#//*casually hangs self in a social suicide*

[its-a-rat-trap]

Via @/boomtownratsofficial on instagram

Transcript below, courtesy of @izzy-b-hands - Thanks so much for putting this together!

BOOMTOWN RATS

'Cynicism is just a safeguard that we have adopted.’

‘Modest’ Bob Geldof looks relaxed as he sits on the grass taking in the sun. Don’t be deceived — Geldof is anything but relaxed as he prepares to launch into the latest harangue against the music business, fans, trendies, the press, pseudo-revolutionaries or indeed anyone and anything else that he’s taken a disliking to. The ‘Modest’ title he has been given is, of course, a sly dig at a man who, in a world peopled with self-important and pompous rock stars, can hold his own in the opinionation stakes. Bob Geldof likes to talk — about his music, about the Boomtown Rats, about the music business, but most of all, about himself. 

The Rats, with Geldof as their spokesperson, have carefully nurtured an image of rebelliousness and casual cynicism which their music belies. They have presented themselves as the bad boys of rock’n’roll — carefree, devil-may-care, uninhibited, even irresponsible. Their last hit single, ‘She’s so Modern’, took a pot shot at the (female) followers of fashion who hang around the ‘new wave’ bands. The new album, ‘Tonic for the Troops’, contains more material in this same irreverent vein. But, as with the band’s first album — ‘The Boomtown Rats’ — there are also songs of a more serious kind. ‘Blind Date’ is about loneliness (almost an obsession with Geldof these days); ‘Rat Trap’, like ‘Joey’s on the Street’ from the first album, is a tragic ode to the band’s home city of Dublin; ‘Living on an Island’ is a Kinks-style song about suicide (‘It’s all about 1978 city life,’ says Bob). 

It comes as something of a shock to realise that the Boomtown Rats are such a serious, not to say sensitive, group. It somehow doesn’t square with their light-hearted attitude to the media, their jokey image and their self-effacing cynicism. The band’s declared inability to take anything too seriously seems to be something of a mask, a protection against the indignities of success and the tragedies of modern life. They are like condemned men joking on their way to the scaffold — laughing to fight off the tears, smiling to hide the fear. ‘This vast cynicism’, as Geldof describes it, was learnt in their native Ireland. That country is not only a land with a tragic history of oppression, social division and violence, it is also (according to the voluble Geldof) ‘the original land of backhanders and family connection.’ You have to be cynical to survive in Ireland — and it’s best if you don’t take anything to heart, because there’s too much pain around, too many chances to have your dreams trampled on. 

‘Cynicism is just a safeguard that we have adopted,’ says Geldof. It’s a safeguard against disappointment and against defeat. And their cynicism worked so well that even Geldof, who has never had any doubts as to his own abilities, finds it hard to take the Rats’ success seriously. ‘You never think of yourself as being wildly successful,’ he says. ‘We’ve been lucky. It still seems ludicrous.’ 

It’s surprising that with such an acute vision and with so much apparent bitterness, the Rats still find it possible to hide behind their gleeful craziness. Johnny Fingers, the keyboard man, can still wander about the streets in a pair of pyjamas or wear a clothes hanger on his head during a Top of the Pops session (just to see what happens!); Geldof still finds it easy to play Star Wars games with a toy light-sabre. The whole band has a fine sense of the ridiculousness of their position, despite the eagerness with which they have pursued fame and riches. Only a band like the Rats could agree to including their records on a K-Tel compilation album and still retain credibility as a new wave group. They can get away with it because they are quite unashamed about their desire to make money and because they are quite clear about the idiocy and the artificiality of the whole pop world. ‘They are paying us a complement by considering us to be a pop band,’ says Geldof about the K-Tel deal, ‘which is all we ever wanted to be, a normal rock’n’roll band.’

‘All we ever wanted to be, a normal rock’n’roll band’

Of course, it needn’t stop with TV advertised albums. Already the other members of the Rats — Fingers, the two guitarists, Gerry Cott and Garry Roberts, Pete Briquette (bass) and Simon Crowe (drums) — are taking some of the writing credits from the incorrigible Geldof. Why? Because ‘when they realised that the publishing money was involved…they started coming up with ideas for songs.’ The brutal honesty of the Rats' ambition is somehow refreshing — especially at a time when the fashionable commitment of most punk bands is beginning to be seen for what it is, simply a peg on which to hang a musical challenge to the Top Forty. 

The Rats don’t claim to despise the Top Forty (even though Geldof doesn’t like most of the music in the charts) while appearing on Top of the Pops. They say they are a pop group, no more and no less. And they can laugh at success and pursue it at the same time because, while they may not feel like pop stars that is precisely what they are. ‘I’d love to be on the Val Doonican show,’ says Geldof in a matter-of-fact way, ‘for the simple reason that it is the Val Doonican show. It’s a total joke. I’d love to appear on it.’ One day we might see the Rats on the Val Doonican show. I don’t think I’d want to tune in, because when that day comes they will no doubt turn in a performance as tedious and predictable as Doonican’s, but they, at least, have no doubts that they could or should make such appearances. ‘We’re in a very enviable position,’ says Geldof, ‘because we don’t hold any particular conviction other than towards ourselves. It allows us freedom to do whatever we want.’

Of course, it’s that old cynicism again, and when you listen to some of the Rats’ more serious songs it begins to sound a little hollow. Bob Geldof says that he doesn’t ‘particularly want to be a figurehead,’ and he is very insistent that the Rats’ songs are not political in the Tom Robinson, Clash sense. But in a wider sense they are political, dealing as they do in a thoughtful and astute way with everyday institutions and ordinary lives. In some ways, Bob Geldof is a childlike figure, toying with the material success he and the Rats have achieved. And the Rats offer a childlike clarity of vision in their songs and a childlike sense of pleasure in their performances and in their self-publicity. But, again like children, the Rats find it difficult to accept the responsibility that their success involves — for fear they might fail to use it properly or for fear it might be taken away from them. ‘I sit on every fence that’s going,’ says Geldof, speaking for the whole band. ‘Politics and philosophies are in the end a joke.’

‘Anyone with a 5000 watt PA has got immense power’

For ‘Modest’ Bob Geldof, the Boomtown Rats are ‘just a danceband’ and he is just doing a job. ‘My job is to sing in a band,’ he says. ‘It’s the same job that Schnozzle Durante had. It’s the same job that Bing Crosby had. It’s the same job that Joe Strummer has.’ But this is false modesty, born of an unwillingness to recognise that a pop star cannot help but be a symbol or a spokesperson for vast numbers of people. ‘Whatever I say I believe,’ says Geldof, ‘but I don’t necessarily extend that belief to others… We’re not going to force anything down people’s throats because there’s enough of that going on.’ Admirable sentiments, indeed. But I’d rather have Bob Geldof for my spokesman than Val Doonican anyday. And that’s why I buy Boomtown Rats’ records — because it’s all there, I don’t need it pushed down my throat, I already think it’s right. 

Bob Geldof, however, remains ‘modest’ to the last. ‘I really don’t have anything to say to anybody about anything,’ he insists. ‘I’ve got nothing to say for people. I don’t want to be a spokesman… We could make endless amounts of people shout out slogans. That’s the reality of it. Anyone in a spotlight with a 5000 watt PA has got immense power. You must accept us for what we do. We do it for what it will get us. We’re the world’s biggest liggers.’ I think, perhaps, he protests too much.

[loneberry]

CN: suicide

Cried reading this long-form article. Turns out sociality is the best way to prevent suicide. The suicide “epidemic” points to a crisis of loneliness brought about by the techno-capitalist destruction of relationships. (Yet I’m wary of stating the problem in such starkly sociological terms—psychological pain and the collapse of meaning in one’s life never feels sociological; it feels, if anything, spiritual.) I have a mother who attempted suicide while I was in a relationship with a chronically suicidal person who eventually killed herself. It’s cast a terrible shadow over my life.

The article also made me feel grateful for my former analyst, who always said I could contact her outside our sessions. I was terrified of being a burden and only called her once, when I was on the edge of a breakdown while traveling around France with my boorish Russian fuckboy lover. Later, when an ex committed suicide, she asked why I didn’t immediately contact her when I found out. I suppose I never got over the fear of being a burden, which points to deeper hang ups around dependency: my pathological need for self-sufficiency (emotional, financial, etc), that core aloofness. Yet I always want my friends to ask for help if they need it. How can we tune ourselves to those subtle vibratory shifts, when we sense a need is there but blocked from being verbalized?

[bpdrug-addict]

I'm a really social person and lately I've hardly been talking to anyone let alone hanging out with anyone besides my partner because my sense of identity loss is making me feel like I'm not enough of a person to expose other people to the lack of a person I am now. I thrive in big loud groups that fuck around and break things and scream and cry and laugh about our evil lives and I feel like in recovery I'm not allowed to have that. I don't know how else to have community and I think the hardest part is I don't want any other relationships with people. I don't want to be mellow and have it all figured out. I don't want to have to feel like I constantly have to work on myself for people to see me as worth spending time on and with. I want my recovery and my antirecovery. I will never be able to erase the way I think and feel and I don't want to change it so drastically that I can't recognize myself anymore. I feel like all my traits have been disciplined out of me since I started exhibiting them. I want to be open about my mentally ill self. I want to be tearing myself apart and have a community that doesn't pity or shame me. I want a community that understands and nutures while not trying to get rid of the problem. I love sitting in the darkness with my close friends and talking casually about the most horrific moments of our lives like were reading a wiki Fandom article. I want the connection and detachment. I want to go back to walking to abandoned buildings and getting shitfaced and making out and talking about how sad other people make us. I want my small community thats so detached from the rest of society that nothing we do aligns with it at all. I love my runaways, my drug addicts, my trauma survivors (if you can call us that), my disordered personalities, my schizophrenics that do psychedelics anyways, my antisocial queers, my harm reduction hotties, my mentally unstable arsonists, my institutionalized bitches, my disorganized adhders, my chronically suicidal hoes, my radical transqueers, and my compulsive liars. I miss my community of mess, destruction, anger, and trying to live despite the mass confusion over what life should be and look like.

[sir-huffman]

Edit: Due to recent events, Duke has come out and has purged all those who had the ‘do not interact if you ship ka.eluc/lu.ckae’ because (1) Duke ships it and (2) can’t take anymore negativity of those who blatantly say “you’re not welcomed here if __________”.

For those of you who come back here to see this wondering why you can follow me again...this was why. So if you still wish to interact, PLEASE RE-FOLLOW if you really aren’t adamant on this whole ‘I refuse to interact with people who ship this ship’.

I still think it’s non-sense as this is a Huffman blog and such shipping shouldn’t be brought up on this blog...BUT PLEASE I extend my hand out again who want to continue RPing with Huffy and me.

Just give me a re-follow, I’ll follow right back as if nothing has ever happened.

(undercut was my original post explaining my stance)

Block Me | Duke’s two cents

Duke just got home from work, is tired, and heat drunk and wanted to get rid of some followers so here is his one and only fucking vague assed post in his entire 7 years of tumblr. If we’re going to purge followers and interactions and divide ourselves for things THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR MUSES and is solely just based on shipping interests or our friends shipping interests, that still have nothing to do with our muses and we’ll never talk about together AT ALL. Then fucking block me.

I’m getting coffee and then going to finish my asks once the purge on both ends is done so I know who I can respond to and not respond to.

I guess I should apologize for those who I follow? I suppose I should, I’m sorry.

Should I give a reason why I still followed - well what does kae.luc or luc.kae have to do with Huffman and his relationship with our muses? Nothing. NOTHING at fucking all.

So that’s why I still followed.

Hang me for it. I’m not gonna argue you. I see both fucking sides of the argument. Trust me. I do. But anyways, this is my mistake and I really should have just been good and listened to rules. You’d think after 7+ years I’d be a veteran and be a good little adult and listen. But I’m not, so I apologize.

Goodbye. Farewell. Duke is destroying their gen.shin im.pact rp reputation he guesses.

Anything goes. Be respectful (though I’m breaking this rule myself what a fucking hypocrite i am) and most importantly HAVE FUN.

If you don’t want to be blocked despite having this “dont follow if u ship kae.luc or luc.kae” DM me and I’ll make sure not to block you. Duke is just going to clean up this mess they’ve dug themselves.

[my-emotional-self]

Toxic Love Chapter 6

Pairings: Steve Rogers x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, Steve Rogers x Reader x Bucky Barnes

Summary: Finding out your soulmates were Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes was one thing.  But when someone from your past comes back to haunt you, you have to figure out if a relationship with two super soldiers is something you really want to pursue or if you’d rather go back to your comfortable single life.

Series Warnings:  18+, Swearing, Angst, Fluff, past mentions of rape, self-harm, attempted rape, domestic violence, stalking, death threats, possible Dark!Steve?, Steve will be an asshole a LOT in this series but I don’t know how dark it will get, explicit sexual content, mental health issues, kind of A/B/O dynamics but not really (no they are not actual wolves, more like the hierarchy), mentions of suicide, flashbacks of suicide, nightmares

A/N: There will be no taglist for this story!  I apologize in advance!

After Steve and Bucky helped you get everything unpacked, the three of you enjoyed some take-out. Pizza to be exact.  Well, the same pizza you had earlier with them.  You had been craving it for the last two weeks and your stomach was very happy.  

“Did you make your grocery list yet?” Bucky asked as he took care of the cleaning up.  

You couldn’t help but laugh. As you were unpacking the few items you had for your personal kitchen, you began playing with the screen on the refrigerator.  You couldn’t believe the high tech gadget and while it took you nearly an hour, you finally figured out how to add groceries to the list.  

“I did.  I’m surprised I was able to figure it out, it only took me about an hour,” you responded.

This made Bucky full out laugh.  “An hour? That’s actually impressive.  It took Steve here almost a month to figure it out before he finally gave up and asked for help.”

Trying to hide your smirk, you turned to look at Steve.  He had a scowl on his face as he was looking at Bucky.  “Let’s not forget I was frozen for 70 years.  I’m still trying to learn all this damn technology.”

Leaning over you pressed a kiss to Steve’s temple.  “Don’t worry about it Steve.  Other than my gaming setup, I’m not too big on technology either.”

~~~

“Dad, I’m home!” you called out to your father as you shut the front door to the run down farmhouse.  It was just the two of you now ever since your mother’s death one year ago today.  You didn’t want to go to school, you wanted to stay home.  Stay in bed.  But your father said it would be best to try and continue on like it was any other normal day.  It would never be a normal day.  Ever again.

As you turned the corner and into the living room, you saw him. Your father.  Dead.  Hanging from the wooden ceiling beam with a noose around his neck.  “Dad?” you choked out, not believing that this was happening again.  “No. No, no, no, no, NO!” you screamed as you ran to him.  Upon touching his leg you knew it was too late.  Way too late.  He was so cold to the touch.  It had been hours since he committed suicide and you weren’t here for him.  

“Why dad!  WHY DID YOU DO THIS!  DON’T LEAVE ME PLEASE!  DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE!!” you cried and begged but it was no use.  He too was now gone.  

~~~

You jolted awake by the feeling of hands on you.  Your breathing was ragged and you were dripping in sweat.  Both Steve and Bucky on either side of you; their eyes filled with worry.

“Are you alright?” Steve questioned.  

“How..did you…get in…here,” you replied as you tried to catch your breath.  These kinds of nightmares always made you feel like you had just ran a marathon.  

“F.R.I.D.A.Y alerted us that your heart rate was going through the roof.  You scared us half to death with your screaming doll,” Bucky spoke quietly in the dark room.  “You feel warm,” he said as he placed the back of his flesh hand over your forehead.

Shrugging him away as nicely as possible, you got out of bed.  “I’m fine.  I’m just going to take a cool shower.  Thanks for coming to check on me though.”

Inside the confines of your bathroom you opened the medicine cabinet and took out a couple of bottles. Filling up a glass of cold water, you placed the pills in your mouth and downed the entire glass.  

It had been months since you last had a nightmare.  To be honest, you thought they were finally done with, until you realized the todays date. Of course.  It was the anniversary of your parents’ death.  How could you have forgotten?  Oh right.  You had met your soulmates and spent the entire day moving into your new place.  Now you felt guilty for even forgetting in the first place.  

As you stripped of your sweat soaked clothing, you hopped into the shower.  The water mixed with your tears as you quietly sobbed and asked your parents for forgiveness.  

~~~

When you got out of the shower, Steve and Bucky were no longer in your room.  Instead, you found a little note on your pillow.  

We didn’t know if we should give you space or wait for you so we will let you make that decision.  Let us know if you need us to come back tonight.  Try and get some sleep sweetheart.  

Steve and Bucky

Even though the note was sweet and thoughtful, you knew instantly that you would not be getting any more sleep tonight.  

By eight in the morning you were still awake and scrolling through social media when a text from Bucky came in.  

Bucky: Breakfast in the communal kitchen?  Everyone would like to meet you.

Oh god.  You were dreading this part.  You had already met Natasha, but to meet everyone else all at once? Anxiety began to creep over you. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to meet them, it was that you had anxiety about meeting people for the first time.

Y/N: Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready

Jumping out of bed you headed for the closet to try and figure out what to wear.  Was this casual?  Or was everyone going to be wearing their pajamas?  Did you want to dress to impress them?  Or did you want to be yourself?  You went with the latter, figuring if you were going to all be living under the same roof, they might as well get to know the real you.  

You put on a pair of black skinny ripped jeans and a plain forest green t-shirt.  Slipping your feet into your comfortable black flats, you were about to head out the door when you took a look at yourself in mirror.  Steve would blow a fuse at the dark circles under your eyes.  So you quickly placed some concealer under your eyes.  

Steve and Bucky were waiting for you in the kitchen and the three of you headed down to the communal living area.  They didn’t ask you about your nightmare and you were grateful for that.  

The elevator doors opened and for once, your stomach growled at the smell of breakfast in the morning. You loved breakfast food, but you weren’t big on eating in the morning.  Now breakfast for dinner, that was something you could eat every night.

Steve cleared his throat and everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at the three of you. Instantly you felt your face heat up.

“Everyone, this is our soulmate Y/N,” Steve spoke loud and clear.  He began pointing everyone out for you.  “That’s Tony, Pepper and Bruce.  You know Natasha of course and right there is Clint and Darcy.  Thor and Jane are still on Asgard but you’ll meet them another time.”

You awkwardly waved.  “Hey everybody.”

Tony was the first to come up to you and he shook your hand.  “Tony I can’t thank you enough for my rooms here.  They are perfect.”

He waved his hand like it was no big deal.  “Please. My gift to you.  And that is why I pay my interior designer the big bucks. She knows what she’s doing.  Now, if you need anything, anything at all, just ask F.R.I.D.A.Y and I’ll make it happen.  Happy to have you here kiddo.  Maybe you can keep those two out of trouble huh?”

“I’ll try,” you chuckled.

Just then Bruce came up and the two of you exchanged quiet ‘hellos’ before he and Tony were off to their lab, food and coffee in hand.  

“Hey, now that you’re here, maybe Cap will stop being such a grouch all the time now that he’ll get laid,” Clint blurted out and as quickly as the words left his mouth, Natasha smacked him upside the head.  “What? It’s the truth.  No offense Steve but you have been a real crab ass the last few months.”

“Shut up Clint!” Darcy spoke as she shoved him out of the way.  “Hi there.  I’m Darcy. Darcy Lewis.  Just ignore him.  He doesn’t think before he speaks.”

In that moment, you knew you were going to be good friends with Darcy.  “Nice to meet you Darcy.”

“Now I hear that you game, is that correct?” she began to say as the two of you piled food onto your plates and sat down.  

The morning didn’t go as bad as you thought.  The only downside was that it now seemed Steve was in a bad mood because of Clint’s big mouth. At least you were getting to know Darcy and Pepper and they both were really nice.  

Darcy asked you a lot of questions about your job and gaming.  She had even asked if she could sit in on a night that you worked so she could watch everything.  Of course you said she could.  Hell, it would be fun to have Darcy there.  

You were starting to get tired after not getting much sleep so you excused yourself and went back to your room.  Tonight would be the first night that you will be working at the tower and you wanted to try and get some rest.  You had a feeling it was going to be a long night.  

“Is everything alright sweetheart?” Steve’s voice startled you just as you were about to open your door.

“Jesus Steve, don’t sneak up on me like that,” you replied with a hand on your heart.  

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to.  I just wanted to make sure you were feeling alright.  Especially after last night is all.”

Dropping your hand from your chest, you gave him a tight smile and put your arms around his narrow waist, pulling him in for a hug.  “I’m ok Steve.  Just a little tired is all.”

He placed his chin on your head and held you in his arms.  You felt safe against him.  Like nothing or no one could ever hurt you.  You were starting to realize that maybe single life wasn’t what you truly wanted. Single life was just something that you had become accustomed to over the last year.  Maybe being in a relationship again would be better for you.

[shihalyfie]

Daisuke and Ken’s dynamic, and what Ken does for Daisuke in return

Everyone in the main 02 cast can be said to be a little surface-deceptive in some way, and so, even with Daisuke and Ken as the relationship at the forefront of 02′s story, there’s still more going on behind it than first glance would initially make you suspect. It’s all too easy to just take the surface reading and decide that Daisuke is some kind of saint whom Ken is singularly dependent on for his happiness (which would really be quite the unhealthy relationship), or, worse, shove them into the stereotypical BL tropes just because they’re the two at the front, even though the story practically went out of its way to depict them as unusual characters who don’t fit into those kinds of boxes as easily.

Even though it wasn’t stated outright in words, Ken did a lot for Daisuke in return, and there’s a lot of layers to their relationship to each other both in the series and in going forward after it.

What Daisuke does for Ken

That Daisuke and Ken have very “complementary” personalities goes without saying, but this applies to both their surface demeanors and what lies beneath them. Daisuke has an abrasive surface demeanor and a tendency to get defensive, but isn’t actually very assertive at all; on the other hand, Ken is more polite and ostensibly “soft”, but is significantly more assertive than Daisuke is. This also means that, while it would of course be foolhardy to pretend that Ken could easily shrug off all of his trauma, it’s also conversely reductive to shove the two of them into boxes where Ken is a constant crybaby angsting over everything bad that’s happened to him while Daisuke’s the only ray of sunshine who can get him out of it. A lot of Ken’s strength in the series is self-supplied; he of course does end up needing the others’ support at times, but extreme readings like this really don’t give the kid enough credit for how good he is at gritting his teeth and pushing on without anyone prompting him.

The initial problem, however, is that Ken is too assertive about the wrong things at first. Like, say, in 02 episode 26, when he assertively says that he’s going to...recklessly chuck himself into an exploding reactor! For the third quarter of the series, Ken deliberately tries to keep his distance from others, and is very clear and open about his reasons why: in his mind, it’s his responsibility, and the others shouldn’t have to be involved. He doesn’t want their friendship, he doesn’t even think he deserves their friendship, and here’s Daisuke going “okay, yeah, but that’s stupid, shut up and let us help you.”

Adventure and 02 have a strong thread of driving it home that “doing things on sheer principle eventually becomes pointless when it gets in the way of being practical” -- and Daisuke, being a simple-minded and “straightforward” person who doesn’t overthink things, is basically there to keep Ken’s focus back on the proper picture. Because yeah, Ken can attempt to do things like frame things in terms of whether he “deserves” all of this, or “whose responsibility” this all is -- but the fact of the matter is that Daisuke and his friends want to do something and help instead of being sitting ducks about it, Ken’s practically not going to be able to do this alone, and, well, that’s the base of their first Jogress in 02 episode 26! Ken says outright that his goal is to do something to help, but then decides that “helping” should involve suicidally chucking himself into an exploding reactor, and Daisuke, hearing out Ken’s troubles, reminds him that him dying there won’t actually help the way Ken wants to help, because it won’t leave him alive to do all of the other things he wants to do and will hurt his family even more just when he was starting to repair things with them -- and as much as this extremely suicidal plan might temporarily spare the others from dying in an explosion, Daisuke would have to live with the guilt of letting Ken go off to die like that, so it won’t make him happy either.

So in other words, while Ken’s trying to sort out his complicated feelings of guilt, shame, and sense of responsibility, Daisuke’s there to keep his head on straight and remind him when he’s about to run himself in mental circles. Ken would have easily spent the rest of the series trying to make up for what he did even without Daisuke’s help, because he’s such a strong believer in “the right thing to do”, but his way of going on about it would have involved him staying in isolation out of a perceived sense of responsibility, endangering himself out of a sense of self-sacrifice, drowning himself in self-blame and feelings of regret, and, eventually, not addressing the very gaping hole in his life that he very much needs emotional support from others right now.

One thing particularly interesting about the Japanese version of 02 is that, for nearly the entirety of the second half of the series, Ken only refers to Daisuke as “Motomiya”, which is surprising given the fact that he employs given-name basis with the others quite quickly. Ken eventually does commit to “Daisuke” after the series in almost all post-02 material, and this image fits the two so well that pretty much every doujinshi artist has caught onto it despite it not being there all that much in the actual series, but it really took him a while; what gives? (Daisuke himself committed to “Ken” from surname basis “Ichijouji” starting in 02 episode 39.) Well, the important distinction is that Ken dropped the honorific with him from very early on -- meaning that he did want to approach Daisuke with a little bit of casual bluntness in a way beyond the distant respect he treated the others with, but at the time, going straight to buddy-buddy on given name with no honorific at all would have been a bit too much for him, and it comes off as him almost deliberately giving off a sense of distance. Why?

Ken didn’t have too much of an opinion on each individual kid in the group until 02 episode 8, when he developed a particular hatred for Daisuke for “ruining his pride” and decided to emotionally torture him a bit. Then, come 02 episode 25, this same kid approached him with no sense of grudge whatsoever, and presents him with a completely different way of seeing things: “whatever you did in the past, you’re clearly trying to help now, which means we’re now on the same side, so we should work together.” It’s pragmatic; it’s extremely pragmatic, and it’s not like Daisuke was working off of blind optimism and trust as much as he observed, very practically, that Ken was clearly trying to do better now and that therefore they should work together and make use of it. This kind of thought pattern is completely alien to Ken’s “I deserve/don’t deserve this” mentality at this point of this series, and by all standards of his own logic Daisuke should be one of the people who hates him the most, and yet -- nope!

By the time of their Jogress, Ken of course understands that Daisuke’s trying very hard to communicate with him, and thus they develop a sort of rapport -- but they’re not quite friends yet at the level of truly being “comfortable” with each other, because most of the second half of the series involved circumstances where Daisuke was helping Ken through a very emotionally hard time. It’s only at the point of the Christmas party in 02 episode 38 when Ken can really think about having these kids as real friends in terms of socializing and not just people who are willing to work with him in his penance journey. It’s enough that Ken’s able to admit that he wants the help of Daisuke in 02 episode 44, when beforehand he’d been trying to keep everyone out of what he’d perceived as his business. And, as Ken’s slowly more exposed to Daisuke’s way of life and its influence on the rest of the group around him, he comes to understand that maybe having a “close friend who can support him” isn’t that bad after all, since it’s not like these friends are just being “open-minded” towards him; they really are there to support him and his actual feelings and welfare, not just “cutting him slack” because he’s helping.

And so, with that, once the crisis is resolved and all is said and done, Ken finally truly accepts Daisuke as his friend and moves him up to given-name basis (no honorific!). This is most prominently shown in Diablomon Strikes Back, where their interactions are now removed from the question of Ken’s former actions and his emotional problems, and it turns out, they’re still good friends in the sense that friends are. As in, people who laugh together, hang out together, converse with each other casually; even if they are working together on the same thing for the duration of the movie, it’s not such an emotionally tense situation that you could chalk their interactions up to sheer necessity. With Daisuke’s help, Ken was able to move on from all of his past hangups, and the two of them became able to enjoy the moment of “now” like normal children.

What Ken does for Daisuke

Daisuke may be simple-minded enough to not have deep-seated concerns that eat at him every day, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a bit socially maladjusted during the early parts of the series. Namely, being really insecure and prone to getting defensive whenever he felt he was being made fun of. Those kinds of things were what was most likely to get Daisuke to “lash out” at others, because he slips into his worst bouts of these whenever he’s lacking in validation.

Daisuke was, undoubtedly, improving over the course of the series, with him slowly starting to become more assertive by the time of 02 episode 20. It’s incorrect to say that Ken was the only person who could truly help him with this; 02 is a series about a group dynamic after all (even if the Jogress pairs are the most instrumental in helping each other), and it would be a pretty unhealthy relationship if one person were so dependent on another to even remotely function. But starting in 02 episode 22, when the crisis is momentarily resolved and everyone’s not sure what to do, Daisuke’s feeling of being third wheeled by Takeru and Hikari shoots up right at the moment everyone’s feeling a bit lacking in purpose. Two episodes later, Miyako immediately stages an intervention to help keep his mind off of things, and she’s arguably even the most comfortable with him at this point in time.

It’s not that Daisuke isn’t improving, nor that his friends aren’t trying to help, but, well...emotionally sensitive as Miyako can be, she’s also a bit all over the place herself and sometimes needs restraining; Hikari may be assertive, but she’s pretty obviously apprehensive about shutting Daisuke down too bluntly, and Takeru being so hard to read and evasive about everything means that Daisuke can’t really tell what he’s thinking or understand his intentions; Iori is younger and is restraining himself, so he still won’t cross certain lines with Daisuke. So as you can see, they’re all doing their best, and they’re not doing a terrible job of it either; hell, the rest of the series involves them maturing into people who can better interact with and support each other, so their own relationships with Daisuke are likely to improve even well after the series ends. It’s just that, especially at this point in the series, there’s definitely room for an extra person to fill a certain niche that’s got a gaping void here, begging for someone who’s assertive and put-together enough to regularly keep Daisuke in check, yet also willing to be properly straightforward with him to the extent that he doesn’t have to feel insecure about their intentions. Hmm, who could that be?

Although “the priority of reaching out to Ken” eventually becomes enough of a distraction that it certainly takes Daisuke’s mind off potentially feeling insecure, as we start to see more “casual” interactions between Daisuke and Ken, we see that Ken actually fills in a lot of the gaps that had been so sorely missing in this group dynamic for a while. Forward-thinking as he is, Daisuke’s simple-minded way of going at things has its drawbacks in that he’s not very smart or good at thinking, but Ken is the opposite, being intellectually analytical and much more thoughtful overall, and since Daisuke is the kind of person who defers to others when they’re better than him at something, Ken being right next to him means that he can give him a hand in making important decisions he can’t by himself. This is especially so in Diablomon Strikes Back, when Ken’s role is largely keeping an eye on Daisuke and making sure he’s not a loose cannon -- something he’s very capable of doing -- but also simply being there as a springboard whom Daisuke can comfortably approach and talk to, since Ken is such a mild-mannered, straightforward person who won’t set off his overly defensive tendencies as easily.

That doesn’t mean that Ken is completely above teasing him, of course -- a lot of post-02 material in fact makes sure you understand that he’s not just some soft-hearted saint and can be quite the snarker when he wants, since his increased comfort level with Daisuke means he’s now able to poke at him here and there, even doing something as mean as dumping all of the Christmas shopping on him (the character songs and other related in-character material lie in questionably canonical territory, but that kind of punchline is not unreasonable to imagine given their respective personalities). But, overall, he sets the right tone for Daisuke to have a friend he’s able to be around regularly and receive support from, and to fill in that niche of his casual interactions so that Daisuke can have some more solid grounding in his life.

It’s also a testament to how much Ken himself had changed in terms of becoming the kind of person who could handle Daisuke like this. When the two of them first “met” in 02 episode 8, while Ken was still fully under the influence of the Dark Seed, even if we were to put the part about him being the Kaiser aside, this sort of person would never be able to become a good friend to Daisuke. This episode had Daisuke put him on a pedestal -- someone he’ll never be able to be as good as, whom he looks up to as an “idol”, much like the way Daisuke has a tendency to instinctively put himself down in uplifting others. Thus, it was a negative relationship for both of them; Ken being put on a pedestal that ultimately made him uncomfortable, and Daisuke contributing to putting him there in the first place, and taking it extra personally when that pedestal was shattered. But then, Daisuke himself (and, ultimately, the rest of the group) became able to treat Ken like the “normal person” he wanted to be, with no pedestals, simply considering him as a friend with his own feelings and needs; as a result, being this sort of “normal person” making friends through his true personality and desire to support others meant paved the way for him becoming the one person who was best equipped to deal with the very difficult-to-handle Daisuke.

Incidentally, in terms of Kizuna: considering how 02 was such a series about everyone becoming people who could fundamentally interact and communicate better with others, it stands to reason that everyone’s relationships with each other would uniformly improve even after the events of 02, and you can see better interactions between everyone that go beyond just the Jogress pairs. Ken’s clearly able to interact with more of the people in the group in a much more casual manner than he did in 02 itself, and it’s made an important point in the drama CD that Daisuke took everyone’s incidental advice to heart, not just Ken’s. However, advertising material still prominently features the two as a pair, and although part of this is of course due to marketing, Ken is also the one who gets the final words in extracting his “promise” from Daisuke in the drama CD; the official website also calls special attention to him being the one to accompany Daisuke on his ramen outings, even though the one depicted in the drama CD and movie was planned to involve everyone in the group. There are multiple indications that Daisuke himself has learned to become somewhat less defensive and prone to insecurity compared to himself in 02, and it seems that this was accomplished via Ken still actively putting himself in a role of checking on him and making sure he feels properly supported in all of this.

[infinitegalahad]

RAY IN THE BATHROOM

Summary: Ray is hiding in a bathroom and has a panic attack over the fact that his only real friend and the love of his life has (supposedly) left him for Brad.

Word-Count: 2.1k

Warnings: References of suicidal thoughts, ptsd, and severe anxiety. Brad is a semi-asshole. Hop on the angst train (with fluff at the end!)

A/N: I was listening to Be More Chill because let's just say that I can heavily relate to Micheal In The Bathroom due to recent events in my life. So then again, what better way to cope then using my biggest kin, Ray Person, in a totally not self indulgent fic?? Also as for the prompt requests-i'm working on them! Sorry, school has been bad. I'm keeping a promise to myself to release at least once a a week and I'm on a gen kill rampage. Idk what else to add so enjoy!

Taglist: @theboardwalkbody

Masterlist | Send In A Prompt!

Ray doesn’t expect himself to be hanging in the bathroom at their first year reunion. But instead of “hanging”, he’s hiding. Those emotions that never come out are now coming back to haunt him. Ray knows he can't hide behind a shit eating grin and sunglasses. He leaned up against the tub inside of the cramped room, his sunglasses tucked into the neck of his polo as tears sting his eyes.

Ray’s legs felt numb and he knows if he looks into the mirror and sees his flushed face and eyes, he won’t be able to conceal his crying. He’s not able to go back outside and would prefer to fake pee or just check his phone in the bathroom.

“C’mon brah!” Q-tip whined like a child, crossing his legs. “This hurts like a butt cheek on a stick”

“You can’t come in!” Ray yelled as he held back a sob, “The little man is going. Suck it up, buttercup.”

Q-tip had been knocking on the door for over ten minutes before giving up and choosing to pee outside. Ray let out a shaky sigh and fell onto the thin side of the bathtub, biting his lip and he batted his wet eyes with his palms.

Ray and y/n had been an unexpected trio. Partners in crime, double trouble, you went well together despite their differences. You were an educated college student and he was a whiskey tango mess who couldn’t shut his mouth for the life of it. You cried, laughed, and did everything together. Little known to y/n, Ray didn’t have a crush on her-but he was more than in love.

However, when Ray is having severe social anxiety, an event he would typically rely on y/n to help him with, his “partner in crime” falls short. Ray knows that y/n is light years better than him. Here was the smartest and most beautiful woman he had met next to a college dropout who didn’t make it past Geometry.

Now the “perfect pair” is severed, leaving one half alone in the bathroom.

Ray’s forgotten how long he’s been in the bathroom for. These types of events always felt forced, and everyone knew that. Whenever that awkwardness would arise, Ray and y/n would choose to ditch and steal a few beers and sit in the bathtub, watching an obscure eighties film in the dark, cramped room with Ray’s god awful commentary.

But even though Ray has Born American downloaded, he can’t bring himself to watch it. Now he’s laying in the bathtub, picking at grout as he softly grieves. He’s hiding in there while y/n is ignoring all of their history.

Ray first arrived at the party, making a dramatic entrance. He made sure everybody knew that he was there, especially y/n. His original plan was to wear a purple tux he had snatched from walamrt since it was ugly as fuck, and Ray knew that. But knowing that you were going to be there, Ray made an attempt with an expensive navy polo and khaki shorts, courtesy of Nate.

Upon seeing you, Ray ran over from whatever he was doing to talk to you. Whether you were OD’S or a casual jumpsuit, you looked dead drop gorgeous-and Ray never knew how to express his affections. So he pulled you into a hug and muttered a shitty joke, and you just laughed.

Over the course of the next hour, the two of you catched up about your mundane lives. It made Ray feel guilty since he knew that you were better than him in every way possible, on the road of success. Your future sounded like you would go to some fancy school and then marry a lawyer. Ray wanted to be good for you, but he didn’t know how to at all. He followed you around like a lost puppy for the rest of the party, feeling a tinge of jealousy whenever one of the guys would give you a chaste hug or when you wouldn't pay attention to him for five minutes.

Ray didn’;t know why the fuck eh was feeling so sappy. It wasn’t like the two of you were dating (even though that’s exactly what he wanted).

Ray doesn’t hate Brad, but he just hates whenever he talks to you. He sees the two of you, smiling and laughing as you catch u[. Ray knows it’s rude, but he buds in and offers to get drinks for the “three amigos”. You kindly accept and Ray goes away to get drinks. He makes sure to spit inside of Brad’s drink as a childish act of revenge.

As Ray walks down the hallway balancing the three drinks, he pauses to hide behind the door since he hear’s Brad mention his name. You and Brad had moved to the couch, sitting too close for Ray’s comfort levels. He had an arm slung over the couch, which was barely touching you, but Ray had taken it as an offense.

Standing by the doorway and leaning, he overheard Brad’s words.

“Ray’s a little shit, whiskey tango loser, sister fucking, type of man. I don’t know what you see in him,” Brad had casually said, cold and straight to the point. He truly lived up to his name.

That’s when Ray dropped the drinks and ran towards the bathroom. He didn’t hear you respond, and that was the last thing he needed to hear.

Now Ray’s sitting in the tub, no longer holding tears back, but there coming out. A sob escapes his mouth and he tries to smile, but he can’t. He gets a taste of his salty tears and tries to stop the waterworks, but they come back, bigger and faster. It’s been a while since he had a good cry-but it happened at one of the most inconvenient times. And it was over a stupid girl-who he coulnd’t deny that he was in love with.

But y/n was lightyears ahead of him. Besides, Brad was (seemingly) a better fit for her. The scenario began to play in Ray’s wild mind. The memories of “double trouble” will get erased. Their wedding will be small, paid for by the Colberts. Q-Tip will DJ, Godfather will make a speech with his horrid voice, and Ray will make a shitty joke as usual. Worst had come to the worst.

Ray hears a drunk Q-tip sing along through the door to “I wanna dance with somebody”. His feelings sink even deeper cause it makes him think; now there’s no one to make fun of drunk girls with anymore. That was y/n’s favorite hobby about these forced get-togethers.

Ray knew that at some point, he’d be forced to come out. As he chokes back the incoming tears, he waits until his face becomes dry, planning to blame it on weed or something in his eyes or the five bud lights he regrets drinking.

Knock, knock, knock, knock

Ray looks up and wipes his face, forcing a fake laugh. “Oh hell yeah, I'll be out soon.”

“Ray, it’s me.” It’s y/n’s voice, and Ray can’t believe it’s her. A part of him wants her to come in, but the other part wants him to defend himself.

“Why do you want me to come out when you can hang out with your new big strong viking? Who talks all educated and shit since you just love being around him.” Ray spits out with a few sniffles.

Based on his words and the sniffles, you can tell something is clearly wrong.

You shake your head and lightly knock again, “Please, that’s not what happened. Brad’s an idiot, and we’re just friends. “Please, come out.”

Ray got out from the tub and came close to the door, feeling your frantic breathes again the door. “My biggest mistake was showing up. I wished I stayed up watching cable porn, or I offered myself. Besides, he’s better for you. Just go away.”

Hearing him say such things made you worry even more, afraid that he could do something to himself that he’d regret.

“Ray, open the damn door. Don’t say dumb shit.” You pleaded, frantically twisting the door knob. The worry was evident in your voice.

“No, fuck you! Fuck this whole place. You’re smart; just leave me alone.” Ray banged against the door as tears came down his face. He immediately regretted his choice of words, knowing that they would hurt you. He turned away to return to the bathtub, only to stop when he heard you now sniffling.

Mega fuck.

Ray reluctantly walks back to the door and opens it, to see your face, all red and wet like this. Both of you stood there, disheveled, tears both running down your face.

Not a single word was spoken between the two of you as you ran into his arms, pulling him close as you cried into his chest. Ray used his foot to slam the door shut and then proceeded to pull you into a bearhug, stroking the back of your head as he comforted you through your sobs.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He repeated as his tears stained your shoulder as well, “I didn’t-fuck. I’m such a retar-” He froze, knowing that you hated that word. “Idiot. I just-fuck. Don’t cry. You’ll ruin all the stuff on your face-”, Ray said as he tilted your face up and started to wipe your tears.

“Makeup. ‘S fine, I’m not wearing much. I just didn’t wanna get mistaken for a middle schooler again.”

Ray and you both let out a chuckle in the midst of your shared crying session. He’s still wiping the tears from your face as you rest your arms on his waist.

“First time we met, y’know. Godfather thought you had a dick for a long time.” Ray added, which earned another laugh from you.

You shook your head, “Remember when Trombley found out I was a girl?”

“Looked like he was about to shit himself-he wouldn’t leave you alone.”

“Ugh, ‘s a nightmare.” The two of you filled the void with the awakened laughter you shared. Ray’s tiny hands moved to your chin, directing it slightly up.

“I still think you’re pretty hot either way, angel.” Ray confessed. The two of you looked at each other for a minute, seeing the love and pupils widen in both of your eyes. Standing on your toes, you and Ray’s lips gently pecked at each other. You could taste the bud light on his lips as Ray’s lips overpowered yours, gently cupping and sucking passionately.

“Fuck,” Ray breathed through the kiss as your foreheads touched, “I love you.”

“Shit, I’ve been waiting for you to say that,” You chuckled as your finger’s played with Ray’s dark hair. It’s gotten longer, and it’s at a length where he can awkwardly style it, but since Ray is Ray-it’s a mess, “I love you too. I’m sorry about Brad, you know how he is.”

“I just thought you and him were having a moment. I just started overthinking it since I thought you didn't wanna be around me. Which is chill, I was vibing,” Ray attempted to joke, which was a way to cope with his pain.

You shake your head and hold his face to reassure him. Ray looks down at you in awe, which makes a smile curve on your lips.

“Brad wasn’t touching me, he just was stretched out on the couch. Ray, don’t say that. You were in the bathroom for over an hour. I knew that you were ethier upset or having explosive diarrhea from Nate’s vegan casserole-or both.”

“That shit was beyond nasty. I bet he got all the ingredients at Trader joes and sold his soul just to buy it.” Ray quickly quipped.

“Jesus, don’t make me vomit.” You huffed as you looked at the bathtub, “Now are you gonna come out now without beating up someone?”

“Yes babycakes, as long as you do one thing.”

Cringing, you force a smile. It’s not because you don’t love him, but sometimes what comes out of his mouth can be questionable. “Yes Ray?”

He grabs your hand, which fits right into his. “Gotta show the homies who’s the alpha around here.”

You don’t mind holding Ray’s hand. You like the tight squeezes and the feel of his soft skin. As the two of you walk out of the bathroom back into the life of the party with the smell of barbeque and the august heat in the air.

“Oh god Ray, shut up.”

Ray simply responds with a goosey laugh.

[snakeboistan]

A Fateful Meeting

Platonic Sugino and Nagisa

“Main Hall, Main Hall,” Sugino said to himself as he turned the corner carrying a large box filled with new textbooks, “just one more corridor and I can head back and enjoy the rest of my break. Or what’s left of it at least.”

He continued to walk along one of the many hallways of Kunugigaoka Junior High’s main campus, casually looking around to glance at the many multicoloured displays that were pasted onto the walls, mainly notices and reminders to study. The things this school did for grades -  it was unbelievable how much power academic performance held around here.

“You better be careful,” Miyoshi from 2-D had warned him when his first mathematics test of the year came back to him with a grade that was less than stellar, “if your grades aren't good enough, you’ll get sent to you-know-where.”

The hushed way his yearmate had described the dreaded E-Class building still shook him to his core.  

Shindo clapped him on the back, “Nah, Sugino’s not like those losers. He actually works hard and uses his brain. Unlike those lazy drop-out’s, he has potential.”

“Ugh,” Miyoshi scrunched his nose up in disgust, “can you imagine actually being associated with that lot? It’s practically social suicide. If anyone I knew ended up going to E-Class next year, I’d burn any memories I had of them.”

“Yeah,” Teruya agreed, “wouldn’t want to get dragged down by the likes of them.”

Sugino shook his head and continued on his journey. He didn’t know why but the subject of Class 3-E was one that was treated as a taboo, it’s existence only made known by harsh whispers and sneers, like it was a cautionary campfire tale than an actual classroom filled with actual students. Personally, he didn’t understand why a group of teenagers should be shunned and treated like parasitic pariahs just because they found it harder to learn but he knew better than to publicly complain lest he ended up in that ramshackled building at the top of the mountain. Apparently E-Class students weren’t allowed to join any clubs and if he was forced to drop out of the baseball club then the world might as well have stopped turning.

‘Ahh, here I am,’ Sugino thought as he placed all of the weight of the box in one hand and opened the door with the other.

He entered the room to find that it was already inhabited by the concert club and the teacher that he was sent to deliver the box to was currently engaged with observing the performance on the stage. Currently all of the students were sitting down - apart from one small kid with blue hair (is it possible to have naturally blue hair?) tied down into a low ponytail. She - ‘he’ Sugino mentally corrected himself when he noted the male’s uniform that the other student was wearing - was stood near the middle, eyes closed and eyebrows furrowed, chin resting on a violin that he was playing. And boy was he playing it. Sugino found himself completely captivated by the elegantly eloquent music that was being played and the way his delicate fingers created notes that filled the entire room, engulfing the vast emptiness with memories of rainy days and crackling fires and mugs of his mother’s hot chocolate. He found himself stepping forward, wanting to get closer to both the boy and the harmony when all of a sudden it stopped.

“Shiota that was wonderful,” Fujimoto-Sensei praised making the blue-haired boy - Shiota - blush and duck his head, “Now everyone, break is going to be over soon so you can all pack up and leave.”

“YES FUJIMOTO-SENSEI!”

As the students began to make their exits, folding up their stands and moving their chairs, the teacher turned to him, “Ah, hello, what can I do for you?”

Sugino blinked and replied, “Oh, Sir, Suzuki-Sensei told me to give these books to you. They came from reception.”

“Oh yes, thank you. I’ll take that.” He smiled and took the bag from him, which Sugino took as a sign to leave. He had just left the hall and was about to make a turn when-

“Shiota,” Sugino called out when he saw a flash of blue hair in his field of vision. The boy in question stilled and slowly turned around, wordlessly pointing to himself, “yeah, you.”

“Umm, can I - uh - help you with something?” Shiota asked timidly, voice soft. His head was slightly lowered and a hand was gripping onto the strap of his school bag. He just looked so small and for some reason, Sugino felt the urge to protect this kid flash through him. Just something about the tiny guy in front of him made him feel warm and safe and he couldn’t help but want to be in his company even though he never really saw him outside of assemblies, school trips and a few breaks between classes.

“I just wanted to say that you were really good,” he said, smiling at the blunette in an attempt to get rid of some of the nervousness that was prominent on his face, “like I don’t know what it was but it sounded awesome.”

“Oh, um, thanks?” Shiota replied, “that’s really nice of you to say.”

“You must practice a lot, right? I mean, you’ve got to work really hard to be that good.”

“Yeah, it’s not that difficult once you’ve the hang of it. You must practice a lot yourself, right, since you’re in the baseball team and all?” at Sugino’s confused look he flushed, “I-I watched you play during the match last week. You were good. I mean you won, so, uh, congratulations.”

“Thank you, Shiota.”

“Nagisa,” Shiota said softly with a smile, “call me Nagisa, please. There’s a chance that my family name might be changing so I prefer to be called my given name.”

“Sure thing, Nagisa,” Sugino beamed, “I’m Sugino, by the way.”

“Hi Sugino,” Nagisa said, “nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

“So, uh-”

“Your hair,” Sugino blurted out because he has no self-control, “it’s..”

“Oh,” Nagisa didn’t seem surprised, eyes going slightly downcast, “yeah, it’s a bit long. I’ve been meaning to cut it but-”

“No, I mean,” Sugino got the feeling that he was approaching a touchy subject, “I mean is it actually blue? Were you born with it?”

“Oh,” he actually looked surprised at that question, with the way his eyes widened slightly, “yeah, actually. My mum’s got blue hair as well. I-”

Just then the bell rang, signalling that break was over and that they should make their way towards their classrooms.

“I-I should get going,” Nagisa said, tightening the grip he had on the strap of his school bag and offering a small smile, “I wouldn’t want to make you late.”

‘Yeah, you’re right. Have a nice day.”

“You too,” and with that the boy turned around and walked away whilst Sugino watched after him.

He wondered if he’d ever meet Shiota Nagisa again.

He really hopes he does.

[grubbyduck]

quite funny, quite scary

Just finishes Donna Tartt’s The Secret History - read it in a fever over the last 14 hours because I am desperately avoiding having to write my essay this week on Morte D’Arthur. I really enjoyed this book - obviously the plot, structure and references are impressively clever, but what struck me most was the way that Tartt absolutely nailed a type of student that I come across a lot at university. I go to Cambridge, and while the circles I hang out with are mostly artistic, chaotic and passionate about current affairs, that type of student that is focused on in The Secret History abounds.

Let me tell you about that type. 

In essence, they are children dressed up like grown-ups. I call them Blushing Babies in Suits; they have this quite intimidating conviction in their own superiority. And the fact that most of us think they are the worst only adds to this - they love the idea that ‘most people don’t get it’, they love being whispered about - they especially love the rumours about the terrible things they do when they are drunk. I am talking specifically about the Pitt club (a gentleman’s club that basically is a corrupt, disgusting cult for the ultra rich and social climbers that spawns a great deal of our country’s leaders), but this also pertains to the (overwhelmingly male) demographic of students who are bewitched by prestige, who think that knowing more makes them a better person - the kind of person who is ‘up in arms’ about the waning of precious Cambridge traditions that are exclusionary and elitist. 

They can be intoxicating - they can make you feel very important if you happen to say something they find interesting, or bother to present yourself as ‘not like the others’. I do not find it difficult to understand why freshers get caught up in these circles of people who talk casually about Dante with a self-satisfied curl of the lip in cafes; it feels, sometimes, like the reason we are here studying so hard. They want to know how much you’ve read, if you’ve read what they’ve read, what critics you like etc... they want to glorify drinking copious amounts of expensive alcohol under the guise of being Serious Thinkers, and laugh unkindly about people who drink and go dancing with their friends. They think they have life figured out because they have mastered how to manufacture a glint in the eye. 

When I searched The Secret History up on Tumblr, I found mostly posts talking wistfully about how they want to be like the students that the book follows. They romanticise them, they talk about this ‘dark academic’ aesthetic. Well... I found that pretty funny, because it just shows how radically these people have (in my opinion) misread the text. Either that, or they are just worryingly attracted to deeply problematic dynamics.

Donna Tartt is not romanticising elitism in academia, or drinking ‘intellectually’, or losing touch with the world to shut yourself off in obscure, inaccessible academia. Quite the opposite: this is a story about a ‘normal’ boy (not extortionately wealthy, not particularly enamoured with any one academic concern) who is seduced into this elitist group of people who utterly isolate themselves and gradually, nightmarishly lose touch with their empathy, boundaries and morals. What starts as a group of clever young people lounging in the sun and drinking wine at a country house becomes suicidal young people devolving into paranoid, alcoholic and abusive relationships. They idolise Julian, they idolise each other, and most dangerously, the idolise themselves - and ultimately, this is why this group of people in particular (despite that fact that many others at the college live a drug-heavy lifestyle) are believably primed to wind up involved in murder. Henry, the most academically obsessed of all of them, is the instigator of the worst crimes in the book. This ain’t an accident, folks! Donna knows what she’s doing!

This book had lines that made me laugh out loud, because they so beautifully conveyed the self-importance of these students that makes it egoically possible for them to interfere with life and death, and possible for them to shrug off brutally killing a man in their narcissistic academic exercise. This is not... romantic? This is a clear message about the dangers of academic elitism. Richard spends most of the book compulsively lying about his own wealth in order to feel welcome - the teacher that they all idolise explicitly doesn’t allow students into his tiny class unless he believes them to be wealthy. That manufactured ‘glint in the eye’ that I was talking about is his entire facade - a man who has mastered seeming charismatic and ‘warm’, but only enables tragedy, and at his core is self-serving and devoid of empathy. It’s deeply, deeply sad.

Trust aesthetes on Tumblr to find this a ‘mood’. Funny, but scary!

[devintrinidad]

Charlastor Week #5: Date

“Why, pray tell, are we here again?” Alastor fingered his binoculars as he gazed at the scene below them. On his face, his usual smile was pinched and wavered so slightly when he caught a glance of something that he would rather not look at. “From what I can see, our presence is not needed.”

“Because,” Charlie stressed as she, too, adjusted the binoculars that rested on her eyes. “We need to make sure that Angel Dust is okay.”

Alastor sighed and set his binoculars to rest on his chest, the straps of the binocular allowing him to do so. He tapped Charlie lightly on the shoulder, careful to not allow his claws to accidentally dig into her clothing.

“I may not be the most knowledgeable concerning…. whatever this is, but I assume our neighborhood spider knows what he’s doing. After all, doesn’t he do this for a living?” He gestured towards the aforementioned spider demon who, if one were to look closely, was smiling contently in the presence of another. “I know that you’re worried about your first patient, but isn’t this an invasion of privacy?”

Charlie fumbled for words as she tried to justify what she was doing. On one hand, she truly cared for Angel. She loved him like a brother and she knew that he felt the same for her. It had taken a while, a few years in fact, but Angel went from outright sabotaging gangster to a harmless, annoying prankster. His tendencies for evil were curbed and he was, for the lack of a better word, almost angelic. Perhaps this year, he would be eligible for an appointment from a few angels from Heaven. Of course, it would be a slow process, but Charlie knew that he had it in him. As for this current situation, well…

Could you blame Charlie for being so careful? She didn’t want Angel to be corrupted by the common sinner or worse, she didn’t want him to get his heart broken after months of therapy about his self-esteem and purpose in life.

Therefore, it was up to Charlie and whoever was willing to help her, to make sure that Angels’ progress was heavily monitored.

In this case, they were monitoring Angel’s date with a newbie who had fallen into Hell only a few weeks ago.

“Come on, Al! I thought you were all for entertainment no matter how unethical it may seem.”

“That, my dear, applies to murder, cannibalism, and general discontent. This,” he grandly gestured to the scene below, “is trivial, and frankly, disturbing.” His eyes widened in disbelief as he adjusted the clarity of the binoculars’ lenses. “What are they doing with their mouths?”

Charlie gasped and did the same. “Oh my gosh!!!” She squealed with happiness. “They’re kissing and they look so happy together and—“

Alastor clapped a hand over her mouth, which caused Charlie to look up at him in question.

“Careful, dearest. Do you really want all of Pentagram City to know that you’re stalking one of your patients? I may not care about the hotel’s main theme, but it would hinder our business.”

“Ugggghhhh, fine, “ she answered, though her voice was heavily muffled by the hand that was held over her mouth. She pushed Alastor’s hand away from her own before magicking her binoculars into a pocket dimension for safe keeping. “Since it appears our presence isn’t needed, what do you want to do?”

“The Princess of Hell in want of something to do, with me, the infamous Radio Demon? Why—“ He placed a clawed hand over his heart, a mocking look on his face. “—I haven’t felt like swooning ever since my mother last pinched my cheeks!”

“Har de har har.” Without warning, Charlie took hold of Alastor’s elbow and steadily guided him in the opposite direction of Angel’s date. All the while, she ignored how Alastor’s radio static gradually began to feel less like a radio tuning into different channels and more like a satanic ritual gone wrong.

There was a lot of screaming and moaning of the damned.

“Lighten up, Alastor!” Charlie tugged him even closer as their footsteps went from a casual stroll to outright running. “This is gonna be fun!”

Alastor’s smile tightened in annoyance.

~~~

“When I said that entertainment applied only to murder, cannibalism, and general discontentment, I didn’t mean that the general discontentment should apply to me.”

“I don’t know… I feel like this is plenty entertaining.”

“My dear, I’ve lured hordes of demons into the pitch darkness of insanity just by hearing my broadcasts. Don’t assume that you are the sole exception.”

Much to his dismay, instead of the fear that Alastor craved, Charlie merely nodded at his little spiel and politely—politely!—booped him on the nose.

Twice.

Charlie and Alastor were seated at a small cafe that Vaggie and Charlie used to frequent before life at the hotel became too hectic. Inside, there were demons that were punished for lower level sins: theft, suicide, being a disturbance to the rest of society, etc. The patrons were often undisturbed and polite, at least when compared to the rest of the denizens of Hell. In fact, when the hotel had first opened, most of those who had frequented this establishment had actually gave a thought into joining the redemption business. Not all were redeemed, however, but everyone was in a work in progress.

As it were, Charlie was entranced by the newer additions on the menu while Alastor was nursing a mug of black coffee. His arms were crossed in front of his chest, his feet tapped nonsensically on the hardwood flooring, and his smile was strained at best.

“I feel like I want to order,” Charlie announced as she snapped the menu shut. She assessed Alastor’s position and the fact that his menu was busy acting like a coaster for his coffee. Like always, his eyes were trained on hers—creepy, but not as much as when they had first met. “What say you, Al?”

He gave a long suffering sigh before gesturing towards the soup section on his menu. “Probably not the most palatable of choices, but it will have to do.”

“Food snob,” Charlie lightly teased. “You won’t like it until you try it.”

He arched an eyebrow, his foot ceasing its tapping. “Does that apply to this situation?”

“Kind of? Look, it’s been a while since we’ve had some downtime without business hanging over our heads. Why not just have some fun for a couple hours before we start filing our taxes and whatnot.” Charlie stirred in some sugar into her tea and inhaled the inviting aroma. “I mean, if Angel can go on a date, then why not us?”

Alastor’s radio static, which had been a low murmur for the majority of time they had been staying at the cafe—at Charlie’s request, of course—suddenly stopped. The dead silence, which had been foreign to Charlie ever since the Radio Demon had shown up at her door, had most of the patrons that were brave enough to withstand the Radio Demon’s presence running. However, Charlie had been more than acquainted with Alastor at this point—at this point, they could be considered friends—and she simply took another calming sip of her tea. Gone were the days where she felt socially awkward and shy around her dear friend. A perturbed Alastor was still an Alastor that didn’t have the means to hurt her. She was too powerful for that, anyway.

Besides, Alastor looked like he had sucked on the world’s sourest lemon than angry.

Which was obviously a big improvement.

“Would you care to repeat that, Charlie?”

“Fine. I’ll rephrase it.” Charlie leaned forward into Alastor space, causing him to jerk backward and away from her. The radio silence continued and Charlie couldn’t help but smirk at Alastor’s… lack of bravado. “You. Me. On a date. Now.”

Alastor blanched at that and for a moment, Charlie almost felt bad.

But this was Hell, she was the Princess of all of Hell, and she would be damned if she didn’t feel a little vindicated for all the times that Alastor had scared her in the past. Revenge was sweet whenever she was serving it.

Soon, the usual radio static resumed, although it sounded like he was flipping through channels before settling on something that sounded like slow jazz.

“Trying to lift the mood?”

“Were you requesting that we go on a date right now or…” Alastor almost sounded embarrassed. He fiddled with the tie that was wound tight against his throat and his ears, cute little things they were, had lain flat against his head. “… are we already on one?”

“Depends. You get to decide. Either way, we are going to enjoy ourselves.” With that note of finality, Charlie turned back to her tea and enjoyed the sweetness that settled gently against her tongue.

Alastor’s ear’s seemed to shudder against his head before he, too, took a sip of his preferred drink.

“A date.” He shook his head at that colloquialism, a disturbed look on his features. “Back in my day, we would call it courting and it was usually the gentleman coaxing the dame and not the other way around.”

Charlie shrugged. “It’s the twenty-first century and counting. You either get with the times or you’ll eventually be left in the dust.” She giggled quietly to herself. In a voice no louder than a mouse’s whisper, she said, “I’m older than you, but you’re acting like an old man.”

Alastor’s ears twitched in irritation. “I heard that, dear.”

“I would be surprised if you didn’t. Now, about that date?”

“I should have known that you wouldn’t forget.” Alastor drummed his fingers atop the table. The jazz that was playing in the background seemed to grow  little distorted and erratic the faster that Alastor continued his little drumming session until—

“I suppose we might as well make the most of our time spent right in the here and now.” He still looked a little perturbed, but the jazz had returned and the smile that was on his face was one of gentle consideration. He had agreed. “But please, nothing untoward and violating the five—“

“The five foot rule,” Charlie chimed in, looking like she had won a million dollars worth of gold. “Don’t worry, Al! I got your back! It’s not like I would make you do anything that would make you uncomfortable.”

“This farce of a date says otherwise.” Voice dry, Alastor hummed a few bars of an old musical number he heard when he was a boy and proceeded to stand from his seat. Any demons that had not left the vicinity began to run out the doors or fall unconscious to the ground—staff included. “However, I suppose that I must bend one of my rules just this once.”

A little worried that she may have pushed his buttons a little farther and harder than what was necessary, Charlie also stood up—albeit, a little too hastily so that her seat toppled to the ground.

“Alastor, what are—“

He took both of her hands in his and smiled a smile that was fit for one of the most mischievous imps in all of Hell.

“What is a date without a little entertainment?” He whistled low under his breath and immediately, there was a change in lighting, scenery, and even the table that they had occupied appeared to be heavily laden with food. “Care for a dance, my dear?”

Charlie looked in awe at their arrangements before pulling in Alastor close so that their bodies were flush with each other. She could feel both of their bodies melding into each other as their feet seemed to know what to do.

“It would be my pleasure, Alastor.”

[wrathandgreed]

I wanna know about your ocs!! microscope, ufo aaand love note for both mia and rae (or the one you prefer)

Gladly! Sorry this took so long; I started it last night but then my husband spiked a fever and we had to run to urgent care for a COVID test and my ipad ate my reply while I was gone :P

Microscope: “Zoom in - describe the little, insignificant details about an OC” (I wasn’t sure if this meant physical or other, so I did one of each :)

Rae (MC):

Girl loves everything peanut - Reeses? Check. Peanut butter fudge? Check. If it doesn’t have peanuts, it’s not worth calling candy/dessert. Her favorite thing ever is a vanilla sundae with crushed Reeses cups, Reeses pieces, and peanut butter sauce on top. With sprinkles.

She also has strangely long and thin fingers, like good luck finding a department store ring to fit her that didn’t come out of the little girls’ department. The only places she’s found that sell rings she can wear is Hot Topic. She buys her rings off Etsy now.

Mia (OC):

Collects tarot cards, but doesn’t believe in them. She loves the art, the symbolism, and how cards can be completely different but mean the same thing. She loves how much work and thought goes into making a cohesive deck. She’s memorized all the meanings and can easily do readings, but she’s insistent that everyone winds up matching what they already think to the cards. Will go on long psychology-related rants about it.

Has really really long eyelashes - like, she wears contacts because her eyelashes kept smushing against her glasses and making it hard to blink. They’re super long but not super dark, so she’ll tint them up with mascara if she’s going somewhere special.

UFO: “Identity! What are some key identifying qualities or traits of your OC(s)? How do they identify in regards to gender/sexuality?

Rae

With regards to gender/sexuality, she’s a cis woman, pansexual, and a dedicated monogamist. She’s very big into the idea of finding a partner and dedicating her life to them.

Professionally, she’s studying to work in art restoration and conservation. She’s patient and serious when it’s time to work, which throws people off because her personal identity is that of a prankster and fun-loving social butterfly. She’s also a singer in a metal band, so her rebellious streak definitely forms a huge part of her identity.

In fact, she’s worried about actually making her way in the art world because restoration/conservation tends to be a conservative (ha ha) field and between her color-rotation hair, variety of tattoos, and foul mouth, she’s doubtful she’ll actually get a job.

The rest of her identity is what she struggles with - the rejected no-hoper foster kid, no family, no friends because who can keep friends when you change foster families and schools every 6 months? The casual abuse, the neglect, the (thankfully temporary) loss of her brother, the suicide attempt - all of it led her to a family that loved her, but you can’t make up for 16 years of awful that quickly.

Mia:

Gender/sexuality: Mia would kind of identify as a woman, but it doesn’t matter too much to her. She’s not sure she’d go so far as to say genderqueer or Demigirl, but she’s not really invested in gender. She feels more like a woman than anything else, but is “meh” on it. She looks damn good in a dress and she knows it, but she’s more comfortable in cargo pants and tank tops. She’s straight, but poly. She needs her partners to be her family, and not every partner has to be a romantic or sexual partner. She craves physical affection and hates being alone. Hanging around in a cuddle puddle watching a movie with one or more partners is ideal for her. And if her partners are also partners? Bliss.

Beyond that, she identifies as a maker. If she’s not straight-up relaxing or doing some other job for her House, she’s building, crafting, or creating. Her style of magic is non-ritualistic, and she’s capable of imbuing what she makes with intention and power. Some items might take her months or years to create, but goddamit the end result will be usable, powerful, and, preferably, aesthetically pleasing.

She’s studied psychology but never actually made it into being a therapist. She has the degree and a year working at a home for troubled kids, but Magic and Making got a hold of her that was far tighter - and allowed for travel, and meeting powerful and interesting people :)

She identifies as a bookworm when she has the time to read, and if she can’t read, she’ll listen to audiobooks while she makes stuff. Part of her love of psychology stems from her love of fiction - books taught her how to deal with the world, and she’ll analyze any kind of story for hours.

Love Note: Who likes who? Crushes? Relationships? Are they mutual or unrequited?

Rae:

Rae and Mammon get a hold of each other pretty fast and never let go. It’s a solid, mutual relationship based on affection, dumbassery, and sarcasm.

If Mammon wants to do something stupid, Rae will find a way to either make it work, or to make it REALLY FUCKING STUPID.

(If it’s going to be dangerous or super illegal, she’ll talk him out of it.)

If Rae wants to do something stupid, Mammon will 1000% ramp it up to ridiculous levels, to the point where it never happens because they’re cracking up like morons over the plan instead of executing the plan.

Then there are days and nights spent locked in one of their rooms just chilling and being together. There’s a quiet there that works.

Mammon also SUPER accidentally helped her find her brother again.

Mia:

Oh boy. Mia’s story is still very much in the works and is VERY VERY self-indulgent, romantically speaking. I’m actually kind of embarrassed, but the story makes me happy.

Married her childhood sweetheart at 18 because the college they were attending wouldn’t let them live together on campus, and you could only live off-campus as a freshman if you were married. They’d been inseparable since they were in kindergarten, so why tf not, right?

(Was still poly when with him, just more casual about partners besides him.)

Lasted a whole three more years. Found out husband had some (diluted, but present) Celestial blood. As he struggled to figure out what this meant, it opened the door to be essentially radicalized into bounty-hunting “rogue” witches and sorcerers. They weren’t happy by this point, and Mia bounced.

Wound up moving around cities for awhile. Has what SHOULD have been a one-night stand with a mysterious sorcerer she met in a bar when some asshole would take her “no” at face value.

He helps her unlock her suppressed magic; has to do a lot of research to figure out WTF to do with non-ritual-based magic. This takes time.

Before they know it, what should have been a one night stand or, at best, a friends with benefits relationship, has suddenly become like 5 years of her, him, and his favorite demon, Asmo, as a kind of poly triad.

But he’s doing shady Sorcerer Stuff behind her back, like an asshole, and gets pulled into the exchange program before they can sort it out.

Mia has a TEMPER, and that’s the final straw. She’s a “leave no survivors, salt the earth” kind of psycho when you push the wrong buttons, so she lights out and has to cut off Asmo too, because he’ll tell Sol where she is if she doesn’t.

Winds up in The Conclave, a sort of sanctuary for non-ritual-based magicians, where she uses her talent for Making Magical Stuff to help them with their defense and offense. War strategy stuff. They jokingly call her General.

Who else winds up there? Rae! (Where else is a human with little magical ability but access to Devildom go? Conclave’s been around for centuries; well, look, they have a lot of art that needs cleaning.....) Who does Rae bring? Mammon! Mammon, at some point, brings Satan because there’s info he needs that MIGHT be in their extensive, centuries-old library....

Which leads to Satan and Mia hanging out a lot, him doing a lot of reading aloud while she makes stuff, then discussions of the books. Which leads to dating.

Which leads to a reuniting with Asmo. And Sol.

And A WHOLE LOT OF DRAMATIC SELF-INDULGENT STUFF LATER, we’ve got a poly quad with some interesting ground rules.

*whew* That took a lot longer than I expected! I have no idea how to be concise :) Hope it wasn’t too boring!!

[daomaikeng]

@ot3flopped

I AM COMING AT YOU

First of all, this is nothing personal, I just hate you. Read this whole thing with a cool brain for once.

Because you keep popping in my feed when I don't even follow you and I've reported you at least 5 times.

You are without a doubt going to find loopholes or grammatical/spelling mistakes in this rant and you're going to attack me for it, but that's only because you're too egoistic to accept that you're an idiot. You may even ignore the main point i'm trying to make and focus on one sentence or whatever. You'll get stuck on one out of place or irrelevant sentence. I may have started a war and you may report me as many times as you like for whatever, but I don't care. I'm proud that I stood up for what I believe in. People do see your posts and hate them, but at least I did something about it.

I honestly think you need help. You should maybe show your blog to a professional and then let's see if they call it "a lovely place" and "the best thing I've seen during quarantine". I don't know how your filthy followers think your blog is a lovely place. And also no wonder you don't have many followers because people actually love ot3. It is NOT ok to bully anyone, even celebs.

The people you insult are someone's idols. Someone has remained alive because of them. They've helped someone through their dark days. You don't get any right to insult the person or their fans because simply, it's got NOTHING to do with you.

I don't like Justin Bieber, Lizzo and Billie Eilish, but I don't insult them. They all have massive fandoms, and they mean so much to each and every fan. Just because I don't like them, doesn't give me the right to humiliate and make fun of them. Just because I don't agree with it doesn't give me the right to call their fans crazy. It may mean the world to the fans. And you know, when you speak about ot3 the way you do, it hurts. It actually really hurts. Ngl, I cried last night after stalking you [which was probably a mistake but yeah, it happened. It made me sick.]

Harry Styles is not the most perfect person on this planet. He has flaws too, just like everyone else. I could say so many bad, false things about H or Zayn, but I won't, because I love them and accept them for who they are. And also I won't stoop down to your level.

You don't believe in Larry. Understandable. But that does NOT mean that you can insult fans or shippers. If you need to know, I'm the same anon who asked you what you're going to do when Larry come out, and you called me deluded. No worries. I'm used to it. I'm a Larry shipper.

I also asked you that your blog can simply be a Harry Styles fan blog, but you don't need to drag ot3 down. You replied saying that it is indeed a Harry fan blog. NO. It's not. It's a place where you simply hate on ot3 and try to prove your point by using rumours and irrelevant words.

If you are indeed a Harrie, I'm assuming you believe in treating people with kindness. Even though you may not like the song, he's your 'idol' (who I'm not going to insult because I'm not a jerk) and you are most probably going to hang on to his every word.

You say that Harry hated his bandmates and similar shit. [Once again, you are going to attack me saying "I NEVER SAID THAT STOP TWISTING MY WORDS"] Yeah whatever. According to you, Harry was the only good person in One Direction and he believed they were foolish idiots and so he distanced himself from them but he's still humble. Bullshit. BULLSHIT.

Harry loved and to this day loves each and every single one of them. I'm not going to believe your baseless facts.

If you do believe in tpwk (which, even if you don't, you should, you dumbfuck) then why the hell is Liam the exception to your so-called kindness? He said he was suicidal, he said his mental health is deteriorating, and if he's finally doing something that makes him happy {the YT weekly things that made you call him a clown}, then why do you have to ruin it? We are loving it!

LP1 was definitely not his best work, he could have done better, but hey, it makes him happy. He's experimenting with new music, he's getting a chance to make music his way, however he wants, so why poke your nose in between? Don't listen to the album if you don't want to, easy as that.

And he's doing it so casually, he's enjoying himself, we're enjoying watching him, WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM?

Not everyone has to be a perfect YouTuber. It's ok if Zayn's tattoo artist made a mistake in the poem. Just because you think you're perfect (jokes on you mate, you're not) does not mean people are not allowed to make mistakes.

Everybody makes mistakes. And everybody is allowed to make them. It's part of being human. People make mistakes. They're forgiven. Big deal?

So what if Niall is half naked on Instagram and he shows his chest hair? If you don't want to watch it, don't. Easy shit. No one is forcing you to look at him. So what if he slid into some Arabella's DMs? His life bruh smh

It's so easy to bully a celebrity. You think it's ok because they'll never see them. Maybe they'll never see those posts, but that does not mean it's ok to bully them. They already have such low self esteem because of staying in the limelight 24/7, and just when they get it back, there's people like you waiting.

I made 4 drafts trying to speak to you properly, but I've decided to fight fire with fire. Maybe it wasn't the best decision, but I'm willing to take the risk. Maybe I shouldn't be wasting my time doing this, writing to you when you'll stop reading after the first paragraph, but I will not let you spread hate. I'll report you and I will END you if it's the last thing I do.

Most of the times, I don't call out hateful people on the internet, because I assume they're having a bad day and yk sometimes it happens.. I'm not perfect either. But you do this everyday. Every single post. You might have low self esteem and you channel that hate on your blog. You are a bully.

I honestly don't want to be mean and I didn't want to generalise (also no offence to solo Harries who are not jerks) but you are the definition of a solo Harrie. Hear me out, I'm not saying every single one of you is bad, some of them are actually really good. But there's lots like you who believe Harry Styles is the best gift this universe gave us and no one else on the planet compares to him because he's perfect. I love him endlessly but his fans are obnoxious. It's people like you who feel the need to interfere everywhere. Like for example, that Billie-Zayn-Louis drama. What the hell did Harries have to do with anything?? You think you guys own the Internet. Sorry to burst your bubble, you don't. It's people like you who hate on ot4/ot3 and you shut down his social media presence. It's now used only for promotions. Poor kid's been in the spotlight for 10 years, give him a damn break.

Do you ever think Harry sees the tweets about his bandmates and feels his heart break? Harry and Zayn were not the only members of One Direction. Each one of ot5 made One Direction what it was. It would've been hella different if even one of them wasn't there. One Direction never was and never will be Harry&Co.

You guys are also in love with Modest! management, and I will not even go there because this rant will be twice as long. All I can say is, you're blind. You're fucking blind.

So what if Louis acted like a kid and he comes across as immature? He can be whatever the fuck he wants to be, he doesn't need your approval. He's been through so much shit and he'd give his life for the 1D boys. I can't imagine how someone can be this rude and hateful. And I saw an anon on your blog about the Torn performance, where Louis was lip-syncing. Like, bruh, duh! He missed rehearsals and Harry carried it, big deal! Everyone knows he lip-synced, even Simon, and everyone knows the reason why. They didn't even try to hide it.

I don't expect you to immediately fall in love with ot3 and start stanning them [here's the part where you say "as if I'd ever like those losers" in that case FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITE] but I tried. If you feel even a bit of remorse, a tiny drop of regret [which I know you will though you'll never admit it] and if you have even a bit of feelings and kindness and compassion left in you, I succeeded.

Please -I'm not begging you, simply asking- spread love. As I said, make your blog a Harry fan blog, which you can do even if you don't hate on ot3. To prove your devotion to Harry, you don't need to hate on his bandmates.

Thank you for reading this.

I hope the best for you. Truly.

[lilyhoshikawa]

Futaba headcanons master post time >:3c

Much credit to @a-missing-ache for talking to me a bunch about this girl so I could put this together~! Many of the ideas here were either ideas she had that I adopted, or things that came up in conversation with her.

- Autistic trans girl with depression, PTSD, and psychosis. Experiences paranoid delusions and visual and auditory hallucinations prior to her arc in the game. Prone to suicide idealization and intrusive thoughts. Susceptible to self-harm if her self-hatred goes unchecked.

- Some of her main special interests are computers, video games, and anime. She gets extremely hyperfixated on games that she really likes and will play them basically nonstop. She’ll play Animal Crossing for a full day if someone isn’t there to cut in and stop her.

- The coat she wears in winter is her favorite, it’s a very good texture stim and she likes to rub her face against the fluffy bit at the top. She also likes to stim with arm flaps or kicking her leggies, but she gets nervous about doing this in public.

- She wears her headphones pretty much all the time as a sensory tool. Often times she won’t have anything playing, but the headphones have a noise-cancelling mode that she leaves it on most of the time to avoid sensory overload and feel safer. She basically only takes them off if they need to charge or she knows it’s safe to. She panics when they run out of battery, but she has an additional pair of wired headphones to use when her main pair is charging. She has basically the longest battery life she could get on her wireless headphones, but since she frequently passes out at random times without turning them off or plugging them in they still die fairly frequently on her. She can’t go to sleep without some headphones on playing white noise or a podcast or quiet music from a video game.

- She goes nonverbal fairly frequently, and typically makes use of texting to communicate with others instead. If she’s alone, she’ll often call one of the other thieves (Ren most often) to have them talk to her and ground her, and sometimes speak for her if need be. After her initial arc, Sojiro learns about her texting thing and gets help from Ren with learning how to use a phone to text and starts using it to text her when she needs to.

- Sojiro’s curry is her staple food, and she eats it pretty much at least once a day for the most part.

- She’s a big coffee drinker, and she takes it black. Sojiro previously would make her a cup in the morning and bring some back from his work when he came home at night, with her leaving the room to make her own cup during the afternoon. She finds drinking it relaxing.

- Prior to meeting the Phantom Thieves, she experienced fairly regular hallucinations and delusions, often being convinced that her mother was in her room or was out to get her somehow. She would hear her mother talking to her or see her appear in her room and usually leave in a panic if she could manage to get up. Sojiro did his best to help her but really didn’t have the tools to understand what she was going through. After her Palace, she gains the confidence to be open with him about her experiences and is eventually put on medication to help with them. It doesn’t make it stop entirely, but becomes far less frequent and allows her to live a more normal life.

- She’ll sometimes have panic attacks which usually result in her laying in bed for awhile experiencing suicidal thoughts until they go away, but as time goes on she learns to manage these attacks a lot better, and avoid hurting herself or letting her intrusive thoughts run wild.

- Part of her shyness and social anxiety comes from a mix of autism, dysphoria, and a general lack of experience being out in the world. She’s easily startled and frightened and usually still needs someone to go with her any time she leaves the house. She likes to make herself small, which is why she frequently sits the way she does, and a lot of times she’ll just sit down on the floor, because she likes it there. She’ll frequently ask others to stop if she’s in too noisy of an area and begins to experience sensory overload, sit down on the floor in a quieter place somewhere and recharge.

- After the Hawaii trip, Ren decides to do video calls with Futaba sometimes so he can show her where he is or what he’s doing when she’s not feeling able to go outside that day. If she doesn’t want to show her face, she holds up a plushie or Morgana in front of her end of the screen instead.

- Part of her social anxiety is with presenting well in public, having fits of big dysphoria, and she’s pretty self-conscious about her voice, so she likes to do the texting thing a lot when she gets nervous and also just speak quietly sometimes, especially if it’s with Ren.

- She retains an issue with eating normally and still has a hard time convincing herself to eat sometimes, and will skip meals on occasion. She has a habit of texting one of the Thieves and asking them for permission to get a snack or a meal, and they always immediately tell her it’s okay, and that confirmation is enough for her. Sojiro sometimes takes her and Ren out for ice cream as a family bonding experience and she loves it. It was meant to be a one-off celebration after she recovered but she loved it so much Sojiro decided he had to make it a regular thing.

- She’s prone to taking depression naps, though before she starts recovering it’s less “depression naps” and more “she stays in her room with lights down and her curtains drawn so she has no concept of time and just kinda passes out and wakes up at random intervals with no consideration for what time it is”. She gets better about it but she falls back into weird and irregular sleeping patterns fairly often and she always hates resetting her internal clock. It’s at least easier than going until she collapses for days on end, though.

- She’ll often take naps inside her Persona, Navi, if she randomly gets tired while the group is just exploring and confirms they don’t think they’ll need her for some time. She’ll also sometimes nap in the Mona car. They’re safe, cozy little spaces that make her feel protected and comfortable so they’re prime napping spots.

- Ren has insomnia and Futaba has a really messed up sleep schedule so sometimes when they’re both awake at like 4am they’ll just text each other and sometimes play a game with one another to pass the time.

- She’s still very prone to nightmares and will sometimes wake up in a panic, and if no one is around it sometimes results in a full meltdown and in the worst case scenario she ends up getting hurt, so she tries to keep people on standby.

- She is, in fact, very funny and snarky when she wants to be, and is actually good at communicating her infodumps with humor and casual speech that makes it understandable for the others.

- If she’d not immediately involved in a conversation that involves a large enough group of people, she’ll just zone out until she’s mentioned again or feels a time to interject. Sometimes she’ll start playing phone games.

- She plays trading card games. She sometimes joins competitive tournaments online when she can, but is too scared to go to them IRL. She promises herself she’ll try it some day.

- As a disaster pansexual, she is very prone to developing crushes on any random girl at a coffee shop who’s even the littlest bit nice to her. She’s still got crushes on Ann and Haru, both of whom know it (it’s fairly obvious), but they don’t let her know that.

- She likes to pose, or do silly energetic motions just for the fun of it. She takes joy in just doing a little dance while she’s talking to someone sometimes. She likes to go “nya” also, especially around Morgana.

- She has nicknamed the position she always goes into whenever she sits (usually to make herself feel cozy and safe and also to be as small as possible) the “Futababall”.

- Before meeting the Thieves, she actually didn’t play multiplayer games very much, as even that level of interaction with others intimidated her to some degree. Ren was the first person she ever played video games with, and she kicked his ass at Smash Bros.

- She experiences periods of severe dysphoria during which she struggles to look at herself and often feels hopelessness or despair. During these periods Ren and Sojiro have taken to putting up a blanket to cover the bathroom mirror so that she can still shower normally and wash her hands and go in and out of the bathroom.

- Before her Palace, she would often go days without eating, or only eat once, through a mix of forgetting to eat, losing track of time, and convincing herself she didn’t deserve it. She sometimes relapses on this but is usually good about bouncing back after a day or two.

- The Thieves star making Futaba’s room one of their main meeting places because she feels safe and comfortable there.

- She doesn’t like it when her room is brightly lit up but if it’s pitch-dark with no lights on she becomes extremely anxious and terrified, gets jittery and sometimes has panic attacks or experiences visual hallucinations. Her preferred method is to use the light of her computer to keep the room dim, but bright enough to see everything, or having curtains half-drawn.

- She sometimes forgot to take her meds when she first started on them and this bothered her so much that she eventually began setting five distinct timers for each dose, and sometimes they’ll just all go off in succession when she’s with the group and confuse them all.

- She collects plushies of her favorite anime characters, because it’s merch you can hug!! She loves cuddling her plushies, especially when she’s feeling a bit nervous. They’re a nice sensory feeling, they remind her of her friends, and they feel safe.

- Sometimes when she’s having a hard time sleeping, she’ll invite Ren to come to her room to hang out while she falls asleep to help her feel safe. He’ll often invite Ryuji over for a date or something and she’ll help them set up a video game to play with each other while they’re there. Ryuji initially had a problem of yelling when he lost in the game and waking her up but he got better about it after awhile.

- Every morning around 5-6am Ren wakes up usually due to insomnia or nightmares and he immediately goes to check on Futaba to see if she’s asleep yet, he often finds her in her room on her laptop unaware of what time it is and when she sees him she does a little yell and jumps into bed and he reassures her that it’s ok before leaving and going back to bed.

- She likes to make fun of Ren for having a criminal record sometimes, noting that the hacking she’s done with Medjid is by far more illegal than him beating up a rich abuser once.

- She like spending time with the lady Phantom Thieves because she really likes girls and they all think it’s cute how gay she is, and try to give her tips about it. If Ren isn’t available she opts for inviting one or more of the girls to hang out with her and it makes her feel very good to be around them. Ann sometimes gives her some of her old clothes and it feels super validating for her.

[badchoicesposts]

Don’t Dream It’s Over Chapter 20

Series Summary: Liam and Ali thought that their relationship was perfect, but their whole world came crashing down when Constantine called him back to Cordonia. Four years later they meet again at Liam’s bachelor party, determined to make things between them work even if it isn’t always easy.

In this AU, Liam and MC (Ali Moonessar) dated for a year in New York while Leo was still crown prince. They broke up when Constantine asked Liam to come back to Cordonia, but they meet again at Liam’s bachelor party before the social season. The story will contain flashbacks, which will be italicized, of their relationship and follow them as they try to navigate the season with Ali as a suitor. I’ve messed around with the timeline a bit so that it fits the story better. I’ve also added in a few OCs of my own.

Pairing: Liam x MC (Ali Moonessar)

DISCLAIMER: I’ve changed up the timeline of the social season a bit to fit my story better. I’ve based it off of some research I did on the British Social Season. 

Also, I’ve never been pregnant so the small amount of information about pregnancy that I stated in this chapter was based purely on my research on the topic. I apologize if any of it it inaccurate.

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of a panic attack, self harm, and suicide.

Taglist: @flowerpowell, @ao719, @kingliam2019, @emceesynonymroll, @hopefulmoonobject, @dcbbw, @qammh-blog, @liamxs-world, @drakesensworld, @i-only-signed-up-for-fanfiction, @lauradowning29, @texaskitten30, @senseofduties, @indiacater, @alexintheskyy, @jared2612

A/N: This is the first fic I’ve ever written. Please let me know if you enjoyed it and would like to read more. I thrive on validation, lol. Thanks for reading!

Catch Up: Masterlist

Ali shoved her face deeper into her pillow as her tears continued to flow freely down her face. She pulled her blankets up tighter around her body, and she wished that she could just will away this feeling. She hated that she got like this. She hated that her mind made her feel this way: feel like everything was hopeless, feel like hurting herself. 

She had been doing so well. Maybe “well” wasn’t the right word. She had been stable. She had been stable until Liam came into her life. After meeting him she had been happier. Liam made her happy. They had been together for five months, and this was the first truly bad few days she had since they first started seeing each other. She honestly couldn’t even remember what had caused it in the first place. It had been something small, something stupid, and then all of a sudden she was spiralling. She was cycling through every bad feeling she had ever had. She was feeling insecure, scared, angry. Everything felt bad, and she didn’t know how to deal with it.

Liam had been calling her for the past two days, but she had managed to get rid of him every time. She didn’t want him to see her like this. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this, but she couldn’t exactly stop the Larsons from barging in. She appreciated their concern and their help, she truly did. She wouldn’t have been able to get over her parents’ death without them. But, as sympathetic as they were, they didn’t understand that she didn’t have an explanation for what was going on. 

Ali heard her door open and close, before heavy footfalls began approaching the bed. She burrowed deeper into her sheets, expecting Luca to just go away when she didn’t say anything. Instead, she heard a shuffling noise coming from her bookshelf and felt the other side of her bed dip, the side of someone’s arm pressing gently against her back. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much,” a deep accented voice spoke from next to her.

Ali’s eyebrows furrowed as she listened to Liam read the opening lines of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

“They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense,” he continued. 

Ali turned her head just enough to see Liam lying on his back next to her, the book held tightly in his hands. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice nasally from her crying.

“I hope you don’t mind. I know how much you love these books, so I figured I should read them too,” he said, smiling down at her. 

He was trying to sound casual, but there was still a tender look in his eyes that showed his true intentions. 

Ali’s eyes began to well up with tears again. This time, however, they were happy tears. The man who she had been trying to hide from was the one that she needed. He wanted to be there for her even if she felt like she didn’t deserve it. She loved him. She loved him so much. 

“Okay,” she said, cuddling into his arm and letting the sound of his voice soothe her into a peaceful sleep. 

~~~

Ali pulled herself out of Liam’s arms, her mouth hanging open. 

“Marry me,” he repeated, getting down on one knee and reaching to pull something out of his pocket. 

Ali watched in silent shock as he opened the box to reveal a sparkling diamond ring. Her mind seemed to be malfunctioning, and she couldn’t form any words. 

“I-uh… what?” 

“Marry me,” Liam said for the third time, a loving smile on his face. 

“What about-,” she began to ask.

“I don’t care. I don’t care about the social season or the other suitors. I love you and our baby with everything in me. My entire life I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to enter into a loveless political marriage. I believed that it was what I needed to do to please the people of Cordonia, but when I met you I was finally able to allow myself the thought of marrying for love. You helped me realize that was possible. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to spend the rest of my life spoiling you and loving you. I want a family with you and a life with you,” he said, his eyes welling up with tears. “Marry me.”

Ali choked back a sob, dropping to her knees and throwing her arms around him. 

“Yes!” 

Liam pulled her into a heated kiss, not wanting any space between the two of them. She responded just as eagerly, both of them forgetting for a moment that there was anything else going on. They let all of their problems fall away as they sunk into each other’s embrace. 

“This ring was my mother’s,” Liam said, when he finally broke the kiss.

The large diamond sparkled in the light as Liam pulled it out of the box, grabbing Ali’s hand to slip it on her finger.

“It’s gorgeous,” she said honestly, watching as it passed over the tip of her finger.

However, the small circle promptly got stuck at her knuckle, refusing to move despite Liam’s struggle to push it further down her finger. In that moment, Ali was so happy that she didn’t even bother to try stopping the laugh that fell from her lips as Liam looked back up at her, an apologetic but amused look gracing his features.

“I have chubby fingers,” she joked, eliciting a laugh from her partner.

“And I love every one of them,” he mumbled, pressing his forehead against hers.

He removed the ring from her finger and placed it back into the box, pulling her up to her feet. 

“We’ll get it resized.”

Ali pushed herself up onto her toes, pulling Liam into another kiss. She pulled away after a moment, moving her lips down his jaw to the spot right below his ear that always drove him crazy. Her hands moved to undo the top button of his shirt, only to be stopped by him grabbing her wrists.

“As much as I would love to continue this, we should be leaving. I made you an appointment to see a doctor. There’s a car waiting for us downstairs,” Liams said, pushing her away with a groan. 

“One more for the road?” she asked, angling her face up towards his and puckering her lips comically.

Liam chuckled and pecked her lips one more time before taking her hand in his. 

The ride to the doctor’s itself was uneventful. However, Ali was buzzing with nervous energy. The fact that Liam was taking her to the maternity ward where all of the previous members of the royal family had welcomed their children into the world made everything seem even more real. It was all happening so fast, and she was both terrified and ecstatic at the same time. 

“The gel might be a bit cold,” the doctor warned as she stood over Ali’s exposed stomach. 

Ali nodded, Liam standing next to her and holding onto her hand tightly. He was nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, impatiently waiting to see their baby for the first time. He had been doing the same thing throughout the entire visit. She wanted to tell him to relax. It wasn’t like he was the one who had just had an uncomfortable exam, but she knew that his excitement was getting the best of him. 

After a moment, a loud, thumping noise filled the room startling the both of them.

“There’s your baby’s heartbeat,” the older woman informed them, smiling at the looks on both of their faces. 

Ali turned her head just enough to see the tears freely streaming down Liam’s face.

“Our baby,” he mumbled under his breath, looking down at her with a genuine smile. 

They sat there listening to the steady heartbeat for a few minutes, neither of them taking their eyes off the screen of the ultrasound machine, before the doctor finally removed the ultrasound transductor from Ali’s stomach and handed her a tissue to wipe off the gel. The woman spoke with them about pregnancy for a while longer and then excused herself from the room, giving them a moment alone. 

“I know I keep saying this, but I can’t believe that we’re going to be parents,” Liam said, helping her up from the exam table. 

“I know. Are you sure you want this?” she asked.

This statement was supposed to be a joke, but there was a slight air of apprehension in her voice as she said it. 

“More than I’ve ever wanted anything in the world,” he responded. 

The two left the office hand in hand, paying no attention to the small crowd of people who had gathered around the building when the rumors of their presence there had surfaced. They needed to make an official statement, but neither of them were ready to spoil their moment just yet. 

“What did Constantine say this morning?” she finally asked, breaking the blissful silence they were riding back to the palace in. 

She had momentarily forgotten about their meeting after the morning that they had just experienced, but now that she remembered, she couldn’t stop her curiosity. Liam, however, didn’t seem keen on answer her question. 

“I don’t think-,” he began.

“Please, just tell me,” she said, her voice soft and desperate, pulling a soft sigh from the man beside her. 

“He tried to convince me to send you away. He said that this would ruin everything,” he whispered. 

Ali turned her head away from him to watch the trees pass by the window as the car moved forward, allowing herself to gather her thoughts before responding. She was tired of getting worked up and crying. She was tired from all of the strong negative emotions she had been feeling recently. She took a deep breath to center herself and turned back to look at him.

“And you asked me to marry you anyway?” she finally asked, confused at the fact that he still wanted this when both of his parents were advising against it. 

“Yes. I don’t know how the people are reacting to the news of the pregnancy. I’ve honestly been too afraid to look. But, I know that I am not willing to give this up. I’m not willing to give up what we have together, to give up our child,” he began. “Ali, I also have no doubt in my mind that you will make an amazing queen. I don’t care what my father or my stepmother says. They don’t know you the way I do. They don’t know how strong, or determined you are. They don’t know how big your heart is or how kind and caring you are. They don’t see what I do in you because they never bothered to look. I know that you will be an amazing queen, and I know that you will be an even better mother,” Liam said, squeezing her hand gently in his. 

Ali sniffled beside him. 

“You need to stop saying things that make me cry,” she said, smiling as she wiped away the tears that had begun to fall during his speech. “I’m pregnant and even more emotional than normal.” 

He chuckled and pressed a soft kiss to each of her knuckles. 

“How are we supposed to get married when the king and queen doesn't approve?” she asked. 

“I’m trying to put things in place. Just trust me, okay?” he said so sincerely that Ali had no choice but to. 

Ali spent the rest of the day alone in her room. Liam had some things he needed to take care of, but asked her to stay put so that there was no risk of someone cornering her and asking questions while they didn’t have a solid plan. She hadn’t been able to calm her wandering mind all afternoon. Her thoughts seemed to be travelling a million miles a minute as she wondered where things would go from here.

It wasn’t until late into the afternoon that she was pulled out of her head by a loud banging on her door. Ali’s body immediately tensed at the sound, not expecting anyone, and her mind went to worst case scenario situations.

What if Constantine and Regina had decided to kick her out? What if they had convinced Liam to send her away? What if they convinced him that it wasn’t his baby at all?

She cautiously approached the door, straightening up when she opened it to see Olivia standing on the other side.

“I hope you don’t mind if I drink,” the woman said, pushing her way into the room with a bottle of wine in her hands. 

Ali stood rooted in her spot by the door, the shock evident on her face as she watched Olivia make herself comfortable on the bed and take a swig of the dark red alcohol. 

“Are you just going to stand there with your mouth open all night or are you going to sit down?” Olivia asked, pulling Ali back to reality. 

She closed the door behind her and sat down on the bed beside the duchess. The two sat in silence for a moment, neither of them speaking up, before Olivia decided to break the silence. 

“He never loved me, did he?” she asked, surprising Ali with how vulnerable she sounded. 

“I think you should talk to him about that,” she responded, not wanting to overstep. 

Oliva gave her a look that told her to just answer the question, and Ali sighed in response. 

“He loved you, Olivia. He still does. Just not in the way you want him to. Not in the way you love him,” she tried to say delicately. 

Olivia took another large gulp from the bottle.

“He asked you to marry him, didn’t he?”

Ali hesitated for a moment, not sure if she should be honest or not. But, despite all of their differences, something deep inside her told her to trust Olivia. 

“Yeah, he did.”

“Well, I guess you’re better than Madeleine.” 

Despite the awkwardness of the situation, Ali found herself laughing at Olivia’s comment.

“I’m definitely taking that as a compliment,” she said in between giggles. 

She saw the corners of Olivia’s mouth turn up slightly, before she purposefully brought the wine bottle back up to her lips to obscure her face.

“Constantine never liked me, you know.”

“Does Constantine like anyone?” Ali questioned, getting more comfortable as their conversation progressed.

“Himself.” 

The two women shared a laugh, an odd camaraderie forming between the two of them as they went back and forth making up jokes about the king.

“When I was growing up, he would find ways to punish me for the smallest things. Nothing I ever did would please him, not that I wanted his approval anyway. But, he was harsh. Almost unnecessarily so,” Olivia said, loosening up. 

“Liam and I found out yesterday that he had been digging into my past. He was looking for something that could stop Liam from choosing me. Something that would make me look bad to the press.”

“And you were too much of a goody two shoes for him to find anything incriminating?” Olivia finished for her, a smile on her face as she took another swig of wine. 

“Yeah,” Ali responded, trailing of slightly as something came to mind. 

“Oh, come out with it,” Olivia prompted with a roll of her eyes.

Ali looked over at her hesitantly, but just like earlier, something made her trust the scarlett duchess. 

“My medical history. I was hospitalized as a teenager for a “major depressive episode”. I’m sure he could have twisted that information to his advantage if he really wanted to,” she speculated.

“Maybe he didn’t think it was enough. Cheers to your mental health not mattering!” Olivia said, raising the wine bottle and causing Ali to laugh. 

“Did we just become friends?” Ali asked playfully. 

“Absolutely not.”

~~~

The next two days were some of the longest of Ali’s life. She spent them confined to her room. Liam had asked her to stay there a little longer while he finished his preparations. He had been extremely secretive about what he was doing. He claimed that it was to make sure that the press and his parents didn’t catch wind of his plans and try to intervene before they were able to come to pass, but she could tell there was more to it by the mischievous glint in his eye the few times they spoke about it. 

She had been doing research on pregnancy and childbirth during what she liked to refer to as her “time in lockup”. Everyone had always said that being pregnant was a magical time, but the more she read about the less it seemed that way. 

She was pulled out of her third trimester research by an excited knock and her door being thrown open. It took her a minute to recover, but when she did, she was shocked to see the one person she had been dying to talk to all week. 

“Em?” she yelled, shocked to see the other woman pushing herself into the room followed by Maxwell, Hana, and Lizzie. “What are you doing here?” 

She launched herself into her childhood friend’s arms, happy to see her supportive face with everything going on.

“I’m here for your wedding,” she said, a suggestive smirk on her face, her eyes going straight to the recently resized diamond ring on Ali’s finger. 

“My what?” 

“Your wedding. Have you showered today? Because you need to start getting ready now,” she said, grabbing a garment bag from Maxwell and dropping it down onto the bed. 

“Now? What? What’s going on?” Ali asked in confusion as she watched the other woman unzip the bag, white fabric spilling out of it. 

She properly took in the appearance of the three people who had entered the room with her and noticed that they were too formally dressed for a regular day. 

“I thought you were the smart one, love,” Cole said, sauntering into her room with a smirk and closing the door behind him. “Haven’t you figured it out by now.”

Ali’s face split with a large smile, and she quickly pulled the man into a hug as well. 

“Oh, thanks for telling us that you were pregnant by the way,” he said sarcastically.

Ali cringed. 

“I’m sorry. I’ve been completely out of it, and everything’s been so uncertain. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what was going to happen, so I didn’t know what to say,” she said, truthfully.

“Eh, you’re lucky I don’t hold grudges,” Cole said taking her previously occupied spot on the bed and looking over at her computer screen. 

“You've probably gained 19-25 pounds. You still have some time to go, so you may want to remind yourself of signs of premature labor, including menstrual-like cramps or lower back pain, a trickle of amniotic fluid, or a watery pinkish or brownish discharge preceded sometimes by the passage of a thick, gelatinous mucus plug. Ew,” he read the passage from WebMD with a look of disgust on his face.

Ali rolled her eyes and reached over to shut her laptop. 

“Can we go back to the fact that I’m apparently getting married today?” she said in a disbelieving tone. 

“Liam’s already taken care of everything. You just need to get ready,” Maxwell clarified.

“What do you mean he’s already taken care of everything? Where is it happening? Who’s going to be there? Who knows about it?” she asked, getting more and more confused with each question that spilled out of her mouth. 

“Take a breath and sit down for a minute,” Maxwell said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. 

“Constantine and Regina don’t know anything about it. Liam spoke with Ana de Luca. She and one of her reporters will be there to take pictures for an exclusive article that will announce both the marriage and pregnancy to the people after the wedding. Drake, Ben, Bertrand, Luca, Olivia, and Ezra are the only people not in the room who will be there, and Leo is performing the ceremony,” Maxwell clarified. “With Charlie, Bastien, and a few other guards working security.”

Everything seemed to come back into focus now that she had all of her answers. She was ecstatic to hear that Luca and Ezra were there as well.  

“Is this really happening?” she asked. 

“Oh, it’s happening, and it’s happening soon. So, you need to get ready!” Lizzie said happily, bouncing in place. 

“Okay,” Ali said, chuckling to herself. 

She looked back over to Emma, who was wearing a satisfied expression as she pulled the dress out of the garment bag. 

“So, I originally started working on this for Liam’s coronation,” she began.

“You were going to make me wear a white gown to Liam’s coronation?” 

“There was going to be gold on it too. It was supposed to make a statement,” she said with a cocky smirk. 

“Well, it definitely would have done that,” Ali said, with a good natured roll of her eyes. 

“Anyway, when Liam called me two days ago I didn’t have time to make an entire wedding dress from scratch, so I made a few changes. I’ve been working nonstop since, but he made sure I was properly compensated,” she said, lifting the hanger so that everyone in the room could see it. 

It was an A-line, floor length dress with a lace-up back. The skirt of the dress was flared out, and there was a white sash tied around the waist. The bodice above the sash was made up of a white lace that extended down to long, fitted sleeves. Small buttons extended up from the sash to the high collared neck. The dress was simple but elegant. Emma had truly outdone herself. 

“It’s… It’s gorgeous, Em,” Ali said, at a loss for words.

Her eyes filled with happy tears as she reached out to touch the soft fabric. She cleared her throat and hastily wiped them away. She had been crying way too much lately. 

“How exactly am I supposed to get out of the palace in a wedding dress without anyone seeing me?” she asked. 

“We’re going to sneak you out a back door,” Lizzie said simply. 

“Is it really going to be that easy?” 

“We’ve made sure to clear out the area,” she responded. 

“How exactly did you to that?” 

Lizzie and Maxwell shared an amused, but worried look. 

“I think it’s best if you don’t know,” Maxwell said.

“Okay, then. So, how exactly do I start getting ready for my wedding?” Ali asked, not exactly sure what to do from here. 

“The first thing we need to do are your eyebrows,” Emma said, pushing her into the chair in front of her vanity. “Really, when was the last time you got them done?” 

“I’ve been a little preoccupied,” Ali said defensively.

“Yeah, obviously,” Emma mumbled under her breath, grabbing a pair of tweezers and pushing her head back. 

After about an hour of getting her eyebrows done and listening to everyone argue about how to do her hair and makeup, Ali was finally ready to put on her dress. Cole conveniently make himself scarce as she began to undress.

“Is that really what you plan on wearing for your wedding night?” Emma asked, looking over her plain nude bra and panties with distaste. 

Ali rolled her eyes.

“Well, since I didn’t know that I was going to get married today, I didn’t go exactly go lingerie shopping,” she said sarcastically. 

Emma nodded discreetly at Maxwell, and he immediately started searching through her underwear drawer. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, surprised at the intrusion. 

“Everything here is boring,” Maxwell finally concluded after a few more seconds of shifting through her belongings. 

“Liam’s never complained before,” she shot back. 

“But, this is different. It’s your wedding night!” Lizzie said, walking over to Maxwell and taking his place. 

“These match the best,” she said, pulling out a plain black bra and a pair of black lace panties. “But, the bra is a little plain.”

“Okay, can we stop insulting my lingerie collection, please? I think we have more important things to do,” she said, gesturing wildly towards the dress. 

They smirked at each other and threw the items onto the bed, amused by her excitement. 

“Before we do that, I got you this for your something new and your something blue,” Emma said, shimmying her shoulders suggestively before reaching into the pocket of the garment bag and pulling out a navy blue garter.

Ali blushed and grabbed it from her hand, pulling it on. Her grin widened as Emma held the dress out for her next. She stepped into it and pulled it up over her body, smiling at her reflection as the other woman laced it up from behind. The dress fit perfectly and tears began to well up in her eyes as Emma smiled at her through the mirror. 

“I’m getting married today,” she said, holding back a sob and wrapping her arms around her friend. 

“I know. We’ve been talking about this our entire lives,” Emma responded, tears streaming down her face as well. “Oh, don’t cry. You’ll ruin your makeup.”

“Well, you talked. Even back then I was afraid I would end up alone,” Ali joked, wiping away her tears, “And now I’m marrying the most amazing man I’ve ever met.”

The two of them heard a loud sniffle come from the corner of the room and turned just in time for Maxwell to throw himself into Ali’s arms. 

“I’m so happy for you, little blossom!” he cried into her shoulder.

She patted his shoulder affectionately. Maxwell had truly become a brother to her in the short few months they had known each other. It was also because of him and Leo that she was even here in the first place, and she would never forget that. 

After a moment he pulled himself out of her embrace and reached into his pocket, pulling out a small box. 

“Bertrand and I wanted you to wear this. It was our mother’s. We thought it could be your something old and something borrowed,” he said, smiling widely at her through his watery eyes. 

Ali opened the box to see an ornate hair comb. Pearls formed the petals of several flowers and small diamonds made up the centers of them.

“It’s beautiful, Max. I would be honored to wear it,” she said with a sincere smile. 

Emma took two sections of hair from the front sides of her face and tied it in the back, allowing the rest to fall over her shoulders and frame her face. She tucked the hair comb securely into the section of hair that she just tied back, smiling at her handiwork. 

“Are you ready to go get married?” she asked. 

Ali stopped and took a breath. Everything seemed so surreal. She was actually getting married today. She placed a hand lovingly on her stomach, and a wide smile broke out over her face. 

“Yeah, I am.”

[yhs-silly]

Hang on there buddy #5

Trigger warnings: suicide mentions, self harm, ghost, character death, murder mention

After a few weeks, Grian was cleared to leave. He moved in with Taurtis and Sam, who had already set up his belongings on shelves. He was so glad to be out of the hospital, happily sitting with Taurtis and Sam- he watched them play smash bros quietly. He loved to watch them just interact like this, casually and friendly without worry. He felt so relaxed, leaning against Taurtis with a yawn- he blushed when Taurtis instinctively put his arm around the blonde.

Later that night Grian was sat on the sofa, both of the boys were asleep. He looked around and realised just how small the apartment was, he wanted to give back to his friends for being so sweet and caring and his therapist did say he needed to improve his relationship with his parents...

Grian picked up the phone, he knew this number off by heart. He typed in each key and pressed the call button, he sat waiting for a response- his breath hitched when he heard the response.

"Hello? Who is this?"

He took a deep breath, it was now or never. "Is this Prudence Sian Xelqua?"

"it's LADY Prudence Sian RUSTIA dear, but yes. Who's this?"

He counted to three under his breath before answering, tapping his fingers on the side if the sofa. "Grian, it's Grian Xelqua..." He had to hold his phone at a distance due to the squeal that followed, he sighed and listened to his mother ramble on about how much she and his father had missed him. "Mother? I have a favour to ask..."

She went quiet. "I should have known...what do you need sweetie..?

Grian quickly realised how that sounded and back tracked. "Oh no, I do want to fix my relationship with you and father but I do really need a favour..." He smiled at hearing her assuring him that it was fine, she understood. "I need a house, I'm currently living on my friends sofa in a destroyed apartment- there are walls missing. Entire WALLS, mother."

She gasped and the clacking sound of credit cards was clearly heard. "Oh gosh! Hold on baby, mama's sending you a nice silver credit card and buying you a nice house, where do you live honey?"

"Academi, in japa-"

"Oh!" Lady Prudence squeaked, typing in the address in order to buy a little home for her son and his friends. "That's the little town Jane used to live! Is her ex still there? Does he still teach?" She gasped again as a little thought popped into her mind. "Is he your teacher?"

Silence from the other end of the phone as the sound of Grian sighing came from the other side of the phone. "No mother, Gareth's dead...he...he committed suicide..."

Prudence gasped, she felt faint. The sweet and gentle man she'd introduced her dear sister to all those years ago had hung himself from the rafters like a rat. She scoffed and fluffed up her hair. "Well he always was a coward, how outrageous! Suicide is a horrible thing to expose children to- how horrible of him! Suicide is a cowards way out and holds no honour whatsoever, such a horrible, shameful way to go!"

Silence from the other end of the phone and Prudence was about to ask if Grian was still there when a quiet, shaking voice was heard. "Mama..?"

"Yes baby?"

"...I tried to kill myself..."

The call ended, leaving Prudence sat in complete silence. Her baby, her perfect little boy, had tried to commit suicide. She felt sick, clasping a hand over her mouth to stop the bile that rose from escaping. She remember when Grian was little, he used to be the sweetest, move inquisitive kid around- hanging off her every word.

But she also remembered what the maids used to say, when she wasn't around Grian, he was quiet, subdued and sulky. But even inspite of that, Prudence had to worry what had happened in the ten years where he was on his own- on the street. Oh god she felt sick.

Meanwhile Grian was quietly cursing himself out for being so impulsive, he should have just listened to his mothers cruel comments about Gareth. Now he'd disgraced her, she was sure to call his father and then he'd know what a pathetic excuse for a son Grian really was.

He was right, Prudence did call her ex-husband but the man wasn't disspointed, he was sickened. He thought that Grian would've died on the streets so he was rather impressed but at the same time, suicide was a huge issue in all walks of life- his cousin was a physiologist and so he knew how important it was that Grian had failed. He was genuinely proud of him for reaching out of them, even if he was slightly put out that Grian had chosen to call Prudence and not him. He hated his ex-wife with a passion but they could agree enough to plan a trip to Japan to visit their son.

Neither of them had time for customs so they took a private jet, landing in the car park outside academi. It was a fairly nice plane as far as private jet's go so no wonder it drew a crowd. Prudence and Alfred stepped out of the plane to see a crowd of rowdy teens staring at them, they stepped out and looked over the group for their son.

Sam was so glad to see Grian smiling and laughing like that, back to almost-normal. He had grabbed his hand in order to drag him over to the shop and he was only just realizing that he still had Grian's hand in his grasp, a light blush dusting his cheeks as they turned the corner. Sam realised just how cute Grian looked, he really was blessed to own such cute friends- wait no, he doesn't own them, his therapist told him that was bad. Wow he really was messed up, Sam felt the empty pang of guilt hit him lightly as they approached the school.

Grian suddenly let go of his hand and Sam looked over in disappointment when he saw that the brit's face had paled, he looked to see what Grian had seen and saw the jet- with two fancy dressed people getting out. Sam couldn't help but notice how similar they both looked to Grian, they must be his parents. Sam didn't know Grian was rich, the kid had been homeless after all- and had no money what so ever.

It seemed that Taurtis also noticed as he tapped Grian on the shoulder. "Hey Grian? Are those your folks? They kinda look like you." He smiled, liking being right as Grian shamefully nodded. He watched as Grian's parents pushed through the crowd, lead by a PA, a butler and two bodyguards.

Grian felt his heart sink as his parents reached him, Prudence leaning down for a delicate huh. "It's ok baby, mummy's here now." She let go and smiled down at him, stepping back to stand beside Grian's father. Lord Xelqua nodded and gazed down at Grian with his usual dissapointed gaze, but his eyes sparkled with worry. Grian suddenly felt seven again, staring up at his parents and feeling like he's in trouble for something.

It was Yuki who came to his rescue, she jumped in as the girls diffused the crowds and curtsied to them. "It's a pleasure to meet you Sir, M'am, you must be Grian's parents. I'm Yuki Karu, my daddy runs the yakuza here- I'm Grian's friend." She chimes and smiles sweetly at them, causing Prudence to smile and nod approvingly.

"Oh it's lovely to see Grian's made some friends, he was never a very social child." She smiled sweetly and fluffed up her hair. "I'm Lady Prudence Sian Rustia and this," She gestured to Lord Xelqua. "Is my ex-hus-"

"I am Lord Alfred Xavier Robert Xelqua, patriarch of the Xelqua lineage and ceo of XelquaSweets." He cracked a neutral expression and flourished a bow before the little group, letting his personal assistant hold his cane as he did so. He came back up with a deep frown as he heard laughing.

Sam found this hilarious, Grian's parents were these over the top upper class hoity toities, the little aggressive kid Sam had met all those years ago was one raised by a nanny. He leant on Grian's shoulder as he cackled at this situation, he could feel the blonde tensining up but really didn't expect to be thrown to the floor like that as Grian took a few steps towards his parents.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" The pair looked at him in shock and confusion, Grian glared. "Why do you think it's ok for you to barge into my life again like this? I called you because my therapist said I should fix my damn relationship with you assholes." He laughed almost hysterically and a cold cruelness rang through his voice, causing at least Prudence- and the remaining teens, to take a step back. "I told you what I did only because I couldn't stand you throwing scorn on Gareth for the same thing! And you know what father? You might as well call up your little physiologist friend because I'm the cause of his death! I'm hysterical! I'm fucking crazy!" He gestures around wildly, tears forming in his eyes as he took some more steps towards his now very uncomfortable looking parents. Sam slowly got off the floor and took a careful step towards Grian as the blonde glared forward. "And I don't have time to play happy fucking families with you neglectfull pieces of shit!"

Before Grian could say anything more, Sam put his hand over the blondes mouth, holding him close and quietly hushing him. He know what it was like to lose his temper like that and he didn't want Grian to hurt himself so he held Grian back and calmly pet the blondes hair. Grian sighed and stopped struggling, relaxing his shoulders but tensing then again as his father walked slowly towards him with a scowl.

"Grian." His voice was cold and harsh, Sam felt Grian begin to shake. "We've done nothing but give you the best, the only reason you're like this is because you ran away, which was your own decision." Sam made sure his arms were tight around Grian as he held the smaller make protectively. Xelqua glared at Grian and raised a hand to strike him. "Your mother and I didn't raise you to be such an ungrateful brat!"

Before his hand could even make contact with Grian's face, the light that reflected of his ring triggered something in Sam. He let go of Grian, pushing him towards Taurtis then grabbed Lord Xelqua's wrist. "Don't you fucking dare." He threw the lord to the ground and jumped on him, pummeling him with punch after punch. Lady Rustia screamed, her long acrylic nails tapping on her purse in worry as she stepped back.

She backed into someone, someone with an angry glare and muscles to make her swoon. She turned and widened her eyes as the teens gasped quietly, standing there and glaring down at Sam- Was Rowan.

[mylifeasevelyn]

Orphan

Hello dear stranger, it’s me, Evelyn. Yeah, it’s been a long time... I’ve written a lot of drafts throughout the past couple of months, but I could never finish them or wrap my thoughts properly... until today.

The past 15 months have all been about rediscovering myself after breaking free from my abuser. I truly thought it was going to be an easy transition, but fuck no, it wasn’t. The first six months were shit ‘cause she kept trying to contact me and trying fuck me up psychologically, and the following months were confusing, to say the least. Too much shit went down and thanks to the few years of free therapy I got from my shitty university, I’ve been processing everything without resorting to self destruction in the process. Ever since I broke contact with my abusive mother/the demon who cannot be named/former wife to my dad, my father and I have been sort of trying to bond as father-daughter. We have never been truly close and I truly can’t remember why ‘cause I cannot remember my childhood or teenage years. My memory is hazy from back then due to all the abuse and trauma I endured at such a young age. Anyways, overall, my life was going from ugh to meh (depression much? Lol)

Shit started to hit the fan on October 30th, 2019. I remember that day clearly because of what happened the following day... anyways, I remember asking my shrink to give a call asap. Within 30 minutes she gave me a call. I was studying at the library at the time. I exited the place and made my way to the closest place where I could speak privately. Long story short, I told her my depression was making a huge return. I was slowly but surely losing interest in the things I was doing, regardless of my feeble attempts to keep myself sane in the process. After she hang up, I kept thinking about how I no longer had anything to fight for. No real sense of family, no real sense of friends, nada. Not even a fucking a pet to come back home and take care of or something (although having a pet while being in this mental state is not my kinda thing to do tbh.) It was in that moment that I remembered that over ten years ago, I used to work as a waitress to grab some cash to eventually travel to Buenos Aires and see My Chemical Romance live, which I did (hell yeah.) Fuck, but that shitty dream of seeing them live again had ended there when the band broke up. October 31st came and well, y’all know what happened already. Having them back shook my world and gave me another reason to keep fighting this mental illness and all the other bullshit I’m still going through. The following weeks became more bearable, but still, something wasn’t right. Another month went by. It was a Wednesday midnight, I was about to get to bed when I got a text from my father, back at it again with the suicidal thoughts. He’s done this for the last couple of years, the first time affecting me so bad that I had a panic attack (fyi, we live in different cities, I can’t just go and see him right away.) Again, thanks to therapy, I’ve learnt how to take a step back and see things with a better perspective. After reading his text, I once again took the role of parentified child and tried my best to comfort him, and insisting on him getting therapy. And as stubborn as he is, he said no and started making excuses and me, as patient and comforting as I know I can be, I kept telling him that I couldn’t always be there for him and it would make me feel more at ease if he would just freaking go and see a professional. I gave him links to read and find the right therapist for him and all that jazz. I also told him that if he wasn’t gonna do it for him, then he should at least do it for his daughter. The following day he sent me pictures of him having a great fucking time with his friends while I was here, back home, fucking worried. So yeah, damn right I got angry at him. I didn’t reach back to him until the following Monday ‘cause he kept texting me and I was getting annoyed by the endless I’m okay pictures he was sending me. I gently told him to back off and give me space. More months went by and we kept being in touch and seeing each other, pretending like it was all freaking peachy, as always. Believe the lie. Remember?

January 2020 came by and a friend told me she was going to see a Queen tribute band with his dad and I thought it would be a great opportunity for my dad and I to properly bond, since we’re both passionate about music. I invited him to the show and he said yes. Another month went by and we met again. I could tell something was off about him the moment he walked through my door, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was doing my make up while he waited for me to be done. Mind you, we don’t talk much because he is a really quiet man when he is around me, my brother and his ex-wife. The moment he started talking I could tell he was venting, and I was carefully listening and responding when necessary. And that’s when he admitted to me that he was back to doing shady businesses with criminals. Since he knows I’m not a judgy person, he told me everything in detail. The more he told me, the more my body was becoming tense, to the point where I pulled a neck muscle. But my stomach truly turned when he told me, casually, that he had given my security number to a thug as “insurance”. The moment he said that, I remembered when he, a few weeks back, had asked for my security number and I asked why he needed it, and he said it was because he’d forgotten it. I was stupid and naîve enough to trust him and he straight up lied to me, yet again. Whenever fucked up shit like this happened, child me would become paralysed or mute. Hell, I used to stutter and mumble till age 13. My teachers were always nice to me about it ‘cause I was a good, responsible student. That’s all I can remember. So, it’s safe to say that I was in shock. He kept on talking and I could see my reflection in the mirror starting to change. Shit. Not a panic attack. Not now. I don’t know how, but I managed to keep my shit together. We left my apartment. I wasn’t feeling well. Something was wrong. I couldn’t process what had just happened. I was back to being a child. I couldn’t talk. I texted my shrink. It was an SOS moment. She couldn’t call me. Fuck. My mind kept telling me what happened is wrong, this is wrong... but what exactly_ is_ wrong? Why am I feeling this way? A couple of hours went by and I was able to block those thoughts from disrupting me. I slowly started chatting again. My father was unaware of what was happening. I’m pretty sure he thought I was grumpy or something. Besides, it’s not like he hasn’t seen me this way before, lol.Either way, he never asks about me, my life. It’s always been about him since we’ve officially “reconnected.” Well, the more I think about it, since forever.

Night time had finally come and it was time for the show. Things were still awkward between my father and me, but I was somehow more relaxed ‘cause I knew I was meeting my friend and her dad. They were late and my father and I were barely talking to one another, so I said fuck it, grabbed my phone and started checking my social media to make time go by faster. And alas, my friend and her dad finally made it. What a relief. I started feeling my usual self coming back. I was back to talking and being my usual goofy self. Unfortunately, my father was being an asshole, I cracked jokes and tried my best to include him in the conversation but he wouldn’t even laugh. He would just look away, so I retreated a bit and I went back to just being awkward with him. Right before the show started, there were two empty seats with a better view right next to were my friend was sitting, so my father suggested we should go and sit there instead. I gladly agreed. I changed seats right away. I looked back, he didn’t move an inch. Instead, he was signalling me what I think meant something like “yeah, yeah, go ahead” and at this point I was looking at him, confused. I was thinking: “dude, really? We’re supposed to be here and bond. Not sit three seats away from each other. Pff” My friend’s father was cool enough to change seats with my friend so that we could sit next to each other. So, there we were, from left to right: me, my friend, her father, and my father. At the moment, I remember telling my friend: “oh good, I hope they bond and have fun since they are almost the same age and wearing the same coloured t-shirts! Bahaha” The show went on smoothly. 10/10. But part of me was still keeping an eye on my father, making sure he was having a good time. My friend would check on him and tell me if he was having fun. As I predicted, he cried while singing his lungs out to Bohemian Rhapsody. Both him and I miss her deeply. His mother, my grandmother. Anyways, the show was over and I had to get back to my dad. The moment the lights were back on and I looked at him, I could tell he had been crying, so my stupid heart and empathic soul gave him a break and tried their best to get back on more friendly terms. Unfortunately, he was back to being unfriendly with the rest of us. So much so, that he grabbed my shoulder and moved me away from my friend and her dad. Again, it didn’t feel right when he did that. That feeling felt so familiar, but I couldn’t remember why... I eventually lost sight of my friend and we got lost in the crowd that was exiting the stadium. For a moment I stopped somewhere where there wouldn’t be a shit ton of people walking all over me and I turned around to see if I see if I could find them to at least say goodbye. My father was vocal again and told me to just keep going and I insisted on trying to find them. As you can guess, I had no luck finding them. Now it was time for me and him to go to each other’s home. At this point it was almost midnight and I had to get on a bus to go back. He insisted on taking me back home (40km away.) Had I found my friend, we would’ve gone back home together, as intended. The ride back home was filled by John Williams’ score of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I chose the music ‘cause at this point I had a headache and since I suffer from motion sickness and I was out of dramamine, I had to listen to my music. I tried making conversation and all I got back from him was “really”, “oh”, “yeah”, “oh, really?” and “oh, yes.” I was trying my best not to cry. The moment the score started playing A window to the past’s part in Mischief Managed! A memory came back. I used to lock myself up in my bedroom and play that song on loop while crying to drown out the sound of me sobbing. I also remember that whenever I cried too hard at night, the following day I’d had to wear make up on my eyes to cover my puffy eyes. I was fourteen years old back then. That was the year my father cheated on my mother and moved to my grandmother’s house, who had just passed away months prior to all that toxic drama that they always had. I didn’t cry because I wanted my mommy and daddy back together, fuck them. I cried because I had to go back to my dead friend’s house and have my happy memories turn to shit after seeing her house lifeless too. Remembering that fucked up memory puts me back on the brink of tears as I’m typing it now. Man, that’s the reason why I don’t enjoy listening to_ A window to the past _anymore. Anyways, I was back home safe and sound, him too. I was feeling mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted.  

I abruptly woke up, found myself lost in my own bed, my own bedroom, my own apartment. I shook my head as an attempt to get my shit together and that was when I heard a voice in my head say: “he was abusive yesterday. He’s abusive too, just like her.” And_ fuck_. Yes. That was it. That’s why I felt weird. That’s why I almost had a panic attack. That’s why I almost cried twice throughout the day. He’s always been this way with me. He doesn’t know shit about me. Whenever I tell him something about me, he doesn’t even remember having that conversation at all. Hell, he can’t even remember my friends names! He never asks about how I’m doing, not that I care since we’re not close whatsoever, but you know, he should at least know that since, well, he’s my fucking father. Whenever he bought me a present growing up, it was always something he liked, something he wanted me to wear. Hell, I can’t even tell how many pink pieces of clothing I’ve gotten rid of because I fucking_ hate that colour, or maybe the reason why I fucking hate that colour so much is because of how much he forced me into wearing it. He’s always been a distant father, but at least he never beat the shit out of me or told me I was fat or ugly, or that he preferred my brother over me (like my abusive mother used to do.) Then again, that doesn’t make him any less abusive. Abuse is abuse. His motto’s always been “here, have this money, do whatever.” I used to appreciate that because I thought “cool, thank you for not being nosy.” Truth is, the reason why we can’t connect, bond or whatever is because he doesn’t give a shit about me. He’s been rejoicing on the fact that I’m “on his side” now because I no longer talk to abuser n° 1. On one of my sessions, my therapist told me that the reason why abuser 1 always did her best to crush my self-steem was because she considered me competition. And I dumbfoundedly asked “competition?”. And she replied: “yes, she feels like she was to compete with you for your father’s attention.” My head exploded after that statement. Right now I can’t help but think of what she told me that way. My father has kinda well more like really, been doing kinda the same shit to me, trying to keep me as close as possible to him, to the point where he texts every other day, which he never did until now. The suicide drama, the criminal activity, and a lot more shit that I’m sick of having to deal with. Like I said before, I’ve always been on the role of a parentified child. I always had to deal with this shit _and on my own. I’ve always been the punching bag. I always had to deal with all their drama when all I wanted was to have a normal childhood. All I got instead is a suicide attempt, a decade of self-harm and a long ass history of drug and alcohol abuse, which they know nothing about because I always kept it to myself. I always felt like a burden. I always felt guilty. I was always a “crybaby” because abuser 1 used to tell me that as a kid and whenever she used to see me cry about something as an adult.

So yeah, I’m fucking done with my family. Oh, and my brother? In case you haven’t read any of my previous posts, he’s just as an asshole as the other two are. He’s violent like abuser 1, so fuck you very much, I’m okay this way. He won’t talk to me and he won’t even tell me why. The rest of my family don’t know shit about me because I was always the “quiet one” so I know for a fact that I’m most likely the black sheep for not returning to my hometown in the past year or so. Abuser 1 is very into deceiving appearances and wearing a public mask, so I know for a fact that she’s playing the victim because she can’t reach me anymore, bahaha. fml.

With this post, I can officially say that I’m done grieving the family I always wanted to have but never did. I’ve been meaning to legally change my name because my middle name is abuser’s name 1 and now that abuser 2 has used my personal information against my will to do criminal activity, I have more than enough reasons to reinvent myself in every fucking way I want and need. With that being said, if you’ve got some last name suggestions, feel free to send me suggestions. This is only the beginning of the new chapter of my life. Hopefully your new chapter is starting now or soon too, dear stranger.

                                                                                                                Never give up, always fight

                                                                                                                        Love, Evelyn