#now i had had a lot of those and my parents began to not trust me when i said i felt sick

[miahasahardname]

i found a photo of me in the hospital after my first seizure and i am wearing the most HORRENDOUS combination of clothing imaginable 😭😭

thinking of redrawing it with mikey because epileptic 2012 mikey is real

[jgracie]

HOW YOU GET THE CURL

masterlist | rules

❝ idk if you’d do percy but with curly blonde hair (like pjo series ver perce) but if you do, i’d love a fic where he teaches y/n how to maintain curly hair (she doesn’t have curly hair) cause he loves the idea of her taking care of him ❞ — anon

in which percy teaches you how to take care of curly hair

pairing percy jackson x fem!reader

warnings none

on the radio . . . romeo & juliet (peter mcpoland), san fransisco (be sure to wear some flowers in your hair) (scott mckenzie), sunflower, vol 6 (harry styles), slow dancing (aly & aj), our house (crosby, stills, nash & young)

an can someone pls tell me the titles sooo smart and funny 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

“Honey, I’m home!” As soon as you heard Percy yell those words from your front door, you left the comfort of the couch and ran into his arms. He immediately put his bags down and picked you up, twirling you around before peppering kisses all over your face.

Life in New Rome couldn’t be any better. After the two of you got into the same university, your parents bought you an apartment to share so you wouldn’t have to be separated in university dorms, knowing all too well how you were attached at the hip. You had cried at the gesture, and Percy held you in his arms as he, too, held back tears.

A wide grin on his face, he asked, “how’s my favourite girl?” As he unpacked everything he’d bought that day, you gave him a rundown of your day. It was pretty mundane - some reading, some studying - but he listened as if you were describing the plot to a sci-fi movie. Your eyes quickly took in everything laid out on the counter, mostly groceries, and landed on one bottle.

You picked it up and read the label while Percy explained what it was, happy you were amused, “that’s a new curl cream. The one I’ve been using’s a little too heavy for my hair, always weighing my curls down. I think I’m gonna try it today, do you wanna do the honours?” 

“Honours of what?” You asked, confused. You didn’t have curly hair, so you didn’t know much about the effort that went into taking care of it, just that it required a lot of different products and was incredibly laborious, according to Percy. His curls were really cute though, so in your opinion, the labour was worth it.

Making his way over to you and wrapping his arms around you, Percy batted his eyelashes, “of trying it on me. I’ve been thinking, babe, you need to know how to do curly hair for when we have kids! Curly hair genes run strong in my family, so I wouldn’t be surprised if our kids inherit them.” 

You felt your face heat up as you thought about having kids with Percy, then smiled fondly when you realised what he was doing. Percy’s always been incredibly shy about wanting to be cared for. No matter how many times you’d tell him you didn’t mind giving him a massage or going over his maths homework, he’d always try to conceal his true intentions with some other lame excuse, like now.

“Okay! Let’s go do it now,” you said, dragging him over to your bathroom. You grabbed a stool for him to sit on and stood between him and the bath, hand-held shower head in hand (I hope this setup makes sense LOL). Making sure the water was the perfect temperature, you began rinsing his hair, careful to make sure no water dripped down his body. While you did so, Percy told you about his day. You always loved his knack for storytelling, your boyfriend never failed to find a way to make anything sound interesting.

Next, you squirted some of his shampoo on your hand and began lathering it in his hair. You felt Percy relax and smiled, glad he was content, “it’s okay to want to be taken care of, Perce. I’ll do it gladly,” you mumbled absentmindedly, to which he simply hummed. As you conditioned his hair, he began to doze off, which made you reconsider using the cream. You didn’t trust yourself to use it without his guidance, but didn’t want to wake him up.

In the end, you decided on disrupting his sleep, since you knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night if he slept now, “how do I do this?”

Percy took your hand and squirted some of the cream into your open palm, “rub it into both hands, then scrunch it into my hair.” You did as you were told, your hands light as too little was better than too much, in case you did something wrong.

When Percy looked into the mirror, he turned to you and smiled, “hey, you’re a natural! You should do this all the time” He asked, his eyes bleary. You would do this a million times if it made him this happy every single one of them.

After the cream came the gel, which was a lot easier since it was the same scrunching motion as before. You were a little apprehensive when Percy told you to put it in, since you didn’t think crunchy curls were the outcome. However, it all made sense during the final stage: the hair oil.

“This, my love, is what stops them from being all crunchy. Just lightly pass it over my hair,” Percy explained, pouring the tiniest amount of oil into your palm. You recognised the scent - it smelled like home, like him. 

You finished and admired your work. Percy was right, you were pretty good at taking care of curly hair. After running his fingers through his hair a couple times to loosen the curls up the way he liked, Percy gave you a hug, kissing your head thousands of times and saying a muffled, “thank you,” into your hair.

Nothing was more blissful than this. Well, until you smelt something burning.

Pulling away from you, Percy asked, “did you make something?” You wracked your brain for an answer then gasped, remembering what it was. Running to the kitchen with Percy behind you, you quickly pulled the cookies you were baking - once blue, now black - out of the oven.

“I wanted to surprise you with these!” You said, disappointed. 

Fighting the urge to cough, Percy picked one up and bit into it, grimacing for a second before smiling and holding a thumbs up, “it’s really unique, I’ve never tasted anything like these. You definitely did surprise me!” He said, sarcasm dripping from his voice Rolling your eyes, you discarded the cookies and replied, “oh, shut up, Perce”

[louloulemons-posts]

Hello! I saw that you are accepting requests for strangeк things and I decided to try ... I really like reading your work and I would like you to write my idea if it's not difficult for you. In general, I sincerely believe that there is very little jealous!Eddie in the world and it kills me. What if Eddie and reader aren't together YET, but Munson is so damn jealous of her for Steve, and Steve and reader don't understand why Eddie is so...mean

+ extra points if Dustin solved all the problems again 😐😐

Sorry if this is too long and stupid! Love you!!!

Words Of Jealousy

Eddie Munson X Fem!Reader

Summary : Eddie can’t stand reader and she has no clue why.

Word count : 2.1k

Warnings : Not proofread, some parts were written at 3am and some at a normal time (i can only apologise i love napping) swears, eddies stupid, minor angst, eddies mean to reader, reader shouts at eddie, reader panics about death (it’s kinda funny), brief talks about the upside down, happy ending, fluffy, idiots in love.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

You don’t really know why’s it like this, but it always had been. Eddie didn’t like you that much was clear. Snide comments, eye rolls, chuckling when you embarrass yourself.

All in all he was an asshole. He came into your friend group a few months back, you’d seen him around before that, but hadn’t interacted much.

Steve Harrington had been your best friend since Pre-K, being inseparable (minus the King Steve - which you’ll forever tease him for) A lot of people assumed you’d end up together, however, the idea of that was gross to both of you.

You had dealt with the whole Upside Down situation also, becoming close with a lot of other people - including Robin Buckley, your other bestfriend and third of your trio.

“So I was thinking, we could have a movie night?” Steve said, his parents had been back for a week and had now gone on another business trip. He needed a fun night after dealing with those two trolls.

“Sounds good, but you’re not picking,” you spoke. “Why not?”

“Because your movie taste is awful,” Robin spoke, shoving a handful of M&Ms into her mouth. “What the hell? It’s not, I literally work in a movie store!”

“Which makes it so much worse,” you sighed, leaning your head on robins. “I’ll pick them out,” Robin spoke.

“Now you I trust.” She leaned her head back and kissed your chin.

“Fine fine, I’ll invite people.”

“Who are people?” you asked.

“Well you know, Nance, Jonathan, the kids, and you know …” he mumbled something.

“What was that?” He mumbled again.

“Couldn’t quite hear you Stevie.”

“Eddie.” You rolled your eyes, groaning. “He’s not that bad!” Steve tried to say.

“To you. He’s horrible to me and I don’t even know why!”

The bell to the store jingled, a sign that someone had walked in. “Speak of the devil,” you said, kissing Robin on the top of the head before jumping off the counter. “I’ll see you guys later,” you said to Robin and Steve, kissing the boys cheek as you passed.

“Aw going so soon Sweetheart?” Eddie asked, exaggerated pout on his face. “Oh bite me,” you said, shoulder bumping him as you went past.

What an asshole.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

Steve had called you later on and apologised about the fact that Eddie was coming. He had begged you to come also, of course you said yes. You didn’t like Eddie, but that wouldn’t ruin your relationship with your best friend.

Climbing out of the car with your bag - you planned on staying the night, like most nights. You walked into Steve’s house, calling out a greeting.

“Hey,” he shouted back, head popping round a corner. “I’m taking my stuff upstairs, I’ll be back in a minute.” Jogging upstairs and into your allocated room you placed your bag on the bed. Pulling out your hoodie you slid it on heading back downstairs.

Coming out of the door, you bumped into someone, “Oh shit sorry Stevi- oh,” you spoke, meeting the eyes of a metal head.

“Watch yourself Sweetheart.” Walking away from him you began your decent on the stairs.

“Not talking to me today?” he asked.

“Ha, you’re funny,” you spoke, sarcasm lacing your tone. “Oh yeah, why’s that?” Stopping on a step and turning to him, “Why the hell would I waste my time?”

“Come on Sweetheart don’t be like that!”

“Jesus christ Eddie can you just shut up for one fucking second. I get you don’t like me, but I’m not here for you I’m here for our friends, so get your head out your house.”

His face went still, the playful glimmer leaving his eyes and jaw clenching. “I was teasing, maybe you should stop being such a bitch for once in your life,” he snarled, stomping past you.

As you said - asshole.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

“Woah, you okay Eddie?” Dustin asked him.

“Princess’ got an issue today,” he rolled his eyes, sighing. “Let’s be honest, you’re not the nicest to her,” Steve spoke up, pulling a can of cola from the fridge for the boy.

“Doesn’t mean she gets to-”

“Eddie I’m telling you this as your friend, you insult that girl in front of my and I’ll break your nose,” Steve spoke, popping the tab and sliding the can to him.

The boy sighed again, taking a gulp of the drink. “Not everyone ends up liking each other and being friends Eddie, don’t take it personally,” Dustin tried to comfort him.

“I wouldn’t want to be her friend.”

“Well lucky me, cause that’s the last thing I want,” you spoke, appearing in the kitchen, making all three of them jump. Eddie almost seemed to wince when he saw you.

“ I get you don’t like me, but do not come in here and speak badly of me to MY friends. You have an issue I get that, you are rude and mean to me all the time and I don’t have a clue why, honestly I don’t care,” you took a breath.

“But do not, speak badly of me to my friends. I would have happily been buds with you, but you don’t want that clearly, every time I’ve been nice you’ve been cruel. Maybe grow up Eddie, fucking asshole,” you spoke.

After he left you on the stairs, you’d turned around and grabbed the bag. You couldn’t do this, even for Steve, you didn’t want to ruin the night with that horrible tension and simmering bitterness.

Turning on your heal you left the house heading to your car, heading your name called behind you. “I’m sorry Steve, just have a good night. I call you tomorrow and me, you and Robs can do something okay.” Kissing his cheek, you climbed in and headed off.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

You didn’t drive home, you felt many things. Angry. Upset. Tired. You never had a solid reason why he didn’t like you and you know, like Dustin said, not everyone gets along. But he got along with everyone else - why not you?

You car clunked. Shit. Could this day be any more shit? It was getting dark too. You had no signal. And you were down a creepy side road. You were dead, that was simple.

Heading to the front of your car, you opened your car up. Smoke flooding your lungs. Well shit, you weren’t bad with cars, but you weren’t a magician. This definitely needed a mechanic.

Looking around you knew where you were, but the walk was far and it wasn’t that safe. You climbed back into the car, placing your head on the steering wheel. All you could do was wait here for now and hope that someone drove passed (preferably not a murderer) or sleep there until morning (and didn’t get killed).

Thank god for your hoodie, Autumn was rolling in quickly this year. Only a few days into September and it was sending a chills all over you - that could also be fear. If a light flickered, you’d vomit on the spot.

You sighed, well you’d better get comfy for now. The sunset was a beautiful sight, but also scary and you wished it would stop.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

You’d been there for a while now, not wanting to waste your gas. It was cold and dark, and you could cry.

The car filled with light, looking behind you, a vehicle drove down the road. Squinting, you tried to make out what it was - a van. Oh shit, yes definitely dead.

Panicking, you tried to start the car again. No use. The lights of the van remained on, but the door of it slammed. Throwing yourself out of the car, you saw the large figure coming towards you.

Attempting to walk as quickly as you could without sprinting, you heading down the road and away from whoever it was. “Hey!” you heard a voice, but continued on your way.

Gravel crushed under two sets of feet, one moving alarmingly quick now. Hands gripped your shoulders and you screamed, squirming to get away. “Hey hey! Sweetheart calm down!” The voice said loudly now.

Shoving away from the person you almost cried out, “Eddie? What the hell?”

“Are you okay?” he asked, hands visible to you, as if you were a scarred animal. “Oh yeah, minus the minor heart attack I’m great.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“My car broke down,” you sighed.

“Have you been here since you left Steve’s.”

“Pretty much.”

“Sweetheart you left 5 hours ago, people are worried.”

“What?” you asked, “Why would anyone be worried?”

“Well …,” he began.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

Steve walked back into the kitchen, hand running through his hair. “What is your issue with her?” he snapped at Eddie, unable to ignore the behaviour anymore.

“I don’t have an issue! She’s just not my type of person!”

“Not your type of person, she’s everyone’s type of person. She’s sweet and kind and just lovely.”

“She’s you best friend, you’d think that!”

“So what you just hate her for no reason?”

“I don’t hate her!”

“Then why do you behave the way you do?”

“He likes her,” Dustin spoke up, munching on a potato chip. The older boys turned and looked at her. “W-what?” Eddie asked.

“You can deny it all you want, but you’re acting like most young boys do when they like people. Tease them, which in all honesty is so stupid.”

“Is it true? Do you like her?” Steve asked.

“N-no! I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t do that to you!”

“Do what to me?” Steve asked cocking his head, purely confused. “S-she’s your girl.”

“Yeah my best friend. But she’s not my girl in a romantic sense. That’s gross, we’ve know each other forever, she’s basically my sister.”

“What?” Eddie asked, not really a question.

“God you’re stupid. Go after her,” Dustin sighed. “Henderson’s right, go,” Steve spoke. Eddie nodded, running out of the house and to his van.

Driving to your home he was confused not to see you car there, but knocked the door none the less. Pulled open, he came face to face with your mother. “Oh hello, can I help you?” No judgement at all - that wasn’t common.

“Hi, I’m Eddie. I’m a uh … friend of your daughters. I was just wondering if she was home?”

“Sorry Honey, she’s staying at a friends tonight. I can get her to call you when she’s home,” she smiled at him softly.

“Thank you,” he nodded, raising a hand in goodbye, heading back to his car. “Where are you Sweetheart?” He mumbled to himself.

Deciding that heading back to Steve’s was the best option, to see if she’d cooled off and gone back. He panicked when he saw the absence of your car, Steve would know where you’d go.

Running in the house, he didn’t even bother to knock, calling out for your bestfriend. “You’re back?” he questioned.

“If she wasn’t home where would she be?”

“She’s not home?”

“No,” the metal head sighed.

“Shit.”

“Yeah shit.”

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

“We’ve been looking for you for hours Sweetheart.”

“I didn’t mean to worry anyone, I just didn’t want to walk in the dark.”

“You’re lucky it was me who found you.”

“I know.”

“Seriously you could have been hurt, why didn’t you go home?”

“Because I needed to clear my head!”

“So you come to somewhere unsafe.”

“I was passing through! Why are you so bothered?” you almost shouted at him.

“Because I’d never forgive myself if you got hurt because of me!”

“Why?”

“How can you not know?”

“Know what?”

“I like you! For fuck sake! This is what all of this has been about. I thought you were with Steve and I’d rather you be happy with him and hate me then be nice and let me fall in love with you,” he said in one breath.

“Wha-“

“I know it’s stupid and childish, but I don’t really know how to talk to girls I like! And I panicked and I didn’t want Steve to hate me for liking his girlfriend.”

“‘M not his girlfriend.”

“I know that now.”

“You like me.”

“I do.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I am.”

“I’ve liked you since Middle School.”

“I kno- Wait what?”

“You heard me. Now can you help me with my car because I am freezing.”

“Oh uhh yeah sure. I can get my Uncle to call his buddy to tow it to the shop.”

“Thank you Eddie.”

You headed back to your cars, side by side. “You really like me?” he asked.

“I do. You’d know that if you got to know me.”

“Yeah I guess so.”

“You can make it up to me.”

“How so?” You smiled slightly, then linked your fingers through his ring covered ones. “Take me on a date Munson.”

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

A/N : I hope you enjoyed this request it was really fun to do more jealous Eddie, but I had to make it happy in the end.

I am having major writes block so if you have any ideas of requests or stuff let me know. I’m currently back in my criminal mind phase so if you’d be interested in fics about the guys from that (-mainly spencer lmao) let me know 🤍

Thank you so much for reading! Please leave any requests 🤍

[zwolfgames]

Can we have more Yandere mha x child reader please 😁🙏

*Thank you for the request! I' unsure wether you wanted a continuation of the original two parts or a new one. This one us a continuation but I was fairly out of ideas so I hope this is alright. If you did mean a totally new concept then I'll be happy to write that too :3)

Requested: Annon

Warnings: Kinda child abuse but not in a violence or sexual way. Manipulation. Incorrect lore. Binding. Yandere.

(3rd person PoV)

Y/N. The one kid know to have escaped the league of villains.

But what no one told the news, was that you were also the one kid to escape all of class 1A. A class of pshyco's.

Now that you look back at it. You had been naive.

Trusting these heroes. Just for them to use you as a doll, as a baby to coddle because they felt bad. Because they needed it.

But no one ever asked you... no one.It had been another two long years now.

Your body had finally been allowed to age without Eri being there to revert you, even if she was willing or not. You still weren't sure if that child had been in the same situation as you... But you didn't have time to look back.

Not when they were hunting you.

Now that some war between villains and hero's was around the corner. The searches became more intense. You'd catch Bakugo not two alleys down from you.

See Tokoyami and Hawks patrol from above.

Allmight had been caught in disguise just yesterday.

They were closing in on you.

You had only gotten away up untill now by cuttibg your hair differently. Wearing baggy... stolen.. clothes and caking dirt all over your face.

But what had to be done had to be done.

It's not like the villains left you alone either.

Altough, with the criminal circkles you had affiliated in, as was totally allowed for a 10 year old... you had heard of them trying to find you.

And you know... for someone's whos mentally just 12, that was scary.So you had trained yourself to fight a bit... Wich wouldn't do a lot against grown adults... but the tought was nice.

It's not like your quirk would be of any help. Crying pearls only helped you get by. And thats it...

But naturally, a story couldn't go on with it's main character living peacefully.

As you were napping on your little cleaned up dumpster of a home, you got knocked out of it as the whole plastic container got kicked to it's side.

An all too exited Kirishima came running to grab you off of the floor.You rolled out of the way. Kicking over some cardboard to slow him down as you sprinted away.

The boy just used his quirk to smash trough any and all obstacles. He had one goal in mind. And that is to take their shared sibling back.

Sibling was a better title then your actual role was. You're more of an emotional support pet....

Just as you think you'd still manage to get away from Kirishama, a tendril of grey scarf wraps firmly around you.

You're snatched up and quickly find yourself trapped in someones arms.

The man didn't even want to talk right now. He had gotten way too attached to you. A little kid with barely any power. Those kind of people is what he vowed to protect.

And even tough it seemed like you didn't want anything to do with him or other hero's. Aizawa was sure you'd understand that you needed the protection when the war began.

That you'd need a parental figure-He means... that he'd be available if you ever needed... guidance.

So in no time were you back to U.A.. Wrists bound like an animal.

You didn't like these people anymore...

They made you feel weak, useless...

Not human.

Just a plaything...

You were once again reverted back to an 8 year old and this time, kept in a diffrent room.

"So, like I said, you'll be sleeping in my room now, alright kiddo? I promise this is just for your safety. See, we even set up your own little bed. Yaorozu even made you a plush of your favorite dinosaur. And well... Koda.. tried to do that aswell- but- nevermind." Aizawa explained as he showed you your... incredibly cozy bed. Tough having to sleep in the same room as the guy that had essentially brought you into this mess..

Not your favourite.

"Don't look so depressed kid. It could be way worse. The villains could have killed you by now. You really shouldn't have run from us. We're just keeping you safe." Aizawa sighs and rubs your now messily cut hair.

You just huff in the little defiance you had left.

How dare he try and say that the villains who just as much wanted you back were trying to kill you?

Did he think you were stupid?

Probably.

Actually, undoubtedly.

They must all think that, that the slightest gust of wind would blow you away.

What did even see in you? Just a child?

No one would go this far for just a child...But you were their child. Group effort. Class project.

That was you. A responsibility they took way too seriously.

You still yearn for the reality where you could have just been delivered to an orphanage. Gotten an actual normal family.

A mom and a dad... or a mom and a mom... or a dad and a da- okay look you just didn't care as long as it wasn't this...

"Look, and we got you even more toys. And Midoriya mentioned that you liked to draw? Right? So only the best supplies for our little hero." Aizawa tries to smile.

You didn't know wether he was the only one that actually noticed how wrong this all was... he knew... but he couldn't give you up... give you away.

He never intended for this... but his class had also gotten attached... he wasn't alone in this... And that sucked for you.

Because escape attempt after escape attempt just ended up as you getting more stuck.

Ankle chain, gps tracker, locked doors, barred windows, constant surveillance.

How is no one saying anything against this? Why is this just being allowed?

Why did the freedom rule not count for you?

Where is the law?

Nowhere.

Not for you.

Its never been there for you.

And honestly, that hurt.

Why didn't anyone help you?

Why weren't you saved?

You littarly live with hero's and you're the victim.

This isn't okay...

And you couldn't do anything about it.

So you broke.

Going from defiant child to broken toy in days. Rotting in your extremly comfrotable bed like a depressed teenager.

Wich techically you could almost classify for mentally. Just half a year more.

Getting dragged out of your bed to be passes around like a plushy for movie nights was common now.

The students were getting more nervous too with the upcoming war.

Ochako coddled you more.

Deku had been teaching you about all his quirk knowledge as if he was scared he's die.

Aizawa was fixing up more safety manners.

Hawks had been coming over to babysit during actual hero school lessons.

Wich was even more awkard.

"Hey kid, smile."

"Y/N, can you draw me?"

"You're so cute Y/N, why don't i just take you with me instead? Im sure they wouldn't mind."

"Kiddo, want to go shopping?"

"Y/N."

"Kid."

"Kid..."

You were not a kid...

Stop it.

Why can't they leave you alone.

So you cried. Embarrassingly so in Hawk's presence. Pearls fell from your eyes and the pro hero looked on in awe.

Cupping your cheeks and whispering sweet words to try and comfort you.

Wrapping his wings around you and patting your head.

And dammit if you didn't hate all of them you would have loved this.

But after this... there really wasn't any escape.

War was spent in a bunker.

The survivors clung to you for dear life after the events and you just had to sit trough it like the good doll you were.

Smile and wave Y/N.

You weren't ever free.

And you never will be.

[a-bag-of-issues-blog]

Language in a Space Age

I've been going down the "humans are Space Orcs" rabbithole again, and a lot of it felt unsatisfying to me, so I tried my hand at whipping up a story I liked.

---

It was four sols prior when the security contract with the mercenaries ended.

Three sols prior when the ship’s Captain had said Xe might know someone.

Two sols prior when we had landed on the sandy, hot planet.

And one sol prior when I had first seen a Human fight.

It was an underground fighting arena – almost literally, with only the very top of the domed structure rising out of the sand dune, its colored glass absorbing the worst of the radiation. The seating was arranged in the large, concentric rings common of many gathering places (and yet we still do not have a word in Common for it, is that not strange?), and they were packed with people and dust alike. Despite the obviously ill maintenance of the ventilation and heating, they were bearable, and I only had to remove a small amount of dust from my body coat as we ventured deeper inside.

“So, boss, who’s your mysterious benefactor?” Asked Asdelon as its left eye moved towards the Captain, the right one continuing to scan the crowd.

Our pilot was something of an outsider – from both its home culture and, perhaps, every culture it has ever entered. As a Khetansh, it was born an almost perfect clone of its progenitor, who was itself part of a set of almost perfect clones of their progenitor, like the rest of its species one way or another. And yet Asdelon has always described itself as different, in a way that the Common tongue can not express. There was a word for it, in its language – but it had never found the need to translate it, and I had never dared ask. It was one of the species that felt the need to stare at others’ eyes as it spoke, and while I would now trust it with my life, back then those large eyes and sharp teeth reminded me too much of the old cautionary stories my parents used to tell me.

Those eyes turned fully onto the Captain after some time of no response. While the scales on its face could move very little, its voice was higher and definitely sarcastic when it continued:

“Thanks for the info, boss, makes tracking this Iethid a lot easier.”

The Captain’s eyes swayed in time with his antennae, a sign of what I had begun to recognize as amusement.

“Oh, don’t scuff your scales now. I was just looking around.”

Captain Exlasl was a Xelthor, and a large one for Xirs age. Xirs outer skeleton was a slight blue and white, and Xe liked to brag that the brown stripped markings on Xirs abdomen were signs of great strength and wisdom in Xirs culture. As I did not – and do not – have much knowledge on Drugarian Xelthor culture, I never challenged Xir about that.

“And we could be helping you, if you were a little less mysterious about it.”

“Don’t worry, I think you’ll have your answer soon enough…” The translator trailed off as Xe reached up to adjust it with Xirs smaller hand, but Xirs eyes began turning towards the arena floor where the latest combatant (a Horenga, with a body coat almost identical to mine) had entered. Asdelon looked down at the combatant, and I could tell it was not impressed.

“Really? That one? I’ll give you that they’re probably a little faster than our Horenga here, but I can tell you right now they’re still more…how do you say…more words than action.”

“The Horenga has a name.” I reminded it. “And their name is Linome.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Its tongue flicked out to drag down its right eye (a method of self-cleaning that was also an expression of boredom, almost like how I and other Horengas clean our ears) and it shifted the weight on its legs. “Listen, if you’re out of ideas, then you could’ve just told us. No need to –”

The announcer’s voice called out, in a dialect of Common so blended with the local language that I could not understand a single word. A combatant walked out, and I have never felt such awe and dread so strong in a single moment before.

Humans are not rare. They are not the strongest species, or the largest species, or the toughest. But they are resilient, they are tenacious, and many are warriors.

This Human was small for her species – which meant her eyes were level with the middle of the ears of her opponent. Her skin had multiple marks on them, wounds healed from past battles in the raised and bumpy way Human skin heals, and her limbs were large and clearly muscled. Her clothes were loose and flowing, and her hands were wrapped – from the base of her digits up to the second joint of her arm. Her face, though, drew my attention.

Supposedly, Human faces change drastically as they emote – the movement of skin and muscles in the face being their primary form of expression. Since moving onto the sand, though, the Human’s face had changed as little as Asdelon’s had – even when they bowed to their opponent, even as they moved to opposite ends of the arena.

“Is that your secret weapon?” I still could not pick up on the inflections of Asdelon’s voice, but the way it moved closer to the arena showed it was interested in some way. Exlasl’s pincers clicked together quickly, amusedly – excitedly, even.

“You bet your behind it is. You’re about to meet the person that once tore off my big arm.”

That caught my attention – but the bell had already rung, and the combatants were running at each other face first already.

---

The event lasted almost an entire rotation, and afterwards we still could not immediately contact the Human, because she was still being treated for her injuries. She had promised to contact us on the next rotation, though, which was good because I needed the time to prepare myself.

The brutality and relentlessness of Humans were not exaggerated. When that poor Horenga struck the Human a over and over, she simply took the blows she could not avoid, and a single direct strike to their chest was enough to end the fight. When an Asdelon walked into the ring with her, she did not flinch as she stared down those large eyes, her face did not change as her skin became torn from claw and teeth. And when a Xelthor entered…

They say human hands were not born for fighting – they are dexterous, but with no more reinforcements than the rest of their body. Yet they taught themselves ways to fight with them anyways, and trained until their bones would break stone.

And on and on and on like that she went, battle after battle, until the rotation was done when her final opponent simply dropped from the exhaustion of so many previous battles. And we were to talk to that, because she was old friend of the Captain’s and “more than willing to be violent when necessary”.

I was scared. Terrified. Multiple levels of fear beyond that which the Common tongue could not fully describe. I was pacing the doorway in front of our rented resting place because I had rested and eaten multiple times during the rotation already and felt like I might be sick if I had done any more of either. I wanted to run, and – what? Feed the stereotype that Horenga were mostly weak cowards? Abandon the Captain and Asdelon, after all they’d done for me? But – but we were about to have a Human onboard! A fleshy, hairless, skin and bones death machine –

“Hello?”

The word was in Horengian (the global version of it, anyways) and while it was clear and understandable, it sounded…wrong. Like a machine had spoken it, except the voice was very clearly…

“Human?”

That was a rude way to address her, looking back on it. She did not mind though, instead only tilting her head slightly in a…shockingly familiar expression of confusion.

“Do you…prefer…the Common language?” Despite the pauses and hesitation and the accent (or, well, the complete absence of any accent), she was easily understandable. I was, of course, afraid for my very fragile life so I did not have an answer ready for her.

Luckily for me, it was at that moment that the Captain opened the door to investigate the noise. Xirs antennae rose fully up at the sight of the human, and her mouth curled upwards as she saw Xir (a human gesture of joy, the one that didn’t involve baring teeth).

Xir didn’t even turn on his translator, simply started clicking in his native Drugarian. And she answered back in kind, pulling her lips back and finally showing clear white teeth as she clicked back at him…somehow (Humans and their terrifyingly good mimicry.) The entire conversation afterwards happened entirely in Drugarian, and I wound up serving drinks for them almost out of an absence of other things to do.

The Human did not ever take off her coat – light brown, large, almost seeming to drag her down – and every time I turned my back to her, I could feel myself being watched. When the captain went to go fetch Asdelon, she turned and looked at me directly.

“You never answered my question, earlier.”

Cornered, instantly. Like a true predator.

“Well…I don’t mind whatever language you use, really. It’s not like I particularly like our global language.”

She moved her head up and down – nodding, a gesture of understanding in some cultures. “What’s your…original language, then?”

“Oh, no need to ask, it’s not like you need to learn it to really talk anyways if we’re going to be travelling together.” Deflect, quickly. “Why do you ask, anyways? The Common language was made for this situation, wasn’t it?”

The human tilted her head, again – the lack of moving ears removes much of the subtler indications in body language, so I wasn’t sure if she was just considering me or confused. She was staring at a point above my head, which – well, I appreciated, but still.

Eventually, when she spoke again, it was slow.

“The Common language…it is what we all have in common. The one through line to unite us disparate people. But it is not…comprehensive.”

She took off her coat, then – and I almost jumped when she let it drop onto the floor, its impact as heavy as if it was filled with sand.

“There are sandbags, in my coat.” Well, that explained it. “The gravity here…it is less than that of my home. Dirt, as we call it.”

Her lips curled up, briefly, at the name.

“The rotation cycle here is different as well. The people are of course different. Yet…when I see them…many are not from this world. Many do not need bags. They need other things. Things to maintain temperature, gravity…level of water.”

Her digits were moving, again, four of them thrumming a rhythm (humans sang, of course they did, anything with a voice like that could sing) as she tried to piece together her next words.

“The Common language is the thing we have in common. That we are people is another of those. But reducing so many people to only the things they have in common…it is like reducing a galaxy to a painting. Too much is lost in translation.”

There was a moment of silence. She was staring to a point to my right. I was looking just over her head.

“…we have a saying for that. In my language. Ylimuan Horenga, I mean. It…” I could not help but chitter a little at the irony. “It doesn’t translate very well.”

She tilted her head, a small amount to the other side. When her face changed this time, a little bit of teeth was showing, but she closed her lips almost immediately to hide it.

“Could you…teach it, to me?”

Excerpts from What Is Lost Between The Words by Linome Aiklion Prinou, translated into Earth English.

[corxoran]

The masked apprentice is kazuma but with all his previous motivations and identity as the final remaining asogi stripped from him. This is a version of kazuma who isn't weighed down by his duties or discovering the truth, a version of kazuma who's more tame and reasonable, but also a version of kazuma who has nothing. No history, no overbearing weight of responsibility, no achievements, not even his best friend who he began to lean on. What's worse, having an identity that burdens you, reshapes you, and stresses you, or having no identity at all?

This is also why I love to explore the masked apprentice's relationship with ryunosuke because even with his memories hazy, even if he doesn't recall their relationship in any way, I have the feeling he could fall in love with ryunosuke all over again. Except this time, this version of himself has nothing to hide from ryunosuke, nothing bearing down on him and forcing him to keep that distance. This version of him would want to give himself to ryunosuke entirely because he doesn't have much of any idea what else he's to do. This version of him would allow himself to be a little selfish, a little VULNERABLE, because he has no great purpose to be strong for. He is simply a person, not an asogi.

But ryunosuke knows this older version of him (a version who was idolized and so far from the truth), and the masked apprentice would feel such envy. He isn't kazuma, but he wants to be if only so ryunosuke will love him that way. He wants to remember him.

BUT also even if you lose your memories, MUSCLE memory doesn't just disappear because your brain literally changes when you learn and blah blah brain stuff, anyway - imagine the masked apprentice with habits he can't quite explain, or a feeling that things about ryunosuke just feel familiar. Must talk about ryunosuke's side of this because I most often see people talking a lot about kazuma and not so much about ryunosuke - no way this guy just got into his buddy's suitcase if he didn't trust kazuma and keep an equally large space in his heart for him. Yes yes kazuma needed ryunosuke and loved him and wanted to lean on him, but surely ryunosuke wasn't inert in their relationship. He had motivations of his own, and feelings of his own. He trusted kazuma so much, and held him so high up on a pedestal - he thought the world of kazuma. Now, after all that's happened, all that he's discovered, I don't think he'd change his mind. Ryunosuke's not a "just for show" kind of guy, he wasn't just kazuma's friend for the shits and giggles. After learning all of this, he'd come to realize that he never really knew kazuma at all, only what kazuma wanted to show him to stay that strong, perfect person in his eyes. Because HE WANTED RYUNOSUKE'S LOVE AND REVERENCE BUT ANYWAY - ryunosuke would want to know the REAL kazuma. The guy he followed to britain, the guy he wanted to help in whatever journey he was on. The guy he followed despite knowing he wasn't being told everything because that's just how much faith he had in him. All of this makes me think that ryunosuke doesn't have much going for him. There's no way he's got a whole career plan and parents and all this stuff that he just dropped to go to britain and never mentioned any of it. I believe this indirectly shows us that ryunosuke had no strong convictions of his own, and so this journey with kazuma was something he was able to go on without much holding him back. Even his speech for the contest was apparently shallow, and he doesn't seem as serious about many things as kazuma. He didn't even remember the speech story at first, but every detail was ingrained in kazuma's head.

I think ryunosuke was content just being kazuma's friend, even if he didn't know every single thing about him. He probably found it very remarkable that someone as amazing as kazuma kept choosing him over and over again. But ah... don't take my word for it I'm one of those girlies who hasn't much time or motivation - I haven't even finished the games yet 😢

[youngstarfishphilosopher]

BUNNY . . . BUNNY . . . BUNNY . . .

(PLATONIC) YANDERE!JERVIS TETCH X CHILD READER.

" Oh, you little bunny, I love you so. Stay with me .Oh, please don't go."

Summary: After being chosen to perform in one of your neighbors, Mr.Tetch's, performances. You find yourself in a new and unfamiliar place. That is, untill you see the face of your neighbor sitting across from you . . .

AN: Reader is on the younger side in this story (about 8-12)

Warning ⚠️: DARK FIC, Yandere Behavior, Kidnapping, Hynotizing, Child endangerment, Delusional behavior, Obsessive behavior, Stalking, Creepy Jervis Tetch, Injuries, Drugging

××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

Blinking your eyes open, you slowly lifted your head up as the ticking noise in your little ears began to slowly fade away. Your face was hot and sweaty. A feeling of panic washing over you as you find that there was something on your face.

A mask of sorts.

Trying to lift your hands and remov it, you only let out a shocked little cry of pain as you felt your wrists rub against the rough rope which ties each of your arms down tightly into the chair. Looking down, you could see the red marks slightly from underneath the rope.

Where were you? Where were your mom and dad?

" Well, well" Looking up while in an even more panicked state, you saw through the peephole of your mask, a very familiar man across from you. Looking at you with a dark, malicious fondness: A smile on his lips.

Of course.

You remembered now.

You and your family had gone to a small dinner show in your neighborhood where the would be some performances being done. One of those performances being done by your neighbor: Mr.Tetch.

Mr.Tetch was a rather nice man around the neighborhood and you would often see him a lot due to how small the area you lived in was. Alway a gentleman like and fancy.

He would come talk with your parents sometimes outside of the house, giving you a little smile and wave while you nervously gave one in return, clinging to your mother's leg.

It's not like you didn't like Mr.Tetch. You were just shy, that's all.

He even once sent you and your family a few homemade sweets after finding out you had caught a rather nasty cold. Always being warm and welcoming to you and your family, and even soon turning into a good family friend.

That was probably the reason why when you were picked out from the crowd, you felt as though you could trust him. Trust him as he held his silver pocket-watch in front of your face: Swinging it back and forth. Watching as you slipped out of conciousness and into a willing husk. The ticking noise echoing throughout your ears.

Oh how foolish you were.

" My dear little bunny is finally awake." He puts down the teacup he was holding in his hands back onto the decorative table filled with other teas and sweets made to your very liking.

" Mr . . . M-mr Tetch?" You ask. Hoping Wondering if maybe the mask was just giving you bad eyesight.

Mr.Tetch stood up from his seat. Slowly walking towards you as he spoke.

" Im Sorry, my dear. I now it us all sudden but . . . Oh, I just really couldn't help myself. Don't you see. Such a perfect opportunity: to take you a way and keep you all for me."

Jervis had grown obsessed with you. Completly delusional. But nobody had been able to see it under all his kind words and charm. He didn't really know what it was at first. But for some odd, dare he say mad reason, he grew this dark wish to have you all for himself.

This fatherly urge to care for you . . to spoil you. . . to raise you as his own. It had all become too much for him to take. And the show had been the perfect opportunity.

He had followed you and your family around for a while. And thank goodness you all lived in a smaller part of Gotham because nobody ever suspected a thing when he would show up seemingly at random.

As he continued walking towards you, you pressed your eyes together tightly, hoping that it all was just a bad dream. Two little tears trickled down your eyes because of the burning pain in your wrists.

You let a small wimper as you heard him kneel down in front of you. Gently unclasping the mask from the back of your your head, and pulling it away from your sweaty face.

You let two more teardrops roll down your cheeks as you slowly squinted your eyes back open. Looking down at the man who had done this to you. You can very clearly now see that it was, in fact, Mr.Tetch.

You were wearing a fancy yet comfortable outfit that reminded you of the white rabbit. The one from "Alice in Wonderland" that you liked to watch on rainy days in Gotham.But you didn't care right now. Your mind only focused on how much pain you were in as you watched Mr.Tetch cup your face and wipe your tears with his thumbs.

" I . . . " You tried to say. Jervis gave you a puzzled look. Now grasping the physical pain and discomfort in your face.

" Bunny? " He asked. His smile faltering a bit. " What is it? "What's wrong?"

" I-it. " You finally manage to choke out. Now on the verge of sobbing. " I-it hurts!"

Now Jervis was panicking. " What?" He asked frantically. " What hurt, wha-"

Then he saw them. Your little red wrists from underneath the rope. An expression of rage starting to form on his face: his smile now fading away, fully.

" THOSE ABSOLUTE-"

Of course! Of course those dense, stupid fools had not been careful with you. Oh . . . they were going to be in for it!

Jervis then took a deep breath.

He needed to calm himself down and focus on taking care of you. You were sobbing now. " I-I want my mama!" You cried," I. . . I want my p-papa!"

Jervis just began to shush you. Cooing at you with sweet words. " Don't worry, bunny. Papa's here. Papa's right here."

Quickly, he worked to get the rope off of you. Trying his best not to put you in any more pain during the process. He could see your wrists now, fully in view: red, raw, and bleeding a bit.

" Oh bunny . . . " He cooed pitifully. Your head hung low, and you began to calm yourself down. The relief of freedom from the ropes was helping a lot. " I'm so so sorry."

You flinched and squirmed as you felt him wrap around your torso. Picking you up as he now sat with you in the seat to the right of where you were just sitting.

As you sat there in his lap, you hat the urge to kick and scream. To fight him off. But your tired, anxious, and hurt body wouldn't let you. So you just slumped into his chest. Winching as he gently kissed your sore, little wrists. " I'm so sorry, bunny. It's ok now, I'm here. Im here."

You don't know why you were feeling so comforted by his words. Maybe it was the sound of his voice, your lightheadedness from crying, or both. But it was working, and Jervis knew it.

Looking at one of the deserts, Jervised used his free hand to pull it forward while his other arm remained gently wrapped around you.

" Here" He says, raising a piece of it to your lips. " Will this maybe make it a bit better?"

You look down at the treat for a moment, then look back at Mr.Tetch. You defiantly didn't trust whatever he was trying to give you.

" Not hungry." You lie. In all actuality, you were starving.

" We both know that's a lie, my dear." He replies, a bit of smugness lacing his tone. " You haven't eaten anything in the past seven hours."

" Now, please eat it." He raises the sweet closer to your lips. And you just decided to give in. Hesitantly eating eat. Meanwhile, Jervis seemed pretty satisfied.

He let out a small hum as he watched you struggle to stay awake. Your eyes slowly closing before you snapped them back open: the method becoming less and less effective.

"Bunny, bunny, bunny, you're so funny with your twitching nose." He began to sing softly. " Bunny, bunny, bunny, you're so funny from your head. . . "

You couldn't hear what he was saying anymore. His words were all ruffling together as you slipped out of consciousness. Falling asleep in his loving, twisted embrace.

[waitmyturtles]

Pain, Trust, and Separation in Some Asian Dramas (The Second Post In a Series of Utterly Un-scholastic, Highly Personal Big Meta)......

AKA, Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: The Bad Buddy Rewatch Edition, Part 2 -- How Themes of Pain, Trust, and Separation Create Structure and Narrative in Bad Buddy and Other Asian BLs

[The following is a preamble I use for my Old GMMTV Challenge posts, here we go! What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far.Today, I offer the second of four posts on Bad Buddy, and the second in a Big Meta series on pain in some Asian dramas, including QLs and/or het romances. I'll look today at how ideas of pain in love, trust in love, and separation of partners/family members creates narrative drive in Bad Buddy and other Asian BLs. THIS IS A LONG POST, caveat emptor.]

Links to the BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series are here: part 1, part 2, part 3a, part 3b, and part 4

Well, after a lot of titles and a chewy preamble (thank you for getting through that, y'all!), I'm here to say that I'm combining my two ongoing meta series into one big ol' post here that I've been dying to write for months. In the course of my watching the shows on the Thailand-based Old GMMTV Challenge watchlist, as well as watching shows from my BL gateway of Japan, I've noticed that the themes of pain and trust in love, along with voluntary or involuntary separation, have been used to create dramatic and narrative structure within Asian dramatic stories to many emotional effects.

I'm celebrating the incredible Thai BL drama that is Bad Buddy in my OGMMTVC series at the moment, and within my Big Meta series on pain in Asian dramas, I examine how themes of pain so very often harken back to artistic, and even traditional, viewpoints of how pain, suffering, and melancholy are natural cultural assumptions within many collectivist Asian societies. In my first Big Meta on pain and suffering in Asian dramas, I wrote that "accepting pain and suffering is a part of the life we decide to live, from an Asian cultural perspective." Suffering is a naturally assumed part of life, a very distinct and identified part of a Buddhist's lived life, and even outside of Buddhism, accepting and living with difficulties of all kinds -- wealth disparities, the struggle for a good education and/or a successful career, the struggle to conform to collectivist familial and/or social expectations, etc. -- are extremely common themes that are unwound on in Asian lives on a minute-to-minute basis. The idea that an Asian must live with pain is often a root of intergenerational trauma, passed along from generation to generation of Asian children-to-adults. The social mores by which Asians are raised and live, to assume what Westerners might call a lack of unconditional parental love and affection, are certainly in part rooted in an assumption that living with pain and without the, say, luxury of turning over one's emotions at any given moment, are an automatic given.

As I've plodded through the OGMMTVC watchlist, I noticed very often that separation of people -- whether those people are lovers, children/parents, or simply just adults within a group -- is often a major narrative turning point in the course of a dramatized relationship. Of course it would be; it's a common trope within the romance genre, for instance.

But I find the separation of people otherwise connected to each other -- and the assumed pain of that separation, and the trust that people may have to return to each other -- particularly fascinating within the realm of Asian dramas, for reasons relating to the assumption of pain and suffering in one's life within Asian cultures that I mentioned above. In other words, the pain of separation, and the trust that one might have that one person will come back to another person -- are givens within the scope of Asian life.

In the following dramas, I note that separation is either a central storytelling point, or is a central focus of side characters:

1) The Thai filmmaker, Aof Noppharnach, has explored separation of people/lovers in many of his shows, including Still 2gether, A Tale of Thousand Stars (in multiple forms), and in Bad Buddy (also in multiple forms, romantic and/or familial).

2) Also from Thailand, Until We Meet Again and I Promised You The Moon are two non-GMMTV dramas in which separation of lovers plays an important concluding narrative role.

3) From Japan, the movie version of Cherry Magic: 30 Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! captures an important central narrative of separation that leads the franchise's two protagonists, Adachi and Kurosawa, to explore depth in honesty and intimacy that they may not have otherwise achieved in their everyday lives.

The painful separation that occurs in Aof Noppharnach's shows is most often related to the outside forces of life as it needs to be lived -- very often economically -- within or external to Thailand. In Bad Buddy, Pran leaves for Singapore for two years. I'm going to unwind much more on Pran leaving for Singapore in the final installment of my Bad Buddy OGMMTVC meta series, particularly by way of how he can do it, emotionally. But I want to offer a quick note about Pran's departure that the show gives a hint to (despite the pain that we feel in our hearts for Pat's loneliness from Pran, as depicted so beautifully by Ohm Pawat and his silent and longing existence as Pat in the first half of the Bad Buddy series finale). The BBS finale has Pran stating that he'll only be away for two years, and that the pay and the opportunity for an excellent architecture job were better in Singapore. In conversation with the fabulous Thai blogger, @recentadultburnout, RAB mentioned that this is a common occurrence among young Thais -- to move overseas for better job opportunities.

In spite of my heart breaking a bit for Pran being away from Pat when I first learned about his leaving for Singapore -- when RAB put Pran's departure in that context, I had to slap my cheek a bit. Because! I'm a child of Asian immigrants. Separation from family for better economic opportunities is a HUGE part of our paradigm of life between continents. As my Asia-based uncle, my mother's brother, once put it, in regards to my mother: "one of the children in our families always had to move away." For my mother's family, it was my mom who shipped off. Besides individuals seeking better economic opportunities for themselves, the economies of many Asian countries are dependent on the reception of remittances from overseas family members sending money back to their home countries, as my mom did for years; the Philippines is particularly notable for having a nearly 9% contribution from overseas remittances to its gross domestic product. In other words? The separation of loved ones is literally built into the financial frameworks of many Asian nations.

The separation of children or partners to overseas locales for the sake of better salaries and/or opportunities is simply a more assumed part of the cultural paradigm, I'd argue, in Asia than in the West. Family separations for jobs are extremely common in Asia; in the West, I'm not sure they are as assumed, especially for extensive separations, as the value placed on keeping a family unit together for cultural or spiritual reasons seems to be more a part of the Western fabric of life (despite our high rate of divorce).

We see an even more permanent economic separation happen in Still 2gether between two side characters -- Type, played by Toptap Jirakit, who is Tine's (Win Metawin) brother, and Man (Mike Chinnarat), who is Sarawat's (Bright Vachiwarit) friend. Man chased after Type during the first 2gether season; in Still 2gether, they're navigating their committed relationship, as Type contemplates, then accepts, a permanent job offer in Phuket, hours away from their home base in Bangkok.

As @lurkingshan put it, I might be the only person on the planet contemplating Type's and Man's relationship (lmao, it do be true), but I found Type's last conversation with Man, on the beach, to be particularly direct and moving for someone who has no immediate plans to move back to the side of the person he's dating.

I think about this scene against the structure of the short series that is Still 2gether, which is centered around the protagonists of Sarawat and Tine being temporarily separated as they prepare to compete in a university-wide tournament. Sarawat has the most lovely contemplation on love during this separation, and even Aof Noppharnach himself admits that the glance that Sarawat and Tine give to each other as they pass each other in the lead-up to the ultimate tournament is his favorite scene he's ever filmed (!!!) (and that scene is sooooo reminiscent of Pran's and Pat's pinky-hold after their public "break-up").

In other words: Still 2gether is ALL about separation, and contemplating the strength of love relationships in the face of those separations. While Sarawat and Tine will get back together, after that tournament -- Type and Man are separated for the foreseeable future. There is no end indicated to the patience that Type wants from Man. The conversation is just, THERE, and hanging -- there's an acknowledgment that long-distance relationships are tough, but Type isn't offering to quit his job and move back to Bangkok. Instead, Type and Man are left to accept the reality that there is no end in sight to their separation.

And I think this was incredibly bold of Aof Noppharnach to include in a GMMTV BL that otherwise ended happily for Tine and Sarawat, the main protagonists. What I admire about Aof's works are these sly inclusions of open-ended, sometimes melancholy non-resolutions, either for his main or his support characters, that leave us as viewers often slightly unsatisfied or unfulfilled. He did this in particular with the character of Aof in Gay OK Bangkok, a web series that he screenwrote in 2016; and many might say that Pran being away in Singapore is also not the most satisfying of endings for our beloved PatPran in Bad Buddy. To me, these decisions to do this artistically are just incredibly reminiscent, again, of the kind of pain that we as Asians have been culturally attuned to accept, for the sake of economics, and/or for the sake of the betterment of our loved ones.

Besides economic separations in Aof Noppharnach's works, we also have separations related to family demands and desires. In A Tale of Thousand Stars and Our Skyy 2 x A Tale of Thousand Stars, we see Tian leaving Phupha's side for two years to study for a graduate degree at Tian's mom's insistence; and we see Phupha refusing to join Tian, after Tian has graduated and moved back to Pha Pun Dao, on trips Tian takes back to Bangkok to celebrate his birthday with his parents.

When I rewatched ATOTS earlier this year, I noted that both Phupha and Tian were remarkably bad communicators throughout the original series -- and I posited that, in large part, their terrible communication was borne out by way of the both of them being raised in traditionally masculine Asian households that seemed to not allow for leeway regarding emotional revelations. BOTH Phupha and Tian were expected and intended to follow in the footsteps and demands of their family members. To the end of the ATOTS storyline in Our Skyy 2, Phupha brings up his parents -- and he hears what he has been wanting to confirm from Tian's parents, in their desire to have Phupha take care of Tian for the rest of their lives.

Phupha in particular needed to have multiple gateways opened to him, vis à vis Tian's family, in order to properly and openly confirm his permanent love and commitment to Tian. If Phupha didn't have that? He was willing to be separated from Tian, either temporarily, or at length. Phupha needed a kind of culturally accepting door opened to him -- as a man raised in what we assume to be a rural and traditional environment that may very well have not allowed for a gay man to live openly and honestly. Phupha indeed follows in his father's footsteps, to the extent of never leaving Pha Pun Dao, and demanded that he have Tian's family's approval before making the final commitment to Tian to love Tian forever.

I find the cultural nuances of nuclear family separation, or separation encouraged by nuclear family, to be particularly heartbreaking in many of Aof Noppharnach's works. We know that Jim and Jam, brother and sister in Moonlight Chicken, ran away from their Isan hometown as youths to find their lives in Pattaya, where we meet them in the context of that show. But separation either from nuclear family, or more impactfully, done by nuclear family, is most evident in Bad Buddy.

Besides Pran voluntarily leaving for Singapore, we know that Pran has been involuntarily separated from Pat before -- when Pran was transferred to a boarding school in 10th grade by his mother, Dissaya. Before that transfer, Pran and Pat were technically "separated" by their parents in so far as they were not supposed to become friends -- all while competing heavily against each other in every category of life.

That boarding school transfer? That wasn't just separating Pran from Pat. What I found remarkable about that separation during my recent BBS rewatches is that Dissaya HERSELF chose to be physically separated from her own son, for the sake of her rivalry with Pat's father, Ming.

I'm thinking about this particularly from the words she used with Pran as they sat at breakfast together before Pran started his second year at university, when Dissaya said that Pran could date anyone, men or women, as long as he "didn't date [the next door kid]."

My interpretation of that perspective is that Dissaya did not want Pran to relieve the heartbreak that she herself experienced when she was close with Ming in her teenage years.

In other words: she chose to send her son away in the face of her ongoing, lifelong fear that Ming and his family would once again wreak havoc on her and her clan.

In the continuation of the intergenerational trauma wrought upon Pat and Pran by their parents -- as a mother myself, this seems to be particularly egregious. Dissaya would have rather had her son AWAY FROM HER, than to contemplate her son even being WITHIN physical proximity to Pat in the context of her hatred of Pat's father, Ming, and the fear that she had that the Jindapats would negatively influence the Siridechawats again.

(The wonderful @telomeke reminded me, in conversation on this topic, that the first question Dissaya asks Pran, after learning about the first faculty fight in episode 1 when Pran re-encounters Pat for the very first time, was, "Did he hurt you, Pran?" Dissaya cannot bear to allow the Jindapats to hurt her son, or her family, ever again.)

I wrote in my first Big Meta on pain and suffering that Asian parenting expectations and mores are far more conditional than they are in the West, as parenting mores in the West are centered around unquestioned and unconditional love from parents to children. So much of Bad Buddy meta out there focuses on the internal experiences of Pran and Pat. When I sat back to think about Dissaya making the decision for herself to be separated from her son for years -- and then to also contemplate pulling Pran FROM COLLEGE when she learns that Pat goes to Pran's university -- I mean. We know Dissaya and Ming both tried their best to embody their hatred of each other into their children. But Dissaya takes it a couple steps further, by attempting to literally control Pran's physical existence vis à vis Pat, which -- and I'm going to sound like a judgmental Westerner here, even as an Asian -- strikes me as out of line by way of just pure emotional projection onto one's children.

When Pran goes to Singapore, at the end of the series, it's out of his own volition. Again, I'll write more about this at the end of my BBS OGMMTVC meta series. But what he experienced by ways of many TYPES of separation from Pat throughout his life -- competitively, emotionally, and then physically -- are extensive. He was physically separated from Pat by Dissaya. He was theoretically "separated" from Pat emotionally, by being discouraged in having a friendship with Pat. He is physically separated from Pat *again* when he goes to Singapore. And I posit later in this piece that Pat and Pran had another theoretical "separation" when they are pretending to be broken up throughout the course of their relationship.

When I think about what teenage Pran must have felt to be *physically sent away* -- BY and FROM his own family, for their sake of his family's desires to avoid ANOTHER family -- it explains a hell of a lot more about Pran's tendency to dissociate, particularly during stressful times. (We see this when he's alone at the demolished bus stop, and cutely in Our Skyy 2, as Pat encourages a grumpy Pran to go to Pha Pun Dao.)

And where Pat balanced Pran out -- where Pat could offer the kind of companionship, and relaxed and equitable communication that Pran had never had with his family -- was where Pran could finally experience truly open and SAFE love from and with another person, another person who wouldn't *send him away* if Pran didn't play by their rules. Instead, Pat fought by Pran's side, and Pran was willing to fight, too, and they remained together, and safe in their love and trust.

Whew. Dissaya separating Pran from his own family, from herself -- to leave him alone at boarding school -- seriously punches me in the gut, especially as a mother myself. I'm thinking about a teenager, on the cusp of adulthood, alone to contemplate his unending love for Pat, and I'm like.... I wouldn't leave a kid alone like that for a moment. But for Dissaya, her husband, and their pride? It seemed to be a worthwhile decision in that moment. A decision that we know would blow up in their faces in episode 10 of Bad Buddy.

In Pran's first separation from Pat -- Pran did not have personal agency. He did have agency later on, as he moved to Singapore, which again, I'll contemplate in a further meta.

Two instances where I was impressed by protagonists leveraging their agency vis à vis temporary separations from their partners was in Until We Meet Again and in I Promised You The Moon.

UWMA's Pharm was first and foremost presented as a blushing maiden. HOWEVER: Pharm demonstrated quite a bit of sexual agency early in the series. He was forward in his crush on Dean. He contemplated openly being gay. And he wasn't afraid to push Dean away when Dean was moving too fast sexually.

At the end of the series, after Dean and Pharm have resolved their spiritual connection vis à vis the embodied spirits of Korn and Intouch meeting once more -- Pharm wants to know if the love between him and Dean is real, and independent of the influence of the spirits of Korn and Intouch. So: Pharm asks for a break.

Throughout UWMA, Dean is the obvious seme, and Pharm is the blushing uke. I squealed in DELIGHT when I first watched Pharm asking for the break. Yes, Pharm loved Dean -- and what I saw in Pharm's asking for a temporary separation was truly out of that love, to confirm between the both of them that their relationship was very much indeed a forever relationship. God, I get chills thinking about it: Pharm was safe enough in his sphere with Dean to ask for and to GET the agency-driven space that HE NEEDED to feel fully confident in the relationship. That was a risky move that paid off for the two guys in dividends in the end. Dean had no choice but to say yes there.

The fabulous Oh-aew in I Promised You The Moon goes even further than Pharm. He fucking breaks up with Teh! After Teh cheated on Oh-aew! YES, HOMEY, YES! No wibbling on Oh-aew's end. Oh-aew was devastated, yes. But he knew he had to have Teh out of his life in that moment, for the sake of Oh-aew's own happiness, growth, and development. He even rejects Teh's reach-out at the end of their college careers.

What stuck me as so golden about the ending of IPYTM was that that break-up wasn't actually presented as temporary. They were apart for OVER A YEAR (thank you kindly to @shortpplfedup for the temporal fact-check!). Oh-aew held his ground. He needed his time and space. He needed to grow! And he valued that, individually.

I'm celebrating these two instances of agency-driven separations because of the style of their intention vis à vis the protagonists asking for, needing, and leveraging these separations. With the economic and involuntary separations I talked about earlier -- it's like there was a higher need, whether it was for money, a better career opportunity, fear, or selfishness on the part of a family to create the separation.

With Pharm and Oh-aew: the separations they demanded were purely personal and for their own growth. We know now that Pharm and Oh-aew get their endings with their partners. Pharm has a purely happy ending with Dean in Between Us. Oh-aew's ending with Teh is open-ended -- we don't know what chaos Teh will wreak next -- but at least we know they're navigating that chaos together again.

The last drama I wanted to take a look at regarding pain, trust, and separation is the fabulous movie continuation of Cherry Magic: 30 Years of Virginity Will Make You a Wizard?! (I always love writing ?! whenever I talk about Cherry Magic, lol).

The central separation in the movie of the two protagonists, Adachi and Kurosawa, comes about when Adachi is transferred to Nagasaki for work. As @neuroticbookworm and @lurkingshan can attest to: a Western viewer of Japanese BLs will often find themselves screaming to a screen, "JUST TALK ALREADY!," and a uniquely common aspect of Japanese doramas is that so much of communication in Japanese culture is silent, unsaid, kept internal by collectivist social pressures to not make waves with another person -- which automatically creates ongoing questions of trust between partners. When Adachi (Akaso Eiji) shares with Kurosawa (Machida Keita) that Adachi will be moving, Kurosawa shares in words that he's happy for Adachi, but through very simple body language, communicates that he is feeling otherwise.

Later in the movie, Adachi gets into an accident in Nagasaki, and Kurosawa rushes to be by Adachi's side. Kurosawa is clearly traumatized. And Kurosawa finally reveals his feelings about the entire situation -- a rare display of direct emotional confession.

We think that Adachi moved to Nagasaki for this job opportunity -- separating himself from the incredibly devoted and head-over-heels-in-love-with-Adachi Kurosawa. Adachi knows well enough that Kurosawa is suffering in this separation. But later in the movie, after Adachi has moved back with Kurosawa, do we learn Adachi's true intentions. Adachi wants to make himself invaluable at work -- so that Adachi's and Kurosawa's shared company will not separate them if the company finds out about their relationship.

This particular conversation between Adachi and Kurosawa -- after their separation, after they've moved in together -- is a huge turning point in the movie for Adachi, who had usually been the reluctant uke in their relationship prior to this moment. In this conversation, Adachi expresses his fear that outside forces will eventually separate them, and he wants to do what he can to ensure the safety of their relationship.

To me, this is incredibly reminiscent of the compromises Pran and Pat make in Bad Buddy to keep their relationship secret -- another theoretical "separation" -- from their parents for the health, safety, and viability of their relationship.

As well, this conversation between Adachi and Kurosawa moves forward into Adachi's desire to come out to their families. He was inspired by the immediate aftermath of the accident, in which Kurosawa was the last person to find out that Adachi had gotten hurt -- only after Adachi's family and company were notified.

The nuances of this separation between Adachi and Kurosawa -- and what the separation LED TO, which was an eventual and permanent commitment between Adachi and Kurosawa -- are incredibly layered. Adachi made an economic separation from Kurosawa. But it was also rooted in his desire to acclimate his company to his company's dependence on Adachi, so that the company would choose Adachi's contribution to the company over the potentially taboo reality of his same-sex relationship with a colleague in Kurosawa. In other words: he wanted to leverage the separation and his work performance upon his return, to render the company no choice in choosing Adachi's economic performance over his personal and private choices.

(One insight into Japanese culture is that for decades, Japanese corporations have wanted their employees to be married, to complete a seamless connection between household and "office" families. The Japanese BL Kinou Nani Tabeta?/What Did You Eat Yesterday? makes reference to the fact that the main protagonist, Shiro, becomes an independent lawyer because, as a gay man, he may have been pressured to take a wife in another, more group-oriented corporate setting.)

AND, following this, Adachi wanted to come out to his and Kurosawa's families, to also acclimate them to their relationship, so that their families would also not threaten the sanctity and safety of their relationship. And his gamble worked -- and their families accepted them, and they were able to make a permanent commitment to each other.

Without a strategically economic separation, Adachi and Kurosawa could not have achieved key moments of communication that led to their ability to find safety in their external environments, and make a personal and private permanent commitment to each other. The separation to Nagasaki was Adachi's lever to move their relationship forward.

It's so nuanced, so layered, and so strategic on Adachi's end, to use the work separation and his commitment to his company as such a motivator to propel his relationship forward and permanently with Kurosawa -- especially vis à vis the unique nuances of spoken and unspoken communication in Japanese society, which are remarkably different than the styles of communication we see in Thai dramas.

In Pran's and Pat's conclusion in the Thailand of Bad Buddy, they go in the opposite direction: for the sanctity and safety of their relationship, they act out a break-up scenario (with Dissaya telling Pran, "come back to your family," ha), and keep their committed relationship a secret. And this happens *two years* before the context of an actual, physical separation when Pran decides to move to Singapore after graduation.

It's a bit of a switcheroo from what we'd expect by way of open vs. closed communication between Japan and Thailand. But both scenarios, from Cherry Magic to Bad Buddy, work brilliantly well to ensure that all relationships are safe and solidified.

I'm not sure that I can say, globally, that separation from one's nuclear family, or separation from a partner, are common occurrences in manifested everyday reality. As I mentioned before, the economies of many countries are dependent on the physical separation of their citizens to other locales to send back monetary remittances. But more often than not -- when partners are partnered, they tend to want to stay by each other's sides.

I love that many Asian dramas do not shy away from the many realities as to why partners or children may be voluntarily or involuntarily separated from loved ones. Our beloved dramas show us the devastation of involuntary separations, as rendered by Dissaya unto Pran. We see that economic separations can actually LEAD to a solidifying of relationships in the case of Adachi and Kurosawa. We see that family-motivated separations, in the cause of Phupha and Tian, simply needed the investment of time for their relationship to reach a point of comfortable commitment. We see that agency-driven separations by Pharm and Oh-aew can lead to emotional clarity. And, we see that theoretical, secret-kept "separations," of the kind that Pat and Pran created for themselves, to protect their relationship, were risks worth taking, simply for them to be together and happy.

Pain and happiness are not emotions independent of each other. At least in the eyes of my Asian cultures, human beings embody all emotions, all the time. Humans are certainly primed, internally and socially, to seek happiness and balance. But as I've posited here in this post -- is there pleasure without pain? The pain of separation, the trust that partners and family members can learn from each other through separation, and the lessons and communicative ability to solidify relationships after the obstacles of separation, are all themes of life that, I think, are worth unwinding on, in glorious emotional detail. And I love that our beloved Asian dramas do not shy away from these examinations.

(Tagging @dribs-and-drabbles and @solitaryandwandering by request! If you'd like to be tagged, please let me know!)

[Well, this one was a doozy -- if you got through it all, I thank you! Next up, next week, is another post I've been dying to write for months. I had the opportunity to engage in lengthy conversation with a number of FABULOUS Asian Tumblr bloggers, all of us Bad Buddy stans, to reflect on our experiences as Asian reviewers watching BBS and to talk about what we related to. I have a list, a WHOLE LIST! of themes to expound on. I'm calling it Asian Cultural Touchpoints Within Bad Buddy. And I may need to split it into two posts, because there's a lot to talk about. Join me and my friends next week in our continued Bad Buddy brain-rot sesh!

Here is the status of the Old GMMTV Challenge watchlist. Tumblr's web editor loves to jack with this list; please head on over to this link for the very latest updates!

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) (review here) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 5) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 6) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 7) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 8) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 9) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 10) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 11) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 12) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 13) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 14) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 15) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 16) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 17) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 18) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 19) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 20) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) (and notes on my UWMA rewatch here) 21) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 22) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 23) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 24) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) (review here) 25) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 26) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (re-review here) 27) Lovely Writer (2021) (review here) 28) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) (review here) 29) I Promised You the Moon (2021) (review here) 30) Not Me (2021-2022) (review here) 31) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 32) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) (review here) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch (The BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series is ongoing: preamble here, part 1 here, and more reviews to come) 34) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] (watching) 35) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 36) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For the Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 37) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 38) The Eclipse OGMMTVC Rewatch For the Sake of Re-Analyzing an Politics-Focused Show After Not Me 39) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 40) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 41) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 42) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) 43) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here)  44) Wedding Plan (2023) 45) Only Friends (2023) (tag here)]

[mythserene]

I got a message I figured I would try to answer out here because updating my less-informed, earlier Lewisohn musings has been on my To Do list for a while.

From anonymous:

I am enjoying your Lewisohn analysis. Do you think he has taken a bribe from the Lennon estate to play down J&Y’s heroin addiction? I can think of no other reason he would lie about this. He is obviously aware how stupid it makes him look.

Thank you for the question, anonymous. Back in October when I first started publicly posting about Mark Lewisohn I knew a lot less about him and hadn't been able to form any sort of picture about what happened between him and Paul/Apple. Or the ongoing and seemingly increasing enmity between he and Paul (+ the Beatles' families), or the anger that seems to be almost boiling over in Lewisohn these past few years.

And for what it's worth—as far as I can understand—even Yoko has locked Lewisohn out. Apple is a unified front on this one.

I do not think that anyone has gotten to Lewisohn to make him say these things, or even that he is aware that he looks stupid. I think that Beatles' fans are extremely straight-laced in the best way, and that the habit of trusting someone like Lewisohn dies hard. Until AKOM's Fine Tuning series I'm not aware of anyone ever putting forward a concerted challenge to even his most extreme narratives. The voluminous word count of the book and the simple fact of all those citations lulled most people into complacency. Until Fine Tuning no one had looked further, or if they did they were shy about stating it. People in the Beatles' community are afraid of criticizing Lewisohn, and I've heard that again and again these past few months. But AKOM went for it, made a persuasive case, and opened the floodgates. (And gave me an opportunity and an outlet for the problems I had been finding, and supported me. Phoebe and Daphne are the only reason you're reading this.)

Back to the question.

First of all, I think that Lewisohn genuinely idolizes John, and I think he is fanatically committed to the narrative of John-as-demigod. And I tend to think that he is now perhaps more committed to his telling of the Beatles' story than even to the beliefs that undergird his narrative. But the other half of the equation that the Solomon-like part of my mind failed to accept for a long time is just how much Mark Lewisohn seems to hate Paul McCartney. And I do not use that word lightly.

When AKOM started their Fine Tuning series I was half-excited and half-nervous. I am a citations freak. I like original sources and I basically mine books and podcasts to find sources and hunt them down. I also came into the Beatles without the background that most fans have. I didn't understand the John vs Paul fight in Beatles historiography. I loved John and Paul both, for different reasons, but mostly I loved them together. What initially caught me about Tune In were all the claims that were completely unsourced, and before long I began discovering more troubling issues, but after a while I forced myself to set it aside because I was just frustrating myself and it seemed like a waste of time to argue with Mark Lewisohn on my computer.

It was Shells and Barriers that made a new thought intrude and begin to become inescapable: Mark Lewisohn must genuinely detest Paul McCartney. This was the episode I most dreaded because, well, because I was ignorant of a lot. I expected it to be the most subjective, and I have a lot of empathy for John as I am an only child who lost both parents a month apart. It makes you feel like you have no tether at all. Like you're floating in space and that any breeze might carry you off. There's no cushion and you feel exposed.

But that episode did something that I was unable to do on my own—that I didn't have the breadth of knowledge to comprehend on my own—it filled in a lot of gaps that I was unaware of. And I simply could not fathom any reason for most of how Lewisohn framed Paul's childhood besides pure loathing. Daphne's word counts are pretty incredible, too. John is jealous twice, both times of Cynthia. (+a "Jealous Guy" mention.) The numbers that stood out to me right away and have stuck in my memory were Paul being "jealous" eight times and "envious" five times = thirteen. And even beyond Lewisohn making Paul out to be completely unmoved by his mother's death and painting the aftermath as safe and comforting, it's notable that Paul is only said to be "loved" four times in the entire book, and he is only said to be loved by John. (Stu is said to be loved nine times.) I realized when I listened to that episode that my picture of Paul's relationship with Mike had been refrigerated and flattened out by Tune In, all without me noticing it. Because Lewisohn doesn't hit you over the head with things, instead he subtly and slyly frames things in a careful and deceitful way, and that framing shapes the reader's opinions.

The case of bias in his writing about John and Paul's childhoods is not easy to make, especially in the ways I like to make a case—finding discreet objective evidence that can be straightforwardly disproved—but AKOM's overall case in that episode was devastating, and there were several details that stood out to me and have stuck with me. Jim hitting Paul until Paul basically threatened to hit back as a teenager and the unnoted redaction of that in a John quote Lewisohn uses is fairly indefensible, and the choice to leave out that Jim was suicidal after Mary's death and to instead paint a picture of a loving and nurturing extended family swooping in that almost sounds better than what the boys had had before losing their mum impressed me as almost malicious when patiently laid out. And then there were a lot of smaller details that struck me. Lewisohn describes Mike as "shattered irrevocably" by Mary's death, which is contrasted with Paul's callousness. (And the way the "shattered" sentence is written it also leaves the impression that Paul wasn't that close to his mum, although Lewisohn is careful not to say that in so many words.)

Jim broke the news to the boys. Mike, who was especially close to his mother, burst into tears, a core part of him shattered irrevocably. Paul's response was less expected and not at all what Jim or anyone else wanted to hear. ... Eight years later, Mike looked back with candor on these first few days ... "Paul made some flippant remark which sounded pretty callous at the time" ...

(Emphasis mine)

Then in a Frankenquote that is half author interview, Paul is quoted as saying about both he and John losing their mothers:

“We had a bond there that we never talked about—but each of us knew that had happened to the other ... I know he was shattered, but at that age you're not allowed to be devastated, and particularly as young boys, teenage boys, you just shrug it off.”

And Dusty Durband, Paul's English Master, was quoted in Chris Salewicz's 1986 biography of Paul describing him as “shattered.”

“Paul had a bad break, his mother had died. He did go through a bit of a rough patch then. I think it shattered him a lot. Maybe it made him turn to other things like practicing his guitar...”

It's like Lewisohn is screwing with Paul by keeping that adjective away from him and even teasing him by handing it to his brother, just out of Paul's reach. I hesitate to write that because it probably sounds as extreme as some of Lewisohn's conclusions, but my Lewisohn immersion has made it seem completely logical, and in fact, almost undeniable. It's a small detail that doesn't seem that important in isolation, but even with just the context of the rest of that AKOM episode it was a piece of evidence that my mind caught and held onto. Lewisohn, by his own testimony, is a Paul watcher. He obsessively listens to, watches, and reads McCartney interviews and is forever bringing them up on podcasts, waxing on about how he understands Paul McCartney like no one else. (This is invariably followed by an example that is freakishly twisted inside Lewisohn's mind to reveal some negative aspect of Paul's character.)

I don't think that Paul and Mark Lewisohn had some great falling out. Instead what I think occurred added up to a thousand paper cuts in Lewisohn's very thin skin. He felt humiliated by Paul one too many times, and he pushed every humiliation down into his gut, coated them in bile, and remembered them.

Last November there was a Lewisohn interview in a Spanish language magazine, Jot Down, where Lewisohn tells one of these little anecdotes. They're always couched in neutral language, and he usually says how whatever happened was understandable, but the theme is the same: some perceived slight by Paul that he had to swallow in silence. (The translation is 98% Google translate. I corrected three or four pronouns that it had mistranslated, but nothing else.)

“He didn't say goodbye to me, he didn't give me a hint of grace.”

Q. I remember a television program in which Paul was asked for a detail of his own life, and he answered "ask Mark Lewisohn." LEWISOHN: Yes. It was a little weird, sometimes. On one occasion, for example, I worked with George Martin on a television documentary about Sgt. Pepper. But he also kept working with Paul. So there we were, on Abbey Road interviewing McCartney with all the equipment, the television cameras and everything else. Then the director of the documentary tells me to let him know if Paul makes a mess with any information, so that I can ask him to repeat his answer with the correct information. I sat there, hoping that I didn't have to intervene. But Paul said he had the idea of making the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band flying back from the United States. And I knew that hadn't happened like that. Let's see, I wasn't there, but I know he had the idea coming back from Nairobi. In fact, he didn't fly to the United States until Sgt. Pepper was finished. And, on the return trip, he was already thinking about the Magical Mystery Tour. I usually let these details go, they're really not that important. Except if they are recording him for a documentary about the 25 years of Sgt. Pepper that was going to be broadcast on television. So, while the cameraman was changing the movie roll, I approached the director and said "Paul was coming back from Nairobi and not from the United States when he had the idea for the album, I don't know what you want to do about it." And the director goes and releases him, "Paul, Mark says you didn't understand it well. That you didn't have the idea when you were flying back from the United States." To which Paul stared at me and replied "Yes, I did." It was a very uncomfortable, difficult and embarrassing moment when I wanted the floor to swallow me. He didn't say goodbye to me, he didn't give me a hint of grace. And I had to learn when to say something and when not to. But, in that place, my job was to say something. I was paid to say something. So I said something, and he didn't like it. Nobody likes to be corrected.

Sorry, anonymous. I wrote far more than an answer because I used your question as an excuse to get on the record an addendum and some corrections to my earlier musings, but I do not think Lewisohn has any idea of how ridiculous he sounds. He is insulated from almost all criticism and is constantly praised as a sort of Beatles' god. He worships John and wants to shape the Beatles' story to redeem him, but I also think he believes in the story that he has shaped. I think he is lost and frustrated at being locked out by Apple—and actively thwarted by them—and that has made his criticisms of Paul much more public. It's as if his new job is just going on podcasts and taking pot shots at Paul McCartney. And for Mark Lewisohn it's clear that the Holy Grail is the breakup. He is intent on recasting Allen Klein as much more of a positive force than history has given him credit for, and Lewisohn has foreshadowed a parallel between Klein and Epstein by manipulating all the evidence about Paul and Brian. He is going to cast Paul as the bad guy and John as the hero. As always. And if John and Yoko are addicted to heroin that throws his whole rewrite into chaos. He simply cannot concede that there was a real issue. John cannot be fully human. He robs John of what makes John so magnificent.

So everyone else has to be wrong.

Just for fun before I go, another narrative Lewisohn was working on putting forward in this “John was actually right” case, was rehabilitating Magic Alex. “Get Back” seemingly thwarted this line of nonsense, but after bingeing the Nagras Lewisohn was seriously pushing the idea that Magic Alex had been slandered by history and that John's judgment about him had been vindicated. It takes listening to a lot of these interviews—something that I can only do in small doses—to begin to see the fuller picture that Lewisohn was wedded to, and Magic Alex is as much a part of that as the heroin comments are. They are all of a piece.

“And they just had to get mobile gear in. So, big deal.”

In the end, I think what Mark Lewisohn means by “right” is different than what “right” means to everyone else. “Right” to Mr. Lewisohn means warped quotes that tell a fabricated story of Paul McCartney not wanting Brian Epstein as his manager. “Right” means Magic Alex being a wizard, unfairly tarnished by the lesser Beatles. “Right” means Yoko being John's artistic savior, and of a heroin addiction dreamed up by bad actors who don't understand things the way he does. A myth perpetrated by those who cannot grasp the truth. And I genuinely believe that Mark Lewisohn revels in the power of being able to take Paul McCartney's own story away from him and use it to hurt him and to hurt his legacy. To use his power over the Beatles' story to wound Paul, the way he feels that Paul wounded him. In so many interviews when Lewisohn talks about Paul he seethes. (It's quite impressive.)

And I think the thought of Lewisohn's retelling slipping away or being supplanted is a very threatening idea in his mind. I think it scares him. I think he is holding onto a delusion of his own making, and he fears that he will not be able to finish his life's work of solidifying that warped tale into historical fact.

Nothing is Real - Lewisohn seethe quick mix

[writer-rubes]

Two Magical Friends

A FNAF:SB AU fanfic

Notes: Before I go in- hi. First writing piece on the page? Cool. Sorry to those who prefer AO3, but honestly I have friends there who don’t know about this fandom, so- Guess I’m putting my self indulgent stuff here!

Also, big thanks to @ayyy-imma-ninja for giving me the power to do this. Seriously, you have unleashed a monster /j I decided to start simple, with an AU that I’ve seen a lot on your page, and one that I love!

Anyways, enough stalling. Let’s hop in with a little bit of wholesome fluff!

The Fairy AU Sun and Moon belong to @ayyy-imma-ninja

————————————————————————————————————————————

Julia has always believed in fairies. She watched every animated movie featuring them known to man, she has countless fairy dolls, all she draws are fairies, and a lot of her clothes are what she imagines that fairies wear. She loved fairies, and always wanted to see one and become it’s friend.

The rest of her family kept thinking she was getting a bit too intense with her belief in fairies. She was six years old and her obsession has not died down. They would have thought it would have gone down a little, but no. Her obsession had only grown with her. Every day, she left a small bowl of candy outside in the backyard, thinking it would lure fairies in. Her mother kept telling her to stop since it attracted wasps, but she kept doing it. She was determined to lure in a fairy.

One afternoon, Julia was following her mother around, trying to convince her to take her with the family to the aquarium, which was where her mother and father were going.

“I’m sorry, Julia. But we’re going there to write a newspaper article on it, so we get free access. We tried to get them to let you come too, but they wouldn’t allow it. The only way to get you in is to buy you a ticket, and we can’t afford it right now.”

“But, Mommy!”

“I swear, I’ll take you once we get paid for the article. We’ll be back tonight. There’s leftover noodles in the fridge if you get hungry, sweetheart. I love you. Oh, and one more thing.” She bent down and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Clean up that candy bowl you left in the backyard. It attracts wasps.”

Her parents left the house, and Julia watched with a sad expression as their car left the driveway, and disappeared down the street. She huffed, and sat on the floor. Why did her parents always get to go out into town and do a bunch of cool stuff, while she just had to sit at home? It wasn’t fair! Oh well, at least she could put on whatever movie she wanted.

But she remembered she had to clean that candy bowl outside. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe the only thing her candy bowl attracted was wasps, not fairies. But she couldn’t give up. Maybe fairies just didn’t like candy? There had to be something else they liked, or maybe they were just scared!

Julia walked to the door to her backyard. She wondered what she could to get a fairy to trust her, since all the stories she heard said fairies liked sweet things. She walked to the edge of the backyard, near her mother’s flower bed. She put the candy bowl there since fairies were also said to love flowers. Strange. It was summer, but she didn’t see any wasps. Normally she saw a few swarming nearby the candy bowl. Instead…

There was a faint glow inside the bowl.

She felt a rush of hope inside of her. Could it be? She bent down to the ground, trying to peek inside without potentially scaring whatever was in there. Her eyes practically began to glimmer with excitement when she realized what she saw.

Not one, but two fairies inside the bowl.

One of them was yellow, like a sunflower. They had petal like rays on their head, and two different colored eyes. They were wearing an interesting looking outfit, with ruffles along their neck, and fingerless gloves. Their wings were shimmering with gold, and had a sun mark on each of them.

The other one looked almost like the complete opposite. They were blue, and part of their face was covered in black. They also had two different colored eyes, and a hat with a star pattern, and a little bell at the end of it. They also wore similar clothes to the other, with ruffles on their neck. However, theirs looked more like a robe than the other’s. Their wings were a beautiful blue, resembling the wings of a moth.

“Brother, we should hurry.” The blue one whispered. “It’s nice that someone left this candy out here, but we can’t stay for long. I saw a cat in that house, and they might let it out, and it could chase us.

The yellow one just laughed. “Don’t worry, brother. That cat hasn’t been outside! Just the other day I saw it sleeping by the window! It can’t hurt us from there!”

Julia was practically frozen in awe. She had always imagined what fairies looked like. They never looked like the ones she was staring at, but she felt her dreams coming true, right then and there. It was then that the blue one finally noticed her.

“Uh… Brother?”

“What?”

The yellow one turned around, and both made eye contact with me. Both of them yelped and backed away toward the edge of the bowl. They clung to each other.

“Oh my goodness… Real fairies!” Julia cried in excitement. Her family wasn’t home, so she couldn’t tell them. But now, she had the chance to befriend them! Two of them! She smiled brightly at them.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.” She said, noticing their scared expressions. “I just wanna be friends! I love fairies! And I knew leaving candy out would lure one in, but two? This is amazing!”

Both of them seemed to calm down a little after Julia finished talking. They could tell she wasn’t going to harm them. She was just excited. The yellow one gently let go of the blue one, and approached the edge of the bowl, facing Julia.

“You left this for us?” The yellow fairy asked. His voice seemed to also be accompanied with the sound of bells.

“Yes, I did!” Julia squealed. “My mommy doesn’t always like it, since it lures in wasps, too.”

The blue one decided to follow his brother, and stood by the bowl’s edge as well.

“Who… are you?” He asked, still sounding defensive. His voice was accompanied with what sounded like the notes of a music box.

“Oh, right, you don’t know my name! I’m Julia!” She giggled a bit. “It’s nice to meet you two!”

The yellow one couldn’t help but smile at her excitement. Julia’s smile had a mix of adult and baby teeth, with a single gap from the most recent tooth she lost. She seemed incredibly friendly. It reminded them both of an old friend of theirs. Being immortal, they met many humans, but only two meant the most to them. A little girl like Julia, and a kind old lady… The yellow one cleared his throat.

“I’m Sun, and this is my brother, Moon!” The yellow fairy exclaimed, gently grabbing his brother’s shoulder. Julia giggled. She liked the names, and thought they were fitting.

Moon just waved to her. Though she was nice, he didn’t quite trust her yet. Or rather, he didn’t want to let himself trust her. She reminded him of that little girl they were close with, but… He didn’t want to feel like he was replacing her. No one could. Especially not this one.

Julia wiped a bit of sweat from her forehead. It was incredibly hot and humid, and there were a few wasps starting to congregate. She smiled at the two fairies.

“My mommy says I need to bring in the candy bowl. It lures in wasps… If you two need to go, it’s okay.”

Sun and Moon glanced to each other. Moon shook his head briefly, but Sun gently whispered something to him. After a minute, they both nodded. Sun turned to Julia.

“We can stay a little longer. If you want to go in, we could hide in your pockets or something!”

Julia’s face lit up. These fairies wanted to spend time with her? She could have sworn this was a dream. She quickly held up her arm and pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t. The prick she felt confirmed that she wasn’t dreaming at all. This was real.

“Oh, thank you! My family’s not home, and they won’t be until tonight!”

She gently lifted up the candy bowl, and rushed away from the flower bed, and the gathering wasps. She went inside the cool house, feeling her body temperature return to normal. She looked inside the bowl, and she smiled seeing Sun and Moon still eating the candy left in the bowl. Instead of walking to the kitchen, she took the bowl upstairs to her room. She paused for one moment, turning her head to look at the room adjacent to her’s. Her smile faded for a moment, but it perked back up when she walked to her room.

The walls were painted a light lavender, the floor had a heart shaped carpet in rainbow colors, there were glowing star stickers on the ceiling, and there were numerous pictures on the walls. There was a white desk in front of the window, with pink and blue curtains dawning them. Her bed also had those same color bedsheets. There was a toy chest by her desk, and a closet by her bed. It was a lovely room, perfect for a six year old.

“You have a really nice room!” Sun told her.

“Thank you, Sun! Daddy painted the walls, and my brother made the desk!” Julia frowned slightly when she mentioned her brother, but she smiled again as she set the bowl down on the desk.

Both brothers got out of the bowl. Sure, they could have gotten out at any time, but they appreciated the free ride. They unfurled their wings, and flew around the room, observing everything. Moon was fascinated with the doll Julia had on her bed, and Sun was interested in some of the books on her shelf by the desk.

“Julia?” Moon asked. “Where did you get this doll?”

“Oh…” Julia went over, and sat down on the bed. “My mommy made it. Well, the clothes at least. My brother got the doll itself. I had it since I was a baby.”

“Does your mother make clothes for dolls all the time?” Moon asked.

“No, not really.” Julia answered. “She used to make clothes for dolls, but stopped after something bad happened to her. The clothes for my doll were the last ones she made.”

“Hey, Julia!” Sun called, getting Julia’s attention. She and Moon went over to where Sun was.

“I noticed when you mentioned your brother, you got a little sad. Did… something happen?” Julia wasn’t expecting such a personal question, but she could answer.

“My brother was years older than me. He was my hero. But he disappeared a couple years ago to stop some really bad guys. A year ago, Mommy got a letter saying he won’t ever come back.” Her smile faded entirely. She missed her brother. Sun flew up to her face.

“Hey, it’s okay! He’s still here in your heart! Isn’t that what’s important?” He asked, trying to make her feel better.

“Yeah, but… he can’t hug me in my heart…” Julia whispered.

Moon frowned slightly, feeling bad that they opened a wound for her. They knew how it felt to lose people they cared about. Being immortal, they outlived many human friends, especially the ones they loved most.

“But we can hug you!” Sun assured her. “Here, I got the perfect cure for that frowny face of yours!”

Julia looked at him, and saw he was holding a little pile of golden dust. He took a breath, and blew it in her face. She squeaked, and coughed slightly, before she sneezed. What was that stuff? She then realized… she wasn’t sad anymore. In fact, the smile that Sun liked was back on her face. She started to giggle.

“What did you do?” She asked through her giggles.

“That’s my magic, silly!” Sun explained. “My fairy dust can make people happy! Sure, we fairies help nature in our own ways, but I love spreading my fairy dust and curing people’s bad days!” Julia let out a soft squeal as she felt Sun nuzzle into her neck. It felt incredibly ticklish.

“I agree with Sun.” Moon piped up, and he also nuzzled into her neck, liking the sound of her laughter. “Your brother is still here in your heart. As long as you love him, he’s always here!” Julia kept giggling as both brothers worked to make her happy again.

After a minute, they let her be, and the dust’s effect wore off. Julia’s giggles died down, and she smiled brightly at the brothers.

“That was fun! I always dreamed of having fairy friends, and now there are two of them right in front of me!”

Sun smiled at her. “You bet!”

Moon smiled as well. “I have a feeling we’ll be coming back here a lot more.”

Julia laughed a little. “My mommy and daddy still don’t come home for a while… Do you guys wanna play?”

A bright smile stayed on her face as the fairy boys nodded.

Julia had a blast playing with the two fairies. Though they were much smaller than her, she found many ways to play with them. Hide and seek, tea parties, drawing, and playing tag. Julia didn’t have any real friends, so having two fairy ones gave her happiness she couldn’t describe. Sun and Moon were also having fun. They hadn’t bonded with a human like this in a long time. They could sense that Julia was kind of lonely, so they wanted to fill that gap. Besides… She reminded them of that little girl they were close with. In a way… it was like reliving that.

It started getting dark after a while, and she could see Sun was getting tired. Moon also had to begin his duties soon, so they had to go home.

Julia seemed to understand, and she opened the window for them.

“Thank you for being my friends!” Julia told them. “If you ever wanna play again, I’ll leave my window open… with a bowl of candy right beside it!” Both fairies laughed.

“We’re looking forward to it.” Moon whispered.

“Bye, Julia.” Both fairies said at the same time. They both flew out the window, disappearing into the night. Julia kept her window open, smiling as she felt the cool summer air on her face. She heard the noise of a car pull up. She gasped, and ran downstairs to greet her parents. When they came in the door, she hugged them tightly.

“Hey there, kiddo.” Her father said. “How was your day?”

“It was amazing!” Julia cried. “I saw fairies! Real fairies! They were so pretty and nice!” Both her parents laughed.

“Sounds lovely, Julia.” Her mother told her. They didn’t believe her at all, but since she was a little girl, they played along. Her mother went to the kitchen to start making dinner, and her father went to finish their report.

Julia just couldn’t stop smiling. She looked down at her dress, and saw a little bit of gold glitter still on it.

“I knew they were real.”

[knchins]

Hii:D idk if your still taking requests for Tokyo revengers but if you are can you do headcannons for Mikey, Draken and Sanzu for a s/o who doesn’t open up because of trust issues and not wanting to bother them with their self since they feel like a burden? My daddy issues(parents marriage) really acting up rn 🙂

tyy:D if you do take this request you don’t have to tho😅

Sorry for the delay, anon! I hope you're having a better day <3

Pairing: Mikey x Reader, Draken x Reader, Sanzu x Reader

TW: they're all adults/aged up, hurt/comfort, minor depictions of PTSD/trauma, mild angst (w/ happy ending)

Reader Type: Gender neutral Word Count: ~300 each

Mikey

The first time he saw you flinch, Mikey didn’t think much of it. The other executives in the board room were being incredibly loud, yelling at one another and bickering over petty issues. The second time you nearly cowered when Koko slammed papers down on the table, he realized that something bigger was going on. Something was bothering you and while he had a feeling it was the arguing, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure. 

Getting you to open up could sometimes be impossible. It wasn’t as if Mikey was an open book himself. He kept a lot of his emotions stored away deep inside. He understood what it was like to not want people to know what was going on within your head. It was safer that way. 

But you were his beloved, he couldn’t just watch you suffer without even trying. He calmly told everyone to be quiet, a tone that read authority and that no one would dare ignore. Those standing immediately sat down and everyone went silent. Mikey stood and looked at you, “come with me while they figure out how to behave like adults.” 

You gave him a confused look before gathering your own papers and heading to his office where he sat down. “You don’t like when they’re loud, do you?” He asked in a soft tone that had you shifting nervously. What if this was some sort of trap? Was he going to snap at you for being so weak? 

You shook your head and he gave you a small smile. He patted his lap, beckoning you to sit down on it, which you did. “You can tell me, darling. Why didn’t you tell me that their yelling bothered you?” 

“I didn’t want to bother you. It wasn’t that important anyway.” You murmured, looking away from him. 

“It is not a bother.” He said sternly as he wrapped his arm around you securely. “I’ll make sure they won’t do this again, okay?” 

You nodded your head back, letting out a relieved sigh. 

“Now let’s go get some dorayaki.” He said with a grin. “My treat.” 

Draken

Draken had always been perceptive regarding other people’s emotions, especially his partner’s. When he felt you begin to pull away from him and dodge his probing questions, he knew that something was upsetting you. However, getting you to open up and tell him what was wrong was always the tricky part. 

With the itching feeling that he had forgotten something and that maybe he was the one that hurt you, he began to look over the calendar in his bike shop. That’s when he noticed the tiny heart beside a date that happened to be a few days ago. His heart sunk in his chest as he realized he had forgotten your anniversary. 

Immediately wanting to right his wrong, he closed up shop early for the day and got you your favorite flowers as well as a giant stuffed teddy bear. Draken was never one to care about anniversaries, but he knew that they were special to you. 

He found you at your shared home on the couch curled in a blanket with your favorite warm drink in your hand, anything to try and keep the negative thoughts at bay that had been conjured by his forgetfulness. 

“Hey,” He said, a small smile on his lips. He carefully set down the bouquet and bear before sitting down next to you and pulling you into his loving embrace. “Why didn’t you remind me?” 

A sigh left your lips, “I didn’t want to be a burden. You’ve been so busy lately.” You murmured as you sheepishly looked at the gifts he had brought you. 

“You’re never a burden,” He replied, kissing your temple. “Can I take you out tonight? I closed up the shop early so we can spend time together.” 

Tears gathered in your lash line as you nodded your head at him, setting down your mug to pull the enormous bear into a squeezing hug and burying your face in his fur. Ken smiled and kissed the top of your head. “Let me clean up, I’ll take you wherever you want to go. And next time, remind me so I don’t forget like an idiot."

Sanzu

You had been feeling more and more alone lately with how busy Haru had been with work. Being number two meant he was often times away on jobs or taking care of business. It seemed he never had enough time for you and you were starting to feel more and more like a burden to him because of it. 

It was like you were an afterthought and knowing that you didn’t come first had you in tears as you started to pack your bags. Luck would have it that your boyfriend would walk into his penthouse at that very moment. He called out your name, surprised to see you with a half-filled suitcase. 

“What are you doing?” He asked as he felt his heart sink into his chest. Did you not love him anymore? Did you want to leave just like everyone else in his life? Was he too much to handle? 

You froze, wanting to lock your emotions away tightly so he couldn’t see them. Instead, he could see the tears that threatened to fall from your eyes. “You just don’t have time for me anymore.” You replied softly. 

He was in front of you with two large steps, pulling you into his chest as he let out a shaky breath. “I’ll make time.” He said, “I promise, I’ll make more time. Why didn’t you tell me how you were feeling?” 

“I didn’t want to bother you.” You said softly as you clung to him. “I know work is important.” 

“It’s not as important as you.” He said, kissing the top of your head. “I’m going to order us some dinner while you unpack. I’ll ask for some time off so we can travel somewhere- anywhere- just tell me where you want to go.” 

“I just want to be here with you.” You replied quietly and he hugged you even tighter. 

“Then we’ll stay here.” He replied. “Together.” 

Requests are open I just take forever to write them <3

[steviewashere]

The Sound of Silence

Rating: General CW: Internalized Ableism, Quick Mention of the 'R' Word (It's Not Written, Quite Literally as 'R' Word)Tags: Post-Canon, Post-Season 4, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Selectively Mute Steve Harrington, Negative Self Talk, Miscommunication, Mean Eddie Munson (For a Split Second It's Part of the Miscommunication and the Plot), Eddie Munson is a Sweetheart, Neurodivergent Steve Harrington (Implied), Pre-Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson Calls Steve Harrington Sweetheart

I should say before this that a lot of Steve's thinking here, a lot of the metaphors and such used, are from personal experience. They are things I think about myself when I'm mute. So be civil and kind about this piece.

💛—————💛

Steve Harrington is a man of few words on most days. He does talk, he loves talking sometimes, has so many things to share. But on a lot of occasions, Steve can’t muster the strength to say hello. Can only make sounds, hums and gasps and subtle clicks. And often times, he hides away when he gets to that point. He’s been like this for as long as he can remember. Though, the first time it happened, he’s not sure what really caused it. Just that something was too much, or he was too little and then it all began. There had been therapists and specialists and urgent care doctors. A lot of conversations between him and his parents that often ended in him being yelled at. Something about him too far left of ‘normal’. And he knew, when the bad stuff came, that part of him may just be this way.

Now, years later, he can put some recognition to what silences him. Sometimes it’s the lack of comfortable sleep the night before. Or it’s the social energy completely drained out of him. Or it’s a particular jab that somebody makes. The raised voice that pushes him over the edge. A nightmare so harsh it rips him of not only the ability to mutter whole sentences, but also the ability to crawl out of bed.

He’s only clarified this with a select handful of people. The people in his life that were closest to him or that would understand. Robin was the second. Words written on a steno pad in the middle of the night, three days in a row where he hadn’t been sleeping properly, nightmares of a cold bunker and rough hands. Notes passed in quiet lulls, pencil scratches the only sound. She only looked at him with a sort of empathy he’s never been privy to. Her eyebrows scrunched in concentration as she focused solely on conversation in written text. He didn’t have to beg with her, which he thanked whatever god gave him her presence in the first place. Then, it was Nancy before their breakup. She could just tell. Her notes accommodated him. Space he took up was always welcoming. And her voice carried softly to his ears, gossip and pet names and gentle praise. Even if she broke his heart some time later, he would always remember her better than alcohol stained and too tipsy to make sense. Max was most recent. She, surprisingly, didn’t tease him for it. Didn’t make him feel bad. More sad than anything. Her voice was raspy in her hospital bed, “I’ll be your voice, Steve. You can be my eyes.” He could see the white, nearly iridescent glaze that permanently altered the blue color underneath. There were no words exchanged after that, but he placed his hand in hers and squeezed.

The others either didn’t notice or were too intimidating to tell. It’s not that they’re scary. But they can be harsh about certain things. And he just wasn’t ready. His voice, the absence of his words, have always been a soft, insecure, and vulnerable part to him. Laying out his cards face up on the table was too much.

But he probably should’ve considered Eddie to be one of those people that he can trust. Especially since Steve lets him move in, take up space in a spare bedroom, rummage through his cupboards. Maybe because they’re roommates. Maybe because they’re friends. Maybe because Steve wants more.

��——— It was a bad night. An even worse day.

The images flashed under his eyelids every time he blinked. Blood and loose skin and wet muscles. Echoing screeches of those creatures that ruined his nearly blank torso. That sadness rippling from Dustin. His wobbling lip, wet eyes, the snotty nose, and strained yells for help. Steve’s stomach turns with every subtle movement of his body. Every single time he stretches, the scars moving with him. 

In retrospect, he shouldn’t have gone to work. Not when he woke up, throat scratchy and the seizing of his chest overwhelmingly intense with every sobbing gasp. Or when he realized, the energy somewhere else, that mustering words was the heaviest burden to bear. He shouldn’t have gone to work, where he gets yelled at for not communicating. For not counting out the change. For not selling the new movies. Where he’s called things he’s heard since he was a little boy, ‘Dumb’ and ‘Stupid’ and the infamous ‘R’ word.

He’s out of it by the time he’s able to sit down in the driver’s seat of the car. Part of him wants to bang the softest parts of his palms on the harsh, stiff leather of the steering wheel. Another piece of him wants to lean down into those same hands, pressed into the sockets of his eyes hard enough to speckle his sight with black spots, and cry until there’s nothing else to do but go home. There’s the encroaching need to scream, to hum behind his lips, wiggle his arms until they’re too tired to move, too heavy to lift, a worse burden than speaking. But he knows that it’s too open to break down in Family Video’s parking lot. So his drive home is ninety percent heaving breaths and squeezing the steering wheel to remind him he’s nearly back to his bed; his safety away from the world, somewhere where he can recharge, power through this, get back on track.

Though, he’s drained when he goes home. Exhausted. Beaten down to just a bag of meat and blood and bones. The Beemer is parked in the driveway. And he jiggles his keys in the door. And slips his shoes off, hangs up his jacket, places his wallet in the little dish in the foyer. Each step of shedding his work skin like tiptoeing on a bed of nails. Barely even makes it two steps before he’s bombarded by Eddie’s constant, erratic, and chaotic nature.

“Hey, Stevie!” he crows. “I made dinner while you were on your way back. It’s on the stovetop, covered it in foil so that it retains the heat. Oh, and I did the laundry, cleaned up our bathrooms a little bit. Made progress with the physical therapist on my bad leg and I—“

Steve sighs heavily through his nose, blinks sluggishly, and places his palm out to stop Eddie. He tries to say anything, something. But all he does is open his mouth, squeak in the back of his throat, promptly close back up, and sag. Shakes his head, sidesteps, and clambers to his bedroom.

Undressing himself like wrestling with bears. Climbing under his covers as if his comforter is a taut iron sheet. He can already sense it, the shift from charismatic Steve Harrington to odd Steve Harrington. Can’t even suppress the aching, sizzling pang that shoots through. Naked skin to his cold bedsheets. Blanket heavy. The darkness of his bedroom will coddle and consume him, he’s sure. 

Tomorrow is another day to try again. And maybe he’ll finally be able to explain himself.

But of course it’s not that simple. Of course his eyes are crusted over and burning like he spent the entire night crying. His whole body aches. And, unsurprisingly, there’s no way to conjure words from deep in his chest. Just whistled little breaths. Coming short and strained from his nose. He stays in bed for the rest of the day. Blearily, he wonders how Eddie’s doing. If the dinner from last night made it to the fridge. Wonders if the phone has rung at all, because he should be going to work.

He tries it. Tries speaking to the lonely, cold, inky blackness of his room. As if seeking for a light. The sounds strain and garble. Like his emotions are honey and he’s gargling. Choking on it. It hurts. He wonders if speaking should be like death, like a demobat tail wrapped around his tender skin, squeezing with razor blade spikes, tugging on him as stiff and thick ropes. Wonders if Eddie can hear him struggling.

Wonders if Eddie can sense him as a shadow in his own darkness, half of a man, barely a person. Thinks that there’s a million ways to explain himself, the words on paper as he did with Robin, or if Eddie will pick him up like dead star fragments and piece him back together as Nancy did, if he’ll just have to wait this out and whisper it in the fragile, sterile, fluorescent light of his childhood home—it’s a hospital in a way, maybe Eddie can perform the role of Max. Steve would offer his legs to take over for Eddie’s bad one, if he’ll be the boisterous noise that should be croaking from him any moment.

Futile, however much he wants it to work. Steve curls himself tighter in his blanket and goes back to sleep. 

Tomorrow will be another day. And he’ll be a full person again, tomorrow.

Some day, surely, he thinks on day three.

And the same on day four.

And when he can smell his skin like molded vegetables in the drawer of his fridge, only then does he stand on doe like legs, awkwardly ambling to the shower. He is twenty years old, mute as the day he was born—breathless and making noise if only to mark his presence; he thinks of himself as the stain on his bedspread, that is his presence, he’s sure. Twenty years old, moving like the toddler his mother was worried about. Crawling backwards. Unable to lift his head on his own for too long. He wonders a lot in the silence of his own existence. It doesn’t end now, in the shower with steam clearing his nasal passages. Ponders, Will I always be this way?

Surely.

The dirt swirls in invisible tornadoes down the drain. Those are his words. Still gone. Through the pipes and out to the sewer. He stands on the plush rug protecting the warm soles of his feet from the cold tile. An overly used towel, threadbare and rough, wrapped around his waist. He slips into pajamas easily enough. Hair sopping and wilted into his eyes.

Tentative creaks down the stairs. Shuffling if only to take up space. Frozen to his spot in the kitchen doorway. There, in the kitchen, shrouded in amber light with a warm mug of what appears to be hot chocolate, is Eddie. He looks up from the pale brown liquid in his cup. His eyes are richer than that of what he drinks. And Steve is startled by how sad, though ferociously angry they are.

“I know this is your house and you’re allowed to do whatever the fuck you want, but you can’t just be a piece of shit to me,” Eddie rasps. His voice is nearly hollow. Penetrated by shrapnel between his teeth. And Steve also wonders if that’s what he’ll sound like after this. This limbo he can’t control. “Seriously, Steve. I thought you were, like, changed or something. Thought you were supposed to be this good guy now. Not a douchebag, remember?”

‘Douchebag’ spits from him like acid. Steve is burning. He is sizzling. Can’t help the trembling in his hands. Or the subtle, missed by Eddie, flinch that forces him back a step.

He looks away from those molten eyes of Eddie’s. Towards the floor. At his bare feet. Going cold against the hardwood. Wants to throw it all up. The explanation. His thoughts. Every little other thing about him that’s always made him some sort of spectacle in his parent’s marriage. Am I the cold, he asks to nobody in particular, or am I the body drowning in it?

Eddie sniffles. Clears his throat. Sighs disappointingly.

Steve is five years old. His dad is sitting at the table. He is being scolded for not speaking up. Steve is eight years old, covered in mud and pink lines from being scuffed on the concrete. He is being scolded for not speaking up. Steve is eighteen years old, bloodied, beaten blue, sweaty, and soot on his new shoes. He is being scolded for not speaking up.

He is traumatized. And he is tired. And he can’t explain, no matter how much he wants.

“Maybe I should’ve expected this,” Eddie mutters, “being friends with Steve Harrington was always a sort of fantasy anyway, right? Who could like a freak?”

It’s not loud, though it disrupts the quiet Steve thought could never be broken again. He sobs. Wretched and screeching. The tears like a flash flood. His chest caving in. All the sounds escaping him, garbled and messy and drowning. He is drowning. He is different. He’s a freak. And Eddie must know, but not like Nancy does. Or he must have found something, the steno pad. Must’ve talked to Max, something.

He collapses into one of the dining chairs. A heaping mess of blood and skin and bones and meat. Just this. He is this with nothing to explain for it. 

Out of the corner of his eye, though blurry, he sees Eddie stand from his chair. Making some sort of aborted movement. And, without much thinking, Steve scrambles his hands forward, wrapping them tight on Eddie’s forearms, tugging him in too close. Forcing him to stumble into his knobby knees. Fingers still squeezing, fingernails biting into Eddie’s soft skin.

“Hey, whoa, whoa,” Eddie’s whispering, “Stevie, hey.” He crouches down, arms encased in Steve’s terrible hold. It’s almost hard to picture, the space and positions between them. Eddie’s wobbling on his own feet, probably sore and aching on his bad leg. Though, there’s a palm warm on Steve’s cheek. Wiping away at the tears. Trying to, at least; more keep streaming. Fingers carefully scooting into his hairline. Massaging on his scalp, pruning with the cold water in his hair. “Steve,” he murmurs, “hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry. That was—I’m sorry, Steve. I really am. That wasn’t okay.”

He doesn’t know what comes from him next to cause Eddie’s eyes to widen in both surprise and horror, but it must be something awful. A scream. Loud and piercing and high pitched. Shooting from him like a bullet, shattering everything between them. Shrapnel from between his teeth.

Eddie frees from Steve’s grasp, wrapping his arms around his shaking back, bringing him in gently. Rocking him from side to side until he’s only whimpering. Petting down Steve’s hiccuping back. “You’ll be okay,” he whispers against Steve’s ear. “I was being mean. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

Eventually, he pulls back some. Putting a small amount of space between their bodies. Steve is shaking from it all. Unable to do much. Eddie soothes a hand down his left arm. “Tell me what’s going on? How come you’ve been pulling away?”

Steve shakes his head. Placing a tired and limp hand on his throat.

“You lose your voice? Are you sick?” Again, Steve shakes his head. And Eddie goes quiet for a few slow moments. Until, a lightbulb seems to shine bright and shatter over his hair, amber light still causing him to glow, despite it all. He scrambles up off the floor. Squeezes Steve’s shoulders. Lightly says, “Stay here, okay? I’m gonna go find a pen and some paper. Be right back.”

When he’s back at Steve’s chair, the both of them significantly calmer, a brand new steno pad is in his hands. He hands it off with a chewed up ballpoint pen. “Tell me by writing it down.”

And so Steve does. Gives it back. Lets Eddie read his chicken scratch scrawl.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ is the first thing. Followed by, ‘I’ve been like this since I was a little kid. When things get bad or I just don’t have the energy, it’s like my body forgets how to talk.’

“Oh,” Eddie whispers. He blinks at the paper and looks up to Steve. A sad little smile flashes on his face. “Okay, Steve. I—I think I get it. Kind of like when my day gets really busy and then when I go home, I just shut myself in my room and listen to music until I fall asleep. Kinda like that?”

Steve shrugs and reaches for the paper again. Writing, ‘Sort of. But it’s for a long time. Like…You know now. Sometimes I don’t talk for weeks. Sometimes it’s a few hours. But I get like this a lot.’ When he’s finished and Eddie goes to speak again, Steve immediately writes some more. Eddie’s mouth shuts with the soft click of his teeth.

‘Am I really a freak?’ Is what Eddie reads next.

His head shoots up from the paper. Eyes impossibly wider than they’ve ever been. Startled and desperate and unbearably sad. “No,” he murmurs quickly. “No, Steve, you’re not a freak. What makes you think that?”

The pad trembles in Steve’s grasp. He doesn’t want to write it, wouldn’t even want to speak it. But still, he sketches, ’You asked me, “Who could like a freak?”’ He tilts his head at his own words. Ducks back in, his hands shaking too much and his eyes moist. ‘It’s okay if you think so. I’m kind of used to it.’

Eddie snatches the paper from Steve’s offered grip. He swallows heavily and locks eyes with him, they’re still so sad. He wonders if that’s what Eddie’s seeing, too. “Stevie, no,” he whispers. “No, I was talking about myself. I thought you were mad at me. Thought you didn’t like me. I don’t think of you that way.”

Steve nods, sagging with relief. And with it a few tears spring loose from his eyes. A hand softly cups his jaw, thumbing at his fat hot tears. He closes his eyes and sighs. “Not mad,” he forces, his voice like raw, out of the box grits. It hurts, but he swallows. “You are my friend,” he musters before falling silent again.

A soft, sad hum emanates from Eddie. His hand tenses on Steve’s skin, but it holds to him gently, like he never wants to let go. “You’re mine, too, you know that? I’m genuinely sorry for what I said,” Eddie says. The apology sweet and drenching. “That wasn’t okay of me. I’m sorry.”

There’s no words Steve can press from within him. He lays his hand over Eddie’s and squeezes. Eyes now open and darting between Eddie’s own. He pushes their joined hands further into his cheek, sighing with it. Boneless in his chair.

“Okay,” Eddie mutters, “I understand, sweetheart. I get you now.” His thumb soothes more. Petting—caressing Steve in a way that makes his stomach flutter. “We’ll get you through this,” he promises, “I won’t go anywhere.”

💛—————💛

[i-write-hurt-not-comfort]

in the defence of Ruki Mukami - why Ruki's trauma has just as much influence on his actions as everyone else

i am sitting in the chemistry library at uni right now and am going to spend my time on the most useless task ever to avoid doing anything impactful. please don't take this too serious because i can't write meaningful character analyses.

so i've seen a ton of stuff around, because i know Ruki's not one of the best loved characters in the western fandom. well, of all the characters, i see nearly the most Ruki hate. and obviously everyone is entitled to their opinions, whatever. but what DOES bother me is the reason.

a lot of people say that Ruki's trauma doesn't correlate to his actions, or explain abusive behaviour in the same way that the other characters' do. and i would die for Ruki and we know this, but i've thought about it a lot and i have a Theory as for why some people seem to view his character this way. (i have also studied neuroscience at degree level and learnt about trauma and synaptic plasticity)

to summarise for those who perhaps haven't read all the games (my sources for all this is basically Ruki's MB, DF, and LE), Ruki was born as an only-child in Romania to a rich family, and his father was revealed to be a politician during the Ceaușescu period in Romania. they had a lot of servants, all of whom Ruki learnt from a young age to abuse. he admired his father very much and looked up to him, and his mother was good to him and was close to his father. it would seem like a very good, perfect family - although i'll briefly discuss later why this wasn't necessarily the case.

unfortunately, in the DL universe lore, Karlheinz and Ceaușescu were buddy-buddy politicians, and Ruki's father was eventually chased out of his position. during his downfall, Ruki's father became an alcoholic and began abusing Ruki's mother, verbally and physically. Ruki saw a lot of this as well: somebody he looked up to, admired and trusted, becoming an abusive monster in a very short period of time. i think that's part of why Ruki overlooks Karlheinz's crimes and sees him as a good father anyway.

not only that, Ruki's mother - once again somebody who nurtured and cared for him - turned out to be having an affair. and shortly after that, his father committed suicide: something Ruki actually walked out on.

that in itself is a lot more traumatic than i think people consider. a lot of the DL characters have long-term trauma, but intense sudden trauma, such as your "perfect" life falling apart due to an alcoholic, abusive father killing himself and his mother having an affair, has similar psychological impact. remember, these are people who were supposed to care and nurture him, he trusted them a lot, and they both abandoned him abruptly in very extreme ways. that's the number 1 root of Ruki's trust issues. he's been seen to cut Yui off entirely because he's scared of becoming his abusive father.

similarly, living in a "perfect" household as a spoiled only child can be inherently traumatic. i don't know about you guys, but i've met some (only some, not the majority) of very, very emotionally constipated spoiled only-children. a lot of children showered with materialistic affection are missing key emotional maturity developments. their outlook on life is very narrow and they lack the emotional components of attachment; this is part of why Ruki is quite emotionally immature.

not only that, but growing up as an abusive sociopath to "lower" members of society such as servants is a form of abusive on his parents' behalf. they did not teach him proper world awareness. some children are born as psychopaths etc, true, but the majority of "sociopaths" (diagnosed as ASPD) are that way because they were not taught remorse as a child. Ruki would've learnt to treat his servants that way because that was how his parents did (and we see his father being a dick to the servants in LE too i think), and that in itself is inherently traumatic too.

imagine then, with very little capacity for remorse or a concept of societal hierarchy, being thrown into an orphanage. Ruki is a dick to everyone, yes, but the shock of having everything you know challenged suddenly and without explanation or support is going to cause further trauma. i think people just don't like to consider the fact that a lot of "sociopaths" (again, ASPD is the correct label there) were victims too. he went from being the "master" to being "livestock" and that's going to very rapidly alter your young brain chemistry, entering a "master" mindset as a defensive mechanism. that's why he gets angry/upset/confused when it's challenged.

Ruki has a fuck ton of PTSD as well - he's the only character who i've seen literally throw up MULTIPLE TIMES when experiencing flashbacks.

but i think people generally know that, perhaps not thinking about it as deeply. my Theory as to why people don't seem to see this as being as "extreme" as the other boys' trauma goes further than that.

diabolik lovers follows this dynamic between the Sakamaki's vs Mukami's, whereby Yuma, Kou and Azusa (Yuma and Kou more strongly) have this mindset of "the Sakamaki's can't have trauma because they were rich" and obviously as readers, we're supposed to be like "um, no, the Sakamaki's can have trauma too" because they do.

with that said, Kou and Yuma do successfully get to Subaru/Laito and Shu's heads respectively with this narrative. especially Subaru and Shu who get really fixated with this "i was a spoiled, privileged kid" and because of that, naturally we, as readers, lean towards feeling sorry for the Mukami's especially.

obviously, Ruki is the odd one out when it comes to the Mukami's. he had a sheltered upbringing whereas the other brothers were fighting for their lives in poverty/on the streets, victims and witnesses of the civil war and orphan crisis. Yuma particularly pushes this "Ruki had it easy" notion too, and i've definitely noticed that a lot of people who don't particularly like Ruki tend to fall towards that.

this idea of "not enough" trauma has enough to unpack as it is and we won't do that to, but personally i think that all of Ruki's abusive actions are justified. no, they are not an excuse. none of the diaboys' behaviour is excusable, but i think Rejet did quite a good job of giving them enough fucked up backstory to make us as readers at least understand why that might be how they act.

and from what i see, it seems to be Ruki who people think is the exception to this the most, because his trauma isn't in the same vein as the rest of the Mukami's. the "rich people can't have trauma" narrative gets pushed so hard that i think people forget 1) it isn't true and 2) Ruki went through a ton of fucked shit as a kid, and i don't think any of his actions made me feel any differently than the other diaboys' awful behaviour towards Yui.

you can find Ruki boring, not interesting, or just not your type. but he very, very much has "sufficient" trauma to explain his toxic and dominating actions. thank u for coming to my TedTalk.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hi! I've been reading through your blog and you seem to give decent advice, so I figured I'd try my luck at something that's been annoying me recently.

So to start, I'm 17ftm (no testosterone), I have had many mental health struggles on the past 5 years and my parents don't really trust me or take me seriously. And I have never had sex with a penis haver so no possibility of pregnancy at any point.

Okay so my problem is that I never get consistent periods and almost always skip more than a month in between. They actually started pretty consistent when I was 13 but became extremely irregular after I gained a lot of unexpected weight (I was on a high dose of antipsycotics which I believe caused this). I skipped 6 months when I was 14. Since my parents don't take me seriously, they kind of softly assume I'm exaggerating or just not counting the days right ever time I bring it up and it made me so frustrated that last year I finally got a period tracker and committed to filling it out daily. I finally decided to go back and check how long it's been because I felt like it had been forever since I actually bled and uh. Guess what I was right 😬

Since the new year, I logged myself as "spotting" on February 7th and January 22. I marked myself down as "light bleeding" on the 18th. Every other day this year there has been no bleeding. Is this abnormal??? My mom keeps saying things like "I skip months all the time" but it's just really unsettling me I feel like something's wrong. I've also had period-like cramps a few times since the year began and at one point they got really bad, like a 7/10 but again I haven't bled even a little bit except those three days I just want to know I'm not being unreasonable.

I do plan to talk to my doctor, my dad set an appointment for next week (I didn't tell him what it was for & he didn't ask which was nice) but while my GP is usually pretty good I'm worried she'll dismiss me like my mom always does & I'm worried I'll phrase something wrong or not describe things correctly. (I have the kind of autism that gives me psychic damage when people don't understand me hence the multiple paragraphs to explain a fairly simple issue... Sorry about that btw)

Thanks for your time and I hope I wasn't too annoying🪻

hi anon,

irregular periods are pretty typical when you first begin menstruating, but the fact that they haven't leveled out by now could definitely be indicative of some kind of complication in your reproductive system that's definitely best to know about sooner rather than later. I'm sorry your parents have been dismissive of you, but if your GP is generally reasonable I'm sure she'll understand why you're concerned; missing your period for months at a time definitely falls into what's considered irregular and warrants further investigation, and it sounds like you've been documenting your experiences enough to back up that that's the case.

I hope everything goes well and you can find some answers <3

[taehyungday]

𝐀𝐂𝐂𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓- 𝚕.𝚓𝚗

𝗉𝖺𝗂𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀…𝗃𝖾𝗇𝗈 𝗑 𝖿𝖾𝗆!𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋

𝗀𝖾𝗇𝗋𝖾…𝗒𝖺𝗇𝖽𝖾𝗋𝖾 𝖺𝗎

𝗐𝗈𝗋𝖽 𝖼𝗈𝗎𝗇𝗍…954

"Your boyfriend gave me unsettling vibes."

After my birthday party, this was the first thing my father said.

"However dad, he is such a great guy, and I love him." I said.

"Your father is correct, Y/n. I didn't you likeyour man, either." My mum commented.

"Jeno is shy and awkward around people at first, but once you get to know him, he is incredibly lovely and amusing. He is also a really caring person." I replied.

"I don't believe he is the right person for you." My father said and then walked out of my room.

"You should reconsider. I didn't feel safe in Jeno's presence." Before leaving my room, my mother said.

"So, what are you going to do now?" . Sana wondered.

"I'm not sure. I have no idea how Jeno will respond." I responded.

I was perplexed as to why my family disliked Jeno. He's a real darling.He is my first love . I'll never forget when he asked me to be his prom date. I couldn't believe such a famous gentleman had asked me to be his date.

Our two-year anniversary is coming up next week. My parents also urge me to end my relationship with him. Jeno hadn't contacted or texted me since yesterday, which was odd. He hadn't returned my calls or read my messages.

"I believe you should speak with him about it." Sana remarked.

"Yeah. Perhaps I should "I responded.

My phone suddenly began to ring.

Suddenly my phone started ringing.

"Hello. Is this Y/n L/n?" A female voice asked.

"Yeah." I replied.

"Your parents are involved in an accident."

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but we were unable to save your parents." the doctor said.

Blankness.

Numbness.

Nothing.

This is how I'm now feeling.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I didn't want to trust what I was hearing. They had vanished. I let go of my body and let it fall to the ground. I began to sob uncontrollably. I couldn't hold back my tears. I was feeling a little low.

Someone suddenly raised my chin with their fingers. Jeno was standing there when I looked up. I simply pounced on him and began crying on his shoulders. He returned my hug and began patting my head.

"Do not be worried, doll. I've arrived." He began to speak in hushed tones.

"Everything will turn out alright." He stated.

[2 YEARS LATER]

"Will you marry me?" I asked her.

As she bobbed her head, she had tears of joy in her eyes.

"Yes," she replied.

I pushed myself up from my knees and grasped her waist, kissing her fiercely.

"I love you." She murmured this as she leaned in for another kiss.

"You know doll, that I love you more."

[FLASHBACK]

Being the son of a wealthy CEO was not easy. People had high expectations of you. When I was born, my mother passed away. My father was usually occupied with his business. I was constantly surrounded by servants who served me. I had a lot of dishonest pals who only befriended me for the money. No one cared about me. I desired someone who would simply adore me.

But then I met her one sunny day. L/N  Y/N She was everything I was looking for in a partner. She was flawless in every way I knew that she was the one for me. I noticed her while getting McDonald's food. And that turned out to be the best decision I've ever made. While taking people's orders, she appeared vulnerable and beautiful. I felt compelled to defend her from those individuals.

She even gave me a friendly grin. She was also interested in me.

I told my bodyguards to look for her the next day.

I wanted to know everything there was to know about her.

They divulged her personal details to me. For her, I changed my private school. For her, I went to a low-cost school.

I killed all the boys who tried to talk to her for her. I killed all the scumbags who tried to bully her for her.

I even killed my father, who tried to prevent me from going to school, for her. Yes, managing a billionaire firm at the age of 17 was difficult. However, I did. I only did it for my doll. After we got married, I wanted to treat her to several luxuries.

I finally worked up the guts to ask her to prom. And she replied with a resounding YES. I had a feeling she wished for me as well.

I asked her to be my girlfriend on my graduation day. And she, of course, said yes.

She, on the other hand, was adamant about not telling her parents about our romance. As a result, I had to sneak into her house late at night in order to cuddle with her. I also hid some cameras in her room so I could keep an eye on her at all times.

Everything was well until she expressed an interest in telling her parents about our relationship. Her parents were attempting to persuade her that I was not suitable for her. My doll even attempted to defend me, but they only wanted her to end our relationship.

As a result, I assassinated them as well. And paid the doctors to declare their death an accident.

My Y/n was simply too young to realise that I was the one who had messed up her parents' lives.

But she'll never know about all the wrongdoings I've done.

"Now you're mine officially, doll. I'll never let you go cause I love you more than anything."

[goodluckclove]

FINAL BLIND TRUST SNEEK PEEK

The results were close enough that I decided to post something that I think is happy and sad. I also don't think I've posted anything directly about Regina Mustard Kaufner, matriarch of the Kaufner family. This feels like spoilers and kind of is but kind of isn't because even in context it leaves you with more questions than answers.

Enjoy reading the start of the mom I really wish I had. I like her a lot.

Seriously guys I need to stop revealing more of this novel before it comes out. I'm just so fucking excited aaaaaa

“I’m going to take them.”

“What?” Enoch said from the other end of the phone. “Mustard, no. That’s kidnapping.”

Regina leaned back in the car seat and kept her eyes on the doors to the University. “Yes,” she confirmed. “I’m going to kidnap them.”

“Fucking hell – that’s…” Enoch trailed off, and when she spoke again she was much calmer. “We’ll call the police. If we have proof of abuse we can call the police.”

But we don’t have proof, Regina wanted to point out. All we have are the visions of my son and some bruises that’ll be covered up by an organization with authority near to that of the Catholic church.

Enoch clicked her tongue anxiously, as if she were right beside her waiting for class to get out. “I don’t like this,” she said. “You said the parents refused to meet with you. What if they’ve tracked your license plate?”

“I’m being very discreet,” Regina tried to assure her.

“Well if you’re still in the Doctor’s car then no, you aren’t. Regina, you can’t keep taking these kinds of risks. You have children to think about.”

The doors pushed open and released a sea of purple-suited children all around Scott and Tenzin’s age. Regina immediately stopped paying attention to what her love was saying. She shifted the phone into her opposite hand and got out of the car, standing to peer through all the faces and dissect the crowd into parts. Looking for the smaller body. The larger set of eyes.

Because yes, Regina did have children. And right now, one of them needed her help.

Once the crowd started to thin Regina began to worry. Did she miss her chance? She was starting to consider pulling off and circling the surrounding city blocks, but before she went any farther with that line of thought she caught sight of a familiar face she was seeing for the very first time.

They were smaller than the other kids and walked a little slower – not from noticeable depression, just deep in thought. They had a young face that was still slightly older than what made sense for their age, with large, deep-set eyes hued a warm shade of brown.

This child matched Scott’s description of Eddie. What identified them for certain, however, was the feeling that flooded Regina’s system as soon as she caught site of them. Her love for those around her came in varying colors. For Enoch it was a bright emerald green, while Tenzin was more of a comforting blue-gray. It was always different for everyone – always – and yet when she looked at the child absently making his way down the stairs she felt the exact color of love she felt whenever she looked at Scott.

Sunflower yellow. Every single time.

It had to be them. Eddie.

Enoch was in the middle of explaining some kind of Louisiana legality when Regina hung up on her without a word. She got out of the car and fidgeted, unsure how to do this. She had no intention of stealing them if they didn’t want to go with her. It would help to find a way to explain who she was in a way that would make sense to the child – but in a way that didn’t encourage them to strike up conversations with frantic strangers in the future. Everything that made sense before Eddie walked outside now felt just as wrong as everyone had been trying to tell her.

This wasn’t Scott. Regina had to remind herself that. This was the other fragment of the being that ended up developing into her son. Was she truly as responsible for this half of his spirit as she was for him?

Not seeing a gap in the sidewalk, Eddie stumbled and scraped his knee against the concrete. From across the street Regina could see the wound, a grating of skin just deep enough to swell blood. It was the type of thing Scott would proudly show off before washing clean with a hose and bounding back off with his day. Eddie, however, stayed still. They did not move. Staring down at the blood, they broke down immediately in quiet tears.

No one was helping them. A few purple-suited adults looked at them as they passed, but did nothing. Regina bore this sight for maybe ten seconds before she grunted in annoyance and ran over to their aid.

“Oh wow!” She exclaimed. “You really tumbled, didn’t you?”

Eddie shrank even smaller on the ground and turned his face away from her. Horror weighed her heavy in place, and Regina knelt down and adjusted her attitude.

She started by speaking much softer. “Does it hurt?” She asked.

“It – It’s scary.”

“The blood?” Regina glanced down at the trickle of red running down just below the hem of his shorts. “Yes. You don’t like blood,” she smiled vaguely. “It’s kind of spooky isn’t it? Do you think it means that something bad happened?”

The child nodded. They lowered their arm away from their face, though still kept their eyes focused down from Regina’s direct line of sight. A sign of respect from Academy children, she learned some time ago. It disgusted her to think about.

She rifled through her bag and pulled out a few paper packets. “I keep sanitary wipes on me,” she said, tearing the top off of one. “They’re for my son. I don’t think he would mind if I used a few to help clean you up, though. Would that be all right with you?”

At first Eddie didn’t respond. He wiped at his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he nodded.

“The thing about scrapes like this,” Regina told them as she gently wiped away the blood up his leg, “is that they feel a lot worse than they actually are. You’ve really only hurt a few layers of skin – and you have many layers of skin, Eddie – so you haven’t gone deep enough to cause any permanent damage on it’s own. This might sting a little bit, buddy.”

Regina pressed a fresh sanitary wipe over the wound. Eddie’s face scrunched up without making much of a sound, and once again she felt the sunflower yellow of adoration for her child.

“You’re being very brave,” she murmured. “Anyhow, it hurts because under your skin has things called nerves. And that’s how you feel things – most things, at least,” Regina was quickly reaching the borders of her medical knowledge. “You didn’t hurt your body. It’s more like you triggered the alarm system that lets you know that something bad could’ve happened. Does that make sense?”

Somewhere in that explanation Eddie gathered the nerve to look at her. They seemed uncertain, and yet more than a little curious. She got a better look at his eyes, and at the iris coloboma that gave them the quality of something antique and wise.

She supposed that meant they could see hers as well. She wondered if Eddie would ask about them.

“How do you know my name?” They quietly questioned her.

Regina’s eyes widened slightly. Did she call them Eddie? Was she so preoccupied with comforting them that she forgot to make any effort to do things subtly?

She thought about Enoch. She should’ve let Enoch come with her.

“My name is Regina,” she said. “But you can call me Mustard if you’d like. Wouldn’t that be funny? It’s like the flower, but it’s also a sauce.”

Regina stood up and pulled her wallet out of her purse. Eddie followed her lead and got up on their own accord. Still, they didn’t drop the issue. “Do you know my mother?” They asked.

She thought about the cold voice that spoke to her on the phone and shivered. “No,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m actually...I’m Scott’s mom.”

“...Scott?”

There was a photo in the inner fold of her wallet. It was new, printed by Enoch only a week before Regina drove off on this terrible road trip, but already the creases were well-defined from folding and unfolding. It was of Scott and Tenzin, each only half-visible and under a pillow fort that collapsed over them mid-nap. Regina smiled at the image, then turned it to Edgar and pointed at Scott’s laughing face.

The recognition was stark. For a moment it was frightened. Then that broke away, and Eddie’s brown eyes once again welled with tears.

“He’s real?” They managed weakly.

-

in short, regina's entire perspective towards edgar could be summarized by this old nedroid comic:

if you have shit parents she probably would do the same for you.