#finding the only queer person in school and immediately start admiring him so much to the point hes starting to dress like him

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

I just saw Barbie. I'm writing meta about it. This is your spoiler warning. Do not read past this if you don't want to be spoiled. Additionally I'm going to discuss radical feminism and liberal feminism. I am neither I'm a feminist, but as a trans person I find both strains to be inaccessible and I prefer a more intersectional approach, just to state my bias upfront. Additionally I anticipate getting multiple "it's not that deep" comments on this meta. To which I respond that the movie may be deeply unserious at times but it does try to tackle gender which means we should get to talk about it.

I do want to acknowledge that this is the movie of the year, and that it's made by Mattel and Warner Brothers and as such it was literally never going to be based and the best we can hope for is what it was, which is liberal girlboss feminism. The movie was very fun and very good and it did have a surprisingly coherent view of gender and it did some things that I did like when it came to that HOWEVER as a gay transgender man watching the movie it's lack of a queer perspective was very obvious to me and took me out of it occasionally.

So I just want to establish for those who have not seen it but are reading this meta how gender works in this movie. And to recap the movie with a focus on the gender stuff rather than the main Pinocchio plot. The movie starts in Barbie land where Barbies have a good day every day and Kens only have a good day when Barbies smile at them. In Barbie land all the powerful jobs are occupied by Barbies and all the Kens have the nebulous job of "beach" which means that whatever the Barbies decide goes and the Kens are more or less subject to their whims (no word on how the Midges or Skippers or Allen fit into this barbie based higherarchy. One could guess based on a couple of scenes but it's never really lingered on)

Ken(Ryan Gosling)'s world revolves around Barbie(Margot Robbie). Ken(RG) is Barbie's(MR) boyfriend, but Barbie is good friends with Ken(Simu Liu) who she dances with and who is generally less cringefail than Ken(RG). Ken(RG) is frequently jealous of Ken(SL). Ken(RG) is also somewhat taken for granted. Barbie doesn't seem to care that much about him. He tries to kiss barbie, she doesn't reciprocate. Ken tries to hang out with Barbie, she kicks him out because it's girls night, as it is every night. So on and so forth. Barbie is not obligated to care about Ken, but she's clearly not putting in any work into maintaining this creator ordained relationship and it's clearly upsetting to Ken.

Barbie is experiencing some Real Girl tm problems such as flat feet and thoughts of death and weird Barbie who has been played with too much sends her into the real world to fix it. Ken(SL) goads Ken(RG) into going with Barbie into the real world. When Barbie learns Ken is coming her immediate assumption is that he'll slow him down.

When Ken and Barbie enter LA Barbie immediately starts experiencing Misogyny. Ken similarly starts experiencing privileges as a man which he did not have in Barbie land. This is heavy handed. Barbie verbally states that she feels like she's being gawked at in an almost violent way and Ken says he feels admired in a not at all violent way (with the outfit Ken was wearing and how he was still carrying himself with deference to barbie I sincerely doubt he would experience exactly 0 homophobia but it was necessary for him to feel that way in order to make his character arc work so I'll let it slide).

Ken goes for a walk without Barbie while barbie does plot relevant activities. He sees women showing respect to men, he sees a slide show of some kind of male role models. He feels like he can be something in this world. So he goes to a middle school library and picks up some books about patriarchy. He tries to get a job in the real world, it goes poorly, so he decides to go back to Barbie land and establish patriarchy there.

Barbie comes back to Barbie land with a friendly human woman named Gloria who works for Mattel and her MCR listening 12 year old daughter. On the way she tells her new human friend and her daughter that Barbies are in charge in Barbie land and women have all the important jobs. But as they drive into Barbie land they find that Ken has gone full radfem in their absence. He's flipped the Barbie-Ken higherarchy on its head. He's turned the dream house into a man cave. And he's some how convinced the Barbies to behave like sandwich making foot massage providing girlfriends.

And here's where I would like to start doing some meta. What has happened here? Ken is essentially a (less complex than human on account of being a doll) cisgender heterosexual white woman. He is in proximity to the ruling party, Barbie who is like a cishet white man. Ken is not on the margins the way that Allen and Midge are. His occupation is Barbie's boyfriend. Ken got a taste of what it was like when the gendered oppression that he is used to is flipped and he decided that's what he wants. He doesn't much care how the discontinued dolls feel about this, he's not thinking about them, nor is the movie. He doesn't really see a problem with there being a division between Barbies and Kens, he doesn't see a problem with one group being subservient. He just doesn't want to be low on the food chain. Ken is right to want liberation for Kens but he thinks that he can obtain that by taking the jobs away from Barbies and giving them to kens. This is why I said Ken has gone full radfem in Barbie's absence. He hasn't gotten rid of the gender essentialism, he hasn't questioned whether power should be shared between Barbies and Kens. Ken is right to throw Barbies shit out of the dream house and kick her to the curb, she doesn't value him like he deserves from a relationship. He's wrong to try to change the constitution to put Kens in charge and change it to Kenland and force all Barbies into the position that Kens previously occupied. I relate this to radfems because radical feminism relies on bioessentialist assumptions and posits that men are always oppressors by their nature and that women would be better off without them. A lot of what makes terfs angry at trans women is that trans people question whether women and men are so easily separately boxed like this and trans women specifically are seen as male infiltrators. Most of them succumb to becoming transphobes before people but on a base level radical feminism is a reactionary hatred of men that is usually based in genuine hurt. Ken is on some all Barbies are pigs shit here rather than examining society and attempting to make it more equitable. I think he needs to sit down with Magic Earring Ken and talk about gender to gain some perspective.

Both me and the movie agree that Kens knee jerk Ken liberation at the Barbies' expense is wrong. Ken even later acknowledged that he didn't even care about patriarchy he just wanted to feel valued. But where me and the movie start to be at odds is when they do a girl boss style ousting of the Kens. Gloria gives a speech about the female grievance she has from the real world and it somehow works on the Barbies despite the fact that the movie previously established that sexism and all of its intricacies and the feelings it engenders are completely foreign to the Barbies. But the Barbies have always been in charge in Barbie land. They're passingly familiar with real world sexism as an abstract concept that they believe they defeated in the 1960s, but they don't experience it, they live in a everyone is valid girlboss utopia. The only way to become ugly is for someone in the real world to play with you too hard, something they can't control. There's no pressure to be pretty because everyone is already pretty and they compliment each other routinely. Barbie doesn't experience any problems being perfect until Gloria starts drawing her with existential dread, and all of the other Barbies are horrified by it as if they've never heard of such a thing. It's a malady that their dear friend is experiencing not a fact of life like it would have to be for Gloria's message to land.

Then they come up with this plan and they free the Barbies and use romantic jealousy to turn the Kens against each other. My problem with this is that in the established world where Kens are the repressed gender, this is essentially putting a bunch of dolls who's oppression is based in being a romantic object for Barbie into misery business ass situations. We're really weaponizing the Kens' internalized misandry against them and saying girlboss? The Kennish desire for Barbie's validation is being used as a tool to oppress them and the movie just... Doesn't see it despite seeming to having coherent liberal feminist messaging*.

Speaking of Liberal feminist messaging. When the Kens realize they've been turned against each other they link arms and head to where the Barbies are. The Barbies have put their constitution back in place. Ken(RG) realizes he's lost and he runs inside crying and Barbie comes to comfort him. Barbie pays lip service to Ken finding who he is without her and to them being "Barbie" and "Ken" instead of "Barbie and Ken" but then when the Kens band together and ask for a supreme court justice President Barbie gives them a concession of a lower court justice and the Kens have to work their way up, the voice over stating that maybe they'll get to where women are irl in a couple decades, and this is treated as a victory somehow. Like putting the girl boss barbietopia back in place at the expense of the Kens is somehow better than the Kens doing the same but in the opposite direction. This after she apologizes to weird Barbie and offers her a cabinet position, treating the most ostracized barbie as more valuable then any Ken.

The closest the movie ever comes to acknowledgeing a perspective outside of the Barbie/Ken binary is when Allen tries to leave Barbieland during the Ken takeover. Allen seems discontented with both the barbieocracy and the kenocracy and he tries to escape containment when Gloria and her emo daughter are leaving Barbie land. He argues that no one will give a shit about a life-sized Allen in the real world because nobody remembers Allen and then he tries to leave with them. Gloria and her daughter change their minds and go back to help Barbie and Allen's plot line just ends there.

There's all these cameos from background and discontinued Dolls. Skipper who's boobs get bigger, Barbie who's a camera, sugardaddy Ken, and magic earring Ken are all in weird Barbies weird house, Midge has a house near Barbie but is judged by the voiceover for being a pregnant doll and Barbie seems to agree, and Allen is the only one who doesn't have duplicates and is sort of in the background casting doubt, but they never follow through on these dolls place in the higherarchy. Which is fine, this movie is the Barbie movie, it's about stereotypical Barbie becoming a real girl and going to the gynecologist. But I do think that they established some dolls on the margins and then left them there, and as someone on the margins in real life I want to know what's going on with them. Most people going to this movie are gonna be Barbies and Kens so they don't touch on it and I think that's kinda sad, but not every movie has to be for me I guess.

TL;DR: the Barbie movie lacks a queer perspective and has some moments where it's stated gender metaphor falls apart because of its necessarily liberal politics.

All that said. I liked the movie. I'm leveling this criticism because it was better than I expected it to be. I didn't expect to go into the theatre and think about gender like that and I did so it deserves points for that even if I have problems with the execution. I thought it would be a shallow Pinocchio plot but it did something fresh with the doll who wants to be a real girl plot and it was genuinely good cinema in terms of the effects and the music and the visual motifs. It was a fun experience I laughed several times. I would recommend it despite being critical of it.

*coherent in that it is a message that has semi consistent internal logic not in that it's internal logic is correct or sound.

[enamouredless]

one of the reasons why I'm a mike having a crush on eddie truther is bc eddie being someone's mentor is already dustins gig, so from a writing standpoint if thats eddies storyline/relationship with dustin then what is mike's relationship w him supposed to be? 🤨 Exactly

[insertpoetryhere]

If it's alright with you may I ask for Akito for the headcanon thing? Your hcs are SO fucking good 🙏🙏

I’ve almost collected all the Ootoris. Time to show some love to my favorite middle child.

1.) Fuyumi and Akito are twins, and refer to themselves as a “buy one get one free” deal since Yoshio very transparently wanted two sons and Fuyumi is just along for the ride.

2.) In school, Akito was the one who got in trouble most often. Or rather, he’s the one who stayed in trouble the most often.

3.) Akito was a complete stoner in high school, but he made good grades so very few people noticed and just assumed that was his personality.

4.) He’s harder on Kyoya than the others are because he remembers using things like “I’m going to study” and “I have club stuff” as code for doing something stupid and assumes all teenage boys think the same. He was a little terror, so clearly Kyoya must be the same.

5.) He can and will snitch on everyone except Fuyumi. It’s the Twin Code of Conduct.

6.) He has always looked up to Yuichi and spends most of his time trying to get his attention.

7.) Akito is queer, and when he was in late middle school he fell in love with the president of class 3-B. The two of them had a friendly rivalry as the presidents of their respective classes. This boy was the one who taught him how to bend the rules a little and how to use your reputation to get away with things. They “dated” until their third year of high school when Yoshio threatened to remove Akito from the line of succession and give his spot to Kyoya if he didn’t start taking the family image more seriously. Deciding that Class 3-B’s president was too much of a distraction, Akito called it off.

8.) Akito claims to be a tea person to seem more mature, but he usually chugs an energy drink before going into work since he developed a far-too-high caffeine tolerance in College for tea or coffee to wake him up anymore.

9.) Akito doesn’t want to get married, but feels he has to since Yuichi still isn’t married and is showing no signs of ever finding a wife.

10.) Akito has been described as the least charming Ootori, not even bothering to try wit most pleasantries. His demeanor is why Yoshio is pretty insistent on dividing his assets between two of his sons instead of giving the entire company to one. The idea is that Yuichi is pleasant but lacks a cutthroat nature, and Akito is vicious but can’t hold a decent conversation. He’s hoping they will balance each other out (assuming they both stay in his favor).

11.) Akito is great at braiding hair, since Fuyumi never trusted anyone else to do it.

12.) Akito and Fuyumi are the reasons why some of the teachers at Ouran saw Kyoya’s family name on the roster and immediately moved him to the front of the class.

13.) Akito feels a mix of pride and resentment when it comes to Kyoya that makes it hard for him to interact with him. On one hand, he’s really proud of Kyoya’s accomplishments (including the ones he shittalks) but on the other, he also resents how Kyoya has always been his fathers replacement for him if he screws up. It’s complicated.

14.) Akito organizes his favorite siblings into categories: the one he admires the most is Yuichi, the one he connects with the most is Fuyumi, and the one he worries about the most is Kyoya. And if any of them were to ask him who his favorite sibling was, he would answer that it was himself so he wouldn’t have to say “all of them”.

15.) Akito is a spreadsheet bitch. He makes spreadsheets for everything in his day to day life and spends chunks of time editing them.

16.) Akito is a very gifted soccer player, but doesn’t get many opportunities to play ever since he graduated school.

17.) Akito is the only sibling with any domestic skills, mostly because of his distrust in anyone organizing his stuff except for him since they don’t “do it right”.

18.) Akito has diagnosed autism, but Yoshio didn’t see it affecting his school work at all so he decided to leave well enough alone.

19.) Akito is very interested in science, but not in a “getting your hands dirty” kind of way. More in the academic, observed from afar kind of way. He likes knowing how things work.

20.) In the future, Akito is the one to suggest partnering with Kyoya’s business to Yuichi, almost like extending an olive branch after a pretty messed up childhood. He’s also really proud when Kyoya decides to decline the offer.

[mianavs]

Ameliorate

Your life was always a dark abyss until Matsukawa came in and made everything better

Matsukawa x f!reader

a/n: hands down the most difficult piece I’ve worked on but it’s finally done. not sure how i feel about it but i hope you all enjoy it anyway! kind of a slow burn fyi

tw: smut, oral (f!reader receiving), heavy angst, mentions of death/grieving

wc: 5.8k

It was a call you didn’t want to take. You were at work going over some accounts when the screen of your cell came to life and angrily vibrated on your desk. Sighing, you reached over to swipe on the red phone icon but the caller id caught your eye leaving you stunned.

[Mother]

You almost missed the call, lost in the negative emotions that the title unburied from the dark recesses of your mind. On impulse, you answered last minute and took a deep breath before you spoke to your mother for the first time since you left home four years ago. In the second it took for your mother to speak, you held out for an apology but instead received the news that your father had passed away the night before.

You exchanged few words with your mother, who was as frigid as ever, but nonetheless agreed to return home for the funeral. After informing your supervisor and taking off the rest of the week, you collected your things to leave only to be bombarded by your coworkers offering their condolences. You accepted their sincerity but felt nothing except for a queer emptiness.

Upon reaching the ground floor of the building, the elevator doors opened and a familiar voice caught your attention. You looked up to face your ex-fiancé speaking animatedly on the phone—until he saw you and his smile faltered.

It had been a mutual decision. After two years of dating, he’d wanted marriage and you—well, you weren’t sure what you wanted but marriage sure wasn’t it. The last you’d heard he had gotten married to some girl from HR and he looked happy. You plastered a smile on your face and greeted him with a nod before heading out.

At least one of you was happy.

On the train to Miyagi, memories of your parents occupied your thoughts. Your relationship them had always been strained. As the only child of a prestigious university professor and a retired news anchor turned housewife, they expected a lot from you academically and socially. Throughout your childhood, you struggled under the immense pressure they placed and you , more often than not, disappointed them.

It seemed that no matter how hard you tried to be their perfect daughter, you always fell short and got reproached accordingly. Your above average grades were never good enough. Your clumsiness and constant slouch made you unladylike, and your awkward mumbled speech was shameful. No matter what you did, the scrutiny never stopped and your imperfections only worsened over time. Your grades fell, you avoided going out with your parents to social events, and you spoke very little to your parents.

A quiet girl with no self-esteem, you started high school at Aoba Josai and everything changed when you met Matsukawa Issei. He approached you first during homeroom on your first day of school and never stopped talking to you from then on. He was patient and kind with you but also pushed you to get out of you shell. Before you knew it, he became your best friend and the two of you spent all of your free time together.

Issei’s friendship raised you up in many forms. Your grades increased after all those study sessions with him and Hanamaki. You stopped looking down at your shoes and found that the sky was much nicer to look at. You laughed, yelled, cried, and talked to Issei about anything and everything.

The change had been so sudden that even your parents noticed and treated you better. They stopped criticizing your every movement and that did wonders to your confidence. While the relationship between you and your parents slightly improved, your relationship with Issei bloomed like the cherry blossoms that fell on the day he confessed to you. For the first time in your life, you were truly happy until everything shattered when your parents found out about you and Issei.

You were reckless with the lies you told your parents to sneak out and see Issei. Your mind was clouded with thoughts of your boyfriend that you hadn’t noticed your parents had been awake when you snuck out at night. That night your parents caught you outside on a park bench with Issei’s head on your lap. As a result, you were confined to your room for a week with your mother becoming your personal jailer and after getting a taste of love and freedom—you refused to go back to being that insecure girl.

You rebelled against your parents. You got into screaming matches with your mother and argued with your father. The worst part of it all was the guilt that you felt after you’d yell at your mother or insulted your father. In that moment, you’d see the hurt in their eyes and the hesitation before they sent you to your room. You hated those looks because it proved that they too had feelings and you were capable of hurting them just like they’d hurt you.

Until you graduated, you lived like a ghost in your own home avoiding your parents as much as you could. You filled the emptiness you felt with Issei, who became your whole world. You went to all of his volleyball matches, he picked you up after work, and you spent most of your time at his house and with his family. The two of you planned a future together during your first year at college in Yokohama until the news of your mother falling ill sent you back home.

“Now arriving at Tokyo station”

The announcement interrupted your musings and you pulled out your phone to distract yourself from the bustle of people exiting the train. You scrolled through your social media page until a rare post from an old friend caught your attention. Oikawa had uploaded a photo of a historic site in Argentina and you found yourself searching for Issei’s name among the thousands of likes and comments. While Issei’s name hadn’t popped up, Hanamaki’s did and you clicked on his profile thoughtlessly. It didn’t take much digging on your behalf to find what you were looking for.

Only a couple of posts down was a photo of Hanamaki and Issei from a year ago at a restaurant you would recognize anywhere—after all, you’d worked there for two years. You couldn’t help but admire how good they looked. You memorized every detail of Issei’s face before a thought crossed your mind and your finger hovered over the screen.

A tap on the photo revealed Issei’s account and you hesitated to wonder if stalking your ex-boyfriend’s social media was the right move before you tapped on his username anyway and his profile opened up. It was on private to your dismay but his account picture showed you more than enough. It was one of Issei with one arm swung over a pretty woman’s shoulder. Shutting off your phone, you tried to convince yourself that you didn’t care but the tightness in your chest proved otherwise.

Gazing out the window at the rural towns the train passed reminded you of your father and his love for the countryside. You hated to admit it but, after living in the city for three years, you came to share the same sentiments as your father.

After returning home following the news of your mother’s illness, your father moved the family to rural Miyagi believing the fresh country air would do her good. Moving back with your parents wasn’t as difficult as you’d feared after leaving everything behind. Your mother still nagged you over everything but not as cruelly and would occasionally compliment your cooking when you fed her.

It was the relationship with your father, however, that changed the most which was why his deception hurt you the most. Your father was the one that helped you transfer to the university he taught at. The two of you always left for school together and conversations about school eventually filled the quiet void during those hour-long train rides to Sendai. Your conversations became personal at night over tea or sake and, in those moments, you felt as if you could forgive your parents and develop a relationship with them.

You should have been more suspicious about your mother’s condition. Whenever you asked your father about it, you’d attributed his wavering gaze to concern over your mother. The improved relationship between you and your parents distracted you from the unchanging condition of your mother despite constant medication and hospital visits. It never crossed your mind that the sickness had only been a ploy to guilt you into coming back to Miyagi so your parents could resume molding their matured daughter into what they wanted.

You found out by chance while listening in to a conversation amongst them but that was all it took to turn your newfound affection for your parents into resentment. For the entirety of the confrontation, you bit back tears when their reactions confirmed everything had been made up. After packing up your things and disowning your parents, you left home vowing never to come back.

“Now arriving at Sendai station”

The long drive to your childhood home did nothing to prepare you for the meeting with your mother. She looked tired and beat down; a sharp contrast to the strong woman she used to be.

“You look awful,” She chided, eyeing you with her sharp gaze. “You’re thin and sickly.”

“So are you.” Your retort was immediate and thoughtless but it shut your mother up. After a moment of deafening silence, she offered to help you with your bag but you declined.

“Come downstairs after you unpack. Dinner is almost ready.” With that, your mother left to the kitchen.

You were surprised to find your room in the same state it had been when you left for college. Palming through your old notebooks, opening your drawers to sift through old clothes, and collapsing on your bed to bury your nose in the sheets made you miss the simpler days of high school.

In the end, you were too distracted by your room to unpack but made sure to wash up before heading down to dinner—a habit your mother instilled in you and returned after only being in the house for twenty minutes. You also took your usual spot across your mother while the chair that your father had once sat in stood bare at the head of the table. The empty spot was disconcerting but your eyes remained fixed on the chair while your mind worked to restore the image of your father on it. Your trancelike state stopped when your mother cleared her throat.

“The wake will be tomorrow morning so ready by nine.”

“Do I need to do anything?”

“A small speech is expected of you.” She stated and left no room for argument. “There will also be familiar faces so behave accordingly.”

The meaning behind your mother’s warning dawned on you when the two of you entered the funeral home and were greeted by the one familiar face you didn’t expect to see—Issei.

If he was surprised to see you, he didn’t show it and was all business when he addressed your mother. Your shock only increased when your mother didn’t go off on Issei and instead treated him like an actual human.

When his sharp gaze shifted to your form, the air around you seemed to thicken and breathing became impossible. Standing in front of Issei took you back in time to those days when Issei would wait for you in the mornings to walk to school. You could have lost yourself in his eyes but the purpose of your return tore your eyes away and you bowed in greeting, not trusting your voice. He bowed as well and offered his condolences before turning to your mother and discussing the schedule and other details as they walked into the building with you in tow.

The discomfort you felt during the service increased tenfold with the arrival of the guests. Former colleagues of your father, friends of your mother, and neighbors crowded the small funeral home and they all had their eyes on you. The condolences, hugs, and pats left you suffocated and desensitized. Before long, their words fused together into a clangor that left you disoriented. You thought you were going to pass out until a former professor of yours asked a question that destroyed whatever remained of your composure.

“…so when did they find out the tumor was malignant?”

Tumor?

Malignant?

Your overwhelmed brain pieced together the information until you understood what had caused your father’s death—cancer. In that moment, everything ceased to exist and there was only you and your thoughts. Your blood ran cold and all of your limbs went numb. While your mouth hung open, not a syllable fell from your lips. As opposed to your frozen body, your mind raced and a whirlwind of emotions wreaked havoc on your being. When you came to terms with the fact that you hadn’t known your father’s cause of death, a strangled cry escaped your mouth and you darted out of the room.

The urge to leave and never return overcame all logic but, before you could make it out the door, a pair of large warm hands clasped your shoulders, gently stopping you dead in your tracks. The faint smell of cologne and musk hit you and you knew it was Issei before you looked up.

Warmth radiated from every part of his body and all you wanted was to bury yourself into him and hide from the world. His eyes widened slightly before he looked around and guided you away into a small room away from the guests. There was a sofa that he led you too and sat down next to you. Suddenly, Issei’s hands were on your cheeks wiping away tears you didn’t know where there.

“God…I’m a fucking mess.” You cursed and buried your face into your hands.

“Funerals are…difficult,” Issei offered. “Trust me, I work here.”

“I didn’t know,” you muttered raising your head. “I didn’t even know how my father died. I never asked my mother and she never told me. She just told me he died and I took a train here without thinking.”

“Everyone processes death differently, Y/N.”

“Fuck, Issei—I’m his only daughter for crying out loud!” Your voice broke as a fresh set of tears threatened to spill. “We’ve never had a stable relationship…but still, what kind of a daughter doesn’t know the cause of death of her own father? I just feel like I’m suffocating and I-I…”

Sobs tore out of your chest inhibiting you from speaking and Issei didn’t hesitate to envelop you in his strong arms that rocked you while he whispered calming reassurances in your ear.

“Shhh…it’s okay.”

“Everything will be fine.”

“This will pass.”

Your cries eventually ceased but neither of you let go. It felt easy to cling onto Issei while he held you just as tightly. The return of your wits, however, brought you back to reality and you let him go knowing it wasn’t right to cling onto anyone’s boyfriend—even if he’d been your friend before he’d been your boyfriend.

“Thank you, Issei. I should really head back now.”

Issei’s grip loosened slowly until he faced you with his thick brows knitted with concern. You smiled hoping it was convincing enough to reassure him before the two of you stood up and left the room. Near the entrance of the hall stood your mother angrily pacing back and forth until she saw you and Issei and opened her mouth to speak but stopped. You decided to speak first before she misunderstood the situation.

“I needed some space to calm down and Issei helped me find a place.”

Her piercing eyes took you in and lingered on your eyes; they were no doubt red and puffy from crying. The anger seemed to dissipate and her shoulder’s relaxed before she finally addressed you.

“It’s time for your speech. Are you ready?”

Coming from the woman that never asked you anything, her question caught you off guard but stirred something in you. You answered by nodding and followed your mother into the packed hall and up to the front where your father lied in his coffin. You stood to the side while your mother addressed the guests and you looked at your father for the first time in years.

The sight should have made you feel anything but the relief that washed over you. He looked at peace and it reminded you of the rare glimpses you’d caught of him talking with his students, fishing in the small pond of your country home, or drinking sake at night. It was with those memories that you replaced your mother and spoke to the guests.

You were composed for the entire speech despite your distraught state only minutes prior. It felt like a blanket of serenity had wrapped itself over your shoulders and shielded you from any remaining guilt. In the end, you wished your father well not because you forgave him but because you wanted to close that chapter in your book.

The rest of the ceremony was easier to stomach without the turmoil in your head. After the last guest left, you and your mother spoke to Issei and his boss about last minute details for the funeral the next day. Your mother offered a brisk thanks before heading out first and Issei’s boss followed, leaving you and your ex alone. The desire to ask him for his contact info was immense, but your better judgement won and you offered him a quick thanks before following your mother.

Very little words were exchanged with your mother that night and you headed up to bed completely drained from the day’s events. You’d just finished hanging up your mourning clothes when your mother knocked on the door and waited until you let her in—something she never did.

Still in her mourning gown, she held out a letter addressed to you from your father and seeing her up close, you noticed the wet cheeks and puffy red skin around her eyes. In all the years you lived with your mother, you had never seen her cry. Crying out hysterically? Yes. Witnessing actual tears or the evidence of tears on her face, however, not even once. Which was why you stood stunned as your mother placed the letter in your hand before leaving you to your privacy.

You tore open the sealed envelope and opened the letter to see that it was dated one year ago.

{Daughter,

If you are reading this, it is because I am no longer on this earth. As the disease weakens my body, I know that I will never see you again and write this to convey everything that I could not in life. I am well-aware that I lost the right to your forgiveness and I do not wish to receive it. Nothing will ever justify my actions towards you. I failed you as a father and caused you to grow up in a miserable home. I held you to expectations that not even I could achieve and I will regret the pain and suffering I caused you until my last breath.

I remember the day your mother brought you into this world. When I saw your frail little body and held you in my arms for the first time, I was struck with an immeasurable amount of fear. I was terrified of being a father and didn’t want you to suffer the way I did. I wanted to prepare you for the world in the way my parents never did for me. However, in the end, my own selfish desires to re-live my life through you tainted whatever intentions I’d had. I will never forgive myself for the irreparable damage I caused you therefore I ask that you do the same.

I wish to end this message by expressing how proud I am of the strong woman you’ve become. Everything you’ve accomplished is derived of your own merits and in spite of the suffering I caused you. Your mother and I are happy to hear of your successes and wish you happiness in your married life. I know you will live a long and happy life because you are not like me. You’re a fighter. You know what you want and take it without regrets.

With this, I hope that you will continue to grow and forget me as I am undeserving of living in your thoughts.}

What began as tears trailing down your cheeks, ended up as wails mourning your father. The proud man that you knew him to be in life came undone in that short letter and every word pierced your heart. In a manner reminiscent of the past, you disobeyed his requests and genuinely forgave your father while engraving each of his words into your heart.

The urge to see your mother led you to tuck away the letter and open the door only to find her already there. Muffling her sobs with her hands, her whole body shook as she gazed up at you. The fragility of her state stirred your compassion and your arms wrapped around her. Collapsing onto the ground, the two of you clung to each other and truly mourned the death of your father.

You woke up enveloped in motherly warmth like you were an infant again. Her eyes that once scrutinized your every move, were softer now as she talked about your father’s last days over breakfast. The hand that had disciplined you in the past now held yours during the Buddhist priest’s chant at the funeral. The circumstances were wretched but you finally felt at peace with your parents.

The funeral and cremation passed with you and your mother holding each other up. As the two of you jointly picked up the bone fragments with chopsticks and placed them in the urn, you came to terms with the fact that the relationship with your mother would never go back to what it was. A sense of filial duty stirred within you for the first time in a while only it wasn’t out of guilt—this time, you genuinely wanted to take care of your mother.

You found yourself outside of the crematorium waiting for your mother to settle things when Issei walked up to you. He’d been at the funeral ceremony, of course, but the crematorium wasn’t a part of his duties so you were surprised to see him. He still wore his black slacks and matching button down but his tie was nowhere to be seen and he’d undone the top two buttons of his shirt.

He began by inquiring about the cremation to make sure everything had gone well. You assured him everything went well before an awkward silence pervaded the space between. Desperate to fill the void with anything, you asked Issei a question only to find him simultaneously asking you one.

“Talked to Hana—”

“How long are yo—”

Your face flushed and Issei rubbed the back of his head as the two of you apologized for interrupting each other.

“You go first,” Issei gently insisted.

“I was going to ask if you’d talked to Hanamaki lately. I saw that you two went out…” The implication of your words caused you to clamp your mouth shut while your face burned even more.

“You saw…us?” Issei sounded amused and you looked up to find that same smirk from six years ago that produced butterflies in your stomach.

“Er…yeah,” you admitted. “I kinda found Hanamaki’s social media and happened a picture of you two.”

“Oh, that picture. That was the last time I saw him since he lives in Tokyo now. We still text though.”

“So Tokyo, huh? Good for Hanamaki.”

“What about you?” Issei asked, his eyes more intense than before. “Your mother mentioned you live in the city.”

“Uh yeah,” You said fidgeting with the material of your kimono. “I live in Yokohama. Got a job offer after graduation and I’ve been there ever since.”

“…Are you going back now?”

Issei avoided your eyes by looking away—an old habit you instantly recognized. Like the old days, you moved in the direction of his face and stood on your tippy toes with a cheeky grin on your face. Surprise flashed on his eyes before his mouth broke into a fond smile.

“I’m staying for a couple more days.” You replied and the next word flowed out naturally like water in a stream. “Why?”

“I wanted to catch up with you.” He admitted before his expression sobered. “Only if you’re up for it though. I don’t want you to feel like—”

“I’d love to catch up!”

And with that, the two of you exchanged contact information before your mother approached you. As you watched Issei walk away, you mother piped up next to you.

“He’s a good man. I regret not seeing it before.” It wasn’t exactly an apology but the effect was the same to you.

“And I regret letting him go,” you lamented.

“You still have a chance.” She replied and you met her gaze.

“I don’t. He has a girlfriend.”

“Then why did I overhear his boss trying to set him up on a date with his niece?” Your mother countered and then started to walk towards the newly arrived taxi.

“Wait, what?!”

Heeding your mother’s advice, you dressed up for your meeting with Issei. He picked you up and the first thing you noticed was the similar colored clothing the two of you wore. Laughing it off, you got into his car and made small talk about the changes in town while on route to the restaurant.

The conversation gave you the perfect excuse to admire him at ease. Issei had always been handsome but you had to admit that he’d really grown into his looks. Any lingering teenage awkwardness was gone and replaced by an air of confidence that he exuded in his speech, mannerisms, and voice. From his defined jaw to the protruding veins on his exposed forearm, you memorized each detail and replaced the memory you had of college freshman Issei with it.

Issei took you to the same restaurant you spent most of your evenings in during high school waiting tables and chatting with the volleyball team after closing time. Unlike the rest of the town, the tables, chairs, and décor remained the same and you were overcome with emotion the moment you walked in. After chatting with the owner for a bit, Issei led you to the table the boys would always take after practice to wait until you got off work.

“I can’t believe this place remained the same after all these years.” You commented after placing your orders.

“I know,” Issei replied grinning. “I can’t imagine this town without it.”

“Just sitting here brings back so many memories of us…” you trailed off when you noticed Issei’s unwavering gaze on you.

“Ah! And the boys too!” You added letting out a nervous giggle before taking a sip of your beer to cool your heated head. “How are they, by the way? I’ve seen Oikawa’s posts of Argentina but what about Iwaizumi?”

The conversation about the whereabouts of the volleyball team lasted until the food arrived. You asked about his family in between bites and Issei answered each of your questions about his siblings and parents.

After finishing your meal and ordering a second round of drinks the conversation switched over to work with Issei eager to find out what you did.

“Financing! Can you believe it?” You laughed. “Specifically, in the mortgage department.”

“Seriously?” Issei chuckled. “Whatever happened to being a novelist?”

“Life happened.” You answered and raised your glass in a mock toast.

“Ah, trust me. I completely understand.” He clinked his glass against yours and the two of you laughed before taking a sip.

After finishing your second beer, the warmth in your cheeks and your animated speech were all clear signs you were buzzed. It wasn’t until you asked the question on your mind since you’d seen that picture that you realized just how buzzed you actually were.

“So…are you seeing anyone?” Your eyes were lowered, but when Issei didn’t respond you looked up.

Issei’s eyes were darker than they’d been. The intensity of his gaze locked your eyes on his leaving you vulnerable. You were suddenly keenly aware how intensely your heart was beating and wondered if Issei could hear it.

“Why do you ask?”

His strained voice sent chills down your spine making you painfully aware of the building tension in your core. You knew what you wanted and you suspected he wanted the same thing but you needed to confirm your suspicions.

“I saw your social media account and the picture you used. The one where you’re hugging a woman…smiling…”

The more words that spilled out, the more pathetic you sounded and you eventually trailed off while averting your eyes.

“We broke up about a year ago.”

“What?!” The word slipped through your lips when your eyes snapped back to see him sheepishly running a hand through his wavy black locks.

“We wanted different things. I felt like I was holding her back so I let her go.”

“I completely understand,” echoing his words, your hand reached across the table to his. “My engagement got cancelled for similar reasons. He wanted marriage sooner than later and I wasn’t ready.”

The two of you shared a moment when, out of the blue, Issei took ahold of your hand and used his thumb to run slow circles on your palm; a gesture he’d always used to signal he wanted to be alone with you. Your breath hitched and a lazy smirk graced his face as he lifted your wrist and pressed a kiss on your pulse point.

“I-Issei,” you gasped and darted your eyes around the room to ensure no one had seen.

“Let’s get out of here. Come to my place.”

His voice was like honey to your ears and you nodded as the tension that’d been building spread to other parts of your body. With that the bill was settled and Issei drove you to his place while keeping a hand on your inner thigh that would occasionally drift and tease your clit.

By the time the two of you made it inside his home, Issei’s tongue had tasted every part of your mouth while his lips left yours swollen. Flushed and whimpering, Issei planted wet butterfly kisses down your jaw until he reached that spot on your neck that elicited a moan from your parted lips.

Issei groaned before sucking on that spot and you to pulled him closer by tugging on his hair—a move you knew drove him crazy.

“Fuck,” his warm breath fanned on your neck. “Fuck—not here.”

He picked you up and you wrapped your legs around his waist. You pulled his lips into another wet kiss that had him groaning into your mouth as his erection pressed against your soaked panties. He set you down on his bed and broke the kiss that left the two of you panting.

His hungry gaze traveled all over your body. Your dress was hiked up and he could make out the darkened material of your panties—the proof of your arousal. With a groan his stripped out of his shirt letting you take in his broad chest that you ached to touch. Grinning from your cute reaction he pressed a kiss to your forehead before snaking his arm behind your waist and laying you down on this middle of his bed. You reached for his clothed erection but Issei gripped your hand and placed it over your head.

“Not yet, pretty girl. Let me spoil you today.”

Issei’s skilled hands worked on your dress and slipped it off you followed by your bra and panties. His eyes raked over your body taking in the flushed skin, erect nipples, and trembling legs.

“Beautiful,” he murmured and leaned over to lick and suck on your sensitive peaks. Each flick against a nipple had you gasping. Each bite had you arching your back. The longer he teased, the more desperate your need to be touched and filled became until you took his hand and placed it between your legs.

“T-touch, me Issei, p-please...”

“That’s my needy girl,” he cooed and pressed one last kiss to your chest before settling between your legs and admiring the way your dribbling cunt clenched around nothing. “Such a pretty cunt.”

He flattened his tongue on your throbbing clit sending shocks of pleasure up your body. Issei’s mouth that alternated between sucking and biting down on your clit had you in tears from the immense pleasure and you lost count of how many times you came on his face. When his tongue delved into your aching cunt, you rutted against his face to push his tongue in deeper.

“Nghhh—Isseiiiii! Need y’now, please!”

Issei’s head rose from between you legs and just sight of his face covered in your arousal had your cunt pulsing again.

“What was that baby?” He teased and licked the translucent substance off his lips. His hands began to work on his pants and your eyes greedily took in his tented underwear. “Is this what you want, pretty girl?”

“Y-yes! Need it!”

It’d been so long since you’d been with a guy let alone one of Issei’s size. In fact, you were certain Issei was the biggest you’d ever had. That being said, the sight of his erect cock had you whimpering from both apprehension and desire.

Issei, always so attentive, noticed your reaction and settled himself on top before pressing a sweet kiss on your lips and assuring you he’d be gentle. You nodded before wrapping your arms around his neck while he rubbed his cock between your folds and against your clit in the way he’d always done before filling you.

Once your slick coated his cock, he lined himself at your entrance and slowly sheathed himself into you. The stretch was still painful even with the prep but as soon as he was halfway in, your walls relaxed and pain turned into pleasure. After bottoming out, Issei waited for your cunt to relax around him before he started moving.

With each thrust, Issei hit that spot near your cervix that built up your release time and time again. Every time your walls fluttered and your cum coated his cock, your nails raked over his back and Issei’s groans filled your ears until he too found his release. The two of you were insatiable and continued your lovemaking until the early hours of the morning.

In the end, you stayed the night and woke up mid-day with your head against Issei’s chest and his arms wrapped around you. Listening to his steady heartbeat and feeling the rise and fall of his chest convinced you of the thought you’d mulled over since your father’s funeral.

You wouldn’t return to Yokohama.

[faresramettas]

share the love con panels

thought i’d write down some interesting answers from the cast (there were many more, but i have a bad memory and i took only a few notes)

first of all, before the panels even started the staff told us not to ask questions about season four, we know they are filming it, but they can’t talk about it. so yeah, our hopes and dreams of an announcement or besse making a surprise appearance (🤡) didn’t come true. they never talked about it, when you mentioned it to them they raised their hands or zipped their mouths or were like “idk what u’re talking about 👀😇😬” so obviously they contractually have to keep their mouths shut. but it’s happening y’all!

the only one who slipped, at the very last panel, was rocco and i was the culprit lol. i asked them if they’d imagined the fandom would support them and fight so hard during the cancellation months and bea said no, seeing our hashtags trending almost every day and receiving so much love was touching and incredible. she made rocco talk (mentioned how “he became saint rocco”) and rocco also said he couldn’t imagine the amount of support, and that “the power is all in your hands, and it was worth it-“ and then realized he spoke too much dhshdhfvk the others side-eyed him and he was like “ops” but we all laughed and moved on.

pietro had a lgbtq+ themed panel with an italian youtuber called shanti. they talked a lot about representation, how it changed for the better in the last 20 years or so, how for example right now there’s attention being given to trans* storylines too, and pietro made some really good points about how a show like skam italia should give hope and a positive representation to a young audience, without unnecessary violence or struggles inserted just for tragedy’s sake. how it may seem that martino lives an “easy” and relatively painless experience coming out and being gay, at least in his season, but young queer people should hope and know that that’s possible for them too. he said that he and filippo are different, and it’s good and precious that they are. we don’t know if filippo is an activist, like pietro is, but sometimes sharing one’s personal experience is enough to help. even if filo is not shown as an activist, he is so aware of his identity, he shares his own experience and point of view with marti and it gives marti courage. and that’s enough. finally, i asked what his favorite lgbtq+ tv shows are and he said queer as folk (he realized he was gay thanks to qaf), he absolutely loved euphoria, and thinks sense8 is a masterpiece (but he didn’t finish it smh). he said elite is just cute (😤) and he also told another fan he finished and loved fleabag!!

i also asked pietro what he, besse, rocco and fede were doing in the carrefour parking lot that night in august and he said that supermarket is open 24h and close to his house and he had to go buy groceries so he caught two birds with one stone, called them up and they drank and ate tramezzini (cold sandwiches, besse got a burrito he said) in the parking lot... and yes, they were organizing the revolution.

fede said what he likes the most about martino is his devotion to the people he loves. what he doesn’t like is how sometimes he shuts out the rest of the world, but it’s a problem he has learned to solve.

rocco said he’s thankful that skam italia has given him more awareness on some topics he used to treat superficially. he also talked about how much he relied on ludo and his research to portray bpd respectfully, and he’s glad that people found themselves represented in nico and that he could help them. it’s the greatest compliment. his eyes shine when he talks about nico, he loves his character so much.

a fan asked what was their favorite line to say. rocco’s is “non è figo il mio tipo?”, greta’s is “gli dei sono immortali”, nicholas’s is “sei frocio?”, pietro’s is “l’acqua solo se mi prende fuoco camera” from season 3, fede said “does it have to be my line? cause i like no zì sbagliato” but for his own it’s “minuto per minuto”. i can’t remember bea’s 😭

greta said the girls tend to stick to the script a lot more than the boys, she said ludovico tersigni literally never says a line how it’s written. nicholas confirmed that the boys (contrabbandieri) tend to improvise more and use the script sort of as a base, and that they piss besse off because he says it looks like they go on set just to goof around and gossip and not to do their jobs lol

i asked nicholas if they ate luchino’s pizza crusts. he said he had like 7 kilos of them because they had to retake that scene many many times, cause they wouldn’t stop laughing, as we can see in the bloopers (he also said it was the most fun scene to shoot) and bessegato would just keep adding mustard, ketchup and mayo on them. he felt sick the day after and “tasted mustard for a week”. fyi, nicholas and luchino are literally the same person. there’s no line between the character and the person, i love him so much. he also said he was having the time of his life in bracciano, with the light summer breeze, while the others were dying in their clothes and blankets.

marti’s spirit animal is the fox, fede’s is a golden retriever (debatable but okay). i think rocco said a cat, greta said besse once told her silvia is a goldfish, bea feels like a tiger but thinks sana is an eagle and i didn’t get the rest cause it was all very confusing lol

federico’s panel on sunday was actually very interesting, he is actually quite eloquent and deep when he wants to. he talked about how he really took the “minuto per minuto” philosophy to heart. how he doesn’t set long-term goals for himself, because he wants the freedom to change. how he chose to study medicine because after high school he knew he wanted to keep studying, and a bit like acting, there’s a fundamental human aspect to it that he’s always been interested in.

a fan reminded him it was marti and nico’s anniversary and he said “how are they celebrating? patatine e marmellata or sushi? in nicco’s new house? have our heroes moved there?” and we were all like Bitch u tell us... ofc he didn’t. but he said he imagines marti and nico celebrating their anniversary at a sushi restaurant in porto fluviale, in ostiense (rome). also, fede says their anniversary is bracciano (dec 1st) and rocco says it’s nel mio letto (nov 1st), i’m afraid we have to go with fede on this one.

i think the best question out of every panel was about marti’s interest in gio: was it real, or was it just a fixation? he said it was real interest, that stayed over the summer too. he and ludo had to find a way to show the shift in martino, and it was hard because they switched seasons and so there was no time for it to be gradually shown. however, where they imagined that shift to happen, is in ep1 when gio sleeps in marti’s bed. marti feels uneasy because of his feelings for him, but at the same time, he is uneasy because of the guilt. when he talks with eva on the phone and sees how giovanni reacts to that, how he’s still so clearly into her, he decides he has to move on from him, and gives up any hope or idea to have a relationship with him.

at rocco and fede’s sunday panel, rocco said he admires federico’s dedication to his work and his professionalism. fede and him bantered and bickered a lot, it was adorable, especially when rocco said some nonsense metaphor and fede was like “basta!” and fede kept asking for more compliments. but the question was about what marti and nico liked the most about each other, and federico said “it’s the kind of love where you like someone so much and you don’t even know why” as in, because you like everything about them, so that was beautiful.

a fan asked if there was any embarrassment between them, they said of course initially there was a lil bit of awkwardness, but they warmed up to each other immediately. one of the very first scenes they shot was an intimate one, rocco said the first kiss they shot was nel mio letto and they’d never rehearsed kissing before. amazing.

fede’s favorite color is blue (nicholas’ too).

rocco and nicholas sat in the crowd at the end of fede’s panel and rocco was like “tell us the story of bambi” and fede called him “er lucertola” and said it all started because of a tossico (junkie/drunk), i love them. nicholas made fun of him for his role in “i cesaroni” but fede said he’s only jealous cause they auditioned for the same role but fede got it, and nicholas has him saved as “andy dei cesaroni” in his phone. 

some anecdotes from other moments (m&g, dinners) i found on twitter: federico said when they shot la grotta, there was this whole solemn atmosphere, and then he broke it cause when they finished shooting he realized he had rocco’s snot on his face and he was like “MA CHE CAZZO È, CHE SCHIFO (what the fuck, gross)” and said rocco was always crying on him (i guess referring to the martino e niccolò clip) and rocco was like yes there was a significant exchange of bodily fluids. okay rocchì.

apparently fede likes his beard so much he said he doesn’t recognize himself without it. 

some fans adopted two giraffes in the bioparco di roma in their name as a gift!

rocco cried on the phone with bessegato when skam italia was cancelled. we been knew but it hurts to get the confirmation.

maxence and lukas are two rays of sunshine. not an anecdote, but i felt like saying it.

last but not least, rocco, nicholas and fede went absolutely batshit over @crazybee‘s “alt er besse” shirt. their reactions were priceless. rocco and nicholas took pics of them, nicholas was the one who sent them to besse and he reposted it on ig. forever blessed.

[ilovemygaydad]

part 5/? of punk!patton gets adopted by single parent logan

part one - part two - part three - part four - ao3 version - masterlist (includes asks and art!)

pairings: moxiety, eventual logince, background pining remceit, mentions of past thomas/female oc

warnings--these are very important this chapter: food mentions, stress, anxiety, kissing, flirting, divorce mentions, making out, mentions of murder (i’ll mark it out), attempted murder, guns, gunshots, gun wounds, head trauma, homophobic parents mention, homophobia, there’s so much swearing i am so sorry, maybe something else

a/n: no joke i’ve had this planned out since before the last part came out, but i literally just couldn’t write it all at once, and i’ve been having a really emotionally weird week. next chapter should start out pretty funny. idk. please enjoy this.

a/n 2: sorry that this took so long to get out. i don’t think it’s that great, but... yeah. whatever.

it’s friday night babey which means that it’s dinner time with the sanders, and logan and patton are freaking out

logan has been cooking/prepping food for the past day, and he immediately started finishing up as soon as he got home from work

patton, on the other hand, was feverishly cleaning the entire house 

it isn’t even messy, but he’s worried that virgil and/or roman are going to be upset

(which they aren’t????? but whatever)

and patton even cleaned himself up! he tried (and failed) to tame his wild curls into some sort of neat anything, and he wore his nicest pair of black jeans and a black sweater with floral designs that he’d bought at the mall with virgil a while back

it was a little out of his comfort zone, but virgil insisted that he get it because it looks very good on him

and, god damn it, you can’t say no to virgil’s puppy eyes

the doorbell rang just before five, and logan ran out of the kitchen to get it

patton literally vaulted over the couch, skidding to the door just behind logan

virgil is like

literally the cutest person on the planet

he’s wearing a white lace dress that has a flowy skirt, and he’s got a white flower crown on, and he looks like an angel

during the time that patton’s being a gay disaster, virgil holds out a bouquet of blue flowers and says, “dad made me get them for you”

patton smiles gently and takes them, pulling virgil in for a quick kiss before leading him inside

roman has, like, eight giant tupperware containers full of cookies and brownies and stuff in his arms, and logan’s like

what???? the fuck?????

“you didn’t need to bring desserts, roman. i have ice cream...”

and roman gives this cocky smile and says “my best friend, emi, loves to bake for us, but he doesn’t really know how to limit himself, so we have tons of baked goods lying around that we can’t eat. not to mention that i can’t keep up this fabulous figure if i only eat sweets!” wink wonk

and logan can feel his face heating up after that wink, but he pretends that it’s just the heat from inside

roman really does have a good figure...

logan chooses to not respond to roman, instead saying, “let’s go inside so you can put those containers down”

they turn to go, and they catch a glimpse of patton and virgil from down the hall

the kids are sitting on the couch, laughing and talking and exchanging the occasional kiss

the adults watch for a second because aw, but quickly move on to the kitchen

“you can set the containers down on the counter over there. i made a a couple of different things for dinner just in case you two didn’t like something that i made, so there’s spaghetti, pizza, and hamburgers. everything is absolutely gluten-free; i know because i triple checked with a list online and bought new utensils to reduce contamination. you’re free to have as much or as little as you like--i won’t be offended either way.”

roman kind of freezes because holy shit that’s so thoughtful and kind

“that’s... logan, that’s too much. you didn’t have to do all that for virgil.”

“what are you talking about? it’s only common courtesy to assure that your guest is able to eat without getting sick, especially when they have a disease that can cause irreparable damage to their body.”

“yeah, but a lot of people don’t care enough to ask or remember, so virgil often has to find something else to eat last minute... i brought an extra dinner just in case, which is very unfair to your person, but virgil has suffered too much for me to not be careful.”

“that’s...” logan starts, trying to express what he feels. “that’s just shitty.”

roman smiles and laughs a bit, replying, “yeah, it is, but at least you aren’t, you know, shitty”

and they have this little moment where they smile at each other, and both of them are like wow this man is... good looking but they snap out of it because

dumb gays

everyone in this au is a dumb gay

including yours truly but that is noT important

logan’s like “hey we should get the kids for dinner” and roman obvi agrees

but when they go to get them, they see the kiddos being all adorable and gay and logan turns to roman with this very serious expression like

we must spy on them. this is the cutest shit i’ve ever seen.

so they shuffle over to the edge of the doorway, just out of sight, and logan peeks his head in every now and then for visuals, and he’s repeating what he hears so that roman can understand what’s happening

logan’s in the middle of telling roman something when

dun dun dunnnn

a voice suddenly appears from behind them like

(the voice is virgil)

“what... are you two doing...?”

fucking busted

logan is like

aHa i can lie to these children!

and he says, “we were talking about work--”

but patton just cuts him off with this deadpan look and “you two are horrible liars”

cut to: roman gasping in offense that this emo nightmare of a child just called him a liar when he didn’t even say anything

so he says, “i didn’t even say anything”

patton, being... well, being the asshole that he is, says, “my point still stands”

roman splutters for a while longer, trying to look at virgil and logan for help, but virgil just shrugs and walks with patton to the table, and logan is still very embarrassed about getting caught

it takes a few seconds, but both adults recuperate and move on to what’s important

which is, obviously, dinner

logan walks virgil through what’s available and offers to cook something else if he isn’t feeling particularly happy with anything

virgil damn near cries at how nice logan is

dinner gets served, and they all start eating the (delicious--who would guess that calculator watch knew how to cook something that tasted like it was served in a fancy restaurant) food

after a few minutes of idle chatter and slight pda between the kids, logan offhandedly comments, “you know, i am extremely happy for the both of you that you didn’t cycle through numerous girlfriends before finding out that you’re queer like many of us do.”

and everyone at the table freezes because

logan’s gay????

“hold up,” roman says with a shocked expression. “you’re gay?”

and virgil sighs and shakes his head because “dad, you’re an idiot. he literally has a pride phone case, and there are multiple pictures of him at pride around the house--including one right behind you.”

he also elbows patton when the punk mutters out a very soft “what the fuck”

“i applaud your observational skills--”

“i assume neither of you knew that he was jewish, either”

and now it’s logan’s turn to be surprised because... who the hell is this kid

“you have a dreidel on the mantle that i assumed you forgot to put away after Hanukkah last year.” everyone stared at him. “oh, i’m sorry that i’m not as much of a dumb gay as my father.”

cue roman getting offended again

“excuse you! the role of ‘dumb gay’ is exclusively reserved for thomas f. sanders!”

poor patton hasn’t stopped being confused this whole time, but roman luckily jumps right back into his explanation

“my twin brother, thomas, didn’t realize that he was gay until he had been with a woman for six years and had a child with her. they amicably parted ways because, like him, she was also gay. i am not nearly as stupid as my brother, and i take great offense to virgil calling me a ‘dumb gay!’” he said matter-of-factly

virgil opens his mouth to say something, but roman cuts him off with a swift “if you so much as think about saying what you’re going to say, i will throw you into the ocean without a moment’s hesitation.” roman then very calmly turns to patton and says sweetly, “so, only good child at this table, tell me a bit about yourself so that i know what my devil child is getting himself into.”

unbeknownst to roman, virgil mutters “dumb gay,” under his breath, causing logan to crack a smile across the table

patton shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “my birthday is february nineteenth, my favorite color is blue, and i’m homoromantic asexual.”

roman waited for patton to say more, but the teen averted his gaze back on his food and took another bite

logan decided to pick up the slack after the few seconds of awkward silence “what about you, virgil?”

unlike patton’s less than enthusiastic reply, virgil perked up at the chance to speak

“oh, well, my birthday is june second, and i really like purple! i’m pretty sure that i’m pan, but i have a preference for guys. oooh! and i really want to be an elementary school teacher.”

that made logan perk up. “really? i currently teach first graders across town.”

“no way!” virgil gasped. “that’s awesome! i love little kids so much. they’ve got so much energy.”

“and their intelligence is unrivaled!”

“yes!”

roman and patton watched as the two excitedly conversed about kids and teaching

patton admired virgil’s enthusiasm, and was happy that he was getting along with logan.

and virgil looked really cute with his happy smile and the little glimmer in his eyes

patton may or may not have zoned out in favor of staring at his beautiful boyfriend

roman couldn’t really tell what logan and virgil were talking about (they were speaking far too quickly for him to follow), but he admired how excited logan looked when he was speaking

oh no

roman was falling for logan

time to not follow his own advice and pretend that his feelings don’t exist

after another half hour or so of chatting, the adults and kids split ways for a while

patton and virgil went up to patton’s room, and logan and roman stayed in the living room

the boys settled together at the end of patton’s bed, holding hands and leaning on each other

“you look paw-sitively purrfect, virgil” patton giggled

“is... are you saying that because i have cat-eye eyeliner on?”

“...maybe”

virgil smiled and pulled patton in for a kiss

they kissed for a little, but patton eventually pulled away

he looked worried, and he fidgeted with his hands as he said, “do you think that your dad likes me?”

“well...” virgil started. “he didn’t like you for a long time. after the first day of school, he kind of held a grudge on you.” patton winced, but he didn’t get the opportunity to say anything. “i think he’s forgiven you now.”

“really?”

“i promise. he just wanted to protect me because he’s my dad, but i think he’s realized that you’re not actively trying to hurt me, and you’re just a bit dumb at times”

“hEY”

virgil smiled and nudged patton “you know i love you”

“hnnnnnn i love you too”

“heLL YEAH!”

meaNwhiLE downstairs

logan led roman into the the living room and roman was

stunned

because logan had at least a thousand books meticulously organized around the room

“how many books do you have in here...?” roman asked, running his hand over an entire collection of encyclopedias 

“about one thousand two hundred on the shelves, but i have some children’s books in those baskets at the bottom as well as the books that are starting to fall apart like my copy of hamlet”

“how did you even get so many books? i’ve been collecting novels my whole life, and i only have a few bookshelves full”

“my mom is a librarian, and whenever they would get newer copies of books or get rid of unwanted books, she’d give them to me. i’ve bought a fair few of these myself, but there are only so many that i can buy on a teacher’s salary”

and roman’s like

????? hot

and logan keeps rambling on about books, and roman’s just having a gay crisis but it’s fine 

but then logan looks at roman expectantly, and roman hadn’t exactly been paying enough attention to read logan’s lips, so he played the “can you repeat yourself? i didn’t catch it” card

“sorry. i asked how you came to adopt virgil”

and roman obviously is like hey how about we spill a lot of sad life things with this almost stranger because he’s cute

~this is where the murder is mentioned~

“his mom was my best friend in high school. although we went our separate ways for college, she stayed supportive of me after i came out. she was... the only one from my old life who would even think to talk to me. even thomas hesitated to talk to me for fear of crossing our parents and their ridiculously catholic ideas.” roman sighed. “eventually, though, she got mixed up in some bad stuff, and she got with this drug addict who got her pregnant with virgil. when virgil was about a year old, the guy thought that my friend was cheating on him, and he shot her. the shot, luckily, didn’t kill her right away, and she was able to push him into the corner of a table and kill him before he could get to virgil. she called the police, but she died before they could get there. as soon as i found out, I went and started the adoption process. i had only been a year out of college at that point.”

~end of the murder mention~

logan was stunned. “that is... horrible, roman. i am so sorry for your loss.”

“it’s alright,” roman said with a shrug. “it was over a decade ago, and it led to me getting the best thing in my life. the circumstances were shit, but virgil has made me a better person, and i wouldn’t know what i’d do without him keeping my head on gay.”

“you mean straight...?”

“nothing about me is straight, logan. don’t be absurd”

eventually, it’s time for roman and virgil to leave

virgil and patton walk out to the car and leave the adults at the door because they wanna kiss each other goodbye without being spied on

on their way to the car, virgil whispers “how much do you want to bet that they’ll be flirting with each other by the time we leave”

“ten dollars. i mean, didn’t you see how your dad looked at logan? it was gross!”

meanwhile, at the door...

roman leans back on the doorframe and smiles. “this was a nice night, logan. virgil definitely had a lot of fun”

“that’s great; i’m glad”

“here--give me your phone. i’ll put my number in, and we can get together some other time to get to know each other better”

logan obliged, and roman sent himself a text using logan’s phone and set his contact name as “prince of your dreams”

they chatted for a minute or so longer, just to give the boys enough time to say their goodbyes, before parting ways

logan didn’t spend the rest of the night texting roman

don’t be ridiculous

to be continued

asks are loved and encouraged, and make sure to check out the amazing art people have made on the masterlist! 💖💖💖

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[silenthillmutual]

pride month day two - rainbow

When he thinks of Mondo, he thinks of rainbows. 

Or, well, no; that isn’t, strictly speaking, correct. But it is an easier way of saying that he associates him with every color, all at once, as if he’s been surrounded in kaleidoscope vision. 

He thinks of Mondo’s lips stained red with too much food dye he used in their attempt at a bake sale. Half of the proceeds were meant to go to charity and the other half to cover costs for them to do something as a club - go to Pride in the city, meet up with the GSAs from other schools, go to lectures on queer studies - but the more garishly-colored snacks didn’t sell. 

Their rainbow gimmick failed. Too obvious, maybe. There were people who didn’t care, because sweets were sweets; and there were people, even, who enthusiastic about the food because of its color. But more often than not, people would show mild interest until they caught onto the theme and recoiled, cringing. 

And it was making Chihiro cry. The rainbow theme had been their idea.

Kiyotaka hadn’t really known what to say to cheer them up. He’d never been good at comforting himself, let alone others. So he’d said, “Maybe they have an allergy to red food dye!” knowing that it wasn’t true. 

It didn’t help. “I just feel bad, that all this food is going to go to waste,” they said, rubbing at their eyes.

“The hell it is! If no one else buys ‘em, Taka an’ I’ll eat ‘em all!” And Mondo glared at him from behind Chihiro’s back, giving Kiyotaka a look that said, very plainly, that there was no room for argument on this front. 

And both their mouths were stained bright red for several days after, drawing Kiyotaka’s attention away every time they spoke. 

(And pink, if you count it - he thinks of how Mondo blushes, almost angrily, hand on the back of his head and looking as far away as he can. It’s not a reaction he invokes, not yet. But he thinks he’s learning.)

Orange, he thinks of leaves falling, crumbling under their shoes as they stand by the fountain and wait for everyone else to show up. 

He’s not expecting Mondo to be on time - or, actually, he’s early, the first person to arrive after Taka. He nods to acknowledge Kiyotaka’s presence, and immediately finds something else to focus on, standing in the same space without actually sharing anything. 

Taka’s staring at the leaves skating by on the pavement when he sees shoes drawing closer to his own. He doesn’t look up before the arm comes over around him, feeling himself encased in heavy fabric, pulled against a warmer body.

“You shoulda worn more layers,” Mondo chides him, managing to sound irritated despite the offer being unprompted. 

“I don’t understand how you’re so hot, when you have so little on!” he says, and (pink) watches Mondo flush at his choice of words.

He doesn’t fix them.

Yellow makes him think of the sun. Don’t most people? The brightest, the first noticeable, caution signs, lights before they turn red. 

And how Mondo always runs them. 

The first time he does it, Kiyotaka nearly has a panic attack, but it turns just as soon as they pass the mark and he can’t say for certain that Mondo had time to react. It’s been hard enough to get Taka on his motorcycle. He’s just nervous, he tells himself. They both are.

But the fourth time - it’s a habit. 

“You need to slow down when the light goes yellow!” he shouts over the din. 

Mondo promptly ignores him. Taka’s hands around him tighten on reflex. 

Green is (go) the color (go!) of (go!!) the carnations Taka grows as a project for one class. They have meaning, significance, and he names them all for men he has admired in his life. Many are politicians, a few scientists, one performer, and...

(Mondo.)

(Pink. That’s the color his face is right now, even on his own.) 

Teal is new. Or maybe, it’s old. It’s the color of the ocean, that Taka has known and never seen in person until they meet up during spring break, one day to exist as friends and a club before school starts up again. 

And he’s never seen it before. He’s been to smaller rivers, never to bigger bodies of water. Not himself, always in textbooks, theoretical, the same way their futures seem to be. 

It makes him melancholy that they even need this. That they are gay-straight alliance lacking in allies. That for all the good they try to do, they are one club at one school and they make about as much difference as the seashells Leon is trying to skim across the water. 

He sits in the sand, unmoving, watching the tide wash up on the beach, wondering what it would be like to feel it on his feet. 

Mondo sits next to him, pokes his side where his skin is most sensitive. 

“Dude,” he says, “You’re sweatin’ bullets. Why doncha take off ya shirt?” 

Without thinking, Taka replies, “Because I don’t want to share my scars.” 

This is the first person he’s told. And he hadn’t meant to - this was a secret - this was something Mondo could hate him for, could lose interest in whatever it is that pulls them back together whenever they occupy the same space. 

But when he watches the waves crash, bubbling in white foam, he just hears “Oh, okay.” He doesn’t feel the sand shift the way he might on chairs or beds, but he does feel skin hitting his, their knees knocking together where Mondo shifts until they’re touching thigh to thigh. “I’ll just sit here with you, then.”

“Don’t you want to go into the water?” Taka asks.

“Do you?”

He answers with the same immediacy, unconsidered but comfortable. “Not with everyone else.” He doesn’t ask Mondo for a clearer answer, but the arm stretched behind him, hand by his hip - that’s teal, the color of the waves he watches and wonders what it looks like at night for just two people.

Blue is --

               the color of --

                                      his bedsheets --

(Pink, his face when they wake up, when they realize they fell asleep with the movie on in the background and he has spent the night dreaming of kissing him -)

Purple is the color of bruises. Mondo’s bruises. Taka’s bruises. Leon’s bruises. Makoto’s bruises. The bruises even on their seniors who had just been walking past, had seen what was happening and didn’t hesitate to jump in and help. 

And it’s the color of his face. He’s amazed at the bruises on the back of his knuckles. He’s never hit someone before, didn’t know what he was doing. He knows the basics of self-defense and nothing about rage. He’s exhilarated -

And then immediately, he’s nauseated. He hurt another person.

“They deserved it,” Mondo tells him, hanging over his shoulder, watching him stare at his hands. They’re shaking, now. 

Leon (let it never be said Leon Kuwata was discouraging) claps him on the back (he smiles, he can’t see it but Taka knows he does) and says, “I’m proud of you, man!” 

Purple is what he expects his father’s face to look like when he comes to bail him and his friends out for disturbing the peace and --

“You did the right thing,” he hisses, so his coworkers can’t hear. 

They only know his father for the heavy-set eyebrows that make him look angry, but Taka knows him better. 

Violet...

(pink) that’s the color of his (pink) eyes, as he is (pink) trying to focus, a little tipsy on Taka’s (pink) face. They are so (pink) soft, where they look at him every time (pink) they look at him, especially now, when they are (blushing, that blush just accentuates the violet in his eyes) being dared to kiss. They’re the (pink) same color when he pulls away, and (pink) even brighter when Taka says, “I want the same dare.”

[nebulous-frog]

Stand Proud

Summary: Dan finally got the job he’d always wanted: he was officially the newest curator at the Marquee Art Museum. He already had the perfect idea for his first exhibit and with the much-needed support of his coworker, Phil, he could make it a reality.

Word Count: 4645

Genre: Getting Together, AU, Fluff

Warnings: Mentions of homophobia (no actual homophobia though) 

Author’s Note: This is my work for the @phandomreversebang​! Big thank you to @vacationphan​ for betaing and being lovely and awesome! Also thanks to @yiffandquiff​, my artist! 

ART 

Link to AO3 Fics Masterlist

Walking into his new curatorial job for the first time, Dan felt extremely overwhelmed and underqualified. Sure, he wasn’t exactly new to museum work - he’d gone to school for years, done internships all over and worked his way up from a few museum historian jobs. When none of that was working fast enough for him, he started his YouTube channel about art and art history, gaining a few million subscribers quicker than he thought possible. Everything he’d done had been building up to curation, and every step of the way made him more sure that that was what he wanted, solidifying his love of museums and art. The journey had all been to prepare him for that goal, so he should have felt ready -this was what he’d been waiting for his whole life.

Dan couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t loved museums. They held overflowing knowledge and laid it all out in interactive exhibits for people to enjoy, and he’d always loved it. He learned so much about so many different things, with topics changing at each new museum he visited. He couldn’t get enough. His favourite, though, would always be art museums.

His earliest memory of going to an art museum he remembered with special fondness; his mother had dragged him along to one to spend time with a friend, but she didn’t expect him to like it. He was barely four years old, after all, so it didn’t seem likely that a quiet, dully-lit museum would hold his attention for long. In fact, she’d been hoping he wouldn’t like it so she would have an excuse to politely extract herself from the outing.

Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. The very first painting they saw had Dan enchanted. His mother’s friend was chattering on about something neither Howell cared about, but Dan paid her no mind. He just stared up at the painting, in absolute awe of the colours and shapes. When his adult companions tried to move on to the next painting, he wailed, devastated at the thought of having to leave behind something so beautiful. Finally, his mother managed to pick him up and carry him farther into the exhibit before stopping at another painting with her friend. Dan’s tears ceased, eyes widening, as he took in the sight of this new art.

The painting was of waves crashing in a storm out at sea, a small boat fighting to stay upright in the distance. The canvas was textured with all the layers of paint, and a fascinated Dan reached out to touch it, but his mother was holding him too far away. He kept his arm outstretched despite the failure to actually touch, too fixated on the art to notice.

For the next several hours, the trio slowly made their way through a few exhibits, stalled by Dan’s wonderment (much to his mum’s chagrin). He wouldn’t remember any of the paintings later, only the feelings of absolute awe and joy that accompanied each piece of art.

And that was just the beginning of Dan’s art museum experience. Art museums became his favourite place. He’d visit the one nearest to his home any spare moment he had and insisted on exploring new ones in all the cities his family travelled to.

So now, as he finally became a curator at an art museum twenty-three years later, he could not have been more thrilled. The Marquee Art Museum had seen his YouTube videos delving into the history of modern art pieces and decided he was perfect for their new curatorial position. His job would be to curate galleries specifically targeted towards the next generation of museum-goers. They even encouraged him to maintain the channel he loved so much, rather than insisting he quit to focus solely on his work at the museum.

It wasn’t a very big museum, but it all felt so intimidating. Dan was in charge of things now and he’d be working with people- not just that, people would be working for him. Following the receptionist through the museum to the director’s office, he could feel the pressure building. The galleries looked amazing already, so anything Dan added to the legacy would have to be equally as amazing. He hoped he was up to the task.

As it turned out, he wouldn’t have to be up to it immediately, at least not on his own. The museum director explained how his first few months would progress as soon as he got to her office.

“Since this is your first job in curation, I felt it best that you have a guide,” she began. “I have every faith in your ability, but I want this to be as smooth a transition as possible for you. Our curator of photography, Phil Lester, currently has the least on his plate, so he’ll be helping you acclimate. He’s a lovely chap, so I’m sure you’ll get on beautifully.”

Dan felt his heart leap in his chest. Phil Lester was a YouTuber like Dan, posting mostly content about museums, but while Dan covered art history, Phil talked about his experiences in museums as both an employee and a visitor. Dan had been following and adoring him for ages, but they’d never met; he was fairly certain Phil didn’t even know he existed. But now they were going to be working together, which was both exciting and terrifying.

His boss shuffled some papers around on her desk, finally finding a file and handing it over to Dan, unaware of the internal freak-out Dan was experiencing. “This has information about what I expect your schedule to be for your first gallery, as well as budget information. Phil will help you look through our art database and come up with a plan. Any questions?”

Dan shook his head. “I think I’ve got it.”

She smiled. “Great. Well, that’s all I have for you for now, so I’ll have Louise take you first to your desk and then over to Phil.”

As Dan left her office and followed Louise, he felt the anxiety rising once more. The pressure of starting this new job was not at all helped by the fact that Dan was about to meet someone he respected and looked up to so much. He’d met other YouTubers before and they could be such snobs sometimes, so he was doubly anxious about meeting Phil. But as soon as Dan saw him, he knew Phil’s internet persona was his real personality and they’d hopefully become fast friends. There was something about the brightness of his eyes and the easiness of his smile that reassured Dan.

“Phil, this is Dan Howell, the new curator.”

Dan gave an awkward wave. “Hey, good to meet you. I’ve seen some of your videos - big fan.”

“Oh, really?” Phil said brightly. “I was about to say the same to you!”

A flush of pride washed over Dan. “Thank you! It means a lot.”

Louise coughed awkwardly, reminding them she was still there. “Well, I’ll let Phil take over from here so I can get back to my own job. Lovely meeting you, Dan!”

Soon after, they were sitting at Dan’s desk. Phil quickly helped Dan pull up the collections database on his computer.

“Alright, Dan. What do you have in mind so far?”

He’d been anticipating this question since he’d gotten the job, but he still had no answer. He knew what his dream gallery would be about, but he wasn’t quite ready to commit to any true ideas without knowing what he had at his disposal. He also wasn’t sure he was ready to share something so personal with someone he’d only just met, especially if his idea was rejected on the first day of his dream job and by someone whose work he admired so much.

“I’ve got a few vague ideas in mind, but I need to browse through some art first, I think. If that’s okay, I mean.”

Phil smiled at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “That’s totally fine! Do you want to start anywhere in particular, or shall I choose? Fair warning, though: I’ll probably start with photography.”

Dan chuckled. “Works for me.”

For the next few hours, Phil sat with Dan as he scrolled through the database, chiming in with fun facts about the art as they went. Sometimes it would be interesting historical tidbits, but more often than not it would be funny comments on what the subject of the art was thinking.

As time went on, Dan saw enough of the kind of art he was looking for that his ideas started to coalesce into a unified theme that he could work with. A particularly inspiring photo finally pushed him over the edge, comforting him enough to make him feel safe sharing his ideas with Phil.

“I’d really love to do a gallery of queer art,” Dan blurted, interrupting Phil’s latest strand of artist facts. “Like, LGBT+, not weird art,” he clarified as Phil remained silent.

Phil’s eyes were wide with surprise, and for a moment Dan was worried he’d made friends with a homophobe. But then a grin slowly spread across Phil’s features.

“I can’t believe I never thought of doing that! That’s brilliant!”

Dan let out a relieved sigh. “You really think so?”

Phil nodded enthusiastically. “Of course! What a great way to involve and inspire young adults in the arts! Do you have any more specific thoughts yet, or is it just that so far?”

Clicking a button to bookmark the photo on the database, Dan shrugged, then turned to shyly look at Phil. “Well, I’ve actually been thinking about this for years. As a gay man, I’ve always wanted to see an exhibit of queer art, so I’ve been considering what I might do to curate one for a long time.” He paused, trying to make it seem like he was simply gathering his thoughts before continuing, when in reality he was attempting to gauge Phil’s reaction to his sexuality. He figured Phil wouldn’t react poorly, given his support of the gallery idea so far, but he also knew from experience that he could never be too careful.

When Phil offered a beaming smile of encouragement, Dan smiled back and relaxed, launching into the meat of his idea. “I want to have this gallery feature as many queer artists as possible and all the art should be about a range of topics within the queer experience,” Dan described, confidence growing as he spoke. “Some of it should be political, some of it should be art for art’s sake, some should describe coming to terms with being queer, and some should just show queer people being happy.” He stared at the picture he still had up on his screen. “Happy like this.”

The picture was a black-and-white photograph of two men dancing together, maybe a waltz, totally lost in each other’s eyes and smiling so fondly that Dan ached to be in love.

When Dan shook himself out of his reverie, he found Phil smiling at him and had to shake himself again; surely, Phil couldn’t be that fond of him already.

“I really love this idea. I’m gay, too, by the way, so I think it would be great to get some more concentrated representation out there. I’m pretty sure I know of some pieces that would fit already, if you want?”

Dan grinned. He was about to begin the process of curating his dream gallery and it would be by, for, and featuring members of the LGBT+ community. He couldn’t wait.

“Absolutely.”

~~~~~~~~~~

For the next few weeks, Dan and Phil were hard at work refining the theme of the gallery and compiling the art for each part. They rarely disagreed on their creative decisions, which was truly a blessing, but when the occasional disagreement arose they easily remained level-headed and could talk through the issue until a compromise was found.

In the second week, Phil suggested they hang out after work and get to know each other better outside the context of the museum, so they headed to Dan’s flat. A Chinese takeaway dinner and some Ribena later, and they were battling intensely in Mario Kart and laughing hysterically. For the first time in a while, Dan felt perfectly content.

Dinner and Mario Kart nights continued on, mostly as a weekend tradition after the third week.

That was when Phil offered to collaborate with Dan on a few YouTube videos, one for each of their channels. Dan, of course, agreed immediately, so they planned to film on the weekend. Neither of them worked at the museum on weekends, which left them with plenty of time to film and then chill for a while, their friendship growing stronger by the minute.

Back at the museum, the gallery plans were progressing well. Every so often, the significance of what they were putting together would hit one of them. Dan would lean back in his chair, an excited smile growing on his face, wondering at how he’d managed to get to this point.

He’d grown up with such little positive representation and had always desperately craved something, anything to reassure him that being himself was perfectly okay. He couldn’t go back in time and fix his childhood, but he could be a source of hope for young people now, and that meant so much to him.

But Dan already knew how significant this would be. How could he not? He’d been thinking about curating a gallery like this for over a decade by now. What really warmed his heart was when Phil had moments like that.

The first time it happened, they’d been poring over stacks of photographs by queer artists when Phil froze halfway through lifting one off the pile.

“Phil? Are you okay?”

Phil blinked, his eyes wide and fixed on the next picture he could see.

“I- It’s- It’s just that, well- This is going to sound totally ridiculous, but this picture feels really important. I’m not sure what it is about it, but I know it’s important.”

Dan rolled his chair down the table closer to him to take a look at the photo Phil had just uncovered. In the photograph were two men, faces close together. They’d clearly just been kissing, but they were grinning too much to kiss now.

After a few moments of silence, Phil spoke again.

“I can’t stop thinking about how this could help someone, you know? How it could even be life-changing. In a good way, I mean.”

Dan felt his heart clench. It wasn’t only him; Phil saw the value of what they were putting together and knew they were making a difference. It felt so good to know he wasn’t alone.

“People are gonna see this and know that being gay doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You can be gay and still be happy like anyone else,” Phil continued. “I don’t think enough people have been told that. I wasn’t told that; I had to figure it out myself.”

It hurt to hear Phil say that. He didn’t sound sad, necessarily, but he said it so matter-of-factly that it was like an emotional slap to the face for Dan. It meant that, at some point in his life, Phil hadn’t known that he could be happy being gay. Dan could relate, but the last thing he wanted was for Phil to feel that way, too, and he was so glad it seemed that Phil had learned since then, whenever it was.

After a quiet moment, Dan softly replied, “Add it to our pile.” He gestured between the photo and the stack of pictures they’d already agreed should be in the gallery. If this photo meant something to Phil, it would mean something to some teenager that wanders through the gallery. “I think this exhibit will do that, too. But I hope it does more. Like, this will be some good representation for LGBT+ visitors to see but it’ll show people who aren’t all that aware of the community the same things.” He absentmindedly straightened a photo that had been bumped before continuing, “This whole thing will basically say, ‘Queer people exist. Choosing not to accept them is not an option.’”

Phil hummed in agreement, already picking up the next picture. “Write that down, we should put it on a text panel somewhere.”

Dan laughed and pulled out his phone to put it in a note. “Saved for later.”

“Good.” Phil nodded, then looked at Dan, a soft smile on his face. “I’m glad to be working on this with you.”

A blush coloured Dan’s cheeks and he found it difficult to hold Phil’s gaze but did long enough to offer a shy smile and a mumbled “Thanks” before rolling his chair back to his spot.

~~~~~~~~~~

After all their planning, the exhibit technicians made quick work of putting everything in place. The night before the opening of the gallery, Dan and Phil checked everything one last time.

It was always hard to get people to follow the “proper” order of the exhibit without flat-out putting numbers, but Dan had made peace with that. Not everyone would experience the exhibit in the same way anyway, so there was no point getting upset over the struggles of enforcing exhibit wayfinding. But he and Phil had curated the exhibit with a specific visitor path in mind, so Dan followed it one more time, experiencing his exhibit as he’d intended.

He started out turning to the left directly inside the gallery and stopping in front of the introductory panel, “Stand Proud” painted on the wall in bold letters. Unlike much of the text in the gallery, Dan had written that panel himself, running it by the museum educator before it was finalized. It talked about the importance of representation and how everyone has a different life story, but this exhibit sought to highlight some of the key unifying factors of the queer experience.

If this exhibit helps even one person, the text concluded, we will consider it an enormous success.

Next, Dan moved through the first section of the exhibit, which featured art that told the personal narratives of the artists. Some of it was abstract, showing only vague colours meant to symbolize different phases of life, while some of it was hyperrealistic, depicting detailed tableaus of the ups and downs.

When they were working through the details, Dan and Phil had agreed that as much as they wanted to make the gallery all about the happy parts of being queer, they had to be true to real life, and that meant art about homophobia. They limited this part to a smaller corner of the exhibit, as much as was possible, because they knew how easy it was for queer narratives to be consumed by the negativity. Dan wanted to acknowledge that negativity as a vital part of identity formation, but he refused to let it control or define the exhibit - or queerness - as a whole.

The second section of the exhibit was art of queer people just being queer. There were paintings of same-sex couples, parodies of famous works but gayer, photographs of same-sex weddings and dates and kisses, and queer domestic scenes just like any other era of art might have with couples and families. It was a celebration and normalization of the joy queer people have the capacity to know. This was Dan’s favourite section.

The third and final section was all about pride. Pride flags, pride parades, pride colours, proud defiance of the society that had worked so hard to deny even the existence of the LGBT+ community for generations. This art was like a living thing, practically screaming “We’re Here! We’re Queer!”

On the wall near the exit to the exhibit were a blank canvas and an array of markers. Next to the canvas was a panel explaining the intention: direct interaction with the exhibit. The canvas was for signatures of the people that came through the gallery, be they queer or an ally. A second panel was nearby to summarize the exhibit; Dan had written this one, too. He wanted a personal message to tell people that their identities were valid and could not be stripped away.

The future is clear: It’s pretty queer.

Dan stared at what he had written for a long moment before Phil joined him.

“It all looks amazing to me,” Phil whispered. “What do you think?”

What did Dan think? He couldn’t say. He was too overwhelmed to think. All he knew was that it was perfect, so he just nodded.

“Then how about we put in the finishing touch, hm?” Phil gestured to the canvas. “After you.”

Dan nodded again and approached the bucket of markers, pulling out as many different colours as possible. In rainbow order, he wrote “Daniel Howell”, then stepped back so Phil could do the same with his own name.

When he was done, Phil put the markers back and walked to the front of the exhibit to speak with the exhibit technicians, still anxiously waiting for approval. Dan barely registered the movement, instead letting his feet carry him back to the middle section of the exhibit as if in a trance.

The black-and-white photograph of the men waltzing, the photograph that had captured Dan’s eye and reassured him enough to create all of this, rested in a neat frame. A happy moment in time, captured for future generations to see.

In the background, Dan was dimly aware of the sound of Phil dismissing the technicians for the night and footsteps. A few moments later, Phil’s shoulder brushed against his own.

They stared at the photograph in silence for a long while. Dan’s expression was completely blank as he drowned in his emotions and thoughts until he finally spoke.

“As a teenager, this would have been exactly what I needed. The photo, I mean. Just this small promise that there’s hope out there for someone like me.”

Phil nodded but didn’t say anything. Dan continued after a short pause.

“I was so alone back then. I didn’t understand anything that was going on and I was terrified. This picture sort of reminds me of that, I guess. But not in a bad way.” Dan bit his lower lip, then slowly rolled it back out from between his teeth. “I’m infinitely happier now than I was then, I think, so seeing this now and remembering back then has me recognizing how much better it’s gotten. I had no hope then, but I’m essentially living what I would have hoped for.” The first of many tears rolled down Dan’s cheek as he turned his head to look at Phil.

Phil was already looking at him, eyes soft and lips turned up in a small smile. He reached out a hand and brushed away the tears.

“Thank you, Phil,” Dan choked out, then cleared his throat. He would get through this and say what he had to say. “You’ve been so helpful throughout this whole process. This exhibit is a dream come true and I can’t imagine having done it without you.”

“Oh, Dan,” Phil whispered, slipping his hand into Dan’s. “Thank you for letting me be part of something so important and personal to you. It’s been an honour, truly.”

A sob escaped Dan’s lips and Phil cooed. He gently tugged Dan forward into a hug, running a hand through curls as he tucked Dan’s face into his neck.

It was a while before Dan calmed down enough to step out of the hug, but eventually he noticed the cramp in his back from bending and leaning into Phil and had to stop.

“Let’s go ‘round mine for some hot chocolate, yeah?” Phil offered, and Dan nodded his agreement with a weak smile.

Not long later, they were giggling as they clambered awkwardly out of a cab, still holding hands since the gallery. They had to let go to make the chocolate and get comfortable on Phil’s sofa, but Dan replaced the hand-holding with cuddling right up into Phil’s side, his head resting on Phil’s chest and his feet curled up beneath him.

They sipped their hot chocolates quietly for a while, placing the empty mugs on the coffee table when they were done. Dan supposed he should probably get off of Phil and head home, but he couldn’t make himself move. He was entirely too comfortable and enjoyed Phil’s company too much to get up now.

Phil seemed to feel the same way, as he snaked his arms around Dan and pulled him closer. Dan’s brown eyes met Phil’s blue ones and he forgot how to breathe. Phil’s eyes were trained on his own with the fondest expression he’d ever seen, and then they dropped down to his lips briefly before returning to his eyes. For a tense moment, Dan thought nothing would come of it, but then he saw Phil lean in slowly, eyelids drifting closed, and their lips met softly in the middle. They parted after only a few seconds.

Dan knew that they’d have to talk, figure out what this was, but for now all that mattered was how much he liked Phil and how much Phil clearly liked him.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dan cried again when they opened the gallery the next day. He couldn’t help it; it was his major curatorial debut and he’d gone and done something extremely personally significant. He couldn’t keep his emotions under control in the slightest and it was horrifically embarrassing. Phil was standing very close next to him and was in the prime place to witness Dan’s breakdown, but he still hoped that Phil wouldn’t notice. Of course, he was never that lucky.

Moments after the first tear rolled down Dan’s cheek, a hand brushed against his own. Surprised, Dan turned to look but immediately cursed himself; he’d just faced Phil directly and now there’d be no hiding his embarrassment.

He looked away again as fast as possible and pretended to be intensely focused on fixing the rainbow flag pin on his lapel.

“Hey,” Phil murmured, leaning in to make sure Dan could hear. “It’s okay.” His fingers slipped between Dan’s so they were holding hands and squeezed gently.

Another fat tear escaped. “No, I’m just being ridiculous. I already did this yesterday and-”

“No way,” Phil insisted. “I cried for my first exhibit, too. This has been building for you for years, it’s okay to show a little emotion.”

Dan swallowed thickly, careful not to choke out his response. “It’s not just about it being my first exhibit, though. You know that. I’m caught up in thinking about how much I would have loved this growing up, and the people this could help now that it’s here and-” he took a shuddery breath. “It means a lot.” He glanced back at Phil through his lashes, not quite willing to look at him directly yet.

A soft smile played at Phil’s lips, one that told Dan that he understood completely.

“I’m so proud of you,” Phil whispered.

Those few words broke the dam and suddenly tears were streaming down Dan’s face, uncontrollable.

“I’m- I-” Dan squeaked. “I need a minute.” He pulled his hand out of Phil’s and raced to the nearest toilet, hiding away to regain control of his emotions.

He’d been so busy recently that he hadn’t had the time to process anything. The last month had been absolutely frantic, full of throwing together the final key parts of the exhibit and swapping things around and navigating this growing relationship with Phil. It had finally all caught up to him, slapping him in the face with so many realizations and feelings that it was hard to make sense of it all.

All he could say for certain was that he was happy. Obnoxiously, blindingly happy.

[aprilrichardson]

I Know It’s Over

There are people to whom music doesn't matter. I often envy these people. My mom is one of them -- she's not really concerned with music, poetry, movies, or anything in popular culture. She considers herself a whole, satisfied person without these things in her life, free from any aesthetic crutches. I am not one of those people. I needed music. I need music. From a very early age, I needed music to tell me I was okay. I needed it to tell me I was normal, I needed it to tell me I was weird, I needed it to confirm that I'd be fine either way. I needed it in a dramatic way. I needed it in a mundane way, playing all the time in the background like wallpaper with a pattern you've stopped noticing. I needed to identify with it, I needed it to make me feel complicated emotions I'd never felt before; it could comfort me or repulse me, soothe me or force me to look outward, echo my own sentiments or expand my mind to fit new ones. Music (and the bands/people who made it) served as my mentor, my older sibling, my voice of reason and, at times, bad influence. When you're an only child from a fractured family, you spend a lot of time in your room. Your hobbies can become your closest friends. Music became my savior and my most time-consuming, all-encompassing, money-draining pursuit. My savings account would be at least triple its current amount had I not been so obsessed with seeing bands and collecting their records. Perhaps I would have created more things of my own if I'd not spent so much time fawning over the creations of others. My personality would have been entirely different if, early on in my youth, I had not blatantly lifted the clothes and mannerisms and styles of those I looked up to or had not read the books and watched the movies they had championed. For better or worse, art -- this specific form of art, music -- has been and continues to be a transformative force in my life. At the very center of this were two bands, R.E.M. and The Smiths, and specifically two people: Michael Stipe and Morrissey. My first two real heroes, with now only the former still on the pedestal I built when I was around 11 or 12. I moved to a new neighborhood and school district when I was in second grade, and became fast friends with a boy my age who lived one street over. Nathan and I shared a lot of the same interests, and as we started middle school, a deep obsession with those two aforementioned bands and frontmen (and, also, Depeche Mode and Dave Gahan). Nathan was gay before either one of us knew what that meant, and was often mocked for this -- I was made fun of, too, but for reasons far less difficult for me than coming to terms with my sexuality as an adolescent. But, for our own reasons, we were outcasts, seeking comfort in our chosen art. This was conservative Georgia in the late '80s/early '90s, a time well before the Internet, before easily accessible media, when role models were fought for tooth and nail, with plans having to be made on how to save enough allowance for cassette tapes, older friends or siblings bribed to purchase things with "parental advisory" labels we'd smuggle into our rooms later. I can barely put into words what hearing (and seeing!) Morrissey for the first time did to us -- did FOR us! For Nathan, in such an environment, Morrissey became a blueprint for queerness, the very first peek into the very POSSIBILITY of life as a grown man who wasn't either an alpha male jock, like all the ones at our school, or stern businessman with a briefcase, like all of our (step)dads. He was the first person to, with his mannerisms and his very existence, communicate to Nathan that it was perfectly fine (and cool even!) to, in the words of the bullies, "act like a girl." And the magical thing is, he somehow simultaneously did the exact opposite for me! As a masculine tomboy, I saw in him a person so easily blurring the lines of both! He made me feel better about the qualities I had so often been told "weren't ladylike." We talked about him constantly. We dressed like him. It goes without saying that his music was playing in the background nearly every time we hung out. I remember my mom allowing me to stay up late to watch Johnny Carson the night Morrissey was on -- I was 12, and I absolutely remember my mom getting angry, watching alongside me as Morrissey fans screamed over Bill Cosby (gulp) as he tried to talk. The next year, Morrissey was on Saturday Night Live, and my mom let me go over to Nathan's house to watch it (our parents became very close friends as well). He taped it on their VCR as we watched, and we immediately played it back. We watched it probably every day for months. We didn't have the money to buy all of his back catalog, so an older kid in my youth group at church let me borrow his Smiths CDs, and I dubbed copies on my tape deck for us. I sat and hand-wrote the lyrics down on notebook paper, carefully transcribing from the liner notes as the tape recorded. It's difficult for me to be eloquent here, and I always find it hard to convey these feelings to people who are, well, normal, who can hear a song and go, "That's nice!" and not have to immediately know its backstory, who wrote it, why they wrote it, what inspires them, what books they read, etc. Who don't feel their insides twist into knots when a turn of phrase meets a melody and the combination makes them feel understood in a way they never have, sets them at ease in a way that even the kind words of the closest relative couldn't do. That is absolutely how I felt the first time I heard The Smiths. When you're 12, at least when I was 12, the last people you feel like you can talk to about your feelings are your parents; and for Nathan, doubly so, as I don't think he could even articulate his until Morrissey's lyrics shed some light on what he'd been going through. So, for us, this guy was so far from "just a singer" -- he was a beacon, a mentor, he told us it was okay to be effeminate and okay to be masculine and okay that you didn't get invited to the parties because staying in your room reading books was more glamorous anyway. The world wasn't made for people like us and that should be worn as a badge of honor, not shame. Such a message was REVELATORY for a girl whose every male role model had let her down or left entirely and a boy who didn't want to play football or shoot guns. The obsession continued and deepened, and in high school, became full on reliance. Who better to help me navigate the emotional minefield that is the teen years than Morrissey? I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I didn't do drugs, I didn't "party," I didn't even so much as hold a boy's hand until I was a couple weeks shy of 16 years old -- all of the things that kids considered fun and did on a regular basis were so foreign to me, until I got home to my bedroom and was soothed by the voice of a guy who also did not participate in any of the above. I didn't really know anyone in real life who seemed to understand my plight more than the man whose voice was blasting out of my speakers. To me, Morrissey was always absolutely the voice of the underdogs. The weirdos. The outcasts. The disenfranchised. Anyone who felt left out, let down, misunderstood, too sensitive, too sad. He was there to comfort us, understanding and empathetic to our needs while giving the finger to the system and the people therein who were keeping us down, shoving us into lockers, ripping the glasses off our faces and stomping on them in front of their domineering friends. When someone writes songs as seemingly personal as Morrissey's, you tend to think you know them. And in my case, having read so many books about him (and now some BY him), I felt that way, to a degree. I like to think of myself as a rational person (perhaps after reading this far, you disagree), but I definitely felt a bit like I "knew" him in the sense that I'd picked up on words he'd frequently used ("vulgar" and "vile" were personal favorites), had working knowledge of the causes that were important to him, and certainly knew his favorite bands and movies and authors. I'd even been lucky enough to meet him quite a few times, especially after moving to Los Angeles, where I'd see him at restaurants and shows, and he was always cordial (if not downright sweet) to me every time we spoke. Of course I'd heard stories about him "being a dick," but that never bothered me, truly, only because I think that's kind of relative, and perhaps a lack of manners or catching someone on a bad day is a bummer, and the "temperamental artist" archetype exists for a reason. Sure, it's ideal that someone you admire is nice to you should you ever interact, but a surly encounter would not cause me to write someone off completely. So, because of this, well, perhaps delusion, I was able to explain away certain statements, such as calling Chinese people a "subspecies" while addressing animal rights, because I knew of his history of exaggeration when trying to get his point across about that subject in particular, the one perhaps dearest to his heart. (And I won't pretend that white privilege didn't play a part; it's undoubtedly and shamefully easier to conveniently ignore something when you aren't the target.) This person's main place in my life thus far was almost as a therapist, so the possibility of him having anything other than the best of intentions seemed so unlikely. But the words became harder to parse, excuses harder to make. Playing the contrarian for the sake of it isn't helpful (or even entertaining) in times like these. You aren't at the Algonquin Round Table. You're courting Stormfronters. It's not funny or charming. I don't expect every artist I look up to (or even every friend or acquaintance in my life) to share my exact same views, but when your band wears T-shirts supporting the Black Panthers yet you voice your support for the likes of Nigel Farage, how does the cognitive dissonance not paralyze you? You change lyrics to songs to slam Trump, yet you basically share his views on immigration? You imply that a gay teenager -- arguably the demographic most deeply affected by your art -- is at fault for the predatory behavior of an adult? You've told anyone who will listen that you were raised on feminist literature, yet you claim the female victims of Harvey Weinstein -- a man who hired fuckin' BLACK OPS to spy on his accusers to make sure they never came forward, so calculated were his plans -- were just "disappointed" that their RAPES didn't result in career advancement?! WHO ARE YOU. Who is this person saying this? The very person who gave me the strength to stand against the establishment has become the establishment! The person whose voice soothed with empathy and compassion for outsiders like me has become someone I would have crossed the street to avoid. The bullied has become the bully. He has, for years now, exhibited the very closemindedness I thought he was trying to free us from. Is it just an inevitability that the spoils of success will change a person? If you isolate yourself and invite no one into your circle who will ever question you, is this the result? Contempt for the very people who supported you for so long? A quality I used to admire in Morrissey was his obstinance, but I've found as I've aged myself, standing by opinions for the sake of it, refusing to allow yourself to grow and change as more information becomes available, to never soften your heart and swallow your pride and apologize when you've realized you might have been wrong about something -- that's not admirable, that's cowardice. I appreciate it more when people admit they don't know enough about a subject to comment on it instead of making a statement just for attention. My heart is broken. The man I looked to as an oasis of sensitivity in a desert of toxicity seems, well, just plain mean and vengeful now. I refuse to be cynical, and I refuse to be someone who says, "That's what you get for having heroes." Perhaps the lesson here is just knowing when to let go. And that it was indeed the songs that saved my life, not the man.

Fifteen-year-old me in my bedroom.

[onrainynights]

So I'm about to tell y'all a tale, buckle up. Everything here is 100% true, except names are changed or shortened because duh. Also warning there is slightly nsfw content, nothing explicit and only mentioned but still warrants a warning.

So, I'm 17, almost 18. I'm a high school senior. The story starts almost two years ago, in the fall of 2018. I was a sophomore. One of my best friends, V, was in our school's show choir for the first time, and had made friends with a new guy one year our senior who was also in slow choir. I knew before I met him that he was gay, because V told me. This guy can be called E. One day, he sits at our lunch table and I'm not really paying attention to his conversation with V, I'm just eating my lunch. But then I look up and my first thought when I see him is "eyebrows" because he has really thick eyebrows and then "wow he's actually really cute." He was the first person I was attracted to in over 2 years. I proceed to ask V all about him while admiring him from afar for several months. At this point its nothing more than attraction because I've never really had a conversation with him. Then, in the spring, I volunteered at the show choir competition my school hosted. I ended up talking to him (yay), and he hugs me within minutes of meeting me. One of the first things I ever say to him is "I like your eyebrows." Things are slightly awkward, because I'm an awkward person, and so is he, but it's pleasant. Unfortunately I don't get to spend too much time with him because we both had things we needed to do and there was A LOT of drama that night not involving either of us.

After that point we would talk occasionally but never really got to know each other, UNTIL fall of my junior year and his senior year. By this point I had a crush, but it wasn't more than that and I didn't feel we knew each other well enough to warrant me telling him my feelings. We were both in the fall musical. At auditions, we were friendly. Except he asked me about J, a guy one year younger than me, who was also just as gay as both me and E. The way he asked me "Who is that?" I knew, immediately, that he was attracted to J. He sounded exactly like I did when I first asked V about E after seeing him for the first time.

Regardless, E and me talked a lot more during rehearsals, though we usually kept our conversations light in topic. We flowed well, and he was just as physically affectionate as I was. After a few weeks, I see him cuddling with J during rehearsal, and a friend informs me they started dating. I asked them both questions about how it started—a Snapchat story, go figure. At first I was jealous, but I saw how happy E seemed, and that was all that mattered. But I didn't really know J, like at all other than his name, so I started spending as much time as I could with the both of them. They were a cute couple, I have to admit, but they always did PDA because of J's homophobic family. They only ever saw each other at school.

The first time I talked to J without E there, we bonded. I don't remember over what. The next time, we were alone because I pulled him aside after he made a dirty joke that I honestly couldn't tell if he meant (he did. It was hilarious, and I told him up-front that I wanted to be friends with him. He enthusiastically agreed.) The time after that, it was because I decided he should know about my feelings for E. I didn't want him to potentially find out later on and think I was trying to steal his boyfriend. He was amazingly mature. He said he felt bad for taking E from me when I had liked him longer, but I assured him that E didn't belong to me by any means and besides, J made E happy and that was all I cared about. I think I was already in love with E by this point but I didn't know it yet. J and I joked about my feelings for E whenever we were alone. We got along really well and it was a great time.

One time I cuddled with them, and it was nice, and when E had to get up J and I kept cuddling and talked about how much we both just wanted E to be happy. It was really nice.

And then, closer to the opening night of the show when the set was being built and there were more places to be out of sight, something strange happened. Now, earlier when I said PDA I meant they made out in front of others frequently, and the first time they did anything sexual with each other was in a well-known security camera blind spot in the upstairs math hall after all the teachers had gone home. I know that because J and E (mostly J) liked to tell me about their sex life. In fact, I knew more about their relationship than most people probably did.

So we were backstage one day, when E wasn't needed on-stage much despite playing a main character. There were two prop chairs between the three of us. J sat on E's lap on the chair that had a higher back and I sat as close to them as I could in an office chair. They weren't kissing or anything, just talking.

It was innocent, at first. But then J started working E up, if you know what I mean. It wasn't really uncomfortable for me, because J somehow made me feel ~included~ in their activities. He would whisper something lewd to E, who would blush or say something back, and then would tell me about how affected E was, how hard he was. At some point I think E mentioned not wanting to come in his pants, but I'm not sure. I kinda forced myself not to look into this event after it happened, so the details are a bit fuzzy. Eventually, E made J stop because he had to go on stage soon and didn't want to have a boner while pretending to be straight. J and I talked afterwards, but I don't remember what about, and it was never mentioned between us again. I'm fairly sure that J was a bit of an exhibitionist, and that E wasn't really one but wasn't opposed to what J was doing, either.

Honestly, in hindsight, I'm not sure what to think about this, because I was always so certain they both viewed me 100% platonically, but then they included me in their "sexytimes" without hesitation. In fact, at one point a plan was in place for me to room with them on an overnight trip so that they could do the do without making their roommate uncomfortable. They were both fully aware that I was probably the only person who didn't mind their PDA, and that sentiment may seem incongruous for a love triangle such as this, but I never questioned it. I loved E selflessly, and so it made me happy to see him happy, no matter what—or who—was doing so. Also, I think perhaps I was crushing on J at some point, but I'm not sure. These screenshots are of me explaining the event to a very close friend a few days ago after the shock wore off that I hadn't told her about it as soon as it happened.

At some point, a mutual good friend of mine and E's, who we'll call A, hosted a party for the cast of our musical. I'm not sure if this was before or after the casual exhibitionism incident, but I'm inclined to think it was before.

This party did not involve alcohol of any kind because theatre kids don't need any to make a party unique, wild, and totally unforgettable. It was small, with maybe 20 people at its peak. E and I were there and J was not, because his family thoroughly sucked ass. Anyway, at that party E told me he was in love with J, and wanted to marry him some day. I, obviously, thought that was kinda crazy to say after knowing each other for two months, but I held my tongue because E smiled so widely when he said it. Later that same night, everyone was sitting around a fire, playing a game somewhat similar to truth or dare. Due to a lack of seating, E ended up sitting on my lap for most of the game, which lasted over an hour, my hands around his waist. It was very nice, and when he got up he laughed and said he forgot he was sitting on my lap. He forgot little things like that a lot. I always found it endearing.

Then the show performed and then it was over, and I didn't get to talk to E again until a few months later, and I never talked to J again. Unlike most teens, I do not talk to people online /through text unless I already know them super super well. I hate getting to know people over text. By the time I see E again, because he's the student assistant in my choir class that semester, he and J have broken up. It was messy, and E is hurt. They're on-again-off-again for several months, but I can never forgive J for hurting E, not when he had talked about only wanting E to be happy. Despite that, I wish I could have spent more time with J. He was a good person, but he and E had a toxic relationship after the honeymoon stage, I think because J simply was not ready to be in a serious relationship. (A agrees with me fully on this.)

So E talks with me and a mutual "friend" (we're all friendly but I wouldn't consider this person a friend. Funnily enough, he also had a crush on E at some point, and we bonded over this. Funny how that happens.) about his relationship, and the things he says raise some red flags about J (including J doing something E didn't like during sex and then not stopping when E asked him to. I was very very angry at this but tried not to show it). It became clear to me that their relationship was toxic, but I didn't feel like I could do anything about it. In hindsight, I should have known their relationship was doomed a lot sooner.

Specifically, there was one point during the musical that J had to resolve things with his ex, who was a friend of mine (who I didn't know was queer and wasn't supposed to until E accidentally let it slip.) While J and his ex talked, I cuddled with E and reassured him that everything would be ok. He was convinced that J would cheat on him or get back with his ex. This lack of trust should have been a sign for me, but I didn't realize it until much, much later. I was focused on comforting E at the time and J couldn't have been farther from my mind.

Then, after E and J got back together again for the last time, covid happened, and school closed. I haven't spoken to E since, and no one knows what's going on with J. The only thing anyone knows is that they're not together anymore, and from what I can tell, they're not in contact at all and aren't going to get together again. E graduated, J is at a different school, and despite everything, I miss both of them.

Every day, I pass by a photo of E and A in the hallway of my school, and my heart swells, and I feel like crying. A graduated too, and she's moving thousands of miles away at the end of October for college. E is still living in our town, going to community college, but I never get to see him.

Our school is doing a fall play instead of a musical this year, and E and A are coming to visit and see a rehearsal before A moves away. It could be one of the last times, if not the last time, I get to see either of them. I'm going to tell E about my feelings, because for the first time since I realized my feelings for him were not skin-deep, he's single and not recovering from a nasty breakup. I'm not expecting him to return my feelings, but I'm expecting surprise. I've been very careful up to this point to keep my feelings from him—I thought it would be selfish to tell him when he wasn't emotionally available. A loves the idea—apparently she thinks someone confessing feelings for her after years would be sweet—but I know that if someone did that to me I might not be so happy. I would be shocked and surprised first, and then my reaction after that would depend on the person.

Also, to complicate all of this, I'm trans and he has expressed confusion about that before (poor guy is uneducated in that department, but not bigoted and certainly better than some gay men can be, but I still have no clue if my trans status would deter him from having feelings for me)

My feelings for this guy are deeper than anything I've ever felt before. I really love him, and I know that I'll regret it forever if I never tell him. His visit feels like it's as close to the right time as I'm gonna get, and it might be my last chance on top of that. I don't need him to return my feelings, but I need to know that I did everything I could to take my chances.

TL;DR: I'm a gay idiot but I'm finally gonna tell him how I feel

[abstract-soprano-moved-blog]

Be More Chill Sky High AU

I saw this textpost here by dear-enjolras-hansen and was inspired to make a bmc sky high au! I remember watching the movie as a kid and loving it. But, yeah, go read the DEH one cause it’s real fun and cute!

Jeremy

Telepathy/Mind control

His mind control powers only came to him in his junior year, and they’re not full brainwashing

Basically he can’t actually force people to do something, but he can place powerful feelings of wanting to do it in the person’s head

His telepathy is full blown though and he can’t turn it on or off

But when he gets flustered or goes through strong emotions other people’s thoughts get jumbled in with his own and he can’t really tell the difference

His telepathy only came in sophomore year so freshman year he was powerless and therefore placed as a sidekick

Even in sophomore year his telepathy was kind of useless in combat so it wasn’t until junior year when his mind control kicked in that he was moved up to hero

He’s always felt really inadequate and weak because of his powers or lack therefore of

The fact that he can hear people’s snide thoughts about him also put a dent in his self esteem

He got called creep a lot because people accused him of purposefully listening in on their thoughts

Once he got moved up to hero people started to like him a lot more though

He initially lets it go to his head and basically abandons Michael and Christine

Buuuut eventually he snaps out of it and realises he’s been a dick

(His guilty pleasure is listening in to Michael think about dorky things like video games and poptarts)

The only time he ever used his mind control outside of combat was to guide people to the right questions during tests

Eventually they fiqured him out and he has to take exams after school now

Realised end of sophomore year he’s in love with Michael

Realises that all of Michael’s thoughts are less bromantic and more romantic

Runs up to Michael last day before spring break and declares his love in the middle of the school hall

They kiss and there’s no voices in his head for a moment

Michael

Sooo everybody thinks it’s going to be technopathy but it’s actually sound manipulation

It’s pretty cool, he can make really good music with it

He can also kind of use it in combat like Coach Boomer

Basically he can use sound waves as a physical force

But he fails to portray that in initiation so he gets put as a sidekick

He isn’t too bothered about it because, hey, he’s got Jeremy

And that girl Christine seems nice

His powers came to him in middle school so he’s basically known since then he wants to go into composing

He spends his free time hanging out with Jeremy and Christine, making music, and researching 90s super heroes and sidekicks

Even though he’s doesn’t become popular until him and Jeremy make up after their fight, ever since first year he’s been hired as the DJ for every major event at school

He writes sappy love songs dedicated to Jeremy and only lets Christine and Chloe listen to them

They’re really good

One day Jeremy finds them and like… Michael basically dies of embarrassment

It’s all good though cause it ends in happy making out

Doesn’t actually really care all that much about superheros or superpowers

He’s more interested in human culture

He’s one of the only kids at their school that doesn’t immediately judge people by their powers

Christine

Shapeshifting

It was actually only a week before the start of her freshman year that her powers came to her

She can shapeshift into any animal or human

But she really hates using her powers for combat so she was placed as a sidekick

This is mostly due to the fact that during initiation she only shapeshifted into a toucan, a bunny, and Lindsey Lohan

She shapeshifts a lot

Christine aint afraid to use her powers basically every ten minutes

She just loves changing randomly into a gecko

She’ll often change herself to look like Jake to confuse people

Jake finds it absolutely hilarious

She also likes to play harmless pranks on people

Like everything’s normal and then BAM elephant in the canteen

One time she changed into a frog and snuck into Chloe’s school bag to surprise her

Needless to say she was almost turned into an icicle by accident

Even though she’s a sidekick and not really in any popular circles, everybody likes her so she’s kind of friends with everybody

She’s really close friends with Jeremy and Michael though so she confides mostly in them and vice versa

She’s super close with Jenna after junior year as well so they have kind of a queer platonic relationship going on

For three years she’s had to hear about Michael’s ‘unrequited’ love for Jeremy and then when they finally got together Jake tells her he’s got a massive crush on Rich

And she’s just like crying to Jenna “Why do people ask me for relationship advice, I’m demiromantic, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!”

Rich

This boi is pyrokinetic!

His powers came to him during the summer holidays before sophomore year

When he came back he showed off like nobody’s business and they moved him up to hero

He’s popular but everybody is lowkey scared of him

Then one day at a party he has a mental break down due to stress of family life and identity crises and all this shit

And he accidentally burned down Jake’s house and put him and Jake in hospital

After that he was super afraid of using his powers at all and was at risk of being moved down to sidekick again which would absolutely crush his self esteem

It was actually Jeremy that came up to him and sat him down and let him talk out all his emotions

The next day Jeremy took Jake aside and told him how guilty Rich feels

Rich and Jake have a long conversation about it and Jake tells him that just because he messed up once doesn’t mean he should stop using his powers

Rich gets mental health support and starts building up his life again

And all his friends are there to support him as he does

He also realises he’s bi

Makes an appalling amount of fire puns

Has a tiny crush on Jake and ends up going to prom with him

They spend the night together and after that start dating

It’s pretty good

Rich used to bully Jeremy about his powers but now they’re an really good terms

Him and Brooke basically talk to eachother about everything

She just gets him so they have a close platonic relationship

One year they went as a sexy angel and sexy devil for halloween

(Rich was the devil)

Jake

Super speed/Super strength

Immediately put as a hero without having to do initiation because of his parents

Jake’s had his powers since he was like ten so he knows how to use them really well

In school, people with more than one super power are already admired, that’s why Jeremy suddenly became really popular when he realised he could use mind control

But Jake’s just naturally an awesome guy

He’s basically the most popular guy in sky high

He prefers using his super speed more than his super strength but he’s well trained in both

Pretty much set for life since his mums were both well known superheros

He’s following in their footsteps

Already stopped a few small bank robberies

Dated Chloe all throughout freshman year

Broke up with her when he realised he was only with her because they were both the ‘most popular girl/boy in school’

Dated Brooke for a bit in sophomore year and then went on a few dates with Christine in junior year

Drunkenly made out with Jeremy one time during Jeremy’s ‘popular’ phase

Basically he’s hooked up with a bunch of kids at school

Because he’s seen as the ‘golden boy’, he feels a lot of pressure to do well as well as keep up his image to his classmates

Turns to sex and alcohol for stress release

He had a problem and refused to get help but after he almost burned to death and was put in hospital it was kind of like a wake up call for him

He got his shit together and he still regularly goes to AA meetings

Gets an extreme puppy love crush on Rich their senior year

Keeps doing things like lifting up benches or running to catch footballs on the other side of the school to try and impress him

It works out well in the end

Really good friends with Brooke, Chloe and Jenna

They make him carry their shopping bags and sometimes them when they go shopping

Chloe

Ice powers

She’s had her powers since the end of elementary school so she’s really talented with using them

She can kick ass in combat but also uses her powers to create ice sculptures and cool her drinks up in the summer

Put as hero no question

Best at combat in sky high behind Jake

On her way to becoming a great superhero

Is often called ‘Ice Queen’

She likes it and is thinking of using it for her alias

Has to deal with a lot of Elsa jokes

She just freezes people to get them to shut the fuck up about it

Loves to pair up with Rich during training

Watching them spar is spectacular

Her, Brooke, Rich and Jake are all training buddies

In her senior year she becomes basically best friends with Michael

They sit and bitch about people while listening to Michael’s latest composition

After Brooke and Jake broke up Chloe and Brooke started up a ‘friends with benefits thing’

Then Chloe realised she was actually in love with Brooke and wanted to cuddle and kiss her non-sexually

So she puts up a massive ice sculpture outside Brooke’s house one day junior year  that says ‘BE MY GIRLFRIEND’

They become a couple

Has been close friends with Jenna since they were kids, and even though she acts like she’s perpetually annoyed by her, Chloe is super overprotective of Jenna

Like she’s overprotective of all her friends (especially Brooke), but like it’s really noticeable with Jenna

Once knocked a guy out for making fun of Jenna being a sidekick

She’s a very angry teen just cause of social and academic pressure, as well as her crippling insecurity

When she’s super angry she’ll storm off to be alone

And just sit and let the things around her slowly be overtaken by frost and ice

Turns lakes into ice rinks in the summer for her and her friends to skate on

Brooke

Flight

Brooke’s had her powers since she was a baby

Her parents had to put an extra secure cage on her cot so that she would stop whizzing around her room at midnight

She also had to be put on a child leash for her toddler years

She loves flying so much

Hardly ever walks anywhere

Just floats around like 3 cm off the ground

Hero

She’s great in combat and is expected to be a superhero in the future

But she has her heart set on being a trainer

The spotlight kind of freaks her out so she’s much happier supporting people instead

Has been pining over Chloe since middle school and when she wakes up to see the ice sculpture in her garden she flies down from her bedroom window and scoops Chloe up superman style and kisses her

When she gets upset she flies up to a really high cloud and just kind of… sits there and cries

She like to fly around with Christine when she’s shapeshifted into a bird

She gets called ‘airhead’ a lot as a joke and even though she laughs along it makes her quite self conscious about her intelligence

She just feels like everybody always only sees her power when they look at her and not her

BFFs with Rich

Even though she’s scared to stand up for herself she’ll protect her friends against bullies

If anybody makes fun of any of her friends she takes their school bag or some other possession and puts it on the roof of the school

And then refuses to get it down for them

Jenna

Technopath

Nobody expected it because everybody forgets the fact that Jenna is actually super smart

She’s super good with any kind of technology, but especially mobile devices

Constantly has her phone with her

Is initially placed as hero in freshman year but she mostly uses her powers to snoop on people’s group chats and the school’s secrets

Cause she could not give less of a shit about being a superhero

She gets moved down to sidekick halfway through freshman year

The only thing she’s worried about is that her popularity is rapidly decreasing

She starts getting left out of loads of shit because being a sidekick means you’re a loser, basically

But she manages to crawl her way back up the social ladder due to her friendships with Chloe, Brooke and Jake

But everybody just completely labels her as a sidekick tagging along behind a group of heroes

So she always just assumes that people are friends with her out of pity or to utilise her power in some way

It takes a lot of time and reassurance from her friends to realise that that isn’t the case

She actually starts to care about her future in like sophomore year and starts to work hard on training with her powers and her grades

End of senior year she gets an offer to work with the government which she takes

Really close friends with Christine

They move in together after high school

They’re quite codependent on each other but not in an unhealthy way

They’re just super close

The lines between a platonic and romantic relationship between them are blurred

Close friends with Chloe and texts her about every piece of gossip she hears

Favourite hobby is hacking into homophobes/transphobes/racists/etc blogs and changing them to look like foot fetish blogs

I may have to write a fic of this… But yeah. BMC Sky High AU

[windofderange]

Let’s talk about gender in Stranger Things 2!

So there’s a bunch of stuff happening in my life and I keep meaning to post something about that, but it’s serious and scary and stuff, so instead, I’m going to ramble a while about why I really love some of the subtle gender role reversals in season 2 of Stranger Things!  Like a normal, well-adjusted person!

Also, no major spoilers ahead, but I will talk about things that happened in Season 2, so if you want to come to it totally fresh, please skip this.

So I’m still a little sad that there’s no queer representation in this show.  Yes, I know it takes place in the 80s and queer people hadn’t been invented yet, but still.  (I was SOOO hoping that the big reveal at the dance would be that Dustin was building himself up to ask Will to dance, but I guess that probably would have been genuinely too much for an 80s middle school to handle.)  However, despite that, I was actually really impressed by some of the smaller ways the story undercut traditional gender stereotypes this season, and some of the improvements to how the girl and women characters were written.

That’s not to say that I thought they were poorly written last season - I just thought they were a lot more one-dimensional.  Emotional mother.  Brainy, goody-two-shoes girl exploring her sexuality.  Even Eleven, who was by far the female character with whom we spent the most time, was sort of scattered - the writers clearly couldn’t decide how unaware of the world she should be, and in turn, what things about gender she should care about (ie, she didn’t know what ‘pretty’ meant, but she still wanted to be it), a problem I don’t think they’ve entirely corrected (more on that in a sec).  The male characters were similarly archetypal - the drunk, broken-down town sheriff, the maniacal scientist, the lovesick teen, etc.

This season, I feel like the characters all got a lot more flushed out, but more than that, the way they did so also made some really interesting choices about gender and gender roles.  Also, I’m occasionally going to refer to the characters as sets because that how some of the storylines run - the adults (Joyce, Hopper, and Bob), the teens (Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, and Billy), and the kids (Eleven, Will, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Max).

1. Joyce and Bob: Okay, so I know I’m apparently the only person in the universe who doesn’t ship Joyce and Hopper, but I loved Joyce and Bob.  Bob is a ‘beta male’ - he’s fat, short, into electronics, likes Kenny Loggins, makes corny jokes, and is too much of a scaredy-cat to watch scary movies.  However, it’s made immediately clear that Joyce isn’t just dating him because she needs a man or in order to fill some hole in her life - the first scene we see of them is the two of them adorably flirting, and then hard-core making out.  Bob is also consistently shown to be the less driven of the pair (a theme that will actually come up a lot in this post).  Joyce is a fighter.  It’s an important aspect of Joyce’s character, one that was established last season, but in the context of her frantically fighting to get her son back.  In the grand tradition of the Aliens franchise and Poltergeist, Stranger Things holds that mothers are the toughest fighters, and this season makes it clear that that’s always been true of Joyce Byers - it wasn’t just the panic of losing Will that drove her; she’s always been like this.  Bob knew her in high school, and makes it clear that he’s always admired her for it.  However, the story doesn’t present Bob as emasculated (a term I hate!) - he’s jazzed as all hell to finally be dating Joyce Byers!  

In setting up their relationship in these terms, the story gives us something we don’t often see - Bob is a boy-gal Friday.  In fact, he’s Joyce’s boy-gal Friday.  He’s competent, with a complementary skill set; he’s valuable, and Joyce clearly values him, and he makes a lot of connections and discoveries on his own, but he’s not capable of turning those connections into actions that drive the plot forward until he turns them over to Joyce.  And he’s perfectly happy in his role - even when he shows up in her house covered in Will’s bizarre tunnel drawing and is told he can’t ask questions, he’s clearly having the time of his life, solving a cool puzzle with a woman he loves.  Like every gal Friday, he can’t conceive of a world in which he could be the protagonist - he’s a superhero, but he’s not the Hero.  That’s Joyce

2. Hopper and Eleven: Off the bat, I have to admit that I think the writers are still doing the worst with Eleven when it comes to writing gender, just because they have the most room to play with and they’re not making use of it.  There’s no reason for Ele to have a concept of gender performance - she’s a lab rat. We know that the mad scientist raised her to think of him as her “Papa” (whether he was biologically or not), but we’re given no evidence that she had any concept of being his “daughter” or a “girl.”  Again, I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but it’s part of the reason I actually really liked the episode with her and Eight (also because I’m a sucker for a coming of age story) because I think pairing her gender development with the punk scene is a potentially brilliant way to play with some of these ideas in a culturally-contemporary way (since gender non-conformity was a big part of punk), and it’s something I really hope the writers come back to next season.

That being said, I did really enjoy the relationship between Ele and Hopper, and in particular, the fact that Hopper is clearly raising a kid, not a girl.  We never see Hopper force any gender norms on Ele (even though he had a daughter of his own and could potentially have those kinds of expectations for her), we see them sharing in not traditionally feminine things (building traps, eating garbage, watching scary movies - all things dads usually do with their sons in movies and TV), and even though it’s clear that Hopper knows about Mike’s and Ele’s feelings for each other, we never get any weird matchmaking or overbearing overprotectiveness from him - his overprotectiveness of Ele is always about keeping her safe from Hawkins, not keeping her away from boys.  He even embraces her “bitchin’” new look, but clearly also helps her get ready for the dance.

3. Mad Max and the AV Club: So I love Max.  I love Max so much.  And I still love the AV Club.  I do get the point of articles like this one that part of the nostalgia of Stranger Things is a nostalgia for nerds who are actually bullied and oppressed, but I think that’s over-simplifying things.  To start with, Lucas is black, and this season they finally managed to engage with that a little, in the same way they managed to engage with Dustin’s disability a little last season.  Also, I think the way that the AV club’s masculinity is presented is important.  This is not the adorkable misogyny of the Big Bang Theory.  They are not traditionally masculine and they are absolutely fighters, and those two things are never presented as being in conflict in any way.  Indeed, the constant references to D&D, including their own nickname for their group as “the party,” sort of reaffirms this - for people who know the game, they know you need a balanced party.  You don’t want all muscles, or all magic, or all rogues.  In many ways, Will becomes the ultimate symbol of this in Season 2 - he is absolutely a soft boy (Hopper even asks if he’s gay in Season 1, to which Joyce rightly replies, “why would that matter?!”), and yet, he is both the major villain AND the one fighting hardest against that villain in this season.  His strength to fight the mind flayer stems from his nontraditional masculinity - from his art, and ultimately, from his empathy, being kept in control of his body by the stories of love and affection from his mother, brother, and best friend.

Max is similarly nontraditional - we’re introduced to her by the traditional nerd trope of “girls don’t play video games!,” “girls don’t skateboard!;” however, if we’re really supposed to read the AV club as models for nerd culture, then the important element surely comes in their immediate reversal in meeting Max and seeing that she does indeed play video games and skateboard.  Not only do they not gatekeep or question her love of these things, they are immediately more impressed by her because of them.  They want to be friends with her because she’s a girl who skateboards and plays video games, and it’s clear that this is the root of Dustin’s and Lucas’ attraction to her, as well.  Even Mike’s resistance to bringing her into the party is never presented as her being a girl or a “fake gamer girl” - the show does a good job of showing that he doesn’t like having her around because she can’t know about Ele, and that having her there without knowing means that things are moving on and the others might move on, as well.  As soon as Lucas spills the beans and Max is fully on board, Mike’s resistance disappears.

4. Nancy and Jonathan: So I think the teens’ stories are where Stranger Things does the best with undercutting gender roles because these stories are so ingrained and so formulaic normally.  These are also the ones that I noticed the most while watching it.  Also, full disclosure - I don’t really ship Nancy with anyone, and was sort of disappointed that last season had a teen girl, two love interests, love triangle story line.  However, I do think the lovestory between Nancy and Jonathan has some of the best gender reversals.  To start with, Nancy is absolutely the Protagonist of their story.  Nancy causes everything to happen in their story.  It’s her acts that inadvertently bring them together (by getting drunk), but she decides that they’re going to do something to get justice for Barb, she takes them to find the journalist, she comes up with the plan to blackmail Hawkins.  Even in the scenes of them getting together, we see her sitting up in bed, trying to decide what to do.  She goes to the door, and Jonathan is there.  All of the focus is on her as the decision maker.

This role reversal comes to a head in the final showdown with the mind flayer.  I loved the call back to the last season when Hopper asked Jonathan if he could shoot a gun, and Nancy took it instead - they had already established that she was the better shot, and again, this scene wasn’t presented as her emasculating Jonathan in any way (and Hopper doesn’t hesitate for a second in handing over the riffle) - it’s clearly just that their lives are at stake, and of the pair, she’s the better shot. But the best is the scene in the cabin - this could have so easily been the teary-eyed girlfriend hanging off her stoic boyfriend (which, to be fair, was a lot of how Jonathan was written last season).  Instead, we got Joyce, raging and holding down her son, who was clearly in pain, as Jonathan screamed hysterically and cried, trying to stop her, being held back and finally comforted by Nancy.

Let me be clear - this scene only makes sense this way, given what we know about these characters.  Joyce is driven and direct - she’s going to make a plan and stick to it, come Hell or high water.  Jonathan has already been shown to be way too invested in Will and his well-being, and it seems completely believable by now that he would even fight his mother if he thought Will’s life was in the balance.  Nancy is an outsider - she’s not family, and her concern is mostly for Jonathan.  However, even as exciting as this scene was, I couldn’t help but step out of it a bit as I was watching it and realize how weird it was to see a young man portrayed as hysterical, rallying against a woman with a plan, and then being comforted by another woman, who was relatively calm and unaffected.  It works so much better this way, but there are so many show where this scene would have had Nancy freaking out for no other reason than because women are hysterical.

5. Steve: Oh, Steve. heart eyes  I am so in love with Steve after this season.  Obviously Stranger Things is a show that loves its parallels, and Steve’s stories move increasingly into roles played by women in the original as the season goes on.  The initial story with him and Dustin have parallels to Stand By Me and Gremlins, but by the big showdown with the mind flayer, Steve opens embraces his role as “the babysitter,” a role that actually has some decent echoes in 80s movies - Adventures in Babysitting would be the obvious, but Steve’s role in the group also directly parallels Mary Plimpton’s character in the Goonies, as the third wheel to the big brother and girlfriend (except in this case, those two had buggered off to go do The Omen instead), who also delivers the incredibly quotable line, “I feel like I’m babysitting, only I’m not getting paid.”

However, again, we’re not given any hint that Steve has any problems with his new role.  After the rest of the adults and teens leave, he directly parallels Mr. Mom, the movie the Byers were watching earlier, wearing an apron and slinging a kitchen towel over his shoulder after doing the washing up.  But whereas the entire premise of that movie is how embarrassed Michael Keaton’s character feels to be a stay-at-home dad and how bad he is at household tasks, Steve seems genuinely proud of himself for tidying up the Byers house, and proud to serve as guiding voice to the remaining kids left in his care.  Even his use of a traditionally-masculine sports metaphor to explain why they have to stay put reaffirms how much he’s internalized his role - he clearly means for it to be rally speech, as he’s presumably delivered to his teammates, and he shows his own confusion when it concludes with, “and that’s why we’re on the bench.”

The episode briefly looks as though it’s going to offer Steve a redeemingly masculine role of protector with the arrival of Billy, Max’s big brother.  We get some macho posturing and a fist fight, and although Steve does get to come to Lucas’ rescue, he’s still soundly trounced by Billy. Again, this is completely in keeping with the characters - we’ve already seen that Billy isn’t just up for a fight, but abusive and dangerously violent.  However, it’s Max, the only girl in the room, who puts down Billy, again in a series of gender undercuts - first, she beats him subversively by drugging him (poison being a woman’s weapon and all that), but then, in another reversal, she takes the opportunity as he’s weakened and blacking out to threaten him with Steve’s baseball bat, extracting protection for her and the AV club using the same oath as we’ve seen used previously by Billy’s abusive father.  The rest of the episode is clearly The Goonies, with Steve-as-Mary-Plimpton and the kids running around underground, and Steve reiterating that he’s there because he’ll be held responsible if anything happens to them.

Even in the final denouement at the dance, Steve gets the same final appearance as Joyce and Hopper, the other two caregivers, dropping off his ‘kid’ and driving away.  (Interestingly, of the teens and adults, only Nancy gets a denouement at the dance - Jonathan is also there, but just gets to smile and wave from the sidelines, the same ending as basically every supporting girlfriend from every teen movie, again highlighting that it’s Nancy who is the Protagonist.)

So why do I care about all of this?  Well, one of my biggest frustrations with a lot of TV and films is that I feel like writers still suck at writing women - in particular, women as protagonists.  It seems like way too many writers can’t understand how women can make choices that drive the story forward, and that means way too many stories fall back on traditional tropes where women are the backups and support.  It’s cool to see so many of those tropes not only avoided, but directly reversed, and so effectively.  Bob, Jonathan, Steve, and the AV club are cool, interesting, likable characters.  They’re not diminished by not being the protagonists, or not being traditionally masculine.  Like I said, I would love to see the writers do more with Ele because there is so much opportunity there for a truly agender character, which is something else sorely missing from modern TV, but I also hope they continue to present women who are ambitious and driven, and men who are emotional and empathetic because it’s super cool to finally get those kinds of stories.

[writersriot]

The Outsiders Queer Subtext ft. Jally - Part 16

Sunday, March 19, 2017

So this is an interesting moment that happens after Pony recaps Johnny’s attack by the Socs. Pony tells us about one of the only instances of Johnny’s interaction with girls. I find it fascinating, hence my long ass rambling.

We went back and watched the movie through again. Marcia and Two-Bit were hitting it off fine. Both had the same scatterbrained sense of humor. But Cherry and Johnny and I just sat there, looking at the movie and not talking. I quit worrying about everything and thought about how nice it was to sit with a girl without having to listen to her swear or to beat her off with a club. I knew Johnny liked it, too. He didn’t talk to girls much. Once, while Dallas was in reform school, Sylvia had started hanging on to Johnny and sweet-talking him and Steve got hold of her and told her if she tried any of her tricks with Johnny he’d personally beat the tar out of her. Then he gave Johnny a lecture on girls and how a sneaky little broad like Sylvia would get him into a lot of trouble. As a result, Johnny never spoke to girls much, but whether that was because he was scared of Steve or because he was shy, I couldn’t tell. (Pg 35)

Okay, so I still ship Two-Bit and Marcia, lol. Pony also says that after this incident Two-Bit gave Pony the same lecture about girls, telling him stories that made him want to crawl under the floor, which I find hilarious and totally fitting of a thirteen/fourteen-year-old boy. Two-Bit and Steve looking out for the younger guys in the gang is everything.

Anyway, onto the main part that I adore. We know Johnny is shy, and especially shy of girls because Pony tells us so. He thinks this behavior could be due to his nature or due to Steve’s lecture that basically scared him off of most girls. I think it’s due to Johnny’s shy nature in general despite the fact that he doesn’t seem all that shy during the whole drive-in movie scene, which I’ve mentioned. He’s more than willing to make conversation with the girls, especially after he and Pony know it won’t be about hooking up with them. Like, that’s just so telling to me.

I’m more willing to chalk up all of this avoiding girls to a shy nature than Steve’s lecture, as intimidating as that might have been. Though in my subtext reading as I’ve said before, I would say that’s likely indicative of Johnny’s disinterest in girls in general, even if he didn’t know what that could mean at the time, for being homosexual. Since in the 60s it would not have been discussed enough to necessarily be an obvious conclusion for him to come to regarding his own feelings.

But you know what? Johnny is 16, only a year younger than Dally at 17, whose girlfriend was hitting on him. The way everyone in the gang treats Johnny like he’s so much younger than them that he needs to be taken care of is interesting. I know it’s due to Johnny’s abusive home life, and the gang wanting to protect him. And they would accordingly want him to be careful with girls because he might not know better if he’s so inexperienced. But he’s older than Pony at 14 yet he’s almost treated on the same level as a kid by everyone else in the gang.

And yet, Sylvia, who is likely to be about 16-17 as well is said to run out on Dally constantly, pretty much any time Dally is in jail or reform school or wherever. I find it fascinating that out of all the boys in the gang, though, Sylvia would try something on Johnny. Like, he is such the polar opposite of Dally, why did she choose Johnny? I mean, Soda and Steve are near the same age but they both have girls. Two-Bit and Darry are the oldest, and Two-Bit usually has a girl or picks up one, while Darry strikes me as too fucking busy holding his life together. So it’s entirely possible that Johnny is the only single one to make a pass at.

But was Johnny even interested in Sylvia? Or did he just let her hang onto him because she was Dally’s girl at the time? Because the way it’s presented, I’m assuming it’s the latter. Johnny admires Dally, so he would probably respect Sylvia simply for being his girl. He might not even think anything of it when Sylvia hangs out with him. Johnny probably wouldn’t even understand why a girl would run out on someone like Dally because Johnny’s sweet like that.

I mean, even in a situation like this with another guy’s girlfriend flirting with him, where Johnny would probably usually be blamed, Steve immediately knows Sylvia’s trying to take advantage of his good nature. I don’t even know if Dally would have blamed Johnny if he found out. Did Dally ever find out?? Probably not. I wouldn’t want to be Steve telling Dally about Sylvia’s escapades lol. I doubt he would have gotten back with her if he knew what she tried on Johnny.

So anyway, I don’t believe Johnny was genuinely interested in Sylvia as more than being Dally’s girlfriend at the time. But it gets me that Sylvia would choose Johnny especially when he is physically and temperamentally the opposite of Dally. This aspect has a lot to do with my theory of Johnny and Dally being counterpoints and mirror foils, who though fundamentally opposite run parallel to each other.

Sylvia is a point of contact between Dally and Johnny. Her place in the story is something I see a lot, and I’m not sure what it would be called as a literary device. Or if it even has a name, or if I’m just making up shit again haha. But usually I see it in love triangles or something similar, where two characters are parallels and opposites with a potential to be together, and a third character comes that connects them both in a different way. I don’t know how to explain it better, and I’ll see if I can find examples of this in other media in the future. If someone knows what I’m talking about, help me out lol.

But when someone like Sylvia is interested in Johnny, the mirror to Dally, it only increases the comparison and connection between the two boys. The way Sylvia shows an interest in both Dally and Johnny (no matter what her motivations may have been) she becomes a kind of parallel or representation of their own feelings toward each other. Like a romantic go-between, if you will. Dally is dating Sylvia, who then shows interest in Johnny despite not being at all like her boyfriend and actually probably valuing her boyfriend more than she does. Sylvia becomes this interesting point of connection for Dally and Johnny’s feelings regarding each other.

It’s similar in the way that Cherry becomes a parallel of Johnny’s feelings for Dally, Sylvia becomes a parallel of Dally’s feelings for Johnny. Not to disregard Cherry and Sylvia as characters, which I know often happens to women characters when two men are paired together. That’s not my intention at all because I love Cherry and we really don’t know anything about Sylvia, so I can’t hate on her (other than her apparently being a cheater). These character parallels are simply something I often see in media, especially when the subtext is queer in nature.

That opposing gender characters end up being romantic parallels for the queer characters, who are often mirrors/foils to each other. I don’t know that many creators realize they are doing this, but I see it. And it happens with many relationship types whether m/m, f/f, or m/f or whatever. Again, I’ll try to remember other examples of this, and if anyone else knows what I’m talking about here, feel free to chime in because sometimes I think I’m the only one who sees this type of stuff without having a name for it. Someone help me lol.

So what do you guys think of Johnny’s almost non-existent interest in girls (who aren’t dating Dally lol)? Just him being shy? And what about Sylvia being a potential romantic parallel for Dally and Johnny?

Until the next part~

[mastcomm]

Their Story Wrote Itself – The New York Times

Cynthia LaFave had a word of warning when she first met T Kira Madden in 2015.

“She said, ‘If you hurt my daughter, I’ll kill you,’” Ms. Madden recalled.

And that, by Ms. Madden’s reckoning, was a fair enough thing for her to say about her relationship with Hannah Beresford. Years earlier, Ms. Beresford had fought an episode of depression so crippling she required hospitalization.

Ms. Madden was no stranger to pain, either: Her 2019 memoir, “Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls,” outlines her trauma-filled coming-of-age as the queer, biracial daughter of a pair of well-to-do addicts in South Florida. That Ms. Madden’s pain may have affected Ms. Beresford was a reasonable concern for her mother.

It proved unwarranted. “Their relationship has brought so much peace to them both that, as it stands now, if anyone tries to hurt Kira, I’ll kill them, too,” Ms. LaFave said.

Ms. Madden and Ms. Beresford, both 31 and now living in Beacon, N.Y., first saw each other in 2012 at the Jamaica Bay Riding Academy in Brooklyn. Ms. Beresford, a former professional equestrian, worked there as a trainer and coach for the nonprofit Metropolitan Equestrian team. Ms. Madden was shepherding the half-dozen homeless veterans she drove there through therapeutic interaction with the horses. It was part of her job as a teacher and counselor at the Doe Fund shelter in Harlem, which also housed formerly incarcerated men, many of them addicts.

Ms. Madden had just received a master’s degree in fine arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where she is now a professor in the M.F.A. writing program. A career in social services wasn’t in her future, but the shelter job attracted her for its proximity to a population that felt familiar. “My parents were pretty severe addicts,” she said. By the time she moved to New York at 17 for college at Parsons School of Design, both were in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. Then, “we had this second sort of beautiful life together,” she said. “They were sober and we had these happy adult relationships. My parents always loved me. They weren’t bad people.”

Just complicated ones. Ms. Madden’s Hawaiian-Chinese mother, Sherrie Lokelani Madden, lives in Atlantic Beach, a part of Hempstead, N.Y., and is the general manager of the Dop Dop Salon in SoHo. Her father, John Laurence Madden, was Jewish and, after a career as stockbroker, headed his brother Steve Madden’s international fashion accessories business; Mr. Madden died in 2015 of complications from lung disease. In addition to their addictions, they had secrets. Ms. Madden found out as a child she had two half brothers on her father’s side from a marriage that her parents’ affair broke up. As an adult, she learned about another half sister on her mother’s side and a brother, whom her parents had placed for adoption. Still, her childhood in Boca Raton, Fla., had a shiny exterior. She grew up winning equestrian ribbons and attended an exclusive high school, North Broward Preparatory School, in Coconut Creek, Fla.

Fridays at the stable with the Doe shelter residents were an opportunity for her to be around horses again and, on occasions when volunteers ushered her charges through their riding and grooming lessons, to read books.

“Hannah noticed me first,” Ms. Madden said. “She remembers me reading at the picnic table, a Joy Williams book called ‘Escapes’.” In 2013, before Ms. Beresford and Ms. Madden found a chance to be properly introduced, the shelter’s horse program ended. But Ms. Madden’s love of horses lingered. She returned to the stable to ask the barn manager if there was someone who could give her lessons.

She was reconnected with Ms. Beresford, whose job at the stable overlapped with her graduate studies in poetry at N.Y.U.

Ms. Beresford earned her master’s degree from N.Y.U. in 2014 and now teaches poetry at Drew University in Madison, N.J. She grew up in rural Voorheesville, N.Y. Her parents, Ms. LaFave, a trial lawyer from Albany, and Jon Beresford of Cañon City, Colo., the owner of Beresford Remodeling, divorced when she was 5.

At 4, she had started horseback riding. “It became pretty consuming,” she said. In 2007, Oklahoma State University recruited her for its N.C.A.A. Division 1 equestrian team. But by then, after years on the road touring, distractions from her athletic career were mounting.

“I had struggled most of my teen years with anxiety and depression, and it all piled up,” she said. In 2008, she hit what she called rock bottom. “I was hospitalized for a while, and in the hospital, I came out,” she said. She called friends and family to tell them she was gay. “As they say, it got better.”

Credit belonged partially to a college poetry class. “Though I’d hate to suggest that depression can be treated with anything less than intensive therapy by a medical professional, that became something I could look forward to, where I could see a future.”

At Ms. Madden’s first riding lesson in Brooklyn in 2013, Ms. Beresford set a professional tone. “We connected on a lot of different levels,” Ms. Beresford said, especially riding and writing. “But I didn’t know how Kira identified. It didn’t cross my mind that she might be gay. I think coming out in Oklahoma, spending my formative years there, made me assume no one else in the world was gay.”

Ms. Madden noted “that we both were in relationships at the time. But right after that lesson I texted my friend, ‘This lesbian in breeches is so hot!’ I felt very crushy toward Hannah.” Not so much, though, that she was willing to break up with her girlfriend and ask Ms. Beresford out.

Instead, life got in the way, she said, and after six months she stopped taking lessons. More than a year passed. “But I always thought of Hannah, how I wished I could be her friend.” In late 2014, she scoured Yelp for the names of Jamaica Bay Riding Academy instructors, hoping to find Ms. Beresford’s last name and contact info.

Eventually, she reached Ms. Beresford through Facebook. “I was like, ‘Hey, remember me?’” Ms. Madden said. Both were nearing the ends of their relationships; Ms. Beresford, who considers herself more a country than a city person, was about to move to Austin, Texas.

But after exchanging and reading some work each had written (Ms. Beresford a manuscript in progress and Ms. Madden short stories and part of a novel), they decided to meet for a first date in February 2015 at the Stonewall Inn.

“In the back of our heads we were thinking, this could be really painful, because I was moving in a matter of weeks,” Ms. Beresford said. But their book swap had already connected them. “When you’re reading something autobiographical, you not only learn the facts of the person’s life but the lens through which they see the world,” Ms. Madden said.

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At the Stonewall Inn, they talked and kissed until closing time. “We got kicked out,” Ms. Madden said. “It felt like love.”

As the Chinese New Year began on Feb. 19, Ms. Madden, who embraces her Hawaiian-Chinese heritage, and Ms. Beresford celebrated together.

Weeks later, Ms. Beresford rented a U-Haul for her move to Texas. Ms. Madden told her, “You can’t move to Austin without me taking you.” They drove together. Ms. Madden returned to her Williamsburg, Brooklyn, apartment alone. Then, in the fall, her father fell into a coma.

“My father was my person — I was really close to him,” Ms. Madden said. Ms. Beresford booked a flight and planned to stay in New York until Mr. Madden recovered. When he died, she comforted Ms. Madden through her grief. They wouldn’t return to Texas to pack Ms. Beresford’s things for a full year.

By then, they had become experienced road trippers. “Hannah and I always joke that we spent most of our relationship in a car,” Ms. Madden said. In addition to the U-Haul trip, by the end of 2016 they had driven to Buffalo for a horse show and to Kansas to visit friends of Ms. Beresford’s; they also drove to upstate New York regularly to ride horses and spend time with Ms. LaFave.

Ms. Madden’s mother had also become a fixture in their lives, through regular visits to the home in SoHo she shared with Mr. Madden before he died, and later to Long Island. Ms. Lokelani Madden felt close to Ms. Beresford immediately. “Hannah really grounds Kira,” she said. “She has this soothing effect. I admire so much how they bring out the best in each other.”

In 2017, Ms. Madden and Ms. Beresford moved to Provincetown, Mass., where Ms. Beresford had accepted a yearlong residency at the Fine Arts Work Center. The next year they moved to Inwood in Manhattan, spending the bulk of their time teaching, writing and editing the literary journal Ms. Madden founded, “No Tokens.” They had already traveled to 30 states when, in July 2018, Ms. Beresford planned a surprise 30th birthday trip for Ms. Madden.

“We went up the California coast through the Pacific Northwest and stopped in Powell, Wyo., to ride horses at this campsite ranch near Heart Mountain,” Ms. Madden said. On the evening of July 12, they climbed back in their rented Toyota to watch a meteor shower.

“There were so many mosquitoes we turned the lights out in the car. Hannah started talking to me about how she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. It was corny in a great way.”

She spoke Ms. Madden’s whole name — T Kira Mahealani Ching Madden — before saying, “Will you marry me?” After Ms. Madden said a tearful yes, Ms. Beresford opened her car door and found her way to Ms. Madden’s side in pitch blackness to present a ring. They counted down from three before turning on the car lights so Ms. Madden could see it: A teardrop-shaped opal surrounded watermelon tourmalines and gray diamonds, designed collaboratively by Ms. Beresford and Misa Jewelry, a Hawaiian designer.

“It was typical Hannah, being the most thoughtful person in the world,” Ms. Madden said. “Years ago, when I was feeling very lonely, I had bought a watermelon tourmaline engagement ring to remind myself to always commit to my well-being first.”

On Jan. 7 at Kualoa Nature Reserve in Kaneohe, Hawaii, Ms. Madden and Ms. Beresford committed to each other’s well-being for life. At a wedding attended by 72 guests, Ms. Madden, wearing a marigold dress designed by Zac Posen before he closed his business in November, walked with her mother down an outdoor aisle strewn with multicolor rose petals. Ms. Beresford wore an aubergine suit by Bindle & Keep, a Brooklyn company that specializes in suits for queer and gender nonconforming people.

N. Michelle AuBuchon, a friend and fellow writer who was ordained by the American Marriage Ministries, officiated during a 30-minute ceremony celebrating their devotion to each other.

“To know T Kira and Hannah is to know how fiercely they love, with no boundaries, barriers or divisions,” she said. A dozen attendants, including Justine Champine, who the couple called “dyke of honor,” stood by the couple as they exchanged handwritten vows. “You and I have dedicated our lives to words and the arrangements of those words, but it’s these moments, our moments of silence and understanding without explanation that matter most to me,” Ms. Madden said. Ms. Beresford was characteristically poetic: “The universe may be limitless, but I can count my life in moments of seeing you, of hearing your voice, of disbelieving in scale,” she said.

Yards away from the water’s edge, with coconut trees swaying and the majestic Ko’olau mountains in the background, Ms. AuBuchon pronounced them married.

On This Day

When Jan. 7, 2020

Where Kualoa Nature Reserve in Kaneohe, Hawaii

Tradition During the ceremony, Ms. AuBuchon led a traditional exchange of flower leis between the families.

Time for a Tour At a cocktail hour, guests were taken in two separate boats on a short tour of the Molii Fishpond. The 125-acre fishpond is a form of sustainable fishery management, which dates back 800 years.

Grass Skirts A band, accompanied by a trio of hula dancers, played traditional Hawaiian music during a dinner that featured short ribs and sea bass.

Kalani Takase contributed reporting from Kaneohe, Hawaii.

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