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extreme-technicality · 4 years

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On Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt, knight (in absentia) of the Realm of Goodcastle

Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt, knight (in absentia) of the realm of Goodcastle, is peak chaotic good. In this essay I will discuss how his backstory, his choices, the origin of his powers, and the symbolism of a candle combine to create Fitzroy, the hero we didn’t know we needed but very much the one we deserve.

We know from Argo’s investigation into Fitz’s home life that he is the son of a long haul trucker caravaner and a (presumably) stay-at-home mom. His family name is one of the most prestigious elven families on Nua, though he’s functionally a member in name only. One day he got a letter inviting him to become a knight of the realm of Goodcastle for the low low price of 200 gold, several other fees, and a certificate of completion from Clyde Nite’s Night Knight school. His parents didn’t have much, and had to take out a hefty loan to send him to the school (as well as pay for all the fees). He didn’t fit in with the pompous, wealthy elites there, and they let him know it with every obvious snicker and the fact that his classmates actively avoided him outside of class. Griffin explicitly states that he (Fitz) adopted the pompous, proper air he puts on in canon as a direct result of the ridicule and ostracization of his knight school classmates. He finally received something other than mocking disdain from them when he randomly (one might say chaotically) turned his professor into a catfish. He only started to truly feel like shit about the catfishing when he heard they were going to expel him from the school and, by extension, his dream–the notoriety and fear from his peers and professor bothered him far less before there were tangible consequences for his actions, inadvertent though they were. Shortly after this, he was invited to Hieronymous Wiggenstaff’s School for Heroism and Villainy, full-ride–upon graduation, he would be allowed to return to Clyde Nite’s Night Knight School and finish his schooling there, then apparently on to the realm of Goodcastle to serve in the queen’s guard. In summary: Fitzroy Maplecourt is someone of humble background who aspires to Make Something Of Himself and help people along the way; as the catfishing incident displayed, he doesn’t much care how he does that, so long as his actions help people (as well as himself).

He didn’t always lean into that side of himself, however: the catfishing incident ended with Fitz also feeling conflicted about how his power manifested to harm the people around him. At the very beginning of Graduation, he’s constantly worried about controlling his magic and not necessarily using it. A knight, after all, would have little need for magic. This viewpoint changes gradually throughout the episodes as he bonds with Snippers and learns more about the nature of magic, specifically his own. It changes most drastically when he meets the origin of his magic, the entity who goes by Chaos. Immediately after he had that psychic conversation with his magical patron, it’s like he stopped giving a fuck about what is “right” or “proper”. He used his magic with precision and intimidated the centaurs–as well as his Hero classmates–into listening to him and doing whatever he said. It wasn’t the stated object of his assignment with the centaurs, wasn’t what anyone expected him to do, and made Chaos very, very happy. He maintained his chaotic mindset, threw himself into it in fact, once he returned to the school. He attacked Gray when convention would dictate he stood there and let him monologue; he mouthed off to the Unbroken Chain tribunal, and his first action as a full member was to call one of their highest-ranking members to trial on Argo’s behalf; he suggested assassinating Gray instead of fighting a war. None of those actions were dictated to Fitz–in fact, none of those choices were knightly in the slightest. He ripped a man’s hand off and intimidated him and the surrounding centaurs (who outnumbered him and his friends many times over, might I add) into seeing his point of view. If a knight did that, he would be called a bully and said to be abusing his powers. But his motivations were selfishly good–he intimidated the centaur leaders into sitting down and having a conversation to avoid war, while he got to keep the apple Higglemus asked for; he saw an opening to attack the BBEG while he wasn’t expecting it, thereby giving him the edge and a chance to, possibly, end the war before it even began; he defended and stood by his friends in the face of people who cared (in his view) more for their precious order than for the aforementioned BBEG and the brewing war; he saw an opportunity to fulfill Argo’s need for justice and took it, unexpectedly but with due process to the order’s laws; he suggested the underhanded approach to ending the war and fighting Gray because he doesn’t want innocent people to die in a war that isn’t theirs. All of these choices were chaotic, and not all of them made Chaos happy. But they were Fitzroy’s choices, made wholeheartedly and with gusto, and he made them because he wanted to. He doesn’t care what Chaos wants him to do, has specifically said he won’t let Chaos use him to be their instrument on Nua multiple times–and that choice is perhaps the most chaotic of them all. Most everything he did and does, he does because it serves either his purpose or his friends’ purposes–but he doesn’t harm innocent people in the process. Fitzroy is chaotically, selfishly good, despite Chaos.

Chaos specifically is interesting, both as an entity in their own right and as Fitz’s magic glucose guardian. They introduced themself by saying they have many names, but Chaos is the one they like the best. This specific wording makes me personally believe that the entity we know as Chaos isn’t actually chaos, but something often mistaken for chaos. My gut wants to say “discord” or “wanton self-interest”, but I’m interested to see what Travis has planned in that regard. Chaos is also the origin of both Fitzroy and Gray’s power, and the Godscar Chasm is their work and seems to be their base of operation. As much as they claim to want Fitz to let loose with his power and do whatever he wants, Chaos also tells him what they don’t want him to do. They “promised Gray a war”, and for a being called “Chaos” they don’t seem to appreciate Fitzroy’s chaotic actions very much. They’ve said before that they want Fitz to win the war, but that it has to be a spectacle–like a wildfire burning down the countryside, before new growth and chaotic peace can grow. Fitzroy, on the other hand, sees how unnecessarily destructive that would be, and prefers to sidestep that option in favor of something quietly chaotic and peacefully assertive.

If Chaos and Gray’s vision for the war is a wildfire, burning bright and brilliant and fast, then Fitzroy’s is a candle, fitting the symbolism of the most recent episode (25: Burden of Things). Fitz chose the candle key to represent himself because fire is chaotic by nature, leaving both destruction and room for growth in its wake. He also claimed candles are chaos contained and put to a good use, bringing light to the darkness and faint warmth. My own interpretation reads a candle as both instigator and instigated: a candle cannot light itself, nor can it control how it was ignited. Fitz had no choice in either the fact or the manner of his magic awakening, couldn’t control whether or not his metaphorical wick was lit or who got burned in the process. However, a lit candle can be used to light other things–paper, wood, plants, cloth, and so on. Fitzroy as the candle in this metaphor has two available options: he could light a hearth, a welcoming space for his loved ones and a respite from the cold, cruel world, or he could light an all-consuming blaze to destroy the flawed existing system and leave room for a new one–one of Chaos’s design–to grow in its wake.

So, to recap: Fitz is tangentially part of a very prestigious elven family, grew up with relatively little save for a loving family, worked and chanced his way into power, and is currently being groomed into using said power in a certain way. He is also adapting to the situation he’s found himself in, making his own decisions and doing so in the name of his benefactor (ie. chaos) as opposed to the spirit (ie. what Chaos actually wants him to do) such that the outcome benefits himself, his friends, and their goals while minimizing the damage to innocent bystanders. Along the way, his personal image has gone from grandiose knight (in absentia), pompous and proper and EliteTM, to a candle–simple, cheap, ordinary, utilitarian, and more importantly, a light source for people who literally cannot afford anything better. I look at this, and I have to wonder: what was his takeaway from Clyde Nite’s Night Knight School? What did he think of the 1%, of the order and class and propriety they hold so dear? As the son of a caravaner, I wouldn’t think he’d see much fancy shit at home, but he’d definitely see hardship. He’d definitely see needing to compromise, and needing to fight for anything you need, facing a world that isn’t serving you like it should. I would ask if he’s angry, but he literally said it this episode–he’s lost his goddamn patience. Everyone is so caught up in the order of things, in the letters and laws and rules-lawyering and arbitrary measures of “worthiness” that they’ve forgotten to turn the lights on and it’s getting dark. Thats not to say that Fitz doesn’t know when to abide by the laws, or use them to his advantage, as we saw in both the incident with the magma monster and the Unbroken Chain tribunal–but they need light, they need a fire under their asses, and Fitz is just a candle doing his best. But a candle can only do so much.

And it doesn’t take much to put a candle out.

#taz graduation #taz grad spoilers #taz meta #taz fitzroy #fitzroy maplecourt #technical talks #there’s so much more i could talk about but it’s late and i’m tired #like how he didn’t want a war cuz his dad would almost certainly be targeted (both bc of his relationship to Fitz and bc he would be part of #the supply lines and it’s always good war tactics to cut off your enemy’s supplies)#or how the impatience and frustration with the existing system mirrors the impatience and frustration most millennials/gen z’s feel towards #America’s flawed and outdated system #I could REALLY go into how his experience at clyde nite’s night knight school shaped his worldview and self-image #like I know I talked about it in the actual rant but did i talk about it Enough #ummmmm oh I put this into gdocs and formatted it like a typical essay #it’s like five pages. 1.6k words. and it’s also currently after midnight.#tldr I’m super passionate about Fitzy’s character development if you couldn’t tell lmao #IMPORTANT NOTE: i wrote this a few weeks ago (right after ep. 25) so like. i blame any nd all inaccuracies wrt recent eps on that lmaoooooo

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blackaquokat · 4 years

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The Song You Might Have Been (Chapter 2)

Link to Chapter 1

A/N: Fun fact, Legal Eagle used to be slang for “lawyer,” hence the DA’s nickname.

You will also notice, this chapter, that I am taking blatant inspiration for a subplot from Shawshank Redemption. Because it is absolutely something my DA would do. And also, there is a scene here that I once wrote in response to a prompt.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback so far, everyone! I appreciate it so much!

Enjoy!

Apparently Yancy has set up a guard rotation for you at mealtimes in collaboration with his nightly watch.

Today, instead of Jimmy the Pickle, a slim bearded man who introduces himself as Sparkles McGee (you’re curious about the story behind that nickname) joins you at your table. He’s a little more chatty than Jimmy was, constantly going on about the local prison gossip. Who is sleeping with who, which jobs are preferable, upcoming birthdays of inmates and guards. He doesn’t seem to expect any kind of response from you, which works out just fine, because you have nothing to contribute. This might be handy information to have in the future anyway.

When it’s yard time again, however, Sparkles splits off to his group of inmates at the corner. Just as you’re about to go spend another hour lost in thought or maybe doing some exercises, Sparkles comes back and drags you to his posse.

He introduces them one by one: a young woman who looks simultaneously bored and ready to kill, “Tiny”; a younger man with a hisp of a goatee and mustache, “Bam-Bam”; a pale, lanky man with gears tattooed to his temple, “Heap-Ass”; and a larger bald man, “Shithole Hank.” The last one is apparently the man to go to for hooch wine, and every time you’re offered a sip, you make a hard pass. Your excuse is a preference for whiskey or lime and gin. In reality, you just haven’t gotten desperate enough for alcohol to drink it out of a toilet.

Once the introductions are made, you once again just sit back and listen as the crew converses amongst one another. With the amount of gossip you catch during that time, you manage to construct imaginary cases in your head where this evidence is used in support of various litigation lawsuits.

It’s a real eye-opener for you, how little of a life you had outside of work that this is the most you can come up with to occupy yourself outside of reading a book.

Speaking of…

“Is there a library here?” you ask during a short lull in the conversation.

The group blinks at you in sync.

“Um.” Bam-Bam shakes his head. “There’s a book cart with a small selection, and a room about the size of a closet, but that’s about it.”

Your brow furrows. “Is this another case of Warden Murder-Slaughter’s ‘rehabilitation over punishment’ slogan falling flat on its face?”

Tiny snorts. Sparkles shrugs. An idea forms in your mind.

“Um…” Shithole Hank leans towards Sparkles. “Should we be worried about that look in their eye?”

“Only if it gets us in trouble.”

You decide to ignore that exchange. “Would you guys like to have a proper library?”

This draws some intrigue from your companions. Tiny in particular looks interested in this proposal.

“How the hell would you manage that?” Sparkles demands.

You cross your arms and try for a confident smile. “You don’t go through years of law school without learning how to figure out contracts and loopholes. If I can talk with the warden, I’d like to at least see what I can do.”

You cut off when you see the group staring behind you with wide eyes. You turn heel to see one of the guards looking you up and down. Rex, your mind supplies. This is Rex.

“If you want the Warden,” Rex growls, “I can take you to him. But you gotta do something for me first.”

Shit.

----

“What do you mean youse done talked with the Warden?” Yancy demands when you stroll into the cell that evening.

“I wanted to ask him what steps I needed to take to get a bigger library implemented here,” you respond with absolutely no shame whatsoever.

The meeting went surprisingly well. You’ve got a rough idea of how to go about this, now that you know what the problems are. Even better, you actually did find a copy of Murder on the Orient Express on the cart, so a double-win for the day. You crawl on top of the bedsheets and crack the novel open.

Yancy leaps down from the bunk and glares down at you. “And youse didn’t think to inform me of this plan of youse’s?”

You lift your brow without looking away from the book. “I didn’t think you’d be opposed to the idea of making your home a little more homey by having a more updated collection of books.”

“Of course not--”

“Then what’s the problem?”

There’s a huff and a growl before Yancy climbs back into his bunk and falls into it more aggressively than necessary. You think that’s the end of it until his head pops down. “What makes you think youse can just waltz into here and demand youse’s luxuries?!”

Ah. Okay, you see where he’s coming from.

You shut your book and set it down. “Look, I know I’m a prosecution lawyer, but I’m not completely heartless. Yes, I would like a larger collection of books, but don’t the rest of you want more to read too? You look like you’ve been here long enough to read all of those three times. I mean, Rex brought me to the warden in the first place just because he wants a better poetry collection to pick from. He asked for specific authors and poets.”

Yancy does not deny this.

You continue, “Besides, just because you’re in prison doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to expand your horizons, literature-wise that is. I know books helped me growing up, imagine what they’ll mean to everyone in here.”

Yancy continues to stare at you, utterly baffled. “Youse quite the enigma, Eagle.”

“For...what? Caring?”

He shrugs. A weird sight to watch from someone who’s upside down. “Not for caring, per se. But more...the ‘doing’ part.” He disappears into his bunk again. “Here’s hopin’ it won’t be for nothin’.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think youse the first person to ask for more books, Eagle? There’s a reason that collection hasna been updated since the war. Nobody’s seen it through to the end. They gets discouraged.”

You purse your lips, fingers tapping against your book. “I would think you’d have realized from my reputation. I don’t quit.”

There’s a chuckle above you. A genuine one. “That’s what I’m countin’ on, Eagle.”

---

Yancy is right. There’s a reason the collection has barely grown since the prison opened up.

No one on the outside wants to fund the damn thing.

That doesn’t stop you. You start writing letter after letter after letter to the state legislature asking (demanding and borderline threatening, really) for the funds needed to make a bigger library. Thanks to your work in the government, and after a quick phone call to Damien to confirm (while he also updates you on the progress on your case), you know exactly who to contact. It gives you something to do. Something really meaningful. It helps to pass the time and helps to keep from feeling helpless about your own situation.

It also gets you a whole different kind of attention from the inmates.

After Week Two of your letter campaign, Tiny speaks up. You’ve started sitting with Yancy’s posse since they adopted you into their group outside of protection detail. “You really think you can get a library here?”

Seeing as Tiny has barely made a sound in your presence before, this takes you completely by surprise. As well as the rest of the table. You recover quickly. “That’s...what I’m hoping for.”

Tiny’s head ducks, her fingers tapping against one another. “Um...if you do…”

“Yeah?”

“Can we make requests?” she eventually blurts out. “For books we’d like? I mean, do you think we could get children’s books?”

You put down your fork and offer her your full attention. “Did you have a specific one in mind?”

“The Velveteen Rabbit.” Tiny tugs at her braid. “My grandmother used to read it to me.”

You’re overwhelmed with the sudden urge to protect Tiny with your life. Even if you’re pretty sure Tiny has killed at least three people since she was imprisoned and could absolutely kill you if she wanted to. “If that book isn’t included in any delivery we’re given, I will annoy the legislature until they do. Sound good?”

Tiny smiles at you. A small, genuine one. It renews your motivation and you end up writing two letters that evening, in preparation for the next time mail comes along. Next thing you know, other inmates (and even a few guards aside from Rex, much to your surprise) have requests for books they would like available.

Oddly enough, it’s the letter writing and the book requests that finally drive you to ask Yancy how you go about ordering contraband.

“What the hell do youse need contraband for?” He’s sitting cross-legged in the top bunk while you’re trying to draft your next letter on the slab sticking out from the opposite wall.

You hold up the golf pencil you’re using with frustration. “Because these are driving me up the wall. They are terrible. And the quality of the paper here is a nightmare too, it smudges way too easily.”

“So what? Youse want pen and paper?”

Your brow lifts. “That not a lethal enough order?”

Yancy’s smile is borderline feral in its delight. “Youse a lot more interesting than I thought you’d be, Eagle. The guy to go to is Heap-Ass. He’ll get you anything you want. For a price.”

You really don’t like that tone of his. “And? What’s the price?”

“Depends.”

“I don’t do sex favors. Or assassinations.”

“Nah, he’s not that twisted. It’ll either be a chore switch or cigarette packs, somethings in that nature, you know?”

You twirl your terrible pencil between your fingers, feeling a little more hopeful. “That I can definitely handle.”

---

You’ve always known, on an intellectual, common sense level, that prison brutality is absolutely a problem. It’s something you learned in law school from the professors who cared about teaching the kind of scenes law students would actually have to address in their lines of work.

It’s an entirely other experience to watch a rookie guard get too into his job and beat the shit out of a prisoner whose only crime was walking a little too close to the bastard.

Your gut instinct is to run forward and help, somehow. A stupid instinct that would have gotten you killed or at least tossed into the infirmary on a permanent basis had Yancy not grabbed your arm to stop you.

“Hold up there, Eagle.” He pulls you back, a glare fixed on the brutal scene before you. “No need for two of ours to ends up with broken wings, youse hear me?”

You swallow back your righteous anger and force yourself to calm down. It’s not right, it’s not right, and the justice lawyer inside of you is itching to make it right somehow–-

Yancy must see your conflict and anger. He puts a hand on your shoulder and mutters into your ear, “No worries. Me and the others ain’t gonna let this stand. We’ve got our own system in place here.”

That night, you pretend to be asleep when you hear that rookie guard scream for help. You don’t look to see what happens, who does it, or how, and the next day, when the warden summons you to ask if you know anything to explain why the guard’s body was found in the laundry room, you tell him as much.

When you see Yancy later, he seems almost impressed at your lackadaisical reaction to what took place. “Thought you were all about the law, Eagle?”

You lean on the wall next to him and look out across the yard, watching the other inmates mingle together. “In the absence of the law, I’ll take what justice I can get.”

You can almost feel Yancy’s approval. “I can appreciate that.”

Link to Chapter 3 here!

Thank you for reading! Please relbog/comment! If you want to be tagged/untagged for the rest of this series or this pairing, please leave a message in my inbox!

@starcrossedforever87 , @dontworryaboutanything , @beereblogsstuff , @falseroar , @intemperantiae , @memetoyoko , @soul-wolf , @marki-dumb , @withjust-a-bite , @raimeyl , @scribbeetle , @its-dari , @neverisadork , @silver-owl413 , @sassy-in-glasses , @chelseareferenced , @sketchy-scribs-n-doods , @axolittle-boi , @wildfandom , @shrinkthisviolet , @purple-anxiety-blog , @conceitedink , @skidspace

#kat writes #prison attorney #ahwm yancy #ahwm #y/n district attorney #a heist with markiplier #wkm #who killed markiplier

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thefloatingshoppinglist · 4 years

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A Letter to the DP Phandom

I’m usually not passionate about stuff.

But ever since I rewatched Danny Phantom in the 10th grade on a random nostalgia trip, that passion was ignited again. It sounds silly, and I’m still a little insecure of talking about it in public. And as a kid with ADHD it’s also been hard for me to try to write fic or find the motivation to draw all the ideas that are burning in my head, and I wish I could finally let it out and show the world just how much I feel about this show. It’s harder when you say the words “Danny Phantom” and unsurprisingly the first response you’ll probably get is “Oh that Nickelodeon show? Yeah I remember that,” to which the conversation ends. But there is so much more to be said.

It’s been said before so many times, and every time it’s talked about there’s this feeling in my gut that is screaming at me to shout it out to the world. So I won’t go into it too much as to what made this show special, but what’s important is that it had potential and that it deserved to be carried out to the best story it could have been. Danny Phantom in itself is a fantastic concept, that got screwed over by multiple factors. Nick, who only cared about Spongebob and FOP, and the show’s creator, who was absent for most of its production because he was too busy with the other things he was in charge of. If you think about it, his absence from his own idea is probably what jump started this show, and I guess we can be grateful for that.

Now we can only think about what Danny Phantom could have been. Perhaps if the concept was given to the ATLA team or if the concept was hatched in the brainstorming meeting room of a Japanese anime studio it could have delved into every idea that was implied, where to be fair, all fanfiction fuel originated from. I cannot even begin to count how many times I have paused an episode of this show to analyze exactly what was being said and what that meant for the world in the story.

Spectra, the misery ghost? If she had been jumping from school to school making kids depressed for her own gain, how many did she indirectly kill?

How would Valerie have reacted to find out that the ghost she hated so much for ruining her life was actually a boy she fell in love with?

Or Jack, after finding out that his supposed best friend in the world was actually a terribly corrupted ghost bent on destroying his family?

And Danielle, who has to deal with the idea that she has no real identity outside of being a perfect little clone, and just a mistake that was never meant to exist?

And what about Danny, who watched all of his friends and family die in an instant, give way to a horrible future that he is responsible for, who we never saw shed a single tear in the 52 episodes in the series?

I could go on. But I won’t for your sake.

There is nothing more disappointing to me sometimes than to think of Butch Hartman’s - the creator’s view of the show compared to the rest of this phandom’s. Us phans is what has made the show’s passion stay alive. Something Butch Hartman’s God-given creative mind apparently can’t possibly accept. I would love to have believed otherwise, but I feel that he doesn’t understand that we are just as responsible for its success as he and the DP crew was.

Butch seems to see all of our ideas as little fantasies that can’t compare to his own. And you know what else he sees differently from us?

Butch imagines Sam Manson as the sidekick love interest girl for the superhero. We see her as a flawed human being with a tough childhood and a hidden guilt for how she changed her best friend’s life.

Butch imagines Tucker Foley as a nerd sidekick purely there for comedy relief. We see him as a clever kid who would sacrifice his reputation for his friend.

Butch imagines Maddie and Jack Fenton to be ghost hunting fanatics who can never change their ways for anyone. We see these parents as two people driven by passion, but will give it all up in a heartbeat if it meant that they knew their son felt safe with them.

Butch imagines Vlad Masters as a black-and-white villain bent on taking over the world, yet we see this man as someone who understands what he does and justifies his hatred for Jack in order to get what he wants - all the while his ghost half is killing the last bits of humanity he has left, leaving him an insane but interesting character.

And then there’s Danny, who Butch sees as an incredibly powerful ghost hero, and ignored him for what this character really stands for - a high school kid with real, down to earth issues and one of the purest hearts I have ever seen in any superhero medium. Even through all the shit he goes through in the show, he still holds true to his values that all people deserve a second chance to live a good life - even those who don’t deserve it.

This short-lived Nicktoon has a lot of soul in it. One that will probably never be resurrected to achieve the culture that it could have had. It feels like a curse, really. Either a reboot from Butch with none of that soul, or nothing at all. And so maybe it’s best we never get one. After all, this phandom has such an unlimited passion compared to all of the other fandoms I’ve been a part of. No one is as unique as you guys. The Space AU, Wes Weston, and the memes we’ve shared are proof of that. I haven’t done that much here because it’s hard for me to communicate anything with what I feel are limited talents. But I want to try now, because of how much the passion for this show has touched me.

And maybe if we have enough, if it can burn long enough, we might be able to give it back and give Danny Phantom the love that it deserves.

#danny phantom #ranted a bit #I got mad again from how shafted this show is #thanks to those who read this #had to get it off my chest #dp #AFSLspeaks #danny fenton #sam manson #vlad masters

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demaury · 5 years

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Some kind of mistake (cha. 5)

Ever since Eliott first came across the new resident of the apartment 320, he made peace with the fact that Lucas ‘Big Blue Eyes’ Lallemant would, one way or another, turn his life upside down. Thing is, he hadn’t expected that Lucas’ wife and Lucas’ daughter would play a part in it. Because, you know, he didn’t know they existed until it was too late. (ao3 link)

As it turned out, it took two more rounds of teething rings, after the set of keys they took out of the freezer, before Ava started to calm down for good. They talked a bit more, whispering lower and lower as the baby was drifting to sleep.

When Lucas left to change her, Eliott tiredly glanced around the living room, for what felt like the first time since he had gotten here. There were pictures, framed here and there, hanging on the walls, sitting on the mantle of the out-of-order fireplace. Manon and a couple of girls grinning broadly on the beach, during summer. Lucas and his friends. Ava the day she was born. Manon and Lucas. Manon, Lucas, and two more people. There was one of Manon’s sweatshirts abandoned on the armchair next to Eliott, some pregnancy books on a shelf and others covering a century of Feminism or fashion. What am I even doing here, Eliott thought.

His life was upstairs. His vinyls, his computer, his graphic tablet. He was just an intruder here, and knowing that Manon wasn’t even in town made it all the more difficult not to feel guilty about it.

Yet, when Lucas returned with Ava, he didn’t move, and they picked up the conversation where they had left it — something about sixteen-year-old Eliott sneaking in the school at night to repaint an entire wall. They talked some more, about their music tastes this time, and when the clock hit four, Lucas finally went to put the baby to sleep and Eliott found no more pretext to stay.

“I should get back upstairs,” he said, stretching his limbs as he talked.

He was practically sure that the bags under Lucas’ eyes had gone two shades darker since he had arrived. It made him want to hug him. Wrap his arms around him and draw him close until he could rest his chin on top of his head. He was the perfect size to be hugged — that was one of the things Eliott had noticed.

Lucas didn’t say anything, but when Eliott moved to the front door, he followed him.

“Have a safe trip home,” he said, grinning despite his tired features, as he leaned in the doorframe.

Eliott’s lips curled into a smile. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“And here I am, trying to be caring,” Lucas retorted, rolling his eyes.

Eliott chuckled quietly, biting down onto his lip. His heartbeat raced faster when Lucas’ eyes followed the gestured. Go home. Go home already. He couldn’t do anything. No matter how much he wanted to — to reach out, to touch him, to kiss him. Despite his best efforts, his arm moved on its own accord, and before he even realized it, his fingers brushed a strand of Lucas floppy hair. Stupefaction passed through Lucas’ eyes, and his eyebrows twitched ever so slightly, as if he was trying to keep a straight face.

If he had been free to kiss him, that was how he would have wanted to do it.

Right here, right now. But he wasn’t.

With a lingering look behind his shoulder, he left.

It was around 9 when Eliott woke up, with heavy eyes and a stiffy neck, and entirely too much work to deal with. Dragging himself from one room to the next was motivated in large part by this simple fact, and also the irrepressible need to get coffee into his system — not sure he would have made it out of bed otherwise.

After lunch, he allowed himself a break to go buy some emergency supplies (a new lighter, to begin with, because he was really no good with matches).

A note was slipped under his door.

Thank you for last night, you saved me.

Text me if you want to hang out. It’s nice having you around.

A number was scribbled underneath.

Eliott stared at the few words, heart beating faster than he was willing to admit. He folded the paper and put it in his back pocket, before grabbing his jacket and heading out.

He didn’t text.

Trying to avoid your own neighbor(s) turned out to be a lot easier than Eliott had thought, when you don’t have the same schedule in the first place. Lucas and Manon left together before 8 in the mornings, and came back at around half past six at night; Eliott’s schedule, for his part, was basically anytime in-between.

He was still thinking about Lucas.

A lot more than he was supposed to, actually.

Especially when he had decided on not taking things with Lucas any further (whatever that was that Lucas wanted from him).

It worked well, really.

Until someday it didn’t.

It was roughly a week and a half after that night they had spent watching Ava together with Lucas; Eliott had just checked on his mail when he came face-to-face with Manon. She was wearing one of those oversized sweatshirts tucked into a pair of mom jeans, a denim jacket folded under her arm. A casual look if there was any, and there wasn’t any trace of makeup on her face — yet, she was beautiful. She smiled when she saw him.

“Hi,” she said, sounding genuinely happy to meet him, when he politely nodded at her.

He hated the fact that she was nice.

He hated the fact that he found her nice.

“You’re Eliott, right?”, she said again. “Lucas talks a lot about you. I’m Manon.”

She offered her hand and Eliott considered his options quickly, before shaking it. “He talks a lot about you too.”

Apparently it was funny, because she chuckled lightly. “Thank you so much for being so patient with us. He told me you even helped with Ava while I was away. I bet he was totally freaking out and I’m glad you were there.”

How did he keep finding himself in situations like this? That was a mystery.

He fidgeted a bit with the belthoops of his jeans, shrugging a little. “I didn’t do anything, really.” Understatement of the year. Drooling after the dad’s baby while they were in the same room didn’t really qualify him as a good babysitter, which couldn’t bug Manon because he highly doubted she knew about that part.

“Lucas is still very insecure about being alone with her, no matter if I keep telling him that babies don’t break.” She had that love-sick expression on her face that made Eliott equally soft and want to punch a wall. “Don’t tell him I said that, he hates whenever I bring it up.”

Why don’t you just stab me with your keys?, he wanted to yell.

“Alright,” he mumbled, coughing a little. “I’m pretty busy these days, so I’m not going to be able to, uh, hang out with him though.”

“Oh, yeah, he told me that too. I think he misses you. I don’t know what you guys have been up to but you made an impression on him,” she said, laughing, then she unfolded her jacket and put it on. “Anyway, I gotta go. It was nice chatting with you. If you ever feel like dropping by, you’re welcome.”

And with that she left, leaving some flowery perfume in her wake.

“Eliott, I love you but there’s a limited amount of time you can spend staring at a bra before my manager starts finding it fishy,” Siham observed, as she swiftly slid next to him into an alley of the store. “We got a lot of high-schoolers these days trying to steal stuff.”

He turned around to find a woman with a pair of red-rimmed glasses staring at them from behind the counter, next to the entrance. Siham exchanged a small ‘told you’ look with him when he turned back. She was wearing one of those unsold products she, alongside the other girls working at Undiz, was supposed to wear as her work uniform. Her black tee proclaimed in pink letters that she shouldn’t be bothered on Sundays, which wasn’t all that funny but completely true — Idriss had learned about it at his expenses when they had started dating, a lifetime ago.

Eliott shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I could be trying to find the perfect gift.”

Siham cocked an eyebrow. “These aren’t the kind of things you wanna buy your sister,” she said, pointing at a row of leopard printed bras.

Eliott frowned, scrunching his nose in disgust. “That’s something I’d rather not think about, thank you.”

She chuckled. “A little bird told me your thing these days would be more Calvin Klein than La Perla anyway.”

Eliott glared at the floor. “Idriss can’t keep a secret for shit.” Not that it was a secret per se, but still. Plus, lots of girls owned Calvin Klein panties, for what he knew, but he didn’t feel like taking the conversation there.

Siham grinned, examining a bra she had picked randomly from the shelf to look like she was actually busy with a customer and not just spending some time with one of her boyfriend’s friends. “I’m counting on that to ease my mind in the coming years. So, what are you doing here? And don’t tell me you just came by to say hello, I don’t have much time for that no matter how much I like having you around.”

Eliott huffed a sigh and stared at his feet. “Your big bird doesn’t know the full story. Calvin Klein is a lot more complicated than I thought he was.”

Siham paused, turning to him with a pair of panties in her hands. She glanced next to Eliott’s shoulder, probably to her boss, then put the panties back on the shelf and dragged him away from the prying eyes, towards the pajama section. “How much complicated are we talking here?”, she asked, careful. “Are we talking about a ‘Joris’ level of ‘complicated’? Do I have to call the cops?”

He snorted and shook his head. “Do you think-,” he paused, then sighed. “Do you think you can love two people at once?”

Siham blinked, then tilted her head, frowning. “Ow. Care to elaborate?”

Eliott’s eyes trailed to the shelf. “He’s with someone,” he mumbled. “And I mean she’s great. She’s nice. She’s even beautiful.”

“Isn’t that the moment where you’re supposed to tell me she’s a bitch who gets in the way of your happiness?”, Siham suggested, leaning on the shelf.

“They have a baby. If anyone’s getting in the way of anyone’s happiness, it’s me,” Eliott groaned, and before Siham gave him the ‘oh no’ speech that went along with the ‘oh no’ expression she already had on her face, he quickly added: “But he’s giving me so many signals, and I just- I mean I like him. I like him a fucking lot. But it’s obvious he’s got feelings for her too, and that she’s got feelings for him as well. I just- I don’t know.”

“It’s a wonder how you and Sofiane always manage to get yourself in situations like these,” Siham muttered, shaking her head.

“Believe it or not but I’m not seeking them.”

“I know, sweetie, I know. But there are a thousand guys out there and you manage to get hooked by one who is giving you mixed signals and has a baby on top of things.”

“Sofiane has been single for ten years just because Imane is busy with med school,” Eliott deadpanned. “I don’t know how that compares.”

“Yeah, you’re right. At least we know Sofiane would treat her right and the other way around,” Siham said. Eliott looked at her and she sighed, gently squeezing his arm. “Eli, I don’t know what you want me to tell you. Just be careful not to end up hurt if you decide to follow through with it.”

Easier said than done, he thought begrudgingly as he exited the store a few minutes later, drawing up the hood of his sweaters when he stepped in the street. Siham had to shoo him away before her manager started to pester her, but invited him over for dinner, arguing that they’d have plenty of time to talk before Idriss came back from whatever gym place he went to these days. It hardly cheered him up. If anything, going to her had left him with more questions than answers. No matter, in the end, whether or not he was ready to share Lucas. No matter whether or not he was ready to share him, his affections, his love, his time. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be involved with someone who was ready to put up with a situation like this — and put his loved ones through it all.

His feet took him to the bus stop nearby, and he pulled out his phone to check on the time. The rain was getting heavier, cars passing by splashing up waves of dirty water onto the sidewalk and practically onto his shoes.

“Hey there,” a familiar voice startled him.

His eyes snapped up from his phone, meeting Lucas’ blue gaze. Thinking of the devil. His hair was all damp from the rain and his face had found back some colors since the last time he had seen him, but he still looked a bit tired. Uncertain, even, as he was fidgeting next to him.

“Lucas,” Eliott said, a little bit taken aback. “Uh, how are you?”

“I’m fine,” he shrugged. There was a pause before he added: “You didn’t text.”

“No.”

“But you saw the note.”

“I did.” He swallowed, heart thrumming in his chest, and pressed his lips hard together before he shook his head. He wasn't keen on bringing it up in the street, but he didn't feel like making up stories about why he hadn't texted in nearly two weeks. “Lucas… I don’t think it’s going to work the way you want it to work.”

“Why not?” The blatant disappointment and the way Lucas’ face fell made his insides twist painfully. “I thought there was something between us,” he said quietly, eyes trailing to the ground, fixing a puddle. “I thought we had something.”

“I thought so too,” he admitted, slumping back against the metallic frame of the bus stop. “But I don’t want this. Not- Not like this, at least. How is that even a life? For you, for me?”

Were they supposed to establish a calendar? To decide when he would get to spend some time with him? Would Manon even know about it? How could they manage to hide it from her, if they even decided on giving it a go? Eliott literally lived upstairs, and like Lucas had said, the walls were thin.

Lucas looked up, brows furrowing. “Look, I’ll admit the situation isn’t- well, ideal, but-”

“Ideal?” Eliott repeated, eyes widening. “Ideal? Lucas, living at your parents’ while being thirty-five isn’t ideal. This-” He shook his head. “This is so much more than not ideal.”

“So what? What if it isn’t?,” Lucas snapped, and the harshness of his tone matched the thunderstorm in his eyes. “I like it as it is.”

Eliott was taken aback, just like the last time Lucas had snapped at him. He was staring right at him furiously, almost defiantly. It made Eliott lose his confidence and threw his attempts at remaining calm by the window.

“But I don’t!” he exclaimed. “We aren’t anything and it already makes me want to kick something, to simply know you’re with them! How is that supposed to work when I feel like I’m the bad guy of my own story?”

Lucas opened his mouth and closed it. Pain flashed through his eyes, soon replaced by anger and bitterness. “I’m so sorry that you having… whatever those feelings are for me is what makes you depreciate yourself,” he articulated, voice rough and strained.

He took a step to the side to leave the bus stop and stride under the rain, and Eliott didn’t even fight the urge to follow him because his legs moved before he even gave it a thought.

“For fuck’s sake, liking you isn’t the problem! Sharing you is!”, he found himself practically yelling, grabbing Lucas by the arm and making him spin around. How had his life gotten so dramatic? When did he suddenly become some mainstream fucker running under the rain to catch their significant other? “I don’t want to have to share you,” he said, earnestly. “I could deal with sharing you with Ava, but with Manon, I just- I can’t. I know she’s Ava’s mom but-”

Lucas stared at him, right in the eye, and said nothing for an agonizing minute; Eliott was left to stare back, unable to do or to say anything else. He couldn’t think properly, he was just feeling like everything was coursing through his brain too fast for him to be able to process it.

“You think she’s mine?” Lucas said eventually. “You think Ava is my daughter?”

That wasn’t what Eliott was expecting to hear. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but certainly not this. “I don’t- I mean I thought-,” he stammered, but before he could finish a proper sentence, Lucas furiously hit him square in the chest.

“Well you’re wrong,” he blurted out angrily, “and I honestly can’t believe you thought I was enough of an asshole to hit on you with a girlfriend and a baby!”

Eliott rubbed the spot on his chest. “I never said-”

He was cut off once more, once again by something that seemed to knock the air of his lungs. Lucas grabbed his face and crashed their lips together, in a searing kiss that Eliott had dreamed about more times he would ever admit it. He didn’t care that they were in the middle of the street, and he couldn’t care about the rain drenching them both — once passed the initial shock, he kissed Lucas back, pulling closer by the waist.

They broke apart as suddenly as they had come together in the first place.

“I’m not Ava’s dad,” Lucas said, and the words sank in, making Eliott’s heartbeat yet again faster at how much of a relief it was to finally hear those words. “And I’m not doing whatever you thought I’m doing with Manon. We live together but-”

This time, it was Eliott who cut him off, claiming his mouth just enough to make him shut up as he cupped his jaw. “Details later,” he said, resting their foreheads together, his thumb grazing the skin of his cheek.

Lucas huffed a snort, but it sounded a little shaky.

Later, Eliott thought, chewing on his lip, somewhat bashful all of a sudden.

With dry clothes.

Or maybe without.

#elu fic #skam france #eliott demaury #lucas lallemant #mine #*#*skm

35 notes · View notes

kiruuuuu · 5 years

Text

Ignorance is Blitz

Dearest @magehir, I wish you a happy birthday and all the best 💖💖 May this next year bring all that you need. Thank you for existing, putting up with me and infecting me with the worst kinds of ideas :) This is a first part to the long-promised Wikihow fic, though it functions just as well as a standalone, and I hope you enjoy it! (hints for Blitz/Rook, Rating T, humour/fluff, ~5k words)

“How to give passive-aggressive gifts for Christmas”, Mute murmurs.

Rook’s brain shuts off mid-sentence. He supposes this is one of the situations where people claim to be thinking of a million possible responses when his thoughts have instead come to a screeching halt and the last syllable died on his tongue, never to be accompanied by its brethren which would’ve formed the rest of the term best describing the all you can eat buffet he went to recently: culinary extravaganza.

“How to find hot people to be friends with on Facebook”, Mute adds just as quietly as before, apparently oblivious to the sudden silence as his two friends merely stare at him in vague disturbance. “How to act like a modern vampire.”

“What the fuck”, Rook addresses him and attempts to catch a glimpse of his screen, now thoroughly concerned. “I hope to god this isn’t your google search history you’re reading right now or else we’ll have to start carrying around garlic soon.”

Mute, now having finally noticed their attention, is grinning down at his phone and announces: “How to hide an erection.”

“I could’ve used advice on that in school”, Glaz states drily, startling Rook into a laugh.

“How to be okay with having a communist friend.”

“Are those actual – what the hell are you reading?”

It’s yet another one of their lazy days, meaning they’re draped over various pieces of furniture, dying of boredom and hoping fate plops anything exciting into their laps. Their standards keep dropping with every passing second and it’s happened before that a small caterpillar became the highlight of one of their afternoons – they spent more than an hour simply feeding it and watching it eat and Glaz ended up almost crying when Sledge threw it outside to motivate them for kitchen duty. At this point, Rook would give his left arm for a balloon or a piece of string, though he keeps dismissing Mute’s claims about the internet harbouring enough entertainment to last several lifetimes. Maybe he just doesn’t know where to look, however.

“How to trick people into thinking you’re possessed.”

“Step one: be Mark Chandar on too many energy drinks.” Mute throws the Frenchman a glare and earns an innocent smile in return. “Seriously though, pretending to be possessed by a demon must be hilarious around Maestro, he’d probably cry.”

“He’d cry for you”, Mute informs him. “With me, he’d offer to put me down before even thinking twice about an exorcism. Do you think we should pick one of these stupid articles and actually do what it says? It could be entertaining.”

“Are there any remotely nice ones?”, Glaz wants to know hopefully. “Like ‘how to break into somebody’s room and clean it without their knowledge’?”

“Oh, here’s one for Jules – ‘how to love’.”

Before Rook can even threaten bodily harm, Glaz sighs and mumbles: “That one I definitely don’t need to read.”

Fighting down the urge to just hug him and never let him go so no one can ever hurt him again, Rook suggests: “They probably have stupid suggestions for really normal things too, don’t they? Like really detailed descriptions of how to shower for example, we can take those and exaggerate them a bit. How does that sound?”

“In that case I’ve got the perfect example”, Mute replies excitedly. “How to date. Short and sweet but the very first point is setting yourself up for success, so this should be good. If we follow this like a recipe, we’ll be dating left and right no problem.”

“Somehow, I doubt that”, Glaz sighs. “Who do you even want to date?”

“What do you mean, ‘you’? Shouldn’t you be the one to do it?”

“I’ll do it”, Rook volunteers to gloss over the fact that the last time Glaz asked anyone out on a date was likely ten years ago whereas he himself flirts with everything that moves, therefore making an unsuccessful attempt sting less. “So, how do I trick myself into being successful?”

“Define your expectations”, Mute quotes the article with a grin. “Are you looking for a lifetime commitment?”

“Sorry, mystery guy, but I’m already in a committed relationship with -”

“- yourself”, Glaz butts in, making Mute snort and break out into immature giggling as soon as he notices Rook’s indignant expression.

“… I was going to say my bed and food, but I guess that works. Thank you for the vote of confidence, in any case. Am I that self-absorbed? I don’t think I am, I’m a good listener, right? And it’s not like I talk over people or ignore them, or as if I’m lacking awareness of talking too much about myself. You wouldn’t call me egocentric, would you? I definitely don’t fit all of the criteria, after all I’m not -”

“Decide how you want to date”, Mute interrupts him quite rudely, Rook finds. “You’re absolutely not going to snag anyone on the internet, we may be out for a laugh but you’re not catfishing anyone.”

“Why would I catfish?! The only fitting part of that is the fish, since I’m a real catch”, Rook protests and causes the other two to groan.

“Yeah, no, I’m not letting you on the internet because you’d need a likeable personality for it. Oh, one of the options is having a friend set you up. I like that – Glaz, who should he try to date?”

“Craig”, the Russian deadpans immediately. Concerned silence follows as the other two attempt to assess whether he’s joking or not. “You can go watch a film with him and get kicked out when he won’t stop talking loudly.”

“I’d say Seamus but -”

“- there’s no way I can compete with Italian sausage”, Rook chimes in and feels a grim satisfaction at Mute’s grimace. He really reacts as if they were talking about his real parents. “Have you seen his bruises? The worst I’ve done is accidentally slap someone in the face.”

Glaz is horrified. “How do you… accidentally?”

“Listen, I was drunk, the guy kept getting louder and louder about wanting me to spank him but I at that point didn’t know how it’s done, so I just…”

“Maybe this was a mistake”, Mute grumbles and rubs his temple. “I would have you date Seamus now just out of spite but he’d chuck you out the nearest window as soon as you started babbling nonsense or acting weird. We need someone who’s more lenient, ideally someone nice so they don’t hold a grudge when we tell them it was all for shits and giggles, maybe shy because then your chances are better, and someone who doesn’t dislike you. So Fuze is out.”

“What, why?”

“Are you telling me you’d like to date Fuze?”

“No, I mean – why doesn’t he like me? He never talks to me, but he never talks to anyone.”

“It could be the fact that you helped Dom dye his teeth blue while he slept. Not only is it fucking creepy, he also looked like he ate all the Smurfs for a day.”

“What about Elias?”

Again, Glaz’ contribution gives them pause, albeit a noticeably more pensive one this time. He’s right, what about Blitz? Together with Sledge, Thatcher and Montagne he makes up Team Dad, meaning they look out for everyone but especially the younger operators, take them under their wing – yet it also means neither of the three are particularly keen on details about their love lives, which is why Mute’s thoughts instantly went to Sledge as a form of punishment. Blitz is similar in that vein, though he fits the Brit’s description to the letter: he’s quick to forgive people, has an atrocious track record concerning relationships as far as they know and he seems to enjoy Rook’s company. He might indeed be a good target for this.

“Rather him than Gilles or Mike”, Rook hastens to reply as soon as he realises that if he rejects the German, this is where his friends’ worrisome thoughts are going to end up. Both of them could easily be his dad, unlike Blitz who might have a fatherly protective attitude towards his younger colleagues but at least no grey hairs yet.

“I’m sure you could win them over with your boyish innocence”, Mute deadpans, making Rook grimace. “They might be a tad too old for your tastes though. I think Mike even owns a Cat Stevens CD.”

“Remember how Elias and Marius talked about a DOS-based game? I think he is, too, but he’s the best out of the three.”

“Ten years older isn’t too old.”

Glaz and Rook exchange a meaningful glance and merely raise their brows at an increasingly flustered Mute who looks ready to smack himself in the face with his phone, given how much he’s suddenly fiddling with it. “I’m not sure we’re talking about Julien and Elias anymore”, the Russian states drily, and Rook nods up a storm.

“Look”, Mute begins to defend himself to two expectant expressions and eventually just sighs in frustration. “Whatever, let’s not talk about my crush -”

“Oh, so it is a crush now, is it?”

“Shut up.” Rook wasn’t aware that Mute’s ears could be this shade of red. “James is… a good friend right now.”

“You say this as if you hadn’t thought about whether he sounds in bed just like the time Seamus accidentally pelted him in the balls with Diana’s tennis ball and he whimpered for an hour straight.” Rook feels a rush of pride at his comment when Mute suddenly looks ready to murder. It seems like he hit the mark, just like Sledge had done: right in the crotch.

“He strikes me as someone who’s had dog slobber in that particular area before”, Glaz murmurs probably as an aside and looks almost shocked when Rook’s instant guffawing lets him know that he said this out loud. Even Mute doesn’t seem sure whether he should be horribly offended or deeply amused.

In the end, they do decide on Blitz being their victim. Glaz gets cold feet halfway through the conversation, raising the issue of morality and deceit but gets shot down quickly when Mute lists some of the pranks with which Bandit got away and which had exceedingly far-reaching consequences. The West wing of their building still has no running water. Not that Rook is complaining about sharing their showers with some of its occupants, no, not at all.

“We’re going to Bond you up”, Mute announces while digging through one of the many, many drawers in the workshop that are filled with… stuff. Rook is waiting for the day this stuff starts pouring out of every cupboard they have, because it means it’ll all get cleaned up and tidied by someone who’s not getting paid enough and maybe then they’ll find the remote for the TV again. He’s sick of bribing people to turn the volume up or down by pressing buttons on the device directly, especially because his candy stash has run low by now because of it.

“What are you guys doing?”

Only Rook and Glaz turn away from the unmanageable mess of cords, cables, plugs and other electric parts in which Mute is elbow deep right now, and maybe Rook should worry about it turning sentient and swallowing the Brit whole at some point, but right now he’s worrying about one thing only: the possibility of Bandit catching wind of what they’re doing. He’s pretending to make nonchalant small talk but really, he must’ve smelled blood. He always knows when they’re up to something.

“Befriending communists”, Glaz replies politely.

“Hiding boners”, Rook supplies.

Bandit’s eyes narrow suspiciously but he remains silent as Mute produces a triumphant noise and pulls out what looks like an earring attached to a cable and a few other things, with a small box at the end. “Here we go! You can wear this, Jules.”

“In my life I’ve only fucked one guy who wore earrings”, Bandit deems it necessary to divulge. “And when he got dressed, he’d do sock shoe sock shoe.”

Rook snorts. “I’m not surprised you’re friends with James since you seem to have prior experience with psychopaths.”

“Let’s go, boys, we have all we came for”, Mute tells them, an unambiguous signal to not engage Bandit any further or else he’s never going to leave them alone, and starts herding them out of the workshop. To their collective annoyance, Bandit follows, unperturbed by the waves of get lost rolling off of them.

“If I give you a Curly Wurly, will you leave us alone?”, Rook addresses him and earns a scoff.

“Please, as if I could be bribed with sweets. This is an interesting device you’re undoubtedly going to misuse somehow and I want to see where it’s going.”

“And four hobnobs. The ones with chocolate.”

“I just told you -”

“Add a chocolate orange to that.”

“Deal. Have fun!”

“I feel extraordinarily gay”, Rook mumbles into his collar and prays that no one else in the canteen is paying any attention to him hovering uncertainly at the edge of the room, waiting for Zofia to be done talking to his mark. Blitz looks comfortable in the middle of the room, paperwork spread out on the table before him and an open bag of crisps by his elbow – only he would still be working during his lunch break. Considering all the people in front of whom Rook could be thoroughly embarrassing himself, he’s one of the better options as his smile is not only contagious but also very pretty. So even if this will influence his reputation for a while, Blitz is likely to be a good sport about it all.

Rook is wearing an apron reading Kiss the cook because one of the items on Mute’s blasted list involved making him look ‘approachable’, and since the pink t-shirt they gifted Glaz with the slogan ‘single and ready to flamingle’ is in the wash, this was the next best option. The earring which serves as Mute’s and Glaz’ way of communicating with him during this whole ordeal is not only garish but unfortunately a clip-on, so Rook couldn’t refuse wearing it. He feels like a budget version of an undercover agent, only much, much shadier.

“You look it, too, so it’s perfect”, Mute’s tinny voice reassures him into his left ear. They’re both sitting at the other end of the canteen, sharing popcorn and crunching infuriatingly loudly into their mic. “Make eye contact, smile and raise your eyebrows – that’s the first step, according to this masterpiece.”

It’s the perfect opportunity to implement a technique Rook has mastered almost twenty years ago: he starts out by rolling his eyes over his friends but as soon as he notices Blitz looking over, Zofia nowhere in sight, it transforms into a bright smile. This instantaneous switch in facial expressions has served him well over the years, especially around unlikeable teachers or bosses – only this time, he thinks a little too much about what Mute has said and ends up with a manic grin instead of a friendly smile while lifting his brows so high he must look either utterly astonished or inexplicably anticipatory.

Glaz masks his snort as a cough whereas Blitz reciprocates his bloodthirsty smirk with a much milder lifting of the corners of his mouth. Even from this distance, Rook can detect his concern which is probably fighting Blitz’ omnipresent drive to be social, accepting and open-minded. He always looks like this when Twitch’s current explanation has left him lost half an hour ago or when Tachanka jovially reminisces about early Spetsnaz training (and who in the world thinks that being chased through a hallway filled with blood and guts by a massive dog in the middle of the night was in any way, shape or form fun).

He’s starting to feel bad. Only a little, but honestly, when Blitz put on the clothes his blind roommate laid out for him this morning (because how else does he explain his usual attire), he probably wasn’t expecting to become a wikihow experiment today.

“I swear you’re gonna make me choke on this popcorn”, Glaz mutters and, like clockwork, Rook immediately replies: “Sounds less entertaining than choking on cockporn.”

More strangled noises in his ear, but fortunately Mute takes over to rescue him from certain death via being cast out of society by informing him of the next step: “Indicate interest and project confidence during social situations. Go on, be interested and confident. You’re as great as you are misguided in one of those, and terrible at the other.”

Rook ignores the slight (really, just because he once paid no attention to what Mute was telling him and they ended up stranded in the wilderness with no more gas doesn’t make him a bad listener, and him self-assuredly flirting his way into some stranger’s car who then became a little too interested in him doesn’t necessarily mean he’s overconfident), and approaches his target with a cocksure swagger he’s practised for exactly three seconds on the way to the canteen. “Hey, what are you doing, I like you, is this equipment paperwork, I’ve actually done a ton of these so I’m an absolute pro, how are you this fine day?”

Blitz stares at him. Maybe Rook should’ve let the other two know that he gets the worst case of stage fright whenever he feels observed in social situations and that it manifests in casual blabbering. “I, uh, I’m good, thanks. Are you alright?”

He sounds hesitant and Rook can’t blame him. After plopping down opposite of the German with a slightly less manic smile, he attempts to ignore Mute and Glaz whom he can very clearly see over Blitz’ shoulder and who both seem to be shoving their fists into their mouths to try and not giggle too obviously. “Peachy”, he beams. “How’s the work going? Is it just as work-y as always?”

His contagious laugh falls on deaf ears, at least from the man he’s talking to. Glaz looks about ready to cry.

“I suppose so.” Bless Blitz for his endless patience. The doubtful tone is still present and betrays his suspicion of something going on, but as Rook neither attempts to steal or set fire to the papers nor to shove a cake into his face, he probably figures there’s no immediate danger. “Have you actually filled out these kinds of forms before?”

“Confidence”, Mute squeaks into his ear, still suppressing his mirth, and Rook suddenly wonders whether Smoke would like to know about the time Mute despaired over his new laptop not working, troubleshooting it for several days and refusing any and all outside help until an innocently passing-by Jäger pointed out that it wasn’t plugged in. So far, the event has been contained but Rook has long been waiting for an opportunity to unleash this knowledge.

“Of course, I used to do them all the time as homework, I could do them in my sleep”, Rook lies through his teeth.

“Great!” It seems Blitz failed to get the memo about projecting entirely misplaced confidence because he goes on to ask: “Could you help me with this one detail then? I’m not sure what -”

And while he explains his problem, Rook’s brain long having shut off, Mute informs him of the next step: “Make engaging small talk. Ask broad, open-ended questions like ‘so, what got you interested in rock-climbing’.”

“So, what got you interested in rock-climbing?”, Rook interrupts Blitz’ detailing completely out of the blue. A distance away, Glaz is putting his head in his hands.

Blitz forgets to close his mouth for a few seconds, and Rook almost wishes he didn’t stop talking but instead ignored Rook’s question entirely. “I… am not particularly interested in rock-climbing, if I’m honest. Why do you ask?”

And while Rook flounders and stutters out a non-committal oh, you know, Glaz, the absolute angel on his shoulder, decides to step in and save him: “Perfect opportunity, the next step is don’t take yourself too seriously. Try making a joke at your own expense if you say something you think is utterly stupid. You can save this, Julien, I believe in you.”

“Well, uh.” Think, think, think. Rook feels like Winnie the Pooh and barely stops himself from tapping his temple. As usual, his mouth is writing checks long before his brain has earned the money, and so he witnesses in unfortunately non-mute horror as the words come over his lips: “It’s just that your muscles are as hard as a rock and I suddenly thought how awesome it would be to go rock-climbing.”

Smooth.

Blitz is genuinely gaping now.

Behind him, Mute nearly falls off his chair while shaking with silent laughter, and Glaz is wearing the all too familiar expression of ‘if anyone asks, I will forever deny knowing you’.

“I, um, well, thanks? I guess? Julien, are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

“I’ve never felt better in my life.” Confidence, right? What was the other thing? Open-ended questions? “Speaking of, what do you want to achieve in life?”

How Blitz hasn’t gotten whiplash yet is a mystery. Maybe Rook will be able to make Mute laugh so hard he’ll drop dead. He’s looking a little blue in the face already. “Why do you ask? Do you really want to know?”

“Yes!”, Rook responds too forcefully and thanks whoever is responsible for Blitz being completely resistant to weird behaviour, merely accepting it as a fact of life and glossing over it. On second thought, the reason for this is most definitely Bandit and Rook would rather gnaw off his own toes than thank Bandit for anything.

Blitz’ eyes lower and he absent-mindedly moves some of the papers around. His entire demeanour… shifts. “I want to make a difference somehow. And I know this sounds horribly cliché, and everyone here has the same wish – but does that make it in any way less special? I don’t think so. We put our lives on the line to ensure some girl will have a mother when she grows up, to inspire some people to turn their life around, so that people have a roof over their head and peaceful sleep. And I don’t care if some say there’s better ways to do this. This is mine, this is something I’m good at, and my capabilities are useful here where they would be lost as a politician or anything else. And there always will be more to do, I’ll never be done, but that’s okay. I’ll know I’ve done a bit, and I’m happy with that already.”

Something flutters.

He hasn’t felt it in a while, not like this, usually stemming from a different place in his body or more concrete, aided by alcohol or general giddiness, but paradoxically his heartbeat is calming down despite the tingling sensation in his chest. Speechless, he stares at the man in front of him, trying to do what he always does when people’s sincerity makes him uncomfortable – joking about it in his head, react with sarcasm, discard the notion as sentimental or naive. Only right now, it’s his cynicism which feels fake instead of Blitz’ words.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bore you with a speech”, the German adds sheepishly and laughs a little. It’s cute. It’s the cutest thing Rook has seen today and if he does that thing where he scratches the back of his head because he’s embarrassed and a little lost now, Rook might pass out on the spot, just lose all body tension and glide to the ground like a jelly pancake because no one, and that includes genuinely happy Glaz, no one has any right to be this adorable.

Blitz scratches the back of his head.

“I’m going to faint”, Rook informs someone, he’s not even sure who, whether it’s Mute and Glaz and this is a badly hidden attempt at getting them to come to his aid, or whether it’s Blitz to inform him that the cute police is on his case.

“Oh, that’s right, it’s lunch and you haven’t eaten anything yet, no?” If his next sentence is something along the lines of ‘let me offer you food’, he’ll have to propose. There’s no way around it. “I’d offer you something more substantial but I only have the crisps. You can try them if you want, but they’re a little hot.”

Right on cue, Mute whispers in his ear: “You should find some common ground and then ask him out. This is already a disaster, no need to prolong it.”

“I love hot things!”, Rook exclaims cheerfully and it’s not even that big of a lie, except that ‘food’ isn’t on the list. But if Mute wants his common ground, he’s going to get it. Without checking the packaging, Rook reaches into the bag and shoves a few of the suspiciously red potato crisps into his mouth.

“He’s going to die”, Glaz utters full of concern, just as the spiciness hits Rook full force.

Blitz seems to be convinced of the opposite. “Really? That’s great, I’ve not found anyone who likes this type. You should try some of the Indian dishes I make now and then!”

Rook’s consciousness is fading, slowly being replaced by unadulterated fire. This must be what it’s like to be burnt alive, he reckons, and right now he’d rather eat glass than ensure a second more of this brilliant pain. His eyes are watering and he’s doing his best to efficiently chew without letting any more of it touch his tongue so he can swallow it as fast as possible, in the process ruining his throat. Now it, too, feels like he ate glass. “I’d love to”, he croaks and sniffles pitifully while a cold sweat breaks out on his back.

“Are you ill? You’re a little…” Blitz’ concern is as heartwarming as it is unwelcome; it only makes everything worse.

“Yes, actually.” He can’t cough now. If he does, all is lost, he won’t be able to stop, ever, and it’ll invade his lungs and slowly cook him from the inside out.

“You need to get out”, Glaz informs him, sounding troubled, “and eat your emergency chocolate. Now. Ask him and then bolt.”

This is it, huh. This is what he’s been working up to for the last half an hour: posing a question while sounding like he’s been smoking for longer than he’s been alive, choking back tears which make it almost impossible to see Blitz, and faced with all the kindness and compassion of a man he suddenly doesn’t want to disappoint.

And so he asks.

“I am still in shock”, Mute says. The others nod.

“I have no idea how it came to this”, Glaz says. More nodding.

“I can finally feel my tongue again”, Rook slurs and downs the third glass of milk, just to be safe. He feels like he ran a marathon, solved maths problems and had an allergic reaction all at once. Not to mention the overarching shame of having embarrassed himself in front of someone who turned out much more sympathetic than he thought.

“I don’t understand.” Mute’s rational brain is rejecting this reality, Rook can almost hear the gears crunching. “Why would he say yes?! Where did we go wrong?”

He’s hesitant to tell them that he actually wouldn’t mind getting to know Blitz better because the memory of them shoving oversized condoms into Glaz’ pockets in order to embarrass him in front of his crush is still all too fresh. “This was a success then”, he very inaccurately summarises the unholy catastrophe of whatever it was that happened in the canteen twenty minutes ago. Maybe he can just… pretend he doesn’t want to actually go on the date but go nonetheless, be far, far from either of these two so he might end up enjoying himself – and if something comes out of it, he still has ample time to let them know.

“You don’t seem sad about this result”, Mute picks up on his careful neutrality and squints. “Are you telling me you actually want him to make you groan with something other than his terrible dad jokes? Is that it?”

“We probably should’ve picked Shuhrat after all”, Glaz muses with a sigh. “He wouldn’t have accepted. He might’ve refused to ever go near you again, but at least we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“Wait.” Mute is on his phone, which is never a good sign if the Thomas the tank engine toy he modified into a fully functioning flamethrower after having watched a video of someone else doing it was any indication. A sense of dread starts rising in Rook. “There’s instructions for a first date here, too. We can do the same thing again, give you instructions and have you follow them. At this point, we kinda have to do this.”

Rook pictures it. All he can see is carnage, chaos and more catastrophes. It’ll be a disaster, he’s already struggling with multi-tasking without it involving another largely unpredictable person, and his nerves don’t deal well with expectations of any kind.

He weighs this against the alternative: admitting that he’d like to go on the date without their interference and facing endless mockery as a result. He remembers his own mental threat against Mute to divulge embarrassing stories of his past to Smoke. He thinks of the time his tongue got stuck to a pole because Mute told him this only happened to children, not adults.

“Alright”, he agrees with a sigh and regrets his decision as soon as Mute’s and Glaz’ eyes light up.

#rainbow six siege #blitz #rook #blitz/rook #kinda #glaz #mute #fanfic #this was a blast I really write lightning fast for you when I'm inspired #♥♥♥#also we all know that bandit would join in if he knew what was going on

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raccoon-james · 5 years

Text

Midnight guest

Pairing: Billy Bennet x Reader

Words: 2522

Universe: Deadly Class syfy

Requested: Yes

Summary: The reader has an unexpected guest in the middle of the night.

Warnings: kinda bad writing I guess?

A/N: As you can see, I’ve finally uploaded my work! It’s my first published fic, but I thought it’s good enough to show it to you guys. English is not my native language so I’m sorry for every grammar/language/spelling mistake I had made while writing it. Also, it’d be nice to receive some feedback, some pieces of advice – please leave a comment or sth. It’s very helpful and motivates me to write more.

●○۞○●

Nights at King's Dominion contrasted with the school in the daylight. Relative calm seemed to return to school halls every time when sun comes down. No noises, no running or fighting - no whatever-made-pupils’-daily-rutine. With sun held up, high at the sky, the school was bustling with life, but with the moment of sun disappearing time seemed to slow down immediately.

Sitting in the room with the door closed, you could easily feel cut off from that little world you have lived for some time. It wasn't hard to feel lonely sometimes. All you had to do then was talk to your roommate, or sneak out to meet friends living in another room. If you wanted peace and silence it was enough to not speak to anyone, play music and take care of whatever had to be done - like homework or makeup.

You liked nights here. Somehow you managed to get a small single room, which was a godsent for you, someone who enjoys being on their own, and the lack of unexpected guests was a guarantee of a successful night. It gave you a feeling of control. You could choose when you wanted company or not; if you wanted some time by yourself, you just stayed in your bedroom. That kind of control was enough to make up for many things, that the legacy status had taken from you. People think if you have a high position in the walk of life then it's easier to live. Bullshit. Why is no one speaking about the expectations everyone suddenly has for you? That you have to be the best, never miss a bit in a fight, never hesitate to pull the trigger, to know all poisons at the back of your hand. And what if you simply cannot live up to the expectations? That's when the lynch starts. "She? I can't believe..." "You're so not what I expected" "The shame of our family"... People pick you clean, then go to work on the bones.

It was couple minutes before midnight and the only audible sounds were your breath, pen writing something down on a sheet of paper and the turning of pages of numerous books surrounding you. Tirelessly you've been repeating materials for the “fundamentals of psychopathy” class. It was interesting, specific but exceptionally enjoyable.

The conception of motive that you had focused on this night was far more addictive than you could imagine. For you it was like digging in someone else's brain. Coming to the conclusions about the killer’s personality based on his actions - adding the way of killing, some repeated patterns and you can compile information about their past, present...the top of the top in this field can speculate - based on tiny details found at the crime scene – about the traumas and habits of the criminal.

The cracking of the door interrupted your flow. While studying in a school for assassins, unannounced visits after midnight don't bode well. In any moment then you could find yourself stabbed or with broken arm, your position meant nothing. Everyone could become a target, from children of the heads of state, through mafia bosses, to the average street rats.

With daggers, the fight technique you have been training for several years, you almost never part with, always keeping them within reach. That was the main reason why you grabbed the weapon so quickly.

Ready to defend yourself, you turned towards the door, no longer sitting but standing. Feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, ready to fend off the attacker.

"Y/N, put the dagger down" said Billy closing the door, in the tone of someone who's welcomed by people ready to slit his throat at least three times every day.

"Uh, I don’t know, I like it... Brings out the color of my eyes, dontcha think?" you said relaxing a bit. You fliped the dagger that made a full rotation in the air and than came back to your hand, that fist on the handle again. Pretty easy trick but always impressing Billy - until one day you'd be very unlucky and loose a hand while catching the blade.

"So, what's the matter?" you asked putting down the dagger. You tossed it on opened notebook on your desk. It was obvious that the studying session is over for you, at least for that night.

"You better tell me, huh?" said the teenager seemingly upset, pointing out to a half-packed suitcase on the floor. Shit... You promised yourself to tell him about you leaving right before They come to take you, which would be about 7 am, definitely not midnight! For all intents and purposes you didn't even know who or where was supposed to take you by tomorrow morning. All you knew was that your parents admittedly, may have overplayed your hand a little. You were a kid after all, a student who'd rather stay up late studying killers’ minds than actually becoming one. Still, have you ever had any other options but learning how to live under direct orders of your family?

"I'm leaving...for some time" you mumbled averting your eyes.

"And what? You...you didn't want me to know? Just leave?" he started, and by that moment you realized what was going to happen. It was going to be a bloody long lecture about your incompetence as a very best friend, as a main theme.

You haven't completely got used to the relation between you and green-haired Billy Bennett. Since your connections with other people were built on viable alliances, and because your loyalty twords them was like loyalty of an average whore from the brothel, you haven’t had many friends. All that had to happen was an extremely unlucky incident, a broken nose and slippery wooden stairs, for you to make some changes in your social life. That was how you met Billy.

"Could you once in your life shut the hell up, maybe?" you stopped his speech before he got a chance to get started with it, slowly looking up at him. He shut his lips and tilted his head a little, raising his eyebrows, noticably surprised with your reaction. You sigh heavily, running your fingers through your hair, wondering what you actually wanted to say when you stopped him. Or was that only self-defense because you didn't want to hear him whine about how bad you really are.

"Y/N..."

"No" you cut him off again. Tiredness that studying drew away, now started to slowly overtake you. "I seriously wanted to tell you but..."

"But when I couldn't do shit about it, right?" he snarled looking little piqued.

"It's not always about you" you hummed staring at your white socks "I don't even know what they want me to do. I received a letter saying I have to pack up and be ready to go at 7 am in the morning. Nothing more. No greetings, how are you or a fuckin hello. It doesn't matter if I told you about this crappy trip today or tomorrow morning, you can't do shit about it. I can't disobey direct orders" you managed to keep your tone serious. You glanced at the rat, still standing near the door. It could be harder for him without you at hand but come on! He could handle it before, so why the hell would anything change now?

Before you had the chance to think about anything else, Billy was standing next to you, embracing you all of the sudden. He wrapped an arm around your shoulders and pulled you close, gently rubbing your arm. Despite the heaviness in your stomach, it fluttered at the feeling of your body pressed against his. You sunk into the warmth of his side, appreciative of the simple gesture. His touch made the room warmer somehow, your future within its walls seeming a little less bleak. Still, you were confused after that sudden display of benevolence coming from Billy. Your body was tense, ready to attack. It took you a moment to edge off but when you did it, you returned the hug.

You liked Billy. He was like cat. Not a fluffy kitty, pretty as a picture but homeless, a bit scraggly and scrawny with unbelievably stunning eyes. These cats you want to take with you even if they aren't drawn to you. And honestly you'd never thought, till this moment, that leaving the cat would be so damn hard. Stupid Billy... Why on earth did he hug you? It was clear now why you had avoided profuse goodbyes all your life. It was so much easier to leave not realizing what's left behind you, because without "goodbye" it feels like you'd never really left. You spared yourself the heartbreaking pain and feeling of loneliness, that goes hand in hand with every long-term goodbye.

"Do you have any plans for tonight?" you mumbled into Billy's t-shirt, hoping your voice wouldn't crack and reveal how devastated you started to feel with every passing second. You used to keep a stiff upper lip, but now it's harder, apparently.

He stepped back at the length of an extended arm and grinned as only he could, which warmed your heart.

"Sleep? I guess..." he answered slightly shrugging his shoulders.

You smirked wrinkling the bridge of your nose, waited for a moment just squinting at him and than turned on your heel so you can walk over to a nightstand and reach the alarm clock.

"I'm not sayin' now, right? But what else would I do at this hour, haha..." Billy muttered while staring at you, tracking all your movements when you were setting an alarm for 6;30 am. You mumbled something like "mhm" putting the device where it was before.

Bennett once again was like a torrent, an unbelievable flow of words which wasn't exactly what you needed right now. Soon it would be half past one, your mind has told you that six hours of sleep is definitely not enough for you to be full of energy by tomorrow morning. Billy was concerned with your actions but didn't ask any questions, hoping you'd tell him what was on your mind. What the hell were you trying to do? Well, you wanted to turn off the only light in the room which was the lamp on your desk buried in books and notes. And when you did it, complete darkness surrounded both of you.

Billy was ready to ask question about what the fuck you were doing. He raised his arm, opened his mouth but that instant you grabbed his raised wrist

"Come" you whispered, dragging him to bed.

"Wha...No! Y/N what the fuck?" he squealed, acting like he didn't want to go with you, yet somehow his body didn't fight back and let you sit him on the bed, so his behavior didn't match the words he was saying at all.

"God...I don't want to bang you man!" you rolled your eyes lying down on the mattress "I had already packed my emotional support teddy bear. How do you think I'm gonna fall asleep now, hm?" you were kinda joking, but kinda not - it was true you had packed your stuffed animals but it didn't really have any influence on your ability to sleep well. You just wanted Billy around, even though you haven't thought about it earlier. The boy widened his eyes on you or at least the darker spot on the bed that should be you. Pretty hard to see anything without any source of light.

"You're still sleeping with a teddy bear? What are you? Twelve?" he laughed. Not exactly laughed, more like attempt to laugh. He was cut off with a cold blade of the dagger near his throat, the best way to silence him in your opinion.

"Say a single word about it and you're gonna end up stuffed just like that teddy bear" you hissed not anymore laying on the bed

"Jesus, how many of them do you have here?" whined Bennett moving away the blade. You couldn't help admiring his ability to stay so chilled and cool with your threats. It was really impressive. Something (the dagger) landed on the floor as evidenced by the hollow metallic sound going with the sound of a laying back body.

"But waking up so early...I don't know..." boy was still whining around while taking his shoes off.

"I'll do my best to not wake you" you said calmly waiting for him to lay near you. To be honest you had never ever slept with him. Sure you had laid down together, sometimes even he managed to take a quick nap but you never lowered your guard.

Billy tried to lie down comfortably but it was hard since it was single bed, not exactly what two people need to sleep together. Your back was slightly touching the wall against the bed, sticking to the boys body, hoping it would compensate for the lack of the bedsheets. You were actually lying on one but it was pretty warm already so it wasn't necessary. With your arms around his neck and a leg over his belly you breathed softly into his hair. You know you should have found it adorable but after all you liked your space. Still you couldn't resist it since you haven't got any idea when you would meet him again. You weren't really much of a hugger when it comes to people, but liked teddy bears as a kid and it you stuck with till now.

Time was passing and the feeling of tiredness disappeared, leaving you on standby mode exactly the same that you were on while being on a lookout. Just like someone if was about to burst into your room now and attack both of you. You haven't locked the door, it was haunting you now but you didn't want to move, scared it would wake Billy up. He was probably asleep by then. You could tell by the regular deep breaths and silence.

With your right hand, you reached for the boys head. For a couple of minutes, you were playing with his short green hair tangling them between your fingers until you would get tired again. That relaxing activity, it made it inevitable for unpleasant thoughts to come across your mind no matter if you were or were not prepared for them. Obviously, you weren't.

Was it possible for you to come back to school in one piece? Who would protect Billy from getting in trouble during your absence? Would you have a telephone wherever you were going, to call Billy here every evening or at least once a week?

It was mind-blowing for you since you have never, ever had problems like that! But also you never had a friend like Billy to make your life more complicated than it already is. Master Lin was right when he said that when you have someone who you would die for, sooner or later things were going to get messed up...

The red numbers on the screen of the clock showed five minutes after one a.m. when you finally dozed off.

#deadly class #deadly class syfy #billy #billy bennett #bennett #billy x reader #billy bennett x reader #billy x y/n #billy bennett x y/n #fanfic #fic #fanfiction

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alicedoessurveys · 5 years

Text

VERY long survey

Where have you lived throughout your life?

Birmingham UK

Do you find your job rewarding?

N/A

What kind of cake did you have for your last birthday?

chocolate

To you, which is better: English muffins or bagels?

I enjoy both, but bagels.

Do you paint your nails?

yes. although they're not painted at the moment because ive been cleaning the house so much the past couple days and its stripped my varnish off

What’s the last website you signed up for?

a dating thing

Do you check your email everyday?

yes, I cant stand having the little red number above the mail app

Have you created any pages on Facebook?

yes but I dont have them anymore

Is there a subject that you absolutely suck at?

every subject, but especially maths and science

What’s your favourite song by Dave Matthews Band?

I dont know any

Are there people you have absolutely nothing in common with, but still enjoy talking to?

I dot particularly enjoy talking to anyone :’)

Have you ever wandered around drunk with your friend?

yes, we wondered around through the middle of Birmingham at 4am

Are you good at holding back your laughter if needed?

haha nope

Have you ever been so unfortunate to suffer from a hangover?

yes

Have you ever had a panic attack?

many, I had to drop out of college because of them

Are you deathly allergic to anything?

nope

Have you ever had a mouse in your house?

nope

Do you know anyone who DOESN’T have an ex?

myself

Is anyone you know really religious?

my family

Are your eyebrows naturally thick?

yes

Has speaking in front of people ever made you sick?

not physically sick, but definitely felt it. the worst experience Ive had with speaking was in college when I had to give a speech then teach a 10 minute class. my throat totally dried up and I literally couldnt speak. everyone just stared at me and I was trying so hard not to cry. longest 10 minutes of my life and as soon as it finished I legged it out the room and burst into tears.

What was the last movie that made you teary-eyed?

Mary Poppins Returns almost got me but the last film to actually make me cry was Coco. That shit had me SOBBING!

Have you had two friends that absolutely hated each other?

yes

Has a laptop ever burned your legs?

not really, I put a cushion on my lap normally

Do you know anyone who has a scar through their eyebrow?

Who was the last person to flip you off?

probably rhys, as a joke

Anyone’s birthday coming up soon?

my dad turns 50 next week

Would you ever wear fake eyelashes?

I have done a few times but they annoy me

Are you good at following directions?

no no no I get confused very easily

Do you have someone that you can just act a fool with and not care?

yes rhys

From where you’re sitting, can you touch a wall?

if I reach behind me

When at a restaurant, do you put your napkin on your lap?

occasionally, it depends where I am and what im eating

Do you prefer electric or manual pencil sharpeners?

manual

Are your biceps at all noticeable?

they used to be before they went into hiding under a layer of fat

Have you ever seen a walrus?

nope

When it comes to dropping food, do you believe in the 10 second rule?

no, I believe in the ‘what food is it’ and ‘how dirty is the floor’ rules

If given the opportunity, would you ride on a camel?

yes. I was supposed to have gone on a camel ride in Tunisia ages ago but I was ill so we didn't get to go

Do you believe that cellphones actually do cause cancer?

they could be. the number of people getting cancer has gone up a lot since everyone has mobile phones

When people you know cry, does it make you feel like crying too?

depends who it is

Do you tend to jump to conclusions?

yes. Im an anxious person so im constantly overthinking and I also find people really hard to read and can get

Are you good at remembering your friends’ birthdays?

yes my brain cant remember important things but when it comes to dates its like a sponge

Is there something you need to do, that you’re trying to avoid doing?

getting a job

Ever pop someone else’s pimple?

ew no

How long does it take you to fall asleep?

about 15 minutes depending on how tired I am

Do you crack your neck often?

no that freaks me out

Did you have a weird dream last night?

not that I can remember, I have been having a lot of weird dreams this week because im ill

Who do you sometimes compare yourself to?

everyone. especially when im at the theatre, im constantly watching other people and wishing I could act like they can or look like them or have their style

Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?

both

In what way are you your own worst enemy?

every way, I dont look after myself at all

What activities make you lose track of time?

sims

When you help someone do you ever think, “What’s in it for me?”

not really

Who do you tell your secrets to?

these surveys

Who do you live with?

my parents and our foster kids

When did/will you graduate?

I didn't

When are you moving next?

I have no idea. probably never

When is the last time you took a vitamin?

this morning, im fighting a cold

Why are you stressed?

im not too bad right now tbh

Do you need to return anyone’s phone call?

nope

Where do you keep your birth certificate?

no clue, my mom has it somewhere

How many books are in your room?

a lot. I have quite a few on display and a whole bunch hidden away in my closet because theres no space for them anywhere else. I'll include some photos of the books in my room;

(the book on my bedside table in the second picture is actually a lamp that lights up when you open it)

Have you ever been IN a wedding?

nope

What was the last thing you laughed out loud at?

probably my mom

Do you have a nickname? Why?

my family call my bongy or Ali bong, I dont know why.. (my name is Alice)

Have you ever had a bad concert experience?

nope

When was the last time someone told you that you were beautiful/good-looking? Do people often tell you this?

my mom tells me almost every day but Im like youre my mom of course you would say that

Are you missing someone of the opposite sex atm?

Want someone back in your life?

meh

Are you currently sad about anything?

actually nope

Are you wearing anything shiny?

my pj top has glittery silver letters on

How important is a sense of humor in a significant other?

very, I fall very easily for people who make me laugh

How many followers do you have on Twitter?

198 (@alicethenerd if ya wanna follow 😉)

Do you sleep with the door open or closed?

closed. I aint about letting those murderers and monsters just waltz straight in easy peasy

Have you ever been to the beach?

yes every summer since I was a kid

Can you handle blood?

nope

Do you pay your bills or do your parents?

I pay my own bills. no way my dad would be up for paying my bills, he already digs at me constantly about the fact that I live rent free even though I look after the foster kids and tidy the house more than he does

What’s your best friend’s middle name?

Connor

Has any place hired you underage for a job?

not officially

Have you ever barely passed a grade/year in school?

yes

Have you ever carried a concealed weapon?

Have you ever tried to sell something overpriced to someone?

Do you plan to become very wealthy some day?

I hope to become wealthy enough to not worry about having enough money to put fuel in my car anymore and to be able to pay back my parents and grandad for everything they've done for me

Do you remember your first time going to the movies?

no, but my earliest cinema memory was going to watch Monsters Inc with my dad when it was first released

Does eating breakfast make you sick?

if I try to eat before a certain time yes

Are you dying to say something to someone right this minute?

not dying to nope

Book series you enjoyed reading recently?

im reading eve of man atm which apparently is going to be a series

Do you enjoy lying in the grass during the summer, and just existing?

I prefer lying on a blanket, I dont like the feel of grass and I dont like the bugs crawling around

Do you have a passport? If so, how many stamps do you have in it?

yes, it doesn't have many stamps in because I lost the one that did have lots in and I havent been away much since getting the new one

Are there any keys on your keyboard that have letters fading away?

nope

Do any of your close friends have children?

What do you plan on having for dinner?

we already had dinner, we had chippy

Do you like Chinese food, or do you find it disgusting?

I only really like one meal

Have the police ever come knocking on your door looking for someone?

actually yes, literally a few weeks ago

Know anybody who works in a tattoo parlor?

yes, my second cousin

Have you ever played flashlight tag?

ive never heard of it

Could you call yourself a movie buff?

not really, im a huge movie fan but theres still a lot I need to see

Have you ever had a piercing get infected?

never had a piercing

Do you check your fire alarms when you’re supposed to?

dad does it

Are you a shorts wearing kind of person?

nope nope nope, my legs are not suitable for public viewing :’)

Is your grandparents’ house obsessively tidy?

not really no. my nan and grandpa’s house is always neat but not obsessively neat. my grandads house is full of clutter because my nan was a hoarder

About how much can you bench press?

I dont know, I havent lifted in years

Have you ever had your phone die on you in the middle of a conversation?

yes

Is anybody in your family a carpenter?

Are you avoiding someone?

yes

Do you call your boyfriend “Monkey”?

I dont have a boyfriend but if I did I doubt id call him monkey

What’s your favorite primary color?

yellow #hufflepuffpride

What were you for Halloween?

nothing, I didn't dress up

Do you have any clothes from Walmart?

nope, we dont have Walmart here

When did you get a Facebook?

about 10 years ago

What color are your eyes?

green/hazel

What motivates you?

happiness

Can you walk in heels?

nope

When was the last time someone asked you your age?

the other day, my own mother forgot how old I was

Do you keep a journal?

not really

Have you ever tried a weird flavor of vodka?

never had vodka

Do you wear a ring on your finger?

occasionally

What are you doing?

watching ‘the greatest dancer’ and wondering if this survey is ever going to end

What’s the last kind of soup you ate?

tomato

Do you currently have a sunburn?

no. its winter

Who did you last text?

my sister

Who’d you last call? About what?

my mom, to ask her to come downstairs and let the dogs out because the baby was asleep on me and there was no way I was going to risk waking her up

Are you currently frustrated with someone?

yes

Do you drink water or soda more often?

water

Do you straighten your hair?

yes

When did you last talk to your brother or sister?

today

What is your least favorite vegetable?

all of them

Outside of family, name 3 people that make you smile/laugh often.

Rhys, Addison, Jacob

In school, what subjects did you achieve your highest grades in?

Was there a subject that you enjoyed, but weren’t too good at?

I didn't really enjoy any subjects at school

When was the last time something didn’t go to plan? What happened?

today. I had planned to deep clean the bathroom but I went super dizzy and had to give up half way through cleaning

Do you have any children? If not, at what age do you think you’ll feel ready to be a parent?

I dont but I am seriously considering adopting one of our foster babies atm. I want to adopt anyway, theres no way I could be pregnant

When was the last time you bought a new item of clothing?Describe it.

I honestly cant remember, im due a shopping trip

Was your last Facebook friend request from a male or female?

female

Do you have an item of clothing that makes you feel especially beautiful? Describe it.

not really no

Think of the last person that betrayed you. If they said they were sorry, would you forgive them?

I would cautiously forgive him but I would also make sure he knew that how he treated me was not okay and that he really upset me and this would be his last chance. but tbh I think hes done with me so 🤷🏻‍♀️

Nastiest thing you’ve ever done?

I dont know, I dont like being nasty

Have you ever been in a lighthouse?

nope

What colour is your shower?

I think its silver, ive ever actually noticed

Where do you order your pizza from?

dominos

When is the last time you had a serious talk with someone?

few days ago

Do you find that you have a certain meal you eat every time you go to certain restaurants?

yes, im a creature of habit

What colour is your bike?

silver & purple

What word can you not stand to hear people say?

the c word, I cant even type it

What room of your house are you in?

living room

What is the temperature in your city right now?

9°c

When did you last use a post-it-note?

last week in the script for the show im currently working on

Would you ever want to own your own restaurant?

yes

Do you have a fan in your bedroom?

no I dont like them, they make too much noise

Who is the last person that you took a picture with?

one of our foster kids

When is the last time you were stuck in a fairly long traffic jam?

the weekend before christmas

Do you have certain friends that you hug every time you see them?

not many

When was your most recent trip to an aquarium?

almost two years ago

What do you like in your salads and what dressing do you prefer?

I dont like salads

If it has one, do you ever use the notepad function in your phone?

all the time, Im constantly writing lists or reminders to myself

How good would you say your memory is?

long term good, short term bad

About how many times during the night do you wake up from your sleep?

a few times

Are there any air fresheners in your house? What kinds?

multiple, we have plugs in and sprays and those automatic ones that go off every 15 minutes

What’s one thing you’re glad you’ve done recently?

done my laundry :’) im on my last pair of pants!

Have you ever done something sexual that you regret?

Do you like to sit in the sun and tan when it’s hot out?

not really, I dont like being too hot

Ever had a person who was obsessed with you so much that it scared you?

Can you drive, and if you can, do you like it?

yes, I love driving most of the time

Have you ever said anything to the last person you kissed that you regret?

Do you like french fries?

yes

Have you ever eaten so much you puked?

not since I was a kid

Do you care about what others think of your physical appearance?

annoyingly yes

Would you rather go to Greece or France?

greece

#survey #long #very fucking long

2 notes · View notes

queen-of-hearts92 · 6 years

Text

Revue Starlight 11: Requiem for a Stage Girl.

First sight of blood spilled in the show! Um, hooray?

For the previous episode go here!

To go to the start of these posts, go to the Prelude!

YOOO! We are near the end everyone! Can you mcfucking believe it?! Man, this anime was a fucking ride and I loved it! God this is good, and gay! Anyways! Episode 11 was an emotional ride, oooo boy! Let’s waste no more time and get right to it then!

This time I couldn’t settle on a song title or lyric for this post I liked so I made one up! A requiem is a musical piece thats often played at a funeral. Hikari is pretty much treat like she’s fucking dead plus I like how it sounded.

>It’s the final countdown! *trumpets play*

We start where the previous episode left off, Karen falling rapidly off the platform. She is still in shock. Karen lands in the water that surrounds the stage and luckily she’s in a place where physics don’t matter so she has landed there safely. Giraffe announces Hikari as the winner of the auditions, he goes “ok time to harvest that starlight for your wish, what you want?”. All the other Stage Girls below watch and wait to see what stage Hikari will wish for. There’s an awkward silence before Hikari gives her answer, she doesn’t want it. Giraffe is surprised, Hikari says she doesn’t need any fuel for her wish. Perplexed, Giraffe asks if she plans to provide her starlight and only her starlight for the fuel. Hikari says, “Didn’t you want to see an unpredictable stage?” confirming that yes she wants to give herself up so no one else's is taken. She grips her knife blade hard enough to cut her hand causing it to bleed. The blood drips onto, not the ground but onto Hikari’s metal badge making anyone watching this go yooo.

Giraffe accepts her request. The tiara is on Hikari’s head as Giraffe announces that the audition duels are over and Hikari’s request was granted. We zoom out a bit to see a giant version of the tiara encircle Hikari, disjointed sounds play and then we hear the sound of a large door closing. Hikari vanishes, only position zero and Giraffe remain. Karen lies in the water too stunned to say or do anything. Position zero is shown one last time before the lights go out, plunging the screen into darkness.

It’s all over.

And then we get the opening.

*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yup that’s me, you’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

One day after the final auditions, there's a notice on a bulletin board. Hikari has apparently transferred out of school. Karen is confused to say the least. She and Mahiru go to the office to ask their teacher whats up. The teacher confirms that yes Hikari left, all the documents have been filled out and they are stamped with Giraffe’s logo. Karen asks where Hikari went exactly but their teacher brushes her off and says doesn’t know. So yes the school is in on all this magic stage bullshit. Karen tries calling Hikari, but her phone has been disconnected. Cause that’s not incredibly alarming at all.

Two days after the final audition, turns out Hikari left all of her things behind. All of it, cause that isn’t alarming at all. Karen pulls out the Starlight book, Nana and Junna are concerned.

Three days after the final audition, Karen calls the London school to see if Hikari is there. Doing her best to speak english while Mahiru holds a notebook with the english words to help her. Futaba and Kaoruko are nearby watching them. Karen’s call was in vain though, Hikari isn’t there either.

One week after the final audition, Karen and Mahiru go to the police for help. They sit with two officers to talk to them. Officer 1 says that Hikari did file the correct documents to leave school but Karen is like “I mcfuckin doubt that.”. The officers are like ok ok, we’ll ask a few more questions then. They ask where Karen and Mahiru last saw Hikari and it hits both of them that saying “on an underground stage with a talking giraffe” would just make them sound crazy, they can’t answer that question. Well shit.

Two weeks after the final audition, Karen sit in the subway station texting Hikari hoping she’ll respond. She’s sent several messages actually. But no response, at all. Karen looks at her phone sadly.

Three weeks after the final audition, the final cast list for the Starlight play has been posted. It’s legit the same exact cast as last time. Alrighty then.

One month after the final audition, she goes to the Tokyo Tower shop alone and stares sadly at the lamp display.

Seven months after the final audition, it’s now December. Karen and Mahiru sit on Karen’s bed still calling Hikari’s phone, and texting it. Still no response. Karen gets up and put her crown hair clip on, she says “Let’s go Mahiru.” and the two leave to go to school.

Mr. White and Hikari’s suitcase being left behind is a HUGE indicator that Hikari’s disappearance isn’t normal at all.

We go to Nana and Junna walking to school, they’re in winter coats. Nana comments on how cold it is, Junna says it’s the coldest day this year and references Nana’s time loop by saying that Nana probably hadn’t experienced cold like this in awhile. Nana is like “yeahhhh.”. The two come across Mahiru and Karen at a mailbox, Karen is trying to contact Hikari via snail mail now. Nana asks Karen if she’s cold and gives her a hug saying “Hot Banana!”. The four of them smile and then Karen says via voice over the contents of the letter she sent. She talks about everyone preparing for the Starlight play. We see a pile of letters Karen has sent to Hikari, they’ve all been returned so no luck with the snail mail either.

Jun Jun certainly thinks you are Nana! *runs*

It’s now the evening, the girls are still working on the play. Junna is writing stuff down on a clipboard and Nana comes in with food for the stage crew. Nana and Junna are called away from the group to run though the script for the play. We go to our girls and Karen, isn’t doing too well. Ameniya (the script writer if you don’t recall) asks if Karen was injured, Karen says no. So she’s like “so, why the fuck are you performing so badly??”. Sanai (the director if you don’t recall) hits the mark by asking if it’s because of Hikari. Ameniya is about to tell Karen to get over it when Mahiru goes “LET’S NOT.” so she stops herself from saying that. Ameniya apologizes and is like “just try to focus ok?” Sanai says “If you aren’t feeling up to doing this role its ok, we can get someone else to do it”. Wow, now that’s a comfort fail right there. Anyways, Junna and Nana arrive and they get back to rehearsal.

While going through the scenes, Karen is still distracted. She starts wonder what was wrong with her, why does she not feel anything while performing? No joy, no fear, nothing. Karen stops practicing all together concerning everyone in the room. She questions why she wanted to be on stage in the first place. Hikari is gone, why should she bother? She speaks aloud saying she loves the stage but she doesn’t know why. Then, a realization hits her like a truck. She knows now what Hikari meant when she said you lose the most important thing to a stage girl if you lose the auditions. Karen’s starlight wasn’t taken by the stage but, with Hikari completely gone it might as well have been stolen from her. Karen realized that this did happen to Hikari, she starts to cry. She says she gets it but also doesn’t but she does. She says her realization aloud that Hikari lost her starlight. Karen cries out Hikari’s name and has an emotional breakdown in the practice room.

Yeah this is the expression I’d make too if I discover a magic ass stage gives you severe depression and it’s already done that to your gf.

It’s the next day, Karen is in her bed with the covers over her head. The other girl are outside sitting at a table together, they all know the truth now about the price of losing the auditions. They are all disturbed by this revelation and the mood is somber. We learn why Maya reacted the way she did to Hikari in episode one, it was the lack of any emotion whatsoever in her eyes. Maya says that since Hikari’s starlight was stolen she became a dead stage girl. Claudine points out that all of them still have their starlight and Futaba comes to the conclusion that was because Hikari didn’t steal it from them. Kaoruko asks why Hikari would do that. Nana gives a reason, Hikari couldn’t bring herself to do such a thing. Put someone through the same pain as she suffered put Karen through that pain. Futaba is like “well shit she saved all our asses then.” Nana says that Hikari ended up losing all of her starlight and wonders where she disappeared to.

Back with Karen, she’s looking at the childhood photo of herself and Hikari. Karen sits up and wonders if Nana was right, the Starlight play is a sad story about parting. She opens up the Starlight book and even though she isn’t sure if she can read this without Hikari she gives it a try anyways. Then, an idea comes to mind. Later, Mahiru comes home to Karen translating the Starlight book from English to Japanese. She’s pleased that Karen’s motivation came back. Then we get a montage of Karen translation the Starlight book and she even gets some help from her friends. After the montage, we see Karen has gotten to the end. And we find out what happens to Claire after Flora falls from the tower, Claire was punished for the sin of trying to seize the stars and was sealed into the tower just like the other goddesses in there. A new sinner, imprisoned away in this horrible tower thing.

The moral of the Starlight play is if you try for a happier ending you can go fuck yourself. Time to change that ending yes?

Karen is like, well this part of the ending isn’t in the play at all. Then she figures out where Hikari is, she’s imprisoned in the tower just like Claire was in the story. Karen is like “HOLY FUCK, I GOTTA GET TO THAT ELEVATOR!” and runs down the hallway towards it. On the way she grabs the same crowbar Hikari had used in episode three and gets to the elevator. She says while trying to break the elevator door down that where Hikari was isn’t their stage. They haven’t stood on their stage yet! Karen shouts that they haven’t Starlighted yet as she swings the crowbar down, the red light next to the elevator turns on. And, as if the school itself is responding to her, all the fucking lights turn on too. Karen finally is able to pry the door open, light next to the elevator is now blue. She looks down the stairs into the yawning void, here she comes motherfucker.

As Karen descends down the stairs, we get a new song! It’s an interlude. Junna appears next to Karen on the stairs, she goes “So, seizing the stars is a sin? Guess us Stage Girls are all sinners then. But fuck it, who cares if we’re seen as sinners. I don’t care! I’m going for that star anyways!” We pass by Junna’s props as they go down the stairs. Junna stops walking and tells Karen to tell Hikari that she will be waiting for her on the stage. Karen nods and they wave to each other as Karen continues onward. Mahiru walks down the stairs with Karen next, she says “We’re from different places and have different stories but we all met on the same stage. We discovered our starlight together.” Mahiru’s props are passed by, Mahiru stops walking and tells Karen to tell Hikari that she will see her on the stage.

Next is Kaoruko and Futaba, they don’t walk down the stairs with Karen but they stand in one of their props (the dojo area). They both say that us Stage Girls are united as one by the stage. They ask Karen to tell Hikari that they will see her on the stage. Karen walks with Nana next, she says “All stages come to an end, so we should burn as brightly as we can while we’re there.” Nana’s props are passed by. Nana tells Karen to tell Hikari that she will be waiting for her on the stage. Karen and Nana wave to each other and Karen continues onward.

Claudine travels with Karen next, they take a gold elevator downwards. Not just any elevator through, the same one from the Starlight play. She says, “The stage keeps us going and it's where our hearts belong. It’s the stage the fulfills us.” Maya continues what Claudine was saying as she and Karen walk down the stairs, “Stage girls can be reborn endlessly, hence even if we fall we can get back up again.” Claudine says, in French, that she will be waiting for Karen and Hikari on the stage. Maya also says she will be waiting on the stage. Karen finally reaches the entrance to the theater, the other girls sit at the bottom of the stairs to see her off. They will all be waiting on the stage for her and Hikari. Karen goes inside, and the door shuts behind her.

Zettai. Unmei. Mokushioku.

No background music plays as Karen enters the stage, it's dark and it looks like the water is gone. And for the very first time, Giraffe isn’t present at all. There's only a small section of the Star Tower here. Something is wrong. Suddenly we hear a cell phone ring, Hikari’s phone sits on position zero plugged into an electrical socket. All the messages Karen sent to Hikari start flooding in. Karen runs over and picks up the phone, the phone turns into a ticket. A ticket for a show. She looks up and the Star Tower section now has an opening, Karen announces her name and class and walks towards the opening into the unknown. The credits now play.

But. There’s a post credit scene, Hikari is naked in a pink sandy wasteland. Her cape is stuck on the branch of a brush and the tiara lies in the sand. The Tokyo Tower lays on its side in the sand a little bit aways. Hikari says she remembers her promise with Karen. The episode ends here.

I’m sure she’s fine. This is fine.

>How to save your girlfriend from a pink hellscape: Discussion edition!

-Well well everybody we got ourselves a nice set up episode! I suspected that it would be a set up one. Also every passing episode, my fear of the stage grows. Hahaha. Ha.

-I fucking told y’all it's ALL the girls who lose get their starlight taken and not just second place! Not like that was hard to fucking know like, sorry I just saw folks going “only 2nd place loses their starlight” and I got annoyed. Good to have verbal confirmation man.

-So! 7 months have passed in universe, it's December now. Likely close to Christmas or New Years. SAVE HIKARI FOR CHRISTMAS KAREN!

-Hikari is pretty much just gone. Her paper says she transferred but all her shit is still at the dorm and her phone was disconnected. The paper was marked with a giraffe symbol which means the school is for sure in on it. So “SHE SENT ALL THE PROPER PAPERS IN” MY ASS. Like, god. Fuck, poor Hikari. ;;

--Also gotta take an aside to say everyone who called Hikari a snake or anything of that nature post episode 10 fuckin take that shit back cause she saved our girls! Hikari is good.

-While I figured that the school was in on this shit, I gotta rant angrily about them. I know they fictional but it always gets my goat (fictional or irl) when adults who are supposed to look after kids don’t do so and even worse when they let something like a severe depression causer creature even near these kids. So here I go! Fuck you Seisho Academy! You irresponsible selfish assholes, how dare you let this stage creature come here and feed off of your students. The fuck is wrong with you?! And then you lose track of a kid?! Really?! Also how is letting eight girls get depression gonna fucking help ya?! Like oh shit you just lost eight students good fucking job. What the fuck. I’m gonna go fight ya, meet me in the fucking pit.

-Even though Karen’s starlight wasn’t taken, the stage ended up taking what was most important to Karen anyways. It was Hikari, without Hikari’s existence she can’t muster up passion for performing on the stage anymore. Karen’s emotional breakdown was heartbreaking good god. Thankfully she bounced back!

-The other girls know the truth about the stage now, and realized that Hikari pretty much saved all of them from losing their starlight. This isn’t how I thought the girls finding out the truth would go but this reveal worked really well. Like, they heard the fucking giraffe talk about fuel and shit so when Karen realized what happened to Hikari they put two and two together. Also, looks like I was right about why Maya reacted to Hikari the way she did in episode one! Yeehaw.

-Turns out after Flora was zapped to the ground, Claire became trapped in the tower for her sins. Called it! Yes! I think it’s interesting that to find the truth we have to go back to the plays roots. Going back to your roots to rediscover your passion is something that’s happened a lot in the show. I like this theme.

-Well would you look at that, Karen’s princely vibe is coming into play! Hikari is a princess now like, she’s literally locked in a tower. And if Giraffe is a Kirin there’s even a dragon to fight! Fairy tale imagery is fun. Also oh man if Karen like gives her cape to Hikari I’m gonna cry.

--Also also, hey rev star. We got lots of girls dipping each other and that’s great but please, we need to see a bridal carry DO IT! The perfect opportunity is right here! Right now! Karen can do it! It happened in Hikari’s dream in the prequel manga Overture! Make Hikari’s dream come true DO IT!

-The lack of music when Karen walks into the stage is creepy as fuck. Makes the phone sounds all the more startling. Also the entire stage was much creepier than usual and that’s saying something! The lights in the audience were off, a good chunk of the tower was gone, and Giraffe wasn’t there at all. This, is alarming to say the least. Even more alarming, the stage is still fucking here. It hasn’t moved to a new location, why? Was it...waiting? Waiting on Karen to come and continue the tragedy? Jesus christ, this stage man. ono

-Hikari’s phone turns into a ticket and I. Fuck. That was fuckin wild. Really good editing in this show oh man.

-Hey guess what? CROWN SOUNDS ARE HERE AGAIN. 20 seconds in, fuck. I don’t really have time to snag a audio clip for it but, just letting you know it's fucking back and still fucking scary.

-I loved how Junna’s stair moment was her going “we’re sinners now? Ok, I’m still grabbing that star though! You can’t stop me!” God I love her, Jun Jun is great!

-Small detail but I wanted to mention it anyways but during the whole episode we never see Maya and Claudine too far from each other, always together. Even during the staircase part, Claudine was only a few steps away from Maya. Like quite a difference to see that right? They meant it when they said they’ll always stay together in the previous episode. It’s a cute detail and its nice to see their relationship going so well! I love them.

-So I wrote about the stage and its favoritism towards certain Stage Girls but it got really fucking long so it will be its own post one day!

-I love the Evangelion like imagery at the end there, this shit is gonna get surreal and I am ready!

-I wish all the Stage Girls were going on this rescue mission but oh well. The scene with Karen going down the staircase was so nice and sweet and I loved seeing all her friends support her! But, this part also felt like a goodbye. Like Karen isn’t coming back...hope I’m wrong.

-Each girl that walked down with Karen was in the same order as their duels. With Junna going first and Maya going last, nice touch!

-An Interlude is a musical piece played between acts of a stage production. So, does this mean we going to act 2 now? Possible season 2? Hope so!

>This speculation was brought to you by: Put that stage back where it came from or so help me!

-I wrote theory about why I think the stage is from the planet Venus! Check it out!

-Since Hikari lost her clothes cause she’s in the tower. This might mean that this shot from the opening is telling us that Karen will end up staying with her in there. They will then, literally become starlight. Just like Karen says in her audition speech. If this is the case then that could leave this show open for a season 2. That would be kinda sad tho, but it seems foreshadowed hm. The other options I’m thinking is that they both get out just fine or only one of them gets out. Or maybe they just, end up on fucking Venus and it’s like oh shit we gotta get back to earth. That option is a bit out there yes but hey, you never know!

-I’ve been shouting about the Starlight Gatherer for awhile now. We still don’t know who it is, I’m banking on Giraffe still! Or maybe the stage itself? Gdi I’m just gonna wait and see at this point, I don’t have any new theories here. Heres a good video about the Starlight Gatherer if you want some more speculation! Oh! And, let me just. Drop the little poem we saw about it right here:

Starlight Gathering is Forgiveness of Sins

Starlight Gathering is a Wonder of Night

Starlight, The Shining of Hope

Your Shines are the Starlight

The Starlight Gatherer

Gives The Beast from Over the Garden Wall vibes here...I don’t like it. ono

-I’ve pointed this out before but I’ll say it again. In her stage outfit, Hikari gets a crown of stars around her head. In artwork often the divine or saints get a circle of stars as a crown like that, these are known as Crowns of Immortality. I have been wondering how this related to Hikari, but I think I know now. Martyrs can also get crowns like that in artwork, and Hikari just martyred herself to save everyone's starlight.

>All good plays must come to an end.

I, can’t believe we’re near the end. Where does the time go? But wow, I love this anime! My gut feeling was right! Am I ready for the end? No. But it will come either way, let's enjoy while it's here my dudes! That’s how shit like this rolls, burns brightly but it doesn’t last forever so we should enjoy it while its here.

See you on the final stage for episode 12!

#revue starlight #shoujo kageki revue starlight #moo watches revue starlight #whew yeehawwww #near the end y'all! I'm not ready

9 notes · View notes

svtskneecaps · 6 years

Text

halloween hijinks

yeah the title’s p bad i made it up for posting and nothing but

uhh i was bored so i wrote a kim jisung x kim jihun semi unrequited story? like love’s not really the main focus bc it’s mostly two idiot friends doing dumb shit yknow

Group: TRCNG (look at ya girl stepping out of her comfort zone)

Warnings: Ouija boards, mentioned flying erasers, two kids being dumb, scented candles, probably language (i don’t remember for sure but knowing me), ooc things (let me emphasize this, OOC THINGS), and poor writing. i did my best

Words: a commentary’s worth (1725)

best gif i could find in 5 minutes of searching my dudes i take what i can get and don’t throw a fit cr to bapwoo the owner as shown above. i’m not a giffer just a bad writer

“We should not be doing this.”

Jisung had been saying that for probably the last day and a half straight. One would think he’d have stopped by now, since the boy creeping around ahead of him with a Ouija board tucked under his arm still hadn’t listened.

“Yes we should, because who else is going to?” Jihun checked around the corner, looking like someone from a parody of a spy movie.

“The teachers probably, I don’t know! We shouldn’t be messing with this stuff.”

“Look, I did research. It’ll be fine.” (Jisung noticed he knocked on wood as he said that)

“You did less than a day’s worth. We’re messing in the occult here, what if we summon something?”

“Yeah, like what? The spirit of an angry old woman who flicks your forehead when you cuss?” Jihun crouched down, checking around a hallway intersection.

“Like a demon! This is serio- what are you doing?”

“I’m being stealthy.” Jihun laid flat on his belly, worming his way through the intersection.

“You- okay.” He was going to say you look ridiculous, but thinking about it this wasn’t the strangest thing he’d seen. Now crouching on the other side, Jihun waved for him to join. Checking both ways for any security or custodians, he crossed the intersection.

But not on his belly, because he kind of wanted to keep that last shred of dignity, thank you.

“You’re gonna get us caught,” Jihun hissed.

“I’m gonna get us caught?” Jisung asked, but the other boy was already moving, crouched in front of a classroom door and fiddling with the knob.

“Got it.” He pulled the door open. “Come on.”

The classroom was eerie in the dead of night. Even the cheery posters with cheesy motivational sayings seemed creepy. And the model skeleton their teacher had dressed up for Halloween really didn’t help the atmosphere any.

“You know what today is?” Jihun asked as he pulled the shades down over the windows.

“Halloween?” Jisung cleared a spot on one of the lab tables at the back of the room.

“No, that ended a couple hours ago.” He pulled the last shade down and moved over to Jisung, beginning to set up the Ouija board. “Today is the Day of the Dead. I read about it on Wikipedia.”

“You think that’s a trusted source?”

“Well I wouldn’t cite it on an essay but it’s pretty accurate a lot of the time.” Jihun pulled a stack of website printouts from of the box, setting them next to the board. Jisung squinted. “Anyway, Wikipedia says spirits come to visit the living world on November first, which is the second day of the festivities, and coincidentally,” he checked his watch, “it’s been November first for about an hour.”

“I thought it was the day of the dead,” Jisung emphasized. “Singular.”

“Me too. But we were wrong.”

“And anyway, what does that have to do with what we’re doing?”

“Halloween, which is the mainstream spooky ghost day, has just ended. According to the Mexican tradition, the spirits have just begun to walk among us. I figured now would be the best time to contact the ghost and ask it to stop throwing erasers at me.”

Jisung felt his jaw drop. “That’s why we broke into school in the dead of night? I told you, it’s probably Siwoo or Hyunwoo or one of the other back row kids!”

“I’ve been watching, it’s not,” Jihun insisted, setting the triangular planchette beside the board.

Jisung sighed. “Fine. So how do we do this safely?” “Well first we’re supposed to light candles.” Jihun took a couple out of the box and set them on the lab table, pulling a lighter from his pocket. “I could only find two at my house. They’re scented.”

“You’re sure they’re not going to set the fire alarms off and get us busted?” Jisung asked doubtfully, picking up one of the candles and breathing in the scent absently (it was vanilla).

“They’re tuned for heat, not smoke. We’re in a science lab, there’s going to be smoke sometimes.” Jinhun flicked the lighter, the flame finally catching on the fourth or fifth try. Jisung caught himself staring too closely and quickly asked a question to distract himself.

“What’s that one scented?”

“Apple cinnamon, I think.”

The distraction didn’t work. He needed a new plan. As Jihun turned to light the other candle, he lifted the first and checked the label. “Yeah. It’s apple cinnamon.”

Jihun finished lighting the candles and looked back up at him, then laughed. “Why are you glaring at the candle? Do you not like that scent?”

Embarrassed, he set the candle down, trying to think of an excuse. “No, I’m just tired.”

“Do you want me to hurry then?” Jihun shoved the lighter back in his pocket and placing the candles on opposite sides of the board.

“Please do.”

Jihun hopped up on the lab table, sitting cross legged and pulling the board onto his lap. “It said we’re supposed to balance the board on our knees, preferably touching.”

It didn’t sound that close until he experienced it in action. Hunched over the board, their heads were almost touching. Despite its purpose being to contact a ghost, it felt intimate.

“Okay, now we warm up the planchette and then we get started.”

“How do you warm up the planchette? Do we hold it over the candle flame?”

“No we just move it around on the board.”

“Sounds easy enough.” They moved it around in a circle. Well, it was mostly Jihun controlling it. “How do we make sure to get the classroom ghost and not a passing other spirit, or something evil?”

“We specify.” Apparently deeming the planchette sufficiently warmed up, Jihun stopped moving it. “And it said only one person should ask questions formally to the board, to avoid confusing the spirit.”

“So you’ll be asking the questions?”

“Yeah. And the other person just tries to keep their mind clear, because the mixing energies could break the connection.” Jihun glanced at him. “So don’t freak out or anything, and don’t take your hand off the planchette. If anything goes wrong, I’ll end the session. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said simply. “I trust you.”

Jihun flashed a smile. Jisung ignored the fluttering in his chest. They leaned over the board, and Jihun opened the session. “We ask of you no negativity and no profanity, only positivity, and we ask you to only communicate with us through the board and only the board, and that anybody here or near to us is not affected by anything negative.”

“Did you memorize that?” Jisung asked, eyes flicking up.

“Yeah.” Jihun slid the planchette over to the greeting in the corner. “Hello!”

“Hello,” Jisung echoed.

“Is there anyone who’d like to speak with us?”

They waited.

“It might take a couple minutes,” Jihun said.

“So do we have to wait in awkward silence until then?”

“I don’t know.”

They tried it. Time stretched on. Jisung wished he’d thought to grab his watch on the way out. Jihun’s was hidden by his sleeve, and the clock on the wall was never trustworthy. The planchette inched towards the U, but he was pretty sure that was gravity and not a spirit.

“Is there anyone in this room who wants to talk to us?” Jihun tried again, a little louder. Jisung winced at his volume, sure that someone was going to hear and come running, but his concerns were quickly forgotten as the planchette began to move, halting over the yes.

“That’s so cool.” The words came out breathless as he stared at the unassuming piece of wood.

“Do you haunt this room?” Jihun asked. It circled around and came back to yes. “Do you throw things?” It moved to no. Jisung resisted the urge to say, I told you so. “Do you know who’s been throwing things?” It moved to yes, then slid across the board, pausing over each letter. They leaned over the board, reading each letter out loud.

“Kangmin?” Jihun asked incredulously. He straightened up abruptly and hit Jisung’s forehead with his skull. It took an inhuman amount of willpower to keep his hands on the planchette. “Shoot- sorry Jisung.”

“No it’s fine.” He shook his head. “Did you get all the answers you wanted?”

“Yeah.” Jihun turned back to the board. “Thank you for your help, spirit. Do you mind if we say goodbye now?”

The planchette slid to no, and then to goodbye.

“Thanks again, goodbye~” Jihun sang. Jisung echoed him. “Okay, we can take our hands off now.”

“Guess you really did know what you were doing.” Jisung rubbed his forehead as he spoke.

“Yeah. Is your head okay?” Jihun leaned in, setting the board aside. “I really knocked it.”

“It’s fine, just hurts a little.”

“How does one check for a concussion?”

“Hyung really, I’m not gonna get a concussion because you sat up too fast.”

“You’re sure?”

Their faces were so close. Jisung wondered if the other noticed. “Yeah I’m sure.”

“Okay.” Jihun sat back, and the tension cleared from Jisung’s chest, although it was quickly replaced by some kind of empty longing sensation. What was up with him?

“I don’t mean to be overbearing or anything,” Jihun said, hopping off the lab table and starting to pack up. “I just worry about you.”

“Yeah, I get it.” Jisung hopped down and stacked up the papers, setting them in the bottom of the box. Jihun handed him a candle, and with a quick huff they blew them out at the same time. They returned the room to its original state and snuck back out of the school, heading for home.

“Do you ever want to do that again?” Jihun asked.

“What, use a Ouija board?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe.” Jisung’s eyes trailed over the jack o lanterns littering the sidewalk. Taking a chance, he said what he’d been thinking, “If I was doing it with you, yeah.”

Maybe it was the excitement of using a Ouija board and not dying, maybe it was that he’d basically been asleep for the past ten steps, but he didn’t remember who reached out first. All he knew was they were holding hands all of a sudden, and Jihun was smiling at him.

And maybe he hated it but he knew he’d do it a million times over if it all led to this.

i probably did shit but hey i tried my sins are atoned for i have contributed to the trcng scenarios tag happy spooky day

#trcng #trcng scenarios #trcng imagines #trcng au #kim jisung #kim jihun #yeah sorry to the fandoms with a kim jihun or jisun this is probably gonna show up there too #not my fault nothing i can do i apologize i did say the group name in the intro bit tho #so your fault if you read thinking it's them #hey stan trcng while you're here

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cutepacabra · 6 years

Text

Understanding my own queerness, and my mestizaje in the South

I’m not really sure what this work is, it’s a bit of ramble from my stream of consciousness, a mea culpa for the people I’ve hurt and a coming out letter in some inane clusterfuck. Each subsection is headed with the title of an LP I’ve found particularly profound during that moment in my life.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Blacksburg Va, The Turn of the 10’s

I had made it. I’d shed the label of the new kid and was finally free to just be some kid people didn’t know, I’d found friends and developed a distance from my past 3 years in copy paster’s guide to neighborhoods. Most of all I had yet develop a real sense of self by that point. I had the luxury of my criollo (phenotypically and by wealth) existence shielding me from having to really wrestle with what it meant to be apart from the group, I got to indulge the luxury of white anonymity; no one asked me “what are you” until they saw my name and even then my response of “Mexican” or “Mexicano” was met with a “well prove it”. Looking back I’m more than a little shocked at the arrogance on display with such assertions, certainly warranting more than my tepid “no” or capitulation. Advancement into middle school of course came with all the requisite increases in outward displays of stupidity, cruelty and insensitivity that the white mindset brings with it (typically characterized as “no one has ever hurt me by talking about my whiteness so why would it hurt anyone else” in a naivete that too oft lasts until death), including but not limited too the whole arsenal of racial slurs that a group of 11 or 12 year olds can pull or cook up, made all too easy by our ready access to the internet. We would throw the hard r a.k.a. The Papa John around with reckless abandon; pouring endless more effort into research for new ways to degrade people of colour than we would our school work, even finding the esotericists the region brought along with it, finding nothing less than delight to find out that the term “moon cricket” or “fruit picker” could be used to degrade a group of people effectively invisible in such a preeminently white space. As with all 12 year old children we were not without our share of homophobia as well, a wide smile across some of their faces as they spoke about how they’d “beat the shit out of” and then “rape” any “faggot” that dared cross them. Of course this put me in a bit of a pickle, being that I myself was a budding young “faggot” and I now had to show my mettle as much as possible in order to avoid social flaying at a level of cruelty almost unique to that age. I had to up the ante, take on that mask and assume those traits that now had become linked with being masculine and fitting in: racism, homophobia, misogyny in addition to a generally callous misanthropy.

The ultimate manifestation of my closet persona can be summed up by all the memories conjured by a simple phrase “Do it or you’re not real” (depending on the particular boy this could be appended with a hard r or a “faggot”). I made myself a fool in boys clothing many a time at the utterance, almost like an activated manchurian candidate, from opening the emergency exit door on a bus moving at least 50 miles per hour down the highway and having to be pulled back in a Looney Toons esque fashion to the sexual harassment of women simply for the comedy of the reaction to the other boys (particularly the women the other boys realized I had a romantic interest in). I had become nothing less than a monster, caught up in the worst of reaction, white enough to be let in on the fun and games with nothing more than the occasional “border jumper” or “mexinigger” comment. Of course it’s difficult to camo hide the things that cannot be hidden and my descent into an internet supported madness borne of cognitive dissonance, memes, image boards, forums and more stimuli than you can shake a stick at, in short exactly who you think would be listening to ska punk in 2010, I would oft hear a phrase that has stuck with me. “You’re pretty weird”, the intonation would vary, sometimes being a derision laced with venom, sometimes a realization built on uncertainty and sometimes the soft smile from someone who found a compatriot in not fitting in somehow. It was undeniable that at some level me being off white or just off perturbed them. I had become a simulacra of whiteness, the dissonance between my hyper real whiteness and the true blue thing they’d known all their life was in that moment there and not; an oscillation that existed at the boundaries of the rigid modernist reality set forth by the racial framing ideology that ruled the way they thought about people. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and says the n word like a duck is it a duck? The answer here was simultaneously yes and no; I had through effort overcome my innate nature within the social structure but had only achieved a consciousness of whiteness (and heterosexuality) that allowed me to become that simulacra; a fake that was in some ways even more real than the real thing since I had to try and maintain that identity continually, this in particular was profoundly perturbing to some of my classmates. “If someone didn’t know you they’d think you were white” and comments in that ilk always carried that worry, that uneasiness that someone from an “out group” could slip “in”, nicknames like “the infiltrator” or “undercover” further cemented this feeling.

This dissonance started to create a toxic pit of self loathing and internalized pathologies aimed against all the things I knew all too well I was and towards all the things I so desperately wanted to be. I hated the rise in my chest a few of my male friends would provoke; I hated my late night google dives into crossdressing paraphernalia and picture sets, desperately framed as yet another “haha look at these weirdos” “joke”; I hated knowing I was on the outside no matter how hard I tried to fit in; I hated myself. The only hate from this era which has yet to set its sun, shining overhead to this day, blinding my path.

That’s not to say that this time didn’t have its share of counterframing towards equality and justice, I ended up adopting the typical reactionary white liberal view of the world but not without a fight put up by my mother’s strong views on human justice borne of her socially orphaned social democrat political views imported from Mexico. As well as the Priest of the local Roman Catholic Church Father Prinelli who was incredibly cool with my generalized disillusionment with organized religion and just asked me to kind to my fellow folk. It would be an unfortunately long time before I would heed their words.

Losing Streak

The North DFW ‘Burbs circa the early to mid 2010s

While my set of friends had not traveled back with me my dips into reaction followed my move back to the same North DFW suburb I had left before landing in the New River Valley. It was around this time that my reactionary mindset found a new target to bully and deny was a part of me: the trans community. While at some level I knew I felt uncomfortable in my gender expression I interpreted this as my failure to “man up” or fulfill my traditionally masculine roles in the face of a lot of decidedly non masculine interests (S/o to ZUN’s Touhou Project series for spurring my appreciation for frilly ridiculous clothing), leading me to decide that I would simply have to be even more “masculine” which at the time meant becoming even more overt of an asshole to gender non conforming folks. I was also stripped of the masculine identity I had built up through sheer rapport with what was actually a pretty large swatch of folks, leaving me to find a new place to cast my dark closeted arts.

I fell in with a roughly the same set of folks I hung out with during my time there in elementary school but the timbre of who I was became profoundly different. The culture and the social structure was markedly different and the survival strategies I had conceived no longer made the most sense. On top of all this was the piling on of teenage angst both normal and dysphoria fueled. I had met the natural end of my sins, supreme loneliness, alienated from everyone around me and even the only one I had in solitude. As I gradually clawed myself a place to exist in the localized social structure it would become more and more apparent that only by beginning to shed some of the malice in my heart would lead to a better outcome.

Better in this case was actually quite good for someone who in retrospect is wholly undeserving, I found myself with an incredibly tight knit group of about 6 people who were tempered by unexpected hardships rarely overcome by the group but almost always partially mitigated. Being as profoundly enthralled in reactionary ideology as I was it would take time for this realization that raw human kindness is what creates strong bonds. These people would layer by layer begin to peel parts of the callous shell I had built with what they had, motivating me to drop some of the most egregious of my beliefs such as homophobia, racism until I was an even stranger mix of self hatred with external crusades for what I have come to believe are the right things.

Bubbling beneath the surface for all this of course is the 3178 kilogramme elephant in the room of my gender identity. Being so alienated from what the “normal” male experience was I found myself not thinking that what I would come to realize were leaking feelings were anything out of the ordinary for kids my age. “Of course all guys want to be girls and think about it with regularity” “There’s nothing weird about always being an ambiguous creature or a girl in your dreams” By this point I just pinned these things down to my now personally accepted bisexuality never even having the mental framework to link these thoughts up with my transness.

Twin Fantasy

Caucasian Station, TX; Texas A&M University

Things kinda fell apart. I was a pretty lonely person for a hot second in my HS years but I at least had the luxury of speaking with someone every single day (whether or not the people I was conversing with or I wished to is another matter) but coming to uni was another level. During the first semester of my fish year I would spend weeks without saying more than a passing set of sentences, too scared, too alienated, too depressed to even leave my dorm for more than runs for sustenance outside. My sanity was barely kept intact by working with cavelier and roguish campus activism collective “TAMU Anti-Racism” as the tensions built on campus with the rising tide of white supremacy in the days before and after the Trump election. This meager sense of purpose I ascribed to being able to “do” anything managed to keep me attached to this mortal coil even if only in the loosest fashion.

Somehow I had become an impression left by my old husk self lying on the ground, a shadow forgotten by everything. The real inflections came in the wake of what was supposed to be a moment of triumph for me in college, my first hetero and homosexual experiences; instead I would find myself disgusted with myself, not for the acts in question but rather for my reaction to them. I kinda hated it. I started chalking this up to some sort of need for romance in my sexual relationships, this would also prove untrue. Simultaneously my “leaks” of transness were becoming more and more apparent, buying women's clothes on the internet and donning them in the dead of night in my dorm restroom only to become overwhelmed with self hate and guilt at the idea that I could be some kind of pervert because it felt right, because I wanted it. My own hate of my physical form also grew exponentially during this time although I would again simply attribute this to a pathology about being really overweight. On occasion I would even have fits of body hair dysphoria and shave all of my body hair in a panicked burst, hopping in the shower with the sole thought that it all had to go. With the answer to my feelings staring me in the face as the barrel of a gun stares in the face of someone executed in the field I still looked the sights down from the other side and said “I don’t see a gun”. Repression truly induces some incredibly wild states of mind. One of those even happened to be an entertaining of the end, through the purchase of a method before I escaped the malaise temporarily and came to my senses.

While this may sound like a recipe for academic success the truth is I ended up in a state of failure in two of my courses at the time (physics and calculus, both of which I had long since stopped attending regularly) and I knew I only had the chance to pass 1 of them when finals week came to tower over me. My premonition came to pass and I would get a big fat F in Calculus to accompany generally low grades overall, putting me on Academic probation. By this time I had at the least come to realize that the college of engineering did not house my future academic home although I was too chicken footed to leave the next semester. With the miasma of academic failure lifted from me I would spend the next two semesters attempting to find my place at the department of Sociology and within the same organizations that dominate my time at TAMU today.

I also have to give great thanks to these orgs for really helping me develop my sense of latinidad and latino identity when the bloom of the cactus upon my face was oft lost in the shuffle. I’ve become much more comfortable with my ethnic heritage and more understanding of my status and place within the mestizaje as a privileged individual for being white passing, even if it’s the source of a lot of my internal turmoil. I’ve managed to dedicate so much of my time and effort to the community and in turn the community has given me back my sense of self, my sense of purpose. I no longer feel like a chunk of gravel aimlessly being flung around a highway and I owe that to all the incredible role models and friends I’ve made and met working for the betterment of Latinos on campus and in the US writ large. A fairly obvious epiphany came to me sometime in the past year or so that having a reason to live really is pretty good.

My life would proceed without any major events until I would come face to face with the incongruity between myself and my body in an unexpected fashion the first semester of my sophomore year. During a trip to a nearby city for a conference I found myself at a dangerous level of inebriation, going quite a bit too hard. I stumbled my way into the restroom and felt the alcohol poisoning creep into my body; one by one my senses felt like they were leaving me, leaving my soul suspended in the ether. In that dissociated state I came to realization, I didn’t feel male during this brush with death, in fact I felt rather femme again refusing to believe what was in front of me I would spend hours in the next days attempting to find out if my reaction was simply a normal response to the irresponsible amount of drinks I had ingested that night.

A good talking to by a friend over the net that I was exhibiting quite a lot of gender non-conforming behavior finally pushed me over the edge and cracked my egg. It was still relatively early in the day when I came to point where my recession dam broke and the dysphoric waters came flooding in full force. Suddenly and violently I had context for feelings I had held for a long time and was now drowning in their full weight. Among these feelings I had pushed down and stamped upon during my early days was apparently anxiety because although I didn’t know it I was having a full blown panic attack at the time. I would come to realize what was happening only after boarding what felt like an exceedingly crowded Aggie Spirit bus, as my vision, chest and breathing further constricted. The world felt like it was collapsing in on me, my eyes went fish eyed like a sick 90s skate video, my breath grew more and more shallow. After getting off the bus and finding a solitary spot to shed some tears in I called the only people I knew I could rely on, my friends. Particularly 3 folks who I’ll leave anonymous for this letter (if i’m sending this to you, you probably know who you are) spurred me to action and to take the reigns of my life. Just before my 20th birthday in March I made an appointment with a clinic to seek hormone replacement therapy. After about 6 months in september I walked in 3 months after my blood exam with a script for estradiol and spironolactone.

To the people who’ve supported me I can’t thank you enough. To the people I’ve hurt I can never fully atone for my transgressions against you. To those on the outside looking in, I hope this shows that life isn’t a linear path, that things can take you in directions you never thought and that there’s always a way to get better.

Thanks and Gig em,

SRJP

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maptoourescape · 6 years

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Hi I just wanted to say I love your blog and I love the way you display Tom's thoughts and mentality. I wanted to ask what do you think about this whole situation with Tom, is it hard to keep roleplaying him and to reenact his thoughts when he has been acting so unusual lately? Do you think he is happy? Keep up the great work! ^^

INTRO &DISCLAIMERNow what I am going to tell you is obviously just how I see the situationpersonally. This might not be the representation of reality whatsoever, eventhough I’d like to think I’m a good judge of character. I don’t know thesepeople. They are, by all means, strangers to me as I am to them. But I DIDhappen to grow up with them, observe them through years of footage, and seemany of their quirks in real life as well whenever I had a fortunateopportunity. Saying that, I feel like even though their stage personas (orwhatever you might call them) are “built strong” sometimes, you can still peekright through them if you have enough of a “people sense”.Look, most folks probably realize that Tom isn’t all that he gives out to be,but they don’t really think about it all TOO much. And honestly, I don’t either- it just comes naturally for me to psychologically evaluate people. And myevaluation of him is that he is full of unresolved issues.I don’t even mean that in a bad way, I really don’t. I just want all the bestfor him. But let’s just say that seeing how his life was up until now, thereare multiple factors that play out in his current “out of character” behavior. Toa certain extent, I can also relate to him in some regard. Similarly to him forexample, I too use a weird sort of humor to hide behind, almost as though it’smy shield, so none of what I’m saying is said in a judgmental manner. We all haveour own issues after all, and that doesn’t make us any lesser.BUT FIRST THING’S FIRSTTalking about humor, let’s just get straight into it, because we have to startsomewhere… Humor is a stress relief weapon by its poetic definition. In Tom’scase, it isn’t any different – only maybe he takes that a few steps further,still. More than just as a casual thing, his jokes are also being used to takethe edge away from what he considers to be serious and/or emotionally intangiblesituations. Why? Because Tom doesn’t appear to be someone who would like to“show his real self” to people in a situation he can’t properly evaluate,unless he knew for SURE they are to be trusted. In other words – he doesn’twant “the emotion that would be shown from him” to be used as a weapon againsthim later on, especially if he doesn’t know what kind of a reaction to expect from thecounterpart. “If you appear vulnerable, this same vulnerability is going to beused against you” is the mentality here – that’s a lesson of sorts that he’s probably learned how to incorporatein his daily life at a very young age already. So deflecting a lot of shit withhumor is basically an act of protecting himself. Same with his manly-manboasting, and all the confident penis commentary, which many people look at justsuperficially, saying that it’s trashy and/or annoying – even though what itreally turns out to be, in my opinion, is a (not all that uncommon) copingmechanism. So the next thing you’d ask would probably be “but what on earth is he copingwith then?” I guess it would be probably safer to ask what he isn’t coping withat this point, because we’re talking about a bunch of things here, all muddledtogether in one big ball of anxiety. Main things to highlight probably include a)fear of abandonment, b) some art of repressed self-consciousness, c) some weird(intrigue by and a fear having lack of?) dominance issue and etc. all the wayto the last letter of the alphabet.I’d say it all started in childhood with his father leaving and being, as faras we know, generally problematic (because honestly, that fucks us divorceekids all up, and it’s so internalized that we don’t even really realize ituntil it hits us in the face as adults, when we are suddenly facing multipledaddy issues all at once lol). Maybe even beforehand, depends on what sort of anupbringing the twins’ parents decided to give them. Then we have the general yearsof complete hell, also generally known as the school days, full of bullies and nasty youngadults with too much time on their hands. We all know the baseball bat stories –need I go into further detail? Then comes the growing up under the spotlight,of course – the unusual puberty they had to go through, as Gustav so nicely putit in the documentary – and being pushed into a harsh ass business at such ayoung age… just basically dealing with a bunch of stuff that kids usually haveno place dealing with, and maybe learning some lessons that normal people onlyget to really learn in their 20s or 30s. Namely how it is to be working with allthe wrong people, and probably having at least some sort of taste of a betrayalon a professional, working level etc.If there is one thing, one lesson that ties all of these separate life erastogether to make a nice whole, it’s one of how you have to be careful aroundpeople, and how forming trusting relationships isn’t a very simple task,whatsoever. Between parents leaving, peers bullying you, media shitting on youand the industry silently pulling their own strings behind your back – oh, andhave I mentioned stalkers and the literal walls they had to build around theirhouse in order to keep them at bay? which didn’t work anyway because their private space WAS invaded by gross people? – I guess you pretty damn quicklystart losing your naïveté. Or well, if not that, at least your trust in prettymuch anyone that hasn’t been with you since the very, very beginning.And then comes, obviously, the relationship he had with Ria.Now, again, everything I’m saying is based purely on my speculation from mereobservation. I don’t actually know any of the people they associate with either.But the vibe I got from his relationship with Ria was honestly… not that bad inthe beginning. I think that, at least at the start, she was really, really goodfor him. And that he got even more attached to her eventually, because she wasthere when he emotionally needed her most (read: the big move to the USA,stalker problems and lack of motivation to keep being in a band from all thepressure…). I also think that he kind of thought this relationship was really“it”, you know? As years went on though, just as any other relationship, theirsseemed to have become this sort of “routine” as well. And we all know that feeling, don’twe? If not from our own experience, then from some of our friends’ experiencesat least? The feeling when the stomach butterflies die down, and the initialeuphoria just settles into a still?My take on it is that he really, REALLY tried a LOT to make it work, even afterit sort of started “crumbing down” for whatever reason. I feel like he feltsuper comfortable with her BECAUSE they’ve been together for so long. Maybe itbecame a sort of a routine for him too, but it was one he definitely sought toupkeep. Tom didn’t want to let go of her. Because ruining what he had with herwould mean “having to find someone new”. And “having to find someone new” wouldmean “having to open up to someone again” – something that isn’t all that easyfor him to do, for the already before mentioned reasons.Pretty sure we all know about some infidelity speculations being rumored tohave been going down between them as well, especially from her side. Andhonestly, that would explain a thing or two about how his behavior has changedin the time ever since they’ve officially broken up. I obviously do not knowthe specifics, but I’ll be damned if I don’t realize it takes two in order toa) form a relationship, but also b) in order to not fix it if it goes south.Doubtlessly, none of the two was a complete saint. And doubtlessly they bothhave their own character flaws. But though dubious in its legitimacy, hersupposed infidelity really ties well with what’s happening right now, in thismoment. Just think about it… Yet another massive betrayal. Another one of themassive disappointments he experienced along his life’s journey. This onecoming from someone he perhaps even considered to be his (other) life partner.Only now that we got the mere basics down can I finally start bringing upShermine, and the point of this entire conversation anyway: his “change” asbrought up with his dynamic with Heidi. Because I really think that in order toproperly understand why I think this Klum relationship is toxic, you firstneeded my quick review of “the entire story”.BACK TO THE POINT AT HAND NOW I don’t think the Shermine relationship was honestly all that different fromthe one Tom has with Heidi now. I can’t claim to know the reasons why itprobably “didn’t all work out with Sher” (besides the obvious fact that thiswas never a relationship in its full meaning of the word, but rather just whatpeople usually call “an affair”), but it might have been them just beingseparated by where they lived and what not – or maybe also Shermine seeing howmuch of a “child” Tom really was in certain regards. It’s not like she was thisperfect example of maturity either, mind you, having to constantly post hintsabout how she’s together with him and what not, but at the end of the day, Isort of feel she got more tired of HIS bullshit than vice versa. And by “hisbullshit” (again, not meant to be judging) I mean this strange passivity that has been surrounding him recently (examples and explanations coming up). If someone on twitter now points out how “unlikeTom it is to let Heidi post on social media about him,” another person then instantlyyells out saying “why do you care, if he apparently doesn’t care anymoreeither!”And to me, it is exactly THAT that is the concerning factor anyway.People are, in a strange way, right when they shout “Tom doesn’t care aboutbeing public anymore!” but they don’t look deep enough into it to see theproblem behind it. Yes, it’s true – if Tom wouldn’t want to be posted on socialmedia, then his old enough, almost 29 year old ass could’ve just told Heidi to NOTfucking do it. So yeah, you know what? Most probably, he’s NOT stopping her.But him “not being bothered to go against it” doesn’t mean he’s automaticallyokay with it. Those two are not mutually exclusive. What I see in his behavior right now - that is also something that’s seemingly been there forever since he’s been hooking up with Shermine too - is mindlessness, carelessnessand a complete disregard for what he used to stand for in regards to his “morals”.May I note that I can also see he has this sort of complete disregard abouthimself floating around as well? He appears to be very passive, and seems asthough he really just isn’t putting any thought into… well, pretty muchanything he’s doing… like ANYTHING, whatsoever. And yes, I realize that “people can change,” and that Tom too could’ve just aseasily had a spiritual awakening, and was suddenly like “you know what, I’m NOTgonna stress about being on social media that much anymore, and I’m NOT goingto stress about being in the press…”. But the thing is – these sorts of thingsdon’t just happen overnight. Especially not with the life he’s been leading andhow much it’s been fucking him up along the way at times. You don’t go fromwanting complete privacy because of your own very legitimate paranoia, to goingto an Amfar Whatever Gala event in front of millions of press to out yourrelationship, just like he did. You don’t go from avoiding cameras as much ashumanly possible to vacantly stare at a paparazzi’s Canon in the distance inorder to see if it’s getting the right shot of you and your new so calledgirlfriend. This sort of mental change CAN obviously happen. But overtime, and usually– dare I suggest? – with therapy (which we are bringing back up later). By myinterpretation of how he is as a person though, I don’t think this “transition”was something that happened in an exactly healthy way. More than seeing Tom as “careless but happy,” (as people paint him out to be), Iright now see him as being “careless and confused”. Numb, even. Out of placeAnd “out of place” is a phrase to describe him best when it comes to how helooks like as soon as Heidi’s around.VAGUELY EXPLAINED CAMP EXPERIENCE INSERTI’ve been there on this Camp, and the way he reacted to literally everything –people, his surroundings, most everything you can imagine – changed bizarrelyas soon as he knew she was around. It’s almost like he was being nearbypetrified. I have no idea why either. One would think that if you’re datingHeidi Klum, you’d want to show her off or something. Or at least be ascomfortable with her as on (play pretend or not) all those paparazzi photos that keep popping up. Especiallywhen literally NONE of the campers really cared for her presence there, so it wasn’t like he was afraid for her wellbeing or whatever. So no, no psycho had the intention to attack her, literally no one cared, but Tom still just turned into this… anxious little mess?Mind you, when I saw her arrive, my mind was also still open. I was like, “ya knowwhat, all of their other family and friends are being so lovely – Georg’s gf who justjoined in on the activities, and Gustav’s wife too, just supporting her hubbyand speaking to the fans… maybe Heidi’s going to prove everyone wrong and bereally lovely”. But honestly, from the moment she entered the Camping grounds, you couldFEEL the atmosphere drop.Never mind the fact that she was having a stare-down with many fans (includingmyself) for no apparent reason, which I still do not understand… From where Iwas sitting, she was making it very damn obvious she wanted to just “geteveryone’s attention”. Her glares were basically daring us “to go spread theword that she arrived”, and when we wouldn’t care (because surprise surprise,we weren’t there for her, so obviously no one really cared?) she would stare atus even weirder. But as I said, that in itself isn’t all that important. What Ineed to convey is how insanely uncomfortable TOM appeared to be when she wasaround.(As a side note, I also feel like we all kinda expected a huge ass party to godown on the last day of Camp, seeing how on the previous few days, the guyswould kinda leave at latest 2 in the morning – which made sense, becauseeveryone knew they were gonna have responsibilities the next day. But literallynothing was planned for Monday morning, and I felt like everyone was superpumped about the guys finally having an opportunity to party with us reallylong and really proper. Only, you know, that never really happened. And I daresay it was mainly because of Klum.)I digress, at some point of the evening after the firework finale, the twins actually came tothe counter in order to hang out with people (after they’ve left to refresh first, leaving people confused as to if they were even returning), and I thought “Yay, maybe they’ve actually joined us again to party like everyone kinda expected, so that’s great!”. But no suchluck. It was there exactly - at the counter - where the difference of how Tomis without her around VS when she IS around became so prominent. Only a nightearlier, the guys would stay behind the counter for AGES, just interacting,taking pictures, drinking, having a good time… on Sunday, they weren’t therefor even 10 minutes, before leaving towards a backstage area of sorts. I sawher being at the counter for a while as well, with literally no one botheringher whatsoever, but she eventually disappeared, initially making me think “Oh, maybeshe’ll just mingle with people, go chat up Georg’s GF or something… maybe thisevening is actually gonna be bomb!”. But her leaving simply resulted in Tom REPEATEDLYpressing Bill into “going to the backstage area”.Tom looked NOTHING like the night before. He was TRYING to interact with somefans, but was mostly just looking really out of place. It happened on at least3 separate occasions in those short ten minutes, that he would poke Bill atevery opportunity he got, just to press him into going to the stage area. Hekept on elbowing Bill whenever the other would turn around to get somethingfrom the fridge, pointing to the stage, looking vaguely lost, not really payingproper attention to his surroundings. Bill was visibly giving hints that he “wantedto just stay for a while longer,” even going as far as showing Tom his drink asthough he were to say “lemme at least finish this first?” until Tom eventuallyprevailed and they actually decided to move to where she was – to the infamousbackstage area. Again, I thought that maybe they had plans on going on stage to the DJs again(seeing how they did that on the nights before), maybe give one last propergoodbye to people before mingling in the crowd some further. But that neverhappened. Honestly, thinking back on it, it was kind of bizarre to think theyjust huddled up in the little space behind the stage. They wouldn’t even pull acurtain to have some sort of privacy – if you went behind the stage, you couldliterally just see them interact there, being all secluded from the rest of thepeople. More secluded than on the previous day when it was raining cats anddogs but they STILL made the effort to just hang around with all of us! The situation lefta bitter taste in my mouth, because at that point I KNEW that if she wasn’tthere, the party would have been so insanely different, so insanely cool. Ifelt bad for Bill, who was just longingly looking onto the stage, taking videosof it – he gave off the vibe that we wanted to go party, but (for some bizarrereason) “couldn’t”. It felt as though hedecided he would rather stick to the out-of-place-looking Tom, which Ihonestly, at the end of the day, can’t really blame him for.Not even half an hour later, the golf carts arrived to pick them up, and that washonestly so strange to observe too. Not even once in the whole entire weekend did Ihave a feeling of them rushing anywhere. Whenever the boys would arrive orleave with the carts, whenever they’d change locations, they would always honkand scream around, letting everyone know what they were up to, shooting people with water pistols if in range even. But suddenly then, the golf cart had topark backwards towards the stage in order for them to “have a clear and quickstart”. There was no honking, no proper goodbyes we were used to from theearlier days. They just kinda… drove off. And I know for a damn FACT that itwouldn’t have been like that if it wouldn’t be for her. I wish this would just be me – that this would just be a plot of my own damnimagination. Because I WISH she wasn’t a cunt, for Tom’s sake obviously. But Ihave talked to a bunch of people, and they have all had their separateexperiences, most of which only furthermore confirmed how I see the situation. Factsare these: 1. Heidi was there for the obvious reason of getting our (thefans’), as well as the media’s attention. 2. She was acting all high andmighty, as well as really possessive (even jealous at some moments, which is sosuper bizarre to think about), and it wasn’t a good look. 3. And I don’t knowwhy EXACTLY, but as soon as she was around, Tom ALWAYS sort of froze on spot.Look, I don’t know, maybe he’s just intrigued by that sort of dynamic and getsoff on it, and just doesn’t want to publically admit that he “likes herdemanding demeanor”. But yo, even if that was the case – at the end of the day thatdoesn’t make the whole relationship any less toxic. OKAY, TO THE CORE NOWShe has subtle manipulation tactics down to the T. I can tell, because I knowhow to use those in my advantage as well. And you’ve probably had this happento you too, mostly without even realizing it. It comes to the surface in a waywhere some parents make their kids feel bad for “not cleaning up the dishes”for example. Instead of demanding “it gets done because otherwise they’ll beconsequences”, some choose the more toxic approach of emotional manipulation,saying things like “don’t worry, it’s fine, what’s another hour more to my nineto five working schedule anyway?” It’s in the way that one friend of yours says“oh okay” without a smiley face when you cancel on going out with them. It’swhen something comes out of people’s mouths, and the meaning is dubious.Something that is meant to make you walk the line between “but is it reallyokay?” and “I feel uncomfortable that you feel uncomfortable, so let me help”. Her entire presence just screams that demeanor,and I don’t doubt I’m right in this. She probably even pulled something like that in that counter scenario I was talking about too, going like “oh you go hang out with fans, I’ll just be there… having my drink…” The question now remains if Tom is oblivious to these attitudes or not.Honestly, both yes and no seem like a legitimate answer to me in this case.Neither of the twins seem to really be capable of a good “evaluation” when itcomes to perception in regards to human character. They’re not short inadmitting that themselves either, and said it numerous times that this is whysongs like “Never let you down” happened to exist in the first place. But italso makes sense if we again tie it with the fact that they had a puberty muchunlike ours is. Meeting people was always sort of arranged in their world, so gettingto know someone spontaneously isn’t really an experience that’s been followingthem ever since they were socially capable of “making their own friends”. Can’tsay that that’s a concept that’s completely alien to them, having lived in theUSA for so long now and what not, but we also can’t say they have as many experiences withit as someone who had a “normal lifestyle” either.I’d say Tom is intelligent enough to realize what’s going on, but simply toonumb to do anything about it. What’s more, maybe he even enjoys this sort ofdynamic.“But why,” you might ask “would anyone enjoy this sort of manipulative dynamic?”Honestly, I feel what he likes about it is that someone’s taking away hisresponsibilities to himself. It basically feels as though you’re giving the reins to your insides into the possession of someone else - someone who you feel can makethe most out of them when you obviously couldn’t. And even if they couldn’t exactly “makethe best out of it” – Tom’s been steering himself for too long, only torepeatedly be faced with complete disappointment on the roads he’s taken. It’snot like he cares what happens anymore, as long as he gets to feel at leastsomewhat at peace. So why not let someone else “take his life into their ownhands”? Why not be the follower of someone who seems to not be bothered by literallyeverything he usually stands against? Someone who seemingly had more luck inlearning about how to cope with this reality that is “being famous and beingshat on”.My conclusion drawn from what I’ve experienced and heard is that she “keeps himon a short leash,” while simultaneously trying to boost her own importance andego as they go. From what I see, he is being very much so infatuated with her,but I wouldn’t dare calling that love by any means. Yet another heated affair,if anything. I think he really lost himself along the way of people fucking himup in his life (especially since the breakup he had with Ria), so he isn’treally thinking straight anymore at all. He’s just going with the flow, doingwhatever the fuck he wants to, fucking whoever the fuck he wants to, and hasthis little rebellious side of him tell him to “fuck the rest”.Which WOULD be a good thing – fuck the haters, imma do my thing and stuff… Onlyif he wouldn’t be doing it out of all the wrong reasons. Namely what seems tobe a desperate attempt and need to just “change himself for the better” because“he isn’t a weak ass motherfucker”.I feel like he has quite some problems with the concept of vulnerability. He has this sort of a persona built up which he strives to be, but really isn’t– basically a sort of an alpha male persona – and right now, he’s probably sofar off in his head, that he just wants to desperately fit this picture perfectimage of himself, no matter how many broken pieces are waiting for him to berepaired on the inside. He wants to prove that “he’s better and stronger” tohimself, as well as to everyone around him. He’s ignoring his issues, pushingthem aside, thinking that “ignoring” his problems is better than to face them,“because after all, facing them only ever brought him pain and anguish anyway”…But holdingthings inside like that, suppressing all the negatives by all means necessary…I think most people realize how bad this can get – a person turning into aliving ticking time bomb that can be triggered into an explosion at any time. Hemight be feeling happy now, in this moment of bliss he’s created for himself,just ignoring everything that’s been eating away at him from the inside, neverletting it surface. But you can only keep your demons at bay for so long,before they come haunting you again, with even more vigor.Prolonging the inevitable in this way is pretty much the most horrible idea onthe long run you can have. But Tom isn’t thinking on the long run. He’s thinking “peaceof mind, now, or I’m gonna lose it”.I don’t know what it is that triggered this “obsession to be okay”. Maybe hewants to be spiteful to Ria. Maybe he wants to prove to her “how much betteroff he can be without her” and “what a changed and open man he has become”.Maybe it’s not even Ria. Maybe he just can’t deal with being without SOME sortof a sexual partner, because it makes him feel like a failure. Maybe he cravesa sort of intimacy he used to have, but is now gone, so he fills his time withwhat he thinks is “second best”. Who knows. It could be a number of things, andmany more than I can probably never even think of.At the end of the line, my personal perception of what he’s doing is that it’s –and I’ve repeated myself in this wordall too many times now – toxic. No matter the reason why he’s doing it. I thinkhe would be better off alone for a while, and, if not getting therapy, at leastletting himself have some breathing space, and just give himself a second toheal from whatever is gnawling at him. Heal from whatever seems to be “pushinghim” from the inside to be this perfect ideal self he so desperately seems towant to be. AND BEFORE I FINISHLet us just quickly dive into this one last important element of this dynamic –namely where Bill comes in, and how it all comes together at the end of the day. If we assume I am at least vaguely correct in my interpretationof things, it’s obvious that there’s no way in hell that Bill would be blind to somethingnot being entirely as it “should be” with Tom. Clearly if even we as fans can perceiveTom as being out of character, how on earth would then his twin miss it?Doubtlessly, no matter the partnership any of the two had/have with anotherperson, it will always affect BOTH twins in one way or another.So how do we explain this undying enthusiasm Bill seems to be sprouting everytime Heidi posts yet another picture of Tom on her social media.Well, there’s a few rough possibilities I see here.1. First would of course be realizing that social media is meant to feed uscontent that isn’t always the exact representation of how the reality is. Whoknows if Bill’s endless heart emojis really are as heartfelt as we imagine themto be in the first place. But I digress. I sincerely think Bill’s not fakinghis enthusiasm. Most of all because his idolizing when it comes to Heidi reallyseems to know no bounds. Which leads me straight into the more possible optionnumber two.

2. Billsort of admiring and romanticizing the relationship Tom and Heidi have – to thepoint where he thinks Tom feeling out of place is just sort of his imagination…Because “how in the world could this picture perfect scenario ever be hidingsomething less than PERFECT”. Bill is like that – the romanticizing idealist.And I bet he has this one picture in his head of how Heidi is, and doesn’tstray from it, even if there’s weird signs that she might not be all heimagines, and no matter what other people might suggest in order to persuadehim. Stubborn. The twins are so. Damn. Stubborn.3. What I imagine most – or well, wish to imagine, hoping that Bill isn’t toolost in his ideals in regards to Heidi – is that Bill actually tried talking toTom about what’s wrong, but Tom refusing to tell him, continuously saying that“all is fine” as he probably does so many times with his manly-manpersona up. And then Bill letting it slide, just being as happy as possible forhim, even though he knows something’s up. Because what else is he to do anyway?STUBBORN, REMEMBER?

Whatever itmight be – at the end of the day it’s really sort of exhausting how the twinsjust give each other concession over and over again. Recently, an old interviewresurfaced where they talked about how “they don’t need therapy, because theyhave each other”. Well, with both of them so stubborn and both of them so damnproud, with both of them being unable to take a sincere word of advice as anythingbut a personal attack… Of course they prefer each other over someone else withperspective. Because a therapist would not massage their egos as they do to oneanother. A therapist wouldn’t let them drown in pity and join in on their spitelike it’s their own. Because that wouldn’t resolve anything.Relying solely on someone that is also really similarly fucked up might makeyou not feel alone, but it sure as hell won’t drag you out of shit. They’re eachother’s excuse, constantly, probably unknowingly only dragging each other downwhen it’s really bad. Instead of telling the other “no, you need to dosomething about yourself, you’ve been down in the gutter for too long”they probably just go “yes, that person did a horrible thing, and I’llcontinue hate them with you while we wallow in our joined self-pity”. Whatthey would need is to challenge each other more, and not just give one anothermore silent vigor to just stay miserable…OUTROBut, hey, this is where I stop babbling, even though I feel I didn’t evenremotely scrape the surface, or tell everything that’s been building up insideme lately.I’ve been debating with myself if I should really go into such excruciating detailregarding my thoughts on Tom – mostly because I don’t think traumas ofdescribed sort are something to discuss online in such a manner, no matter if true or not. In a way, Ifeel protective, because the mere potential of my thoughts being correct gives me a nasty feeling of this being a text of “exposure”. Butthen again, the internet is getting too loud with their weakly argumentedopinions, and people don’t seem to take in account that this human being hasbeen through shit a lot of us can’t even remotely imagine. So I settled foreducation. I wanted to maybe build perspective for someone who hasn’t beenthinking about this all too much.I mean at the end of the day, worst case scenario is that I’m right, but that I’vestill built some sort of perspective for people who think that “Tom’s just a fuckboi”.And best case scenario is that I’m simply overthinking everything anyway, andthat he IS actually just simply happy. In which case, ya know, I’m really,truly happy for him.At the end of the day, that’s exactly what I want, and this is exactly why Iover think it – because I want nothing but the best for all four of these idiots (as said lovingly, of course). So to finally answer your very prevailing question:Do I think Tom’s happy?Solely superficially. Really, properly happy? Alas, I doubt it.Do I want to be wrong?Abso-fucking-lutely.Thank youfor your time, if you by chance came back to find my ass finally thinking of a proper response. It really has been a long time coming.Love,Tina

#anonymous #[anon;]#reviewed this way too many times #posting it now because otherwise I'll just keep on adding

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musingsofamurderess · 4 years

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On the Categorical De-Humanization of Addicts and Alcoholics (a short discourse on addiction and alcoholism and an exercise in combatting codependency)

THIS IS A VERY ROUGH DRAFT ONLY!

I am living proof that recovery and rehab work. I currently have 5 and a half years clean and sober. I am not perfect, nor do I expect anyone else to be. Flaws and assets amount to very much the same thing in my experience. This story and its conclusions are from my experience and are dedicated to my mother, who loved me so hard that she tried EVERYTHING in her power to help me when I believed I was beyond help. In her struggle to understand me, I have found parts of myself that I thought were lost forever. I have found some rudimentary dignity in being myself.

Disease or no, we should all be held responsible for or own actions. We should also learn to hold ourselves accountable. Period.

When I was using, I woke up every morning either angry or depressed that I hadn't died overnight. I had been using, in one form or another, since I was 15. I thought that drugs were the only way for me to deal with the reality. I couldn't process my own emotions, thoughts, or actions in healthy ways then because it was easier to let drugs and alcohol do the coping for me. I did not know of any other way for me to live. Drugs seemed to work, at first. I had fun, went to parties, and had lots of sex, but I was denying myself the dignity and experience of learning to walk a mile in my own shoes. The drugs and alcohol kept me "sane" before I learned what sanity was. I loved them for it, but I hated myself.

Learning a workable definition for sanity was paramount in my journey. Although I am aware that there are infinite interpretations of the concept of sanity, the definition that stuck with me was an a quote by Albert Einstein. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results." When I looked back on my life before sobriety, this was very much an established pattern for me in my personal relationships, through work and school, and in my day to day activities. In short, it all boiled down to one simple example: I went to bed each night wishing I would die, and awoke each morning wishing I had died. I was truly miserable, but that wasn't what got me to get help.

You would think that each day filled with the horror and dread of the coming day, along with the fear and embarrassment whichever debacle the previous day had begotten would be enough to get me motivated to get the fuck out of my own filth, but sadly, it never was. Enough was never enough. I was determined to find the "right combination," to switch drugs or take them in the right amounts such that I would finally "be ok" with myself and the universe. I suffered years of degradation, humiliation, and bad decisions, all the while thinking that I would one day find a "magic solution," something outside myself that would make everything better. It would negate all the years of being abused, and, more so, an entire lifetime of self-abuse.

"You never have to be miserable again," a friend told me shortly after I decided I was willing to do something different. A tall order, I know, and again I am aware that this is no altruism. How did I get here, and how could this lofty idealist jargon ever become a pivotal and functional part of my idiom? I'll drive you. Drunk, about midnight, driving to a friend's house to apologize for getting too drunk during our previous encounter (not to mention drinking most of his large container of Listerine from the restroom), it was darker than usual. Perhaps my headlights were out? BANG. The window looks funny, why am I having to lean sideways to drive? I'm almost there, I'll just get off the main road and park behind the middle school for a bit and see what happened. Nope. I hear sirens. Better to just keep driving normally like nothing's wrong. Shit, it's for me. I park the car. I insist on a field sobriety test.

Him: Say the alphabet, starting with the letter G.

(He was going easy on me, or was he?)

Me: Backwards?

Him: No, in order. Starting with "G."

Me: The alphabet? "G"....backwards?

Him: Just say the alphabet starting with "G."

Me: Ok, I thought you meant backwards. G, H, I, J, K...I give up.

offers hands for cuffing

Blood Alcohol: 0.18%, you can imagine my disdain after one successful attempt at breaking the filter by blowing too hard. I had lost. At least I'd spent the ride over explaining how I had suicidal tendencies and had seriously hurt my back last time I was drunk tanked trying to break through the door to get away from the other ladies there, specifically the pregnant one who told me my predicament was "no big deal" which demeaned my panicked drunken freak-out session and thus promted said attempt to escape. I asked them to call my psychiatrist and may have given them his number, as I did have it memorized for such occasions, but I have his name and apparently was convincing enough to score myself a single suite. I could barely sleep and when breakfast came under the door, I thew the eggs all over the floor as if smashing them was going to relieve the mental anguish of my current situation. I kept pressing the button and the lady on the speaker told me to clean it up or I wouldn't get to use the phone (because I kept asking). The embarrassment I felt when that woman shamed me for making confetti out of my breakfast was intense. Something snapped. I cleaned and waited.

I had already used my "get out of jail free card" with my parents and began to contemplate my dilemma. I couldn't get away with it again. I would call the bail bondsman, who was very nice to me last time, I'd have him call mom and dad, and tell them.....tell them what? I knew what. I balled my eyes out, full on wailing, moaning and sobbing like the love of my life was just murdered in front of me...I could tell them I'd go to rehab. Dad got better, why couldn't I?

I made the phone call to the bondsman, crying almost to the point of laughing at the irony of it all.

This is just the beginning of my story. I can honestly say that I hope that what happened to me, will happen to other addicts and alcoholics. I am glad to live the beautiful, meaningful, challenging and fulfilling life I now lead.

All this is to say, for the purpose of the event that led me to write this evening, I understand the anger, sadness, and exasperation felt by those who have experiemced, still are experiencing, or will experience the phenomena of watching others kill themselves with drugs and alcohol, brutally destroying everyone and everything in their paths. These are people you love, doing something frankly incomprehensible to most. To you, I say: distance yourself. Get away from these probable addicts and alcoholics who either refuse help or don't think they need it. You don't have to be party to that, you have the right to separate yourself for your own well being.

In fact, by cutting them off, you'll most likely be helping them to reach a point in their lives where they will be willing to try something different. To stop making excuses based on past trauma, blaming the people they love and consequently wondering why, time after time, everyone leaves and things don't work out the way they like or expect them to. Encourage them to stop doing the same thing over and over and expecting by doing the same yourself. Don't give in to pity, blaming circumstances and making excuses for them will only increase your emotional, physical, mental and spiritual investment in them, which will lead only to further heartache and disappointment for you. Offer to help them get better, failing their acceptance, distance will provide you the perspective you need to process the hurt you've endured by being involved with an addict or alcoholic. Get the help you need first, just like emergency protocol when the oxygen masks come down in an airplane, you cannot save them before saving yourself. It's hard, but true.

Unfortunately, some of us do die before they reach a point where they are willing and able to get help. The old adage "if you love them, let them go" seems to ring true in this case (in my experience, at least). I know this sounds harsh, but if you think about it, even a sane and sober person wouldn't change their entire lifestyle without a damn good reason. Help give them that reason by letting go. I'm not saying don't love them, I'm saying do it from a distance; for your own safety and in hopes that one day they will understand and perhaps even thank you one day because you did the right thing. Even though it was harder than you imagined, even though every bone in your body may have wanted to fight it or find any other way, you will have done what was best for you and the other person by offering either real professional help or an end to the relationship as it stands.

I sincerely hope, for everyone's sake, that every user will have enough horrible things happen to (and because of) them that they will be moved enough to do whatever it takes to change. In the meantime and for the record, the categorical dehumanization of addicts and alcoholics will not stand. We are people, and people deserve basic dignity and understanding. Period.

Oct 8, 2017

#recovery #my story

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issasideblog · 6 years

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Introduction!

Well, um hello lolol~

How’s it hanging?

This is my first post on this blog, I’m not even sure if I’m going to post anything, but I guess it’s a good place to post my feelings and other things.

I have no idea how to start this, so I guess I’ll just link this post on my other blog, it’ll give a shorter explanation of what’s happening right now heh.

Okay, so hopefully you’ve read that if anyone does read this, or if future me reads this then hello, hope you’re Gucci now~!

Like I said in that post, I’ve been feeling quite down recently.

I’ve always been like this, but recently it’s gotten worse and I’m not entirely sure why, the only reason I can think is that I’m changing medication.

But it doesn’t really explain why I’m constantly sad, or empty/numb

Don’t get me wrong, I do feel happy sometimes, but not a lot.

I don’t have many friends, but I don’t mind to be honest.

I’ve always struggled with friends, this is apparently because I have Autism (there’s that too lolol~), so I’ve never really had friends for a long time.

But, I have one close friend (my best friend) the others are just people I hang out with at school, since I don’t really leave my house.

I don’t really like the others too much, I know that sounds mean. But I’ve always struggled with attachment.

I don’t get attached easily, especially after I found out that they were talking about me behind my back.

Every single friendship I’ve ever had has ended like that, so I kind of don’t trust many people.

I said above that I rarely leave my house, this is for many reasons I guess.

1. I’m scared of people.

That sounds kind of weird in a way if you don’t understand.

I hate meeting new people, and being around other people makes me incredibly nervous, but I don’t really show it.

I can’t make eye contact with people (another thing to do with my autism heh)

2. It triggers my OCD

This also sounds kind of weird, but I’ll explain.

I have really bad OCD (Which could also be part of my autism apparently) but I hate being touched, and as soon as someone touches me I feel contaminated and have to wash.

I can’t sit in any place, beside my bed without feeling dirty and having to wash.

Nobody can sit on my bed, or I have to change my bedding.

If I don’t shower I feel disgusting but sometimes I have no motivation to shower which makes me feel even worse.

3. I’m paranoid

I constantly feel like I’m being watched, no matter what I’m doing. I could just be sat in my room (like I am right now) and feel like I’m being watched. It stops me doing certain things (like exercising) and I have to change really fast.

Being outside triggers this even more, I feel like everyone is watching me and judging me, or that I’m being followed.

To be honest, I just prefer being inside. I feel safer I suppose, but not entirely safe.

My school life is even worse.

My grades are terrible, so is my attendance.

I struggle to get out of bed on a morning, because I’m exhausted, I have no motivation and I honestly don’t see the point, I feel like I’m not going to live long enough anyway.

That sounds like I’m going to kill myself, but I wouldn’t because it would hurt people I care about, I guess.

I find it hard to believe people care about me, but I don’t want to risk them being hurt.

But, I’m very clumsy and kind of self-destructive. I don’t really look after myself, and often miss meals and don’t eat or drink for ages.

Recently, I’ve started sleeping in school.

I’ll just be listening to the teacher talk and lose focus and just fall asleep.

I fell asleep in my exams, which I failed.

That made me sad, but no one knew heh, people that knew got mad/judged me heh.

I literally have no energy, so I try sleep whenever I can.

Min Yoongi who?

I have no motivation to try in school, even though I want to.

I haven’t done homework in three years, nor have I tried hard.

I don’t have good relationships with teachers because of this. They hate me heh.

I sometimes skip lessons, which makes them hate me even more.

My maths teacher now despises me because me and my friend didn’t go to her lesson and gave us a detention (which I couldn’t go to because I wasn’t at school because I was too depressed heh, but my friend did so she doesn’t hate her). But another girl skipped the lesson and didn’t get into trouble which I found rude.

Now my maths teacher treats me like crap and will pick on me any chance she gets which makes me feel like crap and stops me going to her lesson.

I’ve nearly been expelled three times, which was a rollercoaster lmao.

But the latest was last year:

Like I said in my other post, I have Bipolar disorder, which gives me severe mood swings.

During this incident, I was in a manic state, I literally couldn’t control myself it’s kind of like being drunk in a way?

Anyway, me and this teacher were messing around in maths and he said something that I can’t remember and my manic self (please remember I had no control over this, I couldn’t control myself) said

‘Screw you too’

I don’t even know what happened, but he got pissed and yelled at me.

Then sent me out.

A while later, my best friend brought my bag out and I got sent to the deputy head (I think that’s who he is I honestly have no idea lmao).

I later found out she brought my bag out because my actual maths teacher (not the one that sent me out) said if she brought me it, I’d accuse her of doing something to it.

Probably not wrong tbh

Yeah, so I got sent to the maybe deputy head, I don’t know guy for the rest of the lesson (it was my last period, so I could go home straight after). He made me, my best friend and our ex best friend stay behind, except my ex best friend ran off.

We both had to give a statement of what happened????

(This is kind of turning into me talking shit about my school whoops)

But then yeah, my best friend said she didn’t want to do it in case they lied against us, but she was forced to.

THEY DID LIE AGAINST US IT WAS RIDICULOUS.

Around this time, I was being forced to stay behind because I was missing school.

Apparently, it was to ‘catch up’ but I didn’t do anything besides sit there???

So, it was basically a detention, even though my reason for missing school was my mental illness.

Anyway, I was forced to write an apology letter to both teachers, even though I didn’t do anything to one of them?

The whole screw you was literally a joke??? I thought we were messing around which we were.

Anyway yeah, they refused to let me leave until I did it.

(I couldn’t get out without them letting me)

I can’t remember what I wrote but my head teacher had to help me because I refused to write it, because in my mind (and many others) I didn’t do anything wrong, I couldn’t help my actions and they knew it.

But yeah, I was forced to do this, and went home crying.

My parents were pissed.

I’m pretty sure they called the school and told them to retract the apology or something. I don’t wanna ask now lmfao.

So, them both the maths teacher and the other one that I said it to (he’s now my physics teacher and is nice to me??? but it’s gucci) hated me and so I stopped showing up to that lesson, and form (she was my form tutor)

EVERY MATHS TEACHER I’VE HAD IN SECONDARY HAS HATED ME WTH WHY AM I SO UNLIKABLE???

Anyway, my school didn’t believe me when my parents told them I had bipolar disorder.

The school phoned my doctor without us knowing, and asked if I actually had it.

My doctor phoned my parents because it’s confidential and they needed permission, which we gave.

But yeah there’s that too.

I have so many bad incidents in school what even

Because of my disorder and other shizzle, I have a lot of appointments, I miss a lot of school.

At one point my teacher (the physics/screw you guy. Why is he always in this? He’s nice now but still) told me I should cancel them.

I can be really suicidal and put myself and others in danger do you really want that, buddy?

But now, they’re demanding all letters of my appointments, but it’s confidential????

Like uh no go away, my mental illness don’t get your own they suck.

My PE teacher (I am so tempted to give her name because I really don’t like her but I’m not actual that mean, she also might see this and sue me lolol) is one of the worse for dealing with my illness tbh, despite the fact her brother killed himself.

This next part is probably gonna sound really attention seeky but meh, I’m just going to be honest here, because honesty is the best policy.

She treats everyone else really nice (except a recent incident with my best friend) but it comes to me and she’s horrible.

She ignores it, and/or blames it on me (this is another thing entirely ugh).

One time I was really depressed in physics (ITS THE SCREW YOU TEACHER AGAIN FGS LMAO) and he was like ‘I’ll email pe teacher and tell her’ but instead of telling her I was sad, he said I refused to work????

I was sat in the changing rooms, basically crying and she comes in and yells at me for not doing pe.

(side note: I don’t do PE because of my paranoia, insecurity and OCD heh)

I haven’t done pe in three years wth you know this???

Then she goes

“Do you want to talk about it? Never mind you never do.” and walks out.

I don’t like talking to others about my feelings, because in my mind they don’t care and I’m just a bother to them.

In year seven, I was forced to go to the school councillor.

She brought another girl (who for the record, is horrible and I really don’t like her).

She then started talking about my bipolar and saying stuff meaning the horrible girl knew all aboout my private stuff.

The councillor then went on to say my disorder is my own fault????

Apparently, I was just hanging around with the wrong people and not having enough confidence??

No, I have a mental illness, I can’t prevent it.

Trigger warning: self-harm

A few years ago, I used to cut myself (I don’t anymore) and my teacher was trying to force me to take my jumper off, and at some point, I got in trouble for cutting myself h e c c.

A few weeks ago, I told my teacher about how I was struggling with body issues and starving myself. She asked me how I was once but did nothing else.

If it wasn’t for my friend and parents realising I could have starved myself to death, and she would have watched it happen.

I even wrote a song about it recently and it was obvious it was about me, but my teacher read it (it was for an assessment) and said nothing.

Alas I cannot think of any more incidents at school, there are literally too many.

Ever since an early age, I’ve struggled with sleep.

I can go days without sleeping or sleep all day.

This sometimes actually depends on my bipolar.

If I’m manic, I can stay up for days, if I’m depressed I can and most likely will, sleep for days.

I also have something called delayed sleep phase syndrome (Jesus I have a lot of problems)

So, my sleeping schedule is messy.

It’s literally 7:30am and I haven’t slept even though I’m exhausted.

My whole life I’ve had low self-esteem.

I hate everything about myself.

This could be because I’ve been bullied my whole life.

One of my biggest issues is with my weight (You can probably tell where this is going so trigger warning)

I’ve always gone through phases of not eating for days, or rarely eating but recently has been the worse it’s ever been.

I was barely eating, I’d go days without eating, sometimes I would force myself to throw up.

I was constantly over exercising and sometimes I would lose all energy and I’d just collapse to the floor and couldn’t get up, but I’d still push myself.

I lost all my energy, which led to me sleeping at school, as you read above.

I even nearly fell asleep while walking home once.

I told my teacher this too once, not the whole thing, just that I was insecure and wasn’t really eating (like you read above) and she didn’t do anything.

Like I said, I have low self-esteem so I rarely like myself.

I constantly think my friends hate me, this is also because almost everyone prefers my best friend to me and leave me for her.

I think I’m unlikable, and honestly, I’m sure it’s true, no matter what others say.

No matter how many compliments and things I get, I never believe it, they just make me think I’m being pranked and people are laughing at my reactions.

I also get intrusive thoughts sometimes.

I’ll just be doing something and thoughts about me being worthless and other things like that will bombard my mind, or I will get thoughts about killing myself or killing others and I can’t stop it.

It’s just something that happens to me now, to the point it rarely bothers me.

I sometimes, not often, hear things and hallucinate.

This is rare though but has been happening more and more often recently.

They’re usually voices telling me my friends don’t like me, I’m worthless, stupid, they insult me and things like that. They also just repeat things I’ve heard during the day really loudly.

I’ve never really told anyone this.

I sometimes see flashes of faces and people in my sight, I’m not sure if that’s hallucinations but yeah.

Above I said that I’ve always had bad friends, besides now.

One of my worst was being bullied constantly, I don’t even know why I tried being their friends, I was very naive.

One of them still hates me rip.

He’s dangerous now so you know, kind of paranoid.

Another friendship was when one girl’s mother was a drug dealer and they all tried pressuring me into doing drugs and smoking with them.

I never did, I just came up with a lie it wasn’t hard to be honest.

They probably knew but who cares?

Earlier on I said I have paranoia (if it can be called that).

But yeah, I feel like I’m being watched all the time, no matter what I’m doing.

I’m not sure who, but I just feel like someone out there is watching me either through my window (so I always have my curtains closed), through my camera (so I always have them covered) or through a hidden camera in my room which I can’t do anything about.

I once hid under my covers because it got too much, but the feeling was still there.

I’m suddenly exhausted.

My mind has gone blank, but I’ll try post more I guess, if I remember, or have something to write about.

Thank you for reading!

I hope you have a good day/night! ^-^ <3

I’ve probably made loads of mistakes here because I suck hEH SORRY

#I need a nap #Mental health #mental illness #bipolar #bipolar disorder #anxitey #depression #paranoia #hallucination #hallucinatory #auditory halluctionation #insomnia

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stvlti · 7 years

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11 Questions

i was tagged by @privatekururugi, @espiadimonis, and @transguynoriaki a while ago. each gave me a set of 11 questions to answer, so i will answer these 33 questions. i’m not gonna tag anyone in particular, but if you see this do feel free to have a go at any or all of these sets of 11q’s.

from @privatekururugi:

1) Do you have any specific diet you go by? (Vegan, Gluten-Free, Paleo, etc.) i used to be pescetarian, but then the deficiencies it gave me caused some pretty bad dental / gum problems, so i started eating a bit of lean chicken and pork on the side again... (yeah i know supplements exist, but even my nutrition major of a friend thought a pescetarian diet won’t yield deficiencies, and also supplements are fairly expensive. get off my case)

2&3) Do you have any siblings? If so, how close are you? nope, i’m an only child

4&5) What’s your favourite book and why? (I might want to read it lol) hmm. i still really like 1984, it was the first dystopian classic i read and the concept of Newspeak, tampering with historical authenticity on such grand scales, etc. just blew my mind. so even though i still dislike its weakass character-writing (p much anyone besides Winston has no personality, no distinct personal motives, etc), it’s got a soft spot in my heart. next to that i also liked A Clockwork Orange for the philosophical discussion of the nature of right and wrong (although in hindsight the story is a bit didactic); To Live by Yu Hua (the ill-fated episodes and tragic ends are made all the more absurd by the subtle and simply narration style, but it really is a humbling and informative experience for us readers of a different era and socioeconomic background); and of course, my favourite fable, A Little Prince.

6) Would you describe your personality as dominate or submissive overall? what the fuck kind of question is this. well i’m opinionated as heck, so i’m not submissive “personality-wise”. and that’s all i’ll say on the matter because i’m p sex-indifferent lol, if that’s what this question was trying to get at.

7) What are your dreams usually like at night? oh man. i usually don’t dream normal dreams; as in, most dreams i have is either one big adventure / story, or some bizarre situation that would have been questionable at best, fucked up at worst, in real life context. when i start dreaming about mundane everyday life problems or situations, like failing a test or being stuck with a friend i’ve cut off from my life years ago, that’s usually when i’ve got some kind of stress going on in my life.

(i’ve been trying to restart my dream journal tag actually, but i got stuck on my second entry trying to recall the specifics lol. maybe i should release entry #3 from the drafts first.)

8) Is there anything you’re currently anxious about? well, yeah. my future. my job prospects. being homeless once my parents decide to sell their house off for retirement because the housing prices are through the roof here. pick one.

9&10) Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving? Will you be contributing anything? we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving!

11) Whose your favourite Death Note character (if you have one)? Light Yagami, even though he’s a slimy fox.

from @transguynoriaki:

1. What kind of music do you listen to?

hmm, i only listen to really slow music or something dark or rock-ish, nothing in between!! muahahaha!!

okay that’s generalising it; i do love The Honey Trees and The Novembers, which are on opposite ends of the “slow” spectrum (one’s dream pop, the other’s infused with shoegaze and other distortions + some screamy vocals and loud noises at times), with Lana Del Rey and her decadent sounds smack in the middle lol. but yeah i certainly have a taste for the more atmospheric stuff, so aside from the fuzzy feelings of The Novembers’ stuff and the grandness of Lana’s string instrumentals i also like the darker chill vibes you get from The Neighbourhood, some of The Weeknd’s older stuff, etc.

and I also really enjoy MCR, Muse and the like - i.e. dramatic sounds, that’s the good shit to me haha.

i also like more conventional pop acts like Lorde... and my fave local singer, Ivana Wong, of course!

2. Do you prefer to keep your living space neat and tidy or do you like a certain amount of mess?

i do prefer order and routine in my life, sadly if i can’t do that on a structural level you think i can do that with my desk?! lol. in an alternate universe, maybe.

3. What was the first ship you remember really shipping?

hmm probably TerraxBeast Boy from CN’s Teen Titans. i was lukewarm / indifferent to other canon pairings i’ve seen in media up until that point; but i guess i was more persuaded by the storyline than their characterisations as looking back there are glaring trust issues in their relationship (and that’s an understatement)

4. Do you have a certain show or book series that holds a lot of nostalgic value for you? If so, what was it?

hmm, i guess Courage the Cowardly Dog? (i was a weird kid but shush) and Teen Titans of course. as for books, hmm... ASoUE is definitely one of the ones that just takes me back to middle school. i even bought the Beatrice letters files thingy. tbf the whole Lemony Snicket universe did teach me a lot about cryptography, which i guess if me or a friend of mine were to do an L rp and solve cases it would help a lot (*cough* not saying that’s what’s happening right now because i’ve got other stuff i’m investing my time into. i guess my friend’s gonna make themselves scarce as well hahaha *cue Mariah Carey’s i can’t read gif except it’s L*)

5. What is your favorite type of food?

Italian and Japanese are my fave cuisines! i guess that means i love richly-flavoured foods and creamy stuff. ooh, love those sauces.

6. Was there ever a fad or activity from your childhood that you could never understand or get into?

i wasn’t a gamer at all. we didn’t own a single console and i wasn’t allowed to get a handheld. the most i had was a Tamagotchi. so i guess it’s not so much i never got that ‘fad’, just that i was never given the opportunity to discover the really good games. i’ve only ever played a bit of Mario Kart or Cooking Mama on my cousin’s NDS so yeah. didn’t see the appeal in the more light-hearted games like that.

(now that i’ve played Undertale i’m kinda wanting to explore more PC games though. i heard Papers Please is good, and PJ (@kickthepj)’s been recommending Hyper Light Drifter a lot, and the art looks amazing, so yeah... too broke to get them though... and even if i had the money and time to play them i’d be allocating it towards other stuff you know?)

7. What’s your favorite time of day?

well i got 2 fave time periods. the first one’s the witching hours between midnight and early morning, when the world is quiet and you could do anything and nobody would know. the other one is early morning, just after sunrise, and the air is clear and slightly chilly, and it’s also really quiet but you can just hear the birds tweeting somewhere.

i’m more likely to be awake for the first time period described here though... ._.

8. What’s your favorite type flower and why?

hmm i'm not really a flower person. i’m just gonna steal Luke’s answer and say cactus flowers haha (well i do like cacti, they’re some of my favourite plants; i even named my IG/Twitter and Pokemon Go usernames after the plant; also some of you might remember that i had a pet cactus for 8 months)

9. What’s your favorite cliché/trope in fiction?

lovers running out of time...

10. Did/do you do any extracurricular activities when you were in school and what were they?

(wow Luke that’s a lot on your resume!)

i did bits and bobs throughout school, but perhaps my longest commitment was my Clarinet lessons. started when i was in Year 2, carried on until i obtained a Pass in Grade 8 ABRSM certificate in Year 10. i had to quit and give up on a diploma there because i was starting the IB diploma programme in Year 11...

this commitment is only rivalled by the dance classes i took. i did ballet from a young age until i was about 12~13, quitting just before en pointe shoes were introduced; i had also been in Chinese dance lessons from Year 1, so after quitting ballet i just focused on that until Year 10 as well (again, quitting to focus on my full-time diploma).

i also did Taekwondo as a child and obtained a black belt qualification by age 12. i quit once i did though, because again i couldn’t afford to juggle so many commitments the older i got and the more demanding my studies became.

perhaps the proudest extracurricular i’ve done is in my senior years of high school: i started and chaired the student committee as the editor in-chief for the school’s first student-ran and seasonal (now monthly) publication. it’s not student-ran either anymore because i guess the kids that came after the classes of 2014, 2015, and 2016 just dgaf about slightly more demanding extracurriculars that require organisation as long as they can earn their credits elsewhere (yes i’m salty, i’m allowed to be okay, it was my brainchild but apparently kids these days don’t care about having their voices heard if it means having to negotiate diplomacy with the adults in charge. god, how do they expect to survive in uni or in a workplace?)

11. What’s your favorite piece of work that you’ve ever created and what about it do you love so much?

hmm. i think for sure the prose poem i wrote about Light’s death in the anime. idk, the flow and the imagery is just a good concentrated example of what i could be capable of given the right tone and context. (of course, i’ve been trying hard to branch out in genres and forms, so that sort of language isn’t always applicable. but yeah, it remains my fave as a showcase of my best writing abilities ^_^)

and from @espiadimonis:

1.If you could have one piece of death note merchandise of any kind, what would it be?

oh man! i’ve been pining after the Hot Topic official DN poker card deck for quite some time! i’ve checked Blue Banana while i was in the UK, but it’s not available there, and it’s not at Tokyo Toys either (they do sell a DN playing card deck, but it’s a lot cheaper in design :/)

2.What’s your favourite 3D animated movie?

does Lego Batman count? if not, then i guess Zootopia.

(there’s a reason these 2 are listed in my bio fandoms list like...)

3.What superpower would you like to have?

i used to always choose levitation / flying, but lately i’m not so sure. i’ve heard a lot of compelling arguments for other powers haha.

you know what, i’d trade for something as simple as better control of my own brain. i don’t care about mind control over others; i just want to be able to harness the best parts of my lightning fast thought processes and out-of-the-box thinking on my best days without being constantly tripped up by executive dysfunction like that on a metacognitive level.

4.Favourite piece of clothing?

my soft furry hoodie, which i’m wearing right now! <3

5.Who’s your favourite Sailor Scout?

i don’t have one, sorry! i was 4 when it aired on TV, so i don’t remember much from those years except the Sailor Moon t shirt i got courtesy of my aunt because it was all the rage back then... i’m sorry, but i have more vivid memories of Pretty Cure and Sugar Sugar Rune!

6.Do you prefer potato chips chocolate?

it is a good combo for sure! we are talking about Royce’s chocolate potato chips, right? (if you haven’t tried it get some next time you or a friend/family goes to Japan! we can buy it locally from like Citysuper or something, but i doubt they export it to any countries beyond East Asia haha)

7.What song makes you feel melancholic?

oh, Six Billion did last week. it left me feeling cold all over. an effect from the combination of the layered vocals and the instrumentals i guess. (is it in minor key? i’m sorry i can’t tell anymore, it’s been far too long since i’ve had any musical training. but if it’s in minor key it would explain why.)

there’s also some of the stuff off The Novembers’ catalogue... mostly 終わらない境界 from To (melt into), which was my daily commuting soundtrack at a time when i had brainfog on a regular basis, so yeah, anxiety and all that fun stuff :/

8.Which dn character would you invite to Spaceland(the amusement park)?

Sayu or Matsuda? they deserve a lot more than the hand canon dealt them. hmm maybe Rem too? but she wouldn’t be able to interact with a lot of the stuff there :/

9.What’s the funniest movie you ever watched?

i guess The Lego Batman Movie? i’m sorry i know i keep bringing this film up, but it’s comedic genius for a “kid’s movie”.

10.You can only choose one pokémon! Which one do you choose?

Blissey was gonna be my go to answer. she’s a tank, have you seen her? but is she really my fave mon? debatable. idk man. i really liked Vulpix/Ninetales as a kid... but dark and ghost types though!! okay i can’t choose, next question

11.What made you happy recently?

i went to another poetry event last night and i met up with a friend i haven’t seen since September :P

#tag meme #long post

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