#so i no longer have to obsessively think about it while playing sudoku in the dark

[insertsickusername13]

okay yes toxic jake and chloe i love it. screaming yelling fighting, angry sex in bathroom stalls and school custodian closets and ruthlessly spreading rumors and absolutely hating each other for years but still ending up back together when it's dark and they're alone. jake and chloe who are shocked back into reality after the fire and squip and realize they're better off with other people yes yes endgame richjake endgame pinkberry or whatever other ship you want BUT also jake and chloe broken up but jake and chloe still in love with the idea of each other

jake and chloe in january after the fire when chloe comes out as lesbian and jake's so supportive in public but the second he's alone in his apartment he's in tears because I was supposed to marry her. It was over, he knew it was, but there was still some part of him that had his entire future revolving around coming back to her

Chloe with a girl, so much happier than she's ever been with Jake, but when things don't work out with that girl and she's single again she calls Jake with the intention of hooking up, of angry break up-make-up sex even though that break up was with someone else and it's only after he picks up that she realizes she doesn't want that anymore. He doesn't want that anymore. He still drives over and he still holds her but it's not like it was.

They don't forgive each other and they aren't friends but they've still got that time after the SATs in spring when jake took her out to lunch because he was finally stress-free and she can tell that they're there for a reason and she's scared it's going to be a I still love you, but then she's shocked with a "How'd you know?" "Know what?" "I mean. About. That. Girls. That you---" and he looks so flustered and scared and Chloe's trying to be better so instead of relishing in his discomfort she just talks him through everything and somehow it ends with him apologizing and her apologizing and they know they're never ever going to be what they once were---there's never even gonna be acquaintances, they'll see each other once a year when they come home for holiday breaks (if that, because does Jake really have a home to come back to?) but no matter what, she's going to be his first love and he'll be the only name she remembers from high school when she's old and has a life with new friends and a new personality that isn't just a manifestation of her own self-hatred

[lillianfromaccounting]

So I feel like I need to do some explaining since a few mutuals seemed concerned about some of my recent posts/tags. personal stuff and maybe thor ragnarok spoilers under the cut?

tl;dr version: I’m not leaving the fandom. I still think Evans is adorkable and objectively hot. I just don’t get those ovary exploding, brain melting, heart stopping reactions when I see his stupid face anymore. I still find Steve smut hot as hell, so there is that. I just don’t melt at every Evans pic anymore. (Maybe I miss that beard more than I realize? buahahaha no who am I kidding? I will almost always prefer him clean shaven.)

I’ll still be around. I won’t maintain my queue as much and since I’ve logged out at work, I won’t be as active during the day. It will probably take me a while to read fics. I’ll check messages daily and get back to you as soon as I can. <3

I'm still trying to figure out what happened. I've been really burnt out lately and very, very busy with real life. I just don't have that really strong urge to bone him or fawn over his every word or action.

Some theories I have:

-I’ve been going to therapy and maybe I’ve finally figured out what void Chris was filling in my life and I’ve filled that void with something else. (Our social calendar is jam packed for the next several weeks AND I’ve started playing solitaire again. Lots and lots of solitaire. And sudoku. And the NYT crossword. And logic puzzles. God I love logic puzzles.)

-There’s some major planetary alignment shit going on and maybe whatever was causing my “love” for him int he first place is leaving my astrology chart. (Go read Susan Miller on astrologyzone.com. I’ve been reading her stuff for almost 15 years and it’s good astrology shit.)

-Maybe it’s the thought of him being back with Jenny. I really do have this mental block thing where if someone is attached, I stop finding them attractive.

-Things are happening in real life that are slowly deconstructing my delusional fantasy, and I think revisiting that world recently has made part of my brain realize that this really will never, ever happen. At least not how I had imagined it. If multiverses/alternate universes exist, this one has diverged from our reality here and my brain can’t fathom a way to bring it back together. In a sense, I’ve given up on this fantasy. (this is really vague, but I can’t explain more without sounding like a complete lunatic.)

-I could just be hormonal and it’s affecting my brain activity. I’m working on weaning the baby, and maybe that’s doing crazy things to my body.

-I’m also finally getting more sleep. Like 5-6 consecutive, mostly uninterrupted hours of wonderful sleep. It’s not enough, but it’s much better than the 1-3 hour chunks I had been getting for the past almost two years on and off. (Granted, my Evans crush obsession started well before I was pregnant with my second one, so I don’t think I can fully blame it on lack of sleep, but perhaps the lack of sleep extended my need for the obsession.)

-I watched Thor Ragnarok and the way they left Loki completely fits with a fic I’m writing and I’m really concentrating on Loki right now (not Hiddles, just Loki, and I’m not obsessed yet).

I really, really don't know what or how it happened. Last night I cried a little mourning the loss, trying to figure out if I *should* be sad that I no longer have this burning passion.

I know my obsession was unhealthy and while a lot of you can relate and even normalized it for me, I don’t think you realize how bad I had it. It really consumed me, and it was tragic because it would never be a reality (for so many reasons).

In the meantime, it feels good not to have every fiber of my being wanting someone/something I could never have. It's very freeing. This is a good thing (for my sanity, if nothing else).

I might change my mind when new material comes out (I honestly hope not).

I’m kind of at this point where if I meet him randomly, I think I’ll be able to compose myself and not freak out.

[the-lincyclopedia]

On enemies-to-lovers

I’ve seen a few posts recently about the fact that enemies-to-lovers necessarily involves people treating each other badly at the beginning. I’m pretty sure at least some of these posts have been sparked by Reylo. Today I saw a post that said, “If you claim that you love enemies to lovers but have to redefine what enemies means to strip it of all violence and conflict, then you don't in fact love enemies to lovers and it's ok to admit that you don't like it and prefer a gentler setup of friends.” And I have Reactions to that, but I didn’t want to get all personal and vulnerable in the notes of someone else’s post, so I’m doing it here instead. Buckle up. It’s gonna be a weird ride. 

I guess maybe what I personally enjoy might more accurately be termed rivals-to-lovers, rather than enemies-to-lovers. I made my bones in fandom as a Jily shipper--like, I dedicated three years of my life to that ship--and I only halfway regret it. And we don’t have a whole ton of information about James and Lily’s relationship, especially during their first few years at Hogwarts, but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying there was a point when Lily didn’t like James. Maybe she didn’t tell him this, other than the one time we know she did, but I don’t think you refer to someone you like as an “arrogant toe-rag.” It’s just . . . a pretty gross insult. 

Now, this dislike could have been one-sided. It seems like James liked Lily by the end of fifth year. But, when I was obsessed with that ship, I tended to headcanon them as really, really not getting along for a while. I headcanoned them having loud arguments, maybe stealing each other’s stuff, maybe playing mean pranks on each other. I don’t know if that sort of behavior meets everyone’s threshold of enemies, exactly, but I definitely headcanoned them as Not Friends. So maybe “rivals” fits. 

And I know the Harry Potter fandom can tie itself up in knots--indeed, has tied itself up in knots--over James vs. Snape and whether one or both of them was horrible, etc. I no longer like canon James Potter much at all, but I will say this for him: he didn’t support genocide. And however much Snape may have cared about Lily--which is not a thing I’m interested in litigating right now--he was fine with genocide as long as it left Lily alive, even though the ideology he subscribed to was an ideology that wanted Lily dead. 

I maintain that there’s a relevant difference between someone you personally have an issue with and do mean things to, on the one hand, versus someone whose systematic elimination you support, on the other hand. And I vastly prefer to ship people getting past the former than the latter. If that preference means you don’t think I really ship enemies-to-lovers, okay then. But I contend that this doesn’t mean I’m confined to friends-to-lovers or strangers-to-lovers only. Maybe the compromise is that I call the unfriendly-to-friendly ship progressions I like “rivals-to-lovers” rather than “enemies-to-lovers.” But don’t insist people are friends just because neither one has literally tortured the other. (I’m aware that at this point I’m not really arguing with the specific post I linked to and quoted above so much as the mass of posts I’ve seen on this topic in the past couple of weeks.)

I think the reason I’ve obsessed over a certain flavor of rivals-to-lovers for so long has a lot to do with my first relationship. Those of you who have been around me awhile have probably heard of First Boyfriend before, and I’m gonna talk about him again. See, we were in each other’s lives for 17 years, and he was one of the most important people in my life for nine and a half of those years. We may have “only” dated for three (”only” in quotation marks because three years is a long time in high school), but we orbited each other for so much longer than that. 

My first clear memory of First Boyfriend comes from fifth grade. He walked up to me on the soccer field during recess one day and tackled me without saying anything, and then he walked away. I chased him down and kicked him in the shin, and then he tackled me again. My khakis wound up grass stained and ripped. 

We didn’t really interact for another three years after that, but in eighth grade we started talking a lot. Specifically, we started arguing a lot. We had some major philosophical differences around things like morality and human worth, and we had these heated arguments that often ended with him calling me an idiot and me calling him a monster. This is . . . not how friends act? We were Not Friends. 

And then, gradually, we started to be. Mostly because I started to realize how very Not Okay he was, and I started bringing him sudokus to do because I realized it would make himself jab himself with pencils less, and then he started hugging me when I got overwhelmed and upset, and we generally started treating each other better. And that’s a progression that has fascinated me ever since, even though now it sometimes hurts to read because, well, it took him a long time to completely stop hurting me, and I haven’t fully recovered from that. (There’s a lot--a LOT--that I haven’t gone into in this post, because it’s not terribly relevant to the point I’m making. Just know, if you’re tempted to make a snarky comment, that you don’t have anywhere near the whole story.)

I am deeply interested in stories where people go from being interpersonally mean to one another to caring deeply about each other. I am not interested in stories where one character tortures another character or is sexually violent against another character and then romance ensues in the wake of that. And I would like to think that there are things I enjoy that could be classified as enemies-to-lovers, or at least rivals-to-lovers. There exist ship progressions other than “Reylo” and “friends-to-lovers.”