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chameleon-arts · 6 years ago

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How do you fall back in love with life?

clean your room. clean space, uncluttered space, space that doesn’t have miasma clinging to it can work wonders. clean the dishes. sweep. take out the trash. peel the clothes off the floor and wash them, and then actually fold/hang them. take a long shower. scrub behind your knees. brush your teeth. (this can be utterly exhausting, but try to get it done in a day, if you can. the end result is worth it.)

pull out your notebook. it doesn’t need to be a new notebook, but preferably one that you don’t usually write in, or that you haven’t touched in a while. fuck moleskins. the yellow legal pad will work fine. sit in your room, or in the park, or in the library, and write a list. count clouds. describe all the colors that you see, and note patterns that arise. sketch the cracks in the walls. note the shape light makes when it enters a space. talk about what the air tastes like, smells like. what sounds are there? even the white nose, break that down: air planes, fans, cicadas, anything. remind yourself that you are sitting in the middle of a space brimming with detail. remind yourself that you are not in nothingness and emptiness. your world is fathomless. it has potential.

drink cold water and try to eat something that isn’t processed. it does not need to be fancy. buy yourself an apple with the change between your couch cushions. eat it outside. if you’re someone who walks, walk somewhere afterwards, just to stretch your legs. take your fucking meds. remember that its a good thing that you are inside your body. your body is a fantastic and endlessly intricate machine, and even though society has smacked a bunch of poisonous ideas on it, that doesn’t change its inherent worth and splendor. take care of it.

read a novel. underline your favorite lines, and write phrases that twist your heart inside your chest on the back of your hand with an ink pen. read a novel like it’s poetry. read poetry, something decadent but unpretentious. watch a movie you haven’t seen before. if there are free art galleries near you, walk through one. take your time. let yourself bask. if there are patterns in what makes your soul ache, write those patterns down – marbles arches or soot crumbling bricks or dandelions or descriptions of dresses or whatever it is, write them down.

your chosen family is important. remember, they picked you as much as you picked them. the love has no obligation. it is given freely and it is given from a place of compassion. you are not a burden. if you need to breathe, take a minute by yourself and just exist, but remember to go back to your people. when they need you, listen and be gracious. always be gracious. the universe sometimes remembers things like that.

listen to new music. link jump on youtube or related artist jump on spotify or ask the chap beside you in the cafe what their favorite band is, and listen to that. listen to something that you don’t usually listen to. we tend to tie up a lot of memory with music. we are falling in love again. the soundtrack needs to be specific to that.

allow yourself to indulge in romantics. press flowers in old books. play movies with subtitles and mouth the words. dance in your room. wear something that makes you feel good, even if you wouldn’t wear it in public. write your chosen family letters, even if you hand deliver them. write poetry, even awful poetry. revel in its awfulness. eat dark chocolate and when your chosen family want to go out, try to go out with them sometimes, even if its just to the market.

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chameleon-arts · 6 years ago

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Imagine Sasha and Max being friends tho.

(i’ll be real this whole thing took multiple hours to type please somebody actually read this or I might die tbh-)

Like I know they had one episode together but think about them a c t u a l l y being friends.

(below are a ton of headcanons for a friendship between them)

- Obviously they have a bit of respect for one another because of their alliance of convenience, but their friendship would probably be forged on laughing at someone else. Whether it’s their friends fucking up or Pikeman’s general incompetence or whatever else. I can imagine now their camps are competing or something but the stakes don’t matter to them, so Sasha and Max just end up shit talking everyone else and watching the show.

- Since their friendship was forged on calling people out they’d kinda just start hanging out specifically to rant and gossip about the shit that goes down around camp. Like Max’ll get fed up with how idiotic the campbell campers are and come to vent to Sasha and she’ll be here for it, because of course she is or Sasha ends up getting ditched by Tabii and Erin again and just kinda goes to Max to talk about how annoyed she is.

- Sasha keeps pointing out things like the circled under Max’s eyes and other facial discrepancies and eventually he’ll just be like “well how do you look perfect all the time?!?” because it’s not fair. Sasha gasps super loud and immediately goes full makeover mode. She immediately shoves a ton of makeup onto him and prescribes him a skincare routine and Max isn’t sure about it but he’s actually kinda self-conscious and Sasha’s like “do you wanna end up looking like Pikeman?” so Max follows her instructions to the letter and he looks amazing.

- After that they kinda just end up doing each other’s makeup all the time and stuff like that. Max usually just uses like concealer and stuff because he doesn’t want it to look like he’s trying, but occasionally Max’ll give Sasha permission to put some eyeliner on him or something and he’ll never admit it but he l o v e s the way it looks. They start hanging out even more of course because it’s not like Max can go to anyone else about the whole skincare/makeup thing and honestly Sasha loves her other friends but it’s relieving to hang out with someone more willing to gossip with her (even if she’s slightly salty that Max doesn’t have enough hair for her to mess with like Erin and Tabii do)

- Sasha forces Max to watch a ton of shitty highschool movies and Max doesn’t really like most of them but he’ll put up with it because he (although he’ll never admit it) cares about Sasha (and is a little intimidated by her when she’s upset). He doesn’t like them but occasionally Max can also coerce her into watching a horror movie with him so they’re even in his books (even if the poor thing has to watch way more of her movies than he makes her watch)

- They actually end up being r e a l l y protective of each other. Like most of the time, they’ll let people fuck with their friends (so long as no real harm is done), yknow? But if anyone says a word about Max and it gets back to Sasha they’ll literally end up the laughing stock of Lake Lilac by the end of the day because Sasha’s a bitch who can spread a rumor like wildfire. Alternatively, Max’ll sick Nikki and Neil on anyone who fucks with Sasha (which won’t end up pretty). And that’s if they’re lucky because that kid could do so much worse if he’s got the right motivation. They try to hide the fact that they’re acting in defense of one another and justify why they’re screwing over whoever it is they’re screwing over, but it’s honestly just vengeance for their friend.

- All the gossiping makes the two more unstoppable than they were before tbh. Like Max always had other Camp Campbell camper’s secrets tucked away for blackmail purposes and Sasha needs to know everything going on in her turf so of course she’s got dirt on all the Flower Scouts. And it’s not exactly hard to figure out the Woodscout’s. So with their swapping info constantly both of them end up knowing everything about everyone and being able to screw them over in a heartbeat. Basically, hanging out together makes those two terrifying.

- They’re also more confident as a duo than most other times. Like don’t get me wrong, they’re both pretty sure of their capabilities, and they trust their individual friend groups to have their back, but they know that the other person is competent in manipulation and incredibly cunning and they value each other’s skillsets because they’re super similar. When you’re confident in yourself, having somebody who’s like you around only makes you doubly confident. They feel super badass whenever they team up in something and it’s great.

- Most of their arguments are probably petty tbh. Max calls one of Sasha’s favorite movies dumb (she bases her life around highschool stereotypes and dumb cliche movies, of course, she gets pissed when he insults them) or Sasha makes one too many comments about Max’s physical appearance (the girl is obsessed with looking good and as much as Max is willing to listen to her advice, it gets to him when she comments on his weight or how he needs to sleep more because the circles under his eyes are getting harder to cover up. Like, he has depression, do you not realize that weight changes and bad sleeping habits are a symptom of that?!?). A common source of disagreement is how used to being in charge they each are. Like yeah, they know they don’t always have to take the lead, but it’s so ingrained into them that they struggle with it. Max watches Sasha’s dumb movies all the time and took her advice on skincare and stuff so she occasionally forgets that she’s not his boss like she’s in charge of her other friend’s and of course he’s willing to compromise on some things but he doesn’t take well to being treated like a lackey and she’s too stubborn to admit she’s wrong half the time.

- Their fights get bad. Despite normally being over small things and the person who’s in the wrong normally realizing they’re the one who’s wrong, both Max and Sasha are very stubborn people and they will die on this hill no matter how petty the whole thing is honestly. They’ll scream and throw things and once or twice they’ve even wound up physically fighting. Usually, if it comes to an actual physical altercation they’ll stop there because actually injuring your friend is super fucked up. Once Max threw a book at Sasha without thinking and it gave her a black eye. Another time Sasha literally slapped him and it left a bruise for like a week. They both felt like shit after. When Sasha gave Max a bruise she literally cried and he forgave her on the condition that she help him cover the bruise with makeup (He said he’d dealt with worse and something about the way he said it made her uneasy. She can’t place why). The time that Max hit Sasha with a book he froze up completely and refused to even look at her for like an hour. Partially because he felt guilty and couldn’t verbalize his regret but it was honestly more than that. You don’t shut down and practically disassociate for an hour because you don’t know what to say. There was absolutely something wrong with the way he shut down after the whole thing but she didn’t push for answers and he apologized and they just decided to forget it ever happened. They never aim to actually hurt one another, they just don’t have many ways to actually get out their frustrations. They never once actually physically hurt the other more than once each. It’s just not something either of them wants to go through again, honestly. If their arguments don’t end with one of them going too far and the two felt like shit and making up within seconds one of them will eventually storm off and they’ll both get super petty. Making sarcastic remarks at one another whenever they see each other, pointedly ignoring the other, the occasional mean prank. Usually, they forget all about it within a week, though, because as stubborn as they are something dumb happens to one of them and they’ll need to vent. None of their fights are ever serious, as nasty as they are, so it’s easy to get over and never gets mentioned again.

- They had one serious fight that actually put their friendship in danger. Tabii had ended up crying to Sasha because she was devastated over being rejected by Neil. Like, she was super broken up about how he doesn’t love her and it’s probably because she’s ugly even though Erin told her she wasn’t. Sasha wasn’t happy about it. At all. Like, she normally just rolls her eyes and brushes it off whenever she sees Tabii going after him, but she watched so many stupid cliche high school movies where the girl got the guy if he was good and anyone who rejects the protagonist is an asshole. So Sasha, going by movie logic, was pretty sure that Neil was insulting Tabii by rejecting her and was a terrible person. She also failed to realize that Tabii’s whole attitude towards pursuing Neil was kinda creepy and stalkerish to begin with and she already had a low opinion of him since he’s a nerd who called her a cunt and hangs out with Nikki, who she also hates. She did not like seeing one of her best friends in the world (who’s basically like a sister to her tbh) cry. So Sasha, with a burning rage towards Neil, wound up spilling the whole thing to Max. And he wasn’t happy with her for insulting his friend either. Max basically cussed Sasha out because Tabii’s behavior was creepy and it was making Neil super uncomfortable, which he was not cool with. He told her she was a moron if she saw nothing wrong with how Tabii acted but thought that Neil was out of line for rejecting her. Sasha didn’t take well to being called a moron or to her friend being accused of being creepy, and she said something along the lines of “It’s not my fault you hang out with a retarded nerd and a girl who can’t even be a girl properly”. Max basically called her an ignorant bitch and told her to go fuck herself, then he left. Normally their arguments are long and wordy and even violent but this time he just cut it short and stormed out. Sasha still thought she was right, of course, because that boy who Max was friends with had made Tabii cry and he was a moron for not liking her! And yeah maybe the insults to Nikki weren’t exactly called for but every word was true, right? She just kinda expected Max to get over it eventually but a few weeks passed and he never really did. The fact that Max had called her ignorant kinda stuck out to her more than anything. That’s the same thing Neil had called her, isn’t it? Why would they both use the same insult? It’s not like that was a go-to thing to call somebody. The whole thing drove her crazy and eventually when she confronted him about it she got a long lecture about how romantic relationships work, the fact that bullying a girl over dressing or acting slightly differently from her is a shitty thing to do, and that calling Neil ‘retarded’ is offensive because he’s actually mentally ill and even if he weren’t, the word’s still terrible. She didn’t quite understand all of it but she got enough to feel guilty and she apologized. Sasha still doesn’t really like Nikki and Neil much and it’s not like she’s stopped shit-talking them, but she’s eased up a bit because she doesn’t want Max that angry at her again, and in a way she can see how she maybe…was a tiny bit wrong.

- They don’t normally get super sad or deep on each other. Neither really likes to be emotional or open up so they wouldn’t exactly initiate any sort of depressing dialogue. However, they are both observant people so they notice things anyway. Max notices how Sasha talks a little too much about her weight and thinks anything over one hundred pounds is horrifically obese to the point where she diets incessantly. He notices that she cares too much about looking young and pretty too. Damned highschool movies. Sasha, on the other hand, notices that Max doesn’t trust adults at all and that he flinches when she gets too loud (even if he tries to cover it up) and that he either doesn’t sleep at all or sleeps way too often…amoung other things of course. They don’t talk about these things out loud but they’ve both deduced that the other isn’t healthy.

- Max practically forces Sasha to eat every time they see each other and refuses to watch a single movie with her that even mentions dieting in a positive light because she is ten years old and shouldn’t be counting calories and refusing absolutely all fat. He’ll insist on doing her makeup and will make sure to do it lighter and lighter every time because as much as he himself appreciates makeup and uses it to cover parts of his skin he doesn’t like, she needs to be more confident and he can’t in good conscience let her go on the way she’s been going on. Sasha, on the other hand, if she ever notices he’s having a bad day and isn’t functioning well, will let him hide out with her all day even if she has other things to do and he should be at camp. Occasionally she’ll even let Nikki or Neil in her room if she or they feel Max really needs their support (he can’t just stay at his own camp, he’d never be allowed out of activities all day). She doesn’t exactly understand why he’s sad and tired and angry and has a hard time with sleep but she won’t ask. Sasha has some theories on why he doesn’t trust any adult and flinches when she yells but she doesn’t like thinking on that one too long (his comment when she slapped him 'i’ve had worse’ comes to mind). They’re not always great at it and they don’t always understand but they try to help each other even if they have an unspoken rule not to ask questions.

- While they normally spend their hang-out time watching movies or doing each other’s makeup/hair/nails or talking crap about other’s behind their backs, they’ve occasionally had adventures of their own. They typically leave Lake Lilac for these, honestly. Sasha couldn’t care less about anything going on at Camp Campbell and Max isn’t about to get involved in Flower Scout politics so if they’re ever inclined to go on an adventure it’s in town or even the big city. And usually involves crime one way or another tbh. Once they accidentally managed to get Max elected mayor of the whole town and Sasha as treasurer. Money was embezzled, fires were set, and they’re now banned from muffin tops for life. That’s the kind of adventure those two have whenever they’re compelled to do anything at all. Go big or go home, basically.

- They’re actually super honest with each other. The general light-hearted nature of their friendship and the fact that they gossip and chatter about pretty much everything that pops into their heads means they don’t exactly stress about getting judged or anything like that as long as they aren’t confessing to horrific sins or anything.

- They love to fuck with Pikeman. Like they normally just sit around at the Flower Scout’s camp or out in town or the city or something like that but occasionally they’ll screw him over because they both can agree he’s an incompetent asshole who deserves it.

- Sasha flipped her shit when she realized that Max knows how to bake, cook, sew, and knit (he definitely can knit and sew we’ve seen him do it in the show and I headcanon he’d have to learn to cook and stuff cause his parents don’t feel like doing it for him) She nearly died and made him sew/knit her a bunch of stuff for her and decided they had to bake together and she was just super happy about it. Once upon a time, she would’ve judged him for it because of gender roles and stuff and she wasn’t used to guys doing any of those things, but after the whole incident where he called her an ignorant bitch she wasn’t gonna push it and besides, she was happy to have her gossip and makeup buddy also be able to do those other things with her. Like she can do those things with Tabii and Erin too but Max kinda gets her and she needs a break from the two sometimes.

- Most people don’t actually know they’re friends. Nikki and Neil are vaguely aware they hang out but they don’t see much besides the occasional banter when the Flower Scouts and Camp Campbell interact as a group. Max doesn’t talk about Sasha much around them since he knows they don’t exactly like her. Sasha doesn’t dare mention their friendship around Tabii and Erin because they’d freak out completely and probably assume they’re dating since those two don’t realize guys and girls can actually have platonic friendships. She doesn’t want that drama. Their friendship is kinda a secret, which is surprising since they may not talk about it but they visit each other and chat enough when they cross paths that you’d think people would realize. But they’re kinda glad. Lake Lilac is a chaotic place and when they’re hanging out it’s one of the only times they even have the option of just relaxing.

(imma be real I literally came up with the idea of those two being really close friends because I watched the episode where Nikki hung out with Dolph and Nerris and I thought 'Max have other friend too? :0’)

Literally, ANY input is welcome. I spent multiple hours on this so if you have anything to say you know I’m down for a conversation about it

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