#fml this always happens when I’m already struggling a lot in general

[sadgirlautumn]

Y’all I accidentally took that nap until 3:30am so it’s 7:30am and I was about to go to sleep until I saw a fucking stinkbug on my bedside table so I guess i’m going to sleep downstairs

[ayabaiii]

Why I’m so nuts for YOI

YOI flipped my switch in a big way, in a head-over-heels way, in a Victor-dancing-with-Yuri-at-the-GPF-banquet-and-realizing-this-was-it way, and I’ve been thinking lately about why it is that I love it SO much. There are so many reasons. A million reasons. A gazillion reasons under the cut because I’m not as cruel to stick this much text at once into your dash.

Sexual desire can be a positive thing: In most Asian media (dramas, anime), sex and desire is usually treated as deviant- if you want it, you’re a slutty slut or a comical horndog, or it has to be way crazy kinky nonconsensual porn shit. In most Western media, it isn’t treated well either- I just finished watching Big Little Lies and sex is all about shame, rage and violence in that series. But in the world of YOI, Victor is super hot for the cute guy who challenged his rinkmate to a dance off, then proceeded to strip and pole dance, THEN CAPPED IT ALL OFF BY SWEEPING HIM OFF HIS ACTUAL FEET, and then he choreographs a skating routine about SEXUAL LOVE about it and ends up making Yuri skate it. A lot of fandom seem to write Yuri off as a delicate flower who knows nothing about sex, but were you all watching the same series as I was? He basically has a sexual awakening as a preteen watching stupid pretty Victor twirl around with his stupid pretty hair and covers his entire bedroom with sexy posters of him (there are posters where Victor isn’t even skating, they are more or less posters to jack off to). He literally says that he is the only person in the world who can satisfy Victor. I’m shit at translating but the Japanese dialogue and narration in the series (I should just watch the blurays because I find the english subs on crunchyroll distracting and not particularly accurate) is... pretty sexy too. They’re in love, but they’re also SUPER attracted to each other, and that’s ok- better than ok, really, because great sex is a cornerstone of healthy and happy long-term relationships. 

The fact that they’re both the same gender is never an issue: No angsting about sexual orientation. Neither party wishes they were a girl (which happens every so often in yaoi). No pandering or queerbaiting. This series is a straight-up romantic comedy: person A meet-cutes person B, person A and person B fall madly in love. No one gives them any shit about it (except Yuri Plisetsky, but my head canon there is that he has an unconscious crush on Yuri Katsuki and is mad as shit that stupid perfect Victor swooped in and stole him away) 

No stupid romantic subplot friction: No super retarded misunderstandings that could be avoided by just talking to each other (I’m looking at you, every Korean drama ever made), no evil love rivals, no contrived situation with parents or other authority figures trying to keep the main couple apart. Their main issues are what most couple’s issues are: proper communication, compromise, and learning what it means to operate as a unit. I also love love love that when Victor gets jealous and possessive in the Yuri on Stage skit, he doesn’t demand to know all the details of whoever he thinks Chihoko is, he doesn’t close off and make it so Yuri only ever talks to him, he drunkenly scrawls “Surpass Chihoko” on Yuri’s naked back, and then proceeds to climb a public edifice naked and scream his love from the top. And when he demands Yuri do it too, instead of telling him he’s crazy or to get down or having a fight, Yuri just strips and gets up there too, to make his stupid hungover husband feel better.  

A realistic portrayal of love: Victor and Yuri are attracted to each other, but the reason they fall in love is that they really get along and like being around the other person. They have fun, they make each other laugh, they excite and surprise each other, they slowly open up to each other, they bicker and squabble because being in love doesn’t mean your partner doesn’t annoy the shit out of you sometimes. Most anime and media treat falling in love like some magical thing that makes your life instantly perfect, which is not the case in real life. They also treat falling in love as a mysterious and sudden thing you have no control over, and honestly for the most part it is, but that’s limerence, not love. Victor and Yuri actually fall in love and stay in love. Their lives are immeasurably better with the other person in it. They fill in each other’s spaces. 

Realistic portrayals of mental conditions: I stay away from saying mental illness because I think anxiety and depression are things most people experience at some point in their lives- some just have it to a deeper or lighter degree than others. Yuri and Victor are both high functioning- Yuri in his anxiety, Victor in his depression. A lot has been said about Yuri’s anxiety, especially given than he’s the narrator of 11/12 episodes, but I was actually hugely impressed by the nuanced and realistic depiction of Victor as a high functioning depressed person. He’s clearly bored and sad and lonely, hugely craving human connection and feeling cut off from people because of his godlike status: every connection he has is in relation to his sport, and they all want something out of him, so when he falls in love for the first time, he ends up becoming a coach because he thinks that’s all he has to offer Yuri to make him fall in love with him too. I honestly don’t think Victor has ever thought about being a coach, nor is he interested in staying one after Yuri: the entire thing was basically a crazy grand gesture to make the cute boy from the banquet fall in love with him (well, in his defense, it worked, so good job Victor). Victor’s only real connection seems to be to his dog, which struck me as enormously and terribly lonely. Hopefully we’ll learn more about his family in Season 2. 

Realism about bodies and how much fucking work it is to be hot: I just spent an hour and a half at the gym so this is on my mind LOL. Most anime and tv shows gloss over the sheer amount of work it actually takes to be a certain shape, and I already knew from episode one where Yuri gains weight after his depression from a seemingly endless onslaught of FML that I was in for the good shit. Any hot person you know who claims they just sit on the couch eating hot wings all the time is a goddamn liar. I’m no longer sample size because I don’t have time to spend 2-3 hours in the gym every single day and I like to have some fried chicken and chips and ice cream now and again. Now, I had some discussion with male friends when I forced them to watch it last week as to how feasible it was for Yuri to lose all that weight in basically a week, and they claim it’s doable / they’ve done similar before, but I think part of episode 1 shows Yuri as an unreliable narrator who seems to think he’s WAY fatter than he is (which is part of the nature of anxiety), so he was probably, like, in actually 10-15lbs or so heavier than his GPF weight vs how he’s portrayed in the anime in the comical fatty-fat-fatty sequences. Victor is also super cut but it looks like he’s always biking/skating when Yuri’s skating /probably spends a lot of time working out to keep that amount of muscle tone (he’s also clearly vain af so you better believe he is all about the gainz).

Body positivity about squishiness: And this is not in a pandering or condescending way. Victor is affectionately into Yuri’s squishy off-season tummy in the Yuri on Stage skit, and Yuri’s objections are only really that they’re in public and around other people while he’s playing with it. I always interpreted Victor’s saltiness about Yuri’s weight / forcing him to get back to his GPF weight when he first arrives in Hasetsu not as Victor actually caring about Yuri staying hot or not, but as Victor being a petty little bleep because he’s annoyed that he showed up just like Yuri asked and Yuri kind of ended up giving him a weird awkward cold shoulder instead of fucking him into the nearest mattress. And in any case, speaking of saltiness...

People can be petty af because they’re human: Victor is a lowkey asshole (the kind of person who’s so beautiful and talented they’ve been able to get away with just about anything because everyone gets blinded by lasers of HOT PERSON IS TALKING TO ME) but still immensely likeable. And Yuri is a lowkey asshole too- see his HAAAAH reaction to Victor’s baiting about past lovers, or his constant poking of Victor’s hair whorl. He’s really likeable too. Sometimes it’s ok to be petty af.

I really wish that a series like Yuri on Ice had been around in my formative years. One of the biggest reasons I love it so much is I feel like it can have such a positive influence on young people- on people who struggle with anxiety and depression, with people who struggle with simultaneously being on top of their game and not feeling good enough. More importantly, I think it gives a really great primer on the RIGHT way to be in love. My college best friend was a philosophy major and one of her professors once said in class “If it wasn’t for movies, no one would ever fall in love,” and looking back on toxic relationships I’ve been in and people I shouldn’t have slept with, it’s most likely I used tv and movies as a primer for what seemed like socially acceptable behaviour for love: tumultuous drama as PASSION, jealousy and possessiveness as being marked by a great love, sex as a substitute for emotional intimacy. Being older and wiser and through the gauntlet I know a lot more now about what’s good for me, but if I’d had something like Yuri on Ice back in my teens, I think I would have made some better decisions. So I’m glad a series like this is out there now. Hopefully it’ll make a new generation of young’uns (or even old’uns!) make better decisions than I did (well, most of them, anyway. I had a lot of fun, and you should too)

[bubble-tea-bunny]

Breathe [Chuck Hansen x Reader]

Author’s Note: So like, does anyone else really like Pacific Rim?? It’s like my favorite movie ever. This is something I wrote a loooong time ago, and I might even share some of my other Pacific Rim fics too. I want to write for it again though. And, well, more fics in general, but I’m drowning in homework this quarter and I’m always too tired to write. I will try to soon! I have ideas, just... no energy. Fml. 

Word Count: 1,588

You feel as though you are being suffocated.

You stand behind Tendo, your arms crossed but foot tapping anxiously against the hard ground. It takes a lot within you to keep from bringing your hand to your mouth and nibbling at your fingernails. You don’t bother wondering whether or not your unease is noticeable. Max senses it without a problem, for he frequently nudges his nose against your leg before sitting next to you, not leaving your side. He’s still attached to his leash, which is held by Herc, who also has no issue seeing that you’re worried. He doesn’t need to watch Max to know, because he feels the same way.

Your heart beats painfully hard within your chest. The tension in the room is high and you are hurting. You hurt for Herc, who’s helpless and unable to pilot Striker with his son. You hurt for yourself because you are forced to watch the most important person in the world to you dive into the depths of hell, and you are forced to accept that he may never come back. You hurt for Chuck and the Marshal, who are miles away risking everything to keep the world safe and put an end to the true monsters under the bed once and for all.

What was the saying? “Kill one, save a thousand”? Your emotions clash and you repeatedly tell yourself that this will be worth it. Even if they don’t make it out alive, they’ll have saved so many people. They’d be heroes. And while you’d be so proud of the both of them for what they’d done, it would never completely heal the hole in your heart. The thought of them is never as good as the real deal.

You almost want to tune out Tendo as he communicates with the pilots of Gipsy and Striker. You almost want to leave the room, to retreat to your bunk and forget everything that’s happening. You just want one moment to pretend that the Breach doesn’t exist, that it never existed. Things could be so different. There would’ve been no K-Day, no PPDC, no Jaegers. Where would you be if none of this had happened? Being a Jaeger pilot took over your entire being so quickly it feels like you’d been doing it your entire life. You can’t quite remember what it was you wanted to do before the emergence of the Kaiju.

You feel a hand gently set itself atop your shoulder. It’s a warm comfort, and tears well up in the corners of your eyes. You trace the hand back to Herc, who watches you somberly, nodding and pursing his lips. He doesn’t say anything and you know it’s because if he does, tears may actually begin to fall. You understand. You take a deep breath and turn back to the screens in front of you. You can feel Max’s nose pushing against your leg.

They’re approaching the Breach now. Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha are out of the game. Your small army of Jaegers has gotten even smaller. Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka push on like they hadn’t just lost five pilots, five friends. The payload sitting on Striker’s back seems more important than ever with each step it takes.

And then you and Herc are pushed to the side, Newt grabbing the microphone and hurriedly explaining to the four pilots the instructions they must follow for the mission to be a true success. Pretending to be a Kaiju? This mission just got so much riskier than it already was. With four Jaegers still on board, it may have been a bit easier to accept and even execute. But Gipsy and Striker have their hands full with the two Kaiju mercilessly grabbing and biting at their armor, and doing so scarily easily.

You avert your eyes from the screens as you hear the struggle. You hear them, all four of them, shouting out various commands. Their minds are working on overdrive, possibly at the fastest rate they’ve ever been. They don’t have time to make mistakes. They can move fast, the Jaeger can move fast, but the Kaiju can move even faster. Their movements are streamlined in the water and everyone knows they have the upper hand in this circumstance. But your pilots hold out, and it is at this moment everyone sees the reasons why they became pilots. There has been no better time than now for their skills to be tested.

You hear Chuck’s voice over the intercom and your heart skips a beat. He’s yelling, and you can tell he’s frustrated, he’s stressed, and he’s afraid. He would never admit to any of those, most of all the last, but you know him. He’s never been soft or obvious with his emotions. He’s intimidating, and that was the way he wanted it to be. But growing close to him the way that you had meant learning the way he works deep down. There are those he would do anything for: you, his father, even Max. It was an unspoken promise to himself that for the three of you, he would fly to Pluto and back. He would face the biggest monsters for you because he’s Chuck and when it comes to those he cares about, he will do anything.

You’d practically sprinted down the large hallways of the Shatterdome to catch Chuck one last time. You saw Herc and Max when you turned the corner and Chuck was beginning to walk to the elevator. You yelled his name and he stopped, turning around and watching you make your way over. He had come to you in LOCCENT to say goodbye, but you had forgotten to tell him something at the time. You wordlessly left the room in a run, and Tendo made no move to stop you or ask for an explanation. He understood.

You stopped before Chuck, panting slightly. He watched you, and while he wore no smile, his eyes are gentle because he loves you so much. You, though so small, are his entire world. It’s something he’d never say out loud unless with you in his or your bunk, as a quiet murmur against your skin. You’d hum as you trace patterns on his chest, quietly telling him that he’s your entire world too. The room you’re in is your own universe and you’re content to stay where you are forever.

“Come back to me, okay?” you tell him. You look up at him, hope in your eyes. They shine, but Chuck can tell they are because of tears threatening to spill over. “Promise me.”

He gently sets a hand on your cheek, something he never previously dared to do with others watching. Though armored, it’s warm, and you relish it as best you can in these few moments. He nods once, his own eyes becoming glassy as he feels the tears gathering. “I will.” It’s barely a whisper. 


And then he’s in the elevator, the doors sliding shut. Chuck always keeps his promises.

Both Kaiju are dead now, and Gipsy’s grabbed the remnants of one to toss into the Breach. You watch the display of the Breach on the screen as the corpse floats down, down, down…

“The Breach is open.” Tendo moves toward the intercom fast as lightning in order to tell the four pilots this. Their time is limited and they have to act now.

By this time you’re biting at your fingernail, your other hand holding up your shaky arm. Your breaths are short as you watch the payload sink through the Breach. The countdown has commenced and the two Jaegers are taking their distance. In the last five seconds they anchor themselves down to the ocean floor.

The timer reaches zero. The display of the Breach turns red.

“It’s closed.” No one celebrates quite yet, not until they hear the pilots’ voices over the intercom to let everyone know that they’re fine, and they’re ready to be brought back to the Shatterdome, back to safety, to true safety, because the threat has been stifled at the source.

The cheers are deafening. You laugh at the realization of what just transpired. They did it. You hug Herc, you hug Max and kiss his nose, you hug Tendo and he spins you around. The clock is shut down and you can all rest. There is no more working against the clock and doing your best to sort out the problem before the next Kaiju emerge.

You’re running through the hallways again. You know where the pilots will be coming through and you’re determined to catch Chuck before he’s overwhelmed by everybody else.

Raleigh, Mako, the Marshal, and Chuck emerge from the elevator. This time when Chuck spots you, he meets you in the middle. His helmet clacks on the concrete as he drops it so he has both arms to engulf you in a hug. The other three pilots smile before continuing on their way, leaving the two of you to bask in each other’s presence. You hug Chuck tightly, cheek resting against his drivesuit. The tears spill for real this time. You don’t try to hide it. His arms around your waist only tighten as he pulls you flush against him as if to tell you ”I’m here. I’m alive.”

You feel him kiss your head and he mumbles into your hair “I promised I’d come back, didn’t I?”

He’d done it. He’d flown to Pluto and back.

You can finally breathe again.