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#both my parents still can’t believe I am bi
chialattea · 1 month
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watching one piece with your father is so humbling because one moment you’re monologuing to him about how incredible Arlong Park is and next thing you know he’s looking at you with a poker face and goes “you just want to marry Nami.” Like okay dad yeah fair but like, THATS BESIDES THE POINT
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thefrontofmymind · 9 months
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matty healy x reader ig blurb
FC: Olivia Cook
a/n: there isn't really a particular trope i could put this under. like there's marriage and a baby, all of it soft launched. idk. help me
2019
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yninstagram oui oui baguette, bisou xx
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ynfan1 living for yn the rockstar girlfriend
ynfan2 our meme queen
>1975fan1 her and matty are so made for each other
ynfan3 omg i thought she was in paris i saw her today adsskdfjs
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yninstagram why travel with your rockstar of a boyfriend if youre not going to get a metric tonne of fries from room service?
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1975fan1 WHY IS THERE A PIECE OF BREAD ON THE BARE TABLECLOTH??
ynfan1 the past generation had alexa chung, we have yn
ynfan2 how is she so prettyyyyy
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yninstagram via stories:
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yninstagram via stories:
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caption: home.
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trumanblack via stories:
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2022
yninstagram via stories:
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trumanblack Love. Love. Love. Love. What other word could I use? Happy birthday.
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1975fan1 IM SORRY YN IN A WEDDING DRESS???? WHAT???
>ynfan1 AND IT LOOKS TO BE FROM AROUND 2019 BASED ON HER HAIR
>1975fan1 I AM FREAKING OUT
yninstagram love you
1975fan2 so im guessing i have no chance?
>trumanblack none at all, i’m afraid.
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yninstagram lol
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ynfan1 ARE THEY TROLLING WHATS GOING ON???
ynfan2 HER LEFT HAND IS CROPPED OUT
ynfan3 im sorry why is everybody freaking out?
>ynfan4 matty posted a photo of yn in a wedding dress seemingly from a while ago, everyone thinks they’re married now
trumanblack nice shirt, i wonder who’s wardrobe you stole it from
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yninstagram im watching you. also stream being funny in a foreign language, its by…the 1885?
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ynfan1 she’s so right they are mum and dad
1975fan1 im sorry im just thinking about that deuxmoi post from like january
>1975fan2 what one? sorry im a newer fan
>1975fan1 it was about a singer and a model who got secretly married and had a baby like a couple months later and it was never revealed who it was
>1975fan2 oh thats interesting!
ynfan2 obSESSED with that ring
ynfan3 i STILL cant get over that yn and matty are married! Im never going to recover from this
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yninstagram throwback to baby’s first aquarium visit (yes, this is what you think.)
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ynfan1 I AM CRYINGGG
1975fan1 HOLY FUCK THAT BLIND ITEM WAS REAL
ynfan2 mother is mothering the most a mother could mother right now
1975fan2 WAIT SO BOTH ADAM AND MATTY EACH HAVE A KID NOW??
>1975fan3 omg half of the 1975 are dads now…
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yninstagram BRITS.
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trumanblack milf.
>yninstagram thx
charli_xcx FITTIEEEE
>yninstagram THANK U BABYYYY
ynfan1 step on me
1975fan1 the 1975 WAGs make me bi
ynfan2 how is she real???
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dailymail Yn shares new video of her son on instagram, the tot was captured splashing in a puddle of mud in an instagram story from his mum. This is the first we’ve seen anything of Yn and Matty Healy’s baby after the “soft launch” back in November.
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ynfan1 is this really news? a mum shared a video of her child doing something cute, it happens every day
>ynfan2 well yn was the one that posted it, surely she expected people to talk about it
ynfan3 so so cuteeee
1975fan1 I can’t believe my parents are actual parents!!
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bihansthot · 10 months
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hey😊👋 i see you're an enthusiastic bihan fan like me😍💙 i wanna know your favorite options about him and what you think is canon?
him being originally Asian / Caucasian or white ?
cryomancers originate from edenia so...?
his eye color? blue or brown?
him having short spikey hair (like in my fanart i tagged u) or mk1 hairstyle?
thanks a lot bc i care about ur answers 💙❄️
stay cold😵💙❄️
Enthusiastic is one way to put it! Clinically obsessed is another lol 😂
So with his ethnicity I have always assume he was Chinese, fully Chinese. To me Mama Zero has always been Chinese American because if you look at Kuai Liang’s MK2 win screen he doesn’t look biracial.
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Bi-Han in MK1 doesn’t look biracial either:
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And although Tony Chung is an American, (Kuai Liang’s face model) he isn’t biracial either as far as I know, I believe his parents are Taiwanese.
That and the iconic song “Chinese Ninja Warrior” always led me to believe that the Sub-Zero Bros are Chinese. They don’t start appearing to potentially be biracial until John Turk becomes the model for Kuai Liang on MK3/UMK3/Trilogy and for Bi-Han in my beloved MKM: SZ but I always assumed they used John Turk for his physique and not his appearance. In the Midway timeline their Mother is an American but like I said I believe she is Chinese American, I guess it’s open to debate though and unless Papa Tobias ever clears it up we’ll never know for sure. Please note I am not saying there is anything wrong with them being biracial, that’s not what I’m getting at in the least I’m just giving my opinion based off of their appearance and the storyline we’ve been given. If they are biracial I feel like they are like Korean Chinese or Japanese Chinese or something like that, not Caucasian Chinese. That’s just my thought though, again there is nothing wrong with them being biracial I just don’t think they are.
Cryomancers being from Edenia is a pretty new concept and we’re not introduced to that until Kuai Liang’s intro with Sindel. It makes sense though as to where their powers come from but that still doesn’t change Bi-Han being Chinese to me, he’s just half Edenian, half Chinese now but as we’ve seen throughout the games Edenians come in all flavors so Asiatic Edenians aren’t out of the realm of possibilities Mileena and Kitana have had Asian face models for a while now if I’m not mistaken. We don’t know Bi-Han’s yet but Tony Chung being Kuai Liang really solidifies their characteristics for me and I’m curious to see if they’re part Edenian in MK1.
Eye color!! Arrgh! The bane of my existence, just kidding. Bi-Han’s eye color is inconsistent at best, I have statues where they’re blue but in MK1 they look brown? My classic Sub-Zero pop funko has black eyes where both movie funkos have blue eyes. I feel like it’s something Midway/NRS can’t make up their mind about. Even Joe Taslim’s eyes change in the movie, at the beginning they’re brown but at the end they’re blue.
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Personally I favor my head canon of both are the case! When Bi-Han is calm and relaxed his eyes are brown but when he’s agitated or aggressive or horny they’re blue.
Hair style, I will die on my hill he has an undercut, I don’t care that he has a man bun in MK1 he has an undercut god damn it! You hear me Boon?! An UNDERCUT. You can keep the bun and just make it a top knot kinda deal. I personally like him with short hair best because growing up both of my older brothers had stringy unappealing looking super long hair and I am about as unattracted to my brothers as you can get lol so I always associate long hair with them. I am definitely warming up to him having longer hair but to me it’s not longer than his shoulders. I’m having a moment with it ok?
Hopefully that covered everything lovely! Thanks for the ask!
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lilborealis · 28 days
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Mortal Kombat Oc Headcanons lets go (why am I calling this headcanons, I control their canon)
-Seraphina and Tomas are the two most stealthiest of the Lin Kuei/Shirai Ryu and definitely used it to play pranks when they were younger
-absolute hide and seek champions
-Yumi was a surprise baby, as Sindel and Jerrod decided they were done after Kitana and Mileena were born
-she was also a very sickly child, making her much shorter and weaker than her sisters as children, so she hit her growth spurt much later than they did
-Claudia secretly kept a Photo Booth picture of she and Johnny as kids when they were still estranged, she still has it
-Long Fei and Ai Xue (parents to the Lin Kuei bros+sis) were an arranged marriage
-Long Fei’s side of the family has a long history of elemental magic, mainly fire and earth, he was arranged to married Ai Xue due to her family history of ice magic
-Min Le first showed signs of earth magic when she was only six and threw a tantrum, where her stomping started a small earthquake and dislodged the ground around her
-Yumi was left on her own as a kid sometimes, which is why she started studying earthrealm, mainly mythology of different cultures
-Claudia has a black belt in taekwondo, she got it during college mainly for self defense and just because she could
-Yumi is infuriated whenever no one believes her and Mileena that Kitana was an absolute little shit as a child
-as a kid, Seraphina took great pleasure in startling Bi Han, which is a good part of how she got so stealthy in the first place
-Seraphina’s native language is that of Madinatan, which is similar to arabic. Since she hasn’t had a need to speak it living on earth, she’s very rusty
-Min Le is a picky eater
-unless it comes to a mission, Seraphina normally can’t sit still, she always needs to be moving
-Claudia gets Seraphina some hair care products sometimes because Seraphina’s hair is so thick and curly and being a shirai ryu probably doesn’t have a salary
-Claudia and Johnny will both use the phrase “it smells like it’s gonna rain”, full on exposing themselves as midwesterners and everyone else being MAD confused
-Seraphina and Min Le eventually learn some Czech so they can both talk to Tomas in his native language
-bonus! edenians can’t get drunk off of human alcohol and to humans, Outworld alcohol is EXTREMELY strong
-Drunk Seraphina is really sappy and laughs at everything, drunk Claudia cries over anything and drunk Yumi is just brutally honest
-Seraphina normally sleeps in oversized shirts+shorts
-Min Le is a serial clothing thief, that includes her brothers and Seraphina and she can somehow pull the fit off every time
-Claudia loves puppy chow (it’s basically just Chex mix but way better)
-unbeknownst to most people, Claudia actually is a big foodie. She will try almost anything
-Johnny introduced Yumi to earthrealm music and she actually really loves a lot of 2000’s pop
-some of her favorite songs include Maneater and Promiscuous Girl by Nelly Furtado, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head by Kylie Minogue, Irreplaceable and Single Ladies by Beyoncé and Poker face by Lady Gaga
-Seraphina is a secret Rihanna stan
-Claudia also enjoys some of 2000’s pop but also loves Kali Uchis
-Min Le loves artists like Kate Bush, The Smiths, Conan Grey, some occasional k-pop and j-pop and also classical
-Seraphina does not like Nitara (for obvious reasons) like many others but has explicit beef with her solely based on the fact that Nitara thought her blood magic superior to water magic and Seraphina just went “bet” and is currently trying to learn how to bend blood
-out of all of my girls, Seraphina is the most hot headed. You get this woman mad, all hell breaks loose. She also can be hella petty too
-on the opposite end of the spectrum, it takes a lot to get Min Le truly angry, mostly because she takes a lot of unjust shit thrown at her but the one thing she will not take is someone underestimating her skills in combat
-when Yumi was born, Kitana and Mileena were NOT happy that they had another sibling, they were very mean towards her for awhile
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Dannymay 30
5/30/23 "Dear diary" or whatever, I still can't believe Jazz is making me do this. But I rather write whatever than have her nag at me after the big reveal and me have to deal with all the "big emotions" she says I have to work out after the reveal of my ghostly side to my parents and the consequences due to the reveal. The positives are I'm not on the dissection table or getting studded without my permission. Dani, who now goes by Ellie, finally has a home to go to and is officially my little sister. But how that happens still grosses me out. So my dad found out there is such a thing as a polycule, and it turns out he is bi. Great news, right? All for supporting my dad, but why does he need to have such horrible taste in men? And why did Mom agree to it? That is beyond me. But yeah, Vlad is now Pops. I don't know if I liked it better when we were enemies. And to top it off, guess who is serving probation with us? As he isn't only me but part me and part Vlad. That realization was both relieving and disturbing. He goes by Dan now to not confuse the rest of the family as Dani, Danny, and Danny were tripping all of us up. But as he has yet to murder anyone in this timeline, Clockwork dropped him off as the weird family situation was starting to "stabilize," according to Jazz. She was excited to room with Ellie, but unlike her, I'm not happy about my new roommate situation. I am trying; we are both trying, but the whole thing is messed up. At least CW managed to lock him in a human form, so I have the upper hand with my ghost powers. Okay, that should be about enough for today. According to Jazz, I just need to end it with something positive, and then I don't need to look at this stupid diary for the rest of the day. Positive, what's positive? I guess; today, Dan came to "pick me up" after school while learning to drive from Jazz because he couldn't fly anymore and needed to get around somehow. So, Jazz sent him to fetch me, and as usual, I got held up by Dash. So, Dan thinks he is funny calling me little brother now, and yes, that's what he called me when he confronted Dash from behind. So, Dash turns to see who is confronting him and falls on his ass from surprise being faced with the massive bolder that is Dan. Got a good laugh out of that. And there you go, Jazz, your cheerful ending.
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wikiangela-fanfics · 2 years
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Fictober22 - 21. I never said that
Fandom: 911
Ship: Buck x Eddie
Summary: Eddie's nervous about coming out to his parents, Buck's there to support him.
Ao3
Words: 768
Note: I've been writing so much lately I don't even know what I'm writing anymore, I hope this makes a bit of sense lol
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“So, wait, you’re saying you don’t want your parents to know about us?” Buck asks, clearly a bit hurt, and Eddie wants to take back what he said instantly. And he didn’t really mean it like that, anyway.
“No, I never said that.” he sighs. “All I’m saying is, I want to come out to them first. One thing at a time.” Eddie’s actually very nervous about that. His relationship with his parents has been better than ever lately, and he just has no idea how they’ll react to this new major thing in his life. 
“I get that, and I really don’t want to rush you. But I live here, Eddie. Am I supposed to leave and, I don’t know, stay at Chim and Maddie’s?” They both know he’d do it without a second thought, if it was what Eddie wanted. He’s not sure he does, though. His parents won’t stay at his place anyway, since he only has two rooms, and he doesn’t want to be without Buck. He’s not even sure why he still hasn’t done it, Buck moved in months ago, and they’ve been dating for much longer. It just… hasn’t come up.
“No.” he says again.
“Well, I can at least not be here when they get here.” Buck suggests, sitting down on the couch next to Eddie. “So it’s not weird that your friend from work is here co-hosting dinner with your parents, or whatever.” he rolls his eyes with a smile.
“Everyone knows you were never just a friend from work, Buck.” Eddie smiles and shoves him playfully. “You’re my best friend. Why would it be weird?”
“It’s a family dinner. And I know I’m family, but your parents still don’t.” he adds quickly, before Eddie has a chance to.
“I don’t want you to leave.” Eddie decides. “Especially when I come out. I’m doing it tonight and I’ll need you there for emotional support.” he grabs Buck’s hand. He really hopes he doesn’t chicken out again – he already planned on doing that when he went to visit his parents a while ago, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Now, though… well. He’s planning to marry Buck – or, ask Buck to marry him sometime soon – and he’d like his parents to be there. 
“I thought you wanted to tell them one thing at a time.” Buck raises an eyebrow. 
“Yeah, I don’t know anymore.” Eddie sighs again. He’s nervous and confused and how do you actually come out to your parents as bi in your 30s? While introducing them to your same-sex partner at the same time? Well, they’ve met Buck before, but not as Eddie’s boyfriend. He feels his heart pounding, his breath becomes quicker and shallow, and he starts to feel dizzy, so he tries to take deep breaths to calm down. He does not have time for a panic attack right now.
“Hey, babe, look at me.” Buck says softly, and Eddie does. “It’s going to be fine. Your parents love you, and they’ll support you- us. I know it. Breathe, Eddie.” he adds, then starts taking deep and slow breaths, getting Eddie to mimic him. It does usually help, but what helps even more is feeling Buck’s strong hands in Eddie’s, grounding him, and at the same time just getting lost in his blue eyes. “You okay?” he asks after a longer moment.
“Yeah.” Eddie moves closer to wrap his arms around Buck. He presses his face against Buck’s neck, and breathes in his familiar scent, which calms him down even more. “I need you there. I guess telling them everything at once will be even better, no need for two awkward conversations.” he chuckles, relaxing as Buck hugs him back. “Just, let’s not say anything about us until I say I’m bi. They’ll probably figure it out then, anyway.”
“Whatever you want, Eds.” Buck kisses the side of his head. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. So fucking much.” he whispers. Sometimes he still can’t believe he gets to have this with Buck, that he gets to be this happy. And Buck really does make him happier than he’s been in years.
“It’s gonna be fine.” Buck repeats, one of his hands soothingly rubbing Eddie’s back.
“Yeah. As long as you’re here, everything will be perfect.”
Soon after that, they go and start making dinner, while Eddie nervously goes over every possible version of the conversation with his parents in his head. But Buck’s there, keeping him from spiraling and panicking. Eddie knows that as long as they’re together, he can get through anything.
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“To be visibly Queer is to choose your happiness over your safety” 
It’s pride month and this is the only space I feel save being honest about MY experience. I knew in middle school I liked girls, this was before I determined I was NB. I was scared, a bully in my gym class often put me down by calling me a lesbian, I did not know what it was really, fragments maybe. I knew my Uncle was gay, I knew that was something my family accepted and I never knew anything different, but no one explained what it meant to be a lesbian. Growing up lesbian and gay were the popular slurs. In middle school I played traveling volleyball, it was what I considered my main sport, I was always on the outside socially because I tried very hard at practice and the rest of my team wouldn’t meet my energy as they considered it a leisure sport to engage in during their off season. There was always this one girl who was nice to me when we’d talk, I had a crush on a girl in my friend group from school (Not volleyball), and I wasn’t sure what to do. I talked with girl and she actually gave me great advice and I followed it the next day at school, didn’t work out but thats okay. So I come home from school that next day feelin good and I walk into my mother screaming into the phone, I don’t remember that part but I know when she saw me she dismissed the person on the phone, came marching up to me (which with her I’m so mad face that wasn’t great) and asked if I’m a lesbian. Being young and afraid of this big bad word that was an insult I said no! I just liked this One Girl, I still liked boys. Turns out the girl not only told the whole team and all their parents had been harassing my mom all day. She looked at me, asked if I loved volleyball, I said of course I do! She then looked at me and said “Then you’re going to practice tomorrow, fuck ‘em”. That was my last (? or second to last) season on the court. I regret not looking for another team to this day. I can’t tell you how many couples want to bring me in their bed for their pleasure, Or you turn down some guy at the bar and they take it as a challenge and maybe they can now have two girls instead of one. It’s dehumanizing and gross. Being queer has always held me apart from most. Being known is truly difficult.
One of my mutuals on another platform posted the quote at the top this week, and I have some mixed feelings about it. To Clarify the feelings are not about my mutual but the quote itself that was posted on twitter. (I found it on their page and quoted it word for word but I’m horrible with links so if you want to see it I’ll do my best or just search it I guess lol.) This person is someone I hold a lot of respect for in my community. They are a transperson, are very visible as a transperson with their partners. With the dangerous conditions in America right now for our community, transpeople especially, trans poly people even more so. The strength to follow the heart when things are tough, persevering, it is irreplaceable. It did get me thinking though, and I have a lot of questions. What does it even mean to be visibly queer? Is there a definition? Is it a box to check off to feel “included”? 
To Me: For pride month it’s important to support the things you believe in, for yourself and others. Sharing individual and personal struggles to bring awareness and education during this month is great! I always learn so much this time of year. I will say this though, I don’t like such generalized statements. This quote is fine for specific groups, but doesn’t always apply to the community as a whole and I hope I can properly articulate why I think this. First queer people are diverse! A lot of people in the community ‘pass’ as cisgendered heterosexual couples but could be bi or pan or ace (or closeted). The other thing that comes to mind is you could be single! I am! and maybe that is why this bothered me so much, both of these apply to me. I am nonbinary and have been told and done my own research to tentatively know I am technically part of the transcommunity although I never felt I truly “count” whatever that means, and would not label myself that way, the statement felt almost criticizing??... I’m not sure. I’m as plain jane as they come. Dark long hair, nail appointments and feminine clothes are being reincorporated into my space from what I couldn’t explore in childhood. I do pass as cis. and I know how important those kinda statements are so I’m not saying it’s inherently wrong.... I guess what I’m trying to say to you and myself is you don’t have to be visible to count. We all have different challenges and what I experience will be different from you. I want to use this post to personally recognize the groups that may get overlooked or receive a not so warm welcome because we all know our own commuity can be very exclusive. Bi, poly, ace and pan people get flack from both sides, straight and queer a like. Maybe that’s why it’s taken me two days to get this out on a page. During these trying times I believe we must speak out for others, not just ourselves. We are here, We are Queer, We are united. No one gets left behind. We must strive to be open-minded and curious to our differences. If you got this far thank you for taking the time to read this. Happy Pride Month my friends!
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something lgbt just happened to me (extreme emotional pain edition)
(ignore me I just need an internet void to scream in where she wont see it or read if you’re nosy and willing to be nice about it)
(also if anyone has any advice for how to not be so fucked up about the girl who is kinda your ex but not really (in the “never actually dated but we both had feelings and acted like it a lot” way) officially dating a new person for the first time since she shattered your heart into a million tiny pieces please dm me said advice this is 100% serious)
like we have all the same friends and it’s been over half a year so I feel weird talking to irl people about it. even I am surprised at how intensely the emotions punched me in the lungs when she told us she has a bf now. like cmon brain I knew we weren’t over this but I thought we were at least getting better. 
also there’s the added fun layer of “her own internalized biphobia and biphobic family members made it so our connection was always laced with shame and repression and suffering anyway.” and now she gets to celebrate this moment with friends and family and do boy talk with her mom and ask her parents for advice about this guy she’s known for a couple months and have an easy friends to lovers arc with him. while I was stuck listening to her family coo over how she should get back with her ex bf once he transferred to our college while she and I were literally sleeping in the same bed the night before. but bc I’m not a guy ofc nothing could possibly have been going on there. 
like you’re telling me I was in a years-long, will-they-won’t-they sufferfest where I was embarrassingly emotionally devoted to this person only for npc #3 to crawl out of the woodwork and get the instant stamp of approval for wanting to get to know her better and giving it the old college try? 
and to be clear I’m not blaming her she feels how she feels and obviously the bi/homophobia is a societal/community level issue. it just sucks so bad to fall so deeply in love with someone over such a long time and have those feelings be treated less seriously because of things we can’t control. like just on top of the regular heartbreak of it all. and believe me the regular heartbreak of it all is more than enough for my little eggshell heart to handle. 
and on a regular heartbreak level it also sucks because she’s a good person that I genuinely care about on a non-romantic level and still think very highly of. like our relationship wasn’t and still isn’t perfect but she’s one of the best people in my life and an objectively decent human being. so it’s not like I can even rationalize to myself “well it was toxic” (actually maybe the dynamic was but like SHE wasn’t a toxic person y’know) or “she treated me badly” or “she sucks so I’m better off now anyway.” like no she’s wonderful and her new bf is very lucky life just sucks sometimes. 
did I mention she and I are still best friends and even though we live in different cities now which helps I still have to pretend to be totally 100% excited about this for the sake of being a good bestie? like god I love being a lesbian if I had to do life all over again and got a choice I would choose to be queer every single goddamn time. but this is the most painful shit I’ve ever felt in my life and that’s a pretty high bar at this point. especially since this is technically not my first heartbreak but it’s my first one since realizing I’m a lesbian and not bi and started having a lot of The Piercing Loneliness of Breaking Every Societal Expectation feelings about it. like I think my brain was unintentionally pulling a “maybe I’ll turn out normal-passing” on itself (which is total bullshit) for a while there. and even though I know that was bullshit coming to terms with being a lesbian was so much harder for me than coming to terms with being queer at all and everything related to it has just felt so much more intense since. 
and on some level I’m also jealous bc she got out and can have a relationship she can celebrate and talk about with her family without fear and I can never have that. like bi people obviously go through so much shit and have a hard time getting both straight and gay people to take them seriously and as someone who lived that (in the “other people treated me like I was bi bc we all thought I was” sense) and thought that was who I was for 7 years I would never want to diminish that but oh my god being on the other side now I can understand how easy it is to let yourself get bitter. And I never want to be that person but at the same time speaking purely of my own experience it didn’t take me so long (2+ years) to figure out I was a lesbian because I just didn’t know like at some point deep down I knew especially near the end of my questioning era but I kept asking myself “well are you SURE?” because didn’t want to face the loneliness of it. Of closing the door on the last possible chance I had for my family and I to bond over something in a normal way for once. And coming out again was incredibly freeing but I also had to be willing to break my own heart to do it and the compounding heartbreak is just so much. 
anyway if anyone is reading this I love you and I hope you’re having a better day than me. happy new year. 
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beckface · 2 years
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Bestie I am requesting a ramble post about Bectoria (Becky Botsford and Victoria Best) because my Becky introject is gay as shit for her and I wish to make them suffer with gay things
BECKTORIAAA I love this ship it’s got such a fun sitcom couple dynamic :D
I think that if it happens it’s definitely when they’re older, at least 7th grade-ish, when Victoria really starts cracking under the weight of her parent’s pressure. We all know that she is 100% not into men at all but I bet her parents don’t like that very much, so she’s in denial. Little Miss Perfect and all that.
I think Mr. and Mrs. Best have the sort of “we’re fine with it… as long as it’s not our kids” view about sexuality, but one of them is absolutely gay and repressing it. I do NOT believe these two genuinely love each other like, they absolutely live their life as a show and CONSTANTLY compete with each other on who’s the better spouse/parent (they both suck and struggle to acknowledge each other doing well if it directly overshadows themselves)
So Victoria picks all of this up from her parents. She tells herself that she’s not gay and I think she’s the type of person to go through 10 boyfriends each school year because she just can’t hold down a stable relationship due to her competitiveness, desperation, and general lack of attraction towards men.
She also just IS Regina George in middle/early high because of god damn course she is. She has a weird bond with Eileen and I'd like to imagine, like Eileen is just happy to have a friend but Victoria doesn’t know what to do with just pure friendship. Also they get on eachothers nerves with their villain quirks.
Victoria was actually “close” with Tobey in elementary school (they butted heads and fed each other’s egos, it was toxic but what other choices did they have) but she and him drift apart, because aside from being egotistical villains they really didn’t end up having much in common. Also I think that Tobey would reform himself before the other two kid villains (if Tobey DOES reform and doesn’t grow up to have villainy be his career)
Despite being feared and popular and having a lot of boyfriends, no one’s really friends with Victoria, and she likes it that way. Her “friend group” full of vain popular kids is the best you could get in high school status-wise, and it pleases her parents.
The issue is, pleasing her parents has started to feel less like a need, less like a want, and more like a chore.
This is where Becky Wordgirl Botsford comes in. Now she’s just been coasting like she always does, living her life with her secret job of being a superhero, and she’s just as stressed as ever. She’s far from miserable, her family is lovely (even if she still can’t bring herself to tell them the truth) and her friends are super supportive. Some parts of being Wordgirl have just been getting to her more than they have before.
She’s a teenager now, so the press is ALL up in her personal drama. Every time she seems slightly off in her Wordgirl form now, people are speculating. She can’t talk to Scoops as Wordgirl, she can barely talk to Tobey, the press just makes wild dating accusations. The perfection expectations are also getting on her nerves, it’s been so long and it’s just grating honestly.
Becky is sure she’s bi or pan at this point, but is terrified of expressing it. She worries that if she allows it to happen as Becky, then it might slip through as Wordgirl, and she’s just a big anxious mess about what would happen. She’s avoiding dating all together really, she doesn’t want to get serious with someone and then have to lie to them about being Wordgirl.
Gay scene one day Victoria is stealing a trophy or whatever and hid it in her house, and just annoying the shit out of Wordgirl when she comes to confront her. Becky is having a bad day, and Victoria says something that pressed just the wrong button, and instead of bantering back she grabs Victoria’s arms, lifts her up and pins her to the wall in midair and is all intimidating “Where. Is. It.”. Victoria’s brain turns off and she goes red, she stutters out where it is, and when WG lets her down Victoria’s like “I just learned something about myself”
Another day Victoria is really downtrodden and her heart just isn’t in the crime she’s doing, and she asks WG “Can I just… please have it. Just to make my parents think I got it.” And Becky feels really surprisingly sympathetic. They have a long conversation that ends with “You know Victoria… I never really liked your parents. They never really seemed to have their priorities straight” Becky gives her a smile and flies off. Victoria thinks about this. A lot.
Victoria gets a little hero-worship type crush on WG
One day Victoria snaps at her parents and they kick her out. She ends up walking through the rain with just her phone and some belongings, and Becky superhearings her crying and goes to figure out what’s going on. She ends up bringing Victoria home with her to stay.
Becky is understandably standoffish with Victoria, and the girls just kinda let each other be at first. It’s a problem though because more and more Victoria is realizing she has a stupid crush on the other girl
Living at the Botsfords means that Victoria is subjected to family bonding and physical affection from adults that she has never had before, and she doesn’t really know what to make of it. Slowly though, she realizes that it’s safe here, and that she can just. Be a kid. And little by little she starts relaxing, stops competing over every little thing, and stops judging other people so harshly. She still does it ofc, that kind of behavior built from years of abuse doesn’t go away with the snap of a finger, but she’s better and happier. And she’s spending a lot more time, on purpose, with Becky.
Becky cannot believe she likes hanging out with Victoria so much. Turns out that when she’s not being an egotistical brat she’s actually really fun. Turns out years and years of taking classes for literally everything imaginable can make a pretty interesting and dedicated person. Victoria teaches Becky some cool things she learned sometimes, and Becky teaches Victoria how to do it without being condescending. They’re both having fun.
We can’t have Becktoria without making them couple fight a LITTLE though so like. Imagine what I said with the fluffyness and stuff, but the entire time Victoria is just saying stupid shit purposefully to make Becky roll her eyes
Victoria is also highkey flirtatious. Like she tells herself it doesn’t count if it’s a joke, or it’s just friendly and platonic but she’s literally saying things like “Omg Beckface I could kiss you right now” and is very physical with her, like playfully holding hands and putting her arm around her and stuff.
One day Victoria says something flirty and Becky just snaps and flirts back, like leans towards her and puts her finger on Victoria’s chin and goes “Why don’t you do it then?” And Victoria just shuts down again
Victoria figures out she’s Wordgirl because she took superhero-identity classes or smthn I don’t know anything could happen in this universe
Victoria has to battle with her identity as a villain and her newfound happiness staying with Becky and the Botsfords
Victoria also misses her brother a lot. She tries multiple times to reconnect with him.
I think Becky makes a huge plan to try and ask out Victoria, and then Victoria does it first.
Victoria got over her fear of her parents and really just holds resentment for them now, but Becky’s still terrified of the city finding out, so they keep it lowkey. She does come out AS Becky though, and they date publicly after a bit.
Their first kiss was in the sky. Becky flew Victoria up to catch a glimpse of Lexicon, and fell a little bit in love with her as she watched Victoria watch the night sky so close to her for the first time. She had never really taken in the beauty before, after all, to be the best you don’t have time for sitting around staring at stars.
In a scenario where it’s unrequited love on Victoria’s end I like to imagine the song “Andy you’re a star” Goes with it
Victoria teaches Becky how to dance. It helps a little bit but she’s still a mess and they fall over each other a lot.
They’re that couple that acts like they’ve been married for 50 years but only started officially dating a month ago
CUTE GIRLS CUTE GIRLS LKSDJLFSFD
I kinda ended up ranting about mostly Victoria here i’m absolutely gonna do a followup centering Becky at some point
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thefanficmonster · 3 years
Text
Much Cooler
Corpse Husband & Emma Langevin 
Warnings: Swearing
Genre: Platonic Fluff, RPF (Real Person Fic)
Summary: There’s always a certain level of uncertainty when meeting someone you’ve only known online. There’s that sense of insecurity that your relationship with them will never be the same or - even worse - that their view of you might change for the worse. But there’s nothing more thrilling than seeing the person you’ve been talking to constantly for the past however long standing across from you. 
Requested by Anon. Hi dear! Thank you so much for your request and I’m so terribly sorry for how late it’s coming out but I hope the fic makes it worth the wait! Lots of love, Vy ❤
“CORPSE! Wake up you famous dumbass!“ is the first thing the poor man heard over the phone at 9 AM on this fine Saturday morning.
It’s more than enough to make him contemplate why he even decided to pick it up in the first place considering he wouldn’t have been very able to participate in the conversation due to his sleepiness. He also, of course, made the mistake of not checking the caller ID which apparently wasn’t necessary considering how recognizable that voice and accent are.
“It’s 9 AM, Emma.“ He states as a tired parent would to a child, “I’m concerned as to why you’re up so early. More so as to why you’re calling me of all people.“
He can practically hear her roll her eyes but he still smirks to himself, knowing she can’t contradict him or argue since he’s completely right with his claims. “Whatever. Remind me to never call you to congratulate you on a milestone again.“
Now that pokes at his attention with a stick. Lately, said attention has proven to be a hibernating bear, leaving Corpse with a lack of interest or motivation for anything but damn if that sentence wasn’t enough to roll him out of bed and hop on PC. “What? What milestone? Subscribers?“
“Nope! You got two million likes on ‘E-girls are ruining my life’! I can’t believe I have to tell you this! Didn’t you notice the numbers climbing?!“ Emma, as annoyed and sarcastic as she’s trying to sound, she’s obviously overjoyed on his behalf and is super proud of him and of the project she luckily agreed to take a small part in.
As his PC boots up, Corpse can’t help but roll his eyes at Emma’s comment, “Well unlike you I have better things to do than refresh a page over and over aga-” His sentence is quickly cut off when he sees the number of likes under the song for himself.
Knowing that he’d find it there didn’t change the feeling of seeing it for the first time at all. It’s so surreal and so hard for his mind to comprehend. Seeing as how little he thinks of himself, his content and his art, this is like his success coming to slap him across the face as if to punctuate to him how wrong that mindset is.
“You know, it wouldn’t hurt if you offered to take me out for at least a coffee to celebrate, bro.“ Emma comments sarcastically, joking only halfway from what he can sense.
He smirks, “Trying to even the playing field, I see.” He replies, referring to the fact that he’s still a faceless mystery to her while her face is literally the cover art for one of his songs.
She laughs but is quick to dismiss his claim, “Nah, I might be a curious and nosey little shit on other occasions, but other people’s privacy is not something I dig my nose into. However, if I were to even the playing field between us it wouldn’t be appearance-wise. More personality-wise. For my sake and yours I choose to believe you are way cooler in person than you are through messages or on a call.”
This withdraws a genuine fit of laughter from Corpse who throws his head back, a few strands of hair moving aside to reveal his shiny eyes, “Well then, instead of giving me the benefit of the doubt, how about we settle it once and for all? Tomorrow? I’ll text you the location.”
Emma’s eyebrows shoot upwards as soon as she comprehends his words and the tone that leaves no room for her to assume he’s joking, “Wait what? How come you’re agreeing to this? And so easily? Nah, this a trap if I’ve ever seen it.”
Corpse laughs yet again, “No trap, Em. I just can’t have you doubting my coolness.”
                                                             *  *  *
The main reason as to why Corpse requested for this meeting to be today is because he feared that if he had more than twenty four hours to dwell on it he’d chicken out. Little did he know it was the same for Emma. Their friendship has only ever existed with the bridge of social media connecting them and they both can’t help but fear the other might not like who they are IRL. They fear they unintentionally become a different person or change things about themselves subconsciously when communicating with people online. Bottom line, they’re scared of letting the other person down with who they really are, unaware that their personalities are most likely the exact same because, as the people who know them can confirm, neither Corpse nor Emma are the type to put on a show in order to be liked. They would rather have no friends because of who they are than have friends and fans of their persona instead of the real them.
And so, while slightly afraid and anxious about this meeting, both of them see it as a relief test to see if the friendship is in fact as real as it’s seemed these past months.
Corpse was the one to choose the location of their meet-up, a location Emma didn’t even think twice about agreeing on, and ever since, they’ve both been counting the hours until their scheduled meeting time.  It’s not about impressing each other, at least that’s what they’re both telling themselves, but rather proving to the other that they’re worthy of their friendship. They might throw snarky and sarcastic comments at one another that others would give a side-eye glance to and question if their friendship is real, but they know the dynamic best and they sure as hell don’t wanna lose it or each other.
Best friends are the ones who roast each other after all - you can’t tell me I’m wrong.
The nervous Corpse fidgets with the insides of his hoodie pockets as he waits outside the café, having arrived ten minutes early because he couldn’t stand being alone with his thoughts in his apartment, judging every fragment of himself twice as harshly as usual. Emma, on the other hand, could barely bring herself to leave her home. She kept retouching her appearance, despite knowing Corpse wouldn’t judge her even if she showed up in pjs. To be fair she contemplated doing just that several times because her hair pissed her off enough to get her discouraged on her outfit altogether but she did eventually talk herself into pulling it together. She already knew she’d be at least five minutes late, but once again, she knew Corpse wouldn’t care.
He’d wait, cause that’s the kind of friend he was. Cause that’s the kind of friend she was for him too.
And boy did it take her less than a second to recognize him. She wasn’t even out of the car when she saw him and knew it was exactly who she was looking for. He too, as if with a sixth sense that registered her presence, shoots his head up from his phone to look up at her, their gazes meeting. There’s a brief moment of close-to-shocked silence, their eyes a bit widened as their brains comprehend that they’re within arm’s reach of one another.
That’s when Emma’s the first to break the bubble of awe as a wide grin spreads across her face and she runs to Corpse, wrapping him in a hug before he’s even realized the distance between the two’s been closed.
“Hey.“ She mumbles, her face hidden in his hoodie due to the height difference.
“H-hey.“ He replies, hesitantly wrapping his arms around her too.
“I was right.“ She says once she pulls away, “You are much cooler face-to-face.“ She pauses for a second, narrowing her eyes, “You’d be even cooler if you bought me coffee though.“
Earning a laugh from him, she’s guided into the café by the arm Corpse wraps around her shoulders, telling her he’s get her a milkshake cause he doesn’t want to see her high on caffeine. Needless to say, they both are, indeed, much cooler to one another IRL.
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illuminatedquill · 3 years
Text
Extracurricular, An Analysis
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Oh Ji-soo and Bae Gyu-ri
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is sign on as it’s accomplice.”  - Tom Robbins 
You know the story. You’ve heard it before, right? 
Boy meets girl. 
Girl finds out that boy is running a side protection business for prostitutes. 
Girl decides to blackmail boy into letting her join his business. 
Classic high school criminal shenanigans ensue leading them into more dangerous situations where they are forced to make desperate decisions to stay alive. 
Oh, and they fall in love along the way. 
Oh? You haven’t heard this one before? Then let me introduce you to this delightful kdrama called Extracurricular. 
I watched this one while waiting for the newest Hometown Cha Cha Cha episodes to drop and ended up binging the whole series in two days. There are many remarkable parts of this series: it’s a crime drama, first and foremost, that showcases high school teenagers caught in a cycle of violence and crime, abandoned by the society and adults that are supposed to be protecting them. There are no clear good guys and bad guys in this drama; everyone is cast in shades of grey. Our main leads, Oh Ji-soo and Bae Gyu-ri, run the prostitution business, and are both from broken family backgrounds. Their actions are morally questionable at best, but the top tier performances from Kim Dong Hee (you might remember him from Itaewon Class) and Park Ju Hyun make you cheer for them anyway. You want them to have a happy ending, despite the horrible things they do. The audience is always reminded that despite how clever they are in staying ahead, their actions have consequences, and they’re just high school kids. The drama never pulls it punches. 
But, weirdly enough, it’s also a love story. And that’s the part the really sticks with me until now. (The chemistry between the main leads is absolute dynamite and I could watch ten episodes of them just verbally sparring with each other. They don’t even kiss. They’re that fantastic when together on screen.)
I’m writing this because this is undoubtedly one of my all time favorite kdramas and I have a lot of feelings about our main pairing, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri. I can’t call them a couple (wait, didn’t I just say they fall in love) because their relationship can’t be labelled simply as that. Think of it as something similar to the main leads in My Ahjussi. Two people who should have become soulmates, yet met at the wrong time. 
This kdrama is not particularly happy, and while I do encourage people to watch this, I am warning that the subject matter is extremely dark. If you’re sensitive to scenes depicting sexual assault, graphic violence, or anything in that zip code you’ll want to steer clear. 
Also, I’ll be diving into spoiler territory in this analysis. So if you want to go in clean, then stop reading here. 
Still here? Awesome. Let’s dive deep into the messy, amazing pairing that is Oh Ji-soo and Bae Gyu-ri. First, let’s do a brief character background on our two main leads, starting with Ji-soo. 
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Oh Ji-soo is one half of our main pairing and this story starts with him. He lives by himself and has been essentially abandoned by his only parents; his father is a failed businessman who gambles whatever money he acquires on scams and his mother ran away. His apartment is small, sparse, but functional. He owns only a few outfits aside from his school uniform. The only unique item he owns is a pet hermit crab that he takes care of. His life outside of school is non-existent; he has no friends, no one to hang out with and do typical high school teenager activities with. He takes care of himself and lives only for himself and his “dream”: to graduate, attend college, get married, and have kids like a normal person. 
But to do that, he needs a large amount of money. He has no other financial means to do so (his father is largely absent, as is his mother), so he decides, at some point, to start up this protection business for prostitutes. The drama doesn’t go into detail about the how and why he came to this conclusion that this was the best way to make a lot of money in a short amount of time, so you’ll have to suspend your disbelief from the get go. Considering the themes of the story (how youths abandoned by society tend to act out in extreme ways to make it in this world), it’s not hard to believe his desperation would drive him to make such a decision. 
Ji-soo, despite his shady business, is actually a decent person. There’s a streak of humanity that exists inside him that refuses to go out, despite the increasingly dark and bleak events that start to overtake his life. He’s attached to his hermit crab, cares for his “employees” outside of them being tools to make him money, and doesn’t want to see anyone get hurt. He goes above and beyond what’s required to help out people at the risk of his own life (in particular, Gyu-ri, and we’ll get into that shortly). 
What we learn from the first few episodes is that Oh Ji-soo is extremely smart and methodical in how he approaches his life. At school, he is known as a model student - quiet, top of the class in terms of grades, doesn’t draw any attention to himself, always follows along with what the teachers ask of him. Only his homeroom teacher, Mr. Cho, seems to consider his quiet style of existence to be concerning and tries to make him less socially awkward by pairing him up with another student in a new extracurricular club. This leads to the introduction of Bae Gyu-ri, Ji-soo’s longtime crush and future partner-in-crime. 
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Meet Bae Gyu-ri, the other half of our dynamic duo. Her introduction into the story kickstarts the entire plot, as one of her earliest actions leads to a domino effect that spells increasing doom and tragedy for our main leads. She messes with Ji-soo’s operation at a critical moment and she spends the rest of the drama doing her best to make up for the consequences that follow. 
In my personal opinion, she is probably the best main female lead I’ve ever seen in a kdrama. Hands down, no other character exists (currently) that rivals her sheer cunning, wit, and badassery. Gyu-ri is Crazy, capital C, and is the chaos to Ji-soo’s control; the fire to his ice. Despite being the direct cause of half the events that happen to Ji-soo in the drama, he can’t help but need her because of what she offers. They make an incredible team. Her competitiveness, her need to win no matter the odds, helps them survive time and time again. 
Gyu-ri is from the opposite end of the spectrum of Ji-soo; he’s dirt poor and she’s insanely rich (always nice to see a reversal of typical kdrama tropes). Her mother and father run a successful entertainment company. Gyu-ri is popular at school, friends with seemingly everybody, pretty, cheerful and gets along well with her teachers. Ji-soo, and the audience, believe from the beginning that she has the perfect life. It’s not hard to believe that she’s just involving herself in Ji-soo’s business because she’s bored and needs an outlet, at first. 
We soon learn otherwise. Gyu-ri has more in common with Ji-soo than he initially realizes, in that they’re both trapped in circumstances beyond their control - it’s just that Gyu-ri’s cage is gilded, whereas his is not. Her parents are strict and have her life planned out for her, all without her consent or input, leaving her feeling frustrated and powerless despite her rich lifestyle. A suicide attempt hasn’t done much to change her parents attitude towards her, only serving to further their control over her life. 
So, when she learns of Ji-soo’s operation she immediately seeks to angle her way into it. First, she tries to rip him off, believing that he’s an evil “pimp” and thus deserves it. But after spending some time with him, she changes her mind last second and decides to help him out instead. 
And, now, let’s get into their relationship, which is one of the best (if not the best) aspect in the entire series. 
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I need to be upfront about something: the relationship between Ji-soo and Gyu-ri is not exactly healthy. I wouldn’t describe it as toxic - the circumstances surrounding them aren’t exactly the best environment to encourage open and honest communication - but it’s definitely not what should be considered ideal, especially for young adults, and especially for young adults who are dabbling in crime instead of studying. 
So, why do I love them so much? If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know that I loathe toxic relationships in kdramas, so I understand if you think I’m coming off as hypocritical here. Why do I like Oh Ji-soo and Bae Gyu-ri when I didn’t like, for example from recent history, (oh boy, here I go again on my Nevertheless BS) Park Jae-eon and Yu Na-bi?
First, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri are way cooler than Jae-eon and Na-bi ever could be. They run a criminal enterprise that involves having a high amount of intelligence, cunning, and daring to do so. Do Jae-eon and Na-bi run a criminal enterprise as a side business? No, they don’t, because they’re boring art students. 
Secondly, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri actually progress in their relationship and change their views as they learn from each other. Now, granted, that progress isn’t towards becoming better versions of each other - quite the opposite. But at least they have progress. Jae-eon and Na-bi stayed in the same stupid cycle for the whole series and then decided that it was better staying that way as opposed to trying for something else. 
Last, but certainly not least, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri are actually interesting to watch for me. The chemistry between Park Ju Hyun and Kim Dong Hee is explosive and they way they spar, exchange looks, and just generally exist around each other on screen is something I can watch forever. I’ve said this before but Han So Hee and Song Kang’s on screen chemistry, outside of their intimate scenes, really didn’t impress me. 
Okay, back to Extracurricular. This relationship, man. It’s all I can think about (other than HomeCha’s Du-sik and Hye-jin, but that’s another post). Ji-soo and Gyu-ri are so good together. 
I’ve noted before that Ji-soo is methodical in how he approaches his life; he plans out everything ahead, and rigs any situation as much as he can in his favor. It’s brilliant, but when a crisis happens, he doesn’t know how to deal with it effectively. He panics and flounders; becomes indecisive at a time when clear, decisive action is required. 
Enter Gyu-ri. She quickly becomes the partner he never knew he needed. When there’s a situation, she becomes invaluable in her quick thinking and wit, coming up with solutions on the fly. It’s not perfect, but it keeps them just one small step ahead of whatever is coming their way. 
The only thing preventing them from becoming unstoppable is the lack of communication and trust they have with each other. A lot of that has to do with how Gyu-ri entered Ji-soo’s business - she blackmailed him first, and, when that failed, she strong armed her way into getting him to accept her help. It’s implied in the drama that Ji-soo has had a crush on Gyu-ri for a while (since ninth grade, I believe) and in the first episode he actually gets the chance to spend time with her outside of school on a sort of quasi-date. 
It goes sideways pretty quickly because of some shenanigans from his business, but not before she gets to know him and says some pretty touching words regarding his situation. Poor guy is head over heels - even after finding out that she’s the one blackmailing him, his feelings are only dampened, not extinguished. When he catches a glimpse of her family’s situation, he gains a deeper understanding of her and why she acts the way she does. Even more importantly, Ji-soo treats her the same after finding out this information which, to someone like Gyu-ri, means more than if he comforted her about it. 
If you want to see a physical representation of how he feels, other than paying attention to his actions, you can see it in him keeping mementos from Gyu-ri. She has an interesting habit of folding bags into origami shapes and giving it to him. Even after the blackmail reveal, you can see that he continues to keep these in a container on his desk. It’s really cute that he keeps these, when it probably doesn’t even matter that much to Gyu-ri. 
Towards the end of the drama, Ji-soo prepares to turn himself in to prevent Gyu-ri from being implicated in the crimes they committed. And it costs him almost everything to protect her. Ji-soo, the quiet, nerdy kid, puts himself on the line time and time again to protect Gyu-ri, knowing that it puts his life and his dream at risk to do so. And all for what? For some girl that he thinks doesn’t even like him in return? 
Well, let’s talk about that. Because I’ve seen some comments that Gyu-ri was only using Ji-soo for her own selfish gain. And I can agree that was how it was at the beginning for her; she definitely was only interested in acquiring money, like Ji-soo was, in order to achieve her own goal of being free from her parents. 
But, oh man, that is not what is motivating her at the end. 
It’s actually pointed out relatively early by some of her friends that it’s obvious that she likes Ji-soo more than he likes her. Understandably Ji-soo is keeping her at arms length from him given the whole recent blackmailing, so it would make sense that it looks that way. 
Further questioning reveals what she likes the most about him: 
“It’s not like I’m crazy about him. He’s fun. And amusing. He’s smart. And there’s a certain charm he has. He also has a wolfish side to him. But he thinks he’s a puppy.” 
- Bae Gyu-ri
But, as she gets to know Ji-soo better, you can certainly see that she starts to fall hard for him. As a cover story for why they hang out so much together during and after school, Gyu-ri states to everyone that they’re dating. The reactions across the school definitely imply that this is a shocking development, which means that Gyu-ri hasn’t dated anyone before. So why Ji-soo other than the reasons she herself states? 
He challenges her, just as she challenges him. Gyu-ri may be the more dynamic, quick thinking of the pair but Ji-soo is every inch her intellectual equal - just in different ways. She doesn’t seem to be the type to be easily impressed, but you can tell that she’s definitely impressed by Ji-soo’s operation and how thoroughly set up it is. When Ji-soo is frustrated at the beginning by his setbacks, he blows up at another student (knocks him out in a crazy punch) and immediately walks over to Gyu-ri afterwards (who saw the whole thing) to inform her that she is now his partner in crime. 
The look in her eyes, and the small smirk she has speaks volumes about her attraction to him in that scene. Smoldering. 
And, oh yes, she’s prone to jealousy. Another classmate, Min-hee, gives Ji-soo a present out of the blue (it was supposed to be for her boyfriend, Ki-tae, but that’s another sub-plot) - all within view of Gyu-ri. It’s hilarious how she tries to brush it off. Later, for plot reasons, Ji-soo has to spend more time with Min-hee which only furthers Gyu-ri’s annoyance. 
And her motivations stop being entirely about the money and more towards helping preserve the dream that she and Ji-soo share about being free. There’s a scene in episode 8 where it’s revealed that, due to a business partnership with a local gang (set up by none other than Gyu-ri herself in a desperate move), Ji-soo would have to drop out of school permanently to work on their behalf. Gyu-ri overhears this and, despite badly needing the gang’s help in sustaining their own business, immediately terminates the partnership. 
All because it would interfere with Ji-soo’s dream. 
Man, if that isn’t love. 
In the following episode, Gyu-ri, and later on Ji-soo, is kidnapped by the same gang in retaliation for terminating their partnership. Ji-soo comes to her rescue but Gyu-ri is already almost free (again, she’s really, really badass) and is demanding that they bring Ji-soo to her instead of running for her life. 
Surviving this latest attempt puts the two in a reflective, vulnerable mood and Gyu-ri asks Ji-soo why he keeps saving her. Ji-soo asks later on why she keeps risking her life to be with him. They don’t say the answer in words but in an almost kiss (yeah, you read that right - almost). 
And then, if you aren’t already convinced, Ji-soo crosses his one last remaining line in an effort to keep Gyu-ri safe; he accidentally pushes a fellow classmate down some steps and, instead of helping her, leaves her to die after grabbing the evidence she has on him and Gyu-ri. 
Extracurricular pulls off quite the magic trick here, hiding this well done love story in the middle of a serious crime drama. 
The real tragedy is that Ji-soo thinks that Gyu-ri views this whole business, and by extension his life, as one big game. It’s something that she takes offense at, visibly becoming upset when he says that. 
But even if that were true, he should be assured since Gyu-ri doesn’t like to lose. 
As they hurtle towards the end and face up to the consequences of their actions, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri undoubtedly lose sight of their original goals and dreams. They do some fairly horrible things to stay alive and ahead of the police who are close on their trail. You can’t really blame them for doing what they did; in the face of a society that has abandoned them, what they’re doing is a logical outcome to gain what they want so desperately and deserve so much: the chance to be free to live like normal, care-free people. 
I can’t say for certain that they achieve that. The drama is serious in consequences and, at the end, the net around them is drawing tighter and tighter. I won’t spoil the ending scene for you, because I highly encourage you watch this drama yourself but I will say this: Ji-soo and Gyu-ri seem stuck in an impossible situation with nowhere to go, and no one to help them, with a clock ticking down towards either death or discovery by the police. 
But, all the same, I’m always the optimist. They’ve gotten through situations like this before and they can certainly do so again. Maybe not as bad as this one, but not too far out of their league. And, like I mentioned before, Gyu-ri doesn’t like to lose. Especially when it comes to Ji-soo. 
Their relationship is truly dangerous, as Ji-soo himself notes. Them being together is the source of their problems; they’re too much alike now, as opposed to the beginning of the drama where he stated that they’re too different. Their love is the kind of love where both of them are willing to burn the whole world down if it means keeping each other safe. 
I’m a real sucker for those kind of love stories. No one’s a hero here. They’re just kids in high school, doing the best with what they know. 
Who are we to judge what is right and wrong? Especially when the one committing the acts are high school kids who don’t know any better and just want to save each other? 
Do we have that right? 
Do they really deserve that punishment? Shouldn’t we be pointing fingers at the society that forced them to act this way? 
Extracurricular really makes you think about that. Is it really so outlandish and terrible what Ji-soo and Gyu-ri do to survive when the adults who are supposed to be protecting them, teaching them better, have failed in their duty? 
Maybe they really did win at the end. Not so much in succeeding in their goals but in gaining something that not even regular people are likely to find - a partner, a soulmate, someone who will stand by you no matter what. 
If you do watch the ending, and are not an optimist like I am, then all I can say is this: whatever happened, they were together at the end. 
They were together. 
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ginnyweasleywannabe · 3 years
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Blackinnon Week: Tuesday "Soulmates
Tuesday: “Soulmate” The moment they knew , they realize that the other is their soulmate; when they get together.
Word Count: 2159. Can also be found on AO3 @inthemiddle2
Sirius thought he would feel something different today but ultimately he still felt hollow. He looked around the platform, today was supposed to be thing big thing and he thought it would be exciting or maybe sad but nothing. His parents didn’t have anything good to say about Hogwarts but they never had anything good to say about anything. He was looking forward to going to Hogwarts just to get away from his parents. When they first crossed the magically boarder he realized that his leaving wasn’t going to rid him of his problems but just bring on new ones.
The eleven year old boy was currently trying to drown out his mothers complaints. She was speaking to his Aunt Druella. He knew he was going to be in Slytherin, his whole family had been. He wasn’t looking forward to it. Truthfully he hoped he would magically get sorted elsewhere. That would just bring more trouble as his family would practically disown his for breaking family traditions and beliefs. He wasn’t sure what would be worse, getting into Slytherin or not.
Regulus was trying to hold back tears. Sirius hated when he cried, he was such a baby sometimes. He would cry and Sirius would have to stand there and watch his parents beat the little boy. He turned away from Reg not wanting to see the sadness in his eyes that he was leaving him and it would just be him and his parents from now on.
The platform was a buzz with kids full of excitement and parents feeling a mix of happy and sad to see their child off.
“I just don’t understand why we can’t sit together?” Sirius turned to the voice to see a bi-speckled boy groaning. He flopped his arms down dramatically.
Across from the boy was a blonde, almost silver haired girl. She was standing tall, not even looking at the boy as she rolled her eyes and said “Because Jamie, I’m eleven now and I need to start making friends with girls.” She continued to look around the platform in awe.
“But why girls are girly and weird. I hate girls.” He was mumbling now.
“James I am a girl!” The little blonde stomped her foot and rounded on the boy. She stuck he head high but she only came up to his chin.
“Please Marlene, you’re as much of girl as mom!”
“Hey!” The women who Sirius assumed was James’ mom shouted and gave his hair a rumple.
He looked sheepishly as his mother, “Sorry mom!” He turned back to ‘Marlene’, “You know what I meant. You’re a cool girl and you play quidditch, and you’re my best friend which is why we should sit together on the train.”
The girl had been glaring at the boy but her face softened, “Jamie, cool girls can be girly too! My cousin Alice invited me to sit with her and I want to try and make other friends besides you and my brothers. You’re my best friend and you’ll be my best friend no matter what houses were in.”
The two hugged, before James eventually shoved her away saying it wasn’t cool to be the guy crying and hugging the girl on the platform.
Sirius watched the two in envy. He wondered what it would be like to have somebody who loved you know matter what house you were in. He could tell the pair had to be purebloods as they neither looked shocked about the magic around them. That was plus, maybe he could be friends with them. The girl was a spit fire. She seemed like the type who took up the whole of any room. The boy looked nice enough, like he wasn’t so uptight like everyone he had to hang out with now.
Sirius boarded the train with his cousins but they were soon to ditch him, not that he minded. As he peered into the cars he saw boys he recognized from all the pureblood parties his parents made him go to. He wasn’t really sure how he felt about all that pureblood stuff. He had never met a muggle born so he couldn’t tell if they were any worse at magic than him. He did know he hated it just on principle of hating anything his parents loved. If he was honest with himself he figure muggle-borns and half-bloods were bad at magic, it made sense in his eleven year old brain. He saw the kids on the platform who looked confused. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be taught? Oh well it wouldn’t matter anyway. He would be in Slytherin and life would go on as it always had under his cousins careful watch.
He decided to move on from the cabin of boys from the parties, take moment away while he had it. He looked into the next few cabins and saw the boy and girl from the platform. He cracked open the door.
“Do you mind if I join you?
The pair looked up from their bickering, they were seated on opposite benches.
The boy spoke first, he had a bright smile on his face. Sirius knew he wasn’t new to the magical world from the platform but eagerness he had could have fooled some. “Of course! Hiya I’m James Potter!
Sirius recognized the name Potter, he was sure his parents had complained about them at some point. “I’m Sirius” He figured no harm in leaving off his last name for now. He turned to face the girl across from him.
“I’m Marlene. Marlene McKinnon” She had a thick Scottish accent and she pointedly raised her eyebrow at the last name. It seems she had picked up on his purposeful leave off.
She was giving him a smile but also pointed look. He squirmed under her eyes, how was she doing that?
Sirius cleared his throat, “Uh right. Um did you know Marlene means ‘star of the sea’?” He awkwardly coughed again, “So um, I’m named after the star Sirius. The dog star.”
She was just looking at him, “….Right.” Sirius was sure he had just blown it, he was never going to make new friends. But then the little blonde girl smiled at him, “remind me to be your partner in astronomy.”
James looked between the two, it was like they had their own private joke. Marlene was already making new friends, and a boy?!?
“Well Marley shouldn’t you be on your way? I’m sure Alice is looking for you…”
Marlene just rolled her eyes and went to stand up but the door slid open.
A redheaded girl smiled at the group and a boy with long black hair stood behind her.
The girl spoke first, “Hi! I’m Lily! This is my friend, Severus! Can we sit with you?”
Lily didn’t wait for a response before sitting down. “I’m a muggle-born! This all very exciting don’t you think!”
“You shouldn’t tell people that.” Sirius said it in a neutral tone but Marlene and James looked at him.
“Oh.” Lily looked a little hurt by what he had said, “Um Well Sev, isn’t so he’s told me a lot about the school and magic.”
Marlene was quick to jump in and try and mediate the situation, That’s great! It can be overwhelming at first! I’m Marlene! I have four older brothers but they explained a lot to me as well before.”
James also joined the conversation, “So do you know what houses you lot want to be in? Both my parents, and Marley’s whole family are Gryffindor’s! I reckon I’ll make it but I’m not so sure about Mars. She’s slimy like the Slytherins.”
Sirius’ body tensed with the Slytherin jab. He was going to end up there, if he didn’t at first his parents would make sure of it.
“What’s wrong with Slytherin?” It was the first time the long haired boy had spoken. He was aggressive and defensive.
James responded, “Well they’re all gits! All stuck up with their pureblood mania. Slimy I tell ya!” His tone was light and joking but Severus didn’t seem to take it that way.
“My mom was a Slytherin!”
Sirius wanting so desperately to be like by James, “Yeah well that explains it! You’ll fit right in with that slimy greasy hair!” Both the boys were laughing, “I think will call you ‘Snivellus Slytherus’”
James burst out at that, Lily stood red to the face. “Come on, Severus. Let leave these, these bullies!” She stormed out of the cart with Severus in toe.
James hollered after them, “See you Snivellus!”
The door slid closed with a slam. Marlene looked from the door to the two laughing boys. She stood as she began to yell.
“James Fleamont Potter! You should know better than to treat somebody like that! And you know that being a Slytherin is just fine! Marc’s girlfriend Kate was a Slytherin!”
Sirius’ eyes were wide, he had very quietly and still. James gave a sheepish grimace, “Yeah well Kate’s the exception.”
Sirius was holding in laugh at the boy getting put in his place by the short little blonde. The small noise that escaped his mouth reminded Marlene that he was there. She rounded on his, “And you! I know who you are. I have older brother who have gone toe to toe with your cousins. You better stay away from us with all that pureblood bull!”
Sirius shrunk into the bench, “I, I, I just meant she should be careful who she says that to. You’re right my cousins are barmy. It’s not safe to say that to just anyone.”
Marlene relaxed a little bit at his justification, still unsure if she fully believed him. “You both should be kinder people. I expect more from you from now on. I’m going to find Alice.”
Marlene turned on her heal and exited the compartment. The boys both sat there in silence.
“…Your middle name is Fleamont?” Sirius was laughing
“Oh shut it” James gave him shove but was also laughing.
John Bertram had just been sorted into Hufflepuff. Sirius knew his name was coming. He was standing with James and other boys he had met on the train.
“Sirius Black”
Okay this was it. He walked to the stool. Sitting down he wiped his sweating hand on his trousers. It felt like the moment was slow motion. He looked out to the crowd. He saw James and the other boys giving thumbs up. He saw his cousins sitting at the Syltherin table glaring daggers into his eyes. He was quick to turn away from them. His eyes land on Marlene’s. She was smiling up at him. He felt his heart rate start to calm. Then she winked at him and suddenly it sped back up.
The hat had barely touched his head before it shouted, “GRYFFINDOR”
He sat in shock for minute, the women behind him gave him a nudge. He was a zombie as he moved to the Gryffindor table. He sat down off by himself. He knew this wouldn’t last. Why bother making friends. Not that anyone tried to sit with him anyway. Remus from the train sat across from him with a shrug. He was just staring down at the table until he heard the name Marlene McKinnon called. He looked up at the girl. She was smiling but Sirius could see behind her confident smile there was also a slight nervousness to it.
The hat sat on her head for a few minutes. Eventually it shouted Gryffindor as well. Marlene beamed. All around the table boys of different ages stood and cheered. Sirius assumed they were her brothers. Sirius felt himself smile. Marlene made her way down to the table. She stopped next Lily. Sirius had expected her to sit with the red head but she never sat down. After a moment she kept walk and eventually landed right next to Sirius.
“Welcome to the lions den.” Sirius gave her a half smirk, half grimaced.
Marlene reached down and grabbed his hand under the table, “Back at ya, Black.”
Marlene didn’t realize was she was still holding his hand until he dropped it like fire when James sat down.
“So Marley admit it, the hat sat on your head for so long because it wanted to put you in Slytherin”
“God James you’re so obnoxious” She was smiling when she said it though. “I’ll have you know it was between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor.” She stood, “Alright I’m gonna leave you boys to do boy things.” She gave Sirius a squeeze on the shoulder smiled and then walked away.
Sirius didn’t know it then but now as he thinks back on sitting in Azkaban, that little blonde girl was going to change his life. He didn’t know it then but he knows now he loved her then. That first day with his person. She was a force. She was his soulmate.
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bloody-bee-tea · 4 years
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JC Love Month 2020 Day 10
Knowledge
Day 10 of JC Love Month brings more Mingcheng, where JC at first rejects NMJ but then comes to the conclusion that if his parents will never be happy with what he does, then he can at least make the decision that will make him happy.
Nie Mingjue sees what Jiang Cheng’s answer to his confession will be on his face long before he even opens his mouth.
He has known this would be the answer, but the knowledge still doesn’t make it any easier to bear, if he’s being honest.
“I can’t,” Jiang Cheng says and he puts his arms around him as if he needs to protect himself from Nie Mingjue.
That hurts more than the rejection, actually.
“It’s okay,” Nie Mingjue tells him, even though it doesn’t feel like it’s okay, at least not at that moment.
“I just—I mean—I love you, too,” Jiang Cheng says, and that actually comes out as a surprise to Nie Mingjue.
“What?” he asks, completely stunned by this turn of events and Jiang Cheng gives him something that should probably be a smile, but comes out more as a grimace.
“I love you, of course I do, I have for a while,” Jiang Cheng tells him and Nie Mingjue hates how his voice shakes as he says it. “But my parents, they would never accept this,” Jiang Cheng says with a little shake of his head and then covers his face with his hand. “So I can’t.”
Nie Mingjue knows that Jiang Cheng’s family life is not the easiest—understatement of the year, really—but he didn’t think it was that bad.
“I don’t want to put you into a tight spot with them,” Nie Mingjue awkwardly says and Jiang Cheng lets out a shuddering breath.
“I know that,” he gives back but he still seems unhappy.
It makes sense, if he truly does feel the same for Nie Mingjue.
“Wanyin, nothing has to change,” Nie Mingjue softly says because they have been friends for so long that Nie Mingjue finds it ridiculous that this should change everything. “I’m still your friend, you know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng whispers, and he sounds anything but certain about that.
“I mean, I’m not going to lie, I need a few days after this,” Nie Mingjue says, as carefully as he can, but Jiang Cheng still flinches, “but after that, we’re going back to how it was, okay?”
“Okay,” Jiang Cheng mutters, clearly not believing Nie Mingjue’s words and it only makes Nie Mingjue more determined to show Jiang Cheng that he truly meant it when he said that.
“Thank you for not suggesting that we do this in secret,” Nie Mingjue says suddenly and Jiang Cheng levels him with a look.
Nie Mingjue prefers to see his temper like this because it’s the Jiang Cheng he knows.
“Never. I’m not one to keep my relationship secret, I would never do that to a partner,” he says with vehemence and Nie Mingjue gives him a small smile.
“How very good of you,” he tells him and then has to look away when Jiang Cheng flushes slightly.
Nie Mingjue ponders briefly if he would have preferred to never know that Jiang Cheng felt the same for him, especially now that it’s clear that they are apparently not meant to be, but then he slightly shakes his head.
No, he would always want to know that Jiang Cheng loves him as well.
“I’ll get going then, alright?” Nie Mingjue asks and Jiang Cheng can’t look at him when he nods.
It seems like they are both going to need a few days to come to terms with this.
When he’s back home, Nie Mingjue wonders if he should have asked why Jiang Cheng’s parents wouldn’t approve of their relationship, to see if there was something he could argue against, but he berates himself for even having that thought.
He’s not going to argue Jiang Cheng into a relationship when he doesn’t want it, that’s not who Nie Mingjue is.
He doesn’t even know if Jiang Cheng is out to his parents or not. Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan are not known to be very accepting people and it’s probably not far off to guess that they wouldn’t approve of Jiang Cheng coming out to them.
Nie Mingjue never personally had to go through the same since his parents died so early, so he can only imagine how horrible it must be to know that your own parents would never accept you as you are and he just hopes that he never made Nie Huaisang feel like that.
“Da-ge, I’m home,” Nie Huaisang yells as if on cue, and Nie Mingjue calls him over to the living-room.
“Oh, you have your thinking face on. Why do you have your thinking face on?” Nie Huaisang wants to know and Nie Mingjue glares him but he can’t keep up the charade for long.
“Huaisang, come here,” he says and pats the couch next to him.
Nie Huaisang does as he says, but he’s slow to follow and clearly nervous.
“It’s nothing bad,” Nie Mingjue reassures him and ruffles Nie Huaisang’s hair, simply because he knows it annoys him.
“You’re still making me nervous,” Nie Huaisang says and smacks Nie Mingjue with his fan. “Just spit it out.”
“Did I ever make you feel like I wouldn’t accept you? Before or after you came out to me?” Nie Mingjue asks, because he needs to know right now if he failed his brother in that.
“No?” Nie Huaisang says, confusion written all over his face and Nie Mingjue scrubs a hand over his face.
“Why is that a question?”
“Because I don’t know what’s going on,” Nie Huaisang says. “Of course you never made me feel like that. I knew you were gay for as long as I can remember, so I never had to worry about you accepting me as I am, did I?” Nie Huaisang asks and Nie Mingjue nods.
“Of course not,” he says and Nie Huaisang gives him a thoughtful look.
“What brought this on?” he wants to know and Nie Mingjue sighs.
“I confessed to Jiang Cheng,” Nie Mingjue says and then shrugs. “It didn’t go so well.”
“But he loves you,” Nie Huaisang gives back, a frown on his face and Nie Mingjue gives him a sad smile.
“And sometimes that’s not enough,” he tells him. “I don’t think he’s out to his parents, and I think he doubts they would accept him as he is, and they are not going to approve of our relationship. He said he can’t do it.”
“Oh,” Nie Huaisang whispers as he understands where Nie Mingjue’s question came from. “That really fucking sucks,” Nie Huaisang then sums up and startles a laugh out of Nie Mingjue.
“Yeah. Yeah, it does,” he agrees, because what else is there to say, and then he tugs Nie Huaisang into his side, who lets out a token protest, but follows easily.
It’s good to spend a time of heartbreak with his family.
~*~*~
Nie Huaisang just left after dinner when someone knocks at Nie Mingjue’s door. He frowns, quickly scanning the room to see if he can find anything Nie Huaisang might have forgotten, but nothing springs into his eyes.
Nie Mingjue mentally shrugs and then makes his way to the door where the person impatiently knocks again.
“Yes, what?” Nie Mingjue asks, more than annoyed as he yanks open the door, only to come face to face with Jiang Cheng.
“I know you don’t want to see me for a few days,” Jiang Cheng starts, clearly not even taken aback by Nie Mingjue’s greeting and when he shuffles his feet and worries the hem of his shirt, Nie Mingjue realizes it’s because he’s so nervous that he’s just powering through whatever he wants to say.
“But I have been thinking,” Jiang Cheng goes on, and before he can say anything else, Nie Mingjue holds up his hand.
“Do you really want to do this in the doorway?” he asks and when Jiang Cheng simply blinks at him, Nie Mingjue steps to the side to let him in.
Jiang Cheng follows his invitation, clearly anxious to get back to whatever it was he wanted to say, and Nie Mingjue wonders what it can be.
He really didn’t want to see Jiang Cheng for a few days, and for him to show up here like this must mean it’s serious. Serious enough that of course Nie Mingjue will hear him out, if it’s so urgent he can’t even wait a few days.
“So tell me,” Nie Mingjue says once Jiang Cheng is in his living-room and Jiang Cheng startles as if he forgot what he originally came here for.
“I did some thinking,” Jiang Cheng says again and Nie Mingjue nods.
“So you said,” he says, mostly to break the tension and he thinks it worked when Jiang Cheng sends him a glare instead of the nervous look from before.
“I don’t give a shit what my parents think,” Jiang Cheng says and Nie Mingjue blinks at him.
That is quite the bomb to drop, especially after what he said to him earlier.
“What?” Nie Mingjue asks and Jiang Cheng shrugs.
“I don’t care what they think,” he repeats and Nie Mingjue shakes his head.
“That’s not right,” he says, because Jiang Cheng cares so much—it’s the whole reason he’s always so stressed—so this cannot be right at all.
“No, Mingjue, listen,” Jiang Cheng says and Nie Mingjue shuts his mouth. “It doesn’t matter what I do, they will never be proud of me or approve of me. Okay, yes, I care what they think about me, I care so goddamn much that it’s hurting me every day, but that’s just the thing. It will never change. I could be picture perfect and they would still find a flaw with me.”
Nie Mingjue is inclined to agree with him there, because Jiang Cheng’s parents are just that kinds of assholes, but he keeps silent for now.
“I’m out to them, and me being gay was never actually fine, it was just something we didn’t talk about. And then Wei Wuxian came out as bi and suddenly me being gay was a problem, because Wei Wuxian did it ‘better’. He still had the option to fall in love with a woman and why couldn’t I be like that. It was a whole thing,” Jiang Cheng says with a wave of his hand as if that wasn’t actually the worst thing Nie Mingjue has ever heard and then he goes right on.
“And no matter who I’m going to end up with, it’s never going to be good enough. My mother had this perfectly planned already; she would bring a nice young lady home that she picked, I would marry her and pretend to be happy, and we’d have lots of kids to secure the Jiang line. Everything that deviates from that is going to make her unhappy, so I never stood a chance because I deviate as early as ‘brings home a nice young lady’,” Jiang Cheng says and Nie Mingjue can only nod at that, because it does make sense what he’s saying.
“So it doesn’t matter if I am with you or not, at least not to them. They are already unhappy with me. I cannot make them approve of my relationship as long as I don’t bring home a girl.”
“What does that mean for us?” Nie Mingjue dares to ask, though he can guess where this is going.
He just needs Jiang Cheng to say it.
Jiang Cheng gives him a small smile before he goes on and Nie Mingjue wants to go over and kiss him immediately.
“If they don’t approve of me and my relationship either way, why would I make the choice that leaves me unhappy as well?”
“You shouldn’t,” Nie Mingjue agrees. “You really shouldn’t. You should be happy all the time.”
“And I would be happiest with you,” Jiang Cheng says and steps closer to Nie Mingjue. “I know you said you needed a few days, but I figured that was only when I rejected you and I’m not, not anymore. So, is this okay?” he asks, and he seems unsure all of a sudden, as if Nie Mingjue hadn’t declared his love for him earlier that afternoon and Nie Mingjue cannot let that stand.
“It’s more than okay,” he reassures Jiang Cheng and pulls him close with a hand on his hip. “You really want this?” Nie Mingjue asks again, because he needs to be sure, needs Jiang Cheng to be sure about this.
“I do,” Jiang Cheng says and smiles at him. “I love you. Of course I want to be with you,” he whispers and leans up to press a kiss to the corner of Nie Mingjue’s mouth. “If you still want me, after how tremendously stupid I was today.”
“You weren’t stupid,” Nie Mingjue corrects him. “You were concerned, and quite reasonably,” he adds. “But I will always want you. I love you, too,” he says, smiling at Jiang Cheng as well and when they kiss this time, it’s no longer just to the corner of a mouth.
Nie Mingjue suspects that there will be many fights for Jiang Cheng in the future, but he vows to be by his side all the time.
He’s not going to let him face this alone.
Link to my ko-fi on the sidebar!
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insaneasgardian · 2 years
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I posted 2,763 times in 2021
530 posts created (19%)
2233 posts reblogged (81%)
For every post I created, I reblogged 4.2 posts.
I added 825 tags in 2021
#tfatws - 139 posts
#loki - 131 posts
#loki spoilers - 101 posts
#fatws - 85 posts
#tfaws - 79 posts
#marvel - 72 posts
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#sam wilson - 47 posts
Longest Tag: 139 characters
#ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
My Top Posts in 2021
#5
Just thinking about how Bucky never told his therapist about his nightmares but instantly told Sam when he asked about them in this episode. Love it.
435 notes • Posted 2021-04-16 18:14:50 GMT
#4
Stalker Issues
Y/N: Will you help me file a restraining order against a stalker?
Natasha: Of course! Who's been stalking you?
Y/N: I don't know... I just know they're there.
Natasha: That's fine, how long has this been going on?
Y/N: 4 months now I believe.
Loki: No, love it's been 5 months, 1 week, 2 days, and 6 hours.
491 notes • Posted 2021-03-06 11:26:43 GMT
#3
Avengers as random stuff my teachers have said before
Tony: I used to be the best at everything when I was still at school. Except for sleep of course!
Steve: Back in my day, we didn't have all these fancy schmancy little gizmos. No sir, no iphones, no ipads, if we wanted to communicate, we'd send letters!
Thor: Does anyone have a hammer? I need to bonk Stefano on the head with it. Natasha: Now guys, spiders aren't so bad! They eat pests like rude, stupid little annoying children for instance. Clint: I wish they'd permit us to teach archery at this school, but "noooo, too dangerous, you'll put an arrow through someone's head". Bruce: Art is actually very nice. It calms the soul down in a way science can't. I think I'll just steal Mr Keay's job and be the new art teacher, eh? Loki: There's nothing wrong with stealing, as long as you don’t get caught. Admit it, you’ve all pinched a pencil or two when you thought nobody was looking.
Bucky: Oh how it must feel being you, with regular arms.
Sam: Humans may be at the top of the food chain, but in my opinion, falcons, eagles, vultures and such are the best predators, so skilled, and when they hunt their prey they swoop down... so majestic.
Peter: You can do amazing things with chemistry. Just have a look at this super sticky silly string I made yesterday as an example! You too, can one day be like me.
T’Challa: I’m worried that I’m turning into a cat, I was just talking to my sister at break time and she said that I sounded like I have one of those hairballs that felines cough up in my mouth.
Stephen: I was supposed to be a magician you know? The best one ever, but my parents said “Do something science related”. My life sucks now.
Pietro: At your age I could run the circumference of the whole city without taking even a breath of air, meanwhile you kids start panting after a single lap of the school.
Wanda: I’ve always wanted red contact lenses, you know the halloween ones people use to be a vampire? Yeah, I want to just go around wearing those and watch people back away in fear.
Vision: I am not good with human children so I will just go ahead and give you a pat on the head... *pats head* I can’t really feel your hair but I can tell it feels very soft.
538 notes • Posted 2021-02-17 08:54:27 GMT
#2
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LOKI IS BI EVERYBODY
2101 notes • Posted 2021-06-24 05:40:12 GMT
#1
Loki isnt bisexual! why do you all hate straight people, we've done nothing to you
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What part of 'a bit of both' sounds straight to you? Loki just admitted to having engaged in relationships with men, women and perhaps those in between.
We don't hate straight people. The only straight people we hate are the ones like you.
12060 notes • Posted 2021-06-24 06:08:40 GMT
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khaleesiofalicante · 3 years
Note
Ok imma be honest, this chapter moved me to tears and not the sad sobbing but the more inspiring kind. This chapter means the world.
She had told them her dreams were about ducks – since there were the only equally horrible thing she could think of.
Uncle Magnus had given her an odd look then, as if he knew she was bullshitting them. But he hadn’t said anything.
DUCKS AREN'T THAT BAD! HAVE Y'ALL EVER BEEN CHASED BY A GOAT?? I WAS CONVINCED I WAS GONNA DIE
Lexi would be royally pissed if this turned out to be some stupid pointless dream.
YUP
Even though she was only 7 minutes older than Lexi, Selena always acted like she was 7 years older.
That's so cute though
People looked at her pastel-coloured aesthetic immediately assumed she was the soft and sweet Fairchild twin. People saw Selena in her red leather jacket and thigh high boots and assumed she was in the infamous troublesome Herondale twin.
SMH THE DAMN STEREOTYPES
Why Selena hadn’t killed her in her sleep yet, Lexi doesn’t know.
BYE THAT'S EVERY SIBLING RELATIONSHIP EVER
The meals at the Academy were to die for – quite literally. Last week two students from the warlock fraction had almost killed each other over a blueberry muffin.
Oh how times change...they will never know the dreaded soup
NO ANJALI HAS BEEN GONE FOR OVER A YEAR???
IS JAIME OK?? PLEASE BE OK! HE CAN LIVE WITH TREATMENT SO I REALLY HOPE HE'S OK
Selena’s was Idris of course. She was kind of obsessed with it.
Max loved the shadow markets. Lexi thought they were very cool too.
Rafael loved his father’s office – which was weird. There was nothing to do in that room other than ponder about shadow world problems. Besides, the place still weirdly smelled like the tangerine perfume Anjali wore, even though the girl had left New York almost a year ago.
David loved the New York Institute – especially the library.
Gigi of course loved the dining halls.
Dining halls, kitchens, food trucks, vending machines - if a place had food with it, Gigi loved it.
It's so amazing how they all have their favorite places...(same David same)
“You’re supposed to pour the syrup on the pancakes not into your mouth,” Lexi chuckled as she sat down next to her.
“It ends up in my mouth anyway,” Gigi shrugged.
True enough.
AWW ROMAN MAKING GIGI PLAYLISTS!!
Someone make me a playlist.
“His parents fell in love in Rome when they were in Rome,” Gigi pointed out even though Lexi already knew. “I think it’s actually romantic.”
I had forgotten that-
Roman was nice. But not nice enough for Georgia. Lexi didn’t think there was anyone good enough for her parabatai – who was the most perfect person in the world.
Me @ anyone who tries to make a move at my best friend.
AWW GEORGIA LIKES HIM TOO!!
When's the wedding?
(you're telling me you didn't believe you were gonna marry your childhood crush? Liar)
“I like being his friend,” Georgia said. “I like spending time with him and all of that. But I don’t know if I like him…in that way. I feel like I need more time.”
Demiromantic??? YES GIVE US THE REP
Lexi sometimes thought life would be so much simpler if the world was full of women and everyone was a lesbian.
Ikr?? Life would be so much easier.
Lexi says Roman is too-nice-sus
Well well well
The kind of love that cheated death.
The kind of love that sustained memory spells put by princes of hell.
The kind of love that changed the world.
Trust me all of our standards are very high
Lexi successfully survived the class without falling asleep.
Me during English.
Ok who's the blond?
Lexi I thought we weren't gonna fall this soon-
Oh the girl's straight...sigh we've all been there.
which meant they had to hold hands. Kinda.
Lexi was a little scared of that.
Me.
Goddamnit, Alexandra. Get your gay together!
THAT'S SO RELATABLE LIKE?? YES
OH MY GOD IT'S EMMA AND JULIAN'S DAUGHTER GEIDIDHDOHDJSKSJSKGXJDHSODHKDGDDGDJHDJDGDJDGJDHD
Lexi knew Olivia liked boys. She hadn’t dated anyone officially of course. All the boys were kind of terrified of her father.
She could be bi or pan or omni. WE GOTTA HAVE HOPE
vegetable loaf... David I'm so sorry you had to go through this.
Lexi then decided not to do any of her homework over the weekend because she was not coming back to the academy. She was not going to survive the sleepover and whatever else Olivia had in mind.
Bestie...why is this me when I make eye contact with my crush.
“Good stuff?” Max snorted. “Rafe literally ran away from home cause shit got too intense.”
“I didn’t run away!” Rafael rolled his eyes. “Stop telling people that!”
“But you have rumours and shadowhunters getting thrown into silent city and cohort drama and all that exciting stuff!” Liv pointed out.
I-
Liv-
True though.
“Wasn’t there a serial killer when your parents were young?” David asked.
“And didn’t your uncle do necromancy?” Max said biting into a chicken wing.
True and true
“Sorry, Chouchou!” Lexi winced. “I, uh, sensed a mosquitoe on your leg.”
“Girl, your angel powers are weird as fuck,” Max laughed.
MAX LANGUAGE
“I don’t know,” the girl shrugged and threw her a wink. “I wouldn’t put anything past Lexi.”
Lexi looked at Gigi. She was one more compliment away from screaming.
But Gigi of course knew her struggle and therefore quickly stuffed a bread roll into Lexi’s mouth.
I need someone to stuff bread into my mouth when things get like this
There were rumours about David – and how Daddy had an affair. Lexi was yet to find those asshats and shove a witch light down their throats.
When you find them lemme know too.
“Or maybe it’s because you don’t need rumours be interesting,” David pointed out.
Max turned around, looking surprised at that. His cheeks turned purple. Lexi didn’t know why he was surprised. David only ever spoke fondly of Max.
JUST GET TOGETHER ALREADY OH MY GOD
“Oh. Oh! I did hear something a long time ago!” Gigi said suddenly. “Olly, is it true you were conceived at the beach?”
“Georgia, you can’t just ask people where they were conceived!” David sounded horrified.
That is very much possible.
“I heard you were conceived in hell?”
“Oh my god,” Selena looked horrified. “That’s not true! It must have been about Max!”
“Y’all I am adopted!” Max was shaking with laughter and then stopped. “Although our dads could have definitely had sex in hell. I wouldn’t put it past them.”
Oh yes. Both clace and malec.
Then they had of course continued to discuss that cursed topic until Rafael had threatened to tell the Consul about it.
LMAO
Lexi turned around and saw Liv waiting for her. Nope. She wasn’t going to talk a walk – a fucking stroll! – with Olivia all on her own.
“You are coming back to the institute with me or I will un-parabatai you.”
You know there being an un-parabatai ceremony would solve a lot of shit
What if their hands accidentally grazed or something? That shit was lethal.
RIGHT????
She is just trying to be nice. That’s what friends do. They are nice. And they give each other pretty dresses and say they would like to see them in it.
Honey that's gay.
EVERYONE ASKING HER OUT IM DEAD
Selena: Ugh boys
Selena: When I win back Idris, we are leaving all the men behind.
Lexi: Except Magnus? Lol.
Selena: Obviously.
Is that even a question Lexi? Duh.
ALEC LIGHTWOOD THOUGHT SHE WAS STRAIGHT? THE SHAME!
OH MY GOD IM CACKLING
Not everyone can kiss their partner in the Accords Hall. Some people didn’t have access to the Accords Hall.
And most important, some people didn’t have partners!
We're getting a lexi and Alec talk someone hold me
“I’m going to tell you something,” Uncle Alec said. “It might sound simple. It might sound ridiculous. But it’s the truth. So, you must believe me. Can you do that?”
Lexi gave him a small nod.
“It doesn’t matter what other people think,” Uncle Alec said. “Not when it comes to your future. Not when it comes to your identity. They don’t get to have a say in who you are and why you are the way you are.”
Lexi bit her lip.
“Alexandra, people will always tell what to do. But you shouldn’t let them. Never let anyone tell you what to do with your heart or your body. Neither belongs them. It only belongs to you.”
THIS RIGHT HERE MADE ME START CRYING BECAUSE DAMN YES!
“Yep,” she groaned and then hesitated for a moment. “Uncle Alec…Can I ask you something stupid?”
“Can I say no?”
“No.”
“Then go ahead.”
I love her so much
“I feel…I feel it’s something we have to bear, Alexandra. The fear of rejection. It’s something we have to accept as an inevitable part of our lives. Because no matter how much love we have around us, we will always be afraid of people not loving us – simply because of who we are.”
Yeah...
“Besides, they named you after me,” he pointed out. “I don’t know what else they expected.”
EXACTLY! Did they really expect a straight child after naming them after Alec?
“I do like shouting,” Lexi wondered out loud. “That’s good advice.”
“I didn’t mean it literally!” Uncle Alec looked alarmed.
“No, it makes total sense!” Lexi grinned. “Some of these people can be tone deaf. Gotta shout it out. Loud and clear. Awesome advice! Thanks, Uncle Alec!”
DO IT
“Hey, Lexi. I was wonderin-”
“MOVE, I’M GAY!” she yelled as she shoved him aside and kept on running.
ABSOLUTELY ICONIC
“I prefer she/her,” Lexi answered. "But sometimes I prefer she/they. But you can use she/her because some of y'all already shit at grammar."
That's exactly what I tell people when they ask for my pronouns. Istg people are shit at grammar.
alright girl im here to give you a lecture on how someone's dressing doesn't describe their sexuality
OH MY MY GOD THERE WAS A GENDER AND SEXUALITY CLASS IN THE ACADEMY ARE THEY RECRUITING???
One of the boys who had complimented cleared his throat. “So, uh, you don’t like boys?”
“That’s literally what I said,” Lexi rolled her eyes. “I’m gay. I’m very gay. I’m gayer than the Consul. Okay fine, that’s not true. No one gayer than the Consul. But I’m still pretty gay.”
Does the boy have hearing problems?
ALSO YES NO ONE'S GAYER THAN THE CONSUL
“Sexual orientation and gender expression are two different things,” she explained now, remember what Uncle Magnus had taught them. “Sexual orientation refers to who I am sexually and romantically attracted to. Gender expression is how I want to express my gender identity. Those two are not connected. Just because a woman wears feminine clothes it doesn’t mean she is straight. Just because a man embraces femininity, it doesn’t make him gay either. Does that make sense?”
“Ohhh,” the girl nodded. “Yes, it does. Thank you!”
“What I wear does not reflect who I like. It reflects who I am and what I like to wear,” Lexi explained. “And regardless of my sexuality, I like pretty things.”
Exactly.
“This doesn’t change anything. I hope you know that,” he told her. “I mean I have to change the pronouns in my shovel talk. But that’s not a big deal.”
Awwww
Also – my good friend Raziel told me that homophobia is a sin.”
“You mean homosexuality is a sin?” an older man asked.
“No, homophobia is a sin,” Lexi repeated. “That’s what Raziel said.”
“But that’s not-”
Someone cleared their throat. When he spoke, it was in the Consul Voice.
“Are you saying know better than Raziel?” the Consul asked.
Listen to Raziel you dumb shit
“Sure. Let me just call the Lesbian Alliance,” Lexi rolled her eyes.
Ugh I wish
OH NO NO NO NOT THE FAKE DATING. JUST CONFESS AND DATE FOR REAL
“Alexandra, I have a fucking undercut and I have pink highlights and I cuff my jeans and I literally walk around with a sword and I can quote Lady Gaga to perfection! Why would you ever think I was straight??”
Lexi your gaydar is broken bestie.
Don't do this omg this is gonna be a mess
Gigi: THIS IS A BAD IDEA. ABORT! ABORT!
Lexi: Relaaaax. It’s going to be fine!
Gigi: I’ve read enough fanfiction to know the fake dating trope never ends well!
Lexi: I’ve told you to include the ‘angst with happy ending’ tag!
LMAO
Also Gigi which fanfiction do you read?
Jace omg...
That's so him though.
“How about my peeps? It sounds very hip.”
“It does not,” Lexi replied. “Please don’t refer to us as your peeps under any circumstance."
IM SCREAMING ASHSKHSIDBSHSHDH
Her father chuckled at that. “Sweetheart, you’re a Herondale. Being problematic is what we do.”
EXACTLY
Daddy opened the notebook again. “I need names.”
Grabs flamethrower names
“Besides, the Lightwoods and Blackthorns have been hogging the gay genes for too long. Now it’s our turn. I say you gay it up.”
“Gay it up?” Lexi laughed.
“Yeah,” he grinned. “Go for the highest possible level of gay.”
DO IT
He blinked for a second and then it hit him. “OH MY GOD YES! DOES EMMA KNOW??”
Lexi laughed. Yeah, he can never find out it was a fake dating situation.
Hopefully he won't have to because it won't be fake :D
“To love is a privilege and to be loved is a blessing.”
THE GROWTH OH MY GOD
This chapter literally means so much to me. I don't even know what to say. I hope I too can one day have the courage to shout it in front of everyone and not be scared. See ya on Tuesday!
It means so much to me that this chapter meant a lot to you. I hope you find all the courage, strength and support you need. You are amazing.
And here. I made you a playlist.
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You can find it here on YouTube. I hope you like it :)
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lassieposting · 3 years
Note
Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.
What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying. 
Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.
tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.
Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.
But we also had:
SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.
Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.
China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.
The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.
Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.
It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.
Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.
"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:
Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)
Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)
Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)
Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)
China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)
Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)
If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.
Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.
MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:
ADHD: Skulduggery
Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile
Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB
Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two
Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie
Autism: Clarabelle
Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.
TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.
Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...
Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss
Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas.  There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.
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And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:
1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.
Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.
GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.
So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.
There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."
And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”
Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.
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So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.
The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.
The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.
Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".
Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.
(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)
Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.
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