#handled seeing that like my bro i can see is clearly traumatized by just seeing him die well i now found out that my entire maternal family

[lesbianrobin]

omg i agree with all your reasons SO MUCH!!!! (different anon here) also i know this is for fun and whatever, people can ship what they want but like... robin is steve's bestie, his platonic soulmate, how is she crushing and dating his former girlfriend and the girl he LOVED okay fjdhfh WHERE'S THE BRO CODE!!!! that's why when i read steddie fic with side ron*ance i'm like 🥴🥴🥴

also it's so sad how little support i've seen for robin/vickie like i know we dont have a lot of content yet but they're cute!!!!! vickie is the bi nerdy girl robin likes!!!! and she'd fit right into their nerdy group dynamic and steve aproves and supports it!!!!!!

LITERALLYYYYY oh my god like straight up even if i thought robin and nancy had chemistry i don't think i would ship it because i just cannot see robin doing that to her BEST FRIEND like what kind of evil demon would date the girl that broke their bestie's heart. i don't even mean that in the sense of blaming nancy like they both made mistakes bc they were in an impossible situation for two traumatized teenagers to handle but i just mean like. clearly that relationship meant a lot to him and i cannot see robin being like hmmmm anyway! (makes out w nancy).

also YES i like vickie so far and i'm actually working on a couple of different robin/vickie fics rn, they've just been put on the back burner because i want to finish young strangers and i'm still in the thick of finals dkcndncnc but HOPEFULLY i will have some content to add to the pot soonish

[jalebi-likes]

Channa Mereya Liveblog | E4: Does Nobody Have a Clue That Ambar is an A**

Dedicated to the liveblog queen @tellywoodtrash​ and this show’s PR queen @aye-masakalii​

Unfortunately I won’t be able to give many pictures cause I want to go through these episodes as quickly as I can to watch the show live! It’s historic in my tv watching history btw!

Episode 4: Does Nobody Have a Clue That Ambar is an A**

Adi and Ambar playing bitter baap beta. Oh what a fun family breakfast time.

Daarji I still have a question that how did you not know you’re raising an arse for a son. 

Clearly, Daarji trying to be the glue for the household but that’s impossible considering the abusive son you have and the traumatized grandson you have.

Lol, dono baap bete ko ek hi paratha chahiye. I feel I would sneak in and grab the paratha myself - let them fight :)

Also Adi, did you not put any filling in that paratha?

Ok I’m laughing at Daarji saying for as long as I’m alive Adi isn’t going anywhere - cause Ambar had the look of “I’m gonna kill you now Dad”

Ooh Daarji has something up his sleeve - a party for Adi winning the truck competition. 

Daarji, how did you still not understand your son is a piece of shit. 

Ambar has a death wish - HOW DARE HE DESTROY THE FOOD AND THE LASSI AND CHAAS C’MON THERE ARE HUNGRY PEOPLE… AMBAR I WANT TO KILL YOU.

Also, Adi - that was a fake wall - I can’t take your wall punch seriously. 

Also, Armaan thanks for being a good friend and try to de-escalate the situation. And did Adi just pour some alcohol over his wound? I need medical advice here - how ok is that?

Woah… Adi in… self harm mode? Cause boy has really bad scars over his back! 

Finally Tayaji realizes he needed to guide his brother and ask important questions. Ok… every man in this house tends to be sane. Bro did you not have any idea your younger brother is an abusive piece of shit.

Ooh… seriously Ambar has some issues with his own son. Also it is interesting how his older brother never answers the question if he killed Gurkirat or not. 

Ok I love the older brother going that Ambar is problematic.

Ok… apart from Ginni clothes, location of her house, I want her hair too? *unlocking Arnav Asad Singh Rathore Khurana Khan*

Is Adi blind? Can he not see the vehicle is stuck! Exactly Ginni - can’t Adi see she is in need of help. 

Adi in a white shirt in rain, I approve.

Ooooohhhh the hair falls on his face! I love they’re both a bit confused. 

I like the banter  - there’s a tone of level headedness despite the bitter talk. 

Ooooohhhhhhhh they both recognized the tea was too sweet. And they recognized CINAMMON! Interesting how food is important for both of them, the awkwardness of finding that is the common factor between them.

It’s like me realizing the guy I kinda don’t like also loves Hindi films and tv and especially Iss Pyaar Ko... like... kya bolu ab? Also the hair on Adi’s face threw me back to Khushi’s hair on Arnav’s face and boy was he turned on MAX with that. 

Ok... back to CM.

ALSO YES A MAN GOING SORRY I DIDN’T SAY I DON’T TAKE SUGAR SO PLEASE MAKE ANOTHER TEA TO THE CHAI WALLA. YES THANK YOU FOR CREATING A NORMAL PERSON? 

Lol Ginni’s side comment of Adi being bitter due to lack of sugar is hilarious - in the sense of how she just snidely commented it, haha. 

Hahahahahah Ginni going on a rant as to how a person from their area leave a show midway - I feel it if you were rooting for your town boy.

ALSO YES GINNI HAS A QR CODE TO TRANSFER MONEY. EXACTLY! OUR GIRL IS EDUCATED! SHE UNDERSTANDS TECHNOLOGY AND THE WORLD! CAUSE SHE HANDLES FINANCE AND PAYMENTS! YES YES YES AND HER GIVING HIM THE ADVICE TO HELP A PERSON IF THEY’RE STUCK INSTEAD OF JUST SENDING TAANA.

I’m wondering how deprived I am of normal people represented in TV that I’m happy with a hero showing basic etiquettes and a heroine having a working knowledge of tech.

I don’t get the “Tere rukh seeeee” channa mereya streaming through as Adi does help the vehicle out of the pothole on his way out.

OH SHIT… he accidentally spilt mud on her face!!! (Accidentally)

Ugh, tayiji excited to make a financial arrangement out of her daughter’s marriage is hilarious. 

Omg tayiji asking others to ask Ambar about Adi is hilarious. 

Poor Adi attending the party only for Daarji sake. 

Ugh, Ambar praising Adi’s best friend to the public to insult Aditya is disgusting. Also, Armaan is a brilliant friend to Adi.

Ugh, Ambar reminds me of Ram Kapoor from SOTY where he praised Sid ka character in front of Varun. 

Ok I love the maturity of Adi to see the pettiness and immaturity in his father. 

Lol, Daarji took the party in his own hands and gave Adi a grand welcome. OMG DID DAARJI JUST HAND THE REIGNS OF THE HOTEL EMPIRE TO ADI??? YAY. 

Omg did Ambar just place Adi as an intern in the hotel - good job Daarji insinuated that Adi will be LEADING the enterprise. 

Haha chess match going on between the three generations. Meanwhile poor Tayiji, her hubby and she ain’t getting any reign of the property. Lolz. 

Thoughts: WHEN EVERY PERSON IN THIS FAMILY IS SANE EXCEPT AMBAR... HOW DID YOU PEEPS NOT FIGURE IT OUT? Not putting the onus of an abusive person to their family - but like... yaar yeh aise kaise nikla? I like the level headedness of the show. I think that’s what the USP is. They just know when to pullback and give a touch of gravity to the characters. 

The end :)

- Jalebi

[sheerioswifties]

.

[daisugababy]

i'm not the same anon who sent you all those asks just want to make that clear before i say what i have to say. i read your responses to these asks and i'm sorry but i have to call you out on what i perceive as hypocrisy. i don't know that you remember that or if it was someone else with a similar url to yours but either way you co-signed the idea that nico was "flirting" with josh, the patient he lost and at the time nico and levi were going strong and committed to one another

Bro, I literally don't know what you're talking about?? In what part of fandom have you been chillin? i asked @schmico-ing @glassesandkim and @pb-nj and none of them have encountered this kind of discourse/idea either. I have never heard about Nico flirting with Josh??? A patient??? While his boyfriend is right next to them, complaining about Nico possibly leaving for that new job?? When would Nico have flirted with Josh? I'm genuinely so confused my dude. Where did you read that? On tumblr dot com? No hate towards you, I am genuinely asking.

i don't know that you remember that or if it was someone else with a similar url to yours but either way you co-signed the idea that nico was "flirting" with josh

i'm pretty sure i didn't co-sign shit. i even checked an di did not entertain once the thought of a josh/nico flirting situation. fandom clown @glassesandkim said they had chemistry, but i'm pretty sure she didn't say that they were actually flirting with each other right in front of Levi, Bailey and Josh's grandpa. That would be really fucking weird.

i remember this clearly happening in the schmico fandom because everyone was trying to justify nico's actions by saying he was grieving

Yes, he was grieving. Because he fucking killed a 21 year old kid due to making a mistake during surgery. There's a difference between losing sb you (barely) know aside from work and making a mistake that kills someone. Nico. killed. someone. He's the reason this 21 old is dead. That shit is traumatizing. Everybody handles trauma differently.

so yeah i'm sorry but it comes across a bit hypocritical to get up in arms about levi entertaining the idea of another guy whenever he and nico are officially broken up and only hooking up

It was pretty clear that they were not broken up anymore, since Nico asked 'so did we break up or...?' While, infuriatingly, we didn't see them get back together onscreen, it is implied that they were back to being a couple. (This is also one of the main issues with Schmico. A lot of things are just implied to have happened through side comments. It makes it more difficult to follow their barely there storyline.)

and to finish off my thoughts on all this levi and nico were not only broken up but levi had been broken up with specifically because nico didn't want to open up, didn't even wanna talk at all

Nico told Levi he couldn't talk about this issue, but Levi kept on pressuring him. This is not the first time that Levi did so, so Nico will open up. Levi clearly did not respect Nico's boundaries and didn't give him the time to process, because he made Nico's trauma about himself. Repeatedly.

this wasn't a mutual split. so i can understand having a bit of emotional whiplash from going to being dumped to fuck buddies to in love and let's move in together.

I get what you mean, but again, Grey's relies heavily on implications when it comes to Schmico. And from them sleeping together (actual sleeping) and comforting each other (the on-call room scene + hand holding in public), it was kinda implied that they were just back together. But tbh I was also still confused until Nico said his 'did we break up or...' line.

i just don't understand why it's ok for nico to run from levi/push him away, last out at him whenever he is hurting/confused/going through it but levi has one second of hesitation, of wondering what it might be like to have an uncomplicated thing with a guy and we're ready to crucify him

Again, Levi kept pestering Nico about opening up. He acted like Nico not being ready to talk about his problems/trauma was a direct attack on him. This wasn't about Nico not trusting him, but Nico just not being to talk about it in general. If you can't respect your partner not wanting to talk about things that don't even involve you personally, then maybe you're not mature enough to be in a relationship. There's always a time and a place to talk about deeply traumatizing things, but I assure you, work is not that place.

My main issue here is just that Nico has always been so, so supportive of Levi. He gave him pep talks, hyped him up, stood by his side whenever Levi needed him, because he knew how to support him. Levi tried to comfort Nico the way he would've wanted to be comforted. But Levi never knew how to do that for Nico and he never asked.

I'm not crucifying Levi, I'm just annoyed, because relationship wise, from what we've seen, Levi is pretty selfish. He barely made any effort to learn how to be there for Nico, it has always been the other way around, always Nico adjusting to Levi's needs.

And yet, Nico always ends up as the bad guy... Hmmm... Very strange.

[dakotafinely]

Turts and april with a s/o who has deadpool powers/ healing factor please?

FASCINATING!!

Okay, okay, hold on. DeadPools powers are like, regenerative right? Sort like Warren Stone’s but cool. So like, even if there’s a molecule of him left he’ll still regenerate? I’m not sure how his powers work but. I’m gonna assume it works like that.

(Don’t worry we’re not going that far, just wanna traumatize my bois a lil’ bit)

(Gosh this gets really long)

Raph:

After months of persisting, he finally gave in and let you go with him on a mission

And so far so good, you listened and stuck with him like you’d promised

Then came actually having to fight the Foot Clan

Not that you can’t fight, it’s just- well you know, a fight against literal paper ninja’s

You had fought off at least five of them when one finally got the better of you, sneaking up from behind just in enough time that

Slice

Raph practically fainted at the sound of your scream

Looking back in horror to see you, cowering on the floor with an arm twitching on the floor as you gripped the bleeding shoulder

It was a blind rage from there, he saw nothing but target’s of a rage he hadn’t felt in years

When it was finally over, Foot Brute and Lieutenant barely making it out before Raph could catch them, he made his way over to you in a panic

The adrenaline fading into fear as the others crowded around you, he gently shoved them to make room for him to be face to face with you

Where you smiled at him, that comforting smile you give him whenever you know he’s feeling overwhelmed, it makes him feel even more guilty as he should be the one trying to comfort you

He was apologizing, regretting having let you go, you hushed him

“Raph, baby, chill, my arm’ll be back in like, a week tops.”

Annnnnnnnnnnd, he fainted for real this time

Donnie:

You promised you wouldn’t touch any of the tempting big red buttons

You swore of it

But... big red buttons. Big Red Buttons I say!

Unfortunately for you, you touched the most dangerous button first

One that shot a circular saw at the unexpected victims hand, cutting it off

Donnie ran dropped the coffee mugs in his hands and bolted out of the room as he heard your shriek 

Now, you’d told him before any of this about your powers, hence why you were in his lab in the first place. He wanted to take a study of it and you were willing to it because aye, why not?

However, as he saw you bent over, blood dripping between your fingers and onto the now severed hand on the floor. His mind did not bring up your regenerative powers

“Oh Mi Gosh!! I Told You Not To Press The Buttons!” He shouted, not in anger, but in panic, rushing over to you as he scrambled to find his first aid kit. Which, despite always putting it in the same place, he’d forgotten where it was stashed to begin with.

“Why do you have a button to saw off peoples hands???“ You retorted with gasp of pain. Watching him scramble to open the first aid kit. Trying to bandage you up with shaky hands

As the pain eased, you began to realize more and more of your boyfriends silent panic. The shaky hands, the slow exhales of air in order to slow his heart rate. And the tiny tears that were on the brink of breaking through to his eyes

“Hey... hey,” you say making him meet eyes with you “relax, it’ll be back in a week. I know your worried about only having one hand for shell scritches.” You say with smile, trying to make him laugh.

A scoff and an eye roll is what you get, but a smile nonetheless eases onto his face.

“Yes, that’s clearly what I’m worried about right now.” He retorts

“I know, I know, your always so selfish. Guess that’s why I love you Dee.”

Leo:

To be fair, you totally thought you could make that trick flip

Not your fault that you fell off the skateboard and scraped your face against the cement

Leo watched your body roll across the floor in slow motion, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just seen

Mostly because he couldn’t

You were usually the one teaching him tricks that watching you fail one so dangerous made his body tense

He finally snapped back to current time as he heard you groan, curling up as you gripped your face

Leo turning pale as he saw one part of your face on the complete opposite side of the ramp. Blood trailing to you it made him want to gag a bit at the sight.

He rushed to as you sat up, still gripping the left side of your face with a hiss

“Oh mi gosh, are you okay!?” He asked

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” you saw, pulling your hands away to see if you had any blood “wow, that’s a lot,” you comment as you stare at your drenched hands, looking up

Leo’s color was gone, completely, as he stared at your freshly skinned face, blood oozing down onto your chin as he could see in HD the definition of you face muscles

“...Leo? Leo!”

He woke up, slowly sitting up in before the night before hit him like a brick wall.

“(Y/n)? (Y/n)!” Leo called out, bolting off his bed (unsure of how he got there now that he thought about it)

To find you, in the kitchen, talking to Dee. Half your face bandaged as you held a nice cup of OJ

“So, yeah, at least, that’s what I’ve noticed about my regeneration,” “Fascinating.”

“(Y/n)!” “Oh hey Leo, you okay love? Your head made a pretty loud thud hitting the floor last night.”

Leo stutters before pointing at your face

“Me!? What about you!? Half your face was taken off by the cement last night!”

“Yeah, but like, I can regenerate and you could’ve totally had a concussion. You kinda take the priority babe.”

And for once, Leo’s at a loss for words. Bumbling and stuttering trying to find a response.

“You can regenerate???”

Mikey:

You were chopping onions for Mikey as he practically danced around the kitchen to prep dinner. The recipe called for an oddly large amount of onions, granted you were sure having someone as big as Raph to feed probably meant Mikey quadrupled the recipe.

Constantly having to stop and rub your eyes as they got blurry from tears. At first it wasn’t all to bad, but with onion you finished up it began to feel as though you were rubbing your eyes every second chop.

You eventually get frustrated, and continue chopping even as your vision gets blurrier and blurrier. Just wanting to complete that part of the recipe and move on.

Eventually you accidentally chop off a finger due to your recklessness

Mikey jumps at your unexpected scream, whipping around and turning pale at the sight. Seeing blood cover the onions as you gripped your hands so hard your knuckles turned white.

Looking at the finger left to lay on the chopping board before snapping back to reality as you let out a groan of pain.

“Oh mi gosh! (Y/n) what happened? Are you alright?” he asks quickly pulling out the first aid kit he keeps in a drawer to patch up your hand.

“Yeah, sorry! I just got frustrated with the onions,” You say, wiping your eyes of tears both from the pain and the stupid onions. A moment of silence falls between you before you let out a growl of frustration.

“What? Is the bandage to tight?”

“No! I just realized I ruined all the onions I just chopped!”

“Love... you do realize you cut off a whole finger right?”

“Yeah, but that’ll come back in a week. I can’t regenerate the time and energy it took to chop those flippin’ onions!”

“Look, we’ll just leave the- wait you can regenerate??”

April:

You and April were just walking to her house when some idiot came up to you two

“Give me all the cash on your wallets and no one gets hurt.” He whispers, a gun pressed to you back, wrapping an arm around your neck and making distance between him and April

April looked at you with wide eyes, but you stayed calm. Yes, your heart was beating into your ears, but that was mainly because you were afraid he’d switch targets

“Hey man, look-” “Shut up and just give me the money!” he interrupted you, pressing the gun deeper into your back

April began shuffling through her purse, trying to find her wallet as quickly as possible. The wheels in your brain began turning, churning ideas you were sure would get you hurt

But hey, you could handle it.

“Alright, my wallet’s in my pocket can I get it?” you ask him, hearing a grunt of approval you move into action

Taking a swift elbow and digging it as deep into his ribs as it would take to make him let you go, he lets out a yelp of pain and releases you.

You take a jump back and turn toward him, shielding April from view as he glares at you

The gun shots were deafening, shooting you three times in your chest before running off.

April let out a shrill as you fell to the floor. Limp as your eyes lay wide open and lifeless

She dropped to her knees and pulled you into her arms, clothes getting bloody from your fresh wounds as she sobbed over your temporary corpse

This goes on for a few minutes until you let out a large gasp. As life returned to you and pushed the bullets slowly out of your skin. April jumped at the sudden action of your body moving, Looking down at you with wide eyes

You looked up at her, feeling guilty as you see her puffy eyes and the slow tears falling onto your face

“Sorry babe, I couldn’t let you get hurt.”

“What? I thought-”

“It’ll take more than that to kill me I promise.”

(Sorry this took so long to get out! Also, I know April’s is a bit cheesy but I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for the cheesy bro. I hope you liked it!)

[gloriousmonsters]

man this is jumping back a bit from where I was, but I just want to shoutout to how much I love the... second, I think? time that LWJ gets drunk in the novel; it’s such an odd scene and so funny and... weirdly hot, and shows a lot of character (and that just encapsulates so many things I love about mxtx’s writing at its best)

like first off I love how much more Obviously Aggressively autistic LWJ gets when he’s drunk, his usual bluntness and straightforwardness turning to things like ‘you are talking to someone -> I don’t want you to talk to them -> I will stand in front of you so you can’t look at them -> now you’re saying something I don’t like, so I’ll cover my ears and pretend I can’t hear you’. (It also has vibes of mxtx’s fondness for traumatized people acting extremely childish sometimes, which I see... really rarely? and love.) And I love how it’s partly just a funny thing, but it also slides into showing his issues with control and jealousy---he doesn’t want WWX to talk to other people, so he’ll literally physically obstruct that. He doesn’t want WWX to leave, so he’ll try to literally physically restrain him (and get nervous and try to get WWX to shut up when he protests).

(god I could go on for quite some time about how his family/sect’s issues with control and Rules and the weird emphasis on purity and monogamy clearly have screwed lwj up but good, but I’ll restrain myself to just a general gesture)

and then the scene where WWX ‘chases’ and ‘catches’ him repeatedly is... AUGH okay I love stuff that kind of blurs the line between ‘playing’ and kink, and so the scenario of WWX thinking that LWJ is having a further weird childhood regression moment and wanting to basically play tag contrasted with it clearly being sexually charged from LWJ’s end is *chef’s kiss*. and like, the fact that LWJ is both very Yes and very No about WWX licking his hand (bro, I’m nd and grew up sexually repressed too, I get it) and copes with that by playing out this softly kinky scenario where he can ‘run away’ but then let himself get ‘caught’ when he’s decided he wants it is. so fucking good???

(meanwhile, local Deeply Repressed ‘I’m into girls so I can’t be gay, right??’ Bisexual Wei Wuxian is just having a really odd night with his bro who’s looking. kind of hot haha no homo unless?)

I’m not really trying, and if I were trying I’d be failing, to say something super Deep or insightful with this, but it’s so rare that I really like how romantic and sexual tension scenes are handled, but so much of the stuff between lwj and wwx has just the crunchiest undertones of trauma and being afraid of either giving or receiving attention---in WWX’s case, especially if it’s Serious (the old theme of ‘the only things worth doing in life are Cringe so man up and be Cringe’ returns again and I love it), and there are elements of using kink to make things ‘safer’ for yourself as an nd person, and it’s just all... *waves hands vaguely* fuck, dude, sometimes you just enjoy the romance and sex for how Dramatic and tropey and etc it is but sometimes I get genuinely wowed by how Good it is

[screamxqueenx94]

The Tell Part 1/ Teen Wolf Series Rewrite

A/N: Finally got access to the show again nd wrote this in like a day lol! I'm working more, but I'll post as soon as I can

Bold= texts; italics= inner thoughts

Warnings: arguing, blood and a dead body

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

Charli's POV

I had just fallen asleep after I finished cleaning up the broken glass in my room when my dad comes through the front door.

"Charli! Hey, come down here, I got good news!" He calls cheerfully. 

I come downstairs, messy bun bouncing, zip up hoodie hanging off one shoulder and a pair of plaid boxer shorts I use for pajamas on, half asleep and rubbing my eyes. 

"Can this wait until morning? I just got to sleep." I reply in a groggy voice. 

"No, it's too good to wait." He answers happily as he shuts the front door. He gently, but excitedly, pulls me into the living room by my sleeve, then stops right in front of me. 

"I talked to the owner of the video store in town and he said he's hiring. Now normally, he'd only hire someone who's 18 or older, but I got him to reconsider and…" He explains excitedly as I just stare at him, eyes half open and barely holding my head up on my own. 

"And what?" I ask sleepily.

"... And he agreed to hire you!" He finishes. "I got you a job!" He holds his arms out as if he's one of those models showing game show contestants what they won. 

My eyes grow wider. Suddenly I'm more awake. "I'm sorry, what?" 

"I got you a job at the video store!" He repeats cheerfully. 

I just stand there in stunned silence for a moment. 

"So…you woke me up at--" I look at my phone to see the time, "11:36 at night to tell me you got me a job?" I ask sassy. 

He nods his head happily. I just turn around and slowly walk back upstairs while giving him a sarcastic thumbs up. I should've been more excited, but all that activity from today wore me out. I'll have to remind myself to really thank him in the morning. He really didn't have to go through the trouble.

I lay in bed, not able to go back to sleep. My phone pings for a text alert.

Isaac: hey, u still up?

I text back.

Charli: ya. wats up? 

Isaac: i was wondering if u wanted 2 go 2 the movies w me next saturday? 

Charli: sure :) id like that 

Isaac: great! I convinced my dad 2 let me borrow the car so I'll pick u up at 7? 

Charli: ya sounds good 

Isaac: great! C u then

~

I wake up the next morning, get cleaned up and head to my dad's office as he is finishing up a phone call. 

"Do you have a minute?" I ask when he looks at me.

"Sure." He answers as he removes his glasses. I step forward into his office, picking at my nails. 

"I'm sorry about last night, I didn't handle that well. I should've been nicer…" I sigh and sit in the leather padded chair across from his mahogany desk. "You went out of your way to do something nice for me and I was rude--" he cuts me off by putting his hand up. 

"Charli, honey. I'm not mad." He answers smiling.

My eyes shift. "Y--you're not?" I asked surprised.

"No, I get it. It was late, you were tired. I was just excited for you is all." He answers, putting his glasses back on and opening up a manila folder sitting in front of him. 

"I'm excited too though!" I reassure excitedly.

"You are?" He asks, looking up over his glasses with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah! Completely!" I answer back.

He smirks, takes his glasses off and reaches into a bottom drawer in his desk.

"Perfect!" He places an ugly purple and golden yellow button up on the desk and slides closer to me. "Because you start tonight!" He adds. 

I reluctantly take the shirt and set it in my lap. I look at it for a moment then look back up at my dad when he speaks up again. 

"Your shift starts at 3. They close at 11." He puts his glasses back on and looks at the case file again. "Dress code is jeans and sneakers." He looks up at me one last time before turning his attention back to the file. "Have fun." 

I trudge back up the steps and get to work on my weekend homework. I regret all of this morning…

~

Three o'clock rolls around and I'm inside the video store wearing my shirt open to show off my Rolling Stones t-shirt with ripped jeans and vans with my hair up in a messy bun. I'm greeted by my new coworker, Leveque, who gives me my orientation and shows me my locker. After that, we just head back to the counter and wait for business. 

~ 

Hours have passed and we've had maybe two customers, which was Scott and Stiles coming to bring me food and to rent some dumb bro movie. Meanwhile, Leveque is changing the flickering lights while I'm checking the returns and preparing to put them back on the shelves. 

"Dammit." I mumble as I get down to pick up the DVD I just dropped. As I hit the floor, the phone rings and the bell on the door rings to inform me a customer has come in. Fuuuck me…

"Can someone help me find 'The Notebook?" I know that voice. 

A few seconds pass, I put the disc in the box while on the floor hurriedly. 

"Hello? Is anybody working here?" Hold on, douche nugget. 

I pop up and set the box on the counter, making Jackson jump a bit. I let out a snarky chuckle.

"The Notebook, huh?" I ask, striding from behind the counter. "Didn't realize you had a sensitive side there, Jax." I reply sarcastic.

"Are you gonna help me find it or not?" He asks sharply. 

"Check the romance aisle." I tell him as I head towards the phone to answer it. 

He just rolls his eyes and walks the direction I pointed. "Gotta be kidding me." He mutters under his breath. 

I go to answer the phone when Jackson calls out terrified. 

"Charli! Come over here!" 

I run over to where he is and when I'm about to ask what's wrong, I instantly smell blood. I slowly turn and see Leveque laying on the floor with a big gash in his neck. I put my hands over my mouth. Jackson and I slowly back up and he trips over the ladder, making a lot of noise and making the lights short circuit. I help him back up, but as soon as he's standing, we both see something in our peripheral vision and slowly start to turn to face it. We look at it in utter fear, when suddenly Jackson grabs my hand and has us run and hide behind a horror movie shelf. 

Him sitting on the outside with an arm reached out to hold me back. Thanks, Jax, but I could've totally had this one. He sneaks a peek around the corner only to quickly whip his head back around. He looks at me with a finger to his lips when a bunch of movies fall on us. We cover our heads while staying quiet. Once they stop, he looks back again, only for the shelves to start falling like dominos. I start crawling the other way and slide behind a wall. When the shelves are about to fall, he jumps to the side only to get his legs stuck under a shelf. He lays there, clearly in pain, but remains still as the creature walks over him. The creature stands over him for awhile, which made me decide to come up with a plan. 

Why I'm saving him, I'll never understand, but I'm going for it. I crawl to the counter and quickly grab the emergency industrial size flashlight that's under the counter. I crawl back over to where I was and start flashing the light, making it look at me and I shine the light in its bright red eyes, scaring it away. It runs and bursts through the window as I hear a girl scream. 

I run over to Jackson to check on him. "Jackson?" Silence. "Jackson, are you okay?" He must be in shock. I lift up the shelf and throw it off of his legs. He's still breathing, but not moving. I focus my attention on the broken window, then I see Lydia in her car, screaming. I grab my phone out of my back pocket and call 911.

~

Lydia and Jackson are both being seen by EMTs while I'm talking to an officer, telling them what I saw. I stop mid sentence as I start to smell blood again and I become nauseous again, covering my mouth like I'm going to vomit. The officer looks at me concerned, then leads me to his cruiser and opens the door so I can sit down and puts a blanket over my shoulders.

Suddenly, the Sheriff's car pulls up. "Paul, let's get this area locked up." I hear Sheriff Stilinski say. I quickly jump up and start running towards him, when the officer who was interviewing me tried to grab me and stop me.

"Mr. Stilinski!" I cry out. He turns towards me and signals the officer to let me go. I run to him and hold his forearms with tears in my eyes. 

"Charli, what happend?" He asks concerned. 

I don't answer his question. I just beg him in panic, "please don't tell my dad! Please don't tell him what happened! He can't know! He'll make us move!" I'm in tears again, makeup running down my cheeks. 

"Oh--okay, Charli, listen to me, alright? Deep breaths." He coaches me through taking deep breaths. 

"Why don't you let an EMT take a look at you, okay? I'll be right over to talk to you… I promise." He calmly tells me. I listen and go see an EMT. As she examines me, I'm listening to Jackson complain. We just went through a traumatic moment and you wanna complain? Suck my balls, Jackson…

"Why the hell can't I just go home? I'm fine." Jackson bitches to Noah. 

"I hear ya, but the EMT said you hit your head pretty hard. They just want to make sure you don't have a concussion." He answers back, understandingly.

"W--what part of 'I'm fine' are you having a problem grasping? Okay, I wanna go home!" He sounds like a literal child.

I wince as the EMT pulls splinters out of my palms. " I understand that." Noah answers.

"No you don't understand! Which blows my mind since it should be a pretty basic concept to grasp for a minimum wage rent-a-cop like you!" Jackson yells, shoving his finger in Noah's face. "Okay, now I wanna go home!" He continues to scream. 

"Jackson! Shut the fuck up and show some respect for once in your life!" I scream back as I rise to my feet while the EMT was wrapping my hands with gauze. Noah looks back at me and signals to me that he's got this under control.

As I sit back down I hear a familiar voice yell, "Oh, whoa! Is that a dead body?" As other EMTs roll out a stretcher with Leveque's body on it, covered with a sheet and his arm hanging off the side. Fuckin aye, Stiles. 

I start to feel sick again. "Do you have anything for nausea?" I ask the EMT as I cover my nose and mouth with the blanket. She hands me two pills and a bottle of water. I take them like candy and chug the water like my life depends on it. After I finish off the water, I see Derek and Scott on top of the video store, watching everything happen. The hair on my neck starts to stand. I watch them leave and see a familiar face in the crowd. Dad…

He tries to come over to me, but an officer holds him back. "Dammit, that's my daughter!" He pushes through and comes straight to me. He wraps his arms around me and I just burst into tears. I hold him tight as his hand rests on the back of my head while the other wrapped tightly around me. He holds me until I let go.

"Are you alright? Are you hurt? What happened to your hands?" He asks frantically as he holds my face inbetween his shaky hands. 

"I--I'm okay… I just had some splinters from lifting a shelf off Jackson." I tell him quietly as I direct to Jackson with my eyes, making him look over at Jackson, who's still bitching about wanting to go home. 

He pulls me in close again, kisses the top of my head and hugs me tight again until Mr. Stilinski comes up to us. He relaxes his hold a bit and faces him, shaking his hand. 

"Ambrus." He greets.

"Noah." My dad greets in return. "What happened here?" He asks.

"An employee here was murdered and the kids not only stumbled upon the body, but we're also attacked." He answers, resting his hands on his belt.

"Well who did it?" My dad asks conceringly.

"We don't know yet, but Mr. Whittemore and Miss Martin described it as some type of man-dog creature. Mr. Whittemore said it had bright red eyes." 

My father looked at me with concern, but I just looked down at my feet and turned slightly away from him.

"Charli, can you confirm what they saw?" Mr. Stilinski asks. 

"I--It..it was d--dark. I--I couldn't tell w--what it was…" I stutter out, turning away from them. But I knew exactly what it was. An alpha… 

"Can you try and remember?" Mr. Stilinski asked again, stepping closer. 

I start to shake my head. Then my body shakes and I put my face in my hands and start crying. My father comes to me and puts his hands comfortingly around my shoulders and leads me towards his car. 

"Noah, I think she might need some rest. I'll bring her in another day to talk to you, once she's in a better frame of mind." My father insists.

"Of course. I understand." He then looks to me. "Get some rest, Charli. We can talk another time okay?" 

I don't look at him. I just sniffle and nod my head. My father wraps his arms around me again and leads me to the passenger side of his car. He opens the door and guides me in while slipping the blanket off me as an officer hands him my things from my locker. He takes them and puts them in the backseat, then comes around front and starts driving home. 

The car ride is quiet. I just keep my hands balled tight in my lap, shaking, not looking up. My father keeps looking over at me. I can tell what's going through his mind. He wants to move again, I know it. Once we get home, he pulls into the garage and shuts the car off. We're quiet for a moment as we just sit there. 

"It was an Alpha wasn't it?" He asks. 

I'm quiet, but I nod my head. He punches his steering wheel, making me squeeze my eyes shut. He puts his hands over his face and slides them down until one hand is back in his lap and the other is resting on the steering wheel. He looks at me and is quiet for a little longer. 

"Did he hurt you?" He asks. I shake my head. He exhales deeply. 

"Does he know?" 

"I don't know…" I whisper.

We sit in silence again. Too long. 

"Please don't make us move again…" I whisper.

"That's not up to you." He answers harshly.

"Of course it's not…" I comment back, still never looking at him.

He looks at me with anger in his eyes.

"What the hell is that suppose to mean?" He asks with fire in his eyes.  

"You know exactly what it means, Dad." I spit back, still not making eye contact. I pull the door open and slam it shut then head inside the house. 

He punches the steering wheel again and follows me in. By the time he tries to catch up to me, I already have my bedroom door locked. He knocks on my door. 

"Charli?" I don't answer. "Charli… I'm sorry, okay?" I still don't answer. "C'mon, Charli, let's talk about this...please?" He waits before he talks again.

"Look, honey I'm not mad at you okay? I was just scared…" I get off my bed and listen by the door. 

"I was scared because I thought I lost you…" I can hear him tearing up. "I already lost your mother, I don't wanna lose you too, okay?" I continue to listen. 

"If I lost you… I--I could never go on. You're all I have left. We are all each other has, I don't wanna lose that, okay?" I start to tear up too. 

"Look, if you don't feel like talking anymore tonight, I understand… but can you at least let me know that you're okay? Please?" He starts to beg. I stand up and unlock the door. As I open it, we just cry in each other's embrace, falling to the floor and doing what we should've done a long time ago. Letting ourselves cry. 

After I finish crying, I wipe my eyes and look at him. "Promise me that just because this happened that we won't move again… I'm sick of running, Dad." He puts his head down. "Dad...please…" I rest my hand on his. He looks into my eyes and brushes some loose strands away from my face and wipes away the last few tears trying to escape. 

"I can promise that we can try this out…" he pauses. "But my main concern is your safety. The last thing I want is something happening to you." 

I nod my head. "I know, Dad, but please… promise me we're not going to just run away anymore." 

He sighs, wipes his face, then looks back at me. "If we stay… then you start your training after school." 

"What about my new job?" 

"I have a good feeling you probably won't be going back there ever again." He informs me with a half smile, resting his hand on my shoulder. I half smile back at him. 

"Well, get some sleep, you have school in the morning." He kisses my forehead, helps me up and heads off to his room. 

~

I couldn't sleep a wink last night. I try focusing on getting ready for school, but I can't cover my dark circles to save my life. I just throw on a beanie again with a hoodie and jeans with my beat up converse. I say goodbye to my dad, grab my bag and start heading to the Stilinski house. Just as I reach their driveway, Stiles is coming out, keys in hand and backpack over his shoulder. He spots me and looks like he's seen a ghost. 

"Charli! Hey…" 

"Could you give me a ride to school?" I ask quietly. 

"Uh, y--yeah, sure." He speedwalks over to Roscoe and opens the passenger door. 

He helps me in, closes the door, then jogs to the other side and hops into the driver seat. He starts Roscoe up, backs out and heads to the school. It's a quiet ride. There's not even music playing and for once, I welcome the total silence. Just the sound of the engine. We pull into the school parking lot. Stiles shuts off Roscoe. 

"Thanks for the ride, Stiles." I tell him as I'm gathering up my belongings and reaching for the door handle. 

I push the door open slightly, only for him to reach over and pull it closed. I look over at him and he looks calm on the outside, but his whiskey colored eyes are drowning in worry. 

"Charli, last night--" I cut him off.

"Stiles, thank you, truly, for caring… but I'm not ready to talk about it. Not yet." He looks down, almost disappointed, but he turns to me and his eyes are filled with understanding.

"When I'm ready to talk about it, I promise you're the first person I'll come to." I reassure him, resting my hand on his that's resting on the center console. He looks at me with reassurance.

"Promise?" 

"Promise." I tell him, holding out my pinky for a pinky promise. He looks at it with a raised eyebrow, then chuckles and wraps his pinky around mine. We smile at each other then head inside the building.

~

"Just a friendly reminder, Parent Teacher conference is tonight. Students below a 'C' average are required to attend. I won't name you because the shame and self disgust should be more than enough punishment." Mr. Harris drones on as Stiles and I are sitting at our lab tables. 

"Has anyone seen Scott McCall?" He asks, putting his hands on his hips while eyeing Stiles who's highlighting literally everything in his book. 

I start biting on my thumbnail while Stiles looks up at him with the highlighter cap in his mouth. As I'm about to speak up, everyone's attention turns towards the door opening and in walks Jackson. He walks over to his table and sits down. Mr. Harris walks over to him and gets close to him and places a hand on his back.

"Hey, Jackson. If you need to leave early for any reason, you let me know." Jackson just nods his head. 

Mr. Harris then looks at me. "Charlotte, same goes for you too." I just give him a slight nod. 

Stiles looks at me in confusion and I just shrug to tell him I don't understand why he's being nice either. He starts walking up to the front of the room. 

"Everyone, start reading chapter nine." Everyone opens up their books and starts reading. 

"Mr. Stilinski…" Stiles looks up. "Try putting the highlighter down between paragraphs… it's chemistry, not a coloring book." Stiles spits the highlighter cap straight up and catches it with ease. It's weird that I think that was kinda hot isn't it? Yeah...it is…

I start reading, but of course, Stiles is distracted. "Hey, Danny… can I ask you a question?" Oh no…

"No." He says blatantly. Wise choice, Danny Boy.

"Well I'm going to anyway…" I should've known better…

"Um, did Lydia show up in your homeroom today?" Okay, that's not at all what I was expecting. Good question. 

Danny sighs. "No." Stiles and I just look at each other with a knowing look. 

"Can I ask you another question?" There it is. I knew it was coming… 

Danny is clearly getting frustrated. "Answer's still no." 

"Does anyone know what happened to her, Charli and Jackson last night?" Wow, okay another good question…"He wouldn't tell me." Weird.

"But he's your best friend…" Exactly, that's really weird. 

Danny just shrugs and goes back to reading. "One more question…" Based on his body language, I think it's safe to assume that Danny is rolling his eyes. 

"What?" He replies a little too loud. 

"Am I attractive?" There it is, I knew it was coming… Danny is quiet. As the silence grows longer, Stiles keeps leaning forward, then falls off his stool. 

I cover my mouth, trying not to laugh, but at the same time, worrying if he hurt himself. I look over and Jackson is giving Stiles a dirty look. God I wanna punch him in his face so bad…

~

As we leave class, Stiles is trying to get ahold of Scott while I'm trying to get ahold of Allison. Stiles calls Scott while I'm texting Allison, Stiles and I keep looking back and forth at each other. 

"Finally! Have you been getting any of my texts?" I hear Stiles say. Must've finally reached Scott. 

"Do you have any idea what's going on?" He asks. I try to listen in but he's pulling the phone and himself away, so I poke him in his ribs to make him react. "Lydia's MIA and Jackson looks like he's got a time bomb inserted into his face, another guy's dead and you gotta do something about it." 

"Something!" He continues, frustrated. "Hello?" He then looks at the phone and makes an angry face at it. 

"He hung up, didn't he?" I ask snarky with my arms crossed, genuinely enjoying seeing Stiles feel the way I felt the night we helped Derek. 

"He better not make a habit of this or…" I cut him off.

"Or what? What are you gonna do?" I ask with a smirk. He looks at me through his lashes and licks his lips.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" He asks.

"A little bit, yeah." I continue to smirk, then walk ahead. He pauses for a moment then catches up with me. 

"So…" he rubs the back of his head nervously. I look at him. "Do you wanna go with me to go talk to Lydia?" 

"And miss out on you making a fool of yourself in front of her again? Of course I'm coming." I chuckle. 

"Maybe I'll just leave you in the car." He shoots. 

"Maybe I'll go talk to her myself while you wait in the car." I shoot back.

He scoffs. "You're not gonna make me wait in my own car." 

"I may be smaller, but I'm definitely stronger than you." I inform him with a smirk and slight bite of my lower lip. 

He scoffs again. "You're not stronger than me." 

"You really wanna debate that?" I ask, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. 

He's quiet. I think he remembers what happened over a week ago when Scott almost attacked him in his room because he's pursing his lips. He looks down, then back to me. "Nah, I'm good. I think you made your point." He replies, knowing I'm right. 

We go over to Lydia's house and are greeted by her mom, who is actually really sweet. She leads us to her room where she's just laying across her bed, looking at her nails and resting her head on her other hand. 

"Honey, there's a Stiles and Charli here to see you." Lydia's mom informs her. 

Without looking away, she mumbles, "What the hell… is a Stiles?" I try not to laugh, but Stiles elbows me. 

Stiles looks at Mrs. Martin, almost offended. "Uh, she took a little something to ease her nerves." She moved so we could go in. "You can go in." She continues. 

We both thank her and she leaves the door open behind us. Stiles looks back as she walks away while I make myself comfortable in a chair that's in the corner of her room as Stiles approaches her. Lydia looks back at him and places a hand on her hip. 

"What are you doing here?" She asks.

"We were making sure you were okay." Stiles replied. You came to make sure she was okay. I came because this was my only source of entertainment for the day. 

"Hmm." She barely replies and makes a weird sound with her mouth. "Why?" She continues as she pats the bed. Omg, she's is so freakin high… this is gonna be interesting

He sits down where she patted. "Because we were worried about you today." He tells her. I roll my eyes. Uh… you care about her. I'd push her in front of a bus if I knew I could get away with it… 

"How are you feeling?" He asks her. She starts caressing his arm. Okay, this is starting to get uncomfortable…

"I feel…" She gets close to his face. "...fantastic." Oh yeah, she's definitely high…

Stiles clicks his tongue and inhales sharply, letting out a chuckle. "Oh!" He quickly snatches up her meds that are on her bedside table. He reads the name of it and shows it to me. I almost start laughing, but instead I come up with a winning idea. 

"I bet you can't say I saw 'I saw Susie sitting at the shoe shine shop ten times fast." I smirk. Stiles gives me dagger eyes, then reverts his attention back to Lydia. She takes a minute before she replies. 

"I saw Shusie…" she stops. Stiles and look at each other. I raise my eyebrows and he whips his hand under his chin to signal for me to cut it out. "I shaw…" She tries again. I giggle. Stiles puts the pill bottle back. 

"I saw…" she trails off, staring into space. Stiles and I notice something isn't right. 

"Lydia, what did you see?" Stiles asks, placing his hand on hers. 

"Something…" she trails off. 

"Something like… like a mountain lion?" Stiles ask. 

"Mountain Lion…" she repeats.

"Are you sure it was a mountain lion or are you saying that because that's what the police told you?" I ask her as if I was talking to a child. 

"A mountain lion." She repeats again. 

Stiles grabs her stuffed giraffe. "What is this?" He shows it to her. She looks at it dazed. "A mountain lion." She replies, almost childlike. 

"Okay..." Stiles retorts, then puts the stuffed animal back. 

"She is so dru--" I begin to say, but stop as soon as she puts her head in Stiles' lap, passing out, making his whole body react. 

I walk over and help her off of Stiles as he slides off of the bed, which wakes her up, makes her prop herself up with one arm and face us. 

"Okay, well we're just gonna go, uh, let you get back to the whole… Post Traumatic Stress thing." I tell her as I start closing the door. 

"Mmm, stay." She replies weekly. Stiles is quick to go back in while I'm still standing in the doorway, waiting on him so I can get home and start my training. 

Stiles looks around, shocked and then points to himself, "Me? Me stay? You want me to stay?" He asked surprised. 

"Mhm." She mumbles, patting the spot on the bed in front of her, weakly smiling. Is he really dumb enough to go for this? 

He quickly sits down. "Yes, please." She tells him as she inches closer. I roll my eyes and close the door then go sit in the jeep and text my dad. 

Charli: sorry Dad. Running late, needed to stop & drop off homework 2 Lydia

I lean back and rest my head on the headrest as I wait for Stiles to finish up his little rendezvous with Lydia, who apparently wants to get with everybody. I'm getting ready to text him when I see him rushing out. He hops in on the driver side.

"Wow, thirty seconds… that's the best you could do?" I joke.

He gives me a look, then starts up Roscoe. "We gotta try to call Scott again." He informs me.

"Why?" I ask. He looks me in the eyes. "Because I think I know what that was that attacked you guys last night."

"Well, you're on your own for this one, cause I promised my dad I'd be home right after school." I remind him as I look out the window.

"C'mon, Charli! I need your help in this too! I mean, you know more about this supernatural stuff than I do." He begs as he drives us home.

Sorry, Stiles. After last night, my dad needs to know exactly where I am and what I'm doing at all times…" I look at him. "In fact, I can guarantee that he's gonna be pissed that I wasn't home twenty minutes ago." I continue in a matter factly tone. "Do you really wanna piss off my dad?" I finish.

He exhales sharply. "No, I guess not." He mumbles.

"Okay, then I need to go home." I insist. 

~ 

My dad is in the kitchen when I get home. 

"For someone who doesn't eat, you sure do spend a lot of time in the kitchen." I remark as I cross my arms over my chest.

"Well you seem to be back to normal." He chimes.

"Not really…" I sigh and sit at a stool placed in front of the kitchen island and put my head down. "I couldn't sleep a wink last night." I continue. 

I pick my head back up and rest it in my hand, looking down at the counter, picking at the skin around my thumbnail. "When I did, all I could see was that face...those red eyes." I tell him, starting to tear up. 

He comes around the island and places a comforting hand on my back and rubs in small circles and just looks at me with understanding eyes. I look up at him. 

"How do you get used to it, Dad? How do you get used to facing creatures like them and not have nightmares or PTSD?" I ask softly.

Honey, I don't sleep. I never did, but your mother…" he trails off, looking away. I look at him, hoping he'll finish that sentence. He does, "...your mother would always say 'it comes with the territory, but if I can live, knowing that I'm protecting others and protecting my family, then it's all worth it'..." 

I look down at my hands. He pats my back. "One day… one day, you'll understand what she means, Charli." He tells me softly.

"But for now, I want you to get your homework done before I get back." He pats my back then starts walking away. 

I quickly turn around. "B--but what about training?" I ask cautiously.

That can wait. What can't wait is parent teacher conference." He explains as he puts on his black peacoat and adjusts the collar. 

"Shit…" I mumble as I put my head down. 

"You forgot didn't you?" He asks as he grabs his keys from the wall hook. I just nod my head slowly, looking at him with my bottom lip poking out. 

"Well, I'm assuming I'm going to hear all good things,right?" He asks, placing his hands on his hips. 

"You should...unless of course there's a teacher that's out to get me." I joke. He rolls his eyes and chuckles. 

"Stay here. Be good. Get your homework done…" he says as he starts walking down the hallway, then stops and points at me. "...and no boys." He finishes sternly.  

"Not even Stiles?" I ask sweetly.

"Especially Stiles. I see the way you two look at each other." He uses his hands to signal the eyes to eyes motion. "Why don't you call Allison or Lydia, or another girlfriend or something? Why does it always have to be boys?" He asks, with his arms half out. 

"Because boys don't care about shopping or makeup or what dress is perfect for homecoming." I inform him. 

He rolls his eyes. "Whatever you say, kiddo. I'll see you later. Love ya." He calls back as he walks out of the kitchen. As soon as the door closes, I run upstairs, jump onto my bed and text Isaac...

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@softpeteparker @mummybear @ficus-fig @stiles-o-dylan24 @cry-btch @sporadiccookiebagel @inschi @wil2space @mrs-mitch-rapp93 @nicole-lynne @fullangelimagines

[angelicorn]

Chapter 4 Reactions “Why do the dementors look like crusty labias?” -My sister upon witnessing a close up of the whispers.

Chapter 1-2 Reactions

Chapter 3 Reactions

I present to you my reactions to playing FF7R for the first time. I voice recorded myself as I played through each chapter. I finished the game and will slowly be writing down most of my commentary as I played. My sister, who has no prior exposure to the lore of FF7 (sequels, movies, novellas, etc.), watched me as well and I will be including her fresh perspective here as well. I also use the word “bitch” affectionately. I call my besties by that word so if you are easily offended, don’t read.

If you hate any other ship beside your own, don’t read this. In this particular reaction, my sister and I comment jokingly at the interactions between Jessie/Cloud and Cloud/Tifa. Our reactions and preferences aren’t an attempt at disregarding any other ships out there. They’re our opinions and will never be  determining factors on the validity of your personal ship. With that said, here are our reactions!

Ok, fuck, we’re going to have to sneak out and go topside with Jessie... (sis: He’s gonna fuck her.. me: He’s going topside of the plate! Not topside of her! sis: I know, I just wanna piss you off.)

*When Cloud says all SOLDIERS receive training to operate motorbikes* Sis: If he’s lying about being a SOLDIER, why are his eyes the color of mako if all SOLDIER bois have them? me: that’s why normal people have to finish the game to find out.

Sis: JESSIE IS A HELLA THOT, SHE’D BE YOUR BEST FRIEND. Me:... Why can I totally picture that?

*Cloud tells Jessie to get off after Jessie begins narrating themselves as a couple* Sis: Do guys believe girls think this attitude is cool? Yuck.

Jessie isn’t deterred by Cloud’s foul attitude at all. You go, bitch!

*When Roche appears* Sis: uhhh... why is adult Demyx in this game? me: He doesn’t look--oh. HAHA

Cloud is so badass.

Sis: WTF IS THIS PLACE SO NICE FOR? PEOPLE BE UP HERE LIVING COMFORTABLE WHILE PEOPLE DOWN BELOW DON’T EVEN HAVE PAVED ROADS, HOW DO THESE RICH BITCHES SLEEP AT NIGHT KNOWING THERE’S CHILDREN LIVING IN SHIT CONDITIONS RIGHT UNDER THEIR FEET?!?!?!!! ME: Tricia, relax. It’s just a game. Sis: Sorry, the social worker side of me is coming out.

The music is sooo pretty. I need to learn this on guitar.

Her house is so fucking cute.

You know what? Cloud’s kinda like a cat. Cute, but can be total bitches.

Does Jessie’s mom approve of Biggs for Jessie...? (Sis: I approve of Biggs for anybody. He should be the main character. Cloud’s “tew kewl for yew” attitude is a turn off. He’s hot though, so...)

I know I have to sneak into the room, but I wanna hear more of their conversation! (Sis: No time to fuck around, bitch. Get what you need and leave, here, let me do it. Me: No, no, you can play the whole game on your own when I’m done.)

Oh shit, Jessie has a very sweet side to her. I love this bitch.

She’s doing this cause all bc of her dad. Man, Jessie’s so special.

Cloud, Biggs, & Wedge are bros.

*gasp* IS THIS THE PROMISE SCENE? (Sis: Tifa’s so cute! Cloud’s got a lame rat tail, ew. At least he isn’t too much of a dick.)

Why are they showing so much cloti content every chapter??? (Sis: bc obviously he’s been crushing on her since they were lil churrens)

Sis: Cloud looks like he get emotional and teary eyed every time he thinks of Tifa. Like his eyes change in size and...kinda change in color. Like.. them bitches starting to look blue. Me: *gasps* I kinda see it. Definitely his eyes get bigger... Sis: He’s such a typical haole, blonde hair, blue eyes, he got the baby red flush on his face too, soooooo cute! me: You were literally shitting on him a few minutes ago, what changed? 

Sis: You’re like one hit KO-ing everyone. Did you fucking over level yourself again? Me: I...think I did. Sis: This is why you need to learn restraint.

*Wedge gets bit* Sis: Wedge is the MVP bruh

Sis: You have to fight adult Demyx again? Me: Clearly his name is Roche. His name is right there.

Holy shit, Wedge really is fucking MVP

Sis: Who are the hazmat suit lookin’ bitches? Me: The rest of AVALANCHE. Sis: There’s more of them??? Me: Did you really think all of AVALANCHE was just Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, Barret and Tifa?

If you don’t let your friends look at your singed ass, you’re not truly friends. 

Cloud is chuckling! Sis: Feel, don’t conceal, bitch! LET IT GO~

Sis: Is grandma over there hitting the guard?

*Cloud mentions Jessie’s dad* Sis: Wow, did Cloud fucking just--fuck you Cloud, breaking bro code. Snitches get stitches. 

Did they have Jessie strapped up with Biggs so that Cloud won’t talk to her about her dad during the parachute dive? LOOOOL

Biggs wrapping his hands around her waist, bruh. 

Holy shit Jessie is giving me anxiety. 

Biggs’ face nearly collided with Cloud’s I’m dying. 

“pay you in full” Sis: they’re def gonna fuck tonight. Ohh my gosh, but what if she tells Tifa?

Sis: yeah Cloud, why you gotta be such a hardass?

Wedge’s smile is so precious, we need to protect him.

Sis: We’re on our way to fuck bitches~

Oh my gosh, Biggs is a sensitive guy secretly. So cute!

“Life’s a stage and love’s a play.” Wedge, who hurt you? Was it Jessie? Let me go talk to her for you.

Wedge is a cat mom? Maybe that’s why Wedge is so attached to Cloud. Bc Cloud is a grumpy cat lol.

OH SHIT. Did she just plant one on his cheek?

Sis: She wants his dick. She’s thirsty. Me: Wedge warned us about her. She’s just playing a game! Sis: Then ditch the bitch. Me: When you say bitch, it sounds mean! I don’t want to be mean to her, but I don’t want to give her hope. Decent guys don’t lead bitches on. Sis: You were trying to get into Tifa’s room at the start of the last chapter, you freak. Decent, my ass.

I’m sorry, Jessie, I love you, bitch, but...not happening. Sis: She’s so unfazed by it! See? She’s peachy beachy. She probably has other options. Now let’s see if Biggs is home! Me: I need to see what the other option would lead to.

*We paused the game and watched the no promises option* She legit pretended to be excited about making pizza for us and she changes up on us like that with her “psyche!” bull shit, oh my goshhhh, she’s playing the game! Sis: Love’s a play, life’s the stage.

Sis: Biggs is a neat freak AND handsome AND sensitive? Throw Cloud tf away. Make Biggs the main character. 

Do people just not lock their doors in this hood? Sis: If you don’t have valuable shit, there’s nothing to steal.

Tifa is in Cloud’s room! Sis: Stop trying to get them to fuck. Tifa’s not gonna let them fuck until they’re official official. She’s too classy for that.

He’s trying to get her to open up! He wants to spend more time with her! Ugh, He’s trying so hard to be aloof and caring at the same time!

Sis: She won’t share all her secrets. She has a fucking punching bag in her room, she’s strong enough to handle her issues without leaning on no fuckboi. See, look she’s changing the subject. She won’t even sit directly next to him. Cloud scares the bitch, why would she wanna get close to him after he tried to kill Jeffrey. Me: Johnny. Are you sure you haven’t played FF7 before? Sis: If I did, I wouldn’t be asking 21 fucking questions every 10 minutes.

Sis: *sarcastic* Wow, I love how he quietly says good night to her right before she shuts the door, like he can’t fucking say it to her face properly. He’s a coward! Me: Everyone is shitting on Cloud! Sis: He’s frustrating! Me: He’s traumatized! Sis: From what...? me: *realizing I may have spoiled the story for her* let’s play and find out, shall we? Sis: Woooow...

*confused bc this wasn’t in the original* Whaaaat is going on? Sis: Why do the dementors look like crusty labias? Me: Can we fucking play this game in peace? 

Sis: Holy shit, a hoard of labia dementors!

This is fucking weird. I need to use Tifa to stagger these bitches. 

THEY STOLE OUR GODDESS, FUCK NO. Sis: They ain’t do shit on her. She’s strong af, look at how little damage they’re doing to her.

HOLY SHIT JESSIE NO. Sis: damn, maybe if he fucked her, this wouldn’t have happened. me: you’re joking right? sis: obviously. but then, why are you laughing at my joke, huuuh? 

Cloud is still tryna be cool, carrying Jessie bridal style. Like um, Barret and Tifa could have easily carried her bridal style into the bar themselves. Stop stealing the show all the time.

You think Tifa’s a little jealous? sis: no, only insecure girls would think that. Jessie can’t walk and Cloud was only trying to help. Barret would probably throw her over his shoulder if he tried to help her up and that’d probably fuck up her leg more. He has a fucking gun for an arm, tf is he gonna do to help? Cloud’s just being a decent guy. A decent guy who won’t try to go into their crush’s room at night without being invited, weirdo. Me: *I’m speechless, but grinning*...

Sis: See? He can tell Tifa’s nervous. I honestly couldn’t tell at all. And he’s telling her to breathe. Jessie was clearly in distress. Tifa was too, but we couldn’t tell cuz a bitch is strong. Cloud pays attention to her too, why’d she be jealous for? You’re the insecure bitch, LOOOL, just kidding. Me: Woooow, you make a good point, but you had to use me to get there? You biiiitch!

Barret said the line! ohhh my goshhhh, my heart. 

sis: “play it cool” he says, when he’s standing fucking over 6 feet tall, buff as fuck with a gun arm, Cloud with a bigass sword, and Tifa looking fly as fuck. They stick out from the rest of these normies, talk about obvious. 

This concludes our reactions for chapter 4! 

Just a little context, my sister is studying in social work and aims to be a social worker in a few years while currently working in an office for her college that handles campus recycling, promoting eco-friendly alternatives and hosting events that promote the reduction of waste. She loves that the story is about people trying to rescue the planet and plans on playing this game herself! We are very close and don’t mind being a little mean to each other! It’s all in good fun. The whole insecure commentary my sister made was due to my personal issues I had experienced in a long time relationship I had where I caught my boyfriend of 5 years cheating on me with one of my closest friends. I bare no ill will, however, that experience left me with an aversion to dating seriously. I recognize that this incident left me with insecurity issues and always found my self questioning the sincerity of people’s actions. My sister claims that Cloud was just being a decent person helping Jessie, while I saw it as something worth being jealous over. Having my sister watch along and reacting with me is helping me view this story from an objective, unbiased perspective where it isn’t tainted by my own experiences. It’s really interesting and refreshing and an eye opening experience. I’d love to read up on any other gameplay reaction as well, so send them my way! 

[ayellowcurtain]

Wondering if you could write something about maybe Jens following Robbe from the party on Saturday and finding him at the edge of the bridge and talking him down, taking him home to Milan and Robbe spills it all to the both of them. // Please fulfill my crackhead dreams and write a Jebbander fic pleease // can I pls have smth like; jens is secretly pining for robbe while robbe is still sad abt sander but jens is a good friend so he's just supportive and protective (even tho he's kinda hurting) // Robbe's suicide attempt? How would the flatshare reach or Jens?

He didn’t understand how bad things were for Robbe until a second ago. It never crossed Jens’ mind that Robbe would have the courage to do something like this. 

“What are you doing?” The way Robbe talks so calmly while standing on the edge of a bridge, way too close to falling into some freezing water scares Jens. Robbe is unreachable. Whatever he might try to say to change Robbe’s mind won’t help. Something really bad happened and Jens can’t let him do something stupid, so he climbs right next to Robbe, never looking down. It’s not too high, but it’s enough to scare him. Jens really doesn’t wanna fall, but he’s more concerned about taking Robbe safely out of there.

He tries to look around, acting like he doesn’t know what Robbe plan was. It starts pouring and Robbe looks up. Jens tries to look at him without being noticed and he’s sure Robbe is crying. He quietly steps closer, just in case Robbe slips, he can hold him. 

“Come on, Robbe. Let’s get out of here.” Jens quietly holds the back of Robbe’s jacket, trying to keep him as far away from the edge as it’s possible. “I’m not leaving if you don’t come with me.” 

Robbe is still lost inside his own head, but he’s not trying to get away from Jens’ grip either, so Jens lets him be for a little more, trying to look away, calm himself down. He tries to stop thinking about what could have happened if he didn’t follow Robbe here. 

The rain stops all of a sudden and Robbe finally looks at Jens, but just for a second, looking at the water beneath them. 

“I’m gay, Jens. All these bruises are because some guys saw me kissing a guy I’m in love with.” 

It’s his turn to be in shock, not knowing what to do or what to say. Robbe turns around way too quickly for Jens liking, jumping back into solid ground, waiting for him to do the same. 

Jens swallows hard, looking at the water for just a second, jumping off as well, looking at Robbe. He’s in love with a guy. 

“I’ll walk you home.” Robbe is so small and he looks even smaller now. He’s soaked, his face is still a little bruised and he has really dark circles around his eyes. Robbe starts walking in silence and Jens can’t pretend like he’s good at giving advice. What Robbe said is still ringing inside his ears. Jens has absolutely no idea who the other guy is. Robbe has been hiding a lot of things from him this past month and Jens freaked out, acted like a fucking asshole and probably threw Robbe right into someone else’s arms. 

They walk in silence for a very long time. Jens looks at Robbe and he’s shivering. His lips are purple and his face looks even worse than earlier. Jens holds his arm, making him stop, already taking his windbreaker off, putting it in between his legs, taking his hoodie off, instantly feeling the cold air almost freeze him, but his hoodie is still warm. 

“Here. Put this on.” Robbe’s brain must have frozen because he doesn’t really move. “Robbe, put my hoodie, you’re gonna fucking freeze, bro.” 

Robbe finally holds his hoodie and Jens can put his windbreaker back on, holding Robbe’s jacket while he takes his own hoodie off, putting Jens’, getting his jacket back, but only holding it now. 

Jens wants to ask a million questions, but maybe tonight is just not the time. Robbe is constantly saying “not now” so Jens guesses he can ask later when they’re somewhere warmer, able to properly think again. On their way to Robbe’s place, he just watches Robbe. He’s clearly not present, he’s probably thinking about the guy he’s in love with or about their fight. Robbe talked about bruises, which means there are more than whatever happened on his face. 

-

“Robbe! Just let me see it, man!” Jens tried to understand what happened, what bruises was Robbe talking about and he’s angry, not wanting to talk about it, but Jens won’t let go this time. 

Milan comes to see what’s going on, looking from Jens to Robbe. 

“What’s going on?” Jens and Robbe are still looking at each other, waiting for the other one to give up, but Robbe loses, closing his eyes and lifting his shirt and Jens’ hoodie all the way to his chest. Jens can’t look at it after a moment, walking away and he can hear the shock in Milan’s shaky breath. The image of Robbe’s skin with a huge bruise all over his ribs will never be forgotten. Jens had never seen anything like that before. He can’t even imagine how bad the fight was. 

Robbe finally started talking when they got inside the elevator, but he doesn’t remember all the details either. Jens wants to find whoever did this to Robbe and just kill them all. 

“We have to go to the police.” Milan says and Jens turns back to look at the other two. Robbe is finally putting his clothes back down, shaking his head. 

“No. I’m not going to the police. There’s no way. I’m feeling better already.” Now Jens wants to punch Robbe too. He looks at him and Robbe already starts explaining himself, looking at Jens. “I’m ok, Jens.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me? Did you look at yourself in the mirror? I’m not even sure you’re in one piece, Robbe!” Milan is a little lost, but Jens doesn’t care, Robbe can be so stubborn sometimes. He always acts like he’s fine like nothing happened until it’s too late. And it’s past “too late” already. 

“Who did this, Robbe?” Milan finally asks, trying to stop their fight, give some time for both of them to calm down. Robbe looks at Jens and he instantly knows that whatever Milan knows, whatever Robbe told him, it’s a big pile of lies. 

Jens wants to tell Milan everything, but it’s not his place. Milan is older than them, maybe he would be able to put some sense back into Robbe, but there’s nothing Jens can do right now. 

Robbe doesn’t answer and Jens can see Milan’s brain starting to understand that Robbe is lying to him. 

“Robbe! You can tell me...” He puts both hands on Robbe’s shoulder, trying to get his attention. 

“Sander and I...” Robbe already can’t really say it, Jens can see him swallowing hard and Milan is not surprised to hear Sander’s name, so he knows. Everyone knows about Robbe except for Jens. 

Sander. Britt’s new boyfriend. He’s the one Robbe is in love with. And he and Jens have nothing in common. Robbe is falling in love with someone who Jens can’t even compete with. 

Jens watches as Robbe stops talking and Milan instantly hugs him tightly and Robbe finally exhales, his hands are shaking when he hugs Milan back and Jens feels like the worst person ever. Robbe trusts Milan and not Jens. Somewhere Jens fucked up so badly that it pushed his best friend as far away from him as possible. 

Milan and Robbe are crying and Jens feels invisible or unwelcome, but this is not about him. 

“Have you gone to the police yet?” Milan asks and Jens is so, so incredibly thankful that he’s on the same page as Jens, but Robbe looks down and gives Milan the exact answer he gave Jens not too long ago. 

“No...” 

“Robbe...” Milan shakes Robbe a little, but Robbe is not changing his mind. Jens thinks about how deeply traumatized he must be to not want to go to the police or talk about what happened to anyone. 

“Robbe, you have to go to the police. They can’t just keep living their lives while you keep hiding, afraid that this might happen again.” Milan and Robbe finally seem to notice that Jens is still there and Milan nods his head, agreeing with Jens and waiting for Robbe’s answer. 

“I’ll think about it. Now I just wanna sleep for a little.” Robbe looks at Jens and he can’t help but just look at his best friend for a second, using Jens’ clothes that are a little too long for him. “You can sleep here if you want.” 

Jens wants to stay, to make sure that Robbe is ok and that he’s going to the police first thing in the morning, but he’s not sure if he can handle watching how devastated Robbe is for not being loved back by Sander. 

Sander! 

“If it’s okay with you...” Robbe smiles and Jens can’t believe how strong he is, trying to move on with his life even after everything that he just went through. They’ll probably never talk about it, but Jens might never be able to forget how he found Robbe nearly an hour ago. From now on, he’ll try to always be close to Robbe, reminding him why it’s so good to be alive. 

“I have an old mattress in my room, wait a second.” Milan goes to his bedroom to grab the mattress and Robbe goes to his room, waiting for Jens to follow him. 

There’s more than enough room for both of them to sleep on the bed, but Robbe doesn’t say anything and Jens can’t just invite himself to sleep right next to Robbe either so he just waits and helps Milan put the mattress inside Robbe’s bedroom. 

If it’s worth something, Robbe sleeps using Jens’ hoodie, hiding inside the hood, hugging his pillow like he’s a koala spooning someone that’s not Jens. Jens thinks they might start sharing that hoodie and maybe they’ll have something that is theirs and nobody else’s. 

[madou-dilou]

Why The Dragon Prince Season 3 messed up

SO I pRoMiSed YoU aN EssAY about why the third season of The Dragon Prince disappointed me, and as I'm arrogant enough to assume that you are interested in my opinion, I post it here. ;)

*rolling drums*

King Harrow sums up the conflict as a narrative of endless vengeance, wrongs on both sides, that had to be redeemed whatever the cost.When the Dragang finds the egg, they think about the peace that could come.

But when Rayla shows it to Runaan, he tries to kill her, then goes to murder Harrow. He learnt nothing from what happened and is just trapped into that eye-for-eye scheme. At this point, Runaan represents not only Xadia's ideology, but also the whole world scheme. The world is blinded by this narrative of revenge, so blinded that they refuse to considerate peace even at the cost of relatives -and yes, I’m including Viren if “the world”. So there's no guarantee that returning that egg will stop the war, especially that, as far as we know, it was the queen of the dragons herself who ordered this assassination mission.

And Xadians don't stop there. They seem to work actively on kindle the fire. Elves are gathering at the Breach and attack human fortresses. And, just watch the episode where Soren attacks a dragon. Yes, Soren attacked first. But that dragon was flying over the city for days, fully aware of tensions, fully aware that humans were on their nerves after the kingslaying. If he just meant to afraid the people, he could just have left after dodging Soren's arrow; or simply destroy the tower, then leave. But he doesn't. Instead, he destroys the tower, then almost reduces the city to ashes, with the people still inside. When Callum finds out about it, he first doesn't understand why Rayla wants to save this dragon; but she explains him about the narrative of vengeance, that someone has to do something to break the cycle, even if she has to die for it. But she doesn't totally succeed and humans try to kill her, and the dragon gravely hurts a few of them before finally leaving. Even if, unlike Runaan, that dragon finally understood the hope the Dragon Prince was representing for the world (or perhaps he just flew away to warn Queen Zubeia), this doesn't erase the fact that he burnt down a whole city for no reason.

And Viren knows about that. Elves and dragons have exiled humans because they found a way to stop being considered as lesser beings who deserved nothing more than starvation. A quite unethical way, yes, but Elves could just give humans a bunch of Primal Stones if they wanted them to stop Dark Magic. No, instead, the Elves and Dragons exiled a whole people on sterile lands, Trade of Tears/Grapes of Wrath style, then ruthlessly killed all those who dare to pass nearby the border. Maybe the elves see it as a guarantee, a shield which prevent humans from doing unethical things. But to humans, that's just a knife over their throat. When they manage to get rid of that knife, elves and dragons just declare war on them, fully aware that they won't be able to defend. 

Viren sees himself as the Jon Snow of the story, he wants to prevent a genocide, but no one is listening to him because they don't feel directly threatened. And the elves, in my opinion, had no intention of attacking the four other kingdoms, since their kings took no action against them (not even Duren). But if we set in Viren's shoes (Viren who saw his friends dying right before his powerlessness because of those damned critches), his point of view makes sense. He is also trapped into an eye-for-an-eye mindset -after all he is the one who murdered Thunder to avenge Sarai, and he is also trapped in a "protect my people whatever it takes." Just as the elves.

“That’s horrible, Viren.” “We have no choice.” “Story of your life in two sentences bro”

The heroes' job is to stop this, to break the wheel. To save lives from both sides -but more from the human side, given how Harrow qualifies this conflict "unwinnable war".**The thing is, in season three, the heroes didn't stop the war.**Well, effectively they did, but because they chose a side over the other. That was quite an easy choice to them, for their enemies were no more humans but soulless monsters. But that's exactly where the problem is. 

The narrative brutally decided to caricature the conflict into a good VS bad framing :

Magic creatures are actually super friendly with humans!  

“Team Daenerys 4ever”

"Trees to meet you Callum! Yes I know, I was fully OK with my husband and daughter going into a suicide-squad to murder your father and brother, but no, I don't hate you, I think you are a wonderful person and that the world needs to hear a message of peace!" And the human army meets absolutely no resistance from the Xadians, that’s a proof Xadians were absolutely not hostile and humans are mean, racist, awful warmongers invading a land of peaceful rainbowed creatures! And the Dragon Queen is super happy about her baby's return and peace's arrival, so happy that she completely forgets -and so as the characters, that SHE sent those assassins over Harrow, and that her husband spent his whole life killing humans. And of course, the cast, including Soren, totally forgot about that dragon who burnt a whole city down, because dragons are, I guess, way more badass and cool than mere humans...

Viren stops thinking and being sorry about his actions. 

“No son, I don’t, I was too busy looking like a random bad-guy and admiring a sexy starry butt”

You might say, it's because he now acts instead of just talking. But just look his attitude when Amaya confronts him back in season 1. He's mad about her insinuating he murdered Harrow and even proposes the throne to her because she is the only one apart from himself, who cares about the elves and dragons. When Claudia asks him about Soren's life, he takes a while before responding, and doing so, his face is definitely not some Ozai's one. Or when he steals the king's stamp. He hears the screaming from the fight -he is traumatized by the elves and dragons. He looks at the family portrait, the family that was destroyed partly because of him, and definitely, has deeply sorrowful features on his face, while no one can see him, so there's no one in front of whom to pretend anything. And this isn't the only example of th- What? Season three? hahaha! no, he's definitely not sorry about imprisoning Ezran and shouting to Soren that his life didn't matter the slightest! 

Even if he was quite desperate when he was in jail, because he thought humanity was just doomed, this just doesn’t fit...

Oh, and he lost his brain when he gained the crown, and that was totally ridiculous and out-of-character. I mean, given the little we see from Harrow's reign, it was Viren who just handled the whole kingdom for ten years. The cunning king's shadow, who always had a back-up plan to fix Harrow's stupidity thanks to his knowledge, inventiveness, eloquence; the guy who raised Claudia; this guy is now unable to utter a single idea of his own because of a sexy elf’s butt and voice who gives him some validation? Haha. I don't believe it for a second.

And not to mention how kiling him just solved the entire conflict, like he was the one who caused it in the first place. He murdered Thunder and Azymondias and gathered an army to make his crusade, yes. But he acts this way because there already were massive thousands-years-long tensions before. Viren was a product of those tensions, not the direct cause.

But then I suppose it was so much simpler to have a random Iago/Claudius/Richard III/Scar/Jafar/Rasputin/Melissandre...

Oh, speaking of questionable using of fire.

The Cinder-heart soldiers.

“DRACARYS !!”

When people talk about Dark Magic, they describe it as a shortcut, an easy way, a magic problem-solver that gives a far too proper way to determine what's right and wrong, who has the right to live and who hasn't. Well, with the Cinder heart soldiers, writers do exactly the same. They don't use Dark Magic to address ethic issues as in season 1 and 2, here they use Dark Magic to give the viewer something to thrill about, to draw a neat, clear, proper, defined line between what's right and what's wrong. With those humans turned into soulless monsters, you can say that the elves are right to defend themselves because those monsters are stronger than they are; but you can also say that killing them isn’t such a big deal since they have no soul. Of course, that can be used as a tool to point Viren’s fucked up morality, to point that the greater-good mentality can lead to atrocities. But that just doesn’t work. If they wanted to sum up the absurdity of war, writers could have left the soldiers as they were: humans who think they’re doing the right thing but only lead to disaster. 

By making these monsters of those soldiers, by making them Viren’s puppets, by making them extensions of Viren’s will and power, writers frame Viren as the big bad guy who’s fault is everything and who’s death will resolve all the conflict (pretty much how killing the Night King solved the ten-years awaited winter in two seconds). 

And if I remember quite well, as illogical, rushed, nonsense, stupid, badly explained and outrageous king Ezran’s abdication was (GOD, that was SO STUPID. Ezran is Harrow's son, no doubts), his goal was to save lives. But at the final battle, he happily jumps over a dragon’s back to burn those exactly same lives down -even far more numerous than the ones he pretended to save  His sorrowful look on a single frame is clearly not enough to make me believe he’s sorry. He never addresses or criticizes or points the fact that those creatures were humans, while he is supposed to be the main character of a show about ethics, and while Viren shows doubts several times and justifies his actions which he knows are awful. Kantian Queen Sarai did a whole vegan argument about how killing apparently soulless creatures wasn’t a way to solve problems, and she was presented as right in the long term. Kantian-Rawlian King Harrow rathered die that letting one soldier take his place (but he was bad at math so he didn’t realize how putting 200 guards between himself and invincible assassins threw his calculation down, but that’s another matter.) 

“DRACARYS YEEPEEEEE”

Then their son, the main character, the one who gave up his crown to save a few lives, the one who is supposed to carry the whole breaking-the-infernal-wheel thing, this character doesn’t even blink at the thought of lighting a giant pyre out of those people, Daenerys style. And who could blame him? How could anyone blame him? Those weren’t humans anymore. Those were a bunch of soulless monsters who were running at him to slaughter his friends and family. I don't blame Ezran for killing those. I blame the series for making those and not pulling a question out of it. Do you understand what I mean? The Dragon Prince was about ending an absurd conflict where both sides were wrong but had reasons to fight. But turning a whole side into mindless monsters (including Viren and Claudia, one being blinded by power and a sexy elf’s butt, and the other blinded by her love for her father) just threw that speech away. And not to mentions how their deaths are treated on a comic and cheerful mode (I definitely hate this baker).

Did I say “A whole side ?” Oh, sorry. My bad. I kind of forgot about someone.

“A Mary-Sue is never late. Nor early. She only arrives when she was meant to.”

How everyone who ever sided against Viren for whatever reason is automatically a good-guy. Callum, Ezran, Soren, Opeli, Amaya, Aanya, Corvus, Gren, the baker (this DAMNED BAKER !!!) … I mean. When Viren came at the other royals asking them for help to avoid bloodshed, queen Aanya said “I won't send my army to face an unknown danger basing myself on a two-minutes speech!”. Very well, she doesn’t want to risk her people’s life because just one single kingdom messed up. That’s not her problem. I fully understand her choice here (even if she could at least enforce defences because Viren’s arguments were pretty valid). But when Opeli comes at her with pretty similar arguments “We need your army to avoid bloodshed”, she just accepts. Of course, we could explain her choice by strategic issues about how taking down three human armies all at once alongside with the magic army just makes her the most powerful human queen ever, even if that outcome was very unlikely given how unbalanced was the scale (I maintain it, how can mere arrows kill a magma berserk ? and even if she was relying on surprise, Viren's army clearly outnumbers gOoD gUyS's, as it was said several times)... But the season doesn’t address those strategic issues. Instead, queen Aanya just seems like Mary-Sue, like some low-cost Gandalf who has no other reason for being here except helping the good-guys against the oh-so-bad Viren. And as you know, good guys are, by essence, not interested in power (tHeY dOn’T wAnT iT)… So she goes to war right when the narrative is okay and when it helps the heroes. And of course, she arrives right when she is needed, even if, to quote Kronk, “by all accounts, it doesn’t make any sense”. (Kronk, who has the same French voice actor as Viren btw). 

And about Ezran... even the series says that Viren was right on this point : having a world-war resting on a eight years old king's shoulders is the worst idea ever. Even if this kid has best intentions ever, no one can take him seriously. Not Kaseef, who's father was just slain. Not Saleem. Not even Opeli -whom "you should have someone you can trust to rule this kingdom, someone capable, strong, dignified, loyal, lawful" scene seemed like the most unsubtle manipulation ever, and should have foreshadowed some nuance or lust for power into her. 

And about General Amaya…

“I don’t know why I hate him, but he is so dangerous, so evil, and I hate him so much than I’ll side with the people who murdered my sister and drink my nephew’s blood !!”

Of course, there is only one single guy in the whole human realm who deserves to be called arrogant and rotten to the core. Of course, he is so dangerous, evil and bad-intentioned that she just gets alongside the army she’s been fighting her whole life along, the army whom she believes drink human blood and the army who killed her sister. I mean, even if she distrusts Viren because of how her sister died and how Harrow’s assassination benefits him, don’t forget that she is a human and that Viren is working to defeat elves, just as herself. I’m not saying she’s some awful traitor to her blood or anything, but just that she took her decision far too quickly, and that this decision was far too brutal, too defined, for to be credible for the viewer. But, guess what? She opposed to Viren once! That means she is a good girl, and that everything she does is the right thing, even if she has no reason to do so. And don't make me launched about Opeli...

So, the result of it: it gives the impression that the Sunfire Ordeal of Light was right. Elves aren’t wrong, elves are never wrong because they just have an unmistakable detector for right and wrong. The proof is, it found Amaya to be good and Viren being bad! Because Dark Magic is so bad, you know (sorry to the 100 000 of lives who Viren saved with that magic).

“You thought you were allowed to be a morally grey antagonist in a kids show? Haha, how bold of you, you fool !”

And of course, no important character dies amongst the “good-guys” side. Also on the bad side actually apart from Kaseef (whom treatment by the narrative was just disgusting), but Viren died before being brought back and Claudia was traumatized for life. The good guys? Oh, thanks for asking. All of them are well and safe because they brought peace by crushing that oh-so-bad Viren and his oh-so-evil-and-soulless army. Ezran and Aanya butchered hundreds of thousands of people by fire and arrows, and Viren died without Callum trying anything to save him, but I guess that was the right thing to do to prove the narrative of love and forgiveness. <3

“Bye-bye oncle Scar”

And, on the top of that, the icing on the cake, the cherry on the top, "la cerise sur le gâteau" : getting Azymondias back to his mom just solved the entire conflict in one second.

I know the purpose was about stopping the war. But there, the series didn’t stop the war. The series chose a side and forgets about everything that was established in the first two seasons about the complexity and absurdity of war. The series just threw its whole own speech away by ridiculizing Viren, depicting elves and dragons as nothing but kind and gentle, defining a straight line between magic goodies and soulless baddies, and having a thousand years-long conflict resolved in a few seconds.

Do you remember when Harrow described this conflict as “not so simple”, as a thousand years-long conflict where both sides were so filled with hatred to each other that peace was nothing but a naive child dream? Do you remember when Runaan tried to murder his adoptive daughter when she tried to explain that peace was possible? Do you remember when that red dragon burnt down a whole city for no reason? That's a shame because the series doesn’t <3

And that can be explained very simply: NOT ENOUGH EPISODES. If only Netflix agreed to change the format, this series could have obliterated Avatar The Last Airbender or the Alabasta Arc from One Piece (which has a similar plot, but with some bad guys into it from the very start, and in spite of this succeeds into outstandingly depicting the absurdity of war). If only the TDP series has had more time to breathe, to explain and develop characters, motives, depths, events, (especially Ezran's downfall which didn't make any sense) it could have been LEGENDARY

.But instead, The Dragon Prince just ran straight into the trap it was so brilliantly avoiding in season one and two: Manicheism, black-and-white, goodies VS baddies, Simple narrative.

And I don’t even think a fourth season can fix this.

The final picture was too rainbowed, too happy-ending, too simple to be fixed. Yes, there are still “OH SO SOOOO BAD GUYS” and under-plots to explore (Aaravos’s final plan, Viren and Claudia’s trauma, Rayla’s parents including Runaan, Pip, cohabitation between critches and humans), but the series was about the absurdity of war and how characters dealt with it. Once this war is not only over, but also oh-so-happy-ended, I really wonder what’s left to explore. Even Dark Magic ethic, one of the most interesting part of the show to me, is ridiculed. By rushing, they handled their speech in a very clumsy way, and even worse: hypocritical.

The third season threw the series's speech to the trash by a too fast narrative… And I don’t know if I can forgive this.

Reminds me of GoT season eight, actually. But that’s another problem ^^

Thank you for coming to my TED-Talk.

[swordbreakerz]

✨ for all of them, 🎥 for treasure planet and guardians of gahoole, 🍀 for 9-1-1 and penumbra, 📃 for unicorn chronicles, 🏳️‍🌈 for howls, treasure planet and legend of zelda, and 💎 for any ones you have facts for lol

you spoil me uwu

🎥 - ok for treasure planet, gotta be the 12 years later scene in the beginning and the zoom in to the spaceport, the way it transitions from jim reading under the blankets to him flying on his solar surfer is so chefs kiss, and just like. everything about to the spaceport lmao, fr guardians definitely the scene where soren flies through the fire and then blows up the pulley system to get rid of the flecks energy, bro when hes flying above it all holding the lantern before he dives down to save them? chills

🍀 - you know im on that projection shit w/ juno steel, ive truly never like connected with a character like that before and he’s really really helped me thru my recovery and transition lol, fr 911 uhhh ig buck or eddie? i havent Thought About It or like consumed it enough times yet to rly settle on someone but fr now,,, they

🏳️‍🌈 - ok for howls, Everyone Is Bi/Pan, howl is trans and autistic and i will die on that hill, fr treasure planet jim and cpt amelia are both trans and both of them + doppler are autistic, fr loz link is trans, autistic and semi nonverbal and communicates primarily with asl, post twilight princess zelda says fuck it and finds a way back into the twilight realm and she midna and link hang out, most of these boil down to everyone i love is trans gay and autistic because i say so lmaooo

📃 - OK SO. without like, spoiling too many plot points, our main character is cara and she lives with her grandmother. her mom is dead and dad is out of the picture. one day theyre getting chased by these people that her grandma knows and cara gets thrown into an alternate realm full of fantasy creatures using her grandmothers amulet. she meets a unicorn named lightfoot and a bunch of other rad people and basically, starts a journey to save that world from the Hunters. the Hunters are an organisation who specifically hate unicorns and want them all dead, led by Beloved, and cara and her friends have to try and stop them from entering the world and wiping them out. its sooo so so good and i highly recommend it cause i have no one to talk to about it please god

✨ - oh boy uh, well. im just gonna like list them out lmao

unicorn chronicles: i loved unicorns as a kid and read it when i was in elementary school, and over the years its remained just as compelling and well written as i remember and like. god the whole concept is so godamn cool and all the subplots that get introduced are fuckign fantastic and like all the different creatures are amazing i literally cant sing its praises enough

howls moving castle: must i have a logical reason? is it not to vicariously live my fantasy of running away to the countryside with a wizard boyfriend, his demon and his apprentice?? for real though, its such a fantastic story with beautiful visuals in the movie and wonderfully compelling prose in the book, and esp in the movie the whole time travel subplot with sophie seeing howl and calcifer in the past and then howl finding her in the future makes me go feral

penumbra: gays in space. need i say more? im a huge slut for gay found family and especially in futuristic space, and im a huge big fan of the lgbt utopia its created. like yeah capitalism sucks but at least im not gonne get misgendered in space starbucks, u kno? all the writing and dialogue is so incredible and the SOUND DESIGN GOD, alex i know u specifically can relate when i say i would kill a man for sophie and her incredible sound design skills, like dude the dance scene in man in glass p2 you can hear every single individual step they take and every swish of junos dress and i jusT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! god its so good, plus the whole the characters help me work through my trauma and repressed anger haha

911: this one is entirely your fault. so obligatory horny on main everyone on that show is so hot i want oliver stark to cradle me gently in his beefy arms oh my god. other than Men, the way it drives home the whole ‘you can’t save everyone, and it will kill you to try, so just focus on what you can do and keep living’ makes me so emo. the way it tackles big bureaucratic issues as well as closer to home interpersonal ones is amazing and i love how it shows people going through and dealing realistically with trauma.

treasure planet: again, who doesnt want to live in Cool Steampunk Space Travel Future? i really really love jims story and his arc, the way he deals with his trauma is uhh very familiar lol and his relationship with silver is like the ideal. the story is just the coolest concept and i love all the wonderful character design and animation, plus the soundtrack SLAPS and everything is beautiful

legend of zelda: ive been associated with this series from a very young age due to my name and as soon as i gave into my fate and looked it up for real i just kinda fell into it lol. i cant really tell you exactly what draws me to it besides ‘wow fun game!’ and ‘god i wish that were me,’ but like the absurd amount of detail thats put into each installment and the creative ways they retell essentially the same/similar story over and over is incredible

guardians of gahoole: so i had the same experience with this and treasure planet which is i remembered ‘oh hey this is a movie that exists and i cant clearly remember watching it, ill look it up :)’ and then it consumed my life for a solid 3 months. firstly this movie is absolutely gorgeous, the animation and framing is fucking stunning and the way they handled owls talking like people as far as the movement of their very inflexible beaks was amazing. it sort of has the same draw for me as warrior cats? secret animal society ft incredibly traumatic experiences and the characters dealing with it. like, the whole concept is just so fuckign wild and it works so well, i rly enjoy this niche genre.

💎 - alright trivia time, so guardians of gahoole is based on a book series and the movie only covers part of the first arc i think idk, BUT theres another series set in the same universe called wolves of the beyond that i devoured when i was younger! i didnt know they were connected for the longest time and when i found out i was :000, i still rly love wolves of the beyond and wanna reread it, as well as read the actual gahoole books. in the howls books, sophie is a redhead! also, markl is named michael and like a fully functioning young adult who ends up marrying one of sophies sisters. treasure planet is, obviously, based off treasure island but its so much better than the book dont bother reading it lol i tried and it was boring. there was plans for a treasure planet sequel that was fully scripted and cast but it was cancelled cause disney sabotaged treasure planet from the start with the shitty release and advertising and tldr we were ROBBED, also amelias concept was much more octopus like and while that wldve been rad im p glad she was switched to a cat for. several reasons lol. uhh i dont have a lot of Fun Facts abt the unicorn chronicles but for the longest time i thought there were only 3 books and then last year i found the fourth book by chance in a kitsch store and nearly had a breakdown i was so happy, like full on i started shaking and crying cause there was so much joy in my body i cldnt contain it.

thats all i can think of tysm ily, to anyone who read all of this bless u please watch guardians of gahoole and read the unicorn chronicles i will love u forever

[sponfawn]

MTH - Rowdy Bros (part 2)

Continuing from part 1, I'm not going to do every interaction in every chapter, but I'm going to analyze interactions in some key scenes.

* He knows how to use it/Lonesome when you go

In chapter 5, the scene with the team of school shooters happens. We get a lot of new information regarding the Boys' priorities, general lives, and interactions. Some of the info isnt surprising, since we know they work for an evil corporation, but it does give more explicit insight into their experiences. The Boys are completely unconcerned with the hostage situation - Brick is just annoyed, Butch is excited cuz there's a surprise with guns and even impatiently asks if the gunmen will shoot Brick or what, and Boomer's reaction is very nonchalant and relaxed.

Boomer acts like they're people he's just met (tho not new friends). Hes familiar, laid back, and just talks to his brothers like he normally would, as if the gunmen aren't of any significance at all. When one of them tells him to get on the ground, he literally just pouts back like a little kid and says no. Brick literally only decides to help cuz Blossom so desperately needs him to. From the exchanges with the gunmen and each other, we see more clearly what the Boys have likely done. Boomer can tell from a glance what type of gun the guy near him is carrying, all 3 of them know what the human brain looks like outside of the body (with disturbingly casual responses to the idea of it), and a bit later Brick instantly field strips one of the guns. They're familiar with identifying and handling advanced weaponry, and are clearly desensitized to extreme and traumatic levels of violence at 17 years old. But the most important thing that we get from this scene, I believe, is the dynamic that the Boys have.

Brick knows that due to their heroic duties, the Girls will be vigilant for their opportunity to strike, that they automatically will prioritize taking down the shooters to save the hostages, and that theyre perceptive enough to follow Blossom's lead in a split second. He know that his brothers don't have that same motivation, and is concerned that they won't get the message. But all he has to do is say, "Boys", and they snap to attention, Boomer prompting him for directions. All he says is, "help" - hardly an order - but they immediately understand and are ready to jump into action as soon as they get the signal. Brick can say what he wants about their lack of dilligence and obedience, but Boomer and Butch are on it when it comes down to testy situations. Butch still ends up collecting a bunch of guns and shooting various gunmen, and he's not as efficient as Brick would like because of his manic enjoyment of violent/dangerous situations, but he is ready to throw down for Brick at the drop of a single word. Putting a pin in this as well.

* beach episode! - we’ll still have the summer after all

Pretty early on in this chapter, Butch’s raging jealousy makes its first appearance (upon finding Brick and Blossom interacting alone on the beach). Because he works through his emotions with physical activity, he starts the (series of) iconic volleyball games. After the game between Blossom and Buttercup ends, Boomer and Butch try to get Brick to play a game with them. In the struggle between Brick trying to escape and his brothers trying to drag him to the net, he slips out of his shirt and all of the girls present flip their shit. As expected at this point, Butch, but also more surprisingly Boomer, becomes jealous, as well as the rest of the guys present. When Butch realizes that even Buttercup finds Brick attractive, he goes as far to say, "you're not allowed to find my brother hot!" After Brick declares hes going swimming, some of the guys say “girls suck”, to which Butch bitterly replies, "no, Brick sucks." He holds a ton of animosity and resentment towards Brick, certainly more than Boomer generally expresses for him. Yet, soon after, when the fighter aircraft attacks, Butch is the first to join Brick and pull up by his side when he yells for the others to pull back. After he orders Butch and Boomer to keep the aircraft flying at the same altitude and lead it away and then back towards him, Boomer is the one who asks what he's doing, Butch says nothing. After Brick rips out the aircraft's embedded computer, Blossom begins to examine it. He asks if she has any use for it, and as soon as she says no, he says "Butch, fire", and Butch immediately destroys it in her hand. He responds as quickly as if Brick had pushed a button to fire a laser. It's automatic, and he knew exactly what Brick wanted him to do, with no further explanation. It's also interesting to me that Brick didn't order Boomer to do it. While it may have been coincidence, I also want to put a pin in this thought.

After the Boys go home, and Brick finds out that Darius took over and they have to stay another year, he tells his brothers. And this time it's not Butch who sticks around, but Boomer. After Butch has already left, he helps Brick get blankets and a pillow for the couch, tries to cheer him up. He wants to go, but he knows Brick's emotional state is fucked up and he seems to actually care about him in that. After Brick tells him to leave, when he closes the front door, Boomer can't hold his smile in anymore cuz he's finally free to go back and see Bubbles. I think this is the first time when we see Boomer concerned about Brick, in terms of his emotional well-being. I would say his behavior still has an air of obligation about it, but it tells us that he cares about Brick and is loyal to him, in a way that is otherwise rarely shown.

* bonus chapter: Imperfect boys with their perfect lives

This bonus chapter is short, but it does reveal some things about our Boys. The first thing we find out is that the other field agents at JS genuinely like the Boys. They refuse to let Penny hire movers, insisting that they help. Later, they gather around and laugh as Butch chugs a gallon of coffee. Another detail of note, is that before they attend Townsville High, the Boys seem to have a slightly more amicable, normal (on the surface) sibling dynamic. Brick is still a grumpy pissbaby, complaining about how Darius wants them out, and he threatens to strangle them after they almost cause the Girls to discover them in the movie store. But he lets the Boys do what they want within reason. Boomer tries to lightly cheer him up, and even Butch seems to try to improve his mood, saying that once Brick is in charge of JS he can wipe Townsville off the map. In other scenes in other chapters, the Boys still joke and pick on each other like siblings, but I think that perhaps due to the toll Townsville takes on Brick’s mood and stress levels, along with Boomer and Butch’s growing relationships with the Girls, their dynamic is more strained. At JS, things were generally going according to Brick’s plan, and we’ve seen how an improved mood can change Brick’s entire demeanor and behavior towards them - going so far as to shorten Butch’s punishment by a week. In Townsville, I imagine he’s in a chronic bad mood, even for Brick standards.

* hey there Mr blue, we’re so pleased to be with you

The scene I want to talk about in chapter 7, is when Brick sacrifices Bubbles to the black blob that Him deployed. Again, we see Butch’s automatic loyalty to Brick. Buttercup is choking Brick, when Butch whacks her away. 

When Blossom rebukes him for protecting Brick, Butch repeats that she’s not his leader, that she shouldnt even think about giving him orders (and we’ve seen how immediately responsive he can be to orders that Brick gives). Even when Buttercup, his best friend, tells him to move he is resolute, taking a fighting stance. We know that he’s reluctant for things to escalate, watching Buttercup carefully, as he tells Brick to explain quickly. But his resolve never visibly wavers. Meanwhile, Boomer doesn’t move an inch to protect Brick. He’s simply in shock, over what happened. 

When Brick comes up to him, Boomer does something that we haven’t (and that likely Brick hasn’t) seen him do before. He directly questions Brick’s actions. In the scene with the aircraft, he asks Brick what he’s planning to do. But it’s because he wants to know what the plan is, not because he’s accusing Brick of making a bad or questionable decision. In this scene, he is showing outward disapproval of what Brick thought was the best decision. And not only that, he (a literal employee of Evil) is questioning how Brick (a verified supervillain and coworker in the industry of Evil) could do that to Bubbles, a superhero. No wonder Brick is unsettled, Boomer is expressing dissent, and suddenly has morals in regards to a superhero.

* Monday broke my heart

Chapter 9 has 2 important scenes that I want to discuss: interactions between his brothers and Brick the day after his date with Blossom, and some interactions at Robin's party. After the date, Brick is miserable. He doesn't sleep at all, he doesn't eat, he doesn't shower, he just hunches over the kitchen table all night. His brothers, who feel much better about their nights, try to cheer him up at least half-heartedly. Boomer is the one who asks if he's eaten, if he wants or needs anything. Butch encourages him to take a shower. After he finally does, they burst into his room, joint in hand. Boomer tells him to cheer up, Butch says "don't suppose you're gonna tell us what's up", and they just spend time with him, passing the joint around. It's scenes like this that I really treasure regarding the Boys. None of them are very communicative or vulnerable with others, and only Boomer seems to have much emotional intelligence in terms of self-knowledge and caring about others' feelings, but both Butch and Boomer do try to be there for Brick, in the ways that he allows them to be. It's easy to forget that between the ribbing, resentment, and abusive discipline.

Unfortunately, it's not even a week later (on a Friday, after several miserable days of Blossom basically ignoring him, and of trying to convince himself it's just adolescent hormones) when Brick turns his own emotional unrest against Boomer. He accuses Boomer of letting Bubbles get to him too much, of listening to her too much, and not having his priorities straight. He tries to order Boomer to break up with Bubbles, even threatening to make it more difficult for Boomer when they return to their jobs. And while he makes some good points about some of the unhealthy aspects Boomer's relationship with Bubbles (like fixating on her at the expense of his own interests and personal time, and becoming overdependent on her), he is absolutely projecting his own feelings and priorities onto Boomer. I think in a way he's worried about Boomer getting hurt like he is hurt, assuming it's inevitable and that it's just due to some distracting hormones.

He doesn't want Boomer to be "trapped". But it's still really very much about himself. He doesn't want Boomer to "drop everything [he's] doing if she so much as utters a word", and throw away everything Brick's been working for. He wants Boomer to do what he hopes he would do in that situation.

This exchange sends Boomer flying to Bubbles, and in their conversation, he reveals some very important aspects of his motivations, and his relationship with Brick.

Boomer is not invested in Evil. We've seen his more passive nature compared to Brick and Butch, and his active efforts to try to be good for Bubbles, something Brick would probly never even consider. Brick obviously makes the calls, and Boomer goes along with it cuz he literally has nothing else to do. His motivations so far have been his loyalty in emotional attachments, and lack of moral conviction. But recently, those things have been changing. Now he has someone he loves who reciprocates in a clear, communicative way. And that same person is teaching him what being "good" means, and asking him to change. In contrast, Butch goes along with Brick out of loyalty to a degree, and also cuz where else is he going to be able to get out his aggression and superpowered physical need for destruction and violence? Where else is he going to be able to handle dangerous weapons, and have enough money to self-medicate? Especially since, by himself, he's doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his reliability or ability to think on his feet.

Getting back to the scene, Boomer is venting about Brick wanting him to break up with Bubbles. And he frantically rants about how Brick is the leader, Butch is the tough guy, and he has nothing. How he's the runt, that the only thing people ever remark about him is that he's the stupid one, that his brothers don't need him for anything. That the one thing that makes him special is his music gift, but even that isn't really his. He's got some serious self-esteem issues, especially in regards to his brothers. Bubbles tries to calm him down, and Boomer ends up Bubbles about the Boys' job. Again, in their conversation, we get a little peek into his inner world, and his relationship with Brick:

Here we see that Boomer still cares about Brick, and still feels a sense of brotherly obligation to him. But I think he's pretty much done in terms of long term loyalty. I think he'll always care for Brick, but he's deciding in this moment that he won't always follow his lead, there's an expiration date. It'd be really interesting to see how Brick reacts to that when the time comes. I'm gonna put a pin in this thought as well.

Just before the party, Blossom and Bubbles go over to the Boys' apartment to give Boomer a haircut. As Blossom's beginning to cut his hair, Brick enters the apartment. After Brick asks what the they're doing, and Blossom says she's cutting Boomer's hair, Boomer makes a point of showing another act of defiance. He addresses Brick, making sure that he can see him reaching for Bubbles' hand - a silent, but pointed rebellion against Brick's previous orders to break up with her.

At the actual party, the infamous truth or dare game plays out. The part I want to talk about is when Buttercup kisses Brick on a dare, and Brick and Butch's subsequent interaction. As Brick goes back inside, Butch is waiting behind the door, glaring at him.

Brick glanced at him and frowned. What?”

Butch just stared at him, fuming.

“What, Butch?” Brick sighed.

“You're a fucking dick,” Butch spat, shaking his head, and shoved past Brick as he went back upstairs.

Brick's initial reaction, reads as confused. His second reaction is tired, exasperated, and I feel like he's just like "ugh what now". Like this is a repeated issue, where he doesn't know why Butch is mad at him. And this to me just demonstrates a continuous utter lack of understanding, in terms of Butch's perspective, and a surprising lack of pattern recognition for Brick. The only reason we've seen for why Butch is ever pissed at Brick, is due to jealousy. His reactions and behaviors are pretty damn consistent. But Brick just doesn't connect the dots, whether cuz of his issues with analyzing emotions, or cuz he was lost in thought. Either way, he fails to realize how attached Butch truly is to Buttercup. He doesn't see that it's not just Boomer (and himself) who's "trapped" by one of the Girls. And to be fair, Butch himself doesnt know it, but for someone who declared that he knew Butch and Boomer, he really doesn't know shit about Butch's internal experiences. This point of resentment and bitterness on Butch's part is a good jumping off point to go into a quasi-conclusion built from the many scenes I've put a pin in.

Butch is deeply loyal to Brick. We see this in many scenes. During the incident with the mama monster and her babies, Butch tells Blossom, "you ain't my leader". He says this again when defending Brick against Buttercup and Blossom in chapter 7. At the beach, Butch executes orders without question, and without hesitation. At a single word, he immediately eyebeams the computer in Blossom's hand, almost as quickly as if Butch was a gun and Brick had pulled the trigger. And all of this is in spite of the deep-seated jealousy and resentment Butch holds for Brick, the fact that he treats Butch like crap, beating the shit out of him over disobedience, and the fact that Brick is a controlling killjoy. So why is he so unquestioningly loyal to Brick? I think one aspect is that he obviously cares about his brothers. Yeah Butch makes fun of them, and gets mad at them sometimes, but that's what siblings do. Regarding the abuse, he has literally said that the reason Brick is so hard on him is cuz "he deserves it" (chap 3). This is a common mindset in abuse victims, and Butch is no exception. This next reason doesn't necessarily have much evidence, so its more of a headcanon, but i think he's also aware, to an extent, of how Brick has taken care of him and Boomer. He knows Brick got them out of Him's grasp, knows he's basically why they have a job with JS at all, why they've had good income. He's not the most analytical, but he's observant of others' moods, emotions, and behavior. We've seen him be so with literally everyone in the hallway when the Boys first attend school, with Blossom and Brick, with Buttercup, Mitch, etc. He acts like a dumbass, but he's not stupid. I think he sees how Brick has had his back (at least against outsiders), and this is a contributing factor to his loyalty. There's also the fact that siblings often fuck each other over, and still love each other and remain loyal to each other. As much as theyre atypical siblings, they're still brothers.

In contrast, Boomer seems to not be as unconditionally loyal to Brick. He tries to be there for Brick, particularly in terms of emotional support, but he is more inclined to ask questions about orders, and when it came to Bubbles he's even willing to outwardly show defiance against Brick's judgement. Ultimately, Boomer is very emotion driven. For loyalty, he needs to love and be loved. He loves Brick, and I think Brick loves him too. But Brick is not exactly demonstrative in his brotherly affection, and I think Boomer needs that. He craves and needs recognition and affirmation. Brick recognizes that Boomer is emotionally driven, but doesn't realize his emotional needs. And that is where Brick fails as a leader. Brick doesn't recognize the need for different leadership styles, based on the needs of his brothers/team. And that is why he's going to lose Boomer eventually. To someone who reciprocates and demonstrates their affection for him.

* Tried to stick a dead body inside me

This last part is on Chapter 10, with particular focus on the symbolism in the Vortex. I've already basically outlined my theories on this in relation to the Boys' dynamics in a post (link in the reblog), but I'll briefly summarize. The actions that happen in the Vortex, as well as the different positions of the Boys, is very important in regards to their relationships with each other. Boomer is at the lowest place, reflecting his lack of self-worth compared to his brothers. He stands at the bottom of a deep pool. He's alone in the cold, dark depths of the water, and the only way out is up. Brick is in the middle, standing on the floor around the pool. He has more freedom of movement than Boomer, and can make more choices. But soon he finds that he's swallowed up by rising waters as it floods outside of its designated area, disregarding boundaries, unable to be compartmentalized. It reflects his loss of control over his situation/environment, his inner turmoil, and relatively recent inability to simply contain and subdue his emotions. Butch is at the highest point, on a fence with Buttercup, feeling free and at peace with her at his back. Because he is literally "on the fence", with Buttercup on the other side, I feel like he might be (subconsciously) reevaluating where his loyalties lie - with Brick, or with Buttercup. It's worth noting that he is only able to be at that height when she is with him. As soon as Brick moves through her as if she's not there, Butch is eviscerated and pushed backwards off of his perch. And the culprit responsible for cutting him open and pushing him off the fence, forcing him "back in his place" or "back in line", is Brick - the one person Butch always seems to lose to (in his mind at least). This also reflects how Brick uses violence to discipline Butch and keep him in line, and that he tries to use that punishment as a way to regain control (since he unknowingly uses Butch's insides to pull himself out of a situation he couldn't control).

Going back to Boomer and Brick, Boomer is the weight dragging Brick down, reflecting Brick's view that Boomer is the runt, and also more recently, a liability due to his attachment to a certain blonde, blue-eyed Powerpuff Girl. Boomer sees Bubbles and her nurturing, loving care for him as a way out of the dark isolation he feels at the bottom. And that's the way he feels with his brothers. He's left behind, alone and cold, Brick and Butch far above him. But he has no hope that they will help him up. It's only Bubbles who seems to see him down there, and altho she doesn't help him either, she does inspire him to gather the strength to pull himself up to grab hold of her.

The symbolism honestly conveys their current relationships with each other, and their internal experiences, in such a concise and creative way that it gets me every time.

TL;DR

Butch is extremely loyal to Brick in an automatic and unquestioning way, despite all the resentment he has for Brick. But I theorize that that may be changing, very slowly, due to Buttercup. He genuinely cares about his brothers, even tho he rags on them a lot and isn't demonstrative or expressive about it. He seems to internalize the idea that he deserves violent consequences for misbehavior, and I wonder how much of his self-destructive behaviors are linked to that.

Boomer is loyal to Brick, but it's not quite as ingrained as Butch's loyalty. Bubbles is heavily impacting his loyalties, partly cuz, generally speaking, Brick and Butch make him feel worthless while she makes him feel wanted and loved. I think he knows his brothers care about him to an extent, but he has emotional needs that they arent willing or able to fulfill. He and Butch are closer than he is to Brick, and I think he understands Butch better than Brick does at least.

Brick is much more emotionally driven than hed like to admit. It influences what he allows his brothers to do, and how he enforces discipline on them. He's pretty typical in terms of thinking that his abuse and manipulation is justified or acceptable. I think he actually wants what he thinks is best for his brothers, but it's very tied to what he wants and thinks is the best path. He projects a lot of his wants and issues onto them. I don't think he's ever imagined a future where they weren't a team. Despite his emotional nature, he lacks emotional intelligence and doesn't understand or know Butch and Boomer nearly as well as he thinks he does. He knows their behavior extremely well, but not the inner processes and motivations that drive that behavior. And I think that's gonna trip him up.

[lil-nct-scenarios-11]

NCT- A Strange Message || Gang AU- part 7

Group: NCT- all members

Theme: Gang AU

Type: Series- fluff + angst

*Warning- this series will cover some dark themes such as abuse, drugs, and crude language so please read at your own discretion, if these themes make you uncomfortable at all, please do not read this 

Plot: We follow Taeil and watch him deal with his business with Johnny. After that we go back to you (lowkey reference to back 2 u) and how you deal with all that’s been going on around you recently until you get a phone call from the person you least expected it.

Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Taeil slams his car door shut loudly as he storms up Doyoung’s driveway, fuming more than ever. He knocks thunderously on the door and a very astonished Winwin opens up the door.

“You? What are you doing here?” Winwin bewilders, opening the door a tad bit wider.

Taeil ignores him and pushes through inside, yelling out, “Johnny! Johnny, you bastard, where are you hiding?”

Hansol jumps up from the couch and tries to rein Taeil back but Taeil breaks out from his grip when Johnny comes into the living room. Taeil immediately goes to throw a knuckle-cracking punch square on Johnny’s jaw despite the long reach. Johnny stumbled over in shock but recovered quickly grabbing Taeil’s collar to punch him right on his left cheekbone. Taeil gets ready to punch Johnny again but Hansol picks and drags Taeil away and turns his back towards Johnny so Taeil can’t jump out again. Hansol looks over his shoulder to see Jaehyun holding Johnny tightly then Hansol releases his grip on Taeil.

Taeil turns to face Johnny with his index finger pointing, “You need to stop hitting Jaemin, he’s just a kid! Let him be, what happened wasn’t his fault so really there’s no damn reason your filthy hand should be on him. But of course, you always make up some damn excuse to lay your hand on the kid. But now, you really over-crossed your limit. You shouldn’t be hitting him because he wants to talk to someone from my gang. If he wants to talk to someone from my side then just let him because frankly it’s not your decision to make!” Hansol holds him again just to make sure Taeil doesn’t punch Johnny anymore.

“You’re right Taeil hyung. It’s not his decision to make, it’s mine,” Doyoung says as he calmly walks into the living room with an apron on and a moist handtowel in hand. “And I want you to get out of my house.”

“No, not until you let them know it’s okay to talk to who they want without getting hurt,” Taeil says firmly, looking Doyoung straight in the eyes.

Doyoung looks over at Renjun, Jaemin, and Jisung and points at Taeil, “Did you guys get that?” They all nod in unison and Doyoung continues, “Good, well then I think you can leave now.”

Taeil shrugs off Hansol’s hand on his shoulder and turns to leave until Johnny speaks out, “Oh wait! Before you go, there’s something I must clarify. Isn’t everything you just said technically Yuta’s position to say, and I’m so curious to know why someone like you would care so much about our kiddos? I’m sure yours are a handful already, especially the two drama-queen ones. Now what were their names?”

“Leave them out of this, they’re good kids, they just keep things interesting,” Taeil snaps, earning a scoff from Doyoung. “Anyways, Yuta doesn’t need to worry about something like this. So I took care of it instead. And you make sure you keep your hands off Jaemin,” Taeil leans in closer to Johnny. “We all know this isn’t about Dongwoo anymore. I know you’re just mad that you aren't the leader and you love to bring up Yuta’s name to piss off Doyoung, don’t ‘cha?” Taeil lingers and let’s a full-fledged smirk take over his usually gentle face.

“Okay that’s enough Taeil, you should really go home now,” Hansol whispers in Taeil’s ear as he tugs Taeil towards the door with force.

Taeil walks towards the front door leisurely but stops when he sees Winwin standing next to the door with his mouth open in shock. When Winwin notices Taeil walking back, he closes his mouth and just looks down at his feet. Taeil comes closer and places his hand soundly on Winwin’s shoulder, causing him to look up. “Go to that bridge again tomorrow and you’ll find him. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you,” Taeil winks with a sincere smile as he pats his shoulder reassuringly.

“Taeil hyung-,” Doyoung warns.

Taeil puts his hands up as if to say, ‘alright, alright, I’m going, I’m going’ and proceeds to leave with Hansol walking him to his car.

“Thanks for helping. I wasn’t expecting you to do that but I should’ve known better. But again, thanks. I’m just tired of watching Jaemin getting hurt and for stupid reasons and all everyone does is watch. I’m sorry I had to drag you into this, I know you’re going through a lot right now too but Jaemin...” Hansol’s voice falters.

“Hey, don’t be silly. You know I always got your back, we’ve been through situations worse than this. But I’ve been thinking about what you said and I’m sorry for overreacting. You were right things will be ok, now that Y/N is here, the things that needed to happen will happen now. The secrets, the stories, the past... once he/she starts to figure things out, he/she could be the person to make all this ok. Then we’d never have to worry about Jaemin getting hurt or who’ll see us together and stuff. Things will finally be at peace between everyone. I’m glad the kiddos are interacting because it’ll make things much easier. Anyways, I should get going Hansol. I hope I taught Johnny his lesson, it’s time we do something about his situation now. If Johnny does anything like this again I really won’t spare him. It’s time to put an end to his reign and for someone to finally put him in his place- jail,” Taeil grumbles, clenching his fist.

“Whoa, calm down. You’re right about not staying quiet anymore but I don’t you making irrational decisions either. Make sure you go ice up when you get home ok? And I better go in too before they start to get suspicious. Alright take care -illie, see you when uni starts,” Hansol says quickly as he taps Taeil’s car briefly after he sits down.

Hansol walks back towards the house with his arms closed and watches Taeil pull out from the driveway and drive away back home.

“Hansol hyung? Y/N just called me, can you take us over to his/her house?” Renjun asks in a silent whisper, looking up with pleading eyes.

___________

After you left the park, you went straight home just as you told Renjun before you left him.

 “you know I love you right? there’s no one like you in my life, you really are my brother/sister. it’s not the blood that matters but our bond.”

A tear trickles down your flushed cheek and a wide smile proudly stretches on your face. You think of your favorite childhood memories you lived through with Renjun and realize that he was always so much more than just a friend. He was like your big brother, ever since day one. No, he is your big brother. Like he said, its not the blood, its the bond. And anyone who denied that you two were inseparable was a fool. Anything you did as a child, you can safely bet that it was right beside Renjun. Damn, you two really went through everything together. And when Renjun moved away, there was a large hole you couldn’t fill no matter what. For three years, it stayed empty. Even though you texted a lot at first, as with most long distance friendships, it started to get fuzzy. Now you’re sure the only reason Renjun stopped texting back was because of his parents tragic arrest and him having to live under Johnny and Doyoung’s roof.

Sadness pangs your heart again when you start to realize how lonely Renjun must’ve felt when he had no one to stay with. However he ended up with Jaemin and the rest, you were thankful because you can clearly see how attached Renjun is to them.

You still have a lot of questions like when was he planning to tell you about his parents if it wasn’t for Johhny’s aid or how he really did meet Jaemin and ‘em. You take a deep breath as you unlock your door to enter your vacant, silent home. You set your bag down and stretch, you realize you don’t have to worry about all those questions because quite frankly you’re not sure you can handle all the answer given your current situation and you know the answers will reveal themselves as time goes on.

You turn on the light to reveal all the boxes of items you haven't unpacked yet. You don’t want to unpack anything now since you like how they all take up the empty spaces and make your home feel not-so-empty. You lock the door and make your way across to the kitchen, turning on the lights along the way. You hit the answering machine to play the messages you missed while you were away.

You only half listen as you’re rummaging through your nearly empty fridge and grab an almost expired pint of milk to make cereal for dinner. When the last message starts, you drop your spoon in shock as you listen to your mom’s voice that you haven't heard in years.

 ‘Hi sweetie, its mom. Um, I know things are weird between us but I heard about your dad and I was just calling to check up on you. I understand if you don’t want to talk to me hon, but please call me back as soon as you can so I know how you are. I really do miss you honey, I wish I could be with you but I don’t know where your father’s taken you. I love you baby, please call me if you can. I’m sorry...’

“End of all missed messages, to delete these messages press-” you cut off the eerie automated voice. You drop to your knees and let the tears pour down your face. You pull your cell phone from your back pocket feebly and ring up the one you need.

“Renjun?” your voice quivers. “Ren, I need you right now. Please come over, I really need you,” your voice breaks.

“Y/N? Y/N? What happened? Bro/sis, I’m coming over right now. Stay strong, I love you. I’m coming, don’t do anything,” he desperately reassures, wishing that he could just appear before you this very instant.

You wallow in your thoughts of your traumatizing past, as vivid flashbacks take over your mind. You blank out again, feeling like you can’t breathe, the feeling so intense you are almost sure you won’t make it before Renjun gets here.

A few long minutes past before you hear a vociferous doorbell echo into the empty house. You struggle to scramble back on your feet and rush to the door. Your hands fidget with the door knob but you manage to pull it open and you throw your arms around the person at the door without checking to see who it was first.

You didn’t notice how this person’s chest was more sturdy compared to Renjun’s but you still sob into it anyways.

“Whoa, Y/N, what happened?” Jeno asks instantly, pulling you from his chest to see your vulnerable, confused face.

“Jeno? Where’s Renjun? I thought you were Renjun,” you bawl, not making an effort to wipe your tears.

“Y/N!” you hear Renjun’s voice call out as he and Jaemin run up your pathway. He pushes past Jeno a bit forcefully and you crash into his arms instead. “It’s ok, I’m here now.”

“What’s going on? What happened?” Jeno asks, getting confused.

“Don’t worry about it. What are you doing here?” Jaemin wonders, looking at you in sympathy.

“I was just gunna ask him/her if he/she’d seen Taeil-hyung by any chance. He left really angrily when I got home and he isn’t answering his phone so we got really worried,” Jeno explains, his expression turning sad after seeing your state.

“He just left our home a little while ago, he had some business with someone but he should be at your home now,” Jaemin explains softly.

“Hey is everything alright?” Yuta comes up and asks. “Y/N, are you ok? What happened?”

“Nothing I just needed someone,” you hiccup as you wipe away your tears and attempt to gather yourself.

“Ok, I’ll let you calm down first but um I need to borrow Renjun real quick,” Yuta explains quickly, holding Renjun’s wrist loosely.

“I’m in the middle of something right now hyung,” Renjun says quickly, trying to shake Yuta’s grip off his hand.

“I know, and I promise I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn't important. I’ll be quick,” Yuta insists.

Renjun takes a deep breath and nods, “Ok, I need to tell Jeno something real quick.” Yuta nods and steps off to the side, giving them space.

“Jeno, I’m trusting you on this. Y/N really needs m-, you right now so please just be there for him/her. Don’t ask anything just say stuff like ‘everything’s gunna be alright’, got it? I’m serious, I’m counting on you,” Renjun whispers in Jeno’s ear before heading off.

Jeno goes in the house after you and Jaemin and Renjun meets Yuta next to the pitiful garden where he was standing.

“What do you want, you know I’m not supposed to be talking to you. I got Hansol hyung in the car waiting too so-” Renjun blurts as he points a finger towards Yuta.

“Don’t worry kid, I’m not here to hurt ‘cha. And besides Hansol hyung isn’t gunna do anything either because we have a history-,”

“I don’t want to talk to someone like you who betrayed us!”

“But you talk to Jeno,” Yuta points out.

“It's not like I want to, I don’t want anything to do with him. I only talk to him because of Y/N.”

“Exactly, that’s why I’m here to talk to you. I know you’re not happy I left but since Y/N has come into our lives I realized how much I want to help you.”

“I don’t need your help! You’re probably gunna suggest leaving my gang aren't ‘cha? That’s exactly what I thought, if you’re here to explain why you left us than I’m really not in any mood to hear it. I need to go back to Y/N,” Renjun states as he turns around to leave.

“Renjun, wait. Please I know the timing isn’t great but I really need to tell you this right now I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to see you again. Look I know you aren’t happy living with Johnny right now, especially since how he’s changed after Dongwoo’s death. But don’t act like I can’t see those marks on you and Jaemin that Johnny leaves behind. I know you probably don’t believe this or care but I really care about you and Jaemin and Jisung, all of you. But I’m genuinely so much happier and I’ve changed and I want the same for all of you. And whether you like it or not, I will help you. I told you, I’ve changed, give me a chance and I’ll prove it to you. I want to make things better for you and them too,” Yuta promises boldly, holding Renjun’s hand with his back still facing Yuta.

“You know, I really missed you when you left hyung. Nothing was the same without you. We watched Johnny hyung transform into a monster and Doyoung hyung became heartless after you broke up with him and Jaehyung turned into a drunkard and druggie and even Mark hyung, the good one. Even he gave into all the evil and negativity that consumed home. I mean it’s not like you were some kinda god when you were with us but I still missed you. You were the only one to step up and put everyone in their place while still being on their good side. Now our Jisung is the one doing that because you know how quiet Hansol hyung is. If you really changed like you said you did then I’m truly happy for you but you gotta give me time to think this over and it won’t be any time soon because I’m lookibg after Y/N right now. Besides, we’ve already suffered this much what’s a little longer gunna do. And things might change own their own too because that Taeil hyung dude came over and really beat up Johnny hyung. So who knows, maybe he knocked some sense into Johnny hyung. And funnily enough, he was talking about how he wanted us to know that it’s ok to talk to your side. I just wonder how he knew about it,” Renjun wonders.

“Taeil hyung? That’s strange, thanks for letting me know. We were actually looking for him. And thank you for actually listening and I’m really, really sorry that you had to go through all that when I left but I assure you, now is the time for change especially due to Y/N’s arrival. Speaking of which, you should go to him/her, I’ve kept you back long enough anyways, so go. But I want and will make things better because I want to prove to you that a little hope can long way. I miss you too Renjun, I hope I’ll be able to see you soon,” Yuta smiles, a tear collecting in his eye.

“Me too hyung, well I really need to go but yea I’ll keep what you said in mind. You should go to Hansol hyung ‘cause you’re right he’s not gunna do anything, but if he happens to say anything just say I sent you then you should be fine. Take care hyung,” Renjun says with a small but proud smile.

“You too Renjun, ok go now he/she needs you,” Yuta pats his shoulder firmly, giving Renjun a little push.

Part 8

*phew I really need to get back on schedule but great thing is that school starts this week so that should be fun (notice the sarcasm) but fr I really do think that once school starts then I’ll finally have the motivation and structure in my life again so I’ll be able to stay focused

*Anywayyys back to this, please let me know your thoughts on this part and/or series as a whole

* a lot of pretty important things happened here so I’ll lay off the cliffhanger for now so we can all just take a moment for all this drama

*Damn it’s hard to say that johnny’s character in this series is abusive bc he’s such sweet, gentle guy irl and tbh Renjun and y/n’s friendship is too pure for this world and just ugh, I can’t wait to write the next part already haha

*I just take a moment to say thanks to all those who are actually following this series, it means a lot bc I know I haven’t been posting consistently but I just wanted to let u know that I see all u guys in my notifs and I appreciate y’all so thnx and I truly do hope u are enjoying this series

[geek-with-tea]

Skin-A (non holiday) Christmas Fic!

So, this is a gift for @flowersalesman who requested a fic from the Betters Cannot Be Choosers AU. As it happens to be, I know the creator of the AU so I got @opinioninvalid autograph for you!

Now, I didn’t do just that! I also created a little story for you for the AU. The context for this is this post. http://geek-with-tea.tumblr.com/post/156218072600/khealywu-adulthoodisokay-source-this-is

“Skin…skin…”

What did Papyrus do to deserve this? He was a good, upstanding, and absolutely charming skeleton, though mind you the bar was set very low considering it was determined by whether or not one had killed someone. At least this death was all temporary.

“SANS. WHAT SHENANIGANS ARE YOU UP TO NOW?” He muttered, looking up from his Italian cook book. He missed making lasagna-when he was a teenager everyone used to say it was exquisite . Too good, for it kept getting stolen by the Annoying Dog. At least his amazing spaghetti was dog proof.

“aw come on! i thought that might scare you a bit.”

“IT IS JUST A VOICE SAYING SKIN. WE ARE LITERALLY MADE OF BONES. EVEN IF IT WAS SOME FOUL DEMON IT WOULDN’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH ME.” Honestly, his twin never really thought out good japes. Sure it would work on an amateur or most children, but he was neither.

“okay, okay. so i was at the dump trying to find parts for the machine and i found this abomination! i can see why the humans want to throw it out.” He pulled the doll out of his coat pocket.

“look! it just says skin!” He grinned as he pulled out the blue and green furred…toy.

“Skin…skin…” Yep. Indeed. It only said skin. Why?

“too bad you didn’t have a good reaction. you just looked bored and slightly irritated….” Sans, while his mouth revealed little, still had a pout in his voice.

“THAT WAS BECAUSE I WAS BORED AND SLIGHTLY IRRITATED.”

“i picked the wrong target. Hmmm….who would make a good one…”

Suddenly the great work of Gordon Ramsey didn’t seem to appeal as much as it had sheer seconds ago. He knew where this was going.

Sans’ eyebones rose just tantalizingly enough to ruin whatever interest he had in his book. “wanna bet on it?”

Crap. His one weakness. Absolutely he did.

“YES.”

“so who do you think is going to be scared the easiest?”

Papyrus paused. “HMM…HOW ABOUT DR ALPHYS? SHE SEEMS EASY TO SCARE.”

Sans paused, keeping a very easy poker face-which unfortunately did not give a good sign whether Papyrus guessed right or not. “not bad. well i am going to bet flowey.”

Papyrus mentally burst into laughter. Flowey was his best friend, but to say he had never once had nightmares about him was an absolute lie-one he had told a few times, but sure. There was no way Flowey would be scared of a children’s toy. Would be he nervous? Perhaps. Flowey always said horror was boring and always protested to them watching them…well, perhaps if Flowey was hiding a phobia or horror, perhaps it was as risk. But a doll is not the Boogeyman in the slightest.

“SO WHAT ARE WE GOING TO BET?”

“if i lose, i will permanently throw my sock in the living room in the garbage, but if i win, you have to throw out the spaghetti mausoleum.”

“MUSEUM. LIKE A WORK OF ART”

“that spaghetti is dead, not even a reset can bring it back. Mausoleum.”

“EXCUSE YOU, MY SPAGHETTI IS LIKE THE WORK OF DA VINCI!”

“sure! if they put his corpse in a museum it would still smell like your mausoleum, and I don’t have a proper nose or standards.”

“UGH WHATEVER. BUT IT IS A DEAL.” Papyrus pouted, holding out his hand to shake it.

“deal, babybones, deal.” Sans snickered. It was just five minutes, Sans…five minutes.

_______________

It wasn’t too hard to find Alphys after 8 pm at night, curled up in front of TV with vegetable flavoured ramen.

“wonder if she ate the fish flavoured ramen i gave her already?” Papyrus couldn’t help but to snort at that.

“I WISH THERE WAS REPTILE FLAVOURED RAMEN SO I COULD RETURN THE FAVOUR.” Papyrus said between a giggle.

“red fish, blue fish, super embarrassed fish.” Sans snickered as he used his magic to keep the doll from hitting the wall as Papyrus lowered the line on the fishing pole.

It was silent for a moment. He had to do it. He had to. “TOO BAD THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOAT FLAVOURED RAMEN, RIGHT SANS?” To his witticism, Sans flipped him off, a distinct blue tint on his cheeks.

“I DON’T THINK THAT IS BROTHERLY AFFECTION, SANS.” He grinned cheekily as they slowly lowered the doll.

“Skin…skin…skin…skin...” the doll droned as it timed almost perfectly with the ominous music of the Mew Mew Kissy Cutie Halloween.

“O-oh! Is that an oni? Well hello there!” Alphys seemed, well,  not scared, but less nervous than she ever was.

“WHAT IS AN ONI? THAT SOUNDS LIKE ANIME LANGUAGE.”

“it’s part of japanese. she thinks it is a demon.”

She gave an ungodly shriek, but it wasn’t scared at all…she cupped her hands to her face. “Oh my gosh! That’s your vessel? Aren’t you just the cutest thing? Aww, well you see I am a reptile monster, so I don’t have skin. So sorry, I don’t have any flesh for you.” She cooed as if talking to a cat. A cat that wished to devour your skin that is.

Suddenly Papyrus felt just a touch nervous.

“DID…DID SHE JUST OFFER IT FLESH?”

“aw come on bro, don’t you know to always keep some flesh on hand for random demons? i always have flesh in my pocket.”

“WHAT KIND OF EXPERIMENTS WAS SHE DOING IN HER BASEMENT?” He had always tried to avoid that question, after knowing she gave determination to Flowey somehow. Sans swiped his hand to say no. It had been a deal that Flowey’s secrets were Papyrus’s only and Alphys’s secrets were Sans’s only.

“SORRY! IT IS A RHETORICAL QUESTION.”

“Aww! Come here! Do you prefer Mr, Miss or Mx? I am trying to come up with a name for you!”

Sans looked back and forth between Alphys and his brother. “yeah…you get used to it.”

Well, clearly Papyrus was at a disadvantage, but surely Flowey would not react to it. His museum would still be in tact after this setback.

____________

Flowey was sleeping, which made this just a touch mean. But not terribly, it would just be like an alarm clock. As they sit in the tree, Sans kept the toy from making impact with anything as Papyrus lowered it.

“Skin…skin…skin…”

Flowey began to stir softly, yawning. It was like looking at a small kitten and Papyrus had to stifle an ‘aw’. Sans looked at him with a smile.

“and you judged alphys for wanting to adopt a demon.”

“OH HUSH. FLOWEY IS DIFFERENT.”

Sans made a sound like he wanted to say more but just kept silent. Good.

Flowey took a moment, blinking sleep from his eyes as this toy was lowered to eye level with him. Then…something happened. His eyes began to widen at a rapid rate, and for a moment you could see his stem heaving like a bipedal’s chest.

He quickly threw a pellet at it, but Sans swung it out of the way just subtly. Apparently this was just too much for the reincarnated prince to handle.

“Go away! Go away! Go away!” Pellets got thrown faster and faster at the doll, but it just kept on its mantra. “skin…skin…skin…”

“I-I don’t have skin! Go away! Stupid! I’m not scared of you!” But even an infant would have been able to tell he was lying. Sans grinned at Papyrus. “Looks like we have a winner and it’s not your mausoleum.” He grinned and blinked an eye light out for a moment.

Curses. But the Great Papyrus could rebuild. The Museum would be perfect once more, with only the finest spaghetti creations in the jars. But…perhaps it was time to make sure that Flowey wouldn’t be traumatized…

“SANS, I AM GOING TO GO DOWN THERE. IF HE SEES YOU IMMEDIATELY HE WILL BITE YOUR FACE OFF AND I PREFER YOU WITH A FACE.”

“no problem bro. hate to plant any trauma.”

“DID YOU JUST…?” Papyrus groaned.

“well of course i did. it’s what i do.” He laughed as Papyrus went to Flowey.

“FIEND! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS WILL STOP YOU! FOR I HAVE NO FLESH AND THEREFORE AM INVINCIBLE TO YOU!” He slid down the tree he had been perched, letting his scarf blow in the wind like the fabulous long hair he kind of wished he had,  following the number one rule of MTTs Brand And How to Make People Love You: Arrive with a Grand Entrance!

“oh my god he dabbed.” He heard from his twin brother giggling from his end of the fishing rod.

“Papyrus…?” For a moment, Flowey’s fear seemed to evaporate as he watched Papyrus galiantly slowly slide down the tree with his arm shrouding his face in mystery as his extended arm controlled his slide down the tree, admittedly a little too slowly.

For a moment, it had appeared the doll itself was facing him.

“skin…skin…skin…”

“Papyrus! Hurry up! This thing is going to kill me!” Flowey glanced wildly between Papyrus and the doll, with almost a touch of anger.

“skin…skin…skin…”

“EEK! Papyrus! It is getting closer!”

Deciding that perhaps this slide thing wasn’t working at Papyrus-grade level, he simply jumped off, did a backflip and with a precise aim, slammed the doll down to the snow with his hand.

“THE EVIL IS DEFEATED.” Papyrus grinned, albeit a little cheesily.

They heard a soft thump and the uproaring laughter of a certain short, skeleton. “that was the cheesiest thing I have seen from you pap oh my god!”

“WELL I AM SORRY FINESSE ESCAPES YOU DEAR BROTHER.”

Any look of gratefulness on Flowey’s face was gone as it distorted.

“You jerks! This was a bet wasn’t it?” Papyrus was reminded of Toriel with her angry mother gaze and folded arms.

“maaaaaybe….” Quickly shielding himself, Sans dodged a couple of the pellets.

“WELL FLOWEY, I BET THAT YOU WOULDN’T BE FRIGHTENED OF THE DOLL!”

“Yeah! So Sans, Papyrus wins! Because I wasn’t scared!” Flowey huffed in anger.

“alphys wanted to adopt the doll. he lost.” Sans grinned.

“I wasn’t scared!”

“nah, you were just frightened.”

Papyrus noticed something…odd with the doll. It didn’t quite…feel right.

“nuh uh! babies get scared and i am not a baby!” Flowey shook his head vehemently.

“PFFT! you shook like a leaf!”

There…there was no voice box. Quietly, he lifted his hand off the doll…to reveal black beady eyes he wasn’t sure were there. His glove went over the doll once more.

“SANS. DID YOU MOVE THE DOLL WHILE I WENT DOWN ON THE TREE?”

“uh…no…?” Papyrus saw Flowey visibly tense up. They both knew what was coming.

“Well it looked at me, and…um…this thing has no voice box.”

Sans blinked. Flowey blinked. Papyrus blinked.

“well shit.” Sans muttered a moment before all three chose to sprint for their lives and try to find something that would work for holy water.

________

As Chara watched the boys run away, they laughed as they removed the hand from the puppet. Who said being dead had to be boring?

[tinybellz-blog]

Brotherly Love Pt 2.

Who →  Tiny Bell & Vince Bell

When → April 28th 2017

Where → North Bay Jail 

Notes → Tiny tries to get some clarity on his life and a few other subjects from his brother

Tiny: felt more at ease as opposed to the last time he was here. Maybe it was because his brother had been deemed good enough to have physical contact with visitors now, or maybe it was because of how calm he'd been over the past few weeks. Still, as he headed inside the visitation room, he could only think of what his brother had to say since he'd written him last. So much had happened, not only to him, but Vanessa as well. How much did Vince really know about the outside world since he managed to arrange for her to have a safe house? All these questions buzzed through Tiny's head, but he decided to psych himself down and took a seat at the metal table. He looked around, noticing other inmates talking and hugging their families and loved ones, hoping he'd get to do the same.

Vince: It was the first time Vince was allowed a visitor outside of the restrictions of a glass wall and a telephone, and he was glad that it was going to be his brother. He was doing better than the last time he’d seen him. Vince had managed to find some peace of mind in prison. He took up boxing with a group, threw himself into his assigned job making license plates, and had gotten a haircut. But there were things happening on the outside that he still needed to be clued into. And just because he hadn’t heard of much trouble happening, he wasn’t so naive to believe that meant all was well. He walked into the open area, giving a nod to one of his fellow inmates before turning to see his brother seated at a table waiting for him. “Wassup dawg” he grinned, making his way over to dap him up and pull him into a tight hug. “How ya living?” he asked as he finally took his seat on the other side.

Tiny: peered his head up as he saw more inmates coming to visit their loved ones, and he couldn't help but smile once he saw his brother. The first thing he noticed was that he looked a bit different..a little more muscle, but it was more about his inner appearance that he felt had changed over time. "Yo, you're being good in here? Color me shocked.", he half joked as he stood up, dapped and hugged him back. It felt great to actual touch his brother again, even if it was only for a little while. He took his seat and shrugged, trying to play everything off as cool. "Eh, I can't complain. I mean, I'm /living/ so I gotta be grateful." With a smirk, Tiny pulled down the top of his shirt a little to reveal the scar on his chest from his operation. "I've been through way too much for some little heart attack to put me down."

Vince: shook his head and laughed at his brother’s comment. “Guess I can’t be a delinquent forever” he chuckled, knowing it was ironic statement considering he was clad from the shoulders down in a green prison jumpsuit. He couldn’t wipe the grin from his face, not able to believe that he was sitting face to face with his brother. It certainly made turning the other cheek and complying with prison authority worth it. When his brother reached to show him his scar however, his grin faded. He knew Tiny could handle his own, but he still felt like he was lacking in his duties as a big brother not being able to be there for him through something so traumatic. ‘Damn, that’s a mean scar you got there..” he commented. “But I’m proud of you bro”

Tiny: "But seriously..glad you're doing alright in here.", he said sincerely. While he had no doubt that Vince was still Vince at the end of the day, meaning he'd always have a few tricks and a mean streak up his sleeve, but he was glad to see that he could mellow out some and be..normal. Hopefully others would get the chance to see this side of him one day. He knew that showing his scar would be a messy subject, but there was no reason to hide anything from his brother after all. "Thanks. I guess I got a little caught up in this whole..jock thing. My bad.", he shrugged as he put his shirt back together. "I promise I'm done with that stuff though, I'm done going nuts with the sports stuff, doctor's told me to chill for a little bit. Aunt V was freaked, but we're working through it. Oh! And she did want to come, but she had work, important attorney work or something, but she said she'll come next time."

Vince: “Yeeah, maybe if I keep it up they’ll fuck with me on a early release or something.” Vince knew the chances of that happened were probably slim, but at this point he was willing to do whatever he needed to get back to his life. Vince listened as his brother explained to him--and nodded, understanding. He had no plans to chastise his brother for his mistake after all people had done way worse things than take steroids to succeed. He was in a penitentiary full of them. “I’m glad you’re good T. You know how them drugs can fuck with you” After all, Vince and Tiny used to sell to some pretty doped out people--they’d seen first hand how much they can really fuck with a person’s life. At the mention of his Aunt Viv he gave another subtle nod, honestly, he didn’t expect her to take time out of her life to come visit him. he damn sure wouldn’t if he was her. “So what are you gonna do about football, man? Did they kick you off the team or something?”

Tiny: could only nod, but he hoped that his brother would get out on early release, though he knew the chances of that happening were slim with the case against Vince so large. And if there was such a release or pardon, it wouldn't be coming anytime soon, he imagined. For now, all he could do was hope for the best and hope Vince's time in here would be as much of a breeze as it could be. He was glad that his brother hadn't come down on him too hard, as was his fear before he came, the last thing he wanted to hear was how dumb his mistake was. "Yeah, I know. I thought everything was cool when I stopped, but I guess not. Hell, if Drew hadn't punched me in my chest, I could have had /more/ damage done to me.", he admitted with a small shake of his head. Drew Torres being his savior wasn't something he liked to talk about a lot, but he saved his life, he had to give him some credit. At the mention of what he'd do about football, he sighed heavily, still unsure. "Nah, haven't told Armstrong yet. But man, I don't know. I like it, but I hate the stupid ass athlete rules. Can't talk to this person, can't talk to that person, it's dumb as shit. I like doing my own thing like you did. I'm thinking about joining V's group but, she's got her own shit going on."

Vince: Hearing Drew Torres’ name caused Vince’s jaw to clench, but he tried not to let any particular reaction get the better of him. It didn’t exactly comfort him to hear that he was the one that ended up saving his baby brother’s life but he figured he’d take it in stride for now. It was all he could do. When it came to the matter of his group Vince couldn’t stop himself from releasing a chuckle and shaking his head. Degrassi would never change. “Well at the end of the day you know V’s got your back--and if the athletes are still the athletes they aren’t about shit. I wouldn’t trust them.” Vince knew how shit ran in those popular circles, after all he was the personal oxy dealer of Miss Katie Matlin herself. Those kids weren’t each other's real friends. Clearly, they barely knew each other. But they smiled in each other's faces and passed time all in the name of the social food chain. “But--” he interjected, raising his hand. “I don’t think sticking with the football is a bad idea. And if you really want to play then you just gotta deal with them” Vince shrugged. After this year Tiny had a year of high school left. And next year if he decided to play football it could land him a university spot. “But um, speaking of V--” he interjected, scratching his nose. He shifted forward a little and lowered his voice, knowing how precarious her situation was. “What’s going on there?”

Tiny: knew of the history that Drew Torres had with not only Vince, but Vanessa as well. Or at least, what he'd been told from their accounts anyway. But still, if he was willing to let bygones be bygones, then maybe Vince could, at least just this once. Tiny felt that the trials and tribulations of high school cliques were basically third world problems compared to what his brother was dealing with, but a little mundane normalcy might keep him entertained, maybe he'd even provide some insight that would help him. "You're right. I mean, I only really trust like one. Everybody is kinda shady, especially Dallas.", he said with a roll of his eyes as he spoke his name, "Speaking of that, I beat the shit out of him. Got too all in my business so I had to pop him. Good stuff.", he boasted proudly with a small laugh. Tiny raised his brows, but reluctantly nodded at his brother's suggestion. "I guess you're right on that. But I've gotta make a change to them or something, it's too crazy.", he shrugged as he knew he'd have another choice to make considering this. "You mean the..ooh. Uh, she's alright from what I know. I haven't seen you-know-who in ages and he hasn't bothered V." Tiny was curious about the matter, so he pressed on, albeit speaking quietly. "But I thought you'd know more than me. You let her in your safe house, you didn't put a hit out on the dude?"

Vince: had to give a huff at the mention of Mike Dallas as well, everything about that dude read fraud. And he didn’t buy for a minute that the same Mike Dallas that used to get fucked up and then fuck anything that moved like it was his profession was all of a sudden a straight and narrow kind of guy. But he chuckled along with his brother that he ended up fighting him. “Bout time somebody shut him up” Vince grinned. He saw Tiny was at a real crossroads when it came to this whole clique situation--he would tell him to just go rogue like he did last year and forget everyone but people liked Tiny. And being a loner isn’t something you did unless you had to. “It’s up to you at the end of the day.” he nodded, letting his brother know he was behind him whatever he decided. Vince shook his head “I mean, setting up the house is easy to do on the phone but a hit? I know they got these shits tapped. And I’m not really tryna end up back in solitary..” Vince shook his head, wishing he had more of a grip on the situation. “I talked to get Mario to come out here so we could talk about it face to face but you know it’s hard to get people all the way out here. But as long as she’s there he’ll look out for her” He shrugged, making a mental note to call him later and check on things. “So how’s your love life bro? I hope you’re out here getting more than me” he chuckled. “What ever happened to that little piece you had with the pink hair last year? Lola?”

Tiny: "I'll make a mental note to make him flinch one time for you next time I see him in the locker room.", Tiny spoke with a laugh. He knew of the tension between Dallas and his brother, and if he could pester the shit out of the older male until he graduated then that was just icing on the cake. "Thanks man, I'll figure it all out..but I know I'll be good.", he said confidently with a nod of his head. Tiny felt like going it alone sometimes, but while Tiny liked to be a loner from time to time, he felt a sense of responsibility and pride in the way he carried himself now. If he could make a better way for someone younger, be they athlete or an artist, then he'd try his best to be that guide in their life. Tiny listened to his brother speak, sort of getting a handle on the situation somewhat and figuring that setting things up wasn't so easy on the inside. "Right..wouldn't want you to go back there..hell, it'd probably be hard to get guys like that to even come out here. Heck, /I/ don't even like prisons.", he shuddered with a shake of his head. Tiny would try his best to handle the Vanessa situation the best way he knew how, although he wished she'd update him more herself. At the mention of his love life, Tiny couldn't help but smirk and fold his hands behind his head. "Ay, she's got pink hair /and/ ass for days. Don't forget that. Heh.", he boasted before smiling more sincerely. "But nah. It's going good. I mean, I tried with Dallas's cousin Shay and she's cool..but besides him being dick and making it hard..I never stopped caring for Lo. I love her, man."

Vince: “Nah, nobody does” he replied, letting his eyes glance around for a moment at the company they were surrounded by in the small meeting area. No one really looked happy to be there. Glad to see their loved ones maybe, but a hint of discomfort lingered nonetheless. Turning to his attention back to his brother as he discussed Lola he laughed, shaking his head. “Alright bro, handle that” he praised him-- he’d never really looked at her that way since she was so young but he always thought she was a good fit for his brother. “So is that your girlfriend or you’re just talking or wassup?” There was a sense of normalcy that Vince could appreciate in the two of them being able to sit here and talk about girls, but he felt both eyebrows raise when his brother mentioned that he loved the girl. “Wow” he remarked, another grin creeping onto his features. His little brother, in love. “That’s crazy T-- but aye I fuck with it. Good for you.”

Tiny: watched Vince look around, feeling a bit bad again for bringing up Vince's current predicament. Although he didn't blame any of them, Tiny felt a sense of disappointment that more people didn't come to visit him, but when you go to jail, he figured things weren't as simple as they once were. Still, Tiny would try to be there, even if others didn't feel like following, just like always. The sense of normalcy was nice to have though as the two discussed girls again, a sense of pride beaming from him as he spoke about his life. "Yeah, that's mine's. I mean, she's no street girl, but I think Pops would be proud.", he smiled as he raised his fist to fist bump his brother. "She's making me think long term bro. I mean, I'm not rushing anything, I still wanna go to college and do all that shit. But after? I'm trying to start my own family, if not with her then somebody. Make our name mean something.", he said with a sense of hope. "I guess I've come a long way from that scrawny little kid that couldn't fight, hmm?"

Vince: could feel a sense of pride sitting here and listening to Tiny discuss his plans for the future. He’d always knew he was going to be the one to go out and make something of himself, and from the way he was talking it sounded like he was gearing up to prove him right. Vince scratched the back of his shaven head, giving his brother a playful shrug. “I mean I guess I could see some little Tinys running around somewhere down the line” he chuckled. “Hopefully their heads don’t come out as big as yours” It was crazy to him how..grown Tiny looked. He didn’t know what type of diet Degrassi had their athletes on, but he seemed bigger eveytime he saw him. But no matter what, to Vince, he’d always be his baby bro. “So what are you thinking about as far as university? You been looking at anywhere special?” He was really clueless as to how the whole application process went, having never applied himself. But if Tiny went he’d be the first out of their little immediate family to go and that meant something to him.

Tiny: "Heh, if I could just have little Tinys, I'd be good. If I had a girl though...man. I'd be swinging on every dude that'd try to talk to her, cause I know how dudes are. But at least they'll have their Uncle Vince to help them out.", he spoke with a hopeful tone. Tiny wasn't sure how long Vince would be in here for, but he hoped his brother would be free in time to see Tiny have his own family for himself, if not years before that. But of course, that was easier thought than talked about. Tiny grimmaced and laughed as he ran his hand through his hair to examine his own head. "Hey! One, the hair makes it look bigger, and two, it's to fit my big brain." At the mention of college, Tiny thought for a moment before answering. College was a big step, something he never really thought he'd be able to go to last year, but now with the sky being the limit, he had a lot to think about. "I'm thinking Brown for science maybe, Columbia, Cal Tech..NYU and Morehouse are my top two though, but I'm not sure about going so far from Aunt V, you know?" Tiny was enjoying staying with his Aunt and Uncle and his cousins over the past months, as brief as it had been, and he didn't want to leave them after only being their a short time. "If I don't get a scholarship with sports or whatever though, I can always apply for financial aid or scholarship. If I write an essay about my life to these big shots? I know I'd get the 'underprivileged black street kid' scholarship, but I ain't complaining about handouts."

Vince: “Whatever you gotta tell yourself, kid” he chuckled along with him at his big head comment. He was attentive to his brother’s college plans, and knew this conversation was the first of many considering he had a long road of applications and test scores ahead of him. But Vince was going to try his best to be as involved as his incarceration would allow with this whole college thing. “You kidding? Just tell them about that week straight we ate hot dogs and baked beans for dinner and they’ll be throwing the money at you.” As far as Vince saw it it wasn’t a handout--it was more of an investment. And the least they could do for kids like Tiny, who didn’t grow up with a whole lot of resources but made up for it in their smarts. Just as he was about to open his mouth to speak again he felt a tap on his shoulder, an awaiting officer letting him know that it was time to wrap up. Vince turned back to his brother in spite of the warning. “Aye--Imma call you this weekend so make sure you pick up, alright?” he asked, looking the other male straight on.

Tiny: felt a little strange talking about college plans with his brother still. It felt like just yesterday Tiny didn't have much hope for leaving Toronto, let alone going to college. He felt like he'd be abandoning his brother and the life they'd grown accustom to. But things were different now, and Tiny felt like he had a chance to do or be anything he wanted, thankfully with his entire family's support. Tiny could only laugh at the story Vince told him, remembering all too well their diet as youngsters. "Hey, who doesn't love pork and beans? Easy, cheap, and fills you up. It was better than the syrup sandwiches Ma used to make that just made us even more hungry.", he said with a smile. "But I'll try to make my sob story for them less..illegal. I think." Tiny wasn't sure how or even if someone was going to pay for his way for college, so whether it be scholarships or loans, Tiny was going to try his best to not let anyone the opportunity go to waste, if he was fortunate enough to get it that is. When Tiny saw a guard approaching the two, he knew that their time was just about up for now. With a sigh, Tiny gathered his things and stood up, sad to have this time end, but even sadder that he felt used to only being able to see his brother in brief visits. It was better than nothing, he thought to himself, though. Tiny nodded, raising his fist and bumping it with Vince. "Sure thing. I've got a drive back to TO anyway, I should be home by then. No worries, I'll keep an eye on everything.", he added before quickly hugging his brother before the guard escorted him back into the prison. As Tiny started to exit the building, he knew he still had a lot of things to deal with back home, but it was comforting to know he still had someone watching over things he couldn't from the inside.

[somedaypast-thesunset]

im honestly so much better than i thought i was. 

like you have no idea whats going on when ur in the war. you dont know who youre shooting at, what the fuck is happening, who you are - you have no idea. and in this war you go through shit that is like unbearable in some ways and you do it and you dont know how and at the end of the day when its all over youre just left with this massive action that formed every thought you now have and you dont know what any of it really meant. 

but like i have beat myself up for time for not being super amazing totally together. like i dont have a job. my work experience is small. my depression is heavy, heavy, heavy. 

but what i needed to see was someone else who has felt this same loss. i needed a comparison to know that i wasnt as fucked up. even though i lived through all the shit i lived through, even though my mother was dead by the time i was 20, even though my dad died 5 years later - i’ve never been on such levels. 

does that mean im heartless? i dont think so. clearly i am very bothered by these deaths and massive losses in my life. its something i think about everyday all day. but i have dealt with serious ptsd for like.. a decade. 

and i never cracked.

and then on top of this i continued to take huge abuse after the intial trauma stopped about my trauma. and i never cracked. 

no. listen. 

i have no idea how i am here today. i have no idea how there is a man downstairs on heroin kicking the walls and thats not me. how is that not me. i have felt such pain. i have felt such sorrow. but never have i been such a person. literally my worst moments the deepest darkest moments last maybe 10 hours. not because im not prone or i dont feel it as strongly. i feel it so strongly. ive felt all the worst feelings. i feel like im 50 years old bro. its not even just like dead ppl. i saw toooooooooooooooooooooooo much. i know tooooooooooooooo much. 

what is it inside of me that has kept me from making this worse for myself. I COULDVE HAD A BABY. do you know how easy it is to do THAT. its easier to make a baby than buy drugs, really. i couldve had like.. multiple babies. like i look at people and im like omg that couldve been me. and not even like.. oh im better than them its like omg if it wasnt for this like one fucking difference between me an them, i would be that. i would be them. i would have children and do meth an like ...

how in the helllllllll did i do this? this man within two months of a death is so distraught by his grief he cannot function as human towards other. yall i didnt even get drunk. i didnt have time to get drunk. i had real life responsibilities towards myself and other people. while living with a total piece of shit who put holes in my wall. okay. my father dies and im living alone now with a man who put holes in my fathers walls. i try to break up like a week before and i cant because my dad is still in the hospital and everything is so crazy because like we know this man is dieing. 

have you ever watched a man die? have you ever WATCHED a man die? have you ever in your life watched a grown ass man choose to die in human excrement in diapers cant stand cant walk - have you ever in your life watched that?

my ex did. twice. and i had to have that man arrested and to this day i feel guilt about having to do that because he had to experience this trauma as well and he had to handle it however he was going to handle it and he couldnt handle it either. 

i imagine its like the same when you watch someone die of cancer in some ways. like not the exact because theres no choice with cancer. but i guess the question why remains. why did cancer have to befall you. why does cancer exist. why does cancer have to kill you. 

depression killed both of my parents and both of my parents lived with it for AT LEAST 40 years (my father probably longer).both of my parents chose not to do hard drugs. my dad was a very light alcoholic if you could call him one at all - he drank sincerely recreationally but it became a crutch to deal with everything else.

and i even get having the most important person you knew die. and do you understand that i know this so well that i even understand that right now you think that no one else “gets” how important this person was to you. how mighty an great they were because when a very important and beloved person to you dies there is so little room for the negative even though it can rear its head. 

my parents shaped everything i am to this day. they are dead and i absolutely live in the exact EXACt same lifestyle i lived in when they were alive. i changed absolutely nothing about myself in my grief. it has only been literally this year where i have been like okay. its time. and with my mother ... i dint. i i kept a giant GIANT wooden piece of shit box for these people as a symbol of respect when sometimes i really hate them sooo much and i am soooooo angry with them. 

sometimes i forget that im about to be 30 because i feel 15. i feel like when i woke up at 15 except now i am living my nightmares. everyday. and i still wake up everyday, i still try and instead of going batshit insane i took the time to truly explore how i felt about these people and the things that happened to me. instead of just crying about it and being sad and oh no hes dead it was like i knew there was a solution. and i think in some ways its true about my inplanted addiction to instant gratification. an i say this because i did it to myself by using the internet and other things (weed) to instantly satisfy boredom and anger an sadness. what i wanted at the time was to instantly solve how i felt. both times. and not like just make it go away but to “overcome” grief. like i would be enlightened by the grief and oh you know - my mother, shes found her peace now. my father, no longer suffering. its all supposed to happen its all alright. 

and i guess i also in this moment dont want to lie to myself - at 19 i was really unenlightened. at 19 i think i acted ... u know, im having a moment. and its not lke a deep one but i think for like.. maybe 8 years or so i kind of disregarded my ex’s feelings at the time. everything i felt overshadowed it and i kind of gloss over how i cheated on him but “didnt cheat” because i “broke up with him before i di anything” even though i 100% cheated on him. like i spoke the words of breaking up to him before i physically involved myself but it was like a plan between me and this fucking dude sooooooooo its really low and this is like so much shame in my life. i hold so much shame an regret over my actions that i just quickly tell this part of the story of my ex but its pretty bad. and then questionably bad things happened afterwards due to both of our immaturity and insecurities. my life was fucked before she died but i cannot fully say i never hurt someone. i cant say that. thats such a lie to myself. in my grief i did in fact hurt someone else. i disregarded another person and like its soooooooooooooooo hard for me to give any leverage to my mother. like she never made me feel or do anything fuck her. but my main abuser in life died. a person i saw like.. everyday of my life until i was 16. she was soooo important to everything i am today and to be really fair - i’m probably still fucked up because i absolutely refuse to deal with what she did. like i dont want to relive it any more than i already do even though you have to through it to overcome it. 

i smoke weed uner the influence of my father and i think i smoke weed for the same reason he drank - my mother is the reason i smoke weed. for the most part. like im really haunted by my father sometimes but i became so accustomed to this weird life with him that i mostly have like a culture shock where i realize other people didnt do this and then i get over it. sometimes i think about what he looked like when he slept and how it looked like he was dead. sometimes i picture the foot rotting off his body. recently ive pictured the blackheads on his back. they were really bad but not in like im traumatized way - my mother picked at his blackheads and i started doing it an its just a weird gross probably semi normal thing so like even though i have these images sometimes of my fathers illness what i am most haunted by is the words my mother put into my brain. i was brainwashed. i feel brainwashed. and sometimes i repeat scenarios she did. sometimes i do things she did and not like a nostalgic oh i have my mothers traits but like sometimes i lie. sometimes i tell lies. sometimes i have told lies to be able to get someones attention or pity. like not often at all. not even a handful of times in my life have i done this. very spread out. its not common. and its so shameful but i saw my mother do it and she did it pretty well and people would feel sorry for her and give her attention and it wasnt good or deserved in anyway but it worked.

sometimes. sometimes i have exaggerated illnesses. sometimes i have downplayed symptoms i am having. and i do this i think because i was trained to do this. my mother told me i was sick, she told me the symptoms and it was all repeated from there. i have been extremely lucky to have like no major medical issues since i was a child. i have never had to deal with anything happening because im actually pretty physically healthy outside of the toll depression takes on my body. i coud of course quit smoking but i dont have lung issues. i was told i had asthma for 13 years. we had to move. we had to fucking move bro because i had “asthma” and i had to take the inhalers and of course man of course it wasnt ust inhalers it was the fucking plastic tube that somehow made it better you held between the inahler and your mouth. 

to bare it all - i dont even know if im allergic to pine. my mother said i was allergic to pine so no more real christmas trees but what if this bitch was doing it to me. ive never had like extensive exposure to these trees since then. who the fuck knows.

why is it - okay. when i go to the hospital they ask me allergies and i repeat verbatim the same thing my mother said to every doctor i ever met, “sulpha, pencillion, amoxicillin and codiene” 

tell me why as a child i frequently had penicillin and at no point in my memory was there like some reaction upon taking this. and everyone remembers it. we all know the banana flavoured medience. and i remember taking it so many times an then suddenly i didnt  and suddenly it was apart of this list and like maybe i developed an allergy but what if she just decided? how did she find out i was allergic to these other things? i am REPEATING A MANTRA by a woman who nearly killed me using prescription drugs. 

i make alot of excuses. im probably lazy more than depressed because if i was sooo scared i could get tested for my allergies and know for myself. 

do you know how upsetting my birth certificate was? and it wasnt even my mothers fault, it was more my fathers fault. but all these little dumb things and its not like ths is crazy never heard of its small things that other people experience too but they hold so much weight like can someone tell me why my mother stopped spelling her name right? like shortly after my birth she no longer spelt it theresa and spelled it teresa. and i had such a moment at her funeral when i saw her name spelled right and asked why it was wrong. that she had spelled it without an h. her parents were like .. confused and appalled that i suggested she had done this an like of course her name was with an h. and fair enough guys. you are the people who named her. which means it was in my lifetime that it changed. and on legal documents even though she maintained her first real name (mary) she spelled it teresa. but these old documents and the way my father spelled it was theresa. whats in an H? like maybe im crazy right. maybe im just making a big deal out of something small but usually when something lke this occurs its because ssomeone else made the mistake and usually youre a foreigner. like someone wrote your name on an official document wrong and now thats just it. but this woman .. she went to private school like she had to have had official document before 1990. this woman made a concious choice to drop the H in her name. why? was it a choice? did she just like slip up one time and went with it for 19 years after? like did she fuck it up so majorly in some public way that she had to convince other people this is how she spelled her name.

and like its been a really long time. and i dont have a lot of these documents anymore. to be fair, i have like 7 remaining objects of my mothers. i dont even know if i have documents with her writing outside of a wedding guest book from 1980. so sometimes - sometimes she wins. sometimes i think that maybe im wrong. maybe i just think she stopped doing it but like why would i notice this? why would i think about it so much? 

sometimes i try to think really hard about her but i did such a job at blocking her out and smoking away these memories i literally cant remember more than like 10 - 20 memories of her. i spent half of my life with her. closely. and like.. i remember when i was in like grade 3 - 5 because i was walking to a certain school and i remember this is like.. no you know what. i have atleast 5 seperate memories of this and thsi in itself says something - faking sick. i faked sick religiously. and like i knew this bitch would buy it because at this point im a clever angry bitter child with no true subconcious yet. im like i know my mother will buy into sickness - thats who she is- and i wont have to go to school.

so i start the day before at bed. im coughing. im coughing really hard because of my asthma right but im not sick at all im good but im forcing these dog coughs at 2am and she wakes up and its like oh well i guess youre sick and im doing this so often i have a memory of her frustration like she almost almost knew but this was her job and now im playing games. and its like man you trained me to do this but your power was taken and now im using your training against you and all you really wanted was a sick kid. so im giving you all you wanted and none of it is real. and like im aware of this complexity at this point. even really early my father is now pissed at her and they dont trust each other. and theyre fighting about me and shes saying look at this and hes saying this is what you did. this was what my mother did to me. he knew that like i was turning cold because she was cold towards me and he knew it and he was telling her youre doing this to her stop doing this to her and she didnt so it just kept going.

in grade 10 i faked a heart problem. i freely admit this because i feel like its “okay” because it coincides with dropping out of school. but now im desperate. like im so desperate in this depression and my first year was her trying to kill herself and getting kicked out of the house and im like omg i cant do this anymore im not going to school something is going to give even though school is  a relief from home, i was starting to have all these expectations at school academically and socially and i couldnt keep up and something had to give and i couldnt get rid of my parents so i was done.

my father wanted me to “get a job” but it was like... you know. someday youre going to have to get a job. and in my own volition, once my mother had left for a year, i got a job. i was semi comfortable. on my first day of this important job my father became gravelly ill and spent like .. a month in the hospital. and im still going to work. im like 17 years old, everything has gone to shit and im still going to work. and im on the bus everyday crying to my friend that its all so fucking awful and i just want to like party and get high. 

so i started. and i spent all of my earnings on partying and getting high on mdma and k and weed. in one summer. it was like 3 grand or something which is alot of money for me in any time of my life thus far. thats the only time i ever earned a significant amount of money. 

but then i stopped. because within me i knew especially the hard drugs were beginning to do their damage to my body and i was drinking too much and i did carry it on for like a year before my ex put his foot down and i decided i didnt want to be a person in a relationship on drugs like that. we smoked weed and it was fine. 

and like on paper seperately - bratty attitude filled choices. i lied and faked an illness to get out of school, partied while my father was ill. and like i knew this. and in my early 20s i frequently reflected on these choices and actively knew i had to choose other things. was it fun? yes. was i with close loving friends? yes. was i safe? yes. was it the right thing to do? no. and i feel like if i dint make that choice back then i couldve set myself on a better path. but i gave up. i gave up and i give in for this moment and i never fully recovered, i just choose to smoke a shit ton of weed instead. i couldve learned real coping skills but i chose not to and now im almost 30 and i suck, utterly suck, at life. but it could be worse and i could be him. 

we finally spoke - no he answered the call and spoke whatever he wanted to to me still. that he couldnt deal with this and blah blah but its funny i guess as i told a friend i had said my last word were that i was not going to speak to him again. she said he mustve replied because that usually gets him. and its sad i have to resort to feeling like im not going to speak to him again to get any response. and im not being crazy and needy or whatever like you signed up to take care of someone who has major trauma surrounding this issue and you knew this. like in june im crying about how this was my parents fault. i have a whole process i have to go through over the course of my life because like i cant decide randomly one day to face this fear and anxiety. this type of issue has to come up as it will and it may not be a good time for me or anyone else but i now have to face and overcome this issue that is not just a medical problem but DIRECTLY related to my parents neglect. like every time a doctor asks how this happened how many times why has this happened this way i have to explain just the bare bones of how my parents how TWO GROWN PEOPLE thought this was okay TOGETHER and let it go. leaking blood and pus. this is like ... what this cyst has caused me in emotion and mental damage is sooo much morre than the cyst itself. the cyst is simple. knowing the neglect of it caused it to come to such a point that it has to be surgically deal with is painful. how did they fuck this up for me? and its like i couldnt just get surgery at 18. at 18 i didnt have a flare up. i have to wait for the flare up to deal and im like just dealing with it as it comes you know because its normal and i guess every few years i have to get this thing lanced thas just who i am now? i guess? but could be worse. could be wayyyy worse. like it coul be on my face, first of all. it could be like in my labia and i would have ppl touching my labia and doing things. it cou be on my actual butthole. it could reoccur every week. every month. 

eventually i got a few moments to speak a full thought and i told him it was extremely important to me to have someone capable of dealing with the worst of my anxieties and traumas before during and after this incredibly important moment i am about to face and optimistically overcome. i just know i will be very not okay about it. i know this, i did this by myself its not even like im playing it up for others like im by myself in public sobbing soo hard they cannot take proper vitals. thats how much this is for me. i will not have someone be neglectful or judgemental or take away my right to feel the way i have to feel in order to break through this. like im not taking away anything from anyone else, i’m just laying out what is require and if you can do that, then fine, but if you cant then no im not going through with this.

he made a weak argument and i explained that the last time i had to deal with major medical hospital things was my mother. so i am not okay with this and i am freaking out and this instability hes displaying completely on his own makes me question what im doing. and he continued to rattle off these excuses and started into “you want to talk about traumas, what about ...” and i just turned the phone away and waited until he was finished because you cannot tell me that im not allowed to feel any sort of ways about anything or talk about my mental illness or the things ive gone through and immediately launch into your own. there is give and take and youve already taken everything im willing to give now. he says i have to give him a straight answer because he needs stability and to figure out what hes going to do. 

.......

to live with this, i have every right to feel depressed and uncomfortable and unhappy. 

i need to begin the process of mentally letting him go. i want to feel free to talk to random people and open myself up to random people and experiences and i dont want to even think about anything with him. like honestly, there is no future with him or associated with him. he cant fix some of these things, its not going to happen. and im going to allow him and give him opportunities in the future to still be shitty to me. and future me needs to understand that this is just proof for why i have to let it go. 

and like im frustrated - in my perfect world ive abandoned this dream because ive found something better an more fulfilling to me. its so hard to abandon something without anything else. and like i get really aggravated when im in my i dont know what the fuck to do moments. and eventually i find something - anything - and i really try to put myself into it. like that becomes my new job because im trying out all these roles in life and maybe this one leads to something. like i enjoyed jewelry, a lot. but ike i wanted something bigger and grander and to be apart of something and like i guess build on the jewelry. like i went from collecting bones in a forest by myself to showing in an art gallery and going to receptions and making new friends - i like the beginning of my art career story. its glamorous and hopeful. 

and then i thought like i could be more than an artist. i could have a gallery or a studio, i could curate shows, do events - i could contribute to the arts and culture in the city and possibly resolve or find resolution for some of these issues. and i learned like.. a lot about art. i basically forced a semester of art history and basic art techniques down my throat and practiced daily. i wanted to feel knowledgable and professional and like prepared to take on the 1%

and i just lost that. like i built that for myself, by the way. thats not off the back of a man or relationship. amongst all my shit, i created a very minor artistic career. and i was / am well respected for my dedication and quality and like ... i really received a lot of praise. i got very little known hatred towards me. my shit was good enough it sort of overtook an ex friends venture an made her jealous. i was the first person in the city hands down to create a website dedicated to arts in the city. like maybe in 10 years there will be 50 more but i was the first. i was the one who knew how to do it. i left just a tiny make with my minor career. that i built. by myself. in the 5 years before and after my dads death. 

but its not that like i dont “want” to do that anymore. i think i do? but the city is not about it. the numbers to bring people out are small. the money is non existant. the quality of talent is not great. i think if i had entered a more viable scene i couldve graduated from what i was doing but as it stands its just not going to happen. and making money from art is really hard and no one respects a person who just paints unless theyre like the most amazing artist and i guess really i have nothing i want to say anymore. ive tried to express alot of things through art and things are left unfinished. im just ... not an artist like that. 

but im not even like mad at myself for it - 20s are your time to find yourself. im not an artist. and maybe i wont be a wildwoman land developer either. i know that if i could decide on something, if i could find something i actually cared about that i could achieve it. it would literally me be just saying 100% doing this and it being done soon after. no games. no waiting around. if i really wanted it i would invest everything i have into it. i know that.