#it really does feel fucking awful i could be a cis girl and he still wouldnt like me.

[foxlightnights]

i’m out of surgery and finally home. it turns out the stimulator they put in (and took out today) wasnt even working properly lmao, they tested it after they removed it and found the leads were broken but i still dont want to try it again.

but wow i when i called it “useless” i didn’t know i was literally, objectively correct. it wasn’t even functioning!

they don’t want me to drive for a week so i guess i get a break from waking up at 6 in the morning to take my kid into school but that fucking sucks so much honestly because i dont have anyone i can count on or willing to drive me anywhere or even go get me anything unless it’s “convenient” for them.

that’s why i made sure to grocery shop and stock up on shit yesterday. glad i did.

also my dad is a fucking dick but that’s nothing new.

[threepoint14art]

HELLOOOO for pride month i wanted to share our headcanons for fnafhs!!!!! coupled with some edits with our designs!!

Under the cut there's individual commentary about all of em!

Freddys afab, and only goes by he/him with the animatronics. He didnt tell them he's male or anything. What happeend was they they were all talking to eachothet, getting to know eachother, when chica realized she forgot to ask his name. Meanwhile freddy had though he heard Fred, so he wss on his own little world and asked to the air ‘Fred?’ so they took that as his name and he hasnt ‘corrected them’. (This is my (loop’s) work around for those twins basicallly having the same name.) Hes called Freddy and not Fred bc Chica gives them all nicknanes , Freddy, Foxy, Goldy, instead of Fred, Fox, and Golden. ( Bonnie… you bastard you already fit…. cannot change his name to Bon without nuking Bons actual name). He hasn't thought about his sexuality because he thinks he's undatable, Dysphoria levels are very high, hes contantly ‘out of it’ in his own body. feels like hes just, piloting it, distant from himself and the now. whenever he does come back doen it feels awful fir a bilion reasons 👍 this makes it hard for him to identify the feelings he has about himself since its all so fuzzy and distant. hes not thinking about his sexuality, he doesn’t think anyone would really date him so, fuck if he knows! Bonnie is cis demironantic and unlabled. Goes by he/him. One of his names is María (Bonnie María) so that plus his longer hair means he gets misgendered as a CIS guy and I think its rlly funny. He's not thinking about romance because "no one would go out with him", enter Bon with a nuke Chica is cis and Bisexual. Goes by She/her. Her bisexual awakening was magnet hatsune miku lmao Fox is afab trans guy, stealth about it, and bisexual. Goes by he/him. He figured out he was trans PRETTY early on so no one but his family really even knows, he practically has no dysphoria. Golden is amab nonbinary and pan (they/them). Being famous is the worst thing ever you could do to them, people know their dead name and sorta treat them as a gay man rather than someone nonbinary and it's really bad!!! Sort of wishes they fell into some binary so something about them would "change" and so that people would realize they have changed, there is no way to "pass" as nonbinary and it drives them a lil crazy Fred has not been born (sorry low blow), but if they were they'd be amab, nonbinary and bisexual. Still figuring stuff out but eventually he will settle for going by He/they Meg is afab, genderfluid and pan, goes by any pronouns, idek what else to say <3 Bon is afab trans guy and gay, goes by he/him. He and Malva (usagi) are twins and just switched names and lives and gender! so he's stealth to everyone EXCEPT his sister, this includes their father! who is awful!! and this makes him super repressed and ill about being gay, yeah. Both he and Malva lied on legal documents to look cis since they exchanged identities and all that joy is amab trans girl and bisexual, goes by she/her, also famous so people also know her deadname </3

Toddy is afab and cis, she's NOT aware of either of her flags, comphet queen, "dating" bon because it helps them both feel so normal but its not working out and it never will! Seeing the nigthmares all date eachother made her think "oh wow not being monogamous is a thing" and if she thinks of malva and joy thats HER BUSINESS and her business only. Also fun fact her parents are divorced not because they hate eachother but because they realized they were both aroace, epic. Goes by she/her Deuz is amab bigender gay and poly, the nightmares are a polycule. She is not that dysphoric most of the time and goes by He/she Maggie is afab trans guy, bi and poly, Femenine trans guys are epic and he is one, gets misgendered a lot because he doesn't bind and wears makeup and croptops and all that. Goes by he/him and she/her ONLY with his partners. Onnie is amab agender, gay and poly, it used to be forced to have really short hair because it's dad is awful (also bon's dad, yay siblings), so when he ran away he grew it out a lot, goes be he/they/it Onyx (oxy) is afab trans guy, bi and poly, he got kicked out when he came out as trans, he's super happy now tho. He/him Pup(pet) afab demi-boy, his legal name is puppilo i know it sounds dumb thats why they go by pup. He's queer in some way but its impossible to find out given how he experiences feelings and all that (lore tm) so, fuck if i know. Goes by he/they Mai afab demi-girl and sapphic, yay for twins, her legal name is marinette but they go by mai only, she really wants to date but due to how she and pup operate thats kinda impossible and shes super hung up on it. Goes by They/she Lily is afab cis aroace!!! Eak is afab trans guy and gay, he does not really pass that well so he's misgendered quite a bit at school. Goes by he/him Tony is amab cis guy and gay, he's dating Eak, he used to question if he was REALLY gay before eak came out and was super confused about it and then he found out hes a guy and all is well lol Cami is afab aromantic bisexual and nonbinary, though she has not thought about the whole nonbinary thing that deeply at all. Eventually she will use all pronouns but currently she goes by She/her Loon is amab bigender bisexual and poly, is super dysphoric and hates dressing too femenine because it "doesn't fit her", "not cute enough to be a girl and not handsome enough to be a guy", goes by loon when masc and jj when fem. Goes by he/she Malva is trans and lesbian! Unlike Bon she's normal about being lesbian, mostly because their dad thinks she "doesn't look like one" and because generally girls just get an easier pass to be mushy and close to eachother (eugh), goes by she/her Owynn is afab trans guy, demiromantic, ace and poly. Damn share some flags dude you are hogging them. Stealth at school but percieved as a femenine guy and therefore called gay (as an insult) a lot, lied in legal documents to be seen as a guy! he's dysphoric despite passing really well because of very minor things people don't really notice, female scorpions are taller than male ones and he's tall, female scorpions have bigger hands than male ones and his hands are big, etc etc. He goes by he/him Background character jumpscare! Mesero who is named Vincent here, Owynn's older brother who is amab cis pan and poly, he thought he was straight for a LONG while and hated people calling him gay as an insult because he had long hair, sorry to burst your bubble but you are not straight, he eventually became normal about it but it did hurt that people were "right about him" Spring!!! Is amab cis unlabeled and poly, he never thought about labels or anything for the longest time because he thought he was undatable and also was busy with ten trillion jobs, fly low, goes by he/him Bg character again! Novia (ghghg) who is named Leticia here! She is afab cis straight and poly!

Also sorry for not having any of the funtimes, we haven't really thought about them aside from lily, so we have nothing ToT. Any funtime lovers please share what you think about them we really need it

[filthbear]

the casteel series has been so hard to get through

this turned so long please forgive my autism

not even necessarily bc the neiderman books start with fallen hearts, i just feel like heaven ends up this mutated evolution of a vc andrews protagonist where she has to have her way being a total fuckin brat

and heres the thing!!!! reading web of dreams is So Repugnant im on my second runthrough and i feel like neiderman loves to do this thing where he almost parodies andrews’ original voice— we’re met with these frail little waifs who suffer Endlessly and then they die bad.

and i mean, considering cathy and audrina being andrews’ authentic protags, this could be considered an accurate, if broad, way to assess her work.

it’s in the details of it, though; heaven in book 3, annie and leigh are all subjected to cartoonish levels of horror; tony tatterton as an antagonist is admittedly interesting if not complex but neiderman makes a mistake in book 5 of just presenting him as an unrepentant predator. it makes him lose all of that complexity for me. if he’s just hurting these girls without any reason, why do i give a fuck if he dies?

jillian, additionally because of book 5, just seems like an absolute monster. like comparable to my actual mom. her exchanges with leigh are nonsensically self-centered.

the one dynamic i really find interesting in the later books is jillian’s dynamic with tony. did she actually offer up leigh like that??? da mystery…

i think a hallmark of andrews’ authentic work is that evil parents are people as much as they are parents. i mean hell, kitty and cal in book 1 hooked me for the entire series. they are awful and gross and reading what they’re like is uncomfortable but i still recognized it as a genuine sad moment when kitty died, or when cal has the conflict he does (though cal is ……. yikes.)

i could go on for ages. it turns out these books are the only ones i can stand while i’m at work lmao. i keep trying to start mary by nat cassidy but a cis man writing about a menopausal woman put me off quick

anyway fuck andrew neiderman all my friends hate his ass

[drakenology]

Operation Deku Day- Izuku Midoriya

author’s note: hiiii! so today’s inspiration is drunk sex. anyone who’s ever had drunk sex before knows that shit hit different. Something about it is soo nasty and hot ugh I’m a sucker. I firmly believe that izuku is an insatiable sex god don’t let that innocent sweetness fool you so he was the perfect candidate for my idea. please enjoy! all characters are aged up 18 +

warnings: cussing, smut!, alcohol use, breeding kink? and sex under the influence. also light degradation

summary: For Izuku’s 21st birthday you and the girls decide to throw him a surprise birthday party. As the night progressed, you and Izuku got real drunk and couldn’t keep your hands off each other... in more ways than one. 

word count: 2.4k

You spent all week preparing for this surprise party for Izuku. It was his birthday and you really wanted him to feel special and appreciated for being a great friend and loving boyfriend. You were pretty good at pretending that all the things you snuck home were just “things for the apartment” instead of decorations and all his favorite foods for the party. Bakugo being Izuku’s childhood friend couldn’t pass up on helping you and everyone from your graduating class of 1-A prep for the party, keeping everything hidden from Izuku. 

“MIND YOUR DAMN BUSINESS DEKU!” He’d yell at him if the green haired pro hero asked one too many questions. Today was finally the day to set up the party. You just had to keep everything hidden for a little while longer. You woke Izuku up with kisses and a plate of his favorite breakfast. He’d always loved pancakes but for whatever reason, he loved your waffles. Izuku could eat them for dinner if you’d let him. He smiled and ate his food, gushing about how he’s finally 21. 

“I can drink with you now, Y/N.” He said with a mouthful of waffles. You grinned and kissed him on the cheek as he ate. “So, what are we doing today?” He asked. Even though today was his birthday, the hero still had to work. 

“Oh.. uhm.. well.” You struggle to tell Midoriya that you had “nothing planned” knowing that he’d be hurt by that. 

“Maybe we could just go out to the bar and have a few drinks?” You lie, wincing at the upcoming disappointment in his voice. He nodded with a weak smile, trying not to seem too disappointed at the lazy plans. But he was grateful anyways and kind of excited to see the bar scene. After eating his birthday breakfast, he stood up from the bed and got ready for the day. While he was in the bathroom you text the mass group chat with the entire class in it named “Operation Deku Day!” Mina had already been messaging you all throughout the morning reminding everyone that the party starts at 9 pm; right when Izuku is expected to be home. 

“So what kind of cake does he like? I’m at the bakery right now.” Todoroki texts followed by an image of the options of cake the menu had. 

“Get him chocolate.” You text, giggling at the plan all coming together nicely. You wait for a response while looking at all the gifs and memes everyone’s sending sharing the same excitement for the party.

“Cool. I’ll have them decorate it and drop it off at your place, Y/N. Just let me know when Midoriya leaves.” Shoto texts back, you responding with an Ok and answering any questions about the party from the others. 

“Your phone’s going off a lot today, Y/N. Who are you talking to?” Izuku asks, his hips adorning a towel as he just got out of the shower. You look his wet body up and down, almost forgetting to respond to the question before he gets too curious.

“OH! Uh, It’s just the girls. Yaoyorozu wished you a happy birthday.” You laugh nervously, clearly awful at keeping secrets. Izuku just smiles and tells you to tell her he said thank you and got dressed in his hero costume. 

“Well, I’m off. I love you Y/N. I’ll see you later tonight.” Izuku says giving you a small peck on the lips as he leaves your shared apartment. You wave goodbye as he shuts the door and jumped up from your bed, texting the group chat

 “THE EAGLE HAS LEFT THE NEST. OPERATION DEKU DAY IS AGO.” 

Momo, Mina and Uraraka spend all day decorating the house and setting the ambiance for the party. Todoroki brought the cake and put it in the fridge and starting making a small ice sculpture in the shape of All Might for the spiked punch he made (He was known for making a good cocktail). Kyoka made a playlist for the party, she was the DJ afterall. She tweaked the stereo so the sound system would be JUMPIN and laughed maniacally as she knew she was gonna rock the fucking house down. Katsuki insisted on cooking since “You can’t cook half as good as he can.” Or at least that’s what Katsuki said. He handed a hot dish of buffalo chicken dip (my favorite) to Mineta, who insisted on helping with... idk something.

“It’s hot on the bottom, idiot. If you drop my dip I’m gonna drop my fucking fist down your throat.” Bakugo shouts, making Mineta nervous as he walks carefully with the dish. Sero and Yaoyorozu were putting the finishing touches on the decorations as you check the clock on your phone. Shit. It was 8:59. You see a text you received from Izuku 30 minutes ago saying he was on his way home and another from just now saying he’s coming upstairs. You squeal and start panicking. He was probably already on your floor. 

“Everybody ready? Izuku’s home!” You yell over everyone’s excited chatter. Everyone replied in a harmonious yes and took their places. You run towards the door and adjust your strapless dress, turning off the lights. You stand behind the houseplant by the door and almost squeal in excitement as you hear the door click unlocked. 

“Y/N?” You hear Izuku say nervously as he turned on the lights. He gasps as everyone jumps out from their hiding places and yell 

“SURPISE!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY IZUKU!” 

He smiles brightly and grabs you, giving you the biggest hug while lifting you off your feet. 

“Wow, thanks everyone!” He says excitedly, looking around the room to see all his friends. He became a little emotional knowing that you all went through the trouble of planning a surprise birthday party for him. You wipe his tears and give him a big fat kiss, earning an excited spin from him. 

“We love you Izuku. Now, let’s enjoy your party!” You said as you let him to the delicious spread of food to start Izuku off. Kyoko started the music and danced along to the beat to get everyone to join in on the fun. Mina pulled Uraraka towards the living to dance with her as she waved Asui over to join in. Shoto manned the punch bowl, serving everyone with a half smile hoping they like his punch. Midoriya walks over to grab a plate of food from Katsuki.

“Yo, Ka-Chan!” He yelled over the music. Bakugo smirks and gives the birthday boy his plate. They chat over the food and laugh together as they have a good time in each other’s company. Katsuki seemed to cease the usual teasing, just for this one special night. You giggle and run over to the dancefloor with your cup of punch in toe. You drink and dance at the same time, spilling a little bit of punch as it ran down your chin. Mina laughs and takes your hands dancing along to the beat with you. The night was young and the party was a success. You were just glad Midoriya seemed to be having a great time. 

Drink after drink you feel yourself get extremely tipsy, stumbling around with a drunk Mina and Asui. Uraraka had passed out on the couch from all the drinking and dancing. Even Momo was drunk, creating a phone to drunkenly call in some pizza since there was no more of the food Katsuki made. It was 1 am and everyone was still partying like there was no tomorrow. Including Midoriya. You had never seen this shy boy act so boldy and confidently. It was kind of a turn on. He was in a chug contest with Bakugo, seeing who out of them both could drink the most drinks the fastest. Ida, Shoto, Kirishima and Kaminari crowded around the two chanting chug chug chug as they both drank themselves into a drunken stupor. Izuku finished first, erupting into a loud and boisterous burp. Bakugo grunts and raises Izuku’s arm in the air claiming him the victor. When the hell did Katsuki EVER admit to defeat?

“ *hic* IZUKU’S THE FUCKING CHAMPION! *hic* And he’s one of my best fucking friends! I- I love you bro.” Katsuki says, slurring his speech and stuttering over his words. Midoriya winks at you, who was watching the whole thing go down from across the room. 

“L-Love you too, Kaaaachan.” Izuku slurred, stumbling over to you to give you a kiss. He wanted to celebrate his victory the right way; with a kiss from his girlfriend who was looking sexier than usual tonight. Midoriya approached you, smelling like beer and sweat as he pulled you close to him. Without warning he crashed his lips into yours, turning a sweet kiss into an intense and passionate make out session in front of the whole party. Something definitely took over in Midoriya. He was more aggressive with you than usual. You hear encouraging whoos and a jealous aww from Mineta who wished he was the one kissing you. Izuku waved him away as if he was shooing a fly and lifted you up, carrying you away from the party and into your bedroom. He shut the door with a slam, you squealing with excitement as he heatened the kiss. Izuku’s hands were all over you, groping your ass, squeezing your boobs and leaving sloppy kisses all over your neck. He was a beast, hungry for his well deserved prize. 

“Do you know what you do to me, Y/N?” Izuku asked, pulling away from the sloppy kiss as he throws you on the bed. You can’t even answer as you stare at him dumbly, still shocked at your normally sweet and gentle boyfriend turn into a lust stricken beast. He hovers over you on the bed, drinking in your body in that tight little dress you wore. Izuku feels himself stiffen at the sight of you, pulling your panties down under your dress. 

“’M gonna leave this dress on. You look so good right now, ya know that? Your tits are popping out of this little thing” Midoriya hisses, taking his calloused hand and rubbing tight circles on your already sensitive bud. You moan at his dirty words, intoxicated on his touch as you grab a pillow and cover your face with it. Izuku snatched the pillow away and threw it across the room, eager to hear your moans no matter who else was around to hear them. 

“Let everyone know how good I’m making you feel.” He said, easing two fingers inside you wet walls. You moan like a pornstar, grabbing onto Midoriya’s arm for dear life as he fingered you with a steady pace. Izuku’s eyes were glued to your face, watching you make those faces he loved to see pull on your features as he pulled your breasts out of your dress suckling on your swollen nipple. You pant, gasping at the euphoric feeling as the pit of your stomach tightened, threatening to snap as you approach a fast climax. Izuku noticed you body language automatically able to tell you’re about to cum. He quickened his pace as he watched you arch your back as you came undone before him. 

“Good girl.” Izuku coos as he takes his hand and sucked his sweet juices off his fingers. You flutter your eyes open as Izuku pulled his pants and boxers down in one swift movement, his impressive length springing out as you lick your lips at the sight. You wanted him in your mouth so you grab his dick and stroke it with a tight grip earning an eager moan from Midoriya as he grabbed your hair. 

“N-No. As much as I want you to, I have to be inside you.” He stutters, pulling your dress up over your hips. He kissed you sloppily, slipping some tongue in as you moan into the kiss. He motioned for you to bend over and you do so with excitement, wiggling your ass to tease him as he smacked it with fervor. 

“You ready for me?” Izuku asked tapping his dick against you as you nod and back yourself onto him, feeling his dick slide inside you with ease. You both moan at the feeling as Midoriya grabs your hips and thrusts harshly inside you, holding nothing back as he pulled your hair and smacked your ass. The muffled sounds of the music along with the sinful noises coating the walls of your room were all you could hear as you feel his hand reach forward to rub your clit as he brushed up against your g-spot repeatedly. You scream, trying to keep up with his swift and hard strokes as you throw your ass back on him, gripping the sheets for dear life. You’re sure everyone can hear your loud moans over all the music as you approach a second climax. 

“I’m gonna fill that pretty pussy with my cum, baby. You want me to fill you up don’t you, you filthy whore?” Izuku said, earning a frantic yes from you as you whine for him. You’re shocked at his words but more so turned on by them as you clench around him, cumming for him a second time. Izuku hissed as he rode out your orgasm, chasing his own. Soon enough, he’s coating your insides with his hot seed, grunting and moaning as he ruts into you a few more times. You whine at the loss of his dick as he pulled out of you. Izuku watched as his thick sperm dripped out of you, satisfied with the job for now. He grabbed a towel and cleaned you off sloppily, still heavily intoxicated. You giggled and grabbed your underwear and slipped them back on to rejoin the party. Izuku and you were both a visual mess. It looked as if you both just had sex, your hair was an absolute wreck, your dress was disheveled and you were missing a shoe. Izuku was just as bad, sweat glistening on his forehead and he had this big cheesy grin plastered on his face. You hoped you were both inconspicuous enough for you both to just rejoin the party as if nothing happened in your bedroom. But Mina took one look at you two and erupted into laughter. 

“You two just had sex didn’t you?!” 

[saybees]

I have been thinking a lot about gender stuff lately and the deeper I delve into things the more I think I might be a dude and I'm not really sure how I wanna go about this. I've tried pushing this stuff down and ignoring it, but it always comes up again. I wish I was okay with being a cis woman, but I'm just not. I've always hated certain parts of my body for not being feminine enough and not being attractive enough, but I'm starting to realize that it's because I'm trying to fit into a box I don't belong in. As a kid I was always wearing boys clothes, playing with the other little boys, pretending and wishing I was a boy, and I was always mad about being a girl and having to force myself into that role. I constantly wish I'd been born a boy. Life would be better if I were a man.

Thing is, I question this in myself a lot because I'm not sure if I am actually a man inside or if I'm just bitter about how I've been treated so far because I'm a woman. I wonder if I only want to be a man because I will never look the way I want to as a woman, the way society says I should look. I'll never have nice boobs or a nice face. I have what I have and that's some sad tiddies and a pretty blah face. I don't have bottom dysphoria, but I know not all trans people do. And yet even if I was able to have cosmetic procedures done to look like the woman I want to look like I still don't know if I'd be satisfied. But also maybe I would be? I don't know and honestly I never will because I'm poor as fuck so it's not like I can go get a boob job.

And yet I feel like if I could get top surgery I would be happy. My boobs are little and sad and I hate them and also they're in the way and are often tender for no reason other than "woman" things and it makes me so angry that I'm forced to go through menstruation and all that shit. I hate it. It makes me so frustrated. And I hate that my worth is so dependant on that.

I was complaining once to my mum about periods and my dad chimed in to inform me that "it's natural" and I lost it on him, told him he doesn't get to say shit about it because he doesn't experience it and if he only knew what it was like he would understand how awful it is.

A kid I grew up with came out publicly as a trans woman several years ago. I used to hang out with her when we were little. Looking back now I think perhaps we saw something in each other and connected over whatever shared feelings we had about gender. I've had to listen to my father spew hateful garbage about her. He thinks trans people are disgusting. If I ever decide that I'm going to transition and come out I'm going to have to be prepared to receive a lot of abuse from my family over it. I already know I'll have to go full no contact with them at that point. And of course my mother will take it as a personal attack on her because she always does and I don't want to hurt her, but also I don't want to be a woman forever just to please her.

I don't think Jon would stick with me if I transitioned, and that's fine because I'm beginning to realize he isn't quite who I want to be with anyway. He has issues he refuses to work on and he pays so little attention to me. I don't think I can be happy with him forever. Not unless he makes some changes. Besides, I already don't feel like he's attracted to me as it is. I doubt he will be attracted to me if I start looking more like a dude.

Idk, I've just had a lot of time to ponder life and I'm just super not happy with where mine is at rn.

[lovelylogans]

so idk if requests are still open for wyliwf but i’m a sucker for dee in aus and it seems like he gets a bit of redemption before the most recent oneshot. If you feel up to it, i’d love to read something on that

debutante

part of the wyliwf verse.

chapter one | next chapter

notes: this ask was sent right after odds are! look, i know i’m overlooking several of the rules of the debutante ball, but honestly, so did gilmore girls, so. source material, here.  i hope this can serve as a distraction for some of you today—please go out and vote if you are able and if you haven’t already! also happy birthday logan!!!

A debutante or deb (from French: débutante, “female beginner”) is a young woman of aristocratic or upper-class family background who has reached maturity and, as a new adult, comes out into society at a formal “debut” or possibly debutante ball. Originally, the term meant the woman was old enough to be married, and part of the purpose of her coming out was to display her to eligible bachelors and their families with a view to marriage within a select circle.

or: logan wants to dismantle the cis-heteronormative patriarchy with his bare hands and teeth if necessary, roman delights in dresses, virgil fucking hates tuxedos, patton’s really proud of his son, and dee thinks those sanders’ might not be so terrible after all.

⁂

“i need a dress.”

patton blinks, glancing up from the kitchen table where he’s organizing his notes for midterms for his business degree. bright side, last set of midterms patton would ever have to take! dark side, midterms. “just, like, generally, or…?”

the slight attempt at a joke dies when he catches the look on logan’s face—clenched jaw, eyes flashing—and he sets down his papers.

“i’m coming out,” logan continues.

“kiddo, you did that when you were about eight,” patton points out. “remember? i said i loved you and i was proud of you and i’m so glad that you trusted me enough to share that moment with you and thank you for telling me, and we went and got ice cream at lucy’s, and then you tried to use the whole sentimental thing to get me to ask out virgil because you were supposed to have a positive gay role model in your life, as if us being separately gay wasn’t enough in this town whose main tourist attraction is its rich history, from the times of our founding fathers to the times of pride.”

patton’s quoting the most recent town brochure, here.

“no, dad,” logan says, and arches his eyebrows significantly. “i’m coming out.”

the double-meaning clicks in his head.

“no,” patton says, hushed—he isn’t sure if it’s in awe or horror. “like—like, debutante coming out? or, um, wait, like—like—?”

“the male equivalent is a beautillion, and no, i mean like debutante coming out,” logan says. 

patton pauses, waiting, but logan says nothing, until patton says, “kiddo, either your attempts at trying to push this information into my brain via telepathy aren’t working or my brain’s too fried from midterms to catch the implications of what you’re saying, i’m gonna need more details than that.”

logan drops into the other seat at the kitchen table, huffing out a slow breath. 

“you remember dee.”

“your former rival turned weird allies that are still sometimes rivals, yes,” patton says. 

“who came over to our house once.”

“for the gsa poster-making thing?” patton says.

“right,” logan says, and arches his brows, waiting for patton to catch on.

“when… he mentioned he was also trans?” patton elaborates.

“right,” logan says. “i think dee’s parents are trying to out him, because they informed him of their intentions to sign him up for the daughters of the american revolution debutante ball.”

a cold feeling crawls uncomfortably in his stomach.

presenting him to society. a debutante ball. undeniably, harshly female. one of the main benefits of the timing of patton’s coming out had been so he wouldn’t have been a debutante—the very concept of doing that had given him this exact same cold, crawling feeling.

“dee gave me about five separate explanations as to why, of course, so i don’t particularly know why they’re choosing to out him now,” logan says briskly, “but i have a plan as to how that’s not going to happen.”

“you’re… going to be a debutante,” patton says slowly.

“well,” logan says, and fishes out a piece of paper from his backpack. “hopefully, not just me.”

FIGHT THE PATRIARCHY, the title screams in huge letters, then subtitled with Become a debutante or an escort today! Why should women be the only ones who have to go through this? Be a better feminist and put on a dress, if you’re a boy, or a tux, if you’re a girl, and if you fall outside of the gender binary, the choice of debutante or escort is up to you. Contact Logan Sanders for more details. there’s two copies—one blank, and one with an already modest list of names. which is probably to be expected, debutante balls were a big deal at chilton, except the usual names that would be listed under escorts are listed under debutantes, and vice versa.

“dermot, tristan, brad, henry, roger,” patton reads off, slow, and then he looks up at logan. “and madeline, lem, lisa, summer, and ivy.”

“well, it’s hardly fair that girls have to go through all this primping and glamming up just to be seen as presentable to society,” logan says briskly. “boys should come out into society, too.”

“which is your cover story,” patton says slowly, putting it together. that cold, uncomfortable feeling is turning into a warm glow that’s turning up the corners of his mouth.

“right,” logan says. “if a group of boys will show up in pretty white dresses, all very serious about their intentions of being presented to society, with their escorts of girls in tuxes, then—”

“then everyone will think dee is part of the ploy.”

“exactly,” logan says. “his secret is kept under wraps and no one has to know.”

 patton leans abruptly over the table to wrap logan up in a hug.

“hey,” logan complains, but patton just squeezes a little tighter.

“you are,” he says, choked up, “such an amazing friend, kiddo.”

it sounds like something he and christopher might have done as a prank back in the day—christopher in the dress, patton in the tux—but this—this—

patton lets go of him, grinning hugely. “i am so proud of you.”

“so you’re okay with it?”

“okay with it?!” patton laughs. “you’re protecting your friend from getting outed in a way that would be very embarrassing and schooling high society about how weird it is that they still present their daughters like they’re cattle for purchase! of course i’m okay with it!”

“so, dress?” logan asks, and honestly, patton’s just about ready to grab his wallet and haul logan to the finest dress store he can find, before logan continues, “if grandma still has it, we could probably steal the one she was intending to use for you from the cellar.”

that cold feeling is back. “ah.”

logan blinks. “what?”

patton sits back down. “i forgot about your grandparents.”

“what about—?”

patton chews at his lip. “mom’s a part of the daughters of the american revolution.”

“why does that matter?” logan says, and patton sighs.

“oh, you know by now that things work differently in grandma’s world than ours,” patton says. “just—i definitely support your right to do this, but just… know that if a fight comes out of this, i will not regret it or back down, okay? i’m always on your team.”

“well, i know that,” logan says, like it’s obvious, which, fair, it probably is, or at least patton hopes so, it’s his job as a dad to be on his kid’s side. “i’ll bring it up at dinner on friday, we’ll see how it goes over then. they’re less likely to yell at me.”

“it’ll just be us and grandma, your grandpa’s in… i think copenhagen?” patton says, considering, and waves a hand. “some historical city across an ocean, anyway, and virgil’s working.”

virgil is almost always working on friday nights. it’s only partly because he owns the diner, but it’s also because, well. friday night dinners. patton doesn’t blame him for avoiding them—even with the buffer of a couple months, it’s not exactly an easy relationship between him and patton’s parents.

“well, that’ll be something,” logan says briskly, then stands. “i’m going to go put one of these sheets on sideshire high’s bulletin board.”

“good call, a ton of kids here would want to crush heteronormativity and an excuse to wear a pretty dress slash tux,” patton says. “i’m betting you’re gonna ask roman?”

logan looks like he’s trying not to flush, and he adjusts his chilton jacket. “he’s the one letting me in. he’s still there for cheer practice.”

“ahhh,” patton says, only a little teasing. “well, let me know what your plans for the afternoon are, it’ll probably be virgil’s for dinner tonight, ‘cause,” and he lifts up a sheaf of his papers for emphasis.

“isn’t it always?” logan points out, and, with that, he departs.

“my little baby, off to destroy people!” patton calls teasingly after him, grinning, so proud he feels like he’s about to burst.

“i’m destroying the cis-heteronormative patriarchy!” logan calls, and then there’s the sound of the front door opening and slamming shut.

patton’s going to take him on a trip to bookstore and he’s buying him everything he wants.

⁂

“granmè, i’m home!” dee calls, dropping his backpack at the door and hanging his bowler hat on the coat rack.

“hello, mister slange.”

“nanny,” dee acknowledges. he’d address her by her first name, if he knew it. he admires that about her; it’s something they share.

nanny soledad used to be his nanny, back when he’d needed such things; she’s from the dominican republic, which his parents thought was “close enough” to being haitian that it would be enough to help him adjust. which is accurate enough geographically, but not culturally. honestly, he’s surprised his parents even bothered to look as far as geographically. 

but now he is too old for such things, and his grandmother’s memory problems are growing more and more apparent by the day, so nanny had made the transition from the ancestral slange manor to the slange family townhome, where his grandmother evelyn lives.

the townhome is a bit run-down, in comparison with the manor; no multiple wings, no murals on the ceilings, no precisely selected statues in the alcoves. instead, the townhome is a conglomeration of furniture collected by the family over the years; all of it high-quality, expensive, but almost none of it matching, with persian rugs thrown down over almost every hardwood surface, armchairs cluttering the spare corners, paintings hanging dilapidated with no rhyme or reason to their collection. it feels a bit squashed and claustrophobic, sometimes, with its dark woods and narrow hallways and secluded rooms, in comparison to the aggressively, purposefully airy nature of the manor with its open floor plan and silver accents and crisp, neutral colors.

the townhome is closer to chilton, so dee had reasoned to his parents that there was no reason to keep using too much gas to have him make the commute home every night. his parents, frankly just happy to have him out of their hair, had acquiesced swiftly.

well. they tended to like him out of their lives, until they needed him for something. until he needed to act like a doll. dee pushes those thoughts away; he’s thought about it quite enough today.

so dee and his snakes and his clothes were stationed in one guest bedroom, nanny and martha in the others, and dee would return to the ancestral home on weekends and long breaks. it would stay that way for as long as he and nanny could get away with it.

especially with the latest developments. dee suppresses a shudder at the way he’d handled himself earlier in the day, and instead turns his attention to nanny.

“where is she?”

“your grandmother’s in the greenhouse,” nanny says, then, seeing the look on his face, “not gardening, you know i would be supervising if she were.”

“the azaleas are in bloom,” dee acknowledges. “she does like the azaleas.”

“that she does,” nanny says, and falls into step beside him. “i’ve had martha gather some cuttings sent up to her room. bertie is out running errands, but he should be back in time for supper. ingrid will be in later for dinner and should be sticking to the menu, unless you have other requests. it’s lobster linguine tonight.”

“all fine,” dee says, and winces to himself at how distracted he sounds. he needs to stop thinking about it. he needs to focus on the now. the present. thinking about his parents’ ultimatum looming over his head would do no good right now.

“now, she’s taken her medicine for the afternoon and requested some tea. would you like some as well, perhaps a snack?”

“whatever she’s requested will suffice,” dee says. “thank you, nanny.”

nanny nods, and departs for the kitchen. dee continues through the house, to the backdoor, and into the greenhouse.

greenhouse is a bit of an exaggeration. it’s really more of a solarium that’s been overcrowded with pots and planters, in addition to the gardens outside. there’s floor-to-ceiling windows, and the room is overwhelmed with wicker furniture. it’s calming, in here; to say that there’s a lot of earth tones would be an understatement, and the light filters in gold and tangibly warm. 

it’s the most open-air part of the house, but less like the manor; if the manor was like some renaissance painter’s imagination of heaven, all pearly white clouds and soft pastels, this was an impressionist painting’s portrait of a landscape—plants and woods and life, verdant and vibrant and vivid. 

the greenhouse is also the warmest room in the house, which he’s sure is part of why it’s his grandmother’s favorite. dee’s already moving to shed his capelet and gloves; if he doesn’t, he’ll get disgustingly sweaty.

his grandmother is sitting in her favored rocking chair, seemingly not having heard him open the door. her reading glasses are perched on her nose, about to slip off, and she’s deeply absorbed in her book.

“hello, granmè,” he says in french.

that makes her look up, and she smiles at him, reaching out her hand.

“hello, my sweet,” she says warmly, and he reaches out and squeezes her hand carefully—he has an irrational fear that one day, if he forgets his strength, if he squeezes too hard, he’ll snap the delicate little bones in her frail hand easier than blinking. she switches to french. “did you have fun at school?”

he scowls, settling in the rocking chair beside hers, separate by an end table that’s teeming with books. “it’s school, grand-mère.”

“that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun,” she says. “did you learn anything interesting, at least?”

that logan sanders is just as unsurprisingly terrible at comfort that one would expect?

instead, he says, “we’re supposed to start reading sula for homework today.”

she brightens, as he knew she would—his grandmother adores all things toni morrison—and they begin talking about books, and other works by toni morrison, and their favorite parts of said books, which eats up the better part of the fifteen minutes it takes nanny to deliver the tea tray to the greenhouse.

“thank you, nanny,” evelyn says, still in french. nanny nods—she’s fluent in spanish and portuguese and english, not quite in french, but she knows enough to get by in a conversation—and withdraws from the room without a word.

dee swiftly takes the teapot before his grandmother can attempt to pour it herself—her plus a heavy pot of near-boiling water was a hospital visit waiting to happen—and switches to english, saying, “would you mind plating some of the battenburg for me, granmè?”

“as long as you have a crumpet,” she says. “you’re a growing boy, noodle.”

“yes, yes, fine,” he sighs, pretending to be put-upon at both the pet name and the insistence of somewhat healthy eating. “a crumpet too, then.”

he fixes her cup as she likes it—two sugars, a splash of cream—and trades her teacup and saucer for a plate of snacks before he works on making his own tea and she arranges her own plate. he notices that she has reached for none of the savory options, instead opting entirely for sweets.

dee hides his smirk in his tea. 

they continue chit-chatting about all kinds of things as they work their way slowly through tea, a holdover from his english grandfather. even though grand-mère’s french, she’s too fond of teacakes and snacking in general to really do away with it, even nearly two decades after his passing. they talk about the azaleas (yes, they look exceptional this year) running the household (bertie was going to visit his grandchildren next week, yes he’d make sure bertie would pass on her hellos, yes he’ll manage fine without him, it’s not like nanny and martha and ingrid won’t be here) and his academics (yes, he thinks the semester’s going well.)

they talk about everything except the thing that’s weighing most heavily on his mind. 

she might not know. she might not even remember.

dee pushes that thought away. once they’ve finished their tea, he excuses himself to do his homework, leaving her to her book and her admiration of the lilies, and nanny smoothly institutes herself in his chair, with the guise of a magazine to make it seem like she wasn’t supervising his grandmother.

dee picks up his capelet, gloves, and backpack on his way up to his room. back at the manor, he has a whole wing, but here he just has his room. it suffices.

he sits on the bed, briefly, in sight of the full-length, gilt-edged mirror, to sweep the capelet back around his shoulders and ensure that it’s sitting on him properly; he could probably get away with taking off his binder, as he’s home and they aren’t expecting visitors, except he very much does not want to do that right now. he pulls on his gloves, covering his vitiligo-ridden left hand first; his dermatologist swears his particular case is segmental, which typically doesn’t expand with time, but it feels like it has been.

but then again, it is just his left side affected. so. perhaps the woman who’d been to school for twelve years and was a specialist in his particular condition was right.

dee toes off his loafers, debating crossing the room and entering his walk-in closet to store them properly on the shoe rack, but decides against it—the singular item of clutter makes his room seem a little more lived-in.

it’s not that he doesn’t like his room here; they hired decorators to redo it back when his grandmother moved in and he started spending more time here, years ago, so the walls are a subtle shade of gold, with an accent wall plastered with an art-deco black-and-gold theme was behind his bed. his bed is massive and plush. everywhere he looks, things are black, gold, and white, in that order of frequency.

it’s just not very… well. lived-in.

his room at the manor house is worse, though. just about the only thing he likes there is the aesthetic of the gold. the chandelier and tufted wall and personal tv and absurdist decor that screamed “this is too expensive for you to even look at!” he could do without.

he might have to look at it all the more, soon. he’s dreading it.

“homework,” he reminds himself, “homework.”

he makes a beeline for his desk, where his snakes are settled in their vivarium, all lazily sunning themselves under the heat lamp, tangled together in a loose pile.

“layabouts, the lot of you,” dee informs them. luke, leia, and han do not seem to care.

dee settles at his desk, getting out his agenda, his books, and his notebooks. he gets out his favorite pen and sits, ready to get started on his to-do list for the day.

and that’s where his brain stops focusing on school, and starts focusing on what happened at school.

there are several locations in chilton that seem like they were designed specifically for crying.

the most popular ones are the almost-always abandoned bathrooms near the journalism lab were a good bet for most, with the stress of deadlines; and, considering they tended to share with the chemistry and biology labs, that was tripled, and therefore the most commonly-used choice. it wasn’t uncommon for med-school-aiming seniors to duck out around finals week and return after a carefully scheduled five-minute crying break, red-rimmed around the eyes. most were polite enough not to mention it to their faces.

then there was the kiln room; considering it was mostly empty, all bare walls and concrete, excepting for the periods of time where there were ceramics classes or art club, of course, it went mostly empty, and tended to be the discerning choice for arts-inclined students.

and then there was the option that he had opted for today; steal into the senior’s lounge, near the rear exit of the school, and hunker up into the most hidden corner, giving himself until the bell for the next class bell rings to have his breakdown where no one, not nanny or ingrid or bertie or martha or god forbid granmè would be able to hear him, the urge he’s been holding in since he descended from a lie-in yesterday morning to see his parents both sitting at the table. at granmè’s house. to speak to him.

which, really, was never a good sign in the first place, but even for his parents it was a particularly fucking terrible—

the exit door opens.

shit. shit.

dee hastily uses the ends of his capelet to wipe at his eyes and then rummages in his backpack, yanking out the first book he lays hands on, hoping against hope that he can pass it off as skipping class, he can manage that, his reputation wouldn’t even take a hit for that, whereas if someone like louise fucking grant caught him crying—

“are you skipping class?”

dee makes a show of glancing up, nonchalant, at the person who’s spoken.

“are you?” dee contests. logan sanders shakes his head, his hands braced on his backpack straps.

“no,” he says, then, “the bus popped a tire on the way to school.”

“another count against the bus,” dee murmurs, and he turns his attention back to the book, feigning a loss of interest.

logan has not walked away. in fact, he’s walking closer. dee clears his throat, hoping that he won’t get close enough to see his puffy, red-rimmed eyes. he’d specifically planned this particular crying jag so no one would see his puffy, red-rimmed eyes.

“are you skipping class?” logan repeats. dee stifles a curse. damn journalist.

“so what if i am?” dee says, and he might have pulled off his airy tone, if his voice hadn’t cracked on the last word. dee coughs, to cover it, but now logan is walking closer.

“were you… crying?” logan says uncertainly.

“no,” dee lies. and honestly, getting caught might be worth it for the expressions that wars across logan’s face—pained awkwardness overwhelms it, but there’s concern, and discomfort, and a sense of do i have to, and honestly, if dee wasn’t in such a shitty mood it would be pretty funny.

“may i sit?”

“will you listen if i say no?”

“probably not,” logan admits. “even if you weren’t crying, which i’m pretty sure you were—”

“—i wasn’t—” 

“—your attendance is as good as mine, i’d still want to know why you were skipping class.”

dee makes a show of sighing, but shoves his backpack a little further away and scoots further into the corner. logan nods, settling his backpack beside dee’s, and sits close to dee. not quite side-by-side, but just far enough away that it’s clear he’s offering dee the choice to lean closer. it’s strangely thoughtful. he remembers, distantly, logan at his birthday party; he’d ducked hugs a lot of the time, only accepting it when he couldn’t substitute a handshake. he wonders if logan doesn’t like physical contact, and tucks away the idea of investigating that for potential use later.

logan pauses, before he says, almost kindly, “the book’s giving you away. you’re reading the scarlet letter. we read that last quarter. i highly doubt you’d be rereading it. you made your dislike known enough as we were reading it, not that i blame you for finding it dull and archaic. it is dull and archaic.”

dee bites back a curse as he makes a show of glancing at the book. he knew he should have cleaned out his backpack after midterms, but no, he’d been too busy—

“i like the scarlet letter,” dee lies, and logan looks at him, arching an eyebrow.

“try again.”

“what?” dee says. “i could.”

“you literally overrode class one day to complain, at length, about how stupid the plot is, how overblown and over-long the prose is, and that hawthorne desperately needed an editor. which i agree with, by the way.”

“well,” dee says. “i could still like it.”

“please,” logan scoffs.

he turns the book in his hands and reduces a shudder. god, what a terrible book. he’ll toss it as soon as he gets home.

“well, i like sleep,” dee says lightly, “and one should always have sleep-inducing material on hand. it’s remarkably effective. i like it for that reason, how about that?” 

logan smiles, with a little hum of acknowledgement. a i don’t believe you but i think your excuse is funny enough that i won’t press you on it hum. dee’s heard it many times.

they sit in silence for a couple minutes. long enough that dee thinks that he’s going to get away with it—if they’re quiet until second period, then dee can steal away and have an excuse ready by lunch, if need be.

except logan clears his throat, and dee braces himself.

“if you’d like to… talk,” he says stiffly, and he coughs again. “i am—here. clearly. not just physically, as i am now, but as a means of support. i suppose.”

dee rolls his eyes. “how convincing,” he says, and ignored how clogged-up his voice sounds, all of a sudden.

“yes, well,” logan says. “of the many things my father’s taught me, one thing he apparently hasn’t been able to pass down is being particularly good at navigating these… emotional kinds of conversations is not one of them.”

dee would laugh at the look on logan’s face when he says emotional, if his brain wasn’t stuck on my father. 

“your dad,” dee says, a strange tone in his voice, before he can stop himself.

logan’s dad, who was raised in this environment, in this world, and, somehow, had managed to be openly, proudly trans.

logan’s dad, who had been trans, without his parents attempting to publicly interfere with the way he presented himself.

must be nice.

“yes,” logan says cautiously. “what about my dad?”

dee takes a deep breath, and, immediately, two concepts begin to war in his mind.

don’t tell him, one side screams. the whole reason you’re out here is because you don’t want people to see weakness!

he has access to a unique perspective that, to your knowledge, is only shared by yourself and that other person, he argues with himself. and the largest part of this that would be kept secret, he already knows. and you have blackmail in hand if he were to suddenly confess with this additional quest for information.

dee lets out his breath. he says, “does your dad talk about the way it was for him? back then.”

logan stiffens, ever so slightly, in surprise.

“not often,” he says, the cautiousness still lingering in his tone. “he’s only ever really told me a little; bits and pieces. not details, you understand, but…”

logan pauses, collecting his thoughts. dee almost snaps at him to hurry up; usually, logan’s a decent enough public speaker, but the whole dramatic pause thing he did sometimes was really quite annoying.

“i know that it wasn’t easy, for him,” logan says. “that in part, the reaction helped fuel his desire to run away, in addition to my existence and the further stigma that’s associated with that. there are likely old issues of the jefferson that could provide the nastier details; i’ve given him my word i wouldn’t seek them out. i don’t particularly want to. in addition to the writing skills of the jefferson being terrible, i am not particularly inclined to read transphobia and terrible rumors about anyone, much less my father.”

another pause. then, “he had a bonfire for all his dresses and skirts.”

dee turns to him, startled. logan’s dad? that soft little puffball?

“i know,” logan says, seemingly agreeing with how out-of-character it seemed. “my other father—christopher—helped. he’s been saving stories of his various teenage rebellions, too. he used to be rather…” a brief hesitation. “a rabble-rouser.”

dee snorts. it sounds very snotty and terrible and he immediately wishes he hadn’t.

(also—well, dee had known that logan was technically a hayden, it was just he hadn’t really heard logan outwardly express it, ever. he knows that christopher is located in california, somewhere. he wonders how logan handles that. something to look into.)

“why do you ask?” logan says.

“you know why.” 

“all right, that was poorly phrased,” logan says. “why ask about this now?”

dee hesitates. logan adds, awkwardly, “if you don’t want to answer—”

“it’s… fine,” dee says stiffly. he clears his throat. he looks at his shoes.

logan is one of the smartest people you know, he reminds himself. he wouldn’t tell. he knows you’d immediately move to destroy him if he told.

keeping his eyes on his toes, he says, forcefully light, “my parents have entered me into the daughters of the american revolution debutante ball. apparently, they’ve decided to stop humoring this phase i am going through, as i am now sixteen, it is time to cease such childish rebellion and enter society properly, as a—” dee stops, abruptly.

“as a gender which you are not,” logan finishes for him. his voice is very, very quiet.

dee clears his throat, and redirects his gaze from his shoes to the wall across from them. he’s very conscious of logan’s eyes on him, examining him, staring at his face for any sign of weakness.

“dee,” he begins, haltingly.

“it doesn’t matter,” dee says, except for the fact that it very much does matter. 

“that’s not,” logan begins, then, “i don’t,” and then, a frustrated sigh, before he says, “i’m sorry.”

“don’t,” dee snaps. “i don’t want your pity.”

“the definition of pity is the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others,” logan snaps back. “as a fellow member of the lgbtq community, of course i feel sorrow and compassion at the information that someone does not have the support of their parents, and that lack of support will cause that someone will be outed publicly without their consent.”

dee doesn’t say anything, instead choosing to stare at the wall. his jaw is clenched so tightly he thinks his teeth might break from the pressure.

“is there anything i can do?” logan says stiffly.

dee keeps his eyes on the wall. “no,” he bites out.

they sit in awkward silence for a few more seconds. it feels like an hour. then:

“what if i stopped it?”

dee scoffs.

“what?” logan says.

“please,” dee says. “it’s the dar debutante ball.”

“we can get you out of it.”

“the bill’s already paid,” dee says. 

“then we’ll stop the ball,” logan says.

“i’m sorry, have you met the ilk of your grandmother and her friends?” dee says pointedly. “you think you’re going to rob them of the chance to trot their precious little darlings around in a circle for all the men to drool over?”

logan’s back straightens. dee, finally, turns to look at him.

it’s like dee can see the lightbulb go off over his head.

“what?” dee says.

“nothing,” logan says, except he’s smiling.

“what,” dee snaps.

“nothing,” logan repeats. “it’s just—i might have an idea.”

“might,” dee repeats.

“might,” logan agrees. he’s clearly about to say more, but the bell rings, and there’s the beginning of shuffling steps that means people will emerge into the hallways. logan scrambles to his feet, swinging his backpack over his shoulder, before, belatedly, offering a hand to dee.

dee considers it. he accepts. logan helps haul him to his feet.

“your idea,” dee says, picking up his own backpack.

“you’ll see,” logan says, and dee huffs at him, before beginning to head off to his next class—

“dee?”

dee turns, and logan offers an awkward little facial expression that might be a smile.

“if you want to talk about it—”

“we aren’t friends,” dee says, cutting off whatever platitude that he’s clearly building up to. an idea. probably a lie to try and make dee feel better.

“i know that,” logan says, firmly. “but if you ever do… want to talk about it.”

“i will,” dee says, and tacks on, “if i want to.”

“okay.”

“but i probably won’t.”

“that’s fine.”

dee hesitates. “but if i do—”

“i’m around,” logan says simply. 

“i doubt i will,” dee says, attempting to resume his haughty expression.

“you know where to find me, if you do,” logan says. 

dee rolls his eyes, as if that conversation was very trying and not something that threatens to create an even bigger lump in his throat, and resumes his route to his science class.

“mister slange, dinner!” nanny calls, and dee startles. he clears his throat and puts down his pen, rising to his feet.

“coming, nanny!” he calls down the stairs.

find him. right. like the idea of talking to logan sanders about anything else in his life is even slightly appealing.

no, he tells himself. the idea of getting to know logan sanders? maybe even becoming something other than rivals? not even a little bit nice.

⁂

as soon as virgil comes out of the kitchen, roman has this Look on his face that makes virgil immediately say “no.”

“you don’t even know what i’m asking yet!” roman protests.

“i can tell you’re plotting something just by the look on your face,” virgil says.

“ah, but technically i’m not the one plotting, logan is,” roman says, and, well. that’s outside the norm. roman tends to be the plotter of the things that give roman That Look on his face, the one that reminds virgil only a little painfully of remus.

“okay, why am i involved in the thing that logan’s plotting?”

“patton’s in on it too,” roman points out. “and, uh, my mom.”

virgil pauses, contemplates, and says, “i don’t know if that’s a warning sign or not.”

“well, logan and i can explain when patton and him get here for dinner,” roman says. “in the meantime—”

“please don’t order something that will make your mom kill me for violating your meal plan too terribly, i don’t think i’ve recovered from last friday,” virgil says wearily.

“ugh, fine,” roman says, and orders something that is at least passably healthy, which he could really teach to his boyfriend and—and virgil’s boyfriend.

virgil’s boyfriend, patton. nope, even after two and a half months, it’s still bizarre in the best possible way.

by the time virgil puts roman’s order in, and carries out about three more, he’s carting a tray across the diner as the bell jangles and two familiar faces walk in.

“hey,” patton says, and leans in to give him a brief, welcoming kiss. habit. routine. thrilling. patton runs a thumb along virgil’s stubble, grinning at him.

“hey yourself,” virgil says, and jerks his head. “roman’s in a booth over there, and apparently i have a plot to be brought in on?”

and then patton… puffs up with pride? literally, puffs up. whenever he’s proud of logan, his posture gets better and he puffs his chest out a little and his chin tilts up, like logan achieving something is an achievement for patton, makes him more confident in himself. virgil guesses a lot of logan’s achievements owe at least a little credit to patton’s parenting, though, so it’s a fair trade. logan doesn’t seem to be complaining.

“that you do,” patton says, a little smug.

“okay then,” virgil says. “brainstorm your pitch and i’ll be right over.”

he drops off dinner orders—mrs. torres and a gaggle of other older ladies who coo and giggle and wave to roman, who blows kisses back, because he’s the default adopted son/grandson for any active older woman in town—before he sidles up to the sanders/prince booth.

“right, okay, orders, then plot,” virgil says, flipping to a new page in his notepad and clicking his pen.

patton and logan put in their orders—virgil successfully convinces them both to trade in something unhealthy for either a salad (patton) or a side of vegetables (logan)—which he notes dutifully, before he slides in beside patton in the booth.

“okay,” virgil says, and he nudges patton. “pitch.”

“my idea, actually,” logan pipes up, and virgil obligingly turns his attention to the younger sanders.

“so,” logan says, folding his hands. “i am coming out.”

“um,” virgil says, dropping his gaze pointedly to where roman’s resting his hand on logan’s wrist. “you did that. like, eight years ago.”

“that’s what i said,” patton says, pleased.

“let me rephrase,” logan says, and his nose wrinkles. “i am coming out in the sense of the viennese waltz, i will be deemed of good breeding and marriageable age, must have dowry, seeking males with a trust fund, fluffy white dresses, et cetera.”

“oh, jesus christ,” virgil says. “what friend roped you into being an escort for this thing? because that is not a friend.”

“keep listening,” patton chides, a laugh in his tone.

“well, that’s the thing,” logan says. “i’m not going to be an escort.”

virgil considers this for a moment. “i’m not following.”

“logan’s creating an army to charge upon the daughters of the american revolution so we can destroy the patriarchy,” roman says, bright and perky.

“i’m recruiting like-minded members of the next generation to make a statement about gender equality,” logan corrects. “in other words: i shall be the one with a dowry, seeking males with a trust fund, in a fluffy white dress.”

“uh.”

“me too,” roman says sunnily. “i’m going to be wearing a fluffy white dress, too. plus a ton of other kids in our grade—the idea’s really caught on. ooh, logan, we can recruit some of the dance girls as escorts!”

virgil tries to picture it: a group of boys in dresses, girls in tuxes, gasping, scandalized rich people. the idea brings a smile to his face.

“oh, good idea, we should send put a sign-up sheet in the studio,” logan says.

“wait, you said i was going to be involved,” virgil says, his brain catching up with him. “where do i fit into all that?”

“well,” patton says. “isadora and i decided to set up a kind of etiquette-and-dance crash-course day for all the kids involved, because despite my best efforts i have not purged the viennese waltz or my numerous etiquette lessons from my mind—”

“you, cultured?” virgil teases, and patton smacks virgil’s arm playfully.

“with no help from you, thank you very much,” patton says. “anyway. since isadora and i are teaching the kids, and there will be an influx of fluffy white dresses and tuxes…”

it clicks. “alterations.”

“got it in one,” patton says cheerfully.

virgil’s a pretty decent tailor, for an amateur—he’s done his fair share of hemming dance costumes, or fixing suits, even some emergency repairs for some wedding dresses, over the years. he’s about to say something along the line of are you sure i should do this, i don’t think i’m qualified for something so fancy but then he catches the hopeful look on logan and roman’s faces, and—

“all right, fine,” virgil says, and he stands. “just let me know when and where, yeah?”

logan grins at him, and roman chirps a thank you, and patton giggles, soft, as virgil makes his way back for the kitchen.

fancy debutante tailor. he guesses he can handle that. it’s not really a step outside of the norm, so it’s not like he’s doing anything super out there, like the kids are.

virgil thought too soon.

by the time he re-emerges from the kitchen, ready to wipe down the counters, patton and logan are at the table finishing up the last of their meals, and roman’s at the counter, shifting his weight from foot to foot, eyes snapping to him. 

“hey,” virgil says. “you need a refill of water? because i’m telling you now, if you’re going to try for dessert, you may as well give up now—”

roman rolls his eyes. “no. it’s about the debutante ball.”

“okay,” virgil says, and tosses his towel over his shoulder. “what about it?”

“it, um,” roman says, and clears his throat. “ugh. apparently, your father’s supposed to present you at the ceremony.”

“oh,” virgil says. 

“and, um, since i don’t really have a dad,” roman begins.

“i could alter a tux for your mom?” virgil suggests. “since everyone’s already doing the whole ‘screw gender’ thing anyway.”

“i—no, no, she’s probably going to do backstage stuff to make sure that the sideshire kids aren’t spooked by the rich people,” roman says. “plus, she’d hate wearing a tux.”

“yeah, fair enough,” virgil says. he thinks the only time he’s really seen her dressed up is when she has to, during a recital or performance or something. “okay. i could help with the tux of… i forget his name, what’s that guy who was your one-on-one instructor during the nutcracker? sergio, right? i could drive you to visit sergio—“

“sergio is in portugal,” roman says, looking an odd mixture of helpless, amused, and frustrated. “y’know. where he’s from?”

“oh,” virgil says. “um, there’s always taylor? you know he’d be super into the whole pomp and circumstance thing.”

“taylor,” roman says. “virgil. you of all people. recommend taylor.”

“i know, okay, i know, but i’m kind of coming up blank here,” virgil says. 

“coming up blank?” roman repeats, the frustrated part becoming more clear.

“i’m trying here,” virgil says. “you could—”

“oh, for god’s sake, dumb-utante, i’m trying to ask you to escort me,” roman snaps. 

virgil’s jaw drops. just a little. 

“oh,” he says.

roman flushes a brilliantly bright red, and looks down at his shoes.

“i—just, whatever, okay, you don’t have to,” he mutters, and scuffs the toe of his shoe over the diner floor. he needs new ones—the white, rubbery part of his converse is overrun with mud and sharpie doodles, the aglets frayed, part of the high-top worn from where roman grabs it to shove his foot into it every morning discolored. 

remus used to wear green converse, sometimes, the most casual in his extensive collection of costume-style clothes. he remembers telling roman this, when roman was pretty little and ms. prince had enlisted virgil to take roman out for back-to-school shopping, and virgil had bought roman his first pair. he’d been little, then. six, he thinks. maybe seven. they’d gotten ice cream after. roman had gotten rum raisin, and virgil ended up having to eat the rest of it when roman pronounced it “ucky” and roman had ended up getting his usual chocolate-cherry. virgil had made roman pinky-promise that he would get a small one, so he wouldn’t spoil his dinner.

but roman prefers high-tops, and remus had always gotten classic chucks. roman loves red, and remus loved green. 

they’re different, remus and roman. like night and day. it still makes virgil feel a little strange whenever he thinks about how much longer he’s known roman than he’d known remus—really, it had topped out a few years ago, much longer if virgil was just considering how long he and remus had been friends. so much of his relationship with roman was built on the basis of being the last of remus’ friends still in sideshire, other than ms. prince, and so he was one of the only ones who could tell roman about his dad. do what his dad would have done.

remus probably would have bought roman his first pair of chucks when roman was a baby, those little tiny shoes that can sit comfortably in the palm of virgil’s hand with plenty of space to spare.

but remus is dead, and so buying roman his first pair of signature red shoes had fallen to virgil.

basically everything remus would have loved to do with his son had fallen to virgil, really, if ms. prince hadn’t taken care of it first.

apparently, your father’s supposed to present you at the ceremony.

“no,” virgil says, strangely choked up. “that’s—that’s a good idea. cool. i can, um. i can do that.”

“really?” roman asked, eyes snapping up from his shoes. he smiles like remus when he’s plotting, that much is true, but when he smiles when he’s just happy—all virgil can see is roman.

“yeah, sure,” virgil says, and then he coughs into his elbow to clear whatever’s lodged in his throat. “just, uh. just keep me updated on, y’know. details.”

roman’s grin grows a bit more delighted, a bit more remus-like. “are you crying?”

“what? no,” virgil scoffs.

“because you sound like you’re about to start crying.”

“i was chopping onions,” virgil says lamely. “this has nothing to do with you.”

“oh, i better check my calendar again, i didn’t realize it was opposite day,” roman says gleefully.

“you’re the most obnoxious teenager i’ve ever met,” virgil says, and roman laughs, even as he’s backing away, slowly, toward the door. virgil rolls his eyes, and moves to wipe down the counters.

“and you have to wear a tux!” roman calls, and virgil’s head snaps up.

“wait, what, no way—“

“shave off the five o’clock shadow, too, i won’t be looking scruffy by comparison!” roman calls, opening the door. virgil scowls, rubbing a hand along his face—yes, he goes stubbly sometimes, especially during winters or when he’s busy, but he doesn’t look bad with facial hair, he just looks a bit off today because he woke up late—and the reality hits him. a tux. dressing fancy. being involved in a high society ceremony.

“the tux is bad enough!”

“you’re forgetting the tails, the cumberbun, plus white gloves!“ roman says, ticking it off on his fingers.

“i take it back!” virgil calls. “i’m not doing this anymore!”

“too late, i already signed you up!” roman shouts, and disappears from the diner before virgil can yell at him anymore.

a tux. tails. white gloves.

a cumberbun.

dammit, of course roman would manage to net him into some kind of makeover.

⁂

it’s been a shitty day so far. 

something kept interrupting his sleep last night, so when he finally managed to get to sleep, he slept through his alarm. granmè was already having a bad memory day, repeatedly calling out for her dead husband and not recognizing nanny, which means she probably won’t recognize him, so he had to keep out of their way, and as he was walking out the door he saw bertie holding up something ensconced in a garment bag, lips pursed in disapproval, whose length could only mean the arrival of a fluffy white dress, a nice reminder of the thing that dee was dreading.

and it isn’t even eight yet.

“move,” dee snarls to the particularly amorous couple blocking the path to his locker—really, people, it was seven forty-five in the morning, did they always have to start the day attempting to tie their tongues together?—and they shuffle aside, to a vacant stretch of wall, presumably to resume their excessive pda.

dee rolls his eyes. typical.

except—

“slange,” one of the makeout participants says. dee ignores him, placing the books he’d had to bring home for homework in and pulling out the books he’d need for his morning classes.

“hey, slange, i’m talking to you,” he repeats. 

dee rolls his eyes with all the sarcasm he can muster, and directs his gaze to them; summer, absently wiping some stray lipgloss off with her finger, and tristan, leaning over.

“what,” dee says, in the crispest tone he possibly can.

“didn’t take you for a troublemaker,” tristan says, grinning still; dee notes, sourly, that summer could probably spare some energy to wipe off the sticky lip gloss on tristan’s chin, too. 

“excuse me.”

“oh, right, right,” tristan says, and rolls his eyes. “fighting the patriarchy, excuse me. hey, if that excuse is enough to make it look good on your college resume, you wouldn’t happen to know how to—”

“you already know all the people in our grade who write papers for a fee, dugray,” dee says, already exhausted and snippy and—he hates to even admit it to himself—confused. “take it up with henry, if you must. and wipe off your face before you go to class, you have holographic glossier smeared everywhere. it’ll give you away to julia, she doesn’t wear lipgloss.”

summer gapes at him, and immediately begins to screech something along the lines of “what is that supposed to mean, i knew you didn’t block her like i told you to!” but dee’s already tuning it out, slamming the locker door shut and making his way to homeroom. frankly, summer should have dumped tristan the second he told her that she wasn’t allowed to talk to other boys. the pair of them were toxic together—half the material he had on tristan were things that he wouldn’t want summer to know.

the other half would, if it made its way to the right hands, get him sent off to military school.

dee’s saving most of the rest of that for when he gets really annoyed with tristan.

he might be there in ten minutes if he didn’t get an answer—what did tristan mean, trouble-making? and tristan dugray, fighting the patriarchy. please. tristan’s as emblematic of a toxic, rich, straight white boy that there could be. tristan adores all the trappings of the patriarchy; it better allows him to pursue whatever girl he wanted into being his girl of the week, despite the fact that they weren’t particularly wanting to be his girl of the week, whenever he and summer were on a break (and, most of the time, when they weren’t.)

except that isn’t even the only time.

henry, dermot, lem—even shy little brad, who usually breaks out into cold sweats at the sight of him since the whole theater incident in sixth grade, seem to be attempting to make eye contact with him as he walks down the hall, like they were in with him, or something. like they were suddenly friends.

dee stews, furious, at the very idea they could know something about him that he doesn’t know—until he sees lisa approaching logan sanders, who seems to be loading up his backpack.

dee frowns. logan wouldn’t like lisa—well, obviously, he’s gay, but also, lisa subscribes to her parents’ politics, including the epithets of “fake news,” and he’s pretty sure that alone would spring logan into a furious tirade like little else could.

dee pauses.

fight the patriarchy, tristan had said. trouble making.

“what if i stopped it?”

and then he moves immediately toward the locker.

“—long as you don’t say why, then yes, of course,” logan says.

“duh!” lisa chirps. “hilarious, lo-lo, seriously.”

logan’s face twists up as politely as he can manage at the sound of a cutesy nickname, but he can’t really say anything, since lisa’s already flouncing off to be discriminatory and heartless on her parents’ orders.

presumably.

“what,” dee says, “was that.”

“i know,” logan says, turning back to his locker. “lo-lo. what am i, a puppy?”

“not that,” dee says. “you know she’s—”

“a terrible person who stands against everything i am, yes,” logan says mildly. “but she’s wealthy and has a fair amount of—” a near-sneaky glance at a notecard in his hand— “clout, amongst the puffs.”

“the puffs?” dee repeats, his voice already sounding strange.

“you know, the secret sorority,” he says nonchalantly. “one of them, at least, and certainly the most desired to join—”

“i know who the puffs are,” dee says, in a tone that clearly denotes do you think i’m stupid, i’ve gone to this school for longer than you have.

“ah,” logan says. “right. well, i would have gone through francie jarvis, who is less diametrically opposed to—” he makes a sweeping gesture up and down his body, “but she was absent yesterday, so. lisa was the obvious in.”

“why do you need an in with the puffs?” dee says. 

logan glances up and down the hall—god, way to show off you’re discussing something sensitive—before he pulls a leaflet out of his backpack, handing it to dee.

FIGHT THE PATRIARCHY!

dee skims it, and feels his eyebrows rise higher and higher, even as his throat gets disturbingly closed up.

“i noticed that a lot of the puffs are due for their debutante ball,” logan explains, even as dee stares at the—the excuse, the excuse that logan’s pulling for this elaborate ruse, that, if it works—

i won’t be outed.

dee swallows, hard. he folds the leaflet back up, and clears his throat.

“the puffs are a decent enough start,” he says, voice perhaps a bit thicker than normal. “as they’re the most socially prized secret society at chilton, it was a good place to begin—people will want to emulate them, especially those who are attempting to get puffed. mostly freshmen, but there are a few sophomores who are sixteen that’ll join. but you need to pivot your focus—the old crows and the skull and dagger would probably gain more participants per club capita.”

“old crows?” logan says uncertainly.

“the secret society for a select few seniors,” dee says. “who have likely already had a coming out, but it’s not uncommon to do multiple. skull and dagger would probably love an excuse to cause chaos, but that’s sorted, so long as you bother tristan some more. and if you’re going to come at it from the fight patriarchy angle, you’re going to need to get the clairosophic society involved.”

“the…?”

“another secret sorority,” dee says. “do you only know the puffs?”

logan abruptly looks sheepish, and dee sighs, put-upon.

“well,” he says. “clearly, you need my help pulling this off. of all the secret societies at this school, only ten are worth mentioning—”

“only ten?!”

“—so we can get people through those,” dee says, “and yes, ten, i thought you were a journalist, aren’t you supposed to know how to research these sorts of things?”

“well,” logan says. “i’ve already gotten a group of kids from sideshire, but clearly, i’ll need your help on the social side at chilton.”

a beat, and then, uncertain, “if you’re okay with this.”

dee stares at him for a long few seconds.

“if this works,” dee says carefully, trying to directly telepathically communicate i am okay with you attempting to cover for me like this, please count me in, “you’re going to have a hell of a college essay on your hands.”

a grin breaks out on logan’s face.

“as if i don’t have three drafts written already,” he says, and dee allows himself to grin back at him.

“now,” he says. “the clairs,” and logan readies a notebook, and, if dee were at all prone to clichés, he might say something like, this is the start to a beautiful partnership.

but he isn’t. obviously.

⁂

logan has his game face on.

patton’s seen this face countless times before; before he walks into mayor porter’s office to demand answers beyond pr statements, before they entered charleston’s office his first day at chilton, when coming face-to-face taylor after his latest piece that critiqued the way he handles town government.

he’s seen it while they were driving to the exact same place, too; before holiday parties, before birthday dinners, before the first-ever friday night dinner. but he hasn’t pulled up to the sanders’ mansion looking like that in months.

patton puts the car in park, removes the keys, and wipes his sweaty hands on his trousers for what must be the dozenth time that night.

“i’m on your side,” patton reminds him. 

“i know,” logan says and opens the car door, ready to storm up to the door and… well. tell emily that he was going to join the debutante ball.

which she’d probably be thrilled with, if he was the one escorting a girl in a white dress.

it would almost be a little funny to think about, if he wasn’t so nervous—emily expecting patton to go through a debutante ball in a fluffy dress, only to be derailed by the fact that he wasn’t a girl and, you know, the teen pregnancy; emily then expecting logan to escort a lovely young lady on his arm only to be turned around by logan doing it in a fluffy dress.

patton wipes his hands off on his pants again before he rings the doorbell. 

he has never seen the woman who answers the door before.

which isn’t surprising; new maids crop up at his parents’ house like weeds. he’s really hoping that therapy would help make a dent in that habit of his mother’s, but no dice yet.

“hi,” patton says, as kindly as possible—he always tries to be as kind as possible to the maids, just to make up for whatever future tiny offense that they might get fired for. one time he got grounded for two weeks for helping esperanza polish silver and practice his spanish. poor esperanza, he’d liked her.

plus, ever since the whole “being a homeless housekeeper” thing, his sympathy had really only escalated for them—he feels a level of solidarity, even if he’s not a housekeeper anymore.

“hello,” the maid says; she has an accent, patton thinks probably german. she’s blonde, and patton can see only half her face from the way she’s practically hiding behind the door.

“you’re new?” patton asks, and she nods.

“okay, well, hi,” patton says, offering a hand to shake. “i’m patton—”

she shakes his hand hurriedly, before pulling back further into the house.

“—and that’s my son, logan. what’s your name?”

“liesl.”

“hi, liesl,” he says warmly. “i’m emily and richard’s son, she’s expecting us for dinner?”

“oh! please, come in,” she says, flustered, opening the door further. 

“i, uh,” she says, “can i, um. get you a drink?”

“you know what, that’s okay!” patton says brightly. “we can handle it.”

a pause, before patton says in an undertone, “if you’d like to hide in the kitchen before my mother gets down here, please go for it.”

a look of relief breaks out on her face. “really?”

patton nods.

“thank you,” she exhales, and scuttles off to relative safety.

logan waits until she rounds the corner, before he says, “she won’t last another day.”

patton sighs, moving to hang his coat on the rack. he would tell logan that’s not a very nice thing to say, if he wasn’t right about it. “i know, poor thing.”

as they continued into the living room, patton could hear his mother coming down the stairs; less than a few seconds later, she rounded the corner, landline phone firmly affixed to her ear.

“—don’t forget that the dar meeting’s on tuesday, it’s at three o’clock and all the women are extremely punctual…”

emily makes eye contact with patton to roll her eyes, as if to curse the entire customer service industry; patton shrugs at her, just a little, before he lightly bumps logan’s shoulder and murmurs “soda?”

logan nods, drifting off to investigate the latest influx of tiny figurines that definitely weren’t there last week, and patton goes to the drinks cart to prep their drinks for the evening.

her mother’s talking about heddy cubbington—ah, so she’s talking to a caterer, then—and patton leans into her line of vision just enough to wiggle a bottle of gin at her, mouthing “martini?”

okay, he might try and make it a smidge stronger than usual. honestly, if she’s a bit off her game from more gin than usual, then maybe she won’t freak out as badly as patton is kind of expecting her to!

but regardless, his mother nods, even as she’s telling the caterer about her very precise tasting methods that they’ll have to follow to a t, and patton reacquaints himself with the process of preparing a martini exactly as his mother likes it—there was a stint of about a month or so when the hotel’s bar staff was incredibly short, way back in the day, so he picked up a few cocktail tricks here and there. 

he wonders if he could still manage to do a lidless shaker flip without spilling anything.

before he can try, though—and probably hear his mother’s outcry about trying his absolute hardest to stain her rug—his mother hangs up on the phone with a fervor, rolling her eyes as she did so.

“honestly, sometimes it’s like the only person with any sense,” she huffs. 

patton hums, carefully straining the martini into one of the coupes. he would do a martini glass, but those tend to spill more, the coupes hold more liquid, and she prefers the material of the coupes anyway—less likely to have fingerprint smudges, which also means one less thing to use to potentially snap at poor liesl. “troubles with the dar, mom?”

(okay, so maybe he’s busting out his old tricks to put his mother in a good mood—there’s almost nothing his mother likes more than gossiping and snipping at the members of the dar that aren’t pulling their weight, and once she’s expelled a bit of energy ranting like that, it usually meant less energy could be spent ranting at him.)

she sighs, settling on her usual spot on the couch. “constance betterton is running this event into the ground—” patton presses the martini into her hand, and she looks startled, momentarily, before thanks him briefly and continues on her tirade, including the perils of unsold tables and constance’s absolute inability to plan a function. 

patton hands over logan’s soda and directs him to the couch before he can crack open any books of interest, because logan will probably spend most of the dinner ignoring them if that happens, and since richard is on a business trip again that means it will be just him and his mom, and with how nervous he is over logan’s upcoming proposal he absolutely cannot do that, and then he goes and makes himself a plain club soda because him drinking sounds like a not-great idea right now.

by the time that particular train of conversation runs out of steam, it’s enough to carry them to the dining room. 

“so, logan,” emily says, as liesl attempts to set a land speed record for serving salads in her quest to get back to the kitchen, “is there anything new in your life?”

patton’s pretty sure that it would be impossible to pick up on who’s more nervous, him or liesl.

“there is, actually,” logan says, somehow entirely unfazed. “dee slange—you remember, you took me out to lunch with him and his grandmother evelyn—”

“oh, yes,” emily says, “wonderful woman, incredibly talented gardener. she’s coming out less and less lately, it’s been a while since we’ve had a good, long chat.”

“—we’re arranging a bit of an extracurricular project,” logan continues. 

“oh?” emily says, sounding interested. she picks up her fork and begins to eat her salad. “you two are getting along, then?”

“we’ve come to an understanding,” logan says coolly, and even as nervous as patton is, he can’t but grin a bit at his son. we’ve come to an understanding. really, logan, it wouldn’t hurt to say that you’re friends now.

“wonderful,” emily says briskly. “good that you’ve put that petty rivalry behind you.”

patton bites his tongue rather than start on a rant about the seriousness of physical assault.

“quite,” logan says. 

“so, what’s this project?” she asks, with a slight gesture of her fork. “you two are interested in journalism, from what i hear, is it something like that?”

logan sets his fork down. “actually, grandma, it has to do with you, tangentially. mrs. slange is a member of the daughters of the american revolution. like you.”

“a research project, then?” she says. “richard will probably have some books for—”

“not really,” logan says. “we’re both arranging for greater participation in the debutante ball. i’m coming out.”

patton holds his breath. here we go.

emily chuckles. “the correct term for the young gentlemen is escorting, logan. are you both escorting young ladies, then? anyone i know?”

“oh, i used the correct term,” logan says mildly. “i’m coming up with a partner later, but i was actually going to ask if you ever bought a dress for dad to use before he came out.”

emily lowers her fork.

patton’s pretty sure that even if he was about to breathe, he wouldn’t be able to.

“i’m going to be a debutante,” he says, very slowly, as if explaining something he thought to be obvious.

“you’re not serious,” she says disbelievingly.

“i am,” logan says. “we have approximately twenty-five participants so far, and we’re recruiting more. so. do you have a dress or not?”

“that’s absurd,” emily says. “i mean—my grandson, gallivanting about in a dress, how will that look?!”

“you were going to let dad do it,” logan points out, and before patton can say hey, nice point! emily swivels to face patton, piercing him through with a glare. “did you put him up to this?!”

before patton can squeak out anything, logan putting down his fork with a clang louder than necessary, and she turns to face her grandson.

“i was simply asking if you had a dress,” logan says. his voice is very, very even. the game face has reappeared. “i can ask again, if you’d like. do you have a dress suitable for this occasion, or should i shop for my own?”

emily and logan stare each other down. patton’s eyes dart between them both.

his mother has a variety of nicknames: the cobra, from her antiquing friends, because she’d squeeze and squeeze at you until you complied. wicked witch of the west, by some of her shopping friends, over the levels she’d go to over something as simple as a pair of shoes. 

christopher had joked once that “people considered what patton’s mother would do in a given situation, dialed it back, and they’d have what mussolini would do, then they’d dial it back, and they’d have what stalin would do, and then they’d dial that back and then it starts approaching what a sane person would do.”

she’d once forced an ex-president out of a hotel room because theirs had been bigger than theirs. a president. of the whole united states.

patton’s gearing himself up to provide as much supportive parent backup to logan that he possibly can, and also cursing himself for taking the time to hang up his coat, because if he hadn’t and just kept it with him they could make a quicker escape, and palming the car keys in his pocket. he puts together comebacks for my friends will be at this event and undignified and what will people say?!

and then patton takes a closer look at his mother’s face. it’s not her version of the game face, patton notices.

and then patton puts together what that expression is, with no small amount of surprise.

she’s calculating.

she’s calculating, patton realizes with no small amount of shock, if it’s worth it to go up against logan.

because logan is definitely wearing his game face, coupled with a defiant, angry look that, with another shock, it reminds him of him. it reminds him of him when he was a bit younger than logan is now—and, he realizes, his mother must be recalling those hellion days too.

at last, his mother sighs, wipes her mouth a napkin, and stands. “i might have something suitable.”

patton’s left sitting there, gaping. his mother. his mother backed down. his mother. did not fight with logan when it was clear what he was doing would interfere with her social status. 

his mother!

“well?!” emily snaps. “do you want to see it or not?!”

he and logan exchange a look before they scramble out of their seats, heading after her as quick as they can.

they’re going down to the basement, which holds a conglomeration of things and also patton’s second-most-frequently-used sneak-out route. the wine cellar’s down here, along with his parents’ collections of luggage, and matching white wardrobes filled with all kind of things, and gifts from granny trix that his mother has refused to display over the years, and art and furniture deemed out-of-fashion but were still held fondly enough to be stored in the house—it was, by far, the most disorganized segment of the sanders’ mansion.

of course, there were still clear paths to each segment of the basement, so it wasn’t as disorganized as, say, patton’s garage, but still. disorganized by his parents’ standards.

so patton follows logan who follows emily, past life-sized dog statues, past a stack of steamer trunks and matching carry-on luggage, past framed paintings of some of patton’s old family members, past the rows of old wines stored for an occasion fancy enough for them, past candlesticks and antique tables, past crates and cardboard boxes filled with, patton’s sure, more of the same, until they get back to yet another white wardrobe.

“it’s in here somewhere,” his mother says, already flipping her way through rows and rows of hanging garment bags, before she makes an “aha!” sound and plucks free a garment bag that looks identical to all the rest, before sparing it a fond glance.

“we got it in london,” she says fondly, “never actually worn, of course, but goodness, the plans i had for the seamstresses…” and patton feels a squirming sensation in his stomach that he hasn’t felt in a very long time; the same one he’d get every time he was dragged into a department store, the same one he’d get every time he knew he had to wear whatever was laid out on the bed for whatever party or get-together his mother was having, the same one he’d get when his mother’s friends, over for tea, would croon, my goodness, how pretty you are! 

patton clears his throat before his mother can start reminiscing on the times of dresses and skirts past, and says, “maybe show logan the dress, mom?”

“oh,” she says, seemingly successfully jolted out of whatever fashion-induced daydreaming session she’d fallen into, “yes” and unzips the garment bag, to reveal—

well, patton doesn’t know what he’d expected, really. all he can see is a lot of white, puffy tulle. 

“can i try it on?” logan says. “just to see it.”

emily hesitates, clutching the delicate fabric, before she hands him the garment bag with no small amount of reluctance.

“we’ll be upstairs when you want to give us a little fashion show,” patton says, carefully catching his mother’s elbow before she can rethink any of this. “let us know if you need help zipping it up or anything?”

logan nods, and begins the process of carefully unearthing the dress as patton steers his mother back up the stairs.

“he’ll need help getting into the dress,” emily protests.

“if he needs help, he’ll ask,” patton counters, firmly. “he’s sixteen, he’s helped roman with a lot of elaborate costumes like that before. he’ll manage. let’s give him a bit of privacy.”

patton glances back in enough time to see logan shooting him a grateful look, and patton shoots him a thumbs-up—he’d always hated it whenever his mother barged into a dressing room to “help,” so he’d always tried his best to let logan have his privacy when it came to this kind of thing.

also, okay, maybe the weirdness of having his pre-selected debutante dress he’d never worn or even really known about coming back to haunt him in some way is getting to him, just a little bit. 

“how did this idea get into his head?” she asks suspiciously, as soon as they’ve cleared the last of the steps and relocate to the living room; patton crosses to sit on the couch, and maybe walks a little slower than usual to get an answer straight in his head.

“i don’t… exactly know, why this, i mean,” patton says slowly—which is a little true, he doesn’t know exactly why logan chose this course of action over anything else—and fiddles with his suit jacket. “um, but i know it’s important to him. and dee,” he tacks on unnecessarily. “so, i’m all for it. a thousand percent.”

she surveys him, before she says, “you know more than you’re letting on, though.”

“not my story to tell,” patton says, and it surprises him, how firm his tone is. “but i am really behind logan doing this.”

she sighs, as if he’s a child all over again. “you would be behind logan doing anything. will you keep that attitude if he decided to drop out of school tomorrow?”

“okay, first of all, that sounds more like me,” patton points out. “in fact, that was me. logan is at least channeling any trouble-making tendencies toward something productive.”

“productive,” she says. “the daughters of the american revolution debutante ball—”

“—is an outdated, sexist ‘tradition,’” patton says, using finger quotes, “that will, at worst, turn out to be a college entry essay for logan, and at best be a nice, eye-opening event to some of your friends, who, if i recall, were not particularly enthusiastic about that whole upholding,” time for finger quotes again, “‘the promise of equality for all, and we share an obligation to help our nation fulfill that founding promise.’”

emily’s eyes widen, and oh boy, patton sure said a lot more than he meant to there, so he braces himself for what might be a fight, but luck happens to be on patton’s side tonight.

“dad?” logan calls.

“yeah, kiddo?”

“i need help with the buttons,” logan says, voice distinctly closer than before; like he’s hiding around the corner.

“okay, well,” patton says, about to get to his feet to go and help, but then logan turns the corner.

the dress, patton sees, is… surprisingly simple, for his mother’s taste. there’s delicate, appliqué straps, with a modest scoop neckline. the bodice is delicately embroidered, and the skirt is unadorned tulle. 

the dress is simple, he realizes, a little startled, because even before his mother was shopping for it, he had made his distaste for elaborate dresses and gowns clear. she must have picked this out for him in an attempt to garner his good graces with this dress; this was what she must have thought his tastes would have looked like.

he still would have hated it.

it twists up his stomach a bit more, thinking about what would have been, what his mother probably thinks should have been, but patton plasters a smile on his face, rising to his feet, pushing that out of his mind and trying to focus on how logan looks in the dress, not on the fight that would have happened if patton had seen this dress, if he’d had to wear it, before he’d come out.

it’s a little bit short on logan, but that’s to be expected—patton had been a pretty short teenager, and logan’s taller than patton is even now, after a half-foot testosterone-induced growth spurt. the skirt would have swept along the ground if patton was wearing it, if he’s calculating right; as it is, it hits logan somewhere above the ankles, giving it a “fifties flare skirt” kind of vibe. the bodice isn’t really thought out for someone with as flat a chest as logan’s, either, but at least it follows the path of his torso—no need to try and lengthen that.

“very handsome,” he says, before he rounds to logan’s back to examine—ah, yes, as he expected, the buttons up the back are all delicate and tiny and fiddly, and almost impossible for logan to fasten on his own, because he’d never had practice with things like this before. “yeah, okay, let’s see how you fit into it—gosh, i must have been almost a foot shorter than you are now when mom ordered this dress. we’ll definitely have to alter it—”

“do you have a tailor in mind?” emily says.

“virgil’ll do it,” patton says absently, as he’s a little surprised at how easily his fingers remember to maneuver the little pearly buttons—muscle memory, he guesses—and glances up to see his mother arching her eyebrows disbelievingly.

“i know he sews,” she says, voice clearly tinged with doubt, clearly about to say but.

“uh-huh,” patton says, turning his attention back to the buttons. “he’s really good at it, too. he’s done some emergency fixes on wedding dresses and stuff, so he knows how to work with gowns.”

there’s a soft hmph.

“he’s going to be altering dresses and tuxes for the sideshire kids involved in this,” patton continues, then, “all right, hon, that’s the last one. is it too tight, too loose…?”

“fine, i think,” logan says. “tight, but i think i can manage for now.”

patton flips a strap of the dress that’s gotten all twisted around, before sidestepping the skirt—they’ll need to get a crinoline so that it puffs out properly, patton can tell—and observing the entire look, how it seems now that logan’s fully dressed.

it’s a bit odd, definitely. logan’s only ever really worn dresses when he was roped into it as a kid, mostly while playing dress-up with roman—logan’s always been pretty attached to jeans or slacks to pair with his ties or bowties—so seeing logan in a dress is an unusual enough occurrence that it strikes patton’s brain as something completely new.

the dress, as delicate-looking as it is, combines with logan in a strange contrast that works; he looks nice in white, and all the delicate details seem to change what they emphasize—the scoop neck makes his collarbone look graceful, demure, but the thin straps emphasize the broadness of logan’s shoulders, the muscle there. the dress is all soft, sweet femininity, a look that logan doesn’t rock very often, because all the rest of it is logan—who usually favors a straight-forward, business-like, traditionally masculine look. 

he looks good.

“give us a twirl, kiddo,” patton says, mostly teasing, but logan obliges, lifting himself onto his tiptoes to spin himself around, the skirt flaring and settling. patton applauds.

and then he smiles, because logan is kind of smiling, but also kind of trying to hide that he’s smiling, because it’s probably the first time in about ten years that logan’s spun around in a long skirt, and hey, skirts of any kind might mess with patton’s gender dysphoria, but he also remembers how satisfying it is to spin around in a really long skirt.

logan plucks lightly at the skirt to make sure it’s all hanging straight, before he glances over and says, and patton only knows it’s tinged with slight nervousness because of how well he knows him, “what do you think, grandma?”

patton turns to look at his mother for the first time since he’d started fastening logan’s buttons.

emily’s staring at the pair of them. and staring. and staring. patton’s about to prod logan to maybe ask again, before—

“heels,” she says.

“what?” logan says, glancing up from the skirt.

“that dress will never work if you don’t wear heels,” she says, a glint in her eyes.

logan says, “heels are scientifically proven to cause foot, ankle, knee, and back problems. also, they are a tool of the patriarchy, designed to slow a woman down.”

“oh, it’ll be required,” she says. “as well as elbow-length kidskin gloves, pantyhose, a crinoline—”

“that’s ridiculous,” logan huffs.

“uh-huh,” patton says absently, recalling his own experiences with heels. “that’s a debutante ball, kiddo.”

“and if you’re going to do the thing, you may as well do it properly,” emily says decisively, standing up. “i might have a pair of heels that will fit you, just so we can see the amount of height you’ll need—”

and she’s off, heading straight for her closet. in retrospect, patton thinks, he probably should have expected his mom being more on board when it came to clothes.

“help,” logan says, looking at patton pleadingly.

“hey,” patton says, holding up his hands with half a laugh, “this was your idea.”

logan looks like he’s sincerely regretting it.

⁂

virgil’s putting away the last of the dishes he’d washed (patton would probably get on him, later, for doing chores that patton was going to do later, and how you don’t have to do that, honey!! but he was bored, he did some dishes, sue him, also patton always gives him this smile whenever he does things like this, so it is for slightly selfish reasons) when he hears patton’s car pull into the driveway, and the motor cuts off.

virgil smiles to himself, and makes sure that he’s put everything away properly, before he meanders over to the couch and tries to make it seem like he hasn’t been cleaning patton’s kitchen. he’s obviously going to get found out as soon as patton notices his sink is empty, but.

he can hear logan’s voice floating through the door, “—glad she took it okay, but dad, you had to stop at that store right then—?”

“i probably should have warned you,” patton, a laugh in his voice, “but honestly, well. you are gonna have to wear the gloves and crinoline at least, and since you’ve never—”

the door opens, logan carrying a garment bag, patton carrying a shopping bag, “—walked in a pair before, it’s probably smart that you—virgil, hi, honey!”

virgil rises automatically to his feet as patton’s face brightens, and patton rocks up on his toes to give him a greeting kiss. 

“i thought you were working?” patton says.

virgil shrugs, and sticks his hands in his pockets. “things were slow enough, i figured i could let jean close. hey, l, is that the dress?”

“it is,” logan says.

“so that went okay?” virgil says, and logan scowls, ever so slightly. 

“virgil’ll need to see you in the heels you’re intending to wear to get the hemming right,” patton says. “won’t you, virgil?”

“yeah, i’ll have to use it to see if the skirt needs more length—and heels, huh?” virgil says, glancing at logan.

logan scowls even deeper. “grandma seems to be under the influence that if i’m going to be a debutante, i’m going to have to do it properly. therefore, heels.”

“and elbow length kidskin gloves, and a crinoline,” patton says, ticking them off on his fingers. “i have a list.”

“should probably wait until you get the petticoat to tailor the dress,” virgil says. “could i see it, though? you don’t have to put it on or anything. i brought a—”

“oh!” patton says, catching sigh of the torso-only mannequin sitting in the corner of the room.

“i’ll just keep it here for logan’s dress,” virgil says. “i figured a headless one would be less… creepy.”

“it’s appreciated,” logan says, before he hands over the garment bag, and virgil unzips it, starting to unbunch the skirt and wrestle it onto the mannequin.

“i hate heels,” logan grumbles. “have you seen the studies on what wearing these things on a regular basis will do to your spine?”

“uh-huh,” patton says. 

“not to mention your feet,” logan says, scowling at the shoebox like it’s morally offended him.

“also,” logan continues, “heels are an invention of the patriarchy! they were originally meant to help men secure their feet in stirrups, and then it became a symbol of nobility and class, so they’re inherently classist, too!”

“oh, absolutely agreed,” patton says. 

“i can’t believe grandma insisted on heels,” logan says. “flats would be fine.”

“yeah, i probably should have guessed she wouldn’t let that part go, given the lessons,” patton says.

logan glances up, frowning. “lessons?”

virgil glances away from where he’s fluffing out the skirt of the dress, too, to see patton with a strange look on his face; half nostalgia, half regret. it’s a look he usually gets when he’s talking about growing up in the sanders house.

“oh, yeah,” patton says, reminiscent. “as soon as i was deemed old enough, we had walking practice lessons, me and your grandma.”

“…what,” virgil says. because. what?

patton laughs, just a little. “yeah, every day for half an hour a day, one summer! she’d make sure i had proper posture in heels. i had to balance a book on my head, too, to make it even more cliché.”

logan looks, perhaps, a little cowed. virgil, on the other hand, is just—

sometimes, it knocks him totally off-guard, whenever patton talks about the various absurd things he had to do, pre-transition, as the sole scion of a rich family. etiquette lessons and country clubs and going to the opera and flower arranging and walking lessons. patton remembers a lot of it, clearly—of course he does, for so long it had been deemed that patton would be a house spouse who raised kids for a similarly wealthy scion of an esteemed family—but it always throws virgil off, just a little.

he briefly pictures patton—long-haired, in the admittedly few pictures patton has shown virgil of himself at that age—chin tilted carefully up, but not too far up, one of the too-big grimoires from richard’s library wobbling on his head, eyes fixed on one of the portraits emily has dotting the house, walking loops around the living room as emily critiqued his posture and stance with a hawkish eye, the click-click-click of heels on hardwood the only thing to break up her commentary.

“i mean,” patton says, breaking that particular mental image. “you know. at least you’ve only gotta wear heels for this one thing. women are expected to wear heels all the time. and since you’re selling this to a lot of chilton students as experiencing what women experience for a day…”

“…i will shut up about the heels,” logan mumbles.

patton ruffles his hair, and, seemingly detecting the mood that’s dropped over logan and virgil—thinking about what it would be like, to be raised like that—and says, in a gentle tone, brushing logan’s hair back into place, “heels really aren’t so bad, once you get used to them. it does just take a bit of practice, i promise.”

logan sighs, and looks at the box a smidge less distastefully than before. “i suppose i’ll have to try it to see.”

“that’s the spirit,” patton says brightly, and virgil shakes himself and refocuses on fastening the buttons of the dress, before stepping out from behind it to get the full effect.

“it’s a bit short on you, huh?” virgil comments, already digging around in his breast pocket for the notepad he usually uses to take orders.

“i think it’ll look very audrey hepburn once we get the crinoline,” patton offers. “the flare skirt thing, y’know.”

virgil nods, jotting this down; as he is, he asks, absently, “logan, was it tight, loose, itchy, anything like that?”

“tight,” logan says immediately, “and a bit itchy.”

virgil’s brow furrows thoughtfully as he considers what to do about that—brick davis had already stopped by the diner to tell him their nickname they were going to use while they were considering other names to eventually adopt and show off their dress, and they had some sensory issues and had already told him that they loved the shape of the dress, but they already knew that if they could feel the itchy gemstones it would be enough to make them have sensory overload, so he was already brainstorming fixes for that—but he jots it down all the same, before reaching out to pinch at the skirt and lift it, then let it go, just to get a sense of how it moved.

“i mentioned earlier that it makes sense, since i was probably a foot shorter than he was when mom ordered that dress,” patton says. “but if there’s a way to just loosen it a bit, maybe, and make the flare skirt thing look more intentional?”

“that’ll all be in the,” he gestures, “crinoline, petticoat, whichever you get. a crinoline would probably be the better choice, if you really want the fifties vibe—logan, you’re cool with the fifties vibe?”

“fine by me,” logan’s voice floats from the couch, then, “how is this supposed to work?”

both patton and virgil glanced over in enough time to see logan holding up a high heel—white, of course, and very sensible-looking and, if virgil had to guess, three inches tall, maybe four, at the highest. 

patton blinks. “putting them on already?”

logan shrugs, and says, intentionally casual, “if they take practice, why not start now?”

patton pauses, before he clears his throat and crosses the room, and says, “yeah, okay. do you need help?”

virgil crosses the room, too, if only to get a look at the dress from a full-view angle, and he hears a ka-CLUNK as logan staggers to his feet. he turns in enough time to see logan pinwheeling his arms wildly, and patton reaching out to balance him.

“whoa, easy,” patton says. “let’s not walk yet—”

“not that i didn’t before, but i now, truly, know that i never would have been cut out to do pointe with roman,” logan announces, arms stilling, but still held out for balance.

patton laughs. “there’s a bit of a difference there—he’s been on tip-toe since he was learning to walk, honey.”

“you wouldn’t let patton set you down on wet grass until you were three,” virgil points out, which is true—he and patton had laughed a lot back then as logan had avoided bare feet on grass at all costs, doing some interesting baby gymnastics in his attempts to avoid it.

“i hardly see what that has to do with my balancing capabilities,” logan mutters, a little embarrassed, the way a teenager always is whenever someone brings up baby stories.

“okay, speaking of tip-toe,” patton says, “you’re putting all your weight on your toes, you gotta let the heel touch the ground.”

virgil leans a little to see—and indeed, logan is balancing on his tiptoes, as high as he can, the white heel hovering off the ground. logan, slowly, lowers and lowers until the heel thumps as it hits the ground.

“good,” patton says, hand still on logan’s shoulder. “let’s just get used to how that feels, yeah?”

logan frowns. “the weight distribution is different than i expected. i thought it would all be in the toes, not in the—” he cuts himself off.

“heels?” patton finishes for him. “that’s all okay, just—i’ll let you know how to walk. but you’re kinda getting the feel for it? is it okay if i let you go now?”

logan nods his assent, so patton takes a step back—not far enough that he wouldn’t be able to lunge for logan if logan fell—and logan wobbles, just a little, but he manages to regain his balance quickly enough.

“they hurt,” logan says, frowning.

“toe-pinching like it’s too small, hurt, or—?”

“i think it’s my feet aren’t used to it hurt,” logan admits.

“that’s perfectly normal,” patton says. “your grandma used to tell me to throw on shoes super early so that my feet would get all nice and numb.”

“that’s sick,” logan says. “the patriarchy is evil.”

“amen, brother,” virgil says dryly. 

logan preoccupies himself with shifting his bodyweight this way and that, trying to grow accustomed to it, so virgil goes over to inspect the dress a bit more—this dress, honestly, will probably be the most adjustment-intensive, so it’s probably good that it’s logan’s dress—half-listening to patton and logan discuss how logan should distribute his weight and any adjustments he might need to make to his posture and on and on.

considering patton was incredibly short, back then, it’s honestly probably a miracle that this dress even slightly fits logan well enough—and honestly, the fifties skirt effect would probably save virgil a lot of work, rather than spend any time on figuring out how exactly the lengthen the skirt to brush the floor. it’s not like virgil can really start any work right now, considering he really does need to have logan in the heels and crinoline to really get a feel for how the dress looks, but he can gather a few ideas on supplies he might need, fixes he could use for any potential problems.

it looks like his days are going to be filled with those kinds of questions for a while. brick davis wasn’t the only sideshire high student asking virgil to help with their dress; a large chunk of roman’s class had followed his lead, since, to virgil’s everlasting amusement while comparing him and remus, roman was a popular kid that people wanted to emulate, and roman’s friendship slash tutorship of all the students of isadora prince’s dance studio meant that there would also be an influx of tuxes—which, fortunately, were probably going to be way less labor-intensive than any of the dresses.

virgil’s busy jotting down things he might need to bring over or buy, not just for logan’s dress, but for all the dresses and tuxes of the sideshire kids, when patton says, “all right. walking time, do you think?”

“walking time,” logan agrees, with the grim, matter-of-fact determination of someone about to start to climb everest. 

“okay. now, remember, let’s start with half-steps, slowly, we can work your way up to your usual walk slash pace,” patton says, and virgil glances up in enough time to see logan cautiously put a foot forward.

he wobbles, and patton lunges forward, catching his hands—”i gotcha, i gotcha,” patton says, a bit of a laugh in his voice, as logan sways his way back to a balanced stance. a stray thought tickles the back of virgil’s brain, but he can’t quite identify what it is before patton starts talking again.

“don’t walk heel-toe, i’m sorry, i should have mentioned that—try putting weight on your toes first.”

“okay,” logan says, and renews his grip on patton’s hands, before carefully stepping forward once again. the thought pings at virgil again, and his brow furrows, ever so slightly, trying to identify what it might be.

“that’s it,” patton says, encouragingly. “just like that! you’ll get the hang of it in no time.”

and that’s when the thought clicks into place—it’s déjà vu.

virgil’s brain flashes—logan, all of sixteen, not quite secure on his feet, but nevertheless trying to walk forward, patton moving backward with him, their hands clasped together.

it reminds virgil of logan learning how to walk.

and the mental image blooms into his mind, crystal clear, like it was yesterday; logan, all of ten months old, wearing his tiny overalls and his tiny t-shirt and his tiny little tennis shoes, mouth open and showing off all of his newly-grown baby teeth, tongue sticking out as he’d take one toddling step forward, two, patton kneeling on the black-and-white diner tile and saying in the exact same, near-laughing tone, that’s it, honey, that’s it! papa’s gotcha! c’mon, lo-lo, you got this! the sight of logan walking new enough that it was enough to stop twenty-three year old virgil in his tracks, watching eagle-eyed as patton shuffled backwards on his knees, eyes wide, encouraging and watchful, and so thrilled as logan babbled a stream of nonsense at him, stamping his way forward, hands wrapped around patton’s fingers.

and a laugh breaks through the memory, and suddenly he’s back in the present; virgil, all of thirty-nine, watching a nearly-full-grown logan, in his officious suit jacket and tie, struggling to take a few steps forward in his new high heels, brow furrowed still, but no childish urge to stick out his tongue; patton, taller, healthier, happier, overall, voice deeper but the tone’s still the same—absolutely thrilled at the concept of logan learning how to do anything, another milestone for logan to succeed in, another instance to celebrate. 

virgil remembers, too, logan’s soft, chubby little baby hands, wrapped around virgil’s fingers, staggering toward him, the way virgil’s voice would get softer and how quickly it became second-nature to catch logan if he fell. logan’s shrieking laughs, logan’s babbling in his ear, logan’s cries going quiet when virgil shushed and rocked him.  the sweet, babyish sigh logan would let out whenever he fell asleep against virgil’s chest; his head resting against virgil’s shoulder, his weight and warmth in virgil’s arms. 

logan’s far too big for that now.

virgil’s heart pangs—when did they all get so old?—but especially at the sight of logan, almost an adult, taller than patton, nearly as tall as virgil, and almost as old as patton had been that day he’d crashed into the diner for the first time. 

and now here he was; in high school, and preparing to be presented to society as an adult. granted, as somewhat of a prank. but the idea’s still there; logan is almost an adult. soon, logan would be making his way in the world.

soon, he wouldn’t need them to hold his hands. 

“you got this!” patton cheers, as logan slowly, gradually, walks a lap of half-steps around the room without wobbling too much, without the fear of falling down. “you’re gonna be a heels-walking professional by the time of the debutante ball!”

virgil swallows, and echoes patton, voice perhaps a bit thicker than usual, “yeah, kid, you definitely got this.”

logan glances up from the ground to flash a quick smile in virgil’s direction, and virgil takes a deep breath before he crosses the room to take a look at how logan’s handling it; sure, patton had had walking-in-heels lessons, but virgil had definitely worn heels more recently than patton had.

and logan still needs them to hold his hands, for now. just a little while longer.

[chispas-and-broken-bindings]

Thoughts on the female gaze?

Thank you for this ask @palominojacoby​ because I have so many thoughts! Too many to contain in one answer. 

So, I’ll mull over what’s top-of-mind, related to the female gaze. In a nutshell: 

- I’m digesting Joey Soloway’s wonderful Tiff Talk on the female gaze. It’s funny and poignant and a great primer on the subject. You can find it on Youtube, or there is a written transcript you can find here. 

- I’m thinking about what terrifies men about the feminine gaze (my preferred term for it): one, that they won’t be the objects of it and; two, that the feminine gaze is out of their reach. It is a space or a viewpoint that they don’t have access to but feel entitled to. They want to capitalize on it, and exploit it, just like they are allowed to exploit everything��else. This needs to be watched and it needs to be called out. 

- The older I get, the less interested I am in consuming or experiencing art or media created by heterosexual white men. I’ve been in their head space long enough. I’ve been consuming their media and their opinions and their gaze for thirty-four years, and I think, by now, I know what they have to say, and I’m no longer interested in it. It does not inspire me. 

I want to be submerged in the feminine gaze. 

 For the long version, read below the cut. Buckle up, it’s going to be long: 

While eating lunch today, I watched Joey Soloway’s Tiff Talk on the female gaze. Early in their address, after they defined the male gaze, and after they did a funny riff about all the things that the female gaze isn’t (Magic Mike if it were written, directed and produced by a woman/placing women into male roles in your typical Dude Movies), they remind the audience that men have had control of the camera more or less for 100 years (and control of the everything else forever). 

Then they say this: 

So for there to be actual gender parity in the gaze – the kind that would actually make it reasonable for a reporter on the red carpet to say to me – things are getting better for women, right?

We would need the next 100 years of almost every single movie to be produced, written and directed by women. Like, let’s check in again in 2116, people.

And then after that – we could start on the 50/50 thing.

It was that very math – which is perfectly reasonable math – that made me realize that not only do women have to be inspired and funded to start making a fuck of a lot of things in record numbers, but for things to even out, well that’s why I asked that audience of cis men to please: STOP MAKING THINGS.

It did not go over well. 

They then explain why this matters; why it matters that Cis men have controlled art (and everything else) and why it is so important to wrest that control away.

ART IS PROPAGANDA FOR THE SELF.

Yep, TV and film-making and fuck, all culture making, is people going, “I’m okay! And people who are similar to me are okay! Watch this ½ hour then be more on my side! In case of Armageddon! Zika! Trump! Hitler!” 

We all need friends and so we make tribes with our art.

Simply put, Protagonism is Propaganda. Protagonism is Propaganda that protects and perpetuates privilege.

So if only cis men are creating art (or the only ones whose art is amplified), their point of view, their selves, their gazes are the only ones that are going to be privileged in spaces far beyond the art world. Protagonism as propaganda affects politics, personal relationships, economics, etc. etc. etc. 

Joey Soloway’s definition of the female gaze: 

The female gaze is a conscious effort to create empathy as a political tool. It is a wresting away! Perhaps a wrestling away of the point of view. [A wresting away] of the power, of the privilege propaganda for purposes ---​of changing the way the world feels for women when they move their BODIES through the world, feeling themselves as the subject.

It’s a great speech. I highly recommend it. 

During the Q&A after, the third question is from this Cis old white guy, who asks this fucking nonsense: 

My body, right now, is feeling shaken and inspired by everything that you said. So, I just want to ask you, I might be misunderstanding, but I think you your definition of a cis male, is those of us who were born with a penis and identify as male. [Joey Soloway affirms this definition] I’m wondering how you would feel about differentiating those of us who get it and those of us who are perpetuating...

And I just...lost it. (Note: Joey was extremely gracious in their response. I will not be.) Like, holy shit dude. You just sat through this extremely thoughtful, extremely funny talk about the female gaze and how the male gaze and perspective has been privileged for a millennia, and maybe, just maybe, it’s about FUCKING TIME to center other perspectives and YOU IMMEDIATELY TURN THE CONVERSATION BACK ON YOURSELF. YOU INSECURE, FRAGILE LITTLE MAN. SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR 2 FUCKING SECONDS. 

Holy fuck....

Again, you’d think after so long in power, men would be just a tad more secure, but they just fucking aren’t. They’re insecure little bastards (don’t come into my comments and “not all men” me on this). 

I think they are afraid of two things. 

1) That if feminine creators are actually given the space and the funding and the amplification to create feminine gaze works, cis men aren’t going to be the objects or even the subjects of that art. 

I think this terrifies them. Not only are they not going to be behind the lens, but they might not be in the picture either. This is something I’m still mulling over, and don’t have much more to say about it at this time.  

2) They really don’t like being told that a space isn’t theirs. They don’t want the feminine gaze to be out of their reach. They see feminine gaze works gaining notice and prestige and critical acclaim, and they want in. 

This had me thinking about something I’ve noticed in film. Every time a feminine (or queer) gaze film gains critical acclaim, there is almost IMMEDIATELY a rush by white cis male filmmakers to capitalize on that success. 

And it’s exhausting. In Joey’s speech, they say this: 

Sometimes the first gasp of this re-centering of ourselves is a kind of paralysis when it occurs to us how we have been groomed to stay quiet simply by having TAKEN IN all of this work, all of our lives of consuming such an overwhelming amount of cis male artists splashing in their privilege, by telling their stories which work like propaganda that suggest how we should act, for access to their attention. 

And how that stops us from gathering our own attention on ourselves. Like, I wish I could put into film the feeling of being eleven years old, to look around the classroom. Walls lined with presidents, looking around the ceiling of the whole damn room -- ALL of them men? And to think, I’m going to be the first woman president, and then on that very same day, same body, walking home listening to Rod Stewart, because he was my favorite, singing along to Tonight’s the night. Thinking I’m going to be president and then singing “Don’t say a word my virgin child / Just let your inhibitions run wild / The secret is about to unfold / Upstairs because the night’s too oldTonight’s the night? Gonna be alright / Cuz I love ya babe / Ain’t nobody gonna stop us now.” 

Singing along to a pedophile grooming an underage girl to have sex with him. When I sang along, was I Rod or the virgin child? It didn’t matter: my presidential power dreams got lost throughout all of my adolescence, or had to do extreme high jumps throughout my life, dreams of power getting lost in being sister golden hair sublime, sugar magnolia, being the lady in red, your body is a wonderland, you look wonderful tonight, you do, you look so wonderful night. 

I can’t even listen to the radio anymore, I mean, it’s a problem. This Female Gaze is a political platform, it means we start to call out how awful it is to be offered access in exchange for succeeding at being seen. 

We are so tangled up in the male gaze, that one or two or three or four or a dozen, or fucking one hundred feminine gaze stories ISN’T GOING TO BE ENOUGH. 

So when I see a feminine gaze film like Portrait of a Lady on Fire gain critical acclaim, I applaud and I’m excited and I want more.

But then...

Inevitably...

A shithead like Casey Affleck produces and stars in The World to Come, a tale about two women who fall in love on the frontier, adapted from a short story written by Jim Shepherd (if you couldn’t guess by the name, spoiler: he’s an old white guy). 

and...I’M SUSPICIOUS. 

I haven’t seen the film. And I’m not saying men can’t make films that center women, or women loving women. They can, and they obviously have all the resources to (so don’t come at me about cancel culture or gatekeeping), but... 

I’M SUSPICIOUS

and furthermore....

I’m just not that interested. I’m not interested in what Casey Affleck or Jim Shepherd have to say about the experience of being a woman who has lost a child, or is struggling with her marriage, or with material comforts, or is falling in love with another woman. 

I’m interested in what women have to say about those experiences. I’m a woman who has experienced those things. I don’t need, nor do I trust a dude to tell me what that feels like. 

Which brings me to my final thought. 

I want to be submerged in the feminine gaze.

I want to consume media created by feminine artists for feminine viewers. It’s what inspires me. It’s what makes me curious. It’s what I want more of. 

[hajimeow-archived]

Yo Hajime talk abt ur kin mems

since there were no specifications on which ones i am going to start from the beginning and go where my brain takes me from there. they're all gonna be for hajime bc i physically cannot think about my other memories anymore jsyk

also! this ended up being so long i had to put a cut. i will not be apologizing because i feel no remorse.

so first the basic stuff, i remember having a med skin tone and a FUCK ton of freckles like those motherfuckers were everywhere i had skin. also i was 5'7 i think?? or 5'6. i still can't remember exactly but it's something like that. i was also alloaro, some form of mlm, unfortunately cis, and autistic and probably had some other stuff like adhd or depression or whatever but i forgot. also i was kinda muscle-y but also chubby at the same time. and i had light green eyes. basically i was fanon hajime JSJSKDJDKS

and i was going over the wiki recently and my personality was EXACTLY how they described it like i'm genuinely surprised they got it so accurate

i don't remember much pre-game and post game, most of my memories are in game but i do remember pre game chiaki really well, honestly i rly miss her :( she would always reassure me that i didn't need a talent and i never even cared when she beat me in games cus just simply playing them with her was so fun .,.,,;:,,...,,!:&:&:jsjdjskskck</3

anyways. in game. ok. i'm gonna skip over memories where i just know feelings and not specific things like strong feelings or ppl saying stuff or else this would be so long. also obvious sdr2 spoilers

so i remember the party & blackout in the beginning of the game pretty clearly. i was mostly just standing alone in the corner and watching everyone have fun, but it was really freeing to see the others able to enjoy themselves in such pressing circumstances. then the blackout-- it was kinda like all that happiness going away and the dread and denial immediately setting in .

anyways i remember like panicking and wanting to cry when i lifted the table cloth cus i really liked twogami. i'm p sure i did end up crying cus i really liked them for their realism and leadership skills, and the realization that one of us killed them and that the killing game was actually real etc etc

anyway i don't remember much from the investigation or trial besides being really freaked out when nagito basically admitted to being the killer n stuff, and pretty much all the body discoveries after that (besides ch 5) we're just like "ah shit here we go again" but i do remember mikans trial really freaking me out when she just straight up shifted completely, and i also remember being really proud of fuyuhiko for putting his walls down a bit and deciding to help everyone out while the despair disease was going around

anyway enough of the boring stuff, i spent basically all my free time with komaeda, chiaki and mikan (in order of frequency) and with mikan i mostly listened to her talk about medical stuff and i comforted her when she needed to vent, but i didn't hang out with her much because the constant apologizing n stuff started to bother me since i really liked seeing her happy. chiaki i would mostly play games with and we wouldn't talk much, but she gave me a really strong sense of familiarity like when we played games together it gave me a shit ton of deja vu

AND i've already talked a lot about komaeda but idc i'm doing it again. so we started talking cus of him waking me up on the beach obvs and i was pretty attached right off the bat, but i stopped talking to him for awhile because the way he acted in the first trial REALLY scared me so i just got a pit in my stomach even being around him

but he was the one who started approaching me first, i'm guessing since he couldn't rly sense anything was wrong he just kinda picked things up where they left off and started talking w me at breakfast n stuff and it was pretty weird at first, but i wanted to give him a chance and didn't wanna be rude so i accepted offers to hang out in his cottage n stuff

i remember he has surgery scars tho and i'm rly mad ppl don't draw him with any!! i think he had about 5 and i don't remember all of them but i know one was a skin graft on his leg and the one on his side/stomach that i touched wassssss for appendix removal maybe???? mmmm i'm not too sure about that one tho

also !!!! his death. hoooooly shit. ok so yunno the despair that junko always talks about ?????? yeah <3!! i remember like once i saw his body and took the reality in i just. straight up could NOT stand i like fell to my knees and jsut . cried. like i had no thoughts my head was so full that it was empty i just kinda sat there and silent cried while chiaki stood next to me it was so awful dude

later while investigating n stuff i felt really bad ab how i treated him and thought about him, and i thought a lot about our last interaction. it was the first time i had ever approached him myself cus usually he'd come to me. i was gonna hang out with chiaki but i wanted to check up on him first, so i did and he told me to go hang out with the others and i just. knew something terrible was about to happen.

OH AND THE FUNHOUSE OMG ok i literally. i usually didn't mind being around komaeda like he was chill most of the time when he wasn't ranting about hope but when he was acting like such a bitch in the funhouse i wanted to punch his stupid twink ass so bad like...... what BUSINESS does this dude have being such an asshole. he doesn't even know what face wash is. what the fuck. which is another fun fact! komaeda did shower every so often which is why he didn't smell that bad but his skin was always so dry cus he didn't know how to actually wash right and do proper skincare so he just washed his face w soap and left it like that

also he didn't need to cut his nails cus they were so brittle they would just break off on their own <3 plus he had a nail biting habit so they just never grew ever

OH AND THIS IS THE SADDEST THING i remember feeling so bad for this man bc i would like put my hand on his shoulder and he would lean into it. i mean i'd tap his shoulder for a SECOND and girl when i let go hed be lowkey so sad i could just sense it like??????dude he needed a hug SSO BAD like when i hugged him in my cuddling memory he was like holding on for dear life but also was like "u dOnT hAvE tO tOuCh TrAsH LiKe mE hAjImE" like dude it was the saddest shit. i want to hug him forever. like what the fuck what the fuck!!!!!!!!!

also a thing hed do when he started ranting ab hope n shit like he would just go on and on and yunno that one sprite where he's hugging himself yeah he literally did that shit. also sometimes hed just stare dead at me and start backing me into a corner ((ish-- we were usually sitting somewhere but he mostly just got super close to me) and it was the scariest shit i. bro if i saw him like that on the streets i'd return him to the mental hospital like i can remember it somewhat vividly and that shit was TERRIFYING i mean obvs after i shoved him away and told him to cool it he'd apologize and go back to the way he was but jeez dude ....

also a little fun fact the only reason i really kept hanging out with him (i had a few ofc but this was the most prominent) is cus he was hot in my stupid monkey brain. yes that's it. like that's literally pretty much it. i hate admitting it but this post is SO fucking long i doubt anyone's gonna read it anyway so i'm admitting it now lol

anyway i hope u enjoyed :) i'm glad u asked btw! i'm sure you regret it though!

[sorry-apsalar]

Does This Mean I'm a Girl Now?

Content Warning: this fic contains genderbending (sort of anyway) and gender dysphoria as a result of it, also multiple mentions of genitals as well as nudity in general.

My friends and I were discussing a thing that we were mildly salty about which brought on the topic about how we were salty in general over how a lot of genderbending stuff is portrayed. It often relies on stereotypes and gender roles which is really annoying and pretty shitty. Then my dear friend @itsladykit (I hope it’s okay that I tagged you, I just wanna give you proper credit for the idea) brought up the idea of a cis character getting magically genderbent and experiencing gender dysphoria because of it. Which I thought was a really neat idea but I wasn't sure if I was qualified to tell that tale but then they told me to follow my heart and write it and that's why this fic came into being.

Now I feel like I need to put the disclaimer that while I have personal experience with gender dysphoria, the worst of it was was back when I was a teenager, I've mostly grown out of it and I'm pretty sure most people have it stronger than I ever have. So if this isn't an 100% accurate depiction of dysphoria, that is why. I did my best though.

Also, Frender features in it mostly just because I was already fueled primarily by salt, might as well let my usual Futurama salt fuel me too.

-

“Wow,” Fry said as they looked over the naturally formed pool of bright pink goo. They’d been to a lot of different planets and seen quite a few different kinds and colours of goo but never one so pink. “It’s kind of pretty, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Bender replied, disinterested. “I’m bored though so I dare you to jump in and see what happens.”

“Do not!” Leela snapped from somewhere behind them before Fry could even decide if he wanted to take that dare or not. “I don’t know what you guys found over there but don’t listen to him Fry because whatever it is, is probably dangerous.”

“Fucking killjoy,” Bender muttered so that only Fry could hear. He was right though; they were hiding out on a dumb planet with nothing on it to escape some asshole pirates which meant they had to just sit around and do nothing until Leela was sure they were free. It had only been probably an hour so far and Fry was already bored out of his mind. Leela had forbade them from doing anything ‘dirty’ in case they needed to get out in a hurry so the least she could do was let them investigate some cool pink goo.

So, feeling rather rebellious especially as the sound of Leela’s footsteps approached, presumably to investigate, Fry lowered himself to the ground so he could lean forward and stick in his hand in. The goo didn’t come up all the way to the lip of the natural pool, forcing him to lean a bit farther than he was really comfortable with considering the utterly unknown alien substance he would fall into if he lost his balance but if he fell Bender would catch him… probably anyway, so it should be fine.

The goo was pleasantly cool as it engulfed his hand, almost seemingly clinging to him and pulling it down. It was like sticking his hand in thick syrup fresh out of the fridge, a pleasant texture if a bit odd. Right away though his hand began to have that pins and needles feeling that came from laying on one’s arm wrong for way too long so he should probably…

The ground gave way beneath him, sending him into the goo. He didn’t even have time to yelp in surprise before he was fully submerged in it. He gasped instinctively, inadvertently breathing it in, making him choke and sputter.

He needed to get to the surface now! Except he didn’t even know where it was. He thrashed, trying to go in any direction but to no avail, the goo was too thick to swim well in and blackness was already eating at the edges of his vision. He couldn’t die like this! No fucking way! It wasn’t…

~

“…think it’s permanent?” Bender was saying from somewhere above Fry as he slowly came to.

“Who knows?” Leela replied from also somewhere above him. “For his sake, I hope not.”

“You make it sound like it’s a big problem.” Bender’s tone indicated that he disagreed.

“You don’t understand.” Leela was giving Bender her annoyed look, Fry didn’t even need to open his eyes to know that. “Though I guess I can’t really blame you for not understanding this, you’re a robot so it’s probably different for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Leela sighed. “Maybe you’re right, maybe it won’t be a big deal. Heck, maybe it’ll only last a few hours.”

As much as Fry enjoyed napping, the way they were talking was rather disconcerting so with a groan he opened his eyes and forced himself to sit up. Bender and Leela were standing to either side of where he lay on the ground. Bender was coated head to toe in bright pink goo, calling to mind what had happened last. That meant he’d jumped in after Fry and was probably the sole reason he hadn’t drowned. Now he was trying to wipe the goo off with a pink rag that might’ve once been white but it wasn’t very effective.

“Hey meatbag,” he said, turning his attention onto Fry. “How do you feel?”

“Uh… weird.” Fry was covered in goo still too. It clung to him and made him feel all tingly and odd, like his whole body had fallen asleep even though that wasn’t possible. And it smelled strange too and tasted bad. He turned his head to the side to spit as much of it out as he could, though it did little to rid his mouth of the taste. “I got to wash this stuff off,” he said as he stood up, careful of the probably slippery goo coating him and pooling around where it had dripped off him and Bender. “Thanks for saving me.” Was it just him or did his voice sound strange?

“Uh… Fry,” Leela cut in before he could turn to start for the ship. “The pink stuff kind of did something to your body.”

Oh no. “What?”

“Well, uh… um…”

“The most noticeable thing it did was give you boobs,” Bender finished. “I didn’t check your pants so it might’ve changed you down there too. You might want to look into it.”

Fry looked down at himself and… true to Bender’s words, his chest was quite different; his clothes soaked in the pink goo clung to him, highlighting the weird lumps on his chest. Boobs was what they were called, he had them now, big ones too. Or at least they looked big to him from this angle which wasn’t an angle he was ever supposed to see boobs from so how was he supposed to know?

“Does this mean I’m a girl now?” he asked as he looked back up at Leela and Bender. The strange thing about his voice was that it sounded more feminine and if it sounded that way to him how much more so was it to everyone else?

“Not unless you want to be,” Leela said with a reassuring smile.

“Uh… I don’t think I do.” He’d never considered it before even in passing but now that was forcibly faced with it, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to be a girl.

“Come on, let’s go wash this gunk off,” Bender said as he gave up on the rag, tossing it disdainfully to the ground before starting for the ship. Fry was more than happy to follow because who knows, maybe it would only last as long as the goo was coating him.

“All right,” Leela said, “I’m going to collect a sample of the pink stuff to bring back to the Professor.”

 -

Undressing brought to Fry’s unfortunate attention that the goo had changed more than just his chest and voice. His hips were wider, his shoulders a little narrower – not by much, he’d never exactly had broad shoulders but enough that even if no one else was likely to notice he still did – and the other biggest change was that his dick was missing. He could explore what was there instead with his hands but… he didn’t feel particularly inclined to do so.

Which was odd, wasn’t it? In every movie or TV show he’d ever seen where a man ended up with a female body through whatever means, the joke almost always was that they were excited to touch themselves down there and play with their new boobs. It wasn’t even that he wasn’t into such things, while he did prefer men – especially if they were robots or aliens – boobs and vagina weren’t turn offs by any means. On himself though it was just… too weird.

With a sigh, he did his best to shake it off and stepped into the shower after Bender. There was only one on board the ship because it wasn’t exactly meant for everyday use, mostly decontamination and washing off dangerous chemicals which this probably counted as. There was enough room for both of them though so it was whatever.

“You owe me for going in after you,” Bender said, turning to face him. “It leaked into my everything and now I have to clean everything.” To demonstrate, he opened his chest compartment, revealing that it had been partially filled with pink goo, Fry had to pull his foot back to stop it from splashing on him. Bender then began taking things out to wash off too, including his cigar case, its contents most likely ruined. He gave Fry a pointed look as he put it back as if this were his fault, which it kind of was.

“Sorry, thanks for saving me though, I owe you big. But uh… you did dare me to jump in.” Not that Fry had meant to or would’ve if given the choice, not even he was quite that stupid.

���I didn’t think you’d actually do it. But whatever, I guess this is more exciting than sitting around doing nothing. By the way, in case you haven’t noticed yet, your dick’s gone.”

Fry had to hold back a groan; that wasn’t something he really wanted to think about. “Yeah, I know. How long was I in the goo before you pulled me out though?” Because surely a change this drastic couldn’t have happened in brief awful seconds he remembered.

“I don’t know, five, ten minutes. That stuff isn’t exactly easy to see through and it was a lot deeper than it looked. Which was why I had to jump in to find you in it.”

“How come it didn’t do anything to you?”

“I don’t know, maybe because I’m a robot.” That was kind of an ‘oh duh’, huh?

They were silent for a bit while Fry focused on making sure to wash all the goo off. He could probably safely step out now if he wanted to, the pins and needle feeling the goo had given him was rapidly fading, but the water was warm and… “What do you think of this?” He did his best to keep his tone casual. “Does it uh… change how you see me or anything?”

Bender scoffed as if Fry was stupid to even consider such a thing. “No, why would it? I’m a robot and I’m pan so I have double the reason not to care what your body is shaped like. It should be fun to play around with later though.” He winked as if his meaning wasn’t already obvious.

Fry wasn’t really sure about that but… that was probably just because he still wasn’t over the shock of the sudden change. When he was more used to it, it would probably be fun to experiment with so… “Yeah, maybe once we’re home and stuff.” Or maybe it would wear off before they even got there and thus it would basically be a non-thing, just another weird adventure that wrapped up quickly and left everything exactly the same as before. He could always hope, right?

~

“… and it’s permanent,” Professor Farnsworth finished, jerking Fry out of the bored stupor listening to the scientific explanation behind the exact mechanics behind the sex change had put him in.

“It’s what?” Hopefully Fry had just misheard something. He hadn’t exactly been paying attention after all.

“It’s permanent,” Farnsworth repeated. “It’s not going to wear off.”

“You mean I’m stuck like this forever?”

“Not necessarily. There’s of course the traditional transition methods you could take or I could use this,” Farnsworth held up the vial of pink goo that Leela had collected for him, “to engineer a substance that will have the opposite effect. And then it’ll be like this whole misadventure never happened except we’ll have the means to get rich off of selling this stuff. Of course we don’t yet know what all the risks it might pose are but that’s all the more reason to sell it to as many people as possible so we can find out.”

Ugh, Fry hadn’t even considered what other possible risks his inadvertent bath in the pink goo might’ve had. What if it was also super toxic and was going to eventually kill him? Or what if it drastically increased his risk of cancer other possibly fatal condition? … Eh, it was probably fine so… “How long is that going to take?”

“Hmmm…” Farnsworth held the vial up to the light as he studied it. “I don’t know. I should probably get to work on it.” And without any further word he was shuffling off out of the room. Everyone in the room, which was everyone employed at Planet Express because privacy didn’t exist in the modern age, watched him go.

“On the bright side,” Leela said from the other side of the conference table, “if he can make something that can do the reverse, we’ll have discovered something that can help a lot of people.”

“Assuming it’s safe anyway,” Amy added. “It could still be super toxic and deadly or something. So, congrats Fry, you get to be a guinea pig for a new way of transitioning. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t kill you in the end.”

“Uh… thanks, I think.” He’d rather not be a guinea pig for anything but seems he didn’t have a choice here so yeah, hopefully it was safe to use. But at least if anyone could make something that could turn him back to normal it was the Professor. So really everything would be fine. He just had to deal with this weirdness for a little while.

~

Looking at himself naked in his bedroom mirror was a mistake. His boobs were weird shaped lumps on his chest that hung there kind of like those ballast bags that hung on the sides of hot air balloon baskets but rounder and with nipples. How could something that looked like that be natural? Crossing his arms over them to try to hid them from view sort of worked but it also pushed them closer together which wasn’t a pleasant sensation. And combined with his hips, they gave him that ‘hourglass figure’ that was supposed to be desirable but didn’t look right in the mirror.

He couldn’t bear to look at his crotch for more a couple seconds because his dick was gone! That was weird and just plain wrong. Everything about his body looked wrong now and he hated it. He’d never particularly liked his body before – muscles would’ve been cool to have but weren’t worth the effort – but it had been utter indifference. Now looking at himself was an unpleasant experience.

He… wasn’t just going to just get used to or over this, was he? His body wasn’t supposed to be like this and thus he couldn’t feel comfortable in it while it was.

Eager to be done looking at himself, he stepped forward and turned the mirror around to face the wall. It would stay until his body was back to normal. All he could really do was hope that that would be soon.

In the meantime though he went to his closest in search out the baggiest clothes he had. Luckily everything he wore on a typical day was already baggy and a lot of it a size or so bigger than needed. Zipping up the jacket should help obscure his boobs too, maybe even completely, though probably not because his initial call had been right, they were on the larger side. But regardless it would be better than nothing.

Right as he was pulling on the jacket, the door opened behind him. “I don’t like this whole sex change thing,” he said as he zipped up and turned to face Bender as he entered. “Like I really, really don’t like it.”

“Why?” Of course Bender wouldn’t understand and well, honestly Fry didn’t either.

“I don’t know.” There wasn’t any solid logical reason for why he disliked it so much. “It just makes me uncomfortable. My body’s not supposed to look like this with boobs and… stuff.” And lacking of other things. “I don’t like it. So if we could pretend that it’s not a thing that would be great.”

Bender gave him a weird look before shrugging and moving on. “I swear you meatbags never cease to be weird. But if it really bothers you that much, I won’t mention your boobs or junk if that’s what you want.”

“Yes, I would like that, thanks.”

“That means we’re not going to fuck tonight though, huh?”

“Uh… yeah, I’d rather not.” That would involve exploring his new body and he couldn’t imagine that being fun.

“The things I put with for you. But whatever, let’s go watch TV then.”

Fry was more than happy to follow him back out into the living room. He could really use the distraction of both watching TV and of cuddling up with Bender.

 -

True to Fry’s prediction he never got over his discomfort about his new body. Wearing obscuring clothing helped as did making sure to never look at himself in the mirror, especially without clothes, but it was still there. He could go for hours at a time without thinking about it but ultimately it always came back in one form or another and it was the worst.

Thankfully no one at Planet Express treated him any different. None of them even mentioned it after the initial buzz about it had faded. Sadly, such was not true for strangers; men flirted with him more which wouldn’t have been much of an issue if they weren’t flirting with him because of something he was uncomfortable with and wished wasn’t a thing. Bender put a jealous stop to a lot of that though which was much appreciated. And then there was everyone calling him she or her which sucked – he got called they or them some too which was better even if it still wasn’t right – most people didn’t care when he corrected them but it was still awkward that he had to.

But finally, just when it was starting to seem like he’d reached his limit and couldn’t take it anymore, upon arriving at work, Professor Farnsworth was there to greet him with some actual good news for once. The opposite of the pink goo was ready to be tested. The fact that Fry would be the first one testing it didn’t even matter to him to anymore.

It was in the pool out back where everyone else was already waiting because again, privacy wasn’t a thing anymore apparently, though honestly Fry didn’t even really care that much. But… “I’d thought it’d be blue,” was the first thing he said upon seeing it because it was bright yellow.

“Why would it be blue?” Farnsworth asked, genuinely confused.

“Because the other stuff was pink and it did this to me so it just makes sense for something that’s supposed to do the opposite to be blue, right?”

“That makes no sense,” Bender said. “Stop being stupid and go jump in already. And don’t almost drown this time because I’m not jumping in to save you again if you do, once was more than enough.”

“You say that but I doubt you mean it,” Hermes chimed in. “We all know you’d jump if to save him if you had to.”

Bender glared at him but Amy spoke up before he could say anything. “Yeah, you two have been dating for like a year now and were like totally in love for like ever even before you were official so don’t pretend to be a tough guy.”

“Just jump in already,” Zoidberg butted in. “I want to see what happens.”

“Yes, let’s just get this over with,” Fry said before anyone else could chime in with anything. He stepped forward to stand on the edge of the pool. “Can you guys like… look away please? I don’t want to ruin my clothes and uh… yeah.” He didn’t want them seeing him naked when his body was still like this even though logically they all already knew what he looked like but… he just didn’t want them seeing.

“Of course,” Leela said as she turned away. Thankfully everyone else soon followed suit with only a little grumbling.

Eager to have this over and done with, Fry quickly undressed. After tossing his balled-up clothes to the side, he sat down on the edge of the pool and slowly lowered himself into the yellow goo. It felt exactly the same as the pink goo had; cool and thick, quickly giving him that unpleasant pins and needles feeling. He had to force himself to submerge his head.

 -

Fry was awoken by cold water being splashed onto his face. His eyes shot open to see who else but Bender hovering over him. “Hey Fry, I thought I told you not to almost drown this time.”

He didn’t remember falling asleep or unconscious and he certainly hadn’t intended to. “Sorry,” he said as he sat up.

Everyone had crowded around to loom over where he lay on the ground next to the pool. “How do you feel?” Farnsworth asked, adjusting his glasses. “Did it work? I can’t tell with all the yellow.”

“Uh…” Fry looked down at himself. … “It worked!” he said as he shot up to his feet. He was back to normal, how his body was supposed to be. His chest of flat, his proportions back to normal, and he had his dick back. Gosh, he never would’ve thought he’d feel so good while naked and surrounded by a bunch of people staring at him.

“Congrats on surviving another sex change,” Leela said.

“And on getting your dick back,” Amy added with an unhelpful thumbs up.

“Maybe next time think twice before deciding to play with a mysterious alien substance,” Hermes said.

Of course the Professor had something to say too. “Now we just got to wait a couple weeks and see if you randomly drop dead before declaring it tested and ready to sell.”

This was very quickly growing awkward with everyone standing around Fry and talking at him while he was butt naked and covered in experimental goo. “I’m going to go wash this stuff off now,” he said as he was already backing away. Also, now that his body was back to normal, there was something he wanted to do because he finally could again and the shower would be the prefect place to do it.

He’d learned an important and valuable lesson though: next time Bender dared him to play in an unknown substance, no matter how bored he was, he’d think about it a little harder before deciding to risk sticking his hand in. And to be more careful around alien goo in general.

[legacyridley]

— LYING IS THE MOST FUN A GIRL CAN HAVE WITHOUT TAKING HER CLOTHES OFF (BUT IT’S BETTER IF YOU DO!)

“I CAN’T RECALL a single amazing thing i have seen first-hand that i didn't immediately reference to a movie or tv show. a fucking commercial. you know the awful singsong of the blasé: seeeen it. i've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: the secondhand experience is always better. the image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore.”

                                                                                          — gillian flynn , gone girl

ooc —

hi there ! i’m shannon, i’m non-binary, my pronouns are she/they and i’m from the united kingdom. you can just call me the ceo of the unhinged rosamund pike cinematic universe, though. or keira knightley’s bitch, because i am, even if i decided against bringing her this time ( still might later ! ) i love morally corrupt women, i’d give my life for them, if one couldn’t tell by . . . uh. frankie. 

application —

[ rosamund pike | 40 | she/her | cis woman ] if it isn’t FRANCESCA RIDLEY ! you know, FRANKIE ! they’ve lived in monarda for TWO MONTHS. some people say that they’re CONSCIENTIOUS & CHARMING, but that they can also be PRIVILEGED & AVARICIOUS. last i heard, they were working FREELANCE as a BUSINESSWOMAN ! i’ve also heard the rumor that they’re a WITCH. if you’d ask me, they remind me of BEING BORN WITH THE METALLIC TANG OF A SILVER SPOON IN YOUR MOUTH ( JUST LIKE THE TASTE OF YOUR OLD-MONEY BLOOD ), “MANEATER” BY NELLY FURTADO PLAYING, SLIGHTLY MUFFLED, FROM INSIDE YOUR CAR, LIKE MUSIC FROM A PARTY BATHROOM, & THE NOTION OF A NEW SELF YOU’LL FIND BY THE SHORE ( BUT HOW’S THAT WORKING OUT FOR YOU, HONEY? DO YOU FEEL LOVED? ) ! i wonder what monarda’s got in store for them today!

BASICS —

NAME: francesca legacy ridley ( yes, really. )

AGE: forty ( b. 28 january, 1981 — knightsbridge, london, united kingdom. )

NICKNAMES: frankie , and frankie only.

GENDER: cis female.

ORIENTATIONS: bisexual / biromantic.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: divorced & single.

NATIONALITY: british-american ( dual. )

ETHNICITY: white ( english. )

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: english, french, german.

OCCUPATION: social media mogul & socialite. ex-sunglasses model. 

EDUCATION: institut le rosey & magdalen college, oxford.

PERSONALITY —

ASTROLOGICAL BIG THREE: aquarius sun, scorpio moon, scorpio rising.

MBTI TYPE: entj-a. ( the commander. )

HOGWARTS HOUSE: slytherin ( ravenclaw hatstall. )

ENNEAGRAM TYPE: eight with a seven wing ( the maverick. )

THEME SONG: maneater by nelly furtado.

FAVOURITE SONG: lay all your love on me by abba.

FAVOURITE ALBUM: super trouper by abba (1980)

PET PEEVES: people who don’t say ‘thank you’ when you open the door. back-seat drivers. chewing too loudly. tea that’s too milky. cambridge graduates. 

PHOBIAS: trypophobia. hemophobia ( blood ). arachnophobia. coulrophobia ( clowns. )

GUILTY PLEASURES: radio-friendly pop music. sunglasses, still. netflix-binge style sitcoms. kate winslet movies. true crime documentaries. st trinian’s (2007) dir. oliver parker.

ABOUT —

she’s deeply charming but also . . . it’s mostly theatre. ridleys know how to put on a show. ridleys know how to make friends. so meet frankie: #1 flirt, #1 liar, and perfectionist to the nth degree.

oxford graduate from a family of oxford graduates ; if you don’t get what that means for a person, substitute oxford with harvard and you might just about be getting there, right down to the annoying person — the sort of humdrum regular who grinds on francesca’s gears — who says ‘ oh, you went to harvard? say something smart! ’ growing up in a house in london that looks like it is out of a fairytale ( would be, if the city and all its bustle and noise weren’t on the doorstep ) is about as sweet as it sounds, and who could blame one for getting a touch . . . jealous ? well, other than frankie, a product of a private school in switzerland, an oxford college, and a trust fund, who could judge someone for breathing incorrectly, and says things such as ‘ jealousy is a disease, get well soon. ’

HOW DID SHE GET TO HER CURRENT POSITION ? . . .other than her parents’ money and a wealth of connections? well, frankie quickly came to understand something; that every time the older generations catch up to a social media platform, there’s a sudden vacuum as the younger generation work out where to go. and where the audience go is where the influence is, which gains you more connections, more wealth, more influence in places people would never even think to look. do you ever think about what information leaves your hands, and where, when you agree to the terms and conditions? you probably should. 

[ NOTE : when i imagine the platform, it’s something fairly twitter-esque, but without the people who use long hashtags and can’t figure out how it works. and more . . . aesthetic, somehow. like pinterest-level aesthetics. i’ll be working it out over time, but i’ve named it spectrum. yes, it’s named after the florence & the machine song, please don’t judge me. it started off as a university project á la the social network ( brilliant bloody movie ) that went onto a massive scale & became trendy and addictive. imagine if mark zuckerberg was a cool, bisexual, female ex-sunglasses model who once married the heir to grovesnor group, made him sign a considerable prenup and then divorced him when he cheated ( there was some full diana revenge dress content ) fifteen years ago, just before her old university idea went mainstream. he regrets it now, doesn’t he ? ]

imagine the kind of assholes who would give their child ‘ legacy ’ as a middle name to remind her of the constant pressure on her shoulders ? welcome to the ridleys, london-born mother & father to francesca ( golden child, with more issues than meets the eye, actually as much of a party girl as her sister but successful ) and roman ( motorbike-obsessed disgrace. ) they’re one of the oldest witch families out there, but — up until frankie & roman — they’ve been able to keep it quiet for their own benefit. 

so what does frankie DO with her magic? she always says she specialises in the tempting, though the addictive is perhaps more apt. want to feel so excited about something you’ll never be bored again? want the best trip of your life? frankie’s your gal. and does it have anything to do with how influential spectrum became & how much of an addictive presence she can be? . . . well, that’s for her to know & no one to find out. 

AND NOW, THE FINAL QUESTION: why the fuck is london’s premier rich bitch in where she’d consider nowhere, maine ? well, she’s on sort of a self-recreation trip right now. think about tahani in the good place when she tries to step out of the spotlight without actually doing it, except she’s thinking the sea air will cleanse her of a slight... unease coming with the approaching mid-life crisis and having to dye her greys out. 

but now she’s in a smaller place than sprawling london, living in that house you look at and think ‘fuck, i’d kill for that view,’ having to associate with people properly rather than being almost a concept of a person . . . what if people tear aside the mask and discover the serpentine nature and the moral rot that lies behind it ?

credits —

template !

[rivetgoth]

I had this friend I met in the Hetalia fandom in like 8th-9th grade who was like, a lot older than me (I was like 12-13 when we met and she was like 17 or so), and we were REALLY close for a really long time, we'd talk and call every day and it got to a point where she was really dependent on me in this awful way where she would like constantly threaten suicide if I didn't answer her texts fast enough and shit like that. She was really rich cuz her dad was a doctor and one time she bought me an entire fucking Xbox One (I did not ask for it like... I'd always been a PlayStation gamer LOL) because she didn't have anyone to play Halo with her. My family still has it and uses it as a DVD player/Netflix machine.

Anyway the really batshit thing about this person (BESIDES the fact that she was like, definitely a pedophile who loved shota and frequently sexted me after she'd turned 18+ and I was like 14 and she also had both a bestiality and incest fetish that she'd talk to me about constantly — I was a kid I had no moral concept of anything and just liked being edgy and feeling mature) was that she was like. A chronic liar who constantly faked identities. And for years after cutting off contact with her I would look back and realize that she had faked even more than I had noticed at the time. The thing is, I knew for sure she wasn't lying about her home life -- Her address, what she looked like, her dad's profession, her age, her house, her pets, etc, were all things I had proof of. But when I knew her she was constantly remaking her Tumblr to escape drama she'd start, and she would constantly make side blogs under pseudonyms and pretend it wasn't her (sometimes it would be random shit like aesthetic blogs under different names or ask blogs for characters or smthn, other times it was like, callout blogs for people she had gotten into drama with where she would pretend to be someone else defending her). I assumed back then that I was always going to be in on it, because she would always tell me whenever she made one of these fake accounts, and sometimes she would encourage me to make a new account too as a sort of roleplay thing where we both pretended to be people we weren't... Until I learned that she wasn't always telling me. Every so often, I would become mutuals with a new account who would start messaging me about my interests and strike a conversation with me. Then something would slip and my "new mutual" would admit that they had actually been my friend all along... Which should have made me immediately cut contact because that's weird as shit, but I was young and she was a close friend, so I would just sorta accept it.

She ended up being like, horrifically transphobic. She got run off her blog twice for being specifically transmisogynistic, first insisting that she was allowed to headcanon canon trans women as feminine men and then on her next blog insisting that lesbians couldn't be attracted to trans women. I was still young and closeted and she was one of my closest friends and was constantly messaging me that the situation was making her suicidal and she was just wording things wrong and totally supported trans people and people just weren’t giving her the benefit of the doubt and she was still learning so I tried to just stay out of it without losing her. Then... I came out as trans lol. She stopped replying to me when I first came out and then made a bunch of vents on her tumblr about how much it upset her and about how “using he/him pronouns for AFAB people is triggering” for whatever fucking reason. She told me her “best IRL friend” who she had introduced me to once on Skype but who never logged in again after and who refused to ever do a group call or anything (definitely another fake account) said that it was irrational for me to expect my friends to respect my pronouns so soon after coming out and that I shouldn’t be upset if I get misgendered. Then she apologized but told me my name and pronouns would never fit me. As you can imagine, as a little baby trans kid who was closeted from my family and terrified of even having come to terms with being trans, I didn’t really have a great defense.

Soon she started being really woke like 2014 style Tumblr SJW to save face, she came out as nonbinary and told me in private it was because she felt bad when people called her cis during discourse (she absolutely wasn't nonbinary) and she coined a "new sexuality" that was "attraction only to people you perceive as feminine, regardless of how they identify" -- what this actually meant was "attraction to cis women and not trans women." She ran an aroace help blog despite not being aroace? And made a bunch of pride flags that I still see around sometimes to this day. She would start fights a lot and try to out-woke people and got into a bunch of drama with other SJW types of the day, got into a bunch of drama with TumblrInAction and Mogai-Watch and shit like that, and she claimed for a short while that she had a headmate (FWIW I totally believe DID is a legitimate thing but like. Trust me on this one.) who was transphobic and that it made her so sad, she told me that it was actually that headmate that had been transphobic before, and every so often her headmate would front out of nowhere and misgender me and use really abusive language like calling me a cunt or a bitch or whatever. She started making these "intersex nonbinary" OCs who she would constantly make porn of under the guise that they were representation for LGBT people who were just like, extremely fetishistic cuntboys and dickgirls (they were “intersex” to explain why they could be “girls with natal penises” or “boys with natal vaginas”).

At that same time, she somehow always managed to have these random, very sporadically active trans women mutuals who were apparently amazing friends of hers, who shared some interests with her but also would defend her when people brought up her past, with these long-winded “Well, I’m a trans woman and I think what she said is perfectly justified and everyone makes mistakes and she’s always been a good ally!!” Then one day some trans woman received an ask from her account where she claimed to be a “black trans woman” (she was, of course, a white cis woman) and she freaked out and claimed she had “been hacked by TiA or 4Chan to make her look bad” — I realize now she had just been sending anon messages pretending to be things she wasn’t and forgot to hit anon LOL. Late in all of this she also got into a bunch of hot water for being really antisemitic and saying she didn’t trust Jewish people because they were just like Christians and like, 5 seconds later she came out as Jewish and wrote this whole long sad vent about how she had had internalized antisemitism and then started going by a random Hebrew name LMAO.

In the end the final breaking point was when I found her secret TERF blog, where she had been making posts for months about how trans men are just insecure women who are trying to escape misogyny by stepping on the backs of “fellow women” and using me as a fucking example, and also saying that me not coming out as a trans man had been “basically rape” since she had been SEXTING me when she was 18+ and I was 13-14+ and that it was traumatic to know someone she had trusted was secretly identifying as a man LMAO. She was also obviously saying all sorts of transmisogynistic things, but also had these really bizarre fetish posts about wanting trans women to fuck her...? I confronted her about it and she literally fucking out of nowhere told me that she was in the emergency room with a mysterious illness that might kill her and she was allowed to have her phone but due to privacy laws couldn’t send a picture as proof. While “in the hospital” she deleted the TERF blog and her personal blog. I had known her for literal YEARS at this point (we had met when I was 12-13 or so and by the time we no longer spoke I was a few months from 17), and I was completely stunned to fucking hear this person trying to pull “I’m in the hospital with a deadly disease” at being confronted for some shit like that LMAO. I made a post about it on my public and another “trans woman friend” of hers logged in to vehemently defend her by saying that there’s nothing wrong with AFAB women being untrusting of trans people because female oppression is uniquely traumatic and that there’s nothing wrong with women expressing their sexuality by sexting minors as long as the minor consents and that I was the real predator for “hiding that I was a man” (remember, I’d been a 13 year old closeted trans boy), before never logging in again... 😭 One of the last times we ever talked was when she demanded I refund her for the fucking Xbox and I refused.

Anyway, the long-term aftermath of that is that a few people online (in some random cringe areas of the internet) who archived some of her antics still think that I also wasn’t a real person, since they caught onto how much she lied about too, so they think I was also a sock puppet and I have no interest in clarifying and making myself known to those people LOL. I have no fucking idea where she is now, she deactivated everything after her being a TERF came out. There’s like, so much more to that I could say because I knew her for YEARS and, like I said, she was one of my “closest friends.” Her parents had wildly expensive pure bred designer dogs that she would make Vines of. She wrote Beatles real person fan fiction. For her birthday one year I made her a shirt on Zazzle with an inside joke about one of her OCs... does she still have that? Either way, she was easily the most batshit person I’ve ever known closely online and I will forever associate the Hetalia fandom with people like that.

[wrathandgreed]

I wanna know about your ocs!! microscope, ufo aaand love note for both mia and rae (or the one you prefer)

Gladly! Sorry this took so long; I started it last night but then my husband spiked a fever and we had to run to urgent care for a COVID test and my ipad ate my reply while I was gone :P

Microscope: “Zoom in - describe the little, insignificant details about an OC” (I wasn’t sure if this meant physical or other, so I did one of each :)

Rae (MC):

Girl loves everything peanut - Reeses? Check. Peanut butter fudge? Check. If it doesn’t have peanuts, it’s not worth calling candy/dessert. Her favorite thing ever is a vanilla sundae with crushed Reeses cups, Reeses pieces, and peanut butter sauce on top. With sprinkles.

She also has strangely long and thin fingers, like good luck finding a department store ring to fit her that didn’t come out of the little girls’ department. The only places she’s found that sell rings she can wear is Hot Topic. She buys her rings off Etsy now.

Mia (OC):

Collects tarot cards, but doesn’t believe in them. She loves the art, the symbolism, and how cards can be completely different but mean the same thing. She loves how much work and thought goes into making a cohesive deck. She’s memorized all the meanings and can easily do readings, but she’s insistent that everyone winds up matching what they already think to the cards. Will go on long psychology-related rants about it.

Has really really long eyelashes - like, she wears contacts because her eyelashes kept smushing against her glasses and making it hard to blink. They’re super long but not super dark, so she’ll tint them up with mascara if she’s going somewhere special.

UFO: “Identity! What are some key identifying qualities or traits of your OC(s)? How do they identify in regards to gender/sexuality?

Rae

With regards to gender/sexuality, she’s a cis woman, pansexual, and a dedicated monogamist. She’s very big into the idea of finding a partner and dedicating her life to them.

Professionally, she’s studying to work in art restoration and conservation. She’s patient and serious when it’s time to work, which throws people off because her personal identity is that of a prankster and fun-loving social butterfly. She’s also a singer in a metal band, so her rebellious streak definitely forms a huge part of her identity.

In fact, she’s worried about actually making her way in the art world because restoration/conservation tends to be a conservative (ha ha) field and between her color-rotation hair, variety of tattoos, and foul mouth, she’s doubtful she’ll actually get a job.

The rest of her identity is what she struggles with - the rejected no-hoper foster kid, no family, no friends because who can keep friends when you change foster families and schools every 6 months? The casual abuse, the neglect, the (thankfully temporary) loss of her brother, the suicide attempt - all of it led her to a family that loved her, but you can’t make up for 16 years of awful that quickly.

Mia:

Gender/sexuality: Mia would kind of identify as a woman, but it doesn’t matter too much to her. She’s not sure she’d go so far as to say genderqueer or Demigirl, but she’s not really invested in gender. She feels more like a woman than anything else, but is “meh” on it. She looks damn good in a dress and she knows it, but she’s more comfortable in cargo pants and tank tops. She’s straight, but poly. She needs her partners to be her family, and not every partner has to be a romantic or sexual partner. She craves physical affection and hates being alone. Hanging around in a cuddle puddle watching a movie with one or more partners is ideal for her. And if her partners are also partners? Bliss.

Beyond that, she identifies as a maker. If she’s not straight-up relaxing or doing some other job for her House, she’s building, crafting, or creating. Her style of magic is non-ritualistic, and she’s capable of imbuing what she makes with intention and power. Some items might take her months or years to create, but goddamit the end result will be usable, powerful, and, preferably, aesthetically pleasing.

She’s studied psychology but never actually made it into being a therapist. She has the degree and a year working at a home for troubled kids, but Magic and Making got a hold of her that was far tighter - and allowed for travel, and meeting powerful and interesting people :)

She identifies as a bookworm when she has the time to read, and if she can’t read, she’ll listen to audiobooks while she makes stuff. Part of her love of psychology stems from her love of fiction - books taught her how to deal with the world, and she’ll analyze any kind of story for hours.

Love Note: Who likes who? Crushes? Relationships? Are they mutual or unrequited?

Rae:

Rae and Mammon get a hold of each other pretty fast and never let go. It’s a solid, mutual relationship based on affection, dumbassery, and sarcasm.

If Mammon wants to do something stupid, Rae will find a way to either make it work, or to make it REALLY FUCKING STUPID.

(If it’s going to be dangerous or super illegal, she’ll talk him out of it.)

If Rae wants to do something stupid, Mammon will 1000% ramp it up to ridiculous levels, to the point where it never happens because they’re cracking up like morons over the plan instead of executing the plan.

Then there are days and nights spent locked in one of their rooms just chilling and being together. There’s a quiet there that works.

Mammon also SUPER accidentally helped her find her brother again.

Mia:

Oh boy. Mia’s story is still very much in the works and is VERY VERY self-indulgent, romantically speaking. I’m actually kind of embarrassed, but the story makes me happy.

Married her childhood sweetheart at 18 because the college they were attending wouldn’t let them live together on campus, and you could only live off-campus as a freshman if you were married. They’d been inseparable since they were in kindergarten, so why tf not, right?

(Was still poly when with him, just more casual about partners besides him.)

Lasted a whole three more years. Found out husband had some (diluted, but present) Celestial blood. As he struggled to figure out what this meant, it opened the door to be essentially radicalized into bounty-hunting “rogue” witches and sorcerers. They weren’t happy by this point, and Mia bounced.

Wound up moving around cities for awhile. Has what SHOULD have been a one-night stand with a mysterious sorcerer she met in a bar when some asshole would take her “no” at face value.

He helps her unlock her suppressed magic; has to do a lot of research to figure out WTF to do with non-ritual-based magic. This takes time.

Before they know it, what should have been a one night stand or, at best, a friends with benefits relationship, has suddenly become like 5 years of her, him, and his favorite demon, Asmo, as a kind of poly triad.

But he’s doing shady Sorcerer Stuff behind her back, like an asshole, and gets pulled into the exchange program before they can sort it out.

Mia has a TEMPER, and that’s the final straw. She’s a “leave no survivors, salt the earth” kind of psycho when you push the wrong buttons, so she lights out and has to cut off Asmo too, because he’ll tell Sol where she is if she doesn’t.

Winds up in The Conclave, a sort of sanctuary for non-ritual-based magicians, where she uses her talent for Making Magical Stuff to help them with their defense and offense. War strategy stuff. They jokingly call her General.

Who else winds up there? Rae! (Where else is a human with little magical ability but access to Devildom go? Conclave’s been around for centuries; well, look, they have a lot of art that needs cleaning.....) Who does Rae bring? Mammon! Mammon, at some point, brings Satan because there’s info he needs that MIGHT be in their extensive, centuries-old library....

Which leads to Satan and Mia hanging out a lot, him doing a lot of reading aloud while she makes stuff, then discussions of the books. Which leads to dating.

Which leads to a reuniting with Asmo. And Sol.

And A WHOLE LOT OF DRAMATIC SELF-INDULGENT STUFF LATER, we’ve got a poly quad with some interesting ground rules.

*whew* That took a lot longer than I expected! I have no idea how to be concise :) Hope it wasn’t too boring!!

[greatfay]

controversial opinions?

Cold pizza actually not good. Tastes like angry bacteria.

There’s a completely separate class of gay men who are in a different, rainbow-tinted plane of reality from the rest of us and I don’t like them. They push for “acceptance” via commercialization of the Pride movement, assimilation through over-exposure, and focus on sexualizing the movement to be “provocative” and writing annoying articles that reek of class privilege instead of something actually important like lgbtqa youth homelessness, job discrimination, and mental health awareness.

Coleslaw is good. You guys just suck in the kitchen.

Generational divides ARE real: a 16-year-old and a 60-year-old right now in 2021 could agree on every hot button sociopolitical topic and yet not even realize it because they communicate in entirely different ways.

Sam Wilson is a power bottom. No I will not elaborate.

Allison’s makeover in The Breakfast Club good, not bad. She kept literally and metaphorically dumping her trash out onto the table and it’s clearly a cry for help. Having the attention and affection of a smart, pretty girl doing her makeup for her was sweet and helped her open up to new experiences. Not every loner wants to BE a loner (see: Bender, who is fine being a lone wolf).

Movie/show recommendations that start with a detailed “representation” list read like status-effecting gear in an RPG and it’s actually a turn-off for me. I have to force myself to give something a try in spite of it.

Yelling at people to just “learn a new language” because clearly everyone who isn’t you and your immediate vicinity of friends must be a lazy ignorant white American is so fucking stupid, like I get it, you’re mad someone doesn’t immediately know how to pronounce your name or what something means. But I know 2 languages and am struggling with a 3rd when I can between 2 jobs and quite frankly, I don’t have the time to just absorb the entire kanji system into my brain to learn Japanese by tomorrow night, or suddenly learn Arabic or Welsh. There are 6500 recorded languages in the world, what’s the chance that one of 3 I’ve learn(ed?) is the one you’re yelling at me about. Yes this is referring to that post yelling at people for not knowing how to pronounce obscure Irish names and words. Sometimes just explaining something instead of admonishing people for not knowing something inherently in the belief that everyone must be lazy entitled privileged people is uh... better?

Stop fucking yelling at people. I despise feeling like someone is yelling at me or scolding me, it triggers my Violence Mode, you don’t run me, you are not God, fuck off. Worst fucking way to "educate” people, it just feels good in the moment to say or write and doesn’t help. Yes I’ve done it before.

Violence is good actually.

Characters doing bad things ≠ an endorsement of bad things. Characters doing bad things that are unquestioned by the entire rest of the cast = endorsement of bad things, or at the least, a power fantasy by the creator. See: Glee, in which Sue’s awfulness is constantly called out, while Mr. Shue’s awfulness rarely is because he’s “the hero.” See also: the Lightbringer series, in which the protagonist is a violent manipulator who is praised as clever, charming, diplomatic, and genius by every supporting character (enemies included), despite the text never demonstrating such.

Euphoria is good, actually. It falls into this niche of the past decade of “dark gritty teen shows” but actually has substance behind it, but the general vibe I get from passive-aggressive tumblr posts from casual viewers is that this show is The Devil, and the criticism of its racier content screams pearl-clutching “what about the children??” to me.

Describing all diagnosed psychopaths as violent criminals is a damaging slippery slope, sure. But I won’t be mad at anyone for inherently distrusting another human who does not have the ability to feel guilt and remorse, empathy, is a pathological liar, or proves to be cunning and manipulative.

It’s actually not easy to unconditionally support and love everyone everywhere when you’ve actually experienced the World. Your perspective and values will be challenged as you encounter difficult people, experience hardship, are torn between conflicting ideas and commitments, and fail. My vow to never ever call the cops on another black person was challenged when an employee’s boyfriend marched into the kitchen OF AN ESTABLISHMENT to scream at her, in a BUSINESS I MANAGED, and threaten to BEAT the SHIT out of her. Turns out I can hate cops and hate that motherfucker equally, I am more than capable of both.

Defending makeup culture bad, actually. Enjoy it, experiment, master it, but don’t paint it as something other than upholding exactly what they want from you. Even using makeup to “defy the heteropatriarchal oppressors!” is still putting cash in their pockets, no matter how camp...

Not every villain needs to be redeemed, some of you just never outgrew projecting yourself onto monsters and killers.

Writing teams and networks queerbaiting is not the same as individuals queerbaiting. Nick Jonas performing exclusively at gay clubs to generate an audience really isn’t criminal; if they paid to go see him, that’s on them, he didn’t promise anyone anything other than music and a show. Do not paint this as similar to wealthy, bigoted executives and writing teams trying to snatch up the LGBTQA demographic with vague ass marketing and manipulative screenplays, only to cop out so as not to alienate their conservative audiences. And ESPECIALLY when the artists/actors/creators accused of queerbaiting or lezploitation then come out as queer in some form later on.

Queer is not a bad word, and I’ve no clue how that remains one of few words hurled at LGBTQA people that can’t be reclaimed. It’s so archaic and underused at this point that I don’t get the reaction to it compared to others.

People who defend grown-woman Lorelai Gilmore’s childish actions and in the same breath heavily criticize teenage religious abuse victim Lane Kim’s actions are not to be trusted. Also Lane deserved better.

Keep your realism out of my media, or at least make it tonally consistent. Tired of shows and movies and books where some gritty, dark shit comes out of nowhere when the narrative was relatively Romantic beforehand.

Actually people should be writing characters different from themselves, this new wave in the past year of “If you aren’t [X] you shouldn’t be writing [X]” is a complete leap backward from the 2010s media diversity movement. And if [X] has to do with an invisible minority status (not immediately visible disabilities, or diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, persecuted religious affiliations, mental illness) it’s actually quite fucked up to assume the creator can’t be whatever [X] is or to demand receipts or details of someone’s personal life to then grant them “permission” to create something. I know, we’re upset an actual gay actor wasn’t casted to play this gay character, so let’s give them shit about it: and not lose a wink of sleep when 2 years later, this very actor comes out and gives a detailed account of the pressure to stay closeted if they wanted success in Hollywood.

Projecting an actor’s personal romantic life and gender identity onto the characters they play is actually many levels of fucked up, and not cute or funny. See: reinterpreting every character Elliot Page has played through a sapphic lens, and insulting his ability to play straight characters while straight actors play actual caricatures of us (See also: Jared Leto. Fuck him).

I’m fucking sick of DaBaby, he sucks. “I shot somebody, she suck my peepee” that’s 90% of whatever he raps about.

“Political Correctness” is not new. It was, at one point, unacceptable to walk into a fine establishment and inform the proprietor that you love a nice firm pair of tits in your face. 60 years ago, such a statement would get you throw out and possibly arrested under suspicion of public intoxication. But then something happened and I blame Woodstock and Nixon. And now I have to explain to a man 40 years my senior that no, you can’t casually mention to the staff here, many of whom are children, how you haven’t had a good fuck in a while. And then rant about the “Chinese who gave us the virus.” Can’t be that upset with them if you then refused to wear your mask for 20 minutes.

Triggering content should not have a blanket ban; trigger warnings are enough, and those who campaign otherwise need to understand the difference between helping people and taking away their agency. 13 Reasons Why inspired this one. Absolutely shitty show, sure, but it’s a choice to watch it knowing exactly what it contains.

Sasuke’s not a fucking INTJ, he’s an ISFP whose every decision is based off in-the-moment feelings and proves incapable of detailed and logical planning to accomplish his larger goals.

MCU critique manages to be both spot-on and pointless. Amazing stories have been told with these characters over the course of decades; but most of it is toilet paper. Expecting a Marvel movie to be a deeply detailed examination of American nationalism and imperialism painted with a colorful gauze of avant-garde film technique is like expecting filet mignon from McDonalds. Scarf down your quarter pounder or gtfo.

Disparagingly comparing the popularity and (marginal) success of BLM to another movement is anti-black. It is not only possible but also easy to ask for people’s support without throwing in “you all supported BLM for black people but won’t show support for [insert group]” how about you keep our name out your mouth? Black people owe the rest of the world nothing tbh until yall root out the anti-blackness in your own communities.

It is the personal demon/tragic flaw of every cis gay/bi/pan man to externalize and exorcize Shame: I’m talking about the innate compulsion to Shame, especially in the name of Pride and Progress. Shame for socioeconomic “success,” shame for status of outness, shame for fitness and health, shame for looks, shame for style and dress, shame for how one fits into the gender binary, shame for sexual positions and intimacy preferences, shame for fucking music tastes. Put down the weapon that They used to beat you. Becoming the Beater is not growth, it’s the worst-case scenario.

Works by minorities do not have to be focused on their marginalized identities. Some ladies want to ride dragons AND other ladies. The pressure on minorities to create the Next Great Minority Character Study that will inevitably get snuffed at the Oscars/Peabody Awards is some bullshit when straight white dudes walk around shitting out mediocre screenplays and books.

Canadians can stfu about how the US is handling COVID-19 actually. Love most of yall, but the number of Canadian snowbirds on vacation (VACATION??? VA.CAT.ION.) in the supposed “hotbed” of my region that I’ve had to inform our mask policies and social distancing to is ASTOUNDING. Incroyable! I guess your country has a sizable population of entitled, privileged, inconsiderate, wealthy, and ignorant people making things difficult for everyone, just like mine :)

No trick to eliminate glasses fog while wearing my mask has worked, not a single one, it actually has affected my job and work speed and is incredibly frustrating, and I have to deal with it and pretend it’s not a problem while still encouraging others to follow the rules for everyone’s safety and the cognitive dissonance is driving me insane.

It’s really really really not anti-Japanese... to be uncomfortable with the rampant pedophilia in manga and anime, and voice this. I really can’t compare western animation’s sneakier bullshit with pantyshots of a 12-year-old girl.

Most of the people in the cottagecore aesthetic/tag have zero interest in all the hard work that comes with maintaining an isolated property in the countryside, milking cows and tending crops before sunrise, etc. And that’s okay? They just like flowers and pretty pottery and homemade pastries. Idk where discourse about this came from.

You think mint chip ice-cream tastes like toothpaste because you’re missing a receptor that can distinguish the flavors, and that sucks for you. It’s a sort of “taste-blindness” that can make gum spicy to some while others can eat a ghost pepper without crying.

Being a spectacle for the oppressive class doesn’t make them respect us, it makes them unafraid of us. This means they continue to devour us, but without fear of our retaliation.

Only like 4 people on tumblr dot com are actually prepared for the full ramifications of an actual revolution. The rest of you just really imprinted onto Katniss, or grew up in the suburbs.

Straight crushes are normal. They’re people first, sexual orientation second. Can’t always know.

The road to body positivity is not easy, especially if what you desire is what you aren’t.

You’re actually personally responsible for not voluntarily bringing yourself into an environment that you know is not fit for you unless you have the resolve to manage it. Can’t break a glass ceiling without getting a few cuts. This one’s a shoutout to my homophobic temp coworkers who decided working a venue with a drag show would be a good idea. This is also is a shoutout to people who want to make waves but are surprised when the boat tips. And also a shoutout to people who—wait that’s it’s own controversial opinion hold up.

Straight people can and should stay the fuck out of gay bars and queer spaces. “yoUrE bEInG diVisiVe” go fuck yourself.

[hanawrites404]

Part 3

"Des-pa-ci-to, na na na na na na na na na Burrito, pa ta pa pa ra pa pa na ra Secco, na na na na ta ra ta ta ta ta Procciotto~ Mmm...I love this song".

"Give me a break" Jotaro said, and his prayers were answered because the radio started to get all distorted.

"What the??" Noriko got disappointed and sulked as her song got ruined. Jotaro was smiling to himself from the inside, but the happiness didn't last for long when the car abruptly stopped in the middle of the road.

"The hell??" Mr. Kujo tried to start the engine again and again, but it didn't respond back.

"W-What happened??" Noriko asked him. "Don't know. I need to check the engine".

As soon as he said that sentence, on fat drop of water fell on the window with a thud, and it was soon followed by many and eventually it had started to rain cats and dogs.

"Fan-fucking-tastic" Jotaro remarked sarcastically as he slapped the steering wheel from frustration.

Jotaro noticed how Noriko was silent the whole time. He took a glance at Noriko and found her mumbling something to herself. She then rubs her chin, looks back from her seat and then opens her seatbelt and starts to get off the car.

"Wait, where are you going??" Jotaro took hold of her wrist to stop her. "Checking the engine. Why??". "Let me do that. You stay inside". "No, let me go" she struggles to get her hand out of Jotaro's grasp.

"Fine. Do what you want to" he then lets go of her wrist.

Noriko smiles and opens the door, but it wasn't even budging. She looks at Jotaro who shows her the car keys, which means that she won't be able to get out as he had locked all the doors automatically.

She glares at Jotaro and tries to get the keys from him, but he kept it inside his pant pocket, making it out of reach.

"Ha!! I don't need keys to get out" she smirks. She then goes to the driver's seat and does something down the steering wheel and the door opens with a click.

Now let's ignore the fact that Noriko had her boob pressed on Jotaro's knee when she was unlocking the door, shall we??

"How did you do that??" Jotaro asked her and Noriko just smiles and winks at him.

She then gets off and naturally the rain started to drip intensely on her. But ignoring all the awful wetness, she opens the front of the car and starts rummaging through the car parts, being careful not to disturb the other components.

Jotaro had gotten off too but he had an umbrella with him. He observed how Noriko was concentrating on her work and was not getting distracted by the cold rain.

Her whole attire was wet and Jotaro could see her small figure as her clothes clinged onto her body. He also noticed how the little girl was shivering from the cold, but still she was focused.

Her hair had turn darker due to the water and her hair waves had been straightened up, making her hair look longer.

The only thing which was intact was where her eyes and hands were and how her lips were slightly opened in order to take air in and out and also vibrating a little due to the cold.

However, her bangs were continuously disturbing her as they dropped on her face frequently. She always pulled them back but they kept falling on her face, hiding her vision.

To add some ease to the already struggling lady, Jotaro brushes her hair gently behind her ear.

Noriko looked at the owner of the hand with a slight hint of longing for a second and then continues her work. Jotaro's heart skipped a beat when the girl locked her amethyst eyes with his.

He was now truly in love with her, just like how he fell in love with his highschool sweetheart.

"Oh.....so the battery is dead" Noriko came to the conclusion. "Is that so?? Let me call the service center then" he was about to grab his phone.

"No wait" she stops him. She then looks around and sees a bus stand which was lit up.

"Perfect!!" she exclaimed. She then gets out the battery of the car.

"Do you have the battery charger??" She asks Jotaro. "Yes, I have it in the back". "Get it, quick".

Jotaro gives it to her and she then connects it to the battery. She then bites the other side of the wire's coating so that she could connect it with the bus stand's source.

"Pick the battery up and come with me" she orders him, and Jotaro picks up the battery and follows the girl.

The girl gets up the stand and rummages to find the wires which were connected to the source, and luckily she found it in no time. She then disconnects the wires and the bus stand's light goes off.

She then connects the wires of the charger to the source. It took her a minute, but after she was done, Jotaro was surprised to see that the car battery had started charging now.

Noriko grinned at her work and got off. She then casually goes and sits on the seat of the stand and looks up at the dark rainy sky while humming to herself.

"How do you know all of this??" Jotaro asked her with wonder.

"I worked as a mechanic at one of my part-time jobs, so I know the basics. Also, I want to become a mechanical engineer when I grow up" she told him.

"When I was a kid, I used to have a dream where I make a flying car which would be better than any vehicle which ever existed. It would be like a vision of the future" Noriko told him.

"That's great" Jotaro said. Noriko smiles at him. She then asks him "What about you Jotaro-san?? Why did you became a marine biologist??" Noriko kept her face on her palms.

"It's......a very long story" Jotaro told her. "I'm listening. We have a lot of time anyway. The battery will take only half an hour to charge, and I think Jolyne wouldn't mind us being a bit late" she told him.

"Fine.......I used to have these dreams........where I am standing in front of an aquarium and a plethora of marine species appear in front of my eyes. There were fishes, shrimps, corals and what-not.

But the most intriguing part was how my younger self and my lover were inside there too, and we were in each other's arms as we stared longingly at each other and went deeper and deeper into the waters.

Although the creatures of the dreams were always different in every dream, two things were common in it. One was us and second was how we pressed our lips against each other's as we submerged deep into the vast sea at the end of the dream".

"Wow, now that's very......poetic" Noriko was amazed.

"So was she your wife??" She asked next.

Jotaro shook his head no.

Noriko's eyes widen a bit, she then moved closer to him and asked him with curiosity.

"Who was she then?? Tell me!!" She asked like an excited baby.

"It's a he, Noriko". "A he??" Noriko raised her eyebrows, and Jotaro slowly nodded.

"Y-You mean, you are gay??". "I cannot really say. It was.........something that I had never expected from myself.

When I was of your age, I was not interested in girls as they were all annoying, and I usually got into fights with the boys.

He was a transferred student by the way, and our first time meeting each other was not pleasant at all, but I didn't know that eventually we would become so close to each other that we would be afraid to lose one another, and also that his death would still haunt me" Jotaro started to rub his eyes.

"Wait, he is dead?? What happened to him??" Noriko asked him. "I......He got a very fatal wound which literally passed through his stomach.....And I was not there for him at that time...........And he was only 17.........."

Jotaro's voice cracked at the last sentence as he had started to sob over his lover's memories. He covered his eyes with his hand but the tears weren't stopping at all.

Noriko's heart broke on watching the professor crying like this. She then moved more closer to Jotaro and hugged the man. She then started to rub his shoulder and back as she whispered sweet nothings in his ear to soothe him. Fortunately, Noriko was successful in comforting Jotaro for a bit as he stopped crying.

"I.....I'm sorry. I got a bit carried away" he wiped his eyes. "It's alright......I know how it feels to lose someone dear to you" she admitted.

"And you know what's the worst part?? I can never find peace ever again in my life after his death" Jotaro continued. "What do you mean??" Noriko asked.

"I got married and Jolyne was born. I was hoping to find love once more and have a normal family by my side, but it didn't work well. My profession had distanced me away from my family, and I had began to barely give any time to them.

I am also a target to one of the most dangerous people, and I don't want my family to be one of the targets because of me. That's why I got a divorce from my wife, and Jolyne now has an incomplete family.........".

"Yeah.....she had told me about the divorce. But I didn't know that you had left your wife because you wanted her to be safe"

Noriko then holds his hand and caresses it with her smaller ones.

She then smiles to herself and says "You are a very good person Jotaro-san. There is no way one can call you unjust or crude".

"The time when you offered to come with me to the hostel, I had already got an impression that you cared for me even though it had been only minutes since we met.

And the time when you defended me from that perverted manager, I got to know that you didn't like evil even a single bit, and that you protect weaker people if they are in trouble. Now that's a trait I love in a man" she told him.

Jotaro's cheeks got heated up and he looked away from her. Noriko chuckled as she spoke next.

"Not to sound creepy and all but, if only I was a bit older, I would have loved to marry you" she grinned.

Jotaro's blush worsened. He desperately tried to hide his face by hiding in his hat, but the red girl was smart, as she removed his hat and cupped his face. She then turned his head towards herself and pecked him on his cheek.

"A small thank you, for everything" she said and caressed on of the curls of his black hair. Now Jotaro was helpless, he cannot hide his flustered face now as it was fully exposed to the red lady.

She chuckled at the cute expression of the professor. Their relationship had now evolved from formal to informal from the very time Noriko kissed the man.

Noriko didn't regret it and Jotaro pretty much enjoyed it to the most. Speaking in a nutshell, both of their intimacy just went to the next level.

"Well, I think 30 minutes have passed now. Let's go home" she then lets go of Jotaro and goes to disconnect the battery.

Jotaro touches the cheek where the girl had kissed him. It reminded him of his lover's sneaky kisses which he used to give while he was sleeping or when no one was looking.

He also remembers how he used to hit him in the head for that and it pained the red head for the whole day.

*10 minute time skip, brought to you by Cock-yo-ween*

Both of them had now successfully reached home. They then got off the car, grabbed the dinner and rang the doorbell of the door.

Jolyne was quick to open the door. She then asked "What took you two so long. Do you even realise that it's 11 now??".

"Sorry, we had some problems with the car. The battery had died so we had to charge it" Noriko replied as they both entered the house.

"Alright. And what about the manager?? Did you kick his ass??" Jolyne asked.

"Ummmmm.....About that....."

"I had taken care of him for her".

Noriko looked at Jotaro with a bit astonishment. "Wait, you did?? For me??". "Yes. I wanted to--"

"Jotaro-san!!! Not fair!!" She then punches him in the chest and goes away in the kitchen to keep the food.

Jotaro then facepalms and mumbles "Ugh, give me a break". He literally saved her from harassment, and this is how she repays??

"Jotaro-san~ Huh Dad??" Jolyne was next to tease him. Jotaro blushed and looked away from his daughter.

"I-I just wanted her to drop the formalities with me" he defended. "Oh is that so?? Then what's that on your right cheek??" She asked.

Jotaro touched the area where she was talking about and felt something silky and slippery. He then looked at his hand and found a red substance which smelled like cherries.

"You might be wondering what the hell is this?? Well this is cherry lip gloss, and Noriko is the only one I know who puts it and she was with you the whole time, wasn't she??" She crossed her arms.

Jotaro was busted. What he feared the most has now happened. He braced for the harsh impact and was expecting Jolyne to shout at him, but all he got was his daughter speaking to him in a soft manner while holding his shoulder.

"You love her, don't you??" She asked her father.

Jotaro did not look into her eyes. Though her suspicions were correct, he was afraid to agree with her as he thought that it might lead to certain unfavorable consequences. He would have not given a shit to anyone else but this is his own daughter we are talking about right now.

"Dad, please tell me. I'm not going to judge you or anything" she assured him. He then finally nodded without saying anything else.

Jolyne was silent for a moment, processing everything in her brain. After some seconds, she lightly chuckled to herself.

"Honestly, it's not surprising to me. She really is an attractive individual. Not to mention, she really looks like your lover, uncle Noriaki".

Jotaro shot his eyes up at her face when he heard that name. So she knew it the whole time??

"Dad.....you have gone through a lot and you deserve to be happy. If being with Noriko does the trick then so be it. Although I'm sad that Mom was not enough for you, but it's alright. All uncle Noriaki wanted after his death was you to be happy, so do it at least for him".

"B-But what about--". "Age gap?? Are you really worrying about that?? You are Dr. Kujo!! The big, bad professor who doesn't give a fuck to anyone and won't hesitate to kick bones and break ass" she winked.

The alternation she had done to her sentence seemed to make Jotaro chuckle a bit.

"And also, remember how great-gramps married great-aunt Tomoko when she was way younger than him??".

"Don't compare me to that old man" his said grimly. "Alright, sorry. But you do get my point right?? Tonight, you are going to give it to her hard" she punched his shoulder motivatively.

"Give me what??" Noriko came out of the kitchen to see what was going on.

"O-Oh it's nothing Noriko" she grins innocently at her while keeping her hands behind her.

Noriko shrugs and then calls both of them to have dinner as it has been reheated.

"Oh great. I was starving anyway" Jolyne went to the dining room.

"Jotaro-san, come on". "Yes, coming" and he too joined the girls for supper.

*Time skip till bed time brought to you by the lazy author*

"I'm really sleepy now. It's good that I don't have to wake up early tomorrow and see Anderson's owl face" Jolyne yawned.

Noriko chuckled as she scratched her red head. "But that doesn't mean you are not going to study tomorrow. And do note that I am going to clench you hard".

"Yeah yeah I get you. It's better to get lectured by you instead of that excuse of a teacher".

"Oh come on, he is not that bad". "Oh he is very bad Noriko. Don't even ask me where he comes in my ultimate list of total bitches and assholes".

Both of the girls then laughed happily as they gossipped about school and many other things. Jotaro was happy to see both of them bond with each other.

It reminded him of when Noriaki used to tell him facts about everything he ever spotted on their way.

'Jotaro, did you know that Jaipur is also known as the Pink town??'

'Jotaro, did you know that Singapore is one of the greenest cities??'

'Jotaro, did you know that you have more than 100 million bacteria in our nose??'

Though it pissed him how he always acted like a nerd on a trip, he enjoyed listening to his factual rambling.

In turn, he too used to share some information on marine life he read in magazines and Noriaki listened to him patiently. A few kisses here and there were inevitable which made the session even more interesting.

"Alright then. I'll see you tomorrow then. Goodnight Noriko" Jolyne then retired in her room after their night conversation was over.

After bidding Jolyne goodnight, Noriko turned to the man who had his eyes on her the whole time. She then calls out to him with a small blush on her cheeks.

"Jotaro" his name slipped from her lips like petals, and it turned him on. The taller man approached her slowly, eyeing her from top to bottom. He then caressed her rosy cheeks and cupped her face, their faces only inches away.

Noriko was looking directly into his ocean green eyes, loosing herself in those orbs. Jotaro had his eyes on her plump lips as pink as peaches. She could not hold on anymore, and so could not Jotaro himself.

Both of them finally pressed their lips together and it was as if two opposite ends of magnets finally met. The kiss was gentle at first, but then it got more passionate as he pulled her closer by her slim waist.

The smaller girl had wrapped her arms around the broad shoulders of her partner. She being way shorter than him had to stand on her tippy toes to reach his level.

Jotaro noticed how she was struggling, so he offered. "You want to do it in bed??".

Noriko blushed a deep red, but then nodded at him. Jotaro picked her up in bridal style and she held onto him. He then took her to his elegant bedroom.

Though is was a decorated simply, it was looking very exquisite. The floor was wooden and it creaked softly under Jotaro's steps.

The taller man laid down the smaller lady slowly and carefully on the bed as if she was made up of delicate glass. The girl stared longingly at the man hovering over her as she leaned up to kiss his lips.

(Part 4)

[anniecohens]

(romee strijd, cis female) - have you seen annie cohen? annie is in her senior year. the dance major is 22 years old & is a sagittarius. people say she is disarming, playful, compulsive, and volatile. rumors say they’re a member of kincaid society. i heard from the gossip blog that she dropped out of this past summer semester last minute to check into a psychiatric unit.

it’s me, tessa, back again with an older muse of mine! she holds a big ol’ chunk of my heart, so we’re testing the waters and seeing how she does at yates. ~big fish, big pond~ i’m going to try and keep this bio brief(ish) and then just run with things, so bear with me, we’re throwing everything to the wind with maybe, potentially very little information :D fun! if we end up chatting about our muses i’ll be able to tell you more, this is just what’s coming to me.

name: annie luelle cohen nicknames: a, lu age, birth date: about to turn 22, december 1, 1998 hometown: napa valley, california major, university: dance, yates university sexuality: pansexual

pinterest!

HISTORY

annie is the only daughter to jameson cohen, single father and vintner. they live on their winery in napa valley, a large expanse of land with neighbors such as domain chandon and beringer vineyards.

annie’s parents had her young—at the ages of 21 and 22—which resulted in her mother leaving shortly after her birth. she doesn’t know much about her, save for her name (emmeline), how she looks in a few old photographs, and the shit talk comments her paternal grandmother mutters under her breath about how she must be galivanting off in italy or greece to this day.

growing up with her father had its difficulties, seeing as he was plenty busy running the business and estate. still, he did his best to prioritize her upbringing and devote a lot of time to her. and when it got to the point where it just wasn’t possible to juggle everything, he hired an au pair (fr). madeleine, 24 and from france. she quickly became something of an older sister figure, even teaching annie almost perfect french over the years.

seeing as she was still pretty lonely in that big ol’ house, madeleine suggested that james enroll annie in dance classes at a very young age. this would end up being a cornerstone of the girl’s life, from your standard baby’s ballet class (well, pre-ballet) to advanced pointe technique.

insert montage of this bright blonde kindergartener girl running around a stage, dad and maddie in the front row, to twelve year-old annie in the role of clara in the nutcracker, to a young adult seventeen year-old annie as juliet in romeo and juliet.

she was definitely ‘the dance girl’ throughout middle and high school, taking four sick days in a row every winter to perform in the annual nutcracker production. carrying her dance bag around so that she could go straight to rehearsal after school. always saying, sorry, i can’t, i have dance.

truly, though, she adored it and still does, which is why she’s pursuing it as a career (as well as taking some business courses here and there in the case that she has to manage the winery at some point).

MENTAL HEALTH / SECRET

tw: mental disorder / bipolar: around her sophomore year of high school, annie started experiencing rapidly changing moods and confusing emotions. for a small while everyone deduced it to “hormones,” but after what was revealed to be a manic episode, she was diagnosed with bipolar I and put on medication by her new psychiatrist.

however, she kept the situation on the DL, only her father and maddie being aware.

enter university. annie graduated, got accepted into yates due to stellar grades and her impressive pursuit of the arts, and was off to the east coast.

however exciting, the downside was that she started slacking on taking her medication. not often or for long periods of time, but still. everything seemed to be going along seamlessly, though, so she didn’t take it as seriously as she should’ve.

that is, until this past summer. she’d registered for classes throughout the summer semester, but a week long episode that resulted in spotty memory and regrettable decisions prompted her to drop the classes just before they started and check herself into a psychiatric unit a few towns over.

now she’s back for the fall semester and her senior year, giving the cover story that she decided last-minute to take the summer off and visit home after all.

PERSONALITY

tiktoks for a bit of a vibe: one, two, three

and my personal acc tag for her: here

+ sweetheart, playful, outgoing, a bit of a flirt - in that fun, lighthearted kind of way

- compulsive, stubborn, withdrawn when upset

emotional, which really can be here or there, depending on the situation

looks like a hiiii girl, often acts like a bruh girl

“sorry i told you about my trauma, do you still think i’m hot?”

“noo, don’t take care of me, it’s rotten work aha”

romantically calls you dude, platonically calls you babe

but also

stay away from people who make you feel like you’re hard to love

you are such a soft and messy thing, nobody knows how to take care of you

???? you know ????

the kind of person that doesn’t act out for attention, but doesn’t at all mind attention, either

she’ll get up and dance on the table with you, she’ll approach someone and tell them they’ve got pretty eyes, she’ll repeatedly raise her hand in class, she doesn’t mind being looked at

loves horror films/shows, but especially the type that are driven by story or are psychological (think the conjuring franchise, hill house, midsommar). one of her favorite things about watching or reading anything is talking to someone about it afterwards and going in-depth.

 is either wearing sweats and a basic crop top type deal or knee high boots and a short skirt, there’s no in-between

CONNECTIONS

honestly awful at WCs, so i started a tag on my personal acc and am slowly starting to reblog with random ideas

maybe a kind of darker counterpart to her brighter personality. sort of like unexpected friends?

guy friends she fucks around with (not literally!) like fun idiots

girl friends she takes out on friend dates and calls beautiful 24/7

down to just plot the basics (oh, they’d recognize each other from x! they’re in the same society! maybe she probably, most likely would have a  small crush on them! etc.) and then just go with chemistry from there.

believe me when i say i’m down for almost anything, though, do your worst (best?)

[oceanmonsters]

thoughts on “tall girl”

I’m gonna make another post actually going into detail (edit: made post here) about some of the points that really bothered me (because I had a Lot of thoughts while watching this) this is just an overview & what I was thinking while actually watching the film:

movie about a straight white girl opening with Make Me Feel by Janelle Monáe playing...........

the movie is going so hard straight off the bat with the “Jodi is alienated and unaccepted by society because of her height” with the parallel being made between Jodi and the character in the book

“You think your life is hard” god I was really trying to go into this movie with an open mind but literally within the first 5 minutes they’re doing exactly what I predicted and making it seem like being tall is literally the biggest source of oppression ever. Like yes, her life is harder than it would be if she was average height but she’s still a rich cis straight white girl. That doesn’t mean she can’t have problems but there are SO MANY people with lives harder than hers. This line was so tone deaf that it’s so hard to give the rest of the movie a chance.

“How’s the weather up there” is literally being treated as if it’s a slur. Like yes it’s annoying but it’s really not that deep.

this school seems very racially diverse which is usually a good thing but when you’re framing the white girl as having the biggest problems and being picked on / harassed by everyone else, it’s really not...

the scene with the mom taking about her “problems” in high school for being so beautiful and popular and asking Jodi if that counts as adversity and her being like ‘what the fuck, is this what she really thinks adversity is’ is literally a metaphor for me watching this movie rn

her friend Jack is Sam from American Vandal and that’s not relevant to the plot but I keep thinking of his name as Sam now

Sam: He might not even be smart

Stig: *writes the molecular formula of the molecule drawn for which literally all you have to do is count the number of atoms of each type, and happened to recognise the molecule

Sam: oh NO what’s he DOING fuck I’m screwed he’s a genius he’s literally the PERFECT GUY

also is the movie really trying to tell me Jodi is the tallest person in her whole school? There are NO guys taller than her? Because my school was definitely smaller than most American schools and there were definitely at least 5 guys in my year taller than 6’

most of the mean girls making fun of & laughing at Jodi are WOC which really feels wrong...

why is he talking about c-sections what the fuck that was so creepy!

why is Jodi acting like just because she’s tall she somehow has some sort of claim to Stig over Kimmy... like I know Kimmy was horrible to her and now she’s dating the guy she likes which sucks but Jodi’s not entitled to Stig’s affections and he clearly likes Kimmy back but she’s acting like Stig is rightfully hers or smth

Sam is the best thing about about this movie so far, like his character is annoying but he’s actually not bland and is somewhat amusing to watch

also I literally can’t remember his character’s name, they just call him Dunkers or Dunkleman, they haven’t mentioned his first name since they first introduced him so I’m just gonna keep calling him Sam

he just kissed her even though he has a girlfriend... Jodi, run away girl

why is she enabling her sister’s extreme dieting?? This is a teen movie, they should really not be normalising this

I don’t know if it’s because of Griffin’s acting or because of how bland the other characters are so far but Sam is actually my favourite character so far even though he’s annoying and is actively trying to sabotage their relationship... like at least he has personality

also she keeps going on about how tall girls never get the guy or aren’t considered attractive or whatever but she’s had 3 GUYS be interested in her throughout the course of the movie

this kissing scene is making me very uncomfortable... like it’s sooooo zoomed in on their faces to show how they’re all looking at each other

who let Sam just come into her room while she’s sleeping???

he’s sitting on her bed and watching her hello????

he’s now weirdly touching her hair

SHE FUCKIN DECKED HIM SHKSHDKSJ and he deserved it

also this has been bothering me for a while but why does this kid wear so many rings. Who made this style choice bc it adds nothing to his character and imo just looks weird

I’ve also been noticing this for a few scenes but her house is SUPER nice, damn. Like she’s definitely rich, which makes the “You think your life is hard?” comment even more tone deaf.

okay Sam’s actually redeemed himself, if your friend wouldn’t charge at someone way bigger than them with a fucking crate for being an asshole to you are they even your friend

although DAMN if he’d actually hit him with that crate he could have seriously injured him, he was going straight for the head

why was everyone cheering so much for that bland, cheesy speech that was all about her. If I were in that crowd I’d just be like “girl get down & let us enjoy our dance, jesus.” Like realistically hardly anyone would be invested or really care about what she has to say because they literally don’t know or care about her. The movie’s acting like she’s known by everyone in the school, when in reality while people would recognise her they probably really don’t care that much.

also yes, some people in her school are assholes but I refuse to believe that the majority of her school constantly going on about her height - especially if she’s been at the school for a long time, they should be well past used to it by now. Most people in the crowd probably literally just don’t care about her at all and just want this to be over

this guy carried his shit around in a milk crate for all this time JUST IN CASE she ever wanted to kiss him?? I honestly don’t know how to feel about this because on one hand that’s a really extra level of dedication, which I somewhat respect but on the other hand... it’s just way too much

I literally feel nothing for this couple at all - I like Sam but as a couple, I wasn’t rooting for them or particularly happy or satisfied when they got together. Also, they didn’t show Jodi liking him at all up until this point. He was in love with her but there was no indication that she had any kind of feelings for him whatsoever. I guess it could be one of those situations where something happens and you see them in a whole new light and realise that you’ve been overlooking them the whole time but I feel like the timespan between her realising this and then getting together was way too short for me to actually care about them as a couple because for like 98% of the movie the attraction was completely one sided. If they’d shown her starting to have feelings for him earlier in the movie, e.g. when he started dating Liz, and shown her feeling jealous or upset or anything that indicates she actually does have underlying feelings for him but is scared to date him because of the height difference or whatever, I think I would’ve found the romance way more believable.

Also the characters of colour are so underdeveloped & sidelined in this movie - there’s Fareeda, who is literally just a walking “angry black girl”+”sassy supportive black friend” stereotype. She has no other development throughout this entire film. We literally know nothing about her other than that she’s Jodi’s best friend and always sticks up for / supports her even though she’s clearly ungrateful. Kimmy is a one dimensional caricature of a Mean Girl with apparently nothing else that matters to her but being a dick to Kimmy for no reason and being popular and being Homecoming Queen. There’s literally no reason given for why she hates Jodi so much either, because she’s never shown being awful to anyone else - she just really has it out for Jodi. And apart from Fareeda, the only named characters of colour only exist to be rejected romantic interests for the white characters and have no purpose or personality beyond this.

Overall I wouldn’t say this was the worst movie I’ve watched but I disliked it more than a lot of objectively worse movies I’ve watched - it was definitely one of the least enjoyable and most frustrating movies I’ve ever watched. I was hoping that even though the premise seemed dumb it would still be a cute, enjoyable teen movie - but they focused so much on how much supposed adversity she faced and how difficult life is for a tall girl that it’s hard to focus on anything else. Honestly I think that if they’d just cut out all of the dialogue about how hard life was for her, about adversity, about how “tall girls don’t get happy endings” or whatever, the movie could actually have been somewhat enjoyable with the rest of the plot being the same. It could’ve just been about a taller-than-average girl who feels insecure about her height trying to date a tall guy but realising her best friend is actually the right guy for her - and realising that it’s not the world that’s holding her back, it’s actually her own insecurities. My opinions on the quality of the plot and romance are obviously just my opinions and you obviously don’t have to agree with them but I don’t think you can deny how objectively tone deaf the premise is and how the characters of colours are basically sidelined and only exist to support the white character’s storylines, which is why I’m definitely putting this movie in the Never Watch Again pile.