#had to make my own bootleg and get a shitty picture because it makes me giggle

[armands-myspace]

little red car dripping with swag

[xsparklingravenx]

the broken mirror

Title: the broken mirror

Fandom: Persona 5 Royal

Characters: Goro Akechi, Akira Kurusu

Rating: T

Word Count: 5,582

Summary: “Get to the point, Akira,” Akechi said, his name dripping from his mouth like poison. “We both know that you didn’t blow up my phone with notifications for a simple outing.”

“No, I didn’t,” Akira replied, so slow to speak. It reminded him a little of himself, selecting words for the best possible outcome, wearing a thousand different masks to hide his true self. “But what I want to discuss, it’s not something we should do over text. Or phone.”

Major spoilers for the entirety of the third semester. Akechi and Akira, and the truth of the world through one set of eyes.

AO3

The first time Akechi’s phone rang that evening, he ignored it.

It buzzed through the wood on the table, shifting as it vibrated and lit up, casting a light on the cracked ceiling of his shitty rented apartment. The pi-pi-pi noise of its incessant ringtone made him wrinkle his nose in disgust, but it was an easy thing to forget. The laptop in front of him, containing all his notes on their current situation, commandeered the majority of his attention.

Reality was a mess. He was back from the dead through unknown means. A paltry conversation with a paltry human being was the last thing on his mind.

The second time his phone rang, he spared a careless glance its way. Careless, because he knew who was calling, and careless, because he knew it would destroy any of his focus. There was only one person who had his number who would actively call him, and unsurprisingly, it was his name that had flashed up.

KURUSU AKIRA.

Akechi stared at the phone until it stopped ringing again, the screen fading back to its usual, factory-set background image. Most other teenagers his age had images set there. Takamaki, he knew, had a picture of herself and that girl who had been involved in the Kamoshida case. Sakura had a group shot of the entire cast of Featherman R. Even Akira himself had a photo set there, a ridiculous picture of Morgana gorging himself on the largest plate of fatty tuna that Akechi had ever seen in all eighteen years of his life.

In the silence he tapped away at his keyboard, connecting theories and cross-checking intel. Takuto Maruki’s name was scattered about like a constellation across his document. As his phone screen switched off, he was left mostly in the darkness, only the light of his laptop screen left to illuminate the room.

The third time his phone rang, he blocked the number.

It was an easy thing to do. He reached over, unlocked the screen, and with a few taps Akira Kurusu was barred from contacting him. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it, and it wouldn’t be the last. Sometimes, when he left too many messages on read in the Phantom Thieves’ group chat, the members would individually leak into his private messages. Never Sakura or Okumura, but sometimes Takamaki, or Yoshizawa, and always, always Akira.

It went in cycles. They’d contact him and he’d block them. Then he’d require them, and he’d unblock them, enter their group chat, and lurk in the shadows. They were not friends. They were not even teammates. They were colleagues at best, their relationship one based out of a mutual need to solve their current predicament, and nothing more.

That meant he didn’t need unnecessary distractions.

He returned to his work. Websites, tabs. The Phan-site’s question was stark against his backlit screen. WOULD YOU JOIN THE PHANTOM THIEVES?

He scoffed, scrolled down, and then slammed his laptop lid shut. In the darkness, he grabbed his phone, unlocking the screen again to stare at Akira’s name.

“Who’s more pathetic?” he asked. “You for continuing this ridiculous charade, or me for letting you?”

No answer, because Akira wasn’t a mind reader, as much as he seemed like one.

No answer, because Akechi had blocked his number.

No answer, because Akechi didn’t want to give him the opportunity to give one anyway.

 --

 Akechi didn’t have fond memories. Tolerable memories, yes, but fond memories pushed it. Fond memories suggested that he’d formed an attachment to them, which was an impossibility. He made sure to keep a healthy distance away from anything that might have tampered with his mission, or, anything that might have twisted his view of the world. He achieved that through cool detachment, masked by his cheery, ace-detective persona, his flawless disguise.

One of those tolerable memories happened to involve Akira Kurusu and a jazz bar, the songstress’s dulcet tones melting into the air as they both tended to their non-alcoholic beverages of choice. Akechi’s was sweet. It wasn’t that he favoured that particular taste over anything else on the menu, but multiple people at school had mentioned the flavour. He jumped on the trend like he did all others; quickly, and without thinking.

“Is it good?” Akira said. “Your drink, I mean.”

“I can certainly see why it’s popular,” Akechi lied. “All these flavours, exploding on my tongue…truly, a delectable experience. I suppose that’s what is needed to appeal to the masses, though. Something that is universal, that can be really enjoyed.”

“You’re funny, you know,” Akira said, swishing the little cocktail umbrella that the waiter had put in his drink. He had that smirk on his face, the one that screamed that he was trouble. Hell in a handbasket. A devil wearing human skin.

“Oh? Certainly the people who chat about me online seem to think so.”

“No, not like that.” Akira leant back in his chair, sipping his drink slowly, savouring each drop. “It’s the way you use words. You fire them off like they’re infinite ammo in a video game.”

It was easy to figure out a response for something like that. Inwardly, Akechi thought that Akira was a fool. Outwardly, he grinned, several blocks of laughter falling from his lips. To the trained ear, it might have sounded artificial, but Akechi could blame that on the TV studios, on the fact that he needed that laugh to appeal to the millions who watched him from afar. “Are you trying to tell me that I’m babbling, Kurusu-kun?”

Akira watched him over the top of that tiny umbrella, the low-light of the jazz bar reflected off his glasses. Fake, of course, much like his honest high-schooler act, but then, who was Akechi to judge based on appearances? “No, I’m just saying that maybe you could do with being more honest.”

It was more difficult to formulate a response for a statement like that. In the half-second he had to think one up, Akechi ran through a thousand potential reactions. More laughter? Stare in shock? A question in response? A joking answer? There was no way that Akira could know the truth behind him, behind his actions or his words or his façade. There was no need to be worried, but selecting the perfect comeback was vital. He needed to keep him in his pocket, or everything would be over.

In the end, joking answer won out. With a grin, Akechi said, “Why, I don’t know what you mean. What would make you think I’m lying?”

“Just something I was thinking,” Akira said, giving the most subtle of shrugs. “All those words just makes what you’re saying difficult to follow, like you’re diverting. That, and you’re wrinkling your nose every time you take a sip. If you hate it that much, don’t drink it.”

Akechi put the glass down, his own paper umbrella bobbing in the liquid. Hate was too strong a word for such an innocuous thing. Hate was a word reserved for Shido, for the foster families who had made his life living hell, for the people who dared try and stand in his way as he did all he could to make his world manifest.

Hatred was what he felt towards Akira Kurusu. The drink? That had done nothing wrong other than being a little off for his tastes. Akira? Oh. He’d done everything.

“It would be a waste,” Akechi said. “And I’m certain that there must be something to like about it. My classmates often speak of this flavour.”

Akira laughed then, a genuine brand unlike Akechi’s bootlegged version. “And if your classmates said that the fall from Skytree was amazing, would you still take the leap?”

Akechi nearly scowled then, only just covering it up at the last moment. “Are you suggesting that I’d endanger my own life for the whims of others? I’m afraid not, Kurusu-kun. Still, what a drastic change in conversation, all over a simple drink. Tell me then, is yours any better?”

Leaning close, Akira offered his drink to Akechi, pressing the glass into his gloved hand as he snatched the sweet drink off the table. It was a simple exchange, one beverage for another, and yet Akira remained close. “Try it for yourself.”

He downed the rest of Akechi’s drink in one go. All of that sickly-sweet fizz, gone in a moment. Akechi looked at the drink he’d been handed, the one he hadn’t chosen for himself, and simply shook his head in an exasperated show. “Well, I never have been one to turn down a challenge.”

Putting the glass to his lips, he tipped his head back. The fruity mix washed away the saccharine flavour of what he’d had before, a refreshing, yet unexpected taste. When he was finished, he put the glass down on the table, meeting Akira’s expectant gaze.

“So,” Akira said. “What did you think of that one?”

Akechi leant his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand. With his left hand, he plucked the umbrella from the now-empty glass, regarding it with disinterest as he said, “It was good.”

He couldn’t see Akira past his focus on the tiny, paper accessory. That meant he definitely didn’t see the self-assured smirk on his face.

 --

 It took him half an hour to unblock the number. Half an hour of opening and closing the lid of his laptop. Half an hour of getting up to check the window and then sitting back down. Half an hour of locking and unlocking his phone, checking social media idly instead of doing the work he knew should be taking priority.

It took another fifteen minutes for the first text to show up.

KURUSU AKIRA                9:33

Have you unblocked me yet?

Perceptive, but not a mind reader, Akechi reminded himself. He sat at the table, staring at the screen a while before finally resigning himself to a begrudging answer.

AKECHI GORO                 9:37

I’d congratulate you on your clever insight, but we both know that’s bullshit. Regrettably, you’re just good at figuring out patterns. What were you doing for the last half hour? Sending that text every time I crossed your mind?

He set the phone on the table and tried to ignore it. There was no immediate reply. Back when he’d been a part of the Phantom Thieves the first time, there were often long swaths of time before anyone would get back to him when he offered up information in the group chat. Now he knew that they likely had a second one to scheme against him, to laugh at how he was such a fool for falling into their well laid trap. It wasn’t something that stung. He’d been the one who had set out to betray them, after all.

When his phone vibrated again, he sighed. There was Akira’s name once again, because he didn’t know how to leave things well alone. A blight on the background-less screen that Akechi was so used to.

KURUSU AKIRA                9:38

Something like that.

His responses were always infuriatingly short. It wasn’t something he reserved for Akechi, he seemingly treated everyone that way, group chat or not. Akechi deliberated on whether or not to send a follow-up, which turned out to be a mistake. In the time he spent trying to figure out what on earth to say, his phone started ringing again, buzzing through the wood.

He hit the busy button immediately.

AKECHI GORO                 9:40

I’m not picking up. Stop wasting your time.

Responding to him was defeating the point entirely, but Akechi was already a lost cause in that regard. He chuckled, low and bitter, his right hand brushing through his hair to grip at it as he leant over the phone, the little bubble indicating that Akira was typing popping up instantly. It felt like a game. An illicit game that he should have had no interest in playing.

KURUSU AKIRA             9:41

So you want to talk over text only?

AKECHI GORO               9:41

I’d rather not speak to you at all.

KURUSU AKIRA             9:42

Says the one who came to me when the world went to hell.

Akechi’s fingers ghosted over the keyboard, but he didn’t actually type anything. He wanted to snap at Akira, to tell him that he'd gone to him because he was the only one who’d retained his sanity. He didn’t, because raging at someone didn’t have quite the same effect when it was done via toneless messaging.

His fingers itched for his sword. How he wanted to call upon Loki and fight like a beast in the confines of the Meta-verse. He’d spent years venting that way. Blood spilled in his quest to feel like a human being, only it never worked. He only ever felt like more of a monster, a monster he enjoyed being.

The phone buzzed again. Akechi gazed at the message with resentment gnawing in his gut, at himself, at Akira, he wasn’t entirely sure. Discerning his true feelings wasn’t as easy as it used to be. Once, it had been clear-cut. Once, it had been the world against him, and there had only been one way to survive that; detach, shut-down, hate everything.

Morgana, in his whiny little voice, played on repeat in his ears. You don’t really hate Joker, do you?

He switched screens, finger hovering over the block button again. In the end, he switched back, the message still on the screen, plain-as-day.

KURUSU AKIRA             9:45

This is because of what happened today, isn’t it?

 --

 In movies, in shows, in fiction, the heroic sacrifice was big. It was showy. In the old reruns of Featherman, often out of order, it still managed to be righteous, to be tragic, to be justified.

For Goro Akechi, it was lonely.

Back to the wall, the one he’d just dropped to stop the Phantom Thieves getting in his way. Shadows and his own cognitive puppet ready to rip him apart, just before him. His own darkened garb a shroud around him, not a shield anymore, but just a shame. A testament to his true, undesirable self.

A toast, to Masayoshi Shido for having a child every bit as ugly as him. Both of them, murderers. Both of them, scum of the earth. Shido might have put the gun in Akechi’s hand, but Akechi had done the deeds. He’d been used, but oh, hadn’t he put himself in that position?

The truth was so; in those final moments, he wondered if he’d been wrong. To decry the Phantom Thieves for believing so strongly in their bonds, to turn on them as savagely as he had. All along, Akechi had hid his jealousy and envy of Akira behind sugared smiles and soft words. He was everything he wanted to be. He had everything he’d ever wanted.

Taking the bullet for them, letting them run, it was no selfless act. It was one last ditch attempt to be the hero in a story that he’d chosen to play the villain in, and even then, karma had to be a bitch about it. What was supposed to be a magnificent death in a blaze of glory was instead a lonely, bitter end for the ace-detective who had given his all to revenge.

(It was not, and never had been for Akira. Morgana’s words rang hollow. Crow and Joker, Akechi and Akira, they were each other’s antithesis, that was how it was supposed to be. To give his life for his after everything would have been laughable.)

Or at least, that was what he remembered. When he came to, it was Christmas Eve and Shido had been taken down. Sae Nijima was talking about getting Akira to turn himself in across the street, and Akechi, with no memory of how he’d gotten there or how he’d even survived the cruise ship, had marched straight over and taken the metaphorical bullet for him a second time.

It was what he thought about all those nights later, after he’d sought out Akira and Maruki had taken Yoshizawa hostage. As he laid in bed, phone on his pillow at his side, he knew it was that which had tipped him off that something was wrong.

His version of sacrifice meant that he was destined to be lonely, forgotten, discarded. And yet, in turning himself into Sae, he’d found a sense of satisfaction, like finally, finally, he’d done something right.

He’d turned himself in not for his own sick sense of righteousness, but he’d done it for Akira—and there was no way that life would be so kind as to grant him the opportunity to save him. Not in a way that would save them both.

--

His phone was ringing again.

The ringtone was an annoyance, something he needed to change before it grated too badly on his nerves and he threw the entire thing at the wall. Akira’s name flashed up once more like a curse. The block button was nearby. A single tap of it, and he could open his laptop and stare at the Phan-site’s question for another twenty minutes instead of working.

He answered the call.

“I didn’t expect you to pick up,” came Akira’s voice, crystal clear on the other end.

“Yeah, well,” Akechi said. “I didn’t expect you to try calling again. You’re a fool, Joker. It’s quite tiring.”

No energy to it. He didn’t have much to inject in his voice anymore, not unless they were in the midst of fighting Shadows, anyway. That kind of mania he couldn’t hope to reclaim in his day-to-day. There wasn’t any point in it anyway.

He heard Morgana’s voice in the background, asking if Akira was talking to Akechi, asking after him like he was part of their ridiculous little team, like his well-being mattered. Akira’s voice broke away from the receiver for a moment as he answered the first question, and then came close instead of answering the second.

“Don’t call me that when we’re not on a mission,” Akira said. Akechi laughed humourlessly. “We’re not Joker and Crow when we’re here.”

“Would you prefer Kurusu-kun then? Or, perhaps Akira, seeing as we’re on such amicable terms now? Why, I’ll even let you refer to me as my given name, if that’s what you wish.”

“Akechi—” Akira cut himself off, and Akechi felt him wince down the line. “Call me whatever you want, as long as it isn’t Joker.”

“The same to you,” Akechi replied, drumming his fingers against the table. It felt so real beneath his touch. Or was it that he felt real against it? “Come now, Akira. You didn’t call me up to make small talk. Get to the point.”

A hesitant moment. How odd. Akira wasn’t the type to think twice. “Are you free tonight?”

He had a date with the Phan-site, but that wasn’t going all that well. Lots of staring on his end, and no answers for it when it asked him questions. His document on Maruki was a lost cause. “That depends on what you’re about to ask me.”

“Penguin Sniper. There’s a billiards table with our name on it.”

His offer sounded too good to be true. There was a moment when he wondered, maybe it is. Maruki was offering them the world on a silver platter. But no. It wasn’t perfect just yet. There were still flaws in Akira’s reality, still flaws in his own. Akira hadn’t called him up with billiards in mind. There was something going unspoken in this simple back and forth.

“Get to the point, Akira,” Akechi said, his name dripping from his mouth like poison. “We both know that you didn’t blow up my phone with notifications for a simple outing.”

“No, I didn’t,” Akira replied, so slow to speak. It reminded him a little of himself, selecting words for the best possible outcome, wearing a thousand different masks to hide his true self. “But what I want to discuss, it’s not something we should do over text. Or phone.”

Akechi should have left the number blocked. He should never have turned to Akira for help. He should have died in the halls of the cruise ship, lonely and forgotten.

Gritting his teeth, he said, “You just don’t know when to give up, do you?”

“I can be there in half an hour. What about you?”

Back to the wall, only this time, it was Akira instead of the Shadows. There was a certain species of delight to be had in this game of cat and mouse. He could escape. He could run. All it would take would be a single tap of a button. End the call. Move on.

“I’ll be there,” Akechi said. “Don’t make me regret this, Akira.”

--

 Tokyo felt distinctly unreal as he travelled through it. It was like he was passing through a bubble, everything distorted and swimmy, a film over Shibuya and the people within it. His head had felt much the same lately, his emotions filtered through that lens, Akira through that odd sheen.

The trains were bustling, yet not packed. Akechi tucked himself into the corner, arms crossed tight against his chest, and switched stations whenever needed. When the announcer’s voice rang out, telling the passengers that they’d arrived in Kichijoji, he got off and prayed he wouldn’t run into Akira until they’d both arrived at Penguin Sniper.

Fate was not so kind. As he headed up the steps and got his phone out to pass through the barriers, he saw a familiar head of black hair waiting on the other side, head dipped down towards his bag. No doubt speaking with Morgana. Of course the cat would be here, he never went more than three feet away from him.

Akechi considered turning around and just heading home. Akira lifted his head and locked eyes with him, and Akechi slammed his phone down harder than necessary on the barrier. There was a cut on his cheek, easily mistaken for a small nick, not quite healed even after all the spells his teammates had poured into him. Earlier, it had been a gash that had exposed the cheekbone.

The gate popped open with a ping.

Akira didn’t approach him. No, he kept his distance, but he didn’t look away. Akechi took his time approaching, arms crossed back against his chest, his teeth grinding together. He felt very much like a puppet on strings being marched to certain death, only death looked a lot like Akira Kurusu and his gleaming glasses.

“You actually came,” Akira said.

“I told you I’d be here.”

“We thought you might have just said that to get us off your back.” Akira led him out of the station. As soon as they were out in the night air, Morgana hopped out of the bag, stretching himself out. Akira said, “You’re heading off?”

“Yeah, just make sure you’re back before too late! And you,” Morgana steeled Akechi with those bright blue eyes of his, giving his tail an indignant shake. “You better not try anything. You hear me!”

“Your request has been duly noted.” Akechi said. He watched as the cat disappeared into the night. “Well, now we’re alone, you may as well say your piece. Though I don’t understand why I had to come all the way out here to hear it.”

“No, not yet.” Akira pushed his glasses up his nose and turned. “Penguin Sniper, like I said. I wasn’t joking about the billiards table.”

Akechi grimaced. Penguin Sniper was filled with tolerable memories, as was the majority of the joints here, but that made it all the worse. Beating Akira, being beaten by Akira, touches stolen here and there, a trading of drinks, a duel not quite to the death, an exchange of gloves—the last time they’d played nice before Akechi had betrayed them all, stormed into his interrogation room, and pressed the muzzle of a gun to Akira’s head.

Twisted by the thought of revenge, distorted by his hatred for his dear rival, Akechi had not regretted pulling that trigger. He hadn’t even hesitated. All that mattered was Shido’s downfall, and Akira’s blood was to paint the path that Akechi needed to take to get there.

What was one more death when Akechi’s hands were already so dirty? What was one more death when it was the only person Akechi had ever given a damn about other than Shido? It might have been hate, but hate was just a simple way to describe someone that appealed to your emotions in some form. Positive or not, Akira did just that.

Still, he followed Akira up the stairs to Penguin Sniper, and he didn’t fight back when Akira handed over the 800¥ fee to access the tables. In the end they stood at either end of the table, pool cues in hand, the balls all lined up perfectly, ready to be struck.

“Should I go first?” Akira said.

“Be my guest,” Akechi said. “I didn’t want to play anyway.”

Akira’s grip tightened on the cue. He leant over the table, the curve of his body a perfect silhouette, and Akechi hated himself a little more than Akira for thinking that.

A sharp strike against the ball. They struck one another and scattered across the table, a veritable destruction, and behind Akechi’s eyes, a memory flitted. Earlier that day, Shadows on every side, an ambush they’d been sloppy in the face of. Joker’s Wild Card failing him in the worst way possible, leaving him open to a weakness that he’d not accounted for when taking on that particular Persona. A strike of thunder sending him down like a house of cards in the wind.

“Something on your mind?” Akira said.

Akechi scowled. “Not in the slightest.”

“Same way you like sweet drinks, yeah?”

He could have snapped the pool cue in two. He restrained himself, barely. “If you want to talk about honesty, Akira, how about you start? Take off those glasses and look at me. No more masks, no more distractions. Me and you. Here. Now.”

Akira reached up and removed them. He was sharper without them, blazing, unmasked and brutal edged. His lips quirked upwards, the tiny cut pulling at the movement, and a single word came to mind. Trickster.

“I’m putting my cards on the table,” Akira said. “Your turn, Goro.”

Oh, how sick Akechi was, for his stomach to flip at his name on Akira’s lips. He leant over the table himself, picking the angle, striking the ball once more. Joker had gotten to his feet, swaying. The Shadow had swung its scythe and there wasn’t time to dodge it. Oracle screamed his name from her safe space within Al Azif, and Akechi, despite all his frenzy in a fight, couldn’t get there fast enough to stop it.

The ball hit the others. The Phantom Thieves lost themselves in the blood, panic running through their collective veins as the scythe struck more than once. Skull’s Persona rising above on its ship, Fox’s throwing ice while Queen and Mona’s tore through one healing spell after another. Fire blazed through the ice as Panther charged up, gunfire as Noir held off the ones fast approaching. Violet threw out spell after spell, bless magic crashing down through the Palace, and Akechi felt it sear his skin, felt Loki react.

Akira regarded the scattered balls. Akechi had downed a couple. “Your move, Akira.”

“Earlier,” Akira said. “What happened?”

It still hadn’t been enough. Surrounded as they were, even all those spells couldn’t get them the upper hand, and the one with the scythe was laughing, swinging its weapon like a toy. It was the kind of fight that Akechi lived for. It was the kind of fight Akechi would die for. Joker was on the floor, bleeding despite the magic that was being desperately thrown his way. He could see the flash of white at his cheek through all the red. His shirt was drenched with blood where it had gouged into his chest.

It wasn’t excitement. It wasn’t fun. Anger had flooded him, rage and fury and the desire to kill. That wasn’t unusual. His way of fighting scared the others, the way he took joy in spilling the blood of Shadows disturbed them, but in that moment, it had been different. It wasn’t his spells he called upon in that moment, even as Loki manifested above him.

“I got angry,” Akechi told him, putting the cue down.

His power had taken hundreds of lives, directly, indirectly. Never had it been used to save someone. His own ragged voice had screamed for Loki above the din of the Phantom Thieves’ panicked battle, and without a word, Loki changed his heart for him. Turning himself psychotic, it was a small price to pay. He tore through the scythe-wielding Shadow with a deranged cackle, throwing himself into the firing line of not only their enemies, but their allies also.

Fire and ice, lightning and wind, psychokinetics and nukes. All of it he took in his stride as he slashed and tore and cut, bladed edge erasing Shadows the second it touched them. For Joker? Loki laughed. Akechi laughed. What a joke. What a joke.

So lost in the rage, he took the blows like they were penance. They were not his friends, they were Joker’s friends. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt.

Violet screamed, “Crow!”

He ran into the bless spell before he realised what he’d done. The blow of light struck him to the core, making even Loki screech. The world blacked out as the force of it took all of his energy, shaking up his ribcage and his lungs. He went down in an instant, all of the rage swept out of him in one moment.

It only made sense. Life wasn’t kind. There was no way for him to save Joker.

“That was more than anger,” Akira said, stalking across the floor towards him. The billiards had been a ploy, Akechi realised, just a catalyst. “You’re still lying to me.”

“Not lying,” Akechi said. “Do you hear any unnecessary words? Am I talking you in circles, Akira?”

Akira grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. “You blocked my number, and yet here you are.”

Akechi had awoken in a safe room, sat against the wall with the Panther’s face peering curiously down at him. He looked up at her, watching her expression morph into shock. “You’re awake! Yeesh, you moron! Do you know what you did?”

He pressed a hand to his mask as he cackled. It was a low, broken sound. “Is he dead?” he asked.

“Do I look dead to you?”

Akechi looked up. Joker stood over him with his hands in his pockets, his mouth turned downwards, his gaze icy behind his mask. His cheek was still bleeding a fraction.

“You’re a fine looking ghost, Joker.”

Akira was a different creature in Joker’s skin. He moved like a cat, his emotions more pronounced. It wouldn’t have been incorrect to call the expression coating his face a type of fury with how his lips peeled back. “So are you. Why did you do that?”

For you, Akechi didn’t say. “Because I wanted to run wild.”

Akira said now, “I know that it was a lie, in the Palace.”

Nobody interrupted them. To the rest of Penguin Sniper, they may as well have not existed. Akira’s hands tightened in Akechi’s coat, their distorted reality theirs and theirs alone.

“Tell me something, Akira,” Akechi whispered. “What is it you truly wanted from the world? A companion who would play detective with you? Someone who would play hot-and-cold in this thing we call a friendship? Did you want someone who would give their life for you time and time again?”

“No—” Akira began.

“Someone who would deny it, because you don’t want to admit you’re that selfish?” Akechi grabbed Akira’s jacket in turn. “You have so many friends. So many talented, incredible friends. And yet here I am, back from the dead, not a memory of how I survived in sight.”

Akira, for once, had nothing to say, and Akechi, who was doubting his own memories, who was doubting his own feelings, who was doubting his own actions, knew he’d struck gold.

Wakaba Isshiki, Kunikazu Okumura, Makoto Nijima’s father. Was it any surprise he doubted his own existence too?

Reality pulsed and squirmed beneath them, a broken mirror of an existence, reflecting their cognition the way they wanted to see it. Akechi pulled Akira close, a brush of lips. Love and hate, two sides of the same coin, just like they were. It was what Akira had wanted all along. Maybe it had been what Akechi had wanted at some point, when he’d been real.

“I refuse to be a slave to a false world,” Akechi whispered in his ear. “I hope you feel the same, Akira.”

“I know,” Akira replied. “But, when all this is over, I just—you don’t have to leave. You can stay with us.”

Akechi laughed, genuine—or fake, depending on the perspective. Maruki really did have the right idea. Trap someone in despair and they’d do anything to escape. Trap them in their happiness, and they were putty to be played with, never wanting to leave.

“Tell me that again when we’re done,” Akechi said, picking up the pool cue. “Then we’ll see.”

[theliterarywolf]

So... Let's talk about Hetalia. Controversies, Specifically.

Tagging @apply-force-too-begin since they’re the one who was interested.

Hetalia was one of my first big fandoms outside of 'The Big Three' anime (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece) and outside of video games (mostly whatever wee babby weeaboo me could get on the Gamecube).

And, you know what? It's a dumb, silly anime about stereotypes, poking fun at the absurdities of History, and one's relationships with clashing cultures. It's dumb... But, remember, we all need our daily thirty minutes of dumb. And some of the characters are cute.

And, you know what? Most of the most engaging aspects of the fandom were those who used the initial shallow splash of history that the anime gave them to actually research and make engaging, well-written, culturally-sensitive content.

Of course, I'm not going to ignore how... Over-the-top some members of the fandom have been. We've seen how, whenever recent political conflict or natural disaster have occurred, we have to remind younger members of the Hetalia fandom to not cutsiefy it with the Hetalia characters. Examples that come to mind are: when the conflict between Russia and Ukraine was surging up, kids kept trying to draw art of 'Russia just wants his big sister back~!', and the last major earthquake that hit Japan that had people making fanart of the Japan character which, while some was tasteful and was meant to bring awareness and donations for Disaster Relief, not... all of it was...

Hell, that’s not even bringing into account the last time I went to Anime Expo (way back during Hetalia’s hayday), I was walking around and saw a bunch of Russia and Baltic State cosplayers being interviewed by the news and the one dressed up in a USSR uniform was holding up a Communist flag and shouting ‘Whoo! SOVIET TAKEOVER!!’

However, one thing that I have noticed, while researching for this write-up, was this:

Most of the controversies and pieces of fandom-wank that have surrounded Hetalia and its fandom... Aside from one instance... Are the results of the Western-fandom and Western-localization of the anime  via Funimation.

Aside from one... Most of the issues surrounding Hetalia are due to the West and not even the source media in of itself.

So, with that in mind, let's talk about the main controversies of both Hetalia and its fanbase.

Controversy 1 – The South Korea Controversy/Protests

As I recently answered a question about this, so I'll just pull that answer for this segment:

'To summarize it: there’s a Hetalia character meant to represent South Korea. As every Hetalia character has a gag related to them (America gorges himself on fast food and constantly proclaims himself to be the Hero, Italy is cowardly, Germany is constantly angry, China constantly builds Chinatowns wherever he goes and sells bootleg merchandise, etc), so did S. Korea.

His gag was calling all the other Asian countries ‘big brother’ as well as groping the chests of male characters (China and Japan mostly), proclaiming ‘these mountains belong to South Korea, da ze!’

Of course, people would draw pictures of S. Korea doing his thing but one day during a meeting between a bunch of South Korean politicians and representatives, someone brought out a piece of fanart that depicted S. Korea groping Japan’s chest with the latter looking embarrassed and what not.

They interpreted the character as being an offensive, lecherous stereotype that was somehow belittling S. Korea’s worth as a country.

There were a bunch of small protests until, finally, Himaruya Hidekazu (the creator of Hetalia) just decided to say “you know what? Fine! I’m not getting rid of the character but he’ll never appear in the anime adaptation, okay?!’

So… Yeah! Fun times…'

Magnitude of Controversy – MAJOR

Like... In what universe is 'this meme hurt my feewings, we need to take VALUABLE TIME DURING GOVERNMENT FORUMS to talk about it RATHER THAN OTHER PRESSING ISSUES' a good response? And the fact that people took to the streets to protest? Come on, guys! There's so much more to worry about in this world...

Controversy 2 – Emperor Heliogabalus and Himaruya's 'Transgender Erasure'

There was a section of time where Himaruya Hidekazu, rather than focusing on the nation characters of the series, made chapters and updates about certain historical figures. They were all done for laughs while interspersing various bits of trivia and facts about them.

One of these updates centered around the Roman emperor Heliogabalus (or 'Elagabalus'). And this is where certain portions of this hellsite got soooooo upset...

You see, Himaruya titled the update centered on Heliogabalus as 'The Emperor Who Tried to Live as a Woman... Even Though He Was Really a Guy'.

Almost immediately people were typing up callout posts about how 'transphobic' Himaruya was for the title and 'how dare he misgender my precious trans baby~!' or 'this just goes to show how ignorant Japanese people are to Western history' and so many more, all because Himaruya didn't use out-and-out female pronouns for Heliogabalus.

Now. Mm, two things!

One! This was during the time when Himaruya had an open blog where, not only did he post pictures and updates about where in the world he was traveling and what he was researching, but it also had an inbox that was open for people to send insight to him.

So, if people were really incensed by this, you would think that they would use such a means to let a creator know 'hey, this is kind of problematic; can you edit it to show this information', right?

Right?

NO ONE tried to inform Himaruya of their upset; they literally didn't want an answer, they just wanted to be upset!

But, here's the kicker: the guy that all of these people were stanning for? Emperor Heliogabalus?

WASN'T FUCKING TRANS!!

The real Heliogabalus was a sadistic little shit who was connivingly put on the throne by his mother via a bunch of espionage and assassinations... Who, as thanks, had his own mother murdered once he was emperor. Other wonderful exploits of this 'icon' that tumblr kids decided to stan was:

Getting politicians and countrymen drunk and then, while they were passed out, brought in lions to kill and eat them

Deciding 'fuck Jupiter, Helios is my husbando – We're all going to worship him now!'

Completely wrecking Rome's monetary system

Promising favors to his lovers (whom he called his 'husbands' despite not making anything official) that strictly contradicted favors to his other lovers

And just generally being a hot mess

So... why were tumblr children so insistent on him being a transgender woman?

You ready for this?

Okay.

Because he occaisionally dressed in women's clothing and called his male lovers his 'husbands'.

Yeah.

One of the earliest case of tumblr children trying to ruin someone's life because they didn't follow their headcanons.

Magnitude of Controversy – Honestly, this was just fandom-wank. But it was one of the earlier instances of fandom brats using serious terms (transphobia) to justify being upset at a creator not following their headcanons.

Controversy 3 – The Passover Photoshoot

…

…

I'm sorry, just...

Everytime I remember or have to go over this one, I have to stop and reflect; maybe grab a drink.

…

Okay.

So, pretty early into the Western reaches of the Hetalia fandom, a group of friends and Hetalia fans decided to meet up together at a mall for a cosplay photoshoot.

Okay. Cool. Fine.

They were all dressed up as their favorite characters from the series! Germany, Austria, Hungary, P-Prussia, Holy... Roman Empire...

Ahem. Okay. Cool. Fine.

So, they get to the mall and start taking pictures. But then someone in the group gets the amazing idea for everyone to do certain poses.

I... You know, why did I start this, I could have just not done thi--

Nazi salutes. You had a bunch of dumb kids dressed up as Germanic nations. Performing Nazi salutes and shouting 'Heil Hitler'.

Now, as bad as this was... you could have just drawn it out as shitty edgelord humor; we still have plenty of that going on today.

H-however. There were two factors that made this photoshoot 50 Shades of Tasteless.

Number one. This photoshoot took place during Passover.

And number two. The mall that this photoshoot took place at...

WAS JUST A HOP, SKIP, AND A JUMP FROM THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MUSEUM!!!

This is the one, THE ONE, instance where, anytime someone talks about 'lol, young Hetalia fans are so cringey', this is what pops into my head.

Those of us older members of the fandom can never fucking forget this. Yeah, the perpetrators were called out; yeah, they learned their lessons, yeah it opened up a conversation about appropriate behavior in fandom. But this one event will always remain as the big 'Ooh, baby, nooooo! What are you doing?!' moment in the fandom.

Even moreso than what the current batch of hatedum is about.

Magnitude of Controversy – Huge. The South Korea controversy was discussed on a governmental scale, but the Passover Photoshoot is what remains as the biggest mark on the fandom.

Controversy 4 - FUCKING FUNIMATION!!

Okay, I... 

This one is so infuriating because it’s the result of Funimation just not giving a DAMN.

So, Hetalia got popular enough to be localized! Yay... And it was going to be handled by Funimation. Yay... They do quality work... Sometimes.

*kicks the Black Butler dub into the sun*

So, they dubbed Hetalia. And, you know what? So many questionable decisions went into this fucking dub. 

You have Vic Mignogna! You! *clap* Have! *clap* Vic! *clap* Mignogna! You could have easily put him as one of the Axis characters or the Allied characters and you...

Don’t use him...

Until three seasons down the line...

And then you have him as Greece. 

A character who barely says anything.

... And this was WAY before the clusterfuck of KickVic, so they really had no excuse. 

Oh, also! For China, who is a main character, maybe we should have an actual voice-actor?

Pssh! Fuck that shit, let’s just have some random chick from accounting voice him. 

... They literally had some random-chick from accounting do an overly stereotypical Chinese accent and said ‘yeah, that’s fine; print!’

And she gave us such... wonderful line-reads as: during the Hetalia movie Paint It, White! --

“SUCK BALLS! I knew za fortune cookie today was bad ruck~!”

But as bad as the dub got sometimes (Oh God, I’m having war flashbacks of Russia...), the exchange from the dub that people constantly point to as ‘see! This show was antisemitic all along!’ were these: 

Exchange 1 - 

S. Italy/Romano - ‘Hey asshole, I have a surprise for you~!’

Germany - ‘What is it? Another Jew?’

And, you know what? As asinine and idiotic as that brief exchange was... 

IT WASN’T IN THE ORIGINAL MATERIAL!

Funimation, in their infinite wisdom, wrote that in and thought ‘yeah, that’s fine; print!’

So, there goes another issue of ‘problem that only existed because of the idiocy of a Western presence’.

Magnitude of Controversy - Well, people are still talking about it, despite it literally being because of Funimation’s laziness, so...

'Controversy' 5 – The Civil War fanart

So, this segment will be short because it doesn't even need to exist. But, you may have noticed an upsurge in people hating on the series again; even going so far as to raid Discord servers for fans of the series with gore.

Hell, I even scrolled past one person doing a 'call to arms' for people to spam any server that has to do with Hetalia as a big 'gotcha'.

And you wanna know where this fandom-wank started?

Someone on tumblr re-posted an old piece of... questionable chibi fanart of Confederate!America and Union!America. Union!America is hiding a slave woman behind him while shouting at Confederate!America to 'Pick your own damn cotton!'

(deep breath... okay)

And, while the art in of itself is... not great, the fact that it is an old piece of fanart and that someone posted it onto tumblr for the 'lol, look at this cringe' lolz, is what rallied some people to start shitting on fans of the show and raiding servers.

There also may have been some drama over on picrew by some teenage LGBT user lashing out at the whole 'stop spamming Picrew with gay shit' sentiment and then some edgelord over on this hellsite screencapping their game and talking about 'lol, of course it would be a cringey Hetalian to post some dumb shit like this; get off the site, queer' but, honestly, this last one, while being the reason why people are acting dumber than usual, is the most inconsequential.

Magnitude of the Controversy – It would be minimal at best, especially compared to the other ones in this write-up, but like I said, it does have some trickling into the current hatedumb.

So, yeah, here was my little write-up/mini-dive into the madness. You guys can let me know if you want more insight or if you have any questions, and I love you and buh-bye!

[brooklyndrinksandgoeshome]

It’s embarrassing, the last three written entries on here have mostly been about people passing away as if I’m surrounded by the all-encompassing grim reaper everyday at every turn. I mean, this is what happens when you write about the past and naturally the people who are no longer with us will get a bit of extra space because all we have from them now are memories, but for fuck sake, I’m not mister doom and gloom all the time. If anything, it seems as if I’m surrounded by a self-contained bubble of early 90s Japanese wrestling, 70′s power-pop, Radio Garden, this Oliver Sacks book that I’m hoping to finish before the end of the week and curling. No really, curling. Seriously, curling rules.

I haven’t written that much about music in the last several years mostly because of burnout and if I’m not careful, it’ll start to feel like a job and I’ll want to put it off until my non-existent deadline creeps up on me which I can push back to infinity without any consequence (hell, it’s taken me a week and a half to finish this pointless exercise anyway). Besides, critiquing music as a serious profession, I’ve come to realize as the years have past is, well, kind of stupid; like if you don’t have anything nice to say, just ignore it and all the bad music will all hopefully vanish, right?  

That being said, I do wonder why a lot of bands from yonder past never never got the credit or recognition they deserved. Usually from a DIY perspective, I’m quick to blame poor distribution deals from a company run out of their mom’s basement, or a local band who never played beyond the same 20 people at the same club for their entire existence, (this plagued almost every Detroit band from the early-80s until the late-90s) or just plain old self-destruction that still bites people back, whether if it’s drug addiction or a fear of failure/success. My personal favorite --and I can’t find it on the internet to save my life right now, was when a jilted ex destroyed all but a hundred copies of her boyfriend’s first and only EP of his band, thus making it an instant collector’s item with their tracks being discovered fairly recently on a Killed By Death bootleg.

I also think my own opinions on music have always a been a bit left of center as I get bored way too easily and I quickly turn into a crotchety old man whenever Pitchfork creams their jeans over another Garageband produced dance track that sounds as boring and milk toast as any song put together from laptop bloops and bleeps.* Feeling this old out of touch makes one resort to the jazz or country section of any used record store, or when anyone asks me what I listen to these days, I usually say “podcasts.” But something about the aforementioned 70s power-pop obsession has arrived after a brief yet expensive summer of Northern Soul collecting that got put on hold as I have a hard time paying more than $20 for a 45; yeah, this phase didn’t last very long. Before that, it was Sun Ra who has literally hundreds of releases under his always spotty discography and after awhile, it became overwhelming search through scores of, I’m sorry, no disrespect, bin fillers, to eventually find a reissued gem like Sleeping Beauty or Lanquidity. Before that, it was electronic, sci-fi synth soundtrack sounding 70s prog made by the guy who use to drum for The Shadows. Did I mention that I get bored way too easily?

Even by record nerd standards, I know I have some unpopular opinions on popular unpopular music: Big Star weren’t going to be next Beatles ever and they probably have five good songs top. As much as I love The Jam, Style Council have a handful of tracks that blow away anything else Paul Weller’s ever done (oh snap, fighting words). With a few exceptions, The Yellow Pills comps are wildly overrated with a lot of tracks sound more like a second rate Rick Springfield --even if it was the point for a band to be the next Rick Springfield. Also, it still bothers me that The Fastbacks, mostly ignored for their entire 22 year career, got more recognition when they opened for The Presidents of The United States of America when “Peaches” was in heavy rotation. Seriously, I’ll take Answer The Phone Dummy over any 90s Sub Pop release any day.

The Keys: I Don’t Wanna Cry

Produced by Joe Jackson and still managed to have only found a recent audience from the depths of obscurity thanks to a Youtube hero. Not bad, but probably too nice and squeaky clean as The Buzzcocks and Undertones already did this way better and louder. Still, the singer hits those high notes with ease and could have easily been a hit if it was written for, I don’t know, Elvis Costello or someone else a bit more angsier. 

The Letters: Nobody Loves Me

Again, way too wussy and self-hating even by pop-punk standards, but I still love this track as it’s bouncy pogo energy and raw production more than make up for the shitty lyrics. One and done, never heard from again until a 2002 CD reissue of their mostly unreleased discography, or is it a reunion record? I don’t know.

The Tours: Language School

Another one and done from the UK who got plenty of hype from John Peel, signed to Virgin and imploded within a year never to be heard from until Cherry Red reissued their unreleased album a few years ago which is now also going for a steep price on Discogs. Nice short, poppy number here that if anything, makes you realize how much (again) the Buzzcocks influenced a generation of UK bands in the late 70s-early 80s.

20/20: Remember The Lightning

I first remember hearing about these guys from the well meaning Radio Heartbeat Records who reissued a single that quickly went out print along with the rest of the labels discography --some moved on to form Captured Tracks who eventually went on to re-release all of Milk ‘n Cookies output on a (sorry) completely unnecessary 2xLP box set, huge picture book included. 20/20’s first album got lost in the shuffle of another busted label (notice a trend here) that got swallowed up by Epic Records, which is a shame because we could have had a punkier younger brother of the Knack.

De Cylinders: I Wanna Get Married

Spontaneously heard a live set of these guys on the always fantastic, very missed Cherry Blossom Clinic on WFMU and rushed to see their record release/only American show ever in front of a dozen others at a random Brooklyn bar. The wonderful Sing Sing Records reissued this single and naturally, there’s a way out of print CD discography compilation  that’s only available in Japan for like $40 bucks on Discogs. Uh, I have to find a job first.

Nasty Facts: Drive My Car

God, I love the internet. This gem would have never been discovered if it wasn’t for some Youtube hero who posted a vinyl rip of a bootleg as the original pressing is long gone --cheapest one I found on Discogs going for $70 and it’s tough being a cheapskate and a record collector at the same time. Anyway, punky rocky from New York with a singer who sounds like less gruff but equally badass Joan Jett; America’s answer to the Rezillo’s! Get on it, weirdo!

Ail Symudiad: Garej Paradwys

Probably never made it farther out than Cardiff because everything’s in Welsh, but they put out a surprising number of singles that were all pretty consistent throughout the 80s --I’m pretty sure this is their third one. Full of energy despite the weird guitar effect pedals used throughout the song and if you’re curious, they’re called Second Movement and according to Google Translate, this songs about partying in their garage. I don’t know, I didn’t go farther than their “Paradise Garage” song title.

The Elevators: Your I’s Are Too Close Together

The least punky song on here, but it did make me laugh out loud the first time I heard it. I mean, of all the reasons why he won’t go out with her, and he lists everyone one on here, her facial structure was the final straw. Probably a wee mean spirited, but the lyrics go perfect with the chorus, high notes on the lead guitar and all.

The Records: Starry Eyes

Saving the best for last. There’s no excuse, this should have been a huge hit. I mean, it’s great that we have our own song to share with our closest friends --for example, a heartbreaker of an ex or whatever it was you want to call it when we had an on and off again thing in 2012 introduced me to this and well, all it did was prolong some coulda-woulda-shoulda feelings that lasted a bit longer than it should have. Anyway, this song’s a power-pop masterpiece that, unintentionally or not, sounds like an unreleased Big Star track and it makes me angry that these guys got swept under the rug for whatever reason.

I’m tired and I’ve run out of adjectives, just like how I use to back when I (barely) made a living writing about music, no benefits, no thesaurus. Will try to write more about something like Atsushi Onita or how much I love The Great British Bake Off or something. 

*Nothing made me feel more out of touch with underground/contemporary music when I had a hard time understanding what the big deal was with The Fiery Furnaces, but when I couldn’t get away from Animal Collective, that’s when I get up and settled into a WFMU k-hole. I can tell you the exact moment sometime around the end of 2007, on the 7 train heading into Long Island City for work, reading The Metro --I’m a sucker for free daily newspapers no matter how badly written, and came across their best album of the year list with Strawberry Jam being number four or something. “This album rules” the brief review started and once again, I just didn’t get it. I don’t always take part in any schadenfreude, but I’m glad significantly less people give a shit about them these days.   

[sending-the-message]

The Unicorn by Ilunibi

There’s little else in this great big world that can make a little girl in the ‘90s more excited than goddamn stickers. Glittery Lisa Frank nonsense by the roll, bought in needlessly pricey gift sets that peppered the caps of the pink aisles, princesses and My Little Ponies; hell, I used to get excited about the stickers that came on the fruit my mom brought home, or the foil stars my kindergarten teacher stuck to my spelling tests. I was a goddamn ferocious sticker collecting machine, and nothing made me or my friends more needlessly excited than badly printed cartoon characters on shitty adhesive paper.

Nothing.

In fact, the pecking order of my childhood group of friends was usually decided by who had the largest, most unique, most vibrant collection on the whole block, in the same way that some of the boys used their trading cards. She who had the newest set of rainbow dalmatians and sparkling pink horses was essentially the alpha female, and the more glitter and holographic film we had to show off, the better. We’d pile together in our living rooms with shoe boxes of treasures and try in vain to compete with the reigning champion in the neighborhood: my cousin, Rebecca.

Rebecca was different than the rest of us. She wasn’t a resident of that impoverished corner of town, but she was a frequent visitor. My aunt and uncle had barreled their way out of the slums through a combination of hard work and luck (which they’d never admit to), so Rebecca had a lot more at her disposal than a bunch of first and second graders who scrounged together their allowance to buy a couple of sheets of stickers from the drug store. No, she was the cool, older kid with literal boxes of untouched sheets and rolls of Disney characters and multicolored unicorns and cute puppies and fuzzy kittens. And, while she wasn’t in any way mean or unkind to us, she was an absolute scrooge with her collection. I suppose I would be too if the situation were reversed.

We could marvel at her recent acquisitions, but we couldn’t actually touch. Trading with her was like talking to a brick wall, because she was more there to gloat than to take part in our mad scramble. Occasionally, if the wind blew in exactly the right way and the sun was aligned properly with the planets, she’d bestow upon us a gift from her hoard, though I could never peg whether it was goodwill or showing off. It doesn’t matter. She gave me a rainbow shark for my birthday and I still have it stuck in my drawer of sentimental junk.

Additionally, she was very particular about her stickers. I can’t think of time when, at the end of our sessions, she didn’t comb the entire room just to make sure that everything was in its place. I’m not sure how an eight-year-old girl manages to memorize exactly how many sheets of identical Casey and Caymus stickers she has, but it never failed that she would always notice if something was missing. Sometimes, things got mixed up and we’d have to sort through our own piles to find the errant stickers, and sometimes we’d spend half an hour looking under furniture until we found where it fluttered to. She was anal about it.

Which is why it shocked me when she left for the day and I discovered she’d forgotten one.

It was a regular day of our swap meeting, sitting beneath the picture window of my mom’s living room, the only anomaly being that Rebecca seemed more than a little under the weather. The other girls who could make it wrapped up early because their moms needed them home from lunch, but Rebecca lingered until well into the evening until her parents finally picked her up. She counted out her sheets, we spent way too long looking for a missing dragon she’d got from a fifty cent machine, and once she was satisfied with her inventory, she packed up everything and left.

Only, as soon as she was out the door, I noticed something sitting where she had just been. It was on white wax paper and was the size of a Skittle, but it was a fluorescent yellow that caught my eye immediately. I dove on it out of curiosity and a weird sense of first-grade desperation. I didn’t care that, technically, it was stealing. I just cared that Rebecca had somehow missed one of her treasured stickers--probably because she was too sick to notice or care--and I could add it to my own collection.

It wasn’t anything impressive: a yellow circle with the tiny, awkward silhouette of a unicorn on it. In any other situation, I’d think it was the dullest thing I could ever cram into my pile, but it was Rebecca’s. That made it special.

As I shuffled it into my shoe box of wonders, I justified it to myself by repeating the mantra that, if it meant that much to her, she would have noticed it was gone regardless of how ill she felt. Maybe it wasn’t even her who dropped it. Maybe it was Cathy or Ashley or a girl from a previous get-together, and I know all of my friends wouldn’t mind if I kept something as insignificant as a teeny, tiny, pinkie-nail sized sticker with a poorly drawn unicorn on it. If they did bring it up, I’d just give them one of my gold stars or weird, bug-eyed smileys from the doctor’s office. In my mind, it’d balance itself out.

Predictably, after half an hour of gloating to my stuffed animals, I did what any kid would: I completely forgot about it. That unicorn sticker was lost in the fog of dressing up a Beanie Baby in doll clothes so he could have a lovely night out at Pride Rock with his girlfriend, bootleg Hello Kitty. By the time my mom forced me to take a bath and ordered me into bed, the unicorn sticker was barely a blip on the radar, at least until Rebecca finally called me out on my theft.

Or, normally that’s how it would go, except for the fact that I barely could sleep that night. I was plagued with nightmare after nightmare, waking up to stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, feeling like something was glaring at me. I’d always doze off again, but the dreams would go on like a sick, twisted clip show: finding Rebecca eating my neighborhood friends alive in the kitchen, watching my dog get slowly crushed by a car, drowning in the river beside my house. And it just went on and on.

And on. And on.

For days.

To say my mother was concerned by my night terrors was an understatement, but less of one than to say I was scared when I realized she would react to smells and glimpses of something dark that seemed to ooze around in our peripheral vision. You see, as the days marched on, the nightmares seemed to persist in small, strange ways once I woke up. I’d catch a whiff of vinegar and sulfur out of nowhere and watch, horrified, as my mother’s nostrils would flare and her brows would furrow in confusion. I’d see strange shadows slink around the wall, always bolting out of sight if I looked to them and, eventually, I’d watch my mom whip her head around to seek out the culprit, too.

It took almost a week for me to put two and two together, my house gradually becoming more and more unwelcoming and my sleep becoming less and less restful. I probably would have never figured it out if I hadn’t knocked over my box of stickers while staggering tiredly across my room. Amidst tears of frustration and kid-friendly curses that wouldn’t get me grounded, I started putting everything back into place and stumbled across that goddamned unicorn.

It was just as boring as I remembered it, lemon yellow with a awkward silhouette like some kind of girly Batman logo. I stared at it, it stared back, and then I got a whiff of something sour that was so strong that my eyes watered. I blinked and looked down, only to see a blank yellow circle staring back from my palm.

I screamed. I was too young to really register how crazy it sounded and too trusting in the idea that my mom would believe me, and she opted to chalk it up to sleep deprivation. She practically manhandled me to force a Benadryl down my throat, telling me it was for my own good, that I needed a nap, that she’d find a way to get me to the doctor within the next couple of days.

I fought valiantly, but was out like a light within a few minutes.

And I awoke in a nightmare, huddled in my bed, the floor stretching for miles and miles and the walls climbing up to the stratosphere. The only source of light was an ethereal ball of what looked like fire but, somehow, less substantial. It ebbed and flowed and glowed and the shadows seemed to dance with its erratic undulations, twisting and squirming like snakes and monsters. Some of them seemed to have faces, but they burned away in the light.

Fire or no, it was cold. I huddled beneath my blanket, breath creating clouds in the air as I stared, transfixed, at this strange ball of energy. Something dark began to grow inside of it, a shadow that wouldn’t melt, and as it expanded, the orange light grew brighter and more golden, almost radiant. I squeaked and tried to run as I saw four spindly legs, a long and crooked neck, and a jagged horn, but my body was paralyzed when it let out a horrifying scream.

Have you ever heard a horse when it’s angry? It’s petrifying. Terrifying enough, actually, that it was the basis for a dinosaur roar in many films. Loud enough that it makes your ears pop and your head throb. I clapped my hands over my ears and felt blood pool in my palms as it grew louder and louder and louder and louder. I screamed back and it drowned me out, one voice becoming two becoming three.

Though there was only one solitary creature standing in front of me, one twisted and deranged unicorn that jittered unnaturally and bent at weird angles, its voice came from everywhere. In its screams, I began to hear whispers, then words.

Threats.

Threats spoken in languages a six-year-old shouldn’t know, yet somehow I understood. Threats of what would become of me and my family, and lists of everything it knew I cared about. It detailed what it would do to everyone from my favorite toy to my family dog to my best friend to my long-dead grandmother who it shrieked, triumphantly, it could reach even though I would never see her again. I saw flashes of white walls and cups of medicine and a woman, with hair and eyes and skin like me, hanging listlessly from a pipe by her bedsheets with a toppled chair beneath her feet.

“This is what happens,” it told me. “This is what will happen. This is what I am. I am your worst nightmare.”

The screaming only stopped when I felt a horrible pain. I awoke on the floor in my room--my real room--with my mother at the bedroom door, pale-faced and hoarse. My face was sticky and warm, my left eye wouldn’t open. As I tried to push myself up, my mom screeched in a way that would have put the unicorn to shame.

She got me to the doctor that day.

The official story was that I’d fallen out of bed, and maybe I had. Cracked my head on the nightstand and nearly gouged my eye out, but caught my brow instead. They gave me a little clamp because it was too swollen for stitches and, as per usual, a sticker to help me feel better. I stared at it on the ride home, knowing what it was that I had to do.

When the weekend rolled around and we had our little trading party, Rebecca came to gloat, as always. The neighborhood girls clamored around her most recent additions, like a whole new set of glow-in-the-dark aliens and a few sheets of Disney heroines. They ooh-ed and aah-ed and thankfully paid no attention to my bruised and battered face as I sat there, fist clenched around that fucking unicorn as I struggled to force a smile. I couldn’t help but notice how much more alive and refreshed and energized Rebecca was as she flittered around, grinning and happy.

Not like she was when she made me scour the living room for that goddamn dragon sticker the day I found the unicorn.

She had done it on purpose, hadn’t she? She’d left that thing in my house trying to get away from it and look what it had done. Anger was my fuel as I waited for her to turn her back, grabbed a box of her stickers, and chucked the unicorn in. I shook it for good measure, so the tiny thing would settle somewhere in the bottom where she would probably miss it.

And she did. Somehow, despite every odd against me, she missed it. When she left for the evening, she only did a quick check for anything that could have fallen, packed her boxes under her arm, and left with a cheerful wave. I couldn’t even feel remorse as I watched her go; in my mind, it was justified. In my mind, I was playing tit-for-tat. If she was willing to throw her little cousin under the bus, then maybe little cousin had every right to dish it right back at her.

I slept very soundly that night, and the night after that, and the night after that. A miracle, my mother called it, though I knew the truth. I still know the truth.

And I think Rebecca does, too.

I visit her sometimes, out at the ward. She’s not very responsive and more than a little prone to falling asleep mid-visit, but sometimes when she looks at me, there’s a glint of hate and fear and disgust that I can catch in her eye, and envy and spite hidden deep in her voice. It’s like she wants to tell me that I should be in her place, that it should have been me whose childhood was robbed from her.

She wants to tell me, but she can’t. She won’t. She’ll never admit what she did, because she wants me to feel like she is the victim in all of this, that she never once tried to sacrifice me to whatever the fuck that unicorn really is. She doesn’t want to admit that I won.

Or maybe, just maybe, she’s guilty. She knows what she did and I’m a constant reminder of it, the only family member who ever visits and the only one who stays to talk. Maybe she hates me because I remind her of what a monster she is, perhaps even worse than the unicorn ever could be.

And maybe? Maybe that’s the worst nightmare of all.

[amorremanet]

in which still no one asked for this, but it made me feel a little better about how i have a shitty day ahead of me, and pete got to go second because i have blatant authorial favoritism for him but at least i admit it?

their blog url: itwasafineaffair

Pete would tell you how many different pretentious, increasingly ridiculous theatre kid URLs he considered before finally, “going back to basics” and settling on lyrics from Cabaret’s, “Mein Herr,” but then he’d probably have to kill you because it’s a very large, embarrassing number.

That said, he still has the URL ghostsonatas saved in case he ever gets bored of Sally Bowles and decides to break out the August Strindberg.

Also, here’s the Liza Minelli version of, “Mein Herr.” Don’t ask Pete who his favorite Sally Bowles is unless you’re willing to clear your schedule for the entire afternoon because he has a lot of Opinions about that question.

their blog title: “yes, princess, i am immensely happy. thank you.”

which really only makes sense when you see Sebastian’s blog title.

Pete’s blog title used to make sense, because it kept the “Mein Herr” theme: “i’ve always said that i was a rover.” At one point, it was, “du sollst mich nicht mehr sehen, mein herr” because he’d just gotten dumped and was being emotional about it all over his blog title to restrain himself from actually being a shit to his ex.

But then his Princess finally got on tumblr, so Pete matched his blog title to Seb’s.

He would probably try to insist on matching icons, too, but Seb doesn’t see the point and he only got a non-default icon when he left Pete alone with his laptop for a few minutes and Pete picked a selfie for him to use.

For his own part, Pete’s icon changes every couple months, and when the novel starts, Pete’s icon is bearded Chris Evans holding a puppy.

the original posts they make: puns. shitposts. snarky liveblogs of whatever happens to be on TV at the moment. complaining about his coworkers. sub-post complaining about Todd (who usually doesn’t get it). all but outright saying that he is complaining about Todd (who still usually doesn’t get it). “random brief observations or whatever happens to be on Pete’s mind right now.” pictures of Seb’s dogs and/or their sponsor’s cat. pictures of Seb and Margot (give or take a few others, but seriously, Pete isn’t that close to very many people, and he usually only features Todd’s face when he can’t get out of it).

the kind of posts they reblog: Pete’s sidebar will tell you, “this is a personal blog, which means that i post whatever the hell i want and you can react however you want, but i’ll still keep posting whatever i want because it is my personal blog.” But to get a better idea:

cute pictures from blogs with themes like, “butches cuddling kittens” and, “bears cuddling puppies” and so on.

theatre, generally, and especially musical theatre. there’s a lot of general appreciation and theatre kid blogging — I mean, he’s right there and ready to reblog those photos from the one production of Midsummer’s Night’s Dream where Puck and Oberon are really, really close, or photos from when Ben Whishaw played Dionysus in Bakkhai — but Pete also reblogs more serious criticism, theatre history, commentary on the social and political significance of theatre, and so on.

Sometimes, he gets in a Mood and will lecture you on the significance of musical theatre specifically, and if he’s especially Moody, he’ll break out his copy of DH Miller’s Place For Us: An Essay on the Broadway Musical and flap loudly at you about why musical theatre is really and truly a dyed in the wool LGBTQ art form and stop trying to heterosexualize musical theatre already, it’s gross.

(On any given day, there is like a 95% chance that he will be in this Mood because Todd said something ignorant about musical theatre being, “stereotypical” and didn’t really listen when Pete went, “No, stop talking, here is why you’re wrong, you dumb-ass hipster white boy fuck” at him, and Pete just has a lot of residual feelings to express.)

Seriously, in the novel’s timeline, the critical pushback of historians, cultural critics, et al. going, “Um, actually? There are some aspects of this that are troubling for these reasons and we should really be having a Discussion about this” at Lin Manuel Miranda and Hamilton hasn’t started to happen yet…… but when it does? Pete will be all over it. He will be so. excited.

He won’t even be anti-Hamilton as such (like, he enjoyed the bootleg he watched since he won’t be seeing it live because jesus shit, tickets are expensive, but he also wouldn’t actually ask Seb to please use his parents’ connections to somehow find them Hamilton tickets or anything, because ehhhh, that sounds like a lot of work for a payoff that wouldn’t be worth it). Pete just loves it when people take musical theatre seriously as an art form and talk about it like that. It makes him so happy, he could just start crying.

politics or current events, sometimes. there aren’t really very many discernible trends in what he reblogs or doesn’t, on that front, beyond, “well, gay things and LGBTQ stuff more generally make pretty regular appearances” and, “Pete has tags specifically for, ‘disgruntled filipinx blogging’ and, ‘disgruntled biracial blogging.’”

fashion photography and fashion stuff generally, though:

1. it’s mostly for reference in his theatre things. Like, he does sort of enjoy the fashion stuff itself, and he has definitely reblogged some fashion things because he didn’t care about the clothes or the photography but thought the male models were gorgeous…… but even though he doesn’t usually work in costume design, Pete finds fashion stuff productively inspiring;

and 2. this happens a loooot less after February 2014, because that was when he got back from rehab (which his Mama insisted on because it was what Sebastian and Todd both did, even though Pete had already done his homework about outpatient options that didn’t involve going to Middle Of Nowhere, Minnesota, and he liked those ideas a lot better…… but he needed his Mama’s help to pay for any option, and she went, “inpatient rehab first, it’s definitely going to be better for you” and she genuinely believed that, so Pete cooperated)

Which was a big deal wrt Pete’s periodic fashion-blogging because one of the most important things that Pete got out of rehab was the one-on-one session where one of his the therapists said, “Peter, has anyone ever suggested that you might have an eating disorder?”

—which started as a, “face-crack of the century, wait what, what in the shit even are you talking about, of course they haven’t because I don’t have one…… right?” moment and eventually shifted his whole view of everything around and made him go, “holy shit, this explains so much” — and a lot of his initial resistance came out of how he’d never crashed and burned quite so obviously as people tend to think of when they hear the phrase, “eating disorder,” but still. that made so much sense out of so many things for him.

It also made him look more closely at his periodic fashion-blogging and go, “Oh. Some of this is definitely an exercise in self-abuse for me. I should maybe do that less and, like. Keep a better eye on that. And…… okay, wow, what the fuck even is my life, I really, really wish Mama had let me do the outpatient thing instead because holy shit, if they’d suggested that, I could go cling at Bastian right now instead of having to process this on my own with a bunch of nosy other patients sticking their faces into my business, like shit I appreciate the concern from most of them but I want to be with my best friend right now.”

(Pete got his clinging later, when he got back. And he unwittingly made Seb kick one of his slips off the wagon, because he’d spent almost a week coasting by on his ability to fake sobriety while telling himself things like, “okay, if I just moderately abuse my substances of choice, everything will totally work out fine”… but then Pete came home with the, “So, the shrinks in rehab said I have an eating disorder, and it makes sense and all, and I’m fucking terrified” news and Seb went, “okay no, that’s not going to work, Pete needs me to be there for him more than I want to be intoxicated”)

music. there isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason to what he’ll reblog, when, or why, because Pete will listen to almost anything.

One anecdote is that he hadn’t really had much exposure to Nicki Minaj, outside of, “Super Bass” and her verse in, “Monster,” until he deliberately went looking for Nicki stuff on tumblr because Todd, in his perpetually obnoxious hipster-ness, was trying to avoid her entirely because she was, “undeniably talented, but too mainstream.”

So, Pete wanted to annoy Todd and give him a huge middle finger for that shit because on one hand, yeah, uh huh. Way to say that about a black woman artist while actually paying (Bastian’s parents’) money to buy the Glee soundtrack legally, as if that is somehow LESS mainstream than Nicki Minaj, are you SERIOUS.

Also, Todd? YOU OWN MULTIPLE ALBUMS BY MAROON 5. STOP TALKING ABOUT HOW “ANTI-MAINSTREAM” YOU THINK YOU ARE BECAUSE YOU WEAR FLANNEL AND BUDDY HOLLY GLASSES AND YOUR ALLEGED “FILMS” MAKE NO SENSE.

And on the other, oh my god, shut up, you obnoxious fucking hipster, everybody already fucking gets it: you want to be original and edgy and insightful and cool, and you overcompensate because, on some level, you KNOW that you are none of these things, and you are an insecure little white boy who can’t deal with how ~*mainstream*~ more than a handful of his interests actually are, now shut up shut up shut up shut upppppppp.

Clearly, the best way to make this point to Todd was to loudly, insistently support Nicki Minaj and put her on Todd’s dash whenever possible.

That didn’t exactly work out as well as Pete wanted it to because Todd singularly failed to get the point (or maybe he did but just committed himself to acting like he didn’t, Pete’s not sure).

But on the other hand, Pete actually listened to more of Nicki’s music than, “Super Bass” and her verse in, “Monster” while doing this, and that’s the story of how Pete came to fanboy Nicki Minaj.

Chris Evans. A lot of Chris Evans. Not quite, “more Chris Evans than your body has room for,” but say, like…… two steps down from a lethal dose of Chris Evans.

Not that Pete neglects the rest of the MCU, exactly, but he’s like 80% there for Chris Evans, 10% there for Anthony Mackie, 5% there for Sebastian Stan, 3% there for Mark Ruffalo, and 2% there for literally everything else. And it shows. Because he really blatantly favors Chris Evans.

These numbers will change somewhat when CACW actually happens in-character, because Chadwick Boseman. But Pete’s number one will still be Chris Evans.

Tangentially: Please do not ask Pete if he prefers CEvans shaven or bearded. Just don’t.

Don’t do it because his answer will be, “I prefer Chris Evans right here, right now, with his tongue in my mouth and his hand on my ass” and he will think this is clever every. single. fucking. time.

Don’t talk to him about Tom Hiddleston, either. But……… you should avoid doing this for very different reasons.

Like, without any external influence, Pete’s opinion of Tom Hiddleston would just be, “meh *shrugs* whatever, like I haven’t seen a million sad puppy-eyed weird-but-pretty edgelord white bad boys before. Like I don’t have a cute but troubled pretty white boy with big sad Bambi eyes for a best friend. Okay, he’s talented, but ugggggggh, I’m BORED”

—but see, Todd kind of has a Thing for Tom Hiddleston. Todd kind of loves Tom Hiddleston.

Which makes Pete determined to really not love Tom Hiddleston, literally just to annoy and spite Todd for, “having terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, boring as shit taste — my Princess excluded.”

So, uh. Don’t do that. (Trying to talk to him about RDJ isn’t advised against, but only because Pete will just ignore it and pretend he has no idea who that is.)

Oh, also, don’t expect Pete to care that the MCU and the XMCU are separate entities, or care that the canon of the XMCU can be a complete cluster-fuck, or give a fuck that all of the different Spiderman movies are not necessarily related to each other.

Don’t expect him to give a fuck about any of this because he thinks it’s way more entertaining to try and shove all of them into the same universe, just like you’d do with the actual comics.

Also, he has learned that he can get his cousin Emerson, Emerson’s weird nerd-bro friends, and Todd wound up really easily and make them do stupid things by feigning like he has no idea that Chris Evans and James McAvoy will not ever cross paths in a Marvel movie because of dumb copyright reasons, wondering why Hugh Jackman’s name isn’t on the cast list for Age of Ultron

and saying things like, “You know what would be the best possible thing for Thor: Ragnarok? At the midpoint, Sir Ian McKellan makes a grand entrance from behind some random curtains that weren’t there five minutes ago, purple cape billowing behind him, and Magneto punches Loki in the face. Boom, Ragnarok averted. They fill the rest of the movie’s runtime with Chris Evans taking me to dinner and a movie within a movie, it’d be totally meta, right? :D”

Yeah, Pete is also that person who would go to ComicCon in a “totally brilliant cosplay” as, “the World’s #1 S*tucky Shipper,” get super-method about his real-time LARPing as The World’s #1 S*tucky Shipper (but like, using actual method-acting, not, “Jared Leto sends giant health hazards to, harasses, and is otherwise horrible to his costars because lawl method” method-acting), and use it to satirize and take the piss out of both really OTT shippers and the people who act like shippers are Ruining Every Forever because they want to ship.

He’d also tell a nerd-bro that his favorite Gandalf quote is, “Do or do not, there is no try” but his second favorite Gandalf quote is, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one,” and point to a picture of Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore and identify him as Gandalf while identifying a picture of the Fourth Doctor as Dumbledore, all just to annoy the nerd-bro, then yawn and saunter away while the nerd-bro has an angry meltdown.

Someday, Pete is going to troll the wrong person (again) and it will get him into really deep shit (again) that he won’t be able to wriggle out of by being charming and witty (like he usually does when he gets himself into these situations), but his take on this is, “Hey, as long as I don’t unwittingly troll a super-villain, it’s not actually that bad. What is the worst thing that could possibly happen.”

(Seb would point of that that’s exactly what he said before getting shocked into three major heart attacks by another mutant, which in turn triggered his first transformation into a nine-foot-tall wolf-man? And that he has said it in many, many other situations that immediately went from Bad to Worse to Shitty to Excremental to “the motherfucking shit-pits that trailed down from the hill of Golgotha” because saying things like, “what’s the worst that could happen” and, “what could possibly go wrong” is seriously tempting fate to kick your ass — but he will also admit that Pete has better luck on this front than he does, and that Pete has better coping skills, and that Peter Paolo Matthew Arden just has his shit more together than Seb does in general, so he’s somewhat less likely to end up in Golgotha levels of shit from this.)

(But, please, Pete? He would really, really, really like it if you could please act like you care whether or not you get into a mountain of shit from tempting fate by trolling people so liberally, like. Please. Pretty please. He loves you so much and knows that he can’t protect you from the ups and downs of life itself, but you’ve already had so much bad shit happen to you that Seb wants to keep you safe from as much unnecessary bad shit as possible, and…… please? (⊙︿⊙) )

cat pictures. dog pictures. wolf pictures. guinea pig pictures. iguana pictures. giraffe pictures. if there is a cute animal out there, being cute, it has a place on Pete’s blog. especially if he can find an excuse to tag Seb in them and go, “it you” (which he mostly limits to cats and, after Seb trips and falls into mutant werewolf superpowers, wolves — but he’s also gone, “it you” on pictures of lizards, sharks, lions [specifically, the “do lions blep” post], giraffes sticking out their weird blue tongues, tapirs, and pugs wearing sunglasses shaped like flowers).

Pete watched a bit of Community because Seb seemed really into it, and he thought it was okay, not enough to really reblog it that much but okay — but he definitely reblogged a gifset of Troy going, “awww, I wanna lick it” over a puppy from “Cooperative Calligraphy,” specifically so he could tag Seb and go, “awww, Princess, it you.”

In fairness, Seb deserves that and totally agrees that he deserves it because sometimes, he needs a chaperone when he goes to the local ASPCA shelter, or he might well try to adopt all of the dogs. Which Pete finds adorable in theory, and really endearing from his Princess…… but also, Seb? You have six babies already. You would have seven if you hadn’t lost Chewie at the end of April, assuming that you still adopted Cat without losing Chewie. Cool it. Chill. You do not need more dogs right now.

Pete has also been known to go, “awww, Princess, it us” on photosets of cats and dogs cuddling with each other, and “it me” on pictures of pugs embracing wine mom culture

(the latter of which, in retrospect, he kind of regrets doing. Like, he more or less stands by it, but it made Seb get Worried about him and go, “Are you okay? Do you need to talk? Because you were just getting on my ass about not making self-deprecating jokes about sobriety because it worries you, but now it kinda looks like you’re doing the exact same thing, and I’m just?? Should I be concerned, Pete? Do you want to talk about something? Are you okay??? I love you, you’re important to me, I can talk if you want to” which was not what Pete intended at all.

Like, on one hand, he hates making his best friend worry about him because if you ask Pete, it’s only natural for them to worry about each other, but both of them also need to work on worrying about themselves a bit more effectively. Because precedent says that both of them sort of suck at it, probably especially when they think that they’re doing okay with it.

On the other, he hates making Seb worry because Pete is still working on getting used to the feeling of someone caring about you. Like, even with Seb, who’s done things for him like blow off an entire weekend of shit to get down to Yonkers from Poughkeepsie and come out to Pete’s undergrad after he’d had a really messy breakup that caused a wave of drama in his entire friend-group, because Pete went to a small liberal arts school full of theatre kids (even among people who weren’t in the theatre program), and the gossip mill was ridiculous, and everything was a fucking disaster…

…so, Seb lied to his prep school teachers about a vaguely defined, “family emergency,” lied to his grandparents about not having any classes on Friday for some contrived reason to get them to give him a ride to the Metro-North station in Poughkeepsie, booked it down to Yonkers, and spent a three-day weekend with Pete.

Eventually, his grandparents found out what was going on, because Seb called his Mom that afternoon to go, “Hey, jsyk, I’m in Bronxville with Pete earlier than we’d planned this weekend, I’m probably going to use the credit card in the City tonight, we’ll be safe and stuff, but his ex-boyfriend’s a jerk and it’s screwing things up with all his friends too and he’s really upset and he needed somebody to be there with him who’s not involved in any of it” — but by that point, he and Pete had already had their three-day weekend, so it was just kinda whatever.

But, yeah. Like, Seb’s done stuff like that for Pete since they first really started getting to know each other, but unfortunately, Pete’s father and older brother are people who exist. And some of Pete’s dickbag ex-boyfriends are also people who exist. And between all of them, Pete’s wound up having a hard time with the concept of people genuinely caring about him, and even with Seb, he can bristle and go, “No, stop, this doesn’t make sense, why are you doing this, ‘caring about me as a person thing’”

And on the dorsal fin, Pete doesn’t like making Seb worry about him too much because when he’s at his best, Sebastian is a loving, generous, selfless person who is an amazing friend and cares about people for their own benefit even if he isn’t their friend…

but this is not an ideal world, and under all of that, Seb also has a problem where he over-relies on other people for a sense of stability and a sense of who the Hell he even is (the TL;DR of why is, “untreated clinical depression and some of the longterm side-effects thereof”)

and when things go wrong for the people Seb loves, things can start going wrong for Seb himself in short order, because he worries about them, feels their pain a bit too intensely (but not outside the human average enough to make it mutant-level empathy), and generally turns the volume on his human disaster-ness up to eleven.

Like, in the past year-and-a-half, Seb’s had ten separate stumbles off the wagon, and four of them started in close proximity to Something Bad happening to someone he loves — e.g., his Dad had a routine arthroscopic surgery, which went well enough on its own, but Abe had a bad post-op reaction to the anesthesia, and Marceline told her other three kids to basically tell Seb enough to keep him in the loop, but don’t get specific because he’ll worry. Unfortunately, this left Seb with a lot of questions, which made him worry, which made him feel helpless and miserable and scared…

……and then he dropped off the radar for thirty-six hours and when Todd went to his place to check on him, he found Seb coming down from being strung out on Percocet. And, like, okay, on the plus? Seb hadn’t taken all of what he’d gotten his hands on and had flushed the rest before Todd had even gotten there…… but he’d still been really strung out, and he was less than entirely enjoyable to be around while coming down (like, Todd called Nick, Seb’s sponsor, for him, and Seb spent most of their call groaning when Todd said something that was true but that Seb didn’t like him saying)

……and Pete got to see this when Todd called him, going, “Hey, it’s cool if you can’t, since I know you, like, just got back from your Mom-mandated rehab visit a couple weeks ago, but…… uh. Seb hasn’t eaten lately because he got strung out and forgot about it, and I’m not allowed to use his kitchen because he likes it un-exploded, and I don’t want him to be alone, so, like? Can you maybe come over here and cook something? Or take his credit card and get take-out? Or if not, just say so and I’ll try calling Margot again, but…… pleeeeease?”

So, yeah, uh. Pete would really like to not be the cause for that sort of thing, because he doesn’t want to do that to his Princess — especially since you can sometimes get Seb to not totally lose his head about things, and in fairness, he is slowly getting better, but he’s also a stubborn jackass about calming down [which Pete can’t actually judge him for, since Pete is arguably even worse on the, “stubborn jackass” front sometimes, but still] — and also because it would really fuck Pete’s mental health up for Seb to go off the rails. Partly because Seb would be off the rails, and partly because Pete would feel guilty about it.

So, yeah. Long story short, Pete has a lot of feelings about why he regrets going, “it me” on the picture of the pug embracing wine mom culture.)

Golden Girls anything. He’s only even seen a few episodes of it, but he loves it anyway. He has often gone, “Princess, it us” on posts that featured both Blanche and Dorothy, but no one’s really sure if he’s Dorothy and Seb is Blanche, or if it’s the other way around. Pete isn’t even sure, but he’d probably tell you that it depends on the post.

In his defense, both he and Seb have responded to, “better late than [blank]” with the answer, “pregnant!” before, and generally, they both have decent claim to either role.

Seb personally feels like he’s probably more like Rose, but Pete refuses to let him be Rose. Todd is Rose. Todd has to be Rose because as much as Pete likes Betty White, he’s not actually that fond of Rose, and views her in much the same way that he views Todd: they’re kiiiiind of cute sometimes when they aren’t trying too hard and they bring something to the group that Pete would miss if it went away…… but they can also be really fucking nerve-grating, whoops.

Also, Seb isn’t allowed to be Blanche for her, “I looooove a tight man! A tight man with cast-iron pecs… thighs that could choke a bear… butt you could eat breakfast off of… hnnnnnnnnnngh” line

For one thing, Seb isn’t allowed to be Blanche for that line because he’s not discriminatory or anything with body type, but his favorite exes have all been at least a little bit chubby, so like… the exact opposite of a tight man.

For another thing, he can’t say the line right. He doesn’t suck at it or anything, but it’s just missing something. Probably conviction. Because Seb’s preference is not actually for a tight man and he’s putting less effort into the characterization than Pete is.

With anyone else, Seb would hold that he’s putting less effort into the characterization because it’s just supposed to be fun, but…… This is fun for Pete, so whatever. Do your Dramatic™ thing, Pete. Enjoy it.

the first person they followed: the lgbtlaughs blog

what kind of theme they’d have: light background, dark text, straightforward with easy navigation and space for a sidebar pic and links. Not too fancy, but clean and nice-looking.

what kind of text posts they make at 2am: “oh my god it is motherfucking tech week why are these idiots still calling LINE”