#i am also not trying to discount anyones insecurities with self shipping

[wriiothesleys]

i don’t know who needs to hear this, but your mutuals, even your friends, don’t have to exist in the same world as you and your f/o if they also self ship with that character.

there doesn’t need to be competition or feeling like they’ll pick your friend over you. your f/o is yours and they exist in your own space separate from someone else’s. it isn’t wrong or mean either to keep people out of your self ship. if you’re having a hard time because someone “shares” your fave, just remember that person doesn’t even exist in your self ship universe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

think of your f/o as a copy, and there’s plenty to go around for everyone to enjoy and love in their own unique and comforting way.

[drawbauchery]

The First Session

(fic by cartoons-tothemoon)

Skipper couldn’t believe he was doing this. He couldn’t believe he was actually doing this.

It had been a few months since he had gotten kidnapped by the odd bird that made him Denmark’s Public Enemy #1, and now, was he really sneaking out for a THERAPY session from the guy? It seemed downright insane of him.

He knew that Rico wasn’t convinced of any of his excuses, but didn’t care enough to question him.

Kowalski was suspicious, but that was only because Skipper never went out for casual reasons. There was always a mission to be had with him, to go out for a night on the town by himself…pretty uncharacteristic to begin with.

And Private seemed to know all his odd tics and tats as is, so lying to the kid never seemed to register as believable, even if all his ducks were in a row to begin with.

Regardless, he was out of the house, and that was all that mattered at this point.

Or so, Hans said.

“What matters is you’re here now.” He said with a smile. “You know, when I suggested it all those months ago, I thought you had forgotten, or disregarded the idea entirely.”

Skipper wasn’t really sure what lead to him being stuck inside a periwinkle room about as big as a walk-in closet, one that was lined with wooden cut-outs of boats it looked like Hans picked out from the craft store, but undeniably, he was there. Physically anyhow.

He didn’t even know what lead him here to begin with, it’s not like he really WANTED to be here. The last thing he’d want to be on a night like tonight was schmoozing with Hans, or any night for that matter. And besides, that was the past. This was now. What was he doing there?

“Well, what can I say, doc.” Skipper said. “I already have an in with a therapist with you AND you work for peanuts. It’s a win-win don’t you think?”

“Consider it a…friends and family discount?”

“So do you consider us friends or family?”

“That depends. What do you consider us? This is all about you, you know.”

Skipper rolled his eyes at that. He wasn’t attending this therapy session actually looking to be HELPED. He just knew that if he took him up on his offer he might get some insight into what was going on with him. Not for his sake, of course, but just so Skipper didn’t have to deal with him all the time. Sometimes, it was easier to concede than it was to fight all of the time.

It was the same reason that he’d sometimes watch those girly cartoons with Private sometimes. It wasn’t because he liked them, it was because Private would pout if SOMEBODY didn’t, and that usually fell on him.

“What’s the difference?”

“I’d say that’s defined by you, but we don’t have to go down this train of thought if you find it uncomfortable.”

“I don’t. You’re just boring about it. Your job is to talk to sad sacks for a living, I’d hope you’d be just a tad better at it.”

“So, are you defining yourself as a ‘sad sack’ under that definition?”

He crossed his arms in defiance and scoffed at such an idea, refusing to look at him. This whole therapy thing was irritating to him. It felt like Hans was getting away easy, only asking questions of him, waiting for him to reveal more and more so he’d have enough info to use against him. Well, loose lips sink ships, and he wasn’t going to talk any more than he was required.

Even if the scribbling pen scratch of “defensive posture” and “erratic eye-contact” in his notes made Skipper’s skin crawl.

“Let’s get back on track, there is a structure to all this after all.” Skipper’s eyes darted back to his, suspicious and squinty to Hans’s relaxed and half-open. “Normally, during first sessions like this, you would introduce what you consider a form of normalcy to me. Your family, childhood, home life, etcetera, etcetera, but I understand that you wouldn’t want to share that with me. I also know that given the basis of your life, your…missions, and whatnot, you probably don’t want to share that information, let alone with me.”

“Huh. So I guess you found yourself in a rock and a hard place, doc.” Skipper couldn’t help but let a smirk crawl onto his face.

“I guess I have.” Hans said, gravely. “Now, there are two ways we could go about this. You could share with me what you’re dealing with, just cut out any details you wouldn’t want me to hear about-“

“-Hard pass.”

“OR, I could give you a psychological profile now based on previous interactions, and what you’ve displayed in here tonight.”

“Displayed in here tonight?” Skipper asked. “We’ve only been at this for 15 minutes. What could you have possibly learned within 15 minutes?”

“Would you like to know?”

Hans knew this was the best way to get through to Skipper. He was a stubborn bird, a strategist, and rather cunning, but he was also rather short-sighted and narrow-minded. Skipper probably wasn’t ever going to see Hans as an emotional outlet for anything, let alone overnight. However, if he framed this competitively, as a tip of “hey, this is what I learned about you, keep this in mind so others don’t learn this about you,” he might concede at the very least. Well, never concede, but compromise.

He liked a lot of these things about Skipper. He couldn’t help but wonder if Skipper liked anything about him, or knew him just as well. He probably knew the answer to that, deep, deep, down, but such is life.

“Let’s start with a foundation for us to work from. You’re neurotic.”

Skipper looked as if he was going to raise his voice and object to that.

“Ah, ah, ah. Let me elaborate.”

Skipper slumped back into his seat, rolling his eyes. He had been doing that a lot tonight.

“You’re known for being a rather neurotic, paranoid individual. You go through life looking over your shoulder, assuming the worst, probably because for most of your life there has been something over your shoulder. That vindicates you, but also leaves you short-sighted in the long-term as the most minor of stresses can lead to fits of anxiety that can carry on from the span of hours to days or even weeks. However, your anxiety manifests as more often aggression or insomnia than the idea most people have of anxiety of rocking back and forth in a ball in the corner, so it generally goes undetected as anxiety in the first place.”

“On some level, it’s likely that you’re paranoia comes from your over-independence, in which you believe that you are the only capable person in the room, which is kinda rich coming from the leader of a team. Sure, you’re able to work off your team’s strengths and you strategize both around and for them, but, when you can work alone, you often do. The team is well aware of your solo missions, and I’m well aware of our time together in Denmark. On some level this comes from your egotism, but I’m guessing even that masks insecurity, but more so, I believe that somebody must’ve let you down in the past, and they, or you, suffered immensely for it. You took it as a lesson. So, to protect others as well as yourself, you act out. When a mission isn’t going your way, you separate. You believe in the idea of strength in numbers, but you also believe you can be that strong alone on some level.”

“How am I doing so far?”

Skipper looked stunned. He wasn’t looking at Hans at all, his arms had long since uncrossed, but now his fingers danced at his sides. He wanted to fidget, to pull at his lip, but the last thing he wanted to do was give Hans more ammo against him.

“If you want me to stop, let me know. Nod your head yes if you want me to stop.”

Skipper hesitated, but shook his head no. A look of derision was sent Hans’s way, but he ignored it.

“Well, then. Let’s continue, shall we?”

“I suppose there’s only so much left to say. I could talk about how often you act outside of the law, thinking that it doesn’t apply to you, but we both know that we’d be calling the kettle black at that point, even if Officer X’s no tolerance policies are so goody-goody they fall into lawlessness. My knowledge of your interpersonal relationships is slim, so trying to characterize them at all would be more assumption than astute knowledge, but I do pick up on the fact that you don’t have many friends outside of the people you’re working with, however, by choice or by circumstance, who’s to say. However, your relationship with Private is fascinating, as you seem to show more open positive feelings or affection with him than anyone else on your team, or anyone else for that matter. Affection is a strong word, but I’m going to use it. You act kinder, more patient with him, and in return, he seems to make you more vulnerable.”

Skipper twitched at that. Must’ve touched a nerve. He’s certain he’s probably touched a lot of nerves, but he’s probably used to at least some of them being poked and prodded. Just not this one. Or perhaps it’s a more sensitive flesh wound? Semantics.

“Again, I don’t know enough to make assumptions.” Hans shrugged passively, back-tracking.

“But let’s move onto what I was able to learn in the first fifteen minutes. You’re not supposed to be here. Or, at the very least, you lied about being here. You were very hasty and fettered, and took you a few moments to relax, even if you still haven’t fully, it’s more than you were when you first arrived. You then proceeded to lash out at me and crack wise, indicating that you were defensive, though this would later be supported by your posture. You’ve given every indication from the moment that you walked through the door that you do not want to be here, everything from belittling my salary to belittling my profession to belittling me. You don’t make eye contact, you don’t sit up straight, you don’t show me so much as an ounce of respect.”

“But, here’s the thing. You still came here. Even if it was only out of curiosity, or just to make fun of me on my own turf, you still came. I’ve been transparent this entire time about what I planned to do if you came here, and that is my job. And you came anyway.”

“I think that means something. I think on some level, you’re self-aware. You know what people think of you, and you know what you think of yourself. Somehow, you must’ve put two and two together, and realized something about yourself that you wanted to change. Or, at the very least, wanted to fix.”

“And so, you came.”

Hans took a sip from his water bottle, and looked to Skipper. He looked tired. He also looked like he wanted to cross his arms again, but worried about what that would say about him. Hans couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt.

“Skipper, I want to help you, and I think you want to be helped as well, but I can only give as much as you yourself give me. If you give me nothing, I’ll have nothing to work with, and this’ll be a waste of both of our time. Speaking of which, looks like our times up.” Hans said, looking to his watch. “You can pay at the front desk, I’ll walk you there.”

Skipper stood. He felt like he was more troubled than when he walked through the door. He didn’t know what he was looking for from therapy, but the last thing he was thinking would happen was for Hans to do his job. Maybe he was hoping he’d just look at him and be like, “wow, you live like this?” and prescribe him some Xanax, and then he’d be on his way. But no.

This was the one time Hans wasn’t going to be easy.

He settled for crossing his arms behind his back, at last. It looked formal, but also gave him a way he could hold himself after having his defenses utterly ripped from him. Hans noted this, but didn’t say anything. Skipper dropped the $35 to the lady behind the desk who seemed far too enamored with her computer to even register the wad of bills being dropped onto her keyboard. The two left the office complex together, something Skipper knew he wouldn’t have done a mere hour before.

The sky was pitch black, and based on the lack of light that usually seemed to crowd their view, it looked like the city that never sleeps finally decided to take a breather. If only for this brief moment as Hans and him looked up at the night sky and Hans pulled a lollipop out of the pocket of his pants.

When Skipper looked at it, seemingly inquisitively, Hans merely remarked, “had to quit smoking some time.”

They stood in silence for a few minutes.

“I wonder what I’m going to say to the boys when I get home.”

“That’s on you, bud. You don’t have to tell them you’re seeing me, but what’s wrong with telling them you’re seeing a shrink in the first place?”

“Save that for the second session, doc.” Skipper elbowed him, smirking. “You’ve already deconstructed my main personality traits, at least let me have this while I can.”

“Does that imply there will be a second session?”

Skipper was still smirking, though the light from his eyes seemed to dim.

“I guess we’ll have to see.” He shrugged. And that was that. Skipper began his covert walk home. There was no goodbye, no “drive safe,” not even a “I’ll get you for this” like they had in the good old days, things just seemed to…end. Hans noticed it, but didn’t take it seriously. Skipper wasn’t that kind of guy, though he wondered how he’d be able to even be in a relationship with the cutesy doe-eyed Private if he couldn’t even vocalize the slightest bit of care to an old friend like himself. He wondered how he even planned on going about such a thing in the first place. He had to, right?

(We had to see the return of therapist Hans sometime, right? I should’ve titled this “Skipper gets psychoanalyzed” or “Skipper gets vibe-checked by his psychiatrist twink ex,” but…why do that when I can just choose A Sentence I Use Within The Text To Really Pull The Piece Together. “…somebody must’ve let you down in the past, and they, or you, suffered immensely for it” was about Manfredi and Johnson!! I hope you guys were able to catch it. Also I’m so sorry, I don’t usually hear the dialogue in the character’s voices when I read it back but imagining all that psychoanalysis in Hans’s voice is so funny I’m sorry.)

(I’ve also been considering making an ao3, just so I can archive a lot of these fics. What do you think?)

[rossumtrinity]

i need to talk to my group member about stuff but i refuse to be the first one to message and try to coordinate bc i ALWAYS am and im sick and tired of it. so im going to write a post talking abt my qualms with m*nimegs and put it under a cut for being i guess “ship critical” and rambly

first i need to state that i’m not necessarily opposed to the like Base Concept of the ship. i think it has potential as an interesting character dynamic which, like, displays different facets of both characters? definitely some fun homotheatric potential, the drama of being attracted to someone’s who’s basically on death row and also Your Mortal Enemy. 

however i am EXTREMELY opposed to the general fanon interpretation of it as like, Gay Married Old Men and also rodimus is their son i guess (ben affleck smoking.jpg). i don’t find it interesting, megan doesn’t have the range, i don’t think it’s realistic, and the whole infantilizing rodimus thing is ANOTHER one of my huge fanon pet peeves but we’re not talking about that today.

also in the interests of “transparency” in my stupid post, mims is one of my big comfort characters and megan is like The discomfort character so seeing them paired up isnt something i relish

like, i definitely think mims would be attached/attracted to megan as an authority figure who pays attention to and validates him but like... very much within that framework. and i think as a person he is like, really desperate for that kind of approval but actually receiving it from megs isn’t like, great for him? in terms of development? if that makes sense. supplanting lack of self-esteem with approval from authority figures instead of actually working out your insecurities ykwim

and on megan’s part he is canonically abusive, and a lot of his behavior patterns and the way he interacts with people make me uncomfortable wrt being reminiscent of an abuser. idk if that makes sense. and i can also definitely see him getting attached/attracted to mims but not... in a very healthy way either. this is not a man who has done genuine self reflection and attempted to work on who he is at the core. he still believes he’s right over other people, he is still honestly very selfish, he pretty regularly discounts the emotions of people around him. he is not the kind of person who uses power given to him in a responsible way. he just like, doesn’t do murders now, or whatever. good for you i guess

not necessarily to say that i think the ship would be inherently abusive, which would honestly be a whole other post, but that i don’t think it would move either of their characters in good directions. like i think they would both enable the other’s worst tendencies.

the common fanon take, in order to make the relationship work, involves flattening out both characters but especially megan because his abrasive shitty self just doesn’t neatly slot into fan-favorite cookie cutter ship dynamics. and when it comes to mims i feel like it really discounts his character arc, even moreso than everyone on the lost light had their character dev shoved aside to make room for megs. and while mims has the range megan as presented by m*nimegs is literally so boring. 

(ofc meg*p isn’t “canon” and the canon idw meg*p relationship is honestly pretty lackluster despite jro’s efforts but i cant help but think it would have a, not very positive influence on a mims/megan relationship)

If I Were to try and pair megan up with anyone in what i think would be a healthy dynamic it would *have* to be someone with the self-confidence to stand up to his shit and call him out and i do NOT think that is mims in the slightest. imo a ‘realistic’ take would be like, a) weird tension but not getting together in the first place because *waves my hands vaguely in their direction* Where Do I Even Start, b) really really messy and awkward breakup resulting in anti-character development. character regression, even. megan’s latest, first post-war divorce. 

[thehollowprince]

My dearest fellow Fillorians...

I would like, if I may, to have a moment of your time.

It has come to my attention that most, if not all, of you don't like the thought of Quentin and Alice together. I have determined this rather obscure tidbit of information after an extensive and thorough investigation, and just a casual browsing of the Alice Quinn tag.

I get it, I do, and please understand that this isn't an attempt to sway anyone to a different ship. This is merely an expression of my disappointment that so many people are hating on a possible relationship and a suggestion at self-examination.

Too often, when I browse the Alice tag, usually looking for some small amount of Alice positivity, I come across these thesis-length metas about why Qualice didn't and won't ever work, usually with words like "toxic" or "dysfunctional" peppered here and there for dramatic effect and to try and use guilt to dissuade others from disagreeing.

As many of you know, like most men, I'm very opinionated, and as such I felt it was my (self-imposed) duty to address this issue and dissect what a lot of you are saying by attacking one ship because many of you think it poses a threat to your own, in this case Queliot.

I'm going to start this off by pointing out that many of you aren't entirely wrong. The relationship between Quentin and Alice in season one was unhealthy, but no one ever wants to address the actual reason they didn't work. Aside from the fact that the whole thing ended because Quentin cheated on Alice (and no, before anyone tries to point out, Alice did not cheat on Q with Penny - their relationship was done by that point) the reason Q and Alice were never going to work falls to one person.

Quentin.

I know no one wants to hear it, or admit to it, but Quentin held Alice to a ridiculously high standard that she could never meet. To be fair, that's part of who Quentin is: his idealism. He wants to see things as vastly better than what they are or could be, probably out of some self-loathing inclination to say to himself that he could do better (I have a lot of thoughts about Quentin and his depression). And I'm not discounting Alice's insecurities and lack of communication in how that relationship ended, but I personally feel that she would have maybe opened up better or sooner if she didn't have to compete with the idea of Alice that Quentin carried in his head.

Just so that we're all on the same page: season one Quentin and Alice were doomed from the start.

But that brings us to today. Alice and Quentin are no longer the naive little fist year magicians. They've been through some shit and come out stronger on the other side. If - and that's a might big IF - they do end up in a relationship again, instead of everyone immediately shitting on it, I would suggest you give it a shot, because these two have learned a lot from their mistakes and could be something pretty epic this time around.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Why did this motherfucker even bring up Queliot if he just wanted to expound the virtues of Qualice?"

That's a valid question.

If we're examining why Quentin and Alice didn't work, we also need to examine the possibility of Quentin and Eliot not working for the same reasons. We have no inclination on whether or not Q will hold El to the same kind of higher standard, basing his feelings entirely all around the memory of them being together for fifty years in the past (not even getting into the erasure of Arielle from that narrative). And the same goes in reverse. We've seen Eliot's self-destructive tendencies and we don't know whether at the slightest bump in the road he might pull another stunt like his speech at Whitspire after they had their memories returned. We simply don't know. That's the beauty of this show, because they throw us curveballs every episode.

It's also important to remember that the characters have a different perspective of everything that's happening. We, as the viewers, have a God's-eye view of the situation. We know that Eliot realizes he fucked up a chance with Quentin and is ready to actually try, which, to be honest, I think would be a beautiful thing if they both went to this with their eyes open. The downside here is that Quentin doesn't know that. Quentin's trying to save Eliot because Eliot's his friend, one of his only friends who he shares a very complicated and complex relationship with.

In the end, we don't know where this story is going to go. The writers love to throw us under the bus in the final act of the season finales and we have no idea which way the wind is going to blow here. I would appreciate it, if instead of just hating on one pairing to give a kind of pseudo-legitimacy to another, we accepted that both relationships have their upsides and downsides. One of the things I loved about this fandom since the beginning, and what we've prided ourselves on until rather recently, is our lack of negativity. I will be the first to admit that in recent months I have contributed my fair share to that rise of negative commentary, and for that I sincerely apologize. I am here, asking you all to put aside the petty ship wars and just be. We all love these characters, and the fandom is big enough, and canon is complicated enough (thanks Jane), to hold multiple ships at once.

So please, before you attack a ship and use such inflammatory and triggering language, just take a step back and think about it for a moment. None of these ships are free of problems, and I know everyone wants to romanticize them because we all want our happy endings, but that's no reason to attack a pairing that others might love and appreciate.