#fuck this isn’t nearly as funny as it was in july but i refuse to let go of the bookending

[diluc33rpm]

2/2 Do you hate anyone at the moment?

Morbius, the Living Vampire, real name Michael Alexander Morbius, M.D.,[1] Ph.D.,[1] is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by wri

[theficpusher]

Fireworks by damaged_danzy | G | 442 Harry and Louis go to watch fireworks, but things don't go as planned...

Fireworks In Our Hearts by thebravedontsurrender | nr | 994 a drabble where louis and harry have a four year old son and they go see fireworks with him

like a lightning bolt, your heart will glow by supernope | T | 1495 “Fireworks,” is all he says before he’s scrambling for a pair of shoes in the bunks and stumbling out the door. Also known as: incredibly self-indulgent Fourth of July tour fic.

Rockets’ Red Glare by armadillosunset | nr | 1776 Harry Styles hates fireworks. It is known. But Louis always comes through for his baby, even if he doesn’t know he needs it.

Happy Fourth of July by Midnightprincess | M | 2966 A celebration of America's independence might turn into a celebration of something else.

To Give You a Hand to Hold by gettingaphdinlarry | nr | 26150 When he spoke again, Harry’s voice was low. “Ever think of how many birthdays they don’t get?” Louis avoided Harry’s eyes. “What do you mean?” “Martinez was what, nineteen? Missed a good sixty of them.” Harry took the last of his cake and passed the plate to Louis. “Figure sixty missed birthdays each. Just on our side. How many is that?” Louis used the edge of his fork to scrape frosting off the plate. “Never thought about it.” “What would your shrink say?” “‘Focus on the positive.’” Harry ran a hand over his head and scratched the back of his neck. “How’s that working?” :: Marine Louis Tomlinson is medically discharged when an IED explodes in Afghanistan. Months later, he's reunited Stateside with his Navy medic Harry Styles. The two of them shelter each other even as they refuse to admit they're in the throes of PTSD, until one night nearly destroys them.

the sun's been quite kind by hemakeshimstrongx | T | 53753 “You know I can see you looking at him, right?” Lottie says pointedly, right in Harry’s ear so Louis can’t hear them; although it’s not like Louis is paying attention anyways, Tommy is there and they’re talking about something entirely different now. Harry gives Lottie a funny look, even though he knows exactly what she’s talking about. “Even after all this time, huh?” she asks. Harry shrugs. “I dunno. It’s probably just a nostalgia thing.” - Or: Harry and Louis haven't spoken in eight years. Harry finds himself unable to free himself from Louis' captivating pull. It's definitely not just a nostalgia thing.

Say Something by kingsofeverything | E | 105497 At fifty years old and recently divorced, Omega Harry Styles isn't interested in dating. When his doctor suggests a heat and rut matching service, he signs up out of necessity. It’s the only use he has for an Alpha in his life. Twenty-eight-year-old Alpha Louis Tomlinson aims to change that.

Given a Chance by Fabby | E | 173511 Five years after One Direction took their last tour, the last thing Louis Tomlinson ever expected to happen while on a tea run at the local Piggly Wiggly was to run into his ex-boyfriend and ex-bandmate Harry Styles. The odds of them ever running into each other again had to be super slim, right? Wrong. What happens when you mix ex-boyfriends with a large serving of Small Town America? Will Louis and Harry be able to set aside their differences, or will Louis be able to stay breezy as fuck in the wake of Harry’s arrival? (or, the one where Louis and Harry run into each other five years after One Direction ends and learn how to love each other again. Featuring: Reggie as the overweight labrador, Niall as Louis’ last grip on reality, and Nowheresville, North Carolina as the setting for Louis’ worst nightmare to come true.)

[tofuchi]

I don’t have anywhere for these feelings to go except a platform on which I can write that isn’t a word doc that’ll sit on my desktop.

I hate you. You were a predator whether you realize it or not. I was insecure and young, just like your last ex-girlfriend. You made me feel bad about my feelings. You always blamed me when you did things with other girls behind my back. Somehow, everything was always my fault. I was crazy, you had NOTHING to do with it. It was all ME. I made myself that way, I perpetuated it. I kept myself crazy because I liked the attention you gave me when I threw my fits. That’s what you always said. You “rewarded” my “bad behavior.” You are such a creep and a fucking asshole. I cannot stand that I wasted what should’ve been some of the best years of my life on you. They were wasted on you and they were wasted miserable, depressed, and so incredibly insecure. I stayed with you because I felt bad. You were so much older than me and I knew you wanted a family. If I broke up with you, you’d have to start over and it wouldn’t be as easy for you as it would for me. When I did muster the courage to break up with you, you basically said no and told me I was giving up. I told you I was unhappy, I told you I didn’t like how I felt together, I told you I did not want to be with you, and you refused. You guilted me into staying with you. This happened twice. When I finally broke up with you, you had the nerve to tell me “everyone” was “talking bad about [me]” and then you said you wanted to kill yourself. That’s manipulative and disgusting. I told my cousin that you said that and she told me to be strong and not listen to you. She told me that was incredibly manipulative and nothing you do would be my fault. I’m glad I listened to her.

I asked you to stop speaking to girls I caught you fooling around with. Somehow it was my fault I felt that way. It was my fault I didn’t trust you even though I’d found messages and photos on your phone and your computer. It was my fault I didn’t trust you and snooped. It wasn’t your fault at all that they were there. It was my fault that I looked at your things and saw that, years later, you were still talking to her. That was somehow my fault. It wasn’t your fault — you were just “taking an opportunity that came up.” I was the bad girlfriend for having the audacity to ask you to stop speaking to someone this happened with repeatedly. And I was “the only one who [kept] bringing it up.” I always compared myself to other girls because you were always looking at other girls. I was too good for you. I honestly don’t even know how you got other girls to send you the photos they did. I realize now, I was far too good for you. I was too pretty. I was too smart and funny. I was too kind. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it’s true. You mask your small dick — I mean, small man syndrome — well, but at some point, people see through it. I do not know what I saw in you. The insecure, young girl saw someone “mature” showing interest in her, validating her. I cannot stand the thought that you touched that version of me. That you touched me at all. It makes me sick.

I just...I don’t think I will ever stop hating you and I know I lose in that sense. When you said hi to me at that concert a few months ago, I wanted to hit you so badly. I wanted to tell you to fuck off and I wanted to hit you in your stupid face. I always hope I run into you somewhere so I can treat you like trash. Your best friend asked one thing of me when we broke up: to hide it if I started dating someone, to hide it for at least 6 months to give you time to heal. I said yes to appease him but I knew I wouldn’t. I wanted you to see that I was finally happy, and with the type of guy you always knew I wanted. I hope it dug into you like a knife. I wanted you to see that, in a month, I pushed nearly 7 years with you out of my mind and started over. You know why? Because I was over our relationship from 2014. July 2014 is when I stopped loving you completely and just pitied you. I pitied you, but I still hated you. And it took me 3 years and 11 months to finally, really wake up and realize life with you would be horrific. Id be married to someone I hated. I’d probably have a kid with someone I hated. Someone who is a slob, someone who is a pig, someone who is a creep, someone who is lazy, entitled, narcissistic, and emotionally stunted. You were “broken” and I’d moved on in a month, because I was over it for nearly four years at that point. You were too deluded to realize it because you were happy. That’s all that mattered to you — you.

You don’t deserve even half the happiness I’ve found within the last almost two years. Not even a fraction of it. You are selfish and self-centered and you do not know how to treat someone with respect or love them. I would not wish you on any other woman. You are a plague. Stay in your house not because of this Covid-19 quarantine, but because you and your horrible personality should be kept from the world and everyone in it.

[chadnevett]

Books Read in 2019

As usual, this is really “prose books completed in 2019.” It doesn’t count parts of books read or comics. So, if I decided to randomly read half of the essays in a Chuck Klosterman book or haven’t made it through that history of Canadian international trade just yet... well... Dates are when I finished them. Anyway, I’ve added little blurbs where I felt like it.

1. TV (The Book) by Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz (January 6). Babylon 5 was overlooked.

2. Waiting to Derail: Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown, Alt-Country’s Brilliant Wreck by Thomas O’Keefe with Joe Oestreich (January 9). I haven’t said anything about Ryan Adams in public since the spring. I haven’t listened to any of his music since then either. Not sure if/when I will again. It has meant a lot to me over the years. I understand the difficulty in reconciling the love of his art and what came out about him. I’ve struggled with that. I can understand people who say that they’ll listen to the music anyway, because it means something to them and, in their mind, has nothing to do with the person who made it. I have that disconnect for some things. This one is still too fresh for me; too personal. But, man, the people that I don’t understand are the ones who refuse to think any of it is true. As I said to my wife, I didn’t think this was who he was, but I wasn’t particularly surprised either. Quite frankly, nothing he does would surprise me. Anyway, good book. Entertaining book. Well-timed read, I guess, unfortunately.

3. Dead Pig Collector by Warren Ellis (February 13).

4. CoDex 1962 by Sjon (March 17). I can’t imagine reading this as three separate novels and feeling satisfied with any. Still not convinced it even works as a whole.

5. The Border by Don Winslow (April 22). It ain’t Power of the Dog. It isn’t even The Cartel. And the imprisoned child illegal immigrant plot felt completely unnecessary. But, it was alright.

6. White by Bret Easton Ellis (April 28). Not nearly as extreme or out there as portrayed. I disagreed with some of this, was bored by other parts, and enjoyed others... s’okay.

7. Thanos: Death Sentence by Stuart Moore (May 11). I read this; you don’t have to.

8. Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson’s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism by Timothy Denevi (May 15). This was good, but it just sort of... ends.

9. I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street by Matt Taibbi (June 3). If you want an unbelievable work of nonfiction that will leave you shaking with rage...

10. Basketball (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano (July 9). Really entertaining and funny.

11. The Farnsworth Invention by Aaron Sorkin (July 13). I’d like to see it performed.

12. Raised in Captivity by Chuck Klosterman (July 27). Like any short story collection, it’s a bit hit or miss. But, when it hit, it really hit. The story about the father with his son at the park really hit me for obvious personal reasons. I identified with it strongly. And I learned that Klosterman searches for his name on Twitter as he liked my tweet about that story despite it not tagging him and being a reply to my Goodreads update. No judgment, but good to know.

13. This Storm by James Ellroy (August 16). Once you get past the first two hundred pages and the idea of everyone in the past being so casually racist that the lingering racism of the present doesn’t seem so overblown, it’s a pretty good book. I was worried that he wouldn’t finish this new LA Quartet, but he’s already talking about another trilogy after this...

14. Three Years by Anton Chekhov (August 25). A novella about how love fades and learning to live with another person can be difficult. A favourite of mine.

15. Movies (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano (October 14). Didn’t like this as much as the basketball one. Our tastes don’t overlap quite enough for this to work for me.

16. Hate, Inc. by Matt Taibbi (November 21). Oh, it’s not just politics and the police that’s completely fucked? Thanks, man.

17. V. By Thomas Pynchon (December 1). Kind of all over the place.

18. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (December 6). More focused.

[mst3kproject]

Tarantulas: the Deadly Cargo

 I tend to associate this movie with Killer Fish – probably because I originally watched them on consecutive days, but they’ve got many other things in common.  Both feature dull 70’s actors facing off against small animals that aren’t nearly as dangerous as pop culture would have us believe.  Both go out of their way to avoid showing us anything genuinely exciting or cool.  Both have boring, contrived climaxes, and both have titles that are technically accurate but dismally forgettable.  If this one had dropped the Tarantulas and just called itself Deadly Cargo, that would be ten times better already.

A couple of crooks fly out of Ecuador with no idea that their cargo of coffee beans and illegal immigrants is, for some reason I cannot even begin to fathom, infested with spiders.  A bad engine and the aggressive spiders lead to a crash landing in Finleyville, California.  This is a sleepy little hick town that depends on the citrus industry, and they clearly haven’t had an emergency in about twelve years but they do their best to rise to the occasion.  Unfortunately, their attempts to help only unleash the deadly arachnids on their community.  Eventually, the townspeople find that the spiders have made themselves at home in the town’s fruit warehouse.  If they cannot be somehow removed, the oranges will be unsalable, and Finleyville will go broke without a crop.

No shit.  The greatest threat presented by the spiders in this movie is to the town’s economy.  I don’t know why I find that so funny.  Most spider movies present us with the horror of a slow venom death, often while playing up the omg, it’s touching me! angle. Giant spider movies give us huge monsters that can entangle and devour us. Tarantulas: the Deadly Cargo threatens that not only might we be bitten by spiders, we won’t be able to afford health insurance afterwards!

The economic angle is the key to what this movie is.  It’s trying to be something, and the first time I watched it, I wasn’t paying enough attention to pick it out.  On the second viewing, when the owner of the orange-packing plant refuses to shut down operations because of a few spiders, it clicked – this was a Jaws ripoff!  It’s got the shark and the Fourth of July Weekend and the whole thing!  There’s even a Little Alex Kitner, in the form of a kid who climbs a truck to see one of the spiders after the driver assures him it’s perfectly harmless.  Deadly Cargo has changed enough details that it could have been an interesting variation on this formula, but by the time the movie’s over its choice of shark stand-in has pushed it into a couple of corners it just can’t get out of.

I’ll come back to that – first, it’s Spider Nerd time again, and I actually do have to give Deadly Cargo some points for research.  Characters present a dead spider to some sort of scientist, who identifies it as a Brazilian Wandering Spider, Phoneutria nigriventer.  This species can be dangerous to humans, but usually only to small children, and they’re one of the few spiders capable of delivering a ‘dry’ bite that’s intended to scare rather than to kill. They’re sometimes called banana spiders because of a reputation for hanging out in shipments of fruit, but I don’t think they’ve ever been found hiding in coffee beans.  Why would a spider hide in coffee beans?  Spiders like small spaces to crawl into, such as those you find in between bunches of bananas or oranges in a box.  Coffee beans are too small to create spider-sized hidey holes!

The Nondescript Scientist also notes that Phoneutria isn’t a tarantula – another reason why the word Tarantulas should not have been in the title.  It also got a snort out of me because almost all the spiders we see in this movie are in fact Mexican Red-Knee Tarantulas (there are also a couple of Chilean Rose-Hairs).  These are the same spiders we saw in Ator: the Fighting Eagle, and are the spiders of choice for horror movies because they are docile, easy to handle, and don’t bite.  So yeah, if you ever actually see one of these in real life, you can just push it the hell over.

As long as I’m talking about the spiders in this movie, I’d like to know how they got into town so fast.  One minute the spiders are at the crash site in the middle of empty fields, the next they’re harassing the faculty at the School for Autistic Children (are you already cringing?  Wait until you see the kids marching in lockstep to an obnoxious whistle).  Spiders move at like one mile per hour.  Did the plane explosion just spray them across the entire state?

Plane explosion?  Yeah, of course there’s a plane explosion in this movie, and it’s fucking annoying because they came so close to not having one. After the crash the plane develops a fuel leak – but the town’s fire chief immediately notices it, and directs people to dig a trench the fuel can flow into so it won’t pool.  He goes around making sure nobody lights a cigarette or anything, and for a moment I really thought this might be a movie in which common sense prevails… but then some jackass on a motorcycle drives straight into the trench.  Seeing a giant fireball in a movie has never left me more disappointed.

I have digressed, though.  Let’s talk about the climax of the movie, which is one of the places where it most strongly resembles Killer Fish.  Killer Fish had the whole cast trapped with piranhas all around their boat.  Tarantulas: the Deadly Cargo has them all in a warehouse full of spiders, as a power outage simultaneously shuts down the noise that had paralyzed the creatures and locks the doors.

This situation is so forced that it probably requires more explanation.  The spiders must be removed from the oranges so that they can be shipped, but the townspeople cannot just spray the fruit with insecticides, because their buyer specifically paid for chemical-free (somebody does try to argue that he didn’t pay for spider-free, which amuses me more than it should).  Therefore they paralyze the spiders with the sound of angry wasps and go around shoveling them into buckets of booze.

Like Banana Spiders, Spider-Wasps are actually a thing – the family pompilidae lay their eggs inside living spiders so that the larvae will hatch surrounded by something they can eat.  What I can’t find when I looked these up is any reference to the spiders being paralyzed by terror when they hear the wasps coming.  This seems pretty counter-productive from the spiders’ point of view – if you hear your deadliest enemy closing in on your, wouldn’t it be far more effective to run and hide, rather than roll over and present your belly to be ovipositored?

So that’s all ridiculous, and then we don’t even get a real sense of anybody ‘winning’ at the end.  The supposed moment of triumph isn’t the spiders being out of the oranges, it’s the trapped people escaping through the roof.  In Killer Fish the piranhas ate the human villain and Kate escaped with the jewels. Deadly Cargo doesn’t have a human villain – the greedy plant owner looks like he might be able to fill this role, but no, he’s later treated as vindicated when they almost lose the orange crop!  This means the only ‘bad guys’ here are the spiders, and dropping their helplessly paralyzed bodies into poison just doesn’t feel like a victory. Neither does watching boxes of oranges go out on a train.  It’s just lacking something.

It doesn’t help that the end of both movies also just leaves the killer animal problem lying there.  In Killer Fish the whole area is still infested with piranhas – what does that mean for the tourism industry?  Is there any way to get rid of them?  In Deadly Cargo we can’t possibly be a hundred percent sure all the spiders are gone. Some might still be hanging around in somebody’s fruit bowl.  Someone in another part of the country might find a hairy leg in their organic marmalade. We never knew how many spiders there were, so we can’t be sure they’re all gone and not out invading ecosystems where they have no natural predators.

Another big part of why Deadly Cargo is so unsatisfying is not only does it lack a villain, the good characters are never well-defined enough for us to really identify with any of them.  There’s a young couple and a fire chief and the plant owner, but I can’t remember any of their names.  The only people we get a sense of are the spider victims, who are introduced just enough to tell us that they either deserved to die (Mrs. Beasley, cheating on her husband) or didn’t (Little Alex Kitner).  We can’t even feel for the girl weeping over her dead brother.

There’s a heap of other silly bullshit in this movie. Like the guy who opens a trapdoor in the ceiling and then just stands there screaming like an idiot as three or four spiders fall on him – a shot that probably looked way cooler in the director’s imagination.  Or the straight-faced implication that the spiders could sense the warehouse full of oranges from four miles away and headed directly for it.  Most of this is just mildly amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny.  I’m sure Jonah and the bots could make a diverting episode out of this, but I don’t know if even they could make a memorable one.

[useyourrwords]

January in Review // I Cried, Laughed, Ate Pasta, Celebrated My Birthday & Completed TWO Read-A-Thons/Challenges

January was…A lot.

This past month has been crazy, to say the least. A lot of highs and a lot of lows but I’m getting through it so that’s something!

January contained so much in such a short time that I still can’t believe it’s over!

        January’s TBR

Guys, I completed not one, but two read-a-thon/challenges this month! For someone who hasn’t participated in any before I count that as a double win!

I participated in the Late-A-Thon hosted by Destiny @ Howling Libraries and JanJamJar from the Devour Your TBR Goodreads group!

  I was able to combine them both by using a TBR jar with the ARCs I wanted to catch up on in it.

So the books I put in my January TBR are all the books I put in the Jar.

I didn’t get all of them but I didn’t expect to.

│The Good Son│

│

│My Name is Victoria│

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│Skylarks│

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│Anger is a Gift│

│

│The Unbinding of Mary Reade│

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│Rad Girls Can│

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│The Boneless Mercies│

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│What If It’s Us│

│

│Girls of Paper and Fire│

│

     Read

Emoji order – format-representation-challenges/readathons-reading status.

The TBR Jar really worked in my favour! And it was great catching up on so many ARCS!

Each book I pulled out came at the right time and I think I might continue with the Jar until I’ve caught up on the ARC’s I have left from 2018.

│The Unbinding of Mary Reade│

│

│

│

│★★│Read Jan 8│

This one was fairly disappointing. I wanted a whole lot more than it had to give.

│My Name is Victoria│Lucy Worsley│

│

│

│

│★★★│Read Jan 11│

I actually really liked the twist in this but god damn was most of it boring.

│The Good Son│You-Jeong Jeong│

│

│

│

│★★★│Read Jan 25│

I—this just wasn’t great and it mostly just made me angry. 

│Unbroken│Marieke Nijkamp│

│

│

│

I nearly finished this before the month was up but not quite.

│The Boneless Mercies│April Genevieve Tucholke│

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│

│

│

This has been decent enough so far but I’m waiting for more.

Book of the Month

│Girls of Paper and Fire│Girls of Paper and Fire #1│Natasha Ngan│

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│

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│★★★★│Read Jan 21│

I loved it! It was so engaging for the most part!

│January Completed│ARC: 4│Owned: 0│Library Loans: 0│Reread: 0│Diversity: 4│Average Rating: 3★’s│

     Haul

│Vengeful│Villains│VE Schwab│

│

│

Nearly didn’t get this one because I accidentally sent it to the wrong address but I visited my neighbour and I got it!

This was a late Christmas present to myself!

│P.S. I Still Love You│To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before│Jenny Han│

│

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│Always and Forever, Lara Jean│To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before│Jenny Han│

│

│

These were birthday presents to myself!

Past Grey Reads

 Book Review // Girl Made of Stars – I Am Broken

 Book Review // Everything Leads To You – A Quite Love Story

 Book Review // The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – What Do You Mean She’s Not a Real Person???

        Film & TV

I’ve really not watched much at all because I just don’t have time! Or money!

I decided that the season 1 watch I did of Charmed was enough to give me the hit of nostalgia that I needed so I won’t be continuing it again anytime soon! I do want to get around to watching the remake soon though!

January’s TBW

│Mary Queen of Scots│

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│How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World│

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│Ralph Breaks the Internet│

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│Charmed│

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     Watched

│Mary Queen of Scots│

│2018│

 Josie Rourke│

 Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden│★★★★★│ Fave Part: Literally all of it, it was so well done. And I loved that they portrayed Mary and Elizabeth as two women pitted against each other by the men around them. 

I won tickets to see this at my local cinema so me and mum went and it was fucking brilliant!

│Hannibal│Season 2│

│2013│

 Bryan Fuller│

 Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, Caroline Dhavernas│★★★★│ Fave Part: The fact it’s gotten more and more homoerotic.  

I watched the same four episodes about four times each because I needed a fucking break but was being stubborn.

Also, my coworker had time to rewatch every episode in the time it took me to watch those four properly. She has work AND Uni. I have no idea how she has time to do it???

│Drag Race All Stars│Season 4│

│2012│

 RuPaul│

RuPaul, Michelle Visage│★★★★│ Fave One-liner This Season: “Yeah, well some of us don’t have to force story-lines to get air time” -Farrah Moan.

Valentina has continued to live her full telenovela fantasy and it’s entertaining as fuck.

The judges need to stop sleeping on Naomi because the bitch is turning it out and they’re refusing to take notice… Except for maybe last week….But we don’t talk about that.

Manila is killing it as always and the period gown that she couldn’t wear on the show??? Iconic.

Also, I’m very excited to see Season 11!!!! So many queens that I’m looking forward to seeing!

│Jessica Jones│Season 1│

│2015│

Melissa Rosenberg│

Krysten Ritter, Rachael Taylor, Eka Darville│★★★★│ Fave character: Jessica obvs

I am struggling but only because the only time I have time to watch is when I’m fucking tired and ready for sleep. I’ll get there. 

│Dumplin’│

│2018│

Anne Fletcher│

Danielle Macdonald, Jennifer Aniston, Odeya Rush│★★★★★│ Fave part: The fact Bo didn’t like Will despite her being fat, he thought she was beautiful as is.

This so easily could have been terrible and you literally just have to look to last year to see just how easy it would have been but this was so good and special and respectful and I cried so much while watching it and fucking Ginger Minj was everything and this is everything I wanted Sierra Burgess is a Loser to be and I’m so glad I finally got it.

Also, I have a huge crush on Bex Taylor-Klaus. So there’s that.

│Derry Girls│Season 1│

│2017│

Lisa McGee│

Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Louisa Harland, Nicola Coughlan│★★★★│ Fave character: Orla

This show is so fucking funny. I was struggling not to laugh out loud while my mum was giving someone a massage.

│The Haunting of Hill House│Season 1│

│2018│

Mike Flanagan│

 Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas│★★★★★│ Fave sibling: Theo

This show is brilliant like everyone talked about how good it was but I just didn’t have time and then I put it on one night and didn’t pay any attention to it at all. And then I put it on when I had a self-imposed mental health day and mum watched it with me and it was the best decision I’ve made in 2019 so far, to be honest.

I binged watched it in just three days which is huge for me because I haven’t been able to binge watch anything that isn’t just short 20 minute episodes in short season in months.

Oh, and I want Theo to top me.

     Youtube

I would say I need to stop watching YouTube because I watch so fucking much of it but I watch it while I’m doing other things like eating, doing housework, cooking and blogging. It’s the only way I can watch it without feeling guilty.

│VH1│Meet the Queens of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 11│The Pit Stop: LaLaPaRUza w/ Katya│The Pit Stop: Jersey Justice ft. Kim Chi│

I am so ready for the new season!!!

Also, I love anything Katya and Trixie do.

And look at Kim Chi’s look, I die.

│Miz Cracker│Review With A Jew│

Review With A Jew has gotten PROFESSIONAL now and I just love Miz Cracker.

│Ladylike│Hot Takes—Jen Reveals Her Unpopular Opinion & Devin Reveals Her Unpopular Opinion│Kristen Goes to Montreal With No Clothes│

I am loving these hot takes because they’re just fun to watch and see the other ladies react as well!

I think the whole trip with no clothes challenge is a brilliant idea!!!

│Lily Marston│My Friends & I Read Your Assumptions About Me│15 Tools That Help My Neck & Back Pain│

I think the assumptions video trend is actually really a good idea because it allows creators to share a little bit more of themselves!

if you have chronic pain you’re gonna want to check out Lily’s video on the tools she uses to get relief!

│Buzzfeed Video│Mom In Progress—We Tried the 7-Day Vegan Challenge│

So in this video, they eat vegan cream cheese on toast with raspberries and it looked so delicious that I wanted to try it with other toppings. So now mum and I are obsessed with cream cheese and pepper smoked salmon on toast and I can’t stop.

Other toppings I’ve tried are;

 Mango and raspberry jam (because raspberries are pricey)

 Salami

 Tomatoes (with salt and loads of pepper)

 Shaved chicken (with salt and loads of pepper)

And next to try is peaches!

│Liza Koshy Too│The videos I never uploaded… until now│Why I took a break│

I love Liza and I love that she’s easing herself back into making videos again and so far I’ve loved them both!

│Chris Klemens│Telling Each Other What to Say to Strangers: Carly and Erin│

You need to watch this just to see Carly speak gibberish which honestly sounds like Simish and really did sound almost like another legit language.

│Sorted Food│Pass It On│

I will never not love this series. It’s YouTube whispers but cooking a meal.

│ElleOfTheMills│My Weight Loss│

I love anytime some talks openly about mental health and Elle is really delivering lately!

     Music

I’ve honestly barely listened to any music this month let alone any new music.

│Camila Cabello│Something’s Gotta Give│Inside Out│In the Dark│

│Madison Beer│Dead│

│The Greatest Showman Reimagined│Never Enough (Kelly Clarkson)│This Is Me (Kesha)│Rewrite the Stars (James Arthur & Anne-Marie)│

     Podcasts

│Race Chaser│

 Alaska Thunderfuck & Willam Belli│★★★★★│

│Sibling Rivalry│

 Bob The Drag Queen & Monet X Change│★★★★★│

│What The Tuck│

 Nicole Byers & Joel Kim Booster│★★★★★│

I don’t know how to not become obsessed with things and apparently, that means listening to all the podcasts to get the backstage Tea on All-Stars 4.

Past Grey Watches

 Grey Watches // I Wanna Bone Jude Law and Kate Winslet – The Holiday

 Grey Watches // It Has To Be A Shit Show – A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding

 Grey Watches // I Hate It So Much I Love It – A Christmas Prince

Blogosphere Highlights

│Krystin @ Here’s The Fucking Twist│ Top Ten: Mystery and Thriller Releases for Q1 2019!│

│Destiny @ Howling Libraries│BEST OF 2018: CONTEMPORARY!│

│Elise @ The Bookish Actress│ANOTHER 2018 FAVE, FINALLY REVIEWED! SAWKILL GIRLS BY CLAIRE LEGRAND│

│May @ Forever And Everly│My Most Anticipated YA Books Releasing January through July ft. a Lot of Asian Fantasies and Diverse Books in General!│

│Ellyn @Allonsythornraxxbooks│ HOW TO GET ON TOP OF YOUR NETGALLEY FEEDBACK RATIO│

│Silvia @Silvia Reads Books│All I Learned About Audiobooks: A Guide│

│Avery @Red Rocket Panda│HOW TO HYPE YOUR FAVOURITE READS│

│Abbiee @Abbiee│WRITING TIPS Transform a Messy Story Idea Into a Strong Outline (in 3 simple steps!)│

│Ilsa @A Whisper of Ink│How the HECK does one receive a physical ARC because I want one?! (I hear your cries and answer all your questions) Welcome to How To Request + Recieve ARCs│

│Simone @Simone and Her Books│My Review Process and Why I Write Reviews│

│Swetlana @The Caffeinated Bookworm Life│16 Blog Post Ideas To Help You Get Through (AT LEAST) A Month Of Blogging│

│Melanie @Mel To The Any│The Top 12 Books I Must Read in 2019│

Past Month In Review

 Month in Review // Christmas is Over Thank Fuck – December

 Month in Review // November – I Already Hate Christmas

 Month in Review // July, August, September & October – New Post Series!

January’s Goals

 Increase my walk time and maybe go for walks 6 days a week?

 Start doing some floor exercises like crunches.

I need an exercise ball which I have but I don’t know where the pump is and I keep forgetting to ask mum where it is.

 Read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Work out my new blogging schedule

 Start working on my WIP

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH

 Fucking relax a bit

 Maybe finish editing all my past posts???

A Month of Mayhem

I spent my birthday out!!! My mum took me to get my hair cut, we did some shopping, she gave me a massage and some Reiki which I needed!!! And then we went to Fasta Pasta for dinner and it was delicious!!! Oh and I even took photos with mum and didn’t feel gross and have a new selfie I took with snapchat with the fox filter and I think it’s v cute!!!

The last few years I’ve always gotten books as presents for my birthday but mum told me I had too many unread books so I had to choose something else…So I chose things for my reading! Because of course.

I got a pair of noise-cancelling headphones so that I can continue to read or blog or write uninterrupted instead of getting distracted every time mum’s massage clients come and go. Except mum keeps forgetting to check if I have them on before she goes to have a full conversation with me. So when I realise she’s doing it I just turn and look at her and she notices the headphones. I’ve taken to moving one of the earphones off my ear when I notice she’s in the living room but I don’t always notice.

My mum also got me my first book sleeve from Etsy! I spent hours finding one I wanted that wasn’t super expensive but good quality! It’s spacey and I love it. It’s great timing since I’m going to be reading more of my owned physical books this year and I don’t want them to get damaged by the three drink bottles in my bag for work YES THREE!!! and two are 1-litre ones and my bag is heavy. I HAVE MY REASONS!!!

I also bought myself far too many animated movies, some books, a curler, some hair products so I can use the curler I have still not used any of it yet shhhh, and a fitbit!!!!

I mean the fitbit was definitely the most needed one for sure because now I can actually track how many steps I’m doing a day and I’ve been doing pretty good! I’m hitting 8000 steps most days and even hit my first 10000 steps on the 16th which was exciting!

I went and did my tax finally and now my tax debt thanks work for not taking the correct amount of tax out for several years! is down to a very manageable amount! So that’s a relief!

My sister brought my nephews around for a visit and nephew 3 nearly got bit by a spider but nephew 2 saved the day! Other than that the visit was good! I love them so much and Nephew 3 is starting to walk!!!

My mum treated me to get my nails done professionally for the first time ever and I love them. My nails look like bullets.

I discovered where I could buy cheap hazelnut syrup for my coffee and then when I went to buy it saw they also have dark chocolate syrup as well so basically I’m just drinking liquid Nutella.

And I have officially been on this blog for a year!!! I’m so thankful for this community and even just this blog being a lifeline and a thing to focus my attention on when things have been shit in my personal life. I’m so glad I can call myself a part of this community and I look forward to many more years being a part of it!

I lost my bank card while doing my food shopping which was not great and very inconvenient since a lot of the parking I pay for work is cheaper booking online! But whatever.

I had a few emotional moments throughout the month but it was mostly just me having a little cry and then moving on.

I visited my other sister which kind of didn’t go great, to begin with. There was a whole thing, I had an anxiety attack and suffered a bout of paranoia and cried a lot but it all worked out in the end.

Once I calmed down we went to get my phone upgraded (this was already the plan) because I am anxious, my mum is busy, and my sister knows a guy that works there so I got well looked after! But then I had to go back another day because they didn’t have the phone that I wanted in stock.

We came back to her house and played Overcooked on the PlayStation which is always fun for us and I was in much better spirits when I left!

Until the next day when I was a mess again.

Look, I’m really great at handling big life-changing things as they’re happening. It’s a trait I inherited from my mum. The whole world as we know it could end and it wouldn’t look like I even knew something had changed.

It’s like my brain will just put the BIG THING in a box and shove it under a few things until I’ve gotten through it and then it’ll bring it out and say “Remember this BIG THING??? Yeah, now you gotta process it. Have fun.” Which is great until there are several BIG THINGS waiting to be processed and then I get hit with them all at once, which happens most of the time.

So then I break down over seemingly small shit. Its very clearly SO MUCH FUN!!!

So basically I spent that whole day crying and anxious and paranoid and had to call my mum to help calm me down and then my new phone was ready to be picked up and I didn’t want to bother my sister to go with me and I knew I needed to do something on my own to prove to myself I’m not totally useless so I went and picked up my phone by myself! Thankfully the hard part was over I am an absolute pushover and will be talked into buying anything even if I don’t want it so I just had to go in, they transferred my stuff over to the new phone and I was done!

It went well, despite the fact that the guy was having difficulty transferring my stuff over but I think he was a little unnerved by how quiet I am in person and especially with people I don’t really know, and I hate being THAT customer so I tend to just sit patiently and try and get my brain to shut up.

He kept commenting on how quiet and patient I was and trying to get me to talk but I hate small talk because I never know what to say. When we were finished he said he hopes I’ll become a regular customer and if I have any problems to come in and he’ll help me out!

I also made an appointment that day to get my mental health plan done so I can go back to seeing my therapist which, clearly, I super need!!!

Oh, and I also even mentioned to someone I know from my last workplace that I’ve been wanting to learn how to play d&d but didn’t have anyone to teach me and she said that if a spot opened up on a campaign she’d let me know!!!!

At the end of the month, I took a mental health day with my mum. We stayed home all day and did the bare minimum and it was so good! I sat and watched the Derry Girls and then mum and I watched half of The Haunting of Hill House and we talked about what anxiety and depression and paranoia sound like in our head and talked a lot about mental health and it was just really lovely even though it was emotional and I cried.

I know it kind of sounds like this month was a bit of a downer but overall it really wasn’t and it also didn’t feel like that. For the most part, I was happy and motivated and got a good amount of reading done and was productive! I even cleaned out my car!

Sometimes it’s easy for me to focus on just the negatives but I have to remind myself that even though I had some downer moments I am nowhere near as consistently down as I was just a few months ago and that’s progress! I just have to keep focusing on my health, both physical and mental and talking to my mum when I’m sad and talking through my feelings. I say that like it’s the easiest thing in the world when I am in fact Queen Of Not Reaching Out.

Past Month Ahead

 Month Ahead // Happy Birthday To Me + Hiatus Announcement – January

 Month Ahead // December – I Already Hate It

 Month Ahead // November – New Post Series

January is done and dusted, bring on February!

What did you do this month? What did you read? What did you watch? What posts did you write that you’re super proud of?

│Blog│Goodreads│Instagram│Twitter│Tumblr│

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[jaeminlore]

Redemption // Jeon Jungkook

-

the prompt: Jungkook scenario when your pregnant unplan baby he finds the test when you get home he starts yelling, blaming you throwing things,tells you to gtfo of his life with the baby saying fucked up things. So you leave Korea 3 year later you come back with your daughter and you guys see each other again he tries to win you back angst beginning but fluff ending?

words: 8942

category: heavy angst + fluff ending

author note: it’s time to see how good destinee’s character development skills are. also y/n didn’t leave, jungkook did. hope that’s okay. im so proud of myself for writing this?? I didn’t give up and I’m glad i didn’t. anyway, this took forever to write you can literally see my writing improve as you keep reading its kind of funny anyway let’s go!

- destinee

-

You sat on the edge of your bed, your head in one of your hands, as the other held the reason you were so stressed.

A positive pregnancy test stared back, the two lines mocking you; a permanent reminder of the mistakes you had made.

You felt stupid. You and Jungkook were still young, and no matter how much you loved the boy, you weren’t sure you wanted to have a baby so soon.

There was nothing you could do about it now, since you definitely didn’t want to abort the child. You would keep them and raise them with love, for that you were certain.

You were just wondering if the father would also be there, raising them as well.

Your nerves shot as you waited for Jungkook to get off of work, you called up one of your closest friends, Taehyung.

“Hello?“

“Tae? It’s Y/n. I have some news and I’m scared Jungkook isn’t going to like it.”

"Are you okay? Jungkook said you’ve been under the weather for the past few days.“

You gulped. "Tae, have you heard of morning sickness?”

“Yeah,” he replied casually. “It’s when you’re pregnant and you get queasy— Wait, you’re pregnant?”

“Keep it down!” you hissed. “I don’t want Jungkook to know.”

"He’s nowhere me. Plus, he’s going to find out eventually, Y/n.“

"I know.” You shut your eyes tightly, wishing this was all a dream. “How do I tell him?”

“Just tell him,” Taehyung said casually. “Jungkook should be happy.”

“But he wants to go to university. How can he afford that with a baby?”

“I don’t know, talk to him about that when he gets home.”

You shivered in the fear that Jungkook might not want the child. “I think I’ll keep it a secret just a little longer.”

“Be careful,” Taehyung warned you before closing the call.

Since that was decided, you threw the pregnancy test in the trash, being sure to cover it with some toilet paper, and left to prepare dinner for when Jungkook came home.

-

Jungkook arrived home the same time he always did. “Babe, guess what?”

“What?” You smiled, trying to hide your anxiety.

Jungkook handed you piece of paper. “Read it.”

You read over the form, and it didn’t take long to realize that Jungkook had been accepted into his choice university, three hours away from you. “Congratulations!”

“I’ll be moving in two weeks.”

“That’s great,” you said. It truly was, because you were thinking of all the ways you could hide a baby belly while you were in a long distance relationship.

“I know!” Jungkook cheered, smiling at you. “I’ll get my degree and then we’ll start the proper life we’ve always dreamed of.”

“Right.” Your smile only faded slightly. If only you hadn’t gotten pregnant with his child, maybe you could have that life.

Luckily, Jungkook didn’t notice your shift in behavior.

-

The ill-fated day came two days before Jungkook prepared to leave.

While you were sitting on the couch, reading a book, Jungkook slammed something down on the coffee table. You jumped and hesitantly peeked over your book. Your eyes widened in fear as you saw the familiar blue object you had used to confirm your pregnancy.

Jungkook’s expression did nothing to comfort you, as his face was contorted in anger and confusion. “How could you do this?”

You put the book down and looked at Jungkook, “I can explain.”

Jungkook raised his voice, “Why would you get pregnant when I’m going away?”

Your eyebrows pressed together in confusion. “It was an accident, Jungkook! And don’t act like you aren’t a part of this.”

“I’m not a part of this,” he snapped, his eyes widening at the realization of what he just said. Still, he didn’t correct himself.

His actions were stiff, as if he was struggling to keep from exploding in anger. His eyes were narrowed into slits and his notriles flared every once in awhile. You had never seen this side of him before, and it was scaring you. You placed a hand over you stomach defensively.

“It’s your baby too,” you said, feeling small under the harshness of his gaze.

Jungkook scoffed and looked away. He began pacing back and forth in the living room. Finally, he clicked his tongue and looked at you. “I don’t want it. I can’t have distractions like this when I go to school.”

You stood up and grabbed his forearm, “Jungkook, you’re just stressed right now. I know you don’t mean any of this. We can figure it out.”

Jungkook shoved you away. “I don’t want to figure anything out,” he spat. “I want you and that baby out of my house by this weekend.”

You stepped back, feeling tears begin to pool into you eyes. “You don’t mean that.”

Jungkook looked into your eyes, and your lip quivered to see the raw emotion in them. You could see that you were no longer wanted. “I do.”

So you did as he wanted you to, and left.

-

Many people were there to help you throughout your pregnancy. Taehyung had you move in with him, so he could help as much as possible. As your best friend since kindergarten, he vowed to never leave your side despite everything that had happened.

He lived with another boy, Jimin, who would not get within ten feet of you. According to Taehyung, Jimin was afraid he’d hurt the baby. He helped in indirect ways, and those tended to be buying stylish clothes for the new baby. So now you had nearly an entire dresser filled with onesies that would guarantee your child would be the most fashionable baby on the block.

Taehyung wanted to decorate the nursery, despite your pleas to pick out the design. According to him, since it was his house, he got to pick out the design. So he chose art. He wanted the entire nursery to look like some kind of art museum. You figured this was just his way of keeping all the extra paintings he would have to sell if he couldn’t find room for them.

Really, though, the only reason they were offering so much material needs was because they couldn’t really do anything to help your emotional needs.

No one really knew how depressed you were for the first few weeks after Jungkook left. You kept a smile on your face all day long. Even when you had to quit college to work full-time, you acted as if it was no big deal.

When the day came for you to go for your first sonogram, you were a bit deflated that your mother couldn’t come along with you. You would’ve liked another mother’s support during an important time like this. Instead, you got Taehyung in his scrubs, half asleep from his long day at the pediatric office.

Everything was fine. The doctor showed you the screen, where you were able to see your baby for the first time. Taehyung gripped your hand excitedly, his smile widening as he looked at the screen.

When the doctor left the room to go get the pictures for you to take home, Taehyung turned to you. “This is so amazing, Y/n! I can’t believe Jungkook won’t be here to see this.”

It was a slip of the tongue. He hadn’t meant to say it so insensitively. He had, though, and you burst into tears for the first time since Jungkook left you.

Taehyung held you close to him, apologizing over and over for what he had said. “Hey, Y/n, I’m sorry. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.”

You sniffed, feeling hot tears flood down your flushed cheeks. “What if it’s not, Tae? What if it’s not okay?”

He couldn’t answer that.

-

The rest of the pregnancy went up and down, mostly with the weather. For the most part, however, you were able to stay cheerful towards the birth of your child.

In July, you gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. You named her Yuna, after one of your old friends from high school. For the first time in nine months, everything seemed worth it. As if a huge weight had been lifted off of your shoulders.

All that mattered now was the little girl in your arms. You would make sure she had everything she needed. You were going to be the best mother you could be.

“I love you, Yuna,” you whispered to the newborn in your arms.

-

Three Years Later

-

“Look, Taehyung, I don’t care how much you spent on it, I will not put a Ryan Mcginley painting up in my daughter’s room and that’s final.” You hung up then, ignoring the protests of your best friend.

You were no longer living with Taehyung and Jimin. In fact, before Yuna’s second birthday, you had saved up enough to go live on your own.

They were still a huge part of Yuna’s life, mostly since they refused to leave the child alone. They were the best uncles in the world, spoiling her with trips to the zoo and ice cream, even when you told them not to.

Luckily, you weren’t too strict when it came to your daughter. As long as she ate her vegetables and didn’t take candy from strangers, you were a pretty chill mother.

Yuna was a good daughter as well. She took a lot from Taehyung and Jimin, like a love for dance from Jimin and an ear for classical music from Tae. From you, she received a resilient spirit and a soft voice.

You could even see hints of Jungkook inside of her. She had his mouth and eyes. She even had his laugh, and his spirit of competitiveness. If only he could see her now, you wondered if he would be proud.

You had made your peace about Jungkook a long time ago. Yuna brought out the forgiving side of you. She was your one reminder that there was nothing more important than your daughter. So you let the past go, choosing to move on and make the best of things.

There had been a few men in your life, although no one ever stayed long. Most of the time, they left as soon as they found out about Yuna. It was just as well, since you didn’t want to date a guy who wouldn’t make time for her.

The phone rang again, and you rolled your eyes as you picked it up. “Taehyung, I told you I’m not putting a painting of a naked woman in my daughter’s room.”

“Y/n? You picked up this time!”

You froze. Without a word, you hung up your phone.

It wasn’t Taehyung. It was Jungkook.

-

Yuna sat on your lap, contently munching on a cookie while you brushed her hair. Aladdin was playing on your television and your daughter watched, transfixed at the bright blue genie that danced around on the screen.

“Mommy?”

“What is it?” You asked, focusing on the tangles in her dark hair.

“I answered the phone while you were in the bathroom the other day.”

“What?” You turned Yuna around. “Was it Tae or Jimin?”

“No.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know.” Yuna’s eyes widened as she looked at your fearful expression. “Am I in trouble?” Her lower lip began to quiver.

“No, sweetie! Just try not to pick up the phone if Mommy isn’t in the room, okay?”

“Okay.” She nodded and rubbed under her nose. Then she giggled, “It was a cookie.”

“A cookie?”

“I talked to a cookie,” Yuna confirmed, holding up her own unfinished cookie.

Waves of memories came to your mind, back to a few years ago when you called Jungkook Kookie. Why was Jungkook calling now? Why was he trying to get in touch with you?

Had it already been four years? Did he already graduate from his university? Shouldn’t that mean his actual career is starting up? Shouldn’t that mean he already forgot about you?

“Why don’t we get ready for your nap, Yuna. Alright?”

“Okay!” Your compliant child hopped off of your lap and darted for your bedroom instead of hers. “But I wanna sleep in the big bed!”

“Fine, as long as I get to pick the bedtime story!”

-

As soon as Yuna was asleep, you grabbed your phone and called up the last number on your call log.

"Hello? Jungkook speaking.”

His voice sounded exactly like it did years before, but you couldn’t get the hurtful things he had told you out of his head.

“Listen, it’s Y/n. I don’t want you calling my phone anymore. I don’t want you talking to my daughter, alright?” you spoke with the same authority you used when you caught Yuna’s hand in the cookie jar.

He was silent on the other line for so long that you were about to hang up, until… "So it’s confirmed. I have a daughter. Wow.“

You frowned. "What are you getting at, Jungkook? Why are you calling all of a sudden after all these years? Don’t you have a career to get to?”

Okay, so there was still some bitterness piled up inside of you. Apparently it was a special feature that could only be unlocked with Jungkook’s return.

"Y/n, I was thinking about it and if you let me, I want to get to know her. Yuna, is it?“

"She’s not your daughter, Jungkook.” You told him in a warning tone. After all you did to forget him, he couldn’t just ask to be in Yuna’s life, could he?

"I just want to meet her,“ he begged. "Introduce me as an old friend or something. Please, Y/n? I want to talk to you as well and apologize properly. I’ve grown up a lot the past few years.”

“Fine,” you grumbled. “I’ll text you our address. One day. You come and see her, apologize to me, and leave. Nothing more and nothing less.”

He breathed a sigh of relief into the receiver, "Thank you so much. I promise that’s all I’ll do.“

-

Yuna was a good kid. She never asked questions she shouldn’t have, and she was more than willing to role with the punches. For instance, when you told her one of your friends would be visiting, she was happy. When you told her it was the "cookie” she had talked to on the phone, she was ecstatic.

She insisted on wearing her favorite clothes to meet her new friend. This consisted of a purple skirt, bright pink hightop sneakers, and a black tracksuit top. For the final touch, she placed her fake tiara on top the long hair she wouldn’t let you brush out.

“I’m going to see my cookie friend!” she sang as she followed you around the house.

“Yuna, help me pick up your toys so it will be clean for your cookie friend, okay?”

“Okay!” She did help you clean up. Albeit, this consisted of her trying to shove all her toys into the bathtub.

“That’s not where they go, Yuna!”

The doorbell rang, drowning out your daughter’s mischievous giggles. You ran to open the door.

“Hey, Y/n.” There was Jungkook, dressed in a pair of black skinny jeans and a tucked in t-shirt. You almost laughed at the fact that his clothes were practically the same as they were a few years ago.

You opened your mouth to greet him, but the running faucet interrupted your thoughts. “Yuna!”

You addressed Jungkook as you walked backwards into the bathroom, “Make yourself comfortable while I go tame the monster. I don’t know why she’s so hyper today.”

Jungkook chose to follow you into the bathroom instead. He leaned against the doorway while you scolded Yuna.

You quickly turned off the faucet, and Yuna shrieked in laughter, stomping her feet excitedly. “They’re swimming, Mommy!”

“Yes,” you agreed. “But what did I tell you about putting your stuffed animals in the water?”

“I don’t remember,” Yuna said with an impish shrug. She turned then, noticing the tall man in the doorway. She pushed past you and ran up to him. “Hello! Are you my cookie friend?”

Jungkook squatted down to get on Yuna’s level, and the action made you wonder ruefully what it would’ve been like of Jungkook had stayed. Sure, Yuna had plenty of father figures in her life. She had Taehyung, Jimin, and your own father. Still, she knew none of them were her dad. She knew her dad wasn’t in the picture.

A part of you wished for Jungkook to stay for her sake. So she could grow up with a father. You wanted her to be able to brag to her preschool friends next year about how cool her dad was. How he was a photographer with a degree of sports medicine under his belt. You wanted more than anything for Yuna to have the father she deserved. He was so close to the two of you. Yet, instead of Dad, he was a cookie friend to your daughter.

The thought was upsetting.

“Since you’re a cookie, and you’re really really tall, can you get the cookie jar for me?” Yuna pleaded, finding nothing awkward about a new person in her home. “Mommy put it on top of the regurgitate.”

Jungkook looked at you for reference.

“She means refrigerator,” you said. “Of all the big words she knows, that’s the one she can never remember.”

“But she can remember regurgitate?” Jungkook asked you as you ushered them both out of the small bathroom.

“I didn’t study child logic, so how would I know?” you asked rhetorically. “Yuna, how about you go play in your room for a moment so me and Jungkook can talk.”

“Is Jungkook the name of my cookie friend?” Yuna whispered to you politely, as if the question might offend Jungkook.

“Yes,” you whispered back. “I’ll call you when you can come out, okay?”

Yuna agreed casually, mentioning that she did need to have a tea party with some of her dolls. “G. I. Joe still doesn’t know his table manners,” she explained to Jungkook in a scandalized voice, as if she were gossiping.

When she left, you laughed quietly, “She asked for G. I. Joes, but all she’s done with them is criticize their manners. I think she sees me scolding Taehyung too much.”

Jungkook smiled softly in the direction of the hallway Yuna disappeared into. “She’s beautiful. Well mannered, too. Those aren’t from my genes.”

You grimaced, “Just wait till you play a game with her and you can see the clear amount of Jungkook. She looks like you, too. Doesn’t she?”

“Yeah. She has my eyes.” Jungkook licked his lips nervously. “Look, Y/n, I’m really sorry I left you two. I was obviously immature back then, and it took me forever to finally return. I’m sorry you had to go through the pregnancy alone. I’m sorry you had to raise her on your own.”

You waved away Jungkook’s apology, your feelings too guarded to speak honestly with him. Instead, you acted unbothered. “I didn’t raise her on my own, so don’t worry about it. Taehyung and Jimin helped me, as did my parents. My job pays well too, so I’m able to afford this apartment for the two of us.”

Jungkook nodded. “Did, um, did you get your business degree?”

You smiled bitterly, “I had to drop my classes to work full-time. It’s okay, though. Once Yuna is in preschool, I’m thinking of taking night classes. It all depends on whether or not my boss gives me the raise I’ve been asking for.”

“I could help,” Jungkook said timidly. “I mean, I could help take care of Yuna now so you could start school a whole year early. Then I could spend time with her while you get your degree.”

“I don’t know,” you said, “I don’t think I’m comfortable leaving you with her when I’m not here.”

Jungkook nodded in understanding. “Okay. It was just a thought. Can I still visit her?”

“I suppose,” you said, “I guess I can’t deny a father of visiting his daughter. However, if that’s decided,” you said, “Let’s set some rules. Yuna has no idea you’re her dad and I don’t want her to know right now. Not until I’m sure you’re going to stay and not leave like last time. You’re just her friend for now, like Taehyung and Jimin. That’s it. If you want to come back into her life as a father, you need to prove yourself a father first, got it?”

“Got it,” Jungkook gulped nervously.

You smirked at the fear in his eyes. You had gotten pretty authoritative since becoming a mother, and it came in handy when putting your foot down. Everything you had said was true, however.

You didn’t really want Jungkook back in your life. It was all too sudden and painful. Like an unexpected, undocumented flood that just appears on your finest day. The day you thought everything was going to be okay. The day you though everything was finally okay. Yet suddenly all your plans are changed because waters are building up and up and destroying everything you ever worked for.

It had been you and Yuna for the past three years, alone and happy, content to leave your past in the past. Yet now Jungkook just shows up, out of nowhere, asking to come back into your daughter’s life? It hurt. Every memory of his and your past relationship swam around in your mind as you watched Jungkook.

As floods go, whatever levee hiding behind your eyes was being rapidly overtaken by the salty tears you had kept in for so long, until suddenly…

“Hey, are you crying?” Jungkook asked, reaching to touch your face on instinct, as if he had never left.

“I need you to go, Jungkook.” Your lip trembled and your fingers shook as reality finally set in.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Jungkook reached for you once again, but you found yourself recoiling with clenched teeth.

"Just go.“

So he did. He was silent as he grabbed his coat and left.

As soon as the door was shut, you walked into Yuna’s room and leaned against the door, "Hey, Yuna? Why don’t you sleep in Mommy’s bed tonight?”

Yuna looked up from her tea set and peeked around you, her eyebrows furrowing. “Where’s Kookie?”

“Kookie had to go home,” you said. “You’ll see him later, okay?”

Yuna smiled, “Okay! I have a lot to show him. We’re going to become the bestest of friends!”

You sighed internally, because you knew in that moment that no matter how much it hurt, you would have to invite Jungkook back. For Yuna had become attached to her father, even if she didn’t know who he was.

So for Yuna, you would let Jungkook back into her life. Which, unfortunately, also meant letting him back into yours.

-

The next day, the weather seemed to reflect the dread that was permanently settled in your stomach. Rain poured throughout the morning, causing Yuna to be rather pouty at the breakfast table. She had unearthed her raincoat and boots, and they sat on the floor beside her chair. “Can I please go outside?” she begged.

“No,” you answered, doing the dishes while Yuna ate her cereal discontentedly. “I don’t want you to catch a cold.”

Yuna pouted. “If Kookie is coming to take me out to the park, why can’t I go outside?”

You took your opportunity, “Maybe we’ll cancel with Jungkook and have him come another day.”

As you reached for your phone with the intention of doing just that, the doorbell rang.

Yuna dropped her spoon, letting it fall into the leftover milk with a splash. “Kookie!” She squirmed out of her seat and ran to the door.

You followed begrudgingly. Why did she have to become attached to Jungkook? He wasn’t that interesting, honestly. It was just your luck that Jungkook would become someone your daughter attached herself to. In one instance, it would be nice for her to get along with her father. In another, you were afraid of letting her get too attached, when he might simply leave later.

Playdates were fun, especially when you could leave the child with her mom for the night. However, taking care of child when they were sick, or punishing them when they’ve done something wrong, or struggling to put the child down for a nap… these things weren’t easy. Jungkook had no idea what it was like to take care of a child. The very thought of it sent him running away four years ago. Who’s to say it wouldn’t send him running again this year?

With your guard up, you opened the door. Yuna had chosen halfway to the door that she was too shy to open it up to Jungkook, so you had to do it for her.

Jungkook looked up from his phone, his face hidden by a black hoodie. He cracked a smile, “Hey, Y/n. Hey, Yuna.”

Yuna looked up from behind your legs, “Hi.”

Your eyes unconsciously traced down Jungkook’s body. You suddenly let out a chuckle, “Why’d you wear your Timberlands in the rain?”

Jungkook smiled and looked down at his feet, “It’s always a good time to wear Timbs.”

“You’ve ruined them,” you said.

Yuna looked down at Jungkook’s shoes, “They’re wet! You need rubber boots, like me!”

Jungkook smiled down at her, “I’ll bring them next time.”

His soft voice sent a gentle ping in your heart as you remembered all the times you two used to go out.

-

You could remember the day the two of you moved in together. It was a new apartment, and the two of you had been too tired to assemble the bed. So, you both placed the mattress on the living room floor and piled blankets over it to keep warm. You used Jungkook’s chest as a pillow, his slow heartbeat lulling you to sleep.

In the darkness, Jungkook’s soft voice had broken the silence, “Babe?”

“What?” you asked.

“Do you think my parents are right? Do you think we’re too young?” he whispered his doubts into the night.

You rubbed Jungkook’s chest comfortingly, “We’re going to be okay, Jungkook. We’re going to prove them wrong.”

“But we’re not even in college yet,” he said. “We’re barely out of high school.”

“So?” You asked him. “We’re working on it, and we’ve got good jobs. It’s not like we’re using their money. This was all from our own hard work. We deserve to feel unworried in our new home.”

Jungkook sighed and kissed your forehead. “You’re right. Thanks, Y/n.”

“No problem.”

Jungkook’s parents had warned you to be careful when moving in. They had reminded you that Jungkook was young and impulsive. You knew that your boyfriend was immature. He was also prideful, and had a quick temper.

Still, you loved him and wished to ignore his parents. You assumed Jungkook would grow and mature with age. You had assumed, in that innocent hour, that whatever trials came forth, you and Jungkook would get through it.

You never thought he would up and leave you because of a child. Yet he had, and now after four years he had returned.

Had he really changed like he said? How could you trust him long enough to tell?

-

“Okay,” you spoke as you pulled the raincoat over Yuna’s shoulders. “Make sure she keeps this on. I don’t want her getting sick. She’ll try to persuade you to take it off; don’t listen to her,” you advised.

Jungkook nodded. “I’ll bring her back before lunch.”

Yuna pouted as you pulled rain boots onto her feet. “Why can’t I eat with Kookie?”

You bit your lip.

Jungkook saved you from having to be the bad guy, however, by answering for you. “Well, you need to spend time with you mother, don’t you?”

“And Tae’s coming,” you said.

“Tae Tae?” Yuna squealed and clapped her hands. “I hope he makes me sandwiches.” She then turned to Jungkook and said very seriously, “I like it when Taehyung makes sandwiches.”

Jungkook chuckled and reached down to ruffle her hair. “I’ll make sure to bring you back in time to eat them. Are you ready to go jump into some puddles?”

“Yeah!” Yuna accepted Jungkook’s hand, her small one only able to latch onto about two of his fingers. “Let’s go, Kookie!”

-

A few days later, you tapped your feet angrily as you held the phone up to your ear. The dial tone rang twice before he picked up, his voice nonchalant, "Hey, Y/n.“

"Jeon Jungkook, you disobeyed me,” you griped into the receiver. “Yuna woke up today with a cold!”

"…“

"Jungkook!”

"I’m sorry, okay? She gave me these puppy dog eyes and so I let her take her coat off for a few minutes. The rain had stopped by then so I thought it would be fine.“

"Well it’s not fine,” you snapped, “When it comes to my daughter, I need you to listen to me.”

Jungkook sighed on the other line, "Look, Y/n, I know you’re sensitive about this whole thing but it really is just a cold. Give her some fluids and she’ll be bouncing back in no time.“

"That’s not the point and you know it. This is about you thinking you can do whatever just because she’s your daughter, but she’s not. Okay, Jungkook? She’s not your daughter and no matter how much time you spend with her, she will never be. Got it?”

There was a pause on the other line, then a rustle as if Jungkook was switching the phone to his other cheek. "That’s not fair. I’m back now, trying to make up for the years I’ve lost and you’re giving me little to no room to do it. I know your worried and scared that I’ll leave again but I won’t. I promise I’m not going anywhere so please let me continue to hang out with Yuna. Please.“

You sighed. "I don’t know, Jungkook. There’s no way for me to know if you’ve really changed from that immature person you were years ago. There are years of damage and hurt in this family because of you.”

"I know,“ his voice sounded strained. "You don’t know how much I regret it. That’s why I’m back now. I’m trying to make things okay again. I’m trying to give Yuna a father.”

You sighed. “We’ll see, Jungkook. I want to believe you, but I can’t. I can’t believe another empty promise.”

"I’ll prove it you,“ Jungkook proposed, "Go back to school and let me take care of Yuna. Let me learn what it’s like to be a real parent. Then I can prove that I’m worthy enough to be in Yuna’s life.”

“I’ll think about it,” you answered. “Bye, Jungkook.”

Hours later, you were reading a bedtime story to Yuna, who was half-asleep and miserable with her stuffy nose and cough. Your dialogue was interrupted but the doorbell ringing. “Maybe Tae brought some medicine,” you whispered, knowing that you had run out a few hours earlier.

You got up, but Yuna whined and stretched her arms out, “Don’t go, Mommy.”

“You can come with me, okay?” You picked her up and balanced her on one hip. Her head found the dip in your shoulder and her lithe arms wrapped around your neck.

You opened the door, surprisingly not surprised to see Jungkook, standing in the pouring rain with a sheepish smile on his face. He held up a grocery bag. “I’ve got medicine and snacks.”

Yuna turned to look at Jungkook, and you could see his gaze melt at the sight of her being sick. “Hey, Kookie,” she said through a stuffed nose.

“Hey, Yuna,” he replied, reaching out to rub her back comfortingly. “I’m sorry that you’re sick.”

“It’s okay,” she replied, breathing through her mouth. “Mommy let me have ice cream.”

Your eyes widened as Jungkook turned to look at you, a smirk on his face. “It was so she would take her medicine!” you defended.

“Sure, it was,” Jungkook chuckled. “Has she had another dosage?”

“No,” you answered, “She needs one before bed.”

“Alright, let me go measure it and I’ll bring it back.”

“Actually…” You reached out to stop him from entering the kitchen. “I usually give her less than the required amount, and she had a special cup she always likes to drink out of afterwards…”

Jungkook smiled, “Then you go pour the medicine and I’ll hold Yuna.”

Yuna must’ve heard the conversation, because she tiredly spun around in your arms and stretched her hands out towards Jungkook. He pulled her into his own hold, and smiled when she began to play with the hair that brushed the back of his collar. “Go ahead, Y/n. I’ve got her.”

You went into the kitchen and poured the correct dosage (but a little less) for her age. Then you grabbed her favorite Minnie Mouse thermos and filled it with juice.

When you returned to the living room, Jungkook was sitting on the sofa with Yuna on his lap. Jungkook had his phone out and was showing Yuna different selfie filters. They were both giggling, in their own little world as Jungkook chose different filters for the two of them.

You unconsciously leaned against the wall, marveling at how natural Jungkook was with her. Who knew he would be good with kids? It had taken you months to get the rhythm of being a mother down. Yet here Jungkook was, winning Yuna over with something as simple as the snow app. You were sort of jealous. However, it confirmed one thing you were worried about. Jungkook might be able to take care of Yuna on his own, if the need ever arose.

It was Jungkook who noticed you first, and he licked his lips nervously before smiling at you. “You’re back.”

“Mommy! Me and Kookie were puppies!” Yuna shouted excitedly.

"Kookie and I,”you corrected, which made Jungkook scoff and roll his eyes.

“What?” you asked, offended.

“Nothing…” Jungkook sang. Then he looked at Yuna, “Let’s take some medicine, okay?”

Yuna pouted. “I don’t want to.”

Jungkook clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “But you have to. How else are you going to get stronger?”

Yuna rose her eyebrows. “I want muscles like you, Kookie.”

“You do?” Kookie smiled and flexed his bicep.

You rolled your eyes. “Please stop.”

Jungkook laughed as Yuna poked his muscles. She turned to you, “Can I have biceps like Kookie?”

“If you want,” you shrugged. Then you glared at Jungkook, “Put your arm down you weirdo.”

Jungkook wriggled his eyebrows. “Why? See something you like?”

You ignored him and walked over, handing the medicine cup to Yuna. “Drink up.”

Yuna pouted and looked at Jungkook. “Do I have to?” she whispered to him.

“You do if you want to be strong and healthy like me,” Jungkook whispered back.

Yuna nodded and tipped her head back, swallowing the medicine with a strangled gulp. You handed her the thermos quickly and she began to chug her apple juice to get rid of the gross taste in her mouth.

Jungkook laughed and looked at the medicine cup. “It’s like she was taking a shot.”

“Mommy, what’s a shot?”

You groaned and fell back onto the sofa dramatically. “It’s what Kookie is going to get if he doesn’t watch what he says around you.”

“Harsh,” Jungkook mumbled. “Hey, can I have some apple juice?”

You stood up, seemingly annoyed as you walked into the kitchen. “I signed up for one kid, not two!”

Jungkook laughed as he watched you leave, “Thank you!”

-

You were an adult now. So was Jungkook. Perhaps things healed faster the older you got, because the more Jungkook hung out with you and your daughter, the more you found yourself believing him. Perhaps he really meant it when he said he was going to stay this time. It was getting easier to forgive him as well, and Jungkook could sense it. He could sense you opening up to him a bit more. You even allowed him to stay over one night on the couch, just because it was too late and he was too tired to drive home.

The point was that you and Jungkook had gotten closer. As had Yuna and Jungkook. In fact, you were considering telling Yuna the truth soon.

One day, you called Jungkook and asked him to watch Yuna for the night, “I’m going on a date,” you explained, looking through a pile of clean laundry to fold.

“Go Y/n!“ Jungkook teased from the receiver.

"Look, he’s really nice and I’m really excited about this date. Can you please watch Yuna for a few hours so I can go?” you begged.

"No offense, Y/n, but does this guy know about Yuna?“

"No,” you answered, “and you’re not going to tell him, alright? I never tell guys on the first date. It turns them off.”

"It shouldn’t,“ Jungkook said.

"You’re one to talk,” you snapped as you folded some of Yuna’s pajamas.

"I’m just saying, Y/n. You should tell the guy about Yuna beforehand. If he doesn’t want you after knowing you have a kid, than he isn’t that interested in you.“

You pressed your tongue against the side of your cheek. "I don’t really think I need a lecture from you of all people.”

"Look, I’m saying this because of what I did. You need to find a guy who wants to date both you and Yuna. You’re a package deal.“

You sighed, "I’ll tell him Jungkook. I’ll bring it up at dinner, alright? Except I don’t know why you have to lecture me like a parent. It’s my decision.”

"I know,“ he answered. "but this guy could be Yuna’s future stepdad. If he isnt ready for her in the beginning than he isn’t ready for her at all.”

“Is it the same for you?” you asked. “Or does the fact that you left without getting to know your daughter not hold any recollection in your mind?”

"Y/n—”

“No, listen to me,” you interrupted. “I appreciate all of what you’ve done for me and Yuna. Seriously, you’ve been a huge help. However, we aren’t on that level, Jungkook. You don’t get to tell me who to date and how to date. You don’t get to waltz in unannounced and pretend like you didn’t leave us four years ago. You did. I think we’re both adults and can properly admit it by now. Own up to it and stop acting like you didn’t used to be a bad person. You did, Jungkook. You left us to pursue a career and that hurt. If I’m to go and start dating after Yuna was born, you don’t get to tell me how to do it. I’m sorry, Jungkook, but you have no say in either of our lives.”

The other end of the line was silent for a moment, and you felt a sting of remorse. Had you been too harsh on him?

“I understand,“ he finally said. "You’re right. I don’t have a say in either of your lives and it kills me every day to know that if I hadn’t of been such a selfish kid, I would’ve seen her grow up and she would’ve had a father. I know. I’m doing my best to make up for it here and you’re making it hard. Can’t you see I’ve changed? Can’t you see I’m trying?”

You sighed, “Okay, okay. I can see that you’re trying. I really can see the change, and Yuna loves you. I wouldn’t want her to miss out on you just because we had a fight.”

"Thanks. I’ll be there tonight. Is five o'clock okay?“

"Yeah,” you answered quietly. “It’s okay.”

-

Jungkook never could figure out your pattern. It was like that when the two of you were dating. He never quite knew what set you off. You were unpredictable; a ticking time bomb of emotions. Jungkook loved that about you.

He loved how you always spoke your mind, even if it came out in emotional rambles that had him confused from the start. It kept him on his toes. It made him love you even more. There was always a surprise around the corner.

He hadn’t really expected it that fateful night when he found the pregnancy test in the trash. Panic had been the first think in his mind.

How could he be a father? How could he take care of a child? Where would he get the money? Where would he find the time? How could the two of you be parents so young? Would he even be allowed to go to college now? All of his money would go to the baby, wouldn’t it?

Jungkook felt like there was only one option. It was extreme, but it seemed like the only option. After all, wasn’t it your fault that you were pregnant? You told him you were on birth control, so he hadn’t used a condom. That is what the two of you agreed on. So the only logical explanation is that you had lied about the birth control.

It was all your fault. That way, Jungkook could go to school and feel no guilt of leaving you with the baby.

That’s what he had thought, anyway. It worked fine for three and a half years. He was working hard and getting his degree. The last thing on his mind was that fact that you were a mother, trying to support your child. It wasn’t until he began studying for his finals in his last year of college that he remembered you.

He was walking alone in the park, trying to find a break from his constant exams. The bench was his favorite place, since it served as a solace away from his schooling. As he was resting his eyes, he heard a small, high-pitched voice.

“Daddy! Come swing me!”

Jungkook opened his eyes to see a small boy running towards the swings, a grown man in tow. “Wait up!”

The child giggled and ran ahead anyway.

As Jungkook watched, he found himself smiling. Then, frowning as he remembered the past he had tried so hard to forget. He wondered where you were and if you had chosen to keep the child. He wondered if the child was a boy or a girl and what you had named it. A sensitive pang hit his chest as he thought about what it would’ve been like if he had been there. If he had stuck through and been a true father to the kid. Would he take them out to the park as well? Would you and him fight over who the child loved more?

Jungkook cursed under his breath. It didn’t matter now, did it?

It did, though. After tossing and turning for nights on end, Jungkook finally lost it. After his final exams, he picked up his phone and called the number he remembered, although he couldn’t quite remember the last digit.

"Hello! Mommy can’t talk right now!“ a small voice picked up the phone, startling Jungkook.

He quickly composed himself, "Hello. Is your, uh, Mommy named Y/n?”

“Well… Tae Tae calls her that but I usually call her Mommy.”

“Can you tell her I called?” Jungkook asked, feeling a lump in his throat. He had a daughter. She sounded content and happy, like everything he could hope for.

"I’ll tell her! What’s your name?“

"I’m Kookie,” he answered on instinct, forgetting to use his real name.

"Cookie? I love cookies! You can be my new cookie friend, okay?“

Jungkook laughed, "Sounds great. What’s your name?”

“I’m Yuna. Yuna Jeon Y/l/n.”

Jungkook stilled. You kept his last name? As a middle name, yes, but you still kept it. He was still connected to you, through his child.

He would try his hardest to redeem himself and make Yuna proud to carry his name. He had to.

That was his goal and he wasn’t going to be discouraged into leaving you two again. He was going to stick with it this time. He was going to redeem himself.

-

When Jungkook arrived, he rang the doorbell like he always did. Most of the days he visited, you always opened the door hastily, wearing sweatpants and shouting at Yuna to get away from something semi-dangerous. It was an endearing habit Jungkook had come to love because it showed that your life truly did revolve around your kid. That was amazing to him.

Today was even more amazing, in a different way, because you were dressed up when you opened the door. Jungkook could feel his jaw scraping the ground as his eyes raked down your body. You were dressed in a flowing red dress, paired with heels and a shining smile.

“Hey, Jungkook.” you greeted him like you always did. “Yuna is playing with play dough in the kitchen. Try not to get it on the carpet.”

Then you leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Go into the kitchen before he picks me up. I don’t want him to think I have guys over.”

Jungkook obeyed, feeling too shaken to argue. You kissed him on the cheek occasionally, as a friendly way to convey your thanks for him watching Yuna. However, it never felt like that. Or it hadn’t since four years ago, at least. Memories were flooding back to Jungkook as he felt the obvious spark between the two of you.

He felt pathetic and immature again. He had missed his chance. It didn’t matter if he came back to find that he loved you and your daughter all the more. It didn’t matter that he was trying to help around as much as he could. You would never see past what he had done. There would always be that fear the he would leave again. It was his own fault that you felt that way. He couldn’t deny it. He could only pray that you would change your mind.

“Yuna?” He walked into the kitchen to see Yuna on the floor with actual dinner plates, making meals with the never ending abundance of play dough. Jungkook had never seen so much play dough in his life. Yuna had obviously mixed all the colors together before, because it was just a big brown pile squashed into a giant plastic container. “What are you doing?”

“I’m making dinner!” Yuna replied as she rolled the dough into a big ball. “Right now I’m making bread rolls for your app-e-teaser.”

“Appetizers?” Jungkook corrected softly.

Yuna smiled at him, “Mommy taught me that word today. She said she’s going to a restaurant. Since I can’t go with her, I’m making my own just for us.”

Jungkook heard the door close and knew it was a sign that you had left to go on your date. “So, how do you feel about your mom going to a restaurant.”

Yuna filled her cheeks up with air and pouted, “She’s finding me a Daddy but I don’t want her to.”

“Why not?” Jungkook asked, feeling bitter that he couldn’t just tell her the truth right there.

“I want a fun daddy. If he takes Mommy out he should take her to the zoo! Or the aquarium! They can look at the animals together and be happy! Sitting at a table and eating is too boring. I want a daddy like you, who takes me out to splash in the puddles.”

Jungkook stilled, feeling his heart stop for few seconds before restarting. “You mean it?”

Yuna nodded, unfazed and she handed Jungkook a giant lump of brown. “Now make me some steak, please.”

-

You slammed the taxi door shut after paying for the ride. You were angry and sad, wishing to do nothing but curl up with Yuna in your pajamas and watch a Disney movie.

How dare he, honestly. As soon as you mentioned you had a child, your date began asking questions. She lives with her dad, doesn’t she? She doesn’t? Will she be out of the house when I’m over?

And your favorite: You raised her all by yourself?

“Why yes I did, you ambivalent meat sack,” you griped to yourself as you made your way to your apartment door.

You pushed the key into the hole, wondering if Jungkook had gotten Yuna to bed yet. It was nearly eight o'clock, and she should at least be ready to sleep, if not slumbering.

You were met with Jungkook and Yuna on the floor of the living room. It appeared that they had made a blanket fort and proceeded to climb into it and fall asleep together. Yuna was dressed in her nightclothes and her hair was wet, so you naturally assumed Jungkook did his job of washing and clothing her before bed.

Quietly, so as not to wake them, you went to your bedroom and got yourself ready for bed. One shower and a pair of pajamas later, you came back to wake Yuna up so Jungkook could go home.

“Don’t,” Jungkook warned quietly, his eyes still closed as you reached for your daughter. “It took me an hour to get her to sleep and she wouldn’t sleep in her bed. It had to be with me. I’m really happy but also annoyed because my arm is asleep and I can’t move it in case I wake her up. Just leave us here and I’ll get up in the morning.”

You laughed quietly, “What about your job?”

Jungkook sighed. “It’s flexible. I can choose when I work and when I don’t work. I don’t have any set time I have to work.”

“That’s nice,” you mentioned.

“It is,” Jungkook agreed, “It gives me more time with Yuna. That’s also why I proposed you going back to school in the first place. If you wanted to, I really can stay with Yuna no matter the hours.”

You grabbed a large blanket that had been shoved in the corner and pulled it over the pair, along with you as you cuddled close to Jungkook’s side. “I might have to take you up on that offer.”

“Hey, you wanna know what Yuna told me?” Jungkook reached his arm around you to rub circles into your back.

“What’d she tell you.”

Jungkook suddenly smiled and leaned down to make sure you were looking at him. “She told me she wanted a dad like me. How cool is that? We can tell her soon, right? Since she’s cool with it?”

A soft smile bloomed on your lips, “When do we tell her?”

Jungkook bit his lip, “The zoo.”

“The zoo?”

“Yeah, we’ll tell her in front of the giraffe exhibit or something.”

“That actually sounds like fun,” you said. “I’m off tomorrow. Do you want to go then?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Jungkook smiled once more before returning to his sleeping position.

-

“I’m telling you, Jungkook. If you buy her one more animal-themed dessert we’re leaving the zoo.”

Jungkook pouted and looked at Yuna. She was currently balanced on his hip, contently eating a lion-shaped popsicle. She was dressed in a t-shirt and overalls, with her very own pair of Timberlands, curtesy of Jungkook. You weren’t sure why you allowed them to be together honestly. They always teamed up against you.

“But she looks so sad when she asks for it!” Jungkook argued.

“That’s the point!” You told him as Yuna giggled into his shoulder. “She’s playing you like a fiddle and you don’t even know it.”

Jungkook grinned. “Does it annoy you that she likes me more than she likes you?”

“Yeah, it does, since I was the one who pushed her out of my vag—”

“Not in front of my daughter!” Jungkook shouted, reaching forward to cover your mouth.

Your eyes widened, as did Yuna’s when she heard the word “daughter”.

She suddenly grinned, “I knew it! You are my fun daddy because you remembered to take Mommy to the zoo!”

“What’s she talking about?” you whispered.

“Heck if I know, am I right?” Jungkook laughed awkwardly. Then he cleared his throat. “Let’s go sit down on that secluded bench over there.”

Once everyone was settled onto the bench, Jungkook nodded at you. You took a deep breath, “Yuna, we need to tell you something.”

Yuna grinned, “Is Kookie going to be my new dad?!”

You grimaced, “Well, he’s kind of already your dad, Yuna. Jungkook is your dad.”

Yuna furrowed her eyebrows and looked up at Jungkook, “Then where did you go?”

Jungkook opened his mouth to answer, but you spoke before he could. “Jungkook went to school for a bit to become smarter.”

Yuna nodded, “He takes pictures and helps fix people’s muscles!”

“He does,” you agreed, “and now it’s Mommy’s turn to go to school, so Jungkook is going to be taking care of you a lot more in the future.”

“Okay,” Yuna agreed rather nonchalantly. “Are you guys going to get married? All my friend’s parents are married.”

You looked at Jungkook nervously. He only shrugged, “We’ll call this our first date and see how it goes from there, yeah?”

You smiled and looked down at your lap, flustered. If he was willing to try again, you were sure you could be willing too.

Yuna giggled. “Can our second date be at the aquarium?”

Jungkook kissed the top of her head. “You got it, Kiddo.”

~the end~

[amorremanet]

OC profile meme: Adelaide?

oc profiles meme!

…okay, so, uh. Fair warning: Most of the length of this is actually taken up by the footnotes, and there are several periods where it stopped being about Addie specifically and turned into, “And now, I shall babble a lot about her, her brothers, their parents, their family dynamics, and a lot of THINGS AND STUFF that are generally related to this family of weirdos, because they are my weirdos and I love them.”

Also, the footnotes are kind of egregiously long, even by my standards. So, uh. That’s a thing. But anyway.

Full Name^: Adelaide Léonide Beauharnais Moncrieff.

Like all three of her brothers and several of their cousins, Addie got screwed by their family’s love of Significantly Significant and more-than-vaguely pretentious names.

For starters: she, Max, Seb, and Ambrose all wound up with, “Beauharnais” as a gratuitous middle name. It is their Mom’s maiden name, which she still uses almost as often as her husband’s surname. Giving it to the kids was their Dad’s idea.

It didn’t even have anything to do with carrying on Marceline’s family name, since she has two brothers who both had sons; Abe just thought it would be nice for the kids to have “Beauharnais” in their names, too.

Aside from that — Adelaide’s given first name was actually chosen for two reasons: 1. it’s a name with Family History™ behind it, just like all of the boys’ first names; and 2. in honor of St. Adelaide of Burgundy, one of the patron saints of victims and survivors of abuse (also, large families and princesses).

Léonide was just chosen for the sake of family history, rather than being a saintly name. The boys were not so lucky on that count, but Adelaide would’ve had a double-saintly name too, had Marceline not decided that she liked the name, “Léonide” more than, “Leonie.”

Addie is cool with that choice on her Mom’s part, because she got a French feminine counterpart of Leonidas as a middle name, while Max got his middle name from John the Baptist, Ambrose got that guy who the original Twelve Apostles recruited to replace Judas Iscariot, and Sebastian was middle-named after that long-winded douche who wrote The City of God, but he’s way more famous for praying, “Lord, please grant me chastity and self-restraint, but not right now!”

So, yeah. As far as middle-namesakes go, Adelaide is pretty sure that she won and her brothers lost.

Her Bastian is the only one she’s not going to lord it over when she’s bored or insecure or something along those lines, and that’s a relatively recent development, because watching her baby brother nearly kill himself multiple times and go to rehab made teasing him about his saintly middle-namesake really not funny to her anymore.

Seb wishes that Addie would let it be funny again, like?? Please? Acting like it’s not funny makes him feel broken.

Adelaide would be more open to listening on that count if their arguments about it didn’t tend to involve Seb saying that this middle-naming thing is totally funny because he’s a bigger drunken, worthless fuck-up than the patron saint of drunken, worthless fuck-ups, and not getting why his sister doesn’t think that it’s funny.

(It’s largely because she’s realized that her Bastian isn’t kidding when he calls himself a worthless fuck-up or make self-deprecating “jokes,” and she has no idea what to do to help with any of this, but helping fuel his problems is definitely not funny.)

Gender and Sexuality: Cis woman. // Bisexual.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers.

Birthplace and Birthdate: May 27th, 1982. // Baltimore, MD. She’s a Gemini (Leo Moon, Virgo Rising).

Addie’s birthday is known as, “the Day of Driven Dedication,” her birth week as, “the Week of Freedom,” and the “way” that she was born under is, “the Way of Originality.”

And because I like sharing and want someone to see what I did here, these are the birthdates and signs for Addie’s immediate family members:

Abe: January 26th, 1949. // Aquarius (Capricorn Moon, Leo Rising).

Day: The Day of Striking Deeds.

Week: The Week of Genius.

(If Marceline ever heard this, she’d probably go, “So, is that astrology’s way of explaining the elaborate scale model of the storming of the Bastille that he built in the basement? Or the collection of Area 51 conspiracy theories? Or the time he responded to, ‘Dad, I’m gay’ with, ‘Hi, gay, I’m Dad’?”

Abe doesn’t believe in astrology, but might agree with that interpretation, if only because he likes it when his belle étoile affectionately teases him for being kind of a space cadet outside the office.)

Way: The Way of Empowerment.

Marceline: October 23rd, 1951. // Libra/Scorpio cusp (Leo Moon, Pisces Rising).

Day: The Day of Conflicting Destiny.

Week: The Week of Drama and Criticism.

Way: The Way of Extension.

Cusp: The Cusp of Drama and Criticism.

Technically, Marceline falls on the Libra side of the cusp here, but she’s right on the line.

Max: October 31st, 1978. // Scorpio (Scorpio Moon, Capricorn Rising).

Day: The Day of Attentiveness.

Week: The Week of Intensity.

Way: The Way of Grounding.

Max would really rather you didn’t remind him that he was born on Halloween. Like…… please don’t.

Unless you’re his daughter or his wife or maybe his sister, he probably won’t find it amusing

Ambrose: September 23rd, 1984. // Virgo (Virgo Moon, Aries Rising).

Day: The Day of the Breakthrough.

Week: The Week of Beauty.

Way: The Way of Modulation.

Cusp: The Cusp of Beauty.

Ambrose is, in fairness, right up on the cusp with Libra, but technically, he’s still on the Virgo side.

Sebastian: August 13th, 1985. // Leo (Cancer Moon, Pisces Rising).

Day: The Day of Long Odds.

Week: The Week of Leadership.

Which freaked him out, when his late cousin Jeremy was having an astrology phase and Seb had to hear this because Jeremy was one of his best friends, and ahahaha, no thank you, that’s not funny, Seb is not a leader or a role model or anything, why

Way: The Way of Grace.

Marie (Addie’s niece): July 9th, 2008. // Cancer (Libra Moon, Leo Rising).

Day: The Day of Dark Pragmatism.

Week: The Week of the Unconventional.

Way: The Way of Consideration.

Linda (Addie’s sister-in-law): May 13th, 1979. // Taurus (Sagittarius Moon, Scorpio Rising).

Day: The Day of Natural Appeal.

Week: The Week of the Natural.

Way: The Way of Solution.

Yes, I am slightly ashamed of how much time and thought I put into this, and into toggling my characters’ birth charts using the free chart-making things on alabe.com and astro.com — plus the book, The Secret Language of Birthdays, and their free app, for all of the, “Day of X,” “Week of Y” stuff — and of doing it all for no real purpose beyond, “I really like all these inane details,” “Sometimes, I get fun ideas from doing shit with these inane details,” and, “I want someone to see what I did here.”

But clearly, I am not nearly ashamed enough to stop doing it and/or at least not admit to it in public.

Species/Race & Ethnicity: Human (non-mutant). // White (French).

For the most part, the Moncrieffs have not lived in France since about 1781, when Addie and her brothers’ some-odd-great-grandfather sold off the family’s marquisate to join the Marquis de Lafayette in saving the American Revolution, then stayed an expat to find new opportunities.

The only exception to that is one ancestor who Seb is partly named after — partly because said ancestor’s name was Severin Sebastien vs. Sebastian Augustine, and partly because there have been other Sebastiens and Sebastians on the family tree — and he was only an exception because he stayed in Paris with his husband-in-all-but-tedious-legalities, and they eventually got involved in the French Revolution. Severin had no children, so the family in France died when he did.

Marceline’s family hasn’t been in France for several generations either.

This does not stop any of them from being ridiculously insistent on how French they are.

Addie has the most chill about it — which is particularly notable because she doesn’t really have any chill to speak of, ever and about most things — because she’s of the mind that bringing up the family’s French-ness is really only useful when it comes to matters of business, and more specifically, matters of advertising.

See, the Moncrieff family business is wine. The family’s first vineyard in the States is in upstate New York, and they have another in Maryland that was one of the big reasons why some of the family moved to the Baltimore area in the first place. Wine was the family business even before they came out to the States; a huge amount of land on the old ancestral holdings in Bordeaux was taken up by a vineyard.

Traditionally, most of the Moncrieff offspring go into the family business in some capacity.

This generation is sort of odd, in that regard, since Ambrose is a teacher, Sebastian is a mess, and only a handful of their odd cousins joined Max and Adelaide in going to work in the wine business.

(Max has been trying, fruitlessly, to get Seb to please, just come over here and take a job with the company, like. Not even a hard job, you can have a do-nothing desk job that has basically no expectations put on you, aside from you showing up and getting a haircut.

Although there are lulls between rounds of, “Sebastian, for God’s sakes, please stop being obstinate and just take the job,” Max has overall doubled-down on these efforts ever since his little brother went to rehab about a year and a half before the story starts, because dammit, he wants his brother to not die.

The big problem here is that Max is genuinely trying to help, but he’s coming at the whole issue from a place of, “It’s not as though Sebastian needs any of the money to be found in crime, he must need some guidance about what else to do with himself” — and he doesn’t get that this comes off as patronizing because he thinks that he’s being super-earnest about wanting to help his brother, so Seb’s constant refusals and exasperation make Max go, “?????”

[But to be fair, that’s not entirely his fault, since both of them have a problem of not trying hard enough to get on each other’s level, and getting several pieces wrong when they do try, and missing crucial pieces of information about each other’s situations.

So, it’s like…… Yeah, okay, Max isn’t doing great on his end, but Seb and his not-listening are part of the problem with everything, too.]

What Adelaide gets about all of this and Max doesn’t — largely because Seb is closer to her and has an easier time being open with her, so she knows more in general and has a better idea of how to listen and talk to him than their big brother does — is that although Max is sure that getting Seb a steady, reliable, non-criminal job would give him some much-needed stability, a job at the family business would do more harm than good.

Like, it would obviously be a position that he got by virtue of nepotism, which is pretty Not Good for someone who feels like he’s not qualified to be a person on a really basic level, much less anything else, so Seb would feel like shit for it, and he’d want to do a good job of everything but he would also feel like he couldn’t manage it.

Then, the routine and stability would be good for him, yes, but he wouldn’t be able to settle into them for long. He’d get bored and feel stifled and trapped, then hate himself for feeling stifled and trapped (and, “ungrateful,” which is how he’d put it, regardless of whether or not anyone else would agree), or he’d feel like it’s all too much pressure — especially given the whole, “he’s only here by virtue of nepotism, so he’d feel even more of a pressure to do well and like that standard is even more unreachable” — and he’d crumble under it.

Which would all be even Worse than the nepotism part of things, and Addie is trying to be understanding of how her big brother doesn’t get this shit about their little brother, and of how Seb doesn’t feel like he can communicate it to Max at all without making Max, “hate him more,” and of the way each of them think the other one hates him when that’s not true, it’s just that they’re doing a bullshit job of not-really-communicating with each other, and Addie gets it, she does

—but holy fuck, the both of you! you are ADULTS and she is your SISTER, not your trained message-carrying raven. Now do everyone a favor, get your shit together and TALK TO EACH OTHER instead of talking to her, and Ambrose, and Mom *ABOUT* each other

But anyway, as I was saying.

It’s sort of assumed by most people that Max will end up inheriting the position of CEO whenever Abe decides to retire, just like how Abe inherited it from his father.

Addie is probably Max’s biggest competition for the position, and she’s hellbent on not making it easy for him to just walk into it (which he’s not making easy for her in turn, because he has a huge chip on his shoulder about proving that he deserves the position and isn’t here solely because this is his family’s company and he’s the eldest son of the CEO, eldest grandson of the previous CEO, and so on, going all the way back to the some-odd great-grandfather who first started the company and Gaspard Maximilien Moncrieff, who wasn’t the firstborn son — since that was Severin — but who got the marquisate when his brother wouldn’t take it and first brought the family to America).

(Not that Max is deliberately making it hard for Adelaide to give him competition, here. He’s just dedicated, driven, determined, and very insecure about seeming like he’s at all incompetent or undeserving, or like he’s just an entitled rich kid who’s skating by on his family’s name — so, when you put that together with his aptitude, skills, and so on, he sets a really high bar for anyone to meet.

He’s aware of this, to some degree. He doesn’t get why Adelaide is his only sibling who feels like she’s up to the task of matching or beating him — though to be fair, it’s not that Ambrose thinks he couldn’t and more that he just doesn’t want to, vs. Seb, who definitely doesn’t think that he can live up to the examples set by any of his siblings, especially not Max’s — but still.)^^

Either way, Adelaide’s done some work she’s proud of with the company’s ad people, and she thinks there’s value in bringing up the family history in the company’s advertising. Partly, she thinks so because the family’s history is part of their brand, at this point. The company’s been around for long enough, and they’ve relied on the family’s history often enough, that part of what makes them stick out from other companies built around the production and sale of alcoholic beverages? is that their company can point at the Moncrieff name and at their history, and go, “Hey, look at our pedigree in making booze”

Mostly, though, Addie sees the value of family history here because it creates an easy appeal to authority and legacy:

e.g., “our family knows wine, so our company knows wine, and our wine is Quality™”

or, “our buckwheat single-malt is still made with the old ancestral recipe, handed down from the old marquisate in Bordeaux, first brought to us after this ancestor married that other noble family’s daughter from Brittany and the two of them learned how to grow better buckwheat and worked to refine the recipe — therefore, you can trust that we have a Quality™ product and you totally want to buy it now, don’t you?”

Otherwise, it’s like…… Yeah, okay. Addie sees the importance of her family’s history to them as a family — not least because Vigne Rêve (the family’s first estate in America, just outside of Poughkeepsie) is a National Historical Site, and they maintain a local museum there and everything, and if Addie has to endure another round of her grandfather and her baby brother arguing about some aspects of the museum and how it handles certain parts of history, she feels like she’s going to fucking scream

—but she doesn’t actually see the point in insisting on how French they are in most cases, like? To Americans, it makes the lot of them look pretentious. To French people, it tends to make them look completely ridiculous because none of them was born in France, none of them was raised in France, and Addie’s pretty sure that semi-regular trips to France while they were growing up (+ study abroad years in France, in her and Seb’s cases*) is not actually the same thing as legit growing up in France

So, Addie’s perspective is basically, “Seriously, fam. We’re not actually French, we’re Americans whose roots go back to France and the fact that Mom and Dad raised us speaking French at home as often as English — to the point that all four of us padded our college applications by taking the French language AP exams and SAT subject tests, and that Bastian can tell you he’s an idiot while reading Proust in the original French because, ‘none of the English translations get it right’ and this legitimately doesn’t faze him or strike him as weird or intellectually intensive? None of that changes how we are not actually French.”

(*: Max and Ambrose also did study abroad programs, but Ambrose went to Oxford for a conventional study abroad year — like what Seb and Addie did with their Paris programs — while Max went to DIS Copenhagen, did a summer program at the London School of Economics, and had a summer internship in Berlin through IES Abroad.)

Guilty Pleasures: Mint chocolate, pineapple on pizza, soft pretzels, arguing for the sake of arguing, deliberately (but playfully) winding up her brothers for no purpose beyond, “but they’re so cute when they’re wound up” (she really doesn’t mean this to hurt anyone, which is why she doesn’t do it to Seb that much anymore, and why she tries to steer clear of any genuinely sore or sensitive spots with all of them), finding excuses to stop by Seb’s place because she doesn’t feel like cooking today and he likes feeling useful and needed so maybe she can sweet-talk him into making her dinner (she can. she always can. she doesn’t even need to sweet-talk him, really; she just does that because she enjoys the sweet-talking aspect), binge-watching reruns of Law and Order: SVU, Catching All-Stars (the reality show about America’s premier superhero team), and Project Runway.

Phobias: Failure; not finding out what her full potential is and then actualizing it; (but at the same time) pulling an Icarus because she tried too hard or tried to go too far or opened the Ancient Tome Of Horrible Knowledge, Of Which Humanity Was Not Meant To Know, or something like that; loneliness; the CN Tower in Toronto — or, more specifically, the glass walk in the CN Tower, where logically, you know that you’re safe because you’re inside and the pod is secure, but you look down and the glass lets you see the ground and your brain goes, “DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER DANGER DANGER YOU’RE GOING TO FALL”; extreme physical heights in general tbh, though she’ll tell you that it’s not the heights she minds, but the threat of falling off of them (and she’ll cite amusement park rides as evidence, telling you how she doesn’t mind rollercoasters but can’t stand drop rides like the Tower of Terror at Disneyland).

What They Would Be Famous For: Well, she isn’t overly famous or anything, but she is actually fairly well-known in-universe, already, at least in certain circles.

On one hand, Addie can sometimes turn up in the, “society” pages of different gossip blogs or publications like the New York Post and Page Six. This is true of her parents, siblings, and some of her cousins, too, because their family is well-off and essentially minor nobility — just… y’know, this is still set in America, where we largely don’t acknowledge that we have our own de facto systems of nobility, even though we do.

This doesn’t happen to Addie herself all that often, unless:

there’s something big going on that the family’s involved in^^^

they sort of wandered into something that’s a big deal to social voyeurs, even if it isn’t a huge deal to them (like the one time, when Addie was at Barnard, when she dated the son of a Massachusetts senator who was tapped as a potential recruit to the All-Stars)

or it’s a slow news day

But she sometimes shows up in the society pages because of something or other involving whatever higher-profile trouble Seb’s gotten himself into this week

On the other hand, she’s getting a name for herself as part of the family business. Like, a few months before the story starts, she, Max, and Abe had an interview for a fairly big deal feature piece in Fortune, Addie commands a pretty decent amount of respect among business partners, and some people know her from that, even if it isn’t necessarily, “being famous” as such.

What They Would Get Arrested For: Well, there were a few times in undergrad when she only dodged a, “drunk and disorderly” charge by virtue of being a rich white girl. But generally speaking, Adelaide is, if not well-behaved, then at least not doing anything illegal or (ostensibly) too horribly irresponsible.

Unlike their self-destructive trouble-magnet baby brother, and their middle brother whose idea of a wild time would be spending so long in a really well-stocked library that he skips two meals and possibly gets locked in, Addie and Max are proponents of the, “stay within the letter of the law while violating the spirit of it” school of misbehavior

As well as being fairly well-practiced in it, both of them generally prefer to do so when it’s either for a good reason and/or working to a good end, or the infractions involved as so small that no one will actually care enough to do anything (and I’m talking like, “who took the cookie from the cookie jar” small, not like, “bored rich kids trying to justify shoplifting by being all, ‘whatever, it was just one pair of earrings’ or whatever”).

OC You Ship Them With: Margot, but it remains to be seen if that’s going to go anywhere beyond, “I like them individually, I think their interactions with each other are fun, they hit a lot of shipper trash buttons for me personally, and since I’m their writer, I could totally just make it canon if I wanted. I dunno if I want to yet, but I could.”

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: I’m honestly not sure.

Thing is, Addie can be an irksome little gadfly when she wants to be, but she generally doesn’t irritate anyone enough to actually want to murder her, and while she’s loosely affiliated with the story’s main superheroes by virtue of being close with her baby brother and Pete, she technically isn’t a member of the team and doesn’t want to be.

If she did end up targeted by supervillains, it would probably be either a coincidence (as in, “she wasn’t actually targeted, but statistically speaking, if you happen to live in a universe that has supervillains, there’s always a chance that you will end up in the crossfire of one of their attacks, like Max almost was during this one incident in Manhattan back in December 1997, i.e. the end of his first semester at Columbia”), or because Seb and/or Pete fucked up and got identified by a villain who didn’t promptly end up either dead or in custody.

So……… yeah. I don’t know. Good question.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Dude, as long as it’s not going to demand a lot of thinking or attentiveness for her to enjoy it, Addie probably doesn’t care very much. Not like she tries to shut down any debates about the deeper meaning of pop culture or anything, but if she’s going to be reading or watching something for fun, then she’s looking for brain candy that she doesn’t feel like she has to pay a lot of attention to.

Vintage cartoons and “fill in the blanks” genre novels — like, potboiler noir knock-off detective stories, “what if it were like a sci-fi detective story with vampires or some shit,” and so on — are a common source of joy for her.

The ASOIAF books, she only read because Sebastian promised her that GRRM’s writing style isn’t particularly dense, and she’ll acquiesce that the books have the better story, but if she’s going to do anything with that universe, then sorry, brother, but she’s going to watch Game of Thrones, because if you ask her, it’s pretty much just a ridiculous, trash soap opera with more nudity, more dragons, and an actual production budget.

And she may not know more about Star Trek or Star Wars than you because Addie doesn’t want to actually engage with their fandoms or expanded universes or anything, but she can likely rattle off exact quotations or plot summaries better than you can, because the SW movies and TOS are good brain candy background noise, in her mind.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Alleged “love stories” that consist entirely of some dude bullying some girl, and then they hook up because of reasons or something (the relationship between Judd Nelson’s and Molly Ringwald’s characters in The Breakfast Club is Addie’s usual point of reference for what she’s talking about here).

Talents and/or Powers: Well, she doesn’t have superpowers, but some of her mundane powers include, but are not limited to: motivating pep-talks that are sweet yet simultaneously kind of abrasive; multitasking (she’s not as good at is she thinks she is, and tbh, she probably should’ve been diagnosed with ADHD at some point*); remembering the details that you probably wish that she’d forget but spacing on some of the ones you want her to remember; being the absolute worst person to go with her baby brother to make sure that he doesn’t try to adopt every single dog at the ASPCA, because she’ll be right there with him going, “oh no, they’re so cute, we should take all of them home”; getting way too intense when she’s playing foosball, racquetball, Mario Kart, or literally anything else that has a competitive aspect; being the cool aunt who’s down for everything and can be a responsible chaperone while making it seem like she’s a BFF, rather than a babysitter; and looking bomb as Hell in a suit.

*: the fact that she hasn’t been diagnosed with ADHD is even more glaring in light of this one instance when she was at Barnard, when she went to a party where Adderall was available and being offered to people, she took some, and instead of getting high, she got the sudden, abrupt clarity that comes when you’ve been living with brain-static for your entire life and haven’t realized that this is not just a normal part of life that literally everyone experiences.

……Except then, Addie didn’t connect the dots here, or talk about this to anyone to compare notes on what happens when you take Adderall without having ADHD, and she went back to thinking the brain-static was just a normal part of life. She does wonder sometimes, because her mind wanders too much and onto too many tracks for her not to wonder, but she’s 35 and still doesn’t think she might be even a little bit ADHD.

Like, if you pressed her, you would eventually hit a wall where she has to admit that her rationale here is essentially, “Because of reasons” and the reasons do not exist. But that’s sort of a point because no one’s pressed her about this.

Unfortunately, one of the people who could probably help her the most (Sebastian, because he has more experience with psychoactive substances than his big sister does) has never heard the story of this night, and these days, Addie would be reluctant to bring it up to him, for fear of “triggering” him in a way that might mean screwing up his sobriety.

(note: I use the, “scare quotes” here not to question the concept of triggering, but to illustrate that Adelaide…… sorta doesn’t know what she’s talking about, right now.

Like, she understands the concept of triggers and triggering someone, and her understanding is more or less accurate, but when it comes to her baby brother and his well-being, she blows it a little out of proportion.

Meaning: when Seb is involved, her understanding of how triggers work gets hypervigilant and excessive about the power that triggers have over people, to the extent that you usually only see among people who are trying to go, “checkmate, sjws!!!” by presenting shit as like, “triggers are a way of blaming you for someone else’s mistakes because you said the word, ‘assault,’ it made them angry, and they decapitated a bunch of baby seals with a chainsaw and it’s all your fault, how very dare you use words, you horrible person, blah blah blah, don’t respect people’s ~so-called~ triggers because they’re just a bunch of whiny piss-babies, etc. etc. etc.”

I mean, her heart is in the right place, but Addie sort of hasn’t put it together that simply saying phrases like, “pharm party” or, “junky” around Sebastian isn’t a magic spell that will compel him to go get high.

Further unfortunately, Seb has only vaguely realized that she’s doing this, so he waffles between, “I don’t even know if I’m actually seeing a trend or if I’m ‘just being sensitive’ and imagining things” and, “ugh, if I’m not imagining things, I can’t call her on it. She’s trying to help, and I appreciate that, so I don’t want to make her feel bad.”

She also kinda hasn’t realized that talking about drugs and alcohol in general is also not a magic spell that will make Seb go out and use — which he has noticed more clearly**, but still hasn’t called her on, even though Pete’s pointed out to him that it’s kind of ridiculous because:

“Princess, what the fuck does she think we talk about at meetings [of AA and NA]? Our burgeoning collections of vintage Barbie Dream-Houses or something?”

and, “Seriously. Part of why we see Genevieve [Seb’s and Pete’s therapist] is for help staying clean, which generally requires that we talk about our drugs of choice at least a little bit. Does? Does Adelaide think that we — an unreasonably tall, unfathomably kind, and unfairly down on himself addict, and a witty, abrasive, temperamental, but resilient, insightful, and devastatingly good-looking addict — don’t talk to our therapist about being fucking addicts? I’m just???? WHAT.”

—but, still. She’s trying to help, she is just…… being sort of overprotective and misguided about the particular way in which she’s going about it. Whoops.)

(**: He might not have noticed, if the, “Adelaide is averse to and skittish about talking about drinking, getting high, parties or partying, or any of that with Seb, these days” thing had stayed a series of vaguely similar, disconnected incidents, like her aversion to brining up drugs and alcohol with him.

But it’s sort of difficult to miss this when your big sister:

catches you, slightly over a month sober for the eleventh time now, and trying to break the new high-tech lock on the liquor cabinet in your Dad’s study, a few hours into his birthday party [and getting absolutely nowhere because it’s a really good lock with multiple redundancies, designed to make someone get frustrated and give up on breaking past it, which is why Abe and Marceline picked it];

notices that you’re barely even fully aware of what you were doing until she startles you and brings you back around;

sees that you’re deeply upset by this, not because you got caught, but because you really are serious about staying clean, but then shit like this happens and it makes you feel like maybe you’re not serious about it, or maybe you’re too weak for it, and it all sort of makes you feel like you’re gaslighting yourself;

tells you to talk it out at her if you need to;

listens attentively, and hugs you while you cry on her shoulder;

……and then still can’t actually contribute to the conversation without stumbling over trying to find a bunch of euphemisms for drinking and getting high, apologizing for saying things like, “getting high,” “using,” “getting wasted,” and so on

………and when asked about why she’s sorry for saying phrases that tend to be commonplace in your life, making up some rationale about how you’re already upset and she didn’t want to make it worse

…………and then, before you can point out that you wouldn’t be upset about her using the phrase, “getting drunk,” abruptly changing the subject to ask if you want her to go ask Mom and Dad to put the alcohol away for the rest of the night so you don’t have to watch other people drink when you’re feeling upset and vulnerable.

Why Someone Might Love Them: …it’s past 1 AM on Wednesday, I’ve been writing this since Monday afternoon, and I’m seriously blanking on how to answer both this question and the next one.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: …so, while I feel bad about skipping them because it’s such a cop-out, I’m still going to skip them because I’m tired and I’m blanking on how to answer these, and *whines while making vague gestures at my bag of pretzels*

How They Change: This part, I’m sort of making up as I go and really don’t have hashed out yet, because Addie is one of my favorite secondary characters, but she’s still a secondary character. If this were a TV show, she’d be a colorful recurring cast member, but not a, “main cast member in all but name” recurring like Tara on Buffy, Isaac on Teen Wolf, or Kevin on Riverdale.

So…… I’m experimenting and kinda, “vibe-ing it” with Addie and where she’s going to go, at the moment.

But at least I have the integrity enough to admit that I’m “vibe-ing it,” instead of acting like it’s entirely intentional, I say, totally not casting a judgmental sidelong glance at JK Rowling for any reason whatsoever, nope, not me, I would never.

Why You Love Them: okay, full disclosure, I’ve been writing this since yesterday (and if I don’t get this posted ’til it’s technically Wednesday, I mean that I’ve been writing it since Monday), with only periodic breaks to sleep, or eat, or regroup because I could feel my thought processes getting messier than usual, or space out to cartoons for a bit.

So, my ability to bullshit is a little tapped right now, and all I’ve got for this answer is, “idk, I just think she’s fun, like? She’s loving but obnoxious, principled but still someone who winds her brothers up about pineapple on pizza just because they’re so cute when they’re wound up, probably the sort of person who would end up chasing a white whale while making deliberate references to Moby Dick and lampshading that this is a terrible fucking idea but continuing to do it anyway, and??? idk, I just really enjoy her.”

^: This point isn’t actually a legal name or anything, so much as something that’s important to Addie anyway (even though she’s a Catholic in name only, like she’s barely even a “Christmas and Easter” Catholic), but she picked Saint Monica as her Confirmation namesake.

She did this entirely because Monica was Augustine’s mom, and Addie thought that Seb would probably pick Augustine for his own Confirmation saint because Max picked John the Baptist as his saint.

See, for a long time, when they were growing up, Seb wanted to be Max, so Addie felt like, “why wouldn’t he follow Max’s example and just pick his middle-namesake.”

The endgame in this idea was that Seb never would’ve been able to go, “You’re not my MOM!” at her, because Addie could pull out a ridiculous misapplication of Church doctrine to go, “WELL TECHNICALLY, LITTLE BROTHER” and she’d win because Seb is genuinely devout, so she thought he’d just go with it

Then Seb went and chose John of the Cross, contemplative mystic and author of The Dark Night of The Soul, for his Confirmation saint, and by that time, Addie had forgotten her plan anyway because she was too busy with the early stages of college applications, competition season with the debate team and Model U.N. team, and about fifteen other things.

^^: …This footnote is seriously just here because I can’t help Hogwarts Sorting all of my OC’s and I got thinking about it while writing that answer and its spiel about ambition, proving oneself, meeting challenges and the like, so here we are.

Max: SLYTHERIN primary, GRYFFINDOR secondary.

Max would, along with Addie, most likely end up being a Gryffindor vs. Slytherin Hat-Stall. But Max would ultimately end up in the Snake Pit, rather than the Lion’s Den, by virtue of his values, rather than his behaviors or personality traits, exactly.

I mean, his personality and behaviors definitely fit better with how people perceive Slytherin overall — like, if he wound up in Gryffindor, he would be very much a Percy Weasley-model Gryffindor, who’s intellectual but not as invested in learning for its own sake as Hermione, Remus, or a Ravenclaw, and really fixated on Doing Cool Shit or Doing Great Things, to the point that his ambition can overshadow the values and ideals that underlie and guide it

(so much so that people would rather try to argue that Percy should’ve been a Slytherin, rather than actually asking why he’s a Gryffindor or examining what him being in Gryffindor means about Gryffindor, Slytherin, and the Sorting system overall)

Where Max differs from Percy, though, is that all of his ideals are important to him, and he does care about Doing The Right Thing (which he usually conflates with doing the thing that’s best for everyone, or as close to it as possible, which is where his Hufflepuff points come from) — but Max values ambition, determination, and cunning more than he values courage and daring and nerve.

So, y’know, a Slytherin version of the reason why Percy and Wormtail aren’t Slytherins (Percy values courage, nobility, daring, and moral righteousness more than ambition and so on, while Peter values boldness, self-righteousness, and being a big, obnoxious, grandstanding bully, which is why he could go from allying himself with James and Sirius [who were bullies like that] to joining Lord Tom-mort Voldingdong [who is, without question, the biggest example of a bully like this in the entire series, because Heir of Slytherin or not, he would’ve done as well in Gryffindor as Harry would’ve done in Slytherin], and not see these stances as contradicting each other)

Or a Slytherin version of the reason why Neville is a Gryffindor and not a Hufflepuff (by trying to push for Hufflepuff because he felt like it would involve less pressure and he wouldn’t be a failboat who didn’t live up to Hufflepuff’s values, he shows that he places a higher value on the traits that Gryffindor looked for in his students than any of Helga Hufflepuff’s ideals)

Basically, what this means for Max is that he does fixate a lot on the morality, the rightness or lack thereof, and so on of what he does, and he does hit several points where Gryffindor and Slytherin canonically overlap with each other (determination and conviction, a distaste for being told what to do, a tendency to come off like a complete asshole, a habit of slipping into a self-aggrandizing mindset that goes like, “I’m right, you’re wrong, my way of doing things is inherently better than yours, and there’s nothing you can you can do about it,” a tendency to assume that he knows what’s best for people more than they do, and “a certain disregard for rules”)

(though you’d be forgiven for not guessing the last point, since Max ostensibly seems like he’s a total stickler for the rules and would probably make out with a student conduct handbook

—but Max’s take here is generally, “A lot of these rules are actively counterproductive. Yes, a lot of rules serve a purpose and help make things better for everyone, because complete anarchy is fundamentally, completely unsustainable and would probably end up reenacting the Reign of Terror because humans are bastards. Bastards with the potential to do better, yes, but most of us choose not to, and trying to instate anarchy — whether it’s in the sense of complete disorder, or actual political anarchy — based on idealistic hopes, rather than acknowledging the material reality and humanity’s established precedents will do more harm than good.

“However, a LOT of rules are either fundamentally wrong — such as the legislation that used to punish people for having consensual same-sex intercourse — or are greatly misapplied in ways that are wrong. Or, they just don’t do anything beyond pointlessly regulating things that don’t actually need to be regulated. There are some things that it’s silly to fight because it would be a waste of time and energy — such as people telling you to type things in a certain font — but there are others where you can and should ignore and/or flout them because they’re asinine.”)

…and what makes Max more Slytherin is that. in the breaking rules example, he would advocate for people to break the rules more cleverly and with more cunning than just going, “look at me, I am defying the rules!” There are smaller ways of protesting, or maneuvering within the letter of the law in order to defy the spirit of it, and Max would favor those approaches to situations because they’re less likely to get you caught, which means you have a better chance of being able to affect more change over a longer period of time.

More generally, though, it would come down to how he would sooner compromise somewhat on the ideals to get something done, and then try to improve that something once it’s out there. Likewise, he thinks that ideals, values, morals, and ethics are great, but you need to back them up with action and ambition, or else they’re meaningless — so, the drive and determination of Slytherin are more important to him than all of the self-righteous moralizing and, “who actually cares about pragmatism, we have ideals and a Cause” shit of Gryffindor.

Finally, while he definitely believes in some versions of The Greater Good, Max wouldn’t prioritize The Greater Good above all else.

Like, for one thing, he wouldn’t put it above the human element (e.g., he wouldn’t leave Harry in an abusive home, and if he had to keep Snape at Hogwarts for some reason, he would still try to get Snape help, rather than taking advantage of how damaged he is and manipulating him in service of some, “Greater Good,” and thus, he wouldn’t let Snape get away with whatever the Hell he wants as a professor, since Max wouldn’t have any guilt to assuage by letting Snape have more or less complete carte blanche to be a douchebag to children, and he would understand that any alleged lessons that kids could learn from having an asshole teacher wouldn’t be worth it compared to what they can get out of having a more positive learning environment)

For another, while Max would believe in The Greater Good, in the utilitarian sense of trying to create the most good for as many people as possible, he would be pretty exasperated by the idealistic, pie in the sky, “there is almost definitely no way that you can actualize this in the real world, and trying to pursue it without room for constructive compromise” sense of The Greater Good, and he would negotiate hard — and not be above manipulation, word-twisting, and so on — but he’d still rather try to find a compromise (within reason), than be an absolutist who gets nothing done

Adelaide: GRYFFINDOR primary, SLYTHERIN secondary.

The other Moncrieff Hat-Stall, and much like her brother’s Slytherin Sorting, Addie’s Gryffindor Sorting would ultimately come down to her values and priorities. And much like Max, probably no one would believe, at first, that she was almost a Slytherin, because she would seem so undeniably Gryffindor that the idea of her being in Slytherin would seem like a really bad joke.

Contrariwise, if she’d wound up in Slytherin, then she’d probably adapt to it well enough to do well there and find a way to flourish, but there would probably end up being some kind of disconnect between her and a lot of her Housemates, because she would definitely be all like, “Fuck, man, I want to win the match against Ravenclaw (or whoever) too, but I want to win because we’re genuinely better than the other team, not because we cheated. If we can’t prove that we’re better by working hard and beating them fairly, then we don’t deserve to win but we *do* deserve to be put in our place by losing, period.”

Also, she’d probably end up being more of a loner within her own House, rather than playing into all of the ridiculous miniature games of thrones that we Slytherins no doubt get up to, trying to vie for social status and then exert it over each other.

As far as most people would ever hear, Addie just refuses to play those games because she thinks they’re a stupid waste of time, but the reality is a little bit more nuanced.

On one hand, she would kind of have moral objections to those games of social status and lording it over each other (because the whole point of a House is to promote togetherness of people who should work better with each other than with members of other Houses because they share similar values, not to create sub-hierarchies about who’s better than whom and start treating each other like status objects and tools to gain it).

But on the other, there would definitely be an element of, “screw you guys, I’m going home” or, “I’ll make my own theme park! With black jack! And sex workers!!” because Addie doesn’t fucking want to kowtow to some smug, smarmy little shits like Draco, Pansy, Narcissa, Lucius, or Tom-mort Voldingdong Riddle

—which would have a mix of Slytherin motivations (she doesn’t want to lick boot because she’s better than that and fuck you, that’s why; she doesn’t want to follow someone else’s directions and be their courtier because fuck you, Martha, you can’t tell her what to do), and Gryffindor ones (most of the people involved in these games within Slytherin House tend to be assholes with whom Addie would have many serious moral objections, and fuck you, she’s not going to play nicely with them just because they’re Malfoys or Parkinsons or whoever).

(Basically, I see Addie’s objections to the intra-Slytherin social gaming nonsense as being kind of in the same, “Any man who must say, ‘I am the king’ is no true king at all” vein (with apologies to GRRM and Tywin Lannister), as my headcanon Theodore Nott’s objections to Draco’s bullying bullshit behavior patterns, just without the lack of challenging fundamentally Blood Purist assumptions under the guise of supporting meritocracy.

Like, my headcanon Theodore gets on Draco’s case and tells him not to be such a ridiculous, bullying little shit because it’s “demeaning for someone of his status” and, if he truly believes in the power that they have by virtue of being wealthy white Pureblooded young men, then Draco has no need to try and assert his superiority or dominance by tormenting people who are so far beneath them and disadvantaged in ways that they are not. All it does is make people think that he’s weak, especially when he goes on about being so powerful and so strong but then runs crying to Snape or Umbridge or whoever as soon as Potter, Granger, Longbottom, and their pet Weasleys fight back — which shows that Draco cannot back up his threats on his own and suggests that he might not be deserving of his superior position because he might not actually be better than those whom he would rule and subjugate.

Addie, on the other hand, would look at all of the intra-Slytherin social gaming nonsense and self-aggrandizing, bullying bullshit behaviors and go, “Okay, so you’re all essentially a bunch of tiny, dumb-ass birds who are puffing up their chests, spreading their tail feathers as far as possible, jumping around while making obnoxious, annoying shrieking noises, and so on, in an attempt at seeming bigger and more threatening than you actually are. If you need to reaffirm that you have power by harassing people and hurting them, trying to cow them into submission, then you don’t deserve to have power. I’m not going to play into your games when you are really just sad, pathetic, and ultimately insignificant. Run along.”)

But anyway, as I was saying: Addie would wind up getting Sorted into Gryffindor because she values nerve, daring, boldness, Doing The Right Thing (or at least sticking to some sense of internally derived values and beliefs, if you don’t get on a moral high-horse about it being Completely Right And So There Because Fuck You That’s Why), and so on more than all of the Slytherin traits she has or values she shares.

Like, she’s someone who wants to win, and would push herself and her team to ridiculous lengths in order to win (like, Addie, honey? Oliver Wood called and he said you should chill), and she would utilize cunning when she comes up with different strategies for how they could win… but she wouldn’t advocate or allow for any cheating.

She wouldn’t, because according to her, if you win by cheating, then you aren’t really winning. It doesn’t count, she wouldn’t find it satisfying, and she would absolutely judge someone who did find it any kind of satisfying because how the fuck even can you enjoy a so-called “win” that is tantamount to admitting that you should have lost.

Which is, admittedly, a bit of a complicated point.

Like, the “disregard for rules [coupled with a tendency to be okay with them when you’re the one making them]” bit of both Houses isn’t being threatened either way, but on one hand, Addie’s objection to cheating has a Gryffindor sense of valuing the game itself, but she values the game out of a Slytherin’s drive to win. On the other, it’s definitely a Gryffindor’s morally self-righteous objection to cheating, but it’s also based in a Slytherin’s drive to prove yourself and be the very best, like no one ever was.

What ultimately makes this more of a Gryffindor point, to me, is that both Gryffindor and Slytherin ultimately do believe that some people are just better than others, and certainly don’t object to getting in people’s faces to go, “ha ha, I’m better than you” for whatever justifications someone pulls out for this (whether overtly, like James, Sirius, Draco, Tom-mort, Bellatrix, Harry when he takes Draco’s bait, and the list goes on

or more subtly, like most of Snape’s put-downs for people and Albus “paragon of virtue” Dumbledore being all like, “Hagrid, you’re not allowed to keep feeling bad that Rita Skeeter outed you as a half-giant because she’s trash and you are better than this” or, “My brother Aberforth challenges me and won’t let me manipulate him, so I’m going to make snide little comments about his maybe being illiterate and maybe having sex with goats when he’s not here to defend himself, because ugh, I’m right and he’s wrong and why doesn’t he just agree with me about things”)

—but Gryffindor House’s way of doing this is usually more grounded in some kind of underlying sense of moral self-righteousness that Gryffindors genuinely believe in.

Like, James is weird among Gryffindors, when he flat-out says that he’s tormenting and publicly humiliating Snape just because he exists. Most Gryffindors have some kind of moral justification for being shitty to people, like how Hermione hexes the D.A.’s sign-up sheet, even knowing that Umbridge is okay with torturing students, because if someone rats the rest of them out, then they deserve to have ‘SNEAK’ magically break out on their face.

But for all Slytherins will have some kind of underlying belief that we’re better than whomever we’re being shitty to (whether we deserve to have it or not, and in fairness, we probably won’t), and we might bullshit a justification for it… but unless we’ve really sold ourselves on our own bullshit (which, unfortunately, plenty of us have), we won’t believe those justifications. We will know that we’re being shitty to people and that it is, in most cases, nowhere even close to being right or justified, and we’ll do it anyway.

—Which is all relevant to Addie’s opinions about cheating because she does genuinely believe that whether or not to cheat is a matter of moral fiber, and that choosing not to cheat means that, even if you lose, you’re still better than someone else who would choose cheating instead of doing the work to be the best, and she would rather have the moral high-ground of not cheating than the win.

Make no mistake: she still absolutely wants the fuck to win, but… It’s like she says, “Winning by cheating doesn’t count because it isn’t really winning. It’s tantamount to admitting that you should have damned well lost. Either win with honor, or suck it up and lose.”

So, yeah. The Gryffindor and Slytherin are both strong in her, but the Gryffindor does ultimately win out by enough to count.

For another example: Addie wouldn’t rule out subterfuge or sneaky ways of doing things — like Max, she could get behind working within the letter of the law while defying the spirit of it, if she thought that was a more or less right choice — but in order for her to do so, there would need to be some kind of Cause, some kind of Greater Good, some kind of moral or idealistic justification, and/or some kind of larger endgame goal that she can’t accomplish through any other means (or if those other means would do more harm than good).

Aside from that, if this was a prolonged amount of sneaking or a particularly underhanded form of subterfuge, Addie would probably spend the whole time complaining on and off to someone, even just her journal or Ambrose (because she knows that he understands when she’s just venting without any plans to actually go against the plan and won’t get personally hurt, like Seb might, or get offended and argue back at her, like Max), and all of her complaints would be about how she sees the point of the sneaking but would much rather do it some other way where they could be more direct instead of manipulative and sneaky.

Like, manipulation has a place and she’s overall totally fine with using it — and she would agree without question that it’s better to use subterfuge and manipulation than to just beat the shit out of people until they either say they’ll play by your rules or die — but she’d rather get the Right Thing done out in the open. She doesn’t doubt that, sometimes, the Right Thing has to be quieter or underground, and this doesn’t make it any less Right or any less brave, but it sucks when you can’t be open and honest about it.

(Which is where most of her Hufflepuff points end up coming from. Her sense of ethics and commitment to honesty might not be that strong — and she is definitely more committed to both of those things on moral grounds than a more Hufflepuff reason like, “it’s called not being a dick to people, you should try it” — but they do exist.)

Like, with Adelaide, we’re talking about someone who looked at the situation where her baby brother had just nearly killed himself twice over and wound up hospitalized twice within a single week — once for an OD that might’ve been intentional or could’ve been an accident, he legitimately had no idea; and then again for inexplicably (as far as they knew) passing out and falling backwards down the stairs at their parents’ house — where everyone in Seb’s life was on the same page about him needing professional help and wanting him to go to rehab, and everyone knew that he was going to be difficult about it, at best, because he had insisted to all of them that he was fine, even after that particular series of events…

…and still went, “Okay, but do we really need to lie to him in order to get him to the intervention? Look, I get it that he’s lied to all of us more than enough times that we can feel like it’s justified to tell him one little lie that’s hopefully going to be good for him in the end — but it might not end up being good for him. If we catch him off-guard, it might make him get defensive, and it make him start pushing back at us and lashing out instead of letting us try to help him. He could hurt himself more than he already has, or he could hurt someone else, whether he means to or not, and just? It could do more harm than good to lie to him and we might end up hurting him with that deception without it accomplishing anything.”

……and who only wound up relenting about that because: 1. she was given permission to not go help Pete, Margot, and Ambrose get Seb up to Abe and Marceline’s place for the intervention, and thus, Addie didn’t have to lie to Seb herself;

and 2. Pete gave her a few minutes after she stormed out onto her parents’ back deck, then followed her, and despite being pretty high himself at that particular moment — and really only getting away with it because only Margot and Todd could tell for sure, and neither of them was saying anything right then — sat with Addie and gave her a Talk about how he didn’t like the idea of lying to Seb to get him to the intervention either

—“I mean, it’s like you said: lying could go really, very badly for all of us, especially him. And more importantly, to me at least? My Princess values honesty so much that he asked your Mom for permission to sneak some of your parents’ good booze to our unofficial Into the Woods cast party, back at St. Andrew’s, instead of just taking it from the cabinet which is what I would’ve done, because he felt like it would be a better decision for everyone if your Mom knew that we were going to be drinking.

“Once, I had to listen to him agonize for, like, ten days about whether or not it was okay for him to put up a front of being a dick to some ex-boy of yours, because you hadn’t listened to him about his honest reasons for not liking the douche, he didn’t have any proof that you were believing him about at the time, and he accepted that he was going to have a hand in something that would hurt you because dumping someone or getting dumped does tend to suck like that, but he didn’t want to do you any additional hurt through that deception.

“Even worse? He values honesty so much that he gives people the benefit of the doubt when he really fucking shouldn’t, I mean? How many times have we had to hear him say some shit about how Josh was really serious about treating him better this time? Or how Rémy said that he didn’t put anything in Seb’s drink, Seb just got plastered like a cast model of David Lee Roth’s dick and blacked out, and that seemed legit because that’s something that he would do? Or how Mark apologized and he seemed really upset about hurting Seb, so Seb was going to trust him again?

“The downside of this for those of us who don’t treat him like shit for fun or because we’re insecure about our dick size or because our parents were mean to us, or whatever sob story any of his exes has ever sold him on? The downside for us, is that we know that lying to Seb, even for his own damn good? Is going to hurt him. He’ll probably end up blaming himself more than us, after being angry with us for a little while, but that’s really not much better and he’s still going to be hurt.

“But the thing is? There really isn’t a way to do this — this meaning the intervention, and rehab, and getting him to accept help? We can’t do that without hurting him, at least a little bit.

“Your brother is the best friend I’ve ever had in my life, Addie, and I, the gayest of all possible gays, would rather have sex with my own sister than willingly, deliberately do anything to hurt him. But there isn’t a way to do this without us telling him things that he doesn’t want to hear, which will absolutely hurt him in the short-term, because he’s an emotionally sensitive marshmallow and, at first, everything we have to say is going to sound like we’re calling him a fuck-up, accusing him of deliberately hurting us, and confirming all the self-degrading bullshit that he believes about himself.

“It’s going to hurt him and it’s going to suck for all of us, but we need to do it, because every other thing we’ve tried to make him care about what he’s doing to himself? Hasn’t fucking worked. And being above-board with him about it? Hasn’t fucking worked.

“Know why it hasn’t worked? Because he doesn’t want to hear what we want to tell him, and unfortunately, he is really good at showing us enough of what we want to see that we back off. Because we want him to be okay, and we want to believe him when he says he is, and whether he’s taking advantage of that intentionally, or just freaking out and falling back on shit that he knows will work? It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters now is that he straight up doesn’t give a fuck about whether he lives or dies, and we need to get with the program and stop using kid gloves techniques.

“And yeah, it sucks to realize that that’s what we’re dealing with. I don’t blame you for not wanting to hear it, and when it’s on your own time? You can believe all you want that Max was making shit up, exaggerating, or misconstruing things in the whole, ‘I told him he was going to die, and he said, “So the fuck what”’ story — but you aren’t on your own time right now. We’re on, ‘trying to save your brother from himself’ time now, and we have to act like it.

“But, for what it’s worth? Personally? I believe Max. I don’t know how many times Bastian’s almost died have been accidental or intentional or whatever, but I know my Princess, I know that he has deliberately tried to kill himself more than once, and I know that he’s thought about dying by suicide more than he wants any of us to know. Know how I know that? Because I’ve been his friend for almost fifteen years and I’ve lost count of how many times he has said or done something that, if it wasn’t just outright and obviously suicidal, then we can see it leaning that way, if we look at it in retrospect.

“And I feel like rancid, microwaved vomit for how badly I’ve fucked up in trying to handle things as they came up with him, but I wanted so fucking badly to believe that, even when things were rough for him, he had enough of us on his team who could help him and, no matter what happened with anybody else, he’d always have me. He’s done so much for me, he’s gotten me through some of the worst shit in my life, he’s been there for me when I didn’t feel like I had anybody else, whether I did or not, and It was like a matter of pride to be there for him in the same way.

“He’s my best friend, Adelaide. I was supposed to be able to find the magical combination of things I could do or say for him to make him get better or at least keep him from getting worse. Admitting that I couldn’t? Sucked. It sucked so badly that I ignored all my instincts until the second time he wouldn’t admit that Mark had put him in the ER. After that? It’s been a few months of me trying to nudge him into getting help and being, by my standards, perfectly above-board about it.

“Not that I’ve lied to him about it, but I’ve tried being subtle, like trying to gently lead him to the, ‘You need help’ conclusion in a way where he’d think it was all his own idea. I’ve tried being telling him outright that he’s hurting himself in ways that he is better than and telling him that I love him and want better for him than that. I’ve tried being all, ‘Please don’t you dare die on me, I would be a fucking mess if I lost you.’ About the only thing I haven’t tried is telling him that he is hurting me right here, right now, because I’ve been terrified of it going sideways on us and making him get worse instead of better.

“I know I’m not alone in this, either. Todd was trying it before he got clean, and he’s been trying it even more since he got back from rehab. Everyone in this house has tried talking to him, except for Linda and Marie, and you can’t blame Linda when he still gets skittish around her without her even needing to be mad at him, and you can’t blame Marie because she’s five.

“Addie, we have all given Sebastian innumerable fucking chances to do this without lying and ambushing him into an intervention, and it has. not. fucking. *worked*.

“At this point, yeah. We are the taking a huge risk by deceiving him, even in the name of helping him. But if we don’t take that risk, then everything about how this has gone so far says that he is going to keep getting worse until he pushes his luck too far and dies.

“We might not feel good about lying to him, but right now? It’s not about us or how we feel. It’s about what’s right for him and what’s going to help him. You don’t have to like me or anything, but I know you love your brother, and right now, he needs us to put our egos aside for his sake. If we really want to help him — if we really, honestly love him and if we really want him to get well — then we need to suck it up, go all in, and resort to desperate measures that we might not feel good about. Because playing safe with his feelings and our comfort has, so far, only made him worse.”

(On the level of ideas, this was a moment of a Slytherin primary, Gryffindor secondary talking to a Gryffindor primary, Slytherin secondary, about the balance between ideals and results in trying to help someone they love get to somebody who, unlike either of them, could actually help him like they needed.

After Adelaide agreed that lying to Seb was, in this instance, as close to okay as anything was going to get, the moment also involved a moment of, “Uh, as an aside? Why did you say that I don’t have to like you? I mean, sure, you were Bastian’s friend first, but you wouldn’t be my friend if I didn’t like you”

“…um, I actually wasn’t aware that you thought of me as a friend? ……Really?”

“Yes. Really. …Why would you think I don’t see you as a friend? Did I do something unfriendly?”

“No, just… I can’t go into that with you right now. It’d take too long, and we need to get back to the intervention planning session. …Preferably before Max kills Todd or Margot. I don’t think my Princess will play nicely with going to rehab if we let anything happen to those two.”

But now I’m like ten miles away from the actual topic, oops.)

TL;DR: much like how Max is ultimately a Slytherin because he values getting results and the actual doing things more than ideals, Addie is on a very fine line between Gryffindor and Slytherin, but she’s ultimately a Gryffindor because she places more value on why someone does things and would rather have the moral high-ground than the exact victory.

Ambrose: RAVENCLAW primary, SLYTHERIN secondary.

Ambrose is getting skimmed over af because this is way too long already — like, “I have resorted to typing in TextEdit and copy-pasting into the tumblr box, because Firefox keeps trying to stall out on me, oops” too long — but the gist of his Sorting is that anyone who spends ten minutes with him can see that he’s a Ravenclaw.

There is nothing close about this; every other House lags so far behind his Ravenclaw-ness that it isn’t even funny. His Ravenclaw-ness comes out in both conventional ways (e.g., he’s a nerdy, deadpan snarking little shit who loves learning, did well in school and was usually a teacher’s pet, and out of his siblings, he’s the one who would ignore someone telling him not to do something just for the sake of seeing what happens, and the one who’s most likely to waste his last words saying, “oooh, what does this button do?”)

and unconventional ones (e.g., he’s an artsy fartsy little shit who enjoys sewing, watches all of the weird History Channel conspiracy theory documentaries just to see what they’re on about, sometimes reads shit like, “I married Bigfoot and she’s having my baby!” tabloids because they’re so out there that he has to see them for himself, and would rather not gossip, but if you’re going to gossip, then he wants to hear everything)

That said, almost no one would see his secondary House coming, at least not until they get to know him, and even then, there’s not a guarantee that people will see this in him. Like, he’s determined and resourceful, but not in a way that makes most people think it comes out of anything but him being a dedicated nerd. Likewise, he can be cunning, sure, but he generally doesn’t go there, first. And sure, he’s willing to go to extreme measures and even cheat or break the rules, but he’s just so nice that a lot of people don’t pay it any mind.

Frankly, even Seb and Adelaide usually forget or overlook all of Ambrose’s Slytherin traits, even though they usually come out more in his interpersonal dealings than they do when he’s on his own. Which is, in a way, part of why he is such a secondary Slytherin: he’s so skilled at manipulating people that he can convince you that he isn’t manipulating people. Usually, Ambrose does what Pete wanted to do with Seb before giving up and resorting to “desperation tactics” — leading people to conclusions and ideas while making them think that they came up with it all on their own — but if not that, then it’s going to be pulling the right strings to try and keep his siblings from losing their shit, or playing peacemaker between them and spinning things exactly the right way

Sebastian: HUFFLEPUFF primary, GRYFFINDOR secondary.

Seb is, like Ambrose: 1. getting phoned the Hell in right now

and 2. a case where his primary House isn’t really up for debate, and all of his other options lag way, way behind Hufflepuff, and are so close to each other in how much he aligns himself with those Houses’ values and ideals that his actual secondary House only wins by a narrow margin.

Aside from being their Houses, the only reason why they’re different on this cout is that, as I said, people would totally peg Ambrose as a Ravenclaw but Seb would get mistyped as a Gryffindor pretty easily.

And, like? I can’t blame people for that, because Seb, admittedly, doesn’t act like how most people expect Hufflepuffs to act.

For one thing, he isn’t a, “You have ten fingers? I have ten fingers! Let’s be friends!!”-model Flufflepuff, or a happy-go-lucky, Hobbit-like stoner who’s always super chill with everyone and about everything, or a tireless try-hard who keeps telling himself, “I must work harder” while pushing himself beyond his limitations, and he isn’t cheerful and peppy all the time (and based on some of his precedents, the people who love him would be incredibly Concerned if Seb started being uncommonly happy and peppy like some people baselessly stereotype Hufflepuffs as being, because his precedents say that, when he acts like that, he’s probably high, tipsy but not drunk, or deliberately faking because he’s actually more miserable than usual).

He does kind of fit some of the more obviously negative stereotypes associated with Hufflepuff, whether fairly or not — e.g., he can be a pushover and a doormat; he’s a disaster whom some people would say falls under the heading of, “I’ll take the lot / and treat them all the same”; etc. — but even so, a lot of his outward behaviors are more in line with what people expect from Gryffindors, for better and (more often) for worse.

For example: Seb has a habit of running into dangerous situations, even before he gets into the superheroics line of work, which always, in every fucking fandom, makes some people mis-type characters who are obviously Hufflepuffs as Gryffindors, despite how they are obviously Hufflepuffs. I could go on all day about how this is a flawed piece of logic that relies too much on people projecting their own values and ideas onto the characters — e.g., they look at the heroic acts as being brave, noble, courageous, etc., and assume that these acts must be about bravery and courage for the people doing them, even though you could do heroic deeds in order to manipulate people

—but it’s even more glaringly wrong with Sebastian because he really explicitly doesn’t see these acts as being about any of the Gryffindor values.

Like, he doesn’t flinch from danger when he rushes headlong into situations where he could die or get seriously hurt… but before he gets into superheroics, he’s usually doing these to keep Margot safe because she’s one of his best friends and he won’t just sit there and do nothing to help her while she does dangerous things. After he gets into superheroics, he doesn’t see anything that he does in that line of work as brave or even as particularly heroic; he sees it as an ethical obligation to humanity, because he believes that if you have the power to help people and to make life safer for them, and you do nothing, then you do share partial responsibility for what happens to them because you made the choice to stand idle by and do fuck-all nothing.

For another thing, uh. Okay, Seb’s depression and addictions skew a lot of things about his situation, but if you ask him, it’s not a matter of courage to keep fighting them. Depending on how badly off he’s doing when you ask him, he might try to tell you that the real act of bravery on his part would be killing himself for real and getting his problems out of his loved ones’ lives, and then he’d probably berate himself for being a, “coward” because he hasn’t found a way to make any of his attempts on his own life stick yet.

So, no. It might be incredibly brave, overall, to keep fighting his own mind and his mental illnesses, day in and day out, just to wake up in the morning, but in Seb’s case, from Seb’s perspective, his choices to do so are not brave and they aren’t about bravery and anyone who thinks otherwise is either speaking in general terms that happen to be wrong of him, or trying to make him feel better.

The thing is, he doesn’t personally feel like he relies on nobility, chivalry, courage, moral righteousness, or any of that Gryffindor shit to keep fighting. He relies on loyalty and love. Like, on the smaller scale, one of the biggest things that gets him out of bed in the morning when it seems like too much and he’d rather not? Is that he has six dogs and they need him.

On the bigger scale, the people in his life are his biggest and most frequent reasons for doing almost everything

for better (e.g., he can easily be talked out of doing stupid things by thinking about whether or not his Mom would be disappointed in him for what he’s doing; “Be the person who your seven-year-old niece already thinks that you are” is an effective way to make him think about the potential consequences of his actions, and, “Pete needs me to be there for him” motivated him to kick a relapse right after Pete got back from rehab)

for worse (e.g., one of the things that he liked about alcohol, drinking it as a teenager, was that he wanted so badly to feel like he belonged and like his peers actually liked him, and other kids at cast parties seemed like they liked him when he was drinking;

and the first time that he fell off the wagon after going to rehab happened because his Dad had a bad reaction to anesthesia after an arthroscopic surgery, his Mom told his siblings not to tell him too many details so he wouldn’t worry too much, but that backfired because Seb worried anyway and his anxiety dragged his imagination to Hell with it, no one would let him do anything to help and that made him feel helpless and worthless, and being too emotionally overwhelmed and desperate, he texted one of his old “drug friends,” got his hands on pills, and got high)

and for a little bit of both (e.g., while it’s nice that he’s too loyal to let Margot go do dangerous shit by herself, they are still doing things that are extralegal and dangerous; while it’s nice that he’s so willing to sacrifice things for his loved ones and for people in general, it’s a lot less nice when you consider that he does genuinely feel like he’s only worth anything insofar as he’s useful to and doing good for others;

and one of the biggest things that made him relent and go to rehab was that he’d justified a lot of his self-abuse by telling himself, “Well, I’m only hurting myself, so it’s not a problem” and he didn’t want to hurt anyone else, even though he didn’t think there was a problem with the logic, “As long as I’m only hurting myself, it’s okay and there’s nothing bad about it, because I’m not hurting anyone who matters”).

One of the biggest issues here is that Seb could unwittingly give overly Gryffindor-biased people some ammunition because of how little he values himself and how much he dismisses any of his legitimate good points, because it would seem to be a lot like Neville’s push for Hufflepuff over Gryffindor.

But the thing is, when Seb devalues himself, it isn’t a matter of, “I should go to Loser House because I can’t be a Winner, that’s too much pressure” like it was for Neville; it’s a matter of, “All those traits are good and I have none of them because I am garbage.”

He values the Hufflepuff traits — loyalty, acceptance, fairness, kindness and compassion, hard work, etc. — more than he values courage, daring, moral self-righteousness, wit, creativity, learning, cunning, resourcefulness, or determination. If he ever seems like he’s talking them down, the reality is that he is talking himself down and berating himself for )allegedly) not having the good traits that he feels like he’s “fooled people” into thinking that he has.

But, with that said, Gryffindor is his secondary House for a reason. It really is a close call between that, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin — you could probably get any of them, depending on what day you ask, though Slytherin would probably be somewhat less common (regardless of the results below, Seb isn’t actually very Slytherin, at heart, and a lot of the places where he could be a Slytherin are probably actually Hufflepuff traits that happen to overlap with Slytherin) — but Gryffindor wins out because, for all he doesn’t really care about most of Gryffindor House’s values or traits, Seb does want to do the right thing.

He has a fundamentally more Hufflepuffian understanding of, “the right thing” (and he’s not an absolutist about it in the Capital Letters For Significance way that you’ll see more readily among Gryffindors), but still.

And because I like sharing (breakdowns gotten using this quiz):

MAX

ADELAIDE

AMBROSE

SEB

^^^: for example, the kerfuffle that ensued after Doctor Delphi of the All-Stars got outed and, overnight, got an endorsement deal from the family’s company — which was not really an issue of either business or politics, for all the public statements on the matter talked a lot of solid socially liberal talk about equality this and anti-hate that and so on, and for all people who were critical of the decision were right to say that the company’s endorsement deal with one gay celebrity superhero wasn’t really the same as actual political progress for LGBTQ people, and could have been seen as pandering to LGBTQ consumers

Just…… yeah. Those aspects of the situation were definitely still there, and it was fair to make note of them, but they weren’t at the foreground of Abe’s mind.

See, by that point, Seb had been out to his family for a few years and was getting increasingly invested in learning about LGBTQ history and the experiences of other LGBTQ people*, which Abe noticed and could admit that he didn’t get in a way that another LGBTQ person might.

His not really getting it wasn’t helped by how he saw a lot of this as, “Sebastian is being sensitive and upset again, because he does that a lot, and it’s nice that he cares so much about other people and their pain, but now, I feel helpless to do anything to help my son because I have no idea how to make him feel better about problems neither of us can actually do anything to fix on our own, or how to make him not get so upset about other people’s suffering when it’s not his fault or???? Anything?????”

So, basically, Abe wanted to put the company on the side of LGBTQ rights less out of concern for the larger social or political implications, or even out of concern for the business, but entirely because he thought that putting the company’s support behind a gay public figure might? maybe? help his son?? feel better???? maybe??? please????**

—none of which actually directly involved Addie, but at the time, she was taking a parentally-mandated mental health year off before starting at Barnard College, and staying with family in New York City, so it got noticed and turned into a Thing when she went clubbing with a few older cousins, one Saturday night

*: and in fairness? Seb was genuinely interested in this stuff for its own sake…… but it was somewhat more pressing because, on one hand, he wanted to try and figure out what his own place in LGBTQ communities and history might end up being.

And, on the other, he was friends with Pete as well as dating Damian, his best friend to first boyfriend, on the sly, and had to admit that there were parts of their experiences that he didn’t get.

Because Seb was, at this age, “high-strung and tightly-wound, and somehow, still the biggest Pollyanna you have ever met in your life” — in Pete’s words — he wanted to help and do right by two of the most important people in his life, and he decided to supplement listening to Pete and Damian with trying to read up on anything he could get his gay little hands on [which, given that he had rich parents and two siblings with access to top-tier university libraries — Barnard and Columbia, respectively — was a lot].

Which led to a lot of sadness and anxiety because so much of what Seb learned was so upsetting, and it’s very easy for him to get emotionally overwhelmed by other people’s suffering, the impulse he always feels to do something about it because people are being hurt and it sucks, and the realization that, in most cases, he either can’t do anything or has no idea what he could do.

**: Abe tries his best, he really does — and he and Seb often end up having, “strange minds think alike” moments where they come up with the same or similar equally weird conclusions, logic, solutions to, and/or approaches to something completely independently of each other — but…… well.

At the same time, Seb has always been emotional and sensitive in ways that Abe doesn’t always know what to do with, and he’s still tried and done a pretty okay job — like, the biggest problem here is by no means exclusive to him, and he can’t really be blamed for it because no one who’s close to Seb has understood all the different ways that his depression manifests itself as symptoms of depression because they’ve been going on for long enough that people think of them as, “just little Sebastian things”

—but Abe still had plenty of moments with Seb that went like, “uhh, mon belle étoile? Our five-year-old son is having an existential crisis about Winnie the Pooh and he’s very upset about it. He won’t go to bed, I don’t know what to do or to tell him, and I think I’ve only made it worse. Can you please come help him?”

and, “Nothing I’ve said or tried so far has made my son feel any less bad about everything he’s been reading about LGBTQ people and history. I can’t very well tell him not to read it because he’s a teenage boy who’s trying to find an understanding of himself and of where he fits in the world, and he can’t get this particular understanding from any of us, as far as I know.

“Besides, if I told Bastian not to read any of it, he’d probably just continue doing so anyway, because that’s generally what tends to happen when you tell him not to do something and make him get even more curious about it, and??? IDK what to do, maybe it might make him feel better if I put the company’s support behind some LGBTQ public figures and causes??? He has a Thing about looking into the philanthropic ways we spend some of our money, so maybe it’ll do some good for his emotional well-being if we support LGBTQ people and causes???”

—Abe does genuinely love all his children equally, but

At the same time, he has an easier time relating to Adelaide and Ambrose than either Max or Seb, because Seb is emotional in ways Abe doesn’t always get or know how to help with, and Max has always had a Thing about seeming as self-sufficient as possible and prickling when people offer help even if he probably needs it, which Abe has an easier time with than, “oh no, Sebastian’s upset and I’m unable to help,” but it still makes it harder for him to relate to Max, sometimes

But on one hand, Ambrose’s way of doing things tends to either line up with Abe’s or else complement it pretty well, and both of them have a primarily logical way of interacting with the world, where it’s not that feelings are unimportant, but they’d rather take a minute to breathe and get people grounded, then try to proceed with logic at the foreground, rather than making heat of the moment emotional decisions about things

And on the other hand, Addie is ultimately more of a Feeler than a Thinker — just… getting Myers-Briggs about it (she’s an ENFP vs. Abe’s ESTJ and Ambrose’s ISTJ) (and Marceline is an INTJ, Max is an INTP, and Seb is an ESFJ) — but Addie has an easier time with switching between feeling her emotions and letting them be valid (most of the time), and taking actions in the world that are based more in a logical approach and an attempt to balance between the emotional, subjective side and the necessity (if you ask her) of an organized, thought-out, and logical approach

Since I’m MBTI nerding already: Abe and Adelaide have the same cognitive functions in their stacks — Extroverted Intuition (Ne), Extroverted Thinking (Te), Introverted Feeling (Fi), and Introverted Sensing (Si) — but they’re just rearranged a little bit differently.

As an ENFP, Addie’s functional stack goes Ne-Fi-Te-Si, so she primarily approaches things using Extroverted Intuition to look for all the cool new possibilities in life, all the fun ways she can connect the dots in unexpected ways, all the shiny neat ideas that she hasn’t explored yet, etc. When it comes to feeling vs. thinking, her actions are guided by her values and her senses of what the best options are, what’s most exciting, and so on, but she tries to use organized, logical approaches to actualize them IRL

As an ESTJ, though, Abe’s functional stack is Te-Si-Ne-Fi, so he has a sense of ideals and emotional sensitivity that he relies on in how he approaches things, but his primary approach to the world is to break things down logically and intellectually, and to try and sort out which things are more or less useful for whatever he’s trying to do, make, fix, or otherwise work on

And as an ESFJ, Seb’s functional stack has some of the same functions as theirs — Ne and Si — but instead of Fi and Te, he has Extroverted Feeling (Fe) and Introverted Thinking (Ti), and his stack goes Fe-Si-Ne-Ti, which means that his primary way of relating to the world and approaching situations is based on people and feelings, but rather than prioritizing an internally-guided sense of values, morals, ethics, etc. like Abe and Addie do, Seb instead focuses on interpersonal relationships, group harmony and social cohesion, and potential threats to those things

Which is additionally unhelpful for Abe because, sadly, it’s not uncommon for ESFJs to have trouble understanding their own feelings, much less being able to articulate them in a way that others understand, because they’re guided by a Feeling function, but being Extroverted means that its focus is on the world outside themselves and that it’s harder for them to sort out their own feelings on their own.

Add in how some of them (like Seb) end up repressing the shit out of their, “negative” emotions in the name of, “not dragging other people down” or, “not ruining everything for everyone else”…

…and how Seb specifically puts a lot of effort into trying to put his fingers in his ears and ignore all his “negative” feelings — especially the “selfish” ones (as in, “the ones that come from sources other than compassion and/or empathy for other people and their pain”) — until they go away, refusing to try and understand them in a way he could communicate to people more easily, for several reasons (e.g., “if you don’t give them enough attention to understand them, then the feelings won’t be real and they can’t ruin everything for everybody else”)

……and yeah. That’s a recipe for exhausting Abe’s ability to help when his primary approach to most situations is to identify the problem and then try to fix it, or at least come up with something that might make the situation better, if he can’t fix everything right now

Also, y’know. Addie has had her fair share of rough spots in her life — and another thing she and Seb have in common is that both of them have dated some serious douchebags before, though Addie has thankfully never wound up in an emergency room because of one of her douchebag ex-boyfriends — but she hasn’t been living with clinical depression that has gone undiagnosed and thus untreated until about chapter three

[confessions-of-a-former-fat-guy]

Confession 17: Tales of a hopeless jokester.

I've written a lot about how getting healthier and more fit has increased my confidence. I've mentioned the benefits of having more confidence at a high level. How it's helped me in my personal life. How it's helped in my professional life. It's made an incredible difference in my life. It wasn't until recently I realized the biggest impact confidence has had on my life.

I know this has been mostly a fitness, health, and sometimes motivational blog, but I'm going to deviate from the norm and gush about my relationship for a bit. Somehow I'll wind this thing back around to some fitness and good clean eating. Or I won't. Deal with it.

If you were to look back at my life over the past 12 or 13 years (I wouldn't suggest it, I'm incredibly boring) you wouldn't see much dating. Or any really. As previously documented, I wasn't exactly in any shape to be dating. Not physically. Not mentally. Not emotionally. Not financially. So, I pretty much took myself out of the “game”(eye roll). At least that's what I told myself to make myself feel like I wasn't the most unappealing human on the face of the Earth. For years I felt sorry for myself. I watched my friends meet people and get married. I was constantly asking myself why not me? Well, the answer was simple. I was an extremely overweight, underachieving, mopey, miserable sack of flesh. I was no good for anyone, including myself. Shit. Especially myself.

It wasn't until I did something about the things I hated about myself that I felt like I could even entertain the idea of dating. How do you dive into that pool after standing outside the fence watching for more than a decade, though? How do you fight the urge to let old thoughts in? How the hell do you even talk to a girl? I didn't have answers to any of the hundred questions that swirled in my head. So, after months of refusing the suggestions of my friends, I tried the online thing. I made a profile with what wasn't nearly as witty of a title as I thought it was at the time. I uploaded pictures taken at flattering angles. And I answered the 9000 word questionnaire created to find me my perfect mate based on a completely made up compatibility algorithm. WEEEEE!!!!

All I'm going to say about the online thing is that it wasn't for me. I will never deny my old fashioned nature. It just feels unnatural to start a relationship with someone you never would have met without technology or the fact that you both like dogs and nice weather. (DISCLAIMER: EVERYONE LIKES DOGS AND NICE WEATHER. THIS IS NOT THE BASIS FOR A LASTING RELATIONSHIP)

So I jumped that ship and focused on other things. I started CrossFit. I buckled down at work. I wasn't avoiding dating or trying to date. It just seemed like there were other things I should be spending my energy on for the time being. It's also entirely possible I wasn't nearly as ready for dating as I thought I was. There was (is) still a lot of working on me that needed to take place first. So that's what I did. I busted my ass at work, then I busted my ass at the gym. I did this for months. Incredibly, things started falling into place little by little. Promotions and PRs were becoming the norm. I started gaining more and more of the confidence stuff I keep talking about. Things were as good as they could be...or so I thought.

The funny thing about “as good as it gets” is that it can always get better. We may not think so at the time, but life has an interesting way of surprising us when we least expect it. My moment came on a hot day in July on a random Tuesday afternoon at the gym. There wasn't anything extraordinary about that day. I went to work, then headed to CrossFit just like any other day. The second I walked into the box from the entrance everything changed. I've told this story to people before. About how I heard her before I saw her, which is true. That laugh that's grown to be one of the things that gives me life rang through the gym. Once I heard it I followed it to the source. There standing in the corner was this tiny thing that couldn't be much over five feet tall (exactly five feet tall it turns out). She had the biggest, most beautiful smile I've ever seen. She was one of those girls that no matter what room you walk into, she's where your eyes are going to go first...and if you're like me, that's where they'll stop. She was friendly, energetic, beautiful.

I tried real hard to act like I barely noticed her. I can't show my hand this early in the game, right? (I have no idea what I'm talking about). I did my best to warm up like it was just another day at the gym. Eventually, though, I found myself introducing myself. Now, I have to hit pause here. She will tell you I told her I'm “the jokester of the class”. I have no recollection of this and I can guarantee my best friend would have destroyed me for using the word “jokester”, which has never come out of my mouth in my entire life, but I digress. She was likely in much more of a sound mental state at the time, so I'll give her this one. Anyway, that was about it for that day. I can write words all day, but when it comes to face to face conversation with the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life the words don't come quite as easy.

I didn't see her again for quite a while. It wasn't for lack of trying, though. This next part may SEEM a little creepy, but let's just write it off as a boy just trying really hard to put himself in front of a girl he couldn't get out of his head. I found myself altering my work schedule to try to go to the same classes I thought she'd be at. No luck, though. So I employed the services of a friend's wife who said she was sometimes in her class to maybe drop my name or get insider info. (This is the part I like to think of as romantic instead of creepy). Much to my chagrin, I kept striking out. Then one day I got a notification on my phone that someone started following me on Instagram, so I checked it out.

IT. WAS. HER!

You know those moments in movies where they say they had to pinch themselves to see if they were dreaming? Well, that's still bull. Nobody has ever really done that. BUT, if they did, this would have been one of those moments for me. I totally kept my cool, though. I definitely didn't run through the house dancing like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. Nope. I mean, I'm 32.

I waited a while before I followed her back because, you know, guy code or whatever bullshit dudes try to convince themselves is a thing so they feel cool. Before long, though, we were messaging each other, joking around. I AM the jokester after all. Then, as luck would have it, we found ourselves in the same CrossFit class a couple weeks later. I ignore my instincts to hide inside myself or my inherent male instinct to play it cool. Anyone who knows me knows I don't play it cool. Instead, I did the thing that would normally be scariest. I talked to her. That's right, boys and girls. I talked to a beautiful girl. And thank God I did because shortly after I got home I had a new message waiting for me on Instagram. “I don't want to seem forward, but would you want to exchange numbers?”

Uhh. Yeah. I do. I really fucking want to do that thing you just asked me.

My first text to her was asking her to dinner. See, kiddos. Confidence. 28 year old me never would have asked. 29 year old me never would have talked to her. 30 year old me never would have considered a girl like that could ever even be the slightest bit interested in me. 31 year old me would have thrown up and never gone back to CrossFit. 32 year old me isn't any of those old mes, though. 32 year old me knows himself. 32 year old me knows what he wants. 32 year old me knows he deserves more than he ever considered. 32 year old me knows when he's used the third person way too many times. That all came with confidence.

That girl and I went on that date. And then another and another and another. That girl and I spent days together. That girl and I fell in love. That girl and I are making plans for OUR future.

This is all still very new to me. For most of my life I never thought I could be any good for anyone. Now I know I had to endure the hard years, put in A LOT of work, and become the man I am today to be ready for the RIGHT girl when she came around. And I was ready. And I am the man I need to be for her. I am the man I need to be to make sure she always has everything she needs to be happy. I am the man I need to be for ME to be happy. And I'm SO ready for everything that will come.

None of this would have happened if I hadn't made healthy changes to my life. Changes that are still taking place every single day. The idea is to always get better. Get better for you. Get better for someone you love. Get better for your future. Get better for your today. Just KEEP getting better. Become that person you don't think you can be. Get the girl or boy you never thought you could.

Trust me. Any amount of effort it takes is SO SO worth it. If you question that, look at the smile I can't peel off my face. That should be proof enough.

[acethena-discourse]

@grungedyke Tumblr own’t let me reblogged, and i’m not sure if its being dumb or you blocked

Thanks for showing up dumbass. Your presence and your type of thinking in that server is like a tumor, do you realize that? You’re a spineless liar if you think a member saying they were leaving is “strongarming” someone, and those mods are truly either desperate or foolish to keep you in there. No wonder people are uncomfortable with the environment in there – you and other active users have a habit of distorting any disagreement into violent persecution while pretending everything on your side is completely “valid” and brave.

I’m allowed to stay because i don’t break rules. Even now, this isn’t breaking rules. I rarely interact with minors in the server unless they directly talk to me first. But please go off about how I’m terrible for thinking that demanding a mod force someone to stop unhealthy coping, and cropping that out is bad.

My claim that rules are more heavily enforced is directly addressing the fact that i have gotten in trouble for things i legit forget. Ie. THe server does not allow the word b*tch. So often i’ll type “bitching about’ and get a warning from dyno. Thats p fucking strict. I’ve also phrased things v poorly, and been told to either delete the message or clarification, I often opt to EDIT THE INFORMATION because I know exclus will screenshot the bad one, and not the new one. But okay.

Recently a rule has been implimented for triggers, telling us that server anouncemnts will be modifed with new triggers/squick as they appear. Now if you have issues with these instances of rules, please go take that up with the mods.

Now, as for your screenshot, yes, I did tell them to archive it, and how I’ve both handled people baying for blood over the art of 2 ocs in a server in the past. I locked the channel, put an NSFW ban in place, and then *archived them* something I’m surprised you are more grateful for. Considering not only would archiving the channel would keep the good advice (ie yes use lube, do not use soap like in fanfic etc.) along with the bad that yall screenshotted before.

You may pretend to be nice, but that typical tendersoft nerd innocent-white-person shit does not stop you from being predatory.

There is no pretending. I genuinely believe it or not, believe in being nice to just about everyone I come across. That includes you, or a stranger on the bus or even someone walking by my house in a fucking ski mask. Being polite, and kind is just something I believe in. Until you give me beyond a reasonable doubt, I don’t even owe you basic compassion, then you’re gonna get it. Yes, that includes for big mistakes like not having age roles when you were finding your feet in discord moderation. That includes, people like you, who are trying to accuse me of “preserving gross content” when the reality is archiving a chat is a neutral suggestion because it favors no one. But i see, clearly i should go around kicking random babies and yelling don’t touch me. Because clearly if i’m not openly 100% mean to everyone, i must have some ulterior motive for my kindness right?

Can you name a single change to the rules aside from this recent “keep all the messages and let the adults keep reading them” shite?

See the above. In the past when users got banned all their messages would be deleted. They started keeping this for context. Then there's last year where someone decided to doxx a bunch of discords and said “Btw I did this bc uwuw you don’t edit screenshots” it took two weeks to give or take for mods to come to a verdict on what to do. So they made the rule that screenshots may not have their og username in them. Based on this, alone, i suspect the nsfw channels and sex ed might not be reopened for a similar period of time until the mods make new rules and clarify old ones.

It’s irrelevant and maybe even suspicious for you to bring up the wrongdoings of people who are completely unrelated to this situation. You’re already deflecting onto other people, offering no evidence of the “context,” and bitching on behalf of the mods. If you were in any way committed to safety or improving the situation, you wouldn’t be bringing up random people and downplaying things you obviously witnessed.

“offering no evidence of the context” for someone in the server you would know a handful of things about me 1) mobile tumblr is hell and i attach information from pc once I can. 2) I was out of town for someone so eager to screenshot me funny how you were so eager to forget that information.

So heres screenshot 1

Funfact i did not, and still don’t know what agere is. Now i will say my stance on cgl is that its not for me. I don’t like it, i don’t want to hear about it. But as long as both participates are 18, i also don’t need to know about it. Now if a minor was in chat, said “i participate in cgl with my partner” i would full stop be like what the fuck. And would leave if the mods decided to condone it, but that isn’t what happened. But you can see the mods do point out that if an unhealthy relationship or it was discussed at all outside of nsfw- channels they would be warned, banned, or reported.

Then there is the obvious mention that age regression isn’t a consenting adult, yeah. Ya dang right it not motherfucker. But let's talk about the word AGERE in relation to this. I’ve never once heard that there is a special word for nonsexual coping mechanism. So like damn, I’ll just add that into my vocabulary.

But I didn’t know that word exists, me saying “non sexual cgl” or “coping cgl” is literally me acknowledging that I find that eh but ultimately okay between consenting adults who are not aged regressing vs sexual cgl.

screen shot 2

In this a user tries to suggest the mods have a moral obligation to inform someone its “unhealthy” when mods point out that no they do not, but nor do they allow users to go off telling everyone “Oh cgl is a great coping mechinism you should do it to.”

Which is important. Because again, I hate cgl, but I also am of the mind that, i can’t stop it. I outright can’t, so no i’m not gonna get involved in someones personal road to recovery and be like “you’re disgusting”. I can however tell them to keep it away from me, and not to discuss it in channels minors can see. (a policy that has been in place for a while now.)

screenshot 3

More of the mods not condoning it, and stating p clearly that policies have changed since 2017/early 2018. I’ve been in the server since july 2018ish. And things have been nearly constantly evolving.

screenshot 4

Mods again emphasizing that you can find the policy changes since the messages have changed. Because that is important. They confined this to other channels. Why they didn’t delete the information in sexed, i can’t actually say one way or another. They might have kept it because they believe in mistakes of that caliber being left alone. But you also have no evidence for why they kept the og messages.

But the reason, i consider what herpcourse did lying by omission, is herpcourse led you to believe the above screenshots were out in the open. The ones i just posted happened in some random channel. They did not, they happened in an age locked channel. That only adults are in. And mods are under no obligation to 1) be your personal therapist, 2) nor are they obligated to go “uwu reminder cgl in all situations no matter what is disgusting you dirties” because doing so is preformative. One of the mods is squicked by it just like me. But please go off about how admitting past mistakes happened, refusing to performatively disown something, and refusing to tell anyone who mentions it in the age locked channels is actually gross and unhealthy when you know nothing about them is bad.

I did not, in fact, witness anything in sexed, because I don’t go there. I only witnessed the stuff that followed herpcourse callout, which means the above messages. I have sexed muted.

I also didn’t bring up random people I brought up a known predator who is on youtube, actually sends salacious photos to minors, and is p safe to say fucking gross, my point was there are actual sharks in the water, please stop focusing on the tuna. Because you can surprise, call out both behaviors. But i’ve yet to see an exclus call out someone like pkrussel, instead choosing to focus on people who might have a seemingly large following in one community. Me pointing out sharks in the beach and asking you to stop focusing on tuna, is not telling you to ignore the tuna.

I’m only as committed to this situation as anyone can be, which isn’t v much considering I’ve yet to witness someone grooming a minor in gen chat. Or witnessed them grooming minors at all. The only skin i have in this game is the following: Minors still being allowed access to decent sex-ed resources and being allowed to ask questions. And 2) my own personal discomfort with all cgl. My hope is that rules do become more clear, maybe only discussion of sex ed by users to be direct questions only. Meaning a minor can come in ask a direct question and receive a direct answer. Which while not ideal sex ed, is sitll better than what i got, what you probably got, and what they’re likely getting (if getting any at all)

The mods are not level-headed and not passive when they actually care and think they have control. They’re cowardly, that’s the difference. They literally got more mad over someone making fun of one of their icons and a minor saying genuine trauma with the q slur is possible.

I don’t expect them to be 100% level headed. I’d honestly be kinda upset if they didn’t display emotions when shit like this happens. But please give me a source on the icon thing (which btw, no you shouldn’t make fun of people, period) and for the minor saying ‘queer can have trauma’ bc I do think it can. But if you join fya, you can’t request it be tagged as qlur. Because there is a lot o discussion not only of queer as a personal identity but also queer as a history. Which means groups like queer nation, or shows today like queer eye. And just like I hope if I’m discussing the motorcycle gang made up of lesbians called dykes on bikes and their history, you’d not want me to censor, or remove their history and accomplishments by calling them “d-slur on bikes uwu” you don’t expect me to censor the discussion above. But to my knowledge, the denial is not “queer isn’t used as a slur” its “queer as an identity deserves respect, and to insist its evil is to take the word our oppressors used and give it back to them.”

Also what’s with you specifically and always bringing up “afab” as a gotcha descriptor in arguments? What are you trying to say?

Bc lets be real, when you talk about ddlg, you’re talking about an afab person dressing up as a child and calling her partner daddy while he fucks her most times. Didn’t know to point out the difference between that and agere was in fact a “gotcha” based purely on the agab of the person. But okay.

You need to leave and delete your five blogs from anywhere you can speak to minors like yesterday.

Okay, what are the five blogs? Bc I’m only aware of...literally none that interact with minors in conscious effort.

I highly doubt there’s any reason for them to have changed, considering the execrable atmosphere in that server, so here’s a screenshot of one mod (toytulini) going Karen mode along with a bunch of other 20+ year olds while the minor they were targeting tried to defuse the situation as mentioned above.

What is the context? Bc i legit don't’ see any. I see them arguing, btu about what, I don’t know, if i  was involved myself, I do not remember. So again, not much of a smoking gun. It looks like they were trying to get someone to actually *understand* what was being said, but that wasn’t appearing to happen. But again, missing context such as what the argument was about, why that started, so on so forth. also if the person was told not to argue there, yeah, they should have moved it. as per server rules, there are channels to argue in, that wasn’t one. So no matter the context, if they were breaking rules, and did not move when requested, yes, they should be given a ban based on whatever the conversation topic was.

Now, i’ve provided evidence. I’m gonna go to bed, please feel free to dm me here if you need me to clarify anything or want to throw out accusations about how being kind must be predatory af since i’m barely an adult and adults lose compassion after becoming 18.