#and that she's not gonna do anything that would be really detrimental to her wellbeing

[girlitfeelsgood]

y'all are kinda pissing me off rn ngl

[hopelikethemoon]

Pretty Woman (Javier x Reader) {MTMF} [smut]

Title: Pretty Woman Rating: Explicit Length: 3700 Warnings: Angst (discussions of depression, therapy, etc.) and Smut (Bathtub sex) Notes: You can find the Maybe Today, Maybe Forever Timeline here. Set in September late 1997. It starts with Javier POV and jumps to Reader’s.  Summary: Javier and Reader go to therapy and try to work on things.

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Javier slowly rocked his lower jaw as he stared at the therapist. The older woman had asked him to ‘talk about what was on his mind’. There was a lot on his mind. How specific did she want him to get? 

He scrubbed his hands over his face, glancing to his left towards the window. It was a gorgeous day outside, it seemed like a damned shame to be trapped inside talking to a shrink. He’d had to talk to therapists before. Psych evaluations were a commonplace when you handled guns for the government. But none of that ever delved into the sort of shit this meeting was supposed to delve into. 

“Whenever you feel ready, Mr. Peña.” 

Javier swallowed thickly, slowly looking back at Nancy. “There’s a lot to say.” He admitted, brows drawn together as he rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip. 

“Let’s start at the beginning, alright? How did the two of you meet?”

“Work.” Javier scratched at his jaw. “She came to Colombia in 1987.” 

Nancy nodded slowly, “And when did your relationship begin?”

“1992.” He sank back on the sofa, rubbing at the back of his neck, letting his hand linger there at the curve of his throat. “Our daughter was born the following year.” 

She wrote something down in her notebook, nodding her head thoughtfully. “And how was that experience for you, Javier?”

There it was. 

“Not great.” Javier admitted, staring at the ground. “It was a fucked up situation for both of us. We kept our relationship a secret for about a year. I wasn’t really involved, at all, during the pregnancy.” 

“Why not?”

“She cared about her job at the DEA more than I did. I mean, her reservations weren’t without cause. They treated her like shit for being pregnant. Knowing what I know now, I don’t blame her.” Javier shifted in his seat. “We’ve hashed all of this out before. It’s a dead horse we keep beating.” 

“What do you mean by keep beating? That implies you’ve had this conversation with her more than once.” 

He clenched his teeth together and nodded. “Yeah.” Javier twisted the ring on his left finger nervously. “Look, I know I’m not fucking innocent in all of this. I think I fell in love with her in the summer of ‘89. Or at least realized I was in love with her.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I knew she deserved better than me—”

Nancy interjected, “What do you mean by that?” 

“That she deserves better than me? Exactly what I said.” 

“Why do you think that?”

“You’ve met her.” Javier folded his arms across his chest, feeling defensive. “She’s perfect and I’m… Look, I’ve fucked up a lot. I can own that.” 

“No one is perfect,” Nancy shook her head slowly. “Do you think that might put a weight on her?”

“What?” Javier frowned. “I think she’s perfect. That’s my personal opinion and that’s not going to change.”

“Isn’t that opinion the reason why you don’t think you’re good enough for her?”

He looked away. “No.”

“Then what is the reason?”

Javier pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek, “I don’t know where to begin with that one, Nancy.” He admitted, rubbing at the crease between his brows. “I fucked up a lot before her. Before our relationship.” He exhaled heavily, “She was a damn good agent and I’m the reason she had to leave that behind.” 

“Do you feel guilty about that?”

“So many questions.” He huffed. “Yeah. Of course I feel guilty about it.”

“But you feel responsible for her losing her job?”

Javier swallowed thickly. “Yeah.”

“And why is that?”

“That night was a long time coming, but I shouldn’t… We were both drunk.”

“You were both under the influence.”

“I think we were shot for shot.” He frowned, thinking back to that night. “Yeah, we were. She left before I had the chance to tell her that I didn’t want it to be a one night stand.”

“Do you resent her for that?”

Javier rubbed his thumb over the ring on his finger, nodding slowly. “But I’m just as much at fault. I chose not to confront her for three months. I thought she just didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“And how long has it been since your daughter was born?” Nancy questioned. 

“Josie? She’ll be five in May.”

“No, your newborn.” She made a note in her journal, before flipping back a few pages, humming thoughtfully.

“She’s three months old.”

“I see.” She nodded. “You have a pattern, Javier. Something happens and you wait… What are you waiting for?”

Javier stared at a spot just above Nancy’s head, his jaw clenched tight. “I decided a long time ago that I would rather have some of her, rather than none of her.” He admitted, rubbing at his eyes then. They burned with the pull of emotion he felt. “I love her.”

“There is no question that either of you love each other. You shield each other from your own pain at the detriment of your wellbeing.” She closed her journal, shaking her head. “You understand what your partner is going through, don’t you?”

Javier nodded slowly, “Postpartum depression. I should’ve seen it sooner. She wasn’t herself, but I just thought...” 

“That what happened in Colombia was happening again?”

“That she almost died and she realized she didn’t want this.” 

“But that isn’t the case, is it?” 

Javier shook his head. “I checked out a book at the library. I want to figure out how I can help her.” 

“The fact that you’re here is proof enough.” Nancy told him warmly. “I have worked with couples who refused to participate. Husbands — partners — who didn’t think they needed to be involved in this process.” 

“I want to help her.” Javier said resolutely. “I want to help both of us get back to where we were before. Better than we were before.” 

He knew there was shit. Unintentional pain they’d inflicted on each other. And this funky little room with a bonsai tree, miniature fountain, and overstuffed sofa was going to be the place they figured it out. 

Nancy smiled at him, “You both love each other very much, Javier. That is not something you should worry about with her.” 

“Thank you.” He said, rubbing his hands together. “Is there… homework or something?”

“There is.” She laughed softly. “I’m suggesting that both of you engage in intimacy with each other before our next session. It doesn’t have to be anything more than holding each other’s hands or perhaps even a massage. But I want you to listen to each other and speak to each other.” 

“And that’s it?” Javier frowned, leaning forward. “Shouldn’t there be more homework?”

“The issues you’re both facing won’t be solved overnight.” 

“Well, thank you.” Javier glanced at his watch. “I have to go pick the kids up from the sitter.” 

“I’ll see you next week.” 

 ----

 Therapy was weird. You had spent so many years bottling everything up. For a while you had Connie, Steve, and Javier to vent with, but then the Murphys left and your relationship with Javier changed. And then you had Connie again — but even with her there were issues you didn’t want to burden her with.

So you carried the burden. 

That was something you had identified with Nancy. You and Javier were two extremely similar people. Whether it had always been that way or proximity had guaranteed it — you reacted similarly. 

Which did fuck all when it came to voicing frustrations. 

For three months you slept beside Javier, oblivious to the fact that he thought you’d unofficially ended things with him. Either he was too good at hiding his emotions or you had been too wrapped up in yourself. 

And you had. 

Nancy reassured you that everything you were feeling was valid. Those fears, self-doubts, worries — they weren’t your fault. But you’d have to work to get rid of them. And it might not be easy. 

You weren’t particularly fond of the way she had you reflect on your relationship with Javier. There were sore spots that were still sore and she knew exactly how to salt the wound. 

“Are we allowed to talk about therapy?” You questioned, tucking your legs beneath you as you settled onto the sofa, grabbing the blanket off the back and pulling it around you. “Or is it a secret society?”

Javier hummed thoughtfully, clicking his tongue against his teeth as he settled down onto the sofa beside you. “She didn’t say.” He glanced at you. “I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

You laughed softly, shuffling closer to him so you could sink into his side. “I found it frustrating, but in a good way.”

He readjusted the blanket so it was around both of you, curling his arm around your waist and pulling you in closer. “Yeah. It was rough. I didn’t think it was revolutionary—“

“No!” You shook your head. 

“But it was nice to talk to someone outside of it.” Javier squeezed your arm. “Did she give you homework?”

“A journal.” You answered. “She wants me to write down the good things that happen every day.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

Javier tilted his head to look at you, “She told me to engage in intimacy.”

You blushed. “That’s definitely because of my session.” You turned into him, pressing your face against his shoulder to hide the warmth in your cheeks. 

“Now you’re gonna have to tell me, baby.”

You groaned, shaking your head. “It’s so stupid.”

“I’m sure it isn’t.” He rubbed your back. “Tell me.”

You pinched his side lightly. “Shut up.” 

“Ow.” Javier laughed. “I wonder what Nancy will think about that.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Really?”

“Javier.” You pursed your lips and attempted to pout, but he was undeterred. Nancy had told you to discuss things after all. “Fine.” You crossed your arms across your chest and sighed. “I don’t even remember what we were discussing, but we got onto the topic of sex and how that area of our life was.”

“Ah.”

“You should’ve realised where this was going.” You scolded him. “We’ve had our dry spells. But you haven’t touched me since April.”

Javier raked his fingers through his hair, sighing heavily. “Because I was afraid.”

“I know. But it’s almost October.”

“And with everything you’ve been dealing with—“

“Almost seven months.”

“Shit.” He rubbed at his jaw. “How the hell has it been that long?”

“I’m not breakable.” You reminded him. 

“I know you’re not.” He squeezed your shoulder three short times, before he leaned forward to press a kiss to your forehead. 

“And sex is good for mental health.” 

“Well then, it’s decided.” He teased lightly, playing his fingers over your hair. 

“Let’s watch the movie and see where the night goes.” You told him, reaching up to brush your fingers over his jawline. “Does that sound like a plan?”

He nodded. 

 ——

“Is that movie why you wanted a big bathtub?” Javier questioned, arms folded against his chest as he watched you leaning over the side of the tub to test the temperature.

“Maybe.” You clicked your tongue against your teeth and stood up straight, turning around to face him. “You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it.”

“It was an interesting choice.” He drawled out, pushing away from the wall, taking a step towards you. There was a look in his eyes that had your heart racing. “That piano scene.”

You smirked at him. “Right?” You tilted your head as he drew nearer, your breath wavering as he crowded into your space. “Were you inspired?” Fuck. You hoped the answer was yes. You had missed this — him. 

Javier canted his head to the side as he closed the distance between you, his breath was hot against your lips, but he didn’t kiss you. Not yet. 

He ran his hands along your waist dragging them down to your hips. There was a certain reverence to his touch. “I don’t know how he did it. Not kissing her.” He lifted his hand and traced his thumb over your bottom lip. 

“Because it makes for a good movie.” You whispered, curling your fingers around the back of his neck. “But don’t make me wait, Javi” 

Javier brushed his lips against yours, hesitantly at first, before he slanted his mouth hungrily over yours. It was the sort of stoke-your-fire kiss that you had been dying for. Even after Sofia, you had just wanted to be kissed like you were alive. Passion, need, want. 

But you didn’t dwell on the past. 

You moaned against his mouth, your fingers sliding through his hair. With your other hand, you started to unbutton his shirt, greedily trying to get under the layers that he’d kept between the two of you.

Javier had the same idea, peeling off your sleep pants, fingers hooking into the waistband of your underwear before he stopped. He pulled back, looking downwards. “I haven’t seen these in awhile.” 

“I was hoping the movie might be inspiring.” You whispered, sliding your hand over his chest seductively, before you took a step back to pull off your top, showing off your matching bra. “You like?”

He leaned down to kiss you again, dragging his teeth over your bottom lip. “I love it.” He brushed his nose against yours. “I love you.” Javier trailed a row of kisses along your jawline, down your throat, his tongue darting out over your collarbone. 

You reached for the counter behind you, fingers gripping at it for support as Javier’s mouth continued downwards. He pressed open-mouthed kissed over your stomach, leaving no patch of skin untouched. He nipped at you, teeth catching soft skin before his tongue soothed the same spot. 

Javier rose back up to his full height, his hand slipping in between your thighs as his mouth caught yours again. You draped your arms over his shoulders, nails scraping against his back as you rocked into his touch. 

He stroked his fingers over your cunt through your underwear, his thumb expertly finding that little bundle of nerves that had arousal flooding your system. You were already slick with want, you could feel the way your underwear was clinging to you. Feeling his fingers on you was better than anything you could’ve done for yourself. 

You reached down to work on his pants. You fumbled with his belt, forcing it open, before you slid down the zipper and shoved them down his hips. 

Javier took a step back and kicked them off, followed by his boxers. You couldn’t resist leaning back against the counter and raking your eyes over his naked flesh. “Like what you see?” He questioned with a smirk.

“Oh, yeah.” You laughed breathlessly. You moved in close to him, one hand sliding around the back of his neck as you leaned up to kiss him, while your other hand moved downwards and curled around his cock. You stroked him slowly, your thumb dragging along the underside of his cock — before you released him and stepped around him with a teasing grin. “The bath is getting cold.” 

You could feel Javier’s eyes on you as you leaned over the side of the tub and tested the temperature again. He took the bait. He moved towards you, his hands curling around your hips, sliding up your waist. With deft fingers he unclasped the back of your bra, before dragging your underwear down your thighs. 

“Javi.” You breathed out as you stood back up, leaning back against him. His mouth was at the crook of your neck, his tongue darting out to tease you there. His hand skimmed over your stomach, fingers leaving patterns against your skin. 

“Baby,” Javier whispered. You tilted your head to look at him. “Can I tell you that you’re perfect?”

Your brows furrowed and you laughed. “Yes?” 

“Because you are.” He drawled out, squeezing your hip as you turned around to face him. You ran your hands over his arms, tilting your head as you looked up at him. “You’re fucking perfect to me.” 

You smiled up at him, “Why don’t you get in the bathtub and you can show me how perfect you think I am.”

Javier sank down into the first bathtub first, wet fingers gliding through his dark hair as he settled back against the wall of the tub. Your eyes wandered over him, watching the way the water lapped at his skin as he moved in it. The way his cock jutted upwards from beneath the water. Fuck. 

“I missed you.” You whispered as you climbed into the bathtub and settled onto his lap. 

Javier gently trailed his fingers over your breast, his fingers curling around your ribs, “Can I?” He questioned, brushing his thumbs over the skin beneath your breasts. 

You nodded slowly as you leaned in to kiss him. A moan slipped past your lips as he grasped at your breasts, palming them roughly. One time, years ago, you told him not to touch your breasts, and ever since then he still asked you for permission to fondle you. No one could claim he didn’t listen to you. 

You pressed your forehead against his, breathing raggedly as you lifted up on your knees. “Need you.” You mumbled, curling your fingers around his cock as you guided him to your center. 

Javier hissed out your name as you sank down onto his cock, his hips rocking upwards to meet you. You clenched around him as you settled back into his lap. “Fuck.” He leaned back against the tub. “You feel so fucking good, baby.” He ran his hand over your stomach, before he grabbed at your hip tightly.

You arched your back, rolling your hips as you ground yourself against him. Everywhere he touched felt warm — and his hands were everywhere. He ran his hands along your sides, gripped at your hips hard enough to leave bruises, and cupped your breasts with both hands. There was no part of you that felt untouched by him. 

Javier drew his knees up behind you, causing you to lean forward. He tangled his fingers in your hair, cradling the back of your head as he drew you back to him so he could kiss you. His tongue slipped past your lips, dragging over your tongue as he kissed you so thoroughly. He started moving beneath you, his cock barely leaving you before his hips met yours once more. 

Your nails dug into his shoulders, leaving crescent-shaped marks on his skin. His hand smoothed up your back, clinging to you as you moved together. “Close.” You warned him, your inner walls already starting to flutter around him. 

“I know, baby. Let go.” Javier urged you as you worked his hand in between your bodies, his fingers seeking out that little bundle of nerves that would set you careening over the edge. Your body tensed, pleasure rocketing through you as he pressed into you — filling you up completely as you came apart around him. Your name was on his tongue as you felt him spill within you seconds later. 

You let yourself sink forward, resting against his chest as you basked in the pure pleasure of your release. You had missed that. The moment where it felt like the two of you were existing in the same space at the same time. 

“I love you.” You whispered, brushing your nose against his throat, smiling at the way he was running his hand up and down the length of your back. 

“I love you too.” Javier murmured, squeezing your hip. “Nancy might be worth her prices.”

You snorted. “Calm down Richard Gere. Are we going to talk therapy while we bathe?” You pulled back, grinning at him. 

The look of adoration you found in his eyes made your heart ache. “I’ve missed seeing you smile like that.” He lifted his hand and cupped your cheek. 

You leaned into his touch. “We’re not out of the woods yet, Javi. Sadly, I don’t think we can fuck my depression away. Though I’m not opposed to trying.” 

“We can give it a valiant effort.” Javier’s lips curved upwards at the corners. “I want us to get better.”

“Me too.” You sighed, tracing your fingertips over his chest. Reluctantly you rose up on your knees, letting his cock slip out of you so you could readjust yourself, laying back against his chest. 

Javier kissed your shoulder as he curled his arms around your waist. “What’s going in your journal today?” He questioned, nuzzling your shoulder.

“Josie drew me about a dozen pictures while she was with Monica this afternoon.” You pursed your lips as you thought. “There was a breakthrough on a case at work, which was nice. I actually felt pretty excited about that.”

He splashed you playfully. 

“Easy!” You laughed. “I’m getting there. And finally, convincing you to finally watch Pretty Woman with me is my last entry for the day.”

“That’s all?”

“Oh, am I supposed to put sex in my journal?” You tilted your head to grin back at him. 

“That’s my proof that I’m doing my homework.” He teased. 

“Don’t worry, babe. You’re in the journal.” You promised him. 

You knew you weren’t going to suddenly overcome this. But for the first time in weeks you actually did feel good. Maybe it was talking to Nancy, maybe it was finally figuring out why things between you and Javier had been strained. 

But that didn’t change the fact that an unwelcome visitor would still crawl into your mind tonight and try to convince you that you weren’t enough for your family. Tomorrow you would still catch yourself floundering under the weight of your worries. There was no magic switch that made it go away. You had to keep fighting it until one day it wasn’t lurking around the corners of your mind. 

These were the good moments that reminded you of what you were fighting for.

[punkscowardschampions]

Jac & Savannah

Jac: Cannot stop thinking about that one dress in that last boutique we checked out though... Jac: so lowkey mad at Isabelle for having to go home to walk her dog 🙄😩 Savannah: UGH I know! Don't get me started yet again on how her mum is literally never there to do anything for it & they don't even have a garden Savannah: I'll go back & get it for you, she can't stop me Savannah: I have less than zero reasons to hurry home Jac: Lowkey like, who do I call again? 😬 Jac: the poor thing, as if breathing wasn't issue enough without having to contend with getting overweight and her mum's vape habit Jac: You're so pure 🥺🥺 Jac: and I'm personally not over seeing you in that one shade of pink like ??? Jac: 👼🏾 walking Savannah: ^^^  the levels of cruelty make my heart hurt, honestly 😢 but I won't get to Heaven until I convince them to see the error of their ways & that is a battle I simply do not have the energy for today Savannah: you could literally wear that AWFUL dress that Isabelle was considering- thank god we talked her out of that much! 🙌🏾- & still look like an actual goddess Jac: Seriously, I don't know how they can live with themselves Jac: that would be their business, because I'm not as caring as you, or even close, but the fact it hurts you means it's mine too 😤 Jac: actually though, would have had to pretend to not know her, oh my God Jac: not to mention how short it was, as well as just hideous...like this is a SCHOOL event, girl, I... 🤦 Jac: it does mean we're scheduled to help her keep looking though Jac: which is becoming a trial, like I'm so sorry to say but wow Savannah: I likewise don't have the necessary reserves to try and teach her the difference between positive & negative attention Savannah: Can Amelia not help her look? I highly doubt her wardrobe is fully stocked with suitable school event dresses so surely she still needs to keep looking too? Jac: That's a whole conversation her mother should be having with her but also needs Jac: sad, really Jac: Poor, poor Is Jac: Meels is a committed outfit repeater, no matter the occasion Savannah: She can't wear jeans to this though Jac: 🙄 I've also tried on that subject Jac: it'll just become a whole THING Jac: us trying to sort both of them out and getting nowhere with our own looks Savannah: 😔 I'm exhausted by their indecision, it's taking the excitement out of it Savannah: I understand that they can't and don't feel themselves in just anything, but it's getting ridiculous Jac: ^^ Totally agree Jac: although us being on the same page is not anything like a surprise these days Jac: it's so unfair, really Jac: they're not even THAT bothered about the whole thing Jac: we've put effort in before this whole step even Savannah: I knew you'd understand, despite feeling like I'm the one who is being totally unfair by saying anything, the rational part of my mind which isn't on the verge of tears as a result of Is' complaints or Amelia's apathy is like no, Savannah, you're not wrong Savannah: it does matter to us & it's allowed to be viewed as important Savannah: not to mention enjoyable, god forbid Jac: You NEVER need to doubt yourself Jac: you're a complete empath, honestly, to your own detriment Jac: but that isn't your fault and people should try to give even a fraction of what you give them back Jac: so, for your wellbeing, I'm calling a time-out on this and them Jac: you've got to focus on you for once ❤ Savannah: I can't tell you how wholeheartedly I wish I was the person you think I am, Ty & I had a HUGE fight earlier & I've been plagued by self doubt ever since Jac: Oh no, okay, what was said? Savannah: He seemed to think that we had plans today, which is not a conversation I remember us having, so of course I wasn't going to cancel on you all Savannah: & that makes me the most thoughtless girlfriend he's ever had Savannah: I'm so sorry the girl you dated for like two weeks dropped everything without a second thought if you even hinted that you wanted her too because she didn't have a life Savannah: they broke up for that exact reason Jac: He's totally got the wrong day Jac: you don't double-book Jac: not dragging him, he's clearly just so busy with his own stuff too but yeah, no way Jac: he'll work it out and owe you a great apology Savannah: it was beyond upsetting, I swear I need a mental health break from everyone but you Jac: I get it Jac: no boy drama but my family are driving me INSANE right now Jac: I vote we go test 💅 colours and get a hand massage to boot Savannah: Can we? I don't want to be responsible for causing you more family drama Jac: Ugh, no, they're fine Jac: and you're more important than any of this drama, Is and Amelia's too Savannah: ^^ I don't care how hard Ty is sulking, I'm not going to leave you to cope with them on your own Savannah: you needed my help first Jac: Like, he can't put that on you Savannah: he's never spoken to me that way before & I have no idea where it came from Jac: Is he under a lot of pressure right now, on the team? Jac: or at home, school Jac: either way, the issue is not with you, and he probably knows that already Savannah: No, everything's going really well Jac: 🤔 Savannah: It's me, it has to be Jac: You've not done what he's saying you have Jac: accusing would be too strong a word but Jac: we'll work it out but I'm totally clueless right now Savannah: me too 😢 Jac: Lowkey mad at him now Savannah: I shouldn't have even said anything, I told myself that I wasn't going to Savannah: but then Isabelle & Amelia started sulking too & it brought it all back Jac: No, I want to be there for you Jac: and make you feel better Jac: which I definitely will Jac: but I just can't explain away why he's being like this 🥺😢 Jac: and I wish I could Savannah: You'll definitely make me cry, you're the best Savannah: he was acting as though I don't make time for him, which is not true, but if it were, the reason would be that nobody deserves as much of it as you Jac: making you cry doesn't sound like something the best would do Jac: you've got to have your own lives, own friends Jac: you do NOT wanna be THAT couple Savannah: if you don't want my tears because I couldn't be happier to have found the love of my life, I'll keep them in, since they are yours, it's totally fine Savannah: yes, exactly & he knows that, he has more friends than extra-curriculars & he has as many of those as I do Savannah: it doesn't make any sense Jac: I will treasure them Jac: and make sure they never, ever spill for anything less than the happiest of moments, because that is all you deserve Jac: I could talk to him...totally on the low and in the most well-intentioned way Jac: maybe it's something he doesn't want to burden you with? but he has accidentally burdened you with this doubt and worry instead Savannah: 🥰🤗 Savannah: you'd do that? Jac: Of course! Jac: You're my soul sister, so I hope Ty at least considers me a friend too at this point Jac: he's going to have to get used to having me around 😅 Savannah: if he doesn't we have a bigger problem than I thought because I love you so much Savannah: & I will run away with you if anyone ever tries to make me choose 😄 Jac: He's smart, he's not gonna do that Jac: though honestly, I could do with the break right now, would not say no Savannah: maybe we could have one, it's essentially my right as a child of a broken home to play my parents off against each other Savannah: & if my dad is foolish enough to believe he can buy back any of my love or respect after what he's done, why should I feel bad for treating him like one Savannah: I refuse to, I do need to focus on myself Jac: In terms of making-up-to-do, he's in the lead no question, or so far behind everyone else, looking at it that way Jac: I think it would be the most appropriate way to end transition year Jac: God knows if my parents would go for it 🙄 Savannah: I'll talk to them, I've never lost a debate so far & I couldn't be any more well intentioned, my heart is in the exact right place Jac: 👼🏾🥰 Jac: next year is when everything gets REAL Jac: we need the holiday we are NOT going to get until...I don't even want to think about the next time we'll be able to take a real break after this Savannah: ^^^ Savannah: whatever I have to do to make it happen & be perfect, so be it Jac: the salon is the EXACT right place to plan all this Jac: all the inane questions they ask about your holidays will actually be useful for once 🤭 Savannah: 😄 Jac: This is like, just a you and me thing, right? Savannah: of course Jac: Okay because helping Isabelle pick bikinis is the opposite of fun 😂 Savannah: oh my god, I don't even want to imagine Jac: if the dress breakdowns aren't bad enough Jac: we'd be so stressed we'd be put on the no-fly list, honestly Savannah: Amelia would probably throw my body into the sea, weighted down by rocks or Isabelle's dog, I swear she hates me Jac: How could anyone hate you? Jac: and she's friends with me, so her taste can't be THAT off Savannah: we won't mention that she's also friends with Is Savannah: any excuse to talk about how perfect you are instead Jac: I seriously think if we wouldn't, who would 😶 Jac: you'll make me 😳 Savannah: OH! The tans we'll both get Savannah: you'll be sightseeing & I'll just be staring at you in disbelief because you somehow got even more beautiful Jac: Oh please Jac: you're so stunning they'd be running to write new laws just to make it illegal how good you look Savannah: stop, nobody can see me 😳 but I still feel it Savannah: it should be illegal how you make me feel Jac: sorry, but a world where you don't know and aren't told how perfect you are is just not one I wanna live in 💁 Savannah: I don't deserve you, all I've done today is mope & wish your friends away so that I can have you all to myself Jac: We deserve each other Jac: if I didn't have you, who would I be able to get excited about this with? Jac: I'd be going on my own, most likely Savannah: okay, you're right Jac: I just get sad thinking about all the time we weren't friends and didn't know each other properly before Savannah: No, don't be sad, baby, we trust in the universe because it was meant to be now not then Savannah: lord knows I needed my glow up before I could be around you Savannah: 👼🏻✨🌞💛 Jac: That's true Jac: I'm more thankful that we have NOW and the promise of forever than I could ever be sad Jac: definitely not ignoring how blessed I am Jac: also blessed that my hair grew back in and I lost the puppy fat look 😬🤦 Savannah: I stand by what I said when I first saw the pictures Savannah: you were ADORABLE Jac: you're too sweet but I'm not gonna complain about it 🥰 Savannah: It's true & you know that because I would never jeopardise our connection Savannah: you're the only person I can talk to with total honesty, it's so important to me Jac: I only feel like myself with you Jac: no one else gets it all Savannah: I feel like a better person when I'm with you Savannah: but with none of the pressure that my parents put on me not to fail or the fear I have of letting Ty down Jac: You're the best person Jac: if all I do is give you the confidence to believe that, then that's totally worth it Savannah: You're going to achieve everything you want Jac: I can't wait to be Dr Taylor to your Dr Moore Savannah: 😊 Savannah: I'll be there to make sure every second of your life is worth it until then & of course after Jac: Naturally ❤ Jac: have you seen the groupchat? Savannah: please don't judge me for not having opened it Jac: I couldn't even when I'm just sat here like 🤨😑 Jac: Is has sent a million links and they seem to be getting worse every one I open ??? Savannah: Well I can't face that until later when I'm 🛀🏾🥂 Savannah: not that I'll be staying at Ty's unless he apologises to me Jac: You can always stay with me Savannah: I don't think any of your family would be fine about the always, but I wish I could Jac: They'll deal, I have to put up with all of them so 💁 Jac: I'm trying to persuade them to move the sofa bed from the hangout area to the music room, make it more of a spare room too, more privacy Jac: it's not fair that Jesse has a whole room with all his crap in, there's plenty of space in said hangout room for him Savannah: 😄 I'm sure we could win that debate too, I definitely have as much passion about the subject as you if it means I don't have to go home Savannah: it's impossible to 🛀🏾🥂 when my mum is mid-breakdown in her en-suite Jac: 😬😥 Jac: she needs to convert the passion she had for couples therapy for solo therapy now Savannah: Honestly! It's a full time job making sure she's adequately but not over medicated & if I'm worrying about it I know Sienna is Savannah: I have to unlock the door to let her in & before I know it I'm re-doing her braids or checking her homework, all the while my bath water is going cold Jac: You're actually such a good sister, and daughter Jac: In awe of you Jac: I wish you didn't have to work as hard as you do, but it's really admirable Savannah: like, so sorry that you had to go home to walk your dog, Isabelle 🙄 it's no wonder she doesn't understand me Jac: She doesn't even try Jac: she lives on planet Is where the most important thing is which bland boy she's going to get off with next Jac: I can't claim so many of your experiences and struggles but I respect the hell out of you, and try to make your life easier where and when I can Savannah: oh my god, the boy from the other night! I can't Jac: 🤢 Jac: her taste! Jac: worrying Jac: ugly dresses are the least of her problems Jac: I feel like I can't leave her alone sometimes, honestly Savannah: if this thing with Ty is leading to a break up I refuse to date any of the boys in our school Savannah: that would be another full time job working out which of them have & haven't done what with her & when Jac: tell me about it 🙄 Jac: they're all so lacklustre Savannah: ^^^ Savannah: we know our worth & we're simply too good for any of them unless they have a serious emotional glow up of their own Jac: Mhmm Jac: Ty is never gonna break up with you though Savannah: I don't know anymore, I never thought he would raise his voice to me Jac: That's pretty out of order Jac: he knows about your dad, what he's like Savannah: & it's really out of character too Jac: Yeah, totally Jac: men and anger issues are a whole can of worms Jac: there's something he isn't dealing with, for sure Savannah: or something he's not telling me Savannah: I just hope it's not a someone Jac: who could even come close to you? Jac: he's not that cliche of having the perfect girl and risking it on some skank Savannah: Logically I know that but I'm so scared Jac: Babe 🥺 Jac: you NEED to put you first, even just for the length of this nail appointment Jac: you don't need this extra stress from him Jac: I've started the convo, you can read it all once we get to the meat of it Savannah: I just want to be excited about 💅🏾 & all the iconic outfits we saw Savannah: it's SO unfair Jac: I hate this Jac: I wish I could take you away right now Savannah: you do, I'd be even more a wreck if you weren't the amazingly intuitive person you are, earlier without even having to be told I was upset you made me feel better over and over again Savannah: and right now you know what I need, way before I can put it into words or coherent thoughts Jac: we trust the connection too 💫💐💞 Savannah: I love you Savannah: I'm not devoting time & space to anyone else today, from this point on Jac: and we're definitely getting lunch after, my treat Savannah: no, mine Savannah: you've already been taking such good care of me Jac: Okay, but we will be going [place] and I will be getting you your favourite dessert Jac: no arguments 😘 Savannah: Okay, I won't fight you on it Jac: there are so many more important, and fun, decisions for us to make Savannah: ^^^!! Savannah: is Is still trying to force you to make outfit decisions for her though? Jac: I've said we've got more pressing matters right now Jac: I've made it sound like a me issue though, don't worry Jac: they'll have to cope without us for a while Savannah: Thank you, I can't cope with their relationship advice at the best of times Jac: Yeah, there's less than zero chance they'd have anything useful to say so Jac: they don't need to know Savannah: We won't tell them about the holiday plans either, that way you'll have a nice secret to keep as well as my stupid boyfriend drama Jac: to secrets 🥂 Savannah: 🥂 Savannah: Are you still thinking about that dress or have I ruined everything? Jac: You could never ruin anything with me Jac: so yes Jac: but I'm also remembering that other shop we didn't even get a chance to check out Savannah: their window display is INCREDIBLE ✨ Savannah: we should go Jac: I KNOW Jac: I've been window shopping every time I go past Jac: and to be fair, I think it's a bit out of Isabelle's price range, so it actually wouldn't be nice to take her there Savannah: the universe has spoken, I'm taking you there, our secret Jac: 🥰 Jac: I swear I only have fun when I'm with you Savannah: you're so much fun that nobody considers you might not be having any, but I promise I'll always think about you & what you need Jac: You'll make me cry now Savannah: Baby, no 🥺 if you start you'll set me off again Savannah: I'm a really ugly crier & you look like an 👼🏻 Jac: Okay, okay, no crying Jac: we'll stay flawless Savannah: that's harder work for me than it could ever be for you, but I'll do my best Jac: You're the most perfect person I've ever known Jac: inside and out Savannah: I feel that way about you, I'm not just saying it like, oh sure, me too Savannah: you're so perfect I should hate you Jac: Yeah, I know Jac: sorta been there done that Jac: not that I ever hated you really Savannah: I couldn't Jac: No, in the way how perfect you are SHOULD be impossible, that's how hating you felt Savannah: that's it exactly Savannah: & I just wanted you to notice me, I'd wait all day sometimes, getting more extra about everything Jac: It was like, I should've been mad at you but I could only ever be impressed Savannah: Well, I can't lie, I'm glad because I've never worked that hard for anyone before Savannah: it'd be super awkward if I failed Jac: 😅 Jac: I'm flattered Jac: how many boys wish, like Savannah: of course, but boys are easy Jac: duh, if you need to try then you've got bigger problems Savannah: I don't understand what Amelia's is, a smile & a hair flip & she could be dating anyone in our year Jac: Yeah, me either Jac: maybe she's had the same 💭 about Isabelle's seconds Savannah: 😄 Savannah: at this point I'm seriously expecting her to come out as asexual Jac: 🤔 maybe you're onto something Savannah: I do have good instincts for these things Jac: True Savannah: one of Sienna's friends is & nobody's been anything but really supportive about it Savannah: her year group are so sweet though Savannah: I was not like that a year ago Jac: Awh Jac: yeah, she knows we'd all support her Jac: and no one is going to say anything to her Jac: no one with half a brain cell anyway Savannah: & even if things were said it'd be no worse than what they say about her now Jac: Facts Jac: I don't know if she 1. genuinely doesn't hear 2. pretends not to or 3. seriously doesn't care Savannah: & you know her better than anyone so if you aren't sure she probably isn't either Jac: 😕 Jac: if she gave any indication, I'd do everything to help her Savannah: I know you would Savannah: I'm honestly so jealous of how close you two are & have been for like, ever Jac: but we're just as close now Savannah: I can't help but envy all the shared history you have though, all the pictures & stories that I'm obviously left out of Savannah: I shouldn't think like that, I know Savannah: but sometimes it does get to me, even though I try & be a better person than that Jac: We're going to make so many memories together though Jac: from now 'til forever Savannah: of course we are Savannah: it's no wonder he also accused me of being over sensitive, that one is very clearly true Jac: people just say that when they don't want to make allowances for other people's inconvenient feelings Jac: you can feel that, and I feel it too Jac: I wish you had been there Savannah: it just feels like she brings up all these past anecdotes as often as she does to try & leave me out Savannah: but maybe she doesn't realise how much it hurts me Jac: I'm sure she doesn't, but I'll make extra effort to clock it and get her to chill now Jac: we don't need to dwell on the past, especially at our age 🙄 Savannah: I don't want to cause friction, I can totally understand her wanting to reminisce, if we'd known each other then, I'd be the same Savannah: I talk & think about you literally all the time as it is Jac: Not even Jac: I don't want you feeling left out, or anyone Savannah: you would never Jac: you're so important to me Savannah: you've always let me know that Jac: 🥰 Savannah: I don't know how I would cope with anything that's going on in my life right now without you Savannah: I didn't even realise how badly I needed someone to talk to Jac: You look after everyone, you need someone to look after you Savannah: I can't rely on anyone to do that though Jac: me 🙋 Savannah: you can't leave me ever, I swear I'll go crazier than my mother Jac: I never will Jac: I promise Savannah: okay, I'm yours to look after then Jac: I can cope with that 😄 Savannah: you've definitely handled me at my worst, I haven't forgotten my bathroom breakdown, trust me Savannah: the embarrassment will last forever Jac: it so easily could have been me Jac: and maybe I wouldn't have had the courage to ever reach out if not, frame it like that Savannah: No, I hate that Jac: Okay, but no embarrassment either Jac: because you're the strongest person I know, and nothing I've learnt about you has changed that opinion Savannah: Well, I think you're the bravest & I fully believe you'll always find the courage to do whatever you want Jac: 🤞 Jac: I've got a lot of things I want and intend to do Savannah: 👏🏾 Yes girl! Savannah: I can't wait for transition year to be over Jac: Ugh, I know Jac: on the one hand, LOVE the extra opportunities and learning experiences they simply do not bother with the rest of the time Jac: but the other half is having to do lessons I have NO intention of carrying on with, which is just, pointless Savannah: ^^^^^^^^^ Savannah: my auntie was complaining at me as if it was OPTIONAL & I CHOSE it, excuse me Jac: Ha! 🙄 Jac: we all know it's meant to be in theory Jac: but if you don't go to a school with a high teacher to child ratio, with the budget and time to care about tailoring the learning experience to each child...then you're gonna have to do it with the rest, like it or lump it Savannah: She's a product of the American school system, there is zero place for her criticism Jac: and I- 😶 Jac: even our worst school would be preferable I'm sorry 😂 Savannah: Right?! Jac: Compared to the English and American systems, except maybe the super-elite English ones, I feel like we're still going to be at an advantage when we go to Uni Savannah: Agreed Savannah: even this year we've totally made the most of so far Jac: You've got to Jac: or you'll end up with a mediocre life and what is the point in even living Savannah: Ugh, exactly Savannah: I can already tell who is going to end up living like that Jac: I know right Jac: like, sorry to break it to you, but they're called FORMATIVE years for a reason Savannah: mhmmmm Jac: you can still have fun without ruining your life and future Jac: you just have to work hard too and some people are simply too lazy 💁 Savannah: ^^ we manage to have it all Savannah: I'm not sorry if they don't want it enough to secure it for themselves Jac: Exactly Jac: can't be sorry for you if you chose to act that way Jac: maybe some of them will turn it around years down the line but it'll be so much harder than if they'd put the work in when they were meant to Savannah: It breaks my heart that everybody doesn't have you to guide & hype them Jac: Only you deserve me though, that's the truth of it Savannah: I'm willing to work at that for the rest of my life too so Jac: 🥺 Jac: Ugh, I just love you Jac: you've really solidified all my life choices, if that makes sense Jac: like I know now everything I want is exactly what I need too Savannah: It makes perfect sense & I feel it too Jac: Thank God you do Savannah: My family are always pushing me to go to Trinity, they don't understand at all Jac: like, yeah, it's a good Uni, but we've done Dublin Jac: it's also the point of Uni to expand your horizons, put roots down somewhere else Jac: your hometown and Uni town are NOT meant to be the same Savannah: ^^ thank you Savannah: Sienna is the only one whose opinion is valid because I will be leaving her here alone for a year before she can go wherever she decides to & she'll actually miss me Savannah: my parents just want to control me Jac: Right, you aren't being selfish about it Jac: it's because you're too useful to them, like you said, looking after Sienna and your mum Jac: but those are actually both jobs your dad took on when he got married and made a family so Jac: he still has to deal with them Savannah: He gets to literally walk out but god forbid I take the next step in my life Jac: Right, he has to realize you are not a surrogate carer Jac: and that sorting those things out will always be his responsibility Savannah: He takes no responsibility for abandoning us never mind the fact that he spent years emotionally destroying my mum & then walking out when he didn't like who she became Jac: He's going to have to face his blame one day Jac: if nothing else, he does love you and Sienna, he wouldn't let anything really bad happen to you two Savannah: I don't feel loved, I feel like he decided none of us were good enough Savannah: maybe I'm too much like her for him to handle too Jac: I hate that he's made you feel like that Jac: but if anything, that shows failure on his part, not yours Jac: you're brilliant and loving and you're still there, even though it's so much for you to handle Jac: you don't need him, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be held accountable right now, and that it's shit that he isn't stepping up Savannah: I hate him & I can't stand that he's made me carry hate in my heart when that isn't who I want to be Jac: Oh, Sav Jac: you wouldn't hold negative feelings towards him if he wasn't giving you that energy first Jac: you're never a doormat, again, it shows you're strong Savannah: Don't let me be with Ty, okay? Jac: Promise Savannah: Throw my phone into the 🛀🏾 if you have to, I'll forgive you Jac: 😅 I've got it in writing Savannah: 😄 Jac: would never drop it in 🥂 Jac: such a waste Savannah: Lord no, I need the full 🍾 Jac: 🙌 I can get behind that Jac: it's been a DAY Savannah: it had it's genuine 🙌🏾 moments nevertheless, because of & featuring you Savannah: I've looked at the pictures so many times, I CANNOT believe you really look like that Jac: 😳 says you Savannah: yes & I'm going to keep saying it until it sinks in for both of us that you're the most beautiful person that has ever existed because I'm hoping that if it does for me, at least, whatever dress you choose won't take my breath away as soon as I see you in it Savannah: otherwise you'll be trying to twirl but also having to catch me as I legitimately faint Jac: you'll have to not kill me before then or I won't be any use to anyone Jac: just a blushy mess on the floor Savannah: that isn't fair, on the one hand, you can't die, I need you, but on the other that sounds ADORABLE Jac: it's unfair how much of an 👼🏾 you are to me but I don't wanna share so Savannah: pink is one of my favourite colours, you know this & you wear it so well 🌺😳🌷 Jac: I'll wear it for you Jac: even if I don't go for that dress Jac: I wonder if we can get corsages or is that too extra 🤔 Savannah: I'll get that dress if it makes you happy, I'll wear anything you want me to, including a corsage Savannah: there is no such thing as too extra when you're talking about 🌷 🌹 🌺 🌸 🌼 🌻 Jac: my sentiments exactly 😄😄 Jac: I don't think Amelia will wear one Jac: but we can get them Jac: we can get our birth flowers and favourites and it'll be so cute Savannah: It should be an us thing, the holiday is so far away Jac: ^^ and it's more our vibe Jac: doesn't go with a short dress or jeans, really Savannah: 😄 Jac: I've got some books I need to return to the library, do you wanna meet at that little coffee place by there? Savannah: how many books? If you need help carrying them all I'll meet you at the library Jac: love the romcom fantasy 😅 Jac: you know me, there's a few... 😬 Savannah: 😊 I'll be right there, baby Savannah: no more struggles today Jac: ❤❤✨ Savannah: 🥰

[chuffyfan87]

Growing Pains. Part 13a

Cowritten with @disastrousintention. Trigger warnings for discussion of abuse and self harm.

-x-

The date of the meeting had finally come through to discuss Jake's request to have Andrew's legal rights to him removed. He'd arrived early at the court with his mum and was sat waiting anxiously for them to be called in.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Duffy asked Jake softly as she reached over to squeeze his hand.

"Yeh. I want him out of our lives for good." Jake replied firmly.

"Ok, we'll do the best we can." Duffy replied, attempting to sound more confident than she felt inside.

Jake fiddled with his hands, his nerves over the situation kicking in.

Duffy was about to say something when she saw Andrew enter the waiting area causing her to tense reflexively.

Something that Jake immediately picked up on. “He won’t hurt you mum.”

"I'm fine." She replied quickly.

“You’ve tensed up, its a natural reaction.”

"Today is about you not me."

“No, it’s about us as a family.”

Duffy nodded. She could feel Andrew's glare settling on her as he walked towards them.

Jake met his dad’s eye but didn’t say anything.

Andrew immediately noticed his ex-wife's wrist was bandaged and couldn't resist passing comment.

“Charlie isn’t a cunt like you. He doesn’t go around beating women.” Jake replied, upon hearing Andrew’s comment.

"Jake please!" Duffy sighed. "I tripped over Paul's bike ok?"

“Making excuses again, Lisa?” A small smile tugged at the corner of Andrew’s lips.

“Oh just sod off!” Jake replied.

"You'd know all about that." She sneered, forcing herself to meet Andrew's eyes.

“You just liked it rough Lisa. You're still playing the victim I see.”

Jake jumped to his feet and squared up to his father. “What did you just say?”

"Jake please!" Duffy begged.

“Keep walking Andrew.” Jake told him.

"She still can't fight her own battles. Utterly pathetic!" Andrew spat back.

“And you just can’t let it go that you’re no longer in control and can’t push her around anymore. She’s happy and you’re a pathetic lonely old man who needs to use his fists to have sex with a woman!” Jake laughed.

"You little shit!" Andrew roared as he raised his fist towards Jake.

“Go on, hit me. See what happens.” Jake taunted.

"Jake!" Duffy gasped, things were quickly spiralling out of control.

Andrew took hold of Jake's tshirt. "She's clearly not taught you good manners."

“She taught me that men like you were pathetic and couldn’t fight battles against other men.” Jake shoved Andrew away.

Andrew's fist was flying through the air in retaliation when a hand suddenly grasped his arm to prevent him landing a shot on his teenaged son.

“We won’t be having anything like that in here! If you carry on, I’ll have to ask you to leave.” The security guy said as he separated Andrew and Jake.

Duffy looked from one to the other as both men continued to glare at each other. Her chest felt tight, her heartbeat thudding in her ears. She only managed to mumble a few words before she abruptly got up and dashed into the toilet.

Andrew walked off and Jake sat down, he looked at the direction his mum ran in and sighed sadly.

Duffy quickly checked the stalls of the toilets, relieved to find she was alone. She lent back against the door, her breathing heavy as she began to rifle through her handbag.

Jake began to fiddle with his hands again, he was quickly becoming agitated.

"Shit!" Duffy cursed. The packet was empty. She really didn't want to have to make herself sick, not here, but she had to do something, anything, to make it all stop.

Jake knocked on the bathroom door. “Mum? You ok?” He called.

She swallowed back the bile that was rising in her throat. "Fine."

“Sure?”

"Are they ready for us?"

“Not quite.”

"I'll be out in a minute. You go wait at the chairs."

Jake nodded and moved back to the seats.

Duffy's hands shook. It was now or never.

Jake rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on.

When Duffy rejoined Jake a couple of minutes later she was pale and subdued but her breathing was calmer and she was no longer shaking, though her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle.

“Mum, are you okay?” He frowned.

"Yeh, let's just get this over with shall we?"

He didn’t believe her. “Are you in pain?”

"No!" She retorted sharply.

“Yes you are.”

"You sound more and more like Charlie every day..!"

Jake shrugged, “Or maybe I’ve just learnt how stubborn and awkward you are and what dad has to put up with.” He smiled and caught his mum’s eye, a small laugh escaping his lips.

"It falls so easily from your lips doesn't it? Calling Charlie dad." She smiled, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.

“He is my dad. You’re not just family because you’re blood. It’s like Louis...” He paused for a second. “He’s troubled but he’s my brother.”

"He is."

“He’s the only one who gets it sometimes.”

"Gets what?" Duffy asked, sitting down next to Jake.

“What it’s like to feel different and conflicted.”

"Different from your siblings?" She asked slightly perplexed, her eyebrows knitting together.

He nodded. “Conflicted about feelings too.”

"What feelings?"

“Loving people you feel you shouldn’t.”

"Ah."

“He loves you, you know.”

"I'm not sure I follow..."

“Louis.”

"When he doesn't want me out of his life." She sighed.

“He told me something once, not long ago. About six months back, before all this started.”

"What's that?"

He hesitated slightly, “I think you should ask him.”

"What do you mean? Jake, don't mess me about."

“Fine, I’ll tell you.” Jake was silent for a few minutes, “He knows you’re not a bad person. That’s all I’m gonna say, you should ask him though.”

"Um... OK..." Before she could say anything more they were called into the meeting room.

Jake stood up, “Come on mum, let’s get this over with.”

"Yes, the sooner the better." Duffy replied forcing a smile.

“He’ll be out of our lives for good.”

She sighed as they entered the office finding the furthest seat possible away from Andrew.

Jake, once again, took on the protective son role.

The chair of child services addressed Jake directly. "You asked us to convene this meeting Jake so I feel its only fair that we allow you to speak first and explain what it is you want to be the outcome of it."

“I’d like to revoke Andrew Bower’s paternal rights in relation to me.”

"Is there a particular reason you've decided to request that now?"

“It’s something I’ve wanted to do for the last couple of years but I thought now would be a better time to do it.”

"Why is now a good time?"

“Because I don’t want him in my life anymore. I’ll always be connected with him, unfortunately I’m his son biologically, but the trauma he causes my mum is detrimental to her wellbeing and that of my siblings.”

"She's filled his head with lies!" Andrew burst out.

“No she hasn’t. All mum’s ever done is try and protect me as much as possible.”

"By telling you lies about me."

“Mum never once spoke bad about you, ever. She allowed me to make up my own mind. And I have. I know mum wasn’t the only woman you ever laid hands on.”

"All lies. Your mother put her up to that."

“Is it? So why do I have these?” Jake went into his pocket and took out two letters and held them up. “One is from a woman called Marie and another is from Isla.”

"Let me see those!" Andrew demanded.

“He’s a violent man who intimidates woman and doesn’t like it when those women stand up to him.” Jake took a deep breath.

"May I see the letters?" The head of child services requested.

Jake handed both letters to the head of child services.

The committee studied the letters for several minutes.

Duffy lent over and spoke softly to Jake. "Where did you get those?" She asked.

The letters detailed how violent and intimidating Andrew could be on occasions.

“I have my sources.” Jake smiled and squeezed his mum’s hand.

"I'm sorry for all of this." She sighed.

“None of this is your fault.”

"We're going to need to contact these women to provide co-oberating statements before we can continue with this case."

Jake nodded, “They both said they’d be happy with that.”

"OK, we shall pause here and continue once the statements are available unless there is anything further anyone wishes to add today?"

“No.”

As soon as they were dismissed Duffy fled the building as quickly as she could. Her head was spinning.

Jake eventually caught up with her, “Mum what’s wrong?”

"Just needed some air. It's stuffy in there."

“Andrew has another son.” Jake blurted out.

Duffy spun around. "What?!"

“He has a son, Em’s age.”

"I had no idea."

“I’m sorry.”

"Do you know anything about him?"

Jake shook his head, “Nothing.”

"Is this Marie who you had a letter from his mum?"

Jake nodded, “Yeah.”

"Would you like to get to know him? We could maybe speak to Marie about arranging a meeting?"

“He’s my brother isn’t he?” Jake shrugged, “I haven’t thought about it to be honest.”

"He is. Take some time to think about it. It might be good for both of you."

“I will.”

"I'm sorry we couldn't get everything sorted today."

“Don’t worry about it, it’s fine.” He kissed his mum’s cheek.

[aparticularbandit]

There’s a theory that Rose is most likely to die in this season since Jennie mentioned there’s gonna be a major death towards the end & villain usually gets their (literal)dead end in telenovela; which I hope not turned out to be true as well as lowkey agree at the same time. How do you think about this?

so, nonnie, i...have a lot of thoughts about this.  because this does involve talking about pics, etc. from the last day of shooting, that may include spoilers other people don’t want, so putting this under a cut.

yeah, pretty sure rose is going to die.

you’re right that jennie mentioned that there’s going to be a major death near the end of the series and also she’s mentioned that villains in telenovelas don’t get happy endings (even if there’s some wiggle room - and i’ll get into that part in a bit) - and both of those seem to point to rose dying. but!  we can be even more specific! major death means that it’s probably going to be either one of the main characters (jane, michael, rafael, xo, alba, rogelio, petra) or one of the main reoccurring characters (rose, luisa, jr). of these, the only two who weren’t at the jafael wedding are michael and rose. (actually i can’t remember if rogelio was there or not but let’s be real, they probably aren’t going to kill him off.  there’s no narrative purpose to that.  and this, i guess, is assuming the writers even care about narrative purpose at this point.)

anyway.  what this basically means is that everyone else in that group is safe.  which means either rose or michael dies.  and, yeah, there are good reasons that neither of them would be at the jafael wedding (obviously rose is rose and michael is in montana - although he’s supposed to be coming back for another episode - more on that below, too), but the point of the matter is everyone else is safe.

jennie’s not stupid enough to bring back michael and do all that shit to him in the first half of the season and then just kill him when he comes back.  at least i don’t think she’s that bad of a writer, but this season....  i’m giving michael plot armor.

which leaves rose.  and given that rose is being trumped up as returning to villain form this season - given that one of the articles earlier on mentioned that rose might turn against luisa since she is now seeing luisa as the reason she’s in prison instead of rafael (which is who she blamed in season four)--

i doubt rose is making it out of the series alive.  i honestly think the episode she dies is likely the episode where michael returns, and if someone is killing her, i hope it’s him.  that would fulfill that aspect of his narrative arc.  and if luisa is working with rafael and the police against rose (which i think is likely...and went into at length in another ask), it makes more sense for her to be working with michael because she’s worked with him previously (in seasons one and two). the only other person who would have a fulfillment of character arc by killing rose would be luisa.  and i don’t see that as being in her character and honestly that would bother me even more than killing off rose does.  she just as easily can fulfill her character arc by officially turning against rose and choosing raf/family/toxicity/etc. over her in a final moment without having to be the one who kills her. and - returning to villains don’t get their happy endings, even if there’s wiggle room - i think that’s actually referring to luisa.  because even if rose dies, luisa can still be with her family.  that’s not her happy ending, which would be with rose, but it’s wiggle room for her to still be happy, even if she is romantically alone and lost, you know, the greatest love story ever told and, ah, you know, the one person who actually supported her through the past four seasons without expecting anything in return she just loved her like-- but this isn’t what you asked for.  you asked me how i felt.  and you can probably guess how i feel about it from the tone of the previous paragraphs - i think it’s shit.  and here’s why! first of all, please note, going into this season, i didn’t expect luisa and rose to stay together.  i thought trying to do that and have luisa still be family with raf would be really hard, and i didn’t think they would go the narrative route of redeeming rose, even though they’d started down that path and could have done it.  there were other things they seeded (like dennis thinking michael might have been working with sin rostro) that they could have used, and they just didn’t.  there were things they could have chosen to do and they chose to do otherwise.  i thought luisa might have used up all the money to free rose, but they did the milos thing.  etc.  i’m tired, friends.  very tired when it comes to jtv and their treatment of luisa. anyway - and i’ve posted about some of this - it feels like the series is teaching a handful of very problematic things with this narrative (and let’s be real, season five appears to be full of problematic narrative teachings but. not getting into all of those. just. not.  you didn’t ask, not going there). 1) family > romantic relationships.

in and of itself, not a bad thing to teach!  sometimes this is true!  but not always, and here’s the problem: rafael and luisa’s relationship is toxic.  not saying there aren’t elements of toxicity to rose and luisa’s relationship because there definitely are, but i do believe that raf and luisa’s relationship as it has been shown to us by the series is far more toxic to luisa’s mental health and wellbeing than rose and luisa’s is.

see, here’s the thing - luisa forgave rose.  and every bad thing rose has done to luisa can be easily explained - rose says in season two that she had to get elena put in jail to free them - her and luisa - and given that when rose was not doing what elena wanted at the beginning of season two luisa was kidnapped and tortured - luisa being a threat to rose’s marriage to emilio (telling emilio that they were having an affair) would likely have gotten her killed.  putting luisa in a mental institute?  not okay.  removing luisa as a threat in a way that doesn’t get her killed?  a little bit more okay - and the show lampshades this because in the list of things rose did to luisa that they showed at the beginning of the season putting her in a mental institute is not on there.  (but maybe that’s because we’d have to address the problems with luisa’s arc in season four, namely that luisa is blaming rose for something rose was not involved in - luisa should be mad at magda and anezka for gaslighting her, luisa should be mad at petra for not getting her out of the mental institute as soon as she knew what was up, luisa should still be mad at raf for throwing rose in jail - but no, that’s all rose’s fault-- anyway.)

killing emilio and kidnapping mateo were business.  they had nothing to do with luisa personally.  they may have affected luisa, but they weren’t about luisa.  wearing a different face was a safety protocol - and rose did this only twice and the second time luisa knew, so there’s no reason to hold that against her. and rose kidnapped luisa because both luisa and michael trumped up kidnapping as romantic and rose wanted to explain everything to luisa and i tend to headcanon that luisa fainted instead of rose drugged her but you know.  to each their own, i guess.

but also?  the things rose did?  all in seasons one and two.  with the exception of kidnapping luisa, all of those things were problematic to luisa in seasons one and two.  (the face-changing not included because post-susanna, luisa would have known and it wouldn’t have been an issue.)

for three years, rose didn’t do anything.  she gave up her entire previous lifestyle to be with luisa.  she chose luisa over her criminal past because she loved her.  because luisa was more important.

further - rose is the only character we see constantly trying to make sure luisa isn’t drinking and constantly checking in on her with no ulterior motive than just making sure luisa is okay (you can - and i have - make the argument that calling luisa when luisa was on her bender in season one had more to do with making sure rafael didn’t lose his shares in the marbella to protect the criminal plastic surgery ring business - actually you can make ulterior motive comments on a lot of rose’s stuff if you want that interpretation, but i don’t think that lines up with what the show has shown us of rose.  with the exception of that phone call.  anyway).  rose is the only character who seems to actually consistently care about luisa. and the three year time skip proved that she could and did change for luisa.  they had a healthy relationship.  there was no reason to believe they did not have a healthy relationship.  (this blog does not subscribe to the season five rose let luisa get black out drunk because it does not line up with the rose the series has shown us up to this point.  writers, character consistency.  anyway.)

further - rose went above and beyond to make sure that luisa was comfortable with her after everything that happened - often to her own risk and detriment.  after killing emilio, rose told luisa were he was buried - which would implicate her in the murder - and wrote her a letter about it, which is almost as good as a signed confession.  rose reached out after mutter kidnapped luisa - and, yeah, they didn’t talk about police stuff and, yeah, susanna shut that shit down as soon as luisa told michael - but it still happened.  rose gave luisa her kill sheet, which was as good as a signed confession, and apparently told her where the bodies were buried.  rose kept in mind the time zones and when raf sent luisa a happy birthday email she gave it to luisa instead of deleting it or destroying it because she knows how important raf is to luisa, and because she knows and understands the importance of their relationship, she went out of her way to make sure she and luisa could still be together and luisa could still visit raf, despite how risky that was for her.

and if you really want to include the black out drunk scene, rose literally signed over all of her bank accounts to luisa, giving luisa full access to everything she was doing whether her money at any moment in time, including if she was still incolved in any shady crime lord business.

rose did everything she could to have a healthy relationship with luisa, and for three years, they had a healthy relationship.  rose only returned to being sin rostro when she was worried that someone else had turned luisa against her and when she was realized she would need to get out of jail herself.

and if you want to bring up michael and torturing him, please realize this is something that didn’t come up until season five, and regardless of that, rose was still better for three years.

compare this to rafael’s treatment of luisa throughout the entire series.

no, rafael might not have the huge moments the way rose does, but he does not have to.  rafael consistently shows a lack of caring towards his sister - when rose was worried about where luisa was in season one, rafael’s just “she’s on a bender; she’s hiding, it’s nothing new, don’t worry about it”; when emilio came to visit the marbella in season one and they threw the huge party, he intentionally didn’t invite luisa - which, given circumstances, might be understandable except that this is blatantly disrespectful and hurtful to emilio as well, who is his main guest; rafael consistently forgives everyone else except luisa; rafael consistently only goes to luisa when he needs something from her, and once he’s gotten what he needs, he stops caring about her.  rafael had no reason to suspect that luisa was with rose for the three year time skip and had proof that eileen wasn’t rose and yet still didn’t let them around mateo - and it does not matter that he was right in those circumstances because he had no way of knowing he was right.  rafael doesn’t want to visit luisa when she’s in rehab or the mental hospitals because he expects her to say the same thing she always says, which means he gave up on her during season one.

and worse, luisa blames herself for the bad things that happen to rafael and he never brings up that these things are not her fault.  luisa doesn’t control who rose kills.  (and let’s be real here, rafael didn’t really like emilio, so his upset over rose killing him seems a little displaced.)  and the episode where it’s revealed that luisa is blaming herself and feeling so guilty she wants to drink over it about disappointing rafael, the show tells us this makes rafael a good brother, when in fact it’s just rafael is driving luisa to drink because he will not forgive her.

and luisa constantly and consistently tries to prove herself to rafael without it going anywhere.  (not going into season five with regards to this.)

and the irony of all this is that rafael consistently chooses romance over family with his relationship with jane and that is rewarded.

rafael’s relationship with luisa is consistently more demeaning to her and has more of an emotional and mental negative impact on her but somehow that relationship is the one that is touted as more healthy.  it’s not.

and this is especially problematic with regards to the lgbtqia+ viewship because it’s teaching us that being with your toxic family is more important than being with your partner.  even if luisa as a lesbian is not the main reason for the conflict between her and rafael, that implication is still there, especially given that the straight relationship between jane and rafael is allowed to be romance > family with regards to rafael.

this is a problem.

2) it further exacerbates the “women in love are weaker” issue.

what i mean by that is this - if rose was not in love with luisa, rose would not have been caught.  rose would be on her island.  safe.  (or potentially she could still be working as one of elena’s underlings because she wouldn’t have a strong motivation to get out from under elena’s thumb and then i guess in that case maybe she would have been caught, but that’s me using what they showed us in season two to try and talk about the elena/rose dynamic that they basically threw away in season three and decided not to deal with again - so you can see i’m still a little salty about this but you know what, their show.)

rose wouldn’t have given her kill sheet to anyone.  rose wouldn’t have implicated herself in emilio’s murder because they wouldn’t have been able to find his body.  rose wouldn’t be pretending to be eileen, so eileen wouldn’t have killed scott.  rose likely wouldn’t be returning to miami to get caught.  she’s got no reason to do so.

what this tells us, then, is that rose’s love for luisa and willingness to do what luisa needs is her weakness - her only weakness.

which potentially has another fun complication of a woman’s love for another woman makes her weaker because you can make that argument with luisa, too - that her love for rose is her main sin throughout the entire series because if she was a good sister, she’d pick rafael over her lover - but the focus here is on rose and why killing rose off is shit not on luisa - but it’s hard to talk about rose without also talking about luisa (and then talking about rafael, because that’s the love triangle - rose chooses luisa chooses rose - but i’ve addressed that in a different post, too).

and jtv is not the only show that does this.  women are consistently told that being in a romantic relationship makes them lesser, that their emotions make them lesser, and for rose, who is a sociopath, who has a problem with emotions in the first place, having emotions and choosing to act on them literally makes her weaker.

this is a problem.

3) it tells us that no matter how much you change, you can never be more than who you originally were.

and here’s part of why the time skip was a huge problem and likely why they have to do the rose let luisa get black out drunk thing in season five - rose kept her word and gave up her crime lord business to be with luisa.

when luisa makes the claim in the season three finale that rose changed, she was right.  rose changed.  for luisa.  there was no reason to believe that they did not have a healthy relationship during those three years, with the occasional fight over rose not wanting to go to miami because that’s risky for her - but even then, they still went.  the show gave us nothing up to that point to believe that rose hadn’t changed.  it still hasn’t, not in a believable way.  even if you bring up michael - that was before the three year time skip.

one of the entire points of rose’s relationship with luisa was that luisa was more important to her than anything else and that she would do anything for luisa and be anything for luisa.  of course, rose changed.

just the show?  the writers?  they don’t care.  because rose is a villain and villains must be punished.  never mind that rose changed and stopped being a villain for luisa.  what she did early on can’t be forgiven by the show’s writers.  and so she has to return to form and be a villain so that they can punish her and, likely, kill her off.

and, okay, you want to bring up season five and rose’s actions there and at the end of season four?  let’s talk about that.

but to talk about how rose is acting in season five, we have to talk about season four from rose’s point of view.

at the beginning of season four, rose was in jail.  she still was at the end of season four.  as far as i know, she still is in season five.  but at the beginning of season four, rose was in a relationship with luisa.  luisa was trying to get her out of jail.  her girlfriend of the last three years - the love of her life - loved her and was trying to help her.  (yes, rose killed a minion.  one who was probably watching michael.  likely because she expected rafael to turn luisa against her.  or because something might happen to luisa and she would need to find out.  or something - she’s in jail, she wants collateral.)

and then, all of a sudden, luisa dropped off.  was gone.  disappeared.  no contact, no explanation, no nothing to give rose any indication of what happened to her.  she was just gone.

rose was a crime lord.  rose knows luisa is her weakness.  do you know what probably went through rose’s mind at that point?

she probably panicked.  the last time luisa randomly disappeared, mutter had kidnapped her and ended up torturing her due to her connection to rose.  she probably sent out as many people as she could to find out what happened, and that’s what led her to rafael.

all of her actions past that point are 1) to get in contact with luisa again and find out what the fuck happened (although she knew.  she knew it was rafael.  because it was always rafael.  even when he was wrong) and 2) to get out of prison, where she would not have been if she hadn’t trusted luisa to get her out or chosen luisa knowing she was likely to get caught.

honestly - the satin road is likely money to go to the account to get her out, which was supposed to be what luisa did.  and rose was letting luisa take care of that instead of returning to her criminal roots to do it herself - that was the point of her arc in season four.  not that luisa had to be involved in criminal activity but that rose trusted luisa instead of doing criminal activity- a trust that is consistently shown to be misplaced.

so, nonnie, let’s just say that i do not have happy feelings about rose dying.  i expect it to happen.  but i think, narratively, it’s a shit decision.

and one of the bad parts about this - to me, anyway - is that petramos is showing that they easily could have given rose and roisa a redemption arc.  and they’re choosing not to.  because they want to punish a villain, and rose is the designated villain - despite her changes over the series - as opposed to, say, magda, who has not changed, who has given no indication she wants to change, who has consistently fucked over petra both on her own and through her manipulations of anezka.

like, let’s be real here, magda is worse than rose is.  the show has not given magda any redeeming qualities.  and she’ll probably get out of the series completely free, the same way she has for her gaslighting of luisa.

but, you know, that’s more salt than maybe you asked for.

[itsthesinbin]

Always Watching (Yandere!Soundwave/OC SFW)

Thank you to @jinxkatkazama (won’t let me tag you) for your business!

If you like this fic, consider commissioning me!

Warning For: Stalking, kidnapping, obsessive behavior

Nienna still remembered when she first met the Autobots.

“Stupid fucking gps,” she grumbled, resisting the urge to throw her phone out of frustration. Of course, even following a fuckin’ COMPUTER, she still got lost. Of COURSE she did. This SUCKS.

She was simply mumbling to herself when she heard… commotion. Something big slamming into something bigger. Yelling and fighting. What the hell was going on?

Something told Nia to run, but she was a hard-headed girl. She ran, but not away from the fighting like she SHOULD have done. An absolute idiot, she is, it seemed.

What she saw crash into the street was… incredible. Terrifying.

Alien.

A giant, robotic creature had been slammed into the ground. A larger creature shot at her with some kind of blaster, and she had to roll out of the way. Nia had no idea what happening, but…

Girls gotta stick together, right?

She thinks the blue one is a girl, anyway- she sounded feminine. That was good enough for Nia.

She fished a large textbook out of her bag, whistling loudly to catch the bigger creature’s attention. It turned to face her, bright red visor shining down at her dangerously.

“Don’t you know you can’t hit a girl, jackass,” she screamed, chucking the book at the creature’s face.

It bounced off harmlessly. Nia didn’t really know what else she expected, but it wasn’t the creature coming at her with a giant gun.

“Oh shit,” Nia yelled, scrambling backwards. Before the creature could attack, the female had gotten up and slammed herself into the other bot’s back. While they fought, Nia hurried to a safer spot.

She heard yelling, shots fired, and then finally tires screeching as someone drove away. Nia felt her heart hammering in her chest, hearing clunking as one of the creatures approached. She was gonna die today. Of course she was.

The blue bot appeared, peeking around the corner she was hiding behind. She had her hands up, trying to convey that she wasn’t going to harm the human in front of her. Nia stepped back a little, but didn’t run.

“... Ugh, great,” she muttered, crouching down to Nia’s level.

“I know you have a lot of questions, and I can answer them, but you gotta come with me- you’d be in danger if I just left you alone. Got it?” Too stunned, Nia simply nodded, eyes widening as the bot transformed into a… fucking motorcycle. Great. Fantastic. Nia’s going to the looney bin.

She didn’t want to argue with a weird giant robot, so… she was going to be kidnapped by one instead, it seemed.

Reaching the base, meeting the others, was… something else. Seeing the other humans with them put Nia at ease, as well, after they explained their own situations.

So, now she’s stuck with alien robots and their human adoptees. Ratchet denied THAT association with the kids, but Nia can tell Ratchet is the MOTHERIEST of mother hens. It was cute.

Nia had time to kill, some days, and would idly watch Raf mess around with programs on his computer. Already having a bit of knowledge on coding and programming, she asked if she could help with anything.

“No, that’s fine-”. An alarm blared, cutting him off. He turned back to the screen, ignoring her as she looked over his shoulder.

“Scrap,” he huffed. “Someone’s found a signal? I thought everything was secure”. Nia saw the big computer flash something, and moved to let Raf work on his laptop.

Climbing up to the main console, she wondered if she should mess with it. Ratchet would KILL her, and, honestly, she had no idea what she was doing.

As she heard Raf getting frustrated and scared, however, she knew she had to try. She had to do SOMETHING.

Herr fingers flew across the holographic keyboard, the keys automatically switching to her native language. Thank GOD it did, Nia thought, or else she’d be FUCKED.

Nia looked up when the alarm ended, seeing the alert system had stopped. Raf ran a hand through his hair, glancing at her with surprise.

“Thanks for… the help- I didn’t expect you to be able to do that,” he said, eyes wide. Nia gave him a thumbs up, hopping down from the console.

“... How about I teach you how to keep up with the alert system,” Raf said, motioning for her to come over. Nia couldn’t help but feel proud as she sat next to the young boy.

Nia spent months with the Autobots, helping Raf with his security, and Miko with her music. Not helping Jack babysit, though, as he ended up babysitting HER as well. She was not a good influence on anyone.

She really shouldn’t have been surprised when she thought she was being followed, due to her… recent activities.

Another late night, another hour of being lost on the way home. Stupid GPS never worked like it should.

Nia felt like something was… off, however. The air felt heavy, and she constantly felt like something was staring holes into her back. Her chest felt tight with nerves and anxiety.

When she looked over her shoulder, she caught something dark gliding into an alleyway. It was big and birdlike, but definitely not organic. Nia swallowed thickly, turning back around and hurrying down the street.

Now that she was paying attention, she could hear a faint whirring noise from… whatever it was following her. God, it was terrifying.

She picked up speed, brisk walk turning into an all-out sprint. She recognized where she was, now. Nia knew how to get home from here. She’d get home, and call the Autobots. Everything’s gonna be alright.

When she found her home, she all but booked it into the house. The door slammed shut, she braced herself against it to try and stay upright. Her legs shook with adrenaline, and her hands were too unsteady to grab her phone.

She heard it outside for the longest time, zipping around the house. Seeing its’ lights shine through the windows. She didn’t know how long she stayed there until it finally left. Nia didn’t DARE move until she was sure it was gone.

The call with Optimus was shaky, and he had Bumblebee stationed outside her house for the night with the order to comm if anything suspicious happened.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Nia would feel like something was severely off. She felt watched. She felt like she wasn’t alone in her own home. It was horrible, not able to feel safe in the comfort of her house.

She had various Bots outside her home, keeping watch outside. That small comfort allowed her to be calm enough to continue with her normal routine, instead of turning into an anxiety-filled hermit. It just took a little longer to be comfortable enough to sleep at night.

Unbeknownst to Nia, though, someone was keeping a very close optic on her.

The Decepticons’ recon bot, Soundwave himself, had taken an interest in the foolish little human the vehicon complained about. Even if he wasn’t harmed, there was still a small crack in his optic that he wouldn’t shut up about. At least, until Knockout finally fixed it.

Soundwave was a little intrigued- he was interested in all of the Autobots’ little pets, but this one… this one was more annoying than the child.

After he tapped into Nia’s computer, he found the programs Raf had put on it. The ones she modified. He recognized the code, and a flame of curiosity lit in his spark.

So, this was the one that enhanced the child’s primitive coding, too? Fascinating. He’d have to keep tabs on her for a while. Make sure she isn’t planning to do anything that could be… detrimental to the Decepticon cause.

He’s sure Lord Megatron wouldn’t mind this little side project. It’d be to ensure the safety of the Decepticons, of course.

He kept a feed of her up constantly, alongside his usual duties. By the end of the first week, he knew her schedule. Knew what she liked to eat, what she sang while she cooked, how she liked her showers.

By the end of the month, he knew what she was going to do before she even did it.

He began to notice small changes about her, after a day. He had been sending Laserbeak to keep watch on her when she was out of her home, and she must have taken note of the Con’s coloring. She stopped wearing the blues and purples Soundwave had come to enjoy. Gaudy pinks and reds replaced her normal clothing, reminding him of Knockout.

He didn’t quite know why, but it made him angry, thinking she was matching another Con.

Soundwave found himself entertaining the idea of putting her back in clothes that matched his paint. Keeping her here, out of the reach of those weak Autobots.

Hm… He may be more involved with this project than he initially thought. Well… he has been loyal- perhaps Lord Megatron will allow him… a small privilege.

By the next week, he found himself waiting for Laserbeak. His little friend went to pick up his… new guest. Megatron had been pleasant about the idea, if confused. When told that this human was a friend of the Autobots, Megatron was proud of the idea.

Soundwave was fine using you as leverage. As long as he had the human.

The sound of screaming caught his attention, angry cursing filling the halls of the Nemesis as Laserbeak entered his quarters. Nia was dangling from the flying Con’s hold, kicking her legs and cussing furiously.

She fell quiet as she was brought towards Soundwave, anger replaced with terror as she was dropped into his palm. Laserbeak returned to his spot in Soundwave’s dock, slipping into recharge. As she stared up at him, Soundwave began a recording.

Megatron’s face appeared on Soundwave’s screen, startling the tiny, fleshy creature in his hand. One simple squeeze, and it’d be over. The idea of having this much power was… interesting.

“Welcome, human,” the recording began. “You are being given to my reconnaissance professional, and he has full control over your wellbeing- I suggest you behave yourself.” Nia’s face contorted, returning back to being livid.

“Fuck you, you bucket of bolts!” The recording, of course, paid her no mind. Soundwave thought it was amusing.

“You are here as collateral, but do not think you are above being killed, should you prove to be too much trouble.” Megatron grinned, making a wave of nausea wash over the human.

“Let’s hope your Autobots really do care about you.” The recording ended there as Soundwave entered his private room, adjacent from his work space.

Nia was placed into a small hole in the wall- well, small for Soundwave. It was VERY large for her. It had basic bedding, a bucket, and some food and water in the corner. There was a pile of clothing near the entrance, which sealed shut with a forcefield.

Instead of saying anything, Soundwave simply sat down. Silently, he observed her. Seeing her grow disgusted and enraged, realizing these were clothes from her home.

“You took these- what the hell is wrong with you? Are you some kind of sick freak?!” Soundwave smiled, under his mask.

Humans were so emotional, and so… lively. It was amusing.

“Sick freak,” he repeated, using Nia’s voice against her. She swallowed the lump in her throat, torn between screaming, crying, or vomiting. Considering the small space, and just a bucket, she figured throwing up was the worst thing to do, at the moment.

“This is more than using me as a bargaining chip. What do you want from me, you giant bastard,” Nia yelled, standing as close as she could to the forcefield. Soundwave stood, stepping over to her cell. Despite not wanting to show how terrified she was, she took a few steps back as his face appeared at her level.

Soundwave decided to give her a bit of a treat, since she’s finally here. Instead of using a recording…

“Want you,” came his own, mechanical response. She flinched a little bit, not expecting it to be so loud- or as robotic as it was. Ironic, considering she’s talking to a huge robot.

“What… do you mean?” The forcefield lowered, and Nia was grabbed before she could react. She struggled, growing more panicked as she was lifted into his hold.

“Watch you. Know you. Want you.” She stilled for a moment. Watching her…

“For fuck’s sake- did you bug my entire house?! Is that how you knew when I’d be home alone-!” He cut her off, placing a digit over her mouth.

“Yes.” He sat down again, letting her move his digit from her face. Her eyes- a lovely, bright blue that reminded him too much of the Autobots- shined with fury.

“Optimus is going to kick your aft, you stalking monster! And I’m gonna rip out your spark with my bare hands!” A silent laugh left him.

“Cute.” The mockery only infuriated her more. She tried to struggle as he reached up to run a digit along her hair.

“Stay here. With me. Whether Autobots come or not.” Nia tried to argue, but Soundwave was being hailed to the bridge. Reluctantly, he moved to put her back in her cell.

“Let me go! Let me out of here!” Soundwave paid the human no mind, leaving the room.

“Change clothes. Hate the red,” was all he said, before he left the room. She cussed at him as the door shut, sitting in the bedding angrily.

A screen appeared in her cell, showing a feed from Soundwave’s point of view. She knew it was him, because he made sure to start it up while staring into a monitor’s reflection.

“Always watching,” he all but purred, beginning his trek to the bridge. Nia glanced up, seeing cameras in all corners of her cell. He really could see her from all directions. She felt sick. He couldn’t help but smile, not that anyone could see. Even as she began to cry out of frustration, he felt as giddy as he did when he was a sparkling.

“Always watching.”

[gold-from-straw]

Frozen Heart - ch2

Tony makes an appearance! I’m going to tag anyone who liked/reblogged last time, if you’d rather I stopped, please lmk! And if you’d like me to tag you in the next chapter, please leave a <3 or a reblog!

And if you’d prefer to read on AO3 from the beginning, here you go!

Tony threw a handful of dried blueberries in his mouth and spun around on his chair, trying not to stave off the impending depression for just a little longer. Finishing a project was fantastic. Best feeling in the world. For like, five minutes? And then the boredom set in, and when the boredom set in, the depression was only a heartbeat behind. If Tony wasn’t actively doing something, he was not a happy bunny.

Then again, when he was actively doing something, he got super anxious, because he hadn’t finished yet, and it didn’t count as an achievement unless he’d finished it. Fucking goblin brain.

“JARVIS, bring up the list of unfinished projects, would you?”

“Of course Sir,” said JARVIS briskly, a file opening on the holo-viewer. “There’s a set of body armour you started for SHIELD.”

“Eh, archive that. In fact, archive anything I started for those bastards, they lost their TV privileges when they injected me with chemicals without my consent and tasered a man with a heart condition.”

“Thank you, Sir.” JARVIS made several files disappear with an obnoxious trashing noise. Tony smirked. JARVIS pulled up another file. “There’s also a prosthesis for--”

Tony was already shaking his head. “Nah, I replaced it with something better, remember? That neural transmitter implant which connects to a prosthesis so the kid doesn’t have to get used to a new one every time they grow out of a leg? Archive that as well.”

There were only three projects left. Tony felt a hollow fear start up under his arc reactor and rubbed his solar plexus, biting his lip. How had he let it get this bad? Was he losing his creativity? Was he going to have to… god forbid, be idle?

Something bleeped and Tony jumped, springing to the readout in the corner of the room. Behind him, JARVIS closed the holo-viewer and brought up a map in response to Tony’s touch. “What’s going on here? Solar flares?”

“NASA hasn’t got any solar flares of this significance predicted for the next four weeks, sir.”

Tony frowned at the map, replaying the readings of the last five minutes, but his heart was jumping with glee. The endorphins played a refrain of something new something new on his pulse and he grinned as he localised the readings to the New Mexico desert, not far from a little town called Puente Antigo. “Hey, JARV? Ready the mark XII, would you? I think we need a little break from the city.”

As the repulsors whined to slow his descent, Tony turned his head in all directions, gathering as much data as he could. It was obvious where the anomaly had been centred; a vast circle spread across the dirt, a little bit streaked to the south, as if a meteor had crashed at a steep angle. But the crater itself was like nothing he’d ever seen, a complex runic pattern burned into the ground and then overlayed with… “JARVIS, are those frost patterns?”

“Yes, Sir, the frost appears to have originated from the centre of the crater.” JARVIS marked the point on the heads-up display. “Perhaps you should talk to the people to the left of the crater, judging by the equipment they’re getting out of their van they seem to be conducting some sort of research on the crater.”

Tony’s eyebrows raised. “I’m always ready to talk science to new people,” he said, wheeling low and banking hard. “Except anti-vaxxers, if I wanted to be burned as a witch I’d have invented time travel by now.”

He landed gently and flipped his faceplate up. One of the women already had her phone out to video him, quietly muttering “holy shit, holy shit, it’s Tony freaking Stark,” under her breath. The other woman was tugging at her hair and having a nerdgasm at the patterns branded into the earth, and Tony knew immediately he was going to get along great with these girls. The older guy, maybe not. He looked at Tony as if he was a direct threat to the safety and wellbeing of all of them, which, while probably true, he didn’t need to be quite so obvious about it. Rude.

“Room for a little one?” Tony asked with his favourite media smile.

“Holy shit holy shit it’s Tony freaking Stark!”

“Yeah, hi,” he said, stepping out of the suit and waving at the girl in the glasses.

The other girl looked up at last, big brown eyes wide, as if she’d genuinely missed the noise of his approach. “Huh? Where did you come from?”

He jerked his thumb behind himself at the suit. “New York.”

She stared. “Holy shit, Tony Stark.”

“Yeah. Hope you don’t mind me butting in.”

She looked slightly pained. “Uh. Yeah, sure.”

“I mean, you’re on lead, of course,” he added quickly and watched her face light up again. “First come, first served.”

“Oh my God, really? I mean, you’re not gonna just… call seniority?” she said.

“I can’t call seniority, I don’t know you,” he shrugged.

“Oh, Dr Jane Foster, astrophysicist. This is Dr Erik Selvig, also astrophysics, and my assistant Darcy Lewis.”

“‘Sup,” said Darcy, apparently over her star-struck moment.

“Tony Stark,” he said again, pointing to himself. “No Doctor, so you definitely take seniority. What are we looking at?”

She turned back to the crater, her focus sharpening instantly. “I’ve been working on the spontaneous formation of Einstein-Rosen bridges for the last three years of my life - to the detriment of my entire career. The readings we picked up from here were literally off the chart, the frequencies alone were exactly the same as those the Fermi picks up from distant pulsars! But then we got here fifteen minutes ago, and it got weird.”

Tony followed her over to a rickety machine and looked at the readout over her shoulder. The screen flickered and she smacked it, hard. Tony winced and put his twitchy fingers behind his back. Not my machine, not my machine, no touchy!

Jane made a triumphant noise and pointed to the values as she scrolled up. “My array system here is picking up trace gamma radiation congruent with the kind of energy output of an atomic bomb, but it seems to have been entirely concentrated in this one small area, with no ill effects beyond the scorching of the soil here. And these symbols!” She turned, her hair flaring out and hitting herself in the face. “I mean, I’m loath to call them symbols, because that implies some sort of meaning, and obviously we have to be careful not to anthropomorphise, but it’s hard to deny, they look a hell of a lot like writing, don’t they?”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and there was the actual alien, too?”

Tony turned towards her. “There was an alien?”

“Supposed alien,” Erik said, helping Jane with another machine that looked like it’d fall apart in a stiff breeze. These guys needed some engineering lessons, that was for sure. “I’d wager he was one of those crop circle guys, just… diversifying or something.”

“He was blue, Erik,” Darcy insisted. “And he had horns!”

“Amazing what they can do with prosthetics and makeup these days,” Erik shrugged.

“Yeah, but Erik,” Darcy whined. “He froze the ground!”

Erik shook his head, but the machine slipped and Jane yelped, and his attention shifted off them. “He froze the ground?” Tony asked, turning towards Darcy.

“Yeah, dude, like he was in the middle of the crater, having some sort of a panic attack or something. Jane ran towards him asking if he’d seen what caused the anomaly, because she’s a total dumbass and didn’t, like, notice he was blue or something? I dunno. Anyway, he looked at her like she was some sort of dangerous creature, held his hand out and frosted up half the crater, and then disappeared.” She shrugged. “I got a photo, but it’s really blurry, I won’t even bother putting it on Facebook.”

“Do you mind sending it to me anyway?” he asked. “I can see if JARVIS can clear it up a bit.”

“Yeah, let’s do that CSI bullshit,” she said, holding out her phone to him.

He came around beside her instead of taking it, putting his shades on and activating JARVIS in the lenses. “Oh, yeah, that’s a shitty photo.”

“I know, right?” she said cheerfully.

The snap was shaky and grainy, like she’d pressed the button before she’d got the phone in place. JARVIS reduced the noise and adjusted for motion, and slowly a clearer version began to resolve itself in Tony’s display. “Woah,” he muttered.

“What? What?”

“JARVIS, bluetooth it to her.”

“Holy shit, I’m gonna need your image software,” she yelped as the photo appeared on her screen.

The man - or whatever he was - had his hands thrown out in front of him. He was crouched over, like he’d just picked himself up off the ground, or like he’d been startled, and silvery threads poured from his blue fingers. His face was mostly hidden, but Tony could make out a snarl.

“He was just standing up when we arrived,” Darcy said, zooming into the cleaned-up photo. “Jane started yelling at him, saying he should get out of there, he was messing up the data, and he turned around - that’s when we saw he was all blue, with those horns. He freaked out, iced the place up and disappeared. Pooff! Just like that.”

Tony frowned down at the phone, and then looked out at the markings on the desert floor. “JARVIS, can you send the footage we got from the air off to Dr Foster here? And maybe shift the markings to account for the trajectory, if we get rid of the parallax error we might be able to get some information from the markings.”

“Do you think he’s really an alien?” Darcy asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Damn, that would be so fucking funny, you know, go work for a serious scientist and end up caught up in some conspiracy theory.”

“Could be,” Tony hedged. “I mean, just because we haven’t seen any evidence of aliens yet doesn’t mean they don’t exist. But it’s a long shot, so yeah. We should probably wait until we have more information.”

“Boring,” she said, scrunching her nose up and poking at the screen again. “I’m calling aliens.”

A cold wind blew across both of them suddenly, and Tony shivered. “What the hell?” Tony murmured. “JARVIS, is there a storm forecast?”

“All meteorological data up until the last hour have shown between an eighty to ninety percent chance of clear skies, no disrupted weather at all. However approximately fifteen minutes ago a low pressure area appeared localised to Mount Nahokos, eight miles north of here.”

Tony frowned as the satellite imagery appeared on his sunglasses display. “Is that snow?”

“Yes, Sir. The meteorological anomaly appears to be growing, causing exponentially increasing snowfall. The intensity appears to be decreasing in the inverse square law with the distance from the epicentre.”

“You had me at inverse square law,” Tony said. “Hey, Doctors, I’m gonna go find out what’s causing snow in a New Mexico summer, I’ve sent you my phone number, come play science with me, yeah?”

Jane stood up and tucked some hair behind her ear as he stepped into the suit. “Wait, are you serious?”

“As a heart attack,” he said, tapping his arc reactor. “And I know a bit about those bitches. I’ll send a jet for you, we’ll have fun.”

The face plate closed on him and he sighed, closing his eyes. “Too clingy?” he asked.

“They should be honoured, Sir.”

“Yeah,” he said, straightening up a little. “Yeah, damn straight. Or something. OK, let’s go find the abominable snowman.”

***

Tagging!: @red--thedragon @shoot-the-smiles @tkillustration @yohanzen

@senpaiweird @fallenlux @superwhojohnlocked @saturnjuice @individual900 @schmadfoot @mikeystealth01 @timekeeper31289 @tomlinchanel @angrysockpuppetnoises @unistudentinperpetualsuffering @rabentochter @oolaan @victoriagreenleaf - again if you want me to untag you just let me know! Or just don’t like the post and I’ll leave you alone lol! <3

[aadmelioraa]

Kat what are you thoughts about Bellarke canon next season,how you think is gonna go and when first half or second half. for me is gonna be in midseason finale or soon than that.

Hey Anon!

I go back and forth on this a bit, honestly. I keep my spec pretty vague as far as pinning things down to specific episodes since thats not how my brain works, but I definitely think we’ll get canon romantic Bellarke next season, and the midseason finale seems likely right now to me as well. I think that once Bellamy and Clarke reunite, they are going to have a lot to sort through emotionally (he thought she was DEAD for 6 years….DEADDDD), but we have to remember that Clarke never gave up hope that he was alive. She talked to him every day for 2199 days, dammit. If that’s not love, what the hell is??

Consider this: if they hadn’t been separated, I really do think that we would have gotten an overt love confession in 413. Character-wise, we didn’t for at least 2 reasons:

1. Clarke thought she was going to die. You can see it in her face in the Head & Heart scene. She thought she was a goner, and there’s no way she would burden Bellamy with that only to leave him. She was solely focused on his wellbeing, and the survival of the rest of Spacekru. 

2. Bellamy literally could not accept the fact that she wouldn’t make it, doesn’t even allow himself to consider that. He’s in deep denial about the reality of their situation because he loves Clarke so damn much. He thinks if they make it to the ring, they all make it to the ring, Clarke included. He thought they would have 5 years of relative peace together and ANYWAY NOW MY HEART HURTS.

Side note: they are both SO GONE for each other. Their lives and happiness have been so wrapped up in each other for so long. They are each other’s person. They are each other’s rock. Anytime someone mentions the possibility one of them might not make it for any variety of pressing and probable reasons, the other one SHUTS IT THE FUCK DOWN. There are so many good gifsets that make this parallel so well, it just kills me every time. 

Anyway, back to the s5 reunion…I do think the show is gonna draw it out a bit as far as the romantic stuff goes. Not too long, and not because the feelings aren’t there, but because when have we ever had it easy? Plus, it’s the nature of the genre: shit happens, and romance isn’t the main plot, even though Clarke and Bellamy’s relationship is obviously central to the story. There are so many plot reasons that could keep them apart for a bit (more physically than emotionally, but that too). Given what we know about s5 so far, the plot is going to be jam packed and develop at breakneck speed. 

I’m a little worried about that, not gonna lie, because s3 and s4 both suffered from trying to pack too much plot in, at the detriment of character development. BUT even with that concern, I still believe Bellarke will be canon by the end of 5a, even if they get separated again at that point or some other plot contrivance intervenes to keep them apart. It could be the prisoner ship, it could be the situation with the bunker, it could be other grounders, it could be Cadogan?? (seriously I need more on that storyline), it could be Madi in trouble, it could be anything. Maybe Pauna survived Praimfaya and is out for blood (ok that one is fully a joke). Bellarke might have a love confession and then have to split up for a minute…or maybe it just looks like they do and they leave us hanging over the break between 5a and 5b DONT YELL AT ME ITS NOT WHAT I WANT but you know the writers love to make us suffer. And they do it so well. 

IS THIS HIATUS OVER YET????

[gethealthy18-blog]

307: Anti-Aging Skin Science From the Inside Out With Dr. Emilia Javorsky

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/news/307-anti-aging-skin-science-from-the-inside-out-with-dr-emilia-javorsky/

307: Anti-Aging Skin Science From the Inside Out With Dr. Emilia Javorsky

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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This podcast is brought to you by Wellnesse, a new company I co-founded to tackle the toughest personal care products and create natural and safe products that work as well as conventional alternatives. I realized that even the most natural minded of my friends still used conventional toothpaste and shampoo because they weren’t willing to sacrifice quality. There are natural options and ones that work well, but to find products that do both was almost impossible. We tackled the toughest first, creating the first and only natural toothpaste that is fluoride and glycerin free, and that has calcium and hydroxyapatite to uniquely support the mineral balance in the mouth. It also contains neem oil and green tea to support a healthy bacterial balance in the mouth and fight bad breath. Be the first to try it and our innovative natural hair care (shampoo and conditioner) at wellnesse.com

Katie: Hello and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode is all about skin health from the inside out, both about anti-aging and specific skin problems and how we can support our skin. Because I am here with Dr. Emilia Javorsky who is a physician-scientist focused on developing new tools to improve health and wellbeing, specializing in dermatology and skin health. Currently, she’s also involved in early-stage life sciences ventures and she leads an artificial intelligence and medicine initiative with the Future Society. She’s a TEDx speaker, was part of “Forbes” 30 under 30 Class of 2017 in Healthcare and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shaper Community. She is super intelligent, super, super sweet and she’s here today to share her wisdom when it comes to skin health and preventing aging. So listen in. Here we go. Dr. Javorsky, welcome, thanks for being on the podcast.

Dr. Javorsky: Thank you so much for having me back.

Katie: I am so excited to chat with you again. And for any of you guys listening that didn’t hear, Dr. Javorsky has been on the podcast before and we went really deep on skin health and sun exposure and vitamin D and how to make sure all of that happens safely, including how to make sure our ocean and reefs are safe when you’re using sunscreen. Fascinating episode and I’ll make sure that’s linked in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. But I knew I wanted to have Dr. Javorsky back on to talk more about skin health because there’s certainly much, much more to it than just safe sun exposure. And I think today’s gonna be a really fun episode to go deep on a few more of those things. And I’m biased, but my background being in nutrition, I would love if we could start with food because I do think diet is a huge part of all aspects of health. And I know that you have talked about this as well in the past and I would love if we could start broad and then we’ll kind of narrow it down from there on what are some of the ways that food and our diet really impacts our skin health, both directly and indirectly, and how can we support our skin from the inside out?e

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. So I’m really excited that we’re gonna talk about skin aging today cause that’s a topic I’m quite passionate about. Not just from thinking through it from like a cosmetic angle, but also thinking through it from a skin health angle because exactly as you kind of alluded to, aging is really the product of how our skin is doing. So what we think of a lot of the visible signs of aging, whether those be things like wrinkles or age spots or our skin sort of drying out over time is really a sign that our skin isn’t doing sort of as good of a job as it used to at its functions. And that’s really closely linked with skin health. And as you opened with, skin health is really a holistic approach. So our skin is basically the product of everything we put in our bodies, that we put on our bodies, and our lifestyles.

And to start with thinking about what kinds of foods are, you know, helpful or harmful to our skin health or to skin aging over time, there’s been a lot of work done on that. And this is an area where we’re really starting to tease apart how lifestyle actually affects skin and how our diets affect our skin. One area that there’s been a really emerging consensus around is this idea of a high sugar diet being detrimental to our skin. So the term that’s out there and floating around for this now is the sugar sag. And it’s basically really delved into the fact that high sugar diets over time damage our skin’s collagen. And our collagen is most sensitive because it’s a big molecule that stays around in our bodies for a really long period of time relative to other components in the skin. That’s why it’s sort of the most sensitive and that there’s pretty good data that sugar plays a key role in that degradation over time.

Katie: That makes sense. So let’s talk about that a little bit more because I definitely am not a fan of sugar and I’d come out pretty strongly against sugar, even for kids. Just realizing, especially when we’re talking about refined sugar, there’s really no dietary need for that that we can’t meet from a much healthier alternative. And so I know even, but in recent years, like things like the keto diet had become really popular, which is not just no sugar but, you know, extremely no carbs. And I’m curious, that cuts out a lot of even fruits and vegetables at times. I just am curious if you have a take on that and if do we need the natural forms of sugar in fruits and vegetables? Do those have a place? Obviously refined sugar, I would agree with you 100% it doesn’t, but what about fruits and vegetables?

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah. And so the data that is here, again, very early on, but this is really starting to look at exactly the refined sugars. So looking at what we think of is kind of what I would call sort of the commercially available diet. And so that’s talking a lot about added sugars as opposed to kind of the natural sugars that exist in things like fruits and vegetables and the carbohydrates also that eventually become sugars in our bodies that are in a lot of those natural sources. It’s very similar and, you know, something that also is an emerging area is thinking about how actually what we put in our gut, not just what gets absorbed into our body but affects our own microbiome. So affects the microbes in our gut and how does that relate to our overall health and wellbeing and our skin? And there’s pretty good data there too that, you know, excess sugar is probably not a great thing for a healthy gut either.

Katie: That makes sense. Yeah. I’m 100% with you in that one of the many, many reasons we can all, you know, avoid refined sugar or at least reduce it. Are there any other foods that stick out as particularly problematic for skin? I know that often in this world we hear about dairy being problematic for some people. Or, you know, anything that has refined ingredients of any kind, whether it be refined flour or I personally avoid refined vegetable oils, really high Omega six oils just because my skin doesn’t seem to do well with those. But are there other foods that kind of in general are not great for the skin when we consume them?

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah, so the sugar area is the one that I think there’s the greatest area of consensus around. But then there are certainly, sort of at the individual level, people have very differing sensitivities towards different foods. So some people are highly sensitive, dairy is one that you mentioned in particular. We see a lot now learning more and more about what gluten and right in celiac disease, but also a whole spectrum of people that may have gluten intolerance. So they may not have full-fledged celiac, but they may be specifically sensitive to that particular gluten as an antigen. So there’s definitely a spectrum of sort of individual sensitivities. Those we don’t understand as well on sort of a population level, but on sort of an individual, a food sensitivity level, we do know that food sensitivities can manifest into sort of skin symptoms.

Katie: Yeah, I’ve definitely seen that. Actually, I know I do better without gluten as well, but my dad doesn’t have celiac disease, we don’t think, but he definitely has like a very severe skin reaction when he eats gluten and his skin gets like red and inflamed and he gets almost like cystic type acne. And so that’s something that’s in my family and something I’ve really paid attention to. Is there like maybe like an independent allergy, a reaction that can vary by people? So like certain foods may be universally okay, but some people might have a reaction, like one of my daughters for a long time didn’t do well with eggs and if she ate eggs, her skin would get itchy. Is that a thing that can happen based on food as well?

Dr. Javorsky: Absolutely. Absolutely. So when you think of it, I think of our skin in a way as kind of like the ultimate wearable is how I think of it sometimes. Like it’s a really great barometer of what’s going on inside of our bodies, and especially when it comes to basically the whole spectrum of symptoms around inflammation. Right. So that’s why so many, whether they be food allergies or other types of allergies manifest as skin symptoms, right? And that you can get red, you can get itchy. This is, you know, very much what we talk about when we think of it’s sort of the atopic triad or this idea of things like eczema and allergies and asthma being really closely linked is the skin is really a good barometer of what’s happening inside of the body and especially so when we think about things that are related to the immune system and inflammation like allergies.

Katie: Got it. Okay. So I’d love to go now really deep on the positive things because I also have noticed just anecdotally myself that when I eat a really clean diet and make sure I’m getting a lot of micronutrients from a lot of wide variety of sources, my skin is so much better. And so I’m curious, what are some of the ways that we can really support our skin from the inside out?

Dr. Javorsky: So first, the first and foremost way is making sure that you have on board basically everything that you need from a micronutrient and vitamin perspective and that you’re getting that from a well-balanced diet. So a lot of skin symptoms that we can think of that are out there can be closely linked with basically not getting enough of a particular vitamin or a vitamin deficiency. One area we see a lot when people come that it’s a very common cause of things like thinning hair or pale skin is iron deficiency. That’s one that’s really common. And so making sure you have enough iron. B12 deficiency is another one that can manifest with lots of sort of skin symptoms associated with it. So the first and foremost aspect of taking care of your skin is making sure that you’re getting all of the nutrients on board that you need from a vitamins perspective and micronutrient perspective.

The second area is thinking about foods that are really rich in basically compounds that have been shown to be helpful for skin. So we know that like antioxidants as a general category is something that’s helpful for skin. But within that there’s really some granularity around, well, which antioxidants? Because antioxidants are not always all created equal. And there are many that are totally ubiquitous and common and in high concentrations in a lot of the foods available to us. So we think of things like vitamin C and vitamin E. Those have been studied really well to have actual skin benefit. And that ingesting vitamin C and E, you know, helps to both move the needle on sort of overall skin health but also from an anti-aging perspective. Now, those are things you could take it as a supplement, but they’re also really widely available from naturally available food sources, right? We think about citrus being the most common one. So that’s the kind of data where you say there’s great data here for sort of anti-aging and skin health and it’s readily available from natural food sources.

The other one that’s really having a moment right now and I’m seeing everywhere is this idea of like ingestible retinol, right? And when you really boil that down, that’s essentially vitamin A at the end of the day, which again, really like readily available from a lot of foods out there. My cofounder always jokes when I kind of explained this to him that like we should just tell everybody, just eat a sweet potato. You don’t need ingestible retinol products. You just can go eat a sweet potato and get that same benefit.

Katie: Well, and that’s a good point too because vitamin a is one of the fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, and K. And so unlike some other ones, it’s one you can actually get too much of, isn’t that right? And it can become harmful if you have too much.

Dr. Javorsky: Absolutely. So being fat-soluble, it builds up in your body over time, right? And so that’s the kind of a vitamin that you don’t really want to get in excess amounts from a supplement. And that’s where, you know, you have to think about where are the lines in terms of supplementation and dose, right. Because you’ll see in a lot of these supplements that sometimes there are hundreds, thousands of percent higher than our actual recommended daily intake. And so that’s something that’s really important to be aware of. I see it a lot with biotin as a product. So biotin is basically a B vitamin that if you have a deficiency in it can cause a lot of hair, skin, and nail like symptoms. But there’s really no evidence to show that the supplements in people who aren’t biotin deficient taking 1,000%, your daily dose of biotin is going to be helpful and it could, in fact, also be harmful. So that’s really why I think that in any of these areas where there’s data around vitamins for skin benefit that are also readily available in food, it’s always best to start with sort of the natural dietary sources of those ingredients.

Katie: Got it. That makes sense. And another one that’s obviously having its huge time in the sun right now is collagen. And I have consumed collagen for pretty much my whole adult life, but mostly I would make homemade bone broths and stocks and use them in soups and things like that. And now, of course, there’s collagen products available in all different forms, but then I also see people putting collagen on their skin. I’m curious what your take is. I know like from what I’ve read, collagen includes things like proline and glycine, which do seem to be good for the skin, but I’m curious what your take is on it and the best way to get that as well.

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah, so absolutely keep rocking it with the bone broths. That’s great. Because there is really great data out there that shows that taking collagen basically orally helps to give our body the building blocks that it needs to make new collagen. So exactly as you say, all of those sort of amino acids and peptides that then come together to make…our body uses them to sort of put them together to make the big college in molecules in our bodies, it’s something that’s very beneficial to get from an oral source, bone broth being a great one of those. When it comes to putting collagen on your skin, there’s no data whatsoever to show that that has any kind of benefit. And it makes sense because these are really big, what we would call, macromolecules that just don’t get into the skin, right? And so, you know, it’s really important when thinking through the collagen craze that yes, it’s a great thing to incorporate into your diet to help make sure you’re getting all of the amino acids and building blocks that you need. In terms of the creams and topical products you may see out there, it’s really sort of not worth your money because they aren’t going to move the needle on any kind of benefit.

Katie: Interesting. What about, on that note, there’s all these products that contain vitamin C in various forms. And I know just from the nutrition side, vitamin C can like break down and oxidize pretty quickly. Like it becomes unstable pretty quickly. Is that something that is effective in skin products and if so, what should we be looking for to make sure it’s a good form?

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah. So when looking at vitamin C products…this is a great point, right? Just because an ingredient is listed on a label doesn’t mean that it’s contained in a form that’s still active, right? Like a lot of these antioxidants can actually oxidize and break down over time and no longer be effective in products. So when looking for vitamin C products, I just recommend people look for ones that also contain folic acid. So I think that is the additive that’s been shown to best help in stabilizing topical vitamin C and making sure it remains effective. So that’s a helpful heuristic for me, but it’s a great sort of a topic that you flag is that, it’s also important to see that these products basically over the course of their shelf life maintain stability and still work in the way that they’re intended to work when they’re initially formulated. And that’s common with actually a lot of antioxidant ingredients.

Katie: That brings up another thing that I think we really plan to talk through, which is the idea that a lot of what we put on our skin is absorbed into our body. And it’s a reason that a lot of people listening to this podcast choose natural products and try to not put things that could be harmful on their skin, which I’m very much that way as well and I’ve made a lot of my own products for years. I’m curious what your take is on that, like how much of what we put on our skin actually can get absorbed and knowing that, are there good guidelines for choosing things that are not going to be harmful and that will be beneficial? And actually like how can we decipher the things that are gonna help our skin when we use them topically?

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah, absolutely. So I think it really…so how things get absorbed into our skin really depends on what those sort of molecules are, right? And this is an area we’re really just beginning to dive into properly, which is really a shame because there are so many products that we’ve been using on our skin and ingredients we’ve been using on our skin for years that are kind of grandfathered into products. But we never really went through and said, well, let’s take a really close look at this, and the doses that we’re using in these products, how much of that’s actually getting into our skin? And this is something that you may have seen recently with a lot of the controversy that came out of the FDA study on chemical sunscreens.

So a few months ago this study came out where they basically looked at…asked the question, let’s take a look at if you use sunscreen properly, how much of those chemical, sort of, agents are actually getting into the skin, right? And so what they basically did was apply some chemical sunscreens onto people’s skins as you’re supposed to apply sunscreen and did blood tests to say like how much is actually getting into our system…into our circulation. And what they found was that the answer was actually a lot more than we originally thought in that study. And so that was something that was pretty alarming to me and to a lot of others in that there was something that we’ve recommended people use for such a long time and be readily available in products and we didn’t even really have a good understanding of how much of that was getting into the skin, right?

So from that perspective, I always kind of tend to err on the side of caution and I definitely recommend using products. And this is why I think A, starting with ingredients that have been tested and clinically validated. So people have done studies on sort of the safety and efficacy of these products in humans. Because if something isn’t shown to be effective for the benefit you would like to get, well then no level of risk is really acceptable because then you’re just taking some kind of risk on and there’s really no data that you’re gonna get any kind of benefit. So making sure that products are effective and then the other side of that is making sure that products are safe.

I like EWG. Their database is, I think, a great starting resource for people to look up both ingredients and products and see what’s contained in them. They’re actually one of our sort of nonprofit partners. I think that they’re a great consumer education tool for people to look up like, “Hey, what is this ingredient that I see on the bottle and is this something that has been well studied? And if so, what does that safety profile look like? Is it something that’s safe for me to put on my skin?”

Katie: I’m a big fan of EWG as well and yeah, their Skin Deep Database, I’ll make sure it’s linked in the show notes. It’s a great resource for just kind of vetting any product that you use. And I know that our whole first podcast was entirely about this, so I don’t wanna go too deep on it, but I would love to just do a quick recap on sunscreens because I know this has been really well-talked about in the media recently and people are starting to become really aware of this. But for anyone who’s not familiar yet, kinda just walk us through briefly why you might wanna exercise caution with chemical sunscreens both for ourselves and for the environment.

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah, absolutely. So chemical sunscreens, as I just talked a little bit about with this previous study, we found out that they get into our skin a lot more than we thought. And like why you said concerning is because a lot of these ingredients, when you look at them based on studies that are done in a Petri dish or in animals, they’ve been shown to have basically detrimental effects. And that’s also played out in sort of the broader category of what are their effects on marine life? So there’s been a lot of data that showed that basically when we put chemical sunscreens on our body and we go into the ocean, they leech out, right? It rubs off, it washes off. And this has been associated with basically the bleaching of coral reefs. This was a key…and other, sort of, effects on marine life. This was a key reason that Hawaii, as a state, said, “We’re not gonna have any…we’re gonna actually prohibit the use of these chemical sunscreens from an environmental standpoint.”

So the idea that chemical sunscreens get into our body more than we thought they did, there’s more and more data showing that these can be harmful to cells and we know that there is just a really bad environmental impact of these products. And sort of the fourth side of that is that there are alternatives, right? So we don’t see these same effects both from an absorption into our body’s perspective, from a safety perspective, and from an environmental perspective when we think about physical sunscreen. So those are sunscreens containing key ingredients like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. That’s really what to look for on the label. And so because there’s a great alternative that lacks all of the, sort of, safety environmental concerns that the chemical sunscreens have, that’s why I personally am very pro using the physical sunscreens as opposed to the chemical ones.

Katie: Absolutely. Yeah, me too. And in our family, we’re big fans of also just using rash guards and hats and covering up, which is another great way to just physically protecting from the sun, which is essentially what physical sunscreens do as well. Essentially, like you’re just putting up a physical barrier in a form of sunscreen versus clothing. But yeah, I think that’s a good rule of thumb. Another thing I’ve seen floating around, so there’s these pictures on Instagram and Pinterest of people who do like a hydration challenge and they like take a picture of their skin one day and then like a few days later after making sure they drink enough water for a few days and they look so much younger and like there’s a noticeable difference in their skin, which I’m sure there’s a little bit of hype there for social media, but it made me really think, how much of does hydration come into play for skin health and is that just on the short term? Like within like three days your skin looks more perky or actually over the long term, does that help prevent aging and help keep your skin healthy?

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah. So when your skin is hydrated, it’s easier for your skin cells to do their jobs is the way that I think about it. So hydration is a really, really important part of overall skin health and making sure that we’re adequately hydrated. Now, what we consider adequate hydration is usually drinking a lot more water than we typically do on a regular day. So that’s partially why the hydration challenge, you may kind of see those effects is if you go from a state of where you’re relatively dehydrated and not drinking enough water to drinking adequate amounts of water, you see a real improvement in your skin. There’s not a lot of great data that over-hydrating and really overdoing it on the water intake helps out your skin in any way. It’s making sure that you get, sort of, adequate water intake. But again, what we can, what is adequate water intake is, tends to be a lot higher than what we tend to drink on an everyday basis.

And so the answer is actually yes. So having adequately hydrated skin is something that’s really important for overall skin health and both the short and the long term. But in order to get those longterm benefits is also a long-term commitment to making sure that you’re getting sort of your adequate water intake each day. So that’s something that I think is a great lifestyle, sort of, additive and commitment to make not just from a skin health perspective but from an overall health perspective as well. There’s great data across the board that staying adequately hydrated is really good for our health.

Katie: For sure. And it’s another one of those that just like a healthy diet rich in antioxidants and micronutrients is across the board beneficial for you and not just for your skin but for so many aspects of health.

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Katie: Another thing that also comes into play there is sleep. And I know from the research I’ve done, sleep is one of the most important things we can do for our health, both for blood sugar levels…like I know people who don’t get enough sleep have worse blood sugar levels. It increases your stress hormones if you don’t get enough sleep. I would guess all of those things impact the skin as well. But are there specific ways that sleep or lack of sleep impact our skin?

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah. So when you think about lack of sleep and skin, it comes back to what we were speaking about earlier where skin is a pretty good wearable, so to speak, or barometer of the amount of stress levels that are sort of happening within our body. So, you know, the less you sleep, the more stress you put on your body, the more sort of you tend towards having changes in your immune system that it can’t function in sort of the healthy and proper ways that usually does. And so that can basically lead to impairments in skin, right? And we all know this, I think this is the one that people probably get the most easily convinced on when you talk about lifestyle factors and skin in saying that sleep is important to it because we’ve all had nights where we don’t sleep or periods of high stress that we haven’t slept for, you know, sometimes multiple days on end. And it’s just very visual and seeing the toll that it takes on your skin.

Again, this is like a short-term, long-term type of thing that, you know, again, over time that’s why again, investing in healthy sleep behaviors is just so important and cannot be stressed enough. Again, it helps with all areas of health, but in thinking about skin aging over the long term, maintaining a healthy sleep cycle is really important for that and basically decreasing the amount of stress that your skin sees. And when we talk about, you know, lack of hydration or lack of sleep, it all boils down also to like the level of oxidative stress in skin. So this is thinking about the amount of basically free radicals that are floating around and damaging components of our skin. So sun is also related to that, regular sort of stress as we think of it, right, just being like emotionally stressed out. There’s emerging data that blue light can contribute to that, pollution. So all of these factors that are part of our lifestyle basically increase the burden on our skin or what we think of as cellular stress or free radicals that takes its toll over time and results in those signs of what we think of as skin aging.

Katie: That makes sense. Okay. So what about the microbiome? Because I have seen many sources that say that health starts in the gut or there’s a very strong gut component. And I’ve definitely seen that, like I mentioned, in my daughter with the allergy connection and when you improve gut health and get past that, then the skin health improves. I know that I’ve seen that in myself as well or like my dad getting rid of gluten, which is, you know, hitting the gut and improved his skin. Are there other factors from gut health that transfer into the skin or can like certain skin problems indicate problems in the gut and how do we address those?

Dr. Javorsky: Yes. So there is both an interesting linkage now in people thinking about how do changes in the gut result in certain inflammatory skin conditions, whether you think about psoriasis, eczema, you alluded to also acne being part of that sort of area of research as well. I think another aspect of this that people get really excited about the gut microbiome, but we also have a microbiome on our skin. And when you think about it, the skin and the gut aren’t all so different. They’re just two different ways of how our body interfaces with the world, right? So one is on the outside and is how we sort of interface with the world in that way. But our whole gut is also a way that we interface with the outside world and is its own compartment is sort of the foods that we put in it.

So I think that the gut microbiome is definitely an area that we’re starting to really understand how it affects skin mainly through the brain access. So there’s this gut-brain skin access that is well-characterized, and also through our immune system. So those are the way that our gut connects to what we see on our skin. But there’s also what we do to our skin biome, and the bacteria that exist on the surface of our skin, and the role that having a healthy skin microbiome plays in basically protecting our overall skin. So those same sort of conditions that we mentioned before, like acne and eczema, also have very close ties to what’s happening with the microbes that are on the surface of our skin, one being the acne bacteria and why in some people it causes acne versus others. In eczema, there’s really interesting data showing it’s linked to a type of bacteria on our skin called staph.

So what we have in sort of our microbiome on the inside and the outside are both really important for skin health. And I think that we’re just beginning to really understand the role that the different microbes on our skin play in different outputs, whether those be diseases or whether that be thinking about skin aging. But something that we do know is that it’s really important not to physically be too harsh on our skin microbiome. So that’s why it’s also kind of recommended to steer clear of any products that are really gonna kind of over-cleanse your skin or take a toll on its microbiome. So certainly nothing that’s sort of antibacterial in nature. But also, what we see a lot in terms of these like 20-step cleansing routines, right, those things can be quite harsh on the skin microbiome in ways that we may or may not anticipate, so. I would say our inside microbiome and our outside microbiome, all those bacteria are contributing to our skin and in different ways.

Katie: Got it. That makes sense. Yeah. I’m excited to see more research on the skin microbiome. I think we’re gonna see a lot more about that in the next few years, and it’s exciting to keep learning. Another big trend right now that I’m seeing in skin health is all of these different types of light therapy and I’ve used red light therapy and certain wavelengths for a long time. And I’ve seen some evidence that that can help support the skin. There’s now like blue light that I see at spas and, you know, at dermatologists. Can you explain like what these different lights are supposed to do for the skin and do they actually work?

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah. So there’s actually really pretty cool data behind both red and blue light. The exact mechanism of how they work is not precisely known on the red light side. The fancy term for it is photobiomodulation is the fancy medical term that they came up with. But it basically helps your body do better. So we don’t know if that’s through in the warmth of the red light increasing circulation in the area, the specific wavelength of the red light stimulating specific parts of our cells, like our mitochondria is one hypothesis, the sort of energy source of our cells. But we do know in these clinical studies of red light that it does deliver a benefit. So we’ve seen a lot of this in sort of the skin side of it is one, the hair growth side of it is another that people have looked at, people looked at wound healing.

So there is data out there that shows that these wavelengths of red light tend to help skin. Again, it’s something most of those studies have shown that that’s an intermittent kind of use thing. So they mainly look at it three times a week, I think is the most common. So it’s not kind of an everyday thing. So there’s something about that every so often delivering the red light that can be really helpful for skin health and anti-aging, for hair growth, and also for wound healing are the area’s best-studied for red light.

When it comes to blue light, that also has good data behind it. And a lot of the thinking there is actually on targeting basically kinds of bad bacteria is one way to talk about it. So these wave lights, these high energy kind of blue lights are something that do have inherent antibacterial-like properties. So that’s why we see them actually a lot marketed for acne. There is some data to show that blue light alone is helpful. But actually, the area that a lot of this has been studied the best in for when we think towards things like acne is in the context of also combining that with a topical product in something called photodynamic therapy. And so that’s something that really only can get in the context of, you know, you’re a dermatologist and having someone supervise that. But in terms of the at-home devices, there is good data behind a lot of the red light ones.

Katie: I’m also always really curious to know, since you’re such an expert in this and you see all the research, what actually translates into your day-to-day life if you don’t mind sharing? What is your personal, you know, dietary philosophy and your skincare routine and which things do you see enough evidence for that they’re part of your routine?

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah, so I’m actually surprisingly minimalist, I would say, for someone that’s in the skincare world. But I do think it’s because of so much of what the data is strongest for are those lifestyle factors. So for me, it’s really about drinking enough water. Sun protection is huge, and approaching that from a holistic angle, so sunscreen being part of it, but also the things you alluded to is sort of also what we put in our bodies that can help protect us against the sun. But also hats and seeking shade when you can and keeping an umbrella around being it’s the height of the summer. So a lot of those lifestyle factors around sun protection are important to me. Eating a balanced diet is key and trying to get as much, sort of, micronutrients as I can. Staying low on sugar when I can. And then in terms of like my actual like skin care regimen, really the only thing I use is a retinol. So I use a sort of a daily moisturizer plus a retinol and that’s really it. And I cleaned my skin with a gentle cleanser. So I’m pretty minimalist when it comes to skincare products. I don’t have some sort of like 20-step routine to give you. It’s kind of a very eat-your-vegetables approach to skincare.

Katie: That’s a great balanced perspective. I think that’s really helpful to know. I always love hearing how the experts actually integrate things. So that’s really fascinating and I’ll make sure that we include links in the show notes. And I also wanna just, before we end the podcast, touch on one other thing, which is, I know we talked about it a lot in our first episode, but a specific antioxidant called, if I’m gonna say it right, Polypodium leucotomos, I think, is that right? Is it a supplement that you helped formulate? So can you just speak specifically to why that one is so beneficial and how that integrates?

Dr. Javorsky: Yeah, so, you know, when we talk about antioxidants, we really care about where’s the data? So on, on our side, Polypodium leucotomos is one of them. The other one that we work with now is Astaxanthin from an anti-aging perspective and really looking at taking out antioxidants and saying, okay, well, what have these been tested for? And so looking at where the data is in the literature is really what guides us both, you know, from my speaking as someone who’s leading a company, but also for me personally in what we choose to use and put in our bodies. So the two there, Polypodium leucotomos being a fern extract, so it’s a fern that’s endemic to a Central and South America, and this has been best studied in the literature consistently over sort of the past 30 years for its anti…it’s really rich combination of polyphenols that are in this…or antioxidant compounds that are in this fern extract and their ability to help protect the skin against the oxidative damage that’s caused by UV light. And so that’s something that’s been sort of consistently studied.

And then the other one that we’re playing with now is Astaxanthin, which is a carotinoid, so also from the antioxidant family and that has been best studied for anti-aging benefit and reducing the visible signs of aging. So for us, it’s in sorting through this whole realm of like, there’s so many antioxidants out there, like what do I select to put in both my body but also to put in products that I create is really, where’s the data? Because we know that all antioxidants are not created equal for different types of benefits. So seeing where those benefits are and where have they been shown and using that as sort of the guiding light of both my personal choices and also the choices that I make for what kind of products we want to create as a company.

Katie: I love that and I’ll make sure that all the ones you mentioned are linked in the show notes as well as I know you guys have information on some of the stuff we’ve talked about. I’ll make sure all of those are at wellnessmama.fm. for any of you guys who are listening. But Dr. Javorsky, thanks for coming back and for sharing even more wisdom is time and especially for sharing your own personal take on skin health. That was really fascinating to hear.

Dr. Javorsky: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really honored to be back and I love talking about all these things. I’m pretty much a skin nerd, so this has been great. I really enjoyed it.

Katie: I love it, and thanks to all of you for listening and sharing one of your most valuable assets, your time, with both of us. We’re so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/emilia-javorsky/

[fataziraphale]

Okay, but Ryouta and Impostor for the ask meme

YESSSSSSSSSS

(note for a wayward reader: I know I interact with a lot of DR kin communities on here but Im answering these solely as me writing about fictional characters and they way they’re portrayed in canon with some distance between me and them ok)

ryotageneral opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them * | actual love of my life * (maybe somewhere in between this one and the next one? love them.5? what a good character. I am such a fan. a very relatable man)hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang* (def not my type. I’m sure he would objectively look nice though if he wasn’t, you know, literally dying? like he’d be very handsome with such luxury beauty products as Ever Eating Or Sleeping In His Life)hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuffhe’s a hard worker and wants to help people, so definitely some hufflepuff tendencies in there, and there’s a LOT of slytherin in him: using the hope video, agreeing to junko’s sketchy ass offer so he can succeed in his ambition. but ultimately, the way he decides to help people is with his brain and his creativity. he doesn’t love people so much as an abstract idea of wanting to help people, and the most important thing to him isn’t them, but his anime. that’s ravenclaw.best quality: from a “I like this character trait when I see it in a character in a show I’m watching” perspective, he has SO MANY of the same mental issues as I do and I find it SO CATHARTIC TO SEE PORTRAYED and useful for coping like. obsession with saving others to the detriment of his own wellbeing, check. doing weird, manipulative things to try to save others even if it’s not really moral, check. intense guilt for something that wasn’t his fault, check. being really fucked up and traumatized after someone told him he should feel guilty for this thing, check. being stressed out and exhausted due to the amount of work he puts on himself, check. we are very similar. I appreciate it a lot. I love characters that are like me, because I’m ultimately obsessed with myself (as is ryota a lil bit). I also love that he’s shy and anxious and awkward but a lil bit of a dick anyway. like you think he doesn’t associate with people because of anxiety, but he honestly just doesn’t like people. it makes me smile. I really love ryota mitarai????worst quality: I have a hard time understanding how he could feel safe with Junko after she destroyed his DVDs. like, I get why he would be like “being sealed away in this sketchy ass place away from all people or sunlight? PERFECT” but… why would he just accept the offer of someone who destroyed his property, things that HE LOVED AND CARED ABOUT, in front of him? he seemed really scared of her, and then just… wasn’t? idk.ship them with: IMPOSTER!!! I also enjoy scenarios where people write imposter/ryota/ibuki stuff. I know some people include mikan in that, but I have a little trouble believing ryota would be totally okay with mikan after what she did to him? like even though she’s not brainwashed anymore, I’d imagine being around her would be kind of triggering for him, like it would take a lot of time for him to feel safe around her again… I also think I saw a fic once that was Ryota/Seiko where they were sharing stories of being emotionally abused and trying to cope together and that was nice.brotp them with: imposter and ibuki in scenarios where it isn’t romantic.needs to stay away from: I’m very uncomfortable when people ship him with Junko. I’ve also seen some Ryota/Naegi, and I don’t think that would be very healthy tbh… Ryota idolizes him so much that I don’t think it could be anything but a really unbalanced relationship, and as kind as he is, I’m not sure Naegi is ready to care for someone with mental issues as intense as Ryota’s.misc. thoughts: im love him? his character arc is definitely my favorite thing about DR3. I just feel like he’s very realistically written and relatable and likable and charming and ,,, I love that Imposter was given a friend I love that his healing is tied up with the idea that “fats and sugars” are good things I love introverted villains I just,,, love

impostergeneral opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life (like yeah hes me but before I had this whole internet mod twogami persona for YEARS I was like…. my ideal boyfriend. perfect. the hottest man I have ever seen. I saw a man so beautiful I started crying)hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang(for reference, im ace and very sex repulsed when it comes to the idea of fucking men. but. yes.)hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuffI appreciate when people sort him into Ravenclaw, and I see where they’re coming from – he’s the type of person who thinks before acting and likes things to be methodically planned. He fights bad situations with logic and organization. But when it comes down to it, Imposter is motivated by doing the right thing. He wants to save his classmates from death. He wants to save Ryota. It doesn’t matter that he has no personal ties to these people when he’s doing it; there is no doubt in his mind that saving them is the right thing to do. He has no trouble jumping rashly into a situation if he’s sure it’s the right thing, either; he pushes Nagito out of the way without a second thought. He’s such a heroic person,,,best quality: I know this stupid and shallow but I literally cannot get over the fact that he is canonically a feedee… I will never be over it. The fact that when Akane suggests there might be something wrong with his weight he is HORRIFIED by the prospect of weight loss and announces, “Do you know how much money I spent sculpting my physique?” like he canonically got this fat on purpose, he loves food with all of his soul, he believes “fats and sugars are the only thing you can believe in”… and then he’s still an incredibly interesting, complex character with a storyline that has nothing to do with that??? I can’t believe it???? I’ve never seen such good fat representation in my life, let alone a feedee being represented, I just ?????????????? the best thing ever???????worst quality: honestly I don’t,,, dislike anything about him rip. I do think the writers maybe shouldn’t have showed us his true appearance, at least not in such an anticlimactic moment? especially bc he never used that look again, like… if they were going to do it, I would think he would be himself on the boat, but he was just Togami again? it didn’t serve that much of a purpose in the story imo. if they were gonna do it, it should have been more intimate and emotional.ship them with: ryota and ibuki !!! either poly or seperately, I’m not fussed. imposter/hajime is also adorable, like I used to be really really into that ship even though I’m not so much anymorebrotp them with: same as above hahaneeds to stay away from: idk??? like imposter isn’t a very social person, but I don’t really think his relationship with any character is super unhealthy or anything. I just want him to be around people who give him love and support,,, the only thing I do note is that back in the day there was some discourse about the translation of some line Ibuki has in SDR2, about whether she’s saying he would make a good boyfriend or that he would make a good boyfriend despite his weight? I don’t see Ibuki as the kind of person who would prefer him slim, but he needs to stay away from anyone who thinks that way, period.misc. thoughts: the greatest best most beautiful character in the world,, also, me. but like… I love that he too has this obsession with saving people that manifests really differently, but is ultimately very similar to Ryota’s? I love that they have parallel arcs that intersect? I love that they support each other? I love that ultimately HE’S THE ONE WHO SAVES THE DAY in DR3? I love the twist of him being an imposter? I love the way he acts as Togami? I love the way he acts as himself? I love the way he’s so food positive always, I love the fact that he thinks everyone else is too thin and never struggles with his own weight, I just… wish he’d gotten more screentime in DR2 because the fact that they killed him immediately 1. made very sad 2. is frustrating bc of wasted potential 3. is kind of fatphobic bc they… killed their two fat characters in one fell swoop right away and then went on to write NO fat characters in dr3 or ndrv3 but… what can u do. im still love him