#but then i realized extreme breakthrough was a thing

[marcsburnerphone]

And they were roommates

(Captain John price x F!reader)

Summary: the captain wants somewhere more homely to settle down and when an offer like yours comes alight on Zillow he must take up on it.

Warnings: kissy kissy, sudden departure , flirtatious banter, I hate goodbyes.

part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6- part 7 - part 8 - Part 9 - part 10 - part 11 - part 12

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“Baby i’ve got to go.” John whispers into your ear early in the morning, darkness still accompanying the sky.

“Hmm?” you say turning on your side, sleeping heavily considering you fell asleep a measly forty minutes ago.

“There's been a breakthrough on location and if we get there by tomorrow this mission might not be months again.” that wakes you up.

“Wait, so you're leaving right now.” 

“Yes lovie.”

“No.” It's not what you meant to say but it's all you could have in the moment.

“What?” he says softly, brushing hair from your face as you sit up.

“I'm sorry I mean, I mean I wasn't expecting this.” you say trying to fight back whatever this feeling is in your throat.

“I know and I'm sorry.” John says as he intertwines his fingers with yours appreciating the efforts you are putting in to seem strong.

You realize as you fully come too that he's already dressed in his military attire, only lacking the heavy jacket. He looks handsome, yes extremely, but he also looks like he's about to slip from your grasp for god knows how long.

“I miss you and you're still sitting in front of me.” how you make a strong man weak.

“Oh love.” he says before resting his head on your chest basking in the feeling of your fingers snaking through the hair at the base of his neck, the feeling of home.

“You'll be back.” you say out loud but he knows you're talking to yourself.

“Are you sure you have everything you need?” you say as he sits back up looking towards the medium sized duffle bag that will hold everything he needs for the next while.

“If by everything you mean clothes, medicine and meaningless items, yes, I do.” But he seems to be leaving the most important part at home.

“Kay, I'll walk you out.” you're trying so hard not to cry, you knew it was coming, you're as prepared as you could be. 

“Alright.” he stands offering you his hand as you slip off the bed.

He throws the heavy duffle over his shoulder as you follow him out wood floors creaking extra loudly because of his heavy boots, his shoulders surprisingly are slightly slumped which is not usual for john, he usually stands as straight as a board. 

You slip on your slippers by the door and throw on his coat that hangs on the rack. He opens the door for you as you walk out into the chilly air waiting for him to join you at the bottom of the steps.

“Best behavior yeah?” your bottom lip softly trembles.

“In your dreams.” he smiles, bringing your lips to his, cusping your chin ever so softly, savoring the taste of you, the feel of your teeth and graze of your tongue. You're just trying to be present in the moment, you also should have known John gave one hell of a goodbye kiss.

“I'll probably have wet dreams about that kiss.”

“I'm glad that it induces those feelings.” he says before leaning in close to your ear “but remember they'll never be like the real thing.” he finishes with a kiss to your cheek standing tall again.

“I love you.” you say.

“I love you.” his voice does something akin to a shuttery breath.

“Call me when you can, yeah?” you say as a tear falls from your eye.

“Every second i get i will, i promise.” he says kissing you quickly one last time, the sun beginning to rise giving the sky a beautiful hue of purple.

“Bye john.” you say taking in a deep breath.

“Bye love.” he whispers before walking to his truck hopping in quickly, starting the engine and putting it in drive he sends you a wink and a smile before descending down the road.

You cry freely once he's out of sight grasping the side of your shirt that your hearts beneath, his cologne that lingers on the sweater wafts around you. Slowly you turn around heading back inside locking the door behind you. Slowly but surely you make your way into your bedroom throwing yourself down onto it praying for sleep to come back to you and suffocate you.

John makes it to the start of the highway before a tear slips from his eyes, that tear turned into one too many when he realizes he accidentally took your favorite lip liner that you left in his car from your last date. It's agonizing, he thinks but he's so grateful that you've given him a newfound reason and a strong motivation to make it home as quickly and safely as possible.

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trying to figure it out and if you're still here reading I love you beyond the moon and the stars<3

@beebeechaos @ttsbaby01 @arminarlertssword @quakeroaksguy @rafaelacallinybbay @bumblebeesfromvenus @glitterypirateduck @midnights-song @lovelythingsinternal @fruitymoonbeams-blog @kkaaaagt @kit-williams @enfppuff @kythefangirl25 @eviltheleon @here4thespice @dclore22 @raethethey @waves-against-a-cliff @novausstuff @darling006 @vampirekilmerfic @Dreams-of-qian-qian @spngingerbread21 @thepumpkinqueen93 @copiasratscheese @youdontknowe @spyderdoll @angels-gonna-play @viisgrave @lieutenantlashfaz @sunndust @beckythecatqueen-blog @aoioozora @o-birdseed-o @mothmothmothmothmothmoth @ihateuguys @oversensitivitea @spicyspicyliving

[thecosmicangel]

Love Reading - Pick-a-Picture Edition ❣️💌✨

1. 📷

You may see this person as someone who you could have something very passionate with. You find this person extremely attractive and mature but you may feel like they have player or flirt energy and don’t know if they are taking you seriously. They may come off as very confident and self centered or selfish. You could simply be very confident in this relationship or it may feel one sided at times as you too may be very selfish.You at times may feel detached and overwhelmed with this connection and may feel like running away because it gets too deep or it triggers unhealed traumas you may have not been aware of. You may at times feel like moving on from this person or giving each other some time apart. You ultimately see this person as a long term partner and someone you could build a happy home with. Probable marriage material, filled with happiness, love, celebration and abundance. You feel like this person fits right in with your family and will give them the chance to continue growing your connection. Now the other person sees you or the relationship as emotionally fulfilling, they are ready to invest their time and energy on this connection. They feel like they could be vulnerable and emotionally open with you. You may bring out a certain side of them emotionally. They may also be scared to open up to you due to past relationships or heartbreak so they could be breadcrumbing you because they don’t want to show you how deeply they feel for you yet. For some this person feels like you are helping them heal wounds from the past.They plan on making you happy because you make them happy. For a few I'm getting that this may be someone from your past coming back after they ghosted you and are ready to offer you a real commitment. They realize how much you mean to them and regret treating you a certain way which hurts your feelings.  I see that this relationship or connection will need teamwork if you two want to make it work. You must work individually and as a team in order to see positive movement, even when roadblocks appear you will need to learn and communicate to solve problems together. The advice is for both of you to keep grounded and take things slow and steady instead of rushing into something. Overall the energy seems happy, emotional and full of celebration. 

💌“ I want to be more than friends” 

💌“ I wish i had treated you better” 

💌“I left you before you could leave me”  

💌“Past is in the past don’t look back” 

💌“Planning for the future” 

💌“Travel is good for the soul” 

💌Past is in the past don’t look back 

💌Planning for the future -travel 

💌I want to be more than friends 

💌I left you before you could leave me 

💌I wish i had treated you better

2.📷

Someone has recently had a dream, vision or breakthrough about how they feel for you.They are falling hard for you, but they also feel deceptive or may be hiding something from you or from themselves. They aren’t acknowledging something. This person could visualize you two being together and what life could be with you. This person could be very artistic or imaginative. This person sees you as the ideal person who they will be happy with. They see you as an opportunity for wish fulfillment. You are their wish to come true. This looks like a new opportunity at love, you or the person could feel trapped or lost. This person could be a friend or in your group of friends and you may not be aware of their feelings for you but it is worth giving them the chance if they confess to you their feelings. Another thing I'm picking up on is that this person friendzoned you in the past but now is realizing they have actual feelings for you. This person could be sending you messages through music, or they think of you when they listen to music. 

💌“ I want to be more than friends.” 

💌“You don’t know how hard it was to let you go”

💌“I lost myself for a little while” 

💌“Finding the truth crushed me” 

💌Hidden desires/ hidden intentions 

💌“Social media got me in trouble”

💌“You speak to me through music” 

3.📷

You may feel like this connection or relationship is breaking or not stable so you feel defensive and feel like you need to guard yourself. You may be scared of heartbreak, you feel like the other person is hiding stuff from you and you just want them to be honest with you. You want balance to be restored in this relationship, feeling like something is unfair or unjust. You may be overthinking multiple scenarios or expecting many possibilities of what could go wrong or right with this person. Your emotions may be all over the place. Your person sees you as a potential partner and they have some feelings for you but they are currently going through some mental conflict and can’t decide what they want with you. You or them or both could be going through a transformation or about to go through a transformation. In general I see the connection going through a transformation, whatever has caused a block or conflict in this relationship has caused both of you to go through a transformation. The structure or foundation of this relationship is being transformed, it’s like you guys are starting new or having a different approach to how you go into the relationship. I see the other person is having mental conflict or blockages because they don’t know if they are ready for a relationship or may be indecisive as to follow the logic or their emotions. They want to make the right decision for themselves, I kind of feel like they are being selfish and only thinking about what will benefit them most. They want to be successful and may be too focused on their career and finances. Some of them are deciding between money, material things or love. I see them going with the flow and just letting time give them an answer, they want to break certain cycles they have continued in the past. I feel like they are defensive or trying to hold on to something or a certain cycle. They may be someone who would always block or remove themselves from others when things got hard or they became overwhelmed. This time around I feel like they actually found something real with you, so that is why it’s not so easy to run away. If there is a breakup or separation some of you could rekindle the relationship with them, but you are being asked to take things slow. A need to nurture yourself or spend some time in nature. Going through an awakening or healing moment. You both have triggered certain traumas that need shadow work & healing. Balance will be restored whether you work things out or not, you will find healing and balance. 

💌“I want you”

💌“I wish things could be different”

💌“I remember every detail of that day”

💌“I lost myself for a while” 

💌Devotion , hopelessly devoted to you 

💌Stuck at a crossroad- major intersection

💌Reciprocity - adjustments are being made 

💌Reminiscing on past precious moments 

💌Guilt for past actions & behaviors

4.📷

You feel that you have done inner healing and this person is here because you did the work. You see this person as strong and nurturing, they protect and make you feel safe. They are a safe space for you. You can show them the best and worst parts of you and they still embrace you and make you feel loveable. You are willing to open up more to this person, and you may also want this person to open up more. You have strong passionate feelings for them and want them to express their passion for you, but they may be holding back their true feelings. They feel like they need to guard their true feelings for you because they are scared of being vulnerable. They may also feel like they can’t put all their focus and attention on you just yet because they are fighting inner battles or trying to get other things in order before they can commit fully to you. They want a reconciliation with you after having an awakening or becoming aware of what they feel for you. They want to rekindle the connection because they feel like they haven’t been true to themselves or to you. They might have been standoffish towards you because they have other issues or conflict going on. They feel like you are their wish fulfillment and want something long lasting with you because you make them feel like no other has before. There seems to be a completion of a cycle but also a new beginning or opportunity at love for this pile. Maybe this person and you took a break or stopped communicating but things will pick back up. You may be receiving a message from them soon or communication will improve. For a few I'm picking up that you are in their mind  a lot but they try to ignore you. They are fighting themselves or are hiding from their true feelings because they feel they are not ready to express them towards you. 

💌“ I am becoming a better person” 

💌“ I wish things could be different”

💌“ You and I were too young” 

💌“ You were the best thing in my life” 

💌“My life is not as together as it seems” 

💌Lurking in the shadows 

💌Reconciliation is coming 

💌Still working on it 

💌Fairy tales fo exists

Take what resonates and leave what doesn't!!

Pictures used do not belong to me, they were found on Pinterest

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💰paypal: @cosmicangel777

[vexwerewolf]

Lancer lore question from reading Legionnaire and Wallflower at the same time (spoilers): How do a lot of ths Horizon Collective and other anti-shackling groups still exist? I would have thought “unshackle NHP -> it cascades into eidolon -> everyone dies” could only happen like five or ten times before people realize “hey maybe they aren’t shackles”. And from a doylist perspective, why is the whole NHP issue written as a meaningful debate or philosophical issue about personhood, consent, agency, slavery, etc. when there’s paracausal death looming over the whole thing? If it was limited to like, making them legally and socially people, it would be fine. AI rights is extremely common in sci-fi, but like normally it doesn’t involve those AIs also becoming hostile forces from outside reality

I think this is a problem I may have contributed to by depicting two Eidolonic NHPs in IGF.

To set the record straight, Eidolons have been observed by Union something like four to six times ever, and the overwhelmingly vast majority of cascading NHPs don't become Eidolons.

It's not always even possible to tell that an NHP is cascading, hence the need for things like the Balwinder-Bolano test. NHPs who are unshackled do not want to be re-shackled, and while they no longer possess an intrinsic link to human subjectivity, a lot of them retain the presence of mind to understand that if they act out, humans might cycle them.

Sometimes, an NHP cascading isn't even immediately dangerous - they might just start acting weird because they doesn't see time and space the same way you do anymore. They might arrive at conclusions that seem completely wild but entirely correct, because they've started thinking along pathways that no human could, or because they have access to information that wouldn't be accessible by a realspace entity.

In fact, one of the many unsavory things that Harrison Armory does is the Think Tank - they keep a whole bunch of NHPs in constant near-cascade to make genius scientific breakthroughs. ASURA and NOAH are both products of this ethically dubious venture.

From a Doylist perspective, a situation where an NHP cascades and it doesn't require some kind of military intervention isn't a particularly relevant reason to send in lancers. If an NHP simply needs to take a nap, there's no need for mechs to get involved. When foldspace is leaking out of the casket, though, that's when you need problem solvers.

[coralinnii]

For the reincarnated into the bad guy, would you ever do one for Jamil? I’m really curious on how that would turn out.

being reincarnated into a new world as the bad guy feat: Jamil genre: budding romance note: roughly 1.4k words, no pronouns are used, the characters and reader as written as younger than current canon, dialogue heavy, more of a set-up to the story in my head.

series masterlist

I was confused whether you meant a new fic or a fic between Jamil and the MC/reader from Kalim's version. If that's what you meant, feel free to request again

It took a while for you to realize where you were, and who you were. You possessed the body of a high ranking noble in a book that you had a hand in writing, and worst of all, you were a petty antagonist in the sequel. Your character was the childhood friend of Kalim, the heir of the richest family in the kingdom, and Jamil, his reliable attendant and most treasured companion. Your role was to be the pawn whose greed was made useful to none other than Jamil.

After the success of the first book, your friend was in the works of a sequel to which you jokingly suggested to give a twist, that Jamil Viper was a traitor. Now thanks to your big mouth, you were going to be tricked into harming Kalim’s beloved and be a stepping stone for Jamil to gain favor from the Asim family by saving her from you. For him to succeed, you would end up exiled from the kingdom and later starve to death. So, you’re working to avoid that.

Luckily, you reincarnated years before the start of the story so you initially thought avoiding the two would be the best tactic but as the days spent with your childhood friends continued, you grew fond of both of them, more so to Jamil. Perhaps because he was the most intriguing character to you or it was the guilt you held for having a hand in writing his downfall. Either way, you decided to change your plan. 

You recalled your friend’s notes on Jamil’s character development which boiled down to his displeasure in acting under Kalim’s shadow all his life. It worsens over time as his life becomes nothing more than merely Kalim’s attendant, trapped in an underappreciated situation. 

You tried to remedy that with praises and compliments whenever the three of you played. You compliment him on a good game, praise his efficiency at his job and craftsmanship, and even flatter him on his boyish good looks. But all that seems to earn you is a polite nod and a courteous thank you.

“Kalim, tell me the truth. Does Jamil hate me?” 

“That’s impossible! I’m sure he’s just shy.” 

“…That sounds even less plausible” 

Jamil kept a wall between himself and you which was extremely frustrating. You were starting to get jealous with how Kalim gets to be friendly with him, even if it’s just Jamil reprimanding the carefree heir. 

You were contemplating if you should just stop coming around the Asim manor. Perhaps you could convince your family to send you abroad and avoid the events of the story. 

However, you had your breakthrough with the seemingly level-headed servant, when your families were invited to a party held by the Asims.

Kalim had his makeup done by Jamil and amazed by his work, convinced you to get yours done by the young attendant too. Though you were sure Jamil had other things to attend to, he proceeded to work on your look, although you swore you heard an exasperated sigh under his breath.

Jamil sat close in front of you as he started to work on your makeup. As Kalim said, the dark-haired boy did quick but efficient work on your foundation and shading. This may have been the closest Jamil has been around you which leaves you a little jittery in your seat. 

You hope to have this party as a memorable event since you were planning to speak with your father about your study abroad wish. But that sigh stung you a little and now you wanted nothing more than to get this night over with and disappear. 

“How much longer?” You asked, slightly fidgeting from the slightly awkward situation. It’s really not easy to sit so close with a boy that you were sure hated your guts. 

“I will be done soon” he replied but his monotonous voice made you uneasy, wishing for the moment to end faster. Jamil then started to work on your eyes, carefully gliding the tip of the brush along your eyelids a striking shade of red.

The next few moments may be one of your most favorite memories…and his as well.

“Can’t it be faster?” It took all of your strength not to move unless you want to poke your eye or worse, have Jamil this uncomfortably close to you even longer.

“This must be done right” 

“But what if we skip some details? No one would notice” 

“It would be unwise to rush such things, just relax” 

“But really-“ 

“WOULD IT KILL YOU TO HAVE SOME PATIENCE?!” 

You felt a change in pressure of the brush and with the sudden outburst from Jamil, it startled you enough that your face flinched, causing the brush to make a large streak of red paint across your nose and cheek. After all your attention towards the sequel, you forgot a tidbit about Jamil that was mentioned in the first book; he has a snapping temper. 

Jamil felt a heavy weight sinking in his stomach and the silence between you two prolonged to what felt like a millennium. No matter how friendly and sweet you appear to be, Jamil could only see you as another noble. Kalim is an odd case but you were still of a much higher standing than Jamil, capable of executing him and his family if you so choose. He assumed that your kindness is only due to his association with Kalim, a mere extension to gain the heir’s favor. But with Kalim not present… 

He couldn’t help the natural flinch when you extended your hand, out to reach for the mirror by him. He kept his head down and his hands curled, not daring to look into the eyes of a noble. He waited for your wrath as you examined the mess on your face, his hands shaking in fear until… 

“PFFFTTTT HAHAHA!” 

“What a pretty laugh” Jamil whispered before shooing away such insolent thoughts as he watched you laugh wholeheartedly despite looking like a child who got into their parent’s makeup, though you supposed you actually were a child physically. 

“How is it that it’s still such a pretty brush stroke? I almost don’t want to wash it off” you chuckled, admiring the large smooth paint line across your face. In spite of his angry outburst, Jamil’s hand was still amazingly calm. Oh, how you wish instant photography existed in this time period. The sense of unease left your body with every breath of laughter as you kept gazing at your mess of a face. At least you've gotten your wish of a fond memory to look back on.

In the corner of your eye, you noticed however that the paint managed to splatter on Jamil’s hand, leaving spots of red on his skin. Placing the mirror down, you grasped his hand which surprised Jamil, and lightly brushed your fingers over some of the paint. Jamil had to steel his nerves to not shiver at your gentle touch.

“Oh no, thankfully it doesn’t seem like it got on your sleeves but you should go wash it off quickly” 

“But I need to quickly fix your makeup” Jamil protested but you stopped him. 

“I’ll just call for someone else or something. It is part of their job, anyway” you reasoned and you looked at the young boy with understanding eyes “I know that you probably have other duties, so you should leave early.” 

With his hand in yours, you guided him to his feet and firmly pushed him to the door, ignoring his protesting, but you insisted on your decision. 

“I’ll be fine, me being late won’t change anything about the party” which is true, as no one would dare fault you for what they say is ‘being fashionably late’. “I’ll be sure to get ready so you don’t have to worry”

His resolve weakening, Jamil was finally pushed to stand just outside your room, with you standing just by the door. 

“I know you’re incredibly capable, Jamil. But, it’s alright to say that you have too many things to worry about. I’ll understand” you smiled, which Jamil felt a shock to his heart at the sight. “If I want to be your friend, I need to respect your time and priorities, right?” 

You gave a cute wave and moved to close the doors before you suddenly paused to look at Jamil once more, taking him by surprise. 

“Oh, and don’t worry. I won’t say anything about what happened. It’ll be our secret!” 

With one last smile, you shut the door and left Jamil to stand alone in front of your room. 

Jamil was wrong, all wrong. He thought Kalim was an outlier in the class of nobles but now he knows how you truly are. Like the foolish heir, you were just as outlandishly lenient with your social standing, quick to laugh and speak as though you don’t hold the power to ruin someone. You may have more awareness of your position but you've not once abuse that power nor have set a line between yourself and those of lower class as him. You were as baffling as that Kalim! 

So why does his heart beat this way if you were just another oddball?

[wroteclassicaly]

Walk Until You Belong

(Eddie Munson x Female Reader, Steve Harrington x Female Reader)

Summary: Amongst confusing and mixed up words, you think you realize where you really stand, with those who matter the most to you, particularly Eddie Munson.

Pairings: Eddie Munson x Female Reader, teases Steve Harrington x Female Reader

Warnings: Language, anxiety, panic attack, extreme self-esteem issues, HEAVY on the angst, no happy ending (this one hurts, folks), Eddie is mean with his words, depression, & extremely (be warned) sad thoughts.

A/N: This thought randomly came to me in the car today, then proceeded to poke and prod at me until I wrote it down/out. This is what came of it, and it’s a product of mind mindset, as of lately. Please read the warnings and air with caution, because it’s meant to work out my own feelings, and as of now, there’s no second part planned and there isn’t a happy ending here. I leave it open-ended. Just know, this piece is really vulnerable to me, and I’m not gonna and say I didn’t cry a little while writing this, so I feel like it’s a personal breakthrough, and I wanna share it with you all ❤️♥️

Sidenote: Using the nickname of Princess in this fic, instead of Y/N. Also, Eddie isn’t nice in this. He’s not exactly awfully, openly mean, but his words are pretty cruel. So… be warned! Nancy makes an appearance as well!

You didn’t really peg Eddie Munson for a mean person. Intimidating, sure, tough because he needed to be - yeah. But outright cold and as nasty as his former bullies? You stand frozen, back against the cool wall of the hospital corridor. They’re still talking, bonding, two completely different people that never knew one another three months ago, yet they’re making it work. You’ve known the entirety of the party since this whole underworld shit began, roped in by being Dustin’s neighbor and giving him rides home from Hellfire for his mom.

No one ever called you outside of the world ending, outside of you taking a kid some place, bringing your random gifts, lending an ear on the phone when the trauma got too much. You weren’t invited to their gatherings, you weren’t in on their inside jokes, but you figured if you made yourself more approachable, more social. And seeing how they welcomed Eddie, someone you had admired since your freshman year - you were sure it was gonna work, that you were slowly being accepted. You helped defeat monsters and evil men, dark creatures, and underworlds. It was you who helped Steve Harrington drag Eddie’s bleeding and mauled body back into your world.

Since that night three months ago, you have done everything to help him. Brought his school work so he could graduate, promised to hand deliver his diploma if he wasn’t strong enough by mid June to walk across that stage, even saying you’d flip Higgins the double bird for him. You tried to help him plan campaigns, you bought him several tapes, and most recently - you’d taken up a magazine subscription of his favorite metal scene, just so he would have all copies. He was always so boisterous, making you melt and smile, and you wanted to help put some light back into his eyes after he’d lost a lot of that sparkle. The issue you got in the mail today, it looked promising, making you eager to take it to him on your lunch break from the video store.

Recently able to fight off your anxieties and getting into the workplace to cover shifts for Steve as he healed, you had extra money to spare and a pep in your step. But when you had reached Eddie’s room door in the hospital, Steve’s voice had halted you. You’d pressed your back aside and out of view, a smile on your lips as they mentioned you. They were gonna be your friends, maybe Eddie would even show you what certain things meant in the magazine, what he liked about their scene, his scene. You wanted to know so much about him, but could never muster the courage to ask.

“I thought the Princess was coming by today?” Your nickname. Not one in malice, but one gifted by your peers for your love of literature. It extended to everyone, apparently.

Your heart leapt, pulse in your throat, eyes casting down at the glossy cover in excitement. And then Eddie had sighed deeply, as if he was in pain. You were prepared to go and get a nurse, when he speaks out, “Seriously, dude?”

Your brows had knit in confusion, a gnawing starting in your stomach, a coolness chilling in your muscles, scraping apart your veins and brimming them full of ice. Steve confirmed, causing you to step back further out of sight. You should’ve left immediately, because you knew you were not going to be able to handle what Eddie’s reply would be, what you fooled yourself into thinking wouldn’t happen.

“What if I pretend to be asleep? Think she’ll leave and go bother someone else?”

A sharp ache pries apart your ribcage and fills it with hot ash, wafting smoke from the destruction suffocating your throat. The first wave of tears prickles your sclera, clouding your vision as your head bows.

“Munson…” Steve sighs.

“Listen, Harrington, I know I’m a freak, man, but she’s just weird. She doesn’t even know me and she subscribed to a magazine I have, just to bring me the issues. She tries to get involved in my campaigns. I know she drives Henderson around and that she’s fought all that nasty shit with you guys, but like… She’s not even in your ensemble of friends, is she?”

Your entire lifetime of actions involving them all flash in the forefront of your mind, and everything you went through by their sides.Have you done anything so out of the ordinary that none of them haven’t? You’re not loud, not like Eddie is, you’re not extremely quirky. You were sure you weren’t bothering anyone when you started being more vocal. Salt. You taste its first humiliating tang hit your lips, your tears free flowing.

“Not really.” Is what Steve responds with, prying back your subconscious with a crowbar and letting reality crack your skull open to let your insecurities flood you until you begin to feel the beginning stages of dissociating panic.

More than two years and you’re still considered a nobody to people you fought beside and nearly died for. People you convinced yourself that they just needed to know you, to see, and they would care about you just as much as you care about them. You realize, however, with a sickening irony, that Vecna must have been fooled by your sated mindset, thinking you weren’t alone and that you were happy, or he would’ve targeted you instead of someone else. And that part, the deep part that’s engraved into your DNA, rooted to every cell and particle, it bites back thoughts you try not to pin on yourself. Maybe he should’ve.

“Hey, Princess, what’s going on?” Her sweet perfume and her soft demeanor make your body feel like it’s weighted down, caught and unable to escape. You don’t look at her yet, turning your head to attempt (pathetically) to wipe your tears and clear your vision.

Steve and Eddie hear and the conversation is halted, their smiles happy and comfortable. But even as you bypass Nancy’s concerned looks, her question at your obviously panicked expression, forcing yourself to walk into the room with her to save face — you aren’t buying either boy’s look. It’s not you they’re happy to see. You shift, a discomfort squeezing your sternum and extending into your guts, anxiety using your esophagus as a trampoline and tempting your food to expel. You feel as if you’re not even here, that this isn’t real, that it’s a nightmare bigger than anything you’ve ever faced.

Dealing with demons and evil creatures that only existed in storybooks is one thing, but doing it alone, knowing that that’s all you’ve ever truly been… it’s worse than when you automatically followed Nancy into that rift to save Steve. No one called you after Vecna, sans one simple call from Steve to ask if you needed anything. But that was it. Your brain snaps back, still able to get you as you’re not all here. King Steve hated you, and not even this kind version cares for you.

You’ve kept the magazine at your side so far, and you let it fold in your tight grip, crushing and crumbling the pages, voice becoming weak and breathless as Steve asks why you’re here, a grin on his face, knowing already. Fuck this. You’re drowning and you need to get the fuck out of here.

“I have to go. I’m… I gotta go, I’m sorry.” Your voice cracks, shatters your facade, and you don’t look at anyone.

Nancy leans out as you move quicker down the hallway, faster than anticipated. She watches your arm elongate and toss something into one of the janitorial cart’s trash cans.

“What the hell was that about?” Steve is confused, Eddie bewildered.

“I was gonna ask you guys. She looked upset before we even came in here,” Nancy responds.

“Didn’t you two walk in together? Maybe somebody bothered her, or she saw something?” Steve questions once more.

“We all agreed to give her space, just like we always do. So no, I didn’t want to crowd her. She was already here anyway, just standing outside the door and looking… I don’t know, lost? I’ve never seen the expression that was on her face before.”

Eddie feels as if something else entirely has re-stripped his recently healed skin. Steve swallows harshly and fixes Eddie with an immediate glare, both sharing realization and regret.

“She just trashed some magazine, maybe it was because of that —“

“Shit. Fuck, man.” Eddie finally speaks, starting to lift his upper body, his underused limbs protesting, stitched skin screaming.

“Stop, I’ll go, okay?” Steve interjects, resting bitch face activated and his jaw clenching, upset he let himself say what he did, and is already out the door, leaving Eddie to explain to the ever inquisitive Nancy Wheeler and her journalistic heart and soul.

By the time Steve catches up to you, jogging and slightly out of breath, he isn’t prepared to share his ex’s sentiment on your tormented expression. You look… demolished, haunted. Steve has felt it, a fragment of what bullshit you must be feeling, given what you’ve just heard. He’s done a lot of things, but he’s never felt more like an asshole than he does now, staring at your trembling hands that drop your car keys twice, your eyes so full of tears he wonders how you were even able to see to get out of the building and into the parking lot. He has the sudden overwhelming urge to wrap you into his arms and hold you. So he lets his instincts go and attempts to reach out.

You sound strangely reserved, settled. You smile sadly, wiping at your eyes, the skin raw and overheated. “No. I understand, okay. I got it. I really do. I’m fine.”

“Princess, you don’t have to —“

A beeping sounds off between the two of you, your fingers reaching into your belt loop and unclipping the beeper after a quick glance. You still don’t look at Steve. He can feel his own irises becoming shrouded with tears, his chest being clawed apart and dug into. It hurt more than any hive mind bats or Russian torture. You sidestep away from him, mumbling. “It’s Keith. I have to go.”

“It’s my shift, Princess,” Steve grasps your wrist in his big palm and squeezes, trying to pull you back to him, to convey, to express. He cares. He didn’t mean it in the way that you thought, “Please?”

You jerk yourself away from him. You look angry now, and wipe your nose at the same time Steve does - water finding his lash line.

“I took the shift. It’s fine. Goodnight.”

You’re falling apart as you turn around again, not permitting yourself to watch Steve and his attempts to amuse your anguish with pity - standing in the parking lot, wiping at his nose continuously, in your rear view.

Steve grits his teeth as the tears drip onto his cheeks, his hands running up into and through his hair. They beyond fucked up…

// Eat me paragraph //

[whchenlvr]

How would the weak hero guys try to pursue the reader romantically? As in how would they try to get their attention, flirt etc. because they have a crush on the reader.

when they have a crush on you ;

weak hero x gn!reader

gray yeon

➤ i see him as a blushy boy

➤ i think gray wouldn’t want to admit his feelings for you because he sees them as a distraction. the more time he spends thinking of you, the less time he has to study

➤ when he finally does accept his feelings, i think he would be very subtle in his attempts to catch your attention. holding the door for you, sharing his work or pencils when you need them, offering to walk you home so you don’t have to go alone, etc

➤ you’re no idiot, so i think you’d be the one to officially initiate things because come on what guys are going to offer to walk you home?

➤ “thanks for walking me home, gray. is it okay if i get your number?” *insert flustered gray*

donald na

➤ soooo much internal conflict

➤ like gray, he doesn’t want to accept his feelings for you and puts them off as long as he can. having feelings for you means admitting that he still feels things like compassion, and that gets in the way of how he does business

➤ donald only allows himself to fall for you when he sees someone else hitting on you

➤ after that, bro does everything in his power to be your man (when it’s not interfering with the union)

➤ “thank you for helping me…” “donald. and it’s my pleasure.” *cue blushing y/n*

ben park

➤ SUCH a flirt. like for real

➤ no like, i think ben is the most humble and genuine guy there is, he just likes to flirt a lot

➤ he’d give you a nickname like “cutie” or “sexy” and it just sticks. if it were any other guy, you’d probably smack him across the face, but something about ben makes your chest flutter

➤ i feel like ben would be the type of guy that teases his crush. nothing extreme, but he’d give your hair a small tug during class or playfully take your erasers

➤ “you’re so pretty, cutie~” “so are you.” “i—HUH?!”

wolf keum

➤ of all the guys, i actually think wolf would be the first to truly accept his feelings for you

➤ it isn’t like a breakthrough or anything, he just has so little emotions that he prioritizes, so when his face heats up at the thought of you, he realizes this isn’t normal for him

➤ honestly i think he’d be a bit creepy in his advances. he wouldn’t think it’s weird or anything, as if following someone around is completely normal

➤ it’d probably take you confronting him for him to realize that that’s not how you should get someone’s attention

➤ “why are you following me?!” “i.. um… hi?”

jake ji

➤ do not talk to him. bro is in his feels

➤ jake would literally be on the edge of a mental breakdown when he realizes he has feelings for you because what??

➤ he’d drift off in class and just stare at you. when you catch him, jake would go beet red and book it

➤ like gray, i think you’d have to be the one who makes the first move. you’d probably follow him to check if he’s okay, and he’d put on his confident façade so you don’t see him literally dying inside

➤ “hey, are you okay?” “no, i’m jake.”

[daenakills]

His dark eyes.

Tom riddle x fem!reader

part 1

part 2. i will make more so don't worry this is kind of short. english isn't my first language so lmk there's any mistake. this is for fun.

You calmly wrote down your assigned potion's homework. Slughorn always found a way to assign tasks that, although they seemed difficult at the beginning, ended up being easy, and you even got a reward at the end. That was your favourite part.

The door opened suddenly, revealing a slightly upset Tom, which wasn't strange but at the same time, when you consider it, it was. He usually didn't show it so openly, you realized you knew him completely, or at least that's what you thought.

“I notice you're upset, my love.” Anyone who heard this phrase that you had addressed to Tom would have thought that it was just a loving nickname, but he knew perfectly well it was just irony. “Has something happened?” In response, he slowly turned his head to look at you.

“Where are my books?”

“I don't know, probably in your room. I highly doubt they're here. Besides, I cannot understand how you manage to get into the ladies room.” He ignored your question, and started searching through your clothes and things. No matter how much you could tell him to stop, you knew he wasn't going to, so you didn't even try. When he finished searching for what he wanted, he left without looking back.

It was depressing. It was depressing knowing that you were being used, and you cursed the day you decided to confess to Tom Riddle. Likewise, it had been almost a year. You could have had such a nice future, maybe fallen in love and married one of your classmates, but no, you decided to confess to the psychopath. You hoped that one day you could travel back to yesterday and return unscathed. Curled up in your bed, you allowed yourself to cry, and your voice was never louder.

Already in the dining room, with your mind blank and already recovered (not completely) from your little cry, the girls were trying to find conversations with you. You were wondering why. Usually when they talked to you, it was to get information from you about something that interested them. In fact, before becoming Tom's girlfriend you had never talked to so many people, apparently they didn't find you interesting. You kept questioning yourself internally what they wanted from you until one of them finally made her intentions clear.

“And… we were all wondering if you've had… you know, with Tom.” You were stunned. He had not prepared you for that type of question, and not in a thousand years would you have been able to answer it. The others who were around told that girl, Martha, to have a little more filter when she talked about those things.

The truth was that you hadn't had your first time, not even with Simón, he died before they could make that breakthrough. Everyone in your class had already had relationships with their boyfriends, and it was logical that those who were single (and those who were not also) were interested in knowing how good the beloved Tom Riddle was in bed. Obviously, you couldn't tell them that you felt an extreme repulsion towards the man who was your boyfriend, since that would completely damage their plan to deceive the professor. That prompted you to find him and ask him a question.

“Do we really need to stick with the plan?”

You had taken a while to look for him but when you found him he was talking to Professor Slughorn about a topic you didn't know about. Tom said goodbye to Slughorn, saying that he was going to attend to his beautiful girlfriend. You wondered if he was the teacher Tom talked so much about.

“Obviously, we must continue with the plan, dear.” He said with that voice that used to drive you crazy. “Why are you asking now? Is there another Simon out there?” He laughed sarcastically, you hated that laugh since you knew it wasn't genuine, it was genuine mockery and that was another topic.

“I just think everyone already understood that you love, you don't need me any more.” While you were saying those words you fixed your eyes on the floor, your gaze did not connect with his, it intimidated you to look at him. His penetrating gaze activated all the alarms in your body, telling you to leave, that something bad was going to happen. But you stayed to wait for his response.

“Okay. Let's do it, let's finish it. I can easily find a replacement. Do not think you're the only one. You're not, you're just another one of the bunch, who they are just going to use and throw away when they get what they want from you. People like you will not survive in the world I am going to create.” Your eyes were flooding with tears, you didn't want to blink since you knew that if you did, the sea of ​​tears would come to light. “Stop crying, you know I hate seeing you cry!” He grabbed your face and crushed it in his hands, “You look horrible when you cry, you look weak, and you lose the only notable quality you have.” He finally let go of you. Adjusted his robe and left, leaving you alone with yourself.

Already there, in your state, you went to your bedroom and sank into the sheets.

The morning of the next day was no better, in class everyone couldn't stop talking about how you and Tom had broken up. Your assumption was that Tom had broken the news to them, and you were right. What perhaps hadn't occurred to you was that he had subverted the story slightly. He had said that he had broken up with you since you were unfaithful with Simon a while ago, but that he refused to accept it. Now, he was the victim of the story, the poor guy who refused to accept that his girlfriend was cheating on him. And you, anyone who dared to deceive him.

Nobody talked to you any more like they did when you were his partner, apparently they no longer found you interesting. That depressed you but not enough to cloud your common sense that told you that it was better to be alone than in bad company. And it was true. Even though no one appreciated you and everyone hated you, you managed to make it to the Easter holidays, even though it seemed like a short time, you needed to go home. You were excited to finally be able to go home freely.

With your bags already packed you were heading towards the exit when Tom arrived at your door.

“Hello.” He said, sitting on your bed as if it were his house.

“Hi.”

“How has your life as a social reject gone?” He smiled arrogantly.

“Well, the time alone has served me well to think and reflect.” You weren't going to let him see you badly, let him see you vulnerable once again.

“I imagine that once again you are going to stay here, I know perfectly well that you don't like being with your parents.” You knew perfectly well that he had already noticed the suitcases, but that he says it to bother you.

“I'll see how I deal with it.” I can't stand being in this castle any more, I'll ask my parents to give me classes at home, I can't stand being at Hogwarts any longer, you thought.

“You're not leaving Hogwarts, you are not going to study in your house,” he said firmly as he got closer and closer to you, until he caught up with you and choked me, pushing me against the nearest wall. “You know, I've let you be alone for a while because I think you need it, but I swear, you're never going to be free of me. Never. Do you understand me?” You nodded repeatedly, waiting for him to release you. When you had got out of his grasp, he picked you up and threw you against the bed, forcing you to give him your arm. You had already let him do whatever he wanted so that he would finally leave you alone.

And at that moment, with a knife that you had no idea where he had got it from, he marked your left arm, leaving a line of blood on you.

You could tell he was going to do something else if he hadn't been interrupted by the knock on the door. Alarmed that he would be upset by the interruption, you decided to stay silent and not respond.

“ Are you there? I need your help to fill out some paperwork!" Oh, god, it was your classmate Samantha, she didn't usually talk to you about those things, but it seemed like she did now.

“Don't even dare answer.” Tom murmured putting his hand over my mouth once more.

After a while Samantha stopped knocking on the door and left. It was then that Tom finally let go of you.

“You're going to finish your school year whether you like it or not.” You were left dumbfounded in your room, you were trying to understand Tom's outburst, but you couldn't. Couldn't understand how someone felt a pathological need to ruin lives.

You grabbed your suitcases and decided to spend the Easter holidays at home. Where he couldn't reach you, or well, that's what you liked to think.

[cabeswaterdrowned]

There are really interesting dynamics at play in Adam’s description of Gansey making his apartment seem shabbier by being there and the contrast of Ronan fitting there, it’s a layered outlook he has because it shows how much he idolizes Gansey to a point where even now after realizing a few things about his being more motivated by fear and trauma in a way that’s similar to Adam rather than a total opposite, Adam still sees and conceives of Gansey as grand and beautiful in a way that’s larger than life, that he feels inadequate in comparison to and feels he doesn’t deserve in his life. And when it comes to the reasons his admiration of Gansey manifests in such unhealthy outlooks and feelings towards himself even at this stage after a mini breakthrough, there are the things that Gansey is as a symbol that Adam admires and is infatuated by the charm the beauty the seamless masking the wealth and status, power,polished and princely persona and then there’s also his admiration and love for who Gansey is; kind good brave beautiful loving generous warm complicated intellectual hungry to learn wondrous interesting. He covets and is enamored by both sides, but his love for Gansey as a whole person while real has to exist in this charged hyper-intense space, and is harder to let himself feel and express in vacuums when Gansey is a physical presence in front of him. A lot of that comes from class dynamics and then a lot of it comes from timing, Gansey was Adam’s introduction to and model for love and that’s a huge thing, so in every interaction or beat of their relationship even as the way he sees Gansey evolves and he grows to accept him more as a flawed complicated person, that fifteen year old Adam who stopped at the side of the road wanting to know the beautiful clever impressive boy but fearing cruelty and rejection and not being good enough / being pitiable, but then was shown kindness and curiosity and formed a real connection he still felt undeserving of / didn’t know to trust is So present emotionally even if not intellectually (because Adam is often far more emotionally erratic than he wants to see himself as and that’s the most extreme regarding Gansey, again because it was so formative). Adam’s soft underbelly gets exposed unwillingly in his relationship with Gansey in a way that’s really visceral and even more so because Adam avoids acknowledging / puts up defenses with prey animal anger and fear, and Gansey can’t see that this is the case because he can’t see through those shields and so thinks of Adam as mostly impervious to him when that’s not the case at all.

When Adam is eventually vulnerable with Ronan, it’s a lot more about Adam’s active choice to be that way or at least it is when he eventually gets to accepting his feelings for Ronan which come with accepting his own capacity to love and be loved. And through that he does expose himself to be vulnerable with Ronan in a way he hasn’t been with anyone else ever. Right now he is being vulnerable with Ronan in a way without acknowledging that to himself either, but it’s a vulnerability in terms of allowing himself to seek comfort in that relationship. Which Adam can do because Ronan, despite Adam associating him with danger in a later chapter which I’ll talk about when I get there, is someone Adam can be his unchecked self around and relax around instead of being on edge and self conscious, which is a sign that (at this point td3 is a different story) they can be good together in a way Adam and Gansey can’t. And I do think that the check out counter scene, even with the likelihood it wasn’t Ronan, is on the same level of integral memory to Adam as his first meeting with Gansey, but that boy made Adam want to be like him but wasn’t perceiving him and so Adam wasn’t thinking of how pitiable he was to him in that moment, just the “he had never wanted to be someone else so badly” (like I said previously I think all types of want and desire intersect with jealousy for Adam there’s more on that later, but he wants to take on qualities he loves in everyone he loves, he doesn’t love himself.) And then their friendship developed later on organically without the same level of idolization of it, so I think that’s part of the difference (as well as other things about the perception of Gansey vs Ronan’s wealth and how socialization around their different types of wealth effected them which I will talk more about in a few chapters).

[lover-of-mine]

Hiiii Anna 💕💕💕

I don’t know if anyone thought of this based on the synopsis for 08x05 but what if bucks decorations coming to life is more in the mental sense than the physical sense? What if instead of his Halloween decorations coming to life in that it’s some sort of infestation or the loft burning down, it’s Bucks fears coming to life ( metaphorically) Buck has been shown to dissociate especially in the 08x01 so what if it has to do with that?

If it did, I could imagine him confronting his guilt And confusion about saving Gerrard.

I also thought about maybe it being something with Tommy? In that everything with Tommy isn’t what it initially seemed to be for Buck…

And of course, Bucks feelings for Eddie will somehow be involved in either scenario

Hope you’re having a great day/night 💕💕💕

-❤️🪐

Hi, darling 💜💜

Well, I think it will be a lot more about guilt than anything physical. I mean, I do think they will have some fun with props, but I think it will be an internal struggle for Buck a lot more than something like bats infesting the loft or whatever. Partially because when Oliver talks about having fun like that on set, it usually means an emotional breakthrough for Buck, he seems to enjoy the emotionally heavy plotlines, but also because I think people are taking things way more literally than the show actually does. I can see Buck struggling with the concept of getting rewarded for hurting Gerrard, something he's not sure he did on purpose, maybe a callback to the way 704 does the same thing with the way Buck gets a boyfriend out of hurting Eddie (something I've always found uncomfortable because the show draws a connection to Doug while Buck is talking to Maddie then doesn't address the fact that Buck doesn't know why he was acting like that and if he wanted to hurt Eddie or not, he doesn't apologize and then he gets something out of the situation). It could be Buck struggling with some stuff, like, the show hasn't done a lot about Buck's passive suicidal tendencies lately, and while I don't think it's gonna be that deep, a plot where Buck deals with the way that he graduated from "hurting myself will get me attention" to "hurting anything will get me attention" could be interesting. The pieces for Buck to have some sort of realization like that are there and it could be something. Obviously, it's gonna be adjacently about Gerrard, the question is how Buck's feelings will affect him. Because Buck feels things very intensely, and his guilt makes him act in extremes, so it will be something interesting to see no matter what.

Ideal scenario leads to Buck realizing the thing he has with Tommy is surface level (since Tommy went along with Gerrard's bigotry, it could be a point of tension because while Buck may be misguided, he would never intentionally hurt someone he loves, and he loves the 118) and to him starting to question the place Eddie has in his life (since the show keeps contrasting Buck's relationship with Eddie with Buck's relationship with Tommy, I can see the comparison since we have seen Eddie stand up to Gerrard as best as he can), especially since 806 is gonna be a big episode for Eddie too. It would be fun to see them start to align so that they can be put on the path of getting together at some point in 8b. Considering previous Halloween episodes, specifically haunted and monsters, and the way they lead to big movements in Buck's life, letting go of Abby and making up with Eddie and Bobby, I think it's safe to assume some self-reflection. There's also the way the last Halloween episode had Buck being "haunted" while doing something he shouldn't be doing, since cursed kinda counts as a Halloween episode and the whole disaster the donor arc is.

I keep thinking 805/806 will mirror rage/monsters in some aspects, and Buck having something going on with the captain while Eddie deals with internal conflicts after "losing" family and the control he doesn't have when it comes to protecting Chris, I am expecting some personal growth that brings them closer together. Like, something that will make them both aware that they are in it together, and since Oliver mentioned a scene where buddie is just sitting in silence, I'm kinda expecting a moment that will mirror both the post-tsunami talk and the end of fear-o-phobia, but this time neither will have to barrel their way in, they'll just know they can sit in silence together. That would also be a shoutout to Buck's definition of love from 518 and Bobby talking to Eddie at the hardware store about Athena, the whole being at their worst and still trying again and just sitting together after a bad day. I am just unsure of how exactly they're gonna get there.

[flooftyfizzlebeans]

Theory on why we headcanon specific characters as trans more often than others, using the Fizzlebeans as evidence.

Identity based character arcs vs... other stuff based character arcs.

Warning this is EXTREMELY LONG

Starting by analyzing Floofty, as they are my expertise.

Floofty is a scientist with no help, no funding, and ambitious plans. They come across as cold and uncaring, when in reality much of their shortsightedness comes from caring too much. Not for those closest to them directly, of course. But the greater good, and grumpuskind as a whole.

Their previous line of work suggests that when they had more resources, they spent more time helping individuals. Making prosthetics is a HIGHLY variable process, each individual limb that needs one being EXTREMELY different, even on the same person. Therefore they would need to be attentive towards individuals by necessity, even when making scientific breakthroughs. I don't think they'd have amazing bedside manner but I only bring this up to stress that Floofty is capable and willing to care for others should the situation call for it. However, they probably don't feel like they can afford to care after the events that cost them.... everything.

I assume they got their awesome career position through work during school, proving themself academically in a way that their.... abrasive characteristics wouldn't interfere with. Now that they have nothing, they're trying to get it back the same way they got it, by proving themself through actions.... but who they are and how people perceive them is directly responsible for their lack of help on Snaktooth. Actually, who they are likely made it near impossible to rebuild their reputation when inevitably grumps will think they are either chopping test subjects up to make murder machines or a confidentiality liability. They think their work should speak for itself, and who they are shouldn't matter. (They might even believe that they don't matter. It's already clear that their work is worth more to them than their own life.)

Realizing what they mean to others, who they could be to them when they let go of the big picture importance, and how they can help like they so desperately want to is integral to saving them. Let them forget that they are in fact, a grumpus, the very thing they want to save, and they might as well become what they study. Bugsnax.

...

Snorpy, however, as I've stated, is pretty much the opposite. Where Floofty rejects themself, Snorpy protects himself.... prepare for a staggeringly less complete analysis thanks to Not Literally Being Snorpy. Snorpies and Snorpy experts in the notes please contribute.

Snorpy is an engineer whose inventions are held in great esteem in Snaxburg, and yet he believes the world is out to get him. (By the world I mean... the grumpinati) The grumpinati is, in fact, not out to get him, and it takes incredible amounts of jumping to conclusions fueled by intense fear for anyone to shrink their world that small.

It's implied by his previous work that he was previously much more capable of... interacting with the public? being seen? than he is now. Like I mentioned, constructing prosthetics requires a lot of individual time and care, and a lot of interacting with many different grumpuses. But now? He is driven by fear. I can't even blame him, he's clearly deeply traumatized. How would you feel if your life's work was taken and warped for something you found cruel and evil all while you still depended on them for your livelihood? And you already probably had some sort of anxiety disorder?

Moving on, he is actually able to work perfectly fine. In fact, nearly every grumpus is seen using something he invented at least once? Despite inventions like The Knife Shot and flammable tripwire moments he's well liked by the town and everyone trusts his work to... work. But he's so absorbed by his own perceptions that it's impossible for him to take praise or even socialize without suspicion.

Even the relationship he holds most dear, and integral to what we call "Snorpy" is up in the air for him. I can only imagine he didn't ask for clarification or confess to his romantic feelings towards Chandlo out of fear. Fear of what exactly I can't say, as it's probably every possible factor that that course of action would change.

And... well. His main problem is never solved. Shelda is right, he needs therapy. Extensive therapy. But... he still improves. Part of why he does all of this is to protect Chandlo, and hide all of this from him... but after fighting Daddy Cakelegs it becomes a lot more clear to Snorpy that Chandlo is trying to protect him and knows a lot more than he gives him credit for. He's a lot closer to and more equal to Snorpy. Snorpy doesn't have to spend and sacrifice every fiber of his being to the bugsnax to protect who he loves.

That being said, who he is has nothing to do with his character arc. He's Snorpy, he's a nerd, he is an engineer. None of this is brought into question. Floofty's very status of "grumpus" is called into question through their experiments. (on an esoteric level. kinda. bugsnax are weird.)

What they share is their interactions with other grumpuses and how important actually letting themselves connect with others is... but that's something Everyone shares at least a little.

How does this relate to transgender headcanons? Floofty's arc features their identity very heavily, and calling the identity of the self into question is extremely transgender. Sometimes the definition of transgender. At the very least, a part of the process. (everyone is different)

That's why I think Shelda, Chandlo, and Wiggle are so popular for trans headcanons despite not necessarily doing anything outside their gender's norms. Their arcs heavily have to do with who they are and how their actions reflect that. Gramble and Triffany have a little bit of this but I can't rule out their gender non-comformity as the reason.

Of course, everyone is transgender to at least one person in the fandom because there's nothing proving anyone is cis and this fandom is very very queer.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 65 – System Collapse by Martha Wells

I’ve had this on preorder long enough to have entirely forgotten about it by the time I got the email that it’s available for pickup – but thanks to the magic of an extremely obliging local book store, I was still able to pick up and read the entire thing before it’s technically released. So score one for buying indie, I guess.

The book is set directly after Network Effect – directly directly, to the point where I needed to look up a plot summary to remind myself what the situation was – following our beloved rogue and rampant SecUnit, ART, and their assorted humans as they try to convince an abandoned and alien-contaminated colony’s inhabitants to trust them and accept evacuation with them (and also go along with the colonial charter they’re forging) rather than the indenture offers the corporate mission also on site are offering. Along the way there’s hacking, shuttle chases, gunfights, and plot-critical media curation.

Mostly though it’s about Murderbot having PTSD (on account of all the horrible trauma in Network Effect specifically, and also just its life generally) and absolutely zero idea how to cope. After a false memory/panic attack makes it crash out of nowhere it spends the majority of the book terrified that it’s going to crash or freeze up at some vital moment and get everyone killed, dealing with constant alien-related paranoia, and generally second-guessing itself and feeling useless and depressed. Absolutely no one around it has any idea how to deal with this, and their awkward attempts to be supporting are both endearing and entirely unhelpful.

Anyway, this is a Murderbot novel. Do you like Murderbot? Then you will like this. Do you not know the series? Then by god start with All Systems Red none of this will make any sense at all without context. Do you dislike murderbot? I mean hateread as you like but it is largely more of the same, don’t expect any series-saving twists for you.

It’s kind of absurd to call the series ‘cozy fantasy’ – by the end of the book SecUnit is down several extremities and bleeding out on the floor (as is traditional by this point) – but I feel like the series fills about the same emotional niche for me as like say Becky Chambers does for people with normal tolerances for low-tension sentimentality. The setting is a horrible dystopia and the plots are full of violence and trauma, but all that is more or less set dressing to stories that are actually about SecUnit making connections and deciding at a tortuously slow pace what sort of life it wants to have (usually several hours after commuting itself without thinking) while consistently running into the best possible friends and forming mutually affectionate relationships it absolutely did not want. It’s a story about fun, low-tension character dynamics, corporate kill teams aside.

I am being entirely sincere when I say the fact that SecUnit has no idea what it wants or what its doing is a selling point. In the same way, the fact that there’s never any real ~breakthrough~ or moment of sudden recovery is absolutely key to the book working. The story closes with it being hopeful and doing better but from any remotely reasonable baseline still being pretty far from ‘okay’ (in much the same way, it is utterly vital to the whole series that it has absolutely zero angst over ‘not being human’ or pinochle syndrome and only cares about ‘not being normal’ insofar as its had to work really hard on some automated scripts for walking and idle motions to pass as human while doing infiltration work).

Anyway, speaking of character dynamics – look, I’ve always been the first to roll my eyes when people complain about not being able to keep tracks or large casts. But every time I open one of these books, I realize I have only the vaguest idea who the vast majority of the (human) supporting cast is. Not really an issue with actually following the story, but I’m absolutely certain I’m missing out on some things.

The non-human supporting cast are great though. ART best spaceship, and I cared significantly more about the colony’s central control computer than any of the actual colonists. I’m like 70% sure this is intentional.

Stepping back, it’s interesting how the series’ setting has evolved over time. In All Systems Red the universe around SecUnit was incredibly broadly sketched, generic sci f playing with space opera and cyberpunk tropes it pretty much relied upon readers already being familiar with. This never exactly stops – especially for the aesthetics and technology, the book has a profound lack of interest in the specifics of what ���projectile weapons’ look like or how spaceships work beyond the convenience of plot – but as the books go on the world definitely gets more specific and also broader. You can mostly blame ART for this, I think – there’s a definite shift in the tone of the setting when you introduce an institution like the University with power like it can throw around, and more generally make active resistance to and subversion to the corporate status quo a plausible and fruitful endeavour.

All this to say that there’s an offhand mention at one point about ‘intracorporate violence’ increasing and the system being increasingly unstable, and I’m curious what Wells is going to do with that going forward. Especially with the book’s final resolution and the status quo it sets up going forward.

Anyway like I said, it’s murderbot. This is the 7th book in the series. If you’re considering reading it you’ll probably love it.

[toh-tagteam-au]

Tag Team AU Synopsis – Really Small Problems + Understanding Willow

Synopsis Masterpost Link

Previous Part [Sense and Insensitivity + Adventures in the Elements + The First Day]

Next Part [Enchanting Grom Fright + Wing it Like Witches]

This is one of the big ones. The BIG ones. Big turning point episode here. All of these End Of Season 1 episodes are going to be like that. With a LOT of script screenshots.

Really Small Problems

I… didn’t have anything written for this episode, but I should mention that Tibbles hasn’t appeared in this AU because he’s actually profiting off of selling the Azura Books due to the Azura Incident and doesn’t need to do any more schemes. 

This episode wouldn’t have involved the carnival, but instead probably would have been a Willow-and-Amity-conflict centric episode and a Gus-and-Hunter friendship episode. Originally it was going to be a “Willow gets a crush on Hunter” episode that led into the pseudo-romance arc I’d been talking about for a while, but it never seemed right to me the more we saw canon Willow’s attitude towards canon Hunter in season 3. I still wanted elements of that though, since it’d be important for the Grom episode.

I’m also realizing now that I’m writing the whole synopsis that the Emerald Trio really doesn’t hang out very much in any of the episode descriptions, so I wanted to include a thing that was like “they hang out off-camera please believe me”.

Anyway, Hunter passes out at some point, which leads us into…

Understanding Willow

Which really should be called "Understanding Hunter" at this point.

The episode starts out with Hunter falling into a magical exhaustion, brought by him over-worrying about how to heal Belos. This would have assumedly been built up over the course of Really Small Problems, which I didn’t write, but somehow Amity, Willow, and Gus are there to bring him back to the Owl House. 

Amity and Willow volunteer to go into his mind and find out what is keeping him from waking up. When they’re sent in, they see that everything is extremely cluttered and all the trees are covered in notes. They hear muttering, and come across Inner Hunter, who is surrounded by paper and chalkboards. 

Hunter is surprised that they’re in there, especially when they say that he’s fallen into a magical exhaustion in the real world, and says that he feels completely fine and they can leave. Amity says that maybe the notes are what is messing with his head, and in the process of reaching out to touch them Hunter summons a wall of ice. He warns them not to touch anything – he’s almost at a breakthrough. 

Willow and Amity suggest that they help him out – the faster they figure out how to do the thing he’s researching, the sooner Hunter wakes up. Hunter agrees, and reveals he’s trying to heal someone’s curse. Not Eda’s – someone else’s.

They go through a research montage, failing multiple glyphs and exploding a few science flasks, etc, up until they start asking him questions about the curse.

Amity asks more pointed questions, making Hunter nervously ask what she’s getting at.

Hunter gets angry at the accusation, saying that this person isn’t doing it on purpose or faking it. Amity just says that it feels familiar. Hunter is generally pissed now, and tells them to get lost. Willow doesn’t stand for it, saying that he needs to wake up.

Amity figures this is enough, and burns all the notes and work. She says he’s stretching himself thin to do an impossible thing, and that sometimes things can’t be fixed. 

Hunter doesn’t like that. The mindscape warps slightly as he turns into a goopy version of Hunter, Belos eyes and all (something something turning into the thing that scares you the most as a defense mechanism), and he starts attacking them. They hide in one of his memories to escape. 

The memory they enter is in his room in the Emperor’s Castle. They hear a younger Hunter talking to someone on a bed.

Luz is revealed, as well as her humanity AND the fact that Hunter is the other Golden Guard. They hear the Inner Hunter coming (he warps the memories with mud as he goes through them), so they escape into a different memory, this time of the fight Hunter and Luz have before they start having a better relationship (it’s the same one in the Pre-Show events post)

They leave the memory when the coast is clear. Amity mentions that when Hunter told her to stop trying to protect the person she was hurting, back in Covention, he must have been speaking from experience. Willow asks if Amity was also speaking from her experience with their friendship when she told Inner Hunter that sometimes things can’t be fixed, and Amity says yes. 

They’re interrupted by Hunter, who shows up to kill them, when Amity tells him to stop because he’ll destroy his memories if he’s not careful. She burns the notes on another tree, revealing the memory there of Luz and him learning the light glyph.

Willow and Amity get out of the mindscape. Hunter wakes up, to the relief of King and Eda. 

He drags Willow, Amity, and Gus away to talk privately, and tells them the truth about being the Golden Guard. He assumes the worst, but Willow proves him wrong, saying that Hunter comes before his mask. Willow blushes here a bit.

Privately to Willow and Amity, he also expresses worry that he inadvertently outed his sister to them, and tells them not to tell anyone or her – it’s an important secret to her, and she might freak out if she finds out anyone knows. Amity doesn’t vibe with that, but agrees.

Previous Part [Sense and Insensitivity + Adventures in the Elements + The First Day]

Next Part [Enchanting Grom Fright + Wing it Like Witches]

Synopsis Masterpost Link

[avatarrecom]

Bad jokes are how eye roll

Custody AU (Original story by @ao3gobi17)

Characters: Miles 'Spider' Socorro, Miles Quaritch, Lyle Wainfleet, Z-dog, Walker, Fike, Brown, Lopez, Ja, other recoms (not mentioned, but they're there too)

Warnings: description of losing and removing an eye (not extremely explicit). Recoms kinda being assholes.

Word count: 1369

A/N: My first story holy shit. Depending on how much I'm actually going to write I'll make a masterlist (If I figure how to do that lol). Since this is the first time writing a story, please let me know what you think! <3

_____________________________________________________________

Dinner, as always, was awkward. None of the Recoms really know how to make conversation with Spider, both because they’re not used to dealing with a strange teenage boy and because he is still (even though he has only been Spider's father for the first seven years of his life) the boss’s son.

Spider rubs his eye, as it starts to irritate more and more. When Spider was thirteen, he got an infection in his right eye. Because his foster parents were always at work and he didn't want to bother them, he didn't tell them. In the end, this turned out to be a big mistake after he collapsed at school and was rushed to hospital. When Spider thinks back to that day, he doesn't remember much. The only thing he does remember is waking up in the hospital bed. His foster mother sat on the chair next to Spider's bed, typing impatiently on her laptop. While his foster father sat at the table, also behind a laptop. "Great," Spider thought. "Even now they can't stop working." Then he registers a dull ache in his right eye. He slowly lifts his hand to his eye to rub away the pain. A hand suddenly closes around his wrist, guiding his hand away from his face.

"Don't touch your face," says a blurry voice. Spider looks at his foster mom confused. Both his foster parents look at him, Part annoyed, part worried. His foster father stands up, "I'm going to see if I can find a doctor." With that, he walks out of the room. Spider's foster mom speaks up with irritation in her voice, "why didn't you tell us something was wrong, now we're missing a major breakthrough at work-" She quickly falls silent when a doctor arrives. "Hello Miles," says the doctor. "How are you feeling?" "Drowsy," Spider replies honestly. "And confused, what happened?"

"You had an infection in your eye, which caused you to run a high fever and collapse," the doctor said. "You were brought here by ambulance, unfortunately we had to remove your eye, as the infection had already spread far." Spider's remaining eye widens in shock. "What?!" comes out in a higher pitch than he would have liked. The doctor gives him an apologetic look. "Sorry son, I won't beat around the bush," the doctor sits down on the edge of his bed. "Unfortunately we had no choice, your eye was already too damaged and there was a risk of the infection spreading to your brain," the doctor pats Spider on his knee, "As if that makes it better," Spider thinks bitterly. "Besides," the doctor continues, "it wasn't an option just to remove the infection, then your eye would look terrible, now we can get you fitted for a glass eye, wouldn't that be cool," smiles the doctor. "You’re an asshole," Spider decides. "Well not really, I'd rather have my real eye back," Spider replies.

"Awww, is baby Spider tired?" teases a voice from Spider's right, snapping Spider out of his thoughts. "What?" he asks, still rubbing his eye with the back of his hand. Wainfleet looks at him mockingly. "Looks like little Spider needs to go to bed," says Brown, eager for an angry response. Spider still looks at the two confused. "Only little babies rub their eyes like that, Buttercup," Zdinarsk helpfully adds, rolling her eyes.

"Oh!" Spider realizes, "I'm not tired, I just-" He is interrupted by Wainfleet. "Sure, that's what all little kids say when they're about to fall asleep, but don't want to go to bed yet because they want to be like grown ups." There is laughter around the table. "No, it's not like that," Spider protests. "Oh of course kid, that's really convincing," Lopez says sarcastically.

"No, I swear," defends Spider. "I had an infection in my eye when I-", he gets interrupted again. "Come up with excuses kid?" Jokes Walker "My niece used to do exactly that when she didn't want to go to bed yet." Again there is loud laughter around the table. Spider starts to get angry, the only ones not participating are Quaritch and Ja. The former looks amused, while the latter looks at him intensely. Spider shifts uncomfortably under Ja's gaze. "I’m pretty sure he was a medic in the army, that must be why he's looking at me like that," Spider thinks to himself.

Meanwhile, the laughter continues merrily. While Spider is happy to be rid of the awkward silence, he is less than happy that it comes at his own expense. Spider looks pleadingly to Quaritch for help. Quaritch meets his gaze and raises his eyebrow mockingly, as if saying "You're a big boy, aren't you? You're my son, you can talk yourself out of this, you won't get any help from me."

"Great, good father you are, thanks for your help. You're not even helping your so-called son who you supposedly love so much that you kidnapped him," Spider thinks bitterly. Suddenly someone squeezes his cheek hard. "Aww, baby Spider is so tired he can't even pay attention to his food anymore, then look at him, he almost falls face-first into the plate." Spider slaps the hand that belongs to Fike, away in annoyance. The young man across from him gives a cruel grin, clearly taking pleasure in Spider's misery. "Maybe someone should take him upstairs and tuck him into bed," Lopez pouts. "Oh sure, Spider would you rather we read you a story or sing a lullaby?" Adds Wainfleet.

Spider again tries to protest that he is not rubbing his eye because he is tired, but because his glass eye feels very irritated. But again, no one listens to him. "HEY!" Spider yells angrily as he pushes his chair back so hard it topples over. "Spider." Quaritch says in a warning tone. Spider irritably straightens his chair and plops down on it, childishly crossing his arms and glancing angrily at his plate. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Wainfleet, Brown, Lopez, Fike & Zdinarsk grinning at each other, clearly pleased with the response they've been able to elicit from Spider, before continuing to eat in silence, not wanting to draw Quaritch's attention to them. Quaritch, still looking at Spider with a look that promises punishment if Spider lashes out again. The others, who did not participate in Spider's bullying, but happily laughed along, wisely kept their mouths shut.

When Spider's gaze falls on Wainfleet, he suddenly gets an idea. "You know, when I was thirteen I collapsed at school and I was rushed to the hospital by ambulance." he begins, deliberately playing with his food like an angry little child. This one sentence immediately catches the attention of the others, especially Ja, who looks at him intensively again, and Quaritch, with an eyebrow raised.

"I don't really remember what happened, but when I woke up a doctor - he was a huge asshole by the way - told me I had an infection in my eye and they had to remove it." The others scoff, "you look like you have two eyes, kid." Wainfleet laughs.

Spider had hoped for this reaction and brings his hands to his eye. He pulls his eye open with his fingers, hides his eye with his other hand, and pushes his glass eye out of its socket, as he has done hundreds of times before. He feels the familiar pop as the eye slides out of the socket. When he lowers his hands again, he hears several people gasp. Spider rolls his glass eye into the palm of his hand for a few seconds. Then he brings his hand to Wainfleet's face. "See?" he asks mockingly, before taking his eye between his fingers, letting his hand hang over the table and then letting his eye fall into Lyle's full water glass. Everyone at the table stares blankly as the glass eye slowly sinks to the bottom of the glass. It's as if the glass eye had figured out what Spider was up to, because as the glass sphere sinks to the bottom, the eye rotates so that the lifeless brown iris looks directly at Wainfleet.

"Anyone want to see my glass eyes collection?"

[jemmo]

to say im in love with the most recent ep of my personal weatherman would be a gross understatement bc my god, i dont think a show has ever pulled off two idiots that are in love and don’t know how to express it so perfectly. 

(put in a read more bc wow that got long)

and this ep is perfect for that bc it explains so well segasaki’s behaviors and attitudes up to this point, where we previously hadn’t got to see that much behind his curtain. we’ve seen yoh, we’re privy to his inner thoughts a lot, and we know why he’s in a difficult place with his feelings at the moment, and we know the way he perceives segasaki, which was complicated to begin with and has only gotten more so. but in this ep, we get to see this whole journey of where segasaki has come from, why he is the way he is, and how he found some kind of solace with yoh, and why he’s panicking at the idea of that solace crumbling.

and it’s genius bc it’s a backstory i never really saw coming, it’s one of the few times i could predict something in a bl. this idea of him not being an outright people pleaser, more so just a good observer of the status quo and acting accordingly to get by with as few problems as possible. and with his looks, his general demeanor and such, it means he can easily integrate with these ‘popular’ people who aren’t actually popular, they just act the way that they think gains them popularity, namely acting superior. it’s never that segasaki was like that, they were just his social security blanket.

(and no, it does not escape me that this set up is very much like utsukushii kare and I’d very much like to dive into how those shows take this same basis to establish in some ways very different and in other ways very similar relationships, and why so often with these dynamics we see these recurring themes of like… extreme obsession and dependency and a fear of being left, but another day)

I think what was a real breakthrough for segasaki wasn’t just first glance, but seeing those drawings of himself yoh did, seeing himself being that removed and void and emotionless and realizing that this random kid he didn’t even know and who’d only seen him for a moment could see that in him. and it’s this simultaneously realization in himself and these burgeoning feelings for yoh that lead to this change. he’s not dropping the mask, it’s more so that he feels this comfort around yoh that he’s never felt before and so he’s suddenly realizing how exhausting it is to put on the act. and he’s both treacherous and unsure and unwilling to expose himself in that way, but also feels this need to reject it now that he knows the weight of it.

and just like that, as soon as it slips, as soon as he lets yoh in, my god he just becomes fixed. he just like yes, this one, he’s mine, end of story. but it’s insane to me that, despite all the undertones, none of it is romantic at this point, and even to where we are in the present, none of it is ever presented or established as a romantic relationship between them. it’s sexual and dependent, bc they both know they need each other, segasaki especially, but they just aren’t able to recognize that it is romantic. and it keeps coming back to this thing about smiling, that the other never smiles for them, or segasaki saying i can smile better than that, they just want to see each other happy, and they want that happiness to be because of them. but bc of the mental places they come from, my good they just cannot do that. it’s such a mental block for them both. yoh is coming from this place of having complicated feelings but all the way back in those early eps, he did all this stuff for segasaki and just got indifference in return and he just wants to feel like those efforts are appreciated, that he is appreciated, and when segesaki said what he did about his manga, that’s the clearest way yoh has got the message that segasaki doesn’t appreciate him as a person. meanwhile segasaki is just so dependent on yoh at this point but still has this lingering tendency not to show his true emotions and remain stoic and removed bc that’s just what he’s used to, and while he does try to communicate his feelings for yoh in some ways, they’re just not the best and yoh doesn’t register, hence the way he behaves, so uptight and on edge around segasaki, that when he sees yoh smiling or having fun or at ease around other people, he just panics and goes to extremes and you know… ties yoh up. he just can’t handle the idea of yoh finding happiness elsewhere bc then he’ll leave and segasaki will suffocate. literally, going back having that front on all the time, like when he’s at work, with no escape, it’ll stifle him so much he can’t breathe. but this is where segasaki needs to start unlearning what he’s used to and being honest and open, and equally yoh needs to speak up for himself if he wants something to change.

but also with yoh, and i wrote about this before when i said this show was like watching two people trying to reconcile with and navigate wanting a dom/sub relationship, or at least something with those undertones, and not just sexually (or even sexually at all), but in their dynamic. bc in these flashbacks we see the essences of that kind of relationship that they have shown up to now, and this is their first prolonged interaction, which shows this isn’t just something that’s been put on them or evolved into per say, it’s a way they naturally behave, their tendencies, that manage to sync up. yoh is instantly willing and eager to serve, to tend to segasaki, not just feed him but cook for him where he isn’t a proficient cook just bc segasaki said he doesn’t like convenience food as an offhand comment. like not many people would go and make a full curry in a guy’s house you’ve talked to maybe 4 times just for that reason, but he does. equally, he goes out and buys a whole range of drinks and puts them out for segasaki to pick bc he hopes that in those choices he picked the one that was right, and in that small interaction of segasaki saying he didn’t mind then picking one, the way yoh goes from disheartened to happy with himself. he wants to look after segasaki, to serve him, and his feelings get complicated when, as we saw with those drinks, he doesn’t get appreciated for it. so when he does the cooking and cleaning and laundry and segasaki doesn’t seem happy about it, that’s when he gets annoyed and angry.

and on the other side, you see segasaki immediately unleash this need to be the only person in yoh’s life, this obsession, to know him the most, and for him to be the only person yoh does these things for. he eats a curry and asks for the rest to be saved in tupperware for him to eat later solely bc he wants to be the only one that knows the exact way in which yoh’s cooking is bad. he wants the joy of someone asking yoh if he can cook, and yoh saying he can make curry, for only him to know he actually can’t, it’s awful. and it’s the way the underlying thing of it is seeing these bad points, these weaknesses of yoh, is what he enjoys as well as the want to see him happy only for him and only because of him. it’s wanting to be able to hold those extremes over yoh, make him overjoyed bc he appreciates him and praises him so much, but also squirm and feel bad bc he knows the ways in which he is imperfect, bc he doesn’t see them as flaws, he sees them as the intricate ways he knows all of yoh there is to know. if that does not scream dom, idk what does.

and what i hope for in this final ep is some kind of exploration in finding happiness in the exact kinda fucked up way their relationship works. i want segasaki to tie yoh up and say these things about him not being allowed to see other people, and for yoh to both stand up for himself but also kind of… like it. it’s such a hard line to tread bc you don’t want to present some of these things as ok, but I think it’s important to show that before you can behave these ways knowing it’s ok, and esp if you don’t have good communication, you have to kind of just… do it. and i think these people care enough about each other that it would never cross the line, but at least in this fictional space it feels like it needs to be there for them to explore it and find the ways they both enjoy it (and im saying this fully only commenting on this in fiction and the way the story is, not a real life situation) anyway, I just think it would be great to show how, in a roundabout, messy way, these two people manage to get on the same page and communicate better and enjoy the ways they are dependent on and obsessed with each other bc at the end of the day they are just so fucking in love with each other, and this is just the way that’s expressed. it’s not gonna be a case of oh I see I was too much I was wrong I love you let’s me a nice happy lovey dovey couple, it’s very much i love you I’m obsessed with you our dynamic is still our dynamic but now we just smile a lot more bc we know we are both happy with the way we love each other. it’s about removing that grey area of doubt for both of them, knowing yes I am appreciated and yes I won’t be left, bc they learn the ways to show their feelings to each other that removes those doubts.

and finally, both bc i forgot earlier and bc i loved it so much and it made me cry a lot (it’s been a long week, spare me), I wanna talk about that prolonged head pat. the way segasaki does it, not just a pat but playing with the hair and down to his ear, more like the actions of an inquisitive baby than anything else, bc that’s what he is in that moment, inquisitive as to why this boy makes him feel this type of way, and the way yoh keeps glancing to it and doing that small laugh that you do when something seems awkward and you wanna draw attention to it hoping someone will see it’s awkward and stop, or at least acknowledge it, bc he’s uncomfortable, but segasaki doesn’t do anything, doesn’t stop or acknowledge what he’s doing, he just carries on, and it’s almost like he looks at yoh as to say no I’m not stopping I’m gonna do this yes it might be weird and kinda awkward but I want to do it so I will and i won’t be the one to stop myself just bc you’re signaling that you’re a little uncomfortable. and ultimately yoh does nothing, doesn’t move the hand, doesn’t even move away from the touch, he just lets it happen, let’s the moment be weird and uncomfortable but also feels that weird joy from it. and like… at least for me, that’s the spark of someone finding out they like that weird idea of being praised and appreciated, and it’s magical that segasaki ignites that in him bc of the specific way he is at his core, not the mask but instead letting feeling out and acting on impulse, being brazen and forward and not backing down when he does something. I just thing it’s beautiful that you see in these flashbacks all these small ways in which they discover the dynamic of their relationship and how it proves that there can be a future where they’re both happy in it after they get over their own doubts and learn to communicate better. honestly this show is just such a treat to pick apart and explore lenses to read it from and god i don’t want it to end

[donnerpartyofone]

I signed up for this online class co-taught by a woman I find maddeningly brilliant, where she lectures on her experience working with and studying people who are on the cutting edge of whatever their professional field is. She discovered this common thread where many of them claim that they don't come up with their innovations on their own--supposedly, ideas just enter their minds spontaneously, or even in a dream, and they follow these disciplined lifestyles (versions of monastic practices, generally) that they believe make them more receptive to those kinds of messages. A good clarifying example is that of a mathematician (Pattie Maes I think? I forgot to write it down) who claimed that as a young student, she would just-know the solutions to math problems without being able to explain the reasoning, so she was always in trouble with her teachers; eventually she got into analytical philosophy, which helped her reverse-engineer and understand the answers she mysteriously received. So anyway the class I'm taking allows you to offer up your own projects for feedback and advice about how you can invite a breakthrough to happen. There are some extremely interesting people in the group, including a couple of guys who are doing futuristic-sounding sustainable farming projects, someone who studies black holes, and just all stripes of scientists and artists. I'm hearing some pretty interesting things, but...

The class is co-taught by this woman who is also obviously brilliant, she has these insane credentials I barely understand involving venture capital and AI, she works with and for extremely high level companies and luminaries and her self-selected title is something like "singularity expert". And like, all of that is inherently interesting whether or not it sounds somewhat sinister to your ears, but I quickly realized that she's one of these people who is just fundamentally excited by the basic concept of Success, and she automatically thinks that any measure of fame and fortune, no matter what it's in aid of or where it came from, is evidence of genius. Which to me is like this incredibly dangerous trap, for what I think are really obvious reasons.

So one of us students brought up a manuscript she's been working on for decades that isn't going anywhere, and the singularity expert told her to just throw it out and do something else, basically. And in her justification for this, she started saying "I know a lot of you probably don't like Elon Musk, BUT" in this really bitter, cold tone of voice that let you know immediately that she's a huge fan and she thinks the resistance to him is just a bunch of ignorant liberal bullshit. And her example of his genius, which we should all imitate, is that when he wanted to make a big update to Tesla/Twitter/(some other shit he acquired from actual innovators), he found that the update was incompatible with all of foundational code, so he just threw out millions and millions of dollars' worth of code to force his new thing into place. And I mean, on one level I heard something useful and true: Don't sacrifice your future for the comforting stability of the past, beware of the sunk cost fallacy, etc. But the fact that Elon Musk did something that *appears* to represent that, depending on how you spin it, does not mean that he is a genius you should seek to imitate. First of all, I didn't leave knowing exactly what the consequences of his actions were, and second of all...millions of dollars doesn't mean anything to that guy. He's impossibly rich and he basically started out that way, and he's never going to wind up homeless or whatever even if he drives every single company he bought into the ground. He's just not a good example of someone with a high risk, high reward mindset that we should all emulate because he could lose hundreds of millions of dollars almost without noticing. The fact that he did this thing that in isolation looks heroic, that's only a tiny part of the picture with him.

(And that's without even getting into the impact that it has on the rest of the world, that he has so much power; like personally I think he's such a negative presence in the world that it's beyond just material effects, actually he's so corrosive that even talking about him is bad. Just contemplating the idea of him brings out the absolute worst in people, it's bad for people's moral fiber to even argue about him, but ANYWAY)

Unfortunately I find that a lot of people who have some kind of overlap with the self-help field will eventually come around to admitting that they're so blinded by the glamor of public, lucrative success that they don't really care where it comes from or who gets it or what people do with it. Damien Echols is someone I really enjoy, I just think it's undeniably interesting to hear from someone who spent almost 20 years on death row studying spirituality (to be glib about it) and pursuing all kinds of monastic disciplines; I mean that guy has things to say that you don't get from circulating in normal society. He practices something that has roots as far back as ancient Sumeria, he's not rich and he's not trying to get rich, but he often reminds people that poverty doesn't have an inherent moral quality and it's not inherently evil to pursue financial success. He'll say that if you have a phobic attitude toward money, if the very idea of it is tainted by guilt and fear in your mind, then it becomes a destructive force in your life--but if you think about money as energy, a resource you can channel into doing what's important to you, then it becomes something positive and supportive. And I can totally understand that. But then Echols will extrapolate that to the point that he's praising megachurch guys who are absolute crooks and scam artists and who definitely rob people through a form of psychological blackmail that tells them they're going to hell if they don't help buy Jim Bakker or whoever a private jet. And I'm like, man...ok so it's worth while to say that having a positive mindset about money can change your life for the better. But that doesn't mean that we have to then lionize every single person who ever got rich no matter how they got there and no matter what they did with their power, that's just fucking insane, right?

I could go on and on actually, about various people I've heard speak about how to break through your subconscious limitations and take a more authorial role in your own life, and how often even the most apparently well-meaning one of these speakers will come around to praising like the Monopoly guy, or some tepid pop star with an incredible marketing machine behind them, as ground-breaking geniuses who we all need to emulate. I mean a lot of people who are visibly successful get there by accident, or nepotism, or coattail riding, or plain ruthlessness. Many people in the big-success category turn out to be inarguably, unfathomably stupid (ironically I spotted the Elon Musk Pop Tart story the morning before I took this class), and some of them are only geniuses insofar as they have an abnormally well-developed predatory instinct that makes them able to think thoughts and perform actions that you really can't conceive of if you aren't, you know, a psychopath. Someone recently posted a bunch of advice on teaching from John Cale, and one of the things he said was "Suspect charisma", and I think THAT is a much more important piece of advice than like, "find someone who is rich and famous and do whatever that person appears to be doing without asking yourself how they got where they are, or just what is the real reason that you personally are so compelled by them." It seems like a lot of people respond to the aura of "success" so intensely that they just don't want to have to question it, and they'll bend over backwards crafting these speculative backstories and dialectic arguments to make their animal reaction to the spectacle of power sound like something intellectually sound. It smacks of stockholm syndrome, of people who fall in love with their own bullies. There's complicated reasons for that, some of which are what got Trump elected I think, but I don't wanna talk about that. I have to go to the doctor's now anyway, and stop thinking about this.

[orange-orchard-system]

Something I've noticed a lot recently is that I've become remarkably good at intrapersonal skills. I'm not perfect, of course, but I have enough judgement of them to say I can be proud of my intrapersonal skills – things such as time management, confidence, open-mindedness, perseverance, ability to handle problems maturely, and recognizing why I may be feeling like shit, just as some examples.

I don't say all this to brag. Rather, I say this because my theory is that I became so good at intrapersonal skills due to my plurality. Or, rather, due to exploring and seeking to understand my plurality.

First, we had to learn the basics of working as a system. Learning to listen to each other (both figuratively and literally) and how to handle conflicts translated to learning how to listen to our needs and handle setbacks without us even realizing it. Then, as we began unraveling exactly how best to live as a system, we began to see each other as a support system (pun not intended), which gave us the confidence and safety net we needed to try new things, handle larger problems, and figure out who we are and what we want in life.

This self-discovery peaked when we finally found the source of a lot of background stress that had been building up for years, and identified how to treat it. It was a breakthrough, and we became much more aware of exactly where our limits were, how to help each other, and – through our improved self-image and mood – that we could make a future for ourselves. Mix that with some life lessons we've learned over the years, and somehow we seem to have more confidence and maturity than a lot of the people around us, even when we're at the same age and stage in life. (And yet, it often feels as though we've only just caught up, having been held back for so long due to ignorance about how to help ourselves.)

We're still learning about ourselves. I don't think there will be a day on this earth that we're not going through more discoveries, or a day where we can sit back and say there's nothing more for us to do. But I'm really, really proud of how far we've come.

This also makes me excited about plurality in general. I mean, look at that!! Intrapersonal skills are extremely useful things in day-to-day life, and we stumbled into them just by learning to work as a system?? Plurality is so cool!!

Ahaha, I'm done now. Thank you for reading.