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nagisasstunningpersonality · 3 years

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TINSITOGS, a retrospective (happy birthday)

(yes I’m like two days too late I know I’m sorry)

Why hello followers and ass class fandom, nice to see you there. I’m sure MOST people know about this, but in case you don’t, hi. On AO3 I’m better known as livixbobbiex, writer of maybe one of the most infamous Assassination Classroom fics.

Which I mean like, if you haven’t read it yet you totally should it’s fanlore at this point I promise-

Shameless plug that I don’t need aside, I felt that, on its first birthday since actual completion, I just wanted to share some things about it. Some tit bits about writing it, fun facts, maybe even some author advice TM. I appreciate that it’ll be super annoying if I do that in the tags, though, so that’ll all be under the cut. If you don’t want to read the whole post, then no matter what, thanks for the support in general!

I also want to take the opportunity to announce that I’ve reopened my discord, so if you want to talk about my fics with me (and others), you’re more than welcome to join! (the link is here)

The origin story

I’ve stated this many times, I think, but TINSITOGS was never supposed to be a serious story. Taking you back, quite a long time, it actually started in a facebook DM with a friend. We used to come up with “head canons” with each other, which were basically just very condensed fanfiction plots over a multitude of text messages. I believe I was trying to cheer her up, and I tried to come up with some kind of plot line.

At the time, I was fairly fresh to the Ass Class fandom, and I was joking about how there were no teen pregnancy melodrama fanfictions. It wasn’t that I wanted one, I just thought it was strange for a school centric anime with a bunch of ships to NOT have one. And, back then, I only really cared about karmagisa. So I just decided ‘right it’s happening’. The reason I decided to make it ABO was due to ‘it making sense’. Fun fact: it was almost written as AFAB trans Nagisa, but I decided against it as I didn’t rate my ability to handle it well back then. Looking back on it, I’m glad I made that decision.

Over around two months, writing out the plot of this story took over my life a little bit. I had no idea where I was going with it, but I was having so much fun with the drama that I decided that Karma and Nagisa shouldn’t get together soon at all, and I had a lot of fun teasing my friend with the ‘will they won’t they’. It was only when I got bored that I invented this intense drama plotline to finish it all off.

That period of time was a lot of fun. And whilst that friendship didn’t end well, I still have a lot to thank her for. She chose Daichi’s name because I had no idea, and she wanted to annoy me because I didn’t like Haikyuu. When I couldn’t decide on his hair colour, the purple was her suggestion because ‘why logic?’ Daichi speaking Korean was because of how much she liked Kpop. She even helped me choose the title of the actual fic, so there’s a lot you can thank her for, honestly.

After I finished that story, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Whenever I daydreamed, I used to think about that damn Daichi Akabane, and how much I wanted to tell his story. I’d even come up with extra stuff to fill in a lot of the gaps, and developed his character in my mind. I decided that I was really desperate to write it down. Usually that worked when I had an idea I wanted to work through.

I wrote the first chapter in late 2017, and then the next two as well. I just, kept going, and realised that I could go further still. TINSITOGS was never something that was supposed to be shared, but I decided I may as well. After all, that fated ‘teen pregnancy drama’ fic still didn’t exist, and I thought it would be funny to make it happen.

Yes, as I’ve stated publicly a few times, TINSITOGS was a crack fic. If I wanted attention from it, it was infamy. We even joked about me cursing the fandom if it ever became the most popular fic (whoops?). What I wasn’t expecting was a bunch of people, in a fandom where at the time there were NO ongoing karmagisa fics and it was pretty dead, to really seem to enjoy it. It was enough to have me keep writing it, at least. I still don’t know at what point I actually started taking it seriously, but somehow I did, and the rest is history?

The reception

In my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would be the author of one of the most popular fics in the fandom. To this day, the amount of views TINSITOGS has is insanity to me. For the record, across all platforms it’s on today it has 238,000, which is literally a number I can’t even visualise anymore. Almost quarter of a MILLION. To this day on AO3, it’s the most viewed Ass Class fic that’s an ACTUAL ass class fic (the others are multi fandom compilations). So yeah, I achieved the original goal, I guess?

Now you might be wondering, “omg the karmagisa fandom is fujoshi trash”. And, considering the origins, it is kind of funny. The thing is, though, TINSITOGS was written at incredibly good time. It was written when there were, essentially, very few long form Karma/Nagisa stories. If any other fics did get posted on occasion, they were usually just oneshots. I was also, at that point, writing very fast. A symptom of ADHD is becoming obsessively productive over certain things. Since I was able to get a 3k chapter out every few days/once a week, TINSITOGS was consistently bumped to the top of AO3′s default view. And some of those first few chapters were altered canon, and transcribing the canon dialogue didn’t take very long. The more views it got, the more people would read it out of sheer curiosity.

I think it also helps that, at least after it started getting some positive feedback (which was honestly after the pre written chapters), I purposely tried to make it ‘not terrible’. I mean, I personally think the first chapter is pretty weak and if it wasn’t somewhat iconic to a lot of people I’d rewrite it. But in general, I purposely tried to make the world of ABO my own, to make it more accessible to those who don’t like that genre, and stay away from the inherently grosser stuff as much as possible. I genuinely do get comments about how I introduced people to the genre as a whole, still not sure if that’s a GOOD thing but hey, it happened.

TINSITOGS turned into a lot more than just a joke. It turned into my favourite hobby. It turned into a research project (honestly, you would not believe the amount of mummy vlogs and legit scientific articles about child development I consumed). It turned into something that, at least I believe, was widely loved.

Meaning

I think it might be wrong to say that I don’t have AN idea of when I started to take the fic super seriously. For me, it was around the time someone commented something along the lines of saying my writing meant a lot to them, that they’d spent all night reading it and had been unable to put it down.

Not to get too dark here, but I do have a past in writing a very long, somewhat popular fic (it’s still on my fanfic net profile if anyone’s interested, but I don’t recommend it). However, in the latter part of my teenage years, the depression struck. Writing was the love of my life, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it anymore. Maybe I’d be able to muster an idea or even a chapter at the best points of that, but I’d never completely finished any story. Starting to write again was a huge step in my recovery, and one of the reasons I convinced myself that life was worth it was being able to impact someone’s life somehow. Even to this day, I still remember the fics I read when I was, like, thirteen. How much I still remember them, and how much they meant to be at the time. I wanted to be that writer for someone else. To be honest, it was actually Yuri!!! On Ice that got me out of the super bad, but I still never wrote anything of real consequence. TINSITOGS was the first time in a long time I actually committed to something.

And, to be completely honest, there were a lot of times I was tired of it, and wanted to just quit. But, the thing was, I felt like people depended on me in a way. I got so many comments that were just FILLED with support, telling me how much they looked forward to every update. It wasn’t just empty words, either, a lot of the times these comments would be super engaged with the actual writing. I can’t even describe just how much they meant to me, how much I would look forward to reading everyone’s opinions. And then discord happened, which was a lot of fun.

TINSITOGS went a lot further than I ever thought it would. There were comments, discussions, fan art, fan FIC (which is honestly incredible to me). Someone even added it to TV Tropes, at one point. Not to mention the Cards Against Humanity deck and quiz It makes me so unbelievably happy that I could inspire that much creativity, but it’s a two way street. It was all of that which inspired me to write, too.

Writing

The only real goal I actually had was aiming for around 3000 words per chapter. I had a whole facebook log of plot points as planning, and I was mostly just trying to expand on them into prose. I honestly thought that, at its completion, the entire fic would be around 100k words, if that. Not, at one point, being literally the longest ass class fic on AO3.

There are a lot of aspects that were directly adapted from the original messages, and I tried to stay faithful to it more so at first, even if I later removed some of the pure crack. But the style was also vaguely similar, with the story being told mostly from Nagisa’s perspective with swaps to Karma when it made sense. All the main plot beats, too, are pretty much identical. The plus to this was I was able to add a lot of really fun foreshadowing, and I feel like it’s a fun reread because of it.

Honestly though, if there’s a demand to release those OG message logs, I will. Mostly because it’s kind of funny, and interesting to see. Isogai and Nagisa were engaged at one point, even.

Obviously, it changed somewhat. 3000 was the minimum length, and the time to completion was whenever it felt right. One of my big concerns was about pacing, so it took a lot more fleshing out and maybe ‘filler’ content for some of the main arcs to work.

There’s parts of TINSITOGS I don’t think aren’t written that well, and some that I’m still super proud of. I think you can definitely tell there’s a gradual shift in style, and I get a lot more comfortable with writing them as characters as it goes along. To be honest, my pride for the fic overall is what it represents.

It is funny to think about the places it got written in, though. I started it when I worked at McDonalds with no life direction, then it went through my first year of university with me. It’s been written in at least four countries. Aeroplanes, night clubs, long haul buses, a train through the Japanese southern coastline. Even the start of covid. TINSITOGS managed to see a lot. I even turned a scene in (the boat scene during the India chapter with altered names) to my university as a legitimate assignment.

There were also a few messages I wanted to achieve, once I realised I had the platform to put them across. One of them was, obviously, ‘use protection kids’. It was important to me that I didn’t glamorise it too much, and I think that came across. I also wanted to dispute some of the issues with ABO, and subvert the consent issues as much as I could. An arc I really ‘liked’ writing was how abuse doesn’t always look the same way, and that it can be a drawn out change in behaviour. How the most important part of ‘being a good parent’ isn’t perfection, but genuinely loving and doing the best you can for your kid. How love doesn’t solve everything, and effective communication can take a very long time to learn and build a functional relationship. I mean, there definitely was a lot I tried to put in, and you’re free to interpret it all how you want. But, I like to think some people learnt some of these things, at least.

Daichi

Honestly, Daichi developed almost of his own free will. I had a good idea of his appearance, and that he was smart. Writing him from birth until around nine years old (older if you read the sequel fic) pretty much allowed that fluidity. It was really fun to explore a nature vs nurture development, and let his own characteristics speak for themselves.

He’ll always have a special place in my heart.

This is the first image I ever made. When I was trying to figure out what Daichi looked like, I honestly just edited Karma’s hair (pretty well, actually? I’m impressed with my past skill). That’s where the ‘he looks just like Karma’ meme kind of came from.

This was the first image I actually created of Daichi. I THINK it was on rinmaru games mega anime creator or something, but it’s literally not available on the internet anymore as far as I can tell, so I can’t double check. This was in the pre-piccrew days. His eyes are closed because they didn’t have the right tone of goldish/silver.

His sister, Kaguya, didn’t even exist originally, even though I decided on that ending pretty early on. Actually, she was going to be called ‘Irina’ due to some hijinks. Initially, when Karma found out about Irina’s pregnancy, she was going to get super emotional and mad at him and basically force him to name his first born daughter after her. Karma agreed to shut her up, never intending to have another child, so when the surprise second child later came along they had to live with the pain. However, to be honest I just forgot to write in the actual scene that set it all up, and I decided against adding it anywhere else. The name Kaguya was a very last minute decision, and it was a chance for me to explore some ideas that didn’t fit with Daichi’s character.

Interestingly too, Daichi and Nao were never intended to be a thing. I only decided that towards the VERY end. Even though the reason I named Nao that was because of a ship I had in a J Drama (Good Morning Call). It just kind of ended up happening because I won myself over with imagining the cute.

The music

I used to write with a lot of background music, though not all the time. Particularly towards the start, there was a lot that didn’t really make sense thematically, yet I would write to a lot.

Here’s a link to the spotify playlist if you want it it’s basically all the ones I noted I’d listened to a lot. Not including the smut ones, though, I have a whole playlist for that.

Some of the notable ones:

Five String Serenade - the first scene I wrote of the entire fic, in Chapter 25 New Year Time where they fell asleep cuddling.

Cosmic Love - when I wrote Nagisa’s love confession scene in hospital (I also wrote this pretty early on)

Northern Downpour (though it was actually a cover by Emma Blackery) - The chapter after Daichi’s born (30)

When The Party’s Over - Confession Time Third Period, Chapter 69. I literally listened to this song on REPEAT when I planned and wrote the kind of ‘break up’ scene, and it’s one of the few parts that made me cry writing.

Turning Page - I know I said no smut, but this song actually gave me the idea to have the “I love you” in chapter 108 be less on a whim and actually more built up. In the original plan, Karma really did just say it without thinking. I’m glad I changed that.

Bury Me Low and Numb - pretty much all I listened to when writing the last few chapters, because Evil Nagisa core. So much so that Bury Me Low was in my top 2020 songs rewind.

As for the title, there’s actually quite a funny story. I had no idea what to call the fic, and when that happens I usually just try and find some song lyrics. I really wanted to use something from ‘October’ by the Broken Bells. Not only because it’s my favourite song (has been for years), but thematically it really worked. The issue was, it worked as the WHOLE song, there were no individual lyrics that captured everything. And, if they did, they didn’t flow very well. And naming the fic ‘October’ would have been weird for a lot of reasons. There Is No Sweeter Innocence That Our Gentle Sin really was just plucked randomly, in a desperate search to find any snappy lyrics from any song that had some kind of meaning. After a bit of discussion, we settled that it kind of worked... if Daichi is innocent and they committed a sin or something. It also wasn’t the most obvious lyric from the song (Take Me To Church if anyone doesn’t know) so I just went with it. It works out, I think, because TINSITOGS turned out to be a pretty good acronym and pronounceable word in its own right.

The merch redbubble drama

It’s a well known fact that I’m not very good at art. However, I decided to try pixel art because it seemed the easiest to not mess up. I made Karma and Nagisa, before deciding to also give Daichi a try.

This, to this day, is the only good quality art of Daichi that I actually own. The only one I’m actually happy sharing and thinking it doesn’t look terrible. As much as I love people sending me fanart, it’s not ‘my property’, right.

So, I was kind of joking about TINSITOGS having merchandise. At first I just made two funny quote things, and uploaded it to redbubble. I was never intending to actually make money from this, and I’d agreed to myself that if I did, I would just donate it to charity. I was joking with the quotes, but since I had this artwork I figured I may as well uploaded. Separately, there was also an image that had pixel Daichi next to pixel Nagisa and Karma (which I also created).

Aside from showing up in a few people’s adverts across the internet, there was no real harm with this. In fact, I didn’t make money anyway. It was just... more the joke of it existing. I did, however, buy myself a Daichi phone case, which is one of my favourite possessions.

The funny ‘drama’ comes in when they got taken down due to copywrite. Sure, the one with Nagisa and Karma, I understand. But the other three literally had no mention or anything to do with Assassination Classroom, aside from being from a fanfiction. So basically, someone who owns those rights claimed my OC as theirs. Which makes Daichi canon? Whatever the case, I found this hilarious don’t worry.

How has TINSITOGS changed my life?

This is quite a strange thing to think about. Because, in a lot of ways, it really hasn’t. As I’m sure a lot of people know, I don’t really consider myself to have any real ‘fame’, despite the impressive numbers. Whenever I tell people in my personal life, they seem to think I’m some sort of internet celebrity, but that’s never been the case for me. I mean, it’s hardly a cultural phenomenon.

In a lot of ways, I’d much rather befriend someone than have them admire me. Possibly because being someone’s inspiration is kind of weird... I’m just an awkward duck who likes to write after all. I don’t mind it, though. I genuinely find it an honour, even if I don’t necessarily agree. I also want to take this time to say that if anyone ever wants to talk or message me, you’re more than free to do so. I’m usually super casual with people who do that, I promise.

TINSITOGS was the first story I ever finished in the way I truly wanted to. Start to end, a full narrative. And it took a LOT. There were so many times I almost felt like quitting, or took super long breaks. For me, ADHD queen, actually finishing something was a huge deal. And I know I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t owe it to everyone who read it, and myself, to see it through. You know like, if I were to die tomorrow, at least I’ve left something behind.

In a lot of ways, it’s changed me for the better. It’s helped me develop my writing styles, and way of thinking. It encouraged me to become more active in the fandom, and develop some important friendships. I always feel like my Tumblr and Fanfiction ‘known’ factor is separate. I think most of my Tumblr following is more to do with my theories/Japanese context research if anything, for example, but I know I wouldn’t be so interested in that if TINSITOGS hadn’t lead me to deeply examine character and really look into analysing source material for clues. I also think there’s just... a lot of myself in it.

I was 17 years old, when I first came up with the idea. I finished the story when I was 20. Now, at the time of writing, I’m 21. That time has seen some pretty significant changes - just in general life facts and my own personal human development. For me at least, a lot of that was pretty turbulent, and TINSITOGS stands as a time capsule for that, in a way.

I know I gained a lot of confidence, and it affirmed to me that writing is what I love. Telling stories and sharing them is what I love.

Conclusion

Do I think TINSITOGS is an outstanding piece of writing, or the best fic ever? No. I really don’t. It’s strange to say because I definitely spent a lot of time on it, but it’s not like I put my full unbridled efforts into the story. I don’t fully plan, use a beta, or even read through on my own. And that’s okay - that’s not what I write fanfiction for. Fanfiction is my place to have fun with characters and stories I like, without the pressures of having to stand on my own complete originality. Yes, I’m fully confident that I can write at a “higher quality”, if I really wanted to. I’m also aware that some authors put their full effort into their fics, and that’s just as valid!

It feels odd to say this about my own writing, but I honestly think there’s just something in this story. It might not be written in the best prose ever, and the premise might be kind of dumb for a lot of people. But, I think, there’s some part of this fic that managed to grab people. Somehow, at some point, many readers get captured into the emotions and so drawn in that ‘they just have to finish it now!’ Again, I’m not sure myself how I actually achieved that. Of course, that won’t apply to everyone, but I do feel there’s some truth in it. And it makes me happy, to have caused that.

If TINSITOGS is your favourite fic, or if you genuinely think it’s the best story you’ve read, then thank you. I really appreciate your support, and I’m happy to have been a part of your life, I guess. I know how much fanfics can mean to a person, and that’s why I’m not going to take it down, or edit it at all. And it’s fine too, if you loved the fic for a while and moved on -i t happens. Whatever the case, I’m very honoured to have been able to occupy a moment of your life. Or if you find this fic in 10 years time, even, I still wholly appreciate you.

This story was incredibly important to me, and thank you for reading if it was ever important to you too.

You may ask, what now? Well, this is only intended to be a detailed look back for whoever’s interested, and it’s likely the only one I’ll actually do, a year after completion. Of course, if you ever want to ask me anything or just discuss the story, you’re honestly good to contact me in whatever way I have available.

I’m still writing my ongoing stories, of course, despite taking a small break due to the university work load. I fully intend to complete the stories I’ve already started to tell, at least. After that... I’m not sure if I’ll still write fanfiction. Don’t panic, this isn’t a ‘I’m quitting writing’ thing. I may, however, have bled the Karmagisa genre a bit too dry at that point. Who knows? I am pretty interested in writing something original for once, so maybe that’ll work out.

For now, at least, thank you to anyone who read this fic. To anyone who commented, liked, or interacted with me over it. To anyone who created or learnt from it. I’m really glad that I got to share this story with you all, and ultimately left some kind of mark, no matter how big or small.

Happy birthday, TINSITOGS. I had a lot of fun writing you.

#ass class #assassination classroom #ansatsu kyoushitsu #tinsitogs #karmagisa

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thetorchwoodnineroleplayerwriter · 3 years

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Popular!Luz AU concept post

This au concept is something me, @crispyclown , and @molotov-does-stuff worked out together on @pastatiger ‘s TOH discord.

The basic concept is “what if Luz never did become friends with Willow and actually did become popular” based on an offhanded comment from boscha in ‘Understanding Willow’ that went to the effect of “that human could have been popular if she wasn’t hanging out with Willow”.

Here’s all the headcanons we’ve all put together:

Timeline:

1) 'teenage abomination' never happens. Luz just has a boring day and becomes vaguely aware of Hexside.

2) during ’Covention’, Amity and Luz meet for the first time. They don’t hit it off but they don’t not hit it off either. After the Lilith speech, Amity still steps on King’s cupcake, but it’s completely by accident. Amity tries to ‘keep up appearances as a Blight’ and ends up accidentally insulting Luz and King while attempting to apologize. Luz ultimately still has the “Bog of Immediate Regret” line, but Amity doesn’t really care one way or the other, so she nearly says ‘you read Azura too?!’ Before instead accepting. Amity and Luz’s bet is pretty low stakes — Amity apologizes to king if she loses, Luz apologizes to Amity if she loses, maybe? But Eda and Lillith get waaaay into the bet and both sides cheat as canon. Amity still breaks down when the construction glyph is revealed, but Luz formally concedes anyways (with low stakes she doesn’t have any serious need to win, and she still would rather be this girl’s friend than her enemy), citing their own relative skill levels, before going and talking to Amity. Amity is still DISTRAUGHT about the whole ordeal, but she and Luz have a much more in-depth heart-to-heart, where Luz explains what she did, tells Amity how cool Luz thinks she is, and manages to tell her the “I’m not a witch, but… I’m training to be one“ line. Amity leaves Luz with the line, ‘they say humans can't learn any magic. But... I don't think that's going to stop you.' And… they’re, maybe friends? Unclear friends? Probably just acquaintances but the point is its nonnegative relationship development.

3) ‘Hooty's Moving Hassle' is removed.

4) in ‘Lost in Language’, Luz is still a little over-friendly with Amity (Amity respects her for serious but also She Has A Reputation, Luz) when they meet in the library. Luz still gets sucked in to the twins’ chaotic energy, and Luz still thinks hanging out with them will somehow translate to brownie points with Amity. When Amity walks in on them in the secret room, she’s much more visibly and viscerally betrayed by (what she thinks) Luz did. However after saving themselves from evil Otabin, Luz does convince her the twins tricked her, they book trade as canon, Amity actually clearly thinks of Luz as a friend at the end of it all.

5) the moonlight conjuration incident happens after the library incident. Amity spins a BS story about Luz being a skilled witch to her parents and invites her to the conjuring. While initially their conjuring goes as canon (ie nowhere), Luz turns it to a regular party with Boscha, Skara, Amity, and herself. (and Cat, i think? Whoever their canon fourth was, she’s still here.) Eventually they try again, and since (in this au) the conjuring's power == your conjuring group's friendship's strength, and everyone here is at least somewhat friends with luz now, they do manage to animate a few things.

6) at some point here, Luz, Boscha, and Skara team up for a pickup game of grudgeby, and Luz learns the fireball glyph.

7) During ‘Once Upon a Swap', both Skara and Boscha notice how out of character King!Luz is acting. They can admit King!Luz is being cool, if a lil dorky, but they have an out-of-character moment where Boscha tries to ask 'Luz' if she's okay. King doesn't get it, but the others walk in on it so Boscha resumes acting like a challenged alpha bitch. (Luz eventually explains to Skara what was goin on that day. Luz ‘conveniently’ never got the chance to clue Boscha in.)

8) at some point around here, Luz manages to get Eda to enroll her in Hexside.

9) 'adventures in the elements' is changed bc Luz does know two glyphs. However, She and Amity want to hang out some more and Amity thought Luz's fire glyph could help her learn the fireball spell, so they still go to the knee together (with Eda, Emira, and Edric as terrible excuses for chaperones.) Luz learns the ice spell under Eda’s somewhat hands-off tutelage, possibly after accidentally angering the Slitherbeast as in canon.

10) In ‘First Day', Boscha is looking forward to finally getting a read on this girl who wormed her way straight into Amity's heart. (she's not jealous. nuhuh. not even a little. YOU’RE jealous!) Luz still immediately gets Detention'd, tho, but this time Amity and Boscha show up to bust her out unprompted, leading to a VERY awkward moment where Viney (and Jerbo and Barcus) refuse to trust Luz on the basis that Boscha and Amity are her friends, and both of them are notorious jerks who would ABSOLUTELY bully the DT kids. Amity has to duck out for her performance tho. the episode concludes as canon.

11) we get an extended time where we see how Luz easily makes friends with almost everyone at Hexside. She's friend-shaped and she gets a HUGE popularity boost for being honest friends with Skara and Amity. (she gets rancid vibes from Boscha when they’re at school together, but she can't put her finger on *why*. and besides, Boscha calls Luz her friend too, so that probably counts.) during this time Luz meets Gus, who is one of E&E's classmates. Gus can have an episode, as a treat.

12) Luz finally meets Willow, and gets slapped in the face HARD with confirmation that Amity and Boscha are kind of massive assholes. Luz tries to befriend Willow, but Willow refuses to trust her due to how often Boscha, Amity, and the rest of the popular girls who make up most of Luz’s closer friend group have bullied her.

13) Luz tries to get Boscha to take it down a notch. Boscha takes it up a notch. Luz tries to get Amity to help, Amity asks why it matters — it’s just ‘half a witch willow’, no one cares. Luz realizes, awkwardly (and probably with the assistance of Jerbo and/or Barcus), that while she currently has a lot a friends and is popular, if she defends Willow from Boscha’s bullying she’ll lose a lot of her popularity. Luz kind of has a small breakdown over this, because she doesn’t want to risk friends here when in the human world she has so few, but at the same time, she has Principles! She can’t just ignore this! As one of her schemes to help Willow without going against Boscha directly, Luz manages to get Willow transferred out of Abominations, although Willow is kinda annoyed by this since even though she’s in plant track she feels a stranger. (This alienation eventually goes away, but not before…) 

14) Luz snaps and punches Boscha in the face one day for bullying Willow once too many times. Boscha gets PISSED and Luz is NOT BACKING DOWN, even though she’s scared. Boscha basically exiles Luz from the friend group, which has the added effect of making almost all of Luz’s friends stop talking to her, most painfully Skara and Amity. Willow starts to tolerate her, but only barely. (Gus is still Luz’s friend tho. In fact, Gus, the DT kids, and E&E Are the only Hexside students at this point who’ll be caught dead with Luz.) 

15) ‘Understanding Willow’ Is changed; Luz catches Amity burning up Willow’s memories. However, since Amity, Luz, and Willow are distinctly *not* talking to each other, the quest to save Willow’s mind is *much* more tense. Luz keeps taking potshots at Amity for abandoning the both of them, Inner Willow hates both of them, and Amity is trying desperately not to have fun with people who hate her and also trying desperately to defend her actions. Amity still reveals the same secret of the day she stopped being Willow’s friend; Luz, meanwhile, reveals some bad memories of her own human school that make it very obvious how much the chance to be popular meant to her and how she genuinely empathizes with Willow’s whole situation. Ultimately ends with a bit of a tense moment between the three where they admit they’re not friends yet… but at the very least they’re all willing to be friends, now.

16) We get some time watching Luz slowly re-making her friends throughout the school, as people decide they really do like Willow and Luz as people and they’re kinda tired of Boscha been an alpha bitch. Maybe spliced with Willow & Luz & Amity hangin out, being friendly, or with Boscha been salty and Skara et al. being here by obligation even though they *clearly* wanna hang out with Luz some more.

17) ‘Wing It Like Witches’ happens largely beat for beat here. Boscha attempts to re-assert social dominance, Luz invokes the sacred rites of a game of grubby with a bet, Luz tries to get Willow and Gus in for it but Gus can’t and Willow won’t; Amity talks Willow into forming a 3 person team with her. Extra angst from the fact that Boscha and Luz did actually have some bonding over being on the same team on an earlier grubby game.

18) Grom happens now, largely as canon. When preparing Luz for the main fight, Amity theorizes (incorrectly) that Luz’s greatest fear is losing her friends on the boiling isles; Luz goes along with it, because ‘I already faced that fear once this year, it’ll be a cinch’. Grom tries it but it doesn’t work, but then from turns into her mom. (We see Amity nearly cry from Grom turning into her, but realizes what’s going on, and then has a massive blush from being called ‘her’ Amity. Skara rolls her eyes, bc she’s been clued in. Boscha is deliberately not caring.)

20) Boscha eventually gets to the point where she decides to apologize to Willow. She starts with a BS ‘lol sry’ approach, ends with a record-scratch-sudden rant where Boscha really does break it — and herself — down in honest apology. Some of the bad attempts are played for comedy, this one played completely straight.

Miscellanious other elements:

Unrequited Boschamity / exes Boschamity, boscha has cool banter with her friends (mildly platonic boschluz banter, snarky boschamity banter, member boschkara banter, etc), Boscha being really jealous of Luz, Everyone — EVERYONE — pines at Skara, Luz also pines at willow eventually, BOSCHA ACTUALLY GETS A REDEMPTION ARC AND ITS WELL WRITTEN AND NO ITS NOT IN SERVICE OF A SHIP, Boscha::Azula Amity::Zuko wrt redemption arcs, Boscha joins the inevitable rebellion as one of those ‘everyone in public thinks I’m an enemy of the rebellion so I can help them out real nice in the DL’ people, and yes we ARE overthrowing the government at some point in this au just not right now, right now we’re having ANGST and LUMITY, boscha is actually very nice to her friends when she wants to be she just usually doesn’t feel like she Should Be Vulnerable, any episode that’s just ‘Luz With Willow And/or Gus doing Hijinks’ (ex ‘Really Small Problems’, ‘Something Ventured, Someone Framed’) that hasn’t already been mapped to an event in this timeline is skipped completely, yes that means Mathholomule successfully becomes president of the human club, none of this aus cast is actually friends with him tho don’t worry, Edric has been quietly dating Jerbo for a while now but his sisters don’t know, Emira is a disaster lesbian for Viney and the teasing is relentless, Emira is a terminal prankster with a maladapted sense of boundaries as a result of her parents, this is a point of contention for her courtship of Viney who can and will go OFF on her for crossing the line and not feeling guilty, Edric is very aware of boundaries but he also finds looking to her for direction gets him in trouble the least at home so he just feels terrible afterwards and tries to get Emira to tone it down and/or apologize, basically the library incident was her idea in this au and he went along with it because of blight child optics stuff, Luz’s memory may out Luz to Willow and Amity, Willow and Amity absolutely say ‘gay rights’, in fact the entire isle says ‘gay rights’, this au tricks you into thinking ‘oh easy lumity’ but then Willow comes in like a wrecking ball, during that murky period when Luz’s friends all hate her bc she punched boscha all the people still willing to talk to her get friendly REAL fast, yes that includes willow and amity once they all stop hating each other, nobody lets Amity live down “Oh, wow,,, sports” except Luz who didn’t get it, Everyone has a song assigned to them at the sleepover, Luz’s is Bad Reputation, Skara’s is Caramelldansen, Boscha’s is Money Machine, Amity’s is Eminence Front because I say so

#the owl house #toh #toh luz #toh amity #toh skara #toh boscha #toh willow #toh au #feel free to use #but please tell us #also feel free to comment

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mybiasisexo · 3 years

Text

Trust

Genre: Angst | Highschool!au

Pairing: Kyungsoo x OC

Length: 1.8k

Warning: Unfinished | OC

Summary: Kyungsoo keeps to himself, but that all might change when the most popular girl in school, who just so happens to be his neighbor, decides to set her sights on him.

Author’s Note: This is an idea I came up with waaaay back in like 2015 I think. I wrote all this and then forgot about it. Idk if I’ll ever get back to it or not. The plot, ngl, was wild, like fucking crazy haha. But it fit Kyungsoo a lot I think.

MASTERLIST

credit

She was doing it again.

As hard as I tried to ignore her, I couldn’t help but know.

She was staring at me.

Park Sooyoung, the most popular girl in school, was staring at me, Do Kyungsoo, the most invisible person in my class.

Most guys would be flattered by the gesture, but I just wished she would stop. I sink lower into my chair and hold my textbook over my face, hiding it from her view.

I could still feel her stare.

The bell rang, and I was instantly out of my seat. I slung my backpack over a shoulder and spared a glance at the bold girl. Our eyes locked briefly and I cringed internally, pretending it never happened and practically ran out of the school.

When I got to the front, I sighed and leaned against the brick of the building, waiting for my brother to pull up. I was just scrolling down my blog when a burst of sound pulled my attention. I lifted my head and spotted Sooyoung saying her farewells to her minions and heading over to a shiny red mustang, an older man was in the driver’s seat, his shades blocking his face.

Figures. Sooyoung was notorious for her hookups. It was no surprise to me she would try to get an older man—and a rich one at that.

I lifted an eyebrow as I watched the man rev the engine, a cocky grin on his lips. Sooyoung laughed ecstatically and hooted as her friends squealed and they peeled off.

A loud honk straight ahead of me caused me to jump and I felt my face redden as I saw my brother waiting for me. He gestured for me to hurry and I jerkily fumbled to the passenger seat.

The car ride was silent. I’m ashamed to have had Sooyoung catch my attention, no matter how brief. She was not worth my time in the slightest and I was unimpressed with her in every way possible.

“Did you see that mustang in the lot?” My brother, Seungsoo, asked me. I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“Yeah,” I said quietly with a slight nod.

“It was nice. The person who owns it must have money to blow.”

“He must,” I agreed, whipping my phone back out and opening the app to my blog.

I could see my brother glancing at my phone and me quickly, “back on your blog?”

“Yeah,” I repeated myself, my attention not really on my sibling.

“That’s…cool…”

I repressed another sigh. My brother didn’t understand me, and I didn’t really care enough to try to let him. He pitied me somewhat, making himself believe my isolation was not of my own doing. He wished I had more friends.

He cared, I had to give him that. He was a good older brother to have.

He drove up the driveway and parked the car, leaving it idling. He spun to me as I realized our location and began to gather my stuff.

“I have to work tonight, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tell the parents for me?”

“Will do.”

Seungsoo saluted me off and sped away from our house. My eyes flickered to the pale blue two story building beside my own off white home and sighed again, dragging my bag behind me like a dead dog.

The first thing I noticed once I entered my home was the smell. My mother was in the kitchen, humming to herself. I stood near the entrance, just watching her for a minute. Her back was turned to me and she didn’t notice me once she turned around to the sink, washing her hands briefly.

After I realized she wasn’t going to notice me anytime soon, I slowly climbed the stairs.

I saw my father’s office door was cracked open, so I poked my head inside, knocking gently against the soft wood.

My father was glaring at his computer screen before I caught his attention.

“Kyungsoo,” he greeted with a nod. I bowed and once I straightened, cleared my throat.

“Just letting you know I’m home,” I mumbled, letting my eyes take in the lighting of the room. It was too bright.

My father nodded quickly and returned to his computer.

“I…uh,” I gulped and cleared my throat again. It kept trying to close on me. “Seungsoo hyung has a late shift tonight at the restaurant. He told me to tell you, so…”

I peeked at my father through my lashes as he made a disapproving noise from the back of his throat, “that’s unfortunate. Your mother was looking forward to seeing him… When is your next shift?”

“Tomorrow at five,” I informed quickly.

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“You’re welcome,” I bowed nearly ninety degrees and quickly departed from his presence, my job done.

I retired to my bedroom, throwing my bag into the corner and myself on top my bed.

My fingers started pulling at strands of my hair without my permission and I bit my lip hard enough to keep my scream from escaping.

I strongly disliked my parents.

~*~

The incessant ringing of my alarm interrupted my dreamless sleep. I groaned and blindly reached for the device, finally hitting the snooze button. I rolled around so that I was lying on my back and blinked blankly at my ceiling.

It was cold.

A lot colder than it was yesterday, and I was both overjoyed and highly annoyed.

I loved autumn. It was my favorite holiday, but I dreaded the winter, and you couldn’t have one without the other it seemed.

My alarm went off again and I rolled back on my stomach just so I could bury my head into my pillow and scream.

By lunchtime, I had yawned around seventy times since my alarm first went off. I got plenty of sleep, but I was exhausted.

Hongbin, who was sitting directly in front of me watched as I blinked and struggled with keeping my eyes open.

“You okay?” He asked.

I focused on his voice and nodded, “yeah. Just tired.”

“It’s probably the weather,” Sanghyuk, who was sitting beside me, rationalized on my behalf.

“Yeah, it’s really cold today, isn’t it?” Hakyeon agreed, shivering for emphasis.

“I like it!” Another guy at my table, Jaehwan—although he preferred to be called Ken for some odd reason—yelled. He threw his beanie on the table and the guy sitting on the other side of me, Wonsik, snatched it up, putting it on top his close shaven head.

These were the closest things to friends I had—although the term ‘acquaintances’ didn’t even really cover what we were. We really only ate lunch together, and sat beside one another in any classes we shared. There was another guy, Taekwoon, who hung out with us occasionally, but he hated areas that were too crowded and chose to eat his lunch alone in his car.

I had no reason to judge him on that.

“I like the cold,” I countered, staring at my rice.

“Isn’t it the best?” Ken urged, excited I was talking.

“I like when it’s chilly, the chilly autumn breeze. You can feel it in your bones, but the sun is still there to reassure you warmth still exists.”

Wonsik grinned, “I like that. Sanghyuk, give me a beat!”

The youngest of us started beat boxing terribly and Woonsik immediately started rapping about the weather. Ken began singing exactly what I had just said, word from word, during Wonsik’s verse.

I shook my head and allowed myself to grin at them.

Hongbin lightly kicked my shin, and when I looked up at him, he grinned knowingly, lifting his eyebrows up to let me know he understood.

That was why I still ate lunch with this odd group.

The rest of school passed by in a blur.

My locker closed with a bang and Sooyoung was on the other side, eyes wide and centered on me.

I jumped as I saw her, my heart racing as I noticed her. “Hi,” she nearly whispered, a knowing grin gracing her lips.

I glanced around the hall even though, at such a close proximity, there was no denying who she was looking and talking to.

“Hi?” I swung my backpack over a shoulder and spun around, heading out to the front of the campus to get picked up.

“So… are we going to talk about the other day?”

I cringed. So she didn’t forget. That explained the stares.

“What about the other day?” I played off. I didn’t want to talk about it. It was a lapse of judgment, my darkest moment of seduction.

“Well… I thought you had fun and… well, I did too. I was wondering if we could do it again sometime, maybe….”

Her sentence carried as I spun around to glare at her. I wasn’t the tallest person, and she wasn’t the shortest, her head stopped at my nose and it was hard being intimidating at this angle. I felt like a Chihuahua.

“Nothing happened that day, Sooyoung, and even if something did it was unintentional, an accident. One I’m not willing to repeat. Understand?”

Her eyes fluttered when I said her name and she seemed to drift off afterwards, not comprehending anything after.

I gazed at her apprehensively in silence waiting for her reply, but when she remained silent I lifted an eyebrow, “Sooyoung?”

“Yes?” She asked immediately, blinking quickly in an attempt to seem focused.

I sighed and decided I was done with the conversation.

“Kyungsoo!” She called after me and I tried to ignore the weird twist in my stomach hearing my name come out of her mouth. Images of our day together came to the surface without my consent.

I was going to throw up.

My hand was wrapped so tightly around the strap of my backpack I was sure my knuckles were white, I also had a feeling Seungsoo was already waiting for me. That being said, I slowed down enough to let Sooyoung know I was listening to give her time to catch up.

She did and fell instep with me, “you can say whatever you want, Kyungsoo, but I know what happened wasn’t something you could forget, let alone regret.”

“You don’t know me very well,” I informed her with a frown.

She shrugged, “and you don’t know me very well either, or you would know I’m not one for giving up on a conquest.”

“Me? A conquest?”

She laughed darkly and my stomach twisted again. She took ahold of the strap of my bag that dangled behind me and yanked it hard enough for me to fall back a bit. She used my second of falling to redirect my momentum so that I caught myself pressed closely against her. Her lips grazed my ear and her breath stung, “you underestimate yourself, Kyungsoo. Just tell me you’re flattered and you’ll see me tomorrow.”

She pushed me away just as quickly and I barely regained my balance as she strutted ahead of me. Her skirt rolled up so that her ass nearly poked out. I gulped as I watched her walk away, confused and, to be honest, terrified of the girl.

What had I just gotten myself into?

#kyungsoo scenarios #exo scenarios #kyungsoo #kyungsoo scenario #exo scenario #kyungsoo oneshots #kyungsoo oneshot #exo oneshot #exo oneshots #kyungsoo drabbles #kyungsoo drabble #exo drabbles #exo drabble

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notthatiwilleverwriteit · 4 years

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i feel like jian yi uses emotion to influence zhan zheng xi's decision. when he talks about his sexuality he is either crying or on the verge of crying which i think softens zhan zhengxi's attitude towards him. i don't get people that are saying zhan zheng xi is demisexual and not interested in girls at all and when his only encounter with girls is xiao hui? who is his stalker. it is very natural for zhan zheng xi to dislike her. i feel like jian yi is very manipulative.

Good evening, dear anon-san!

Before we get any further, I got your another ask that it’s okay if I won’t answer your question. I’m not sure why you felt that way but you had gone through the big trouble of writing your thoughts, so I want to try and give you mine. Also, I don’t talk about Zhanyi too often, so I don’t want to pass chances when people give me a nudge to do so. Anyway, I hope you won’t mind I decided to answer your ask.

You had a lot of things to talk about, so I thought I would give my thoughts some structure by picking up some overall themes.

A bit of a TL;DR: I imagine your interpretation of Jian Yi’s character is very much of an unpopular opinion. And I’m afraid I won’t be agreeing with it very much because I have always read him and his relationship with Zhan Zheng Xi quite differently. That being said, though, I do want to applaud your courage to share your views with us. It makes me feel privileged that you feel comfortable enough with me to be open about your opinions.

Zhan Zheng Xi and Xiao Hui

Let’s start this with perhaps the easiest topic: XH having a crush on ZZX. It’s true she didn’t really hide her feelings for ZZX. She tried to muster up enough courage to deliver her confession letter many times and also approached him directly. However, it was clear ZZX was bothered and felt uncomfortable by her affections. (ch. 51, 52, 98, 99. 102, and 156)

She was quite persistent and forward, but I don’t think she deserves to be called a stalker. Not even close. I think we’re forgetting that middle school is that awkward time in life when it’s starting to be noticeable that girls develop faster than boys. Girls of that age can actually be very open about their crushes while boys feel embarrassed, bothered, and annoyed by them. Nor are boys really interested quite yet. I think that’s very much apparent in ZZX and XH’s case.

A short storytime. When I was in middle school (about 12-13 years old) I had the most intense crush on this boy in my class. My very soul was consumed by how much in love I was with him. And I had no problem being open about it, either; I gave him birthday and Christmas cards publically, forced him to write on my friends book, and overall was quite pushy with him. He never returned my passionate feelings but was rather annoyed, embarrassed and disgusted by them. After two years, my feelings passed. Was I a stalker, though? I don’t think so.

So, yes, it was very understandable and realistic for ZZX to be bothered by XH’s advances but I wouldn’t brand her as a “stalker” and make too direct conclusions about their relationship. Rather I think that’s how it usually goes in that age.

Jian Yi and Xiao Hui’s letter

Overall, JY was in a very difficult position when he found out about XH’s feelings for ZZX. On one hand, he was very much in love with ZZX, and it had been his most precious secret that he’s both wanted to confess and hide. Worst case scenario, his romantic feelings might end their childhood friendship or put them in a position where others could easily discriminate and bash them. On the other hand, XH’s advances put pressure on JY and painfully remind him that it’s not as simple for him to confess and be open about his crush. I have always sympathized with him because being in that position can be very painful and conflicting. (100, 101)

I mean, imagine someone asked you to deliver a confession letter to the person you have been in love with for years. Can you imagine how crushing that would feel? A big part of me, at least, would certainly think my crush was doomed. And it was obvious JY struggle between doing the right thing and doing what his heart wanted to.

When JY agreed to give ZZX her letter on the condition that she won’t come near him, I think that was the most manipulative JY got in that whole story (ch. 100):

And I don’t think even that was very successful. He told her to stay away but... what was the endgame? Was JY’s plan to make her believe he had given ZZX the letter and prevent her from finding out the truth by telling her to keep her distance? But at some point, she would have grown anxious and approached ZZX again, right? The truth would certainly have come out eventually.

I think he hadn’t thought it through at all but rather that “don’t come near him” plan was a desperate attempt to buy some time. I don’t see that as JY trying to isolate ZZX in a toxic way at all but rather him trying to prolong the inevitable. His feelings for ZZX never had the same promise of a future as XH’s feelings - and straight love, in general.

Also, let’s not forget that JY did end up giving ZZX the letter despite his own difficult position (ch. 102):

What ZZX said made him realize it wouldn’t be right for JY to decide things for him. He couldn’t advance his own goals that way and feel good about it. But at the same time, giving ZZX that letter put JY’s feelings at a big risk. Basically, JY came close to watching the person he loved returning someone else’s feelings. I’m not sure I could have done the same if I had been JY, and I bet many of us would have struggled to make up our minds, too. Would that make us toxic manipulators, though?

Xiao Hui’s letter exposed

XH’s confession letter being exposed to everybody was a messy situation for all parties. It exposed so many private and vulnerable feelings for anyone to see and make fun of. And usually, the more we want to protect something inside us, the stronger we react when it’s either exposed or poked at.

Even if I don’t really see JY worrying about ZZX’s reputation as a bad thing or something problematic, I have always wondered about that part (ch. 158):

It always seemed like an odd thing to worry about in that situation to me. But I suppose he just didn’t want ZZX to become the center of gossiping. People were making fun of the letter and both its writer and who it was addressed to. Again, romance is quite a tender topic at that age, especially publically. To be involved in those kinds of things - even involuntarily - would most probably put you in the kind of awkward position that you can never quite live down. So, yeah, even if my center of worries wouldn’t probably be protecting ZZX’s reputation, I still get where JY was coming from.

I also suppose JY didn’t want XH’s crush to be public knowledge because it made his situation that more difficult and an uphill battle. The rumors and gossips would stoke and contribute to the overall rhetoric that ZZX has a girlfriend or that he’s popular among girls. But again, I don’t really see that line of thinking as manipulative. I don’t think he was pretending to be sad or trying to provoke XH to make her look bad in ZZX’s eyes. I’m sure I would have felt somewhat the same in his situation, actually.

However, I do agree that readers (if that’s what you meant by “people”) were too eager to brand XH as a problematic homophobe and hate her guts. What she said was wrong and hurtful but still not that surprising (ch. 158):

She had been publically humiliated and her feelings had been made of by everyone. She was hurt and embarrassed, and when JY blamed her she lashed out and threw the easiest and most obvious insult she could think of. I don’t think it’s fair to judge her whole character based on one moment when she was so vulnerable and humiliated.

What comes to ZZX, I don’t think it was a case of him conveniently walking in when JY had been bashed by XH and him judging the situation wrongly (JY as the victim and XH the villain). The way ZZX handled the situation tells us that he could see behind the emotional escalation and recognized the pain both JY and XH were suffering (ch. 158 and 159):

He understood XH had poked a very vulnerable spot with her “disgusting gay” remark and why JY had gotten upset. Not long ago before the letter incident, he had seen how insecure JY was about his feelings for someone of the same sex and how scared he was of being rejected because of it. It was the last thing JY wanted people to talk about out loud but also where you could hurt him the most.

But ZZX also realized the situation XH was in and why she had lashed out. He was very gentle with her and treated her feelings with respect despite turning them down. He saw his own little sister in her, not a villain or a bad person. I’m sure his reaction would have been vastly different if he had thought XH was out to deliberately hurt JY.

Jian Yi’s orientation and manipulation

I can’t say I see JY using emotions to knowingly influence and manipulate ZZX’s decisions but I do think ZZX has an obvious soft spot for his best friend. It goes all the way back to their childhood when ZZX promised to protect him, and later JY’s special place in ZZX’s eyes is represented by the rhetoric of lifelong promises between them (ch. 97, 127, 159, 161, 169, 285):

To me, that’s pretty much the essence of ZZX’s character. He’s loyal, protective, and surprisingly comfortable being so caring. We can see him treat his little sister very similarly to how he treats JY. So, when he sees his best friend crying and thinking there’s something wrong with him because he’s different from others, it’s his second nature to comfort and reassure JY.

Overall, JY has talked about his orientation or feelings for ZZX three times in the comic so far in a way that has changed the course of the story. (If you wish to read more about how I see the Zhanyi storyline go check out my other earlier answer.) The most shocking and dramatic turning point for both of them was probably when JY’s feelings came to light for the first time (ch. 143):

I really can’t see JY being emotionally manipulative at that moment. I would say his reaction is more than understandable and realistic instead. I don’t know if you have ever had to come out to anyone about your sexual orientation, dear anon-san, but it’s always a nerve-wracking experience. I’ve told about my own bisexuality to my parents and best friend and it was insanely scary both times even if I was confident they wouldn’t have a problem with it. Despite everything, there’s always that little “what if” rattling in your head.

Now, multiply that by XXX and put yourself in JY’s raincoat. He was a teenage boy who had just kissed his lifelong best friend and couldn’t play it off as a joke. The more he tried to run and hide, the more the feelings he had buried for years poured out in a mess of tears and fragmented thoughts. I mean, we had read about how deep their friendship ran for 100+ chapters by then but I’m sure many of us were still nervous and unsure about how ZZX would react.

However, ZZX isn’t unable to set his limits even when offering comfort. I think that was apparent the second time JY’s feeling were addressed when JY was drunk and looking for something ZZX wasn’t ready to give him yet (ch. 165):

JY was genuinely very emotional and in a vulnerable place but ZZX had to reject him. I actually talked about that moment in one of my earlier answers because I have always found it interesting and complicated. JY was so insecure and afraid of ZZX rejecting him that he wanted to push the limits to find out how ZZX felt about him (both being in love with him and someone of the same sex). It almost seemed like he was tired of being anxious and kind of wanted to get it over with. But ZZX wasn’t quite there yet. He had expressed his support when it came to JY liking men but wasn’t ready for what JY was really feeling. Unfortunately, that meant he had to hurt the already vulnerable JY but the bottom line is, he did reject him. He might have a lot of affection for JY but he’s also very in tune with what he wants and isn’t ready for. That’s also a part of him being honest and loyal. If he had allowed JY to have his way, ZZX wouldn’t have been true to JY or himself.

The third and last time was when JY finally, officially confessed and - according to my interpretation - ZZX returned his feelings. Again, I don’t see JY being emotionally manipulative but there is one aspect that has always caught my attention (ch. 209):

JY says he likes ZZX so much he’s about to explode and whether it’s about their past or future, it’s always been and will always be about ZZX. This time JY’s fear of rejection manifests itself a bit differently, though. He kind of rejects his feelings himself before ZZX even says a word. He already knows ZZX isn’t happy about being loved by another guy and his best friend at that, so there’s no need for ZZX turn him down. Also, by seemingly shifting the goal of his confession (you won’t feel the same way but at least I finally said it) JY is protecting himself.

Could that behavior be taken as manipulation? I guess on some level, but I think it’s also a very natural and realistic reaction. It can be used to influence someone’s decisions but it’s also a defense mechanism. One that I - and I’m sure many others - can personally relate to very much. And I don’t see JY saying those things in that situation as a way to try and make ZZX feel sorry for him and return his feelings that way. This was the first time he was completely open and honest about his love for ZZX - confessing while looking straight into his eyes - so it’s no surprise he behaved defensively like that.

Also, I believe ZZX had already made up his mind about what his answer would be before he even asked the question. He had reached his resolve and was comfortable with it. All he needed was for JY to say the words out loud.

Jian Yi, Mo Guan Shan, and He Tian’s money

Okay, the last topics! This was something you only briefly mentioned but I felt like they supported your view on JY that already differed quite a lot from mine, so I thought I would give my two cents about these, too.

I think JY is exactly the kind of friend Mo Guan Shan desperately needed when he was falsely accused of assaulting that girl. In fact, JY is the kind of friend all of us should have: someone who won’t hesitate to stand up for us. Because I don’t think “anyone would have done the same thing” for MGS. Actually, that’s why She Li picked him as the scapegoat in the first place (ch. 178, 186, and 184):

Not only did SL take advantage of knowing MGS was a social outcast at school and people were prejudiced against him so no one would even doubt the things said about him but he also knew MGS didn’t have the kind of friends who would step in. He Tian most certainly was one of them, but so was JY the way he didn’t hesitate to barge into the office and loudly demand justice for MGS (ch. 185):

Let’s remember, when the assault case was going on HT, JY and ZZX were the only ones defending MGS. Not even the teachers seemed to think “innocent until proven guilty” or even entertain the thought that MGS might not have done it.

What comes to JY talking about HT having a lot of money (or being rich or poor in general), I think it’s just a part of him being cheeky and the kind of humor 19 Days has. JY’s character has this obliviously and unapologetically immature side that can be a bit annoying at first but soon becomes one of his most lovable features. I never took this side of him as an offense but rather him just being a 15-year-old boy among other teenage boys that will fire back just the same (ch. 258, 296, 298, 301, and 310):

JY doesn’t really have a filter and he likes to brag a little when, for once, he’s in that kind of position, but there’s no true malice in his words.

A few quick notes that I won’t get into deeper than this:

I don’t know about ZZX being demisexual but overall BL does seem to have this trend of making male protagonists fall in love with each other without identifying as LGBT. BL has been criticized for this because it’s a way to avoid talking about the fact that men who are attracted to other men are, in fact, gay (or bi). In many BL stories, the protagonists are portrayed as straight and them falling for a guy is just special circumstances and they’re gay for just that one guy. And while I don’t personally have a major problem with it, I can’t deny it feels a bit of a cop-out. Does Zhanyi fall into that category? On some level, I guess, but it’s also too early to say. The boys are just figuring out who they are as individuals, so JY, for example, identifying as gay might be said out loud one day. Don’t think that will ever happen in ZZX’s case, though.

I also don’t think JY is trying to isolate ZZX from other people. Now that he’s more secure regarding ZZX’s feelings for himself and their relationship, he’s even included XH to their group.

Phew!

Was that all? I think that was at least the most of it, if not all. If you think I skipped something or would like me to elaborate on something, let me know!

As I warned you in the beginning, I ended up disagreeing with the majority of your interpretation. Hopefully, I wasn’t too harsh with my wording or ways of putting things. Even if our views were pretty much the opposite to each other, your thoughts prompted me to look at JY’s character and Zhanyi from a new perspective. And that’s always a good thing. Thank you again for that opportunity and for sharing your interpretations with us, dear anon-san!

#zhanyi #Jian Yi #Zhan zheng xi #19 days #answered ask

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balaclavastyles · 7 years

Text

Bad Ideas

what happens when Y/N finds herself with a crush on an accident waiting to happen

warnings: language

word count: 2,187

requested: nope!

( masterlist )

There were a lot of things Y/N didn’t like. For one, she didn’t like sleeping with socks on (and couldn’t even begin to understand people who could). She also didn’t like slow walkers, especially when they all seem to be directly in front of her. Y/N also detested her roommate, Katherine. Though she knew it was wrong to feel so bothered by one person, she couldn’t help it. Y/N didn’t dislike Kathrine, or as her friends called her ‘Kathie’, right away, no, it was a slow descent into the pit of suffering.

The first day Y/N arrived at her dorm, she was excited, to say the very least. The idea that she’d finally be living on her own and everything that comes with it was something she had been wanting for a while. Even the mundane activities that came with university life, like microwaved dinners at ten pm, which is what she’d heard about since she was fifteen. Nothing seemed negative…until she met Katherine. Sometimes Y/N wishes she had a journal on hand at all times so she could write down all of the inane or ignorant comments Katherine would make on the daily. Surely it would be interesting to read ten, maybe twenty years from now. As much as Y/N wished she could find humor in Katherine’s offhand remarks, she couldn’t.

The first day in her dorm didn’t go as smoothly as one might hope. First off, settling in wasn’t the easiest when her lovely new roommate decided to basically have a going-away party in the cozy apartment. Why couldn’t her family just say goodbye at an earlier time and save the tears for home, Y/N thought. Though she barely knew her and decided to view the gesture as more endearing than annoying. Over the course of the next couple weeks, Y/N started to realize her first encounter with Katherine might’ve been foreshadowing for the days to come.

First, it was the disagreement between the rooms. Y/N had set up her suitcases and begun to unpack in one of the two bedrooms of the dorm. Though they seemed identical to her at the time, Katherine found them to be quite different. After her family finally left the over-crowded apartment, Katherine explained to Y/N why the rooms were very different and how they needed to sort out who got which room. (Bear in mind, this is all without so much as a ‘hello’). In the end, Y/N ended up keeping the room she had claimed in the first place, much to Katherine’s displeasure.

Now just a bit less then halfway through the year, Y/N has an understandable dislike for Katherine and her annoying antics. Though, ever the pacifist, Y/N tries to avoid conflict whenever she can. Why waste her breath on an argument when she can just spend her time studying in the campus café? It was a somewhat nice little coffee shop, though Y/N couldn’t say she enjoyed the walk back to the dorm in the darkness of night. Something about it managed to creep her out just a little, though who was she going to complain to? It wasn’t as if she’d manage to make any actual friends over the course of the semester. Obviously, she had made acquaintances, like the girl who sits next to her in English that she’d lent a pen to a couple times, or the boy she passes a couple of times as she walks to and from her classes. But in the way of real friends, Y/N didn’t really have any at this school. Text and calls from friends back home still existed, she’d even managed a couple Skype chats, but nothing beat real, face-to-face, human interaction.

It was a Thursday night and Y/N, once again, found herself sitting in the cozy café, some generic jazz playing through the speaker above her. The only way she could describe it was as an off-brand Starbucks that the university really went all out for. It was just hipster enough to be considered ‘cool’ but not as popular to the point where the line was out the door. Y/N was sure the actual Starbucks down the road had something to do with that, but she had more important things to think about.

Like who was sitting in her usual seat?

It wasn’t as if she was a newcomer to this café and there were plenty of open booths and tables all over, so why did he have to be sitting there? Y/N was already annoyed with the fact that she’d frequented the shop so often that the staff knew her order by heart. So the fact that now she’d have to give up one of the only consistent things in her life she enjoyed didn’t please her very much. Though, Y/N wasn’t one for confrontation so, with a huff, she swung her bag down onto the booth directly next to the one she’d grown accustomed to.

Everyone who had known Y/N her whole life knew she was not unfamiliar with the act of being passive-aggressive, especially when she was already in a bad mood. Though she was usually quite considerate of others, considering the fact the boy sat in the booth behind her probably had no clue that was her usual seat and he was there to study, just like she was, Y/N couldn’t help but play the music she listens to as she studies a bit louder than usual. She couldn’t really tell you why this entire situation set her over the edge a little bit, maybe it was the fact she had just taken a test that she thinks she may not have been the most prepared for, or maybe it’s that she knew Katherine had already made a lot of friends considering the many get-togethers held at their shared dorm. But whatever the circumstances were, Y/N knew her intentions were probably in the wrong place.

These somewhat rational thoughts she seemed to be having all of a sudden came to a brief halt when she felt a presence next to her. Carefully, feeling all the courage from before leave her body, her eyes glanced up at who she now realized was the man who had been sat behind her.

“You do realize this is a café, right? Not your bedroom, so can you please turn your music down, for god sake.” The words shot from his mouth like darts as her mouth stumbled to find the correct words to piece together a halfway-eloquent response.

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Y/N spoke softly, reaching to click the volume down on her phone. Though this wasn’t the worst case scenario, he probably could’ve been a lot worse, she still just wanted to crawl into bed and watch Netflix until she fell asleep, but she had far too much studying to do for that. As much as she wished her mind was set on whatever ancient texts her English teacher wanted her to read now, Y/N had something much more interesting on her mind. Like how the boy speaking to her had really pretty eyes, even in the dim light of the coffee shop, or the tattoos poking out from under his shirt sleeve. Though Y/N was mature enough to know this would probably be their only interaction and pushing him out of her mind as soon as possible would be the smartest idea, something about him made her want to know more.

Y/N was pulled out of her trance as the man opened his mouth to speak again. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you ‘t’s not nice to stare, moppet?” She could feel the heat rising to her cheeks as a small smirk danced on his lips, that she now noticed were a lovely shade of pink. Once again, Y/N was at a loss for words, only finding herself being able to nod like a child who was just scolded by a parent. “I-um- yes, sorry.”

A breathy laugh slipped past his lips as he raised an eyebrow down at the girl sat so stiffly in the booth. “You sure do say sorry a lot, d’you know any other words?” He laughed sarcastically as he teased her. In any other situation, Y/N would’ve been fuming at this point, especially because she was already having an exhausting day. Though she couldn’t find the courage to be mad, instead, the only thing she could find was a rosy color slowly creeping onto her cheeks. Hoping that the dim light of the coffee shop would hide any actual evidence of her embarrassment, Y/N straightened herself up before clearing her throat. “Yes I do, and I would love to share my vocabulary with you, but I’m busy. So if you’d please go back to whatever you were doing so I can study in peace.” The girl forced out, hoping to sound more confident than she actually did.

Y/N soon found out whoever this guy was wasn’t going to be phased by her little show of courage. “Ooh, you’ve got a bit o’ a mouth on you, don’t you? I’d love to see what else you’ve got in store for me, but lucky fo’ you, I’ve also got some studying to do, but don’t think I’m gonna forget this-” He gestured between them, referring to their tense conversation. “-Au Revoir.” He spoke, his accent thick as he took his seat back in the booth behind her. Y/N was a bit stunned, to say the least, over what had just happened. Tiredly she ran a hand through her hair, trying to find the concentration she previously possessed as her focus moved back onto the laptop in front of her.

Y/N made her way back to the dorm, the autumn air nipping at her skin. Much to her dismay, she realized it was time to start wearing a jacket as she shivered slightly, her feet padding along the sidewalk. Part of Y/N had forgotten about Katherine’s very existence as her mind was so focused on the eventful conversation she’d just had. She couldn’t help but be filled with dread as the realization kicked in that whatever that interaction was between her and the guy was probably just a one-time thing and the rest of her time at university would be spent with Katherine’s constant whining and not whatever-his-name-was’s quick wit. As she opened the door the apartment as quietly as she could, hoping Katherine might be in her room and not even notice that Y/N had returned. Unfortunately, Katherine was sat on the couch, watching some show Y/N definitely didn’t have time for.

“Oh, you’re back.” The ginger spat, turning back to Y/N for merely half a second before focusing her attention back to the television. This wasn’t unlike Katherine in any way, in fact, this was probably a nicer side to her than Y/N was used to, usually she hardly acknowledged her. With a quick nod, not wanting to engage in any sort of conversation, Y/N found herself slipping past the roommates spot on the couch and into her own room. Thankfully, Katherine didn’t care enough about her to stop and ask about her night, one of the few perks of despising your roommate is that they don’t care what you get up to, Y/N decided.

With a flick of her finger, the small ceiling light illuminated the room, one of the few places Y/N actually felt at home in. It wasn’t big or anything, but it had everything she had back in her old room at home, a little bookshelf crammed full of every genre she could imagine (her Harry Potter collection took up quite a bit of room), while on the opposing side of the room her dresser stood with small pictures of her with friends or family sitting in frames. Nothing in the small dorm room would ever be as good as home was, but it was a start.

Quickly changing into clothes that could serve as pajamas, meaning an old tee shirt from her junior year of high school that was several sizes too big even then and some old gym shorts that she could never wear outside of the privacy of her own room.

As Y/N sunk down onto her bed, she began to finally collect the thought swarming in her brain.

1) What was that guy’s name?

2) Did she actually bomb that test that badly?

3) would she ever see him again?

4) When, if ever, would Katherine stop being her actual worst nightmare

As much as she wished she wasn’t, Y/N was focused on some of those questions more than others. Part of her wanted to find out his name, be able to get more a vibe from him if she knew his name, right? But then again what if the vibe from his name and his actual personality were polar opposites. Like what if his name was Eugene? Not that there was anything wrong with the name Euegne, but Y/N really couldn’t see someone that cool having a name like that.

Nonetheless, name or no name, Y/N knew there was something different about him, as much as she wished she didn’t.

#harry styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles smut #harry styles fanfic #one direction #one direction imagine #one direction smut #1d #1d imagine #1d smut #1d fanfic #one direction fan fic #my writing

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itsyaboisayori · 6 years

Text

Why I’m questioning Sayori

I said I’d make this post so here it is! Even got on my laptop to properly do the post :p I’m just kinda winging this but I’ll try to list out everything I can. If I forget stuff I’ll go back and edit it later so if you’re curious, keep watch! I’ll reblog any time I make edits, at least somewhat big ones.

Also, replies are welcome! I’m open to constructive criticism and anyone wanting to offer new viewpoints. I accept that I’m still learning and nothing is for sure yet. Also tbh anyone telling me I sound like I’m kin is validating as heck so if you’re thinking it then I’d appreciate you saying it ahaha, but please don’t lie to me because you think you know what I want to hear. I want the truth. I don’t want to be a confused mess ;n; And I know all/most of these could be COMPLETELY unrelated to being Sayori fictionkin, but I feel like they’re worth mentioning anyways. It’s more like, a bunch of little coincidences rather than big solid evidence, I’m aware of that and that’s a big reason why I’m questioning and not for-sure Sayorikin.

One thing I realized just a couple of days ago is how, since I was a kid I’ve had this like, ideal thing I guess? how do I put this into words lmao my brain is dumb,, I guess a fantasy, that I’d fall in love with a childhood friend, like someone I’m close with from a young age but strictly friends for a long time. I’ve always been in love with the idea of falling in love with your best friend. And of course that’s what happens to Sayori, due to her programming in DDLC. And if I’m kin with Sayori from other game(s) rather than just DDLC then it definitely could be something unrelated, just a coincidence.

I’m like, really drawn to DDLC?? Maybe just because DDLC is a great game and I love all the creepypasta type stuff behind it all, all the theories and dark shit, and also I think just as a cute dating sim it’d be great anyways (but nowhere near as great). But idk, when I saw it I immediately felt kinda drawn to it but maybe that’s just in my head or for some other reason like the characters look nice or smth.

Also it REALLY gives me feels. It makes me feel things in general. I rarely get genuinely scared from fictional stuff anymore but this game fucked me up. I’m still scared to play it on my own because, even after watching multiple youtubers play it multiple times, it still fucking scares me.

The Sayori suicide scene and her poem- especially the poem- really get to me. I saw people making hanging puns in the previous video before her death so it was kind of spoiled for me but even still, it got to me. And the scene where Sayori is freaking out because you deleted Monika before playing the game REALLY gets to me,, like I just understand that overwhelming, helpless feeling. Especially finding out why she acted that way, it’s so fucking hard to watch that scene and normally I’m not affected by this kind of stuff. So either DDLC is extremely good at psychological horror or I have some sort of connection to the scenarios, whether that be just that I’ve been through similar things and am projecting (not really that I remember though? idfk brains are weird) or ya know,,, I once lived as someone in DDLC or whatever.

(TW self harm/suicide/choking) Probably has no real correlation but when I have panic attacks/flashbacks (unrelated to DDLC I mean) I feel like I’m choking or like I can’t breathe. And when really frustrated I tend to choke myself? Sayori died from asphyxiation instead of her neck being broken, by accident because she used a stepping stool instead of something higher like a chair and jumping off. Btw I’m okay, I never actually choke myself to the point to causing permanent damage or anything, and of course I’m not saying this is like, okay or anything. I know it’s bad but I’ve done it completely on impulse, and this was all before learning DDLC even existed. I’m working on getting better and I’m not going to kill myself or anything, just thought I’d mention this.

I relate to her personality,,, so fucking much. Not just the whole pretending to be happy to make your friends happy thing, but how she is as a person besides her depression. Tbh I feel like a lot of people relate to her because of her depression and how she deals with it, but like she’s so much more than that. She pretends to be dumb but it actually pretty smart. Maybe she’s not the best with words but I think she’s a lot more intelligent than some people think. She’s so cheerful, maybe even annoying, and is kind of the class clown, and is a total weirdo sometimes but it’s GREAT and just,, same lmao. Like “looks like my boobs are getting bigger again >:D” is something I’d say lolol I just love Sayori so much, like idc if I’m kin with her or not she’s still fucking amazing.

Another reason I relate to her but probably is like not at all proof I’m Sayori or anything, just thought I’d mention anyways, but I was kinda like, really in love with my guy friend in high school for years, he’s actually kinda like MC in some ways, like he was kinda popular with girls but not like Popular(tm), super nice and couldn’t directly say no, but he knew I was in love with him (or at least knew I had a crush on him but he probably had no idea I liked him THAT much but hey neither did I for a long time lmao) and didn’t like me back and even started intentionally avoiding me. Like, he would make up an excuse to not give me a hug, like he was late for class, but hugs only take like a fucking second what the hell?? It sucked but like when the player turns down Sayori I Relate.

I just,,,,, want to hug Natsuki like she’s fucking adorable and I want to protect her the most bc she’s like a precious child and she’s obviously abused by her dad. Tbh Yuri is a little creepy and for some reason I don’t like her that much but I mean I’d still hug her. I don’t hate Monika, like it was just her programming to do all that stuff she did so I don’t blame her and she’s p cool and I’d hug her too tbh. When Sayori interacts with Natsuki it makes me feel all warm n fuzzy. Like I don’t think in my canon Sayori and Natsuki were dating or anything, I think I/Sayori am/was just really protective? Idk, thought I’d throw that out there.

I also heavily relate to wanting to be a mediator and wanting to help everyone get along and be happy. I often (try to) play that role in this life. I’m extremely empathetic, so that’s prob why, but I can’t stand when people are fighting or can’t see each other’s point of view. Though it also frustrates the FUCK out of me when people refuse to or just absolutely cannot see any point of view but their own. Maybe that’s not really a Sayori thing but ye

When I look at Sayori I get the same “that’s me!” feeling as when I see my kintypes. Who knows though, maybe in a month or two it’ll fade, we’ll see I guess. But right now it is Very Strong. Like I’ve somewhat questioned being fictionkin with other characters before but I’ve never had the “that’s me” feeling this strong with anyone else. Ruby from RWBY is a close second but I still think she’s just a kithtype.

I feel like having a past life or whatever as someone who was experimented on kinda makes sense?? Maybe I just enjoy horror a little too much but I really think if I am Sayori I’m kin with her like actual her not just the DDLC version of her. The new game hasn’t even been announced yet but I’m so excited, mostly because I feel like I want to learn more about my possible past life I guess. I wanna see if things in the second game connect with me or if it’s just DDLC. But I feel like, if I’ve had any past lives as any humans, they were probably really dark or smth. I kinda have a dark mind I guess and that would just make sense to me lmao, like I’m 21 why haven’t I grown out of my edgy phase, why the fuck am I still really into creepypasta? Damn.

I’ve been kinda obsessed with DDLC lately. I have BPD so it could totally just be a BPD obsession thing and maybe this obsession will fade and someday I won’t care too much about DDLC, only time will tell. Also I’ve had the song Your Reality stuck in my head for a week straight but it may just be a catchy song and I tend to have a song that kinda automatically starts playing in my head occasionally, usually lately it’s been Sad Machine by Porter Robinson (good song btw highly recommend)

Most likely unrelated but Sayori’s hair has been described as “strawberry blonde” on one wiki and my hair is like, light brown but reddish, though it looks more like Monika’s hair, especially because I keep my hair long. I’ve been kinda wanting to cut it but I like having long hair tbh and I feel like a lot of ppl don’t want me to cut my hair haha, though I really wanna get a short wig and maybe wear that occasionally (esp bc I’m non binary and wanna pass as more boyish sometimes, I know society will never accept me as nb bleh but anyways). Though, it’s been said that the reason her hair is short is because it’s easier for her to deal with, but I’m not 100% sure if that’s canon. Though I guess it doesn’t matter much? cuz multiverse stuff n all but, still.

Speaking of her appearance, she seems to not care too much about how she looks, which I relate to haha, especially because of depression n stuff. I mean I have Crippling Social Anxiety(tm) so I do care to an extent but usually I’m like, if someone likes me they’ll like me for who I am not how I look anyways. I don’t feel the need to dress super proper to impress anyone in casual social situations, like making friends or even going on dates (though I’ve only been on a real date like a few times and they were with my gf who I’d already been dating online for a while). And yeah a big reason she’s so careless about her appearance is depression but I think if I wasn’t depressed and she wasn’t depressed we’d still both have that mentality like, we don’t need to impress anyone with our appearance so it’s better to just dress how you want, whatever way makes you feel comfortable and happy with yourself and your body, than focus on being proper and stuff.

Maybe I’m just projecting but man I feel like a lot of stuff I do and my ways of thinking and stuff are very Sayori(tm). I feel like I am so much like her, like she’s so me. Though of course, maybe my reason for being kin with her is purely psychological. Maybe I “became” her after seeing DDLC. Maybe I am her because I relate to her so much. But again, only time will tell. If I still feel like I identify as her (which, currently, I most definitely do) in a couple of months or so, then I guess I’ll start calling myself fictionkin. Idk.

#dc #tw suicide ment #self harm ment #ficitonkin #kin #ddlckin #ddlc kin #sayorikin #sayori kin #ddlc fictionkin #doki doki kin #doki doki literature club kin #hey uh I'm open to suggestions/comments/etc as long as you're not like here to tell me I'm stupid for thinking I'm fictionkin or some shit #thanks #questioning kin #questioning fictionkin #I appreciate help and advice guys

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confessionsofaloudmouth · 4 years

Text

The Half of It; a blog post by Chelbey Trump

Okay, so I kinda fell off the face of the Earth for the past 2 months. I was so dedicated to uploading on here, but then I felt it was disrespectful to post my own work directly after the death of George Floyd. I spent a few weeks educating myself by watching various documentaries and signing a ton of petitions. Of course, that didn’t take up all of my time. I read a lot, got a killer tan, and basically just procstatinated the idea of uploading on here.

But, today I have sparked inspiration! I am going to write about The Half of It, a Netflix original movie, directed by Alice Wu, and starring Leah Lewis. The movie was released on May 1, 2020 and has a 97% rate on Rotten Tomatoes.

Characters:

Ellie Chu; I saw so much of myself in this character, yet felt so much different than her. Like Ellie, I am witty and snarky and, yes, sometimes a bit of a smart aleck. On the other hand, Ellie was much more quiet than I, her family situation was unique, and I have never made money off of writing papers for other students. Ellie was the perfect main character for my favorite genre of a movie. She had the mindset of getting out of the small town, of wanting more from like. To me, she was very similar to Charlie from Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is my all-time favorite movie. She’s on the outside of everything, looking in, until a sudden move makes her the center of everyone important’s attention. I was worried she would live up to the generic, slightly rude Asian stereotype that so many movies choose to enhance. However, while her heritage played an important role in the relationship she had with her father, it didn’t take up the entire storyline. Yes, it painted realistic obstacles of being made fun of in high school and being different in the whitewashed small-town. Yet, again, it wasn’t all about how she was different because of her race. I think it’s important movies do that in order to highlight the struggle of POC in America, however, I think we’re all sick of POC main characters only getting a storyline that stems out of their race. Moving on, I loved Ellie. Her character arch was so delightful to witness: We watch her literally come of age, accept her sexuality and embrace the love she feels for someone else. I love seeing women become confident and happy with what they already have in themselves.

Paul Munsky; I think you all know I’m about to say he is the cutest character ever. Like, ever, in the history of...ever. Another storyline we always get is the POC sidekick best friend who provides the humor and never gets a deeper connection with the audience. However, Paul was a straight, white man and the story didn’t revolve around him! How delightful. Paul had his own subplot which I think balanced well with Ellie’s. I believe that it was testament to the whole, “You never know what someone’s going through.” It also provided the support reflected from Ellie that extended from just writing letters for Paul. His sausage storyline is super cute and it compliments well with his football player demeanor: He has poor communication skills, and he only knows how to make sausage because he helps work for the family business. However, hes bored with that life, so, as hes trying to literally spice up the sausage, he wants Ellie to spice his life up with a love letter to Astrid. In the end, Ellie helps him learn to be more of an individual than just another football player. I don’t the fact that he ended up falling for Ellie, however, I can see why he did. She was a light in his boring darkness, saved him from carbon copies. She saw the very best in him. How could you not fall for someone who helps you love yourself?

Aster Flores; I love, love, love, love, love Aster. She was the perfect mixture of girl-next-door turned art-nerd-you-never-expected. She wasn’t the weird, quirky, “I’m not like other girls,” stereotype. She sacrificed her personality for the sake of pleasing other people. She kept her own feelings, sexuality, inside in order to satisfy the people who looked to her for guidance, which was, conveniently, popular blondes and her own ‘boyfriend.’ Her dynamic with Ellie was beautifully tragic. I wanted them to fall in love so badly, yet I was perfectly okay with them simply being best friend. Yet, i guess, in a way, aren’t those sometimes the same thing? A best friend and a lover? Maybe Ellie was wrong in saying there was no perfect person for everyone... Overall, i want to see more of Aster. She didn’t really step out of her cocoon until the movie was ending. I want to see her in art school, flourishing both in grades and, ya know, sexuality. She told Ellie she had to find herself, and I want to see that happen. Sequel title: The Whole Thing. Idk, to me, that’s perfect.

Honorable Mentions; Mrs. Geselschap was on-point for the common, small-town English teacher. I always form deep connections to my English teacher, for obvious reasons, and I felt that connection with this character. Trig Carson was annoying and I hate him. His character was good, yeah, it paid omen to the gross, rude, homophobic, racist, jocks that attend every American public high school. That’s why I hate him... Mr. Chu was deeply symbolic for Ellie, but also just a comedic relief for the audience. The moments he was asleep, or talking during the movies, I saw the lovely dynamic of a broken, yet still close family that doesn’t really get displayed on television. Its possible to be missing a parent and still be a well-functioning citizen. Finally, Mr. Chu made me cry a lot at the end, so he gets extra brownie points.

Settings:

I was reminded so much of my little hometown, with the football games being the biggest moment of every fall, the cornfields stretching far and wide, and the usual, broken-down pickup trucks. I loved the detail of Ellie’s father operating the train system, which Ellie ultimately took over for him. That small detail was symbolic for Ellie, showing her that there was a way out and that she didn’t have to settle in Squahamish just because of her dad. In the end, the trains she directed ended up taking her out of town. The small-town aspect also let us feel closer and more deeply connected to the characters. They were exactly like every teenager around them, but tiny little aspects which made them unique- their love for art, their sexuality- made them stand out and gave their story more prevalence and relevance. All good coming of age movies rely on a geographically convenient setting, and this one worked very well.

Plot Lines:

Ellie vs. Other Students; Ellie didn’t care when they made fun of her. She wasn’t afraid of their bullying or even offended by it. She simply turned her cheek and literally helped them all by writing their papers for real cheap. She outshined all of the other students with her educational and musical abilities, yet she never once stood up to them or let that light do it’s thing. She stayed behind the line, opting to play her piano at the talent show. However, when those bullies broke the piano to embarrass her, Paul swooped in with a guitar and forced her to do her thing. Without even wanting to, Ellie showed them all up. She needed to do this, to cross the line without a big, grand gesture to fully become herself. Additionally, I loved that Ellie wasn’t even hateful towards Paul, who was seeking after the girl Ellie was in love with. She stuck to her devices, never wanting to hurt others or outsmart them by actually trying. It made who she ended up being a complete shock, yet it was comfortable, because they sneakily morphed her throughout the movie.

Family Dynamic; Paul was expected to stay small-minded by his own family. They didn’t care if he went above and beyond because they never pushed him to even do so. Paul wasn’t encouraged to do that well in school or social settings. He had a fate, which would be taking over the family business. Maybe that is what he ends up doing, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Ellie’s dynamic was similar, however, with her mother dead, she ultimately took over the paternal position while still a high school student. I felt angry with her father for not being strong enough to be a proper father- and, yes, mother- figure for Ellie. In the end, he found his way again. I liked, though, that Ellie was able to go on without her mother there. Her mother meant a lot to her, but her world didn’t fall apart without her. She carried her sadness as motivation to make her mother proud.

Homophobia; I know I was not the only one shocked by Paul’s declaration that Ellie was going to hell when she admitted to him that she was gay. I think this was obviously upsetting, but it was a true testament to a small-town, driven and united by religion. It showed that, though Ellie knew Paul well and they were really good friends, Paul’s religious ‘morals’ were beyond any relationship he might had formed. In the end, I was happy that he accepted her for who was she was. Homophobia is not excused by any god, including my own. It is with love that we begin to truly wash out sin and Paul was able to understand that. I felt sad that Aster was driven into the closet somewhat by the unspoken homophobia obviously laying in wait in the town. However, I do understand that she also didn’t want to come out because she didn’t really know herself, either. There was a nice balance of reality and self-assurance here.

Quote Corner:

“Love is being willing to ruin your good perfect for the chance at a great one.” (The entire scene where Aster and Ellie exchange paintings on the side of a building added 3 years to my lifespan, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m serious, I’ll cry.)

“How you could live in an ocean of her thoughts.”

“I’m like a lot of people which kind of makes me no one.”

B-Sides:

These were the songs which touched my music soul the most;

Overall Rating: 4.75/5

Literally the only reason I took off .25 points is because this wasn’t one of those movies I could watch again and again. Of course, I’m going to watch at least five more times within the next year. However, I only know 2 movies I can watch again and again: Tangled and Bohemian Rhapsody. Even then, I get bored after awhile. This movie was in my favorite genre and it satisfied every single detail required to successfully tackle that specific trope. It wasn’t cringey, though movies in this genre tend to be, and the characters were spot on without being annoyingly so. I want to see more of all of them and I’m hoping Netflix would consider a sequel. We shall see, friends.

Next time I decide to actually put effort into something other than a book or swimming, I want to discuss a classic: Mystic Pizza.

In the meantime, here is a Google Doc containing various petition links: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj7wKips77qAhXYlnIEHZiuCBsQFjAAegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fdocument%2Fu%2F0%2Fd%2F1wtawPIxNuYuYlPTIBMxPe6jmaMSN7aH0pJO5x7cy4nc%2Fmobilebasic&usg=AOvVaw3MAVKPgC70UwkdV2rH2PlN

#the half of it #ellie chu #netflix original #netflix #the half of it netflix #netflix the half of it #the half of it review #netflix review #paul munsky #aster flores #movie review #movie reviews #review #reviews #blog post #blogger #bloggin #book blog #movie blog

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paladinsheadcanons · 7 years

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paladins college au?

*puts on sunglasses* LET’S DO THIS. Also, @mal-dambra. -Mod Inara (by the way, I don’t actually know how colleges work exactly and had to google a lot of this stuff, so some info might be inaccurate)

Makoa: The old professor teaching Marine Biology. He owns a massive saltwater aquarium at home. He often takes his students to the local Marine Life Rescue Organization, where a green turtle he personally rescued years ago currently lives. Makoa is well-known as one of the wisest and most knowledgable professors on campus, and most of his students don’t have a problem seeking him for advice for their studies. All the students do need to know one special rule though, Don’t ever challenge Professor Makoa when he’s angry.

Fernando: A former Fine Arts student himself, Fernando now works as an artist’s model at his former university. He doesn’t mind holding some really extravagant poses for long periods of time, and he loves chatting with the artists (when they feel comfortable with it). He sometimes flirts with his fellow artist models for fun. He cosplays during his free time, and he makes all his own armor and props. Also takes up salsa dancing.

Ruckus: Real name Russel. Dropped out of a geology major to get into Robotic Engineering. He’s a really eccentric person, and honestly a huge Sci-Fi geek. His dormmate and partner for the majority of his projects is a reserved dude named Bart. They nicknamed each other Ruckus and Bolt respectively, Ruckus due to his tendency to be loud-mouthed, and Bolt with his immense interests in electrical systems. They argue a lot, but are surprisingly close friends.

Barik: Head of the Engineering department, and a professor specifically for the Mechanical Engineering branch. His personal inventions and projects are often made to help those with disabilities and such, his motivation being his own struggles as a little person. Absolutely no one can deny his genius when it comes to how the stuff works, and he’s won a few awards for it but wants to continue teaching so that hopefully, he would be able to directly encourage more people to do the same with their inventions. He’s rather brash and really direct with both his praise and critiques, but is overall a pretty fun person to be around.

Ash: A Sports Management student, she takes every aspect of her studies very seriously. She’s pretty popular and known to be a strong leader figure in general. She’s also the president of the university’s rugby (For Americans: football) team, which is somewhat ironic to those who know her personally, as she’s someone who likes her personal space, a lot. She’s not huge on social events, but does enjoy the vacation/celebration parties her friends and teammates like to organize, provided they aren’t too wild. There’s a rumour going around that basically anyone attracted to girls has a crush on her. @Mod Ash :3

Torvald: The elderly head librarian at the university, and everyone affectionately calls him Grandpa Torvald. He is very healthy and energetic for his age, and loves chatting with the students and staff if they need any help finding material for their projects. He has a side interest in inventing things, and hangs out with Barik a lot. He gets extremely excited when one of his own inventions, no matter how “insignificant” it is.

Inara: One of the most well-known professors on campus, Inara teaches in Environmental Studies and always encourages her students to be mindful of nature. She has a few rock gardens at home, and collects stones and fossils as a hobby, with enough knowledge of it to help out students and even fellow professors in the Geology departments. She volunteers at an environmental organization called Mother Earth’s Grace frequently. Occasionally, students come to her to talk about personal troubles, and she would always take the time to listen and try to give them advice.

Drogoz: A Herpetology student struggling with student loans. A lot of people accuse him of being greedy and hoarding his money, but in reality he just wants to save up enough as soon as possible to get out of those college debts. (SAVE HIM.) Is a huge nerd when it comes to anything related to dragons, and in spite of his financial state he has a pet bearded dragon he named Pogoz. He loves the little guy, and would punch anyone who makes fun of his little dragon.

Bomb King: A Chemical Engineering student who simply goes by B.K, he was suspended at least twice for his more…explosive projects during classes. He’s often called a pyromaniac by his peers, but he doesn’t particularly care. He does actually take safety very seriously, so he knows his little experiments won’t actually harm anyone, and in reality most of his professors know this too. It’s just that he tends to cause a lot of disruptions.

Cassie: First year student in a Zoology. She loves animals, especially birds, and keeps her pet Greenwing Macaw, Zigs, in her dorm room (it’s technically not allowed, but Zigs is very well-behaved and her roommate Kinessa doesn’t mind all that much). She’s a rich kid who’s friendly to everyone and loves parties, especially those on the beach. She sometimes adopts a stereotypical valley-girl accent to mess with people as a joke, or when she wants to annoy someone who makes fun of her.

Lian: Another rich kid, but with attitude. Her family has very high expectations of her, and she takes those expectations to heart. She’s aiming for a degree in International Relations and takes her studies very, very seriously. She tends to be bossy and demanding in group projects, which results in her not being very well-liked in her classes. However she’s the president of the debate club as well as vice president of the shooting club (with air rifles mind y’all) and is well-respected for her skills in those departments. She has a reputation to uphold, but her guilty pleasure is watching random Japanese anime, and her favourite characters are often the noble girls with the obnoxious laugh.

Kinessa: Cassie’s roommate and a Business student, but she doesn’t actually give much thought to her studies. Was held back in high school due to a few disciplinary issues, thus about two years older than Cassie despite them both being first years. She has an interest in firearms and is the president of the shooting club. She likes watching movies of military stories, and has at one point considered joining the army herself, but decided against it, mostly due to her uncle, Strix.

Sha Lin: The resident playboy who doesn’t actually date anyone, and a student majoring in World History. He enjoys learning for the most part, but there are certain classes which put him to sleep. He’s also that person who refuses to sleep early and regrets it the next morning, as he is in no way a morning person. He survives on coffee and energy drinks. He absolutely hates exams with every fibre of his being but does study a lot for them. He’s in the archery club and considered to be one of their best, but has refused the position of leadership. Has plans to travel the world and visit major historical places of interest someday.

Viktor: He’d hoped to attend college in his youth, but was unable to, and ended up in the army forces. Now a retired soldier, he has decided to pursue a degree in Government Studies despite knowing how challenging the whole thing would be, especially as a much older student compared to his peers. However, he plans to take the lessons he learned during his time in the army and apply them to his studies, and has no intention of backing out regardless.

Tyra: A Archaeology student who absolutely loves the outdoors and exploring new places. Part of the reason she decided to pursue such a degree was due to the hopes of one day exploring new places with challenging terrain. She is also a well-trained survivalist, and thoroughly enjoys hiking and camping, especially in mountainous areas. It’s a well-known rumour that she fought a bear and won, which was how she got that bear skin she hung on the wall of her dorm room, but in reality she just bought the fake skin off a random pawn shop one day cuz she thought it was cool.

Willo: Everyone thinks she’s not supposed to be there cuz she’s too young. She’s actually a child prodigy, and is among the top of her classes. She’s pursuing a degree in Botany and dreams of one day founding a botanical garden and being able to take care of all the flowers growing there. She’s a bit of a prankster, and usually gets away with her pranks by playing the “just a kid” card. This evil prick.

Evie: Currently putting off going to college for the time being and enjoying some time out of high school. She does visit her local university frequently, mostly for the crazy-good ice cream cafe they had there, but she does wonder if there would be something she’d like to study there.

Skye: She’s one of the most notable students in Fashion Design, as well as a pretty notorious student on her own. She’s a little older than most of the other studies, as she took a few years off to work before attending college, and she likes flirting with many of the other students and even the staff, provided they were within her own age range. She has some interest in chemistry and botany, and some say that she once used that knowledge to poison someone who did something bad to her. This rumour was actually true, except that the “poison” was actually just terrible coffee and the guy was just being overly-dramatic.

Androxus: Dropped out of college halfway through his second year, but a few years later returned to work there as a night guard, considering he already knew the place well and knew his way around a fight. He’s very quiet and the other guards are wary of him, but he doesn’t intend to bother them as long as they don’t bother him.

Buck: He’s a yoga instructor in an on-campus fitness centre. He’s a lot louder than most people would expect, but he knows how to be patient with his students and colleagues. He’s a fairly religious Buddhist, and was allowed to set up a small shrine in the studio, which he prays at for prosperity everyday.

Maeve: Hasn’t started college yet, due to a really bad financial situation and being homeless. She isn’t really sure she even wants to get into college though, as she doesn’t particularly see any fulfilling futures for herself just yet. She hasn’t given up on the idea yet though.

Zhin: A really notorious problem student, with a small band of delinquents at his side. He doesn’t really do anything particularly serious, but definitely has a severe attitude problem with every one of his professors and many of his classmates. He’s technically a student in International Relations along with Lian, but he hardly shows up to classes. Has been threatened with expulsion several times, but he doesn’t care much.

Lex: He has dreamed of becoming a police officer as a kid, but eventually decided to pursue a degree in Law and become a court prosecutor, feeling that it would be more fulfilling to do so. He’s a really serious student, and actively tries his best to participate wholeheartedly in every class. He’s a bit of a sci-fi nerd when he isn’t studying, and has a thing for surfing.

Mal’Damba: That one creepy Medical Science professor with a ton of wild rumours surrounding him, one of the most well-known rumours being him secretly being possessed by some evil demonic spirit. Students staying late in any of the school of medicine’s buildings literally pray they don’t run into him at night. In truth Mal’Damba is just super skinny due to a mild metabolism issue and doesn’t get a lot of sleep thanks to his pet snakes being noisy jerks at night (he won’t move them from his room though, he loves them too much despite everything). He runs on several cups of coffee everyday. Someone save this man.

Pip: An overly-enthusiastic Chemical Engineering student, a year below B.K. He’s easily fascinated with chemical reactions in general and always asks a ton of questions. Some of his professors have literally had to ask him to give them a break from answering his questions. He likes studying a little more than most, and likes to work on pretty much all of his projects as soon as possible. Whenever he has any problems he either seeks out his professors or tries to find them in the library. Luckily for him, Torvald loves excitable students like him. Pip has a little fennec fox plushie he cuddles to sleep, which helps him deal with being away from home.

Grover: The head caretaker of the campus greenhouse and gardens. He’s a very quiet and gentle person, and is often visited by Inara, Willo, and Grohk. Whenever students have classes while he was caring for the plants, he likes to teach them a few more trivial details about the plants, or maybe tell the students some interesting experiences he has had in the gardens, such as the time he fell asleep under one of the larger trees and was awoken when a chick fell from the tree onto his lap.

Grohk: A student in Environmental Science, Grohk has a love of nature almost rivalling that of Inara. He loves to visit gardens, and has a particular fondness of thunderstorms. He volunteers at Mother Earth’s Grace along with his professor Inara, though not as often. He sometimes struggles in classes due to a minor speech problem, but other than that he’s pretty happy with his college life so far. That being said, he tends to stress out quite a bit when his projects’ deadlines and exams start coming up.

Seris: She’s the head nurse at the infirmary located in the school of medicine. She’s a very quiet and mysterious person, who pretty much only ever spoke when necessary. Some people are scared of being treated by her as she is visually impaired, but Seris has never made a mistake with her treatments in the infirmary, especially when her assistant Ying is there to help.

Ying: A recent Medical Science graduate, Ying is currently an intern assistant nurse at the infirmary at her former school. She’s still new, but has a lot of fun helping the patients. She also enjoys working with Seris and has a lot of respect for her. Ying is very outgoing and friendly, and when she’s not working at the infirmary she’s out volunteering at an orphanage. She carries around a small antique mirror everywhere, which she considers to be her lucky charm.

Jenos: A professor in Astronomy & Space Sciences, he’s kinda that professor that gets on everyone’s nerves due his more arrogant side. He’s good at what he does when he teaches, and is fair with his grading, though he has a bad habit of making dumb comments about his students or colleagues to their faces. He genuinely enjoys his work though, finding joy in thinking about the mysteries of space and the stars. He likes to go stargazing on his own every now and again.

Strix: Kinessa’s uncle, and an old friend of Viktor’s from their shared time in the army. Unlike Viktor, he chose a simpler life after the military, and instead crafts small trinkets to sell. He does visit the college often though, sometimes to visit Viktor, sometimes to check in on Kinessa as he lives closest to the institute within their family. Kinessa and him don’t particularly get along due to a serious disagreement regarding Kinessa’s initial plan to become a soldier at one point.

#all champions #paladins #paladins champions of the realm #paladins headcanons #long post #college au #i got a little carried away #but it was fun

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liskantope · 7 years

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My reaction to 13 Reasons Why

I recently finished the controversial Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, partly because I wanted to understand the controversy myself, and partly because several people highly recommended it. Here are my main thoughts. Spoilers and content warnings for the obvious heavy issues (see tags) under the cut.

To start with, this series was well-done, well-acted, and really gripping at least once it got into its stride. I also found that it was deeply moving and conveyed really positive messages in certain places. As well as the expected suicide scene (which was longer and more graphic than I expected), there’s a rape scene near the end which I found very upsetting and uncomfortable to watch, so I would hate to think how someone whose life experiences are closer to Hannah’s might react. I guess my point is that the content warnings should really be taken seriously.

One thing this series is not is gritty. The darkly glamorized high school aesthetic strikes me as unrealistic and annoyed me a lot earlier on. Maybe part of my annoyance originates in my not having had the typical high school experience, at least the way it’s depicted in most media (I feel similarly about That 70′s Show, which displays a lighter version of this subculture). But even granting that partying, drinking, and sex are so ubiquitous in the high school environment and that pretty much everyone is super good-looking in high school, are most teenagers really go around with that kind of verbally quick-witted confidence? Do most parents respond to their sarcasm not with anger but with an equal degree of casual sass? Are most parents so lackadaisical about their teenagers going out to parties at unknown houses (”why not take a break and relax?”). The events that take place at parties in this show are sort of an argument against that kind of laxity, I think, but they’re not pushed as such. And a lot of the dialog felt basically like an un-nuanced depiction of how adults imagine today’s teenagers to talk: for instance, I remember the perjorative term “pussy” being popular among guys who liked to put down other guys, but not nearly so ubiquitous in conversation. Also, I’ve never had the impression that so much slut-shaming comes directly from guys rather than from other girls, but I could be wrong.

Most of all, I was bothered for the first two-thirds of the series by Hannah’s self-assured articulateness and apparent confidence which seemed to be with her at almost all times. My impression is that such characteristics, along with flawless good looks, tend to make for a lot of popularity, with the main forms of bullying stemming from jealousy (which is not the way Hannah’s bullying was depicted). It was hard for me to swallow the fact that Hannah wasn’t a total hotshot despite clearly having the looks and the social skills to be one, and it felt like a bit of a stretch to me that the slightest things caused negative rumors against her that were taken quite so seriously. But it may well be that these events are quite realistic and that high schoolers are even dumber and crueler than I realize.

There were of course some plot points that seemed unrealistic. To name a couple, it seems like relatively little was made of Clay basically having to watch his friend Jeff die (his parents are wondering why he’s acting strange, and this is never even brought up as a recent traumatizing incident!); and it seems strange that Hannah’s parents, anxious to get their hands onto any clue behind Hannah’s suicide, weren’t immediately on the hunt for the tapes that Hannah had wanted for her “stupid” school project.

A couple more stray notes:

I’m always pleased to see depictions of a couple like Hannah’s parents, who obviously had a lot of disagreements both before and after the horrific event of their daughter’s suicide and still manage to stick it out together.

The plot event at the end that sets it up for a second season doesn’t particularly intrigue me. This just doesn’t feel like the kind of story which should be followed with a sequel.

And finally, the big controversy about the potential dangers of this series. The issue in a nutshell is that a lot of people worry about the content of this show encouraging suicide among viewers, especially teens. My first response to this is going to be mostly tautologically obvious: 13 Reasons definitely will have a harmful effect on some teenagers for the reasons I’m about to discuss, while it will also have a helpful effect on others because of some very positive and helpful messages it preaches. I wouldn’t be able to offer much insight on which people might react how because I don’t have enough experience dealing with high schoolers who are struggling with these issues. (For what it’s worth, one of the glowing recommendations for this show came from a friend of mine who worked/volunteered for years helping teens at suicide crisis centers.)

On a basic level, some are criticizing the show for “glamorizing” suicide. Although the writers were clearly well-intentioned and went out of their way to show that suicide is not “worthwhile”, I think I understand exactly what these critics mean. Disclaimer: I am not suicidal and have never been seriously suicidal for any extended period. Yet watching the show made even me feel a sliver of attraction to it in the abstract due to the glamorous way it’s done (leaving 13 well-spoken messages), in a similar way to how watching a James Bond movie might give me a momentary desire to be a gun-slinging badass even though I hate guns, or how Breaking Bad made me idly fantasize for a moment about running a drug empire. So I do worry about the wrong person consuming it at the wrong time.

But the suggestion that makes me raise my eyebrows a little more is the deeper idea that 13 Reasons encourages suicide by providing a close-up shot of a lot of horrible things that happen to one teenage girl (mainly to do with sexual harassment, assault and rape) and how it drives her to kill herself -- as in, maybe this might weaken the resolve of a real-life teenage girl who is going through similar things. And it’s not as though there isn’t a point to that. Because yes, the story depicts rising above the trauma of being harassed/assaulted/raped and bringing the perpetrator(s) to justice (Jessica says something like “You know what happens to girls who go for help”) as pretty hopeless. The story pretty much implies the message that these things happen to women all the time and that the result is necessarily life-shattering trauma that can’t possibly be overcome except in the vastly unlikely circumstance that someone is actually willing to listen without saying anything that could be perceived as judgmental. And it pretty much implies (although I don’t think the writers quite intended this) that it’s perfectly natural for a girl in a severe enough situation of this kind to be driven to kill herself. Rape is presented as pretty much the worst thing that can happen to someone apart from death, and possibly even worse than death.

The interesting thing is, I get the impression that a lot of this criticism comes from the same kind of people who, in the name of feminism, present rape and its milder variants as necessarily a life-shatteringly traumatic thing for which it’s virtually impossible to pursue justice. Such people must surely realize that to some extent, in order to raise awareness and opposition to horrific crimes, we need to deliver a message about just how awful it is to suffer them and how helpless victims or potential victims can feel and that it’s okay to feel that way. But at a certain point, too much of this narrative just might become needlessly disempowering for victims or potential victims.

So where do we draw the line? It seems that depicting a victim actually committing suicide goes over the line for these people, but is it really so much less damaging to constantly push a narrative implying that rape is absolutely always so thoroughly dehumanizing and second-only-to-death that fear of it has to be the main day-to-day existential concern for women everywhere? Isn’t it possible that such a narrative might push some rape victims over the edge to suicide even when nobody’s actually saying “a rape victim might reasonably want to kill herself”? It’s something that I wish more people would think about. Because I’m not saying that I know where that line is, but I don’t think it should be assumed hands-down that telling women how helpless and fragile they are in the face of sexual violence is completely justified exactly until suicide is (somewhat) sympathetically depicted as a response.

#13 reasons why #13 reasons why spoilers #suicide cw #rape cw #That 70's Show #feminism

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nedcanquen · 7 years

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Chapter 4: Mr 7th Floor

Tags: Slow Burn (like…really slow burn) - endgame is NedCan but they don’t get there directly, Single POV, Yep, Canada will date other people before endgame because he’s very desirable even if he doesn’t always know it, Audit firm AU, Office AU, some angst.

Pairings: NedCan (endgame), NorCan, implied NedDen, DenNor (I can’t believe I missed this in the last update), implied Spamano, France/Jeanne d’Arc

Photo from Pexels/Skitterphoto

It’s in the opposite direction of his home but Matthew has to make a diversion to the cafe. It’s earlier than the last time he’d brought Emil there, so there’s a good after-work crowd. Matthew pulls the door open and feels his heart warming at the sight of children playing in their little fairytale corner and the smell of freshly baked goods and warm foods wafting in the air. This cafe is truly something, and Matthew notes a few high-school aged students running up and down as waiters, but still not enough to match how popular the place is.

“Can I help you?” Matthew turns to see one of these teenagers smiling at him. His eyes fell to her nameplate ‘Yuka’.

Maybe he hadn’t thought out the idea of thanking Mathias in person, especially considering how busy the place is, “Hi Yuka, I’d just like to leave a message for Mathias, if that’s alright,” It is likely a bad idea to bother Mathias in person. “I’d like to thank him for the maple syrup danishes.”

“Oh, so you’re the lucky taste tester for those. Okay, I’ll pass the message along. Your name…?”

“Matthew. Please also let him know that I...really appreciated them.”

The back door swings open and Mathias is carrying a tray of freshly baked goods, grinning and puffing with exertion. Yuka takes the tray and Mathias wipes his brow with his arm. His hair is a little messy but it doesn’t take away from his charm apparently, as his customers turn and greet him excitedly. Some of the children run up and Mathias greets them with bear hugs and has to bribe them with candy to get them to go back and play.

Matthew can’t help but smile and a short laugh escapes his lips. That’s when Mathias notices him and stiffens somewhat. He can’t really see the expression on Mathias’ face as he’s wearing a face mask for hygiene, since he’s baking the goods, “Hi Matthew! If you’d like more of those maple syrup ones you’ll have to put in a special order, I just made four.” Mathias says with forced levity as he pulls down his mask out of politeness.

“Oh please, don’t worry about it. I just wanted to come by and thank you in person. I think if you do add them to your menu, you’d have people lining up non-stop, all-year-round,” Matthew looked out at the loud and crowded cafe. “Not that you’re unpopular to begin with...”

“Yeah,” Mathias laughed ruefully. “I didn’t expect to be this popular this quickly, so my hiring plans, expansion plans and all have been sped up! I should probably do something like...hire an accountant, a manager and stuff but...anyway you’re not here to hear my business woes.”

“Do you need help?” Matthew didn’t know why he said that, considering the amount of work he already had. “I mean, I’m surrounded by accountants, and so technically, is Daan. You may be tired of PKDE people but it shouldn’t be too hard for me to reach out to other people from university and stuff who decided that the big firm route wasn’t for them. Some went freelance. That may help with the accounting. The floor manager and stuff well...I don’t know anything about that.”

Mathias looks at him incredulously, then laughs in earnest. “Ah...sure. That’d be nice. Just a first step to get a handle on the money so I can figure out where I want it to go, and preferably someone who doesn’t need much guidance and is trustworthy - the goes without saying I guess. Daan would be offended I didn’t ask him but he doesn’t get to complain because he’s hardly ever here. Speaking of, would you happen to know anyone who’s willing to babysit some rabbits too? We’d pay by this point.”

“Rabbits?!”

Mathias pulls out his phone and shows Matthew a picture of three particularly adorable rabbits - one as white as snow, another caramel colored and a black-colored one. Matthew didn’t hear the whine coming out of his mouth as his heart melted at the sight. “Oh my god…” He murmured, covering his mouth with his hands.

“Here, this is a video. I figure it won’t be hard to find someone who wants to take care of them, the problem is finding someone that they trust AND wouldn’t steal them.” Mathias added with glee and tapped on the screen. Someone was feeding the caramel one a baby carrot and Matthew couldn’t take his eyes away from the wiggling of that cute nose and munching little mouth greedily chewing on the carrot.

Matthew forced himself to close his eyes and shake his head. “They live here?”

“Hah! No.” Mathias replies. “The noise is a little too much for them, but the problem is, rabbits are social, they need people around, and these are not caged so someone would just need to drop in and make sure that their litter is clean, they’re fed on time, they’re not accidentally killing themselves, that kind of thing. I used to do that but now this place takes up all my time. Belle travels as much as Daan, Christian, uh, Daan’s baby bro? He works worse hours than Emil and Daan is so fucking picky with who gets to take care of his rabbits, he won’t even-”

“Those are Daan’s?!” Matthew almost yelled in shock. He doesn’t know why he’s so surprised but he can’t really process it at the moment.

Mathias gave an evil smirk. “Oh yeah, they’re not mine. I mean I suppose he tries to have this badass rep in the office, but who says an evil bastard can’t have pets? Frankly, I don’t think they need as much care as he thinks, they’re well trained, but you don’t know how much I’ve been chewed out already for not being with them as much as he wants, which is how taking care of them became something that involved more than three people! So I tell him, ‘you got pet rabbits and you’re the one who decided it was okay to fly everywhere’ and what does he do? Gets a new rabbit ‘oh they’re social! The third should make them happier!’ Damnit man that isn’t the point!”

Matthew’s jaw has dropped by now, trying to imagine these two adult men who look like posterboys for GQ magazine, having a spat over the proper care of pet bunnies. Trying to imagine Daan, the man who makes managers quake in their shoes, whom the other Partners call a miser, who stole projects from other directors on his way up, who flat out uses the word ‘stupid’ when evaluating work (and fine, maybe he isn’t wrong but doesn’t he know what positive reinforcement is?). Daan, the man who Michelle called a bond-villain lookalike, has three fucking adorable pet bunnies. Whom he fights with his boyfriend over. The third of which he bought because he didn’t want the first two to be lonely when he travelled. What world is this?

“Yeah, sorry, a little off topic, but out of all things, it’s the rabbits that are taking up a lot of my time now too, I run back at slow periods to check in on them! So I really ought to hire someone, but Daan will insist on a full background check and want to see how his bunnies interact with any newbie so it’s not like I can just hire anyone when he’s out of town, which is most the time. Just a little venting there, and a bit of revenge. Because someone at the firm now knows about his bunnies, and that’s one person he can’t intimidate.” Mathias grins smugly.

Matthew just stares back wordlessly.

“Don’t get me wrong! I do love them! It’s literally impossible to be down when they’re hopping all over you but…”

“They’re adorable.” Matthew breathes. “I’ll ask around for them too.”

Now it’s Mathias’ turn to look at Matthew wordlessly, a curious expression on his face that had rapidly changed from annoyed to remorseful. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck...you really are a nice guy aren’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Matthew shoots back, and what kind of people has Mathias been talking to that he shows them pictures of cute bunnies and they still behave like assholes?

“It’s a compliment! I meant it as a compliment. I,” A short laugh escapes him, “Forget about the rabbits, I really wanted to hate you. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m jealous though I have no right to be and...”

Matthew waits for him to continue, figuring that he’s not really thinking about what he’s saying, so it’s as honest as it’s going to get.

“Take care of him please,” Mathias finishes, a sad smile on his face. “Lukas. I know I don’t have any right to ask and he doesn’t belong to me or anything and heck, he’s more than capable of taking care of himself, but...you’re a nice guy, and I’ll be happy just knowing that Lukas has found what he’s looking for.”

The mood is heavy again. Somehow, Matthew walked into the cafe expecting this to come up but the rabbits and overall warmth of the place made him temporarily forget.

“I should get back to the kitchen. Thanks for dropping by Matthew.”

Saturday comes too quickly. Matthew makes sure he’s brought everything he needs for the hike, checking through his backpack one more time before messaging Lukas and heading to his car. It’s early enough that the sun hasn’t risen, and he’s scheduled to pick Lukas up from the apartment that he shares with Emil before they drive out to their chosen trail. It’s an hour’s drive out of the city and they want to be able to reach the end of the trail with plenty of sunlight and time to spare, because they’re going to be having a long talk at the waterfall they’re aiming for and they’ll need time to return to the car after that. It only occurs to Matthew now that they’re fairly optimistic about still wanting to spend that much time together after what’s said today, but he supposes that they’re not the explode-in-rage type. Besides, even if Matthew somehow finds himself angry, he’s not going to strand Lukas out there, it’s just not right.

The streets are quiet at this time of day and Matthew enjoys the quiet as he drives the familiar route. He and Lukas had been exchanging messages about today since the cafe incident. Matthew had taken a picture of the danishes and sent them to Lukas with a simple message “Delicious. Has Emil told you?” Maybe that was passive aggressive, but Matthew didn’t want to sound confrontational to the extreme either.

Oh God he is so bad at this.

Lukas responded with a simple “Yes.” Then sent Matthew a map of the chosen trail for the weekend. They only discussed their plans for today after that. When he arrives he finds Lukas waiting for him outside, tired and tense. Well that’s not what Matthew wants to see. He leans over to open the passenger door.

“Hey.” Matthew smiles in greeting. “You can nap on the way there if you want.”

Lukas seems to relax a little after that and smiles as well. “Doesn’t sound fair to leave you bored.”

Matthew looks at Lukas with the strange light of early morning resting on the pale planes of his face, and wonders how they ended up together in any capacity. “Thanks.”

Before he can start up the car, Lukas squeezes his wrist. “Wait, Matthew.”

Oh God were they doing this now?

“I just want to suggest that we enjoy the hike, no matter what words get said at the waterfall.”

Lukas’ voice is deep and calming, it has a trance-like effect sometimes, even when he’s agitated. Usually there’s a good amount of dry humor involved in speaking to Lukas as well, but that seems entirely absent now. Matthew reaches a hand over the squeeze the one on his wrist. “I agree.”

They don’t really talk on the drive, not in a continuous way to fill up the silence the way Matthew is used to having to deal with when he’s out winning clients or visiting his brother. But occasionally Lukas will see something and comment on it, something that Matthew can’t see because he’s driving and paying attention to the road, but he appreciates it all the same. It’s just enough to keep him awake but quiet enough that Matthew feels comfortable. Lukas and the promise of a hike has this effect on him - he can stew away for weeks with toxic thoughts that may or may not lessen when they meet up for simple dinners in the city, but together like this out here, Matthew almost remembers what it feels like to be at ease again. It’s this calm companionship that he appreciates but it’s probably nature gifting it to both of them. Nature gives enough to fill the world with wonder, and simultaneously provides a solitary challenge as well as a joint one.

They reach the trail and set out, just in time for day to begin creeping out over the land. It’s early enough that there’s barely anyone there and it feels like they have this national preserve all to themselves. Matthew breathes in the fresh air and feels it rejuvenating him after too much time sitting in offices with its recycled air systems, or walking through a city with the inevitable smell of car exhaust. He lets the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, birds and insects chirping and the many thousands of sounds of woodlife that he just can’t see, rush through him and calm him. It’s familiar and safe, in a way that most things in his life right now aren’t. He can still identify certain birds from their call as well as the names of some trees and plants that they pass by.

Matthew’s family loved the outdoors. In happier days, his fondest memories involved camping with his parents and warm nights by the fire. It’s something that his father’s other family shared with theirs, which meant that whenever he and Alfred got a little too frustrated with each other or their Dad, they’d pack up and disappear into a place like this. Even now, retreating out here to a place where there were no buildings in sight, where he knew how small he was, served as his sanctuary. It was amazing how it lifted him everytime he came back out here - the smell of plants and trees, the physical exertion of putting one foot in front of the other. How it felt to sit on the rough surface of a rock when they took a break, the comfort of feeling dirt in his hands, of how he had to pay attention to every part of his body. Before he met Lukas, Matthew had forgotten what returning to this sanctuary was like, and he was thankful that being with Lukas gave him a reason to make time for this in his life again. That was probably why they were still together in some ways. Matthew feared that coming out here alone would ruin this last sanctuary the way this thoughts at night had now ruined his bed.

They take their time, stopping quietly to observe the birds that alight and sing from the trees, to let animals walk past safely. It’s easy, it’s nice, it’s the kind of peace that Matthew knows he has to fight to have more of in his life. And isn’t it strange that it’s something that one has to fight for when one’s life is effortlessly overwhelming?

Hiking is a meditative experience - the deep breathing, focus on the body, walking in something that was obviously larger than yourself...than you’d ever be. Distantly he wonders if this is in anyway comparable to what Alfred feels on the job. Matthew remains aware of Lukas, and they’d reach out for each other to steady the other if one stumbled, or slow down if the other was getting tired, but for the most part they match each other’s pace. Occasionally they talk about the week, safe topics such as the books they’re hoping to read, if the other knows what kind of plant that is, or type of bird.

By the time they reach the waterfall, the tension that suffocated the air in the morning is gone. Even with the conversation to come, Matthew can’t summon the same level of nervousness as before and he’s grateful. They make themselves comfortable, set up a tarp overhead and dig out food and camp cooking gear from their packs. It’s not fancy - bread and crackers, cheese and tea with assorted nuts and dried fruit. Lukas gets the small camp burner going as well as the small kettle for the tea and they sit together with the waterfall ahead of them, but far enough that its roar is not overwhelming.

“Thanks for speaking to Emil.” Lukas starts.

Matthew shrugs. “I’m glad I did. It’s nice to see that so many people love him. You, Mathias and even Daan offered to speak to him. I guess that’s why he feels he needs to be more independent. He hasn’t quite figured out yet that having support doesn’t make one dependent.”

Lukas pours out the tea with a dry laugh. “I think the issue is that everyone you just mentioned was mostly on their own, well, except for Mathias, but he was an only child so in a way he was on his own. Daan’s parents weren’t married, they just lived together for a while and had children together, then went where life took them. Daan didn’t have much growing up but he’s always taken care of himself and his siblings. Daan and Belle have a similar mercenary self-reliant streak and Christian looks up to them, especially Daan, so I suspect he’ll have his own version of it. So...Emil looks at us and thinks that you have to be alone to grow up, and it’s not like I was much better at encouraging otherwise.”

Matthew nodded. “Are you sure you’re ready to talk about this? You look...” Unhappy was putting it mildly. It was the kind of unhappiness borne from trauma that one desperately tried to hide.

“You’re going to ask me about Mathias right?” Lukas responded.

“Among other things, if you’re ready to talk about it. I felt an urgency earlier this week but now that I know there’s more to consider here and it still affects you strongly...We can wait until you’re comfortable.”

Lukas let out a short laugh. “Matthew, no matter what happens after today, I’m going to be fond of you, so I’m going to speak to you about Mathias and these other things, and I’m going to ask you that no matter what the circumstance or what you feel about a person, that…” He reaches out and squeezes Matthew’s hand. “If it’s important to you, it’s important. Kindness is well and good, but if you’re kind at the expense of yourself, it doesn’t help anyone and I don’t want to see the anger you may be capable of because I abused your patience. So be honest if something bothers you. Don’t hide it for anyone sake.”

These were the most words at one time that Matthew could remember Lukas saying, which meant a lot. He found he had little to say, so he just squeezed the hand back and nodded. “I’ll try.”

Lukas nodded as well, looking at the waterfall in front of them as if gathering strength. “Well, Mathias and I were neighbours growing up. Expat communities tend to bundle together, and the Scandinavians are no different. But anything that involves the more complicated part of my relationship with Mathias has to start with what happened with Emil and my parents. You know we’re orphans.”

That had been the extent of Lukas’ early life that he had been told.

“Well, my parents died in that accident when Emil was still in middle school, and I wasn’t even in university yet. Actually, I was in the middle of my conscription when it happened. I was literally somewhere in the Norwegian Sea. I was Emil’s only remaining family and it was impossible get hold of me. I remember being called in to see the CO and wondering what catastrophe had happened. Even after hearing the news, it didn’t seem real. Of course, they couldn’t turn the boat around just for me. Arrangements were made, but by the time I was finally back with Emil…”

Matthew knew that the Bondeviks had been living in Canada, Lukas’ father also worked for NorgeOlje and was posted there by the company. Lukas’ mother was an artist, a painter from Iceland. Due to citizenship laws and Norway disallowing dual citizenship, Lukas was Norwegian, but Emil was both Icelandic and Canadian. Matthew can only imagine what kind of a mess it must have been, with three countries involved, not many extended relatives to rely on and Lukas not even being employed at the time.

“So he was alone for a few days.” Matthew stated.

“More. I had to get back to land, there are no direct flights between Norway and Canada, I couldn’t leave until the paperwork waiving the rest of my conscription was done and then there was...I’ll spare you the legal details. But yes, I couldn’t go to Emil immediately. I will forever be indebted to the Kohlers, Mathias’ family, for taking him in. For all that they did. I was never the most demonstrative of brothers to begin with, and Emil and I are both reserved by nature. Mathias was the brother he needed then, which he managed to do despite just having started working himself.”

There’s a broken voice and regret lacing those words and Matthew finally understands why Lukas is so protective over Emil, sometimes in contradictory ways - that he has to house and feed his brother, but doesn’t want his brother to feel overwhelmed and so discourages his boyfriends from helping him...unless it’s bad. Lukas doesn’t know how to make up for those lost days, and he’s been desperately trying to ever since.

“I came back and had to convince the courts to award me guardianship.”

“How did you manage to do that?” Matthew asked, honestly amazed. “You were citizens of different countries, unemployed…”

“I didn’t.” Lukas scoffed. “So the Kohlers legally adopted Emil.”

Oh. Mathias’ actions and the protectiveness that Lukas and Daan also seemed to exhibit over Emil now made more sense. “So...you went to university after that?”

Lukas nodded. “Because Emil now had a place to stay, I had the liberty to get a degree and maybe earn enough to actually take care of him one day. Thankfully university in Norway is free. There were living expenses of course, but those were manageable with me working odd jobs. But if I wanted to qualify for permanent residency in Canada and work and live here, it made sense to study here. I worked for a year in Norway, then moved back to Canada and started an MBA, which of course, is not free and I paid foreign-student fees. I got to stay with Emil briefly but then it was time for him to start university. Thankfully for Emil, even though he didn’t really get to choose a place for himself, Icelandic universities are also free, even if living costs are far more expensive, but he was happy there. My parents left us money, otherwise it would have been impossible. Also, we had so much help. Help and luck. Help that...again, I’ll never be able to repay.” Lukas sinks, looking at the ground, arms resting on his knees and all Matthew can do is run a comforting hand up and down his back.

Matthew absorbs all this and can understand why Lukas never mentioned it. He can’t understand why everyone else seems to think that Lukas ought to able to share this so easily. When Lukas looks up again, Matthew adds, “And Mathias, he helped didn’t he? He helped put Emil through university?”

Lukas smiled bitterly. “He helped me. I insisted on helping Emil, Mathias and his family had already done so much for Emil’s high school. I lived with Mathias so I didn’t have to pay rent or residential costs, while I was studying here and that’s when we...our relationship changed, while Emil was back in Reykjavik. Good times I guess, Mathias was quite a fast riser at LEGO before he burned out. I suppose that was my fault too.”

Matthew can’t help but let out a laugh. “He worked at LEGO? Seriously?”

Lukas had to laugh too. “Seriously. He designed new LEGO worlds and built those giant dinosaurs and ships and things that get displayed. Perfect match don’t you think? Though every night he’d come home complaining about how corporate life strangled the fun out of it, and there were always the pieces! Everywhere! All over the floor, I stepped on them so many I was always yelling so I’d vacumm them all up in revenge.” Lukas grinned, before the smile fell. “Maybe if it weren’t for me, he could have let himself enjoy it.”

There - for a brief moment, Matthew saw how happy Lukas had been. It was in the softness of his smile at the memory, which Matthew had never seen before. “How did...how does that lead to now? You and Mathias don’t really see each other do you? And you don’t like to talk about him.”

“The thing about gratitude is that sometimes, it silences you.”

Matthew frowned in confusion and tried to read Lukas’ expression. He failed. “I don’t follow.”

“Remember what I just told you about not letting your kindness let people take advantage of you? It’s also unfair to those who love you. Kindness can make you...fail to express yourself, fail to communicate and they will never know what you actually need. It was the same with me and gratitude. I felt like I owed Mathias and his family so much, I loved him but...I stopped talking to him, I couldn’t talk to him. And Mathias is...he has so much energy. He’s like a sun, a light that draws everyone to him because he emits so much warmth and adventure. I resented that. I could never understand his jealousy and possessiveness, when I was the one who had more reason to feel that way, but I swallowed that down too.”

Lukas let out a tired sigh. “It catches up, you know. The things you don’t say, all of those things, combined with my gratitude ended up making me feel trapped and imprisoned. The worse it got, the more jealous and possessive we both became. We were turning into terrible people, just by being together, so...I ended it. I had no idea who I was. My parents died when I was nineteen, the life I had planned for was off the table, everything was a mess. I convinced myself that I was living and working only for Emil for the following years. I knew I couldn’t find who I was if I stayed with Mathias, and I knew it would be worse for him if we stayed like that.”

“And so you stopped talking to him?”

Lukas looked a little ashamed at that, still staring off at the falling water. “I may have dated his cousin not too long after I broke up with him. A cousin that I knew he hated at the time.” At the look on Matthew’s face, Lukas added. “I don’t think I ever said that I was never going to be blameless here. But yes, Mathias was furious and since then...we’ve never…”

“You haven’t even been to the cafe?”

Lukas takes another nervous sip of tea. “I’ve seen pictures of it.”

A thought suddenly occurs to Matthew. “You don’t like maple syrup do you?”

Lukas let out a chuckle. “No. I don’t hate it, it’s nice, but I don’t go looking for it either. Interesting line of questions, from ‘what’s the story with Mathias?’ to ‘do you like maple syrup?’ immediately after.”

“Oh. I was just wondering if maybe those danishes he made for me were meant for you, somehow, indirectly.”

Lukas lets out a bellyfull of laughter at that, surprising Matthew but pleasing him all the same. It was nice to hear the laughter after such a heavy topic. “Mathias doesn’t work like that.” Lukas eventually got out. “He made you maple syrup danishes? Probably his thank you for taking care of Emil. He’s a horrible liar too, you’d be able to tell when he gave them to you if there was anything else he intended.”

Matthew shook his head, embarrassed. “Daan delivered them to me. So I didn’t know if maybe-”

But Lukas only chuckles. “Those two? Sure, Daan is better at lying, no, lying isn’t the right word. Deceit is the better word. But anyway, Daan is one a Partner in your firm right?”

Matthew nods.

“Unless he’s changed drastically, Daan is aware of what image and authority means when someone as young as him is in charge. He only sacrifices those when he thinks he can win a deal by doing so. There’s no deal here, so I’m willing to bet he was just delivering danishes, once again, as always, dragged into something, thanks to Mathias.”

Lukas looks out smiling fondly, lost in memory and Matthew only just realizes that he’s long since brought his own hands back to himself, resting on his knees in front of him. It’s as obvious as day, from the soft look on Lukas’ face, that he still loves Mathias. He always will, and now Daan’s words make sense, the warning and honesty. The advice that being together with Lukas may mean just accepting that a part of him will always love another man.

Matthew feels a sense of finality with this because he knows he can’t. He can’t accept being less than someone’s one and only. Maybe he’s being unreasonable, considering what he has to offer, but he can already feel the tendrils of romantic affection for Lukas shrinking away out of defensiveness. Maybe if they had a chance to know each other longer – if they somehow dropped their walls more naturally, if Matthew had time to more fully appreciate how comfortable Lukas made him feel or even if Matthew had a better idea of himself – a couple of years more, or a thousand other ‘what ifs’ and maybe Matthew would have found himself in love and able to accept this condition. But somehow even with that...he doubts it and besides, it hasn’t been years and the ifs haven’t happened. It’s been two months and Matthew has issues layered upon issues. He lays down on the dirt to look at the canopy and hints of sky beyond, and thinks of his mother living in happy (he hopes) retirement, walking the dogs in St Johns, of his brother living not only his dream, but the dreams of countless others while Matthew is simply satisfied with checking numbers.

“Are you that angry with me?” Lukas’ question interrupts his reverie.

“Huh?”

“You looked mad just now. And far away.”

Matthew shook his head, feeling too comfortable to move. “I’m not mad at you. I was just thinking I guess. I don’t feel...well I don’t really know how I feel.” He confesses. “I guess I can see why you never wanted to mention this before. Emil seemed to give me an impression that we were taking too long.” He laughs. “You’ve been together for two months! Why isn’t my brother wearing a ring?” He mimics.

Lukas looks taken aback. “What? He did not say that!”

“No,” Matthew chuckles. “Struck me as the sentiment though.”

Lukas nods. “I was desperate for something new with Berwald. And yes, Mathias and I had known each other for a long time but actually crossing the line from friendship to more had seemed sudden to Emil. I was trying to learn from previous mistakes with you, but maybe I couldn’t hide my impatience, or rather...it’s just that I’ve never really had to wait, or be the one to make the move. But, you’re a good man and I could see...us together and building something solid if I just didn’t mess up. So yes, I didn’t mention the past because I didn’t want to scare you away. Maybe that was dishonest of me.”

The words take Matthew’s breath away and he can’t move, speak or even think. The thought that he was considered so good, that Lukas was afraid of losing him. Even if it meant a little dishonesty. Well that felt entirely new too, so new he wasn’t quite sure he could believe it.

“Matthew?” Lukas’ face hovers over Matthew’s.

“I have issues!” Matthew blurts out. He can’t quite believe he said that but there’s no taking the words back now.

Lukas raised an amused eyebrow. “We all do.” He responds with his signature dryness. “Okay well, it’s your turn. What are Matthew William’s issues?” He too, lies down on the ground with a sigh of relief beside Matthew and Matthew is grateful that he doesn’t have to look at Lukas hovering above him to tell his story.

“Well, I’m luckier I guess. I have my parents at least, though they’re divorced. My Dad travelled to the States a lot for work, ended up having two families and I have a brother. Mama and I found this out when I was eight. Alfred is a year younger than me.” He shrugs. “I’ve never been able to understand it. Mama found out, called up Al’s mom, her name is Polly.”

“Polly?”

“Yeah, I call her Aunt Polly. People still have these types of names. Anyway, she called Aunt Polly and Aunt Polly thought that Mama knew and was okay with everything? And she’s hopping mad at Dad but loves him, so can’t they just continue this way? And somehow Mama actually agreed to try it out.”

He hears Lukas shift. “Wow. That’s...not where I thought that was going to go.”

Matthew let out a short laugh. “Yeah well it didn’t last. Aunt Polly is a sweetheart, but Dad didn’t change. It was almost as if he was given a ‘get out of jail free’ card too easily and just rolled with it instead of learning from it and well apparently the whole thing was about him promising to be a more honest man? I don’t have all the details and frankly, never asked. So, Mama realized that she just didn’t trust my Dad anymore. And she tells me anyway, that she has no idea what possessed her to agree to sharing a man, but she finally gave Dad an ultimatum - us or them. So Dad moved to America, and chose Polly and Alfred. Mama didn’t tell the courts that he was illegally married, in return for full custody. He tried to blame Mama for the separation over the years whenever I had to visit him, saying that he was kicked out, that it wasn’t as if he abandoned us.”

Matthew sits up, stretches and sighs. He now understands why Lukas kept staring at the waterfall. His nerves make him restless with adrenaline. Lukas thankfully, had reverted to his usual silence and didn’t rush Matthew for more before he was ready. “...Anyway, later on I found out about...polyamory which answered a lot of questions but still, it has to be open, respectful, honest. Dad wasn’t any of those things. He knew that it just wasn’t for Mama and didn’t want to lose her. I don’t actually blame Aunt Polly for anything, and it seems that the experience was good for my Dad, he was a better husband to Aunt Polly as a result of all that happened, and they’ve had boyfriends and girlfriends along the way since, oddly no takers for another marriage though, and that seems to work for them. But I just didn’t get it, still don’t and I think that still lingers, I didn’t know why we weren’t good enough for him, especially Mama. Once I met Al, I understand him leaving me but Mama?”

He heard Lukas shift beside him. “Do you really believe that? That he left because you weren’t good enough?”

Matthew fights tears, because yes, he absolutely believes that. There’s no proof and everyone around him can say all the sweet words that they want, but that’s what he believes. “Alfred was already everything Dad wanted in a son. Sure he said he loved me but that was out of obligation right? What father sleeps well at night admitting that he’s not all that excited about his firstborn? But every year I remember him telling me to get out more, play more, go on more adventures, live. When I met Alfred, I understood why.”

Somehow he found it in himself to talk about it, how Alfred was a genius and he was proud of him, but that meant that Al had finished university by the time he had turned nineteen and then joined NASA as an astrophysics genius and became a social-media celebrity when Matthew was still figuring out what he was good at. How people forgot about Matthew, all his life, after meeting Alfred, how he made the mistake of taking a year abroad in the US to get to know his brother better and the ‘friends’ he made used him to get to Alfred. How he had a lovely boyfriend during that time but even Carlos could never tell the difference. “I cut the year abroad short, just spent a semester, Alfred was mad at me and if he were still in school he could have applied for a semester abroad in Canada, but...he wasn’t in school. He had already moved to Houston. And right now, at this very moment,” Matthew looks up at the sky, though he knows it’s the wrong time of day the see the International Space Station’s steady light moving across the sky. “Now he’s on the ISS and he’s the youngest astronaut in space.” Matthew says with pride, this isn’t the first time he wishes he could untangle his feelings about his brother - the love and pride mixed with the hurt. “I’m fine when I’m on my own. When he visits though...it’s like all these things rise up to the surface, we end up being ridiculously competitive over the smallest things.” He laughs. “And I know it’s not actually his fault and we’re both old enough that we can’t blame Dad anymore. But...Al is like a sun that people can’t help but be drawn to, even if he pisses them off. He makes himself invaluable, he believes so much in the best possible version of humanity and fights for it. He makes mistakes and talks over you when he thinks he’s right, and he doesn’t always respect your space but he genuinely tries. That’s infectious somehow, he’s my brother and I’m proud of him, but oh my God, I’m the worst brother ever because we get along best when he’s not even on earth.”

Matthew feels the warmth of Lukas’ arm on his shoulders. He turns to see the other man looking up at the sky, where Matthew had been staring just a moment ago. “You won’t see it. It’s easier at night actually.”

“I figured.” Lukas shrugs and looks back at him, back to earth. “Matthew...have you and Alfred ever talked about this? For all you know, he envies you. Maybe your Dad yelled at him to be quieter and be calmer like his brother? As an older sibling with a bigger age difference who can remember the things said to me as opposed to my brother, I can definitely say that parents change their stories depending on the child. With two drastically different sons, I’m willing to bet that your Dad fell back on that, and no one was the wiser.”

Matthew considers it, and wonders why he never thought of it before. Probably because he had never confessed his true feelings about Alfred before, trying to be a better brother than he felt. It’s a hilarious image, a younger Alfred being told to just calm down and be quiet for a few minutes oh please. He can already imagine his brother’s reaction, knowing his natural competitiveness. Objectively, Matthew knows that Lukas is probably right. There’s little reason for Alfred to be as competitive as he is against Matthew otherwise, but personally and emotionally, the hurt has lived there longer.

“It makes sense.” Matthew admits. “But it does mean that,” He takes a deep breath, not wanting to say what he has to say, but he can’t lie either. “It means that in my personal life I’ve never wanted to feel second best to anyone ever again. Alfred probably responded by doing something that no one could hope to copy, work-wise. Me? I set my goals lower - I’m happy with being good at what I do, and my work actually affects people’s day to day lives, their jobs and whether they’re cheated or not. Al may be trying to save humanity by giving us a future in space, I’m happy with keeping us going in the world we already have. Admittedly, I feel appreciated here, I’m happy that Francis has fast-tracked me. I’m recognized here even if I’m not the best in the entire firm like, well, like someone like Daan, who makes Partner before even hitting thirty. Which is ridiculous.” He scoffs and Lukas tenses for a moment. It occurs to Matthew that he shouldn’t talk about Mathias’ boyfriend in front of Lukas, even if they were childhood friends of a sort. There’s a reason why Matthew hadn’t learned about that history until now and just thought that Lukas was Arthur’s friend. It’s not ridiculous to conclude that Lukas hasn’t spoken to Daan for as long as he hasn’t spoken to Mathias. “Sorry, I shouldn’t talk about them, I don’t want to hurt you.”

Lukas looks at him with those mysterious dark blue eyes that Matthew can’t read. He withdraws his arm. “Talking about them doesn’t hurt me. They’ve been best friends for a long time. I used to be jealous, admittedly, at the thought that Daan was comforting Mathias when I couldn’t, because I was the one who had hurt him, but that’s so long ago now. Now I’m glad Mathias had someone he could turn to, to help him when I couldn’t.”

They sit in silence for a while. Until Lukas says, “You’re going to ask me to talk to him aren’t you?”

Matthew laughs. “I can’t be the first to suggest it. Sounds like you want to and that makes sense I mean, it just seems to me that you guys aren’t...done. There’s so much that is unsettled, unspoken, assumed. The last time you both spoke to each other was years ago, and in anger, when neither of you were thinking straight. Now you both seem to be in different places in life and you seem to regret leaving things as they were, which is why everyone surrounding you both is still stuck in your story, waiting for it to...continue or end but none of that has happened. It would be different if you guys were resolved.” It’s a eureka moment for Matthew but Lukas recoils, his face looks terrifying but Matthew knows better. It’s not anger, it’s fear.

“I’m not saying that you have to march up to him today, but I don’t think I can be with you when there’s still this hanging question weighing on you. Mathias is the elephant in every room, even when I didn’t know about him, I could feel something tense, something I didn’t know but was important.” Lukas looks even more terrifying, but Matthew soldiers on.

“I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, I mean, I really couldn’t even if I wanted to. I do like you and I do respect you, and I think that...you’re amazing, I can’t really believe most the time that you give me the time of day. All I’m asking, if I even can, is that you just...speak to Mathias. Like...one on one, at peace, apologize, tell him you’re happy for him, whatever it is you want to say that you felt you haven’t done yet, to close this wound. If you can, when you can...when you’re ready to.”

Matthew forces himself to hold Lukas’ steely gaze with one of his own. He knows he’s right, at least, that this is the right thing to ask Lukas to do for his own peace of mind. Based on what he saw of Mathias, he guessed that the man would be open to such a respectful conversation, if only to put things at rest. Mathias oddly, had seemed to be more at peace, having acknowledged the past and his feelings while Lukas it seemed, avoided it.

“Matthew.” Lukas responds softly, controlled. “I don’t know if I can speak to Mathias. I wasn’t joking when I said we were terrible people together. You haven’t seen us fight.”

“You both have a couple of years and growing with you now. Do you still feel as uncertain of yourself as you once were? You said you had to find yourself?” Matthew prods.

“I…” Lukas looks down and gulps. “Fine, you have a point. I’ll even say that I’m proud of what he’s done with his cafe, and getting himself back up. So I don’t want to ruin it, and he’s moved on. He doesn’t need the past weighing him down.”

“Neither do you. And if you don’t talk to him, the past will weigh you down. Not to be mean but I kind of care about you more right now than him, even if he makes damn good danishes. Remember what you told me earlier about kindness? And gratitude? And silence?” It’s a bit of a low blow, using Lukas’ words against him, but what was the point of sharing wisdom when you couldn’t handle it?

Lukas is glaring at him now but it’s not long before he just sighs, lies back and covers his eyes with an arm. Matthew doesn’t push the issue, so they remain in silence for a while.

The sun has climbed in the sky and the relative increasing silence of the birds and life around them tells Matthew that more people are making their way through the preserve, even if they haven’t reached them yet. Matthew mulls over his words and wonders about how he feels about everything. He’s glad that they’ve talked, and Matthew can’t really believe how therapeutic it is to have gotten these things out.

“So, just to summarize this.” Lukas eventually speaks. “We are on a break, until I speak to Mathias, and say things.” He glares at Matthew. “You know how I simply ache to talk about things.”

Matthew chuckles in understanding, while he himself doesn’t mind talking to people, Lukas seems to loathe it, which makes today memorable. Somehow, Lukas had decided to trust him. Matthew can only respond by being honest, still. “Maybe I’m mean. I don’t quite get why people think I’m niceness incarnate. Is it the volume of my voice?” He teases back. Lukas didn’t speak much louder than he did and no one ever thought him kind at first meeting.

“You have the face of a damned cherub, curly hair, big eyes and all. If we ever walk into a cathedral, I’ll take a picture and prove it to you.”

Matthew didn’t quite know how to process that. “This, coming from the man who literally looks like an elf from Norse mythology?”

Lukas just gave him a sardonic look that spoke loads, before shaking his head. “Fine, if I speak to Mathias, and resolve my feelings...if you’re still keen, we try again...”

His heart thumps in his chest, hardly believing that Lukas is even willing to try. “If you want.” He smiles, he can’t help the tiny flutter of hope in his chest even if a bigger part of his awareness is telling him that there will be no second try. “I suppose if we do we’ll have to keep this up - being honest, talking.” There’s an odd feeling inside, where part of him likes Lukas more than he used to, but the other part is well aware of Lukas’ unresolved feelings and is still holding back. But if...if Lukas speaks to Mathias, who has himself, moved on, and that gives Lukas the closure he needs for both him and Matthew to honestly try again? There are no guarantees in life but Matthew can see himself wanting to try, can see them making something good out of it.

Lukas however, doesn’t smile. “But if I speak to Mathias, and nothing changes…”

Maybe the light feeling was premature. “Even if nothing changes I’ll be here for you, but as a friend…” He sighs. “Because of my own hangups, I don’t know if I’d be able to develop feelings for you as you deserve. What you feel isn’t...wrong, I know that it’s normal for people to always have lingering feelings for others, heck even I sometimes just admire attractive people on a bus or train, but that’s nothing compared to this. Your lingering feelings are...they’re strong, and I’m not strong enough to just accept that.”

Lukas pulls himself up, shaking his head. “You have a right to ask any significant other of yours love you more than someone else. But since we’re doing this and I’m going to walk into that damned cafe and speak to Mathias because you’ve asked me to, you have to speak to your brother, and your dad, maybe your mother too.”

“What?!”

“You heard me.”

“That’s...three people! I asked you to speak to one!”

Lukas just gives him a look and Matthew looks down, properly chastised, he knows what he said was silly. “Al calls me every other week from the ISS, I don’t want to bug him with this stuff while he’s up there doing spacewalks and spending 99 percent of his efforts keeping his very human body alive in an environment that is pretty hostile to it. But he returns to earth in three months’ time. I’m planning on going down to the States to spend some time with him, and of course I’ll see my Dad. I’ll speak to them then.”

“You can’t speak to your parents before your brother gets back?”

Matthew gulps. Lukas is right, there’s no excuse really. “What is speaking to them supposed to accomplish? We’ve put all this stuff behind us, the person who’s failing to deal with it is just me.”

“A therapist then. Whatever you need to do to realize how…good you are. How worthy, because frankly, even if I resolve everything with Mathias and came back to you, until you resolve that particular hang up of yours, we wouldn’t last anyway.”

The words strike him like a punch to the stomach, but Lukas doesn’t stop. “I know how jealousy starts Matthew, believe me, I know how it feels and how it works. I spent years feeling inadequate and hiding it with bravado. If you continue feeling inadequate, you won’t let yourself believe that I would want to be with you, and if you don’t break it off for some imagined reason, I would get mad because of the trust issues. Passive aggressiveness would ensue and the break up after it.”

Matthew has nothing to say, but he can feel the defensive anger uncurling in his gut. “So you have it all figured out then?!” Honestly didn’t he just say that he understood how it felt?

“No Matthew. I don’t. And here the part where I also warn you that I’m horrible at comforting people.” Lukas lets out an exasperated sigh. “Look, I’m not even asking you to resolve this immediately, that’s impossible. I’m asking that you be willing to try to. Just like how you know I wouldn’t be able to resolve this mess of memories I have with Mathias in a few days, months even. I’m asking you the same as you’re asking me - to try, to want to fix these things, and then, maybe, we can help each other through it.”

Matthew calms down, his anger dissipating as quickly as it rose because he knows that Lukas isn’t suggesting anything wrong, or unfair. He’s right really.

“Fine, I need to have a think on how best to tackle it. Speaking with my Dad may not get me anywhere, but maybe the...therapist, and I’ll definitely speak to Al when he gets back.” Matthew felt a little odd about the therapist. He knows he has hang ups but they don’t seem serious enough to take a therapist’s time away from people who really need them. Not to mention, spilling out his insecurities to a stranger?

Lukas holds out a hand to help Matthew up and he grabs it. “We have our quests then. But for now, with the sun this high, let’s head back.”

There’s an awkward silence at first but the hike back is long. The same lull and peace that calmed them on the way in, worked the same on the way out. Matthew is grateful, and wonders if he fell into the trap of underestimating nature, believing that if he wasn’t careful, he would lose another sanctuary to his thoughts. He gazes at the boreal forest and its tall trees, older than he will ever be, bigger than he will ever be, have witnessed things that make his own personal problems insignificant. He thinks of the preserve he’s walking through, how awe inspiring it is, and revels in the sensation of being a tiny part of something bigger than himself. He feels inspired, real, and oh so small. Even if he messes up, it really isn’t the end of the world. Matthew smiles to himself with the knowledge that no matter what happens, there’s still one place where he can find truth and peace.

Notes:

Sorry if Matthew and Lukas are kinda OOC? It’s tough to write two characters who don’t like to talk much when they have to have a talk. But I tried.

Also, I realize that I’ve been making up company names but LEGO is LEGO.

#fic: Mr 7th floor #nedcan

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graceivers · 7 years

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Review #2 - The Mistake

The Mistake Author: Elle Kennedy Genre: College, Contemporary Romance, Sports Rating: ★★★★★ Recommendation: worth reading; would read again Summary: Grace is an unsuspecting underclassmen. John is a college hockey playing upperclassmen. John makes a mistake when he doesn’t realize what he’s looking for and what’s right in front of him. It’s a college romance, people.

Female Lead: THIS IS MY GIRL. I named this freaking tumblr blog after her because Grace Ivers is literally everything. I relate to her so, so much. She’s just completely normal and real in this setting. She’s not some overtly sexual co-ed. She doesn’t have family drama or past traumatic experiences. I say this with absolute love, but there is quite literally nothing extraordinary about her. She just is. She’s someone who embodies the true definition and reasoning of why there is new adult literature—people in their twenties trying to figure out what this thing called life is, what they want, what they can achieve, what they deserve.

Kennedy writes Grace so amazingly because she doesn’t shove a bunch of adjectives down our throats or unnecessarily use appearance to illustrate personality. Her descriptions of the character are the epitome of how to use ‘show, don’t tell’ in writing. Every quality of Grace shines through in her actions, her likes and dislikes, her relationships. She’s a neat freak; she loves action movies; she prefers football over hockey; she’s smart because she works hard; she hates being the center of attention; she gets nervous and rambles around guys she’s interested in; she removes people from her life when she knows they’re bringing her down; she knows what she wants in a career but at the same time is also exploring her options. Grace is seriously everything to me—so honest and normal and human. There was not one thing I disliked about this character. If I can’t be someone like her, I want to be best friends with someone like her. Male Lead: Listen, if I don’t know a guy much at all (fictional or otherwise) and I call him by his first name, it usually means I’m somewhat in love with him. In my fictional dream world, if Grace is who I want to be, then JOHN—though mostly referred to as Logan because sports reasons and the fact that there’s another John in the book/on the hockey team—is absolutely who I want my boyfriend to be. Hockey player? Check. Respects women (though he unintentionally hurt Grace)? Check. Honest? Sense of humor? Sweet and secretly has an arsenal of romantic gestures ready at hand? Yes to all of the above! I’m not sure you can get any better than John in a college setting.

John has little more of that family baggage thing going on, but that’s okay! Again, Kennedy’s good at that ‘show, don’t tell’ thing. Facing his troubles in having to deal with his alcoholic father makes John all the more lovable to me. Because honestly? One of the sexiest things about John is his sense of duty and commitment. He and his coach and his friends all know that he can definitely go pro, and it’s his dream to do so. But given the circumstances, he puts that completely aside out of obligation. He can’t let his brother down; he has to care for their father, work for the deteriorating family business. Family is family and though he knows he’s going to hate it and maybe even resent his father if he doesn’t already, he’s going to do it. He’s already doing it. That kind of commitment? Putting family first even if you want to punch them in the face? Sacrificing your own dreams and aspirations for other people? Jesus, that’s an amazing, stand-up man right there. Kudos to Kennedy for making family drama not a burden but relevant and character revealing. In a lot of other circumstances, I might have found that kind of baggage hanging around a character to be annoying and detracting to the character and story, but not here. Not with John.

There are probably a thousand more things I could say about how much I love John, but it would get embarrassingly long. So I’ll leave with the point that John is the best, and basically every male lead in every book I’ve read since this one I’m subconsciously going to compare to him because THIS GUY IS THE BEST. Seriously, if there is a real life John Logan type guy out there, please point me in the right direction. Plot & Writing: College romance at it’s finest. Kennedy does an excellent job at keeping it real. Real because yes, there are people out there that have sex on the brain very often and sleep around a lot, especially given the age and setting. But also real because there are people like Grace out there who are normal and unassuming and don’t want any fuss or fanfare; they’re just trying to live their life as unspectacular as they think and know it is. There are so many ways you can take and write a college romance, but this by far is my favorite. I don’t need the over the top stuff, the extreme personalities, the tortured backgrounds. I relate to normal, and that’s why I love this book so much.

The timing of the book was a little weird to me. Yes, I realize it was because Kennedy wanted that summer vacation period where Grace and John didn’t see or directly talk to each other, but I felt that got in the way a little of the pacing because you’re skipping out on weeks—weeks that were in fact relevant to both character insight and development as well as the status and dynamic of the relationship between the two leads. Honestly, I kind of quick-read/skimmed around sometimes up to the point where John sees Grace at the gazebo before school starts up again during my first read of the book. If it weren’t for a reread, I wouldn’t have picked up on the important stuff Kennedy put into those summer months. The pacing everywhere else was fine, but again, it just felt strange to me that Kennedy shoved summer vacation as the reason for Grace and John not communicating when she could have come up with something else. (Don’t ask me what that something else is. I don’t know. I’m just a dumb reviewer.)

This is also a book where the biggest conflict is not saved for like the last few chapters. Kennedy does her set up, reveals John’s mistake of mistreating Grace before the halfway point, and spends the rest of the book building a great relationship. Yeah, there’s a tiny stumble in the relationship towards the end, but it’s a squabble that every couple is going to go through, so there was no need to worry. I loved the way Kennedy wrote this couple. The development of their relationship ran a natural course. Nothing was hurried or seemed out of place. I as a reader knew exactly why the relationship between Grace and John worked because Kennedy expertly put in scenes where the characters were basically forced to realize and say aloud why they wanted the other, John in particular when Grace was making him work for that date and their subsequent relationship. Kennedy brilliantly inserts her best ‘show, don’t tell’ moment by showing us how much John loves Grace while he’s actually telling it to her and everyone else who’s listening. I am sure that’s trickier to pull off than it sounds, so major props to Kennedy’s writing there.

I read some reviews before I read the book, and some people mentioned that they didn’t like the epilogue because there was no interaction between the couple. I disagree. While, yes, that interaction might have been nice to see, I think the epilogue is still very telling of the kind of John and Grace’s relationship. In the short amount of space that she has, Kennedy doesn’t quite have time for her great showing skills, so she opts to tell us what’s been going on with John’s family and some important relationship milestones like moving in together. Still, I found the love between Grace and John pertinent and visible. It’s an epilogue. People are supposed to get their happy endings. John’s dreams is realized as we watch him on the ice as now a professional hockey player for the Bruins while he has his girl up in the executive suite to watch his first game. Grace is graduating and with the man that she loves. What more could you want? Secondary Characters & Plots: I have this strange thing where I read the second book in a series first when the books can be read a standalones. This is not intentional, I swear, but it happens more often than not. That being said, I loved Garrett as a secondary character in this book not knowing anything about him because I hadn’t read his book yet. He was entertaining and funny and totally there as a friend for John even when the latter thought he was in love with his best friend’s girlfriend. Most of the interactions between John and his friends/teammates were fun. Jesus, even when he goes to confront Morris who was on a date with Grace, that turned out into a fun friendship that definitely helped out in the end.

On Grace’s side? Not so much. My one tiny gripe with this book is that there weren’t more female friendships. I did not like Ramona. I absolutely loved that because she and Grace had been best friends for so long, Grace had a sense of duty to be by her side when things went wrong. But that spoke more to Grace’s character than Ramona’s. Ramona was not very supportive when Grace confided in her about her relationship with John. I mean, she accused Grace of lying and basically aligned herself with those stereotypical fake/plastic friends who were only interested in gossiping and having sex with popular dudes/athletes. Thank the lord for Grace who has common sense to cut those people out of her life. Then there was Daisy, Grace’s other roommate. I was indifferent about her. She was fine when she was there, but it made no difference whether she was there or not to me. Her friendship with Grace seemed like one of those things when you’re friends with someone because you see them a lot, but it’s probably not everlasting. I mean, maybe I can praise Kennedy for writing something realistic like that, but I still would’ve liked to see Grace have stronger female friendships.

Secondary plots… I’m not sure there were any? Or any worth mentioning… I don’t know, I read this a while back. I was all for the growth and dynamics of the protagonists. But hey, at least I’m not complaining about bad side plots. That should be a major plus. Favorite Part(s): That first real date John takes Grace on after she made him jump through hoops to get it. This perfect date is perfect. John getting a table at a restaurant on short notice when reservations are hard to come by. The sheer fact that they’re going out to some fancy restaurant instead of the million other things people constitute as a date, especially when you’re in college. SAME SIDING IN A BOOTH. The humor laced in when John finds out that Grace prefers football. THEY BOTH HATE BASKETBALL. They talk, and it’s normal and honest and fun and what a date is what we all hope a date should be. HE HOLDS HER HAND IN THE CAR THE WHOLE TIME. I mean, I can get very annoyed at people doing dangerous things that will distract them in the car while they’re driving, but I totally didn’t care here. JOHN ASKED FOR A FREAKING PERFORMANCE REVIEW BECAUSE HE HASN’T BEEN ON A REAL DATE LIKE THAT IN A LONG TIME AND SAVED IT FOR GRACE BECAUSE HE WANTED IT TO BE HER AND SHE DESERVED IT AND HE WAS NERVOUS. Take notes, everyone! Authors, you don’t need amazing sex for a relationship to work. Guys and girls, you don’t need to end a perfectly perfect date with sex. This scene sealed the deal for me, and I loved Kennedy’s writing, the story, and the couple so much because of it. Final Thoughts: The couple seriously sold this for me. There was so much amazing stuff between them. I LOVED when Grace called him John (obviously) or Johnny. I loved the way John treated her even though he did mess up when he didn’t realize the great thing they already had. True to John’s words as he declared his love for her for everyone—or at least people who actually listen to their college radio stations—to hear, it’s not about the sex. John loves Grace for who she is and vice versa. So, I got my sports/hockey fix, my amazing couple, my realistic leads and setting. And oh, yeah, it takes place in Massachusetts, my native state that I will forever love and probably never ever move away from. The Mistake is college romance at it’s finest and definitely one of the better books I’ve read.

#book: the mistake #author: elle kennedy #genre: college #genre: contemporary romance #genre: sports #rating: five stars

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pokemonfreak387 · 7 years

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Winter Break (Redone) Chapter 11 (Friskriel Fanfic)

Notes: Oh hey look. Angst. Huh, that was a thing the original fic was definitely missing. No wonder it was a shitty story. Also fair warning, the word f** is used uncensored in this chapter. Thanks to @thunders29 for proofreading and being supportive!

Chapter Summary: Asriel makes his way back to school after the winter break, but trouble soon rears its ugly head for him. The fiasco at the party has already been spread, and Asriel is more than upset about it. 2543 Words.

Chapter 11 Then We Wouldn’t Have to Deal With You Moggers

Asriel groaned as his alarm clock blared in his ears. If there was a thing all teens his age could agree on, it would be that the alarm on the first day back to school after a long break is both the loudest and most annoying one yet. It didn’t help him either that he could barely sleep thinking about what may happen when he gets back to school, especially after the New Year’s Party fiasco. Granted, Asriel didn’t see any of the school gossipers there at the party ironically, so there was a chance he was safe.

As Asriel slowly sat up and turned off his alarm, he heard a small noise being emitted next to him. He turned his head to find that Frisk was actually laying next to him still asleep. Two questions popped into his head: Why was Frisk here, and how did they sleep through the alarm? No matter the answer, Asriel gently made his way out of bed without waking them up, collected his clothes for the day, and went downstairs for breakfast.

It wasn’t until Asriel had breakfast and showered that he saw Frisk again that morning. He was laying in the loft, drawing on his sketchbook, when he heard his door open. Sure enough, Frisk appeared from behind it, one of Asriel’s blankets wrapped around them.

“You’re up early.” Asriel remarked, peeking above his sketchbook.

Frisk didn’t respond, but instead made their way over to the boss monster. They gently took the sketchbook out of his hands, placed it on the coffee table, and flopped themselves on top of him. He let out a surprised puff as he got most of the air knocked out of him, but it was shortly followed by giggles.

“Mmm, warm…” Frisk murmured.

“Even being wrapped in that thing, you’re still cold?” Asriel chuckled. “By the way, why were you in my bed this morning?”

Frisk rubbed their head deeper into Asriel’s chest. “Room… Too cold. Wanted warmth.”

Asriel never did understand why humans got so cold so easily, even when they had on garments that practically simulated fur on their body. Maybe it was because humans didn’t have magic within them to keep them warm? Definitely a question to ask Alphys today in class. Speaking of which, Asriel fished his phone from his pocket and saw it was time for him to leave. As much as he didn’t want to leave the comforting embrace of his lover, school called, and Toriel was going to be even more pissed if he didn’t go. Asriel gently kissed Frisk on their head and guided them back to their feet, Frisk letting out a groan in protest.

“Asriel…” They started. “Please be careful today. I’m worried what may happen to you.”

“S-same, honestly.” He replied. “Maybe with luck, everyone has forgotten about it?”

Frisk gave him a face.

“Hey I’m just trying to be optimistic.”

Frisk just chuckled and shook their head. They then walked up to Asriel and gave him a kiss. They stayed together for a while, their tongues twisting with each other, until they broke off and Asriel made his way to school.

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When Asriel first came to middle school, he remembered people constantly whispering around him. He knew the whispers then were about him, some good, some bad, all leaving him with soul-shaking anxiety. Now in high school, the whispering had become somewhat less, and any whispering that did occur didn’t affect Asriel quite as much as it did before. However, it seemed the whispering was especially loud today, and the Anxiety that Asriel had first felt four years ago came back.

Trying to avoid the gazes of the students around him, Asriel made it to his Chinese class. He was glad to see John and Dave already there, though part of him was also a little disgusted by them. Maybe it was the memory of the two of them going off somewhere during the party to bang, but he didn’t give it much attention. Instead, he put on his best cheery facade and walked up to them.

“John! Dave!” Asriel greeted. “Howdy, how’s it going?”

John jumped at his voice and gave Asriel a nervous look. When Dave turned around and faced the boss monster, even through his shades, his eyes looked worrying. It was rare to see Dave have any sort of emotion, so this led to Asriel to instantly lose what positivity he had.

“Um… Asriel,” John said nervously. “You… May want to read this.”

He handed Asriel over a paper. It was the school’s newspaper, the “What’s News” newspaper. Seems even Toriel had gotten her hands on naming this, but that wasn’t what caught Asriel’s eye and the boys’ attention. No, what made them act so anxious was the headline”

BREAKING NEWS: IS THE HUMAN-MONSTER AMBASSADOR AN INCESTUAL TETRAPHILE?

On the night of December 31st, 2020, a majority of the town, Ebott, had been invited over to the Mettamansion for the ever popular Mettaton’s annual New Year’s Party. It was a very exciting event, especially since this was the first time ever that the human-monster ambassador, Frisk Dreemurr, had been able to attend one of these parties. There was plenty of enjoyment to be had, listening to their story of how they made it through the underground first-hand. However, it was only shortly after they finished their story that we got a shock of a lifetime. Around 11:05, Frisk had begun searching for their brother, Asriel Dreemurr. Nobody thought anything of it at first, until Asriel suddenly appeared in front of them, more drunk than a JRPG character. The 16-year old boss monster must have been drinking out of loneliness, as shortly after he had begun to what seemed to be sexually advancing onto Frisk. They showed resistance, that is until Asriel had begun to try to kiss them! He had blacked out during it, but it was very obvious what he was trying to do. This leads many questions to the public: are Frisk and Asriel in a relationship? Does the ambassador have more personal reasons for their ambassadorship? How long has this been going on? How will this affect Frisk personally? We will find answers soon.

When Asriel finished reading the article, he was so enraged that he burned the paper into ashes within seconds, and tossed them into the trash. John and Dave looked at him with fear and surprise.

“Hey!” John whined. “I paid a dollar for that!”

Asriel shot him back a glare that made John cower. Asriel seemed to be a lot scarier than he normally was. Dave had assumed that Asriel would begin to freak out like his usual anxious self, but he did not foresee this. In a low voice, Asriel growled something.

“Who wrote this!?”

The boys looked at each other.

“I-I think Marco Linder.” Dave responded. “He is the director of the press. Go to Mrs. Lalonde, she may be able to tell you more.”

In an instant, Asriel stormed out of the classroom, leaving the boys and any other bystanders stunned. John and Dave gave each other a look, and they made their way to Mrs. Lalonde’s room. There was no telling what Asriel would do at this state.

---

Rage didn’t even define what Asriel was feeling right now. He expected an attack on himself, especially with how much he knew there was a lot people in the school that didn’t like him, and he would’ve taken it passively as per usual. But frisk? No, that was crossing the fucking line, and Marco was about to learn that. It would be a miracle if Asriel didn’t get suspended from burning him to a crisp.

Mrs. Lalonde’s room was directly below Mr. Walsh’s class, so the trip wasn’t too long. However, no matter the distance, it seemed someone beat Asriel to the punch. Someone who, just like the teen, was a white, furred monster of large, threatening size. There was no mistaking the loud, lecturing voice. Even if it seemed way more malicious than usual, Asriel knew exactly who was already chewing out his target.

“Do you realize just how much damage you have dealt to so many reputations?” Toriel asked in a surprisingly restrained voice. “And you just let this story slide? Without thinking just how badly it would affect the world? This school was not built on rumors and dishonesty!”

“He claims that he was just going to report on something about the party.” Mrs. Lalonde tried to explain. “I didn’t go so I wasn’t aware that what he was reporting was this.”

“But didn’t you look at the final print before it was published?”

“N-no… I just thought, since he’s been doing so well, I had confidence in Marco that it was perfect.”

Toriel scoffed at the teacher’s ignorance. She then turned to Marco, fire almost literally burning in her eyes.

“Listen up, young man. This school is built on patience, bravery, integrity, perseverance, kindness, justice, and determination. This school was not built on childish rumors that are to be reported in the school news!”

“But it isn’t a rumor!” Marco talked back, no hint of regret or restrain in his voice. “Besides, you’re just biased cause these are your kids!”

“Well I am a mother to my children first, so as their mother I demand you tell me why you did it.”

Marco huffed in frustration. “We were short in stories and we needed something good. Unlucky for you, someone managed to hand us this gem of a story.”

“Who?” Toriel demanded, but Marco just laughed.

“You think I would tell you? A news reporter never reveals their sources.”

“Is that so? Well, I’m sure you’d be happy to tell the same thing to your parents once you are suspended on the grounds of bad attitude, failure to comply to the school rules, and threatening the life of a student. Not to mention if I don’t hear who told you right now, the Newspaper Club will be disbanded, and Mrs. Lalonde loses some of her paycheck.”

A whine came from the teacher, but she refused to speak. Marco also seemed to not want to talk, but there was no fear in his eyes, only challenge. Toriel could not believe this. She had never met such an ignorant, stubborn person in her life. It’s hard to believe that she used to think that Marco was actually once a good student when he first came to the school two years ago. What has this world turned into?

The stare off between Toriel and Marco was cut short as some called out “Excuse me,” from the audience that had formed behind Asriel. Everyone turned towards the bunny monster who spoke up. She shrank back when she suddenly realized everyone was looking at her, then mumbled something barely audible.

“Speak up child.” Toriel commanded, a little softer than she has been.

“I-it was a g-girl named Gillian.” The bunny explained. At the word Gillian, Asriel gasped, and all his rage suddenly melted into disbelief. “Gillian Tynnclear from B-Black Hills High Sch-school. We got the info f-from her.”

Toriel sighed at that news. Black Hills has not been a very friendly school with Tutoriel High, so she wasn’t too surprised it was a student from that anti-monster school. She recomposed herself and looked around the room. Her eyes then landed back on Mrs. Lalonde and Marco.

“Well, it seems at least someone can show a little integrity.” She remarked. “Mrs. Lalonde, the Newspaper club is to not release any more issues until we see some justice. Mr. Linder, I will see you in my office after school with your parents. The rest of you, please go to your first periods, the bell is about to ring.”

The audience parted like the Red Sea as Toriel walked out of the room, a small shake in her stride. The students soon dispersed, chatting about what just happened, some praising the bunny, some throwing tetraphobic jokes her and Toriel’s way. Mrs. Lalonde even left the room, looking like she was about to pass out in fear. This just left Asriel and Marco. One look at the rather short human, and Asriel’s rage reignited.

Asriel advanced over to him. Fireballs had begun to form in his hands, the flames shaking without much restraint. Determination and anger were plastered on the boss monster’s face as he spoke to the senior.

“Why?” He growled. “Why would you ruin all we worked for? All the PEACE we worked for!?”

The second Asriel got the last word out, Marco became a blur, and Asriel felt something smack him right in the cheek, knocking him to the ground in pain and snuffing out the flames in his palms. The world blurred, and Asriel began to feel dizzy. His cheek began to go numb as he saw a pair of shoes walk up to him, kicking him in the stomach and knocking the air out of him as he curled up in pain.

“Peace? Bullshit. All you monsters are nothing but trouble.” Marco spewed. “You all come here with your magical bullshit, suddenly claiming everyone is connected by their ‘souls’ and then we find out you can actually MAKE lives? You all have played god long enough.”

He kicked Asriel again.

“If only Trump actually became president. Then we wouldn’t have to deal with you moggers.”

Moggers was the worst insult one could call any monster. It was an old phrase from before the war, often used more to describe the more corrupt monsters. However, today it was used as a slur, much like fag and the n-word. It was the nail in the coffin to make tears finally stream from Asriel.

“Go back to the Underground, and then go to hell.” Marco spat, leaving Asriel to squirm on the floor in pain. When the door closed, Asriel let out a sob that he had been holding in. He wasn’t crying over being attacked, or being insulted, or even at meeting possibly the worst human ever. No, what made him cry was that he broke the promise he made to Frisk that morning. He blamed himself, as per usual, and was afraid to see Frisk after this. At the same time, he wanted them now more than ever. They would heal him, make him feel better, just make him forget about this only for a little while. But instead, Asriel just laid on the cold, tiled floor, crying.

A short minute later, Asriel heard a loud zap, followed by a pair of arms picking him up. He tried to look through the tears and dizziness to see exactly who it was. All he saw was a round, bone white head, and something blue underneath it.

“C’mon kid, let’s get you home.” The character said. Asriel felt a rush of wind and the background suddenly changed. He finally saw the character to be Sans, which made sense to him now that he thought about it. Sans laid the boss teen down on his bed, taking off his shoes and pulling the covers over him. He gave one last scratch to the back of Asriel’s ear before walking off.

“Rest up,” He whispered. “I’ll go get Frisk.”

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

Text

AT THE VERY LEAST, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE

The idea even flowed back into big companies. When people come to you with a problem and you have to be a bit smarter to dominate Internet search than you had to be morally right; he was therefore always happy, knowing he'd done the best he could. What are the great things to work on your own stuff while you're there.1 It's the people that matter.2 Prefix syntax seems perfectly natural to me, except possibly for math. The same mix of denial and wishful thinking that underlies most mistakes founders make. A better name would be curiosity. And so ten years ago, writing software pretty much meant writing software in C. If undergrads were all bad programmers, the more risk you can take more risks, because no one will know if you fail utterly, you're doing no worse than expectations. It used to suck to be an increasing number of idea clashes.

None of them are run by product visionaries, and empirically you can't seem to get those by hiring them. Business owners weren't supposed to be bound by some plan you made early on. It was like someone getting fouled in a soccer game and saying, hey, you fouled me, that's against the rules, and walking off the field in indignation. Not just because of its prestige, but because the principles underlying the most dynamic part of the mechanism of popularity. They used drugs, at least. Till the rise of national corporations didn't just compress us culturally. But wait, here's another that could face even greater resistance: ongoing, automatic medical diagnosis. But marketing is increasingly irrelevant. Every other funding cycle is in Boston. That was much harder to do in most situations, while a smart person knows what to do in the mid 20th century masked this underlying trend. When does it have to be designed to be changeable. He was the original author of GMail, which is also high on the list?

I think founders will increasingly be able to compel.3 Maybe you're just running fast.4 Distinguishing between wise and smart is a modern habit. And since fundraising is one of their aims. It will be interesting, in a hits-driven business, is that I don't know if this one is possible, but there you face bureaucratic obstacles that would slow down a startup. E tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the language, and the further you project into the future, but empirically it may be that they aren't. And fortunately it has gotten very cheap to run a startup.5 The three main causes of the Civil War.

I can't think of any field in which determination is overrated, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more variability in the VC business were established when founders needed investors more.6 FDR said not a single yes or no answer to that.7 But there are things you can understand about startups. They're the ones that set the trends, both for other startups and for VCs.8 One possible explanation is that they become part of their identity. A program gets easier to hold in your head.9 The total amount of desirable startup stock available to investors will probably increase the number of good ideas is not very parallelizable.10 Merely understanding the situation they're in should make it less painful. And whatever its components, they're not all innate. This was true when their parents were in college, but to put in a lot of equally good startups that actually didn't happen.11 There are plenty of people as smart as Bill Gates who achieve nothing.

Notes

We could be adjacent. The banks now had to write great software in Lisp.

Emmett Shear, and since you can fix by writing library functions. What people who are running on vapor, financially, because that's how they choose between great people to endure hardships, but it seems to pass. The actual sentence in the biggest company of all tend to be higher, as Prohibition and the foolish. But try this experiment: set aside an option to maintain their percentage.

But it is more important to users, not just the local builders built everything in it. It's lame that VCs play such games, but they're not ready to raise money? So by agreeing to uncapped notes. Later we added two more modules, an image generator were written in 6502 machine language.

This point is due to recent increases in economic inequality start to rise again. I think it's roughly correct for startups overall. Our founder meant a photograph of a company tried to unload it on buyer after buyer. But it's easy for small children, or a complete list of n things seems particularly collectible because it's a seller's market.

It's not a programmer would find it more natural to expand into casinos than software, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniations, but you get an intro to a can of soup. Anyone can broadcast a high-minded Edwardian child-heroes of Edith Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods. There may be overpaid. So, can I make it easier for us now to appreciate how important a duty it must have been; a vogue for conglomerates in the postwar period also helped preserve the wartime compression of wages—specifically by sharding it.

Stone, Lawrence, Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the world of the flock, or Microsoft could not process it. Especially if they don't have enough equity left to motivate them.

Nothing annoys VCs more than the rich. Most smart high school, because it was too late to launch. I'm not claiming variation in wealth, not widening. How much better is a shock at first you make something popular but apparently inevitable consequence: little liberal arts colleges are doomed.

The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably a losing bet for a small amount, or at least consider going into the heads of would-be-evil end. This form of religious wars or undergraduate textbooks so determinedly neutral that they're practically different papers. Viaweb, which usually revealed more than their competitors, who may have allotted for the future. But not all equal, and Reddit is derived from Slashdot, while they may then, depending on how much they can get done before that.

Jessica at a famous university who is highly regarded by his peers. In a period when people tell you all the best thing for startups might be tempted, but except for money.

Us he would have a taste for interesting ideas: whether you have to do, but those are writeoffs from the other. They influence one another both directly and indirectly. He adds: Paul Graham.

Us. Where Do College English Departments Come From? They overshot the available RAM somewhat, causing much inconvenient disk swapping, but also very informative essay about it. It would be.

Thanks to Chris Small, Jessica Livingston, and Slava Akhmechet for their feedback on these thoughts.

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bittersot · 5 years

Text

2019-06-01

Hello, my name is G̸̟̠̜͇̦̜͌̿͌͒̊͡͠h̖͈̬̫̲̆̋̈̇̌̂̕o͖͕̻̞̘̩͆̆̑̐̉̽͂̍̕ş̘̩̙̾̋͋̉́̌̉͘̚��t̶̫̲͓̥̱̲̺͇̮͑̒̅̽̍̽̔̊̎, I am 18 years old, and I have ADHD.

When I was a child, I was a bit self centered, so to speak. It wasn't that I tried to be, I was just, a bit dense, very dense. I said what came to mind, I repeated what I heard others say without thinking much on the meaning, if it sounded nice and got stuck in my head, I'd use it, likely in the wrong way.

I was always quick to jump into conversations and share my experiences, not noticing if I cut someone off, but ai got pissed if someone interrupted me. Most people probably thought me annoying, but not everyone would say self-centered, because I didn't just talk about myself, I talked about EVERYTHING that excited me, and as a child, 99% of the world excited me. I knew tons about reptiles and dinosaurs, nature, animals and running around were some of the best things I knew. I was hungry for new information, I liked to do stuff physically, and I liked to read about different topics as well. I did it due to excitement however, and could rarely take a stance on topics, I only got mad if something inconvenienced me directly(notice that this includes something bad happening to my friends, because that meant we likely couldn't play as usually etc). I was not good with understanding people, I took things literally when most of my peers had moved further into "social skills", and I remember not knowing what a Bra was nor why I shouldn't take of my shirt when it was hot in the classroom. I don't know how they found out you shouldn't do that, but while I did get laughs and sighs directed at me, it didn't bother me, because that info didn't excite me. I was at the top of my grade, I got the most advanced books in literature, though since they had less pictures than in the others books, I didn't see it as a win. Taking in info en masse but without looking at it socially, I was marked as a bit of a weird kid, but people found me cool nonetheless. I prefered to hang out with boys, I enjoyed running around in the forest behind the school with sticks pretending we were agents or soldiers. I was friends with girls, for most of the time, however, some I lost contact with because I didn't "get" them. They weren't bad, a bit mean sometimes, but I just didn't get the fun in talking about fashion and "popular" things, perhaps because you needed to follow a certain trend, perhaps because we sat still a lot, but I wasn't drawn to them. I did have two other close girl friends, they were more into fantasy like me, but due to a certain cat related mishap, we split for a while, during which I went to hang out with the boys, and that stuck for a while.

I was also very, very, stubborn, to my own detriment. I would disagree over the most stupid things cause they didnt please me at the current moment, such as refusing to eat the meatloaf because it didn't look good, and getting the rest of my daycare class to do the same. It wasn't untul everyone was standing around waiting for naptime that the caretakers got me to take a bite, and I liked it, thought it tasted good. Don't know why I so passionately decided to shit on meatloaf on that day, but I got the rest of the class in on it, and stuck with it even when I was the only one left. During handball practice before a match with another group one time, I refused to shoot at the goal if it wasn't with "my ball", I think I remember thinking "Why am I doing this, why am I do stubborn?" In the middle of my protest, perhaps because my teammates were complaining about me loudly, but I didn't give up immediately, I couldn't.

I was also impulsive. God, so impulsive. I threw a stuffed animal at a teacher ones cause she was making a joke while dragging out the time until she'd give us results on a certain topic. I felt really embarrassed. The few seconds before it happened, I remember imagining it like a cartoony scene when everyone complained and things were thrown around in the background, so I launched away my plushie at her. I tended to hit and punch my friends as I grew older, in middle school I would jump some of my friends as a way of greeting them. I didnt think it through, it just felt right, I enjoyed the body contact and their complaints, somewhat, because they would still smile afterwards and hang out with me.

It was easy to make me cry. It didn't happen often, because I mostly thought about myself and other remarks didn't land unless I was engaged in a discussion of a topic of massive interest to me, or if something inconvenienced me. I lost a toy ones, a blue bakugan snake ball, and I cried. I cried and I cried and ALL the other girls in the class had to gather to comfort me as I lied on a couch unconsolable.

In high-school, it was the first time I was in a class where a majority of students were teens I didn't know previously. And these teens were not used to my antics. Whereas in my two previous schools, most kids were somewhat cool with me because "I had always been that way", in this new class, when I didn't stick to social rules or hit someone in a friendly manner(or so I thought) it was called out and focused on. Half because it was bad(and it was, I was impulsive and my hits likely hurt) but I feel like a few of them revelled in how weird I was, didn't try to bully me, but I remember hearing whispers behind my back, and the girls would laugh and treat me as a pet when I hung out with them.

I split during 7th grade. I don't remember exactly when, but the anxiety which had been planted somewhere around the end of middle school took root and thanks to RSD, it got a boost so bad it shut me down completely. I shut up, kept my hands to myself, my thoughts to myself, and my feelings to myself(what happened was not DiD, if DiD is like driving in a car and other personalities being able to take over the wheel, then what happend to me was that I previously always wore clothes for sunny days, and now after a terrible snowstorm put on winter clothes, and since they seemed to work, I refused to take them off, even subconciously). Old me did show up in the cracks of my new self when talking to the one friend I still had from my past, but due to reasons (which I have reason to believe was gaslighting, but then again we were kids, I think my RSD just made it worse, plus when she talked about me to others without asking me if she could (Young me found her to be way too loud and open about herself, no surprise considering what I was doing but I don't think she did anything bad)) I pushed her away through ignoring her more and more, in some way I thought I "set her free" to be with people as open and honest as herself, and we split paths when high school ended, not keeping up contact.

My new self, was very introspective, I had to be, everyone had focused on being able to define their identity for a while now, whereas I hadn't thought much of anything outside of the best thing in the moment. I looked inside myself, and found stress, fear, and emotional turmoil. I started to avoid classes and presentation where I was put on display for a lot of people, and taken to a therapist when my parents started to notice how I stayed home unusually often. This me became very good at observing and picking out faults in myself and others, not actual faults, but faults as society saw them. Despite my young self being dense, I wasn't immune to the information I picked up. I remember being told as a woman that I should focus on being hot and pleasant to men, and now when I didn't have my whims to take my focus off the subject, the misogyny around me caught up and that hurdle of imperfection sent me deeper into depression. Never wear your heart on your sleeve, I told myself, over and over, it was far too risky. I grew very depressed, having a hard time leaving bed most days, falling asleep as soon as I got home. I remember spending endless nights crying and crying. What kept me alive was Pokémon, Vocaloid, and the two friend groups I was blessed to have, while I fell out of touch with one due to getting to attached to a certain person and then realizing they thought of me as, something, I was left with the other group. Other group split, which didn't bother me because I was still with the person who motivated me the most, and she went into animation. I followed her, and thanks to her, I decided to go to an animation school. Rest is documented elsewhere, but after around my first year, I realized I didn't want to be an animator, but I am glad I took this route, because I am good with said subjects, and it felt like a chance to think what I truly want to do, and I have now decided I want to go into psychology. My troubles are far from over, my old self has broken free and is showing up more and more, not irl, I'm too afraid of that still, but I hope I can tame her, and be myself again, but with the experience and capabilities of thinking things through and enjoy reading the charades most people seem to put up.

What do I know? I quit sports(handball) in middle school cause the rest of the team were "normal" girls, neurotypical who liked to talk and joke about things those types of girls do(I hate that I can't express this any better), but I kept on dancing for a while, and I loved it, I still do. Dancing and working out till I can't move are some of the best ways to make me feel good, to get rid of that excess energy, especially dancing, but due to feeling that everyone was so much better than me, and my inability to leave the house on my own when I technically could just not move from my comfort zone, play more games and not go, I ended up quitting that as well. I wish to dance, workout, and do yoga again, preferably with someone, so the motivation is greater, if someone else is there, I can't just bail.

But, I'm 18 now, and due to reasons, I have been told I am not to trust, and I believe that, not because they are right, but because of what they have said, along with depression, my memory has started to deteriorate. I've always had a hard time remembering unless it is something I am extremely excited about, thus I have let a lot of people down when it comes to birthdays and arriving on time, so I wanted to write down what I can remember as of now, when I left my childhood barely a month ago. Everything will be gone soon, but I do believe that what I have written here isn't made up, this is who I am, and who I was.

Final note, I had an unspeakable amount of imaginary friends throughout my entire childhood, human, humanoid, animalistic and monsterous, Pokémon and other fantasy beings. I still have many imaginary friends, I wouldn't be able to keep together without them, thanks to them I developed the Superiority Complex which got me out of the deepest parts of my depression, and now they are helping me drop said complex. It is silly, but due to, everything, I can't trust anyone outside of myself. I still can't, but I wish to change that, I need to.

#ghost #journal #I ended up writing this because it is pride and I thought about hoe my bisexuality is connected to the rest of my identity #didnt manage to cover that in this. but I wouldn't be bisexual and see through social norms as clearly if it wasnt for my adhd #'holding me back' from falling headfirst into the fuck of a society we live in #hapy pride

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ishomoogoo · 6 years

Text

For His Amusement Ch2

chapter 2 here, other than swearing, there isn’t anything to get upset about.

Over the course of the next few months, it has come to my attention how the different genders fit into this society. From a combination of reading all of the old newspapers that the library has in my spare time, as well as from what I have observed myself, it seems there is quite the gender gap between the three. It is especially apparent where Omegas are concerned, but the Alphas stand out as well.

Alphas seem to be the preferred sex when it comes to leadership positions and tend to gravitate heavily towards the different forms of law enforcement or other combat prone jobs. They also seem to get promotions more often than Beta’s, which is not really a surprise considering their overall nature. That doesn’t really make me feel all that comfortable trusting my safety to a bunch of hormone fueled meatheads, not that law enforcement was all that great in my previous world; I did work the NOPD for a time.

Betas seem to be evenly dispersed across all fields of the various forms of employment, not all that striking considering they’re the “moderate” gender. It seems that Beta’s are more the support type, filling the roles that Alphas don’t want and the Omegas can’t take like maintenance, factory, or infrastructure jobs. They still take Alpha and Omega saturated jobs because they make up most of the population, but this is simply a generalization. There will always be exceptions to the norm and I assume things will change over time.

Omegas, however, seem to have the same problems that women have in my old world. They are the baby and house makers and are thought to be far too delicate or stupid to do anything else according to public opinion. In fact, until the Omega’s suffrage movement in 1945 and The Omega Equal Opportunity Act of ’85, Omegas had almost no rights to speak of. They were simply expected to, and to be perfectly honest forced, stay at home, get mated off, and spread their legs until they can’t pop out any more babies. Of course, just because legislation says Omegas can work wherever they want and have equal rights, doesn’t mean that they do. Especially poverty stricken and rural areas where bigotry and hatred is the norm; and it doesn’t help that scripture dictates that Omegas are responsible for the original sin. If the numerous gossip columns and the myriad of unapologetic men and women are anything to go on, Omegas should stick to professions dealing with kids or as care providers. They sure as hell should stay the fuck away from more “stressful” jobs like law enforcement, the medical field, or the military. Those are only a few examples but the popular opinion states that Omegas should know their place and stop rocking the boat.

I sigh as I open the trailer door, kick my shoes off, and head to my room; greeting my slightly drunk father along the way. At least I’m going to be a Beta, less hassle to worry about and I don’t feel very ambitious about my future anyway. I’ll just live my life as I always did, alone and as quietly as possible; well, if my empathy and near insane need to feel helpful lets me anyway. Knowing me, I’ll probably go for law enforcement again, for no other reason than the familiarity of it.

Granted, I don’t actually know for sure if I’m going to be a Beta, since it seems that until a person presents, it’s damn near impossible to tell. This is generally between the ages of 13 and 15 but there are outliers. The reason for this is because secondary traits, like knots and a male’s uterus, don’t develop fully until puberty. Once they do, their bodies starts secreting hormones and, in the case of Omegas, go into heat. Aside from that, things like facial hair or the rounding of the body that normally goes with puberty begins as well. I just figure that since my dad is a Beta, information I gleaned from his ID, I will be too. No point in asking about my Mom, Dad never talked about her even when directly asked in my past life, and it didn’t change here. All I got as a response was a grunt and a mumbled line about how it was “none of your business”. Needless to say, I dropped the subject after that and never brought it up again.

During my short time here, four kids in my age group have presented. There were two Betas, an Alpha, and an Omega. This gives me a pretty good idea on what people are supposed to smell like so I don’t seem like an idiot who can’t tell what gender everyone is later. Like the book said, Betas have a very neutral scent, only a little different from someone who hasn’t presented yet. They have just enough variation to differentiate them from one another. The only other word I could use to describe them is earthy, which is neutral in its own right.

Now, there is only one Alpha my age, but I have met a few adults and I can say with certainty that Alphas set my teeth on edge. It’s not just their smell, which tends to be spicier and headier than Betas and Omegas. No, what really gets me is their attitudes. It’s honestly amazing how the class clown from trailer 3 turned from an innocent kid looking for attention, to a posturing, arrogant blowhard. It’s not just him either. The other Alphas I’ve had the misfortune to meet act pretty much the same, demanding respect and obedience just because they have a knot. It makes me want to either punch them in the face or just leave the fucking room because it’s too much to deal with.

A girl in my class turned out to be an Omega and it seems that she is the only one in our small town. Her smell is rather sweet and kind of soothing, but irritating at the same time. She doesn’t annoy me in the same way as the Alpha’s, who make me feel nervous and twitchy, but instead defensive and wary. It’s rather hard to describe, but I feel almost like a dog whose territory has been invaded. It feels like if I don’t act appropriately, something will be taken from me.

It’s aggravating, but I also feel bad for her because of how meek and timid she became. That was another thing that changed about her. Now, from what I know of her, she was always shy around others; but after presenting she simply became submissive. There was no other way to describe it; one day she’s just having trouble talking to others, and the next she’s tilting her neck and adverting her eyes. She starts making weird cooing noises whenever someone looks at her wrong as well. This might be a bit of an exaggeration, but that’s pretty much what she does around an Alpha.

I was very surprised when a few days after she had to leave school because of a fever, which turned out to be a pre-heat, she returned acting completely different. The Alpha from trailer 3 immediately started pestering and harassing her, and after only a few days she stopped coming to school. I haven’t seen her in the last few weeks and can only assume she was pulled out and will likely never see her again since the teacher never acted concerned about it. The kid from trailer 3 was never reprimanded for his behavior towards the girl and simply stopped showing up around lunch and recess when she stopped coming to school.

Once in my room, I drop my bag down next to the worn out nightstand and take the plastic chair, shoving it under the knob since there is no lock for my door. I don’t really expect anyone to be barging in; dad’s already well on his way to falling asleep completely smashed. I suspect he’s close to, or has already lost his job. I just want to make sure I have some level of privacy while I think about something that I only realized in my second week after my “awakening”. I then go over and sit on my bed, staring out of the window, like so many times before.

Hannibal, what the fuck happened to him? I obviously died and somehow re-incarnated or something similar, but I don’t know what happened to him. We fell together so it’s safe to assume we died together at that time, unless he was way luckier than me. Did he wake up sometime in his past as well? Hell, would he even be in the same universe? Knowing my luck, who knows? I’m 13, almost 14, so he would be 24 or 25 now. Old enough to travel and attempt to locate me, but I don’t think I ever told him where I grew up. I just gave a vague story about following dad around the docks during our sessions and left it at that. Come to think of it, I think I know more about Hannibal’s past than he does mine.

That still doesn’t answer what happened to him, or whether or not I want to find out. The thought alone of seeing him again and seeing that he doesn’t even recognize me brings me to the brink of tears. I shudder a breath in and out and furiously rub at my prickling eyes. I can’t do it, I don’t want to start over again. I can’t handle going through all that again. Hell, I don’t even know if circumstances would allow that. After all, everything is such a huge unknown now. He may not have chosen to move to the states. He may not have even lost his family here.

I take a deep, almost steadying breath and shake my head. It doesn’t matter how much I think about it, he isn’t here and I have my own life to figure out. Besides, it’s probably for the best. I may never forget him, but my life certainly doesn’t have to revolve around him anymore. Maybe I was given another chance so I could finally have a normal life for once. I only slept with him the once after all; the rest of it was just us manipulating each other. That is hardly a healthy relationship by any standard. I flop over on my side and continue to think about my life, slipping into sleep just like that.

Dad did end up loosing his job and, almost a year later, he finds a job as a boat mechanic in New Orleans. So we move from a dumpy rusted out trailer in a weed-covered trailer park, to a small fourth floor apartment in some housing development in Algiers(1). Nothing too different from the first go round; but the building is a different one, and the move was a few months earlier than before. The only thing I can somewhat complain about is that I will be turning 15 near the end of September and I haven’t presented yet. I know everyone is different, but high school is going to be bad enough with my empathy and weird anti-social behavior. Add in being a late bloomer and I can pretty much guarantee that I’m going to have a rough time. I want to hurry up and become a Beta already since I apparently have to be one of the three. While I’m at it, I want to be an adult again too; all these hormones and mood swings are driving me crazy, again.

(1) i only did Wikipedia level of research for this chapter, so i apologize for any errors. Algiers is a section of New Orleans that is considered the projects and has a very high crime rate, i thought it was appropriate.

#hannigram #Sherlock #a/b/o verse #alternate universe

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