So I'm currently unemployed because I got fired for taking too much sick leave (it was legally sketchy blah blah blah but in the end I just can't work and take care of myself and investigate my mystery health problems at the same time). So I've been spending more time writing!

I really admire your writing and loved Hunger Pangs. I'm looking forward to the poly elements developing and I'm wondering if you have any advice for writing about poly. I've made one of my projects a snarky take on "write what you know" ... Apparently what I know is southern gothic meets Pacific northwest gothic, chronic illness pandemic surrealism, and falling back-asswards into threesomes.

I know this is a very open-ended question and I don't expect an answer, I'm just curious about it if you have the energy. As a writer, trying to write honestly / realistically about polyamory/enm, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what's different about portraying monogamy or nonmonogamy in books, romance or erotica or otherwise.

I'm trying to read examples but it's hard to find examples that fit the niche I'm looking at. Excuse me if this question is nonsense, it's the cluster headaches.

I'm sorry to hear you've been dealing with all that and solidarity on the cluster headaches. But I'm glad you're finding an outlet through writing! And I hope you're happy with an open-ended ramble in response because oh boy, there's a lot I could talk about and I could probably do a better job of answering this sort of thing with more specific questions, but let's see where we end up.

There's definitely a big difference between writing polyamory/ENM (ethical non-monogamy) and what people often expect from monogamous love stories.

Just even from a purely sales and marketing standpoint, the moment you write anything polyamorous (or even just straight up LGBTQIA+ without the ENM) you're going to get considered closer to being erotica/obscene than hetero romances. It's an unfair bias, but it's one that exists in our society. But also the Amazon algorithm and their shitty, shitty human censors. Especially the ones that work the weekends. (Talking to you, Carlos 🖕.)

So not only do you start out hyper-aware that you're writing something that is highly stigmatized or fetishized (at least I'm hyper-aware) but that you are also writing for a niche market that is starving for positive content because the content that exists is either limited, not what they want, or is problematic in some fashion i.e. highly stigmatized or fetishy. And even then, the wants, desires, and expectations of the community you're writing for are complex and wildly varied and hard to fit into an easy formula.

When writing monogamous love stories, there is a set expectation that’s really hard to fuck up once you know it. X person meets Y. Attraction happens, followed by some sort of minor conflict/resolution. Other plot may happen. A greater catalyst involving personal growth for both parties (hopefully) happens. Follow the equation to its ultimate resolution and achieve Happily Ever After. 

But writing ENM is... a lot more difficult, if only because of the pure scope of possibilities. You could try to follow the same equation and shove three (or more) people into it, but it rarely works well. Usually because if you’re doing it right, you won’t have enough room in a single character arc to allow for enough growth, and if ENM requires anything in abundance, it’s room to grow.

And this post is huge so I’m going to put the rest under a cut :)

There's also a common refrain in certain online polyam/ENM circles that triads and throuples are overrepresented in media and they may be right to some extent. Personally, I believe the issue isn't that triads and throuples are overrepresented, but that there is such minuscule positive rep of ethical non-monogamy in general, that the few tiny instances we have of triads in media make it seem like it's "everywhere" when in actuality, it's still quite rare and the media we do have often veers into Unicorn Hunter fetish porn. Which is its own problematic thing. And just to be clear, I’m not including this part to dissuade you from writing "falling back-asswards into threesomes." If anything, I need more of it and would hook it directly into my brain if I could. I'm just throwing it out there into the void in the hope that someone will take the thought and run with it, lol.

I’d love to see more polyfidelitous rep in fiction, just as much as I’d like to see more relationship anarchy too. More diversity in fiction is always good.

Another thing that differs in writing ENM romance vs conventional monogamy is the feeling like you need to justify yourself. There's a lot of pressure to be as healthy and non-problematic as possible because you are being held to a higher standard of criticism. Both from people from without the ENM communities, and from the people within. Granted, some people don't give a shit and just want to read some fantastic porn (valid) but there are those who will cheerfully read Fifty Shades of Bullshit and call it "spicy" and "romantic," then turn around and call the most tooth-rottingly-sweet-fluff about a queer platonic polycule heresy. That's just the way the world works.

(Pro-tip for author life in general: never read your own reviews; that way madness lies. I glimpsed one the other day that tagged Hunger Pangs as “ethical cheating” and just about had an aneurism.)

And while that feeling of needing to justify yourself comes from a valid place of being excluded from the table of socially accepted norms, it can also be to the detriment of both the story and the subject matter at hand. I've seen some authors bend so far over backward to avoid being problematic in their portrayal of ENM, they end up being problematic for entirely different reasons. Usually because they give such a skewed, rose-tinted perspective of how things work, it ends up coming off as well... a bit culty and obnoxious tbh.

“Look how enlightened we are, freed from the trappings of monogamy and jealousy! We’re all so honest and perfect and happy!”

Yeah, uhu, sure Jan. Except here’s the thing, not all jealousy is bad. How you act on it can be, but jealousy itself is an important tool in the junk drawer that is the range of human emotion. It can clue us in to when we’re feeling sad or neglected, which in turn means we should figure out why we’re feeling those things. Sometimes it’s because brains are just like that and anxiety is a thing. Other times it’s because our needs are actually being neglected and we are in an unhealthy situation we need to remedy. You gotta put the work in to figure it out. Which is the same as any style of relationship, whether it’s mono, polyam or whatever flavor of ENM you subscribe to* And sometimes you just gotta be messy, because that’s how humans are. Being afraid to show that mess makes it a dishonest portrayal, and it also robs you of some great cannon fodder for character development.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to my current pet peeve in how certain writers take monogamous ideals and apply them to ENM, sometimes without even realizing it. The “Find the Right Person and Settle Down” trope.

Often, in this case, ENM or polyamory is treated as a phase. Something you mature out of with age or until you meet “The One(tm).” This is, of course, an attempt to follow the mono style formula expected in most romances. And while it might appeal to many readers, it’s uh, actually quite insulting. 

To give an example, I am currently seeing this a lot in the Witcher fandom. 

Fanon Netflix!Jaskier is everyone's favorite ethical slut until he meets Geralt then woops, wouldn’t you know, he just needed to find The One(tm). Suddenly, all his other sexual and romantic exploits or attractions mean nothing to him. Let's watch as he throws away a core aspect of his personality in favor of a man. 

Yeah... that sure showed those societal norms... 

If I were being generous, I’d say it’s a poor attempt at showing New Relationship Euphoria and how wrapped up people can become in new relationships. But honestly, it’s monogamous bias eking its way in to validate how special and unique the relationship is. Because sometimes people really can’t think of any other way to show how important and valid a relationship is without defining it in terms of exclusivity. Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how ENM works for a lot of people and invalidates a lot of loving, serious and long-term relationships.

This is not to say that some polyam/poly-leaning people can't be happy in monogamous relationships! I am! (I consider myself ambiamorous. I'm happy with either monogamy or polyamory, it really just depends on the relationship(s) I’m in.) But I also don't regard my relationship with a mono partner as "settling down" or "growing up." It's just a choice I made to be with a person I love, and it's a valid one. Just like choosing to never close yourself off to multiple relationships is valid. And I wish more people realized that, or rather, I wish the people writing these things knew that :P

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. I hope this collection of incoherent thoughts actually makes some sense and might be useful. 

----

*A good resource book that doesn't pull any punches in this regard is Polysecure by Jessica Fern. It's a wonderfully insightful read that explores the messier side of consensual non-monogamy, especially with how it can be affected by trauma or inter-relationship conflicts. But it also shows how to take better steps toward healthy, ethical non-monogamy (a far better job than More Than Two**) and conflict resolution, making it a valuable resource both for someone who is a part of this relationship style***, but also for writers on the outside looking in who might have a very simple or misguided idea of what conflict within polyam/ENM relationships might look like, vs traditional monogamous ones.

** The author of More Than Two has been accused of multiple accounts of abuse within the polyamorous community, with many of his coauthors having spoken out about the gaslighting and emotional and psychological damage they experienced while in a relationship with him. A lot of their stories are documented here: https://www.itrippedonthepolystair.com/ (warning: it is not light material and deals with issues of abuse, gaslighting, and a whole other plethora of Yikes.) While some people still find More Than Two helpful reading, there are now, thankfully, much, much better resources out there.

*** Some people consider polyam/ENM to be part of their identity or orientation, while others view it as a relationship style.It largely depends on the individual. 

fic: kintsugi

summary: The day after brunch at Jerry's, Jack and Shitty have a raw, much-needed conversation over the phone. Some issues need to be addressed before they can head down the road to patching things up.

word count: 6k

tags: year 3, post-comic 3.12, phone calls, friendship, canon compliant, apologies, introspection

notes: based on the prompt ‘providence + family’ by @atlasthemayor.

read on ao3

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Jack’s stomach churns strangely when he sees Shitty’s name flash on his caller ID.

It’s a disconcerting feeling, a slight jolt and twinge in his gut, both reminiscent of when anxiety coils low inside him and distinctive in some way. It makes Jack frown and set his heated dinner aside on the coffee table with the hand not holding the buzzing phone. He’s not sure he ever had this foreign reaction to Shitty calling him before, so after a brief moment of puzzlement he decides to write it off as a side effect of the exhaustion weighing him down.

The phone vibrates once more in his palm before Jack slides his thumb across the screen to accept the call. “Hey, man,” he greets, balancing the phone between his cheek and shoulder so he can pick his food up again. Shitty won’t mind the sound of his chewing, probably. “Staying up late to study?”

It’s coming up to half past eleven on Saturday night. Jack dragged himself through the front door and into the dark apartment at around ten forty-five, his muscles sore and his body beat from over twenty minutes of ice time. He dumped his gear bag in the entryway next to his shoes and headed straight into the kitchen without flicking any of the lights on, shoved one of his frozen meal plan boxes of grilled chicken and brown rice into the microwave without pausing.

The yellow glow of the microwave was the sole source of light in the room as Jack strapped an ice pack to his shoulder, still aching from Ericsson’s high-stick, stuck Bitty’s handwritten PB&J note on the fridge, and waited. The only thing he really wanted to do was fall face-first into his bed, text Bitty that he was home, maybe break down the game over the phone if Bitty wasn’t too busy -- but his regimen had taken precedence. He knew he needed to put in some calories and take care of his pain if he wanted to get up for his six a.m. run. By the time his phone started ringing, Jack was mechanically chewing on his food in the living room. His couch was more comfortable than a dining chair, plush upholstery engulfing his tired limbs, and it only distantly occurred to him that there was something sad about eating dinner alone in the dark.

Shitty’s call, when it came, was unexpected.

“Hate to tell you this, but eleven thirty is not late," Shitty replies, the familiar timbre of his voice tinny due to cell reception. It's an effect Jack is closely acquainted with after months of daily phone calls with Bitty, so he knows that's not all there is to it when he notices something else amiss about Shitty’s voice; like the rhythm of his speech is slightly off. He registers it as abnormal, but before he can figure out if he wants to ask about it Shitty carries on talking. “How’s everything going for ya?”

“Okay,” Jack answers plainly, piling rice onto his fork. He doesn't have the energy to think of anything more gripping than the truth. “Eating post-game dinner.”

Shitty pauses on the other side of the line, makes the creases in Jack’s forehead deepen. Something feels weird, but Jack doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it if nothing is really wrong. Sometimes people act in ways that confuse him for any number of reasons, and he’s not always good at telling them apart.

“Yeah, yeah, I saw,” Shitty says, clearing his throat quietly. “The Red Wings. Great game, brah. Your shoulder doin’ okay?”

Jack’s mouth slows down his chewing on instinct, and he swallows the rice with difficulty. Shitty never just tells Jack great game. Shitty talks about hockey like he’s the narrator in a porn film, with an enthusiasm unmatched by anyone Jack has ever met. Shitty once sang Jack’s praises for half an hour after a game against UND in which Samwell lost 2-0. That, combined with his tone -- something isn’t quite right, Jack thinks. He's more confident in that observation now, but his brain feels slower than usual and he’s too tired to connect any dots.

“Euh, yeah. I’ll be alright. Really have to shake it off and make sure I’m all there on Monday night, eh? We’ve had a good streak, but it’s always about how we play the next game. We’re getting better as a group.”

Jack’s tongue slips into hockey speak naturally before he can do anything to stop it, but instead of chirp him, Shitty makes a vague, throaty noise and doesn’t comment. “Yeah, I get what you mean. You and Mashkov really seem to hit it off out there, heh. Uh, listen -- I know you had to drive back for your practice, but. We didn’t really get the chance to talk much yesterday, and I guess…” Shitty pauses again, and Jack lowers the box to rest against his knee, apprehensive. “Well. D’ya have a moment? Because I’d really fuckin’ like to apologize for some shit.”

Jack’s hand clenches convulsively around his fork, a piece of chicken breast sliding off the tines and falling back into the box with a dull noise.

The early morning and then noon hours of Friday were an emotional blur. From the anxiety spike when Jack stepped off the plane to the car ride on the flooded highway; from the sleep-deprived, tearful conversation in Bitty's narrow bed to the cathartic brunch at Jerry’s with their friends. Jack drove straight home after his nap and stepped out of the car back in Providence to find his phone overflowing with chirping text messages. The chirps haven’t really died down over the weekend, but Jack doesn’t mind them, and he doesn’t think Bitty does either; it feels good to have a subject that’s been burdening them both treated lightheartedly. Trusting their friends with this secret isn't as heavy on Jack's shoulder as he feared it might be.

Shitty is the only one who hasn’t written much in the group chat. He and Jack talked briefly on the lawn outside the Haus after the six of them had returned from brunch, and then they resorted to roughhousing when the mood got too somber. Jack hoped that it’d be enough to put everything behind them, but if he pushes himself to think it through, a part of him has known that this conversation was coming. It wasn’t like Shitty to let things go so easily.

Jack's glad that Shitty can't see his face right now, because he can feel himself grimacing. He hopes his brief silence hasn’t been too revealing. “Shits -- it’s cool, yeah? We’re cool.”

“I don’t think we are, actually,” Shitty argues. His voice is growing strained. “You don’t have to talk, even --”

“C’mon, man, there’s really not much to say. Everything is good now --”

“Jack,” Shitty cuts him off, and the tone of his voice shuts Jack right up. Shitty can get wrapped up in things, can lose himself in long tirades about rights and wrongs and justice, but this tone sounds different than it has through the hundreds of rants Jack has been witness to. Shitty sounds dead serious. Jack blinks, and realizes: this isn’t Shitty being his normal self. He’s genuinely torn up about this. “Just -- will ya let me…? Please.”

“I…” Jack starts, but he doesn’t really know what he wants to say. He’s never been skilled at these kinds of conversations, and the odd feeling he got when he saw Shitty’s name on his screen squeezes even tighter than before, making him feel slightly nauseated.

“It’s -- I --. Jack, what I said in front of everyone during the home opening kegster… and all the other times I... That was some fucked up shit. I fucked up real bad, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Jack tries again, but this time the words feel so wrong in his mouth that he has difficulty shaping his tongue around them. It tastes like an outright lie, although he wasn’t aware he was even lying at all.

Jack hadn’t recognized the churning in his gut until now, but Shitty’s steadfast apology intensifies the feeling and dredges up what Jack has clearly failed to notice. He wants to tell Shitty that there’s no need to apologize, but apparently that’s just not true; it’s only now that he realizes the sharp response he had to Shitty’s call is bitterness. Jack’s feelings actually were hurt by Shitty. Maybe he should be startled by discovering wounded feelings he wasn’t cognizant of for over a month, but if this past summer has taught Jack anything, it’s that sometimes he manages to overlook the most substantial of things.

“-- and it’s not enough to be chill about it now,” Jack blinks out of his thoughts and tunes back into Shitty’s distressed train of words, coming chopped and fast through the ear speaker. “I should’ve -- before, too, I should’ve created a safe enough fuckin’ environment --”

“You were always talking to us about creating safe environments, Shitty,” Jack interrupts him. His voice sounds hollow to his own ears, and he puts his fork in the box and the box back on the coffee table to free his hands. He’s still making sense of his own mental state, and he knows that whatever is going to come stumbling out of his mouth will be barely coherent at best. “It’s not -- it was just that -- you’re always saying it’s important, and then, câlice… It was hard enough, hiding, and then with you as well --.”

Everyone was allowed to be queer, for Shitty. Jack remembers how in sophomore year Shitty marched into the Haus, ecstatic about the five different people who had come out to him that same week, babbling about how great it was and how different Samwell was to Andover. He mentioned sexuality labels Jack had never even heard of, had accepted so effortlessly those borderline strangers who had trusted him with their identities. Shitty has always been the most open-minded person Jack knows, the one to talk endlessly about the inherent toxicity of heteronormativity and to lecture the team about never labeling others without their consent.

Jack’s not always good at pinpointing the root of his own feelings, but the moment he thinks of that thrilled look on Shitty’s face almost three years before, he knows, like a lightbulb going off, why he was hurt. Because it seemed like everyone was allowed to be queer, for Shitty -- except Jack. Like Jack wasn’t queer enough to warrant the same respectful treatment. Like he wasn’t really allowed to be queer at all. Jack had never felt particularly close to his sexuality, but when even Shitty assumed so assuredly that he couldn’t be anything but straight, it stung. He just hasn’t registered it until now.

There’s a split second of tense silence, and then Shitty says, “I didn’t even know you were having a hard time, brah,” the pace of his speech slowed down.

Jack’s eyebrows draw together. His right hand, absentmindedly, pinches the fabric of his suit pants and rubs the smooth texture between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t -- what does that mean? It’s not like you asked.”

Shitty’s breath comes out in a harsh exhale, crackles in Jack’s ears. Jack can hear springs squeaking and sheets ruffling, the sounds of Shitty dropping heavily onto his bed. “Brah. How was I supposed to ask? You never pick up the damn phone anymore. Shit, man, I know fuck all about your life lately."

The fabric of Jack’s pants stretches in the tight grip of his fingers as he blinks, takes in Shitty’s accusation, and realizes he’s right all in the space of two and a half seconds. He can recall a few missed calls that he never got around to returning, but it didn’t seem so important at the time. He was, and still is, in the midst of his first NHL season, trying so hard not to get so lost in hockey and his own worries that he drowns in it and forgets to be a good boyfriend to Bitty.

It never occurred to him that he was investing so much effort into being a good boyfriend to Bitty that he wound up forgetting to be a good friend to everyone else. He knew Shitty and he weren’t talking as often, that things between them haven’t been great lately, but the truth is he had so many other things to worry about that he let it drift to the margins of his mind.

Jack lets go of his pants, rubs his palm down his thigh to smooth the creases away. His momentary bout of anger deserts him with the release of a slow, purposeful exhale. "You’re right. I’m sorry."

"No, no, shit,” Shitty says immediately, switching back from resigned to guilt-ridden in the matter of nanoseconds. “Don’t -- damn it, don’t apologize, oh shit, I’m victim blaming aren’t I, I totally didn’t mean to put this on you --"

"Shitty --"

There’s the sound of bed springs creaking again and then loud footsteps hitting a floor, which Jack assumes are the background sounds of Shitty rushing up from his bed to pace the length of his room. He’s seen Shitty do it across his small room in the Haus countless times, and it feels strange now, having it happen forty miles away. "It’s just, you know, I tried and you didn’t pick up and I get it, fuck do I get it, remember how in freshman year you forgot to talk to anyone for like a week during the preseason stress?"

Jack cracks a tiny, shaky smile that he knows won’t make it into his voice. His first few months at Samwell were a horrible time, fraught with loneliness and frequent panic attacks, too absorbed in thoughts of the path he was supposed to take to function in the path he ended up taking. His therapist helped with that, later, but before that there was Shitty. Determined to be Jack’s friend for no good reason at all. "Yeah. And you broke into my dorm room to make sure I wasn’t dead."

"So it wasn’t like I was offended you didn’t pick up or some bull,” Shitty hurries to finish, “I know you, I get it --"

But that’s wrong, Jack thinks, frowning deeply. Surely, Shitty must know that. "Shitty."

"What? No, seriously. It’s not the first time it happened, and with the pressure of playing in the league and all, I totally get it -- it’s just --"

"You’re allowed to be offended, Shits." Jack says quietly. His hand reaches up to curl around the phone and tug it away from the crook of his shoulder, but his muscles remain tense even when his shoulder drops down. His other hand is still fisted on top of his thigh and the purple shadows cast by the faint stars outside the windows heighten the grooves of his veins. "I know I -- I know it can get difficult -- with me --"

"No," Shitty interrupts, sounding even more emotional than before, a penitent snowball that keeps on rolling down the hill. Shitty’s capable of rolling on forever, if he thinks something is truly wrong. "No no no, Jack, I didn’t mean --"

"Shut up, Shitty." Jack says firmly. He preserves, reminding himself forcefully that the sentiment he wants to establish is too important to be derailed by Shitty’s atonement. His hands have begun to shake slightly, but he needs to get it out. "I know I’m worthy of love and friendship and all the crap you were about to say. I’m just saying --. You’re allowed to be hurt even if it isn’t new behavior. Just because I -- my anxiety -- y’know. If it hurts you, you’re allowed to be hurt."

The other side of the line goes quiet for a long moment, not even the sound of breathing coming through. Jack closes his eyes, counts to ten, tells himself that it’s Shitty and that the two of them are going to figure it out. Fighting with Shitty has always been mentally hard on Jack, has always felt like shaking the only foundation Jack had to stand on. It didn’t happen often, but Jack tries to remind himself that whenever it did they always came out intact on the other side. Arguing was a healthy way to understand your needs and the needs of the other person, his therapist told him.

When Shitty speaks, he sounds awed. "Christ on a cracker, man. That was fuckin’ wise. That Bits’ influence on you?"

Jack pauses to consider it seriously, taking time to recompose his brain. Being with Bitty -- it has taught him so much, about his own feelings and others' and how to put them into words, the importance of open communication. He told Shitty that the previous day after Jerry's -- feelings could easily not occur to him, even if he felt them very strongly. He coexisted with them without acknowledging their existence a lot of the time, and this phone call is only one example of it. Being with Bitty, having to be aware and give name and give value to his own feelings to make things work between them, has changed the way he interacted with his emotions. Made him understand himself better. He’s not at all sure he would’ve been capable of articulating himself in a conversation like this if not for the progress Bitty and he have made together.

But being aware of his worth as a person, and learning that his disorder didn’t define him but shouldn’t be brushed aside either, that wasn’t Bitty. “No, Shits. That’s your influence on me.”

This silence is even longer than the one before it, and then it’s broken by muffled sniffles on the other side. Jack's heart leaps, panic building in his chest -- but then Shitty says, throat choked up, “I thought -- fuck, Jack, this is gonna sound so motherfucking stupid. But I thought you didn’t, y’know. Need me anymore. I know this is on me too, I’m barely keeping my head above water here and the whole -- fuckin’ Harvard situation, it’s not… but each day we didn't talk and I saw your game scores, or I would see those Falcs vids… it looks like you have this spankin’ fuckin’ brand new life that I know shit about. And you’ve got Mashkov, and St. Martin, and…”

Jack can’t find adequate words for a long moment, and once he opens his mouth he’s surprised to hear his voice is thick, surprised to feel hot tears pooling at the corners of his eyes. “Shitty. Tater is great. And Marty is great, and -- Thirdy, and all of them. But.”

None of them are you, he wants to say, but that sounds too dumb to utter out loud. That’s not how Shitty and he talk to each other, or at least, it’s not how Jack talks to Shitty. Shitty is good at phrasing his feelings in ways Jack can handle, but Jack can’t ever make the right words come out of his mouth.

There’s another pause, his mind blanking, and then he says, “Tater didn’t make me sign a friendship contract.”

Shitty snorts, but it isn’t a happy sound. “Jacko --”

“No. Shits --. Tater didn’t make the effort to be my friend even when I was doing everything I could to push him away. He didn’t drag my ass to the Haus my freshman year after I hadn't talked to anyone but faculty in two weeks. He didn’t argue with Bergey until we were banked together on every roadie and was heartbroken when no one spread rumors about us hooking up.”

That shot goes wide. “Oh fuckity fuck, Jack, I’m a fucking dickhead --”

“Bordel de merde, Shitty, will you fucking listen?” Jack rubs his fingers over the bridge of his nose, feels his skin crease between his brows. “Tater didn’t make me go to Gender in Warfare in Early 20th Century America because he knew it’d end up one of my favorite classes, or learnt my story about the fire extinguisher and the football team by heart, or -- or have been defending me behind my back since the first week he knew me. Tater’s great. I’m -- you know, uh, thankful, for having people on the Falcs. I didn’t think it could be -- after the guys at Samwell, no team would ever be the same.”

“Yeah,” Shitty says, sadly, in the tone of someone who knows exactly what Jack means.

Jack’s throat bobs when he swallows, chest aching. “And they’re great. But Tater -- or Marty, or any of them -- they’re not...”

None of them are you, Jack wants Shitty to hear, gripping his pants in his hand again to balance himself. He doesn’t know how to say it in a way that would make Shitty hear him. None of them could ever be you.

There’s once again silence between them, only interrupted by Shitty’s quiet sniffles and the erratic beating of Jack’s heart. His phone is too warm on his ear, clammy from sweat smearing over the screen, but he can’t bring himself to put Shitty on speaker. It feels like they’re too far apart to have this conversation already, like Shitty should be sitting here on the couch next to Jack in flimsy underwear like he was every time they needed to talk like this over the past four years.

After a long moment, Shitty makes an ambiguous rasping noise and admits, “I was jealous.”

Jack winces. “I’m sorry.”

“No. Yeah, I mean, apology accepted, whatever, just. I was jealous they got to be there for you every day, really be there in the moments I used to live through with you that I now know zilch about. I was used to that being me.” He then adds, much more grimly, “Except apparently I sucked ass at being there for you at all when it counted.”

Jack sighs. They veered off topic to talk about something Jack considers more important, but now they were back to that and he knows in the pit of his stomach that they, both of them, won’t be able to move on until they talk this through. This is a conversation they need to have, even if it would be easier for Jack to not have it at all. “Shitty. I need to tell you something.”

The thing about Shitty is that he has faults like the rest of them, but Jack has always known that he’d drop anything if Jack needed him. He knows because it goes unconditionally both ways. Shitty’s voice goes immediately even and he wastes no time before saying, “I'm listening.”

Jack swallows. It feels -- heavy, on his breastbones. It didn’t before, it didn’t at Jerry's. He doesn’t remember this weight from years ago, when he first talked about it with his parents, and then -- later, too much later -- with his therapist. His chest was so laden with other concerns then that there was no room for anything more, and this burden was only ever an afterthought. At Jerry's he was thinking of Bitty, of Bitty’s happiness and Jack's own happiness with him, and the necessity of the action for their joint happiness. It didn’t leave any space for this weight.

Now he can feel the weight. It’s stupid. Shitty already knows, and besides, it’s Shitty. Jack knows Shitty so well that he can practically predict the exact words he will use, and even if he couldn’t, he knows Shitty would never turn him away. Yet his chest feels tight, like he’s holding in all of his air, and his fingers are again shaking against his thigh. “Shitty, I'm dating Bittle.”

Shitty makes a baffled sound, clearly not expecting this choice of confession. “I -- yeah, dude, I know.”

“I’m dating Bittle,” Jack reiterates determinedly, eager to get it over with. “He’s a guy.”

Shitty goes quiet for a moment, and then he says, voice low, “Okay.”

Jack wasn’t sure he was going to say it, but now that they’re here, this is something he wants Shitty to know. “He’s not the first guy I’ve been with.”

Shitty’s sharp intake of breath at this is audible even over the phone, but other than that he doesn’t react outwardly. Jack's shaking hand lifts up to rub over his chest while he waits for Shitty to say something, and Shitty doesn’t keep him waiting long. “Okay. Thank you for telling me.”

That’s almost exactly the reaction Jack expected to hear, but for some reason he doesn’t feel settled. “It never came up before.”

“That’s okay, buddy,” Shitty reassures him. Jack’s not sure what Shitty is thinking, if he’s thinking anything at all. This probably isn’t as big a deal to him as it feels like to Jack.

Jack frowns down at the shadows of his socked feet in the dark, thinks it over, and then corrects, “No, actually -- no. It never came up with anyone else. But I did think of telling you. More than once. You were the only one… but I had reasons not to. Or, I thought I did.”

“That’s still cool, brah,” Shitty hurries to interrupt. “You don’t have to --”

“No, because,” Jack sighs, trails off midsentence. He doesn’t want Shitty to make this easy for him, to allow Jack to take the exit he’s being offered. He knows they could stop the discussion right there and Shitty would never say a thing, but he doesn’t want this to hang over their friendship for the rest of time, and he knows that it could if he doesn’t force himself to dig deeper. “Because when you assumed that if I had someone it must’ve been a girlfriend, it hurt. I didn’t realize before -- I thought I was upset because Bitty was hurt, and I hurt him even more with my reaction, and it mattered more at the time. But it hurt. And that’s not entirely fair to you, because you had no reason to think otherwise. Because I didn’t tell you.”

There’s more rustling in the background, and Shitty talks over him before the last word is out of his mouth. “Jack, no, you’re under no obligation to disclose your identity to anyone and it doesn’t give them any right to assume -- I assumed and it was so fucking wrong --”

“Yeah,” Jack agrees, because it was. He’s not trying to argue that it wasn’t. Shitty was wrong, but that’s not the point Jack is trying to make.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Shitty sounds contrite, and Jack can almost imagine the look on his face now. The small wrinkle in his forehead, the downward slope of his mustache, the sharp angle of his jaw. Shitty always looks older when he feels guilty about something. “So fuckin’ sorry.”

“That’s okay, man. Eh. Well, it's not, but it's forgiven.” And it is, Jack knows. He’s already forgiven Shitty, would have to try so hard not to forgive Shitty. They’ve hurt each other in the past and they’ll most likely hurt each other again in the future, but it’s never done intentionally. Shitty’s friendship is worth all of this crap and always has.

“I guess I just... “ Shitty lowers his voice, and Jack has to press the phone harder into his ear to hear him. “Fuck, I don’t want to excuse my actions, this does not in any way justify the shit I said. But I guess, in my mind, even though I know you should never assume about anyone, I did think that because it’s you… that you’d tell me. If there was ever anything to tell.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack says this time. He’s not sure Shitty knows this, but this is what he was trying to get to before. What Shitty is saying is reasonable even if it isn’t ideal.

“Fuck no. What the fucking fuck are you apologizing for, you idiot --”

“I’m not apologizing for not telling you, Shits,” Jack stops him before it becomes another rant. He’s growing tired of using so many words at once, feeling the toll of the unexpected emotional turmoil he’s dragging his overworked body through. “I know what you said was wrong, and I know I didn’t have to tell you. I’m saying I’m sorry if you were hurt by it. And I'm apologizing if it made you feel like I didn't trust you, or. Or some shit.”

Another pause follows Jack’s words, and he has to stifle the urge to collapse sideways into the couch and shove his face into a cushion until everything goes away. This conversation, as necessary as it is, doesn’t come naturally to either of them. They’ve been talking about their feelings for too long now and it’s starting to get awkward and overwhelming.

“I’m not saying I wasn’t super touched by your previous comment,” Shitty says, suddenly. “Because stereotypical masculinity is complete bullshit and I’m not ashamed to admit I teared the fuck up. But Jack -- Bitty has done some serious work on you. Or, like, you know, healthy relationships and all, you two worked on yourselves with each other to be better and all that, but. Man, I don’t think that’s a distinction you would’ve made six months ago.”

Jack considers it. The idea of someone’s hurt being valid even if the reason for it didn’t make sense probably isn’t a concept he would’ve been able to grasp, or at least would not have paid much thought to. Looking back, he was probably hurt dozens of times by little comments in the Haus, or things he heard around campus, or moments of feeling left out by his team; but when the reason for his hurt wasn’t completely logical it was harder for him to allow himself that pain. He would usually distract himself from it, instead. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

“But can I just say again -- I'm so fucking sorry for being a heteronormative jackass. I’m sorry for hurting you, I’m sorry for hurting Bits, I’m sorry for --”

Esti de câlice de tabarnak. Jack drops his face into his palm and sighs over the string of Shitty’s rapidly escalating apologies. Jack is fully aware that Shitty is just going to apologize until they’re both old and gray if Jack doesn’t stop him. “Shitty, can you knock it?”

Shitty hesitates, but the flood of his words stops. “I miss you,” is what he says eventually.

Jack drops his hand down, leans his weight on his elbows and blinks at the dark room. Shitty used to tell him that all of the time. When they were apart on school breaks; when they were separated on roadies; when Jack had two lectures and a senior workshop on Wednesday nights and Shitty wouldn’t see him for several consecutive hours. Shitty’s affection was always abundant and inescapable, and Jack didn't know it was something he was lacking until he finally hears it. “I miss you, too, man.”

Shitty lets the gravity of it, the seriousness in Jack's voice settle between them, the earnestness he wouldn’t usually hand over easily when they were back at school. And then he says, “It’s hard as fuck, man. It’s hard to admit that it’s hard, too. It’s hard to see Lards’ pics from kegsters I can’t attend anymore, and it’s hard to find friends in this pretentious shithole full of pretensions dicks, and -- Harvard is fucking hard, Jack. And I hate being away from you guys, but I don’t wanna bring you down with my sad. You assholes are my goddamn family, there’s nothing that’s ever gonna replace that. It sucks knowing that I'm stuck here. I miss you so much it drives me fuckin’ insane.”

Jack knows, instantly and wholeheartedly, what Shitty is talking about. He’s living his dream and he loves the Falcs and he’s sincerely grateful for all of it even on his worst days. But sometimes stepping off the ice after a grueling practice and getting pictures of Bitty, laughing with Holster and Ransom on the ice at Faber -- it aches somewhere deep inside him. Sometimes he lies awake in foreign hotel rooms in foreign cities, and while most nights he longs for nothing more than Bitty’s presence, others he closes his eyes and wishes Shitty was there to crawl into his bed again. Sometimes he puts on his jersey before games and imagines the blue and yellow are red and white. His team from Samwell is his family, too, and sometimes missing them feels like missing an amputated limb.

“I wish we got to see each other more,” Jack squeezes out. His windpipe feels strangled, and for a moment he thinks that if he blinks too hard tears might well up again. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s so tired his body is shutting down, or because he’s been holding on to more emotions than he previously thought. “I didn’t know --. I feel the same way, Shitty, but I didn’t know you felt like that. I’m sorry we didn’t really talk much lately.”

It wasn’t something Jack was consciously aware of, but he more or less assumed that if Shitty was ever struggling he would just reach out for help. Shitty was always the better one of the two of them at communicating his feelings, at saying when he needed something or was going through a rough time. It never occurred to Jack to reach out and ask because he always figured that Shitty would come to him first. It's a startling realization. He really isn’t as good a friend as Shitty deserves.

“‘S not your fault,” Shitty objects, even though in some ways it really is. But Shitty means it, Jack knows, despite the lingering hints of anxiety. Shitty wouldn’t say it if he didn’t honestly believe it wasn’t Jack’s fault.

“Maybe, but you should make time for the things that matter to you, right? I’ll try to be better about that. I wanna be there for you, too.”

Shitty sighs, and the tails of it turn into a breathy, weary laugh. “Fuck, Jacko, this is a fuckin’ sobfest. Shit, man. Yeah. I’ll try, too. We could Skype, even. You know I miss that mug of yours.”

Jack finally pulls the phone away from his ear, wipes the sweat tracks away and switches the call to speakerphone. His calendar app is full of cute little reminders Bitty leaves anonymously, like 06:30 work hard and have fun! or 11:11 someone is thinking of you. He’s developed a habit of checking his calendar often these past six months, counting down the days until he gets to see Bitty next. He’s sure it won’t be easy, especially with the progression of the Falconers’ season, but from now on he’ll have to make every effort to fit more people into his schedule. Bitty makes him happy, but he’s not the only one who does.

Jack scrolls through the events logged into his upcoming week. He’s got a game on Monday and one at home on Wednesday, and then Thursday is American Thanksgiving. Bitty is throwing together a whole meal for the Samwell team. He told Jack that he’s under no obligation to come if practice time doesn’t allow it, but... “Are you going to Hausgiving on Thursday?”

Shitty curses loudly. “Fuck, I fuckin’ wish, but I don’t know if that’s smart. I’ve got this fuckin’ test coming up. But I promised Lar-- uh --”

Jack smirks, even if it’s only to himself in an empty apartment. Lardo texted him after Jerry’s to let him know that the two of them will exchange deets privately like civilized bros, but Shitty still seems to be under the illusion that he’s fooling someone. Like his heart-eyes haven’t been obvious from space -- and Jack is painfully aware that if he noticed, that really says something. “Lardo, eh? Not getting out of that one.”

He can almost see Shitty’s answering furious blush from all those miles away. “Fuck you, Zimmermann, don’t make this about me. What I was sayin’ is, I wanna be there super freakin’ bad -- we all know I will gladly sell my right leg for Bitty’s cooking --”

“And for Lardo’s company,” Jack chirps, incredibly satisfied with this turn of conversation.

“I will fuck you right up, don’t you think I won’t!” Shitty threatens emptily, even though Jack takes him down every single time. “Seriously. Your bro becomes a pro athlete and suddenly he thinks he’s a goddamn comedian. Anyway. For Bitty’s cooking, I will make an effort. You got team stuff?”

“No,” Jack says with finality, swiping his calendar closed. He always feels better when things are put into action. “I think I’m going.”

“For Bitty?” Shitty asks, most likely trying to chirp Jack back.

“Well. Yes,” Jack says, perfectly honest. He’s not in any way ashamed of how much he wants to be near Bitty all of the time. He doesn’t think he can remember ever being less ashamed of anything in his life. “But also for you. Think you can meet me there?”

Shitty’s quiet. And then he says, “For my best friend? I’ll meet you halfway across the universe, Jackabelle.”

After the two of them hang up the call, Jack doesn’t move, his eyes fixed blindly in the direction of the windows across the room. His food is growing cold on the coffee table, but Jack thinks that at this point he might genuinely be too tired to eat. Whatever little energy he had left after the game was spent on this conversation with Shitty. He doesn’t regret it; they needed to say all of those things. Jack needed to hear all of those things, both so he could forgive Shitty for something he didn’t know he was holding onto, and so he could work on being a more considerate friend.

The game plan is solid, though, Jack decides. Thanksgiving dinner at the Haus will bring the opportunity to be completely honest with his friends after months of hiding a big aspect of his life from them. And it’d be fun, too. Ransom would put together actual charts for the seating arrangement, and Holster would draw everyone into a betting pool on the football game results, and Bitty would inevitably prepare insane amounts of food using the frogs as his sous chefs. He would probably insist that they’d hold hands around the table and say one thing each of them wants to give thanks for, as well.

Jack doesn’t mind American Thanksgiving, but he’s never really seen the point of that ritual. He’s known for a long time now what he's truly grateful for.

day 2 - soulmate

only death will do us part (2319 words)

They told him his soulmate must be dead.

All his life, the circlet of script around his left wrist had always been greyed out. Illegible. You had to squint in order to see it twining around the green-blue of his veins, and even then it might have been mistaken for scar tissue if it hadn’t been for how circular the soulmark was. How regular, the shape of the words were. Little rounded hiragana with a fat ‘ko’.

Amane had studied it as intensely as he had ever studied anything in his life, which was really only the moon rock, any astronomy books he could get from the library, and the newspaper for news of advances on space travel, so he could say for certainty he thought he knew what it said.

    「Hanako-kun!? Are you hurt!? That looks painful...」

Strange, and a little sad, that his soulmate would recognise him for someone else. But that’d make them easier to identify, hopefully?

If they were ever coming. People whispered around him when they saw the little silvery words wrapped around his knobby wrist. Faded words, a gone soulmate. How unlucky...

Another impossible thing to believe in then. He wanted to go to the moon, he wanted to be part of the Space Race, if Japan could join in too... he wanted his parents and Tsukasa back.

They weren't really here right now. They haven't been the same in a very long time. 

Tsukasa always seemed oddly triumphant whenever his eyes laid on Amane's soulmark. His eyes would curve just so, and for a moment Amane could believe he was the cat that had tasted cream. 

(Tsukasa had no mark of his own. People whispered that that meant he was fated to die, unbelonging. 

Unlucky boys, they whisper.

And Tsukasa—

—always gave that queer, cheery laugh, that said That's exactly what I want.) 

Hey, have you heard? Those twin boys... are marked by misfortune. They say the dead do not have soulmarks.

But then came along Tsuchigomori-sensei, with careful dark eyes that did not immediately dismiss him, or cringe away from where he silently sat in the corner, mooning over his newspaper clippings that he meticulously glued in his notebook, or gazing emptily outside to the sky.

Only he said consideringly, one day after class, after a gaggle of schoolgirls exchanging gossip and tattletale had fled the class in giggles, on realisation the tall teacher was still in the classroom.

"Or, your soulmate hasn't been born yet."

The words hit him like a stone. 

"Oh." He felt his breath drop out of him, as if gravity had changed his orbit.

Yet, cool relief swept over him also. Dead, or unborn: they're just not here yet. Their soul is still out there. 

But what if he isn't here by the time they come? 

He got up shakily from his desk, and uttered a quiet goodbye to his teacher before he left.

Tsuchigomori watched him with forlorn eyes. From the book he had read last night, Yugi Amane would have to grow to be 64 before he would meet his soulmate.

Those would be lonely years for him, but hey, the least he could do would be to commiserate with him over a drink or two.

Those of the Far Shore indeed do not have soulmarks.

_

When he met her, he was too caught up trying to remember to breathe right.

Don't cry. Don't let him see he's gotten to you more than this. Don't let anyone hear—

It was useless. Tears still pooled in his eyelids, blood still rose to the surface no matter how much he licked it away, willing the wounds to close. At least the blood would congeal soon. 

The reopened scabs kept weeping, while the orange of evening sunshine drifted in together with the tinny music of the evening broadcast, and the desperate sawing of cicadas.

He hadn't heard the door open. But then suddenly she was there like a ball of energy, dressed in the zaniest clothes he'd ever seen, yelling something about the evening announcement. He can't remember. Trying to remember is like viewing the image through oily water. 

(Even blurrier is the memory of when he fell for a pretty, kind older girl at a festival.

But—

—it couldn't have been her.)

She stopped, and turned to look at him, mouth open. He must have banged the bookcase beside him, he realised dimly.

And then she was over him, asking the words he had long memorised by heart.

Frozen to the spot, he couldn't breathe again.

Kind red eyes stared into his. They widened and began to settle into that expression he didn't know what to do with.

"Were you crying...?" The question broke through him like cold water.

She couldn't, shouldn't see him like this.

He ran. Scrambling out the door, she heard her yell "Wait!"

She had... fat ankles. Cute legs.

Heart in his throat, he sprinted out into the corridor. Don'tbebehindmedon'tbe-

She had nice hands. Nice, gentle hands in those fancy black gloves.

He ran and ran. The moon was already out in the swirling pinks and yellows of the sky.

runrunrun 

Did she have a soulmark too?

His heart rabbiting in his chest, the only sound he could hear for a long time, the deep throbbing next to his ears.

I didn't say anything to her. Except 'goodbye'.

His legs whirred to a stop. Head bowed, he trembled under a lamppost.

He didn't know what to do. His hand slipped into his pocket hesitatingly. Shouldn't he just go back home and forget about all this?

(But what if she's still there?)

It was only then he realised he had lost his key. His copy of the house key. 

"Oh no," he said softly to himself. The light of the lamppost flickered to life above him.

The moon was a pale thumbprint in the violet sky when he turned back.

But she wasn't there. Neither was the key. Both lost to the darkness.

A hiccup caught in his throat, as he felt himself crying again. 

(Were they both ghosts?)

_

They told her her soulmate must be dead. 

(Or, you are dying soon, they don't tell her.) 

All her life, she had waited for the prince of her dreams, the love of her life to show up. Maybe they'd ride in on a white horse, she'd giggle as she daydreamed, watching the fluffy white clouds pass over the blue sky, or in a black limousine, she smiled prettily as she walked on pavements and crossed the road, hoping, hoping. The words of the soulmark though... left little to be desired.

     「Yeeeeeeeees~ Over here.」

What kind of words were those?? Hmph, they came off a bit creepy. Why couldn't these words be something like, You're beautiful, m'lady, or I've fallen for you at first sight? Or even let me help you or good day. 

She sighed as she traced the silvery rope of letters over her right wrist. The 'a's stretched and wriggled like snaky beads. Honestly...

It didn't matter as long as she could meet them soon. She always smiled to herself then, determined.

Yashiro Nene was optimistic.

This she would tell herself everyday.

Yashiro Nene ... was also easily tempted. Aaaaah, when a handsome guy swept by or even looked her way...

She was lost. 

But! How was she to know otherwise, she told herself. From her soulmark it was obvious she'd have to approach or talk to them first, before they said the fateful words.

But she didn't feel ready talking to pretty boys unless she was also, either super pretty or feminine enough to pass.

She picked flowers, she picked stitches, she peeled and stirred and picked out bits of eggshell. All for her love to come true.

(Unsaid, was the what if the old superstition was right.)

So, in the meantime, she pined after boys she never really talked to, while waiting for the one to sweep her off her feet. Or in her case, beckon her over with a stretched-out word that might be a cat's yawn.

It was Aoi that talked to her in high-school. Kind Aoi that took a look at her and smiled brightly, and asked her if she liked flowers. While other girls might have laughed or fallen silent at her soulmark, Aoi 'ooh'd at it.

"It's so delicate," she said. "It's almost like a silver bracelet, I like it!" And then she'd showed Nene hers easily and eagerly, and they'd both speculated and giggled over their soulmarks for the better half of the gardening club session.

And then Aoi told her the tale of Hanako-san of the girls' toilets.

It captured Nene's heart at once. Why not, it coaxed to her. And before she knew it, she was creeping up the old wooden stairs to the third floor, and turning the old-style stained-glass door open.

Red doors stared back at her. Which one? One, two, three...

Braving herself to stand in front of the third door, she swallowed in the dusty silence and willed herself to knock. 

"Hanako-san, Hanako-san..." Her voice creaked out of her, hovering before her. Sunlight underscored the dust motes drifting in the air. "Are you there?"

A beat. Two. And then the stall door in front of her creaked ominously, exactly like from a horror movie, and a voice called eerily in reply. 

Nene hunched her shoulders, clutching her hands. She was ready to run if a monster came crawling out.

The door swung open, but there was only the toilet gaping mournfully in the dark. She let out her breath, sighing in relief. Just her imagination, huh...

"Over here." There was a husky voice beside her ear. Ahandonhershoulder—

She screamed and turned to shove the stranger, but flailed when they shot through someone's chest. Someone's chest. Ohmygodshewasgoingtodie...

Their laughter resounded above her head. She peeked out of the ball she had curled in. Huh...

"Are you alright?" A smiling boy's face entered her line of sight. She tried to gather her faculties, now that the shock had worn off. Something had struck out to her, what was it-

"Ah!" She sat up, eyes wide. "It's you!" The boy — the ghost — looked at her in confusion. "It's you?!" She realised with a start. "Oh, oh no..." Her voice faltered. "The rumours are true then. You're a ghost, right?"

"I am." He looked at her, puzzled.  "Do I still need to introduce myself as 7th of the school mysteries? Because that's what I am, nice to meet you." He smiled.

"I…" Her mouth worked, speechless. Where were the words for this? Where were all the times she'd practiced what'd she'd say if, when, she'd found them? "Hi." She put on a brave smile. "I'm Yashiro Nene, and - I'm your soulmate, and I'm so, so glad I've finally met you." Her eyes filled with tears.

It was true. She was glad, even though he was dead. He was dead, wasn't he? It was a miracle they could meet.

Amber stared into ruby eyes for a breath's space. He stared at her as if she was the ghost. 

"You...?" He looked really taken aback. His face was pale. "You are...?" 

Be still my heart. Yashiro Nene prayed to herself. "Yeah," she said lamely, as she held out her wrist for him to see. His first words carved into silver links on her skin. Be still, don't be nervous, it's okay, it's going to be okay right? Tears rose unbidden to her eyes.

She was always really afraid they might not accept her. He kept staring at her as if he was in a trance.

The ghost finally moved with a start. His hand came up to her cheek. "I'm sorry," he said hoarsely. "I didn't mean to make you cry. I-" He dipped his forehead against hers as his arms curled around her back protectively. "I always thought you were dead." His voice cracked. She could sense the truth of it.

"Me too," she let herself admit, a tear running down her cheek. "I was always really afraid."

He held her tighter. He didn't feel like anything more than the temperature of the air itself, but she could feel his touch on her. There was a chillness where his face was buried into her shoulder, so she raised her hands to cradle his head softly.

"I'm really glad you finally found me," he said, after a moment.

"Mm," she agreed, cracking a smile. "Hey, what should I call you? I can't just keep calling you ghost in my head." She giggled.

He hesitated. "...I'm used to Hanako after so long," he said carefully. "But you can - call me Amane." He looked at her, oddly searching. "Yugi Amane was my name."

"Okay, Amane-kun it is then!" She said breathily, a giggle bubbling out of her. She wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the mixture of emotions boiling within her after the adrenaline and the tears had worn off.

He took her hand in his, turning her wrist this way and that. A finger traced the letters over her pulse point. He looked so pensive. "...Do you still have yours?"

"Ah." He caught himself. "I'm not sure," he faltered. 

"It's okay," she told him, holding his hands before he could let go. "We have time." She smiled at him, full of hope.

He flushed, shaken. Appeared to pull himself together. "Actually." He grinned coyly, taking a step into her space. She took a step back, surprised by this change of pace. "We should make up for lost time, don't you agree?" He purred as he sidled closer to her, curling a lock of her hair around his finger.

"Ehhh?" She squeaked. "I mean- yes?" She was about to swoon! His breath hit her red cheeks. They must be red, she felt hot. Very hot and bothered.

Yellow eyes closed in on her, and she closed her eyes.

.

Be still my tongue, he thought to himself with dread, as he stared down at the scar where the soulmark used to be. She can't know she's dying soon.

He'll hold her hands, hold her in his arms, steal sweet kisses as much as he can before—

—he has to let go.

//note: if you’re confused about Nene’s soulmark it’s because it’s Haaaaaaaai, kocchi dayo. I chose to translate it more literally here.

edit 22/2/2020: rewrote where Nene knocked, forgot it's 3rd door. From left or right? Who knows, assume there’s 5 doors and it’s always at the centre.

About: A natural woman

An article published in The Guardian in 2011., by Suzanne Moore seems more relevant as the time goes by. The article doesn’t argue the position of a wild woman who uses no make up, has hair to her knees etc., it rather questions ways to become a woman in Western society. The key thought behind the article could be best describe by one of Moore’s sentences: “To become a woman is to become a female impersonator.”

Here is the entire article with favorite parts marked in bold:

Why does nobody want to feel like a natural woman any more?

Suzanne Moore

Falsies have become my preoccupation. But clearly not just mine. I could buy a mascara called Falsies to give myself "the ultimate false lash glam look". But why do that when I could just wear enormous false eyelashes? Or, better still, spend a small fortune on lash extensions, which hopefully wouldn't fall off for a few weeks if tended lovingly. It all seems a lot of time and energy, really.

On the train or at the supermarket I see many young girls with long, spidery, glittery lashes, even when in their uniforms. I quite like this overalls-and-drag-queen look. I like the lack of pretence that this is real. But how did we get here, I wonder – to this new aesthetic of femininity where everything is meant to look as fake as possible? Hair, nails, tan, teeth, tits. Sure, I know the rules: that we are born naked, and "the rest is just drag". Sure, I get the hyper-femininity of the big queens and the game old birds such as Dolly Parton and Cher. What is strange is that a parody of femininity is now what many ordinary women are aspiring to.

There was time when falsies were the pads shoved down your bra to make your breasts seem bigger, a kind of comedy stuffing. Now the stuffing is put directly inside the flesh, in the form of silicon implants. While not as cheap as chips, false breasts are certainly becoming as common as them.

The "boob job" industry is massive. Boom boom. And everyday. Cosmetic surgery was once only the province of the rich, famous and deluded. It was surely another era when I was ferried to an American TV studio to debate with the legendary Betty Friedan and some daft woman who was claiming that her breast enlargement was a political act. A grouchy Freidan keep shouting into my ear: "So she thinks she can buy big bazookas, right?" It was a struggle to explain I was on Friedan's side, and now I wonder if anyone would even bother with this discussion. The political language of empowerment about reproductive rights and equality in the workplace has itself been given a makeover. Gok Wan makes women feel better not by giving them more actual control, but by giving them control pants.

As the inimitable satire website The Onion once wrote, women "are now empowered by everything that the typical woman does". From driving the kids to school to eating energy bars! "Owning and wearing dozens of pairs of shoes is a compelling way for a woman to announce that she is strong and independent and can shoe herself without the help of a man." This is satire? Only just, says this humourless feminist.

Buying stuff is the way our culture encourages us to believe we have some kind of power. When it all goes wrong and we have bought the wrong stuff, then we discuss the morality of it all. The woman who died recently after having industrial silicone injected into her buttocks was a sad case of someone buying the wrong stuff. The moral of this story seems to be: next time you are having buttock implants, get a reputable surgeon.

It's the same with Botox, liposuction , tummy tucks and all the rest of it. People get "work done". Most discussion centres on whether that work has been done well, not whether it should have been done at all. The kind of feminism that espoused looking "natural" has pretty much lost the argument about body image. It was hardly ever going to be a fair match: some activist women against an entire military-industrial-cosmetic complex geared up towards getting us to commodify our own bodies. That's right. I am not saying that men do not objectify the female body, but now the gaze we direct at ourselves, at each other and in the mirror is a harsh one, too. It is sexualised in that we see what the body could become, as well as what it is. It is the gaze of search and destroy, and it certainly affects the inner lives of those who are not perfect. Which is a fair few of us.

Heath, happiness and relationships are secondary to what Catherine Hakim provocatively calls "erotic capital". This is the basic "if you've got it, flaunt it" model to wave in the face of feminism. It doesn't wind me up particularly. What is key here is who defines erotic capital, and how. Today's templates of beauty for women are very samey, but they rarely occur in nature. The tall, slim-hipped figure with huge, pert breasts – basically the body of a Brazilian transsexual – was sought after for a while. Now we are told bottoms are making a comeback (where HAVE they been all these years?). These things are spoken about it in vacuum, as if we are not allowed to talk about the racial aspects of "the bootylicious".

Increasingly, surgery cuts across race, gender and age alike. The girl in Miami has a nose job just as the woman in Tehran does. Signs of ethnicity can be erased, other signifiers or "capital" can be purchased. And once you have made a purchase, you want people to see that you have. The fashion – or indeed fetish – for fakery means women are actually asking surgeons to make their implants look as fake as their tans. Certainly, the way to counter what is going on here has to be strategic.

One way is to promote a diversity of body shapes and all kinds of beauty. Susie Orbach is launching an Endangered Species International Summit. The purpose of this is to "challenge the culture that teaches girls and women to hate their own bodies". Who could argue with that? For it is the entire culture, not a male conspiracy, that is making impossible demands. Yet none of this is simple.

Artificially enhanced femininity is on display everywhere. Older women pay to look younger. Young women start altering themselves very early on. One result is a kind of glazed uniformity. You see it in porn. You see it in all those late-30s, Botoxed faces that look neither old nor young, just done.

Somehow, though, something else is going on that is blowing apart any idea of "the natural". Some women are not saying, "this is what I really look like", rather they are saying, "enjoy the performance". Just as a drag queen would. The media then scrutinises this performance of femininity entirely as a construction. This radical idea – that gender is constructed – is being acted out in all this fakery. But as an aesthetic, depoliticised "style".

Lady Gaga may sing Born This Way, while clearly demonstrating with her hard body – complete with internal shoulder pads/prosthesis/spare ectoplasm – that she wasn't, that this is all an act.

A look that has comes to us via porn, ladyboys, transsexuals, queer culture and high fashion is a look I now see on the bus. This excess of femininity may compensate for endless anxiety about appearances. There is nothing natural going on here, and some women are not hiding that fact. To become a woman is to become a female impersonator. How, in such a world, can we say to any young girl: "You are fine just as you are"?

I got an ask which I have decided to respond to anonymoosely, because I can.

I just read your post about Fat Aziraphale and how it made you feel better - I'm trying to use Aziraphale to convince my wife (also fat) that really, she's wonderfully friend- and wife-shaped and people find her pleasant to look at.

Oof.  This kind of situation is such a hard one to be in, for all parties concerned, because we’re all stewing in nigh-constant fatphobic garbage, and almost no fat person, no matter how good their self-esteem, can ignore that garbage 100% of the time.  So the person feels bad because they don’t look the way someone else decided they should look, and the people who care about them feel bad because, well, they care.  Just yuck all around.

I have Thoughts on this, and I figured I’d put ‘em on the blog.  They are not specific to asker, especially since asker didn’t ask for advice.  Asker can totally ignore me if they like, that’s fine.  But now the Thoughts will Live on the Blog.  Oh -- and I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor throughout all this.  Not “plus-sized” or “larger” or the o word which I hate with the blue-hot screaming fire of an oxyacetylene torch of rage.  Fat.  Simple term to contrast with thin in the same way tall contrasts with short.  I like simple.

(this gets exceptionally long without being the least bit organized)

Disclaimer, I am not an expert in anything except being me.  But that means I’m an expert in being a fat human, and one who ID’d as female for over 30 years and still gets read as female 99.44% of the time (women get hit harder with this crap), and one who has done a lot of thinking about this whole mess.  So maybe that will be useful to someone.

And I don’t know if this is ever a “convince” sort of thing.  I think it’s more a “come to realize, slowly, over time, with a lot of work and hopefully support”.  (Asks aren’t the best place to craft the very finest of language, so I know there’s a lot of wiggle room in the meaning of “convince” in the ask that spurred this post, but again, I’m taking this more general.  )  It’s very hard to show a fat person your inner understanding of them as a whole and wonderful and important human being. This is because we get so many little reinforcements, day in and day out, that being fat is inherently bad, and that we are inherently bad if we are fat.  It creates a narrative which hits us from almost every conceivable angle, and it can feel very, very convincing.  (Read this 2010 post by Ragen Chastain if you want to be sad.  I’m not saying her results are typical, because her work involves dealing with fatphobia, but I am saying that if any of us sat down to do this math, we are not likely to be happy about whatever result we do get.)

So it’s a bunch of little things needed to turn things around, and it’s over a period of potentially years, and it’s the fat person in question having both the willingness and the energy to put in a bunch of boring yucky work.

Positive representation is a huge part of it, though.  It builds a new narrative.  It gives examples of fat people accomplishing things, creating things, living and having fun and just actually being people.  Of fat people being loveable, and loved, although that’s not the most important part.  I focus on it in the Good Omens hyperfixation part of my life, because my hyperfixation is completely around a romantic Aziraphale/Crowley relationship, but being a valid romantic partner is not nearly as important as all that other stuff (hi my aro and ace people you are not forgotten).  And I’ve seen a bunch of posts by people talking about how Sheen’s Aziraphale, and the fandom response to the character, have helped with their own self-esteem -- because it’s the new narrative.  It’s not “this character is (barely, if you squint, but we’ll let it ride for a sec) fat, and therefore bad or the butt of a joke or less than the thinner characters”.  It’s “this character is fat and important and loved”.  Type of love is up for all of us to decide per Mr. Gaiman, but you don’t get to argue the love.  Aziraphale’s appearance has nothing to do with his value as a human-like entity.  He’s literally tied with Crowley for most important character, given that the show has been reframed from the book to both begin and end with our ineffable duo (plus the emphasis given by the Hard Times cold open).

Sharing that new narrative with the important fat person in one’s life can be one very small part of helping them unlearn the old narrative.  If it helps, I kinda not-officially-but-it-works-out-that-way curate fatter-versions-of-Aziraphale artwork in my fat positivity tag, along with all the other fat-positive stuff that runs through my blog.  (I don’t think there’s any fics in that tag besides mine, just commentary, but I can’t remember right now.)

Over on my other Tumblr account, I follow a bunch of fat-positive blogs, although I haven’t refreshed the list in a while (I just... don’t need it as much as I used to, which is fascinating, now that I think about it), and some of them have gone dormant.  But I can recommend, in no particular order, fuckyeahfatpositive, ok2befat, and fatqueerlove (assuming the person IDs as/is comfortable with the label “queer”) for the more affirmation side of things (though there’s some activism mixed in); and bigfatscience, the-exercist, and fatphobiabusters for the more activism side of things (debunking bad science and fatphobic myths; speaking out against fatphobia in medicine, legislation, reporting, and wherever else it shoves its ugly head out from its troll-cave). The Fat Nutritionist hasn’t updated in a year, but she still has lots of good stuff up. thisisthinprivilege is... hard to read, sometimes, and I think it’s better for after you’re energized and angry about the garbage you’ve been taught.

(If anyone gets through this ridiculously long post and knows of other good resources for that last paragraph, by the way, I’d love to hear about ‘em.)

But it takes the fat person actually seeking out the new narrative, and shoving fat-positive content and mindsets into their eyeballs and brainpan, for there to be a real change, I think.  And that’s the boring yucky work part.  A lot of people find that they can’t really pull their thoughts out of the old track and into the new one without getting some help from a therapist -- and therapists are great and there’s nothing wrong with going to therapy, I see a therapist every two weeks myself -- but therapy takes time and money and energy and a therapist you can actually work with.  Not everyone has all four of those things.

It’s also important to not draw any lines when trying to communicate to one’s important fat person that they are, in fact, important and worth whatever kind of love it is that one has for them.  No “you’re not actually that fat” (how will they feel if they gain more weight later?).  No “at least you’re healthy” (how will they feel if they become unhealthy?).  No “but you carry it well” or other variations on “at least you’re not one of the ugly ones” (how will they feel if their appearance changes later?).

If there’s a line, then your important fat person always has to be careful not to cross it.  Don’t imply to them that there is actually an appearance-related condition to your love for them, and they just luckily haven’t failed you yet.  If there actually is such a condition, maybe sit down and have a few deep thoughts with yourself.

Plus, speaking personally, I am “that fat”, and I’m not 100% healthy, and I carry it weird and am really-weird looking.  And I don’t appreciate being thrown under the bus so someone can tell someone else “at least you’re not one of those, you know, the fat people who aren’t valid and important human beings”.  So nobody ever do that.  Please.

Final words to my unhealthy, or really really fat, or weird-shaped or just plain ugly-by-current-common-standards fat people out there -- i got u fam.  You’re all valuable and important and I love you.  And you’re all doing, or going to do, amazing things, because doing amazing things has precisely jack to do with the amount or positioning of fat upon your very important and inherently worthy human self.

That’s all!  If you made it this far, then you get this link to a photo of a cute bearded dragon in a hat, if you’d like to click it.  I follow william-snekspeare on my other account and have commissioned him for artwork twice now and he is an absolute dear.

And I hope asker’s wife has a good body image day tomorrow.

Then Sadness

Date: 19/08/18

Words: 1848

Warnings: Langst, Shance, eventual polydins, Lance’s Harem, pining disaster gay!Shiro

Tag: @moonsworllld​ ; @zoeyheys ; @klangst-drabbles ; @de-campbell ; @nyanbacon ; @lady-of-jazz ; @averypottermormon ; @voltron--headcannons ; @jamieisamess ; @aichi-phantom ; @moyasolkoroleva ; @loncemcuwu ; @goodbibabygirl ; @the-ironic-queer ; @carthix ; @eirikland ; @fan-but-no-art ; @edhelwen1 ; @midnightfries01 ; @likeimnotmyself ; @l8rpaladudeswee ; @fics4fun ; @thotugou-thotsuki ; @v-analogical ; @supercalifragilistic-depression ; @yecum-morte69 ; @eclipse-dd ; @the-supreme-ace-bitch ; @into-sum-gay-shit ; @justanotherphangirl ; @abrokitten

(I said I would tag everyone who left a comment on that post, so here it is. I’ll tag people on the second part as long as they tell me they want to be tagged.)

Part 2: Once

Based on this post.

“Lance is so noisy!”

“Good morning to you too, Pidge.”

“Good morning, Shiro. Lance is so noisy!”

Pidge huffed as she sat at the table, picking some of the food goo and shoving into her mouth. Hunk smiled at her, he knew his best friend could be very annoying when he wanted to. Keith snorted, of course Lance was noisy, he was Lance. Shiro and Allura only chuckled. Coran was too absorbed in one of Slav’s ramblings to acknowledge the girl’s presence.

“Can you guys believe him? He spent the whole night talking and laughing while I was trying to concentrate! And he kept on pacing, and I’m sure he was stomping with so much force on purpose, there’s no way those were his footsteps, he has light feet!”

“Calm down, Pidge, before you choke.”

“I’m gonna choke that idiot…” They laughed at the grumbling girl, Keith even getting into the joke and offering to help her.

“You should know how Lance can get already, Pidge. We’ve been friends for some time now.”

“Doesn’t make him any less frustrating, Hunk.”

The subject changes, each of them taking the cue to complain about the Blue Paladin. Slav had finally stopped his monologue, letting Coran join the fun. The alien watched they whine and moan about Lance. There was no sign of bad blood, only an incredible fondness. Soft smiles and adoring looks. They truly cared for their paladin; it was obvious to anyone. That reminded him…

“In at least 29% of the existent realities, all the paladins fall in love with Lance.”

Silence, so thick Keith could probably cut it with his knife. Hell, Hunk could cut it with his spoon. Allura was the first one to react.

“What…?”

“Why are you all so surprised? With how much you like him, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of these realities.”

More silence. They had no idea how to react. The idea of one of them falling in love with Lance was already absurd; imagine every single one of them falling in love with him?! Impossible. Maybe the other realities were really different from theirs.

Lance choose that exact moment to enter the room. His skin shined, his smile showed off white teeth, his hair looked extremely soft. He was with his usual jeans and sneakers, but with a blue t-shirt he bought on some Space Mall. Didn’t take much time for Lance to decide he was not going to use the same clothes every day, no matter how great altean technology was at washing them while he bathed—“This is not an anime, guys” he had said. It was tight and a V-neck, letting the team see the muscles he was so proud of and putting his large shoulders in evidence. His blue eyes—bluest blue—gleamed with that same old joy of seeing his teammates.

Had Lance always looked so good?

“Good morning! What did I miss?”

Silence. Lance’s smiled dimmed a little, confusion invading his mind.

“Why are you guys looking at me like I’m some kind of rare oddity?”

Coran’s laugh made the team get out of the trance, their cheeks burning with red. Lance sent the old man a questioning glance, slowly sitting beside Hunk. The man only shook his head softly and gave that mysterious dad smile. You know the one, the “I know what’s going on but I want you to find out by yourself because I think is amusing and is a good life lesson for you” smile. The rest of breakfast was little awkward, with Lance trying to talk with his friends and said friends trying to stop thinking how good he looked that morning.

The only consolation they had was that everything would be back to normal in the next morning. After all, that sudden realization was only possible because Slav caught them by surprise. They just had to survive the rest of that day. Easy.

Boy, were they wrong.

It was as if an umbrella was shut and they couldn’t open it anymore, leaving them soaked with the insistent rain. After they noticed Lance that first day, they noticed him every day. They were looking at him, really looking at him, and, God did they like what they saw. None of them would admit it. They hid that behind a veil of curiosity; they only wished to know why the paladins from the other universes fell in love with Lance. A smug dad smile had permanently painted itself in Coran’s face and the team wished nothing more than to wipe it off. You know the one, the “you’re lying to yourself and I can see it, but I’ll let you figure things out even when I already know the answers because it’s a good life lesson and very amusing to me”. That one.

As they noticed more and more about Lance, said boy noticed more and more their weird behavior. He wasn’t dumb, something happened to his teammates and he wanted to know what. He had asked Coran about it, the alien only gave him another dad smile and left, mumbling something about “young love”. Well, it seemed he would’ve to do everything alone. He could do that, just go to one of them and ask.

And ask he did.

The first one was Shiro. It was the middle of a mission, everything was going fine, when Lance decided to finally confront his team. Who better to start with than the leader of said team, am I right?

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You heard me, Shiro. I want to know what’s going on with you guys.”

“What do you mean, Lance?”

“Allura blushed when I told her a joke, Keith looked constipated when we were sparring, Pidge runs every time she sees me, Hunk is a shuttering mess when I’m near and even you seem less…” He searched for a word, keeping his eyes trained on the older man. “Graceful?”

“Are you sure it’s not your imagination?” Shiro asked nervously, trying to ignore the panicked voice in his head demanding him to run back where the others were. He hadn’t felt that ever since Adam and, being honest with himself, he did not miss that panicky feeling.

“Shiro, sorry to tell you that so bluntly, but you’re acting like a gay disaster right now.” Then he smirked. “Maybe you have a crush on me? I mean, I am irresistible, you know?”

Boy, did Shiro knew. Lance looked especially good that moment, with messy helmet hair and sweat running down his temples. The planet had a very warm weather and while the armors could cool down their paladins, they used the same energy as the boosters, so the team decided it was better to keep the boosters working in case they needed to run. They were luck the Garrison was near a desert, so they were less bothered by the warmth. Talking about armors, Shiro was really appreciating the way Lance’s accentuated the boy's broad shoulders.

If you haven’t noticed yet, Shiro was a shoulders man.

And, well, Lance’s shoulders, am I right?

“Shiro? Earth to Shiro?”

The Black Paladin froze, Lance’s face was too close for comfort. Bluest blue staring directly at his eyes. Oh, God, his heart was making some sweet samba inside his ribcage. Thoughts were running a marathon inside his head. Blood was rushing to his ears. Air was leaving his lungs. Shit. Shit. Yeah. Okay. Maybe Slav was right. Maybe it was one of the 39% universes. Maybe he had a crush on Lance. A small one. A small crush on the Blue Paladin. Small. He could deal with small. He could deal with having a small crush on his teammate. He could deal with what the universe was throwing at him.

Alarms suddenly blared. They were discovered. In less than a few minutes, the entire galra population of that base was going to be there, trying to kill them. They needed to move. Shiro snapped right back to his role as leader, his—small, mind you—crush on Lance could wait. Looking at the boy, they nodded to each other and ran back to where their friends were.

“Pidge, how’s the download?”

“Almost done, I need more time!”

Takashi went silent for a bit, trying to think on a plan, but Lance’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Lance was telling the team his plan—when did he plan all that?—and Shiro couldn’t feel more proud. He knew Lance was smart, but his observant nature was a very welcomed surprise. The plan was very good, and the Blue Paladin even offered a few solutions in case something went wrong. His mind was on fire, completely focused on the mission, any trace of any other thought completely gone. Shiro could see it in his eyes.

“Nice plan, Lance! You guys heard our sharpshooter, let’s put that plan in action!”

“Thanks, lion king.” Lance smiled so endearingly, Shiro didn’t had the heart to roll his eyes at the nickname. His heart was too occupied writing the next part of that samba.

Shiro could deal with a small crush on Lance.

“Let’s kick some galra butt!”

He couldn’t deal with a bigger than Voltron itself crush on Lance.

Fuck.

“Lance is so noisy!”

“Good morning to you too, Pidge.”

“Good morning, Shiro. Lance is so noisy!”

Pidge sniffed as she sat at the table, picking some of the food goo and shoving into her mouth. Hunk smiled weakly at her, the memory of his best friend’s loud voice fresh in his ears. Keith huffed, of course Lance was noisy, the universe would be too silent if he wasn’t. Shiro and Allura only sighed. Coran was too absorbed in poking his food goo sadly to pay any attention to the grieving girl’s entrance.

“Can you guys believe him? He spent the whole night talking and laughing while I was trying to concentrate!”

He hadn’t. It was all Pidge’s memories. Because Lance wasn’t there. He was galaxies away, lost somewhere, maybe even imprisoned by the enemy. Because he was too selfless. Too loyal. Too Lance.

“Calm down, Pidge, before you choke.”

“I’m gonna choke that idiot…” They laughed dryly at the mumbling girl, Keith offering to help her.

“You should know how Lance is, Pidge. We’ve been friends for some time now. He’s been done things like that ever since the beginning.”

“Doesn’t make him any less frustrating, Hunk.”

The subject changes, each of them taking the cue to tell some story about the Blue Paladin. Slav watched their futile attempts to ignore pain the silence the absence of the Blue Paladin brought. Coran still refused to enter the conversation, even though it was obvious he was listening. There was an incredible fondness in their broken voices. Soft smiles and adoring looks. Tears running freely, sobs rising to the skies. They truly cared for their paladin; it was obvious to anyone. That reminded him…

“Of the 29% of the existent realities where all the paladins fall in love with Lance, only 3% don’t end in tragedy.”

Silence.

Then sadness.

Interview with Nyallah Transcription (12/1/18)

Interview and transcription by Princess Amugo

Princess: Discussing her career and her new single. But would you like to introduce yourself to the people?

Nyallah: Yes hey friends my name's Nyallah I am a vocalist, songwriter, from Los Angeles, I don't go to yalls school. I'm actually from rival territory, but I don't have beef with y'all. I think yall cool, so it's all good. If you have beef that's fine, throw hands.

P: Post up *laughter*

N: right, what's good. But yeah my name is Nyallah, I'm 20, I'm a vocalist, writer, I do like R&B, soul, hip-hop music, influenced music. I've been working on a project called 'Reflections' that is scheduled to drop in December. I am super excited as Princess said earlier, I have a single called 'Growing Pains' that I wrote ages ago but is still relatable content til this day. Omg there's a jam playing...

*Nyallah gets super flustered because my roommate started playing her song during the interview lol,*

But yeah I'm from LA, I study music at SC, I also curate events. I love culture, stuff pertaining to black culture, stuff pertaining to advancing Black culture and advancing knowledge and all that beautiful to black folks and accessibility and things. I think its important as artists that we do that shit and that take the time to give back to our communities that are less fortunate, not less fortunate, but in the terms of white people, yeah less fortunate to everyone else. Y'all should run us some coin lol

P: Right off the back, I, idk I could feel it through text. I loved her energy and I could tell through text that she was a genuine person. Just to start off, we can first talk about your single and then we can branch out. I just wanted to know what was one of your inspirations for writing this song (i.e Growing Pains)

N: So yeah, Growing Pains I started writing in 2017. It's the 3rd song that I wrote that I then put on the project. I wrote it during a time when I was just really sad and really depressed and just really going through it. I had just gotten out of a relationship and I had a whole 360 with my friend group. Spending time with folks that I thought I was gonna be with forever and then that changing. It was just a really tough time, there were also just things at my personal level, like it was a lot of growth and a lot of difficulty. Growing Pains was the song that I wrote kind of thinking 'oh ok so like imagining' Me imaging myself 6 months from now like being healed and fine, I was like ok 'what would I tell myself right now'. And so I kind of wrote it in that sense. And its kind of funny, because for a while Growing Pains felt sad because I'm talking about myself not falling back to the past but it's hard for you to be like 'don't do that`if I'm literally actively doing that. Now I am in a place where I can sing the song or I can listen to the song and its so light and its so happy and its a lot more different because the intention and the meaning behind it has shifted due to my own growth as a person and my own growth in terms of the relationship with the song. But yeah pretty much that is the premise behind it, it was me writing affirmations to myself to remind myself that everything would be good. That's like kind of how all my music is like honestly, it all kind of sounds like affirmations or conversations with self. They kind of feel like journal entries like poetic journal entries that rhyme, that have some riffs and have some really cool background shit. But yeah that's the premise behind 'Growing Pains'.

P: Sounds like Growing Pains acted like a time capsule of emotion that you opened up later on as you grew

N: Yeah, I think the emotion behind it changed, because the first time it me crying out to myself like 'don't fall back to the past' 'don't do this' beating myself, you can't do that, you can't do this you know like a little kid, slapping them on the wrist and then as time passed and as I started writing more of the project growing into myself and just really embracing everything about my identity, about me as a person, not surface level but me as Nyallah and then me as Nyallah black, queer femme. And then me as black queer femme who is a vocalist and an artist and a content creator and all these different things and yeah. I was in a place where I was at the beginning of that journey and now I am a little bit further along that journey, I don't think I'm done, I don't think the journey is ever done but I am very much further along in that journey. I have a very different perspective on things now and I needed to go through that really dark time of feeling straight up alone even though I wasn't really alone. There were people in my life that still cared about me, I had to go through that process of 'dang nobody gives a fuck about me' and feeling like 'so many people who were close to me you just turned on me' people who I known for years...there are certain situations that you think its not going to go that way but it does and that's life. With this project, Reflections, the whole reason that it is called reflections is because it’s like me looking at the mirror and being like this is all the shit that I have learned and experienced within the last year, this is where I am at. It's like me being like, hey guys hows it going my name is Nyallah. Here is where I have been for the last 2 years and I know you've all been curious, I'm a Capricorn I don't say shit so yall don't know what really is going on. But here enjoy. That is what the intention of it is was. I wasn't the writing the project to write a project, like I was just writing to write and then eventually I was like 'oh I have enough stuff where I could make a project like I could tell a story, I could really go into some stuff and unpack my shit.

P: Speak your truth and things.

N: Exactly because that's really what music is for me. Its healing and unpacking and releasing. If I'm able to do that for myself and then do that for other people through my music like me get that therapy and then also be able to inspire others and get people through tough times like that is a blessing cause it's not all about me or any of us, its just all about the collective. And I think that the more we recognize that and the more that we actively work with that in mind things are a lot easier. I learned that, and I'm learning that now because of all that I have experienced you know. Like I said I had to go through times of feeling like dang I'm really alone, I don't think this will ever get better like oh I'm black and queer and femme and the whole world is essentially out to get me like I am not the norm. I am the polar opposite of what is the norm which is upper-middle class, cis-hetero white male total opposite. This world, in America, but the world at large the world at large is built to not support me, to not allow me to exist but me learning to be like with that all in mind still choosing love, still choosing to focus what I can do for my people, in the moment....I had to experience all of that in order to understand that...

P: Wow I loved your answer. I guess you already answered this question in a way but I was going to ask now that you have this mindset, how do you now navigate through the world as an artist as a black queer femme.

N: Just unapologetically as fuck. I've gone through the process of 'omg I'm going to silence myself, omg I'm going to do this, oh I need to make it so I'm palatable, omg I'm super femme but I'm not here for the male gaze but I think I need to do this for the male gaze so that I can get---I don't give a fuck. Like I don't care anymore because the fact of the matter is, this whole thing is not made for me so I'm not supposed to succeed in it anyway even if I do do all that stuff so I'm just gonna do what I need to do, what feels comfortable, what feels safe, what feels rational for me. In order for me to get through and like that's not playing into these norms or these stereotypes and these expectations `and all this fuckshit that has been put on us by white supremacist society. I think that it's really interesting because people ask me this all the time "how do you navigate spaces" and I'm just like I come in with my bright colored hair I'm dressed however I'm dressed and I do what I have to do. I mean, I always feel that because I'm black and because I'm a woman I just deal with hella sexism and hella racism and then the intersectionality of that. Dealing with white men not acknowledging your existence and like your voice being silenced by white men, by black men, by white women, by this by that until they need something from you. I have always dealt with high expectations. I have really high expectations, that's why I have anxiety. A lot of my anxiety is because of shit I've normalized that's really just something that society has taught me like....being in these spaces where you're doing that work you are doing above and beyond but yet you're seeing your white counterparts doing a quarter of the work and getting triple the praise for shitty work...I think knowing that we did all of this, I'm not an egomaniac. I think its really easy as black people to get trapped up in the cycle of white supremacy and of capitalism and all that shit. Where we think that we need to have all these cars and all that stuff on the class level but also in the terms of 'I need to look a certain way, I need to detach from my blackness' I'm not going to use any examples 'I'm going to detach from what feels comfortable to me' because blackness is so fluid. It's the gang bangers, its the crips and bloods doing ay and z but its also the Afrocentric folxs doing drum circles its all these different things. Its the black folks going to school and trying to be doctors and lawyers, it's the black folxs that are change makers in public policy, it's the black people doing curation and creative work. WE are so fluid and I think as much as they have tried to shove my blackness in my face, it's just helped me loved my blackness more. It makes me realize, I have something that y'all don't have and it makes you mad and I don't know why you're perfect just the way you are, you don't need any of this just like I don't need any of your shit, but that's your battle that you have to fight um and if you keep trying to project on me you can but I'm going to keep being unfazed and just doing what I need to do and focusing on myself..What I have learned going to a PWI in the music program, especially being black and queer you experience people wanting to pimp you out but they also want you to sit down and take their shit and to be shat on over and over again...Its interesting to see the dichotomies...its crazy because you're in the middle of this intersection and you have people constantly telling you that you need to ignore this part of you, this is what you are and its so fucking annoying and I've just learned how to just silence most of [the bullshit] but I think I've gotten good at being like that's how yall feel but this is where I'm at, this is what I'm feeling, this is like what I stand for and that's like made it a lot easier. Remembering this is all us, like we did this, that always makes me feel really good...Being in the music program I've dealt with [violence, manipulation, the most malicious shit], but I can't sit and be malicious too because its a dumbass cycle and that is what you want, you want me to vibrate lower, be bitter, to step out of my zone and step out of focusing on myself and focusing on putting the people forward to focusing on your petty shit, I don't give a fuck. I've learned so much about detachment within my program, I navigate spaces and relationships differently....learning how to do the work even when that person doesn't fuck with you and makes it point to make it difficult. I've matured so much. Its eye opening because as a black, queer woman you see damn yall all made childish, you have to mature so quickly....I've learned to love myself more and grown into myself more...cause I've tried conforming and not conforming and I'm like you don't like that still because there will always be something wrong with me [in their eyes] because at the end of the day I still look the way I look, I still have the history I have and at the end of the day you don't like what you see because of your own personal things...that's why I don't care about white people...because I have encyclopedia of receipts of yall. My identity, in relation to my program, has taught me how to focus on myself at the end of the day I just have to focus on myself....

P:...You just hit the mark on everything...I wanted to ask what other mediums do you do?

N: Music is my main thing that I have done the longest to go back to prior to college, I did musical theatre all of high school. I started doing theatre in 8th grade and then I just started doing musical theatre and stuff. I did my first straight play Senior year, I did Joe Turner's 'Come and Gone' by August Wilson. Black, black, plays. It's really good, it talks about the slave trade, it actually talks about intergenerational stuff. Like that's literally my whole thing. I feel like the universe brought me here in part do intergenerational work and shit. So I've always done music and I joined a choir in the fourth grade and I started learning how to play piano around the same time. In elementary school, I played violin for a little bit, clarinet for a little bit. Violin for like 2 years, Clarinet for like a year.  Then in middle school, I did choir still, I was given awards in talent shows and shit. Then I did a play in the 8th grade and then I could write. That's when I realized I could write like I could write plays because I always wrote poetry in like stories and tried to write a song but I just didn't. For some reason it was really hard, I was a good detailed writer but I couldn't put it with the music, it was always really hard, it would always be too many words, not enough melody or something. It was always something. I honestly just needed to refine it. It was always in the back of my head. Then I went to high school, I went to Hollywood High for 2 years and did show choir there and choir and plays and stuff, musicals. Then I started my first musical In the Heights my sophomore year and Abuela Claudia that shit was hard, she be sanging lol. I did a musical twice, I did it my sophomore year, junior year, when I switched schools we did it again. So I've just always done chamber choir, show choir, musical theatre, plays, I did photography. Like I was always writing. Writing and music is what I've done the longest and photography. Photography I started in 9th grade, summer of 9th grade. I was doing that and then stop. I always would stop and go with cause I feel like with photography, I loved the visual, I think it's important, I love the snapshot of just a moment and being able to curate that moment exactly how you wanted it to be or capturing what is. I'm always dating visual artists because I just love how their minds work. I love how they can see the world and they see it completely different from how everyone views it but they can still merge their shit into another thing that's dope. But yeah I was doing all those different things and then I did Grammy Camp the summer before my senior year of high school and that's when I was like 'oh dang I can study music' because for the longest time, I was like 'I'm just gonna be a writer, I'm going to study English, I'm going to study film and its fine and it's fine because people kept telling me that you can't do music, everyone wants to do music. But then when I went to Grammy Camp at USC I was like 'oh there is a contemporary music program that is not just Jazz or Classical' because I knew that I wouldn't be able to get into any of those programs because I wasn't classically trained and I wasn't jazz trained, I hadn't been doing that for years. So I just knew that and I was like 'damn how the fuck was this gon work' and yeah I applied to USC I also had really good grades. They always knew that I would get into any school I applied to, they were just like 'you need to figure out what you want to do' you're smart, but you don't need to read for the rest of your life. That's already going to be something to do. I applied to USC got in the first time, didn't get into the Music Program but I got in for English and then after that, I got into the School to transfer. So I've been doing the program for three years and not four which means I have to take more classes at once and it's jam-packed. Its kind of hard, but I'm almost done yknow I have one more semester after this, I'm thankful I've gotten through this one. I'm literally like damn I'm almost finished....I was always just doing different things. But now I do music mostly I write as well. So I sing and I write but I also take photos still. I'm trying to add more photos onto my feed but I keep having a conflict of interest with it because its like oh I'm an artist, I'm a musician so all my stuff on my feed should be my music but then its like naw if I wanna post all that---its just kind of hard, I keep going back and forth with stuff. I'm gonna just starting being more fluid with it. I do photography, I write poetry but I put that on the same line as the music, but I write. Poetry helps me how I write out lyrically...I do content curation. I started this series called the loft sessions my sophomore year of college, I'm a senior now. We've been on a hiatus because I needed to finish my EP Reflections. But now that's almost done, I want to regroup and figure something out. I want to do some stuff and what else. I love doing events. Loft Sessions was kind of cool because it was a quarterly event series centered around black artists, for black artists, by black artists. I started it because I was tired of going to all these events that were school funded and there were no black artists, we weren't at the center. Or feeling like damn ok if my music isn't this, this or this, it's not gonna work, it’s not gonna sell. So I started Loft Session, it was actually in collab with some UCLA folxs so a lot of my friends at UCLA and USC came together and they helped me put everything together. I would curate everything like the lineup and do it in my loft, in the loft I lived in. We would sell drinks and whatnot and showcase so many different types of artists. We'll have black visual artists, photographers, I wanted to do filmmakers at one point. I wanted to live painting and different stuff like that, they would showcase like that and then we would have live DJs, bands, rappers, singers etc come in and perform. I was really cool because it was just a space where everybody black was able to behold space, have fun...supporting black artists and meeting new people. Just having a good ass fucking time. But I want to focus more marginalized voices in the black community because we had a lot of men and I had different rules that were disrespected...now that I have more time I understand how to navigate that differently. We didn't turn away anyone who wasn't black...it was nice that we were at the center. I want to plan some things over winter break and over the next year. I want to plan shows, collaborative things, identity focused-caused focused events because those are important...I want everyone to get that representation because it's long overdue. Other than singing, writing songs poetry stories, event curation and photography. I want to do more creative direction. Like with my project I want to more directing but I'm scared. I want to find a filmmaker that I can vibe and we can collaborate and ....I want to be as active in my process as possible I'm not tryna be idle. I like to cook. Spirituality, holistic healing. I'm a crystal wearer...

P: You've already answered this, but I was going to ask, what should we be looking for in terms of like what you're going to be putting out in terms of projects. You've already answered this with curating, creative curation, all of that and of course your EP coming out "Reflections"

N: I can reiterate

P: Yeah for sure

N: Well Growing Pains is out right now, that is on all streaming platforms, Spotify, Apple Music Tidal, Youtube, SoundCloud, Amazon Prime, etc Listen to it add it to your playlist, share it with your mommy your aunty your grandma everybody. Share it with your cousin the girl that you were into, send it to your friends like they were going to get through these finals yall need to get through these finals, we going to get these degrees. We're going to get this bread, whatever that bag is for you were going to get this bag. Number 2  Reflections is set to be dropping this month. Keep an eye out for that. Honestly, y'all should follow me on Instagram, I should activate my Twitter. I have to figure what worlds I would be in twitter..but yeah follow me on Instagram. I post all my updates there, I also post a lot of good informational stuff about spirit and yknow numerology in addition to blackness, everyday news, queerness, and other marginalized communities. We just discuss shit, we like to talk about shit lol. Follow me there like I said n.yallah on Instagram.