simply. “For always trying your best. And he wants to understand what it’s like to care so much about something. He wants to learn how to understand you, which is amazing, don’t you think? He doesn’t really seem like the guy who’s ever put much effort into anything before.”
He joined because he admired you? You feel a strange heat in your chest. Nagi, who’s trying to understand something. And you, who has to stop trying to understand everything. What a strange pair you make.
Reo smiles slightly, but you can’t help but find it unbearably smug, the meddler. Why did he have to say the right words to send your thoughts spiraling? “Why don’t you try looking at this from a different angle? What sort of guys do you like?” Reo says abruptly.
“Successful and rich guys,” you say automatically.
“You like successful and rich guys?” Nagi says, and both you and Reo whirl around at the sudden intrusion into your classroom. How much has he heard? You’re panicking as Nagi raises a hand in greeting, but he suddenly frowns. Oh no. Oh no– but he promptly marches over and snatches Reo’s hand off your shoulder, patting off imaginary specks of dust.
“Petty…” Reo mutters, but neither of you acknowledge him.
“What are you doing here?” you say.
“I wanted to see you,” Nagi replies.
You kick Reo’s leg just as he starts shooting you self-satisfied glances. Reo winces, then lightly jabs you in the ribs with his elbow.
“Don’t hit them,” Nagi says to Reo.
“Huh? But they kicked me first!”
Nagi shrugs. “That’s okay.”
“I don’t like this double standard. You’re ganging up on me,” Reo accuses.
“That’s your problem,” you tell Reo loftily.
Nagi calls your name softly. “Are you free on the weekend?”
“Yes. Oh, did you want to study for the history test together?” you ask, grateful for a change in subject.
“Test?”
“... I’ll be there on Sunday afternoon.”
“Okay, boss,” Nagi says.
With nothing left to discuss, you all start your separate paths home. Reo flashes you one last thumbs up before the three of you part. “Good luck!” he calls.
“Thanks,” you say. Because like it or not, this weekend is going to be the first time you’re alone with Nagi after his confession.
—
On the weekend, you take the subway to Nagi’s house. The ride is only twenty minutes, but you spend the entire time leaning your forehead against the cool glass of the window, scenery flashing by in a muted blur. What’s going to happen? You haven’t even responded to Nagi’s confession yet, and your heart drums nervously in your chest.
But Nagi’s house, you discover, is surprisingly ordinary. When you ring the doorbell, it takes a few seconds for him to amble down, wrinkled clothes and sloppy hair revealing that he just crawled out of bed.
“Welcome,” he says, and leans over as you run your fingers through his hair, causing the strands to spike up. Soft and silky, despite the fact he puts zero effort into its maintenance.
“Do you even know what I’m here for?”
“... To game?”
“To study!” you correct, shooing him back inside. You take off your shoes at the entryway, changing into house slippers, and the two of you settle down in the living room. There’s only a couch, a low table and a rug, and a television set in the corner. It’s sparse but clean, so it’s possible Nagi has to hire someone to clean his house, because you doubt he does it on his own.
You pile your textbooks on the table, folding your legs underneath yourself as you flip through your notes. “So… did you study for the test next week?”
“We have a test?” Nagi says, picking up your pencil case.
You slap his hand. “Yes! In history. Did you forget already? I just told you last Friday!”
“You were going to come over, so… I was too excited. I forgot.”
“Am I just supposed to remember everything for you? You need to take initiative,” you say, exasperated, ignoring the fluttering in your chest. So he’d been excited to see you? No, those sorts of thoughts were irrelevant. “Look through the textbook. I marked everything I thought might be on the test.” You slide the book to Nagi, who dutifully picks it up before immediately lying on his side.
“Sit up. You’ll get a headache,” you say, and Nagi slides back into a cross-legged position, resting the book on his lap.
It’s quiet except for the scratching of your pencil and the rustle of pages. When you glance at Nagi to check his process, he’s diligently looking through the textbook, absorbed into reading each section you carefully marked. He’s oblivious to the emotional turmoil that you’re experiencing just by sitting across a table from him; how had you been able to act so casually before? Now, you’re hyper-aware of his presence, his soft sighs, his loose posture, the eyelashes shading across his cheeks.
Out of the blue, Nagi speaks. “You said I can ask you if I have any questions, right?”
You hum, tracing your finger down the text you highlighted. “Yes. Got a question about a passage?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“Can I tell you that you’re cute?”
“That’s… that’s not related to studying,” you try to scold, but your voice is weak even to your own ears.
“Sorry. But I didn’t know if I was allowed to tell you or not,” Nagi says.
“I…” You try to stand, try to find an excuse to leave the room for a second, but your legs have fallen asleep from being in the same cramped position for so long. You stumble, and Nagi, moving faster than you’ve ever seen him, is by your side in a heartbeat.
“Are you okay?” he says, and his concerned face is hovering inches from your own. Somehow, you ended up sliding on the floor, Nagi’s arms caging you in on both sides. Your face is on fire, and somehow, you still have a tight grip on your notes. You nod, but he doesn’t move away. Instead, his eyes linger on your lips.
“Is it okay if I kiss you?” Nagi says. He leans in closer, and you squeak, raising your notes to block his lips. His eyes are earnest, gaze fixed solely on you, like you’re the only person in his world.
“Well… that’s not…”
“I can wait for you,” he says quietly, “But you told me not to run away from you. So don’t run away from me, either.”
Your cheeks are burning. There’s no more excuses left. You had already run out of them, long ago. “You can. But I’ve never kissed anyone before,” you murmur. “Reo is the one with all the experience–”
“Call me by my first name,” Nagi interrupts.
“What?”
“You call Reo by his first name,” he says. “Call me by mine, too. It’s not fair, otherwise.”
“That’s so childish!”
“I’m not moving until you do,” Nagi says stubbornly.
“Fine.” You take a breath. “S… Seishiro. Is that better?”
“Yeah.” His hands grip your wrists gently, the touch sending shockwaves through your entire nervous system.
The notebook flutters to the floor as Nagi leans in to kiss you. Like everything he does seriously, it brims with an intensity that steals your breath away. He tastes sweet, like the candy he snacks on, and you cup his face, pulling him closer.
When you break apart, Nagi rests his forehead against yours. “It’s a lot of work,” he says, “but I’m thinking of playing football professionally.”
“Really? Wow! You have the talent to pull it off,” you say. “Reo finally convinced you to go pro?”
“You said you liked successful guys,” Nagi says simply. “So I have to work hard to be successful.”
“I did! But Seishiro…” You kiss him again, because he’s just so cute, and murmur against his lips, “Forget about my type. The only guy I like is you.”
#liya writes#blue lock#nagi seishiro#nagi seishiro x reader#nagi x reader#blue lock x reader#x reader#nagi seishirou#nagi seishirou x reader#seishiro nagi#seishiro nagi x reader#YEAH HE HAS ME IN A DEATH GRIP. SORRY.#couldnt finish work until i had this done bc it absorbed all my attention
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love in the little things : svt hip-hop unit
── alternatively: the times when actions whisper softly, but the love speaks volumes.
svt (hiphop unit) x reader, established relationship, fluff , 642 words
vocal unit | performance unit
꒰ 🫧 ꒱ — there's a sense of calmness that SEUNGCHEOL feels when he drives around with you right by his side. whether it's the daily commute to work or a night out with your friends, he insists on being the one to take you there. "i find peace in it," he said one time when you asked him about it.
and sure, the experience of driving beside him is a joy in its own right, but what tugs at your heartstrings the most is his steadfast commitment to punctuality. you had mentioned to him once how being made to wait on your own makes you anxious; he understood this unease, that's why he never lets you experience that anxiety. it washes you with relief and comfort to see him patiently waiting for you when you get out the door.
for more of this, check out open road promises.
꒰ 🫧 ꒱ — like the pitter-patter of the raindrops, it became a pattern on countless occasions already. it was instinct for WONWOO that every time it rained; he would subtly shift the umbrella he was holding up for the both you, so that you would get more than enough shade to keep you dry.
whether it was a drizzle or a downpour, he would position the umbrella at an angle just to give you more shelter. every now and then, he would even steal glances at you to make sure you were comfortable, without a care for the rain-soaked shirt clinging to his arm. it was a gesture he never talked about and never seem to have to think twice about — his tiny habit that means so much to you.
in the midst of the rain, wonwoo never fails to wrap you up in the most beautiful kind of warmth.
꒰ 🫧 ꒱ — with his wholehearted belief that what's his is yours, MINGYU loves to give you the best bites of every food he eats. initially, you thought it was just a simple act of sharing, which was already sweet in itself. yet, during a cozy movie night at his place, the realization hit as you both were enjoying a bag of gummy bears. it dawned on you that he had been actively avoiding your favorite colors, making sure that you had them all to yourself.
since that moment, you grew more aware of it: the cheesiest slice of pizza, the fudgiest corner of a brownie, the juiciest chicken drumsticks, the scoop of ice cream with the largest chunk of cookie dough, and the portion of the corn dog with the perfect cheese-to-dough ratio, among many others. his smile that radiates joy and fulfillment every time he does it — a wordless testament to his love for you.
꒰ 🫧 ꒱ — you smiled as soon as you saw VERNON's name flash on your phone screen. though you never know what to expect, it was a familiar occurrence in your day-to-day — his penchant for sending you the most random texts in the most random times throughout the day.
"look what i just saw that reminded me of you!" one of them read, it was then followed by a picture of puddle in the shape of a heart. this has become a delightful routine that never ceases to make your heart jump every time you feel your phone vibrate, notifying you of a new message. but it doesn't stop with images of heart-shaped objects; he sends factoids ("did you know that honey never spoils?"), casual updates of what he's up to ("babe i spilled water on myself and now i look like i peed my pants"), little reminders for you ("don't forget to eat today okay?"), and your favorite of all, his tiny confessions of love ("i love you and i can't wait to see you later!").
the spontaneity of it is what you loved about it. the thought that during arbitrary moments in his day, his thoughts are filled with you.
svt masterlist | navigation ── reblogs and feedbacks are highly appreciated !
© 2023 PEARLESSCENTT. please do not steal my works.
#svt#svt imagines#seventeen x reader#seventeen imagines#svt x reader#svt scenarios#svt headcanons#svt fluff#scoups x reader#wonwoo x reader#mingyu x reader#mingyu imagines#vernon x reader#scoups imagines#wonwoo imagines#vernon imagines#seventeen scenarios#seventeen fluff
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Chapter 42 in human Bill Cipher's imprisonment in the Mystery Shack about to get a whole lot worse, featuring:
A history lesson on a second dimensional cult and its obnoxious child leader.
And Dipper making the mistake of asking Bill what "reality is an illusion" means.
And most importantly... The Eclipse: Prologue.
####
The source of light is a completely hypothetical phenomenon.
Just a couple of centuries ago, scientists postulated that perhaps light was a side-effect of magnetism generated by the poles of planets, and that someday the study of magnets might explain how light shifted over the course of a day.
But modern scientists theorized that light emanated from some force or object in a higher dimension, and that the unseen movements of this source-of-light explained how light ebbed and flowed around the perimeters of objects over the course of a day. Physics experiments backed up this hypothesis of a "third dimensional" origin of light.
Scientists adopted the term "sun" to describe this hypothetical light source. Experiments also suggested the third dimension might have a multitude of weaker light sources that provided much less illumination—perhaps spread across the third dimension like water droplets suspended in fog—which they dubbed "stars."
Roughly once a year, light (or rather, the "sun") was eclipsed. This was a very long time; a child born just after an eclipse might already be in school, have mastered measuring angles and reading, and begun learning multiplication and division by the time they saw their first eclipse. Some years were skipped, such that they wouldn't have an eclipse for two, three, sometimes even four or five years—it was possible to almost reach middle age without seeing an eclipse—with no discernible pattern to these gaps. Eclipses usually occurred around the new year—indeed, New Year's Day was fixed to the average date of the eclipse—but eclipse season ranged up to three months in either direction.
Experiments were being conducted to test ideas about the nature of eclipses—the two most prominent theories were that the sun naturally flickered off and on like a lamp, in a rolling pattern that accounted for how eclipses didn't affect the whole plain simultaneously but had been proven to move; or that the sun was obscured by some object in the third dimension, like a ball thrown in front of a lamp. There were solid arguments in favor of either theory, and thus far the data on hand couldn't disprove either.
But where science petered out, religion took up the baton.
A new religious movement called the Higher Dimensional Gate was picking up steam in the northwest. The cult (as some watchdog organizations called it) had been started a few years ago by a married couple—line and trapezoid—who gave largely inoffensive New Age-flavored sermons about spiritual purity and enlightenment. Their shows would have been unremarkable if not for their inclusion of their child—a charismatic young equilateral triangle they claimed had an "inner eye" that granted him clairvoyance. Every show, they put him on stage for a few minutes, where he'd point out audience members and offer seemingly-psychic insights into their lives. As he approached adolescence, he was given more and more stage time, which he'd use to recite the same sort of rhetoric as his parents while tossing in some novel claims about the third dimension that reflected the public's modern scientific fascinations.
It wasn't until the line's death that they evolved from a traveling psychic sideshow with a few zealous supporters into a burgeoning religious movement. The trapezoid adopted a background role as the precocious triangle took over all their speaking engagements, which he used to spin a novel mythology describing the third dimension as a separate spiritual plane found in an unseeable direction "upward, but not northward" from the mundane mortal plane. It was at this time that they adopted the name Higher Dimensional Gate, and their young leader announced that his spiritual contacts in the third dimension had granted him the title Magister Mentium—teacher of minds (or, perhaps more ominously, master of minds).
Higher Dimensional Gate aggressively recruited new followers, with the Magister leaving school to support a frenetic pace of traveling speaking engagements. More and more devotees followed him from town to town, overfilling hotels wherever they went and flooding parking lots with a caravan of RVs and trailers. Fliers they left in their wake offered mail-order pamphlets, sermon recordings, and religious paraphernalia. But the cult didn't break into the national consciousness until a couple of theoretical astrophysicists published a paper debunking pop culture misinformation on the third dimension.
Along with referencing several sci-fi shows spreading the idea that the third dimension allowed time travel, the authors dove into the bizarre beliefs of several New Age authors, speakers, and religious movements. They particularly maligned the ideas put forth by Higher Dimensional Gate, calling their descriptions of angelic aliens and spirit guides "misleading fairy tales" with no scientific basis in reality. They said the Magister Mentium would have done better to finish a basic public education before making claims about the third dimension.
The paper didn't receive much notice outside popular science magazines—until the Magister Mentium released a vicious public rebuttal that made national news for its absurdity.
Soundbites from his twenty-minute rant were broadcast in news segments about fringe religious movements and scientific literacy. Talk shows played quotes as fodder for jokes. Editorialists predicted that the young triangle was the sort of crooked cult leader who'd be on trial in a decade for cheating his worshipers out of their life savings. Only a few programs played even as much as a full minute from his speech:
"These scientists want you to think that the third dimension is some dead realm hidden behind a door you'll never see—and I'm telling you it's not! It's the dream realm! It's the realm of spirits and positive energy! It stretches into all possible futures, and if you could peer into it, you'd see the road to your own best possible future!
"And I know this. Because unlike these pessimistic brainiacs who mock what they don't understand, I can see the third dimension. I can witness the 'sun' in all its glory—a blazing white circle, more dazzling than anything you've ever seen, so bright it burns like fire to stare at it! I can see it pass through the pinpoint white lights of the 'stars'!
"And I can prove it.
"The most 'educated' minds in the scientific community can't predict an eclipse. They look at their historical records and they do a little math, hope they'll get lucky, and shrug if they're wrong—what do they know? All they can do is guess!
"But with my own all-seeing eye, I've personally witnessed a phenomenon that scientists can't even imagine. I know what passes between the sun and our plane—and I know when it's coming.
"I note all my detractors are in the camp that thinks the sun flickers.
"So let's run a scientific experiment. I challenge the scientific community to predict the next eclipse more accurately than me. I'll give it to you within the minute. In fact—I'll sweeten the deal! I'll give a million dollars to any nerd who can guess more accurately than me! I will personally hand you the prize money!"
"But if you want the prize, you'd better guess soon. Because the eclipse will be here in two weeks. I can already see it on the horizon."
It was nearly seven months until New Year's.
Sources close to the Magister's family claimed he was a spendthrift with nowhere near a million dollars on hand.
When asked to comment on the public ridicule his challenge had inspired, the Magister snidely replied, "We'll see who's laughing after the eclipse."
####
Gideon approached the Mystery Shack disguised in a pair of sunglasses and a camo jacket from his father's closet. The jacket was as long as a dress on him. It was hot.
He kept outside the tree line as he circled the shack, passing the gift shop, the house door, and finally the long side of the house where tourists never parked and the residents rarely ventured.
Gideon peered anxiously at each window for witnesses. He looked up at the attic dormer which once held the window of Bill's face; he caught a flash of bright golden curls pulling out of sight, and flinched. No, that was fine. That was who he was here for. Weren't any other blondes in the house.
When he was sure the coast was clear, he ran across the open ground from the trees to the side door, heart threatening to beat out of his chest. By the time he reached the door, Bill was already downstairs in the floor room, hands and grinning face pressed to the window like a child awaiting a special delivery. He waved excitedly at Gideon.
Gideon hissed, "Shh!" and immediately felt stupid about it.
He partially unzipped his jacket, pulled a manila envelope out of an inner pocket, knelt, and shoved it under the door. As Bill had promised, the door had poor weatherstripping and the envelope slid in easily.
A napkin covered in faint dry marker writing slid out. Gideon picked it up and read it. "Nice work ☆ Boy! I'll pass you the next message at Town Hall. Get yourself something nice, my treat. ◡̈" Inside the napkin's fold was a $5 coupon to the hardware store. It was expired.
Looking at the coupon, Gideon asked himself what a powerless imprisoned demon could really do to help his father's business.
Inside the shack, Bill checked the doorway to ensure no humans were coming for a few minutes, flopped onto the flat old sofa, and pulled several sheets of notebook paper out of the envelope: the answers to all the questions he'd told Gideon to ask his worshiper. He skimmed past her name to the second question: how had they located Bill?
At the sight of a familiar name, his heart leaped into his throat, then slowly sank into its cage again as he read the rest. "Someone calling himself Stanford Pines reached out, claiming to be an ex-cultist wanting to help other victims of the cult. He said the cult's 'founder' was incarcerated. He sounded like an enemy, but they thought he might know something about your disappearance and sent Sue."
Until the last moment, Bill had held onto a sliver of hope. As much as Ford said he couldn't stand Bill, somebody had had to contact his artists, and who else...?
But there it was. It had been Ford; but he hadn't been trying to save Bill. He'd just been trying to rip the nails out of one more thing Bill had built.
Fine. Bill wasn't wasting time on lost causes. He'd never really seen Ford as a friend, anyway. If Ford was stupid enough to throw away a god's favor, that was his loss. Bill could kill him with the rest when he had his power back. He didn't care. He'd just... really thought he could win him back over.
He crumpled up the pages, tossed them on the floor, and hunched forward to rub his eyelid with his hand.
Well, trying to get Ford back on his side had just been a way to pass the time. He hadn't taken it seriously. Not really.
He leaned back, flopped his head on the backrest cushion, and sighed; and then he fished the pages off the floor and smoothed them back out.
He read through the rest of the information Gideon had obtained. His girls in Death Valley had indeed been awaiting his arrival "as Bill requested"; and when he didn't show up on schedule, they'd taken to waiting for him in shifts for half a year before giving up. The way Bill had "requested" was to stack themselves into a human throne for him—he imagined Sue hadn't wanted to mention that detail on the phone with a kid. And they'd kept that up for six months? In shifts? That was hysterical. What a bunch of lunatics. He couldn't wait to meet the gals in person, he was just going to love them. Sue was set up at an inn a few towns west—not a lot of motels in this lonely part of Oregon—and there were a couple more girls in Portland who could be here in an hour.
They'd also made contact with a few devotees of Bill's teachings in Washington, but hadn't told them his exact location. Unsurprising—if they were the devotees he was thinking of, they were less "hardy New Age hippie spiritualists looking forward to the creation of a bright new world" and more "paranoid doomsday preppers anticipating being the last survivors of the doomed old world." The Death Valley group probably didn't trust them. Just about all of Bill's "students" were freaks of one sort or another—if not when he met them, then by the time he was done with them—but different varieties of freaks usually clashed. He had to keep them safely corralled into separate sects to maintain the harmony and their loyalty.
They were all so, so close—all these humans just waiting for an opportunity to meet him, touch him, save him, serve him, love him. They were so close he could almost reach out and grab them.
But "almost" wouldn't get them into his hands.
Something would come up soon. He was sure. He could feel it.
####
Sometimes, stairs just weren't worth the effort.
Bill understood, intellectually, that stair steps had a "top" surface and a "side" surface. He also understood that, given how gravity worked in this dimension, you could only step on their top surfaces. He knew this. He was smart. He'd personally worked out the equations to calculate how gravity worked in this dimension ages before an apple beaned Newton.
It was just that, when he looked at a staircase, he couldn't shake the impression that someone had simply taken a 2D plane and artistically folded it into a zigzag. And on a folded 2D plane, there wasn't a "top" surface and a "side" surface; there was just the surface, and a 3D body could stand anywhere atop the surface with no problem.
So he would try to get from the attic to the kitchen, subconsciously decide that rather than walking "down" the stairs standing vertically he wanted to walk "up" the stairs standing horizontally, and he'd try to lean forward to put his foot on the side of a step—and then his face was on the floor again.
And even when he kept his ups up and his sides sideways, sometimes over-concentrating on where to step distracted him into tripping anyway.
The stairs in the Quadrangle of Qonfusion never gave him trouble. They worked fine both vertically and horizontally, he'd designed them that way. And also he didn't need to use them. He could float. They were mainly there for the outerplanar Henchmaniacs and because Bill liked the zigzag motif. He was much less fond of stairs these days. When he got home, he was ripping them all out and replacing them with ladders and slides.
He was better with stairs than he'd been when he first occupied this body. But when he didn't focus on every single step, he still tended to slip up. He often got to the stairs and saw his body crumpled on the landing fifteen seconds in the future. If the damage wasn't too severe, sometimes he just resigned himself to the bruises and stepped off the ledge. Had to get downstairs somehow, after all.
But sometimes the future held a broken leg, or an unconscious heap, or a lot of blood. When that happened, sometimes he'd shuffle his footing a bit until the future looked less painful and then try descending. Sometimes he'd creep down to the last safe step and then look for a less fatal route the rest of the way down.
And sometimes he got halfway down the stairs, saw looming disaster, couldn't for the life of him figure out how to avoid it, and thought forget it and just sat down in the middle of the staircase. If he waited there long enough, eventually whatever he'd been about to instinctively do would change, and he could safely finish his journey.
Stairs were, by far, the most frequent and most stupid of his inconveniences as a human.
He never thought to bring something to read in case he hit unexpected delays on the stairs. There was nothing interesting to do, and he didn't so much as have a window to look out of. He got bored. He was constantly sleep-deprived. Sometimes he fell asleep, leaning against the wall.
He'd overheard the humans speculating on why he liked to nap on the stairs. The leading theory was that it had been normal in his home dimension, followed closely by runner-up theory "just to annoy us." None had asked him directly. They usually just left him alone on the stairs. But not today.
Bill flinched out of sleep as his leg was kicked. A fizzling field of white pinpricks filled his vision and faded as he opened his eyes. "Mruh?"
"You're blocking the stairs," Dipper said. This time Bill had fallen asleep on the stairs below the landing, slouched down with his shoulders and head against the wall, legs stretched across two stair steps and knees raised.
"And you're disturbing my sleep." Bill yawned and glanced downstairs. Coast was clear. He could get to the living room with nothing but a fumble on the next to bottom step now.
"Get out of the way." Dipper kicked his leg again.
Well, now Bill didn't want to get up. He kicked Dipper back. "No. Your ancestors lived in trees, act like it."
"What?"
"Climb, monkey boy."
Dipper grumbled, but surveyed his roadblock thoughtfully. He experimentally lifted a foot over Bill's abdomen, considered how far down it was to the next step, and scooted down to Bill's feet instead. Bill watched with a smirk as Dipper clung to the railing and gingerly stepped over one foot to the edge of the stair step, and then the next. Bill briefly considered tripping him, decided it wasn't worth getting in trouble, and instead twitched a foot up as Dipper passed over and laughed when he jumped.
"Jerk," Dipper muttered. "This is why you only have one friend."
The jab ripped at a raw sore in his chest. Ex-cultist. "Whatever!" He laughed loudly. "My real friends are all one little interdimensional rift away, I didn't come here to make pals with humans." He jerked his hood down over his eyes and slouched lower, arms crossed tight. "I don't even care. This entire universe is a hologram and nothing's real anyway."
There was silence. Bill congratulated himself on getting the last word in; and then Dipper said, "What does that mean?"
"What kind of stupid—it means I don't care about you, what do you think it means? You're made from the exhaust belched out of a star's tailpipe—"
"I meant, the hologram thing. You're always saying stuff about the universe not being real, what are you talking about."
Bill thumbed the hem of his hood up and glanced down at Dipper. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up determinedly. He'd pulled out his journal and pen. He was serious. He was all ready to learn about the secrets of the universe.
Ford's little wanna-be protégé with his little knock-off Journal, wasn't he adorable. He wanted so much to be just like his great uncle. And in many ways, he was like a younger Ford. The ignorant, arrogant, insecure, naïve, easily-flattered, easily-exploited younger Ford, back before he grew a personality. Except even back at his most boring, Ford had found the strange beautiful where this kid only found it interesting. You don't have what it takes to be Ford.
Bill was already filling this brat's head with gunk—bogus conspiracy theories, wild goose chases after lucid dreaming, nightmares about whole dimensions that existed only as parables for somebody else. What was a little bit more? He could give this kid something to talk to his therapist about. Something that—in his darkest, lowest, loneliest moments—would come back to mind, and remind him that nothing he did would ever matter.
Plus, he hoped Ford would look in on the living room and seethe about not being his student anymore.
"All right kid, sure! Fine. You just so happened to catch me on a day when I've got nothing to do." Bill stood, stretched, and sauntered down the stairs. He fumbled on the next to bottom step. "You wanna know about the universe? You wanna know the big secret?"
"Uh..." Dipper eagerly flipped through his journal, looking for a blank page. Apparently he hadn't expected Bill to actually indulge his curiosity. "'Secret'?" He trailed after Bill into the living room.
"Okay, okay, maybe it's not a 'secret'—a secret suggests somebody's trying to hide it. It's just that nobody thinks you're important enough to tell and you're too primitive to see it for yourself."
Bill turned around, a lecturer on a stage. Dipper sat on the couch and tried to position his journal on his knees to take notes. He looked so attentive. He thought he was going to enjoy this.
"So you remember what I told you about the second dimension. That from the third dimension's perspective, it's nothing but shadows cast on a wall."
"Plato's cave. Yeah."
"Your dimension is a lot like that. There are higher dimensions than this, and your entire universe is being projected down from one of them. If being in the second dimension and seeing into the third is like being a shadow looking at the entrance to the cave, then being in the third and seeing into the fourth is like a character on a movie screen looking out at the film projector. While you're distracted by the movie, I'm studying the film reel and watching the frames coming up. It's how I tell the future—and you can't even tell yourself I'm lying about that, because you've seen me do it."
Dipper grumbled, "You've spoiled the killer on Duck-tective."
"I've spoiled the killer on Duck-tective! Twice!"
Dipper was furiously taking notes. "Wait—so, the fourth dimension really is time? Mabel and I kinda visited the fourth dimension once, but I wasn't sure if it being 'time' was, like, some kind of metaphor..."
"Ha! Listen to you! That's like asking if the third dimension is light. No. Time isn't the fourth dimension. It's just in the fourth dimension," Bill said. "And for the record you didn't really visit the fourth dimension. The glowing blue tunnel with floating clocks and calendars? That was a metaphor."
"Aw man," Dipper muttered, disappointed.
"So when you say you can see the future, you mean—you literally see it? With your eyeballs?"
"All-seeing eye," Bill said smugly.
"Can... you teach me?"
"No. It's not a learnable skill. You're either born with an inner—what's the human phrase?—a third eye, or you aren't."
Dipper processed that. "How do I find out if I have—?"
"You don't."
"Aw."
Bill waited for Dipper to scribble down a couple more lines before he casually dropped the next bombshell: "In fact, not only have you never been 'in' the fourth dimension—your universe isn't really even third dimensional."
Dipper's pen gouged into the page. "What do you mean, it's not third dimensional!"
"I mean you've got two dimensions and the third's an illusion. Hologram, remember?"
"What are you—" Dipper waved a hand around in the air. "I'm moving my arm through the third dimension right now!"
"No you're not."
Dipper threw his pen on the ground. "Okay, you're messing with me!"
"Not this time. Listen. Got a little riddle for you: what do Plato's cave and a movie theater have in common?"
Dipper pursed his lips angrily, but he'd been issued a riddle and couldn't resist trying to solve it. "Sitting in the dark, staring at shapes?"
"Ha! Look at it, it still thinks it's part of the audience!" Bill wagged a finger disapprovingly. "In both cases, everyone and everything in the show is an illusion—just light and shadows projected on a flat wall."
"But—! The world would look flat if it was 2D—"
"It does look flat. 2D is all you've ever seen," Bill said. He held his hands out, thumbs and forefingers forming a rectangle like a picture frame, his exposed eye staring through it at Dipper. "Your eyes only see a pair of two-dimensional images that your brain interprets as 3D because it's been trained to. Depth perception is an optical illusion! You can't actually witness the depth of an object—your brain uses context clues to guess it! And the context clues are lying to you."
Dipper scowled. "But." He paused. "It's different."
"Uh-huh." Bill leaned against a wall, feigning a yawn. "Okay, wow me with your philosophy."
"Pictures on paper are 2D, and they don't look 3D, so since the real world does look 3D..."
"Hey, you know that autostereogram art your sister's friend likes so much? Magic Vision Posters?" Bill asked. "Cross your eyes a little and a 3D illusion pops out of the page?"
Dipper's frown deepened.
Bill's smile widened. "And those are just manmade pictures. The projectors I'm talking about are cosmically complex. If it's so easy to trick your brain into seeing something three dimensional in a flat image, then how do you know, really know, that everything around you is 3D rather than an infinitely complex 2D hologram?"
"Be... cause..." Dipper looked around, grasping for another defense of reality as he knew it. He picked his pen off the floor. "Because I can touch an object and feel it's 3D! Even if my eyes can be fooled, I can... look, I can feel the curve of the barrel and everything."
"And?" Bill asked. "If your laundry comes out of the dryer unexpectedly cool, you think it's damp because your species didn't evolve wetness-sensing nerves. And you still trust your sense of touch?"
"Wait, that's why that happens?"
"Uh-huh. Water is wet, your t-shirts aren't, and your third dimension's an optical illusion."
Dipper slouched back on the couch, arms crossed, chewing his pen, brows drawn and eyes unfocused. Bill watched with a smirk as Dipper's faith in an objective observable reality slowly eroded before his very eye. For someone so eager to burrow into the strange, Dipper wanted so much for the world to make sense. That was why he was burrowing into the strange in the first place: to shine a flashlight on the things that go bump in the dark.
Maybe that was what rubbed Bill so wrong about this kid. Bill was sure that, deep in his heart, Dipper didn't really know how to celebrate the weird; he only wanted to expand the boundaries of normal. Disgusting.
Finally, Dipper mumbled, "How did you find this out?"
"This little shadow peeled itself off the wall and flew out of the cave—do you think I stopped there? I've seen further! What looks like an inescapable labyrinth to a two-dimensional Minotaur is nothing but a fun maze in a puzzle book when you can see over the walls from the third dimension's perspective. And once you can see the fourth dimension, your so-called 'third' dimension looks no different! I can see through walls, into boxes, past barriers; and I can see just how flat your world really is. Like taking a photo and looking at it from the edge."
"Hm." Dipper was still staring into space.
Bill's smug smile drooped into a frown. Dipper didn't look like he'd absorbed anything Bill just said. He hated an inattentive audience.
He crossed the room, planting a hand on the couch backrest by Dipper's head to lean over him, and waited until Dipper looked up into his eye. Bill said, "And I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt: you're no more real to the things projecting your universe than the shadows in Plato's cave are to you. This. Entire. Universe. Doesn't. Exist. And nothing that happens here matters."
That little look of doubt edging into dread was so, so satisfying.
Bill pushed himself upright and sauntered to the door, his hex cast, ready to leave Dipper alone with his budding existential crisis. "So that's why I try to have fun with it! Your whole dimension is like an amusement park. Why hang out in a cave unless you're leaving cave paintings, who cares what the shadows think about the graffiti?"
"What's in those higher dimensions?"
Bill paused, glancing over his shoulder. "'Scuse me?"
"Something's gotta be running the 'projector' or whatever, right?" He asked it with an edge of desperation, like if Dipper could just make it that far, the world would make sense again. "Movies have audiences. Who're they?"
Bill stared at Dipper—and then slowly grinned again. What a glutton for misery. Feed him a bitter spoonful of poisonous knowledge and he asks for the bowl. But of course—tell him that reality isn't real and the next thing he wants to know is where to find reality.
Okay, fine, Bill would keep playing—this was almost fun. "Higher dimensional beings! Duh."
"What are they like?"
"Wretched incomprehensible shapeshifting contortions of flesh and bone that appear to gorily mutate as their vast bodies pass through the dimensions your limited eyes are capable of viewing. Seeing them will drive you mad."
"Ah. Great," Dipper said. "But what are they like as people?"
"From your perspective, all-knowing and unknowable. Talking to them will also drive you mad."
"I'm detecting a theme here," Dipper grumbled.
Bill gave him a polite golf clap. "Another win for human pattern-detection instincts! Give 'im a hand." (Oh, Bill wished he had his powers. It would be so funny to give Dipper a giant disembodied hand.)
In spite of his visible irritation, Dipper was still taking notes. "Is it possible for a human to meet one?"
"You've got more pattern-detection instincts than self-preservation instincts," Bill said wryly. "But sure, of course it's possible. In fact, I think you already met one."
That got him looking up from his journal. "I did?"
"Sure! Not here, but in a parallel universe that doesn't exist anymore. No clue what you talked about, I steer away from that guy when I can. But hey, maybe you'll remember it someday."
"How can I remember it if it happened to a parallel me in another universe?"
"When things like him speak, they leave vast echoes. Even across timelines."
Dipper considered that. "Could I meet him again?"
"Maybe if he takes an interest in you. Pray he doesn't. Prayers won't actually help, but it's something to keep your mind occupied!"
"Is it possible to be more proactive about meeting one of them?"
Bill laughed. "Kid, you're stupid. And that makes you very entertaining."
"Great?"
"But if you wanna break into some cosmic horror's living room, sure! If they don't come down here, all you need to do is go up there."
And back to taking notes Dipper went. "You gonna elaborate, orrr..."
"Ha, fine. The issue is you're not built for higher dimensions. Like I said, you might seem real to yourself here, but there you'd just be a light on a wall." He made a circle between his forefinger and thumb, turned his hand upside down, and peered through the circle like a monocle. "If you want to ascend, you need an aperture to translate between dimensions—something through which fourth-dimensional spacetime can be compacted enough to appear three-dimensional, or pseudo three-dimensional spacetime can be augmented with a fourth dimension. With an aperture like that, you can climb up and down the dimensional ladder to visit anywhere level of reality you want—from the zeroth dimension to the billionth."
"Including wherever our universe's projector is?"
"Bingo. Unfortunately for your suicidal ambitions, inventing an aperture capable of manipulating spacetime like that needs a lot of science humanity is nowhere near mastering; but with the materials humanity currently knows how to manufacture, I bet building one would be pretty simple if you got instructions from a species that's already done it." Bill arched his brows mockingly. "Hey, might even make a fun little summer project, if you don't mind going insane. Something to take to the science fair next year, huh?"
"Shut up," Dipper said. "And—if you got out of your dimension—do you know about species that can give those instructions?"
"Suuure! Heck, give me a couple pieces of paper and a pen and I could probably whip up the blueprints myself."
Dipper nodded. Dipper processed that. Dipper glared at Bill. "Wait a minute. Are you trying to get me to build another portal for you?!"
Bill cackled, doubling over. Voice shrill, he said, "I was wondering how long it'd take you!"
"Oh my god."
He groped for an arm chair and dropped down, still laughing. "I was this close to saying 'why don't you ask your uncle for the blueprints' to see if you'd get it!" He wheezed, "Can you imagine the look on his face!"
Dipper chucked his pen at Bill. "I hate you."
"Hook, line, and sinker! You idiot!" He slid halfway out of his seat, covering his face with his hands.
Dipper groaned. "So you made up all that stuff about the third dimension being fake and the universe being a hologram?"
Bill struggled to control his laughter enough to catch his breath. "No—no, all that was true. A hundred percent scientifically verifiable!"
"Shut up, man." Dipper got off the couch, kicked the back of Bill's armchair as he passed, and trudged into the gift shop.
####
"Hey Grunkle Ford? Is the third dimension actually an illusion being projected out of the fourth?"
"Been talking to Bill again, have you?"
Dipper winced. "I mean. Well. But he's not telling the truth, is he?"
"Mmm..." Ford waggled a hand uncertainly.
"What."
"Based on our current knowledge of quantum mechanics, it's not impossible," Ford admitted. "And it would explain some things about black holes."
"Ugh. That's the worst thing I've ever heard." Dipper rubbed his eyes. "How do you live with that?"
"With what?"
"Thinking the entire universe might be, just... some kind of projection? Like a movie?" Dipper said. "I mean... what's the point of doing anything if everything's fake. That's awful."
Ford pressed his lips together.
####
1981
"The universe is what?" Ford asked.
His muse shrugged apologetically. "Sorry to break it to ya, kid! I figured you'd rather hear it from me than—"
"But—but that's amazing!" Ford started pacing across the dreamscape's translucent grid floor. "The implications for physics, for faster-than-light travel, for, for—for religion?" He looked at Bill. "Is the projection a natural phenomenon or someone's creation."
"Uh," Bill said. "Creation?"
"Then who made it? Descartes' 'evil genius'? A demiurge? God?"
Bill laughed. "Kid, depending on your interdimensional political opinions, those are three names for the same guy."
"He's real?"
"Define 'real'," Bill said. "And 'he.' And 'is.'"
"I... I cannot do that!" Ford resumed pacing, muttering again about the implications.
Eye crinkled in amusement, Bill said, "I've gotta say, Stanford, you're taking this pretty well. Most humans don't like hearing they're secretly flat."
Ford barked a laugh. "'Most humans' didn't like hearing that the Earth isn't the center of the solar system. I'm a man of science! If we could prove this, it would be the biggest leap forward in physics since special relativity!" He beamed at Bill. "Do you realize what this means?"
Bill pointed at their portal calculations. "It means if you want to get this working, you need to zero out all the depth values."
"Ah." Ford's shoulders sagged. "Yes. That too."
"Wish you'd taken that fourth semester of Fifth-Dimensional Calculus now?"
"Hush," Ford said sourly, and was immediately mortified at himself for being so disrespectful to his muse; but Bill laughed with what sounded like genuine delight.
####
2013
"Right," Ford said self-consciously. "Awful."
####
At three a.m., Dipper lay in bed, gnawing at his shirt collar, staring at the ceiling.
Yeah. Oh yeah. He could feel it. Wondering whether reality was real would haunt him the rest of his life.
####
Bill slept like a baby.
Nothing like bullying a child to improve a miserable day.
####
Bill woke the next morning from a nightmare about—what had it been about. Being trapped in the bathroom as a metaphor for... something or other. Being trapped in general, probably. Great, had that incident given him trauma? Was he gonna start having recurring nightmares? Would this be a thing he had to deal with? What a miserable malfunctioning species humans were.
He could see the beforeimage of Mabel coming upstairs; not enough time to pull out his dream diary. He'd just have to remember it to write down later. He sat up, cracked his sore neck, and shuffled to the stairs in search of breakfast.
His foot missed the first step and landed on empty air, his stomach lurched, and he braced for a rough landing. In the split second he hung in the air, he thought that he wasn't supposed to fall, he'd looked. Hadn't he looked? He was sure he had—he didn't remember looking, but he could always see, if there'd been an injury in his imminent future he would have subconsciously noticed it and stopped to evaluate, the fact that he'd just walked meant there was nothing for him to notice—right? Idiot, why hadn't he double checked before he just walked off half-asleep—
It occurred to him that this split second was lasting a lot longer than it was supposed to.
He caught the handrail. His fall stopped as he gently bumped into the wall.
"Huh." He straightened up, gave the stairs a puzzled look; and then, experimentally, did a little hop. He went higher than he'd meant to, and hung in the air longer than he should have. He repeated the experiment a couple of times; and then, took a bigger jump forward, aiming for a couple of steps down. He seemed to float in the air for a moment before his feet gently settled on the wooden board. "Oo-oo-ooh." He looked around the stairwell, baffled; and then he looked up, eye burning as he stared through the roof and into the sky.
A chill ran up his spine. "Uh-oh."
####
Dipper frowned at his syrup bottle as the syrup painstakingly oozed out. When he let up his squeezing even a little bit, the syrup sucked back in.
"Come on." He squeezed again and shook the bottle over his pancakes. Like morning dew on the fruits hanging above the head of Tantalus, a round drop of syrup glistened under the skin-softening kitchen light, but never fell. "What's the problem?" Dipper wiped the drop onto his finger and wiped his finger on his pancakes.
Mabel slammed the door open and pounded into the kitchen. "Dipper! Come outside, I need to show you something!" They ran out.
Mabel stood on the edge of the porch, held up an orange glitter-filled super bounce ball the size of a walnut, and said, "Watch this!" She flung the ball down on the porch step as hard as she could.
It rocketed up into the sky, arcing away from the Mystery Shack toward the forest. Dipper's jaw dropped. "Whoa!"
"I just lost four balls that way!" Mabel planted her hands on her hips, watching with satisfaction as the pinprick point of the latest ball soared upward until it disappointed. "I'm gonna get some more!" She ran inside and bolted up the stairs.
Ford passed from the gift shop into the living room, frowning. He picked up a magazine left on the dinosaur skull, flipped through it, and observed how slowly the pages fluttered. "Hmm."
From the entryway, he could hear Stan down the hall on the office phone: "Hello? Doctor? This is Stan Pines. Yeah, I got a medical question. I stepped on the scale this morning, and it says I lost twenty percent of my weight overnight. Do I have cancer?" There was a pause. "Eighth call this morning?! What is this, some kinda bug going around town?"
Dipper closed the door as he came back inside. "Hey, Grunkle Ford? I think there's something..."
"Something strange going on? Yes, I've noticed," he said. "It seems that gravity is about twenty percent lower than usual." He pulled his sparkly birthday pen out of his coat pocket and dropped it from several feet up into his other hand. It fell just a bit slower than normal—not enough that it looked like it was on the moon, but enough that the motion looked uncanny.
"What's going on?"
"I don't..." Ford trailed off as a flash of bright yellow appeared in his peripheral vision. He turned toward the stairs.
Bill had stepped onto the landing. He looked at the bottom half of the staircase with a critical, calculating gaze; and then jumped off the top step. In a single smooth, slow arc, he leaped over all the stairs and descended, slow as a feather, to land lightly on the floor.
"Whoa." Under his breath, Dipper said, "That's a lot more than twenty percent lower."
It just figured he had something to do with this. "Bill," Ford snapped. "What's going on?"
He wasn't expecting Bill to give him such a solemn look.
"There's an eclipse coming," Bill said. "I'd give it three days."
####
(Be honest how long did it take you to figure out Bill was just seeing if he could get Dipper hyped about building a portal. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!! We're heading into the biggest storyline so far—plotwise, lengthwise, and emotionwise—so I'd love to hear what you're thinking and expecting so far!)
#bill cipher#human bill cipher#dipper pines#gravity falls#gravity falls fic#gravity falls fanart#fanart#my art#my writing#bill goldilocks cipher
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i’ve had this post in the drafts for like two months but with the release of poor things on hulu has come an uptick in really really bad poor things takes so here I am clocking in for the poor things discourse!!
while art is obviously subjective and can be interpreted like literally however you want blah blah blah etc. etc., I think a lot of the criticisms of poor things are pretty surface level and in the name of like performative anger and not genuine criticisms. will be addressing and commenting on the two biggest criticisms I’ve seen:
1. poor things portrays the born sexy yesterday trope
ultimately I think the film does enough to subvert the trope, and actually utilizes the trope as a vehicle to subvert it. what I think poor things is really doing is critiquing and commenting on how men seek out infantile and docile women as a means to exert control and assert their own self importance. these men then become disillusioned when said women gain intelligence, perspective, and experiences that don’t center them.
godwin, max, and duncan all sought to control bella in some way. they sexualize her, view her as an object, property, and an experiment. at the beginning of the movie, prior to bella leaving god’s house and exploring, we do get a bit of the traditional born sexy yesterday trope. but bella being who she is, she wanted more and she wanted to explore the world, grow, etc. this fundamentally changed the way these men interacted with her, and they were no longer infatuated by her innocence and curiosity, but saw her as threatening and something they needed to reign in and control.
first, when bella asks to leave the house and see the world, she is met with pushback from both godwin and max. when bella expresses her frustration, godwin fucking chloroforms her to get her to stop talking and fighting him. this pattern continues until bella leaves.
we saw this to an extreme with duncan. he noticed that bella was gaining intelligence and perspective, was threatened, and resorted to locking her in a trunk and literally fucking kidnapping her as an attempt to regain control. but after that, she continues to learn and grow. she meets new people who introduce her to philosophy and reading and intelligent conversation. this essentially brings duncan to his breaking point and he begins to mentally deteriorate.
2. all the sex was super gross bc bella developmentally had not yet reached the age of consent
people not grasping that bella having sex with all these men is SUPPOSED to make us uncomfortable is baffling. the depiction of this kind of relationship cannot be equated with endorsement. I actually think it was important that the audience know that at the beginning of the movie that bella had the brain of a child because it allows us to see how much duncan takes advantage of her. it also just further hammers home the critique of men preferring underdeveloped infantile women they can control, rather than independent intelligent women who challenge them.
I don’t necessarily have any problem with the movie depicting that bella enjoys having sex. discovering sexuality it is an ordinary part of adolescence (when she first starts masturbating I’m assuming she was like 12-14 developmentally) and ultimately what makes the lisbon scenes with her and duncan so uncomfortable is that we know that he knows he’s taking advantage of her. I do think it was intended to be uncomfortable for the audience to watch. she does not have the knowledge and understanding to know that the dynamic between her and duncan is very very bad, but she gets there eventually. I can’t fault her for in the moment not realizing what was happening to her.
but this is where my personal criticisms come in — once bella does learn how these men took advantage of her she does not fight back against them like I wanted her to. she isn’t outraged, she doesn’t tell them how violated she feels. duncan does get his comeuppance (which was hilariously played by mark ruffalo) but I think that max and godwin got off too easy. especially max who agreed to marry her when developmentally she was a child. I just don’t think she should have been so quick to forgive them.
I also just want to take a moment to discuss the common critique that “it’s so obvious this movie was made by a man like duh this is how men perceive what female empowerment is” etc. etc. this was actually addressed by emma stone in a conversation she had w olivia coleman — emma was a producer on the film and really feels like people are taking away her agency in deciding how to tell this story. she was an integral part in the production of the film, no one was demanding her to portray bella in a certain way, and ultimately what we see on screen is a product of her involvement in the filmmaking process. by reducing this to being a movie about how men perceive women you are completely removing and invalidating the women that actually had a say in how this story was told.
tldr; idk like obviously you can think whatever you want about it, but just don’t mistake depiction for endorsement and understand that sometimes the point of the movie is to make you feel uncomfortable. stories and narratives in fiction are complicated bc people are complicated!!!! we are messy and difficult and exploring certain topics in a fictionalized world allows us to better understand the world we live in. sanitizing ourselves of engaging with this kind of material will only hurt our ability to analyze and form opinions about contentious areas of life.
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Hello, I did not want to disturb but I wanted to know how the stands of Bucci-Gang + Trish and Diavolo would behave in front of their beloved?Since they are manifestations of his soul, they would also show his Yandere side, sorry if it is a lot of work and I love how you write
*just so everyone knows I keep a lot of asks and hope to eventually write them later if I really like the concept…even if it may literally take an eternity to get to them*
So since this is Yandere focused I’m going to lean on that, but you’ll get to see the expressions of obsession as I write.
Yandere Bucciarati Group + Diavolo and Trish’s stands reacting to their darling
Bruno Bucciarati
Generally speaking Sticky Fingers particularly seems to “stand guard” around you. It’s fingers sometimes float across your skin, gentle touching. But at a moments notice is quick to use its ability if Bruno even suspects you trying to escape or pull something. There are times where you feel it grab your arm and drag you closer to its master.
Leone Abbacchio
Since his stand doesn’t really have offensive capabilities, it tends to like also hanging around you. Though if Abbacchio really insists on you not leaving his side, Moody Blues will do its best to keep you still. If he decides to use his ability depending on where you’re at, it does it relatively quickly and quick to pause with precision if it’s something like seeing your face sleeping at night. Simply watching you seems to be one of its favorite things to engage in.
Guido Mista
The Sex Pistols pretty much adore you, even the troublemaking number stops being a nuisance when you’re around. If you can see them, they insist on you feeding them when mealtime comes around. They may slightly pester Mista saying you’re better at doing so simply for holding food a certain angle. He enjoys this as much as the pistols do, and even if you can’t see them and feed them they still generally cheer when you’re around. if anyone outside the gang and Mista himself, they’ll end up reacting somewhat hostile. Snide or sarcastic remarks if someone tries to romance you.
They’ll also pester Mista if he hasn’t seen you in a few days due to a job or something he had to take care of on his own.
Narancia Ghirga
Aerosmith’s flight patterns seemingly change course a bit when you’re around Narancia. Out of protective instinct, it seems to fire it’s bullets/weapons more aggressive if you’re in any sort of immediate danger. Or if Narancia is tracking, Aerosmith seems to get a quick reading on you, fast. For some reason if the stand was used casually, the way it would fly around would be akin to something at an air show. Presenting the way Narancia may be excited to be with you.
Pannacotta Fugo
Purple Haze is interestingly affected by Fugo’s obsession for you. It stops obsessing over its arms, drooling minimizing to almost nothing. It’s aggression in battle nearly quadruples, out of getting rid of anything that Fugo considers a threat. So there’s times things may or may not get out of control or on the other end of the spectrum killing something with almost unusual precision . But it settles once knowing you’re safe, this may or may not exhaust Fugo occasionally. Under the surface Purple Haze would be pleased if you came to check on Fugo out of concern.
Giorno Giovanna
Gold Experience and Giorno are pretty much in sync almost constantly. It generally likes to express certain flowers that evidently have deep romantic meanings as a gift. It’ll daze you in a heartbeat if you try to sneak off somewhere, giving way to its stand master taking care of you for a few hours. Generally it seems to enjoy kissing your hand, and occasionally turning an object into a small animal for you. It doesn’t hesitate to turn something that you own into an animal to track down either if it means being in your presence again.
Aromatherapy is another thing it seems to do with plants, especially after Giorno figures out what your likes, dislikes, (and potential allergies) are.
Requiem is basically game over for any escape attempts with a stand, and even if you’re hesitant takes some effort to try and comfort you. Caresses and touches that would be comforting in a normal context that’s not having you run in terror from a mafioso.
Diavolo
Due to his violent tendencies and tactics, King Crimson is intense in presenting Diavolo’s dark desires. It’s touches are tight and unbelievably strong, that it tends to leave bruises on your body. Erasing time is smooth and precise, inducing confusion from trying to escape Diavolo. The stand is of course as impulsive as it’s stand master, your legs are broken or are knocked out as quick as your thoughts to wander.
Trish Una
Spice Girl has some impulsive traits that King Crimson does, as much as Trish probably doesn’t want to admit it. This stands intensity shines through sitting on your lap, arms around your neck. Not caring in the slightest if you can see it or not. It gives faint phantom kisses on your cheeks, and certainly uses its abilities to keep you in place no matter the area. It tends to also enjoy having you match Trish someway, even the smallest accessory it enjoys seeing Trish put on you to coordinate. Like you and her were meant to be.
#yandere#yandere x reader#yandere jjba#yandere imagines#yandere jjba imagines#yandere jjba x reader#yandere headcanons#yandere jojo’s bizarre adventure#jjba imagines#yandere x darling#yandere x you#bruno buccarati#giorno giovanna#guido mista#narancia ghirga#pannacotta fugo#jojo diavolo#jjba diavolo#leone abbacchio#trish una
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You find me attractive when I’m jealous?
-oneshot-
summary: You were away for a while…Zhongli is missing you so badly and is marinating in his dark thoughts…
incl.: Is mostly following Zhongli, Zhongli jealous, dark-ish thoughts on Zhongli’s end, longing also on Zhongli’s end, you're implied to be an artist here (potter), Neuvillette’s name is thrown in the mix, Clothes sharing, pet names, reader is implied to be male but could be read as gender neutral
pairing/s: Zhongli x reader, Zhongli x male reader, Zhongli x gn reader
warning/s: talks of tying and locking you up, slight yandere themes
note: took me a day and then some to write this...hoot hoot…part 2?
☆masterlist☆
You were away on a business trip to Fontaine, overseeing the expansion of your business into the region, leaving your significant other back in Liyue. This marked the first extended separation for both of you.
As the days stretched into weeks, Zhongli found himself wrestling with unfamiliar emotions, the absence of your presence gnawing at him like an unrelenting hunger. Each morning became a battle against solitude, with the memory of your loving kisses at the start of the day serving as a constant reminder of your absence.
Lying on your side of the shared bed, mentally preparing himself for yet another day without his love by his side. He buried his nose into your pillow, unable to muster the heart to change the sheets. A lingering hint of your scent still clung to them, offering a faint reminder of you.
Once he deemed his morning ritual complete, Zhongli moved to ready himself for the day ahead. However, when it came to selecting his attire, he found his own wardrobe lacking in appeal. His gaze wandered to your side of the closet, “I’m sure Y/n wouldn’t object…”
Dressing in your crisp white shirt brought solace, as your scent enveloped him. He should’ve done this earlier, your scent lingered on your clothes, not too much but enough to make him be reminded of you just like the pillows.
Zhongli stood by the window, watching as the early rays of sunlight danced across the Liyue skyline. As he gingerly held the cup in his hands, marvelling at the intricate patterns adorning its surface.This particular set had been lovingly crafted and gifted by you to commemorate your fifth anniversary, he found comfort in your delicate craftsmanship, a testament to your talent admired across nations.
The demand for your team’s products surged in Fontaine, preparations for a new store were underway, drawing you to the region. While Zhongli brimmed with pride over your achievements, yet a tinge of melancholy gnaws at him due to the prolonged separation from you, accentuating the bittersweet nature of your success.
His thoughts wandered into a darker place. Image of you in Fontaine, surrounded by strangers and perhaps, other admirers. The mere thought twisted his stomach into knots, igniting a fire of jealousy deep within.
Zhongli’s eyes roamed, unable to ignore the lingering traces of your presence-subtle reminders of the life both you shared. The empty space echoed with memories of shared laughter and more…intimate moments, now replaced by a haunting silence that seemed to mock his solitude. His nails elongated into claws, digging into the table as frustration and longing intertwined within him.
In the depths of his heart, Zhongli acknowledged that his jealousy was irrational, stemming from fear and insecurity rather than any tangible evidence of wrongdoing. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t silence the voice of doubt that whispered poison into his ear, clouding his thoughts and judgements.
And so, the days turned into weeks and the distance between you grew daunting, Zhongli found himself trapped in a prison of his own making, his heart consumed by the flames of jealousy that threatened to consume him whole.
However, amidst the growing anticipation of your return, Zhongli’s heart leapt at the sound of your voice echoing through the halls of your shared home. “Zhongli~, I’m home,” you called out, your presence immediately illuminating the space. He perked up, turning to behold you standing in the doorway, your smile as radiant as ever, almost banishing all negative thoughts in his head. Setting down the bags you were holding, you stretched out your arms, offering a warm embrace.
Zhongli did not hesitate to leap into your arms. Hand resting on your shoulder, he buried his face in the crook of your neck, his breath warm against your skin. He took a hearty inhale of your scent fully expecting to bask in you for a bit. However, amidst the warmth of your embrace he caught a lingering scent of an unfamiliar dragon.
He pulled away your hands still wrapped around his body. “Who were you with?” His voice carried a low growl.
“Ah, it's quite a story actually…the Chief Justice of Fontaine, sir Neuvillette saw me off.” You did not question why he was asking, too focused on holding him as close as possible at the moment.
Zhongli’s gaze intensified as he caught another whiff of this Neuvillette person. His hands curled in anger, nails digging into your back.
“You’re lying,” His voice still low and dangerous, his eyes fixed on you.
“Hm? No?” you countered, meeting his gaze steadily. “Sir Neuvillette merely bid me farewell on my way out.”
Zhongli leaned closer, his breath heavy against your skin, his eyes a blaze with jealousy, his disapproval of the Chief Justice becoming increasingly apparent.
“Was it a quick farewell?” He inquired, his voice laden with tension.
“It was brief and cordial,” you said in a steady tone, mind connecting the pieces together. He’s clearly jealous. You pulled away, your smirk betraying your amusement as you caressed his cheek gently.
The touch caused Zhongli’s breath to hitch, his body tensing momentarily. The scent of another man lingered on your clothes, fueling his suspicions despite your reassurance.
“Jealousy looks good on you my love,” you chuckled. Your playful words only served to deepen the ache of his burning jealousy, leaving him torn between desire and doubt.
His grip loosens and instead of anger an annoyed expression etched on his face. “You find me attractive when I’m jealous?” His jaw remained clenching, brows furrowed.
Leaning in, you whispered into his ear, “Absolutely divine, my love,” a playful tease dancing on your lips.
Zhongli questioned himself: Was his jealousy warranted? As he observed your nonchalant demeanour, every sign seemed to point to your truthfulness. Yet, a darker thought crossed his mind-what if he simply took you, tied you up, and never allowed you to leave the house again? All that you offered to the world would then be solely his…
It wasn’t such a terrible thought…He is a deity, he possessed the power to do it, and no one could stop him. Yet, he realised that such an act would inevitably alter the way his lover would look at him. And that, he couldn’t bear the thought of it.
“Love? What are you thinking?” Oh right Zhongli was still wrapped in your arms.
“I’m thinking of tying you up.” To his bafflement you burst out laughing.
“Zhongli, my love, you always have the most dramatic ideas.” You look surely amused but Zhongli is surely debating whether he should go through with it or not.
You both dropped the subject but Zhongli kept this thought in the back of his head just in case…
word count: 1,120
#zhongli x reader#zhongli x male reader#zhongli x gn reader#genshin impact#genshin x reader#genshin impact fanfics#zhongli genshin impact#fanfiction#slight yandere
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TCF Theory: What If God of Death Had a Reason for Kidnapping Minors?
(Hey, @murasaki-cha, I might have a theory that could sorta maybe redeem your pathetic little meow meow! 😂)
[Also: SPOILER WARNING for... basically everything in TCF?]
So, here's the thing:
It's no secret I always had… issues with the God of Death for kidnapping the Chois.
Let me clarify a bit.
What he did to Kim Rok Soo, aka. Cale, was not okay either – however! I can see it justified somewhat by circumstances: he was cursed, his life was generally depressing and terrible, and there was a world in need of saving. Honestly, the deal with the Original Cale Henituse to switch the two of them was best for all parties involved. (I'm still angry he did not ask Cale himself for permission, though! All the God of Death needed to do was tell him: "Look, this is the world where your BFF Lee Soo Hyuk reincarnated into. And the world is going to be destroyed in about 20 years if nothing is done about it. Would you mind cleaning that up for me?" You bet your butt Cale would have agreed fair and square, even if he were EXTREMELY miffed about the deal. But it's so much easier to simply hide your involvement in the transmigration, so that Cale doesn't have a personal vendetta against you once he gets OP, right…? Not that it succeeded, lol. Cale still ended up cursing the God of Death a lot)
However – all of what I just said? NONE of it applied for the Choi family member.
First, we have Choi Jung Gun, aka. Nelan Barrow. Let me remind you, the kid was FIFTEEN. Freaking 15!!!! The God of Death kidnapped a literal CHILD with no combat experience, and dropped him in the middle of an active war zone! Sure, technically Super Rock was there and presumably took care of him – but still, that was an objectively a terrible thing to do, God of Death! Bad boy!! 🧹🧹🧹
Then we have Choi Han, and ohhh boy, he had even worse somehow! Even though he was 2 years older than Choi Jung Gun when he got transported, he still ended up in the freaking FOREST OF DARKNESS. Weaponless, isolated, under constant threat of death. It's a miracle Choi Han did not die or completely lose his mind – and in a sense he did – but he was still able to retain a piece of himself, NO THANKS TO YOU GOD OF DEATH. My goodness! What a way to treat your "chosen hero ", mister!
...as you can probably tell, I was pissed enough at the God of Death for kidnapping poor Choi Jung Gun, but I am NEVER forgiving him for what Choi Han went thought. Should have given him something! A letter, a sword, or at the very least – A FREAKING MAP!!!
Aaaand finally we have Choi Jung Soo. Which was a bizarre case in comparison to the previous two. Even the God of Death remarked how unusual it was.
First of all, consent was asked – WHAT A TWIST! 🤣
Secondly, Choi Jung Soo was already an adult, and experienced fighter. He'd have a much better time in Nameless 1 world than any of his predecessors (excluding the fact that he'd have a TERRIBLE time trying to fight the White Star; who may I remind you possessed Kim Rok Soo's face... Also, did he even get to read "The Birth of a Hero"...?). He was also on the verge of death. AND he allowed to say no!! It was much more fair than what happened to the other two.
...But why though? Why the special treatment, God of Death? Why not kidnap Choi Jung Soo as a kid as well? The timing was kind of strange.
So here my theory comes in.
What if, it wasn't the God of Death who determined the timing of the transportation? What if there was an outside factor involved? Just because there seemingly wasn't a strict pattern to WHEN the Chois got transported, that doesn't mean there couldn't be one.
An outside factor like, let's say.... the Hunters? 🤔
From his behaviour in the Sloth Test, we know that Choi Jung Gun absolutely hates the Hunters. And it seemed very personal too. Even if we take it for granted that the Hunters were responsible for the existence of the Original White Star and the war and all that... It was still VERY personal. Like, "I will tear you to bloody pieces with my bare hands and chew on them with my teeth" level of personal. So, what gives?
Then it hit me.
The Five Colored Bloods Hunters are Wanderers who can freely travel across dimensions. They targeted young Kim Rok Soo, because he had a "mark" of the God of Death on. They assumed it could be a sign of a Single Lifer, and it did not matter to them if it necessary to kill him just to "check". The only reason why Kim Rok Soo survived was because Choi Jung Gun was there (even though I have issues about his execution – using a minor as BAIT?! Not cool man! Almost as bad as the God of Death!). Without him, young Kim Rok Soo absolutely would have been killed. And the way Choi Jung Gun was acting in the Sloth Test made it seem like it wasn't the first time something like this happened either.
Meaning: the Hunters were already on Earth 1. They have been there.
So, what if... the Hunters had already targeted the Chois in the past? Including Choi Jung Gun himself?
Think about it. If the Hunters had any clue that this particular lineage could produce Single Lifers... they'd certainly keep an eye on the Choi family, right? There would be no need to directly interfere. Just, watching them from the sidelines and let them produce next generations. Spying on their kids – like the total creeps they are.
And perhaps, there was a particular sign of a potential Single Lifer to watch out for, that could manifest around adolescence? What if Choi Jung Gun showed such a sign at the age of 15?
Instead of simply using him as a weapon to save another world... was the God of Death actually trying to save Choi Jung Gun? By transporting him into another dimension??
It would... kinda make sense, right? By transporting Choi Jung Gun, his "Single Lifer power" activated. His lifespan became much longer, he developed an Ancient Power too. He was initially weak, but he grew stronger overtime. Strong enough to stand up to the Hunters and protect himself; and also taking him away from their immediate reach.
...What if the same happened with Choi Han? What if Choi Han became a target at the age of 17? And the only way to save him was to transport him as well? I mean it worked with Choi Jung Gun, why not try it a second time? If the first one became a powerful ally who could fight the Hunters, the God of Death would certainly like another one on his payroll, right?
And then there's Choi Jung Soo, of course. Maybe he escaped the scrutiny of the Hunters? Or maybe because he developed powers which made him a harder target? Why would the Hunters bother with difficult opponents when they can always play dirty and go after literal children, instead? There is also the issue of the Monster Apocalypse, as Cale suspects the Hunters were behind it as well. Maybe the Hunters had a different plan for Earth 1, and so they had to stop using it as hunting grounds for Single Lifers?
If I'm right about this, then the God of Death's actions became a liiiiitle bit more understandable.
I will forever criticize the man for not asking at least three of his victims (and don't try to give me some bull about him being "unable to", God of Death used various means to communicate through the story; Choi Jung Gun even freaking wrote "The Birth of a Hero" books for the sole purpose of giving necessary exposition to a transmigrator – more than that, if he had enough space to simp for Whales and provide Harol's backstory for no reason! He could have included ANY type of message in there, to ANYONE!), but if Choi Jung Gun were to literally die if he did not get kidnapped and transported into a war-torn dimension in need of saving... Well? Saving someone's life via transmigration might be unconventional, but I've seen it happen a lot in many isekai. I can roll with this.
...But seriously tho, I hope Choi Jung Gun makes that broom beating a regular thing. The God of Death certainly can use it. You know – for emotional intelligence improvement! 😏
#tcf#trash of the count's family#lcf#lout of the count's family#god of death#tcf god of death#theory#tcf theory#tcf meta
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Wasted Oxygen...
Gojo Satoru x Reader x Geto Suguru
The Cursed Trio | Mr. Sandman
...
Despite being the ever energetic guy he was, Haibara loved to sit down and people-watch. Silently observing others go about their daily business, unaware of their audience as they freely express themselves through large and small mannerisms.
He'd always make sure to find a nice cozy spot, somewhere a bit hidden so no one could see his lingering eyes. If Kento was here, he'd been stating how inappropriately creepy he was being. He could already hear him hehe
Regardless of what his partner would think, the raven-haired boy could easily spend hours observing the world interact with itself. If he was lucky enough, he'd see an entire movie unfold right before his eyes.
Most of the time, though, he tried to call upon his inner Sherlock. Using the art of deduction to figure out the possible stories from every passer-goer.
Usually, it'd be more fun with you considering your extraordinary ability to deduce people to downright filth.
The two of you hanging out, making up stories for every person that caught either of your eyes had become a little routine of yours, one that started from his days of teaching you Japanese. He'd tell you certain words while discreetly pointing to people who embodied said words --- he hadn't expected for you to suddenly start rambling about the possible nuisances of each and every person you saw
And the fact that you had no filter made it worse! The amount of times he had to cover for you after you'd accidentally said something rather insulting about a person who stood close enough to hear --- double digits!
Regardless, it's the same reason as to why you're the most attuned person in terms of others emotions --- once you notice the patterns, you'll see them everywhere is what you'd often say to him
Although, it did leave him wondering. Just how were you so good at people-reading? Is that how you got along with those two so well? Because you knew instantly what they were about the moment you met them?
No, that can't be. On numerous occasions, you've complained about how Gojo and Suguru confused you. You claimed that they were like a whole new different breed of soul that you've never come across before.
Haibara blinked
Souls. The first time he heard about your Cursed Technique, he had to admit --- he'd never heard of a technique like yours.
Cursed Sight: Chains, a cursed technique that bestows its user with the ability to perceive the spiritual and see the souls of living beings as well as curses. The way it works is rather simple, or so, that's how you mentioned it to be.
As one knows, everything is made up of energy. So by simply channeling your own cursed energy, you can manipulate the strands into forming objects. By focusing well enough, you could bring said objects into the physical world: however, there was a catch.
You could never break eye contact.
The technique had great potential. Just visualize the item you need and Wala! It's there. (You had a preference for chains ghost rider type beat. You'd chain curses down to limit its movements prior to going for the kill. In times where the Curse proved too strong, you'd hold it down while continuously attacking it with an already cursed energy-imbued weapon)
To be honest, your fights were quite the spectacle. The way you expertly used your chains to capture curses, the way you used the ends of the chains to destroy them with such force --- ooh la la (aizawa x ghost rider's love child)
We're getting side tracked --- point is, your ability allowed you to see people's essence. You knew when they lied, you knew what they felt, their soul usually said everything you needed to know (you confessed that the soul only shows the most general of feelings so that's why you depended on deducting to truly understand people's intentions)
One major down side, you could never turn it off. I don't think you've ever really seen someone's face much less your own. Bodies are shaped around the soul, and the soul is always so blinding with its different hues. At least, the silhouettes had somewhat of expressions. (Further clarification, it's like cutting out human shape out of colored paper. Just three-dimensional. AH, THINK GOD FROM FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST but include the shape of hair and outfits) You could see the shapes of their eyes, the slope of their nose, and the curve of their lips.
(and now, you're probably asking -- but OP, what about clothes? How do we have a sense of style if we can't see the look when we look in the mirror? That is true. Wearing outfits will just accentuate your soul's shape. But the moment it's off and on a hangar, you can see it plain as day since it's soulless on its own. Also Ieiri helps you, sometimes even Yaga if you're that desperate)
"You're going to hurt yourself from thinking so hard, Haibara." There you are! You even brought, "Hiya!" "Senpai!" Gojo glared at you, "Meh, why aren't you ever this respectful? Hm? You have to respect our customs, foreigner!"
You scoff, "I do respect your customs, just not you."
"Bitch."
"Masochist."
"Masochist?! The hell is that for?"
"You like me insulting you, your soul lives for it. Got a degradation kink, old man?" "Who the fuck you calling old man for?! I'm just a year old-" "Haibara~! Let's go get something to eat!" "O-Oi! Don't run away, pussy!" You stick your tongue out at him as you pull Haibara by the arm, dragging him to some nearby tall selling takoyaki
You spent the entire day ignoring Gojo, who sulked behind you and Haibara as you dragged said male all around Roppongi where you were supposed to meet up with one other. Yep, you guessed it!
Mei Mei!
(don't you just love mixing friend groups and praying to whatever god is out there that it all works out? 😁)
Mei Mei couldn't care less about Haibara, though she did seem to acknowledge him as somewhat worth having around in regards to his 'service potential', but honestly, her indifference was palpable
Instead, Mei Mei focused on you, whose face held a dreamy look as the pretty woman spoke to you with that lovely sing-song voice of hers (she still HELLA sus iykyk but for the sake of this, she ain't. She's just greedy here)
Gojo was irked by how close Mei Mei got to you, his face unbelievably stoic as he watched you and Mei Mei interact (cue that anime angry mark and eyebrow twitch)— Mei Mei acting like a sugar mama to you as the white-haired woman walked you around pointing at shit she knew you'd like.
Ah, I can already hear some of you confused --- specifically the ones who are really into canon.
You see, Mei Mei does nothing out of the goodness of her heart. No, no. Greed is the very foundation of her character. And so, it would make sense that she wouldn't just spend her money on anyone just for the hell of it.
And so, the truth. You and Mei Mei had this secret arrangement --- in return for a few favors and pieces of key-information that she can't quite get from her watchful crows, Mei Mei would pay for your services. Usually, she'd just send the cash over but whenever the two of you are together, she'd provide you a little shopping spree. (No-one knows about this btw)
Despite the previous, it was evident that Mei Mei liked you. She saw you as her favorite little Kouhai, mainly because of how resourceful you could be, and the way your personalities seemed to mesh well together was exquisite in her opinion.
(Side Note: Your relationship with her is incredibly on-the-surface. The reason why you get along so well is because you adapt yourself to her personality. I wouldn't say you're a people-pleaser, although you are, but more of a subtle manipulating type of thing. Idk how to put it)
You weren't at all annoying like the others. Additionally, you had a higher chance of reaching your service potential than any other (i don't even know if that's a compliment or an insult and I wrote it 🤪)
Gojo wasn't a big fan of Mei Mei spoiling you, and it led to a whole day of the two of them kind of fighting to show off who could spoil you the most (though it may or may not have been your plan from the get-go).
The situation became more obvious to Haibara when you wrapped your arm around his, a wicked smile upon your lips as you quietly inquired from Haibara what he wanted. Not fully grasping the scheme, he answered, and then you'd claimed as your current desire, which Mei Mei and Gojo would then buy immediately.
Eventually, Kento joins after receiving a SOS text message from Haibara. At the sight of the two wordlessly seething cotton swabs with you smirking in front of them, Kento dragged him away (he only greeted you, he could care less about the other two)
While Mei Mei was preoccupied with a phone call, and Gojo was off buying something sweet for you and spicy for Suguru, to eat together later — you found yourself sitting at the same spot Haibara had been sitting earlier.
There was someone next to it, but that didn't stop you as you plopped yourself down, attention focused on the people walking by. Blissfully unaware of the minor curses that plagued them.
Sometimes, if you felt merciful, you would destroy the curse. Weaker curses didn't require you to physically manifest your chains; a small, invisible chain was all it took to loop around the curse and squeeze them to death.
"Never seen a technique like yours, foreigner."
At the stranger's words, you paused. You hadn't sensed any cursed energy from the person sitting next to you, so how could they have known? Glancing to your side, you tilted your head in slight confusion as you examined the man sitting next to you
"what happened to 'hello'? 'how are you'? To introductions, in general?" There was a slight tease to your words yet your fingers subtly twitched by your side
The raven-haired man snorted in amusement, a slight smirk on his lips as he leaned back against the wall of the bench. His hands were in his pockets as he didn't once look your way.
"How long have you been here with them?" Something in his voice had put you on edge, but at the same time, you didn't feel imminently in danger.
"Long enough, give or take."
He made a face, "Like it, so far?"
You shrugged your shoulders, your eyes still on his silhouette as you answered, "Neutral, so far."
"So you haven't been here long enough," he sassed back earning a short snort from you.
"Oh? Why's that?" "You'll see, soon enough." And with that, he stood up, walking away from you without another word. You stared at his soul, watching it get tinier with every step he took.
You had met many dark blues, but the edges of his were... fuzzy. Not clearly definable. That was new.
Surprisingly, you didn't feel shook or concerned. You actually felt a rush of excitement, the sort you got from trying to solve the mystery of some crime show before the narrator could even reveal the truth.
Suddenly, Gojo appeared in the corner of your eye, his sunglasses pulled down his nose as his iridescent eyes gazed down at you.
His eyes were the only ones you had ever truly seen. You thought it was because of his Six-Eyes.
"Yo! Got the drugs," he said, to which you replied with a casual "Hm."
He narrowed his eyes, "What happened?"
So observant
You perked up, "What?"
He repeated, a small frown on his lips, "What happened?"
You shrugged, "Just an... interesting encounter, that's all."
Gojo knew better. But he also knew you.
"Alright, let's go. Mei Mei already left, and she wanted me to give you this," he said with displeasure in his voice as he threw a bag into your lap—a luxury brand bag. But not before handing you yet another bag, another luxury brand.
With a sense of curiosity, you gently untied the bag's ribbon and opened it, revealing a small box inside. Your fingers carefully lifted the lid, revealing the gift within as you opened the box
A single earring, a crescent moon hanging from it. It's metal glimmering under the setting sun (wow, time passed fast today)
"Now we can match!" Gojo said. Showing off his wrist, a silver bracelet with a sun hanging from it.
You snorted, "What about Suguru, hm?" (While you asked, you put the earring on without another moment's notice)
He rolled his eyes, revealing another bag matching your own, "His is here...ya like it, tho?"
Having stood up from where you sat, you smiled softly as you affectionately bumped your head onto his shoulder before motioning for him to walk with you. (You didn't get to see his grin, but you could feel it.)
"Let's go home, Gojo," you said, with Mei Mei's gift loosely wrapped around your wrist, knowing it could wait.
...
(A/N): Ugh, I keep having to come back to fix certain things so it can better fit my narrative. I keep writing these shits while being tired af, and when I wake up --- I forget my own canon 🙄
Anyways
Who do you think the rando guy is?
Also did you notice how you immediately checked Gojo's gift rather than Mei Mei's? In fact, you completely ignored her gift to you.
Moreover, have any of you noticed that whenever you get to know someone --- their name alters? I wonder what that implies for certain people.
And what does a fuzzy outline mean?
This was also supposed to take another turn but then the characters charactered and here we are now.
Drop a comment
Feel free to buy me a 🦩
Hope you enjoyed!
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I wanted to find and gather some lesser appreciated Mobius moments from S1, and some thoughts occurred to me.
When we see Mobius drill into Loki about his choices, his thought patterns, whether or not he enjoys hurting people, Mobius comes down on Loki HARD, cruelly, goading, and manipulating (Sound familiar? Just wait...). He does so in a way that's confident he will get the answers he expects from Loki, which he does.
When we cut to the scenes with Renslayer, Mobius's truer, gentler side appears. The side that is kind and soft and believes in second chances. Notice, also, the difference in lighting between these scenes.
And then it hit me:
Mobius was using a carefully constructed persona--an illusion--with Loki to control the situation and get Loki into the headspace of self-reflection. He uses the very same technique Loki uses regularly to get the outcome that is beneficial for both of them.
Genius, really.
As we move into S1E2 and E3, the power dynamics are decidedly uneven, but once they are out in the field, Mobius's actual power and control over Loki is quite limited and actually banks on a LOT of faith. A ridiculous amount of faith, to be honest. Despite logical misgivings, Mobius makes a POINT of giving Loki freedom and trust because he has analyzed Loki enough to know that lack of trust perpetuates a destructive self-fulfilling prophecy.
So when Loki chooses to escape with Sylvie, all those centuries of belief and good will Mobius invested in him were thrown in his face. He's understandably furious, but the interrogation scene after both Lokis are captured simply does not read as normal without the additional lens of jealousy. If Mobius were not emotionally compromised in some way, he would have handled the interrogation clinically, and he would have sent Loki to be pruned without a thought.
Mobius doesn't do either of those things. Rather than asking Loki objective questions, he focuses on Loki's attention on Sylvie and verbally twists the knife where he can. His punishment for Loki after the interrogation is shockingly personal:
A word about the Sif loop scene: I really, REALLY hated that Mobius did that. It honestly made my gut churn. I think the writers tried to play it off for laughs because Loki gets kicked in the balls repeatedly, but the emotional undercurrent of Sif's words and everything that it means is just awful.
That said, I understand that this scene reveals not only Loki's vulnerability but ALSO Mobius's. This is a "passionate diagreement" through proxy. Mobius knows what would hurt Loki the most psychologically. But why would Mobius choose to hurt him this severely with these specific words?
Remember, this might be a memory, but Mobius is choosing to speak his feelings to Loki through Sif.
I think the answer is 4-pronged: First, Mobius put his career, reputation, and friendship with Ravonna on the line for Loki. The stress of the potential repercussions (which were HIGH) should Loki betray him was a constant heat on his neck. Despite this, Mobius chooses the riskier route of believing Loki would not betray his trust. And yes, within the context of what Mobius has done to advocate for Loki and what's at stake for Mobius should he fail, Loki absolutely betrays him.
Second, Loki told Mobius everything he believed about the TVA and his place in the multiverse is a lie. When was the last time Mobius reacted so violently?
When Brad called him a "nowhere man".
Mind, there is guilt beneath this anger. Not only has everything Mobius believed in been revealed as a lie, it is revealed he was complicit in the genocide of multiple timelines for which there was never any ultimate good. YIKES. That's a lot to take in, and Mobius at his core is a deeply empathetic person. The guilt of this horror, at his hands, is probably why Mobius does not defend himself when Sylvie tears him a new one in S2E4.
Three, I think Mobius may have wished for a friendship with Loki long before his intervention. I've written elsewhere that his intervention appears to be premeditated. Mobius was only waiting for his chance to come along. Who knows how many centuries that took. I believe he may have rationalized away his emotional attachment as a means to help the TVA succeed. Mobius is adept at suppressing not only his emotions but his wants.
Four, by S1E3, Mobius came to love Loki to some degree, platonic or otherwise. I think it's very difficult to not develop love for someone or something you've been tasked to be an expert on. Having Loki actually beside him, engaging with him over lunch and work, no doubt added some much needed color in Mobius's life. It's hard not to become infatuated with someone fun and exciting.
The jealous rage that overwhelms Mobius doesn't last long. When it comes down to it, Mobius can't help but believe in Loki. Doubt in the TVA takes root once his immediate anger dissipates. So Mobius steals Ravonna's TemPad, verifies Loki's claims, and immediately self-corrects. Mobius could have dug his heels in with more denial, but he doesn't. Why? Because Mobius ultimately cares more about Loki than himself.
When Mobius returns to Loki, he asks a few other questions that I can't share images for because of the 10-image limit. Those other questions include but are not limited to:
Do you care about Sylvie?
Do you really believe you deserve to be alone?
I should point out these questions are not at all tied to the well-being of the TVA or the multiverse. They are specifically tied to Loki's well-being. Loki's happinness.
Why does Mobius ask these questions? Because, in my opinion, Mobius was preparing himself to let Loki go, be with who he wants to be with (Sylvie), and fight the battle he wants to fight. Mobius will not be the obstruction to Loki's path to personal success even if that means letting go of the TVA, letting go of Ravonna, letting go of Loki himself.
All of this is a selfless act of love. What kind of love that is is up to the viewer, but it is very much there. It's real and integral to the story.
Classic Loki points out that this is a high cost. In response, Mobius takes the crux of his belief in Loki and directs it to himself.
The beauty of the goodbye scene in S1S6 is that the emotional thrust of selfless love is echoed and amplified in Loki's own self-sacrifice in S2E6. Loki lets go of the TVA, lets go of Sylvie, lets go of Mobius himself. Ouroboros.
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Heylloooooo. How are you doinnn?
Can you do a scenario where the reader offers to trim the hair of the founder's + indra + izuna. Their hair is so much damaged due to all the jutsu they practice and negligence. So the reader offers them a relaxing shampoo and hair trim.
Hey there!! Extremely tired, but holding up. I'm having vacations soon, so looking forward to that!
How are you nonny? Feeling and doing okay? 🤗❣️
I found this request so cute and funny that I had to prioritize it, lol.
Indra
- "I don't require any of that, my hair is fine, that's highly feminine, humiliating." It will take a lot of convincing, but both using good words and managing him without letting Indra realize exactly what she is doing, (Y/N) gets her husband to surrender to her hands. The Otsutsuki does not agree to step full body into the bathtub, bent over the edge and resting his bare chest on the fine cold marble. His hair rains down on the water and is submerged to a certain length, while she uses a cup to wet his scalp. Somehow, impossible in the awkward position but apparently possible for him, he relaxes so much that he stops protesting, accepting the washing in silence. Between massages, (Y/N) inspects the damage, and concludes that it is a sin for a hair as beautiful as Indra's, with golden highlights, to look so dull. Although he maintains impeccable body hygiene, he has no idea how to take care of his mane, dry and brittle from all the battles he's been through. He hisses when the water is too hot, and tries to end the whole situation, but once he's knee-deep in it, there is no way to escape. Indra does not usually turn his back, show his neck, or allow anyone to approach him with sharp objects while he is vulnerable and without sight, but today he makes an exception. After all, is his wife who we are talking about. With the cut, he's adamant about her not reducing its length, proud of its iconic longness, and (Y/N) only succeeds in cutting off the split ends. When he looks in the mirror, he complains about losing a lot of hair, even though he genuinely hasn't. A tiny child, in the body of the worst villain of them all.
Madara
- "Yeah... that might be nice... let's see if it gets me out of stress." He surrenders himself to (Y/N)'s magical hands like a cat, allowing her to manipulate his hair and do whatever she wants with it. The girl suspects that if she were to chop off his mane like his father had it, as relaxed as Madara is in his special bath, he wouldn't even notice. Either way, she gives up the idea of playing a joke on him and concentrates on soothing her husband's scalp, bringing the unique pattern of his hair back to life, and restoring a bit of its shine. Gentle shampooing here, cream bathing there, soft drying to keep it damp enough to cut... The Uchiha actually falls asleep while his wife washes his hair, and (Y/N) appreciates how deeply he trusts her, enough to unwind under her fingers. When his mane is finally clean, she wakes him up to get out of the water, pulling him out of the bathtub and sitting him on a chair. With the scissors, she gets rid of all the unsalvageable parts, removing the fire-scorched hair and leaving only the healthy, reducing the length by considerable amounts. Madara, ignorant of any decision she might make about the size or style of her cut, reads a book while sipping a cup of tea, seated cross-legged like a gentleman. Solely dressed in his bathrobe and with his hair full of hooks to separate it in parts, he looks like a lady enjoying a day at the spa. When she finishes, he doesn't even bother to evaluate himself in the mirror, oblivious to his image and unconcerned about what his wife might have done, fully trusting his judgment and accuracy. He is happy and loves his new/almost identical image.
Izuna
- "What? No, there's no way. I said no... well, thinking about it... no. Well, maybe yes..." Another little child. Izuna refuses to admit the damage to his hair, and a whole week passes from the official proposal (Y/N) did, about taking care of his image, until he decides to accept. Manipulated by candy and promises of steamy nights, the Uchiha can't say no, and hands over his mane for his wife to control as she pleases. His hair is considerably thinner than his older brother's, less dense and bushy, but the problem lies in those unruly strands at the back of his head, near the scalp. A mixture of straight and curly hair, how to treat it is a puzzle, but she is determined to find out. She can't get him to take a bath, Izuna claiming he already showered in the morning, and only manages to wet his hair at the kitchen sink, with the man reclining on top of the counter and trying to squeeze the length of his hair into the cramped space. Even though the experience is uncomfortable, he refuses to get in the shower again and insists they do it this way. Needless to say, the kitchen ends up completely soaked, the floor full of water and the cabinet as well, foam floating all over the surfaces. Once ready, they proceed to the cutting, and the Uchiha himself stands in front of the mirror, suddenly excited and engaged in the task, marking the limits he intends (Y/N) not to exceed. He becomes the leader of the situation, and is genuinely pleased with the result. Promises to remind (Y/N) about doing the same thing every month. Every, single, month. Without fail.
Hashirama
- "YES! ARE WE DOING IT NOW?!" In fact, he is the most excited of them all, and is the one who prepares the items (Y/N) might need. On his free afternoon, the Hokage looks for scissors with sufficient sharpness, and in the absence of the right ones, goes to buy them. He prepares his special shampoo, because we all know this Senju is obsessed with having perfect hair, and readies a bathtub with warm water for himself. All the things she intended to set up for him, Hashirama gets them in an hour and surprises her by sitting in the tub with the shampoo in his hand, smiling from ear to ear. He provides instructions on how he likes to massage his own scalp, which areas are sensitive, and where to pay special attention, guiding each movement without the need to physically control (Y/N's) hands. To make the experience more pleasurable, she follows each step, executing it the way he asks. He cannot finish without first applying one of the most expensive conditioners in the world, which he requires her to leave on for at least ten minutes. In the meantime, and with two cucumbers in his eyes, Hashirama relaxes. When he is dry and ready for the haircut, he suggests the idea of styling his hair in a similar way to what he used to wear when he was a child, and it is (Y/N) who has to get that terrible occurrence out of his head. Pouting, he agrees to sit in the chair and let her control this part of the process, without being in charge of the technical direction. He ends up with a cut the length of his middle back, and smiling because he loves it! According to her, there's not much difference from how he had it before, but he doesn't need to know that.
Tobirama
- "You don't need to take care of it, my hair is fine. And if needed, I can do it myself." He has an irrational fear of losing some of his incredible intelligence if he cuts his hair, and has a bit of trouble accepting the offer. (Y/N) can't stand the strawiness of his hair, and Tobirama refuses to admit that's true. Stubborn and dismayed by his wife's approach, he will first try to work it out on his own. He is extremely embarrassed when going to the beauty and cosmetic store, asking for help "for a friend who has bad hair", and accepting guidance on what products "his friend" should use from the young man who works as a manager. When he gathers the necessary information, he refuses to shop at that same establishment and goes to one at the other end of the village, just so the manager won't judge him. He waits until late at night to proceed, once (Y/N) is asleep, and begins his experiments. The problem is he treats his hair as if it were an object of study, misapplying products and cutting off parts he shouldn't have. In the morning and without having slept, he has to admit defeat amidst his own fatigue and disappointment, and agrees to let her take over. He created a mess on his head, with uneven strands and even somehow managed to stain it with a strange color, but nothing she can't fix. After solving the texture problem, using the same products but in the right way, she corrects the premature cut Tobirama tried to self-manage, equalizing each strand's length and leaving his hair presentable again. He won't admit he made a mistake, at least not without crossing his arms over his chest, closing his eyes, and pouting, but he does acknowledge how good his hair now feels.
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I thought y'all should read this
I have a free trial to News+ so I copy-pasted it for you here. I don't think Jonathan Haidt would object to more people having this info.
Tumblr wouldn't let me post it until i removed all the links to Haidt's sources. You'll have to take my word that everything is sourced.
End the Phone-Based Childhood Now
The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development.
By Jonathan Haidt
Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.
The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and beyond. By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.
The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to “The Nation’s Report Card,” scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s.
As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less, having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likelyto live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens, and managers say they are harder to work with. Many of these trends began with earlier generations, but most of them accelerated with Gen Z.
Surveys show that members of Gen Z are shyer and more risk averse than previous generations, too, and risk aversion may make them less ambitious. In an interview last May, OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison noted that, for the first time since the 1970s, none of Silicon Valley’s preeminent entrepreneurs are under 30. “Something has really gone wrong,” Altman said. In a famously young industry, he was baffled by the sudden absence of great founders in their 20s.
Generations are not monolithic, of course. Many young people are flourishing. Taken as a whole, however, Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. And if a generation is doing poorly––if it is more anxious and depressed and is starting families, careers, and important companies at a substantially lower rate than previous generations––then the sociological and economic consequences will be profound for the entire society.
What happened in the early 2010s that altered adolescent development and worsened mental health? Theories abound, but the fact that similar trends are found in many countries worldwide means that events and trends that are specific to the United States cannot be the main story.
I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online—particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction. Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. Life changed rapidly for younger children, too, as they began to get access to their parents’ smartphones and, later, got their own iPads, laptops, and even smartphones during elementary school.
As a social psychologist who has long studied social and moral development, I have been involved in debates about the effects of digital technology for years. Typically, the scientific questions have been framed somewhat narrowly, to make them easier to address with data. For example, do adolescents who consume more social media have higher levels of depression? Does using a smartphone just before bedtime interfere with sleep? The answer to these questions is usually found to be yes, although the size of the relationship is often statistically small, which has led some researchers to conclude that these new technologies are not responsible for the gigantic increases in mental illness that began in the early 2010s.
But before we can evaluate the evidence on any one potential avenue of harm, we need to step back and ask a broader question: What is childhood––including adolescence––and how did it change when smartphones moved to the center of it? If we take a more holistic view of what childhood is and what young children, tweens, and teens need to do to mature into competent adults, the picture becomes much clearer. Smartphone-based life, it turns out, alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.
The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.
My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now.
1. The Decline of Play and Independence
Human brains are extraordinarily large compared with those of other primates, and human childhoods are extraordinarily long, too, to give those large brains time to wire up within a particular culture. A child’s brain is already 90 percent of its adult size by about age 6. The next 10 or 15 years are about learning norms and mastering skills—physical, analytical, creative, and social. As children and adolescents seek out experiences and practice a wide variety of behaviors, the synapses and neurons that are used frequently are retained while those that are used less often disappear. Neurons that fire together wire together, as brain researchers say.
Brain development is sometimes said to be “experience-expectant,” because specific parts of the brain show increased plasticity during periods of life when an animal’s brain can “expect” to have certain kinds of experiences. You can see this with baby geese, who will imprint on whatever mother-sized object moves in their vicinity just after they hatch. You can see it with human children, who are able to learn languages quickly and take on the local accent, but only through early puberty; after that, it’s hard to learn a language and sound like a native speaker. There is also some evidence of a sensitive period for cultural learning more generally. Japanese children who spent a few years in California in the 1970s came to feel “American” in their identity and ways of interacting only if they attended American schools for a few years between ages 9 and 15. If they left before age 9, there was no lasting impact. If they didn’t arrive until they were 15, it was too late; they didn’t come to feel American.
Human childhood is an extended cultural apprenticeship with different tasks at different ages all the way through puberty. Once we see it this way, we can identify factors that promote or impede the right kinds of learning at each age. For children of all ages, one of the most powerful drivers of learning is the strong motivation to play. Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: to wire up their brains by playing vigorously and often, practicing the moves and skills they’ll need as adults. Kittens will play-pounce on anything that looks like a mouse tail. Human children will play games such as tag and sharks and minnows, which let them practice both their predator skills and their escaping-from-predator skills. Adolescents will play sports with greater intensity, and will incorporate playfulness into their social interactions—flirting, teasing, and developing inside jokes that bond friends together. Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and end up socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play.
One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail—often—in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults.
Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities. Its central activities––play, exploration, and intense socializing––were largely unsupervised by adults, allowing children to make their own choices, resolve their own conflicts, and take care of one another. Shared adventures and shared adversity bound young people together into strong friendship clusters within which they mastered the social dynamics of small groups, which prepared them to master bigger challenges and larger groups later on.
And then we changed childhood.
The changes started slowly in the late 1970s and ’80s, before the arrival of the internet, as many parents in the U.S. grew fearful that their children would be harmed or abducted if left unsupervised. Such crimes have always been extremely rare, but they loomed larger in parents’ minds thanks in part to rising levels of street crime combined with the arrival of cable TV, which enabled round-the-clock coverage of missing-children cases. A general decline in social capital––the degree to which people knew and trusted their neighbors and institutions––exacerbated parental fears. Meanwhile, rising competition for college admissions encouraged more intensive forms of parenting. In the 1990s, American parents began pulling their children indoors or insisting that afternoons be spent in adult-run enrichment activities. Free play, independent exploration, and teen-hangout time declined.
In recent decades, seeing unchaperoned children outdoors has become so novel that when one is spotted in the wild, some adults feel it is their duty to call the police. In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that parents, on average, believed that children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in front of their house, and that kids should be 14 before being allowed to go unsupervised to a public park. Most of these same parents had enjoyed joyous and unsupervised outdoor play by the age of 7 or 8.
2. The Virtual World Arrives in Two Waves
The internet, which now dominates the lives of young people, arrived in two waves of linked technologies. The first one did little harm to Millennials. The second one swallowed Gen Z whole.
The first wave came ashore in the 1990s with the arrival of dial-up internet access, which made personal computers good for something beyond word processing and basic games. By 2003, 55 percent of American households had a computer with (slow) internet access. Rates of adolescent depression, loneliness, and other measures of poor mental health did not rise in this first wave. If anything, they went down a bit. Millennial teens (born 1981 through 1995), who were the first to go through puberty with access to the internet, were psychologically healthier and happier, on average, than their older siblings or parents in Generation X (born 1965 through 1980).
The second wave began to rise in the 2000s, though its full force didn’t hit until the early 2010s. It began rather innocently with the introduction of social-media platforms that helped people connect with their friends. Posting and sharing content became much easier with sites such as Friendster (launched in 2003), Myspace (2003), and Facebook (2004).
Teens embraced social media soon after it came out, but the time they could spend on these sites was limited in those early years because the sites could only be accessed from a computer, often the family computer in the living room. Young people couldn’t access social media (and the rest of the internet) from the school bus, during class time, or while hanging out with friends outdoors. Many teens in the early-to-mid-2000s had cellphones, but these were basic phones (many of them flip phones) that had no internet access. Typing on them was difficult––they had only number keys. Basic phones were tools that helped Millennials meet up with one another in person or talk with each other one-on-one. I have seen no evidence to suggest that basic cellphones harmed the mental health of Millennials.
It was not until the introduction of the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and high-speed internet (which reached 50 percent of American homes in 2007)—and the corresponding pivot to mobile made by many providers of social media, video games, and porn—that it became possible for adolescents to spend nearly every waking moment online. The extraordinary synergy among these innovations was what powered the second technological wave. In 2011, only 23 percent of teens had a smartphone. By 2015, that number had risen to 73 percent, and a quarter of teens said they were online “almost constantly.” Their younger siblings in elementary school didn’t usually have their own smartphones, but after its release in 2010, the iPad quickly became a staple of young children’s daily lives. It was in this brief period, from 2010 to 2015, that childhood in America (and many other countries) was rewired into a form that was more sedentary, solitary, virtual, and incompatible with healthy human development.
3. Techno-optimism and the Birth of the Phone-Based Childhood
The phone-based childhood created by that second wave—including not just smartphones themselves, but all manner of internet-connected devices, such as tablets, laptops, video-game consoles, and smartwatches—arrived near the end of a period of enormous optimism about digital technology. The internet came into our lives in the mid-1990s, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union. By the end of that decade, it was widely thought that the web would be an ally of democracy and a slayer of tyrants. When people are connected to each other, and to all the information in the world, how could any dictator keep them down?
In the 2000s, Silicon Valley and its world-changing inventions were a source of pride and excitement in America. Smart and ambitious young people around the world wanted to move to the West Coast to be part of the digital revolution. Tech-company founders such as Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin were lauded as gods, or at least as modern Prometheans, bringing humans godlike powers. The Arab Spring bloomed in 2011 with the help of decentralized social platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. When pundits and entrepreneurs talked about the power of social media to transform society, it didn’t sound like a dark prophecy.
You have to put yourself back in this heady time to understand why adults acquiesced so readily to the rapid transformation of childhood. Many parents had concerns, even then, about what their children were doing online, especially because of the internet’s ability to put children in contact with strangers. But there was also a lot of excitement about the upsides of this new digital world. If computers and the internet were the vanguards of progress, and if young people––widely referred to as “digital natives”––were going to live their lives entwined with these technologies, then why not give them a head start? I remember how exciting it was to see my 2-year-old son master the touch-and-swipe interface of my first iPhone in 2008. I thought I could see his neurons being woven together faster as a result of the stimulation it brought to his brain, compared to the passivity of watching television or the slowness of building a block tower. I thought I could see his future job prospects improving.
Touchscreen devices were also a godsend for harried parents. Many of us discovered that we could have peace at a restaurant, on a long car trip, or at home while making dinner or replying to emails if we just gave our children what they most wanted: our smartphones and tablets. We saw that everyone else was doing it and figured it must be okay.
It was the same for older children, desperate to join their friends on social-media platforms, where the minimum age to open an account was set by law to 13, even though no research had been done to establish the safety of these products for minors. Because the platforms did nothing (and still do nothing) to verify the stated age of new-account applicants, any 10-year-old could open multiple accounts without parental permission or knowledge, and many did. Facebook and later Instagram became places where many sixth and seventh graders were hanging out and socializing. If parents did find out about these accounts, it was too late. Nobody wanted their child to be isolated and alone, so parents rarely forced their children to shut down their accounts.
We had no idea what we were doing.
4. The High Cost of a Phone-Based Childhood
In Walden, his 1854 reflection on simple living, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The cost of a thing is the amount of … life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” It’s an elegant formulation of what economists would later call the opportunity cost of any choice—all of the things you can no longer do with your money and time once you’ve committed them to something else. So it’s important that we grasp just how much of a young person’s day is now taken up by their devices.
The numbers are hard to believe. The most recent Gallup data show that American teens spend about five hours a day just on social-media platforms (including watching videos on TikTok and YouTube). Add in all the other phone- and screen-based activities, and the number rises to somewhere between seven and nine hours a day, on average. The numbers are even higher in single-parent and low-income families, and among Black, Hispanic, and Native American families.
In Thoreau’s terms, how much of life is exchanged for all this screen time? Arguably, most of it. Everything else in an adolescent’s day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed, and for the hundreds of “friends,” “followers,” and other network connections that must be serviced with texts, posts, comments, likes, snaps, and direct messages. I recently surveyed my students at NYU, and most of them reported that the very first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is check their texts, direct messages, and social-media feeds. It’s also the last thing they do before they close their eyes at night. And it’s a lot of what they do in between.
The amount of time that adolescents spend sleeping declined in the early 2010s, and many studies tie sleep loss directly to the use of devices around bedtime, particularly when they’re used to scroll through social media. Exercise declined, too, which is unfortunate because exercise, like sleep, improves both mental and physical health. Book reading has been declining for decades, pushed aside by digital alternatives, but the decline, like so much else, sped up in the early 2010s. With passive entertainment always available, adolescent minds likely wander less than they used to; contemplation and imagination might be placed on the list of things winnowed down or crowded out.
But perhaps the most devastating cost of the new phone-based childhood was the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends (about two hours a day, on average, not counting time together at school) than did older people (who spent just 30 to 60 minutes with friends). Time with friends began decreasing for young people in the 2000s, but the drop accelerated in the 2010s, while it barely changed for older people. By 2019, young people’s time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck.
You might question the importance of this decline. After all, isn’t much of this online time spent interacting with friends through texting, social media, and multiplayer video games? Isn’t that just as good?
Some of it surely is, and virtual interactions offer unique benefits too, especially for young people who are geographically or socially isolated. But in general, the virtual world lacks many of the features that make human interactions in the real world nutritious, as we might say, for physical, social, and emotional development. In particular, real-world relationships and social interactions are characterized by four features—typical for hundreds of thousands of years—that online interactions either distort or erase.
First, real-world interactions are embodied, meaning that we use our hands and facial expressions to communicate, and we learn to respond to the body language of others. Virtual interactions, in contrast, mostly rely on language alone. No matter how many emojis are offered as compensation, the elimination of communication channels for which we have eons of evolutionary programming is likely to produce adults who are less comfortable and less skilled at interacting in person.
Second, real-world interactions are synchronous; they happen at the same time. As a result, we learn subtle cues about timing and conversational turn taking. Synchronous interactions make us feel closer to the other person because that’s what getting “in sync” does. Texts, posts, and many other virtual interactions lack synchrony. There is less real laughter, more room for misinterpretation, and more stress after a comment that gets no immediate response.
Third, real-world interactions primarily involve one‐to‐one communication, or sometimes one-to-several. But many virtual communications are broadcast to a potentially huge audience. Online, each person can engage in dozens of asynchronous interactions in parallel, which interferes with the depth achieved in all of them. The sender’s motivations are different, too: With a large audience, one’s reputation is always on the line; an error or poor performance can damage social standing with large numbers of peers. These communications thus tend to be more performative and anxiety-inducing than one-to-one conversations.
Finally, real-world interactions usually take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen. But in many virtual networks, people can easily block others or quit when they are displeased. Relationships within such networks are usually more disposable.
These unsatisfying and anxiety-producing features of life online should be recognizable to most adults. Online interactions can bring out antisocial behavior that people would never display in their offline communities. But if life online takes a toll on adults, just imagine what it does to adolescents in the early years of puberty, when their “experience expectant” brains are rewiring based on feedback from their social interactions.
Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness. The brain contains systems that are specialized for approach (when opportunities beckon) and withdrawal (when threats appear or seem likely). People can be in what we might call “discover mode” or “defend mode” at any moment, but generally not both. The two systems together form a mechanism for quickly adapting to changing conditions, like a thermostat that can activate either a heating system or a cooling system as the temperature fluctuates. Some people’s internal thermostats are generally set to discover mode, and they flip into defend mode only when clear threats arise. These people tend to see the world as full of opportunities. They are happier and less anxious. Other people’s internal thermostats are generally set to defend mode, and they flip into discover mode only when they feel unusually safe. They tend to see the world as full of threats and are more prone to anxiety and depressive disorders.
A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.” These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.
5. So Many Harms
The debate around adolescents’ use of smartphones and social media typically revolves around mental health, and understandably so. But the harms that have resulted from transforming childhood so suddenly and heedlessly go far beyondmental health. I’ve touched on some of them—social awkwardness, reduced self-confidence, and a more sedentary childhood. Here are three additional harms.
Fragmented Attention, Disrupted Learning
Staying on task while sitting at a computer is hard enough for an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. It is far more difficult for adolescents in front of their laptop trying to do homework. They are probably less intrinsically motivated to stay on task. They’re certainly less able, given their undeveloped prefrontal cortex, and hence it’s easy for any company with an app to lure them away with an offer of social validation or entertainment. Their phones are pinging constantly—one study found that the typical adolescent now gets 237 notifications a day, roughly 15 every waking hour. Sustained attention is essential for doing almost anything big, creative, or valuable, yet young people find their attention chopped up into little bits by notifications offering the possibility of high-pleasure, low-effort digital experiences.
It even happens in the classroom. Studies confirm that when students have access to their phones during class time, they use them, especially for texting and checking social media, and their grades and learning suffer. This might explain why benchmark test scores began to decline in the U.S. and around the world in the early 2010s—well before the pandemic hit.
Addiction and Social Withdrawal
The neural basis of behavioral addiction to social media or video games is not exactly the same as chemical addiction to cocaine or opioids. Nonetheless, they all involve abnormally heavy and sustained activation of dopamine neurons and reward pathways. Over time, the brain adapts to these high levels of dopamine; when the child is not engaged in digital activity, their brain doesn’t have enough dopamine, and the child experiences withdrawal symptoms. These generally include anxiety, insomnia, and intense irritability. Kids with these kinds of behavioral addictions often become surly and aggressive, and withdraw from their families into their bedrooms and devices.
Social-media and gaming platforms were designed to hook users. How successful are they? How many kids suffer from digital addictions?
The main addiction risks for boys seem to be video games and porn. “Internet gaming disorder,” which was added to the main diagnosis manual of psychiatry in 2013 as a condition for further study, describes “significant impairment or distress” in several aspects of life, along with many hallmarks of addiction, including an inability to reduce usage despite attempts to do so. Estimates for the prevalence of IGD range from 7 to 15 percent among adolescent boys and young men. As for porn, a nationally representative survey of American adults published in 2019 found that 7 percent of American men agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am addicted to pornography”—and the rates were higher for the youngest men.
Girls have much lower rates of addiction to video games and porn, but they use social media more intensely than boys do. A study of teens in 29 nations found that between 5 and 15 percent of adolescents engage in what is called “problematic social media use,” which includes symptoms such as preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, neglect of other areas of life, and lying to parents and friends about time spent on social media. That study did not break down results by gender, but many others have found that rates of “problematic use” are higher for girls.
I don’t want to overstate the risks: Most teens do not become addicted to their phones and video games. But across multiple studies and across genders, rates of problematic use come out in the ballpark of 5 to 15 percent. Is there any other consumer product that parents would let their children use relatively freely if they knew that something like one in 10 kids would end up with a pattern of habitual and compulsive use that disrupted various domains of life and looked a lot like an addiction?
The Decay of Wisdom and the Loss of Meaning
During that crucial sensitive period for cultural learning, from roughly ages 9 through 15, we should be especially thoughtful about who is socializing our children for adulthood. Instead, that’s when most kids get their first smartphone and sign themselves up (with or without parental permission) to consume rivers of content from random strangers. Much of that content is produced by other adolescents, in blocks of a few minutes or a few seconds.
This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life. Adolescents spend less time steeped in their local or national culture. They are coming of age in a confusing, placeless, ahistorical maelstrom of 30-second stories curated by algorithms designed to mesmerize them. Without solid knowledge of the past and the filtering of good ideas from bad––a process that plays out over many generations––young people will be more prone to believe whatever terrible ideas become popular around them, which might explain why videos showing young people reacting positively to Osama bin Laden’s thoughts about America were trending on TikTok last fall.
All this is made worse by the fact that so much of digital public life is an unending supply of micro dramas about somebody somewhere in our country of 340 million people who did something that can fuel an outrage cycle, only to be pushed aside by the next. It doesn’t add up to anything and leaves behind only a distorted sense of human nature and affairs.
When our public life becomes fragmented, ephemeral, and incomprehensible, it is a recipe for anomie, or normlessness. The great French sociologist Émile Durkheim showed long ago that a society that fails to bind its people together with some shared sense of sacredness and common respect for rules and norms is not a society of great individual freedom; it is, rather, a place where disoriented individuals have difficulty setting goals and exerting themselves to achieve them. Durkheim argued that anomie was a major driver of suicide rates in European countries. Modern scholars continue to draw on his work to understand suicide rates today.
Durkheim’s observations are crucial for understanding what happened in the early 2010s. A long-running survey of American teens found that, from 1990 to 2010, high-school seniors became slightly less likely to agree with statements such as “Life often feels meaningless.” But as soon as they adopted a phone-based life and many began to live in the whirlpool of social media, where no stability can be found, every measure of despair increased. From 2010 to 2019, the number who agreed that their lives felt “meaningless” increased by about 70 percent, to more than one in five.
6. Young People Don’t Like Their Phone-Based Lives
How can I be confident that the epidemic of adolescent mental illness was kicked off by the arrival of the phone-based childhood? Skeptics point to other events as possible culprits, including the 2008 global financial crisis, global warming, the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting and the subsequent active-shooter drills, rising academic pressures, and the opioid epidemic. But while these events might have been contributing factors in some countries, none can explain both the timing and international scope of the disaster.
An additional source of evidence comes from Gen Z itself. With all the talk of regulating social media, raising age limits, and getting phones out of schools, you might expect to find many members of Gen Z writing and speaking out in opposition. I’ve looked for such arguments and found hardly any. In contrast, many young adults tell stories of devastation.
Freya India, a 24-year-old British essayist who writes about girls, explains how social-media sites carry girls off to unhealthy places: “It seems like your child is simply watching some makeup tutorials, following some mental health influencers, or experimenting with their identity. But let me tell you: they are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it.” She continues:
Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.
Rikki Schlott, a 23-year-old American journalist and co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind, writes,
"The day-to-day life of a typical teen or tween today would be unrecognizable to someone who came of age before the smartphone arrived. Zoomers are spending an average of 9 hours daily in this screen-time doom loop—desperate to forget the gaping holes they’re bleeding out of, even if just for … 9 hours a day. Uncomfortable silence could be time to ponder why they’re so miserable in the first place. Drowning it out with algorithmic white noise is far easier."
A 27-year-old man who spent his adolescent years addicted (his word) to video games and pornography sent me this reflection on what that did to him:
I missed out on a lot of stuff in life—a lot of socialization. I feel the effects now: meeting new people, talking to people. I feel that my interactions are not as smooth and fluid as I want. My knowledge of the world (geography, politics, etc.) is lacking. I didn’t spend time having conversations or learning about sports. I often feel like a hollow operating system.
Or consider what Facebook found in a research project involving focus groups of young people, revealed in 2021 by the whistleblower Frances Haugen: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression among teens,” an internal document said. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”
7. Collective-Action Problems
Social-media companies such as Meta, TikTok, and Snap are often compared to tobacco companies, but that’s not really fair to the tobacco industry. It’s true that companies in both industries marketed harmful products to children and tweaked their products for maximum customer retention (that is, addiction), but there’s a big difference: Teens could and did choose, in large numbers, not to smoke. Even at the peak of teen cigarette use, in 1997, nearly two-thirds of high-school students did not smoke.
Social media, in contrast, applies a lot more pressure on nonusers, at a much younger age and in a more insidious way. Once a few students in any middle school lie about their age and open accounts at age 11 or 12, they start posting photos and comments about themselves and other students. Drama ensues. The pressure on everyone else to join becomes intense. Even a girl who knows, consciously, that Instagram can foster beauty obsession, anxiety, and eating disorders might sooner take those risks than accept the seeming certainty of being out of the loop, clueless, and excluded. And indeed, if she resists while most of her classmates do not, she might, in fact, be marginalized, which puts her at risk for anxiety and depression, though via a different pathway than the one taken by those who use social media heavily. In this way, social media accomplishes a remarkable feat: It even harms adolescents who do not use it.
A recent study led by the University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn captured the dynamics of the social-media trap precisely. The researchers recruited more than 1,000 college students and asked them how much they’d need to be paid to deactivate their accounts on either Instagram or TikTok for four weeks. That’s a standard economist’s question to try to compute the net value of a product to society. On average, students said they’d need to be paid roughly $50 ($59 for TikTok, $47 for Instagram) to deactivate whichever platform they were asked about. Then the experimenters told the students that they were going to try to get most of the others in their school to deactivate that same platform, offering to pay them to do so as well, and asked, Now how much would you have to be paid to deactivate, if most others did so? The answer, on average, was less than zero. In each case, most students were willing to pay to have that happen.
Social media is all about network effects. Most students are only on it because everyone else is too. Most of them would prefer that nobody be on these platforms. Later in the study, students were asked directly, “Would you prefer to live in a world without Instagram [or TikTok]?” A majority of students said yes––58 percent for each app.
This is the textbook definition of what social scientists call a collective-action problem. It’s what happens when a group would be better off if everyone in the group took a particular action, but each actor is deterred from acting, because unless the others do the same, the personal cost outweighs the benefit. Fishermen considering limiting their catch to avoid wiping out the local fish population are caught in this same kind of trap. If no one else does it too, they just lose profit.
Cigarettes trapped individual smokers with a biological addiction. Social media has trapped an entire generation in a collective-action problem. Early app developers deliberately and knowingly exploited the psychological weaknesses and insecurities of young people to pressure them to consume a product that, upon reflection, many wish they could use less, or not at all.
8. Four Norms to Break Four Traps
Young people and their parents are stuck in at least four collective-action traps. Each is hard to escape for an individual family, but escape becomes much easier if families, schools, and communities coordinate and act together. Here are four norms that would roll back the phone-based childhood. I believe that any community that adopts all four will see substantial improvements in youth mental health within two years.
No smartphones before high school
The trap here is that each child thinks they need a smartphone because “everyone else” has one, and many parents give in because they don’t want their child to feel excluded. But if no one else had a smartphone—or even if, say, only half of the child’s sixth-grade class had one—parents would feel more comfortable providing a basic flip phone (or no phone at all). Delaying round-the-clock internet access until ninth grade (around age 14) as a national or community norm would help to protect adolescents during the very vulnerable first few years of puberty. According to a 2022 British study, these are the years when social-media use is most correlated with poor mental health. Family policies about tablets, laptops, and video-game consoles should be aligned with smartphone restrictions to prevent overuse of other screen activities.
No social media before 16
The trap here, as with smartphones, is that each adolescent feels a strong need to open accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms primarily because that’s where most of their peers are posting and gossiping. But if the majority of adolescents were not on these accounts until they were 16, families and adolescents could more easily resist the pressure to sign up. The delay would not mean that kids younger than 16 could never watch videos on TikTok or YouTube—only that they could not open accounts, give away their data, post their own content, and let algorithms get to know them and their preferences.
Phone‐free schools
Most schools claim that they ban phones, but this usually just means that students aren’t supposed to take their phone out of their pocket during class. Research shows that most students do use their phones during class time. They also use them during lunchtime, free periods, and breaks between classes––times when students could and should be interacting with their classmates face-to-face. The only way to get students’ minds off their phones during the school day is to require all students to put their phones (and other devices that can send or receive texts) into a phone locker or locked pouch at the start of the day. Schools that have gone phone-free always seem to report that it has improved the culture, making students more attentive in class and more interactive with one another. Published studies back them up.
More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world
Many parents are afraid to give their children the level of independence and responsibility they themselves enjoyed when they were young, even though rates of homicide, drunk driving, and other physical threats to children are way down in recent decades. Part of the fear comes from the fact that parents look at each other to determine what is normal and therefore safe, and they see few examples of families acting as if a 9-year-old can be trusted to walk to a store without a chaperone. But if many parents started sending their children out to play or run errands, then the norms of what is safe and accepted would change quickly. So would ideas about what constitutes “good parenting.” And if more parents trusted their children with more responsibility––for example, by asking their kids to do more to help out, or to care for others––then the pervasive sense of uselessness now found in surveys of high-school students might begin to dissipate.
It would be a mistake to overlook this fourth norm. If parents don’t replace screen time with real-world experiences involving friends and independent activity, then banning devices will feel like deprivation, not the opening up of a world of opportunities.
The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else. Smartphones are experience blockers. Our ultimate goal should not be to remove screens entirely, nor should it be to return childhood to exactly the way it was in 1960. Rather, it should be to create a version of childhood and adolescence that keeps young people anchored in the real world while flourishing in the digital age.
9. What Are We Waiting For?
An essential function of government is to solve collective-action problems. Congress could solve or help solve the ones I’ve highlighted—for instance, by raising the age of “internet adulthood” to 16 and requiring tech companies to keep underage children off their sites.
In recent decades, however, Congress has not been good at addressing public concerns when the solutions would displease a powerful and deep-pocketed industry. Governors and state legislators have been much more effective, and their successes might let us evaluate how well various reforms work. But the bottom line is that to change norms, we’re going to need to do most of the work ourselves, in neighborhood groups, schools, and other communities.
There are now hundreds of organizations––most of them started by mothers who saw what smartphones had done to their children––that are working to roll back the phone-based childhood or promote a more independent, real-world childhood. (I have assembled a list of many of them.) One that I co-founded, at LetGrow.org, suggests a variety of simple programs for parents or schools, such as play club (schools keep the playground open at least one day a week before or after school, and kids sign up for phone-free, mixed-age, unstructured play as a regular weekly activity) and the Let Grow Experience (a series of homework assignments in which students––with their parents’ consent––choose something to do on their own that they’ve never done before, such as walk the dog, climb a tree, walk to a store, or cook dinner).
Parents are fed up with what childhood has become. Many are tired of having daily arguments about technologies that were designed to grab hold of their children’s attention and not let go. But the phone-based childhood is not inevitable.
The four norms I have proposed cost almost nothing to implement, they cause no clear harm to anyone, and while they could be supported by new legislation, they can be instilled even without it. We can begin implementing all of them right away, this year, especially in communities with good cooperation between schools and parents. A single memo from a principal asking parents to delay smartphones and social media, in support of the school’s effort to improve mental health by going phone free, would catalyze collective action and reset the community’s norms.
We didn’t know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It’s time to end the phone-based childhood.
This article is adapted from Jonathan Haidt’s forthcoming book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
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your shadow under the illusory moon, p.2.
summary: out of everything he's done in his life, it's his relationship with you that haunts lyney.
notes: 2k words, fic, first part, childhood friends au, spoilers for lyney's backstory, the first part has the most context for this fic
Lyney has always believed in miracles.
In Sumeru, there’s a particular theory about a cat in a box. Until you open the box, the cat is caught in a state between life and death; in other words, it is both, at once. A living contradiction, a miracle of its own, as long as the box is closed and the truth is unknown. There are things in this world that require a similar layer of belief. Anything can be manipulated and falsified. Perspective can change the very nature of an object. Not everything that is as it seems.
Of course, there are patterns and rules to miracles. Like any good magician, Lyney knows all the right tricks to create the perfect stage for such a miracle to bloom. However, there’s also an element of randomness to any event, unpredictable factors that can change the course of a life.
The bouquet in his hands is one such factor. A simple collection of flowers, pink cyclamens and tender red columbines, tied together with a string. For the past few months, similar bouquets have appeared in his dressing room.
“You’re nervous,” Lynette comments.
He twirls the bouquet airily. “Why would I be? These are just… presents from a fan, after all.”
Lynette throws him an unimpressed stare. “Right. But it’s not just any fan, brother. I think it’s obvious from all of your little research that the person who sent these is–”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Lyney interrupts. His palms are clammy, and he carefully places the flowers back down on the table. “And if, and only if, they were the one to do this, I don’t think they’d be happy to see me.”
Lynnette purses her lips, but says nothing else. He knows what his sister is thinking, just from the unimpressed flick of her tail: he’s a coward. There’s nothing he can say to that when she’s right.
But how can he be brave when the person he has to face is you?
—
In rare moments alone, Lyney tumbles through his memories like a kaleidoscope, peering up at each brilliantly colored piece of halcyon days, long past. All of his most beautiful memories always involve you: his childhood friend, his first love, a fellow ragtag orphan running through the streets by his side.
You were the cleverest child on the streets, and Lyney had been honored to call you his friend. His favorite memories involve the summer, when you, he and Lynette would sneak down to the beach to roll up your pant legs and step into the surf, shrieking as it washed over your ankles. You would collect shells and set up crab traps, digging for mollusks and building elaborate castles that the tide would wash away.
On one such day, Lynette wandered off to check the crab traps, giving you and Lyney a few minutes alone. She had shoved him with her elbow, reminding him to make the most of the time she had generously allotted for him, ears twitching amusedly when he stammered and turned bright red.
Though Lynette always pushed him to make a move, at the end of the day, Lyney was delighted just to be by your side. You were his precious family, no matter the nature of your feelings.
“This is pretty,” Lyney murmured. He’s holding what looks like a drop of starlight in his palm, a smooth piece of red glass. The two of you had been digging through the surf for a little while now, searching for little trinkets and treasures. Mostly you and he would pick up shells, seaweed and odd bits and ends the water rolled in. On rare occasions, you might find a coin that someone dropped.
“It’s sea glass,” you informed him. “Broken glass bottles get worn down by the water and sand until they’re smooth like that.”
“You know so much,” he said admiringly.
“I read about it,” you said. You beckoned him closer, then dropped another treasure in his palm, a piece of green glass. “You can have this. I thought you’d like it.”
He fingered the drops of sea glass in his hands. “We need another piece.”
“Why?”
“Because we need a third piece,” he said. “For you.”
You smiled, childish joy breaking across your face. “Really? Okay.”
“It’s like a miracle that we found these treasures today,” Lyney said. “Maybe we were meant to find them.”
You shook your head, and you have that look in your eyes: the one that made you look older than you really were. “There are no such things as miracles, Lyney. It was only a coincidence.”
You walked leisurely along the beach, your shoes in your hands, tracking footsteps across the soft sand. After a beat, Lyney hurried to keep up with you, his own footsteps like lovers next to yours. The tide would wash them away, but for now, these were proof that the two of you existed.
In hindsight, Lyney has always been a little jealous that you can look at the world in the way you do. To you, everything is neat and simple. You only believe in what you can see, and once explained to him that there are rules, patterns and calculations that govern the world. The truth is a single immovable force. There are no miracles or contradictions.
“What you see is what you get,” you had said. “You can only trust your eyes.”
But that’s where you’re wrong, he thinks. There are countless lies in the world, a bevy of facades and mirages and deceptions. Even the truth is never quite so simple.
After Lyney was forcibly separated from you, his days dulled, colored with desperation and fear.
The noble that took him and Lynette in would never let him see you. In that house, he was kept on a tight leash. Freedom was always just out of his grasp, hindered by watching eyes and hidden threats.
“You can’t associate with orphans like that anymore. But if you do well, perhaps I can take your friend in, too,” the noble purred.
A lie, of course, but he had been young and desperate and naive. And then Lynette was stolen, and the noble murdered, and Father became their next caretaker.
“You have to let go of your past or you won’t survive,” she had warned. “The only family you have now is the House of the Hearth. I don’t want to hear talk of this friend again.”
And yet, Lyney clung to you desperately. Throughout the training. Throughout the cold, bitter nights. Throughout the distrust and the initial bullying. The memories of your time together provided warmth that he held tightly to his chest like a star. As long as he could get through this, then he could see you again. Everything would be made right with the world, and it would no longer feel as if his chest was being torn to shreds every second he was away from you.
Lyney needed leverage, a plan. No, he needed a miracle. Because only those with power had the right to do what they wanted in the world. Hadn’t he learned that, time and time again?
“Father, there’s someone I know that would be an invaluable asset to the Fatui,” he posited, once he had enough successes under his belt for Father to find him useful. “They’re clever, and skilled with their hands.”
Father smiled thinly. “And are you asking me this for my sake, or yours? Not just anyone can become a Fatuus. Could they survive here?”
He had bit his lip so hard he tasted blood.
Because how could Lyney do that to you, for his own selfish desire to keep you close? He couldn’t bear the thought of you suffering from injuries that were so common in their line of work, of never knowing whenever this would be the night you wouldn’t make it home, of you always living despised by the people around you, just for who you had to associate with to survive.
And worse. What if you were sent off to someone like Dottore, who treated his underlings like pawns and experiments?
You had built your own life, from what little he had heard. Information about you was ferreted out in coincidences. To investigate you directly would be to put a target on your back, so he could only hear snatches of your name through association with the more important people and places around you. Last he was told, you worked at the Fontaine Research Institute, and had made a decent name for yourself as a mechanic. Could he rip you away from the tranquil life you had created, and thrust you into a place like the Fatui?
“Why don’t you just talk to them, Lyney?” Lynette had asked once. “Enough of these games.”
“And what if they don’t want to see me, Lynette?”
She sighed, and he dipped his head.
He’s a coward, but Lyney can’t touch you with his bloodstained hands. He doesn’t deserve to love you anymore, because of the things he has done– of the things he will do, for Father’s sake. You live in the sunlight, and he lives in the shadows cast by your light.
Lyney finds himself thinking of you when he wanders into a little trinket shop one day. There are rows of handmade bookmarks, and the sight of it reminds him of how you used to always have your nose buried in a book. On a whim, he buys one, keeping it tucked in his pocket like a secret, a connection that tethers the two of you together.
Maybe if things hadn’t gone so horribly wrong, he would be by your side right now. The two of you would live in a little home together, and be a real family again.
But dreams were just that: dreams. In the end, there are some miracles even a magician can’t make true.
–
When Lyney steps into the dressing room and he comes face to face with you for the first time in years, his mind goes blank.
You watch him like a wary animal, and his breathing quickens in his chest. He can’t do this. Not now. Not ever. The years are cruel, because even though you’re older and more tired, he can still find traces of the friend he once knew more intimately than his own self.
“Why, hello there. Are you a fan? I didn’t expect to see someone back here,” he finds himself saying. Even off the stage, Lyney finds himself slipping into a mask. He watches himself from an audience seat, performing a part for you.
Have you been okay? He wants to beg like a child. Have you been safe? Has anyone hurt you? But none of those thoughts pass his lips throughout your conversation with him.
When your attention wanders, it’s easy enough for Lyney to carefully spirit away your bag, and, with shaking hands, slide his bookmark into it.
When you turn to go, he can’t help himself. “Did you enjoy today’s show?” Lyney asks.
“I could understand why people like your magic shows so much.”
“But do you like them?”
You tilt your head, considering his question like you would a math equation. “Well, I don’t really believe in magic. But I appreciate the effort and the logistics behind each trick.”
“I’m glad, then.” A knot of tension loosens in his chest. It’s confirmation of what he’s known, from searching for you in the crowds for the past few weeks when he first realized you had been showing up at his shows: that despite everything, you were still watching him. His first audience member, and the most precious one. “Have a nice night.”
When you’re gone, Lyney collapses onto the dressing room table, hands shaking as he grips the wood, so hard his knuckles turn white. Your bouquet remains, and he brings the petals to his face, breathing in the fading fragrance.
There are things in this world that can never be truly repaired or forgiven, like how a shattered bowl will always bear memories of its cracks, or some animals hold grudges for the rest of their lives, remembering the face of their tormentors.
But Lyney believes in miracles. In the unexpected, in the unpredictable, in the contradictory nature of the world. And one day, maybe a miracle will bring him back to your side.
#liya writes#genshin impact#lyney#genshin impact lyney#genshin impact x reader#x reader#lyney x reader#lyney is the most conflict avoidant man in the world fr#i felt like the first fic was somewhat incomplete so!!! i figured writing about lyney's perspective (equally biased) would help that#i love tormenting him <3
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