#they’ve ruined the tumblr icon again
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WHAT DID THEY DO TO MY BOY
#they’ve ruined the tumblr icon again#mom come pick me up i'm scared#admin speaks#I keep waiting for someone to roast me for still having DoodleJump on my phone
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hi hi this is just something to track all the hq fics i’ve read recently! this really seemed like a lot when i was putting this together but most of them are less than 15k. this has a LOT of kagehina, plus some kuroken, bokuaka, iwaoi, tsukiyama, and a few other random pairings. favorites are marked with a ✨!
KAGEHINA
✨ his weight in marigolds - karasuno013 (11k)
Tobio imagined that the petals were soft, orange, perpetually messy locks of hair, and his fist clenched around the bud involuntarily.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Please Kiss Him Instead! - Bird_Of_Dreams (6k)
Recently, Kageyama has been receiving what appears to be countless confession letters. The Karasuno volleyball team reacts appropriately with surprise, jealousy, and bemusement (depending on who you ask). But no one is more surprised than Hinata, who is confused and more than a little hurt that Kageyama never told him about them. But is that the real reason behind his conflicted feelings?
As It Should Be - gghostnebula (7k)
Based on a request I saw on Tumblr that someone send fanfics where "Hinata is bullied without the team knowing and then they find out." I like the idea of everyone (including Tsukishima) enraged and vengeful. So I. Did that. I'm so sorry. I'm also really really sorry that the 'ungrateful second-years' aren't really in this because I wanted them to be but I couldn't find a good place for them, since this focuses so much on just Kageyama and Hinata.
Five Plus One - Xachyn (1k)
Five times other people thought they were dating and one time Kageyama wondered if they were.
The Crown and The Crow - Yuu_chi (9k)
Somewhere out there is your forever one wearing your Mark on their skin; it's just a matter of finding them.
✨ In Transit - Mysecretfanmoments (5k)
Hinata finds that he likes standing close to Kageyama on buses and trains. It doesn't mean anything--probably. Maybe.
four times hinata and kageyama almost kiss (and one time they do) - spaceburgers (2k)
When it happens, it’s not romantic. Things between them have never been romantic, after all. They’re too stupid for that.
spoiled - buu (2k)
It's the Kageyama that gently takes Hinata's hand when they're walking together, or rests his head on the top of Hinata's when they're watching TV, or pulls Hinata into his lap when he complains about being cold. Hinata struggles at first, confused and thinking Kageyama's making fun of him or something, but he slowly starts to realize that, beyond all belief, Kageyama is the Doting type.
Thaw - peppermint_wind (40k)
Kageyama Tobio just wants to get through the day. He hates winter, he hates most people, and he really hates getting up for an 8:00AM class. That's when Hinata Shouyou, bright and obnoxious, literally comes running into his life at full-throttle and changes everything Kageyama thought he knew.
Basically, the College AU where Hinata and Kageyama meet by Hinata literally knocking into him and spilling hot coffee all down Kageyama's clothes.
touch - buu (3k)
Hinata doesn't notice it at first, really. It's small things, natural things, like when they sit together at lunch and Hinata ends up hooking his ankle over Kageyama's and he doesn't move away; in fact, he seems to not notice it, and go on eating his lunch like nothing's different.
✨ Routine - someonestolemyshoes (29k)
Kageyama Tobio has a routine. Up, shower, dress, breakfast, classes, practice, work, dinner, laptop, show time. Hinata is a well-known cam boy, and Kageyama is his biggest fan.
✨ Acceptable Risk - Mysecretfanmoments (46k)
Tobio braced himself and stood, gathering Hinata’s warm body close. Hinata’s weight settled against him, strengthening the impression he always had at these times: that he was collecting a part of himself, severed by some weird circumstance. In these moments he couldn’t help feeling that Hinata belonged to him, and as long as he didn’t talk about the impression out loud it harmed no one. As it was Hinata mumbled a little, curling into him the way he’d anticipated.
(Kageyama and Hinata navigate living together at university while not dating. It's hard—the not-dating part, that is.)
hot - buu (6k)
Hinata should not be this hot. Kageyama shouldn't find his short stature attractive, shouldn't have problems with his eyes lingering a little too long on Hinata's smaller frame, the way his shirts hang just a little too big on him sometimes.
Oh God - orphan_account (6k)
No, class distinction had never held much meaning for Kageyama. Until the day he met Hinata. One-shot Omegaverse! AU. Smut is heavily present within this story. Mostly PWP, but there's plot, if you squint.
operation: find out if hinata has a hot bod - day (2k)
Kiyoko compliments Hinata's body. It turns into a chaotic mess where the team (aka Tanaka and Nishinoya) tries everything in their power to get a glimpse of Hinata shirtless.
Hinata is oblivious and Kageyama is stressed out.
well, maybe i’m a crook - aruariandance (7k)
The thing is-- Hinata is in love with Kageyama and everyone knows it, including Kageyama.
5 times Kageyama purred + 1 time he didn’t - orphan_account (3k)
No one at Karasuno had ever heard Kageyama purr, but that was normal. He wasn't exactly the most expressive on the team, and no one really minded.
Hurt - someonestolemyshoes (27k)
It’s alarming, Kageyama thinks, how quickly things can go downhill.
One minute Hinata is fine, at the top of his game, spiking left and right and everywhere in between and the next he is crumpled in a limp, lifeless heap on the gym floor and the resounding crack of his head hitting the wood is still echoing in Kageyama’s ears.
knock knock - writedeku (6k)
“I don’t need telepathy to win,” is the first thing he says; nearly shouts it, to be precise. “We can play it without me being linked.”
One by one, the teambonding practises stop as they all turn to Kageyama to gape. Play volleyball without telepathy? It’s not that it’s not possible, but that would put them at such a major disadvantage it’d be like having a team full of one-sided Kageyamas.
the hedgehog’s dilemma - drunkonwritting (17k)
So when he comes to Karasuno, Tobio expects more of the same. He won't make the same mistakes again, but he doubts anyone on the team will like him—Tobio's grown used to his solitary existence, to the point where he can't imagine what it's like to have people around all the time, people who actually want to spend time with him outside of school or practice. He's resigned himself to being alone, because no one in his life has ever decided they want to get to know him or spend time with him or even like him as more than a casual acquaintance. Tobio's tried time and time again to change that and failed over and over—he doubts it's going to change anytime soon.
But when he sees that orange-haired shrimp staring at him from the gym doors, eyes wide and betrayed, he feels a vague sense of premonition.
Don’t Make Me Walk When I Want to Fly - MissKiraBlue (24k)
"I don't want to leave without an apology"
After Hinata rushed from their fight he ended up in a car accident.
But when he wakes up he's not dead and he's not in a hospital either.
Hinata has to live the same day – the day when he and Kageyama fought – over and over again until he finds a solution where he could get out of the time loop.
he may suck at beer pong but he slam dunked my heart - Authoress (9k)
After a while, Kageyama kind of just...forgets how angry the floral snapback makes him. It becomes a companion, almost. It's seen him through many a late library study session, through feeding planaria and wrestling bean beetles into petri dishes. He feels something close to affection for the ever-present hat.
Oh no, Kageyama thinks. I'm attracted to a douchebag.
(The AU where struggling college student Kageyama meets and very unfortunately falls in love with his frat boy lab partner, Hinata.)
room to grow - Mysecretfanmoments (6k)
Third year Kageyama is considerate, careful, doesn't grab Hinata's hair. Hinata's still trying to figure out how he feels about it.
Dare - majesticartax (10k)
“W-wait! Kageyama! What—hold on!” Hinata cries, kicking his legs, flipping around in his setter's strong arms and struggling uselessly, scrambling.
“Can’t we talk about this!?”
Wish You Would - longleggedgit (7k)
The title of this document was just jealouskageyama.docx so that pretty much tells you what to expect.
"If you don't want me to go out with him," Hinata says, lifting his eyes to meet Kageyama's, "then give me a reason not to."
Right Here All The Time - longleggedgit (5k)
"You were flirting," Kageyama says, sounding bewildered, almost accusatory. His chest is heaving under Hinata's hands.
Hinata laughs. "Yeah, and it worked."
Immolate - Marks (2k)
Kageyama balls his hands into fists at his sides and grits his teeth as want builds up in his stomach and sets up camp. It's not the first time he's felt like this around Hinata, but it's the worst every time and he wishes he could just will it away.
come on closer - skeletalparade (6k)
Kageyama shifted uncomfortably on the bench, fingernails scraping against the plastic of his water bottle. He was trying so hard not to stare at Hinata, but it was difficult. Hinata was a good vice captain, but he was ruining Kageyama’s life.
2-Player Mode - medea_azyungele (5k)
Are you ugly or something?" Hinata asks, with his usual lack of tact.
"Oi, dumbass! I'll let you know that-" but he couldn't finish because Hinata interrupts him: "Let's turn on the webcams!"
Suddenly, a square icon pops up in a corner of his monitor.
Oh no he's hot.
I like the way your clothes smell - Mysecretfanmoments (75k)
Power outages, ghost stories, and the presence of a certain orange-haired boy lead to bad decision-making on Tobio's part. He'd planned to keep his crush a secret; the universe has other plans.
a first time for everything - Mysecretfanmoments (4k)
He rolls away from Shouyou, his breathing just a little fast. His body has been weird today, more like when they first started dating. It happens sometimes—mostly when they’ve been on the court together, or they haven’t had time alone—but it feels just a bit different than usual.
((Kageyama bottoms for the first time. established relationship, iltwycs-verse but can stand alone.))
✨ Color Theory - kageyamz (41k)
That’s right, he thinks I’m straight. Kageyama sighed in relief at the answer then tensed up, the gears turning in his brain. Wait, I am straight, right? Kageyama wants a simple time at university, but life has other plans for him.
cheater, cheater (pumpkin eater) - teddy_or_something (7k)
Closets hold many things, one of which being skeletons. In Hinata's case, there was a person where there should've been a vibrator, and that was definitely enough to wilt his erection.
Song fic to Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off by P!ATD.
✨ change in pressure - viscreal (37k)
Kageyama couldn’t for the life of him guess what he’d been doing to get so goddamn beat up, but it was there, and the guy wasn’t even taking care of any of it. The pain was making it hard to concentrate during class, making it hard to think at all, and that plus the boy’s overenthusiastic emotions were putting Kageyama in a particularly sour mood, so he really couldn’t be blamed when he snapped something sarcastic at the teacher and got detention in response.
alternatively titled: in which kageyama, an empath whos still just as socially inept as ever, ends up having a gay crisis because hinata cant stop getting hurt.
seventy-thirty - viscreal (4k)
Hinata was the first one to bring it up.
KUROKEN
reddit boyfriends - NeverNothing (4k)
Lev goes on reddit to talk about his senpais and accidentally goes viral. Yaku helps.
✨ you’re the break lines failing (as my car swerves off the freeway) - ghostpot (15k)
Kenma thinks that Kuroo looks ugly with his head bent against the arm of the couch like that. Then Kenma thinks that he wants to marry him, and is promptly thrown into the 5 stages of grief.
✨ the galaxy is endless (i thought we were, too) - cosmogony (31k)
Kuroken AU where the last words your soulmate will say to you appear on your skin when you turn 16, and how Kenma and Kuroo learn what this means over the course of their lives
✨ Best Friends - Mysecretfanmoments (6k)
Every evening they walk home together, Kuro smelling of salt and suntan lotion, Kenma’s hands sore from scooping ice cream all day, and it feels nice. Peaceful.
He’s glad Kuro came, after all.
((During the two weeks he spends manning his uncle's ice cream booth on the coast, Kenma decides that maybe he likes his best friend back, after all))
BOKUAKA
tea-stained polaroids - dalyeau (6k)
“I'm gonna date that,” Bokuto declares solemnly, and Kuroo throws a plastic spoon at his head.
cookies and cream - norio (6k)
Some people might tell Akaashi that he couldn't bake his worries away.
But some people haven't dated Bokuto Koutarou.
Komorebi - OwlBeDamned (8k)
When his thirteenth birthday comes, Akaashi should be elated.
Instead, he is worried.
"WWOOOAH, YOU HAVE GOT THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HUMAN BEING I HAVE EVER SEEN - NO, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HUMAN BEING THE WORLD HAS EVER BEEN BLESSED WITH...CAN I TOUCH YOU?!"
✨ Upstairs - yoogiboobi (16k)
For about a second, a heartbeat, he's met with a pair of dark, piercing eyes, with what is probably eyeliner, looking back at him. It really is just a split second before his hand knocks down three cereal boxes that hit him square in the head, effectively making him break eye contact and drop his groceries to the floor.
In which some of the first things Bokuto learns about his upstairs neighbour are the colour of his eyes and the sound of his moans.
steam - orphan_account (8k)
bokuto: why is he so hot bokuto: why am i so gay kuroo: LMAO you mean your vice captain right bokuto: yeah
kuroo: i got this bro bokuto: what bokuto: wtf does that mean
Bokuto started to panic.
heavy heart, a love apart - drifloon (7k)
(802): Our sex has gotten so much better since we broke up.
IWAOI
✨ It’s Tradition - MelissaWritesStuff (4k)
Every year, without fail, on Oikawa's birthday, Oikawa has somehow gotten a kiss out of Iwaizumi.
lips like sugar - ohhotlamb (8k)
Hajime is offered to learn the art of kissing from a true professional, one Oikawa Tooru. It's not as bad as he thought it would be.
darlin’, your head’s not right - aruariandance (14k)
'“Our wedding,” Oikawa says by way of explanation, tapping his finger against his magazine more emphatically. “What colors should we use? Color scheme is important, apparently.”
Iwaizumi feels his lifespan shortening.
or,
Oikawa teases Iwaizumi about a childhood promise he made to marry him when they were older, except suddenly it's not really a joke at all.
✨ Bet On It - originalblue (13k)
Hajime knows exactly how shitty Oikawa's personality is, and has no scruples whatsover about betting Oikawa six thousand yen that he can't be nice for an entire week.
Something Borrowed - rageprufrock (16k)
In which Oikawa and Iwaizumi have always been a foregone conclusion to everyone else, but a massive, unanswered question to one another.
The PDA jar - orphan_account (10k)
“What is that thing for?”
“I’m glad you asked, captain. This… is the Public Display of Affection jar. Or PDA jar for short.”
“Now whenever you do something that may hurt our children’s innocence, you’ll have to put money in the jar as a punishment."
✨ stumble into the sun - sunsmasher (4k)
“So,” Hajime says, as he peels off his uniform shirt, letting it fall on top of his gym bag. “Have you guys ever heard of like, someone being turned on by people saying nice things to them?”
Matsukawa slams his locker shut. “Oh my god,” he says.
by chance - crossbelladonna (62k)
When Iwaizumi Hajime meets Oikawa Tooru, suddenly everything bursts into color. The only problem is that for the other, it doesnt seem to happen the same way.
or
the world is black and white until you meet your soulmate au
TSUKKIYAMA
by any other name - parenthetic (5k)
A Concise Guide to Dealing with People Asking if your Best Friend and/or Crush is Single:
Panic Lie Run
Do you see what I see? - honeydragon (1k)
Three times Tsukishima wonders what colour Yamaguchi's eyes are, and the one time he finds out.
The Great Yamaguchi-Tsukishima Split (Capitalization Necessary) - WyYeuw (2k)
"But no, the current situation isn’t normal. This situation requires the full attention of the team. No, what’s really concerning this time around, is that Yamaguchi is the one ignoring Tsukishima.” Yamaguchi confesses. Tsukishima fucks up—like, really fucks up. The volleyball club notices and loses a week’s worth of practice.
Baby, this is how it all goes down - psych0tastic (7k)
In the midst of revising for a class test over at Yamaguchi’s place one night, Tsukki suddenly spoke up and said, “I'd like to bottom the next time we have sex."
OTHER
Rewards Program - surveycorpsjean (8k) - bokuroaka
Akaashi enjoys his normal life, as a normal grocery checker, at a normal grocery store.
Of course, it all goes up in flames when two hot as hell college kids dump their items on the conveyor belt.
Donuts. Glue. Donut holes.
And that's only the beginning.
Edelweiss - ostentatiouslyrealistic (6k) - semi/tendou
Hanahaki Disease (n.) An illness bred from unrequited love, where the victim suffers from coughing up flower petals.
Sympathy From a Lost Boy - meraki_drabbles (11k) - ushiten
The figure was hollow-cheeked and gauntly, with prominent eyelids bulging out under thin raised eyebrows, casting a shadow over irises that Wakatoshi couldn't decide the colour of, but rather processed them as a strange mix of crimson and ruby and scarlet dripped against a mahogany canvas.
"Sorry, am I intruding?
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so…now that we all know what you DISLIKE about star wars (and 400% fairly so, you have my full support here)…
what drew you into the universe, what keeps you around?
favorite characters, ships (OTPs or actual spaceships lol), overall themes, do you have a favorite random weird creature or robot that you adore? whatever you wanna talk about!
go off honey (again, but supportively 💖💖💖)
tax paid: the very nerdy star wars punk vest i made and the even nerdier matching vest i made for starsky
Lmaooo, entirely valid. You were like "star wars?" and I was like the drunk person at the bar who can't stop shouting about how much their ex sucks. But now that I have gotten all that off my chest, let's talk about why I love it (since if I didn't love it, I wouldn't have such strong opinions). Basically my feelings on the OG SW trilogy are similar to my feelings on the OG LOTR trilogy, as that tumblr post floating around somewhere put it: sure, they have flaws, but also, they're perfect. I have a complicated relationship with the prequels, as do we all, since George Lucas cannot write dialogue or direct actors to save his life (stick to what you're good at, George, hire other people to do the rest), but even they have their moments. Like. Hit me with that "Across the Stars" love theme, John Williams. Gahh. Just like that.
Because... Star Wars wasn't actually this omnipresent corporate global entertainment monolith when it started out. It was a dorky low-budget indie sci-fi film in the 1970s which everyone thought was going to bomb. But it told a simple and compelling story in an interesting way, everyone agrees that ESB is one of the best films/sequels ever made, and then ROTJ gave it a happy ending while it was still okay to do that. My main thematic gripe with the Disney trilogy (I will try to keep those to a minimum, lol, but I have to bring it up to compare) is that it very clearly fell into the "actual happy endings are naive and unrealistic and a cynical postmodern audience won't accept anything less than things being Bad" trap that, yet again, we have GOT to thank for. It obviously existed to some degree before that, but GOT blew it up to huge levels, where the only valid situation or character is that which is Grimdark and Depressing. Which, in my view, misses the heart and soul of what SW is all about??
Like. ESB is genuinely dark. ANH was this fun plucky little sci-fi film where the scrappy good guys won the day against the Nazi stand-ins, as they were supposed to, and then ESB comes along (speaking of John Williams, let us all chant together, DUH DUH DUH DUHDUHDUH DUHDUHDUH, DUH DUH DUH DUHHHH DUHHH DUHHH DUHHHH) and things go... wrong. Leia and Han are on the run for most of the movie, then get captured and tortured by the Empire and and betrayed (however unwillingly) by Lando. The Rebellion is attacked on Hoth (I tell you, those fuckin AT-AT walkers were SCARY when you see it as a young kid for the first time), and forced into hiding. Luke loses his hand, doubts Obi-Wan and Yoda and realizes that his mentors are fallible, makes dumb mistakes, and of course gets hit with The Most Famous Line In Movie History. But it's also just adrenaline and excitement. THE ASTEROID FIELD! THE HAN-LEIA BANTER! THE FIRST LUKE-VADER DUEL! THE FACT THAT YOU HEAR TWO FRICKING NOTES OF THE IMPERIAL MARCH AND YOU'RE JUST LIKE OH YEAH OH YEAH OH YEAHHHH!
But also then... Return of the Jedi. It gets shat upon for the Ewoks and reusing the Death Star as the Big Bad and being supposedly cheesy and not as Thematically Dark as ESB. Which is all kinda silly, in my opinion, but also, can we talk about Luke Skywalker's character arc and how he chooses possibly the most radical compassion ever demonstrated by a hero in an action movie, let alone a space opera. He insists that Anakin Skywalker is still in there somewhere and puts his own neck on the line to prove it. Luke doesn't save the galaxy by being a Badass Jedi. He saves it by throwing away his lightsaber and saying "I will not fight you, Father." He saves it by trusting that even in the depths of darkness, Anakin can come back from the charred ruins of Darth Vader and finally do what he was supposed to do all along. He can end Palpatine for good and all (we don't talk about "Somehow Palpatine has returned" because it's nonsense, obviously). Anakin can avenge the Jedi and what was done to him and all the lies he believed and the pain he wreaked on the galaxy, even then. It's not too late. It's not too late. Like. I don't care if this is Lightweight or Childish or whatever. It makes me CRY every time I watch it. Especially the moment where Luke takes off Anakin’s helmet and sees how ruined he actually is under there, and yet the downfall and death of the trilogy’s chief villain is not triumphant at all but instead utterly heartbreaking. “You were right about me Luke... tell your sister... you were right.”
Excuse me, I need to just /CRIES INTENSELY/
Luke won't be tempted to the dark side for his own sake, but Leia's ("If you will not join me, then perhaps she will"). I likewise hold firmly that Anakin/Vader is one of the best movie villains/antiheroes of all time and likewise have many feelings and Strong Opinions about his arc, prequel writing clumsiness and eye-rollingly tepid love story aside. (See: he and Obi-Wan were deeply in love and in a way they still are, don't @ me. I have no problems with Padme and obviously stan Natalie Portman at all times, but Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship is the real love story, the heart of the prequels, and in some ways even the subsequent movies, the end.) And “so this is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause” is... raw af as a line. For being in a Star Wars prequel movie. What?? (Also, the Revenge of the Sith novelization had no business being as good as it was. If only that dude had also written the movie.)
Anyway, my point is: the OG trilogy had plenty of moments of staggering emotional weight and where things genuinely sucked for the good guys and the outcome wasn’t entirely clear. The difference is that it didn’t choose to dwell on them, and it allowed for a transformative fictional space where a happy ending, fiercely fought for and squarely earned, was the right outcome. We didn’t need to go back thirty years later and make everything suck for fear that a cynical modern audience couldn’t connect with it otherwise. (Like I said, we didn’t need the new movies at all, but Disney heard that Cha-Ching of the Almighty Dollar). Star Wars was sci-fi, sure, but it also had the fantasy elements that allowed a happy ending to be the right choice for what we saw the characters go through and the philosophy that carried us through the original trilogy.
Likewise it’s just... Peak as far as dynamics go. C-3PO the fussy metal butler who worries about Everything and R2-D2 who is the droid embodiment of YOLO? Flawless. Sassy scruffy space pirate and badass politician warrior princess bicker constantly, butt heads, drive each other crazy, and then fall in love? Iconic. (And has shaped my ship tastes for... all of eternity, oops.) The above-discussed transformation of Luke Skywalker, whiny ordinary teenage kid, to the truly great man who fulfills what Obi-Wan, Yoda, AND the rest of the entire Jedi order couldn’t manage to do, because of their own flaws and blind spots and black-and-white moral views that didn’t know what to do with a man who loved as passionately as Anakin Skywalker, for better or for worse? The guy who managed to save the galaxy with love? STAN.
So... what? The Disney trilogy decides to retcon all that, throw everything that they’ve fought for out the window, make Han, Leia, and Luke miserable and rejecting the roles they grew into in the original trilogy, and die without ever really reuniting or seeing each other again as a trio? The underlying message was that “these happy endings aren’t satisfactory/realistic/sophisticated enough” and idk, maybe it’s just the shitshow of the last few years, but I’d like to see some entertainment that had the cojones to tell me that despite all the darkness and despair, maybe there’s a chance for hope. (”Rebellions are built on hope,” thank you Only Valid New Star Wars Movie Rogue One.) And Rogue One worked so well, despite being utterly GUTTING as all the heroes died one by one, because we knew what was coming next (A New Hope) and that their sacrifice was going to be worth it. I don’t care if that’s “realistic” or not. As I’ve said before, that’s what stories are for, and if I only wanted things that were Real Life, I would only read the news. Besides, the idea that happy endings never happen in reality is equally bullshit. We as a culture need to accept that more, instead of finding reasons to tear everything down.
So just... yes. The original trilogy might have flaws, but also, it’s perfect. And do I want to rewatch it all now? Kinda.
(Anyway. I warned you this was gonna be long. Oh look, it’s long, and I’m sure there is even more I could say, but still. Ahem.)
sleepover weekend asks
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what's the nicest possible way to tell a close friend their roleplay blogs suck and if they want followers and interaction like they keep complaining about they have to actually put effort into it instead of just making blog after blog and slapping a character on it like that's they need to do. I've tried to suggest this to her before by comparing other blogs that play her muse but she just feels inadequate instead of inspired to emulate them which I understand but it's very frustrating when I suggest a million ways to make her blog better and she brushes them all off for one reason or another and I don't want to say anything because she's like a sister to me. sigh.
Unfortunately, the short answer to this is that there really isn't any way you can make her see this unless she's ready to see it.
But, I don't like giving those sorts of answers, they feel hopeless and shitty, so, let's try this...
Understanding what the problem with your friend and her connecting with this information is, is important. It might help in talking to her about the issue.
What I find in these instances, and a lot of similar ones, is that the mun is unhappy about the results but quite happy with the process. She's enjoying some part of this, it's just not the lack of interaction, obviously. It's the very things she's doing to turn people off of her muses.
I think a lot of people get kind of addicted to new muses. I mean, the entire process of having a new muse:
interest to outright fixation, no matter how short-lived, in a new, inspiring muse
who is almost certainly in a new fandom, and probably, one that is very busy and popular at the moment
"someone stop me" phase, even though they've already decided
picking the perfect URL, creating the new blog, making the graphics and batches of icons
reblogging All The Content about the new muse, at least, the visual content and maybe, a couple of "oof, right in the feels" style short meta posts
plugging the new muse on the old blogs, through friends, etc.
mass follows
new mutuals! Shiny new meme asks in the inbox! New threads!
It's about the newness, the excitement, and the irrationally promising feeling that damn it, this time, the blog and muse is going to be successful, popular even, beloved, the actual favorite iteration of the character in the RPC. Like anything exciting, it's addicting for people. And like anything addicting, it can take hitting rock bottom and going several more feet down, a few times, before they're over it and want to change.
Which is, of course, where you come in with your as-yet failed RP interventions.
What makes what you're trying to do here very difficult is that there isn't a total bottoming out she's going to reach. There will always be something new and exciting coming out with a new and exciting muse that'll fix the problem, in her mind. There will always be the option and availability to create another blog, slap another muse on it, rinse and repeat. With shampoo and conditioner that never runs out.
You definitely had the right idea by trying to get her to contrast between why what she is doing isn't working the way she wants and why what someone else is doing is working out that way. It's just, as you found out, often not the best idea, no matter how well-intentioned it is. With her blogs constantly failing for reasons she refuses to believe, it's incredibly likely she's already done some comparison in all the wrong ways, ultimately going back and forth between blaming the other iterations, finding nothing but errors in the way they write the character and set up their blogs, and feeling depressed that she's not good enough, but they are.
So, you might have unintentionally inflamed all of this! She could be in a place where she's even more likely to believe that what she's doing is great as a defense mechanism for being hard on herself.
I'd also like to say that I'm aware the "right" advice here is, "there's nothing you can do, you'll just make her feel bad, people have a right to RP however they want." But, you're also her friend, and you have to be around the complaining and upset when this just keeps happening.
Furthermore, when we have very close friends like this, we automatically keep trying to fill in the gaps for them at cost to ourselves - every time they make another blog/muse, we get roped into writing things we know are just going to be dropped, making them things we know are going to left on a deserted blog, and so on. Eventually, it makes you feel bad about yourself because your efforts aren't good enough, either. It can really ruin the hobby for you, sucking away enjoyment and creativity you could be spending elsewhere.
I don't think you're wrong in trying to help both her and yourself.
Keep being honest with her. When she complains, be honest about why this is happening. And you can, indeed, be kind and honest!
Let's say that she says something about how she wrote all these opens and no one is going for them.
You could say something like, "that sucks. I liked this one, it's the one that feels and sounds like the character to me. What were you doing when you wrote that? You should rewrite the others to be a little more like that, I think people are looking for more of the character like we saw them in the series."
You're acknowledging that she's right, it does suck, it's a shitty feeling no matter how at fault for it she is. While pointing out something she did good (and, okay, maybe she didn't, maybe they all categorically sucked lol but find one that was even a tiny bit better/that has elements you can use to both boost her confidence and show her what is right, not just wrong). Then, giving her an idea - whatever she was thinking, watching, listening to at that time, she tapped into something more like the actual character, and she could do it again. And telling her what the problem is, at least with this, that people don't want a cardboard cutout muse, they want the one they like from the fandom book/show/movie.
No need to actually compare with another active mun and muse, or tell her that it's because what she's doing is terribly and driving you nuts. Even if both are true.
If she's the one that compares herself to another blog this time, seize the opportunity!
"Well, people like that the muse is developed and like the character they know. When you interact with another canon, don't you want them to be like the character you liked? You liked -current muse- for a reason. When I've felt like that, I reminded myself of why I was drawn to the character and worked harder on writing them accurately and getting their voice down. I think this other blog has done that and you haven't yet."
It's a little harsher, but she may very well only be looking for validation from you that this other blog actually sucks and she's doing great. A lot of complaints on tumblr are that - seeking validation, not help. The entire culture of that shit is not at all helpful. You don't want to try to sort of shock her out of it by being too harsh, but you do want to make it clear that you're not going to just give ass pats and tell her what she wants to hear.
You're telling her why this other blog is more successful, that the muse comes off as the character and is enjoyable to write with. Because the mun put in the effort to make them both accurate to the character and a muse that's fun/interesting/engaging to write with in RP.*
*Not all characters transfer over well to RP, either, and this might also be some of her problem. For whatever reason, some people are deeply drawn to the worst possible choices for them. They will find the least applicable character in a whole series, one with a billion characters that spans decades of material, plenty of viable options all around, but no, it's got to be this one. The one that's impossible for them to pull off, boring or disliked by the fandom, is incredibly difficult to interact with (think manic pixie bullshit, villains that are extreme loners, incredibly quiet and reserved characters, or those who are only ever seen in their canon to be bantering with friends and enemies - people they have established relationships with, unlike someone else's muse, even if that muse is a canonical friend or enemy), or is an active turn off in RP, like an outrageously overpowered character whose entire existence is based on being OP as fuck. That's going to be what they go for. Every. Damn. Time.
If you notice she's doing this, she could be compensating without even realizing it by turning the string of muses into identical and empty clichés she thinks people want to interact with, but that she can still handle writing. And unfortunately, your job is even harder, OP, because everyone has a character type...and your bestie's is Fucking Impossible to RP for 90% of the RPC Population Type lmao I'm...I'm so sorry.
Maybe if this is the case, you can get her to try out a different character that has some of the traits you've noticed she seems to always be drawn to, but without the complications. Work smarter, not harder, though! Propose this as you desperately wanting your muse to interact with x. Some people react very badly to being told "you'd write a great -muse name," others are flattered by it. If you don't know for certain that she'd be flattered, or at least not offended, that she doesn't hate this character or anything, do not say this. Just tell her that you love this character, you think she could handle them as a NPC in a thread, could she please try?
And make that the single most interesting thread in the history of threads. Specifically, for her. Give her tons of engagement with this NPC of the sort she tends to want the most. It might stick and reset some of her perspective on the types of characters she keeps choosing.
You're reminding her that she's a RPer, too, which sounds like a crazy thing to have to remind a RPer, but we do weirdly lose track of this. We get very invested in what we're putting out more than what we've successfully been given, especially when we're not being given much of what we want. So, you're prodding her to recall that there are two parts of this equation, she's been on the side of it - she's wanted to interact specifically with a canon muse because she loved the character/ship with hers/whatever, and has, as we all have, experienced both the disappointment of running through a ton of them who just are not that character and also finding the version that very much is.
This helps to put other people back into perspective in a way that isn't just "interactions." (Read as "desired attention." Which isn't a slam, it's true. It's also not a problem, we all are here to interact, we all enjoy having devoted mutuals and such. It's only a problem when we stop seeing them as anything other than a means to an end for ourselves.) She might be able to relate to them, thus, why they don't like her muses, if she can put herself back into their shoes.
You stick with that and transition it into why she picked the current muse. It's the same deal, there was something about the muse that sparked interest, creativity, etc. What was it? Something that isn't there, or there enough, in her writing. In all the excitement of muse-creation, she's probably let whatever it was slide right out the door. If you can get her to recall that feeling of interest and identify for herself what all triggered it, she might be able to stick with it.
And you've encouraged her again to give people what they want if she wants interactions by developing her muses. You've also done so, if it all applicable and true, by using yourself here, making it feel like not just a common problem, but one experienced and overcome by someone she cares about and trusts.
She might have an issue with needing a lot of high-interest, high-reward scenarios, too.
This is a high-effort, minimum reward situation for her. A lot of us in the RPC have shit like ADHD that can really make this difficult once we're experiencing it in this way, but even those who don't absolutely fall into it as well. So, you'll need ways to make it fun, but...I think if you can sort of kindly trick her into experiencing the effort as its own reward, it'd go a long, long way.
I can't really say what I do, having this problem with high-effort, minimal reward because I don't tend to experience that in RP. The writing is the reward for me, as much as I lose it utterly with happiness every time a writing partner is loving what I've given them. My reward system is set up around the writing and exploring characters. Hers seems to be set up around the reaction to it and amount of engagement with it. You need to try to use the latter to give her some of the former.
If she likes Halloween or Christmas, Fall or Winter, this could be your way into doing it!
Get her hyped about a seasonal prompt list you're doing. This does, yeah, mean you will have to do it, too lol but in the end, any time you aren't able to produce something daily like these lists usually are set up for, you're showing her that it isn't a job she's got to fulfill - the rules are only as strict as she wants to make them for herself. And if you keep yours short and fun, she'll feel like it's perfectly fine and good to do it this way as well. That it doesn't need to be a damn masterpiece or anything, just fun, something different to show off her muse.
While what she's actually doing, in addition to that, is getting in touch with and developing her muse. Importantly, when we write in a way that is just for ourselves like this, we tend to kind of...bond, for lack of a less weird sounding way of putting it, with a muse. It makes them stick with us longer, raising their importance and easier availability to us.
Let her know you're doing this, pick one out you genuinely like, and don't expect her to be down with it immediately. It's work with no foreseeable reward. Except, it's very hard to listen to our friends be excited, proud of themselves, enjoying themselves without wanting to join in. It'll be especially helpful, though, if you think people you interact with will like the posts and comment on them, or even try to turn them into threads if you include their muses (with their consent, of course, and no pressure). If she sees that, it might make it even more interesting to her. You might also have to pose this as her helping you out, that you don't think you'll get more than two done if she isn't doing it as well, as a sort of a challenge she can hold you to.
Whatever you think might work best for engaging her, you know her well, you can do it!
Be there to help her out with ideas if she goes for it. Throw out some easy, fun suggestions you think she might like, that even give her some opportunity to write something with her muse that she doesn't get a chance to. Pull from the muse's canon, is there something in their canon that goes with the prompt word "snow," for instance? Is it something she enjoyed about the canon story? Suggest it. Thinking about both the muse and your friend, is there something else that came to mind about that prompt you could suggest? Do it!
Again, whatever she's most into, it's an angle. Humor? Her serious muse is forced into a ridiculous, funny situation that involves the snow. Angst? A sad memory associated with the snow. Shipping? A romantic, fluffy scene (or steamy one). And so on.
Be there to express interest and encouragement while she's doing it. Don't do things that are going to come off as pressuring or helicopter moming her, of course! Like, asking how much she's gotten done, did she start working on it yet? That's a bad idea, unless she enjoys that sort of thing. Instead, tell her how much you can't wait to see this, ask about how it's going, tell her about yours to encourage her to talk about it.
And be there to be her audience when she posts it. This really seems to be her highest reward, so give it to her. Like the post, comment on the post, tell her in messages. Not individually, all of those things. If you can find a way to that doesn't mess up what you've got going on with your blog, mutuals, other friends, etc., mention it on your blog.
At this point, people might be both aware of her RP habits and wary of engaging with her, but someone might bite if you're enthused and go like the post. If it's applicable, make some jokes about it on the dash, turn it into a moment of inside joke-like crack for people to see. Mention that she wrote this and you loved it, link it or outright reblog her post. Hell, mention that you and her are doing such and such prompts for whatever holiday or season before the fact, that way, it doesn't come out of nowhere to your mutuals, either. Again, if applicable, you can ask to turn it into a thread.
The point, at this juncture, isn't to attract people to her blog and posts, it's to demonstrate to her that this is fun and rewarding. If you can get people to go like the posts, great, but you can only count on yourself to do it at first.
Most people enjoy those sorts of prompts on their dash from mutuals, though. You're always going to have some who feel like it's annoying because it wasn't strictly a RP reply, but whatever, they're not the majority in most fandoms anymore, thankfully. Point is, it's literally showing her mutuals that she's capable of thinking as her muse and working on her muse. It's showing off good things and making her muse more interesting and uniquely hers in a good way. And it's totally possible that she's going to organically generate likes, people wanting to use this as a plot with her for RP, and mutuals who are increasingly following along with every post made.
The hope is that she experiences the beginnings of more interest in the muse than she does making muses, gain some confidence in doing this with the enjoyment of it, and stick with a muse longer than five seconds so that she can actually end up with the interactions she wants.
There are definitely other ways of doing this, the prompt thing just came to mind because it's major prompt season. You've got a prompt list floating around for literally every popular point of interest right now, from whump to extreme fluff to horror to humor. And it's going to keep going until January. It's also something that can be as short as a paragraph or as long as several thousand words, and that a hell of a lot of people don't do all of. So, it's easy, so long as she's got a reason to find it interesting and stay on course with it even a little bit.
You could also try getting her into doing something like moodboards for her muse but with little additions of writing that go along with them. Nothing major, just things like a quote from her muse or a sentence from a starter, thread, whatever.
So long as you can get her to start refocusing on RP being enjoyable from the inside and not just the outside, it's valid as hell to try it! She seems to be experiencing RP as instant gratification and basing that gratification on things she can't control, like popularity.
Right now, even giving her the sober truth that one can write the best version of a canon muse there is to be found, be someone enjoyable and interesting in OOC interactions, and be an amazing writer without that being enough to garner popularity, or even the plots that are wanted. That being a very popular RPer and having more interactions than you know what to do with (honestly sucks ass) isn't a set of absolute values, but rather, variables that are always in flux and often, totally mysterious. It's usually a mixture of total luck, visual appeal, and both mun being on point with what people want to see right this second and muse being the mixture of fanon that is desirable, also, right at this exact second. It is seriously not within anyone's control, no matter how much effort, quality, or even outright bullshit they have to put out there.
If she's ever going to stick to a muse and not find herself envious, upset, and bored it's absolutely got to come from herself. She's got to be popular with herself, enjoying herself regardless of what others are seemingly achieving or want to give her. It's not going to be recognized no matter how harsh or sweet you are about the problem, unless she's capable of really looking at those problems as problems, and I don't think she's going to get to that point through negatively bottoming out. She might get there through the opposite, though!
It's...just going to take a lot of effort and patience from you, with no expectation of reward yourself.
Because it's still likely as hell it's just not going to happen. And while it seems like you are the kind of friend who would find the effort worth it because you care and are invested in her, please know that there's no shame in merely contemplating this and noping right out.
You've got a life and are trying to enjoy the hobby as well! And if it seems like something that could sour your friendship? It's not worth it. You're better off just accepting that she'll inevitably tire of doing this and move on to another hobby, maybe decide to do fandom blogs or something instead that you can support her in.
It's definitely an unenviable and frustrating position you're in. All you can really do is try not to let this negatively impact the friendship, to keep refraining from just outright telling her things she'd find hurtful, and try your best to show her that it's rewarding to develop the muse and stick with it, not a task. That there are improvements she can make to her blog, and that it isn't a negative reflection on her that they can be made. You can try all the compassionate trickery in the world to lead her there, but it's ultimately up to her whether she brushes this off as well, don't let it hurt your feelings or exasperate you too much!
Also, it's totally possible that even if you met through RP and/or it has been a big part of the friendship, you might have grown in different directions in the hobby.
Growing within the hobby is inherent to any hobby you stick to for long enough, especially if you started out in it young. Some people seamlessly just keep growing to things that make them happy, others experience a lot of growing pains along the way as they're maybe ready for change, but only in select areas they have to discover for themselves. Still others grow in a way that doesn't make them very happy, but they're both not ready (or willing) to approach why and what they can do, and also still too attached to the good times they had to reassess whether it's still something they want to do, or if it's something better moved away from into something else.
That's always very difficult as a friend. Difficult in watching your friends not go the same directions as you anymore, even in something as comparatively silly as a hobby, in seeing them not enjoying themselves, and in the possibility that it could signal the end of enjoying the hobby with them. It's sad and frustrating, and can feel lonely, but if you're close enough friends, you've got so many other things to still be good friends over, so keep that in mind!
She might need to keep doing this with her blog and muse situation until she comes not to the realization that she needs to change how she's RPing to get what she wants, but rather, that she wants to stop RPing. That could be the burnout that happens here eventually, but again, not only can you still be great friends, if it makes her happier, it's good.
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history, huh?
chapter 3: propius
(check the rb for chapters 1 + 2 on tumblr + ao3 links!)
Adam was woken at 5 o’clock on the dot with a series of sharp knocks on his door. “Up and Adam,” Gansey’s voice called, making the one stupid dad joke that always set Adam’s blood to a boil. He was too tired to react, however.
“Kindly leave until a later time,” he called, his voice heavy with sleep. “I don’t have class for another three hours.”
Gansey opened the door anyway, striding in with more pep than anyone should have in the morning.
“You’ve made the tabloids, my friend. Your weekend with Ronan finally hit.”
“Did you sleep at all?”
“Nope,” Gansey said cheerfully. “‘From America, With Love: Ronan and Adam flaunt friendship.’” He turned on his heel once he’d crossed the length of the room, which Adam could never forget was formerly Malia Obama’s, and seated himself in Adam’s desk chair.
Adam had never been closer to considering strangulation. He elected to shove his hearing ear into his pillow instead.
Unfortunately, the muffled sounds of Gansey speaking still made their way in. “‘Photos: Adam’s Weekend in England,’ oh, that’s boring…ah-hah: ‘New Bromance Alert? Pics of FSOTUS and Prince Ronan.’”
Adam resigned himself to his fate and mentally promised himself a giant cup of coffee. “As long as I’m getting fewer death threats on Twitter, I’m happy,” he mumbled into his blankets.
Gansey ignored him. “Why are you so tired? It’s the hour of kings, time to be awake and alive.”
“I’d settle for dead if it meant I could sleep at this point, to be frank.”
“Please don’t be frank. Be Adam.”
Adam sat up, eyeing Gansey in his wire-framed glasses with disdain. “Any more puns and I suffocate myself with this pillow.”
“Please don’t,” Gansey said, but his eyes had already returned to his screen. While he read through the articles, he continued his line of questioning. “Working on the campaign late last night?”
“Not really,” Adam admitted. “I had a Press and the Presidency paper to write.”
“Just write ‘I’m Adam Parrish’ on a piece of loose-leaf paper to turn it in and you’ll probably get an A. You live it every day, for Christ’s sake.”
“And yet I still need to cite sources in Chicago Advanced.”
“You’d think nepotism would work out more in your favor.” He flicked to a fresh article, a gesture Adam only recognized from all the other times Gansey had done it. “Luckily, I think the press is eating this one up.”
Adam grimaced. “Fantastic.”
“Not-campaign-ruining, you mean.”
“That too, I suppose.” He wanted nothing more than to flop back against his pillows and get the sleep his body so desperately craved after being jet lagged for a week, but he fought the urge.
“That _ People _exclusive takes the cake, I think. I didn’t realize how much you cherished your relationship with Ronan.”
“Fuck off, please. Or end my misery.”
“No to both. Why are you even taking that press course?”
Adam slid out from under his blankets, rolling his shoulders to try and wake up more. “Curiosity, I guess. It never hurts to learn more of what not to do.”
Gansey looked up from his phone to level a glance at Adam. “And what have you learned so far?”
“…Don’t have a sex scandal?”
“You _ would _need someone to tell you that.”
_ “Hey,” _Adam said, affecting outrage.
Gansey lifted his thumb to run over his lower lip, tilting his head consideringly. “One of us three will probably have a scandal before your mother’s second term is up.”
“If there is a second.”
“Chin up, young padawan. With you working on it we’re guaranteed.”
“I don’t know, Gansey,” Adam replied. “I don’t think I’m the good luck charm you believe in.”
“Of course you are,” Gansey said. “We won the first time, no?”
Adam glanced exaggeratedly around the room and to the phone in Gansey’s hand. “I’d say so. That or we’re about to get questioned very thoroughly about the the events of last three years.”
“Don’t make me cut you off on the true-crime videos.”
His eyes narrowed, focusing on Gansey. “Don’t you dare.”
“Blue agrees, anyway,” Gansey said, successfully deflecting topics. “Said there’s a ninety-four percent chance you’ll get into a sex scandal before the general.”
“Both of you date more than I do, why am I the one who’s supposedly having a sex scandal?” Once his initial outrage passed, disbelief crept in at the time of day. “Did you just text Blue at five AM and get a response? How the hell did you manage that?”
“She’s been up,” Gansey dismissed. Adam stared at him for a moment, and then Gansey seemed to feel the weight of his stare. His eyes widened almost comically. “Oh, Christ, no, not that. Nate Silver asked for another set of eyes on the Superbowl predictions, and she’s trying to get a shoo-in with them before the primaries begin. I just brought her some coffee.”
“And you didn’t bring me any?”
“You’re the only one of us who hasn’t been up all night. You need coffee the least of all of us.”
“Don’t blame me for your bad decisions.” Adam squinted at Gansey. “Were you working on an article all night or something?”
He snorted. “Hardly. They’ve been blocking all of my pieces. Too far from my mother’s politics, too far from your mother’s, too controversial, too critical, all in that order.”
“Thought you were liking the _ Post _gig?”
“On paper,” Gansey dismissed. “I’ve defaulted to writing about Welsh history.”
“Sounds like it’s right up your alley, then.”
“Once again, on paper.”
“How do you even connect the Welsh to the hellscape of American politics?”
Gansey waved a hand. “‘Eternal spirit,’ ‘fighting for honor,’ ‘remembering Glendower and others who set a pristine model,’ et cetera, et cetera.”
“People read that? That just sounds like you in high school spouting off again.”
“Yes, Adam. People read it.” Gansey squinted at his phone again. “Twitter _ really _likes you and Ronan together.”
“We’re exciting,” Adam said dryly, reaching for his laptop. He scanned over his most recent paper while Gansey dramatically narrated replies to the gif of them on _ This Morning. _
“‘Either of them could stab me and give me one of those smiles and I’d thank them,’ Jesus Christ,” Gansey read, “They really love your fake smiles… ‘name a more iconic duo, I’ll wait,’ hm, maybe any other duo? ‘Oh my God, just _ kiss already.’” _
Adam choked out a laugh as Gansey punctuated the last one with a dramatic and uncharacteristic hand wave. “At least it’s working,” he allowed, shutting his laptop once he felt secure about his essay. “Now get out. _ Some _of us have places to be.”
Adam’s phone buzzed on his way out of his cursed Presidency and the Press course.
Somehow, the interest of those around him seemed to pique even higher when he looked at his phone instead of in front of him. It wasn’t a new sensation by any means; ever since starting at Georgetown, he’d felt eyes on him constantly, but the intensity increased tenfold each time his classmates thought he was too occupied to see them staring. He noticed every time, but of course nothing could be done about it.
The name _ HRH shitty bird boy _ popped across his screen. How strange - in only a week, he’d almost entirely forgotten that the name he had (quite maturely) given Ronan in his phone was… _ that. _As he swiped the notification open, he felt a certain amount of trepidation as to what a technology-averse prince would ever text him about.
His harassment and emergency fears flew out the window with the body of the text, simply a screenshot of their tabloid appearance with the added caption of _ youre the nerd and I’m the cool jock. _
_ Competitive yachting? _Adam asked in response, nearly tripping over his own feet while typing.
_ ffs i told them to stop writing that as my preferred sport. _
Adam felt his lips twist against his will.
_ I’m sorry, this is a common problem? _
_ you can’t even imagine. _
_ I appreciate that they consider competitive yachting a regal sport. _
_ status symbols and faux athleticism are the core of the monarchy. _
Adam blinked down at his phone, stopping short abruptly. Persephone, from behind him, adjusted accordingly.
He…hadn’t been expecting this. Any of it. The text, the almost-joking response, the casual statement about the monarchy being ridiculous despite him being in it. Their conversation ended there, and it was probably for the better. He resumed his pace, trying to get to his next class. He almost forgot about the texts, too; save for a rogue screenshot Adam sent him of speculation on Ronan’s presence in Majorca, nothing else went between them.
Sometimes, Adam could _ just barely _ get away with being on his phone during briefings with Maura. He hated to be distracted during them - they were _ important, _he knew that, but all the same occasionally she spent a particularly long time covering an obscure dignitary’s comments and he’d gotten too few hours of sleep to truly focus and someone or other was blowing up his phone.
Maura’s topic of conversation this week appeared to be a series of Buzzfeed articles run on the lack of pets in the First Family, complete with a power point dissecting their points
The glamorous side of politics, truly. Discussing a clickbait series in the West Wing briefing room.
_ iMessage chat to _ ** HRH shitty bird boy **
_ Resumed 30 October, 2019, 1:47 pm _
_ if you want a pet chainsaw dragged in a mouse the other day _
_ Ah yes, the mouse. A pet eternally beloved by constituents. _
_ we can’t all have a raven, that would be unfair _
_ Your heights of cool and goth are truly dizzying. _
_ im glad you agree _
_ Modest, too. _
_ it comes with the wealth and fame _
_ As long as you’re being straight with me, feel free to be as ‘modest’ as you like. _
_ i’m the prince of bloody england. i’m straight all the damn time _
_ That’s the biggest lhxemxlp_
His phone slipped from between his fingers, landing with a dull _ thud _onto the wooden floor. Adam stared helplessly at it, a sleek black rectangle hiding between types of oak. But Maura repeated his name, and he suddenly remembered what had made him drop his phone in the first place. He dragged his eyes up, staring at a spot on the sterile white wall just beyond Maura’s head.
“Adam,” she said a third time, but he refused to look her in the eyes. She conceded immediately. “What the hell?”
He felt his cheeks darken as blood found its way up. “I’m sorry.”
Her lips thinned just like Blue’s did, turning into a dark line on her brown face. “Do you even remember what I was saying?”
“Er…” he scrambled. “Don’t mention animals in any public setting?”
She looked at him for a long moment, then picked up a mug of coffee and took a controlled sip.
“Get out?” she said once she’d swallowed her sip.
“I-”
She pointed to the door. “I am impossibly busy. Take your phone and go laugh in private.”
He nodded once, finally, ducking under the table with his spine pressed against the bottom to grab his phone. His fingers closed around it, grip the edge of the wood, and he was up in a second.
He couldn’t regret it.
Because - well, here was the weird thing.
He wanted another text from Ronan.
_ iMessage chat to _ ** HRH shitty bird boy **
_ Resumed 31 October, 2019, 12:03 am _
_ it’s finally spooky day in your hell country _
_ Isn’t it 5 am in England? _
_ Do you ever sleep? _
_ bold of you to ask that question _
_ halloween, bitch _
_ it waits for no one _
_ I’m really going to have to advocate better habits. _
_ I understand, you’re enthused for Halloween. _
_ do you even care at all _
_ I enjoy halloween like everyone else. _
_ Though your level of excitement feels a little pagan? _
when the skeleton army rises Jesus will forgive me
_ appreciate this glorious day parrish _
_ I have enough fear in my daily life, thanks. _
_ I filed my own taxes all throughout highschool. _
_ And payed rent. _
_ The horrors of early adulthood. _
_terrifying _
_ terrible i’ll never deal with that shit _
_ You’re the prince, we know. _
_ Do you also not have enough horror in your life? _
of course i do
_ but parrish. listen. _
_ this is the one day a year all the monarchy and parliament dress as they are in life _
_ hideous monsters _
He laughed a little harder at that than he should have.
_ You’re telling me the monarchy plays dress up. _
_ ronan_frankensteins_monser_costume.jpg _
_ matthew insisted. did this on me an hour ago _
_ oh my god _
The makeup _ was _really good, and the monstrous look suited him, but hell if Adam ever said that to him.
He may have saved it to his phone, though, to glimpse Ronan’s green-paint covered skin and crooked, drawn-on stitch smile on his perfectly blank face.
Although Adam certainly didn’t intend to make a habit of texting the Prince of England, when he saw a funny bird or a stupid article or an obscure meme his first thought became _I should send that to Ronan. _And Ronan, clearly, was thinking along the same lines. The sheer number of sole emojis that seemed to tell a Ronan-centric story he received at all hours only affirmed that. And somehow, between all the pictogramme and jokes, he started to learn snatches of information. Declan was a better storyteller than Ronan, Matthew was the only person who could make Ronan attend family dinners ever since their father died, and his mother - the Queen of England, Adam had to remind himself sometimes - drew further away every day.
The problem became that he always wanted to know _ more, _and Adam didn’t know if that was due to his rampant curiosity or something else buried deep inside of him, and he was too afraid of what he might uncover by digging to look.
Adam had very few friends.
Most of that came with the territory of being part of the First Family; nothing made casual acquaintances drift away quite like being constantly surveilled by Secret Service agents and trailed by NDAs. Adam didn’t have time for small talk and coffee, a fact which he sometimes lamented and often loved. Part of this came from the type of friendship he became accustomed to with Gansey and Blue, the all-encompassing type of friendship that took over their minds in spare moments and forged ties stronger than steel between them. He’d probably forgotten how to have normal, casual friends, not friends an outsider would think he was completely in love with. And, perhaps more than anything else, it came back down to Robert Parrish and his heavy hands and ringing words. Adam’s memories of his first few years were scattered and inconsistent, but they filled up a too-large corner of his brain all the same. Blue, who entered his life at the tender age of 5, had won his trust with greater ease than their other peers, and Gansey had done the same in high school. They knew him and what he’d been through, and so they could (platonically) love him for all that he was. When campaigning and political office came into the mix, that full truth of Adam Parrish became a secret to guard like any else.
But, oddly enough, Adam had a third friend: Noah Czerny, the thirty-three-year-old baby of the Senate.
Noah and Adam met through an Aglionby networking event while Adam was a student and Noah a recently-elected congressperson, both green as grass in different ways. Adam, thrown neck-deep into a Presidential campaign, had questions, and most of the time Noah had answers. Although all of the professors had warned Adam to proceed cautiously with Czerny, Adam found nothing to fear. Noah had mellowed out quite a bit from his high school days, becoming a familiar face at political events and a surprisingly-wise piece of advice always at the ready. Despite Adam’s near hero-worship of this brand-new politician, half-Mexican just like him and just as frequent to lose sleep rewriting policies that unjustly taxed communities of color or defunded children’s education, they’d formed an improbable bond. The summer before his sophomore year, Noah let Adam closer to the politics process than even his mother had as he ran for the Senate, and Adam took to it almost at once. A politician twelve years his senior was perhaps not a conventional choice of friend, but Adam seldom remained conventional.
It wasn’t too out of the ordinary for Adam to arrive at Noah’s congressional office unannounced, either with business or without, and so when Adam rounded on Noah’s stark, bright, white office, he wasn’t at all surprised to see him ducked over an obscene number of papers.
“It’s Friday night,” Noah said without looking up, barely before Adam had even crossed into the office. As always, the tiny burst of color in the Pride flag deposited in a tourist mug drew Adam’s eye for a long moment before Noah himself did. All Adam could see of him was his brown curls, resolutely held in place even as bent over a desk. “Go party or something.”
“Damn, I didn’t _ think _ this looked like a frat. I knew something was off.” Adam slid into one of the seats across the desk. He had several inches on Noah, but he always felt smaller in those chairs across from the most important legislators in the country. “What’s got you here at eight PM?” Off of Noah’s brief, incredulous look, he amended to _ “this _particular time, I know. You’re salaried. Shouldn’t you…ever go home?”
“I’m trying to get something done so that there’s at least a hope of banning fracking in our lifetimes.”
Adam scoffed quietly, though not for lack of faith in Noah. “Let me know when you’ve cracked the code.”
_ “If, _but sure, I’ll be in contact. Now, why are you here?”
“You didn’t answer my leaving-the-building question.”
Noah’s eyes flickered shut briefly. “Jesus, Adam, I am salaried by the taxpayers of millions of Americans. I’m not going to slack on them.”
“Fine, but don’t make me drag Gansey in here to make you take a long nap and drink some hot soup.”
Adam’s phone buzzed, but he ignored it; despite it being almost 1 am in England, Ronan could presumably take the blame. Noah asked, “Did you catch the Fox town hall last night?”
Adam grimaced. He’d seen part of it, trying to multitask with his macroeconomics homework at the same time, but instead he’d fallen asleep with his head on the laptop screen. “Part of it. It was a shitshow.”
“You can say that again.”
“I honestly thought that Whelk would pull more support from the extremists. He just seemed desperate last night.”
“Oh, he definitely was.” Noah leaned away from his desk, appraising Adam as though considering his words carefully. “We went to school together.”
“Aglionby?” Adam asked. He knit his eyebrows together. “How did I not realize he went there?”
“The school doesn’t exactly love toting him.”
“He’s older than you, though, right?”
“Yes, Adam,” Noah said slowly. “I’m thirty-three. He’s already announced a bid for President. How old do you have to be to run for executive office?”
Adam scowled. “I just came from class, I can’t use my brain. He was a senior when you were a freshman?”
“Yep,” Noah replied. “We were paired in upperclassmen-lowerclassmen bonding.” His lip curled a little. “He outed me.”
“Wait, _ what?” _
“He outed me to the school,” Noah repeated. He looked back down to the papers on his desk, his voice softening to a barely audible level. “I trusted him, which was a dumb thing to do, but I was a really stupid freshman. Scared, too. He was a friendly personality.”
_ “Fuck,” _Adam said, pushing a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, that’s…”
“Terrible?” A bit of Noah’s life returned to him. “Don’t worry about it, kid. It was years ago.”
“But then…Whelk, he was the reason you…?”
“He didn’t make my parents react the way they did. They did that on their own. But no, they wouldn’t have known without him.”
Adam shook his head. “I thought it wasn’t possible to like the guy less, if only because of his politics, but he’s done it.”
“Done what? Received the full wrath of Adam Parrish?”
“He very well may.”
“Don’t worry about him. Whelk will be out soon, believe me. I know him. He may have his parent’s money, but he’s barely old enough to hold office and he’s running on fumes.”
“If he’s not, I’ll convince Blue to skew stats until he is.” Noah knew just as well as Adam that that wouldn’t change anything, but it lightened the air anyway. “It seems kind of pointless to entertain any of them. Greenmantle is probably going to win no matter what.”
Colin Greenmantle: former antique collector, congressperson from Massachusetts, and millionaire with the funds to take over the Republican primary, and very possibly the whole election, before any papers were even filed.
“It’s early,” Noah said. “Too early to worry about it. Too early to even be _ talking _ about it.”
Adam slanted a half-smile at him. “Never too early to worry about an election.”
Noah looked back to his papers before broaching the next topic. “I hear you’ve got a job on your mother’s re-election campaign.”
“Once I graduate, and maybe a little earlier, yeah.”
Noah cast a glance around the office. “Are you sure this is the life you want?”
Adam knew he was referring to the constant bustle, the fear of disappointing and harming instead of helping, and the ever-evolving media scrutiny. He knew it was the closest Noah would give to a warning. “I’m sure.”
Noah sighed. “Fine.” He pointed to the door. “But I won’t let you throw your youth away, not this early. After you graduate, Parrish. Go get drunk and make out with someone.”
Adam stood, his frame unfolding and standing tall. “You are a terrible role model.”
“Can’t hear you over the loud music.”
“You and Blue and Gansey - if I die of alcohol poisoning, it’s all your fault.”
“Feel free to blame, so long as you’re out there and not here.”
“Alright, alright, Jesus. You’ve made your point.”
“Finally,” Noah called after Adam’s retreating form. But Adam could hear the amusement in his voice all the same.
For someone so allergic and averse to technology, Ronan sure seemed to share a lot with Adam.
_ iMessage chat to _ ** HRH shitty bird boy **
_ Resumed 13 Novemeber, 2019, 8:38 pm _
_ bird.m4a _
_ she wont stop nuzzling my head?? _
_ Picking for lice, probably. _
_ God knows you have so many. _
_ my scalp is perfectly clean _
_ Forgive me for abstaining from running my hands over it all the same. _
_ I’ll leave that to her. _
He didn’t always respond, though.
Adam tried not to read into it.
(He mostly succeeded.)
Adam never tired of stepping into the Oval Office. On the Wednesday right before Thanksgiving, he stepped in with the same amount of awe he always had, allowing himself a single moment to glance around at the wide windows and perfectly upholstered furniture. He sat on one of the couches without preamble.
His mother looked up from what was in front of her on the desk and smiled, albeit a tired one that frayed a bit at the corners; Adam had seen a few particularly troublesome foreign dignitaries be escorted away not long before, so he didn’t have to guess at the reason. Ana looked like she belonged to sit right there amongst all the history at that desk, from the sun dipping just beneath her halo of hair straightened within an inch of its life and her stick-straight posture. It might have been a lot at times, but seeing her was a reminder of all the good that came from her position.
She rose and walked to join him, her heels clacking lightly at the ground before she sank onto the cushion beside him and pulled him into a loose hug. Adam had overtaken Ana in height some years before, but there had been a long gap in there as he grew - like one day he was three and a half feet tall and wrapped tightly in her arms and the next he was off to Georgetown and several heads taller. She pulled away after a minute, slowly and bit-by-bit as though savoring her moments as a mother rather than a president. Her hand reached to muss his hair a moment later, and Adam ducked away instinctively before exchanging an identical grin with her.
“God, I forgot how light your hair looks in here,” she said, leaning back a little. “Almost golden.” She tilted her head as though examining him. “Nah. Still brown. But much lighter.”
“How could you forget? The photo here was in _ GQ, _the same article that first declared me the family golden boy.” At the corner of their conversation was the knowledge of where he’d inherited that hair color, as it sure as hell wasn’t from Ana. But he let the thought stay buried, patting the dirt back down with the shovel himself. Their relationship always had an absence in it, and he didn’t particularly feel like deepening it in the Oval Office.
“Ah, so that’s the one I have to blame for your big head,” she responded, reaching for a piece of fruit from the little coffee table. It was a familiar half-jest, borne from Adam’s constant contradicting confidence and imposter syndrome. Idiosyncrasies were just Adam’s style, never one to make things easy for himself. He sometimes wondered if so much of himself conflicted because he tried to walk the middle road so often, balancing his weight over all sides to minimize the damage if the rug was yanked from beneath him, like lying down on a bed of nails: a thousand tiny, dull pains over one sharp, potentially fatal puncture. She smiled again. “Is Noah doing well?”
“For Noah he is. He would barely look up from some new reports on fracking, seems hopeful he’ll be able to garner enough support.”
Ana snorted. “Good luck with that. I’ll be shocked if it reaches the floor for debate.”
“That makes three of us, then.” He nodded towards the desk. “Bad meeting?”
The frown lines on her face deepened. “Don’t get me started,” she drawled, falling back fully against the cushions. After only a moment, she _ did _ get started regardless of what Adam did or didn’t do. “We received the memo a few days ago that a delegation from Sweden wanted to be in contact, right? Fairly standard stuff, Maura gets back to them quickly because they worded it like it was an urgent matter, and there’s a back and forth for a while about scheduling and accommodations. We’re of the belief they won’t be out here until Monday at the earliest.”
Adam knit his eyebrows together. “It’s not Monday.”
“You fuckin’ tell me. Anyway, I’m halfway through a meeting with a few UN representatives when Maura has to interrupt. They arrived at the White House, claimed they had a meeting, and just…didn’t leave. Evan Maura couldn’t get through to them, which is the thing that scared me a little.”
“You should have put Calla on it.”
“Believe me, if she were here, I would’ve. But as it was, I had to hurry out the UN members to deal with decidedly more antagonistic foreign relations.”
“Why were they even here?”
“They wanted to discuss the military relationship between our countries-”
“What the hell?”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” she said, waving one hand in dismissal. “Any points they were trying to make went straight out the window when they started pulling out cue cards, to be honest. I might have to call Löfven to smooth things over.”
“Well, there’s never a dull moment,” Adam said fairly. His mother snorted.
“Sure isn’t. Anyway,” she said, glancing at her watch, “it’s now Thanksgiving, so no more meetings for twenty-four hours.”
“It’s Wednesday.”
She pulled a face in dismissal. “We take our patriotism seriously, darlin’. Don’t want our home state gettin’ too mad.”
“Of course.”
Ana checked her watch again. “The turkeys will be on their way to the Willard by now, so we’re not ruining any American traditions today.”
“Wait,” Adam said. “Where?”
She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. “The Willard. They stay there every year.”
“What? No. _ No. _You cannot give the turkeys five-star accommodations with taxpayer dollars. You’ve been doing this every year?!”
“It’s public knowledge, sugar. Every news outlet mentions it.”
“How did I not-” Adam cut off. “There is no way you can do that! They’re turkeys! It’s a waste!”
“It’s precedent, Adam. I’m not sure if there’s anything to be done at this point.”
Adam stood quickly, pacing back and forth, and his mother stood behind him. “It’s a _ blatant _waste of money, I’m shocked we haven’t already been-”
“Hon, every president so far has done the same-”
“Imagine the story if we broke the tradition! Even conservatives would have to applaud your frugality-”
“We can’t play games with tradition, you know they already call us disrespectful-”
“-we can’t be using _ taxpayer money-” _
“-by all means, if you have the time to find lodging for two forty-pound turkeys-”
“Put them in my room!” Adam blurted. His mother stopped short.
“You’re not serious,” she said. “We’re not putting the turkeys for me to pardon in your bedroom.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Adam-”
He shifted his feet, coming to a stop. He lifted himself up to his full height. Debate Captain Adam, six-time Best Delegate Adam, and First Son Adam converged into one. His mother barely looked phased.
“Oh, God,” his mother said. “I can’t listen to another sales pitch.”
“Madame President,” Adam began, “I’d like to echo the sentiments of the forebears before me-”
“Nope,” she said, making double-time back to her desk. “You’re not going to filibuster me.”
“In 2018 alone, at least forty-three articles in the Wall Street Journal accused the sitting administration of wasting tax dollars. This came on the heels of a tax increase for Americans making more than ten million dollars per year and the subsequent pushback from a more conservative electorate in Congress.”
“Fine!” Ana said, her hand falling to the desk with a thump. She brought it back up to her head to massage her temple a moment later. “I’m too tired to hear my own history read back at me. You win.”
He sat back down on the couch, crossing his legs primly. “Perfect,” he said, allowing himself to smile once again.
#trc rwrb au#rwrb au#trc#the raven cycle#pynch#pynch au#adam parrish#ronan lynch#richard gansey#richard campbell gansey iii#noah czerny#rwarb#rw&rb#the raven boys#the dream thieves#blue lily lily blue#the raven king#wip#wips#my wips
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One Life to Live
Hi, sorry for the delay if you’re following this story on Tumblr. The chapters that have been put on AO3 have at last caught up with the chapters here. New chapters will go up weekly from hence on. You might find it easier to read on AO3 though. I’d link if I knew how. I’m Kris22 over there.
As always thanks to Ronja for allowing me to write fanfic of her Hunger Games fanfic “The Chance You Didn‘t Take” available on AO3 and FanFiction.
Chapter 30
“Marcus presents well on TV, doesn’t he? You wouldn’t guess how much he hates it.” My hand stills as I focus on the screen and Buttercup nudges his head beneath my palm in protest. I absently go back to scratching him behind the ears and his chest rumbles in contentment.
“Yeah, well, you soon learn to fake it,” replies Johanna from the other end of the sofa. “You should know that better than anyone.”
“Yeah,” I say. Fake or not fake, real or not real, on television who can tell the difference?
“That’s where Gale and I used to meet to go hunting,” I tell her. Cressida had Marcus stand with his back to the valley, using the mountains in the distance as backdrop. The sun was directly behind him and it shone through his golden-brown hair and set it aflame as if it were a halo. Man-on-fire, I can almost hear Cinna say. He’s the darling of the media now. I don’t envy him.
I nervously wait for the moment Cressida interrupted the interview to ask me how I feel about a national park but it’s like it didn’t happen. It’s been edited so seamlessly that no one would guess there’d been a break in the dialogue between Marcus and herself. True to her word, there’s not even the slightest glimpse or mention of me anywhere. And nothing either in the separate feature she did on District 12 that had aired immediately before.
I let out my breath in a long exhale and feel the tension ebb from my muscles. I imagine Marcus in District 13 having the same reaction. We felt sure that if there were any compromising footage it would come out either before the interview was broadcast or during. And apart from that . . . um . . . incident in the woods, what else could they have on us? Only that Marcus was a guest in my house but that was a very reasonable arrangement given the circumstances. Otherwise, it was all very circumspect. No public displays of affection, no chaining naked to trees, no fights with logging companies. Only Johanna knew the extent of our relationship, and I doubt she’d have told anyone. Peeta’s engagement to Lace would have made a juicy story, but thankfully he’s protected, having done nothing to attract publicity to himself – either through his own actions or through association with another.
“Looks like you’ve dodged a bullet,” says Johanna. She reaches for the remote to switch off the television and then settles back onto the sofa. A plate of Peeta-made cookies is on the coffee table delicately iced in Peeta’s signature style. She takes one and scrapes off the icing with her teeth. Johanna likes the icing best. If you let her, you’d end up with a plate of cookies that look as if mice had been at them.
“It would seem so,” I reply. I wish I could feel more certain, but if I’ve learned anything from my experiences is that life seldom is. In fact, feeling safe almost guarantees that you’re not. I forget to stroke Buttercup again, and tired of my erratic attention, he decides it’s time to move on. He drops to the floor and ambles over to his favorite lounge chair, tail swishing. He leaves behind a layer of cat hair on my dark green trousers.
“I told you nothing would happen,” says Johanna. “Wouldn’t want to ruin the fantasy they’d put so much effort into perpetuating, would they? I stand naked against a tree for a good cause and the media goes berserk. You get caught shagging against a tree with the current golden boy and then nothing.”
“You know that’s not true,” I say, exasperated that she still thinks like this. “Maybe at one time, when it would have made the Capitol look stupid if the truth came out, but not now. They’ve had no compunction giving Marcus bad publicity in the past so I can’t see why it would be different just because I’m involved. We were mistaken about what we heard that’s all, and then we let paranoia take over.”
I’d agonized over whether I should tell Marcus about Remus and the knowing look he gave me when I returned to camp. In the end, I decided that he should have all the information just in case he needed to be prepared. That was a mistake. Between Cressida’s return to the Capitol the following day and Marcus’s for District 13 a week later, our waking hours were spent alternating between optimism that we had nothing to worry about and then dread that we had everything to worry about.
Marcus was petrified that another scandal would put his mission in jeopardy. As there’s no official mandate from the central government to establish national parks, he depends on the goodwill and co-operation of individual districts and a negative association with me – any association with me, actually – could have that support withdrawn. Especially in 13 where my name is anathema. For me, it was the terror of a media onslaught, that what had happened before could happen again – my private life no longer private but entertainment to be analyzed and exploited. That the careful re-building of my life as plain Katniss Everdeen would all come to naught. That it might impact on Peeta, who’s only just now finding himself after what Snow did to him.
We had our first ever real argument. I told him it was his fault for breaking his own rule and luring me into a clandestine meeting with him for sex. And he said it was my fault for . . . he couldn’t quite articulate why it was my fault but it had something to do with being Katniss Everdeen. It seems if I’d been a nobody we could have fucked in the main street (his words) and while it would likely have had us arrested in 12 it wouldn’t have merited even the smallest mention in the Capitol. Because, you know, we’re just ignorant hayseeds and they are so much more sophisticated than we are and they have no morals (my words). Oh, and he wasn’t exactly a nobody either. In fact, that was the problem.
We did calm down and apologize to each other and had make-up sex, which was nice, but it wasn’t how I imagined we’d be spending our final days together – tense, fearful, with each blaming the other for our predicament. It wasn’t until the night before he departed for 13 that we came to a mutual understanding. Neither of us were at fault. We were victims of our celebrity – a celebrity that neither of us had sought. Mine was thrust upon me, and his was a regrettable consequence of his life’s work. But I did tell him he was partly to blame. If he had been fifty, pot-bellied and bald instead of young, handsome and with eyes the color of maple-syrup that could melt any women’s heart, he wouldn’t attract a fraction of the media attention that he does. And then he told me that if I had been a scraggy, wrinkled old bat instead of young and nubile with eyes like silver moons and hair evocative of midnight, all the Games prowess in the world couldn’t have made me the cultural icon I’d become. We were just too good looking for own good. And then we laughed and had sex – playful, affectionate, I-want-to-remember-this-forever sex.
But the worry was still there when we lay in each other’s arms that night, and the next morning when we said our goodbyes. It was a bitter-sweet ending to what had been an unforgettable interlude but as I watched him pass through the Village gates for the last time, rucksack piled high, long legs in hiking boots striding purposely towards the next wilderness to be saved, I was struck by the rightness of it. It was how it was always going to end; how it always should have ended.
Johanna tosses a denuded cookie back onto the plate and picks up a fresh one. She ignores the pained look I send her way. “Would you have gone with him?” she asks. “If you could?”
I brush cat hairs from my trousers to give me a few seconds to think about it. I’d honestly never considered it since I can’t leave 12. But there was a time when I could have happily left everything behind and followed him around the country, hiking mountain trails and making love at every opportunity. It was at the concrete house by the lake, the morning after we’d made love for the first time and there weren’t enough superlatives in the world to describe how wonderful I thought he was, although now I find it hard to determine exactly what I did feel for him.
“No,” I say eventually. “Even if didn’t mean being in the public eye again, I still wouldn’t. We don’t want the same things.” I hesitate, wondering if I should say anything, but then blurt it out. “I don’t think I’m normal.”
I brace for the sarcastic response I’m sure to get, but to my relief it doesn’t come. “None of us are,” she says grimly. “You don’t go through what we have and come out normal at the end of it.” She’s silent for a moment, but then rouses herself. “But if you want me to comment further, you’ll have to be more specific,” she adds.
I sigh. I don’t know to explain it to myself, let alone to someone else. “Well, it’s about how I felt about Marcus. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago when I would have done almost anything for him. He made me feel so . . . so . . . “
“Turned on?” she smirks. I feel my face grow hot. I should have known the real Johanna couldn’t be too far from the surface.
“Yes, but more than that. Wanted. Desirable. And we had so much in common too. But when he left, I didn’t feel much of anything. I should have been devastated, shouldn’t I?”
“Rebound.”
“What?”
“It was a rebound. It’s when you haven’t got over one relationship and you dive straight into another. Marcus gave you the validation that Peeta didn’t. It’s not so complicated. Pretty simple, in fact. Happens all the time.”
“It does?”
“Yep. It goes like this. You feel like shit because you’re still hung-up on your ex so you’re looking for a distraction – something or someone to make you feel better. So along comes Marcus who is clearly attracted and you transfer the feelings you don’t think Peeta wants on to him. Only it doesn’t last because it’s not based on anything real.”
But some things were real. I really did like him, felt a connection with him, even. And I liked the sex, but maybe that’s just a physical thing. I haven’t been with enough men to know if it’s different when it’s with someone you truly love.
“A rebound is bad then?” I ask.
“Depends,” she says. She takes another cookie from the plate. “Has it made you feel better or worse? And then there’s the person on the other end of it. It’s generally considered not fair to them. But, if you had to pick the ideal man to have a rebound with, you couldn’t have done better than Marcus. I told you at the beginning– one track mind. Nothing competes with saving the forests for him.”
Gale. He was like that. The cause is more important than any relationship. As soon as Gale heard about the uprisings in the Districts, he no longer wanted to escape with me into the woods when just minutes before, he’d been so keen. But Peeta, he would have gone with me, even though he knew it was a bad idea.
“He told me he doesn’t keep girlfriends for very long. I guess that’s why,” I say. He’d also have figured out what a liability I’d be to him. And I certainly wouldn’t want the kind of life a relationship with him would entail. That final week had been an eyeopener for us both. But at least it ended well, all things considered.
I put out my hand for a cookie but change my mind when I can’t find one that hasn’t had the icing scraped off.
“You’re disgusting,” I tell her. But I can’t keep from laughing. It’s part amusement, part relief. No repercussions from that lapse of judgement in the woods and an explanation that makes sense to me about my feelings for Marcus. I feel a sudden rush of affection for the woman who’s helped me through this – and more besides. Once I compared her to an older sister who really hates you. I guess I have to revise it to an older sister who sometimes seems to hate you but really doesn’t, and you can always depend on to have your back.
“I’m going to miss you,” I say.
“Yeah, I know,” Johanna replies casually as if she were picking lint off a sweater. “But my reason for coming here in the first place was to help Marcus out and he’s gone. Peeta doesn’t need me anymore either. So even if I hadn’t been asked to, it still would have been time for me to go home.”
“You’re going to be great mayor.”
“Thanks, but I’m not mayor quite yet. I have to be elected first. It’s the way it’s done now.” Before the war, District mayors were appointed by the Capitol but now all governing roles are decided by vote. It’s the republic Plutarch had talked about, just like in the history books. The people elect their own representatives.
“You’ll get it,” I say confidently. “They love you in 7. They wouldn’t have asked you to run, otherwise.” Who’d have guessed that Johanna would be destined to be Mayor of District 7, but when you think about it, it’s the perfect fit. She’ll bring passion, commitment and integrity to the role. And essential for a career in politics, a thick skin.
“So, have you thought about what you’d like to do on your last night here and to celebrate your candidacy?” I ask. “How about drinks first at the pub and then dinner at that restaurant you like or maybe see a movie. Or we could do all three. Anything you like. “
“Anything I like?” she asks ominously. Images of pub crawls, strippers and naked sprints through the streets flash through my mind. “What I’d like is dinner with just the four of us. You, me, Peeta and Haymitch.”
I groan. This is far, far worse. “You more than anyone know the circumstances – “
“I don’t care,” she says flatly. “Ever since I got here, I’ve been stuck between the two of you. Haymitch has too. Why don’t you think of other people for a change and how it affects them? You and Peeta are Haymitch’s family! What do you think it’s been like for him?”
“He hasn’t said anything,” I say, on the defensive. “How can I know if – “
“It should be fucking obvious! How brainless can you get?” She gives me a look filled with contempt. I guess she’s back to being the older sister who hates you.
I hadn’t considered it from Haymitch’s perspective. He’d have missed the dinners, I suppose, but it’s not as if they could continue forever. They were only intended to help us establish a routine. And besides, it was Peeta who showed the first signs of breaking from them.
“It’s not like I started it.” As I say it, I realize how false that is. I was the one who put a complete stop to the dinners and made things awkward between Peeta and me. All because I couldn’t handle him being with Lace.
“I don’t care who started it,” she says, but less angrily than before. “It’s time for it to stop. Is this how you’re going to live the rest of your lives? Forever trying to avoid being in the same place at the same time? You’re neighbors, for fuck’s sake. You’ve been in two Games and a war together. You don’t throw away a bond like that because he fucked another woman when his brain was mush. And now that you’ve fucked another man, you’re even. There’s nothing standing in your way now. So, what’s stopping you? It can’t be Lace. She’s gone.”
Gone, but not forgotten. Not by me, and not by Peeta either. But Johanna does have a point. If Haymitch is a kind of father figure to us both, then that makes us his children. And having two children who don’t get along and won’t join in any family activities if the other is there too, can’t have been easy. For my own part, it has been a strain avoiding Peeta when we live so close, work similar hours, and have Haymitch in common. But it hasn’t been just me. Peeta stopped seeking me out like he used to when he found out that I’m in love him. Nothing about our situation has changed, Lace or no Lace. He stays away from me because he knows that I’m in love him and he feels bad that he can’t love me back. And I stay away from him because I know that he knows, and feel humiliated that he does. But if . . .
“You’re right,” I say. “It is ridiculous. You make the arrangements and I’ll be there.”
“And now that Marcus is out of the picture – “
She stops suddenly, confused. “You will?”
“Yes. In fact, I can hardly wait. It’ll be fun.” I rise from the sofa to gather the cups and the plate of ruined cookies to signal that the visit is over.
Johanna looks stunned as if she can’t believe how easy that victory was. She was probably all primed to go into battle and then it failed to materialize. How disappointing that must be.
“Oh, Johanna!” I call out cheerily just as she’s about to walk out the door. I’ve just remembered something Haymitch told me. “Maybe we should let Peeta do the cooking. He likes to do it. He’d always take over when we had our dinners.” If I have to do this thing, I at least want the food to be good.
“Sure,” she says, still dazed. And then she’s gone. I wonder if Peeta has already agreed to it, or that she still has the job of guilting him into it too. I decide that it doesn’t matter either way. Peeta will be motivated by the same reasoning as me. The present situation can’t continue.
It’s funny, in the way that’s weird rather than amusing, that mine and Peeta’s situation is now reversed. In the days following the Games and before we embarked on the Victory Tour, he avoided me for pretty much the same reasons I avoid him now. And, in turn, I avoided him for the same reason he avoids me. It’s the discomfort of being around someone whose feelings you don’t return.
But there’s one crucial difference. Peeta had hope. I know that now from what Haymitch told Peeta before the prep teams arrived. He could afford to wear his heart on his sleeve knowing that there was a good chance that if I was given the space I needed, it was only a matter of time before I felt the same way. I have no hope. Therefore, my strategy will have to be different. This is about survival, not about capturing Peeta’s heart.
Peeta will have to believe that whatever I felt for him, I no longer do. That’s the only way we can be at ease with each other. I may never stop loving him, but I know how to bury my feelings so that they don’t show. I’ve had plenty of practice at it. After my father died. When I was reaped. When he started going out with Lace.
I can do this. I can put on a show. I don’t even have to be good at it. In the Games, Peeta was convinced I was in love him because he wanted to believe it. So now I do the opposite and he’ll believe because he wants to believe. And if he can’t do that, he’ll pretend. We’re both very good at pretending.
Chapter 31
Venia purses her lips at the state of my nails. “There’s not much I can do with these apart from a polish. If you want artificial nails, you’ll have to come back when Octavia’s here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I mostly just wanted my hair trimmed.” The shape Flavius had cut into my hair has nearly all grown out. Working at the school during the week, and out in the woods with Marcus on the weekends hadn’t left much time for trips to the beauty salon.
I ask, “Where’s Octavia? Not sick, I hope.”
It’s unusual not to see Octavia at her station, her auburn head bent over her task. Since Venia re-united with her coworkers, each has settled into their former specialties as beauty therapists. Flavius is hair and makeup. Octavia is the nail expert. And Venia is skin treatments and waxing.
“She left work early,” smirks Flavius. “She has a date.”
Venia collects a few tools from the nail station and returns to my side. While Flavius cuts, Venia smooths and buffs. It reminds me of my days as a tribute when all three of them would be working on various body parts at the same time.
“We weren’t busy, anyway,” says Venia. “You’re the last customer for the day.”
I know. That’s the reason I chose to come at this time. I didn’t want to take the chance of running into Lace when she’s having her roots done.
“Anyone I know?” I ask.
“Possibly,” replies Venia. “He’s from 12. Thom something. Bick? Hick?”
“Hickory?”
“That’s it. Hickory. Octavia’s had crushes before but she’s got it really bad this time. I caught her looking through wedding catalogues.” Venia pauses mid-buff. “I’m worried for her.”
“How come?” Thom is a nice guy. He was a friend of Gale’s who helped with the clean-up of 12 and gave me a ride home in his cart when I was too weak to walk home. That was the day Peeta came back.
“Because of . . . you know, of what we did before the war.” I don’t miss Venia’s use of “we”. If Octavia is accused of being a facilitator of the Games, they all are.
“But doesn’t Thom already know? He was in 13 at the same time as you.” All the survivors from District 12 actually.
But Venia shakes her head. “Octavia didn’t know Thom then. We didn’t mix very much with the people there. We thought it safer to keep to ourselves. Especially after the bread.”
I suppose being shackled to a wall and beaten for simply taking an extra portion of bread wouldn’t exactly endear the populace to you.
I try to reassure them. “You do know that I’d vouch for you if it ever came out? And tell them how you helped prepare me for the rebellion propos and Snow’s execution?”
“I know you would. And maybe we’re worrying over nothing. But we risked a lot coming here and 12’s our home now. Flavius has met someone too – he’s from the Capitol, so that’s not a concern but if we had to leave . . . And Lucia is settled in school and has made friends and Cicero has a good job at the medicine factory . . .” And so Venia goes on. Flavius chimes in too. He tells me they’re set to take on two apprentices and once the tailor has moved out, they want to expand the salon –
“What? Arthur’s leaving?” This is the first I’ve heard of it. But maybe that’s not so surprising. I haven’t seen much of Arthur lately. It’s been only been Max, Johanna and me at pub nights. Arthur is obviously spending his Saturday nights elsewhere.
“Oh, he’s not going far,” says Venia. “Just to another store on the main street. He says it’s better situated for passing trade and with the dressmaking shop next door it will likely bring more business to them both.”
“I don’t think more business is the only thing those two want from each other,” says Flavius with a suggestive wink.
“Flavius!” chides Venia, but she can’t conceal a smile. “It’s true, though. We misplaced the stone we use for sharpening scissors and Octavia went to ask Arthur if we could borrow his. But no one was there even though the door was open. So, she went through to the back, thinking that’s where he’d be, and she caught them red-handed, kissing, and his hand was up her skirt. Octavia forgot all about the stone.”
The two of them collapse into giggles. “We didn’t think he had it in him,” says Venia, when she’s able to speak.
Neither did I. I can’t laugh about it though. Peeta will be devastated when he hears that Lace has moved on. And so soon after their break-up too. But as badly as I feel for Peeta, I also can’t help feeling happy for Arthur. If there was ever a man who deserves reward for long devotion, it’s him. I only hope that Lace proves worthy of it.
One thing I do know is that Peeta isn’t going to hear of it from me. I’m done being involved in his love life. It’s brought me nothing but trouble ever since he made that confession to Caesar Flickerman years before. My only objective is to get over him if I can and make sure that he thinks I have.
And that makes this dinner tonight so important. It will set the stage for our relationship going forward. We’ll be friends. Not necessarily close friends. But at least friends who can enjoy social occasions together and feel comfortable in each other’s company.
Johanna wants us to dress up so I guess that means I’ll have to wear a cocktail dress. I have one already in my closet. It’s the emerald green dress I wore to the party in 8. But it’s long sleeved and in a heavy fabric and that makes it too hot for this time of the year. I’ll have to go down to the basement where most of the Cinna clothes are stored. There’s a whole rack of cocktail dresses to choose from.
But what do you wear when you want to show that you’ve made an effort, but don’t want to appear as if you’ve set out attract anyone in particular – and by anyone, I mean Peeta.
I begin by eliminating colours that are evocative of sunsets or flames. That takes care of anything orange, red or yellow. And then anything that Lace might choose. If Lace is Peeta’s idea of feminine allure then I should make sure to do the opposite. Therefore, no pastels, ruffles and especially any kind of lace. No. No. No, I think as I reject one dress after another. And then I find it. The perfect dress. And so different from the girlish or jeweled frocks that Cinna usually dressed me in that it’s almost as if he knew that one day, I might have a need for a dress such as this. It’s in unrelieved black. Simple and unadorned in slinky silk jersey. I really like it, but Peeta, who loves colour, probably won’t and it’s sure to send a message that I didn’t dress to please him.
I accessorize it with black high-heeled sandals and silver and jet earrings. The dress comes to just above the knee with a deep halter neck. It’s impossible to wear a bra without it showing, so I leave it off. I turn around to check how it looks in the mirror from the rear. The clinging fabric does set off my best asset, but since it’s a dinner and I’ll be sitting on it, no one will see it. The burn scars, although much improved from the skin treatments, are still noticeable on my back. I decide to draw attention to it by putting my hair up in a kind of messy bun. This will contrast with Lace’s unblemished skin and immaculate hair and will surely show Peeta that I don’t care at all about being attractive to him.
I arrive at Peeta’s door at the same time as Haymitch. He’s wearing a dinner suit, but his white shirt has already untucked from the waistband and his tie isn’t around his neck but dangling from his breast pocket. His eyebrows rise as he takes in my appearance and his lips curve in a sardonic smile. If I needed any confirmation of how incongruous I look in this get-up, I just got it.
Johanna answers the door, elegant in a wine-red fitted dress with matching shoes. She appears to have paid a visit to the salon too, because her hair is now a uniform color and has been restyled to lie flat against her skull and frame her face instead of the usual red-tipped spikes sticking up all over her head.
“I like your new look,” I tell her.
“Yeah, it’s more conservative than I usually go for but I figure I have to start looking the part of mayor sooner or later. But what about you? What have you done with Katniss Everdeen?”
I smile and shrug. I’m unsure if not looking like myself is a compliment or not.
Peeta stops short when he sees me, his mouth gaping, but he collects himself quickly. “You look beautiful,” he says.
“Thanks,” I murmur. He sounds sincere but I know how easily Peeta can fake it. “You look good too.” And he does, in a cream suit designed by Portia.
We move into the dining room. Johanna’s gone to a lot of trouble. I can almost imagine we’re at one of those fancy restaurants in the Capitol. Fresh flowers, dim lighting, the furniture polished to a high sheen. The table is resplendently laid out with the finest dinnerware and gold cutlery. These came with the house. I have them too but I’ve yet to use them. I wonder if Peeta recognizes the pattern on the plates as the same as those that accompanied our feast in the cave. Johanna and Haymitch take seats at opposite ends of the table. That leaves Peeta and me to sit across from each other.
White wine is poured into cut-crystal glasses and starched linen napkins are laid across laps. I wait for either Johanna or Peeta to start bringing in the food but they stay seated. How are we to eat if the food never leaves the kitchen? I eye the woven gold basket filled with soft rolls in the center of the table. Is that all we get? Just then, Cass enters the room carrying a large silver tray.
“Good evening,” he says, as places a bowl of soup in front of each of us. “I hope you brought your appetites with you. Don’t forget to save room for dessert.”
And then he’s gone. Presumably back to the kitchen.
“What was that?” I say to no one in particular.
“Cass is doing all the cooking tonight. He’s a qualified chef. He can cook all sorts of things - not just pastries and desserts,” says Johanna.
“Yes, I know that. But what’s he doing here?”
Peeta answers. “Johanna thought it would be nice to have a professional do the cooking so we could relax and enjoy ourselves.”
Right. I just wish Johanna’s idea of relaxation was drinks at the pub, or a barbeque in the backyard. Any place where I didn’t risk locking eyes with Peeta at any minute. We can scarcely look at each other. Every time his eyes chance to meet mine, they flit away. It’s like being back at school. We’re doing a very poor job of acting at ease with each other so far. I’m a lousy actress at the best of times but I expected better of Peeta. Clearly the knowledge that I’m in love with him freaks him out to the extent that he’s forgotten all his acting skills.
The food is a welcome diversion and I tuck in. The soup is creamy pumpkin sprinkled with slivered nuts and little black seeds. Sublime. I recognize it as one of the soups at the Capitol feast. It’s followed by those delicious little roasted birds filled with orange sauce. Then fish swimming in a green sauce flecked with herbs. And then, oh, I don’t believe it! Lamb stew with dried plums! On a bed of wild rice!
That makes me think of our feast in the cave, of course. It’s even served on the same patterned plates. My eyes instinctively search out Peeta’s. Do you remember it? You must, surely. How excited we were when that parachute arrived. How careful we were to eat only small portions so we wouldn’t be sick after so many days of hunger. And then how we whiled away the time until we could eat again – snuggled together in the sleeping bag, my head on your shoulder, your arms wrapped around me, imagining our life together if we survived the Games. You, me and Haymitch, you said. Picnics, birthdays, long winter nights around the fire retelling old Hunger Games tales. You must remember it!
But Peeta doesn’t look my way. His gaze flickers between Johanna and Haymitch without it ever landing on me even though we’re sitting directly across from each other. And he laughs just a little too loudly at Johanna’s poor taste joke about prunes and how we’ll all shit well tomorrow. He remembers our feast in the cave, all right! I’m certain of it. He just doesn’t want me to know that he does. To spare me the humiliation, probably. I want to kick myself. Gawping at him like a love-sick idiot – practically begging him to remember one of our most intimate moments together. At least Peeta has his wits about him, not letting on that the stew holds any particular significance.
I quietly return to my stew. It’s not as good as I remember it and I can only manage a few mouthfuls. Saving room for dessert, I tell Johanna, when she comments. Unfortunately, there’s a long break between this course and the next. I suppose Cass wants our stomachs to have a rest before he brings out the dessert which is sure to be spectacular. But it makes the pressure to appear congenial and unaffected by Peeta’s presence that much harder when I don’t have the food to distract me.
Since I got here, Peeta hadn’t spoken a great deal, and me even less. The conversation has been carried mostly by Johanna and Haymitch. She’s been picking his brain about the challenges of town planning and the provision of services such as garbage collection and road maintenance. Johanna had better get this job for mayor. She already acts as if it’s hers.
That’s why it’s a surprise when the focus of attention turns to me. I’d been occupied twisting my crystal glass around by the stem watching the colours change across its facets. Anything to keep my mind off the person sitting opposite me.
“You’ll step in, won’t you, Katniss?” Johanna asks.
My head jerks up. “Hmm? What – “
“She doesn’t have to,” says Peeta quickly.
“Step in for what?” I ask, directing my question to Johanna.
“To watch the tapes with Peeta.” says Johanna.
Before I can respond Peeta interjects again. “There’s no need to bother Katniss. I’ll be fine with Haymitch.”
“You won’t,” says Haymitch. “The tapes labeled ‘to be watched with Katniss’ are all that’s left. It’s probably why the content has become repetitive lately. Aurelius has obviously run out of material I can help you with.”
“You need to watch all the tapes,” Johanna adds. “You don’t know what memories are missing until you do.”
“Katniss has already done her share. I’ll be fine watching on my own,” says Peeta.
Johanna shakes her head. “You know that’s not how it works. You need someone to put it into context. Besides, the tapes were her idea to begin with. She should see it through.”
Peeta turns to me for the first time. “There’s really no need.” He’s almost pleading with me.
I really want to accept his offer to not watch the tapes with him. I know he’s giving me an escape but if I go along with it, it gives the impression that I’m afraid and that’s not good either. It has to appear as if I have nothing to hide. Which I don’t. Except the part that I’m still in love with him, of course.
I can see where he’s coming from. After my slip-up with the stew, he’s worried that if I’m compelled to watch the tapes with him, I’m sure to give myself away. He’s protecting me from myself.
I look coolly into the blue eyes of the person who is now my greatest opponent and I promise myself I will defeat his plan. Johanna is right. I should finish what I started. Remember that my primary objective was for Peeta to find himself. And if those tapes hold the final pieces, then I’m determined that he shall have them. I will watch those tapes, no matter how bad they are, and he will never guess from my reaction that I still carry a torch for him. It’s the only way we’ll ever be able to act normally around each other.
“I’m happy to help,” I say. “Same time and place?”
All eyes are on him. He’s trapped and he knows it. Peeta’s nod is almost imperceptible.
What a timely moment for Cass to bring out the dessert. It’s a tower of pastries filled with different flavored custards, welded together with chocolate and studded with raspberries and sugared violets surrounded by an immense web of delicate spun sugar. There’s enough for at least a dozen or more people. But the best thing about it is that its position in the center of the table effectively blocks out my view of Peeta.
So, Dr Aurelius has sent tapes that he wants Peeta to specifically watch with me. I wonder if I was ever going to be told about them. Probably not if it had been left up to Peeta. He’s obviously anxious about what’s on them. That makes me think that he has most, if not all, of his memories back. Enough, at least, to guess at how I feel about him. It seems that the tapes have progressed from those which showed me either indifferent or acting a part to when I began to return his feelings. And the irony is that it’s made not a scrap of difference. I’m glad now that Dr Aurelius sent the compromising tapes first. I had never stood a chance with him, even without Lace.
Cass comes out to clear away the dessert plates and the remains of that pastry thing. He frowns at how little impact we made on it. But it really was huge. To make him feel better, I ask if he can wrap it up for me to share around the staff room tomorrow. Max will probably make some joke about chocolate covered balls and phallic symbols. We finish with tea for Peeta and me and coffee for Johanna and Haymitch. Haymitch takes from his pocket a silver flask and pours a generous slug of whatever’s in it into his cup.
The dinner finally comes to an end. I pull Johanna aside before I go, ostensibly to say goodbye to her. I won’t see her tomorrow. The train for 7 leaves very early and Peeta has offered to walk her to the train station.
“The whole night was a setup, wasn’t it? To get me to watch the tapes with Peeta again?”
She doesn’t bother denying it. “Yep. Someone had to give the two of you a nudge in the right direction.” She gives me one of her stern big sister looks. “Don’t waste it.”
“I won’t,” I say. She doesn’t have to know that I have something completely different in mind to her.
I hug her goodbye and wish her luck. I don’t know when we’ll meet again. Not with me stuck in 12 and Johanna busy being mayor but maybe she’ll find time in her schedule to visit at some point.
“Don’t be a stranger,” she calls out as I leave. Where have I heard that expression before? Ah yes, Plutarch. They were the last words he spoke to me before he left the hovercraft that brought me back to 12. Thankfully, even after that scare with Marcus, that’s exactly how it’s stayed.
“Never,” I call back. No one could ever be the little sister that Prim was. But maybe I’ve gained a pretty good substitute for an older one.
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*SPOILERS* for TGD 3x16 “Autopsy” aka I’m so tired of Canadians getting the better melendaire promos and I’m like Owen Wilson with my usage of wow 🤦🏻♀️ 😂
Y’all idk if I’m ready for tonight
just kidding I AM and dying to see what “bring the funny” antics melendaire is gonna get into 😆
-not gonna lie it’s weird to not see Claire and Melendez work on a patient together 😂 first time it’s happened in a while but at least they’ll interact this ep still!
-why do they always have heart to hearts in the middle of surgery lmao
-I have never seen them work this fast it’s so disorientating like damn wtf just happened honestly
-wow Neil Melendez actually mentoring shaun?! This shit hasn’t happened since season 1 finale because they never want them to work together lol but it’s so nice to see 😭 I miss the ogs interacting
-l*mlendez having scenes together with no romantic context we LOVE to see it
-gdi Morgan Claire and Melendez weren’t “sneaking around”
-Morgan admitting Melendez is a good mentor but only to Claire 👀 but Claire putting her in her place about reporting and what it really did to the whole team AN ICON 👏🏼👏🏼
-but Morgan thinks favoritism is going on with melendaire but like that’s his job to mentor?? All of the attendings and chiefs have favorites let’s not lie and have mentored all of you in multiple occasions sooooo like
-this is adorable! A crime board with shaun and park and them being detectives
-so far we have NOT seen melendaire interact was I mislead?!
-wow park being in cahoots with shaun and not listening to melendez 😂
-okay wtf is up with lim and this kid she keeps seeing??
-an interaction outside of work with residents?! Wow I’m amazed
-I miss Jared. Jared should be going on these adventures with shaun
-park being some weird pseudo father figure giving advice to shaun instead of his actual friends??
-wow okay plz tell melendez and Claire just argued and disagreed like that to throw people off that they love each other and are still besties and @jillrox202 is right they did sound like a couple fighting 😂 like they straight up pretty much told the other they were wrong
-I did not see shaun getting arrested coming
-shea better still be friends after this ep is all I have to say 🙃
-okay jk I also have to ask so is shaun actually in love w/ lea or did Carly telling him how he feels affect him?
-breznick back to their disagreeing ways I haven’t missed it :// but Morgan apologizing is an improvement!! We love growth plz keep growing for once lol
-awww lim you better adopt this adorable little girl 😭 but wtf is this storyline it came outta nowhere
-I’m hoping Melendez doesn’t suddenly think this is the chance for him to be a dad 😂
-honestly how am I not supposed to ship shea I’m sorry but I still don’t think lea is ready to commit and be in a serious relationship but I am rooting for them
-Audrey lim giving the inspiring speeches we love to see it 😭
-I love Claire being called Dr. B
-wow Morgan connecting with a patient instead of Claire?
-wow Carly doing an autopsy for shaun or I guess allowing him
-lmao can’t you see I’m torn about the ships
-he doesn’t have to do ANYTHING like him and lea can just be friends even if he’s in love with her like if he’s not ready STOP PRESSURING HIM
-so he does love lea and Carly but lea more does this mean we’re gonna drop Carly as a character next season or after this ep 🙄 BECAUSE GOD FORBID WE KEEP WOMAN IN THE SHOW AND STORYLINES IF THEYRE NOT A LOVE INTEREST FUCK OFF WITH THIS NARRATIVE PLZ
-but shaun hugging Carly broke me
-omg yessss I was right 😭 that fight was a fakeout. Melendaire is on a supposedly “platonic” bowling date Claire said why does it have to be hard to hide their friendship and Melendez said it was WORTH IT I CANNOT DEAL
-okay so nothing else made me cry this ep except seeing lea cry that was hard and we’re gonna go back with people being on the lea hating train
-she doesn’t want to put shaun through the stress of dealing with her because we all saw how it was when they lived together they were at each other throats but they got through it and I wish lea would’ve worded it better and elaborated more but to know it’s not unrequited hurts even more 😭 becaus they’ve always been so comfortable together and shaun has never felt stressed or worried around her like he did with Carly and this shit sucks 😩😩 in a way she did mean she didn’t want to be with shaun because of his autism and that makes it 20x worse but she’s just scared and doesn’t want to ruin him 😩😩
-but ayyye melendaire working together again next ep and look to be agreeing with each other as usual and looking like a beautiful team
-BUT APPARENTLY YOU CANADIANS GET THE BEST FREAKIN PROMOS AND DASH ASKS CLAIRE OUT AND WE GET A JEALOUS MELENDEZ WTF WTF @gilbxrt-blythe better have it posted here on tumblr soon folks BECAUSE IT LOOKS LIKE WE ARE GONNA GET JEALOUS MELENDAIRE AND CLAIRE WEIRDLY GOING ON A DATE WITH DASH
Because then we get a finale called heartbreak and I ain’t ready for that y’all
#the good doctor#claire browne#neil melendez#tgd#melendaire#shaun murphy#morgan reznick#alex park#audrey lim#shea#sharly#carly lever#lea dilallo
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Mas’ Must Follow MASterpost
[In no particular order]
People
@risrielthron One of the best. You will feel as if you are talking with your lifelong friend. Sweet, friendly, and generous. A true example of who we should all try to be more like.
@theodorebennas Daddy Beans. Chill dude. Knows he can be a bit of a meme and owns it. Actually extremely smart and has a ton of good sense. Crusade!
@tanzrielle Super chill in the most not chill way. Will talk your ear off about their awesome characters and want to hear all about your own too. Great person to know and bounce ideas off of.
@thebattlesheep @a-sheep-does-art Sweet thing. Loves to meet new people. Does not RP much but when they do they kill it.
@possum Loser. (Seriously such a humorous, sweet, and all around amazing person.)
@wiedaashcroft Really great character, and the person who plays them is extremely laid back and chill.
@the-petalpaw-family They don’t RP as much right now, but their stories and characters are next level. No lie, they take things like plot and character lineage to places you rarely see. Amazing places.
@kat-hawke ICly very interesting and intense character. OOCly a more grounded individual. Blunt, but never cruel.
@darthscharactervault Someone who does not give themselves nearly enough credit for how creative they are with their ideas and characters.
@gwenya Often NSFW but she’s a gem of a person. Amazing, chill, down for whatever. She’s the raunchy friend you never knew you wanted.
@the-real-arcanist-val Smart person, fantastic writer, extremely sensible and rational. All around someone you want to know.
@vaard Never personally interacted with him, but he’s an iconic figure among the community. Everyone should follow. (Does not take commissions but is an amazing artist, too.)
@harvee-sarah-zena One of my closest RP partners. Might not post as much as they SHOULD but if you can catch them their RP is some amazing work. And their characters are all so unique.
@thegreatnyehehe Likely not returning to WoW any time soon, but still one of the best characters ever. To this day, worth reading through their posts.
@kinzorscarstorm Chill dude with a cool character. Have not interacted much IC, but respect them OOC for their char and methods.
@open-world-azeroth Not really a ‘person’ but a great resource for some fantastic RP spots.
@mediocre-bladeleaf Very cool aesthetic, and from what I see of their writings they have some awesome characters.
@draenei-tales Shout out to a fellow active and really cool looking Draenei RPer. All I see from them is extremely interesting.
@leora-strauss Don’t know much about the character but their aesthetic is so amazingly cool.
@serelia-evensong Active and interesting RPer. Will fill your dash up with fun to read posts of all kinds.
@susan-gampre Hoe. But she knows it. And she’s good at it. The character and RPer both are sassy and take no shit, and I love them for it.
@storykeeper-wra Spooky character. But not tired and boring spooky. The sort that’s very interesting. Like a good book. Makes sense they are the storykeeper, because their story is very appealing.
@halforc-mercenary Have always wanted to interact with their character but never much got the chance. Still adore their writings on my dash, and they often impress me with their plots and quality.
@rhysgoodwin Cute char, updates often, fantastic writer.
@priestess-nightfury Elf RP/Aesthetic at some of its very best.
@stonestridernerd They will love you and make you feel like the best person ever just be hurling likes at you and complimenting your work. They are just a gem of a person. So, so sweet.
@theshadowborn Shame I’[ve not interacted with their character much, but they are a clearly talented writer.
@durotan-ofthe-frostwolf Lot of OOC silly stuff, but genuinely a cool person and always a pleasure to see on your dash.
@ranekvilmas Just a very talented writer and all around chipper guy. One of those people who always has something interesting on their blog to read.
@penvenomstarkstar A good head on this one’s shoulders. ICly their character is extremely well written with so, so much depth. Endless things to discover here.
@ravenpriest DAMN awesome aesthetic. Really nails the gothica vibe.
@longveil Such a cool aesthetic. I’d follow for that alone, and there is so much more there too.
@kyuusei-shadowleaf Another blog worth the follow for aesthetic alone. So cool to see across your dash.
@k-sunrael Followed for a long time. Their blog can sometimes be a bit NSFW but the content is quality.
@monster-of-master In the vibe of ‘dark’ aesthetic without being overtly in your face. The sort of subtle horror we all secretly crave. Very much enjoy their content.
@summysparklesprocket Such an amazing, kind, and funny person. And the character is next level because they are a Gnome taken seriously. Love them.
@quai-mason @andrew-mason Extremely talented writer and one of the few who posts so, so frequently. You’ll eagerly await their next post, trust me.
@unabashedrebel ICly they are a very cool character with awesome stories. OOCly they are a smart and conscience driven individual with a good moral sense. More than once they’ve shown they are not afraid to stick up for what matters. Lot of respect.
@safrona-shadowsun Killer character aesthetic, great reblogs, and does not ruin their theme with bullshit. Fantastic follow, this one.
@helryder666 All over the place with their posts, but its never unwelcome or uninteresting. They always seem to know what you wanna see, even if you don’t know.
@thewardancer Some of the best troll aesthetic I’ve seen, honestly.
@brandstonethings Just a big bear of a man. I love him, and you will too. He’s so well written he feels alive.
@archmage--khadgar I hesitate with people who RP lore characters. This one managed to be one of my few exceptions. They actually do a really great job with it.
@forhonorandglory Only followed for a short time, but still worth it in my books. Sharp wit, great character.
@covexalexanderkingsley Don’t know if they still RP as much these days but they remain a very fantastic and creative individual.
@eilitheduskbringer Very talented writers. One of the best I’ve seen. And they host to an amazing community I’ve come to respect.
@thepalewolfhowls Great artist too, but I mainly know them for their awesome character and fantastic sense of story and plot.
Guild/Other
@the-royal-courier A fantastic source of events and stories. While they don’t host many writings of their own, they still reblog community events. Absolutely advise a follow.
@stormwinduniv Been around about as long as my old arse. Very talented group of writers who put on so many community events and intellectually focused debates.
@the-silver-circle A group of extremely talented writers focused entirely on Kaldorei writing and storylines. Very high levels of respect from me.
@moment-in-time-wra Less a ‘guild’ but still a great service for in game photography. They make your events look fantastic! Run by Risri.
@atc-wra A very talented small group of RPers who know how to make stories pop. You just want to be a part of them, or read what happens next.
@deadsunharbor Very fantastic crew who are open to all manner of amazing RP opportunities. They do criminal/dark correctly and with finesse rarely seen.
@oathswornvanguard Lawful good guild done proper. They have stood the test of time not only with their quality but their kindness and openness to the community.
@wraconnect A great source of WoW events and blogs to follow.
@wowrpevents Another fantastic source of WoW events and blogs to follow.
@wracentral ANOTHER fantastic source of WoW events and blogs to follow.
Artists
@whimsicallyart @elaianna Talented, intelligent, observant, and all around a gem of a person. Worth knowing.
@littleliongod One of the best I have worked with. Talented, priced very fair, extremely punctual, very communicative. Can not possibly recommend enough for any commission work.
@artofaokori Worked with them before and would absolutely do so again. Their style is very unique and you’ll recognize it anywhere in a good way.
@vintrove @vinsketchbook Extremely talented. Some next level stuff. Commissioned them twice and both times they blew me away with the end product.
@catbatart @cat-bat Such a shame I’ve only worked with them one time. One day, I must commission them again because they are the sort of artist who will go that extra mile and bring your piece to life.
@ferachidoesart They are Ferachi. They do art. Really well. Great style, super unique, and their commission prices are way more reasonable than you’d expect for their amazing quality.
@auggusst-art @auggusst Really such a kind and talented soul. One of those hidden gems of tumblr. They deserve more notice, so go give it to them!
@blackdogmelancholyooc @blackdogmelancholy Nerd. But actually a really cool dude with a ton of raw talent. They are great to work with.
@anzka Have not posted here in a while, but you should take a peek. Why? Because no one. Draws. Gnomes. Better.
@planktonheretic You like thick ladies? What about buff ones? Then my friend, have I got a treat for you. That treat is Plank. Check out their Twitter too for even more fantastic work!
@kellydidathing Amazing artist. Very busy person, but worth the investment because the art is top notch.
@izzarra Talk about raw talent refined into a craft. This artist is going places, seriously. Amazing stuff.
@thestringking @jane-fitzgerald @ahn-qiraj Extremely talented young lad who I know will go on to kill it in the art industry. Already one of the best out there, no lie.
Self Plug
My blog should be easy to find, right at the top of this post here, or the bottom. If you want to see all my character blogs, please check out RIGHT HERE (under repairs atm so a few of the characters might not work or link improperly) for a complete list. Each character page here contains a link just under their summary that will take you to their individual blog. Check out the ones that interest you!
Also want to plug my own guild, @coldwall-collective, for still being some of the best writers and content creators I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Go check us out!
Not Here?
Don’t be sad! Many reasons could be the cause. Maybe we’ve just not interacted enough. Or maybe I’ve not seen many of your posts. Maybe I overlooked you because I’m silly. Any of these could be a reason. If you don’t see yourself here, it does not mean I don’t appreciate you. I do. You’re a part of what makes this community great and I have all the respect for you.
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how I run my blog
Tagged by: as usual I’ve stolen it from @mynameisanakin
Tagging: no one, i am too lazy and i follow like 14 people so. just do it if you want to.
SPEED: is not my forte. I try my best, but there are several factors that work against me in this aspect: 1) I’m a chronic procrastinator 2) I’m scatterbrained 3) I have more than one blog 4) I almost never write replies that are less than two paragraphs and I want it to make sense and be good and be enjoyable for my partner, so it takes time. I almost never reply the same day (MAYBE on discord, because there my replies are way shorter and it’s mostly to my best friend), and you’re lucky if I reply within a week. I really try to be faster on this blog because I made a promise to myself (and I was doing okay until the whole virus thing happened and I ran into a bunch of personal problems) AND I am keeping a low profile on this blog so it doesn’t get overwhelming.
Long story short, if you are looking for a super active daily replies partner, I am not it for you. If you’re okay with waiting for a while but getting more developed stories and longer replies in turn, then we should talk :)
REPLIES: Are on the longer side on this blog. I don’t really have the patience for one liners because they tend to go nowhere and then feel like bread crumbs of randomness all over my blog. They’re okay sometimes, but more often than not they feel like crack. Writing replies is really exhausting for me sometimes, but I try to force myself because I WANT to do it, I’m just having issues concentrating on one thing at a time so it takes me forever.
STARTERS: I don’t write welcoming starters because 8 out of 10 times they get ignored or are so random that they lead nowhere. If someone writes me a welcoming starter, it depends on the content but usually I’ll try to make it work for me and reply. I don’t often like starter calls because most people write absolutely pointless starters. For example they’ll write a paragraph of explaining what their muse did all day (unrelated to my muse), then walk into some random place they’ve never been to (e.g. a shady bar) and suddenly get surprised by my muse being there, and/or, my personal favorite, say something like “what the hell do you want from me”? Which I struggle with for several reasons. One, if you create a setting but don’t bother explaining why we’re there, you put the entire weight of explaining that (aka creating the actual setting) on ME, but you add an additional complication by making it something that I didn’t come up with, so now I have to introduce a world YOU invented with 0 idea of why you chose that particular location in the first place. Second, you put my muse in a situation that makes no sense for them and again force me to explain that, without even giving me a good reason to. And third, I play very different muses, but most of them are going to lose interest in the conversation immediately if the first thing you say to them is rude af. So, yeah, I actually really struggle with most random starters. Please just plot with me and then I will love you forever for writing me a plotted starter that I know will not create 400 questions in my head that I then have to bother you with, which makes me feel like a nuisance. (Or at least keep the setting neutral? Or try to come up with something that seems reasonable for my muse? I always try to do that and when I am unsure, I message the person who liked my starter calls.)
Speaking of which, I rarely post starter calls, because.. well, like I just kind of explained, it’s comes with responsibility and work. And I’m lazy.
INBOX: is open for memes at all times, and questions of any kind. I often don’t get notified, so I sometimes see certain messages months later - when that happens, I usually don’t reply anymore if they’re anon because I’ll assume that person forgot or isn’t even around anymore. Sorry about that! It’s an issue I’ve had on several blogs and I don’t know how to fix it.
Anon hate is deleted without comment, unless I feel there’s a point in replying to it publicly, or if it’s entertaining.
I don’t roleplay via inbox and therefore any “ic” questions or interactions posted in there will be treated as a one-time meme, if I can reply to them at all. Asks of sexual nature from complete strangers will usually be ignored because Obi-Wan isn’t the muse for that at all. As I’ve stated in my rules I only roleplay with mutuals and therefore won’t roleplay with someone I don’t follow, even if they ignore that rule and start rping with me via inbox. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but I have these rules for a reason and I ask that people read and respect them.
SELECTIVITY: I am selective with whom I follow because I have limited time and energy for this blog (and all my blogs) and therefore find it irresponsible and pointless to accept 600 followers and threads when I know I can’t possibly reply to even 10% of them. Before I follow someone (back) I look at their blogs; in particular at their writing (to see if I like their style and their portrayal), their rules (to see what they like/dislike and if our general understanding of the RPC, roleplay, and in a way social interactions in general go well together), and sometimes their OOC posts to get a feeling of how the other person is. (Obviously I also sometimes don’t follow back when I don’t know the muse or fandom at all.) Blog rules and ooc posts can say A LOT about a person, and there are plenty of people in the RPC (in any fandom) that quickly rose to tumblr fame with shiny graphics and fancy formatting and dozens of well-developed verses and headcanons, but they straight up suck as people outside of writing. My rules state very clearly that I discourage hateful comments, mob mentality and callout culture, and unfortunately many “popular” blogs use exactly these tools to execute their power (which comes from being admired for all the wrong reasons). So, I know many people think being selective means you only pick partners with fancy graphics and poetic writing, but for me it actually means I want decent human beings as partners. I don’t give a shit if you format your posts (as long as you cut them) or if you have a blog with a fancy theme, or just a rules google doc, or if you use icons or not. If I like your writing and you seem like a nice and reasonable person, I’m good to go. If you talk to me about dogs I’m even better to go.
WISHLIST: I always try to have one because I find it very helpful when looking for plot ideas with new partners. I will look at yours if you like a plotting call or something too, but I know not everyone has a wishlist~
HONEST NOTE: I’m not a teenager anymore and I’ve been rping for over 14 years. I work with lots of strangers, I study for a job with lots of strangers. I think about philosophical concepts a lot, about morality and human behavior and I’ve come to the conclusion that kindness, empathy and compassion are some of the core values every single person should focus on to make the world a better place. I have no patience and no interest in engaging in the absolute toxic and harmful hate movement that’s taken over this website (and other social media platforms) in whatsoever way. Occasionally I’ll make a salty comment about it, but only because I’ve had it up to here. I am here to enjoy fandom the way I used to, and the way it used to be meant to be enjoyed - not to completely ignore real issues like world politics, economical and environmental crises, in order to entertain witch hunts on people who happen to enjoy a fictional ship that isn’t 300% approved by puritan statutes of the 1600s.
I am responsible for the content I seek out online, and so are you. Does it suck when I see something I dislike? Sure. Is it the fault of the person who posted it? No. Especially not when I read their rules first, like I’m supposed to, and they clearly state that the thing I dislike will appear on their blog. And even if they didn’t, it was my choice to go on their blog and look at their content. If you can’t handle taking responsibility for the content you seek out online, then you are probably not old enough to use the internet unsupervised.
I am free to write, read, and post on my personal blog whatever I want, as long as I am not breaking the law. Liking a fictional ship that involves an age gap? Not illegal. Liking a fictional ship that involves siblings? Not illegal. Liking a fictional ship in which one party was abusive to the other at some point? Not illegal. Liking a fictional character who killed your fave? Not illegal. It’s fictional. Get over it. And if you really think that seeing fictional characters or ships online that YOU consider “problematic” is hurting people in real life, then you should join those politicians who burn books that are “corrupting the people’s morals and minds”, who ban video games because they “make gamers violent”, and censor songs from the radio because they “present biased views on people of public importance”. Please reflect on your behavior. Destroying someone’s life because they liked something you don’t, telling them to commit suic/ide, ruining their chance of making friends who maybe share their love for a ship or character.. that’s bullying. Some of the cases I’ve seen on here were so severe, they qualify as serious cyberbullying and should be reported to the police. I don’t give a fuck if you hate Rey/lo or Damon Salva/tore, or the Joker. You don’t go and send someone messages telling them to kill themselves because they RP it. Because that is the real crime.
And finally, if you feel the need to “educate” someone you consider “problematic” for whatever reason and you actually approach them - make sure you’re actually there to educate and discuss, not to throw an opinion at them and get aggressive when they don’t immediately magically agree. Because chances are they won’t. If you choose to open a dialogue, make sure it IS a fucking dialogue and not a condescending monologue. Learn how to shape an argument, find evidence to back up your claims - because not only will you become better at talking to people in any kind of situation, you’ll also maybe realize that your opinion wasn’t as well-founded as you thought.
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The Emancipation of Ginny ~ 4
summary: shawn and ginny could’ve ruined everything six months ago, and sticking together despite their past could make or break them now as ginny stays on as his personal assistant. but what happens on tour doesn’t stay on tour.
warnings: Language, tequila-flavored nostalgia, Gertler on the loose
WC: 4.6k
Shawn and Ginny chatter while Shawn reaches for the aux cord and scrolls through his playlists. With a gasping chuckle, he seems to find exactly what he didn’t know he was looking for.
“Oh my god,” Ginny snorts, but her knee is bouncing and she’s nodding along so Shawn knows he’s got her.
The sharp clapping starts followed closely by drums, then the pulse of the synthy keyboard. By the time the breathy vocals start, Ginny is already there, ready to imitate them perfectly, the product of a thousand sing-a-longs.
Her warm voice curls around the “ah… yeah…” but Shawn steps in with a headbang and joins her for Whitney Houston’s iconic “WOO!”
They’re buckled into the backseat, dancing and wriggling to the intro of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” Jake bobs his head with a barely there smile. They do this a lot, especially when they’ve clearly pregamed their evening. Shawn knows what to play to get Ginny moving and singing along even louder than he is. Whitney is always a safe bet.
Shawn claps in time with the beat and sings a lower harmony to Ginny’s eerily excellent Whitney impression. When the chorus starts, they’re both belting, laughing and shimmying and paying absolutely no mind to the relative audience they’ve gathered.
They’re stuck at a light on Curzon St. because a lorry fender bender has blocked up traffic, but the folks around them are treated to a show as Shawn and Ginny put their all into the 80s pop classic. What they also don’t notice is the stunned teenager in the car to the right and just ahead of theirs who has the perfect angle to film them out the window, capturing every wail, every head bop, every time they grab Jake’s seat ahead of them to encourage him to sing along.
Shawn and Ginny didn’t know any of this until the next morning, by which time the Twitter video had gathered 11 million views.
+
Andrew Gertler has a Ginny Dresden problem.
Andrew adores Ginny. Andrew’s pretty sure that at this point, without Ginny, he’d have lost all his hair and maybe accidentally strangled his artist to death (not that Shawn isn’t a delight 97% of the time, but his job is very stressful, ok?!).
Andrew remembers when they stepped off that first plane together in New York, already thick as thieves. He had a feeling in his gut, the kind of feeling that directs him wisely, when he listens to it. The feeling didn’t have an action attached, it was more a reaction, a sinking feeling of dread.
The feeling said, fuck, this will be complicated.
The feeling, as always, was right.
Andrew saw it, obviously, as did everyone. When three months passed and he noticed no evidence of a sneaky affair, he figured they were safe, the sexual tension would remain just that (though, Andrew would admit, it wasn’t just sexual tension. Because that would be easy to get past. This was always more than that).
When Shawn and Ginny sat him down three weeks into their secret relationship, about six months after Ginny joined the team, Andrew was frankly stunned. He was annoyed, of course, at his naive belief that they had skipped over the complications he feared, and even more irritated that he didn’t notice, especially given the way they were looking at each other like they had each hung the moon for the other.
It’s probably weird to everyone around him, anyone in the industry who heard about this, that Andrew never considered firing Ginny. He really didn’t. He just… knew that wasn’t going to fly. He accepted their fate, trusted them to be grown-ups if and when things went south.
And when they did, chaos reigned only for a night before Shawn managed to right the ship. Thank god.
But Ginny, sweet, thoughtful, intuitively organized and proactive Ginny, she was still a problem.
It’s hard to know exactly what the fans know. They were whispering about Shawn and Ginny long before it became a thing, and they’ve continued whispering long after. Some believe they never broke up at all, that they hid their relationship for privacy. Some believe he’s still in love with her and refuses to fire her so he can win her back. And then some believe Shawn’s fucking Cez, so really, you can’t spend too much time listening to fans because as lovable as they mostly are, they’re also so insane.
But the fans keep Ginny in their line of sight at all times. They monitor how closely she stands by him, how often they’re seen out in groups together. She’s never far from their minds, or their theories, or their tantrum fits on Tumblr about how if she had any self-respect at all, she’d have left Shawn’s team when he dumped her ass.
Those posts make Andrew irrationally angry -- that’s when he knows he has to log off and take some deep breaths.
But the truth is, he can’t ignore them, not entirely. Because when they start chattering about how Shawn is playing with her heart, reeling her in and casting her back out again as he pleases, keeping her on the team for his own comfort, that kind of shit gets press attention eventually, if it gets enough of a groundswell buzz on social media. And then it becomes his business.
+
It happened all at once for Shawn, kind of the way falling in love did. When it started, he lived with it for 48 hours before he piped up and let it all come crashing down.
He remembers holding her on the plane, a Learjet taking them from Sydney to Tokyo. It was an overnight flight but Shawn’s body clock told him it was noon, so he was nowhere near tired, but Ginny could always pass out on command. He envied it, but he made her as comfortable as he could while he did it.
She was curled up against his chest in their reclined seats, the armrest up between them. He had a blanket draped over their bodies, bunched up under her arm because otherwise she feels “all trapped and shit,” which he knows she hates. Her springy curls are positioned so they’re tickling his nose. When he moves his head to avoid them, somehow they follow. So instead, he embraces it and buries his face in her hair.
The smell of coconut oil and something that’s just somehow Ginny completely overwhelms him. His heart kickdrums in his chest. His breathing starts to speed, but the weight of her on his chest constricts his lungs. He holds her tighter, blinking quickly as he tries to find his way out of this unfamiliar feeling.
He’s sick with it, whatever it is. The panic doesn’t fade when she nuzzles her cheek against him and lifts her head, blinking sleepily, mumbling in a raspy morning voice something about “get some sleep, you minger,” but he can barely hear her over the rushing in his ears. He just nods with a shaky smile and closes his eyes long enough to make her think he’s trying to sleep. She goes heavy against him again and he knows he’s alone, as alone as he can be with her plastered to his side, overheating him, clinging to him. He coughs uncomfortably, choking on his breath.
And the panic still doesn’t fade over the next couple days every time he looks at her and she smiles that big, beautiful Ginny smile, perfect white teeth framed by the signature matte red lipstain that is a scientific marvel because as much time as he spends kissing her, it never leaves a smudge. It’s like she was never there.
But she was. She was everywhere.
It was terrifying.
Even with the rise of panic, he doesn’t let himself consider the Scary Solution until 36 hours into what felt like a prolonged, very well-hidden anxiety attack. If Ginny caught on to his weird feelings, she never showed it, especially not when he was cupping her breasts and rowing his hips hard into her ass as he took her from behind, fucking her a little harder than usual.
The Scary Solution, of course, was ending it. The fact that he was even considering it was scary, though maybe not as scary as continuing. Two days ago, the idea of ending it would’ve made him bark like a defensive dog. He couldn’t imagine letting her go. Now, to his combined horror and relief, because fuck, human emotions are weird, it feels like the safest option.
He let himself stew for a while longer, but he didn’t want to draw it out too much, he told himself. It wasn’t fair to her. None of this was. So the sooner he ended it, the better off they’d both be, and the less likely it was that she’d hate him forever.
He sat her down in the armchair across from his and held her hands. He forced himself to look straight into her deep, dark eyes while he spoke because she deserved that kind of attention.
The truth is, he doesn’t really remember what he said. He stumbled something out about how much he cares about her, how he’s enjoyed the last two months more than any he’s ever had out on the road, but that this had all become too much. Things had moved way too fast. He didn’t want to end things like this, especially while they were still on tour, but he had to be honest with her. He had to focus on the music, on the path he’d be taking next and that as wonderful as she was, she was a distraction.
He hopes he said it as nicely as possible. But given the stricken, dumbfounded look on her face, he’s sure he could’ve done better.
Her tears were pretty immediate. His welled up but never spilled. She stared at him quietly for a while like she was waiting for him to take it back, or like she was looking for something in his expression that told her to dive in and fight for him. Maybe she didn’t find what she was looking for.
She stood on shaky knees, swiped at her face and mumbled something about talking to Andrew, about finding a replacement for herself quickly to minimize disruption to the tour.
That’s when it hit him. She was leaving.
He did realize when he made this decision she might not want to stick around, but somehow it didn’t truly register what he’d be losing until she said it.
His brain scrambled, watching her walk out the hotel room door, sniffling gently as she unlocked her room across the hall. He blinked. She hadn’t slept in her own bed in two months.
She was leaving him.
He was selfish to panic about it. He made this decision for them. He couldn’t expect her to stay, to be his personal assistant of all things, arranging his laundry and paying his house cleaner and reminding him to call his grandmother on her birthday. He had no right to feel this empty at the idea of continuing tour without her. But it was there, nonetheless.
He let himself lose his mind over that long, sleepless night without her. When he stood outside her room early the next morning, hearing her singing Norah Jones under her breath, he felt like shit.
“Please,” he begged, voice shaky with unshed tears, “Please don’t leave. Please. I know it’s fucking unfair to ask. I hate myself a little. I really do. But, fuck, please, I can’t do it without you, Gin. Not because… because I’d forget to fuckin’ put on pants in the morning if you didn’t tell me to, but because you’re… Jesus Christ, you’re my best friend. I can’t lose you like this.”
Ginny had every right to kick him in the shins. She didn’t. She had every right to laugh and tell him to go fuck himself for even asking. She didn’t.
Ginny’s dry cheeks stung with her tears. She sniffed and toed at the floor, locking her arms over her chest. “Don’t really want to leave, you know,” she murmured, “This is a good opportunity for me. I’m learning a lot.”
“So don’t leave,” Shawn pled, lurching forward. She adjusted, taking a step back. Shawn noticed and shivered, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Don’t leave. Stay. I think we can do it. I honestly think we can. We were best friends first, remember?”
She did remember. She had never felt this way about anyone before. That had to be worth holding onto, right?
+
Andrew’s been internally groaning all morning, watching the video spring up everywhere. E!News has it on their Instagram, People’s retweeting it, Tumblr’s having a fucking field day. Even Niall reposted the video on his Insta story with the caption: “😂😂😂 go off I guess.”
Not helpful.
In the next room, Shawn and Ginny are chuckling, nursing hangovers as they pack Shawn’s shit to get ready for their rescheduled flight to Miami. They find their viral video very amusing, thank you very much. When The Rock retweeted it with three of the dancing girl emojis, Shawn and Ginny both had to stop what they were doing, they were laughing so hard. Shawn’s wiping tears away when Andrew knocks on his door.
Shawn lets him in and narrows his eyes at the grimace on his face. “What’s up?”
“Just want to talk to you guys,” Andrew begins steadily, resigned. Shawn feels Ginny stiffen up beside him. The bed squeaks when she sits on it. Shawn lowers himself beside her and doesn’t let himself reach out for her hand.
“So this video. It’s… y’know, obviously it feels innocent enough, you’re just singing, being the shitheads you are, but it’s… ugh, god, you guys know I hate these conversations.”
Andrew looks weary. Ginny is silent, curious. Shawn is tense from head to toe, leaning forward slightly.
Andrew continues, “The reality is, there’s a lot going around about how you guys are back together again, how Shawn has seduced you again, how you can’t keep your hands off each other, yada yada--”
“Andrew--” Shawn interrupts, the word so sharp it almost sounds like a swear. Andrew cuts back in before Shawn can continue.
“No, but listen, you guys both know where I’m going with this. This will become an image problem. All we need is for one outlet to start sparking stories about how Shawn’s fucking the only woman on his team, and we’re all up in smoke. We haven’t had to work that hard to preserve the good guy image because, wow, how novel, Shawn actually is a good guy. But the media will have a hell of a time batting around the idea that he’s a fuckboy if we don’t shut this down.”
It’s not lost on Ginny that Andrew doesn’t seem to be speaking directly to Shawn, referring to him by name, glancing more at Ginny than at his artist. Probably because he can see the look on Shawn’s face and knows talking him into this is a lost cause. He knows he can use logic and reason and PR strategy to get to Ginny, but Shawn’s ears are already turning red.
“What are you saying then?” Shawn seethes.
Andrew sighs. “I’m saying you guys need to spend some time apart. We can’t have you photographed together for a while, not by fans, not by paps. You need to lay really, really low. If Shawn’s at the front of the pack, Ginny, you’re at the back. If we’re all out as a team, Ginny’s on one end of the table, Shawn’s at the other. We just have to let this blow over. It’s annoying and it’s strategy and I know you both hate it, but it’s where we are at the moment. I’m sorry, guys.”
Andrew’s words are simple. There’s no talking him out of this, he’s delivering his decree and that’s it. Ginny nods, looking exhausted. To Andrew’s surprise, instead of quiet rage, Shawn opens his big mouth.
“No.”
“What?” Andrew hums, eyebrows shooting up under the frames of his glasses. Ginny also looks startled.
“I said no. I’m not doing that. It’s stupid.”
They can both see the way Shawn’s bubbling over. They pause for a moment, waiting for him to continue. When he doesn’t, Andrew starts again.
“It’s shitty, but--”
“No, it’s fucking pointless, Andrew, we’re not doing that. We’re singing. We’re singing in the car. We’re singing Whitney Houston in the fucking car and someone put it on Twitter and now I can’t be seen with my best friend? No fucking way, I’m not doing it. My fans know better than this. They know I’m not some womanizing creep who’s fucking a girl on my team just because she’s a girl on my team. They know me and they know Gin, too. What are we supposed to do? Not speak to each other in public for a few weeks and boom, problem solved? That’s so fucking stupid. I refuse to live that way. It’s false and it’s fake and I won’t do it.”
Ginny blinks. Her lips are parted. She looks between Shawn and Andrew, whose face is unreadable. After a moment that feels like ten minutes, Andrew eases up out of his chair and looks down at them both.
“We’ll talk about this later.”
He lets himself out and back in to his own room next door. Ginny swallows. Shawn drops his face into his hands and leans forward taking a deep breath.
Ginny drops a hand to his back for a second before she takes it back and wrings her fingers.
“Fucking insane,” Shawn mutters.
“Well…” Ginny sighs. Shawn sits up.
“What?”
“Well, I get it, though. I get how it might not look great.”
“I don’t give a fuck how it looks!” Shawn croaks, “You’re really ok with that? With standing minimum ten feet from me at all times just to shut up the idiots on social media who think because we’re friends means I must be some gross loser who can’t keep his hands off his female teammate?”
Ginny wets her lips. “I’m ok with playing the game we have to play so we can stay on the path we’re on. I’m ok with whatever protects us.”
Shawn shakes his head. “Ginny, we can’t live like this. We can’t live dishonestly like this. This is how this kind of shit starts. It starts with a stupid little lie to protect some lame image and then it snowballs and then everything around me is a lie. Can’t you see that?”
He looks up at her, pained and red-faced. This time Ginny does leave her palm on his shoulder, rubbing her thumb into his muscle soothingly.
“I get that, I do. I know where you’re coming from. But I also know that you know that we have to pick our battles here. And more than that, we have to trust Andrew. You know it wasn’t easy for him to march in here and lay that out. You know he hates this kind of shit, manipulating something just to keep people off our backs. But he does it to keep you safe.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not a fucking child. I get that maintaining my image is part of his job, but--”
Ginny interjects. “No. Stop right there. It is his job. It’s what he’s paid to do. And he knows this better than we do. He knows what can happen if we do this wrong. So we need to listen to him and play by the rules, just for a little while. I don’t like it either. I really hate it, actually. The idea that people think I’m some sunflower following you around waiting for you is frankly incredibly insulting. But I’m focusing on the bigger picture, which is that if I stay on your team, I learn every day, I meet people, I’m growing my network and I spend all day every day with my best friends. So… yeah. I’m going to take Andrew’s advice. If you want, we can develop a secret sign language so we can still talk even when you’re standing fifteen feet ahead of me and not looking in my direction.”
Shawn snorts, defeated and tired. “Ok. If I pull on my left earlobe it means ‘hi.’”
Ginny smirks and lifts the hand resting on his shoulder to flick at his ear teasingly. “Kay. If I scratch my nose it means, ‘Shawn, spit out your fucking gum.’”
+
Shawn found time over the next day or so to mumble out an apology to Andrew for overreacting. Andrew accepted it graciously in that way Andrew does where he makes you feel like you never had to apologize at all.
Ginny and Shawn stick to the “strategy” and keep apart for a couple weeks in public, riding in separate cars when they can, Ginny chatting animatedly with Cez and Brian, looking totally disinterested in her ex-boyfriend. All went according to plan.
One day during soundcheck for a radio festival in Vermont, Andrew and Ginny are bopping their heads in perfect time (without their notice), standing in front of the soundbooth.
Ginny, eyes fixed on the stage, tilts her head toward Andrew’s to speak. “Think Cez should move Zubin’s mike to the left like--”
“-- five feet? I was thinking the same thing,” Andrew finishes with a laugh. Ginny chuckles and bounds away, communicating the suggestion. When they’re back in place, Ginny returns.
“Last couple weeks were weird,” Andrew acknowledges, “But I just… I wanna say thank you. Whatever you said to him, it worked. You made my job easier. So thanks.”
Ginny shrugs. “You were right. He just needed to hear that from someone that… wasn’t you.”
Andrew laughs. “But being that person isn’t always easy. I have so much respect for him, you know? I mean, I know you know. But his insistence on living a totally honest public life is so, so cool. It’s just not always the best thing for him. And I never want to feel like we’re ganging up on him. I never want him to feel too managed. So when you can step in and get something across to him that I can’t, that’s a big fuckin’ deal for the whole team. You’re gonna be a kickass manager, Gin, maybe sooner than you think.”
Andrew nudges her gratefully with his elbow and strolls away to make a call.
Ginny looks back up at the stage, watches Shawn’s eyes close, his brow wrinkle as he kicks into a “Particular Taste” high note.
And she thinks for a very long second that she should feel better about what Andrew just told her.
+
The days following the breakup were… hard. Shawn’s head reeled, trying to wrap around his own actions. Ginny was mostly numb, trying not to look him in the eye. They mostly avoided each other except when it came to professional necessity -- Ginny checking in with him about arranging his flight home, Shawn asking where his old pencil case filled with guitar picks got packed. All of this monitored very carefully by Andrew, who was looking for any excuse not to send Ginny home but knew he had to be looking anyway, just in case.
But before long, Andrew stopped watching. It became clear disaster wasn’t to strike. Shawn and Ginny slowly and surely became a new version of Shawn and Ginny, a version that had gone through a stage of innocent, flirtatious friendship, intense and all-consuming romance, and now were settling into seasoned, tried-and-true partnership.
It definitely didn’t happen overnight. Andrew doubts Shawn and Ginny could put a finger on when exactly they really would’ve called themselves friends again after the spate of awkward tension, but the fact that they did it at all meant they were gonna be ok.
But if Ginny had to guess, it would be that night in Antwerp when she heard him in the next room strumming “St. Patrick’s Day” by John Mayer and felt completely, totally comfortable snagging her Gibson acoustic and padding over in too-long plaid pajama pants to knock on his door and be invited in to play.
They sat cross-legged and pretended to ignore that the last time they were together on his bed, they were making love, and now they’re making music, and Ginny thinks that’s a pretty decent substitute.
+
In another three weeks, the video is long since forgotten.
Though, to be fair, given how much of the bottle of Patron they’ve finished between the two of them, most things are, in fact, forgotten.
Ginny and Shawn are planted on a balcony, barefoot with their legs stuck through the railings, feet swinging over the streets of… Chicago, Shawn’s almost sure. Wherever they are, it’s the kind of city where Shawn feels like he can really breathe, not like New York or LA. He can breathe in London, too. He and Ginny both love London. He’d like to go back to London with her, hold her hand, walk around her hometown, kiss her neck and feel her giggle…
Shawn sits up and sneezes loud. Tequila always makes him sneeze.
“Does not,” Ginny quips, and Shawn realizes he must have said that complaint out loud, “That’s not a thing. Tequila doesn’t make you sneeze.”
“Does, totally does,” Shawn grumbles, taking another slug of it anyway. He follows it with a sip of beer and… a sneeze. He holds out his hands and makes a face at her.
“I rest my case.”
“You’re drunk,” she accuses, pressing her face into the railings like she’s testing to see if she could get her head through. Thankfully, she doesn’t try very hard.
“I am. ‘S good, haven’t been drunk in a while.”
“We were drunk last week,” she points out, sipping at the lime wedge she’s already mostly sucked dry. Shawn watches her cheeks hollow out and turns away, feeling his face get hot.
“You know I’m like, so glad you didn’t leave,” Shawn blurts, pivoting the subject on a dime. Ginny blinks cluelessly.
“When?”
“When we broke up. You could’ve left. You didn’t. I’m glad you didn’t.”
Ginny swallows. “I didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t want you to,” Shawn sighs, dropping his head forward against the railing.
“I wondered if maybe you did,” she confesses quietly, closing her eyes. She can feel him turning to look at her curiously.
“But…”
“I know. But I wondered if maybe you felt guilty about me losing my boyfriend and my job all at once and that’s why you asked me to stay.”
Ginny chances a glance at him. He looks gutpunched.
“But that didn’t last long,” she assures him, “I know why you wanted me to stay.”
Shawn blinks. His tequila-slow body feels like it jumps into hyperspeed. He grips the railings tighter and swallows, waiting for her to say it.
I know you were scared.
“You’re my best friend, too, Shawn,” Ginny assures him, light-eyed and wistful. Shawn tries not to feel disappointment at her dodging the opportunity to poke at him, make him really talk about why he let her go.
Sweet and stupid, they drunkenly sway on the balcony for another hour, muttering to each other about Shawn’s next album, about the record company anniversary gala coming up, about a weird dream Ginny had about pancakes a few nights ago that she worries might mean she secretly hates dogs. They talk until Ginny falls asleep with her face against the railing. Shawn wakes her up before she can get an impression on her cheek from the metal. He scoops her up as much as he’s able when he’s more tequila than boy and drops her on the bed next to his, drapes the duvet over her, bunches it up under her arm and collapses onto his own bed, heavy with exhaustion.
Pls help me keep Ginny in lime wedges and buy me a Ko-fi (link on main page)!
Taglist: @smallerinfinities @the-claire-bitch-project @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn @stillinskislydia @singanddreamanyway @alone-in-madness @abigfatmess @shawnitsmutual @awkwardfangirl2014 @september-lace @grittyisathot @sinplisticshawn @mutuallynotmutual @rollingxstone @yslsaint @randi-eve
#shawn mendes#shawn mendes fanfic#shawn mendes fan fic#shawn mendes fanfiction#shawn mendes fan fiction#shawn#shawn mendes fic#shawn peter raul mendes#shawn mendes fluff#shawn mendes angst#shawn mendes series
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mid-year book freak out tag 🤍
this annual book tag is really popular in the booktube community and through watching my favorite booktubers, i always get to hear about the books they’ve read so far in the year so i thought it’d be fun to join in!!
i don’t have a booktube channel myself but i do think it’d still be cool to get to talk about books on here so that anyone who does stumble upon this tag could enjoy this experience as much as i’ve had.
hopefully maybe some of these books could catch your eye if you’re looking for some recommendations and if not, you still get to learn a little more about my reading tastes.
all the books i mention below the cut have links so that you can check them out if any of them peak your interest!!
1. best book you’ve read so far in 2021
- fifty words for rain by asha lemmie
this is one of the very few books where i felt such immeasurable grief over a fictional character. the main character nori goes through so much pain that when she does receive the love she deserves, it’s enough to bowl you over. this book has one of the strongest sibling relationships that i’ve ever seen and deals with such difficult topics being that nori herself is a mixed race child dropped off on her own in japan in the late 1940s.
2. best sequel you’ve read so far in 2021
- our dark duet (book two in the monsters of verity duology) by victoria schwab
i haven’t read that many sequels this year, although there are some new & anticipated releases that will change that (ex: cazadora [book two in the wolves of no world series] by romina garber)
our dark duet is one of two sequels that i have read and it’s the one that stands out to me the most because new monsters, new perspectives, and really surprising writing choices towards the end made this book an absolutely iconic and memorable finale of the monsters of verity duology.
i feel like this author is the best example as to the kind of writing i love based on the books they’ve written, even though the endings to some of their works seem to always leave me a bit unsatisfied. with that aside, the way v.e. schwab crafts these characters and depicts different relationships in dire settings makes for darkly intriguing premises and i’m really glad that i got to stumble upon their books through this duology first.
3. new release you haven’t read yet but want to
- the chosen and the beautiful by nghi vo
a great gatsby retelling with a queer asian protagonist and magical realism (from what i read of the first couple of pages) !!
this book seems to include a lot of things that i love in fiction, which always leaves me a bit hesitant because even with that, it might just lead me down a road of disappointment, key word: might. i have read a bit of the beginning before buying a physical copy just to be careful but from what i have read, i’m really excited to get to this!!
4. most anticipated release for the second half of the year
- the taking of jake livingston by ryan douglass
i just recently found out that this book is pretty short so based on the premise alone, i’m really interested to see how the author handles these sensitive topics broached in the summary and subverts them to fit the horror genre.
i follow the author on twitter and love everything they’ve had to say so far about this debut (and it comes out in my birth month!!) so i can’t wait to support them after the release.
5. biggest disappointment
- the gilded wolves (book one in the gilded wolves trilogy) by roshani chokshi
fun fact: i actually really enjoyed this one (i didn’t give it four stars on goodreads for nothing) but i did change my rating in my review to a 3.5 because as much as i loved the setting, characters, and fantastical elements that this story has (+ the writing was beautiful), i didn’t care about any of the romance between the characters, which i think for a lot of readers made their reading experience better but for me, it ruined mine.
personally, i feel like this book would’ve done well without any romance and so i could’ve absolutely given this a five-star. but then if there was no romance, the ending might be a bit different but even then, i just didn’t care about any of the romantic tension or angst that was going on between these characters. and from what i heard of the sequel, the silvered serpents, there’s even more angst and i feel bad that that just repulses me because i don’t experience romance repulsion much, i actually do like romance a lot of the time, but there’s some cases where i either just don’t care about the romance or something about it sets me off. in the case of the series, well ……yeah.
it makes me so mad, though. because again, everything else about this first book was amazing!! it is absolutely rich with history and its characters all have such distinct roles in the story that i enjoyed being in each and every one of their perspectives. enrique is the historian of the bunch so being in his eyes made all these different clues they would find so interesting as we learned about their backgrounds. and same with zofia!! who is beyond skilled when it comes to math, and i love how her mathematical skills transfer so well in her ability to understand certain things that the other characters might’ve glossed over.
all of that and……the romance just wasn’t for me. it wasn’t the main focus, per say, but it did drive certain things that would inevitably happen in the story and that irritated me way more than i care to admit.
6. biggest surprise
- happily ever afters by elise bryant
this book had a lot of things that i usually don’t enjoy as much in other stories and the main character, tessa, herself makes some decisions that are so naïve and seem so selfish that you would think i’d dislike her.
however, there was a lot charm and empathy in this book that made our protagonist feel more endearing to me and if anything, i could understand why she makes the choices that she does and how that affects the other characters. i loved how much care the author obviously had for her main character and there were just a lot of other aspects to this novel that compelled me to love it more than i expected.
the romance, too, the way the author handled it, was absolutely phenomenal (see: i do like romance sometimes), and as someone who cares about friendship a lot in stories, in this one, how the author portrayed the importance of having your friend’s back made the story even more top-notch to me
7. favorite new author (debut or new to you)
- olivie blake
i’ve only read her latest novel, the atlas six, but from just the writing in that book alone and how the author constructs the characters so well, there’s already this undeniable trust i have when it comes to her writing—when it comes to knowing how sincere and perceptive she is in the direction that she has and will take in her stories, in the fates of her characters.
every writer has their own story to tell but with this one, there’s something about how she’s already laid out the pieces on the board in the atlas six that makes me think she already knows what story she’s drawing up now, more than her readers will be able to expect.
i follow her here on tumblr and so i’ve seen her responses to inquiries about these same characters or just general themes she explores in all of her works and her insight and way of thinking absolutely blows my mind, so much that its made me want to read everything she writes. i just recently bought the e-book copy of masters of death and i’m really excited for that one, just the same with her upcoming release, my mechanical romance
8. newest fictional crush squish
- noah from meet cute diary by emery lee
i don’t have fictional crushes, much less crushes in general, but i do have squishes, which is basically like platonic attraction. and in the context of this question, i genuinely do like noah’s character enough that i’d love to be his friend
noah is a pretty interesting character as far as how readers perceive him goes. some readers absolutely despise him while others may see themselves in him and then again with the few who just generally like/love his character. in my case, i really like him, and for all these different readers, it all centers around one thing.
it’s the fact that noah is a bit of an asshole
he’s an asshole who’s sometimes selfish and makes judgements pretty quickly, even when those judgements are actually right. he has a bit of an attitude that makes him seem stand-off ish and it’s that attitude that throughout the course of this novel develops so that he becomes more endearing. there’s so much more i can say about it, but i feel like i’ve said enough in this review, so if you want to learn more him on that front, you can read it if you want
besides the reasons already stated well enough in my goodreads review, another reason why i’d want him to be my friend is that i feel like it would just be really fun to hang out with him since in this novel, he notes down a lot of potential settings for his meet cute diary submissions on his blog. these settings are more for romantic dates and to have the chance to flirt and be with your crush but it’d be nice to think how good of a time we would have as friends. friends can have as many dates, just as much as any other couple, and so with noah i feel like it’d be nice to get to hang out with someone and be out of the house
he’s also a big manga reader (it’s not fully explored in this book but it is briefly mentioned) and as someone who wants to get into reading more manga, i think it’d be cool to not only get some good recommendations from him but just in general get to talk with him about it and have cool discussions about the different plots and characters.
9. newest favorite character
- sinter blackwell from all the better part of me by molly ringle (no surprise there)
sinter’s just a character who’s really charming and has a heart of gold. his love for theatre and how he expresses himself in fashion and music, along with getting to see how he became more comfortable in his sexuality and learned what being bi meant for him meant a lot to me.
the twist in the middle of this book where we see him come to fit into this new role that neither he nor me as the reader could’ve expected made the journey throughout this book feel even more heartfelt and i love how much by the end, he becomes a better version of himself than he was in the beginning. and by better, i mean that he knows more about himself and what he wants and he grows even more confident than he’s always already been.
i just love him, that’s….yeah
10. book that made you cry
- the cost of knowing by brittney morris
i cried at what was one of the happiest moments in these two characters’ lives because i knew what would happen after, so you can imagine how much harder i cried when what happened actually….happened.
this book just made me feel really sad
11. book that made you happy
- anxious people by fredrik backman
for a book that i now consider one of my new favorite comfort reads, it’s really fucking sad. as sad as i just mentioned the cost of knowing was right above, this one is just the same except it’s in those sad moments that i got a lot of reassurance and felt this warmth from seeing how these different characters who were complete strangers to each other interacted with one another.
this story is absurdly funny and has some interesting twists but the root of it all left me feeling near the end so appreciative of having given it a chance since it did take me months to finally get to reading it. highly recommend 💛
12. most beautiful book you’ve bought / received this year
- night. sleep. death. the stars. by joyce carol oates
this book was at least $35 and you know what? it was worth it.
i don’t buy a book unless i’ve read it already and really liked it but there are cases where i do take a chance on some and take out my wallet—either because the book isn’t available at my local library or on libby/scribd. either way, even then i do try to be really careful because i don’t want my money to just go to waste like that
with this book, it isn’t just the cover that pulled me in nor the title (they’re both really beautiful, i mean), but i did read bits and pieces of the first couple of pages when i came across this hardcover copy during my visit at barnes & noble and the writing was stunning so i’m hopeful that the book as a whole can leave me with a nice reading experience.
13. books you need to read by the end of the year
- the messengers (book three in the greystone secrets series) by margaret peterson haddix
- infinity reaper (book two in the infinity cycle trilogy) by adam silvera
+ a lot more but my fingers are getting tired so here are just two i do want to get to in the near future. i pre-ordered a copy of infinity reaper over a year ago and have owned it since the beginning of march of this year and yet i still haven’t read it, i can’t believe myself sometimes.
to be fair though, i am just really terrified about what i’ll read in this second book after the events in infinity son, the first book. plus, the author is known for a lot of angst and pain in his stories when it comes to the fates of his characters, which yes, i absolutely adore. he’s my favorite author for a reason, but……i don’t think i can handle it rn :/
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I’m a Larry shipper, right? Why am i disappointed at the fandom, after coming back to it... +What even is Larry? + How can we save the ship
I was going through tumblr and came across some posts by anti’s
First of all I want to clarify that I DONT hate Eleanor, I actually used to stan her a bit. I had these blogs about her and made a page saying We ship happiness or something with Elounor as avatar. I follow her on all my social media. Even if people say she’s untalented. She graduated Uni plus has a good sense of fashion so eh let’s forget that “beard” stuff. Let me live!
So why do we ship Larry. You have multiple types:
The O.G’s: They have been here since the first 2 years, anywhere between x factor days and 2012. They saw how close H+L were and started shipping them, probably from videos like this:
youtube
Be it platonically or romantically, they just thought they were cute together and loved seeing them interact and mess around. Right now they have either moved on from it all or are still here, using past moments as ‘proof’ or just still love their relationship, be it platonically or romantically. A lot use old blog posts and videos as a way to convince the newer generation that Larry was and is something, they promote their friendship mainly . Again, not all of them make up theories and see every moment as proof.
It is also quite obvious that since a lot of em are a bit older, that they ship Larry without being too annoying. That doesn’t count for everyone however...
New Gen. 2013-2015: These shippers either found out about 1D a bit later or just found out about Larry. They have watched countless proof videos and are convinced that H+L are together. By doing so much research they’ve learned a lot about Larry. They probably use the dug up moments and posts from the OG’s as a way to convince others that Larry is real or at least tell them about the ship.
1) So you have the shippers who DEFINITELY ship it and are 99.9% convinced it’s real and even when they start to doubt it they watch a lot of videos to re-convince themselves it’s real. They are often found analysing everything H+L do.
1.5) Some even go so far as to hate on the GF’s, and sometimes they don’t even realise they are doing it. Traits: Call the GF’s names, try ‘their best’ to not disclose who they are talking about but do a terrible job at it (E.G “E is such a bitch, I don’t like her, neither do I like Br, ew!”), hate on the GF’s without reason (E.G. They see a picture of said GF and rant about how terrible they are, without good motives.), automatically dislike any woman who get’s associated with H or L, especially when the media reports they are rumoured to be dating. Even if it’s just an interviewer, a family member/friend, or a celebrity that H/L admire/look up to/respect/befriended. Ahem.
Apparently that is what people call, ‘a Larrie’.
2) You also have the shippers who mainly love their friendship. They’re okay with whatever as long as the two are happy and have a healthy friendship. They want them to interact more but don’t want to force the shipping thing. They don’t really research and dig a lot. They just admire and support from a distance.
They’re usually new to it, and chose not to fall into the rabbit-hole of Larry, maybe a friend introduced them to it, or just have other OTP’s and don’t really want to pay too much attention to Larry.
3) You have the people who are right in between. They would LOVE it if the two were together but aren’t mad at the fact they might just simply be friends. They like the concept of them dating, they might love Larry videos, make or love fanart, read or write fanfics. That in my opinion is the true definition of shipping, just loving the concept and idea of two people being together, having the opinion that they fit together. Nothing else! They want to think it’s real, but don’t force it. They always rethink what is proof and what is not. Always try to find a logical answer and are not afraid to deny said ‘proof’ but also on the other hand, try their best to convince others that there was something going on between them and possibly still is. E.G. they tell people stories about the past, show them footage, but do not want to force the people to believe it’s real. They don’t try to indoctrinate them. They just want to share the ship...
Aka the said friend of version 2.
It’s probably quite obvious i am that one^
So let’s see. People started shipping it cause they were always so close. And the others knew, they saw. They lowkey shipped it. The looks they gave the two, the “You two are so cute!” ~Niall, when Harry said his valentine was Louis. the ‘You two are together, aren’t you?” by Liam, the “When was the last time you kissed a girl?” ~int “When was the last time you liked it?” ~ Liam. Niall’s looks and smirks at the two. The boys teased them about it a lot and it was all fun!
There were even people who asked them if they were dating, and when Louis was going to propose to Harry. And did they mind? No! Because even if half of the people who shipped them were kind of convinced they were going out, the two still played along, made jokes about it and fed the shippers. They loved to see the shippers reaction, they chose to queer 1D, despite the rumours and jealous guys trying to hate on 1D, calling them stupid names.
Just a side note. watch this
youtube
Korean boybands can do this... why can’t Larry? And you know that Kpop management companies are a lot like Modest... Even worse sometimes, you know that South Korea isn’t nearly as open to the LGBT as the west. YET THEY GET AWAY WITH IT!!!
People wrote fanfics, made fanart, made compilation videos(Larry moments), it was okay!
But then stuff started changing. Even when Louis said he had a GF, the two were seen acting in a way that made it seem he did not have a GF at all, similar to how they were right when Louis’ relationship with Hannah ended. Sometimes even worse. People loved it! JOKING that GF was hired! But there were people who took it TOO FAR! They hated on the girl, sent her hate, tried to sabotage their relationship. Louis didn’t like it.
Now to back paddle a bit. Yes it was quite obvious Harry did like Louis to an extent. And Louis didn’t mind. He was there for the boy. Cared for him like his little brother, as a best friend. People thought Louis was gay cause he was quite flamboyant, well what do you get after growing up with so many sisters? Plus, have you seen him when he was a teen? I used to follow him on Bebo. He had girlfriends, and they were real. Now, not saying they’re 100% straight either, chill down, people.
I guess through the years, Louis actually started to like Harry too. Maybe? No? Okay! but there was definitely some man love going on, as H+L friend would say. More fuel for the shippers.
To that point it was okay. But to resume what I started to say about the GF. People turned into pricks! Even IF the GF was hired, which i don’t want to comment on, sending hate to her went too far. We don’t need that kind of negativity in our fandom. It broke us apart! It made us all less close...
Fast forward a bit and we are in the “She’s my girlfriend, People genuinely think me and Harry are together!” era! The two started getting less close. Presumably because they caught on. Louis found out about the hate, obviously. He thought that minimising the touchiness with Harry would make things less complicated. But it made it worse cause people found out. By now you have two sides. The side which realised what they were doing and is even more convinced that GF is fake, cause ahaha why would he do that to his poor Hazza if Modest! didn’t tell him to? And the side who started to believe in Louis+GF more. By now you know I’m talking about Eleanor but yeah.
So you can either believe Modest was there from the start and hired Eleanor, (who had a friend who worked at Modest) Because Modest didn’t like the idea of two guys being in a relationship going public, having her be the muse, the lover, the topic of the songs, or that Modest started interfering when they found out about the rumours getting worse.
The latter can mean that Larry was nothing more than a Bromance (or a one sided love cause Harry liked Louis, it was mutual but they stayed friends for the benefit of... being friends. You almost can’t deny that and if you do then i guess it was just a theory) and when the rumours went overboard, Modest took action and told them to stop being so touchy feely.
Harry for example, only get’s rumoured to be dating someone,he get’s papped hanging around a girl and the second it gets out, new articles start to sprout out of nowhere, and whenever things do get “confirmed” they never end well or last as long as Elounor did.They are mostly high profile people. He’s been getting labeled as a womaniser since pretty much the start of their career. That somewhat correlated with Larry since the womaniser image got people to not believe in the HxL rumours too seriously.
I made a rant about that in 2012 but it was super messy so i’m not going to go into that.
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Either way, them being less close made people even more suspicious and to this day, even after them awkwardly denying rumours, even after Zayn saying it is not real. People believe they are together. Why? cause proof videos. I believe that if you are a true anti, you should at least dare to watch the 30 most iconic Larry moments, and if after all that you still stand by your opinion, then respect to you.
There were far too many suspicious moments. Even if half of what they were trying to do was a joke. You can not deny that they really loved each other. And something ruined it.
The thing about their management company glaring at them or giving signs of approval whenever they do something wrong, or the thing about them giving signals not to answer a question is not made up. There is actual footage of them looking behind the camera and the interviewer saying they have to either stop an interview or saying they are not allowed to ask that.
So why would the management company do such a thing when it is so obvious that the fans really like shipping the two boys?
The reason is because, even if the fans have no problem with it, others do. Outsiders do. A lot of celebrities don’t get permitted to come out. They have to act a certain way and get introduced to girls they have to date for a month or two, sometimes even years. With every generation you have a group of people who completely despise the concept of gay relationships.
Now there are some groups and artists who’ve come out and are doing perfectly fine. But if you have as big as an audience as One Direction, things become more problematic. It is not only the fact that hundreds of girls who feel they have a chance with the boys or are raised not to approve of anything that has to do with the LGBTQ+ (so they grew up with homophobic parents) pretty much get a slap to the face. It’s that they will get so much attention that all the homophobic people in the world, potentially people who can influence a big group of people, will possibly start to hate on them, all these kids who are unfortunate enough to have closed minded parents will not be allowed to listen to the boys anymore. Their entire image will have a massive switch.
Now that they are solo, they have far more time to focus on themselves. Time to reshape and tweak their public image, time and space to show the world who they really are. They are breaking free from the bubble gum pop bubble. They are free to do whatever they want
When they first got put together, people started to say stuff like “One Direction is gay” Using ‘gay’ as an insult just to seem cool cause people thought that liking One Direction was shameful. Especially because of the often obnoxious fans. People simply did not want to be associated with them. But One Direction grew!
I don’t see them coming out any time soon. At this point i am not even sure if they are still together. Especially with the recent events regarding Louis.
I want to say that when Louis and Eleanor first started dating, it was quite awkward, but their relationship started looking realer as time passed by. This time, it just does not at all. Not judging her, i love her. It’s just strange. She got back with someone who “cheated” on her and has a kid with someone else, you’d expect her to ask her boyfriend to do a paternity test. But that is their thing. They can do whatever they want.
Also regarding recent events. Harry seems to be so much more free. He’s swinging and waving around LGBT flags and is being more flamboyant than ever.
Flashback to a couple of years ago when the boy said he liked girls, didn’t like nail polish or make up, and talked about girls. The boys kept mentioning he’s changed. They of all people would understand what exactly changed.
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Now about Louis.
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That is just weird. Moving on.
I believe that we should all just chill and stop the negativity, I didn’t want to believe the misogyny until someone pointed it out to me, don’t get me wrong, i did see it before, but when I came back to this fandom I didn’t think it would be so much worse.
Theories get annoying unless there is proof, in my opinion you can do whatever you like with them, as long as you are aware that your theory might be false/debunkable!
You can ship it as much as you want but DON’T send hate to the GF’s, like, if you ship Larry, why waste time on them in the first place?
Maybe if we all stop commenting Larry on everything we see, maybe then they will come back as close as they were before. Cause it was quite prominent that Harry was saddened by it. They have good and bad memories from the ship.
Just please guys, Larry is fun and i love it, but what I don’t like is all these “shippers” who point at Larry and management, everytime something happens between the two.
But I also don’t like people who attack the shippers, without listening to them first, stand in each others shoes, try to understand each other and why the other person thinks a certain way, step out of your own shoes for once ahaha. We’ll get to understand each other more that way. WE ALL HAVE TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND!!!
Louis said this:
“My main hope for the future is that we all remain best friends throughout everything. I would hate it if anything ‘affected?’ our friendships.”
Sadly something did happen, we have two years to fix things. Maybe i’m just crazy cause i miss the good old days. But let’s at least consider it.
Can we make a plan? Start shipping Larry the way we did in 2011. Just secretly. Let’s not go overboard and theorise everything. Even if it is just for a couple of months. Let’s focus on the friendship! Make them believe we have moved on and know it’s just friendship. I really want to focus on that the next couple of years.
I call it the Larry Reset! Hopefully now there won’t be an article to come out which says “Larry shippers have moved on and have accepted that Larry was a Bromance. Want it back the way it was.” Actually tbh let that happen!
#Larry#One Direction#Larry Stylinson#1D#Harry#Harry Styles#Louis#Louis Tomlinson#Louis and Harry#Harry and Louis#Niall Horan#Liam Payne#Larry is real#Larry is bullshit#Larry moments#Larry theory#Larry theories#kpop#got7#Jackson x Mark#MarkSon#Harry x Louis#Louis x Harry
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goddd I cannot believe u have read iwwv u don't know me but for some reason we watch like.. the same shows and now books lol. anyway can I ask what were ur thoughts on the ending? like to me at least it was onvious Oliver had not done it and he wasn't gonna pull a unreliable narrator last minute (despite being an unreliable narrator) I'm talking abt the whole uhh James is a**** thing.. like what HAPPENS NEXT? is he w wren? also I feel so bad for meredith like girl love urself.. sry 4 the essay
omg yes taste!!!! Also no I’m dying to talk abt this novel so don’t apologize if anything im sorry bc I wrote way too much answering ur question LGRNLRGN
IF WE WERE VILLIANS SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT go read it if u haven’t it’s legendaric
Okay the ending!!!! AH!!!! Okay yeah so I think it’s clear Oliver did not do it, I think the ambiguity lies more whether or not James intentionally killed Richard or if it was an accident. Like, did he see Richard stumbling out in the woods hella intoxicated and think to himself that this was the perfect opportunity to get revenge for all the abuse and torture Richard had been terrorizing him with??? Did he lie to Oliver? Personally, I believe James that it was an accident… of sorts. I don’t think James set out with the intention to kill Richard at all. But Richard was goading him and fighting him and after the buildup of cruelty and tension between them over the past few months, Richard be a homophobic dick and calling James and Oliver qu*er and prodding at the most important relationship in James’ life struck a nerve. So when Richard wanted to keep fighting and hurt him again he was like fuck this and he hit Richard too hard with the hook and that in tandem with Richard being drunk caused Richard to fall and die. And, like the others, James felt awful but there was a sort of sick sense of relief.
(Also, I’m not exactly sure Oliver counts as an Unreliable Narrator. I mean he is certainly keeping some things from that detective guy but, and I was reading something from M.L. Rio about this, like he’s literally just oblivious and dumb as fuck sometimes LKGNLRGLKNRG. So idk how often he’s intentionally Unreliable but I also get what you mean)
Anyways I’m totally a believer that James is alive bc despite enjoying dark stories im like okay but I need a happy ending LGKNLKRGlkenlgneg. Like c’mon they never found the body……….. A metaphorical death and shedding of his past life bc he blames himself for Oliver taking the fall is like the MOST tragic hero Shakespearean shit ever like it just works so well!!!!!! The part where Oliver describes the last time James visited him in jail…
“Oliver I’m begging you,” he said. “I can’t do this anymore.” When I refused again, he pulled my hand across the table, kissed it, and turned to leave. I asked where he was going and he said, “Hell. Del Norte. Nowhere. I don’t know.” (343).
GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDd. God. Anyways I think that was very telling of his plans. Hell (for “committing suicide”, moreso for all of his wrong doings). Del Norte is the beach that him and Oliver slept on that one night and so I feel like that place holds a lot of significance for them, but it’s a place only those two know the significance of. So, I like to think he ran away there and started a new life. He wrote that letter with the disjointed Pericles monologue I think to hint to Oliver that he was at Del Norte, if he wanted to find him, because even though his “death” was a self-punishment for ruining Oliver’s life, he still cares for him a lot and doesn’t want to be without him. Like a whole monologue about the sea????????? The fact that he literally said the monologue to Oliver while they were at Del Norte?? “To give my tongue that heat to ask your help; / Which if you shall refuse, when I am dead, / For that I am a man, pray see me buried.” LIKE WHAAAAAAAAAAT god !!!! Also water is gay<3 and in my heart Oliver goes and finds him and they like work through shit and are together.
Anyways I don’t really think he’s with Wren. Their relationship during senior year was always sort of ambiguous to me…. Like they definitely got super close, they probably were romantically involved in some capacity (since other characters like Alexander who is much more perceptive were like Oliver how did it take you this long to notice LRGNRGNK) though idk if it was like the Encompassing Love Affair Oliver thought it to be bc he’s oblivious and jealous. And also like James was very much enamored with Oliver so idk. (EDIT i just remembered they slept together LMAO but i think my point still stands) In the epilogue Wren is in London and is a recluse and doesn’t reach out to any of the Villains which like. Good for her LRGNRLG even though I hated Richard I can’t imagine like how much of a toll that took on her to see her cousin die and all their friends be like uh yeah we should let him die and then have to keep up a lie like… even though she agreed Richard was awful that has to be so heart wrenching (badumtss) and life ruining. So I think she especially wouldn’t want to be with James seeing as he essentially led Richard to fall into the lake, though I’m not sure if she knows that or not.
And Meredith!!!! Like I’ll be real sometimes she frustrates me but I think she’s also SUCH an interesting and realistic character (which is something I love about this novel, all the characters are interesting to me and I like how the female characters are portrayed.... like i LOVE Fillipa she is such a bad ass bitch but again she’s not just like. Expected to always be strong and clever like she’s got feelings too. Anyways love her). As I said before I was perusing through the author’s tumblr a bit and ppl were like “omg why did Meredith go through all the male friends” like BYEEE literally feeding into the stereotypes that made her feel insecure and weak… (Also again, they’ve known each other for four years… so its not that insane lmao). I think Meredith’s relationship with her sexuality and beauty is very interesting and relatable for a lot of women (I mean I am not. Like a seductive femme fatale like she is but LGKNKRGN). On one hand she is definitely a multifaceted person who is more than her sexuality, on the other, she’s constantly Literally Cast by Gwendolyn in sexualized roles and seen as sexualized by her friends/bf (Richard) and constantly told her worth in and out of the theatre is her body. Like there is an interesting duality about the power she possesses with her sexuality but also the extreme insecurity that is bred by being constantly sexualized and this struggle of like knowing she has worth outside of her body but also sort of … not in the eyes of others. That scene where they’re doing those exercises of their strengths and weaknesses really Hit. Anyways yes Meredith love urself queen… get a hot respectful gf… become a powerful successful legend…..
Related-ish sidenote, obviously I like James and Oliver together the most though I will say Meredith and Oliver’s relationship was interesting though ultimately unhealthy…. Like one of the aspects I like about their relationship is Oliver respects Meredith and when he realizes he is falling into that idea that Meredith is this super sexualized person he’s like hold awn that’s shitty of me… But also I think the fact of the matter is that their relationship was catalyzed by shitty stuff,,, like lust and the need for revenge. Like I honestly don’t really think they would’ve gotten together if not for the extreme animosity with Richard and the adrenaline of like that whole show run and more particularly That Night…. It feels like they got together because they were drunk and they’re attractive, which like yeah fine valid, but also, subconsciously, to be like fuck you Richard. Like, guess what I’m with the guy who you’re constantly saying doesn’t matter. And also seeking comfort and validation when their most important people are not valuing them (Richard being literally fucking awful to Meredith, James sort of pushing Oliver away—again I think subconsciously was sort of a revenge jealousy type thing where Oliver is with the person that James doesn’t really like and makes not amazing comments about being promiscuous). And then their relationship I think keeps going because like. Wow grief is a bitch and they want some comfort. Meredith is drawn to Oliver because he’s one of the only people who values her for more than just a sexual object which like is What She Deserves but their relationship is like a mess of sex and guilt and Oliver is in love with James (the parts where Meredith drags Oliver for caring more about James… iconic as she should! Like when Oliver is like sorry James is visiting me I’m not coming or when she’s like are you more jealous of him or me when they kissed for that scene….. OOP!). Anyways idk if that makes sense but I find Oliver and Meredith’s relationship interesting bc it’s not like… the worst unhealthy relationship ever or anything and I think there is genuine care and love/attraction there between them but like Oliver is never going to totally Be What Meredith deserves especially because like… he loves James more. Also the part where Meredith slaps Oliver when he gets out of jail and he’s like yeah I deserve that is so GLKNRglkenrgnrg to me.
Anyways I probably have more thots but wow. This is long. Sorry LGRNLKRGNng
#if we were villains#books#anon#ask#okay i edited something and idk why tumblr glitched the fuck out at least on my dash but i added the read more again...#tumblr is a broken hellscape <3
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