#he just has has a real shit personality with even shittier views

[soukokuwu]

DAZAI OSAMU

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐈 𝐌𝐄𝐓 𝐀 𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐍

》 angst, unfortunately (dazai x reader)

》 trigger warnings! suicide themes, death

》 word count: 2.3k

》 notes: you saw him for the exact opposite of what he was. he did you a favour, but everything has a price. and now he has come to collect.

》 a story where Dazai is an angel

The ring of the shopkeeper’s bell. The smooth wood of the door. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee. The taste of baked ham. The sun illuminating the alley right outside the cafe.

There he appeared again. After ten years.

He looked just as you remembered. He didn’t age. Bandage over his right eye. Black hair a mess, covering one half of his face. Deep brown eyes as alluring as ever, piercing into your very soul. Black tailored suit, black tie, white dress shirt, same as the last time.

Although, there was one thing different about him.

Black feathered wings that used to be almost miniscule compared to his person— no, could you even call him that? Body. The wings that used to be diminutive compared to his body were now thicker and wider, standing even taller than his frame.

You were painfully aware that only you could see his beauty. Everyone else walked past him without regard. You strolled over to the figure, aware that he saw himself far from what you made him out to be in your head. That wouldn’t deter you from believing that of him though.

Your guardian angel.

»»-------------¤-------------««

Scribbling.

Sound of pen against paper had been all you could hear.

The pen had been discarded and you felt a pat on your head. You had looked up into his eyes. Empty. Vacant. Hopeless.

He had grabbed your hand and led the way. Something had been weird about the route he took that day. That had not been the usual way the two of you took to your school.

A left instead of a right. A bookshop instead of a cafe. The hustle and bustle of people instead of the usual seclusion. Yet you never questioned him. He had been the adult after all. Maybe there was a special event today that you had forgotten about. Yes, that could be why he hadn’t taken you straight to school.

The two of you had finally reached the train station. It had only been on rare occasions that you would step foot there, given that your family hardly ever went out. Even at twelve years old you could tell that your parents were struggling financially. In spite of that, though, you were all happy together. As long as you had each other, your mom would always say.

It had been a windy day. The sky turned a darker shade of grey. It had not been too crowded for a weekday morning in the subway station, so you could see the sky clearly even though you had been a short little child back then.

An announcement played, saying the train would be delayed and it would take a while longer. You looked around, trying to find the display screen that estimated the next train’s arrival.

However, something moved past you and caught your eye. A single black feather fell in front of your face and you eyed it until it touched the ground. You gripped your father’s hand tighter out of fear, but it barely registered in your father’s head. He was much too preoccupied with his own thoughts. Scared as you had been, curiosity got the better of you and you looked around for the source. It could not have been a crow, so where could the feather have come from?

Just as you were looking, you spotted him there, near the front of the platform, facing your direction. A general disinterested look, blank chocolate eyes looking straight ahead at absolutely nothing, dark brown hair and small black wings floating in the breeze. Even all those years ago, he looked breathtaking to you. Something that was supposed to instill fear intrigued you instead. He spoke of something in a soft murmur, in a voice low enough you couldn’t make out what it was.

A pair of watchful eyes followed him as he walked toward you, looking around at everyone on the platform. As the creature passed by you, he stopped in his tracks. His body stiffened and he slowly turned to look at you, who had been blinking up at him skeptically.

“This human is creeping me out,” he had murmured to himself, gulping and then bending his knees to get leveled with you. His eyes had then seemed alive for that split second, filled with intrigue. “It’s as if she can see me.”

“But I can,” you said, almost causing him to stumble over.

The creature blinked in succession as he tried to register what you had just said.

“You can... see me?”

You nodded, attention completely focused on the peculiar being in front of you. He had ominous black wings, but you didn’t feel scared of him at all. You then proceeded to question him about why it was that nobody else could see him. But everything he had shared with you about the different dimensions and how it worked were too complicated for you to remember. Being the inquisitive child you were, you kept interacting with the being. Banter and jokes were all you remembered sharing with him that day.

“You’re funny,” you had told him, laughing at the stupid joke he shared.

The creature had laughed too, before his expression shifted slowly into that of hesitance. You had asked what was wrong, but he shook his head, claiming it had been nothing. He was seemingly looking at something past you, but he hogged your attention by asking if you wanted to see a magic trick. Excited, you had given him all your focus, and by the time you clapped for him and noticed the absence of your father’s hand, you realised you were someplace else.

It was a peaceful place. The both of you were situated in a meadow, surrounded by a sea of colourful flowers. The skies there were a dark grey too. The only sound you could hear was that of the wind blowing. You were alone there with him, your father nowhere in sight. Despite having been teleported to a foreign dimension with someone you barely knew, all you had been thinking of was how much you wanted to explore this place.

“I can’t see the station anymore,” you had casually remarked.

“Sometimes it’s better to see what isn’t there instead of what is,” the creature had replied, an ache in his tone you didn’t miss.

Before you could ask him what he meant, warm droplets of rain started falling onto your face. The creature used his wings to shelter you from the rain, letting himself get drenched. His wings were too small to cover the both of you at the time. Feeling bad, you had asked if he could take you to his home so that you both would get shelter. The flash of melancholy that took over his face you could not have missed.

“Not now, you have to get back home,” he murmured gently, patting you on the head. You nodded in resigned compliance, catching a glimpse of the words imprinted on his wings.

Osamu Dazai.

The world around you began to shimmer and flow together, the colours of the flowers mixing together in circles. It was all making you sick, and so you chose to close your eyes. Everything was spinning. But as you felt a few raindrops fall onto your face, it stopped.

When you opened your eyes next, you found your mother sat next to you on your bed, crying over your body, hugging you when she realised you had come to.

The creature was nowhere in sight.

And neither was your father.

»»-------------¤-------------««

No one told you what really happened that day until a few years ago, when your mother was on her deathbed. Initially, she had just claimed that your father had to move to another city and wouldn’t come back. You were twelve but you weren’t that stupid. You didn’t believe her, but you thought better than to press her about it.

However as she was dying, she told you the real story of how your father disappeared. She recounted to you his suicide note, word for word. He had had enough of his life. Apparently the happiness you saw in your family as a kid was all a facade. Your father was far from a joyful man. He was beyond depressed, with a shit job and a shittier financial situation. His wife had lost interest in him as a man and his only solace had been you. Which was why he wanted to bring you with him. To die with him.

His plan that day was to jump in front of a moving train with you. But that creature had saved you at the last minute. According to witness accounts, they saw you let go of your father’s hand just as he was about to jump off the platform before you fainted on the spot. There was a small boy who swore he saw a man with brown hair and black wings who pried you away from your father, but of course the authorities didn’t take him seriously.

»»-------------¤-------------««

The city looked so much better from way up high. It had been a while since you were here. The wind blowing reminded you of that day when you were teleported to another dimension. You shifted your gaze from the scenery to the figure beside you. He had followed you here all the way from the cafe. He looked even more mesmerising now with a soft smile plastered on his face.

“Dazai?” You called out hesitantly.

The being nodded in acknowledgement. However, you found you couldn’t quite find the right words to say now that he was here, in the flesh.

“Ask me.”

His statement stunned you. It was a gentle kind of prodding, indicating he understood the situation. You were almost a hundred percent sure by now of his answer, and as much as you would like to confirm it, you decided against it.

“You’re my guardian angel, Dazai.”

It was not what he really was, but it was true all the same. He had saved you as a child even though he had absolutely no reason to. Osamu Dazai saved you even though he had been, and was still, the embodiment of death.

“I’m the angel of death,” he uttered, completely monotone. Dazai looked puzzled now, his lips pressed into a firm line. He shifted his gaze and looked out at the view of the city from his spot on the skyscraper. The streets surrounding this building were somewhat secluded, save for two or three pedestrians walking below. You caught a look of understanding that seemed to wash over him, as though a sudden realisation of your intentions, and why he even appeared before you in the first place.

You thought back to all those years ago, when you tried to convince people you weren’t crazy. In hindsight, telling people about a heavenly creature that saved you from death’s grip wasn’t the brightest idea. It had resulted in years of bullying, several counts of physical abuse and a consequent depression that you wished would go away.

Where you would normally be shut in at home, today you were out and about. You had taken work leave. All your colleagues were stunned into silence yesterday when you offered everyone cupcakes. They should; you usually didn’t even respond much even when spoken to. But the day before, everyone found you pleasant to be around, and you could see the looks of relief on all of their faces. They all spoke of not being able to wait to see you the next day.

Everyone who thought they knew you took it as a sign of you getting better. But no. To you it was a sign of clarity. You felt more upbeat today than any other day. It was because you knew exactly what waited for you at the end of the day: oblivion.

Before you knew it, you were standing at the edge of the building. Your legs trembled slightly when you realised just how high up you were. The fear was taken over by confusion when you felt warmth envelop your right hand.

Dazai’s fingers were intertwined with yours and he offered you the most comforting smile you’d seen in a long while. You were completely perplexed by the words he uttered next.

“I’ve always wanted to commit a double suicide with a beautiful lady when I was human.”

You had expected that he was the angel of death, but you never thought he had been human before. How it worked you would never find out, but there was something you wanted to know.

“Aren’t angels like you immortal?”

“My death was set in stone the moment I saved you from myself.”

Dazai did not need to explicitly tell you, but you deciphered it anyway. It was a simple message: your death would spell his. That’s all there was to it. A curse of some sort, because he had failed his duties all those years back. He forcefully saved a soul bound to death by his own hands. This was his punishment. But he did not look the least bit unhappy.

If anything, he radiated pure bliss. It was a bittersweet moment. The person you had dreamt of countless times in your life, the one you had fantasised finding again and again— he finally appeared but it was on an ominous condition. It only meant one thing: you would not change your mind today.

Your legs stopped trembling. Your heart started pounding faster in your chest. The warmth of the noon sun was getting uncomfortable. Yet you found the warmth of his hand relaxing.

Without warning, you felt your hand being yanked toward him, your body covered in his warm embrace. This time, his wings were big enough to shield both you and him from the outside world. You could see nothing but his face. You were pressed against his chest, foreheads touching and eyes glued to each other’s. You felt any fear you had dissipate into the void.

“Will you meet me in another life?”

You couldn’t help but ask. It was something you were wishing for, no matter how impossible it may seem: to get to know Osamu Dazai as a person. You hoped to find him in that other life, if it was possible at all. You wanted to get to know him, to understand his soul, preferably as equals.

Dazai’s unbandaged eye was clouded with a certain bewilderment before it reverted back to a gentle kindness, one you had seen many years before.

“I promise.”

Deep down you knew it was bullshit. You could sense his uncertainty. But as you both plunged to your death, the words were the only comfort you found, aside from the tenderness of his hug.

You opened your eyes to look into his once more, and then everything went black.

A scream.

And then nothing.

tags: @yokelish

[gcldveined]

I got this reply in response to a post I made about loving Gwen, and I’m putting my own novel of a response in the tags. Here we go.

Actually, nothing you said about her is fair, and I’ll go into why. While Gwen is a character I hold very dearly, I need to preface this with the fact that I in no way see her as perfect (in fact, I’ll go deeply into why she isn’t), or better than any of the team. As anyone who knows me and my love of Torchwood can tell you, I’m arguably in love with every single member of the team evenly, and with Rhys as well. So I’ll try to hit all the points you brought up here.

The writing in the first 2 series —  Honestly, I’ll start with yes, the writing can be spotty and rough in points. It happens when you have so many different writers with differing views of what the relationships and characters are. For a non-Gwen example, take s1e12 Captain Jack Harkness - it was written by a woman who was fairly anti-Janto (a canon ship) and just wanted to see two soldiers kiss, by her own admission. So it took a very odd turn out of character for Jack to say “there’s no one” when asked if he had someone romantically involved with him. Owen’s development went back and forth from asshole to progress to asshole to progress again. Tosh got next to no attention outside of wanting love. They were all written in a bit of a shoddy manner in s1, when a show with many, many writers was just getting on its feet. Something of a sidebar, but important to note that the uneven writing does not apply solely to Gwen. Gwen being written as condescending and holier than thou - nope. I’m sorry, but no, that’s not what it was at all. Gwen was written as a point of humanity for Torchwood, which was desperately needed, as is evidenced as early as s1e2 Day One. Gwen was not a seasoned veteran of Torchwood, she was a woman who joined the police force because she wanted to help people. On top of dealing with the overwhelming nature of joining Torchwood itself, she first spoke up about morality, and humanity, (as was evidenced and clearly intended by the writers as they dubbed her The Heart of Torchwood) when she heard Carys sobbing in a cell because the poor girl was fighting with some murderous sex alien for control of her own body. Gwen was also written to be a vessel for audience projection, whether anyone likes it or not. And I believe it was necessary; if any of us were to react in any way but concern for someone in Carys’ situation, I’d question if there was something deeply wrong with us.

It was clear that nobody on the team had explained to her what was being done (Jack’s line about the computers running a bioscan on her makes that clear). It is only when he gets aggressive and defensive about it -

“Now, is that enough? Do you want more? Cos it gets kinda boring.”

- that she continues on about it.

“You've been hidden down here too long. Spending so much time with the alien stuff, you've lost what it means to be human.”

This line isn’t about being holier than thou, and it’s not about being condescending. It’s about the fact that she got caught up in the moment with them, laughing and relaxing and eating Chinese takeaway while a girl fought for control of her body and felt as though she was losing her mind in a dingy cell underground. It was a moment of shock at herself and a hope to find that same response in the others. And when they didn’t respond in kind, a realization about what they have done and how they have compartmentalized things in order to do the job before them. She doesn’t go on to build the background on Carys without prompting. She doesn’t go off on a sermon about how horrible they all are. Jack says:

“So remind us. Tell me what it means to be human in the twenty first century.”

and she does. She goes to pull up Carys’ life, as we all know, and in the end — Gwen was right. She was right in needing to keep Carys grounded, in a fight for control, though by the time they come to that conclusion it is too late and she has escaped. Later, she continues to argue with Jack about it, and they have a very sort of tense feeling between them through the rest of the episode. But then we get to the end, and Jack tells her —

“Do one thing for me. Don't let the job consume you. You have a life. Perspective. We need that.”

That’s a bit long winded for that one episode, but this is the foundation of what Gwen does for the team and who she is. Any one of us would be shocked entering Torchwood, finding what they do and how they handle it. Jack knew from the beginning what Gwen possessed — compassion and perspective — and wanted to use that. We see Gwen fall into the more callous and detached side of Torchwood to an extent over the course of the series, but we also see other characters come around to a more caring side.

It’s balance, it’s not condescension. Jack — her boss — told her to keep up with what she had been doing. I don’t know about you, but if I came up with an opinion — much less a controversial one — in my workplace, and my boss told me it was good and to hang on to it, I wouldn’t just drop it. I’d keep at it, like she was instructed to.

What the writers wanted vs. what they portrayed onscreen — We’re going a bit out of order here, but I think this one fits in well here. The writers wanted compassion, an emotional and steadying hand for Torchwood’s detachment, and an audience surrogate. And that is exactly what they gave us. Every show has an audience surrogate; Gwen was simply Torchwood’s. Jack created Torchwood Three to be different than Torchwood One, and especially if you listen to the audios, Torchwood One was extremely callous and detached. Gwen’s POV was essential to the Torchwood Jack wanted, to the Torchwood Jack never stopped working towards. The writers didn’t always handle everything well, but they knew what they wanted with Gwen, and they gave it to us.

Gwen’s infidelity with Owen and Jack — oh boy. This is a topic, because I know Gwen gets a ton of hate for it. Let’s preface this with: she was wrong. Gwen Cooper should never have cheated on Rhys, emotionally or physically. However, let’s explore this topic and how hating just Gwen for it and not Owen or Jack as well is misogynistic and wrong, full stop.

Here we go.

We’ll start with Owen. We’ve established I do not condone it, but I feel I understand her thinking in that, and I think it’s an important to delve into it a bit.

Gwen started Torchwood, as discussed, shocked by the detachment from humanity. She would later fall into that to an extent, as well, and I believe part of her affair with Owen was the beginning. She was stressed, overwhelmed, and scared in a job that demanded a lot from her in every way - physical, mental, moral, and emotional. She couldn’t speak to Rhys about it, since it was confidential. She needed someone to confide in about the stress of the job (as seen at the end of s1e6 Countrycide), and as seen throughout the series in Gwen’s mannerisms, playfulness, and affection, she’s very tactile, hence the physical aspect. But most importantly, it wasn’t emotional. Gwen was not looking for another love — even in her most brainless moments (which they all have), she couldn’t have believed that Owen wanted an emotional affair. Even from Day One, he says:

“I torture people in happy relationships.”

In Countrycide, he gives her this speech while they are inches from making out, about the incredible sex they would have together:

“Doesn't happen with him, does it? You're too familiar. Whereas you and me, we're not cozy at all. We'd be amazing. And that scares the shit out of you.”

Owen cared about sex, and being Owen and the carer he is (though he pretends not to be), allowed her to confide in him about the transition and stress of the job:

GWEN: “And I can't share [the things she sees in Torchwood] with anyone.” OWEN: “You can now.”

That was what Gwen was looking for. A confidante. The cheating was shitty, and the later action of telling Rhys and retconning him was shittier (imho, the writers REALLY fucked that one up, especially by never bringing it up again), but Gwen was not the only person doing shitty things. Owen knew she had a boyfriend. Even referenced him repeatedly in his efforts to seduce her. Canonically “tortures people in happy relationships”. The point of this particular ramble being this:

IF YOU HATE GWEN COOPER FOR CHEATING AND DO NOT HATE OWEN HARPER FOR BEING THE OTHER HALF OF IT, IT IS MISOGYNY. FULL STOP.

Full stop. No excuses. Owen did exactly as badly as Gwen did. They both fucked up. I adore Owen Harper with my whole soul, but you cannot excuse for him what you hate Gwen for. They did it together, knowingly. You cannot cherry pick who you bash for their grey morality.

And on to Jack.

My personal headcanons aside**, we have the same situation. Gwen was not the only one flirting. Gwen was not the only one with feelings. Take s2e1 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, for example. That scene in the cells, when he finds out she’s engaged to Rhys? That was him trying to seduce her (romantically more than physically). That was his poorly timed and awful attempt at making something out of it (Gwen also reciprocated in this scene. I don’t deny that.) To quote The Four Aces: “love is a many-splendored thing.” It’s complicated and rough, and Gwen had genuine feelings for Jack at the same time as she did Rhys. It’s not good. It’s bad. It’s immoral. It’s not ideal. Jack Harkness also had real, genuine, and complicated feelings for Gwen, too.

**I need to make a side note that I am not a Gwack shipper. My personal headcanons have Gwen’s initial crush on him fading by s1e4 Cyberwoman. I don’t enjoy the forced Gwack storyline, and it was dragged on endlessly, and I really kind of hated it. But we’re going by show canon. So the Gwack flirtation is a thing.**

So the point of this one is the same as the one before:

IF YOU HATE GWEN COOPER FOR FLIRTING AND DO NOT HATE JACK HARKNESS FOR BEING THE OTHER HALF OF IT, IT IS MISOGYNY. FULL STOP.

Full stop. No excuses. Jack was a willing, informed, and understanding participant in their flirtationship, despite her current and longstanding relationship with Rhys.

I’ll make one more point and then end this — it’s beautifully put in this post by @blipintiime​​, aka 1/3 of my heart, but here is this: every single member of Torchwood is morally damnable. Ianto Jones hid a murderous Cyberwoman in Torchwood Three, using the team and Jack to get her there. Owen Harper began the series by essentially drugging a couple for sex. Suzie Costello - well. Suzie. Toshiko Sato invaded each team member’s personal space, their thoughts, their most private recesses of their mind, for days, and then brought her alien girlfriend into Torchwood. Jack Harkness lied repeatedly and continuously to his team, murdered Ianto and Tosh’s girlfriends, killed when he didn’t need to, used an arguably sentient alien as bait, and a whole plethora of other things we won’t get into.

Torchwood is flawed, and that’s the point of the show. Each member is flawed in their own way, and has something brilliant to contribute. Hating Gwen for being the same is arguably misogynistic and unfounded. She is far from perfect. But she is not the fandom’s or anyone’s scapegoat.

Thanks for reading, stop blaming Gwen for things you pardon others for, goodbye.

[mzyraj]

Dementia

I don't get to visit my extended family much because of how much travelling that would require and how bad my body is, but my dad's been visiting his parents since his dad was put in a care home recently. Although my grandad certainly wasn't right for a while and still hasn't been assessed for a diagnosis, it's apparently really obvious he has some kind of dementia and he's gone downhill a lot over just a year.

So I've been thinking a lot about dementia and it just seems like potentially the cruellest thing. Partially because it robs a person of themself, or at least the way they view themself, so many cases I've heard of loved ones saying "if they could see themselves now they would be devastated". But, even more so than that, is it's not even fair the way it hits people.

So many people with dementia get very confused about where and when they are, thinking it's decades ago when they were much younger, when their parents were alive. But sometimes that translates to the people who had the shittier lives suffering a lot more in their dementia than those who lived happier lives, because they believe they're back when and where they were abused, while their happier peers might be confused but largely contented.

I mean, we like happy endings to stories. Somebody went through bad shit but survived and is now living a much happier life! But the horror at the idea that that awful time will become real again in their minds... Like, just imagine those poor kids who have been packed into cells in the US recently - even if they come out of it okay in the medium term, in 70 years they could be in a care home, reliving the way they were treated as if it were happening to them at the time.

It's horrible.

(Note: besides living through ww2 as a kid pretty peacefully, this doesn't really apply to my grandad, he mostly seems out of it entirely. I was thinking more about what I've read re holocaust survivors and the like)

[moccahobi]

Cleft Views Pt.2 Taehyung x Reader

Summery: He puts Y/n on a pedestal; always watching from afar as she talks happily with those around her. He so badly wants to talk to her– so much in fact that he fantasizes what they would talk about for months and months on end before actually talking to her. Only what happens if Taehyung’s perception of Y/n is completely different than what it really is?

How could he have been so goddamn stupid to like you? Of course there had to be something… wrong with you. Of fucking course. You couldn’t just be the perfect fucking person he dreamed of. You had to be… wonky. Shit, you really had to have something wrong with you for Taehyung to like you. “Taehyung! What the fuck are you talking about?” Yoongi shouted through the recording booths external microphone. Taehyung looked up at him. He must have been talking out loud again. “Sorry, hyung. I didn’t mean to talk out loud. I just have a lot on my mind.” He sighed. “Listen Taehyung. I don’t know what happened to make you feel so shitty, but I’m willing to listen over some food.” “Really, hyung?” He looked up at Yoongi hopefully. Maybe he could help Taehyung out. “Yes. But after we record, and you’re paying.” “Of course, hyung.”

“So, let me get this straight, you finally talked to Y/n and she acted different than what you expected?” Yoongi asked through a mouthful of lamb skewers. “It’s not just that she stuttered and seemed very scared, hyung. She also looked so different. She was covered in acne and had this horrid scar and this large indent in her lip, had this weirdly gravelly voice, AND SHE WAS SO COLD, HYUNG! Like, I needed to sit in front of a fire for a day to warm up from how cold she was!” He cried out, taking a large sip of his soju and trying to calm down. “She is literally so different than I expected! For starters I thought she’d be warm!” “Woah. Taehyung-ah, there’s a lot wrong with what you just said. You basically said that because of how someone looks, acts around strangers, and feels, you don’t like them? Dude, that sounds very vain if you ask me.” “Are you calling me vain, hyung?” Taehyung felt angry at the insinuation, but tried to stay respectful knowing how Yoongi could get. “I’m not saying you’re vain necessarily, Taehyung-ah. Of course she isn’t what you expected and of course you are upset at this, but what did you expect to have happen? You put her on a pedestal and kept polishing that image of her. You literally made an image of her she had no way of living up to.” Taehyung sat there in silence, his ice cold water felt like her skin under his hands. He sighed, “I guess that makes sense, but I still don’t know if I… God, I feel so vain.” He sighed, the conversation lulling as their waiter brought them more food. “I can imagine so.”

It was the day of the Valentine's festival and Taehyung was spending it alone in his apartment like a total loser. Some of his friends were going to the festival with their significant others or with a friend and pretending to be a couple while others were going out with other friends, but Taehyung was still hung up on what Yoongi had told him earlier that week. Did he really set himself up to fail with you? Was he really destined to feel disappointed because he dreamed about you so much? He sighed and got up from his couch. He shrugged on a jacket and left his apartment, getting lost in this thoughts once again as he moved. You was so different than what he had imagined what you’d be like, but even with that disappointment, he couldn’t get you from his mind… why? He turned left. It must have been due to the fact that he had spent a literal year of his life dreaming about you and this disappointment felt almost as bad as a break up. He had literally spent so much of this year dreaming up a life for the two of you together… he’s lost all of his plans for his future simply because you may no longer be in it… He took another left somehow managing to get onto the campus. He’d have to move on… but would it be ok for him to have to do that? He started to get winded as he went up a hill. Of course it’s ok to take time to recover, why wouldn’t it be? Sure it wasn’t a break up nor had he ever actually spoken to you, but that shouldn’t discount his feelings. Never. He didn’t need to feel shittier about himself after finally meeting you. Taehyung had made it towards the other side of the campus. He sighed. Did he even want to move on? Maybe his life was better by liking you… he wanted to be better for you. He seemed to latch onto you after he caught his last girlfriend cheating on him. You seemed to be her foil and he needed that then. Maybe it was time to simply move on. He no longer dreamt of his ex nor did he feel pain knowing what she had done. He turned into a garden he practically lived in his first year in college. He forgave her in fact. She was clearly insecure and one shouldn’t hold that against someone. “It’s ok. It’s ok. It’s ok. It’s ok.” A voice interrupted his thoughts. “You did this, Y/n. People love this idea… just go…” You were pacing and throwing your hands around you. It made Taehyung’s heart break even more. He was really an empath at heart and he hated seeing anyone in pain, especially not you. You started hyperventilating. You dropped into a squat and let out a loud scream, not that anyone would hear. Except for Taehyung. Taehyung’s heart broke. You were having a panic attack. He didn’t like this one bit, but he didn’t know what to do. Should he go up to you and comfort you? But you’re having a panic attack. You’re vulnerable… Should he watch? That’d be mean. “Oh! H-he-hello!” You squeaked, breaking him from his fretful thoughts (which must have taken up more of his time than he felt like they did) and when he looked at you, your eyes seemed to be wide in fear. “I-I’m sorry for…” He sighed. How could he explain this? Sure he didn’t do anything wrong, but watching someone having a panic attack? That’s not nice…   “Are you feeling better now, do you want me to leave you be, or… do you want me to help you calm down? I know some quiet places somewhat near here that can help, if you want that is.” Taehyung didn’t know why he was doing this for you, but he still wanted to be there for you. Especially after you had a panic attack. You nodded at him which only made Taehyung chuckle lightly, “Y/n-sshi, you have to use your words. I offered two things.” “I-I-I-I would like your help.” You said quietly, to which Taehyung nodded and helped you up, your hands still as cold as he remembered, “Follow me then.” You two walked in silence away from the football field and towards the comsi building. “I n-n-n-need to get to the footb-b-ball field to help out at the festival so if we can g-g-g-g-g-go near there I’d appreciate it… I never got your name.” You said quietly. “It’s Taehyung. Don’t worry too much about the festival, Y/n-sshi. You’ve done a lot for the festival already and from what I just saw, it’s ok for you to take a small break. Besides, we’ll only be a few blocks away from it so if you do have to leave sooner, that’ll be ok.” He said before the two of you walked to an outlook of the city.By the time the two of you moved to sit down on the outlook’s bench, you were fidgeting insencently before you spoke up, “W-w-w-why did you help me? I think most people wouldn’t.” Taehyung’s mind rushed. Did he say he pitied you? Felt empathy for you? Still loved you? Was that a reasonable thing to say? “I-I” What could he say? He sighed, “Honestly, I’ve had a crush on you for the longest time and had been working up to talk to you for the longest time… I-- fuck. I don’t know what I’m saying.” He sighed, “You’re such a sweet and amazing person, really. I was… am constantly in awe at how hard working and accepting of others you are, it was basically inevitable for me to fall for you. I’m surprised more people haven’t. You’re so sweet and caring and… yeah. I feel like most other people would help you too if that’s any solace.” He felt awkward and shy after saying that but he still spared a shy glance towards you. You were beet red, your mouth wide open, and eyes looking at him too. “I- r-r-r-real-really? I wouldn’t h-ha-have guessed… I-I’m honored… B-but, I don’t know if I c-can reciprocate.” You said, your voice getting smaller as you continued talking. Taehyung’s heart sunk slightly at hearing that, but it did make sense. Taehyung literally only ever asked to borrow one of her pencils. That was literally it. “I understand that, really. But do you think you’d be willing to try one date with me?” He asked, hope still swimming in his mind. “I-I… sure. W-when?” “How about… now? I’m free, you’re free.” “Taehyung-sshi… I-I-I-I have t-to att-tt-tend the festival.” You sighed, shaking your head lightly, but even Taehyung could see the small smile that was growing on your face. “Come on, they won’t miss you too much but if it would make you feel any better, our one date could be at the festival.” “Omo! God no! Plea-s-se, I don’t want to g-go back there!” You full on laughed, leaning back and this time when Taehyung got to look at you, he got the pleasure of knowing that your laughter was caused by what he had said. You laugh was gravily, like your voice had been like when he first met you but now he felt as if he liked it. “Well then it looks like our schedules are free right now. How about some food and then maybe we go to a fun park that’s off campus? Or maybe the Han River? That’s always so pretty.” He said and now he could see a wide smile spread on your face as you bit your lip and slowly nodded. That was all Taehyung needed before he jumped up, grabbed your cold hand, and helped you stand up as well, “Then let's go!” He shouted into the night, only to be hurridiy shushed by you (who was laughing) as you two walked to the closest convenience store.

“So are you going to tell me how this mysterious date went or are you just going to stare off into space?” Yoongi huffed after five minutes of Taehyung smiling distantly at him. It was creepy. “Yeah, sorry. So it was Valentine’s Day and I saw Y/n and push comes to shove, I end up convincing her to go on a date with me. It was honestly so amazing! Like we went to get instant ramyeon and coffee from that cool convenience store a block from here and then we ran around the park near the Han River like maniacs and laughed for like an hour or so. She really is wonderful, I don’t know why I ever doubted her amazingness. You know the best part?” “You two kissed?” “No, but she did ask me out on a second date! It’s tomorrow for lunch. I think I’m the luckiest guy on campus.” Taehyung sighed dreamily, he was so glad that he had the cojones to ask you out. Seriously. Now his future was on the right path again. This time with the real you.

Previous

[rawresparza]

It has been a crappy past few days, and I turn out to be not very good at being supported and/or comforted. But I suspect I'm not the only one. May I please prompt you to show us Rafael learning to be loved by Sonny? I bet it wasn't easy for him. Please and thank you?

HI, anon! I’m so sorry you’ve had a rough few days and I hope things have at least started to look up. I totally understand what you mean because I have a hard time in that regard, too, and sometimes I still struggle with it. I definitely agree Rafael would, as well. I hope this is at least a little bit along the lines of what you were thinking and if not, I hope it’s still okay. May the rest of your week be brighter

–

Rafael has had a grand total of approximately seven hours of sleep, forty-eight hours of a migraine, and zero hours of patience over the last three days and if anyone would bother to ask, he’d say he’s very much fed up with it.

Well, no, that’s not true at all. A number of people have asked, Sonny has asked him so many times he’d lost count, and he’d only responded with increasingly gruff versions of “I’m fine.” Sonny knows damn well he’s not fine, he hadn’t been fine when the defense had dropped a surprise fucking witness on this case and he hadn’t been fine when he’d popped prescription ibuprofen for the umpteenth time, even though it hardly ever works to get rid of the pounding in his head.

But he can’t slow down, he doesn’t know how, that’s not in his blood. Always keep moving, keep busy, that had been his philosophy as a kid because it’d meant maybe, just maybe, he could avoid a bad evening at home or a run-in with some older boy or another he’d mouthed off to that day. Either way, slowing down would mean risking getting caught in someone’s snare, and coming up with new excuses for his bruises for concerned teachers or the school nurse or even the ER doctors was never worth the trouble.

Upon deeper reflection, he supposes one could make the argument that at this point in his life, he’s really just running away from the very thing that could help him: taking a break, taking a breath, letting someone take care of him. He’s just not used to that and seven months into this relationship with Sonny, Rafael is a little concerned he never will be. Comforting other people has never been his forte and he’s even worse when it comes to being comforted but that’s why he’s never made any real effort to make friends. He’d had Eddie and Alex and even Yelina as a kid; but with friends like them, why would he dare pursue anything like that as an adult? Getting close to people had only ever led to getting hurt, in his experience.

Sonny had somehow managed to evade the walls he’d carefully built up around himself over the past couple decades, Rafael has no idea how he’d done it. A few invitations out to coffee then drinks then dinner, that absurd Staten Island accent murmuring sweet nothings in his ear, a kiss on a rooftop with a half-decent view of the Manhattan skyline, these are all things that had led Rafael down the path to his own demise; that is to say, he’d let himself fall in love. He doesn’t regret that, he could never regret that, but sometimes, Rafael feels like maybe he doesn’t deserve it.

This is one of those times.

With Buchanan and his piece of shit client looking all kinds of arrogant on the evening news, Rafael’s mood has taken a turn from bad to awful. He’d popped another two ibuprofen against the advice of his boyfriend–

“Did you finally hit up Fordham for your medical degree while I wasn’t looking?”

–and now he’s feeling especially petty because Sonny had been right, he shouldn’t have done it, especially not on an empty stomach. He’s had seven coffees and half a stale granola bar he’d found buried in his office desk drawer today. When Sonny had asked what Rafael wanted him to bring home for dinner, Rafael had lied and said he’d already eaten.

Why? He doesn’t know. Maybe he’s just always been a sucker for self-sabotage, old habits die hard. It’s easier to push people away than admit he could use the help.

He can feel Sonny watching him watch the news and it’s unnerving. His body betrays him, works against him, tenses up even though he doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he’s getting more and more irritated by the second, by virtue of the fact that Sonny is simply existing beside him. That isn’t fair, he knows that, but he also knows Sonny will earnestly try to offer any form of assistance possible and that’s the opposite of what Rafael wants. What he wants is to be left alone to wallow in his frustration, he wants Sonny to go back to his own damn apartment so he can get sufficiently buzzed off a few pours of the good scotch he saves for shittier days before hopefully getting another hour of sleep.

Instead, Sonny’s hand finds its way to the nape of his neck, fingertips playing with the ends of Rafael’s hair. It feels good. He’s not used to feeling good. Before Sonny, he’d barely remembered what it was like to feel at all. On better days, things between them are incredible, it’s like living in fantasy world compared to what Rafael’s previous, much more short-lived romances; but on days like this, he wishes he was still alone. At least he has the decency to feel bad about that, he supposes.

“You should turn that off,” Sonny says, tilting his head toward the TV screen. Rafael purses his lips, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening, but Sonny doesn’t heed the warning. “And you should eat something. Carmen told me she only saw you guzzling coffee during recesses.”

“Carmen’s not my mother and neither are you,” Rafael says. He doesn’t bother to hide his bitterness but Sonny doesn’t even flinch. It’s a little infuriating.

“No, I’m your boyfriend,” Sonny says patiently. Sonny’s fingers travel up over Rafael’s hair, webbing out over his scalp and pulsing just slightly at just the right pressure points. It sends a shiver down Rafael’s spine and his eyes flutter shut as a relieved sigh escapes him. “I’m your boyfriend, and I love you, and I really wish you’d just let me do something to help you. Feed you, hold you, tell you nice things, whatever. Anything.”

Rafael slowly blinks his eyes back open, still reeling a bit from how much tension has already left his body just from one gentle massage. But it’s not the massage, it’s Sonny. Of course it’s Sonny, it’s always been Sonny. “Okay. Tell me something nice.” It’s conceding without conceding, he’s really just testing the waters, but he turns the TV off anyway and his heart flutters in his chest when he’s met with a pair of dimples.

“I got the recipe for your favorite dish from your ma.” Sonny hesitates, studying Rafael for a reaction. “She said she used to make it for you when– well, when things weren’t so good at home. I’m sure it won’t be as good as how she does it but…” He trails off when Rafael straightens up in his spot on the couch, shaking Sonny’s hand from his head. “I’m sorry, did I overstep?”

Rafael catches Sonny’s hand before he can pull it away, shaking his head, a look of awe taking over his expression. “You called my mom? You did that for me?”

“You’ve just been so stressed out,” Sonny says, lowering his eyes sheepishly. “This case has been rough, I know, but you’re barely sleeping and I’m sorry, you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life, but Raf, you seriously look like you might keel over any second. I just figured, if you won’t take care of yourself, I can do it for you until things get back to normal.”

Swallowing hard, Rafael considers Sonny’s words, turning them over in his mind, examining them piece by piece. It’s not a hard bargain Sonny’s driving, he suspects most people would be thrilled to have their significant others say something like that to them. It’s just that over the years, he’s developed a habit of being suspicious of those who extend kindness his way. He’s not proud of that but it is what it is.

Maybe it’s time he starts to unlearn that. Maybe it’s time he starts trusting Sonny not just with the good but with the bad and everything in between. It’s time he starts getting used to the idea Sonny isn’t going to run when things get hard

“It’s hard for me,” Rafael admits. “I’m not great at the whole asking for support thing.”

“No kidding,” Sonny teases, arching a brow.

Rafael’s smile reaches his eyes, genuine but brief before he takes on an air of sincerity again. “I want to be better at it. That might take time, but I want to let you in.”

“Well, lucky for you, I’m very patient when it comes to gorgeous, green-eyed ADAs. Especially ones with really short fuses.”

“You’re going to take a dig at me while I’m opening up to you?” Rafael asks, huffing with mock indignance. Even as he does, he settles in next to Sonny, lowering his cheek to his boyfriend’s shoulder and smiling against the soft fabric of a Fordham Law shirt while Sonny’s arm drapes over his shoulder.

“To be fair, I complimented you in the same breath, so those clearly cancel each other out.”

They laugh together and it’s like the air has cleared. The room feels different. Sonny kisses his hair, and Rafael doesn’t even consider pulling away. He’s found an anchor in Sonny, a happy place in Sonny’s arms. Somehow, he’d stumbled into this, having no idea what to expect. Rafael had never imagined he’d be this fortunate.

“By the way,” Sonny says, “I picked up some kung pao and fried rice for you at the Chinese place we like. I’ll heat it up for you if you want it.”

God, he loves this man. With every last part of himself, Rafael loves Sonny more than he’d thought he had the capacity to love someone. It surprises him, every single day, the ferocity with which he feels for this one person because he’s never felt that with anyone else before. Sometimes he cringes at himself for throwing the word “soulmate” around in his head because that’s not like him, that isn’t a concept he’s ever believed in, but Sonny has a way of making Rafael believe in the impossible.

Tomorrow, when he’s back in court, he’s sure he’ll be pissy and snappy and anyone who crosses his path will suffer his wrath; but at the end of the day, he’ll remember he has this. He has Sonny.

That makes it all worth it.

[askmerriauthor]

I remember you railing against BvS pretty hard before. Have you seen Justice League yet?

I actually did get to see it just the other evening, yes.  Movie review and writing talk after the jump, because spoilers.

To its credit, JL is a far better movie than BvS.  That’s a very low bar to set, I admit, but the point stands.  That doesn’t mean it was a good movie though.

When I saw BvS I walked out of the theater thinking “Meh, it was boring but whatever”, only to become more and more angry about it from a writing standpoint as I mulled it over in my head in the following days.  JL garnered the same initial response but - despite my dwelling and pondering and scrutinizing - has not advanced any further than that same “meh”.  It’s a passable movie with plenty of problems (both in production and in performance) at best and just plain ol’ boring at worst.  The most generous I can be with the movie is to say that it had a lot of good ideas with very poor execution.

The basic thrust of the movie is that Batman feels guilty about the shenanigans he was up to in BvS and wants to make good by forming the Justice League to deal with threats now that Supes is dead.  The world has been getting progressively shittier since that event as society falls into a sort of existential dread afterward, contributed wholly to their iconic hero biting it.  Which is somehow what the baddie of the film - a shmoe named Steppenwolf - needs to enact his evil plan of evil bad death doom nasty bad.

Y’know, completely ignoring the fact that Supes was depicted as a severely divisive public figure in BvS that a bulk of the population actively hated, including the US government at large.

Anyway.  There’s a nonsense non-story about Steppenwolf needing to collect the three magical macguffins to destroy the world and the heroes need to join forces to stop him.  Honestly though?  Steppenwolf, as a villain, was utterly pointless.  He had no character, no involvement with the heroes, and spent the bulk of his time on screen only briefly popping in via teleportation and back out again.  He goes through the film collecting the magical macguffins, but for all the difference he makes himself, they could have just spared the character animation budget and made the macguffins naturally gravitate toward one another on their own.

Also - really movie?  Steppenwolf?  Really?  Of all the characters associated with Darkseid, we’re starting with freakin’ STEPPENWOLF?  I admit someone like Granny Goodness would have been a bit much for this movie, but we couldn’t have at least gotten Kalibak?

ANYWAY.  So the Justice League is put together from a ragtag bunch of misfits who overcome staggering odds, learning to be a team in the process.  Superman is brought back from the dead (because of course he is), Steppenwolf is defeated, and everything is hunky dory until the next movie.  Which apparently is going to involve the Legion of Doom rather than Darkseid if the after-credit stinger is to be believed, which just goes to show DC has absolutely not learned their lesson about trying to retroactively introduce characters in a big franchise.

I mean, seriously, who are we going to get in that movie?  Deathstroke apparently.  Solomon Grundy?  Cheetah?  Captain Cold?  Gorilla Grodd?  The general viewing public doesn’t know who the usual array of Legion of Doom’ers are and aren’t going to give one flying flip about seeing them shoe-horned together.  Especially not after the cluster that was Suicide Squad doing the exact same damn thing.

AN-NEE-WAY.  Justice League has a lot of trouble with its pacing and tone, with a clear breaking point happening halfway through the film when Superman is brought back to life.  In reviewing my thoughts on the movie, I keep coming back to that spot being where things really begin to unravel on the whole.  Writing wise, the movie has a hard time keeping itself steady as it constantly waffles between trying to be gritty and dour one moment, then playful and slapstick the next.  Apparently the film was handed over from Zack Snyder to Joss Whedon halfway through production which would certainly explain quite a lot, but doesn’t do much to excuse the final product.

We have a big ensemble cast to work with that the movie makes no effort to endear us to, on top of them being very contrary to previous depictions where the big three are concerned.  Bats, Supes, and Diana don’t act like they did in their previous movies at all.  Bats bounces between being  grim to actually cracking jokes and being the butt of a few himself, Supes spends half his time just sort of being there looking bewildered and the other half being incredibly smarmy, and Diana (along with the Amazons as a whole) had any-and-all character granted by her own movie violently siphoned out of her until she was a bland cardboard cutout.

Given that we just had such a great Wonder Woman standalone movie, this version of Diana really grates on my by comparison.  She’s dull, isn’t proactive, and spends the film needing to be goaded into being a hero by Batman of all people.  Bats is constantly lecturing and advising her on how to be a hero, a leader, how to not lock herself away from the world and others… y’know, stuff that Batman classically has trouble with himself and it REALLY SHOULD BE DIANA TEACHING HIM THAT SHIT SINCE SHE ALREADY DID ALL THAT IN HER OWN DAMN MOVIE AND BEING A RECLUSIVE UNTRUSTWORTHY ASS IS LITERALLY BATMAN’S ENTIRE M.O. IN THIS FRANCHISE.

Flash was fun though.  I enjoyed his presence and jokes, which felt a bit more natural since he is such a young character compared to the rest.  Cyborg was just sort of there as a plot device - dude literally just grows new powers and plucks meta-information out of nowhere whenever the plot needs him to.  Thor - I mean Drax - I mean Aquaman was… well, he was there.  Yep.  He sure did take up screen real estate without actually having any useful contributions to the story, setting, theme, or conflict resolution.

This may just be my own personal sense of humor at play, but there was a gag I really wish they’d gone for with Flash.  After he’s first introduced and the movie is half-assedly explaining his powers, he points out that using his superspeed burns tons of calories, so he’s always famished and is constantly snacking.  “I’m like a blackhole for snacks.  A snack-hole.” he says, while chowing down on an entire pizza himself as he walks.  It’s a fun notion that is never used in the movie beyond that.  At most he says “I’m hungry” about 45 minutes later and is told to go have nosh off-screen, but that’s it.  Since Flash is constantly zipping around from moment to moment, I really wanted to see him always eating whenever he’s not doing something important.  Like, every scene should have him munching on something different.  He’ll be chowing down on this big burrito in the background as the camera slightly pans away to someone talking, and then when it pans back he’s got a tub of Ben & Jerry’s under his arm.  Or in any scene where he has to stand still for more than 10 seconds, each time the camera cuts back to him, there’s increasingly large and varied stacks of discarded food containers scattered around him.

Or, hell, just have him share his snacks with the others.  It would’ve been super cute for him to offer Diana some ice cream and have her be genuinely delighted in return.

Except, y’know, that would require Diana to actually have character in this movie…

The strongest scene in the entire movie to me (and certainly to a bulk of the audience for how vocal a reaction it got in the theater) was right after Supes is resurrected.  He’s all addle-brained and violent because he’s still grave-groggy, so he starts fighting the League members.  As he’s being dogpiled by the rest, Flash kicks into superspeed and starts running around him.  The movie shows the rest of the world freezing in place from Flash’s point of view… until Supes’ eyes start tracking Flash’s movement ever so slowly.  That single point made for a fantastic “OH SHIT” moment that nothing else in the film managed to hit quite as well.  Unfortunate on the whole, but I will give points for that one, if nothing else.

Supes actually tries to fight Flash with both of them going at superspeed, which is a neat bit as well.  It’s clear in watching how they’re moving that Supes is indeed slower, but only just, and it’s more because Flash is so startled that anyone can begin to keep up with him - along with his own inexperience - that Supes takes him out pretty quickly.  The same can’t be said for the big bad of the film.  Steppenwolf is effectively invincible to everything the entire movie, including the heroes.  Attacks literally bounce off him without him even realizing they landed in the first place.  The League members do their best to fight him and will, from time to time, manage to put him through a wall or stagger him before he knocks them through several buildings himself.  But because everyone is pretty much the same level of invulnerable, the fights become pointless because they’re just knocking each other around through papier-mâché set pieces without effect.

But then Supes shows up and instantly trivializes whatever threat Steppenwolf was supposed to have.  It’s played like Awakened Neo verses the Agents in the first Matrix movie, right down to the whole “leaning casually away from a mega-punch” move.  Supes casually walks all over this villain without any effort whatsoever, actually leaves the fight entirely for a few minutes to go save a building full of civilians (by literally picking up the entire apartment complex over his head and flying away with it, because all effort at gritty realism is long gone), and then comes back to derisively snark “Is this guy still bothering you?” at the rest of the group.  And y’know what?  Even with all that, the heroes don’t even kill off the bad guy.  He gets swarmed by his own mindless Parademons for absolutely no good reason, because apparently suddenly a bunch of canon fodder minions that even Batman can take out in a toe-to-toe fight are powerful enough to overwhelm Steppenwolf?

The movie’s writing falls prey to two very common problems the comics suffer from, and it is purely a fault of the writers.  You’ll often hear people say “Superman is a boring character - he’s got unlimited power so he’s impossible to write good stories for”, which is the hallmark of an unimaginative writer.  The other common problem is many writers’ fondness for hoisting Batman up on a pedestal as this amazing genius who can do no wrong.  We get both here.  Batman is the driving force behind everything that happens and all other characters’ motivations, and yet is so vastly outclassed by their power at the same time that the movie struggles to find anything for him to do.  Superman is so beyond powerful that he makes the rest of the movie and its entire cast obsolete - he can do anything in this version through brute force alone, so how is there any danger or conflict?  He literally stops the destruction of the world by using brute strength to pull apart the three macguffins with his bare hands.

So… yeah.  Justice League has a lot of problems if you look at it any harder than just “open eyes, turn off brain, eat popcorn”.  If you can do those steps, it’s a passable bit of brainless fluff and flashy special effects.  And it’s still a superior film to BvS by a vast margin.

[rhosinthorn]

icarus

an original work inspired by the solar eclipse

I once had a friend.

 One of those friends that when you said I’ve got your back you actually meant it, and no matter what time the phone call came, or what problem the call was about, you dropped everything to get there so you could fix it.

 He was always keeping his window open, just a crack, just enough for me to push it the rest of the way up on nights when I didn’t want to be home. Never told his parents why, just took the shouting about wasted energy and kept leaving that window open. In return, I went to every stupid coffee house, listened to all the shitty poets, the wannabe fringe crowd, drinking coffee that varied all the way from river sludge to divine nectar, depending on the place. I lied to his parents when they asked why he had been up so late. He was helping me with homework, was the common excuse, and when they asked which library we were at, I told them it was the college library, which was open all night.

 Sometimes it was the truth. Sam helped me bullshit the boring essays that they shoved down our throats, and I did his math homework, since even the shit I could come up with was usually better than his. We got through high school by the skin of our noses, and that last day, he slams a flier on my desk and tells me to pack my shit; he’s picking me up the day after graduation.

It was a rental flier, stolen from some beat up bulletin board in some equally shitty coffee house. Turns out, it’s an even shittier apartment, where the hot water heater runs out in the time it takes you to wash your hair, and all the floorboards creak, and there’s crotchety old people and cranky single moms with cranky babies all around, but it was his, it was mine, it was ours, and we couldn’t give a shit.

 Sam got a job shelving books at the library and I got a job as a janitor at the shitty high school we all thought we’d be rid of once we had that stupid piece of paper in our hands. I still got dragged to stupid coffee houses, resented spending the money I was earning on shitty coffee and prayed that wherever we were going was one of the ones with good coffee, but now it was different.

 Ever since I knew him, he was always scribbling. Always had a piece of paper close to hand and a pencil stuck behind his ear. When they made us clean out his locker, he carefully preserved each and every scrap of whatever it was like it was priceless jewelry.

 And the first time he got up on that crappy stage and opened his mouth, I realized it was.

 There was something about the way he could string words together that made them so much more than a bunch of letters in a row. When the teachers made us read boring old poetry, it was never like hearing what he could come up with in front of that microphone, and I know for a fact that none of the kids in those classrooms paid half as much attention to dusty old poets as every single person in those coffee shops did when Sam opened his mouth.

 Slowly our world changed, like a fresh coat of paint on the walls of our apartment, but it wasn’t just covering up the cracks and scuff marks, it was new. It was late night parties in places that were probably illegal, lights and sounds and adrenaline. Some of the people around us were experimenting with things I’d never heard of, even from the pointless shit the teachers peddled about drug education where we sat through slideshow after slideshow of how whatever the evil of the week was would kill you in horrible, painful ways.

 The school tested randomly, so I stayed clean, stayed away. It was enough just to be there, to be immersed in the atmosphere even without imbibing in whatever they were promising would rock my world. So did Sam, even though the library couldn’t really give a damn, so long as the books were sorted and shelved. There was enough magic in the moment, he said, sounding way to serious for it to be shitty cliché. Enough just to be there, to be a part of everything around us.

 But we spent just as much time in the middle of nowhere, weekends when Sam packed us into the beat up car that was running by the grace of whatever god was supposed to be looking out for it and we drove to somewhere. Sometimes it was woods, where the trees reached up as tall as the buildings we had always known, sometimes it was moving water, a river, a canal, something long left untouched. Once it was an open field, completely overgrown.

 We met all sorts of people at the coffee shops, at the clubs, at the probably illegal parties. I met girls, Sam met girls, boys, all sorts. All half drunk on his words and wanting to know him. Sometimes just get under his skin and figure him out, sometimes in the biblical sense of knowing.

 Most of them were just passing fancies. Sam called them dandelions, on account of how they bloomed brightly only to wither and blow away not long after.

 But there was one.

 We saw him first at the coffee shop, slouched in the dark corner that we used to frequent because it apparently had the best view of the stage.

 He came up to us after the mic was shut down for the night, waiting for the nightly throng of people who had clustered around like flowers gravitating towards the sun. The way he strolled up caught my eye; there were people who had their lives together, and there were people like the rest of us trying to just push through as best as we could, and he was one of the former. I almost envied him, but it was almost impossible to. This guy had a way of pulling you into his orbit and making you forget that you wanted to be anywhere else. He said his name was Apollo, and we all kind of laughed at how stupid his parents had to have been, giving a guy a name like that to suffer under.

 It seemed as if we kept running into Apollo after that, as if he knew where we were going to land each night, and something…changed. The walls of our apartment were never clean, even when we had just painted them, but now the walls in the other bedroom were covered in words, spiraling out from random points. Where his words had touched you before, now they made you feel, immersing you in them until you knew you were drowning but you didn’t mind. Sam and Apollo started spending hours each day just talking, building these castles of words that almost seemed real.

 And it just kept building and building, like the heavy beat of a song ramping up into the final stretch, and the two of them became lovers for however long they could hold each other’s attention, and then I come home one night and Sam’s lying on the living room floor, staring up at the ceiling. The cracked, grimy, boring ceiling.

 Only he’s not actually staring, because he’s blind.

 The doctors that I dragged him to couldn’t figure it out. They poked and prodded, and I spent every dime I had and got two other jobs to keep going while they fussed over him, but all he said was that he had seen the sun.

 Eventually he told them to stop.

 Sam came home and bumped into things for a few weeks until he had it all sorted. There was one day, I come home for an hour between shifts and he’s tracing the words he had scribbled all over his walls as if he can see them.

 Apollo is gone. Has been gone.

 I asked Sam, that first night, if he was blind because of Apollo.

 No, is his first answer, loud and strong and furious, as if angry at me for even suggesting it. Yes follows just as quickly, just as adamant, and then he settles, turns his face towards me and says maybe?

 I looked at the sun, he kept saying, every time someone asked. The doctors mumbled something about it being plausible, based on what they were seeing, but at the same time improbable, given that the only thing that could do that amount of damage was an eclipse, and it had been decades since the last.

 Strangely enough, his words started meaning more. Even though he couldn’t see, his words painted pictures for all of us sitting in those dim coffee houses. Pictures of places and people and experiences that Sam had never, would never, could never see. And it wasn’t like he was listening to those books on tape, or any of the other ways they tried to teach him to adapt his life.

 Someone talked about a guide dog, but Sam said no. I could barely convince him to use one of those canes, no matter how many times he tripped or fell or bumped into someone on the street. He hated it, hated feeling what he had once seen. It was better to stumble, to almost get hit by cars and bikes and other pedestrians.

 I feel, he tells me in the middle of another shouting match, a fresh bruise on his cheek where he caught the edge of a door. I feel.

 Because there’s no use arguing, I stop. It’s easier to keep the box under the sink where all of our medical shit ends up stocked than to keep having the same argument over and over.

One night, as I’m patching him up, he starts telling me about me, about some stupid kid from a shitty family who has a best friend who’s worth more than most brothers. He’s not using our names, but I can see us in his words. But he goes on and tells about a girl, about a home, about someone to say welcome home, and I brush him off. Guys like me don’t get that. It goes right up there with the pipe dreams about picket fences and 2.5 kids. Probably took a knock on his head today that he’s not going to admit to.

 I forget about it for months, and then I meet this girl.

 Her name is Hestia, and she’s everything he said and more.

 She doesn’t give a shit about our crappy apartment, and whenever she’s there it seems less crappy. I met her at a diner I keep ending up at because it’s in between the two jobs I’ve kept now that he can’t work, and everyone there seems to love her.

 And somehow she picked me.

 We’re talking one night when I happen to look at her, and I see her eyes. They’re old, old eyes, and I had never understood what that actually meant until I saw them. But now I do, and I remember something.

 Apollo had those same eyes.

 I was a pretty shitty student, but something about those Greek myths stuck in my head. Maybe because most of them were about screw ups like me, and maybe because Sam practically lived and breathed them whenever they came up in class. The teachers never could figure him out, because he would fixate on these ancient poems and then turn around and bitch about Shakespeare.

 Something about those names is familiar, and I find myself in the library, a book of myths in my hand, and in them I find Apollo, and further in I find Hestia.

 I looked at the sun.

 When I got home, Sam was there, just him, icing a bumped elbow. He seems to know, even though he can’t see my face.

 Does it matter? he asks, leaning against the doorway as I stare at him.

 Yes I want to say, I want to shout. Yes it matters. What business do they have with people like us, with shitty apartments and shitty coffee, and too many jobs and not enough time?

 Sam just turns away and shuts himself in his room.

 I stop seeing Hestia.

 Sam disappears.

 Somehow, everything seems…less now. Smaller.

AN: Don’t know where this came from, but it was tricky. The entire viewpoint is something I don’t usually do. Hope you enjoyed.

[salarta]

Fan theory: Polaris as outsider

This is another but of random ass fan theorizing. While I use character and comic book history, whether or not it’s actually true is another matter. It’s only a theory.

The base of the theory: what if Polaris’ behavior and activities throughout her character history are based in a self-perception that she’s an outsider and doesn’t belong?

The common accepted assumption about Lorna’s powers is that they were reawakened in her teens (X-Men #49). Until her origin story (X-Factor #243), there was no reason to believe otherwise. Her origin story established that her powers awakened as a child, then Magneto had Mastermind erase her memory of that day - including the fact her powers manifested.

As I’ve fan theorized before, there’s nothing here to suggest that her powers themselves would've been suppressed or lost as a result of memory erasure. So, it makes more sense to me that what Mastermind did only made her consciously unaware of both the existence of her powers and how to use them. They would still be intact, just disconnected from her conscious mental awareness.

Based on THIS theory, Lorna growing up would undoubtedly have a sense that something wasn’t right. That she was missing something. That she wasn’t “normal” and “couldn’t fit in.” But it would be too vague to put her finger on. Unlike the X-Men and a majority of mutants, she wouldn’t know WHY she felt like an outsider among humans. She would simply see herself as some sort of ‘other’, her own unique entity with no others to relate to. Practically alien.

That Lorna dyed her hair brown until she became aware of her powers again, without realizing at any point that her natural green hair might mean she’s a mutant (even if her X-gene only gave her a new hair color and nothing else), lends a lot of weight to this interpretation. She certainly didn’t feel like a normal human, but she also didn’t identify herself with mutants, which leaves her as something outside both identities.

So we have Lorna, awakening to her powers, realizing that she’s a mutant. She joins the X-Men - it’s the first time she’s found a group in her whole life that she can connect to. There’s even this guy, Havok, who’s maybe the first guy in her whole life that wants to date her and doesn’t think she’s a weirdo or a loser! She might finally belong for once!

But then Krakoa happened, and for whatever reason, possibly the only guy who’s ever accepted her as a potential girlfriend wants to quit, and wants her to quit too. So she does, cause she feels like she needs this one person to validate her worth and make her feel like she’s an actual person.

Then possession by Malice happens. While possessed by Malice, her former teammates as well as people who took over in the X-Men seemed to show no regard or respect for Lorna - the woman trapped inside her hijacked body - whatsoever. They showed no real concern for her well-being, no sense of wanting to get Malice out of her and save her.

In short: the X-Men demonstrated what sham they are as a “unifying force” and betrayed any trust she had in them. They reinforced all the perceptions she had about herself before she became aware of her powers: that there’s nowhere she actually belongs, and she clearly must not belong with mutants either, otherwise they’d care about her even while possessed by Malice.

This could have set her on a string of trying to stay out of the X-Men proper but do X-Men related things, such as X-Factor. Join lower key teams. Avoid high profile involvement. It may have even resulted in why she didn’t opt to lead a team in her own right for so long, because why bother trying when you’re an outsider and there’s literally nobody in the universe you can identify and connect with?

Except for that one boy who keeps wanting you as his lover, of course. At least there’s one person.

Then whoops, he died.

Which is when she isolated herself in an apartment with his shirt. Without that one guy, suddenly there’s no point in her taking part in a world that’s proven it doesn’t like or respect her even as some abstract sentient living creature.

Then Magneto came and inspired her again. He recruited her for Genosha. She had a purpose once more, and this time it was being done right. With a man who saw what she could do and wanted to help her build on it. She wasn’t some disposable Z-list nobody on a massive team roster in Magneto’s eyes, the way she was with the X-Men. Magneto saw her as perhaps the most important person at Genosha other than himself.

Then Genosha got attacked and Magneto “died” too.

At which point she just went “fuck it” and joined the X-Men again. Not out of looking for a place to belong. Just to do things. Also helps that Xavier appeared to start giving a damn about her mental well-being this time, something the X-Men didn’t do when she was possessed by Malice.

Oh, also helped that Havok was back and wanted to marry her. Except then it didn’t help because he suddenly didn’t want to marry her.

Whoops.

But hey, Xavier was still helping her with her mental issues, so there’s that. Until M-Day. Then she lost her powers again, ripping away a core part of her self-identity and self-worth.

Then Apocalypse forcibly recruited her as Pestilence and made her a literal plague monster. As in, “she’s so disgustingly inhuman that she actively kills and hurts other people.”

Which, I should note, is the same message sent with her “secondary powers” caused by Zaladane stripping away her usual ones, back in the 80s (after Malice, before X-Factor). And I use quotes there cause my fanon is that Zaladane forced shittier powers on Lorna when taking her actual powers away. Those powers included Lorna’s physical presence literally bringing out the worst in people, to the point where they were willing to die just to attack and badmouth Lorna even as she’s trying to save them.

Between those two character states where you’re treated like gross and dangerous scum, wouldn’t you get a bit of a complex about your self-worth and self-esteem? Wouldn’t this just reinforce views you have of not belonging?

Cause that seems to be what happened with Lorna. As soon as she regained consciousness after the whole Pestilence thing, she got the fuck outta there. She went off on her own. She didn’t want to keep pretending she belonged.

Then space happened.

She accepted what amounted to exile into space, with the only guy who she’d ever been romantically involved with. She essentially cast herself out of human life on Earth.

When she finally did return, she went with Havok to X-Factor. She was once again serving as a sort of “support” to him, as she had in space, rather than becoming her own woman. It’s easier that way, you know. If you’re a leader, you have to set an example. But how can you set an example if you feel nobody can truly love and respect you?

Then when Havok left, she stayed, serving under Madrox’s leadership.

Things changed a little when she got recruited by Harrison Snow for X-Factor at Serval. She was, supposedly, the leader. Though the first 6 issues had Gambit somewhat undermining her authority.

And maybe that was intentional on Lorna’s part, subconsciously. Maybe she knew he would do that, with all his past experience as a leader. Maybe she sabotaged herself and set herself up for Gambit to “prove” she doesn’t deserve to be a leader, because that would reinforce all the negative impressions she has about whether or not she belongs anywhere.

Because after a while, you start to internalize this shit, and if it’s fully internalized, you try to keep it intact because that becomes a core part of your identity.

And thus, we have a Lorna that doesn’t get to take part in major Marvel events, who took decades to lead her own team, all these other things. And from a fan theory perspective, trying to make that junk all have a “logic” to it, maybe that’s because she doesn’t feel like she deserves to be part of the X-Men or mutant culture. Because maybe she’s something else entirely that, in her mind, nobody will ever truly understand. Because she’s an outsider to every possible group out there.

Because of what Mastermind did to her head as a child, and everything after it.

Aaaaand that’s this theory!

[wavemaker9]

also all the angsty ship questions for rustralia!! all or whichever ones you want. you're going down with me

i accept this sacrifice

sorry mobile people

1. do they have a lot of arguments? if so, over what?

they argue pretty rarely. if they do, it’s usually over basic shit. gender roles have been i think the thing they’ve really argued over the most? at least the pink crayon time but i feel there was another time. oh one time kyle and gil teased ivan about his written language and ivan got genuinely upset so kyle had to backpedal real fast and he actually apologized instead of doing his “learn how to take a joke” thing like he does with ludwig/gil. they make up pretty quickly if they do find something to fight about because they’re both so worried about seriously angering and pushing away the other

2. who apologizes first? in what way? is it hard for either of them to apologize?

whoops accidentally partially answered above. usually whoever started it probably. the one who upset the other is so worried they apologize as quickly as possible once they know the other is genuinely mad. usually they just say they’re sorry and how they didn’t mean to upset the other and give a lot of praise to the other as they can. prob not hard at all because it’s harder for the other to stay mad at them

3. which one has more insecurities? over what?

they both have so many. i guess i picture kyle having slightly more. that may be because kyle assumes the same, but basically like since he’s younger and doesn’t express his issues as much as ivan does so they build up. kyle still hasn’t learned how to deal with a lot of the shit ivan has with his additional experience. it’s also a vicious cycle with the expressing himself because he feels bad hiding the feelings because they build up but he also feels bad not hiding them because kirkland raising and all that. he also has worse immediate influences in his life. his season is objectively way shittier to him and like actively harmful to himand he lives with a creature who is constantly talking shit about him while ivan just has a couple normal pets. idk there are a lotta things i guess. over what though? over like everything, lol

4. who gets more riled up? do they show their anger? 

not really by each other i think but kyle gets riled up more probably. ivan gets upset by more things and his anger is probably worse in that he’ll allow himself to act farther on it if he lets himself at all, but when arguments start with him, at least that i’ve seen, he does that smiley false (and sometimes genuine) joy thing a lot which gets the person he’s upset with angry which amuses ivan so it probably doesn’t build as much. he’s also backed off in teh past if he saw himself getting really mad like with the language thing. you push kyle and he gets aggressive argue-y/sarcastic and that makes things worse and that makes him angrier usually and he doesn’t recognize the need to back off. the angrier he gets, the harder he fights. one thing he learned from summer was accidentally making himself angry instead of his target. 

5. how do they hide their pain when they’re upset? do they try to hide their pain?

as mentioned above, kyle tries to hide the pain a lot more. mainly humor and liquor. ivan might hide it in the immediate panic denial way sometimes but he’ll cry way more easily about shit if given the chance. alcohol works for him too. can i say the big answer is alcohol?

6. who tries to make up first? does it work?

again, whoever fucked up first, they usually make the first move to try and patch up whatever issues they’re dealing with

7. would they hate-fuck if they were mad at one another? if they had a falling out?

i don’t think it’d be a full hate-fuck. mostly i picture that cliche angry yelling to confession/apology to making out shit. if they were /really/ mad about something serious, i don’t think they’d be in the mood. probably both of them are chill with hate-fucking. kyle at least isn’t. about that shit, like super into it, but he’s fine with it in concept. his emotions and relationships always cross over spectacularly so he could easily roll with it in certain relays, but he doesn’t really view their relationship like that. his relay with ivan is actually one of the more nice and caring ones he’s had and he’s kind of settled into that so like them getting to the angry stage of actual hate-fucking just instills panic and a need to fix it since love is their primary emotion tied to their relay and that anger is so different that, like i said, it’s more just worry about breaking up than sex atm. kyle frustratingly loves a lot of people but ivan is not one of them, he straight loves ivan and that’s it, no anger to be found. if they did already have a falling out… see it’d still be like anger to passion i think. hate-fuck’s, at least the way i’m picturing it, are way too aggressive for them. at least this version of them. first rp thing i wrote with kyle had him end up hate fucking ivan, that was def a thing. thatwhole. fucking rp was a Thing though not thanks to the ivan that’s more a side thing, but this kyle and ivan are too gooey in how much they love each other, i don’t see them having the history they standardly have and then hitting actually /hating/ each other but still being dtf. idk idk. 

8. do they hold grudges? is it hard for them to let go/forgive each other?

yeah. kyle’s like the most obvious grudge holder like ever? kid wears his feelings on his sleeves and i’ve already mentioned his grudge with arthur adn then ludwig in hetalr. against each other, though, nah. again, they will forgive each other at the drop of a hat for shit they really shouldn’t. 

9. is there something big that could potentially tear them apart if it was revealed

i think the only thing they’ve ever disagreed on to the point where it threatened their relay was an rp idea where basically ivan was willing to sacrifice someone else to save kyle and kyle was 100% against that. it didn’t really threaten their relay at the time but it’d be the closest thing that would. kyle is so self-sacrificial and ivan is so hardcore focused on protecting those he cares about and that can cause a clash when they contradict. if ivan sacrifices someone else who kyle would rather live instead of him, kyle. kyle understands, but he’s still furious because it a, dismisses kyle’s expressed wants for wanting to save the other person, and b, betrays how bad ivan’s morals can get for what he wants in a way that kyle can’t easily forgive without at least some time passing. that was also mentioned in the hp au with kyle being furious with mel for saving him during the attack on that famous quidditch game. kyle never wants to live at the expense of someone else and even if it’s another person’s choice, he’ll blame himself, but he’ll be mad immediately at that other person for forcing that onto him. especially with someone who knows him as well as ivan tends to; he expects ivan to know he’d never want that and respect that, ivan’s always so good otherwise about putting kyle’s wants first and now when that actually matters ot kyle he doesn’t. he’ll move past it and understand it to a point given enough time, but he may never forgive them. 

another thing would be ivan genuinely trying to contain kyle to keep him from leaving. they’ve brought it up and kyle laughs about it because he never really considers ivan being serious about it. both because he wouldn’t consider anyone would do that (Again the overly self sacrificing sde) and also like anyone would genuinely be that upset and resistant against losing him (+ he figures there’s no reason in the world he’d ever leave ivan by choice). ivan actually taking steps to control kyle and force him to stay either against his will or at least against his expressed plans (one idea was them having to split for political reasons despite neither of them wanting to) would be jarring because again, ivan puts kyle’s priorities first so commonly he doesn’t expect ivan to suddenly not do that in a way ivan should know is a /huge/ issue for kyle.

I read “if it was revealed” and idk if the above covers that. i guess just revealing that ivan is willing to cross lines kyle doesn’t fully realize he will?? idk. i have no idea if kyle could do anything to make ivan wanna break up with him. 

10. if something already happened to tear them apart, what would make them come back together? is it even possible?

literally every ‘could they ever get back together’ question is ‘probably if not definitely yes’. even the above could have ways of kyle managing to at least accept it and get back together with ivan. mainly him being lonely. both of tehm are so willing to put up with a lot of shit to be wiht the other because they’re so lonely and finally found someone they click with so well that they don’t feel lonely with anymore. 

11. what’s their favorite pass time when they’re upset?

kyle does the standards. working out, playing video games, drinking. less standard for everyone if he’s really upset is the whole. like. self-damaging shit. both unintentionally and intentionally dangerous and directly lethal shit, it’s a scale. ivan probably drinking too. i don’t remember if this was a joke or a genuine thing but i remember the idea came up of a dart board with people’s faces on it who he’s mad at and i honestly still love the idea. i remember ivan rants about things he’s mad or sad about in his journal, there was the pics of gil with his eyes crossed out. just hanging out together tends to brighten their moods together, but drinking together probably ups things or just cutesy romance/sex shit. idk probably other stuff idk

12. who do they confide in when shit hits the fan (besides each other)?

doug for kyle which is all bad. occasionally may discuss it with nz or human friends but less so, especially depending on the situation like can’t blab about work problems in detail to human friends. mostly just tries to bottle that shit up. i imagine ivan talks to family about shit but there’s def his journal that he again will happily express all his problems to with no filter even if sharing the information. oh also doesn’t he have a therapist he talks to too?

13. is it hard for them to talk about their feelings openly with each other? if so, is there any way that can be resolved, even in the slightest?

it’s always hard for kyle to talk about his feelings while ivan’s super chill with it. kyle’s slowly learning how to be more comfortable showing his more ‘negative’ emotions like sadness to ivan, but he’s still ~~ about it. they’re that ‘you wanna talk about your feelings?’ ‘no’ ‘i do’ ‘i know ___’ ‘i’m sad’ ‘i know ____’ vine. 

14. who grieves more when the other is away?

both are very bad at being alone. ivan probably low-key grieves teh whole time and kyle just high-key grieves during his mood dips when he can’t otherwise distract himself

15. who misses the other more, or really thinks about them more?

both miss each other so much again. they’re always trying to communicate with each other because they’re again so bad at beign alone. they’re tied, always missing the other always

16. do either of them have a special item (an article of clothing, a necklace, a book) that they use when they miss the other? if so, what is it? what do they do with it (read, wear, look at, smell)?

they each have gifts and clothes from the others they like. they’ll steal clothes they very clearly can’t wear just to have that smell and touch that’s familiar. kyle made a book once with like pictures and an audio thing to talk about how great ivan is and also gave him a bunch of sketches he did of ivan as a ‘you make my life so much better and i just want you to know how much i appreciate it’ thing. ivan gave him a translated journal of all his thoughts about kyle and how great he was. i’m 95% sure kyle’s admitted in hetalr canon to looking at that journal a lot when he hits a mood dip. it’s so important to him. also kyle at least saves a lot of messages from ivan to read back through. oh, i rmeember ivan does too cause he was able to back up a lot of messages when aus!kyle deleted them all.

17. who cries more? who gets more emotional in general?

ivan. ivan cries more. ivan gets more emotional in general, too, but kyle is a close second. they’re both very emotional but ivan expresses it and lets himself feel it way more. kyle lets himself flip between 3 emotions that he feels at max volume and the other ones he buries in his backyard. 

18. do either of them have the other’s stuff lying around their house?

see 16 pal

19. how about teasing? do they tease each other while in a fight (whether it be with themselves or just general teasing)?

their chiller fights they do. like the pink crayon fight eventually turned into kyle sending ivan ‘duuuun duuunnn’ messages like it was jaws. ivan especially probably, he’s all about that ‘i’m going to act really dismissive and unbothered to bother your anger because you get angrier then and god is it funny’ so if they were like playfully fighting ivan’d definitely tease kyle a lot especially since kyle does let that shit set him off more and he’s so funny when he’s non-seriously mad

20. do either of them have any vices?

both of them do, have you seen them?? they have like. all of them. they have all the vices.

21. what’s the thing they miss most about each other?

just general company. again, they’re both lonely and desperate for companionship and they just miss having the other’s company and the good warm feeling of being around the other. it’s prolly why they’re so touchy feely when htey are together. hate being apart, even just by feet or inches. 

22. what’s their go-to breakup/angst song?

any that really highlight how devastated the person is following the break up, especially if drinking is involved in the lyrics. OH OH OH! idk if it’s specifically for rustralia but the go-to song for kyle’s early views on relays is Love Is Hell. Again (friendly reminder that Again was for a relay where it was pretty much entirely the other person’s fault but kyle still managed to blame himself because of course he did) or Perfect I’ve tied to other breakups of kyle’s, does that count? Trying Not To Love You isn’t so much angst as a lot of the others since the end is brighter but i picture it with rustralia a lot. Get Stoned is another non-rustralia but other-kyle-relay song but that starting line “Just hear me out: If it’s not perfect I’ll perfect it to my heart explodes” is so good for kyle in any relay. fuck now i’m just connecting through recommended songs for the vids from get stoned and there are a few tha’s probably good for kyle. oh i bet that shitty bruno marz song about catching a grenade or whatever. fuck there’s probably lots but i do not feel like spending 40 minutes slowly scrolling through all my songs on my phone. honestly these double as both songs about shitty relays kyle has/has had/thinks he’ll have as well as songs kyle’d likely listen to. never forget he’d mainly a modern/pop rock kinda guy at this point in his life and he likes most of marz’ shit including that just. terrible song. 

i went to check kyle’s feelings blog to see if i reblogged any songs to it and i forgot he reblogged the wtnv quote ‘he grinned and everything about him was perfect and i fell in love instantly’ what a sappy idiot. 

23. who’s more jealous?

ivan, but mainly because he’ll act on it. ivan will get jealous and get angry. kyle will get jealous and get sad. kyle loves ivan, but isn’t past the ‘he can do better than me’ mindset so if he thought ivan was interested in someone else. like that. fucking sucks and he hates it and he’s devastated but it’s whatever makes ivan happy. he’s always worried about that and will get relatively prickly about the idea of someone else making a move on ivan, but if was clear ivan was into it, he’d back down, he values ivan’s happiness too much. ivan, on the other hand, loves kyle and also isn’t really past the ‘he can do better than me’ mindset but instead of just accepting it, he gets anxious or on edge or prickly or just generally overly protective just as bad but doesn’t let it go. kyle can’t be happy with someone else if ivan doesn’t let him find out he’d be happier with someone else

24. who is the first to forgive?

i’ve answered this like three times now my dude cmon, it depends on the person apologizing like almost every time because it’ll be the other person. if tehy’re both partially to blame…. kyle’s self-worth is low and he justifies behavior for people he likes so probably him? yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. not that ivan is far behind though, again, they both forgive so easily.

25. what’s the one deal breaker for either of them (lack of communication, fear of commitment, etc)?

i honestly don’t know what ivan’s deal break would be, but i already mentioned kyle’s tends to be cases where his own wants/needs/expectations are blatantly dismissed in ways that cross lines for him on moral grounds. basically even outside of this relay, if kyle gets to a point (and from past experience lemme tell you it often takes either a big event or a long time of little ones) where he realizes that he’s not happy because this other person doesn’t value him and his wants as much as he does them and he actually reaches a point where he can acknowledge being alone would be better than this, he’ll finally move on. man does it take him a while though and some really nasty shit, he’s put up with so fucking much in the past. look at him still dealing with doug. summer he’s had that once or twice but always goes back to her. the one rp he reached that point after just. the worst shit. this kid will put up with so much just to not be alone. 

26. who would take longer to let go? do they ever really “let go”?

ivan. ivan probably never lets go, the stubborn guy. again, kyle’s accepting of things. there was one rp with khep about what’d happen if kyle and gil had a relay and gil died and kyle was dating someone else by the time gil came back and remembered who he was and that he’d been involved with kyle and everything. kyle refused to break it off with the person he was dating even if he cared about gil more, but he also expected gil to start dating other people too and when gil countered he wasn’t going to do that because he still liked kyle and wasn’t ready to move on and while he could accept kyle not taking him back he wasn’t going to start dating someone just because kyle wanted him to, it fucking like blew kyle’s mind. he literally had an epiphany at realizing the concept of doing something you want because the alternative, while expected and the ‘more right’ option at a glance, won’t make anyone happier than the other option. kyle’s all about self-sacrifice where it’s literally an expectation for himself even when it’d be more practical for him not to. if he felt letting go of ivan was needed. it’d take forever and emotionally kill him in the meantime but he could at least pretend long enough where he could mostly buy the act. ivan would not pretend. if he didn’t want to let kyle go, he wouldn’t.  

27. which is more afraid of confrontation?

both (with each other. with others, both are fine with confrontations under certain circumstances. kyle likes to throw himself into fights and ivan likes to watch fights, it probably accidentally encourages kyle being a little shit)

28. who’s the first to distance themselves (if either)?

kyle, kyle always. kyle distances himself to avoid hurting himself as his first reaction to anything, it’s what happened when they first started semi-dating. kyle put off dating ivan seriously for at least 2 months and kind backed off just a bit when he realzed ivan was romantically interested in him instead of just platonically/sexually. same with after they got engaged and kyle got scared about that & then the 2p event, kyle backed off hard after that. really in comparison between austin and kyle, kyle tends to criticize austin when given the chance for being so emotionally distant, but you really can see the start of what austin will do in the 1p2p au with how kyle handles some relay shit now. 

29. who’s more patient? is it hard to break that patience?

both are pretty patient with each other but i think ivan is a little more with kyle? it doesn’t really fully break his patience but he makes a stronger point of calling kyle out when kyle talks shit about himself. 

30. who’s the first to blame themselves?

*clint mcelroy voice* HA! no but seriously it’s kyle hands fucking down my dude. kyle is always prepared and eager to take the blame 100%. even if it wasn’t his idea or fault or even if he wasn’t involved at all, if taking the blame will help in his eyes in any way shape or form, he’ll do it in a heart beat, martyr in the worst way

31. who’s more likely to do something out of spite?

i wanna say both? they’re both stubborn assholes when they wanna be and if they were really upset about something, i could see them doing something to get back at the other for that reason. 

32. who would be the first to say they hate the other? would they mean it?

kyle but probably not. it’d hurt and he’d probably cave and admit he didn’t mean it and take it back, but he’d probably say it as an attempt to get ivan to distance himself from kyle for whatever reason kyle has to cut ties. or i guess i don’t know if he’d say those words but a part of him might come close trying to draw them out of ivan. it’s easier to break things off if the other person hates you so you can say you’re doing the right thing for everyone. alternatively, him genuinely upset and blurting out that he hates ivan before stopping and backtracking no no i don’t. i could never hate you but i’m not fucking happy with you right now, fuck. 

this is of course ignoring those playful cases where one of them is being super gooey in a teasing way or like being a smart ass or something like that. kyle at least will playfully say shit then, but he does while like, leaning into him or giving him a cheek kiss or some sign to show ‘i’m not serious, i love you, you bastard.’ both know how unsure the other is so if they ever do tease about that, they’re like really really focused on making sure the other knows they’re not serious. 

33. who worries more?

ivan. kyle ‘no worries’ brown. jk, kyle worries too. they’re like tied but ivan a little more. both are so worried about losing the other but again, kyle’s more pessimistic and accepting in the end. if something happens that makes ivan leave him, that’s what’s best for ivan. it is the worst thing ever and will crush his heart, but ivan comes first. other over self and all that. + ivan doesn’t look in any political danger of losing his country, so he’s relatively sure ivan’s okay in that way as well. it’s unlikely kyle would lose his country to put him in danger as well, but ivan can lose kyle in other ways. and like even if he can’t lose kyle via death atm, he still worries about that. he was very on edge when captain attacked kyle even when kyle insisted he’d have been fine. of course, if it were reversed, kyle’d have worried too, but i don’t think quite as bad as ivan? not that he wouldn’t have been worried a fuck ton it’s just like. kyle is a 9.9 and ivan is a 10, you know what i mean? ivan’s concern is some high key shit. 

34. what scent reminds them of the other?

kyle’s scents are probably more earthy, warm earth and the salt of the sea and burnt wood. ivan’s are more cool and crisp, the air after a cold snow and the fresh smell of evergreens in a forest. oh also of course sunflowers yeah? yeah. vodka/beer is tied to them too probably. probably others too but that’s just off the top of the head. 

35. do they have any regrets (regarding the other, or just in general)?

besides standard solo and then nation regrets because boy are there a lot, kyle regrets taking so long to listen to ivan and start dating him seriously and trust him about all this. i have no idea what regrets ivan has about kyle. maybe the same? it’s okay that you needed your time and i’m fine with it but i kinda wish you’d listened to me earlier too. also sometimes they tend to regret gifts if like one of them gets a big thing for the other and the other gets smaller shit. both have had one or two times each where htey were like ‘i fucked up and should have done more’ i think. kyle has at least. 

36. who’s quicker to walk away if a situation gets heated?

ivan probably. i’ve seen him walk away from shit he was mad about like the language thing with gil and kyle. kyle makes heated shit build instead of trying to resolve it. 

37. who is more prone to anger?

both, but it’s different types. kyle is more of the expressive instigatory childish anger while ivan is more the smiley you can’t tell but i’m plotting how to end your life or at least burn a bunch of pictures of you later today in my backyard kind of anger. kyle’s a low key often kind of anger while ivan is more high key but he doesn’t try to keep up the angering shit like kyle does. 

38. who cries more in an argument? do either of them cry?

ivan. kyle tries very hard not to but will sometimes cry. ivan is way more open about hte tears. it doesn’t help that usually arguments set one/both of them in a panic if tehy get bad enough of losing the other as previously mentioned

39. does it take a lot for it to get to the point of yelling?

yeah def but they can deffo do it

40. who sleeps on the couch? can either of them sleep without the other?

they usually don’t stay mad at each other that long. i feel if they were, kyle’d just head out for the night, crash at a friend’s house. again, always ready to distance himself if need be. if he’s still mad enough that they need enough space to not be in teh same room, he’s mad enough that he figures it’ll just be better to just be in separate buildings for the night. kyle’s an extremes guy, all or nothing really. of course before he leaves still tells ivan he’ll be back in the morning, doesn’t want that worry even when mad. if ivan’s mad, kyle’d probably sleep on the couch/in the guest room then I guess unless it was a big enough thing where it’d be easier to stay with a friend until things cooled down. 

41. who’s more likely to protect the other?

ivan but both of them but ivan is more likely to do /anything/ necessary to do so. 

42. if one of them gets injured, who worries more?

again, both but ivan prolly but only slightly. if it’s a big thing, again it’s 9.9 vs 10. kyle worries so much all the time but ivan is just so anxious and !!! about some shit. admittedly with smaller shit, kyle gets injured a lot so like all his friends and fmaily kind of get used to it but ivan still puts a lot of effort into making sure he’s okay. if ivan got a smaller injury, kyle’d try to figure out what he needs but. well. again, with how often kyle deals with injuries on himself, little ones that can heal easily, even on others are chill. he asks if ivan needs pain killer, bandages, something to clean the wound. gets him what he needs but he’s a bit more calm about that. he hates seeing ivan hurt but he knows he’s going to be okay in a little bit and so he tries not ot let it get to him. it’s one of the few things kyle remembers to think logically about since it’s for injuries small enoguh where he doesn’t fly into a panic. one contradiction to this is like mild injuries that are caused by the other. ivan wants to make sure kyle’s okay of course, but he enjoys kyle being in pain to a point so he enjoys it when kyle lets him do things like cut him during sex. kyle knows ivan likes it when kyle hurts him in ways like that during sex, but he feels so guilty knowing he’s the reason ivan’s in pain like this. again, back to the hate-fucking thing, kyle could be about that in the right situations, but he’s not standardly into pain during sex so it takes a lot of reminding himself that this is making ivan happy, that he’s hurting ivan but ivan litearally asked him to and could & would stop him if ivan didn’t want this any longer. it still makes him a little uneasy. he’s happy to do it for ivan but he is definitely not about it.

43. who would be more afraid of the other’s death/harm?

both of them are so afraid of it all the time always. they both know it’s unlikely for the other but it’s still a possibility in very rare ways and the very thought of losing the other like that is so bad. 

44. who ends up yelling first? are they always yelling when arguing, or do neither of them yell at all?

kyle does first, an instinct from some question that pushed a little too hard. if he full on yelled, he’d apologize unless it was a really bad argument, but just like quiet yell probably gets ivan to raise his voice as well

45. who would be more likely to save who?

both of them???? i remember the post was like ‘this doesn’t have to be a romantic ships so i understand some of these questions but they feel so weird for ships like this where they both love and care about each other equally and think a lot a like. 

46. who stays up at night brooding?

kyle but he’s just as likely to brood as to check his phone for the memes

47. who has more dreams/nightmares about the other?

both????

48. who comforts who after a bad dream/event?

both????

49. do they think about each other a lot? does it affect their performance/schoolwork?

yes, and prolly. kyle def, but no more so than anything else. let’s not forget his government started taking his phone from him because he wouldn’t focus in meetings. this fucking child. this fucking adhd-as-hell child. also the times in rp where they each called the other for phone sex at work.

50. if one of them were to come back after a long time, who would come to who? would it go well? would the other person take them back?

ivan’d probably come back immediately. kyle’d be tempted to come back a lot laer on, but he can never go through with it completely. he’ll be on ivan’s doorstep, but can’t knock or ring the bell because he thinks ivan won’t take him back which is bullshit because of course ivan would kyle, cmon, it’s ivan. 

[exploding-emotion]

UGH

21.3.17

So I came out to my parents last week which was huge and thing have been feeling a lot better but last night things went to shit.

I had a meeting to help an organisation I work with and upon showing up I noticed I was one of 3-4 people (12 total) who actually goes and helps out at the events we put on. So what happened when I attempted to address an issue we have out at the event? I got a response that was so crafted as to not disturb what has been going on already that their argument echoed the “boys will be boys” argument we've all heard before. This was the first grief of the meeting. It got worse. I am 18, that being said, these meetings consist of people twice, thrice and there was a person possible quadruple my age that regularly attend these meetings. SO, I do my best to be respectful, understanding that they are older than me and so when they talk, I listen. However, I don't think they view their respect for me the same way. I was constantly being ignored throughout the night and talked over. The only time I had a majorities attention, was when I raised my voice and hit the table. I felt incredibly frustrated and even embarrassed that I needed to completely FORCE myself to the top of the conversation in order for them to pipe down and listen. Makes me wonder how important my assistance and input really is to them and how they really see me.

So, after that infuriating meeting, I went home, hoping to relax and hammer out some homework. HA. Nope. Friend from the past is having issues and taking them on me, I ended up going through a memory box I have and felt like shit after that. I wanted to go through the box so I could pull out things to burn but nope. Just made me feel like shit and stress about other stuff throughout the night. Despite the meeting ending super early, I didn't go to bed toll 12-12:30 or so. When I finally did sleep I had 3 shit dreams.

First dream I had, my family was having a party for some odd reason. I had to help clean, set up, and serve when it came time. So who did my dad decide to invite in this dream? My dickbag ex-bestfriend and a guy I had a thing with on and off who mainly just strung me along and constantly gave me false hope. So in the dream I was anxious and pissed that they were going to show up and when they did shit got worse. They gave me those “that right, you're below me” attitudes/looks throughout the party. In the dream I was thinking “jeez I wanna tell these fuckers off so bad. I could fight them both and probably win” but just like the real me, my dream me doesn't do shit. So for the rest of the dream I served them and bottled up hate. When I woke up I was incredibly pissed and just over anxious and in a stir. It was 2:14. Back to bed maybe 20 min later?

Second dream I can't remember all that well but I get bits and pieces of it where I am laying in a bed. Anyways, I wake up feeling even shittier somehow and guess what? 3:32. Back to bed in 15 min.

Third dream, I am in college and living in an apartment above a library/bookstore. Seems cool right? Except in the dream I am a total fucking loser and have no one to hang out with. Even my own partner in the dream was more interested in someone else and they were in an apartment 2 stories up from me but wanted nothing to do with me. Eventually the library turned into a department store and it was huge. Idk what the significance was but it happened. I woke up and it was 5:15. Back to bed in 30 min just to get up and get ready at 6. 

SCHOOL. Fuck me please. I had a dreadfully boring day and realised how little others socialise with me. I wanted to sleep all the first 2 classes and come 3rd period I got a little pissed by something dumb but oh well. To make matters worse, the sub we had in 3rd was an ultra conservative nut who supports trump 200% and he was full on arguing with a girl about politics and would not let her speak. 4th was alright. lunch I realised how I need to talk to people more. 5th I actually had someone ask if I was okay and try to cheer me up from my bleh mood. 6th I just was done by. I usually am alright with my 6th period class but today I was so aggravated I wanted to fight some people and I wanted to just go home and curl up and yeah. Fuck it. But I bared through the class and after school some kid went to cross the street when he heard the cross walk sound but almost walked into traffic before he realised it was the sound for going across the other direction. He turned around embarrassed and I gave him the “you're stupid” look and he gave back the “yeah I know look”. so after his blunder I decided to put my luck and knowledge to the test by walking into the street when the light is yellow and technically a car could still zoom by. Cuz fuck it and I know what I'm doing. In the end I made it across the street fine, a few people gasped but that happens. Now I am home and bleh. Hoping this helps channel some of this shit.