#bro social path live was a fucking EXPERIENCE

[jinikaris]

I'M ALIVE.... barely.............. god what......... a concert

I can't believe me and stray kids existed in the same room THEY ARE ACTUALLY REAL

[kobiiioo]

new list of headcanon (of both lihan and hanpunk) 💯💯

yk what time it isssss yoohoo 🎉

but we starting off w lihan first bc she’s my bbg and i lob her sm

sum tmi abt lihan

her hairstyle is actually a ruined haircut (akutagawa haircut ifykyk) she got at the hair-salon and she decided to just grow them out like that (now she sticks with it bc she smh started liking it 😭)

ngl i feel like lihan would legit be a good singer ??

she’s in a band in her college; she’s the bassist but also the lead singer

she hums and talks to herself A LOT and wouldn’t rly realize that there are people around bc it’s just a habit of hers since little

she spent most of her childhood alone since her and her brother got separated at a very young age (her staying abroad and suhhan going back to their home country)

which leads this to the previous hc (her humming and talking to herself) bc girl just played with her toys and basically had difficulty socializing with others due to instant switch of language and blablabla (ykwim)

she always (and when i say always it’s FOREVER) keeps her headphones on when fighting and almost whenever she goes

her canon event traumatized her sm that after that incident she started fighting with her headphones on bc if she doesn’t, she’ll have panic attacks or breakdowns bc ppl panicking = overwhelming = affects her = reminds her of her brother’s 💀

after getting recruited a month after her first canon event (suhhan 😰) she stayed few days in migs office rotting and and sobbing for hours non stop though it pissed him (i find this kind of funny ngl)

after this incident she would sometimes run away from her universe and make herself at home in migs office bc she just hates being there (he got used to it by now)

she once got caught singing the 4 big guys song while she was just chilling in migs office (she’s a whole joke) and he just stared at her for minutes, considering abt his decision on recruiting her for 0.05 secs (a very embarrassing experience for her)

she works at a kr bbq restaurants and istg after her shift when she goes back to HQ for missions she’s DEAD and on these typa day, she’d drink at least 5 coffees

the thing is coffee barely helps her bc caffeine has no effect on her (she’s addicted)

a mint chocolate chip enjoyer 😋

she’s actually a good cook and enjoys cooking but legit lazy and have no time

she’s a extremely good writer and loves poems, literature, philosophy allat she loves learning new things

but academically REALLY not smart

her personality switches a lot depending with who she is (will make a post abt her relationship with other spider ppl soon)

she hates kids but is somehow good taking care of them ??

actually loves sarcasm and dark humor

my girl is anti social, socially extremely anxious, and tries SO HARD TO AVOID ANY SOCIAL INTERACTIONS.

it’s like so bad to the point that when she goes to convenient stores to buy a drink or a snack wtv and the cashier asks smth she’d just reply with nods 💀💀

this also means that she hates public speaking so as spiderwomen, whenever ppl tried to interview her she’d literally disappear in an instant

hanpunk headcanons 🫶

there’s this time lihan was sent by miguel to bring hobie bc bro has been ghosting everyone and on her first time visiting hobie’s universe and his boat, she literally cleaned his whole house and cooked for him bc she literally couldn’t stand how bro was living like nothing but a fucking human being 😪

main reason lihan avoids hobie is because he’s so intimidating

she actually doesn’t know how to act around him and truuuly, deep down, she hasn’t realized yet and is in denial that she’s fallen HARD ASF FOR HIMMM

the way she dealt with love was by avoiding any kind of interaction bc girl is a hopeless romantic (just like me fr)

after lihan joined the SS she started taking her morning coffee there as a routine (yk the cafeteria or wtv in your imaginations) and SOMEHOW hobie would always cross path with her and he would never just walk past her; bro would RUN TOWARDS HER if he has to, just to sit across her and start yapping and annoy her

and as this happened continuously, it somehow became their usual meeting time which i actually find it cute

bc then on some days when he’s a bit late than the usual time he comes, she’d be looking around the HQ, sipping in her coffee pretending she’s all chill when she’s prob thinking “it’s already past 8:07am.. he usually comes by 8..” while getting all anxious like- AUAGSUSHHAHSHS 💥💥 ITS BEEN ONLY 7 MINUTES GIRLL

ngl i feel like hobie in general would be very cautious when interacting with some people bc (i mentioned this before but) i feel like bro analyzes ppl reallyyyy well

so i feel like he’d be a lot more careful and gentle with lihan, knowing she can be very sensitive and her reactions to things can vary depending her mood and situations

hobie does the talking and lihan DEF listens

it’s super rare for lihan to actually talk talk as in talk about things she likes and whatsoever, but whenever it happens, hobie makes sure to make her feel like she’s heard and he’d actually go real quiet and just listen carefully and take in every words to every gestures and expressions she uses

lihan curses a lot in korean and by now hobie learned some of it so instead of saying the “fu€k” hobie would say “씨발” and lihan would just be like “??????” like when and who did he learn that from ?? obv you dumbass

or like when she sees one of those crazy anomalies during missions and she wants to make a comment abt it hobie would be like “미친놈 (crazy one) fr innit ?” and she’d be speechless bc she’d realize in those moments how repetitively she uses certain words that he actually by now memorized them 😭

hobie would randomly pull out snacks from his pockets bc he gets candies and snacks from kids around the streets 🥹

anw basically he’d just hand those to lihan sometimes after a very tough mission and be like « treat ? » while waving the snack as if she’s a lil puppy with that iconic smug smile just to mess with her

and what’s funny is that girl would be all annoyed and still accept it UAGSJDJS

lihan: always warm hobie: always cold

lihan acts like she’s careless and she doesn’t really pay attention of her surroundings but she actually listens and hears everything; sometimes hobie would be like « geez it’s freezing in here » and lihan would fuxking THROW a hot pack at him and call him « pxssy » to just walk away 😭

they both have their ways of doing those small acts of services to each other and it’d be so obvious to the others while only they be like « pff nah it doesn’t mean anything »

this is all for now and i feel like this list is getting too long so uhhh yeah im sure i have more headcanons but maybe a part 2 sooner or later 😰⁉️

thanks for reading the yapping 🙏

[toepher]

I wrote this as a kind of self reflection piece and also for the month of June to bring awareness to men’s mental health. Of course it’s July 1st and I’m sharing it now but I be a procrastinator sometimes. It’s deeply personal and embarrassing. I hope all my dude/bros can read through it and derive some strength and insight. Love ya’ll!

Combat Sports…and cheers to everyone’s collective midlife crisis on social media…including my own!

I have always had a deep love for combat sports and I’ve always been a protagonist. It started with wrestling back in seventh grade. I survived my first year and won a single match. I got completely destroyed and dominated that year. When I moved to 8th grade we were given the option of either staying on the junior high school team where I’d have a much better chance of getting a spot in the lineup or moving up to the high school team to basically be a rag doll for the elite D11 monsters that were consistently in states earning podiums.

I chose the shark tank and most of the time since making that decision I’ve always chosen the shark tank over the comfortable route. I got completely massacred in that room over and over again. John Henry, Mike Ferrera, the Mcgoldrick brothers, the Farley brothers, Erik Hansen, and George Kauffers consistently beat the ever living shit out of me. It was brutal but I found strength in it and they took the time to really teach me the sport. I got lazy sophomore year and into partying, drinking, and drugging. I quit the team and that moment was the beginning of a dark path that intermittently dominated my life for many years.

It all came to a head after my father died. I never faced it. I didn’t know at the time but the conversations he always had with me about his experiences and AA were likely the little bit of glue I needed to keep me from complete self destruction. It was also him trying to pull me up and out of it all. I ignored the shit out of him. When he died I did what men do I picked myself up, ignored the pain, numbed the pain, and went on autopilot completely unconscious to the damage I was causing. In 2021 I made the decision to get sober and start to really challenge myself again. I hated who I was and I hated how I looked. I had sacrificed my morals, integrity, and health during that time period in a big way and I’ve been coming back from it ever since. I found my strength again in combat sports under Professor Matt Perez at American Killer Bees as well as a metric fuckton of support from my colleagues at work.

The goal was simple. I will not die like my father in a chair at 60 years old obese and riddled with co-morbidities. Though I’ve felt him with me and even saw him once during the last couple of months the importance of having dad in your life as long as humanly possible can never be understated and I wish he were here with me now in the physical plain more than ever. We must accept that with which we cannot change and have no control over. But as I write my own history I know full well I have control over what I chose to do and when I started down this path to fight again and eventually become the kindest most vicious monster I could ever be the central goal remains the same.

Live as long as I can for my children. It is statistically proven that children from two parent households and children raised by single fathers lead better lives. The prisons are literally filled with fatherless men and women as I write this. My children will never be without me and my stepson is my son. I give not a single fuck about the adoption I was unable to secure or the blood we do not share. I will never leave him or be anything less than a father to him regardless of circumstance.

When I walked back onto the mat at American KIller Bees in 2021 I was 257lbs of swollen alcoholic still gradually drying out. I had no concern then for the vanity that comes with exorcise and I’d caution anyone who starts down the road of physical accountability to put the vanity of reclaiming your healthy body to the very back of your mind. Focus on bigger things that matter more and just start showing the fuck up.

In the beginning you will be nothing but discouraged as you constantly measure yourself against others or free weights or the treadmill or whatever your schtick is. It doesn’t matter. What matters is showing up as much as humanly possible, doing whatever you can with the body you’ve got, and showing up again and again. More importantly than anything else is showing up when you don’t want to.

I’ve been showing up. I’ve been sharpening the sword. I’ve been working and developing my own game and I’ve been testing and measuring my skills against bigger, stronger, faster, and better men and during the beautiful pain of the process I have certainly become a monster again myself. However the monster I am now is one of total control. The foundation I’ve built through MMA and therapy has proven itself unbreakable thus far.

To many of you I’m sure I appear skinny and unassuming. I like it that way. It seems some people who think they know me routinely see my kindness and loving nature and mistaken it for weakness. The truth of it is my truth. I talk shit because I have bled, broken, and brutalized myself on those mats. I talk shit about life and psychology because I’ve survived tremendous darkness and educated myself through it with a good therapist. I talk shit because I’ve earned the right to speak it. I talk shit because I know I’m the total package nowadays and anyone in my circle will continue to be pulled and inspired by my daily quest to be a good man in the face of everything hell bent on making me into what I am not.

If anyone reading this wants to find out you’re more than welcome to come down and sign a waiver at the gym or openly debate anything with me. I have earned the right to tell the majority that you will find yourself sorely lacking if you haven’t been training your mind and body as I have. The two are more intricately connected than myself or anyone truly understands. I have become a psychological and physical savage in the nicest way possible and I’m proud of it but there is still much work left to do.

I found my why, it was in myself and my children. Get off your ass and go find yours. Stop sharing dumb quotes to an oceanic background and start putting the work in you fuckin savages!

“Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one”

[indornaga]

indoraptor speculations

figured I should start putting down my personal findings on the indoraptor in one place, and while most of them are about speculations of the canon one, because i’m noncanon it’s really only a jumping off point, a reference for me--but at the end of the day i’m an indoraptor, and those that came before me still influence what i am.

cut for length

re "watching" (listening for background noise) to a jp youtuber and the first video on the playlist is a speculation of what the Indoraptor is, having come out before JW2. he says that if the indom had an emphasis on the rex dna for size and power, then speculatively the indo would have an emphasis on the raptor for intelligence and quickness.. now, taking into account the indo from JW2 is a prototype, there werent a lot of opportunities presented for the indo to, if it had it, display a high level of intelligence.

if it had raptor, or beyond, level intelligence, we dont get to see it other than it using a raptor handle to open maize's balcony door--but we've seen raptors use that level of intelligence and greater. was it, because it was a prototype, far less intelligent because of the balance of dna in it's genome? imo it shouldnt have. the indominus rex was extremely intelligent--it figured out it had camouflaging abilities, baited a trap, and used a power it should never have been able to know how to use because they didnt feed it live bait thus never naturally learned to hunt for gods sake. the indoraptor, being MORE raptor than the indominus, should have had far higher intelligence than it's predecessor.

could it be the indo was, developmentally and medically speaking, mentally retarded because of the way it was kept? in a tiny cage with no social, parasocial, or enrichment activities? if we take into account a deleted scene where the indo breaks the lightbulb in its cage and subsequently kills the maintenance worker that goes into it's cage to fix it, had it been in the movie that could very well have developed how much we know about the indo's intelligence! but instead we're left with a theme park monster that destroys everything in it's path because violence is what we as the viewer is all it is assumed to know.

it could very well have been that it was of low intelligence because it IS a prototype. something in it's genome could've been fucky. we know it can be ""trained"" for lack of a better term for being inflicted with a violent pavlovian response. ((it's hinted and speculated that the indo was TRAINED to respond to the ultrasonic targeting system with stun batons)) but that doesnt.. speak for it's level of natural intelligence.

and it's bothering me.

not to mention that the indoraptor was created for the army as a weapon. we know this, because Hoskins in the end of JW1 says "take that, and size it down" @ the indom.  they wanted to emphasize intelligence and trainability ((and loyalty but we're not talking about that bc fuck ingen lol)) (re, needing blue's DNA to make it "Tameable") in order to have the most astounding and destructive animal possible for the battlefield.

where was i in all of this. what was My role? i want answers.

the speculation that i have is that i was genetically altered to be more of a water unit, thus the more crocodillian form. that leads me to believe that in my canon, the original indo testing was a success, and they were seeing trainability and use on the battlefield. that leads further to believe that i was FAR more tame than previous iterations--or at least, they wanted me to be. to lose your animal in murky water is a nono, they had to have some guarantee they were getting this creature back. i feel like i was intelligent as an indo. angry, feral, but intelligent enough to know that displaying my anger was a detriment except in deployment.

the thing that throws me is that i dont feel like i ever actually saw battle. was i the prototype for my iteration? i feel more contempt for humans than downright all-or-nothing destructive like the canon indo. i feel like i remember lush forests with water features. was that my permanent enclosure? a testing enclosure? was i part of a park? was that because i escaped? i dont know..

-----

i'm almost certain i had a triceratops friend as an indoraptor. their movements are too familiar, like i've watched those majestic but horrifyingly dangerous horns from an outsider's perspective. they dont feel like they're MY movements so i think trike isnt a 'type of mine of any sort. but i cant... help but feel like they're intimately familiar.

was it a failed experiment? as in, the animal didnt live up to expectations, AND was given to me as live prey? or was it simply given to me as live prey? and i didnt eat it? or was it put in my pen in order to test ME? and we were just like "nah bro".

this has been haunting me for a while, but i dont know i'll get an answer.

i see it [as a] [really cute and sweet type of bonding/clan type thing, especially if they were also an experiment]. especially if my suspicion of me as a goddess bouncing to the familiar form (reptilian) of the indo is true bc it's def a Me(TM) thing. overriding killer instincts to be matronly as the goddess would, that is. but if i bonded with the trike, i would never have let them take it away. Mine.

-----

the movie indo was kept in a cage all its life and look at the amount of destruction it was able to make. can you imagine if it was healthy and fit?

if i was kept in an outdoor enclosure (and the green space i know wasnt just where i escaped to) how in the gods damned hell did InGen keep me inside LOL i know climbing and high leaps were def a thing for me. i dont think a wall even as high as the Indom's would keep me in. i had to want to be there... I feel like i was ... waiting. biding my time... but why.

[fallen-gabrielle]

Headcanon about Numbuh 999

Her background and relationship with Monty

It is really a shame that we didn't get to know more about Numbuh 999, a.k.a. Nigel's mom. It is revealed in the very last episode. Kinda too late to explore the character, huh? Well, that's what the fanbase is for, isn't it? Headcanons and theories is what gives the fandom some content while on hiatus (or because we won't get anything canon ever again since the sequel will not be a thing).

I tried to piece together the few information we had in the cartoon to give her a backstory. Things we know for sure:

she was the first girl operative of the 7th age of the KND, she has a long lost brother who is the father of Numbuh 10

...Okay, that was fast. Most of the following is based on some personal experience and knowledge of the mid 60s. I headcanon that Monty's rebellion happened in the early 60s. Also, I gave her a headcanon name, because she needed one. I refer to her as "Margaret".

So, how did kids got lost/separated ? I'm going with the divorce of their parents. And my train of thoughts starts here to follow a logic path.

She went to live with their mom and he went to live with their dad. Simple. But 999's journey just had begun.

A single divorced mother in the mid 60s was actually not well seen by society. So they would always shame the mom for ‘failing her marriage’ and 999 would constantly be reminded that a girl like her with that kind of background would never be able to do something good in her life. Teachers back then loved to shame a kid for living with a divorced parent. Being a victim of adult tyranny, when she learned she could make a difference by joining the KND, she didn’t hesitate. But of course, joining a ‘boys band’ was actually difficult, most of them thought it was ridiculous for a girl to fight. ‘Girls can’t fight! They all cry when being slighted touch, don’t like getting dirty and so on!’ Would be the arguments the KND use to exclude her.

Monty was actually neutral about girls (mostly because he didn’t really know how they work since it seems his mom died and thus not having a womanly figure in his life before). It was with the ‘girls are also victims of adult tyranny’ argument that sold the idea of having girls operatives (people keep saying that girls should act in a certain way and not speak for themselves, for exemple). So yeah, 999 wasn’t part of Monty's rebellion. She joined the KND some time after.

I believe with that in mind that she was extremely cocky, and showing off her toughness. Most of it was only a facade, because she needed to. She would totally have disobeyed direct orders just to spite her hierarchy and piss off Monty, because she didn't like to blindly obey to a boy (also, she secretly enjoyed to piss him off, cuz annonying the guy always so serious and sure of himself was funny to her). ‘I am a woman of action!’ is totally one of her lines. I just like the idea Nigel got some of his ‘free spirited’ temper from his mom, while he got the rest from his dad. "It's okay to ask for help" Why I believe this quote fits 999:

Like I already said, she was constantly reminded that, as a girl, she couldn’t be as strong as boys. She fought her ass off to prove herself to everyone and was always scared to ask for help, that would make her seem ‘weak’. At some point in my story, she yeet herself in a battle/mission when Monty actually ordered to not engage. Leaving a kid completely on her own kinda triggered Monty’s trauma from losing Ben to the social services, he really didn’t like to see a fellow kid all alone, so he went after her. They both get separated from the bigger group, and in the end they still did the mission with plan a (which Monty thought it would be too dangerous, so that’s why he said ‘do not engage’ but she didn’t listen). Thing is, she twisted her ankle in the precipitation, and Monty immediately proposed to carry her, but she said she was able to walk (spoilers, she really couldn’t). At this point, Margaret always defied Monty’s orders and authority, because she thought he was just being bossy for the sake of being an annoying boss for the girls, while he just didn’t care if the operative was a boy or a girl, as long as the work was done well. He was just always thinking of every different outcomes for each situations, because he didn’t want to repeat the only mistake he made: thinking that his father was the only source of evil in the world and thus didn’t see the social services coming for him and his bro. So he started to think about all possibilities and really pondered his decision. He was kinda sick of her behavior and they had a heart-to-heart talk. He asked her what was her problem, and she answered him that, as a boy, he couldn’t understand what it was like to be told how to act and what to become according to their society and adults. Except that Monty did understand: his father always tried to make him the next head of the family, thing Monty never liked. She also told him that her mom would get the "blame" in her parents’ divorce, and that the men in her family (father and brother) left her and her mom alone. While Monty couldn’t understand what I felt like to be in the middle of a divorce, he could a least relate to her for being separated from her brother too. He then tells her that it’s not a crime to ask for help when we really need it. It means we know our limits, and this is the first strength we can have. He then convinced her to heal her ankle (he was good at healing injuries, because of Ben), and you know, he wasn’t exactly the best when he was talking to girls, so she asked him if his mom ever taught him how to talk to them, to which he answered in a deadpan tone it was kinda hard for her to do it since she was already dead for years. Awkward silence as she realised that if her family was fucked up, other kids had it even harder, and felt ashamed for thinking he was being pretentious: he was just hiding some big sadness (and girl, you haven’t heard of Ben yet, so brace yourself). It was also the first time Monty ever mentioned his family to a knd operative other than his best friend so it was a weird moment for him to think about his mom since he never did it all this time.

In the end, they completed the mission, and after that,  they started to see each other, to learn more about themselves. Their relationship grew until they fell in love. When he felt really at ease with her, he told her everything about his family: who his dad was, what happened to his brother. He was kinda scared at first, because he thought she would reject him if she knew his origin. Since he loved her so much, he needed to be completely honest with her (and he already knew about her family’s drama soooo). She then told him that he wasn’t responsible for his father’s sins. That he shouldn’t feel guilt for something he never did. Her feelings for him didn’t change. In conclusion, their relationship was rocky at first, and then evolved through talks and learnings.

Some more details on her here.

[a-very-fond-farewell]

The forbidden crack! Untamed prompts: 22/?

Drama AU [this is just an idea tho, no plot basically]: “Did you find a bitch in me?”

[JC-focus crackships galore baby! title is from a Marina Diamandis’s song (“Hermit the Frog) but that’s probably not important for the non-plot so... yeah]

*

“So... wait a minute.”

“Hit me.”

“I’m still confused.”

“About?”

“Wen Qing... why should I know about your ex’s exes?”

“Because he’s a bisexual menace and I don’t want him to ruin this for me.”

“Jiang Cheng is not going to sleep with me.”

“What do you know tho? He’s that powerful.”

“Babe, I’m a lesbian.”

“And he has dated everyone in our circle of friends and their significant others.”

“Big lesbian energy, you’re absolutely right.”

“Thank you. I taught him well.”

*

or the only au where there’s only drama and no plot and JC went from experimenting to actively turning people gay or straight just because.

[attn: in this au Jin GuangShan is not, I repeat, not a bitch and did not, in fact, have other kids aside from Jin ZiXuan bc I say so. don’t make me complicate this non-existent plot more, please]

[under the cut for more!]

ok. got it. JC knows he’s no saint. hell, he doesn’t even qualify as a decent human being, alright. he’s that socially abominable. but things have escalated to a point where he doesn’t even know what to do. maybe become a hermit, lock his dick and call it a day. yeah, that should do the trick. because he really doesn’t know when it all started... no. that’s a lie. total bullshit. it was Nie HuaiSang.

so, SO, he may have been 16. sweet bush child with no future nor name. a great big sister, a stupid big bro, an overachieving mother, a distant father, the usual. save for fucking Nie HuaiSang and his stash of porn. and JC was straight. and he just wanted to check if the link his high school friend sent him was a jumpscare or not. he closed the tab right after the first moan echoed in his room late at night, he forgot to put the jack in and his earphones were possibly all the way back in his backpack on the kitchen table. fuck his life. and also fuck HuaiSang for being into weirdly sensual artsy porn on top of that. fuck his life. fuck the replay button too.

coincidentally, HuaiSang was his first kiss, first head, first everything only one year later and JC still talks to the jerk to an extent, but not because he wants to, okay? they were experimenting, but JC was still straight. he wanted to do good on his first actual relationship with a woman, whatever that meant for him at the time. HuaiSang was okay with that, the lying bastard. JC may or may not have grown fond of him by the time their graduation came, but they never got around to talk about it because they were stupid and young.

also, HuaiSang’s brother had caught them once and JC had known there and then why his non-boyfriend had decided to cut things loose afterwards. that jock was scary as fuck.

.

then. THEN. university came and Wen Qing was the one reminding JC he was still very much as straight and unbendable as he could get. it took him three years to not yell at her in frustration and ask her out: the sexual tension between them fueled by rivalry over good grades and the scholarship program they both wanted to have access to for their masters.

she had been the one asking him out. JC was lying about having the balls to do it, obviously. the fact that she also discovered to be a lesbian while being with him could have burned less, all things considered, but JC knew he had made love to her and that was enough for him. letting her go had been the right thing to do and they still talk everyday and she loves his nephew and everything is fine.

JC is FINE.

it only took him the two remaining years of his masters to get over her, but. FINE.

.

he’s not gonna talk about her brother. it happened only once. okay maybe once that particular night, at a bar and they were drunk and Wen Ning was nothing like his sister and the boy always had a slight crush on him and he was the one suggesting it, okay?

Wen Ning was kind and gentle and kissed way better than his sister and maybe after two years JC could get over it and move on and they could still be a family after all and that last stall in the staff toilet had been where JC’s bottom cherry was popped and oh gods that felt so good...

“actually, Jiang Cheng, you’re lovely. but I think I’m actually really straight so... I’m sorry. I hope we can still be friends?”

yeah. JC’s not gonna talk about fucking Wen Ning.

.

maybe the fact that his brother Wei Ying got married so soon was the reason why. it has to be.

JC hated, HATED Lan Zhan. he hated how much in love they were. how softly they moved around each other. how much he wanted some of that as well.

and since he was THAT petty he had to flirt with Lan Zhan’s brother (Lan Huan) because of it. the man was terrifyingly good looking and a gentleman. so much he didn’t want to give in to JC’s requests... because he already had a boyfriend.

JC knew nothing about said boyfriend aside from the fact that he was apparently a snake, whatever Wei Ying meant by that.

Lan Huan looked very intrigued, but he’s also very loyal and JC admired him for that. he didn’t want to have that conversation tho, the one where Lan Huan politely asked him to stop being so charming in his periphery, so JC decided to hide for a month or two and maybe extended that period of time and never show his face again while he’s at it.

Lan Zhan would have also had his head on a fucking plate if he dared touching his precious older brother so, there’s that as well.

.

so he dated a bunch of people after swiping them on apps left and right, got the hitch out of his system and felt miserable about it.

Nie HuaiSang came back into his life like, the day before JC started working for a new company and asked him out for a drink. HuaiSang was crushing for a man too young for HuaiSang’s comfort because he usually liked older men and this boy was fresh out of his bachelor and JC’s friend was well in his late twenties and didn’t have a job yet and...

JC shut him up with a kiss and they felt slightly less lonely afterwards, until they actually talked about their issues and decided to stop being messy and grow out of their bad habits.

JC still fells sick at the idea of being someone else’s “bad habit” though.

.

Wen Chao was a mistake.

Wen Chao’s girlfriend was a mistake.

Wen Chao’s brother was a mistake.

Their bloody uncle was a mistake.

Their father was an even more spectacular mistake.

JC has yet to find out how he survived the year of his thirtieth birthday, honestly. that shit had been wild as fuck.

.

YanLi and her husband offered JC to look after Jin Ling more often in order to make him feel some sense of safety, he knew that much. at the time, JC hated the fact that ZiXuan worried over him and that his own sister didn’t know how to help him either.

people at work had started to treat him differently as well, now that they knew how messy he was. he started getting treated for depression soon after being promoted to supervisor, his workaholic tendencies saving him from himself after years of sleeping around and drinking too much for his own good.

A-Su was YanLi’s friend from university and was kind enough to ask him out one day. she stayed with him for a year before apologizing to him, saying she wanted something more: a family, a future, something JC could have not given her anytime soon.

.

his brother and Lan Zhan adopted a boy and JC became an uncle for the second time. A-Yuan was difficult to look after, having survived stressful living conditions in his early childhood, so Wei Ying appreciated the extra hand when JC offered it to him and his husband.

looking after children forced him to be not so angry all the time and now Jin Ling had a cousin he could play with and was very glad his Jiujiu was feeling better.

.

when Lan Huan came back into his life, JC had forgotten about even attempting to win him over in his early twenties. it felt life a lifetime had passed.

they started as friends this time around, but JC felt nothing for him and he was okay with that. they were good uncles to A-Yuan and that was enough.

.

what really caught JC off guard was when Meng Yao stumbled upon him one day in midwinter, crashing on JC and sending his briefcase up in the air. the older man was apologetic and kind and gods forbid JC still needed some of that in his life. even if it was the other who had crashed into him, JC offered to buy him coffee since Meng Yao’s cup was now sadly rolling out frame on the snowy path.

to his utter astonishment, Meng Yao accepted.

JC took his time with him, willing to slow down and really get to know this new man who seemed so welcoming and easily approachable... yet so impossibly far and unreachable.

Meng Yao confessed cheating on his previous partner with his best friend five years prior and how he felt undeserving of another chance with someone as kind as JC. he revealed how therapy helped him work on his tendency of manipulating others and that this was the only reason why he wanted to be honest with JC and tell him the truth. so that the younger man could make up his mind if Meng Yao could be granted a chance with him.

this heartfelt confession startled JC in the beginning, especially bc Meng Yao seemed adamant about not sleeping with him for the foreseeable future, unless they talked it out some more.

on JC’s thirty-fourth birthday, one year after meeting Meng Yao, JC asks him to marry him during a pleasant dinner the older man has planned for him.

to his horror and absolute joy, A-Yao accepts.

JC didn’t mind not having been intimate with him until then, nor he would have minded if A-Yao never happened to change his mind on the matter. JC felt safe with him, even when he saw him reminiscing the past with grief painting his features behind his fake smile. JC knew he could give him happiness and so he asked him to meet the Jiangs for the first time to announce the good news.

all but Wei Ying and his husband have arrived the even JC brought A-Yao home, their car stuck in traffic. they start eating without them, with the couple’s permission. YanLi and ZiXuan didn’t bring A-Ling this time around, not willing to leave too soon and waste a chance to really get to know the new member of their family. JC’s father seemed pleased to meet with A-Yao, exchanging pleasantries and conversing about common interests...but JC’s mother is weirdly cold and distant that night.

once dinner came to a end, finally Wei Ying arrived, apologizing profusely for making the lot of them eat without them. however, nor he or his husband could take their eyes off of A-Yao...and neither could JC’s fiancé.

“if you still have some dignity to spare, I suggest you leave this very moment,” said Lan Zhan, the most he has ever spoken in one breath in front of JC. to which, to JC’s astonishment, A-Yao answered by giving JC one last look and the saddest smile he had ever worn...before leaving the house and never look back.

.

confused, heartbroken, humiliated...JC didn’t know what to feel when Lan Zhan explained to the lot of them what Meng Yao had done to Lan Huan after eight years together. cheating on the kindest man alive with an old acquaintance of his that to that day remained unnamed bc Meng Yao refused to reveal their identity.

JC’s mother didn’t have to tell her son that she had known all along something was off about A-Yao: JC could feel it in the way she was looking at him, sitting next to him on the couch. she had a sixth sense for venomous people.

the following year, JC is pretty sure it passed in a blur. he remembers working less hard than what he was expected to do, been consequently and rightfully demoted in his company. others gossiped about him being so proud for nothing in the end, which aggravated his mood.

to his surprise, his mother was the one suggesting him to take a break somewhere nice. to clear his head for a month or two before deciding what to do with his life. Wei Ying booked him a trip to Taiwan the following day and in less than a week JC is on a plane to take a long vacation there.

.

one night, roughly a week after his arrival at the hotel, JC was staring blankly at the skyline in deep thought. he had done the tourist-y shit, eaten all the foods in the best restaurants, brought presents for his family. and now he was bored out of his mind. the same, old questions swirling in his mind: did A-Yao lie when he said he loved him? did he lie just so he could have a fresh start and forget about the past? did he leave bc he felt guilty for his past with Lan Huan? was he serious when he had accepted JC’s proposal?

that’s when Mo XuanYu came barging into his life like a hurricane.

the younger man, seven years his junior, spotted him from an adjacent balcony and proceeded to talk to him as if...trying to de-escalate a suicide attempt from his part.

“sir, please. I’m sure there’s more to life than this. I don’t know what happened to make you feel this way but...everything will be fine in the end. I promise you. I was there. It’s okay. please don’t jump over the balcony.”

JC had no intention of jumping, just to be clear, but something in his eyes must have caught the kid’s attention and...was that a steward uniform he was wearing? did he work for the hotel? JC was none the wiser but that was the first time someone had reassured him so wholeheartedly without even knowing him and it felt...weird.

he started tearing up and the younger man panicked, promising to keep him company all night if necessary, reaching out with a hand to touch JC and reassure him from the other side. JC grasped it gingerly in his own and let himself be coaxed back to the realm of the living by such gentle soul.

JC hated himself for sleeping with him not even a week after their encounter.

but it just felt so good to let himself be guided by hand to the most hidden and wonderful places. away from the tourist crowd, eating delicious food with someone smiling prettily at him. yet he hated himself more for thinking about someone else in bed with him, at least in the beginning.

Mo XuanYu seemed to know anyway, and even encouraged him to just do whatever he felt like with him. casual hookups didn’t have to be meaningful, the younger man had said, and it wasn’t even the first time someone used him as a rebound either. still, something ugly stirred in JC at that.

so he decided to stop thinking about himself for once and shoved every bad memory away. all to pour his affection into someone else and cater to his lover for the following month and a half. borrowed time of a stolen season, during which JC doted on the younger man and learned to listen.

some of the stories Mo XuanYu told him felt slightly familiar, almost as if they had a friend in common and didn’t know who it might have been. after his shift, the younger man would ask to eat with JC and share his frustrations, repaying him in kindness with sweet kisses and even sweeter smiles that felt a little bit too brittle in the morning, when he was bound to leave.

by the end of JC’s trip it was clear to him that he had grown fond of the other man, too much for his own good. but during a vacation, away from home, surrounded by new and exciting things...anyone would have worn a mask to forget their normal life, that reality they would have eventually been forced to come back to.

by the end of his vacation, JC had figured out who their common friend was and remembered how distant Nie HuaiSang had felt falling in love with Mo XuanYu. how sad the younger man’s emotional unavailability has made him feel.

and when they parted ways at the airport, JC kissed him goodbye and never saw him again. the memory of Mo XuanYu’s brittle smile engraved forever in the back of his mind.

.

back to work. back to his bad bitch persona. it felt good to focus on his job and nothing else for a year or two, keeping others at distance while bossing them from his office as he regained his boss’s trust. being promoted a second time gave him the confidence he needed to move on with his life and by his thirty-seventh birthday he could finally see a future for himself.

therapy was helping a great deal and even his siblings seemed to notice his progress, praising him for his willingness to seek help and his hard work.

A-Yuan and A-Ling included: the kids were growing up too fast, involving their uncle in their school projects and plans for mischief any chance they got to see him.

Lan Huan caught everyone by surprise one day in autumn by confirming YanLi and Wei Ying’s suspicions about his breakup with Nie MingJue, Nie HuaiSang’s older brother.

the older man didn’t tell them why he had stepped back from his engagement with the man, aside from saying that the both of them had found out something concerning about their past and common acquaintances. the discovery making them feel so disheartened to the point of braking their engagement of mutual accord.

JC felt bad for the man, knowing how much it hurt to lose someone so dear. not that they had had been able to discuss over the matter much, not even after A-Yao had left. it would have been awkward to talk about their common ex and his penchant for secrets and hurting other people’s feelings.

but they understood each other well enough and started talking more, out of their common interest in their nephews and their well-being.

.

five years later, JC was forty-two and content with his life. A-Ling was close to thirteen and A-Yuan quickly approaching fifteen. he could see them growing up and out of his reach, but their affection for him never wavered. until one day A-Yuan called him in the middle of the night, startling him awake.

apparently, his best friend JinGyi had called him for help after being beaten up by his foster mother and A-Yuan didn’t know what to do. calling his parents would have only alerted and worried Wei Ying and Lan Zhan, who were probably still asleep and hadn’t even noticed their son had sneaked out in the middle of the night.

panicked and worried, JC called Lan Huan instead and they left for the hospital. and something hurt at the sight of such a young boy lying still on a bed too big for him. something else clicked in JC’s brain at the sight but it would have taken him several months to realize what exactly.

furious and restless, Lan Huan spend months looking for the woman who had hurt the child, eventually destroying her in court until he pried a confession out of her. social services immediately alerted as JC inquired over the possibility of giving the child a permanent home himself.

not even a year later, JC was able to welcome the kid in their new house in the quietest part of town. it took a while for the boy to adjust, worrying over JC eventually changing his mind and letting him go. “who even adopts someone close to be of age?” JinGyi had asked, frustrated and certain JC would grow bored of him.

but JC was there to reassure him every step of the way, telling him family was forever and not something easily dismissible. he repeated it until the boy seemed satisfied and called him “dad” for the first time one inconspicuous evening at dinner. if JC cried on his pizza, well, nobody has to know.

.

Lan Huan was glad to listen to JC gushing over his son, more than supportive and borderline enthusiastic to listen to every little progress and new success.

JC knew this was enough, but he would lie saying he hadn’t felt loved by the other man. yet, he didn’t dare hope he could have another chance at happiness at almost fifty years old. Lan Huan himself close to fifty-five and well settled into his career as a lawyer...too much to consider a valuable partnership with someone like JC.

his therapist had bashed him for ages over such insecurity, but JC could only smile at him and shrug. many people didn’t find their happy ending and he still had JinGyi to look after. which seemed a good way to spend the rest of his life.

so it came as a surprise when, one evening, as JC overlooked at Lan Huan building a piece of furniture with JinGyi in their living room, he started crying with love and affection.

“why are you crying Jiang Cheng?”

“I’m happy.”

he really was.

he still is to this day.

*

[they don’t marry, but they do spend the rest of their life together anyway]

I need a break, this took days to make D:

[takonei]

Just a wonderment of mines.. but like.. what would the Beta!Au be like in a HPA!AU???

I have to know if the babies will be happy, I have to.

I’m supposed to write chapter 5 what the fuck

But if what you wish is a decent amount of happy chemicals for them, then here we fucking go, all the HCs that came to my mind. Will contain spoilers up to the end of chapter 4.

Back to Hope’s peak with the Beta AU crew!

Shuichi Saihara

Was scouted like a normal human being

Could take a break from some of the annoying clients, so he gladly accepted

He doesn’t have a specific group of friends, he hangs out with everyone

Although the ones he hangs out with the most are Miu and Kaito

Usually gets average grades (but excels in history and literature). Not that smart but he ain’t a full dumbass.

Had a crush on 70% of his class at some point

But no one knows that of course. Except Miu because mom knows all.

He is happy here, and less lonely than before since he gets to see nice people more frequently.

Rantaro Amami

At first, refused the invitation

Then his crew mates insisted he at least gets a proper education and friends

After some time, he finally accepted

He met Ryoma, his best friend, who accepted to help him create improved ways to transport tools and do operations

He is on good terms with everyone in the class, surprisingly (or not) and is often the one trying to solve conflicts

Class representative. Gets good grades in biology and English and that’s it because he is an uncultured swine.

Will absolutely fucking not retire from his war medic career after school.

Miu Iruma

Also refused the invitation at first

“I have a kid to take care of, screw yall”

She accepted when HPA offered to give her a slightly bigger dorm room for both her and her son.

HPA thought about getting him to the elementary section of the school but he was just a normal kid

She still sometimes gets out at night to do her artworks, although less than before

Still has a crush on Rantaro, although she tries to get past it because she knows better than to try to get into a romantic relationship with an aromatic person

Huge fangirl crisis when she realized Kaito was in her class

She became the mom of the group and adopted like 90% of them

Dumbass but decent in literature, for some reason.

Kaito Momota

His gang was very supportive when he got the letter

That boy will make the family proud

Never tried to hide his prosthetic leg

Not like he could, since he had to take different PE classes adapted to him

Huge fanboy crisis when he realized Miu was in his class

Big bro(tm)

Actually gets along pretty well with Tsumugi, who helps him be better at scientific mechanical stuff.

Above average in science, but is a legit dumbass in the rest of the classes

Kaede Akamatsu

Gladly accepted the letter.

After all, Hope’s Peak is such a great high school! She couldn’t refuse.

She tries to be friends but isn’t that good at it. She appreciates everyone, but mostly hangs out with Maki and sometimes Tenko and Shuichi.

Still an absolute disaster lesbian with a crush on Maki.

The two end up like how you would expect them to be. Pining but never actually asking.

She sometimes asked Kirumi for advice (she doesn’t know why her specifically, though. According to Kaede she’s the only one who would give nice advice despite having 0 experience in romantic relationships).

After countless tries they finally end up together, which was absolutely not a surprise.

And anyone not supporting them will feel the wrath of 4 experienced fighters + karma.

She’s very glad she got to meet them all.

Overall nice grades in everything that isn’t science.

Will remain a writer after high school since this is her passion.

Maki Harukawa 

Accepted, although a bit hesitant to leave her siblings.

But it’s fine, they said. They can still see Maki on week-ends.

She isn’t the social type, and ends up hanging out with only Kaede and sometimes Tenko and Shuichi.

Still very gay, although she takes a lot of time figuring out her feelings for Kaede. Good thing Tenko exists.

She likes the ambiance of the academy, even though she gets to practice her talent a bit less.

Sometimes the others come to her to ask for additions to their uniforms. It doesn’t bother her to do so as long as they are not rude.

She actually recreated the vest for the uniform to feel more comfortable.

Average grades, but does better in literature, for *cough* some reason.

She will gladly continue her hobby after graduation and perhaps create her own fashion brand.

Tenko Chabashira

Joyfully accepted the invitation!

She may have trained a lot already, but surely Hope’s peak would have athletes to help her train, right?

She loves to talk with the others! It feels like a great class.

She is usually the one organizing events, Rantaro approving most of the time.

Much like Shuichi, she tends to talk to everybody, not just a specific person.

Although she is closer to Gonta, Shuichi, and sometimes trains with Kirumi.

Her grades are a bit below average except in PE, where she excels.

Tenko is aiming for the Olympics after graduation, to perhaps win a gold medal. Her classmates really encourage her for this since she is more than capable of it.

Kokichi Ouma

Still has 100% of his trauma, unfortunately

Immediately accepted the letter

At least he would have a stable place to live and could easily avoid other, people, right?

Wrong.

Himiko is here all the time to help him get through this

And he partially manages to! But that’s also thanks to Kiyo.

His classmates also do their best too

And that’s how all rodents got banned from the class.

They tried to ban them in the entire school but apparently they can’t, to everyone’s dismay

He doesn’t really know what to do after graduation. At least Himiko will help him make a decision.

Grades not that good but he is doing his best

What did you expect from someone who never went to school, honestly?

Himiko Yumeno

Oh, to study astronomy a place that isn’t a hospital room? Sign me up!

She was so happy to meet new people

And immediately became friends with almost everyone

Her parents were worried her condition would not be taken seriously but she presented Rantaro to them.

It’s not his expert field but he can still get stuff done

She spends most of her time with Kokichi, trying to help him with his issues.

She also suggested him to open a nice and cozy coffee shop after graduation but he refuses because of the possibility mean clients will get karma’d.

But it’s okay, she will still help him find his path.

Science nerd, good grades but sucks at history

Basically a “Intelligence 100 Wisdom 0″ person.

Korekiyo Shinguji

Although he was a bit hesitant at first because he didn’t want to leave his sister, he accepted the letter anyway.

He still continues to see her almost on a daily basis to make sure she holds up well.

The others were a bit hesitant to talk to him at first due to his creepy aura, they learned how to trust him.

He often has people come to him for advice, mostly Kokichi, Himiko, Angie, Kaede and Shuichi.

He may not show it, but he really appreciate the others’ presence.

Overall good grades.

Tsumugi Shirogane

Was not surprised to see the letter coming to her home.

After all she was already considered ultimate prodigy, she just didn’t officially have the title.

Her colleagues regretted seeing her go but it was for the best. After all it’s only 3 years.

She actually likes it a lot here. They let her do her own research.

The classes are pretty useless for her since she already learned everything, but still goes because the principal told her she had to, to her dismay.

She gladly accepts to help someone, the only condition being that they must be motivated for this.

Excellent grades everywhere except PE. It’s very rare to see her have a grade below 95.

She will go back to the science facility she worked in after high school.

Ryoma Hoshi

Took some time before deciding to go to HPA.

After all he couldn’t leave his crew mates that easily. But just like Rantaro, they insisted he get a proper education and friends.

He doesn’t warm up that much to others, aside from Rantaro.

He still enjoys it here. Too bad the inventors and mechanics tended to be a bit too eccentric for his taste.

He helps Rantaro bringing back better stuff on the battlefield.

Smartass in science and English. Much less in literature and history. 

Won’t retire after high school. After all, his place is on the battlefield, not in a factory or a lab in the city.

Kirumi Tojo

She accepted the letter quickly. She could take a break from the exhausting missions.

She still sometimes had to take up to a month long break from school to get a mission done from time to time.

Unlike Maki in UTDP, she didn’t hide her talent to everyone. She told everyone rather soon that being a maid was just a cover.

The others still have doubts about her, but they got to warm up to her enough with time.

She still hid her CIP from everyone but Rantaro, though.

The more time she spent at the academy, the more she started to think she could retire after.

To perhaps have enough money so she could be settled for life.

That’s not an easy task for sure. But perhaps HPA could help her with it.

Good grades in most of the fields. Especially PE.

Angie Yonaga

owo what’s this? A possibility to get a life outside my island? LET ME IN-

Finally a possibility to settle in somewhere else and get a better life

Especially in Japan! She is really interested in seeing the culture here.

She still considers the culture from her home very important despite her past, but she tries to mix it with Japanese culture when working.

After all, she is the ultimate craftswoman! This is no hard task!

Thinks she will open her own shop here after graduation. Where people could appreciate foreign culture.

She doesn’t have grades that good, but tries her best!

Gonta Gokuhara

To be scouted by Hope’s peak was the achievement he didn’t expect.

But hey, he wasn’t complaining!

He really likes it here and can study more than he ever could.

Unfortunately he couldn’t study rodents due to... complications.

More accurately, he preferred studying them when he was absolutely sure Kokichi couldn’t see him. Mostly at night in his own dorm room.

He has rather nice grades, especially in biology and PE.

He knows he will continue with his talent after high school, which isn’t a surprise.

K1-B0

Has no clue what he is doing here.

There are better robots out here, he’s sure of it.

But whatever. Being scouted here is good too.

He sometimes try to warm up to his classmates, but he is pretty antisocial.

Most of the time it’s with Ryoma, though.

What is he even going to do after graduation? Who knows.

Gets grades generally above average.

Took me long enough! Hope that’s what you were looking for~

[the-innefable-idiot]

You’ve made your choice, my love

Hello yall!

This is my first fic EVER posted and I am quite excited!!! 

Since this is my first time doing this, I am still lost on technicalities, but I am learning. This fic is almost 1.8k words and I am SO PROUD huisadhdsuisda

Here is the AO3 link. Since I am used to ONLY read stories there, I still don't know what I am doing, so please HLEP. 

Also, bear in mind English is not my first language and I didn’t beta it, so every feedback is welcome. I am talking not only plot and characterization, but also grammar and punctuation.

I have a 3k fic on the way, it just needs some tweaks here and there. It has a polyamory take on the Forrest/Alex/Michael dynamics from another fic by @spaceskam. 

This fic in particular was the following prompt by @tookmetwice: “Guerin sees Forrest coming out of Alex’s house and Alex kissing him goodbye. The ensuing conversation where Alex tells Guerin to fuck off and that he’s no longer his fucking doormat.”

Please, enjoy!

-------

You’ve made your choice, my love

Alex woke up to a light snoring by his side. This time Forrest was the big spoon and Alex felt good, safe. He tried to get out of bed without waking up the historian, but military men shared the trait of light sleep.

"Good morning." Forrest said lazily while stretching. "What are the plans for today, captain?"

"First and foremost, take a shower. Every time you convince me to stay in bed after sex and everytime I regret later when we get all sticky and gross." Alex said while reaching for his crutches. Forrest grabbed him by his hips and tried to bring him back to bed. "Then we’ll have a nice breakfast you will cook, by the way, and then you’ll go to the library to continue your research while I go do my secret Mr. Robot stuff at the base."

Forrest went for a kiss, but ended up kissing Alex hair as he turned his head. Alex stood up and went to the bathroom, but came back a few seconds later with a fake exasperation.

"You can come, but let it be known I’m doing this only to save water."

Both men tried their hardest to keep the act, but Alex couldn't stop laughing when Forrest tried to fling himself out of bed and ended up falling on the floor, his feet tangled on the covers. Once back on his feet, the historian followed the man to the shower.

-------

After going through their morning plans, Forrest was ready to leave. He was by the door when Alex pulled him to a passionate kiss. They were in what was considering "the honeymoon phase" and Alex was discovering the wonderful world of public display of affection. Lately he has been the one initiating the platonic touches in public, experimenting his limits in many different places and scenarios. If Alex kept going like this, they would be snuggling in The Wild Pony in no time.

Even though Alex was the one pushing Forrest to go to the library, he was also the one holding him at the door with kisses that made Forrest's legs feel like jello. 

"Text me when you are done in the library. I really really want to drink a milkshake." Alex said fondly, their faces not too far from each other, while his fingers were running through the blue hair, taking them away from Forrest's eyes.

"Yes, captain.” Forrest said smiling, channeling all the energy he had to get out of the sweet embrace Alex had him in. God, he could stay like that till the end of time. “Love you, captain." He whispered before leaving. Forrest heard the other man shout a "love you too, dork" as he entered his car. When he turned it on, he heard a loud noise coming from nowhere in specific. Someone must've broken something heavy made out of glass somewhere nearby.

As Forrest turned the car and got out of sight, Alex face changed. His smile and relaxed demeanor turned into a stiff posture. He knew the glass, wherever it was, didn't shatter naturally. He knew the source for it before even seeing him walking by. He was way too familiar with the light curls, the cowboy swag and the smell of rain that came after shattered glass.

"A Manes man being all lovey-dovey with a Long." Michael had a bitterness in his voice that just made Alex fell so tired. "I must wonder what circle of hell I am in."

"Damn it Guerin, why do you make this so hard? I thought we were getting better at the whole 'sup bro' thing"

"You do know what the Longs did to Liz' family, right?"

"Oh yeah Guerin, because the main take away from our lives is that bloodlines define who we are entirely. Not a chance to be different. Sure, congratulations for you. Do you want a fucking gold star?"

Michael was taken aback by Alex' outburst. He was so focused on his own frustrations that he didn't think Alex would return the sentiment.

"I’m just sayin’ it’s pretty convenient he showed up around the same time as your father. I didn't think you were the type that fell for the first hot piece of ass that crossed your way." Michael knew it was a low blow. He didn't want to admit he was doing it on purpose, a petty act of self-destruction, really. 

"Guerin, are you mad because I'm dating a Long or because I am finally falling in love with someone that isn't you?" The silence was deafening, and it was all Alex needed. "That's what I thought."

"Don’t blame me for this, Alex. What we had was good, fucking cosmic, and you kept running away."

"And yet the first time I am willing to change, the one time I go after you to give us a chance, you leave me behind and choose another person the next day."

"How could've I known you were willing to change? I was so used to you leaving that I couldn't believe you."

"I told you things that night I never told anyone by then. You know how hard it was for me admitting those things." Alex sighed, running his hand through his hair. He was getting louder, so he focused to soften his voice for his next words, which he would maintain for the rest of the conversation "I know Max was in danger that night. I mean, he fucking died and that scarred you. I get it. But you told me to come back the next day and I did. And I waited. And waited. And waited while you were with Maria. You made your choice."

"I..."

"Shut up, Guerin. After that day you made sure I knew who you had chosen. You chose Maria over and over and over again, and I never complained. It hurt, but I tried my best to support you both. That means being a fucking adult."

"I never looked away, Alex."

"Yes, Guerin, you never looked away, but you also never went after me. You never chose me the same way you choose her. I never got to say goodbye the first time I left because you chose to be in jail." Alex was letting out all the resentment, hidden for years, locked in a deep place that he never dared to open. Until now.  "You... knew you had the power to change my mind, you knew that we could come up with a plan to run away together."

Alex sighed, all the frustration now turning into exhaustion.

"I wanted to tell you I was leaving to escape my family, not you. That in a year or so I’d be back, luckily with a good salary, and that we could get the hell out of here. I was going to beg for you to stay put for me, but you chose to be locked up instead."

Tears threatened to fall, but Michael was determined not to cry. He knew what Alex was talking about, pillow talk back then consisted on fantasizing what was just said, but Michael was a coward and always chose the easier path. Now he sees he's been paying the price for it.

"You loved me and I loved you, Michael. Hell, I think this conversation only proves we still love each other. But what I am discovering with Forrest is that sometimes love is not enough. A relationship requires tenderness, respect, vulnerability. We never had the chance for this. We were drowning in trauma after trauma and we couldn't handle it back then."

Michael dropped his shoulder, suddenly feeling the weight of everything he has ever done. Alex managed to put into words what was going on between them both since the beginning, and Michael hated it, because they were true.

"Guerin, we were cosmic the same way black holes consume the light out of the stars around it. It wasn't healthy. It still isn't. And I won't accept your jealous outbursts because I am choosing someone that isn't you. Of all people, you won't be the person that makes me feel guilty for being with Forrest. I won’t allow you to do this. Why can't you just be happy for me?"

What hurt the most for Michael wasn't the words coming out of Alex' mouth, but the way he was saying them. Alex wasn't angry, wasn't throwing things around or screaming at him. He was just tired. He was saying those things not to vengefully hurt Michael, but to confess something he has been carrying around for years, his voice was flat, almost emotionless. Michael would take a thousand a rage outbursts instead of this… emptiness.

"I don't want to lose you, Guerin, but I think we need to take a step back. Maybe you were right, and we are not ready to leave the tortured lust phase. You don't need to come in person here, just text me and I will answer you as soon as possible." Alex turned to close his door, but hesitated, pondering for a few moments what he was going to say next. "Once you accept I chose someone else, we can start socializing again. Just… get your shit together and we may try again the 'sup bro' stage, Michael."

And with that Alex closed the door, leaving Michael with his own thoughts. 

He doesn't quite remember getting in the truck and leaving Alex' house. He was supposed to meet Maria and Kyle for something, but apparently he sent them a text message saying he wouldn’t show up. He remembers driving to the middle of the desert and screaming until he lost his voice. He could feel losing control of his powers, the ground shaking and rocks violently flying around. He doesn't remember driving back to the airstream and collapsing on his tiny bed. He noticed his throat hurt moments before losing conscious, but he didn’t do anything about it, the pain was almost welcome. He woke up 20 hours later with a worried Isobel invading the place to see if he wasn't dead.

This problem has always been in the back of his mind, but now Alex brought it up to the surface and now Michael has no other option but to face it. Maybe he made the wrong choice the day Alex left for the military when they were teenagers. Maybe he made the wrong choice when he didn’t fight for Alex when he came back to Roswell a decade later. Maybe he made the wrong choice the day after his brother died. And now he has to confront the consequences alone.

The end

-------

Hope yall enjoyed!

[stereostevie]

LaKeith Stanfield Settles Into His Toughest Role Yet: Himself

As he heads towards his thirties, the electrifying actor is laying himself bare — and finding a new sense of balance

by Tirhakah Love Feb 12

For nearly a decade, LaKeith Stanfield has used his screen time reveling in the bizarreness of America’s racial consciousness. Whether Atlanta’s quippy street mystic Darius, or the code-switching sardonics of Cassius in Sorry to Bother You, his characters have always seemed to be in on the joke — and in his latest, Judas and the Black Messiah, Stanfield is closer to the secret than ever before.

Shaka King’s film, which chronicles the final days of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) through the sullen eyes of FBI informant William O’Neal (Stanfield), finds the actor in his darkest, most nuanced rendition of the Black saboteur to date. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” the 29-year-old said over a Zoom call last week, “I just really wanted to make sure I was getting it right. But then also not getting it too right, if that makes sense.”

Stanfield has built a name on playing conflicted characters, but a figure with as much baggage as O’Neal — who was forced into his own role while still a teenager — demanded what he calls a “necessary nuance,” one that became, at times, overwhelming. The film set became not just a vision of radical Black politics, but a space for Stanfield to process his own upbringing in order to be a more “realized, holistic” person. LEVEL spoke with the actor about how playing O’Neal helped illuminate his path toward a healthier decade that included both therapy and meditation, heading into his thirties.

LEVEL: Judas and the Black Messiah was supposed to drop in August, but 2020 had other plans. How does it feel to know it’s coming out?

LaKeith Stanfield: I’m excited. I want people to learn about Chairman Fred Hampton’s story. It’s something that’s not spoken about enough. Everything has been such a question mark with this pandemic — not knowing how it was going to come out, or whether it would come out, period. So here we are with Black History Month, this story of Chairman Fred Hampton, and everybody gets to experience this in the most honest way we could put it in. I’m really happy. I’m going to host a screening at my house and just invite everybody… who’s been tested. [Laughs]

By my count, this is the second role that Daniel swiped from under your nose. Didn’t he get you for Get Out, too?

That’s right. You know what, for Get Out I auditioned for like every role. I came in and I read with Jordan Peele. And then I read for another — I think it was Rel’s role — and ended up eventually reading for my role. Damn, I forgot all about that.

How can we keep being friends with a dude who just steals roles from you, bro?

Nah, it’s all good. [Laughs] Ultimately, those decisions are made by people who have a better understanding about casting and their relation to the story than I do. If they’d asked me to play a hat in this movie, I would’ve done it.

It doesn’t seem like a Hollywood thing to do at all.

Hollywood is not always behind things like this. It took years to get it to the point where we could actually make it. These are stories people are yearning for. We have to always prove that time and time again, unfortunately, but it is what it is. We show and prove these kinds of stories are human stories. They’re specific to the Black experience, but it’s global. We hope that we can get these studios to understand that more and more.

How did you relate to [William O’Neal’s] isolation and paranoia he lived with? How did you tap into that?

I didn’t see him as someone I could connect to, so we started to design the character from the inside out. The thing is, we don’t have any information about O’Neal outside of his Eyes on the Prize interview, a couple of court transcripts, and other eyewitness accounts. We could create him from scratch and give him different dimensions. I wanted to introduce how he might be a thrill-seeker. He might get fun out of creating imbalance. He steals cars — he wasn’t very afraid to put himself in a line of fire — but he was also a person who eventually felt guilty about what he did. In the full-length version of his Eyes on the Prize interview, he says at one point, “I felt bad about the things I did, but I had to continue to play the role.” He contradicts that later by saying, “I’ll let history speak for me.” Clearly this guy has an internal struggle that we missed.

Wearing all these different masks.

In the scene where I had to poison him, a lot of it didn’t end up making it to the final cut, but we shot [me mixing it in] Kool-Aid, and I had to go through all those motions. With somebody like Daniel, who I just respect as a human and an artist, as Fred Hampton, it felt like I was actually poisoning Chairman Fred Hampton. One thing [co-star] Dominique Fishback mentioned to me is that your body doesn’t always differentiate the experience from your imagination. So sometimes your body thinks that’s real, everything you’re putting it through. It’s no wonder I’ve been feeling so stressed out and having panic attacks. I realized going forward before I step into something like that again, maybe have a therapist. [Laughs]

“There’s a dynamic between celebrity and the common man that Covid-19 has really lifted the veil on. We all gotta wear our masks or we suffer the same fate. You’re not special.”

For Black people playing an op it’s different. There’s real pressure. Especially for a character who’s never been portrayed.

That’s how I felt when I first figured out I found out who he was. But you don’t go into something like this not knowing that’s going to be the case. I hope I was able to portray him in a way that made people see themselves in the character. What decisions would you have made? Were you trying to go to jail for five to 10 years? Would you try to stay out? What does that mean? Those are the more important questions. Let’s say there’s a million people in the world: two of them are Fred Hamptons; the rest are William O’Neal. I want to challenge people to think about the ways they might be O’Neal-esque. And maybe through seeing this, you might distance yourself from some of those things.

If the pandemic has revealed anything, it’s the disconnect between the celebrity class and everyone else. People like Hampton and [Bobby] Seale are trying to do cultural work. We’re seeing that there’s disconnects here. How does a film like this impact your view of celebrity?

These roles are metaphors for so many things. Chairman Fred Hampton as a metaphor for socialism, selflessness, and O’Neal could be argued to be a metaphor for capitalism and selfishness, or perceived celebrity ego. There’s a dynamic between celebrity and the common man that exists, which Covid-19 has really lifted the veil on to a significant degree because we all sit in here on Zoom, right? [Laughs] We all gotta wear our masks or we suffer the same fate. You’re not special. This made everybody have to sit down and confront that idea.

[Laughs] Right.

One could argue that the fact that Fred Hampton died at a young age is justification as to why you shouldn’t try and put things outside yourself for the greater good, because it ends up being helpless and hopeless. I don’t agree with that. I think that Chairman Fred Hampton’s legacy lives on, like he said, “you can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill a revolution.” I remember being in that scene where Daniel was giving a speech, and I’m thinking, the things that Chairman Fred did all those years ago, today we are here experiencing this moment collectively because of him. While I’m doing this, I’m looking into the audience, seeing Afros, seeing Black people, seeing the beauty and the confidence and love, I don’t really even see that these days. So he zapped me back into a time where this is what people were on. We gotta find that in ourselves again and unlock it

You have a great way of playing chaos agents. Whether it’s a muted performance in Atlanta or muted in a different way in Uncut Gems, where your character was always on the fucking edge. Why do those roles as subversive figures speak to you?

I haven’t really thought about it but I know one thing’s for sure: I tend to lean toward characters who have internal dialogue or struggle. I like trying to find some groundedness and truth in the in-between of two extremes. These characters appeal to me on a subconscious level because that’s how I am. I like taking things to crazy extremes and then trying to find some kind of balance in that. I’m also attracted to characters being able to show the mirror to you and have you see something that activates something in you. Those characters that have you see yourself through absurdity.

You mentioned earlier how young these dudes were. Fred Hampton was 21 years old when he was killed. If he made 24, 25, I’m wondering how much more he could have gotten done. Being Black, we make it to 25, it’s a thing. You’re now about to make it to 30. How’s it hitting you? Do you think about age at all like that?

Not really. Not really, but to some extent, this is a landmark moment for me. I feel like I’m just starting to really get my shit together, like personally. And be the better version of myself for myself. I just started therapy just this year.

Yo, congrats.

Thanks man. Going into my thirties, I plan to continue to do it. It’s been helpful for me to unpack a lot of stuff. I’ve been through a lot of stuff, there’s a lot of things I just didn’t confront. Those things mount; you act out in different ways and they can become harmful to you. So I just said this year, I’m going to make the choice to try and be better. Like I was always throwing off therapy. I never wanted to try it. I was like, whatever. It was just something that’s bad in my family. Growing up, everyone’s like, “therapy, what the fuck are talking about?”

So I wanna continue working on that — working on myself and finding a better sense of balance, and by virtue of doing that, unlock more potential in my heart. And I’ll be able to express in a more realized, whole holistic way. Those are my ambitions moving forward.

There’s always a moment where you just know that you need it. That, there are strategies you just don’t have that you need to build to be a person. Was there a moment for you where it’s like, fuck I really gotta go to therapy. I really gotta get some help?

I wake up every day and I have the same thought: Fuck, I gotta go to therapy.

[Laughter]

I was kind of raised like a wolf. I didn’t have parents or people who were guiding me or told me anything. So I had to figure out everything on my own — try on masks and faces and hats and wigs — and try to figure out what my place is in the world. For a long time, I didn’t realize I was stunted because of that. Not having that at home, and at an early age being traumatized by things I was seeing. Just now, I’m starting to really find the tools to help me pull that young self out of that abyss. It took me a while to even realize there was a problem because I was like, “Oh, you guys are crazy. I’m not crazy.”

Were you shopping for therapists during the pandemic?

It’s all on Zoom now. I’ve found this really cool therapist. It’s great and perfect for me right now. Hopefully it continues to be the case. It’s helped me a lot. After doing press yesterday, I had another session and it was amazing. It helps you unlock things about yourself. It’s not even necessarily about the person that you’re doing therapy with, but like you said, perspectives and strategies and tools that you didn’t have access to before.

Especially in the work you do, it’s important to extricate yourself — that period of like, okay, I gotta get out of this. How have you come back to yourself in this period of time?

It’s been meditation. The one good thing about this pandemic is being able to sit at home by yourself and deal with yourself and just your inner voice. And even though that’s annoying as hell, beautiful clarity comes out of it. People would be surprised how many answers they can give themselves just by listening to themselves and not distracting yourself with so many things like social media or movies and stuff. Now, it isn’t easy, especially once you become hooked into a pattern, but it’s really worth it.

That’s been beautiful for me just to take those moments. It’s important and it’s taught me a lot about myself. And that’s kinda what pushes you. Now that you understand and recognize some of the issues that you want to make better about yourself, you can plan on ways to do that. Whether it means therapy or yoga, which I also started doing.

There’s a scene in the film that feels like the Last Supper, and it’s just gut-wrenching. That sense of dread is so hard to tap into, but it also feels of a piece with what so many of us have been going through — knowing that people are losing their lives, either from our government or from a virus, and living with that same dread.

It’s a real thing. I went to the hospital recently on some health stuff. When I was in there, there were a bunch of Covid-19 patients being moved about. Being in a hospital is pretty scary right now. People screaming and literally dying around you. There’s an overall energy. Like this feeling of loss permeating in the world today.

Before we started this movie, my best friend who I grew up with got killed by his brother. So I was carrying that with me the whole time. One thing that made those moments real for me is that I know what it feels like to lose somebody abruptly, violently. When we filmed me having to poison Fred Hampton, it was a really tough day — I was thinking about my own brother, just in a whole different place all day. On set crying. That sense of loss, knowing the violence of all of that, really informed everything for me. There was no distinction between reality and what I was experiencing in the moment. Most of the takes in that scene, I was actually bawling. I had to tone it back.

The worlds are just overlapping with one another. That’s fucking wild.

I hope having gone through all that, somebody watching it can be moved or touched. Maybe it helps put emphasis on Fred Hampton and why it’s so valuable to protect people like him.

As someone who lost someone close recently, some days it feels like your worlds are collapsing on one another. I just lost my dad this past summer. It’s weird to even talk about, but the fact that you have to just carry on, with your friend’s death sitting in the back of your head is…wild.

With movies, you never know if we’re doing the right take, or even if it’s ever going to be seen by anyone. Especially with something like this, you never really know. I’m so grateful for everybody putting their best foot forward. I want everybody to see it. I really want Black people to see it, especially Black kids in Chicago. I want them to see someone who really put things outside of themselves and put something first and gave in love. I just hope that somebody sees it and it touches them. It makes them think about something a little differently. That’d be dope.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

[soymusico-y-amoenclavedesol]

Okey so I was for the first time watching this in youtube; and i have so much to complain about it hahahaha  I don’t know if you know the song or not, (if not, you should listen it) but literally the song says 

“And so, they keep on twiddlin’ them thumbs Skiddly-dee-da-dum They gonna keep on twiddlin’ them thumbs Skiddly-dee-da-dum-dum And so, they keep on twiddlin’ them thumbs Skiddly-dee-da-dum (skiddly-dee-da-dum) They gonna keep on twiddlin’ them thumbs Skiddly-dee-da-dum-dum”

“Don’t believe everything that you hear Let it go through your left and right ear Don’t just march to the beat of that drum Don’t be one of them people just twiddlin’ them thumbs”

Bro, the song is talkin about commoners, while it’s a critic to whatever you like (capitalism, socialism, whathever you think it is) it is, first of all, a message to all of us; it is a “well, thats just the way of the world” but at the same time Sabrina asks us to stop doing nothing, to stop licking our thumbs, to step out of the rythm with other sheep; to ask ourselves everything! to ask ourselves what to believe and in what to not, TO DO SOMETHING TO CHANGE THIS. And let me tell you from experience (i might not be too old, but i have lived my fair share of learnings) you can’t change someone else’s perspective, attitudes, emotions, or opinions; you going to pride, (or to BLM marches, etc), aint gonna change the world if you don’t change for the better yourself; you can’t throw your garbage to the dried river beacuse it’s easiest, and then complain about the factories that make too much pollution, in the same way you can’t ask a whole world sistem to change, without having asked yourself ihow to change for the better first.

The people in charge will say “pfft, everything is to blame on those common people” and the people will say “pffft everything is to blame on those rich btchs” but that won’t lead us anywhere!!! 

I saw a lot of comments of “ohhh that reminds me to the greeks” “fuck the capitalism” “everything is the fault of the government” but without you don’t believing everything that you hear, whitout letting it go throw your left and right ear, whitout you, not marching to the beat of the drum, and not being one of them people twiddlin’ them thumbs, we’ll keep on this circular path. 

I ask you, please, PLEASE, stop blaming others (even if they are to blame) and look inside you first; stop seeing yourself like the good guy in every story, and ask  yourself, how can you be the good guy in the story!

[letamreviews]

Top of 2019

With 56 films watched and 27 favorited in 2019, I composed a list of my top. By pure happenstance, the list is almost an exact third (18) of the total films watched. Be aware that I don’t have as much to say about some of these because I took no notes after.

Because I’d be biased towards them, I don’t count the National Theatre Live plays.

Since the list is likely to be altered between now and the end of February (to accommodate for films missed), check the Lettboxd list later on to see an up to date listing, but be aware that it intentionally lacks the details provided here.

EDIT (01/04/20):

Woke up this morning religiously re-reading this and caught some grammar errors. It’s almost like staying consistently well-rested is actually beneficial. While I’m at it, Blind Rating (BR) is how worthwhile the film is watching “blind” (or knowing nothing). The scale is 1 (worth it) to 5 (you must). ‘Eh is essentially a 0.5.

1. Midsommar (USA)

Saw the original and Director's Cut in theatres and discussed them with a group immediately after both times. I’m somewhere between really liking it and loving it. Still unsure. Hell of an experience with a lot to notice, debate over, and pick up on during the second viewing. Don’t even get me started on the Christian/Dani matter. Dat tension, tho. Blind Rating: 4/5

2. Us (USA)

Saw in theatres and discussed with a group immediately after. I’m digging the allegories and the way (I think) it reflects on society. Dem reveals, tho. Blind Rating: 4/5

3. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (USA)

Saw in theatres and discussed with a group immediately after. Two things probably play a huge hand in this not being atleast 3 spots lower: my demographic and the fact that her older self constantly reminded me of my grandma and a certain middle school teacher. Regardless, it’s an entertaining, interesting, and lively documentary with its many personalities on-screen all giving their take on matters along with Ms. Morrison herself. Glad they managed to finish and release this 1.25 months before her death. Blind Rating: 0/5

4. When They See Us (USA)

Saw on Netflix over the course of a month. Y’all, this one hurt too much to watch again any time soon. Admittedly, part of the reason why it hit me so hard is because I could easily have been one of them. Dat ending, tho. Don’t forget to watch the Oprah followup When They See Us Now after. You’ll ball (again). Blind Rating: 3/5

5. Parasite (South Korea)

Saw an advance screening in theatres and watched a live post-film Q&A. I really like it. This hit me in such a way that it’s one of three films I’m writing an essay on. Planing on watching it a second time soon so I can finish with a sense of accuracy. This isn’t one that I would recommend looking at images for. There are some that will spoil the experience of the second half. Seriously, block the “Parasite” tag from your feed if you can. Blind Rating: 3/5

6. Luce (USA)

Saw in theatres and discussed with a group immediately after. This was is so~ good as a thriller and especially in regards to being Black in America. Wanted to watch it a second time but never managed to squeeze it in before it left theatres. Dem performances, tho. Dat tension, yo. Dat score, bro. Blind Rating: 1/5

7. Them That Follow (USA)

Saw in theatres and discussed with someone immediately after. I love it. Blind Rating: 1/5

A drama influenced thriller about a religious and somewhat self-isolating community that's effectively blanketing a realistic romance. (snip) —Letterboxd review

8. The Souvenir (United Kingdom)

Saw in theatres (partially because so many movie peeps were shitting on it). I love it, but I didn't fucking love it. Was tempted to see it again, but didn’t get the chance. Dat ending, tho. While it was a movie peep telling me the whole plot that caused me to gain so much interest in it [Cabin in the Woods (2011) all over again, amiright?], I must say that the less you know the better. It’ll make for... a more immersive experience. Blind Rating: 3/5

9. After the Wedding (USA)

Saw in theatres and discussed with a group immediately after. I thought I really liked it, but I love it. This was a trip down unexpected lane, le'me tell ya. The trailer is a spoilerful lie, but the Landmark's description is very accurate. People's experiences will have a heavy hand in how they react to it and feel about certain characters. The way they made this feel like a constant thriller was excellently done. Dat cinematography, tho. Go in knowing nothing more than what the previous link provides. Blind Rating: 1/5

10. Joker (USA)

Saw in theatres and discussed with a group immediately after. I really like it. Blind Rating: 1/5

(slight spoilers)

This was difficult to watch at times, but hella captivating throughout. Arthur's reasoning is believable, his sanity is questionable, and his life is indeed one hell of a joke. Like watching an extreme example of what happens when people on the lower end lose access to social programs. This can very easily be taken as a commentary on mental illness kept unchecked. More than that, it's a story about a guy who accepts his "crazy" and transcends poverty, circumstance, and societal bullshit... at everyone else's expense. (snip) —Letterboxd review

11. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (USA)

Saw in theatres and discussed with a group immediately after. I really like it. Captivating documentary in a very similar style to Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, but with Mr. Davis never joining the “talking heads” (as people like to call it) and instead being heard as a constant narrator of his own biography. Regardless of how I feel about him on a personal level, this shit was a great watch and the ending hit hard. Still need to get his autobiography, though. There’s a nostalgic factor for me here since I was partially reminded of my grandpa while watching it. Blind Rating: 'eh

12. Queen & Slim (USA)

Saw in theatres and discussed with someone immediately after. Fuck yeah, I enjoyed this one. Dat soundtrack and cinematography, bruh? 👌🏿 The throwback soundtrack, main characters’ racial group, and fact that they went to New Orleans definitely play a hand in why this one’s not atleast 1 spot lower. Blind Rating: 1/5

13. Dwelling in the Fuchon Mountains (China)

Saw in theatres during festival and attended discussion days later. I really like it. Was long, but in a good way. Similar to Ash is Purest White (2018) in that I kept thinking "please end here," but would be glad it didn't later. It's beautifully slothy and has absurdly long tracking shots. The cinematography during walking conversations is notable. Dat trick, tho. Blind Rating: 'eh

14. A Girl Missing (Japan)

Saw in theatres during festival and discussed with a group immediately after. Bruh~, this is a hell of a personal trial. Didn’t expect it to go the places it did. Blind Rating: 1/5

15. Dutch Angle: Chas Gerretsen & Apocalypse Now (Netherlands)

Saw on MUBI on phone. I love it. This goes over his childhood (for 8 minutes), career paths, photography of 9/11/1973's Chilean coup d'etat, the 6 months he spent on-set photographing Apocalypse Now (1979), and him as a person. What I didn’t expect was how much he would get into the details of things happening during that film’s development. Along with those details are interesting photos presented excellently in a way that’s reminiscent of manga at times. I like the way the photos take center point and are treated like the foreground. It’s like the director and editor forced themselves to remain aware that the documentary was showcasing 15% of the total slides housed in the Nederlands Fotomuseum’s archives in Rotterdam and that most of his Apocalypse Now photos were never seen. Dat score, tho [Ex Machina (2014) vibes]. Blind Rating: 0/5

BTW, it had its official (Dutch national) release by EYE Filmmuseum on 12/19/19 in the Netherlands, so maybe it’ll come to the USA soon. 🤷🏿‍♂️ Forgot to mention it’s been added as a special feature to the 40th anniversary 4K blu-ray disc of Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (2019).

16. Receiver (Ireland)

Saw on MUBI on phone. I really like it. A very interesting short film in three odd segments. First was disturbing; second was about activism, protests, and politics; third was about the person I assume the film was made for. All compose what I took as a film about the importance of having reliable sound and hearing. Needs to be watched alone with good sound quality (for immersion). Blind Rating: 'eh

17. Bacurau (Brazil)

Saw in theatres during festival. I really like it. This was some Most Dangerous Game shit with a hell of an ending. The whole game is an allegory of civilized people's obsession with hunting wild animals for "sport". I really like the portrayal of history here and enjoyed the racial matters it lays bare. I can only imagine someone watching this without knowing a thing. Kinda wish I didn’t even read the description beforehand. Digging the soundtrack. Blind Rating: 1/5

18. Little Women (USA)

Saw on 35mm and discussed with others on separate occasions. I really like it. This was just warming and sad. I felt for the main characters and actually felt satisfied with the way it ended. Considering the type of film, there are handful of typical things for me to complain about. That being said, the movie earned its stars back. I mean, did you not see their attic performances? Shit was dope. Blind Rating: ‘eh

[soulvomit]

This is long and rambly and goes nowhere in particular. It has to do with all of my life experiences between my teens and 20s being framed as negatives by the public (but especially by nongeeky women and normie men) when either they were neutrals or even positives. What person actually feels BAD about having had a rockin social life? Or a good career path when they were younger? Or frames these things as something done to them that was a negative? Me, that's who, and I feel like the broader culture- and aspects of the privilege conversation - forced it.

To start, I dated *so many guys* as an emotionally hungry desperate teenager left to my own devices without any adults around and without any access to the world otherwise, and at one point I was constantly in a new relationship, but the broader culture was actually becoming more and more conservative.

And I discovered that my "number" with men mattered to all people but kinky women and younger less hung up men. If I felt good or even neutral about my past in any way then it made other women feel bad. The only way to frame my life that didn't commit the grave moral sin of making even one other woman feel bad, was to find ways to frame myself as a victim.

Which I absolutely wasn't, with regard to anyone perhaps but my mother who left me to myself. Lots of stuff could have happened, but didn't. (And then there's the idea that you're privileged if you've never been sexually harassed on the job or sexually assaulted by men, which is fine because fuck yes I'm more privileged in that regard than most women I know, and this would not be a problem if we weren't also told out of the other side of much of the left's mouth that being privileged makes you bad.)

My number mattered to many LGBTQ women just as much as it did to traditionalist men. It matters to women who didn't have a dating history who are jealous/resentful, so my history - as painful as it was, as rooted in a fucked up space as it was - could also be framed as privilege.

(Painful doesn't mean I conceptualize myself as a victim in my life narrative.)

Up until my 40s, my entire sexual history was handled by almost every fucking person around me in terms of *how it made other people feel.*

It's tbh only people who were directly okay with sexual experimentation as a concept, and were really really secure in their own sexuality, that were okay with my past.

The female lgbtq culture was often almost as traditionalist around female sexuality as the mainline conservative male dominated culture, nobody cared that I'd gone years at a time single as an adult and couldn't hack adult dating.

Teenage narrative is treated like it's the only time you'll ever learn anything new, and for Gen X and later LGBTQ people, it's treated as the only narrative that counts with regard to sexuality, whatever happened as a teenager is treated as something you can't ever undo, and women are just as policed around "experimenting" by other women (even some bi women) as they are by men. As if people never come out LGBTQ after marriage. Which is a narrative that was still semi acceptable as long as I could still frame myself as "having failed at a good traditionalist marriage i entered into as a virgin," but weirdly, having *dated* lots of guys in my teens, wasn't accepted.

And yes this was also a problem even with many bi women, unless I was dating in sex positive spaces. Most people around me had internalized ideas about how much sex women are allowed to have, and around women and attention-seeking (this is another post it's a lot to unpack), and around demonizing women who are attractive to men. And even in LGBTQ culture some women may still have internalized jealousy/competition stuff, and resent other women (while simultaneously wanting to date them, which is a fucked up dynamic.)

People were only okay with my history as long as I framed it as some kind of horrible loss of agency (but for me to do so would involve lying or omitting). It's only in my 40s that the culture has given me permission to own my entire history and permission to feel okay about it.

Because, know what?

YES I fucking made out up and down Mulholland Drive and all up and down Pacific Coast Highway between 1989 and 1994, AND I WON'T FEEL BAD ABOUT IT. I made out all over the 818, the 213, and the 310. I made out stuck in traffic on the 405 and the 101. And when I left Los Angeles, somehow, the wild ride stopped, and I'll never be sure if it's because I got serious about life and slowed my roll (it's at the same time that I started taking my career seriously - it was expected - now every partner had to be the love of my life, which is when shit started to really suck) or if Angelenos just make out more than NorCal people do.

Or if my move was in fact part of reinventing myself as a Serious Adult, which it definitely was. And who I wanted to date while young and broke and under my mom's roof was very different from what I wanted as someone with my own money and my own space. I was 20 when I finally really got serious about my life, and 22 when I began a career and moved out. This is based on a narrative around work and independence that is probably alien to many Millennials and Gen Z for good reasons that should be attacked as part of broad structural inequality instead of defended as some sort of ideal.

And privilege conversation gets brought up too because my dating a lot and making out/having sex as a teen and young adult often gets unpacked that way by other people, even though dating became a difficult shit show once I got a career and got serious about my life, which happened while some of my female friends were still dating. "Well, LAH DEE DAH, nobody finds ME attractive" is how my long-ago dating history was handled by other women.

(By the way, I stopped operating the same way after I left LA, all of that came to an end.)

Framing myself as a complete failure in the social department became an inauthentic way I was living and felt like the only way I could represent myself to, ironically, not be hated by people who felt bad about themselves.

Even my mom forced this shit on me in a really gaslighty way.

"If you feel good about your past experiences, it means you're a slut. You're not a slut, because I didn't raise you to be a slut."

Actually, mom, you barely raised me at all, that was my dad, until 14 when it was myself, but ding ding ding thanks for playing.

And the broader culture judged my social life and my past based upon whether or not it resembled that of the "popular people." I had a full, very active social life, it was just largely with people I met in BBS and tabletop gaming culture and later with LGBTQ people, and somehow that didn't count.

There was a narrative that geek culture and subculture spaces were "the loser's club," something you fell into because you didn't fit in. Just as you still counted as socially awkward if many of your friends were from other cultures, weren't white, weren't "normies," or were LGBTQ. There was no narrative around what you had to fit in with actually not speaking for a majority of people, so somebody with 50 friends and active professional networks who was having all the relationships and sex they could possibly desire to have (not me, but I knew people like this) was still somehow a loser who must be somehow terminally broken. And even more, there was a narrative that computer jobs were for people that were too weird to do anything else, and as a woman, it meant I was too awkward/unfeminine/ugly to do a social job (and then to feminists it meant I wanted male attention, which was also claimed by the most sexist dude bros, but not generally other nerds/geeks) or that my daddy got me the job (actually that last plus imposter syndrome IS why I left computers). Most of the things in my life that were positives were framed as negatives.

So for a long time, I walked around telling myself that I was a socially inept person who sucked at everything because all of my experiences and choices were framed as the product of a lack of agency.

[personalthoughtsofscar]

Universal alignment, P1.

Wednesday April 17th, 2019 - 6:45 pm  Self reflecting. At that exact moment I was thinking to myself of how grateful and blessed I was. I felt the feeling of pure happiness. Mind clear, vision clear, world around me so bright and vivid. So pure. So cleansed. I felt so whole again. To love yourself is the toughest battle. I’m becoming a soldier to my own thoughts. Each and every day is a blessing. I feel so aligned and it allows me to flow freely. Mentally, its been good. Now what I am about to share is going to be one of the most cherished moments I will never forget. 

6:57 pm

Where I am located is this tiny lil path that is directly behind my apartments and it leads to this reserve that a lady by the name of Pamela Callahan fought to keep. She fought to keep it just as it is and it is such a nice area to go to and breathe.*inhales, exhales* She created a space for us to roam and think freely. 

A guy with a backpack (& two Games blunt packs on the side) walks past me as I’m sitting on the Pam stone. REAL TALK - dude scared the shit outta me. Like legit had me ready to do that SOS shit on my phone scared me. I saw and felt his ora. Weird to some, but it was the first time I ever clearly saw somebodies ora. Bright as day, vivid like. There is a lil buddha guy that is buried deep in the cuts of the bushes, so I asked him instantly “Do you know what that buddha represents in the back?” AN INSTANT VIBE --  He described a different buddha that I didn't see. So I show him the buddha my friend discovered and he instantly lit up even brighter. We started talking about the land - he describes the story of the lady who fought for it and how she did it for us. Us, souls out here trying to find direction. That area was my spot to think freely. Roam freely in my head and start thinking about everything I wanna do in life. Plan my future of success. Here another soul out here, to roam freely. Also to catch a PokemanGo gym. 

Jay. aka Philly, 31. “Im the biggest kid you’ll ever know” 

Just like that, we sitting there talking about our lives. He got a girlfriend, who, btw is fine as fuck, & they live in the apartments next to mine. He hates his current job, so he went out looking for a new one and caught an interview. Its even for a better position, better pay. I know you got it bro. Sending you those good energies. Its yours. Which brings me to the reason I am writing this piece... He’s a christian. Believes in only God. I also believe in God, but I also believe in Angels and Energies especially from the universe. He met recently somebody else who believes in what I believe in expect not a firm believer in God. He believes she believed energy is God, not a person. Which is cool, I’m never here to bash anyone or their beliefs. So as we are talking, spiritually, I am feeling a sense of pure happiness. Jay was so opened minded into what I believed in, no judgement. Appreciated the words I shared, and how I felt.... Immediately  I see in a distance a lil beam of light shining through clouds. That was my sign. That was my signal that I am on the right path. My social anxiety is no longer serving me. I was able to completely open up about myself to a complete stranger, but in a good way. I was able to shed some positivity to his day, share my experience with someone. The realization of the power I hold just by listening to someone,  and to send back good vibes, wish nothing but goodness upon someone I have never met. Be able to just fuel the positivity out. Be me.That shit felt fucking good.

As we were leaving, he said “Yo, you have such good positive energy, you gonna be famous one day” Humble as can be, “I only want to make a difference.” As I start to plan my next few months to prepare my move for Vegas, this energy I have right now - this mindset is only going to get stronger. My photos.... are only going to get better. The knowledge I seek is only going to make me smarter. I will only surround myself with energy that will fuel me. Meeting a complete stranger, at that very moment was the absolute most needed. It was MY reminder that I am good. I am doing exactly what I need to be doing. My goals and dreams are at arms length. And every person I encounter will grow, nourish into what they sought out to see themselves as. I believe IN you💫

[branlao]

a different mirror. pt2

well here you are Spongebob.   

We’ve spent all this time talking about what isn’t real, what doesn’t lead to contentment, and posited the critical inquiry of what/who are YOU and what the fuck do you want? Now is the time for answers!

my bad bruh,

I don’t have them.

No one has them.

Buddha doesn’t have them either. 

Remember that thing about the lamp? The quote that started everything off from that book you should read? (EVERYDAY ZEN BY CHARLOTTE JOKOBECK) That’s it. Buddha was just an example, he didn’t have the answers for you to step-by-step throw into a smoothie w/ kale and just drink til you find enlightenment. 

As Buddha once said, “i ain’t shit, you gotta do you fam.”

BUT WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO DO YOU? FAM?

It’s meditating. 

But what is that? I’ll bet you tried before. Maybe you’ve incorporated it into practice, as a routine that you are pretty familiar with and are just curious to see what I have to say about it.

Or maybe you’ve tried it before and don’t get it. “This shit stupid. I’m bored. This shit isn’t working.”

Either way is fine. It’s just a tool. I’m not telling you to live and die by one fucking thing you can do to make your life good, I’m just recommending what helps me.

It’s productive to first start with what meditation isn’t versus what it is.

Meditation isn’t control.

Meditation is observation.

That’s it.

You’re not trying to do ANY “THING” really. 

What I mean by that is that you are not shooting for any conscious, actionable, ACTION when you meditate. You’re not searching for yourself, you’re not getting to deeper truths, you’re not calming your mind.

You’re really, kind of.. just sitting and breathing.

The reason meditation isn’t the aforementioned is because it’s just more of the same shit if you are approaching it from the perspective of self-betterment. It’s just a fad diet. It ultimately becomes you just whipping and taming the mind once again. 

Even Zen and mindfulness can become a part of the never-ending battle of good versus evil. What you should be doing versus what you shouldn’t be doing... 

This isn’t it. Chill out, bro.

Stop trying to whip and tame the mind. You can’t just say: “stop having that thought, it’s bad for you”; “stop doing this habit, this is unhealthy”; “stop loving this person, because they might hurt you if they don’t love you back.”

Every time you try to tame your mind it doubles back and lashes out. Homie is scrappy and belligerent, and fucks you up when you’re at your most vulnerable. The conscious mind is a dirty fighter. When you’re at your weakest point, inebriated, about to sleep, guards are down, your conscious mind brought his big cousin, childhood friends, and the rest of the fucking crew to roll through. He brought 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 shooters ready to gun you down.

But you had it coming. You slipped up, headass.

You can’t just stop having thoughts, or emotions by simply choosing not to have them anymore. Your habits, opinions and general dispositions towards intimacy, relationships and EVERY PERSPECTIVE you have to date isn’t as easy as simply making the choice of not having them anymore. If it was simple as making a choice to NOT have thoughts or these feelings, you’d be a fucking robot.

iOSYOU 3.2. 

   -fixed some emotional stability glitches    -stress-tested notion to find if ‘men are indeed trash’ (from iOSYOU 2.2)    -added different hues of brown for the shit animoji. (iPhone X, XS, XS+)

No. That’s fucking ridiculous. You’re not a machine. 

Every single thought, emotion, opinion that goes into your head is in there for a reason. So stop trying to beat yourself down for having them. They are or WERE allies, but what you need to realize is just because your views have gotten you through the past, doesn’t mean they’re always equipped to handle what’s going on presently in your life.

Life is dynamism. Life is flux.  ...and you are a part of life.

This means that you’re just a dynamic, ever-changing piece of an infinite, boundless puzzle... and you aren’t finished. 

This ‘you’ now isn’t going to be the ‘you’ in a minute. This ‘you’ now wasn’t the ‘you’ yesterday. This ‘you’ NOW isn’t even the same ‘you’ that was the ‘you’ when you first started reading this sentence.

So stop clinging to this self-concept of you. ‘You’ doesn’t necessarily make sense. You aren’t a list of your likes or your attributes. YOU’RE JUST YOU, ACCEPT THAT.

With that in mind, though, how do we proceed?

I get it. Life isn’t an acid trip where you’ve lost all sense of individuality and have melted into the grass that is everything like your grandparent’s carpet in the house they had 2 years ago. You have to get on with your day. You don’t want to run into an existential crisis at every turn today because you no longer have a self-identity. 

But your focus should be on being adaptable. 

Your self isn’t the notion of selfhood that you created at one point in time when you first wrote your Myspace or Facebook bio. It’s constantly changing.  Your likes and dislikes and taste for food, music and clothes are changing. Your friends and social circles are constantly changing and evolving with their own new perspectives. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Your attitude and dispositions to certain situations are going to be different now than they were 5 years ago (as they should be).

There is no need for added and undue stress on yourself right now trying to make your concept of selfhood adhere to a neat through-line. 

Walter White once said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” (or was that a different W.W.?)

With that being said, now, the stark reality is there isn’t a one-size-fits-all path to truly “finding yourself.” There isn’t a cure or a philosophy that truly gets it all down to pat. The only reason Buddhism or Zen is a workable system of thought is because it is a tool for you on the journey to finding YOU. Actual you. 

It is a practice for you to quell the incessant chatter that is constantly fogging or frosting up your windshield-- blocking your view of things-as-they-are or things-as-it-is (ily Suzuki-roshi).

Zen is the wipers. Zen is the defrosters, or the ice scrapers so you don’t crash. But you have to choose to use it. Hell, you don’t even need to drive your car, you could take the bus or walk. But if you want to get (T)HERE, then choose your tools carefully, and know that they are just tools. They aren’t going to fix all of your problems. 

If Enlightenment is the moon, Buddhism is just the finger pointing to it.

Buddhism ain’t shit. Zen ain’t shit. 

Fuck Buddha. pampered lookin, can’t handle sickness&death sheltered lookin, crash-diet/fatboi bodydysmorphic lookin, hippydippy tree-hugging tryna be woke-lookin BITCH.

It (IT as in true reality and existence) is so much bigger than this. IT is so much bigger than words and explanation.  There really isn’t even a point in trying to fucking explain IT.

With that being said, that’s it. Buddhism and the teaching are just words. Real practice is meditation and just living life as directly as you can, keeping in mind that you just want to do and try your best. That’s it.

There’s plenty of things on how to meditate, and if you are so inclined look them up. Really, because my shit is probably not going to be that helpful, but here’s what I do:

Find a good spot to sit, or designate a specific place for sitting.

Set a timer - and COMMIT to the time. Usually 5 minutes is probably fine.

Take a position - half-lotus, full-lotus, sitting in a chair/posturpedic yoga ball. Whatever, just try to be as upright as possible so you’re not slumping. 

Start breathing without trying to control your breathing necessarily (there’s plenty of variation on literally all the steps I’m giving, so again look it up if you don’t fuck w/ my methods).

*Take care to tune in and pay attention to your breaths, with special attention to delineate your inhalations and exhalations:  “Right now I’m breathing in ANNNDDDD now I’m breathing out.” (you don’t have to say this to yourself, but set it as an intention). 

Sometimes it’s easier for people to count their breaths from 1-10.

 I.e.: (inhale)..... (exhale).... say in head “1″; (inhale)..... (*exhale).... *say in head “2″ ETC, etc, all the way to 10, then repeat the process. Seriously, whatever works for you. Change it up if you’re willing to find and experiment and play around with this general process. eyes open, eyes closed/different seating positions, whatever. Again, there is a long (ancient, even) substantial body of work on just the act of meditation, and I’m nowhere equipped enough with experience to formally teach you those, or be strict regarding the form, so look into that shit yourself. But what I’ve described should be workable, enough hopefully.

Thoughts will come up, no doubt. But remember, it’s not your job to control them. Don’t mentally spank yourself (*winkingface) for having these thoughts, no matter what they are, or what they’re about. Just notice these thoughts, and even feel the sensations of you having them. Tenseness in your body, confusion, the emotions rising. Just observe all of that. Then after you notice the thoughts and subsequent physiological effects, try to shift your focus on your breathing again. 

After a couple of minutes of this, you’ll learn that this shit is fucking hard.

Up until this point, you’ve trained yourself to run your thoughts into the ground and pump that shit to 11.  As soon as your brain came up with a particularly sexy idea, you’re so accustomed to toddler-you stretching the thought like playdoh, squeezing, rolling into a ball, making a thin log/turd/hotdog until that thought is dried out and stuck in the carpet.

Just try your best to return to your breathing until that timer runs out. 

Notice all this, but don’t block it out. 

Don’t run away. 

Your goal isn’t to change yourself.

Your breath is the anchor and a tool to ground you to RIGHT NOW. To this very moment.

And right now should just be you sitting and breathing.

Every time you wander off, just think “oh, here I am going off again...” then gently start focusing on breathing again. The goal is just to try your best until the timer runs out. After that, just get on with your life.

Chill out with your expectations.

Don’t expect everything to come out of fucking nowhere. That’s like expecting a six-pack after your first 5-minute session of crunchy-frogs and leg lifts, and the first time you say no to bacon on a fucking bleu-cheese burger. 

You’re not doing this FOR anything. 

You’re not doing this to GET anywhere. 

You’re not doing this to BECOME anyone. 

You’re doing this so you can start appreciating right now. 

You’re just really trying to keep it real. 

It’s a process, so try hard to work it into your day. 

It will really help.

And I’ll be here if you need me.

-bran

[muma-paduriilor-blog]

It all starts with the change of kushina’s death. To try to save her life she is escorted to the Uzumaki village, where she would give birth and there they are attacked. The village is in ruin, kushina is dead and her child is lost.

Minato had gotten there as quickly as possible and there he fought the rampaging nine tail and attacker. He is hurt, and after sealing the fox into his son, the only possible vessel for the nine tails as their chakra was too large for anybody without the genes to hide it

So Minato dies also, and old man sarutobi gets there and doesn’t know what to do

He knew from Itachi that something was going on.

And the attack exemplified there were traitors in the mids of hidden leaf and  more importantly inside the anbu and inside the kage council.

So he calls the only person possible to help him.

He calls Jiraiya, Naruto’s godfather, and tells him to hide Naruto from everybody

As far as anyone knows, all the namikaze family died and the nine tails is lost

The thing is, in this situation after seeing the state of Tsunade and everything else Orochimaru decides to act quicker gets into anbu to try to get closer to the secrets of the hidden leaf.

And he stumbles over the Danzo’s little experiments with the hashirama cells

He knows he needs to spill this

But thinking this is his one chance to power and immortality he waits until he can get his hands on those experiments first

But danzo gets wind of this and pins everything on orochimaru

Which makes ororchimaru a criminal and he needs to run and hide

At this point tsunade becomes is mia and emotionally broken so she will be out of the story for a while

Ororchimaru manages to get to jirayia

And trough some wonders jirayia listens to him and tries to get sarutobi to see danzo is corrupt

There is some animosity as jirayia had not taken the role of kage

Which led to mint becoming it, dying

And sarutobi and jiraya both believe if jiraya had stayed and helped the deaths could have been avoided

They do agreee they need to be careful

Danzo is not the only bad guy and they need to see how far the corruption runs and just where from danzo got all those bad secret super dangerous jutus

Meanwhile itchy and shinsui get into anbu

And shit hits the fan when shinsui gets hurt

So itachi hides shinsui and tries to heal him

Then danzo asks for the death of the uchiha

And then they go to see danzo and there they fight him

shinsui is badly hurt and is almost surely dyeing

At the same time, Izumi finds about the plan and goes to the kage and jirayia for help change itachi and shisui’s mind

Thinking that shisui died itachi kills danzo

Everyone thinks that itachi is a murder  

Izumi stays in the village and using some genjutsu she manages to postpone the uchiha riots

Meanwhile shisui was helped miraculously by Shizune who was traveling inside the village

Jiraya helped itachi and shisui find her after the Danzo incident

So shisui doesn’t die YET ? MAYBE ?

I mean I have to paths here: shisui dies and kisame replaces him in the relationship role/ shinsui lives/ both kisame and shisui become part of itachi’s life

For now what is important is that they use itachi’s “crime” to arrest all the people plotting the assassination of the kage

And  that ostracises the uchihas

Not only that but both sasuke and fukagu are traitors

So he  really starts to hate the village

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY

Naruto is being raised by the sanins

You see, after escaping to one of the other smaller hidden villages orochimaru tries one more thing to obtain immortality trough the sage mode

He goes to the snake cave and actually fights his way and is almost killed by the venom

Jirayia actually finds this and runs to help orochimaru’s ass

After that, jirayia actually says he will take half the poison greatly hurting him to save orochimaru’s sorry ass

After all this time emotions hit orochimaru like a bitch and gets, in his late twenties, the whole empathy and bond thing

That starts anew the relationship between the tree seeing

Orochimaru writes to tsunade about his life

And tsunade stops feeling so alone

Returns to the village to push for reforms and becomes a very hard working and proactive politician greatly loved by the people and one of the most important factors to combat the corruption inside konoha

Meanwhile orochimaru settles down

And only sometimes experiments on himself

But now he only has the goal of making the largest library of jutus ever and documenting unique forms of jutus

So all the people would still be there only not addicts

The first cases to take in for healing are Izumi itachi and shisui

And he’s like: ”the fuck, when did I become a foster house for the uchihas”

But it work cause they look after each other and so on \

And because jirayia has to leave some times

And orochimaru is the only senin that has a “home” he ends up babysitting quite a bit

And naruto ends up calling calling jiraya dada and and orochimaru “mama” cause he has pretty and soft hair

The uchihas and eventually kabuto become “brothers”

Kabuto goes and studies under tsunade, wishing to finally change the system that done him dirty

Becoming one of the best medic nin in the while- specialising in genetic

Karin is beyond herself to finally see another uzumaki

After their village was destroyed there was a massacre

Having happened during a war the uzumakis had been hunted by lesser ninjas for their secrets sealing techniques and high chakra supply

She had been born in captivity and had barely escaped

Anyways, naruto grows up very different

Highly uprooted due to most of his time spent on the road

After itachi goes to join the akatsuki to obtain inside intel, orochimaru’s lair is quite lonely and till the Toka team arrives

and he never spent as much time with tsunade as by this time she was filled with paperwork and in line for the next hokage

So she couldn’t leave the village

Anyway all this changes when he turns ten

Jirayia sends him to school in the hidden leaf

There he lives supervised by tsunade and get to know each other better

The thing is that in school he does pretty sucky

At first everyone is super excited about him

There are never many new students

And he had such a close relationship with tsunade and the hokage

But his chakra is so unstable that he cannot do jutus correctly

And he is too impatient to use taijutsu and genjutsu

Combine that with his annoying happy go lucky attitude and be quickly becomes the class buffoon

He end iruka get to become good good friends

The events of the first episode still happen

And for the next few episodes too

Only sasuke gives a much scarier aura, since he very much hates the village

Naruto recognizes sasuke as Itachi’s lil bro and seeing how the village hates the uchias and the state of sasuke kind of make him…think, feel stuff

And they just don’t get along

They hate each other

Here I want naruto to know about the attack of the nine tails and they are sealed In him

So when irk tells him about how his parents had died

He again is said

Some talk and everyone agrees they can trust iruka and he is told the truth

Iruka gets over his pain

And their relationship is stronger

Naruto also finds out about how the bijuus are treated and seen

After the attack of the first and nine tails they became outcasts

anyway

Going back to team saven

Sakura is still there and this time she plays a quite different role

She, her fallout with ino happened because shikamaru didn’t stop his communication with sasuke

Both were pretty laid out with chill personalities

And shikamaru liked that he didn’t need to put effort in that relationship

But most people hated sasuke

Sakura was very social savvy and as soon as ino started spending more time with sasuke she was quick to fight

She was also jealous

Ever since they had started their ninja training ino had began training as a part of inoshikacho

And subsequently left sakura on her own which pushed sakura to become a ninja and be better than ino

In their teamwork test there is a lot less protest than in the original

Sasuke and naruto have more of actual animosity than a rivalry

And they are pretty much ready to fail

But after sakura is cornered and put under a genjutsu

Well they help her get out and together make a plan that still fails

But they do earn their respect and finally get on to their first mission

And for the next couple chapter things go their way.

The zabuza  arc is the same

With some changes in the character interactions

Naruto and sasuke  end up paired together and learn to trust each other

They talk about how they both feel left out inside the village and bond over their lonelyness

This is the first time sakura feels a sense of overwhelming

She becomes aware of her teammates’ situation and after the mission she vows to become stronger

next arc!!!!!

The chunin exam

Here is where things divert

So sakura actually gets the highest score in the exam and takes both minato and itchi’s records

Shikamaru could have gotten it <and would have actually gotten a higher mark but due to laziness he only did enough to pass>

Also, during the zabuza arc naruto had used the fox chakra

The zetsus found him as such and this is where the akatsuki came into play

Itachi hears of this plan to get naruto and heads out for the hidden village as he cannot find jiraya

Meanwhile orochimaru is at the the second part of the chunin exam to protect team seven from the sand nin

They run into ino’s team who was attacked by the gaara’s team

Things go bad when they are attacked and after using the fox chakra, naruto passes out

But the sand team leaves them

Hinata’s team also arrives after kiba smells blood and nejii’s team watches from afar

Due to each team having both scrolls they end up in  standstill of sorts, a strange peace agreement

This is the first time all the leaf genin interact fully and get to know each other

One the fight dulls down sasuke and sakura find naruto passed out and  ororchimaru nearby

This fear has sasuke awaken the sharingan in full form but before they can get to blows naruto stops sasuke

“hey orochimaru-sensei ….”yada yada

Naruto says that he is not allowed to say anything and orochimaru leaves saying that he needs to be careful of the sand nin gaara

Orochimaru leaves and naruto tells them not to worry

The kage knows about all this

So they leave it be for now

This is where sasuke get into a bad mindset

He is used to being the best: no amount of isolation could ever diminish his accomplishments

Yet in the last situation, naruto protected them against foe again

They make it out the forest and into the other round

This is where I leave it for now

[idiopath-fic-smile]

have you ever put any thought into what's going on with the ABC gang in WAR a decade on? like, a lot of high school aus that use homophobia as a plot point are deliberately set in the 70s or the 80s, so it gets a little depressing because they'll have to wait decades for things to really get better - but you set WAR in 2006, which is *so cool* because in less than 10 years it goes from, well, 2006, to obergefell v. hodges.

this question is a bit complicated by the fact that i’m still working on adapting WAR into a novel, and the characters are a little different (i combined a lot of people, and also made most of them female) so this is specifically for the Les Mis fanfic version. 

also, this is more just my overall headcanon for the epilogue of WAR. take it with a grain of salt, none of this is True Canon, death of the author, etc

-it is my cherished secret headcanon that the members of the ABC gradually realize (in some cases, YEARS later) that actually none of them were straight, cis, and allo, with the possible exception of combeferre. 

ex) high school jehan ID’s as gay, but once they’re in the place to have more vocabulary for it, they come out as trans, nonbinary but femme-leaning (while continuing to be mostly into dudes). i think that eponine is bi (and also realizes pretty late that she’s nonbinary.) joly and bossuet are both bi. cosette is a lesbian. marius is ace. (their relationship worked in part because neither ever pressured the other, for anything. it was kind of more like playing house.) bahorel ID’s as straight for the longest time, but there’s a couple of male celebrities he jokes about as his “exceptions” until he realizes one day, hmm not really a joke. courfeyrac in high school considers himself gay, but after jehan comes out, realizes in retrospect he doesn’t fall perfectly on one end of the kinsey scale, either.

-molly keeps the ABC alive once the others graduate. gavroche joins when he becomes a freshman, and by his senior year, the club is double its original size. (he jokes it’s because he made LGBTQ rights cool, but really, a tide is turning.)

-enjolras stays politically active and does a lot of nonprofit and organizing work all throughout college. in ‘08, he joins one of those groups that goes door to door registering voters (so does jehan, who attends the same university). enjolras’s experiences with other people, people NOT from affluent suburbs, open his eyes in a good way and make him a little less intense about his own point of view.

-most of the ABC kids are swept up in the excitement of the first obama campaign. combeferre actually gets emotional, talking about it; he writes some very eloquent op-eds in the school paper about what obama means to him, and how fucked-up all the racist scrutiny really is. joly, musichetta, and bossuet phone bank. eponine starts taking photos at rallies, one of which becomes kind of well-known and helps launch her interest in pursuing photography for real. courfeyrac organizes theatrical productions to raise money for the campaign, which are a weird and wild success. bahorel is a minor social media star, and he leverages his dubious fame to try to help get out the young people vote.

-(eponine is gavroche’s legal guardian, and she balances work with community college. she was honestly more of a hillary girl, but obama wins her over eventually.)

-grantaire and enjolras stayed together post-high school, and after a year of attending a nearby community college, grantaire has the grades to transfer to the same university as enjolras. 

grantire spends most of his early college years bouncing from one major to another; he likes art but more as a release than as an area of academic focus. like, getting a bad grade on an art project is fucking devastating. they start fighting a lot that first september in the same school because enjolras is so sure of his path and grantaire feels guilty and defensive for not knowing where to go with his life. it makes grantaire feel like a worthless burnout again (which is frustrating because he thought he’d WORKED THROUGH IT, dammit), but he also resents enjolras’s attempts to help him, which eventually makes enjolras pull away in hurt, which terrifies grantaire so much that he pulls away too, and they break up very early sophomore year of college.

-the night obama wins the election in ‘08, even despite the blow of prop 8 passing, all the old ABC members are calling each other, yelling into their phones with delight. combeferre is literally crying.enjolras is jubilant, but grantaire, who had never seriously thought that obama had a chance, honestly feels like he’s high again.

enjolras and grantaire wind up at the same celebratory party and, under the influence of all that victory, they hook up. holy shit have they missed each other. they briefly get back together, but it’s not like it was in high school, before they knew quite how badly they could hurt each other. when enjolras does study abroad for a semester, they break up again, amicably, rather than do the long distance thing. they drift apart even when he gets back. it’s nobody’s fault.

-jehan switches to they/them pronouns and puts out a chapbook of poetry about feeling connected to the words of dead authors. bahorel becomes a college radio DJ, and is so good, his show gets picked up by local stations and he eventually starts working as the “bad boy of NPR”. courfeyrac realizes that more than acting, his real joy is stage managing. musichetta goes into business, advocating for greater diversity. 

-grantaire winds up at the last minute, majoring in psychology. studying this stuff in an actual class makes him realize just how dysfunctional his family dynamics have really been, and how little of it had to do with him. it’s both freeing and terrifying. he makes friends in his advanced psych courses (mostly idealistic young feminist women), and dates one for a while. ironically, she’s also bi. he has more of a chance to unpack all the stigma he’s been carrying around for years, how frustrating it was to be seen as “the gay kid” in high school when that wasn’t really true.

-combeferre decides to get dreadlocks after graduating undergrad and becomes “that hot World Lit TA with the dreadlocks”

-grantaire starts kind of considering going into counseling. the members of the ABC he’s still in touch with keep urging him to write Mr. Myriel a letter, and grantaire keeps dragging his feet, but one night he’s in town to visit Eponine, and runs into Mr. Myriel at the grocery store, and basically word-vomits all this gratitude, and the two become penpals. Mr. Myriel eventually writes one of the recommendation letters that gets grantaire into a sociology master’s program.

-combeferre gets fed up with the ivory tower of academia and joins a startup that teaches coding to kids, particularly girls in low-income areas. (He’d long been interested in coding, but more as a fun side hobby.)

-grantaire moves to the city (uh, let’s say chicago) to get his master’s, where he also reconnects with bossuet, who by then is a hippie engineer and just a solid, low-stress friend to have. they become super close in a platonic bros way, and grantaire may actually be the one to say, “oh btw, did you have a crush on joly, or did you guys both just like musichetta?” (answer: YES and YES). grantaire rents a bedroom in bossuet’s apartment (bossuet has more space than anticipated because he just had a rough breakup) and in his starving student days, grantaire pays some of his rent to bossuet by cooking him dinner and stuff. in this time, grantaire actually learns how to cook, beyond just fucking up the occasional frozen pizza.

-kind of to his surprise, grantaire winds up really enjoying counseling (or at least, finding it rewarding; talking to people with such intense problems be rough) and particularly working with youths. they never expect his sense of humor, which turns out to be a pretty useful tool in connecting with them.

-bossuet sometimes, long-distance, donates his time to combeferre’s coding project. grantaire hears through bossuet, through combeferre, that enjolras is moving to chicago for law school.

-at first, grantaire and enjolras are awkward around each other, but the weird thing is, their positions are kind of reversed because grantaire by now feels pretty confident in his role as a counselor, and is doing good work, while enjolras is under a ton of stress in law school and still not always 100% sure it’s the right move. grantaire is living alone by now, and he misses hanging with bossuet (who is in a complex poly triad now, and has a lot less free time) (part of me feels it’d be way too big of a coincidence if it’s joly and musichetta, part of me yearns for it, so you decide for yourself i suppose). so grantaire starts coming over to cook dinner at enjolras’s apartment as enjolras studies. this is partly because grantaire’s own kitchen in his studio is really insufficient, but mostly an excuse for them to hang out in a low-cost, low-pressure way. they eat and watch Parks and Rec.

-in theory this is a great system, and in practice it’s the same kind of agonizing romantic tension from high school. enjolras is really into this more confident, happier, more balanced grantaire. grantaire appreciates that enjolras has gotten  a little less overbearing, a little lighter even as he’s also so clearly fraying at the seams. grantaire just wants to, like, give him a massage, but whoa boundaries. they sit on the same couch and SOMETIMES THEIR ARMS BRUSH.

-enjolras decides first that he wants to get back together, that they’ve grown enough in the time they were apart that they could build something healthy and balanced now. he’s not totally sure how to make his case to grantaire, and he feels a little weird being the less stable one of the pair. 

-enjolras decides that he’s gonna make grantaire dinner. grantaire doesn’t really get why; enjolras generally does the dishes so it’s not like anything’s really owed here??? enjolras slips into way overachiever mode and prepares like a whole three-course spread of painstakingly researched recipes. grantaire is VERY confused. “I thought I was hot shit, dude, where did you learn to cook like this?” enjolras has to shamefacedly confess he taught it to himself for this night. “Damn, are you proposing or something?” grantaire blurts in an ill-considered joke, and enjolras’s ears turn red. they get together again. it’s really good this time.

-in 2013, when the supreme court rules that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, enjolras actually finds out because grantaire texts him the minute the news breaks with simply, “Holy fuck, you were right all along!!!!!” and then some hearts.

-they’re married a year later. one of their wedding photos is them kissing, both raising a middle finger to the imagined haters, like “bring it on, assholes” you’d think this would’ve been grantaire’s idea, but nope, enjolras. it’s framed over their mantle.

-by november 2016, enjolras is a lawyer for the ACLU, and grantaire is a counselor at an organization that primarily works with LGBTQA youth. after the election, enjolras doesn’t get out of bed all day. then he’s a whirlwind of activity. trump-era enjolras is a hybrid of the wisdom and confidence of obama-era enjolras, and the “fuck these motherfuckers” pinpoint focused ferocity of bush jr-era enjolras. grantaire’s work is frequently draining as hell, but he’s drawing again (making a webcomic with joly, actually), and they’re getting by.

-sometimes, at low moments, they remember how it felt at their wedding reception, when bahorel cued up Ted Leo’s “Shake the Sheets” and all those friends and loved ones danced their brains out (enjolras’s parents have some MOVES as it turns out), and grantaire got super choked up, and then enjolras leaned over while they were dancing and whispered in his ear, “Probably better that he didn’t go with our prom song,” (which, as you’ll remember, is Fifty Cent’s “Candy Shop”) and they both burst out laughing in the middle of the dance floor. If they survived high school, they can survive anything.

-bossuet, grantaire, joly, eponine, musichetta and sometimes enjolras have a long-distance D&D game wherein a ragtag crew of outcasts battles the odds as they attempt to take down an evil totalitarian kingdom. (joly’s already got notes for the graphic novel version.)