#no but the way i just internally screamed because i absolutely relate to this and i didn't even know before i saw this | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ohmyeyesmyeyes · 2 years ago

Text

fix of you

jack hughes x f!reader

warnings: swearing (c-word), mentions and descriptions of drugs and alcohol usage (class b), effects of weed, reader is kind of a relatable asshole at moments? (you can make your own conclusions), brief joke of alcoholism as an attempt at easing tension, mentions of cheating and subsequent emotional damage, mentions of casual relationships, toxic relationships/exes, internal dialogue, fluff and reassurance

psa: i'm gonna be honest, i don't remember writing most of this

word count: like 8.4k??

Rudy was so far gone – so pissed up his own arse – that he misjudged your horror for excitement. How he’d managed to do that was completely beyond you, because immediately after clamping your eyes on him, you’d frozen entirely, before ducking out of potential eyeline before he could see you.

He being…someone complicated – Lewis. Even the mere sight of him left a sour taste in your mouth.

Rudy, bless his pure soul, had turned to you, an eyebrow somehow raised despite his deeply intoxicated state of mind, and pouted.

“What?” You asked, awkwardly looking towards the bar to avoid being under his scrutiny.

“What was that? You looked at Lewis and just fuckin’, I don’t know, dipped.” Rudy slurred, spinning in his chair clumsily and looking straight at Lewis, who – thank fuck – was talking to the person next to him and seemingly oblivious to Rudy’s obviousness.

You knew the two of them were friends, and somehow through the madness and spontaneity of the text Rudy had sent out to everyone in his contacts, that fact had escaped your mind entirely, and that only seemed to increase your drive for another drink and the need to get yourself the hell out of there. You’d been contemplating ditching for a while anyway – the ‘party’ was beginning to die a little, but the only reason you’d stayed was because Rudy was way too high to even be trusted to get home safely. Naturally, that responsibility had fallen onto your shoulders.

You shrugged, “Nothing. I just don’t like the guy.”

He spun back around, patting the bar, and only seconds later – seemingly pulled out of thin air – a shot glass with amber sloshing liquid slid across the surface. You didn’t bother attempting to snatch it out of his hand, knowing it’d only irritate him.

“How come?”

You swung your head towards him, incredulous. He knew perfectly well why. He was the only one who did.

“Because the two months we were in an established, exclusive relationship he was sleeping with someone else when he was ‘working’.” You snatched the next shot that slid down the bar and nabbed it for yourself, barely flinching when the burn soothed your throat, “Is this tequila?” You asked, eyes wide.

“Yes, it’s tequila. And I remember now, he was kind of a dick to you.” Rudy shrugged, wobbling on the stool.

You felt your irritation flare for a second, watching him laugh and smile to himself and play off how absolutely awfully Lewis had treated you, like it was nothing. You gave him the benefit of the doubt considering he was all kinds of pissed, but you couldn’t help the defence mechanisms kicking in as you picked apart what he’d just casually said.

“Kind of? Kind of a dick?” You echoed, rolling your eyes as Rudy froze, recognising the poorly hidden frustration in your voice. You’d also had a lot to drink, but it clearly wasn’t enough considering you seemed to latch on to the smallest details.

To save your own sanity, you put up your hands in surrender, and Rudy watched, mildly impressed at your restraint, as you left the bar entirely and made your way outside.

You were done with pretty much everything inside that building; Rudy, and most of all, Lewis. The guy got your blood boiling unlike you’d ever felt, and the more you thought about it, the more you wanted to yell and scream until your throat was raw and bleeding and your voice was hoarse because you had to let all this unsanctioned anger out somehow. It was crushing you inside and out, and it was weird – you were confused by it. You and Lewis had only dated for two months, and it wasn’t even that serious.

You figured if you’d paid a little more attention to him during your relationship, you’d have been able to put the pieces together a little quicker, but the guy was intelligent. Cunning, sly, slimy. There weren’t enough insulting adjectives to describe the chilling way he managed to get under your skin.

It made you want to get into a shower and scrub your skin – knowing you’d willingly let him touch you.

It had ended four months ago, but the lasting impact he’d had on you was somewhat unexpected—

“Oh, hey.” A voice shook you out from inside your own head, and you looked up, moving out of the way from the door.

There were two of them, crowded around a cigarette, and they had an element of vague familiarity about them. The girl was the one who’d spoken, and when you turned to look at her, feeling a little caught under her gaze, she smiled.

“Hey.” You replied, slowly stepping towards them.

She picked a tin from her pocket and flicked the lid open.

Oh, now you know where you recognised her from. She supplies Rudy, and you were pretty sure you’d bought from her before; nothing serious, never anything serious – which was probably why she was only offering you a blunt.

You hesitated, stuffing your hands in your pockets. Realistically, if you smoked one right now, you knew the chances of Rudy getting home safely would be significantly lower, but that jumpy, itchy feeling nestling its way under your skin was almost overwhelming. It felt like being in a supermarket, faced with a wall of the same bag of crisps, and you could hear people talking and walking, the label on your jumper was scratching the back of your neck, your head felt funny and your shoes were too tight.

Yeah, it kind of felt like a sensory overload.

And you also knew – without a fucking doubt – that a joint would take all of that away. The sound of the music filtering through the front door would melt to a soft tune in the back of your mind, the tightness in your chest would ease up, and you sure as hell wouldn’t give a shit about Lewis.

The woman seemed to sense your internal dilemma, and before you could answer, the tin lid snapped shut.

You smiled apologetically, “Yeah, I probably shouldn’t.”

She shrugged, still smiling politely as she tucked it back into her jacket pocket, accepting her own blunt from her company, “Hey, it’s no problem, you just looked like you could use one.”

“Honestly, I did, but…not tonight.”

And before you could even so much as breathe, the door to The Championship was slamming open and out walks…a girl? Making a direct beeline for you, it would seem.

She was wearing faded jeans with a simple green crewneck, as though she hadn’t expected to make an appearance tonight, and her flaming red hair was resting against her collarbones – cut in sharp layers. She looked elegant, and a little classy, and undoubtedly pretty, but for the life of you, you could not place her.

But the way she was smiling at you – controlled and easy (not drunk?) – you’d have thought you’d known each other for years.

“Hey, you must be Y/N.” She started, stopping in front of you and crossing her arms.

You nodded, a little confused, “I’m sorry, do I know you?” You asked, curious. She’d come from inside the bar, so she’d obviously been invited to tag along to Rudy’s party, but even then you were sure you’d not seen her inside. You’d remember hair as red as that anywhere – it was breathtaking.

She laughed a little awkwardly, her eyes flicking back to the window momentarily “Not yet–”

Shit, did that sound menacing.

“My name’s Marnie,” you felt the penny drop, and the smile on your face melted a little, “I’m Lewis’s girlfriend.”

The silence was unbearable, but the one thing you could think of at that moment was holy fuck you should have accepted that joint. You wanted to laugh, you felt the bubbles of amusement begin to rise, but they popped before they could escape, dissipating somewhere along the lines of–

Marnie, what a fucking bitch.

So this was the girl Lewis had been sleeping with all throughout your relationship?

Now, you were a feminist, you really were. But you kind of drew the line about here. You were well aware that she knew you were in a relationship with Lewis, and she was well aware you knew that, if the cautious smile on her face was anything to go by – and something about her having the audacity to approach you and introduce herself even despite that knowledge deeply unsettled you.

Deeply.

It looked like she was expecting some kind of blown up reaction on your end, because her eye was twitching fractionally – she’d put herself that close you could see it – and the smile on her face was clearly slipping with every second you refused to give her the satisfaction of reacting to that little piece of information.

So you smiled, heart hammering with something. Adrenaline? Dread? At this point the lines had blurred to the point of disfiguration.

“Well, it’s always nice putting a face to the name.” You said stiffly, sarcastically.

You weren’t doing much to hide your distaste for the entire situation. Why bother? They’d already done the damage, what was the worst you could do?

She ignored it, though, and the smile on her face grew – as though she genuinely thought you were cooperating with her, “I was thinking–”

Dear God, please don’t let this be–

“That because your friends with Rudy and Rudy’s friends with Lewis, that we’re probably going to be spending some time around each other, right?”

Fuck.

You nodded reluctantly, already sensing where this car crash of a night was going to head.

“Would you want to have a few drinks…you know, until this awkwardness is resolved?” She asked.

Why, why, why, why? Why would she even think that was a good idea?

“I’ll pay.” She added, clearly as an afterthought to try to convince you.

For emotional damage? You laughed internally.

“Because I’m an alcoholic?” You joked lamely, resisting the urge to roll your eyes and wince at your own devastating sense of humour at wildly inappropriate times. It was dark and not actually true, but you knew what Lewis had thought of you when you were together. He was always muttering something about your bad habits – and so what if you enjoyed a singular glass of red wine in the bath every now and then? – and you could tell from the taken aback and slightly flushed look that Marnie had suddenly sported, that he’d influenced some of his own opinions onto her.

“No, no.” She stuttered, shaking her head, “I just want to do this…for Rudy.”

Godfuckingdammit.

Either she was a good reader of people, or she was just lucky, because there was no one in the entire world who could possibly persuade you to do this, apart from maybe Rudy. He was your soft spot, and right now, you hated that soft spot possibly more than Lewis and his stupid face.

You shut your eyes, hands waving with a mind of their own, “Sure.”

You regretted it instantly, even more so when Marnie grinned.

“That’s great—”

“I just need to make a phone call, and I’ll be right there.” You interrupted, automatically sliding your phone out of your pocket, not waiting for her to answer before you stepped away, taking a seat on the edge of the pavement. It was a quiet night, barely any cars on the road, and if someone saw you talking on the phone, you knew the likelihood of being approached would be slim to none.

Besides, if someone happened to come up behind you, you had—

Oh. They’d gone.

You sighed, noticing you were now alone, and stood up. There was no way you would willingly sit with your back facing the sidewalk in the dark without someone watching you. So you leant against the window of the bar, thumb hovering over a contact, that, even at reading, made something flutter in your chest.

Nerves, anticipation, the whole lot. You were smiling before you’d even clicked the call button.

He picked up on the fourth ring, and you found yourself smiling bashfully at the floor even before you heard his voice.

If three-month-ago-you saw yourself now, she’d be mortified.

“Hey.” You started, foot kicking at a broken piece of glass.

“Hey.” You could tell he was smiling just from the tone of his voice – it was painfully distinguishable.

“What are you doing right now?” You asked, praying with everything in you that he’d be free. You knew he had training today – it had finished at around four, so technically he’d had time to sleep off the exhaustion, and he had tomorrow off…so, in theory, he should be free.

But given the hectic schedule he seemed to live by, you would be in no way offended if he decided to turn you down right now. You’d turn you down if you were being honest.

There was some rustling, and you deduced he must have pushed himself from a sofa or bed, “Absolutely fucking nothing. Please take me out of my misery.” He breathed a laugh to disguise his plea, and the sound of it sent chills through your body, a certain giddiness igniting in you knowing he’d pretty much show up for you right now, even if it was to watch some crappy movie in your apartment. Unfortunately for him, the reality was a lot less exciting.

Before you could interject and ask him, however, he was talking again, “Is that music?”

You turned your head, looking straight into the bar. You hadn’t exactly realised how loud the music was, but when you spotted Rudy messing around near the jukebox and speakers, that issue kind of answered itself, “Yeah, I’m at The Championship bar, you know the one that’s like a five minute walk from yours?”

There was a beat of silence, “Oh, the one on the corner by the deli? Yeah, I know that one.”

It only occurred to you then, due to Jack’s awkward answer – an open statement left half-hanging, that you hadn’t actually asked him to meet you there, or even given any indication you wanted to see him.

You barely wasted a second before the invitation had toppled from your lips, “I was wondering if you wanted to come by? Rudy’s decided to throw a party and it’s honestly torture.” You hesitated, expecting him to fill the silence, but when he didn’t interject with anything, you continued, heart pounding with the anticipation of what you were about to admit, “And we haven't seen each other in a while so I’m kind of missing my fix of you lately.” You completed it with an awkward laugh, hoping the statement sounded less casual than what you truly meant.

That was what you and Jack were, amongst other things: casual. Or, you thought you were. It had started as an awkward blind date but he ended up staying the night and after a minor misjudgement on your behalf, he’d ended up at the door of your apartment building, a bag of Indian food in hand and an apology because he’d ditched you in the morning even after the promise of breakfast. And against your better judgement, you guys had been…friends (with a question mark) since then.

Nothing else had happened, but you seemed to have a sort of unspoken relationship. One that meant you’d be smiling at your phone at inappropriate times.

So, naturally, you were kind of curious as to what his reaction would be.

“I’m missing you, too.” He paused, and you felt a twinge of relief flood your system, almost overriding the buzz of alcohol you’d consumed earlier. Jack tended to have that effect, whether you liked it or not. “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

“But it takes five at a minimum?” You smiled again, eyes glancing to the direction you knew he’d be coming from, even though darkness shrouded the path and realistically he wouldn’t appear in that moment.

“Then I’ll run. You sound like you need saving.” He laughed, and you could distantly hear the slam of his door shut over the phone, his keys in the lock.

You rolled your eyes, “Don’t wear yourself out.”

“Not possible. I have incredible stamina.”

The insinuation was bold, but it dissipated some of the tension in your shoulders. The relief you felt purely based on the reassurance that it wouldn’t take him long to reach you felt wrong in a sense; that you relied on his presence to alleviate some of the stress from the awkward situation both yourself and Rudy had placed you in.

It felt careless.

“Yeah, your hockey skills really prove that. I’ll be waiting inside…trying to have fun until you get here.”

��Only as long as you pretend to have fun when I actually get there.”

“No need to pretend.”

You heard him breathe a laugh, “I’ll see you soon.”

“Bye.”

You hung up, steeling yourself as you walked back through the door, feigning a smile when Lewis lifted a hand up from where he and Marnie had claimed a booth. You went straight to the bar, knocking into Rudy from where he was sitting back on a stool.

“Where the hell did you go?” He asked, dramatically looking at your shoes and then moving back up to your face, eyes wobbling and cheeks flushed.

“Outside.” You answered, grabbing two bottles of beer from the ice bucket. You weren’t entirely sure if Jack would want a drink when he got here, but seeing as Rudy had somehow booked an ‘all expenses paid for’ event, you figured there was no harm done.

“Why–” Rudy stopped talking, blinking dumbly as it clicked that you’d taken two bottles, “Why two?” He pointed lazily, before collapsing on top of his hands against the counter surface.

“Because Jack’s coming.” You stated simply.

“As in the Jack who I haven’t met yet?”

“The very one.”

“Ooh.” He let out a slack giggle, and you shook your head, smiling a little at his antics. You felt yourself colour at his eyebrow wiggle, a flicker of pride touching your heart at the mere notion of finally sharing the brilliance of Jack with your friend – singular because Rudy was a part of a different sphere to who you usually spend your time with.

Rudy probably wouldn’t even remember meeting him this time around anyway.

So you patted him on the back and slid across the booth so you were sitting directly across from Lewis.

He’d had a haircut since the last time you’d seen him, and there were wisps of facial hair tickling his cheeks. He looked weird, worn and a little on edge. And the sight of him sent an alarm blaring through your mind, red flags metaphorically swimming in your line of vision.

A well of words flew through your mind: disgusting, cheater, dick, bastard, liar, sociopath, fucking bitch.

He didn’t inspire much positivity. At all. It had you questioning why the fuck you even agreed to Marnie’s request in the first place, because you didn’t even have to be here. You didn’t have to put yourself through this undoubtedly horrific conversation for the sake of fucking Rudy – who was practically passed out and unaware to everything that was currently going on around him.

No one said anything until the tension was seemingly too much for Lewis to take, because he nodded to the second bottle of beer you’d placed on the table next to your spot, “Are you waiting for someo–”

You vaguely heard the door shut, and in another world – if Marnie hadn't frozen in her place with her own drink midway to her mouth, jaw falling slack as her eyes followed something across the room – you wouldn’t have thought anything of it.

“That’s Jack Hughes.” She gaped, and your heart stuttered in your chest.

Lewis’s words were lost on everyone, and all three of your heads turned around just in time to see Jack pause by the door, seemingly taken aback by the small crowd of people blocking his view from everyone seated in booths. Because your back was to him, you spun around in the booth, pulling yourself up onto your knees so you could peer over the top of the wooden brackets, waving a hand to catch his attention.

There were a few brief seconds where his eyes were stuck on Rudy, and without even realising it, you caught yourself checking him out, assessing him from head to toe, right from his trainers to the Yankees cap pulled over his eyes. You were pretty impressed Marnie had recognised him so instantly, especially considering Jack had clearly dressed for subtlety.

He’d gone for a pair of jeans, the legs baggy, and a navy V-neck jumper, a white shirt peeking out from underneath. You weren’t a fashion expert by any means, but somehow that washed out denim Yankees hat topped it all off, and he looked good. His hair was a little shorter than the last time you’d seen him, but it still poked out from underneath his hat in waves. Even from where you were admiring him, you could tell he’d shaved recently.

Shit, he looked insanely good. To the point where you didn’t know if you’d be able to stand not touching him tonight.

Your hand had frozen in place, elbow resting against the wooden platform, and it was only when he’d caught you over the crowd of heads that you realised exactly how you’d reacted to him. He smiled, wasting no time in dodging past several people as he made his way over to your booth.

You slid down, waiting for him to join you, cheeks burning and fighting the intensely strong urge to grin as you took a sip of beer to avoid the questioning gaze from Lewis. You figured he was confused; ice hockey had never really been his thing.

Honestly, it hadn’t been your thing until you met Jack, but…here you were.

You found yourself running a hand through your hair, suddenly aware you hadn’t looked in a mirror in the last few hours, and before he’d even sat down and before he was even within a four foot radius, you already knew you were going to have way more fun with Jack in the same room.

By the time he’d appeared at the end of the booth, that gorgeous smile on his face – cheeks a little red (you assumed he kept his promise and ran over, considering it had barely been five minutes, and his cheeks were tinged from exhaustion) – your eyes were shining with excitement. You felt like a little kid – you guys hadn’t seen each other in a couple of weeks because he’d been on a roadie, but you never would have guessed you’d be so giddy to see him again.

“Hey.” He greeted, and it was as though you’d been overtaken by some sort of tunnel vision, because you missed the look shared between Lewis and Marnie – all because Jack wasn’t paying them a single shred of attention. His eyes were boring into yours, and that smile you’d been hiding broke free as you reached for him, pulling him into the booth next to you.

“Hey,” you replied, before suddenly remembering the pair sitting opposite, and you turned back to them, unable to help yourself from looking back at Jack, as though you couldn't quite get enough of him. You caught a waft of his aftershave when he sat down…as if he couldn’t get any more irresistible, “Jack, this is Marnie and Lewis; Marnie, Lewis,” you gestured lazily to the man next to you, “Jack.”

You felt Jack pull his attention away from you to politely greet the couple sitting next to each other; Marnie was the picture of awe, her eyes were wide and she was drinking Jack up, not quite able to believe he was sitting across from her. You didn’t have her down for being an ice hockey fan, but you kind of loved how uncomfortable Lewis was at the attention she was paying Jack and not him.

He was jealous, for sure. His jaw was ticking and you could vaguely see him sizing Jack up across the table, a misty curiosity lingering in the depths of his eyes as to just why his girlfriend knew who this guy was when he clearly had no fucking clue.

“Nice to meet you guys.” Jack smiled, casually draping an arm over the back of your bench, his hand gently touching your far shoulder.

In return, you discreetly shuffled a little closer on the bench – though the task in itself seemed almost nearly impossible considering how easily he’d slotted himself in next to you, his hip pressed to yours and the lengths of your things touching – and crossed one leg, resting your knee on his thigh.

It was casual, not altogether touchy, but you could sense the scrutiny from across the table.

“How did you two meet?” It was Marnie that jumped in first, eyes completely fixed on Jack and not paying any other soul a single shred of attention. It was a little amusing, but at the same time – you were kind of…off?

You couldn’t place the sudden ugly, bitter taste in your mouth, but it made you want to grab Jack’s hand and leave immediately. But you guys weren’t anything established or exclusive, so that kind of felt misplaced.

Then you immediately felt guilty because you’d dragged Jack out of his house only to place him into the questioning hands of a woman you barely trusted, let alone knew. The last thing you wanted was for him to feel like he was cornered.

“Through a mutual friend.” You answered, shrinking in on yourself.

You felt Jack pass an inquisitive glance over you, but you refused to look at him.

“Oh.” Marnie was disappointed with the lack of detail, you could tell.

Lewis cleared his throat, sitting a little straighter as everyone's attention returned to him, “What do you do, Jack?”

It felt an awful lot like an interrogation.

It was clearly the wrong thing to say in front of Marnie, because her eyes narrowed and her cheeks flared a little in embarrassment. She must have clipped Lewis under the table, because you saw him flinch as though he’d been poked.

“I play hockey.” He answered, a little awkwardly. You could tell he was trying to hold back, maintain his modesty for the sake of not making Lewis feel a little silly; you guessed he was also holding back because he knew Marnie had recognised him.

“Oh,” Lewis began, furrowing his brows, “So that’s a full time thing? Like in the big leagues?”

Marnie paled, her eyes slipping towards the ceiling. You half expected her to facepalm at the comedic faces she was making, but she bit her lip, taking a drink.

You felt Jack’s ribs squeeze at your side. He was trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, I play in the NHL.”

Lewis swallowed, realisation settling in as he nodded, “Shit, so you’re good, then?”

Jack shrugged, ever humble, “I’m alright.”

For some reason, through a short burst of enthusiasm, you felt compelled to contribute, “He’s amazing,” you told Lewis, nodding and fighting a proud smile. Even saying Jack was amazing still felt like an under-exaggeration. You turned to look at him, allowing the smile to take over a little, “You’re amazing.”

His cheeks flushed and he suppressed a smile, twisting his hat around so it faced backwards on his head. You found yourself preferring it that way; you could see more of his face. The tired shadows under his eyes and the smile lines creased into his skin like a tattoo.

“Thanks.”

You took a deep breath, pulling yourself away from his magnetic composure, “So, how have you guys been?”

Lewis let out a breath, looking to Marnie for assurance. She, on the other hand, sat up straighter, determined to take some control over the slipping situation. It was painfully clear to her that neither you or Jack were particularly interested in maintaining a real conversation with either her or Lewis – you were much too taken with each other – and neither of you were exactly trying to hide that fact.

In fact, to Marnie, she felt as though she was intruding in on something private.

“We’ve been good, I just got promoted.” She said awkwardly, met with silence and mildly impressed looks – not really caring.

She briefly wondered if Jack knew what had gone down between the three people he was sharing a table with.

He didn’t.

He was just too enamoured with you.

“What exactly is it you do?” You asked, now finding the humour in asking questions. It might have appeared mean, but it was the only way you could actually cope talking to them. Answering questions and so obviously pretending you were interested was entertaining.

Passive-aggressive and petty, sure, but this was what Marnie had asked for.

She swallowed a mouthful of her drink, vaguely surprised at being questioned, “I work in a school – I just got promoted to head of department.” She noticed your confused expression, her eyes flickering to where Jack had replaced his arm along the back of the booth, this time twirling your hair in his hand absentmindedly. He was looking at her, at least acknowledging the conversation – much unlike Lewis, who’d turned on his phone and was scrolling through Twitter. “History. Head of the History Department in a High School.” She elaborated.

“Well done.” You cringed inwardly, knowing your effort of a congratulations was hilariously lacking in authenticity.

It seemed the awkward and noticeable tension had finally gotten to Jack – who’d never really been able to sit still and comfortably in such situations – who straightened, eyes zipping between everyone as if only just realising the unfortunate dynamic between everyone but him. He looked to Lewis, who – the coward – was purposefully avoiding eye contact with everyone; to Marnie, who’s hand was rubbing against her thigh, her eyes wide with traces of panic but managing it with a tight smile that was too wide to possibly be natural.

Then he looked at you. You were drawing shapes on the leg of your pants, the knee not resting on him diddling up and down under the table. You only did that when you were nervous or caught off guard by something.

Your eyes kept worriedly darting between Marnie and the back door exit – looking rather like you wanted to be anywhere else but here.

He hoped you still wanted to be with him wherever your desired place was, but he recognised that internal need to just get the fuck out.

If he was being honest, he’d never seen anyone look so damn uncomfortable by the people they’d chosen to spend time with, and he doubted you’d spend time with people that inspired that level of unease willingly.

Or maybe you would? He didn’t know you that well to know it for certain, but he knew you well enough to say with some certainty that there was something he was missing.

If anything, it seemed like the odd couple seated opposite him were a little sheepish or guilty about something, and the only way he knew he could get an answer immediately was if he just…went for it.

Asked.

“So how exactly do you guys know each other?” He asked, gently and cautiously probing at the silence.

In his defence, he wouldn’t have had to ask if he’d have been briefed prior to arriving and clearly disrupting the middle of something. There was history there, definitely.

What he wasn’t expecting was a dark laugh to escape you and for Lewis and Marnie to look like a pair of deer caught in the headlights. You leant forwards and rested your elbows on the table, twisting your body to face him, looking almost pleased with yourself.

“Yeah, how do we know each other?” You directed the question to the others, your levels of amusement boosted incredibly.

Marnie looked almost ashamed, and Lewis…Lewis looked like a pickled dick with sunburn.

Neither one of them said anything and you practically felt Jack’s confusion triple in the silence. Honestly, you were kind of hoping they’d answer for you.

It’d save you some embarrassment – misplaced embarrassment, of course – but ultimately your frustration won you over.

They had a right to look so ashamed of themselves.

“Lewis and I dated for a couple of months.” You admitted, watching Jack’s reaction carefully.

His eyes seemed to narrow – incredibly fractionally, and you knew that slight change would have been lost on Marnie and Lewis – and his gaze flicked from you to Lewis, almost assessing him. He kept his gaze on him for a while, before a low, almost disbelieving, “Really?” Was heard.

Lewis blushed, clearing his throat, “Yeah.”

Jack slid his eyes back over to you, arching an eyebrow. You couldn’t quite grasp what he was thinking, and it sent your heart into a frenzy even thinking about what else you were going to tell him – you couldn’t not. Not if you wanted him like you did.

“And you…” Jack was talking to Marnie, you realised.

The woman in question stuttered at the attention, “I’m his girlfriend.”

Jack could tell something wasn’t being said – the tension and the scraping of the surface of the story didn’t quite add up. Too much tension for a simple ‘we used to date’ admission.

There was an awful silence. It truly was awful. You’d rather have listened to nails being dragged down a chalkboard than listen to that heavy silence of unsaid things.

You felt Jack’s hand flop on top of your leg that was resting across his, and you looked at him. His brows were furrowed and he subtly gestured between Marnie and Lewis, a question written clearly in his face.

At this, you bit your lip momentarily, stealing yourself for what you were about to do. You took a swig of your drink, moving to face the couple.

“Look, I don’t think this is a good idea. I shouldn’t have agreed to sit here and have drinks with you because it’s not healthy. So I’m gonna head out.” You shrugged your coat on your shoulders, accepting nods of agreement, and Jack slid out of the booth, hands in his pockets as he awkwardly waited for you. “But you both deserve each other, really.”

It was a clear jab, but considering all the things you really wanted to say, it was incredibly tame. But you couldn’t help the not-so-subtle whisper of ‘cunts’ escape you as you dragged a rather shocked Jack out of the bar behind you. You walked straight past Rudy; someone must have called his partner because they were attempting to help him get back to his feet, but you weren’t about to stop until you were at least three blocks from The Championship.

Jack didn’t let go of your hand, nor did he say anything as he let you take him on a short trip. He could tell there was something bothering you, that much was evidenced by the rather strong insult you’d chucked at that couple right before you dipped, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or be concerned.

Sure, the insult was kind of funny and Lewis and Marnie’s reactions were priceless – picturesque almost, but he was definitely concerned. Mainly because you hadn’t even acknowledged what had happened, and also because you hadn’t stopped power walking or unlocked your jaw.

He took the initiative, walking a few steps in front of you so you got the idea to follow him instead, and rather than lead you indoors somewhere, he took you down some steps – you almost didn’t recognise it in the dark, but the graffiti pattern against the metal shutters was an instant giveaway.

He’d brought you to your shop. Your closed shop, nonetheless, but it was familiar.

He dropped your hand, not saying a word as he took a seat, his back against the shutters. You didn’t say anything – even despite knowing his back and jeans would undoubtedly be dirty when he stood back up – and took a seat next to him.

“What–” He started, hesitating slightly, “What happened with Lewis and Marnie?”

You swallowed, picking at a loose thread on your jeans, trying to bide time to structure what you wanted to say. In the end, however, you just ripped off the bandaid.

What’s the worst that could happen?

“He cheated on me with Marnie, for pretty much our entire relationship – even though he was the one to ask me if I wanted to be his girlfriend in the first place.” You looked down, huffing a petulant, self-deprecating laugh, “He told me he met her three nights after I agreed to be exclusive, and that they’d been sleeping with each other for the two whole months we were dating.”

Jack’s silence was unnerving, and it stretched a good fifteen seconds. You didn’t regret telling him by any means, but any silence after that kind of confession was enough to send your mind reeling. You wondered what he was thinking, but refused to look at his face for fear of rejection, or an expression you didn’t want to associate with your situation - mostly pity. You didn’t know how you’d take it if Jack was looking at you pityingly.

“Did Marnie know you and Lewis were together?” His voice sounded a little strained, as if he was holding himself back from reacting too much.

“Apparently she knew from the get-go.”

You heard him sigh, a hint of frustration thrown in there.

“Fucking hell.” He muttered, and you felt an arm brush yours.

When you looked at him, his head was resting against the shutters, eyes closed as he folded his arms on top of his knees. He must have sensed you looking towards him, a hint of confusion at his odd reaction, because his eyes suddenly opened and he tilted his head in your direction, a blankness in his face.

It frustrated you, that you couldn’t get a read on him immediately.

“What are you thinking?” You whispered.

Jack cast his eyes beyond you for a minute, “I’m thinking that he was an absolute fucking idiot for treating you that way; that you could do way better – find someone that would treat you like you deserve because…you’re honestly mesmerising, and I can’t comprehend why he’d pull that shit when you were already in his corner.”

Your chest clenched and you held your breath, hoping and anticipating his next words, “You really believe that?”

Jack looked back at you this time, his eyes shimmering in the dark as the light from the streetlamp flashed, “Course I do.”

You felt your brows narrow against your will – not entirely in an accusing manner, but one of complete and utter disbelief. You were completely stuck on how in the world someone could possibly view you in such a positive way – if you’d heard someone talk about their partner in that way, you wouldn’t really be surprised – then again, you hadn’t actually seen any realistic human relationships that procured that level of devotion – and the fact that it was Jack telling you that was how he saw you; Jack who, as far as you were aware, only saw you as a bit of fun?

You were speechless.

“Why?” You managed, your heart pounding so hard against your sternum the action was almost painful.

You’d never been so nervous in your entire life.

He shrugged, as though his thoughts were simply an everyday thing – nothing new that hadn’t occurred or something he hadn’t thought about before, “Honestly?”

You nodded numbly, your entire body tingling.

“You’re kind of everything I want in a partner. I mean,” he took a deep breath, preparing himself, “it’s not necessarily what you stand for, but more just…you that I want.”

Your chest was tight, and your eyes were stinging suddenly – an unexpected wave of emotion crashing over you. You didn’t let it show – that vulnerable feeling, shining from your eyes – though you could tell purely by the way Jack seemed to soften, his face relaxing like he’d realised the weight of the words he’d just placed on you.

Honestly, you were still partially in shock.

Sure, you’d hoped he felt a little more than just teasing friendship, and the only thing that had held you back from mentioning anything to him was the frailty of the friendship you both shared. It was a delicate ecosystem of sorts, that you hadn’t wanted to trespass out of fear of losing him entirely. That was the seeming issue – to you at least – because Jack even showing a shred of feeling towards you was a fantasy you could only imagine.

It felt too good to be true.

And before you could question it or add something to at least give him a hint that he wasn’t alone, he was talking again.

“Can I ask you something?” This time it was his turn to pull his eyes away, only for a brief moment. He looked more scared now than he did when he’d admitted you were - in some sense – the woman of his dreams. It said a lot about Jack as a person; that he wasn’t afraid of revealing how he truly felt, but the notion of you rejecting him was the one thing that had him stalling, “When you invited me, did you want to make Lewis jealous?”

It was clear what he was asking, and your lack of hesitation in answering seemed to ease him up a bit; he took a silent breath – you could see his chest rise in relief.

“No. I invited you because you make me feel like everything is gonna be okay, and I needed that. I didn't invite you to make Lewis jealous because I don’t want him. I just want to see you, like, all the time, every day, for as long as possible.” You gave a delicate laugh, reminding yourself that he’d already made it clear that it was you he’d already chosen, “I’ve really missed you.”

He nudged his elbow into yours, and before you knew it, a smile had broken out on your face – completely against your will.

You were okay with it, because the grin on Jack’s face rivalled pretty much every smile you’d seen him wear. It had you question if he’d ever truly expressed emotion in your presence before, but the edges to it were softer – a tenderness that hid behind the unbridled joy.

“I’ve missed you too. A lot.” He breathed a laugh.

Neither of you were touching – a stark comparison to the bar situation where every inch below the waist had been practically pressed to each other. Somehow, it felt more intimate – that with your words you were able to communicate almost as much as with a single touch. That kind of honesty in your mid-twenties in the jungle of the dating circus was refreshing.

“Look at us, communicating like real adults.” You quipped, unconsciously biting your cheek for a moment, still hazy – you half-expected to wake up, your brain intent on having you believe that this entire scenario was simply a reverie you’d conjured up in your own mind.

“Right? I feel like I’ve matured a decade in the last ten minutes.” He laughed, the sound so sweet you couldn’t help mimicking it. You almost felt guilty drowning out such a beautiful sound.

You shook your head, not in any rush to say much else. You’d said all you wanted to say for now, and the idea of letting it sink in sounded pretty cool.

You were exhausted, too.

“All things considered, I had fun as your fake boyfriend.” He admitted, and you swung your head to face him, amused at his statement.

“Is that the narrative you had in mind when you showed up?” You teased.

He hummed, nodding his head, “How did I do?”

You shook your head in disbelief. Honestly, he’d certainly acted the part, even though his behaviours and little idiosyncrasies in showing his affection towards you in subtle ways hadn’t changed from how he’d usually act.

“I’ve seen better.” You joked, a smile on your face.

He could tell you were kidding, but he feigned offence either way – partly for both your entertainment and also because he was curious as to which direction you’d take it, “Oh, you have multiple fake boyfriends on your roster?”

You shook your head, laughing becoming deeper with every minute change to his facial expression, “You’re my favourite fake boyfriend.”

“Favourite?” He echoed, his smile fading slightly but remaining all the same.

Softening.

“The only fake boyfriend.” Your laughing dwindled, until your cheeks were aching from the intensity of your smile.

You hadn’t realised it, but somehow you’d both unconsciously leaned into each other; your shoulders were pressed tightly together, and your face was slightly tilted towards his, just as he’d tilted down a little.

This kind of tension had always existed between you both; woven and seamlessly inserted between the contrasting fabrics you were made up of, but between the inches separating you, it seemed to have its own life. It felt as obvious as the Northern Lights flashing in the sky – just out of reach but one single motion of you looking upwards would have your heart stuttering and you’d be unable to tear your attention away from the spectacle – there was the acknowledgement that you were experiencing a pivotal moment.

That if you and Jack gave in and removed the last couple of inches, ultimately submitting to your urges, nothing would ever quite be the same between you.

“I don’t want to be your fake boyfriend.” He whispered, eyes flicking down to your lips.

“I don’t want you to be my fake boyfriend, either.” You were almost breathless, the mere thought of what could possibly occur in the next few seconds consuming your entire being until it was all you could think about.

His lips against yours, slotting together in a hot mess, even despite the grimy location.

Until you just couldn’t take it anymore. In those split seconds you’d finished talking, eyes zeroing in on his microexpressions and then fixating on his lips, the patience you’d heroically harbouring vanished, and you found yourself lifting your head, placing a tentative kiss on his lips. It was quick, but you felt the heat almost instantly – it was difficult not to, considering the featherlight contact almost burnt you.

Electrifying.

It barely lasted five seconds, and it hardly took any time for him to respond, his mouth only just beginning to move against yours before you pulled away, almost afraid to venture into previously chartered territory. This was nothing new, but there was something glaringly terrifying straying into commitment – because that what that kiss ultimately symbolised: a short, sweet promise that cemented any and all doubts either of you could have possibly had about the other; a pledge that you were both on the same page.

It did seem, however, that you were holding back, because Jack had barely had any time to properly react to your ministrations before you’d pulled away, and you could feel the heat of his hands hovering over your cheeks – his brows pulled down in confusion even despite the heartbreakingly astonishing smile now permanently etched on his lips.

It was a cheeky one, and you could recognise the glint in his eye from a mile away.

You had a singular second to register exactly what it meant, before he’d dealt the dilemma he’d been battling for an incredibly short amount of time, before you felt his hand – rough yet passionate – rest itself on the side of your jaw, his fingers just reaching into your hair at the back of your neck, before he was pulling you closer, his lips slotting perfectly between yours, and one of your hands automatically made to grab his forearm, the other resting on his shoulder, tickling the ends of his hair.

Like you’d wanted, it was a hot mess; both of you intent on breathing the other in, to the point where you couldn’t tell where you ended and he began. Your mouths were working together in an intricate dance, one that only the both of you seemed able to perform to such a chaotic standard, and it was his tongue that traced your bottom lip eagerly, your mouth parting wider to invite him in.

You were vaguely aware of your screaming lungs and the need to gather air, but your instincts and desire were screaming at you to never let this man go; the very essence of him was addicting to the point you were sure you’d let him annihilate your heart wholly if it meant you’d experience even a shred of his attentions and love in your lifetime.

“Get a room!” A gravelly voice startled you both apart, your hand felling to grip the material of his jumper in your fist, and very briefly you felt him make a move to shield you from the intruder – if only for a brief moment.

You didn’t blame him – it was difficult to remember exactly where you were when your senses were so incredibly intoxicated by his presence.

Both your chests were heaving, and Jack nodded awkwardly at the man standing at the top of the stairs. He wasn’t someone you recognised, but he was carrying a bottle of red wine in one hand, the screw top lid missing, and he was in an expensive looking silk dressing gown, shaking his head in disappointment.

“Acting like horny teenagers, the lot of them.” You heard him mutter under his breath as he trudged away, uncaring of the inquisitive looks he was being subjected to, and it was only when he rounded the block, disappearing entirely from view that you and Jack took one look at each other’s messed up appearances: his hair was a wild mess, his hat knocked off somewhere in the haze of the action, and his cheeks flushed, lips slightly swollen and shiny – you were almost positive you were in a state mirrored to that, and it took hardly any effort at all before you were both giggling like a bunch of schoolgirls.

It was kind of ridiculous how easily you managed to get lost in each other.

“Want to stay the night?” Jack interrupted, “No double-meanings; I just wanted to know if you’d like to get breakfast with me in the morning? I think I still owe you from last time.”

You found yourself nodding before you could even muster up the energy to string a sentence together.

#jack hughes x reader #jack hughes imagine #jack hughes oneshot #nhl imagine #nhl fic #hockey fic #hockey imagine

332 notes · View notes

senseandaccountability · 19 days ago

Note

Sorry for a question out of nowhere but! Who are your favourite writers? What genre do you read the most? Do you have a favourite book of all time? I’m interested in my favourite fic writer’s faves! :)

Yay, more literature questions! I answered a related ask some months ago, but I am a librarian by trade after all, so I love to talk about these things and will try to rotate my faves a bit. Right now, for example, I’m reading a folkloristic book about the forest in Swedish mythology and culture, L’autre fille by Annie Ernaux and A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. I try to read from various genres all the time because it keeps the analytical skill going. And because the whole finding your genre is a trap when it comes to fiction, lol. The brain is not meant to be that narrow-minded in its scope, it wants to stretch. I just finished a very moving children's book about grief and friendship, for example, that absolutely made me cry because of how factually and devastatingly it painted the immense confusion after someone you love dies. And the gorgeous thing is that since this is aimed at kids, you can show grief as a huge owl that moves in. Just like that. It's blue and it doesn't say anything, but it doesn't want to harm you, either. It watches as you make coffee and forget that you only need to make coffee for one now. You can scream at the owl that it should go away, but it doesn't. It sits there, huge and blue, in your house. The nerve! You will have to find a way to co-exist with it. In time, it may shrink and you may think it disappears but it just takes on another shape and starts wearing your loved one's clothes and help you clean your house and one day, when the sun shines again, you open your door and find another person there, who asks if you maybe want to hang out for a while. And the owl nods.

One of my absolute favourite genres is any kind of collective novel, which is often a combination of two things I adore: proletarian literature and modernist fiction. Novels or series of novels telling the tale of a city or a war or the fates of a huge family through the ages, mmmm. I also enjoy narrative history - Peter Englund (see image above) is a very literary historian, writes beautifully about little slices of life during wartimes which is right up my alley. Other than that, I read a lot of literary fiction (whatever that is), poetry and a very specific genre of gothic/dark academia that’s best represented by the early novels of Carol Goodman, I guess. There are a lot of books like that but so very few I truly like. Crime works best for me when I listen to it and then I typically pick something easy-to-digest read by actors I enjoy listening to (unfortunately I’m picky and elitist when it comes to narration) but there is one Swedish crime author whose books I devour the moment they are released and that’s Christoffer Carlsson. Introspective broody angst about tiny rural places in Sweden during the 1980-90s, anyone? Yeah, it might not translate super well, I don't know. I love him. I also enjoy Tana French though I haven't read that many of her latest. I don't want spies or cool agents or high stakes or serial killers or international crime syndicates, I just want gritty bleak accidental violence or authors who use the crime format to tell a story about something else. One novel that I always kept putting on top of my favourites list back when I did those is Possession: A Romance by A.S Byatt. I read that one while studying literature at Uni so it meshed well with everything for me and for that reason I’m not sure I’d love the book as much now. I’ve never read anything else by Byatt that has moved me. Around that time I also read What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe and adored it, but same disclaimer for that. As a teen, I would have put Wuthering Heights there, for sure and I mean, a gothic novel about class and prejudice dressed as a tragic love story with ghosts, what's not to love?

And finally, two books that made me look at things differently after reading them. Giovanni's room hurts in my soul still, and I think I must have read everything I could find by Jean Rhys after she tore Mr Rochester a new one in Wide Sargasso Sea.

#literature #answered asks

9 notes · View notes

blankvort · 9 months ago

Note

you've probably answered something like this but favourite songs from the stage show and i want details, GO‼️

pezberrywhoreee i cannot even begin to describe the dearth of times i have answered anything related to mean girls and the amount of times i have internally cried and screamed wanting to interrupt a conversation to talk about mean girls. i say that god is dead but you are doing his work right here. putting this under a read more because you said details and this became a study of why every song in the stage show is better than opioids and thin mints combined <333 no articulacy here just 8000+ words of vibes and ranting

first of all if cady sings a single line i am violently shoving every note of the song into a mental folder called faves in such eldritch fonts that my brain computer is halfway to summoning cthulhu whenever it loads the soundtrack. she is described as the heart of the story on the backstage casting call page for a reason and that reason is her absolutely incredible range as she struts from the plucky guitar gyrations and membranophone-focused percussion of it roars into the candid, confiding, crescendoing (and other c words you can probably guess based on the verbiage i use in dms) keys of stupid with love and then climb the vocal volcano that is apex predator and akfjskhfidbdihgshejfhiajw i love her and i love her songs and i need to shut up now i’m sorry

second (but not really because i’m still going on and on about cady i’m sorry) i’m upset abt most other productions burying cady’s fourth-wall breaks and kind of making the segue into revenge party less. i don’t know riled up?? because 1) where did my girl janis’s influence go it is so much more impactful when cady’s main reason for going along with the revenge plot and pushing it further is hearing about janis being outed from janis herself! when her main motivator becomes aaron, who she likes super superficially by the time more is better rolls around, you think wow! what a bitch! for even longer! like you don’t even have to cut the “your hair looks sexy pushed back”/”are his eyes gray or green” conversation that prods her into sending gretchen over the edge this isn’t a time issue 2) where did cady’s brain go bring me a whole box of profound regret and impulsive decisions let the people in the back hear the hows and whys of her descent into plastichood and moreover i would like her to sing more and most of all i love it when characters break the fourth wall. by that i mean i want the “sounds kind of bad right to spy on someone but they’re the first friends i’ve had and i don’t want to have none” things back because the narrative nudity and the way it follows the melody of the verses in fearless is a+++

now. my legitimate favorite songs from the stage show in chronological order

a cautionary tale: the repartee the art freaks have is elite and so are their riffs. The lyrics are 3am notes app poetry lines and that’s an amazing thing for mean girls. It’s not the typical broadway opening number but it’s rough and brash and brilliant. To me the cast of mean girls strikes the perfect balance between caricature and lived-in character and the insouciance of this song towards seriousness reflects that wonderfully. Janis assuming the worst of everyone by saying that the temptation to be popular and hot is far too great and saying that you can’t buy integrity at the mall is some nice, if blatant, foreshadowing regarding cady losing her integrity as she gets caught up in the perilous biome of shopping centers with such dangerous patrons as build-dat-bear. The last line of the chorus abruptly changing the amount of beats in the measure adds an extra kick layout fosse quality that i love too. The ending is the apotheosis of mezzo-soprano/tenor harmonization. Need both janis and damian to step on me but for different reasons. No i will not elaborate

it roars: i have a soft spot for wild life but it roars is superior in every way to me because it introduces cady, the show’s sense of humor, the cast’s incredible skill when it comes to singing and dancing (seriously i had never seen an ensemble that made me want to be ensemble before mean girls), and the perfect transition from a cautionary tale will always get me hyped. i have many thoughts about the many changes the mg script and score have gone through throughout the years but oh my god my jaw dropped at the breathtaking belting of “i have danced with the maasai, i have climbed kilimanjaro” when i first heard it mashed up with it roars and the callback the verse gets in fearless 2.0(?) totally dislocated it. Also i know that it’s a pairing so unpopular it’s basically nonexistent but hear me out when i say that it roars is just a more optimistic, afrobeat inspired version of what’s wrong with me. Cady never seems to think that it’s the student body that needs to change, she thinks she needs to fight and win to belong just as gretchen thinks she needs to serve the most powerful person in school to be deserving of… idk anything?? Of course you cannot trust me on this because i will ship cady with anyone if you give me the chance. Writing cady/the marymount girl fanfic as we speak

it roars is the first indicator that musical cady is pretty different from movie cady in that she earnestly wants to go to the us, wants to have more/better friends, wants to try high school and skateboards and rapping and starbucks venti chai. which makes sense because you know you gotta have that sick i want song so characters feel less tossed about and more thrusting into. there’s a better way to word that but i don’t have the skull size to summon a less immature dictionary right now. a curious thing about it roars, though, is that kenya, being a country and all, has high school and skateboards and rapping. no starbucks because apparently rwanda was an easier location to settle into but that’s a good thing actually nobody should support starbucks. either way you can really see that cady’s been sheltered from the realities of any society past the stone age and idolizes this incredibly abstract view of friends and people. she’s equal parts desperate and determined, artless and acute. it’s ironic, i feel that at first her speech patterns (lions and birds and stuff) seem at odds with her sub-saharan surroundings as though she’s already trying to integrate herself with this slangy teenage culture she knows nothing about and then when she finally finds herself in slangy teenage culture she compares everything to the survival-based rules of the savannah. i know this is probably for streamlining purposes but it’s also so interesting to me that her immediate reaction to her parents’ funding being cut is wow adventure wow possibilities. she knows that everybody wants connection but she doesn’t yet know why connection has to be culled by all these arbitrary rules like fashion or acting cool. like i don’t remember where i read this but some novel said that the only thing worse than being smart is being smart and sensitive because then neither the logical nor emotional explanations for any event can make sense. i swear i will find that book someday to take a photo but today i am bedridden because i walked the five or so inches from home to the grocery store

back to it roars. i hate the grammar in the line “none of my closest friends even has hands” but i love everything else about the song. the beat is so bouncy and the ostinati of the wind and brass sections are top tier. the comedic beats are underscored by cutting the music and then the vocals come back in soaring alongside the strongest bass since george perry and i could die happy if hospitals changed the flatline noise to any cady singing “so exhilarating”.

two paragraphs and we’re still going strong dead god help me. personally i feel like the best delivery of the ensemble lines have to be as obnoxious and deafening as humanly possible but i get people who feel differently. it’s just really great to me when cady is polite and confused and very presumptuous and sonja aquino’s actively going through act two of the exorcist in real time. i think that’s why danielle wade is my cady of choice too. love it when autism: the song is put through the epiglottic funnel of anxiety. also i’m wiping tears right now about the fact cady refers to phones as little screens in her first act one song and in the act two opener she’s glued to her phone because she wants attention so badly and still doesn’t feel like she has enough even though she talks about how america and the plastics are so much more than what she’s used to. Also very interesting that cady views inclusion as a game that needs to be won (and eventually comes to view baleful adoration as winning) even though she later exhibits a sort of survival of the fittest mentality that shows up as early as her mention of baboons attacking those that go near their pack. Fun fact i think her takeover of the plastics mirrors dispersal in male baboons wherein mature male baboons leave the pack they were born into to find another troop to temporarily stay in and usually if they end up replacing the alpha male of that non-natal troop they commit infanticide because then he can reproduce with the alpha male’s old mate/s. That’s not super fun but it is a fact to me. but i’ll talk about the strange views musical cady heron seems to hold about winning more in my do this thing essay which i am definitely going to write despite my best efforts to make this post under five thousand words

gonna slide the it roars reprise in here too because it’s not on the soundtrack but it still makes me feel things. “i’m sixteen just like everyone here but not like everyone here” and what if i said mean girls is the best dissection of the torturous dichotomy between being desperate to belong and being desperate to be unique. There’s a thing called theatrical exaggeration but for mental health purposes i choose to believe that north shore class of x immediately clocked cady as a weirdo utterly undeserving of trust or respect when they saw her wear socks and sandals. I know i just complained about people calling every iteration of cady boring but i feel like i haven’t seen actual hate for musical cady (at least not as much slander as i’ve seen sent to og movie and especially movie musical cady) because you can better bear witness to her most vulnerable moments when she’s singing directly at you instead of saying things in a soundproof recording studio. She’s not quitting she’s regrouping! Which is a fascinating choice of words to me because regrouping in math is basically carrying over values because they’re too much. She gets sucked into this idea that more is better even though she has to compartmentalize the information she’s learned from hostile classmates and teachers and draw connections to her experience with animals because more is not better without proper management. Also this bitch is gonna get e coli if the janitors don’t care enough to clean the slut-shaming graffiti on the wall they are not wiping down those cubicle doors

where do you belong: i love gay people. “so what if all the ducklings think you’re ugly it’s because they’ve never seen a swan” is ted talk worthy material. never getting over the fact that damian knew this girl for all of maybe one introductory french class’s worth of interaction, accused her of doing drugs, and then built her confidence back up from the seventh circle of hell. the “your mother called you baby girl?” “singing!” exchange is peak best friend banter and showcases the art freaks’ dynamic of frank, funny jerk with a tarnished heart of gold and budding broadway babe with a shocking amount of wisdom obscured by hilarity and hypocrisy. the debate team rejected damian because he was too fabulous to be deigned to one oregon-oxford role i’ve decided. i love unreliable narrators and damian shooing cady away from the mathletes as soon as she shows the barest interest in them is an entertaining way of showing that nobody in this story is free from social norms. the lunch tray percussion is something all marching bands should adopt and so are the lighting cues. janis’s reactions to damian killing his dance breaks are the best. rachel hamilton is my fave ensemble student i don’t care if she gets maybe two or three lines total. she was giving bombastic side eyes before anyone knew the word bombastic. i desperately need to know if she knew what cady was actually saying or if she thought cady was just a lion king stan asking to be canceled. damian painting everyone but his two-person clique as problematic is also peak teenage behavior. everything at that age is just finding the lesser of two evils and figuring out whether or not you want to meet the bigger evil anyways. janis deriding “the geeks and the freaks” despite being labeled as an art freak by every mg promo is also amusing and barrett and mary-kate’s deliveries of “christian believers” could send me to heaven any day they want. the ending is so satisfying to listen to and even more satisfying to watch. also i do mean it when i say that cady was adopted by the local gays in this number. are janis and damian aware that having their own table in a school that makes juniors and seniors have lunch at the same time makes them more powerful than all the politicians of the globe combined

stupid with love: ALSKAJLDJASLDAJLLKJ. stupid with love is the best musical representation of how a crush driven by hormones and being treated with the barest sense of humor and dignity can devour a person taylor swift eat your heart out. the music really sweeps you up into this story like you’re a close friend privy to even her most embarrassing thoughts and the way her love life flashing before her eyes just shuts out whatever aaron was going to say about lebron james is the funniest thing because yeah! you can be convinced you’re totally in love with someone when you’re that age while ignoring everything that makes them a well-rounded human being! the way cady’s clearly grown up in a caring household that’s so chock full of trust that her parents can’t fathom that she’d do anything remotely dangerous while having the whole house to herself for more than one hour BUT also feels like she doesn’t “get” love is super interesting to me to like most sixteen-year-olds have the idea that their parents don’t understand them sure but has she come to the conclusion that familial love isn’t enough? that she doesn’t get enough familial love anyways? that love is unknowable? does she wholeheartedly believe that she fell in love at age five? stupid with love is a song of so many possibilities and it’s as giddy and delusional as you’d expect, every emotion heightened by cady’s new brand of eloquence. fetch may never happen but calculust absolutely should. the little snippets of dialogue in between are so endearing on both cady and aaron’s ends to the point where i can forgive ms norbury clearly not knowing how to conduct a class. who’s gonna tell cady to raise her hand before she answers. i’m kidding she can do whatever she wants, even ignore the existence of multiplication. multiplication is a bitch cady i get it

we once again see that cady is determined almost to the point of self-destruction and that she’s desperate to live a ‘normal’ life by getting together with the normalest boy of all time and the song so perfectly sets up why we should care about cady and aaron as a couple–he’s the only person thus far to not even suggest what she should think/do, encouraging her in a teasing way to be herself (ie smart) instead of telling her to be dumber so he can feel better about himself. cadaaron is the only straight ship ever argue with the wall. also the instrumental on its own is literally such a bop?? i’d drop a grand piano on myself daily if the keys could just perpetually play the song. quoth my own blog my heart belongs to every video out there of a cady opting up on the last “i learned math so i can learn love” it just fits so well thematically and makes the song even more satisfying because it makes you think yes!! summon that girlfailure swag and learn love. also this song is so next to me from twihard: a new musical coded with the pencils and/or feet providing the musical pulse. this is me very subtly begging you to listen to twihard: a new musical as put on by the esoteric ensemble productions and uploaded like a full decade ago starring danielle wade

apex predator: i love women. i love bon jovi. i love zoology. this song was made for me tina fey told me herself. i can even forgive whoever made halls rhyme with dolls because of the regina furry confirmation. the first few chords kind of give me jaws theme vibes. it’s grinding and warning and doused in grit. you get the brightness of cady’s other songs cut with the flinty, darker strings of janis’s numbers. the heavy drum sort of sounds like a heartbeat, quickening as cady realizes the might of the pride and considers how regina’s help compares to janis’s in an almost clinical manner. shout out to erika henningsen’s “exotic pet” obviously. that line should be studied by every ivy league with a literary program because regina and cady considering the other an exotic pet instead of a real friend but still seeking each other’s approval……. maybe the narrative foils are really reflections of my tin foil hat but hear me out. it’s so interesting that they refer to regina as an apex predator because apex predators are animals without natural enemies but almost every single friend or admirer of regina’s exhibits an envious kind of awe when it comes to regina. regina’s so magnetic that you can’t be her enemy but close enough to pseudo-celebrity that you can’t exactly be her friend either. also the harmony at the end combined with the epic percussion deserves its own award. no longer does egot mean anything. One must be an egota (emmy grammy oscar tony apex predator singer) to be considered showbiz royalty

stupid with love (reprise): cady is so so smart and so so stupid. aaron getting confused at a genuine compliment not solely based on his looks is adorable but i also love it when the line delivery gets changed to be more like “wow i already know i’m cool but it’s nice to hear it from the cute possibly murderous girl who sits behind me”. same goes for cady’s “shit” right after aaron swears off dating–it’s funny as hell whether she’s smiling through the pain or so disappointed in herself she looks like she’s experiencing medical shock. her making love into a function is similarly messed up but funny as hell. i literally have a google drive folder full of audio clips of the “i just don’t get it–i’ll never get it–i just don’t get it–somehow…” part it’s so serious

sexy: this is modern feminism talking i expect to run the world in shoes i cannot walk in - the greatest mind of our generation karen smith. if the national emergency alarm was changed to the ending riff i would become an arsonist just to hear it over and over again. a youtube commenter said that she sings every line like she’s waiting to be shown the script and redo it and whenever acting and singing can waltz along in magnificence together i sob in joy even if that waltz is set to trashy pop. literally every costume shown is worthy of fashion week and then some. the sex doctor bit is beyond saturday night live. sexy rosa parks deserves the world. modern feminism is a mess but at least it built the last verse of this incredible song.

someone gets hurt: regina pretending to cry and aaron being confused again and then being manipulated into a makeout session is so so funny. so terrible but so funny. the incredible blare of noise after that first “until someone gets hurt” feels like being pushed off a cliff and into a sea of warning sirens which feels fitting. if any song from the stage show were to be played by a chamber orchestra i would want it to be someone gets hurt because everything about it is almost four seasons by vivaldi to me. as i said do not expect sensible comparisons from this review. it’s really dark and intense like all of regina’s numbers but this time her style of seduction is on full display, highlighted by some heavy timpani work and a male ensemble that’s carrying more than just regina on their backs holy cow. squidward would worship regina with how she made the bass clarinet sultry despite hitting something in the high fs during each “hurt” and holding that “go” for like five seconds. the ending is giving celine dion’s villain arc. it’s also maybe the first time the audience sees aaron through the eyes of anyone other than cady who’s so starstruck she might as well be blind and we see a guy who’s still susceptible to regina’s yknow reginaness. she guilt trips him about his potential infatuation with his body and then gets extremely touchy with him while wearing a playboy bunny costume. she asks if she was a game he wanted to play despite (maybe devoid of remorse) playing him just to get back at cady. she’s making so much shit up because peeling away too many layers of her perfection would be dangerous but so would losing aaron to cady’s actual openness. first she says “fine” to mean that she’ll be fine without aaron in the reverse psychology sense, then they say “fine” to mean that they’re both hot af, then he says “fine” to agree to get back with regina and possibly to convince himself that his interest in cady can and should be pushed aside because being with regina is better for them both. love this song. hate being unable to sing a single note of it.

revenge party: my overall fave song of the obc album, the stage show, and the movie musical. words alone cannot describe the excitement that electrocutes my nerves when i hear “now you know, caddy—” because everything from that line onwards is going to be stuck in my head for at least a week. some people can’t function until their first cup of coffee in the morning, i can’t function until my first listen of revenge party. in slight relation to that gretchen’s squawking will make me spit out any drink; such has been scientifically proven over the course of several years. i actually have a line-by-line analysis of revenge party drafted so i won’t go into detail right now because i need viewer retention but i mean it when i say art freak harmonization is the best kind.

whose house is this: if kevin g has one fan it is me. let the man rap even if half his lyrics don’t make sense. i have heard the big fun from heathers comparisons. i have heard the halloween from be more chill comparisons. all of them are so incorrect i could set several houses ablaze with the rage i feel at the very suggestion that whose house is this isn’t a masterpiece. no joke this is the first song on my workout playlist. the way nobody even cares about cady in this number is hilarious and so is kevin refusing to swear. gretchen deserves all the thank yous and so does the horns section. karen’s actions are just. Absurd as they always should be. the mario kart ass instrumentals during that “turn the freaking music up” segment make me pleasantly stressed. there are traces of jungle techno but little to no traces of cady’s signature sound and the usually lax but articulate and expressive rhyme scheme of her songs switching to frenzied verses full of immaturity and inconsideration makes me feel things that should not be felt while listening to a rave number with flatulent bass.

more is better: the only romantic duet to ever exist if you ask me. the fact that cady switches from the more sincerity-charged love to like most likely because the plastics’ philosophy is to be cool about things makes me want to bite the bars of alcatraz prisons. the way cady’s signature sound only really returns after aaron chooses to leave her because she’s become regina 2.0 without even acknowledging it is the stuff of emotionally resonant legend. as i said in my aaron review post the only thing that bothers me about this number is aaron kissing cady while she’s clearly drunk and he isn’t but cady kind of gets him back after do this thing so. yay equality. aaron’s so tired of being manipulated and told to shut up i feel so bad for him. cady’s so in denial about missing her old home in any capacity and being uncomfortable with the skin she’s tried to grow into for aaron’s sake and i feel so bad for her. the shimmering sound that comes with cady singing “stars” makes me feel better though. 11/10 would be sad again. say no to excessive air conditioning and light pollution

someone gets hurt (reprise): i like it when gays have bad breakups without even dating. what more do you want. but actually i am obsessed with the way this is blocked out because the way the chaos of cady’s house gradates into the dark street where there’s nothing but her and her crumbling friendships. the link between janis and regina is really reinforced by this song and it makes me feel insane.

world burn: the only way regina can redeem herself for wearing a black turtleneck and black pants is by slaying so hard you forget she’s just printing shit and polluting the corridors and she does it in world burn. her having a recurring set of notes to follow until she absolutely loses it is iconic. i learned so much about hernia formation through this song so i think it’s also an educational heritage site. the contrast of her 1984-esque lyrics and beats with lines like “trang pak is a grotsky byotch” is beyond hilarious but in the context of the show it makes my timbers shiver. she is both manipulated and the master manipulator. renee rapp’s opt up for the ending is golden but every regina brings their own flair and intensity to it. something that really interests me is how different actresses interpret the lines “this is what i get for helping / helping someone lame fit in” because to generalize regina either thinks she was actually helping cady or is trying to convince herself/the audience that her primary motivator was controlling cady’s every action before she got too hot to ignore or because she saw her hanging around janis and damian or because regina can’t ask a girl out like a normal person. idk it’s very fun and very satisfying to listen to and ramps up the ante for all antagonistic songs ever!

i’d rather be me: did you mean the feminist anthem of the twenty-first century? i’d rather be me is pure janis in her sort of jumpy, edgy, eleven o’clock exasperated glory tuned to this effusive fusion of pop and rock. the energy this has is soooo good because every girl in school is tired of being treated like shit because of the expectations placed on them by society and the idea that by i’d rather be me the female student body of north shore is so exhausted of the plastics’ bs that they parade janis around despite shunning her for years is amazing. most criticisms of this are abt how wordy it is or how it’s not worded right but hello janis is a teenager her inner and outer monologue is not going to be as mature as fucking grizabella the glamor cat and it can include words that anyone would study for the sats like sycophant. sycophant is not that fancy a word i learned the word sycophant from a star wars fanfiction i read when i was seven how could you not know the word sycophant at age seven squared after making a living out of reviewing shows written by wordsmiths like sondheim. sorry that was mean i’m just tired of people either going “they wouldn’t talk like that they’re teenagers” or “they shouldn’t talk like that they’re part of a theatrical production worth millions of dollars!” lmao

ok so i think that janis was losing herself just as much as cady over the course of the revenge plot taking place because okay she’s ruined regina but she’s barely changed anything about herself and if her plan had worked without hitches wtf was she going to do. was she going to keep hanging out with cady. was she going to fill the power vacuum left by the plastics herself. was she going to run regina over with a bus herself. i’d rather be me is the culmination of the crushing pillars of her revenge plot and the full realization that revenge wasn’t what she wanted–she wanted to change the way the world works, change it into a place where people can just do and be without being ostracized. to me the instrumentals and the mockery in the lyrics are almost stinging?? someone with even could describe this better than me but the strings during the instrumental section between verses remind me of a mosquito bite because they’re high and sharp and put against the heavy drums and cymbal crashes they really paint this picture of a dam of anger breaking and giving way to a new wash of awareness.

also i cannot stand it when ppl say this song is the show giving endorsement to janis being a hypocrite there is a reason why all the lyrics are in future tense. she is wrapping her mind around the notion that there is no pleasing everyone, that there is no true gratification gained by holding grudges and letting them control your every thought, that if you don’t let yourself have the liberty of lashing out you’re only going to manifest your maliciousness in worse ways with longer-lasting effects. that being said let girls be haters

also the obc album should’ve let janis swear. every public performance of i’d rather be me should let janis swear. let her have a line with bite before her throat turns into a cavern where vowels go to melt into a singular solution

also janis’s costumes over the course of the whole show are amazing but her look in i’d rather be me goes so hard. if i had any of janis’s jackets i think i’d curl into it like a cocoon and wait until the heat death of the universe for metamorphosis into coolness

do this thing: no joke this is the second song on my workout playlist. i hate the title so much but i love also the audience reaction when ms norbury starts singing as if she didn’t just slay the what’s wrong with me reprise gets me every time. truly the actresses in the adult women track are so underappreciated and so are the adult women in general. kevin g’s unabashed doing of the thing regardless of the haters is iconic. the return of the heavy percussion is so enjoyable and so are the mathletes’ lines lining up with the steaming kettle sound somehow behind each buzzer even though i hate buzzers because in real life mathletes nobody wants to answer on beat. ms norbury best matchmaker ever i LOVED the detail of aaron being present for the mathletes’ win but cady clearly focusing on the competition above all else. i’m pretty sure the mathletes are also the only characters to drop an f-bomb in a song which is just fantastic + the gretchen/regina parallel between kevin and marwan regarding schquillz is phenomenal. “the limit does not exist” being both the answer to the question that signifies cady’s return to her old self with more self-assurance and the theme of the musical in terms of not limiting other people is a level of genius i will never reach.

i see stars: i’m sorry they gave cady a big finale where she calls everyone beautiful and bright and holds hands with the other girls she’s hurt and you expect me to not love it?? this one had to grow on me though because i was so bothered about the stars imagery coming up maybe like five songs before when we’d been following animals and math for the whole show. as we all know characters can only have one or two interests before they become completely incoherent. but now i know more about light pollution and have played the video of this song with the pride chorus more times than i’ve blinked so i get it. shane oman also breaking his crown during the escalation of the instrumentals from a very optimistic but singular combo of strings and cymbals into the violins and heavier drums and whatever else is such a good detail. i still get goosebumps with that “you stars” there is just so much emotion packed into this finale and the rest of the ensemble joining in is as effective as onions being cut directly into my eyes when it comes to crying. obviously my fave version of this is the one with cady and janis’s mini duet during the rhinestones don’t shine part but guaranteed this one will make me cry no matter what

now. for the songs that didn’t make it onto my absolute fave list they are still my children just bastard ones and i will go into detail about them too because there is no point in writing this post if it does not crash the tumblr dashboard for you

a cautionary tale (reprise): akin to its origins, the reprise of a cautionary tale kicking off act two is there to introduce the act, but unlike its first iteration, the reprise is literally just there. no jokes no nothing. would love to see it reworked into something that reminds the audience they’re north shore freshmen being told this story by janis and damian because i forget about that framing device until the dialogue break in i see stars every time lmao but other than that it’s serviceable and any song that involves art freak harmonization is a solid song

meet the plastics: maybe i don’t love women as much as i claim to. I don’t know why i don’t like this song more truly. Maybe i just need to listen to it more lmao because the lyrics are great, the tempo changing with each introduction is great, and gretch waiting until regina’s out of earshot to try and convert cady into a fetch truther is great. Maybe it’s the “humps my leg like a chihuahua” line that turned me off from it because nell benjamin i do not care that you wrote legally blonde i do not think regina george would bring up animal humping imagery considering what her mother puts her through unless she was hopped up on pain meds. All that being said i would die for the polyphony at the end and karen playing with cady’s hair near the end is so cute

what’s wrong with me: gretchen it’s not you it’s me and i like songs with a specific sort of climax and what’s wrong with me really does feel like a music box piece played by some dusty not-quite-antique you find in the attic that makes you feel a particular, peculiar strain of melancholy because it’s so cyclical and fragile. which is the point, probably! It just sounds really different from the rest of the show and i feel like the lyrics don’t quite fit the language we’ve heard gretch using so far but maybe that’s also part of the point. That being said the line “see that you see what’s wrong with me” makes me go mad because there are so many ways to interpret it. Is she telling the audience that they should be able to see what’s wrong with her? Is she saying that the audience sees something good in regina that she can’t see anymore because of her constant mistreatment? Is she once again asking what’s wrong with her or has she finally had a breakthrough about her dismal self-esteem?

fearless: oh my god a cady song and act ender that i’m not totally into sound the sirens. but really fearless without the revisitation of the it roars/wild life passage that tells the audience what makes her fearless aside from wanting to move to america (which might make her more fearless than i thought now i sound that out but still) isn’t my favorite songs despite it having some of my favorite moments like karen’s ribbon dance, gretchen’s very cool dance, cady mirroring regina’s pose on top of the cafeteria table at the start of meet the plastics at the end, the mini someone gets hurt reprise at the end, it isn’t my favorite to listen to because the lyrics are just all over the place. Cady why are you saying that she’ll go cry to mama do you think mrs george is sober enough for that. Cady why are you spouting live love laugh merchandise ass quotes. Cady why are you quoting dwayne the rock johnson “imagine stronger, better, bolder” are you going to play a lacrosse game against regina. Why does karen not wear more vests after this number

You know what made me care about fearless?? The fearless reprise. Oh my god the fearless reprise. I need to make a separate post about the fearless reprise but i can’t listen to it more than once a day or i’ll end up crying for hours on end.

stop: is it homophobic of me to put three damian songs on this list? probably but i make up for it by filling that broadway cares bucket every time i can. and it’s not that i even really dislike stop!! I have so many thoughts about stop!! i just don’t like it when compared to the other songs that can hold up inside and outside the context of the show!! i just feel like it has to be experienced live to understand its award-losing enormity unlike where do you belong and even then it sounds noticeably different from the rest of the show + essentially pauses the narrative to talk about a whole other story that never gets resolved outside of damian being ghosted (i thought theater was supposed to provide escapism 😔) and then frays a bunch of threads out from the ensemble in a way that doesn’t feel quite as well sewn in as the worship we see during apex predator or after rockin’ around the pole because like. it’s funny sure but just the act before we saw that things can be funny while also moving the story along past attempting to hammer in the message “stop ignoring your real friends” in cady’s thickened-by-makeup head.

also how does damian even know about her word vomit. cady barely even word vomits in the stage show. it’s all just word coughing fits of confusion and unintentional comedy under peer pressure. whenever she says something embarrassing she either gets cut off or turns it into a whole song. i’m sorry damian i love you and your stupid straw hat but we just saw the whole show we don’t need a recap of everything that happened in the last hour with almost zero internal rhymes and without the frantic pacing of ya got trouble from the music man. cmon.

onto things i love about stop tho which are a) the gaiety (and gay-ty) b) the dancing and c) the staging. i love it when gay characters just get to be silly goofy instead of singing themselves to their graves and even if damian was built off the dramatic thespian homostereotype he gives me the impression of a silly goofy teen trying to balance the interests of his best friends with his sanity through the medium he’s most comfortable in which happens to be literally show-stopping song-and-dance number. also we get cadnis content in the background and the choreo i’ve seen for how janis plays keep away with cady’s phone only gets better (which of course is a synonym for gayer. let the babies hold hands before they yell at each other in the street and see a 15-second death they’re both sort of kind of responsible for). the dancing of course is wonderful. i mean does it make sense in-story for damian to somehow be popular enough with the ladies to rally them into a giant dance break after asking them to divulge their biggest, darkest secrets like an hour after being kicked out of the girls’ bathroom and calling one of them danny devito? probably not. is it really enjoyable when you aren’t itching to get back to the main story? yes. it also makes north shore feel more authentic in a sense?? obviously there’s so much about the social hierarchy exaggerated for comedic effect but yeah public high school is that crazy one day you’ll hear that a classmate got into a drunk driving accident and the next you’ll hear that the same classmate scored an audition for the x factor. and the transition from the art classroom, which is one of my fave sets in the whole show because aghhhh i want to pause everything and analyze art whenever it comes up in a tv show or movie or video game or musical because it’s almost never just art present for the sake of filling the set! there’s a reason why the set designers put that there or downloaded that asset or whatever! based on the official yt video in stop we see a sort of cubist portrait of janis ian, a few monochrome figure studies, and some more abstract pieces and i so want to know what this number would’ve looked like in-universe. did cady legit just run out of class to confront damian and get swept into a gay tea spilling session until the end of the day. be glad you got suspended girl

so. while i cannot begin to fathom the stamina it takes for damian to go from that gorgeous dance break into the grand vocal ending—philip doesnt know what he’s missing out on for sure—stop is not something i play on purpose but if the obc album shuffles to it i won’t complain!

what’s wrong with me (reprise): is it homophobic of me to put every gretchen song sans whose house is this on this list? probably but again it’s just not something i can put on repeat/a number i think depends on the production to arouse much entertainment value. it’s fucking hilarious though i’ll give it that. like it might be in the top three of mg songs when it comes to unadulterated comedy. my heart breaks when gretchen realises she’s stuck in this cycle of servitude and is still being hurt by the people she most desires the approval of and her work is still going unappreciated and then i get a heart attack from laughing because regina’s reign of terror is so absolute even her own mother has feared her from the age of three onwards?? in addition to that what’s wrong with me reprise is why i cannot stand for mrs george hate she’s just a girl too. a toxic girl who never emotionally developed past high school but like. what do you want her to do. she has never had a heartfelt conversation with her daughter ever. also “why couldn’t it just be drugs” is so funny to me because yknow. reggie gets hit by a bus and spends the rest of the show so high she forgets her love languages are acts of slanderous service, passive-aggressive gifts, weaponized physical touch, quality time spent playing hard to get, and words of refutation. taylor louderman deserved a tony for pulling the kalteen bar scream off every night too i think it’s night queen aria levels of difficulty.

the funniest part of this song to me is probably the way it starts and ends so abruptly. usually you can tell when a song’s about to start in a musical but gretchen nearly breaking down into sobs as soon as cady turns her non-self-tanned back without missing a beat is both relatable and hysterical. my girl is clinging to les mis motifs and middle school herd mentality in a world meant for fosse tributes. the spotlight is only on her when she talks about how dim her light feels in comparison to other characters. then mrs george joins in and you get the first female/female duet to rival defying gravity since idk. everything in fun home. i take cash and credit not criticism.

but really the gretchen/mrs george connection is so interesting because they tether themselves to regina in a style that’s irreconcilable with happiness on either end and they know that but possibly for a mix of selfish and sympathetic reasons don’t want to leave in any capacity. the way they’re separated on stage by little more than a change in colored lighting is interesting too and raises the question of whether or not they’re aware that regina’s sun is burning those closest to her in general.

also. can plastic cady snap and yell at me i want to feel something

in conclusion i love you pezberrywhoreee thank you for asking this. i think i said the words “also” and “but” more times than i said the word “gay” and that’s a real hurdle to fly over. i think i expect many random things in your inbox hereafter as retribution/reward depending on how you see it

#sigh.#mean girls the musical #mean girls musical #mean girls broadway

16 notes · View notes

topazadine · 6 months ago

Text

Writerly Questionnaire

Thanks to @the-golden-comet for the tag! I enjoyed reading your answers, especially the part about your characters!

Alright, here goes.

About Me

When did you first start writing?

I wrote my first story at age 7, started my first book at age 12 (no you can't read it, it's terrible) and published my first poem at age 15.

Are the genres/themes you enjoy reading different from the ones you write?

Despite writing fantasy, I actually don't read much of it myself. My undergrad career focused most on British literature (specializing in Victorian lit) so that's what I'm most familiar with and what I like the most.

Is there an author (or just a fellow writer!) you want to emulate, or one to whom you’re often compared?

I don't really seek to emulate anyone because I have my own unique voice, and I don't really get compared to anyone else either. If you have suggestions of what I might sound like, fire away lmao, because I don't really know who I emulate. However, I take a lot of inspiration from Willa Cather for atmosphere and Emile Zola for realism.

Can you tell me a little about your writing space(s)? (Room, coffee shop, desk, etc.)

I exclusively write at my desk. My setup looks like this:

I need my little guys and my Emotional Support Stuffed Cow (her name is Bluebell the Moobell because she has a little bell in her). Note the knitting I'm procrastinating on at the bottom right lmao.

What’s your most effective way to muster up some muse?

Funnily enough, I often get inspiration from my day job as an SEO writer, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the types of stuff I write. Sometimes I'll just be hammering away at a Construction Accident Personal Injury Lawyer page and it strikes me that I need to kill one of my characters.

Did the place(s) you grew up in influence the people and places you write about?

Sort of. I have this thing I do where I like to mentally walk through buildings I used to visit as a relaxation activity, like my childhood elementary school, so that's given me a good memory of how places are laid out. As for actual settings? No, most of those are just made up of pictures I've seen of different places that I've never visited.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing, and if so, do they surprise you at all?

Some of my recurring themes include: Degradation/transformation of memory Struggling against fate/the unknowability of fate Found family Abusive relationships Moral relativism Satisficing (choosing between multiple suboptimal outcomes to pick the least harmful option) None of them surprise me; I recognize where they come from. For example, my obsession with the degradation and transformation of memory comes from my own struggles with dissociative amnesia, and my interest in satisficing comes from my International Relations degree. My concerns about the unknowability of fate come from the fact that I had a premonition that I'd die of a heart attack at 42. And I'm 32 right now. You can imagine that this influences my process lmao.

My Characters

Would you please tell me about your current favorite character? (Current WIP, past WIP, never used, etc.)

As a lesbian, I am not ashamed to say that I am deeply and passionately horny for Uileac (who you can meet in "Cachaille" or read about in 9 Years Yearning). Like how can you not go crazy for a man who thinks this is the perfect declaration of love?

He's so scary and so devoted, yet also very chill and laid-back? And funny? And athletic? And protective of his lil sis? He's just ... (screams into pillow)

Which of your characters do you think you’d be friends with in real life?

Ono. He's a Sinan royal guard who is just so sweet but also kinda dumb.

There's a scene where he has to ask Cerie what kind of menstrual products she needs for their trip, which is both mortifying and really adorable. He's just a really gentle and nice guy who I think would get along with damn near everyone.

Which of your characters would you dislike the most if you met them?

I think Mordrek would scare the absolute shit out of me ngl. Like ... bro just ... does this kind of shit on the regular

Tell me about the process of coming up with of one, all, or any of your characters.

Uileac, Orrinir, and Ono were heavily inspired by Uguisumaru, Ookanehira, and Omokage from Touken Ranbu and I don't apologize for that. Obviously they are a bit different, but their personalities are quite similar. Cerie was developed from a roleplay where I was playing as Uguisumaru's made-up sister, so that's why she's Uileac's sister in Poesyverse. Haniya, Cerie's love interest, was made up by using personality testing and astrology to come up with Cerie's Perfect Match. No one knows where Mordrek came from. He just kinda showed up.

Do you notice any recurring themes/traits among your characters?

They all have daddy issues. Every single fucking one of them.

How do you picture them? (As real people you imagined, as models/actors who exist in real life, as imaginary artwork, as artwork you made or commissioned, anime style, etc.)

All the art I have for my characters was made with AI before I realized AI was absolute garbage shit, so I'm not showing it, but I did commission a painting of Cerie from the amazing artist Caleb over on Twitter:

My Writing

What’s your reason for writing?

For me, that's kind of like asking why a bird sings. It's just what I do and what I have always done.

Is there a specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating coming from your readers?

Definitely when someone says that my writing helped them or resonated with them. My writing gives me catharsis and it feels really good when other people say they got that same sense of catharsis.

How do you want to be thought of by those who read your work? (For example: as a literary genius, or as a writer who “gets” the human condition; as a talented worldbuilder, as a role model, etc.)

As someone who takes risks that pay off.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Depicting trauma without being melodramatic.

What have you been frequently told your greatest writing strength is by others?

People have told me they like how meticulous and carefully set up my stories are without infodumping or being boring. They appreciate the work that goes into planning things, how it all pays off in the end and comes together nicely without plot holes.

How do you feel about your own writing? (Answer in whatever way you interpret this question.)

I think I've come a long way and continue to improve, which is what is most important.

If you were the last person on earth and knew your writing would never be read by another human, would you still write?

The last Kauaʻi ʻōʻō still sang until the end. So yes.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely what you enjoy? If it’s a mix of the two, which holds the most influence?

I write whatever the hell I feel like when I feel like it. People tend to like it, but if they don't, I enjoyed making it anyway.

Open tag!

#writers on tumblr #creative writing #writing #writing community #writing game #oc game #oc character #my ocs #tag game #tagging game #tag meme #my writing #literature #writeblr #writerscommunity

11 notes · View notes

lafayetteworld · 1 month ago

Note

Hi - I’m reading what if we were other people - and I’m absolutely obsessed with it! The characterizations of Damian and Fay are so strong and consistent with a lot of growth as well! I’m only on Chapter 22 (still reading through the Euro-Trip) but I absolutely cannot wait for them to officially get together although I’m thoroughly enjoying the slow burn that is building.

Fay just feels like such a lived in character with a real history and very legitimate and realized flaws and anxieties. I adore the way you also integrate her therapy into the growth and her growing self-awareness around her self-destructive thoughts and tendencies. The portrayal of self-care, mental health and mental health maintenance are so realistic and refreshingly wonderful in this fic! I love all of her small idiosyncrasies that make her so real - the same lunch she has every day, all of the little Knick knacks in her room, all of the random jobs she has (which we now know is an honestly v relatable trauma response).

I also love your version of Damian - he has such a strong internal voice that comes through. There’s still the slight sneakiness and sass that I’ve always loved in his character that has softened into a sort of endearing teasing towards Fay. The way he thinks through how he feels about Fay as he is realizing his feelings towards her are so in character - highly logical but sort of frustrated at his own inability to parse through and control his emotions because they’re so new. I also really love how much he respects Fay and her trauma - his compassion and empathy are not obvious at first but they’re so heavily present in all of his actions.

I also love their relationship!! I love that they are putting themselves and their friendship first because they’re so scared of hurting each other. It makes the slow burn so much more endearing because they love and care about each other too much to make a move. I adore how Damian acknowledges that they are both complete and whole individuals but she is his choice which makes her all the more singular - it’s such a healthy and wonderful way to see love depicted - especially when people can so easily fall into the trap of being co-dependent and “needing” your partner so much that they become a crutch and a barrier to healing yourself. It is so much more romantic to me to have someone choose you and continue choosing you. I also love how much they challenge each other - Fay allows Damian to be vulnerable and Damian calls out her putting herself down - it makes them grow together rather than one of them “healing” the other. Ugh and the innocent touchingggg- I kicked my feet and screamed into the void when Fay began stroking his arm. I can’t wait for this to progress!!!

I also love the family dimensions you depicted as well. Moma and Cora are such wonderful additions that I love reading about that add so much depth to Fay’s character. And the Wayne clan is so interesting to read about! You can see how Bruce loves his children but he isn’t present most of the time and tries his best when he is. I love that you maintained the closeness between Dick and Damian - it’s one of my favorite relationships in DC! (Also love that Kori and Dick are together in this!! My ship heart is singing)! I can’t wait to see more of Jason - I’m so intrigued by his fiancé! And I can’t wait to meet Tim officially in the fic - I wonder if him and Damian wi still have major beef in this iteration haha.

The entire story arc with Archer was also beautifully written. I was so proud to see Fay stop being so passive and take action when she started kicking ass omg. I was so so stressed when she went to confront them - but when it was over, you could feel the catharsis in her that she didn’t have to suffer anymore. I truly hope they stay gone because Fay deserves peace above anything else at this point.

Anyway, this has gotten much longer than anticipated - sorry for that! I just love love love your fic so much and I know it’s on hiatus but I just wanted you to know that I will continue to be an avid reader whenever you update! I look forward to whatever ending you have planned! Honestly at this point - this fic is better written than a lot of published romance works I’ve read haha! - 🌻

Hi there,

I just want to say thank you for taking the time to provide me with such great feedback and all your thoughts on my fics. I really do appreciate it. While I haven't replied yet, I did read this post many times over in the past. Through your and others' comments, I can remember why I enjoyed writing these fics in the first place. I've always wanted to see a particular type of romance - both slow-burn but intense yet avoids tropes like romantic dependency or the characters 'needing' one another, like you mentioned. I love many published novels and fics with these tropes, but I wanted to see something different, so I decided to try my hand at it. I am so glad to see that I succeeded to the best of my ability and that my work excites someone. I am a sucker for characters that have to go through a lengthy process of working on themselves and depicting the struggles that come with it. I am sorry for leaving you hanging on both works. I am currently re-writing What If (just addressing grammar issues!) and hoping to complete it in early 2025. Providence is much more complex, so that'll take longer, but I would like to return to it very soon, as well. Thank you again, and I hope you have a lovely day!

3 notes · View notes

caspersickfanfics · 10 months ago

Note

I've read through the Cyno seasick scenario @relevantlucidity brought up multiple times now and I swear every time I read it, I'm even more obsessed with it oml. If it ends up being a fic, I would read the heck out of it!!

I absolutely love anything surrounding those four sumeru boys,,, Tighnari, Cyno, Kaveh, and Alhaitham are just such a good friend group, my heart simply loses it, I love them. A SICKFIC SCENARIO WITH ALL FOUR OF THEM?? I am losing it. (Honestly I need to write them all too. I have no experience writing Alhaitham especially so I've been a little hesitant to commit to anything, but I really want to write them all, so I definitely need to make plans for that)

I feel like everything I want to say would just me screaming repeating everything y'all already said, but gah!! Cyno hiding how he's feeling because he feels like the other two are more in need of Tighnari's help than him. It's so!! Cyno!! And it hurts me!! But I love it!!

Don't even get me started on the anxiety with the return trip AHH. Internally he would be so freaked out at the thought of possibly getting that sick again, even with Tighnari's reassurances

Agh yes!!! That scenario is so good!!! I love the sumeru crew sm and would be thrilled to see them in your writing!!! It's funny that you're hesitant about Alhaitham - I feel that way about Kaveh :') Even though I wrote him a bit in one fic, he wasn't actually in the fic that much 😂 I relate to Alhaitham so much more 😬 But yes I gotta get over that because I am such a sucker for good friendships, I need the whole gang there!!! Not to mention, I just thought about Kaveh and Alhaitham perpetually arguing and making Cyno feel even worse... like one thing about Alhaitham/Kaveh is that if you have a headache or any level of anxiety, you don't wanna be anywhere near them lmao

I love the screaming! You're so right, poor Cyno would be having just an awful anxiety-ridden time on the way home. I actually like the idea of Alhaitham and Kaveh calling a truce for his sake on the way back. Like Cyno would try to act like he's not worried around them but they both know him well enough to recognize he's not doing great. I also have a soft spot for Kaveh taking care of sick Cyno?? Idk if it would fit for this fic, but Kaveh coming across Cyno puking in the toilet maybe while Tighnari is looking after Alhaitham or getting him some water could be really sweet. Since (I'm pretty sure??) Kaveh is older, I picture them taking on thee roles of big brother/little brother - Kaveh being very reassuring and steady while Cyno relents and accepts his help. Maybe out of character? Idk but I like it haha

I can just ramble about this scenario forever apparently haha XD Thank you for this ask!! <333

prev seasickness hc discussion here!

more here!

#dutifullyshamelessearthquake #cas chats #headcanons #tighnari hc #sick cyno hc #alhaitham hc #kaveh hc #genshin hc #to write #genshin impact hc

9 notes · View notes

keepingupwiththecullensblog · 5 months ago

Text

🌟🚗 Welcome back to “Keeping Up with the Cullens”! I never thought I’d say this, but Midnight Sun actually got… good? Yes, you read that right! After trudging through Edward’s endless brooding and inner turmoil, the book finally delivered moments so intense and relatable that I had to pause and really take them in. These chapters are a must-discuss because they shed new light on Edward’s character, and trust me, it’s a perspective I haven’t seen explored enough! 🧛‍♂️💋 Honestly, I love it because it shows that even sparkly vampires can have teenage meltdowns. 😂✨

Let’s kick things off with the most ridiculous, over-the-top car chase in vampire history. Edward, in full-blown panic mode, doesn’t just drive fast—he goes full-on action hero by stealing a flashy car to speed across town and save Bella from James! 🚗💥 I mean, who knew Edward had a secret need for speed? It’s like he’s suddenly in a vampire version of Fast & Furious, but with a lot more angst and existential dread. You can almost hear him muttering, “Outta the way, mere mortals!” as he zooms through traffic like a bat out of hell. 😂 Seriously, this whole scene is so over-the-top that you can’t help but laugh and cheer him on. Edward’s driving is described as borderline suicidal—he’s pushing the car to its limits, and you can feel his sheer desperation with every reckless turn. He’s absolutely terrified he won’t reach Bella in time, and it’s honestly like watching someone try to beat their own high score in a racing game, except the stakes are a million times higher. 🏎️💨

But after the car chase, the story takes a much more gut-wrenching turn when Edward arrives at the hospital. For once, Edward is acting like a normal, concerned boyfriend, and it’s both shocking and refreshing. Charlie’s not there to help with Renée—he’s stuck dealing with a court appearance, which totally sucks but also makes sense. So, Edward steps up, making sure Renée has everything she needs and is comfortable, just like any boyfriend would. It’s kind of surreal to see him in this role, especially after all the dramatic vampire stuff. He’s navigating Renée’s thoughts, which are practically screaming at him, but he still manages to keep it together. Renée, of course, is immediately suspicious of this perfect, polished young man who seems too good to be true. Edward can barely keep his anxiety in check as he tries to maintain a calm exterior while internally, he’s a wreck. 😅💖

And then there’s the chapel scene. Edward, our brooding, angst-filled vampire, actually prays. 🙏 Yep, he’s praying to Bella’s God for the strength to leave her because he’s convinced that staying with her is too dangerous. “I prayed to a God I wasn’t sure existed, to the God of her people, that he might give me the strength to leave her.” This moment is so gut-wrenching because it shows just how much Edward is willing to sacrifice for Bella. He’s not just some cold, immortal being; he’s deeply conflicted and desperate. You can feel his pain as he contemplates a future without Bella, even though it’s the last thing he wants. 😩💔 This prayer scene is significant because it humanizes Edward in a way we haven’t seen before. He’s acknowledging that he’s out of his depth, that he needs help from a higher power to do what he believes is right. It’s a raw, vulnerable moment that makes his internal struggle so much more real. It’s one of those moments where you realize just how deeply he loves her, and it honestly makes the eventual breakup even more heartbreaking. 💔😭

I seriously teared up. 😢 I’m not very religious, and most people would be shocked I even pray when I need strength, but Edward praying and then lying to Bella is my absolute favorite part because it’s the most human thing. After seeing Bella’s anxiety in the hospital, Edward decides that this isn’t the time to leave her. He knows she needs him right now, and he even lies about staying with her forever because he can’t bear to tell her the truth. “I couldn’t tell her that I wouldn’t stay. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t have forever to give. But I had to let her believe it, because the truth would destroy her right now.” This is gut-wrenching because Edward is trapped in his own emotional turmoil. He absolutely hates lying to her—seriously, I don’t know how he’s doing it. 🤯 The fact that he’s staying while she recovers, knowing he’s going to leave, is just heartbreaking, especially since he’s seen Alice’s vision of Bella being comatose and depressed after he’s gone. I wanna cry just thinking about these hospital scenes. 😭💔💔

Their conversation in the hospital is filled with so much tension and love that it’s almost unbearable. Bella, still weak and in pain, tries to comfort Edward, who is wracked with guilt. “Don’t I taste as good as I smell?” Bella tries to lighten the mood with a joke, but Edward can’t even play along. His love for her is so intense that he can barely contain his emotions. When Bella asks him why he didn’t just let the venom spread, Edward’s response is heartbreaking: “I can’t do it, Bella. I won’t do that to you.” 💔💬 You can feel the struggle in every word he says—he wants to give her everything, but he’s terrified of what that would mean. It’s in these moments that Edward’s true nature shines through; he’s not just a vampire, but a man deeply in love and profoundly conflicted about what that love means for Bella’s future. 😢💔

And let’s not forget the little moments of humor sprinkled in. When Edward is pushing Bella in a wheelchair, he actually growls at people who stare at her too long. “A low, warning growl slipped through my lips when anyone looked too long at her fragile form.” 🦁 It’s such an overprotective boyfriend move, but you can’t help but smile because it shows just how fiercely he cares for her. Edward’s protective instincts are in overdrive, and while he’s usually so controlled, the thought of anyone causing Bella discomfort sends him into a near-animalistic rage. It’s almost like he’s a regular guy, freaking out because his girlfriend is hurt, and he doesn’t want anyone making her feel worse. 😂💪

The prom scene is another bittersweet moment. 💃🕺 Edward takes Bella to prom, not because he’s into it, but because he wants to give her a good memory—something she can hold onto when he’s gone. “I wanted to give her something to remember me by—something she could hold onto when I was gone.” 🥲 This is so sad because Edward is already planning his departure, even as he’s trying to make Bella happy in the moment. It’s that classic vampire dilemma—how do you balance your love for someone with the knowledge that your very existence puts them in danger? The prom, with its lights, music, and human warmth, contrasts sharply with Edward’s cold, calculating decision to leave. He’s trying to give Bella a piece of normalcy, something she can look back on fondly, even though he knows it will only make his departure that much more painful for her. 🥺💃

Finishing Midnight Sun has left me with so many emotions. 😵 Just when the book finally started diving into the parts of the story I was most curious about—Edward’s POV during these critical moments—it ended, leaving me craving more. Meyer did a fantastic job of humanizing Edward in these final chapters, showing us that even a century-old vampire can have teenage meltdowns, moments of doubt, and flashes of humor. 🧛‍♂️✨ I have so much more to say about these chapters, but I’ll save that for another post… or maybe two. Stay tuned for more deep dives into Edward’s surprisingly human moments and all the drama that comes with being a sparkly vampire in love. 💔✨

6 notes · View notes

rosecreates · 1 year ago

Text

The Devil Within

On a night where Nimue regains another, rather awful memory of her past during her trance, she runs off to vomit into a bush in the forest whilst plagued by a terrible headache, and unknowingly is followed by Astarion, who isn't keen to let her completely get out of explaining what's wrong.

Word Count: 2,524

Pairing(s): Vague Dark Urge/Astarion during their friends-with-benefits phase

Characters: Nimue (My Dark Urge), Astarion, Alfira mentions

Warnings: Spoilers for Act 1 Dark Urge stuff. It's for the most part introspection into my Dark Urge Nimue. Lot's o' angst with...some comfort, sorta, it's Act 1 Astarion so he sort of does his own weird way of trying to help. Dark Urge-typical violent themes. Light emetophobia warning, as whilst it's not descriptive Nimue vomits due to her urge. Not proofread.

A/N: I wrote this on a whim, first time I've written anything BG3-related actually and first time in a long time that I've written anything outside of Tumblr RP, so forgive me if Astarion's character isn't written the best or in general if the writing isn't great. But it's mostly about Nim anyway and I wrote this for fun. Title is from the song by Digital Daggers, "The Devil Within". The song is practically Nim's urge talking to her directly.

Light pink eyes look around, the little elf they belonged to finding her vision bleary as she processes what's going on. Her head is absolutely throbbing. And red. There's so much red. All over her, all over the ground at her feet- blood. It's blood. The ground is white marble, once pristine but now positively drenched in ichor. But from what, the elven girl wonders, as her sight grows clearer, and her gaze finally finds the source.

The sea of corpses that lie many feet in front of her, before a pulpit where a priest is hunched over with a knife sticking out of his back. She recoils, horror consuming her face, screaming as she falls unto the bloodstained ground. She feels ready to vomit, and gods, her head aches so badly. And yet. And yet, there is a certain satisfaction that she feels, despite the bile that feels ready to consume her. Satisfaction?

Soon, realization dawns on her at what had transpired.

It happened again.

She had done this.

The little elf was the sole one to blame for this grisly crime.

Nimue snaps out of her trance with start, breathing heavily as she regained her bearings, her head hurting once more as, just like in the memory, she felt ready to puke.

Another memory of the past, it seemed, and a violent one at that. One that appeared to indicate that these blasted urges she'd been suffering from ever since she awoke on the Nautiloid truly had always been with her, even before she'd been afflicted with amnesia. And the incident with Alfira...wasn't the first time she'd ever blacked out and committed murder in her life, either.

But there were still too many questions she had about the nature of this urge, and why she was saddled with memory loss. But her infuriating butler won't tell her anything. No matter how much she tried to press him when he appeared to her the night after she killed Alfira, he didn't budge. She hated indulging her urge, but she wouldn't be opposed to letting it direct her for once against that ugly creature that called itself Sceleritas Fel.

Alfira...her mind wanders back to that night. The grief she'd suffered immediately after the unintentional murder returns- as if it ever left, because it certainly didn't. Nimue had been ready to welcome Alfira as part of her camp, to become yet another member of the group of wayward strangers united by their need to find a cure for the tadpole in their heads that Nimue found herself de-facto leader of.

Nimue had internally declared herself their protector, despite the fact you could hardly call a woman constantly fighting against her urges to kill all of them in cold blood fit to protect just about anyone. But she thought she had control over those urges. A foolish thought in hindsight, but she thought that redirecting them towards her enemies and using the urges to make her at least a decent protector was working.

In the end, she was only trying to lie to herself, and had underestimated how truly catastrophic her urges were. That underestimation of them led to Alfira's death. Sweet Alfira, who wanted to just go on an adventure with people who were nice enough to help her with her still-ongoing journey to finishing a song for her deceased teacher, who'd perished to gnolls only a short time prior. Nimue finds a slight smile forming on her face as she thinks about the tragedy of it all, of having reunited the apprentice bard with her beloved mentor through a gruesome death perhaps even more awful than the demise Lihala had faced, before shaking her head rapidly.

She hates this. She hates it. None else in this camp are any the wiser to it, thinking her to be their stoic but well-meaning leader, who tries her best to protect them whilst also helping who she can at the same time, but not without asking for compensation. What would they think, if they learned how she usually only helped others because she wanted to spite her urge? How she hasn't the faintest idea of a moral compass, only going by what would make her party happy and to resist against this vile urge hers?

How deep down, she's really just a wretched coward who doesn't even know who she is beyond what fragments of memory slowly resurface, who feels only cold apathy in face of most people beyond her companions, who doesn't even truly understand her own emotions. That is, all except for the fear that drives her, the fear of losing control, and the even worse fear of being alone. That fear is pathetic, she knows, and yet it is also part of why she's managed to continue having enough willpower to remain as she has been.

No one needs to know a thing of what a monster she really is beneath the perfect ethereal facade of a mild-mannered but good-intentioned leader she puts up. But how long can she keep it up? How long until the others start to realize what frigidity lies within the heart of their beloved leader Nim?

She doesn't want to know. If she can keep this up forever, she happily would. She just needs to keep her wits about her, to fight against her urge even harder, now that she knows it can take control of her even when she trances. She has to admit, ever since Alfira's death, she's been trancing even less, and she's been plagued by horrible memories whenever she did trance.

How was she supposed to deal with the prospect that she could trance and then wake up to find herself standing over the corpse of one of her beloved companions? They, who were all that kept her connected to whatever humanity remains within her otherwise monstrous being that hid within the skin of a High Elf?

Dammit, she really is going to be sick. With haste, she gets up from her bedroll as quickly as she can, a hand over her mouth to try to hold it back. She doesn't want anyone to hear her, to see her in this sort of state. And she retches into the nearby bush once she thinks she's far enough away from camp, shaking as her head is still gnawing at her.

"My, you look positively dreadful for once."

She freezes.

Astarion.

Of course the only other fucking elf in camp, who experienced the same sort of trances that had him semi-conscious and bore the same keen senses, would end up breaking from his trance and catching her running from camp with vomit barely held back in her throat and throwing up inexplicably. Of course he would. She has to wonder how he didn't catch her when she murdered Alfira, frankly.

But in fairness to those godsforsaken urges of hers, they weren't stupid. They had gotten Alfira a little farther from her companions before maiming the poor bard. Still, she has to wonder if the vampire knew more than he was letting on.

Or maybe she was just paranoid. Yeah, she's probably just paranoid. Because she's afraid, and god her head is agonizing right now but she can't let him know. He's certainly the one person at camp who'd perhaps make the least fuss about learning her darker nature, but she still doesn't want him to know.

No one needs to know. Nor should they. It's why she never pried into her companions' pasts unless it was truly necessary. She'd say it's because they didn't pry into her past, but she'd been frank with them that she didn't remember anything at all of it. Rather, none were all that nosy, and so she wasn't nosy either, despite her admitted curiosity.

"Had a bad trance, that's all. Sorry if I broke yours."

The icy stoicism was up in full force as she tried to brush it off, even though anyone who was at least mediocre in reading people could tell there was more than she wanted to tell. The way Astarion's crimson eyes narrowed said as much. His beautiful blood-colored eyes, that she'd love to tear out of his skull slowly and carefully to admire from up close- shut up shut up shut up.

"I saw you scurry away from camp as fast as you could and vomit into that bush there, darling."

Of course he saw that.

Her gaze remains cold as it looks at Astarion, pretending to be entirely unfazed. "...And if I did?"

"Normally? I wouldn't care much, but I've noticed you've been...how should I say this, quite disheveled lately, in comparison to that almost irritatingly perfect composure you usually have. You've only ever been anywhere near this much of a mess on that lovely night you and I lost ourselves in one another's bodies. Obviously a good kind of mess, unlike this."

Ah yes, that time where Nimue had taken up the vampire's offer of a night of carnal pleasure, all in hopes of distracting herself for a while from, well, mainly her urges, but also from everything in general. And it had worked. Kind of. The pleasure barely managed to be louder than the urges. It's not that she hadn't enjoyed that night, but it barely achieved what she wanted. And she wasn't sure how 'there' Astarion had been during it. He'd looked so...far away, even though he was right there at the same time.

Still, anything was better than nothing when it came to her damn urges. And right now, she's focused on Astarion not managing to pick at her enough to get insight into her true mental state. He may be being very...casual about this for the most part, but he clearly wanted answers. She's not exactly sure why- it doesn't matter anyway, because she won't give them to him.

"Where are you going with this?" She queries, brow raising slightly.

"What have you been seeing in your trances recently that's caused you to be in this kind of state, darling?"

At least he thinks it's just her seeing bad things in her trances. Her gaze does not move from him as she proceeds to answer with cool-collectedness.

"It's nothing, really, Ast-"

His unimpressed look makes her stop, before she weaves together another sentence to try to get him to stop.

"...It's just been some memories of some difficult battles, that's all."

He narrows his eyes at her. He doesn't buy it. "You may think no one notices, but we've all seen how you delight in spilling the blood of your enemies."

"You can enjoy killing their enemies whilst being haunted by nearly losing your life, or an ally almost losing their life."

He scoffs. "Please, your blatant lack of self-preservation is painfully obvious, as much as I loathe it."

Astarion had certainly made no secret of how he dislikes Nimue going and helping others, especially when it put her or others in danger, that's for sure. Or well, Nimue usually only put herself in danger. She'd rather die than anyone else.

They fall into silence for a few moments, Astarion waiting for her to finally tell what's going on, and Nimue not wanting to say anything. Nimue breaks it first, when she realized Astarion wasn't going to budge.

And perhaps because she wanted to take the chance that she could tell him at least a little of what's going on.

So, she sighs, and in her soft, and right now quite weary voice, she finally explains a little. "...I've been slowly getting back pieces of my memory. But the memories...aren't good ones."

Most of her trances have actually been occupied by the memory of the night she killed Alfira, but he doesn't need to know that.

He tilts his head to the side, and his face shows he just wants her to continue. Begrudgingly, she does. "Tonight, the memory I got was...of a younger me, surrounded by corpses, in...a church, I think. The memory distressed me enough that I felt the overwhelming need to vomit. So I did. And I have a headache. Probably because of not getting great rest."

Astarion evidently listens closely to each word, and nods once Nimue finishes, his arms crossing as he speaks. "Well, it's good that it seems like your memories aren't lost forever." He starts, before he seems to pause to contemplate what to say or do next.

It seems he's not really sure how to proceed, actually. Nimue silently questions why he came if he didn't even know what to do when she fessed up about what's going on. "You're aware you don't need to keep this to yourself, mm? I'm sure the others would let you vent your troubles and help you gladly."

Nimue's gaze finally falls from Astarion to the bush beside her she'd puked in earlier. "...I didn't want to trouble them." It's not a lie. They all have their own problems. Although there's a lot more to this than her simply not wanting to be a burden.

Astarion rolls his eyes. "How about you stop playing the woefully selfless hero already? You've already helped them plenty. They could do to help you a bit in return."

Nimue doesn't respond, her gaze staying on the bush. A minute passes before Astarion dramatically sighs, shaking his head, prompting Nimue to look at him once again. "Tell me, do you plan to try to trance again soon, or not?"

Nimue shakes her head. "I don't think I'll be able to, if I'm going to be honest." Astarion makes a sound of annoyance, before walking closer to her.

"Well, luckily for you, I don't plan to either."

"You don't have to stay up with-"

"Shush, darling. First, let's return to camp, yes?" He motions for her to follow him, and she follows silently, them returning to camp side by side, before he leads her onto the rock formation at the camp's center. At first, she's confused what he's doing, but he soon sits down, and pats the spot beside him, signaling for her to do the same. She obeys, and he proceeds to point up at the sky, where from here they get a lovely view of the starry night sky above.

Ah. He was getting her to stargaze with him. To get her mind off the bad memory.

And, well, she can't say she's upset about it. The stars tonight are gorgeous, she has to admit. She always did love the stars, or well, she'd loved them since she spent her first night camping with everyone. And Astarion- befitting the meaning of his name- was quite fond of them as well.

This was...really nice. Her head still hurts, but it feels like it hurts a bit less right now. And her urges had decided to be quieter now, giving her a welcome slight reprieve for now.

Neither her nor Astarion uttered another word, but simply admired the stars together. Tomorrow would surely have an endless amount of horrors awaiting them as always, but that wasn't right now.

Right now?

She felt the closest thing to peace she had in a long while.

#{writing}#{fanfiction}#{oc fic}#{bg3 fic}#{oc: nimue}#{bg3 - astarion}#bg3 #writing #bg3 writing #bg3 fanfiction #astarion #astarion bg3 #dark urge #bg3 dark urge #astarion ancunin #baldurs gate 3 #astarion x dark urge #astarion x durge #do not ask me how i vomited up a 2.5k word fanfic between like 10 pm - 2 am i do not fucking know what came over me #anyway hurray for the first bit of writing on this blog i am going to sleep now #as previously stated this is my first bg3 fic so apologies if astarion isnt exactly written the best. again this was focused on nim so yea #i tried y'all but im not gonna go over and proofread this in my current state + this was for fun #hope y'all like this though ive been wanting to write stuff of nim for some time now #maybe when i gain enough confidence i will write what ive really been wanting to write and do something of nim from others' povs #i dunno we will see #anyways goodnight

13 notes · View notes