#and that's bullshit obviously! she is irrational and fucked up in many ways but she's not a needlessly cruel person

[neonlights92]

RUN: Chapter III

Jeon Jungkook hops from bed to bed, sleeping with as many beautiful, rich women as he can possibly find time for.  He’s young and attractive, with a silver tongue that gets him practically anything he wants.  So when his friend and boss, Kim Taehyung, tells him it’s time to settle down, Jungkook takes it pretty badly.  And when he finds out that the woman he’s destined to marry is, in fact, his little sister’s best friend, he is less than impressed.

You have spent your entire life trying to forget the way you feel about Jeon Jungkook.   So when you find out that Jungkook is to be your husband - and that he is anything but pleased about it - your world is thrown into chaos.  How can you survive a loveless marriage with the man you are hopelessly in love with?

WARNINGS: Language, some violence and smut.

A/N:ENJOY!!!!

Jungkook shone.  He really, really did. 

You watched him from across the room - the way he drew people in like a magnet.  He was stunning.

You knew he could tell you were watching him.  The way his eyes flickered to yours, and the side of his mouth pulled up slightly. 

Perhaps he enjoyed the power he had over you.  After all, you were his wife.  It was only normal that he wanted you to be attracted to him… Wasn’t it?

You couldn’t ponder on that thought.  Couldn’t let yourself think about Jungkook wanting you to love him.  It was too much - too overwhelming.

You turned from him quickly, grabbing a flute of champagne and downing it in almost one gulp.  You cringed at the unfamiliar taste - and the burn at back of your throat - but you needed a distraction.  From your husband, of all people.

Your life really was ridiculous. 

“Y/N?” 

You turned quickly, snapped out of your reverie by the sound of your name. 

Kim Namjoon stared back at you, a small smile on his face.

“Namjoon,” You relaxed a little, lips splitting into a smile of your own, “Hi.  How are you?”

“I’m fine,” He gestured at the champagne flute in your hands, “You’re going to snap that.”

You looked down noticing your grip was like a vice and gasped. 

“Shit.”  You loosened your fingers and blushed, “That would’ve been embarrassing.”

He gave you a sympathetic look, “Tough week?”

You groaned, setting the glass to one side and shaking your head, “Tough month.” 

Namjoon and you were fairly close.  The two of you had grown up together - along with Nayeon and Jungkook - and you felt you could genuinely trust him.  He was the only member of the Special Seven - apart from Jungkook of course - that you felt you had a real friendship with.

Namjoon was different to other made men.

He was intelligent and grounded.  He didn’t act on impulse or throw himself into situations he couldn’t handle. 

Namjoon was like the centre of gravity that Bangtan desperately needed.  

You liked that about him.

“It’s not your doting husband, is it?” He asked, raising a sarcastic brow.

You assumed he knew the truth about your marriage - even down to the fact Jungkook had no romantic feelings towards you.  The two of them were close - brothers, really - and you imagined they shared everything with one another. 

“It’s not his fault,” You answered, though you weren’t sure you totally believed it, “We were both… Forced into this.”

“But you love him.”  The words weren’t questioning - they were a statement.  Namjoon always was so intuitive.

“How did you - I  mean… What are you talking about?” He scoffed and rolled his eyes, “Anybody with eyes can tell you love him Y/N - that you have loved him for years.” 

Something inside you twinged.

It wasn’t that you cared that other people knew.  You didn’t.  Love wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

It was just…. Well Jungkook knowing that other people knew.

Would he care?

And at this point… Did it even really matter?

“It’s not his fault he doesn’t feel the same way,” You said eventually, deciding it wasn’t even worth it to deny Namjoon’s accusations, “That’s just life.” “Jungkook is an idiot,” Namjoon wrinkled his nose, “He wouldn’t know love or commitment if it whacked him in the fucking face.  He’s spent his entire life dropping women’s panties and not sticking around to get to know them.  He thinks he’s incapable of anything more.”

You raised a brow, “I think he just doesn’t want anything more.”

“Bullshit,” Namjoon shook his head, “He doesn’t know what he wants.”

“And you do?” You replied, smiling a little at the way Namjoon’s brow furrowed into a frown. 

He seemed genuinely annoyed at your husband’s behaviour.

“I know he’s too much of a pussy to even open himself up to the idea of being with you for real,” He shrugged, hands reaching for his pockets, “Even told him so myself.” “Really?  And what did he say?  I’m sure that went down a treat…”

“Told me to fuck off of course.  But what else did I expect from the ever eloquent Jeon Jungkook?”  You laughed at that and so did Namjoon, shaking his head at his younger friend’s apparent stupidity, “Honestly.  I know Jungkook.  And I know that deep down inside, all he really wants is to be loved, Y/N.  And I think you could help him realise that.”

His words warmed you down to the tips of your toes.

“You think so?”

When he nodded, you felt something in your chest expand and lighten.

For the first time since you’d found out about your engagement, you felt a little better about things.

If Namjoon thought Jungkook had the capability to come around.. Then maybe things weren’t so bleak.

You placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled warmly, “Thank you.  For speaking to me.  It really has helped.” “Just being honest,” He shrugged, “Thought you deserved to know my opinion, I guess.” 

“You always have been the smartest Bangtan boy.”

A throat cleared from somewhere to your life and you both turned to look, lips lifting unconsciously into a smile at the sight of your husband.  But Jungkook wasn’t smiling.  In fact, his mouth was pulled taut into a firm line.

And he was… Glaring at Namjoon.

“What are you two talking about?” Jungkook asked, hard eyes turning on you.

You felt a little intimidated by the way his gaze seemed to sear straight through you. 

“Just catching up, Jungkookie.”  You watched your husband cringe at the nickname that rolled off Namjoon's tongue, “Don’t keep her locked away for so long again.”

“I’ll try not to Joonie.”  His eyes were still pitch black, “You ready to go, Y/N?  I’m getting tired.”

You arched a brow at his odd behaviour. 

If you didn’t know any better you would think he was jealous.

But there was absolutely no way Jungkook would feel jealous or possessive over you… Was there?   

“Okay.”  You nodded swiftly and turned to Namjoon, “It was nice speaking to you Joon.  I hope we can catch up again soon.” His eyes were soft and he smiled, “You can count on that.”

You didn’t even realise Jungkook’s hand had slipped into yours until he was pulling you away from the crowd almost roughly.  Namjoon gave you a little wave and a knowing wink, and you shook your head, confused by your husband’s sudden shift in behaviour.

There was no way he was actually jealous, was there?

Not after knowing the way you felt about him.

Not after pushing you away himself and making it clear he wasn’t interested in a real marriage.

No.  You shook your head.

He must just be tired, like he’d said.

When the two of you made your way outside, you finally tugged your husband’s hand and forced him to look at you.

“What?” The word was sharp and angry.

You flinched, “Are you… Okay?”

“Just peachy.  Enjoyed your little chat with Namjoon?”

You followed him down the marble staircase, towards the garage.

“Wait.  Is that why you’re acting like this?”  You were speaking to Jungkook’s back - why was he walking so damn fast? - as you struggled to keep up, “Because I was talking to Namjoon?”

Your husband decided not to answer as he grabbed the keys wordlessly from the valet and continued making his way towards the car.  You trailed after him, feeling dejected and hurt by his sudden sourly attitude. 

What right did he have to be angry at you when all you had been doing was talking to a friend?

“Jungkook!” 

His name flew out of you angrily, just as the two of you reached the car.

He froze for a moment, and then turned, eyes hard like two glass balls of obsidian black.

You finally caught up with him, confused and hurt at the way he was treating you.  It made absolutely no sense.  

“Why are you mad at me?” “I’m not mad.” You rolled your eyes, “Obviously you are.  I’m not stupid.  So why are you mad?” “I’m not mad,” He answered unlocking the car and - despite his apparent fury - opening the passenger door for you, “I just find it sweet that you and Namjoon seem to get on so well.”

He slammed his own car door shut and your fingers twitched as you clicked in your seatbelt.

“You’re being stupid.” He turned to you again, his eyes wide, “Sorry what?  This coming from the woman that basically pissed on me in front of Jihyo to mark her territory?” Ok.  Now you were mad.

“How the fuck can you even compare the two?”  You couldn’t believe how irrational he was being, “She was literally all over you.” “So was Namjoon!”

“Oh my god.”  You tugged a hand through your hair, “You’re an idiot.” “I’m an idiot am I?  For finding it uncomfortable that my wife and my best friend spent the evening flirting right in front of me?” “Why do you even care?”  Your eyes were watering with angry tears but you bit them back, “You made it very clear that you aren’t interested in making this marriage work the way I want it to.  So what does it matter if I flirt with Namjoon?” You knew maybe your words weren’t the wisest.  Perhaps you should’ve assured him that the reality was all you’d spoken to Namjoon about was how much you loved your oblivious husband.

But he’d hurt you.  You sort of wanted to hurt him back.

“Right,” He seethed, “So it’s not alright for me to have an affair, but totally fine for you to?”

Your heart clenched.

“Oh my god.  Oh MY GOD.  Jungkook what the fuck?  We were talking about you for god’s sake.  Okay?!”  You pinched the bridge of your nose and felt the tears catch on the edge of your fingers, “What the hell?  Why would I ever cheat on you?  Not only am I completely in love with you but Namjoon is your best friend!  Jesus.”

The words were like lava spilling from your mouth, hardening everything they touched.

You couldn’t take it back.  It was all out there in the open.

Completely in love with you, you’d said.

Shit.

You squeezed your eyes shut, counting to ten.  Waiting for something.  Anything.

After a moment, your husband cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry.”

Your pulse jumped.

“What?” You opened your eyes and when you looked at Jungkook, he was already regarding you with something… Different.  It wasn’t the same affection he usually regarded you with.  It was… Deeper.  You didn’t know what it was.

But it sort of scared you.  In a good way.

“I said I’m sorry.  You’re right.  I don’t… I don’t know what came over me.”  He shook his head and tugged a hand through his hair, “I was...Jealous.”

The word fell like a stone between the two of you.

“What?”  Your voice was like the wind, almost, “Why would you be jealous?” He smiled - small and gently - and shrugged, “You’re my wife.  That means something, doesn’t it?  So I don’t - I wasn’t thinking straight.  I reacted badly.  Forgive me.”

Your heart felt like it was going to fall out of your chest. 

“So it was a possessive thing,” You answered, licking your bottom lip.  Your husband’s eyes flickered to your mouth, “You wanted to stake your claim on me.”

He shook his head, “No.  It was more than that.”  He clicked his tongue, “I was jealous that you weren’t with me.  He made you laugh.  I hated that.”

Now you were sure you must be dreaming. 

There was no way your husband was saying these things.

You tucked your lip between your teeth, “What does that mean?” He shook his head, eyes searching your face before they fell on your mouth again.

“I don’t know.”

He leaned in slightly and you held your breath.

“Are you going to kiss me?”  You whispered - nerves wracking through your body hotly.  

It felt like the world stood still for a moment.  And then Jungkook’s eyes softened like butter. “Yeah.  I am.  If that’s okay?”

You nodded stiffly. And then he kissed you.

Your body hummed to life at the contact eyes falling closed immediately as you allowed your husband to bundle you up in his arms.  It was uncomfortable of course - cramped in the front seat of the car - but Junkook picked you up and pulled you towards him, anyway.

You giggled as your dress caught on the gear shift, and your husband laughed, pressing his forward to yours, settling you into his lap.

“You look beautiful,” He told you honestly, eyes earnest, “Did I tell you that already?” You shook your head - breathless and hot all over.

Jungkook - your Jungkook - was kissing you.

He was kissing you.  And he seemed to be really enjoying himself.

“Well you do,” He said decidedly, pressing his lips to your collarbone as he pushed the strap of your dress further down your arm, “You look beautiful.” Your heart caught in your chest, and it felt almost like you were on fire.

Everything Jungkook’s lips touched tingled, and even though you knew this was actually happening, it still felt like some kind of vivid dream.

“Thank you,” You whispered breathlessly, not knowing what else to say.

Jungkook smiled softly at your words, his mouth moving towards your collarbone and pressing kisses against the skin there. 

“I love these freckles,” He groaned, tracing the dots with the tip of his nose, “So cute.” Your heart flipped and you sighed, “Thank you.” 

He pulled away a little and pressed his forward to yours, chuckling softly.

“That’s all you have to say?”

You felt dazed as you stared back at him, “Huh?”

“Thank you,” He whispered, pressing a kiss to your brow, “It’s all you have to say, it seems.”

“I’m a little…” You cleared your throat and felt a shiver crawl up your spine as Jungkook tucked some hair behind your ear, “Lost for words.”

Your husband smiled - self-satisfied and a little proud, “C’mere.”

He leaned towards you and once again you were swept up by his kisses.  It felt as though you were spinning out of axis - but it was so good.  Nothing had ever come close to this and you told yourself that if this was it - if this was the only time Jungkook was going to kiss you - then you were going to make it count.

You brought your shaky hands up to his chest, intending to push his jacket off his shoulders, but losing your nerve along the way.  Instead you tightened your grip on the material of his blazer.  You felt him smirk against your lips.

“Want me to take it off?” He asked, after a moment, pulling away so he could search your face for an answer.

You expected him to be cocky - smug - but instead his gaze was just questioning.  Your heart twisted. 

“Yeah,” You nodded furiously, “Please.”

He smiled again, and did as you’d told him to, removing the jacket and throwing it somewhere to your left.  You continued kissing him with fervor - making up for your lack of experience with enthusiasm - and after a while you felt his lips venture towards your throat… 

And then lower to the valley of your breasts.

And - for some reason unbeknownst to you - you froze.

Jungkook took that as a cue to stop and pulled away, a dark brow arched.

“Sorry.”  His hair was all out of place, “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to-”

“No, I liked it.”  You assured him, feeling your heartbeat pulling out of your chest, “I just… This is my first time doing anything like…. This.”

“Right.”  He still seemed unconvinced.

“But I’m enjoying myself.  I was enjoying myself.  All of it.” 

Jungkook’s eyes were warmer than you’d ever seen them.  He pushed your hair out of your face and bit his bottom lip.

“We should probably stop anyway.”  

Your heart fell. 

“Oh.”

“We’re in the front seat of a car - anybody could walk by,” He added on, eyes following your expression carefully, “Not exactly a good idea.”

“Okay,” You nodded, suddenly realising the position you were in.

Jungkook had pushed the straps of your dress down your arm - exposing more of your cleavage than you probably were comfortable showing in public - your hair was a mess, your lips were puffy and your make up was probably all smudged.

You made to climb off your husband’s lap, before Jungkook grabbed the back of your head gently.  He forced you to look at him.

“I was enjoying myself, too.  For the record.”

And then he kissed you again, once, soundly - on the mouth.

God. 

You really did love him.

//

The days after your tryst in the car were filled with uncertainty.

Jungkook had driven the both of you home in almost complete silence - save for the murmuring of the radio - and when you climbed into bed that night, the only thing he offered you was an arm to cuddle into.

You’d taken it of course - gladly - and every night since then the two of you moved towards one another as soon as the bedside lamp clicked off.

But it wasn’t enough for you.

And apart from night time snuggling - nothing much had changed about your relationship.

But after having felt Jungkook’s lips on your own - felt the way his kisses seared straight through you - you wanted that feeling again.  And despite what he’d said about enjoying himself… You wondered if maybe that was just to spare your feelings.

Perhaps he’d realised all at once how little he was attracted to you.

Maybe that’s why he hadn’t made a move since.

The thought caused your throat to clog up, and your heart to clench, so you pushed it all back down, trying not to think about it.

Instead you found another pet project - this one a pair of dark blue jeans that Jungkook had ripped a hole through.  You’d heard him complaining to his butler, Minhyuk, about how they were his favourite pair, and you wanted to fix them for him.

You sat in the same armchair you always did - tucked into the corner of the master bedroom - and listened to the radio mumbling gently in the background.  It was some stupid cheesy love song, but still the lyrics caused the same feelings you tried so very hard to push back down, to bubble up.

A figure in the doorway paused your actions and you looked up.

It was your husband.  His eyes were unreadable.

“Jungkook,” You smiled softly, “Hi.”

You couldn’t hide your content at seeing him - could never hide how happy he made you - and you resigned yourself to stop trying.

He didn’t say a word.  Instead he walked over to you carefully and fingered the material of the jeans.

“Oh.”  You laughed gently, “I just heard you talking about them the other day.  Thought I could pull my weight around here.”

Your movements had stopped, but Jungkook’s big hand came to rest over your own.

He bent down so that his face was level with yours.

“You didn’t have to do that.”  His eyes were like two balls of fire now, melting you from the inside out.

You felt your bottom lip tremble, “I know.”

And then his mouth was on yours.  He took the jeans out of your hand and set them to one side, grabbing you by the waist and hoisting you up as if you weighed nothing at all.

You giggled a little, and when Jungkook pulled away to watch you laugh, he couldn’t help the chuckle that slipped out.

“You’re so…”  He didn’t finish the sentence, instead leading you over to the bed and laying you down.

His eyes were questioning as he played with the hem of your t-shirt, and without a second thought you lifted your arms, letting him pull it over your head.  It was embarrassing of course.

The first time Jungkook would see you in underwear and you were wearing the most unflattering beige bra.  But he didn’t seem to mind.

He helped you unhook the bra, and when your hands came to cover your breasts, he stopped you.

“Let me see them.  Please.”  His eyes were hot and you felt like you were suffocating almost.

You nodded wordlessly and pulled your arms down, watching as Jungkook took in your naked torso.  

“Fuck.  So beautiful.”  He whispered, leaning down and pressing his mouth against your breasts. 

You arched against him, feeling as though you were going to explode just from that one touch, and Jungkook smiled, “So sensitive, too.”

His lips moved to your nipple, and he sucked gently, watching you attentively.  His body was completely taut - waiting for your reactions - and when you moaned wantonly he smirked.

“Fuck,” You whispered and your husband clicked his tongue teasingly.

“Such profanity.”  He smirked and tugged your trousers down slowly, “Guess we’ll have to clean your mouth out with soap, Angel.” The nickname was like a surge of warmth, straight to your core.  He’d barely touched you and already you were panting like you could no longer take it.

“Please Jungkook,” You begged, not even knowing what you were begging for, “Please.” “Alright, shhh, shhh.  I’ll give you what you want baby,” His lips played with the hem of your panties, and after a moment he pulled those down too, “C’mere.” And then his mouth was on you and it felt like time itself had stood still.  You arched your back almost completely off the bed - and if it wasn’t for Jungkook’s steadying hands on your thighs you might have melted to the ground right then.

He licked at you diligently, and you found yourself winding tighter and tighter like a coil about to break from the pressure.

“Oh god… Oh god…”

His eyes bore straight through yours, and you felt like you might pass out from the intensity.  

“That’s it,” He whispered, removing his mouth and using his hands instead, “Cum for me Angel.”

And finally, a wave of indescribable pleasure washed over you.  It was so strong you thought you might shatter into a thousand pieces.

Jungkook coaxed you through your climax, and when you finally came down from your high - your bones like jelly - he climbed up your body and pressed a kiss to your lips.

“A thank you,” He smiled boyishly, “For the jeans.”

Your eyes were round and wide as you stared up at him, “But don’t you want-” 

“Nope.  Don’t need it.”

Jungkook pulled you under the covers, wrapping an arm around your waist and bringing you towards his chest. 

“But  Jungkook-”

“Sleep Angel.”  A soft kiss was pressed to your forehead, “We’ve got plenty of time for everything else.”

And in that heart-wrenching moment you realised that Jeon Jungkook not only owned your heart - he owned your body, mind and soul too.

“Okay,” You whispered, pressing a kiss against the firm plane of his chest, “Goodnight.” 

That night, you slept like a baby.

//

[phoenixyfriend]

Vader Tries to Help

People encouraged me to share the dead dove concept! Yay! It’s a horrible concept with an undertone of comedic absurdity in the sense that you keep waiting to see what awful, incredibly stupid thing Vader is going to do next. Like it’s horrifying but it’s also very dumb.

By moving forward into the fic, you acknowledge that this is intended to be dark and liable to be upsetting, and that you are taking responsibility for your own engagement with the material.

This AU was helped along on discord by several parties but tbh I’m not sure how many of them actually want to be named.

Warnings: Mutual Extremely Dubious Consent (forced by a third party), drugging, irrational behavior (Vader), nonconsensual body modification, forced pregnancy, imprisonment, threatened torture of a child (not followed through on)

----------

Vader captures Obi-Wan a few years into the Empire. Because Vader is Anakin, but even worse on the emotional bullshit, he decides that he needs to keep Obi-Wan safe but harmless. Vader also got Luke in the whole 'capturing Kenobi' situation, so part of what Vader's thinking about all this is that Obi-Wan tried to protect The Baby and so Vader kind of owes him, obviously.

Palpatine lets him keep Obi-Wan "safe," because threatening Obi-Wan is a convenient way to make Vader shut up and do what he's told. Palpatine can kind of tell that threatening the toddler would make Vader lose his shit and attempt to kill good ol' Palps, so threatening the middle-aged depressed alcoholic being kept in Vader's guest room with Force-nullifying cuffs is pretty good. It's an additional layer of emotional torture on top of the electrocution of Vader himself!

Vader has Obi-Wan taking care of Luke, mostly, because Vader has Obligations and A Job, and Obi-Wan wouldn't hurt Luke, duh. He might try to escape with the kid, but he won't be successful, and Obi-Wan will definitely put Luke's safety first, so that probably won't happen.

This is all fairly normal for a variety of AUs, granted, and not very dark.

But see, Obi-Wan behaves. He's aware of how tenuous the situation is for him and his charge, so he plays nice. And Vader decides to reward that.

By giving him Cody.

There's an implied thought process there that Obi-Wan was fond of Cody, and Cody was fond back, and now that the Jedi aren't around, they can follow through instead of worrying about some silly Code. Vader's nullified the orders to kill all the Jedi, of course, possibly dosed their food with an aphrodisiac so they don't try to talk themselves out of What They Obviously Want.

Now, we’re going to make it a little darker, because why not make things worse by having Vader try to make things better?

Vader somehow twisted himself around to encouraging them to have a baby. This is accomplished through a combination of Sith Magic and nonconsensual surgery, and lots of questionable drugs.

Obi-Wan just wakes up in a hospital bed with a womb one morning, and is informed of the surgery then and there, after it’s already happened. The droid telling him about it is just like "in the Lord Vader's infinite kindness--" and Obi-Wan just.

Anakin.

What the fuck.

What in the actual fuck made you think this was a good idea.

(The Sith Chemicals, probably.)

I feel like Palpatine would maybe even order the pregnancy induction just to torture them by proxy because that's like eight levels of Fuck No and he barely has to do anything except tell Vader that he'd like to see what kind of children a Jedi Master like Obi-Wan has.

Luke needs friends, doesn't he?

Obi-Wan is having some very complicated emotions about all of this because Vader is, in his own absolutely insane way, trying to help.

Anakin wanted babies and Padme wanted babies so clearly, if Obi-Wan and Cody are in love, then they also want babies!

Cody and Obi-Wan very well might not be in love. Anakin definitely could have misinterpreted. It’s probably more angsty if they're just friends who ended up in this bullshit together.

(He's taking baby fever to new and somewhat horrifying heights, because... he would adore Obi's kids.)

(His family button is suprisingly large for a mass murderer.)

Vader Kindly Informs Bail That Obi-Wan Is Alive And Unharmed. Bail was a friend of Obi-Wan's, telling him this is only helpful and will keep Alderaan from getting more rebellious out of personal insult. Obviously.

Vader is almost offended when Bail implies he might hurt Obi-Wan. He kept his son safe, he owes him. Speaking of, don’t you have a child? How old is she, again? It would be Good for her to make friends, wouldn’t it? :)

Palpatine is just like... sitting back and eating evil popcorn as Vader runs around, ruining people's lives by trying to be less of The Worst than before.

Palps barely has to do anything, Anakin's fucking it up on his own!

Could have been just a sly "Kenobi is so attached to young Luke, but now that you've been reunited with your son, perhaps he'd be happier with a child of his own?" Come at it from both "make Obi-Wan happy" and "protect your relationship with Luke" angles.

Vader: I can't have babies anymore due to what you did to me on Mustafar. Obi-Wan: So you're punishing me by forcing me to have them instead? Vader: No! Children are a gift that you have been cruelly denied by the Order that held us in its chains! Obi-Wan: ...oh, right, you're insane. Forgot about that. Somehow.

Big dramatic speech about how the Jedi Order spent so long making them take lives, he’s giving Obi-Wan a chance to create it! To put something good and bright into the world!

Poor Cody is like. "General, I am very fond of you but I'm having a million panic attacks at the same time because of the mind control, and also Vader is under the impression that we're in love and I need to be your stud? I wasn't aware you could have children--" "I can't. Or at least, I couldn't, but Anakin is... creative." "...what."

I don't want to actually objectify Cody in the narrative past the point that Obi-Wan himself is, because nnnnngh racism and clone stuff, so I'm going to say Cody was in love with Obi-Wan, and would have been okay with at least discussing the whole baby schtick if not for the absolutely horrible circumstances.

Like if the war had ended normally, and Obi-Wan had expressed a desire to retire, unlikely as that was, then Cody may have suggested a dinner, and they could have gotten married and then eventually adoption...

(Cody had a lot of fantasies he didn’t let himself think about too hard.)

But no. It's this... weird Vader-inspired bullshit.

I'm just so invested in Vader trying to help but making things legitimately a million times worse.

He wants to help :) Oh god, he wants to help.

Why aren't people more appreciative of how hard I'm helping them? - the Anakin Skywalker story

With less time to stew and also getting handed what he wants, Vader could absolutely flip on a dime the second he saw Luke being protected, and go from “I hate you” to remembering that Obi-Wan said he loved him, and now he must keep Obi-Wan safe out of debt and he just... he’s playing house. 

Vader throws Obi-Wan a baby shower after the pregnancy is confirmed. Bail is invited, because Obi-Wan doesn't have a lot of friends still alive. Vader decides Bail is top of the Obi-Wan’s Friends List.

This is the first time they've seen each other in two years. Obi-Wan is heavily pregnant despite Bail knowing full well he didn't have the plumbing for that before the Empire rose. Cody is there and emotionally exhausted but more lucid than most troopers. Luke is running up to Leia because New Friend!!!

....there may be MORE of the 212th and 501st at the baby shower, with “kill all Jedi” orders revoked, of course. But it will keep the children safe!! And Cody and Obi-Wan can see their surviving friends!!

Cody: I'd be much happier to see my surviving troopers if they didn't all still have chips in their heads. Obi-Wan: I feel much the same. Vader: [404 error]

Bail and his family might be there at blaster point, but aren't you happy to see them, Obi-Wan??

Obi-Wan's endless trauma is honestly somewhat curtailed by the incessant need to facepalm at Vader’s bullshit

Obi-Wan and Cody both outwardly have a very "there are much worse people I could be stuck with in this situation but obviously I wish I'd had a choice, no hard feelings" attitude at each other.

Internally, Cody is suffering because this is NOT how he wanted his crush to be realized, and Obi-Wan is just suffering, period.

Cody: How did he even choose which of us ends up pregnant? Obi-Wan: He thinks I need to be protected, and that he needs to keep me safe. Cody: ...he does realize that you're better at-- Obi-Wan: Cody, he's completely lost it. No! He doesn't realize!

I feel like over the course of the year or two this plot unravels towards Palpatine getting murder-deposed and Anakin getting locked down, part of the driving force to Vader not being Vader anymore is that Luke actually really loves Uncle Obi and always starts fussing and going "Ben's sad" whenever Vader dismisses what Obi-Wan wants in favor of what Vader thinks Obi-Wan wants, and Vader can't deny his child anything.

Luke cries because Palpatine Feels Wrong like, once or twice, and Anakin goes “oh, okay, assassination time.”

[joestarsecrettecnique]

I am so very sick and tired of the toxicity that’s been poisoning the snk fandom as of the last couple years. I gave myself time to digest the ending and my feelings on it, before embarking in a journey to debunk many misconceptions and critiques I’ve seen floating in the fandom.

By the way, by no means I think this ending is perfect. I think this is textbook execution by Isayama to tie together every loose end left behind in an orderly manner, and I think that it was a bit rushed and oversimplified. I would’ve wanted more of Eren and Armin’s conversation, more of the squad realizing what his true goal had been, and some narrative choices I don’t 100% agree with. But still, what I saw in other fans’ critiques post 139 frankly appalled me, so I feel the need to make this. Also, this obviously are my own interpretations, I am not Isayama himself lol

“Ew, so Eren did pull a Lelouch after all”

No, Eren did not pull a Lelouch. While his action and the final result may seem similar, I find very different nuances between the two. Lelouch wanted for the whole world to be united in fighting against him, and thus he made himself the world’s greatest enemy. His will to turn himself into a monster was selfless. Eren didn’t give a damn about the world, he had no noble intentions whatsoever. He said it in chapter 122, his goal was to protect Paradis and, more specifically, his closest friends. He turned himself into a monster, killed 80% of human population, and endangered the lives of those very friends he wanted to protect, so that by stopping him, those friends could be safe. Eren had no intentions to break out of the cycle of hatred or unite the world against himself, he just wanted to give his friends a chance to survive, and that is not selfless, it’s selfish. Eren’s goal was incredibly selfish, and biased, and driven by his feelings instead of rationality. Nothing like Lelouch!

Now this, this I myself am not the greatest fan of. I feel like it makes that great scene in chapter 122 loose a bit of its strength, Ymir obeying the king for 2000 years just because she loved him. Honestly, I always thought there was a bit of Stockholm Syndrome going on, but I didn’t think it would be the only reason. However, like it or not, it’s undeniable that it makes perfect sense in the narrative that aot has always strived to tell. Love has been a theme strongly woven in the story, and it also draws a great parallel between Karl Fritz/Ymir and Eren/Mikasa. Ymir was a slave to her love for King Fritz, just like Mikasa was a slave to her love for Eren, in that she struggled to accept reality until the very end despite the atrocities that Eren committed. Ymir stayed bound by her love for King Fritz, until she saw Mikasa break from her own poisoned love, aknwoledge it, and kill Eren despite of it, or maybe because of it. Only Ymir knows that one, heh. But the point is, Mikasa showed Ymir that she could break free of a toxic love, she was that someone that Ymir had been waiting for to finally free her of her burden.

“What? But that makes no sense!”

Now, on my first read, I simply thought that Eren had ordered Dina to avoid eating Berthold, and that he had made her walk down that road unaware that his mother was trapped (because we know that the Attack Titan’s future memories aren’t infallible, there are still gaps), killing her indirectly. I’ve since then read some theories stating that Eren willingly killed his own mum in orther to give kid himself a reason to feel enough hatred to kickstart the whole story. Honestly, I like this version maybe more! But let me explain to you why this is not a plothole, like many people think. In this same chapter, we have Eren explaining how the Founder’s power works in synergy with the Attack’s: “There’s no past or future, they all exist at once”. This means that time travel in aot doesn’t work in a manner where Eren extracts himself from time and space, and from a separate realm he operates on the past. The way I understood it, the mechanics works kind of like Tokyo Revengers’ time travel. MInd you, I only watched episode one, so my understanding might be jackshit.

Spoilers for Tokyo Revengers’ episode one. In the show, the main character loses consciousness and finds himself reliving his past. He interacts with someone in this “new” past, and when he wakes up again in the present, past events had been over-written by the changes he made. I think this is how aot timetravel works, with the exception that, since past and future (and present, of course) all happen at once, side by side, there is no old past to be rewritten, neither a future to return to, and present Eren wouldn’t be aware of the changes that his future self would make. It creates sort of a time paradox, yes, in the sense that there’s a loop where present Eren’s mom has been eaten because future Eren, in the future, operated on the past by causing past Eren’s mom to be eaten, but all these Erens are one and the same, as all timelines exist at once.

“Boo-hoo they ruined Eren’s character, he’s such a wimp!”

I have to confess (isn’t this appalling, that this is a thing that I have to confess, what the actual fuck), I am an Eren stan. I absolutely do not consider myself a Jaegerist, I think Eren’s option was better than Zeke’s, yes, but it was morally wrong and awful and he absolutely was not only in the wrong, but also if he wasn’t dead I’d want him to be punished for his crimes. I didn’t particularly enjoy him pre-timeskip, and I started to like him because I found his evolution fascinating. I wanted to understand his motives, what was going on in his head, he was a puzzle that I wanted to solve. Maybe because I’m a psychologist, who knows. Anyways, if you’re an Eren stan only because he acted like a chad and now you cry his character was ruined, I’m sorry to say, you never understood him. Eren was not a god, he was not a strategist playing 5d chess with perfect rationality, Eren was the same he has always been. He was a young man spun along by his passions. Eren feels things with burning intensity, he lets himself be driven by his emotions. He almost flattened the world because he was disappointed that he and his friends weren’t the only human beings inhabiting it, for fuck’s sake, he’s always been irrational, selfish, and immature. Of course he doesn’t wanna die, of course he want’s to live with all of them. You really expected a 15 year old hot-headed brat to become Thanos after he suddenly found out he killed his own mum and all his dreams had been crushed? Of course he felt conflicted, of course he suffered, of course he wanted to live, “because he was born in this world”. Honestly, when I read his meltdown, I felt relieved that his character hadn’t been turned on its head, it was heartbreaking to see that he really was the same brat he’d always been, that he’d tried to steel himself to do horrible shit for his friends’ sake and that he felt bad about it! It made me appreciate his character a lot more, I felt nostalgic towards the times when I was irritated by his screaming and pouting. Suffice to say, this is also my answer to all those people that believe his internal monologue to convince himself the Rumbling was what he really wanted were bullshit since he “pulled a Lelouch”. How can it be bullshit? Maybe he planned to be stopped, but he also said that he thought he would’ve still done it if they hadn’t. He also said that killing a majority of the population was something that he wanted to do, not a byproduct of the alliance not stopping him early enough, because with the world’s militaries in shambles Paradis would’ve had time to prepare accordingly. Anyways, of course he needed to convince himself to do this awful thing even if he knew he wasn’t gonna succeed completely, can you imagine how horrible it would be to know your only chance is to kill thousands?

I also maybe think it was because of the spine centipede thingy? When Eren says “I don’t know why I did it, I wanted to, I had to”, he gets this faraway look on his face and we get a zoom in on one of his eyes, which is drawn very interestingly and kinda looks like the Reiss’ eyes when they were bound by the War Renounce Pact? So maybe it was also the centipede’s drive to survive and multiplicate that forced Eren to do the Rumbling so that its life wouldn’t be endangered. I don’t know how much I like this, I feel like it takes some agency away from Eren and also makes it feel like he’s not as responsible for the genocide he committed that we initially though, which mhhh maybe not, let’s have him take full responsibility for this. As I said, I’m not defending Isayama blindly, I do have some issues myself with what went down.

“What the fuck, did he say thank you for the genocide?”

Guys c’mon, this is like,, reading comprehension. Yes, it was poorly worded and a bit rushed, but by now you should have full context to make an educated guess on the fact that no, he didn’t thank him for committing a genocide what the fuck you guys. Armin started bringing up the idea that maybe they should have Eren eaten because he was doing morally questionable things ever since the Marley Arc, which for manga readers was like what, 2018? Isayama has been showing for three years how not okay Armin was with Eren’s actions, how could it make sense for him to thank him for a genocide? You see some poorly worded stuff, and your first instinct is to ignore eleven years’ worth of consistent characterization to jump to the worst interpretation possible? Let’s go over this sentences and reconstruct what they mean.

“Eren, thank you. You became a mass murdere for our sake. I won’t let this error go to waste”. Armin recognizes that Eren had no other choice, but does not condone it. He clearly calls it an error, which feels like an euphemism but for all we know the japanese original term used could’ve been harsher. Point is, he clearly states he think what Eren did was wrong. But he recognizes that Eren’s awful doing opened up a path for Paradis to break out of the cycle of hatred. Not a certainty, but an opportunity. He thanks Eren for giving them this chance, and promises not to waste it, even if it was born out of an atrocity. He thanks Eren for sacrificing himself for their sake, even if he doesn’t agree with the fruit of his labor, so to speak. He’s thanking Eren for the opportunity that his actions gave them, not for the actions themselves! Where the hell do you read “thank you for the genocide” guys, sheesh. I’m mad at y’all.

“How could Eren send MIkasa memories if she’s an Ackerman and an Asian, and their memories can’t be manipulated by the Founder? I call plothole!”

Now, here we’re going into speculation territory, so you’ve been warned. I don’t think that that information they gave us was true, about Ackermans being immune to memory manipulation. We know at least that the clan is in some way subject to the Founder’s power, or Mikasa and Levi wouldn’t have been called in the Paths by Eren multiple times. Stories never being entirely true or false, or relativity, better said, has been a strong theme in the story, we know this by Marley’s and Eldia’s different accounts of history compared to the actual Ymir backstory we got. So who’s to say that the belief that Ackermans aren’t manipulable is the truth? Maybe they’re just hard to control, not impossible. We know that by the Founder’s ability Eren experienced past and future happening simultaneously, so he could’ve very well been trying to send those memories into Mikasa’s head ever since the beginning of the story, only just succeeding in chapter 138. It would at least explain Ackerman’s headaches as Eren trying to manipulate their memories and failing. Of course, we’d need Levi side of thing to know for certain, as he had headaches too and we weren’t shown in the chapter if Eren spoke to him in paths like he did with the rest of the squad. We know he didn’t talk to Pieck, but he even went and spoke to Annie who he basically hadn’t seen since Stohess, so I hope he spoke to Levi too. Who knows, maybe he even spoke with Hanji, but she died before she could remember. I wish we were shown that, honestly, I’m sad that it was skipped, especially after Levi said in an earlier chapter that “there was so much he wanted to tell Eren”. Fingers crossed for the anime to expand on it.

“So Historia’s pregnancy was useless”

What? No, it wasn’t useless! Eren told her to get pregnant to save her life, so that she wouldn’t be turned into the Beast Titan. If she became the Beast Titan, then Eren would’ve had to enact the plan with her instead of Zeke, and yeah, Ymir brought the power of the titans with her, so theoretically Titan Shifter Historia would’ve had her time limit removed, but we saw that the only way for the Alliance to stop the Rumbling was killing Zeke, so Historia would’ve had to die. Useless to say, when Eren talked to her about his plan, she was very vocally against it, so I don’t think she would’ve helped Eren with his plan. It was Zeke or nothing, and the only way for Zeke to keep his titan was for Historia to be unable to be turned, hence the pregnancy. Did y’all read the same thing I read? Anyways, she could’ve definitely been handled better, but she wasn’t necessary to the plot anymore, and her being removed from it in such a way was sad, yes, but it made sense.

“They massacred Reiner!”

Yeah, can’t really say anything about this. I definitely understand the sentiment behind this scene, which I appreciate. It’s to show that thanks to his Titan being removed and the times of peace approaching, Reiner was finally able to shed the weight he bore on his shoulders and “regress” to his more carefree persona he had when he thought he was a soldier, instead of a warrior. I am very happy for him, and I think it’s a nice conclusion to his arc, that he’s finally happy, but it could’ve been portrayed in a less comic relief-y way. It just sledgehammers all his characterization. Feels surreal that we saw him attempt suicide a couple month ago in the anime and now he’s sniffing Historia’s handwriting.

Guys, this absolutely sends me. There are people who unironically believe Eren actually reincarnated in a bird? Guys. It makes no sense, it violates every rule that Isayama established for his universe’s power system. How could he even reincarnate in a bird? Guys, c’mon, this is symbolical! Birds have been heavily used in aot to portray freedom, and this is a nice, poetic, symbolic way to show that Eren who lived his whole life chasing freedom and never actually got it, is finally free, like a bird, now that he’s dead. It’s also a pretty explicit nod to Odin, I think. Aot is heavily inspired by Norse Mithology, and I think there were some pretty clear parallels between Eren and Odin/Loki in the later arcs of the story. Eren has been shown to “communicate” through birds like with Falco in chapter 81, or with Armin in chapter 131. Emphasis on “communicate” because again, this is symbolic, I don’t think he actually spoke through the birds, he simply talked to them via paths, but birds are associated with Eren’s character (see also the wings of freedom, y’know?) and the shots were framed so to give the impression that he was talking through the birds, but he wasn’t. Symbolism. Anyway, I really think they were supposed to be a nod to Odin’s crows.

Aaaaand that should be it! Even though I most definitely forgot some other criticism on the chapter, it’s crazy the amount of negativity floating around. Hope I didn’t bore you!

[punkscowardschampions]

Edie & Billie

Edie: You’re not at home, are you?

Billie: Why?

Edie: ‘cos Rih has to babysit and you are the last phone a friend that needs to be eliminated 👾

Billie: 💀🔋 if anyone but you is asking

Edie: that’s the 👻

Edie: Even convinced Jun to get the fuck out

Billie: with what 👻? 👽 ?👾 🤡 ?🎃 🤖? madness

Edie: 👻 ish

Edie: there’s some exhibit at some museum, idk, it actually wasn’t my idea so I can’t take cred

Billie: 🦖 🦴 🦕 was next guess

Billie: safe that the 👻 🔮 came through with a plan

Edie: 👽 more like

Edie: that’s the best I can do with emojis anyway

Billie: 💬 💬 💬 💬

Edie: I met the most perfect boy

Billie: Dude not you catching a dose too 🚱

Edie: I’ve gone outside of the gene pool so it is not the same thing at all

Billie: 👍 start

Billie: Go on, what else has he got going for him?

Edie: Only everything

Edie: he’s perfect, I just said

Edie: You know that really tall, ridiculously good-looking boy in Rih’s year

Billie: 🤨 💭 ?

Billie: it’ll come to me

Billie: Aha! The one who [some rave story she’s heard of something wild he did]

Edie: I don’t know how you didn’t just KNOW but yeah

Edie: that sounds like him 🤩

Billie: he’s been working at ⛽️ [the location of said petrol station like whatever road it’s on] nights I’ve gone in

Edie: That’s good to know

Edie: I can go in too now

Edie: 💡

Billie: 👻

Edie: It’s so weird how we met actually

Edie: the thread has 90k people on it, what are the chances, how does that happen

Billie: spooky how many posts you could’ve missed before, weird if he ain’t wrote any til today & then replied to yours 🔮 🛸 🧲

Edie: He’s deffo been on there before, I recognised the username

Edie: but he mentioned somewhere in Dublin so then I knew he was at least from around here

Edie: I’d have never talked to him before, it’s deffo fate

Billie: fated if he agreed the monster was a copout reveal

Edie: He’s not 12, so duh

Edie: He’s so cool

Billie: It’s defs him?

Edie: Come on, like I’m gonna get catfished

Billie: this is wild odds, all I’m saying

Edie: It would be weirder if they worked out where I went to School, and then picked some boy who also went to that School to use

Edie: anyway, he’s sent me stuff today so I know it’s really him

Billie: he does look like someone to use for 🎣 but I can picture him on that thread loads

Edie: 🤤🤤🤤

Edie: Do you think he’ll come see me

Billie: yeah, why not

Edie: Aforementioned hotness, he could get ANY girl

Edie: I don’t know who he has gone out with before

Edie: didn’t he go out with one of Rih’s friends for a while?

Billie: [a pause while she has a convo with her friends about this because she has many and they’re mostly lads so at least some of them must know him or have some info]

Billie: Last seen with Lexie but that was time ago & nobody since

Edie: Hmm

Edie: I’m nothing like Lexie

Billie: he ain’t still with her & wasn’t for long, I’d assume he’s looking for different

Edie: and that’s me 🥴

Edie: charming 😏

Billie: 👽

Billie: She hasn’t said anything ☢️⚠️ I’m hearing now, that’s chill

Edie: she’s a bitch anyway, I wouldn’t trust her

Billie: if Blips is accurate on his timeline, even she couldn’t be that much of a bitch

Edie: ?

Billie: Everything with his sister was fresh then, apparently

Edie: Oh

Edie: I remember her, she had a nice smile

Billie: I don’t think I ever met her, it’s gone out my head if I did

Billie: the memorial he made for her is sicker than anything the teachers would’ve though, we hang there constantly

Billie: Take this info with 🧂 yeah? the source is Blips

Edie: She was a lot older

Edie: would’ve been, your paths probably didn’t cross

Edie: makes sense

Edie: he would’ve wanted someone around

Billie: makes sense he’s not thinking straight to pick Lexie to be that someone, but idk man, you can have your fill of pity quick enough

Edie: Maybe someone in her family died? I can see that and making that connection

Edie: not a sibling obviously or we’d know but she’s pretty dramatic, like all Rih’s friends are

Billie: not above milking a dead nan, bet

Edie: 💭 exactly

Edie: Poor Liam, that’s kinda fucking gross

Billie: bad taste in my mouth from being the messenger

Edie: I won’t say it was ages ago because that’d feel a bit like spitting on her grave but you know

Edie: fuck Lizzie or whatever her name is

Edie: she’s probably had 100 lads since then

Billie: Yeah, fuck Lizzie

Billie: what’s next for you & him?

Edie: I don’t know

Edie: I sort of asked him to come ‘round but not just like that

Edie: so his answer was as open-ended, I guess

Edie: I really hope he does though

Billie: he doesn’t know you’re unshockable & didn’t wanna freak you out by coming through the window on a real dark & stormy night

Billie: tracks if Lexie is his point of ref, she’s known for saying what she don’t mean

Edie: ugh, she’s really fucked that up for me

Edie: I should go cockblock her too

Edie: that’s a good idea actually

Billie: You could roll up if he’s working, let him know you’re not alike

Edie: If I roll up on her, he will 😈

Billie: 😶 cos idk how he rolls

Edie: You think he’ll be 😱 / 🤬

Billie: He could think you’re jealous, which would put you looking like her 🤡

Billie: lads always go to that headspace

Edie: most lads

Edie: like your mates who can’t spell their own names without checking with their ma first

Edie: I don’t think he’s like that

Billie: I’ll bite, what’s he like?

Edie: emojis weren’t covering it but I dunno if I even can with actual words either

Edie: he’s like no one else I’ve ever spoken to, I wasn’t bored, and he wasn’t weirded out

Billie: You weren’t even a bit bored?

Edie: nah

Edie: I felt like I was barely keeping up

Billie: 🤯

Edie: but he wasn’t trying to be impressive how lads do, because that isn’t

Billie: he was waiting for whatever he sent to impress you, which worked

Edie: he sent me lots of stuff

Edie: not 🍆 pics

Billie: he looks like he’d be a fuckboy

Edie: right?

Edie: he’s got too much about him though

Edie: I would’ve gone with it if he wanted, he had the chance

Billie: 🤯🤯

Edie: come on

Edie: you can see him

Billie: & I can hear you, you don’t say this kinda shit about anyone

Edie: I know, I’m deadly serious

Edie: 💀💀💀

Billie: What a day

Edie: Don’t tell anyone else yet though

Edie: I think he feels it too

Edie: but just in case

Billie: 🤐

Billie: he blatantly does, but that’s up to yous two to broadcast if you want, how you want

Billie: I’m just excited for the reveal 🎟 🍿 📺 🕹 📷 💻 📼 💿

Edie: He makes films too

Edie: and I’m writing a song right now

Billie: link me

Edie: [do, at least the ones that are clearly not private or whatever]

Edie: 😍

Billie: Cool, I’m gonna check these while you go 😈 on Lexie

Edie: If you hear her scream, no you didn’t

Edie: 😘✌️

Billie: not her 🩸 🦷 🦴 got it

Edie: only partly

Edie: she’s only 3rd on my shit-list, after-all

Billie: if I give you away with a new tic, no I didn’t & they’ll never convict 🤪✌️

Edie: so lucky you can shout ableism if it comes down to it

Edie: ADHD is an excuse for nothing except maybe being five minutes late 🙄

Billie: I’m not going for that with a free pass to shout out at the law 🐷 🐽 🐖 🥓

Edie: you can brag about your free pass, I only get caught when I want to ☠️✊

Billie: not a humble brag you can throw out to your new man, going off these locations I’m recognising, he’s got skills at never getting caught

Billie: How’d he get into [somewhere he should not be]?!

Edie: that’d be telling 🤫

Edie: I told you, he’s really smart

Billie: How didn’t we have a clue about him pretty much?

Edie: because he looks like a fuckboy, I suppose

Edie: you know Rih is gonna act like he’s a decade older than me because she thinks she’s so mature

Billie: 🙄

Edie: I can’t wait to call her out on her bullshit again with something new to add

Edie: can’t wait for the opposition like she’s got a leg left

Billie: She’ll run out fast, he’s cool

Edie: She’s not

Edie: but whatever, she can’t do anything

Billie: No chill, but he’s barely older, so if that’s her only 🔫

Edie: and he went out with Lexie ages ago, well, basically

Edie: she can’t act like she’s really good friends with him, I KNOW she isn’t

Billie: & she wasn’t in Lexie face not to go out with him, couldn’t cos there’s nothing wrong with him 🤷🏼‍♀️

Edie: you act like she’s rational but yeah

Edie: I don’t care, I know this is right

Edie: and what I want

Billie: She’s not, like, irrational enough to be hating on your happiness

Edie: I hate on hers

Billie: that’s different

Edie: not to her

Billie: Yeah but in terms of you & Liam

Edie: If she tries to be nice that’ll be even worse 😷

Billie: minding her own business isn’t gonna happen

Edie: I wish she’d keep hers to herself

Edie: I can’t stand it when he’s here

Edie: I’ll kill Lizzie and steal her bed

Billie: least you can stay at his soon

Edie: 😋

Billie: [frames of one of the videos cos the location is some end of summer event, why not] & you’ll be there together this year

Edie: You really think?

Billie: I don’t think you’ll be dumped quicker than Lexie

Edie: Damn fucking right

Edie: even if he was after one thing, I could do it better than her

Billie: [deletes that message like I don’t wanna read about your sexcapades thank you]

Billie: 🎧 🔊

Edie: [retypes it more vividly which I won’t subject you to lmao]

Billie: NAH

Edie: 😂😂😂

Edie: you’re alright, I’ve got another level to my mission now

Edie: [deets of the scavenger hunt thing]

Billie: Did he sort it for you?

Edie: Yep 😍

Billie: this lad

Billie: unreal

Edie: I think I’m in love

Billie: Someone offer to make him for you in a lab? getting sus otherwise

Edie: That would make sense

Edie: he’s way too perfect

Edie: not that I’m mad

Billie: 🏩 💕 💐 🧸 💞

Edie: 💍💒👶

Billie: [deletes that like calm down lol]

Edie: 👶👶👶👶👶👶👶 maybe

Billie: When’s the [some meteor shower or comet that’d feel very fated and cosmic and therefore we must]? invite him to that first

Edie: 🛸

Edie: I just need to think of a way to tell him where and when

Billie: You’ll be looking up for it, makes sense if he has to 👀⬆️ to find out

Billie: I’d put something on his roof

Edie: About the only place he’d genuinely have to look up to see

Edie: might be less literal

Edie: 💻

Billie: that’ll work too

Edie: plus if you reckon he’ll think I’m mental for hitting up Linda, finding out where he lives without asking will really tip it

Billie: romantic gestures are mental, less of a public ambush than most are

Edie: Everything fun is

Billie: Yeah, but nothing’s fun about getting asked out in the hallway between lessons or whatever 💩 is meant to pass for 😍

Edie: Well yeah, that’s too American teen drama for words

Edie: are his friends gonna be standing there pissing themselves at you believing it even for a sec

Billie: if it’s me his mates are stood about meowing cos some tics refuse to 💀

Edie: That’s cute

Edie: at least you aren’t saying some embarrassing untrue shit

Billie: my true form is 🐱 🐈 & I’m saying the truest shit since 👶🏼 🧒🏼

Edie: I know enough not to throw out suggestions for your head to grab but I’ve seen people saying wild things that you’d get eaten alive for

Edie: but duh, how else did we end up with you

Billie: I know not to watch that shit & maybe 🐦 it but yeah, love to my non-verbals 😝 😜 🤪 ✌️ 🖕 👍

Billie: & to ma for never meeting a stray she didn’t love

Edie: I’ll wait ‘til you wrong me ‘fore I add you to the shit list and send ‘em your way

Edie: tRIGgeRd ❗️❗️❗️❗️

Edie: 💗

Billie: Well I ain’t gonna develop a convenient new 👊 one OR pull a Lexie & wheel out my dead relative to steal your bf 💚

Edie: Ha, don’t

Billie: wouldn’t know what to do with him after using him as a 🛹 ramp & 🚴🏼‍♀️ jump

Edie: I’m the only one allowed to jump him tah

Billie: 😷

Edie: Okay I need to focus on this last one

Edie: see you at home

Billie: k

Billie: see you soon 🏴‍☠️

[flowercrownjay]

i rank ninjago seasons because i said so: 

SONS OF GARMADON (s8) I think this is probably my favorite season because it’s so much darker than the rest of them? Also, it’s the first really Lloyd centric season since s2 (I know Possession was kind of his season but it was Morro in his body so it wasn’t really him?). I absolutely love the vibe of this one as well and the angst is amazing too. Also it kind of starts a storyline that continues through to the next few seasons which is what I love about it. 

POSSESSION (s5) I’m sure I’m not the only person who thinks this but I love this season so. freaking. much. I was never a fan of Nya before this season just because I felt like she was always reduced to this basic stereotype of “girl wants to fight but guys won’t let her but she’s actually a genius” and it kind of bothered me. But her being the Water Ninja was definitely a step up and I really started to like her after this season (although I’m still salty because I was the Water Ninja long before s5 came out but whatever). Also, another reason I love this season is because of the implications and the extra character building you can do behind the scenes, especially for Lloyd since he himself isn’t in the season as much.

LEGACY OF THE GREEN NINJA (s2) I don’t think it should surprise you that my top seasons are all Lloyd-centric but I’m biased towards him, obviously. I’m big on nostalgia so this season kind of just hits different for me (listen, hearing “way of the ninja” makes me cry so this is nothing). I know in terms of plot this season kind of sidelined the rest of the characters but I just... the final battle absolutely makes up for all of that. Also! Darreth. And the Garmadon + Lloyd relationship that I absolutely live for.

MASTER OF THE MOUNTAIN (s13) COLE CENTRIC SEASON COLE CENTRIC SEASON- other than this one being the first season Cole really got to himself it was just a beautiful season overall. It flowed really nicely plotwise and the ninjas, even though they were split up for a lot of the season the way they came together in the end was *chef’s kiss*. Anyway Cole Brookston-

TOURNAMENT OF ELEMENTS (s4) I love the vibe of this one. It’s such a light hearted season for the most part, unlike its successor, Possession. Also, Skylor and the rest of the Elemental Masters were amazing as well. And I kinda vibe with the whole “only one can remain” tournament thing. There are only I few times I actually cried in the whole series and the Corridor of Elders was one of those points (of course, when I rewatch I cry over every little thing). 

HUNTED (s9) Hunted was a very good story plot-wise and continuation-wise, my only complaint was that the ninja were split up during most of it. But this season definitely let some of the background characters like Dareth and Skylor shine on the Ninjago side while introducing some more history on the Oni and the Dragon side. And young Wu! I love him. A lot. And the whole revolution-vibe was very well done.

RISE OF THE SNAKES (s1) I honestly can’t remember what this one was called but I think that was it. This one is only this high-up for nostalgia’s sake. I felt like it was a pretty decent season but it definitely wasn’t the best. The standout moments were definitely episodes 7-10 where they were unlocking their true potentials. (Those shaped my childhood LMAO). 

PRIME EMPIRE (s12) I’m honestly not sure what the later seasons are called because Netflix doesn’t have the same names most of the time but I really vibe with this one. Also the idea of being in Prime Empire sounds appealing as fuck but whatever lol. I think this was a Jay-heavy season, as far as I can tell and it was pretty good. There could have been more Zane but that’s alright. Also bringing Harumi back was a solid 10/10 move. 

SKYBOUND (s6) I know a lot of people like this season but I just cannot. It was probably the absence of the rest of the ninja for a lot of the season and having it be really Jay-centric, which of course I don’t mind at all, but still. The whole Nadakhan-sky-pirates thing I just did not like. But other than that it wasn’t the absolute WORST season. I did like the first three-ish episodes and the last one but I hated the ones where the ninja were disappearing I NEED THE GANG BACK TOGETHER.

MARCH OF THE ONI (s10) THIS SEASON HAD SO MUCH POTENTIAL AND THE ONLY REASON IT’S DOWN HERE IS BECAUSE OF THE LENGTH. They only used four episodes to cover that huge plotline and I hated that. I did not cry when Cole fell because I watched it over the summer when I knew he got a season later on. (Yeah, when I stopped I had only watched till s7). Jay and Nya were pretty cute and so were Cole and Kai. Garmadon supremacy as usual. 

REBOOTED (s3) I spent an hour arguing with my little brother last night on why this was one of the worst seasons and he just. Would not listen. There are so many problems with this season, the least of them being the digital Overlord bullshit they wrote in. (This is no hate to the writers as I understand they were pressed for time writing this one since the show was renewed). My main complaint is the JayxColexNya crap they wrote in and it completely ruined all three of their characters. Cole had never been remotely interested in Nya until this season and Jay was just. Upset? Over what a machine said? I’m 100% convinced the Overlord did that on purpose to divide their team. OH AND NYA WAS *LITERALLY* REDUCED TO AN OBJECT. BASICALLY. I didn’t even watch this season all the way through because it was so BAD. The only redeeming factor was the Titanium Ninja where Zane dies because I sobbed like a little bitch during it. 

HANDS OF TIME (s7) There are so many things wrong with this season. I cannot think of single good episode. Honestly. They completely wrecked Lloyd’s character by making him sound like a whiny baby (I know he’s a kid but STILL). The ninja were just RUDE through the entire thing and maybe the only decent episode was Out of the Fire, Into the Boiling Sea. MAYBE. Lloyd not knowing how to make an energy dragon in midair? I thought he conquered his fear?? Yeah I just hate this season for so many reasons.

SECRETS OF THE FORBIDDEN SPINJITZU(?) (s11) I’m not sure what this season is called and I really don’t care enough to find out so we’re calling it this for now. I hated the Fire Chapter of this season with a *burning* passion (get it lol). Kai lost his powers, which is fine, but he was such a bitch about it. I hated it. Hated. It. In the past Kai has been known to be irrational but this was a whole different level? He wasn’t being irrational, he was just being straight up rude. Especially to Wu, who I know deserved it but it doesn’t sound like a very Kai think to do? And then the Never-Realm part was OKAY at BEST. The only good episodes were the first few, I don’t make the rules. (Also, LloydxAkita bothers me for many reasons. Akita’s probably like way older than him. And she just... reminds me of a furry. I don’t hate Akita I just don’t like them together.)

Okay yeah so that’s my ranking, it changes a lot but this is it for the most part. I don’t think anyone read all the way here but if you did thanks. 

[chickensarentcheap]

Best Part of Me - Chapter 3

WARNINGS: NONE

TAGGING: @c-a-v-a-l-r-y​, @innerpaperexpertcloud​, @alievans007​, @alievans007​

The clock reads 5:07 am when he snaps awake. Torn from a comfortable, almost pain free sleep by a nightmare. He hasn’t had one in three months; since the images of his wife’s brutalized and violated body in place of Erin Ferguson’s had finally subsided. That one had haunted him every night since returning from New Zealand; having him bolting awake, drenched in sweat, chest impossibly tight and making it difficult to breathe, tears streaming down his face. Those dreams had thankfully stopped just as fast as they began, and from that night on he’d been able to sleep reasonably well when paid didn’t wake him.

Tonight, he’d dreamt about Austin; the exact same images that he’d seen while dying on the Sultana Kamal Bridge. His tousled blond hair and his steel blue eyes and his sweet, innocent smile. Only this time he hadn’t been alone. Millie was with him and they’d been holding hand as they waded through the surf; talking and laughing as if they’d always known one another. Both smiling as they looked over their shoulders at him, holding their hands out towards them.  But when he’d reached out for them, they’d simply faded away, leaving him despondent and heartbroken and calling out for them.  It was then that he’d woke; eyes snapping open, feeling the sweat that beads on his brow and gathers at the nape of his neck and the small of his back, his lung fighting to draw a steady breath.  

It takes several minutes for his brain to register his surroundings; the smell and the sound of the ocean trickling through the screens of the wall to wall windows, his wife’s gentle, rhythmic breathing behind him,  the feel of her smooth leg pressed against his. She lays on her stomach, comforter pulled up to the back of her head, her bare feet sticking out at the bottom; the same sleeping position she’s had in the six years that they’ve shared a bed.  And he rolls over onto his side, fingertips gentle as they pull the comforter down to her shoulders and then brush her hair to the side; lips placing feathery kisses along smooth, warm skin, his palms sliding down her arms.

She gives a long, content sigh and her hands come up to rest over his; lacing their fingers together and then placing them against her stomach as she wriggles back into him.  “What time is it?” she inquires sleepily.

“Early,” he presses a kiss to her shoulder, then her ear.

“How early is early?”

“Quarter after five early.”

She groans. “What is wrong with you? Why do you insist on waking up at ungodly hours? You’re supposed to be retired.”

He’s been waking up at the crack of dawn for as long as he can remember, since his military days, and is able to function on little to no sleep. A trait that’s come in handy since having kids. Often the one that gets up in the middle of the night to change diapers and fetch bottles.  

“I told you,” his lips are on the side of her neck now. “I’ve got shit to do with Ovi today. And we have to go into Port Douglas. To my dad’s place.”  

The anxiety nags at him the second he mentions his old man. He’d reached out as soon as they’d moved back to Australia, but his father hadn’t requested to see him in person until a week ago. Sending him a text message in the middle of the night, rambling about things he needed done around the house and how he couldn’t handle them on his own. From what Tyler understood, the dementia was rapidly progressing; he had his good days and his bad days, and required a live-in personal support worker and a nurse that came every second day. He wanted to feel bad about it; that his old man was struggling. But the bitterness is still so raw; all the anger he’s been holding onto since he was a kid, the years he   had to listen and watch his father abuse his mother.  Abuse that was turned on him when he turned nine and his mum passed away. He can’t get past it; that rage that he hangs onto. The desire to teach the old man a lesson whether he remembers half the shit he’s done or not.

But he promised Esme he’d give it a shot, that he’d be the bigger man and try to put the past behind him, at least for the sake of his children. The kids deserved to spend time with their grandfather before it was too late, she felt. After all, her entire family -aside from Kyle- considered them dead.  Tyler could care less whether the kids ever saw his father, let alone spent time with him. Why expose them to someone that had caused so much agony in the first place?  

“Oh yeah…” she yawns noisily and rubs the side of her face against her pillow. “…and you’re okay with that?”

“How bad could it go? If things are as bad as his nurse says they are, he probably won’t even remember me. Maybe that’s a good thing; he won’t have a lot of shitty things to say about me or my mum.”

“Even if they aren’t that bad, don’t let him get to you. He’s a bitter old man who’s so miserable that he wants to make everyone else that way. I thought maybe he was turning over a new leaf when he’d contact me all the time, but…” she shrugs.  “Don’t let him get to you, Tyler. Just let it go in one ear and out the other.”

“We’ve been here six months and he’s called how many times? Twice? And never asked about the kids once? His only grandchildren?”

“I know it’s easy to take it personally, but if he has dementia, he likely doesn’t even remember even having grandchildren. He might remember you, but he probably doesn’t remember you have kids. I mean, Millie was two months old the first and only time he saw her.  And she’s almost six now.”

A little more than a month away. Until she hits that milestone. And he wonders if that is the reason behind the dream involving her and Austin. That she’ll be turning the exact age he’d been when he’d passed away. Part of him is even scared; that she’ll wake up that morning and be sick and it will turn out to be something horrible she will never recover from. It’s irrational and he knows it; the chances of that happening. But his brain doesn’t exactly recognize the difference between rational and irrational these days.

“Did the baby wake up?” she asks. “I thought you got out of bed earlier, but I didn’t know if it was for her or if you had pain or…”

“Around two thirty. I just got her a bottle instead of waking you up.”

“Baby, you’re the best. You spoil me. You let me sleep through the night, you let me take naps, you help me get off.”

He smirks. “Three times.”

“Yes…” she sighs happily. “…a very nice three times.”

“You almost woke the entire house the third time.”

She giggles into her pillow. “I can’t help it. You have that effect on me. If you weren’t so good at the things you do, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

“If I wasn’t so good at them, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

“It’s true. I would have had my five days of fun and that would have been it. If you hadn’t known what you were doing, it would have ‘boy, bye’.”

He chuckles into her hair. “That’s fucking harsh.”

“Well you had nothing to worry about obviously because it’s six years and five kids later and I’m still keeping you around. You’ve got some skills.”

“Yeah? You’re decent, I guess.”

“Fuck you, Tyler,” she huffs, and directs an elbow at his stomach.  

“I wish you could, actually.”

“Do you even have that in your cell phone? When the dry spy officially ends?”

“Maybe…”

“You have absolutely no shame,” she declares, and then rolls over to face him, pecking his lips. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being you. For being the way you are. With me. With your kids. You put the work in. Without complaining about. You don’t piss and moan when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night or when you have to do dishes or laundry or take the garbage out.”

“Any man who complains about all that is a little bitch.”

“You’d be surprised. There’s a lot of little bitches out there. I’m lucky,” she kisses him again. “Very lucky. You help out, and you’re eye candy. What more could a woman want?”

“A big dick? Oh wait…”

“See? You’ve got it all,” she laughs and tucks her head under his chin, an arm curling around his neck, fingertips gliding back and forth at the bottom of his hairline.  

He wraps his arm around her, drawing her tight against him, hand rubbing her back in slow, smooth circles. She feels so good; the thin fabric of her tank top against his bare chest, the warmth that radiates from her, the feel of her lips and her breath against his throat. He closes his eyes, finding himself easily lulled back to sleep; the sensation of her fingers against the back of his head and pain in his shoulder and back settling down to a dull manageable ache. Until it’s interrupted by the alarm on his cell phone.

“Really?” Esme grumbles, as he rolls over onto his back and reaches for the phone.  

“Really,” Tyler sighs, turning off the alarm and then staring up at the ceiling; mentally trying to prepare himself for the day.  

Even with the pain, it isn’t the physically challenges that hold him back. He’s learned to live with it and work through it. It’s all the bullshit that does on inside of his brain.  The anxiety, the illogical fears, the hypervigilance. All working together to make it extremely difficult to function as a normal human being. He can’t believe what he’s been reduce to; not even half the man he was six years ago. When he got stare down the barrel of a gun and not even blink. Now there’s moments where he can’t even go into a store without something triggering him and bringing back all the memories and the trauma.

“Do you really have to get up this early?” Esme asks, as she moves closer to him, resting the side of her head against his chest, her hand on his stomach.  

“I do.”

“Like you can’t stay in bed for like ten more minutes?” she drags a finger down to the waist band of his boxers. In the beginning stages of things, they’d both preferred to sleep naked; loving the feel of skin pressed against skin. But back then they didn’t have little ones that could sneak up and burst into a room unannounced. Making some clothes a must.  

“Not even ten more minutes,” his hand captures hers, moving it back up to his chest.

“Fine,” she huffs, and reaches up to comb her fingers through his hair.  

“Go back to sleep,” he presses a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll get the baby if she wakes up. I’ll bring her to you before you leave.”

“You’re a keeper,” she says with a smile.  “You’ve even learned to put the toilet seat down and put your dirty laundry in the hamper. You can teach an old dog new tricks.”

He grins and slips out of bed, grabbing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt as she moves back over to her side of the bed; tucking one of his pillows underneath her head and then pulling the comforter back up past her eyes, kicking and wriggling her feet until they’re once again poking out from the bottom of the blanket.

“Be safe,” she says when he reaches the bedroom door.  

An old habit, he supposes, used to saying it every time he left for a job in the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morning. And it hurts his heart; that she’d become so accustomed to him leaving that those words are now second nature.

****

Ovi saunters up onto the back patio at quarter to six; hair still messy from sleep, eyes heavy. He’s grown considerably since the move, packing on the weight and the muscle: less stress, more eating right and a consistent work out schedule, and hard, manual labour. It isn’t a full time job by any stretch of the imagination, but their clients pay well and Tyler pays even better. Ovi and Chloe can live comfortably, pay all their bills, and never worry about finding themselves in financial trouble.

It’s become their routine. Sitting out back, drinking coffee and eating breakfast before setting out on the road. This morning neither of them offer a verbal greeting, instead exchanging smiles and nods before Ovi drops into the chair across from him. Both staying silent as they watch the sunrise, the rippling ocean painted in a brilliant, breathtaking golden hue.

Tyler doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of the sunrises and sunsets, the smell of the salt that hangs in the air, the breeze that rolls in off the water. The mountains had been beautiful; it had been one hell of a view from the back deck at their place in Telluride. But nothing compares to this. Maybe he’s biased; he’d spent almost thirty-six years in Australia. It’s home. He’s admittedly much happier here, far more relaxed. The privacy and the seclusion not enough to solve all of his problems, but helping the healing process tremendously. He feels grounded. Secure. As if he’s finally able to put down real roots. Able to raise a family somewhere that feels totally safe.  

Ovi watches the final moments of the sunrise with the rim of his coffee mug pressed against his lips. There’s pure wonder in his eyes; as if it’s the first time he’s witnessed the scene playing out in front of him. Wide eyed and amazed, like a child on Christmas morning that’s rushed downstairs to find the living room covered in presents and treats.  

It reminds Tyler of the first time the kid had ever seen snow. He’d glanced up from the dinner table and had given a loud gasp, eyes impossibly wide, and dropped his fork onto his plate with a loud clatter as he sprung up from the table and out the sliding door. For a half an hour he’d stayed out there on the deck; clad in nothing but a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Tears streaming down his face, unable to even form a proper sentence as he let the soft, white flakes fall onto his upturned palms, laughing when they got stuck in his lashes and his hair. Millie joining him and teaching him to catch the them on his tongue.  

After that he became fascinated with anything to do with winter. Throwing himself into helping the kids make snow angels and snow men, even building forts and having snowball fights. He and Tyler would go ice fishing on the weekends, their main bonding time. And he loved Christmas. Not necessarily getting gifts, but giving them. Enjoying the decorating of the tree and putting lights up on the house, and all the delicious food that he’d never been able to experience in India. He was a child again; filled with wonder and excitement, able to forget all about what happened in Dhaka and the trauma he still struggled with.

“That was an awesome one,” Ovi breathes, shaking his head in disbelief before turning to the plate of food in front of him. Nothing extravagant; some scrambled eggs, toast and a selection of various fresh fruit.  

Tyler nods in agreement, pushing food around his plate with his fork. The meds fuck with his stomach first thing in the morning; often not able to actually eat a meal but resorting to smoothies and supplements to get the calories into him. He likes the weight he’s at now; a little extra around the middle, but larger through the chest and shoulders, biceps and forearms bigger, as well as his thighs. He feels healthier than he has in years, maybe even since before Dhaka. He’d been running on nothing but booze and pain meds back then. And a death wish. Now he concentrates on what he’s putting into his body and how hard he works it.

Addie stirs in the car seat carrier that sits on the ground beside his chair; the soother tumbling out of her mouth, prompting that tiny whine that comes shortly before an epic meltdown. Two weeks old and she has a temper already; small and feisty, just like her mom. When putting the soother back in doesn’t work, he picks her up; laying her across his forearm, stomach down, her face rubbing against his skin as she settles into him.  

“I don’t know how you do it,” Ovi comments. “Make it look so easy.”

“It’s far from easy, mate. Trust me. Being a parent is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“You don’t make it seem that way, though. You make it seem like you’ve been doing it forever. It’s only been six years.”

“I just learn as I go along. Pray I don’t screw it up. Or screw them up.”

“I think you’re doing a good job. A great job, actually. It’s still funny seeing you like this though. As daddy Tyler and not Tyler, Tyler. Do you ever miss it? Miss him?”

“Not often. But yeah, sometimes I do.”

He feels guilty for even saying it; as if he’s somehow disrespecting his wife and his kids. But he’d been Ovi’s age when he had joined the army and began building and honing his skills; the ones that he’d taken with him into the job. He'd spent years on the move; being deployed while in the military and then bouncing from job to job, never settling down, never having to worry or think about anything other than his work. Now everything had ended abruptly and with it came a much slower pace, consistency and routine, more responsibility. Not just for himself. But with six people that depend on him.

“Do you ever want to go back?” Ovi asks.

“Once or twice I’ve thought about it. But I’d never actually do it. I don’t have it in me anymore. Not mentally. I need to work on myself. Not worry about helping other people. And I kind of love my wife and the life we have together, and I want my marriage to work, so...” he sips his coffee. “I’d never do it. I lose everything. And no job is worth that.”

“So if something came up, you’d just say no?”

“Unless it’s a threat to my wife or my kids or you. Nothing will make me go back. What’s going on? Why are you asking me about all of this?”

“No reason,” Ovi shrugs.  “Just curious.”

“You’re a shitty liar. You always have been. Who’ve you been talking to? Nik? Yaz?”

“No one!” he insists. “I’ve just been thinking about things.”

“What kind of things?”  

“Things that I can do with my life. On top of what I do now. I thought maybe if you ever got back into it, I could too.”

“That’s never fucking happening,” Tyler scowls, and Addie begins to fuss again. Maybe even hearing the change in his tone of voice or feeling the tension that takes root in his body.  And he lifts her to his chest, a hand on the back of her head, fingertips gently rubbing in her dark hair. “Not for me.  Not for you.”

“We could build our own business,” Ovi suggests. “We could get the word out, take on clients.”

“I said no. We’re not doing that. We’re not even going to talk about it. Get that shit out of your head. All it’s going to lead you to is a really fucking dark place. Trust me.”

“The money is good! You used to say that all the time.”

“No amount of money is worth not coming home to my family. You’re the last person that should want to get into this. After everything you went through...everything you saw...why the fuck would you want to get involved in that crap?”

“It was exciting. When you had me take the kids. Being on the run like that. Being responsible for the lives of others. I finally got over being scared of everyone and everything. I want to help people. Just like you helped me.”

“I didn’t help you, mate. I fucked everything up. I fucked you up.”

“It wasn’t your fault that things went bad,” Ovi argues.  “It was my father’s fault. Not yours. You got me out of there alive. Even when you knew there was no money. And you almost died doing it.”

“And I don’t want you almost dying...or dying...trying to solve other peoples’ problems. We can’t save everyone. No matter how much we want to.”

“I just want to give back all the good I’ve been given.”

“Find something else to do then. Feed the homeless. Work at an animal shelter. Volunteer somewhere. Do anything that would make you feel good. But fuck the job. Don’t even think about it. You want to mess things up with Chloe? Because that’s how you’ll mess things up with her.”

“It didn’t mess things up with you and Esme.”

“Like hell it didn’t. We split up for six months. You know how close it came to her filing for divorce? You know how close I came to barely seeing my kids? It was a goddamn miracle she took me back. And I still kept doing the job and I still kept making promises I never kept and I still keep abandoning her and my kids. You don’t think that hasn’t caused problems? That I don’t pay for my shitty decisions every day? We see a marriage counsellor, for fuck sakes.”

“Chloe said she’s fine with it. That if that’s what I want to do...”

“You actually talked to her about this? About becoming a mercenary. Are you fucking serious right now? Why the hell would you do that?”

“She’s part of my life.  I can’t make a decision like that without talking to her about it.”

Tyler frowns. “You’ve actually been thinking about this? For how long?”

“I don’t know,” Ovi shrugs. “Couple months, I guess.”

“A couple months?! And you’re just bringing this up to me now?”

Addie begins to cry in earnest now; startled by him raising his voice.  And he pushes his chair away from the table and stands up, a palm against the back of her head, the other patting her back as he sways his body back and forth in an effort to calm her.  

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he whispers harshly to Ovi. “Why would you even think about doing the job?”

“The excitement. The danger. The...”

“The danger is exactly why you shouldn’t want to do it. You saw what happened in Dhaka. You were right there the entire time. Why would you want to put yourself through that? And never mind that, why would you want to put Chloe through that?”

“You and Esme...”

“Don’t even bring Esme into this. I’ve screwed up. A lot. I’ve made a lot of mistakes that could have ended my marriage. We have to see a goddamn therapist to try and fix things. Is that you want? You want to screw up someone else’s life? Because that’s exactly what you’d be doing.”

“But if she’s okay with it...”

Ovi is interrupted by the sliding glass door opening; Esme holding it so Declan...in just a diaper and a t-shirt and his hair sticking up in all different directions...can toddle through.

“Sorry to interrupt, guys,” she gives a tired, sheepish smile. “But someone woke up wanting daddy.”

Little arms wrap around his leg and Declan rubs his forehead against Tyler’s jeans before looking up at him with a huge pout on his face and those blue eyes rimmed with red and filled with tears.  

“What’s a matter mate?” Tyler asked. “What did the mean lady do to you?”

“He was pissed because I had to change his diaper before I would bring him down here to see you. If one of them could not have your temper that would be great,” Esme helps herself to a sip of his smoothie. “Is she okay? Want me to take her? Just so this one...” she lays a hand on Declan’s head. “...doesn’t pitch a fit because he’s jealous?”

“She was just a little unsettled,” he says, handing his daughter off and then scooping Declan up onto his hip. Running a hand over his strawberry blond hair, pressing kisses to his cheeks; letting him grab at his ears and his beard and anything else he can get those little hands on before sitting down and settling him on his lap and helping Declan feed himself the leftover food on his plate.

“Oh typical,” Esme grumbles, and sits down beside Ovi,  settling Addie against her chest and laying the side of her head against her daughter’s.  “He knows daddy will give him ‘big people’ food. And you wonder why he’s going to be six six and two hundred and fifty pounds when he’s sixteen.”

“Don’t listen to the mean lady,” Tyler says to his son. “You’re going grow up and be big and strong and kick some major ass.”

“Ass,’ Declan repeats, and shoves scrambled egg into his mouth.

“Oh, way to go Tyler,” his wife sighs. “You couldn’t leave one all innocent and sweet. Don’t you dare think you’re going to be teaching my last one any of your potty words.”

He grins. “She’s going to be the worst one of them all. It’s always the small ones you’ve have to worry about.”

“Your dad talks a lot of nonsense,” Esme says to the baby, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. “Don’t listen to him. He’s a bad influence. He already has your sister beating up kids on the playground and using the F word.”

“She’s got a hell of a right hook,” Tyler says, and Ovi nods in agreement. “She messes up her brothers.”

“We don’t want people messing anyone up this house.  Don’t pay attention, Addie. You’re going to grow up sweet and kind and never hurt a fly.”

Tyler snorts. “Not if she’s your daughter she won’t.”

“Can you believe I put up with him? That I willingly do this every day? Listen to that mouth?”

“It’s the other things that I do with my mouth you like,” Tyler says, and shoots her a wink across the table.

Ovi nearly spits out a mouthful of coffee.

“Oh god...innocent ears...”  she places a hand over one of Addie’s ears, and then a hand over one of Ovi’s.  

“Yeah, he’s not so innocent. He’s probably getting it more than I am.”

Ovi bites down on his bottom lip and shakes his head in embarrassment.

“You’re not used to this yet?” Esme laughs. “You know what he’s like. You’ve lived with him for five years now. You know the crap he talks about. Only the strong survive in this house.”

Ovi wipes his hands on the thighs of his jeans and holds his hands out in a request to hold the baby. He’s always been a natural; taking on the role of a big brother the moment he’d first laid eyes on Millie when they’d travelled to Mumbai and stayed at the Mahajan house. Lending a helping hand in taking care of the kids whenever Tyler was out of the country on a job, never shying away from dirty diapers or spit up.  He is a calming presence. Never raising his voice or showing any signs of nervousness of anger. And Addie snuggles right into him, one of her hands gripping his shirt, her head against his shoulder.

“This is nice,” he smiles. “Babies are nice.”

“Remember that they’re always nicer when their someone else’s,” Esme says. “So you don’t end up with one of your own way before you’re ready for it. Because they’re sweet and they’re cute but they’re a lot of work.”

Tyler nods in agreement.

“So no kids, okay?” Esme tousles Ovi’s hair. “I’m not old enough to be a grandma. Give it a few years. At least. Okay?”

He nods in agreement.

“So what were you guys talking about? Things looked kind of intense when I came in.”

“Just stuff,” Ovi shrugs. “Nothing important, really.”

“For something that wasn’t important, you two looked like you were going to get into it about something. Everything alright?”

Both Ovi and Tyler nod.

Her eyes narrow. “What aren’t you guys telling me?”

“It was no big deal,” Tyler gives her a reassuring smile. “Just normal talk. Guy talk. Nothing serious.”

“Well I’ll let you guys get back to your guy stuff,” she says, ruffling Ovi’s hair once more before standing up. “I’ve got school lunches to make and bags to pack. Ughhhh. Is it the weekend yet?”  She places her hands on Tyler’s shoulders and presses a kiss to his cheek before heading inside.

“Whew...” Ovi breathes a sigh of relief. “...that was close. I thought she’d hear for sure.”

“Don’t ever bring the job up again,” Tyler’s voice is calm and even, his attention fully on the toddler in his lap. “I don’t ever want to hear it come out of your mouth. That’s not something you want to get involved in. And it’s not something I’m letting you drag me back into.”

“I wasn’t saying I was going to do it,” Ovi attempts to reason. “Just that I thought about it.”

“Well don’t think about. You’re too good for that. Way too good for it. Go back to school if you want. I’ll pay for it. I’ll support you no matter what you do. But not if you do that. You go into the job, I can’t have your back. I just can’t.  I can’t just sit on the sidelines and watch you kill yourself. Understand?”

Ovi nods.

“You deserve so much better than that life. So does Chloe. And I wish every day I never got back into it. That I’d just walked away for good. It would have saved me a whole lot of hurt.  It wasn’t fair to Esme. Or my kids. And that’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. Trust me, kid. You do not want that guilt on your shoulders.”

It will always be there. He knows it will.  He’ll spend his entire life looking for absolution that will never come.

[qqueenofhades]

I know she wasnt one of your favorite characters and you dont watch the show anymore but what is your opinion on this whole mad queen Dany thing from a storytelling perspective? I personally hate it. But I am really attached to her character.

Short answer: It’s an idiotic giant pile of steaming bullshit.

Longer answer: It’s an IDIOTIC GIANT PILE OF STEAMING BULLSHIT BY A COUPLE OF MEDIOCRE-ASS FAKE-WOKE MISOGYNISTIC RACIST WHITE MALE HACKS WITH ABSOLUTELY NO STORY-TELLING OR COHERENT NARRATIVE ABILITY WHO THINK THEY ARE BEING ~LE RISQUE AND IN FACT ARE ACTUALLY JUST FUCKING DUMBER THAN A BOX OF TRUMPS.

(Deep breaths. Deeeeeeep breaths.)

Obviously, the question of whether Dany was going to be “mad queen Dany” was played with a little and could have been thoughtfully or subtly done (if these hacks possessed any writing ability, which as noted, they do not). But (again, bearing in mind that I don’t watch the show), from what I saw, she went evil in the span of like… an episode and a half? After Jorah, Missandei, and Rhaegal died, and she is justifiably upset and fucked into a corner by illogical plot decisions and contrived writing, apparently these misogynist fuckburglars were just like “oooohh that would Drive a Bitch Crazy!!! UNLEASH THE KRAKEN OF CRAZY!!!” Which perhaps isn’t unique to Dany, since they busily destroyed everyone’s character arcs and 7 seasons of development, but wow.

(Plus I have heard spoilers/hints about Jon having to kill her next episode, which is a whole new LEVEL of Yikes. We knew they were misogynistic asshats and the treatment of female characters had always been gross, BUT WOW.)

Dany’s arc, both in books and show, has had some other problems. I.e. the very cringy “white saviour” business and how POC were generally reduced to props for her story, whether “savage” or as “noble savages” or slaves who needed saving – as usual, the show made that much worse, because again, they cannot write and their entire ethos has been to hammer home Shock Value Grimdark as much as possible. Especially since they apparently claimed that Dany’s turn into madness was foreshadowed in season 1 when she had a “chilly” reaction to Viserys’ death. You know, the brother who mentally, physically, and sexually abused her and sold her into an arranged marriage for his political ambitions. According to these monumental crapsacks, that definitely means a woman is Crazy, if she doesn’t break down in tears over her abuser’s death. They have managed to send a fuckton of gross messages about women throughout the show in general, but that’s a new one.

Dany has, at this point, struggled for seven-plus seasons in show canon to make the right choices, to realize how hard it is to be a ruler, to deal with her Targaryen heritage, to help the entire North in the Long Night (honestly, why didn’t they end the show after that? It’s been nothing but downhill since). They already forced her to act irrational and to play up the Dany-Sansa feud, rather than acknowledging two complicated female characters and their different philosophies and allowing them to find actual common ground. So having us believe (again, when apparently the takeaway here is to kill everyone she cares about Because Bitches Be Cray and then have that drive her into murderous insanity) that within like…. 1.5 episodes, she’s supposed to be the End Level Boss is… wow. (After Cersei got killed by…. a falling ceiling, and don’t even get me started on Jaime and Brienne.)

As far as I can tell, these bogglingly incompetent hacks either got bored with the season/project (since they were offered the budget for 10 episodes but were like “nah we’re good with six!”) or indeed, this was the plan all along. I would not be surprised. They have been absolutely wedded to ham-handed Shock Value as their main plot tactic all along (it was one of the many reasons I quit several seasons ago) and mistake gruesome mistreatment of their female characters as Gritty Medieval Realism ™ or Strong Female Characterness ™. So we can’t say they weren’t on brand until the end. The assumption here is clearly that we were all chumps to “expect a happy ending from Game of Thrones!” …. which, I seriously doubt anyone was. In my version of the ending (TNR), it’s genuinely bittersweet. Not all the favorites make it, in the epilogue it’s clear that the post-war years have been difficult, and so forth. But it’s also not a pointless, nihilistic bloodbath of eight seasons of audience investment masquerading as Woke Postmodern Grimdark Super Smart Cutting Edge Ending.

(Also in my version, Dany melts down the Iron Throne to help fight the Others, survives the final battle, forgives the fake Aegon, becomes Queen of the South, eventually gets married and has a son, deals with the death of her dragons and the contestations to her rule long-term, and doesn’t go goddamn crazy.)

I don’t care how Realistically Grimdark your media is (and I have written many posts on how I would like this whole trend to die with fire and I blame GOT for making other franchises think this is the way to go). In no universe is your audience going to think that sending everything to hell within less than 2 episodes of the final season is a satisfying and meaningful ending, and if you think so, you really have no idea how fiction works and should not be writing it. A GOOD ending does not need to be a rainbow-fluffy-bunnies one. But in no realm, as evidenced by the uproar that my entire dash is in, does this one qualify. The paranoid terror of social media and spoilers is making them go so far as to gaslight actors, film false endings, and then break their hearts when they find that a decade of their hard work is going up in smoke like this.

As far as I know, Emilia Clarke had at least two serious health scares while working on GOT, and when she found out this ending, she left the house and just wandered aimlessly for three hours and tried to drink her sorrows away. How is that acceptable to do on a professional level, far less what you may think of Dany or her character or anything else? When again, the takeaway from this is that anyone who ever identified with Dany or her struggle to overcome abuse, enslavement, helplessness, etc, and admired anything about her, was a chump to do that. Sure. “Mad Queen Dany” was one narrative possibility. But if they were going to pull it off (which, again, I cannot emphasize enough how bad they are at writing) this needed to happen way before. Not out of the blue in the last two episodes of the show, because Women Are Emotional LOL, Must Be Stopped.

I am so sorry to everyone who loved her, or any character on this show, but I honestly, deeply am not surprised. As bad as it is, I have… known for a long time that they were capable of ruining this on a fundamental level, have never actually understood the characters or cared about narrative coherency, and their treatment of women is disgusting on just about every level. But even I am gobsmacked at how badly they managed to fuck it up. That should tell you something.

Me to D&D, every time they have or will open their mouths for the rest of time:

[captain-mcdavid]

(pt.1) (pt.2) (pt.3)

smut: yes | no

word count: 5.1k

warnings: smut, swearing, angst, unprotected sex, *age difference (disclaimer: this is fiction, i am in no way suggesting that these are colton’s preferences. if you are uncomfortable with a slight age difference, the one in this story is six years, then this is probably not a good piece for you.)

The hours after Colton left were mostly a blur.

You were so overwhelmed with emotions that the only thing that felt rational was hopping on a plane. 

When you showed up with bags messily packed at midnight, the next flight out was at 10:45. There was plenty of time for Colton to realize you were gone and come after you, but you knew he wouldn’t. Not after how things ended. There was also plenty of time for you to leave and go back, but the only thing about eleven hours in an airport... It gives you lot of time to think. It was basically eleven hours for you to dwell on the fact that Colton tried to replace you. By hour one you were upset. Hour two you were mad. Hour three, you were infuriated. And there aren’t enough synonyms for angry to get through the other eight hours. You were so angry you started to calculate time, how many hours you were here, how many hours since you’ve eaten, how many hours since you’d slept, anything to take your mind off of him. 

You were so mad you couldn’t even begin to think about his side of things. 

Which is why you got on the three hour plane ride home, and why you’re getting into a cab at the Edmonton airport. Three hours was enough for you to convince yourself that it was for the best, it would have ended anyway. 

Fourteen hours later, you’re still calculating time, you haven’t slept, and you’re so emotionally exhausted that you can’t even be bothered to take off your coat or clothes when you walk through your front door.

It’s about 5 in the evening when you fall asleep for the first time in forty eight hours, and when you’re woken up by Lauren storming into your apartment it doesn’t feel like you’ve gathered enough rest for what’s about to come.You almost forgot that you texted her before you left. 

“What time is it?” Wiping your eyes you speak with a groggy voice. 

“Ten thirty,” She says shortly, opening the curtains to let in the light behind them. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

You shrug at her and she rolls her eyes. “This is what was always going to happen, we weren’t gonna work out right? So it’s done. For real this time.”

She scans your body sprawled out on the couch, while you rub your temples to soothe the aching in your head. Stalking to the end of the couch where your feet are, she yanks off one of your boots, and then the other before saying, “You’re a fucking idiot.”

The clear mad tone to her voice is like a trigger for you, and you shut your eyes tight, because you know that all fourteen hours of built up anger are gonna come out of you at once. Before you can stammer out a response she’s talking again. “No, don’t. You need some tough love right now. I thought you’d figure this out on your own but obviously you’re so dense that you can’t.”

She swipes your legs off the couch and you sit up, trying not to look at her. 

“You’re self sabotaging.” She states firmly. “Stop it.”

“I’m self sabotaging because it’s never going to work out, Lauren!” You’ve never actually yelled at her before, but there’s a first time for everything. “I don’t need to hear another speech about how I’m the one walking away all the time because I know that now, but I was just doing the inevitable!”

“You don’t know that!” Lauren fights back, raising her voice just as much. “You won’t even try for more than five fucking days cause you’re so scared of being rejected again!”

“And what that’s not a rational fear? Are you sure about that cause the second he left Edmonton last season he found a replacement who looked exactly like me, only thing is, she was his age!”

Her eyes soften when you tell her, and just like that you’re back to tears again. They’re angry tears though now, and you’re not ready to stop yelling it. It feels good to get it all out. “Don’t tell me that I’m stupid for being scared of what would have eventually happened, because he would have realized soon enough that six years was too much, and I would have been brokenhearted again.” You finish, getting to your feet to walk away, but Lauren stands.

“It is an irrational fear. And you’re so blinded by it that you can’t see that he is so fucking in love with you!”

“Oh my god! I’m not gonna do this again,” You’re trying to walk away but Lauren grabs your wrist and pulls you back.

“If you won’t listen to him, listen to me.” It’s a plea, her voice has quieted significantly, and you don’t want to hear it but you know she won’t leave until you do. “Listen to me.” She says again.

You pull your wrist from her grasp, folding your arms over your chest, waiting for her to continue. 

“Your replacement? This girl that you’re so hung up on? Where is she now?” Lauren asks, and you furrow your eyebrows. “No idea, right?” She continues, “Exactly, she’s gone because even though she looked just like you and she was his age and all that bullshit, she wasn’t you. You’re so butt hurt by him trying to move on that you’re forgetting that he didn’t actually move on. He came back to you.” 

Lauren is literally out of breath from her rant, and you look on stunned. You’d be lying if you said that her words weren’t hitting home. 

“He has come back to you so many times.”

Especially those ones. 

“I have one more question okay? One more. Then you can make your final decision.” She speaks softly and you’re not sure if you’re ready for what’s coming?

“It’s a six year difference, and people will tell you it’s wrong, but has it ever felt wrong?”

You find yourself shaking your head immediately, and Lauren smiles a sad smile. “I’ve been rooting for you guys from the start, and now you need to start too. Fight for what’s right.” She finishes with a chuckle at her cheesy comment and for the first time in you’re not even sure how many hours, you smile too. 

“I’m a fucking idiot aren’t I?”

“Oh totally.” She laughs, “We could have had this argument over the phone, because you’re about to get on another plane.”

You lift your hand to your forehead with a sigh, “I’m getting on another plane,”

“You’re getting on another plane!” Lauren yells again, making you laugh. “Go take a shower and get your shit together, I’ll book you a flight.” 

This time you didn’t actually have to wait at all, Lauren practically yanked you out of the shower, yelling about a flight leaving in an hour and a half. When you touch down in St Louis it’s 3:30 their time, and it’s been 36 hours since you left, and you’re still calculating time for some stupid reason. 

You haven’t even thought about what you’re going to say to him when you see him, and the closer you get to his house, the more nervous you feel. The underlying fear of rejection is still there no matter how confident you go into this.

When he said he was done, he might have meant it in a way that you can’t change. But you’re the one who needs to take strides to keep him in your life now, and you know you can’t let the fear of heartbreak stop you from trying. 

When you walk into the lobby of his building, suitcase strolling behind you, the last person you expect to see is yourself...

She’s about three inches taller than you, her shoulders a little bit more broad, but she’s most definitely the twenty five year old you... Your faces aren’t identical, but she looks like she could be your sister for sure. 

The wind feels like it’s been knocked out of you, and you can only stare while she sits on the couches, scrolling through something on her phone. 

Your mind goes so blank that you can’t even feel your limbs as they turn you right around and bullet you towards the doors. There’s someone coming towards you but you’re so unfocused on what you’re doing that you don’t even look at who it is until they’ve grabbed your upper arm. 

Your neck cranes up to see the tall man that’s stopped you. He looks at you and then back towards where twenty five year old you was sitting. It takes him about point five of a second to realize what’s just happened before he’s stepping in front of you, blocking your way out completely. 

“Joel,” You say weakly, your head getting a little less foggy. “I need to go,” Tears are already starting to slide down your cheeks and you really don’t want him to see this. 

“I know how this looks, okay?” He starts, “But nothing happened.” 

You scoff, trying to move past him, but he bends down to make eye contact, “Y/N, if you were going up there to do what we’re all hoping you are, you can’t let this stop you,” 

“It looks like he went for her right after I left, again.” You cry, throwing a hand up. 

“He was hurt, you left and he was hurt so yeah he phoned her, and then he got drunk off his ass and passed out. I promise you, nothing happened. I was just up there and he could barely even put his suit on without having three shots of espresso. He’s so hungover, the amount he drank? He would have been debilitated last night, nothing could have happened, and it was all whiskey so he probably couldn’t even get it-”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” You interrupt, hoping he won’t go any further. 

“Yeah? Maybe, I don’t know, it’s supposed to stop you from leaving again.” He says. You study his eyes and it warms your heart that he actually looks so genuinely scared for his teammate.

“Is he okay?” You watch Joel’s face when you ask, and that’s enough to tell you it was a stupid question. 

“No,” He says. “Not at all.” 

You pause, just looking at him, trying to figure out what’s going through your head because everything feels so strange. 

“Just at least go up and talk to him, we have to leave soon, but he’s still up there.”

He looks at you expectingly, and you realize he’s not gonna leave until you agree, so you nod. He gives you a small smile before he turns and walks out of the building. 

You watch him leave and you think about calling Lauren, but you know exactly what she’ll tell you to do, so you decide to skip the conversation and trust Joel. He said nothing happened. 

You turn around and you feel deflated all over again when you see that she’s still there. You don’t have much time but you’re unable to stop yourself from sitting down across from her. Her eyes catch on you and she gives a small smile before looking back down at her phone. 

You can’t imagine how you must look right now, because you literally can’t take your eyes off her. You’re blatantly staring, and she’s definitely starting to notice. Her line of sight flashes quickly back and forth between you, the creepy staring stranger, and her phone.  

“Uber’s take forever sometimes,” She says with a uncomfortable chuckle. It’s clear that she’s trying to make the situation less awkward, so you try too, responding with a nod and a smile. 

Your gaze shifts to your feet and you realize how dumb you are for doing this. You want answers from her, but you can’t exactly say, “Hey, did you sleep with my sort of boyfriend last night?” Her eyes are trained on you now while you shift uncomfortably. 

You shake your head, getting ready to stand up when she speaks again. 

“You’re her aren’t you?” 

You’re not totally sure how to answer, so you just raise your eyebrows. 

“We do look alike, wow. I was really hoping you weren’t prettier than me, but you are. Damn.” She shoves her phone in her purse as she sizes you up, and even next to Colton you’ve never felt smaller. “You want to know if I slept with him right?” 

Well, she definitely wasn’t you personality wise...

You’re totally shocked into silence, so you just look at your feet, not sure if you should answer that or not. 

“I’m not gonna lie, I’m really tempted to tell you that I did just because I feel threatened...” Your heart nearly stops and you look back up at her. 

“But Colton is literally the nicest guy I’ve ever met, and he deserves to be happy, so I’m not gonna ruin that for him. Nothing happened last night.” 

You lift a hand to your face to swipe away the single tear that rolls own your cheek. You feel so relieved that you could sprint for the elevator right now. 

“He loves you a lot,” She gives you a gentle smile and you smile back. “I thought I was coming over to get laid but I spent the entire night listening to him talk about you.” She laughs and rolls her eyes at the same time, and you literally think you feel your heart clench. “I really wish he felt that way about me, but after all of that-” She motions backwards with an blown out look on her face and you laugh. “It’s clear that he won’t, you guys have something special. An age gap doesn’t change that.”

“Thank you,” You whisper, standing up. You think she’s done so you start to walk away, but she speaks again. 

“You know you’re a lucky girl...” Her eyes flicker downward and you furrow your eyebrows. “To be loved by someone like him. He’s amazing.”

You can see in her eyes that she has real feelings for him too, and even though you know it’d be super weird, you feel the urge to go back and give her a hug. But you have the feeling that’d be a little out of bounds so you just smile and say, “I am. Really lucky.”

The elevator doesn’t seem fast enough, so you opt for the stairs, going as fast as your legs will let you. You do the awkward walk jog down his hall as you pass people, all of them give you weird looks, but you can’t be bothered to care.

You shove the key he gave you into the door, swinging it open with way more force than needed while you shout, “Colton?” 

But there’s no response. 

You wander aimlessly around the house, hoping he’s somewhere and he just didn’t hear you, but it’s obvious that he’s not here anymore. You missed him. 

He must have been in the elevator while you were going up the stairs, and it literally feels like such a blow, because wow, what are the odds of that happening?

You don’t want to wait to see him, but you know you’re going to have to, so you make yourself some supper and watch some reruns of friends. The time before his game goes by so slowly, and once you finally see him on the ice, the minutes go by a little faster. 

He’s not playing well, his minutes are significantly lower than usual, and every time he steps out onto the ice he looks slow, and tired. You know him well enough to know that this will make him angry. You weren’t expecting him to come home happy but you weren’t thinking he would be mad either. 

When the game is done, you’re trying to think over what you’re gonna say, but at some point, you end up passed out on the couch. 

When you wake up there’s a blanket on you that wasn’t there before, and you can’t even pin point when you fell asleep but obviously you did. Colton’s suit jacket is laid over the back of the chair across the room, and his shoes are by the front door. The excitement you feel knowing he’s home makes you scramble off the couch, searching the rooms to find out where he is. 

When you step into his room and hear the shower running, you debate waiting again, but you decide you’ve waited long enough. At least those are your thoughts until all your clothes are off. 

Now you just feel nervous, and you end up counting to three four times over before you finally have the guts to open the door, and now your legs are shaking as you wobble towards his figure behind the curtain.

It’s pathetic really, how afraid you are of admitting that this is your fault. You don’t know why blame is such a hard thing for you to own, but it just is.

He must have heard you already cause he doesn’t startle when you pull back the curtain. He’s facing you, hands rubbing through his hair. He only meets your eyes for a moment before his gaze drops to his feet. You lift a leg over the barrier, your tail between your legs. It’s impossible to tell what his reaction to your touch will be right now, but you try anyway, gliding your hands up his chest and up to his collarbones. He looks at you again, and you stare back, trying to gain back the courage you had a few minutes ago, but all you can see is the anger and sadness in his eyes, and it breaks you all over again. Tears are slipping out now, of course, and you’re frozen in the moment, unable to speak.

Colton’s line of sight drops a little lower, pausing at your mouth. You’re not sure why, or what he’s thinking, but it’s probably not the same thing that you are. You hesitate for a second before standing on your tip toes to press your lips to his.

This isn’t what you came here to do, and this isn’t going to make anything better, but you just need some type of comfort from him even though you don’t exactly deserve it. 

Kissing him usually makes all your problems go away. His affections help you forget everything wrong with your relationship, you’re hoping for that again but you realize you’re not going to get it when Colton’s hands land on your hips. You know what he’s about to do, and everything inside of you hurts. He’s pushing you away. Physically but it feels emotional too.

You try your best to hang on, to keep yourself close to him but he’s too strong, and you give up, sobbing when you land back on flat feet. With a last attempt your hands scramble down to keep his touch on your waist. You hold his hands there, looking down as the water soaks your hair.

You have to own up to this.

That’s the only way you’re going to keep him.

When you feel like you’ve gained back the ability to speak, the first words that make it out are, “I’m sorry,”

You don’t expect him to say anything, but you still pause for a second before continuing.

“I want you in my life,” More tears. Fuck, of course there’s more tears. “I want you in my life so badly, but I’ve been so afraid of rejection. And I know that it’s been me leaving, I realize that now and I’m sorry I blamed this on you.”

He’s finally looking back at you again, and for a second you think that maybe that will be enough. Maybe you won’t have to bare your entire soul, but when there’s nothing once again on his end you know you have to keep going. You’ve completely forgotten everything you had rehearsed, so you’re just gonna have to wing it. 

“It’s been 48 hours since I last saw you,” You start, and his eyebrows furrow. Really? That’s what you’ve come up with all of the sudden? More time calculations? “When I left, I needed eleven hours to fully convince myself that leaving you was the right idea. And I needed three hours to convince myself that it was for the best. But I didn’t even need one hour to convince myself to come back.” 

This is so off topic, and it sounds so ridiculous, so you try your best to reel it in. “God, this sounds so stupid.” You mumble, lifting a hand to swipe your tears away. 

Colton lifts his hand from under yours and interlocks your fingers, and that’s all you need to keep going. 

“What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t ever think I would meet the love of my life at nineteen years old. I didn’t think I would fall in love with you at a fucking beer pong table right when I looked at you. It all happened so fast, and I didn’t expect any of it. And I sure as hell didn’t expect to love you as much as I do now.”

You’re crying so much that you can’t even look at him anymore, dropping your head you continue, tangling your hands together and picking at your nails. “The first time, when you told me this wouldn’t work, I was absolutely destroyed, because after knowing you for just one month I knew I would never love another person like I loved you. The pain I felt after that was indescribable. And every time since then, I’ve pushed you away because of it. I’ve walked out on you because I didn’t want you to walk out on me first, and I’m sorry. I was so scared of rejection that I couldn’t see what you were trying to do when you brought me here. I thought that I was protecting my heart, because I felt like you were eventually going to realize that six years was too much, but it’s not. Six years is nothing compared to how much I love you, and I’m not going to let others decide that we’re wrong because we’re not, everything about this, about us, is right, and I’m just so fucking sorry,” Your sobbing is probably prohibiting your speech at this point, but you try to choke out the rest while you’re on a roll. “I know my faults now, and I’m not gonna leave again unless you tell me to,”

He’s silent still, while you stare at the ground, and it feels like forever has passed before he crooks his index finger under your chin, gently pulling your head up. 

“I love you.” He whispers, “More than anything.” Then he presses his lips to yours and it’s like everything falls back into place. He pulls your body against his and you’re finally allowing yourself to feel how right everything between the two of you is. He feels like everything to you and you swear your heart is actually bursting inside of you. 

He pulls back, but keeps you close, closing his eyes while he rests his forehead on yours. “I’m sorry too.” 

“Don’t Colton-” You start but he stops you.

“No, I am. I’m sorry for what I put you through. And I’m sorry for everything today that happened with Joel, I’m sorry that I called her. That I ever even met her. I shouldn’t have done that. Fuck, it was unfair to her. I’m so in love with you there was no room for anything else. You’re it. You’re all there is for me.”

“I don’t wanna hear anymore apologies.” You sigh, placing a small kiss to his lips. 

“I don’t wanna see you walk out that door ever again.” He lifts you up to wrap your legs around his waist and you smile, pushing his hair back. 

You lean in for one more kiss before whispering against his lips, “Never ever.”

He kisses you back, harder his time and you run your hands through his hair arching your back to get even closer to him. He turns to press you against the wall and you can’t help but smile, cause you know exactly where this is going. 

It takes you by surprise though when he flings back the shower curtain, turning off the water before walking you out of the bathroom. 

“Colton, we’re soaked!” You squeal, but his lips just trail down your neck. His kiss is about to make you forget that you’re dripping all over the floor, but then you’re being launched into the air. 

You suck in a breath when you land on the bed, eyes locking on Colton as he hovers over you. He kisses you again and you let him, before turning your head. “How are we supposed to sleep here? The bed is gonna be all wet,” 

“There’s a guest room,” He murmurs, nibbling on your ear. 

“We’re gonna get towels before we bang in that one right?” You laugh, but it mixes with a moan when his free hand grazes your nipple. 

“Okay, I like where your head is it, with round two in the guest room-” He starts with a grin, “And yes we’re gonna get towels, but can you just shut up and let me kiss you?” 

You nod, connecting your lips while he reaches down to hook his hand underneath your knee, he pushes up while he slides down, his lips following his movements down your body. 

He places a delicate kiss on your mound before licking firmly up your slit, stopping to circle his tongue around your clit. He sucks hard, pushing your other leg up to spread you wider. He licks into your entrance and you arch off the bed with an inhumane noise, grabbing at his arm. He lifts onto his elbow, licking back up at your clit while he teases your entrance with one of his fingers. He pushes it slowly in and your grip on his other hand gets tighter.

“Colton,” You moan out and he groans against you. “I need you inside me,”

He slides his finger out of you and sucks it into his mouth before scaling back up the bed to hover over you. You start to roll onto your side, knowing he likes taking you from the back but he pushes you back over easily, shaking his head. 

“Not yet,” He whispers, sliding his forearms under the backs of your shoulders. You wind your arms around him and then he slides in slowly, groaning when he bottoms out. He stays like that for a minute, eyes clenched shut while he waits for you to get used to him. You lift up slightly to press your lips to his and he sighs, breathing into your mouth. 

“I love you so much,” He whispers, kissing you gently. 

“I love you,” You repeat, stammering slightly when he rolls his hips against yours. He keeps his mouth on yours while he rocks into you, licking into your mouth.

He disconnects and raises up a bit, sliding an arm out from underneath you to reach down to where your connected. “You’re absolutely stunning,” He breathes, rubbing at your clit. You arch off the bed and he groans watching you, loving the way you feel clenched around him. “Here, baby.” He pulls out and you can’t help but whine while he guides you to roll over. 

You get up onto your knees and elbows, and he pushes your leg further out to spread you more for him. He pushes into your from behind and you cry out at how good the different angle feels. He rocks into you a few times before his hands travel up, resting on your rib cage to pull you off your elbows until your resting against his chest. He swipes your hair off your shoulder and you crane your neck around to kiss him quickly. 

His lips slide down to your neck and collarbone where he gently bites the skin. You moan, your head lulling back to rest against his shoulder when his hands grip at your breasts. One stays there, and he rolls your nipple in between his fingers while his other hand falls down to rub at your clit. 

“Colton,” You cry, jerking against him when you grazes your g spot. 

“I’m right here, baby.” He coaxes, rocking into you again. He hits the spot again and your head falls forward but he holds you still against him, rubbing harder at your clit to get you there. 

“Colton, I’m so close,” You whisper, grabbing onto his forearm. 

“Come on, sweetheart, let go,” His lips slide up and down your shoulder and your breathing gets heavier as he carries you closer and closer to your orgasm. 

He’s rocking into you faster and you can tell he’s getting close too. One last roll of his rips has him pressing into your g spot, and you’re over the edge just like that, jerking against him when he rubs at your oversensitive clit. You clench around him and he growls deep in his chest, cock twitching inside you before you feel his warmth spreading. 

He holds you still against him so you don’t fall flat on your face, gently leading your body down to the mattress. He slips out of you and you roll over, giving him a lazy smile while he folds in beside you. “Fuck, I love you.” He whispers.

“You’ve said that a few times,” You grin. “But I love you too.”

“Stay with me,” He whispers, his grip on your waist getting tighter. You look back and up at him when you answer so he knows that you mean it. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” 

Then he kisses you hard, and your heart clenches in your chest, warmth exploding everywhere in your body. 

You slide out of the bed with a smirk and he sits up on his elbow, furrowing his brows with a grin. 

“I’m not going anywhere expect the guestroom, cause that bed is cold and wet. You’re welcome to come,” Backing out of the room Colton laughs, getting out of the soaked sheets. 

“You’re welcome to cum, cause I’m gonna eat mine out of you.” 

“Jesus christ!” You stammer, not expecting those words to come out of polite Colton’s mouth. “Where did that come from?”

He laughs and lifts you slightly to set you on the bed. “We’ve got a lot to learn about each other still,” He pauses to kiss you before continuing. 

“And there’s lots more where that came from.”

[alwayshailing87]

It’s time I talk about this.

I created a new tumblr because no one needs to see the sock drawer of content on my older account. I’ll start fresh here.

I had contemplated writing a blog post for a while. There’s been so much weighing heavy on my mind that I just needed to get out to begin with. The decision to finally open up was sort of inspired by a friend’s social media post earlier this week. It touched on fears of abandonment, and anxiety. I felt the need to talk about my own fears. I’m coming to the realization that I’m in much greater pain than I let on.

2019 could have been considered a comeback year for me in a lot of ways. I committed to the fitness journey. I broke free from years of emotional abuse and manipulation. I found my spark again, my inner comedienne. I’ve expanded my circle and have some truly incredible friends at my side. I’ve connected with some genuine people that I’d love to keep in my life. Sky’s the limit, right?

As 2019 came to a close I recalled all of these victories, and yet it was the loneliest I had felt. It was the most...broken...that I had felt. I’m thankful for my mom and all of the hugs she gave me while I was home. There were nights during the Christmas season where I would just well up with tears because I felt so alone. She sort of chalked it up to me missing my grandparents, as I always do at Christmas. But I was too embarrassed to explain that there was more.

Circle back to the mention of emotional abuse. Without getting into dirty details, some of which are of my own fault, I was lured into a situation where a man I trusted took advantage of my heart and my mind. Freshly devastated from the sudden passing of my Grammy in 2013, he white-knighted his way into my world. Promises of protection, love, to “treat me the way I had always deserved to be treated”. He wanted to “tear down my walls”. Lots of that stuff that makes a depressed, vulnerable woman feel like someone gives a shit.

Months prior to this, I stared down a flowing Monongahela from the railing of the Birmingham bridge. I couldn’t do it, obviously. I was in rough shape mentally but asking myself over and over “what would happen to Sylvia” seemed to keep me from ending my life. To have someone essentially reach out a hand to you and vow to be your protector and love you, it would be insanity to not grab that hand and hold on with everything you have left.

He knew of the several times I had been ghosted, or stood up on dates. Blown off on dating sites, and just treated like trash in general. I’m a chubby girl who’s a few eons off from a model body. His whole act was to shower me with affection and I fell for every single fucking bit of it.

When I think back on this, I think of these words and phrases that were said to me: Soul mate. Gorgeous. Dream girl. The perfect woman. Best friend. The greatest thing that ever happened to me. And there was friendship. Laughter. Humor that spanned from highbrow to lowbrow and every terrible pun in between.

Stupidly enough I fell in love. And I loved fiercely, as I do with anyone I care about. I offered up my unwavering loyalty. See, the thing is...I’ve gone through my life dedicating myself to my loved ones as a fierce family member and friend. There have been so many times in my life where I felt alone or unwanted, that I vowed to make sure anyone who settled into my circle would never feel the way I have felt. This was no different.

As expected (and in retrospect, thankfully) this whole thing came crashing down. I found out I was one warm body out of multiple. And that’s when things for me started to deteriorate.

Being toggled back and forth between “I still love you” and “You’re one of the best things in my world” and “I don’t want you in my circle anymore” will eventually warp your mind. Even as a friend, the loyalty given due to the history was thrown out like a used sock. The memories and the bond meant nothing. I began to think I deserved it as punishment for the mistakes I’ve made in my life. Maybe I did or still do. In the aftermath of this, I was on suicide watch. To be outright rejected and shunned by the very person who vowed with everything he was to be THAT person for you, you wonder if you were ever worth anything at all. If your white knight tells you that he doesn’t care about you anymore, then maybe you’re just not worth any man’s time. That maybe you’re just not worth anything, period.

It’s weird now, being able to step out of a situation and say “hey, he was a piece of shit and all of this was toxic”, while also being pretty emotionally damaged because now you feel like any man who expresses any sort of liking towards you is lying. And when you feel fat and disgusting on a frequent basis, you’re highly skeptical of a good looking guy finding you attractive and not chasing some dime of a babe elsewhere.

In the time since I’ve freed myself from the bullshit, I’ve heard those similar words. Gorgeous. Perfect. Beautiful sassy funny and any word in between that makes me think a man might truly and whole-heartedly value a single shred of my existence. And while it feels wonderful, and hearing it makes me smile, my brain retreats back to the feeling of “He’s just saying that while he probably bangs or flirts with a bunch of other women. You know that you’re nothing compared to other smokeshows who are in his league”.

So when the messages go silent, or plans to go out on a date fall through, half of my brain says “he’s busy” or “things happen, it’s okay”, the other half gets back on its bullshit, and I assume the worst. Because it’s all I know.

All I know are lies. Just lies. Lies and excuses and half-assed answers and secrets. I don’t think any man has ever been proud to have me. And it’s brought me to this place where I feel alone and unwanted. It’s brought me paranoia and crippling anxiety. I’m scared of destroying the fledgling of a relationship(?) I have going because I have been so destroyed by lies that it’s so hard for me to believe people. And that terrifies me. The last thing I want to do is push someone away because I know that what I have to give in a relationship is pure and genuine. I try so hard to fight the irrational fear and BELIEVE what is being said to me. Even now I’m a crying mess as I type this, because the one I’ve been talking to...I can’t begin to express how I felt when I saw his huge smile in real time. It was a smile that completely took my breath away. It was a smile that was so genuine and it brought me pure joy when I saw it.

That kind of joy, those “butterflies” that someone feels in moments like that? I felt it. For a while I wasn’t sure if I could feel anything like that again. I think of that smile and I grin to myself all over again, and yet my heart sinks because I’m scared that it will disappear for someone better. Because I am always the second or third choice...or just not the choice at all.

For some reason the holidays just amplified the loneliness. I think of curling up with my someone at Christmas and enjoying the warmth and the lights. I’ve wanted that for so long, and I’m so tired of being alone. I’m just tired. I’m tired of feeling like I’m not worth a man’s honesty or time. The fear and worry that I’ll be told to get lost by someone I care about - again - is like a vice grip in my chest. Sometimes it’s hard to breathe. Sometimes tears just flow out of my eyes and I’m not even moving. It’s not just a fear of losing someone you genuinely want in your life, but it’s also the fear that the devil in your head is right; that you really are ugly, worthless and unwanted.

And I know the only way I can begin to combat it is therapy. There’s zero shame in admitting that I need to go back. My therapist helped me through the first phase of healing form the toxicity and abuse. But now I need to learn to handle the constant fears of abandonment. I tried to fight it for the last couple of months but I just can’t do this on my own. I just want to heal. There are so many parts of me that are strong and grounded, and I feel like this is the one piece of me that still hasn’t recovered from the trauma.

I’ve been told never to apologize for my fears and my trauma because it was, and is real, but I still feel a need to express some level of remorse because this is not the best version of me. I don’t take pride in the reactions I’ve had. I can only humbly ask for patience as I work through this.

[panticwritten]

About to get hella emotional on main

November 19th will be this blog’s second birthday. I’ve been thinking about this post since September, and how I didn’t post anything for it last year.

I’ve been doing this writeblr thing for almost two years. It’s been so awesome to be a part of this community (the somber wording of this makes it sound like I’m leaving but I’m not), even if I know I don’t actually talk with other people very often. I go back and forth about feeling guilty about that, but the point stands that it’s so cool to see so many people so excited about their work. It’s amazing, and I really don’t have the words to describe how much I love to see it even if I don’t know a lot about peoples’ projects.

I’m going to have a normal anniversary post on the day, but that’s not what this is. This is gonna be sad and this is pretty much the equivalent of rebreaking a bone to make sure it sets right. Be forewarned about mentions of suicide, depression, and a story involving animal death that got a lot more detailed than I thought it was going to when I started this post.

I want to talk about why I made this blog.

Full disclosure, November is the absolute worst time of the year for me. It’s the time when seasonal depression starts to hit. It’s the part of term that always kicks my feet out from under me. There are a lot of memories stitched into this month that I haven’t been able to untangle. Really, it’s only two memories and a lot of uncomfortable Thanksgivings, but still.

It was just a month to me until 2014 when I ended up hospitalized after I overdosed on my antidepressants. I’m not gonna go into detail about any of that or the fallout from it, other than my life changed a lot for the better after. New school, new people, shiny new paint over everything.

But that whole thing was massively related to my daydreams. I cared more about them than I did reality, I was in physical pain when I was reminded that the world I’d spun up in my head and the people I loved so much who lived there would always be out of physical reach for me. I hadn’t had the Collective for very long outside of the histories I’d constructed for them. I’d known them forever in my head but I’d only had them for around a year. But they weren’t real and no matter how much I loved them or they loved me the family I spent most of my time with couldn’t really be there for me.

The point is, my daydreaming was wildly unhealthy then. I was obsessive and had at some point convinced myself in no uncertain terms that no one could know about the world in my head as anything other than what it looked like. It was just a story, right? Stories can’t hurt you, can’t give you trauma, can’t bake lasting and damaging fears in you even if they’re about you, right?

They can’t make you afraid of being underground, of the smallest echo in the dark of a cave. They can’t make you flinch when someone touches you out of some bullshit fear response you never physically learned. They can’t make distant sounds of movement in a house ratchet your fight or flight up. They can’t lace a fear of being watched so deep into your core that your constant irrational fear is a hidden camera in a space that’s supposed to be yours, that everything’s a test and all you have to do is mess up once and— 

Yeah.

So I started writing them down. It gave me a way to bleed shit out, I guess. Instead of just wrangling it down into a box in my head, I sifted through what I had. I tried to start at the beginning, but everything was too fragmented then.

Eventually, I started the daydream that would turn into Breaking Furnace and I found a good way to categorize things. I started writing it, I got really far before I made this blog. I had been putting off finishing the dream itself because there was some shit toward the end that I knew was gonna suck, but the November 2017 happened.

I’d just moved to Portland, I was up here with my new roommate, keeping up decently in school, I had a new friend in my roommate and frankly the best ESA to ever exist and things were good. Things were okay, I was a little wary about November like I had been the two years before that, but generally fine.

Just one thing.

Before I moved up here, I had my cat, Dipper, checked out my the vet. I just wanted to make sure he was good, pick up a nice flea collar, reassure myself he was fine. Most things were fine, but we found out he had a heart murmur. I was told it increased his chances of throwing a clot that would kill him, but that he might just live his life. I’d know if it happened if his back legs stopped working. I felt the way he breathed so heavy a lot differently after that, but I made jokes because I had to. I got him a little ‘I have a heart condition’ tag for his collar.

So, November 8th. It was some time in the morning, 10 probably. I was watching Grey’s Anatomy. Dipper knocked an empty water bottle off the stand his food was on and I remember so clearly laughing when I turned to look. Asking what he was getting up to in the way you only can with the dumb animals we love so much.

And I remember my entire body going numb when he fell off the stand himself because he couldn’t walk properly anymore. I panicked and called my mom but she obviously couldn’t help and I was left to deal with it by myself so I couldn’t afford to be panicked. I needed to not feel it, so I just.

That numb was what stayed with me, and I don’t know if it’s actually gone away.

I was numb while I held him and l looked up a vet. Called one, explained in a voice that I didn’t recognize, got transferred to another, explained again. I was numb when I messaged the group chat my new friends had set up asking for a ride or for someone to go with me. I didn’t have money to order a Lyft, I was still waiting for the money I was transferring from my savings to my checkings so I could buy a new bag of cat food.

I was numb when the Lyft driver my friend called for us asked what was wrong with my cat and all I could say was that he was dying. When we got there and I explained at the front desk and had to watch them take him back. When they asked about sedatives and anesthesia and I didn’t care how much those cost because I couldn’t let him hurt. They were so gentle when they asked if I would want extreme measures taken to save him, but I’d known I was going to lose him before I’d called them so I was numb when I signed the DNR form too.

When I met with the vet, all I needed her to tell me was what was happening, to confirm the odds. She asked me what I wanted to do, but what I wanted had nothing to do with it and everyone in the room knew that. Even though I knew already, I asked what would be kinder and signed another form.

I got to hold him, got to make sure he knew that I was there. That I didn’t just leave him. He didn’t look any different afterward and I didn’t have room to feel anything but that vast emptiness.

They waved the fees for the visit, but I couldn’t afford to get a personal cremation. I could get fur clippings and pawprints for free but I felt like I was losing him twice in one day when I signed that order form. They asked if I wanted to see his body again once I’d left, but I couldn’t. I just wanted to get out. I regret it, I hate myself for it sometimes.

I almost didn’t go to the support group I found out about the next day. I met someone there who was so fucking pissed on my behalf. I genuinely can’t remember if it was $80 or $180 to get the personal cremation, to be able to get something of him back, but this fucking saint of a woman walked with me down to the reception area and asked if there was still time and paid it for me. I will never be able to repay her for that.

But the thing is, I never got to grieve.

I went home without him, I got mad. I walked into my dorn and automatically turned to look at my bed because he’d normally jump down from the shelf when I walked in. I cried, more than I ever had before.

I emailed my professors, didn’t go to class that day or the next. I looked at myself and I stared at that stand his food was still on and I just. Didn’t have time to fall apart. I didn’t have time to lose it. I went to a stupid fucking volunteer training thing at a hospital I ended up not even getting a position at instead of letting myself breathe for five seconds.

And no one really let me talk about it, I only had access to the limited counseling services my school provides, so I never actually got the chance to work through anything.

So, after that terrible story that made me cry for the first time in months to write, back to Breaking Furnace.

Instead of letting myself think about it at all, I threw myself into my daydreams and finished the Furnace daydream in about three days. I obsessed. I wrapped myself in my writing because if I’m thinking about my stories I don’t have to think about real shit that actually hurts.

I didn’t want to just write for me anymore. I needed a distraction. I needed something to make me not be who I was, I needed a community that didn’t know anything about the terrible hurt that I was trying to paint over.

So I made a writeblr.

I did that, and I started posting my writing. I felt welcomed and I felt cared about. I felt the community I never actually expected to be able to be a part of. I expected to lose interest after a few weeks but I didn’t and I felt comfortable in something that had nothing to do with what was killing me.

I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that I don’t know if I would have survived if it weren’t for writeblr. I don’t have any planned landing point for this, just that. I’m just, so thankful and so glad that I made the decision to break into this.

[juistheseminarian]

Eccentric, part 2 : now I’m here

I was planning to be done with this by now - both with this article and with the illness. I can’t believe that it’s been almost 15 years and I still get people congratulating me for acknowledging that I have an issue and going it’s-the-first-step-to-recovery, which they’ve learned was an appropriate thing to say since you don’t want to stand there and be embarrassed like I do with my boyfriend’s mom when she starts crying (which she does a lot). I’ve stirred things and realized things and I intended this to sound like a sort of retrospective from a place of unadulterated success. But guess what! 

I ended the last bit on my return from anorexia and lasting relationship with a psychologist I described as abusive, although that may be excessive and may come from the resentment of a long therapy seemingly not having “worked”. I started seeing them around age 12, before the eating disorder really declared, and i was referred to them at the end of an endless session of musical chairs through which I met many, many ‘emergency’ professionals whose schedules couldn’t accommodate another patient. I had to tell the whole story every time as if I were filing a police complaint or justifying an ailment that had long thinned beyond recognition, losing more of its meaning every time; I worried often, and I still do, about making myself sound ill enough to be considered, knowing I was taking their time when they could be curing people with actual issues. 

Having been sent to therapy after the school phobia I developed as a 5 or 6-year-old, and then again as a 12-year-old, and on and off ever since, means I’ve barely lived without framing my every breath as something to be treated and fixed, analyzed and made normal, insufficient, dependant, bending the wrong way. I entered this longest bout of therapy as a child and left it a decade later as a child. I believe for the first few years the psychologist was reliable if a little too set in her ways: there was no talk of medication outside of an apparent agreement to exclude it, which comforted my irrational fear of treatment with just as little medical basis as I previously had. However, her patient-based approach helped me feel like this time around it wouldn’t be an issue if I wasn’t “really” anything, or that’s how I viewed it at first. I don’t mean to dismiss the entirety of what happened there, only, you know, the bits where a refusal to diagnose me lead to a refusal to treat me, which in turn lead to desperation to fit me into the superstitious ramblings of an unstable person who refused to treat herself. Fuck that person. Call it what it is. 

I resented the amount of information she gave me about herself, the description of her previous marriage leading up to ten years of unhappiness she couldn’t get out of, the description of her current partner’s superior attitude, the way her life was a mess and the way I viewed her as honest instead of genuinely intrusive. She’d offer to pay me to iron her clothes, she’d talk to my teenage self about her finances, about her gynecological health, and I listened, and my mother became concerned. By then she had framed my parents as unable to understand me the way she would, she whose child had run away from home and I had to know all about it, apparently. I defended her. 

After the anorexia bit I grew alright for a while. I went to high school, I had a boyfriend, I neglected my own friends in order to make him my first priority at all costs, in short I was playing my role very well. My writing got noticed, as it should be, and I was exempted from english class, as I should be. I was bad at maths, I was good at history, I enjoyed latin class, I had friends I looked cool to because of the whole having had sex thing. Over one year my boyfriend and I had split up and I saw a few boys from my grade, most notably a wreck of a teen who regularly said he could be doing this with any of my friends and prided himself for using me “as an experiment”. When I broke up with him to go have the world’s least satisfactory sex with a friend of his, he called me crying hundreds of times. He had read somewhere that cool people had open relationships so he wanted one: when I took him up on that he said I disgusted him, turned around cause he “couldn’t look at me”, and masturbated in my bed. It was terrific. I was a sheep in shame’s clothing. 

There were the “can we do this without a condom”s and the “I want to see you shove that shower up your vagina to clean out the danger and I’m watching you”s and the “I can’t believe you cheated on me”s (he was kind!) and the “I’m storming out of your birthday party because you and your friends are little bitches”s. I don’t like how this is taking the same turn my life took - revolving around boys and men the second it got the chance, which is something I still haven’t worked out today as I live under the constant scrutiny of my several imaginary sugar daddy-leaning role models, but I’m keeping that topic for next time. This is, of course, she says in a white girl voice, about me. 

During the last year of high school, the boyfriend and I broke up for good because I had fallen in love with a guy we had met at a music festival and had pursued email after email. I felt glorious cracking the shells of emotionally unstable dudes and making them rely on me for subcontracting introspection: now I take “you’re the closest friend I’ve ever had” as a red flag, poisonous edible paper that dissolves in my water tank and kills me. It seems I do know better now, and it seems no woman ever told me that, and I keep being scared of them, and I keep being gay too, that’s my life’s familiar ghost. I’ve never gone far enough to confront the very real fact of loving women: I saw it as a kid when female nudity made me react, when I didn’t feel any sense of belonging with either boys or girls, when I felt like a monster. That desire is different because I don’t let it exist. Funny i’m only mentioning it now. What’s it like to be out to yourself? 

Do you relate to princesses? To female leads? Sometimes I can’t allow myself to replace fictional characters cause how realistic would it be to have the man of the story want to fuck me when my buttcrack isn’t even shaved? Obviously that would never work. Obviously cinderella’s ass is smooth. I never feel polished enough, or good enough an actor, or intelligible enough: expanding like a red giant, I feel like a stomach with needs, and the picture is grotesque - nothing like those Degas ballerinas. Dripping, eating itself, round but not motherly, the hunchback from Ken Russell’s the Devils is too feminine next to me. Suppose i’m fattening from storing all that shame. 

***

These days I resent the other diseased. Everyone hates my uncle cause he’s got it too and he drinks and he takes medication that people view with contempt; he lets himself die but it never seems to work even though he acts like it. Somehow something is still barely holding his limbs attached, miraculously, precariously. And my friend’s mother too, brain locked in a hamster wheel, hanging on to people like smeagol consumed, no longer in touch: filtering words like a beekeeper, only letting the crazy in. She makes me afraid to give birth. Would my children grow with a devolved being, Lovecraft’s blind cave-dweller, who once was human and is now condemned to live? Avoiding it in hallways, fearing it under their bed? 

By the fourth year of the relationship with festival boy my anxiety had become the decisive factor in every single move I made. I could no longer travel, be spontaneous, laugh, orgasm or breathe. The lump in my throat had grown bigger than I was and my face felt numb, I evaporated, I had emergency doctors drive a camera through my nose only for them to confirm I was choking myself this whole time. It really felt strange: like you’d have tried to swallow turkish delight but it piled up in your throat, invisible. The doctor wrote: patient known for anxiety. I thought: great, now when I die for real they’re gonna think i’m crying wolf and also they’re gonna be right. Fortunately enough, I then was relieved from the constant imminence of choking, you’d never guess how. 

I called a therapist my mom had taken me to when i was about 12 and we both liked her a lot - serious and a little intimidating in just the right way, a little soft yet clearly not one to let me bullshit my way out (my mom liked those). I was in the uni hall with some friends when her assistant called me back and scheduled an appointment for me later this same week: it was a huge deal. She remembered me. I suddenly felt safe, suddenly felt myself slip from my own consciousness like the narrator in Janice Galloway’s depression book when she enters a clinic: she’s no longer her own problem, or so she thinks at first, before realizing care never comes in the shape we expected. 

I started treatment almost immediately and was in shock at the realization that I did not need to suffer any more. I wasn’t aware, I didn’t KNOW of the existence of medication that would prevent me from spending hours and hours in inescapable pain, contorting my body between screams and frantic sobs, persuaded I was about to die a solitary death that’d leave me to witness my loved ones moving on in relief. Everything around me felt temporary and fleeting and treacherous. And most of all, each of these occasions were a trial for my failure to live, and I sat accused as my chrysalis life developed before me, never free, never daring, hidden, waiting. Every time, I realized how much I was missing out on. Every time I was too tired to seize the day after recovering and just dozed, scrutinized always, for a respite I knew would be short. My idea of living was a xanax in front of any distracting tv show: suddenly sleep was warm, and I wasn’t dying, and things lifted by the tornado gently fell back into place, and disappeared. 

(river) Oh, I got plenty of help. Therapists and medications and EMDR and - hypnosis and transcendental meditation. Nothing made me feel better (...) I feel everything. There just wasn’t enough positive emotion to balance me out. (payton: so it wasn’t because of me?) (river) no. you were my only relief. (“the politician” (2019) ep.6) 

My trust in festival boy was broken: I felt that if I was ever overcome with the looming fear and froze, he wouldn’t help. I have no idea if it was true: I’m very prone to blaming others for my feeling abandoned, often with no relation to their behaviour. I never could learn his language (i’m sure I can now) and the required travelling to see him became too much, even though we had met through travelling and didn’t feel at home anywhere. This continent of my life was infected and we steeped in sepsis for months and months, resentful, picturing other people when we touched, searching for admiration elsewhere. It’s the worst thing you can do to a bond, demand things from it when it’s dead, as if it was gonna answer. You know it’s been dead for months but when you try and bury it, you can swear you saw it squirm, and then it’s gone, and you took out the doubt. 

In this case I didn’t, Martin did. Martin was an old friend I knew through my first partner, and he came back into my life with an exact timing, like he was taking up an offer I was about to throw at someone else. It was all i wanted, car rides at night, feeling desired, watching him on stage, not being shamed. Comfort and help and reassurance, feeling small next to him, and knowing for certain that he understood: everything he says I take seriously, because there’s no way he doesn’t know, I could never lie, and I don’t want to. Well - I omit a little bit since that’s what it takes for me to grow guilt-free: I’m a fangirl and have never felt the need to stop, I let the obsession continent drift and crash, and perhaps it will become submerged and perhaps it won’t. Point is, I can defend it now, all the pieces I feel,I’m no one’s moodboard. 

I took a step back and realized I had no way of relying on the trope of a positive ending to this,  since there isn’t one. I see no perspective for myself, and I recently understood why antidepressants were considered a risk factor for suicides. It did make me indifferent to things that used to be matters of life and death: school grades, my weight… I care, and I don’t. I gained over 10 kg that sports don’t affect at all: I run all the time, cycle all the time, and it piles up forever, and I don’t recognize myself. I don’t fit in myself anymore. I don’t want to celebrate this thing i haven’t chosen and that I can’t deal with, and when I start thinking about it I end up in a frenzy. I just pretend it’s not there, but I feel so heavy carrying all that me. 

It’s a good time to be lost, if you’re okay with it. I’m not. I’m not free enough to be lost: I’m merely pulling on my leash and choking myself, looking at the shop displays, window shopping for life, shiny presents in a snowy christmas street, the others singing while I watch. I watch, I drift off, they see me lose focus, we’re too tired to get me back. There’s so much to experience and when I look back, so much I’m glad I’ve done before realizing I was doing it, because clearly it would be too late by now. I’m not a recluse by choice: I’m one of the weak ones, the eternal witness, or a loser, depending on how you see it. I like both. I think taking myself as seriously as i do now is both a symptom and a cause of why I’m such a bore: what’s so bad about looking stupid? I do it all the time while trying to not look anything at all. It’s not that deep, if I do say so myself, and as you’d expect, I never do. Ah the clever girl’s burden, say the adults, and together we mock the monster we’ve created and the monster takes it personally. 

So see, that’s where I’m at: no longer can I lazily bask in the excuse of a shitty partner, this time it’s on me, it’s on being sick, it’s on being sick without an excuse. My parents support me. My partner supports me. My friends would support me if i let them anywhere near me. But I take the crazy and I give it an incubator, I show it films with role models of crazy so it can grow and grow and finally make me special, isn’t this what I do? Look at joaquin phoenix and lose weight, I tell it; you’re not very good at the crazy, looking so plump and healthy. At least show your scars: they’re fading, it’s been over a decade, so now what, we’re just gonna look like someone who should get a makeover without the moving story of why they’re neglecting their appearance? What’s funny is, I’m actually a very ambitious person, mediocre is my rock bottom - listen to me when I tell you. There’s no such thing as effortless when effortless is a mountain.

(payton: i’m scared.) (river) don’t be. There’s more honor in defeat than there is in unused potential. (“the politician” (2019), ep.8) 

My therapist recently told me that if I was catholic I’d be in trouble. Duh, right? Jokes aside, she went: then people would see you as a waste because you do nothing with your force. You wouldn’t be allowed to just have that and not live it. I pondered: don’t you think I know that? Is more guilt really the solution? 

I know i want things. I know I love things, and people, and sounds, and places, and smells, and being alive. But do you see the difference between ‘knowing’ you shouldn’t be doing something, and understanding it in your very flesh, by experience, growing from it with the intimate conviction that it’s something you must stay away from? I know those things, and I don’t feel them really. I’m a fast learner, I’m a semi competent person, I can almost seem okay in a group. But I have shackles for lungs and I have concrete for breath. It’s got brutalist charm and warmth almost doesn’t spread. 

So that’s where I am with the dreams I have and the love I feel and the way it won’t come out. I suppose I’m awake but I’m not quite there. Martin feels it first: the pain on his face when I disconnect is breaking my heart. He’s just trying to bring me back. I’m loved. I’m locked away. And once my arms break I’ll dig my way out with my teeth if I need to.

[tysonrunningfox]

Ripped: Part 5

Hey so....y’all buckled in?  Like, we’re going with this, apparently, we’re just...fucking going 

AO3 (It’s just easier but I’m posting both places) 

“How’s the book?”

“Awful,” Astrid answers Fishlegs’s question without looking up, crossing her ankle over her knee, “it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh,” he starts typing something but she can still feel his eyes on the top of her head, “since you skipped lunch to read it, I figured it must be good.”

“It’s idiotic,” she finds the end of a sentence and sets it down, almost vindictively splitting the binding by pressing its open pages into her desk, “and I skipped lunch because I’m meeting a friend after work and was going to slip out early.”

“Not because of the book?” He raises an eyebrow, “because I thought you were in this to avoid Grimborn-ology.”

Astrid laughs, “Fish, you of all people know what I think of Grimborn-ology, but this isn’t even scientific enough to earn that bogus title.” She clears her throat and flips a couple of pages back, “and I quote ‘the most damning connection between the young Hiccup Haddock and the murders happens to be an old academy racing song with the lyric: ‘I’ve got my sword and I’ve got my mace and I’ve got my wife with the ugly face’. At first pass, this seems like standard Viking brashness, but looking at the year the song was first played by the academy band, eighteen-eighty-two, the same year the proposed connection between Hiccup Haddock and Mary Johnson occurred, the connection becomes clear’.”

“What connection?” Fishlegs frowns.

“There is none, it’s idiotic.”

“You’re more than two-thirds of the way through it,” he points out and Astrid shuts the book, nostrils flaring as she shoves it in her bag. It’s not any of his business. “Where did you get that anyway? It looks old.”

“Hiccup gave it to me,” she sighs, squinting at her computer screen and trying to remember what she was doing. Right, she was helping find some file for her advisor’s research, but she kept drifting across Grimborn articles and distracting herself.

“Admiral Hiccup Haddock?” There’s something about Fishlegs’s always teasing snort that makes her answer even when she wants to ignore him and while it’s led to some great discoveries these last few weeks, right now it’s beyond obnoxious.

“No, the one who gives Grimborn tours outside of my apartment. Apparently, they’re related.” Astrid thought he was lying about that at first, but from the official portrait of Admiral Haddock in the book, it’s maybe the only part that’s true. They have the same long nose and straight eyebrows, although Admiral Haddock’s eyes match his face’s naturally stern expression while Hiccup’s have always been a bit more hectically excited. A younger photo of the man shows his straight, angled jaw without the graying beard, very similar to Hiccup’s jaw, which was unfortunately accentuated without the stupid hat.

Fishlegs must notice her blushing, feeling stupid about noticing once again how decently cute Hiccup is without the period garb, and he raises a judgemental eyebrow.

“He brought me the book after I explained what we found about the first victim to him,” she sighs, “and he invited me on a private tour, at three in the morning, like that’s not a really good way to get murdered.”

“He asked you out?” Fishlegs is surprisingly excited by the information, leaning forward over his desk.

“No, he asked me on a creepy private murder tour.” She rubs her forehead, attempting to get rid of her blush with the power of wishful thinking. Maybe he was kind of cute when he muddled through some absolute bullshit explanation of the difference between late and early, but that doesn’t make it a date and it doesn’t make it any less weird.

“What did you say?”

“I said…I’d let him know.”

“Right,” Fishlegs rolls his eyes goes back to work, “I’m sure you will.”

Astrid tells Ruffnut about the conversation the second she plops into the booth across from her and Tuffnut, pausing briefly to order a drink and finishing with, “what do you think he meant by that?”

“I don’t know, maybe he picked up on how weird you’re being about this tour,” Ruffnut shrugs, “which is still going on, by the way, despite all your research to stop it.”

“I’m not being weird,” Astrid scoffs.

“You’re being a little weird for not handing forward my dossier,” Tuffnut points at a thick binder on the table between them, scooting it an inch closer to her with one finger, “I think you’re both just scared of the truth.”

“Theodore Roosevelt was not the Grimborn Killer, Tuff,” Astrid takes a sip of her drink when it arrives.

“Right, and his wife wasn’t the secret fourth victim of a total of eight,” Tuffnut rolls his eyes, “and hunting wasn’t an alibi. The national parks weren’t a hopeful precursor of the future where he could set up human game preserves—”

Ruffnut cuts him off by shoving a jalapeno popper in his mouth, “has he texted you?”

“Hiccup?”

“No, the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt after being discovered for his crimes.” She shakes her head, “of course I mean Hiccup, who else are we always talking about these days?”

“How are things at work?” Astrid tries to change the subject but when it doesn’t work, she distracts herself with Tuffnut’s binder, opening it to the middle. “No, he hasn’t texted, not since the one message to get me his number.”

“Here, let me show you this one thing,” Tuffnut flips to a purple tab in the back of the binder and grins excited.

“This is a crossword puzzle that you filled out entirely wrong,” Astrid blinks at him, “or are you saying you actually think ‘bull moose party’ is another word for ‘unsolved murder’? It was supposed to be cold case, you crammed multiple letters into every square.”

“Or did I?”

“Yes, you clearly did.” She laughs, “you know, Tuff, I didn’t think it was possible, but this might be a bigger load of crap than the Admiral Haddock book that Hiccup gave me.”

“Which you read,” Ruffnut adds with a shrug and a knowing look.

“Ok, what do you think I should do? Since you seem to have so many opinions about this.”

“I think you should go on the private murder tour with the cute weirdo who you’ve been flirting with for weeks,” she says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world and Astrid frowns.

“I’m not flirting with him, I’m…reminding him that trespassing is illegal.”

“Right, by reading the books he gives you and engaging with his interests—”

“Why does the private tour have to be at three in the morning?” Astrid interrupts because she doesn’t really have a retort for that.

“Obviously so you can have hot sex in a murder alley without worrying about anyone interrupting you.” Ruffnut shrugs off Astrid’s glare. “Like against the wall. I bet he’d be super into that and maybe you’d stop being so obsessive if you got laid.”

Tuffnut nods sagely and Astrid kicks his shin under the table.

“If you’re so into the idea, you go on the stupid tour.”

“He didn’t ask me, though, he asked you.” Ruffnut looks worried, and worse, quietly worried. Years of friendship has taught Astrid that if Ruffnut wants to do anything but set the room on fire and watch it burn, there’s probably something going on that’s worth taking seriously. “Would you go if it were at a different time?”

Astrid shakes her head, emphatic, “no. I don’t know. Maybe.” She sighs pulls Tuffnut’s binder towards herself, flipping through pages of nonsense, “I have questions, I guess.”

“He’s tall right?” Ruffnut grins, “I don’t think the wall would be too difficult to figure out—”

“No, questions about Viggo Grimborn and why so many people are so invested in him. Or the concept of him, because there’s so little real information out there.”

“If only you knew someone offering you a private tour where you could ask those questions.” Ruffnut pushes more gently than normal and Astrid can’t help but see the logic in what she’s saying.

“And deliver a very well put together dossier to someone who should really know the truth before he teaches the masses,” Tuffnut wiggles his eyebrows.

“Now, there’s an idea. You really want me to deliver this to him?” She holds up the binder and he nods.

Well, Hiccup made her read garbage, she can at least return the favor.

“Wait, are you actually going to go?” Ruffnut laughs, “you know, Astrid, this is a pretty bold move. What will you do if you end up having fun? How would you handle that?”

“Very funny.” She scrolls through her contacts and opens a new text thread.

“Are you texting him now?”

“In a minute.”

Astrid (4:52pm): hey so if I told you that I’m going on a 3am murder tour with your cousin, you’d be legally responsible to pass that information along if I show up missing, correct?

Officer Snotlout Jorgenson (4:53pm): if u think ur gonna end up missing maybe dont go

“You’re texting the hot cop?” Ruffnut leans over the table to see, “tell him I say hi.”

“Stop being so nosy,” Astrid hides her screen.

Astrid (4:54pm): no, I’m going to go, just checking

Officer Snotlout Jorgenson (4:54pm): u were so normal

That’s a release, in a way, hearing that she’s not acting normally after she’s committed to what she’s doing. Maybe Ruffnut’s right, maybe she’ll have fun. Maybe it’ll be miserable, but she’ll get her answers about Grimborn-ology answered and she can spend the rest of the time haggling with Hiccup about buying her sound-proof curtains.

She opens up the single text he sent her, a simple ‘hey, this is Hiccup’, and her stomach does a stupid, irrational flip as she answers.

Astrid (4:55pm): Just letting you know I’m ready for that tour.

She’s just getting home from the bar when he responds, a string of texts coming in all at once while she’s trying to set her bag down and get her phone out of her pocket.

Hiccup (6:02pm): Really? Hiccup (6:02pm): I don’t know why I said that, of course you wouldn’t be texting me if you didn’t mean it Hiccup (6:02pm): unless this is a joke and I’m ruining the laugh you were going to get out of it, in which case, gotcha Hiccup (6:03pm): But assuming you’re being serious and that I didn’t deter you by accusing you of lying for no reason, does Saturday work? Hiccup (6:04pm): oh and sorry for not responding right away

Astrid (6:05pm): To clarify, you mean Saturday at 3am, as in three hours into the day

Hiccup (6:06pm): Yes, the very early part of Saturday that can be reached by staying up very late on Friday night Hiccup (6:06pm): see? It is an early date Hiccup (6:07pm): not that it’s a date, I didn’t say that

Astrid’s glad that no one can see her blush when he says that, because her head is still full of all the stupid things Ruffnut said to get a rise out of her. It seems to have worked, unfortunately, because she’s remembering how stunned she was when Hiccup showed up outside her apartment in normal clothes, looking taller and more striking than she remembered.

Astrid (6:08pm): Saturday works

Hiccup (6:09pm): Great! I figure it makes sense to start at your apartment anyway so I’ll meet you there?

Astrid (6:09pm): Sure.

Friday night, Astrid attempts to doze off in front of a movie to at least get a few hours of sleep before whatever idiocy she signed herself up for, but she doesn’t have any luck. Hiccup’s usual eight o’clock tour of the courtyard happened on schedule, but the light drizzle picked up enough he must have had to cancel later tours because she doesn’t hear anyone come by. She half expects him to cancel on her too, maybe even wants him to, but the rain dries up a little past one and she gives up on sleeping.

It’s still cold even if it’s not raining and Astrid layers up, sipping on coffee as she sets Tuffnut’s binder by the door. The knock at 2:57 catches her off guard, and she quickly yanks her boots on before answering.

“Hey!” Hiccup greets in an excited whisper before clearing his throat and continuing in a low voice, “I don’t know if you have any neighbors on this floor, but—”

“Oh, I don’t,” Astrid’s heart stumbles over a beat as this feel stupid all over again, “which I shouldn’t have told you if you’re planning on murdering me.”

“I’m not,” he takes a step back, hands raised, “I meant it when I said you could take me and plus, I’d like to think I’m more creative than that. You know, since you live at the first Grimborn murder site.” He laughs, “not interested in retracing those steps.”

Everything about this is a bad idea.

But like with cheap apartments, Astrid feels better diving in headfirst and committing to the consequences.

“I got you something.”

“What? You really didn’t have to do that.”

“No, I definitely did,” she grabs Tuffnut’s binder and holds it out to him, “one of my friends is apparently interested in the Grimborn murders and he was kind enough to put all his theories in one place. I figured since you made me read about Admiral Haddock, I should return the favor.”

“You read it?” His surprised smile is wide enough that she notices slightly crooked front teeth that only add to the boyish excitement in his eyes. “What did you think?”

“It’s awful, I’m almost finished.” She taps on the binder, “but I think this is likely just as bad, open it.”

“Theodore Roosevelt?” He frowns at a random newspaper clipping about a third of the way in. Something is highlighted and there’s a gold star on the page protector next to the title. “As in the president of the United States?”

“Yep, apparently he’s Viggo Grimborn, his wife was a secret fourth victim, it’s all in there.” She puts on her rain jacket and makes sure her keys are still in the pocket.

“I…can’t wait,” he shuts the binder, grinning wider and tucking it under his arm. Then he fidgets and clears his throat again, “would you mind if I left it here for the tour though?”

“You think you’re coming up here after the tour?” She raises an eyebrow and his eyes widen.

“To be fair, I did say this isn’t a date, so coming back up to your apartment to collect that lovely binder doesn’t mean anything. Maybe.”

“Sure,” Astrid takes it back and sets it inside before locking up, “you can leave it here. I’m just messing with you.”

“I probably deserve that,” he claps his hands together, “ok, so tour. I was going to assume you’re solid on Elizabeth Smith, given that amazing picture you gave me a copy of, so should we head to the second site?”

“It’s your tour,” she waves him ahead of her on the stairs.

“Eh, since it’s a private tour, it’s more like it’s your tour.” Hiccup holds the door for her anyway and she tucks her hands in her pockets, looking up at her apartment window from the courtyard. It’s quiet, the air still and heavy on the damp, frigid pavement and Astrid shrugs against a rebellious shiver running up her spine.

“You should have let me know, I would have specified that you wear the hat,” she nods at his messy hair and he might blush, or it might be a trick of the moonlight. The street lights went out hours ago and she resists the urge to step closer to pick out the nuances in his expressions. If she got closer, he could see her face too, and she’s not quite sure what it’s saying right now.

“Yeah, that’s kind of just a gimmick,” he grins, “plus, it needs dry cleaning since someone threw a toothbrush at it.”

“I didn’t throw it, for the record.” She cocks her head towards the gate, “onto site two?”

Hiccup is a good tour guide, she’ll give him that. Apparently, she’ll give him more than that since she’s out here in the cold at three in the morning, but he’s making it entertaining. They aren’t twenty yards down the street before he’s listing facts about every doorway and alcove and filling in bits of information she wouldn’t have known to ask for. She keeps expecting to yawn, but the cold and the movement is enough to stave that off. Well, the cold and the entertainment.

“And that brings us to December eighteen eighty-three, where most of Berk had forgotten the trauma of the Smith murder in the rest of the trauma of being a late Victorian slum, that is until the night of the eleventh when a carpenter by the name of Howard Strum heard a shuffle beneath his back window. He thought he heard a woman cry out, but when he asked if anyone was out there, he got no answer,” Hiccup backs up to a hip high gate across a narrow alleyway and offers Astrid his hand, “help over?”

“We’re going back there?” She balks, arms crossed.

“I can’t take usual tours because of the gate, but two people in the middle of the night when everyone’s asleep is a lot less conspicuous,” he climbs over himself, bracing his weight on the gate and making it creak when he stumbles on his left foot, “the carpenter’s house is remodeled but the alley is still the same.”

“Isn’t that trespassing?” Astrid is good about people, it’s one of the things that led her down her path in criminology. She kept wondering how obviously awful people got away with things when just being around them set her teeth on edge, and she waits for that instinct to kick in now.

She’s stupid enough to be alone with a guy she hardly knows, trespassing into a dark alleyway to check out a murder sight, every bone in her body should be telling her to run, every hair on the back of her neck should be at attention. Really though, her heartbeat is calm and she’s more worried about getting caught than anything as she looks up and down the street, half ready to see Snotlout in a police cruiser coming to inform her once again that she’s being stupid.

“There’s no ‘No Trespassing’ sign.” Hiccup shrugs a lanky shoulder, “well, not after the apartment block’s HOA made the guy living down here take it down.”

“There’s a padlock.”

“I didn’t see it if you didn’t,” he offers her his hand again and she stares at it. Long fingers, red from cold, seemingly made for gesturing.

“One condition,” she leans on the other side of the gate, checking the street again for cars. “You answer some questions.”

“About trespassing sign laws on this block or about Viggo Grimborn?”

“About you,” she swings her leg over the gate, proud when she doesn’t make it squeak, “and why you think Grimborn is so interesting.”

“About me?”

She didn’t realize he was slouching until he stands up straight, running his hand back through his hair like he wants her to be aware how narrow the alley is, his elbow right in front of her face in the darkness. She steps further into the alley to regain some space, because why not amid all of these other brilliant decisions not unlike those made by people before they get murdered.

“You said it was my tour.”

“I did, I did definitely say that,” his smile is sheepish, teeth white in the last licks of moonlight from the sidewalk as he starts leading her deeper into the alley. Everything about him is confusing, from the shy duck of his head while he taps an obvious padlock with a long finger to the way she feels completely comfortable while everything about this should be threatening. “Usually this stage of the private tour means unlocking Catherine Whittaker’s tragic past and not mine, but…here it is, by the way,” he pauses, pointing down at the ground and up at a new apartment block window. “Where her body was found in the morning by the carpenter who’d heard a bump the night before. Mutilated like Elizabeth’s Smith’s had been.”

Astrid didn’t think Hiccup could do anything more annoying than lead tour groups of murder enthusiasts to look inside her apartment, but in the moment, avoiding eye contact with her is up there.

“Ok, let’s keep moving,” he waves her along with him, taking an abrupt left into another, even narrower alley, hazily lit by outdoor fire alarms near the roofline of two old apartment buildings. “You said you had questions.”

“Yeah,” she nods, “you said usually, how many of these private tours do you give?”

Even though he specified that this wasn’t a date, she could see how that would work. He’s making her feel plenty comfortable when she’s practically trying to be on edge, there’s plenty of time to talk, plenty of privacy in dark alleys. Maybe Ruffnut is more right than she knows.

“This is the third?” He laughs, still awkward, no doubt waiting for her to circle back to his tragic past comment, aware that she’s trying to stall. “The first was Gobber, actually.”

“As in my landlord?” She cocks her head, “so it’s not a move you do or—”

“What? No, unless I was making a move on that condo security guy who paid me quadruple for one a couple years ago, before they put up that monstrosity,” he points behind them at the new apartment block they just turned away from. “Which, come to think of it, he might have thought I was because he kept getting real close to me through here. I don’t think so though, I think he might have just been one of the real weird Grimborn-ologists.”

“There are not weird people who call themselves Grimborn-ologists?”

“You’re looking at one,” he points to his chest with both thumbs as they move out of the alley and back onto a sidewalk. He turns right without thinking and points at a fire hydrant, “that hydrant was used to clean off the alley after Catherine Whittaker’s body was taken to the morgue that used to be in what is now the sheriff’s office.”

“Right, you aren’t weird at all for knowing that.”

“Oh, I am, but by Grimborn standards, I’m positively well-adjusted.”

“You take tours of people to inhabited apartments,” Astrid smacks his upper arm with the back of her hand and it’s not until he’s brushing her off that she realizes how it felt like a habit.

“Ok, this is a story, this is a good one. So, this one time, I got a message from a guy who I’d just been in an online bidding war with for an original Grimborn letter—”

“So normal.”

“I am, just listen, so I get this message and he’s asking if I want to ‘see his collection’,” Hiccup frames the phrase with air quotes, turning to walk backwards while facing her, his hands waving around while he talks, “and I say sure, because I love people’s collections, or I thought I did until this happened. But anyway, I go to this guy’s house and his collection is just…grotesque crime scene photos, but they’re all framed in these fancy custom frames covering a whole wall of his living room and I’m looking at them and he comes up behind me and is breathing over my shoulder and he says, and I quote, ‘I’ve always wanted to see a dead body’.”

“What did you do?”

“Ran,” he laughs, “like I said, noodle arms,” he pats his bicep through his jacket and turns back around to walk next to Astrid, shaking his head, “and that’s an extreme story but a lot of people are actually off their rocker for Viggo Grimborn. There have been copy cat killers and all sorts of people committed for idolizing him, which is absolutely not my thing.”

“Are we um,” she clears her throat, tucking some hair behind her ear and looking up at him from the corner of her eye, “back around to me accidentally uncovering your tragic past?”

“You wanted to know what I find so fascinating about Viggo Grimborn.”

“Well, yeah, because you’re the one giving me a private tour so you’re the one I can ask but just…out of all the cold cases in the world, out of all the unsolved murders, why this one? Why is this the place with tours?”

“I can’t answer that overarching question for you, but I can tell you why I’m so interested,” he licks his lips, looking from her face to the wall above her head, apparently struggling for the words.

“You don’t have to—”

“No, it’s your tour and I don’t know, you do seem to be more directly impacted by my interest than most.” He grins briefly when she laughs before turning serious again, “my dad was a Captain in the Berk police force when he was killed in the line of duty. I’d been living with my mom and was planning on moving in with him to transfer schools and I came anyway, it was too late to change anything. And yeah, he’d complained about tourists and whackos on the phone, but I didn’t get why he was so annoyed until I found the book that I gave you in his study and saw my name on the cover.”

“So, you are named after Admiral Haddock?”

“Oh yeah, my dad was big into genealogy and fought to give me that family name, I think my mom is still annoyed about it, honestly.” He lights up when he talks about his dad, smile boyish above that stark jawline as he pauses to gesture to an obviously closed frozen yogurt shop, “right here used to be the entry to the alley to the third site, but a few years ago, it got rezoned when the fire hazard law requiring a three foot alley between shale roof buildings was repealed, and obviously that meant it was time for frozen yogurt. And as if that weren’t bad enough, this alley used to be the most crime ridden place in Downtown Berk, it’s said that even police officers wouldn’t walk down it after dark.”

“That’s where all these alleys come from? Fire hazard laws?” Astrid doesn’t think twice before following Hiccup across the street and down another alley path. He turns right then left, trailing his hand along the bricks like he’s checking in on them.

“Yep, and you can imagine how hard it made it to chase a murderer down, or anyone down for that matter.” He pauses, “my dad was a big guy, he used to bitch about trying to fit down here. They’re why to this day Berk has such a large homeless population, there are so many nooks and crannies protected from the elements.”

“Huh,” Astrid rests her hand on the building to her right, the way Hiccup is doing, and tries to imagine if this was where she had to sleep. The ground is mostly dry, at least, but the wind that occasionally whips past their ankles is brutal.

“Between you and me, that was the reason for the rezoning, it doesn’t have anything to do with fire.” He says in a low voice, leaning in what should be a little too close, his breath warm on her cheek. When the hair on the back of her neck stands up, it’s not because she’s scared, and she puts her hands back in her pockets.

“So, for you, being here and doing this makes you feel close to your dad?”

“It’s comforting that not everything has to be solved,” he shrugs, “you can learn about it, you can exist within it, you can try to understand it but sometimes, some things just don’t have a solution.” Hiccup’s sad smile is optimistic and habitual, one he’s used hundreds of times to move forward when there’s no other option. “Well, again, I have to commend you on getting to the base of my tragic past in record time, is it my turn?”

“You’re out of luck there, I don’t have a tragic past,” she shakes her head, “just a present merging with a bunch of other tragedy.”

“You’re absolutely right there,” he turns another corner and knocks on the back of what she recognizes as the frozen yogurt shop. “Because right here was where a witness watched a young prostitute named Margaret George lead a tall man in a black hat into her apartment, which was right over here,” he steps up to the base of new condos and gestures beyond the wall. “About twenty feet down the sketchiest alley in Berk, she was barely scraping by affording a single room. This was when the case got really famous as she was a young actress running away from an arranged marriage. And, because nothing about the way that humans behave has ever really changed, a pretty face made the case blow up. Her ex-fiance didn’t help, skulking around in black hats and making everyone generally uncomfortable. It also didn’t help that he was a medical student rumored to sell specimens to the anatomy lab.”

“That sounds pretty damning.”

“Maybe that’s the thing about the Grimborn case, there are so many suspects that all make sense. Or as much sense as you can make out of things with very little physical evidence and across more than a hundred years.”

The walk towards the fourth site is through more alleys, all of which Hiccup navigates without thought, pointing out landmarks, hemming and hawing across descriptions of mutilations he seems to know better than to offer to show Astrid pictures of.

“You must think I’m a wimp for not wanting to see the gore,” she elbows him in the ribs, not quite sure when she started walking close enough to do so.

“No, not at all, I’m not so into it myself. That’s where a lot of people get hung up, the mutilating part of the murders that is, but focusing on it too much just seems cruel to me. They were people,” he shudders, “plus, I can’t say I have the best experience with women who really want to see the pictures.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean they’re out here looking for their Johnny Depp, or something,” he shuffles back when he laughs, wheezy, quiet enough that she wouldn’t hear it if she still weren’t standing far too close, “although how anyone romanticizes being strangled—”

Astrid jumps at the scream that cuts him off, wincing at the thud that follows. Heavy, intentional. There’s a rustle and then obvious, heavy silence sets in, only interrupted by Hiccup’s arm curling around her shoulders.

She looks up, embarrassed for hiding in his neck, itching to shrug his arm off but frozen in place by something she can’t quite place. Maybe it’s his expression, hard and focused, straight jaw at eye level while his eyebrows knit together, electric eyes honed to a deadly, perceptive current. He’s warm, especially for how skinny he is, and it makes her feel cold enough to want to get closer.

“Well,” she clears her throat, “you really went all out on the ambiance for this not a date.”

“I have no idea what that was,” he mutters, voice low and careful, “we should get out of here. Now.”

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 2.9

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, as the second trial began, we figured out Ryoma’s body was in the piranha tank, Kirumi was very craftily not trying to defend herself too much, and we narrowed the suspects down to only Kaito and Maki because Kokichi is being an obstructive dick and not telling us what he knows about the real time of death, all so that he can push aside any semblance of proper deductions or evidence to make the trial about himself and attempt to force his philosophy onto Kaito.

Kokichi:  “Let’s start this extreme death debate! Tear up the other’s lies! Rip each other apart!”

So let’s do this, shall we? Kaito and Maki are totally about to start tearing each other apart, right.

Shuichi:  “W-Wait just a minute, what are you trying to—”

I like how Shuichi is also not on board with this assholery. As he shouldn’t be, as a detective who values proof and evidence rather than random accusation-slinging.

Kaito:  “Quit screwing around! We don’t need to debate who’s the culprit! I’m not the culprit! That’s for sure…”

Miu:  “Which means…”

Shuichi:  “Kaito, wait! Maybe Kokichi is wrong! Maybe he—”

Kaito:  “But Maki isn’t the culprit either!”

I love this so much. We’ve just been forced to listen to several minutes of Kokichi going on and on about his twisted worldview and how the only way to survive in a situation like this is to distrust each other and throw around accusations, and Kaito just nopes the everliving fuck out of it. He’s so good. Kokichi specifically did this to target Kaito, to try and force him to give up his philosophy of co-operation and trust, but, ha, as if. Kaito is never going to stop being Kaito and there’s nothing Kokichi can do about it. With how strongly Kaito cares about sticking to his convictions no matter what, it is hilarious to me that Kokichi ever thought this would work.

I also like how Shuichi seemed to assume Kaito was about to accuse Maki and tried to stop him, because even though he believes in Kaito he doesn’t want to automatically accuse Maki based on that either – but Kaito was already one step ahead of him.

Maki:  “…What?”

I love how bewildered Maki is by this. Why would he do that when his own life is on the line, especially when it’s her of all people he’s assuming wouldn’t kill someone.

(And bear in mind that, since Maki knows Ryoma was alive at nighttime, she isn’t assuming that Kaito necessarily killed him. So it’s not that she thinks this has to be some bizarre reverse-psychology way of trying to take the suspicion off himself, either.)

Kokichi:  “You’re saying neither of you are the culprit? Then what would be the point of this whole deba—”

Kaito:  “Who cares about that!? All I know is that neither me or Maki are the culprit!”

Yeah, damn right Kaito doesn’t give a fuck about any of your bullshit philosophising. You were the only one who acted like this one-on-one debate actually had to happen, Kokichi. No-one else agreed to it, because it’s very obviously not the best way to reach the truth. Stop trying to make the trial about yourself.

Kaito:  “It’s just a hunch I’ve got!”

Kokichi:  “A… A hunch!? Are you being serious? You do know all our lives are on the line here, right? And you’re betting our lives on just a hunch?”

Kaito:  “Hmph… You don’t get it. This isn’t just any hunch… This is an official hunch from *the* Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars!”

The best kind of hunch! No, but, seriously. I’ve been over so many times how keen Kaito’s intuition is when it comes to people. He may not be able to explain exactly why he’s sure of it, but he can just tell that Maki is not the kind of person who wants to kill anyone, and he can believe in that hunch so strongly because his intuition about people has always turned out to be right in the past. That’s his “proof”. It may not be concrete, empirical evidence, but it’s very much not nothing.

Also, Kokichi’s got some nerve to be complaining that Kaito is risking their lives for the sake of his philosophy, when that’s exactly what Kokichi himself was trying to do for the past several minutes. Kaito is only bringing up his philosophy now because it’s relevant, because he was being challenged to accuse Maki and he refuses to do so. He is not going out of his way to try and make the trial about this, unlike someone.

Kokichi:  “You’re totally not serious! You can’t be *that* stupid, right?”

Tenko:  “No, he might actually be that stupid.”

As much as I adore Kaito and wholeheartedly support everything he’s doing here… I also do enjoy the very blunt way Tenko puts this.

Still, Kaito really isn’t being stupid, at least not in the sense of the word that means “unintelligent”. All Kaito is being is reckless, to believe in Maki because of his intuition without any concrete proof. And that’s something that can sometimes be described as “stupid”, which is why everyone is calling him that, but that’s the only sense in which it fits.

(Except for Kokichi, who definitely thinks that simply believing in someone that strongly is the stupidest thing ever.)

Kaito:  “There’s no doubt about it! I believe in Maki!”

Maki:  “…You what?”

I adore how bewildered Maki is here. Why would anyone ever believe in her. She’s just a horrible murderer who doesn’t deserve to be believed in… right? Kaito doesn’t even know it yet, but he’s already doing exactly what he needs to to help her with her issues.

Kaito:  “In the end, the only thing that matters is what I believe! Right!? Whether I believe or not! Whether I *want* to believe or not! That’s the only thing that matters!”

Kaito is so good! This is why he could also believe in Shuichi without letting himself worry about being betrayed! And this philosophy of his is also really relevant to the game’s overall theme. There’s a lot of emphasis put in the lategame on how sometimes you can’t know whether something is truth or lies – and here, Kaito’s saying that if there’s no proof either way, then you should just focus on what you want to believe is true, because that’s the only part of it that’s relevant to you.

Gonta:  “Is okay to be idiot! As long as you believe in people!”

Gonta is also Very Good.

Kaito:  “Guys! I said don’t call me an idiot! It really hurts my feelings!”

It’s okay, Kaito; you are the best idiot. And only an idiot in the sense that you’re reckless, not that you’re unintelligent.

Shuichi:  (…It’s absurdity, total absurdity. But then again… that absurdity saved me before, right?)

Yes, Kaito’s absurdity is the best kind of absurdity! Embrace it, Shuichi!

(Also, look at how Shuichi feels like Kaito has saved him already! Aww.)

Shuichi:  (If I can trust my logic… maybe I can trust Kaito’s feelings too. Yeah… It’ll work out in the end. So…) “…I’ll believe in Maki as well.”

I adore Shuichi trusting Kaito enough that he trusts not only that Kaito isn’t the culprit but also that Kaito’s judgement of Maki is correct.

Maki:  “…What?”

Maki cannot believe that there are now not one but two people doing something as foolish and obviously wrong as believing in her.

Kokichi:  “Maaan, you too? How could the Ultimate Detective believe in someone without proof?”

Shuichi:  “But there’s no proof linking Maki or Kaito to this crime either. I believe in innocent until proven guilty. For now, they are innocent.”

Exactly, Kokichi. Accusing them solely based on the lack of an alibi – an alibi that you know full well is irrelevant – is just as irrational of a thing to do as believing in them without any proof. In fact, the more logical option of the two is to believe in them until proven otherwise, since there’s only a one in thirteen chance that any given person is guilty.

Kaito:  “Right on, Shuichi! I knew I picked a good sidekick!”

Yay, Kaito being proud of his sidekick for not falling for any of Kokichi’s asshole philosophy either!

Although usually Kaito’s pride in his sidekick comes from Shuichi being a good detective. This time he’s proud of Shuichi for believing in people… but in two trials’ time, that’s not quite going to go the same way.

Shuichi:  “Uh, and by the way, I might be the Ultimate Detective, but… I’m in training. I… told you that, didn’t I? I’m just an apprentice, not a real detective.”

Shuichiiii, now is not the time to be putting yourself down after you just helped drag everyone out of Kokichi’s bullshit and Kaito is being proud of you! (Maybe it’s because Kaito’s being proud of him that he mentioned this now, like he still doesn’t feel like he deserves it.)

Kokichi:  “How do you plan to get closer to the truth without suspecting either of them?”

I don’t know, Kokichi, maybe by talking about one of the number of things about this case that haven’t been cleared up yet, such as when and how Ryoma was killed and how he was put into the piranha tank? We only stopped talking about those because you hijacked this trial with your bullshit.

Maki:  “So I just have to turn it around, right?”

Kokichi:  “Huh?”

Maki:  “It’s not like I owe that idiot a favor or anything just because he defended me… But that hopeless idiot may have encouraged me a bit.”

Makiiiii! It’s so lovely to see her actually feeling safe, just a little bit, enough to talk about what she knows, and all because of Kaito believing in her.

And no, of course she doesn’t owe Kaito a favour just because of what he did. Kaito didn’t remotely do it because he was expecting anything in return; he just did it because that’s what he would always do.

(Also, hee, Maki still calling him an idiot even after he’s done this for her. To be fair, he is very much acting in a way that she considers utterly illogical right now, even if it helped her feel more safe.)

Maki:  “I didn’t want to say anything, but I can’t stay silent forever. …So, I’ll tell you.”

Angie:  “Oh? Tell us what?”

Maki:  “I met up with Ryoma during nighttime yesterday.”

And this is how you can get closer to the truth by believing in people. A reasonable amount of co-operation is necessary for everyone to share all the pertinent information that they know, and to do that, people need to believe in each other, at least a little bit. With nothing but doubt and suspicion, all people would be doing is throwing around accusations without proof, because nobody would feel safe sharing any information with others.

Gonta:  “Th-That’s right. Everyone suspected them. Cuz they no have alibis for those times.”

Look at Gonta having figured out what the word “alibi” means and now being able to join in a discussion about them! See, he is not stupid.

Kirumi:  “Yes, this seems too convenient.”

Of course Kirumi wouldn’t want to accept Maki’s statement as truth, since her entire alibi hinges on the assumption that the murder took place before nighttime and as soon as people realise that’s false, she’s an obvious suspect.

Keebo:  “But why did Maki wait until now to mention that?”

Kokichi:  “Ah-hahahaha! It’s totally obvious! Maki’s so desperate that she has to lie!”

Shuichi:  (Was that… a lie? Did Maki lie to us…?)

Maki:  “…”

Shuichi:  (It’s true, we don’t have all the facts… But why would Maki say that now, of all times…?)

It’s so obvious why Maki would only mention this now, and her telling a lie to protect herself is not the only possible reason, nor is it even the most plausible one.

Even without knowing that she’s an assassin, it’s still clear she has trouble trusting people, so obviously she’d assume that mentioning something like having been the last one to see the victim, alone, in the middle of the night, would get her suspected, especially since they also had each other’s motive videos. It’s only thanks to Kaito and Shuichi that she’s just that little bit less afraid of being scapegoated, because she knows that at least those two will believe her and back her up.

If she were only mentioning it now because she’s lying, then she’d have tried to tell some kind of lie that didn’t implicate her so much, and may well have mentioned it before Kaito even said anything at all. Or if she really was the culprit and wanted to defend herself then she could have just accused Kaito, like Kokichi was telling her to do. Kaito did make himself look more innocent by not attacking Maki, but she could argue that it’s just a ploy to take suspicion off himself.

The reasoning behind why this isn’t necessarily a lie even though she’s only mentioning it now is obvious enough that I’m honestly a little surprised nobody brings it up. On my first time through, my vague theory up until a little before this point was actually that Maki did it – but her reaction here convinced me that I was wrong about that.

Kokichi:  “We shouldn’t listen to anything Maki says. She’s just gonna throw out more lies.”

This coming from the one person who knows better than anyone else that Maki is telling the truth about having met Ryoma at nighttime, since Kokichi told Ryoma who had his motive video. If he believes she did it, then he should be arguing that, sure, maybe she met Ryoma at nighttime, but that’s when she killed him, right? As it is, this is just more of Kokichi trying to thrust his bullshit philosophy that everyone lies all the time and you should never trust anyone ever onto the rest of the class. And he especially wants to make this point about Maki, because she’s an assassin, and even though he hasn’t told the others that yet, that’s still something that makes her an especially untrustworthy and awful person who totally lies all the time (even when he knows she’s not lying), right?

Kokichi:  “I hate liars! Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

While this sounds like the most pathetically obvious lie Kokichi ever tells, it… might actually be a little more true than it seems. I’ve mentioned enough that I think what Kokichi really hates – and part of the reason he tried to force everyone to watch their motive videos – is the thought that someone who’s acting on the surface like they’re trustworthy and want to be friends is lying and will readily turn around and betray him. So in some sense, he really does hate lies. He’s just okay with his own brand of lying because if you’re open about telling lies all the time then there’s no expectation of trust that can be betrayed in the first place.

There being a grain of truth to this statement would be more interesting than that he just felt like telling the world’s most easily disproven lie, at least.

Shuichi:  “So you saw the motive videos. Did you tell Ryoma that Maki had his?”

Kokichi:  “…”

Aaaaand of course, Kokichi can’t just tell them that straight away, because that would support the idea that Maki is telling the truth and make her seem trustworthy and he can’t have that.

Maki:  “I keep my room unlocked.”

Kokichi:  “Wow Maki, that’s super careless. Aren’t you scared someone might kill you in your sleep?”

Maki:  “…”

This is Kokichi hinting at the fact that he knows Maki’s an assassin and therefore would have less reason to fear being killed in the night than most. Maki’s probably beginning to worry that he found this out from her motive video.

Maki:  “When he asked me, he said that he would show me my motive video in return… But I wasn’t interested, so I declined.”

Ha, damn right Maki didn’t want to see her own video. She probably already figured out it would show the kids from her orphanage and give her the ultimatum that she has to murder someone to protect them, which is already exactly why she kills people in the first place. She doesn’t want to see a video that would essentially just be giving her another hit request, not as long as she can avoid it.

Everyone’s still doubting Maki’s story in its entirety. I don’t know why nobody is bringing up the possibility that it could be partially true but then she also killed Ryoma while they were together.

Keebo:  “Then why did you wait until now to bring that up?”

Maki:  “I didn’t say anything until now because I wasn’t in the mood to be suspected.”

“Wasn’t in the mood” is a hell of an understatement of her issues about believing she’s a horrible murderer and everyone should suspect her, and being convinced that they’d assume this about her here even if she didn’t kill anyone.

And that still doesn’t explain why she decided to change her mind now, which is because Kaito and Shuichi believed in her. Apparently she’s still not too willing to admit how much of an effect that had on her, heh.

Maki:  “It seems that Ryoma and I had each other’s motive videos. That’s pretty fishy, right? So I didn’t want to mention it to avoid suspicion.”

…that and the part where you met him at nighttime and could have killed him without being seen and that’s suspicious, why is nobody mentioning this at all?

And there’s also the fact that Ryoma knew Maki’s talent and probably brought it up during their conversation, which she would have been worried might come out if she talked about meeting him at all. Obviously she’s still not mentioning that reason.

Kirumi:  “It is quite selfish to keep this information hidden because you were not in the mood.”

True, but also, Kokichi is even more guilty of doing this literally all the time.

Also look at how Kirumi in particular is trying to discredit Maki. For her case to work, she needs Maki’s statement to be a lie.

Kaito:  “Well, whatever. Either way, let’s just believe Maki.”

Hee, Kaito being so casual about how we should just believe her now, especially now that she’s given a perfectly plausible, non-malicious reason why she was hiding it.

Shuichi:  “Because if Kokichi told Ryoma… it becomes more likely that Ryoma visited Maki during nighttime.”

There’s also the fact that if Kokichi told Ryoma then that happened during nighttime too and we no longer need Maki’s testimony specifically to prove he was alive then. The writing… kind of overlooks that point, in order to make it necessary for Shuichi to lie.

Kokichi:  “Here comes the dramatic turnabout… Now I’m the one pressured by Maki! Ooookay, it’s true. I told Ryoma.”

Shuichi:  “Just as I thought.”

Kokichi:  “But that’s not a bad thing, right? He wanted to know, so I told him.”

Kokichi treats this like it’s some big accusation pointed at him, when all it is is him giving everyone a truthful piece of information that doesn’t implicate himself at all. Nobody other than him would make such a big deal out of telling the truth and helping the trial along.

(It’s possible that when Kokichi told Ryoma, he expected it would lead to Maki killing him – she’s a horrible assassin, so of course that’s how she’d react to learning Ryoma knew her secret, right? – and yet despite that expectation, Kokichi told Ryoma anyway. That could be part of why he’s so defensive about this.)

Kirumi:  “Have you seen everyone’s motive video?”

Kokichi:  “Nope, not yet. I was gonna wait until we hosted, like, a movie screening party. I just checked who had whose, so I could give them back to everyone after.”

Kirumi:  “Hmm… I see.”

Ha, Kirumi would be worried about that. And she should be, because Kokichi is lying as usual.

Kaito:  “That means Maki was telling the truth! Ryoma was alive during nighttime!”

Kirumi:  “No, we cannot be too sure about that yet.”

Again, Kirumi being the one to most openly question Maki’s testimony, because it’s incredibly bad for her.

Kirumi:  “Even if Ryoma and Maki did meet, it does not mean it was during nighttime yesterday.”

…The only other possibility is this morning, though, because Kokichi only saw all the motive videos at the beginning of nighttime. We’re still awkwardly avoiding this fact.

Maki:  “…So you still suspect me?”

Kirumi:  “I am saying it could still be a possibility. If there is still a small chance of you being the culprit, then I cannot trust you entirely.”

But there’s a small chance that anyone is the culprit, especially if the murder really did take place at nighttime. Kirumi’s doing a good job of sounding like she’s doing this for the sake of everyone here, but…

Kirumi:  “Because everyone’s lives are at stake.”

…that’s not the “everyone” she’s really referring to here.

Kaito:  “She’s not lying! Can’t you tell just by looking at her!?”

More of Kaito’s instincts! He’s the type of person who judges whether or not someone’s lying just by looking at their reactions and getting a read off of them, not by proving it with facts and evidence.

Maki:  “I’m not lying. I did meet up with Ryoma during nighttime. …I’m telling the truth.”

Maki looks and sounds vaguely frustrated as she says this, understandably so since she must have expected everyone except Kaito and Shuichi to not believe her even though it’s the truth, and that’s exactly what’s happening.

Kokichi:  “If you can’t prove your claim… then it’s the same as an outright lie!”

…It’s really not, though. The truth is still the truth. Only Kokichi would think of unprovable truths as being equivalent to lies.

Shuichi:  (I can’t say the two of them met now, that’s too obvious a lie…)

I like this part. Even though it’s obvious that you have to tell a lie that backs up Maki’s testimony, the challenge of this debate is telling the lie in a way that still sounds believable. Saying he saw Maki and Ryoma together would beg the question of why he didn’t mention that sooner, given how everyone was asked when they last saw Ryoma alive. So instead Shuichi has to remain vague and just say Maki met with someone he couldn’t identify. It’s neat that the game managed to incorporate a little bit of not only “what to lie about” but also “how to lie believably” into its lying mechanic.

Shuichi is already a better liar than Kaede by yelling “I’ll reveal the truth!” before he tells one, and not “I’ll turn this lie into the truth!”. But he’s also significantly better at actually confidently telling the lie than she was.

Shuichi:  “Well, Kaito and I train together every night… And yesterday, because of the ‘Insect Meet and Greet,’ we started late.”

Kaito:  “Huh?”

Shuichi:  “Ah, Kaito, don’t worry. You don’t have to say anything.”

I also love how Shuichi makes Kaito complicit in the lie without asking him because he knows Kaito will want to support Maki too, and that he very quickly and efficiently communicates to Kaito, “shush, I’m lying, go along with it” without actually saying that.

(Incorporating a little bit of something actually true – their nightly training – is also generally a good way to make a lie sound believable.)

Shuichi:  “We knew one of them was Maki, but we couldn’t pick out the other one…”

Honestly, this is the least believable part of the lie, because Ryoma’s voice is so distinctively deep that you’d think they’d have been able to tell it was him.

One part of the lie that is actually provably false is the part where Kaito testified earlier that he went to sleep in his room when nighttime hit, so he shouldn’t have been there to train with Shuichi at midnight. However, Kaito happened to only mention that during the Mass Panic Debate… and apparently nobody was listening to him. (But I guess Shuichi could have claimed that he came to wake Kaito up for training, if someone had called them out on that.)

There’s also the fact that, to get to and from Maki’s lab in order to have this conversation with her, Ryoma would have had to use the stairs that Kaito and Shuichi were supposedly exercising on, meaning they should have seen him coming and/or going. Thankfully nobody thinks things through enough to realise this.

Kirumi:  “What?”

Kirumi, naturally, is the least okay with this apparent confirmation of Maki’s story.

Kaito:  “U-Uh… Yeah, maybe! That was probably… around midnight!”

Kaito is a somewhat less convincing liar than Shuichi, but to be fair it would probably have looked a lot more suspicious if he hadn’t said anything at all, since he was supposedly there too.

Maki:  “…”

Maki’s staring at them in bewilderment. I wonder if she’s aware they’re lying for her.

Kirumi:  “And you two did not confirm who Maki was talking to at the time? If I overheard a conversation in the middle of the night, I surely would have checked. We are still part of a killing game, after all.”

Kaito:  “Wh-Whoa, chill out… Why the scary face?”

Kirumi is still very frustrated at how inconvenient this is for her. And Kaito seems to have noticed that Kirumi is being a bit more intense about this than she would normally be expected to be.

Kaito:  “That was my bad… But it’s not really manly to eavesdrop, y’know? I wouldn’t do something so uncool…”

Even though this is part of a lie, this is still consistent with Kaito’s established concept of manliness. Just like he said before that it’s unmanly to pretend to listen when you’re not interested, it’s also unmanly to be listening in when the person speaking doesn’t know about it. It’s not just about being true to yourself, but also about being open and honest regarding your intentions towards others.

Gonta:  “Then Gonta will believe friends.”

Miu:  “Y-You’re gonna believe him… just like that?”

Here’s some more brief hints at Miu being a vaguely interesting character in that she’s the most paranoid one here other than Kokichi, so naturally she’d be the least willing to believe Shuichi even though he has no obvious reason to lie.

Tsumugi:  “Yeah, you’re right! I’ll believe him too!”

…Tsumugi may well know that he’s lying.

Kokichi:  “I’d be so surprised if Shuichi was a liar, especially after we believed him for so long. We wouldn’t be able to trust anyone anymore! Well, it’s not like he’s lying anyway…”

His sly grin as he says that last part pretty much proves he knows Shuichi is lying. Everything else Kokichi says here is, yet again, him trying to force the idea that if someone who seems trustworthy like Shuichi turns out to have lied, even once, no matter what the reason, then obviously nobody is truly trustworthy ever and you should never trust anyone at all.

---

[Next post]

[kytcordell]

Raised by a Borderline

I need to take a brief hiatus from public updates for BTBW. Patreon early access updates and other content will still continue. I just need to prioritize my work load and take some time to recover.

I normally don’t like to involve my personal problems with social media or work, but I feel like this is something that has to be said.

My mother recently made a disingenuous suicide attempt as a means to manipulate me.

I grew up with a mother that has borderline personality disorder. If you don’t know what this is, this article gives helpful information.

People who have BPD often suffer from absolutely delusional and batshit obsessive levels of insecurity, and will do anything in their power to prevent people from leaving them. In my case, my mother had been visiting another city when I informed her that I would be moving out for my own health and well-being. She waited until around the time I said I would be back to grab my things to stage a suicide attempt. I say staged, because she very strategically timed this. I came home to grab some of my things and found her passed out with a suicide note on her phone. I called 911 and the police searched her room to try and figure out what pills she might have taken. I even went outside to help them look in the grassy area around her window.

Turns out, she left the fucking pill bottles ON MY BED in MY ROOM. She clearly intended me to be the one to discover this scene. Later at the hospital, I found out that there were a lot of pills left in the container, meaning that she didn’t even take that many. This entire situation was very obviously a charade to guilt me out of my decision to move away for my own sanity.

I have been emotionally abused and gaslighted by her my entire life and I needed to remove myself. Rather than simply accept that I am an independent adult that needs to move away for my own development and well-being, she always pulls absurd shit any time I try to distance myself.

Last time I tried to leave, she pulled a knife on me. 

Why? According to her, because I had the only key to the outer door for the apartment complex, she couldn’t go out to smoke if I was gone.

If you’re interested, I explain more details about my background and childhood in the rest of this post. If not, now you know why updates have been somewhat inconsistent as of late.

Throughout my entire childhood, my mother threatened me with abandonment and was physically abusive.

She would say and do awful things any time she felt “insecure” or “worried.” Of course, these feelings could be triggered by anything from me losing my jacket at school or simply saying something that hurt her feelings. In addition to threatening to send me to a foster home, she would also insult me and say absolutely awful things like, “you’re useless just like your father,” or “I wish I never had you.” She tried to justify this sort of behavior by claiming that she was just worried I would develop the same bad habits as my father and she wanted to “set me right.” My parents were divorced when I was four years old, and  my mother has always talked shit about my father and then used that as a justification for why she was so malicious toward my innocent childhood flaws.

My mother was always financially very clever, and she would always use financial support as a means to control me. I was always well-provided for financially, and I used to think that meant everything was okay and that she was a good mother. I didn’t realize that every she has ever done for me was a trap to ensure I could not later leave. She would offer support so she could later use it as leverage to control or manipulate me. I cannot count the number of times she has threatened to throw me out after asking me to live at home.

When my mother became upset, she would wildly flail and strike me as a child. I remember one occasion where she attempted to strangle me and had to be pulled off by my grandmother. On another occasion, to prove to other parents that she “knew how to discipline her child,” she struck me with a ring on and gave me a bloody nose. (We happened to be in the company of other people who regularly struck their children, so I suppose this is why no one called the cops). As I got older, I actually became less afraid of being hit, and more afraid that she would accidentally hurt herself during her erratic, uncontrolled thrashing. Eventually, I think she stopped physically assaulting me because I made it very clear I would knock her teeth out if she tried. I am quite strong generally, and one time I simply held her down while she screamed and was trying to reach the scissors so she could vandalize my property.

She gaslighted me and pushed me away from my passions.

I neglected my art for years because I felt like I had to pursue a certain career or lifestyle in order to be accepted. I suffered from severe depression and suicidal tendencies for most of my life because I constantly felt like I was not good enough. She had subtle ways of manipulating me away from truly pursuing what I wanted, even if she did not outright forbid me from drawing. It was a complicated and ongoing manipulation that left me feeling like my self worth was entirely derived from my social status and financial success. Any time I would try and address this, she would deny ever mistreating me or doing anything to make me feel unworthy.

I honestly did not realize something was wrong for the majority of my life. My mother gaslit me and convinced me that she was a perfect parent for most of my life. There are hazy gaps in my memory where I can’t remember exactly what was said or done. I just remember a few vivid instances of abuse occurring.

Typically, I am incredibly good at spotting borderlines and culling them from my social circle. I’ve an acute sense of spotting bullshit and warning my friends about it. However, I guess it’s a lot more difficult when it’s a situation I was raised in.

She eternally self-victimizes and refuses to behave like an independent adult.

My mother, in spite of being a capable and competent person, feels entitled to being pandered to. My whole life, I felt like I had to constantly tip-toe around my mother and try and meet her endless need for emotional validation. She expects to constantly do things for her in order to “prove that I care,” even things that she is perfectly capable of doing herself. Any time a conflict occurs, she is incapable of showing any accountability for her own actions and inevitably always blames others for hurting her or not being kind to her. Just recently, she started berating me for not caring about her because I offered to set up an Uber account for her so I she wouldn’t be reliant on me calling one for her every time she needed one. She basically felt like I should be happy to call Uber for her, even though it would be more convenient for her to have her own account. Her entire reasoning for refusing to get an account was an irrational fear of credit card fraud, based on some unrelated incident that happened to a friend of hers. Therefore, according to her reasoning, others should simply pander to her illogical behaviors that are based on totally unfounded insecurities.

[hammurabicomplex-a2]

@streetsofsecrets​​​   :   ⚡laura and roman!! also a au where grigori and pat get married njhgbjnk BREAK UP MEME,   accepting!

who files for divorce:   grigori,  after pat pulls a ginger on him.   she won’t tie tatiana to the bed,  but nearly running his car into the living room?   screaming at the top of her lungs in the middle of the street about how she fucked his friend?   i wouldn’t rule out the possibility if he pisses her off enough.

the reason for their break-up/divorce:   other than the things mentioned above,  their relationship got boring before it got messy.   they fell into routine,  which pat can only stand for too long.   it grew into them being constantly annoyed with each other;  pat with his callousness,  grigori with her temper.   which predictably led to constant fighting,  and just overall not getting along.   also,  i believe pat needs more affection and tenderness than grigori is able to give her.

who gets the better lawyer:   both of them have the money to get really good lawyers.

if their conversations only end in fights:   very often.   specially when grigori starts with his  your feelings are irrational  bullshit,  which drives her insane.   granted,  she does have some irrational feelings,  but she also feels like trying to talk to him is like talking to a wall sometimes.

who gets custody over the kid(s):   pat gets the custody of whatever kids they have together  ( which i assume they do,  a pregnancy was likely what prompted them to get married in the first place ).   as for tatiana,  pat would be very happy to take her too,  but since they’re not related to each other in blood,  it’s grigori’s call.   depending on how many children she already has on her plate,  it’s probably not the worst idea that grigori keeps tati so she won’t be too overwhelmed,  but she’ll obviously still visit very often.   and also depending on how old tatiana is,  she might even be able to decide for herself.

who gets to keep the pets:   patrick stays with pat.   pat will fight for vanya  ( in her defense,  she loves that snobbish cat better than grigori does ),  but in the end,  he’s gotta stay wherever tatiana ends up.

who moves out of their home and who stays:   pat briefly moves in with whichever scozzari will take her when they separate,  but eventually i feel like she’ll come back to their apartment before the divorce is final.   at least  trying  to make this amicable,  and also so they won’t be moving the kids around more than necessary.

who gets the house/apartment in the end:   grigori can have it.   pat wants to live somewhere that doesn’t look like patrick bateman’s apartment.

who gets more money from the other:   i feel like grigori is the kind of person to make a list of every single item in their inventory,  no matter how tiny,  and they split it all evenly.

who gets the kid(s) for which holidays:   they argue a lot about it,  and end up spending the holidays together.   it’s just easier.

if they stay friends:   were they  ever  friends.......   i do feel like they try to get along for the children’s sake but there are definitely times where they have their fights and just do not want to deal with each other.

who wants to give their relationship another try:   we all know it’s pat.   she’s bound to try to get back together or at least sleep with every ex she’s ever had,  specially when she’s feeling lonely.

who finds a new love:  pat’s ego will be shattered if he so much as dates someone else before she does.   not because she loves him,  but because she hates the idea that he already moved on and she didn’t.   but given the way grigori is with relationships,  and also their responsibilities with work and parenting,  i’d say they have other things in mind,  though of course meeting new people is bound to happen at some point.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Oh, that’s what the dress thing is about.

You know, I think it’s really fucking annoying when Democrats don’t stand by their alleged convictions. When they refuse to stand by “defund the police” and instead use “tough on crime” language. When they refuse to stand by the vision of a less militaristic America and talk about wanting America to be “strong”. I think it’s annoying when they refuse to challenge the idea that the stock market doing well is the same as average people having secure, well-paying jobs, and I think it’s annoying when they buy into the idea that people should have to earn necessities through working for them, rather than things like food and shelter and health care and education being inherent rights. I think it’s annoying when they play up their Christianity to avoid offending religious conservatives, when they talk about how abortion should be “rare” to avoid offending conservatives, when they engage in the pretense that racism is primarily a result of poor rural whites getting left behind (granted, poor rural people getting left behind is a very real problem, it’s just… not why Trump got the election in 2016. Nor is that problem fixable by backing off on things like queer rights and immigrant rights. Anyways.)

So when a Democrat does the opposite of that and makes a clear, unambiguous, and indeed controversial statement about what they’re for? That’s a good thing.

AOC can’t win for losing. She’s simultaneously dismissed for being from a working class background (“go back to being a bartender”) and also demonized whenever she wears clothes that are typical of and appropriate for someone in her position. It’s bullshit and regressive, and it’s hard to imagine it’s not connected to her being a woman of color.

AOC isn’t some profound traitor to the cause or whatever. She’s not a demon. She’s not our savior either. She’s a human being like the rest of us with strengths and weaknesses who is attempting to make a certain type of change through the political process. People who are in favor of making that sort of change through those sorts of methods tend to like her and talk her up and that’s good and appropriate and consistent with their worldview. (And…while there are limits to the political process, there are also matters of life and death significance that happen though it whether you are engaging with it or not. There is a difference between someone like AOC being in the House and someone like, idk, whatever conservative is trying to pass the worst fucking laws right now.) People who are cynical about the method do best to give her as little attention as possible and focus on other things — union organizing, protesting, mutual aid, guerilla gardening, sharing info about where to get textbooks for free, figuring out how to show Bezos’ debit card number in Times Square, whatever.

(Obviously I am not advocating doing anything illegal because that would be breaking the law, and breaking the law would be breaking the law. Ahem.)

Realistically most people aren’t radical, and it is as irrational to expect progressives to be radicals as it is for progressives to expect radicals to have the same politics as them.

If you’re following a lot of people who aren’t personal friends and also don’t share your worldview, you’ve got a call to make over whether it’s worth putting up with them expressing opinions based on a different worldview. If there’s someone you have a good relationship with that has a different opinion on the effectiveness of the political process than you, or who thinks it’s ineffective but is stanning AOC anyways because sometimes people are inconsistent, maybe have a direct one on one conversation about that. But there’s really no reason for people on the left to get mad that AOC is making a political statement that at least approximately corresponds to our priorities.

(And there is no way to criticize someone who is making a political statement while doing a normal politician thing that she was going to do in any case, for, you know, wearing an expensive dress or whatever, without it coming across as you’re actually criticizing the statement.)

Sometimes people come to radical politics by a slide from liberal to progressive to radical. (I would have thought that was the only way, but from what some people say on tumblr I guess some people go straight from being raised conservative to radical with no in between? And some people do get raised radical. Anyways.) I think when people slide in the other direction, which can happen, it’s because of things like lack of community support and perceived ineffectiveness. Yelling at progressives isn’t really going to change those issues. Focusing on making the left strong and interconnected and effective is.

“Strong,” just shoot me now. Sigh.

There are some big differences between liberals/progressives and radicals/leftists. I think the core one is liberals/progressives tend to basically trust the system. I think it is actually really important for people with radical politics who were raised trusting the system, myself included, to intentionally unlearn that trust. Maybe for some people that involves a period of demonizing politicians to overwrite a basic tendency to trust the politicians that are on “your side”, idk, maybe this is somehow helpful for someone. For me I think it’s more effective though to take a mellower approach, and go back to core values. AOC is advocating wealth redistribution, and that is a value I share. I also have values that are not anywhere near the Overton window: open borders, land back, police and prison abolition, abolishment of corporations and nation states and capitalism and very specifically the United States as an imperial power, and I’m not sure how many of those AOC is in favor of on a personal level (I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s for open borders anyways), but definitely there is only so far the political process is going to be able to go in moving towards those goals. So regardless of what I think of her as a person or politician, there are some things that she’s not going to be with me on, and that’s ok. Most people aren’t. I can focus on the ones that are, and with the rest I can either focus on other values that we share or I can let them go their own way when they’re not actively standing in opposition to what I’m for. It’s ok.

It’s important to not swing back and forth between “this politician is amazing and the best and is going to change everything for the better” and “this politician is the literal worst” (when they’re actually better/less bad than most.) It’s important to see differences. There is a narrow range of what a given politician is likely to be able to do, and they act within those ranges and can only be sensibly evaluated within those ranges. If you want to go “but fuck all politicians though” that’s fine, there’s something to be said for seeing politicians as a class whose interests don’t align with the interests of people with less power — like landlords, like cops, like bosses. But if that’s your take there’s still no real reason to single out one specific politician who happens to be 1. a woman of color and 2. for that class, about as non-shitty as they come.

I mean, you can fundamentally not like bosses and still notice when a boss who’s a woman of color gets a lot more hate directed at her than the white male bosses, and find that kinda weird and concerning and probably reflective of how people saying those things treat women of color who aren’t in positions of relative power. Same for politicians.

Like yeah “we’re not going to girlboss our way out of this one” sure, but also…how relatively powerful women get treated and how powerless women get treated is not entirely unrelated. And if I can’t dance I don’t want to be a part of your revolution. (=misogyny (and racism and the intersection thereof) within leftism is still a problem actually.)

Anyways: you’ll notice I almost never post about politicians including AOC on here. I’m certainly not going to start stanning her. I don’t think that’s constructive. Democracy, to the extent that it’s a useful concept, isn’t about which horse you back. It’s about organizing and coming together and coalition building and taking to the streets and an awful lot of phone calls and mailing parties and meetings and talking and listening and research and attempting to translate legal text into something that makes sense and figuring out how to phrase things persuasively and supportive infrastructure like local newspapers and hashtags and days of action and petitions and saving your elected officials’ phone numbers in your contacts and showing up. (And so much fucking fundraising, endless fucking fundraising.) It’s often more about stanning laws and policy concepts (“green new deal”, “Medicare for all” etc) than stanning politicians. People who focus on politicians do not know how to do democracy IMO.