#mine and then derail the topic and make it A Problem like

[nullians]

.

[terraliensvent]

I apologize if I’m beating a dead horse, but I absolutely hate that people are so willing to go off topic in the lounges the moment any kind of criticism or problem relating to staff is brought up. I had left in the middle of the conversation and came back to people talking about a show with complete disregard for what was there not even an hour before. Only a couple of mods were watching lounge one and I’m afraid that the other staff members are not going to see the entirety of the previous conversation. Also, I know it’s not only staff that fall under this, but it kinda concerns me how casually staff were speaking sometimes. I know I should not expect messages to be sent like professional emails, and I don’t, but it gives a feeling that some of us are not being seriously heard, especially with how Tycho only chose to start talking when the 49ers cbc he has came up and never even slightly addressed what was being talked about before. (While I do believe that Tycho derailing the conversation like this is a problem, the way people send messages in this context may just be a pet peeve of mine. Regardless, maybe someone shares the same view?)

I’m hoping people who weren’t lurking in lounge one and suggestions catch on to what happened and it doesn’t just get more buried.

This ask is my sign to step away from this. I never even came to closed species to trade or get money. I just want to be part of a good, well-moderated, and thought-out community for once.

This is an afterthought, but I realize that I may not have been clear that I was referring to the SD situation and how staff handled/is handling it, I’m sorry if that was confusing.

oh absolutely, the insane topic changes in there give me whiplash. its infuriating how adamant everyone is to bury shit almost immediately too, like everyone just wants to bury their heads in the sand

i also agree about how staff was just being unprofessional, like in the thread about how the planetary subtype was released in a shitty state, temul was just speaking stupid like "erm teehee ya we r dum sumtimez!! whoopsiez!!!" like thats such an unprofessional way to talk to people with valid criticisms and just makes you and your team look stupid.

[generation1point5]

I can’t help but find it odd when I see other creative types, especially those more progressively oriented, discuss intellectual property. It’s a necessity on an economic basis, certainly, but on an ideological level the philosophy begins to break down. Ideas can be formulated in parallel; all creative pursuits are derivative to some degree; meaning is as much the result of interpretation as it is the act of generating something following one’s own vision. In no way shape or form is ownership of that idea brought into the conversation. It smacks of American individualism. 

This is not an argument that can be used in the broader context of abusing artificial intelligence to mimic another’s art, writing, music, or any of the other creative pursuits. The arguments against AI are fundamentally economic in nature; to try and approach it from a philosophical standpoint is to derail the argument into semantics and fruitless excursions into what it means to be human, the nature of reality and experience, and other topics that are mere fronts for people to flex their skills in rhetoric more than it is a good-faith attempt by any party to arrive at some sort of truth.

I can certainly understand the frustration of having ideas being derived directly from a creator without credit. There’s even been an occasion where I’m all-but certain there was a character design that had been derived from one of mine by sheer parallel, but it’s not like I “own” the idea of the outfit I came up with. This has been a fairly common pattern with many artists I know whose designs have been (rather brazenly) lifted and copied with only minor alterations. But the offense in that, at least to me, seems to stem more from the fact that it signifies an unwillingness from someone to engage with the author, and merely understand the author’s work to possess wide enough appeal to be worth mimicking in an effort to achieve similar recognition. I think this, at least on a psychological level, is the origin of all objections to the use of artificial intelligence in the creative process. It is about the fundamental break in the relationship between the creator and the audience. It stems from a lack of validation and recognition for the labor put into the process. On some level, it can also be argued that the person who takes what is given and puts their own twist on it does not truly understand the source material, and imitates mere shapes and colors.

But this line of thinking is another matter of mistaking authorial intent to be authoritative. To some degree it certainly is, but it is not the word of god. The break is not on ethical lines, but relational. To mimic a work without respect to its source material signifies a break between how the author connects with their audience, and it is this lack of respect, recognition, and value that creates the reactionary behavior that forms the basis for arguments in defense of intellectual property. This is felt most keenly when the work produced is conceptualized, understood, and made with the intention of being a means of self-expression. Work created on commission or for a client carries no such weight. The release of ownership signifies that intellectual property as a concept is a social contract; the ethical ramifications are the result of breached norms, not objective moral principle. This doesn’t make the act any less wrong, it merely highlights the nature of the wrong that is at the root of the problem.

These thoughts give me pause to consider the reasons for my own writing, the goals I hope to achieve with them, and the inevitable impacts it will have on my own self-perception, esteem, and the way in which I try to derive value for myself, my reasons for being. I conclude again that writing should not be my reason for being; it is a part of me, a fundamental one, but I do not want it to be the source of my value as a person. Neither do I want to grasp it so tightly that I think it too precious to evolve, to be taken and transformed by others, even if that transformation comes with a shift in vision altogether different from what I originally strived to realize. Even my contemporary writing strives to paint a different picture from what I had first set out to make.

I see my writing as a means to be understood; but the story does not end in understanding. After understanding, there comes exploration, growth, and inevitably, change. I do not want my writing to be a static thing, or something that remains solely in my hands forever. In some sense it has to be released in order to be offered to an audience, for them to see and do as they see fit, heedless of my own approval or lack thereof. What comes after will emerge in its own way, and the story will go on, or be retold anew in an entirely different manner. There will inevitably come a point where my part in that whole process will come to an end, and that is not a bad thing at all. Whether my own contribution leaves a legacy or not is immaterial; it is a temporary and fleeting happiness. I have been at my most satisfied with my craft when I know I have written something others resonated with, even if it is for just a moment. When that moment fades, it is better to let go of it than to tie it to my own sense of worth or validation.

[moondrippedeyes]

Okay this is my first time ever posting something like this here and it's about to be long af and probably very sappy.

(Reddit style post)

So I,  26(F), am heavily crushing on this guy 24(M) at work. We work in a pretty big hospital but in different departments. He's the head of the clinic right across from mine (I'm also in charge of my own clinic).

This crush actually came out of nowhere. I've seen him around the hospital ever since he got there (I've been there longer than he has) and I see his name a lot on certain little "committees". The earliest memory I have of ever interacting with him was back when I was still working in the Emergency Department and he was up at the MedSurg floors. I was transporting a patient upstairs after sending the report and all I can remember from my interaction with him was "Glasses". I'm really good with faces, not so much with names.

After that, I would see him here and there like the cafeteria, the lobbies, the hallways, elevators, even the committees that he and I will unknowingly both be in. He was never on my radar at all (mostly because I was also in a relationship with someone at the time).

We didn't really start actually knowing each other until his best friend/roommate (who's also the head of another department) invited me to a Murder Mystery party at their house.

At this point, I was closer to his roommate (we'll call him Jack (28M)) than I was to him even though Jack got to the hospital a few months after he did (we'll call Crush boy "Ben"). Jack and I got to know each other because I would cross over to his department to steal ice chips daily for my own consumption. Anyway, Jack added me on Facebook and invited me to a Halloween themed Murder Mystery party this year. Of course I said yes because 1) I get to dress up and 2) I LOVE Murder Mysteries.

Sorry, getting derailed. Anyway, Jack and his wife opened up their house to a few friends for this party. I think that was when I started noticing him a little bit. I was in full monster make up and Ben was the investigator. One of my objectives was to talk to his character yaddi yaddi yadda.

With me being the competitive person that I am, I started knocking out my objectives and approached him. We got talking and I noticed that he was actually pretty cute. Not just in the physical sense, but his little mannerisms and such were very endearing. But not wanting to be distracted, I moved on to my list (I eventually figured it out and won best costume).

With the game over, Jack, a few others and I were sitting around the kitchen island just talking about work related things (I was ranting about my boss and Jack was talking about one of his problem employees who I happened to know as well). Ben walked in with his costume Saber prop in hand and just listened in to our conversations. From work topics, we moved on to things we liked to do in our spare time. I mentioned that I love Star Wars (which Jack knew) and watching certain TV shows. I mentioned a few that Ben was also watching so he was able to join in on the conversations. We all talked until it was time to go.

Right before we left, I went to go use the restroom and after coming out, I noticed a Stormtrooper helmet with a unique design on it. I mentioned how cool I found it to Jack but he told me it wasn't his. It was Ben's. At the sound of his name, Ben peeked around the corner while messing with his props and it was at that moment that I felt my body feel like tv static. All of a sudden, my heart started pounding and my palms started sweating and he was all I could see. Immediately I was like "oh sh*t".

It's been downhill ever since. Now every time I see him at work, I get nervous and I either want to run the other direction or make fun of him. I have literally turned into a high schooler with a giant crush on someone she shouldn't be crushing on.

We ran into him one time at the Info desk and I casually threw in the invitation to my best friend's (we'll call her Rinny (24F)) birthday. I invited both him and Jack but it was completely innocent (he and Rinny met through the flu drive which he helped out at and Rinny was spearheading it). When he found out the time, he was all "that's so late. I have a bed time." See whenever guys say this, I usually understand it as a polite way of saying thank you but no thanks. So I let it go. When I mentioned the party to Jack, he said the same thing too but asked if we wanted to do a birthday dinner on a different day. I brought it up to Rinny and she said she was down for it so I said yes. And then Jack asked if he could bring Ben. Honestly I should've said NO because my dumbass was trying to sort out why Ben was making me feel things but I didn't want to be rude so I said "sure."

So me being the dumbass that I am, drank a lil ol' liquid courage so I wouldn't spazz out and be nervous and next thing I know I was Chatty Cathy who didn't know what Personal Bubble was. I was super embarrassed and apologized after to Jack to let Ben know (I didn't have Ben's phone number or socials or anything at the time). Jack reassured me that I had nothing to apologize for and that if Ben was really uncomfortable, he would've pushed me away. Fair.

Fast forward to now. It's been almost 2months of me feeling like this and I'm still free falling like I'm back in high school. I've had 2 relationships and I just got out of a 1year weird situationship (I've been "single" since May of this year) and yet none of them has made me feel like Ben has. Everyone is telling me to go for it and to just tell him to his face but I don't want to make things even more awkward than they already are. I don't want to date anyone because I'm trying to sort out my own baggage and he hasn't dated anyone either for more than a year (everyone has confirmed that he's been single this whole time). I dont want to just hook up with him either because he's a genuine great guy and I'm not really that person that can do random hook-ups.

Oh and the kicker? He knows I like him. I'm not subtle at all. I overheard a conversation with him and Jack where Jack said "hey your cute secret admirer stopped by my office today" and I had just told Ben that I came from annoying Jack. Cue me lamenting my fate.

So yes. I am down bad for this man. I can't shut up about him. Every time I see him, my day brightens a bit. If I'm in a bad mood, it lessens when he talks to me. But I know he doesn't feel the same way. The vibes aren't vibing on his end and I am completely okay with that. I'm satisfied with just a friendship between us. Besides, I'm leaving in 6months to a whole new country because I accepted a job offer there wayyyy before this whole thing with Ben started.

Just needed to get all of that off my chest because I feel like I'm going insane and Rinny is tired of me talking about him constantly when I don't intend of making any moves.

[meiilan]

One of the things that annoy me personally a lot about how normalized fatphobia is in our society, is that it is literally constantly derailing conversations unnecessarily.

Like the other day, I was making a little post on Instagram, where I wanted to sell some old cosplays, that I've outgrown. And all I said was "I'm selling my [x] cosplay, because I've grown a little too plump for it." And I mean, c'mon! Plump is cute, it's an adorable sounding word! How can anyone take that and think, I'm all down because I feel like I've grown "too fat", or whatever!? But lo and behold, literally the first six messages I get after that post, are not from people interested in buying my cosplay, but from people who felt the overwhelming compulsion to tell me that I'm not plump and that I look all nice and thin and I don't need to worry. Worry about what!? I just want to sell a cosplay, that's gotten too small for me!!!

So, not only did the whole initial message of my post get entirely lost on these people, the very moment they saw me using the word "plump" - not even fat, motherfucking plump was what triggered them. They then insisted on flooding my message box with completely unrelated messages, and unsolicited comments about my bodysize, that I did not ask for!

What's worse, is that they couldn't have been any less insensitive with their decision to tell me of all people, that I don't at all look, as if I gained any weight. Because I was fucking proud of the weight I gained! Due to a depression-induced eating disorder and other health-related problems of mine, I've been struggling with severe underweight for all my life, to the point where it got almost life threatening several times. So to me, who as a 166cm tall European person, that used to fit into Asian size S for most of their life, the fact that I had to upgrade to an Asian size L recently felt like a huge fucking achievement. And these people - in their insane compulsion to treat any weight-related comment through the lenses of normalized fatphobia, fucking invalidated my achievement!

So yeah.

tl;dr: When someone randomly comments on their body size in relation to a completely different topic, they want to talk about, that's not your pop-up quiz cue to immediately bend over backwards in order to tell them, that they look thin, or don't look like they gained weight. Because it could very well be, that their comment was spoken with pride and you just stepped on it!

[caratmagic]

—jung wooyoung—

contains: arguing, pretty offensive words, explicit content

word count: 2.3k

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Enemy Territory 🌻chapter 4🌻

You hate that you find yourself dragging your feet slowly—yet quietly— to Wooyoung’s door. Hoping that the noises you hear from behind it aren’t those of pleasure.

There’s an exchange of them chatting, audible enough to hear but not enough to make out the words. As if snooping like this wasn’t enough, you press the shell of your ear against the door. Using the frame of it to steady your body from making any unnecessary movements or noise.

A rustle. Then several more. You think you hear the sheets move.

They’ve stopped talking.

More silence, then a loud thump onto the floor.

Your heart races out of your chest and you have a hard time picturing what could possibly be going on inside Wooyoung’s room.

Footsteps hurry to the door and before you could get more than halfway down the hall, Wooyoung’s body peeks out from behind his door.

“Snooping on me now?” He scoffs with that annoyingly charming sneer. “I thought we were supposed to stay out of each other’s business? Now look who’s breaking their own rules.”

You shut your eyes tightly while your back faces your ex.

Fuck.

A breath quickly fills your lungs as you turn around in efforts to compose your expressions. You’re somehow confused as to why he was suddenly wearing a shirt.

“I— I was just about to knock and ask you what type of meat you wanted to grill, you idiot.” Your mouth moves faster than your thoughts and you’re so glad that your brain was quick enough to pull something straight out of your ass. “I didn’t want to…  interrupt.”

Wooyoung holds the door open slightly for you to catch a small glimpse of the girl politely seated at the edge of his bed. Blinking curiously at you with a content smile on her face, although her tears still stain her cheeks. “It’s not even noon yet y/n, I’m smarter than that to start having rough sex knowing that you’re in the apartment.”

This thought somehow makes your stomach turn and not in a pleasant way. You didn't want to imagine Wooyoung like this with someone else. Yet, an image of him bare and in his sexual glory flashes across your mind and for a second you forget that you aren’t single. You forget that you have a neglectful boyfriend who likes to have sex with you once a week then proceeds to avoid you until the next weekend arrives.

Does Wooyoung have sex often when I’m not around? Did he have to use the word ‘rough’? Do they have rough sex together?—

Why was the thought of Wooyoung having sex with someone else more distressing to you than the entire problem of your boyfriend literally using you as a weekend booty call?

Not a single soul should know why, because the reality of it all is that: One, Wooyoung is single. And two, you are not.

So you had no right to be bothered about it.

Right?

“Uh. Right,” You subconsciously mess with the tips of your fingers to think of what to say next since you didn’t expect that his comment would throw your mind into a loop. “Just text me when you’ve, um, decided what you want. I’ll head to the store now since you’re busy… so you’ve got 20 minutes to make a choice.”

“No need to wait 20 minutes for me to text you, y/n,” Wooyoung slowly pulls his lips into a gentle smile. A smile that sets off a million bursts of fireworks through your chest. “You already know what kind of meat I like to grill.”

Instantly you blink away the feeling—or at least try to ignore it. “People change. Just wanted to ask in case you had a change in taste.”

Wooyoung presses his lips together before nodding his head slowly. Clearly catching your composure and deciding not to point it out due to the guest on his bed. “Uh, nope. My tastes are constant, y/n.”

The worst part of it all is, your conversation was being monitored by a ditsy flower, just waiting for Wooyoung to come back and take care of her… You hated it. Everything about this set up.

Now, heading out of the apartment to get groceries seemed like a much better idea to you than twiddling your thumbs to wait for Wooyoung’s pretty guest to leave.

“I’ll head out then.”

Upon grabbing your purse and your keys, you curse at yourself mentally for getting caught snooping. Even scolding your heart for causing your mind to lose control of your emotions.

************

It had only been half an hour since you left to get ingredients for the meal with Wooyoung, yet a familiar vehicle pulls into the apartment complex parking lot.

A few flights up and your boyfriend is back at the front of your door. Sure to himself that your car has left and that you’d be gone for a while.

San punches in the code of your apartment door. When it opens, a girl stands on the other side peering up at San with a shocked expression.

“Oh hey, It’s y/n boyfriend.” She smiles before turning to Wooyoung who, at the moment, keeps a straight face.

They had finally completed their 30 minute rant session, where she comes to him for help with her loneliness. Which was a topic to talk about for another time since Wooyoung felt like it wasn’t even his place to do it for her— also, considering he’s rejected her multiple times to be something more than her emotional support friend.

He never felt like a new relationship was something he needed.

As far as relationships are concerned, Wooyoung has enough on his plate to deal with considering the ugly truth he’s recently discovered. And of course, his unsettled feelings for his gorgeous ex.

“What are you doing back?” Wooyoung asks San, holding the door open for his emotionally unstable friend.

“Uh, coming to see my girlfriend??” San exchanges an offended glare at Wooyoung.

“Oh, I thought you already had your fill for her last night… What happened? Fell asleep before you could finish the job?” Wooyoung’s words are calm yet sharp like knives. Attacking San with precision as he tilts his head in accusation. “She’s out getting groceries.” He adds.

“You know,” San narrows his eyes, striding to level his face right in front of Wooyoung’s. “You have a lot of nerve thinking you can have any say in our relationship considering you’re her fucking ex.”

“We only broke up because I decided to switch colleges last minute without telling her.” Wooyoung doesn’t back down. He’s aware that his choice was the reason why the two of you broke up and that he should’ve told you sooner he wasn’t going to go to the same college as you guys had planned. “At least I never snuck out of bed after having sex with her.”

San scoffs at the gall. “Don’t act like you fucking know me.”

“I don’t.” Wooyoung shifts his weight and sticks his hands into his jean pockets. “But I know every part of y/n way better than you do. Every. Single. Part.”

San’s hand clenches into a fist and right before he draws it back to swing at Wooyoung. The girl awkwardly standing beside them in the threshold of the door raises her voice. “Hey, as much as I like the drama, I kind of have work so if I can just pass through…”

San doesn’t steer his eyes away from Wooyoung as he takes a step to the side for the girl to get around his body. Too peeved to realize that he was blocking the door.

“…I’ll see you later, Wooyoung. Thanks for helping me out again.” She waves before disappearing into the hall.

San huffs through his nose. It’s upsetting to him that Wooyoung doesn’t even seem the least bit affected by the situation. “Why aren’t you packing your shit? Isn’t this your last week?”

As if his train of thought derails, without even waiting for an answer to his own questions, San pushes past your ex and heads straight into your room.

Looking for what he left so recklessly before sneaking away that morning.

Wooyoung, with his hands still in his pockets, calmly follows San. Watching your boyfriend’s frantic search for whatever he’s misplaced.

Since Wooyoung respects your privacy, he stops right at the entrance of your room. “Did you wait for y/n to leave the apartment?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” San tosses a pillow off your bed. Not sparing a single glance at your ex.

“I don’t know,” Wooyoung leans against the door. “I mean, if I had something to hide, I guess I’d want to wait until she was gone too.”

San stops completely. His heart drops to his stomach when he turns to your ex standing in front of your room. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Wooyoung shrugs with a playful smirk etching onto his face as one of his hands pulls something out of his right pocket. “You tell me.”

There. What San was looking for.

His phone.

“Where did you find that!?” San yells as he practically dives for it.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Wooyoung shoves it back into his pocket. Placing his hand in front of himself defensively. “Question is, why are you so upset?”

San swallows and processes quickly before clearing his throat. He couldn’t understand why his palms were so sweaty. “It’s—Because it’s fucking mine! Hand it over!”

Wooyoung shakes his head, angling his body away from your boyfriend. “It can’t be yours.”

“Are you fucking mad?” San yells again. Smacking Wooyoung’s arm away from the position he’s guarding his pocket. “Of course, it is. It’s my phone!”

“No, no, no.” Wooyoung’s stupid, playful smile begins to boil hate into San’s veins. “This can’t be your phone.”

“I’ll drop kick that fucking smile off your face, you son of a bitch, give me back my phone!”

“Dude,” Wooyoung chuckles, loving how riled up your shitty boyfriend is getting. “I swear this phone has got to be someone else’s… because when I saw it on the couch, ringing at 4 am, someone named Eunji was calling to ask if her ‘daddy’ was still going to—and I’ll quote her on this, “Rearrange my guts like you always do on Saturday nights.” And you're telling me you’re certain that this is your phone?”

The reality settles into the air and San realizes that he’s been caught cheating on you… by your ex.

This is when Wooyoung’s twisted smirk turns into an angry scowl. He’s disgusted that you found a man so indisputably vile and unloyal.

“You really think you’ll get away with this? Lying to y/n like this and fucking her once every week just to make up for how shitty a person you are?”

San’s gaze falters to the floor and he snatches his phone from the unguarded pocket of Wooyoung’s jeans. “What are you gonna do, huh? Tattle-tail on me?” He shoves it into his back pocket, scoffing. “She’ll never believe you. She hates you.”

“Even if she does,” Wooyoung turns on his heels and enters into his room across the hall. “She’ll wish you were dead after figuring out that you leave her in the mornings just to be in some other woman’s bed the very same night.”

San follows Wooyoung a few steps into the hall. “You wouldn’t dare tell her.” He spits.

An exasperated sigh paired with the front door swinging open, startles the two men away from glaring at one another.

*********

After 30 minutes of shopping, you head home.

The entire time in the parking lot, you were gathering the courage to talk yourself into confidently walking back into your house. 

So what if he was having sex? You have sex all the time with San while Wooyoung stays in the room across the hall from yours.

How is coming back home knowing that he’s having fun with a woman be any different?

Equality at its best example for it. You remind yourself as you exit the elevator.

To your dismay, You were unpleasantly greeted by a very voluptuous woman with intruding questions as to why you were going to enter into her boyfriend’s home.

You push past the nuisance at your front door. Sighing as you lazily drop the groceries onto the floor.

You can only assume that this other girl— an entirely different girl compared to the one from this morning—is Wooyoung's little problem.

This boy must be cheating… What a waste. “Taste’s are constant” my ass.

You pray that Wooyoung’s ditsy girl toy from earlier this morning has left.  Though you liked witnessing drama, you didn’t want to see two girls fight over your ex. “Wooyoung? I think you have a guest.” You call out as you take off your shoes.

To your surprise, Your boyfriend is staring at you from the hallway— eyes wide and stunned.

Wooyoung steps out of his room to stand in the hall next to San. A flat smile sets on his features as he stares at you and eunji. “I won’t need to…” He seems to be talking to San when he speaks. “Next time, set a better password on your phone. You never know who’ll scroll through your messages and send people your girlfriend’s address.”

This confuses you. Immensely. More so, when San’s face drains of all color.

“Baby! Who the hell is this girl?” Miss voluptuous checks your shoulder as she rushes past you. Headed towards Wooyoung with her arms stretched out.

What rattles your world from it’s axis isn’t that Wooyoung doesn’t hold her, it’s that the girl doesn’t even look at him. She doesn’t even acknowledge that Wooyoung’s standing there.

Instead,

She’s all over your boyfriend. Calling him “baby’ and glaring at you as if you were nothing more than a disgusting insect.

No, no… I must be dreaming.

“Sannie, who the hell is this girl and why is she coming into your apartment?”

[ chapter 5 >> ] 

[mcrmadness]

Hhhhhhhhhh writing fanfiction is so difficult. I'm just overthinking all the time.

For example, I absolutely HATE it when in medias people are always lying and/or cheating. I hate it how in older slash fanfics being not-straight was always a huge problem, either internalized homophobia etc. or other people turning their backs to the main characters, in worst case scenarios it was friendships ruined because one had developed other feelings towards them. People ending up doing "gay things" and then regretting everything and becoming extremely cold towards the partner.

Like, it's so frustrating. Especially in one certain fandom of mine (*cough* dä *cough*). You don't need to go more than maybe 10-15 years back with fanfiction and you're already getting stories that are nothing but one or all of the above. Hell, even FAN VIDEOS were always some super sad angsty break-up stories like... why???

Already back then I started writing fanfiction myself because I wanted to read something nice, fluffy and lighthearted (without smut), and I couldn't find that anywhere so it was the old case of: I have to do everything here myself then.

And now every time I write my fanfics that still somewhat rebel against these, idk, gay-shaming fanfics filled with internalized homophobia, secret guilty pleasure relationships with cheating I just. I feel like I'm doing the right thing. But at the same time I think about my fanfics through the eyes of a reader and it's just... I'm wondering if my fanfics come across as me trying to moralize or something.

"Don't cheat, be who you are, don't be ashamed of who you are, don't hate on others for something they can't affect on..."

I mean that if people read a fanfic where a subplot is to avoid cheating, does it feel like I'm talking to a child about how cheating is bad? Does the reader take is as a personal attack, even if they'd never even THINK about cheating, does it still make them feel like "yo don't you fucking tell me what to do or not to do!!!" when the core point of that is just that: I find cheating so awful tool in medias that I do not want it to my fanfics either. End of story.

I'm wondering if it sounds like I'm mocking those early 2000s style fanfics only because I never liked the way they handled things. In fact, I didn't even like the 2000s LGBT+ movies/series usually because why the fuck everything had to have a sad ending??? And nowadays medias are a bit better and I'm no longer interested because I grew out of that curious phase and now I'm just a boring aroace not interested in characters' preferences in relationships etc. anymore. I only write (and sometimes read) fanfiction about my OTP because my obsession is nowhere near healthy anymore but no can do.

Cos in a way I'm, I guess, venting out the experiences I got when I tried to find myself something to read or watch when I was an adolescent and a young adult, and couldn't find anything because everything was just, well like I explained above: filled with internalized homophobia or was nothing but smut. First one made me irrationally angry every time, and the second one eventually stopped interesting me after I grew out of the novelty of reading something "forbidden" when I was still a minor and realized that actually, I'm not enjoying these stories at all anymore, I'm not getting anything out of these, then I started skipping the smut parts and suddenly I was left with _nothing to read. Even with bigger fandoms I literally have nothing to read when I filter out stuff I don't want to read about. So, I don't read fanfiction because there ISN'T anything to read even if I would find some ship interesting to read about.

I'm derailing again but the main point was: when I kinda write my opinions about certains topics and things into my fics, I just hope that the readers don't think I'm scolding them of something they may or may have never even done.

And I'm not going to write them to cheat or be okay with cheating because I myself hate that. And I'm aromantic after all, and I still don't find it a nice plot tool.

[aadyeah]

Hello, Aadya. Just wanted to rant a bit and ask you a question.

So, a few days ago, I saw a tumblr post about some popular institutes like Allen and FITJEE having tumblr accounts. Now I am from India, but I have never attended these classes. Tbhwu, my mom tried to get me to attend Allen but I refused. I told her that the place didn't give me good vibes and that I would study on my own. And thankfully, she agreed. Then even though my mom agreed to letting me study on my own, my dad kept forcing me to attend Allen, and i don't want to.

Before I read the post, I didn't know that these institutions gave more mental health problems than they solved, but can you please explain to me why so many students are scared of it? How exactly do they manage to make things worse for students? I need the list of reasons so I can show them to my dad.

Please shed some light on this, if you want.

-❤

Hi! This is going to be long so buckle up.

I am in 9th, right now and I have been attending Fiitjee since class 8. 

In the beginning, I was shit scared of the place, but two months in, I kind of started vibing with it. I was always one of those know it all kids. Yup, I read my elder sister’s books. I was ahead of my class.

And when I started Fiitjee, it felt like I was finally in a place that would appreciate my curiosity.

You know the NCERT books? Yeah so, what they do is to pick the chapters from there and derail it into teaching the syllabus of two classes ahead.

Let me give you an example, class 8 has the topic ‘metal and non-metals’ in chemistry. Guess what, we were taught spdf configuration, redox reactions, oxidation problems, and all that.

The funny part is, chemistry was naturally easy so all of this seemed fun and games. Everything went downhill when they did that in maths and physics. In that chapter Light, they taught us lense equations. 

It was just weird for me. 

So naturally, after two phases my rank sank. [Phase means terms.]

You know what else sank? My self-confidence. It’s still at rock bottom. Fiitjee did that. It killed my self-esteem. No one is ever going to tell you that you will do better.

The only thing they’ll keep repeating is, “there are harder things ahead.”

The teachers there weren’t awful. They were just impassive. They don't really care for you. It’s not like they wouldn't answer your doubts, they just don't care enough to explain it fifty times. Or to explain things in a more exclusive manner. It’s like they teach only to the best of the kids. 

Only the best of the kids. 

Another fun fact: Almost the Fiitjee students are either from really rich backgrounds to waste money or they are super smart.

I fell in between. I wasn’t a super genius. And my parents are that rich. But they put a lot of money (around 50 thousand in 8th and 2.5 lakh for 9 to 12) hoping for me to become a genius.

haha, look at me, a mess up.

Now get to the taunts. Parents taunt you. They will taunt you. It’s impossible for them to not. I M P O S S I B L E. It’s justified though, did they put money in you to become a fuck up? No. But are you a fuck up? ✨YES✨

Plus, the school pressure. Not healthy. 

So to sum it up, things Fiitjee gives you for a really high amount:

taunts

possibly depression because you aren't acing it, and no one cares for mediocre students.

✨anxiety✨ 

murdered dreams because you need to be studying as much as you can

t a u n t s

Really expensive. REALLY EXPENSIVE BOOKS. 

exhaustion 24/7

you degrade in school. that’s a fact. It will happen.

dead social life because its always ✨fiitjee time✨

did I say exhaustion?

lead me into self-harm in the first place because I felt like I was a failure

yes, an eight-grader felt that

you know in the 3rd phase parents-teacher meet, my MAT (mental ability) teacher told me “no one is going to read your books if you fail class tenth” after papa told him that I write.

haha look at me now I am failing, not writing but doing fiitjee

perfection 100

ALL IN ALL ITS A MONEY HOARDING SCAM 

unless you are one of those students who can handle stress perfectly. Then institutes are the right thing for you. They will give you a direction. See, I am not villainizing institutes. I am just explaining what it did to me. Your experience could be different. You can be one of those smart kids the teachers love.

ABSOLUTE NO-NO FOR NEURODIVERGENT KIDS. ABSOLUTELY NO. KABHI NAHI. NO NEVER. IT WILL KILL YOUR CHILD INTERNALLY. YOU WILL BE DEAD INSIDE.

You all know about the glorious Fiitjee Tab? AAH.

Now that. Is what a money hoarding scam is. Someone, please explain further, I will reblog with a picture of mine.

@strudel-and-creme? explain further, please?

And hey, anon, @warning-coffeeisexplosive is an Allen student. You can have some personal insight from him.

[lovelyirony]

strawberries & cigarettes by troye whatshisface but it's winteriron (idk if this is a prompt or just a statement you can take it as either)

Bucky doesn’t like the fact that he’s going to a stupid fucking private school. He doesn’t like that this is his mother’s sacrifice, that she stays up late with the bills and works another job so that he can go there and make a living. 

He doesn’t even know what he wants to do in life, that’s the thing. Mom thinks that he’s going to be a really good businessman and she doesn’t know that he smokes outside his window and sometimes just doesn’t retain any sort of information at school because he has to be good. 

“I sacrifice so much for you,” she tells him one night. “You need to make a good living for yourself. Promise me.” 

And he does. Hell if he knows how he’s going to keep it, but that’s the promise. 

- 

The one kid that he absolutely hates at school is Tony Stark. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a whole silverware drawer at the ready in case he doesn’t like the spoon. 

Tony’s kind of wealth is the kind that is so astronomically high that at some point you have to wonder what it means to him. Because it doesn’t seem to mean anything. 

He shows up in the shittiest sneakers he’s ever seen, held together with tape and drawn on by someone else. His hair is never styled, his uniform is never washed, and yet he just exudes that kind of confidence that comes with knowing that your life is better than anyone else’s, kind of. 

He’s also an ass in class. Correcting teachers, derailing the topic, and acting like it all is beneath him. 

They say he’s a genius, going to take over his father’s company. He has his future set in stone, and so there’s nothing else for him to learn. Bucky’s not really sure if he’s a genius or not, because he’s pretty sure a genius could figure out when to leave shit alone. 

Everyone at St. Anthony’s knows that Bucky is an individual who does well on his own. At most, you say hello and move on. He doesn’t talk to anyone, he makes sure he doesn’t look like he talks to anyone, and he’s said multiple times that he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. 

Tony Stark, however, talks. Doesn’t matter what the subject is, he talks. 

Bucky gets nicknames. Because of his...frigid demeanor, this means that Tony calls him shit like “Ice Pop,” “Icicle,” “Mr. Freeze,” and any other nickname that’s applicable to cold. 

“Hey Snowball,” Tony says in class. “You finished with your presentation for English class? Mine still sucks, although I’m sure it’ll be better than Hammer’s.” 

“That’s not saying a lot,” Bucky mutters. “At all. Now shut up. It’s class.” 

“We all know it’s going to be boring,” Tony says. “Sitwell has the personality of a tumbleweed, and you’re so much more interesting to talk to.” 

Bucky doesn’t respond to that. 

“Ah, so we’re at the no-talking stage, darling. I’ll make it up to you. Ice cream? Dinner? Elaborate cruise trip in summer?” 

Bucky rolls his eyes, and Tony quiets for roll call, but says one last comment. 

“I think I’m going to do the presentation in Comic Sans. Thoughts?” 

“I wish you didn’t have thoughts, then maybe you’d leave me alone.” 

Tony laughs. 

“You’re cute, Barnes. Cute. You know I don’t leave anyone alone.” 

- 

There’s a bad day. Bucky gets those sometimes. Every day of his life is a bad day, almost, but this one? The absolute worst. 

He had nightmares, barely got any sleep, and found out that his little sister used up the last of his shampoo, so he had to use his mom’s and now he smells like “Strawberry Paradise.” 

He hates the day, and it’s not even eight o’clock yet. 

Tony Stark, of course, makes it worse. He talks incessantly about something related to robotics or the weather or music or whatever, and Bucky just sees red. 

"Can you shut up for one fucking second of your life?” he hisses at him. “Oh my fucking god, it doesn’t matter. Nothing you say matters at all to me.” 

- 

Tony’s heard a lot of shit like that. Like, a lot. Probably worse. 

But for some reason, it’s hurting more coming from Bucky Barnes. 

Tony doesn’t shut up. He knows that. Everyone knows that. He has legitimately given people headaches. His dad has timed his talking and limited him to about two minutes. It would’ve been even less, but at family therapy they’re trying to work on “empathy for others.” 

(A crock of bullshit, because Tony’s fairly sure his dad doesn’t know what that is.) 

Bucky’s...he’s different. Sure, he hates Tony. Everyone does, and to be completely frank, Tony likes it that way. You know where you stand, how you can be interpreted if people only feel one thing about you. 

But Bucky is perhaps the only interesting person Tony knows at this hellhole of a school. He works really hard on his assignments, has more to work on than other kids. He looks frustrated at math equations, but stays and pores over textbooks after school. 

He brings a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every single day. Tony thinks the last time he had one was at a birthday party when he was twelve, and even then it wasn’t really a sandwich but more of a deconstructed concept thing that probably cost two hundred bucks a plate. 

- 

Now that Tony’s ruminating on it, it’s probably because no one has exactly told him that what he says doesn’t matter. They just say they don’t wanna hear about it. The two concepts are honestly very different. Tony has a sneaking suspicion that he is going to go into a tailspin about this on a Thursday night at two in the morning. 

Ha. On a Thursday night at two in the morning. What odd phrasing that is, why is that so weird? It’s night, but it’s morning and you’re supposed to be asleep but morning is a wake-up time, so--

Oh, there’s the meaning. 

Why would you discuss a night and a morning? Why does it matter? On a Thursday? 

Tony wonders how much shit he’s said that just ultimately doesn’t matter. 

This gets him thinking about how much nothing in his life matters. Don’t get him wrong, he knew it. 

Knew it in the way everyone tells him he’ll be the next Howard Stark. 

Knows it in the way that his own father isn’t exactly all too fond of him and Tony has a problem looking at anything with dear old Captain America because of comparisons that his father makes and honestly he probably almost named Tony “Steve.” 

Could you imagine him having the name of Steve? God, he’d barf. 

- 

For some reason, this is the worst he’s ever felt. Sure his father hates him and his mother could be considered an absentee at best, but what gets him to cry into his pillow and rethink his entire existence is a guy who has eye circles darker than anyone else’s and thinks that wearing any bright color is “branching out into alternative fashion.” 

God, he wishes he had a break. 

Nothing you say matters to me. 

This is the phrase that gets him. Tony is pretty sure it’s because it’s what everyone thinks. 

- 

Ever since then, Tony doesn’t talk to Bucky. Ever. 

And that’s...that’s weird to Bucky. It was routine. Tony annoys him, he snaps a bit, and then it starts all over. 

Tony looks at him, sometimes. As if he’s some sort of impossible problem he can’t figure out. 

When Bucky actually thinks about it, Tony hasn’t really talked to anyone. He’s still himself, which is irritating, but he’s not talking about anything and everything and filling up space. 

It’s...odd. 

He feels a little bit bad because what he said was super shitty and he shouldn’t have said it, but now it’s too late to just kind of awkwardly apologize, and Bucky’s already shit at apologizing anyway.��

- 

Summer arrives with a bang. School is let out ,and in comes the ninety-degree-days that melt your damn head off. Bucky’s apartment doesn’t have AC, so their windows are permanently open and fans are blasting as they swear they’re melting. 

Bucky needs a job. Preferably one with air conditioning. 

He finds one as a driver. Rich people hate taxis, it’s a huge health hazard or whatever they wanna say. He’s not gonna ask. But a nice man named Edwin hands him keys to a damn Cadillac and tells him not to drive too close to the other cars and be careful, because he wasn’t supposed to start the job quite yet, but “something came up.” 

- 

Tony fucking Stark. That’s who he’s fucking driving. 

“Oh my god,” Bucky groans. He sees Tony get into the car. 

“Hey, Jarvis told me I had a new driver, it’s really nice to--oh my fucking god.” 

“Where are you driving to.” 

“Queens.” 

“Queens, seriously?” 

Queens isn’t the type of place for someone like Stark to go to. He’s supposed to say Saks Fifth Avenue or Gucci or wherever the hell rich people go when they’re not vacationing in Europe or elsewhere. Not Queens. Especially not Queens. 

“It doesn’t matter where I’m going so long as you know where to drive,” Tony says. 

“Sheesh. Okay.” 

The rest of the drive is silent. It’s not like Bucky can do small-talk. Jesus, he’d rather take his other arm off than do that. 

And Tony, obviously, is not going to say anything. Not after hearing that stellar set of remarks from school. 

It’s a school. There are kids out front, who practically swarm the vehicle. 

“Should I be concerned?” 

“No, they do this every week. If you drive the car back home, Jarvis will explain more. You were kind of an ‘on the spot’ hire for us.” 

“Got it.” 

- 

Jarvis is a kindly old man who Bucky would trust with his Social Security number. 

He is also extremely loyal to Tony, at least. 

“He helps out with some after-school program at one of the local schools,” Jarvis says, smiling softly. “Has a spot in his heart for the children.” 

“What’s he do?” 

“Oh, helps them with schoolwork. I think he does some improvement type jobs around there, but he won’t let us know. Secretive, that one.” 

Bucky sips his tea and doesn’t say anything about how Tony once told everyone in the class that he was wearing neon yellow boxers and they were the comfiest damn boxers he had. It’s just not pertinent to this conversation. 

“You know him, Mr. Barnes?” 

“Um, yeah. We go to school together. I’ve seen him around.” 

“He’s a good student. Always getting straight A’s. Doesn’t always seem like it, but he listens well. Just has a different method.” 

“That’s for sure.” 

- 

For the next two weeks, it’s silence. Always. Bucky will turn on the radio and that’s it. The only thing that Tony has said is to “please change the channel to literally anything” when Belinda Carlisle’s infamously terrible “Heaven is a Place on Earth” came on. 

And that’s it. Seriously. 

When it is two weeks and four days, Bucky can’t take it anymore. 

“Look. I have this job for at least two more months. I’m talking to you. So tell me what you’re doing today.” 

“Teaching.” 

“Wow, way to be descriptive,” Bucky says sarcastically. 

Tony knows he shouldn’t throw it back in his face. But honestly, truly, this is pissing him off. 

“Oh I’m sorry, does what I say matter to you now? Is that what this is?” 

“Oh come on. That was months ago.” 

"Not the point!” Tony says. “I’m getting out now. Feel free to pick me up or not. I don’t give a fuck. But don’t you pretend for a damn minute that you give a shit about my reaction since you’ve already made your point.” 

The car door is slammed. 

Bucky is in somewhat of a pickle. 

- 

Sam tells him that he’s, quote, “the stupidest motherfucker on the planet.” 

And then hangs up. 

thank you for being such a good friend sam. really appreciate it. 

aw look at the little bitch boy mad because i called him stupid. shut up i’m on a date and don’t care once about you. at all. 

i think what i really like about our friendship is how open and empathetic you are to my feelings 

do you know how unattractive you are? on a scale of one to ten? prussia.  

you can’t count now? 

no i can count i’m just saying you shouldn’t exist. 

god i hate you. i’ll talk to you next month

(Yes, they have a time limit to texts. Once a month. And Bucky used his to try to get advice like an idiot. He should’ve just asked Steve. Steve probably would’ve sent him money for a milkshake.) 

- 

Sharon, upon reading his text, sends him back one message: 

so i read this but i’m not emotionally invested. can u make a playlist and send it to me? 

oh my god. you have got to be kidding me. 

i’m not. i told you that u need to b more creative in life. b spontaneous!!! 

He leaves her on read after that. 

- 

Bucky has to figure out how to apologize. Genuinely. Because nothing’s worse than having an apology made but knowing that the person isn’t really meaning it, they’re only saying it to make people more comfortable. 

(He wonders how many times someone’s apologized to Tony because of this reason.) 

He’s not exactly sure how to go about apologizing. 

But he figures it’s sooner rather than later, so he takes the subway to Manhattan and then gets a bike (that’s not exactly his, but he’s bringing it back) and starts the trek to the mansion. It’s a good and solid thirty minute bike ride. 

- 

Tony is having a rather uncomfortable family birthday dinner. Howard’s, to be specific. He’s not sure why they didn’t just go out, but maybe his father is tired of acting like a happy family in public. God knows Tony is. 

(“What’s your favorite thing about your son?” An interviewer had asked cheerily, blush lipstick stretching widely as she smiled. 

“Well, it’s certainly not his sense of style,” Howard had joked. 

He didn’t know what his favorite thing about his son was. He couldn’t answer the fucking question.) 

Jarvis mentions that “Sir Anthony” has a visitor at the door. 

“Are you serious, kid?” Howard says, hissing. “You told someone to come over? During a family event?” 

"No, of course not,” Tony says hurriedly. He doesn’t have anyone over to the house period. Too much risk, not enough payoff. There was also the fact that the house is basically like a mausoleum because both of his parents would rather be caught dead than spend time in one another’s company anymore. 

“I’ll go...I’ll go check who it is.” 

- 

Bucky. Fucking. Barnes. 

“What are you doing here?” Tony hisses. 

“I came to apologize.” 

“For what?” 

“For telling you that your words don’t matter?” Bucky says, more of a question. “I don’t know what else I would apologize for. Maybe for mean-mugging you. I don’t know.” 

“Why?” Tony asks, tiredly. “Why would you apologize for that?” 

“Because it’s obviously affecting you and also I know I was in the wrong? That’s why people apologize?” Bucky answers. “What I did was shitty. What you say matters, I was just having a shitty day and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. It obviously stuck with you a lot longer than I thought it would. So now I’m apologizing.” 

No one besides Jarvis has ever apologized to Tony. Ever. Not in a genuine way. 

“Did you...did you bike here? You have a bike?” 

“What? No.” 

“You walked here?” Tony asks, incredulous. 

“Of course not, then I’d be arriving, like, an hour later. No, the bike isn’t mine.” 

“Who’s is it?” 

“I don’t know, some hipster’s from Brooklyn.” 

“You stole a bike?” 

“The circumstances weren’t ideal, but I don’t have a car to drive to your freakishly large house,” Bucky said bluntly. 

Tony grins. 

“Well then, Buckster, welcome. Let me give you a ride home.” 

He pokes his head into the dining room, where the plates are already being cleared. 

“Hey, I gotta give my friend a ride home. Car broke down a couple miles from here.” 

“Why don’t you just fix it?” Howard asks. “You’re a Stark.” 

“A Stark who would need to order a part for a 1980 Ford Crown Victoria.” 

“Tell him to get a better car.” 

“Sure, pops.” 

“Don’t call me that.” 

“Alright, Dear Father of Mine.” 

“Just go, damn it!” 

- 

Bucky is led to a garage full of luxury cars that probably cost more than his whole block put together. 

“Which one you wanna go in?” 

“Am I allowed in one of these? Holy fuck these are nice.” 

Tony grins. 

“Best part about having a car is driving it. Choose one.” 

Bucky chooses a bright red car, a smooth Cadillac. 

“Holy hell, this is cool.” 

Tony drives. 

He’s a good driver once you get past the fact that you will fear for your life for at least twenty minutes. He is also notoriously terrible in the city traffic, yelling at drivers and pedestrians alike. 

“How are you still alive with the way you drive?” Bucky asks. 

“We made it, didn’t we?” Tony asks, grinning. “Now go return your bike and don’t try to walk to my house again.” 

“See you tomorrow?” 

“Naturally.” 

- 

Tony talks a lot. But Bucky finds himself listening. It still takes a while, but he talks. 

Tony really is smart. His mind just works quickly, and that’s why at school he never really seems to absorb anything. 

Bucky tells him about his neighborhood and how much he hates his neighbor because she keeps blasting music at one in the morning. 

“So? Blast it in the morning,” Tony says. “That’s what I’d do.” 

“Ma would say no.” 

“Then don’t tell her!” 

- 

When it all changes, it’s when Bucky picks him up from a gala. He gets the following text: 

pls come pick me up!! please! i’m begging! 

It’s eleven at night, but Bucky sighs and goes to get the car and goes to pick him up. 

Tony’s swaying outside. Bucky gets out, getting a pack of Marlboro out of his jacket. 

“Shouldn’t smoke,” Tony says. 

“You drunk?” 

“No, can’t risk it when Howard and Maria aren’t here--mom and dad.” 

He almost never calls his parents mom and dad. Ever. Only in public settings. 

Bucky lights up anyway. Tony stares at the orange embers flaring up. 

“Why did you need a ride?” 

“Kind of avoiding an old...enemy. Slash ex-boyfriend.” 

“The worst kind of enemy to have. He trying to talk to you?” 

“It’s been an all-night event, so--” 

The doors burst open. 

Out walks the sleaziest guy that Bucky’s ever seen. His suit is garishly designer, the kind that borders on being confused for a tacky suit that you find in a thrift store for two dollars total. 

“Tony, baby! Where have you been? I wanted to discuss things with you...in private.” 

He gives Bucky a once-over. 

“And who are you, catering?” 

Bucky immediately wants to clock this guy in the damn mouth. 

“Actually this is James, my boyfriend,” Tony says, snaking his arm around Bucky’s waist. 

At this point, he’ll just have to go with it. It’s not the worst thing that’s happened. 

“And who are you?” Bucky asks. “Sweetheart, you never mentioned you knew someone with such a...unique take on style.” 

“I’m Ty, an old and close friend,” he says. He sticks his hand out. Bucky makes him switch hands by holding out his metal hand. 

“Nice to see you,” he says. “But unfortunately, I have to take my guy back home. Plans and all that, you know how it is.” 

“Bye Ty!” Tony says. 

Bucky throws an arm around Tony’s shoulders, bringing him close. A ghost of a kiss to the forehead completes the lie, and Bucky looks back towards Ty, who has his eyes narrowed. 

He flips him off with his right hand. (It’s satisfying.) 

“Thank you so much for going along with that,” Tony says, looking up. 

The cigarette is still in his mouth. He takes a drag, letting embers fall down and disintegrate into the pavement. 

“He seemed like a shitty kind of person.” 

“Not the best of people, that’s for sure,” Tony mutters. “You wanna go get ice cream?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.” 

- 

Getting late night ice cream is like going into a different dimension. Bucky’s not sure if it’s the overbearing, fluorescent white light that gets to him, but Tony seems tired. At ease, but tired. 

He gets strawberry ice cream, and Bucky gets chocolate. 

They sit and eat for a moment. 

“Why do you go to St. Anthony’s?” Tony asks. “It’s clear you hate it.” 

“You don’t?” 

“Not the worst school I’ve been sent to.” 

“You don’t want to be there either?” 

“There are a lot of places I don’t want to be, but this isn’t about me, I’m asking about you. You wanna share with the class or get a hall pass?” 

Bucky snorts. 

“Geez, okay. My mom really wants a good education for me.” 

"She know that you don’t know what to do?” 

“And how do you figure that?” Bucky asks, eyebrow raised. 

“You wouldn’t be working as a chauffeur for the rich kid if you knew what you were working towards,” Tony says with a shrug. “Seen it happen before. Usually I don’t know who they are, but you figure out commonalities pretty quickly.” 

That makes too much sense. 

“I have no fucking clue how I’m living my life and my mom wants me to become a businessman.” 

“You wanna do that?” 

“Do I look like the kind of guy that wants to wear a suit?” 

“You look like you’d look good in a suit, not that you’d wear one.” 

Bucky laughs. Takes a bite of ice cream, and readjusts the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. 

- 

Over the summer, he and Tony get closer. They take walks in the park and Tony drags him into overpriced shops to look at clothes that are the ugliest goddamn things they’ve ever seen. 

At some point, they hold hands and discuss secrets of the world of theirs that is unique to them. 

Bucky kisses him one night while they’re just leaving perhaps the worst restaurant in the entire state of New York and god Tony didn’t think he’d ever not mind being wrapped up in fake-strawberry scented hair and cigarette smoke clinging to clothing, but he doesn’t mind it. 

The whole summer, they’re inseparable. Tony chatters in the front seat of the car, now, and Bucky smiles a little bit more. 

They walk in parks together and show each other funny little jokes and make inside understandings and look at sunsets and sunrises and get coffee and look at each other across the room. 

- 

It’s love, honest and true. But it’s not love like the never-ending kind. The thing about love is that it is not included in any toolbox, physical or mental. There is one thing that everyone knows regardless of whether it is admitted or not: 

Love does not solve everything. It does not fix everything. And one should never rely on it to do anything but exist and work through your person to the best of its ability. 

- 

Howard comes back from a business trip. Sees Tony kiss Bucky goodbye, and that is that. 

You can’t something like that as a son. It just...it won’t work for business. 

Tony is sent to a boarding school upstate. Stricter guidelines, more controlling. 

Bucky only hears one thing from Tony: 

I’m sorry. 

And he doesn’t believe it. 

When you’re young, you think love is invincible. You think it survives through everything if you really want it to. 

Love doesn’t do that. 

Bucky writes letters, calls Jarvis, and mourns the loss of young love. He smokes a little bit more, leaves it clinging to his skin as a reminder that Tony would always wrinkle his nose in that adorable way, but it served to show Bucky that he had a bad habit. 

He was in the middle of quitting. 

His mother notices it. 

Tells him that he needs to get his own shampoo. 

“You can’t just use mine all the time,” she says playfully. 

He remembers Tony’s hands gently threading through his hair in disbelief as Bucky kissed the living hell out of him. 

Now there’s barely any trace. 

He stops in his tracks when he sees an old coffee cup of Tony’s in his kitchen cabinet. 

“When did you get this one?” Becca asks. She’s drinking out of it. He remembers Tony smiling over it at their little coffee shop that was hidden away. “I love it. It’s so cute.” 

“From a thrift store,” Bucky says. “You can have it.” 

“Really? Thanks!” 

- 

Tony pauses at the smell of cigarette smoke. Remembers blue eyes blazing along with orange embers, smoke curling around long hair and long summer nights. 

His roommate at this new school asks if he smokes, if he can get him a pack. 

“Uh, no. Just used to know someone who did.” 

“You think they could get me a pack?” 

“They don’t go here.” 

“You can’t call them?” 

Tony doesn’t respond. 

You can’t call them? 

He’s almost texted him about twenty times. Called him about thirty. 

He knows the number by heart. 

But he knows that Howard made him get a new phone, and now the memories are fading. He wishes he still had the pictures. 

- 

Love does not always last. Sometimes it is not meant to. Tony tries to tell himself that as he wakes up with tears streaming down his cheeks. 

You always wish it would. 

[genderfluidlucifer]

Response to being asked to give  an opinion on Connie’s calout by residentevil-4

(Tw: CSAM, rape fic, incest fic, predatory behavior, racism, ableism, kink mention, nsfw mentions. Minors should probably dni.)

“Connie and I know each other irl and went to school together for 3 years, although they now live in a different state and have cut contact with me. We went to a private therapy school in Manhattan as we're both disabled and were deemed unable to attend public school. Even though we were pretty close, Connie didn't like having photos taken of them, so I don't have any selfies of the two of us; however, these are from our sophomore and senior yearbooks which at least confirms that we were in the same year at school. People who have seen Connie's selfies should be able to confirm that that is what they look like. First and foremost, Connie is not TMA. They are intersex and the two of us have discussed intersex issues both in person and online, but they are still decidedly CAFAB.” Ok so first off, I want to address this part of the callout. To be honest...was it really necessary to literally doxx Connie ehre? Because this textbook definition of doxxing. Yes Connie’s done some shitty things but I freally don’t think that what they’ve done warrants this level of doxxing. Or...even better, any doxxing. This feels like a really unnecessary breach of privacy, revealing sensitive information on Connie’s childhood that they choose to confide in you with. I really don’t agree with this aspect of the callout as it feels very invasive and bordering on stalkerish.  Btw when I say bordering on stalkerish I’m not directly calling you a stalker Bonnie. Just so we’re clear. I am not defending Connie supposedly faking being TMA. Because faking being TMA is a very serious issue. HOWEVER since I don’t know Connie irl and to be quite frank it’s none of my business what the nature of their agab is. Were not close and I’m certainly not going to like lead Connie onto thinking we’re friends just to confirm this with them because that would be creepy. So to be honest I’m going to take this part of the callout with again of salt for now.

[ID: A cropped screenshot of a numbered list Connie posted to their blog hadrosaurs in response to an ask. 

“3. I’m TMA And that’s completely irrelevant. I’m not accusing them because of their gender I didn’t even know their gender when they said that to me saying that they said that because they fucking said that and the reaction to it was incredibly alarming. Don’t fucking say that stuff to people.]

I mean I”m not a trans woman so take this with a grain of salt if you want but...I don’t see how this is really proof of Connie being deliberately transmisogynistic? Yes Connie gives iffy retellings of mistakes they’ve made in the past. I’ve seen that on their blog before and I won’t pretend it doesn’t happen. BUT here they sound genuine enough and to be honest a growing issue I’ve seen with callouts as of late is. A person confirms they in fact did not do the thing they were called out for. And then the people who make the callout choose to see it as proof of incriminating behavior anyways. To be honest it’s a big problem and it’s also incredibly unfair to the person being called out. If you’re so determined at that point to see the person as bigoted no matter what they say then of course anything they say can be seen as proof. So I’m going to have to pass on this bit of evidence. “Connie responded: “Final note: I have spoken extensively with several trans women about using TMA to describe myself. I will not be getting into discourse about that on this blog again. All that leads to is people demanding my medical records and calling me slurs. If you wanna have a thoughtful conversation about it direct message me cause it’s not happening again here.” Again this really doesn’t seem all that self incriminating. Connie mentions here that they’ve talked to rl trans woman about whether or not they can be considered TMA. Connie really doesn’t have to disclose that personal information to people for any reason. Yes even when people are e including this ask response in a callout. And considering lots of people DO get invasive about Connie’s medical history ans general personal life over matters like this? I feel their reaction is pretty understandable here. “Connie has constantly compared “exclusionists” (or anyone, really) to TERFs, even when the people in question are not transmisogynistic, trans exclusionary radfems, or are even transmisogyny affected themselves.

“ Gonna have to disagree with this part of the callout too. Lots of ace inclus blogs, even some run by trans women , have proven that the ace exclus movement was started by swerfs/terfs. But the blog that has the most evidence for this is courteousmingler on tumblr. I suggest you check out that blog’s archiving of the history of ace exclus rhetoric before rushing to call me a transmisogynist for disagreeing with this part of the callout. I looked through all of the evidence for Connie being racist and tbh as a black ndn it all feels incredibly flimsy. It’d be one thing if Connie was using their experiences to derail and invalidate the discussions about how black people are oppressed But they weren’t doing that there at all. This part of the post feels incredibly biased. And like OP is looking for things to be mad about. Going to have to pass on this list of evidence. Also uh I seem to recall that residentevil04 got called out for some questionable behavior as well. “Both me (insepsy, hi) and ezrat have had really weird spikes in activity on our Statcounters, both on the same day. (Saturday, 4/17/21) For both of us, majority of the pages looked at by these visitors have been related to or about Connie, or have been posts that Connie would find "problematic" such as the f slur untagged or something related to "panphobia"/aphobia. I’m sorry but...none of the proof of cyberstalking holds any water. Visiting someone’s blogs and rbing posts to disagree with them is not cyberstalking. Keeping tabs on urls that an abusive person who has harassed are using so you can block them (in this case with kyoshi) and warn your mutuals is not stalking. As a victim of rl stalking it’s...really weird to call this legit stalking at all. Much less claim that you have damning proof of it being stalking when no such evidence exists in the callout. Besides after Connie and nonbinarydave called out one of kyoshi’s buddies for sending a death threat hate anon to nonbinarydave’s toddler st4lker partly admitted to doing it a few times. Then other mutuals in kyoshi’s toxic social circle clearly began joining in. Making side accounts where they tried to spin a false narrative of nonbinarydave’s daughter being one of their alters (ableist as hell.) And also trying to do it in such a way that they thought would trigger nonibnarydave’s psychosis (also ableist as hell.) If you’re going to drag Connie for their mistakes and never let them move on from those mistakes then it’s only fair to do that to people you agree with who also do toxic/bigoted things. ALso the fact that your wording here suggests that you think panphobia and aphobia aren’t real makes me doubt this claim even more. Exclus and their allies are notorious for mislabeling inclus disagreeing with them as stalking. “connie said that they would release that info at a later time and the minor began to argue with them that they had a responsibility regardless of their complicated relationship with age. in this argument connie for a time kept their age ambiguous and at one point told the minor (who confirmed in a later ask that they were severely traumatized by adults) that they obviously weren’t traumatized. connie quickly deleted this ask and any mentions of it and the next post they reblogged was about how wrong it was to try and quantify or discount others’ trauma. on my old blog i @ed them in the replies and asked if they had just done that. connie admitted to it and said it was fucked up but quickly blocked + deleted my comment. i can’t remember whether or not connie apologized to the minor, they may have? but yeah. i thought that was pretty weird.”] I do agree with some of the concern here that adults shouldn’t over expose minors in discourse. I’ve been contemplating this for awhile myself. And trying to figure out how to take better steps to avoid including minors who are triggered by discourse in discourse, especially. HOWEVER I have one little issue with this addition to the callout. If that is the case then exclus and their allies need to practice this as well. You cannot ignore the fact that the reason a lot of minors are getting involved in exclus discourse is due to adult exclus and their allies forcing minors to pick a side in the discourse. Y’all are not at all exempt from this problem. I still remember an ex mutual of mine trying to convince a minor to agree that aces can’t face corrective rape. And based on how aggressive it got with me when I tried to avoid giving an opinion on the matter, I can’t imagine that it would’ve reacted better to the minor refusing to give an opinion or to the minor outright disagreed. Refusing to put these standards on exclus and their allies is both hypocritical and quite frankly very transparent. The claims about them glorifying dark topics on AO3 through their fics also seems unfortunately legit. I mean those asks of shaming people who ask their viewers to not romanticize or glorify abusive relationships in their works is very damning. I’m very disappointed to see that Connie has taken being an inclus to the point of validating antis anti culture wholeheartedly. I can’t think of much more to add to my opinion on that part of the callout. As for the issue of Connie interacting with pro shippers in the past, I do know that this claim is legit. I’ve seen it before and so has Breeze. This was why for a brief time we decided to stop following their blogs. Because it was triggering to have pro shippers put on our dash. And sometimes we just don’t feel it’s worth it to always let people we’re platforming know they’re rbing triggering stuff. So sometimes we just quietly unfollow and choose to not interact until we’re sure they’re filtering what they do and don’t rb in some way. I definitely don’t agree with that behavior. And if they’re still doing that I”ll deplatform again. “The anon asks: “A weird question but do you know any other stimboard blogs with your follow criteria? (No radfems, racists, fandom antis, etc.) I was hoping to find more through your “similar blogs” but a lot have no anti-antis for their DNI or allow truscum/transmeds and exclus. :(“

The user responds: “I know of @turtle-pond-stims, @outofangband, and @kinaesthetics! 🍂🍄" “[ID: A cropped screenshot of an ask sent by Connie from their now-deactivated blog, butch-with-a-tortoise.

Connie says: “hey anon I have safe stim blogs. dm me if you want them. And radfems/bigots aren’t allowed to interact. For my own safety (because the community is honestly terrifying) I can’t publicly say on my blogs that I’m safe for proshippers/kinky people but I try to spread word how I can.”] [ID: Screenshot of a post by evilwriter37, which reads, “I’ve been seeing posts about fandom police leaving ao3, and it’s like: Good. We don’t want you here anyway. Go find your own fanfiction site.”

The post is tagged “#Fandom #AO3 #Antis #Purity Culture” and has 87 notes. It was posted on December 21st, 2020.

There is a reply from main-to-outofangband-andothers saying: “there are Silm antis on that site who are against Russigon (Maedhros and Fingon) not because they’re cousins but because they’re both male (coded)”] [ID: A screenshot of an anonymous (though signed off as being from outofangband) ask sent to evilwriter37, which says, “Melkor and Viggo solidarity is ‘Look there’s nothing wrong with keeping my enemy chained up in my personal chambers at all times so please just focus on the war efforts and I’ll focus on the boy* in my chambers’ -@outofbangand.

*boy used figuratively @ antis”

The user responds: “Pfft!!! Hahaha! You’re absolutely right! (And Viggo does refer to Hiccup in canon as ‘my boy’).”] I can’t really say anything to refute this. Because these are all posts of Connie outright stating that they disagree with antis. And not only sympathize with anti antis but are fully against antis. Looks like very damning evidence. Although ngl I’m not entirely against kinky blogs as a whole? Just so long as they truly stay in their lane with their kink content. And don’t force it on others in any way. Or shame people who are triggered by their kinks. It is true that being entirely against kinky blogs no matter what is dipping your toes into swerf rhetoric. Tbh I’m not going to look at the rest. This is pretty much all I need to make a decision on whether or not I”ll continue platforming Connie. Though I will try to get some more  perspective from people who I interact with as well. Because I feel better about making a more definitive decision after doing that. Also in general please don’t not try to get an opinion from me on how I feel about syscourse. A lot of the claims about Connie’s age weirdness and them using their alters as a shield feel like syscourse to me. Especially if this callout was written by one or several singlets. Singlets should never be trying to judge how legit someone’s system is ever. Even if their system friends encourage them to. You can call out a horrible person with a system without trying to insinuate that they’re lying about their alters in some way. Doing otherwise is ableist ESPECIALLY if you’re a singlet. Also in general the reason I stay out of discussions of judging how someone is handling their systems is because it’s syscourse and syscourse is triggering for my system and I. If this post was an attempt to get me to give an opinion  on the validity of Connie’s system I don’t appreciate it. And I would appreciate not being dragged into such matters again, thank you.

In general there’s like a few parts of this callout that feel legit. Which is unfortunately cluttered with obvious bias and obsessive hatred of Connie. I’m not here to stan or coddle Connie. I know they are not a perfect person. Especially since no human being in the world is perfect. But I feel the way this callout was created was very sloppy since a lot of the evidence was messy at best. And some points were very hypocritical as well as there being some no true scotsman moments from OP. In acting like exclus never do any of the thing that they tried to call out Connie for. Which is behavior that I am not a fan of. This is why people need to be more careful about callouts and like make roughdrafts and have a more unbiased person helping them if they don’t feel they can do it on their own. I’m even trying to make a resolve to do better at that myself. So it’s not like I’m unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. Anyways those are all my thoughts on this messy callout. And tbh I’m not going to get too much more heavily involved in this. Because I need to focus on more immediately serious rl stuff more often, like doing what I can to get out of the hellish landscape of a house I currently am stuck in.

[aziraphalesangel]

“So, I took {youngest sister} to the paediatrician yesterday. she gained seven kilos. the doctor says she needs to slow down her eating”

“She’s fourteen.”

“I said it was probably the pork buns. I told her if she keeps eating them she’ll start looking like a pork bun.”

“She’s still growing.”

“Apparently she only grew a centimetre this time.”

“She’s only just started puberty. half that weight’s gone to her chest.”

“I know, she went up 4 cup sizes in six months”

“She’s fourteen.”

“She’s 63kg. That’s heavier than you right?”

“...”

“She’s getting a bit of a belly.”

“She’s fourteen.”

There seems to be this idea, that kids just crave being skinny just because. just because of social media, just because of airbrushed pictures in magazines, just because of media, just because of celebrities, just because, just because. And people really thought, the adults really thought, that teaching us about “Body Image” in high school was going to solve that. That telling us that those pictures were doctored, that social media influencers are fake. we know. for fuck’s sake give teenagers a bit of credit. 

You know what was always dumb? When teachers got told to sandwich body image and mental health topics in between subjects like obesity in young people. That one second you have an adult telling you that you should love your body, that it will be changing because puberty is a thing that happens, that you will have a growth spurt, that sometimes you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see and that means you brain is lying to you (that was a stupid thing to say to kids), and then you tell us, that there is a growing problem of obesity in children. That gaining weight is bad.

I can’t speak for other people’s schools, or the areas that grew up in, but my school didn’t seem to have those allegedly CRIPPLINGLY obese kids. Of course there were fat kids; kids with a bit of chub around their waist, teenage girls with cellulite, boys with stretchmarks on their bellies, kids who wobbled when they ran. We were children. We were still growing. You can’t have a growth spurt without gaining weight. You cannot start puberty without the necessary fat stores. You just can’t. but instead of telling us that, they told us there was an obesity crisis, and we looked around the room at all the other normal looking kids and wondered who? And when we couldn’t figure it out, we asked: Me?

let me tell you a story:

When I was 12 I was a particularly weight. By the time I was 14, that weight had nearly doubled.

sounds bad right? 

let me tell you a story:

When I was 12, I weighed roughly 30kg. That is roughly 10 kilos underweight. I had this trick I could do when I was about eight, where I could shove my entire hand under my ribs. People told me I was skinny, but it was never the insult those people who like to derail fat positivity posts like to think it is. Not one adult ever told me I was unhealthy. Not one adult ever told me my weight was a problem. 

By the time I was 14, that weight had nearly doubled.

For the first time in my life I was a healthy weight, and all I could think about was that my stomach wasn’t flat anymore.

I was fourteen

Now lets look at how that mentality happens okay?

2013 I got instagram. I only followed my friends; a bunch of gangly and chubby 12 and 13 year olds. I didn’t care for magazines.

You know what else happened?

We started highschool; year 7. My friend’s parents were finalising their divorce. I didn’t know then, but one of the reasons her dad cheated was because he thought his wife had “let herself go”. Said wife was in her forties, and had given birth to two kids. I don’t know what he expected.

And my friend started parroting her mother. “I’m so bloated, I’m so fat. I can’t eat that, it has too many carbs.”

Never: I’ll get fat. Always: I am fat.

She was twelve. She hadn’t even started puberty yet.

You know what else happened?

2015, my family started going through some shit. My mum got diagnosed with a new chronic illness, which the doctor said she got because she was overweight. The advice the doctor gave her was to lose weight.

And suddenly, everything I ate was a personal attack on her. “Don’t eat that, it’s full of sugar. Don’t eat that, it has too much fat. Don’t buy that, I can’t eat it. If you eat that you’ll end up looking like it. If you eat that you’ll end up like me.”

And of course, my personal favourite: “Are you suuuuuure you should eat that?”

And a year later I was diagnosed with anxiety. Shocker.

My family used to be close to the family of a friend of mine. And my mum still mentions sometimes that the two youngest (a year older and younger than my youngest sister) were always hungry. Their parents used to starve them so that wouldn’t end up fat. I’m still friends with the girl my age, and she gets regularly and violently verbally abused for her weight, because she’s fat, and her siblings are skinny enough that you can see their ribs, and we all eat the same food, what’s your excuse? As if, just because you’re the same family, with the same food, that your genetics, your body, is all the same, all functions the same. As if it didn’t matter how good her achievements were in literally anything, she was fat, and her parents both made sure they would bully her until it just stopped. As if that’s how it works.

Watching my friends, go from these awkward funny kids, to very very anxious and depressed teenagers (and we all developed anxiety and depression to a degree, which is a post for another day), watching as some of them ended up hospitalised and forced to drop out of high school for eating disorders, watch as others tried to justify compulsive puking and laxative addictions with a smile on their face, because of their parents, it’s always because of the parents, or teachers, or whichever adult meant the most to us, because someone instilled that pathological fear of watching that number on the scaled tick up and up and up. Someone warned us that gaining weight meant we failed. And we believed them because we were children.

My little sister is seventeen. She lost seven kilos this year. Her ribs stick out, and when she lies on the floor on her stomach, she gets bruises on her hip bones. She’s still growing.

My little sister is fourteen. She gained seven kilos this year. She hasn’t, yet, internalised our mum’s fatphobia; she doesn’t care, yet, what she weighs. She doesn’t care, yet, what size clothes she wears. She had a big shit eating grin the day she was told her bras were too small. She’s fourteen. This year they did the body image module in PD/H, this year she went to a doctor for her ADHD, and instead they told her she needed to watch weight. This year will be the year adults start ramping up the policing of her eating habits. She’s fourteen.

Telling us there is an obesity crisis isn’t helping. Treating obesity as a social problem instead of a biological one isn’t helping. Doctors deciding their first advice, regardless of the condition, is to loose weight, isn’t helping. People on social media promoting laxative teas isn’t helping. Celebrity endorsement of weight-loss companies isn’t helping. Commercialising weight-loss isn’t helping. All this^ has done nothing to make society, broadly speaking, less fat. It has created a lot of eating disorders and mental illnesses though.

But blaming people’s obsession with being skinny on that, takes away from the very important fact that, the most harmful factor is our parents. And when you’re a teenager, or a young adult who can’t move out yet, you cannot escape that. Because there will always be someone nagging you about your weight, about what you’re eating, when you’re at home. And when you’re not?

Well I can’t speak for everyone, but when I’m eating out, what makes me choose the “healthy” option instead of the filling one, is that little voice in the back of my head muttering;

Are you suuuuuuuuure you should be eating that?

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

In the last few weeks, I’ve watched two two-episode specials of some British comedy shows: The Last Leg Goes Down Under (Josh Widdicombe, Alex Brooker, and Adam Hills travel through the Australian Outback) and Sean and The Real Man’s Road Trip: Sean & Jon Go West (Sean Lock and Jon Richardson travel through the American deep South). Both of them had an overriding theme of “soft male comedians confront the difficulty of feeling insufficiently manly compared to people who live and work in rougher parts of the world”. That has gotten me thinking about that topic in general, and I am going to write down some of my thoughts about it (this post is about the topic in general, not about those specific shows, though the thoughts I express in this post can certainly be applied to what happened in those shows).

This means I am going to write about the very controversial subject of toxic masculinity. I will start by saying I have a somewhat unconventional opinion on this: I’m completely fine with calling it something else. I hate how often conversations about the concept of toxic masculinity get derailed by men saying it’s wrong to refer to their masculinity as “toxic”, and then we explain that that isn’t at all what it means, and they say it feels like it means that because of the wording, and no one actually has a productive conversation about this thing that hurts people.

So I think the name should be changed for the pragmatic reason that it would make discussions easier. But also, I strongly believe that people who are affected by a term should get to decide what language we use around that term. The men who complain about the term “toxic masculinity” tend to be the exact sort of men who do not share this belief of mine. They are often the people who will refuse to use a trans person’s chosen name and pronouns, or will refer to a marginalized group by a term that members of that group have made clear they don’t want used by people outside the group. But the fact that many of these men don’t respect the terms that other people want used doesn’t mean I have to sink to their level. I am happy to give them the same courtesy I give everyone else, which is to let them choose how we name things that affect them.

And men – very much including the sorts of men who complain about the term “toxic masculinity” – are very much affected by the issue of toxic masculinity. Along with all the other genders, of course. As far as I’m concerned, if anyone in any of the groups affected by the issue of toxic masculinity (which is, again, all of them) dislikes the term we use to describe it, I’m happy to change it. The problem is that no one has offered alternatives. There isn’t any other term that means exactly the same thing as “toxic masculinity”. So taking away the term leaves us with no way to talk about the issue, which is what at least some (but certainly not all) of the people who complain about the term wanted in the first place.

So for the sake of this post, I’m going to pick a different term. I shall call it “pressure to be a real man”, or PRM (there is no meaning as to why I picked this, I came up with it after two seconds of thought, if society really does decide to come up with a new term for this phenomenon we should pick something better than that), and have that mean exactly the same thing as “toxic masculinity”, but without the baggage that’s associated with that term itself. PRM is the basic idea that conventionally masculine attributes are good, conventionally feminine attributes are bad, and men who do not display enough conventionally masculine attributes have failed as a man and as a human being. They have instead become womanly, which is why we use terms associated with women to deride them (concrete example of this from the media that got me thinking about it: the time they wrote “Don’t be a pussy” on the van in The Last Leg Goes Down Under).

PRM is an issue I’ve seen a lot in my life, as a not very feminine woman who has spent many years in a very “masculine” and male-dominated sport. PRM is deeply ingrained into this sport, and I have seen it affect me and all the people around me: my teammates, the people who coached me, the people I coach, my co-coaches, my friends and enemies on other teams across the country, the provincial and national organizations that govern our sport – everywhere you look, PRM abounds.

I want to write about how I have seen PRM affect different types of people around me. The most accurate way I can describe what I have seen is to put people into four groups, in a way that will be a massive oversimplification: masculine boys/men, feminine boys/men, masculine girls/women, and feminine girls/women. Obviously, this is not an accurate way to categorize anything. No one is just one thing, “masculine” or “feminine”. Masculinity and femininity mean different things to different cultures and different people. And many people are not covered by sorting everyone into “boys/men” or “girls/women”.

Despite all that, categorizing people that way is the best way I can describe this phenomenon’s affect on my own experiences in this sport. Everyone I know in this sport is, as far as I know, cisgender. So I don’t have personal experience with seeing how PRM affects anyone who is not covered by the categories of “boys/men” or “girls/women”, and therefore I’m not going to try to write about that. And the fact is that the nature of our society – and certainly the nature of the culture within my sport – does mean everyone can be defined by whether they’re predominately “masculine” or “feminine”. Whether they conform to more masculine stereotypes or feminine stereotypes. It’s not good that people are seen this way. But they are seen this way, and the way they’re seen affects the way they’re treated, and we have to acknowledge this to be able to talk about it.

So that is my justification for dividing the people I know within my hyper-masculine sport into four very oversimplified categories. Here is how I have seen PRM affect all four:

Masculine boys/men: These people are under constant, relentless pressure to keep up their image. I have watched this kind of pressure absolutely psychologically break boys and men. When I first became a coach, I very quickly learned that a major challenge of helping masculine teenage boys is getting past the layers of PRM that shut them off to the world. The way they can’t ask for help, can’t tell people when they’re struggling, can’t express themselves.

I once wrote a poem about this, and my instinct is to say it’s shit because I wrote it a long time ago and most of my poetry seems shit when I look back on it, but I just found and reread it and it’s actually not bad. So I’m going to paste it here, because it gets my point across:

“drank a 26 of vodka 2 show off” – text from his first university party, 3:19 AM.

There’s a particular level, and form, of panic reserved for teenagers choking on androgens.

They’ve seared holes through their tongues and their chests and their throats. They’re standing on tables, brandishing breadknives, jumping off balconies, talking shit.

Their deepest conviction is that down to the swirly black monstrosity ‘cross the forehead, Clark Kent has every hair, every muscle fibre in place. Their second deepest conviction is in their mandate to keep pace, to do it with no breaks, with Lex lurking in top corners of eyes, bottom corners of mirrors, every corner of minds.

It’s no wonder that the grooves carved deep in their knuckles bear striking resemblance to the ridges on their teeth.

Over the years, I’ve gotten better at reaching boys who are in this situation. I’ve learned how to be patient with them, how to meet them on their level, how to help them as much as I can. I cannot tell you how many boys who present a very tough front in public have cried on my shoulder in private after a bad match (no, seriously, I can’t tell you - the fact that I wouldn’t do that to them is why they trust me enough to do things like that).

It’s hard to keep this up all the time. It can lead to dangerous situations. It can lead to boys getting competitive, not being able to back down, trying to out-manly each other until someone gets hurt. It can lead to boys doing things with which they’re not comfortable to show off. It’s such a bad thing and I want to help these people so much and if they’re not comfortable with me calling the thing that hurts them “toxic masculinity” while I try to help, then fine, I’ll call it something else. The semantics aren’t important.

Feminine boys/men: These people have already failed to be what PRM tells them they should, and that brings its own set of challenges. In the best case, these people end up in a good environment where they’re accepted for being who they are. In the worst case... well, the very worst case scenario for this situation is how things like Matthew Shepard happen. The vast majority of people in this category will fall somewhere in between.

It’s difficult to feel like you’ve failed at the task you were assigned by virtue of being born a boy. It can make it difficult to be around more masculine men, due to fear that you’ll look bad by comparison. It can make it difficult to be around women, due to fear that they’ll label you insufficiently manly and therefore undesirable. For men who are sexually attracted to women, there are obvious practical reasons why they wouldn’t want women to label them as undesirable. But I’ve even talked to a few guy guys who have told me that, especially before they got comfortable with their sexual orientation, they’ve also felt insecure about women labelling them “not good enough” just because they grew up in a society that told them men are supposed to be attractive to women.

Feminine girls/women: If we’re talking in cultural stereotypes, which I am at the moment, then just the fact that they’re participating in my “manly” sport disqualifies girls and women from being completely “feminine”. But no one is completely “feminine” any more than anyone is completely “masculine”. And my sport is full of girls and women who might do this one masculine thing, but overall, most of the way they present themselves lines up with femininity.

These people are in a difficult position in this male-dominated sport. First of all, they take the majority of the unwanted sexual attention from boys, particularly from the masculine boys who have been steamrolled by PRM into thinking they have to be sexually aggressive toward girls. These girls get it from all sides. Outside the sport, get made fun of for being not girly enough because they do this sport. And within the sport, they get made fun of for being not tough enough because they like to wear makeup or whatever.

These girls often don’t get taken seriously within the sport. Even if they work harder than other people and do physically and mentally tougher things than other people, our PRM-laden culture says that someone who looks and acts like that cannot be as valuable as other people. They often get looked down on, they get patronized, they get overlooked and ignored.

Like the feminine boys and men, they feel the pressure of being in a culture that prizes masculinity and knowing they don’t live up to that. But they also have their own unique challenges that come from misogyny (just like feminine boys have unique challenges of feeling like their femininity means they have failed at being a man).

Masculine girls/women: This category is where I fit, so I know how this feels because of my own experiences rather than just because of other people I know (obviously not every person who fits into this category will have the exact same experiences that I do, but some things are common to many of us).

In some ways, masculine girls and women get the worst of all worlds: we still get all the sexism and misogyny just for being girls/women, but we also feel the PRM - the “pressure to be a real man” - that affects anyone who presents themselves as masculine. Outside the sport, we get criticized for being not as girly as girls are supposed to be. Inside the sport, where masculinity is prized, we still get overlooked and sometimes treated badly because we’re still girls.

Personally, I have felt the pressure to prove myself very strongly throughout my time in the sport. It’s hard for boys to be masculine enough to be considered “one of the boys”; it’s also hard for me to do that, and when I fail, I feel like I’ve proved right everyone who says women aren’t good enough to do this stuff. It’s hard to have to represent a whole group all the time.

So... that’s it, that’s the post. Toxic masculinity, aka PRM: it’s a very bad thing that harms people of all genders and gender expressions, but it doesn’t harm people regardless of gender or gender expression. It considers each individual’s gender and gender expression, and harms them in a specific way that’s based on that. It’s the cause of so many bad things in so many parts of society, and because of that, it’s incredibly important that we’re able to talk openly about it and try to find solutions. And we can’t do that if we don’t even have a term to describe it. So if people don’t like calling it “toxic masculinity”, then call it something else, I don’t care. Just pick a name so we can get on with the discussions.

[littlebabycrybtch]

looool whiny cishets like ‘if the gays get married it ruins REgular marriage for us which is important to keep safe for us’ and then the aspexies exist and gat.ekeepers who are all no critical thoughts allowed head empty respond ‘see if you dont fuck and like Talk about not doing that it kinda ruins me getting dicked down somehow??? bc i have a problem its kinda weird for me to hear you could have a problem thats not quite the same as mine and want ppl to care abt that too ??? its confusing idk it just makes me feel like i cant relate to you and thats obviously your problem bc the only other ppl im uncomfortable around for not being able to relate is cishets so... without thinking abt it deeper than superficial feelings that almost kinda makes you just like them??? can you stop trying to Take this from me please i shouldnt have to respect Your issues :( you should respect mine and thats all and this is a normal request to expect to be filled :(’

like coolio man anyways you can still be sex positive and discuss topics like sex positivity and misogyny and rape culture and asp.ec positivity and cisheteronormativity, and frankly you have the responsibility to bc they dont derail anything from each other and its disgusting to try to rank the importance of any of those especially when yall want to rank some of them entirely out of necessity. like oh sorry did you obtain the activism by saying ‘sometimes ignoring problems that dont affect me personally is actually self care actually, other people suffering so i can be comfortable is right’. is that the activism. is that historically how progression has worked. are you improving the community that definitely isnt a club by rejecting ppl who were there b4 ur bratty ass was born who try to talk abt real world social issues so you can sit back and take ironic fun like idolizing hosier and making homophobe headcanons for satire and just..... make it WEIRDLY unironic ‘gay culture’ and actually pressure ppl into a funnyman personality fanclub. is this what you think its supposed to look like.

i hate to break thsi to you but your social media having a gay flag in the bio isnt inherently a progressive activism tool to use against prejudice if LITCHRALLY all you allow yourself and others in your group to do without rejection and mockery, is clown without any displays of regular human emotion. ‘i have a problem that you might not 100% relate to but you’re the only one who can help’ ‘EEEEW FUCKENEN UUUUEUEUE LMFAOOOO UE GOD UNPOG’ ok is that the real you like did you actually break yourself on purpose for twitter and tumblr clout of all things or are you able to be a person again for a sec bc im begging dude just. behave long enough to form a new original thought on anything besides smth that will come back to benefit you somehow

[shy-magpie]

RQG 157

these things get long and are by definition one spoiler after another, so live blog under the cut

pre episode nonsense:

My hopes for this episode are mostly just the obvious: For Zolf to pull out of his spiral; for Azu to talk to someone about how she's doing; for Hamid to find his footing with the Kobolds (loving that they are devoting a proper arc to using unearned privilege/power rather than pretending it doesn't exist); more Cel lore; a Wug; and for someone to shake answers out of the Brorb. Not sure Alex is going to let us get to know the kids individually which makes sense as juggling 7 new NPCs would seriously cut into everyone else's screen time. I think we will get more of Skraak & Hamid working through their issues, and Skraak's helping the kids through recovery. If we are very lucky maybe Zolf & Skraak will talk rather than just have Zolf resent the Kobolds for putting Hamid in a place to fall into old habits. Okay lets hit play!

Episode live blogging:

Intros are quick: Zolf sounds low, Ben sounds higher energy than he was.

Oh the Brorb drawings come better when the other half is distracted but not thinking about the real topic.

Krakens are through out the globe, unknown numbers, not true instances of Shoin, network is down.

Cel and I both react to having Shoin be the one to come closest to a truly non physical form.*

Krakens are cloned brains in robot bodies. Specifically said Daleks not Jurassic Park.

Shoin thinks he sent a ransom note using the Kraken as a threat against the world.

Does not handle it well when Zolf hones in on that no one knows who he is, much less trembles at his name.**

Hamid follows Zolf's lead and twists it towards boasting about beating the Infection. The talking half doesn't seem to know how he did it as clearly as the drawing bit. Unfortunately its strictly surgical which would be hard to reproduce at scale even before you consider the side effects.

Quick huddle with the rest of the team:

Cel always wanted to go to London?

Zolf wants to ask more about how the infection works so they could prevent infection. Wilde thinks he is suggesting using Shoin's solution, I get Alex has to catch people up but I don't like Wilde being a paragraph behind me or underestimating Zolf.

Bryn wants to review the diary. Alex confirms the diary says he had a possible  way to "end it" as a whole.

They go back and Cel feigns being extremely impressed that Shoin might have a way to stop the infection. I think having time to regroup cut him off from his memory of the infection again. Alex spells out Shoin loses coherence whenever they bring up the infection/the time period around when he was infected.

Heal check time. Zolf crit fails. Azu got a 29 and can see where his theory was better than his surgery. It may be an aphasia (issues to with communication. can't get to certain words, some can't be spoken even if he understands the concept; others he can't understand if he hears them even if he uses the word/concept himself. Brain trauma, memory problems more severe the more recent you get, sounds like unable to store short term memory properly so anything longer ago than a week but after surgery likely lost.)

Cel switches to the simulacrum. He verbally dismisses it as a waste of time. His hand keeps drawing based on the previous question re:stopping the infection.

Alex calls for a sense motive. Zolf & Azu see the latest drawing is a landscape using technical notation. Its a barren mine. Yes! it's the entrance to Svalbard. Cel can see its a circuit. Alex makes us/Lydia wait until after he's done with the simulacrum stuff.

Shoin thinks using humans as your base design to improve from is the wrong approach, gives some credit to Francois Henri for taking a different approach.

The circuit maybe to transmit something, it needs an organic component. Cel couldn't roll much better then that so they probably need to kick it towards the Harlequins to set a team on.

Shoin is moaning about paying the bills. Took on the contract to provide Simulacrum fluidics to Damascus for the money.

Drawings change shape get less technical and focus on the cavern entrance. Ben catches it sounds yonic, Alex was trying to not go there but did he really think you could go from cave imagery to seed imagry without stopping there?

Hamid tries to get more on how he caught the infection.

Bryn and Alex spell out that to get answers you ask a real question he won't answer verbally but will answer with his hand, with a decoy to keep the talking him distracted while the hand answers.

Decoy question is about Harrison Campell.

Concept drawing of a person, overwhelmed by an image of a huge figure with lines going from the small to the large? Is he suggesting they plant someone they prepare to be infected, and have them infect it back?

Proofs? Minor changes between the proofs and published version of early Campbell books.

Another review session upstairs. Hamid's red string wall got cited as being useful! Cult of Hades/Wellington may have been the one to hire Shoin to make parts for Damascus. Zolf and Hamid talk briefly, about work and as dry "stick to the subject" as possible but they are talking productively.

Oh Ben finally gets in that the interrogation is hard on Zolf's knees because he has to keep his legs out of the cell. He snaps a little at Cel when they comment on cell vs Cel. Carter suggests "naughty box" which nicely derails that point of tension. Cel refers to Shoin as being more pleasant to talk to than Carter. Not sure if that undermines the tiny Cel/Carter ship or fuels it with tension.

Cel asks who hired Shoin to make Sim parts. He can answer directly. Well directly for him, it seems to be mostly justifying stealing Tesla's work on the basis that Tesla wasn't going to implement his theory. Hamid snipes him with a shot praising Edison to get him back on topic. Shoin says Edison was being backed by a big investor. Is it to much to hope this is Alex finally consolidating the factions? If Hades is Edison's investor (leaving Edison & co as effectively their minions, rather than a faction of their own) and the factory owners we can cut down on sides considerably.

He goes on about how he spied on Henri, religion as money maker. Shoin was directly approached by Hades lot. Shoin made sure his bits won't work since he didn't want competition. Wellington was his contact with Hades. Wellington always had a pair of cloaked figures.  Vinegar + squizard = funny? Could be useful.

Do not follow what is going on with the hand.

Shoin is still unstuck in time and thinks he is going to connect them. Cel unplugs the speaker on his villain speech. Cel induces a dream state by powering him down

~break~

Cel suggests  painlessly killing him. Zolf seconds the idea because its immoral to keep him like that.   Hamid points out the longer the keep him around the more likely it is for someone to be infected. Wilde rules they should kill and seal it off.

Cel & Zolf have an argument about having the Kobolds handle the remains. Cel calls Zolf out on his inconstant stance on whether the Kobolds can be infected because if he doesn't believe that then he is risking them.

Wilde is moving on? Cel suggests letting the Brorb die, putting it in a bag of holding, keeping the bag in the anti magic field.

They can't just call Einstein because using unofficial channels is bad when irregular behavior is a sign of infection(?)

Alex's unhealthy attitudes about productivity are called out when he refers to the time Wilde spends thinking/planning before getting their transport arranged as "working" (with the inverted commas) rather than considering it part of the work.

They work out possible paths if teleporting is off the table.

And the boys are snapping at each other again. Zolf, you can't flip out every time you are reminded that Hamid doesn't have the experience or expertise of a seasoned sailor. Yeah you did leave the team without your skills and maybe the kid was a bit green for a field promotion; but you know what? He did a fine job, and the other choices were Sasha, who wouldn't lead, and Bertie, who shouldn't. Just because stepping down was the right thing to do, doesn't mean you get to lose it when you are confronted with the mere allusion to the idea it had consequences.

Barnes tells Hamid why going over the pole is a really bad idea. That Azu's suggestion is carrying Hamid has troubling symbolism.

Zolf actually comes more or less to Hamid's defense by pointing out that all their options are bad options, so having a go at Hamid's idea in particular is unwarranted.

I'm not going to bother listing out options. They will pick one or won't need to pick one. If we have been a very good fandom Alex may reward us with Earhart coming back as their preferred transport.

There we go, Hamid suggests her, Zolf seizes on the idea compliments Hamid on it, and immediately takes it to Wilde. Thank God he isn't so far down he can't do that. If he isn't compulsively shooting down any hope (especially from Hamid) then he really is on the upswing from the low brought on by quarantine stress.

Lydia isn't happy that there isn't going to be an American chapter. Then again we wrote off Svalbard, so don't give up!

Its the Northwest Passage and its so weird realizing that not everyone has it as a cultural reference. Wonder if it's an Oregon thing or a US thing.

Yes it would have been cool, but I think Alex is not going to let us have cool new story arcs when we haven't played with the ones we have at home.

Einstein and Earhart are our two best transport options. I am a happy fan. Especially if Zolf has to use his family and Earhart’s reaching out to him near the end of the journey to appeal to her. I mean we did get more on Zolf's relationship with his family than I expected after Paris, so I'm not going to sulk if they don't pursue this, but it would be nice.

Conflicted as a fan, its hard to remember that this taking months extra is a bad thing when the end of the series is feeling too close for comfort.

Zolf, look at you leveraging your experience with moving even when things feel hopeless!

Cel I love you, kraken as submarine is brilliant. Air kraken is suggested by Carter.

Hamid plays with the ideas while Alex goes "why?". Because you are going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than that if you want Hamid to see it as a no win situation rather than proof he needs to redouble on cheerful creativity. Feeling like he had no options led to the worst parts of Hamid's life, the things he is truly ashamed of; having few losses outside of those, he is going to make Kirk's Kobayashi Maru hang ups look amateur.

Zolf is heading to the beach.

Cel is checking on their village.

Hamid wants to contact Einstein himself, Zolf says he should talk to Wilde about that. Hamid wants Zolf with him for that meeting. Zolf either doesn't want to be a safety blanket, wants Hamid to get used to dealing with Wilde directly, or completely missed Hamid offering a chance to work together because he is incapable of seeing Wilde as an opponent. He does say some nice things about being a team.

Hamid tells Cel to say hi to Jasper for them. He is good at the people side of leadership. Remembering names and relationships, knowing how to show he cares because it's important to Cel without overstepping. If Zolf can learn to let go of the rank stuff, they could be an unbeatable team of co leaders.

Zolf nods at Azu. Azu smiles proudly back. Alex jokes about not liking giving them time to heal because they coordinate.

Hamid offers hugs to both Cel and Zolf. Because this entire character is a "fuck you" to toxic masculinity and he is not afraid to openly show affection to his friends.

Cel gives him a great hug.

Zolf hesitates but gives him a pat on the shoulder. Hamid's has high enough charisma to make that not awkward. Good kid, accepting that Zolf is reaching out as far as he can.

Hamid talks to Skraak. Hamid is worried about taking the kids. Maybe Skraak can convince them to stay & help Jasper with science. Because RQG loves us and wants us to be happy, they are considering a fantasy some of us harbored since "science" as a serious possibility. Could solve the issue with Alex not wanting the kids to take up too much screen time too. Skraak is the perfect character for Hamid to have as his second. He believes in Hamid, and can be confided in, but isn't going to take an ounce of self pity or bullshit.

Alex that village better be okay. Smoke? Controlled burn. Ben lightens the mood. The tank is still guarding the village. The barricade is up but they are guarding about as well as a village of level 0(1?) characters can be expected to.

They are having a party and there is a bon fire. Because Alex knows we wouldn't have trusted him if there wasn't a little scare with the smoke. !puns

The village is visibly healing since the weather is fixed. They thank Cel but know better than to ask.

Jasper! Jasper is looking good. He stepped in as a leader of the village. Cel and I could burst with pride. Jasper thinks Cel is coming to stay, Cel tries to explain they are going to help save the other villages around the world and mentions that Jasper would like the Kobolds.

!puns

* One day I need to hunt down the right corner of SF because there has got to be a decent amount of trans humanist fiction for trans humans out there somewhere.

**Not sure if I should feel bad for hoping this gives him a safe target for his destructive tendencies. Ideally Zolf would get past that point without indulging his dark side lest he reinforce bad coping mechanisms. Ideally Zolf would have weekly therapy without the fate of the world on his shoulders too. Its the more personal version of looking forward to a fight after Hamid's been stressed because he seems to find cooking baddies cathartic.

[ikenbar]

Mr. Love: Ike’s Choice CH3 PT 4

Warnings: Slight angst, Lucien FLUFF, may come across as date rape but it isn’t. Ike just isn’t used to being treated so well lol, and cliffhangers that will leave you wanting more :D

(Chapter Three (Victor and Lucien) prologue and part one, and parts two and three here~)

((Please read the author’s note (and the beginning of the story) on chapter one part one if you’re new here :D))

Chapter three:

Part four:

I stalled the meeting for as long as I could. Reading every line on the contract, starting pointless conversations with Victor, asking multiple dumb questions. It all worked but I only received five minutes and a really annoyed CEO. I really hoped five minutes would be enough for Lucien to leave but, judging by the patience that man held for me during dinner, my options were grim. 

I approached the front doors of LFG and saw a black sedan parked by the front steps. A long, slender figure stood in front of the car, leaning on the passenger side door, holding a bouquet of flowers. My stomach turned. He bought me flowers. 

Me. 

Flowers. 

Crud. 

Lucien caught my nervous eye through the glass doors. He smiled warmly and stood from his place on the car. No backing out now. I took in a deep breath and I pushed open the front doors. 

“Sorry to keep you.” I said as I neared the car, “The meeting ran longer than initially intended.”

“Not a problem.” Lucien smiled, “I’m willing to wait. Especially if it means I get to see you.” I halted in my steps. How could he be so forward like that? And with such elegance? He does it as if it were second nature! How am I supposed to respond to something like that?

“For you.” Lucien said warmly. I hesitated but took the bouquet anyway. 

“Uh... Thanks?” I awkwardly muttered. I am normally such a confident person! How did this man make me feel so childish!? Lucien smiled gently as he walked forward, closing the distance between us. He handed me the flowers in his hands.

“Thank you.” I said, inspecting the flowers, “For the blue... hyacinths?”

“I’m impressed.” Lucien’s smile grew through his words, “Do you garden?”

“No. Maria does.” I said, petting one of the flower’s petals daintily, “I used to help her out when I was younger. She would tell me stories about them and what each one represents.” I racked my brain. What did Maria say the hyacinths represented? Good cheer? Hope? Happiness?

“Oh? So do you know what these flowers symbolize?” Lucien asked, intrigue dripping from his tongue. 

I gave my mind one last search but, eventually, I just shook my head. Lucien tilted his head slightly as he clicked his tongue, “Well, maybe you will have an idea of what they mean after tonight.” I looked up at him questionably. Before I could get a word out though, Lucien’s face changed from placisity, to worry. "Did you get enough sleep last night?" He asked kindly, surveying me closely.

"What?"

“I’m fine,” I said, “It’s just a scratch." Lucien knitted his eyebrows slightly. 

“It looks as if you have stayed up for quite a while." Lucien placed a cool finger tip under my eye, unintentionally sending shivers up my spine.

"I stayed up all night to prepare for this meeting." I said, plainly. Lucien hummed but didn't move his hand.

"This cut is new.” Lucien’s finger traveled from my eye to my cheek. Man, I need to put a band-aid on that. I brushed away Lucien’s hand. 

“I leave you alone for a week and you’ve already hurt yourself.” Lucien shook his head, “Maybe I should work harder to make sure you aren’t left frequently unsupervised.” 

“It’s nothing!” I said this quickly, hoping to derail that train of thought. Lucien frowned. 

I avoided his stare and moved backwards, "I fell.”

“Taking care of yourself should always be a priority." Lucien spoke in a manner that reflected a teacher’s, "No meeting is worth the cost of your health. Anyway, the best way to prepare for a meeting is a goodnight's rest and a healthy breakfast.” Lucien drew closer to my face, causing my cheeks to burn slightly, “As for the cut, it looks to have been pretty deep to have left that kind of a scar. What exactly happened to you the week we were apart?” 

“Oh really?" Lucien straightened his posture and arched an eyebrow, "Where did you fall?”

“In the forest. Just outside of town. By the hills.”

“Hm, are these the same hills that were on the news? The ones to do with that old warehouse explosion?” Lucien’s words were simple but it sent my stomach into a downward fall, “What were you doing there?”

“Going for a walk.” I lied. Images of the last week’s events flashed in my head. I silently tried to brush them off as looked up at Lucien quizzically, “I saw that on the news too. What do you think could have caused it?”

“Hm,” Lucien held his chin in thought, “Well, it was an old warehouse. Perhaps there was faulty wiring. Or a group of delinquent kids that were playing with matches and spray paint.” Lucien looked down at me, “Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

“None.” I spoke slowly, trying to cover up my obvious suspiciousness, “That’s why I thought I’d ask. You are the scientist, after all.” Lucien trained his eyes on mine. I could feel him pry his way into my thoughts, searching for the answers I was keeping from him. 

As I was ready to put up my defenses against him, Lucien’s smile returned. He placed his hand on top of my head and carefully petted it. “Next time you want to go for a walk, let me know. I’d feel better knowing you’re safe and by my side.” With that, he strode back to the car and opened the passenger side door.  “Shall we?” He gestured to the inside of the car. I stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. I didn’t know if him dropping the topic so quickly was surrender or strategic attack. Either way, I could tell that even though that battle was over, the war had just begun. I shook my head slightly to recenter myself and walked to the open door to Lucien’s car.

I sat down in his car and Lucien shut the door next to me. After he did, I breathed out carefully. This was really happening. I am going on my first date. He had bought me flowers. He was going to take me out to eat. He wants to talk about me and really hold a conversation where I am the center of attention. I can’t handle this. Maybe he’d understand if I-

My eyes froze on the flowers in my hand. Words from this morning entered my mind.

“This will be good for you. It’ll get you out of your head and into the world for a change.”

I needed to get out of my head

Lucien had taken time out of his day to find me flowers and a place to eat.The least I could do was accept it… but, still, this was all very new and overwhelming for me… I wonder if talking to someone will help me calm down. I pulled out my phone and opened the Contacts app. I skimmed through the names displayed on the screen. 

Ashton would tell me that if I were feeling uncomfortable to just bail. 

Bart and Maria would worry about me then offer to sit in on the date to supervise. 

Gavin should be recovering. Besides, I didn’t want to make him worry over such a trivial problem as this anyway. 

Kiro is… Kiro. A superstar like him shouldn't have to listen to my problems. 

Sam… wasn’t a bad choice. After all, he was the one who helped me to decide to put trust in him… which led me to this situation of feeling overwhelmed and nervous. Which makes me want to slap the kid’s face so maybe it was a bad idea.

 As I was losing hope, one name flashed on the screen. 

Victor. 

My finger stopped scrolling and trained my eyes on the message icon. Victor would be an ideal choice. He would tell me straight up that I was overreacting what I should do to calm down. He wouldn’t beat around the bush or spare my feelings…. But he was my boss. I couldn’t turn to him about problems outside of work. He would call me a dummy and blow me and my funding off faster then I could take back everything I said. 

I sighed and leaned my head back against the car seat. Maybe talking to someone about my meaningless exaggerations wasn’t the best idea. After all, I was really just overthinking it all. Nothing was going to happen that night. I was going to be fine.

Lucien opened the driver’s side door and sat down in front of the wheel. He smiled at me as he shut the door. “Ready?” He asked sweetly. I forced a nod and placed my phone back in my pocket. Lucien started the car and we pushed off of the sidewalk and away from LFG. As the car moved down the street, I leaned on my hand and directed my attention to the window next to me, trying to steady my racing heart. The car ride shouldn’t be too bad. As long as it was silent and no prying questions were asked. Knowing Lucien, I knew it wouldn't take long for that to happen. So, I decided to speak first.

"What are your plans for tonight?"

“Don’t you mean ‘our plans?’” Lucien flashed a smirk in the rear view mirror. I arched my eyebrow. He chuckled and focused back on the road, “... I’m not going to tell you.”

“What? Why?” I asked, quickly turning my head to face him.

“Mystery will provide more to the experience.” Lucien hummed playfully.

“You sound like Maria.” I sighed and redirected my attention to the window.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Can I at least know if I should be prepared for anything?”

“The way you are now is perfect. No need to change anything.” 

I felt my cheeks grow slightly hot from worry as my shoulders involuntarily tensed. There was a moment of silence. the air in the car became denser with each passing second as overwhelming thoughts flooded my mind. What if this was all a plot by Montu? What if Lucien was actually a spy preparing me to turn me over to some terrible plan that could potentially end my life and the lives of innocents?? And I got into his car like it was nothing?! What if the place he was taking me to was-

Lucien placed a hand on my knee. I jumped at the sudden touch. Lucien merely sighed and rubbed my thigh slightly with his thumb. “You’re safe with me.” Lucien’s voice rumbled soothingly in my ears, “Nothing bad will happen to you tonight. Not while you’re with me.” I had never heard such calming words from anyone in my life. Especially not directed to me. Lucien really knew how to make someone feel comfortable. I felt all the worry in my heart fade and my shoulders ease slightly. Sensing the calming atmosphere, Lucien removed his hand from my knee. “Feeling better now?” He asked calmly, as if to a once raging beast.

“Give it time.” I said, redirecting my attention outside, “I’m sure I’ll find another reason to feel tense.” Lucien laughed gently.

“Not if I can help it.” Lucien winked at me from the rear view mirror. 

Eventually, Lucien pulled the car to an empty sidewalk and slowed it to a park. We had stopped at a street I have never seen before. I looked at Lucien quizzically and found he had already been looking at me. “Close your eyes.” Lucien smiled sweetly. My shoulders tensed up again.

“What?” My tone conveyed exactly how defensive I was feeling then. 

“This is just to add to the mystery.” Lucien opened his door and got out of the car. I watched as he walked around the front and to my door. When he opened it, I was immediately greeted by the sound of old folk music and chattering voices. “Don’t worry,” He assured, “I won’t let you fall.” I opened my mouth, ready to refuse, when Lucien cut me off. “If you feel unsafe at any time, you may open your eyes. I’m not forcing you to do anything. But I am asking you to trust me.” I paused. Lucien obviously thought a lot about this. He just wants me to be happy. He isn’t asking me to jump off a bridge. Just to close my eyes. I can do that. I can close my eyes… 

With one final sigh, I closed my eyes. Lucien took my hand and guided me out of the car. At first, I struggled against his guidance, trying to maintain control of my feet.

“It seems as if you know where you are going.” I could hear Lucien smirking through his words, “Should I let go?”

“No.” I quickly answered, tightening my grip to his hand, "Sorry. I… Sorry.”

Lucien chuckled, “Let me lead.”

I took a deep breath, then relaxed my legs. Lucien pulled at my hand again and this time, I was more willing to follow. After a little more walking Lucien halted his steps, stopping me along with him. I felt him replace the hand holding me with his other one as he walked behind me. I felt his body draw close to my back as he placed his free hand softly around my waist. I tensed and felt my eyes flicker, threatening to open. 

“Keep them closed.” Lucien whispered in my ear, letting go of my hand and placing them over my eyes, cutting out all light from my eyelids, “We aren’t there yet. You’ll need to be patient.” I felt my cheeks rush with blood as I forced my eyes shut. I felt him push his body against mine as he started guiding me again. What air we had between us was shared as I could smell the peppermint in his breath as it tickled my neck. The warmth from his hand make its way through my shirt and touch a part of my  heart that had remained frozen for a long long time. I could feel Lucien’s chest press against my back, allowing me to feel his heartbeat. I was suddenly aware of my own heartbeat as the intimacy of the situation made my heart race and my breathing along with it. I felt Lucien’s head lean in closer to my ear.

“Nervous?” Lucien’s voice was deeper than usual, causing a shiver to run down my back and my breathing to stop momentarily.

“N-no.” I stammered nervously. Looking for a way to cover my lie, I directed my attention to his heartbeat, “Are you?” Lucien chuckled handsomely in my ear, causing my already crimson cheeks to become even hotter.

Just as I thought I was going to explode, Lucien stopped guiding me. “We’re here.” He said, pulling his hand away from my eyes but maintaining his position behind me. My eyes fluttered open and I took in the sight in front of me. My jaw dropped.

We were standing in front of a glistening fountain. Lights from the surrounding nook of buildings lit up it’s waters, as well as the lanterns that were strung across their roofs, connecting every building to the ones across from them. The tilted structures looked as if they had been there for ages as vines and cracks laced the brick walls. The wooden doors barely hanging from their hinges as years of weathering tore at their layers. The cobblestone floor was a light muddy brown from the thousands of dusty foot steps that had graced it before we did. The ground was broken in places as stubborn plants burst through it, hoping to find some sunlight.

The small nook of buildings seemed as if it should be a ghost town, but it was far from it. The windows of the buildings were lit up as lives bustled within them. I could barely make out the words on the signs advertising each of the building’s residences, but they looked to be small shops, bars, and restaurants.

Customers chatting gleefully amongst each other and folk music from a small bar filled the once tense atmosphere. But even as the voices took up the air, you could still hear the soothing sounds of the fountain as it spotted from a large spout in the middle and onto layers of decrepit sediment. The setting sun in the background just made the scene even more of a beauty to behold. 

 Lucien pulled away from my face making a wave of smells fill my nostrils from the mixtures of different types of food in the air. I wasn’t able to particularly make out a specific kind of food but the combination made my stomach growl. 

Every piece of that plaza reminded me of something but I couldn’t put a finger on what. It felt so homely and comforting but at the same time, unnerved by unpredictably. As if something could go terribly wrong terribly fast. But no one there cared. Everyone was there to spend the night with joy and each other. And even through the bustling and the screeching music, things seemed almost peaceful.

“What do you think?” Lucien asked sweetly as he positioned himself next to me, taking my hand in his and squeezing it slightly. I dragged my eyes away from the scene and onto Lucien. I couldn’t find the words to describe how I felt. Most of them ended up forming a lump in my throat. I could feel my chest compress tightly and, 

for the first time that night,

My mind was left blank.

(Next)

[drjackandmissjo]

firewhisky on ice, sunset and vine

you’ve ruined my life by not being mine

Chapter 6— previous chapter — next chapter

Harry Potter fics Masterlist

They were once again in their original compartment, the one they shared all the way back during their first ever ride on the Express.

In the past few years, under Pansy’s suggestion, they had moved to more populated carriages, not remaining locked in their little booth, to have the opportunity to mingle with other students, yet after the incident between Draco and Saint Potter, they had decided a more secluded area was in order.

And there they were, Draco and Theo and Pansy and him, just as old time. Crabble and Goyle were in the nearby compartment, as if they were guard dogs waiting to be fetched, which wasn’t a far approximation of both their use and bestial nature, considering how they behaved. The rest of their housemates were scattered all over the Express, but in that little moment of time and space they were alone, far away from prying eyes and from tall Gryffindor idiots.

He had managed to avoid seeing him, back at the station, but Blaise had failed miserably at keeping him out of his mind during the holidays: his mother had bombarded him with thousand different questions about the ‘mysterious boy’ that had snagged his heart and hadn’t stopped meddling during their entire stay at his grandparents’; each one of his aunts and uncles and distant cousins kept on asking about his relationship status, twisting their noses whenever he replied, disapproving of the lack of a ‘nice pureblood girl in his life’, to which he simply had to politely smile to prevent himself from doing something irrational and idiotic; he had found himself asking his grandmother suggestions on how to tend plants, with the sole purpose of using them to then impress the useless plant-head.

At King’s Cross, he had sprinted as soon as he saw his friends, ignoring everyone else and focusing on Pansy, who was in the midst of telling Theo about her newest achievement, in the form of a freshly out of Beauxbatons boy who was doing an internship at the Ministry.

He didn’t know why, but he dreaded his next encounter with Longbottom. He had brought a plant from his grandmother’s garden and was planning on giving it to him during their next study session together, alone and in the privacy of the empty classroom they used, and he had already rehearsed several times in his mind the speech he was going to give to the Gryffindor, to excuse his foolishly romantic behaviour and masquerade his uncharacteristic affection and attachment. Yet he feared immensely an unscripted encounter, conscious that his brain didn’t work at his maximum potential around the tall idiot.

It had been quite an effort, the one he constantly had to make to concentrate in Transfiguration class whenever he decided to tap his fingers over the desk or whenever he bit his thumb when he focused on something he didn’t understand. During their private sessions, it was even worse: Longbottom would usually loosen his tie, roll up his sleeves and put a pencil behind his ear whenever it was his turn to explain something, and Blaise’s brain immediately went blank and dead for several moments, his only thought being incomprehensible blabber about biceps and forearms.

Overall, Blaise Zabini was whipped, not entirely in a bad way, but couldn’t be seen acting smitten. Especially not over a boy. Clearly not over a Gryffindor.

He focused his attention once more to his small group of friends: Theo was reading a trashy wizarding romance novel about a witch and a half-blood that, based on the plot, sounded too much like a wizarding version of Wuthering Heights, yet Theo entranced and captivated by the story, unaware of the Muggle origin of it, based on the time of release; Draco was poetically staring off the window into the vast [ic1] and immeasurable space that could be seen from the window, lost in his problems, mostly Death Eater related; Pansy was filing her nails, mindlessly nodding her head to a song that was playing in her head and remained stuck there for the foreseeable future.

“I gotta tell you something” he blurted out, without really thinking about the course of action he wanted to follow. He knew, deep down, that they would accept him no matter what, but the little anxious voice in the back of his head still whispered frightened.

They all turned to him, each with a puzzled look, stopping whatever they were doing to give him the attention he deserved.

It was an unofficial rule, never once discussed yet always respected, between the four of them to constantly listen to each other’s rambles and problems. It had been done when Theo’s father pressured him into learning Divination, when Pansy’s first time happened in a dark corner of the Slytherin dungeons with a sixth year boy while she was still in her third, and, of course, when Draco came back from the Summer vacations with a new tattoo and a burden on his shoulders. While he never truly admitted what he’d have to do for the Dark Lord, the other three still leant their ears to the blonde’s panicked whispers.

And they were all returning the favour now.

“No turning back, brace yourself and do it” his mind told him. He was a Pure-blooded Slytherin, on top of his classes and better than any of them, and if they had a problem with him being himself they could’ve shoved their heads up their arses even further than they already were.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever wondered or not, about why I don’t keep girls around for more than a public appearance or just for a couple of weeks” he began, hoping for once to be able to fulfil his speech as he had imagined it in his head.

As it could’ve been predicted, he was immediately interrupted by the monotonous voice of Theo, who simply went back to his book while saying: “Not our place if you wanna shag one different chick each week.” Then as if in an afterthought, he raised his head once again, staring into the distance with clouded eyes, and whispered: “They sure as hell about to fall over you, the wee girls chasing your attention as Nifflers with gold.” He had been reading one too many trashy romance novels for Blaise’s likings and now imagined love stories and escapades everywhere. Just before leaving for the holidays he had admitted of ‘having a feeling with his seer powers’ that Thomas and the Fire Kid were snogging on a daily basis, which left Blaise speechless while the others laughed.

“Are you trying to say that Blaise’s a heartthrob?” asked Draco, almost offended at the idea that he was less desirable than his friend. Pansy then intervened in the situation, leaning in before conspiratorially claiming: “Girls in the bathrooms talk, you know? Many do when they think no one’s there to listen, but Millicent heard that Romilda Vane, that hideous bitch, might be trying to sneak some Amortensia into either Saint Potter’s or Blaise’s cup!” That was an interesting news indeed, that side-tracked the conversation and also derailed Blaise from his train of thought; “Rule number seven: a possible poisoning should always be avoided, unless it was planned.” “Might be a miracle if she even knew how to brew tea, let alone perform correctly all the steps to properly do the potion” commented Draco, tilting back on his seat and folding his arms while sporting an insufferable smirk on his lips. “How’d you know? You never pay attention to classes anymore!” asked an affronted Theo, who was constantly complaining about the lack of response from the blonde prefect, but rarely mentioned it whenever Draco was near: Blaise had a feeling he partially knew what their friend had to do, since his parents were once again on the previous path, but he also never confirmed nor commented the situation.

“So does Pansy!” yelled outragedly the blonde, trying futilely to defend himself, despite the true words that just had been spoken. In the past few months, his attention span had drastically declined and now even teachers had started to realize it, which meant fewer House Points than intended. Which gave Blaise constant headaches[ic2] . The she-devil then turned to his friend, a dissatisfied expression on her face: “That’s different, I never paid attention to anything other than Charms, cause everything else’s boring and useless to me, you on the other hand…”. That was a trite topic that could go on and on for weeks. Blaise had his out, his one chance to have them forget he even started the discussion, which would last the remaining train ride for certain.

Yet he didn’t want to go back in hiding his true nature with them and, since he desperately wanted thing to move and work with Longbottom, if he turned out to be a fellow as well, he might’ve used Pansy’s help to woo finally the Gryffindor and Theo and Draco’s discretion if thing really got going.

It most definitely was a ‘Now or never’ type of situation.

“I’m into boys” he admitted quietly, partially drowned by the sounds of his friend’s argument, yet they all perfectly heard him.

The following silence was morbid and sickening, with Blaise looking out of the window with his wand in position to cast a protecting charm over himself. “Rule number five: better safe than sorry.”

Tentatively, as if handling a porcelain doll, Pansy moved forward, placing softly a hand on his and whispering: “Are you certain?”

“Sweet Salazar, Pansy, of course he’s certain, what kind of fudged up question is that?!” Theo exploded, throwing his hands in the air and watching the girl as if she had grown two extra heads, and now looked like the dog their current Professor of Care had during their first year.

Blaise had always been curious about how they had managed to fit such a large creature inside the third floor corridor, but still had no explanation. His most quoted guess would be a shrinking spell firstly and then a second enlarging one, probably performed by either Dumbledore or Flitwick, for sure. Hagrid, although he was a great and passionate professor, didn’t strike as the master of form changing and fitting charms, although he could clearly impress and surprise.

His overturning trail of thoughts was once again shifted back into the conversation at hand, instead of being let to free float in a very Pindaric [ic3] style, by the curious voice of Draco Malfoy: “Why you’re not cursing?” he asked, tone dripping disbelief, that now Blaise shared as well. Pansy was also looking at their fellow housemate as if she intended to solve the mystery before her, clearly having forgotten what spun their conversation in the first place.

Theo, on his own, merely shrugged, “Gave it up until the Spring break in a bet with my cousin, she’s from Durmstrang and won’t drink alcohol, the loser gets kicked of the Easter feast and doesn’t get the food.” The explanation was short and concise, typically in Nott style: “If it can’t be said in one sentence only, it’s not worth it” was his life motto, which was an interesting perspective in life, yet became complicated when asked to write a three feet parchment long essay, while the Slytherin in question could only master a very poetic “The Wound-Cleaning Potion is a potion used to clean cuts and other open wounds.” Needless to say, many nights were spent begging Theodore Nott to just write four more sentences cause Professor Snape wanted more than a simple “It’s used by healers.”

They all managed to convince him to be marginally less crisp only after reading out loud the works of Crabble or Goyle, which sounded too much like his own for his liking, which lead to the domino effect of a two and a half feet piece.

“Weird shit you pulled, you started it?” asked Pansy, incredibly suspicious and folding her legs under her body, a cat ready to pounce. “Grandma’s work, she casted a spell on us to check it and if we remove it we lose” he admitted, sounding excited and vengeful at the same time. While his grandmother had probably meant it as a meaning to have a peaceful evening, she did not keep in count the sheer ambition her grandchild had. Knowing Theo, this little challenge would keep on going until the last day, or until he won. He was too headstrong not to finish it with first place, whichever prize might be coming, it was the pure conscience of being first that would keep him warm during cold nights. “So, you rash-holes gotta keep your fudging mouths clean around me or I’ll lose my shirt” he then added, pointing his finger at all the three remaining people and throwing his best glance their way.

“That fucking sucks ass, Theo. So fucking sorry” exclaimed Pansy, fretting hurt and exaggeration, mocking him with every breath she took. “You’re a bench, Parkinson, and you should definitely caramelize yourself!” “Theo! You kiss your grandma with that mouth?” intervened Draco, placing a hand over his heart and pulling an incredulous face, scandalized and amused.

Once again, for the billionth time, the topic had switched and Blaise could feel his newly headache spread. He had a half thought of leaving the compartment to jump over the train and simply lay there, but decided to try one more time to get on top of the issue: “GUYS! Can we please focus here for once? I just told you I’m gay and I’m slightly uncomfortable not knowing whether you’ll hex me or I’ll have to kill you first” he said, staring at each of his friends dead and emotionless in the eyes.

“You would never kill us, Blaise” commented a very relaxed Draco, comfortable in his position. He was so dead wrong, or plain dead, depending on which came first. “Try me bitch. I had to study bloody herbs on my own cause of you so I’m already murderous.” He seemed visibly shocked by that, “Oh, yeah, sorry mate, how’s it going?” he asked, probably genuinely curious. “Pretty well actually, turns out it’s actually fun and…. Hey, back to the main side, what’s it gonna be, stronzetti?” Blaise all but yelled, losing his patience. It was an actual miracle that he had managed to keep up with them for that long: screw Potter, he should be assigned holiness, or at least a martyrdom, for his years spent in suffering.

“Well, that’s easy: I personally don’t care and as long as nobody” Theo began, pointedly looking at all his friends in the eye and not just at Blaise, “trickles nobody on my bed I’m chill with whatever.” Blaise took a breath of relief, his shoulders sagging a little as he felt all his tension leave his body. “One down, two more to go.”

“When you say trickles you actually mean fucking or a general shagging?” asked Draco, tilting his head forward with an unreadable expression he always used when playing with his friends. Not many saw this side of the blonde, the joyous and rascal version, reserved to his closest circle only. He had the best one liners, for certain, and used sarcasm and humour at every possible occasion.

More than once, Blaine had to hex him whenever he started punning, cause once it had begun, he never stopped willingly.

Theo leant forward as well, eye to eye with the blonde with a murderous look on his face: “Malfoy, you keep your hands off my property or I’ll chop them off clean, but as a general rule don’t get on my bed or I’ll burn our dormitory down.”

Pyromania was a serious issue of Theo’s, which was the main reason why he was on speaking terms with the Fire Kid from Gryffindor, which as a downside meant endless teasing from the rest of his house. Despite it all, their unlikely friendship was solid and dangerous, with one accidentally sending things on fire and the other purposefully letting it all burn. “I’d do it if I was you, mate. Who knows who did whom before you took the room” Pansy intervened, reclining back into her seat and picking up her nail filer once again, starting back to where she got interrupted. “THANK YOU FOR THE IMAGERY PARKINSON!” Theo yelled, bolting up on his feet and thundering over the compartment. Raising a hand to pass through his hair, he gave out a huffed breath and opened the door to the corridor, “Imma go and claw my eyes out excuse me” he proclaimed, before hastily exiting and loudly closing the door with a sound that reverberated the entire train, probably.

The remaining trio burst out laughing immediately, Pansy and Draco falling onto each other as Blaise wiped tears off of his eyes. “Merlin, He’s so sensitive!” he commented once his chuckles had quieted down and as his breathing returned evenly. He then closed his eyes, savouring the moment as an eventual calm before a tumultuous storm: “What about you two?” he asked, returning to seriousness.

Pansy looked at him softly, before shrugging and returning back to her task, “I’ve had my suspicions but kept quiet cause.” Then, in an afterthought, she pointed her filer at Blaise’s chest and conspiratorially added: “Hope you know we’re gonna talk about it in private, just the two of us, also just cause I may have already someone to set you up with.”

Blaise chuckled at that, already conscious that the action might be immensely futile but touched by the feeling nevertheless. “Draco?” he asked boldly, turning fully toward the friend that had been keeping silent about the matter. Despite Blaise’s suspicions, it was not his place to say anything about the other boy, but an acceptance would’ve been gladly welcomed still.

“I’ve have too much on my own plate to deal with this as well but” he began, messing up his non-gelled hair as if to pull the words out of his brain directly, “I’m cool, mate. As Theo said, don’t fuck anyone on my bed” he finished with a wicked smile and a wink. What was the wink for, Blaise had no idea, but he warmed up at the sentiment nonetheless. “Not gonna be a problem, trust me” he admitted smirking: even if things were smooth with a certain boy, he still would be extremely hesitant of bringing anyone of the same species further than the common room, and even then he couldn’t exactly bring a Gryffindor there! “Why not? Are you ashamed of us or something?” asked Draco, offended and wounded at the idea, at which Blaise could only reply with a huffed out laugh and a shake of his head, “That’s one way of putting it.”

Draco turned expectantly at Pansy, who just looked him sternly in the eyes before deadpanning: “Your room smells like flowers and douche deodorant, no one with an ounce of self-respect will ever bring a date to shag there” she claimed, with great reasons, before returning to her nails. Crabble and Goyle had an unhealthy lack of familiarity with personal hygiene, which meant that the remaining occupants of the dormitory had to constantly keep the windows open or, during the winter, spray the room with whatever substance strong enough to hide the odour of musk. “Speak for yourself, Millicent’s cat’s always stinks worse than death itself!” outragedly cried Malfoy, desperately trying to defend his wounded honour for some reason unknown to Blaise, who simply stood back and enjoyed the scene. “Which is why he’s not allowed in the room, we keep him on the doormat, asshole” venomously rebutted Pansy, raising her filer in the air and vehemently threatening the blonde.

“Isn’t that poor creature already been through enough?” “Quiet Zabini, he chewed on my favourite pair of shoes and they were expensive” she replied immediately through gritted teeth, without lowering her makeshift weapon nor detaching her eyes from her prey. “We all come from powerful and rich Pure-blood families and are talented wizards, couldn’t you just use reparo?” snorted Draco, slowly and unperceptively leaning backwards and far away from the witch. Pansy simply drew closer, fury in her eyes, “First of all, that’s not the point. Second, they were bloody Louboutin and even with the spell they still had something missing and I’m still salty about it” she said, punctuating each word with a blow with her bludgeon, which caused the blonde to wince in pain.

The scene was comedic and truly heart-warming, but it was interrupted by Theo’s head, which poked from the newly opened door: “We’re there, guys, move your sugar plum behinds” he said entering, shifting the pair of bickering idiots to take out his coat.

Blaise felt better than he had in weeks as he fixed his tie on the window reflection. Holidays had been great, the quick chat with his friends freeing and fantastic and he was finally ready to set his plan in motion.

With his heart infinitely lighter, he grabbed his suitcase and exited the train, secretly hoping to be able to peak a certain Gryffindor before the meal in the Great Hall.

GLOSSARY:

“Stronzetti” means “Little pieces of shit/Little Assholes”