#is it so weird to want a college to serve the function of a college and nothing else?

[chaosorchestrator]

So glad to be done with college. Specifically I'm very glad to not have to engage with classmates anymore. I refused to accept the idea that college classes were a social setting for the entire duration of getting my degree and I stand by that decision, but having to be there meant constantly being ready to evade when it looks like someone might try to stroke up a conversation uninvited.

I only went to learn things and receive certifications to prove I have learned the things. That's literally it. I was not available to be bonded with in any capacity. Covid sucks but at least it meant doing classes remotely so I didn't have to worry about that shit as much. In breakout rooms I would always just claim not to have a working mic and do basically all of the group's work by myself.

I didn't realize I had this much to say about it actually. Seriously though why is it that people feel it's ok to just. randomly start talking to someone who's just waiting for class to start or whatever. I had to wear headphones and pretend I couldn't hear people just to make them stop.

Also this isn't directly related, but at one point I had to stop going to the smoothie place that was right on the edge of campus because the person who worked that shift started to like... recognize me, greet me by name, and sometimes comment on it if I happened to show up at a different time than usual? It creeped me the fuck out honestly i just had to stop going there. Since then I've been told that customer service people are instructed to do things like that for some indecipherable reason? I assume it's neurotypicals being weird again, because why the fuck would you want a customer service person to break script and derail the planned interaction???

[knifedog-machina]

Daemons To Systems, And The Ways They Intertwine

Hey, I’m Max, he/they - I’m the host of our system, the guy who lives in the front and has only ever lived here, the one who identifies our body as my body specifically. A few nights ago, we realized something about our system origins while talking to some other systems, and I’ve honestly never heard of it happening before, so I thought I’d talk about it.

I used to think that I was a singlet before Jude and Gavin walked in. Now I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. See, before I was the host of a system, I was a daemian. I had three daemons, over the course of my time practicing daemonism, interacting with the community. And they were all a little weird.

The first one was Charlie, affectionately longformed as Charlemagne. Xe appeared in January 2018 as a red fox, said that was xir settled form, and never changed from that. That’s an option for daemons - I know other daemons who chose their forms, independent of how well that form represented their daemian, and stayed that way - but it was in contrast to how most people seemed to do it. I never really felt the need to find a form that fit my personality, not when xe was so confident that this was what xe was.

I didn’t try to make xir do anything, I didn’t decide to give xir faux autonomy - xe just did things xirself, with or without my prompting. Xe was playful, optimistic, a cheerful presence always willing to race around and perk me back up. I really needed xir, back then - I was going through a lot of stress in high school, and I needed someone around to remind me of the whimsical little joys in life. Xe fronted sometimes, and I loved when xe did, conjured phantom tail and paws and big fox ears and an unstoppable zest for life.

My next daemon, Martin, appeared in May 2019 after a fever dream. Really. I was sick and tired and miserable, and I didn’t want to do anything, including things that would make me feel better, and a new internal voice appeared in my head. She told me to drink some water and get to sleep. The next morning, she was still there, lounging around as a large black dog, and she stayed.

This became her role, her purpose in our mind, being a shepherd for my needs. She ran our faulty executive functioning, told me to take care of myself when I forgot important things, encouraged me when I failed to meet expectations. She raised her hackles when anyone tried to overstep our boundaries, and advocated for doing what we needed to protect ourselves, regardless of whether it was nice or polite.

Charlie and Martin overlapped in existence for a while. Charlie loved having a big sibling to play with, and Martin was fond of xir. So I had two daemons for a while, and the arrangement was nice. As I transitioned out of high school into college, my circumstances and environment drastically changed. Charlie was sweet, but xe stopped having a function in my life, so over the months, xe popped up less and less, until xe faded away entirely. Xe wasn’t upset to go, and xir memory is a comfort to me - xe served xir purpose, brought me joy, and had a life well lived.

In October 2021, I created a new daemon, compartmentalizing my emotional dysregulation and disordered anxiety into something that was Not Myself, so I could talk to it and understand its needs without being overwhelmed with distress. This became the feral shadow of a dog that we named Cortisol, nicknamed Court - and if Martin was our Freudian superego, who provided guidance for my decisions and stability when I got stressed, Court was our id, feeling all the explosive emotions that I couldn’t externally express and curling up for scritches like a beloved pet when it got what it needed.

We stayed like that for almost a year, getting familiar with the rhythm of life together. Then, in August 2022, my current headmates walked into my brain. My daemons vanished for the duration of their stay.

They only stayed around a few days, that first time - I was moving to a new place and having new people in my brain simultaneously was overloading our mental RAM, so I was forgetting a lot, and I decided that I’d rather live with them some other time. They understood, we said our goodbyes, and they walked out the next morning. (Recounting this to my friend Tanix was hilarious, by the way. “what the fuck (positive)” he said, his own headmates unable to do this. The joys of being a gateway system.) Once the headmates were gone, my daemons returned into my life.

They came back in March 2023, after I settled down into college for a while, and the memory didn’t jam up like it did previously, so we didn’t part ways this time. Martin and Court vanished overnight, again, and looking back on it, I’m noticing some patterns.

Gavin is basically performing the same role that Martin did - he’s the guy reminding us about our responsibilities, talking through the emotions when we feel like garbage, telling me to eat when I forget, or encouraging me to eat when I have enough sensory issues that I can't stomach anything. He consistently fronts when talking to people we don’t especially like, because he feels protective of us and tends to be the most patient with annoyances.

He’s also literally just some guy, just a decent human person who wound up in here because his partner arrived in my brain five minutes before him and understandably got really upset about it, so he followed them in. Somehow. We don't know how it works, but I also don't know exactly where the first two of my daemons came from, so I’m fine leaving it as a mystery.

(He has a lot of complicated feelings about the position he's in, playing a daemon’s role as a completely different person from me, and will probably write his own post about it some time.)

Jude is, unfortunately, kinda in the same role as Court. And since Court held the emotional dysregulation in my brain, Jude also holds the grand majority of the distress and anxiety that we feel on a regular basis. We all really wish it was split more evenly, because Jude tends to not only lose the ability to talk when they panic, they also get stuck in the front, completely unable to talk to me or Gavin.

(It’s not even that they feel the stress that directly affects them, it’s that on top of the stress that we get in our daily life. They regularly had panic attacks over my grades and exams last semester, and they weren’t even the one studying for it at all! It’s fucked up and I don’t love it for us.)

And there are other interesting little coincidences. You know how Court was a sketched-in sort of black dog? Jude only really realized they related to dogs upon arriving in the system with me, and the archetypal form they identify with is, again, a stylized black dog.

It’s really interesting, the ways my brain decided to be plural, because I didn’t think I was a system back then. I had a daemon, then two daemons, and they were daemons because I considered them parts of myself - no matter how autonomous they were, we were bound together in the same identity, as parts of the same person. They were reflections of me, and I loved them like I loved myself, and they loved me with the same ferocity.

With this realization, that my daemons effectively merged into my system, I did have to ask - are my headmates also parts of me, since they’re falling into the same functional compartments in my brain? We don’t think so, or at least, we don’t think it’s that simple. 

They’re completely different people from me, people who arrived here with their own lives and memories and identities. They aren’t autonomous reflections of my psyche like my daemons were. They’re my weird roommates who moved in with me, and my boyfriends, and I guess you could say we’re life partners - because hey, what’s a partner if not someone you share a life with? What’s more intimate than sharing the same body, hearing each other's thoughts and feelings? They aren't parts of me, but we live the same life together, and I think that counts as something just as significant.

[sleepyleftistdemon]

(CW: mental health issues, gender dysphoria, disassociation, suicidal thoughts (and actual suicides), and maybe more)

I've been thinking about putting up my story for Pride Month. I started typing in this whole thing in someone else's post, but I didn't want to hijack it. (Although it was talking about some of the stuff I am putting here.)

Some background:

I was a military brat growing up. That means that I moved around a lot. That means that I didn't have the same groups of people around me, except for my parents and sister. Therefore, nobody could recognize my issues since most people thought it was just the way I was.

I am on the autism spectrum. That means (for this stuff at least) that I don't really do self-reflection well. Add that to the above point and... yeah.

Because I wasn't diagnosed with autism, my parents thought I was weird, weak, and an idiot. Oh they didn't say anything like that, but you could tell that's what they thought. I heard "You're old enough to know better" so many times. But I never caused major issues, so they thought that I would always do what they said.

When I was in single digits (1970s), every time I took a bath I would spend time trying to shove my p*nis back into my body. It didn't belong. So I was already experiencing gender dysphoria even back then.

I was miserable and without a reason I could recognize (not having heard of trans people). "Fortunately" while still in single digits, I found a character on a TV show that knew how to handle negative emotions. The show was "Star Trek", the character was Mr. Spock, and the method was repression.

So I was okay for a while.

In 10th grade, repression turned into (undiagnosed) depression, something else that nobody (including me) recognized. I thought it was perfectly normal to think about suicide when I had homework to do.

(I even remember the assignment that was the last straw. It was to write a romantic scene for English class. I wrote a note on it, telling the teacher I never wanted to see it again. She thought it was about how bad it was. I didn't tell her that it triggered me.)

After high school, I joined the military. It wasn't because I wanted to or anything like that. My parents wanted me to join and, with my depression, I really didn't care what I did.

After serving 4 years, I went to college. I was struggling a bit, so I went to get tested for ADHD at the student health center. (I had read up on it, including how a lot of people with ADHD were mistakenly diagnosed with depression. Ironic, really, because...)

I was diagnosed with disthymia, a chronic, low-grade depression. I got medication (Zoloft) and tried therapy. Since I was repressing and didn't realize it, I got nothing out of therapy, but the Zoloft worked enough for me to function.

Imagine, if you will, a wooden boat with a figurehead (me) on the bow. (Is that the right word? If not, deal with it.) Before the Zoloft, the boat builders put the figurehead almost completely underwater. I would come up for air, but it was difficult. After the Zoloft, it was like the workers moved the figurehead right at the waterline. I would have good and bad times, but they were all still under a cloud of depression.

Speaking of imagining things, do you remember the tiny alien controlling/riding in the robot in the movie "Men In Black"? Another thing that I did (and since I don't know when I started, so I'm just gonna put it here) was I pictured something similar like that for me. Except instead of picturing myself as an alien, I pictured myself as a small piece of dimmed light "no bigger than a flake of dandruff". (And I put those words in quotes because that is the exact wording I used.)

That, BTW, is called disassociation.

I the 2000s I got married to a woman that my parents hated. My parents disowned me because I wouldn't divorce her, thinking it would shock me enough to do what they wanted. Instead I disowned them right back by changing my last name and didn't attempt to contact them again.

My dad died in 2010. I wasn't allowed to go to the funeral. It wasn't until years later that I found out that he probably killed himself due to having early onset dementia.

After that, my mom got into more regular contact with me. She lived until her suicide in 2016. (She had bipolar disorder and I learned later that she had attempted suicide earlier. And that both of my parents cheated on each other during their marriage.) My ex-wife (yes, we did divorce but not because of my parents; she was hooked on opiods and had Borderline Personality Disorder) died the same year.

(I tried to get her (ex-wife) help, but she didn't want to change. After being left at work since she had the car AND finding her passed out on the toilet with drugs she got less than 2 hours before she was supposed to come get me, I had had enough.)

Anyway, that gave me a date where I felt I could commit suicide. I would be able to live a day longer than either of my parents (who I said saw me as weak), thus proving that I am stronger than they were while still not having to deal with my depression forever.

You know what saved me? One of the posts I read here on Tumblr a while back. The original post said that like women who buy fake p*nises, men can buy fake breasts. A reply to that post said that many men who bought those turned out to be trans.

I really didn't think that I was trans. I ordered fake breasts from Amazon and tried them out. They seemed great, but they weren't an actual part of me.

I wrestled with the thought that I might be trans. I asked myself if I was a woman if I'd still want to die. (The answer, BTW, was no.)

It wasn't until 2 months later that I went to a nail salon and got my nails painted that I experienced gender euphoria. Using the figurehead imagery from above, it was like the figurehead was at the top of the bow, riding proudly on the ship. Instead of seeing myself as smaller than the flake of dandruff, I pictured myself as a gingerbread woman inside the shell of a gingerbread man (keep this in mind).

It also reminded me of the single digits me in the bathtub, miserable without the words to say why. Repression sucks.

Since I am a veteran (and since it's cheaper than health insurance), I get my healthcare from the VA. I talked it over with the psychologist (or psychiatrist - whichever one can prescribe medicine). It took a while (mainly to get me comfortable with it) to see an endocrinologist. (Well, first I had to see a therapist to answer questions to make sure I was a good fit. When I brought up the gingerbread visual, she said that many trans people use the gingerbread imagery to help describe what they're feeling.)

So in May of 2024 (last month from when I posted this), I finally started on HRT. And while my depression is starting to creep back in (HRT doesn't work overnight), I realize that I am finally on the right path for me and my happiness.

(Of course, with all of the new transphobic laws and such coming into effect, this is also a stressful path. But it's the only way for me to go.)

I do hope this helps people, whether to know they aren't alone (for people still in their egg) or to help the transphobic people out there to see that trans people are just people, trying their best to get through life as painlessly as possible.

[jeskoholic]

A Little Piece of You Chapter 15: Boy Talk

This is a chapter from an on-going series. If you missed out on the previous entries, you can check my masterlist.

Previous chapter: An Excess of Kwangya

Word count: 4,487

Tags: Male OC, College Jisoo, College Friends, Intercollegiate Romance

Enjoy

---

It was for the collective good that neither Soyeon nor I saw each other after that exchange. Not even the playful strings of fate could bind us together as everything felt really a drought; whereas we never even got to see each other again even if was by a slim chance. Spacing myself from her did help justify the decision before I could even take it back because admittedly, it does take a huge deal of getting used to her absence. Gone were the calls, the periodical nagging, the occasional skinship… I would lie if I would say that I did not miss her to a certain degree. There was a point in our relationship that I enjoyed what had transpired. However, the negatives outweigh too much of the positives for me to even continue on. So far, I have no regrets whatsoever.

It was quite ironic, even for a person such as me, to divert my attention to the flurry of academic works I had going about. Normally I would just let things slide like how they would usually go but  I figured that for a change, I might try to exert some extra effort and see how would that go for the incoming weeks. In my head, it would help me ease the periodical guilt that sprang from Soyeon’s slap. I was either intentionally heading straight home or going to Naevis at a weird time to enjoy myself without the rest of my new found friends.

Still, I remained updated about her thankfully, through United Kwangya; of which most of her updates came from Kyungsoo and Yeri. I also observed that I went back to the more silent, sentinel type of person in the messaging group unlike when Soyeon was still actively participating in it. Somehow, that subtle ‘break-up’ between us both incited a barrier that served the rest selective of their conversations. Replying and reacting to my friends chats suddenly felt awkward; a predicament I never viewed possible considering the presence of Shinwon and Kino…

Maybe even Ningning…

Then again, there are also the conversations that I could not avoid. Shinwon is really a close friend of mine and a classmate on a mutual subject, so the talk was inevitable. I do appreciate how he’s not bringing the topic out with regards to Soyeon, but aside from that we really have nothing else to talk about. I guess it was my fault, considering I was making up shit-stupid reasons just to not go home with him when the issue was at its peak, all because I just wanted to be alone.

I already feel bad for doing that, but I need these little solo-times to make things work on the way they were supposed to. Soon, I will be able to get back on track.

I have full confidence that Shinwon, among others, would understand that best.

The midterms are also starting to knock on the university door, and I figured I would press myself further to see what it would yield. It was a cold and rainy night; I was stuck in the comfort of the four corners of my room with Joohyun-noona running an unofficial night-shift, effectively leaving me alone in charge of the apartment. I didn’t really mind, as the soft noise of the night cityscape coupled with the rain was an immaculate combo for studying.

That night, I had my phone on my desk as I repeatedly memorized the derivatives of certain trigonometric functions, the most used ones at least. I was working on a set of problems that I deem would solve my usual confusion between arcsine x and arc secant x, because in my head they always looked the same especially at first glance.

BZZZT

 My phone lit up in response to a newly received message. At first, I initially thought that it was either the United Kwangya messaging group or at least one of the members… then I had a hint that might be Jeon Soyeon, finally deciding to message me directly after that…

I honestly hesitated for a bit before I decided to open it nonetheless.

Well, I was half-right. The message was indeed from a United Kwangya member, just not someone I would immediately think of in this time of the evening.

Kim Hyojong: Yo, Jae-in, it’s been a while! Are you there man? Are you online?

Of course, there was not even a second’s hesitation especially when it came from Dawn. I don’t know what has gotten into him that he suddenly wants a conversation, but a talk from a good friend is certainly something I could not ignore even in this situation.

Right… If there was one person that I could relate to in some degree… it would be him. We’re both not in the active circle of United Kwangya, not the ones who go out every week anyway… plus, he’s not studying at NLIU either so I guess he’s someone I can talk to when I’m in a sump with the rest of them.

With that, I decided to place a mental note on the problems I have yet to solve and brought my phone up to reply.

Jae-in: Hey, man! What’s up? What’s with the sudden private message?

Dawn: Well, I’ll just ask if you happen to be free tomorrow evening, right after your class. Let’s head for a stroll at Metro Station for a change?

This dude has got something to tell me. He’s got to be sandbagging on something otherwise he would not have messaged me in this form. I could literally hear him through the screen. I’m willing to bet on it.

Jae-in: Yeah, sure… I really don’t have anything else planned after tomorrow’s classes. Oh, but it’s the class I share with Shinwon. Do you mind if I tag him along?

Dawn: That’s very convenient then! I was just about to ask him the same thing. Go ahead and ask him if he’s up to it, but I would appreciate it if you limit it between the three of us.

Jae-in: Why…? What’s going on? Did you suddenly commit murder or something? Do you need help hiding the body?

Dawn: Hahaha hell no, brother. This is something serious. I figured I want to ask your opinions on things, and Shinwon’s inclusion is a damn good addition. I hope he goes as well.

What is this dude up to?

Oh wait…

Jae-in: This is about a girl now, isn’t it?

Dawn: Hey, I’m going to save things for tomorrow so we can enjoy it between a cup of tea or cola or something. No alcohol and I insist. At least we have something to talk about. Don’t forget to message me tomorrow, okay?

Jae-in: Alright then. Save the best for last, I guess? Lmao

Look at this idiot…

This is most definitely for a girl.

Hyojong has always been quite the ladies’ man ever since. I would not be surprised if that was the case.

I could almost envy his enthusiasm to finding the right girl.

Let’s see where this goes. If it works out then at least I should take notes from him, I guess.

---THE FOLLOWING DAY---

In lieu of recent events with regards to the other side of the group chat, it would stand to reason that Jae-in’s enthusiasm to meet Dawn was largely anchored to his curiosity more than anything else. His sudden appearance in the middle of all the chaos of United Kwangya offered a fresh set of perspective to divert him from the lingering guilt of Soyeon. It was already established in his head that Dawn, being a person enrolled on a completely different university than all of them, had a different approach with regards to people. He was the most ‘friendly’ amidst most of them, so Jae-in found the situation to not be really much as a surprise. What he found as a surprise though, was Dawn going all the way of asking them out for their opinion. He cannot immediately think what else Dawn would ask him for because normally his friend would take care of things himself.

Given the conversation Ko Shinwon and Yoon Jae-in shared on their first subject earlier that day, it was mutually agreed that Dawn was planning to ask another girl out. He was to what Jae-in would always tease him, the more ‘tamed’ and toned-down version of Hongseok as he really craves more on flirty conversations than skinship and sex.

Hours passed and eventually the afternoon fell. Jae-in and Shinwon took the long route, exiting through the university hospital to meet with Dawn along the way and ultimately settling to meet on a convenience store near his college. Similar to North Light, strands of people started to walk out of its premises with the only reason being the hourly dismissals.

Jae-in and Shinwon treaded towards the tall buildings of the spread university campus, still engaged in a conversation with regards to their drafting subject. That was when he showed up; the man of the hour Kim Hyojong. He was walking towards their direction, a soft black beanie concealing the rest of his blonde hair while he supplied both of his friends with a wide smile. As he waved his hands in greeting, Jae-in was able to notice the can of soda he held, including the two others lodged on his other arm with his sling bag’s strap lay dangling on his back.

“Hey!” Hyojong said with utmost enthusiasm as soon as he approached the two. As per usual, he gave them mutual fist bumps even with the sodas and joined them on their walk. “I went to pull my luck and hope that I bump into the two of you. The convenience store is so jam-packed with med students racking in some coffee for the night classes so I had to settle for a little take-out.”

“Well, going way up here was a good call then. Jae-in and I were about to stay at the internet café just to chill and wait, so it was better that we walked up here,” Shinwon added.

“I agree,” Jae-in said. “Had we agreed to stay there and things did not turn out the way we thought they would, you’re going to walk all around just to get to NLIU’s main gate. It’s crazy when you think how large of a space the university actually occupies.”

“You would have been tired the moment you arrive at the shop,” said Shinwon in agreement. “Well, let’s just cut to the fucking chase… to what do we owe the pleasure, Kim Hyojong? This entire ordeal seemed pretty serious considering you’re pretty much MIA most of the time. This is such a huge development. Kino would flip if he hears this.”

Dawn smirked. “I can’t help it. I figured I had to tell it to someone. However, this is not the place to talk. You guys okay walking all the way to Metro Station?”

“Of course, I mean look who you’re talking to. We literally have Jae-in with us.”

“As for the time,” Jae-in added, nodding. “We have all night. Go ahead and we’ll listen.”

“Damn, you guys are as reliable as ever; well except for the one time you misdirected me on Yeouido, Shinwon. I’m never forgetting that.”

“Hey!”

“Anyway, let’s head on. We have a shit ton to talk about.”

---

“Okay, we’re here embracing the beauty of the city’s best malls while we tread its premises… so could you please just cut it with the suspense and tell us what the hell is going on?” Jae-in said with an obvious tone of sarcasm, wedging himself between the two figures of his friends.

“Fine then, I think I’ve stalled long enough,” Dawn began as that time he swapped positions with Jae-in and became the one wedged between them. “So, for starters, I think it was already a given fact that your boy Dawn talks to a lot of girls, right?”

“Oh really, you do? Can you please tell us something that we don’t know yet?” teased Shinwon.

“Hey, I’m being serious, man! I’m trying to intro this in the smoothest way possible!”

“Okay, okay, so… let me guess… you found a girl amongst all the ocean of people you’re talking to, and hoping to hop to the next level of that talk you asked Jae-in and me for help. How does that sound?”

“That feels way too accurate of a guess,” said the other friend, Jae-in from the other side of the trio. “I think that you just hit him spot-on.”

“It does feel like a suspicious guess, but nevertheless accurate. It does sound bad when you put it up that way, though,” Dawn replied with a smirk and transferring his gaze towards Shinwon’s grimace.

“Isn’t it bad, though? I mean, you don’t usually end up doing that no matter how serious it gets,” teased Jae-in. “What made this any different from the past ones, hmmm?”

Kim Hyojong hesitated for a bit, cleared his throat, and then proceeded to talk with a clearly retreated tone.

“I… I happen to stumble upon a girl… Nayeon…  when I was sending people tons of messages… it went down initially as a random conversation here and there and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her because she replies so quickly…  it eventually evolved to our ideal types and of course I had to spill mine to her.”

“Ah-huh…. And….?”

“Well, apparently this girl I was talking about introduced me to someone she thought would be suitable for me and that is judging by all the conversations we had prior to that arrangement. She organized a lunch date for the three of us a couple of days ago, and there I finally met the woman that I wanted to talk about.”

Three…?

There’s more than one girl this guy’s talking to?

“Wait, hold up,” Shinwon interfered. “I’m confused… so this person that you initially talk to was not the same girl you’re intending to ask out, but rather her friend?”

“That’s what I am trying to explain man… listen carefully because it is very complicated.”

“I mean, my expectations were low but holy fuck.”

 “Anyway, so I was successful on talking to this friend of hers and I was thoroughly interested on where our conversation would lead, but then she eventually posted a photo on her story with a couple of her other friends and damn I was so stunned with one of her friends bro. She looked so amazing. I knew when I first saw her I’m immediately hooked.”

“What the hell?” Jae-in replied as he stifled a laugh. “I thought you were already talking to this Nayeon girl? How come that it was her friend that you’ve suddenly developed interest on? Is it really that complicated? You just took a 90 degree turn out of her way!”

“Hey, in my defence, I was just talking to Nayeon because she looked like a fun person to talk to, and I was right! Turns out Nayeon and I had a lot of things in common that we’re easily getting along, so when I asked the name of the pretty person on her story she immediately went off and arranged a date for us to meet without an ounce of hesitation. It was just the very first day and yet I’m already mesmerized with her. Damn man, she’s so breathtakingly beautiful.  I learned that her name was Kim Jisoo, which I thought was as pretty as her face could ever be.”

Jae-in silently placed his palm over his forehead while laughing to himself, along with Shinwon fighting his urge to do the same.

Hyojong was definitely something else.

“So, have you gone already and talked to her or at least add her profile?” asked Shinwon. “That way you could at least talk to her directly and not pushing things through with this Nayeon… I mean, this Jisoo girl might think that you’re into her friend and not her.”

“Well, no… Not yet. Of course I wanted to jump right into it and talk to her almost immediately, but my conversation with her friend, Nayeon, stopped me. She said that Jisoo was the type of person who always trusted her first impression on someone that adds her on social media. With that, I checked my wall and realized all the bullshit I’ve been sharing for the past few weeks and they were really embarrassing. Good thing Nayeon told me about the whole first impression thing and I’ve got time to evaluate my profile for it to be interesting for her, but with its current setting I’m pretty sure I got a lot of things to work on first.”

Jae-in knit his eyebrows.

“Didn’t it occur to you that maybe this Jisoo has already taken a peek on your profile by now? You two have literally met, and even if you say that you’re talking through Nayeon, it’s almost impossible to believe that she didn’t even get curious with what you’ve got in store. I’m sure at some point she’s taken a peek to it.”

“I placed a quick remedy for that and temporarily hid all my posts,” Dawn said nonchalant, earning a look of surprise from Jae-in’s end. “I made things as private as I could, and thankfully Nayeon was quick enough to understand why I did that.”

“Wouldn’t that make Jisoo’s impression worse if she sees? That would appear so suspicious; it’s as if you’re trying to hide something… in this case you are, but you know what I mean.”

I honestly don’t see the point why Dawn had to go onto such huge lengths. Maybe there’s something in that first impression that he really values, or an essential element that I’m morbidly lacking.

Until I know what that is, I still feel like this entire overhaul is so unnecessary.

“It might, but the way I look at it… I’d rather delay it for a short while than let her see it the way it is now. In the small chance that she’s not paying attention, then there’s my lucky strike. I’ll be able to change everything before she could even see how crazy I was.”

Shinwon turned a gaze towards Jae-in of which the latter was quick to return. Their eyes met for a brief moment yet they already spoke a ton, perhaps including how they would try to help Hyojong in his problem. Good thing, Shinwon was quite the quick thinker and decided to head on to the route that Dawn was probably trying to steer the conversation into.

“You know what…? I think Jae-in and I could relate to you better if you show us what she looks like. At least then we can see if she’s worthy of our approval, right Jae-in?”

“H-huh…? Sure… I guess…?”

“One sec,” replied Dawn in quick fashion as he immediately fished his phone from his pocket, in turn directing the three of them to seat at the nearby bench within the mall. Seconds later, he flashed a photo of two ladies smiling towards the camera, proceeding to hand his phone over to Shinwon for him to see further. “There. Jisoo is the one on the left and Nayeon��s on the right.”

Shinwon eyed the picture carefully, and then his eyes widened.

“HOLY SHIT, THIS IS THE GIRL YOU’RE TALKING TO?!” he exclaimed, pointing towards the photograph. “Holy shit man, she looks like a goddamn model! You’re so fucking lucky!”

“Dude, that’s Nayeon you’re pointing at.”

Shinwon shifted his finger towards the other girl.

“She is so beautiful!”

Dawn emitted a soft chuckle.

“I get it, they’re both pretty so I get why you’re confused. It was just Nayeon’s idea to bring us together because she felt that we’re… compatible, I guess.”

“Here, take a look Jae-in,” Shinwon said as he handed the phone over.

With that, Jae-in held the phone with the two ladies pictured perfectly. Sure enough, there was no denying that they’re really pretty, and even that felt like an understatement to him. However, perhaps his subsequent fallout with Soyeon caused him to be really disinterested in anything romantic, even down to the smallest details of praising a person’s visuals. He could see why Dawn would take a liking into her, it’s just he could not give his honest opinions about her. He really could not care less.

“She’s pretty,” he concluded, sufficing a smile while returning Dawn his phone. “I can see why you’re interested on her. He looks exactly like you’re type. I approve… I guess.”

“It’s decided then; you get both of our approval,” said Shinwon. “Now, tell us of this plan of yours.”

Dawn straightened his back and sighed, trying to gain confidence.

“Thanks to Nayeon, we know that she likes a good impression. With that, I want to overhaul everything in my profile, man. The picture, the cover, the bio, even the clothes, and anything else I could change to improve a good impression towards her. I want her to get an impression that I’m this chill, reserved yet humorous dude just by looking at the photo. That’s how I want to present myself to her so that she could approach me easily even through messaging.”

Shinwon choked and coughed while Jae-in wide-eyed his statement.

“Damn I didn’t expect it to be that far,” said Jae-in. “You’re re-doing everything from the bottom to the top.”

“I mean, come on man; when was the last time that I’ve been this much of a simp for a girl, hmm? You’ve seen her; you’ve seen how good looking she is. I want to at least match that. I promise you, once this works out, it would be really worth.”

“So where do we come in?”

“Ah, I need your skills and your knowledge. Do you know someone who has knowledge on photography? It’ll be better if it’s someone we know closely. I don’t know if there’s anyone at the United Kangaroo or whatever, who’s into this kinds of things, but I just want things to be perfect in her eyes and I want to look as best as I possibly could get. I need a good photographer, and I’m speaking here because I’m willing to pay the price for it.”

Jae-in suddenly remembered something.

 “Hey what’s wrong with this huh?” Shinwon smirked as he pointed towards Dawn’s current fit. “You’re pretty okay with your current setting man, why don’t you just jump into it right away? You don’t need to re-do everything just… just tweak a couple here and there, maybe?”

“I feel like if I do it this time, I’m not going to achieve anything of the sort and I think I could things better. You know, it should start of as booming as it could be so she could get immediately overwhelmed with how carefully planned my profile was. With that, she’ll be more interested on knowing me and hopefully it could be the ground to start things off, harvesting the seeds I planted from the date and from our future conversations.”

“Well I think you can get those things even if you stay true to yourself. Let me use myself as an example; I barely even give some thought into what I’m wearing every day and it’s my confidence that’s bringing me to the next level. I don’t think you really need to go this far, Hyojong, and risk exhausting yourself for nothing. “

“I told you man… I might end up regretting not doing it the moment that it does not work out. Think about it; if I manage to give a good impression with Jisoo then that’s the best case scenario, right? If, however that that is not the case (which I do hope not), then at least I have my profile set up good. It’s just… I can’t explain it. I just want to look presentable because I trust Nayeon’s advice. She might be someone that I would pursue in the long run, you know.”

“Yeah, what I’m trying to say is you can just head on off and—“

“Shinwon,” Jae-in interrupted right as Shinwon was starting to make gestures in the air in front of him. “I feel like we should just leave Hyojong be, you know. I think he’s pretty much decided already anyway. Sure, maybe you and I could not immediately see why he’s doing this, but maybe there’s something going on with his convo with Nayeon and Jisoo that is making him motivated to do this.”

“You’re definitely correct, Jae-in. There’s just something that I can’t explain, making me push through with all of these. You’ll know when you’re in the situation,” nodded Dawn in agreement.

“Also, at least if Dawn fails this entire thing does not work out for him then we know that his profile is already set for the next agenda of flirting, right?”

“Yah”

“Anyway, my point is that… let’s just help him out Shinwon. Trying to get around the bush and forcing this off would just be fruitless and dumb. I say we let him do it and see what comes out from it, right?”

I do wish this works out for him, though.

“Okay then, fine. Then the first thing we should think of is the photographer. Do you guys know anyone reliable for photography?” asked Shinwon.

“Hey, Kino does that part-time, right? Why don’t we ask him?” Dawn said, his eyes widening upon realization. Jae-in, however, shrugged his shoulders in response.

“I don’t know about that one. The fact that Kino does photography is pretty much already given in United Kwangya, but most of the time he’s really lazy. If he’s not on the mood to do it, his natural skills won’t surface even if you force him by bribing a lunch or something. If you like, I think I know someone who could help you, I just don’t know how I’m going to talk them into this…”

“Wait, you’re being serious? You know someone aside from Kino? Are you sure you can ask them for a favour? Are they professionals at this?”

“Well, not exactly, Dawn, but I think it could get the job done. Just let me worry about how I would convince them to do it.”

“Oh right,” Shinwon’s voice suddenly added to the fray, but before Jae-in could even hear the rest of his statement, his mind began to space out.

And there, just as Shinwon and Hyojong were debating whether it was a good idea to ask United Kwangya’s resident ladies’ man, Hongseok, Jae-in immediately opted himself off of the conversation. He turned his attention towards his phone’s blacked screen; his mind generating thousands of explanations on how to even convince a small favour from Ning Yizhuo from that evening, especially on an oddly timed circumstance directed to his friend instead of himself.

---

Next Chapter: A Coffee Date

[radio-ghost-cooks]

Hi beastie! Hope you like ask game spam :P

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans?

5. do you prefer to drink soda from soda cans, soda bottles, plastic cups or glass cups?

12. name of your favorite playlist?

13. lanyard or key ring?

17. most frequently worn pair of shoes?

19. sleeping position?

21. obsession from childhood?

23. strange habits?

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather?

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

43. hoodie, leather jacket, cardigan, jean jacket or bomber jacket?

56. favorite tradition?

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)?

OMGS IM THE BEASTIE!!!!! I LOVE BEING A BEASTIE

okay okay (1) coffee mugs :] they r so goofy sometimes. i saw one patterned with dicks and i want it so bad

(5) when i can get my hands on it the answer is glass bottles but since they're kinda rare where i live i normally go for the can

(12) "oh gods im going to college"

(13) keyring. i've essetially created a flogging whip out of keychains atp 💀

(17) all black low rise vans. skate shoes my beloveds

(19) i always fall asleep easiest curled up on my left side but i normally wake up starfished on the bed

(21) tie between Ever After High and Wild Kratts. baby i own the fucking Wild Kratts MOVIE

(23) i have a pretty bad picking stim and the skin between my fingers is basically fucking gone 💀 and i have to move around for my brain to function when i'm fixating on something so i sway in place a lot

(27) stay indoors. make cocoa or chai. i can't do the cold (<- is from ny)

(40) random waves of clapping sweeping through the cafeteria. also that time i made friends with the school weed dealer. Musky wherever you are i hope ur doing well

(43) nostalgia says bomber but heart says hoodie

(56) making oliebollen every new year's morning :]

(76) i'm about to sound like the spiderman collab poptarts guy but. the sour cream and onion spiralized potato they served at Universal Mardi Gras last year in Orlando. it was like one massive curly fry withour the weird batter

[mikuni14]

Be My Favorite Ep 5

Another great episode full of excellent, engaging conversations, very good scenes, well-run plot, sticking to the timeline, logical development and character growth.

To me, this series is perfect, I enjoy every minute of this show, I literally have no complaints about Be My Favorite. 😲

Kawi is a perfect character in how human, ordinary, and very unusual ML for BL  series he is.  I’ve seen some complaints about Kawi, but actually these complaints are what make me adore him. For me, the fact that he's so different from the regular BL drama lead, has no outstanding qualities, and isn't funny, cute and dorky, making up for what he lacks in character (which happens a lot in BL shows), that he makes mistakes and does stupid things is very refreshing. One could say Kawi is basically a loser, he's shy and gullible to the point of being annoying, he's extremely awkward and he struggles with reading the room and people intentions, with being social. He's practically blind to reality and tends to make fake, but always depressing scenarios in his head. He often blames external factors for his failures. But what is amazing is his hidden courage, a desperate need to correct his mistakes, his ability to look at himself critically, to admit that he was wrong, the ability to change, develop and grow. Kawi is one of the few BL characters to get a real, and I mean real transformation, and right now, in episode 5 he’s already a different, more mature person than he was in episode 1. 🥰

So is Pisaeng: what an interesting dude he is! 😍 At first, I kind of expected him to be the typical seme type guy: handsome, rich, perfect in every way, handling his problems and his life in a calm and efficient way. And would you look at that! Pisaeng is also a mess, also going through internal turbulences :D, self-discovery and not handling his life and the plushie machine perfectly. 🤘 He’s often angry, but he doesn't know how to let his anger out because he doesn't want to hurt anyone and tends to hide his emotions. He’s also lonely and has no one to talk to about his problems. He wants to have friends. It was absolutely wonderful and innovative for him to have his journey about his sexuality privately, without Kawi's presence, although he was the trigger. His scene with Max, their conversation, the dynamic, Max lashing out and apologizing... I love it so much. And of course I ship them, well, I'm just a simple minded person with simple needs (I think I died a little watching Pisaeng gather his strength, bracing himself to confess🥺🥺🥺)

What I love about this drama is that Kawi and Pisaeng are so ordinary, so normal. They are kind and have good hearts, but they can also be aggressive and capable of being cruel. They talk to each other surprisingly honestly, sharing their private thoughts and problems, but they also fight with each other and drive each other crazy. There is no fakeness, weirdness, inconsistency in their behavior, their dialogues and scenes WERE CLEARLY NOT WRITTEN FOR A ROMANCE BUT FOR THEIR CHARACTERS. This almost NEVER happens in BL series. AND I LOVE IT.

The series in its innovation doesn’t stop there. It serves us very beautiful confessions of love, and equally beautiful scenes of rejection. Pisaeng, Kawi and Pearmai act more grown-up than most overdramatic older characters from other BL series. Also, they show a lot of real life situations, like Kawi with his type of character unable to break through with his art, how fear, shyness and the belief that no one will want to listen to him anyway are paralyzing and preventing normal functioning.

It's interesting how Kawi's personality, upbringing, learned habits and self-instilled limitations made him never really give ANYONE a chance, although the world was full of chances for him. People from his college wanted to be friends with him many times, from the first day, seniors wanted to listen to him and were enthusiastic about him. And Kawi finally understood it - because he wanted to understand it - and he's working on himself.  Now he gets a chance to be a singer, which I'm sure he would have turned down a while ago. Not to mention his peaceful acceptance of Pisaeng's confession, which he feared so much.  I also like the fact that Kawi is no longer afraid to draw strength and inspiration from friends who offer him their support willingly and selflessly.

And one more thing: the series can "sell" good one-liners, and the life wisdom stuff in a natural way, without moralizing and sounding pretentious.

I can't stop gushing about this show, I just love it so much 💖💖💖💖💖

[thedawningofthehour]

I’ve finally finished the chapter!!! :) now I can ask about it.

I don’t know about you but I despise sandels. I would wack him upside the head too. They’re uncomfortable and make weird noises on the floor. They’re just really weird to me I guess. So I appreciate Hueso.

I don’t know if she’s been talked about before in the fic but I assume the girl is Kendra. She always seemed to have a lollipop of some sort on her. I miss watching her and Donnies fights in the show. They were always really funny.

I speak from experience when I say that this ^ is one of the most accurate descriptions I have ever read. When something traumatic happens people brains have a really cool function of forget, ignore/deactualize (is that a word?) or break down. From personal experience I understand the “I know this is really bad but it’s bad to the point of my brain giving up comprehending it and it simply doesn’t compute as anything worth my attention.” I don’t remember from my psych class last year what the name of it is, but I know theres a psychological name for it.

If this is going where I hope it’s going, i’m really excited! Gale isn’t the type of person to see something like that and leave it be. So i’m excited to see what he does with the info.

This made me want to cry. Thats all.

Love your work! Have a great day/evening/night. Can’t wait for the next update :)

Oh yeah, they are loud. I wasn't even really thinking about it from that direction, but Leo would absolutely be the dumb bitch who wore flipflops to a stealth mission.

Soup made a comment about him wearing socks with sandals and like-to confirm, Leo has the fashion sense of a dead shrimp and would totally wear socks with sandals. Both because he's just that bad at being gay and also to annoy Donnie. But in this particular instance Hueso wanted to make sure he was wearing good walking shoes so his feet wouldn't be sore at the end of the day. (and he's not going barefoot because wtf they're probably immune to HIV but don't go tempting fate here)

I actually very much prefer sandals. I went to college way up north and I would take my trash out in flipflops when it was like -30 out. (I was also very stupid, so don't do this)(not that you can, it doesn't get that cold anymore)

Anita's a Yokai, so no her granddaughter is not Kendra. The Purple Dragons will have another cameo (maybe get a mention in the recovery arc, we'll see) but since everything else has ballooned we just haven't gotten to them.

Which is honestly really funny to me, because Kendra clearly considers herself very important and probably makes the 'Othello Von Ryan's ARCH ENEMY' thing a point of pride. Meanwhile Donnie straight-up doesn't remember her and his brothers are like

A lot of what Leo does is disassociate and compartmentalize, so he's very, very good at going "I know this is objectively horrific, but it also looks kind of sick. I kinda want to poke it with a stick."

Which is a very real and valid trauma response! Not everyone responds to shit the same way. For some people, turning off the 'holy shit' part of their brain or making light of it, that's literally their way of trying to process the thing. And it has its uses. It probably served Leo very well during the Krang war, when things went to shit and he was able to stay rational while everyone around him was panicking.

The problem being, of course, that Leo never unpacks that compartment and just lets it fester. So it just gets worse and worse until something finally rips it all free.

I think this was the first real Cass-Gale fight? Besides little arguments and teasings. I mean, they're siblings, and they're under a ton of stress right now. They're both ready to crack.

I considered having Cass storm off and ending it there, but I didn't really like that. Gale knows that he isn't really mad at Cass, and Cass knows that Gale was lashing out. They're both socially stupid but they know each other. At the end of the day, they'll always have each other's back.

[lastweeksshirttonight]

Hey uh remember when I did retrospectives of Last Week Tonight episodes? Let's bring it back to 140.

Last Lee Tonight (wherein I'm definitely showing United Passions at my next bad movie night) Season One, Episode Six

(original air date: 6/8/2014) Major topics covered: FIFA, Bashar al-Assad's incredible iTunes library

"And speaking of Germans losing things, it was the 70th anniversary of D-Day this week."

It's really nice to throw this show back on again, on a note unrelated to the purpose of this project. I don't talk much about myself but it's been a rough few months with work scheduling, my chronic illnesses, and my mental health. For every "I'm taking a very spontaneous and ill-thought-out trip to New York to see John Oliver WOOO!" moment, there's been at least five "why can't I catch a break"s. When I'm not being beaten down by the collective forces of capitalism, I genuinely haven't been watching much John at all, mainly in an effort to play the large backlog of video games and read the large pile of books lying around my house. I've been moderately successful there (hey y'all should give Cassette Beasts a go, it's delightful), but there's nothing like going back home, so to speak. (I hesitate to call LWT a comfort show for me, given that it's basically A Record of the Decline of the United States in Real Time, but it kinda serves that function to some degree. I am a psychopath.)

Where we last left off in... May, Jesus Christ, I'm so bad at scheduling and writing and content creation - when we last left off in May at Episode 5, things were finally starting to coalesce into the modern LWT experience. We had our first viral segment on Net Neutrality, the first time a segment was uploaded in full to the LWT YouTube, and an opening news roundup that was starting to feel more thoughtful and themed. This episode continues that theme and gives us our second big viral topic.

There is a variant on the desk-slapping here, where John doesn't do it to open the show, but does a milder version of it to get the audience to shut up so he can move on with doing the show. One of my favorite things about him is his constant desire to barrel through clapping or any audience praise of anything he's done at a given moment in time and this opener is a pretty good example of that.

We open on John calling the week disappointing because California Chrome, a horse competing for the Triple Crown, did not win the Triple Crown. You can tell this is an early episode of LWT because there is no prerequisite horse-fucking/bestiality joke, just John angrily saying "fuck that horse" about Tonalist, the horse that defeated California Chrome. All of these horses sound like indie bands from my college years. I feel like Tonalist opened when I saw MGMT live.

We then move into German Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. This gives John an opportunity to plumb one of his favorite comedic depths, making fun of the musicality, smoothness, and romanticism of the German language. A German man used his lifeline to call Chancellor Merkle, who, thankfully, did not answer, as she was busy running Germany.

This transitions into China hiding the events of Tiananmen Square from their populace, including by censoring the Internet.

Attempts by protestors to use different trending words - and to put facts about Tiananmen Square in a sex tape - to get around that were also clamped down on, leading to this absolutely glorious screenshot of John's hypothetical romance novel:

I feel like someone on Reddit probably wrote When Spring Turns to Summer recently.

We also learn that Friends is incredibly popular with Chinese youth. I'm not really shocked by this, Friends has a weird international reach. I know multiple Korean idols who learned English partially through watching Friends. The fact that there's a Chinese replica of Central Perk? That's wild. The show edits a Friends clip to include historical facts about the massacre, and then we move to our central story.

I'm a big fan of whenever John talks about FIFA and football in general. Recently in one of her "posts relevant to my interests", @tellthemeerkatsitsfine noted that there's a strain with John and his contemporaries with them being nerds who really wanted to be jocks, and I think that dichotomy really helps John come off credibly when he talks about the deep-rooted corruption in this particular organization. The sport is something that is literally rooted into him, hardwired as something he deeply cares about... but there's the rest of it to consider.

In my opinion, someone who deeply loves something can really be the best at describing everything wrong with it. You don't really find the grime if you're only on the surface of something. I know that critical observation of a fandom while in said fandom is in short supply these days, but I wish it was more common.

Anyways. I think FIFA's corruption and grotesqueries are pretty known in 2023, but at the time, knowledge of their fuckery wasn't as widespread. Socially, we've definitely spoken a lot more about the cost-benefit analysis of the Olympics and taxpayer-funded stadiums, which is comparative to John's opening about the issues with FIFA and claims that World Cups bring money to the areas hosting them. (Not true!) Other items I'd completely forgotten about, like FIFA Court and their boardroom looking like something out of Dr. Strangelove.

The "And Now This" is "Chris Matthews Reminds Everyone Who He Used to Work For". (Answer: Tip O'Neill.) My abiding memory of Chris Matthews is Zell Miller accusing him of beating a woman and challenging him to a duel at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

SNL had a pretty great sketch of this where Will Forte played Miller that I can't find right now. PISTOLS AT DAAAAAAAAWN MATTHEWS!!!!

The final segment is on Bashar al-Assad's campaign of terror against Syria, rigged electioneering, and chemical warfare. More importantly, al-Assad's life history and iTunes library are discussed.

This was also the subject of the classic Bugle episode 187, which has a chance to go far more in depth about his favorite music, like "Sexy and I Know It". (Andy Zaltzman describing Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes as a doubles tennis group is one of my favorite Bugle moments of all time incidentally.)

Right Said Fred coming out to perform an anti-Assad version of "I'm Too Sexy" gives us the first time John has had a celebrity come out basically to troll one single person, and thus almost the cornerstones of modern LWT have been established. Eagerly awaiting the first bestiality joke. Also, really love the changed lyrics, they put a hell of a lot of effort into this one. I wanna see Right Said Fred live now.

Random notes:

Lee will continue sexualizing one (1) older man damn it: light blue and dark blue checked shirt, black tie, and black jacket? I know I've said red is John's color but light blue is a very close second, 10/10

I feel like I made up for not doing these for two months by writing about five year's worth of unnecessary analysis of this damn episode. Hopefully you enjoyed it!

It was amazing seeing an ESPN ad for something not handegg-related. -groan-

LWT YouTube is still a bit confused, as we did get the two major topics as their own videos... and then 1 minute of the FIFA section as its own minisode. I really would love to know the logic behind why there specific jokes were isolated like this in the beginning of the show's airing.

My sausage, if anyone cares, is the Korean idol industry. It's an absolute cataclysmic nightmare and yet there's a lot there personally that changed me and a lot that I love out of it. It's complicated. Fuck SM Entertainment.

A reminder that John's LMFAO fandom has endured for a decade longer than the band itself lasted:

[maraienna]

And now finally after many failed attempts to draw, here’s my Pizza Tower OC, █████ "Swirl" Chiffon! (I'm not much of an artist, I'm more of a writer, but I wanted to try anyways.)

Swirl (she/they) is currently in her late 20's and is a barista at her own tea café selling loose-leaf tea, tea accessories, and also various baked goods (which is similar in function to Teavanna when it was still its own corporate entity, minus the baked goods), While not struggling as much as Peppino, Noisette's café does occasionally give her café a run for its money! Though envious at times, ultimately she doesn't let the jealousy get in the way. Sometimes tea is bitter rather than sweet, after all!

(More information if you want below the cut but for the most part this is what you really need to know about her. Thank you once again to Bean, specifically the blog @ask-the-totally-real-peppino ,for inspiring me to create her!)

Before the Tower fell, she was a scientist helping create the clones as Pizzahead exploited her emotions around having children... as well as paying her a great deal for her assistance! (I have my own headcanon that Pizzahead is more of an engineer than a biologist, which is why the clones came out all weird) Though the only stipulations were that if a man named Peppino ever came around to the staff room that she was to fight him off, and to never enter behind one of the doors labeled "War".

Needless to say, she would eventually ignore both, but long after she served her purpose. In fact, the reason she broke those rules was the fact that she'd grown attached to all the clones that she successfully created and wondered where all of them would go. Upon entering the War level, she was pretty much tackle-hugged by all of the clones she helped to create, but was only able to rescue one - the same one that would become a boss in Pizza Tower!

Pretty much she'd already quit by the time that the game's events started getting sick of the manipulation tactics, but Pizzahead still went ahead with his plans in spite of missing an extra boss. Though before she left, she would leave things behind for Peppino to help him reach the top and also undo everything Pizzahead did.

Also, as a small aside, before she went to college, her family ran a bakery. They called her Swirl as a nickname since one time she got into the icing as a baby and it looked like she had colored swirl dyes in her hair.

As for relationships! I'll run through them very quickly:

Peppino: She knows about him, but hasn't met him (yet!). It's kinda hard to not hear an entire tower crumbling - and that was before the news of him being a hero! Though if they ever met she'd be super anxious considering she helped to create the clones and as an extension fears his wrath about it.

Gustavo: Also does not know him. She'd be a lot more chill around him though.

Brick: The rat is fluffy, and big, and soft, and that's all there really is to say on the matter. (Jokes aside, she would love Brick so much.)

Mr. Stick: Doesn't hate him, but also doesn't like him. She respects the hustle, but avoids him and refuses all deals with him.

Pepperman: Not the biggest fan of him, but ultimately she thinks he's harmless. She gets tired of him pretty quickly and ultimately finds excuses to escape social interactions with him.

Vigilante: Loves to hang out with Vigilante. She loves to hear stories about Vigi's grandpa, and before she left the Tower she'd visit Noisette's café just to talk with them.

Noise: She's more skittish and afraid of him if anything else. She doesn't like the pranks he does and often curls up into a ball trying (and failing) to not cry about it.

Noisette: Honestly they consider Noisette one of their (two) friends. Despite the fact that Noisette's café tends to do better than their own café, they don't mind.

Fake Peppino: She loves all of them. Every single one. Without exception. Even if they're from different universes, or have more murderous tendencies. She views all of them as her children and loves all of them equally.

Pizzahead: Without mincing words - she hates the guy. Plain and simple. Pretty much the only person she genuinely hates.

Snick: Absolutely loves the little porcupine dude. She would give him pets if he allowed it.

Honorable mention to Pizzelle!: She would love to hang out with Pizzelle much like with Noisette. She's anxious too, so they could bond and help each other overcome their anxieties!

Other minor characters I didn't mention: Either I forgot about them, or Swirl doesn't have a strong opinion either way.

Other fun facts about her:

She's pretty shy and also has general anxiety, which makes customer service very hard for her. Even though she runs a café, it often smells of lavender and other calming scents from her burning scented candles and incense in an attempt to keep her calm during work hours.

The scribbled out name isn't exactly a "dead" name, but after years of Pizzahead calling her by her first name, she decided to go by her childhood nickname to distance herself from the painful memories.

Swirl is pan! As long as you're not a bad person, she's willing to give people a chance.

She is plus-sized! I tried to convey that in the art but I feel I kinda failed on that front?

She doesn't have a strong leaning towards gender identity, but isn't agender and uses she/they for the sake of ease. One day she'll wear a dress with makeup and jewelery, and then the next she'll wear a tank top and knee-shorts without brushing her hair.

Her Sugary Spire counterpart would be Cream, a disgruntled coffee barista who is a very guarded individual with a goth style. She tries (and fails) to not form an attachment with whatever the Sugary Spire equivalent to the clones will be - though Cream views them more like pets than family.

[damureo]

Dinner and a Show

My husband, his mother, and I went to a restaurant that had a musical performance. We were seated at a table with an elderly couple. His mother started conversing with them while my husband and I kept to ourselves. I'm not exactly sure what prompted her, but she suddenly says, "i live in a red state now, and I'm the only democrat in the neighborhood!"

I wince. My husband winces. We exchange glances, take a drink of water, completely try to eject ourselves from what's to come.

What are the three things you don't bring up in (casual) conversation? Religion, money, and politics. And she just opened the doors.

The old man starts laughing and says, "Trumps gonna win."

"Haha," starts his wife, "let's not talk about politics... let's talk... about the kids!" And looks at my husband (25) and myself (24).

She asks how long we have been married, to which the answer is one year. She smiles and goes "aww honeymoon phase :) Enjoy it while it lasts!" Which isn't... inherently offensive, but it's kinda weird? We have been together for 5 years before marriage we're past a honeymoon phase. I had no desire to have an actual conversation, so I stayed silent.

My husband responds "I mean it's the same as before, except now we can do taxes together."

Mother in law groans "ugh how romantic (sarcasm), and to say that next to her. I swear, you guys and your views on marriage..." The woman agrees with her, clicks her tongue, and shakes her head.

"Oh, no, it's a factual statement. I work in finance for a reason haha" is all I say bc I'm trying to crawl out of my skin and get out of this conversation.

The old man suddenly points at me and goes "🫵DID YOU PAY INTO YOUR TAXES THIS YEAR?!"

Hesitantly, I nod.

The couple laughs at my husband and I, the man elbows my mother in law who is also chuckling, and says that they'll give us some life advice.

"If you want to pay less into taxes, maximize your deductions and credits. Buy at least 6 properties. Have at least 6 kids so that when they get older, you have a home for each of them, and they can pay you rent. A continuous flow of money. Property credits and children credits."

Without missing a beat, my husband goes, "Well, i'd love to do that if we could even afford a house :)" The couple frowns and shakes their heads. Telling us that young people just don't get it.

What do you mean you can't buy 6 properties ? Not even 2? Nonsense! Just get a piece of land to build on! Oh, I get it... it's because you both went to college!

She asks us about what we majored in and our jobs. My husband just says, "Oh, you... don't want to know the answer to that... let's talk about something else," and she pushes. He tells her that he's a political science major working as a social worker. She rolls her eyes and looks at me. I tell her I'm a psychology major working in finance. She makes some snarky comment like, "Oh, of course, that's what the two of you majored in."

The couple starts laughing at us. Again. The woman goes "tell me something, political science and psychology: when I was in college we did an experiment for a class..."

The experiment is basically studying the importance of having a lower, middle, and upper class and why it is a necessary and required system in order to have a functional society. She goes on to say that the experiment concluded that everyone has the same goals and, therefore, we all need to work together to help one another. Thus, the 3 class system is super duper important.

My husband just stares at her. "But... this experiment is in a classroom setting where your goal is to pass the class... Of course you all have the same goal...you are all literally in the same place..."

The discussion was interrupted by a server coming by offerring coffee refills. The server was a gorgeous woman and the old man's facial expressions kind of reminded me of a cartoon where a sexy lady walks by and the eyeballs literally pop out of their heads.

He asks her if she plans on serving him all night and shes says "haha... no I'm just filling up everyones coffee."

"Oh, well, don't you forget to take care of me every once in a while, sweetheart. Wink nudge wink" ugh

All of this, and the show hasn't even started! I decided to use that moment to leave and hide in the lobby until the show began. My husband followed suit. I felt I had worms in my brain. Was their financial advice really "no money? Buy properties and have kids!" Huh?? And not even 1 property 1 child, but 6 each??

We're gone for about 10 - 15 minutes and come back 10 minutes before the show starts. The couple left the table, leaving us with his mother, who is visibly annoyed.

"How can you leave me here with them?" She yells. "They wanted to talk to me about my illnesses and golf! (She plays golf on a weekly basis . ) I can't believe you guys abandoned me!"

"Why would you bring up that you're a democrat to strangers? The man is wearing a vietam veteran hat!" My husband says back.

"Well, I didn't think they'd be bothered by ME saying it!" She is, in fact, also a white boomer. My husband is mixed, and I'm ethnically ambiguous, but definitely not white.

"You started it, and they came for us! We didn't even want to talk to them! You didn't think they'd be bothered by you, but what about us?"

The conversation is cut as the couple comes back and the show finally starts.

The show ends, and we enter the car, MIL breaks the silence by laughing and says, "Thank god I didn't mention that I'm Jewish!"

🙂

I hope one day I can purchase several properties with the intention of profiting off my many children. And hopefully you can too!

[criticinlove]

2022 Favorites

I want to write about favorite things because I am such a negative nellie but when stop for a second I remember I am such a lucky duck and am constantly obsessed with so many things around me.

my belly: like everyone, I think, I am ~on a journey~ towards body acceptance and true peace with my relationship with food. losing the structure of school and living alone has been harder for this than I was expecting, and both my ability to maintain healthy habits without much stress and my confidence in myself have taken a big hit. that said, this is the first year I have ever looked in a mirror naked when I "look bad" and found some beauty in the strange shapes it takes over time. it really is a journey, and my belly is coming along with.

the IRA: wow. Manchin made this a rollercoaster that it really didn't need to be, but when it finally passed by surprise... I haven't felt anything like that ever. Amidst so much shitty political activity this year re: repro rights, LGBT rights, COP27, etc, this was such a BOON and it relieved a pretty huge psychological weight I didn't even realize was there. Having imperfect but real legislation at the federal level is a dream come true for me and so many activists and is so motivating. It has also been gratifying to use my intimate knowledge of this bill in my work. sweet.

art class: haven't had an art instructor since freshman year of college when I took my animation class, and it seems like one of those things that only gets better as you get older, because you can really appreciate advice but you also understand that art and taste are personal. having a structured amount of time to create art with others was nearly euphoria inducing some weeks. one week I walked the half hour home with a shit-eating grin on my face the entire time feeling like the luckiest person alive. another week I was really freaking out and had to step out to cry in the academic building bathroom and thought I couldn't take it but then I went back in and listened to music and drew for two more hours and felt so much better. art is therapy, as they say.

killing my move: it is uncomfortable to toot one's own horn, but looking back I am impressed with how I managed my first two-ish months in the bay. I am proud that I just put myself out there like an animal - it brought me into so many weird social situations, and it was gratifying to make peace with the fact that some worked out and some didn't. that's not me being fundamentally unlikeable, it's just that some things connect in life and some don't, and that's a good thing. it has given me so much hope and inspiration to broaden my horizons outside of the east coast and ivy league lifestyle and mindset, so shoutout to relentless socializing and everyone who was subject to it.

alcohol: I drank out of obligation in college and smoked weed for pleasure, but these days I'm not ingesting much THC at all and kind of loving alcohol. I think I forgot that drinking with people is genuinely hilarious, fun, and makes spending time with others easier. This makes it sound like I drink a lot when I really have like 3 drinks a week; I just mean that I really appreciate the social function it serves and the joy of imbibing together

my thesis: after submitting, I was sad with my time management over the final few weeks and really wished I had done a better job because I felt it could have been a lot stronger. But with some distance now, I think it's really cool that I found an academic niche that really suited what I loved to learn about and produced important original research on something that matters to me a lot. How cool is that?

no more leg/pit shaving: It was been truly pleasurable to see wayyy more women letting their leg hair, armpit hair and I presume bushes grow out on the west coast. Sometimes all it takes is some other people doing something for you to realize it's ok to do (a good general lesson!) and I am over leg and armpit shaving for now. It has been a great process to feel more acquainted with what my body hair does on its own and confront my own internalized misogyny when I sometimes catch my armpit hairs in the mirror wearing a tank top or worry about wearing a skirt. I realize I have it so easy in this department because my hair is light and most people don't notice. still, a revelation!

learning an instrument: I finally bought a guitar this past month and got an app that is teaching me to play. It scratches a long-untouched part of my brain (as in literally feels like scratching an itch inside my head). so empowering and fun to do something new from square 0

cuenca jacket: I love the jacket I got in high school for my uniform when studying abroad in ecuador so much and was just marveling at how weirdly good it is an how much it has stood the test of time for me. perfect design. I wrote it an ode.

workout classes: sometimes what you really need is a weird woman leading you through a yoga class in person, together with some other people you don't know.

deleting instagram/being a little mysterious: another psychic relief which is so obviously not good for me.

realizing the social stuntedness that comes with growing up rich: an overdue reckoning.

friendship: they call it the best ship, but to be honest I think I've neglected it over the years, often partial to romantic connections. as time goes on, cultivating friendships only seems to get harder to keep up at the same number and pace as was possible in school. Also, trying to make new friends from scratch leaves me feeling renewed gratitude for my friends.

volunteering: it is WILD to me that more people (especially in my situation in life (young professionals in new places with office jobs and no student loans)) don't do this more. I have spent the last few months volunteering on alternating saturdays at Creative Growth's youth program in oakland and my neighborhood church's Friday night meal which we serve to mostly unhoused people.

The first few weeks I caught myself feeling like it was just another job, but then I just remembered that I am electing to do this and it is such a powerful experience to get to know more communities around you and more people. I have loved getting to know the artists in CG's youth program, literally supporting their work and feeling inspired by what they create. It has also just been fun! Sometimes there's not a bigger lesson! I have loved finding a friend in a very old fellow church volunteer named Fredora; hearing about her life and laughing with her. There are so many ways to participate in community and while there's always something to critique about the ways nonprofits and churches give aid and do their work, for me the wonderful awkwardness of showing up somewhere just to show up and doing it over and over again has been a marvel.

mushrooms and korean food: yum. my palate has reached new heights because this is the year I finally started craving mushrooms and loving korean food. I also think it's the first time I've lived somewhere with great korean food.

the bay: the culture shock of the west coast has been wild, and I am enthralled with the megalopolis that all the cities around the bay make up. I am excited to keep taking it in.

tilden view: along with the culture shock, the natural beauty shock of the west coast seems to overwhelm my little bluegrass pea brain every. time. Recently I went on a bike ride as the sun was starting to set up in tilden park (about 2 miles from my house up the hills) and as I was climbing, every few hundred meters there was a new view and every time I looked back out at the expanse of the bay and layers of cities and hills, without fail, tears would just spring to my eyes. the perfection of beauty is creepy, like someone took what is most pleasing to a human and just turned it up to 100, but it also just knocks my socks off, and I can't stop feeling amazed by that.

cassis: Rex and I spent a few days in Cassis between our time in Venice this summer and visiting my family in Provence (what a sentence!) Anyway, it was one of those strange experiences which was so undeniably and unbelievably pleasant -- sopping up bouillabaisse with crisp bread, watching the french tourists amble in the heat, renting a dingy to cruise by the Calanques and their shimmering beauty, the outrageous sweetness of the sun setting from our Airbnb's window. We knew then, I think, just how good it was, and it is impossible not to feel a wave of fondness still for that perfect vacation.

stuff on the street: in berkeley and oakland people just leave stuff out for other to take. usually it's junk from their house or clothes or books, sometimes kitchen supplies or food they grew in their gardens. one of the reasons they do this is because it never rains and so people leave everything outside and have no awareness of the constant covering and protecting everyone does around the world instinctively. but it also has a wonderful feeling of people just turning out their pockets un-self consciously and I love looking at it

having love: really caring for people who aren't so much in your life is one of the best heart-achey good, sad feelings. shout out to my exes!

writing: I finally want to write again (see this blog etc.)- makes me feel like a kid and so good

worst person in the world: this movie is so good. I rewatched it later this year which I almost never do. just wonderful

Laguna Beach: this show is epically good. Never saw it when it aired and it is deeply curious and hilarious. on netflix now

lying: I've had a few lie-based evenings this year, and it's especially fun to do with someone else/new without any mean deception. It's good to try on different answers sometimes!

craigslist: always trawling. always a happy customer. best finds this year include my apartment and my cheap guitar.

anonymity: there has been so much freedom and free feeling leaving cambridge and a place where everywhere you went you were kind of seen. I've found it so much easier to trust that what I'm doing is really coming from me internally because there is no one to see it and have thoughts who knows me. I have slowly begun running into people who I know now when I'm out but man, what a blissful few months

babysitting: another fun way to get to know the people who fill the physical space around you, and to encounter child brain, which is always good. and you make some spending money. I am already sad that this is something that gets weird in a few years

landlords: landlords have gotten a bad rap this century and for good reason. but I love the strangeness of cohabitating with the weird hokey couple I live with and I especially love overhearing all their arguments. I know them intimately and not at all and venmo them at the end of every month and occupy their home! How weird and fun.

"how good is this?": saying this in an australian accent in my head a lot (see gratitude practice)

Debby ryan: Rex and I saw her on the beach in puerto rico. awesome.

[nerves-nebula]

Car wrapping sounds neat! Very niche haha. We were, for some reason? really set on becoming a book binder for a while, which idk if there even IS jobs for that anymore lol.

Yeah, I get you on the food thing. Due to circumstances we just.. don't feel hunger. like idk, it's weird. We also are kinda picky texture wise so we often fall into that autsim-food-vibes where we pick a food and eat almost only that for a week or so and then move onto something else. Mac and cheese is good but it can be a trigger for me unfortunately. The first 4 or 5 years of my life the only food I really had was mac and cheese LOL (you can laugh don't feel bad xD). I'd try frozen burritos if they didn't cost an arm and a leg lol

hmm so body sharing. Honestly it's kind of like being minorly dissassociated at all times? Like I'm usually the person in control of the body so it's more of a "there's two voices" sort of thing, but every once in a while my head partner gets control.

They are more of an influence? So like depending on how much they're there they can kind of influence how we function but they don't take control. They're more confident than I am and don't worry as much about what others think plus they care more about appearances so they'll try to make us look more put together. They have... better posture than I do so. it'd be nice if they came around more to help with that lmao.

It's weird though because it can feel like I have different levels of my own personality fluctuating, so sometimes I know I like certain things and sometimes I honestly don't know. I know logically I like chocolate, but depending on how much influence they have over the body we might not enjoy the taste if that makes sense? But apply it to more things. It's kinda messy but we've adapted.

We mostly are just like two heads in one body. When I'm really dissassociated the other guy can help out more, and it turns out they are really good at tests because I've actually done better when they're more in charge during tests than I would by myself xD. Downside is when we're super dissassociated they don't usually come out much so it's more like we're both trapped in a room together and we're vaguely seeing what's going on outside with the body.

Very odd to describe but it gets into derealization and depersonalization BUT the entire time we're internally vibing with each other (if it wasn't triggered by ptsd lol). We're just some silly guys living in the same head ig, like roommates but more extreme xD. Mental breakdowns are less jarring when you have a pal to hang out with. Great for distractions too, but sometimes neither of us are the impulse control lmao. We accidentally ended up collecting spoons found in the forest because of that haha

Oh I ADORE book binding. I love to make books. I love having something physical and weighty to hold once I've completed a project. I really want to print a book full of of my art/comics one day just to bind it. My college just bought a spiral binder too that we can use for free, so that's a TON of fun haha!

uhhh I'm trying to think of what else I eat but HONESTLY I can't remember. I like frozen pizza, I guess?

the mixing of your personalities is fascinating, the fact that you might dislike the taste of something you previously liked because the other guys got a different taste is so interesting. really kind of puts into perspective just how subjective experiences are, huh.

i've never been able to pin down what kind, but I've dealt with dissociation before but I don't think I've ever had the "trapped in my head watching whats happening" kind. At least your not alone? :')

your spoon collecting reminded me of something! i once brought in a spoon i found in a bush outside my house growing up and we cleaned it and started using it. it was slightly bigger than a normal spoon but not big enough to be a serving spoon. I miss that weird little utensil.

anyway, thanks for sharing and tell the other guy I said hi hah!

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

Re: disability accommodations and when to use them

I am autistic. I’ve known for just shy of a year now. The reason I didn’t know before becoming an adult is multifaceted, but I am very much low support needs. I do not have meltdowns very frequently; if I’m lucky, I can go months between them. I rarely lose speech; if I’m lucky, I can go months without that happening. Many of my sensory issues are very manageable, inconvenient though they may be. I can hold a job, I can go to college full time, I can pass for a little while in social situations without getting a bunch of stares.

For another example, I can walk into a dining hall, sit down, eat a meal, and walk out. I can probably socialize, if I’m sitting with a friend I know. I can’t eat many of the foods, but I’ll be able to find something I can eat, most of the time.

Last year, before knowing I was autistic, I walked into the dining hall this way frequently. The music would often scratch at my ears, or the pop machines would humhumhum until I wanted to cry, or the pots and pans would clank and it would make me flinch and shudder. And it wasn’t good, but I could handle it, because I was used to just handling it. If they didn’t serve what I could eat, I just raided the potato chips. Nevermind that the crunching made my ears hurt. I was fine.

And then, in November, my beloved friend Batty told me that I was likely autistic. Then Arrow concurred. I broke the news to my friends and they stared at me in confusion, wondering how I thought this was news, because they knew. Just to say, it hit me all at once that I’d been coping with a disability quietly for a long time.

So, about a month or two later, I bought a set of ear guards.

They’d been sitting in my online shopping cart for weeks, really. I’d been hemming and hawing over them, wondering if I was making a mountain out of a molehill.

“I don’t really need these”, I thought. “It’ll look weird if I use them, anyway. It’d be rude. Or something.”

But I bought them, one day, shortly after Christmas, because I’d gone to a family party and nearly burst into tears because everything was so horribly loud. I thought I’d save them, and when the next round of family parties came around, I’d use them.

And then, when they arrived, I was so excited about them that I wore them straight to the dining hall.

I have not gone to the dining hall by myself without them since. It’s just that much quieter. I don’t feel overwhelmed, or like I’m crawling around in my own skin, or like I’m about to snap like a tearing rubber band. I just… eat. And even better, people see them and give me my space, letting me initiate social interactions on my own terms. It’s obvious. It’s useful. It’s mine. And because I’m not so on edge, I can plan better, and actually pick out meals that fill me up and don’t leave me hungry in an hour.

Do I strictly need my ear guards to eat or function? No, I could reasonably eat at a dining hall without them. I do, once in a while, when I’m going with friends. But I do need them to improve my quality of life, and that’s okay. I shouldn’t have to be on the edge of breaking down to use the accommodations available to me.

If it makes your life easier just fricken use it. Use the shower chair, even if you could theoretically stand. Use the cane or walker or wheelchair; whichever relieves the most pain and gives you the most freedom/spoons. Put in ear buds; buy the safe foods, instead of the ones that you can just kinda make yourself swallow. It’s okay. It doesn’t have to be a disaster to help you feel better.

[hey-hamlet]

The SCP AU has only been mentioned ONCE but I’m already thinking about it! AU where sometimes, children have anomalous abilities and attributes. They may be showing it of to their classmates. They may be desperately hiding. They may not be of this world. They might not even notice it. But there is a foundation that calls them SCPs, and it wants to steal them away to a place of cold cells, calculating researchers, and containment. Where they will never see the light of day again. That is, if they don’t succumb to their own powers or get killed by some other SCP. But if they are careful, and brave, and in need… a door will open.

those doors lead to UA! And UA isn’t just a high school. It’s also a research center, a college, a middle school, an elementary, AND a preschool. Anything a lost child could need while they learn who (what) they are and what they can do. SCPs get a basic curriculum for whatever dimension they plan to live in, plus the skills (if possible) needed to blend in- the courses offered are varied. Most move to a more accepting place (three Portlands is a popular destination). They can also choose to live permanently in UA, as staff. Adults… can SOMETIMES get in. If they’re lucky. And Nedzu is looking for new employees. (parents of young anomalies might get an exception)

UA is… if a place could be the definition of “reinforced”, that would be it. The main building gets, well, destroyed or blown up every now and then, but it always puts itself back together by sundown. Reality benders find the locally reality to be unusually… stiff. Unbendable. It has separate buildings for each school level, student dorms, staff apartments, Several massive underground bunkers, all the regular stuff. A few gyms open up into seemingly indefinite planes of grass, for especially dangerous SCPs to practice.

As for where UA is… nobody can tell if it’s a pocket dimension or a parallel world, but across the wall is a view of regular Japan. Getting close to the walls is impossible- you simply find yourself on the other side of the property, or right where you started. Students have attempted to cross reference the view of “regular” Japan to events happening in REAL Japan, and things don’t quite match up! Some swear they’ve seen Nedzu exit the front gates and return with a little bag of groceries, but he’s probably just messing with them. Maybe.

As for the price… Nedzu is a little fey-like when it comes to the price. A student can pay back tuition as a no-interest loan, but most are encouraged to instead become alumni- basically pledging to protect UA and its students in any time of need. Protecting can mean many things, from obtaining critical resources to infiltrating oppositional groups to straight up serving as Nedzus own private (hero!) army. (1/3)

Random character backstories:

Eraserhead has the ability to drag halt abnormal things. But if he stares for long enough, he will bring ALL things back to normalcy- a grimoire becomes a book. a teleporter is forced to walk. A god becomes a man.

Of course, living in normal society, he had no idea. But one day his friend came to school nervous and excited and pulled off his hat and his hair was made of mist!! And he could make little clouds!!! And Shouta thought it was some crazy prank, but he went along with it. Until lunch time when a bunch of strange men in black robes with guns and tattoos all over their faces broke into school! They demanded to have “the missing link”, and then they blew up a hallway and people were screaming, and then black ooze was dripping from the walls and blood was dripping out of their eyes and they killed someone. and then helicopters were landing outside and different men in white were running in and shooting back and the cafeteria ceiling collapsed and the sky was RED and someone grabbed Shirakumo and tried to drag him away but Yamada started yelling except he was SCREAMING and the ground was shaking with his voice and his mouth was too wide and the building started to collapse and this is all TOO MUCH and this is ILLOGICAL and WRONG and Shouta grabbed his friends and ran for an exit but Shirakumo turned around to throw a cloud over a kid under a falling wall and Shouta and Yamada fell forward and the door shut and there was a little white mouse in a tuxedo and Shouta.

Blacked out.

Tokoyami bought a fake grimoire on eBay and accidentally summoned a real demon to his soul

Recovery girl wasn’t hired by Nedzu, she just showed up one day on UA grounds to heal. Sometimes she mentions ancient history like it was yesterday.

Ectoplasm is a ghost. Like, a dead guy. Nedzu had his grave, dirt and all, moved to one of the apartments so he could “haunt” (teach) at UA.

Shoto is the son of a high ranking manager in the SCP foundation. Endeavor very much does not believe in sympathy for SCPs, and he made that clear when Shoto was locked up.

Hawks is a first responder to attacks on UA, due to his ability to “fly” between dimensions. He is also somewhat overworked.

Iida didn’t need rescuing- his parents are well respected alumni so he and his brother got in free. Having practically grown up there, he is among the few who NEVER get lost no matter how many times the school rearranges itself. Some kids joke that he is one of the many robots that keep UA functional.

Ashido ate an entire packet of Wondertainment® ExTrA sOuR gummy worms.

(2/3)

A bonus Crack backstory- the SCP UA is situated right in the regular BNHA world. Nedzu grew up in a lab like normal, but he never escaped. He just… popped out of existence one day. Twenty years later he returned, older, wiser, impossibly powerful. He sniffed the air, wandered Japan like a little cryptid, and finally found a nice hill in the woods. The next day… UA sprouted like a sunflower fell from the sky unfolded from the wrong dimension materialized from nothing APPEARED, and everyone aptly freaked out. Heroes stood guard as scientists and researchers poked and prodded at the walls, but nobody could get through the barrier. The people inside are weird and wrong but don’t seem to notice them, or even the occasional nearby villain battle. Even all might tried to break through, decades later, when he spotted a little girl get decapitated (she’s fine), but UA simply isn’t of this world. The main cast goes to Ketsubutsu, I guess. And if there are rumors of doppelgängers, of heroes swearing up and down that they saw themselves (but WRONG) inside The School, well. Those are just rumors.

!! Everyone read this this is so good!!

[folkloreguk]

❥ My Sweet Evil Heart (C.Chanhee)

A/N: I wrote this as part of an angel/demon collab for The Boyz! You can find the masterlist HERE. This was really fun to write and I got to live out my alternate universe dream in which I'm a detective...I hope you like it, I'm always welcome to any form of feedback!

genre: demon!Chanhee, detective!reader, angst, fluff, reader is constantly sleep deprived, Chanhee is the sweetest demon ever

synopsis: You, a highly respected detective in your department, are investigating a case of a very strange demon who seems hesitant to do evil...but can you trust someone who is supposed to be the personification of wickedness?

words: ~ 10.6k

Have you ever met someone deeply unhappy? Someone who seems to, at all times, be fighting a war inside of themselves? Have you ever felt empathy for somebody, even though they tested you, over and over, as if the worst part inside of them was trying to make them lose you on purpose? Did you hold on and never stop believing in them? Or did you say something to drive them away, making them think they would only hurt you in the process of you trying to make them see clearer?

This is the story of a demon, whose every cell demurred at his evil nature. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start with the basics.

Being one of the head detectives at the local police station was not an easy-going, nor an amusing job. Whilst working on serious cases, lacking proper sleep was not an uncommon occurrence for you, and in some instances, self-care came up short until the mystery had been solved and the guilty ones were locked away. Every case pulled you in and swallowed you whole, keeping you deeply invested for days and nights until your brain felt like it had turned to mush and your body worked on autopilot, until you functioned a little like a highly intelligent zombie. And yet, you couldn’t imagine yourself doing anything else in your life. The thrill was close to an obsession, and seeing justice being served thanks to your work was more addicting than any drug could ever be to you.

Most crimes in your world were committed by demons, of course. They were your worst enemies, the monsters you saw in your nightmares and the reason you never strolled down a street without a gun by your hip. It wasn’t forbidden for them to walk the earth, so long as they kept to themselves. Their evil nature made it almost impossible for them to uphold these terms, though. You wished you could lock them all away in some putrid prison cell, or better yet, send them back to where they crawled out from originally. But the law couldn’t convict beings before they had done anything wrong. So, it was on you to make sure you kept an eye on the sinister beings, figure out what they were up to and stop them before they could actually hurt somebody. Like that morning, when you were called to a liquor store to investigate a break-in.

“My name is Y/F/N Y/L/N, I am the lead investigator,” you greeted the store owner with a handshake upon arrival. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

“I came here this morning at around 7 to open up the store. When I got out of my car, I saw the broken glass of the window,” he explained.

“What was taken from inside the store?” you inquired further.

“That’s the weird thing. Nothing is missing from inside,” he said.

“We might just be dealing with vandalism,” you thought out loud. “Do you have security cameras?”

He did, and so you went along with him to the back of the store. It was true, the interior of the shop seemed completely untouched. You suspected whoever had done this had never even intentioned on entering. There was a college campus not too far from the store, and you recalled countless times you had witnessed careless vandalism done by some intoxicated students during a Friday night. It was a very human-like crime. Demons weren’t known to do things by halves. Their crimes were usually the go-big-or-go-home-type of crimes. But then, when you watched the security footage, you were stunned.

At precisely 3:29 am, a dark figure appeared in front of the window. They lifted their arms, swinging a baseball bat against the glass. And against your speculation, they did climb through the hole in the window. With no mask or disguise whatsoever, the demon man looked right into the camera in the corner of the room. The abyss of darkness in his pitch black eyes was unmistakable. He looked around, as if he was debating on whether he should have done more, but then, to your utter confusion, spun around on his heel and climbed right back out the window.

You assured the store owner you would be looking into this case. With nothing left to do, you headed back to the police station. You had taken the security footage with you, and the moment you arrived in your office, you played it on your computer screen. Over and over - only puzzling you more, with each rerun you saw. You worried this might only be a warning. Not seldom had you been a witness to demons playing with their prey, feeding off the fear of innocent souls. Was this one indulging in one of those little twisted games? Right away, you uploaded the demon’s face onto the database for criminals, even if vandalism didn’t compare to the serious allegations that stood against other faces on that list. While you turned your attention to other cases, his features wouldn’t leave your mind. Even when you left your office at night, he was still the most prominent person in your memory.

By the time you began your walk to your home, the sun had disappeared. You couldn’t help it, even if technically you could finish work earlier, your desire to solve your assigned cases was always higher. Had you just walked home at 5 pm, you were sure to end up on your computer at home, researching and digging around on the web to discover possible clues. This way, at least you had all resources you would need at your office at the police station.

Now, in the dark, the streets were rather abandoned, most shops had already closed, and the moon dimly cast light through the clouds. Those conditions were what made it a breeze for you to notice your shadow. The figure had been following you for 5 minutes now. Judging by how carelessly loud their steps sounded and by their not-so subtle choices of hiding spots, you could tell this wasn’t something they had practice in. Purposely, you didn’t turn around, so they wouldn’t realize you had caught on to them a while ago. Instead, only a minute or so from your home, you took a turn left into an abandoned alleyway. Your hand was on the gun in your belt.

Just as you had stepped into the alley, you turned. He was right behind you. With dark orbs glaring and teeth snarling he came at you, knife in hand. Your eyes widened – you recalled his face vividly – as you took in the situation in the blink of an eye. After all, you had watched the security tape of him breaking into the liquor store countless times only hours ago. But you had the upper hand from the very moment you had spun around. His build wasn’t particularly strong, but you knew you should never underestimate demons. You grabbed his shoulders and along with him, your body crashed against the red brick wall to your left. He struggled against your grip, but his determined and feisty expression was the by far the most intimidating part about him. His face was inches from yours but looking into the sort of darkness that were demon’s eyes did nothing to you. Your hand was around his wrist with the knife – which he was aggressively trying to bring down on you – but only at first.

Because suddenly, something uncommon occurred. So uncommon, in fact, that not a single cell in your body could believe it. He willingly dropped the blade. It hit the asphalt, the metallic sound echoing in your ears. He relaxed his arm in your iron grip. Demons never gave up. They fought until you had forcefully brought them to the ground or done worse to them. Their ironic god-complex and evilness didn’t allow them to step away from a fight – until this one had come along, apparently. And then, as if his behavior hadn’t already stunned you enough, he did the unthinkable.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Without a doubt you thought you had misheard him. Swiftly, you pulled your gun out of your belt and pointed it at his face. One thing you knew. You weren’t going to play along in his little games. In panic, he rose his hands, showing defeat.

“Quit playing games, devil’s son,” you hissed. “What is it you’re trying to achieve here? You’re sorry? For what?”

He was hesitant. With every second, your curiosity only grew. Either, he was a skilled actor or…you had no idea what else it could’ve been about him.

“I almost killed you. That’s what I’m sorry for,” he said. “Does that get me a prison sentence?”

Your eye twitched because this didn’t seem right at all.

“You broke into a shop and attacked me, but then stopped out of your free will,” you assessed the situation. “You’ll most likely get away with a fine and your name in our register.”

If you had been awaiting an evil grin or any sort of enjoyment in his face, you’d be waiting endlessly. If anything, he seemed to be…disappointed?

“But you’re a cop, right?” he said. “You can lock me up, can’t you?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? You won’t be locked up if you don’t commit a crime severe enough. As much as I hate it, considering you demons are running free, it’s the law,” you said.

“You don’t get it,” he said. And he was right, you really had no idea. “I should be locked up. You need to get me to jail before I hurt somebody.”

His face was dead serious, but you didn’t want to believe a single word. How could you, when your daily life consisted of hunting down his kind, because all they brought upon the earth was chaos and death?

“Give me one good reason why I should believe you,” you said, unimpressed.

“I will tell you anything you want to hear,” he said. “If you bring me to a police station. You guys have these lie detectors, don’t you? I will take a test if that’s what it takes for you to believe me.”

~

So, that was how half an hour later you still hadn’t returned at home, but rather found yourself back at the police station. Almost everyone had gone home by now, so you took the liberty to choose the biggest interrogation room available. A few minutes and he was sitting in front of you, hands in handcuffs and his body connected to the lie detector.

“Okay, here’s how this works. I’ll start by asking some simple questions, and then we’ll get to the bottom of whatever your intentions are,” you explained.

“Alright. Go ahead,” he said. This was your first time seeing a demon take this sort of test. Usually, you couldn’t be bothered because you knew all they did was lie whilst smiling you in the face.

“What’s your name?”

“Choi Chanhee.”

“Where were you born?”

“In hell.”

“Did you break into a liquor store last night?”

“Yes.”

“Did you intend on killing me tonight?”

“…Yes.”

“Is that your definite answer?”

“…No.”

“How come both of your last two answers are lies?” you asked. “You didn’t intend on killing me, but yes is your definite answer?”

“I can’t stop the evil in me but I’m trying,” he said. You were stunned. The answer was the most truthful of them all.

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“I was never like the others since I came to earth. I’ve never felt a rush like they do, causing mischief and hurting humans. I don’t belong. It’s as if there was a demon inside of me, but it’s not controlling all of me, do you understand?” he said.

“I’m not sure, but go on,” you said.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody or destroy things. But on some days, I’m walking down the street and my body starts following the devil’s orders instead. I usually snap out of it quickly and stop myself. That’s why you’re still alive,” he explained.

“You’re telling me you’re some sort of good demon?” you asked. “Why don’t you go back to hell, if you’re struggling so much on earth?”

“I hate it there,” he said. “And either way, I’m banned from there forever.”

Your head raised as you stared at him.

“Banned?” you asked.

“I stopped a bunch of demons from killing a woman once,” he said. “Safe to say they weren’t happy to hear that, back at home. I couldn’t go back, even if I wanted to.”

“Can you tell me the name of the woman?” you asked. And he did. All this time, he really had been telling the truth. When you searched up the woman’s name in the computer, it only confirmed your suspicion. She really had been under attack when an unidentified person had interrupted and saved her life.

“I can tell you names of demons,” he said. “If you do me the favor of locking me up, I can sell out everyone I know about.”

You massaged the sides of your head and sighed. This guy really was one of a kind.

“I already told you, I can’t put you in jail for something you didn’t do,” you said. “That’s against the law, and then it’ll be me who ends up behind bars instead of you. I’ll have to let you go.”

“What if I mess up?” he said. The amounts of firsts you were experiencing in the timespan of an hour were giving you a headache. Never had you felt compassion for a demon before. But you were only human, and when you noticed the genuine concern and insecurity in his soft voice, you couldn’t stop yourself.

“How long have you been on earth for?” you asked.

“I don’t know, a few years, I guess?” he said.

“And in those few years, which of your deeds would you rate the most criminal out of all?” you asked. Any other demon would have been able to give you multiple answers, one more vicious than the other. He, on the other hand, took his time and even when he answered, he didn’t sound at all sure.

“I’ve broken into a house before, destroyed a car window and one time I stole a dog,” he confessed with his head tilted towards the floor.

“What happened to the dog?”

“I…gave it back,” he said. A laughter erupted from your throat against your will. In a friendly manner, you pat his shoulder before retrieving the keys to his handcuffs.

“Trust me, you’ll be just fine out there,” you said. “Whatever it is you’re doing to stop yourself from being evil, it’s working. I will let you go now."

Even though he wasn’t happy with your answer, he knew he had no choice but to comply. As you walked him through the hallways towards the exit of the station, you could only think of one thing: your beloved bed. Not only your body but especially your brain was drained from energy. You desperately needed a refill by getting a good night’s sleep.

“You’re the first person who’s been really kind to me,” he said, as you held the door open for him. The night air was cool, and you quickly zipped up your jacket to your chin.

“You gave me no reason not to be,” you replied.

“I almost stabbed you,” he said, bluntly.

“Almost.”

“For most people, me being a demon is reason enough to loathe me.”

“Well I guess I’m not most people,” you said. His smile was gentle, but his black eyes would always give him away. “I’ll be here at the station every day, if you have any concerns or need somebody to consult. But right now, all I want is my bed.”

“I understand,” he replied. “Thank you. Goodbye.”

“Good night,” you said, before you parted ways. Once more, you journeyed home. He remained on your mind until the moment you slipped off to dreamland that night.

~

The days passed without a trace of him. You followed your routine, but one thing you couldn’t help. You simply had to tell every person who worked with you about the changed demon you had met. No one really wanted to believe you. It was kind of understandable. Some thought you were testing their skills, seeing if they could figure out you were lying. Others went as far as to suspect your lack of sleep had given you hallucinations. But you didn’t let it go. And after all, you were a highly respected member of the police force. Some said they wanted to meet this demon gentleman, as they had renamed him.

But then you were called to a brand new homicide investigation and all of the jokes at the station were blown away by the intensity and buzz the case brought with it. You had a murder to solve. There was no place for sweet demon men in any part of your brain. Not for now. And as always, you slipped into old habits – staying up all night, living on coffee and quick meals – the toxic behavior was almost inescapable. Your fellow detectives tried their best to keep you healthy and most importantly, sane. They took you with them to get salad for lunch, invited you over for game nights (a futile attempt at giving you a break) and told you to go to sleep on time. After all, they needed your brain to function at full capacity for the case. You knew people were relying on your knowledge, and you weren’t doubting your capabilities. But a highly intelligent zombie was still a zombie. And so it happened that one Thursday night your boss sent you home. Not because you weren’t doing a good job – rather for of the opposite reason.

“You are allowed back at the station when you’ve caught a full night’s sleep. Do what it takes to take care of yourself,” your boss had said. Her tone displayed as much strictness as her eyes showed concern. Truth be told, you were too exhausted to even argue against her order. That’s when you knew. You really needed a rest. You dragged your body home.

“Hello sweetheart,” you greeted your pet bird, who chirped excitedly when you set foot into your apartment. “Guess what. I’m home early.”

As much as you wanted to drop into a slumber right away, your stomach growled. And you weren’t in the mood to wake up half-starved. As you prepared some left-overs from the fridge, you heard your bird call from the living room. “Peek-a-boo!” he sang. It caught your attention. He only played this game with you – when you were outside in your small garden and he was watching you through the window. So who exactly was he talking to, now?

You picked up a knife, because as a detective it was practically your job to be paranoid, and tiptoed into the living room. It would be harder for an intruder to spot you in the dark, so you pushed the light switch. Slowly, you advanced to the window and gently pulled the curtains aside. A shiver ran down your spine when you saw the figure standing between the trees. They didn’t seem to be hiding, if anything they were lazily resting their back against the garden fence. Maybe they weren’t aware you were watching them. Bold of them to assume they could intimidate you by acting so nonchalant. You cracked the window open slightly.

“If you don’t leave my property within the next ten seconds, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing,” you announced. The figure flinched. The moment he stepped into the moonlight and raised his arms, you remembered his face.

“Choi Chanhee?” You opened the terrasse door and stepped outside.

“Are you going to hurt me?” he asked, eyes glued to the knife in your hands. Quickly, you lowered your hand.

“What are you doing here?” you asked instead of answering his question.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” he admitted.

“And so you thought creeping around in a police woman’s backyard was an appropriate thing to do? Wait…have you been stalking me?” you asked. You should have cut back on the sharp tone, but you felt half-asleep and this was the last thing you needed. Plus, the immanent realization hit you, that you had not noticed him at all. You had been so caught up in your work that you had not recognized a demon lingering around your home address, watching you. It hurt your pride a little – and could have ended very differently, had it been a more malovent demon than the one standing in front of you. This one looked terrified, kneading his hands nervously.

“I thought you wouldn’t be upset with me…that maybe you would understand. Because you’ve been the only one who’s listened to me. I’m just trying to find a purpose,” he said, “And my head tells me you’re the right direction.”

Demons. They’ve always had a fondness for the dramatic. But his words tore at your heart strings. His behavior resembled a child who had done wrong and was in the process of being scolded.

“Do you have no home?” you asked, softening your voice.

“I’ve lived with other demons. But they don’t want me there, anymore,” he said. For obvious reasons, you thought. Your head was racing. There was no way you could leave him standing there in the cold. But letting a demon into your home sounded like you must have had a death wish. It’s not like you didn’t have enough space, though. With an extra guest bedroom that nobody had ever used before, he would be just fine. There was no excuse. You cursed your parents for making you get a bigger apartment “In case you got married and had children soon.” You never know what could happen, they had said. And how wrong they had been, but how right they had been on that last part.

“Would you say you’re a tidy person?” you asked. A gigantic yawn came over you, and once again your stomach grumbled.

“What? I mean…I think so?” he said.

“Are you hungry?” You were in disbelief. Maybe it was the zombie in you that had a heart so soft, it took pity on a demon.

“I’m starving,” he said.

And that was how you came to have dinner with a demon. Spoiler alert: It wouldn’t be the last time. You ate quietly, trying hard to fight tiredness but it was no use. Afterwards, you showed him the room he could stay in.

“How do I make this up to you?” he asked.

“We’ll think about that another time, alright?” you said, “I need to sleep now. I’ve got an unsolved murder case waiting on me tomorrow.”

That night, you locked your bedroom door and slept with your gun on your nightstand. Just in case. Even though you were almost fully convinced the demon in the bedroom across the hall was more harmless than a five-year-old, he was still a demon.

~

When you woke up and saw your boss’ message on your phone, you couldn’t believe it. She wanted you to stay at home for the day. Apparently, you needed the rest and she had no interest in getting into trouble for overworking you (which she obviously wasn’t, you were the one doing this to yourself). When you walked down the stairs, you had almost forgotten about the previous night. It felt a little like it had all just been one wild fever dream – that was, until you spotted the demon sitting on your sofa, your pet bird on his shoulder.

“I let him out, I hope that was okay,” he said. You were dumbfounded. “Listen, I just wanted to say…thank you. Tell me whatever you need me to do and I’ll get it done for you.”

You wanted to go to work. But you knew he would be no help making that possible. Your mind was already wandering off to your case, the tips of your fingers burning with anticipation to search the internet for clues. Your grumbling belly interrupted your eagerness.

“Um…you could go to the grocery store for me?” you asked.

~

You went back to work the next day. Unsure of what to do, you decided to keep your demon housemate a secret for now. The other detectives would have probably written you off as insane, and you needed them to take you seriously. To be fair, maybe you were a little crazy. But he had been really good on the first day. Only one incident, which involved him dropping an egg on the kitchen floor, stood out to you. Of course, that could happen to anyone. But any other person would not have apologized in the way that he did. Normal people wouldn’t have acted so guilty, had it been an accident. But as long as his malice remained to that extent, you could live with it. You almost laughed at the idea of him purposely watching the egg roll off the counter and not doing anything.

He sure was strange. But little did you know, his egg-dropping shananigans were only the beginning of his uncontrollable little pranks he would pull on you.

Once he let your bird fly out the window. When you came home you discovered him outside, talking to your bird, begging him to come back inside. Little did he know, all it took was a whistle and a few treats and you had him sitting on your shoulder, ready to go back inside. One night you returned home to find him staring at the ceiling in the dining room, a kitchen towel in his hand. When you asked him what he was trying to achieve there, he told you there was a mosquito sitting above him.

“So, why don’t you kill it?” you asked. He looked shocked.

“Kill it?” he asked, “We should probably just shoo it outside.”

That’s when you knew. Choi Chanhee wouldn’t hurt a fly. Literally. All those times you had worried about leaving him home alone with your bird vanished in an instant as you laughed.

“You’re right. Killing is one of the worst sins. But sometimes, especially when it comes to mosquitoes, you don’t need to worry about any consequences. If anything, I’ll be grateful,” you assured him.

Another instance made you think maybe you had been too quick to judge him as harmless. When you walked into your bathroom in the morning, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, you almost jumped out of your skin. A red substance stuck to your mirror in what seemed to be random shapes. On impulse, you called his name. On second look, you realized what he had done. The red was merely ketchup, and the random shapes weren’t so random, but they spelled “meeting at 2 pm”. When Chanhee appeared in the doorframe, he already wore his sorry expression.

“What did you think you were doing here?” you said. “You know where the post-it notes are!”

“I- He- The demon in me wanted to scare you…I’m so sorry,” he said. It was difficult to be mad at him when he was so sweet. You had, after all, told him to remind you of your meeting you had that day. He was so easy to forgive, too. Whenever he went to buy groceries, he returned with a bouquet of flowers, and after he had figured out your favorite candy, he made sure you never ran out of your supply. You liked being alone, but suddenly it felt nice to have someone waiting for you at home. A warm sensation filled your heart whenever he asked you about your day during dinner.

Even if after dinner you had to argue with him as if he was your son, because the demon in him had decided to take on the form of a teenage boy who was too lazy to take out the trash. You were still seated at the table, rolling your eyes at the demon’s horrible attempt at being evil.

“Don’t make me ask you one more time,” you threatened him, although you didn’t know what you would have done had he continued to argue against you. Only when he reached for the knife that he had already put down tidily on his plate, your eyes widened. His knuckles were white around the metal and you leaned back instinctively. Your gun was still in your belt – you had sat down for dinner straight after returning home – but you didn’t want to use it. Not on him.

“Chanhee,” you spoke in a calm tone. His face was unreadable. He wasn’t making eye contact. Instead, his gaze was glued onto the blade in his hand, staring blankly. His eyes blinked, almost robotically. Something changed in his demeanor then. There was a tremble in the hand that was clutching the knife. It grew more uneasy by each passing moment. Your heart was pounding in your chest and you kept your eyes trained on him, trusting your reflexes.

“Fine,” he suddenly said in a grumpy tone. Then he dropped the knife. The metallic sound rang in your ears for seconds afterward. You let out the breath you didn’t know you had been holding on to, as you watched him get up and retrieve the full trash bag from under the sink. You had been sleeping with your bedroom door unlocked for weeks. Even though it pained you, that night you locked your door again.

~

At 3:28 am you awoke to the sound of breaking glass. You allowed yourself to yawn and rub the sleep out of your eyes for just a moment, then you were on your feet. Gun in hand, you opened your door. Across the hall, the door to Chanhee’s room stood ajar. Light came from downstairs.

“Chanhee?” you called quietly. No answer. But your ears picked up shuffling and the sound of shards of glass being moved around. You approached slowly, trying not to give yourself away. Then you heard the quiet sobs. Your arm with the gun dropped to your side when you stepped into the kitchen.

He was sitting on the floor like he was one of the shattered pieces of glass himself. When he saw you, he flinched and tried to dry away his tears. But it was no use. They kept coming, and you had already seen them either way.

“I dropped it on purpose,” he said, referring to the broken glass. Another sob went through his body, making your chest ache at the sight of him. “I’m sorry.”

“I have nine more of those. It’s alright,” you assured him. Gently, you sat down by his side. You put your arms around his hunched frame. He stiffened at first but calmed his muscles after a moment and let you hold him.

“Shh, it’s okay,” you said. Whatever it was that was hurting him so much, you’d be here to fight it off for him.

“I can’t stop the evil in me,” he cried. His weeps seeped through your skin and tugged at your organs. It felt like a thousand tiny, sharp needles in your heart.

“It’s a part of you. It’ll never fully go away. But look at you, you’re doing such a good job holding it inside of you,” you whispered. He shuddered.

“I tried to kill you,” he stated. “I don’t deserve you. You’re so kind. You do all this for me, and I tried to kill you.”

“But you didn’t,” you said. “And that’s what counts. We all have urges inside of us…but it’s what we end up doing that truly counts and makes us who we are.”

“But it’s so hard,” he cried. His face was in the crook of your neck as he sniffled. The small teardrops that touched your skin felt like ice. “And all I do is bother you. I’m an inconvenience. Why don’t you just lock me up with the other demons? Why give me another chance every time I mess up?”

You couldn’t believe he would hate himself so much. Chanhee had more compassion than a lot of the humans you knew had. Some days he sat and pet your bird for hours just because it made him happy, he always had money on him to give to the homeless people in front of the grocery store and he almost cried thinking he forgot to pay for an item at the store (which you had obviously paid for).

“How could you even compare yourself to other demons?” you said. “If you want, I will take you in to work with me sometime. Then you’ll see the atrocities others commit. Even among humans, you’d still be sorted into the best of the best. I believe in you and that you will do good.”

He only sobbed harder at what you had said, and you felt the need to pull him in just a little tighter. You softly rocked your bodies in an attempt to calm him down.

“I would fall apart without you.” Between the hiccups and tears his words sounded like a broken confession, but that’s why they hit so hard.

“You’re not alone in this. I’m here for you,” you whispered, lips right by his ear. Your hands were in his hair, stroking his head as if you could pour all your emotions into this one gesture. What else could you do to show him you would never abandon him the way his demon people had? And it seemed to do the trick. His fists that had been clutching your shirt loosened up and his sorrowful crying turned into mellow breathing on your skin.

“Aren’t you sleepy?” you asked. “Let’s get you back to sleep. Tomorrow things will be better.”

“I haven’t been able to sleep well for three days,” he said. “But I need to clean this up first.”

He let go of you and started to pick up shards of glass. There was still a haggard expression on him, and his cheeks were painted red and tear stained. And yet he was determined.

“Let me do this,” you said, touching his arm. “You can’t even keep your eyes open. Go to bed, Chanhee.”

This time, he didn’t argue. But his good behavior didn’t stop the apologetic, almost battered look at you. He knew you would be by his side no matter what – but what he needed most was his own forgiveness. And you could tell by the way he spoke about himself that it would take a while until he was ready to accept himself as he was.

You heard his heavy steps on the stairs as he walked to his room. Quickly, you gathered the biggest shards of glass and then used a hand brush to collect the tiny pieces. This wasn’t what you had signed up for when you had taken him in. You thought you’d have to argue with him daily and that you’d miss having your personal space and privacy. You knew it would be new, living with another person after living alone for so long. But nothing could have prepared you for the way Chanhee had swept you off your feet with his adorable charms. You didn’t need to fake excitement when you came home to him, nor did you ever have to force yourself to tell him about your day or have any conversation with him, for that matter. He was truly enchanting with the way he made you care so much. Especially when you had assumed all demons were your sworn enemies.

When you finally dragged your tired body upstairs, you softly pushed open the door to his room, only to see him lying wide awake.

“Can’t sleep?” you asked. “Even though you’re so exhausted?”

“No,” he spoke. Even his voice made no attempt at hiding the sleepiness. His look was pleading. “Can you please stay with me…just for a little while?”

There was no way you could say no to his lovely gaze and messy hair and outstretched arms. So, you crawled in next to him under the covers. Your faces were inches apart. The last time you had been looking into a demon’s eyes this close-up he had been lying face-up and dead on the side of a road. Those eyes had been lifeless, and yet you felt like they had still held so much ferociousness, even in death. Now you only saw concern and genuine care in the black orbs across from you. You admired his softly sculpted face. It was one that seemed like it would much rather belong to an angel.

“You’ve been working so much,” he whispered. “You must be much more tired than me.”

“I’m used to it,” you said, “I enjoy my work because I’m doing it to help others.”

“You’re a good person,” he stated. There was something in his voice you couldn’t make out. Regret? Admiration?Maybe it was both.

“So are you, Chanhee,” you said. Without second thought, you leaned forward and pressed your lips to his cheek. He didn’t flinch nor pull away. Instead, his pretty lips curled into a smile as he closed his eyes, ready to finally drift off to dreamland.

~

From that night on he seemed to improve a little, day by day. No more breaking things or having to argue about simple house chores. It occurred to you almost as if he had turned into something more human – so much that you dared to take him to work with you. People there had found the idea of your new demon friend strange, and you were sure some would take more than a little convincing to let down their guard around him. You couldn’t blame them for the prejudices – you had once been the same, after all. But Chanhee was okay with it, even when you had explained to him that some people might hate him, just because of his black eyes and what they meant to people. He had lived years of receiving that sort of treatment. Nonetheless, it pained you to think about how used he was to it. It took bravery and thick skin to walk into a police station the way he did that day. He was fascinated, looking behind the scenes. Perhaps you found it amusing how alarmed everyone was when they first laid eyes on him at the station. His ability to turn around their views of his species within twenty seconds or less was nothing but astonishing. He very willingly took it upon himself to walk down to the nearest coffee shop and order ten cups, also earning him the sympathy from the last few sceptics. When you were deep in conversation with another detective, discussing the possible whereabouts of a highly wanted demon, Chanhee suddenly interrupted you.

“I know an underground club where they like to go after…committing crimes,” he said. “Every demon in this city knows about it.”

At that moment you realized his full potential and what good he could really do. That was, if he was ready to sacrifice his people. But he just had – without even blinking. He could be an immense help to you.

“Young man I can see you have a bright future, should you ever decide to join the police force,” said your boss from across the room. Seemed like she had the same idea as you. Chanhee only smiled shyly but couldn’t hide the glint of pride in his eyes.

~

The following days you instantly made arrangements to get Chanhee an interview with the head of the station. He had been scared, at first.

“What if the other people there hate me?” he suspected.

“They might make assumptions about you in their heads, you know, because you’re a demon. They only know demons to be evil. But the moment they realize how good of a person you are, I promise they’ll change their mind,” you said. “You’ll be precious to us, and if you want to do good, the police is where you can be the most helpful. You’ll change lives, maybe even save people.”

“Yes, I want to help,” he said. “I’m done with my kind.”

“I’ll talk to my boss tomorrow,” you assured him. “If you’re too anxious to come in to the station, maybe she’ll allow you to work from home, from my office here. This is just a try, okay? If you really enjoy this work, you’ll have to learn and earn your badge.”

The way he looked at you filled you with so much pride. He seemed to have found some hope. Like he could finally spend his time in a productive and truly good manner. You couldn’t wait to see how he would do.

~

A tiring day and many discussions with higher-ups at workplace later, you returned at your home, late at always. Your fingers tingled with excitement and you wanted to yell for Chanhee the moment you walked through your door. You had managed to score an internship for him at your station. He was allowed to start as early as the following week. As you walked up the stairs, following the shuffling noise you heard, you imagined his face when you told him the news. You knew he’d be ecstatic. His smile would make you so happy, and you almost grinned at the mere thought of it. The noises were coming out of your office.

“Hi, Chanhee. Guess what my boss-,” you started. Then you fell speechless. Paper was scattered all over the floor. Drawers stood wide open. The orderly sorted piles of case files you had been working on were dispersed into every corner of the small room. Photos and pieces of paper were falling out of the folders. And in midst of it all stood Chanhee.

“Y/N- I’m so-,” he said, helpless.

“Don’t,” you said. Every ounce of excitement was gone from your voice, replaced by an ice cold tone you didn’t know you had in you. He flinched, but you couldn’t keep in what you had to say. “You’re impossible. I can’t fucking believe this! These are real cases, Chanhee! I’m trying to save real people here! This isn’t some broken mirror or a spilled cup of water. I can look past a shattered glass, but this is too much…I honestly thought you were getting better…”

Somewhere you knew you were being too harsh. But your job was your entire reason for existing. This was your life mission, laid out in front of you as if a hurricane had rampaged through the room. It would take days for you to rearrange the files. You weren’t even sure if you’d be able to find the correct places for each piece of paper.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice cracking because he was about to cry.

“I don’t want to see you right now. Please get out. I need to clean this up and you can’t help me with this,” you said, trying hard not to scream out of frustration. Your eyes were already scanning the floor. You had no idea where to even start. With low-hanging shoulders and teary eyes that were threatening to spill over, Chanhee slipped past you. He granted you one more look before he scurried out of the office like a frightened animal.

Even though your stomach was grumbling from starvation and you could barely stay awake – as always – you needed to get some of the cleaning done. Now. Or you would go insane. Plus, you needed time away from Chanhee. While you collected the paper from every inch of the wooden floor, guilt slowly started to nag at you. You had never raised your voice at him to this extent. And he was sensitive. It wasn’t his fault, that’s what you always told him when he blamed himself for messing things up. He knew that. You cursed at yourself. How could you be so impulsive? All too well you knew how he felt about his demon half. You were supposed to be there for him, to tell him he was doing a good job and to make sure he didn’t beat himself up. Now you had achieved the complete opposite. A dull ache in your chest accompanied your hungry stomach.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang. In a haze, you stepped down the stairs and to the door. You needed to apologize to Chanhee. When you opened the door, a delivery girl from your favorite restaurant stood there, handing you an order. You were puzzled.

“Already payed for,” she checked with a beaming smile, “Enjoy your meal!”

“Thank you,” you said, voice numb. Before you knew it, she had turned on her heel and was on the way back to the car.

“Chanhee! Your food is here,” you shouted, assuming he was the one who had made the order. You got no answer. When you set the bag down on the kitchen table, you saw a note, addressed to you.

Y/N,

Words can’t express how sorry I am about what I’ve done. All my life I only wanted someone to love me. In you, I thought I might have found what I had been searching for all this time. But I messed up. I always do. I drove you away from what we had. I’ve wondered why I always end up disappointing people. Now I know it’s because it’s the only thing I’m truly good at. You deserve someone you can trust blindly, someone who will walk through fire for you, someone who will take a bullet for you. I can’t give you that. I can’t even trust myself. Thank you for giving me a home and for being the most generous person I have ever met. You will always be in my sweet evil heart. Don’t worry about me too much. I will find my way and you will find yours. Who knows, our paths may cross again. I ordered your favorite food. I know you’re always starving when you get home from work. Enjoy it and don’t let it go cold. Make sure you get enough sleep tonight, and don’t forget to take your water bottle with you tomorrow, you left it here this morning.

I’ll hold you in my happiest thoughts forever,

Chanhee

You only snapped out of your motionless state when one single tear dropped down your cheek and onto the note. A heavy blanket of sorrow and regret sunk into your whole body. The emotions seeped through your skin and before you knew it, you were a sobbing mess on the kitchen floor. You wanted to take him in your arms and tell him you forgave him. Hell, you had forgiven him minutes after you had yelled at him. You should have gone to him then. Had you only apologized quickly enough, perhaps he’d still be here. Then he’d be eating dinner with you, and although you’d be frustrated, you both wouldn’t be alone.

Your tears fell into your food while you ate it, unable to control your sadness and frustration you had against yourself. They mixed with the shower water as you stood in silence under the hot stream, overthinking everything. Your pillow was wet from the crying as you struggled to fall asleep. Like a broken-hearted zombie you trudged across the hall and into his room. Chanhee’s covers still smelled like him and you hugged them tightly, as if you could hold a piece of him and bring him back that way. But there was nothing you could have done. He had left, and it was alone your fault.

~

The next day passed like a vivid fever dream. While you were sat in your meeting, you couldn’t possibly focus on the case your team was discussing. Instead, you pondered whether your makeup was able to conceal your puffy face and the dark circles under your eyes. If it was obvious, at least people didn’t seem to point it out. Maybe they were so used to seeing you tired that it would take a lot more than some tiredness and lack of concentration to arise concern. It was the first time in years you really wanted to go home after work. In fact, you couldn’t stand the laughter and good mood at the police station for one more second. All you wanted to do was scream and cry, and seeing people joke around without any idea about your feelings only intensified your desire. Of course, you could have confided in somebody. But you were afraid they would tell you Serves you right or I told you. You don’t think you’d be able to handle those blatant assumptions and the mocking.

Your plan for the night was set: You’d sit in the bathtub for half an hour, then you’d wrap yourself into a human burrito in a blanket and fill your brain with some brutal movie that would make your life seem like it was mere child’s play. But as most things in your life lately, nothing went as planned. Because after only five minutes in the hot tub, your phone rang on the other side of the room. The first time you ignored it. You really tried. But then it rang again, and you looked up to see the caller ID. It was your boss.

You groaned and quickly stood up, not giving up on the prospects of a peaceful night just yet. But then you heard her message – a break-in at a bank, one dead bank employee, five hostages, a possible shoot out. They were calling for back up. And when there was a chance to throw bad guys behind bars, the most inviting bath or an exciting movie suddenly turned dull.

Not fifteen minutes later you had jumped out the bath, gotten dressed in your uniform, taken your gun and ammunition, and were pulling up at the scene your boss had ordered you to. The bank was in the city center, close to the main square. The police team was stationed in a side street. Some of the team had already been sent to the front of the bank, where the police was attempting to make contact with the robbers.

“They’re holding four hostages in the back of the bank. One of them is at the front, right by the glass doors for us to see. The robbers have guns to their heads. If we come closer, they’ll shoot them,” your colleague informed you.

“Demons?” you asked. Against your will, Chanhee appeared in your mind. You wondered how he was doing. Was he hiding out in somebody else’s garden right now? Had he found a bed to sleep in? Then you quickly shook your head. This was not the time for heavy emotions of any kind.

“Yes. Five of them,” your colleague added. You huffed.

“What do they want us to do? Are they demanding anything?” you asked.

“They want us to let them leave with the money,” she said. You grinned bitterly and nodded.

“What about the back entrance?” you asked. You knew the layout of this bank and had been there multiple times in the past.

“That’s our route. Besides the one at the front, the other demons are inside the bank. The entrance isn’t guarded. A team of four will go to the back and try to sneak up on them. When we have a clear line of fire on all the robbers, we’ll take them out at the same time,” she explained.

“Alright,” you nodded, fixing your bulletproof vest around your upper body. You were ready for this. To others, missions like these would have been nerve-wrecking, and you would have been lying if you said you were completely calm. But the adrenaline was already rushing through your body, and fear was something you hadn’t felt since your very first operation.

“All ready?” your colleague asked the other two members of the team who would go into the bank. You received nods and professional expressions. You had all trained together and were used to functioning like one unit. Sticking close together, you rounded the bank, using a side street so the demons wouldn’t see you approaching. In your ear, the voice of your boss was giving orders and checking in on you. The street was dark and devoid of any life except for your team. Multiple of the surrounding streets had been evacuated and shut off to the public. The scene had something straight out of a heist movie. Except this time, the robbers weren’t going to pull of the perfect theft and get away. You would make sure of it.

“We’re almost there,” you said. “Twenty meters to the entrance. Awaiting permission to go inside.”

“You have permission,” your boss spoke over your earpiece. One last look at your teammates, and you were on the move. Sneaking inside soundlessly was easy. The backrooms were all empty. As you passed abandoned offices, you saw knocked over office equipment and paper scattered on the floors. Lamps had been left on and you heard the faint buzzing of a running computer that was most certainly unoccupied. Moving swiftly, you walked along the corridors, guns pointed ahead at all times. Your teamwork was untouchable. One of you made sure the path was clear, then the rest followed.

“You are one room away from the entry hall,” your boss said.

“Understood,” you answered and slowed down your steps. A cat wouldn’t have been able to walk more silently than you did. Now your ears picked up voices. Somebody was crying. There was shuffling of feet on marble.

“Shut up!” a male voice yelled. The crying faded out into muteness. In the dark, you could make out figures. A few countertops and a good distance separated you and your team from the demons and the hostages. You nodded to your colleagues and they understood. The four of you parted ways, moving into the room and taking shelter behind the bank counters. Once again, you checked the situation. Close to you, four hostages sat on the floor. A woman was still crying, and you could tell she was struggling to keep herself quiet. Around them, four demons stood, dressed in black. Their ski masks kept their faces hidden, but their body languages told you enough. They were not to be messed with. By the far entrance, the fifth demon was positioned with the remaining hostage, and you could spot the police cars outside in the town square. From behind your hiding spots, each of your teammates had a clear line of fire on the demons. The fifth one would be taken out from police outside the bank. You were just about to send a signal to your boss to let her know you were in position. Suddenly, the scraping of feet on the floor alarmed you.

“What was that?” one of the demons barked. The noise had come from your colleague beside you, who was now flinching. You had no time to think. No time to complain about her mistake. If you didn’t act now, they were going to close in on you.

You jumped up, pointing your gun at the closest demon. Right away, the remaining demons had their guns aimed at the hostages’ heads. Your colleagues had done as you, guns held towards the demons. Now you got a proper look at them. They were towering over the hostages, who were crouched on the floor in intimidation. The one in front of you only chuckled. Humans didn’t laugh like this. It was pure malice and recklessness displayed in front of you.

“I thought we told you to stay away,” he began. The only thing you could truly note about him was his mouth. The rest was covered by his mask and where the white of eyes should have been, two orbs of darkness sat, eying you like prey.

“Let the hostages go and we won’t shoot you,” you ordered, with a surprisingly calm voice.

“And why would we do that when we can just kill them?” he asked. His gaze momentarily focused on his fellow demons, as if he was a stand-up comedian and he had just delivered the funniest punch line.

“You will die if you harm even one of the hostages,” you stated.

“Oh, is that so? Humans never learn, do they?” he said. This monster was completely insane. And suicidal too, it seemed. “Go on, shoot.”

First, you thought he was urging your team to shoot. Then you realized, he was looking at the demon closest to you. The very demon you had your gun pointed at. He was asking the other demon to shoot at the hostages. You were preparing to pull the trigger.

But then your mind started racing. You stared at him intensely as your heartbeat quickened uncontrollably in your chest. The dark eyes. The soft lips. His skinny frame and gentle hands. You knew exactly who this demon was. You’d be able to pick him out of any crowd. What the hell was he doing here?

“Shoot!” the bigger demon shouted again, but Chanhee didn’t budge.

“I told you he was goddamn useless,” one of the others said. “Get rid of him.”

“You don’t deserve any of this money,” the bigger demon snarled, and his hand went to his belt. You knew there were human lives on the line. What you were about to do could be considered not only stupid, but wildly imprudent. Emotions were supposed to be left out of police operations. But how could you not have been blind with shock? You were going to let your heart control your body over your mind, and if it was deadly so be it. The bigger demon was now raising his arm at Chanhee.

Before you knew it, you had jumped out from behind the counter. You mirrored the demon’s actions and you pointed at him, pulling the trigger. At the same time, his gun went off. Just in time, you had pushed your body between the two demons.

“Y/N!” Chanhee shouted.

The bullet hit your shoulder and you fell backwards. Burning heat spread through your insides as you stumbled and reached for anything, anyone to hold on to. You could only think of Chanhee, and how your bullet had pierced through the big demon’s skull perfectly. Then, your colleagues opened the gunfire. The shots sounded almost muffled through the intense amount of adrenaline in your blood and the initial effect of being hit. Your body fell to the ground with a heavy thud, and a wave of agony spread through you. You grimaced at the excruciating pain, hands grasping at your shoulder. All you could see was white, before you sank onto your back and the world went dark.

~approximately 18 months later~

“Y/N,” Chanhee said, for the sixth time within the last ten minutes. You pressed your phone harder against your ear, holding it up with your shoulder. Your hands were too busy writing a police report on your laptop.

“Chanhee, I promise I’m writing the last few sentences already,” you assured him. He liked it when you came home early, leaving enough time to relax on the couch with him, instead of falling into bed like a corpse. Today, he was especially insistent, urging you to stay on the phone with him until you had finally packed up your things and left the police department. You guessed he was just trying to make sure you couldn’t stop somewhere along the way and start working on something new. And maybe that fear wasn’t so far off the truth.

“I’m done,” you said. “Status report: I’m switching off the laptop. Now I’m taking my bag. I’m getting up. I’m locking my office behind me. I’ll be home in twenty minutes or less.”

His laughter on the other side of the line made you smile. You couldn’t wait to see his face and get to hug him.

“Alright. I can’t wait,” he said. “I’ll see you.”

The walk home was calm. A soft breeze went through your hair and in the distance, you heard sirens of an ambulance. Promptly you were catapulted back to your memories and into the vehicle after you had been shot. Going in and out of consciousness, you kept repeating one name: Chanhee. When you woke up in the hospital bed, you half-expected him to be sitting there, waiting for you to wake up. But of course that was not the case. He had committed a crime – or at least tried to commit one. The prosecution was in his favor. They acknowledged his compliance with the police and his hesitation to hurt the hostage. Plus, he sold out the other demons and showed no resistance at any point. His regret and sorrow was apparent, nonetheless his mistake caused him 11 months in prison – by far less than the other robbers got.

People had called you insane for standing by him. Others thought you brave and newspapers named him the first good demon in the world. Every week you visited him in prison, often more than once. You made the most of your short time to talk, and with your kindest words you let him know that you were still here for him. Every visit you learned a bit more about how he had ended up in that bank.

After he had walked out on you, he had nowhere to go. So, after strolling the street mazes for days he found himself in the very demon night club he had once warned you about. Most unsavory figures twisted his mind into thinking doing good was no use. They made him believe he would never be able to escape the demon in him, and he might as well embrace the malice. They more or less pulled him along to the robbery, while he overthought the whole thing. It hurt you, seeing him cry as he recounted how scared he was when he saw the hostages. Some of them ended up injured, but all survived. You knew he would have never forgiven himself, had one of them died.

The day you picked him up from prison was a day you’d never forget. Holding each other in your arms felt so right, and you had missed it tremendously. His months at the prison hadn’t been easy, but you made sure he felt loved and cared for when he finally returned. He almost refused to believe that you would open your doors to him again. It was no question to you. You’d always be here for him. Even when he insisted you keep your office at home locked at all times. You trusted him almost a hundred percent by now. His demon only came out rarely, especially in times of stress or intense negative emotions. But you only treated him with kindness, and he gave back just as much of it.

“Chanhee I’m home!” you shouted as you entered your home.

“I’m up here,” he spoke. You ran up the stairs, excited to see him. Your eyes fell onto the open door of your office. For a moment, your heartbeat quickened as you approached it. You must have forgotten to lock the door that morning. Slowly, you pushed it open.

“Hello,” he grinned. You only chuckled as you watched him, sitting by your desk, a book in his hands. “I hope you don’t mind me being in here. This chair is so comfortable.”

“It’s all good,” you said. “Do you know what day it is today?”

“Umm…Friday?” he asked.

“It’s been exactly two years since you first started living here,” you said. “I think we should get some take out and celebrate, what do you say?”

“I can’t believe it’s been two years,” he said. “I’d love that. And you know what? I think I’m ready to start the internship at the police station.”

You smiled proudly. He had put his book down and was getting up.

“You’re going to do good things,” you said, wrapping your arms around him. He finally had found his place. His home. And you were never going to give up on him.

[mr-chatterboxs-column]

vague explanation of why these clips are jointly relevant below the cut

So earlier this month I watched the movie Valley Girl for the first time (Nic Cage Summer woo), which was designed to delight me personally, like a beautiful projection of Romeo and Juliet onto the TMBG song "XTC vs Adam Ant," but with the impressive era-specific datedness of Mannequin, another rom-com I adore because of, not despite, its having aged so badly it reads as a period piece. The thing that thrilled me from the start was the dialogue, even though I couldn't really justify it with logic mid-experience. When I was writing a review and later trying to convey my enthusiasm to my best friend, my instinct was to compare it to Soderbergh even though on the face of it I could not begin to understand why.

I am a known, diagnosed Soderbergh enjoyer slash apologist (don't worry, it’s not terminal, I realize Magic Mike XXL is better than the original) and the speech above from Sex, Lies, & Videotape is one that has been engraved in my brain since the first time I saw that movie, probably in high school. It's got an acclaimed script that is known for its seeming lack of formalism, its realism, but one of my favorite things about that speech is that it is a structural Chekhov's Gun in disguise as realism. It feels like a movie that is full of conversations that go nowhere, but it is actually a movie about "conversations that go nowhere" -- like, they are *a plot point*.

It's about analyzing the value of conversations that go nowhere, about how they are valued in different ways in different contexts and between different people, about when that is good and when that is bad and when that is just something you should notice, like maybe we as people don't always notice when we have replaced doing something with instead just having a conversation that goes nowhere. And that dinner conversation that feels like just an excerpt from an awkward one-act play about "huh it can be weird to talk to college friends you haven't seen in years" is actually expository dialogue establishing "this character actively does not want to be able to lock his fucking front door." I'm sure if Soderbergh did write that one-act play it would be great and probably really fun to watch, but this is a guy who has directed some of the best heist movies of the last 20 years. It's one of those cases where "therapy language" in a fictional setting is being used not because the screenwriter is part of LA therapy culture or because it's an element of the modern comedic mileau but because it's establishing the particular relationship different characters have with Literal Therapy, you know? So in that sense, it's not a realistic script at all. It's formalized, it's designed to feel like Ann, John, Graham, and Cynthia are in these modern Southern harlequinade roles or they're trying to break out of them.

Anyway, for me that's how it ties back around to Valley Girl. I have absolutely no context for whether the slang in Valley Girl is being used "accurately" or "realistically" (it was made years before I was born and I have never been to California) and I don't think that matters at all. All the characters are communicating in a way that serves a function, they're establishing their roles and how they're trying or not trying to defy their roles or reach across the arbitrary barriers they encounter (mostly capitalistic). So many of the big scenes where you're supposed to see chemistry building between Randy and Julie are them talking excitedly with each other at a distance, so their dialogue isn't quite audible, and once the camera reaches them it's not clear what they could really have been talking *about* before; a lot of their most emotional on-screen exchanges are conversations that go nowhere to the point of barely having any nouns in them. But they clearly both know that talking to each other *at all* is defying their roles, and then in the obligatory pre-climactic breakup scene, the true high point, the "one key" moment in Valley Girl, is Randy, visibly shocked at having been dumped and struggling to think of a retort that will hurt Julie in turn, telling her to "fuck off, fer sure, like totally," making fun of her Valley slang in a way that almost feels like breaking the fourth wall, given the bulk of the movie never acknowledges that most of the cast members are using this extremely distinctive mode of speech. This element of the script that has been a source of comic relief throughout has been pointedly identified as a symbol of economic and class divisions, all the social tensions that the movie is *actually* about, for the entire early section that seems like just a by-the-numbers teen comedy.