#sorry as a shorter person I get so pissed off by this narrative | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

secretsantasides · 4 years

Text

Gift #8: My Universe

Gift for @enby-fander

Prompt: Analogical High School AU

My Universe

Characters: Logan, Deceit (called Daniel), Virgil, mentions of Remus, mentions of Patton

Pairings: Romantic Analogical, Platonic Loceit, Brotherly Anxciet, implied Brotherly Logicality

Warnings: Alludes to homelessness and poverty, sad boi Virgil

Summary: Thank you to the two anons who showed up on @enby-fander's account and gave me major inspiration right when I needed it. Here you go, Trans Virgil and Nonbinary Logan that starts as angst and ends as fluff.

--------------------------------------------------------------

As the rest of Kingston High School's sophomores rushed into the cafeteria, Daniel Hyde instead ducked through an out-of-the-way, yet familiar, pair of dark, wooden, though probably fake wood, double doors. His head was down as he stalked over to the Fiction section, deliberately searching. For what, bystanders had no clue.

They parted, anxious to induce the wrath of Dan, a boy rumoured to be in a gang. None of them would put such a thing past the punk boy. He wasn't someone to mess with.

He walked with such a determination that they knew he was on the hunt. His prey? Another, hidden from all but him.

Logan Jekyll was seated in the middle of the mystery section, shrouded in darkness. The junior knew these shelves well, so much so that they could traverse them without requiring sight. That way, they had no reason to flick the switches at the start of each row to the "on" position, which would illuminate the row of dim fluorescent bulbs dangling above. Logan liked it better in the dark, anyway. It hid the introvert from those pesky freshmen. The ones who liked to taunt Logan for some unknown reason.

"Oh look, it's genius Jekyll. Aren't you the one with the ridiculously high GPA? Highest in your year?"

They gave a quick, curt nod to both questions, not speaking. Instead, they continued to read their book, turning the page after a few seconds of silence.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was most definitely living up to the praise they had heard it received, primarily by the Hyde brothers. Daniel had always pressed them to read it, so they had finally began the novel.

As they read, laughs were heard. The rowdy students had become bored with the junior and had stampeded away towards the computers. Logan never understood what they seemed to find so funny.

"Hey, first chair Jekyll, heard you got the solo for the next concert."

When they nodded, quick and curt, the group started laughing yet again. All the way over to the doors. Probably after they walked out the doors, too.

Logan recognized someone in that mob as the sophomore who liked to raise hell during rehearsal, along with a few trumpet players, a bassoon, and half of percussion. He brought the baritone horn section down considerably, even with Logan there to counterbalance his pure idiocy. And to think, this kid is laughing at him. Sheer stupidity, all of it.

"Jekyll, my man, the reason our debate team isn't shit. You're captain, right? Who's second, in your book?"

At the first question, they nodded. At the second, they scowled and looked back at his book. They did have an opinion on who would fall second, but that opinion was not owed to a group of freshmen who loiter around and taunt others. Seeing the spectacle-wearing one's scowl, the boys laughed. Turning and walking away, they kept on snickering and joking about "perfect Jekyll."

'Our debate team? You mean, my debate team.' Logan recognized none of those dumbasses as members of debate, especially not the one who initiated the conversation. He would be debating things when pigs flew.

"I found Jekyll, man of the hour. Nice speech you gave, didn't realize you could do that. Thought only seniors could."

They shook their head "no" at the statement, causing them to… big surprise… laugh at them.

At least they're eloquent enough to make a speech. These people could barely string together simple sentences, let alone write with enough skill to compose a speech at the level Logan did so at.

"Hey guys, here's Dr. Jekyll. Heard you finally found your Mr. Hyde, and you're terribly in love."

They scowled, otherwise ignoring all of them. That narrative wasn't even fitting to Robert Louis Stevenson's original story. In the end, it was revealed that Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde were one and the same, a relationship they and their boyfriend do not possess.

"What, don't want to admit that you're gay as f*ck for Hyde?"

The scowl already adorning their features intensified some, but that was the only indicator of how pissed Logan truly was. Lacking a reaction, the group turned and walked away, laughing as they went.

Did they owe them an explanation of their love life? No, they should f*ck off. It's their damn significant other, not theirs. They were thinking of multiple profanities that could describe those idiots, but decidedly did not execute them aloud. Their choices would make probably Remus Kingston proud, a boy who has an alphabet of swear words, an alphabet that only skims the surface of his cursing dictionary.

As Logan sat there, reminiscing about how much of an asshole all of those freshmen were, Dan was slowly honing down his search radius.

He had visited most of Logan's normal rows, besides mystery and parts of nonfiction. As he walked to non-fiction, he stopped abruptly and turned to walk down the row of mystery novels. Logan truly adored the who-dunits covering these shelves, or so he's heard. He may have good luck looking here, as long as his brother knew Jekyll well. Dan was certain he did.

Don't fail me now, nerd, I need you, he thought, breathing deeply.

He strolled casually into the aisle, flicking the switch at the start of the row. The dim fluorescent lining the ceiling flickered on, revealing exactly what he was looking for. Exactly who he was looking for. Logan Jekyll.

Logan hissed at the sudden lights, sparking a chuckle from the sophomore stalking towards him. They looked up, blue-green eyes meeting grey.

There was an amused smirk adorning the boy's features. Logan did not mirror the expression, but they were nonetheless glad to see the sophomore.

"Didn't realize us Hyde's had made an impression on you. Not surprised, though, with how much you see my brother."

The one clad in blue blushed a deep red at the mention of their boyfriend. Daniel laughed at the sight, before offering out his hand. Logan looked down at the palm obscured by black, fingerless gloves, bewildered as to why the other was putting his hand out. Their confusion showed, causing Dan to roll his eyes and huff.

"Take my hand, Calculator Watch, I'm helping you up. That sorry excuse for carpeting is stale as f*ck, so we might as well go sit somewhere more comfortable."

Reliasition flashed before Logan's eyes as they muttered an, "Ah." Their hand took the other's gloved one, allowing the younger boy to hoist the older off of the matted, black carpet. They now were roughly at eye-level with each other, Logan with a solid height of 5'5" and Daniel being just a half or full inch shorter.

Daniel ran one hand through his slicked back black hair, shoving the other in one pocket of his faded leather jacket. The hand brushing the hair joined the other in the pocket opposite.

"Now, Jekyll, we have a pressing matter to discuss."

The two walked in silence for a while, Daniel leading them through the hallways. Suddenly, he took a left into a classroom, Logan following behind.

The classroom was abandoned, obviously having been used as a science room at one point. There were posters adorning two of the walls, saying things like "Eat, sleep, science, repeat."

"We need to talk about my brother."

Panic flashed in the eyes of Logan, who hid the emotion quickly. Dan wouldn't have noticed if Logan had not coughed directly afterwards, drawing attention to their still shell-shocked expression

The older of the two anxiously scuffed one of their NASA-themed Vans across the linoleum tiles, before looking back at the aforementioned boy.

"Go on."

"Well, he has refused to leave his room for the past 5 days, so I wanted to ask you for…"

He hesitated, but Logan pushed him on.

"For what? Spit it out, Hyde."

Daniel coughed, before regaining his composure.

"I need your help, Jeyll. I need your f*cking help. You're the only person I know that can do anything to get my brother out of his hiding space, and that's all I care about. I'm willing to put aside our indifferences if it helps my brother. Now, tell me, will you?"

"So, what am I supposed to do again?"

The two were walking to the apartment the Hyde brothers shared.

Daniel cleared his throat. "You're supposed to get that bastard to emerge from the cave he has made out of his room. This may be a habit of his, but it has gone on longer than normal, which concerns me."

Logan chuckled. "Sounds like him, alright. At least I now know for certain you and I are talking about the same person."

Dan burst out, "Finally! Someone understands how antisocial that motherf*cker can be!"

He gestured dramatically to emphasize the point.

The older's face morphed into a grin and they began to laugh.

"Hey!" they said, through their laughter, "That's my boyfriend you're talking about!"

Daniel snorted.

"He's my brother! I'm allowed to call him an antisocial bastard."

The pair's laughter tapered off as they continued their trek.

"May I ask how far away your apartment is?"

Daniel coughed, shifting a bit awkwardly.

"Um… it's still a few minutes away, but we're heading up on it."

Logan cocked an eyebrow.

"Y'all live in the downtown area?" they asked.

Dan stayed silent, but nodded.

"My apologies for pushing the subject."

The pair had arrived at the place Daniel pointed them towards, a run-down, dirty-looking, crowded apartment building. Dan stopped multiple times before they arrived, obviously completing a routine.

First, he stopped by an older woman, who was walking across the sparsely filled parking lot with a cart. In the cart, canned food resided, all of which had a small message written on them in Sharpie.

As he reached her, Daniel pressed a can of food he procured from the pocket of his black backpack into her hands.

Logan heard her murmur, "God bless you, honey. You and your brother stay safe, alright Danny?"

They saw Dan give a warm smile towards her. "We will. Stay safe, Mrs. Cunningham."

Secondly, he waved to a group of little boys running in the lot, kicking a ball around. The one who had the ball kicked it towards Daniel, grinning brightly.

"Mr. Hyde!" the other boys shouted, having just spotted the teenager.

"Now what have I always told y'all? Call me Dan."

"Okay, Mr. Dan!" the boys chorused.

Daniel rolled his eyes, ruffling the hair of one. "I give up, y'all obviously are gonna be respectful at all times."

He paused, before clearing his throat.

"That's a good thing, boys. Respect everyone, even if it doesn't seem like they deserve it. Just gotta respect everyone."

The last part was murmured.

The boys all nodded vigorously, before one shouted, "First one to the tree over there gets to pick teams!"

They all sprinted, leaving Dan and Logan to chuckle.

"Kids, right?"

Daniel gave a half-moon smile. "Yeah."

The last stop before the Hyde apartment was at the front desk of the lobby. It could barely be considered a lobby, more like a room with a desk shoved in the corner, some assorted furniture in the other, and stairs to the upper floors. Daniel stepped up to the desk, pulling a sheet of folded notebook paper out of his jacket pocket. He set it on the desk before turning around and smoothing the worn-leather of his jacket. He popped the collar, looking Logan in the eyes.

"Let's go, Jekyll."

"Apartment 7C, correct?"

The pair had just arrived at floor 7, both out of breath. Daniel hid it better, though.

"...Yes," he composed himself, looking at the junior with a look of annoyance.

They strolled down the hall, stopping just short of the end.

APARTMENT 7C read a small, dirty plaque mounted just above the doorknob.

Dan proccured an equally rusty key from his back jean pocket. He turned to Logan and said, "Let's go get my bastard of a brother out of his damn slump."

The pair walked into the mess of an apartment, Daniel shouting out a quick, "I'm home!" to ease the other Hyde's anxieties. Though, the shouting may be contradictory, as the older Hyde brother was not a fan of loud noises.

Daniel quickly dropped the key on a rickety table close by to the door. His combat boots were shed, as Logan kicked off his Vans.

Dan turned to Logan, directing him towards his brother.

"Down the hall, first door to the left. It'll be locked, so… here."

He grabbed a penny from the counter and threw it to Logan. They caught it with ease, studying the coin. They looked up, raising an eyebrow.

"Our locks are garbage, so this should get it easy. I would've done it myself earlier this week, but I believe in the sanctitiy of one's room. That is, until you're in there for almost a week."

Logan nodded, turning to follow the instructions given.

Dan stopped them.

"I don't think he wants to see me, so I'll stay back. Jekyll, get my brother. Please."

He sounded almost desperate, so Logan obliged.

They found the door indicated easily, as there was a galaxy-patterned poster in blues and purples attached to the door with Scotch tape. It just seemed… right.

They jangled the knob a bit, discovering it was unsurprisingly locked. Logan took the penny, shoved it into the flat indentation on the rusty knob, turning slowly and carefully. It worked. The door was now unlocked.

Logan turned the handle, quickly entering the dark room. They heard a hoarse voice, dull due to lack of use, emitate from the corner.

"L-eave m-e the hell alon-e."

A throat was cleared, a few coughs ringing through the silence of the room.

"I'm fine."

Logan huffed, rumbling for the light switch mounted on the wall next to them.

Their hand knocked the switch up, prompting a hiss from the figure huddled in a corner.

"I thought you would be happier to see me. I assume I was wrong."

The figure looked up, revealing messy purple hair, tired and unfocused eyes, and a miserable expression adorning the features Logan would always find beautiful.

"Stella?"

"It's me, nebulosa."

Logan looked around the room.

It was very… Virgil.

He had a few band posters on the walls, hoodies with patches and stitching and a worn leather-jacket (much like Daniel's) hanging in the closet alongside his school-issued letterman's jacket, a black guitar propped up nicely in a corner, a chair that looked similar to those in the small dining room set with his low-quality music stand, band folder, and the large, bulky case of a euphonium put aside carefully, and a few trophies and certificates earned for track, for musical achievements, or for academic accomplishments were set on the dresser or hung on the wall above it. Everything was in black and deep purple, with subtle hints of navy.

They liked the color scheme a lot, as it was quite pleasing to the eye.

Much better than their brother's mixture of bright and pastel blues, all light in tone. Patton really didn't know how to mix colors.

Logan's attention was diverted, however, from the room surrounding them when they heard sniffles from Virgil's corner.

"Hey, hey. What's wrong?"

Virgil wiped his eyes, acting as though he wasn't just crying.

"I'm just over-emotional, I guess. Damn it, peri-"

He stopped himself, a look of shock adorning his features. Logan looked upon him with a look of pity, sad-smile creeping onto their features.

"Is that why you've been isolating yourself, babe? Hey, hey, come here."

Virgil shook his head. "I'm fine," he said stubbornly.

Logan walked over to him, wrapping their arms around him.

"It's okay, stella. ...I love you."

Virgil gave a weak smile.

"I love you too, Logan."

#fanfic #secretsantasides #analogical #virgil sanders #ts virgil #logan sanders #ts logan #high school au #sanders sides

35 notes · View notes

timeisacephalopod · 5 years

Text

Ive seen endgame! Spoilers under the cut and I’m not tagging this as spoilers because I’m literally telling you now its spoilers.

1- what the fuck was the point of Tony’s kid? We had more than 10 years with this character, he doesn’t need a kid for emotional impact when he died and now I’m kind of pissed they threw this fucking random kid in there only to orphan the poor thing and make Pepper a single mother. What fucking bullshit. Never should have been a storyline.

2- Pepper in the suit yaaaaaas.

3- Wanda. Fucking loved her moments. And Thanos’ “I don’t even know who you are” was fucking iconic lmao. I mean her “you will” was okay but holy fucking damn that was the funniest shit from Thanos.

4- they killed viz permanently lmao yeah I didn’t give 2 tits and a snare drum about him anyway so I don’t care.

5- Steve. What the fucking fuck did they do to him? Don’t get me wrong, I like Peggy, and I liked him and Peggy in FA. They were cute. But it was a 4 month fling in the middle of of a war. Not that it can’t be important, but after 15+ years you are telling me a 4 month fling from Steve’s youth is more important to him than everything else? And what of Bucky? He leaves him to HYDRA and after all the shit he went through in WS and CW you’re seriously telling me he’d just LEAVE him there like that? I don’t mean to be a dick to Peggy because I do like her, but narratively speaking Bucky has always played more importance to her except when they want to make Steve feel nostalgic. I’m sorry, I’m fucking over that plot line.

More than that though she moved on in her show, she had a life after Steve and he went back and took that from her. And I don’t see why aside from no one let him grow as a character while also having him grow as a character. He went through a huge character shift in WS and then we saw nothing of it. Aside from his motivations in CW, which make sense given the context of WS however much I disagree, we see none of that development and I’m fucking tired of watching him lament over a relationship that lasted for a shorter time than a high school semester. To any normal person, and even to Steve given his non normal stance, he would have moved the fuck on. Also he made out with her niece that one time!! How is he living with this!

Also Sam says they never had a Captain America but Steve was still big when he danced with Peggy, which means he got the serum, which means he still can’t age right, which begs the question of how the tits long did he live? And again, what does this mean for everything else considering getting the serum implies he was, at some point, Cap even if he was never the Cap they knew. What the fuck! I’m actually the most mad about this because Steve, post WS, probably would have been one of my favorite characters given his extreme narrative shift and just how interesting that could have been if anyone ever fucking let him move on with his fucking self but no. Instead we end with him in the same spot he started in! I watched ten years of this shit for him to do NOTHING? All that development (that the narratives never really let him go through in totality because he narratively never shifted out of his War and Peggy Phase even while his character, on an individual level, moved out of that several times) and I watch him end in the same place he started?

Honestly I’m pretty pissed about that. Especially with all the did with Bucky. I seriously can’t believe Steve fucking left him there, ignored every piece of information he had, ruined Peggy’s original happy ending, and then didn’t even grow as a character. I like that he got a happy ending, I think he’s earned that, but I simply cannot believe a 4 month fucking fling meant so much he’d ignore his best friend, HYDRA, Peggy’s original marriage, the fact that he made out with her niece that one time, and everything else to end up exactly where he started. Which is why I don’t really care for him to begin with- because the narrative always leaves him right at the beginning and I don’t know how to invest in a character that grows but never grows. If he narratively was allowed to grow he would have been so. Much. Better. It is so fucking frustrating to me that he never moved the fuck on. You have no idea.

6- “I can do this all day” “Yeah I know”

7- “You look like melted ice cream”

8- Hated almost everything they did with Thor. Fat jokes? Yikes. Though I did love that ice cream line. Loved the bit with Frigga. And like. Thor being devastated and traumatized is ok. I think that’s realistic enough even if I wonder how someone that’s been alive for well over 1000 years doesn’t know how to handle himself with slightly more grace. I would have liked to see him crack differently.

9- Cap picking up Thor’s hammer and Thor being happy about it? 10 000 times better than the garbage Whedon wrote. Loved that.

10- Nebula. N E B U L A. NEEEEEBBBUUUUULLLLAAAA. Start to finish fucking loved her. She was amazing. 2 questions though- how did she not kill herself when she killed herself? Which in itself is a fucky question to ask. And also the second contention point I have with the movie beyond time travel bullshit is why NO ONE asked where she was post Nat (that in a minute). I know they were sad about Nat obviously but Rhodey is a full bird colonel, he keeps track of thousands of people for his job, plus all of his involvement in Tony’s antics, plus the Avengers and you’re telling me he didn’t notice her gone even with Nat? And Tony, you’re telling me he didn’t notice her gone? He was the one who bonded with her the most and he didn’t notice that he’s now technically lost two people he was close to? And Rocket? He didn’t notice? Are you fucking kidding me? I thought that was bullshit.

Even if, by chance, Rhodey somehow didn’t notice his partner in crime was missing (”I wasn't always like this” “Neither was I”- new BroTP yo!) when I think his military experience alone would have made him the second most likely to notice after Rocket (because he knows her the best) then Rocket should have. And if for some reason Rocket didn’t notice despite her being all that’s left of his found family, making him extra invested in her whereabouts, over Nat, whom I think he’d care about but not like Nebula, then Tony, who spent all that time with her in space, would have noticed.

Fucking someone would have noticed her gone. And the whole second half relies on no one noticing this moment and I call absolute bullshit on that. Someone. Would. Have. Noticed. Rhodey if for no other reason than experience of keeping track of people in war zones, Rocket if for no other reason than her being his last remaining connection to his family, and Tony if for no other reason than Nebula being a large part of the reason he’s alive. I was completely thrown from the story here. I simply can’t see how they could over look that even considering Natasha.

11- Natasha. Are you fucking kidding me? You killed her over Clint? I fucking hate MCU Clint. He’s boring, he’s nothing like the comics, he’s a fucking prick, and I don’t give a fuck about his family or anything to do with him. I liked him best when he was going to kill himself for Natasha. That is the only moment, as Marie Kondo would say, sparked joy for me. Otherwise throw the whole thing out. Fucking Natasha over Clint. Fuck you. That was an insult to the viewers. I don’t give a fuck about Clint, I don’t give a fuck about his kids aside from thinking they didn’t deserve the snap, and I don’t give a fuck about his story.

My mom said he was a plain Timbit (donut hole for the US readers) in a donut world and I honestly think that’s insulting to the plain Timbit, which is something we give to dogs as treats in Canada. Clint isn’t even a dog treat to me and they killed Black Widow over him. Fucking pissed.

12- “That suit does nothing for your ass” “No one was asking you to look, Tony!” “That’s America’s ass!” .... “That is America’s ass”

13- I actually really liked what they did with Bruce. I was excited to see all the benefits of the Hulk and Banner in one! That was pretty cool!

14- Strange’s reappearance was pretty badass. And Wong! I was excited to see him there! Was a bit surprised by Tilda Swinton’s appearance but okay. I didn’t hate it. Loved when she punched Bruce out of the Hulk lmfao that was so funny. I do like that she apparently does that to everyone lmao. I should write a fic where she punches Wong’s soul out of his body when the meet just because I think it’d be funny. And I’d love to see more Wong.

15- Steve vs Steve was really cool, I liked that. And fucking Hail HYDRA holy fucking shit I almost lost my ass. Couldn’t fucking believe he said that (and knowing that he just leaves that all for Peggy, his 4 month fling? Find this wildly out of character for him). Then he fucks right off with the tesseract omg.

16- Scott had some iconic one-liners. “That’s America’s ass!” “Okay I'm going to go inside you” omg. Ant Man was a joy to watch in this. I find Endgame used his character right.

17- I know I said it but Pepper Potts in the fucking suit y’all! I don’t know who was watching Morgan but also Pepper Potts in the fucking suit!!

18- That time travel shit made things entirely way too fucky. I knew that’s what they were going to do because that’s all that made sense, but I thought it was fucking stupid. And can Thanos even snap the stones out of existence? Because Tilda Swinton’s speech implied if he did something like that timelines would essentially do the funky chicken and die. She removed the time stone and shit was supposed to get weird, remove all 5 and what happens? Wtf? He fucking hid those stones. Did like Thor’s bit there though, killing Thanos. I think Nebula earned it more than him but I also think it was a good moment for Thor before his character became a fucking joke.

19- narratively I understand why they started with Clint’s family dusting but I don’t give a fuck about Clint or his dusted family. I would have preferred watching a civilian lose his shit.

20- Steve you need therapy, stop leading therapy sessions. Especially when your advice is ‘move on’ and you literally go fucking nowhere in your life even after you went all over hell’s creations. Get this man a proper therapist he needs like 15!

21- lmfao Russos talking about gay representation and it was a guy talking about a date. I shit you the fuck not that was it. Gay. It was barely even there. Only straight men would ever assume that could possibly count as representation holy fuck. Like thanks for the blink you miss it shout out I guess. You remembered gays exist, wow!

22- Strange’s one finger thing, I liked that a lot actually. I think it functioned both as a great call to action and a nice reference to Stephen’s power.

23- Quick question, why was Tilda Swinton in New York? Because they went back too far for Strange- at first I when they mentioned 3 stones in NY I was like wait, when’s Strange’s story supposed to happen? After WS right? He can’t be in NY with the stone? But then Tilda showed up and I was like... why isn’t she in Nepal at the teaching sanctum? Because apparently the NY one isn’t a teaching sanctum and as far as I knew she was training Mordo and Wong there at this time so wtf? And it can’t be explained with ‘she knew she needed to be there’ because she punched Bruce out of hulk and he had to grovel to her to get the fucking thing from her and only managed because she knew Stephen gave up the stone willingly and would never do so without good reason because he’s the best fo the best. So like. Why was she there aside from plot convenience? That was a little too easy. Frankly, the whole plot was a touch too easy but still.

24- tired of aliens we’re supposed to relate to looking like humans but in pink while aliens we’re supposed to dislike are animalistic and non human looking. That’s a garbage trope.

25- The black woman in the elevator who made Tony and Steve is 100% Fury’s mother no one can convince me otherwise. I think the timeline matches up but I don’t care if it doesn’t she’s his mom now. He gets it all from his mama.

Bonus: stop trying to make Howard happen, Marvel, its not going to. I fucking hated that scene with Tony and Howard. What kind of bullshit abuse apology was that? Howard then, sure, he didn’t suck quite yet and seems to be aware of his own shortcomings. Howard in the future? Sorry, irredeemable crap. Narratively interesting irredeemable crap but irredeemable nonetheless. Tony panicking and saying his last name was Potts was great though lol. I’ll take it as evidence he took Pepper’s last name when they got married.

Bonus Bonus: I cried when Sam held the shield. I’ve been gunning for Sam to take over as Cap since we met him and everyone told me it’d be Bucky. I argued that we’ve already seen the story of a super soldier as Cap, it would be more interesting to watch Sam as a relatively normal guy take over as Cap. And I like Bucky traumatized and Winter Solider-y. I think he’s more interesting that way. Seriously though, Sam as Cap will be amazing and I didn’t expect to cry at that of all things but I did. I’m so excited to see him in that role!

Bonus Bonus Bonus for any sorry fucking soul who’s made it this far in I think I might update the Tony, T’Challa, and Their Gaggle of Children verse to include Morgan (but older) finding Tony only she’s his actual assed kid and no one believes it even though they have a striking resemblance. Which annoys them both because he got the media to buy all his other fake kids with easy to track down parents but not his actual kid. Ending with Nebula showing up and him claiming she’s his kid and everyone buying it.

#winters ramblings

27 notes · View notes

lizzybeth1986 · 6 years

Text

Quick Thoughts on TRR Book 3 Chapter 11

• Again, fam, I'm not entirely sure I'll have this QT out in time but I hope I will. My surgery has been fixed for next Thursday, and I'd like to finish whatever I can before I leave for hospital. It's going to be hard, but fingers crossed I can get it done.

Here is Part 2 of Chapter 11's Quick Thoughts once you're through with this one!

• I'm noticing a narrative pattern here! Whenever something devastating is happening right in front of us (like the two attacks in the palace) they immediately pick up from where they left off in the previous chapter, bring that portion to its dramatic conclusion, and then play the opening theme (in this case, it's the sad version of the TRR title track). They used a similar narrative format in Chapter 1 of this book.

• This is also the third time the sad TRR track plays in the book. The only time it was played sans the narrative style of Chapter 1 and Chapter 10's openings, was in Chapter 6, after the orchard at Applewood was burned. All at points of time when all hope seems to be lost, before our lead characters get up, dust themselves off, and resolve to keep going despite everything and everyone against them.

• It was pretty clear that Constantine would sacrifice his life in this chapter, given the way he was talking at the end of the last one. It's the kind of symbolic send-off one tends to write for a character one knows will die sooner than he anticipates. Which is why even though I'm kinda pissed that Leo comes now when everything seems safe, I understand why having him there is so important. In the narrative, Leo is an important part of the closure that comes before Constantine's demise.

•

A few notes on Constantine's demise:

1. He's right about one thing: it definitely is a better end for him. He dies a hero. Cordonia never finds out that he was going to die anyway. No one gets to know what he did to the future Queen/newest Duchess either. I'm still going to be unhappy about this because it's a way better end than the man deserves.

2. I know I would find it disturbing if the man who arranged for me to be harmed in multiple ways in his own house was hailed a hero during his funeral, with only me and a handful of other people knowing he had done, and without the option of ever opening up about who was really behind it. I don't know about you, but my MC Esther would definitely feel conflicted about that.

3. Also..."everything I did, it was for you...whether or not it was right". Sorry Constantine, but that's a load of bullshit. After all this time, this man is still making excuses just before he dies. Liam answered this brilliantly in the last book - Constantine had a choice. He always had a choice. There were other, better ways of getting the MC out of the competition if that was his goal but no, his mind went straight to privacy violations and assault.

4. Also, while he pledged to help us under pressure from Liam, the fact remains that the brunt of his actions were borne by other people. The MC's name was dragged into the mud and SHE had to run around and make all the effort of setting it right. Liam was forced into a loveless match that would have culminated in a disastrous marriage had Tariq not cooperated, and he had to work on figuring out who was behind this not knowing his own family was involved. In all this, Constantine did all the work of making his own home as unsafe for his guest as it could possibly get, and very little of the work in restoring her reputation in the eyes of all of Cordonia. Did he apologize? Sure he did. But that doesn't change a damned thing. It doesn't change the fact that he sowed evil and left it for other people to reap.

5. I find his last line to Liam quite poignant though. "You are Cordonia". That's a very loaded statement, and a very accurate one. And I think if there is anything that can keep Liam strong and carry him forward, it's that. No one in this book is as immersed in the culture, history and spirit of Cordonia as Liam is - which is why he makes the best king for the nation. Because he knows it intimately and cares for it, he knows what this country needs so it can heal. Even if it takes a while for Liam to realize that himself.

6. So long, old man.

• Title: Cold Fire. Kinda fitting, considering our tour has now moved to Lythikos, but the 'heat' of the tensions within the court have turned up several notches. It could also refer to that sick, sick burn Drake delivered to Madeleine today though 😂😂😂

• Alternative titles:

Drink What Everyone Else Is Drinking. Good For Health.

Drake Doesn't Need A Sword to Slay Assholes. Nor Does Olivia, Apparently.

@callmetippytumbles suggested a shorter and better alternative title to that one, and it's: Drake Roasts And Gets Roasted.

• I was hoping we would spend at least a chapter in the Capitol and, yknow, actually help Liam work through his grief, but nope. Flash-forward it is.

• Bastien is in hospital now, with injuries sustained from escorting people out of the palace, so Mara (who apparently hasn't been sleeping since the attack) is the one doing the debriefing on his behalf.

• It's clear to Liam and our friends NOW that whoever has been conspiring against us was a part of the Unity Tour and working from the inside (bruh, I could have told you that long ago). I'm thinking now that if Neville is part of this plan, perhaps the duel was meant to serve as a distraction so arrangements could be made within the time that the entire court was out in the courtyard. Just a theory.

• This was also alluded to in Perfect Match, when one of Nadia's alternative identities is Steel, a guest in the 'royal's tour who is actually an assassin.

•

This is perhaps the closest we get to Liam confessing how much all this has been affecting him, and sadly enough, he doesn't have enough time to really work through his grief. The suggestion to continue to Lythikos and get their answers there comes from Liam, and he speaks of it as something Constantine would have wanted. It isn't entirely healthy, but I think this is the way Liam has been brought up and it's hard for him to give himself time to be vulnerable, to give himself the space to grieve properly. Because now more than ever he has an entire country depending on him, and the royal family is known for projecting displays of strength and stoicism even if they don't feel it. It's not a good way of working through one's issues, but it's probably the only way Liam knows to deal with his trauma. I feel like in a lot of ways he's reliving especially the assassination attempt that happened earlier, but worse because someone he loved actually died this time. I'd definitely see some signs of PTSD at work here, even if it's suppressed. Particularly given that he speaks of feeling empty.

•

Waitaminute...are you telling me that Esther, the future Queen of Cordonia, is going to attend a Ball, her fiancé's father's funeral, a meeting, and an entire trip to Lythikos in this fever dream of a costume???

Fine. Fine, Esther, I give up. Fanta bottle inspired Stephanie Seymour gown it is 🙄

• What Madeleine says about the effect the MC has (particularly if the MC chooses all the right options during the tour) on people is very very similar to the last thing Constantine said before he died:

I'm guessing in a lot of ways this is seen as the MC's personal victory. Constantine and Madeleine were the two people who believed least that the MC had anything of value to give if she became Queen or a person of power in Cordonian politics. It was a long hard road to achieving this level of confidence even in her naysayers, so in a lot of ways the MC now truly is a unifying factor. Which makes me wonder what they say if you do a gag-run instead where the MC fails miserably during the tour. I know @boneandfur is doing such a playthrough as of now, but I don't know exactly if Madeleine and Constantine's words to her change in such an eventuality.

•

OMG. The design team is KILLING IT with the OOTD this week! It's gorgeous, and it tells us plenty about the Lythikos duchy and the Nevrakis House! For those of you who haven't read my House Sigils essay, I theorized that red was one of the house tinctures (colours), and that the sigil was either a sword or a spider. The flaming sword is attached to the gown (possibly as a brooch pin). @i-dream-so-i-write and I discussed this, and it was she who pointed out that Diavolos signature weapon was the flaming sword, as can be seen from the above picture. I'm not sure which metallic colour would form the second colour/tincture, but evidence seems to be learning more towards silver (there is a little gold on the brooch-sword, so it could be either). Tldr: I love this gown. It has that grace and effortless style that I've come to associate with Nevrakis fashion.

• Olivia is wearing the gown she wore for her Coronation. Come to think of it, the Scarlet Duchess moniker that Olivia got would refer to way more than her fashion. Given that it's one of her house colours and she was proud to be a Nevrakis especially at the time, Scarlet Duchess would mean so much to her. So much.

• So we're seated in the front and served fresh, piping hot food. SWEET! XD This time we get to order stuff. Maxwell gets fondue, Hana gets glazed salmon and Drake has ordered for ribs.

• Olivia: I had to request a few changes for your more...rustic palette.

Drake: Are you expecting a thanks? Because you're not getting one.

You're in for the meal of your life, Walker 😂

•

If you've never liked Olivia at all before? This scene in reason enough 😂😂😂

• Lucretia drops by to make more heavy hints about marriage prospects for Olivia (including relief that her niece wasn't scarred from rubble. How...caring).

• Olivia and Liam then perform the opening dance (like they did during the social season) and Liam takes this opportunity to find out what she knows. He gets little, beyond her worries about having to marry someone Lucretia will pick for her. Hana points out that perhaps "one has to wonder who Lucretia wants Olivia to marry". Good question.

• But before that, Kiara comes up to the MC to tell her she will be withdrawing from court after the Winter Festival ends. Kiara's argument is sound - she had already extended her public support and seems to be attending the wedding. But now is a dangerous time to be a part of the court, and Kiara's doing what she can to stay safe. Remember, she was the only noblewoman in court injured during the attack at Homecoming Ball, a fact that was given hardly a minute of consideration before the MC "convinced" her to join them again.

• Hana mentions that perhaps they can speak to her before she returns. I hope this means we will FINALLY address what happened to Kiara and look into possible - very valid - concerns about her safety. This is something we SHOULD have been talking about when we meet her at Castelserraillian, but no. PB decided to create a whole new character instead just so Kiara wouldn't get the attention she deserved as a character.

• Then again, she is seen as a suspect in a way none of the other court ladies (besides Olivia, and she's only viewed as such because of her family history) are. Sigh. The MC gets the option to speculate that she "knows something" and Drake gets to answer that "we must suspect everyone". DRAKE. Who ALSO got wounded at the same Ball that she was wounded in. Ugh. I mean I shouldn't be surprised considering he gets angry about people not supporting Liam barely hours after he got shot, but he's friends with the King. Kiara is not, and if she gets wounded again wouldn't it be their fault for not addressing the concerns she and her family had in the first place? Apparently Penelope's and Madeleine's concerns should be given ample consideration, but Kiara? Kiara who?? Oh right, Penelope's love interest's sister 😠 While we're at it, let's just make her suspicious for no reason!

• CONGRATULATIONS MAXWELL STANS on getting your first character development scene! There isn't a lot of overt character development but the scene does show us how observant and resourceful Maxwell is, pointing out the hole in the armoury wall that will allow us to overhear people's conversations and give us a better idea of who we should suspect. It does this while still establishing him as goofy, fun-living and always ready to live life king-size.

• Maxwell and the MC engage in what is known in European folklore as an apple-shot (Apfelschuss in German. The most popular folk tale involving this feat of archery is that of William Tell, a Swiss folk hero, who was ordered to shoot an apple from the top of his son's head by a cruel nobleman named Albrecht Gessler. Thankfully, he succeeded).

• Oooh now comes my favourite part: the weapons!

• This is an amazing Easter Egg in two ways if you're a TCaTF fan. One is that it reminds me SO MUCH of when Val gets to be the narrator, which is ALWAYS fun! Case in point are the names she gives the Iron Empire soldiers at Ennan: Pointy, Mr Fancy, Birdface, Grumpy and That Other Guy. Here, the MC gives names to all the weapons.

• So if you're someone who has played TCaTF and forgotten the weapons, no problem! I'm here to list out what these weapons are actually called, where they originated from and how Kenna (if the reader pays) gets them!

• The Weirdly Fancy Dagger is the Black Asps Dagger (which I think might be venom-tipped, like Adder's Fang) which Raydan gets from a Black Asp agent when he is imprisoned under Azura's orders. I see this weapon as being associated most with Abanthus/Lythikos in this list of weapons, because it comes from Adder's team of Lykos spies and assassins, and eventually (if Kenna chooses so) Adder can get to rule over this kingdom either alone or alongside Princess Zenobia (or not at all).

The Dragon Face Hammer! is actually the famous Wave Hammer, made by Kailani Keawe of Ebrimel - a fierce warrior and a skilled craftswoman - from Heart Oak Wood sneaked in from Thorngate. Heart Oak has all the appearance of wood with all the strength of metal, and makes for an amazing secret weapon.

The Ram Head Thing is Crown Guardian Leon Stirling's signature weapon - The Ram's Head Mace. This is a weapon clearly associated with Stormholt as Queen Adriana bequeathed it to him. Leon gets to pass it down to Kenna upon his death, if she so chooses. This mace is strong enough to crush armour, and Leon won the tournament at Ducitora with it before Azura killed him.

The Skull...Flail? is Val Greaves' signature weapon, The Deadman's Flail, which is powerful enough to crush armour. Kenna can use this weapon in her fight against Severin Cale, Leader of the Mercenaries. Val herself uses it often in battle.

The polo mallet is just...there.

• Ooh finally! It's time to investigative.

1. Madeleine approaching a man the MC has rejected in favour of her current fiancé. If you're marrying Liam, this man is Drake and he gets to roast Madeleine like she's never been roasted before ("Liam does get what he wants. That means he also gets to throw away what he doesn't want"). If you're marrying Drake, Hana or Maxwell, she is talking to Liam, addressing the king-sized elephant in the room. Liam doesn't pull any extra punches - he just looks extra annoyed and tells her he's "had other matters to attend to". It may seem like a weak defense in comparison to Drake's explosive comeback, but to be fair the man is going through some crazy shit here, and I don't think anyone in that state can actually expand enough thought to form a rebuttal at all. I doubt he'd have either the inclination or energy to actually respond with more than "I've had other matters to attend to". It's particularly awkward if your LI is Maxwell because he is standing right next to you hearing all this, but that hardly reflects in his dialogue. Basically, I view this sequence as telling us more about Madeleine than about the men: she may have changed a tiny bit, but she's still just a huge shit-stirrer.

Possibly, this might be set up for the apology that will ensue if we save Madeleine's backstabbing ass next chapter. It'll be something along the lines of "oh forgive me, I was so wrong, what I did was so wrong, I'll never do that again" etc etc yadda yadda getouttamyfaceyoufakeassbitch.

Also, I believe that the part of the reason Drake delivered that zinger to Madeleine was because he was still stinging from Olivia's burn at dinner 😂

2. While there are very few differences between the first and last conversations, the second conversation changes drastically depending on who your LI is.

a. If your LI is Liam, Hakim comes up to Liam, gives him his condolences for Constantine's death, and then comments positively on Esther and the upcoming wedding, which leads to a discussion between the MC and Maxwell about wedding preparations. I think this is mostly because Kiara never really interacts with Liam, so they got Hakim to do the honors. Over here though, Hakim and Liam's conversation about the wedding forms only a tiny portion of the conversation, as opposed to the entire thing.

b. If your LI is Hana, Kiara and Hana have a lovely, lighthearted conversation about the latter's upcoming wedding. Kiara expresses great happiness at Hana getting married to the MC, and Hana confesses to being so nervous she constantly dreams about it. I love the way Hana and Kiara's friendship is written here: how open Hana is with Kiara and how encouraging and supportive Kiara is towards Hana. I think it's so beautiful to see 😭

c. If your LI is Maxwell? It's Hana and Kiara again, this time speculating what the MC's wedding to Maxwell will be like. Kiara confesses that she plans to skip a cousin's reception on the same day by pretending to be ill, just so she can attend their reception instead. Together they discuss what surprises the Beaumonts might spring during the reception - from dance-offs to ball pits to hot air balloons filled with kittens. Here too, it's a lovely moment - two of the smartest court members having fun talking about weddings.

d. If your LI is Drake, Kiara talks to him instead. First about the offerings at the dessert buffet, then about the wedding. Kiara is overly chirpy and happy and excited about the wedding, and Drake tenses up when she turns the topic towards the wedding preparations, because those are "complicated". Of course, if you do the LI scene with him at the ice palace, you will find out that he doesn't like talking about it because he would rather keep things simple and focus on his bride, and the nobility is all about perfection and elaborate preparations. Very possibly the Kiara-Drake conversation was written this way as a lead-up to his conversation with the MC at the snow palace. (and perhaps also to dissuade people who would like to ship Drake and Kiara, especially given the backlash Kiara got from fans just for having a crush on the man).

The main focus of this conversation of course is to give out the message that the MC's upcoming wedding is something that still excites people, and that even people afraid of staying in court don't want to miss it.

3. The third conversation between Olivia and Lucretia is given the suspicious sounding music from ES, and begins with Lucretia trying to find out more about the MC. Olivia doesn't tell her much beyond what everyone else knows, and Lucretia leaves her with this cryptic statement:

I feel we're going to have a Big Reveal about what actually happened to the Nevrakises and whether they really were traitors or not.

• With that we finish our little stint at investigation, and in comes our next chance to spend diamonds on our respective LIs!

• I love how Liam's outdoor kink has been referenced two chapters in a row now 😂

•

(Screenshots: @kennaxval for Hana, @mariamatsuo for Drake and the Vika Avey YouTube channel for Maxwell).

Again, like the previous scene, the LIs have their own individual stamp over their ice palace scene. The beauty of it is not just that they all seem different in the way they make love to the MC, but that their reactions to the ice palace itself vary from LI to LI.

Liam gives us a legend. He tells us about the prevalent pre-wedding tradition in Lythikos, where an engaged couple would have their village build them an ice palace the following winter. Kind of like a seasonal barn-raising, which also involves a community coming together to build something for the couple. It says plenty about Lythikos and its people (I won't elaborate because at some point I'm going to be writing essays again). But it also confirms for us how immersed in Cordonian culture Liam is, and how much his Queen will learn when she is with him.

Hana gives us a fairytale. She tells us a story her mother used to read to her at night, about a frozen kingdom, an ice palace and a princess with a frozen heart, which thawed the moment she found true love. The fairytale Hana tells us bears similarities to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen", and more to the film it inspired, Frozen. But snow maidens are a staple of certain European cultures (particularly Norwegian and Slavic legend), so it could be a mix of many stories. It's fitting that Hana relates the ice palace to a story, connected as she is to literature and folklore and romance. In a lot of ways, hidden beneath the fable of the ice princess is Hana's own story.

Drake gives us a memory. As a follow-through to the conversation between him and Kiara in Maxwell's armoury scene if the reader bought it (unbeknownst to him, because he doesn't know the MC was overhearing them) he gets to be more open about not being very interested in planning weddings. His ideal would have been to take his bride to his mother's ranch in Texas for a wedding very reminiscent of his parents' union, and were Cordonia not in this condition that's exactly what he would have done. It's very like Drake, whose most powerful emotional associations are connected to his once-happy childhood and his memories of his parents, particularly his father.

Maxwell gives us an gift, made with his own hands. When he brings the MC to the ice palace, he suggests creating ice sculptures, and both make one of each other. It's a sweet, funny and affectionate scene, with both of them exchanging cute banter about Maxwell's "secret affair" with "Ice MC" and his tongue getting stuck in ice while pretending to kiss her 😂 It's very Maxwell. He's very hands-on, likes to do fun things, likes to entertain. And that's exactly the vibe I'm getting here.

The love scenes are tender and sweet and hot, and I think each of these scenes is worth the diamonds you'll spend. The scenes are tailored perfectly to fit the personalities of each LI. This is exactly what I hoped to see with scenes like the bathtub scene at the beginning of the book, and the spa scene. If they continue with this kind of quality content going forward, then I'm really really glad they took that hiatus.

• Okay we're back to the ballroom now. With Madeleine super drunk on...um...some pineapple drink.

• Madeleine is the only person to have the pineapple drink, and she seems to have an affinity for pineapple's since Maxwell offered her that Pineapple Paradise Punch in Fydelia. Everyone else is drinking Lythikos Nog.

• Madeleine collapses in the middle of Olivia's speech!

• The security detail uses "Code Locusta" to refer to poisons. Which is fitting, because Locusta was a very notorious maker of poisons during the time of Claudius and Nero (around AD 54 was when she contributed to the assassination of Emperor Claudius, and his son Brittanicus a year later). She was not only someone who was an expert on poisons and hired for that purpose, but also someone who used her skills to bring down royalty at the behest of their enemies. This could be a bit of a stretch, but I think this ties in symbolically with the plot of the movie scene in Liam's playthrough, where the enemy of the throne is someone who also can claim to be a royal. Especially considering poisons have been used to kill Liam's mother, and now to kill a supporter of the Crown and the MC, and a member of a very powerful Cordonian noble house. And yet...the other noble house - the Nevrakis family of Lythikos - stays untouched.

• The last time I recall "Locusta" being used in literature was in Alexandre Dumas' (père) The Count of Monte Cristo. A chapter of this book, in which a woman attempts to poison her stepdaughter so the family fortune could be passed on to her son, was titled Locusta as well.

• Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, folks. Or should I say, in the Kingdom of. Cordonia?

• Can I just say I love the parallels between Lythikos in Book 1 and now? We learned a little about Olivia's past in passing from Liam here, and now it will hit us in full force in the form of Lucretia. Constantine didn't seem to be in Lythikos, and returned to tell Liam that he was going to die soon, and now we visit the same estate after he has given his life to save his son.

Olivia gave us the worst place and the worst treatment then, and the best now. We convinced Kiara to support us in this very ballroom, and perhaps we might have to do so now too. It was here that Madeleine proudly claimed she was neither unrefined or insecure...but now she doesn't care about propriety.

I recall it was here for the first time that Maxwell stans were given the chance to express affection towards him, and it's here that they now get his first character development scene in Book 3. Most of all...it was here that the initial 3 LIs started to open up to us, in different ways, (if we paid) and now we return...an engaged couple - shedding all our layers and keeping each other warm in the cold (again, if we pay). I have many fond memories of Lythikos, and this chapter definitely brought me back there xD

• Tumblr isn't allowing me to write further for this post, so I will be writing my theories and who I believe is involved in the next post.

#the royal romance #long post #liam x mc #king liam #drake x mc #drake walker #hana x mc #hana lee #maxwell x mc #maxwell beaumont #olivia nevrakis #lady kiara #countess madeleine #trr quick thoughts #quick thoughts

70 notes · View notes

thecaffeinebookwarrior · 7 years

Note

hi there! in the series i'm working on, my protagonist sinks into a deep depression after the betrayal of one of her closest friends. i was wondering if you could offer me any tips into an accurate and unoffencive portrayal of depression and different ways in which it manifests itself? thanks so much, your other posts have helped me a lot with my work:)

Hello! Sorry it took me so long to get to this, my inbox is a monster right now (which I’m very pleased about, because that means you lovelies like hearing what I have to say. Ill-advised, but wonderful.

In any case, the most common mistake that neurotypical authors (which I’m not assuming you are, but I’m generalizing here) make when depicting depression is that they think it manifests as sadness.

Sadness is a luxury compared to actual depression. It’s a counterpoint to happiness that needs to exist in order to provide yourself with perspective on how good the good times actually are.

As someone who was depressed in my mid-teenage years, and who’s researched depression extensively, I can say that depression feels more like nothing. It feels like numbness and apathy.

In your periphery, you may be aware that your life is falling to shambles, but you simply can’t bring yourself to care. That’s why many people with depression will have neglected kitchen sinks and nasty bedrooms full of dishes.

Which brings me to my next point: contrary to the aesthetic posts you may see, depression isn’t pretty. In some cases, it can be pretty damn ugly.

When I was depressed, my room was a petri dish. I had soda cans propped up in the crack between my bed and the radiator because I didn’t even see the point in walking to the trash can. I never changed my sheets or made my bed. Ever. There was a dinner plate that I left on top of my bookshelf for so long that it was green and fuzzy by the time I took it down again.

Another thing to keep in mind when depicting depression is that it can come 100% out of nowhere, or it can be brought on by something in the person’s environment.

Like your character, my depression in this instance was partially caused by environmental factors: I was overwhelmed with college, with working a hellish retail job, with a major that I was unhappy with (biology; I’m much more of an artsy type, and didn’t get along well with the more analytical science majors), and neglecting my physical health.

Now, anti-cure based sentiment runs high on Tumblr, but don’t be fooled: in some instances, certain actions and taking control of your life really can alleviate depression. Mine began to improve when I cleared all the garbage out of my room, and spent the next few months repainting, redecorating, and really gutting it out to fit my tastes and personality. I stopped drinking soda and made an effort to be more active, which lead to me dropping more than twenty pounds and feeling much prettier and more comfortable in my own skin (weight alone isn’t a good indicator of physical health, but in my case it was.) I began showering every day and slowly but surely reverted back to the finicky neat-freak I am now.

And of course, I became an art major and switched my career goals from becoming a doctor to becoming an art professor; a career that appeals much more to my personality, and that will be much less likely to end up accidentally killing someone.

None of these things occurred overnight, mind you, and will almost definitely not work for everyone, but they played a huge part in my recovery and helping me to become the still decidedly not-neurotypical but predominantly happy person I am today.

Now, I largely based these tips off of personal experience, but know that no two depression narratives are the same. Everyone experiences it differently, and all of their experiences are worth listening to.

Finally, I will leave you with some sources that are worth a look: here is a Ted Talk on depression that’s very informative, as well as a shorter Ted-ed video and Asap Science video that explain the medical mechanics of it.

I also highly recommend you check out Hyperbole and a Half, the blog (here) and/or the book (here), which features one of the most accurate, honest, and honestly, piss-your-pants funny depictions of depression I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, I hope this helps, best of luck, and happy writing!

#depression #acourtofsobsandfeels

99 notes · View notes

void-king-of-swingttv · 7 years

Text

Here’s an old thing I wrote a while back as a plot bunny that kinda died.

Why we did it

It was a normal day at Shithole High as my friends and I sat as our table at lunch, today’s meal of… some kind of meat or something (mine was currently having a staredown with the person sitting behind me) flying over our heads like a slimy Fourth of July fireworks show. In a normal school, a teacher would be all over this stuff, stopping it and doling out detentions by the handful. But this was my school. Teachers couldn’t care less about just about anything short of a stabbing. Not that it happened before, and I dare you to find a legal document that says otherwise. The current supervisor was sitting by an open window, lit cigarette between his fingers, puffing like a broken car.

So it was just the same old routine at Shithole High.

Okay that wasn’t it’s actual name, but it may as well have been, and because I’m just telling you how we took over the world, I can call anyone anything I want.

So where was I?... Oh yes, that fateful conversation.

”He said what?” My friend to the right said, and shall henceforth be called Timothy. He was the joker of the group, and is the most perverted man to walk the earth. Yes, I said is. This question was directed at quite possibly the most energetic person in this, or any galaxy, who shall be called Grove. “It’s true, he said he was running for president is 2020. It’s ridiculous.” If you have any knowledge of that year, or the preceding years, you probably know what she’s talking about. If not, she’s talking about a rap star becoming the Commander in Chief. Yeah.

“Pointless, and unneeded.” the third in my septuplet of friends plugged in. She was soft spoken, angry all the time, and one of the exchange students the school received from Japan. Her name was Yukki, but due to the hairstyle she always had, we called her Cousin It. She didn’t mind. “Makes good news.”

“That’s not the point!” Timothy said, making excited hand gestures while speaking. “The point is that the government is getting lenient to the point of lazy. Literally anyone can run for president these days, and they just let them.” “The problem is nobody cares anymore.” Said my brother. Okay, we’re not actually brothers, but we may as well be from how long we’ve been friends. “People are just happy that they can make money, and put food on the table. They don’t care who runs things they have no say in.” he said in his unplaceable tone of voice. Really, even to this day, I can’t tell how he feels from his voice until he reaches a breaking point, and really turns it up to eleven. A nice guy generally, and loves complimenting women on just about anything. He just can’t tell when a girl likes him when she’s practically falling over for him. His name is now and forever, Ray.

“That’s everyone on earth, Ray.” Our friend, with the nickname Dren, which I am aware just spells nerd in reverse, but she asked me to call her that in the book, so shut up and deal with it. She was a happy little geek, with a love for anime and Yaoi. And if you Google that shit, I will find you and break your keyboard across your hands.

I told you not to Google it! No, you will not forget it!

So, continuing from that little snag in narrative, the conversation, they looked to the last two of the group: myself, and my girlfriend. Yes, she is your current Empress. No, she was not always taller than me. She used to be about a foot shorter than me. Calm, brilliant, beautiful, and a mouth like a drunken sailor, I was lucky to have her back then, and I’m lucky to have her now. Oh, my Misery...

...Sorry, I drifted off for a second. She just looked at them and gave her usual response of a shrug and a look that said “It’s-physically-impossible-for-me-to-care-any- less-than-I-do-now” and looked at me for my opinion. I just grinned, and then the fate of the world was decided.

“I think we could run things better than just about anyone. Now or ever.”

...What? Were you expecting some great tragedy that led to us ruling the world? No, we did it on our own time because we wanted to. It’s not my fault that I was right when I said that.

So, after a quick giggle, and a few bites of my friend’s packed lunch (The one on my tray was now trying to grab me by the nose), we all just froze. We came to the same realization at the same time. And the real fun began. Dren started us off. “So, theoretically, how would you take over the world?” Timothy answered first. “I would just wipe out everything, and rebuild society on top of it.” It was a simple plan. Short, sweet, and to the point. Not extremely good in the long run, but effective. Grove was next with her basic strategy. “Hostile takeover. Leave everything, just capture it all.” Not as simple, but equally effective. And as a plus, society doesn’t have to start over afterwards. Yukki’s only word on the subject was an infuriating, “Magic.”

I can’t stand when the only response people will give about something that falls into the category of ‘unknown’, is a simple ‘magic’. No, that’s not how it works. We live in a world where cause has effect, A is equal to A, and things don’t happen because so. Every question has an answer, and we will find them. Why else do you think we turned the moon into a giant research facility?

Back on subject, Ray was next with his conquering plan. “A quiet, diplomatic style. It’ll take longer, but I’ll win the people, and the world.” Complex, challenging, high risk, but even higher reward. Just like him: win by not pissing anyone off. He would always do his best not to make anyone mad. Now, he loves doing it. Now it was my turn to plan.

“Quietly fund terrorist groups to cause as much trouble as possible. Then repeatedly quash them, winning the adoration of the people. Then, once there is enough chaos in the world, and the people are willing to accept their security in exchange for their freedom, I will accept the power, and forever end chaos and strife in the world.” And as you can tell, it worked.

I can tell that some of you are understandably upset at this. But if I can offer a counterargument: It was 6000 years ago. Well 6398 years, 7 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 22 hours, and 53 seconds ago. Your sort of late to the “Get pissed at the current Galactic Emperor” party. Besides, we haven't had a war of any kind in almost 5,000 years.

After I said my plan, they all gave me a look that said ‘You’ve-been-planning-this-for-a-while-haven't-you?’ and to that I say ‘Maybe’. So with that, Misery put her two cents into the machine and turned the dial. “Whatever works, really.” The tried and true ‘Do-whatever-needs-to-be-done’ tactic. Proven to work by dictators throughout history. If you plan on saying otherwise, look at the various dictators of the Silver Ages, and tell me that at least one of them planned to be put in the big boy chair at some point.

That was when things got serious. I put on my business face and addressed the group. “Okay, let’s get down to it. We can take the world anytime we want, can’t we?” They nodded. “Then let’s do it. Let’s take over the world.” I got some incredulous looks for a minute, before they all broke out in grins that would make ol’ Mr Grinch’s hair curl, and raised their glasses high. Well, lifted their milk cartons above their heads. “A world without war!”

“Without hate!”

“Without suffering!”

“Without danger!”

“Without sickness!”

“Without sadness!”

I simply raised my fist.

“Without pain.”

#old writing #I was young #world domination #young me was not very good

1 note · View note

chellyfishing · 7 years

Text

ok i finished kona so as promised my lil* post on walking simulators i’ve played. (*it’s not lil.)

first things first: a lot of these give off a creepy vibe because it involves you investigating a deserted place piecing together What Happened. i don’t personally consider them scary, as such, but i guess some people might? with minimal spoilers, i can say that unless noted there are no jump scares or battles and you can’t get a game over at any point. none of these except flower and maybe gone home are exactly the cheeriest of games, they’re not total downers and you can take away a lot from each of them, but there’s almost always death involved. also these are all short games, many can easily be completed in a few hours, some you might want to spread out over a couple days.

i’m a little hesitant to put gone home on here bc i haven’t actually played it myself, but i did watch a full LP. i don’t think it’s a spoiler at this point to say that there was a bit of a bait-and-switch with advertising and it’s not a horror game. it is actually a very sweet, heartfelt coming-of-age story about a teenage girl who left behind notes for her visiting sister. while this might be a bit of a spoiler, i saw a review that called it “a lesbian scavenger hunt,” which i think is pm all anybody needs to know to decide to play it.

the vanishing of ethan carter is the first one i played and probably still my favorite. i played through it possibly half a dozen times that first week, and it’s not necessarily that sort of game. at the risk of overselling here, i can’t tell you how much this had an effect on me. you play a detective who’s come to a small seemingly deserted town at the behest of a young boy (ethan). what follows are a series of visions, stories, and light puzzle-solving to get to the bottom of what happened to ethan carter. as the story unfolds things get pretty disturbing and there is some blood (stain variety, not gushing). there’s nothing that would, i think, rate more than a PG-13 though. i could go in-depth but just play it okay.

dear esther is credited with being the first walking simulator. you can hear about its humble beginnings as a mod for some other game i forget by listening to the audio commentary, which you have to do for one of the trophies. dear esther is, the most out of these, not what it appears. it’s almost more of a poem than a story, and there is a lot left abstract and open-ended; death of the author is encouraged. it’s probably got the slowest start, but i like the peacefulness of it. it has a sequence that is the most beautiful and transformative thing which then leads up to the climax, and by then you are definitely in a different game than you started. no puzzle-solving, you don’t pick up or interact with any items, no keys or secret passages to suss out. you just walk and look and listen. definitely melancholy, but then, the whole thing is what you make of it. also apparently there are loads are little background details that can change randomly each time you play it, if you’re into that.

firewatch is another one that seems creepy, but (i’m sorry to spoil, i just want people to be okay when they play!!) i promise you, if you can handle some sadness and bittersweetness, you’ll be fine. this game is a little treasure. i saw someone complain about the graphics and i like??? couldn’t disagree more? i mean first of all what do you expect but second all it’s got more of a painted feel to it than a hundred laboriously-created computer models. there are some views and areas that are just beyond lovely. anyway you play as henry, who’s come to sit alone in a tower in the middle of the wilderness for summer 1989? to watch for fires. henry’s a bit snarky and sad and would probably be played by paul giamatti. the other man character is his boss, delilah. the rapport the two develop is probably the high point of the game tbh. their banter is topnotch. while firewatch seems a little overwhelming in scope but it’s actually not. there’s not much gained by extraneously exploring but you’re welcome to it if you want. it’s mostly just a lot of walking with very easily navigable roads and rappelling and such while around you all this weird shit starts happening. henry and delilah discuss what it all means and what to do about it. all questions are answered by the end, except for the ones any good story leaves open for you to decide.

beyond eyes... i don’t quite want to say that i wished i never paid for or touched this game, because my reasons for my violent rejection of it are very personal. so, here it is neutrally. it seems like a colorful, peaceful game about a blind girl, rae, looking for her lost cat, nani. the catch is that rae is blind, and so you have to sort of “fill out” the world by walking around (laboriously slowly, bring patience). it really is lovely, kind of painterly-feeling with so many vibrant colors, and i was very pleased with it for a long while. and again, i don’t want to spoil it, but the ending caught me so off-guard, threw me for such a loop, and triggered me so unexpectedly that i immediately turned it off and deleted it from my system. suffice it to say the tone is a bit different from the rest of the game. so, i won’t tell anyone not to check it out. it is pretty and simple and it seems like the kind of game people might want to support financially. just... not me. it made me disproportionately angry and upset and ruined my day. if someone has played or does end up doing so, my reaction might seem a little extreme, but it was one of those things that struck hard without any warning and it was just not what i needed at the time.

i tried to wait for what remains of edith finch to go on sale and i failed. while i’m not convinced it has $20 worth of content (it’s possibly even shorter than dear esther but i’d have to check), it’s also gorgeous, so i guess we all make sacrifices. anyway i’m still sort of processing my feelings for this game. most of it is completely genius. it’s about a girl, edith, who’s returning to her family home for the first time in years. she’s the last finch left alive; they have a habit of dying young, most not even making it to adulthood. you find out the story of each finch and each is interactive in a different way, one you’re different animals, another it’s in the format of a comic book, it’s all really neat how it’s done. anyway, obviously this game talks about death a lot but never shows it; in fact, some of the sequences are so abstract you have to interpret them yourselves to decide what even happened. my main continuing reservation is... i don’t know what it’s trying to say. i don’t know what it’s all supposed to mean. i mean maybe it’s some crap about the value of life no matter how short or idk, but for the most part at the end i was kinda like, “ok.” i keep thinking i must be missing something, but i’ve no idea what. it’s kind of just a collection of interesting stories whose only discernible thread is they all happened to the same unfortunate family for some reason. it’s the kind of “open to interpretation” that makes me feel like something is lacking. anyway i still loved it and do recommend.

kona. oh kona. let me start off by saying you can die in this one. they’re not that ubiquitous but there are creatures that can and will kill you, and sometimes they might startle you as well, and of course there’s the cold, which can also kill you. i kept getting pissed off at that fucking inventory because it was JUST BARELY too small and you never knew when you were going to need something. now that i actually do know it’ll probably be waaay less infuriating. there’s also a final boss, but the “fight” is basically you going “jesus christ it’s a lion get in the car.” it’s very intense, but i wouldn’t really call it scary. you don’t even have to do anything offensive at all to win, just run like hell. a couple more words about the gameplay: i mentioned the better coat. you actually can find the components you need for that early on and possibly go straight and get it? like i’m not sure if the game lets you but if it does, it makes exploration SO much easier. you still have to be careful but like. type b careful rather than type a. anyway it’s pretty much a must. um, you probably want to take your car for the sake of convenience, and also you can get a snowmobile later! there are a number of little achievements to earn, some of which make this game a lot more involved than any other on this list. like, it’s a very big area with poor visibility and you’re looking for very very small things WITH A CHEAP-ASS SWEATER CARL. anyway, as for what it’s actually about: you’re a detective again, come to québec in 1970 to find some seriously fucked up shit. this game isn’t really horror, it’s mostly just what the hell is going on this is so fucking bizarre. there narrative has a lot of stuff about colonialism and racism and a lot of Cree culture and lore driving it. it was funded by kickstarter btw. so yeah, a little too game-y, most intense and involved of the bunch, unsettled even me at times, but not meant to invoke terror or keep you up at night, only make you think about the circumstances that created this event.

flower is your friend. i’ve only played a little bit of it but honestly that’s all you need. you can just go back and do that bit as many times as you want cause this is a game that’s all about being a petal on the wind. it’s cute, it’s playful, both the score and visuals are charming and lovely. this is the game you play after running for your life in kona. recommended to have in your library if for no other reason than to know it’s always there when you need something simple and beautiful and andy dwyer is unavailable.

#deep thoughts

1 note · View note

attractionjapan · 7 years

Text

The Birth of Japan Game: Episode 3: The Nanpa Intro

The Birth of Japan Game is a chronicle in ten parts, recounting the early years of Dorian Gray’s journey along the path. The narrative begins some time in 2006 and concludes in early 2012. Names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent alike. Previous episode here.

After her year of exchange study finished, Maya went back to Japan, and we continued on in a long-distance relationship. I tried to stay faithful to her, even though I was tempted daily by other girls, some of them new Japanese exchange students. There were a few unsanctioned encounters, but for the most part I managed to stay focused on my studies, as I was now set on becoming an exchange student myself and heading over to Japan.

Over the past two years I’d steadily risen to the top of my class. There’d been some stiff competition – particularly from the Chinese students, who had a natural advantage in already knowing the kanji – but somehow I came out on top. As I lived on campus, I also took an active interest in events put on by the Japanese Studies department, and I stayed in contact by email with friends like Hayato, who introduced me to the outgoing exchange students from their universities. Soon my high grades and extracurricular efforts came to the attention of the department head, who asked me to become president of the university’s Japanese Society. Bemused at first, I eventually accepted.

It was the first time I’d ever been in charge of anything. I had always been something of a loner, but now I was…well…a leader. To be fair, the responsibilities weren’t great – putting on dinners, meeting the new exchange students and showing them around the city, organizing the occasional movie night – but it still seemed like a prominent position. Suddenly I was confronted with political decisions, albeit those of an exceedingly trivial nature: who should be treasurer, Lisa or Sarah? Which student should I recommend to become next year’s president, Jason or Minh? It was a great foretaste of future office politics and other universal human bullshit. I didn’t take any of it too seriously.

The time came to apply for my year abroad. Now my grades and time spent running the Japanese Society paid off, as my application was accepted and I easily passed the interview. Most of the exchange positions were in places like Kyoto and Hyogo, but I managed to secure the sole spot in Tokyo. I would be living in Shinjuku, which seemed sublimely urban in contrast with the small Australian cities I was used to. Maya, who now lived with her divorced mother in central Tokyo, was ecstatic.

The day came and my parents drove me to the airport. I’d decided to arrive in Tokyo well ahead of the new semester’s start, to give myself time to get my bearings and settle in. Or at least that’s what I told everyone. In reality I wanted a week or two to myself to experience the city’s night life. The university I would be attending offered to send someone to meet me at the airport but I declined; true to my solitary nature, I preferred to figure things out for myself.

Stepping out of the terminal at Narita Airport, I felt a breathless sense of expectancy. I had arrived in Japan at last and the future with its infinite possibilities stretched before me. Compared with native speakers my Japanese was still rudimentary, conversational at best and riddled with errors, but I wasn’t lacking in confidence. I hailed a taxi and lugged my bags to the student dorm where I would be staying. Mrs. Murata, the kanrinrin or dorm manager, came out to meet me. She was a short, stooped middle-aged woman with a subservient demeanor and what I would soon discover to be an almost infinite patience with the raucous ways and irregular hours of her student charges. Since I had arrived two weeks ahead of anyone else, we were the only people in the dorm apart from Park, a Korean graduate student in his thirties. Park took me under his wing and helped me get my resident card, health insurance registration and mobile phone contract.

“I’m still rubbish at Japanese,” I told him. We were sitting in the dorm’s lounge watching television and drinking cans of Kirin beer.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve been here for ten years. Just watch TV every day and you’ll be able to understand everything after a year.”

At night I went into the city by myself and spent time in bars and clubs with names like Atom and Womb. Sitting alone in a darkened dive with a glass of beer and a cigarette in hand, I felt that I’d arrived. And when I wasn’t exploring new areas, I was making up for lost time with Maya, staying overnight at her house or meeting in the city for love hotel visits.

Eventually the other exchange students showed up, and I found myself with a veritable United Nations of new friends: British, American, Thai, French, Swedish, German. There were a few Anime Club-style shut-ins and misfits, but for the most part they were a personable bunch.

I also had Japanese friends in the city who I’d met through Hayato and other connections back home. One of them, Ryu, was a young salaryman with a broad outlook and devilish personality. Short of stature even for a Japanese, his looks and mindset had earned him the nickname “Lil’ Satan.” Not yet thirty, he’d spent time in America and Australia, ostensibly to improve his English but really to sample the bars and clubs and hopefully hook up with a Western girl. This he did with great success, even if he at first misunderstood foreign strip club etiquette, taking “ten minute private lap dance” to mean “ten minute round of aggressive sex.” Getting kicked to the curb by the bouncers didn’t dampen his enthusiasm, and before long he was on his way to victory. Now, back in his hometown of Tokyo, he was eager to show me around, and we often did the rounds together, hitting up bars and his favorite, the hostess clubs, where he’d haggle with the promoters outside for reduced prices.

Surreal encounters abounded. One night we wound up at a Middle Eastern-themed shisha bar in Koenji, sucking fruit-flavored smoke from a water pipe on the second floor. Before long a pair of girls wandered in. One was a standard university type with prim clothing and wavy brown hair, but her friend was a full-blown visual-kei goth with facial piercings and blonde extensions, wearing clunky black platform boots and a fake leather corset. Her expression conveyed a detached boredom with life.

Ryu and I engaged them in conversation. We’d been to a tobacconist earlier in the day and picked up some cigars, which we now handed out to the girls. Ryu seemed interested in the more conventional one, Saori, while I took a liking to Miyuki, the goth. The conversation was slow going at first, but between my gaping foreign enthusiasm and Ryu’s practiced Japanese cool, we soon had them talking. Things looked set for a quick bounce to karaoke or even directly to a hotel, when Saori suddenly stood up.

“I’ve gotta get up early for my part-time job,” she announced. “But you guys have fun.”

Nothing we said could convince her to stay, and Miyuki barely seemed to care. Sitting in the darkened lounge, she sucked on her cigar and stared vacantly into space. After a few moments of silence she excused herself to go to the bathroom.

“I want to fuck her so bad,” I told Ryu. “I don’t know what I can do, but she’s totally my type.”

Ryu nodded sagely, and when Miyuki returned, his impish – or perhaps merely practical – side took over.

“DG wants to fuck you,” he told her, employing the crudest, most direct Japanese locution.

I could have strangled him, but I remained calm. Getting pissed and losing my cool wouldn’t get me anywhere.

“Too bad,” Miyuki said. “I have a boyfriend.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Ryu countered. “He isn’t here now, is he? It doesn’t matter.”

Miyuki exhaled a puff of smoke. “I guess not,” she said. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

Utterly lost, I stared at them both. Was Ryu actually helping me rather than fucking me over? It was impossible to tell, but I was already on my fifth or sixth beer and, suddenly emboldened by the strange atmosphere, I leaned over and kissed Miyuki on the neck.

“Don’t try that again,” she said. “Or you’ll be sorry.”

Now Ryu made his own move, even more brazen than mine. Sliding over to Miyuki, he threw his arm around her and kissed her on the lips. In response Miyuki opened his mouth with her own, waited until his tongue slipped past hers and then seized it with her teeth.

Then she bit down with all her strength.

Ryu started to struggle. Shorter than Miyuki, he was probably stronger than her, but now he flailed about helplessly and tried to shake her off. Miyuki held on, gazing directly into his eyes as his face reddened, engorged with blood.

Finally she drew back and let him go. Ryu clutched his mouth like an injured child, blood dripping from his lips.

“That’s what I do to people who try to kiss me,” Miyuki said.

In my drunken state, I took this as a challenge.

Pulling her into me, I kissed her neck again and moved up to her mouth, pushing my tongue into hers. As expected, I felt small, sharp teeth closing around it, followed by a blossom of pain. My tongue felt like it would burst, and I could taste something coppery in my mouth, but rather than pull back I gripped her tightly and stared into her eyes as my blood mixed with her saliva. Then I moved my hand down to the space between her legs.

I seemed to have passed some kind of test, because now Miyuki was kissing me back forcefully – sans teeth – and moaning as I massaged her firm thighs through her black tights. I could tell she had an incredible body beneath all the protective covering. I went for her breasts and then she got up and straddled me.

“Let’s go to karaoke,” Ryu said, desperate to reassert his claim. But Miyuki was having none of it.

“Not you,” she told him. “Only him.”

To his credit, Ryu took this with admirable dignity and excused himself immediately, a barely perceptible frown the only sign of his displeasure. Soon after, Miyuki and I made our way back to my dorm, where we evaded Mrs. Murata and high tailed it up to my room. Her body exceeded my expectations, and I realized that her initial violent defense was only a means of screening out those incapable of matching her passion. We stayed up all night drinking, talking and fucking.

As you can imagine, I wasn’t the only one in the dorm interested in girls, and the other exchange students and I often went out looking for them. But I was more interested in making Japanese friends of the same persuasion, hoping that I could learn from them. Expat writers of all kinds are quick to malign Japanese men, characterizing them as superficial, uncommunicative and emotionally distant. To me, these stereotypes always said more about the men making them. If you didn’t like Japanese men, I decided, then you didn’t like Japan: they were, after all, half the population. Even as a student I saw all too many foreigners falling into the trap of associating only with Japanese girls and picking up feminine speech and mannerisms as a result. Japanese speech patterns are more distinctly gendered than English ones, but too many of the exchange students and even long-term residents I knew seemed oblivious. I realized that a man who associated only with women would always be half a man, not understanding the other side of the dynamic. Japanese women didn’t want men who spoke and acted like them, they wanted men who spoke and acted like men, or at least their culture’s conception of the term.

More importantly, Japanese men were with the women I most desired. I almost never saw foreigners with girls I wanted; my envy was reserved for the locals and their stunning paramours. Countless times I saw small, ugly, poorly-dressed men with fashionable stunners, or browsed magazines to find lanky, effeminate boys with phenomenal teenage beauty queens. In contrast, foreigners always seemed to be with the same kind of girl: short, plain, and recently returned from homestay in Idaho or some other middle-of-nowhere American state. These were the international party girls, those who thronged terrible Roppongi clubs like Gas Panic and Muse. Appearances aren’t everything, and I’m sure many of these men genuinely loved the women they were with, but time after time I heard the same complaints in bars:

“Akiko (or Yuka, Maki or Kaori; the names were always the same) is great, but…I always wanted to try one of those other girls. You know, the flashy kind. Shibuya girls, the type who shop at that 109 store, or the girls in the clothing ads.”

Worse, Akiko was often not a casual fling or girlfriend, but a wife.

Call it shallow if you want, but I’ve always felt it’s better to live your desires rather than sublimate them into tedious complaints. So it made sense that I would have to imitate Japanese men if I wanted to get with my ideal girls. As a result, I quickly dismissed not only my foreign friends but also Western “pickup artists” and others of their kind. What did they know about Japan when they couldn’t speak the language, when they’d never even been here? To this day, when I’ve met several of these vaunted “instructors,” I can’t say I’ve seen them achieve anything other than a beginner’s success in Japan. In fact there are only a handful of foreigners who I’ve seen with truly exceptional Japanese girls.

Then as now, my approach was to treat Japanese men as equals and afford them the same respect I would any of my friends. I did not allow myself to be offended by any flippant comments or “insensitive” remarks they made; in this age of ever-narrowing political correctness, getting pissed and leaving in a huff seemed like the weakest possible option, particularly when the offense was almost always unintentional.

But I still get queries from friends and acquaintances who see Japanese men as the enemy and want to know how to “deal with them.” I always tell them that chest thumping and open hostility will quickly get you ostracized. If you really want to destabilize a Japanese man, praise him in front of his friends. The more humble you seem and the more knowledge of his culture you demonstrate, the more your standing in the group will rise. Use perfect Japanese to talk about his handsome face and effortless style; he’ll soon loathe you. With the louder, more aggressive types, it’s often necessary to get your girl and get out, not giving them a chance to engage with her at all.

But this sort of thing is almost always childish and pointless; non-engagement is the better strategy. I’ve defused fights and turned enemies into friends simply by caring less than the other party and approaching situations with an open mind. The principles behind Japanese martial arts are similar. Karate, after all, means “empty hand,” and aikido depends on turning an opponent’s strength against them.

One night I set out from the dorm alone and headed for a nearby bar. I’d sat through a full day of classes and now, bored and restless, I felt like getting away from the dorm atmosphere, which had quickly become suffocating. Apart from the other exchange students, there were a number of residential assistants – Japanese students who lived with us. They were studious types, more interested in formal language exchange than actually learning the mindset of people from a different culture. Worse, they acted like spies, reporting our activities to the head of the exchange program. They’d already formally complained about me for letting girls spend the night in my room. I didn’t care to be around them any more than I had to, and my close friends were at a party somewhere, so I was on my own.

On this night the bar was crowded, so much so that it spilled onto the street, with customers sitting outside on stools in the warm summer air. I took a seat next to two young Japanese men and struck up a conversation, and they introduced themselves as Hiroyuki and Rintaro. Though we were in an area with several universities, they weren’t students; instead, they worked a series of part-time jobs in noodle houses and convenience stores.

Hiroyuki had a face like a brick. Just nineteen, he looked at least thirty. He was heavily built and would have been handy in a fight; I wasn’t eager to see him angry. Rintaro was more of a pretty boy, except he wasn’t actually pretty. Like his friend, his face looked older than his stated twenty years, but displayed more surface cunning than Hiroyuki’s flat, amiable features. Hiroyuki seemed happy-go-lucky, but Rintaro was the brains of the operation: a canny, practical intellect.

Before long the conversation turned to girls, and they regaled me with tales of “delivery health” hookers and fast pulls with teenagers in Shibuya and Shinjuku. I told them about the kind of girls I wanted, the fashionable kind seen in magazines.

“Oh, you mean gyaru? Yeah, we get with them all the time,” Rintaro said. “We can introduce you to some of them, but…can you hook us up with some Western girls?”

I could tell right away these were dodgy characters I couldn’t fully trust. They were outwardly friendly, even comically so, but I sensed they would use me any way they could and probably not make good on whatever promises they made. Still, I was excited to be hanging out with them; I felt they could grant me access to a side of Japan I’d glimpsed in books and films, an underworld of illicit beauty.

“I’m up to my neck in Western girls,” I said.

This wasn’t untrue. There were more female exchange students in my dorm than male ones, and some of them were on the adventurous side. Their Japanese was still basic, and they didn’t seem to have many Japanese friends. I could tell they were lonely. One of them, Aleksandra, a Ukrainian girl, had propositioned me fairly directly, but I turned her down, not wanting to generate more gossip for the residential assistants. Another, Lindsay, was a young Australian with a somewhat spacey disposition. Blonde, thick-limbed and reasonably outgoing, she’d until now been frustrated by the hesitant approaches of Japanese men, so different from the blunt propositions back home. I decided that an encounter with Hiroyuki and Rintaro was exactly what she needed. In a reversal of the typical Madame Butterfly scenario, the pair proved no match for her Occidental wiles when she ended up dating both of them at the same time and playing them against each other in a way that almost destroyed their friendship. She eventually grew tired of them and moved onto a Chinese exchange student, leaving my new friends frustrated and heartbroken…for at least a few days. To find new girls, it was only necessary to walk outside. Before long they were back to their usual unflappable optimism.

Now that I’d proven myself by getting them laid, Hiroyuki and Rintaro were as eager to hang out with me as I was with them. They called me multiple times a day and asked if I was putting on parties or meeting any new girls. As I’d expected, they didn’t come through with the gyaru I wanted, but they still took me along drinking with them often enough that I didn’t mind. Hanging out with them was an exhilarating but constantly disorienting experience, as their crude, street-level Japanese was miles away from my rapidly developing but still bookish speaking style. And while I’d expected them to support my approaches to girls in the manner of a Western wingman, they were just as likely to steal my targets or blow the whole thing up with an explosion of vulgar mockery. Some of their tactics, if that’s what they were, left me shaking my head, but there was no denying how successful the pair were. I often saw them carelessly discarding girls who would have been the highlights of most men’s lives. In particular, one of Rintaro’s girlfriends, Rimi, was a stunning young woman who could have worked as an adult video star, an eighteen year old nymphet with the face of an angel and the body of a toned and rangy stripper. I fell in hopeless lust with her the moment I saw her, but he constantly cheated on her and eventually broke up with her by simply deleting her contact info from his phone; apparently she didn’t even merit a goodbye. Hiroyuki and Rintaro’s emotions were broad strokes on a canvas of plain primaries, and the whole business of relationships a Rabelaisian joke. I decided that I needed to be more like them: flexible and free, living in the moment, full of violent cheer and meaningless laughter. If nothing else, they were teaching me how young, working class Japanese men really talked.

One day as we were walking the streets of Shibuya, Hiroyuki did something that changed my life. I’d noticed an outstandingly attractive girl walking ahead of us, a petite blonde with an ultra-short miniskirt and a handbag covered with rhinestones. She might as well have been the archetype of young, fashionable Shibuya ostentation. Until now, encountering girls like this had always obscurely wounded me – what could I do about their existence? Was there any way I could enter their world or (even more impossible) draw them into mine? My longing always faded into hopelessness.

“That’s it, that’s the type,” I said in Japanese. “I’d kill to get with someone like that.”

“Huh? Her?” Hiroyuki replied. He looked at her as if inspecting an oddly-shaped rock.

Then, without warning, he darted forward and caught up with her.

Smiling and gesturing while proceeding with absolute calm, he spoke to her in a way that resembled a talk show host crossed with a criminal prosecutor, combining rapid fire statements about her clothing and appearance with a torrent of questions – who was she? Where was she from? What was she doing? Did she have a boyfriend? – that continued even as the girl ignored him. Finally, bafflingly, she stopped walking and gave him her undivided attention.

“Now! What are you doing now?” he repeated.

“Nothing, just….nothing.”

“Let’s go get something to drink. We can go to karaoke, over there.”

Now the girl appeared to be considering the offer as if it were a matter of life and death. Finally she gently shook her head and said, “I’m sorry…I have a boyfriend.”

Hiroyuki turned and left her without another word. Soon he was by my side again. Stunned, I asked what he had just done.

“When you get one to stop, you take her to karaoke or a hotel,” he explained. “From there it’s easy.”

I’d met Momoka in a similar way two weeks earlier, so I was familiar with the concept, but I’d done it unconsciously while drunk. Hiroyuki had done it in broad daylight with total nonchalance, as if greeting an old friend. The girl’s initial reception and ultimate rejection of his offer had had no apparent effect on him. I could readily believe that he tried this multiple times each day – perhaps hundreds. It was my first real experience with nanpa.

It’s best to give a brief history of nanpa (don’t worry, I’ll dispense with the italics). Dating from the Meiji Period, the term originally denoted “the soft bunch” of layabouts interested in spending all their time with women, as opposed to those presumably chaste young men espousing the martial and manly virtues. In the modern sense, nanpa refers to picking up girls in public, often directly from the street or crowded public areas.

Nothing like this exists in the modern West. Sexually propositioning women in public has no even semi-respectable context, and is seen as inappropriate behavior at best and borderline criminal insanity at worst. Western “pickup” has barely legitimized it under the “day game” heading, but it’s still largely seen as a form of harassment. Just imagining it probably makes you think of leering construction workers shouting obscenities at passing women, or try-hard divorcees walking their dogs in the park in the hope of a “chance meeting.” Certainly few men outside of the self-styled “pickup community” would directly and confidently approach women on the street if they wanted to retain their social standing and avoid being maced.

But in Japan, this context exists. Japanese women, I discovered, were used to shrugging off nanpa, and most considered it a distraction that barely registered on their mental radar. Although genuine harassment exists as it does in every country and should not be trivialized, the majority of women I’ve spoken to have admitted to meeting at least one past boyfriend through nanpa. And in practice, I’ve had sex with hundreds of women met in this way and enjoyed long, fantastic relationships with many of them. The Japanese girlfriends and other sex partners I’ve met this way vastly outnumber those I’ve met through “traditional” means such as bars, parties and friends’ introductions, and even more modern methods like online dating. By “vastly” I mean at least two times more than all the other methods put together. Simply put, I’ve spent a lot of time doing nanpa, and can vouch for its effectiveness.

But I’ve met all too many foreigners who view nanpa as a dirty word. They prefer the “chance meeting” model, where everything is supposed to look natural. They’ll shyly start a conversation in Starbucks by asking how to read a particular kanji, or else ask for directions in public and then desperately try to segue into a personal conversation. These methods always struck me as unbearably phony, and in my experience they strike girls that way too. Those who use them are still bound to the Western paradigm that street approaches are something crass or abnormal. But the young Japanese men with the stunning, fashionable girlfriends don’t do “chance meetings.” They do nanpa.

If all this sounds a bit weighty, it’s important to emphasize that successful nanpa should be fun, light and witty. If the girl doesn’t feel engaged and won over by a cool, confident guy, you’re doing it wrong. And you’ll really know you’ve succeeded when she thanks you for approaching her. It might seem difficult to imagine, but the thought of being approached at random by their dream man is exactly what many girls want. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard “aite yokatta” – “I’m glad we met” – when our “meeting” was me walking up to her on the street as a complete stranger and talking to her as if I’d known her for years.

Some girls actually go out with the intention – subconscious or not – of being picked up: wandering around in public, or sitting on a bench at night alone looking bored. Often this isn’t planned: they were out with their friends, and then their friends went home, leaving them with nothing to do. Having grown up receiving constant attention, they know on some level that all they have to do is look receptive.

Look for girls who are walking slowly, Hiroyuki told me. They’re probably not doing much, and are receptive to approaches.

This isn’t to say that girls won’t ignore you, run away from you or have other unpredictable reactions. But there’s no law against talking to strangers, and as long as you’re not a complete psychopath or groping menace (hint: don’t touch them, it isn’t necessary), it’s rare to have heavily unfavorable reactions. In fact, much of what someone new to nanpa would interpret as “unfavorable” is often an expression of shyness or bewilderment rather than a real lack of interest. If a girl doesn’t know why you’re talking to her – particularly a girl who’s had little experience with foreigners – she’ll be less likely to respond. Complicating the issue are the scouts and hosts who approach girls hoping to recruit them for their clubs or turn them into customers. But if you make her laugh or, more powerfully, put her at ease by demonstrating that you understand and can relate to her, she’ll quickly open up.

Okay – sounds good, right? But like many things, nanpa is easier in theory than in practice. It would take me hundreds of encounters and a few more years to really internalize the process. At this point it was still beyond me, and I could only react with awe to what Hiroyuki had done.

Of course, I had other things on my mind too. Over the course of the year my relationship with Maya had grown strained. She was an amazing girl, but my sexual ambitions had grown, even if they still seemed so much idle fantasy. I wanted more girls: sexier, flashier, and more accommodating, girls who would fulfill my every fevered dream. I wanted tall, statuesque models and writhing porn stars. I wanted girls glittering with jewels and dressed in stylish clothes, girls with sparkling nails and shining eyes, from rough ghetto hostesses to high-end university students and jet-setting society ladies. I wanted inexperienced teenagers and mature women, feminine waifs and boyish athletes, stick-thin sylphs and filled-out, curvy goddesses. My tastes seemed to change on a whim. One moment I was obsessed with classical beauties like the actress Ryoko Shinohara, the next I wanted voluptuous goofs like the adult video star Aoi Sora. A single picture in a magazine or album cover was enough to send me into a frenzy. And above all, I wanted to be the kind of man these girls would be proud to have their arm around.

But the reality was different. My clothes were dull and unfashionable. In social situations I came across as diffident, even withdrawn. If I’d directly stated my desires, the women around me would have written me off as a daydreamer at best and a creep at worst. And looking back, I wouldn’t blame them. Incongruity is always unattractive.

Imagine a strong, conventionally handsome man with a great job who treats his girl like a prized possession, but is so jealous and insecure that he monitors her every move and seizes on every conversation she has with another man as a sign of her infidelity.

Now imagine a beautiful woman on the arm of a fat little man, old and grey-haired. He’s shorter than her, and seems otherwise unimpressive. But suddenly that fat old man tells an amazing story, demonstrates himself to be a man of the world, a gentleman of refinement. Other people cross the room to hear what he has to say. He makes a joke at his own expense and casually disarms his audience. Suddenly we, and the women around us, are enthralled.

So, which is really more attractive? The outwardly desirable man who lacks any inner strength, or the man you’d pass over without glancing at twice who’s comfortable with himself and in complete control of his life? I wanted to be more certain of myself, even if I had no idea how.

My encounter with Momoka proved to be the catalyst for breaking up with Maya. Now that I’d been with a girl who could have stepped from one of my dreams, it was time for me to do the right thing and break up with my girlfriend. Even though I’d spent only one night with Momoka – in contrast with the nearly two years I’d been with Maya – I was convinced that we shared a deep connection. There was a hint of sadness to her, an existential depth that Maya utterly lacked. And with her tall stature and stunning body, she was clearly more desirable. As soon as I broke off with Maya I would make Momoka my new girlfriend.

But the grand relationship I’d planned for us proved to be an illusion. Momoka met up with me a few times more but, perhaps frightened by my ardor, eventually decided she wanted nothing to do with me. In the caprice stakes, men and women are just as bad as each other, and looking back I can say that I fully deserved what I got. But at the time it struck me as a cosmic injustice, and I was ruined for weeks, pining over my lost dream girl. You can imagine the pathetic sight I made, sprawled on my bed listening to the same bands I’d shared with her, now feeling even worse than they had made me feel as a teenager. I still can’t listen to Bjork.

And even before all that, the breakup with Maya was painful and protracted. I’d given too much of myself away, and in my youthful exuberance I’d become excessive: writing her poems, declaring my love, projecting future happiness. Maya, a country girl from Hokkaido who’d moved to Kyoto for university, had never experienced anything like this. She took my early, infatuated hints at marriage seriously, and I’d met her mother.

In fact, I’d slept with her mother.

This requires some explanation. I first became aware of Maya’s mother, Mrs. Tanaka, when she wrote a letter to her daughter in Australia. Evidently Maya had mentioned me, as the letter contained a paragraph addressed directly to me, inviting me to Japan for “karaoke and bowling” and asking various personal questions. I considered this somewhat odd, but chalked it up to cultural differences. From Maya I learned that her mother was in her early forties (Maya had been a teenage pregnancy) and divorced, and was looking to relocate to Tokyo. Later, once I’d moved there myself, I was able to meet her in person.

Mrs. Tanaka – Eriko – resembled her daughter enough to be an older sister. But while Maya dressed somewhat conservatively, Eriko wore high heels, skin-tight jeans and revealing tops along with flashy golden belts and shiny jewelry. Like her daughter she was tall and had an impressive figure, slender and gently curved. Maya loved her but complained about her “noisiness” – literal translation – and transparent attempts to ingratiate herself with a younger crowd. I got the impression of a stifled party girl who’d married too young and still craved affection. Once she realized I was in Tokyo for at least a year, she took every opportunity to invite me around, going so far as get my phone contact information and make me promise not to tell Maya. I considered this eccentric but harmless; after all, what could happen? I had no intention of doing anything with her; in fact the prospect frightened me. But I couldn’t deny that I found Eriko’s slutty flightiness exciting, and the idea of bedding both mother and daughter intrigued me. Still, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously.

For the first few months Maya was always present whenever I encountered her mother, and for the most part Eriko and I kept an appropriate distance. But over time I found her sending me more and more text messages, most of them open-ended and innocuous, but still clearly requests for attention. Eventually she invited me to go shopping with her, and I followed her through Shinjuku’s Takashimaya department store while Maya was at work. There was no real sense of an illicit encounter, but I couldn’t deny a strange undercurrent to our interactions as Eriko asked for my opinion on various new clothes and eventually treated me to lunch at an Indian restaurant. Our conversation was resolutely trivial, but I could tell from her body language and facial expressions that she was enjoying my presence in more than a friendly way. I finally said goodbye to her outside the station, uncertain how I should feel.

The situation progressed over the next few weeks, with Eriko eventually inviting herself over to my university dorm. While our shopping date had seemed light and unreal, occupying a weightless dimension of its own, as soon as my girlfriend’s mother stepped over the threshold of my building, reality sunk in…and was immediately compounded when Mai, one of the residential assistants, came out of the laundry room and stared in surprise at the older woman standing next to me. True to her background as a gregarious country type from northern Japan, Eriko struck up a conversation without missing a beat, and I had to hurry her along to my room, certain the Orwellian-minded RA would be taking notes.

Once inside, Eriko busied herself picking my scattered clothes from the floor, folding them neatly and arranging them into piles. It seemed more reflexive than considerate, an unconscious desire – partly cultural, partly personal – to impose order on disorder, form on formlessness. Or perhaps it was only a way of making herself feel at home in my charmless student’s room. When she had finished, she sat down on my bed with an air of mock exhaustion. I joined her, and before I knew what was happening I found myself massaging her shoulders and kneading the hard but soft-skinned muscles of her neck. Eriko relaxed and leaned back into me, and I spent several minutes exploring her body with my hands before finally resting my chin on her shoulder and then bringing my mouth to her neck. She broke the tension with a burst of meaningless laughter. We seemed about to have a conversation, but finally there was nothing to say, and soon we were locked in a tight embrace. I found myself overwhelmingly but almost impersonally excited, and Eriko pressed herself against me with undeniable force.

When it was over we resumed our earlier manner. There was no question of letting it mean anything, as the event had been essentially meaningless, two displaced individuals falling into each other’s orbits and colliding under the force of an inexplicable attraction before drifting away to a safer, reasonable distance. As if to emphasize the point, after expressing how happy she was that Maya and I were going out, Eriko made a show of talking about the future relationships she desired – was there anyone I could introduce her to? I told her I’d keep my eye out.

Needless to say, this experience put me into an unusual head space for a while, but it was only one of the factors leading to my eventual breakup with Maya. I procrastinated for weeks, paralyzed by cowardice, until one night I met her at a restaurant close to my station and managed to tell her that I didn’t think we had any future. I was still too young, and wanted to explore life more.

Maya didn’t take it well. In fact, the relationship died in stages similar to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s model of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Except instead of acceptance, it was more like anger and depression II: angrier and more depressed.

“So you’re just going to throw me away,” she said, and seemed almost on the verge of punching the glass window close to our table.

“I’m not throwing you away.”

“You are!”

I’d naively hoped to wrap things up in an “adult” manner and see her off at the station, but she followed me back to my dorm and insisted on staying the night. As she gradually came to terms with the reality of my leaving her, she struggled to project a future in which we were still somehow connected.

“I still think I can trust you,” she said. “Ten years from now when we’re married to other people, I can see our children playing together in a garden somewhere…”

I felt myself close to tears. Even then I doubted I’d ever have children, but the dreamlike image affected me deeply, and I felt utterly destroyed.

Then it was time for one final attack. It was the small hours of the morning, and we were both highly-strung. She demanded to know the real reason I was leaving her, why I wasn’t satisfied.

“Okay,” I said. “I really just want more experience. I want to fuck other girls.”

Depending on your temperament, your sympathy for me at this point – still fairly early in the book – has either been cemented or evaporated completely. In the case of the latter, I’ll say that, in my defense, I met Maya years later in a coffee shop and found her a mature, confident woman, successful at her job and happily married to a prosperous, upwardly-mobile Japanese businessman. Despite the callous way I’d treated her, she bore me no ill will and said she looked back on our relationship with fondness. I wanted desperately to believe her. With the passage of time, she now felt free to joke about the past, and she brought up an incident that had stuck in her mind.

“There was that one time I went to your dorm and saw all the clothes neatly folded on the dresser. I remember thinking there was no way you would ever have folded them that neatly or stacked them up like that. You said you’d done it yourself but I knew you were lying. It was another girl, wasn’t it? You had someone else in your room.”

I conceded that she was right; it had been another girl.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say, “It was your mother!”

The post The Birth of Japan Game: Episode 3: The Nanpa Intro appeared first on Attraction Japan.

from Attraction Japan http://attractionjapan.com/birth-japan-game-episode-3-nanpa-intro/

0 notes