#for the graduation i have to get Yet Another Day Off Work and also im supposed to get him a gift???

[axel-tiredstudent]

sent THREE super long / important assignments due next week today maybe spending days inside working on them was worth it

[pepprs]

prefacing this by saying im fine and its whatever and im mostly numb to it. but it kinda fucking sucks that being gaslit about my own sexuality leads to… doubting my own sexuality lol!

[blowmymongrelmind]

can everything just stop for one fucking minute so i can catch my breath, my sister gets married in a week and two weeks after that is my brothers high school graduation and a week ago was my sisters bachelorette party in new orleans i dont know why my family thinks i have three weeks worth of plane ticket and hotel money i dont know why everything has to happen at the same damn time

[navstuffs]

Friday night dinner

Pairing: Carmen Berzatto x Sydney Adamu

Summary: Carmen Berzatto has dinner with Sydney and her dad.

Trigger warnings: none, they are already dating, domesticity with syd's dad

Author's Notes: hiii! launching this one month before the show comes back and i had this idea since last year?? lol im an embarrassment. OH, i personally didnt like the alternative ending i gave this fic but left in there, you can read it if you want to :) also the name of the fic comes from a british show. anyway, enjoy your reading!

Carmy arrives at the apartment, knocking precisely three times and holding the wine bottle in his hands. No sweaty hands, which was good. Years of cooking probably stopped that side of him, at least. Deep down, he can feel the tingling sensation of nervousness and anxiety, and it just grows when it is Mr. Adamu who opens the door, cloth on his shoulder, apron on his hips. Mr. Adamu doesn't say anything as Carmy, standing there like an idiot, greets, "Good night, sir."

"Hey, come in, she's in the kitchen."

Not off to a good start, but at least Mr. Adamu had given him a slight smirk, not one that Carmy had noticed, looking down as he entered. It is his first time in their apartment after they started what he doesn't know yet how to call, two months ago. Richie explains, "going out, getting to know each other," what Fak calls "being utterly in love," and Sugar pinches his arm, stating, "If he loses Syd, I'm going to kill you."

Carmy tries to erase the thoughts in his head as he follows Mr. Adamu into the kitchen. The recognizable smell of food, Syd's food, welcomes him and slightly calms his nerves. When Carmy finally sees Syd in the middle of boiling pots and sizzling pans, he feels like he is home.

"Look who I found at our doorstep. Didn't have a choice but to let him in."

"Dad!" Syd sounds scandalized as Carmy nods. 

"Hey, I-mhm, I brought wine." He hands the wine bottle to Sydney, who thanks him. Then, Carmy stands there, hands in his pockets. "Can I help?"

Before Sydney can even reply, her dad shakes his head. "Please, like any of my guests would ever work in my kitchen. Go relax, Carmen. Syd and I will take care of this. We are almost done anyway."

Well, great. At least, while cooking, Carmy would not have to think about what to say to Mr. Adamu during dinner without sounding like a fool. Now? Carmy nods, giving another smile in their direction, before leaving the kitchen. He could sit on the sofa, but that would sound like he took more liberty than he should. Or he could hang between the space from the kitchen to the living room, looking like a piece of furniture that no one actually knew how exactly got there. You know, in case they needed help.

Carmy decides on the middle ground: the living room, but without sitting on the sofa. With one last look to Syd's back, he steps into the living room, his eyes working the space. Smooth jazz plays in the background, but it is low enough that he has to pay attention. CD’s, books, even DVD’s. Carmy feels like invading space, invading somewhere he shouldn't be yet. 

He turns his eyes to the books: some mysteries, science, and cooking—tons of cooking books. Carmy gives a small chuckle, some of which he had himself. He then turns his eyes to the pictures across the bookshelf: Syd and her dad, his arm squeezing her shoulders on probably the day of her graduation from the Culinary Institute of America. Mr. Adamu looks proud, pulling her into a half-hug as Syd smirks back at the camera.

The other picture shows an eight-year-old Sydney playing in a backyard, running after a woman he couldn't see. The next one shows the same eight-year-old Sydney with a woman who looks exactly like her, smiling at the camera. 

"My mom." 

Carmy turns to find Sydney at his side, a glass of wine in her hands. "Oh, yeah. She was a pretty woman."

"Yeah." Syd hands him the glass of wine, but Carmy doesn't drink it. She also looks nervous, not as in the day we re-opened The Bear together, but you are here now, and this is getting more real.

"Hey, you good?" Carmy asks, squeezing her arm. She takes a deep breath and nods. 

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Didn't think it would be this nerve-wrecking, and it's just, you know, my dad!"

"Wait until you meet my family," Carmy replies before he can stop himself. He realizes what he said and quickly tries to correct it. "Not, not that we would be going there. If we went there, I meant. We don't have to."

Syd looks at him, her face opening into a smile. "We shouldn't -"

"Hey, Sydney, I think the pie is almost done." Her dad calls her from the kitchen, and Sydney startles, asking for one second before leaving. Carmy follows her, glass of wine still secured in his hand. 

He watches Mr. Adamu and Sydney work for a while. They barely look at each other, but there isn't no animosity. No screaming, shouting, nothing like that. Mr. Adamu tries to explain to his daughter that he didn't know if the pie was good, and Sydney gestures that it was nothing. He goes back on finishing the salad, humming to the tune it was playing; how he could hear it, Carmy had no idea. Carmy just stands there, observing their work. What a contrast with his family.

"Oh, could you put the plates, please, Carmen?"

"On it, Sir. Where are they?" 

"Upper cabinet to my right. Forks and knives will be on the first drawer down here."

Carmen takes the task seriously, trying to impress Mr. Adamu with his ability to place the plates, forks, and knives on their dining table. But hey, you try to impress when you can, right? 

Soon, they are seated at the table. Carmen waits until Mr. Adamu is properly seated on the head of the table to sit himself, looking straight into Syd's eyes. He has a good feeling about this.

"I hope you enjoy the food, Carmen. I was responsible for the salad preparation."

"Which looks good, Sir."

Mr. Adamu doesn't correct the "Sir" but gives him a satisfied smile. Carmy then feels a slight nudge on his foot, Sydney's brown eyes smirking. She was probably having a blast, watching him all nervous and shit. But Carmy realizes he doesn't seem to mind, not this time, as he smirks at her back.

extra/alternative ending:

It is not later that night, after saying goodbye to Emmanuel, that Carmy asks Syd how well he did. Syd, who is walking him to the door, stops her hand on the door's handle.

"I don't think he hates you," she replies, face serious.

"Yeah, but, but, do you think he liked me? Like actually liked me? Because I feel like now, I shouldn't told that stupid joke Richie suggested, or I shouldn't have -" Before he can continue, Syd's lips are on his, silencing him. His hands immediately go towards her hips, pulling Syd close to him. After they break apart, Syd taps his chest, "You did great. He let you call him Emmanuel."

[jelliezellie]

I got you ! (Maybe another platonic/romantic request bc i realised im a sucker for those)

Cadet!Reader who brought their own tea from their home and who decided to share with Levi ? Maybe tea that their family cultivated ?

Pure fluff bc im also a sucker for this

💞💖

A/N: Oh my god, my lovely Levi requester hello!! <3 Thank you so much for another amazing request :)

Idk why I struggled to write this, I literally love the idea I just couldn’t write it at first lmfao

Hopefully this lives up to your standards though &lt;3

Homemade Tea - Levi Ackerman x Reader

Your family ran a tea shop in Trost. The day it was destroyed, you thought all hope for your family’s business was, too, but you were hard workers. Even for something as delicate and seemingly purposeless as tea, your family worked to recreate every recipe down to the last measurement. 

When you graduated from the Training Corps, your parents surprised you with several bags of your own tea so you could “take a little bit of home” with you. Little did you know, you needed home more than anything.

You woke up with a sigh, climbing out of bed treacherously. Your thighs ached and your arms were strained—putting a shirt on had never been a difficult task, but the Scouts seem to have the ability to make everything difficult. You hissed in pain as you pulled the rest of your clothes on, walking down to the mess hall. It was still a bit dark out, so you decided to take some tea with you. At least Connie and Sasha and Jean wouldn’t beg you for a taste. 

A kettle was already over the fire and Captain Levi sat at a table by himself, glaring at you when you appeared. 

“Why are you up so early, cadet?” He questioned. He wasn’t even in uniform yet—God. It wasn’t anything magnificent; at least, it usually wouldn’t be. But somehow, the captain could wear a sweater and read a book and you were head over heels. Your stomach twisted as you took another step towards the kettle.

You stood up a little straighter upon seeing him. “I was just going to make some tea.”

His brows tented. “You’re not using mine. Erwin paid for that.”

“I have my own.”

Levi’s brow rose and he placed a black, leather bookmark in his book. “How do you have your own?” His tired eyes stared at you, then at the bag you showed him,

“It’s my family’s.”

Levi stood as the kettle whistled softly and took it off of the fire. He opened a cabinet and took a cup out, then searched for something else. He sighed in defeat, looking back at you. “What kind of tea is that?”

“It’s my family’s recipe; it’s original.”

He frowned and his brows rose in disappointment. “Does it have a name?”

You thought for a moment, a smile tugging at your lips.“Home.”

He sighed and found an infuser, then handed it to you. “Put some in.”

You tilted your head. “Did you run out of tea?” You grinned sleepily as your brow rose smugly.

“Just do it, brat.” 

The sun shone through the trees softly, providing a golden glow to the mess hall. You placed the infuser in the kettle, then turned to Levi. The sun made his baggy, silver eyes shine a little brighter. As you admired his eyes, he found himself trying not to look at you. It was rare for a cadet to get up this early, but that wasn’t what made him antsy. No—what made him question your presence was your tranquility.

Normally, when the cadets came down to the mess hall for breakfast, he’d sigh and go back to his room because of their ruckus. But you looked at him with matching tired eyes and a bag of herbs for your tea in your hands. 

Unusual, he thought, but once he smelled the tea, his heart melted a bit. The cinnamon made his mouth water and the lavender added to the comfortable silence you shared.

He cleared his throat. “It smells good. You called it home, right?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t really have a name.”

“Does it smell like home right now?”

Your entire demeanor softened. “A little.”

His eyes flickered at you before he stared out the window. You took the kettle off of the fire as he placed two cups out in front of you. You poured an even amount in both before placing the kettle on the counter. 

Levi delicately lifted his cup by the rims with his slender fingers, bringing it to his lips. You picked up your cup, too, and drank from it, relishing the taste of your family’s tea. It was warm and it felt like pure comfort and joy seeped into your tastebuds and warmed your body. When you placed your cup down, you noticed the captain staring at you, as if he was studying you. 

He looked away and cleared his throat. “The tea—it’s good.”

You nodded. “Thank you; my family—”

“Can you make more for me tomorrow?”

You tilted your head as a soft smile tugged at your lips. “You like it that much?”

He struggled to maintain eye contact as he nodded. “I like it,” he replied stiffly. “It tastes good. It tastes like,” he paused, his brows tented as he searched for a word he couldn’t place. “It tastes like home.”

You nodded. “Good. That’s what it is to me.”

Levi sat at his table, sliding his book out of the way as he stared at you expectantly. “Sit,” he mumbled, not as an order, but as an invitation.

You sat across from him, your thighs hurting as you lowered yourself onto a chair. “What are we doing for training today?”

His brows furrowed. “Are you sore from training yesterday? All we did was ODM training.”

You sighed. “Yeah. Connie and Jean sort of tempted me into racing them through the forest.”

He nodded and his brows rose. “So that’s where you went after training.” He wanted to speak to you but couldn’t find you anywhere in the barracks. When he noticed that Connie and Jean were gone, too, he knew you were probably fine. “Hange was worried about you.”

You mean you were worried about me? You thought to yourself. Hange was experimenting on their titans all night. 

“Oh, really?” You responded. “Huh. I wonder why.” You stood, wincing in pain. “I guess I should go check in with them…”

He grabbed your hand quickly. “No!” He exclaimed, his eyes wide. He blinked and his face softened again. “No. I meant to say that I was.” He paused, staring up at you. “I was worried about you.” 

You smirked. “Why?”

 “Don’t worry about that right now. It’s too early for any of that,” he mumbled softly. “Just drink your tea.” 

You two continued to drink tea until the rest of the scouts filled up the mess hall. Every day after that, though, you filled up his teacup with your family’s tea.

[gaybd1]

pls allow me to make a long life update ramble here bc im sick of irl people not understanding at all

I feel like I have a feel disconnected points to make

People like me aren’t meant to get bachelor’a degrees and we’re DAMN SURE not meant to get master’s

I’m 1000% just in survival mode right now and there’s theoretically a month left to go but idek if I’ll make it that long tbh

It has taken me YEARS to figure out a healthy/sustainable work-life balance that goes with my executive dysfunction but that’s NOT POSSIBLE working full time AND doing a degree

I’ve been feeling guilty for resting at all lately (and probably should) but yet if I don’t my health suffers majorly

It has always been hard for me to get simple things done, but now I can’t even THINK about simple necessary errands like walking to the supermarket or going to get a cell phone number or updating shit at the bank because ALL my energy goes to keeping me and my dog alive, keeping a job, and trying to stay in this program

I have delayed my transition by YEARS to pay for all this which was definitely the wrong call ughhhhh

I worked SO hard all of K-12 to get into a good university, when it came down to it didn’t even want to go, was too depressed to apply to hardly any, chose my best option still not knowing what I wanted to do but forced into it and forced to take out all of these loans when I didn’t even know what they meant.

Ended up never dealing with audhd shit, trauma shit, didn’t know what I was doing with my life, tried to get jobs to pay for school but couldn’t handle class and jobs at the same time so got more depressed until I stopped going to classes altogether and got kicked out

That would have been great for me tbh but I still didn’t know what else to do so I begged them to let me back in which they did and I ended up barely graduating with some pointless major I just chose to get me a degree. And also $80k of student debt I had no way to even comprehend knowing how to use

Didn’t know what to do after that either so I ended up in retail for a couple years before I got a random rare opportunity to get me out of there and doing what I always wanted

Well. I felt like I needed to make up for lost time degree-wise and ended up basically begging myself into this half-shitty program that culminates in this masters. I applied maybe five years ago, waited a little over two to start until I had money to pay for it (this is after fleeing the US and the 80k lmao) and somehow killed the first year of it.

I took another year and a half off trying to figure out the rest of the money which I eventually did and that’s how we end up here. I will hopefully have the degree in October but will still be paying for it the rest of the school year rip

So financially this sacrifice is obviously huge and on one hand I never thought I’d be able to do it so yay me and on the other hand I have NOT been able to pursue v v important trans stuff which I notice and deal with eVERY GODDAmn day thanks AND I will also probably not be able to make my every-18-month visit home next summer with my family which also gODDAMN SUCKS because family was EVERYTHING to me growing up and they’ve all forgotten it and probably think I have too but I miss those mfers so much and they would never buy a flight to come see me so.

ANYWAY yeah in undergrad I could NOT do a job and school at the same time so I’ve been proud of being able to handle it this time around but the last fourish months of this program are so intense and I am NOT handling it

Like I have done SO WELL up to now so I feel like I just GOTTA keep going but it’s SO HARD and I’m TOO STUPID and I’ve been told my whole life I’m not meant for higher education and now BOY DO I KNOW IT

I’m just trying to keep going. I order food and groceries to my house. I’m putting off super important errands and appointments as long as I can because I JUST CANT GET THERE I CANNOT WASTE SPOONS ON CELL PHONE PLANS RIGHT NOW I’m just trying to stay alive holy shit

I hate feeling so incompetent in my personal life especially because I’ve always put my professional life first out of like. Fear of losing it. and I KNOW this “laziness” is justified bc I’m spread so thin AND have executive dysfunction and a chronic illness but holy shit it still feels bad scoob. So fucking bad.

I think what I need to do is arrange time off work just to get this all sorted and finished but I’ve literally never taken a day off in my life so I’d feel bad and have MORE anxiety figuring out how to do it lololol ahhhhhhhh

[secret-sturniolo]

just a long vent. read (or dont) idc

not that anyone really cares, but i just have some things i need to get off my chest because im currently alone in my room crying in the dark.

let me preface this by saying i dont have any friends. i literally do not have a single person i can talk to. i dont even have a therapist because she just quit. the last friend group i had, i found out they had a secret group chat where they were shit talking and making fun of me. so, the closest thing to friends i have are my 151 followers and the people in this fandom. when i log on here and i see that people have interacted with me or like my works, thats literally the highlight of my day. so to anyone who has talked to me or shown me support, i truly thank you and i love you.

if you met my family, you would think we have it all. my parents own a successful business, they (appear) happily married, and my brother and i have everything we could ever want or need. but heres the truth:

my parents are alcoholics. every night its the same thing. they get drunk, they fight and yell and say nasty things about each other until one of them goes to bed and they sleep in different rooms. im the one who has to mediate things. im the one who has to send my little brother to bed so he doesnt have to hear them. im the one who cleans up the spilled drinks. im the one who drove us to the hotel when my dad was being verbally abusive. and when my mom almost died in the ICU a month ago as a direct result of drinking, i was the one visiting her multiple times a day. i was the one at home doing all of the dishes, all of the laundry, all of the cleaning, and bringing my brother to and from school ON TOP OF my own schoolwork and going to work every evening all because my dad is lazy and doesnt get out of bed until 1pm.

they swore to me that they were done drinking. and when they lasted 3 days and got drunk again, i didnt shame them. i didnt say anything at all. in fact, i showed them support.

wanna guess what i get in return for all of that?

i get told that im the one whos tearing our family apart, that if they get divorced its my fault. that maybe if i was nicer we would have less problems.

and god forbid that i have a bad day sometimes like a normal human being, because then i get accused of not taking my medications.

they also like to act like my mental health problems are harder on them than they are on me as if they didnt literally play a role in me developing them. a year ago i had to go to another state to receive inpatient and residential treatment because i was anorexic and suicidal. let me tell you, thats not a vacation. i have clinically diagnosed ptsd from things i witnessed there. all those times they had to take me to the hospital? yeah, not fun for me either. i promise you, nobody has tubes shoved up their nose just for shits and giggles.

you guys, im only 17. i havent even graduated high school yet. if this is what life is like now, im terrified to be an adult.

i mean it when i say that this fandom keeps me going. it makes me feel appreciated, even just a little. so if you made it to the end of this, thanks for caring enough to read this absolute dumpster fire of a post.

love you all <3

[ellecdc]

Hi elle i was the anon whose results were supposed to come out today. well, my average fell by two grades. i'm not happy, my parents are not happy. I passed barely with decent scores. I'm going to a mediocre business school this fall (if they even want me) yay i guess. that's it for the update im going to go jump off a cliff now

should i just stop my education? anyways my stupidity and mental health doesn't allow it guess the futures not very bright after all

I'm sorry that it's taken me a few days to respond to this; I will admit I've been having a difficult time myself and didn't feel I had it in me to give this ask the response it deserves.

instead of babbling off motivational quotes about how "it'll all be alright in the end; if it's not alright then it is not yet the end" etc etc, I will tell you a story.

my best friend growing up [and one of my dearest friends still to this day] failed her written drivers test seven times [I don't think either of us really remember the actual number because every time we tell the story, the number grows more and more lol, but it was certainly at least 4-5 times]. Today? She's driving around and we laugh and laugh whenever we tell the story.

my first degree was in psychology. when I was 17-21, my mental health was at an all time low, particularly in my first and second year, and by the third [and then my fourth] I was so unbelievably tired of school... I failed. I failed a lot of classes. I failed a sociology class, I failed my first year intro to psychology! [basically psych 101 - as a psych major], and a few statistics/math courses!

in fact, in my second year I decided to take one class online while my other four were all in person. I submitted the first quiz in that online class and then nothing else for the rest of the semester. I never logged on again, never dropped the course, and by the time I realized what I'd done [or bothered to consider the consequences of putting this class 'out of sight, out of mind'] it was during exam season, and I knew I hadn't learned a single thing in that course and was going to fail, so I never even showed up to the final exam.

you know what I finished that class with? 8%.

on my university transcript, I have an 8%. I didn't just fail, I FAILED.

and you know what else? I got my degree anyway

I have a degree hanging in my office; a degree that saw a lot of tears, a lot of pain, a lot of failures, and a lot of doubts. sometimes I still wonder if I even deserved the degree, seeing as how I was anything but studious or invested in my academics. I graduated, and it was not with honours nor anywhere near top of my class, but I graduated

I even worked for two years in the field immediately post graduation. not only did I get the degree, I also got the job

and then....I took my transcript from my first university - that same transcript that has an 8% on it - and applied to another university....and got accepted

and remember that friend I mentioned? the same one who failed her drivers test an 'obscene' amount of times? she went to nursing school, and did really well. she's a devoted care taker and if anything ever happened to me [or any of my loved ones], I would absolutely want her in charge of my care.

well, she failed her nursing exam. she was devastated; this was all she'd ever wanted to do, the only career she ever saw herself in, and she'd devoted so many years trying to get here

so I reminded her about the drivers test. and I said "sweets, what are we doing right now?" and she was like "...talking?" and I was like "no shut up; right now we are sitting in your car in a McDonald's parking lot that you drove us to...with your license that you got. So yeah, maybe you failed your nurses exam, but you also failed your drivers test, yet here you are almost seven years later having driven an incalculable number of kilometres. you failed your test and it probably sucked at the time, but today we laugh about it and it's nothing but a moment in time. you will nurse one day, and this will be merely a moment in time that you may not even fully remember."

so.......all this to say; tests are sometimes meant to be failed. that's not a comforting thought, and I'm sorry, but you either pass or you fail [or you pass but aren't please with your marks]. and right now this feels big, and right now it feels heavy, but one day this moment and these feelings will only be a memory or a moment in time. I've never been anything but a mediocre student until I went back to college in 2020 [I was twenty four at the time!], and yet I still graduated high school, got accepted to university, failed classes, graduated university, and got accepted to university again.

my friend failed her drivers test numerous times yet owns her own car and drives everyday. she failed her nursing exam yet still tends to patients in hospitals and nursing homes today.

don't stop your education, don't jump off a cliff, and don't be too hard on yourself - it's a moment in time, you're building your lore, and you will be okay.

xx

[jiamiuxin]

daiya no ace anime reflection/review

**spoilers!!**

im at a point in my life where i have a lot of free time at the end of the day and i find myself filling that slot with anime.

for the past two weeks, ace of the diamond has taken up a big portion of my mind as i found myself falling in love with the team and its players.

about a month ago was when i started a roll on watching sports anime. i caught up on haikyuu, binged blue lock and ao ashi, and finally spent another good chunk of time on free!!. ace of the diamond was no new title to me, yet for some reason i kept it on the back burner. i dont know why; whether it was the art style, the then-seemingly long list of episodes, or the fact that it was baseball. maybe it was all of them. when i burned myself out trying to find another anime, i finally settled on giving DnA a chance.

today, as i have finished all 176 episodes (no OVAs yet!) i confidently say it's one of my top, if not the top, anime ive seen so far.

i noted a few things as i progressed through the series: strong points, cons, favorite characters, and a few personal thoughts.

i will start off with the cons head on. daiya's is, i guess i could say, notorious? for its "annoying, loud, benchwarmer" MC. one genuine complaint i do have is the lack of animation quality in the third season. there were many still shots with voice overs, though i felt a little more satisfied with the animation towards the end. also, to a smaller extent, the anime is not as complete as the manga.

anyway, i think the slow burn is actually a strong point, as many others point out. indeed, it is the very low lows that make the highs so high. don't get me wrong, i love a stupidly powerful MC, such as mob psycho 100 or OPM, but the realism gives DnA its charm and relatability. when others say "season 1 is bad, season 2 is good, season 3 is amazing," they are not lying.

DnA's charm not only lies in its realism, but also its character development and character interactions. brotherhood, leadership, and teamwork are all themes throughout the anime. the way the third years cared for their juniors and the way the juniors fought to elongate their seniors' summers was beautiful, heart-wrenching, and gut-punching to me, a recent college graduate. these types of moments are not uncommon in sports anime, but something about DnA's execution made it so much more..emotional? relatable? whether it was due to convenient timing or the fact that the sheer amount of episodes made me feel like they were actually my own friends, i just felt so much more compelled when watching daiya.

on the topic of my personal emotions, as i said, the themes of graduating/retiring really hit home for me. but that made daiya all the more special to me. both personal relatability and just watching everyone's hard work made it so easy to sympathize with their determination. maybe it was the countless scenes of them heaving and gasping for air; or the scenes where TJ made their frustrations so visible and vulnerable. as a watcher, i did not see myself rooting for some characters in a show; normally, i'd take a normal stance with the expectations that the "of course, the MC team will win." i saw myself rooting for my friends. in addition, knowing TJ, we can never be too sure on how seido's games will actually go. everything comes down to the realism. it's daiya's realism that made me feel their passion, made them so relatable, and made it feel like they were actually at high stakes. i truly, rarely never cry when watching an anime. besides assassination classroom, no other anime has made me so emotional. not only that, but daiya made me cry several times. the amount of immersion is insane.

to no surprise, my favorite character is miyuki. he was the know-it-all. he was essentially the rock of seido with his calls. i often found myself wondering how strong seido would be without miyuki. no disrespect to ono; as he proved, and as kataoka also believes, ono is also reliable. but miyuki was just built different bro. anyway, i appreciated his character for not only baseball iq, but his rapid maturity into the captain role, and his flexibility with his juniors. i found his personality very admirable and his logical approach to situations both relatable and reliable. other characters i particularly were fond of were chris and kuramochi. if okumura had more screen time, i could also see him climbing up my list. as someone who had no prior baseball knowledge, daiya/seido as a whole, but particularly chris and miyuki, gave me a newfound respect for and fundmental understanding of baseball.

i think one last thing i wanted to note was that i really don't read manga. but for daiya, im definitely gonna pick up the manga now. i have never done this before for an anime, even others i really liked--hxh, haikyuu, one punch man, etc. i just never felt compelled to read the story further beyond the anime. but for daiya, this is something im willing to do. i just love it that much.

if you are having second thoughts or are debating on watching DnA, def watch it if you do not mind slow burn and can take a realistic approach. on the other hand, i do not recommend if you want to see an OP MC.

~

i am truly a nobody, especially not a professional anime critic LMFAO but i just wanted to vent my thoughts of daiya somewhere :) these are just my personal opinions

[queerspaceprince]

super long post

i saw the tv glow spoilers, me being depressing, tw's in tags

i went to see I Saw the TV Glow this afternoon. i got it. def cried a little (idk if hrt has stopped me from crying more bc i havent cried since i was in hs anyway) my sib got it, tho we havent talked ab it yet bc im still processing even now. my mom did not get any of it. at all. wasnt affected. thats fine, whatever.

and. jesus. i give the movie a 15/10, but it was. a whole lot. i have too many emotions.

Im def gonna mention a few spoilers so if you dont want to be spoiled, is your warning.

it made me feel too much. is the allegory really allegory if the hidden meaning is right at the surface?

when owen says that thing during their convo on the bleachers -i cant remember the exact words fuck- something about feeling hollow or missing something or whatever, how he thinks something is wrong with him and his parents do to-i feel that. so much. i felt it so much more before my egg cracked, but i still feel it in relation to my depression and anxiety. that hit me.

there was also that part about feeling like you're watching yourself from the outside, as if through a tv. oof.

then the whole thing maddie said about how time didnt feel right, how nothing changed when she left. i get it. I was 10 nd my parents got divorced, and suddenly im 11 and thinking i wanted to d1e for the first time, and then im 14 in a kind of manipulative relationship, with like 1 friend and super depressed, and then i was graduating and realizing im queer and exploring my gender and going through a breakup. then im 20, and getting my first job, and coming out to my family. and now im 26. and i still mostly feel the same way i always have. i have more good days, and im more confident now, but i still feel like im just going through the motions a lot of the time.

when did I stop being a kid? ive been an adult for 8 years and Im still only working part time (32 hrs), still living with my mother bc rent is $$$$, still barely functional enough that I havent cleaned my room since last year and ive only showered 3 times in the past week, and i have to force myself to go get coffee on my days off or else ill stay in bed all day. Im just stuck here. i shouldve taken driving lessons when I could. id be out. except i cant leave my sibling behind with my mother. shes not awful, but them being alone is an explosion waiting to happen. but they dont have a job and i doubt i could support both of us. and now i dont trust my eyes enough, like i read for 15 minutes and everything else goes blurry, like im seeing triple.

anyway. next is the scene in where she talks about k1lling herself to get back to the pink opaque world. I. have to admit i nearly threw up. the imagery, the way she spoke about it. she said she regretted it while she was stuck underground, then how she felt good about it, about getting out....ive been sitting in a low spot for a while, it was better while we were on our trip, but it just reverted when we came back. i keep thinking im going to relapse into sh again. i feel so close to the edge sometimes. and theres really no reason for it either. my life is fine. not great, not perfect. but adequate. anyway i had to close my eyes and take a minute after that.

i feel that even without wanting to go back to the other world, maddie was suicidal. she wouldve found some reasoning to k1ll herself. Now ive only ever been actively su1cidal once, when i was 15 -or 16- idk my teen years are all a blur of depression and anxiety. im good now. well. i say good. im more, self destructive then really wanting to d1e. just. i feel so bad on the inside for no reason, why can i have a reason to hurt on the outside?? anyway, im ok now, im 3.5 years clean, i dont want that to change. im working on my coping mechanisms.

there was another quote from that planetarium scene that i couldnt stop thinking about but has now vanished from my mind entirely. bc sometimes getting my thoughts in order is like. catching smoke.

anyway. then everything after that. him growing old. knowing something about him is different but not wanting to acknowledge it or it would drastically his life as he knows it. I understand that feeling. except for me, its not exactly acknowledgement of myself, its doing something about it. while I didnt exactly stay in the closet long, that feeling of not wanting anything to change is why the closet exists. i realized i was queer in 2014, trans 2015. came out as bi that summer, but i didnt come out as trans until 3 years later. when I had a job. access to money if i ended up getting kicked onto the street. i literally had a bag packed and ready to go. and yet. even when i did come out, i was too afraid to correct my family on my pronouns or name for another year. my sibling really helped with that. immediately used them. Tbh theyre my fave person and id do anything they asked.

the whole thing about there still being time.

i see a lot of tiktoks about this. people watning to do stuff now bc there is still time to change your life or whatever. im interpreting it differently.

there is time now, but your hourglass will run low eventually. live while you still can, while you can still do something about it. how that message showed up after maddie left- their time together had run out, but he might still be able to do something. make a change. idk. but owen was too scared to do anything.

im still scared to do anything.

i still dont correct people on my name or pronouns if they get them wrong. i still dont speak up if my family says anything not pc (they are learning tho). im too scared to talk about any big feeling i have bc ive always been brushed off in the past and i dont want to feel worse becasue of it.

i still havent done anything to get my name or gender marker changed bc im scared. idk why. ive been living as a man for 6 years, i got top surgery almost 3 years ago, and ive been on hrt for nearly 2.

it terrifies me for some reason. maybe ts the complexity of it. ive found 3 different versions of the paperwork, and nowhere does it tell me exactly how or who to submit it too. one of those said i could submit online but it had to be printed, notarized, and scaned back into the computer? none of the other versions said it had to be notarized???

and i have nobody who has any knowlege that could help. my aunt worked for a lawyer for years, and yet she just said all I have to do is go to the dmv. like babe. no. thats not how that works.

i think ill start on that again.

while i still have time.

[sl1tcl1t]

Life Update: Idk where else to write down my thoughts and experiences for almost the past year.

To get myself caught up with the last post I made from last year, it was my final year in HS and I never wanted to leave that rancid hél/hø\e so damn bad. I finally graduated and got into college. This freshman year is the absolute worst. On top of that, I couldn't get a dorm room, which is expected according to the hierarchy of classmen. But anyway, this year's schedule has been extraordinarily harmful to my physical and mentally. Since I don't have a dorm, I gotta commute to my classes every single day. In my case, I must drive all the way from the south to the city (1hr 30min on avg.) This is not a bad drive, unless u wanna beat the I-75/I-85 9 - 5 traffic. Which ALSO MEANS I gotta wake up at 4:00 am and leave the house by 5 if I want to arrive in time for my 8 and 10 am classes. Additionally, my last class during Mon,Weds, and Fri ends at 5pm. I don't get home till about 7. AND on top of all that, Tue and Thurs is when I work my part time shift. The latest my shift can end is at 7:30pm and it takes me at least 30 mins to get home. If I want to get the most sleep possible, I gotta be in bed by 9. My sleep schedule bc of this is incredibly fùçk3d up. Luckily, me and my friend made a little room for me to sleep in my car. Which is also another problem. Bc Im too damn sleep deprived, I oversleep multiple times and end up missing classes. Classes where I can't easily get a PowerPoint w/readily available info to write. I feel incredibly behind.

My mental and physical health has gotten progressively worse since I moved outta my mom's house. I really don't wanna get into grave detail abt my family, but TLDR; both parents are complexly problematic, but one's more flexible than the other. But, Jesus Christ Almighty, living with this man is insufferable. Nothing but complaining, guiltripping, nonchalant shaming, and being plain irritating. He brings a wave of negative energy anytime he enters a room. Granted, there are things that he complains about that are justified, but he's getting more and more senile everyday. So he just gets mad at anything now. It pisses me off but also makes me sad. Another thing is that work is overexerting my well-being whilst giving me such a low pay. For context, I work in a warehouse now. Lifting boxes every other day that are half the size of you will give you nausea. My feet have blisters and my hands are cramping. My calves burn, my entire arm is aching, and my head pounds harder than ever. My friend suggests that I might have burn out, and I believe it with every bone in my body. Working at a place that accepts newly hs grads, ofc there would be å$5h0lés my age and worse. The smell has gotten worse since I moved in w dad. He essentially lives in a white trash neighborhood, so the smell outside is horrendous. This smell has affected the inside of my house and now I reek. And the ppl at work love to remind me abt my smelly ass despite trying my hardest to mask it. I seriously cannot stand other day in there and hopefully I can get a new job this upcoming summer.

But apart from all this, the cherry on top of this shit show was today after work. I got off early and wanted to visit this little gravesite around in my area to take pics and upload on here. I chickened out. It's too damn dark for me to take any so I walked around, contemplating life per usual. I decided to go inside the convenience store. I asked if there were any sleeping pills/melatonin and the guy had asked a question that made my mind go blank,

"Are you homeless?"

Never in life would I hear those words issued to me, but if I'm gonna be completely honest, I live at my dad's house, not paying any bills or insurance (yet), I sleep in my car majority of the day, and I have the worst pay to labor ratio. So technically, Imma borderline broke ass freeloading bum. But anyway, I was even more in shock when he rang my items. I forgot my wallet in the car and told him I was going to run out n grab it, but he just gave me the bag with an empathetic, "it's okay". And now I feel like a piece of shit to completion. Bc in hindsight, Im not HOMELESS, but it damn sure feels like I am.

I can't believe Im turning into every person I've met in the workforce. Ppl who just live paycheck to paycheck and just let the days past by; not doing anything but working. I use to make fun of those ppl at my last job as a cashier while in HS, but seriously, I got the realest reality check of my life. I really cannot live a life like that for 30+ years if I can't figure something out by graduation. Else I'm better off with maggots in my eyes and my skin wilting in the ground.

I'm done ranting, I need some sleep.... GN and happy Halloween ✌🏽

[psyduckappears]

Homesickness for stoncy? PLS ik you've written the last two prompts for it, so im sorry if you get sick of writing stoncy 😭😭

read it on ao3

no but honestly i don't think that getting sick of these three idiots is even possible!!! this was such a blast and also this got away from me again so BADLY ..... hope you like it :)

It's a twist-of-fate kind of coincidence, how it all comes together.

After Vecna, after another brush with death, and world-death, and all-encompassing devastation, Hawkins goes back to normal.

Small-town people are a species beyond comprehension – a tight-knit family that will stab each other in the back at the first opportunity but hold your hand through the next crisis as though nothing happened, a steaming casserole or a rich, sweet pie ready to end all your worries – a community of shared knowledge and shared identity that doesn’t welcome difference but values togetherness over honesty; it’s alright to be different as long as we don’t acknowledge it – a microcosm of shared-experience who will help each other through their trauma as long as nobody calls it trauma.

Hawkins goes back to town-festivals in the summer and caring too much about high school basketball games and exchanging gossip on Main Street when you’ve just run into your neighbor after checking off the last of your grocery list.

The kids go back to school. Robin, Nancy, and Jonathan graduate high school and, only a blink of an eye later, move away for college. Joyce finds a new job, one that pays marginally better than the one at Melvald’s, when one of the school’s secretaries retires. She has more than enough experience making phone calls thanks to that awful telemarketing gig, and nobody doubts that she’ll be able to manage any parent that might try to cause trouble just fine. Even Hopper goes back to his small-town Chief job, now sharing households with Joyce, and together neither of them need to pull as many hours as they did before.

Steve is … well, Steve is Steve. Does he spend too much of his time off work alone at home, watching on the news as the world at large goes to ruins around him that from this rural exile stay distant silhouettes on the horizon? Absolutely. Does he feel a little left behind, here in Hawkins, while the others have left him for the wide, wide world, where life happens every day, right before your eyes? Sure. Sure, he does, but it’s more than that.

He misses Robin, who moved to Boston with Nancy. They promised each other he’d follow her there as soon as he has some money saved and an eye on a job, but so far, it’s all felt a little hopeless. Besides, he doesn’t think he’s quite ready to leave Hawkins, yet, despite everything. After everything over the past couple of years, he probably should be running without a single look over his shoulder, but the thought of leaving still makes him uneasy, invokes this violent urge to radio Dustin, or El, or any of the kids just to see that everything is still looking calm. It’s hard to trust the peace.

Robin, the absolute saint that she is, understands. He thinks they all do, to some extent, even the ones of them who’ve left and sworn up and down they wouldn’t miss the place in the least.

He misses Nancy, too, who he’d just started getting closer to again after Vecna, and Jonathan, who he’d just started to really get to know before they moved away, leaving him behind, too.

So yeah, again, he does feel left behind, and he wants to be out there, but sometimes he thinks in the privacy of his own mind that he feels homesick, and it’s more like … he misses the home Hawkins used to be, before. When they were all still here, and when another apocalypse wasn’t fresh behind them all, and even (though he’d never say it to anyone) those moments facing down hell, where at least it felt like his lacking prospects for a meaningful future wouldn’t matter for much longer. Who cares if you ever got into college when you’re already dead?

He misses, most of all, a time where he wasn’t always looking over his shoulder, not always checking if all his ducks are still in a row, are still alive. He misses sleep without dreams where people he loves die like it means nothing, alive one second, gone the next. He misses a town where every shadow doesn’t feel like a warning, and he longs for a place where everything isn’t predictable, even the crises. Maybe, he thinks, he just misses somewhere he’s never been.

Nancy fills her time between classes with extracurriculars until she doesn’t have time to miss anyone, or at least that’s what she tells herself even while she’s already realizing that it doesn’t work. She joins the campus paper, a group of girls who run together twice a week, and a progressive feminist student organization that Robin invites her along to, but she still feels her fingers itch for her car keys all the time, ready to drive to New York, to Hawkins. It helps to know that Jonathan is the same way.

They schedule phone calls whenever neither of them has class or anything else – mostly when Robin does have class or something else, not because they desperately need the privacy but because she spends most of her time and the money she doesn’t need for rent to call Steve.

Sometimes, when Nancy comes home during one of those calls, Robin will grin and greet her and force the phone into her hand. Nancy kind of loves her for it, if she’s honest, and Robin’s expression says that she knows it even without her saying it.

Calls with Steve always make her smile too wide, and more often than not, she holds him up for way too long, trading news from college and stories about Robin for anything going on back in Hawkins, the more mundane the better. He always has something good about her brother and his friends, at the very least, something light that will make her laugh and that Mike would never tell her himself.

She also learns, this way, that he and Jonathan talk on the phone sometimes, too. It’s usually when Jonathan gets anxious about being so far from home, and he doesn’t really trust Will or his mom to tell him if anything was up because they know he’d be right on his way back home. Nancy can’t say she blames him, and she’s grateful, really, that Steve can do that for Jonathan, now. Be a link back home to take off the edge. Be a friend at all, after all their history. It’s just that it makes her miss them both so much more.

They go home for Christmas, but it’s just a few days before they have to head back to study for some upcoming exams, and they spend the holidays with their families. Only Robin begs off most of the time before and after Christmas dinner to spend with Steve, and then they’re gone again, after just barely a glimpse of the other two.

Calls and calls and calls pass between the three of them, and suddenly it’s a Friday night in early spring, just about 10pm, and Nancy can’t stand it anymore. She calls Jonathan.

“If I leave now, I can pick you up in about four hours,” is what she opens with. She’s met with a few seconds of silence.

“My roommates are out,” Jonathan finally replies. “You can ring the doorbell. I’ll sleep until then and take over.”

Smiling to herself, she starts a pot of coffee. He always knows exactly what she’s thinking. “Power nap halfway there.”

“One or two hours. Maybe near Pittsburgh.”

“We’ll be in Hawkins by afternoon. You have class on Monday?”

“Nothing I can’t skip this one time. I feel like we won’t want to haul ass back to campus after just one night.”

Jonathan is already awake again when Nancy rings the bell, an overnight bag, leftover pasta, and a thermos of coffee ready to go. At 2am, even the city that never sleeps has that eerie quality to it, though it isn’t really silent. Especially not on a Friday night. Still … even though he thinks it’s comforting, in a way, the thought of Nancy standing out in front of his door in the middle of the night, entirely unprotected, has him rushing down the stairs. He doesn’t exactly live in a nice part of town, and judging from past experience, even that can’t save you, sometimes.

“Hi.” Nancy grins when he bursts out the door, the momentum from the stairs still in him as he pushes against the door a little more forcefully than necessary.

Nancy looks tired but happy, messy but beautiful. She looks like she was already halfway to bed when she called him and barely took the time to get dressed before hopping into her car; hair tied up hazardously, sweatpants that he’s pretty sure are his tied fastened with a tight knot so they won’t slip from her waist and looking oddly discordant with her street shoes, and a sweater that is frayed at the sleeves from where she worries them while studying.

He kisses her hello, met with something hi, there you are, and I missed you, too, and then she barely leaves him the time to catch his breath before she’s dragging him back to the car.

There’s a laugh on his lips when he takes the keys from her and slips into the driver’s seat.

“Alright, Jitterbug, how much coffee have you had on your way here?” he asks as they start down the street. They should always leave in the middle of the night, he thinks; the traffic is way less awful at this time.

“Oh my god,” Nancy says, already digging through his backpack for one of the tapes he – predictably, apparently – brought. “Did you just make a Wham! reference?”

He gasps, only half-pretending to be offended. “You know exactly that I wasn’t –“

“I need to tell Steve.” She’s giggling, now, which is definitely a sign that she should probably get those few hours of sleep in, soon. Drunk Nancy has never been a fun time, but sleepy Nancy? She’s a blast. She loves everyone, and she thinks everything is hilarious, and Jonathan loves her, but he really needs to focus on getting them out of the city and onto the right interstate. “I swear, Jonathan, the first thing I will tell him when we see Steve is that you, Jonathan Byers, made a Wham! reference after being all high and mighty when you found out he listened to them.”

“You know they – you know they didn’t invent the word ‘jitterbug’, right?”

Nancy just keeps laughing at him until he knocks her over a little at the shoulder, which has her grin over at him tiredly. He feels unfathomably fond, but he just gives her a roll of his eyes, gluing his eyes back to the road in front of him.

“Take a nap,” he tells her. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time to take a break.”

“You mean you’ll wake me up before you go-go,” she grins, but she dodges his swatting hand and closes her eyes, resting her head against the window.

The drive isn’t half bad, even though the sentimental part of him wishes they were driving east so he could watch the sun come up. This way, the further they get into the morning hours, his gaze keeps slipping to the rearview mirror, not wanting to miss it.

He drives, drives, stops for gas, stretches his legs, and keeps driving. Before he knows it, Nancy wakes on her own, and they’re well past Pittsburgh.  In fact, they’re almost at Zanesville, and it’s nearing ten in the morning.

When Nancy realizes this, she gasps and smacks his shoulder several times. “Jonathan!”

“What?”

“You’ve been driving almost eight hours.”

“I wasn’t tired,” he defends, even though he knows it’s still not exactly reasonable. He’s had, what, three and a half hours of sleep? She gives him a look, like god, why do I love this idiot, and it makes him grin sheepishly in a way that makes them both think of Steve, somehow.

Which makes sense because he swears, Steve makes him a little bit stupid.

He will not examine this fact right now, though.

“At the next stop, we’re switching,” she tells him, glaring a little. He can tell she’s reluctantly well-rested, though, and they both know she is much happier about it than she will ever admit when she says, “I guess at least now we can skip that power nap, get there a little earlier. I need to … walk around a bit first, though. My bones feel like I’ve been stuffed into a moving box for two days.”

Rather than agreeing, Jonathan just cracks his stiff neck, laughing when the sound makes her crinkle her nose in disgust. He needs a stretch, too, he really does; his gas foot feels like he’s been flexing it for hours, and he’s pretty sure his ass has fallen asleep. He can’t feel the right half, anymore, and it’s decidedly not a pleasant experience.

“Also, we’re getting breakfast. Gas station food sucks, but I am starving.”

“There’s a box of pasta salad in my backpack,” he offers, even though pasta salad is really just a fancy way of referring to yesterday’s cold lunch. “Knock yourself out. I had some before we left, so I’ll probably just get a donut, or something.”

“You ate pasta salad at two in the morning?” Nancy asks, scandalized as if they haven’t done the same thing with leftover pizza after sharing his last bit of pot or staying up too long studying and … studying. He raises his eyebrow at her, and her judgmental expression melts into a knowing quirk of her lip, an admission of complicity. She starts looking for the box, then, and calls him an idiot for forgetting to bring a fork.

She eats it with her free hand instead of waiting to see if they’d have any at the rest stop, and he falls a little bit more in love with her when she drops a bit of pasta, it falls right into her hoodie, and she begins laughing so hard that she almost chokes.

Robin starts calling at seven and manages to shake Steve out of bed by eight, when he stumbles to the phone with a big yawn and a world of annoyance.

“’lo?” he mutters into the phone, the absolute most anyone could expect of him at this ungodly hour on a Saturday.

“Steve! God, finally –“

“Robin, what the fuck?” He keeps the phone by his ear and drags the chord to the kitchen, where he turns on the coffee maker. “Why are you calling me at –“

“It’s Nancy,” she interrupts him, and only then does he recognize that tone in her voice. It isn’t angry Robin, or excited Robin, even though both sound just as frantic as she does now. It’s terrified Robin. And she’s scared because of Nancy.

He stills.

“What? What do you mean –“

“She’s – not here! I was out late last night, I don’t know if she was still here then because I figured she was in bed, and you know she always has to park super far away from the building, but this morning I realized her keys were gone, and so were her shoes, and she doesn’t have class or any of her other stuff today because she has this big paper due next Thursday, and she cancelled all her clubs and shit for that.”

“I – Robin,” he interrupts, trying to be calm, even though it feels counterintuitive. “Don’t you think she could have just … gone out? To … to the library, or to go shopping, or …?”

“She never takes the car for that. She only uses it when she’s leaving the city.”

“So maybe she went to see Jonathan.”

“I tried calling him. His roommate says he hasn’t seen him, but he ‘took all the food’, which is probably an overstatement, knowing that guy, but – anyway, Jonathan is also gone. I just – I don’t have a good feeling about this, Steve.”

The truth is, neither does Steve. Steve is, in fact, freaking the hell out as he’s standing there in his kitchen, not at all tired, anymore. He tries grasping for logic, that they might have just … gotten together to have a picnic, or something, but …

But suddenly it occurs to him that while he’s been hesitating to leave Hawkins unprotected, he’s been doing the exact same thing to them.

“She didn’t leave a note? Anything to say where she’s going?” Robin’s silence speaks volumes, and Steve feels the dread growing like a shadow in him, looming and dark, always behind him.

Nancy wouldn’t just disappear without telling anyone. Neither would Jonathan. Not after everything that’s happened. He takes the little bit of coffee the machine has produced from the pot and mentally starts looking for his car keys. “I’m coming over there.”

He makes decent progress, despite the little bit of morning traffic that actually affects Hawkins, but breaking every speed limit he can get away with costs gas, and he has to stop a little over half an hour outside of Columbus to fill up the tank. He uses the payphone outside to call Robin to see if there have been any news, but now she isn’t answering, and he feels himself panic even more.

Maybe she’s just in the bathroom, or something, he tells himself. He should call again in a few minutes, maybe get something to eat in the meantime. He hasn’t eaten at all since last night.

His mind switching between Boston and New York, he walks back inside, finding a couple of things he normally enjoys in the snack aisle. He doesn’t feel particularly hungry, but he still goes through the motions of picking them out, swiping his card at the register, and lodging them under his arm to carry back to the car.

When he turns away from the cashier, he bumps into the guy behind him and drops all of it.

“Shit, sorry,” he mutters, already crouching down to pick up his good. He feels like he should get a pass for being clumsy under the circumstances, but it’s not like this guy knows that, and –

“Steve?” the guy says, having joined him on the ground to help him out, and when Steve’s head snaps up, yeah, sure thing, that’s Jonathan Byers right there in front of him. Steve almost thinks he’s hallucinating, but he doesn’t think he’s imaginative enough to come up with such an accurate image of that perplexed expression.  

He drops everything he’s picked up right back down again and squishes Jonathan into a hug that probably surprises Steve himself just as much as it does Jonathan.

“Uh, hi?” Jonathan’s voice is muffled against the fabric of Steve’s sweater, but he’s slowly reciprocating the hug, so it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s Jonathan. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I – oh god, is Nancy with you? Please tell me she’s –“

“Yeah, yeah, she’s outside,” Jonathan says, and then he’s pulling away, aiming a worried frown at Steve. “What’s wrong?”

“What are you doing here?” Steve exclaims, then, jumping up from the ground and realizing they’re still right in front of the register, right in the middle of that gas station. At least it’s not a popular one; their only audience is the guy who just rang Steve up a minute ago, and he looks like his job has long bored him to death, and he is now just a corpse with a mysteriously acquired ability to stand more or less upright.

“We’re – we wanted to see you.” The way it comes out is an almost indignant kind of stammer, but clearly embarrassed. Jonathan is looking at Steve but only kind of, and Steve can’t remember when he stood up, even less so when he crossed his arms over his chest so defensively.

Steve would tease him about it if he wasn’t so busy staring at him, open-mouthed, confused, and a little bit angry in the wake of the whole scare. And then there’s that other feeling, the one he’s gotten so incredibly good at ignoring.

Steve seems to be taking too long to reply because eventually, Jonathan goes back to stammering. Which is weird because Jonathan has never, ever been bad at silences.

“It’s just – Nancy called last night, and it was kind of insane because I was just hanging out at the apartment and being kind of miserable about how much I missed her and how … long it’d been since I’d seen you, and then she called and said we should drive back to Hawkins because apparently she was the same way, so …“

“So you just … took off in the middle of the night to – visit me?”

If Steve thought Jonathan looked embarrassed before, he doesn’t know what to call this. He only knows he’s never seen him this red in the face.

“I guess…”

It’s then that they’re interrupted, again not by a new customer but by Nancy, this time. She’s got her wallet out, is looking for something in it, and speaking as she walks into the gas station.

“Are you having trouble with your card again?” she asks, probably because she’s been wondering why on earth Jonathan has been taking so long to pay for their gas. “I keep telling you, you need to call the bank to get you a new one, this is getting – Steve?”

And, okay, so Steve already knew that she was fine, Jonathan already told him, more or less, what’s going on, but he swears, Nancy is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his entire life right then. He barely knows what to say, and then Nancy helps him out.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, and only then does it occur to him that he never answered Jonathan when he asked him this a minute ago.

Priorities need to be set, though. Rather than answer her question, he does the same thing he did with Jonathan and pulls her into a big, extended hug. She goes a lot more willingly than Jonathan, even though she still seems beyond confused, and even when she pulls back, she leaves her arms around him.

“I – Robin called me,” he finally says, and he can watch every muscle in her face transform from pleasant surprise into some kind of horror.

“Shit,” she says. “Oh god, I – I didn’t leave a note!”

He snorts at that. “Yeah, no shit. You know how scared we’ve been?” He looks over his shoulder at Jonathan, who’s wearing a similar expression. “How is it both of you just decided to disappear without telling a single soul where on earth you’re going?”

“Shit, she didn’t call my mom, did she?”

Steve shakes his head, even though that’s really not what he wants to talk about, right now. “I radioed Will to check if he knew anything and told him not to tell her until I called. But he’s definitely going to be pissed when he finds out about this. Actually, so am I – what were you thinking? What if something had happened to you, and nobody would have known where to even start looking?”

Nancy’s hands around him land on his shoulders, then, squeezing reassuringly just like she used to do, eons ago. He wants to keep catastrophizing, but she stops his last resolve with a small smile. “I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to worry anyone, really. We just … really wanted to see you.”

And really, who could expect Steve to be mad about that? When they keep saying it like that? Part of him wants to resent the easy way Nancy’s echo of Jonathan’s words melts him into something warm and far more relaxed than he’s felt since he woke up this morning, but even that he can’t really hold onto.

“Well, it’s still stupid,” he mutters petulantly, but he pulls her back into another quick hug and lets go feeling a lot less wound up. “I’m gonna go back outside and call Robin.”

Jonathan finds him outside a minute later with Steve’s forgotten snack haul piled up in his arms, leaning against the wall as Steve talks to Robin.

“I know, they’re idiots,” he says, pointedly, which gets him one of those funny little Jonathan-smiles that make him feel all mushy and stupid. Considering the fact that they just nearly caused some sort of national search because they wanted to see him, he lets himself feel the mush for once and grins back. “But they’re really, really sorry and will totally make it up to us.”

“Did they say that or is it just wishful thinking?” Robin asks, but she sounds a hundred times better than when they last spoke, so it’s alright.

“They may not have said it in words, but it’s not like this doesn’t give us a lot of leverage. Anyway, apparently, I’m so incredibly awesome that they both just hadto up and –”

“Oh, hi, Robin,” Jonathan cuts in, snatching the phone from Steve. “Yeah, we’re really sorry about all this. It was pretty late, and it was kind of, uh, an impulsive thing. So we weren’t thinking straight. We didn’t mean to worry anyone, really.”

Steve watches him talk, even though he can’t hear Robin’s replies anymore. He can fill in her parts in his head, more or less accurately, but he doesn’t know what she says to make Jonathan go all pink in the face again.

Finally, Nancy joins them and demands her turn, by which time Steve has to put the third quarter into the phone’s coin slot. She talks to Robin for a little while, apologizing yet again for the scare and promising she’ll bring her back a truck’s load of those knock-off Heath bars she insists are so much better than the real deal, and Steve opens a bag of cookies while they wait for her to finish, offering one to Jonathan.

When Nancy hangs up the phone, all three of them stand silently by the phone for a minute, hovering around the inevitable what now.

“So…” Steve eventually breaks into the quiet.

“So?” Nancy echoes, something amused but not fully self-assured in her smile. Jonathan, beside her, suddenly looks even more nervous, so Steve gives both of them what he hopes is a somewhat reassuring grin.

“You two have any plans tonight?”

They end up at Steve’s place, on account of Nancy and Jonathan both being worried that if their families know they’re in town, they’ll ‘monopolize all of their time again’.

Steve has to stop himself from smiling when Nancy says that. She still blushes a little.

“I mean, I love them! And I miss them, and all that, but – we didn’t really get to see you when we were here for the holidays.”

“You know, Robin said you had some big paper due,” Steve says, looking between the two people on his couch. “Cleared your schedule for it and all. Not that I’m complaining, but – you know. You’re you.”

Miraculously, this makes her blush even more. After some prodding, she admits that she finished it all up yesterday in a productive streak, and that she might have wildly overestimated the amount of work it would be, which honestly sounds about right. He always knew she would continue overkilling it in college the same way she did in high school.  

“Oh, so you only came here because you didn’t have anything better to do,” he sniffs, anyways, and she swats at him but still has to smile at the overstated pout that his laughter really wants to break through. “No, no, I see how it is.”

“Oh, shut up!” she laughs. Jonathan, pressed against her other side, watches the scene with something like fond exasperation until Nancy turns on him, her face suddenly taken over with a grin like she’s only now remembering he’s here, and she snaps her head back to Steve in excitement. “Oh my god, I almost forgot. You won’t believe what Jonathan did last night!”

“What did he –“

“Nothing, don’t believe anything she says!”

“No, no, this is gold because – when I picked up Jonathan last night –“

“Libel!” Jonathan squeaks, wrapping an arm around Nancy’s waist and pressing the other down on her mouth as she keeps laughing. She tries licking his hand, wriggling in his arms, but she isn’t really fighting him. He isn’t holding onto her nearly strong enough to keep her in place if she was really trying. “Lies, slander, I - Steve, Nancy is trying to defame me, and I want you to know that you cannot believe anything that comes out of her mouth. She’s – she’s turned over to the yellow press, she’s –”

But Steve doesn’t respond. When Jonathan looks over at him, he’s watching them with a grin, like he isn’t even aware of it, and Nancy seems to notice it too because she stops squirming and stares back at Steve as well.

“What?” Jonathan eventually asks, suddenly self-conscious again. He isn’t usually like this in front of anyone but Nancy.

Steve’s eyes snap to his, but the smile doesn’t dim at all.

“Nothing,” he says, though his tone of voice suggests otherwise. “Just ... it's good to see you two.”

In his arms, Jonathan can feel Nancy soften, leaning back until her back is flush against his chest, his hands now both loose around her middle. There's been this understanding between them for a while. This understanding that means that Nancy knows exactly that he, too, is looking at Steve, and that he knows with just as much certainty that Nancy feels a similar warmth stirring in her at Steve’s words.

And maybe it's obvious. By all means, it really should be, if not from their calling at any given opportunity just to hear his voice, then from today, from the way they drove for hours and hours just because they couldn't stand missing him anymore.

But Steve was there too, several hours out of Hawkins, ready to cross state lines after they went missing for just a few hours. Worried out of his mind, embracing them with an inevitability like he's a compass and they’re north, and really, can there be an explanation for them finding each other like this that is any less significant than the earth's magnetic field?

Steve looks at them like that, now, like it’s a law of nature. Like he knows he can’t turn away, and he doesn’t mind at all. Jonathan thinks that the space that this look is taking up under his sternum might kill him, and he’d let it.

It’s Nancy who eventually braves the silence between them, reaching her hand out for his wrist and tugging him closer. She smiles, and Steve looks so openly hopeful that Jonathan frees one of his own hands to put on top of Nancy’s.

“It’s good to see you, too, Steve.”

The tension isn’t uncomfortable, but something has shifted, and it stays. Still, they spend the rest of the afternoon catching up, and it feels easy, just talking like that. Nancy talks about the adventures of living with Robin, the things they’re finding they have in common the more time they spend with each other. Jonathan talks about this impossibly pretentious guy in one of his classes and lets Steve tease him about it like, see, now you know how we feel.

Steve, for his part, gives them the weekly highlights of town gossip (Mrs. Baker left her bastard husband, good for her; the new mayor proposed another attempt at a mall and was unanimously shut down; a senior from Hawkins High was caught selling weed behind the school, only for Hopper to let him off with a warning because fuck Reagan, and I’m not ruining some idiot kid’s future over some fucking weed, Harrington, who do you take me for?). They ask him how he knows all that, which is how he realizes he hasn’t told them about his new job.

“Shit, that’s right! You know Flo? From the police station?” The question earns him two equally confused glances, which he willfully ignores because he knows they know her, and they’ll get why he’s talking about her in a minute, either way. “Anyway, she got sick a few weeks back, and I guess they never realized how much she was actually doing because once she wasn’t there anymore, everything kind of erupted into chaos. Hop knew I was looking to make some extra money, so he asked me if I wanted to be her stand in.”

“That’s … cool,” Jonathan says, like he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to think it’s cool. It makes Steve laugh, which makes Jonathan blush, which makes Steve’s cheeks hurt.

“It’s alright. Turns out I’m pretty alright at talking –“ Nancy gives him a no shit kind of look for that. “– and the hours aren’t bad. Besides, now that Flo’s back, it’s nowhere near as stressful.”

“They kept you on?” Nancy asks, surprised. “Even though she’s back?”

Steve shoots her a wry grin, like, see, I can keep a job. “Bunch of apocalypses are bound to make people paranoid, so there are a lot of calls to take. We got, like, several lines now. All the paperwork on top of that …”

“Sounds like you’re having a good time.”

The weird thing is, he really is. And he’s still saving money, and he's still planning to up and follow Robin into that wide, wide world, but for the first time in a very long time, he’s letting himself feel like it’s some idea of where he’s going.

Not that he wants to spend the rest of his life behind a desk. God, no. It's all the people that call, that come and go every day, looking for help. On some rare occasions, Steve is the one who gets to help them, in some small way, and he's realized that that's kind of the one thing he's really good at.

“You know that kid?” he says, by the way of nothing at all. Nancy cocks her head, that curious expression in her wide-as-the-sea eyes, and Jonathan frowns at him softly, nothing like the way he used to. “Ryan White, some middle schooler from up in Kokomo. Non-Hawkins news weren’t really top priority for a while with everything that was ... going on, last year, but Robin told me about it, and then I started following it … You’ve heard of him, right?”

There’s a short silence, and for that moment, Steve gets weirdly nervous. He tries to focus on Jonathan’s teeth pulling at the skin of his lower lip, but it only makes him nervous for a different reason, until he nods, slowly. “He’s the one who got sick, right?”

Steve hums, yes, that’s one way of putting it. “The one they wouldn’t let back into school. Someone shot through their living room window, did you know that? Just put a bullet through it.”

“God,” Nancy whispers.

“Nobody was home. They’re moving to Cicero, now that he’s finished with middle school. But I swear, the kid is what – fifteen? And he’s dying, and he has to deal with all of this bullshit on top of it all. And … it all makes me so mad when I think about it, which I do too much because I have way too much free time – ‘cause it’s not fair, right? And what else is not fair is that probably tons of other people are having the exact same issues but get none of the help or the – national fucking attention, whatever, none of that support and nobody cares. It makes me so angry, I could –“

Maybe they’re staring again. Maybe Steve has talked himself into half a rampage and gotten off-track from where he was originally going with this. Nancy is staring, and Jonathan is staring, both with those soft frowns that should be infuriating, should feel infuriating because they should be screaming of dear god, look at Steve, he really has been cooped up in here for too long. He’s turning into some Murray Baumann of obsessing over civil rights.

But it isn’t. They’re both looking at him like that, but it doesn’t feel condescending or pitying or even like they don’t understand. Which makes sense because – who is he talking to? There are two of the most empathetic and socially aware people he knows, even if he wouldn’t even have been able to identify them as that until Robin taught him what on earth that means.

“Yeah,” Jonathan finally mutters. “Yeah, no, I know what you mean. It’s – well, New York is bad. People out here are still pretending it isn’t happening, mostly, but back there, you can’t. … Sometimes you walk past an apartment building in a certain part of town, and you see a whole – a whole life in the dumpster behind it. Just thrown out because there was nobody who would or could claim it.”

The soft, warm tone of his voice has Steve deflating a little from the rigid stance he’s worked himself into. Nancy reaches out her right foot to nudge him with her socked toes. He sighs.

“I just – I want to do something. To help people, to – ” Steve manages. It’s the first time he says it out loud; he hasn’t even talked this over with Robin, not that there’s much to talk about, not that she isn’t the one who got him here in the first place, in a way. “I mean, I want to do something where I can help people like that, you know? People who don’t have anyone to back them up. I just … don’t know how.”

“Have you thought about …” Nancy begins. “I mean, maybe Hopper could help you –“

“Oh, no, no,” Steve cuts in. Maybe, maybe he’s gotten up by now, pacing back and forth in front of the couch like they can solve the whole question of his future right here, right now. “No offence to Hopper, the guy is a saint, but – well, for one thing, everything in the past couple years hasn’t really got me jumping up and down to work for the government in like, any way or form. And then – everything that Hopper’s done that makes him a great guy is also what kind of makes him a shitty police man? I mean, the police don’t exactly protect people, do they? They protect – I don’t know, the law? And the law doesn’t usually protect the people who really need it, so I just don’t –“

A hand on his wrist cuts him off, and he’s a little surprised that it’s attached to Jonathan, this time. In his endless mental list of maybes, Steve finds himself wondering if he’s staring at Jonathan, now, if turning to face him has left them just the slightest bit too close to one another.

“Uh,” he says, eloquently.

“I’m saying this in the kindest possible way – because you going all anti-establishment is weirdly, unfairly hot – and don’t you dare tell her I said this, but meeting Robin really is the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“She knows,” Steve replies, almost automatically, then clamps his mouth shut and abruptly lets it drop open again. “Wait, did you –“

Jonathan snatches his hand away like he's burned himself, so maybe he himself didn't realize what just came out of his mouth. He really does blush so drastically. It’s a little bit addictive to look at. There are a few seconds where both of them just sort of ... gape at each other, lost for words in this inane situation.

Nancy, fortunately, has always been rather impatient with them and cuts through their silence with an exasperated groan.

“For God's sake,” she says, with both of the others now staring at her instead, like waiting for her to tell them what happens next. “Will you just –“

She doesn't get to finish. She doesn't need to finish, really, because apparently her and Jonathan still share that strange psychic connection between them, so that Jonathan gets the message just fine.

They're kissing, and Steve never even saw it coming.

It somehow just happens like this. One moment, Steve is rambling about the … evils of the world, and the next, Jonathan Byers is kissing him like he doesn't know if it's allowed, and he'll give it his all just in case it's all that he's going to get. Maybe, Steve is kissing back the way he is for the same reason, or maybe it's just to prove that Jonathan is wrong. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Before he knows it, they’re pulling apart, breathless like marathon runners, but more from the shock than from exertion. More like the adrenaline of having slain the monster and lived rather than the endurance it took to get there.

Nancy doesn't give him the chance to catch his breath before she takes over from where Jonathan left off, and yes, he thinks dizzily, maybe this is that homesick feeling he's been having. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Well, he doesn't have to miss them tonight, or even tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe he is finally ready to come with them, find a place somewhere that can be a home they can all come back to, eventually. Hawkins has Hopper, Joyce, El, and the other kids there to look after it, look after each other. From the way the two of them keep looking at him after they part, he gets the feeling that he might be needed elsewhere.

[fuchsea]

hii no worries!

lol well i try to include him in stuff but we’re just into wildly different things. and yeah for sure, it’s weird bc we have a pretty big age difference i just saw her as a baby for so long, until one day she was old enough to talk about more stuff and we’ve been besties ever since. being an older sister is definitely not for the weak but i wouldn’t change it if i could (though i do wish i had one a bit older than me too lol). oof gosh i don’t think it’s possible for me to just pick one…. we find ourselves in laughing fits so often. going to a txt concert together was pretty incredible though!

they are def movie vibes. they properly met (had seen each around before) bc my dad worked at a brewery and my mom came looking for a job, and he pretended he was the manager and hired her. his actual boss said he would hire her but only if my dad trained her. they worked together for a while, my dad told his friend who also worked with them that he was gonna marry her one day. friend said good luck lol. then my mom had to leave town, and that morning my dad showed up and tossed his bag in the car and said i’m going too, and they’ve been together ever since.

ok tbh i usually make it without the vodka too lol, only if i have the patience. also my sibling Swear they can taste it when there’s alcohol in the sauce and they prefer it without so i’ve just gotten in the habit of making it that way. oh yeah veggies in pasta is my favvvv! my all time fav pasta dish is just pasta primavera (aka with roasted veggies and olive oil and salt) and then topped with an ungodly amount of fresh cheese (parm or any kind at all). we’re having soup for dinner tonight but i’m not sure what kind yet 👀 probably some sort of italian chicken soup.

ooooo those sound amazing!! yesyes i lovvveeee naan i love indian food in general. i love samosas and butter chicken and palak paneer and lentil curry and everything else i’ve ever tried. i’m from the US so we have a lot of access to different foods. i can’t imagine it’s AS good as actually being there, of course, but i do love what i’ve had! i’ve never had those two things tho. modak sounds sooooo 😻😻

yesss my little forest town was the coziest. christmas party that sounds fun!! i wish i had a party to go to lol. i did go see my trees yesterday tho!! i’ll show u pics after i’m off anon if u wanna seeeee 👀 i don’t think it’ll let me add pics anonymously? maybe through submission but not asks.

my christmas holidays start the day after thanksgiving lol, i mean i’m not in school and nothing is on a strict schedule and my mom looovvessss christmas so we just do as much as possible leading up to it. i honestly don’t think i relax any more or less than a typical day, bc i usually am pretty chill and i always like having things to do equally? so im kinda just like making my regular relaxation and activities and festive as possible. we’re gonna make gingerbread houses tomorrow i think? and have more christmas lights to look at and baking to do and stuff. i love it im very big on holidays in general i love having things to celebrate and do special things for. ^-^ are there any festive foods from another country’s winter holidays that you really want to try?❄️🌸

hiiiii 💙

yeah that does make sense if u guys are into completely different things it becomes a bit hard to include them into things, especially if they're younger than u (i'm assuming he's a teenager/early 20s and that age period is truly so whack) ooh what's the age gap between u and ur sister! my sister is 5 years younger than me and i knowww i get u because she was so tiny and now she's about to be 20 and i don't know how i feel about it. and it's been weird because i moved away from home when she was 12 and it's wild that she's in uni now like where did all the time go (and the way things are going for me rn i'll probably only get to see her for her graduation and that's a whole other leap i don't want to think about because what do u mean i saw her before she started uni and next time i see her she'll have graduated 🥲)

how was the concert! i really don't know much about kpop so i apologise but pls do tell me who ur favourite member is and what's ur favourite song by them 👀

someone should definitely make ur parents' story into a christmas rom com movie because it's literally begging to be done! that is so so so romantic oh my god! like it's got the exact recipe for a good small town christmas romance 😭😭

i haven't really tried it with vodka (i only kinda started drinking this year and i am taking it slow) but is the hint of vodka that strong in the sauce usually? god yes i love a good primavera with crunchy veggies in. i only like broccoli when it's in pasta because it just goes so well with a red creamy sauce! ooh most important question : what's ur favourite pasta shape! sooo how was the soup? 👀 i'm vegetarian but i love a good hot n sour noodle soup with loads of pepper in it!

i feel like u can never go wrong with indian food because it's got something for everybody! but god yes the dishes u mentioned are some of my favourites too! i know u said samosas but have u tried samosa chaat? it's basically a samosa broken into pieces and then we had some mint sauce, tamarind sauce and sweetened yoghurt on top of it! i haven't been to the usa, but while i was in the uk there were so many indian places and some of them were really good and reminded me of home so i'm guessing that that's the same with usa too! especially with how many indians live there now. and yes modak is truly so so good! maybe next year during ganesh chathurthi u'll be able to get it in the states!

it was fun! i only just started working here and it was a good way to meet everyone and also learn spanish. yes yes please do send me pictures after! i think u can't submit media while staying anonymous so it will have to sadly wait 🥲

oh so u pretty much have the entirety of december off! do u celebrate thanksgiving? how was it this year for u? i'm guessing that u guys put up the lights and decorations after halloween itself then! do u guys go get a tree from a christmas tree farm? 👀

i feel like my life has been so all over the place for the past couple years that anytime i get days off i just rot in bed but i do like staying active too. like i need some form of exerting activity between bedrotting to keep me sane! do u have any hobbies that u do during holiday season? what other festivals do u celebrate 👀

ooh i don't know much about festive foods in particular but i would loooove to have authentic pizza and pasta in italy! what about u!!

[septembermonologues]

🦉Positivity owl reporting for duty! This was sent by a friend who wants you to smile as much as your posts make them smile. Please list five things that make you unique, four things you are super passionate about and why, OR three of your favorite memories. Feel free to send the owl to those who you feel deserve to smile🦉

🥹🥹🥹🥹

mmmmm 4 things im super passionate about and why

im going to be so long winded lol

1) loving my friends and doing it loudly and without embarrassment. i had really really really shitty experiences with "friends" in middle and high school and still can't totally wrap my mind around how lucky i am to be surrounded by the people i get to call my friends now. i owe them all everything, from my oldest friend (a decade in 2026!!!!) who made me believe in soulmates, to the two friends i met around the same time who i don't keep in touch with as well as i should but who dont fault me for it, to my friend who pushed me to get help for myself and looked out for me when i struggled the most with my dad and who im convinced i spent my life with in another life, to my friend who's become family and her husband who welcomed me immediately, to my beloved tumblr mutual who i get to text all day everyday and hasn't gotten sick of me yet, to my little trio at school who saw someone awkward and trying to find their feet and all but held them at gun point to hangout and who were sad that i was graduating before them when i expected to just get in and out and just finish my degree mostly intact. how fucking lucky am i? how blessed am i? and i want to return it all and more if i can.

2) making sure any of my activism and want for a better world comes from a place of love for other people. i just don't know what the point of any of this is if you're not working for change because you care about others and their circumstances. we owe each other everything.

3) this maybe out of place because it's work related but as a stage manager i want to be firm about having safety tools for my entire team- my cast, my fellow sms, my production designers, my crews. i think a lot of things are just "part of the job" and get swept under the rug to keep a show moving but thats how the wheels come off the bus. and safety to me, at least to start, comes in the form of silly ice breaker questions every night not only to encourage actors to get in the habit of signing in but also to get everyone talking and engaged in conversations over a joke or an unserious but very important hot take and to bridge the gap that is the sm table so they feel like they can come to me with an issue, to making sure a safety captain is set up as early as possible in the rehearsal process, to having an anonymous debrief form that goes straight to someone (an intimacy director ideally) who knows the cast but isn't in the room every day so they have somewhere to go if they dont feel comfortable coming to me, the director, or the safety captain, to making sure everyone actually takes their 5s and 10s and gets out of the rehearsal room at least once, to making sure my asms are doing all or most of their work while we're clocked in and not adding work for ourselves outside of designated times unless absolutely necessary.

4) finding ways to take care of yourself ESPECIALLY if they feel small or silly. i spent so much time stuck in a constant state of feeling shitty and i regret it so much and don't want to see anyone else do the same if it can be helped. i started doing basic skincare in 2021 because it just felt nice (i still dont know how much any of it actually does anything) and when my therapist pointed out that thats perfectly valid self care it all felt so much more accessible to me. so i do a silly little face mask when i feel like i need something easy to refresh and get my nails done even if acrylics seem out of character for me because it's nice to go sit in a salon and pick a new design to change things up and have too many different flavors and formulas of chapstick because i like to have options and listen to my boy bands and watch my vampire show and my way too long rpg shows and keep at least a loose routine because it helps keep me moving. you dont have to change your whole life all at once. it can be trying a new flavor of coffee or going out for a fast casual meal and bevvie or buying a new candle fragrance. and, again, it might seem small and stupid but its so important- you have to start somewhere and it all adds up.

[logisticalandrewthinks-blog]

Rebirth

Feel like i gotta put an edgy title, even if I'm not feeling as edgy at this moment in time. its been a little while, a little over two years in fact, last i posted was August 7th 2022, now its August 30 2024.

I've graduated university now, and was lucky enough to have snagged a job before I finished that pays decent and has alright upward mobility. I'm wondering if I should feel happy now or if that will come later? it feels all a little too empty. Although I am not in the depths of despair that I used to always be in when I posted on here, i am feeling slightly empty on is this all life is now. I'm moving in with Hung next year, so theres that to look forward to, and also the Japan trip is finally happening, of which I have done my best to plan and organise, I realise now that if I want to do something, I should organise it, otherwise nobody will do it, since the people I tend to surround myself with are very low maintenance people who therefore aren't really planners much with the exception of like Kass I guess, who enjoys this sort of thing of being organised and planning for things. But I do have Japan to look forward to I guess, I am excited for that, but a part of me does wonder if all I will do now in life is just make money so that I can go on holiday, and then work, then go on holiday. I dont really have many aspirations to own a house or even relationship stuff much at the moment, though next year maybe ill try to date again to see if im any different to it, and if im alright to date now. Its more that in my future I see other people getting together with other people, and i feel like i should follow suit, like i should have myown person that im with too, since at a certain point of our lives i assume we wont see eachother as much since they'll be preoccupied with their significant others.

All this talk of is this all life amounts to and tangentially being related to that, the worth and happiness of a life made me go back and read an old manga that I really liked when i first read it back in the day called "I sold my life for ten thousand yen per year." which is about a guy who does just what the title says, he sells his remaining life til just three months, since he has nothing to live for but not a lot of money, so why not live a few months in luxury at least. I won't regurgitate the entire story but its worth a read again future Andrew if you're still there, thats quite touching and gets you thinking about the worth and happiness of a life.

This is probably the most mentally healthy I've ever typed into my blog, materialistically things are looking up for me, I'm gonna be making decent starting wage with benefits at a (allegedly) good company, Ill be doing hybrid so work from home some days and work in office other days. I have a group of friends online that i frequently join the voice calls daily to hang out and game if that occurs or watch things. These extend to real life too, seeing friends in real life and interacting with them. Its all going in a way, materialistically very well, and yet I can't help but feel, "is this it?". Like am I supposed to just do this for another 40 years til I retire, to then just rot away and die?

Something I did do this year which I really enjoyed was travelling, I went to morocco with oogin + HABS people which was an amazing short trip, a 8/10 experience could only be made better if we were there longer, paris with chrystal and josh 💀 was a 5/10 but mainly cause of being a third wheel of a couple that I don't think should be together, maybe I'll keep a record of their thing later if I can be bothered, and also went to the peak district to try outdoor climbing for the first time, and then to manchester recently for a wellness chec kinda thing for chrystal, since she always visited us but we never visited her but i said i wanted to, so i said fuck it ill organise it, when are you guys off and so 4 of us went up north to manchester for two days. But all this to say, I really do enjoy travelling, I finally understood why those hippie sorts of people spend their entire lives travelling, I used to think oh it must get so tiring and so boring so fast, wouldnt you want to just sit down and chill? but you can! you can sit down and chill underneath a blanket of stars, or sit by a warm fire, and just look out into the distant deserts of morocco. I really enjoy travelling and I hope to do a lot more this next year.

Something else i took up in the last two years is bouldering, its a hobby that i genuinely enjoy, I've been climbing for two years, on and off, (maybe like 6 months total where i didnt climb so technically one and a half years) but its what inspired me to then go outdoor bouldering with puru armaan and yossi which was a fun trip, though it was humbling how difficult it is! currently I can climb v4-v5 indoors but i could barely only climb V0+ outdoors, which is like beginner grading, which is pathetic 😭 hopefully next time will be better.

I'm not really here to say much else, If i think of something Ill post again soon, but its 8 am and ive stayed up all night to watch LE SSERAFIM's comeback "CRAZY" which is really fucking good. Thats another thing I've done in the last two years, is gone back to my kpop roots cept this time i have the disposable income to irresponsibly spend money on merch and albums for LE SSERAFIM. the music and obsession as a hobby has really helped though, it gets me through the hard times seeing the behind the scenes and watching the live streams and hearing them talk about their lives. Bias is Miyawaki Sakura since I already kinda was biased for her in IZONE when she streamed gaming content on youtube and made videos for gaming.

I would say to end this post that LE SSERAFIM and Bouldering funnily enough have saved me, in the last two years. Two years ago i was hurt fairly badly by people who i thought i was close to, though perhaps i never was since its an online friendship, how close can a online friendship be? obviously an online friendship can be very close, but it depends alot, and it seems perhaps this was not one of those times. I dont recall if i ever actually outlined what happened from my point of view as a record, so maybe ill do that. haha i always say ill write these things and never get round to doing it. it does help somewhat though, clear my thoughts by writing in this blog, so i really should do it more often, maybe now im more mentally well ill do it???? who knows. we shall see in the next one.

I shall leave with le sserafims latest song that got released 4 hours ago, which is the cuntiest thing i have heard in a while, and will defo be a bop to remember, and so future andrew!! relearn your roots!!! go back to listening to le sserafim and rest up!!!

[telluriandaydreamer]

academic melancholist's intermission

entry I ; VI/XIII/MMXXIV

since this is my first post i want to do an introduction before i get into the entry! my name is hayley, im eighteen, and i really like making art and (thinking of) stories. this page is personal to me, i dont care if people interact or anything, but it is strictly me being dramatic as an outlet. i know i sound so dumb and melodramatic but hey, i feel cool and i have this little secret thing just for me.

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about a month ago, i graduated high school, which should be super cool and liberating and all of that, but i feel so very stuck at the moment. it's a weird in-between place, where i am glad high school is over, but anxious for college to start. the bittersweet kind of anxious where you get so excited you quiver in your seat, anticipating the future, but youre stuck in the present with nothing left to do but wait.

i'm getting a new job soon, and that has filled my heart with an even deeper aching for change. childcare is not my calling, and i adore children as much as the next person but i cannot last another day in this position. i'm supposed to work at my future college's library soon. another reminder that i just have to wait for change. i can't handle dull repetition like this. used to, my job brought so much excitement into my life but not anymore. i believe i am very burnt out, but i've already turned in my notice. all that's left to do is wait. always. waiting.

so while i am so desperately clinging to these changes in the near yet ever so distant feeling future, i find myself wanting several things that feel unobtainable. the first being, more friends. i go no where to make more friends. i am introverted and a 'good girl' (a party pooper) and too socially anxious to do things the socially acceptable way. i am also depending on college to make new friends.

now, i am attempting bookkeeping certification to fill my mind with some kind of learning as i desperately grasp for knowledge and the structure and rigidity that classes have always provided me with. i feel so dead now that that structure is permanently gone. how am i going to survive college anyways? aside from that, the certification feels very.... daunting. the course is self paced and set at a pace by default where you are to finish it in 5 months. i am not about to pay coursera's 50 fee monthly, so now i'm tempted to figure out how much i can cram and do in a week, since that's the free trial period. so far i have 7 percent in 3 hours. it's not looking too good....

i just really miss myself. i made school my entire identity without realizing it and now i'm numb. i miss my routine and seeing off limits friends and learning and being a kid. graduation hit and now i'm terrified about the future.

terrified and excited at the same time. that bittersweet anxious feeling.