#[ suddenly feeling self aware and insecure about everything I did on this blog ]

[captainseamech]

//.

[delqcate]

hi angel!!! im aware of how super busy you are rn, but I can't get like frenemies scott barringer and reader out of my head, imagine it, like he's so annoyed by everything she does, she's the total opposite of him, sweet and kind, but also the sarcastic angry feminist, and he's the self-righteous football captain arsehole.

But no matter what he does, she's constantly stuck in his head, and it's kinda like the song "you look so pretty, pretty like the sun, i could watch forever while you shine on everyone" and he's so in love and a little insecure, which he covers up with this pompous arrogant fboy persona

anyways, you're writing gives me life more than anything! when i first discovered your flannel shirt fic on scott, i became obsessed and stalked your profile and obsessively read through all your fanfics, hayden characters or not, I read them all, and im head over heels in love w u :) you genuinely write the best fluff ever, like your my favourite blog for fluff, like don't get me wrong smut is cute and that, but god i would kill for some forehead kisses and hayden fluff

because i love you.

scott barringer x reader

anon you own my whole heart ilysm!!! you're soso incredibly sweet and being your favorite fluff writer??? such an incredible honor 🥹 i'm sorry it took me a while to get to writing this and i feel so bad cause i feel like i just didn't have enough inspiration for this so it's all messy but I hope it's still good. scott and shelby don't get together here but they're still good friends

summary: you and scott don't necessarily hate each other, but you can't tolerate both that much either. after a plan gone wrong, turns out there's a reason why.

warnings/cw: swearing, kissing (i don't know if that's warnings but yeah), fluff fluff fluff

word count: 1.9k

Where does Scott even begin with you? The Cliffhanger's sweetheart, the epitome of the sun in this hell hole, is his friend. Well, sort of.

Because every time he was near you, it felt like he was constantly basking in the sun, yet at the same time, he was warmed up by everything you did, from your smile to your voice. It was almost like he was constantly taunted.

He couldn't get enough of you, though. You were everything he's ever wanted—the warmth and love of another—and yet he still seems to be pushing you away.

But then that all changes when a little surprise is left on one of the class boards one morning when Scott and the other Cliffhangers are called to meet up with Peter and Sophie.

Scott walks into the classroom, wearing a sweater he just threw on due to the cold, and looks at the board in confusion. "Morp? Wh-what's a morp?" His brow was furrowed, and he frankly didn't care too much about decoding it until Auggie followed from behind him. "Oh, cool, a prom?"

Scott looks at Auggie, realizing everyone else is inside already. His eyes land on you, and he suddenly can't focus on anything but you. Everyone was taking a seat, and it took him a moment to realize you sat with him until a hand waved at his face.

"Scott, y'there?" Your voice rings out, and he looks at you, his face brooding as always. "Why? What's up?" He clears his throat and focuses his gaze on you. Despite hating you, he seems to be interested in what you have to say. Probably just sucking it up so it would be over.

You look at him, and suddenly you find yourself drawn to his eyes. Do they seem more blue than usual lately, or have they always been this way? But you don't have time to ponder about that because now it’s his turn to snap you out of your thoughts.

"Hey, are you there?" He gives you a small smirk, and you playfully roll your eyes. “Yeah, sorry,” you say, clearing your throat and resting your head on your palm. “Sophie and Peter paired us for morp planning.”

His eyes widen slightly, but he immediately covers them up with his emotionless stare again. “Why us? ," he asks, sounding annoyed. “Dunno,” you reply. “Probably ‘to build a stronger relationship between us’,” you say, playfully mocking what Peter constantly tells everyone whenever there’s a team activity.

He let out a soft scoff but couldn't help but let a smirk form on his lips. He was starting to let his guard down, something he rarely does around people; besides Shelby, she relates to him more than anyone. "Yeah, all that bullshit."

You nod and chuckle, watching as he bounces his leg, a habit you share with him. "All we have to do is plan the music, so it shouldn't be too bad. They're letting us use Peter's office and a couple more gadgets, I think." You shrug, but all you could think of was Scott.

Spending time alone with him in a room for days on end sounded both eventful and terrifying. But at least it was him instead of anyone else; at least you could get some peace and quiet for once.

————————————————————————

It had been days since you and Scott were assigned to make the playlist, and despite the bickering and constant grogginess you two would feel the next day, it was bearable. It caused something in Scott to brew—something he thought he could keep in, but it was just waiting to burst.

Scott dragged Shelby away to a corner in the common room—not the best place to have a private conversation, but it'll do.

"Let me guess," Shelby starts, her gaze landing on Ophelia talking to Peter and back at Scott. "You need advice to ask her out?" Scott scrunches up his face, annoyed but thinking about it. "Well, yeah," he says after a moment.

She chuckles and looks over at you again, trying to think of anything. "Morp's tomorrow, Scott. How are you sure Auggie or someone else asked her out?" Scott suddenly seemed upset at the thought, however. "You think Auggie has more of a chance than me?" His angry question was a little too loud, loud enough to catch your attention, at least.

Shelby quickly looks away and narrows her eyes at Scott, slapping his arm playfully. "Will you keep it down, you idiot?" He whines and leans against the wall, crossing his arms and staring at you from afar. "How am I ever going to ask her out? I'm just the cocky football star, a pompous asshole fuckboy. Every bad thing you could think of."

She sighs and moves closer, taking his hand and watching his expression before continuing, "Sure, you can be a complete asshole." He scoffs and looks at the floor. "Great way to start that off," he muttered. She rolls her eyes and continues with, "But all that matters is what they think of you. You wanna go all out and be stupid with your promposal? Go ahead. I'll be there every stupid step in the way."

He moves his gaze on her and mutters, "Stop calling me stupid. But, thanks."

————————————————————————

The plan was perfect. You and Shelby would be hanging out together, saying some good stuff about Scott, and Scott would play football with Auggie. Auggie would throw the ball at you, and he would save you. He would tie that to some smooth way to ask you out, but he would worry about that later. What was the worst that could happen?

Scott watches nervously as Shelby and you sit at the bleachers, taking a deep breath as Shelby discreetly nods and Scott starts to play. Your gaze moves to Scott, and a small smile grows on your face. Seeing Scott play football was cute to you. Despite being an ex-football captain, he still never lost his love for the sport, and you admire him for that.

Shelby notices your stare and chuckles, looking at Scott and back at you. "You eyeing Scott?" Your cheeks heat up and your eyes land on her, shaking your head as your face gets all flushed up. "No- well yeah, but not in that way! He's my friend; I just want to watch him."

Your gaze moves back to the two boys playing, and you swear you saw Scott wink at you, but maybe it was your mind playing tricks on you; he probably got something in his eye.

But you didn't even have time to think because the football started flying towards you, and Scott's amazing plan came crashing down as soon as the ball hit him right in the face.

"Scott!" You yell out and rush down to him with Shelby. He lets out a loud groan and covers his face. He's never felt so much pain and embarrassment before. "Auggie, fuck!" He groans out. "I didn't mean to, I- I'm sorry!" Auggie frowns and looks at the two, watching as you take Scott into your arms and prop your leg up for him to rest on.

"Shit- Scott, move your hand." You frown and try to move his hand, watching as a crowd of people form, someone rushing to grab Peter. Scott whines and shakes his head, saying something about how it really hurt, but it's muffled from his hands.

"C'mon, please? I swear the pain will be gone soon; I need to see how bad it is." You were trying to stay calm for the both of you, and after a moment, he moves his hands away to reveal a bleeding nose and some tears.

You wince and help him stand up. With the help of Shelby and Auggie, you guys safely bring him to the girls rooms and onto your bed, hurrying off to the bathroom while the two find something that could help Scott besides a wet rag.

You return to him on the bed and move his hand away. A small hiss escapes you, and you start to clean him up. The silence was killing you after a while, so you mumbled out, "That was stupid, y'know?"

He looks at you with an annoyed expression and scoffs, trying not to move too much as you clean his nose and check if it is broken. "Well, I'm sorry for saving your life," he says sarcastically, clearly upset that you didn't appreciate him saving you. Maybe his plan was just stupid.

"I mean, I appreciate it, but look at you now." You frown and place the rag on your side table, grabbing some tissues to clean the spot better. "Why'd you do it? Ruin your oh-so-perfect face for me?" He smirks and looks at you. "You like my face, huh?" You roll your eyes, and he lets out a small laugh as you punch his arm.

"Sorry, I couldn't help it." He lets his laughter die down and listens to the two of you breathing. It calmed him down to hear your breath, especially because he definitely needed to calm down. He took a deep breath and calmly let out, "Because I love you."

You stop your arm and move your gaze from his nose to his gaze, which was locked onto yours. You couldn't tell if it was because he was frozen in embarrassment or because he wanted to show you he really meant it; either way, it left you shocked.

How does he like you? He's made it very clear that he has some hatred towards you , so it didn't make sense. "But the way you act around me—" he quickly interrupted you. "It's because I'm insecure." He sighs and looks down at his hands, feeling the embarrassment creep up on him.

"You're just so- so gorgeous. You make everyone smile and laugh; it's like the goddamn sun. You shine so bright, and I can't help but feel this jealousy towards you because everyone gets to experience all of that." Although he didn't outright say it, it was clear to you that he was jealous, and it was incredibly adorable.

You let out a soft laugh, and at first he thought you were laughing at him, but a small smile formed on his lips when he realized you were laughing with him. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I feel like I shine brighter when I'm with you. You make me sparkle, I guess."

He chuckles and moves a little closer, sensing the change in tension, and he was sure you did too because you moved closer. "Sparkle, huh? What are you, a vampire?" He smirks and wraps his arm around you, making you roll your eyes and cup his cheek. "Just shut up and kiss me."

"Yes, ma'am." He smirks wider and kisses you gently, immediately crash-landing into heaven as soon as he feels your lips. They were soft and felt heavenly, just like he imagined. The kiss grew deeper but didn't last too long as someone threw a box of bandages at them.

Scott pulls away in annoyance but quickly gets flustered as soon as he sees Shelby and Auggie; he completely forgets they were coming back. "Congratulations, lovebirds!" Shelby smirks and moves her gaze between Scott and you. "But do us all a favor and get a room, will you?"

You let out a small chuckle and quickly helped Scott clean up, hearing the pair's footsteps as they headed outside. Despite both of you being complete opposites, Something told you it would all work out in the long run.

taglist: none!

[urupotter]

So while I've said before that I don't like the HP subreddit, I still frequent it because occasionally I read something insightful. This is one such case, where I read a reading of Lupin that I'd never seen before in response to a comment of mine analyzing the shrieking shack confrontation between Snape, Remus, Sirius and the golden trio, where I mentioned that Lupin was a gaslighter so I wanted to share. It was created by reddit user u/UsuallySiSometimesNo and is posted here with his permission. We had a little conversation in the comments. Read it under the cut

UsuallySiSometimesNo: That struck a cord with me, too. I didn't think about that on a conscious level before, but when I read it, it felt instantly true.

Honestly, I think the strongest examples of Lupin gaslighting are actually done to himself. The biggest, character-defining example, I think, is that after finding friendship with James, Sirius, and Peter, he becomes so desperate not to be ostracized from them (due to his issues of self-worth and his personal brand of impostor syndrome) that he deliberately and routinely feeds himself false narratives about their behavior until he can no longer tell fact from fiction, even as he's experiencing it.

Their relentless bullying of Snape? A childhood rivalry.

Their casual bullying of other students? Kids being young and stupid.

Their clear disinterest verging on contempt for Peter, someone less fortunate and vulnerable with whom they're supposed to be good friends? Just mates being mates.

Even actions taken against Lupin, himself, are revised in his memory to be 'no big deal', because he desperately needs that to be true. Let's pretend for a moment that Snape indisputably deserved to be slaughtered by a werewolf the night Sirius told him how to get past the Whomping Willow. Sirius did not send Snape to be killed by any old werewolf. What happened that night was that Sirius - one of Remus' best friends, if not his actual best friend - attempted to use Remus' curse/illness against someone (which is a big enough betrayal on it's own) without ever telling Remus that when he woke up in the morning (covered in blood and in the presence of a shredded corpse) it would be to find that he had committed the act he was most petrified he might one day commit. In setting Snape up to be killed by Lupin, Sirius, at the very least, risked Lupin's sanity, and, at the very most, risked Lupin being sentenced to death.

Now, I understand that Sirius wasn't thinking about all of that when he did what he did, and I, as a someone removed from the situation (and armed with the additional character/situational knowledge granted to a reader) can even understand why Sirius' own trauma led him to grant such a blind death sentence to Snape (which I think is related to a point you made elsewhere, u/Adventure_Time_Snail, about Sirius' "violence towards those who trigger his fundamental fear of wizard fascists" because of his abusive upbringing). But Lupin's perspective is not one of an unbiased observer. And once James found out what was happening and pulled Snape back before it was too late (which, I would think, was more to save Lupin than to save Snape) and once Remus awoke the next to day to discover everything that transpired the night before, I find it hard to believe there wasn't at least some conversation about the true gravity of the situation. And yet, even all these years later, Lupin doesn't bat an eye when Sirius not only doesn't display shame when the event is mentioned in POA, but offers something akin to regret, NOT at the fact that his actions could have gotten Lupin killed, but that that they DIDN'T get Snape killed: "It served him right...", he sneered. etc. etc.

I think the obvious question here, is 'Even disregarding what Sirius did to Snape - how can Lupin be okay with the knowledge that Sirius has no regret, at all, for what he did to him, even now that they're adults?' Well, we're not in Lupin's point of view in the books, which means we can't hear his internal monologue, but I think a satisfactory answer to the question is that he's done a substantial amount of internal gymnastics in order to get to a point where he doesn't see this as a big deal, or even as something that he has a right to be upset about.... just like a gaslighter does to their victim.

Again, because we're not in Lupin's POV, we can't point to the exact instances that such internal gaslighting took place, but, based on what we do observe from Harry's POV (and based on external knowledge of gaslighting as a true-to-life concept) I wouldn't be surprised if Lupin so desperately needs everything to be okay that he derides himself for feeling bad or betrayed, that he calls himself stupid for thinking terrible things that have happened to him are a big deal, that he wars with himself about how people who are his friends and who are so good to him and who are better friends than he thinks he deserves could possibly do something to harm him/others, and that he beats down whatever emotions and senses and gut feelings he has that tells him something his friends have done might be very wrong. What we see in the books is a man who makes excuses for his friends and harbors a warped perception of reality in much the same way victims of gaslighting do, and he seems to exploit his own insecurities in order to instill doubt in his own experiences in much the same way perpetrators of gaslighting do.

I can't help but think that, by the time Lupin tells Harry that Snape harbors a particularly strong hatred for James because James was a better Quidditch player, Lupin has become so adept at gaslighting himself that he actually believes it.

tl;dr: One of Lupin's defining characteristics is that he gaslights himself out of a desperate need to be liked by others, since he has a difficult time liking himself and seems to believe all of his relationships are incredibly fragile.

Urupotter:

This is a fascinating reading on Lupin that I've never seen. I don't read him the same way, in that I think Lupin actually does know that what he's doing is wrong, he just doesn't have the moral courage to act on his conscience. (I view him as the anti Snape, great conscience, but abysmal moral courage, while Snape had unbelievable moral courage but a shitty conscience. Their arcs are about growing their moral courage and their conscience respectively) Realizing that his negligence almost got Harry killed is what triggers his arc, concluding when he goes back to Tonks and Teddy after running away, taking responsibility for his actions for the first time.

But this reading is so interesting that I'll have to reflect on it. Do you mind if I post it on my Harry Potter tumblr blog? I'll credit you of course, I would just like to discuss it with my followers. Of course if you don't want to I won't.

UsuallySiSometimesNo:

Honestly, I think the lack of in-depth conversation about Remus Lupin (at least compared to fan favorites Sirius Black and Severus Snape) is a missed opportunity and a shame. Don't get me wrong, I can discuss Sirius and Snape until blue in the face, but Lupin's arc is just as powerful in an understated (and often underestimated) way. The muddy, oversimplified truth is, without the fatal-flaw decision making of all four Marauders throughout their lives, the series of events proceeding the first chapter of the first book don't happen, and the story we all know and love never comes to be.

And speaking of sparking a discussion about Lupin...

I think Lupin actually does know that what he's doing is wrong, he just doesn't have the moral courage to act on his conscience.

You know what? I agree. And that's what makes him so interesting, I think. He is constantly and dependably full to bursting with internal conflict. When his friends are wrong/do something wrong/say something wrong, he can and does immediately identify the situation as wrong. When he does something wrong, or when he does nothing in the face of something wrong, in that moment I believe he knows the full weight of the situation. Like you said, he has a strong conscience, as well as a deeper, perhaps more nuanced understanding of right and wrong than do, for example, James and Sirius. Now, Lupin needs his friends. They're not just people to hang out with, they're a lifeline for him. He's not going to engage in conflict with them if there is even the slightest chance that he might lose them (for a variety of reasons, he lacks, as you said, the moral courage to do so). But he's also a generally decent human being, and with a strong conscience comes the capacity for sincere guilt and remorse. So, not only will he not confront his friends, he needs it to be okay that he doesn't confront them. And it's at that point that I think the self gaslighting is triggered.

But Lupin is intelligent and nobody's fool, so the gaslighting creates only a thin layer of ice over the problem. Just enough of a cover that he can live with the things he would otherwise deeply regret. I do think he believes the alternative reality he makes for himself to be accurate as long as it isn't really challenged. Crack the ice, though, and we see him express remorse and reveal an underlying awareness of past and present truths. But then the moment is over, and the war between the uncomfortably and full weight of the truth and his need for the companionship of his friends returns, and then the gaslighting begins again, allowing him an easier return to his closest friends (and eventually his closest friend, singular, after the others have been taken from him as was his fear all along) without conflict and with minimal strain on his conscience.

Once Sirius, the last of his original chosen family is gone - truly gone, as opposed to 'located elsewhere' as he was when in prison - following OOtP, suddenly Lupin's arc takes off at a greater speed than at any point prior. He's now literally lost all of the people he'd been terrified of figuratively losing. Although there are still people and things he cares about, he isn't as dependent on any of them as he was on those foundational friendships, and the finality of their absence allows him to finally grow beyond his stifling cycle of reality shifting, confront the truths of his reality and his circumstances, and, as you said, finally take responsibility by returning to Tonks and Teddy - a decision that, ultimately, triggers his death (I don't mean to imply that it was a bad decision or that it's the sole cause of his death, but Rowling has said that being 'out of practice' contributed to his loss at the Battle of Hogwarts, which makes for a fantastic tragedy).

I don't mean to overstate the importance of this theory or imply that it's always present when he's on-stage, and, as with anyone, many other elements, of course, factor into his actions/words/motives. But I think it's a fascinating potential component of his character all the same. If you have more thoughts on this, I love to hear them - and I look forward to reading the discussion on your blog!

So what do you think? Is this a valid reading of Lupin? I'd say it is, but I'm interested in reading my followers thoughts!

[wallwriterstuff]

When You’re Lost, I’ll Leave My Gaslight On ||Yandere!Alec Volturi x Female Reader||

A request by @tiger-khans-blog Part 1: Obsession  Part 3: These Violent Delights 

Warnings: Yandere!Alec, obsessive behaviour, unhealthy relationships and implied non-con later on. This is possibly one of the darkest fics I have ever written so please be aware if controlling behaviour, gaslighting etc. is triggering to you, do not read this fic. 

The following link will take you to a Citizen’s Advice Page that have resources regarding Domestic abuse and violence. They detail various organisations offering support, refuge and advice for both women and men in abusive situations, however these only apply to the UK.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/gender-violence/domestic-violence-and-abuse-getting-help/

I am from the UK and therefore am not sure about what resources may be available internationally, however I know many of you are from places outwith the UK. If you have any resources you know of that would be useful or helpful to add here then please do! You can reblog this post with link in or message me a link to have me edit it into the original. I will post this link and any that get added in all three parts of this fic that I post.

Words: 4,436 

Summary:  Alec’s actions earned him some time in the dungeons of Volterra, and he really seems to be trying his best to behave himself the second time around. However, as your relationship with him blossoms, you find yourself growing more and more insecure, unsure if things are really as they seem to be. Your descent into madness seems much slower than Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole. 

Bella didn’t even write to you. Nor did Alice or Edward, or Emmet or Jasper. Only Carlisle had bothered to contact you, expressing his deepest regret you had gotten tangled up in all of this and his promise to speak to Aro on your behalf. Carlisle’s efforts had granted you your own quarters on the opposite side of the castle, smaller and far less grand than the ones you had woken up in but entirely yours to decorate how you pleased; at least, that was what Felix and Demetri had decided. The silence from back home was bad enough but on top of that you had to come to terms with the fact you were now forced to live with vampires who had little to no respect for human life, one of which had a mental gift she had loved to use on you as punishment for turning her brother against her as she put it.

To say you were depressed would have been an understatement.

It felt beyond impossible to consider feeling anything remotely positive when nothing seemed to go right for you. The secretaries who brought you food were the only interaction you had for the first few days and they were mostly too afraid to stick around and talk to you after hearing you were Alec’s mate. You had been utterly and entirely alone. Unbeknownst to you, this was a test, one you failed miserably, and after they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of you by day 4 of your stay with them Felix and Demetri had taken it upon themselves to visit you. They were quite patient, letting you stay as far from them as you wanted while they invaded what had become your safe space, those unblinking red eyes taking in the sparse walls and boring, plain wood desk and doors. It was then that Felix had spoken up about decorating and Demetri has enthusiastically agreed this was a wonderful idea.

Felix, it turned out, was quite the talented artist. Looking at the brute you’d never imagined he could hold a pencil without snapping it in half, but he had drawn up the most beautiful sketches you could imagine as you told them what your bedroom back home had looked like, and how you had wanted to decorate it with your father. They had let you cry again at that point and looking back on it it was rather amusing to watch the two immortals – who physically had lacked the ability to tear up for over a millennia now – share a panic stricken look and throw tissues at you. By the end of the week, they had come back to your room with everything they would need for their DIY project and helped you start painting your room. You had been a little overwhelmed at their kindness, but both had waved it off as nothing and whenever they got the chance over the next week, they had helped you decorate.

You had shared music tastes, let Demetri try to interest you in poetry (even if he had failed dramatically) and even sat to watch a movie with them once while you had lunch. Still, it didn’t feel like home, just an escape from an abysmal reality.

“You know, he will be freed tomorrow.” Felix said quietly. You were in the middle of stringing up some fairy lights around the canopy of your bed when the news rendered you immobile. You barely remembered to breathe until Demetri very gently touched your waist and helped you down from your bed before you fell.

“I don’t want him to be.” You whispered, eyes ducking away from theirs. Alec had been their friend for far longer after all and the confession was cruel. Demetri sighed slightly.

“We have visited him once or twice, spoken to him. He truly does feel awful about what happened.” He promised you. It was very obvious on your face you didn’t believe him, and even if you did you were certain Alec’s behaviour was not normal, it didn’t eradicate your fear to know he wished it never happened when it seemed like he had had no control over it in the first place. If he couldn’t control it, it could very well happen again. Felix watched you carefully as you sat back against the headboard, curling your knees to your chest.

“Why…why was he like that? Is it – I mean could he…will he be like that again?” you swallowed, mouth a little dry as your heart fluttered in your chest. You felt sick, suddenly no longer curious about whatever dinner the new secretary might bring. Gianna had stopped showing up two days ago and you didn’t need to ask to know why. They shared a side long look, Felix going back to putting together the bookshelf you had repainted with him. It was a bit of a pattern, that Demetri handled your more sensitive questions – Felix just didn’t have the tact or patience for them.

“You remember our discussion on the transformation process? How we are frozen at the stage of growth we are at when we turn?” he questioned, waiting for you to nod before continuing, “Alec was turned no older than you are now, just 16, you know yourself from growing up I’m sure what a volatile time that can be. It is not that Alec wishes to scare you, just that the violence of his feelings is something he will have to learn to control.”

“The violence of his feelings?” you asked warily. Demetri hummed, head tilting.

“We feel emotion far more intensely than you, little human. Our bodies are frozen but heightened, so that we might experience everything to the fullest extent and therefore miss out on nothing. Alec is essentially a teenager seeing the girl he has a rather potent crush on for the first time, the mate pull was both entirely unexpected and strong. He admitted himself he had no way of controlling his own actions but he has meditated and spoken to master Marcus for help since. He really does not wish to put you through that again.” Demetri assured you.

“You have to give the boy some reprieve, he wasn’t exactly having fun either. Alec prides himself on his self-control, your appearance tossed it right out of the window.” Felix pointed out. You hung your head, brows furrowed. It sounded an awful lot to you like they were defending the inexcusable behaviour. He’s just a boy, he couldn’t control it, it’s not his fault…well, it didn’t change the fact it had hurt you. It had traumatised you really, so much so that even when you replayed Demetri’s words in your head in an effort to help calm yourself you still found no sleep that night knowing Alec would be at your door tomorrow.

Except he wasn’t.

He didn’t come the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that, and you hated that you were beginning to wonder if he was ever coming at all. Was this a new, peculiar kind of torture? Making you wait for him? Every knock at the door made you jump the first day or two but after that you slowly began to unwind, your heavy heart coming to the conclusion he maybe wasn’t coming back, that he felt it better to stay away from you. You almost passed out when he finally did show up at your door, standing behind Demetri as still as stone and looking jut as perfect as any sculpture could. It really wasn’t fair the boy was so pretty. Demetri gave you a warm smile.

“Good evening Y/N, do you mind if we come in little human?” he asked. You hesitated. Did you want Alec in your safe space? Your room was your sanctuary, decorated how you liked with no trace of Alec inside it as of yet. He seemed to notice your hesitation and you were surprised to see just how much anguish it brought him.

“If you prefer, we could take a walk around the Gardens? Demetri says you haven’t left your room much.” Alec said. His voice was softer now, no longer did it have the rough edge to it it had held in the throne room. You swallowed thickly, slowly nodding your head, and moved to get your shoes from by the door. Alec inhaled sharply as the shirt you were wearing rode up slightly. His arms had left to sizable bruises on your torso and he had obviously seen them. You weren’t expecting him to look so torn up about it. Demetri glanced between you both, his eyes knowing.

“I would suggest a jumper, the evenings can be somewhat chillier.” He advised. You nodded, crossing to your closet. Once you were ready, you shut the door firmly behind you and stuck close to Demetri’s side, much to Alec’s obvious ire, but the boy kept himself in check with remarkable discipline that gave you hope he could maybe be better.

“How are you?” he asked, his voice strained. Your hair fell, covering your eyes until you pushed it back with a quick nod.

“I’m okay. How are you?” the small talk was entirely forced and thoroughly unpleasant, but Demetri stood firm between you two, absorbing it all. You were more than a little grateful.

“I have…been better,” Alec confessed, “Demetri explained the…difficulty, I’m having in being around you?” he asked. The strain in his voice was growing more obvious again now but one look from Demetri forced him to settle as you shuddered, memory flashing to the violent grip his arms had on you. If he noticed your hand subconsciously go to your bruised flesh, he didn’t comment on it.

“He told me you couldn’t control your feelings.” You said quietly. Alec huffed, eyes flashing with irritation.

“It’s as upsetting to me as it is to you, to think a mere human would make me so…so…” he trailed off, trying to choose the right word. You prompted him, curious to see what he would choose. “Obsessed.” He settled for the word with such a flat tone you couldn’t help but wrap your arms around yourself, mind reeling. It wasn’t a good word. It wasn’t your preferred word. Carlisle and Esme had been mates, hadn’t they? Rosalie and Emmett? Alice and Jasper? They had proven to you if nothing else that mates should be loving, kind. It was a relationship based on mutual attraction and desire, caring, not one person’s obsession with another. It was an unhealthy word.

“Why don’t you tell Alec of our trip to the market the other week?” Demetri hedged. He was clearly acting as chaperone today as you headed out into the fading sunlight. The Gardens of Castello Volterra were magnificent, kept tidy and neat and bursting with colour. A massive expanse of green dotted with vibrant hues of flowerbeds and glorious leafy sculptures in shapes you could recognise. Horses, chess pieces. Your answers were short, quiet, and Alec seemed to have moments he was incredibly open and vulnerable before he became a little more robotic, his control slipping when he found his emotions getting the best of him again. The amount of effort he put into his composure really astounded you, and by the time you were half-way around the Walled Garden you were actually starting to feel a little bit bad. Clearly your presence really did make him suffer.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” He admitted finally, fists clenched at his sides. With a sharp exhale, Alec turned to you, ruby red eyes darkening as soon as they made contact with your own Y/E/C.

“Alec-“

“Y/N, I have tortured myself over the way I behaved towards you. I am truly sorry I ever laid a hand on you. I hope that as I work on controlling myself around you, you work on being able to forgive me for that.” Alec cut Demetri off, his body rigid with tension and eyes flickering to the very slight gap left between you and the tracker as you moved closer out of instinct to the person you trusted most out of the two of them. His nostrils flared, seemingly annoyed by it.

“I…can try. But you need to promise me Alec, promise me you won’t hurt me like that ever again.” You said. Truthfully you were intrigued by him. Demetri had told you you would also feel the mate pull eventually, though not as strongly as Alec did, and your curiosity to know more about the witch twin was the start of a very deep dark hole you were about to fall into. The air turned almost ominous, like that strange moment between hearing thunder and waiting to see if there would be lightning.

“I won’t make you promises I can’t keep.” Alec’s voice was all that was left of him, as he was gone by the time you blinked again. Demetri sighed slightly, though he tried to perk up his expression when he realised you were looking helplessly to him for answers.

“Well, that went rather well, do you not agree?” he asked. What had Alec meant? He had done so well today. Clearly he was getting the hang of controlling his emotions, he could be less of a threat. You had rather liked the sweeter side of Alec you had glimpsed today, the side that told you about how Jane had planted the peonies and had chased Felix quite literally out of the city when he accidentally trampled on them once, just to hear you laugh. You liked the side of Alec that had quietly complimented the way your hair reflected the dying light while you stood and admired another topiary.

A month passed this way before you finally felt comfortable enough to be around Alec on your own. He had really tried hard to become a better man for you and it showed. His smiles were more natural and he found it easier to relax in your presence, no more uptight Alec that left you wandering when he would snap. Felix and Demetri had continued to chaperone your dates for all that time until you finally asked one night if you might be allowed to be with Alec on your own for a little bit. Demetri had enthusiastically agreed, both Guards seemingly happy you were finally letting their friend have his chance. Alec seemed to sense your nerves when you appeared in the library, where you’d both agreed to meet for an hour to two to test the waters. He was more relaxed than you’d ever seen him, leaning back against the sofa with his eyes closed while he listened to some far-off birdsong you couldn’t hear, or so you imagined.

“I wasn’t sure you would come.” He admitted. You smiled slightly, pulling your sketchbook from your bag as you sat on the opposite sofa to him.

“I said I would,” You reminded him. Alec smiled slightly, head bobbing in agreement. “What are you reading?” you asked. Alec glanced to the book beside him.

“The Picture of Dorian Gray, though I confess myself bored of it. Wilde has never been my preferred author.” Alec answered, sitting up and eyeing your sketchbook with interest. You didn’t notice, too busy flipping through your pages to find the sketch you were working on now. The lines were already drawn, you had just wanted to finish your shading today.

“How is Jane?” you asked. You wanted to chase away the silence and figured it would be a nice way to maybe broach the topic that she had avoided you like the plague. Alec didn’t answer you and when you looked up to see why you saw his eyes fixated on your sketch, nothing but awe painting his face. You flushed a deep shade of red.

“Beautiful and talented, little human.” He breathed. You were fairly sure you weren’t supposed to hear, but it only made your blush darken. It was nothing worthy of a spot in the Louvre, just a sketch of the view from the fountain in the plaza looking down one of Volterra’s many alleyways. You tucked some hair behind your ear with a small smile.

“Thank you,” you said softly, “I started it the other day, when Demetri took me to that café I told you about? Where they do those really nice pastries?” As if a switch had been flipped Alec’s face shut off, all expression wiped away and an impassive mask replacing it. It had happened so fast you were unsure anything other than apathy had ever painted his face in the first place.

“Demetri takes you out often.” He noted. There was nothing his tone or his face to give away his feelings about that, but a strong sense of foreboding settled in your gut. You shut your sketchbook, knowing deep in your chest that the damage was already done. The atmosphere in the room had changed drastically, becoming charged and electric, like it was filled with current just waiting to frazzle and consume you whole.

“Yeah…it’s nice to get out of the castle, and it’s not like I’m a prison so why shouldn’t I see the city I’ve got to live in now?” you rambled ever so slightly, voice wavering a bit, but Alec’s expression changed so quickly you were sure he was trying to give you whiplash. With a laugh he nodded his head.

“Of course.” He made no further comment and you descended into silence again until it was time to leave, your sketchbook long abandoned and your eyes fixed on him, waiting for his mood to shift again. He was perfectly respectable in every other way however, his silence easy to brush off as nothing when he kissed your knuckles chivalrously after walking you back to your room. He still hadn’t set foot in it yet despite his obvious intrigue, waiting for you to invite him in personally. When the door closed behind you, you released a breath you didn’t know you had been holding. The whole evening had gone far better than expected even with the few minor road bumps. In fact, Alec’s mood seemed to do an entire 180 compared to how he had been when you first met. He was pleasant, charming even. That was where the problem started.

One night, he bought you flowers and a pastry from your favourite café, remembering the exact kind you liked and bringing it to your door so you could enjoy a walk with him in the Gardens once more, watching the stars come out. You’d passed Felix in the corridor and waved but the giant had hurried by as though he hadn’t seen you. A few days after that Alec had promised to take you out to the markets, but the weather had been too bright for him apparently even though you had argued it was overcast enough that the chances of him exposing himself were slim to none. He had come to your room with new sketching pencils that night, an apology gift to make it up to you, he said.

It had become a theme though, you noticed. Alec would promise to take you somewhere, and then he would find one way or another to weasel his way out of taking you out.

“I never promised you anything, I said we might, your imaging things.” He would dismiss it the same way every time and always follow up with a nice gesture that made you feel bad for questioning him on it. He really did feel guilty about you not getting to go out, didn’t he? It wasn’t just that though either, it was Demetri and Felix’s absence in your life that had grown concerning. You were conscious you hadn’t seen your friends for quite some time, Alec always claiming they were busy with guard duty or some other task, yet when you caught Demetri in the corridor once he had brushed you off with the enough regret in his eyes that it made you question Alec’s entire story.

“But they always found time to at least say hello to me before, so why-“

“Y/N, my love I don’t wish to upset you, but do you really think they were ever your friends?” Alec asked. You blinked, frowning in confusion.

“Of course they’re my friends! We decorated my room together and they helped us get to know each other. I just don’t get why they aren’t around anymore.” You huffed. Alec ran his hand down your arm gently, your skin tingling at the ice-cold contact. He had slowly started to incorporate physical affection into your relationship, and you would be lying if you said you weren’t thrilled with the little touches. It was a far cry from the rough embrace he had given you nearly two months ago.

“They were fulfilling a duty tesoro, you required a room and at the Masters request they built you one, and do you really think one little human can go unguarded in this place? They were your sentries, not your friends.” His expression was so sympathetic you wondered how you couldn’t not believe him, and he’d held you to him as you cried over their obvious betrayal. As weeks dragged into another month though your anxiety only grew, and it didn’t make sense. Things between you and Alec were really good. He had much more control now and he was affectionate and sweet, always giving you little gifts and making time in his day to see you even if no one else would, but something was just…wrong. You were sure you were going mad.

You wrote home frequently to the Cullen’s so they could pass letters on to Bella, but those letters sometimes went missing and despite being sure you wrote them, Alec assured you you hadn’t and he had never seen them materialise. As sweet as he was Alec always put down your clumsy little accidents to you being human to, laughing when you tripped into his arms or holding his breath as he cleaned up scrapes for you with that dreaded little saying of his.

“You’re only human Y/N.” he chuckled, as he carefully placed a band aid around the finger you had accidentally cut while cooking yourself dinner. You sighed dejectedly.

“I wish you’d stop saying that.” You admitted. It felt like you weren’t good enough. Your human needs were a bother to him, that much was clear. He always had to take time to make sure you had something to eat when he really just wanted to spend his free hours with you. Most of the time when he was free you were asleep and you could only imagine how boring it must be for him to have to spend so much time alone when you were across the castle, sleeping peacefully. Bathroom breaks were another thing that gave you almost nauseating anxiety now to, and you’d scrubbed your body pink on multiple occasions wondering if your personal hygiene was assaulting his nose or not after a day or two without showering.

You needed to clear your head, you decided, so a trip to your café was in order. Alec wouldn’t be able to take you you knew, not with the sun as bright as it was right then. It would fade quickly given the late time of year but you left a note just in case Alec wondered across your empty room. It felt good, to get fresh air and to sit in a window seat, watching the world go by without a care as sweet pastry melted in your mouth. You had brought a book with you to enjoy to, a fantasy world to escape to for a little bit before your old anxieties came crawling back in. Though your relationship with Alec was as yet undefined, you felt like you were to blame for that due to your inferior status. After all, what could you possible bring to a relationship with him that would make him want to call you his mate? You were only human after all.

“Now what are you doing here little human?” Demetri’s voice startled you so much you dropped your book to the tabletop with a gasp. Heart fluttering, you couldn’t help but laugh breathless, if only to ease the tension.

“Demetri, god you scared the hell out of me.” You swallowed, not liking the way he was frowning at you.

“Well you can consider us even then.” He said, arms folding across his chest. You felt a lot like you were a child being scolded in that moment.

“What?” you asked.

“You heard me. You cannot just leave the castle Y/N, not without telling someone or at least leaving a note. There was an uproar when Alec found you gone, we thought something had happened to you.” He chided. Your frown deepened.

“But I did leave a note, I taped it to my door so Alec would see.” You protested. Demetri’s eyebrows rose.

“Not according to Alec. He found no note and I did not see anything resembling one when I came to your room to see what the fuss was about. Come on, you have had your fun. A harmless misunderstanding it may be but you will be in for a scolding from the Masters.” he sighed, holding a hand to help you out of your chair. Your stomach twisted. You were going to have to see the Masters because you’d gone out for coffee? How had Alec missed your note? You were sure you had left it on the door for him! You remembered the schluuuuck sound of sticky tape and everything as you taped it up!

“But Demetri, I swear I left a note.” You said, packing away your things as your good mood crumbled. Demetri was quiet for a moment.

“Perhaps you did and it was overlooked, either way you have scared us all enough for one day.” He took your bag from you like the gentleman he was, escorting you back to the castle. You were so sure you had left that note for Alec, as sure as you were about your own name, but what if you hadn’t? You resolved to steel your nerves for now, take your scolding and ensure you left one next time. Hell, next time you would even tell the secretary to go and tell Alec in the throne room just to be safe. You weren’t going to worry your mate like this again, it wasn’t going to become a pattern.

How wrong you were.

[im-whatchamccallit]

Circles//Kim Doyoung (NCT 127)

Pairing: Kim Doyoung x Fem!Reader

Genre: Series/Multiple parts, Mafia/Crime!AU, Suggestive, Angst, Fluff, Potential Smut in future chapters

Warnings: Suggestive content, mention of guns and murder, mentions of the mafia and organized crime

Word Count: 4.5k

(A/N: So, like I said in one of my last post, I’m trying to start a series so that I will have a reason to post more often and not let this blog die the way I did before. Only problem? This was the first thing that came to mind and I’ve been terrified it won’t do well so please leave feedback if you like it so I know to continue it. This is also my first NCT 127 post so... Yay! Also, I recently read about how taboo a lot of people think the mafia/crime AUs are in fanfiction and I want to be cautious of their feelings in regards to this which is why I also haven’t posted it but I just want to post something while getting out of my writers block. But, again, leave feedback on whether you love it or hate it, leave request if you want, anything’s appreciated.)

Masterlist|Guidelines

You’ve seen elegance but never at this level, eyes glued to the ceiling that seemed to reach heights you could only dream of, not even thirty basketball players stacked onto one another’s shoulders able to graze the top. The sparkling from the crystal gold leaf chandeliers adding to the fairytale-like atmosphere as servers of all kind bustled around you offering food and drinks at any given chance, your hand reluctantly staying at your side as you declined their generosity. You were starving, but you had a job to do and, that job, was Song Minhyun.

He was the newly appointed Don of the Amarillo family, his father passing away from an unknown condition only a week ago but, based on how fast Minhyun made the world aware that he was now in control of all the illicit acts committed in the name of Amarillo after years of having their identity protected and undisclosed, even going as far as to threaten and betray the various families beneath him in an insane power trip, it was clear his father’s death was no accident. But you were never a fan of that man, he was creepy with a bad attitude to match, so this task wasn’t some gesture of vengeance for him, it was strictly about you and your family.

Just like the Amarillo’s, your family went under an alternative name, Nio’s, which closely resembled the name of the pharmaceutical manufacturing company masking it, Neo Tech. It always made you laugh considering no one caught on to their association, given Nio’s were the largest distributors and exporters of controlled substances in majority of the Eastern hemisphere. But joining Nio’s wasn’t a life you wanted to live, you were practically forced into it, but once you’ve engrained yourself into a life of organized crime, it was impossible to leave. You lived every day with the mindset of kill or be killed, Minhyun’s threats to expose your operations to the NIS who, after the death of Nio’s founder, Kim Dongwan, assumed your family officially ceased activity in the crime syndicate, being your main motive for taking him down. Sure, you were ordered to handle the assassination but, considering you could face life in prison simply for everything you’ve done in the name of Nio’s, you were more than willing. There was one problem though, Song Minhyun was an absolute dream.

Your thoughts seemed to fade into nothingness when you initiated conversation, going with the plan to seduce and kill him only to find he was much more enticing than you anticipated. He was a year or so older than you yet spoke like he was some immortal seer, his wisdom and life stories drawing you in and leaving your heart racing. His smile was so wide and gummy but eyes sharp and attentive, never leaving yours even as he drew you further from the crowd which, according to Taeyong, was not part of the plan. And you couldn’t begin to understand how fucked you were.

You didn’t know where he was taking you, too focused on his words while simultaneously adjusting your silky white dress to reveal more cleavage from the already plunging v-neck and your walk becoming sultrier to expose more of your leg from the thigh-high slit.

“You know, you shouldn’t focus too much on your looks when you’re naturally beautiful.” Minhyun spoke, your eyes darting to him as your hands returned to your sides, a shy giggle echoing in the now deserted hallway he lead you through.

“Can you blame me? Standing next to an attractive man can really mess with a girl’s self-esteem.” You admitted, suddenly feeling like some high schooler in a rom-com.

“Well, I can help with those insecurities. Just tell me where to start and I’ll make you feel like an absolute queen.” Your breath hitched as his body turned to face you, hand reaching to cup your neck but it was large enough that his thumb could glide over your bottom lip with ease, smudging your red lipstick against your skin teasingly but still holding your gaze.

His presence, the sheer dominance he exuded made you whimper in a mixture of fear and pleasure. You weren’t going planning to escape yet he made the initiative to hold you close to him, an arm wrapped securely around your waist making a heat rush through you that could only be described as want, no longer aware of your duties and no longer caring. He was perfect, and you wanted a piece of his perfection. Maybe for the night, maybe forever, you decided you’d choose after whatever surprise he had for you was done in the dark office he dragged you into, your excitement blocking out the burning gaze from just down the hall.

Minhyun shut the door, not bothering to lock it seeing that you were so willing and easy to remain with him. He knew who you were and what you were planning to do. You were an orphan taken in by Nio’s, trained to be a child soldier for a man who couldn’t even hold his own against Minhyun’s father, now under Taeyong’s rules and orders. But knowing that his first encounter with Taeyong was less than stellar and the sudden ultimatum to forfeit all their assets to the Amarillos or be handed over to the police for sentences that can range from 50 years to death for each and every one of his precious borgata, the only thing Taeyong could do was kill him and you, unfortunately were just a pawn in those plans.

“You know, your looks are nothing to be insecure about. You’re beautiful beyond comprehension.” He spoke lowly, inching closer and guiding you to his large desk just by the window, the moonlight that seeped through the blinds the only form of light allowing you to take in his features.

You gasped as he grabbed your hips, spinning you and pressing you over the desk. You sighed in contentment at the feeling of his hands caressing up your thighs, dress riding up and slowly revealing the black thong you had, a low chuckle leaving his lips at the sight. Not just because you were practically bare before him, but at the pocket pistol held securely in its holster that you managed to forget about. It was a Glock 42, making him proud that he did his research on you because, if he was in your position right now, and the number of murders you committed were accurate, he’d be a goner already.

“(Y/n), if only you were as smart as you are beautiful.” He said, your eyes widening at the way he spoke but, more importantly, he knew your name. Your real name. Not the one you were given for this mission.

“How’d you-Ow!” You whimpered as he grabbed your hair, pulling you upwards until your back was flush with his chest.

Tears were pricking your eyes, your breathing heavy as you felt a cool metal press to your temple swallowing hard while simultaneously attempting to reach to your thigh discretely to find your own gun, only to find it was the one in his hand.

“When I read about you, I was so intrigued. So curious. You know there’s only one photo of you online and it’s a mugshot from when you were still living on the streets?” He laughed out loud at that, ignoring the way your body thrashed against his in an attempt to free yourself, head leaning further away from the possibly cocked gun in fear that he was finished monologuing already.

“But you’re really weak. And I’d usually like that in women, especially when they’re this submissive but, them wanting to kill me is a deal breaker. So what am I to do if I have the opportunity to murder my would-be assassin?” His lips were pressed to the shell of your ear, your eyes squeezed shut as you tried to silently apologize to the Nio’s. Sorry that you let your guard down, that you let some pretty face turn you into some horny teenager, the only plus side to your death being that it wouldn’t be Taeyong killing you because you knew how much he loved to torture before doing the deed. And with that final thought, you were ready to die, just hoping that someone else could finish the job you’ve failed tonight. And they did.

The sound of the door colliding with the wall was all you heard, followed by two hollow gunshots. Your eyes flew open as you felt Minhyun’s body fall limp against yours, hand slowly releasing your hair until you could move again, quickly shoving him off to adjust your dress to cover yourself before facing your silent savior, your heart stopping at the fierce, angry, “don’t move or I’ll kill you too” gaze Doyoung was giving you.

It was one thing to piss off Taeyong, you knew what to expect, but with Doyoung? He wasn’t a killer. In fact, he was the medic of your unit, coming along in case things went awry and someone needed instant care. He was a gentle person with a snappy attitude, but never one to act on his threats, so to see him with a gun in his hand, a body lying face first in blood from its skull and chest created by the man himself and approaching you with a scowl so deep you thought his baby face would finally start to wrinkle, you felt more fear than when you were almost dead.

“D-doyoung. Thank yo-“ You gasped as your head turned, eyes stinging with tears and cheek burning in both embarrassment and from the harsh impact his hand left.

You slowly peered up, afraid he’d strike you again just to see Yuta and Haechan slipping by silently, giving you a brief glance while collecting to fallen shells and your gun from Minhyun, only to leave you alone once more with the unpredictable aid.

“Doyoung-“

“Let’s go.”

Those were the only words he said before turning to head out of the office, your body immediately following close behind. He was silent the entire time, stuffing the pistol back into his waistband before buttoning his suit’s blazer to conceal it, leading the both of you through the still bumbling party and to the exit. Everything he did felt so tense despite being so normal. The way he spoke to the valets, how he entered the car without bothering to open the door for you, even his group call letting everyone know the task was done felt hostile. But you said nothing, continuing to wait idly by and praying he forgot about the situation.

You were tempted to break the awkward silence looming between the both of you on this seemingly hours long drive but, from the way he was radiating heat from how angry he was, you felt staying silent would be best. But you didn’t want to stay silent. You wanted to thank him for saving you while simultaneously screaming at him for slapping you, but also have one normal conversation with him. It was painful to admit that for the past few years you both weren’t exactly friendly with one another, no one seeming to care as “this was strictly business”, and you hated it. You never said it but you loved the Nio’s members and knew they loved you and each other as well, but for some reason the only two people that kept this family at arms length were the core members, Lee Taeyong and Kim Doyoung.

You knew Doyoung wasn’t a fan of the family ever since his father introduced him to that life, pissed he didn’t follow in his older brother’s footsteps and leave as soon as possible. He was supposed to be the heir to the family and be the boss of the 18 people living under his roof and the 7 working overseas in China to keep production there running and, as much as you didn’t want the responsibility, he was in too deep to run away. He opted to stop training for field work, developing a phony passion for medicine and surgery which led to him becoming the emergency medic for the team and no longer catching his father’s fancy for taking over their empire, leading to his heirship being rescinded. And as for the spot as heir? Doyoung’s father ordered Taeyong to fill. You knew Taeyong a lot better than the others but were utterly shocked to see him take over so easily. He was obviously a natural born leader but he had a habit of complaining about not always wanting to be in charge, using you as his unwilling therapist when he felt like reverting to his unintimidating, crybaby self. But there was no exit at this point, so what more could you do than make the most of a bad situation by befriending one another and having fun when you felt your lives were no longer in danger? And, whether they liked it or not, they were going to have fun with you and the rest of their constantly growing family.

“Y-you know, I was more scared of you then being killed back there. I’ve never seen you so mad.” You laughed, hoping to at least get a smile or something from him, your eyes glancing over to see his grip on the steering wheel tighten at your words. Maybe you should’ve just shut up.

“Doyoung, I’m sorry I put you in a situation where you had to kill, I know you hate stuff like that but, if it wasn’t for you, I’d probably be dead. Besides, it’s kinda like medicine if you think about it. Except you saved a life by taking one rather than just giving drugs to- OW!” You cried out as he slammed on the brakes, the only thing keeping you from flying through the windshield being your hands on the dashboard and the seatbelt crossed over your chest and waist.

“You bitch!” You snapped at him, watching his blank expression as he removed his seatbelt and turned off the car.

“Meet me in my office. You have five minutes.” Doyoung said plainly, your eyes fixed on him in bewilderment as he exited the car with no concern for you.

You let out an annoyed breath, your fear from before mixed with anger as you hurriedly followed his lead, leaving the car and speed walking to the front door he was entering through. To your surprise, most of the guys were there, not sparing either of you a glance as they knew what had happened and knew better than to interfere, but one person didn’t keep quiet.

“(Y/n), what the FUCK did I tell you?” Taeyong growled, your body practically jumping as he cornered you in the entrance’s corridor, eyes burning with anger and panic that you knew he had no way of controlling. He was always a hothead.

“I-I-“

“I’m having the meeting with her, Taeyong. Don’t bother. You have two minutes.” Doyoung spoke, voice fading as he continued down the hall to the small office he typically frequented to buy and sell shipment for Nio’s personal and professional use.

As soon as he was out of earshot, you grabbed Taeyong’s hands, eyes wide and teary as you tried to plead with him to save you.

“You went off where we couldn’t see you and didn’t even complete the mission. You could have been dead by now.”

“I know and you can punish however you want but, Taeyong, Doyoung is pissed, and I don’t know what to do. He already slapped me, now he’s not even speaking to me,”

“He never talks to you.”

“He does sometimes, when he wants to be a sarcastic asshole! But, please, Taeyong, talk to him. Calm him down so he doesn’t hurt me again.” You tried to use a soft voice, hoping to strike a sympathetic nerve in the doe-eyed man.

“(Y/n/n),” Taeyong sighed, cupping your face and making you lock eyes with him.

“You fucked up and made Doyoung do something he’s sworn to himself and us that he’d never do. His anger is justified. But I’ll be there for you whenever you’re in danger, whether it’d be an enemy or anyone living in this house, I’ll never let you get hurt.” He gave a warm smile, your lips curling to mimic his.

“But not tonight. You put us all at risk as you need to face the consequences.”

“Taeyong!”

“I’ll visit you in the infirmary later tonight.” You whimpered in fear as he kissed the crown of your head and pushed you in the direction of the office, heels clicking against the white marble floor as you stumbled to what might be your imminent doom.

You could taste blood in your mouth from the way you bit down on your tongue to ease your anxiety, your once statue-like body moving forward with caution although the chilly air was urging you to retreat. You couldn’t turn back because Taeyong would just escort you to Doyoung himself but if you went straight to Doyoung, who knows what he’d do. You couldn’t even take a second to cry over your dilemma once you noticed the dark brown mahogany door. The office was soundproof, something you both loved and hated. Whatever Doyoung wanted to scream at you would go unheard by the men possibly showering and preparing for bed after a somewhat successful evening, but then they wouldn’t hear you scream for help. It reminded you of earlier tonight, making the situation a bit more lighthearted until you realized you could’ve died then and would possibly die now.

“Oh god,” You breathed out in a whisper, shutting your eyes and taking a deep breath as your hand gripped the steel doorknob, turning it and entering the spacious and organized room.

“Doyoung.” You spoke lowly, shutting the door behind you but refusing to move any closer to him as he sat with an unrecognizable file before him.

“July of 2016, you were assigned to deliver a new batch of amphetamines to Xu Minghao who ran the Chinese operations of Sebong. Instead of cooperating with Weishen, AKA the Chinese sector of your own team, you thought doing the drop off yourself would be fine, only to let your guard down and let it slip that you were in Nio’s which promptly lead to you not only being ambushed, but Sicheng jumping in to save you and being shot in the lower back in the process.” He said blandly, flipping over the page to yet another as you swallowed hard at the memory, accidentally mentioning Haechan’s name and revealing you weren’t just a middle man in their operation but a direct asset, and Winwin payed the price for your stupidity.

“I remember just fine, but-“

“February of 2017, you knowingly entered enemy territory in Kyoto without alerting Yuta who, as you’ve always known, is in charge of our Japanese affairs. He has people over there for a reason, to handle the shit we can’t while we’re in Seoul. But you waltz over there and initiate a gang war that has only now been resolved.” He said, voice growing in annoyance and animosity that was a complete 180 from his once emotionless tone, your voice caught in your throat as you also remembered that day. You were on vacation and thought it’d be fine as long as you went in some disguise, but you were too well known and the fact you couldn’t speak Japanese only made it worse. You even remembered how Yuta refused to talk to you for months as he traveled constantly to fix your mistake.

“I-I know I fucked up that time but I tried to explain and I-“

“And that brings us to tonight! You had to stay in the spotlight with the man threatening not only your life but everyone you know in Nio’s and neighboring groups, and lead him back to the apartment we set up for you for a simple and quick execution, but you decide to go further into his mansion, expose yourself to him, and allow him to nearly murder you with your bare ass out!” His voice was strained as he screamed this time, your eyes watering as he pushed the large leather chair back to stand, making his way around the desk to approach you.

“I’d remind you about what happened in 2013, but I’m sure you’d never forget that.” He said with no emotion once more, your eyes low as you tried to suppress the urge to touch your slightly sunken head. Your our only job was to shoot if you saw someone escaping during an exchange but, instead, you were hit yourself, every medic working hard to keep you from dying and leaving you with a partially shaved head and a new metal plate in your skull.

“But I want you to tell me who saved your ass that time, (Y/n)?” His voice was playful now, emotions changing like an out of control radio station. Sometimes you wondered if he was just as mentally fucked as Taeyong.

You gasped when you felt his hand gripping your face, forcing your head up and back until your eyes met, a fire behind them that made your stomach swirl in fear but enchantment. You almost even forgot about how rough his grip on your jaw was because his hands were so soft, the warmth he let off no longer intimidating but causing you to turn to putty in his hands and wanting to fall against him in comfort and bliss. But the sudden harsh flick to your forehead made you realize he was anything but comforting.

“Stop acting like a touch starved dumbass and answer me. Who the fuck saved you from bleeding out in a filthy warehouse in the middle of fucking Daegu?” He said harshly, your eyes darkening as you tried to keep your composure.

“You did.”

“And you decided that me handling the responsibility of operating on you was some sentimental, heroic act and that from that day forth, you would make it everyone’s job to save you? That it was my job to save you?”

You felt your eyes tearing up again, lip quivering as a sob threatened to escape you and he could only let out a scoff, harshly pulling his hand back as he watched you cry.

“And now you’re crying.”

“I tried to thank you, I tried to apologize for making you save me yet you won’t let me! You slapped me! You’re screaming at me and making me feel bad when I already fucking feel bad. I know I’m fucking up and it’s hard on you guys but I-I just don’t know what to do! I’m tired and sick of having to live every second of my life knowing there is no one in this world I can trust and that I can never leave and that’s all I want, Doyoung! I just want to leave and be a normal person.”

The silence between you was deafening, almost loud in a way, but it was allowing you both to take in the words you said. You could see the look of conflict and annoyance on his face through your tears, a glimmer of what you both hoped and feared was sadness in his eyes as he rolled them to look anywhere but you. And what Doyoung saw of you was a breeding ground of trauma and dysfunction.

You were no different from anyone there, your life story was so similar to most of theirs that no one had time to pity you. You joined Nio’s when you were only 10, hair matted and filthy like the clothes you wore, hands stained red with blood and a look in your eyes that screamed frustration but hopelessness. You were the perfect tool for his father and it was sad watching yet another lost soul fall into this lifestyle. But you proved to be so capable of yourself, strong and competent but, after the death of his father, something in you changed. You were emotional, distracted, constantly agreeing to do task but never fully connecting mentally. He even noticed you screaming in the middle of the night from nightmares. Whether you remembered or not, you and Doyoung were close, so close it managed to shift the atmosphere of Nio’s into something enjoyable and worthy of being part of, but he knew it wasn’t good for you to stay. Not for any of you. So he gave you a chance to leave, a chance to live your life the way you had always told him you wanted, but you didn’t take it. Your reason? Taeyong. You never explained why he was the reason you were staying but the way you constantly clung to their leader like you were his lapdog was all the clarification that he needed. For Doyoung, the closeness you shared and the desire you both had of living normal lives was nothing compared to the same greed for power you shared with Taeyong. So he stopped trying to save you, stopped focusing on how to help you preserve what little of your sanity was left until now. Seeing you at your breaking point made it clear to him that even if this life would follow you forever, letting you go was better than having everyone killed from your mistakes. And, if you left, whatever problems haunted you would be yours to face alone, and he was fine with that.

“You will never be a normal person. And whatever life you choose to live will be as stressful as this one because you’ll spend every second looking over your shoulder wondering who’s out to get you. But, you’re dead weight now, and it’s unfair we’re the ones that have to keep carrying you. I don’t care when or where you go, just leave.” His tone was harsh and cold, the relief you felt at his words not enough to ease the pressure in your chest.

Doyoung’s no longer had power to make these decisions once Taeyong was appointed as leader, so you knew without the boss’ approval his word meant nothing. But, if you had the chance to run, why not take it? Maybe for one day, you could be free, probably take the time you needed to hide away from Nio’s and the crime world you knew all too well. You had no set plan, but sticking around trying to making one would do you no good.

“T-thank you. Thank you for everything.” You said with a small voice and deep bow, Doyoung not bothering to look at you as you hurriedly exited the room to head to yours and pack any belongings you needed for your new life.

You knew this life was hard to leave yet lived with the ignorant optimism that there was always some escape and no turning back. Unfortunately for you, you were simply a butterfly living in an airtight jar and, no matter where you turned, the air you needed was nowhere to be found and, tonight, was the beginning of your suffocation.

[sadselfhelp]

Who I Am, And Why I Created This Blog.

TRIGGER WARNINGS - Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Child Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Violence, Drug Overdose, Suicide, Psychotic Breaks. 

Take a walk with me, let me show you around the mind of The Sad Hatter.

There's a lot going on in my head right now, and I feel like I'm on the precipice of something. I'm standing on a cliff's edge and I'm either going to plummet or I'm going to fly. It's been building inside me for a long time, and I can't contain it anymore. So here it is, here's me laid bare, because I need to say this, I need to put it into words. I need to purge it all. To try and make sense of all of this shit in my brain, I think it's time I organize it. I don't know where to begin, but I guess I start at the beginning and make use of the ability to edit.

Before you read this, please be aware of the trigger warnings. And please understand that this is the most honest and open I have been, I really am stripped bare in this piece of writing. It’s not at all pretty, and am I not guiltless in parts. This may well alter whatever opinion you have of me. 

I guess the beginning is birth, right? But I don't want to rehash all that trauma, so let me speed through it. Twenty-Eight years ago I was born, violently. I'm serious, I ripped my way out of the womb, and tore that thing apart. I guess I can sort of understand why my mother couldn't love me after that was my first act, collapsing her womb. So let me speedrun this part of the story. Mum didn't want me, gave me to my dad who raised me as a single parent with the help of his parents, until he met my stepmother. Shockingly, she didn't want me either, but because she couldn't get rid of me she decided to physical and psychological torture was the next best thing. 

When I was eleven years old I snapped and didn't want to put up with it anymore, so I wrote a goodbye note and then snuck into the medicine cabinet and took a bunch of pills. Spoiler alert, I didn't die. I did however end up in a children's home, cue more abuse, little bit of bullying and sexual assault etc.... I snapped again, but instead of turning my anger inwards, I became an absolute bastard. Ok, I still turned it inwards a bit, I had a lot of anger, and now I have a few hundred scars to prove it. But, it turns out that violence can beget violence, and I acted out in every possible way. Racked up a horrifying rap sheet, assault, vandalism, arson, and finally... GBH. I was supposed to get put in a secure unit (child prison – Scottish Edition) but I was always able to talk myself out of trouble. 

See, I was this tiny little white girl with big sad eyes and a hell of a sob story, even at the bottom of the food chain I still had privilege. So instead of getting locked up, I just got sent to a different home. And here's the really messed up part, this home was better. The staff were nicer, and nobody hurt me. My behavior literally changed overnight. I went from being charged by the police on a weekly basis, to never getting so much as a pocket money sanction. I will never excuse my actions, nor condone them, but after years of guilt I finally realized that the bad things I did were in retaliation to a bad situation, and though I wasn’t acting like a good person, I’m not a bad person, just a messed up one. 

I still refused to go to school though, because though I didn't yet know it at the time, I had severe social anxiety. I was smart, a little too smart to be honest, and I found myself thriving with a private tutor. When the time came to sit my exams, someone fucked up, and despite having record breaking test scores on the pre-exams, I never actually got to sit my standard grades (think SAT's – Scottish Edition). I'm still bitter about that. So by this point in the story, I'm 16, and legally an adult, too old for a children's home. I got turfed to a hostel, and the next few parts of the story are pretty fuzzy to me. 

This is where my mental health really started to deteriorate. I bounced between homeless hostels and B&B's for a year or so, until I got a my first flat/apartment. By that point, I was utterly fucked in the head. I was blacking out frequently, for anywhere between a couple of minutes to three days. I would come back to myself in sometimes compromising positions, and once there was blood. A lot of blood, splashed all over the walls. Then there was the time I suddenly found myself standing in the kitchen, about to plunge a knife into my own chest.

Nobody ever did tell me what the hell that was about. Or maybe they did and I just... forgot? But because I was extremely suicidal, a doctor finally decided to do something, and the police and the paramedics came to my door to take me to the psychiatric hospital. I spent ten months there while I cycled through various anti-psychotics and anti-depressants, and was 'rehabilitated into society'. The second I was out, I made the worst decision I have ever made in my life. If I can give you one piece of advice, one lesson to take from my shitshow of a life, it's this: Don't move hundreds of miles away to be with the guy you met online while you were having a psychotic break.

I've never really thought of myself as a victim, but I guess I'm the only one who saw it that way. Ben, that was his name, Ben was a monster, and I didn't know it until it was too late. He never hit me, never lifted a hand to me, he never had to. He could put a knife in my hand and make me hurt myself for his entertainment. I had told him everything, so he knew exactly how to break me down, how to make me want to bleed. He locked me in a house and used me up. And when I had enough, and tried to break free of him, he would just tell the police I was mentally ill and they would smile sympathetically and give me back to him.

But then my dad had a breakdown. My dad, who when he found out what my stepmother was doing to me, buried his head in the sand and packed my little suitcase for me. I hadn't spoken to him in a while until he reached out from the same psychiatric ward I had not long vacated. He had cracked under the realization that I had never lied about her, and the guilt broke him apart. I could have hated him, if it had happened a few years earlier then I would have. But I had experienced enough of the world to learn a few things, like how easily it is to fuck up, and that no matter how strong you are, you aren't immune to monsters. The truth was he was as much a victim of her evil as I was. She had manipulated him, played with his head, used his insecurities against him. So I helped him through his issues, the way I wished someone had helped me. That doesn't really make me a good person, it just makes me human.

But my dad got better, and found his footing. And when he did, he realized something wasn't right with me, and I told him the truth about Ben. My dad had left me to suffer at the hands of an abuser once before, and he wasn't going to allow it to happen again. He came and got me, and he took me home. He moved me in with him, gave me his bed and slept on the couch. After a couple of months, he helped me get my own place.

And that's the happy ending, right? All the trauma was over, I was safe, that's where the story should end. Right? I bet you're not naive enough to believe that, but I sure as hell was. I thought I would recover and that everything would be ok. I thought that with safety, there would come the chance to heal. I thought my wounds would scab over, and I would have my scars but at least I would be able to move without bleeding out. But that's not how trauma works. I had two decades worth of trauma, abuse, and hell.

I just... faded. I didn't crack, I didn't crumble, I didn't break, I just stopped. For five years I sat in one room of my home, drowning inside myself. Last year I got handed a lifeline, and now I live somewhere better. I'm not really allowed to live independently so I actually live in kind of retirement village of all places. I have my own house, but it's got intercoms and emergency cords everywhere, I get checked on daily by on on-site worker. And I'm trying to get better, I really am. It's just not that easy.

There's more to the whole story that I maybe should have put in, like the fact that my mother was a drug addict when she was pregnant with me, and that may have been the reason some of my organs didn't properly form and/or formed wrong. My lung split in half when I was a baby, and parts of my stomach are missing. Or that my mother is full on batshit insane. I could have had a perfect childhood and I still would have been mentally ill. Hell, I was seeing psychologists at five years old. Take my sketchy genetics, add twenty years of severe traumas, and well... I'm a little fucked up. Because a lot of medical conditions use acronyms, my full list of diagnosis looks like I'm collecting the fucking alphabet.

I have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and Agoraphobia. I also have a Pulmonary Sequestration, Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia, the stomach and lung issues. Immune Hemolytic Anemia, I'm basically allergic to my own blood. Plus, ya know, my liver recently decided to just fucking nope out, the pissy lil bitch is failing. I also may or may not have cancer, I don't know because I pussied out of the tests. At this point I am a walking, decaying corpse that is held together by glitter glue and bitterness.

So... why exactly am I writing this? And why am I even considering posting this? I mean, my problems aren't as bad as some other people's. We've all got shit to deal with, especially in 2020. The whole world is falling apart, so what right do I have to sit here pouting and pouring my problems out? Well, for a start, I guess this is my blog, I can post whatever, and it's up to everyone else if they read it.

So here it is, you have the backstory, so here's what it's all been leading up to.

I'm struggling. Like, really struggling. I'm stuck on this cliff, and I want off, any way I can. Whether I fall or fly, I just want free. I can't live like this anymore, because I can't breathe.

The fucking agonizing duality of being socially anxious and too easily overstimulated, and yet feeling fucking empty inside if you're not surrounded by action and noise. The world is too noisy for my brain, but my brain is too noisy for the world. I get antsy if I'm not doing at least a thousand different tasks, but I get overwhelmed if I try to do anything at all. It leads to short bursts of mania, followed by weeks of depression. But underneath all of that, under all the dramatic showboating, and the dark humor, under all the bravado... I'm really just sad.

Years ago, when I first came up with the moniker "The Sad Hatter", I said it was because I may be mad, but my madness was born of sadness. I'm just sad. I carry it with me where my heart should be. So I named myself Sad, and I put on the hat, and I wore my sadness like armor, turned it into an act, and made a spectacle of it. "I'm The Sad Hatter, and I'm mentally ill but that's alright, I'm going to be just fine!" I told you all I had my issues, and I'll come close to opening up about how bad those issues are, I'll give little chunks of information at intermittent intervals, and then two hours later I'll act like it never happened. I'll admit I was close to killing myself, and then two days later I'll post dog photo's and act like I'm all better.

I'm writing this because I'm sad. And tomorrow, I'll act like I'm not. But when I waver again, I'll come back here and I'll open up again. And along the way, maybe you're reading this and realizing you aren't alone in feeling overwhelmed. Maybe you're realizing you're not the only one who isn't healing neatly and in a timely manner. Maybe you're reading this and gaining some insight into the struggles someone you care about is facing. Maybe my opening up is can help somebody else, I really hope so, but I know it's helping one person. It's helping me.

This blog, it's about living with myself. It's about living with The Sad Hatter.

[uwua3]

hi, first of all your blog is so pretty damnnn! so are requests open? if they're open, can i request for jealous misumi headcanon?

thank you so much for being the first person to ever request! you’re the absolute best ♡ i really hope you like this~ have a happy, happy day!!!

summary: misumi knew he didn’t deserve you, but he wanted you more than anything

warnings: abandonment, depression, family trauma, insecurity, jealousy

author’s note: i wish to apologize for not seeing this sooner :( i hope you know i didn’t purposely ignore this because the moment i saw this, i became so happy! i am forever grateful for your request, thank you for everything! ♡

i purposely left the ending open! it’s up to you what decision you would have made with your relationship with misumi + i wanted to acknowledge misumi’s vulnerability because of his past; i felt as if growing up in a hostile, competitive environment leads to stunted emotions and not being able to understand one self. it’s a bit personal because i think most of us understand being afraid to take risks to go after what we want because we feel as if we don’t deserve it. i’m here to tell you, don’t let it build up, it’s better to disappoint someone for a moment than yourself for a lifetime! go for it! i believe in you!

word count: 1,489

music: want you more – harlequin gold

upon the rooftop.

🌻⚠️ ikaruga misumi

misumi didn’t realize how attached he became until it was too late

he’d casually come up to you with no clue why you turned so red when he held your hand, or when he refused to leave your side because he enjoyed your company

after all, he’s only recently discovered what having good friends is like!

but it’s hard to know the difference with misumi since he’s like this with everyone, always ready with his special triangle to make them smile—it honestly feels like you’re just like everyone else

you started thinking misumi’s affectionate & clingy behavior was a joke since he was so indifferent and unbothered by your attempts to drop hints that you’re interested

seriously... you once even told him you liked him straight to his face and he was lost in his daily town mapping to find the best triangles

did he respond? no. misumi just started rambling about the best hotspots of triangles that were around, much to your embarrassment

so you decided you shouldn’t waste your time on someone who didn’t even understand personal relationships and tried to move on, as much as it hurted to admit. how can you be romantically involved with someone who was incapable of having proper feelings? you knew you didn’t believe that... but it was for the best

yet, misumi was confused for the first time in a while. he was always sure: always knew the backroads to the next triangular treasure, always knew what time the members woke up and went to sleep, and always knew what mood they were in the moment he stepped into the room, but he couldn’t figure you out at all

he was slowly, but painfully, becoming aware of how you stopped returning his touches and didn’t even look at the gifts he brought back. but he didn’t know it wasn’t personal, but to you, it looked like misumi didn’t care you were with someone else all the time

when in reality, misumi trusted you 100% and thought you just had more friends, which was completely okay! misumi was very happy you had more people to talk to, pushing down the evil feelings of envy in a place only he knew. you were probably just busy being a social butterfly, right?

until one day, misumi saw you take off the “best friends” triangle necklace you two shared before heading out of the dorms to some person across the street

misumi was... what was this? he slouched down at the balcony, unmotivated to even go outside. he quickly jumped off to another adventure searching for triangles, but his coping mechanism was beginning to fail at giving him momentary distraction. what was this feeling? was he... jealous?

but, he couldn’t be! nothing belonged to misumi in this world. misumi grew up in a brutally blunt home that saw feelings as weakness. misumi had nothing to him because he didn’t deserve it... that was that

misumi came home to the mankai dorms with nothing that day, and you didn’t even notice

misumi thought he didn’t deserve you, and it was selfish of him to even think you’d pay attention to him when he couldn’t emote like everyone else (but it wasn’t really his fault, it’s just the way he was raised)

misumi became secluded from the others due to this realization. it was one internal struggle to another, the jealousy bringing past childhood trauma to the surface. misumi was afraid of exposing his past after maintaining an easygoing persona for so long

the mankai boys were on edge; they’ve never seen this side of misumi where it was like he was actually fully aware of his own actions. misumi would pop in every now and then to avoid suspicion, but his triangle trips became less frequent and his hyperfixiation even seemed exaggerated

none of them knew what to do, because you appeared exactly the same and misumi’s character had a full 180 flip like he was a stranger

but he didn’t act any different around you. misumi treated it like it was a street act; he was hurt, but you could never tell

but never fear, misumi’s jealousy was never angry; his fear was bearing any resemblance to his parents after his grandfather passed, so it’s not like he ever blamed you out of spite

in fact, misumi felt like it was all on him. he didn’t know what love was, or what a healthy romantic relationship looked like. so these feelings he had unintentionally held, came attacking his heart the moment he finally realized he liked you, a lot

it was a month after he saw you without your necklace. you were being loudly mocked downstairs in the dorms about your latest date, who you revealed was nothing special and the dating game was boring

the select group of matchmaker boys would groan about your recent endeavors, how they always ended up for nothing

misumi wanted to be the only one with the second date, he thought suddenly

misumi became scared as he laid in his own bed, alone because he couldn’t handle anything else. scared of ending up like his parents with an unhappy marriage and projecting his own insecurities onto you

but then he thought of his grandfather, who was very much in love with acting and woke up everyday to be involved in its craft until the day he died

that, was love. love was when misumi took you to his favorite triangle discoveries and when you actually cared about his strange coping mechanism. love was you wearing that necklace you two shared because he wanted to be the one closest to your heart. misumi loves you, it just took him a bit of jealousy and self–reflection to realize it

sitting up in his dark room and untangling himself from the messy sheets, misumi couldn’t hide behind his triangular daydreams anymore. he had to do something about you because you made him just as happy as his special protractor

he was ready for commitment. he was ready to reveal parts of himself that weren’t ideal, but honest enough so he could explain how he would need patience from you

so he felt everything. years of practice maintaing his calm composure and naive honesty cracked as it came down to this when he sprinted to find you. his door whacked open with a loud boom, alerting the rest of the members of his presence

misumi, with every care in the world at this point, grabbed your hands and pulled you from the boys, not saying a word despite your protests

he deserved this. after years of pretending, never having anything he ever wanted. he needed this. this spontanaeity, not planning out every move in his life. he didn’t need a plan, he needed you

up on the roof you both went even as you questioned him numerous times. but it was like he couldn’t hear you, your words carried away in the wind. you tried stopping him but he couldn’t just settle down, he needed to say it

“i want to take you to more than just triangle trips. i want to go wherever makes you happy, i want to make you happy.”

misumi rushed out, his mouth moving faster than his brain as he stared into your eyes with his fists clenched at his sides. he hadn’t changed his clothes in a few days, he looked like the state of his mind: a mess

it was so heartbreakingly truthful of him that misumi’s wavering posture was highlighted in the moon’s light, his shot of confidence suddenly dying when he glanced at your neck to see it without your triangle necklace

you had never seen him so erratic, so nervous, but so determined in anything. it looked like he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, even though that one word would crush him

the silence was defeaning. misumi exhaled after holding his breath out of nervousness. shoving his hand in his pocket, misumi pulled out another necklace, but this time, much more unique and special to him

the triangle necklace was the first present he ever received with love

“i want to make you happy, like this made me when my grandfather gave it to me. please, take it.”

misumi stood in front of you, tall on the roof’s peak as he shined amongst the night life. for once, he threw out his methodical thinking and was doing what his heart wanted at the moment

misumi was so jealous. jealous of every person you stared at with that look in your sparkling eyes. he only wanted you to smile at him, hold his hand, never leave his side. the list goes on. he knew he didn’t deserve it, but he wanted it so bad—he never needed something so much as he did in that moment

glowing in the starlight laying in the center of his shaking palm, was his heart

[benmillerbct]

Of Reflection and Time-Management

something I've been learning throughout the year so far has been reflecting on my work and managing my time more appropriately. questions I've been asking myself a lot now have been things such as: What am I going to work on today? what did I do yesterday and what can I do to make it better? what have I learned from my progress so far?

these kind of questions are things I've found quite helpful in considering my options and being aware of myself compared to the time I have. as I write this, Thursday at 11:21am, I'm still thinking back on what work I still must do and remind myself that I can go to playing games and relaxing once it is all done.

managing my time as I am right now however can also be rather taxing. I find myself being much more tired and stressed as I constantly play the things I need to work on through my head while doing said work. this can lead to difficulty doing any future work that may suddenly appear as one concentrates on managing the pre-existing work.

just yesterday, I was asked to work on a new blog discussing what I have learned over the past 8 weeks of BCT and I have difficulty remembering it. not only due to a lack of proper care to record and reflect on the lessons, but due to focusing more on the present work to be done, writing other posts, finishing my 2nd programming assignment, beginning work on my final project (a dnd character creator) and working to design my final studio project (a friend making app).

as such I think I need to re-orient myself and come up with a better way to manage time. as it currently stands, I have done so by simply remembering, but I'm seeing how much that taxes me. I think a better option would be to set reminders on my Calender and taking more notes, that way I can focus on the project soonest to be due and have everything I need to remember hints and tools to remember my other work between the weeks.

this is a lot to read but the "too long; didn't read" of all of this is, looking back and reflecting on my current way of handling my time, I see it has flaws that need solving and I may have a possible solution. I'm sure it's not the best solution, but that is why we have the internet. to help get information!

this brings us to the topic of reflection rather well. reflection is a rather useful tool in most parts of life. it lets us consider alternative actions and solutions to our mistakes while giving us a chance to congratulate our successes big or small. it gives us a moment of respite from the present that troubles us and lets us consider the past and future. and it helps us to act with hindsight.

I've found that reflecting on one's actions can be very useful, and very powerful, but one may find themselves using such a power dangerously, be it against others or themselves. reflect on your actions incorrectly and one may go about making excuses. reflect too often and one may find themselves either becoming arrogant or self-defeating. never consider your reflections in future choices and actions and one may find it useless as they continue life never fixing their mistakes.

Reflection is a tool we have learnt as we have grown but it can be abused or wrong. even I find myself using it in ways that lead to being critical of myself or simply making excuses for my actions. something we can do to strengthen our ability to reflect however is to learn from others.

Everyone has a different background and life. this changes how we see ourselves or consider the world. this can help us to better ourselves by learning from their beliefs and considering them alongside our own. we often can be very critical of ourselves, getting the opinions of others can help us in reflecting by giving us an outsider's look at our actions and a less biased understanding of our situation. do not consider another's opinion any more important than yours, however, as it can lead to many insecurities and a feeling of incompetence. this is something I can also say from experience.

Overall, we must remember something important in regards to both reflecting on our actions and managing our time. these are both tools that we use to better ourselves and make our lives easier. they have no say in how they are used and can be used for better or worse. they can be used too often or too little and we choose how we use them.

all I can do is give my understanding and give the advice I was taught and try to live by.

"Everything in moderation."

[winterfrostlovetriangle]

Hey! I hope you're still doing requests. If you are, can you write a one shot with Loki where he saves the reader after she self harms because she has insecurities, and she's also jealous of another woman? Can you make it fluffy? Thanks. Love your blog!

Hi! Thank you so much for your request. I am still taking them and would love more! Aw, thanks! I hope you enjoy it! There may not be much fluff, sorry. 

I would like to add that after months of not being able to write for personal reasons, I proud to bring you this fic.

Thank you to my beta @lotus-eyedindiangoddess! ❤️

Pairing: Loki x reader Warnings: Self-harm, angst, teeny bit of fluff

Masterlist

HOLD ME

You threw the door open letting it slam behind you. you didn't care how much noise you made, you were angry. Tearing your dress off you stormed into the bathroom. Anger burned in your chest bubbling up into your throat until it came out as a strangled scream. Hot tears streamed down your face as you gripped the counter, bent forward your hot skin pressed to the cool stone. You pound your fists on the smooth surface and glance at the mirror. The person that looked back at you was nothing special, no great feature that made you stand out. Nowhere near as beautiful as she was. Perfect hair, perfect body. You were nothing.

You couldn’t take it anymore, the stolen glances, moments when it was just you and him. You closed your eyes remembering every kiss, caress, the hushed promises. Waking up in his bed or yours, the feeling of his soft lips on yours or other places. You loved the way he made you feel like you were truly his. You had started to believe it but fear was creeping in. He promised it was all for show, that he didn’t love her at all. But you saw the gifts and notes from her. The stories she spun to make him and everyone else feel sorry for her. She wept about fighting her faults and imperfections like everyone else and took drastic measures to gain pity and attention. The healers were put hard to work several times, but the damage was already done. 

She was supposed to be your friend. She certainly played the part in front of you and in public but you heard the things she said about you and your friends, the lies that she spread. To hell with her flaws, everyone has them but there is always a choice. You certainly had yours and considered drastic measures as well but you would never do it as she did. It would be quiet and without ceremony. You doubted very much that people would miss you, or weep for you, should anything happen to you, not as they would for her. It made you sick when you heard that he had gone to see her and tell her that he felt sad about what happened to her and wished to help her. Even though she had orchestrated the event to bring attention to herself. The knowledge made you angry and jealous. You ran, high-tailed it out as fast as you could but something drew you back to him. You had no idea what it was but you went back. Not tonight though, you couldn’t. You were done. Watching them flirt and talk together while you stood in the corner, unnoticed and alone. You stewed over everything that had happened in the last few months. You were tired of being in her shadow and let the anger boil over, quickly leaving the hall. So here you were, staring at your reflection, hating it; hating her and him. No, you could never hate him, you loved him too much for that. You began to imagine her in his arms, his bed. You imagined her name coming from his mouth at night instead of yours, even when, deep down, you knew it to be untrue.

In a sudden blind rage, your fists hit the mirror with a crack, glass shattering around you. You banged your hands against the fractured pieces that clung to the wall until something made you stand up straight. A new feeling, a pain that was almost…cathartic. A release. Relief surged through you. You glanced at your wrist, watching crimson drops stream down your arm. All sense and rationality left you as you found yourself picking up a shard of glass. You peeked up at the mirror briefly before looking down to see the broken piece marking your skin. You sighed at the feeling of pain. So physical and different from the one that tore you up from the inside. This almost distracted you from it. Yes, that's good. Keep going! Your mind screamed, so you did. You stared at the cuts and smiled at the blood that seeped from your veins, staining your skin and the white tiled bathroom floor. 

A noise behind startled you. Whipping your head around, your vision blurred and you lost your balance. Something cool grabbed you, telling you to do something but you didn’t want to listen. You were tired and weak… Sleep. You nodded and muttered the word out loud and heard a garbled response. The voice was familiar. Safe. It reminded you of home…. A home you ran from. 

Loki...” 

The name fell softly from your lips as you felt life ebb out of your body. It was better this way. He could have her. She was better for him. This way he need not waste time on her and her pathetic existence. It was better that you left. The pain was gone, you were done. You were ready to go but something was pulling you back - waking you up. You felt life returning to your body. “

No. Let me go.” You attempted to fight back but were held still but the same cool body that had grabbed you earlier. As your mind cleared and you became more aware of what was happening around you, you realized that a strong pair of arms were holding you. They cradled you to the body they were attached to. Your shoulder was wet, where his tears had fallen as he held you. You felt yourself growing stronger and as your senses came back you could hear… HIM. He was holding you, he was there. Singing? A small smile tugged at your mouth as you realized he was singing your favorite Asgardian lullaby, one you had heard him sing to you many times before. 

Suddenly, the weight of what you had done hit you. Tears fell down your face, not the hot tears of anger but the bitter tears of regret and pain. You couldn’t look at him. All you could do was shake your head. Instead of letting you go those same pairs of arms brought you to his chest, rubbing your back, and speaking soft soothing words. You buried your face into his chest and gripped the fabric of his shirt tightly as you sobbed. Time stood still. It was just the two of you curled up together on the floor of your bathroom. You slowly calmed, your tears turning to sniffles and finally nothing. You peeked up at him and instead of finding disappointment, you found sadness and love. Your breath caught in your throat stopping you from speaking but you knew you didn’t need to say anything. You knew he had forgiven you. He caressed your cheek lovingly and kissed your forehead before standing up and making his way to your bed. Placing you under the covers he climbed in next to you and his arms were pulling you towards him again, cuddling you as close as he could. You laid your head on his now bare chest listening to his heartbeat. Sighing contentedly you closed your eyes.

“Sleep now, my love. I’m here, and I'm never going to let you go.” The words played in your head as you drifted into a peaceful night’s sleep. You knew when you woke in the morning things were going to be different.“

I love you…” 

You were at peace. 

Tom/Loki Tag List: @lots-of-loki

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#loki #loki x reader #mcu #angst #fluff #self-harm #loki fanfiction #loki fanfic #requests #anonrequests 

[baph0meat]

several years ago I asked you "tips on turning 21?" and you gave some damn good advice that helped me so much when i turned 21. so, got a tip for turning 25 and suddenly being very aware of the process of self-actualization?

[continued] “i asked my older sibling and they said "don't eat trash food" lmfao”

well i actually first off actually unironically agree w your older sibling -- it feels like a drag to get nagged abt it but genuinely switching from like. “hot pockets from the corner store every night bc i’m tired” to gritting my teeth and putting in the planning and time to cook for myself and eat in ways that were kinder to my body did a LOT for like, both just my overall wellness and also my fucking wallet bc trash food is literally so fucking expensive out the gate. there’s like. a whole BUNCH i could get into as someone who has worked in The Health Food Industry abt how a lot of what you’re paying for w processed food is convenience and immediacy and that a lot of times “Healthy Food” costs more in terms of time and preparation and getting WAY fewer calories per dollar in ways that aren’t feasible if you’re food insecure etc etc etc but i’m not getting into that i’m just gonna say: when you CAN, whenever you’re able, gritting your teeth and prying yourself up and over to the kitchen and not having trash food actually does do a lot for u overall.

anyway. cw for brief suicide mention as i talk abt this but i’ll try not to get too heavy abt it

i’m abt to turn 27 next month and have finally hit the point where my life has like... stabilized in a way i never thought would’ve been possible. (i got married, did i say that on this blog ever? hi, it’s me, ira, i got married to the coolest woman alive and moved to spain.) but the thing is i’ve said that every year. like, fuckin, on an absolute clockwork schedule once a year i’ve been like “hi guys wow things have been so crazy but everything in my life has FINALLY settled so i’ll be around a lot more” etc etc. so: your life is never settled and it is also always settling and eventually i have found i just stop noticing. i think also as things settle i’ve noticed i’ve started like, really getting struck by my life STRETCHING OUT in front of me, esp since i was suicidal for most of my life til now and like, i never had to THINK abt or plan for stuff, and now suddenly sometimes it’s like. even tho i’m so happy w my life now it’s still so exhausting sometimes to think abt doing this fucking forever lmao. forever! every day! life is so long and my brain is so small!

all this to say: never expect stuff to be Done esp a concept as huge as self-actualization and also expect to be tired. expect to freak out a little. i know we’ve all heard “nobody has it figured out in their 20s” and we’re like “yeah yeah cool except i look around and other ppl in their 20s seem to at LEAST have it more together than i do” and my solution for that so far has been oh my god stop looking in other people’s windows, ira. 

i’m getting really rambly and disorganized here so i’m just gonna post a list of things that have really, really helped me in the mid-20s zone and that made me healthier and happier than early-20s me

i don’t drink or use substances when i’m in a bad mood anymore. ever. even if i’m just like “lightly bummed out” -- total stop, total red light, no substance use. this one rule has changed my life entirely and i take it extremely seriously. i have to be happy and feeling good going into it, or i don’t take anything/don’t have any drinks, period. (i tentatively make an exception for this re: using weed to medicate anxiety but i personally still try to keep that a last resort.)

every time you feel like bitching about something you don’t like on social media, make a post abt something else that you like instead. every time u feel like saying something meanspirited or vague or unpleasant abt someone you can’t stand, find a genuine, wholehearted compliment abt someone you really like instead. i’m obviously not saying “never complain ever” but i’m saying only complain when it like.... matters, and take vicious, merciless inventory of when it actually matters bc it u might find that inventory doesn’t line up w your actions generally

related to that: be very cautious abt like, friend groups who bond over shit they hate instead of bonding over shit they like.

talk to yourself a lot. talk to yourself before you say or do things. ask yourself questions about how you’re feeling, why you’re reacting to things the way you do, esp if you’re feeling/acting negatively and feel lost abt Why. cultivate a relationship w yourself in a tangible, daily way so that you can understand your feelings and actions better

find something screenless that you enjoy doing every day. i’m not trying to sound like crotchety specter of Fucking Log Off but i am that and i think the internet is evil and i think it’s making our brains dribble out our ears in liquid form and finding offline things to fill my days up with every day and only coming online when i’m done with those things has probly done more for my growth as a person than anyone else. this place is evil

related to all of this, i guess: everything 21 year old you thought was super boring/would have refused to do if commanded is probably really really good for you and will make you feel better

that’s my advice happy birthday

[mbti-notes]

Hi. thank you for writing this blog, you're really helpful. I'm sorry if my question is weird. I'm physically unattractive and people often comment/mocking my looks. because I was a very sensitive kid, I withdraw from people and become really introverted. now I'm in college but my communication skill got worse. when classmates talk to me, my mind went blank and I always need seconds to answer. I want to know what's wrong in my thinking, is it because I can't accept the reality of my looks?

Not a weird question at all. No child deserves to be mistreated and I’m sorry that you had to go through the bullying. There are two main issues that I think you need to address: 1) the residual effects of being bullied, and 2) your standards for evaluating the worth of people, including yourself. 

1) People get bullied for all kinds of things. It’s missing the point to try to compare what kind of bullying is worse than others. The most important point, in terms of psychological health, is your subjective experience of the bullying and whether it had a significantly negative impact upon your well-being. In children, the experience of constant bullying is a recognized form of psychological trauma. 

When people experience emotional trauma, the way that they perceive and assess situations changes. It has to. All human beings have a survival instinct. When you live your life experiencing constant threats, it is normal and rational for the mind to find ways of protecting itself. Therefore, bullied children are much more likely to feel fearful, anxious, and/or defensive in social situations, since most of their social learning took place in situations that were legitimately threatening, hurtful, and painful for them. Unfortunately, fearful, anxious, or defensive behavior tends to get worse over time and causes problems in life when the original trauma is never properly addressed and resolved. This is why bullied children are more likely to struggle with mental disorders as well as socialization and relationship problems later in life.

Children need care, love, and affection to thrive, but many are thrust into bad situations, and it’s not their fault. As a child, you barely know up from down, so you can’t be expected to know how to fend for yourself in very negative social situations. Try to look at your situation more objectively. Imagine that, today, you were walking down the street and you witnessed somebody bullying a young child about their looks. How would that make you feel? Would you join the bully and ridicule the child, believing that the “ugly” child is worthless and deserves it? A sensitive person is capable of empathy, so I doubt that you’d want to be the bully. An empathetic person would immediately know that the child was being mistreated and want to stop the bully, would they not? A bully wants power over people, and their greatest success is to teach you how to bully yourself. Not only do they make you feel like shit by calling you ugly, they also gain complete control over you once they convince you to call yourself ugly, for the rest of your life. To be more objective, look upon your childhood self not through the disdainful eyes of your bullies but rather through the empathetic eyes of the good person that you are. You didn’t deserve to be bullied. You deserved to be loved. You deserve love.

Everybody needs to go through level 2 ego development in terms of learning how to adapt well to their social environment. If your social environment is loving and full of affection, you’re going to learn that the world is a safe and positive place, so you’ll naturally feel confident in navigating it. If your social environment is threatening and painful, you’re going to learn that the world is a frightening place, so you’ll naturally feel unsafe and insecure in most situations. As a child, you had to adapt to a negative social environment as best as a child could. From being bullied, you “learned” again and again that physically “beautiful” people get praised and physically “ugly” people get scorned. Since you were repeatedly called “ugly”, you’ve come to expect that people will scorn you, and you might even start to unconsciously attract people who confirm your distrustful worldview. Bullying is always worse for children because they have no preexisting knowledge of how to cope with it. The early adaptations that you learn in childhood tend to stay with you because they serve as your “default” mode. Whenever you feel a little bit stressed by a social situation, your psychology tends to “regress” to those early adaptations, even when the present situation poses no objective threat to you. It’s a mental reflex, aka a defense mechanism.

There’s a lot of debate in the psychological community about whether it’s possible to rid the brain of traumatic memories. However, even if you take the most pessimistic position of believing that childhood trauma is written into the brain and stays with you forever, that doesn’t mean nothing can be done about it. If you are able to improve your awareness and understanding of the many ways that your past trauma has impacted your cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns, you can then implement some practical strategies for disengaging your past adaptations, i.e., you can learn healthier coping mechanisms instead of allowing your “default” mode to run the show all the time. This is generally what they teach you in cognitive-behavioral therapy. A lot of people are in therapy to try to make sense of past trauma or abuse.

For example: You’re talking to someone new, and you suddenly freeze up. Why did you freeze up? What’s going on? Time to reflect on yourself honestly. Chances are, you are afraid. Based on your past experience, perhaps you’re afraid of trusting this new person only to have them turn around and mock you, and then you’re instantly that hurt kid again. It is a perfectly reasonable fear to have because you have experienced it several times before. Humans are considered smart for being able to learn from their past experience. Once you’re aware of the fear and its source and able to accept it as legitimate, then you have a chance to implement a better coping strategy. Perhaps you take a deep breath and remind yourself that this new person is not the old bully of your past. Remind yourself to give this new person the benefit of the doubt. You can’t develop a good relationship without giving a little trust and being positive. A lot of people can overlook physically unattractive features once they see a nice personality, but it’s a lot harder to overlook a negative and distrustful attitude. Another way to cope better is to work on your people skills and communication skills, which will help boost your confidence.

2) Beauty has a very important place in human psychology. Without connection to beauty, people wouldn’t be able to access all the good, positive, wonderful, and sublime things about being alive. I would never downplay the importance of beauty; however, the fact is that most people’s concept of beauty is superficial and wrong. For a lot of people, beauty is merely about ego: comparing and contrasting, competition and jealousy, self-harm and violence. If beauty is meant to be a human good, then why does it drive people to be their worst selves? There’s something rotten going on. True beauty is NOT about whether you are more/less beautiful than, it’s about nurturing the ability to see the best side of everything in the world. Not many people nurture this ability in themselves. If you did, you’d never ever call yourself ugly, because everything in this world has some beauty in it. If you aren’t able to see it, then the problem lies in your own perception, not the object itself.

Human brains are built to process information about physical appearance very quickly. This cannot be helped. We all make snap judgments based on physical appearance because this ability was very useful for human survival. However, human beings also have the capacity to reflect on the veracity of their snap judgments as well as the intelligence to realize that outward appearance and inner qualities are two different things. Failure to use one’s higher intelligence means remaining very hasty and shallow in judgment. To be shallow isn’t just to care about appearances, because we are all primed to care about appearances, it’s to take appearances as the only/primary standard for JUDGING someone’s WORTH. Shallow people easily become bullies when they feel the need to elevate themselves socially by putting others down. All you have to do is read through comment sections on gossip pages to know that no one is immune to having their appearance mocked, not even beautiful celebrities or supermodels. No matter how objectively beautiful you are, there’s a shallow person out there ready and willing to pick you apart, for their own egotistical reasons. The fact of the matter is that there are lots of shallow people in this world. There’s no avoiding them, there’s no wishing them away, but you can always render their judgments meaningless, and thus very easy to ignore. 

Be brutally honest with yourself, would you rather use the criterion of “physical beauty” or the criterion of “good moral character” to choose a mate/friend for yourself? I’m not saying that the two criteria are mutually exclusive, I’m simply asking which one is more important to you. If you say “physical beauty”, then you must count yourself as one of the shallow people. And if you are shallow, you’re going to care a lot about what other shallow people think. By being shallow yourself, you’re doomed to judging yourself through the eyes of a shallow person - you. If you say “good moral character”, then congratulations, because you understand what really counts for creating a successful relationship. It takes someone of good moral character to recognize another, and when you have good moral character and prioritize it, it’s easy enough to see through shallow people and their meaningless judgments. If you surround yourself with people of good moral character - people who are capable of appreciating you for the good person you are and vice versa - you will exist in a very different social space, a place where shallow people can never get any real foothold.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that they need to be beautiful to be loved. Makes no sense. When you focus only on physical beauty, you turn people into mere objects, and, worse, you turn yourself into a mere object and allow others to treat you as such. Genuine feelings of love don’t come from physical beauty, they come from deep within the heart. What is it that you really want from people? Do you want them to praise your face and body? Is it going to make your life meaningful and fulfilled in the long run? No, because what people really want is love. To experience love, you must be a good person who is capable of love, and then you will have the ability to spot good people who are capable of loving you. If you are not even capable of loving yourself and seeing the beauty in yourself, how can you ask others to? If you are not capable of loving people and seeing the beauty in them, what kind of people will you attract and who would want to be around you?

You are not a passive player in social situations. Children who are bullied often feel passive and helpless for good reason, but that doesn’t have to be the case for the rest of your life, does it? You get to choose your attitude towards socializing (whether to trust or distrust), you get to choose how to engage with people (whether to focus on outer or inner qualities), you get to choose what sorts of people to engage with (shallow or kind), you get to choose who to keep as your long term friends (those who praise your looks or those who appreciate your true beauty). When you always default to the old lessons you learned from childhood trauma, you’ve essentially given up the power to choose, thus remaining a victim indefinitely, trembling in fear in every social interaction. And if the only standard you have for navigating social situations is the “physical beauty” standard that shallow people told you should be elevated as the most important human quality, you’re going to live a very shallow existence, devoid of love, because you’re not using the right standards in your approach to relationships. Do you want to think in the same way that the bully taught you, or do you want to have your own way of looking at the beauty in the world and trust in yourself?

[marlahey]

@rochey1010​ going back and forth in long-winded replies seems like unnecessary effort for both of us so I hope you don’t mind another text post as I fully articulate my thoughts. as I’ve said before, you’re obviously entitled to your own opinions, but you’ve now seemed to make a lot of assumptions about me a fan/viewer/general consumer of media that I feel like I should clear up. you’ve also made some further claims about the show I’d like to pick up for discussion. If you want to speak further please feel free to respond but of course don’t feel obligated. This’ll be the last public post/reply I make and we can go back to ignoring each other in the tags!

Well i love Eliott/Lola's friendship and i have an upcoming post on that as i said in other posts. I love lola too but i'm sorry i didn't just start watching this show because lola was invented and there's a w/w love story. I've been here for seasons and carried over from OG. I have investment in eliott for personal reasons (mental health) and elu because duh. Their stories have been long running too as i said. And you don't have to be a main to set up a plot/arc. The things between them have been set up since S3 with minute par minute talk, S4 and Idriss, S5 and the cheating perspective, and now S6 and Lola friendship. That is intentional. Do you think it's a coincidence that Lucas talked about pansexuality and eliott having more choice in S5 and suddenly Eliott has a friendship with a girl. That lucas abandonment issues haven't been resolved and are now coming to the forefront because of this friendship? That max has stated that Eliott feels he can save someone from a darkness he himself went through, that eliott himself was sorta saved from the shadows by Lucas. That neils/david specifically stated that this character can help someone even though he has bipolar disorder. That with Eliott's arc there is a focus on his SKAM. That we now have new info about it serving the season. If you understand writing. These things aren't put there for fun. They are there to imply/hint/foreshadow events actions to come. That there is a character now on the show with Lola basically female eliott. Do you think these are all coincidences. This plot we are seeing has slowly been set up not just since S3 but actually heavily developed starting in S5. And that if you now go back and watch S5 you see our main players being set up for this plot e.g  dasille relationship, daphne's ED, Eliott and his individuality, Elu trust/insecurity issues, Eliott's art and it tying into seasonal themes, Lola herself and her outlier persona etc. I don't know whether you are but there are many fans have migrated over from espana just for this season. But you have to understand there is a long term fanbase here that love Eliott, are invested in him and have been waiting for more of his insight. We are now getting that and we will talk about him. He's a hugely popular character as is Lucas and their love. I love both and i will talk about both. Sometimes i won't talk much About lola and talk more about eliott, sometimes i'll connect them and discuss their relationship, sometimes i'll make a post about just about lola, daphne, tiff, benny, movie references as i have. But this is my blog and i'll post what i want to post. You don't have to read any of this stuff. The tag is a big place, just scroll by. As for the theories- just theories. And in my theories i believe these characters are going to make mistakes, fail and grow e.g. lola self Destructing again but being her own hero by the end, eliott and lola being dragged down like lucas said but showing the strength of their friendship by the end, lucas being proven right but also proven wrong by the end. Like i said specific dialogue now being used is not just there to fill the script e.g. "and i have lucas. I can't lose this" "i think one of you may bring the other down" and eliott is heading for a rock bottom as is lola. Again just my thoughts. 👍

While I find it odd that you seem to be gatekeeping the skam france fan community, to be clear I have seen the entirety of three iterations: og, france, and austin. I believe I started OG during s2 or 3, and have seen Fr and Aus from the beginning. I’m not as interested in other versions as I’m very familiar with the plots/characters by now. I’m partial to france as a bilingual canadian as it’s nice to exercise that part of my brain; I’ve also studied/lived there briefly and have some very close friends from france so that amplifies my enjoyment. I’m also bisexual, so I also find this ‘only here for lola + w/w’ when you yourself admit to being emotionally invested in the show’s most dominant queer ship dichotomy very awkward.  to be honest, I think many skam’s fandoms tend to fixate on the esak ship and their season. friends have seen other iterations and confirmed this for me. it happened with elu as expected so I was really unsurprised when maya was introduced and fandom immediately put a lot of their investment into shipping two characters of the same gender. nearly every fandom in general does this: teen wolf, glee, supernatural to name a few – even harry potter. I’m not really a fan of the romantic subplot in lola’s season. she is not elliot 2.0 for so many reasons; she’s her own person and she doesn’t need a romantic partner to be a compelling character with a compelling story. that being said, I liked elu’s season. I particularly love maxence’s elliot; he’s my favourite even. I was thrilled to see him onscreen however briefly after S3 every time he appeared. now he’s finally his own person outside of his relationship with lucas and I couldn’t be more pleased to see that.  I’m not sure how idriss and elliot reconnecting after the attempted kiss falling out plays into lucas’ insecurity or their relationship. it’s perhaps a reminder of his bipolar disorder or the fact that he clearly had friends/relationships before lucas, but I’m not sure how it’s relevant to the season at hand. the biphobia discussion with arthur preceeding lola’s introduction as the new main is not proof that lucas’ supposed abandonment issues are founded in any way, or that he even still has them when we meet her. by insisting on it, you’re perpetuating the harmful idea that any bi or pan person will be tempted to cheat or leave (physically or emotionally) when presented with literally any person whose gender opposes their current partner. this is something that skam fr had literally left unaddressed for so long even with representation in alexia and elliot, and I was so thrilled when it finally came up. it’s very uncomfortable that you’re now using that important conversation as apparent proof that lucas will be abandoned or betrayed, inadvertently or not, by his pansexual boyfriend. I know that daphné was meant to be s6′s main and skam fr wasn’t given the rights by og’s creator. so it makes sense that she/her relationship/struggles feature heavily in her sister’s season. I’m personally thrilled cause I love her and lula is a wonderful actress. that being said, not everything is foreshadowing. not every single interaction or conversation will return to further plot or character. sometimes storylines are just resolved or dropped and awareness raised is just awareness raised. sometimes it’s wonderful and sometimes less so. I understand writing. I’m saying this as a literal former english teacher (ignoring capitalization for aesthetic lol) and assistant in film/tv post-production with an MA in media studies. “Lucas, you have nothing to worry about, it’s not like that between us.” “I know, he explained it to me.”  I’m not sure how much clearer the literal show can be about this issue. spoiler or not, it’s been made abundantly clear that lola and elliot are not romantically involved. even more importantly and I’ve said this on my blog before, you’re allowed to have intimacy with someone without forcing it into a defined familial or romantic relationship. it doesn’t mean that someone’s partner should necessarily feel threatened or abandoned and says a lot more about that person’s insecurity than either individual in the friendship. we’ve also already discussed how much I dislike this turn for lucas’ character as elliot’s apparent MH saviour so it’s not worth repeating again. as for elliot saving lola, well he literally did that already. I’m not sure what you mean by lucas ‘being proven right and proven wrong’ by the end, but you’re obviously adamant that something will happen. I have also seen maxence’s interview a few times. I’ll not argue with the ‘lucas saved elliot from that shadow’ because it literally came from the actor’s mouth, but maxence doesn’t say he can save anyone else from their struggles, but help them and I think that’s a really important distinction. this whole saving idea doesn’t seem healthy at all, especially as lola and elliot grapple with their mental health. it seems like people want to see a ‘rock bottom’ (whatever that means) for them both and it makes me a little uncomfortable. addiction and MH struggles should not have to reach a breaking point in order to be considered resolved or cathartic; they don’t even have to be resolved, because they’re not a plot device. they’re a reality for so many people. the show does a good job of not romanticizing them but some of the things I see in the tag are just... yikes.  as for his ‘dark’ side and the less than happy elu moments, I’d argue that maxence may have meant literally punching out what’s his face to save lola and the subsequent argument(s) with lucas, since that interview came out just before ep 4. but there’s still several eps to go so I could be totally wrong. who knows. it’s your right to theorize on your own blog of course and it’s not my intention to be mean. I’m just trying to further the discourse in a respectful way. I do feel that you may put a little too much stock in what’s literally said/seen and assuming a lot in the unseen gaps, rather than considering a broader context. to wrap up though, lucas is free to have this (however hurtful) fear, just as you’re free to believe it’ll for sure come to pass.  I dread seeing either lola or elliot spiral out, but as 2020 has taught me, I very rarely get what I want lol. thank you @cakepleasee for helping me sort out my thoughts!

[maq-moon]

My mental illness & fandom

So this is a long time coming from me. Almost a year, really. I want to be clear up front: this isn’t a call-out post. It’s me explaining my (and possibly others’) behavior. It’s partially an apology, too. I know tumblr is like... the worst place to talk about mental health, but this is where the people I care for-- the people to whom this applies-- will see it. I’m so nervous that I’m actually shaking, but I think it has to be said. I won’t feel right until I’ve explained. So, off we go!

I’m crazy. I use that word because I have to laugh about my mental health or I’ll cry about it. There’s a laundry list of diagnoses (when I see a new doctor I ask, “Would you like them alphabetically or the order in which they were diagnosed?”), but right now we’re going to focus on two. I have PTSD (no, I won’t say why) and BPD. BPD is currently being bastardized in the media. Crime shows love to have their perp or unsub suffering from undiagnosed or unmedicated borderline. I won’t rant about how the mentally ill are far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than to commit them.

The central thing with BPD is “black and white” or “all or nothing” thinking. Everything is one extreme or another; no middle ground exists. There are also attachment issues. We tend to get attached to people fast. Add the “all or nothing” to that. We could, hypothetically, meet a new person, have one or two good conversations, and think, “Wow, we’re great friends!” while the other person is thinking, “Meh, maybe I won’t answer their next text.” (This is where the media stereotype of stalkers/obsessed killers comes from).

I get this way. I’m very sociable and chatty and, if others are to be believed, downright charming *wink* I also attempt to cover my insecurities with humor. I’m incredibly insecure and want to avoid talking about a significant amount of my life, so I joke a lot. I’m generally positive with everyone I meet. Why shouldn’t this new person want to be my friend?

Because of me. Because of PTSD. As much as I get attached, as much as I want this new friend, I can’t trust them. As soon as a conversation turns serious, I get uncomfortable and push new people away. Sometimes friends will physically push the new people away for me if they see I’m in distress.

Which brings us to our title: fandom. Should be lots easier since it’s online, right? Nope! Have you ever heard of parasocial relationships? Most people haven’t. I learned about them when David Bowie died. A parasocial relationship is basically a one-sided relationship-- like why you’re sad when a celebrity dies. They didn’t know you, but you felt that you knew them in a way. That’s why the prefix is para. Here’s the connection. A person with borderline gets involved in fandom. Suddenly they’re surrounded by new people. Blogs, Twitter, the AO3 comment section, Discord servers-- they all serve as a way to interact with new people. And interaction means attachment.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have made actual friends in fandom. I go out of state a few times a year to visit someone from my Harry Potter roleplay days. I know it’s not impossible. But I don’t know when it’s a real relationship and when it’s parasocial.

You may be thinking that it’s like this for everyone. We’re all navigating the Internet and faceless kinda-friends. Well, yes. But I’m acutely aware of how having borderline makes me act and how it affects others. I don’t want to be that clingy weird lady. I don’t want to over-share and make people uncomfortable. So as soon as I feel a rapport building with someone online, I do what I do in real life: shut.it.down. I don’t ghost one person, I quit the Internet (all or nothing, remember?). I don’t want to give myself the opportunity to fuck up a friendship, so I stop myself from forming one. And I don’t think about how that affects the other person, because PTSD has me focused on my own well-being.

BPD and PTSD are one hell of a combo, right? Come closer, stay back! Ugh.

I asked my therapist once how to tell if the people online were my friends, if they liked me as much as I liked them. She said that a good indicator would be someone going out of their way to ask how you are or just saying “hi”. I realized my fandom friends weren’t my friends, and it was probably my fault. I quit the Internet for much of 2020 (when I wanted to come back, my computer broke. w e i r d). It’s hypocritical of me to make assumptions, though. After all, I don’t send random “hello how ya doin” messages. I keep quiet out of fear of my mental illness. I don’t know why others are quiet. I jump to the worst conclusion, though: none of them like me. And that’s me. That’s not a reflection of any community I’m in. All of my fandoms are full of lovely people. People I like, and who I wish I were brave enough to let like me.

I said way back in the first paragraph that this is a sort of apology. I’m not apologizing for having mental illnesses. Genetics and experiences did that and I stopped being ashamed a long time ago. I do want to apologize to a great group of people (while being vague enough that hopefully only they know who they are?).

Last year, I feel like I invited myself to your event. It was open, obviously, and I had a great vacation around it, but I still feel like I went somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. Zero blame on all of you; it was me assuming we were friends. The person I brought with me kept trying to get me to actively invite myself to things you were doing the next day. You weren’t talking to us, but she heard two of you discussing Indian food and kept pushing me to jump in; I’m not that rude. I talked to each of you for a few minutes, and then… Then I was afraid that the borderline would “kick in”. I was afraid that the only reason I had driven so far to meet you was because of borderline-induced parasocial relationships. A few weeks later, I did a fic swap but ignored everyone. I didn’t talk. I wrote, but I didn’t interact. I’m sorry for all of it. I won’t blame BPD; that’s a cop out (I have borderline, not “I’m borderline”). I was just very excited and very afraid and very insecure and even more very afraid.  

I’m used to not being liked. I’m what you would call “an odd duck” or “a special snowflake”. I’m weird, basically. But it’s one thing to be disliked for your weirdness and another to not know why you’re disliked, or even IF you’re disliked. That’s the beauty and the horror of the Internet, I guess. You can do you, but there are no boys asking you for tissues the day you’re wearing a Wonderbra. Er, an imperfect analogy. You don’t know what people really think! There’s no body language, no inflection. The only way I can think to tell if someone’s sort of my friend is if we’re mutuals. Some of my very favorite people aren’t, and I won’t pretend that doesn’t sting—but it’s me. It’s me and my idea of friendship, which is arbitrary and changeable, and it’s my brain playing tricks on me, and it’s me trying to outsmart a mental illness.

So… yeah. 1300 words on my brand of crazy. I hope maybe I cleared some things up (eleven months later). I guess if I had to tl;dr this thing, it would be that if I’m following you on a social media platform, if I go back-and-forth with you in comments, and so on, I probably want to be your friend and have been self-sabotaging. I’m not trying to put any onus on you. I’m just letting you know.

With love,

Mac        

[afishlearningpoetry]

Looking Closer at How The Abominable Bride Foreshadowed and Can Be Used to Chronologically Decode Series 4:

In the opening sequence of TAB, Sherlock imagines a recreation of John returning to England after being dispatched by the army and the two of them meeting for the first time. As this is his dream, everything about the sequence and the comparison and contrast with the unfiltered scene in ASIP informs of his own biases and desires. Sherlock imagines coming off weirder but suaver and John being less frustrated about it than he actually was, telling us both about his knowledge of John’s love for him and his wish to smooth out the dents in their relationship.

In TLD, John writes a sequence recreating his first night meeting Sherlock using his self-insert Eurus as Faith Smith as an outlet. As this is John’s story, everything about the sequence and the comparison and contrast with their first night together in ASIP informs of his own biases, desires, and in this case especially, deeply-held fears and insecurities. John imagines Eurus and Sherlock being more open and honest about their feelings and their night together, telling us about John’s own memory of the event and his history.

Of course, more important than the differences between Sherlock’s dream and John’s story compared to reality, is the even more massive gap between their own points of view.

[Continue below the cut for more ➤]

See also: Shout out to @shinka for “Something Borrowed, Something Blue”... 10 Revealing Things From The Six Thatchers That Haunt You Late At Night, 10 Revealing Things From The Lying Detective That Haunt You Late At Night, and 10 Revealing Things From The Final Problem That Haunt You Late At Night. (#tw suicide #tw self harm #tw depression)

Bonus: Substitute, point of view, insecurities, emotional context.

Right off the bat in Sherlock’s dream, his goal with the opening war montage is clear –– to objectify John and his bright blue eyes as much as possible, while in John’s nightmare of his army experiences, everything is dangerous and happening incredibly fast. Throughout the entire comparison of all these different scenes together, this will be a constant theme –– Sherlock will constantly express how much he wants to be with John and that he’s aware John loves him, while John will continue to deny himself his love for Sherlock, thinking Sherlock does not love him back. “I spent a whole evening with her. We had chips. I think she liked me.”

In TAB, Sherlock then imagines their first meeting as him completely nailing his deduction of John and and sweeping him off of his feet. John hardly says anything back and looks more starstruck than speaks dialog, while Sherlock imagines their exchange happening much faster than it actually did. Sherlock gets all the details right –– mentioning the violin, having an “eye” on a loft, John looking down at his leg, Stamford reassuring John that he’s always been “like that,” but misses, or perhaps brushes over the emotional context of what John was going through in this scene. But John was more frustrated than anything, and angry that Sherlock was able to see through him right away, while John has been hiding himself from the world for a substantial period of time. John expresses this a lot in series 4, representing his own insecurities through subtextual means. Sherlock isn’t without his own insecurities, however, and there is gloom beneath the romanticism –– Sherlock imagines whipping a corpse with a riding crop when John walks in, while John actually meets him shortly after in the lab, and throughout the episode Sherlock frequently lashes out at John in various ways over John not understanding his feelings. This is often shown through John’s stories of Sherlock, in comparison to real John’s blog in the present day and John clearly is not picking up on how Sherlock cares for him, so it’s fitting that Sherlock’s feelings in this sequence are actually clear as day, and that John’s own recreation of their meeting in TLD is much darker (and filtered through another character and story, which in its own way, also makes his own feelings clear as day).

What’s also missing in Sherlock’s iteration of their meeting is the vast depth of loneliness and self-loathing that John is depicted with in the opening scene of the entire show, which wasn’t recreated in his dream. John’s story in TLD is set after Mary’s death –– as series 4 with TST and TLD is about the coverup and fallout of Mary’s murder at the hands of John and Sherlock, who was working with Moriarty and isn’t really dead –– and so the grief, darkness, and haunting ghosts in it are easy to assume being for that, which is the purpose of John covering up what really happened with this story, but one of the thing that’s really going on behind the true events of this episode is John approaching his own crisis point. In John Yorke’s Into the Woods, a book about stories and the five act structure, he describes virtually all stories as being able to be broken down into five acts. Act four is the darkest point of the story, the act where things continue to get worse and worse before the final confrontation, and is defined at the end by the “crisis” point where circumstances could not possibly get any worse. John is approaching his crisis point in TLD and finally reaches it in TFP, after he’s shown being shot at the end (in this episode, the gun goes off less then halfway through and at the end of the episode fades to red).

In TLD, John is also back to the point he was at the beginning of ASIP, or act one –– he’s deeply miserable and lonely, and is isolating himself from the world with presumably as little human contact as possible. John has not solved his own problem yet, which means he’s approaching his darkest point before that change can happen –– and that change will be represented by Sherlock telling him that he loves him back. But before he gets there, it’s fitting that John’s construction of this episode revolves around John being unsure whether or not Sherlock is really is a sociopath and capable of romantic sentiment (“You lie all the time, it’s like your mission.” “He’s not a monster.” “Yeah he is,” and the text from Irene), John reimagines their first night together, when John both first fell in love with him, and when he was warned about Sherlock being a psycopath. “One day we’ll be standing around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there,” Sally Donovan says in ASIP. “Not long ago he shot Charles Magnussen in the face, we did see it coming,” John reiterates in TLD.

John’s self-insert in this episode is represented by Eurus. Eurus is one of John’s dark mirrors, is at the heart of everything of the lie of series 4, and is John’s own primary, totally invented plot device. While John was writing the coverup and fallout of Mary’s murder, the story was mostly done and complete, but when something happened to John at the end of TLD, he suddenly had to invent a third episode that had nothing to do with the character arcs of the first two episodes –– TFP is a false catharsis of character arcs, plot points, and thematic threads, and is completely contrary to everything the show has done up to this point. It’s totally imagined by John –– so in a butcher job, in a rush to fit in Eurus where she doesn’t belong to make a third story happen and cover up what actually happened at the end of TLD, John had to use her as a plot device and slip her in somehow in TST and TLD to make sure she was there all along, all along. In TST, John writes Eurus in place of his invented cheating storyline, which was 1) covering up his communication with Sherlock, working together to take Mary down at the end of the episode, 2) sublimating his emotional cheating on Mary with Sherlock, because John tried to fuck Sherlock in every episode of series 3, and 3) done to make John look like the middle age crisis husband who took his perfect wife for granted before her tragic death, which he obviously had no involvement in, how dare you say that. In TLD, Eurus somehow obtains Faith Smith’s private note, which she hid in her bookshelf from her own father for years, deciphered what it meant, obtained it from a third party, and then added some “deductions” of her own onto the letter in order for Sherlock to find. If you didn’t have fun reading that sentence, please know I didn’t have fun typing that sentence. She also controls everyone in the prison so she was able to just leave and disappear for enough time to both impersonate John’s therapist and Faith Smith before returning to set her magical psychic trap. Eurus’s additions to the letter are also telling in and of themselves –– they’re hidden, subtextual clues on a surface layer text that was planted for someone to find.

In TLD, one of Eurus’s primary functions is to act as John’s self-insert for his first night with Sherlock. One of the ways we can tell this is by her outfit design –– while everything in series 4 is filtered through the color blue, the color representing the false narrative at work and John’s authorship, the color red represents John’s “me-substitute,” as John tells Sherlock in TST.

As @shinka explains in “Something Borrowed, Something Blue”:

The red balloon. Striking touch of red in a season full of cold and blue tones. John the Writer tells the audience that Red is a Me substitute. In others words, if Blue is the color of John’s Fiction, Red is the color of John’s Truth. Which means we can have both blue and red in one scene; as John the writer presents a scene, John as himself appears through the subtext and the narrative.

Eurus is wearing bright red as the bus lady and as Faith Smith. Eurus is John’s own subtextual substitute for himself, appearing in places where his authorship is to be questioned. Of course, also keep in mind throughout looking at the rest of this comparison and contrast, that Sherlock realizes in TLD that Eurus as Faith Smith wasn’t actually there. Bill Wiggins and Mrs. Hudson both point out that nobody’s there. So how do they remark on this and how does Sherlock realize it only to have Eurus appear again at the end of the episode and in TFP, as if she really had been there the entire time? Eurus isn’t there. Eurus is John. Eurus as John as the author, placing a substitute for himself.

John spells it out as he writes Sherlock deducing Eurus as Faith.

“Oh, of course you don’t own a car, you don’t own one, do you, living in isolation, no human contact, no visitors.”

This is something Sherlock doesn’t picture in his recreation of their meeting in TAB. In TLD, John states it in their first conversation to establish where Eurus as Faith is coming from. This is also where John himself is at the beginning of TLD on the surface layer text, and as we continue the comparison, it becomes even more obvious.

Next, Sherlock imagines John asking how Sherlock could know about his army history. John in TAB is less angry about this, as Sherlock immediately proceeds to sharing rooms instead of questioning him. In ASIP, John is frustrated someone was able to see through him right away. In TLD, Eurus angrily replies back at Sherlock, “You can’t know that.” In TAB and ASIP, Stamford didn’t say anything to him in either versions, reinforcing that Sherlock claiming he researched John in TRF was a lie meant to trick John into seeing him as a fraud so he would really think Sherlock is dead be safe from Moriarty’s clutches. This also feeds into John’s own self-loathing, as he thinks that if someone sees him for who he thinks he really is, they wouldn’t like him. If Sherlock is a genius, he must eventually notice that John loves him, and if he doesn’t say anything about it, then Sherlock must not feel the same way back. Even though in TLD, John classifies his relationship with Sherlock as a romantic one, through his self-insert Eurus as Faith.

John as Eurus as Faith is talking about two different things when it comes to Sherlock deducing her failed romantic relationship, something Sherlock doesn’t do in ASIP and has no clue about until TSOT (where he’s surprised at and jealous of John’s history with Sholto). Since this is a recreation of their first night together, John is partially talking about Sholto, but since John is writing this story now and specifically after TRF and Sherlock’s 2 year disappearance, he’s also partially talking about Sherlock. In TLD, Sherlock deduces that “Presumably you downsized” when you left your job and “maybe” when you ended your relationship. John did indeed move (and downsize) after being discharged from the army, and he moved out from the loft after TRF. In both situations, he also left his previous line of work, the army and investigating with Sherlock. The “maybe” on Sherlock’s part, written by John, means a couple of things here; first, that John thinks Sherlock doesn’t consider their own relationship to be romantic, and that Sherlock doesn’t consider himself responsible for ending it, whatever exactly it was, by faking his own death, which is what really happened in reality. Instead, as we later find out through Eurus as Faith’s marks of self harm later, John blames himself for his relationship with Sherlock being a failed one, because he was afraid to be vulnerable with Sherlock and open about himself and what he wants. This is also a remark on his relationship with Sholto, reiterating that John is back where he was in act one, now in act four. He feels he repeated his mistakes with Sholto with Sherlock and hasn’t changed as a person, that nothing will change, and that he feels utterly lost, isolated, and completely hopeless. “There wasn’t anything physical going on, was there?” “For quite some time, in fact.”

In TAB, Sherlock continues his deduction of John without interruption, as John continues staring at him starstruck. In ASIP, John continues to push back against what Sherlock is doing. Soon after in ASIP however, Sherlock recruits John on his case investigating the four serial suicides. Sherlock ironically imagines the lab meeting as the one where he came off seductive, while the one where he John agrees to join him was actually where John plunged in head over heels. It does however, contain the same truth; that Sherlock was right about him, which leaves John scratching his head how Sherlock doesn’t pick up on John loving him, which must mean it isn’t returned. And while Sherlock is aware of that, how John misses the war, and that he enjoys being with Sherlock on his work, he isn’t quite aware of just how much he saved John’s life that night.

In TLD, John writes Eurus as Faith being suicidal. Sherlock deduces that Eurus as Faith is carrying a gun in her bag with no way home, meaning she was planning on killing herself if her meeting with Sherlock didn’t go well. In ASIP, this isn’t quite as obvious, particularly from Sherlock’s own point of view, which is why it isn’t depicted in TAB. That’s why Sherlock literally remembering John walking down the street in ASIP after leaving the crime scene is so completely contradictory; Sherlock had already long left that location. John was on his own. Sherlock has absolutely no way of flashing back to that moment, and its especially obvious because it happens while Sherlock is talking about how Faith as Eurus is suicidal... John is talking about himself. John himself kept a gun in his desk drawer and was considering killing himself, before he met Sherlock and Sherlock completely changed his life, giving him a purpose and a reason to live again, as John ended up instead using the gun on Jeff Hope to save Sherlock’s life, and John no longer needed the cane. Eurus is also carrying a cane here, which Sherlock looks closer at before flashing back to his memory of John he can’t possibly have.

The flashbacks in TST and TLD are indicative of all of this being written from John’s point of view. In TST, after Sherlock discovered the A.G.R.A. stick being hidden in one of the Thatcher statues, he kneels down and picks it up in his hand, as a projector light visual effect appears over the scene and the shot cuts to the stick being held in John’s hand. In the opening scene of TST, a projector with flickering light was used to display doctored footage of a trigger-happy fall-man meant to blame the death on, showing how Norbury was a random person blamed for Mary’s death. There’s no light effect with the flashback in TLD, since the fallman has already been chosen, but instead a distorted moving of the image of John walking down the street alone. Eurus is practically ablaze on screen in her red dress, in Sherlock’s loft and walking throughout central London, carrying a cane of her own. She is John. John is talking about himself through Eurus and Sherlock, having Sherlock pick up on something about John that he didn’t realize in ASIP, as is displayed in absence in TAB.

Continuing in TAB, Sherlock starts to leave the room like he did in ASIP, but John doesn’t push back. In ASIP, John is abrasive with Sherlock about what just happened. This is another display of Sherlock not realizing how cold he can come off, but it’s also a connection to TLD in that John is not willing to let the issue drop, since Eurus continues to ask him about how he deduced her as the night continues. Also in TAB and ASIP, Sherlock talks about the rooms they can share, and judging from how Sherlock immediately brings it up in TAB, compared to how it takes longer in ASIP, we can tell he was intending to seduce John. John was also trying to seduce Sherlock in ASIP –– as he asks him whether or not he has a girlfriend or boyfriend, John remarks that Sherlock is “unattached, like me.” Sherlock panics and shoots him down, saying he’s not interested, even though he very much is. In TLD, John states this rather more obviously, with “Sex” being Eurus’s starting point of conversation. “How did you know I wasn’t getting any?” Sherlock says that he’s not an expert, but assumes that her partner had “failed to notice” her marks of self-harm, indicating that their relationship was no longer intimate. John is talking about Sholto here, or “the most unsociable man he’s ever met”, failing to notice that John was hurting, but still is ultimately placing the blame on himself for not being vulnerable, but also about Sherlock. John writes that Sherlock deducing it came down to how her partner “failed to notice” what was going on. “How do you know he didn’t notice?” Eurus as Faith asks. John thinks Sholto and John didn’t care enough about him to notice.

“Oh, well, ‘cause he would have done something about it.”

“Would he?”

“Wouldn't he? Isn't that what you people do?”

“Well, that's interesting.”

“What is?”

“The way you think.”

“Superbly?”

“Sweetly.”

John is questioning himself a little bit here, partially over how much Sholto and Sherlock returned John’s feelings. Would he? Wouldn’t he? He’s questioning whether they would have even done anything if they’d noticed John’s feelings at all. Would he? Wouldn’t he?

Sherlock arrives at this conclusion through logical means, beating around the bush of the human element, but John as Eurus as Faith loves it, which is how he fell in love with Sherlock their first night together, by learning to see the great heart behind the brain. John will go back and forth on whether or not Sherlock is a sociopath throughout the rest of the episode, and while John concludes that Sherlock is flawed like any human, he’s never able to fully answer the question of whether or not Sherlock is capable of romantic feeling.

We know that John is still unsure of this the next episode, because TFP is structured around John interrogating the possibility of how Sherlock ended up the way that he did (similar to inserting Eurus into these stories last minute where it doesn’t make sense –– why was Eurus flirting with John important to her plan? And how did she get the note from Faith to begin with? –– John also hastily inserts Sherlock having recurring dreams about Redbeard in the middle of both episodes). This is where John, through his substitute, poses the question: would he? Wouldn’t he?

In TAB vs. ASIP again, dream John is compliant (while ignorant of Sherock��s true feelings and intent), while John pushes against Sherlock one last time (also, ironically, ignorant of Sherlock’s true feelings and intent). How could he know everything about him? How could he see through him so clearly? “We don't know a thing about each other; I don't know where we're meeting; I don't even know your name.” But even though they’d just met, both John and Sherlock saved each other from killing themselves that night. John was considering shooting himself, while Sherlock, in the midst of a drug bust at his loft while feeling utterly embarassed and exposed in front of John (“This guy? A junkie? Have you met him?”), willingly took a ride with the cabbie, knowing he was heading to his own suicide. Both ASIP and TFP contain multiple references to suicide, and John’s gun in his desk drawer is shown in an episode with a case about suicide.

But John doesn’t let that happen. By using his own gun he was going to use later, John is able to save both of their lives, and John recreates this in the episode again by having him save Sherlock from Culverton –– but as he’s approaching his crisis point in act four, John is feeling suicidal again. 

“Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.”

“You were gonna take that damned pill, weren’t you?”

As Sherlock is repeating to John as Eurus, keep your hands off it, Sherlock experiences an image of a gun going off, the gun in the opening, at the beginning of the episode hovering over John, and the gun that Eurus shoots John with at the end of the episode before fading to red. Eurus is John’s substitute (including a shot of the London Aquarium, where Mary’s death was covered up). The gun goes off, with a bright flash and loud bang as Sherlock is talking about John as Eurus being suicidal.

John shot himself at the end of TLD.

Somehow behind the true events of series 4, John is trying to communicate to us that he committed suicide. John’s authorial substitute, the subtextual red herring that was laced throughout series 4, shot him. John is telling the audience that he’s tried to kill himself. Unlike ASIP, he was not able to escape his own Samarra. It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing. We need to decide which way you’re going to fall. Would he? Wouldn’t he? The same scenario is repeated as John approaches his crisis point.

Though John is committing suicide through the subtextual narrative of series 4, and thus bringing about the death of the show, it isn’t a real death –– it was a faked one. 

In TFP, John writes a scene with the three Garridebs brothers being hung from a couple of ropes, making it look like a suicide when it was a murder attempt (see here for context on what “Garridebs” is about). In an episode that was titled “The Final Problem” precisely because it was not the real final problem, the Garridebs moment in TFP is not the real one. John shooting himself is the third Garridebs moment –– the Garridebs wound was self-inflicted. Sherlock is utterly oblivious to this in TAB. John thinks he failed to notice. John thinks he failed to notice “the big one” deduction on Eurus as Faith’s note. That’s what people do, don’t they? Leave a note. Would he have done something? Wouldn’t he have?

“Taking our own life –– interesting expression. Taking it from who?”

Yes, he would have... but John doesn’t know the answer. He doesn’t know how much Sherlock loves him –– and he’s finally going to know in series 5.

Before John is shot by his substitute, he wonders again if his love for Sherlock is one-sided, and whether or not Sherlock fell in love with him too, that first night when they met and saved each other’s lives, sitting under the pink glow of Angelo’s restaurant. Or, if Sherlock even noticed John liked him at all.

“I spent a whole evening with her. We had chips. I think she liked me.”

“We spent a whole night together. It was lovely. We had chips.”

But the reality is that Sherlock does love him –– if he’s failed to notice anything, it’s because of his emotional repression and fears of vulnerability, and the two of them both failing (especially on Sherlock’s end, given he’s aware of John’s feelings) to communicate with each other openly about how they feel. It’s not about either of them being solely responsible for ending the relationship, like John is so eager to assign blame to himself. They’re both idiots.

In TAB, Sherlock leaves his meeting John with a wink and a smile. “Shall I, um ...? Smile and wink. I do that sometimes. I’ve no idea why. People seem to like it –– humanizes me,” Sherlock says in MHR. Sherlock thought he was being obvious about his seduction in ASIP, and was even more blatant about it in reconstructing it in TAB.

John, however, remains unsure, and continues to deny himself.

[eduardolimpsych101-blog]

The Jump is Beautiful

Peace has its ways to demand attention.  

According to the calendar, it has been half a year. 7 months next week to be exact. To be honest, I stopped counting at 4. It doesn't feel necessary anymore. Gone are the days where I tell myself "I can't believe it. It still doesn't feel real" and need a constant reminder that time has passed and will not go back. Now are the days where they feel the most real and where time not passing fast enough becomes my worst reminder.

My close friend committed suicide last May. And I knew it.

The night before May 15 was weird. You could call it a premonition or somewhat paranoia but I felt something was wrong. I couldn't pinpoint right away what I was feeling but my chest felt heavy and tears fell for no reason. I was scared, remembering now how I felt that evening. I had an instinct of asking one person how they were feeling. I gave words of encouragement. I admitted to them that I felt something was wrong and just wanted to make sure they were fine. Guess what? Wrong friend. Or I guess just not the right one at that moment.

My close friend committed suicide last May. And now we're lost.

I was in school cramming a group paper for a major when our barkada chat popped up. Our friend that was his course mate was the one who messaged. I started to feel my heart getting heavy. The feeling I had last night came back and my worst fears came true when he finally told us the news. I was in disbelief. We called each other up and ask who was free so we could just be together. I asked my group mates if I could just help tomorrow then left to meet with friends. It was the worst reunion ever.

What followed was a series of sleepless nights and endless bouts of crying throughout the week of his wake. Every part of his death was a reminder of the last time I missed a death. It was even in the same place. And every part of me was blaming myself again like last time. If I reached out more, maybe just maybe Peace wouldn't have to. 

The third day of his wake where I finally stopped crying excessively, I went back to our chat box and found a conversation of ours on how we were struggling to find time to meet up as a barkada. He wasn't complaining though he even said a hello across the hallway was enough. I was lucky because he had a Stat subject last year so I got to see him for like 5 minutes every other day. We would chat for a bit about anything even if we both had classes. The friendship was always that simple to him. He just love simply being together, doing nothing particularly exciting. And now that's what all we want also: to be together.

“Most of the time sapat na yun sa akin e.”

This was the second time I knew something was wrong but still chose not to do anything. This was the second time I chose not to hold on. But this will be the last time that I didn't start doing something. 

My close friend committed suicide last May. And it will not be in vain.

What we can do

My friend did not tell us at any point his diagnosis. The one time he told us anything about his mental health was when we had a reunion because one of us in the barkada was going to do a semester abroad in Japan. He opened up about going to a therapist and working on his issues with himself. He told us that he has this thing that when he is happy, he thinks that it won't last so he just sabotages it himself so at least he knows when the happiness will end. He opened up about having times where he feels depressed or feels pressured about his academics. Even during that lunch, he said he can only stay until 1 since he had to go back to school to study. This was the time I should have done more like ask how he was everyday or send words of encouragement every now and then. 

In 2017, WHO released statistics on mental health citing suicide associated with depression as the second leading cause of death among people ages 15-29. DOH also presents that the suicide rate for men and women for every 100,000 people is  2.5 and 1.7 respectively. This has become such a problem that in DOH's 2017 budget plan, 100 million was allotted for mental health drugs and 1 billion for mental health facilities. But the government can only do so much. The stigma around mental health problems as just excuses or only weaknesses of the person prevents people from seeking out help even if it is available. We must start by first educating ourselves with what depression and disorders in the same category in order to begin the process of eliminating the stigma on mental health. 

Saundra Ciccarelli (2017) explains Major Depressive Disorder as "when a deeply depressed mood comes on fairly suddenly and either seems to be too severe for the circumstances or exists without any external cause for sadness". It some sense it is not logical. It is not something you can eliminate in their sight so they can feel better. Neither is it something you can reason them out of. 

According to Ciccarelli causes of depression may be: 

1. Repressed anger towards authority figures

2. Learned helplessness (tendency to stop trying after past failures)

3. Self-defeating thoughts

4. Variation in neurotransmitter systems

With the first reason, consultations with family guidance counselors may be done or just having a more open conversation as a family can help. For the second and third reason, extra caution in the words we use must be made. Every mistake they make, they will amplify and intensify guilty feelings. It is important to not only think about what we say but also how we say it. I implore you to read more upon this so you can understand what a person having depression or depressive moods is going through. Asides from what is mentioned, it is important we are also aware of the free facilities and services near our places that can accommodate new clients. 

Me taking Psych 101 and writing this blog post is just step number 1. He has changed my life and many others'.

Farewell

To Edel,How weird is it that the only time I talk to you at length is for a subject. Last time it was for Eng 10 case study, now for Psych 101. I guess you understand me anyway. 

You were the first person not to question my insecurities when making friends with what I called "popu" kids. You just kept on trying and eventually you broke down the wall I put up. You are one of my best friends and I'm sorry I never told you that. You were always there to help everyone in our group even if that meant you driving out of the way just to go to us. I remember you fetching me one time at my house so I wouldn't be hassled with transportation to your despedida. I remember you baking cookies for a girl that eventually gave it away (tough man but hey at least you learned how to bake haha). I remember you taking on 3+ roles for your section's school play. I remember you. In all ways you never looked at yourself. You are the kindest, most generous, and loving person. 

But you weren't without your flaws. 

You had your own wall, one where I only noticed far too late in our friendship. It wasn't like you weren't open about your emotions just not specific ones. I just wished I caught onto it so I could've convinced you that you were a far greater person that what you think. If I saw every doubt when it came to your decisions, I would've told you that I was proud no matter what choice. If I saw every hesitation when you wanted to speak, I would've made you feel comfortable until you were ready to tell us. 

But really, would I have? Because it is because of you that right now I am not afraid to ask people how they are doing. I don't care if I come off as FC. It is because of you that I talk about my feelings to my friends and to God. It is because of you that I learned to love my friends explicitly. I just wished that "because of you" wasn't in exchange for you. 

I miss you. I miss you everyday. We miss you everyday. And right now are days are still pretty heavy but they will get better because you gave us a reason to be better for each other and for you. Thank you for everything. I'll see you when I see you and don't worry I'll give you more than a high five. 

To everyone suffering in even the most simplest way, you are enough and more than enough all at the same time. 

A sight is never too beautiful to resist.

[mysticorigamipaper-mcl]

honestly the worst part about kentin´s arc is how much hate he is getting, i get most ppl already dont like him but now is fucking ridiculous i literally cannot go to his tag on a normal episode without reading "how awful" he is but now is worst,i just want to see cute fanart! I hate the tumblr mcl fandom, the hispanic fandom will make fun of things and even say they dont like a character but it never overflows with negativity (ik im super annoying but i need to vent and have no friends)

*hugs* You have a friend in me anon. You’re not being annoying, and venting can help one feel a little better. I’m sorry to hear there’s more negativity towards Kentin and his fans. And I also realized a while back there was little positivity towards him in the tumblr fandom. I try to give all the boys some attention through posts and fan art on my blog to share with all fans, but I noticed Kentin receives the least. It’s actually hard to find good/cute content with him in it. Though Kentin may not be my favorite personally, I can see why others like him, and it’s a shame there isn’t more material available. Not to mention that anyone who seems to voice that they like him receive so much hate in return and are shamed for their personal interest in his character/route. It must be absolutely frustrating.

Yes, after the latest episode Kentin is getting more hate than usual. But I think part of it is more towards his attitude change in the recent events since we met Evan. And his behavior towards strangers and women in general. I mean, he and Evan were acting the same, if not worse than Dake when he was always harassing Candy. Treating a girl/woman or anyone the way they did to Candy and Rosa in this episode is something very relatable in the real world. It’s unacceptable, uncomfortable and upsetting behavior. That’s why people are more angry than usual. His attitude is something a lot of us face. There are guys that actually act like this, and it may be triggering many who have experienced such attitudes in real life.

Apart from that, this is how I see his situation. Evan was Kentin’s role model and surrogate big brother in military school. Not only did Evan defend Kentin from bullies, he apparently gave him confidence and molded Kentin, transforming him while he was there.

And Kentin seems to be very grateful for what Evan has done for him. When Kentin returns to Sweet Amoris, no one recognizes him. Thanks to this, his first plan of action is get back at Amber by stealing her first kiss (her not knowing he was the nerd she used to bully) and then telling her she’s a bad kisser, in an attempt to lower her ego/self esteem. He even smashed her new cell phone. He wasn’t about to let anyone bully him anymore. And he wanted that made clear through Amber. If your Candy was mean to him before military school, he is cold towards you. If you were nice, he’s nice towards you when he returns.

Once he’s back, he befriends Armin and Alexy and no one seems to bother or bully him. He becomes more relaxed and doesn’t try so hard to put on the tough guy act. He becomes a sweet guy again (as long as your Candy is nice to him), just slightly more mature as he’s not stalking Candy anymore like a lovesick puppy. I think with the absence of Evan and the other boys, Kentin wasn’t fired up and influenced to act the way he did in military school where you had to act tough, macho and not allow anyone walk all over you. But later, I think he started feeling out of place at Sweet Amoris, if not alone. Though he clicked right away with Armin and Alexy, Armin started becoming more of a friend towards Nathaniel. Alexy has a crush on Kentin but they don’t hang out a lot, if at all these days. And he doesn’t seem to be getting along with any of the other guys, or any of the girls in his class, apart from the few conversations we’ve seen him have with Lysander or while our Candy is present in his route. Then, for those on his route, even when he finally gets to date his long time crush and kiss her, his confidence in himself and his self esteem appears to continue to dwindle. First Candy wants to hide their relationship from everyone as soon they officially become a couple (Kentin more than likely thought she was embarrassed or ashamed to be seen with him as his girlfriend) and it hurt him deeply. Then at the party during spin the bottle, Kentin became upset when another guy tries to kiss Candy on a dare and claims Candy doesn’t realize how beautiful/wonderful she is and how could other guys NOT be interested in her. I think him witnessing that and becoming more aware of that reality seriously made him question if he was good enough for Candy, if he was manly enough, if he was the kind of guy she wanted to be with. Again, his level of confidence drops.

Once Evan returns, Kentin is suddenly brought back to his military school days, and that macho attitude kicks in like Pavlov’s dogs to a dinner bell. Kentin suddenly feels like he’s brimming with confidence with his old buddy back at his side, and admires/mimics Evan to a horrifying degree. Kentin becomes so overconfident that he shifts into an arrogant, rude person. Notice how he talks back to everyone and becomes disrespectful towards Candy and the other classmates, as well as the teachers. He thinks that this new confidence makes it so no one messes with him, that no one will try to walk all over him again.

Be that as it may, I think he’s distancing himself from everyone. Putting up a wall. Making sure no one approaches him. Not even his own girlfriend. Because he’s hiding so many insecurities and fears. He has no identity. No self worth. No friends. He doesn’t have much of a father figure since his dad is gone a lot, and therefore no male figure to look up to or learn from. Until Evan came along. Evan was everything Kentin thought a man should be. Strong, confident and assertive. And because Kentin became so grateful of Evan’s support, he failed to notice Evan’s flaws. Arrogant, harassing, even delinquent like. Kentin becomes blind to Evan’s and his own behavior and makes excuses or gets defensive when people call him out on it. He gets upset when people tell him Evan is a bad influence. But to Kentin, Evan was the only person who ever seemed to be there for him when no one else was. It’s why he tries so hard to defend Evan and his actions. And as a result, Kentin becomes the very type of person he hates without knowing it. And he doesn’t want to see it.

He’s scared…he’s alone…he’s frustrated…he’s completely lost. That’s a dangerous and self destructive combination. And until Kentin accepts who he really is, learns to truly be himself or figures out what he can become/wants to become on his own, without the influence of anyone but himself, he’ll continue to have this identity crisis. I just hope for his sake, that will come about on some serious self reflection in the next episode.