#I guess people know what they’re talking about when they say ‘trust the process’

[asimplearchivist]

Do y’all ever think about what was going through Grovyle’s mind at the Passage of Time when he found out about the hero being his partner?🙂I do.

(Click for better quality! And please for the love of God notice the reflection in his eye that I spent far too much time on getting just right😭)

Time lapse below the cut:

[notjustjavierpena]

you mentioned wife being the first person javi opened up to about his mother.

imagine him walking with her around his fathers ranch and just showing her all the places from his childhood, his favourite hiding spots etc and causally just mentioning his mum here and there. reader is clinging to his arm and just basking in the day.

at night they’re staying in his childhood bedroom since it got late and they had quite a few beers with Chucho and eventually javi is holding wife/then girlfriend close and just says “i’ve never told anyone about my mother before like this” or something like that ahhh

Open

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A/N: This is extremely personal for me to write about as a person who knows what it is like to lose a parent when you are young. I have written this with utmost gratitude to Hubby Javi because I can process some feelings through him. I hope you enjoy this harsh thing. I hope you know that this heals me and I hope it heals other people too. It might not be completely how you wanted it but I hope you like it better.

Summary: Javier opens up about the loss of his mother inside his childhood bedroom.

Pairing: Javier Peña x f!reader (no y/n)

Tags: +18 smut, angst, talk about abusive parenting, talk about grief, descriptions of a child experiencing grief and the loss of a parent, descriptions of cancer and its effects physically and emotionally, talk about death obviously, hurt/comfort, love confessions, openness is beautiful!!! kisses, clit stim, sex to deal with emotions

Word count: 4.7k

Link to this work on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56911576

Open

About two months ago, you promised Chucho Peña that you would help him with the annual apple harvest and suddenly, the leaves are turning brown, and September begins with magazines filling up with apple pie recipes. 

Today, you have dressed the part for a weekend on your father-in-law’s ranch with your boyfriend. Dressing the part means that you have gone out to buy yourself a pair of denim overalls that make you look mostly like a caricature of a farm girl. Javier promises that he finds it sort of endearing, reassuring you every time you bring it up with embarrassment on your face. 

“Stop worrying,” he says as he wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, standing on a ladder that you are holding whilst he plucks apples off what seems like the millionth tree in the orchard, “He likes you, baby.”

“I should have just gone with my usual clothes,” you argue with a little sigh. Javier doesn’t know how much it means to you that you aren’t seen as foolish, how much it would hurt to find out that you are seen as the butt of a joke behind closed doors. He doesn’t know how much you need this approval because Chucho Peña is the kindest and most gentle and attentive older man you have ever met, treating you like his own child with a soft mija (my girl/daughter) that had been enough for you to excuse yourself for a moment the first time you had heard it. He is not at all like your own father. 

“You’re making an effort that doesn’t go unnoticed,” Javier offers as a consolation after you have stayed silent for a little too long, stepping down the ladder and taking off his work gloves. He stuffs them into his belt and kisses you with another reassuring smile, “He likes you.”

“I guess I'll just have to trust you,” you sigh dramatically and Javier pulls you into an embrace, the chuckle he lets out vibrating against your chest. You feel his lips pull into a smile as he rests his mouth against your cheek.

“You are kind and honest,” he compliments and sways you from side to side as he holds you close. You wrap yourself around him too, listening to his sweet words and breathing in his scent, “And he thinks the world of you. I might actually start to feel a little jealous.”

A little smile forms on your face as he squeezes you tighter and when he pulls back just a bit to kiss you, you nod at him, trying to play it cool despite thoughts of self-doubt nagging at you, “I did warn you about how I get around parents..” 

“I know, mi amor (my love), I know,” he acknowledges and holds you close again, “But you did enough to charm him the first time to be invited back. And the overalls really do sell it.”

“Shut up,” you groan as he snickers in your ear. He always manages to make your heart flutter in your chest, teasing you relentlessly but grounding you as he does it. None of your baggage is too big for him, even as you present it with trembling hands from how heavy it feels to you.

“Just a few more minutes here and we can have a well-earned fucking break. I love you but not enough to skive off in my Dad’s garden,” he tells you and starts to loosen you from his embrace, “That okay?”

You nod and then you finally break apart. Javier gets back onto the ladder to pick the remaining apples off the tree in front of you. He starts the repetitive task once again, handing each one to you so you can carefully put them in the basket on the ground so they don’t bruise. While you do it, you find your mind drifting to the day you met Chucho. 

You remember the drive to the ranch, your heart pounding in your chest at a million miles per hour, and the fake smile you had given Javier each time he had asked if you were okay. During your stay for dinner and drinks, and as you smiled and charmed, you hid the anxiety until you were all the way back at Javier’s apartment once more, only then letting your facade crumble and telling him that the dizzying nervousness he had seen on the drive back had nothing to do with his father and everything to do with your own. 

Javier had asked you if your parents had ever hurt you and with a shaky voice, you’d had to explain that while the answer was no, what you received instead of deliberate cruelty was cruel indifference. 

“I don’t know what’s worse,” you had said with stinging tears in your eyes, “Being hurt or being invisible.”

“You’re not invisible to me,” Javier had whispered into your hair. He had held you tightly that evening, right in his hallway, feet planted on the floorboards that have become yours too, his arms a harbor of reassurance that things will never be like that again, “I will never allow anyone to treat you like that again.”

Now, as you place another apple gently in the basket, you think about how different Chucho Peña is from your father. Chucho’s attention is genuine and warm, listening to you with the same interest as Javier shows too, letting you know where some of your boyfriend’s mannerisms come from, whereas your parents’ show of care was always fleeting and conditional to the point where you wondered why they even decided to have you. 

“Hey,” Javier’s voice breaks through your thoughts. He’s looking down at you from the ladder, concern on his face and gloves already off again, “¿Estás bien? (You okay?)”

“Yeah, sorry,” you feel embarrassed that it’s so evident on your face that you aren’t at ease but decide to be honest, “Just thinking about parents and overalls.”

Javier steps down onto the gravel again, laying the gloves on the top step of the ladder. He tuts, face serious for a moment. 

“C’mon, you’ve been standing in the sun too long. Let’s take a break now and go for a walk in the garden. Still got a lot to show you,” he says with his hand reaching out for you. You take it with an unsure smile, but as you are interlocking your fingers and gently swaying your arms between your bodies as you start walking, you find that it feels more than alright to let yourself be comforted by him. 

Javier leads you through the apple trees until you are out of the orchard completely. He talks quietly about the ranch but there’s a slight hesitation to dig deeper than the materials and the construction of his childhood home. You decide not to push it, knowing that it was not easy to reveal your secrets, and instead admire the many flowers that will bloom in next year’s Spring. 

Javier seems to notice you taking in all the different bushes and flowers and you’ll never admit to seeing his shoulders slump slightly just before he starts talking again, “Mom loved this garden, you know. She spent hours here, tending to every single plant until her fingertips were green and dirt-smudged. I used to follow her around, pretending to help but mostly just getting in the way.”

“Didn’t get into trouble, did you?” You tease and lean into him as you walk. 

“Loads and I would hide up there when she got angry with me,” he points to an old and slightly weathered oak tree, a rope ladder in even worse condition hanging down the trunk, “But she’d always soften if I apologized. Once she said she liked her hyacinths without their heads to make me feel better.”

“I’d swap parents in a heartbeat,” you sigh with your head on his shoulders and he moves to let you hold onto his arm instead. He goes a little quieter and you allow him to hold onto her memory by himself for a moment, looking up to see a slight crinkle on his forehead. 

“Even when you’d only have one?” He eventually murmurs into your hair and from the way he exhales, you know that he regrets saying it, “I mean… I know you would.”

“You have beautiful memories of her, I can tell,” you say as gently as possible, “If you ever want to tell me more about her, I’m here to listen, you know.”

Javier clears his throat, “Thank you.”

A moment passes but nothing more happens. This would be the perfect opportunity but the silence stretches out until you walk beside him again, holding his hand instead of basking in his half-embrace. You want to say something but you are at a loss, searching for the right words to comfort him but failing just long enough for him to change the subject. 

“We should go see how far Pop has gotten,” he suggests lightheartedly and steers you back where you came from, out of what used to be his sanctuary with his mother. 

“Yeah, sure, baby,” you reply. 

Another time then.

—

When the sun has gone down behind the horizon and the cicadas have come out from their hiding places, singing their hearts out, Javier takes you to his old room upstairs. The both of you have had alcohol with dinner and while Javier had offered to take a cab, his father had scolded him for even thinking about such nonsense, telling him that it was a joy to have him home so wholeheartedly. Your father-in-law had looked at you with a warm smile as he had said it. 

Now, you lie in Javier’s old bed - just a little bit too small for the both of you - with the quilted bedspread lying neatly folded in the end. It somehow feels more intimate to be in his childhood bedroom than it would be to go through his underwear drawer. 

Right above you, several posters are pinned to the ceiling and overlapping each other. The corners of the posters curl slightly and their colors have dulled since the 70s but they display the men of rock bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Some display the band logos too, they exist on the CDs that you have found in Javier’s glove compartment but he never listens to them when he drives you around. You make a mental note to casually put one of them on during your drive home tomorrow. 

Seeing those iconic faces from the 70s stare down at you, you can’t help but glance fondly at Javier when he isn’t looking but instead standing by the open window on the opposite wall, smoking a cigarette. Suddenly, his wardrobe consisting of denim jeans, colorful shirts, and leather jackets makes sense. 

You try to imagine Don Chucho coming in here with the determination to put out the cigarette in his son’s hand, holding in a lecture that would only have made the teenager roll his eyes. Then the snark that would have come out of Javier’s mouth, his face mustache-free and full of spots, and you smile so much that you turn around onto your stomach to hide your expression in his pillow. 

It smells faintly of sweat and the cheap cologne only a teenager would have bought, so you turn to peek at your boyfriend again. He taps his fingers on the window sill, overlooking the garden that you have come to learn so much about earlier. 

You spot small pieces of who he is everywhere; a stack of sociology books, paperback horror books with titles in both English and Spanish. The most worn down and loved one is El Resplandor which you guess to be The Shining. There’s also a corkboard on the wall with ticket stubs and polaroids, a framed photograph on the desk that you haven’t had the courage or chance to look at yet, beside it a figurine of La Virgen de Guadalupe that’s been tipped over in what seems to be frustration. Your smile drops a little as you feel the weight of the unfairness he must have felt. 

From the window, Javier exhales a puff of smoke and reaches up to rub his eye with his free hand. You glance again at the photograph on the desk, curiosity getting the better of you as you rise from the bed and walk over to it. 

As expected, the picture is of Javier's mother. What you didn’t expect is seeing your boyfriend at the age of what you calculate to be younger than ten. The resemblance is striking; her features are mirrored in his even with how much he still looks like his father. 

You chew on the inside of your cheek as you pick up the religious figurine next to the picture, placing her upright once more so her head is tipped toward Javier and his mother. There’s a surge of emotion in your stomach that you try to suppress, a sense of urgency to reach through the photograph and comfort the little boy who has lost half of himself. 

You hear him stub out his cigarette on the wood paneling outside, followed by the dry sound of him trying to brush the ashes off the wood again with his calloused hands. In his late thirties and still acting as if he’ll get caught by his father. 

He turns back towards you and you act like nothing has happened, holding out your hand for him to take. He glances in the direction of his mother’s photo but decides not to say anything even as he notices the figurine standing upright once again. You flex your fingers to draw attention to your hovering hand, “Come to bed.” 

You’ve both already been in your underwear for a while since it’s late and you’re alone - the overalls hang on the back of his door, scowling at you - so he simply takes your hand and you walk backward until the edge hits the back of your legs. You let yourself fall down onto the bed and into the mattress, moving backward until there’s room for him too. 

Javier sighs the second he is lying down next to you, your shoulders touching from the missing width of the bed. He turns onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow and staring down at your face. 

“What?” You ask with a little smile.

There’s a flash of something in his eyes and the fact that he hasn’t said anything yet makes you want to squirm nervously. He reaches out with the arm he has been lying on, splaying his fingers against your cheek as his thumb rests underneath your chin, and then he crashes your mouths together in a kiss that you know is him resolving back to past methods of dealing with it all. 

However, you find yourself kissing him back at first, grabbing his wrist, and leaning into him to make out with him in a way that his younger self wouldn’t have believed was possible to experience. There’s a warm feeling in your stomach as you tangle your legs together, desire for him swirling below your belly button. 

You gasp against his lips when his free hand slips into your panties, your heart hammering in your chest as he smears some of your wetness over your clit. He rubs you off until you breathe heavily, fingertip dancing back and forth over the hard nub.

“You’re so wet,” he moans quietly and slowly increases the pressure of his fingers. He really wants you to come, it seems. You didn’t have getting laid in your boyfriend’s childhood bed down on this year’s bingo card but you can feel your orgasm approaching so damn quickly that it makes you not able to think straight. 

“Baby,” you babble, horny out of your mind from the intense emotions in the air, “I’m not gonna— in your dad’s house.”

“Yes, you fucking are,” he says in a low voice, kissing your open and panting mouth to shut you up. You might come but he won’t have you making noise loud enough to reveal what you are doing. He growls in the back of his throat, “You want my fingers? Don’t reply. Just nod or shake your head.”

You dig your nails into his wrist hard enough to create little crescent-shaped marks. You want to nod your head so badly but it feels wrong to be nothing but an outlet, a distraction from what you should be talking about. So instead, you shake your head with a moan, on the brink of bursting, “Stop, Javier. Stop.”

Javier raises his brow but immediately brings his hand to a halt, watching as you whimper from being edged. You clutch at your own chest, rolling away to not tempt him to fall back into his bad habit. 

“¿Qué pasa (What’s going on)?” He asks with a crease on his forehead. He tries to kiss you again but you put a hand on his chest to create some space between the two of you. He scowls, “What? You’re not having sex with me because we’re in my Pop’s house?” 

“That wasn’t sex,” you bite with frustration throughout your lower body, reaching down to fix the waistband of your underwear. The fabric sticks to you and your throbbing clit tells you to beg for forgiveness so it can have its release. You ignore it, “That was you avoiding the elephant in the room with intimacy and I don’t want to be a part of that.”

Javier lets himself fall onto his back, reaching up to push the heels of his hands into his eyes. He groans and lets his palms run down his face until his arms rest along his sides again. He heaves a big sigh, “Shit. Shit, sorry.”

“It’s alright,” you promise because it is. You aren’t even mad despite how you probably should be, only feeling the way your heart aches for the boy who had to grow up too fast. Without a word, you reach down to entwine your fingers and give his hand a reassuring squeeze, “I promise. It’s okay.”

“We talk about her but we don’t talk about her,” he says to the ceiling. You go quiet and choose to simply listen instead of breaking the streak of him opening up about something so vulnerable. Instead of using your words, you rub his hand in soothing circles. 

“Pop likes to mention her occasionally but it’s with a little smile on his face and a funny story,” he continues quietly, “And that’s fine. Really, it is. I like remembering the good but he says all the right things without making it hurt. It feels as though he expects me to keep all the bad in check and believe me, there was a lot of awful shit. So much that sometimes it feels like I can’t move when I am reminded of it. Hospitals with never-ending halls, that poisonous shit they shot into her veins, her losing her hair, even her goddamn eyelashes, and suddenly not—“

He stops for a moment and swallows thickly. You turn onto your side and rest your forehead against his shoulder, still clutching his hand to let him know you are not letting go. He clears his throat to sound as if his voice isn’t wavering, “Suddenly not recognizing her anymore. This terrible sight of her turning yellow during her last few weeks. I was just a kid and it was horrible and unfair. I wish he’d acknowledge how horrible and unfair it was.” 

You kiss his bare shoulder a few times. There are so many things you want to say but mostly, it is that you are so sorry for what he went through. 

“I think I learned that nothing lasts forever,” he adds without looking at you, staring down at where his fingers are entwined with yours. He is quiet for a moment and you feel your heart pick up in rhythm as you try to find something to fill the silence with, something that debunks that belief. However, just as you are about to say something, he speaks again, “But I would like this to be. I would like us to be forever.”

“Javi,” you finally say softly. 

He lifts his gaze to lock it onto yours. He looks at his most vulnerable, eyes brown and big as he waits for you to continue. You take just a moment too long and he is off again, suddenly very chatty.

“I know I haven’t asked you to marry me,” he says, “But I promise it’s coming. I just need to get it right.”

“You don’t have to talk about that right now. You know I love you and I know you love me too; I know it’s coming,” you say to reassure, pushing the idea of only letting him speak away because this topic is too big to stay silent on, “I’m not lying here with you because I want a ring on my finger, and I’m certainly not treating it like a condition for you to open up to me. I want to know you, Javier.”

“Thank you,” Javier looks grateful to hear that, saying nothing for a moment before looking at the ceiling again. He laughs softly, “You fucking terrified me, you know, the first time we sat down together.”

“I terrified you?” You furrow your brows, huffing out a laugh of disbelief.

“I pull my grief up to every table I share with a person I would like to have in my life, mi amor (my love). I was terrified the first time we were on a date,” he admits, “I kept thinking when you were going to ask about family… If I was close to my mother. I hated to imagine the way your smile and curiosity would drop but I don’t want to just focus on the way I want to remember her. You were so kind and thoughtful and damn bright-eyed - that was before I knew about your dad - and I didn’t want to share how I actually remember her because you might have not wanted to see me like that.”

“Javi,” you let go of his hand to put your palm against his cheek, turning his head towards you. You weigh your words, “I want to know everything about you. I want to know everything about her too. Especially if you’re gonna marry me.” 

“She was incredible, loved music, always honest even if it meant war, and read so many books that Pop had to build her bookcase after bookcase,” he tells you with a tremble in his voice and a tear that threatens to spill down his cheek even as he smiles in remembrance of her, “But as warm and loving as she was hard. Believe it or not, Pop used to be the softie of those two.”

“I can imagine,” you say fondly. You let your hand fall down to rest on his chest, palm laying just where his heart is. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen a woman so defiant in her ways but she grew up with a lot of expectations of how she should live her life,” he continues, “I think that hardened her a lot. I think it brought a lot of trouble too. She was so fiercely independent. She was fiercely protective of me and Dad too but sometimes even more of herself. I guess I know what it’s like to defend oneself from all the bullshit people give you.”

“Fiercely protective?” You tease, “Sounds like someone I know.”

“Yeah, I guess. Maybe I got that from her,” he admits with both pride and sadness. He puts a hand on your wrist, rubbing it with his thumb as a way to fidget, “That’s why it got so hard when she got sick because that defiance just crumbled. I was just a kid but I was old enough to see through the facade she put up every day. I was happy to eat takeout all the time - I was barely ten, so who wouldn’t be? - but I knew it was because she was too exhausted to cook. The music was too loud, the TV muted so she could sleep on the couch all the time or maybe it had the sound turned up all the way because she was throwing up in the bathroom.”

It seems he cannot stop himself now, hand tightening around your wrist and tears falling from his eyes, “She would look at Pop with a scared expression because she knew she had to leave him all alone with me. I don’t think we ever talked about that fact. I think I just realized it for myself one day.”

Your chest constricts at seeing him cry for the first time in your presence. You’ve seen him in the aftermath of it on the nights when Colombia creeps into his head as he sleeps, where he excuses himself to the bathroom and comes out a few minutes later with puffy eyes and a reddened nose. Seeing him now, upset like this, hits you harder than you thought it would and your heart aches as you listen to him talk about the loss of his life. 

It is years of bottled-up cruel pain and sorrow flowing out of him, so you follow your instincts and throw your arms around him even if his arm is still trapped between you. You hold him tightly and feel his reluctance for a millisecond before he allows himself to tremble in your embrace. 

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” you say softly, “You were just a little boy, and you had to watch your mom suffer. No one should have to go through that.”

Grief is a funny thing because as you close your eyes, feeling his shuddering breaths against your chest in the midst of his emotional motion sickness, you swear that it is not an adult Javier that you are hugging but rather the version of him that had to let go of his mother. 

When your muscles start to ache from squeezing him so hard, you pull back a little to stare into his tearful face, watching his eyes glisten. You wipe a tear away but it is just replaced by another. 

“I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to mess this up,” he says and you’re not sure if it’s him or the little boy in him that speaks. 

“You won’t,” you reassure him, your voice steady like a lifeline that he can hold onto, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here.”

Javier sniffles with a hesitant smile. Like the instincts of a mother, you lift the hem of your shirt to wipe a few tears from his face. You lean close to kiss him afterward and then move to lie face-to-face with him, so close that your noses almost touch. Your voice is sincere, “I know she meant a lot to you and your dad, so thank you for telling me. It sounds like she was an amazing woman. I wish I could have met her.”

“She would have loved you,” Javier replies, “She had this way of seeing right through people, knowing if they were genuine or not. And you, you’re the most genuine person I’ve ever met.”

Despite the warmth outside, you feel a different kind flow through you at those words. You brush your lips against his in a tender kiss, “I need to make sure that I tell you that I love you even more when you are so open and gentle with me.” 

He looks tired now but it’s the tiredness that fills the body after relief, “I love you too.”

“I think you should get some sleep,” you say softly. 

“I’ve never talked to anyone about my mother like this before,” he adds, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You never have to find out,” you tell him and reach to rub a thumb between his eyebrows, “Close your eyes, baby.  I’ll stay awake until you’re asleep.”

He does as he is told and smiles until sleep takes over, his face relaxing, his mouth going slack, and his breaths slowing down. He is so beautiful like this, looking peaceful, looking like home.

.

.

If you would like to follow my writing then go follow @notjustjavierpena-fics and turn on notifications 💖❤️

[prodbyton]

mx ☆ p.wb - 01

park wonbin x fem reader

you bump into a hot guy at a band concert, but what happens when you realize the hot guy is a member of the band?

🎸 cw. foul language

despite it being a small venue, it was packed. you were shoulder to shoulder with people as you made your way through the crowd, holding your breath as you tried not to inhale the must of peoples sweaty bodies. you see the bar, looking up and squinting slightly at the very limited drink menu. you settle on a white claw, you don't want to be too intoxicated, places like these have all your senses heightened and you just want to relax a bit.

you’re not a big fan of general admission concerts, they’re too pushy and you hate having to stand outside for hours to get remotely close to the stage. not that you care too much about the view for this concert, you’re not too familiar with the band playing but your friend had convinced you to come since its a band she’s recently got into, and they’re still considered “underground”. she played you a few songs before and they were good,

as you turn back around to go back to where your friend is, you underestimate the amount of space you really have and bump into someone, the liquid in your can threatening to spill as you try to balance yourself

“easy there, princess” you almost didn’t hear the voice of the person you bumped into, his voice mixed in with everyone around you along with whatever song the speakers were blasting. you look up to see the face that voice belongs to, and you have to stop yourself from dropping your jaw. damn, he was handsome. tall, blond curly hair, abs peeking out from his cropped t shirt, that face, what a gorgeous face.

“princess…?” your voice lingers in confusion, processing the pet name this complete stranger just called you.

he laughs, his eyes narrow as he eyes you. they go from your face to your shirt quickly, not wanting to stare too long where he would look like a creep.

“your shirt, it says princess?” he says it like its a question but you finally remember that you had worn a cute tee with the word princess in big pink letters.

“oh, i guess you’re right,”

“i guess so,” his voice lingers, he eyes you again and he feels drawn to you, like he doesn’t want the conversation to end. “you a fan of the band?”

“i like a few songs, my friend is a big fan though. she told me to come tonight.” he nods, understanding that you weren’t a fan. for now, at least. “what about you?” you look up to him, taking a sip of your white claw while you wait for his response.

“i’d say i’m a pretty big fan, you’ll enjoy the show, trust me. especially the guy on bass, he’s really good”

“i’ll keep that in mind,” a grin falls on your lips, keeping the conversation light and flirty before realizing you might have been gone a bit too long.

“i should probably go back to my friend before she gets worried, we stood outside for 3 hours to get barricade” you shift your weight to one of your feet while you take your phone out of your pocket to check the time.

7:30. show starts at 8.

“no worries, princess. my name’s wonbin by the way. hopefully i see you around here again” and with that you were sucked into the crowd once more, wonbin nowhere to be seen as you push through people to get back to your friend.

“girl where the fuck have you been?” karina shouts once you’re close enough for her to see, it was even louder by the stage, you have to lean into her so you can talk directly into her ear.

“well i went to get a drink, and i bumped into a guy. a really fucking hot guy”

“did you get his number?”

“no, but he said he hopes he’ll see me around. said his name was wonbin”

she punches your shoulder. hard.

“wonbin? park wonbin?”

“i dont fucking know his last name! but yes wonbin, he was about this tall,” you gesture to a height you felt best represented the male you talked to minutes ago, wanting to give karina the best description you could. “and he was blond, long hair. really hot”

“you’re fucking lying,” she punches you again in the same spot, the already growing bruise makes it hurt even more.

“okay stop hitting me, and what are you talking about? do you know him?”

“girl, you talked to park wonbin… he’s literally part of the band.

your eyes went wide.

“no way, no fucking way. you’re full of shit” it’s your turn to punch her arm now, not believing her at all. there’s no way you just bumped into a flirted with a member of the band. why would he even be in the crowd if he had to get on stage soon?

“are you sure he said his name was wonbin?”

“yeah, but plenty of guys are named wonbin. i think you’re over exaggerating” she shrugs, believing that you had talked to one of the band members and had no idea.

it's just a coincidence that his name was wonbin and fit the description perfectly, right? its not a big deal anyway, it was just some harmless flirting. plus he’s in a band, and guys in bands flirt with everyone!

but none of that matters because the wonbin you spoke to was not the one in a yband.

you were wrong. you were so, so wrong.

it was him. the hot guy you spoke to at the bar was on stage right now, playing bass and singing to the crowd, grabbing the attention of hundreds of people.

you could barely focus on the music, you were so focused on wonbin. your eyes fleeted to the other members, you don’t know anyone else’s name but they were all breathtakingly beautiful. you’re not surprised though, if wonbin was that hot it would make sense the rest of the band would be.

you think back to what he said, when he subtly shouted himself out by hyping up the bass player. of course he wanted you to keep your eyes on him the whole concert.

and you did. you couldn’t take your eyes off him. he was so mesmerizing on stage, the way his hair shined with the stage light, the way you were conveniently on the side of the stage where he was, it was easy for you to keep your focus on him the entire time.

once the concert was over and the noise was dying down, you and karina were turning to join the line of people leaving the venue. you were in a trance, you can't get the image of wonbin out of your head. karina really was a big fan of the band, you somehow underestimated her interest until now, with the way she’s already talking your ear off about what happened moments ago before she asked you what you thought about the show.

“it was him, rina” you sigh, not sure if you should be excited or not.

“i knew it!”

“but now i don’t have a chance!!” you whine, the excitement of tonights events slipping through your fingers.

“if he flirted back with you, then you probably have a chance. just don’t become a groupie y/n,” she nudges your shoulder, and you know she’s serious but there’s still a tinge of humor in her tone.

“no promises, the rest of them were hot as fuck too so who knows” you wink, and you two giggle as you walk back to your car.

you don't know how, but you were going to get him to yourself. if you caught his attention tonight, how hard could it be to get it again?

masterlist | next

a/n: first chapter!! hope you guys like it, kept it a little short just to get a feel of the direction i want to take the next chapter 🤭

taglist: @starwonb1n @drinktzu @kyusqult @helovalley @miyawakiblossoms @murariki @nishimuraii @luvyujun @blooqz @bunni @b-riize @daegale @sunwoosberrie @rosesfortaro

send in an ask or reply to the masterlist post to be added to the taglist!!

[raayllum]

some of the questions & answers i was most interested / validated by from this interview between The Reel James and Aaron Ehasz

INTERVIEWER: He used dark magic again, there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it?

AARON: Yeah he did. He did what he had to do, and he saved her. Like I don’t know what would’ve happened if he hadn’t made that decision when he did. 

INTERVIEWER: Another wonderful moment in S5, well actually several moments, something that I and so many of the fans are asking for, which was just having more Rayllum this season. And Aaron, you delivered, sir, because I can tell you - I was putting together a compilation video and they are like five, six, seven genuine Rayllum moments. Was that something intentional? Did you always kinda knew you were gonna do that in S5?

AARON: I thought people were gonna hate us. I-I’m glad people feel that way, cause we - we were very distinctly decided let’s focus on rebuilding their actual relationship as friends and as trusting people who care about each other and not build the romantic part. So I thought people were gonna be like “No kiss, what?!” and it turns out people actually respond to the genuine connection and reconnection that happened between Callum and Rayla this season, and that makes me really happy. 

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I think we all got a little bit of closure too, with that scene with Amaya and Rayla in the Great Bookery. They’re having that conversation and it sounded like Amaya was gonna tear her head off, and then she ends up saying she sees “a lot of me in you” and I think that’s such a mature moment. I was wondering if you could kinda talk through that cause that ended up being one of my favourite scenes of the entire series, because it was just so much more mature than I ever expected it to be.

AARON: Yeah, I mean, it’s something we knew we were gonna have to grapple with from more than one side [...] Amaya’s also this super protective aunt who saw what happened and saw how hurt her nephew was, so it’s just great material and also they’re both such strong characters, so seeing them kind of go at it a little bit, but also each show some vulnerability was just really delightful, and it was a great opportunity. Sometimes you find those scenes that are almost [...] but yes the time between Rayla and Amaya, it was just a joy finding the drama and the humour in their conversation.

INTERVIEWER: [Rayla and Callum] have their Han Solo - Princess Leia moment where Callum looks over to Rayla and says, “Rayla, I just want to tell you--” she says “I know.” And I’m like whoa! Hold on. So I’m guessing he wanted to tell Rayla that he loves her, or he forgives her?

AARON: Some combination, but I think he’s seeing in that moment - you know, you have those moments where you’re hurt by someone and they come back, and they wanna be welcomed back or treated warmly or something, and we all understand this, and instead of... Part of you wants to be warm and normal again, but you’re a little cold, cause you’re waiting for them to do whatever they need to do to process the wrongs that you perceive that they did to you. Like we have those moments in our relationships all the time and they’re hard not to do. Part of it is you’re standing up for yourself and all this stuff it gets complicated. And I think to some degree in that moment, Callum recognizes, like, he’s kept these walls up and maybe he’s hoping she’d do the work to get through them, and in this moment he’s regretting that the walls were up, maybe. And trying to tell her, you know, that - cause he, he thinks that’s it. Like they won’t have time to process, and maybe he... So, I dunno, I agree it’s a sad, beautiful, lovely moment. 

INTERVIEWER: Do you see a world where they actually have that ‘sit down and have a conversation’ about “here’s how I felt, Rayla, when you left for two years” and “here’s how I felt when you came back” and “you gave me the cold shoulder” or do you think that was enough closure? They can move forward from now?  

AARON: Um, what do you think, do they have more to talk about? 

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I think they do.

AARON: Yeah, I agree. They have a lot more.

AARON: [About the “I hope you know--” “I know”.] He’s regretting that he’s held the walls up to protect himself and not given her a chance to make things up to him more easily, and not express to her that he missed her, that he still... 

INTERVIEWER: Was Callum using dark magic in a way to darken and make it easy to be controlled by Aaravos next time? Or was it just a convenient way for Callum to get free and safe his friends on Finnegrin’s boat?

AARON: Yeah I don’t think so. I think, Callum recognizes correctly that using dark magic somehow is creating some vulnerability in him that allows Aaravos kinda more access in a way to controlling him or be inside him in some horrible way. The fact he recognized the risk and vulnerability of using it- that it poses to himself but he took that on anyway because he felt like he had to to save Rayla.

AARON: The wait for S6 will be similar to the last gap [between S4 and S5], slightly less or slightly more. We’re concurrently working on S6 and S7 right now. 

[sailorblossoms-snowbaz]

Yet another Jealous Simon post

Saw this scene again here and it just hit me that this is lost in the hilarious irony of Simon saying “nobody is seducing a vampire” while Baz is Right There like “am I a joke to you?” but CO is already telling you that Simon answering “who am I jealous over, Baz or Agatha?” with “both, I guess” is bullshit right here too (it’s the easiest answer to avoid processing).

I mean… I was logging on here saying “Simon’s romantic jealousy is only about Baz” (and sexual, or however the fuck you want to name it) because he doesn’t give a fuck about Agatha having male attention or having had a boyfriend while he was mistakenly telling himself “he wanted her” (he didn’t want her, he wanted to be like her, he’s finding her aspirational in the memory he uses as an example when he’s tellingly like 12, when he should have plenty to draw from during their time dating or before if he actually wanted her – he has nothing!) (and we only learn shit like that in her own POV, or when Baz calls Dev), Simon snatching Baz’s handkerchief from her and keeping it to himself, “nobody knows Baz better than me” (he’s even seeing Agatha as competition), essentially making a jealous scene to Baz (can’t listen to what Baz is trying to say because he can’t get past “did you have to hold her hands??”) etc. But I can’t believe I missed this shit.

In the scene is question, Penny and Baz are talking about “seducing” Nicodemus (I’m pretty sure Baz is just being a little shit here). It’s Penny’s idea, and Simon’s response is basically “none of my female friends are seducing a vampire” (he, however, is perfectly allowed to seduce one) because note that Penny is presented as an option first, and Simon’s reaction is “no.” Immediately. Then Penny singles out Agatha, saying she was thinking about her seducing a Vampire… and Simon’s reaction? Fucking nothing. He’s completely focused on telling Agatha they’re not doing anything illegal instead. And after that, he says The Line. Simon has a much stronger reaction to Penny. Penny singles out Agatha, but Simon’s reaction singles out Penny… which firmly establishes this line as platonic concern over the girls, rather than jealousy because Agatha might be seducing someone. Agatha and Penny are grouped together here, put on the same level (and, as usual, Penny comes first… note that whenever Simon brings up important people in his life, Penny is always leading his list, even when he’s like “oh well I’m dating Agatha, shouldn’t I put her higher in my list?) (when it’s a general “important people” in his life, he mentions her second – he mentions her dad too, the mage is third iirc – when it’s Agatha The Girlfriend? She’s dead last) (tellingly, Baz is talked about constantly before either list is brought up). With Agatha, the only time Simon has a reaction to her being around a vampire is when it’s Baz. When he doesn’t feel like he can “trust her” to be around Baz. Even when he’s not explicit about this or it might deceivingly look like it’s the other way around, Simon establishes her as competition through his actions and behavior, and only ever cares if the “target” is Baz.

With Simon’s closest friends, he draws the line at “seducing” a vampire. With Baz? He draws the line at talking to them. When he’s kissing him, one of the things he’s thinking is “I’m not ever letting him go, I like him under my hands, not off plotting and talking to vampires.” Baz should be kissing Simon, not doing objectionable things such as “plotting” and “talking to vampires”…. I’m repeating this shit right here for emphasis because italics aren’t enough.

And if it needs to be more obvious… enter Lamb in the next book. Simon, who already had a problem with Baz talking to other vampires, goes along with this because they think it’s the only way to get information to rescue our good pal Agatha… he’s not even fucking contemplating seducing, and then All That happens. Then Simon has to hear Baz doing more than talking (he’s flirting!! And having milkshakes! And practically DATING the vampire!!!). He immediately reacts to Baz saying “maybe he wants privacy” with “fuck that, we’re all going” even while talking about other things and eating (only Baz gets more attention than food, which Simon puts no.1 in his list of favorite things when going to Warford, even before Penny) (with Agatha the reaction is the opposite: he’s focusing on the discussion). We know what happens later (Simon attempts murder) (screaming “I’m his boyfriend” at Lamb as his introduction… classic “he’s taken, so back off bitch” move).

Then in awtwb, he’s strongly opposed to sending Baz “alone on a mission.” Las Vegas has him traumatized. He puts “you’re not going alone because it could be dangerous” on the same level as “I’m not listening to you have another date.” Except “I’m not listening to my boyfriend talk to other men (who might be interested in him and might try to make a move while I’m here, unable to do shit about it)” is perhaps the most distressing thought, because in Vegas, Simon trusted Baz to keep himself safe, but after Vegas, he can’t trust Baz in the latter situation because he has no vibe-check. Important things are at play, and rather than focusing on that (like he focuses on “we’re not doing anything illegal”) he’s focusing on “no way in hell I’m letting my boyfriend go there by himself when he might end up on another date without even realizing while I listen. Fuck no, not again. I’m not strong enough.”

[bruh--wtf]

Comfort Zone

Remus Lupin x Reader

Main Masterlist

Summary: Remus likes the quiet girl in his class and helps her out of her comfort zone.

Remus Lupin Masterlist

You sat next to Remus as silently as you could, praying Mcgonagal wouldn’t notice you slipping into the back row.

You’d accidentally slept in, which you never do, but today you did. And none of your dorm mates are particularly nice. Or friends of yours. So none of them bothered to wake you.

You saw two of them a few rows ahead of you and one, Jess, looked back at you before notifying the other, Donna, of your presence. You saw them giggling behind their hands before you decided maybe coming to class late was somehow worse. You just avoided looking at anyone.

“Ignore them,” you hear whispered next to you. You jump a little at the sound of Remus Lupin’s voice. He rarely spoke to you. He was Remus Lupin, he didn’t have to. He was smart, witty, attractive, popular, and had practically every girl, and some boys too, at Hogwarts at his feet.

“What?” You whisper after a second of processing. He glances at your roommates and nods in their direction. He rolls his eyes and gives you a pointed look.

“They’re ridiculous. Ignore them,” he says. You press your lips together and look at Mcgonagal again.

“That’s pretty difficult when you live with them,” you mumble. He watches you for a second then he shakes his head.

“They’re just jealous,” he says. You almost laugh outright, and cover your mouth with your hand, thankfully not drawing any attention to yourself. You look at Remus who raises an eyebrow at you, clearly confused.

Why would Jess and Donna be jealous of you? They were gorgeous girls with plenty of friends. You… were not that.

“They have nothing to be jealous of, trust me,” you say quietly. Remus scoffs and you stare at him for a second, extremely confused.

“I know for a fact those girls woke up well over an hour before breakfast to get ready for school just to get attention. Jess hasn’t gotten new robes since third year because she thinks the smaller ones make her look better,” he rolls his eyes. “There are those girls and then there are girls that don’t care what others think and wake up for themselves. You strolled into class late, and I’m guessing you slept in, right?” He asks. You hesitate before nodding a little. He smiles a little and nods at you, glancing over you quickly.

That look that he just gave you has made multiple people blush in the past and you heard a rumor he once made someone faint. You think that rumor might be right.

“They’re jealous because you don’t even try and you look ten times better than them,” he says. You stare at him for a moment, and you can feel the heat on your cheeks. He smiles a little at you before refocusing on Mcgonagal.

When class was over you stood up, but Remus stopped you. “Uh, Y/N,” he says. You look at him as you sling your bag over your shoulder. He stands up and you hate how short you feel. “My friends are having a bit of a get together tonight. Do you want to go?” He asks. Your eyes widen a fraction.

“Me?” You ask. He smiles a little wider and nods.

“You,” he says.

“Um…”

“Please? Dorcas and Marlene backed out last minute and Lily would rather die than let the guys outnumber the girls,” he says. You smile a little. You were friendly with the girls from that dorm, you’ve just never really talked much.

“Um… sure,” you finally say. He smiles and nods.

“Great. Meet us in the common room after dinner, alright?” He says. You nod and walk out of the classroom.

That night, you walked into the common room and Mary ran up to you. “Yes! Thank God you’re here. Lily’s about to completely blow,” she says, grabbing your hand and pulling you up the stairs towards the boy’s dormitories.

“Um, are we allowed up here?” You ask. Mary laughs a little and shrugs.

“Not technically, but we come up here all the time. The boys come to ours sometimes too. Minnie doesn’t really care,” she says. She pulls you into a dorm without knocking. Inside you see Lily, Alice Fortescue, and the marauders.

“You’re so arrogant, it’s ridiculous!” Lily exclaims, looking at Sirius.

“Why am I arrogant this time?” He asks. Then notices that Mary had dragged you in here and throws his arms out. “Hallelujah!” He says. Everyone else notices the two of you now and Mary pulls you over to sit next to her, so she was also next to Lily. You noticed that you ended up next to where Remus was sitting on what you assumed was his bed. His legs dangled off the side next to you. He smiles at you when you look at him quickly. You smile back quickly and then look away.

“Sirius was just explaining why he should pick the movie for the third time in a row,” Lily says, pointedly. Sirius sighs and puts his hands on his hips looking at Lily.

“Because, Evans, I have the best taste here, clearly,” he says. Mary gasps next to you and puts her hand over her heart. Sirius puts one hand up and gestures to her. “Okay, Mary and I are tied for fabulousness,” he says. You smile a little at whatever this could be called.

“I’ll accept that for now,” Mary says.

“But, fine. If someone else wants to pick, someone else pick. But no sappy depressing chick-flick, I swear to God!”

This starts a whole new argument over what movie to watch. Eventually Remus moved off the bed and sat on the floor next to you.

“Sorry about them,” he says quietly. You turn to look at him, a small smile on your face.

“Don’t be. This is much better than watching Jess and Donna debate over who their next victims should be,” you say. Remus laughs a little and you smile a little more. You did that. You made Remus Lupin laugh. It’s hard not to feel at least a little proud.

“That’s fair,” he says. You smile at him and he nods at the group. “Anything you want to watch?” He asks. You shake your head and shrug.

“I’ve never watched much TV,” you admit. He raises an eyebrow. “I prefer to read about different worlds and picture them myself than have an image thrown at me,” you say. He smiles a little and nods at your words.

“I definitely understand that,” he says. You smile and finally you notice James turning on the TV and was turning on a movie. You shifted a little and got more comfortable, leaning back against Remus’ bed.

A few times throughout the movie random conversations would break out and it was mostly Mary and Sirius trying to get you involved in them.

By the end of the night you were more comfortable with the group and speaking but not entirely.

You noticed how Alice and Lily had fallen asleep on each others shoulders. It was well past lights out, but for once you didn’t mind all that much.

You felt yourself dozing off by the time the movie ended and decided to force yourself to go back to your dorm. Mary looked over at you and raised an eyebrow. “You’re leaving?”

“Um, yeah. I’m tired so I’m gonna head back to the dorm,” you say. Mary nods and moves to stand up.

“I’ll go with you. Traveling alone is spooky,” she says. You smile a little and nod. She shakes awake the other two girls who get up a minute later. Sirius and James had already collapsed on their beds and Peter had fallen asleep on the floor. You were following Mary out when Remus stopped you again.

“Y/N,” he says. You turn back to him and smile. He hands you your cardigan that you must’ve left on the ground.

“Thanks,” you say. He smiles at you and glances out in the hall.

“Uh, do you wanna do this again some time?” He asks. You smile and nod.

“Sure, I’d like that,” you say. He scratches his neck and smiles at you.

“You think maybe we could? Just you and me? Maybe Hogsmeade on Saturday?” He asks. You blink at him.

“Um… like…” he nods, making you finish the question.

“A date,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be if you don’t want it to be, though,” he adds. You press your lips together, a smile spreading on your face quickly.

“I’d like that, actually,” you say. Remus raises an eyebrow, smiling at you.

“Great. So… Saturday?” He asks and you nod, smiling.

“Saturday. Goodnight, Remus,” you say and give him one last smile before you join the grinning girl in the hall. After the door’s closed and you’re down a bit of the stairs the girls erupt into giggles and squeals and you find yourself doing the same.

[princelylove]

Omg sameee, I love delusion yandere too, there are something so charming about them. Do you have any jojo characters list for top most delusion yandere?

Btw this is a little to weird to say out loud but last night I had a dream about Gyro after I read your writing for him. Actually I have never really interested in Gyro, I read your writing because I just love how you analyze character. So in the dream, he act quite like how you describe him, I remember there are me, Johnny and Gyro sitting around the fire at night. I was talking about how I adore Mountain Tim and how gentleman he is and Gyro jealous. He said he can also be like that and start to get closer to me despite my effort to push him away, he even pin me down and start kissing me?! (I don't remember much what happened after, I guess I just wake up). Funny is that Johnny just sitting there, staring, maybe he just don't know how to react or just doesn't care at all.

I think Gyro is also belong to the delusion yandere type, I just feel like he fit in this category. Your opinion?

~ 🏵️ anon ~

They’re very cute. They’re fun to write for- someone who fully believes they’re not doing anything wrong is dangerous. 

So sorry for laughing at Johnny just sitting there- the visual of him just sipping his drink and giving you the equivalent of ‘damn that’s crazy’ is objectively hilarious. I disagree with Gyro being delusional, but he definitely has jealousy issues. Talking to someone else/talking about someone else in front of him is an awful move, how could you, anon. 

As for the characters I think are very delusional… here’s a short list with some elaborations below.

Narciso, Jotaro, Diego, DIO but it’s kind of warranted he literally has a cult, Yukako, F.F., Enrico.

Narciso fully believes you’re already dating, and bound to be married. His mind skipped the entire courting process and went right to “mine.” despite only knowing you for a few seconds- and you weren’t even really talking to him. If you don’t like him, that’s alright! He can change his sex and body type via his stand to your liking, it really doesn’t matter to him, as long as you’re happy. He can’t help but smile and talk to you affectionately- he doesn’t hide the way he scowls and glares at everyone else, though. You’re special, because you’re his. Don’t forget, okayy? He doesn’t mind reminding you when you make little mistakes- please don’t sip from other people’s drinks, he doesn’t want your saliva to mix.. Don’t hug other people, even if it’s family, they don’t deserve your dead skin cells rubbing off on them and he wants only his scent to be on you. But anything above that, like kissing someone else, or claiming to have another lover… isn’t advised. 

Jotaro is under the belief that you need him to protect you and you’ll drop dead the second he looks away. It doesn’t really matter if you’re strong, or if you think you can handle yourself. As long as stands exist, everyone stands a fighting chance of offing you- even if you have your own. Jotaro feels strong protective urges for his darling very early on in the relationship- even if his darling is still under the assumption that he doesn’t like talking to them. Even if his darling isn't physically weak, he doesn't really trust that. It's not reassuring. The only thing that is reassuring for Jotaro is the mental image of his darling safe and sound- locked up somewhere only he knows about.

F.F. is still learning about the world. They don’t really know what the word “dating” or “marriage” means, or why you seem so averse to doing it with them, but they’re down if it means they get to spend more time with you! They're delusional and obsessive, but not quite possessive or protective. F.F. just wants to be around you, and they don’t really know why! They just assume you’re in a bad mood when you try to push them away- “Oh! Oh! We’re playing?? I love this game, shove me again!!! Your hands are so soft, I wanna eat ‘em!” … They mean well, really. Your distress is always taken as something they can’t control- yeah, their darling just breaks down sobbing when they get handsy with them, no reason. 

[scottishaccentsareawesome]

OK, so I’ve been thinking about this a lot....

And after their fight in the debriefing room, you don’t see Rooster and Hangman interact with each other until they’re on the tarmac right before the mission and Hangman says “You give ‘em hell.”

No more confrontations or apologies, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.

Like, say...after Ice’s funeral  (that I’m only admitting happened for the sake of this post).

Rooster was at the funeral. Hangman was at the funeral (he was standing next to Bob in the lineup of Daggers in their uniforms, I just recently noticed that).

...And Hangman probably knew (twenty bucks says he heard it from Phoenix) that Rooster knew Ice.

So, after the funeral, maybe a bunch of the Navy personnel go from there to the Hard Deck to toast the Admiral.

And Hangman looks out the window and sees Rooster standing by himself on the beach.

And something inside Hangman is telling him that, no matter how they feel toward each other, Rooster shouldn’t be alone out there.

Because similar to when he’s in the air, he needs a wingman right now. A good wingman.

So Hangman goes down to the beach.

“...Penny for your thoughts, Bradshaw?” he says, as he reaches the bottom of the stairs, leading to the sand.

Rooster sighs, but keeps his eyes on the ocean in front of him.

“Leave me alone, Seresin, I’m not in the mood,” Rooster replies.

Hangman nods. “I can understand that. You knew Admiral Kazansky, right? You guys were close?”

Rooster swallows. “Yeah,” he says.

“Well, then, I’m sorry for your loss,” says Hangman “...I really am.”

Rooster looks back toward Hangman now, looking slightly surprised at his words.

“Uh...thanks,” he says.

Hangman nods, and sits down on a bench nearby.

Rooster hesitates for only a moment, then sits down next to him.

“How’s Maverick doin’?” Hangman asks. “He flew with Kazansky, right?”

Rooster nods. “Yeah, he was his wingman,”

Hangman actually cringes. “That’s a hell of a loss,” he says.

“Yeah, they were really close,” Rooster continues. “Mav always said that - “ he pauses “ - that after my dad died, the only people who could keep him sane were me, my mom and Ice.”

“...Sounds like they made a good team,” says Hangman.

“Yeah, they were a great team,” Rooster agrees. “I can only hope to have a wingman that good someday.”

Hangman bites his lip. “Still haven’t found a good one yet?” he asks.

Rooster glances at him for a second, then quickly looks back to the ocean. “Nobody that’s lasted very long.”

“Huh,” is Hangman’s only reply, as he processes this information.

“It’s just...that’s something pretty damn special, y’know?” says Rooster. “Having a good wingman, like Ice and Maverick were to each other. Somebody you can count on to always have your back, no matter what. In the air...even on the ground. I mean, your WSO’s got your back, obviously, but they can’t come to help you with extra firepower when you’re getting ambushed by three bogeys and you need backup, y’know?”

“Right.”

“And ice and Maverick, they could always depend on each other,” says Rooster. “...Hell, they were damn near everything to each other.”

Hangman quirks an eyebrow. “Just how close - “

“ - That’s classified,” says Rooster, with a small smirk.

Hangman now takes a moment to process this information. “Huh,” he says. “Well, I guess when you’re that close with somebody, it can be hard not to get...classified,” he says. “Getting to know somebody that well, becoming so dependent on that person...”

“...That’s why you always leave them hanging, isn’t it?” Rooster asks. “You don’t want to depend on anybody, don’t want anybody to know you that well.”

“Yeah, I guess I have a few trust issues,” says Hangman.

“It’s a wonder you made it this far in your career,” says Rooster.

Hangman scoffs. “You’re one to talk, given the trust issues you have.”

“I trust people.”

“You don’t trust yourself.”

Rooster stares at him for a moment, and blinks. “...Maybe you’re right,” he says. “I guess I could use a good wingman, myself.”

“Well, I can only help you if you can keep up with me,” says Hangman. “That way, you can help me out when I need it, too.”

Rooster actually manages a smile. “...You offering to be my wingman?”

Hangman smirks, and shrugs. “Well, when I’m declared Mission Leader I will definitely consider you,” he says.

Rooster rolls his eyes. “Well, if you’re chosen as Mission Leader - “

“ - When.”

“If,” Rooster repeats. “...and if you choose me as your wingman...I’ll have your back, I promise.”

Hangman looks over at him with a smile, and there’s something in his eyes that Rooster can’t quite read.

“...I’ll have yours, too.”

[meowmeowriley]

Hi MeowMeow Costume anon here sorry it’s taken a couple days for me to reply life got busy finding one’s honour is harder then I thought!

You want my autistic head canons for Zuko? Strap in for some unhinged rambling because I have ✨thoughts✨ this will be long

(CW: implied child abuse (Fuck Ozai))

Zuko likes music (Iroh mentiones he’s talented with the Tsungi horn) and his swords I also think he would have picked up dancing at some point with how he moved during dance of the dragons.

When he’s around people he trusts he emotes more with his face and masks less in general and I’d say if he felt safe enough he’d do more overt (for him) stimms like humming, minor rocking or tugging on his hair Iroh would be one of his safe people and eventually the gaang would be too

*I don’t think he’d have very obvious stimms in general being raised royal he’d be expected to act a certain way and hand flaps are not it. Also flaming 💩lord Ozai would have seen any aberrations as weakness and stamped that shit out fast

*I honestly think it could be one of the reasons the flaming 💩lord despises Zuko being inherently different would be a weakness in his eyes and reflect badly on him

I think he and May get along well because they’re both autistic and are a safe space for each other. she has trouble processing her emotions he has trouble controlling his they make good emotional counter balances

He cares so much about the people and animals around him even his enemies a strong sense of justice is a common sign of autism and speaking out of turn was the initial reason for his banishment.

He’s so socially awkward he doesn’t know how to talk with people instead of at them his entire pep talk to himself and subsequent introduction to the gaang when he tries to join them is peak “how do you do fellow kids” and his “that’s rough buddy” is as iconic as it is socially inept.

The guy totally hyper fixated on hunting the Avatar and when he could no longer find his purpose in it and realised he was wrong he did not cope

He has no tackt. none. and he takes things at face value and he hates lying his humour is also a little left leaning and he tries to relate to others and their experiences as a way of bonding.

While he’s not a prodigy fire bender like his sister he found ways around his limitations that helped accentuate his natural talents like his sword fighting (dancing would help with sword work) being incorporated into his bending (I don’t remember any other character bending with weapons).

He’d know a lot about tea from Iroh and I think he enjoyed working in the tea shop

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk!

I hope these make sense it’s kinda late now but this was fun to write thanks for reading my insane rambles :D

Also in response to the (non gendered) Prince! line you gave me so much surprise gender euphoria I cried 😭🫠🥹 sincerely thank you. I’m going with he/him pronouns atm but he/they is something I want to look into.

if you don’t mind me asking what are your pronouns?

I’ll probably send another ask in the next couple of days to annoy you with lol but in the meantime have a great day!

Sorry I took so long to get back to this, but damn I needed it today so I guess it's good I kept this in reserve. ❤

Holy shit, I can't unsee Zuko as autistic now. Like it's impossible. He's so perfectly coded to be on the spectrum. He's generally monotone, until he's not, and that's always when he's dealing with big emotions. He'd be a lip biter for sure.

Zuko doing dance as a stim 😍 the first time the Gaang sees him dancing when he thinks he's alone, they'd be so supportive, and have no idea what that would mean to him.

Fire lord Zuko infodumping about tea to some random person who tried to ask if he'd like them to make him some, as he heats the tea himself with his bending, and damn if that isn't the best tea that servant has ever had in their life.

Until next time my non gendered Prince Zuko! (Which will be in like, a few minutes, when I get to your other ask. Again sorry for the wait 😭 I'm bad at this)

[callipraxia]

Even Further Interview Analysis - On the Portrayal of "Otherness."

Maybe fourth fifth sixth time will be the charm when it comes to attempts to communicate what I'm thinking about this topic, post-Hirsch interview. I'm drawing from several quotes here that don't immediately link together at all, but trust me, folks. If you want to, of course. The full transcript of the interview, conducted and generously shared by @fordtato and @hkthatgffan, can, as always, be found here. The three previous interview-related pieces of content I've written can be found in their own section here on the handy-dandy directory post on the dreamwidth archive of my less ephemeral blog posts. 

For some variety, we're going with a quote from one of the Interviewers, a Hirsch quote I only made a joke about in my original post, and...uh, one of the same quotes from Hirsch from my last post. I...have a lot of thoughts, I guess. At the same time. In no order that can be translated into the English language very exactly. Anyway....

[Hana]"...with Ford in particular, with all of the content in the journal about him feeling “strange, on the outskirts of society, not understood,” it resonates so much with LGBTQ+ fans. Everyone I know who’s a big Ford fan is from some part of the LGBTQ+ community. There’s lines in there about romance baffling him, and stuff like that, where we’re like, we get it, we understand it, it makes sense, it resonates. Regardless of whether or not this was intentionally planned when you wrote it, how do you feel about Ford being interpreted as a bit of a queer icon for so many in the fandom?" -------------------- [Alex Hirsch] "When you do a clone story, the point of a clone story, in my mind, is a character seeing themselves in a different light, right?" -------------------- [Alex Hirsch] "I think that Bill was trying to find Ford, but I think- I always think of Bill as like, this guy who has, like - you know, he’s stirring the pot of soup that is the Ford plan, and he’s got like 900 pots of soup across the universe of different things he’s working on, and at any given moment, he’s so cocksure that it’s all gonna work his way eventually. Bill’s a trillion years old, so it’s like, Ford disappearing for thirty years is like- [snaps fingers] is like somebody saying they’re ghosting you and then texting you the next weekend, you know what I mean?"

This...thing will be divided into three parts: The Part Where Calli Talks About Sex and Gender and Neurodivergency, The Part Where Calli Talks About Mental Disorders, Addiction, and Fiddleford McGucket, and then, last but not least, The Part Where Calli Talks About Different Approaches To Writing Aliens. These do not, however, each correspond to one quote, and there will be some overlap here and there, so bear with me, if you will. There's also a stronger element of "reader response" in here than there was in the "Ford Plan" essay - there's still a good amount of canon analysis, but I do talk a bit about my own reactions to things and compare my writing process to Mr. Hirsch's toward the end, so I completely understand why those parts might fail to interest people. That said...let's begin.

--------------------

I. The Part Where Calli Talks About Sex and Gender and Neurodivergency TW for mentions of toxic masculinity, possibly homophobic aspects of queer-coding, domestic abuse, and my view that Bill is so close to being a sexual assaulter that his, er, anatomical limitations are a moot point.

There's a certain irony to Ford's status as a queer icon that I don't think I've ever seen pointed out before. I'm basically writing a book about this, actually (sort of - long story), but since I have no idea if that will ever go anywhere, I'll talk about it a bit here anyway. It's how, in a story where one of the threads is Dipper sorting out what it means to be a man, it strikes me enormously that his personal idol ends up almost personifying Traditional, Slightly Unhealthy Masculinity, at least at first glance.

Ford's first major action on-screen is, of course, picking up J1, so that we can see his hands...and then he hauls off and punches someone in the face. I wrote a 10,000 word essay (readable here) about Ford's anger issues and how they interact with his sense of self; the reason I wrote it was because of the revelation that Ford's actually a lot more casually violent in his limited screentime than Stan is. I won't go over all that ground again, but the second thing we ever learn about Ford is that he can and will shoot first, basically. And possibly literally, since he's carrying a massive gun throughout the scene and the very next episode establishes that he keeps at least one firearm (or...shooty-weapon of some sort, anyway) concealed on on his person at probably all times, considering he had it on him for game night with his nephew. Based on the weird mix of manual weapons and (if Stan was telling the truth, anyway) firearms in the Mystery Shack and in the Bunker, it seems entirely possible that he's been a bit of a weapons aficionado for a long time, well before he started walking the multiverse. As for afterward, well...afterward, the man sets his head on fire for a laugh, swings around with his magnet gun like the illegitimate love-child of Magneto and the Amazing Spider-Man, and I read a degree of awe in Dipper's statement that the aftermath of Weirdmageddon was the only time he'd ever seen Ford cry...in the whole month he's known the man. Given how few contexts he's had to reasonably see Ford have much a reason to cry in, I assume the remark was made just to underline the severity of the situation: Ford is this tough, stoic space cowboy who just went through days of torture at the hands of a mad god without breaking, so you know it's Serious Business if he's crying. Manly men like him just don't do that, do they?

Of course, along with all this testosterone poisoning, we also did always see plenty of evidence that Ford wasn't actually a talking sci-fi cardboard cut-out of the Marlboro Man. For one thing, there's the way he introduces himself verbally, once he's past the whole fistfight phase of events: "Greetings!...I like this kid! She's weird!" I suspect he started making his way toward also being something of an icon in the neurodivergent communities at about that exact moment. The moment also had the effect of reminding us: this potentially intimidating figure in black with a gigantic gun who can beat Stan in a fight is also, after all, also the Author of the Journals. We don't know much about the Author, but we do know that he was a scientist so brilliant that McGucket, a genius in his own right, accepted a place as his assistant. Hard to be that without also being something of a nerd, right? We also know that he's a very talented artist, and that he writes in oddly-structured sentences, and also that he writes in cursive - maybe that was just something I noticed, since I also write in cursive and occasionally oddly-structured sentences, but it was endearing and relatable to me, anyway. Most importantly, we also know that he apparently finds the unusual as cool as Dipper, our protagonist, does. In other words, we are reminded that, dramatic entrance notwithstanding, he's one of us, and as Hana noted...a lot of us ain't exactly Models of the Elusive, So-Called 'Norm,' are we? This is only emphasized as time goes on, given his enthusiasm for DD&MD and how we soon learn he is significantly more complex than he might have seemed at a glance - aside from being severely flawed, fully aware of it, and riddled with guilt, he also quotes poetry at what it seems safe to assume was one of the lower points in his life, an action shortly followed by philosophical reflections on the nature of heroism. It's also established that, in the sharpest departure of all from the Traditional Masculinity tropes, he didn't have a female partner before his long exile and isn't still griping about that fact to this day. In the America of his youth, just being a single man in his thirties who had never had a girlfriend, or even just didn't complain loudly about not having a girlfriend in between relationships, was the kind of behavior that could make the government suspect you were both gay and/therefore a Communist, especially if you were someone high-profile enough to be working on science with an enormous grant not all that long after the Space Race. Plus...look, the idea of a domestic abuse victim being shipped with their abuser is...not something I'm all that comfortable with, but I get where people get the idea from, and while Bill is definitely not a man, he does use the same pronouns as one. I can imagine people imagining it as a gay-adjacent ship even before the Journal came out and all but explicitly labelled Ford as One of Us when 'us' is defined as the Not-Straights as well as one of the Not-Neurotypicals. It's possible, as I said in my first interview overview, to use the Journal to build a case for Ford's heterosexuality, but the balance of evidence seems to tilt toward the idea that he's Something Else, even if it's not all that specific about what, probably to some extent because there's good reasons why Ford himself might not know, or at least not know the words to apply to the situation. That, however, is material for the post I'm thinking of putting out, like, the day before the new book comes out in July or something. Here, we're discussing not so much sexuality per se as the experience of Otherness.

As I mentioned briefly in the previous paragraph, the LGBTQ+ community isn't the only one which has taken Ford to its heart. Members of the neurodivergent communities - autistic people in particular - have also related strongly to Ford; in fact, this is actually the primary reason why I related to the guy so much. I'm asexual, so I'm in the Not-Straight Club, but for various reasons, my feelings of alienation began long before I noticed that I still thought kissing sounded vaguely unpleasant while others my age had revised their elementary school opinions on the subject. In fact, one of my earliest memories is of feeling that I was...off to the side, somehow, whenever other people were around. I was just an observer, never quite understanding what I saw, always reading like mad to try to figure out how people worked and apparently coming up with some...odd...ideas in the process before high school, which was when I started running across words in classes that seemed to describe the world as it appeared from my point of view. I wouldn't be diagnosed formally with any of my several DSM-V entries until many, many years later, but there was a profound relief in knowing that there even maybe was an explanation better than just "u a freak, lol." Having those words, and with them some sense of history and community, made it all seem more natural, not less so. This is similar to how a lot of people have said they feel about finding out that there's a word for being gay or trans or otherwise queer in some way, and there was some relief tied up in that, too, when I eventually found out that there's a whole world of other aces as well as other people otherwise wired like I am, but it was less of an issue for me, and therefore not what I first "clicked" with Ford over, even though I kind of read him as some kind of ace as well. Instead, for me, it was over how I related to the feeling of being the one person in the room whose occupational interests didn't align with everyone else's - of being the kid who could never quite get it right at Show and Tell. Over knowing what it's like to have your classmates nearly put you in the hospital when you hadn't done anything to them. Over how even the things your family says to make you feel better just underline how you're Different, how you're not really part of the circle even with your own parents. And yes - over having developed a certain amount of bitterness and distrust and general unfriendliness toward the 'normal' world over time. That's definitely a place where there's the potential for the portrayal of Otherness to become...an issue. Another such place is when we get to the matter of Bill.

Bill is presented as a highly alien being, but there's a lot of ways in which he's all too human. Far too many of the ways in which he's all too human happen to be ways that strongly imply that if he had a human body, he'd be one of the not-charmers we used to see getting interviewed and then arrested on To Catch A Predator. And he uses male pronouns in English, appears with accessories which allow big dramatic gestures, has a high-pitched, whiny voice, is a relentless sadist, and is most frequently shipped with human males. All taken together, if one looks at Bill through the lens of queer coding, he can come across as something not dissimilar to the stereotype of the Depraved Homosexual, a homophobic stereotype used to imply that gay people, and especially gay men, are inherently villainous and dangerous...and that's even before we get to the Penthouse scene, where Bill makes his entrance singing a love song to someone he's abused for years who, at that particular moment, he also has on a short leash. Literally.

Did the writers intend for Bill to come across as The Dangerous Gay? I...like to think not, but as Hirsch himself admits in both the discussion of Grenda and to an extent the discussion of the intent behind Ford's alienation - the world was radically different back then, so that you could end up unthinkingly writing certain things then that you know would never fly today, and which you wouldn't even try to make fly today, not least because now you know better than you knew back then. To his credit - well, the thing he specifically apologized for wasn't my apology to accept, as I am exceedingly cisgendered, but I do feel he handled having that brought up about as gracefully as possible. As far as Bill goes, though...maybe you could convince me he wasn't deliberately portrayed as a gay pervert specifically, but I'm not sure there's an argument which could persuade me to buy the idea that Bill wasn't intentionally, or at least knowingly, portrayed as some form of pervert, especially in season 2 and the Journal. The first time I read the Journal, after a steady progress of growing more and more uncomfortable with the overt psychological, financial, spiritual, and physical abuse, I threw the thing at one point in Ford's first section while exclaiming, "what in the sam-hell?!" - which, for me, is the equivalent of much stronger profanity, because I usually swear like Fiddleford, if I must add any embellishments to my expressions of disapproval at all. That was how overtly rape-like I found the post-betrayal possession plotline in the Journal. Okay, so, Bill doesn't have a penis. Cool. I don't care. He's still shown (repeatedly, even) to take sadistic pleasure from robbing others of their physical agency, of reducing them to helpless objects which he can treat however he pleases. Even once he loses the ability to do this to Ford completely, he goes out of his way to overcompensate for it: when we first see the two interact in "The Last Mabelcorn," Bill introduces himself by warping Ford's dreamscape into his own image before he proceeds to box Ford in even further, surrounding him with copies of Bill's self and also getting into his personal space and touching his mental representation of himself, to Ford's obvious consternation. And then we get to Weirdmageddon, where first he turns Ford into his backscratcher, and then the next time we see them, the scene is played almost like a literal attempt at seduction - though, of course, with nasty little details like the "literally on a leash" and "the sofa is alive" bits, just to keep Ford off-balance, so that he reacts instead of thinking. It's possible that they also, to some extent, to play into the depiction of another Other category often associated with Bill, though I don't tend to personally share this view. in a...questionable way. This topic is the portrayal of mental illness as Other.

The Part Where Calli Talks About Mental Disorders, Addiction, and Fiddleford McGucket TW for, well, discussion of mental illness, addiction, and how both Fiddleford and my grandfather had those issues.

I suppose we all see the issues that touch us personally first, so let's just jump straight into it and speak of probably the first thing in Gravity Falls that made me uncomfortable. That thing was Fiddleford McGucket.

"Legend of the Gobblewonker" is a great episode, but I'll be honest: the whole bit with McGucket at the beginning of the episode made me cringe the first time I saw it, and it kinda makes me cringe whenever I rewatch it to this day. There's just not much getting around it: McGucket looks and sounds like a caricature of people from the same part of the world as me. The way the other characters regard McGucket makes me self-conscious (well, moreso than usual) about the way I sound when I talk, and I kinda want to kick Blubbs a little every time I see the episode. Or maybe even say something exceedingly unkind to him about how he's a fine one to make comments about other people's mental capacity when he's dating Deputy Durland. Not something I'd actually do, of course, because it's not Durland's fault that he is like he is, but dang, do I want to put Blubbs in his place in that scene sometimes. It then gets even less comfortable for me once I consider that McGucket is also portrayed as a caricature of people with dementia, severe mental illness, or both in that scene, and it becomes more uncomfortable because when I combine that with everything else about McGucket, it starts feeling an awful lot like the butt of the joke is someone with an uncanny resemblance to one of my real-life grandfathers. And then came the twist of the episode, and that...actually opened up a whole 'nother can of worms for me, because to me, the way McGucket acts at the end of "Gobblewonker" and during some asides in "Society of the Blind Eye" makes me think that he is, essentially, faking insanity in order to manipulate people in the "present" times of the show. And that's...not the same issue, exactly, as him being written as an insulting caricature, but it's kinda uncomfortable, too.

I will give Gravity Falls this: it does a decent job of sympathetically portraying characters who are clearly not mentally well or neurotypical all the time. Dipper and Mabel are all too familiar to those of us who grew up with unacknowledged stuff going on, and you'd have to try pretty hard to write Stan more like someone with ADHD and moderate depression, not to mention some compulsive behaviors. Ford's mental breakdown in 1981 is also played completely straight with little to no effort to inject any humor into it, even though he falls into the category of "visibly 'crazy'" toward the end of it. We know very little about Dipper and Mabel's background, but the troubled circumstances in which Soos and the Stan Twins grew up are also handled fairly realistically and sympathetically. Notably, however, while Ford acknowledges he came close to "losing [his] sanity" in the past, none of the Pines family ever acknowledges that there might be something "wrong" with them in the present - that is a label reserved for others, mainly Bill and Fiddleford, with a side of every member of the Gleeful family and a sprinkling of Pacifica to taste. This makes it a tad awkward that all of them originate as villains of one or another caliber...and yes, I did mean to include Fiddleford there. Watch "Legend of the Gobblewonker" with the assumption you've never seen anything else about the character and listen to what Fiddleford says after his robot is wrecked, and then put it together with the nature of the problem Fiddleford was trying to solve. Fiddleford wasn't just looking for attention - he was specifically trying to convince the people that there was a dangerous monster in the lake. Later in the episode, when Soos and the Mystery Twins have the bad luck to get too close, he also plays the role to the hilt, seriously endangering their lives before he's stopped by a quirk of geology. The outlines of his plan become obvious from there: if the robotic nature of the Gobblewonker hadn't been revealed, then either the stories of what happened to Soos' boat (or, in the worst-case scenario, the dead bodies of its occupants) would have seemingly confirmed Fiddleford's ravings about a dangerous beast that destroys watercraft living in the lake. At that point, Fiddleford would have gotten validation, sure...but even more importantly, fishing season, whether officially or unofficially, would have gotten cancelled as a result of his shenanigans, despite the effect this would have on the local economy, which is why I tend to think he went with the 'lake monster' strategy in the first place. It seems to me that his reasoning ran something like, “if Tate's excuse for refusing to interact is that I frighten the customers, the obvious solution is to create a situation where there are no customers in a way that can't be traced back to me.” And if someone has to take significant property damage, or even get actually hurt, to make that happen, well....

So yeah. Swap him out with someone doing absurd things for the sake of his love life instead of because of his desire to induce his son to speak to him and it's pretty classic villain behavior. This is underlined by Fiddleford's own descriptions of his other stunts: the pterodactyl-bot he built in response to his divorce was "homicidal," and his next project is apparently going to be a death ray. In the Journal entry which corresponds to the episode, Dipper is still clearly wary of him. Anyone who didn't know how the story was going to end could easily buy this episode as an indicator that Fiddleford would at least sporadically be a threat, perhaps along the lines of Gideon - who, incidentally, Fiddleford is more than happy to work with at the end of the season, even though building the Gideon-Bot would have necessarily given him some insight into Gideon's predilection for illegal mass surveillance operations. In every other appearance he makes in season one, though, Fiddleford merely acts out a parody of psychosis, with his two bouts of conflict-enablement at the beginning and end of the season merely bracketing the act; once we learn about the essential falseness of his act in "Society of the Blind Eye," the brackets become underlines that reinforce what the episode shows us retroactively. "Society of the Blind Eye" shows a man who perhaps, based on his reaction to the image of the Blind Eye, has PTSD or something similar, but except for his moment of panic after he sees the Eye in the Journal, he is clearly shown to be in full command of his faculties throughout the episode. It happens twice, in fact, in his first scene of the episode: after throwing up an almighty clamor, he stops carrying on about Lee and Nate vandalizing his home once he thinks he is out of earshot of others and mumbles that they did indeed "get [him] good." A moment later, he spots his "visitors" and then slips right back into character, yammering about his hourly arguments with his own reflection...at least until Dipper flatly tells him to drop the act, and he does. Instantly. Without hesitation. He no more thought that his reflection was some other hillbilly watching him bathe than I did. The implication in "Blind Eye" is a bit pitiable - that he pretends to be the happily deranged Ol' Man McGucket character to cover up his loneliness and lack of self-esteem - but it's still him faking insanity, which is...not good behavior, at least. He ends up being a cringy stereotype of people from my part of the world and from my social background (my father was born as poor as it sounds like Fiddleford was in a state which shares a bit of border with Tennessee), and he also seems to be someone who is exaggerating the symptoms of his mental problems the way so many of us in Diagnosis Club are often accused of doing in real life. And he comes across as a bit of a pot shot at homeless people, sometimes, too. That's...a lot of issues for one dude to have, especially given his relatively minor role in the series proper.

Of course, the dirt-poor cackling hick stereotype...I'm not partial to it, but I don't actually really hold that one against the writers too much. Southerners make fun of ourselves all the time, after all, and the line between laughing with people and laughing at them is a treacherous boundary, one which everyone probably perceives a little differently, which is why it's always more comfortable to write about your own people. The way I 'read' the Folks Who Talk Like Me - that is, Fiddleford, Bud, Gideon, and kind of Farmer Sprott, I guess - in the series makes me generally feel that the writing staff was in fact laughing at us and not with us, but since I am not Jewish or Hispanic or even a man and yet presume to write from the points of view of the Stan Twins and Soos on a regular basis, I...don't reckon I'm quite standing in a glass house, but I'm close enough to doing so that it would probably be a bad idea for me to throw around any stones no matter how careful I try to be about that sort of thing, y'know? But the "Fiddleford crazy" narrative - that one kind of bothers me.

I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago that my first impression of Fiddleford was that he's not dissimilar to what you would get if you wrote a somewhat unkind parody of my grandfather, who had severe bipolar disorder with psychotic features in his later years. To a degree, I still see Fiddleford that way even after it becomes apparent that he's not half as out of it as he pretends to be, and that's because when do we learn for sure that Fiddleford is sane, it's in the same episode that we learn about something else he has in common with my grandfather: that is, a history of addiction. They even both created the instruments of their own destruction: Fiddleford invented the memory gun which gradually eroded and scarred his brain to the point that there's a bit of an implication that he might not ever fully recover, and Pawpaw spent several decades as an alcoholic after making a decent chunk of his lifetime income bootlegging, a classic case of getting too high (or low, as the case might be) one one's own supply. In the "Blind Eye" tapes, we get the impression that Fiddleford also genuinely did descend into madness for at least a while in the year or so after the Portal Incident, and it's shown to be a direct effect not of trauma from his experiences with Ford and Bill, but of his chronic use of the memory gun. Mr. Hirsch even compares him to an alcoholic in the Interview, and while my grandfather was luckier, it's not at all surprising or unrealistic that Fiddleford's habit ends with him homeless, wifeless, friendless, cultless, and estranged from his only child. The McGuckets are as much of a tragedy as the Pines family in their own way, and you could easily write a decent neo-Southern Gothic about them alone...if, at least, you figured out what to do with Fiddleford post-breakdown a little less clumsily than the showrunners did.

There's a gap that doesn't make sense. Fiddleford in the "present day" is clearly far more rational than he was at the end of the Blind Eye tapes and is just playing up his former symptoms when he deems it useful so that he can avoid confronting his problems directly, but in the last Blind Eye tape, he was so out of it that he was speaking about Bill in tongues. What the heck happened? Is the implication that once he was kicked out of the Blind Eye, he just...automatically recovered enough to use his new reputation strategically for no reason other than lack of access to the gun, instead of seeking out other drugs? And then, when he ends up facing his demons by sheer accident at the end of the episode, he just...spontaneously finishes getting better instead of being even a little re-traumatized by the horrors floating back to the surface of his mind, or the sight of what he looked like as he fell apart back then? And then he is just effortlessly forgiven for everything by everybody? Bear in mind that he probably abandoned his son before he finished his mental collapse (it's possible that Fiddleford just stayed in Gravity Falls and started the Blind Eye because Emma-May had already initiated their divorce, but when he walked out on Ford, there's no evidence that there was anything at all preventing him from continuing to walk right on back to Palo Alto) and that it's canon that for a while, he was non-consensually wiping Ford's memory when he deemed it necessary. Since the memory gun is presented as Fiddleford's drug of choice, him secretly using it on someone else is...well, to put it extremely mildly, not cool, dude, not cool at all. And far from using the Journal to patch up this uncomfortable fact the way they tried to use the Journal patch up how equally uncool it was for Mabel to slip drugs into people's food, the writers actually used the thing to establish these events as canon shortly before having other characters begin singing Fiddleford's praises to the skies with no acknowledgment whatsoever that he, like his fellow older adult characters, is a messed up person who's done some seriously messed up stuff in his day. It also surprises me that I can't recall ever seeing a single person imply that Tate might have only "forgiven" Fiddleford in hopes of getting the money after the old man kicks the bucket. Where everyone else has a variety of fallout to their sins sooner or later, Fiddleford only pays on-screen for what he did to himself, not for how it affected other people, and the degree to which he even had to pay for that is glossed compared to what other members of the cast get. What makes him so special?

It's possible that, having played Fiddleford as nine kinds of potentially offensive stereotype throughout the series, the writers just decided to not go any further in the hopes that this would even up the tally sheet and sweep the issues with the character under the rug, so to speak. It's also possible that he and Tate are being shielded from exposure to the full fallout of the plot solely by their status as minor characters - I had to dig release-the-balrog levels of deep to construct any kind of canon-based personality for Tate for my fics, and though his role in the backstory is huge, Fiddleford's actual contributions to the story are fairly small. He doesn't even get to remember "wait, Stanford Pines is the Author, and his device leads to demon-land?!" before we find this out by other means. Redemption arcs, too, are one of the show's weaker points; this is most obvious with Gideon, who snaps out of what has appeared to be a near-delusion at the end of one speech near the very end of the show and is just readmitted into society without much comment, but the process of showing someone changing instead of just showing them changed is one the writers seemed to have struggled with a little in general. I think, though, that at least part of the reason why Fiddleford's redemption comes about a bit awkwardly is really just because of an inherent weakness of allegory: when you use a thing as a representation of something else, it's never going to fit perfectly. It will always have extra baggage and individual quirks that, once you look at it for a few minutes, start to undermine the message in some way.

Fiddleford may be genuinely mentally ill to some degree - aside from his apparent breakdown about the time he got kicked out of the Blind Eye, he's also fairly realistically portrayed in the Journal as anxious and possibly dealing with a "functionality-allowing" level of OCD - but he definitely isn't actually an alcoholic: he's a symbolic representation of an alcoholic. In "Society of the Blind Eye," Fiddleford is really just a means to an end, the vessel through which the show conveys one of the lowest-key "don't do drugs" messages ever written by showing that trying to cope with your problems by blacking them out will just make things worse for you in the long run. This fits in with how the writers intended to use Fiddleford in "Legend of the Gobblewonker," where I was supposed to come away with a message about being nice to my grandparents instead of with the impression that this man is as dangerous and unscrupulous as anyone or anything else in this town, and it fits in with the characters-as-tools approach to writing that Alex Hirsch mentions several times throughout the Interview (remember that thing? The thing I was originally talking about? Yeah...). It's obviously more successful than anything I've ever done, but my objection to that approach is that it causes the exact kind of snarls I've been talking about in this section here: when the character is a character, you play out the consequences of these things, but when the character is just a symbol for something else, you're likely going to end up with these dangling issues that create uncomfortable snarls the second you take a closer look at them. I'll continue to elaborate on this theme in my next part, where I talk about Dipper's clones and Bill and the Axolotl and other such non-human entities.

The Part Where Calli Talks About Different Approaches To Writing Aliens. No real TWs here, but there are spoilers for some of my fanfics.

I made a joke about Mr. Hirsch's comment on clone stories in my original running commentary, but it really was a line that surprised me a little. This is because it never, ever would have occurred to me that the point of a clone story could be to see their "template" in a different light. Probably this is in part just due to other fiction I'm familiar with which deals with the clone idea in a lot more depth, but I do think it is also at least in part an effect of philosophy and/or habits of character creation.

The role of habit, of the tendency we all have to write things the way we always have done without thinking about it, cannot be underestimated. I come from a play-by-post roleplaying background; until GF and the idea for For Want of a Jailbreak slammed into my life like a freight train in 2021, my game was also the context of all of the creative writing I’d done for the past twenty years. Creating a character who exists solely to play a role in someone else’s story therefore just sounds odd to me, considering I have sunk hundreds of thousands of words and the majority (a slim majority, but still) of my life to date into something where literally everyone is the main character of their own story while simultaneously playing a supporting role in two or three or seven other characters’ stories. If you recognize this format, it’s because it’s not entirely dissimilar to how the plots, such as they are, of American soap operas work. Characters may start out as just adjuncts to the plots of established cast members, but if they gain any traction at all, they’re quickly going to start developing their own storylines, just like Tracey and Quattro did after I tried to put them in FWJB Part II to create a specific conflict. They created the desired conflict, all right, but they also created fifteen others and somehow ended up being absolutely essential to the thematic unity of the piece – it doesn’t work without them, even though I never intended for them to contribute to any themes. I didn’t even intend for the series to have any themes; I had absolutely no plans to explore ideas in this fun little AU I’d cooked up. The themes just arose from the characters instead of me manipulating the characters to prove a theme.

This approach does, admittedly, have its compensations, or at least compensates for one of my greatest creative weaknesses: I suspect I would have gotten bored and/or never figured out how to end Part III if I’d had a Message in mind when I started talking. I’m not a terribly organized person, and if I try to get organized, I have so much fun making plans that I never get around to actually doing anything. My imagination also, though, to put it mildly, is rather weak in areas where Mr. Hirsch’s seems to be quite strong. This is probably no small part of why I find analyzing what he says about his writing style so interesting, really, and after doing so for a while, I think I’ve found an essential difference. It’s that he seems to generally know what he wants to say and then just says it instead of waiting to see what he ends up with, and he doesn’t spend an awful lot of time worrying about all those grey areas on the fringes that complicate the message. The first half of that sentence is a strength; the second half is...more complicated.

One of the perks of knowing what you want to say and saying it boldly, without worrying too much about all the finer shades of grey around the edges, is (or at least, I imagine it is) that it makes writing symbolically much easier for authors like Mr. Hirsch than it is for authors like me. Things are rarely symbolic in my universes; I can write you a twenty-page essay about [insert symbol] from [insert famous novel] if you give me two days and a source of pressure, but that’s because I am really good at participating in English lit classes, not because I really feel the symbolism. Symbols just aren’t what I think in – I’ll never forget reading about how zombie stories are apparently often written in times when people are anxious about immigration and that vampires represent fear of the Gay, because I’d never been more baffled in my life. It just failed to compute. If people wanted to write xenophobic and homophobic rants – or so I wondered as I read what the undead were apparently supposed to really be about – then why didn’t they just...do that, so the rest of us could avoid them and get on with wondering “but no – what if everybody at the cemetery did just pop up one night? How would we really respond to that?” A few years ago, in one of my Charlotte Bronte moods, I wrote 48 poems on post-it notes at work and then revised them all into a Mead composition book, and not one of them means anything. Half of them are descriptions of actual events, with minimal commentary. They’re poetic in form, but they aren’t really poetry because I’m not really a poet. Mr. Hirsch’s work is not (generally, though some of it is) poetic in form, but the imagination behind it is a poet’s. Therefore, he could write “Double Dipper” and use the clones to make a point without proceeding to get into all those side issues that go with the kind of clone story I’m more familiar with, such as personhood and legal rights and all that kinda stuff. The clones to Mr. Hirsch are symbolic representations of introspection, not characters; it’s debatable, really, the degree to which anyone in Gravity Falls should be considered a true character outside of the Pines family, because even though the show uses the town’s name as its title, it isn’t actually about the town of Gravity Falls: everything else in the setting exists solely to tell the one family’s story, and that’s that. It's tidy and compact, like a poem.

I, as established, am more of a “spend ten years cross-hatching tiny different areas with subtly different pencil points to create a greyscale drawing” person (metaphorically – I like metaphors much better than symbols), but I have to admit – there is something attractive about the idea of drawing in broad, bold lines like that. Attractive and a little frightening. Part of the reason it’s frightening is because, of course, overlooking those details means someone is going to get angry with you sooner or later. Unfortunately, that's also part of the reason why it has a certain appeal. It's when you write like that, after all, saying things without fifteen qualifying statements tacked on at the end or a lot of deep dives into the minds of the characters, that you create room for audience engagement and therefore create an intellectual property that can, in theory, outlive its first audience and attain a lasting degree of success.

Some years ago, I formed a theory about the Harry Potter books, and so far, nothing I’ve come across has contradicted it. That theory is that the series owes part of its success to its “dormitories based on personality” system and the way that encourages people to identify with “their” House, and that it owes most of the rest of its success to the ways in which it betrays its own ideals. From a very early point in the fandom, after all, there was a certain...tension over the places where the series said one thing but seemed to practice another one, to greater or lesser degrees. The books knock us about the head with the idea that individual choice is destiny, but sons always look uncannily like their fathers, somehow. I could write a whole essay about ways Book 7 takes every issue the series ever had, magnifies it, covers it in high-wattage lights, and then...just walks off, apparently having never noticed there was a problem at all, much less that the problem had just got worse. These contradictions grew sharper and sharper as the series went on, to the point where eventually, it became clear there was a real issue in the foundations of that IP rather than just a failure to think about the full implications of a few things, but I suspect there is something universal about successful properties in the broader idea, because all things which bold-strokes authors seem to never, or at least only minimally, think of and which people like me can’t stop thinking of? Those things make up the boundaries which define the spaces where fandoms grow. There’s a lot of books I’ve loved passionately in my life, but only a very few I’ve written about outside of school. The balance of good points and unpalatable implications cannot be anything other than precarious anywhere it occurs, but it’s on that razor’s edge that a certain kind of personality feels compelled to explore the areas that cause discomfort instead of doing what I did with, say, Divergent, which was “loudly express my displeasure to anyone who would listen after getting halfway through the second book before my distaste for the main character became so overwhelming that I couldn’t finish it.” I don’t think that Gravity Falls’ issues are as deep-rooted and insidious as the ones in Harry Potter, but there’s some issues just the same, and...well, here I am, aren’t I? How many words have I written about this one interview so far? The document I’m typing this in is using Times New Roman size 12 font and very narrow gaps between the lines, and these words are about halfway down the tenth page. I’ve written three reasonably competent novels set in this universe and a handful of short stories I wouldn’t be embarrassed to produce in an undergraduate fiction-writing class and also some fairly well-received canon essays. And in July I reckon Disney is, indeed, going to part me from yet more of my money, even though it’s a book about Bill when “Bill dies” is one of my very favorite moments in the whole series because I hate him. I also consider him one of the problematic issues of the franchise for – believe it or not – even more reasons than the ones I’ve already discussed in the first two body sections of this document, though he could be the ultimate expression of those as well.

I already discussed in part I why I find some aspects of his portrayal uncomfortable as far as it comes to sexuality, so I’ll not repeat that. As for part II, the reason I don’t take any particular offense to him on the mental health angle is that I don’t personally regard Bill as a depiction of a mentally ill character. He says he’s insane, but Bill says a lot of things and even the most honest of them are no more than half-truths. Bill cheerfully classifies himself as "insane," but like Fiddleford, he isn't, at least not by any definition of the term which is precise enough to be useful. Bill's behavior can come across like a bad dose of anti-social personality disorder with narcissistic and histrionic features, which is quite an unfortunate combination to have when he also is a sadist, but he knows right from wrong, as he proves by how quickly he goes from gloating to groveling once he’s trapped inside Stan's mind. He may not understand exactly why it works or how it would feel to have someone do it to him, but he understands perfectly well that he’s putting the emotional thumbscrews to Stan and Ford by attacking Dipper and Mabel, and he understands just as well that they are not in any mood to play games after they turn the tables on him. He also betrays a clear consciousness of guilt in the scene where Time Baby raids the Fearamid and he acts like a teenager who just had the cops called on his noisy party full of underaged drinking. He is not at all confused about why Time Baby and company want to rain on his parade or under any impressions that appear to be out of touch with reality. When he does things like present Dipper with a screaming head that he treats like a gift, I truly don't believe he's so "lol crazy," or even so alien that he doesn't understand that nobody would want that thing; I believe he does things like conjuring the head and the living sofa and whatnot because he understands humans and therefore knows they will disturb his victims, who will therefore be off-balance and who will therefore continue to react instead of think. This keeps them right where Bill wants them, in positions where he has the maximum advantage before he offers a deal. This is controlled, well-reasoned behavior, not the result of a lack of comprehension of what a human boy in the 21st century finds desirable or of what Ford might consider appealing interior design. Here’s the part where I get around to those aliens I mentioned in the section title, because while I can’t fathom liking him, I do think I would have loathed him less it if he had been a little more alien. As it is, though, he ends up compacting everything I dislike about humanity into one geometric figure and not, to my mind, doing much else.

While a character like Bill has to have a good grasp of human psychology and an ability to imitate it in order to manipulate his victims, one of my issues with Bill is how I never really got the sense of how Other he is. We’re told that he’s Other in ways that aren’t just versions of villain stereotypes, but we’re not really (in my opinion, mind you) shown it. From even the limited amounts we know about Bill and the GF Multiverse, we can deduce logically that he probably does have incomprehensible numbers of plans going at once, and that he can somehow process them all at the same time when even the slightest attempt to do the same would probably drive one of us to madness or force our heads to collapse into black holes, but emotionally, I don't ever feel it, and so it’s relegated to something Alex has to remind us of, because Bill ended up too human for the thought to flow naturally, somehow. Hopefully we'll get some good dirt in July, but for now, Bill is an alien, but he doesn’t quite feel like one. He doesn’t feel like something with answers, like something above us, like something older than the galaxy. He feels more like a human being than some of the actual human beings do. He feels like...well...to quote Ford, “the scam artist he is.”

To be clear, though, I’m not bashing the writers here: for one thing, writing alien intelligences without stumbling into insulting some category of people by pure accident is hard. Most writers are human, and the less like you something is, the harder it is to imagine the world from that entity’s point of view. For another thing, too - no matter what else Bill is, he's also one of the most effective representatives of evil I’ve seen in fiction in a very long time, and since he is a central villain in a high-stakes story, that means he succeeded in the most important part of what he was there to do. The writers had the guts to follow through with making him a virtual singularity of unpleasant traits without softening him up around the edges along the way or even giving him the excuse of an alien's incomprehension of why what he is doing is bad, and they had the skill to write him as pure, unabashed evil in a way that nevertheless acknowledges how complicated people’s motives for dabbling in the Dark Arts can be. He is a symbol even I can work with: I find it believable that he could get a lot of people to do the wrong thing for the right reason, because his alienness just makes him generalizable, a sort of talking abstract concept, like a sentient but bodiless force of evil that looks a little different to everyone who looks at it. Most people who do evil things, after all, are not born declaiming the “now, gods, stand up for bastards!” speech from King Lear: there’s something we can, with a greater or lesser degrees of effort, understand about many people's reasons for stepping onto the slippery slope even if we still firmly denounce the act of taking that step. Bill also seems to start small, at least on the surface, in what he asks of his marks, so that it feels like: oh, surely I can be just a little selfish just this once, and it won’t hurt anyone, and probably no-one will ever even find out about it – that’s the routine he runs on Dipper in “Sock Opera.” Or he uses those groomer traits of his to slowly skew your view on normality and/or morality, so that perhaps you’re Ford, and view stealing nuclear waste as a “public service” after he whispers in your ear for long enough. I can understand how he managed to get by so long before he resorted to the inelegant tactic of using people's family members as hostages to get his way; although evil and unappealing in himself, he has the skills to present what looks like an appealing deal to others a lot of the time. It's a sign of an intellectual maturity in the show's composition that we see Bill, most of the time, as less of the mad god and more of the guy you don't want to do business with, really, but who you know you might well end up needing to do business with - as the manifestation of all the little compromises everyone makes, which for some ultimately spiral out of control. And while he is annoying, even that can work in his favor under the right circumstances, because he’s the kind of annoying that makes at least some people (ie, me) want to put him in his place. I think I’m sensible enough to realize I couldn’t really outsmart him, but I dang sure would want to try. He can get an emotional reaction from anyone, and generally the one he wants at that. He’s a brilliant creation, really, and an accomplishment for a creator to be proud of regardless of whatever else he is.

The Part Where Calli Tries To Draw Some Conclusions

In the beginning, five tries to get this far ago, I had no idea what, if any, coherent point I might end up with. I didn’t even really expect to end up with one. I just had reactions to what I read in the transcript, and I knew that if I wrote about them, I’d get a clearer idea why I was reacting and maybe some new insights into something I love, ie, the show. I was not looking to write an essay about how Gravity Falls is Problematic in its portrayal of the Other, and I was not looking to write an essay to defend it from such charges. I was just writing to figure out what exactly it was I thought about the issue. Now, here at the end, here’s what I think I’ve written:

1. There are some ways in which some of the depiction of Otherness in Gravity Falls are indeed potentially problematic. 2. These issues are not, on the whole, crit fails. Every work has its flaws, and, as usual, the ones left in GF just highlight the excellence of the rest of the final product even more. 3. Commercially successful writers and fan writers may, in part, be distinguished by the approaches taken to character selection and usage; we're also symbiotic organisms, where we get improved quality of life and they get fans who stick around and spend money for a really long time. 4. I...may have figured out how to get rich? Pretty sure I can't use it, but I think it just might work for someone with the skills. Let me know if you're the one who pulls it off, somewhere out there.

There's a lot more I could have said here - and, in fact, a lot more I did say in one draft or another. Sometimes I ended up cutting passages when I got to the end of them and realized I no longer agreed with my original premise, and sometimes I gave up on a point as so convoluted that it would have made it difficult to get back to the main point afterward. In several places, there's ideas that feel important, but I can't quite pull them out of the air yet. But here's where I think I'm going to wrap this one up for now.

[pop-punklouis]

i know you said you don’t want to talk much about it but your thoughts always give me comfort here especially since so many nasty things and uncomfortable things have been said about louis since this weekend sigh

i’ve tried to engage very little in a lot of the discourse and conversation that’s been had over the past few days tbh but i guess the only real opinion i have is that if you are claiming to know better than louis and know how to navigate his situation better than he does, as a fan account on tumblr dot com who doesn’t even have an ounce of information of what’s going on behind the scenes, then maybe you need to take a step back. sometimes it feels like some people think of these people as characters in a film they’re watching on the big screen instead of real human beings who are doing the best they can with knowledge they hold and you know very little if anything about. it’s one thing to reevaluate your attachment or beliefs over situations or to curate your experience to engage with fandom/artist in ways that are healthier and more comfortable for you, personally. it’s another thing when you claim to know better than the people that are actively going through these circumstances and then judging/blaming them for it as a third party bystander with one card drawn out of the entire deck. people can feel how they want. people can create their own stories. but at the end of the day, louis is an intelligent guy who knows what decisions are best for him, his career, and his circumstances right now (which always ends up making sense in the end every time). so, i trust louis and that’s all there is to it for me. if you want to say ugly things about him or his character so easily, do you but you can block me in the process. i don’t mind, babes. i encourage it.

[lifmera]

Heya, I was wondering if I could have a matchup for Hazbin Hotel? Male please x

My pronouns are she her, I'm fairly average height for a girl and my favourite animals at the moment are either cats or goats!!

I have black hair, dark eyes and pale skin, my hair goes just above my breasts and is layered. I wear a lot of black and hardly own any clothes that aren't!! (It’s just so flattering) I have a few large tattoos as well and am definitely getting more. I also have a lot of ear piercings, a nose stud and 🍒 piercings. I’m also English (northern, not southern) so I do have an accent

In terms of personality, l'd say l'm rather outgoing, witty and a bit nerdy. I wear a lot of studs and chains but I think they look badass, however I wear them causally so I guess you could also say I’m pretty bold? I've often been told l intimidate people, however I like to think they don't know me well enough to judge. Ive been told I can be quite loud, and I have some blunt, dry sense of humour which my friends seem to like. I'm an ENTP through and through and am currently in law school, stereotypical as fuck ik. I can sometimes struggle to trust people due to past experiences, however I think I’ve got the hang of reading people now to know when they’re my kind of cunt or not.

I can have a short temper and struggle with my emotions sometimes, (diagnosed bpd/adhd, looooove to see it) but am in the process of learning to manage them quite well.

Hobby wise, I enjoy drawing, painting and going out with my friends to concerts and festivals. I Love music, specifically Goth, Metal (Death, Goth metal, Nü metal, all sorts) and a little bit of rock obviously. I'm tempted to start learning how to play the drums or guitar but am not sure where to start, plus school takes up so much of my time.

There's of course no rush to reply, I adore your work I think your matches are always spot-on and I'm really curious !!

-🕷️🕸️

HEY 🕷️🕸️!!!

Honestly I was so TORN between these two. So i decided lol… why not both?

Its okay hun!! I major Pre-Law right now 🩷

I’ve decided to pair you with… VOX & HUSK

Vox first though. Cus i read this and i was like.. VOX but then when i showered i was like .. wait husk… and then i was like FUCK… anyways

He’d definitely talk to you more because you reminded him of Velvette. And what probably went thru his head was “ooh new model :)”

But he LOVES ur personality. If you intimidated VOX? He would literally purr at ur feet and BEG you to join the Vee’s.

Even if you are dry, its okay, cus everything else makes up for it to him.

He definitely isn’t surprised if you don’t trust him at first, but he’s think that “nothing a little hypnotizing cant fix ! ;)” (take that as you wish.)

Vox is kinda pretty shitty himself- and probably doesnt really care much about you unless you blow a fuse on him. But honestly he’d like that.

Though he’d also be glad that you are managing your emotions! He HATES tantrums . (Cough cough Val)

He would probably make you draw you guys together lets me honest. He’d think it’d be funny. Till he actually enjoys it.

He would make fun of ur music taste. Then he would love it. Cus hes such a LOSER like that……

Honestly he’d love it sm he’d have them as theme songs D:

If you learned any instruments it’d probably cause him to want to as-well….

Ok Husker time…

Not gonna lie. You guys give off the same vibe, and he’d probably like you the most out of everyone at the hotel.

Especially at first glance?? Like finally… someone normal

Says him anyways.

Husk HATES cats, and obviously… i think he would also let you pet him or brush his fur… after becoming in a relationship. Otherwise he’d literally bite you.

I think he would talk to you first at the bar, and man is he good at finding shit out???

I think you guys would become close friends within a finger snap-

And honestly become inseparable. Totally have backhanded shit to say and it would be so funny. (Great duo)

He definitely would be super proud of you for seeking help! He would say that not much people have enough balls to do that.

Honestly i also think Husk would enjoy painting too. He seems like a gambler but i think in his free time, something like painting would relax him?? Or atleast looking at paintings and analyzing them.

Your music taste? Probably same as his. He’d love to listen with you, and Everytime you are at the bar he’d ask if you wanted to play a song you both enjoyed.

If you learned the guitar he’d be SO IMPRESSED. Like “okay dayum… ❤️”

~~

I HOPE THIS WAS OKAY HUN!! And AWUGHS THANK YOU SO MUCH?? i always try to make the characters accurate because i feel like if they are ooc .. its just.. weird ?

[dyingstars-if]

Hello! How would the ROs react to someone flirting with the MC in front of them? Both in the crushing stage and in the relationship stage (hoping for a strong reaction from my dear red flag Krios 👀)

hello!!

crushing -

krios: xe’s thought process is pretty feral, but xe would respect mc’s wishes. if you want the person dead, they’re dead. if you want them left alive…krios guesses xe can do that too.

rune: it depends on mc. if they seem okay with it, then so are they. if they seem uncomfortable, they’ll be inserting themself into the conversation and getting between the person and mc before anyone can blink. subtly insults the person as they shield you and give you the chance to make your escape.

ezlyn: their fangs itch and their claws feel as though they’re going to burst through at any moment, but they’re fine. they’re totally okay with what is happening in front of them. they absolutely do not care that someone else is flirting with you.

aren: they are unbothered, and they remain unbothered when the person’s body is discovered in a ditch the next day.

relationship -

krios: someone would have to have a lot of nerve (or more likely, a death wish) to flirt with mc in front of krios, the Monarch of the unseelie kingdom and known possessive bastard. if mc says xe can’t kill them, then krios will make them suffer another way. if they’re a member of the unseelie kingdom, they’ll be stripped of any titles and possessions, thrown to the streets, and never again allowed to step into the same room as xyr beloved. if they’re not, krios will have rumours started about them, and plant evidence of crimes so heinous on them that it gets them thrown under the prison.

rune: they trust you completely, so they remain unbothered if mc isn’t. however, if mc is bothered, then rune isn’t going to hold back. they will air out this persons dirty laundry for everyone to hear. “my Liege, i know you must be distraught at your husband running away with the gardener because he couldn’t bare to spend another moment with a leech like you, but, please, do learn some self control.” sweeps you away to somewhere quiet to check on how you’re doing.

ezlyn: they wrap their arms around mc’s waist and pull them closer as they send the person flirting with them a vicious glare. then a thought would occur to them and they’d school their face into something more pleasant. “ah my Liege, i overheard you talking to my partner about how strong you are, we could use people like you in our armies. perhaps i should put your name forward to our Monarch for conscription?” watches with smug satisfaction at how they pale.

aren: if someone flirted with mc in front of romanced!aren, that person would lose their tongue, and then their hands, and then their eyes, and then finally their life.

[whimsicallyenchantedrose]

Girls' Trip Fairy Tale Ending--Chapter 5 of 6

Summary:  This is my combined birthday gift for Joni (  @jrob64​  ), Marta ( @snowbellewells ) and Krystal ( @kmomof4 ).  Happy birthday ladies! Four fandom friends are nearing the end of their annual girls’ trip when they’re suddenly visited by Isaac, the author before Henry.  He gives them an each a gift–an opportunity to jump into any scene in the storybook they want and fix it.  Large focus on CS, although other characters and relationships will be explored.  A big shoutout to @hollyethecurious​ and @winterbaby89 for betaing!

Word Count: 2420

Tagging a few people who may be interested (Let me know if you want to be added or taken off the list): @sailormew @annaamelll @flslp87 @emmateo26 @bethacaciakay @ultraluckycatnd @effulgent-mind @ilovemesomekillianjones @kat2609 @brooke-to-broch @missgymgirl @galadriel26 @the-lady-of-misthaven @charmingturkeysandwich @jennjenn615 @laschatzi @kimmy46 @snowbellewells @iamanneenigma @daxx04 @nickillian  @gillie  @britishguyslover @ginnyjinxedandhanshotritafirst @kmomof4  @linda8084 @golfgirld @captain-swan-coffee @searchingwardrobes @hollyethecurious @laughswaytoomuch  @allyourdarlingswans  @winterbaby89 @facesiousbutton82 @therooksshiningknight, @lfh1226-linda @tiganasummertree  @jrob64  @anmylica   @booksteaandtoomuchtv​ @elfiola

Other chapters:  (1) (2) (3) (4)

Can also be found on: (ao3) (ff.net)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jen didn’t know what she expected transportation via storybook to be like, but she was delighted to discover it was something like entering a snowglobe.  Snowflakes swirled around her, and she watched with delight as they landed on her arms, her shoulders, the ends of her hair.  Each one was different, but each was thoroughly exquisite in its own way.  She knew that most people didn’t get her love of winter and snow but it was beautiful and fascinating, and she would go on loving it despite what anyone else might say.

So engrossed was Jen in the snow swirling around her, that she barely noticed moving from her place in the cabin until the air cleared and she found herself just inside the Charming’s flat.  Her eyes fell first on the tremendous, festively decorated Christmas tree in the sitting area and then the simpler evergreen wreath hanging on the inside of the door.

So it was Christmastime in her version of events?  Well, why not?  Wasn’t Christmas the time for magic?  And she would need some heavy duty, industrial strength magic to fix the mess Isaac had made of the latter part of season 6.

“So Hook….he killed my father?  Okay, that’s a little tough to process.” she heard David say from the kitchen area, and suddenly she knew just exactly where they were in the story.  She hung back for a moment, trying to figure out just the right time and the right way to intervene.

“I was hoping I didn’t have to tell you,” Emma said, sounding defeated from her perch on the breakfast bar.

“Where the hell is Hook anyway?” David asked, aggressively pacing the kitchen. “He didn’t have the guts to come tell me himself?”

If anything, Emma looked even more dejected. “There’s more.  Hook, he … he left town.”

“What?” David exclaimed, finally coming to a stop and staring at his daughter in disbelief. 

“We had a big fight about him hiding this, and I told him if he wasn’t ready to trust me that, that we shouldn’t talk for a while,” Emma said, “so I guess he wasn’t ready, because Leroy saw him on the docks, and he got on the Nautilus and just…sailed away.”

At this, Jen found herself shaking her head, hurrying forward to intervene.

“Emma,” she said gently, “are you sure?  Are you absolutely SURE that’s what happened?”

Emma looked up, anger and pain written all over her face.  She spread her hands wide.  “He’s not here, is he?  What am I supposed to think?”

“I know how hurt you are by all that happened,” Jen said, “but hasn’t he shown you yet that you don’t need to put up your walls to protect yourself from him?  Hasn’t he proven how much he loves you?”

“Not enough to keep from hiding things from me,” she muttered.

“Kind of like how you hid the truth about the shears and your destiny as savior from him?” Jen asked, being careful to keep any hint of accusation from her tone.

“That’s….that’s different!” Emma spluttered, jumping from the counter and striding purposely toward the coat rack.  “I’ve gotta get to the station. Look, whatever you or I or anyone else might think of him, the facts are the facts, and the fact is that Leroy saw him leave me.  End of discussion.”

As though to punctuate her sentence, she stepped out the door and slammed it behind her.  The Christmas wreath on the door fell to the floor with the violence of the action.  David moved forward to replace the decoration on its perch.

“You know I’m right, don’t you David?” Jen asked.  

He didn’t look at her, instead taking long moments to adjust the wreath just so on the door.  Finally he turned back to face her.  “She’s my daughter, Jen, and she’s hurting, and he’s the cause of it, whatever led to it.  My focus has to be on helping her heal”

“But if things aren’t exactly the way they look…if maybe this is the work of a villain or something,” Jen said, “wouldn’t the ideal way to help her be to figure out the truth?  And you know Killian.  You know how much he loves Emma.  Doesn’t he deserve the benefit of the doubt?”

David frowned, and Jen could tell her words struck a chord in him.  “I suppose you’re right.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

With another delightful swirl of snow, Jen found herself transported to the sheriff’s station where David and Emma were discussing digitizing files and the merits of busywork to help dull the pain. She decided to hang back in the shadows, watching to see how this scene played out.

“I’ve got just the thing to mend a broken heart,” Regina said happily, brushing snow off of her coat as she breezed into the station and held up a small piece of paper rolled into a scroll.

Emma eyed it warily. “Whatever spell that is, I don’t want it.  I’m seriously not in the mood for magic.”

“Who said anything about magic?” Regina said unfurling the scroll which was covered in so many images of the season, it looked like Christmas had thrown up all over it.  “It’s a two for one drink coupon for that new club, Aesop’s Tables.  Seems they’re having a big Christmas sale.  It’d be a shame to waste it!”

David stepped up, looking at the coupon and shaking his head. “Really?  You think half priced liquor is the way to go.”

“I certainly do,” Regina said.  “We need a ladies night out, me, Emma and Snow.  We go early enough, we can get back in time for Christmas eve with the family.”

Emma looked unimpressed at the suggestion.  “Remember she’s in a sleeping curse?  She’s at home. Asleep.”

“Well, she doesn’t have to be asleep,” Regina said with a meaningful look at David.

“Oh come on!  I just woke up!” he said.  Regina gave him a look, and he rolled his eyes.  “I guess she doesn’t have to be asleep.”

Emma got to her feet, clearly in no mood for any of this. “I can’t. I’m about to go on patrol, and shouldn’t you be trying to break that curse?”

Regina blew out an exasperated breath. “Well, I’m working on it, but I could use a break.  We all could.  I know you’re hurting, and I know you’re trying to hide it because, well, you’re Emma, but you can’t just run from this.”

Emma gave her a hard look.  “I didn’t run.  Hook ran, so, there’s nothing more to say.”  She placed the last file on the pile in front of her with rather more force than strictly necessary, and then headed toward the door.  It was abundantly clear that she was running from the conversation as much as she was heading out on rounds.

“You know,” David said speculatively as she walked out, “I’ve been thinking.”

Regina snorted, “a dangerous pastime.”

He glared at her and then went back to the topic at hand. “I’m not sure it’s true.  I’m not sure Hook really DID run,” he finished.

“Well he’s not here, is he?” she asked, gesturing around the office to make her point. “Seems your daughter has some reason to think he skipped town.”

“Leroy,” David said.

“I beg your pardon?” Regina said.

“Leroy’s her reason,” David said.  “He apparently saw Hook on the docks, told Emma something about Hook getting on the Nautilus and sailing away.”

Regina tutted derisively.  “Leroy?  Emma’s just going on the word of that gossip girl?”

David shrugged.  “You know how hard it is for Emma to trust, how closely she guards her heart.  She’s hurting, but you and I both know Hook.  That man isn’t capable of loving by half measures.  It doesn’t make sense that he’d decide he doesn’t trust her and just….cut his losses and skip town.”

Jen nodded in satisfaction.  That’s the David she knew, rather than the clueless one Isaac wrote, the one who was ready to believe the worst of Killian at the slightest provocation.

“I guess you have a point there,” Regina conceded, “and we do have a psychopath running around trying to separate Emma from all her sources of support.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe it’s time to give the pirate the benefit of the doubt.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

With another swirl of snow, Jen found herself in the sitting room of Emma’s house.  She smiled as she saw the tall Christmas tree in the corner, bedecked with lights and garland and all manner of  hook, swan, storybook and Disney character ornaments.

The smile slid from her face as she spied Emma and Henry sitting together at opposite ends of the sofa.  Henry played on his phone, earbuds in place while Emma slowly, gently placed Hook’s possessions in his chest. She hesitated as she reached Liam’s ring hanging from its chain.  She held it close, looking down at it, the tears coming to her eyes in spite of herself.

Beside her, Henry seemed to notice her distress.  He pulled the earbuds from his ears.  “Mom, you okay?”

Emma took a deep breath and decisively placed the ring in the trunk and closed the lid.  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she answered. “I have to be,” she added under her breath.  “Henry, can you take this out to the shed later?”

Henry nodded.  “Yeah, whatever you want.”

That was it?  That was all Henry had to say on the matter?  Clearly it was time for Jen to intervene again.

“Take a moment to think about this Emma, Henry,” Jen said.  “Look at what’s sitting before you.  Hook’s chest, filled with all his most prized possessions.  If he was going to leave you, why would he leave all of that behind?”

Jen saw a small glimmer of hope dawn in Emma’s eye, but just as quickly it disappeared.  “I don’t know, but I’ve already told you.  I have to face the facts.  Holding on to false hope only hurts worse.”

Beside her, Henry furled his brow.  “Jen’s got a point, mom,” he said, Jen nodded in satisfaction. Maybe the Truest Believer was ready to work his (metaphorical) magic once more.  “Killian spent two hundred years trying to avenge my grandma Milah.  Once he loves someone, he loves them forever.”

There was that tiny spark of hope in her eyes once more.  It lasted longer this time before it faded. “But sometimes love is not enough.  Seems that’s the case with Hook.”

“Mom, he literally went to hell for you,” Henry said.  “You two were proven True Love.  When Zeus wanted to send Killian to his ultimate reward–to the place he truly belonged–he sent him back to you.  You really think he gave all of that up over an argument?”

Emma took a moment to think this over and seemed to be on the verge of responding when there was a brisk knock on the door, and a moment later David and Regina strolled in.

“Regina…what the hell?” Emma asked, getting to her feet.

“Your Charming father and I have been talking,” Regina said, “and we’ve come to the conclusion that you’re being an idiot.”

“I’d like to point out for the record, that that is not  the conclusion I came to,” David said with an exasperated glare in the direction of his step-mother-in-law.  “I said that I thought your pain might be clouding your judgment.”

“Technicalities,” Regina said with a wave of the hand.

Emma rolled her eyes.  “As much as I’m enjoying the bickering at my expense,” she drawled, “is there a point to your visit?”

“We were thinking,” David said, stepping forward.  “How many times in this town has a villain screwed with things and made circumstances seem different than they are in order to despirit the heroes and further their plan?  How can we be sure Gideon didn’t, I don’t know, do something to make Killian leave?”

There was that hope in Emma’s eyes once more, and this time it stubbornly refused to fade.  “Do you really think that could be the case?” she asked.

“Of course!” Henry said, “and we know what Gideon’s trying to do!  He’s trying to separate Emma from all her sources of support before the final battle!  It would be just like him to get rid of Killian, her true love.”

“But…” Emma said, starting to protest once more, but far more weakly this time.

“Emma he’s your True Love, and that’s a special kind of magic,” David said, placing his hands on her arms.  “Don’t you at least owe him–and yourself–trying to figure out for sure?”

“I suppose you’re right,” Emma said, “but how?  Forget why he left.  We don’t even know where he went.”

Jen stepped up, looking at Regina.  “It’s Christmas time.  Surely there’s some sort of…I don’t know…enchanted Christmas ornament ro something that can help us out.”

“I don’t know about an ornament,” Regina said slowly, “but there is the legend of the Christmas wreath.”

“What legend is that, mom?” Henry asked.

“Well the evergreen wreath is a symbol of everlasting love, right?” Regina asked.  “You know, evergreens never shedding their green needles, the circle the symbol of that with no beginning or end, all of that?”

Emma shrugged.

“Well, apparently, at Christmastime, the wreath has a special, even greater magic,” Regina says.  “The magic of the season enhances its True Love properties, and, in short, if someone is True Love, it’s said they will be able to see their True Love in it, assuming they adorn it with something meaningful belonging to said True Love.”

“One problem,” Emma said.  “I don’t have a wreath.”

“But Grandma and Grandpa do!” Henry said excitedly.  “They made it together and it’s on their door!  That could work, couldn’t it?”

Regina groaned.  “Given how utterly sickening their True Love is, I’d say a wreath they lovingly made together might be the perfect option.”

“And as for something meaningful to Killian,” Emma said, reaching into the trunk and grasping Liam’s ring, “I’ve got the perfect thing.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” David asked with a broad smile.  “Let’s get back to the loft!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“I don’t see anything,” Emma said dejectedly several minutes later.

Regina had poofed them directly to the loft, and Emma had wasted no time in draping Liam’s ring over her parents’ wreath before staring into the center of it.

“You have to believe, Emma,” Regina said, “truly believe in the strength and everlasting nature of your love.  You need to put all doubts from your mind.”

Emma took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and then looked back through the center of the wreath.  She gasped, hearing him before she saw him.

“Emma? Emma are you there? I didn’t mean to leave. I was on my way back to you and Gideon, he sent me away.”

Slowly the picture began to emerge from within the wreath.  Killian seemed to be in some exotic place, a place in the desert.  If Emma wasn’t mistaken, he was standing beside…was that Ariel?...and he was speaking into what looked like a seashell.

“Seems he’s trying to communicate via ‘shell’ phone,” David grinned. Regina groaned and Emma shushed them both, concentrating on what she was hearing from the wreath…or shell…or whatever the hell was happening.

“I would never leave you. Emma. He wanted me out of the way, and I love you. I don’t know if you can hear me but I’m trying to get home to you, and I won’t ever stop until I do.”

Tears of relief filled Emma’s eyes and spilled down over her cheeks. “Killian?” she answered.  

Through the wreath, she saw him start and look down in wonder at the shell in his hand.  “Emma?  You’re there?”

“I’m here,” she said tearfully.  “I hear you.  I love you too!”

“I’m trying desperately to get home to you,” he said.  “Christmas is tomorrow, and I couldn’t bear to spend it without you.  Do you have any suggestions?”

Emma looked around at Regina.  “Anything more to that wreath legend?” she asked.  “Can it, like, transport someone?”

“Well,” Regina said slowly, “I suppose it’s possible, if he could find a wreath of his own and something of yours to tether them together.  Maybe the wreath could bring him home.”

“Are you there, love?” Killian asked.

“He can’t hear you?” Emma asked Regina.  

She shrugged.  “Well he’s not my True Love.”

Emma rolled her eyes before telling Killian what Regina had just conveyed to her.  It was a matter of just a moment to get everything arranged.  As luck would have it, Ariel had, among her tremendous collection of random things, a Christmas wreath, and Killian was able to tether it to Emma’s by adding her engagement ring to its boughs.

There was a flash of Christmas lights, and then he was there, back in the room with them.

Jen held her breath, knowing what was coming, thrilled at the prospect of being a witness to it.  She pulled back to give them a bit of privacy, even if she had no intention of withdrawing entirely from a scene of such great importance to her very favorite fictional couple.

“I’m sorry, Emma,” Killian said, taking her hand. “I should have told you what I did to your grandfather all those years ago, and I should never, never have even considered running away.

Jen noticed the tears in Emma’s eyes, her watery smile as she looked up at him. “It’s okay.  I didn’t exactly make it easy for you to tell me the truth.  Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

She turned away, trying to pull him with her, but he held his ground.  “No,” he said, “no, there’s something I have to do before I get pushed into another portal and this time, I’m gonna do it the right way.”

Killian reached into his jacket pocket, wincing with the pain the movement caused his bruised body.  He pulled out the engagement ring and Jen noticed how brilliantly it shown in the light of the Christmas tree behind them.

“Swan,” he continued "I know that you face an uncertain future, but there’s one thing I want you to be certain of–that I will always, always be by your side.”  He sunk to one knee gazing up at her with every ounce of the love and adoration he felt for her. “So, Emma Swan, what do you say?  Will you marry me?”

While normally not nearly as exuberant as Krystal, it was only with great difficulty that Jen restrained herself from squealing.  The scene had been beautiful and romantic when she’d watched it on her TV screen–multiple times–but being there, in person–there were no words.

And then when Emma got to her knees beside him, took his face in her hands, gave him her yes and then kissed him tenderly, there was no way Jen could have held back her ecstatic sigh.

Neither Emma nor Killian, who were thoroughly engrossed with each other and cocooned in their love nor anyone else in the room heard or noticed as the snow swirled one last time to transport Jen back to the cabin.

[noxexistant]

I DONT REMEMBER IF I ACTUALLY ASKED YOU FOR FEEL GOOD DELANCEY AND TWIN THINGS (AND MY TRACK RECORD ISNT GOOD) SO JUST IN CASE

P L E A S E

order up! 🫡

feel-good morris n oscar + mike n ike interaction, on a bed of modern au (aka medda fostering au)

—

Mike’s been watching Morris colouring for half an hour.

At first, Ike’d been worrying it was because Morris was colouring in one of Mike’s colouring books - Medda had asked first, of course, before she gave it to Morris, and Mike had immediately eagerly said it was fine, but maybe he was regretting his decision. Realised somewhere down the line that it was upsetting him more than he thought it would. So Ike’d asked, but Mike’d shaken his head and said honestly that he really didn’t mind. Even though it was one of Mike’s new colouring books that he hasn’t touched yet, one brighter and more childish - full of space and astronauts and planets and aliens - than his usual tastes.

“You’re still starin’,” Ike tells him softly, bumping their shoulders. “It’s okay if you don’t wan’ him to use your book. Medda can print him somethin’ else to colour.”

Mike shakes his head again. “That one’s for him.”

Ike…blinks, not quite understanding. “What do you mean?”

“That one’s his,” Mike repeats, like it’s obvious. “I picked it special for him, last time Medda took me to buy me colourin’ stuff. ‘Cause Morris don’t have any and Medda don’t buy any for him.”

“‘Cause Oscar don’t like Medda buyin’ ‘em stuff,” Ike explains, worried that Mike thinks Medda’s just neglecting Morris or something. Mike’s face shows that he don’t think that, at least not really, but he still clearly just doesn’t really understand.

“Why?” Mike asks, not for the first time. Ike takes a guess again, just like he had the last time Mike asked.

“Same reason Finch don’t, prob’ly. Think bein’ bought stuff means they owe somethin’ in return.”

“But Medda ain’t like that.”

Ike shrugs. “Oscar don’t trust that. Y’know how sometimes it’s hard for people to trust, if…people’a done stuff in the past.”

Mike pouts. “S’jus’ not fair that Morris don’t get stuff like I got. Even Oscar don’t get him stuff like you get me stuff. Colourin’ books an’ fidgets an’…an’ toys.”

Oscar looks up sharply from where he’s sat behind Morris, on the couch on his phone while Morris is on the floor colouring, having apparently heard Mike say his name. He’s louder than Ike is. Ike offers him a brief smile to hopefully assure him that everything’s fine, hoping Oscar won’t immediately assume offense like he tends to when it’s anyone else talking about him.

“Oscar’s doin’ his best,” he says quietly, leaning in closer to Mike so Oscar won’t hear any more. Morris had had a colouring book one of the last time he’d been over, but it was well-worn and he’d finished it, filled up every page, and Oscar’s apparently been forgetting to buy him a new one since, having to keep telling Morris every time he asks to colour that he don’t have a colouring book and he can maybe ask Medda to print him something. “Things’a just been bad for the both of them. They’re both doin’ their best.”

“There a problem?” Oscar asks, loud and edged enough for Morris to flinch. He looks up and back at his brother immediately, concerned gaze then falling to Mike and Ike. He falters when he sees Mike staring back at him, shuffling backwards towards Oscar.

“No, no,” Ike quickly assures. Oscar ignores him, looking at Mike instead.

“You been starin’ at Mo for ‘bout an hour. You got a problem?”

Ike swallows hard. Mostly because he doesn’t know if Mike does, but if that answer’s yes, then Mike’s all too likely to just say it outright, and there’s a good chance that’ll set Oscar off. Maybe set Morris off too, if he’s interrupted from his current task, torn away from where he’s settled colouring. Ike opens his mouth, hoping to speak first, do some damage control before any more damage can be done, but Mike beats him to it.

“I wanna colour.”

Morris takes a second to process the statement, then scrambles immediately to his feet like Mike’d given some sort of command. He leaves the crayons - also Mike’s brand new ones - where he’d poured them out and then meticulously organised them in rainbow order beside their box, and the colouring book, open to a page of a UFO half-filled with chaotic, colourful scribbles, and flees to Oscar’s side. Oscar catches him, wrapping an arm around Morris’ shoulders to pull him close.

Mike looks at the brothers, confused.

“No,” he protests, a little too loudly, frustrated that things apparently hadn’t gone how he’d wanted. Morris makes a soft sound, hiding against Oscar, so Ike nudges his twin.

“Gentle,” he reminds him softly. “Think you’re scarin’ Morris a bit. Try an’ talk softer, and explain what you’re thinkin’, okay?”

Mike nods seriously, and takes a few seconds of silence to try and organise his thoughts into words. “I wanna colour,” he repeats, pointing at the book on the ground.

“He’s lettin’ you,” Oscar snaps, defensive. “All yours, see?”

“No!” Mike shakes his head. “Both of us!”

Ike deflates a little with relief, finally understanding.

“He wants to colour with Morris,” he explains to Oscar. He then turns his attention to Morris, leaning to the side to try and see him, and turns his voice gentler at the same time. “He’s askin’ to play with you, not instead of you, Morris. D’you wanna colour together, with Mike?”

Morris peeks out from where he’s hiding half-behind Oscar. He looks sincerely confused and maybe a little overwhelmed, and Ike immediately understands it’s most likely that nobody’s ever asked to play with Morris before. At least not recently, not here. One-on-one might be a little overwhelming too, Morris clearly has a hard time trusting people.

“Can I join in too?” Ike asks. “Me and Mike colour together a lot. Maybe all three of us can colour together. That sounds fun.”

Mike makes an excited noise. Eager, he gets up and runs to the shelving unit where a lot of the toys and activities are kept for the living room, and pulls out a couple more of his colouring books and a pack of coloured pencils. One of them’s the colouring book he chose for Ike, a Star Wars one for adults, and the other’s one of Mike’s for himself, one of his mandala type ones.

“Make sure you give Morris some space,” Ike reminds him gently as he scurries to get them situated on the floor beside where Morris was set up. Mike does so, gives Morris a safe distance to return to his colouring without being too close to Mike, and then upends the box of coloured pencils to pour them out haphazardly between his and Ike’s stations. It’s how they always do it, just picking out the pencils they need from the mess as they go. Mike says it’s like another little game, finding the one they need.

Morris looks…perturbed by the system, but doesn’t say anything. And looks slightly less scared now too, openly peeking out from Oscar’s side as Mike and Ike both get settled. Mike picks a page at random, while Ike flicks through the book to find one he likes. He settles on a page of Padme - the Prequels have always been his favourites.

“Are you gonna join in?” Mike asks Morris, eyes big and eager. He then deflates a little, seeing Morris’ unreadable expression and Oscar’s open protective suspicion. “You don’ have to. If you don’ want to. Or if Oscar don’ want you to. But I want you to.”

Oscar glances away and swallows. “Look,” he says reluctantly, eyeing Morris and apparently reading something in his face that Ike can’t, “So long as you don’t hurt him—“

“He won’t,” Ike assures Oscar quickly. “He’s really tryin’ to be friends. He might…be a little overeager, but he won’t be mean. I’ll keep an eye on ‘em, I swear, don’t worry.”

“Oh, yeah? I will too,” Oscar says sharply. “Sure as hell ain’t leavin’ you with ‘im.”

Oscar’s whole demeanour is still…unkind, but Ike wasn’t really expecting anything else. He feels bad, wondering exactly what sort of stuff must’ve happened to make both Oscar and Morris like this, but he understands that it’s a step. For Oscar to squeeze Morris briefly in what Ike recognises as encouragement, however reluctant, and for Morris to crawl slowly from his brother’s arms back to his spot on the floor, eyeing the twins cautiously as he goes.

Slowly - sort of like he’s thinking it might be a trick, like he thinks Mike might explode on him as soon as he touches anything, Ike thinks - Morris reaches out and picks up the aqua blue crayon he’d been using. Mike beams at him.

“D’you like the crayons?” he asks eagerly. “An’ the book! Picked ‘em special for you. They’s yours.”

Morris blinks. “…mine?”

“Yeah! Got you crayons ‘cause Medda said pencils like this’d be too small an’ sharp for you. An’ I picked the book myself, for you. Space an’ aliens an’ stuff, ‘cause of your shirt you’re always wearin’. The alien one.”

This time, both of the brothers look a little overwhelmed when Ike looks between them. Morris is staring with wide-eyed wonder at the gifts, and Oscar looks…Ike doesn’t know. Oscar just looks like a lot, like he’s overwhelmed by someone other than him paying attention to his brother and wanting to get him things that are safe and appropriate, and wanting to play with him. Getting him a space colouring book ‘cause he likes aliens.

“An’,” Mike adds, grinning at Oscar with just an edge of mischief, “It don’t count as Medda buyin’ you stuff. ‘Cause she bought it for me, I just gave it to you. Jus’ a present.”

Oscar looks sincerely taken aback for a second. Then huffs a sound like a laugh, a slight smile tugging at his cheek.

“What do you say, Mo?” he prompts gently. Morris doesn’t look up, but he’s smiling down at his book, eyes sparkling.

“Thank’ou,” he says automatically, but utterly sincerely.

Mike beams again, bouncing his legs excitedly against the floor, looking incredibly proud of himself.

Ike’s proud of him too.

It’s silent once they start colouring, Morris retreating back into his own little world and not answering any of the few questions Mike tries to ask him, and Oscar’ll only look at Ike every so often to offer him a glance with a subtle warning held inside of it, but Ike doesn’t mind one bit. Mike clearly doesn’t either. It’s a step - a big one.

Maybe they can make friends out of the Delancey brothers yet.

[nicky2]

we system self discovered after starting hypnosis but it became very clear quickly that we had been one all along. we definitely had more than sufficient trauma during that developmental period to be a classic traumagenic system lol. but it is kind of sad, isn’t it? realizing the system had been one way, had had these parts, and then we listen to hypnosis and now we have twice as many parts and only one is original, and it’s not me and it’s not the host lol. i know that parts don’t “die”, they just return to the primordial goo and the memories are reorganized to whoever can handle them. but i have this image in my mind of these kids we had in our head who never had a chance to become adults, who i never had the opportunity to meet, because we accidentally found BS. i wonder what they knew through the patterns of memory that they had. trying to investigate a dead part like i might investigate a living part feels like going into a bedroom and it has the belongings of someone, and pictures of them, and some of their diaries, but they’re dead and they have been gone for the last 7 years. honestly it reminds me of other people i’ve lost. i’m very much of the mindset that my parts are not people, we comprise one whole person. but what are people but collections of information— experiences, memories, lessons learned, impulses, behaviors, relationships, opinions— that one day lose their containing body and are never accessible again in the way they were accessible when they were contained by that body? i can’t ask my dead parts questions without feeling like i’m writing the answer in for them, playing make believe. it feels the same trying to imagine what [dead loved one] would say to me if i came to them with my questions. no matter how realistic the response i come up with… i’m not really talking to them, right?

i can’t wait to one day trust a therapist enough to tell them about my experiences with bambi sleep lol. i had therapy for awhile, but we never talked about me indepth. we talked about the relationships between host and me and the others. but never about me, or our past, or why i am the way i am, both in the way BS created me, and in the rationale of the part that thought trying BS might be a hail mary solution to the problems we were experiencing by the nature of how we failed to fit the mold set out for us. we were playing an ill-suited role. we were not that girl. BS was supposed to turn us all into the girl we were supposed to be for the people who had control of us at that time. but we reorganized (sounds nicer than shattered) instead, and we’ve left those people. we’re somewhere much safer.

i don’t credit any of the success of my alters and their support circles to BS, i just think we had just been cohesive enough to grin and bear the weight of our suffering beforehand. afterward, we were too broken to find the weight bearable and we had to run away in order to survive. maybe we could have left with more of a solid ground to stand on without BS. but i think maybe that old part wanted to break us. if we were broken down into a liquid and poured into the perfect mold but still came out wrong, then staying would be unnacceptable even if we didn’t come out of the process broken. it would have just been clear that nothing could ever REALLY make us into the girl we were supposed to be. and now being that girl is my burden, i guess, and i’m trapped as a sideshow in the life of somebody for whom my burden is a nightmarish past life, a distant but haunting memory. the darkness is over, but i still want to find out if we can become that girl. it is maladaptive now. our situation is different. but if i don’t really really really try to destroy us, how can we really know that we’re strong enough to survive?

i know better than that, in theory, but i still try by instinct almost. i wake up and i start trying before i’m awake enough to recognize i’m awake. trying to break us down into what Those People wanted us to be.

anyway. people talk more nowadays about the risks of bambi sleep, which is good. but i don’t know if having all the content warnings we have today would have helped the girl who was here when we started. she didn’t believe in hypnosis, but if it were real it was supposed to replace us completely with someone who has no free will, so that would be seen as acceptable. the thing that she couldn’t have been warned for is that we have a dissociative disorder she didn’t know about. she couldn’t have known about what would happen to the perfect girl she made to replace her, which is that i’m bambi but i’m bambi in a mind where i have none of the controls that bambi is supposed to have. the other alters are not “old selves” that i can silence. theyre parallel selves that exist outside of me. theyre not in my control. i can imagine silencing the others, i can even successfully silence them temporarily with bambisleep, but it takes more than hypnosis to do that permanently. and i don’t have like the money necessary to make the fucking saw esque contraptions i’d want to trap myself in this with. nor do i have the personal agency to find and actually pursue living with an owner that could do all that for me. maybe i could have if she were aware of the state i’d be in now, back before i existed. maybe if she knew what i would become, and what (truly much more safe for our physical and mental wellbeing) situation i’d end up in, she could have planned a better, more thorough self-destruction. but she didn’t really know she was self destructing, even if she would have been fine with that. she didn’t really have a plan. she just wanted to escape her suffering, not by leaving or being strong, but by staying and being radically different. so much so that would we no longer have to suffer with the free will that we naturally had. but it wasn’t enough destructive power soon enough to prevent the boys from saving our collective life from misery in unwanted servitude. so. she didn’t achieve that. but now, 7 years later, we’re destabilized and driftless. the free will that saved us isn’t nowhere to be found, but it’s pointed in so many different directions as to be ineffectual. someone come get me. someone come pick me up. we only function well in society because we’re safe with someone who’s protecting us. if someone like the people we left knew the degree and nature of our newer vulnerabilities, it’d be bye-bye to freedom. in essence, i’d finally win.

and then one of the boys would end our life and i could stop experiencing all of this