#lol i've watched like four people in the past few days get chased off this site for not agreeing with someone

[san-station]

No more sad songs • Bang Chan

Pairing: Bang Chan x Reader

(Fluff & Angst)

WARNING: Broken heart.

↝Word count: 1,9k 

The things you've done for your best friend were uncountable, you would go to hell and beyond to bring him back to you, just like Dante did for Beatrice on his journey through the nine circles of Hell. Having the Lee Minho as your Thing #1 was what people would say: a blessing. But sometimes blessings weren't as great as they sound. Your relationship was a mess, he was known as the mighty fuckboy of SKZ fraternity and you were "Lee Minho's fan", "the girl who chases the unreachable", "the groupie" and more names you've heard around campus. 

People didn't know that you've been friends since you could spell your name correctly, you went to the same school, you lived in the same neighborhood and Minho was the first one to approach the little shy girl who rather play alone with her dolls and paint some flowers than play with the other kids. Minho found you cute and weird (in a good way), you were the only girl that didn't want to give him a kiss or ask to be his friend, so he thought you were unique.

Over the years, you built a beautiful friendship based on him being the cocky fuckboy who dragged the bashful girl to parties; you being the responsible friend who dragged  him to his house before he passed out and gave him painkillers in the morning to get him to his dance major classes. Him, distracting you from your music major homework to watch his new choreography, and more.

Your friendship was like any other friendship... the problem was that you were deeply in love with Minho from the very beginning. You loved everything about him and it hurt, you were in love with the one person who will never see you as more than just a friend because he loved to party, to live the moment and forget about the past, to blindly look forward and annihilate everything in his path, it didn't  matter if his best friend was in the field, he'll destroy her without noticing and, even so, you loved him.

You've been through a lot due to that reckless behavior and he was oblivious, he didn't realize those sad songs you wrote were about him and the things he did impulsively. That time when he kissed the girl with the white dress on Lee Jeno's party leaving you all alone in a place where you didn't  know anyone and ended up calling your friend Changbin to give you a ride back home; the time when you were eating at a restaurant with your other friends to celebrate your birthday and he didn't show up because he was having some fun at the dance studio with his choreo partner and didn't even apologize; that time when he got pretty drunk and kissed you in a SKZ party and then said "I'm sorry, Y/N, I thought you were another girl! Ewwww, I kissed my best friend this is so weird" and started laughing his ass off. 

He never notice the tears in your eyes when he did all of that, he never stopped to ask how you were or if you wanted to go when you felt so unhappy on those parties. And you still did everything for him because he had your heart, yet, he was so stupid to understand it. All your friends knew it. Well, they all could read your lyrics and play your beats and be aware of your feelings towards Minho.

Now you were at the music studio with your fellow partners and friends: 3Racha, also known as Bang Chan, Seo Changbin and Han Jisung. Your appointment for today was creating two different beats with the same lyrics to see how flexible it could be, but all you were thinking were gloomy melodies and heartbroken songs.

The australian boy gave his friends a concerned look and text them on their group chat. 

∼3RACHA Bros∼

Chan: I think it's Minho again... 

Jisung: Yeah, saw him yesterday, he REALLY had some fun lololol

Changbin: Hyung, do something... this isn't working.

Chan: Why me???

Changbin: you're good with words :D

Chan: We all literally are good with words, Bin.

Jisung: c'mon Hyung, she'll listen to you, you have like a thing lol

Chan: ????

Changbin: Make her happy or we won't buy you food :D

Chan: I hate both of you...  

Jisung got up from his sit in front of you and you looked up at him immediately. Changbin stood up as well and smiled at Chan. 

"We're gonna buy pizza for the rest of the evening", Changbin said fixing the black beanie on his head. Jisung grabbed Chan's wallet over the table and he groaned.

"For real?", Chan questioned rolling his eyes and sitting back on his chair. The laptop in front of him stopped playing the track he was working on and stared at Jisung. 

"We'll be back soon", Changbin said again and, before getting out of the room, he turned to you and groaned. 

"And pleaseeee, I'm begging you, Y/N, no more sad songs", he pouted. 

Jisung pushed him outside the room and yelled: "yeah! I'm the sentimental boy of the group, please, be happy for once, girl!" 

You tensed and lower you gaze to your lyrics book tracing the words with your fingers. Chan sighed at the view of your dispirited body and sat next to you, closer.

"Let's talk about... the beautiful day!", Chan panicked a little and smiled at you brightly. You didn't see him, you couldn't find in yourself any strength to put a smile on your face or even willing to, it didn't worth it.

"I'm not in the mood, Channie", your voice sounded like a sweet whisper. If Chan wouldn't have gotten that closer, he wouldn't have listened.

"Would you like to talk about it?", he asked pouting. He really wanted to make you smile, it warmed his heart watching your amusement. Right now he felt sick watching you so depressed, he could feel as if all his energy would've left his body and needed proper sleep to regain the power or the enthusiasm he required for you to feel something more than sadness. He heard you sighed.

"Yesterday, in Mark's party... Minho was making out with like four different people at the same time while I was sitting on the couch waiting for him to go back home." You closed your eyes, images of last night travelled through your mind making you whimper. "It hurts so much..." 

Chan kept silence, his breath was heavy, his eyes were on your face as you finally saw his expression and you got worried.  

"Don't look at me like that, I'm gonna be fine soon!", you reassured him.

"It's just that... I've told you the truth about him so many times and you're still not over him, Y/N", Chan caressed a strand of your hair avoiding your hurt gaze. 

"It's not that easy, you know? We've known each other since first grade... I've loved him since...", Chan frowned and hummed for a second. 

"How could you tell it was real love when you basically were thinking about dolls and candies?”, he spoke calmly, pronouncing every word slowly for you to process the question. You frowned and opened your mouth, yet, Chan interrupted.

“Tell me something... Has he ever told you that he loves you? Has he ever thanked you for everything you've done for him?”, once again, he caressed your hair and stared deeply into your soul, his brown eyes made you swallow hard trying to remember a moment when all those things happened. 

“Has he ever compliment you about your work? About your incredible music?”, he continued as the voices in your head screamed the real answer. 

“Sometimes… I think...”, you finally mumbled and sighed in defeat. Chan was right, Minho had only said good things about her when she did him a favour, when he asked for things and she was there to help him; when he was tired of listening to her complains, he would say something nice to make her stop.

Your lips trembled as you tried to speak, but nothing came out, so Chan grabbed your hands and squeezed them. 

“Y/N, you love someone who's too selfish to realize you've been crushing on him for years, I think it's time for you to understand that you have to move on or you're going to keep hurting yourself even more than you are right now”, his voice, in a way, made you feel safe, it made you feel that the decision you’d make was the right one, that there are others who could make you a better version of yourself, make you believe you were loved. Chan’s voice was really one of those who you wanted to hear before going to sleep and when you wake up. Chan always took care of your feelings trying to make you smile even when you had to write a sad song, even when you cried the whole night because Minho forgot your birthday, even when you were so fragile you could broke by negative thoughts. Chan was there and that was the most important thing in your life right now. You sniffed and avoided his gaze, it started to burn your cheeks unexpectedly.

“The past sometimes brings us joy, you have your good memories with him, he’s your best friend, for God sakes!”, he scoffed in disbelieve and that made you chuckled, his eyes became crescent moons when he smiled at that gesture.

“The love meter you have right here”, his right finger pointed the left side of your chest. “...you need to low that status a little. From 'I'm in love with Minho' to 'I love my best friend as much as he loves me, as a friend' and keep looking forward because you're a strong woman, okay?”, your seriously thought your body was on fire, your hands holding his made your stomach growl and you giggled due to his words. 

“You are beautiful, Y/N, you are an amazing person and you have the kindest heart... Give it to someone who will appreciate everything you're willing to give and embrace real love…”, Chan died a little inside when he saw the effect of his words on you, you were shining, cheeks with a pink shade of embarrassment and giggling like a teenager girl. His heart was racing out of control but on the outside he seemed relaxed.

“Thank you, Channie… I really appreciate it”, you said trying to stop your smile from growing bigger.  

“I promise that, once you forget about that crush, you’ll find someone who would be there for you in the good and bad moments”, he pinched your blushed cheeks. He stood up and you thought he was going to sit on his chair a few meters away from you, but he actually grabbed his laptop and sat on your side. 

“So, what about we start making a happy beat for your lyrics?”, you nodded and opened again you lyrics book. 

Both of you began to work on the melodies and changed a lot of the lyrics as they were too depressing. An hour and a half later, Changbin and Jisung came back with the pizza they promised and watched the joyful atmosphere around you. At the end of the day, you made two flexible tracks for your appointment and ignored the messages Minho had sent you inviting you to another party. You laughed when Jisung was making fun of Changbin, you laughed as Changbin was complaining about Jisung, you laughed when Chan laughed, you were happy there having your own party and you couldn’t think of any sad songs anymore. 

Masterlist

[lydiabennett]

man but i defended this specific tumblr model of activism for so long because it genuinely seemed like the best way to reach a lot of young people and help introduce them to activism, and what they could do, and it’s just

all it does now is teach people, especially young people / new people, that the only efforts worth making are the ones with a 150% success rate, and that without that success rate, all other energy should be put towards nonstop criticism, particularly regarding language.

and i absolutely positively agree that language is important and that language holds power but language cannot and should not be the end goal of any activist circle because coming up with an approved set of words does fuck all to make any real changes to things like harmful policy and legislation. it also completely strips any and all possibility for nuance and multiple interests from activist conversation: everything must fit a specific narrative, or be cast aside, and everyone must follow the specific trends in activism (and if you don’t think there are trends, you’re fooling yourself) or they’ll be cast aside, and anything that seems inconvenient or makes you uncomfortable, rather than being considered and thought about and discussed and dealt with, is just instantly dropped, like that’s going to do anything to help anyone.

and god forbid someone only have two hands and be incapable of carrying every single sign ever to make sure that they can get the activist stamp of approval, largely from people who are vehemently opposed to any and all action that isn’t completely perfect, because apparently no action at all is preferable to imperfect action.

i think the scariest thing is that, the moment someone tries to introduce nuance to a conversation, or to remind people that there are multiple narratives deserving of attention and energy, they’re summarily branded as being a Bad Activist, and either harassed until they fall silent, or chased out. this is especially dangerous because in doing so, activist circles become little more than debate spaces to try and determine the most perfect language -- because action cannot be perfect and thus everyone acting gets shoved out. so activist circles achieve nothing. in fact, these circles are genuinely harmful to the causes for which they apparently fight, because it saps the energy from everyone willing to engage in actual, useful action, and it distracts efforts towards constant infighting and screaming so that the inner circles of activism can try to achieve some elusive ideological purity, that genuinely isn’t possible.

this also makes it extraordinarily difficult to sort out the genuine criticism -- “this message is actively harmful, and causes real harm to people, and has no place in what we do” -- from criticism rooted in appearing the most publicly Aware -- “you don’t do exactly what i want you to do and have inconvenienced me.” it starts becoming more and more difficult to discern what’s actively exclusionary, versus what’s simply applying already-limited focus and energy to one topic over another. and that’s just not sustainable. we’re going to burn out every single young activist trying to learn, or trying to act, or trying to make changes, solely because we’re more interested in the public appearance of purity and cohesion than in the actual opportunities to learn and to make real changes.