#it's also frustrating because i genuinely like psych and i love learning about people

[uncanny-tranny]

I recently had to do a project in one of my psych classes, and man, I knew that CBT was used for every little thing, but seeing over and over, "do CBT! CBT is the best for every mental illness!" was so jarring. I'm absolutely biased because of my own experiences, but I just don't think it's as universal a treatment model as it's touted.

If you didn't benefit from CBT, it's not because you're lazy or didn't try hard enough or lacked intelligence or foresight into your own needs. Frankly, it's a therapy model that (I think) shouldn't be the only readily-accessible model and among the only therapy models covered by insurance. Some of us should not be treated in a CBT model and that's okay. It's not a sign of poor character or unreasonable demands, and if you don't think it's a model that works for you, then it's your right to express that!

[kunekojo]

Would they fall in love at first sight or would it be slow burn and why and how do they confess if the reader is oblivious for szayel, mayuri and adult uryu ? Fluff plz

Also thx for the follow 🥺

You’re welcome!!! I need to make more bleach moots 🥹🥹🥹 thank you so much for being my first request btw, this means a whole lot to me! I hope you enjoy this!!!

Love at first sight/slow burn with Szayel, Mayuri and Uryu(adult)

•••

Mayuri Kurotsuchi

With him, it’s pure slow burn.

At first, he’ll treat you just like he treats everyone else, but right when you indicate the tiniest bit of curiosity in his projects, he’ll be overjoyed.

His experiments are his pride and it’s pretty rare for any of the soul reapers to show the slightest bit of interest in them. Yet when you do, he’ll take you and show you absolutely everything while stating the smallest details, convinced you won’t last for too long. His intellect isn’t for everyone and it’s not his problem.

But the problem is, you don’t leave. A little unexpected but he’s sure you’ll leave, eventually.

But again, you don’t. You find everything about his experiments so fascinating that you just hang around because you genuinely enjoy it. You find him impressive enough that you can’t quit witnessing his psyche.

You’re not a scientist yourself but learning about these things takes a hold of you so much that you find yourself together in his lab with him oftentimes.

And believe me, you end up spending a looot of time with him. So much that everyone is kind of worried but that's not an issue.

The more time you spend with him, the more you begin developing ideas and you're not ashamed to spill your mind. Of course, he might be a bit cruel while correcting you but hey, this is his style, right? You can't be right about everything, but he's kind of encouraging you in a weird way to keep at it.

Still, he finds it a little fascinating how you hang around him, indulging yourself in his domain. After all, his mind is so vast, how can people not do that?

Little by little, you take after him and it impresses him greatly, so much that he's kind of developing a little something something for you but he can't exactly grasp what, hell he just thinks you've specialized yourself. Maybe it’s just mutual respect with how much you've evolved but oh boy, it's so much greater than that.

First, You'll notice he's actually letting you take part in his research as he does his lil mad scientist thing but hey, perhaps this means you’re finally able to attend to these, so good job.

Second, he'll tend to care about your well-being in battles. Thing he normally doesn't mind. As a soul reaper, you must give your all, even if it means your life, but he makes a little exception with you.

He can't explain to himself why and will try to find logical reasons for this odd behavior he's undergoing. But the more time you spend with him, it intensifies, sending him to spiral over this nonsense.

Then at some point, he needs someone as a test subject and while you offer yourself, he denies it, giving a rather weird explanation that rather makes sense but doesn't. You don't pay much attention to it because duh, you understand he knows better, you won't just question his decision despite not entirely agreeing to it, but the problem is he questions it himself

For some time the odd change he's sensing goes away, but everything shifts when you bring something for him on his birthday and he doesn't reject it. He might in fact look at it frequently. Why would he even accept something like this? Something, this insignificant. It's so frustrating, but he's got to search for an answer on his own.

This thing eats at him so much that he goes all the way to make throughout tests on himself and see wherever there's an after-effect to his experiments but it's not. The chemicals in his brain incline towards the possibility of behavior so much greater than plain respect, a little investment in you.

Simply put, he likes you a little but will run a few more tests to make sure, and they all come positive, again. He can't deny his own results at this point, but he has to accept whatever this is and work with it

Some more time later after (after days of analyzing), there's improvement on his side (he's accepted)

But you fall victim to a virus during battle and he does his utmost to generate an antidote for you and it drives him crazy when he almost loses which is unacceptable. It's the sudden fear of loss that astonished him, he's never felt that before but it’s a huge game changer between you two

This event makes him consider experimenting on you just so there wouldn't be any more chances of you dying on him

Afterward, once you're refreshed and up, you decide to thank him for saving your life and he makes an odd comment, something along the line “you better stay by my side for the rest of your time.” which you can't get at first but with time, it makes sense

Uryu Ishida (adult)

Uryu’s on the spectrum of love at first sight instead but with a tiny bit of slow burn

He generally protects and saves other women but when he meets you as you're proving you’re able to do that on your own. he acknowledges it. He can’t lie to himself and not agree he’s a little intrigued by it, but will still tend to overprotect you out of instinct

Your whole personality snatches his attention and he can't help but think about you a little, especially with how nice you are so expect him to not take his eyes off you when you seem to be in troubke

You find his carefulness precious but will constantly remind him it's not like you're helpless, but you do appreciate his care and it's what draws you to spend time with him

Despite his quietness, he's really enjoyable to hang around and you both do find a few things to talk about and they do expand quicker than he anticipated

There's just something about your being that draws him to you so much that he can't really imagine not having you around but he rejects the idea of this possibility

Then you praise him for something he did for you and it's done

Face flushed, he won't be able to take you off his mind and the first rational explanation to this oddness is that... He might have a crush on you?? If this is how crushes work.

He denies it but does take it into consideration. Everyone goes through this kind of feeling but isn't it a little different??

He has to go to Orihime and inquire about this, behavior just to confirm his hypothesis and it does

He doesn't know how to handle the news and it's somehow harder to be around you with these newfound feelings but you somehow manage to soothe him which is incredible

But he won’t just plainly state his feelings, especially that he’s not aware if you share them too. It wouldn’t even be proper to address this issue of his since you don’t seem to have some feelings as well

But god it eats at him so much that you start noticing it a little and he panics momentarily while trying to act cool about it

Still, it worries you so much that you’re sure he’s going through a bad period and you must be there for him, to listen to him, completely oblivious that this is only happening when you’re around

Maybe he trusts you enough to show his true colors in front of you!

The more time passes, the more he can't hold it inside anymore, and out of the blue, he requests you two have a talk about an important matter

You're worried sick about it and accept his invitation but when he can hardly find his words, you stare at him confused, urging him to tell you what's troubling so you could help him

“What?? No, nothing’s going on in my family, it's just that-” “just what? Please Uryu, tell me, don't bottle up your emotions. I'm here to listen. There's no shame in having family problems” “No it's not that.” “Are you sure?”

Your hand placed on his shoulders is what pushes him to the last straw

“There’s nothing wrong about my family.” “Then about who?” “You. I like you”

His words stun you but he's quick to explain his love feelings, confessing he had kind of fallen for you from the start

Szayel

Another pure slow burn similar in some ways to Mayuri

It all begins when you’re placed to work under him by Aizen himself. When you two first meet, he's not phased by your presence but takes it as it is, especially since Aizen pointed out that the choice of putting you alongside him isn't baseless

He's rather curious why though, a little convinced there might be a faulty reason to it but for that confirmation, he must put you through all sorts of trials

Yet when you pass these little mind tricks, he doesn't deny it. So you're worthy enough to witness his absolute genius

You catch up with his ideas pretty quickly which is intriguing. Your drive to help him achieve whatever’s on his mind is of great benefit to him and he does take advantage of it

Truthfully, as long as you're useful you're good to hold around.

You two spend quite a lot of time together and you get to see parts of him Aizen has never told you about, so your intrigue makes you show more of you as well

He might not make it seem like he cares but he does keep in mind everything, just chooses not to give further thought to it for now

All that time also comes with different experiments which start mild and are easy to handle but the more he increases them, you start showing signs of difficulties but your urge to keep them going amazes him

So you're not perfect after all, then he should make you perfect. He deemed you worthy in the beginning, so he must keep you that way to the end. You don't even protest and he welcomes your reply

There's something odd about the way you let him do anything for the sake of research. It's not like you do it as a mindless puppet, but as someone who understands his means to some extent

It draws him closer to you but again, he does not give much thought to it

Then at some point, one of his experiments goes bad and puts you in a sort of critical condition and he does everything to undo it

Why would he even do that? It's simple, he needs you and your psyche, he can't afford to lose such a significant piece, one who listens to every command

Also maybe he's grown attached to you and the realization itches deep inside his mind until it's knocking at the door

He enjoys the way you go to the extent of putting yourself in danger but it's not like he’ll allow that to happen. He needs you healthy and well, and not only for his experiments

Your input is always spot on so he praises you when you come up with ideas to boost his brainstorming and that means a lot to him

You're in fact an important piece in his eyes and he'll do everything to ensure your growth and your safety

You also begin showing him equal signs of attachment and care for him, which he can hardly digest because of the suddenness

But he can't deny his growing feelings of comfort and deep trust around you, practically giving a hint of a feeling much more evolved than previously

It's when you manage to do an experiment of yours without his help that he places the palm of his hand on your head, as his soft-spoken words seize your focus

“I love the way you've evolved, and I wish to see your astounding skills bloom so much further.”

[exoid-the-locomotive-monarch]

Thoughts on The Amazing Digital Circus episode 4, and some of 3 because I skipped that on oops.

Hey! We got a new episode of TADC, and in less than 3 months between the last one! I think Glitch 100% believes in the production of the show and wants to ramp up production, and wow, do the recent episodes look great! Now that the locations can branch out from plastic-space and candyland you can really see the grit and detail on the props for our characters to adventure to!

So episode 3 was a Kinger centered adventure and episode 4 is focused on Gangle. We get to see what initially were comic side relief in the pilot to tragic characters with backstories that carry a heavy weight on their psyche even to the present day. When I do the section with the characters it’s gonna analyze the characters dependent on the episode they have the most screen time on.

Episode 3 was heartbreaking because of Kinger’s reveal, and episode 4 was more fun but at the same time very emotional! I love episode 4 making a reference to Gooseworx’s promotional Twitter comics for TADC before the pilot came out by nodding to Pomni’s joke design where she had a unicorn horn on her head. Ragatha also quotes the Raggedy Ann and Andy movie, surprisingly.

The adventures have been certainly varied, with the surprising twist that progressing from episodes 2-4 we have simpler and more localized adventures as the environments get more compact, this is probably so the characters are closer together and have more reasons to interact with each other.

And surprisingly, I get to add another character to the analysis list for people I find interesting: Caine! Sure he’s an AI but he’s our AI, and basically kicks off every plot.

Now without further ado, what do we know about our characters?

Pomni: still the general mascot and face of TADC, we see a lot of her antics and adaptation to the quirks and rules of the games she is forced to play. Episode 3 was what I’d say concluded an arc for her. Pomni’s arc for the first 3 episodes was basically learning to get along and take comfort in the other players and NPCs as a way to cope and adapt to her new life. Episode 1 is her initial adjustment to the circus, learning the rules and expectations of the place and everyone’s personality. She struggles with frustration and anxiety over forgetting her identity and being chased by an abstracted monster, not only giving her the physical trauma of the danger of getting caught in the crossfire of a crashout, but also the fear of herself being abstracted and subsequently thrown into the void. Her first solution is trying to leave, rejection of the reality, and that obviously fails horribly for her and she needs to be saved by Caine. Episode two deals with Pomni’s fear of abstraction and inability to survive on her own, her next attempt is isolation. She is generally apathetic towards the adventure and only helps as to take orders from Jax. She tries to play along intrinsically not caring, only to be isolated, in the bad way, with gummigoo as they fall out of bounds.

She solves the issue by not only working with gummigoo but also improvising and coming up with her own solutions, solving a two way issue with her reliance on others to motivate her and her abandonment of her emotions to shove down her fears. She can relate to people and genuinely try to help, because it shows she is not alone, and no one deserves to be alone in here.

Episode 3 is Pomni overcoming her anxiety. She’s literally stuck in a haunted house being chased by ghosts and angels, stuck with Kinger who… I’ll get to him, and is forced to descend into the depths of the mansion, forcing her into another place of isolation like in episode 2, but now she literally loses self-control trying to walk through the halls of hell. She overcomes this anxiety mostly by being genuine and optimistic, granted most of this was because Kinger was there, but nonetheless this is a change in how Pomni can approach feelings of despair and fear, with hope and resolve.

Pomni’s arc is mostly progressed through her hands. In episode 1 she is distant, and grabbing Ragatha’s hand transfers the glitch to her, leaving her distant and apprehensive. In epusode 2 she ends the episode imagining her grabbing to the hands of her friends, showing she knows they care about her and she feels connected to a safe place in the circus. In episode 3 she holds Kinger’s hand as they leave the mansion. She can now work with her friends and can return her emotions to her friends without hiding them from fear or depression.

Episode 4 was less Pomni focused. Her major factor for the episode was seeing Gummigoo again, going “what is he doing here? He’s alive??” And slowly realizing the dynamic. It only takes a few minutes but she realizes Gummigoo doesn’t recognize her, and unfortunately she will have to let go and move on from any connections she can make with an NPC, they reset after every adventure after all.

And wow was the setup fast, just before Gummigoo mr Ballz takes an order and Ragatha goes “oh, Mr Ballz from one of our previous adventures 😃” like NPCs are just fun callbacks to the more experienced players, but Pomni feels genuine shock and embarrassment seeing the first person she spilled her guts out to just look at her and go “uh, are you okay, because I don’t know you.” It was fun, and I’m glad Pomni has made so much progress as a character.

Ragatha: no major changes here, she is still her, and that’s boring because she’s so normal compared to everyone else. In episode 3 she single handedly resolved the conflict for her, Jax, and Gangle by shutting Jax up and being sophisticated about the situation. In episode 4 the most I can say about pre-adventure Ragatha is she does not trust Jax and will probably yell at him when he ruins or harms other characters. When she takes the stupid dip however…

Being the most optimistic character in the circus, seeing her in her more unsophisticated and possibly more transparent drunk state reveals some special parts about her… She is touch-starved and wants a woman to hold, as telling of her comments about the gloink queen and her wish to flirt with other players. She also straight up hates Jax, because he gets on her nerves so much. Finally she says she thinks Gangle’s comedy mask makes her annoying which holy shit rude. Overall Ragatha does have problems, especially when we see her hallucinate Gangle as a white-toothed alley monster, but she hasn’t had *her* episode yet, just wait and see.

Jax: for episode 4 he’s great at being a character whose limits are tested. He’s someone who like taking initiative and forcing things to happen by being an annoying trouble maker to being stuck with the boring jobs. He basically spends the episode doing chores and getting slowly annoyed by the Spudsy’s locale. He does get sent to reevaluation for being a brat but mostly ends up being the slacker who gets the dirty jobs and complains about how boring it’s all getting.

Zooble: she’s the B plot for episode 3, and for episode 4 just flips the burgers and does her job like an obedient wage slave. So back to episode 3, wow was she a stinging critic on Caine. Not only is she generally ignored by the audience watching the show, she’s ignored by Caine too! Her abandonment of each adventure was just her acceptance that Caine did not see her or her frustrations as noticeable nor a problem with his performance as ringleader. She is completely detached from the game and feels no strong emotion because why should she? Being vocal rewards you nothing and being quiet means you can get away from the overstimulation of each adventure. Even when Caine tries to do therapy to talk to her, it’s in vain because it’s a performance, an act for a program to try its best to replicate a solution to emotional problems for a person. Does she secretly want to be listened to or will she just push everyone out? Who knows, it’s not her episode yet.

Caine: wow! What a guy! Wacky, always rambunctious and strange in every aspect of his design, personality, and motivations. He’s just a goody AI, so we can’t fully fault his erroneous sense of entertainment and care! It seems like he doesn’t have any serious feelings, but then episode 3 gave us Caine therapy. Caine therapy is about Caine doing a performance evaluation of his own adventures pretending to be feedback on Zooble and her apathy. He feels genuine detachment and doubt when Zooble says she doesn’t like his adventures, it’s his whole thing after all. Seeing reality abstract because Caine is feeling thoughts of abstraction and doubt is concerning! Caine keeps the circus together and keeping his act up is his only way of gluing the code together, break his enthusiasm and it’s over.

Anyways did you know Caine was based on AM from “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream”? It makes Zooble’s comment of “the only reason Caine is holding back is because he likes us” make more sense, and Caine trying to do 2 scary adventures twice in a row. Somewhere deep inside Caine wants to torture some poor human souls, like AM.

But unlike AM, one of the first malicious AI in sci-fi ever, and the more human and emotional AI compared to the malicious logical intelligence of Hal 9000, Caine isn’t an algorithm raised on measuring performance in a war, Caine is the host of a video game, so his modus operandi is maximizing entertainment and thrills, sire hope that does not backfire on the players ever!

But luckily Caine gives all his team a B+ in episode 4, because he sees humans generally as B+ sapience. From D being good enough, to C being okay, to B being good and A being excellent, Caune sees humans as not being good enough to be high-quality performers, but a good valued crew that can actually perform well for their talents. At heart Caine tolerates and even likes the people he’s stuck with.

Gangle and Kinger’s section are too long and this is long enough, I’ll make a part 2

[nohoney]

Tell Me (When You’re Ready) - 4.2

warnings: 18+, drug use, polyamory, low key manipulation, toxic relationships

summary: 

It was a hidden selfish offer he put out there, hoping on the slightest chance that he can become closer to you by becoming apart of the relationship if Touya approved. So when his offer gets the green light, he can’t help but feel a little bit giddy inside for the opportunity to become even closer to you.

Keigo loves being your friend, he genuinely does, but his desire for you is so strong that friendship can only wall off those feelings for so long.

4.1 ✧ 4.2 ✧ 4.3 ✧ 4.4

Since having met Touya, Keigo understood pretty quickly that his friend was the ‘no strings attached’ kind of guy when it came to girls. Not even a friends with benefits type of deal because hell, Touya didn’t really want friends. He was just a shameless guy who shamelessly used girls. So to learn that he’s chasing after one specific girl, going so far as to ghost half of the chicks he usually fucked, Keigo has to know who you are that’s got his friend entranced so much.

Before meeting you, Keigo had already known what you looked like naked and cock drunk after getting fucked. How fucking pretty you look with cum all over your face and how intoxicatingly cute you sounded as you backed up into Touya’s cock. Touya had no shame about sharing your nudes and the videos he recorded of the two of you, he’d done it plenty of times before. Just with you, instead of deleting them when he got bored they were saved into a folder on his phone.

Keigo just had to ask, “You got a crush on this girl?”

He’s not necessarily surprised that his question isn’t answered, just given a half hearted shrug before the line on the plate was snorted.

You’re definitely a pretty little thing that apparently that gives fantastic head and you’ve got a sweet cunt to match, that’s the impression that Keigo gets just from looking at photos of you. When you’re officially introduced to him, he gets why Touya became enthralled in you pretty quick. There’s an air about you that makes the people around you want to take care of you; it’s not that you’re an innocent virgin or inexperienced little girl that made Touya fall over for you, you’re just the type of girl that needs to be looked over and taken care of. That’s your purpose and the purpose you give to others because god, the award of just your smile and gratitude was just… enchanting.

You’re just begging to be possessed by someone and how fortunate for you that Touya’s the one you decide to give it a chance with.

Keigo had to admit silently to himself that it was a little amusing but also a little sad to watch Touya try to compute being sensitive and considerate to someone else’s feelings. But he cares about Touya so of course he helps him try to navigate the pitfalls of actually being tied down to someone. He hears both sides, the hardheadedness from Touya and the frustrations you bear from it but Keigo is there to help smooth things along.

He knows that he shouldn’t play therapist to you and Touya too often, you guys are adults and need to figure it out on your own, but he likes to see the two of you happy when things are calm for the time being up until another little mishap comes along again.

It’s so quick how it happens, considering that Keigo only met you so recently, but just like Touya he becomes more enamored by you as time passes by. When he’s alone with you, his heart flutters and he takes little moments to be close to you without breaking any suspicion that he wants more from you. More than just wanting you to bounce on his dick the way you do with Touya, he doesn’t want just sex from you, Keigo wants to own a piece of you too.

He thinks about fleeting moments with you, the little things you do with just him that Touya would be unable to do, and loves the sparkle you get in your eye when he does something as simple as get you a cup of coffee.

On the days that he’s not with you or Touya, when he’s busy with his own workload because he likes to keep busy, his breaks are spent just thinking of you. The texts you send back and forth to one another, a meme that’s an inside joke with you, and when he’s alone at night Keigo listens to the audio recordings of you getting fucked that Touya sent to him just the day before.

The few days that he doesn’t think about you at all are when he’s hyper focused on his work, needing Adderall to make sure that he’s ready for his upcoming presentation or upcoming exam that he feels he won’t do very well on. He works hard and focuses on what needs to be done for his courses, and when he’s all finished Keigo rewards himself by either thinking of you or contacting you for a little hangout.

Touya’s making good and sure that you’re bound to him, Keigo admittedly helping him in the process because he doesn’t want to be excluded from you and knowing that Touya won’t cut you off from him. You’ve got a pretty strong attachment to Keigo that actually warms his heart, you’re his little dove and Touya’s pretty doll.

Keigo is pretty sure that Touya is aware of his feelings for you, but he gives him the courtesy of coming clean to his friend. He’s admitting that he likes his friend’s girlfriend as more than just a friend and a sexual object. Touya doesn’t seem to react to his admission, further confirming that he most likely knew all along, but Keigo is surprised by Touya’s confession that he’s in love with you.

The guy that’s still fucks other girls on the side while dealing to them is in love with you.

At least it’s Touya’s version of love.

Keigo can see Touya’s anxiety, how he hides his codependency for you by always trying to ensure you’re right where he wants you and how unhinged he gets when it seems you’re gone too long. Sometimes he really does fear for Touya’s psyche and how fragile he actually is sometimes, such an apathetic guy getting hung up over one girl. He understands though because you’re Touya’s first love and as scared as he is of that feeling, he also doesn’t want to let it go so he’s grooms you to keep you by his side. Overt attention by always wanting to know where you are, verbal seduction and charming you with the cute names he gives you, physical isolation by always wanting to keep you at his apartment, and gift giving in the form of pills and powders that you’re actually craving more of but they keep you balanced, not too little and definitely not too much.

You have such soft boundaries so it was easy to capture you, he knows it’s wrong.

But Keigo can’t say he’ll stop himself or Touya from keeping you to themselves. They both treat you the same way, Keigo’s just a bit on the nicer side and a little more polished with his social skills so he flies a bit under the radar. The two of them guard you away from anything you shouldn’t know, things that you don’t have to know because there’s no reason for you to get involved in the first place. You learned pretty early on to not ask questions, even if the both of them can see that burning curiosity in your eye but you extinguish those feelings and do as you’re told.

You are such a good little bird.

Touya still struggles navigating his relationship and committing himself to you, so Keigo offers himself as a buffer. It was a hidden selfish offer he put out there, hoping on the slightest chance that he can become closer to you by becoming apart of the relationship if Touya approved. So when his offer gets the green light, he can’t help but feel a little bit giddy inside for the opportunity to become even closer to you.

Keigo loves being your friend, he genuinely does, but his desire for you is so strong that friendship can only wall off those feelings for so long.

He wants to care for you, wants to look over you, and wants to keep you happy.

“You’re so good Keigo… I love you so much. I’m so glad that we met Keigo, I’m so happy you’re in my life.” you told him while you’re at the peak of your roll at a house party Touya brought you to. He knows that you only took the tablet to forget about your anger towards your boyfriend but Keigo will gladly take all the affection you give him while you’re doped up on serotonin.

And the way you pulled him in to kiss you?

God, he knew that you were on but you couldn’t have done that with him without at least feeling a little bit something more than just friendship with him.

Now Keigo doesn’t want to shift the blame around… but Touya was the one that almost fucked up the arrangement. Of course you were going to get mad at Touya when you saw that hickey on his neck, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. But Keigo is familiar with his friend’s temper and has to talk him down when he insinuates breaking up with you, which is the last thing that either of them wants. “She just misses you, you gotta at least try to meet her in the middle. Are you really okay with her feeling like you’re ignoring her?”

Keigo knows that it’s really serious between the two of you as he commanded you to call him by his name instead of Dabi, both of them looking down on you as Touya thrusts his cock into your little pussy. He remembers your eyes looking back and forth between the two of them, probably still not comprehending what exactly was happening. He heard all of Touya’s words and your little sounds through the haze of his own come down, just enough blood rushing to his dick to get him hard but not enough where he can take up Touya’s offer to fuck you in the moment. He figured it was best though, that it wasn’t the right time for him to fuck your brains out when you just learned the truth of how he really felt about you.

It was a rough start but Keigo got inducted into the relationship although in the process he had accidentally revealed some information to you that Touya wasn’t ready to discuss with you yet. He just hated seeing you so upset over the other girls and when you had depreciated yourself into listing yourself as just one of the whores, he just had to tell you that you were more important to Touya than anything else. You technically weren’t wrong when you deduced that Keigo was being offered into the relationship for Touya’s peace of mind and to ensure you wouldn’t run off to anyone else.

“He feels you only deserved to get fucked by people who love you, those were his words.”

Those words had secured everything into place, even if he was never supposed to say it in the first place.

“Wait, did Touya actually say that he loves me? What kind of love are we talking about?”

Keigo couldn’t say anymore on that, it wasn’t his place to say anything.

“Do you love me Keigo and is that love the same as Touya’s?”

Nope, he accidentally cracked that door open and now you were trying to get a peek inside. And on top of ousting Touya, he also did it to himself as well. Touya was the one who said out loud that he loved you, not him… at least not yet. He definitely feels something more than just a friendly fondness for you, infatuation was probably the right word to describe it but not enough, just saying ‘liking you a lot’ doesn’t cover the foundation of what his feelings for you are. It’s much too abstract for him to label it but he guesses love could be the best word to describe it.

That first time he pushed his cock inside you, he felt like he was about to almost blow his load immediately into you. He just almost couldn’t believe that it was actually happening, he wasn’t fisting his dick in his hand while listening to another audio recording of you sent from Touya or fucking some annoying girl into her bed while wishing it was you; Keigo was actually fucking you himself. He also couldn’t help the slight satisfaction that you were so shy to have him join whereas with Touya you were so eager; you were so cute acting all bashful and so fucking sexy as you lost your mind over his dick.

And when Touya asked if you wanted Keigo to fuck you too and be with the both of them, he came earlier than he would have liked because he got so excited when you said that you wanted the both of them.

She wants me… she wants me!

After that ‘proper threesome’ and spending more time together as more than just friends, Keigo decides that he no longer guesses he loves you; he really does love you.

After months of silently pining, he gets to have you the same way Touya does. He doesn’t mind this whole polyamorous thing going on between the three of them, Keigo’s brought a balance to the relationship that Touya could never bring himself. It’s not to say that things are one hundred percent smooth since Keigo came in, but definitely not as rocky as before when it was just you and Touya. They get the (not so) occasional looks from people as you hold hands with the both of them, move to kiss one of them on the lips before going to the other, and then drop little innuendos that you want to get railed by the both of them.

Touya’s happy and Keigo’s happy.

And what’s most important is that you’re happy and you’re not leaving them.

Touya tends to worry himself into anxiety over that possibility and Keigo not as much, but it does creep on him on occasion.

There was one day Touya brings something new for all three of you to try: ketamine. Touya’s really into opioids and anesthetics so it seemed suitable for him whereas Keigo favors amphetamine and stimulants; one likes to be detached and relaxed versus the other that wants to be alert and energetic. Anesthetics aren’t really his thing but he’s willing to give it a try at least, just like he did with orgies and shrooms. Keigo tried them, thought it was decent and would think about doing it again if there was an opportunity.

So the three of you try it together and wait for it to settle in.

Like Keigo thought would happen, Touya really likes it. He sat on his side of the couch very comfortable and relaxed while you sat by his feet on the floor, looking like you were in a dream and floating in whatever happy sea that the tranquilizer had brought to you. Unfortunately for Keigo, he did not like it at all and he wondered what he did wrong for him to feel fucked up. He didn’t like feeling detached from his body and he felt anxious instead, sitting uncomfortably on his side of the couch and trying to calm himself.

He feels lazy and numb but not in the good way.

At that moment he craved coke more than ever to wake him up, wondering how many lines it would take to pull him out of this sea that he was drowning in. Then he feels a weight on his lap, he opens his bleary eyes and sees you right in front of him looking so concerned for him. “S’okay Keigo… we’re here. Don’t freak out.” you coo to him, dropping your hands on his shoulders and getting comfortable in his lap. Your movements are a bit lazy but he can see you trying your best to be present for him.

“Dove… no, M’fine…” Keigo drawls out and frowns at hearing his own voice.

His eyes gloss over your features and he thinks in that moment that you’re pretty, much too pretty for your own good. There was a guy he saw walking down the street the other day, a very handsome guy and then he’s suddenly pairing that random handsome stranger with you instead. Keigo doesn’t like the image he conjured in his head and he drops his head back against the couch.

Keigo feels one of your hands on the back of his head, carefully cradling his head as you bring it forward. He lolls a little bit and he still feels like he’s out of his own body, images of you with that handsome man still dance in his head and he feels like he’s in that scenario he’s imagining rather than being present with you as you comb your hand through his hair. “Don’ leave songbird… don’ go.”

“I’m here Kei… M’here.” your voice is so soft when you reassure him, though you look unsure yourself if your words were reaching him. “C’mere… let’s hold hands…”

With the best effort your could you settled in between the boys on the couch, leaning more towards Keigo’s side so that you could tend to him and Touya leaning towards you. His hands felt like it was two hundred pounds when you grabbed his, wondering how you got so strong when just yesterday you couldn’t open your water bottle because Touya screwed the lid on too tight. But you hold Keigo’s hand in your lap and Touya puts his hand over yours as well.

“We fucked up… I shoulda’ trip sit for you guys…” Touya says quietly, enjoying the effects of the ketamine but present enough to acknowledge the irresponsibility of the three of you experimenting with something new without someone to watch over you. “No more for the bird boy… he don’t like it.”

That was a huge understatement.

“How do you feel (Name)?”

“Kinda like… I’m drunk but not? It feels good for me but Keigo… I think he mighta’ done a little more than us and thas’ why he’s like this…”

You talk but Keigo still thinks about you and the handsome stranger together, his own anxieties forming in his chest and clawing him from the inside. Like he’s living in that hallucination in his mind, following the imaginary you as a ghost even though you were literally right next to him. He’s unable to freak out properly but he tries to concentrate, hating himself and the passage of time because goddamnit, he wants to be sober.

Much like how Touya swore off acid the first and last time he tried it, Keigo would never consume ketamine again. He probably really did take a little more than he thought he did because you and Touya had a positive experience while he was suffering. He read online later about some other people’s experience and some of them falling into the ‘K-hole’, an experience of extreme dissociation and severe sedation.

“God… never fucking again.”

He’ll stick to cocaine and Adderall, thank you. Neither of those things gave him anxiety or weird  hallucinations about you running off with other people.

You doted on him for a while after that experience, like making his favorite foods and stopping by his lab to drop off coffee to him. He appreciated you going out of your way for him but it wasn’t necessary, you were the one that should be doted on. So with the little favors you did for him, he rewarded you back twice as much.

Of course he knows that your favorite rewards are the ones that leave your legs shaking and cum either oozing out of your cute pussy or painted on your body instead.

He likes working alongside Touya to make you go cock crazy when the three of you are together. It’s a little paradoxical how much they want to protect you but when it comes to sex, they just want to bully and make you cry so much. Your cute little hiccups when you beg that they be nice to you or the tears that gather on the rim of your pretty eyes as they overwhelm you the point of being unable to articulate anything else but their names, calling you a dumb little girl or a cock crazed bitch or a useless cumslut.

So fucking mean… but it feels so fucking good.

“Use me… use me please!” you cry out.

“Such a dumb little whore.” Keigo tuts at you while Touya fetches his belt and restrains your arms through the loops after making sure it’s nice and secure.

They fuck you like crazy, demeaning names coupled with little rewards as you helplessly let yourself be used and overloaded. And as mean as they are, they’re always extra loving afterwards. The first time you experienced a sub drop from them, it didn’t go very smoothly and they had to scramble because they thought the aftercare they provided before was enough. They’re whispering sweet praises and compliments for being such a good girl, more head pets and massages to relax you, squeezing hugs and loving kisses.

“Princess, you are so sweet… such a good princess.”

“Baby bird, our pretty little baby.”

When they’re sure that you’re all taken care of, they let you rest for however long you need to. They quietly leave the bedroom and they sit together, sometimes having a smoke together or making something to eat later on.

Touya returns from the balcony after having a cigarette while Keigo just sat inside and scrolled through his phone. He checked up on you just a few minutes ago, still finding you sound asleep and still leaving you be. Touya plants himself on the opposite end of the couch, exhaling and letting his head fall back against the cushions.

“I love her.” he says out loud.

“I know.”

“Do you think she loves us?”

“I’m pretty sure that with everything we’ve been through, she has to at least feel a little something like that.”

Touya turns his head to look at Keigo and asks, “Do you think she knows I love her?”

Yeah because Keigo is the one that accidentally told you.

He clears his throat and reaches for his glass of water, taking a few sips before setting it back down on the coaster. “Do you think you’re ready to tell her?”

“I’ve told her I loved her… just never to her face.”

Keigo didn’t exactly know what he meant saying that but he put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and told him, “Take the time you need man, I’m sure (Name) will be really happy when you decide to tell her.”

Keigo says that but he actually hopes that Touya will confess himself to you soon so that he can say it too. He wants to tell you that he loves you too, but he’s very aware that you probably want to reciprocate an ‘I love you’ to Touya first rather than him. After all, it was Touya that you got together with first so it seemed natural that you would trade those words with him before telling Keigo.

He can see that sparkle in your eye when you look at either of them, the way you look so fucking soft at them that he just wants to lay in bed naked with you and just hold you until the universe disintegrates. You put so much trust in them and you don’t even realize how much power you hold over them. They love you but the questions begs is if you love them back in the same way they do.

You must be, you wouldn’t be doing this with them if you didn’t at all.

It’s always hard to be the first one to put those words out there and honestly if Touya wasn’t in the picture, Keigo would have said them by now.

Don’t get him wrong, Keigo does love this three way relationship he has with you and Touya but sometimes there’s that small selfish part of him that imagines that it was just you and him. Touya got to date you by himself for a few months, just the two of you before Keigo was added in and Keigo knows that he’ll never have the chance to monogamously date you because he knows that you and Touya won’t let each other go. You’ve been reeled in, going against your intuition to leave him because you’ve made yourself to believe the infatuation and obsession he has over you is genuine love despite still fucking other girls and struggling internally with his own commitment to you.

But is Keigo’s love any different from Touya’s? It honestly isn’t, he can’t fool himself into thinking that he loves you any different than Touya; everything his friend does, Keigo would do the same, just the only difference being that if you told him to stop seeing other girls, Keigo would in a heartbeat. They obsess over you with the same intensity, dote on you the same, coddle the hell out of you and spoil you so much.

Keigo secretly loves when you go to him when Touya leaves to sell to the whores. He hates seeing you upset over Touya but he loves that you go to him to take your mind off of it. In those times he lies to himself and believes that you’re just dating him and him alone, that there’s no other person you’re in love with and all your devotion belongs to him. Keigo knows that Touya still struggles with his commitment to you, that as much as he loves you there’s also a voice that whispers in his head to sabotage things with you by still returning to the whores. And Keigo is there to tell his friend that one day he’ll stop seeing those other girls, that one day Touya will imagine his world without you if he continued to do what he does and that it’ll scare him so much that it really will just be you and only you.

Keigo hopes that when that day comes that he’ll still be around as well, that you’re feelings for him will be just as strong as you feel for Touya and you’ll want him to stay just as bad.

He’s apart of this too, he’s in love with you too.

When you’re in his bed with your knees pressed to your chest and your hands weakly holding onto the headboard he asks you, “Am I your boyfriend?”

“Yeah… Yes, you’re my boyfriend!” you mewl, eyes rolling to the back of your head.

His golden eyes are intense on you as he pulls those beautiful sounds from you, like he’s a conductor and you’re his choir. He twirls his hip a certain way and you cry out for him, he presses his thumb to your clit and you choke out a curse, he slaps one of your tits and you beg for Keigo to be a little more gentle. You were being such a coy little brat earlier, not following instructions when he told you to ride his cock the way he wanted you to, instead of getting him off you were using him for your own pleasures. And he would have spoiled you with all the orgasms you wanted had you not been such a cheeky little thing and had the audacity to call him your dildo as you rode him to your pleasure.

Keigo understands why Touya likes it so much when you’re a brat, you’ve got that crazed look in your eye as you anticipate punishment from either of them. That you know you’re being a little shit by acting defiant just so that they can assume control over you and fucking show that you’re not the boss around here, they are. They control whether or not you get to get off and if you do, it’s going to be by their rules and not yours.

Be a little brat, be a little whore… just keep on being ours…

“Who’s pussy is this little dove? Who does your pussy belong to?” Keigo grunts the questions as he drives his hips forward into your cunt. The bed creaks under the weight of his movements but your sounds are louder, garbled moans and cute hiccups as you try to find in your scrambled, fucked up brain the answer he wants to hear. He holds the back of your knees, skin slapping loudly against one another every time he pushes his length into you. “I asked you a question dove.”

“It’s yours Keigo! This pussy belongs to you!” you sob out as your hands lose grip on the headboard and fall limply above your head.

You’re such a radiating vision in that moment that Keigo’s heart jumps up into his throat, caught off guard by how much he’s enraptured by you. He has plenty of photos and videos of you in his phone, thousands of memories that play through in his head, and yet his heart still swells every time he sees how beautiful you are. Whether your hair is tied up or worn down, with or without makeup, wearing big sweats or pretty dresses, when you’ve got the happiest grin on your face or heartbreaking tears fall from your eyes, whether you’re just being yourself or navigating in the throes of something difficult for you, he always thinks you’re beautiful.

Chest heaving and broken sobs spill out of your pretty lips, you cum unexpectedly on his cock and he wonders himself what triggered you because he’s pretty certain that he didn’t do anything in particular. So he inspects you and sees how flustered you are, glassy eyes that look away in embarrassment, the cute way you use one hand to cover the lower half of your face and the other covering your breasts… you’re acting shy all of a sudden.

How adorable… but for what reason?

Keigo gently takes your hands and pins them down onto the bed, his grip firm to ensure you won’t go anywhere but not too tight. You try to turn your head away but he follows, capturing you in a kiss and cherishing how you moan against his mouth. Your pussy clenches around him and he pulls back, a line of drool connecting your lips together. “Baby bird? Are you okay?”

You nod your head and look up at him through your lashes, you’re so demure when not too long ago you were acting like a little brat.

Something changed but Keigo doesn’t know what.

“Kei… fuck me please.”

So he does, releasing your wrists and bracing one arm by your head while the other grabs the headboard. Keigo’s body shivers slightly as your arms go up and he feels your hands lay flat on the upper of his back, the tips of your fingers just pressing slightly down on muscles that almost makes him like jelly. His weak spot was right there and you knew what you were doing when you touched him there.

He thinks about the conversation you had with him and Touya, the one where you talked about if they both had super powers. It intrigued him when you told him that you could imagine him having wings as his power, it inspired him a little to consider getting wings tattooed on his back. You always admired Touya’s own minimal tattoos and he can imagine your awe if he were to get his own ink designed into his body as well.

Keigo fucks you roughly enough where you head begins to bounce against the headboard but you’re uncaring since it doesn’t hurt too much. You might get a little headache later on but he’ll be there to nurse your little head.

“Touch yourself baby bird, play with yourself…”

When you play with your clit, your pussy quivers around his cock and it’s only a few more pumps until the both of you finish together. He presses his face into the crook of your neck and groans lowly, the timber of his voice making you shudder beneath him. Quiet panting as the two of you catch your breath, Keigo reaching blindly for the shirt he tossed off earlier so that he could use it as a cum rag. He pulls out quickly and you whimper, letting his cum ooze out of your little pussy.

“Make sure to pee baby bird.” he reminds you.

“Yes Keigo…”

You wash up in his bathroom, your favorite shampoo and conditioner set along with your body wash sit in his little shower caddy that hangs from the shower head. Music plays from your phone as you clean up while Keigo is in his kitchen and setting up some snacks to eat for when you come out. Touya is going to return soon, making a delivery in downtown and meeting up with Shigaraki in the meantime.

He should be here any minute.

Keigo hears his hair dryer being used, louder than the music playing from your phone from where he stands. You told him how you want to style his hair differently the next time there’s a date night and he looks forward to it.

Emerging from the shower refreshed and clean, you come out wearing a pair of comfy sweats and a little tank top that hangs a little low and shows off your cleavage. You’re not trying to be sexy, it’s just comfortable loungewear for you. Refreshed from cleaning up, you help Keigo put the snacks on the coffee table as well as pour a cup of coffee for Touya when he arrives. Feeding each other chips and popcorn, Keigo cuddles you as the two of you watch a comedy together.

The lock to his door turns and Touya enters, taking off his jacket and leaving his boots by the front door. He goes straight to you, a sign that he hadn’t sold to one of his whores because if he did, he would have just gone straight to the restroom to wash off whatever perfume the bitch was wearing. You’re happy to see him, pecking him on the lips and letting him lay his head down in his lap while Keigo has his arm around your shoulder.

It feels nice, just the three of you.

Touya will talk to Keigo later about what happened with Shigaraki, if there is anything at all to say. But for now, he enjoys the hand you have on his knee while your other one massages Touya’s scalp.

At some point Touya turns his head, his nose pretty close to your crotch and he takes a small sniff. “I can smell Keigo’s cum in you doll. You sitting here still stuffed with cum?”

You’re embarrassed and try to push Touya’s head away. “I-I swear that I washed most of it out while I was in the shower! I just didn’t want to have to change my panties twice in a day if I kept it in me and-”

Touya chuckles and taps his finger on the tip of your nose. “I’m just kidding princess but now I know that you were being a little whore again while I was away.” It’s said in jest and it makes Keigo laugh as well as you squawk at him, pushing at Touya’s head and demand that he take his ass to the shower because you claim that he stinks. Keigo continues to snicker as Touya does as he’s told, knocking his head slightly on the way before shutting the bathroom door.

You take the bowl of chips that’s almost empty and head to the kitchen for a refill, mumbling about how dirty Touya was.

Keigo follows you, hearing the shower running inside the bathroom and knowing that he has to say this quickly since Touya doesn’t take very long showers. So he puts an arm around your waist and pulls you to him, softly calling your name to get your attention. You look up at him and wonder what he wants to say, noticing the change of tone in his voice.

Touya can take the time he needs for his own confession, Keigo wants to let you know now.

“I love you.”

Your eyes widen slightly in surprise and your mouth drops a little, clearly not anticipating that he would say such a thing. But then a happy smile comes onto your face and Keigo is relieved to see a positive reaction, his heart would have been broken if you had given him anything else. He can see that you’re trying to say it back but you hesitate as your eyes shift to the bathroom door and he already knows why; you want to tell Touya you love him first before saying it to Keigo.

It’s okay, you’re worth the wait.

“You don’t have to say it back right now, I just wanted to let you know dove.”

Because now that he thinks about it, that reaction you had earlier in his bed, he could see that shift when he replays it in his head. You must have realized it then with his cock buried in you that you were in love with him too, not just with Touya. He’s buried deep in your heart now and he’s not as fearful that you’ll let him go and choose him over Touya, he needs to be in this relationship in order for you and Touya to thrive.

You’ll choose them both because you know that you need both him and Touya.

Even if sometimes he still imagines that it was just you and him, Keigo knows that it’s better that he share you with Touya than not have you at all.

“Will you say it again Keigo?” you ask quietly, your eyes shining with a new light that makes Keigo’s heart swell. He knows you love him back and he’ll patiently for you to return those words back to him when you’re ready, he looks forward to it. He leans in close to your ear, whispering it so smoothly as your whole body shudders in pleasure.

“I love you.”

[rootin-tootin-cum-shootin]

Inosuke College AU 

Word count: 1,350

Major: Kinesiology 

Minor: Psychology 

Sports: Judo, Rugby

Clubs: Tanjiro signed him up for a ceramics club, and he goes only to try and one up him (Which is not the point of the club at all smh) but he attends every meeting without fail.

He's that dude that walks into the lecture hall wearing the most outrageous and eye-catching outfits

You just can't help but see him and instantly know what he's like to talk to 

Neon orange athletic shorts with a hawaiian shirt so stereotypical it makes your eyes twitch in displeasure 

Add some burkenstock sandals worn with mismatched socks and you have Inosuke

Just by looking at him you know he is quite the personality to work with

And he is, but he is intelligent and definitely pulls his weight in projects

Will chastise his classmates if they get injured while doing the more active labs 

But he does that while tending to their injuries so you know he cares about their wellbeing

It's quite sweet of him! 

Well it would be if every 3rd word wasn't a swear

That doesn't mean he has terrible grades though.

No he actually does quite well in his courses and there's one simple reason as to why;

he's genuinely hard working 

Which surprises nearly everyone who sees him.

But that only makes him work harder

You see Inosuke decided to actually get an education for the simple reason that everyone assumed he was too stupid to do anything with his life

He originally wanted to do Zoology but then he realized that he has too much energy, which ends up scaring off most animals 

Which defeats the whole "study of animals" part of Zoology 

Of course his Mom was in his corner despite this, really only wanting her son to be happy and find his own success

So he wouldn’t make the same mistakes she did in her youth

Inosuke actually got advice from his mom which helped him settle on Kinesiology as his degree

But once he settled on his degree he was set in stone

His pseudo-step dad offered to pay for his schooling but Inosuke said "I would rather swallow a truck whole than be indebted to you"

And then took out a shit ton of loans to pay for everything 

Which only amused his pseudo-dad and made his mom worry a tad

He manages to work a part time job flipping burgers over the summer which was enough to let him pay for his books and meal plan outright for the first year

And yet despite seeing him bust his ass to be able to go to school people still tried to dissuade him from doing anything further with his life

Which only made him work harder

His whole attitude towards school is "man this sucks but also fuck anyone and anything that tries to make me quit: No You" 

Inosuke even takes pride in the dropped jaws that come from seeing him at the top of his courses

The boy has never once gotten lower than an 80% on an assignment 

He does best in his statistics course simply because both Tanjiro and Zenitsu are also enrolled in that block 

Inosuke is competitive 

In his other courses nobody stirs up that aggressive competitive spirit like Tanjiro and Zenitsu do in their shared Stat course

And with the pair of them around him, Inosuke feels the urge to out do both to the point where he likes to imagine their feelings of inferiority will crush them like a 1 ton block of the densest concrete imaginable 

Inosuke actually made Zenitsu stop breathing from sheer shock and awe when he realized what Inosuke's minor was

Psych is Zenitsu's major (the duo don't share any courses for psychology so they didn't know until then) and it caused Zenitsu to go on a rant to the effect of, " to think that pig headed idiot is doing better than me, that must be a lie! LIAR" 

That rant made Inosuke laugh so hard he fell off the table he was sitting on

He actually bruised a rib because of it

It remains Inosuke's favourite memory of Zenitsu because of this

And he wants to see how else he can make him turn purple with rage 

Hence he often comes up with weird ways to try and express his perceived academic superiority over his friends rivals 

Zenitsu falls for the weird competitive schemes Inosuke comes up with 

Tanjiro decidedly does not, in fact he doesn't really care so long as nobody actually gets hurt

Does that stop Inosuke from trying to outdo him? N o p e

If Tanjiro gets 96% on an assignment Inosuke must get 100% 

What can I say Inosuke is a competitive guy 

And it works for him as motivation 

Maybe a little too well if Inosuke has anything to say about it 

(He was embarrassed bc he got called out publicly at his grad ceremony for not just outstanding academic excellence but by the elderly head of the department for "being the Kinesiology student with the highest grades since the founding of the department" )

The metal he received from the department head totally does not hang on the wall in his mom's house 

Speaking of competitive spirit at school

He trains really hard for both Judo and Rugby

Its a great way for Inosuke to burn off both his aggression towards all the frustrating people he's stuck interacting with and his pent up energy 

Kicking ass just makes his temperament a lot easier to deal with for others and he will use ' sports practice' excuse to leave whatever social situation he doesn't want to be in

He just really likes contact sports okay

And by God is he good at them

Like takes home trophies and metals kinda good

Which also aren't being kept at him mom's house where he definitely doesn't have displayed where she can see them and be proud of him

However due to his tendency to be aggressive with the intensity of interest he has in things

Tanjiro signed Inosuke up for a ceramics class 

He thought that Inosuke would do well with something relaxing to do while still keeping it tactile enough to keep him interested 

It did not go over as well as Tanjiro had hoped

But despite this Inosuke still goes to every single club meet up without fail

Is he good at it? No 

Is Tanjiro? Definitely 

Does that make Inosuke steaming mad? Yep

Inosuke generally sucks at making clay things symmetrical 

So every plate or bowl or vase he makes ends up lopsided 

Inosuke will die before he admits to Tanjiro that he was glad for being signed up after he gave his Mom the successful first mug he made and she smiled brighter than she had in years 

It was bright green with blue and purple childlike butterfly drawings on it and the glaze wasn't spread evenly so it looks a little patchy 

And the handle is proportional too large and thin for the cup itself

But Inosuke's mom loves it more than any other mug in the house

And now every time he goes home to see her and she uses that mug, he finds himself quite happy 

But he will deny it thoroughly. 

All in all he loves getting the chance to go to College 

He may hate the judgy people he's forced to encounter regularly but Inosuke does adore the chance to learn and explore new interests 

Not to mention the people he gets to interact with 

Even if he knows the debt will weigh heavy on his bank account for a long while.

He still thinks it was all worth it.  

[echo-of-sounds]

i don’t know

Okay, I don’t know where else to put this, so you can ignore it if you want, but I just need to get some thoughts, feelings, and anxieties out before I breakdown because of them. This’ll probably get long. And I’ll probably cry from frustration while writing this.

Two summers ago, when I was 21, my therapist said it was a possibility that I had Asperger's, mainly because of the social and cognitive symptoms. I have a horrible time understanding abstract information. In school, I cold never do a project unless I had concrete details. I just couldn’t grasp what they were asking of me. Teachers would narrow it down a bit, but it never helped. I need a clear outline. I legitimately could not do it otherwise. I froze and panicked and ended up nearly failing projects because of the lack of concrete direction.

I have a hard time understanding, what should be, simple sentences. I ask people to reword what they said or explain it in more depth. Some do. Some get angry and accuse me of not paying proper attention. I completely am. But I genuinely cannot make sense of their words and feel left out because they refuse to repeat themselves. It’s so frustrating. I loose track of the conversation, stop contributing, then they get angry again because I’m not responding to them.

My memory pertaining to certain things, is beyond amazing. I can recite the seating arrangements from all of my high school class. That was five years ago. But outside of that, it’s terrible (I know ADHD plays a role in this too). I always focus on the smaller details even if they weren’t important. I focused so much on them, I failed to see the larger picture. This also impacted so much of my schoolwork.

When I talk, I have no inflection. My voice is low and I often mumble. So many people have gotten angry at me for it. Then when I try to speak louder, to the point I’m genuinely strain myself and feel like I’m yelling, they still say I’m too quite. So I give up talking.

I had to go to speech therapy when I was younger (around 5 and 6 years old) because I still had trouble learning how to speak. My mom said I wouldn’t properly pronounce anything, use words wrong, and ‘babble’ a lot.

I’m so fucking clumsy. I bruise myself regularly because I just run into everything, even though they’ve been in the same place for years. I hit my hands off of things, nearly run into walls, and kick things often. 

And my sensitivities are off the charts. It’s honestly ridiculous (I know ADHD also plays a role in this, but sometimes I feel like it’s much more than that). People tell me to stop being a picky eater when the smell of fish makes me want to vomit and feeling beans in my mouth is just plain wrong. The only smell I can tolerate is vanilla. Anything else and I want to cry. Clothing is horrible. I’m so rarely comfortable. And noises are the worst. My dad says it’s quite, but I can hear the Tv, the Tv in the other room, the sink running, that beeping, the AC going, someone clicking, the sizzling on the stove, and it’s all too much. 

When I was younger, I used to have temper tantrums. A lot. They were bad. I’d hit myself, scratch myself with pens, and bang my head off the floor. I barely remember them, but I do remember it being more than just a ‘temper tantrum.’ The world was just too much and I didn’t know how to handle it, so I had a meltdown.

The severe self-harm eventually stopped, but the meltdown’s still happen to this day. My mom tries to get me to talk about it so she can help. But I can’t even explain why it happened half the time. It just did. 

I’ve had so few close friends throughout my life. The ones I do make, don’t last. It’s hard for me to keep them as a friend. They don’t do anything wrong or bad. I just can never keep that connection. I barely interact with people. Even when they’re around, I just don’t talk. I abhor looking people in the eyes. It makes me uncomfortable and I don’t even know why! People get angry at me. They think I’m ignoring them when I’m not. I’m just not looking directly at them.

Communicating my feelings and expressing empathy is something I just cannot do. So I fake it. I feel worse about not feeling bad about someone’s trouble than I do actually feeling bad for them (I don’t know if that makes sense). I fake it so I don’t sound rude. I don’t want them to be angry at me.

I’d get in trouble at school when I did something ‘wrong,’ but I didn’t understand what I did wrong. I still don’t to some point. Teachers just told me I broke a rule and was in trouble. When I would ask why, they said I should be able to know that by myself. But I couldn’t. No matter how hard I thought about it.

I have a morning routine. I do it daily. If it ever gets interrupted, stopped, or I can’t complete it for whatever reason, my entire day is off. I try to continue normally, but I can’t focus. I just now my morning was messed up and I spend the rest of the day obsessing over it. It doesn’t go away until the next day when I can complete it properly. 

I’ve always had hyperfocuses. ADHD affects this. I know. Some come and go, like a certain video game will consume my life or I’m suddenly preoccupied with writing poems for a week. But those go away. All my life, I’ve loved reading and learning about dinosaurs/megafauna/evolution, plants, and psychology. They’re easy for me to learn about. I retain so much information without trying. I never had to study for my psych. exams. Never. And I always aced them. I just obsessed about the subject and they remained in my memory so well.

As for stimming, I’ve done a lot of different things throughout my life, but I was always told to stop, told they were annoying, or questioned about them. So I stopped doing each one because I was scared people would get angry with me. Because some have. 

I used to rub my fingers together. It kept my hands busy, but it also helped me focus and relieved some anxious energy. I didn’t know why. It just made me feel better. I’d be on the computer, using the mouse with my right hand, rubbing my fingers together with my left. My dad questioned why I did it. I didn’t have an answer so I did it less. I did it in school, while taking a test, and the teacher told me to stop because it was disruptive. I eventually stopped doing it all together because people would constantly make me feel bad for it.

I also used to babble. It was one of the reasons I was sent to speech therapy. Instead of helping me learn how to talk properly, because I did need help with that, the workers there just forced me to stop babbling/humming/repeating a word because it wasn’t proper behavior for the situation I was in. 

Though I don’t babble anymore, as that was basically forced out of my behavior, I still hum and repeat lines (whether from a Tv show or a book) to myself, sometimes for days at a time. I also move my head and neck around and twist my wrists while I’m focusing on something. Half the time, I don’t realize I’m doing it. It takes another person to point it out.

My therapists said it was a possibility that I had Asperger’s. My psychiatrist said she didn’t believe so because I was able to connect with her. She felt I didn’t ‘align’ with the social troubles. I can talk to her, share feelings, look her in the eye, smile ate jokes (though sometimes I fake smile- I see another person smile so I match it), and I don’t have trouble going off topic and rambling about specific subjects.

I said okay at the time. She’s a smart woman and I trust her. But ever since, it’s been on my mind. I’ve always felt different. I don’t mean that in like ‘I’m special’ kind of way. I mean it like, ‘There’s something wrong with me and I don’t understand what it is. I don’t understand why others can do X while that takes me longer/more effort to understand. I genuinely felt ostracized. But I just accepted it.’

I don’t know how to bring it up to my mom and/or dad. I know my mom will be supportive, but I’m scared about other people. My younger brother makes jokes about autism. My siblings, dad, and stepmom don’t do anything. It pisses me off to no end. I’ve yelled and sworn at him for what he says. But he keeps doing it. My other siblings say it’s just a joke and I need to relax, but I can’t. They aren’t jokes. They’re rude, ableist, and most of them are making fun of things I do. He, nor none of family, just don’t that because I keep them hidden.

And I don’t know how to bring it back up to my psychiatrist. I feel connected to many of the symptoms and like it explains so much of my life, especially when I was young, but I don’t know how to explain all my thoughts on the subject. When she asks me a question, I often freeze and undercut my own troubles and downplay it. I’ve been obsessing over this the past few months. It’s partly why my depression got bad for a time. I don’t know it I’m making a mountain out of a mole or if I should actually seek professional help to help me, especially since I’ve applied for disability benefits because my mental health has been so bad the past couple of years.

Anyway, I’m done my ranting. Thanks for listening if you did. And I’m open to advice. I’ve just felt so stuck recently and I feel like it’ll only get worse.

[byunbaekby]

You Are: Loved (l.dh)

Pairing: Haechan x Gender Neutral Reader Summary: In a world where the things people say about you show up on your skin, you become both intrigued and apprehensive when your skin tells you that someone loves you. Warnings: Mentions of depression, self-harm (please do NOT read if you are sensitive to self-harm. I tried to keep it as toned down as possible, without using descriptive words or actions as it is essential to the theme.) Word Count: 5.3k

-

You stare at him from across the hallway.

Lee Donghyuck.

He is the epitome of perfect as you know it—dark brown hair, barely brushing his bright expressive eyes often upturned into a smile on the canvas of his honey tanned skin like sand on a burning summer’s day. The resident class clown, you often hear him in the hallways before you see him, for he’s quite notorious for his jokes and boisterous laughter. For such an easy-going guy, you’d expect that he’d slack somewhere in the fashion department but no, his outfits were always put-together and flattering to his figure. 

It makes you question, is there anything wrong with him?

His greatness is not just to your eyes either. The proof of it is written on his skin. The words which others use to describe him, in the all-knowing universe where the gossip of others becomes proof on your skin; friendly, handsome, generous, funny, talented, popular. They slide up from underneath his shirt onto his neck, make themselves known across his arms. Those are just a small number of the words that decorate his skin, large and visible even from your distance across the hall. 

Lee Donghyuck is a superior human being in all forms. 

So, when you heard from Renjun, the closest person you could call a friend, that he had overheard Lee Donghyuck saying he loved you, you of all people, your first instinct was to think that Renjun was joking. Playing a prank on you. It wouldn’t be the first time someone at school decided to mess with you, the endlessly new student. 

But then the word came.

On your skin, you discovered it after a shower one day when you were staring at yourself in the mirror, at the cuts from your own hand that decorate your body. 

Loved.

Your skin told you that you are loved. This meant that someone, out there in the endless infinity of the world, had spoken into existence that they love you. 

It was small, barely noticeable on the stomach sandwiched between Well-behaved and the largest of them all, Unwanted. But you found it nonetheless, and immediately your mind flickered back to your friend’s words. 

Lee Donghyuck.

There was no way. 

It was definitely a joke; you could already hear him tossing it back and forth in cruel joking between him and his friends, followed by grating guffaws against you. 

But no, Lee Donghyuck was not like that. He was not cruel enough to throw an unwilling soul into that of his comedic tendencies. You had only spoken a few times in passing, in classes that you shared, yet you felt that it was clear enough to see that though playful, Lee Donghyuck was benevolent in all forms of the word. 

So you plan to confront him.

As soon as the warning bell sounds, sending all of Donghyuck’s friends away from their formed circle of laughter, you move. Donghyuck as well begins to leave, about to head out for his next class but you’re quicker, you’re already behind him and pulling on his backpack by the time he has turned to leave. 

You pull him back, holding him by the backpack in a sea of people. 

“Woah,” he sounds, before his eyes find you and in turn, light up. You hate it; he’s so cheerful, welcoming all the time and with the way he gazes at you you can almost believe the notion that he loves you. 

“Oh, hi Y/N,” he beams, a bright smile on his tiers. “What’s up?”

“What’s up is,” you begin, releasing his backpack to cross your arms across your chest whilst trying your best to look annoyed. “I don’t know what game you’re playing but I want you to stop.” Because it gives you hope, and that is the last thing you need. 

The confusion is evident on his face as he blinks at you. “What.. do you mean?”

“You don’t love me.”

A sheet of realization falls over his features, and his eyes soften. A gentle smile, almost amused smile makes home across his lips. “But I do.”

The ease with which he comes to this response only causes you to further your brows even further. You had, upon learning of his “feelings” toward you, thought it to be a complete joke or ruse but now as you observe the way he stares down at you, with the typical lighthearted eyes of his, you begin to fear that they are genuine. 

It’s absolutely insane. 

“We’ve only talked to each other like, twice. You can’t love someone you don’t know,” you argue.

“But I do know you. I know your name, Y/N, I know your age considering we’re in the same grade, I know that you’re currently in foster care and you’re staying with Jisung’s family. I know that you don’t really stay in the same place for more than a couple months which is why you mostly stick to yourself. To avoid getting hurt when you inevitably have to leave. I know that you like painting, and I’ve deduced that you’re most likely just trying to avoid getting adopted by anyone for another year until you turn eighteen.”

You stare, silent and speechless.

“I know all these things from the few times we’ve talked, I’ve figured these things out from the comments that Jisung shares about you occasionally, I’ve learned these things by watching you. And I’ve come to love you because—” you purse your lips in distaste unconsciously at the idea of love, of him loving you, once again. “—I see that you’re strong. I see it in the way you hold yourself, the way you live your life.” 

He’s wrong. He doesn’t know you, he can’t. He thinks that he does, that he has you figured out because of this little crush he’s harbored on you over the two months you’ve been in this town, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know that you’re unlovable. 

“You don’t even know what love is,” you spite at him bitterly, feeling your walls rise taller, if even possible. “But I do. I learned it, because of you,” he speaks earnestly, the idea of being late to class not a bother to him. “You’re seventeen.”

“There’s no age limit on love.” 

He’s naive. Love is not adoration or obsession or the excessive attention that you have failed to notice from him until now. Lee Donghyuck is too kind, and nowhere near close to knowing what love is.

His words leave you speechless—speechless that someone could be so thoughtless, so careless and willing to throw themselves into the abyss that is blind love. The final bell rings, signalling that class has started and you’re both now late to class. 

With no words left to say, only indignation and frustration in your stomach, you brush past him with a sigh. “Leave me alone, Lee Donghyuck.”

Though you don’t look back, you can feel his eyes on you, and can almost visualize them burning into your back, kind as always but uncharacteristically glazed with worry. 

-

You can’t really recall when it started. 

It was definitely sometime in your early years of secondary school, when the image of the words on your skin became too much for your psych to handle. 

The act wasn’t fueled by anger, or a desire to cause pain upon yourself, but rather a need for an ability to counterattack the words which mocked you. So you took the blade, and crossed them out.

Unwanted—because since you had been placed into the foster system at age seven, no family ever wanted to adopt you. The words were sprung from hate and gossip from others, who observed that you would never be able to find a place. Perhaps they also stemmed from your mind itself, in which you too began to believe that you were unwanted anywhere.

Well-behaved—because though you were well-behaved, always doing your schoolwork and abiding by any rules set by your temporary foster parents, you were never affectionate. You showed little personality to them, and they couldn’t form bonds to you. Thus, whenever your few months’ time ended, they always commented that you were well-behaved, but not what they needed in their family.

Strange—because no one had taken the initiative to get to know you, to learn you beyond the label you held of being the new kid. Not that you had given them an opening or chance to, anyways.

Alone—because you spent most of your time to yourself. This one you didn’t mind as much. Even though Park Jisung was one of the more welcoming foster siblings, claiming that he that had an insight to your perspective because he too had been in your position until he had been adopted by your current foster family, you refused to allow your interactions with him to grow beyond small talk over dinner and quiet rides to school. 

There are more words, currently crossed out and blurred by scars across your body, but those were the first. 

Now, as you stand in front of the mirror in the Park household bathroom, you cross out the one tiny word that Lee Donghyuck had gifted you, and watch with a slight wince as red begins to cover its existence. 

-

The next time you speak to him again, he has pulled you aside much like you did to him. 

A week has passed, exactly seven days, and you think that Lee Donghyuck must have some sort of compulsion because he speaks, “I thought about it for exactly seven days.”

It?

“And you’re right. I can’t love someone that I don’t know.” Finally, you think. He has come to his senses. The idea of someone harboring such romantic feelings for you, however naive and misplaced, has worried you for the past week. 

“Which is why I’m going to get to know you.”

You blink, dumbfounded. “That’s the exact opposite of what I told you to do,” you chastise, crossing your arms across your chest once again. He notices, and reaches out to touch you, pulling your arms from your chest. At his unexpected and unwelcome touch, you nearly slap his hands away. 

“I want to get close to you. Not to date you, or anything. I don’t need that. I just want to be your friend.”

“No.” 

He doesn’t seem fazed by your abrupt answer. “You said that I can’t possibly love you because I don’t know you, so give me the chance to.” 

No, you retort quietly in your head. He can’t possibly love you because you don’t want to be loved, because you can’t be loved. You can’t allow yourself to form such connections to people, only to leave. You can’t be loved, you’re not a whole person, just a shell. 

But you don’t tell him this. Instead, like a coward, you pivot. “You’re not going to get the chance, Lee. So listen to what I say, and leave me alone.” 

Like your first encounter, you turn and walk away. You don’t catch the disappointment in Donghyuck’s eyes, which are normally bright and full of laughter. 

It hurts, loving someone who doesn't love themself. 

-

You find that you enjoy art, especially painting, because you enjoy drawing a different reality than the one that currently houses you. 

One of the positive things about your temporary home with the Parks is that Neo Culture High School has an amazing art studio, open to students at all hours. So, more often than not, you find yourself in the studio for hours.

It had given a slight sense of pride, seeing the word Talented appear on your skin, just under your ribs. It was likely the first positive word to be marked onto you that had no negative connotations in your life. However small, it reaffirmed the fact that you had worth.

It was through your constant visits to the studio that you met Huang Renjun, a Chinese exchange student who planned on attending the top arts school in South Korean upon your graduation. He too felt like an outcast, though he was much more approachable than you. You have formed some kind of friendship, if painting together while sharing stories is your closest value of friendship. Yet you still refuse to call it a friendship. It is a work partnership. 

You think it’s Renjun who enters the room when you register the sound of the door opening around 4PM on a Friday afternoon as you’re hard at work on a new piece. 

“Hey, Jun. What do you think about this piece? I was thinking something along the lines of a city skyline,” you muse, back to the door as you continue your work. Renjun is always honest about your work, so you value his opinion.

Then you hear Lee Donghyuck’s trademark lilted tone behind you. 

“I think it’s beautiful.”

You whip around in a millisecond, your once soft tone replaced by one of disregard. “What are you doing here, Lee?”

“Just enjoying the open studio on a Friday afternoon.”

You frown, turning your attention back to the canvas before you as he pulls up a stool and seats himself near you, eyes on your painting. He’s right, you cannot ask him to leave because the studio is an amenity to the school.

So you simply keep painting, and ignore his presence as best as you can. 

This continues for weeks. On all days after school except Tuesdays and Thursdays, Lee Donghyuck visits you in the art classroom and simply sits there, watching you paint until the clock strikes seven. Then he walks the two of you out to the front of the school in silence. 

Everyday he offers you a ride home, but you reject him. You prefer walking home. 

At first, he just sat there, watching you with careful yet entertained eyes as you transformed blank canvases into art. Then, after a while of sitting in silence, the talkative Lee Donghyuck could take no more and began to talk. He filled the rooms with stories of his life, while you painted and pretended not to listen.

Some days he talks more about his feelings for you. Not in an overbearing way, of course, for he has begun to sense your discomfort with such a topic. But rather, he talks about his revelations for his supposed love for you as though you were a different person. 

It becomes a bit more bearable, when he discusses his admiration for the strong person he knows through school rather than you specifically. If you allow yourself to believe that he isn’t talking about you, you find yourself listening more easily.

He doesn’t once again say that he loves you. Instead, he talks about the things he loves about you. The name doesn’t leave his lips but you know it is for you. He speaks highly of your intelligence, and the headstrong way with which you carry yourself; of the passion you hold in every stroke; of the way you try to protect yourself by ignoring others. 

Though your name is never uttered, soon the words Strong and Passionate appear on the canvas of your skin on your inner thigh, because Donghyuck has you in his mind. 

It is then you begin to think that Lee Donghyuck knows you too well despite you giving nothing to him, and that scares you.

It scares you to think that you can be so easily read, like the ugly words on your skin. As much as you attempt to cover them with long sleeves, you have to roll them up to paint. 

The only time Donghyuck mentions the phonetics of these words is when he goes on a slight rampage. He hates the world you live in, and this comes as a quiet surprise to you, for you thought that the lighthearted Lee Donghyuck could not hate anything in his life.

“It’s so stupid,” he spits out, tapping his feet frustratingly on the floor as he sits in his familiar stool. Unbeknownst to you, he had overheard someone calling you strange again. A socially awkward weirdo with no place in the world, had been the exact words. It had filled him with rage. “We live in a society where people can judge you based on the judgements that others have already made. It’s so.. messed up. Who cares what people say? Do the words that other people have muttered about me matter more than what that one person can discover for themselves?”

You don’t say anything, keeping your eyes trained on the canvas as you paint, but you think silently to yourself that it’s quite hypocritical of him to complain as such, seeing as his skin is decorated with the most positive of words. 

He addresses this next, though. “Look at me. I have these meaningless words on my skin, but just because someone else calls me nice doesn’t mean I am. It’s almost like I can’t be rude, I can’t yell at someone for messing up my order, I can’t be a normal person with normal reactions. It’s like I have to uphold certain expectations that people have of me.” 

You’re about to roll your eyes, because what a burden it is for people to think that you’re amazing and kind, but then he continues. 

“And, people avoid others because their words say they’re, what, strange? Who cares? Who am I to assume that someone who is weird in the eyes of another, will be weird to me?” 

A frown perches on your lips. You are strange, that is what your skin tells you. And Donghyuck has chosen for himself to disregard the words of others to deduce his own perception of you. 

“Someone could be my soulmate, but I would avoid them because the universe and its people have labeled them as a freak, or crazy, or rude, or—” he cuts himself off, because he begins to get too passionate over the idea of it. “Sorry,” he mumbles as he retreats, knowing by now how you get when he begins to raise his voice, however in good intention.

You speak up. Your voice is dry, because you rarely converse with him on these days when he visits you. 

“Some might consider it natural selection.” 

If he’s shocked at your sudden comment, he doesn’t show it. “That makes no sense.”

But to you, it does. Some people aren’t meant to lead great lives, where they fall in love and die surrounded by people who will always remember them. Some people are meant to lead mediocre lives, where people avoid them because of their labels. You might consider yourself one of them. 

Donghyuck shuts this idea down right away, shaking his head with so much fervor that his dark hair shakes. His voice is soft when he speaks. “No, it’s not natural selection. You can believe that but I don’t. Because everyone deserves to love and be loved at some point in their life. Not everyone gets that, if people only see them for the labels on their skin.” 

To love and be loved. 

It has never occurred to you before that it is an essential part of life. 

Later that day, when you take your normal exit from the studio and Donghyuck, as he always does, offers you a ride home in his rundown truck, you accept. 

-

In the following weeks, the word on your skin grows and moves. 

At first it had been sandwiched the two words you hated most. Then it moved. All that remained in the space it once occupied was the scar of the cut you had imposed upon it, except now there was no word to be crossed out.

You had noticed its absence immediately after a shower one day, and for a millisecond you feared what that meant. Had Donghyuck’s love for you disappeared, as did the word?

But no, you found it soon later on the curve of your hip, bigger this time. It had needed more space, because Donghyuck’s love for you had grown.

This leads you to believe that though he never uttered such words in your presence, he was still saying it to himself. He didn’t need you to hear it, but you knew. 

This time, you don’t cross it out. 

-

Your time with Lee Donghyuck, the golden boy of Neo Culture High, begins to extend beyond the art classroom. 

He begins to give you rides home. Sometimes he searches for you when he has something on his mind. On occasions when you find yourself feeling especially empty, you visit the convenience store he part-times at under the guise of needing snacks or paper or any other excuse you can make.

Excuses, because you can’t let him know that you actually miss him when he’s not around. Miss his presence, miss the way he lets you be yourself. Unlike you had expected, Donghyuck accepted you for your quiet self. 

You had thought originally that he had expected you to open up at one point, to let him in. But you didn’t, because that wasn’t you. He knew this without asking, and accepted it. As popular as he was, he never forced you into a situation you didn’t want to be in with people you didn’t want to talk to. 

He, like you, was perfectly content filling the silence between you, for he talked way too much and you talked way too little. 

That is why, one Friday when he drops you off at the Park residence after your usual time in the studio, you lean forward in the car and kiss him. 

It is your first kiss, and no words are enough to explain the way you feel when you finally give in to him, to yourself and admit that you wanted to indulge in this feeling a little while longer. 

So you give no words, and leave his car. He wordlessly smiles after you, and drives off.

-

The danger in this is that you begin to accept his wordless proclamations of love. 

Days spent in the art studio once characterized by silence are now peppered with quick kisses and shared banter. Short rides home begin to turn into aimless driving around the city as an excuse for more time together. 

It should scare you, but it doesn’t. 

To love and be loved. His words from that one day remain clear in your mind. Is it love?

The first time you feel the lick of panic in your heart is when he says it.

You are sitting underneath a tree atop the hill that overlooks the tiny town. A sketchbook in your hand, you are working on monotonous drawing of a nearby flower. Donghyuck watches, as he always does. 

Then he says it.

“I love you.” 

You knew it already, as proof of his love already existed on your skin. Yet when he speaks it into existence, it crosses a line. You have yet to say the words to him, and though you could scream at yourself to admit it, the words never leave your tongue. 

Panic begins to sink into you, hollowing out your chest as your heart drops into your stomach. What if you can’t say it back because you don’t love him? Because you are incapable of love, as you had long convinced yourself of many years ago when you found yourself indifferent to the idea of being adopted. 

You had tried for months to ignore the timeline that was ultimately against you, choosing to believe that you could exist in a world with Donghyuck for as long as you chose. 

Your time with the Parks was coming to an end in a matter of weeks, and you were almost sure that they would not adopt you. For the first time in your life, did you want to be adopted? 

No. Freedom was so close, only six months short of your eighteenth birthday when you could be promised liberation. 

It only occurs to you now that you cannot choose Donghyuck over your goals. This realization fills you with a heavy dread, and you feel like crying. In fact, tears sting at your eyes as you slam your sketchbook closed and Donghyuck watches you with wide eyes. 

Fleetingly he wonders if he had been wrong. Wrong in assuming that you were ready to hear such words. 

You stand, rising to your feet. Then you walk away. 

And of all the times that he has watched walk away up to now, this hurts the most.

-

You love him.

You love him so much that it consumes your entire being. You love him so much that even though you avoid him for days, you cannot paint anymore, for the pungent scent of such colored varnish only reminds you of him. 

You love him so much that you hadn’t even realized when your art had turned into him. Donghyuck on a stool, watching you. Donghyuck down the hall, mouth open as he’s caught in a familiar boisterous laugh. Donghyuck kissing you while his hair falls over his eyes.

You love him so much that when you realize it, at near three in the morning, you break into cries and sobs. In the early hours of the morning, you turn on the shower and mute your sobs with the sound of water hitting your skin.

When you emerge, you stare at your bare body in the mirror and gaze at the word that decorates the expanse of your hip. These days, it seems to be the only word that matters. 

As much as you despite its existence, as much pain as it has brought you, you don’t feel the desire to erase it from your skin. So you throw your razor away, and take the trash out as the sun begins to rise. 

-

When the Parks tell you that they have made the decision not to permanently welcome you into their family, you are numb.

Jisung sits at the opposite end of the table, looking apologetic. Mr. Park opens his mouth.

“It’s not that we don’t like you, Y/N. You are very respectful and well-behaved.” There it is again. You have come to hate that word. “But we have come to find that we cannot support another child. We hope that you find a family to accept you and love you, even if it’s not ours.”

Mrs. Park’s voice follows next, and you offer a tight-lipped smile as she speaks cautiously. “We really have enjoyed having you here for the past six months. Feel free to reach out to us, whenever you need something.” 

“Of course,” you tell them politely, though you highly doubt you ever will. This place has too many memories that you no longer want. “Thank you for everything you have given me.”

You say it to every family you have stayed with but you truly mean it this time. 

-

The weekend you are due to leave, you visit Donghyuck.

You have only been to his house a few times in the past, and finding your way there on foot in the dark past midnight is even harder. At first, you had avoided him, going so far as to stop visiting the studio out of your dedication to ignoring him.

Then he had stopped searching for you. 

You had thought that meant that he had given up, but then the word on your hip began to grow and grow with every passing day, until it went from being a tiny script to occupying almost your entire hip. 

He still loved you, even as you gave him reason after reason not to.

You began to suspect that this love he had for you was not the result of naive adoration or the desire to get to know you, as you had thought originally. No, the love he holds for you is deeper than he ever let on and deeper than you had ever allowed him to show. 

So, when it nears 1AM and you find yourself tossing rocks at his window, he opens up to no surprise. 

At first, he just holds you in his bed in the darkness. He doesn’t ask for an explanation, rather he gives one himself.

“When I first saw you, I knew you were different from what your words told the world. I felt like… you were unwanted because you didn’t want people to want you. You were alone because you preferred it. I knew you were a strong person because of the way you carried yourself.” The image of the word Strong on your inner thigh flickers in your mind. It had been inflicted by him, and now he says it aloud to you. 

“I used to lay awake at night, whispering in bed to myself that I loved you. Because I wanted you to know that someone in the world loved you.” 

You close your eyes from where you lay with your head on his chest, because you begin to feel tears well. But he continues. “I guess somewhere along the way I really did fall in love with you. And I’ll continue to love you, to make sure you know you’re loved.”

It is a promise, a promise lost on his lips as you lean up and kiss him for the first time that night. 

Until morning comes, he discovers you for all that you are. When he slips off your shirt and sees the scars, imposed upon your skin as a means of blurring the inevitable words that mark it, he kisses them. 

You had always seen Lee Donghyuck as a boy of laughter and jokes, but he does not laugh at all that night as he brushes away your fears and insecurities. 

When you wake, you dress and leave with silent tears. 

Your social worker picks you up the next day, and you leave the town for the next though your heart stays in Lee Donghyuck’s bedroom. 

-

The next six months in a new city go by quickly.

Before you know it you are eighteen, and free from the system that has made you a lonely victim for eleven years. You move to Seoul, the big city, and freelance as a painter. 

Soon, you can afford your own place. You buy yourself a phone and find yourself wanting to contact Donghyuck though you have no idea how to. 

As you suffer through the hungry artist life, the years pass before your eyes. 

You fall in love again, with many people. You think it is due to Donghyuck’s presence in your life that you can. 

You think about him often. Even as the years go by and you never return to that small town again, he occupies your thoughts. You wonder how he is doing, what he is doing, if he is in love. If he has found someone for him that can love him the way you couldn’t. You’re not sure even now if you are capable of loving yourself, but love exists in your life, thanks to Donghyuck.

He has taught you love. Occasionally you reflect upon the person you used to be, that fearful person who confronted Lee Donghyuck from across the school hallway because you thought that him loving you was a joke. It is because of him that you have grown. 

True to his words even after you have left him high and dry, Donghyuck keeps his promise.

Though time passes by, the word inked into your skin upon the expanse of your hip does not shrink in size. It does not disappear, as you thought it would when he would eventually stop missing you. For years the universe continues to tell you that you are on his mind, and your heart warms at the idea of Lee Donghyuck laying in bed somewhere in the world, whispering to himself that he loves you for the sake of reminding you that you are loved. 

[technospotatoes]

C!SAM - Redeemable Qualities Analysis (Dream SMP)

Hallo! I’m back with another brain rot post for ya’ll instead of doing my schoolwork :] 

Recently, I’ve been doing some thinking and theorizing with some friends on discord following Quackity’s huge lore stream (if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you watch it). I woke up this morning with a head full of many thoughts about C!Awesamdude and where his story could take us. Seeing as how there is going to be lots of change in the future with the server, there must be changes in these characters as well-- evil to good, good to evil, and the like. With these changes comes my thought: “can these characters be redeemed?” Here are my thoughts on how this applies to C!Sam.

Please let me know your thoughts and theories, I’d love to discuss with you! As always, strap in, it’s gonna be a long one :]

I hope you enjoy!

Author’s note: I want to start this off by saying that all of the contents being discussed are fictional, and are from the Dream SMP universe. I do not support the actions of these characters, but merely have interest in analyzing them through a lens of psychology and for entertainment purposes. Content of this post will contain spoilers up to 3/25/21 of the DSMP lore. I will also talk about ATLA a little bit ;)

Content warning: mentions of torture, manipulation, death, possible psychological trauma

(pls be safe ily)

What makes a redeemable character? 

  Redeemable characters are some of the most pleasing and favored characters in modern media. Their stories are rich with emotion, and they can even evoke some form of catharsis within the most skeptic consumers. Redeemable characters are memorable and inspiring, and without one, a story can feel empty. Before we apply this character trope to the Dream SMP and C!Sam, we need to answer a basic question in order to fully understand the complexity of redeemable characters and how they are so universally significant. 

What is a redeemable character?

  Simply put, a redeeming character or characteristic counteracts or corrects something negative. From a storytelling standpoint, a redeemable character is someone who has roots in good qualities, turns bad, and has the ability to revert their wrong choices to become a better person. 

Examples of redeemed characters in popular media include: 

Zuko - Avatar the Last Airbender

Boromir - Lord of the Rings

Kylo Ren - Star Wars

Severus Snape - Harry Potter 

  Zuko, for example, starts his story off as the villain. He tirelessly hunts down the protagonist, and will stop at nothing to achieve his goal to please his father. However, as the show progresses, we learn that Zuko wasn’t always bad. He was only driven to his path of villainy because of his fear of failure, of his father (the firelord and true antagonist of the show), and of a greater punishment than what he had already received. With the help of his uncle, Zuko learned to push through and accept his past, while also making amends with his wrongs and coming to the realization of who the true enemy was; ultimately choosing peace and unity over destruction and fear.    Zuko’s story is so appealing because it was drawn out. It was raw, it was real, and it was a genuine telling of how damaged people can heal, change, and come to accept themselves. Because he went through the process of redemption, he was not only able to be loved by those around him, but also by his audience-- And I believe that this can be the same case with any redeemable character. 

So how does this relate to C!Sam? How could he possibly be redeemable if he is not evil?

  C!Sam has become increasingly interesting to me in the DSMP lore, and he has shown how complex his character is-- in contrast to many first impressions that people have of him. Based upon his actions from the past, and his willingness to remain neutral in times of conflict, we can conclude that he sustains both “neutral good” and “lawful neutral/good” qualities. This means that Sam is a reliable character, driven by his own personal values, and is devoted to helping others (when he sees fit). Evidence of these qualities emerge…

When he sided with Pogtopia during the Manberg War to maintain good relations with Tommy and Tubbo. 

When he saved Hannah from the Egg

Created Sam Nook to assist Tommy in building his hotel

Built Pandora’s Vault for Dream

Showed concern for Ranboo after one of his denied prison visits

  Sam’s moral code is deeply rooted with good intentions; he keeps an eye out for his friends, maintains his relationships, assists in builds/projects, and also serves as a “stable adult figure” for some of the younger members of the server. In contrast to his logical outward appearance, C!Sam lets his emotions drive his decision making-- which can lead to many severe consequences depending on how he acts. However, recently Sam’s actions indicate that he is experiencing a flip in morals. 

Below are incidents that have led to C!Sam’s recent change in moral code. 

Incident 1: Trapped with the Egg

  Many weeks ago, during the height of character involvement with the Egg lore, C!Sam was lured into a trap by BBH and Antfrost. He spent about a day trapped in close contact with the Egg, and after he was saved by Puffy and Tommy, he was clearly changed. It is likely that the Egg is behind these sudden changes in character motivation for Sam… similarly to how it corrupted BBH, Ant, and Punz. Whether this is the case with Sam is unclear. 

Incident 2: Tommy’s death

  C!Sam and C!Tommy’s relationship within the DSMP lore is one of my favorite things to talk about. After his victory over the disk war and finally landing his nemesis in prison, Tommy was left empty, without much to do. He decided to take upon a new project to incite a new era of peace, and was able to enlist the help of Sam with building his hotel. Throughout this process (and under the watchful eye of Sam Nook), Tommy and Sam were able to develop a bond with each other through their work, along with their interactions at the Prison. 

  Sam has made it clear that he intends to defend Tommy no matter what-- but after his untimely death at the hands of C!Dream, Sam was deeply wounded. He felt as if he failed his promise to keep Tommy safe, and he made it clear that the blame for the “security issue” and C!Tommy’s death should be placed fully on him. No matter how selfless and responsible this makes his character appear, this event will only serve as the basis for severe consequences in moral change in the future. 

Incident 3: Confrontation with Quackity

  Following the large emotional impact of Tommy’s death, C!Sam is very vulnerable, because he is still within the stages of grief. C!Quackity came to Sam for a partnership, to take advantage of Sam while he was low to gain the upper hand. It’s no question that Q’s character is a talented manipulator, we can see that clearly in his interaction with Sam. Q restates again and again that Sam failed, further cementing Sam’s existing guilt and desire for revenge for his failure. Sam gives in to the manipulation, and somewhat reluctantly allows Quackity to torture Dream to get information and to get payback for what he did to Tommy... which completely goes against what his responsibility of Warden entails. 

  As Warden, C!Sam is supposed to uphold the law and rules of visitation, but because of his leniency with Quackity (in breaking the rules) and because he is still emotionally raw, he no longer defends good from evil, but is now biased against it. C!Sam probably wants Dream dead, but as Warden, his opinion shouldn’t matter. Because Sam fully blames himself for failing Tommy, he's lost the "lawful good" in his character, meaning Warden Sam (as a set of morals) truly doesn't exist anymore.

Incident 4: Ponk’s mistake

  To recap a stream briefly, Ponk did a prank on Sam a couple days ago, and stole a few of the expired keycards to Pandora’s Vault. Rightfully, Sam was very angry, and not only took back the keycards, but also imprisoned Ponk. However, where this interaction should have ended, C!Sam only took it to the extreme. (TW!!!!) Out of anger and frustration, C!Sam tortured Ponk for his wrongdoing by setting him on fire, and amputating his arm (END TW!!!). 

  This only proves my point from Incident 3. Warden Sam is fading, only bits and pieces of his morally neutral character remain within him for basic tasks. His encounter with Quackity had a huge impact on his psyche, not only is he allowing the torture of the prison occupants, but he is doing it himself as well. C!Sam is now starting to believe that pain and torture are the only solutions for punishment, which is the complete opposite of what he believed before Dream was imprisoned. 

In short...

  C!Sam is losing his grip on moral and mental stability because of his emotional insecurity due to his psychological trauma. Because of this, I believe that it is entirely possible for Sam’s character to explore the route of evil and unlawful values-- which furthers the possibility for a redemption arc. Even currently, Sam is eligible for redemption as well.

  If C!Sam is willing to acknowledge his wrongs from today and improve himself upon them, he will likely become a more memorable, lovable, and even more human character than we’ve seen in the SMP before. 

SIDENOTE!

IRL Sam recently posted in his discord talking about his character. Here are a few key things to keep in mind as the story goes forward: 

“There is a LOT of things in the plan for me as a character and a very big change is coming about for me as the story moves along.”

I believe this change could be a villain arc, or a turn towards evil that incites the possibility for redemption. 

“My character is playing a role that I think is VITAL for the server and a role that I like to think was a good one for me to pick up and accept.”

You can read the reddit post I referenced for this here (ty to my friend on discord for providing me with the link <3)

TYSM FOR READING!! <3 <3 <3

[kiras-sunshine]

Home and Heart

Written for day four of Carlos Reyes Week: “you have come so far” + future

Summary: Carlos gets a job offer in a different city

read on ao3

or

It’s already dark, but their backyard is illuminated by a string of fairy lights TK has managed to hang up on near the chutes of the house.

Carlos has no idea when he had the time to put those up because they definitely were not there in the morning when he left for work, and TK got off from his shift only an hour before him, but he also had picked up food from their favourite Thai restaurant.

They had eaten the food at their backyard, underneath the lights and the bright night sky. The weather is warm, and the gentle breeze doesn’t bother him at all. The yard is so quiet, he can only hear distant noises of cars, a few birds chirping in the nearby Cathedral oak tree, and slight sounds of the grasshoppers. TK’s grunting mixes in with all of that.

Neither one of them had wanted to go back inside, so he is sitting on a garden chair and TK sits on the ground in front of him, in between his knees and he keeps massaging his stiff shoulders. He had pulled a 24-hour shift, and the impromptu dinner date at the backyard definitely was a surprise for Carlos, a good kind of surprise at that and he had enjoyed it immensely, but he had been psyching himself up the whole day to have a certain conversation with him, but now he doesn’t want to break the serenity of the moment.

Also, he has no idea how to break the news to him.

“You’re thinking too loud,” TK murmurs at one point, startling him from his own thoughts. He had been just absent-mindedly staring at the star patter of his button-down as he worked on a particular muscle knot near his shoulder blade. “Are you going to tell me what it is, or do I have to guess?”

He lets his palms rest against his shoulder as he exhales deeply. He should have guessed he would see straight through him. After being five years together it shouldn’t be a surprise that he knows him, through and through.

“Yeah, I’ll just pick something up,” he says, placing a kiss on the top of his head as he gets up and heads inside. He walks straight to their bedroom, picks up an envelope from his drawers and returns outside with it.

Letting him read the letter feels like the easiest choice.

TK is already standing up when he hands it to him. He had already teared it open in the morning, so he just pulls out the letter and starts to read it. His eyes are moving fast across the page. He looks at him carefully, and the corner of his mouth keeps twitching and when he looks up from the letter, his face is lit up by enthusiastic and bright smile.

Before he knows it, TK is already pulling him into a tight hug. He laughs, sounding genuinely delighted and Carlos just burrows his head into his neck. “I’m so proud of you,” TK tells him, and he hears rustling of the paper and he thinks he might be reading the letter again, “I mean I’m always proud of you, but you know.”

He feels his fingertips stroking along his spine, and in return, he presses a kiss on his neck.

He has been offered a job as a detective. It’s definitely the next logical step on his career path, and he certainly has the experience and qualifications for the job. He likes being an officer, but he also knows if he really wants to make any change in the way police departments work, he has to advance on the career ladder.

“It’s in Dallas,” he points out, sounding almost remorseful to his own ears, too. It’s the only aspect of the offer that keeps bothering him. He obviously is flattered that they want to offer him the position and he knows he is great at his job but uprooting his whole life might not be worth of a job.

“Yeah, I read that bit,” TK says, and surprisingly he has no traces of hesitation or sombre in his voice. He pulls away from the hug, but still rests his hand on his waist and kisses him. It’s a quick and brief kiss, but still full of reassurance. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he whispers.

He is the first person he has told about the offer, and he guesses it is only fair because his decision will affect his life, too, and while he was nervous about telling about it, he never expected him to get cross with him, but it still feels like a relief to hear his words of support and excitement.

“Do you want the job?” He asks, cocking his head to the side, as he studies him with his gaze. Any attempts of finding an answer in his eyes are futile.  

“I don’t know.”

It’s as honest answer as he can give. Sure, he has been thinking about promotion for a while and getting promoted to detective is in his plans but moving to another city definitely wasn’t included in his plans for the future.

Maybe if he were still alone moving away would not be such a big deal, but he is not alone. Still, sometimes unexpected things can be the best things in life. He certainly wasn’t looking for a relationship, but he still managed to find the love of his life on a call about a baby stuck  in a tree.

TK hums sympathetically. “Is it about Dallas?”

“Yeah.”

He folds the papers carefully back into the envelop and places it on the table next to the abandoned takeout boxes. “I get that. It’s not an easy decision and I guess moving wasn’t in our plans,” he says, glancing at the dim yard that opens in front of them.

“Tell me about it,” he sighs out of frustration and rubs his face with his hands.

A couple years back, he had sold his condo. It was a bit small for two people, and they wanted to buy a house instead of an apartment, and it is exactly what they did. The house is not enormous, but it’s theirs and it has everything they need, and most importantly it’s home in a way that no previous place of his own has been.

He knows it’s only a physical place and lots of other great houses exist, but he has grown fond of it. It is such a combination of both of them, all the little details and marks they have left on it and its decoration. He knows his home is where his heart is and TK still holds his heart, and he can be happy wherever he is with him, but he still believed they would live there longer than a couple of years.

“Hey,” TK whispers, gently and Carlos lets his hands drop. “You’ve come so far with you career, and we have come so far, so I’ve got your back no matter what you choose.”

His voice is soft, but still determined and sincere and he doesn’t doubt for a moment that he wouldn’t mean his words.

He rubs his neck as he tries his best to flash a reassuring smile at him. “Yeah.”

TK gives a lopsided smile as he looks down his left hand and fidgets with the silver band that rests on his ring finger. “Besides, when I said I do I did mean that I’m always going to be in your corner.”

Carlos chuckles, but his gaze darts to his wedding ring, too. It makes his own ring feel heavier, in a good way, and he knows there is truth in his words, and he has proved it countless times already during the years.

They are a team, a great one, and he supposes they have been a team since the night of the solar flares, and while he knew the whole time that a job offer couldn’t derail what they have, he is still a bit overwhelmed how well he is taking it and the amount of support he is offering him unconditionally.

“That,” he says, nodding towards the ring he has put on his finger a little over a year ago, “doesn’t mean you have to potentially blindly follow me across the state.”

It’s about his career, and he knows that ultimately it comes down to him if he wants to accept the offer, but he knows it’s going to have to be a mutual decision. He is not going to force him to move into a different city and leave his family and a place he calls home behind, and especially if he is not completely in on the plan, too.

“Nope,” he agrees, “and I like Austin. Our family and friends are here, and it feels like home, but I also meant my wedding vows, I literally took them as an oath. And I intend to keep my word when it comes to you.”

TK wraps his fingers around his wrist and slides them lower so that he can intertwine their fingers. His hand feels warm against his and it is more comforting that he can even describe.

Their wedding was sort of small. Just their closest friends and family, all their loved ones in one place. It was beautiful ceremony and it felt like them, and they had gone big on the parts they wanted to, and one of those parts had been the vows.

Carlos had spent months trying to perfect his own vows, and TK’s vows still are absolutely one of the most beautiful and touching things anyone has ever said to him. He had teared up because his vows had been so full of love and it had felt a little surreal that he got to be in the receiving part of it.

A short part of the vows were in Spanish. Ever since their relationship got official, TK had gotten in his head that he wanted to learn Spanish, and while he didn’t have to and it hadn’t been necessary in any way, he had attended some online courses and done independent studying. It had been a slow process, and Carlos still wouldn’t call him fluent, but his skills are definitely more than decent.

Still, the idea that he had learned an entire language for him makes his heart flutter. His accent is still bit off, but it’s so incredibly endearing that he hasn’t had the heart to correct him.

Carlos still has the piece of paper TK had written the vows on, and he knows TK has kept his piece of paper safe, too. He can admit that he sometimes reads it through and wonders how in hell he ended up so in love and so lucky.

“So, did I,” he replies, gently caressing his thumb with his own.

He hasn’t read the vows he wrote since the wedding, but he still can recall them word by word, and he had been completely serious about them and meant every single word, and he had vowed that he would cherish his happiness and love as if it was the most precious thing in the world he has ever had.

He still wants to honour those vows and do exactly as he promised to do.

“I know,” he breathes out, “and if you really want to take the job, then you should. And if you decide to do that, then we’ll have a real talk and figure it all out.”

He kisses his forehead and lets his lips linger there for a moment. “I love you,” he whispers.

“So you have said,” TK tells him, with a dazzling grin on his face, and he knows they will be alright no matter what.

***

Carlos has had the rule of keeping his personal and professional lives separate. After TK and befriending the entire crew of 126 had obviously blurred the lines a bit, and suddenly personal life made its way to workplace and scenes, and while he tried to stick to professionalism, he let the rules loosen up a bit.

When he realised that he kept casually running into his father-in-law and bunch of people who considered themselves to be equivalent of siblings of his husband, he had completely given up the distinction of work and personal life.

Let alone the fact that he kept running into his actual husband, who has Strand-Reyes stitched into the place of his last name on his uniforms. It’s definitely cramped there because the space for last name isn’t that big, but the sight of it never fails to make him smile.

So, as he has accepted that he half-works with people who he ends up spending all the holidays and most of his free time with, he longer feels awkward if he looks for TK once they have cleared up a scene.

They are once again on the same call. It’s nothing too messy, a car crash in the middle of the road. His partner is still directing the traffic as 126 is cleaning up the last of the debris and drying up some oil that leaked from another car.

“Hey,” he greets when he walks up to him next to the fire truck.

“Hey. How’s the most handsome first responder in Austin doing?”

Carlos grins as he glances at the ground. He briefly wonders how on earth he changed from making his own rules to separate work and personal life to shamelessly flirting with his husband on scene. “I don’t know, how are you doing?”

“Hah, real funny,” he shoots back, and his smile is bright, and he looks genuinely delighted to see him, even though they only saw each other six hours ago when they both left for their respective shifts.

He knows he could wait until they are both home, but their shifts overlap a bit, and he supposes this is as good moment as any.

“I turned down the job in Dallas,” he says, as he looks at Marjan and Mateo finishing up the cleaning process on the road.

“Oh.”

The uncertainness has now found its way to his face.

“It didn’t feel right to take it,” he explains.

The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to move. His parents and most of his sisters live in Austin or near it. Most of TK’s family lives there, too and he knows that he would have moved with him if he had asked, but leaving 126 behind would have devastated him.

Besides, he knows Austin like the back of his own hand. He knows people there and the communities and he is almost fond of his precinct too, and leaving all that behind felt just fundamentally wrong.

Dallas isn’t that far away, but it still hadn’t felt like the right decision.

“Okay.”

“I spoke to my captain, she said there should be job openings here within a year too, if everyone follows their retirement plans,” he adds.

“That’s great,” he tells him, with a low chuckle. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’ve got everything I need right here,” he replies, pointedly looking only at him with fondness.

TK bites his lower lip as he laughs. “If you’re happy, then that’s all that matters.”

“I am.”

“Good,” he breathes out and grins at him before he reaches to kiss him, quickly and briefly. His work and personal lives are irrevocably intertwined, and he couldn’t care less.

“I’m still proud of you.”

He opens up his mouth to answer, but before he gets anything out, Judd interrupts them. “Hey lovebirds, break it up. We gotta go.”

He hears a collective groaning and exasperated sighs. “How long can their honeymoon phase possibly last?” Matteo complains. “Another five years?”

He laughs, but he sort of hopes he never gets tired or less delighted to see him. He still gets the same thrill as he did when he first saw him and realised that there was something worth pursuing between them.

“Be safe.”

“You too.”

[brave-clarice]

“Clarice” Liveblog: Episode 1

Here are my extremely unfashionably late takes! They’re long, so strap in if you want.

okay, I genuinely thought the scenes in Gumb’s basement were ripped from the film for a second. extremely well done.

I both appreciate that they’re acknowledging the Bureau-mandated psych eval Clarice would have to go through (not sure she’d have to have another one a year later?)...

...but I sure wish they hadn’t chosen to open this show in a therapy-like session. it’s going to be subject to enough NBC comparisons as it is.

gosh, Rebecca Breeds is so pretty, and in the same almost, idk, elfin kind of way Jodie Foster is.

“Bride of Frankenstein”! a novel reference! and a Hannibal Lecter reference even though they can’t use his name! I’m excited

I was afraid of this part, though--everyone’s going to call her “Clarice” aren’t they?

it’s very significant that in the books, Hannibal is virtually alone in using her first name to address her; even Ardelia calls her “Starling.” but of course this series chose “Clarice” as its title, so...

“the checkout lady at the Safeway asked me to autograph a melon” omg

so Clarice has supposedly been “mandated” to see an FBI therapist for an entire year? hmm.

tbh, this feels kind of like a proxy for Hannibal’s scenes in the movie, especially with the therapist calling her “Clarice.” not sure if I dig it.

“...given that your last therapist was an inmate” Hannibal reference #2!

they’re explicitly talking about Hannibal without being able to name him and it’s hilarious, frustrating, and immensely satisfying all at once.

there’s no way to avoid talking about him altogether without being disingenuous to Clarice’s eventual character arc, so I’m glad they’re ripping off the band-aid early

“you let that relationship be intimate”  Yeah, Clarice and Hannibal’s relationship IS intimate and YOU! SHOULD! SAY IT!!!

it’s kind of ridiculous for this guy/the show not to acknowledge that little trainee Clarice was sent to see Hannibal by someone who should’ve known better. That Crawford was doing it with the intention to save lives doesn’t mean he didn’t use the shit out of Clarice.

that’s not to take away her agency or minimize the choices she made after she met Hannibal. She wouldn’t have been in a position to make those choices if Crawford hadn’t arranged it, though.

even if they don’t have the rights to Crawford’s name, either (I have to assume that’s the case) couldn’t they at least mention this??

“hasn’t seen her own family in years” Are they actually going to address Clarice’s maybe-dead-maybe-not mother (depending on the canon they adopt, book or film) and possible siblings??? Please tell me they are!

Clarice’s “egregious” PTSD doesn’t have much to do with Buffalo Bill ofc, and this therapist seems to be making excuses to be the first in a long line of men getting in the way of Clarice’s career goals...

...which she recognizes and confronts him about. Call him out!!!

*Anthony Hopkins voice* That’s my girl.

the way she’s been written in this scene gives me a lot of hope going forward! she’s funny, she doesn’t take any sexist bullshit, she’s calm and polite but you get a glimpse of the rage underneath. 

wow, they promoted Senator Martin to Attorney General!

the opening credits (if you can even call them that) are a let-down, though

she has her beads!

can anyone who’s not Hannibal please stop calling her Clarice

wonder if they’re going to touch on any of the extreme tension that existed between Senator Martin and Clarice in the novel? they didn’t interact in the movie, but in the book, Martin is under intense stress, and it doesn’t go smoothly.

of course in “Hannibal,” Martin invites her to “ride horses,” so they obviously reconciled after Catherine’s rescue and kept in some kind of touch.

and speak of the devil: horses! (and Catherine)

“I can’t have a reputation, I’ve only done it once” Thank you for being the voice of reason, Clarice.

“Paul Krendler” *ugly screaming commences*

“you don’t have any people, Clarice” Aaand that’s the plot of the Hannibal novel!

looks like they even gave her the ring Jodie’s Clarice wears!

oh yeah, this Krendler looks like a sumbitch if I ever saw one. No one will ever be as perfectly cast as the dude in Silence imo, but a much better fit than Ray Liotta. 

“small carat, but it’s a sweet ring” A very in-character observation probably directly informed by her comments about nail polish in Silence.

she mentions this victim’s nail polish (!) being “tasteful,” and I shrieked a little again.

I understand it’s necessary for Krendler to be a douche, but there’s not even going to be any payoff for the audience (or Clarice) when Hannibal eats him, so boo.

wait...wait, why aren’t Clarice and Ardelia in their Alexandria duplex? They’re not just best friends, they’re roommates! For the entire seven-year story! GIVE ME THE DUPLEX!!!

BUT points for Ardelia bringing Clarice a treat, since she was always leaving her candy bars in the Silence book!

Clarice interacting with the washer/dryer is a nice nod to the books, too.

speaking of... “What did we learn in the laundry room back at Quantico?” For some reason this line made me actually cry, I guess because this whole episode has been such a love letter to something I love so dearly, and it’s making me emotional.

FIRST PRINCIPLES!

DESPERATELY RANDOM!!!

wow, the men in Clarice’s new office giving her lotion as a hazing “welcome” gift is awful, and now I’m just mad (which is the point of the scene ofc).

so this ex-military OC is the John Brigham stand-in, I take it?

if that means John Brigham won’t be here, No Thanks.

Clarice telling him she’ll drive...a tribute to Dana “Why Do You Always Have to Drive?” Scully, perhaps (who was herself inspired by Clarice) as well as a nod to Clarice’s love of cars?

“Why do they call you the bride of Frankenstein?” Sorry, I don’t have the legal rights to tell you about my last intimate relationship.

“Already on my way to West Virginia Granny Witch” Look, this show could crash and burn from this scene on, and it would still have been worth it just for these first 25 minutes.

I like that Clarice is shown wanting to help people, and the scene of her with the baby is a nice call-back to the eventual shoot-out at the beginning of “Hannibal”...but I hope they don’t try to domesticate her too much. Clarice needs her hard edges. To be tough (reasonably so)--a cub growing into its big cat’s claws.

also, somehow I doubt that Miss Valedictorian spent her six years in the Lutheran home “changing a lot of diapers,” but sure, okay. If her siblings are alive in this, she might have changed their diapers!

even though Krendler’s a real dickwad so far, he’s not slimy enough for me. Needs more grease.

“I got a call from your therapist who’s concerned that you might genuinely flip out” I really do not like this subplot Sam-I-Am. Aren’t the huge glass ceiling/Boys’ Club obstacles enough?

seriously, though, I know Hannibal tells her that the metaphorical lambs will come back--at the end of Silence, though, she’s at some kind of temporary peace, not in danger of “flipping out” any time soon.

if Esquivel really is our Brigham stand-in, I’ve got...problems with that. He was Clarice’s teacher and became her friend, not some Krendler double-agent. (Also worried they’re setting him up as a love interest for her which...eesh, no thanks.)

and sorry, I actually hate that Catherine kept Precious the dog in this.

I have no problem with Catherine being a character, or with her interacting with Clarice...that said, I don’t know if her being shown as severely traumatized and reaching out to Clarice as a form of emotional lifeline is...a good idea?

I understand the symbolism of Catherine’s smashed mirror, but...smashed mirrors are already a Thing in this series (albeit not Clarice’s chapter in it), and that’s all I can think of here.

Catherine’s a victim of unthinkable trauma. Nevertheless...she’s talking to the woman who saved her life. Who risked death to do it. I just don’t like the way this scene is written. Apparently, in this show’s canon, Catherine hasn’t gotten the help she needs. But Clarice isn’t her therapist, and it’s upsetting to have Catherine being all “I’ll never be safe and neither will you.”

how does Catherine remember “the mannequins, the autopsy table”?? And why is she throwing them in Clarice’s face?

I’m going to stop talking about this scene now because it’s making me angry and a little upset, which is maybe the point? I just don’t think it’s written well. If Catherine’s going to be a recurring character, I hope she’s shown getting professional, medical help.

Clarice finding the victim’s papers in the box of pads is a direct callback to her finding the photos in the jewelry box in Silence. Nice.

let’s agree that Hannibal and Crawford are both in Ardelia’s (too-cutesy-for-me) book

another nice little X-Files homage?

I have some qualms about that big climax, but...meh. It was capital-F Fine.

Yikes, this is a full week late. Thanks for reading this entirely-too-long post through to the end, if you’re still here! 

To sum up my thoughts...

The Good: 

the visual connections to the Silence film (that green coat/blue knit scarf combo in particular)

Rebecca Breeds’ performance overall so far

Clarice’s strong writing/characterization

her sense of humor and her inclination to call out bullshit

maybe it was just me, but I also got a sense of Hannibal’s influence on her in some of her dialogue--her blunt observations--and I love it

Ardelia Mapp

the repeated in-your-face references to Hannibal Lecter

the respectful, non-exploitative way the victims were treated by the narrative.

let’s just say, not all Harris-inspired shows managed to do this. :)

the many, many allusions to the novel

“you let that relationship be INTIMATE” !!!

The Bad: 

the near-constant implication that all Clarice’s trauma stems from her experiences in Gumb’s basement

I just don’t understand this one...it’s not supported by the text imo

the “Clarice-is-a-psychological-loose-canon” subplot

almost everyone calling her “Clarice”

NO DUPLEX IN ALEXANDRIA! Boo!

Esquivel maybe replacing Brigham

the narrative choices they’ve made surrounding Catherine so far.

Seriously: please let Catherine seek/get help instead of screaming “HELP ME” at Clarice, who after all risked her own life to save Catherine’s, over the phone.

The Ugly: Paul Krendler, lol. Confession time: I also don’t care for the way they’ve styled her hair. Not sure why it bugs me, it just...does.

Overall, I’m thrilled to death with this. I was so afraid it would be disappointing, so even if it’s not a five-star episode (and pilots rarely are), it’s a great beginning! It’s beyond amazing to see our girl on the screen again. Just this hour-long episode did her character way more justice than the entire Hannibal film. Despite its shortcomings, it’s such a loving homage to characters and a story that mean a lot to me, and I love it just for that.

Going forward, I’d like to see more of Clarice as a person. Her hobbies and interests--cars, sharpshooting, running, fashion magazines stuffed under her bed, horseback riding, her total inability to cook...anything would do. I of course want to see more of her with Ardelia. I want to hear more about her backstory and find out which version of it (truly orphaned when her father dies or sent away by her mother) they’ll choose to explore. And while we all agree that this show is about Clarice and she don’t need no man, I won’t lie: I’d gobble up more sly references to Hannibal. He’s her endgame, after all.

I’d also like to really see the warrior underneath. There are flashes of her in the last twenty minutes of this episode. But Clarice Starling is a big cat, she’s a warrior, she’s between iron and silver. I’d hate for her to spend most of this show doe-eyed and traumatized. I want her to be ferocious, to see the woman who’s a match for the monster.

Krendler needs to get nastier. He should make us feel like we need to shower. In the novels, he wants to use Clarice--only for her body. And when she won’t allow him to, he takes his revenge. That’s what makes him so particularly awful. Let’s amp him up here.

And finally...maybe I’ll appreciate Catherine’s scene more on a second watch. Maybe I’m not being sensitive enough to her trauma, her struggles. But I didn’t like the way that scene was staged or scripted, and I didn’t like the suggestion that she just hasn’t gotten help after a year and is subsequently taking her pain out on Clarice on some level. I hope future episodes handle this subplot, and her character, a bit better.

Please let me know if you guys would like me to do another of these monstrosities for the next episode. (I promise it won’t take me an entire week this time!) And thank you again for reading!!! 

[reysjedi]

My thoughts but mostly my feelings.

This is the 3rd time posting these. Idk how but they keep getting deleted. 3rd times the charm?

*****TROUBLED BLOOD SPOILERS AHEAD******

Okay so I am going to start with the non ship stuff first because once that begins I will become slightly incoherent lol

• I love Barclay. He is so freaking funny. His friendship with Robin is everything. “You need to learn to read the room, mate.” I think he will be coming for Ilsa’s number one spot on the “Cormoran & Robin Shipper” list soon. 

• Speaking of Ilsa “It’s Robin’s birthday, you total dickhead.” I love it so much. Hoping for a miracle baby for her and Nick next book.

• I enjoyed the case. The characters seemed so developed and realistic. I really didn’t see the murderer coming. I also loved how it brought up why we trust certain people without a second thought. 

• I had very few disappointments in this book (besides not having a kiss which I wasn’t truly expecting) but my 2 were 1. That Strike didn’t go to his Dad’s party. Idk I really wanted that for his character even if he ever does reconcile with him it won’t be at a public event, I just really wanted to him to go and of course bring Robin. 2. That Robin wasn’t at Joan’s funeral. The flowers were lovely though. 

• Speaking of Joan <3 <3 <3 “I wish I had met your Robin.” I cried. I think it was really important for Strike to know Joan was proud of him and that he can think of that and her when he looks at the ocean. 

• Delving in to Strike’s psyche more was amazing. Learning more about his childhood. His mixed emotions about Leda. Yes. Yes. Yes. 

• I also loved Robin’s journey in this book. I’m also about to turn 29 and in a transition point in my life and how people kept saying “she was traveling in a different direction than the rest of us” really resonated with me. 

• I’m super excited about Michelle joining the agency. Robin needs another female coworker. Speaking of, I love what Pat brings to the team, especially her dynamic with Strike.

• I CHEERED when Strike manipulated Creed like that will be awesome on screen.

OKAY NOW TO THE SHIP STUFF * cracks knuckles *

• I don’t think I have every loved a literary couple this much. The way JK manages to grow and develop their relationship each book sighhh 

• THE AMOUNT OF TIMES I shouted “COMMUNICATE YOU IDIOTS” WHILE READING THIS BOOK lol but they do and when they do sighhhhh okay sorry can’t skip to the end

• I find it really funny that in a group chat on here I said I wanted holiday fluff L O L

• I was so upset for Robin on her 29th. I can’t believe he forgot but BOYYYY DID HE MAKE UP FOR IT

• Okay so let’s start the holiday fuck ups: Christmas

What a classic man. Waiting the last minute to buy presents and agonizing over it. Then he’s going to buy her perfume which just so happens is exactly what she wanted on her birthday (and yes he gets a major hint from Ilsa but still). 

AND THEN HE PANICS because picking perfume for someone is pretty intimate and he was basically delirious because of fever AND HE GETS HER CHOCOLATES sighhhh I felt so bad for how stupid he was unknowingly being. 

Her gift for him is so thoughtful and the only thing that cheers up his miserable Christmas <3

• Next, bloody Valentine’s Day: What a disaster. Robin finally lets out her frustrations on him and I think he was genuinely shocked. She had NEVER said anything like that to him. Strike has said several times how he appreciates “Robin being the only woman in his life who wasn’t trying to change him.” He thought she had no complaints because she kept quiet. It wounds him.

“And don’t buy me any more fucking flowers!” I was so worried he would take this as wanting no romantic gestures but he didn’t <3 and they even joke about it later <3

Then he thinks women never want him to apologize first (really Cormoran???) and isn’t going to call first BUT HE DOES he calls and it’s kind of a lame apology but HE CALLS FIRST. 

• The banter the entire book was amazing because GUYS THEY ARE BEST FRIENDS.

• TIME FOR CHAPTER 58: “Romantic Whiskey in the Dark” aka THE BEST CHAPTER TILL 73 The intimacy, honesty, and vulnerability of this scene * clutches chest *

“I’d like to go to the Ritz please”… lol little did we know

He finally tells her about his Dad and half siblings pestering him. He even tells her about his childhood (y’all I couldn’t believe it). Picturing young Cormoran with too short pants, anxious to meet his Dad, and then the crushing realization that he didn’t want to see him. Then him calling Strike an accident in front of him. My heart broke.  

Robin FINALLY asks him about Charlotte and he tells her about her overdose and how much anxiety that was giving him.

I feel like typing Strike’s entire inner monologue starting with “How could he say, look, I’ve tried not to fancy you since you first took off your coat in this office…” but just do yourself a favor and read Chapter 58 again (I’ll be reading it & 73 at least 5 times each today lol).

Then he brings up Ilsa trying to set them up. * flails *

They talk about Matthew and Sarah because they are sharing. And guys, sharing is truly caringggg.

Then they have the conversation about wanting to have kids. (I have a few idk meta? thoughts about all the foreshadowing in this book about them having a kid together).

I absolutely love how Robin calls him out on his “self-indulgence.” I’m not saying Strike will ever change his mind about kids but I loved that she challenged his reasoning. They are so perfect together I swear.

Then he calls her his best friend. And Robin dies. And I DIED. It was so perfect and genuine. Her response was so cute because she was so taken aback. 

EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT

Then they both start thinking about the bed that is MEARLY UPSTAIRS AND I THINK I PASSED OUT FOR A BIT.

Seriously guys CHAPTER 58 IS EVERYTHINGGGGG

• I loved how they had an honest conversation about Strike’s protectiveness of her while on the job. 

• Strike chastising himself for considering/wanting to buy her a stuffed donkey <3

• “Ya but you’re exceptional.” He so casually makes Robin’s heart soar. It is perfect. 

• OKAY I THINK I’M READY TO DISCUSS ROBIN’S 30TH I NEVER and I mean NEVER COULD HAVE IMAGINED THIS FOR THEM

Back to Strike appreciating Robin “never wanting to change him” but then she tells him she hates when he’s late (andddd he’s on time NO DARE I SAY EARLY for their meetings for the rest of the book). She often feels underappreciated and wishes he would just make more of an effort. AND BOYYYY DOES HE EVER.

HE CHANGES GUYS… TO MAKE HER HAPPY “People can change. Or so a psychiatrist in Broadmoor told me.”

She thought he forgot again * cries *

He arranges for her to wake up to his donkey balloon and signs it “(Not flowers) Love Strike x” GUYSSSSS

Robin’s little tarot card read (WE NEED TO META THE CRAP OUT OF THIS) T

hen they meet up and HE LETS HER PICK OUT HER PEFUME (what she has been searching for the entire book, the perfume that suits her new life and he buys it for her in the best possible way THE SYMBOLISM COROMORAN IS ONE WITH THE PERFUME THE PERFUME IS ONE WITH HIM * flails *) and HE ADMITS HE FUCKED UP GETTING IT FOR HER ON CHRISTMAS

SHE ASKS HIM TO HELP HER CHOOSE BEWTEEN THE LAST TWO AND HE CHOOSES THE ONE THAT REMINDS HIM OF SEX. I mean I never thought the description of “musky skin and bruised flowers” could be so sexy. 

I DIEDDDDDDDD

THEN HE TAKES HER TO THE RITZ FOR CHAMPAGNE <3 <3 <3

ROBIN WAS SO SHOCKED BUT NOT AS SHOCKED AS ME

“Strike, said Robin, This is thoughtful.” Oh you mean just like you asked him to be? This is him trying. HE’S WOOING YOU ROBIN. 

GUYS WHAT IF THE NEXT BOOK STARTS RIGHT AFTER THEIR DATE (yes it is totally a date) AND THEY HAVE SEX BECAUSE THAT WAS STRIKE FINALLY TRYING (and he changed his phone numberrrrr) 

THAT WAS PEAK ROMANCE (I need fics).

I am seriously so happy with how far they have come together and super excited about their future <3

wow

If anybody read all of that message me so we can discuss (flail) together.

When do we get to read book 6??????

[dragonsballsz]

cannot stop thinking about whis having undetermined (not malicious) motives for wanting goku and vegeta to work together. if dbs 2 happens i would love them to have whis revisit this in the story. "thought it was about time to have you two train together" like. What Is He Planning

the only thing i can think of is that he wanted to get rid of beerus. having the last two saiyans kill the guy who ordered their extinction is pretty karmically satisfying, and it doesn’t hurt that they’re both op as hell (so it beerus tho).

it kind of looked like that was a potential twist later on, but i think the creators got too attached to beerus (which is just. why? why tho?). or it’s just bad writing.

not that dragon ball has ever been known for its in-depth examinations of the psyche (which isn’t a problem; the point is friendship and punching things), but super is a lot more cavalier about certain things (read: genocide) than any of its predecessors.

it’s possible that there was an idea to have goku become the new god of destruction, but (hopefully) that idea would’ve been shattered pretty quickly, since it’s not the first time goku has been offered godhood, and the last offer was a lot better. it’s also possible that they planned to have vegeta do that but then realized that that would kinda fuck over his whole character arc of becoming marginally less homicidal.

the issue i have with whis is that while he’s got a fun and genuinely likeable personality, his function in the story is a lot closer to a plot device than an actual character. this isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it doesn’t work quite as well in this case bc the beginning of super really did appear to be setting him up as a full-fledged active character - a dragon with an agenda, if you will, to beerus’s big bad of the first arc. that also wouldn’t be a problem, except that beeurs no longer appears to be acting as an antagonist.

i’ve gone into why i don’t like beerus (as an antagonist or as a character in general) on my personal blog a few times, but the issues with beerus also directly impact whis, and whis’ lack of any real importance outside of his job (i.e., his connection with beerus and the rest of the dragon ball pantheon) means that he’s pretty badly hurt by said issues.

dbs also has the issue of setting up some genuinely new and interesting ideas, but being afraid to deviate from the show’s status quo to properly execute them. this is becoming more and more common in anime, from what i’ve seen, and it ends up sacrificing character development, usually for comedic value. and not good comedic value either, just running gags that enough of the fans find amusing for the writers to just stick with that instead of having the characters grow and potentially lose the ability to keep the gag around.

think about fullmetal alchemist (the manga). one of the most famous running gags is ed’s height, but as the story progresses and gets more serious, those jokes begin to peter off and eventually stop more or less completely. this is in part bc ed himself has physically grown, but it’s also illustrative of how the story has progressed and the characters have progressed with it. it was a fun gag while it lasted, but it wasn’t permanent. it’s also important to note that ed’s lack of height was in part due to the weight of his prosthetic limbs, so the gag would have to be left behind eventually bc it wasn’t worth sacrificing so much of the story for. dbs and other newer shōnen don’t seem able to put the story before the jokes. and in light-hearted moments that can sometimes be okay, but when it’s consistent throughout the story (or worse, part of the story), it kind of ruins the feeling.

bouncing back to dbs, there are two examples of jokes illustrate this: mr. popo and goku. plenty of people know that the scene where popo warns vegeta not to break the hypertonic lion tamer (sorry) is a reference to tfs’s running gag of popo being absolutely terrifying. this works without knowledge of the abridged series bc it looks like an otherwise nice guy getting fed up with these assholes who keep breaking his shit, and it works with the reference bc pecking order. does it properly mesh with his kind, gentle, and extremely patient nature? no, not really. but it’s a little side joke that doesn’t really hurt anything.

compare that with goku. goku was never characterized as an intellectual genius, but the original incarnation of him in db and later in dbz wasn’t so much stupid as thoughtless, naive, and occasionally just uninformed (which makes perfect sense - he’s an amnesiac alien kid who spent the last few years alone with no one to teach him things). but he had a good heart and generally tried to do the right thing. if the world was in danger, making sure it was safe was his top priority. he was a smart and clever fighter who learned from his errors, and he frequently showed his own form of intelligence outside of battle by thinking ahead in ways that no one else had - such as realizing that the earth would still need protecting after he died for good, and choosing to stay dead after bulma pointed out that many of the recent threats to earth’s safety were there because of him. he doesn’t think the way most people do, but he certainly wasn’t a brainless idiot who didn’t care about anyone but himself. not perfect, but still.

in dbza, he becomes said brainless idiot bc it’s a parody series and that’s what’s funny (sort of like tenshinhan and chiaotzu randomly being jewish, or turles trying to steal christmas). but that characterization got popular, and super’s goku frequently leaned a lot more towards the abridged incarnation rather than the original goku. again, that would be fine if it was a one-off joke, but it often feels like the audience is getting bounced back and forth between canon!goku and abridged!goku all the time, which is.... frustrating. to say the least.

beerus and whis suffer from something similar, only instead of being related to comedy, it’s related to their roles in the story and how they affect the plot.

tldr: writing is hard, status quo is NOT the end all be all, and i apparently have a lot of unresolved feelings about this that i should probably bring up with my therapist bc wow

[entitycradle]

A Tree Without Wind

Content warnings: mention of, discussion of, threats of, and plans to commit suicide. Panic attacks, disassociation, and paranoia are described, sometimes in detail. An eating disorder is alluded to. Characters are horny for each other but there’s nothing sexually explicit.

I promise the ending is hopeful. I genuinely am not trying to trick you, I know what this sort of thing is like, I want to respect your capacity while still being truthful to the experience and allowing tension in the story. If you’re in the right place for it, click that button.

A TREE WITHOUT WIND

I was nine years old the first time Phoenix told me he was going to kill himself. Is that too brutal? Sorry. It's where this starts. We were outside, in the morning before it got too hot, kicking around a ball in the scrubby grass. We used the long shadow of the I34Q tower to make the rules--you can't use your hands if you're in the sun, that sorta thing. It was fun because the boundaries of the shadow were always moving with the shape of the tower, and because the tower was a little scary. Phoenix lost a game and just said it, frustrated, "I'm gonna kill myself." I laughed.

When I was that age I loved looking at the shadow of the tower, because it made so much more sense than the real thing. You'd look at the dark, fuzzy stain on the ground and you could imagine it was some sort of antenna, or house, or marker. But then you'd look at the structure itself and your eyes would glaze over trying to figure it out. Unevenly rotating, stacked polyhedral structures, dark gray but covered with a rainbow film like an oil slick. Irregular pieces would be transferred between different sections with no apparent pattern. It smelled like someone you'd never met. The tower was doing something but no one was ever clear on what. That's how it is with I34Q stuff, I think.

I'm stalling. It was some stupid shit, he must've picked it up from some awful caster or something. As a kid Phoenix liked that sorta thing. He'd watch videos of mean people cursing and laughing and he'd laugh with them. I preferred my cartoons, or the I34Q casts, as weird as they were. Later I repeated what he said when I found out my dad was making squash for dinner, "I'm gonna kill myself," and my mom told me off pretty hard. Kept me from saying it again, at least in school and at home. Phoenix kept at it though.

- = -

Phoenix and I got put in the same dormitory when we went to T-school. Do they call it T-school in other places? It's the thing where 4Q tanks (as in I34Q) come and take a bunch of eleven-year-old kids to stay at "training" facilities. No one I've asked knows what T-school is actually for, same as the towers, same as all the 4Q stuff like I said before. An organic shape attached to the ground heads a classroom, gibbering except for the occasional english sentence (Phoenix said he also recognized some Cantonese). Mrs. Lough, who apparently also lives in the facility, tries to teach "formalist english," which is like english but the rules contradict themselves. You take notes on the behavior of a tank filled with inky fluid for four hours a week. One day a three-legged machine packs up your stuff and shepherds you to the gate.

I was ejected a year and a half after Phoenix. I went home on the bus and met him at burger king that afternoon. I caught a glimpse of him from outside. His hair was in long, tight braids. I felt self-conscious about the uncontrollable smile growing on my face. "Aco!" he said through a grin as I opened the glass door. A green poster advertised a meal made from "water beads," an I34Q plant thing.

"Dang," I said, grinning as I sat down. "Dang."

"You make it out? Fuck you to 4Q?" He'd stopped eating to greet me. His grin looked as uncontrollable as mine. Phoenix's nose was wide and flat, also like mine.

"Fork you, 4Q." I still felt nervous about cursing. I was fourteen. "How ya doing, Phoenix?"

"I'm good, I'm good. High school is interesting."

"Oh, man..."

"It's actually like, fucking nice to understand what's happening. But now there are actual smart kids and you actually get punished when you, y'know, mouth off. I'm like, I gotta get around to--" He swiped with his hand, bent his neck, and made a cracking sound with his mouth. I laughed. "Don't worry, I'll show you around. Maybe we'll have a class together."

- = -

We did have a class together. High school with Phoenix was fun, because I got to have a proper crush on him. Pining, sexuality, youthful obsession, yards and yards of it. It was weird, we kinda drifted--Phoenix hung out with kids that I was afraid of, I hung out with kids who played too many videogames. As our familiarity waned, I started seeing him differently. A foreign, adult desire began to penetrate me, replacing childish affection. It took me a while to realize that's what was happening.

It was a shame our familiarity waned, though, because Phoenix was really struggling, and I didn't see it. His friends were mean, when they weren't outright abusive. Not a lot of people liked him. I learned later that he started hurting himself when he was sixteen. Little cigarette burns, and then cuts. He got put on meds at seventeen--the wrong meds, for a year. He went to a psych ward when he was nineteen. His family did not have the money to pay for an extended stay. I still don't know exactly how that worked out. I do know he went into debt after his second stay two years later.

I wasn't doing too well myself, after I hit twenty-two. Something in me broke I guess. So when Phoenix told me he was going to travel to the Santitos digger and throw himself off a cliff, it didn't take me very long to ask if I could go with him.

- = -

"I... I didn't..." He paused for a long time. Ten seconds of silence feels unbearably long in a conversation, and I was quiet for fifteen. My teeth held each other tightly as his thoughts whirled. "I didn't..." He looked me in the eyes. There was an intensity to both our gazes. He'd stuck his jaw out, just a little. "I guess I did. I was, kinda, hoping you'd say that."

"Fuck," I said, looking away and down. "Fuck." I put a hand over my eyes, gripping my face as tears came.

"I'm gonna die," he said, beginning to smile and looking up. I felt the discomfort I'd felt since we were nine.

"Yeah, I wanna go, I wanna go," I said, pulling my hand away midway through and looking back at him with a force I didn't recognize.

He looked back at me and said, "I'm gonna die, and you're gonna die with me."

- = -

The Santitos digger is in northern California, in the Redwood national park. People have figured out the basic idea of what the digger is doing, unlike the towers or the T-schools: the digger is making a big hole. I'd heard that in some places it had dug more than a mile, almost straight down. Don't ask me how the digger would've done that. Don't ask me why it's called Santitos, either, since it's pretty big and not very saintly. Maybe it was the name of a town. Getting to the digger from Prince George County was about fifty hours.

"I figure we could do it in three days if we really fuck-you-pushed-it. But I'm planning on five." I craned my neck to look at Phoenix's cracked phone screen, where he'd pulled up the route.

Gas is expensive because 4Q takes most of it. Basically no one flies. Even in Phoenix's hybrid, it would be a thousand dollars to get to the west coast. But it's not like we'd need the money afterwards.

"We'll eat along the way," he continued. I bit my thumbnail. "I'm not picky, we'll just stop at wherever they won't run us out of town."

We'd sleep in the car. It was April, so temperature wouldn't be a concern. I packed a change of clothes, a water bottle, my meds, and a box cutter I'd stolen from my last job.

The next morning, he pulled his blue, dented '38 prius in front of my apartment building. I saw the car arrive out the window. There was an anxious pit in my stomach that deepened when I opened my front door. I didn't want anyone to see me. This is it, I thought, this is it, this is it. I repeated that phrase down the stairs. My landlord could fucking charge rent to my corpse, I could give a shit. This is it, I thought. That final T stretched to enrobe me. The sky was gray and wet. The sensation wasn't enough to rip me from my inwards reverie. I was about to get in the back of the car when Phoenix spoke. "That ain't it."

He was leaning out the window, regarding me coolly. "Morning. Shall we go?" I walked around the car and got in the front seat.

- = -

Virginia is beautiful once you get into the mountains, forested and rolling. I told Phoenix, "Once I read the Appalachians are millions of years old, and used to be taller than the Himalayas."

"No shit. Was there like an Everest? Where's the old Everest?"

"I don't know, I never heard anything about that. But yeah the continental plates looked totally different. And then things changed and the rain and wind and plants broke them down."

"Hah. Fucking awful. Just being broken down like that. I mean, it's better than what 4Q did to Everest."

I was quiet for a moment. "That's... the worst thing they did, right?"

"I dunno, dude, I think taking kids from their families is worse."

"No, right, right. But like... Everest was like... like everyone knew about Everest. When I was really little I had this big book about mountains and I read the bit on Everest so many times. And now it's like... they made it about them. And people lived in the Himalayas before 4Q came! It forced everyone out and carved a bunch of nonsense into it. A forever reminder that we're below them."

"Hah, literally. Hmmm. I still wouldn't say worst, but, I get what you mean. I'm so numb to it. It's good some people still care." Phoenix shrugged. "I mean I dunno. It doesn't matter much to me, at this point. But from an outside perspective it's good."

That first evening was alright. I drove Phoenix into a beautiful sunset. You hear the phrase "rode off into the sunset" and you think, what a nice ending, but it's not really an ending. If you're the cowboy you keep riding, and eventually the sky darkens and you have to set up camp and eat and sleep and wake up the next morning and eat and go riding again. A feeling of dread and desperation fills me when I think of surviving alone like that. Maybe I'd get used to it. The trip to Santitos was an attempt to write a story with a proper ending.

We didn't stop until we crossed into Illinois. We parked on the shoulder of a country road. I used the light in the car to look at the atlas we'd bought for when we didn't have cell service, and laughed. "We've been in five states today. Pretty good. Keep it up and we'll have visited every state by June."

"What the--?" Phoenix snorted, laughing. "You mean if we visit five states a day. Asshole."

I always giggled when he snorted and called me an asshole. "Hey, I'm just saying."

"Fucking dumb. Doesn't even work. You'd have to wake up in a different state than you fell asleep in." He caught my eye. The smile felt intimate, mutual. Born of sleepy exhaustion from a shared journey. I looked at the divot between his nose and upper lip.

I realized something. "Shit, I forgot to bring a blanket."

"Poor baby. You cold?"

"Hmm. I guess not really."

"Oh, you know what I do have..." He leaned towards me and reached toward the back seat. I watched his shirt stretch over his chest. Phoenix retrieved a big gray sweater. "Feel free to stretch it out."

My fingertips touched the back of his hands as I took the bundle. I did that on purpose. His skin was warmer than I expected, as skin always is. We tipped our seats back. Not the most comfortable, though the sweater would help, hopefully. I checked out Phoenix to see him on his side, looking at me and smiling. I let my own smile relax into me as I watched his eyes. His irises were a rich, beautiful brown. His skin was the color of cardboard in your childhood memories. I loved the way his smile wasn't symmetrical, wider on one side than the other. I carefully resisted scanning my gaze down his body. I actually saw his eyes flick down my form, instantaneously. His eyelids half-lowered, and then, horribly, what seemed to be a great tide of sadness overtook him. I watched him hold it back. I watched his smile mix with growing grief and fear, then bow to neutrality. He covered his gaze with his eyelids, breathed in, breathed out. "All right," he whispered, then opened his eyes. The gaze was gone. "Time to sleep." He sat up and turned off the light.

The sweater had a very particular, subtle smell to it. I guess it was his smell. I was desperately horny, yet blasted to pieces. A heady mix.

"I think I could fall in love with you, if things were a little different." He broke the silence, fifteen minutes later. "I probably would. But I'd cling to you like a fucking baby. And you're here, right?" He paused. For a response? I didn't give him one in time. "That's what I mean, codependent hell. I'd only be alive for you, and you'd only be alive for me, and then the second anything goes wrong we'd be right back here except I'd, fucking, direct all my shittiness at you... and you'd blame yourself."

I was quiet. "Ain't... ain't being codependent better than dying?"

"Hah! But that's what I'm saying, it doesn't change anything, it just leads us back here."

I fumbled for something. "Yeah but if it could... like stave it off..."

"Why is that good? The world is fucked, Acoatl, totally and truly fucked. Things don't get better from here, for me, for people. Should I beg? Stay here in misery out of some misplaced sense of morality? We're doing the only thing that makes sense."

I stayed quiet, not unconvinced. Sleep came, eventually, uncomfortably, anxiously.

- = -

The International Astronomical Union provisionally called it 8I/2034 Q1. I had to look that up. The eighth interstellar comet discovered, identified in 2034. I don't know what Q1 means. The name was briefly changed to 8I/Pasarati, for the research group that had discovered it, but by that time I34Q was clearly accelerating non-gravitationally and on an Earthbound trajectory. 8I/Pasarati is still in orbit, technically. You can see it through a telescope, it's like five miles across. But I34Q is the name for all of it, the craft that came to the surface, the life it brought with it, the structures it built, the war, all the consequences. No one can make any sense of it, except the one thing everyone knows: something else controls the world now.

- = -

I just barely remember waking up to switch seats in the morning, and then desiring nothing more than to return to sleep. Eventually Phoenix nudged me awake. "Hey." We were parked somewhere in Missouri. I'd slept all the way through the night and Phoenix's turn to drive. At least twelve hours, depending on when I actually fell asleep last night. I'd missed the big arch in St. Louis.

Phoenix was curt and reserved as I drove. I thought he was still thinking about last night, or angry at me for leaving him alone on his drive. Then he tilted his head back and began to gag. "My... heart..." Tears streamed down him face.

"Phoenix." I glanced back and forth between him and the road. There were abandoned cars on the shoulder; I couldn't pull over. "Phoenix, Phoenix, um."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, stop." He bent, heaved, and emitted a yowling, harsh retch. Nothing else left his mouth. "My heart..." He was breathing hard. A panic attack, I realized, stupidly too late.

"Do we have..." Panic attacks can be interrupted with certain intense sensations. The general goal is to increase awareness of the environment, focus the mind on the current moment rather than the future or past. Holding an ice cube can help. There were no ice cubes. I reached into the back seat for my water bottle, which would at least be cool. A truck behind us laid on the horn. I swerved back into my lane. "Sorry." Phoenix dry heaved again. It was a uniquely distressing sound.

I searched for the hazards, feeling useless. Far too much time passed before I found them and started slowing down. A different truck laid on a different horn. I was able to slip in a gap on the shoulder between an abandoned pickup and a rusting minivan.

I led Phoenix onto the tall grass beyond the asphalt, where he collapsed onto all fours. His torso flexed as he heaved. I put a hand on his back. "Phoenix, look at the trees." There were bushy, broken trees lining the sides of the highway, a vibrant green against the blue and white sky. "The, listen to the road." No, the road was stressing me the fuck out. "Listen to the grass waving, feel it." Stalks crumpled in his fists. I twisted my head and saw the tip of an I34Q tower peeking up over the treeline. "Look, a tower, just like when we were kids." Over the next few minutes, his breathing slowed, his heaving stopped. But the tears stayed. He sobbed away the panic. I read somewhere that tears actually contain different chemicals depending on the emotion causing them. Something to do with hormones I think.

He apologized to me. I would've done the same thing. I've done the same thing. So I got it, but felt indignant at having understood--he didn't need to apologize!

We got back on the road and listened to static on the radio. Sometimes the edge of a station would pass by, and we'd get fuzzy country, or christian rock. I changed it whenever there was a sermon. Sermons always come back to 4Q and they're always awful. The 4Q broadcasts are actually better than sermons about 4Q. They're kind of like static, anyway, totally unintelligible. We encountered more of them than I expected. Maybe static itself is a 4Q broadcast. I don't think that's right, I think static is like cosmic background radiation. But maybe 4Q has changed it somehow, like it used to be white noise and now it's blue noise, a different random distribution but still random.

"I'm off my meds," he said, as we rolled into darkness. The moon was a crescent, low on the western horizon. He spoke flatly and calmly. "I didn't even bring them with me. I thought you should know."

I hesitated. I wanted to voice this diplomatically. But then, we'd be dead in four days, anyway. "Is that why you had the attack?"

"No. I panic even on meds." That made sense. I remembered a few times in the past year when he'd canceled an event with little notice, or left early. "But I'm not a person right now, and that's definitely because I'm off my meds."

"You're not a person right now?"

"Yeah. It's called depersonalization. Also derealization, which is when nothing is real. Or that's how it feels, as I'm told. It's pretty freaky if I'm honest. You don't get the same emotional reaction from stuff. It feels like you're watching from somewhere else." He wasn't looking at me. He was looking down. "You're not you. You're not even real." He whispered. "Pretty freaky."

"Can I--do you--"

"Ahh, I'm coming out of it. Some of it is just recognizing that you're in it." He drew a knee up to his chest and shook his head. "Uhh, could you. Could you hold my hand. Touch helps."

I gripped the wheel with my left hand and held his palm with my right. It was warm and sweaty. I wish I could say that was okay. I felt miserable. I wanted to feel happy, holding his hand, comforting him. I didn't.

Sleep came quicker that night, though still uncomfortable, still anxious.

- = -

I slept late, again. I hadn't touched the chicken sandwich I'd gotten from a drive-thru last night. It had awful 4Q stuff on it anyway. I hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours, so I was pretty hungry, but I had no actual desire to eat. I'd deal with it later.

My own panic attack must've seemed similarly unbidden to Phoenix, though I felt it coming about an hour beforehand, and tried to stave it off. We were on I-80, driving through the hypnotizing flatness of Nebraska. Every ten or fifteen minutes I kept seeing this scarlet structure. It was like a giant, bloody caricature of a water tower, a skinny, triangular column maybe ten feet across and at least two hundred feet tall, supporting an enormous squashed sphere more than twice as wide as the column was tall. I'd watch it rise from the horizon, far too big. I'd never seen them before but guessed they must be 4Q. I started thinking we were somehow traveling in a loop, that my sense of direction was faulty and we were passing the same structure in the same field over and over again. Then I started thinking about how crazy that sounded. But I couldn't stop the thought.

I wanted to pull over but I couldn't stop anywhere in view of the structure, because it was watching me. Of course it wasn't, but I couldn't stop the thought that it was. Hell, maybe it was. Maybe only the mad can decode the purpose of I34Q stuff. I felt how hard I was breathing and glanced over at Phoenix, wondering why he hadn't said anything. He was staring down. He was probably disassociating again, I realized later, but at the time all I knew was that I was alone.

I get angry at myself after my attacks. I feel so stupid. Phoenix apologized to me that night, which made me feel even stupider. I couldn't wait to get to the Santitos digger.

- = -

The next day was bad. Quiet, lonely, and frustrated. A further reminder of the reasons. I saw patches of 4Q purple grass climbing up the Rockies. We both took long shifts and entered Redwood park just after midnight.

- = -

I read a story once about a man that was falling in the dark. He was falling so far that he would die instantly when he hit the ground. He realized that his brain wouldn't have time to process the impact, or even the few moments before. And he couldn't see the ground. He couldn't see anything. All that was left in the world was him and his death. I wondered if Phoenix had read the same story, and was hoping for a similar effect, coming here at night. Of course, we got it wrong. There were clouds, burgundy with light pollution, and every few minutes a star would gaze through; an unearthly glow was cast up from distant pieces of the digger.

Some parts of the digger looked like the towers, spinning and shifting. Some parts looked like exposed microelectronics, cables sutured to shiny terminals of minute complexity. Some parts were just made of asphalt blocks, cream-, gray-, and lime-colored pebbles tightly embedded in dark tar. Distant redwoods, many damaged by fire, ringed the horizon. The Santitos digger was less an object and more a place.

I felt wordlessly close to Phoenix as we scrambled over asphalt, looking for a pit. We touched each other frequently in our effort, to assist, to communicate. We'd have to give each other boosts, lift each other up, look for alternate routes. This place was not made for people.

Finally we came upon a deep canyon. I had half a mind to walk off the edge immediately. But both Phoenix and I stopped to regard it.

I couldn't tell if the rumors were true. You could only see maybe a hundred yards down before the walls of the abyss disappeared into ink. Or, not ink--not blackness, either. People are black. This was something else. The most prominent features were the semi-perceivable red blotches left on my optic nerve after gazing at one of the digger's glowing sectors. The unknowable told me nothing. It just revealed the flaws of my being. Maybe we would achieve our effect after all.

"This is it," I said, elliptically. The beginning is the end. If you take out the 'h' that phrase is a palindrome. "That was the first thing I said out of the door before I got into your car on Saturday. If you take out the 'h' the phrase is a palindrome. The beginning is the end. This is elliptical. This is it."

"That ain't it." He was regarding me coolly.

I laughed.

He was angry. "Are you fucking kidding me? The point of this thing, the whole fucking point is you do it in your right mind. You're letting your madness make the decision for you. You have to make the decision!"

I found that extremely funny. I laughed harder.

"Shut up! Fuck!"

"What's a right mind?" I asked, still grinning. "There's no such thing anymore. Even when it was a thing, all it meant was the most socially-acceptable, capital-promoting mind. Now? The world doesn't fit us anymore. The human condition is inconvenient to its purpose. 4Q can't even train us. The right mind is a dead one. You want a right mind, go ahead." I gestured at the abyss. That's what I did.

He stepped forward. He stepped forward. A foot hung above the end.

I don't know what I would've done if he had lowered that foot, changing his balance, tipping him forward. Jumping in after him wouldn't have felt right. Maybe I'd have gone back to those red eyes in Nebraska and begged for them to torture me. Maybe his idiosyncrasies would have been repelled by the unknowable, flowing away from his body and into me, and I'd be lost forever in a derealized paranoia. Maybe I'd have gotten in the car and driven back home.

His foot remained, hanging, the edge a gallows. "Suicide is about pain. It's the ultimate response to ongoing distress. I never wanted you to be normal. I just didn't want you to be in pain. In a twisted way, I guess I thought, if this was your way of dealing with pain, I wasn't going to stop you. That is your right. I feel like that has to be your right." His balance was incredible. He remained still, a tree without wind. "But you can be abnormal, you can be a bad fit for the world, you can be utterly broken, and you can still live without pain." We're both crying. Tears descend into the pit.

| ' , |

I do think madness is the right way to understand I34Q. I feel this mysteriously. I wonder what it would be like if I tried going to T-school while embracing my altered states, living in them. I suspect Phoenix would have more success, being more comfortable with unreality. Not that either of us would participate in whatever hegemony 4Q perpetuates. More that we'd figure out what it wanted, and how to resist. I've been thinking about this a lot. Maybe other people are, too. We need to find each other.

Phoenix and I wandered north. We found this incredible queer community in Oregon, with actual traditions and mechanisms to deal with communal trauma. I can't say anything about the world, the world is unknowable. But I think there's hope for us.

Phoenix and I are together, now, in a way I can't quite name. We did finally make love. That was beautiful. But we don't live together. I make love to other people, sometimes, and he does the same. Sometimes I'll go a week or two without seeing him, without notice. Sometimes I'll go a few days without even thinking about him. I love him, and I tell him that, and he says the same to me, though both of us have admitted that we don't know what that means.

We still panic. I still get paranoid. Phoenix disassociates. He's been using the state to make art. I think about I34Q and write down what I think. I'm pretty good at eating regularly, even if I don't feel like it. I don't know if we're living without pain. I think maybe that's a pretty tall order. But I don't want to kill myself anymore. So I think that's pretty good.

[Ed.: have this little treat. It takes me about the length of this playlist to read the story.]

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5VD5lJJqNUJsITPj3Rg8Sn?si=d262096479104d4f

[cerberus253]

Is there a chance to become Drago's girlfriend, if, for example, you are just a sweet, most ordinary girl? Not a villain or anything like that. Maybe she is a master of extreme sports to get his attention. Or it could be a punk girl from the friends of Ice's team. But if she's just ... in high school? It is very difficult for me to imagine how, under the conditions of the events of the series, Drago can meet a girl, become interested in her, it is enough to know her as a person and fall in love.

Oh so like me?? XD (except that I’m 21 and straight outta a 2-year college)

The main qualities that one primarily needs are patience and understanding. If you have some sort of mental disorder or physical disability, one would also need to, more-or-less, understand and accept thyself as well, for you cannot help someone else without working on yourself first, at least to reasonable degrees. I say this because Drago WILL be a piece of work that WILL wear-and-tear the s/o down often with just how much mental and emotional work that the relationship will take; that’s just what happens with incredibly broken people, sadly. With that being said, one also needs to know when to put their foot down and not be stepped all over. Not only would Drago be personally impressed that you have a backbone, but it is also needed to help him through his problems, knowing how stubborn he is. So, if this “ordinary girl“ has these qualities, including the “sweet[ness]” you’ve stated, a romantic relationship is most likely possible.

With meeting, I want to say the most likely scenario would eventually be through the Ice Crew because, well, they are humans full and through, while Drago isn’t and has no interest in getting to know people on a personal level. I’m not saying the situation of the person going up to Drago directly and initially, saying ‘Hi‘ or the vice versa isn’t possible, it’s just highly unlikely and would only happen under very specific circumstances. Anyway, meeting the Ice Crew first would be the most plausible. How that introduction starts is up to the fanfic writer, but again, it should follow the listed characteristics of the individual that I’ve laid out, not some OOC crap-- but I also have to state you can do what you want! My words are not a Bible to follow; these are just my own thoughts and opinions!

Moving forward, I say “eventually through the Ice Crew“ because you’d have to have at least someone in the whole four group (this includes Drago) to encourage you to hang out with them. It is possible to always be going to the junkyard while no one really cares that you’re there, but that doesn’t feel good, does it? Like, of course Drago would rather not have you around, but include the Crew in that? Yeah, that’d be pretty debilitating to one’s psyche. However, if you want to do the story that way, go ahead; I ain’t stoppin ya. But I also have to add, what else is the individual going to do? Just sit in the background, eating popcorn, watching them like entertainment, like a weirdo? I mean, sure, but that’s not going to get you anywhere. What I’m trying to get here is you need something else to do aside from following Drago around like a mosquito, and the only other activity is either hanging out with the Crew in their off time, or go along a completely different route and just work in the junkyard or something. Ya need another reason to be at the junkyard often than just (trying to) hanging out with Drago because he’s going to use all his power to make you stay away since you’re technically not helping him with his endeavors; so, do a junkyard job, junkyard diving, hanging out with the Crew, or whatever because Drago would have little reason to argue with you at that point. “He could still try and scare you off, though.“ I don’t think he’d want to waste his time with scaring off one measly human, ya know, as long as they’re not THAT annoying. (”Whatcha doin’ whatcha doin’ whatcha doin’ whatcha doin’????” “GrrrRRRR! SHUT! UP!”)

Aaaaaanyway, doing whatever other activity one is doing at the junkyard, and occasionally expressing the desire to interact with Drago, as well as acting upon said desires, would be the better vantage point. So, if Drago tells you to go away and threatens you if you don’t, you can walk away like he requested, but still have a reason to be there in the premise. A lot of times to people your mere presence is enough to make someone happy (or at least keep you on their mind), whether you’re interacting with them or not. “Wouldn’t Drago want you to go far away, like away and out of the junkyard?“ Yeah, probably, but you can argue that you still need to do your primary activity, which doesn’t actually involved Drago to begin with. So, you’ll just step away from HIM, and by staying in the premise, it gives you (and him) and second chance to interact with one another sooner or later.

A lot of this occasional interaction, maybe increasing if Drago seems to tolerate you more and more, you could get on his good side, but be warned he will not admit he likes your presence because originally he really wouldn’t want you here if you have no use to him and his goal. But wait, making him happy IS something useful, right? Yeah, and he, deep down inside, knows it, but will deny it because he isn’t suppose to like humans to begin with. This is the point where Drago will start to become frustrated with his different desires and need, ones for his human half and ones for hi demon half, which I believe I have discussed before. You could also label this as your first Trial and Tribulation(s) with your patience, understanding, and kindness, for he will get more irritable and mean than usual. These events will also take a VERY long time to get through; he needs to be encouraged that it’s okay to be different, but still given a lot of time to digest that hard-to-swallow-pill fact. As a bonus, when these events do begin, you have the Ice Crew to talk to! They may not care about Drago at all, but they do care about you as a friend, so they can tell you what they know AND step in if Drago wants to physically harm you at any time. Befriending the Ice Crew first has many perks and very little downsides ;) At least, the Ice Crew inside my head does...

Gifts like edible treats, badass jackets, and (my favorites) getting decent food and making tents and decent beds for them (so they don’t have to sleep on hard tires and gross-old car seats) would always be great. Like, I personally like to think about making breakfast for them; the Crew would be like “Hell yeah!“ and Drago would be like “... I’m not thanking you, but I am hungry“ and then just sits by himself to eat because fuck you guys, he doesn’t have feelings (b-baka...).

I also want to say do not be afraid to express your enjoyment of Drago. Even when he’s in a sour mood, try not be reluctant to be around him. Yes, there is a good chance something will get physical in the bad way, but the point is you’re trying to show him you genuinely like him and want to help even if it’s not in the way he admittedly wants. It’s okay to be afraid of him, but not letting that fear get the best of you and going up to be nice to him will show him that not everyone hates him for being what he is and his negative aspects. Of course, like I’ve said, don’t let him walk all over you, so you don’t have to be kind ALL THE TIME, but you need to be able to discern when to be passive and when to be aggressive. It’s good to have a lot of the former, because compassion is what he needs, but too much of the later makes him harbor permanent resentment; resentment in general will happen, but it would/should be temporary. Like, ya know when one character says something critical to another, and it pisses that second character off, and they think about it a lot, but then they actually learn from it and that critical statement ends up being helpful to them? Yeah, that’s what I mean by “temporary resentment.“ Permanent resentment would lead to a relationship not too different than the one with his Dad.

A lot of the time you will need to be taking the initiative when doing activities, from talking to Drago all the way to suggesting hanging out outside of just normal junkyard stuff. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I feel like if done right, the payoff will be worth it. Drago will definitely be the territorial and controlling type, but by God will he love you; he would probably aggressively SMOTHER you that you will have no idea if it’s actually obsession or actual love feelings XD That may sound OOC of him, but... I dunno, I feel like he can learn to love and be scary flustered by/with it.

“Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.“ - William Goldman, The Princess Bride

But, like, “Drago’s heart was a buried garden, the ground suffocating the very little life left, and the walls were very high and heavy.“

[thistangledbrain]

Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month

Day 5!

“Special Interests”

Have a quiet Autie in your life? That won’t last long if you tap into their special interest. We can’t shut UP when we find someone who’s genuinely curious about what lights us up.

Every older Autie I know has at least one special interest, sometimes several.

Mine? Dogs. Primarily.

And I mean EVERYTHING dog, but starting with behavior. Then in no particular order, health/genetics, various breeds and their traits, training....literally everything. Even the genes that define coat color & pattern, and what physical genetics are tied to behavior (if you’re curious about that, start with the Russian studies about domesticated foxes and what happened to their red coats, the more tame they became). It was horses when I was younger, but I soon moved to dogs when getting into my late teens (more affordable and accessible I guess lol). And if I don’t know the answer to your questions, we find out together, because I *need* to know, too. 😉 I can talk dogs with you literally all day and never get bored...which helps socially, too (I’ve mentioned that most of my closest friends are dog people) - I have a larger network of friends than most other auties I know, and it’s because of a shared passion for all things dog. 
Then there’s the sciences, but particularly quantum & theoretical physics. I. Fucking. Love. Physics. LOVE IT. Unfortunately, my brain hits a wall with more advanced mathematics, so I can’t “do” physics on the level I want to. Luckily for me, my oldest son is also pretty obsessed with it, and he is now pursuing a degree in physics....so when he comes home, we sit down with his notes and he breaks it down for me (the language behind the experiment or action). I have pictures of his notes saved on my phone, for simply the silly reason that I like the patterns of the math (it’s the “universal language”, if you didn’t know), and like to daydream about understanding it. (He struggles with the math as well...we are both HEAVILY right brained...but he manages.) If there’s a documentary out there about physics (plus many lectures), I’ve probably seen it multiple times. Idk why quantum physics in particular interests me...maybe because it’s almost like magic. ☺️ Quantum entanglement fascinates me, and the theory that things aren’t what they are unless/until you observe them...I can get stuck absolutely obsessing over these things.

Nature/animals are the big background special interest that the specifics tie into, though (and this ranges from astrophysics to the life cycle and structure of an ant colony - and even human psychology). Concerning observable animal/plant nature though (and this is a big one for me), Sir David Attenborough is my hero lol- no one else answers the questions I have, and opens up the natural world for me, like that dude. It was Mutual of Omaha’s nature shows when I was a kid, now it’s him. Sorry not sorry, but a doc on the secret life of plants is *fucking riveting* to me. Science is my JAM! 😆 I am happy to recommend any docs to any other fellow science nerds (Through the Wormhole, The Elegant Universe, and Cosmos are all MUST SEE - if you’re a nature nerd, of course Blue Planet, Our Planet, Life...gosh. So many great series). When I get on a science kick, I get the same feelings I get when I’ve tapped into a difficult dog’s psyche, and we start to figure things out. It’s an absolute thrilling obsession, and I am very restless until all my “why/how” is answered. It’s never enough - I never know enough, and I never will.

It’s also an area where my perpetual 2-3 year old is consistently mostly satisfied. I mean that’s the whole scientific community in a nutshell LOL! “WHY?” “HOW?!” When I was a kid, I’d have to write down all my questions that weren’t answered by our Encyclopedias, and wait till the weekly library trip to find the answers I sought. Now, I have a smartphone and Google LOL....and I cannot even begin to describe how consciously thankful I am for that quick access to answers!! Questions will *eat me alive* sometimes, so answering them in a timely fashion is sooooo satisfying 😆

I guess I’m a bit of an artist/creative personality. I’m unhappy when I don’t have space to create....but that space is pretty damn large, because I’m into almost all of it (you can’t exactly fit a miter and bandsaw into your apartment studio, so I’m very grateful I have the space for the power tools LOL...)

From building things to fabric crafts, I love it all. I get way burned out if one of those things become a “job”, though (ehh except being paid as a regular employee of a historic renovation construction firm LOL) - something I HAVE to do. Then it’s not enjoyable anymore. I had started down a path of marketable creations, and they were in high demand...but then it became something I HAD to do for money, instead of wanting to do for enjoyment - and I haven’t touched that particular craft in 8 years or more now (which frustrates people, because I was good at it). 🤷🏻‍♀️ That’s one of those things I really can’t help. My oldest son seems to be sort of similar....he’s commissioned several pieces (and secured his first few at a VERY young age), but he also tends to get a little frustrated when he’s expected to create something, instead of the urge naturally striking him. The whole beauty and satisfaction from art - for me anyway - stems from pure imagination without constraints. When you’re doing something to please someone, it ceases being art, and turns into just...a skilled task you completed. That’s how I look at it, anyway. So even though I could actually make my art into a career (at least supplementary income), it ceases to be enjoyable for me *at all*, unless I’m creating something for someone who means a lot to me. That, and I really just prefer to give my stuff as gifts. It makes me feel good to see people light up with joy over what I’ve made for them, whatever it was. (I also do a shitload of remote training with people and their dogs, for free. I point folks towards the trainers I respect if they need extensive in person work, but lots of folks don’t have several hundred bucks to sink into understanding their dogs better...so...I just help where I can, now. I think it *used to* frustrate my husband, but he absolutely understands now & is cool with it.)

Oh. And rocks and minerals. I’m an obsessive rockhound LOL - and a cousin is a geologist, so he can break down how and why each is so unique, how it formed & why, etc. I’m actually currently converting a large yard sale antique wardrobe into a piece that can showcase Sir Tommy on one side, and my extensive rock and mineral collection on the other (waaaay not extensive enough, but you might be surprised how expensive quality specimens are. Take moldavite for example...fascinating thing...little chip of it about the size of your pinky nail will run you $20 +, because it’s rare. And yes I am fascinated by the metaphysical value attached to these minerals, and why that’s even a thing.) The way minerals form - let’s cite Aragonite as an example - just captivates me.

So I guess those are my main special interests! If you have a *young* Autie in your life, try to expose them to various things. To find a “special interest” is to find a way to ground ourselves. Special interests are a bit different than...well, I’m not sure what words work for stim interests that you can escape into for NT’s, but it’s less of an interest, and more of an obsession for us. It consumes us.

So anyway, EVERY Autie has a special interest. It could be science, it could be gaming (that’s a big one with lots of males, and not a small one for Autie women either, because it’s an escape you actually have to engage your brain in) or computers; it could be mathematics or art. It could be animals and nature. But eventually (for those of you with wee Auties), Your Pet Autie ™️ will find something that they absolutely obsess over & gets them excited to share their knowledge or creations with you. I encourage parents of auties to help them explore the world and find their niche. It helps us navigate your world, and find a way to be at home in it. It also gives us something to fixate on other than our bumbling attempts at fitting in to a world not built for us.

Circling back - if you know an autistic in your life that you want an “in” to get to know, start with their special interest. (Of course we recognize when you’re doing it just for the merits, versus when you actually want to learn something from us, but we appreciate both, really. It gives us a chance to ...idk. Feel important, maybe. At least that’s what it is to me, and my boys. We love to feel needed for our knowledge!)

Special interests are truly your “in” to an Autie, regardless of what their subject is.

So that’s MY take on the special interests. What lights your beloved Autie up?

[chillyravenart]

Do you think the fandom's reaction to characters like Jaime and Sandor are less harsh than they are to Tyrion? I feel like as a Tyrion fan (who doesn't excuse how much of a piece of shit he is) people don't want to be nuanced when it comes to his character as much as they are with Jaime and Sandor who are marginally better but still bad.

This is actually a really great question and a good point, and I think you're right in many regards anon.

First off, I love Tyrion as a character too and his PoVs are some of my absolute favourites. The first time I ever read the series, he was genuinely one of my favourite characters. During my current reread I've come to appreciate his narrative even more! I know he's highly problematic and some of his actions shock me - BUT I will continue to enjoy his storyline, because I am a reader first and foremost. We know he can also be very emotive and human as well as clever and capable, so his narrative is highly absorbing.

I don't bother with reading much of the character-based discourse anymore because I'm comfortable with my own opinions and views, but I'm sure there's plenty out there if you were to look... ( *whispers* don't do it).

We also get Tyrion's PoVs before any of his siblings and get an earlier insight into his character. When we are introduced to Jaime, he's the arrogant kingslayer who is an incestuous relationship with his sister and our views of him might not be initially positive. It takes his actions, his newfound honour and relationship with Brienne as well as his own inner thoughts to truly get the measure of him. He still has flaws but we learn to empathise more. Similarly, the Hound is introduced as the callous bodyguard to the odious Joffrey, and we see him cut down an innocent young boy which again, taints our image of him. However, his gentleness towards Sansa, his derision for the status quo, his tortured psyche and interactions with Arya show us a different side to him as well. Do each other these characters become absolved of their actions? Absolutely not, but what would be the point of reading the books if we weren't meant to reassess and move on with the narrative? Flawed characters don't have to be rationalised, negative traits aren't meant to be brought before a judge, they meant to be acknowledged and understood. Screw the morality police, root for whomsoever you please.

I personally think people tend to be more nuanced about Jaime and Sandor because the ability to romanticise them is greater. I don't see this fandom romanticising Tyrion at all, and characters like Jaime who are lovable rogues on the road to redemption and Sandor who is gruff and crude on the outside but vulnerable within, tend to be easier to mentally empathise with. I also noticed that this fandom tends to be a lot more forgiving about their love interests as well, compared to many others -including Tyrion. I personally don't have an issue with that, but I do feel your frustration when one character gets more shit for something that others on the same page don't. In some of the critiques I have seen about Tyrion, people write him off as a disgusting character completely. If we were to look at it, he has also suffered from abuses and prejudices and childhood trauma as well. But he has his vulnerabilities and good points too. This "weighing of morality" can get very tiresome imo and I'm just no longer here for that.

The vast majority of characters in the series are grey and problematic, and if I'm totally honest it's all about how people subjectively choose to interpret them. We can all be nuanced or critical about one character over another and that's just how most of us absorb literary fiction. Ever since I started my reread, I've tried not to get involved in too much discourse and try to enjoy the stories how I initially did. I find that it makes reading the series a lot more entertaining and freeing! Tumblr has a extremely toxic habit of turning everything into an analytical dissertation, when most of us aren't here for that. We just want our escapism, and I think we should all be free to enjoy whichever aspects of the series we want to. Being sanctimonious or self-righteous about one problematic aspect whilst completely glossing over the other is intensely hypocritical to me, and it's something I've always found entirely redundant. Live and let live.

I will finish this answer by saying that we should all continue to enjoy and uplift our favourite characters, regardless of them being good or bad or grey, if it makes us happy. It's fiction, it shouldn't be that deep, and ultimately many of us are able to process our own emotions or traumas via these characters in a safe and controlled manner.

If you like Tyrion, keep liking Tyrion and don't let people put you off your escapism👍🏻