#oh and also i think less about the undesirable stuff now too.

[justajsworkshop]

so, my new favorite thing is to say “anytime i think about (insert undesirable thing), i make $1,000 because (insert undesirable thing) isnt real but the money sure is.” guess who got $1200 today. 💸🖤

[skiyoosmi]

if fate permits

chapter twenty

a taste of his own medicine

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“Hey… uhm… I’m sorry. I’m not sure where to start because I’ve been the worst friend to ya for the past weeks. But I want to start with an apology, I guess… yer probably tired of hearing it, right? … it’s something I’ll never gonna be proud of, my pettiness, I mean… but yeah… I’m sorry, YN. I hope ya believe me when I say yer impo–”

Beep! You sighed, ending yet another voicemail from Atsumu. It’s been almost a week since you and your brother moved out of the apartment and ever since the day after that, your soulmate has yet to cease dropping more than three voicemails every single day.

It wasn’t that you haven’t caught sight of him at school; in fact, you see him everywhere. It’s just so happens that you couldn’t help but avoid him like a plaque. You think he knows it though and you’re actually glad that he’s trying to respect your space (except for the endless ringing of your phone which only gets sent straight to voicemail every time, much like today). Which is why right now, you only stared at his contact, contemplating whether you will entertain his ‘apology.’ He sounds like he regrets it, after all and the fact that you only have less than 10 days before your flight wasn’t helping the situation.

“You know, if you keep having a soft heart like that, I’m betting a hundred bucks you won’t get too far once you become a famous writer. A lot of people will take advantage of you, you know. And don’t even get me started with those haters that disguise themselves as critiques,” Speaking of the devil, Kiyoomi suddenly spoke up, his figure leaning against the doorway of your room, much like the pose your father had when you were leaving your previous apartment.

Hundred bucks, you begin to think, where the hell would your jobless ass get a hundred bucks? You won’t tell him that verbally, of course; you value your life too much to even risk being strangled by your brother’s own hands.

“What do you mean soft heart? Where’d you even get the idea that I’m going to talk to him, doofus!? No way, he needs to learn his lesson,” You huffed, turning to him with an eyebrow raised, as if challenging him. He scoffed, entering your room, and sitting on your bed. You were kind of surprised he did given that your room was still messy as hell; but once again, you opted to keeping your mouth shut.

“It’s written all over your face, dear sister. Plus, you’ve said that a million times already I’m actually tired of hearing it now. After all these years, you think I don’t memorize every habit you have?” He replied, hands taking some of the clothes that were still stored in a brown carton and beginning to fold them neatly before standing up and putting it into your closet. He really does take after your father, from appearances to characteristics, “Your eyes, they speak to me the loudest, telling me every bit of your feelings. In fact, I’m kind of puzzled Atsumu never found out through them. But then again, it just supports the truth that he’s as dumb as he could get.”

This boy doesn’t really miss a chance to voice out his disfavor for your soulmate, huh? You wonder what is it that made him dislike… no, wait dislike was an underestimation… rather, loath Atsumu to the core. Bad first impression? No, your brother was not that petty. Did they have a fight you never knew about? If Atsumu and him ever fought, you were sure as hell you’d be the first one to know, seeing as your best friend practically whines and complains at you at every single thing in his life… so why?

“He hurt you and not just once. It’s not supposed to be my business but technically speaking, you are my sister before you were his soulmate and that’s all I needed to dislike him,” said Kiyoomi, continuing to fold your clothes as if what he said was practically nothing. Was he a mind-reader? You don’t know but perhaps, you could try to convince him to start up a fortune-telling business with you and earn millions.

“… You’re so creepy, ‘Yoomi,” You spoke up after a few moments of silence while he sneered, obviously not pleased with your comical reply, “Forget it! God, it’s so hard to have a serious talk with you.”

You only pursed your lips before bursting out into laughter, making him glare at you before his eyes softened. He hasn’t heard that pure laughter in a long time, after all. For some odd reason, he is proud that it was him that made you happy again like that, even for just a short while. After watching you work on something he doesn’t really know what, probably for the play, (it’s a relief you still have a smile on your face while you were on it though), he stands up, stopping by the doorway again when he heard you speak, “Thanks for being there, ‘Yoomi. Can’t imagine my life without my best brother.”

Kiyoomi knows he’s far from being the best brother in the world; he wasn’t expressive, sweet nor overprotective… but hearing those words from you means he’s at least good and somehow, he’s fine with that. He remains quiet before saying, “You know, your friend Hajime, I think he’s nice.”

He doesn’t say anything more, but he knows that his words reached you; he didn’t miss the way you blushed, after all. He takes note of making you flustered more often.

Osamu grumbles under his breath in annoyance, clenching then unclenching his hands as he watched Yui cling onto his brother’s arm like there was no tomorrow. Doesn’t this girl have any decency left in her blood? They were in the public cafeteria of the university, good heavens! And they haven’t even officially became soulmates AND a couple.

The last thing he wanted on his agenda today was to become a third wheel, much less to his brother; and the fact that it’s not even with you, the true soulmate, his favorite Sakusa (he won’t let Kiyoomi know that though), and best drinking buddy, makes it more unbearable for the gray-haired lad. He could only scowl so hard at his twin, who on the other hand, remained unmoved. At least that’s what Osamu sees but unbeknownst to him, Atsumu just wishes he could go and find you as soon as possible.

He has had enough of you averting your gaze each time you catch each other’s eyes at the theater room. According to his brother, your flight is in ten days which means he only had a few more days to make your friendship right; to make it up to you and prove that you are, indeed, an important figure in his life (cue Osamu’s mocking last night when they talked: “HAH!? You sure do have a peculiar way of showing her that she’s important. You’re making me want to laugh and choke you at the same time.”)

“Oh! Iwaizumi-kun, Tooru and… Sakusa YN?” Yui trails off, making the blonde perk up at the sound of your name, turning his body quickly only to find you already looking back at them with… disappointed eyes? As quickly as it came, it disappeared and soon, you were smiling and waving at Osamu, completely ignoring your “best” friend. Atsumu can only stare at you in disbelief; never, not even once, had you disregarded his existence like that before. Even when you had small arguments, you made sure to acknowledge him with a simple nod.

In addition to your indifference, Hajime only furrowed his eyebrows in confusion at Yui’s greeting, as if he doesn’t know Yui at all, not even as an acquaintance. Hence, the three of you only proceeded to the table Makki, Mattsun and your brother saved for you.

“Eh? Iwaizumi… ignored me?” Yui frowned, obviously not used to being disregarded by the boy who used to give her a greeting every time they come across each other. As far as she could remember, they ended their bond in good terms, without anyone having to feel angry at the other so why is it that he acted that way? Did he hold a grudge after all?

Meanwhile, Atsumu gazed into nothing, your sad eyes flashing into his mind and staying there. Have you given up on him already? Did his nightmare that day actually came true? His trail of thoughts was cut off with Osamu’s voice speaking with amusement plastered on his face, “ooh, a taste of his own medicine, huh YN?”

He smirks, finding his brother’s suffering oddly satisfying. He too, like Kiyoomi, has his limits as to Atsumu’s undesired talent of hurting you (he knows the blonde was also suffering but you know, it just really gets on his nerves how blind his twin could get). So right after saying that, he stands up, picking up his tray that holds his food and beginning to walk where your table was.

“Samu! Where are you going?” The said lad looks back at his blonde twin weirdly before shrugging, “YN and Kiyoomi’s table, where else? You can’t expect me to stay on the table with you two, it’s weird.”

“So… you really can’t remember anything about your soulmate? Like who it is or something?” Oikawa asked, staring at Hajime’s hands, as if he’d be able to see anything on his pinky. Unfortunately for him, the ex-captain was not given the ability to be a Moira so he wouldn’t be able to see any changes no matter how long or hard he looks. The spiky-haired lad merely groans, feeling a headache coming due to his dear friend’s pestering, “Yes. I told you that already. I just woke up, saw my thread black and now, I can’t remember anything about who it is.”

“But you can remember us? It’s just the soulmate stuff you forgot?”

“Well, I’m talking to you right now, am I not, you dumbass?” Hajime snarled; an inch close to punching his best friend in the face. Beside him, you look down, feeling the sadness and heartbreak for him because even those feelings were lost the moment he woke up. If you let go of Atsumu, will this also happen to you? You can only give a pathetic laugh at your silly question; of course, it will. You weren’t some kind of special Moira that will be exempted from that ‘curse.’ But you wonder, how would he react? Would he be sad? Or would he just forget about you too and just throw everything you had away? It seems so easy for him to do that, after all.

Now that you witness what’s gonna happen upon cutting the thread, a part of you somehow wishes you should’ve just told him when it was still early, when you were still young and problem-free. Maybe he would’ve given you a promise like those in the movies wherein he says he would marry you once you get older. Maybe he would’ve been able to love you if you could’ve just given him a chance to do so. But it’s your fault, isn’t it? Because you were a coward; you were so greedy for true love that you can no longer have it, you think to yourself.

In the midst of your rather negative thoughts, a warm hand pulls you away from mentally beating up yourself further. Looking up, you find Hajime looking at you with soft eyes, as if assuring your heart that: “You’ll be fine. I’m here. I’ll keep you safe.”

Maybe… just maybe, the universe has given you another chance for true love.

marga's notes. I HAVE FOUND A NEW HUSBAND AND HIS NAME'S BENIMARU SHINMON

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[whentherewerebicycles]

You seem to be really amazing at executing planned changes with food and exercise (and also generally better psychological habits) - can i ask for advice on this? I’ve finished up studying for now and realise my body has turned into a twisted up, pudgy, weakened wreck! Exercise hurts and sugar/processed food feels so cosy and I can’t seem to get through this part where i have to feel discomfort for a while before i feel better!

What works for you? Should i read that atomic habits book you mention? I saw another one recommended - the Kindness Habit - do you know anything about it?

(I tried journaling btw - but it didn’t get me anywhere)

hello!! i can share some things that have worked for me when it comes to implementing longer-term changes in diet and exercise. these seem really simple but i think that actually making big lifestyle changes is much less about summoning up colossal amounts of willpower and much more about making small but important tweaks to the way you think about/approach diet and exercise. here are five things that have been helpful to me.

(1) don’t think of diet changes in terms of restrictions (i.e., “what delicious cozy sugary things do i have to deprive myself of today to be Good”). instead, approach diet changes as a fun little game of adding in as many good things as possible (fruits, veggies, leafy green things, nuts of all kinds, whole grains, beans, etc.). every single time you are preparing a meal or looking for a snack, describe it to yourself as a chance to be creative and resourceful, as you think about fun ways to add in small good things every time you eat. especially in the early weeks, don’t restrict foods from your diet at all. focus solely on finding a creative way to add in something healthy and delicious every time you eat. (i really liked using the daily dozen checklist when i was starting out—they have an app and it’s very satisfying and fun to see how many things you can check off the list each day.)

(2) narrate this “adding-in” game aloud to yourself. for example: “oh—what if i eat a big handful of berries on top of that ice cream?”, or “i’m hungry—ooh, there are carrots in the fridge, aren’t there? i’ll eat three carrots with hummus before i switch over to pita chips”). and every time you figure out a creative way to add in a good food, stop and observe yourself doing it, and let yourself feel a little spark of delight at how clever and creative you’re being. this sounds silly, but i swear it works! part of changing your habits is changing self-talk & especially changing the kind of running narrative you have in your head about who you are and what you do. you can change that narrative in part by repeatedly reframing the way you tell it to yourself, ideally aloud (or aloud in your head) to help you can better “hear” and internalize the new story. instead of “ugh... i ate ice cream again. why don’t i have any self-control? why am i someone who just eats like crap?”, you’re offering your brain an alternate story, one that focuses less on things you perceive yourself as lacking, or on things you ‘failed’ to do, and more on the creative, positive things you did do (“i wasn’t going to eat any fruit today, but wasn’t it great that i remembered we had those frozen berries in the fridge? that’s pretty creative and resourceful of me, and plus it’s a good way to use up something i’d forgotten i even had”).

the “noticing and feeling delighted” part is just as important. to successfully change a habit, you need to find creative ways to make the new habit pleasurable in and of itself. the more pleasure you feel when you do it, the more self-reinforcing the habit itself becomes. you might not experience eating healthy foods as intensely pleasurable (at least at first, especially if you are comparing them with the intense brain-hacking pleasure that super sugary foods give us). so don’t try! instead, focus on making the choice a source of pleasure and delight. "look at how clever i was! look at how creative i can be! look at what a good choice i made! look at how good i am at this game of adding in!” that act of stopping, narrating, and letting yourself feel genuinely pleased with what you’ve just done makes the choice to add something in pleasurable, which in turn can help fuel your sense that this isn’t about having iron willpower or about cruelly depriving yourself of delicious things, but is about playing a fun little game with yourself, creating little challenges or puzzles for yourself throughout the day and then giving yourself positive reinforcement when you figure them out.

(3) manage your environment to set yourself up for success. to paraphrase the atomic habits book: the people who seem to have the best willpower are the people who have to exercise it the least. and they have to exercise it the least because they’ve very effectively managed their environment, arranging things so that the desired choices are easy and “frictionless,” while the undesired choices or habits are more inconvenient or introduce more friction (it’s harder to get to them).

the easy starter version of this (from atomic habits): put the things you want to eat in highly visible places and/or in appealing arrangements, and put the things you don't want to eat in places that aren't visible or that are inconvenient to access. ice cream goes in the very back of the fridge, buried behind all the other stuff. nuts go in a bowl on your desk so that you can idly snack on them while you work. apples and bananas go in a big brightly colored bowl right on the counter, so that every time you pass through the kitchen your eyes are drawn to them. chips go in the bottom cupboard, the one below eye level that you don't use very often, and when you get them out you pour some into a bowl and put them right back in there (instead of leaving the bag out on the counter). make the choice you want to make easy, and make the choice you don't want to make harder to get to.

eventually, the most effective way of managing your environment is just to exercise total control over what comes into your own living space. for me, if i don’t want to eat it, i don’t have it in the house. i typically also place a curbside delivery grocery order so that i don’t have to go into the store—anything that comes into my house is something i made a deliberate choice about ordering, not something i wandered by a shelf and added to my cart because i wanted a treat. something i’ve learned about myself over the years that moderation is just not in my vocabulary—i’m an all-or-nothing person, and it’s SO much easier for me to just not have stuff i don’t want to eat in the house. no ice cream in the house. no alcohol in the house. no fried things, no chips, no candy, etc etc. if someone kindly brings me baked goods that i did not ask for, i genuinely appreciate the gesture, but as soon as they leave i give them to my next door neighbor or dump them in the trash. (SORRY TO PEOPLE WHO BAKE FOR ME!) if it's in the house i'll eat it. if it's not, i won't, and i also won't miss it.

i did do this pretty gradually at first, though! when i switched to a primarily whole food plant-based diet, i focused on playing the adding-in game for a couple weeks, and then when i started getting competitive about it i decided to use my grocery order as a way of creatively boosting my fruit/veggie/etc consumption even more, and in the process i started winnowing out things that took away chances to add in a good thing. i would say it took about three or four weeks to get to my personal ideal state of Nope I Don't Have It In The House.

it takes time, but i’d say that within a month of having only things you want to eat in the house, your cravings will be gone, at least within your own managed environment (going to restaurants or traveling DOES require you to exercise willpower, but there are ways to prepare for this in advance). the good news, though, is that 6-8 months or so of eating like this usually brings with it such improved sleep, mood, energy levels, skin, hair, GI function, etc etc that you start to be like oh my GOD why would i want to eat that horrifying thing?? I KNOW HOW BAD IT MAKES ME FEEL!! I WANT TO POWER MY BODY WITH PLANTS!!!!! in other words, the pleasurable side effects of eating well becomes positively reinforcing in its own right, while the negative effects you experience when you reintroduce sugar or fried things tends to reinforce the idea that those foods Feel Bad.

(4) it's not exercise, it's movement. i too used to hate exercise and found it extremely painful and tedious and horrible. so instead of exercising i just started moving. i canceled my membership at the local dog bar, where i had been taking my dog almost every day to let him run off excess energy, and started talking short walks with him twice a day instead. if you don’t have a dog, offer to walk your friends’ dogs—trust me they will lose their MINDS with joy lol. i think that starting to build in regular walks is the best way to get active again, because walking is typically quite pleasant and it becomes positively reinforcing to like, wave at the same neighbors every day, and see the cute kids next door running around, and notice all the ways that the trees and flowers are changing, and so on.

if you do not find being outside inherently pleasurable (sometimes i do not lol esp if i’m grumpy about having to walk the dog), tie another pleasurable activity to your daily walk. i listen to about six hours’ worth of hockey podcasts a week and i am only allowed to listen to them on my walks, so i end up looking forward to the walk because i’m desperate to hear people talk about My Guys. you can also walk with friends, or call a friend while you’re walking, which is even better than podcasts!! social walks are so much fun and go by so much more quickly. i started out just doing daily 15 min walks, and over the past couple years have built up to walking between 60-90 min a day when i’m at home. sometimes i hate/dread my walk; sometimes i love it and look forward to it. but regardless of how i’m feeling, i do it every day and if i miss it once, i don’t miss it a second time. 

as far as activity goes, i think it’s totally ok to just be a person who walks a lot! but i’ve found that becoming someone who walked a lot helped change my own narrative of myself—I started to think of myself as a walker, an active person who moved a lot every day. and that made it easier to pick up other forms of activity too, or at least to adopt a curious, exploratory attitude towards other forms of movement. also once you start tracking your active minutes you tend to get quite competitive about it! or at least i do, lol. i keep a note on my phone where i write down the date + type of activity + total number of minutes I did after every burst of activity, then at the end of the week i add it all up and compare it to the previous weeks. it makes me want to do more, to beat my own numbers—or it makes me want to keep up a streak (like, if i have a five-week period where i’ve consistently hit a certain level of active minutes every week, i don’t want to break it!!).

my biggest suggestion for exercise, though, is to figure out what kinds of things you enjoy and what kinds of things you don’t, and then to spend all your time doing things you like. i HATE structured fitness classes and workout videos. i hate them so much!!!!!!!! but i love being outside, i love doing solo activities (as opposed to group workouts), and i love doing any form of movement that doesn’t feel like a Planned Workout, capital w. also becoming a hockey fan got me really interested in skating, so i picked up rollerblades and found that to be amazingly fun too (something i can do outside AND something that feels like gliding around effortlessly AND something that makes me feel closer to My Favorite Guys!!!!). you may not have passionate feelings about hockey fandom as i do, but i think it’s really just about being creative—finding a creative way to link something you don’t love to something you do love, or find pleasurable, so that you can start forging those positive associations. 

i spent my first couple years of being more active just walking walking walking, and then this past year during the pandemic when i really ramped up my movement i added in longer walks, hikes, and rollerblading, and i also looked for ways to “habit-stack,” ie attaching an activity i don’t much care for (running; exercise biking indoors; doing squats and lunges) to one i do enjoy (i take my tennis shoes when i go skating and then go for a run immediately afterwards, before i have time to talk myself out of it). there are still all kinds of things i don’t do—i really don’t love strength training + bodyweight exercises yet, and i hate stretching even though I Know I Should, and i know that if i want to get stronger and faster, or build up my endurance, i will eventually need to introduce some element of structured training into my daily movement.

BUT the idea of making those changes seems kind of cool to me now, instead of Horrifying and Dread-Inducing! i feel like all the positive associations i’ve forged have made me more curious and open to ideas i would’ve resisted with my whole being not all that long ago. i found a way to make movement pleasurable, and then (thanks to sports fandom + my tendency to go down research rabbitholes) i found a way to get myself intellectually and emotionally engaged in the general concept of being a highly active person. for me, that combination of real pleasure + intellectual/emotional stimulation is what i personally need to build & maintain good habits.

(also, just shoehorning this in at the end because i like it: the “it’s movement, not exercise” mindset shift was also really helpful to me because it stopped me from thinking of exercise as like, this highly structured, regimented, torturous thing you forced yourself through for a set period of time each day, and helped me instead think of movement as something that humans are designed to do & to naturally enjoy. instead of Forcing Myself to Exercise, i looked for more natural-feeling forms of movement that didn’t feel so artificially divided from my “real life.” i think that helped with reframing my self-narrative, too! it made being active feel more integrated into my daily life, which in turn made it easier to think of myself as an active person, someone for whom movement was just a normal part of daily life and not a thing i had to psych myself up to do every day.)

(5) it takes time to build good habits, but not nearly as much time as you might think, and eventually you stop thinking about how long you’ve been doing something and you just start enjoying it (ie it becomes a genuine change in your lifestyle/thinking, not an artificial thing you have to work hard every day to maintain).

i am not yet AN ATHLETE and may never be, but i often remind myself that it took me a little under 30 years to build up a PROFOUND aversion to exercise, so it’s actually kind of miraculous that in just two years i’ve become someone who genuinely, earnestly, enthusiastically enjoys being active and feels antsy/weird/restless when i can’t get out of the house and move. every small stride i’ve made has strengthened my trust in myself and helped me reframe the narrative i tell myself about what kind of person i am and what i do/don’t do. every time i do the thing (whether it’s exercising or making a delicious healthy dinner) & happily notice myself doing it, i reaffirm to myself that i’m the kind of person who takes care of my body and mind by eating well and spending lots of time moving outside. (as a side benefit, when i spend a lot of time happily noticing things and speaking encouragingly to myself, i also reaffirm to myself that i am a happy person who treats myself kindly and who is always eagerly seeking out experiences that feel joyful and life-affirming.)

plus, the more often you do something, the more opportunities you have to have positive experiences while doing it! not every walk is AMAZING, LIFE-CHANGING, DEEPLY FULFILLING, but like, if i am walking seven days a week, that’s seven opportunities for something cool or fun to happen on a walk (not to mention seven opportunities to reap all the physiological & emotional well-being benefits of exercise!!). and if i am really conscious and intentional about noticing and actively delighting in those positive experiences, i help wire in those positive associations more deeply, and my brain/body increasingly comes to associate movement with happiness, joy, and fulfillment. as the habit of being more active becomes fulfilling in and of itself, i don’t have to expend as much energy tricking or cajoling or bribing myself into doing it.

*

i hope this helps!! i am literally always happy to write extremely long essays in respond to simple anon questions, lol, so if you want to talk more about your own ideas for building better habits please do share!! i can also rec you specific books that i’ve found really useful—both for just like, helping me figure out how to make big changes, and also for providing that intellectual stimulation that gets me more engaged in wanting to eat well & be more active.

(also, on the extremely slim chance that you are also a hockey fan: over in my fandom sphere, we are organizing a fun summer thing inspired by one of our fave hockey players, where we’ll be planning lots of fun fannish community things to get ourselves moving this summer. it’s going to be a good time!!)

[lu-undy]

Chapter 78 - SBT

Here it is!

"I assume you had your reasons for doing it this way but it has to change, and fast." Lucien sat on the oval table and crossed his arms. The smoke from his cigarette floated in the air like a cloud above his head.

"I did. But now that there is no danger anymore, I might actually do it." 

Lucien frowned and pondered.  The king of the beggars went on.

"I will set a rendez-vous point. All you have to do is have him be there." 

"Non." Lucien answered, raising cold eyes to his ex-colleague. 

"What?"

"Non." He repeated firmly. "You are not taking any risks in this business, I am. So we will do things my way."

"What risks are you taking?" Maurice asked and Lucien's anger flashed on his fair irises.

"You know very well." He answered drily.

"Very well, what do you suggest?" 

Lucien sighed. 

"I do not know yet. I need to think about it. The stakes are too high. Every second that I spend with you discussing it is a second that I betray him and his trust. I cannot afford that, nor do I want it, not anymore, not ever." 

"Fine." Maurice said, from his old wooden throne. "You do as you please." 

"Tell me where they are. I shall bear the responsibility of the rest." 

Maurice wrote something on a piece of paper and slid it to the ex-spy. 

"That is where I have kept them. Good luck. They are expecting him."

The Frenchman's rage boiled up a notch higher. 

"Pardon?" He asked in his native tongue. "Do not think for one second that this puts you out of any responsibility!"

"What are you going to do? Stab me in the back, like in the old days…?" 

Lucien's jaw relaxed and he smirked, not like the free man he was now, but like the spy he had been: cold, arrogant and overly self-confident.

"Me? Nothing. Him? I am not so sure, Maurice." 

He took the piece of paper that he stored in his pocket and exited the hideout. When he made it back to the surface, he adjusted his scarf and headed back home. 

-- Next day -- 

"Mundy, I forgot to tell you something."

"What is it?"

Lucien was sitting next to his lover at the table while they shared breakfast. 

"Richard and his wife agreed to take Diamond." 

"Oh, that's great news!" 

"I also sent the word to Maurice, and he is happy to take Star."

"Oh, alright."

"Oui, he shall train her to take on Perle's job and hunt mice and chase away any undesired rodents." 

"That's nice, hear that, Starry baby?" Mundy was cuddling the lady kitten. She meowed happily. "You'll get a nice home and a job. Kids'll cover you in pets too!"

"And guess where our beloved ball of hunger will end up?" Lucien asked, petting Glovy on his lap. 

"I don't know, where?" 

"There is one young man who will make him more than happy." 

"Who?"

Lucien smiled before answering. 

"Bastien." 

"Bastian?" 

"Who better than an apprentice chef cook for our beloved Glovy?" Lucien asked. 

"Hear that, fat boy? Your new dad's gonna make you delicious food!"

"Mrow!" He answered excitedly. 

"Yeah…" Mundy extended his hand and scratched Glovy under his chin. "You're one happy, chunky boy, aren't ya?" 

The large yet short cat purred happily under the attention. 

"So that settles it apart from Junior…" Mundy said. The kitten had grown up like his brother and his sisters but still looked smaller. 

"Viens, mon petit." 

[Come, my little one.]

Lucien bent down, released Glovy and scooped his namesake off the floor to put him on his knees. 

"He will have a good forever home. We shall offer him as a gift and a surprise." Lucien answered, cuddling the kitten. 

"Yeah, but to who?" Mundy asked. 

"To whom?" Lucien corrected. "Well, who will need a Lucien and has been missing me while I was away?" 

"Me?" Mundy answered. 

"Apart from you?" Lucien asked. 

"Don't know, who?" 

"Victoria." He answered. 

"Oh…" 

"I think she will take the best care of him." Lucien added. 

"I'm sure you're right, darl'." Mundy laced a lazy arm around Lucien's shoulders and the Frenchman leaned on him. 

"Any plans for today?" Mundy asked.

"I was thinking of taking the kittens to their new homes." Lucien answered, pushing a lock of silver hair behind his ear. 

"Oh, ok, sure."

"I suggest we start with Bastien and Richard, they are not too far apart from each other. Then, Maurice and in the end, Victoria."

"You wanna take Junior to the diner?" 

"Non, I planned on knocking directly at her door, after her shift." 

"You know where she lives?" 

Lucien raised his eyes and his smirk to his lover. 

"Right, right, ok, ex-spy, I get it." Mundy chuckled.

"I see you are learning." Lucien teased. "But what do you think of this plan? That ought to keep us busy for most of the day."

"Seems like it, yeah. I'm alright with the plan. But first, we need to tell Pearl and Soot." 

"But of course." 

Lucien and Mundy finished their breakfast and found themselves sitting on the carpet in the living room, facing the cats. 

"Right, ladies and gents…" Mundy started. "Today, you're gonna leave Mum and Dad, even your gramps."

The kittens listened with wide open eyes. 

"Meow?" Perle, who had been laying on the carpet, moved to sit up.

"Do not worry, mon bébé," Lucien scratched her head gently. "They will all go to good homes. Star will go to Maurice and hunt the mice there, oh and Junior will go to Victoria."

"Meow?" Soot rose to his feet too. 

"Hey, Sooty boy, you trust the old gramps, eh?"

The black cat went straight to Mundy and purred when he scratched his jaw. 

"There we go. Now, we're gonna give you a few minutes to say goodbye, ok? You be good boys and girls." 

Mundy rose to his feet. 

"Mrow…" Perle bit her Papa's sleeve. 

"Oh? Qu'est-ce que tu veux, ma chérie?"

[Oh? What do you want, my darling?]

She kept on pulling his sleeve and meowing sadly. 

"I will stay with her, go and get ready, Mundy."

"You sure?"

"Oui, she needs me." 

"Fair. See ya in a bit, I'll go get my shoes and stuff." Mundy left a kiss on Lucien's brow and left him with the cats. 

Perle stood on her back legs. Lucien smiled and lifted her into his arms, rocking her gently.

"Qu'est-ce qui se passe? Tu n'aimes pas les 'au revoir' ?"

[What is happening? You don't like goodbyes?]

"Mrow…" She answered sadly. 

"Personne n'aime les au revoir. Ni les hommes, ni les chattes apparemment. Ne t'inquiète pas, tes bébés sont grands maintenant, ils n'ont plus besoin, ni de toi, ni de leur père, ni de nous."

[No one likes goodbyes. Neither people, nor lady cats apparently. Don't worry, your babies have grown up now, they don't need you or Soot, or us anymore.]

"What's wrong, baby?" Mundy joined them and put Lucien's shoes down next to him. "Don't want the kids to go, eh?" 

"Non, she does not." Lucien answered. They both spoiled her with affection, scratches and sweet words. 

"When…" Lucien started. His eyes were riveted on Perle. "When Jérémy was growing up…" 

Mundy's eyebrows jumped. He hadn't expected Lucien to talk about his late son. 

"There came an age where he liked me… less." 

"Oh?" Mundy scooted closer to his lover. 

"Like any other child of his age, he started seeing me not as a model, but as someone who continuously failed to understand him."

"It's fine, luv', we all had that phase for a bit…"

"I guess so but," Lucien sighed and looked away. "It still felt strange to hear the baby that I had carried in my arms a few years before tell me that he hated me, that I was never there for him, that… that…" 

"Sshhh." Mundy wrapped his arms around Lucien and pulled his head under his chin. 

"I was a poor father… I was absent, I was busy, I was away, I was…"

"Hey, it's alright. All dads are like that, ok? They're all busy with work and stuff when we're kids. Then we get to teenage boys and we start gettin' weird, and wonderin' about sheilas… And boys, I guess… About ourselves. We got all these questions and parents are shit at answerin' them. So we feel alone, and not really understood. But it's fine, it's how it goes and how it should go." 

Lucien buried his head deeper in Mundy's chest. 

"Doesn't mean you were a bad dad. And I'm sure of it now, I've seen you with Victoria and with Pearl. You're a bloody good Papa." 

"Maybe." Lucien's voice was muffled. His eyes were closed against Mundy's heart that he heard beating gently in front of him. He could smell the cheap cologne too, it brought him immense comfort. 

"Hey, not to me, eh? I saw you. I even told you. Wish my dad was like you."

"Oui but…"

"But what, love? Tell me." 

"I…"

"Get it out, darl'... Better out than in."

Lucien's shoulders sank. 

"I wish I could now know what Jérémy really thought of me. At the end, he kept on reproaching me all those things and, well, they were all true. Each time he did, I looked in his eyes, God, his eyes… He had his mother's eyes… Blue, of a darker shade than mine, dirty blond hair, buck teeth… He was an adorable little boy but he grew up to hit puberty, too soon. And each time he would address me, it would not be with admiration anymore, but with anger and hatred." 

"Hey… Darl'..." Mundy gently rocked his lover and slid his fingers through his long hair. "Close your eyes and remember when you were his age, eh? Didn't you think that you had it all figured out, that you'd be better off without your parents, that they didn't understand what you felt…?"

"Mundy, you are not understanding."

"Oh?"

Lucien pulled himself out of the embrace and rubbed his eyes. 

"Non, I understood him too well! I knew this rage, this powerlessness, this frustration. I knew it so well that when I was faced with it, I decided to leave home and live in the streets." 

Mundy frowned. 

"When I turned 18, I fled. My mother and step-father pressured me and forced me to choose between Medicine and Law. I didn't want either, and so I ran away. And whenever I saw Jérémy look at me with hatred, I would see myself, right before I fled. It terrified me, that sight."

"You were scared that he'd run away too?" Mundy asked. 

Lucien raised his eyes to him and nodded sadly. 

"Oh, I get it now… But Lu'..."

"Who knows? Maybe he wanted to flee too. Maybe God claimed him back before he had the chance."

"Ssh." Mundy pulled Lucien in a hug again. "You can't know. No one can."

"What terrified me most is how his mother would have reacted, had he decided to run away."

"Lu', stop thinkin' about it. You can't do anything about it, and in any case, you don't have to."

"Oui, but what if-?"

"No, luv', listen." Mundy cut him off and cupped his face such that he rested his forehead against his. "What ifs are useless, darl'. Stop thinking about it. Let your baby boy rest, and let yourself rest too."

"I cannot. There are things that I have been holding within myself for far too long. I want someone to know. I want someone to share all these personal secrets with, I want to share the weight of that burden, all those mistakes, those sins." 

"Hey now, don't be dramatic. Everyone does stuff they regret. There isn't one man or sheila alive who doesn't regret somethin'! It's just not possible!"

"Oui, but I don't care about other people!"

"Neither do I! But you can't continue carrying stuff like that on your back!"

"You want me to forget?" Lucien asked, his eyes wider than planets. 

"No! I want you to learn to live with it in your heart, not on your shoulders like you're carrying the world's misery on yourself!"

Lucien lowered his head and softly headbutted Mundy's chest. 

"I know it's hard, love. I really do. Sometimes I think about my parents and how I… I-I…" 

Lucien raised his head and Mundy looked away. 

"How you what?" He gently asked. 

"I'm a monster… I-I left them to die."

Lucien's eyes snapped wide. 

"Non!" He frowned. "You outdid yourself to avenge them! I saw you, the delicate, shy, compassionate you torture a man. You burnt a man, you burnt every square inch of his chest while he was wide awake and alive!"

Mundy rubbed his eyes and winced. 

"Yeah, you don't need to remind me of that, thanks…."

"Mundy…" Lucien put a hand on his cheek. "You have surpassed yourself, you have done what you never thought you could and yet what did you do? You put yourself aside and did more than what trained soldiers did during the war! Mundy, you avenged them and made them proud."

"Hm. Don't think they're proud." Mundy answered. 

"That is not what I said. I said you made them proud. You avenged them and that is what you had set yourself to do, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Don't you feel at rest now with respect to your parents?" 

Mundy raised his eyes to Lucien and his gaze hung there for a few seconds. 

"I… I'm not sure." 

"Do you regret having dealt with Duchemin?" 

"N-not really but…"

Lucien nodded as he started to understand it. 

"Ah, I see… It is the discussion you had with your parents when you took me to meet them?"

Mundy nodded and sighed. 

"I feel like they'd be even more furious at me." 

"Why?"

"Mum's a good woman. She never would have wanted to hurt anyone. And Dad just hated violence for the sake of it."

"So you feel like you have avenged them but betrayed the education they gave you, their values?" 

"Yeah. I think you put the words on it, again." 

"Again?" Lucien asked. 

"That's why I was so fascinated by Lulu at first. It's cause he managed to put words on things I felt inside me."

"Mundy, you did what you did because it was the right thing to do when you had to do it." Lucien said. "Had things been different, of course you would have reacted differently. Had you not been dragged into the alligators business, you surely wouldn't have followed the track of the worthless man who killed your parents. Besides, this isn't a case of violence for the sake of it. You didn't wake up with the crave to torture someone, no one does. Non. You used violence because what else was left?"

"Nothing." Mundy answered.

"Exactly, you were alone and you didn't have any other way to set things straight. No law on Earth would have condemned that man for the atrocities he caused. So don't look at it the way you are. Had you not followed that lead to find the alligators, Duchemin might still be walking this Earth."

"And I wouldn't have met you." 

Lucien smiled. 

"Non, you would not have, but such is the game of life. You cannot win everything. Either you missed all this, you didn't deal with Duchemin and you didn't meet me, or you indeed go through all of this but with me at your side." 

"Is that the choice I have?" 

"Not exactly. You have made the choice of pursuing the alligators' road and we know where that has led you up until today. Who knows what the other path could have offered?"

"I wouldn't have known you."

"Indeed, but you would not feel this almost regret that you do right now." Lucien explained. 

"Hm."

"It is similar to me. I thought I had put away the suit and tie for good after Marie and Jérémy passed. Yet when the Minister of Defense told me of Duchemin, I could not resist the urge to deal with him." 

"D'you think they'd uh… They'd be… proud of you?"

"Non." Lucien chuckled. "Marie hated my job with a passion. She was very wary of Jérémy discovering it and becoming attracted to the idea of becoming like me. I pretended I had an office job - after all, the suit and tie worked wonders to fool anyone - and invented all kinds of stories and lies to him. He was too young to understand. But I think that as he grew up, he might have had suspicions. There aren't many jobs where you travel left and right, attend luxurious parties but don't take even your partner with you. I think he had his doubts about my job, maybe that added to his hatred towards me." 

"So we're both in the same state, eh?" 

"Oui."

"Again?"

"Oui." 

"Thank God." 

Lucien looked at Mundy. He smiled softly. 

"I'm tired of feeling alone and have weird feelin's inside me, and I'm startin' to get used to you understanding me and feeling the same way too." 

Lucien returned the gentle, lopsided grin. 

"I am grateful to have found you for that same reason, mon loup."

[My wolf]

Lucien tapped the tip of Mundy's nose and the Aussie's eyelids fluttered as he chuckled. 

"Hey…!" Mundy pulled Lucien from his waist and kissed his nose. "There, now we're even."

"Merci!"

[Thanks!]

"You're welcome. So, shall we take the kittens to their new homes?" 

"Before we do, do you feel any better?" Lucien asked.

"Yeah… Thanks love, you're the best."

"My pleasure.  In that case, let us proceed." Lucien turned to Perle. "May we…?" 

The lady cat rubbed her head against Lucien's hand before going to his mouth. He kissed her and she went to lie against Soot. 

"I think that's a yes, Lu'." Mundy said. "I found this cardboard box. Let's put the kitties in and I'll carry it. You lead the way." 

"Perfect." 

The couple scooped the kittens and placed them gently in the box. They went to the door and exited the place. 

"Mister L, Sir?" 

"Oh?" Lucien saw a group of kids running to him in the street. "Oui, what is it, gentlemen?" He squatted to be at their eye level. 

"Maurice said Francis left this for you." One of the blond boys recited his text and inflated his chest proudly. 

"What did he leave?" Lucien asked.

"This!" The child pointed further in the street. 

"Oh!" Lucien's eyebrows jumped and he failed to hide his surprise. "Is that really true?" 

"Yes, Sir! Francis said he was delighted to know you were doing well. He sends his regards." 

"Thank you. Here…" Lucien took his wallet out and gave the children a note. "Don't spend it all on sweets, and do share it." 

"Thank you so much!" The kids ran away, leaving the couple and the kittens alone on the pavement. 

"Hahaha!" Lucien went to the black motorcycle and tapped it gently. "A marvel of elegance and technology. I am delighted that Francis decided to leave it to me…" 

Mundy caught up with him, the box still in his arms. 

"I remember that bike. You came to see me at the lake with it. It's the one that turns invisible, right?" 

"Indeed, that is the one." Lucien let his fingers run on the leather seat. "A delight to drive too." He raised his eyes to Mundy and took the box off of his arms to secure it at the back. 

"What are you doin'...?"

"You don't think we will walk to deliver those kittens, do you?"

"N-no, we could take me van?"

"Non. Here." Lucien handed him the second helmet and made sure the kittens were safe. He wrapped his scarf around the box to dampen the noise of the engine.

"W-what? You want me to-?"

"Come on, Mundy!" Lucien straddled the motorcycle and held a hand out for his lover.

"You sure?"

"You don't trust my riding abilities?"

"N-no, nah, it's just that…"

"What then? Am I too old for riding a motorcycle?" Lucien chuckled.

"Nah, course not, hold on…" Mundy put on the helmet and took his lover's hand. He straddled the motorcycle, behind Lucien.

"Be careful on the road, love." 

"I will. Now hold on." Lucien started the engine and the motorcycle woke up in a roar. 

Mundy put his hands on Lucien's sides and took advantage of the situation to hold him dearly. The Frenchman smiled in his helmet and off they went to deliver the kittens. 

The first stop was made to Bastien. He was delighted to meet his new companion. Then came Maurice and a well earned lunch break. Lucien and Mundy were left with Junior. While waiting for Victoria to finish her shift, they spent the afternoon in a park with the young cat. 

"Mundy?" 

"Yeah?"

"I had a thought about something you said."

"What is it?"

"Remember when you told me that there were things you wanted to do with me and that you hadn't had the chance before I went away?" 

"Yeah."

"I think we should do one of them this evening." Lucien answered.

"What d'you have in mind?" Mundy asked. 

"Surprise…!" Lucien teased. "But first, let us deliver this young man to his new mother." He scratched his namesake's jaw and the kitten purred. 

"Alright, you lead the way."

[ablednt]

The Oof Side of having RSD

Long post I know but this stuff is important cause sometimes being ND and mentally ill cam be ugly and hard too and that needs to be talked about too.

Most of this I think is more prevalent in people who don't know they're ND so if anyone is relating to this even if NT then you're fully encouraged to reblog

Fixating on individual people as the Valid Person in your life. They are the Authority. You Have to please THIS one person at any time. You probably won't realize that you're idolizing them cause normally it's a friend or mutual so you think oh it's just that they're so much cooler than me. You start to try and find excuses to talk to them more because you Just. Need to talk to them (about anything! You just need to be in their presence!) for reasons you don't really understand yourself. This causes you to become hyperaware of their behavior and words so you can fine tune yourself to fit this persons standards for a good person. (This, as far as I know, can also be a bpd experience but I don't have bpd so I don't know where the overlap ends) This can also be multiple people but usually it boils down to one or two people. You start to base your self worth on their mannerisms and ability to validate you and so you feel bad talking to them now but you keep doing it til they eventually can't cope with it and leave and you don't know what to do from there and you feel sick and betrayed somehow.

Lashing out at others to "get back at them" for perceived rejection. This is a sentiment I think ties into how passive aggression is glorified in our current society and seen as really cool or whatever. Anyway I'm talking about (as an example from my intrusive thoughts recently I ignored) stuff like "No one responded to me on my discord so I'm deleting this channel/the message" and shit like that. It's like. Instead of self care you think you will feel better or be standing up for yourself if you do something to "punish" whoever made you upset. Not only is this a bad mindset to have in general but a lot of the time people haven't done anything seriously wrong but rsd is making you feel like shit so you think it must be their fault cause it's not like you know you have rsd.

Feeling like you always have to be on the defense or offense. Now this one is a bit tricky cause on one hand, personally, when people have accused me of this they were also incredibly toxic and attempting to shut me up entirely but on the other I have gotten into these unhealthy behaviors before so try and think individual situations through thoroughly to try and examine whether or not your reactions were reasonable given the context and your current state of being. But with this kinda stuff I'm talking about when you think someone might be mad at you over a disagreement or some other reason and you feel the urge to make yourself pityable to avoid any perceived rejection (as an example from my past "Sorry if that was argumentative, my dad always made every thing into a debate and I don't know how to act normally"). Or to lash out by going on the offense. Normally this isn't an intentional behavior it's instinctual because those are two survival responses to feeling like you're about to be hurt. The problem comes in when you have rsd because perceived rejection is everywhere so you will constantly be in that flight or fight mindset unless you learn to keep these reactions in check.

Self depreciation. This one ties into the last one in that it's a type of survival response. If you beat anyone to demeaning yourself then maybe they'll accept you. This is also something that's glorified currently as it's seen as funny and cool. While it's good to recognize imperfections and embrace them I'm talking about mindsets of "lol I'm trash! I'm ugly lmao! I'm a bitch ik lmao" and for unknowingly hyperverbal or adhd folks it tends to be "I know I talk too much when will I shut up lmao" and varients. Basically, its a mindset of "well everyone wants to hurt me, if I want to hurt myself then we have something in common, everyone's happy." That's a subconscious mindset but it leads to toxic friendships (sometimes on both sides sometimes just on the other persons) and a lot of hurt in the long run for others too but especially for you.

What all of these behaviors boil down to is this: When you're ND and/or mentally ill you grow up feeling less than everyone else, feeling broken and undesirable. That's no way to live so to survive your brain starts looking for validation anywhere and everywhere with all the desperation of looking for water in the middle of a desert. But the problem is that the wounds from this stuff are now so deep and fundemental to your development that while support can and will help you, you first have to work on unlearning the ableism and self hate. The only person who you're really trying to prove anything to is yourself.

When I was 17 a friend expressed that I might be autistic and around the same time I learned about my ADHD and I had been exhibiting all these behaviors. I felt relieved because I was realizing that these things were survival instincts, that I wasn't simply a failure or unable to hold relationships. I absolutely hated myself that time of my life and I have had my ups and downs since then but because I knew now it was a result of being marginalized and not my own worth I began to work on self love and now these behaviors are just intrusive thoughts I deal with normally.

It CAN get better, you aren't undeserving of healing or forgiveness, and you deserve to be able to look back one day and realize that you love yourself and You're imperfect and messy but you at least feel in control of yourself. Leaving that fight and flight mode and learning to regulate your emotions is hard but it's one of the most freeing things I've experienced thus far in my life.

Anyway that was long sorry but hopefully it's helpful and if anyone needs help or wants to talk my inbox is always open <3

[cupcakes4747]

Truth Or Dare | one

Word Count: 2K

Warnings: n/a

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader, Jungkook x Reader

Genre: fluff

Laptop. Check. Phone. Check. Supplies. Check. Keys. Where are the keys? You looked around for the keys, trying to quickly find them. After ten minutes of searching, you realized that they were in your hand the entire time. You groaned at yourself and quickly rushed out the door. You didn’t want to be late for your first day at university. You wanted everything to be perfect. Ever since you were in middle school, you have been dreaming of going to this college, and you couldn’t believe you had actually made it. You had all sorts or expectations for college you had been thinking about for years. Studying in aesthetic hipster cafes, getting your own apartment, partying with your friends, and most of all, getting a boyfriend. You were the only person you knew that has never had a boyfriend. All through middle and high school, all of your friends would get a new boyfriend every few months and you would always have to third wheel and watch them make out with each other. They would tell you stories about losing their virginity and how awesome sex was, while you on the other hand had never been asked out, or even kissed. You never understood why; you weren’t unattractive, and there was nothing wrong with your personality, but for some reason, it really hurt your self esteem. You thought that you were undesirable and repelling to boys. But now you were in college. You were older, smarter, and since your awkward phase was over, prettier. And there were a whole bunch of new guys who didn’t know who you were and this was your chance to prove to yourself that you weren’t as undesired as you thought. However, ever since you moved into your dorm three weeks ago, you’ve been having all sorts of bad luck. First, the moving van was two days late, so you had to live in your dorm for two days without any of your stuff. Then, you accidentally clogged the toilet and had to call a plumber who ended up doing a horrible job of fixing it. And then, a few days ago, when you went grocery shopping, you realized at the checkout line that you had forgotten your wallet. You didn’t want to be late for your first day of university on top of all that. You ran as fast as you could to the bus stop and as you checked the time after you sat in the bus, you gave a breath of relief. You were five minutes ahead of schedule.

Making it to class on time, you finally started to calm down. You watched as all the students piled into the lecture hall, looking for someone who seemed friendly enough to introduce yourself to later. Then you made eye contact with the most beautiful boy you have ever seen in your life. He had dark brown hair that fell over his eyes, a tall, muscular build, and that mysterious “bad-boy” look. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him. And just your luck, this attractive man happened to sit right next to you. Oh my god, what am I supposed to do? Do I talk to him, or...? Your thoughts were interrupted when you heard him say:

“Wow, I must be in heaven, because I am looking at an angel.” Is this guy flirting with me? You blushed. Nobody had ever flirted with you before. You didn’t know how to react so you just let out a nervous giggle, even though you later on realized that that was the dumbest pick up line ever. The class started and the cute boy kept making sarcastic and funny retorts to everything the professor would say. You found yourself giggling to everything he was saying and you weren’t sure if it was because you genuinely found it funny or just because you thought he was attractive. After class ended, you both formally introduced yourselves and the cute boy, who said his name was Jungkook, asked you if you wanted to go to a party that weekend. You had never been to an official party before; only small get-togethers with your close friends. Everything you knew about frat parties was from the over-exaggerated scenes in college movies.

“Sure, why not,” you said nonchalantly, as if partying was a regular part of your routine and that getting asked to go to a party by a hot guy was an everyday occurrence. 

“Great, see you in class tomorrow, Y/N,” Jungkook replied. You beamed as you speed walked out of the lecture hall. This was the most interaction you’ve had with a guy your age other than the weird nerdy kids on the math team back in high school.

When you arrived home, you dashed straight to your closet to figure out what you were going to wear to the party, completely ignoring your pending responsibilities as an adult. How did people dress at college parties? Should you wear something trendy? Something stylish and fashionable? Something cute and innocent? Something sexy? You had never thought of yourself as sexy, but as you were looking at your reflection in the full-length mirror, you realized that your body was not that bad. You worked out consistently and ate healthy, which made you look healthy. And plus, a sexy guy like Jungkook would probably be interested in a sexy girl. You didn’t own any sort of sexy dress, but you knew your roommate had plenty, but she was out somewhere so you couldn’t ask her then. You sighed and decided to get started on your homework.

The next day, you walked into your first class, excited to see Jungkook, but he was nowhere to be found. Disappointed, you sat down at your seat and listened to the professor.

“For our very first project of the school year, we will be doing a partner project where each assigned pair will be assigned a piece of classical literature and have a series of mini-assignments to complete about it,” your professor’s voice boomed across the large lecture hall, “It will be due a month from today.” You groaned internally. You hated partner projects. Either the other person would take control of everything and not let you have any input or say of what goes into the project or the other person would completely slack off and not do anything, leaving you to do all the work. The professor started calling out names of the assigned pairs from his list. Please let my partner be Jungkook, please let my partner be Jungkook. “Y/N and Namjoon, you two will be partners. Please raise your hands.” You raised your hand and looked around the lecture hall for another raised hand. A tall man walked up to you with his hand outstretched.

“Hi, I’m Namjoon, your partner.” You shook his hand and introduced yourself to him. He was almost an entire foot taller than you and could be quite handsome if he didn't dress so dorky. He was wearing a plaid sweater vest on top of a shirt and with pants that did not match at all. Along with that he was wearing a paper-bag brown hat which made him look like a journalist from the 1950s. You appreciated cute dorks since you considered yourself to be one. You both had decided to meet at the library later that day to get started on the project, both of you deciding that it was a bad idea to procrastinate and that it was smartest to start as soon as possible. 

Later, in the afternoon, you were walking to the library to meet Namjoon to get started on the project and heard footsteps running up to you.

"Hey, beautiful," Jungkook smirked after he caught up to you. Your heart fluttered.

"What are you doing here? Where were you in class today?" you questioned.

"Oh, I ditched. I was still hungover from a gathering at my friend's place last night. Did I miss anything important?"

"We started a project with assigned partners. I'm meeting him up at the library right now."

"Oh, boring. I'm glad I ditched." You rolled your eyes.

"Anyways, I need to go now. It was nice talking to you, Jungkook."

"Wait, are you still coming to the party on Friday?" Oh my gosh, he remembered! 

"Yes, text me the details, please." You told Jungkook your number as he typed it into his phone.

"Okay, cool. I'll let you know everything. Bring your hot friends." You rolled your eyes at him again.

"Yeah, sure. Bye." You didn't know how you were capable of keeping up a causal conversation with an insanely good-looking guy. Usually, when a good-looking guy would approach you, which they rarely did, you would just panic and freeze, and never be able to come up with anything interesting, witty, or funny to say, causing yourself to reply only with one-word answers, making yourself look unconfident. The problem was that you were kind of unconfident. Other people's opinions mattered way too much to you, causing you to revolve your life around how others will react. You knew it was unhealthy, but had no idea how to stop.

Lost in your thoughts, you had already made it to the library.

“Hey there!” Namjoon said. He had already found a table and was ready to go with his laptop open. “I already got a headstart on the assigment. I came up with multiple points of views to analyze this part of the text.”

“Wow, you are really on top of things,” you replied, impressed.

“I already read this back in high school for fun. Although it was a few years ago, I have a general idea about what happens.” And here you were thinking you were the only person of your age group who read classic literature just for fun, but decided against mentioning that you had also read it for fun in high school. Now that you were in a new location where nobody knew who you were, this was a second chance at a first impression. You did not want to be considered a nerd anymore.

You sat down and began reading and discussing the novel with him. Even though you just met him, you found that you really enjoyed working with him. Namjoon had a different perspective than you which made you see the novel in an entirely different way and vice versa. It was refreshing to have a deep conversation about a topic both people enjoy, as most exchanges you’ve had in the past year were just shallow small talk. As you both reflected and discussed, you had breezily finished the assignment in much less time than you anticipated. Perfect. More time to get ready for the party. 

“Nice work. We got done really fast. Maybe to speed up this project and get this over with, we can finish the next essay question tonight since it will be fresh in our memory,” stated Namjoon.

“Actually I’m going to a party tonight. Tomorrow maybe?” you said trying to hide the proudness in your voice. You never thought that you would be partying instead of doing homework since it was usually the reverse. You thought he would think that you were super cool and adventurous for partying in the first week of school, since it was something you would have never even contemplated doing in high school. Namjoon, however, seemed unfazed by this. 

“All right I’ll just submit mine tonight. You can do yours tomorrow. I’m happy to proofread your work before turning it in if you’d like.” A small part of you was disappointed that he didn’t seem to think anything of it and another small part of you was worried he would think you were irresponsible or a bad student when in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth. It was still nice of him to offer to help you when you knew he was probably busy with other things.

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” you said gratefully as you packed up your things, “When can you meet up next?” 

“How about Sunday evening?”

“Works for me.” You both bid your farewells and went your separate ways, eager to go to your first college party and see Jungkook.

[fanficfeeling]

Best Friend Jaskier x Lesbian!Reader Headcanons

A/N: Quarantine babe-y! PLEASE send in requests to keep me busy, I’d MUCH rather be writing then doing my actual work right now. This one was fun to write! I love writing LGBTQ+ related content so send more requests for that in PLEASE. I decided to go with headcanons to sort of show case how I do them in case anyone wanted to see them!

Request: hi! I love your writing 😍 can I request hcs or a one shot - whichever you prefer - where the reader is a lesbian and bffs with Jaskier, please? you could add some Geralt as well if you'd like. thank you! (For anon)

Warnings: None. Let me know if you spot anything you’d like tagged!

Word Count: 1046

Requests are OPEN! 

~~~

- You meet him in a tavern one evening, because of course you do. You're listening to him sing and quite enjoying it, and he notices, so he approaches you after his set. He gets a little too flirty for your taste a little too quickly.

- "Before you get too invested in this, I should let you know that you're not quite my type."

- "I'm sure that whatever it is about me that you find undesirable it can be-"

- "It's nothing you can change, I promise you."

- Your eyes flicker below his belt, then quickly back up to his eyes to make your point. He catches on pretty quickly.

- "Oh! My apologies then. I misread that horribly."

- "Happens all the time."

- Of course, he couldn't leave well enough alone, so he insisted upon making amends. He bought you a drink anyway. You asked him about his music. You talked through much of the evening.

- You also both decided to flirt with one of the bar maids to see who she was more receptive to. It was you. She was absolutely into you. He was upset.

- But Jaskier and you? Fast friends from that moment on.

- Of course traveling is ingrained into his very nature, so he had to leave eventually, and you'd thought that was the last you'd see of him. If only you'd known how unshakable he is.

- He came back.

- "I hope you didn't miss me too much."

- "Fuck, bard, you scared the crap out of me!"

- He did that occasionally, where he would come back around after a few weeks just to surprise you and spend a few nights drinking with you. You knew it had to be just because he enjoyed your company, because the coin was never good when he played here.

- One day, on one of his visits, he brought a very scary looking, white-haired friend of his with him to introduce you two. Geralt wasn't very receptive to the idea at first, but you have a way with people like that. That's another friend right there. He was sad to leave you once they did.

- On one of Jaskier's visits, you were both a few too many drinks in.

- "Friend? Friend-o? Best friend?"

- "What, Jaskier?"

- "I think you should leave this place behind and come travel with me! Imagine it! We'd be unstoppable! A travelling duo of chaos! The women would love us! We'd have so much fun!"

- It sounded absurd. Of course you agreed. You were ready to go in less than a day.

- Just like he thought, you have so much fun together. You leave chaos wherever you pass through, but you love it.

- He's shows you everything he knows everywhere you go, and you experience so much more culture then you ever had before.

- Best wing men for each other ever! Jaskier is the best hype man for you, and he's so awesome your hype for him sort of writes itself.

- "Hi, hello there, don't worry this isn't about me, I get the feeling you are not that into men, and if that's the case, might I hype up my good friend over there? She's sort of the best, very fun, very cultured, a great conversation, and I think you are exactly her type-"

- "Hi! Did you enjoy the bard's performance tonight? He is great, isn't he? You know he's the same bard that wrote "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher"? He is actually a pretty good friend of mine, he's terribly interesting, would you like to meet him? He could tell you all about his music!"

- Your favorite escapades are when you end up traveling with Geralt. Jaskier loves it because now he doesn't have to wait by himself for Geralt to get back from fighting monsters, and you love helping Jaskier pry details about Geralt's fights from him.

- "Geralt please, we need details-"

- "I know you want fodder for your songs, but why does she need details?"

- "Because I am terribly nosy like that."

- He pretends he's annoyed but you know he doesn't mind all that much. He always tells you things to the best of his descriptive ability in the end, and he gets fairly into it.

- You always distract Jaskier from his work, much to his chagrin.

- "I need to write this song before I lose the inspiration for it!"

- "But I'm bored, please hang out with me?"

- You whip out the puppy dog eyes. They usually work.

- When they don't you get to hang out with Geralt. It's a little awkward the first few times, but eventually you find stuff to do with him.

- Sometimes you drink. Usually in silence, but it is relaxing. Sometimes you ask him to show you stuff in the area if he knows it at all.

- "Why? We'll be moving on soon enough."

- "Consider it your contribution to my cultural education."

- Eventually, you decide you need to get on his level, so you ask him to - what else? - teach you how to fight. Your first few lessons are disasters, but after a few, you actually learn a thing or two. You find you actually enjoy it, and it develops your friendship with Geralt nicely.

- When you learn that Jaskier's real name is Julian Alfred Pankratz? You use that every time you can possibly squeeze it in.

- "Would you like to meet my dear friend, Julian Alfred Pankratz?"

- "Another gem to add to the collective musical stylings of Julian Alfred Pankratz!"

- "Julian Alfred Pankratz, you are in so much trouble!"

- He especially hates it when you use his full name in that last context.

- This man totally throws out the phrase "I love you" to his friends often and with no hesitation at all. He tells you he loves you every chance he gets. He likes to let the constants in his life know that he appreciates them.

- "My darling friend, I love you, you know that, don't you?"

- "Of course I do, Jask. I love you too."

[angiethewitch]

god stop whining about weight loss stuff. just lose some weight fatty. stop being a little piggy

I know I said I don't answer hate mail but I have something to say about this.

trigger warning.

see, this is what society does. I read somewhere "society says no to anorexia, but yes to anorexic bodies". and when you think about it, its true. as shown by the diet ads very clearly advertising disordered eating. they're not just advertising diets, they're advertising harm. a little while back I also wrote a post about how companies are capitalising on peoples worries (specifically womens worries) about their weight during quarantine. on that post I got people saying its because I'm fat, I need to exercise, etc.

society says yes to skinny, but no thank you to eating disorders. why is that? because disorders aren't sexy. you can't sexualise an eating disorder. society says they love girls who eat, but oh wait only if they're skinny. and if you're not thin, its open season. people suggest diets and workouts and doctors treat you differently. if you're not thin, you aren't a person anymore, you become your weight.

and so when a woman talks about this, about diet culture, about the immense pressures women face to be tiny, peoples immediate reaction is to insult that woman. skinny girls never talk about it, they think. if a woman is angry about how society treats her like a doll, she's fat, she's ugly, there HAS to be something wrong with her.

(I know men face pressures too, but its not the same, because a womans entire worth is put down to her looks, whereas men are allowed to exist naturally. i know they face pressures but please don't derail this)

a woman talks about the pressures she faces as a woman in this world and your first reaction is to tell her to shut up and lose some weight. if you know me and my blog, anon, you'd know im still in recovery from an eating disorder that robbed me of my health for many years. but that doesn't matter. now I've told you this, I'm sure you have a picture of a frail girl in your mind, and you'll feel bad. People often do when i mention it. you know why? because again, you're saying yes to an anorexic body. but it doesn't matter. if I was 200 stone, it still wouldn't make it okay for you to say this to me. because, again, if a woman is too loud about the issues she faces, she's fat, she's undesirable, she should shut up and stop eating. when a skinny woman talks about feminism, people applaud her. when a fat woman talks about feminism, it's just because she can't get laid. its because she's ugly. its because, because, because...

when I talk about these things, and it makes you so angry that you feel the need to go onto my blog, press the anonymous button, and insult me, I suggest you look inside. why do you respond in that way? why is your instinct to tell a woman to shut up? what internalised misogyny do you need to address, or externalised misogyny? I also want you to think about what it is that upsets you about fat women. we all have it. in fact, its one of our evolutionary advantages. generally, women do better in famine, because our fat stores take longer to burn through. historically, women have always done better during times of food shortage. so ladies, love your fat. love your cellulite. it keeps you alive.

consider these points, anon. I sincerely suggest you dig deep and understand why you react this way to women talking about how frustrated they are with these things.

I do hope you find a satisfactory conclusion, and I hope you can work towards being less hateful.

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 129 Review

*

Attack on Titan is a very violent series. People get torn, crushed, cut, shot, and bludgeoned basically every other chapter. Loved ones are lost tragically. Mangled corpses feature regularly. The main character is one of the most ruthless people in the world.

What makes SNK so interesting is how it depicts violence. People have described the series’ depiction of violence as “unvarnished” and “real” and I’d say that’s true, but there so much more to it than that.

It’s not just that the series depicts violence viscerally. That’s been done before.

It’s not even that the series depicts violence as a fact of life.

What sets SNK apart is that it treats violence as endemic.

In Attack on Titan, violence is not only real and unfortunate, not just a fact of life we have to deal with, it’s ever present.

Yeah, this is a story about people who have to fight giants, and then the whole world, to survive. Violence would be an inevitable part of the plot no matter what.

But Attack on Titan goes above and beyond that.

It’s about the emphasis. Some stories would argue that violence should be avoided at all costs. The hero and villain are at odds with each other, but they manage to broker some kind of deal.

Or a story could acknowledge that violence is sometimes necessary. It could be an action movie that kicks off after the conflict has already spiraled into violence. In that case, the question of why people start shooting at each other isn’t necessarily important.

Or the story could show how the conflict came to violence, but emphasize the undesirability of resorting to war.

What makes Attack on Titan unique is that it focuses very much on the origins of violence, but doesn’t emphasize the undesirability of it.

Every conflict in this story is resolved using violence. If this were just a mindless action show, that’d be fine, but this is a series that invites the reader to dwell on whether violence was appropriate.

Unlike most stories Attack on Titan concludes, after all its philosophizing, that non-violent alternatives are a waste of time!

Paradis’ attempts to broker peace with the world are presented as flailing and unsuccessful. Every attempt by Armin to negotiate with the enemy fails.

King Fritz is depicted as a coward, a control freak, and a fool because of his ideology. His ideology of non-violence.

Attack on Titan seems to mock people who don’t want to have to kill. Because of that, the series almost seems to revel in its bloodshed, even as that bloodshed is depicted as gruesome and ugly.

SNK isn’t like Gundam.

Gundam has always had the theme that war is bad. SNK’s theme seems to be that war is unfortunate but necessary.

The difference between those two themes is huge but subtle.

Another important pillar of this series is freedom.

The Survey Corps rides out into the outside world constantly. Every one of them knows they’ll be trampled and torn apart at some point; they do it anyway because they believe in their cause.

That cause is to fight for freedom.

Freedom in Attack on Titan means being able to decide your own fate. If you want to explore the outside world, you can do that. If you want to found a family, you can do that. If you want to virtue signal by adopting the same dream as your friend, you can do that.

But people don’t have to literally be a slave to be unfree.

In Attack on Titan, you can be unfree just by being a slave to other people’s expectations.

People expected that Eren would be humanity’s savior. He was sold to the public as a trump card against the titans: a human who had their power. He was the advantage humanity needed to win. After 100 years, humanity catches a big break, and his name was Eren Jeager.

But it never panned out that way.

The expectation was always unrealistic. Eren was still one (not particularly bright) person, and he was never going to destroy all the titans himself.

Come the end of the Uprising arc, and Eren has not really contributed anything, and he starts to give himself grief.

When it’s revealed his existence seems to have impeded humanity’s survival, Eren begs for death. The weight of everyone’s expectations had crushed him.

Eren had been a slave to the Rogue Titan hype machine.

After Historia’s ahem “pep talk” and some post-cavern ruminations, Eren starts to let go of that way of thinking, and he’s better off for it.

He still works hard, but he doesn’t think he has to carry the world on his back, and thanks to Historia and the military overshadowing him in Uprising, people in general expect less of him, too.

Eren had been liberated from people’s expectations.

Freedom also means freedom from the past.

The Eldians are dogged by their history. Every major villain so far has thought Eldians deserved to die for the sins of their ancestors.

Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie were brainwashed to believe Eldians were devil children.

The Marleyans hammer at that point to this day.

Zeke is convinced Eldians are a curse partly because of the animosity caused by the Empire’s history.

We haven’t seen King Fritz yet, but he’s probably the craziest one of them all. He is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo convinced that Eldians carry an irredeemable stain because of their ancestor’s actions that he’ll let their enemies slaughter them.

So it’s not just what people do in the present that can make you unfree. Attack on Titan is also about not being held back by the past.

There’s one more aspect of freedom in SNK to bring up, and I think it’s one of the more underappreciated ones: the importance of posterity.

Isayama loves children.

Soldiers in SNK are asked to devote their hearts for the sake of humanity. “Humanity” means not just people alive today, but their progeny.

People join the Survey Corps despite the high death rate because even if they die, they feel they’re contributing to a future their children can enjoy.

Erwin’s soldiers know they’ll die when they charge Zeke. Erwin sells them on it with talk of paving a way forward for future soldiers.

Parents who abandon their children are presented as bad or weak people. People like Grisha, Rod Reiss, Reiner’s mother.

Gabi is spared by Mr. Blouse because she’s just a child.

Zeke thinks being born is a curse and wants to sterilize a whole race.

Oh, and there was also that hilarious non-sequitur speech Onyankopon gave about children.

The heroes fight because they’re working to a free future for future generations. For their posterity.

Attack on Titan implores people to fight for our own freedom, but also for the freedom of our descendants.

So Attack on Titan has two major components to its message: violence is necessary, and freedom for yourself and your offspring is worth bloodying your hands for.

But fighting for freedom has its limits.

…aaand because I need to tie this post in to the actual chapter I’m supposed to be reviewing, I’m going to use Floch and Gabi to illustrate this point.

In this chapter an ice cream swirl takes flight, ready to fulfil his dreams. They are mercilessly shot down by a kid with a gun. How did we get here?

Floch and Gabi were two wild fanatics starting out.

Gabi was born into a family that had a warrior in it, and it’s clear she aspired to follow in his footsteps. She and Reiner were close, and she wanted to carry his legacy.

Floch joined the Survey Corps because he heard a call and decided to answer. He idolizes Eren, and sees him as an example to follow. Eren is vicious when he fights, and Floch thinks that makes him a good leader.

Both of them wanted to free their respective peoples. Paradis is stuck on an island and feared by everyone around them. The mainland Eldians are stuck in a ghetto and feared by everyone around them.

Gabi believed the mainland Eldians would prove their worth by destroying Paradis, thus displaying their virtuousness to the world.

But Gabi was also a bit self-serving, too. She also wanted to prove that she herself was a good Eldian. She was showered with praise because of how good a fighter she was; she was driven to become that good to prove her own value.

Gabi was raised to believe her self-worth came from how well she fought for Marley. Sources of self-esteem are external for her. They come from the gratification of others.

Floch’s self-esteem is also external. He derives all of his self-worth from his identity as an Eldian. He pounds his chest about the glory of the Empire because if Eldia is glorious, then he, as an Eldian, will be glorious.

He wants to bask in the warm, glowing light of world domination. Of the knowledge that his race is the most powerful group of people in all the world.

I don’t know if Floch believes that Eldians are superior to other races, but that’s not the point. In his mind, the power of Eldia and his own power are inextricably tied together.

The big difference between the two is that Gabi isn’t an idiot.

Say what you will about her, but Gabi is actually talented. She’s smart, strong, a good shot, a good fighter, and a dutiful soldier.

Floch’s only talent is his absolute shamelessness.

He has no moral compass, so he’s willing to do things that his enemies won’t. He’s also stupidly audacious, so he’ll do crazy stuff most won’t consider.

This allowed him to get the upper hand at first. People didn’t expect him to leak information about Eren’s imprisonment to the public or that they’d work with Eren directly.

But now that our heroes are going against him in basically a fair fight, he’s losing badly. The only strategy Floch’s puny brain can muster is to keep spamming our heroes with redshirts.

Compare Floch’s shamelessness to Gabi.

Gabi…is a good person.

She wants to prove her self-worth like Floch does, but she’s not fucking pathetic about it. All she wants is for herself and her people to be recognized as equal to everyone else.

She does not, in the end, want to revenge kill Marleyans just to feel big and strong.

She only wanted to wipe out Paradis because she was indoctrinated to think that way. Once she realized that Eldians on Paradis weren’t devilish, and that the Marleyan system was crap…she stopped hating Paradis and didn’t hate the Marleyans for it.

Floch, on the other hand, nurses a massive victimhood complex that he uses to justify genocide.

This is where the series draws a line between justified violence and unjustified violence.

Floch does not give a shit about human life. He kills people wantonly, and the lives of his own troops doesn’t seem to be a factor in his strategy this chapter.

Floch, very expressly, fights to oppress others and take away their freedom. His big talking point is about Eldian freedom, but in reality his actions go beyond that into cruelty.

Gabi, even when she was a brainwashed fanatic, was never sadistic and hasn’t done anything egregious that I can remember.

In this chapter, Gabi shot a killed people with her rifle. The Yeagerists…didn’t actually kill anyone this chapter, but they tried.

But Gabi is with the good guys because she’s right on principle and isn’t motivated by sadism, or personal insecurity, or a desire for revenge.

The same is true for all of the Cringevengers.

They’re all fighting to oppose global genocide.

The Yeagerists, including Floch, are fighting because they think global genocide is justified if it saves their country.

That is inherently selfish.

Those are the themes of the series in a nutshell.

This is where things start to get questionable.

First off, I object to how pervasive war and violence are shown to be. War is an institution, meaning it is the product of human behavior. That means human behavior can be changed to make war less violent and less common.

And war has, in fact, become less violent and less common.

Attack on Titan has paid lip service to that fact, (see: Gabi, above) but it remains that we are 95% into the story and there is still zero hope for a peaceful resolution.

There is almost zero chance the Cringevengers stop Eren. Even if they do, the world will be whipped into a fury at the destruction he caused, and not only would Paradis be wiped out, the mainland ghettos would conceivably be overrun by angry mobs and Eldians would be killed in the streets.

By the way, I think this would happen even if Magath had lived. I do not understand why people thought just one person’s word would have mattered at all.

Obviously it’s not a peaceful resolution of Eren destroys the world.

Secondly, while the series makes a point that excessive violence is bad, remember that the series also makes the point that appropriate violence is often bloodier than we’d like.

The issue, as I just said, is that Attack on Titan overestimates how often situations calling for violence come up, so functionally the series seems to lean in favor of violence as a general rule.

The series flat out conflates pacifism with defeatism.

King Fritz is a defeatist. He chooses to let his subjects die rather than work towards undoing the caste system that he ruled over.

Instead of making Marleyans equal to Eldians, he let the Marleyans do as they pleased while hiding out on Paradis.

And if the Marleyans came knocking, he was going to let them kill everyone.

He hoped to create a utopian world in the time that he could. This world was built on brainwashing and dictatorship.

But King Fritz’s ideology isn’t identified as defeatist in the story.

He’s identified as a pacifist.

This is why I always thought it was ridiculous that people said Attack on Titan was anti-war. As if a series that implores people to fight could be anti-war.

This chapter was good on its own. I didn’t even mind the violence since it’s a battle and the never ending bloodshed was conveyed really well.

Then the wider context of this fight came to mind…

[hobbitkiller]

She-Ra, Supergirl, and Tangled: A Tale of Three Female Relationships: Part 2

*SPOILER WARNING FOR SHE-RA, SUPERGIRL, AND TANGLED: THE SERIES*

For those of you just tuning in, I’m taking a deep dive into 3 female relationships in 3 of my favorite tv shows that all turned into toxic messes at some point. The point of this series of posts is to exam these relationships, where things went wrong, whether there’s a chance for redemption, and what conclusions, if any, we can draw from these relationships about media’s representation of female characters and female relationships.

Oh, and shipping, ‘cause this is tumblr after all...

So, in Part 1 I gave a summary of the female relationships in question in these three shows (Adora and Catra, Kara and Lena, Rapunzel and Cassandra). I also summarized how these relationships began and when they started to go wrong. If you already know that stuff because you love these shows too, you don’t necessarily have to go back and read it, but doing so is always encouraged.

In this installment, I will be exploring 3 themes related to the festering resentment within these relationships: Mother Knows Best, Chosen Ones, and Itty Bitty Boxes. Follow the jump to get started!

PART III: MOTHER KNOWS BEST

I’ve heard a few people claim that Mother Gothel is not a top tier Disney villain. She doesn’t have the following that characters like Scar or Maleficent have. However, at the same time, I’ve heard many people saying something along the lines of “This is my mother.” There’s something uncomfortably familiar about Mother Gothel in Tangled. I recognized the same putdowns and microaggressions that I used to get from my stepmom in Gothel’s targeted jabs at Rapunzel’s confidence throughout the movie...all done with a smile and “It’s for your own good” attitude.

A lot of media focuses on the relationship between fathers and sons. Mothers in Disney have historically been silent or dead. (Except Perdita. That bitch was awesome). 

This, of course, makes it interesting that 5/6 of these characters have verbally (and in some cases physically) abusive, manipulative mother figures. And for Adora and Catra and Rapunzel and Cassandra, that mother figure is the same.

Here are our three abusive mothers:

Shadow Weaver who raised Adora and Catra:

Lillian Luthor who is Lena Luthor’s adoptive mother (and played by the absolute joy to watch that is Brenda Strong):

And, of course, Mother Gothel who kidnapped and raised Rapunzel for most of her life and is the SPOILER biological mother of Cassandra:

There are, of course, good mothers sprinkled in. Rapunzel’s biological mother, Queen Arianna is great once she actually gets lines in the TV show. Lena’s birth mother was also, by all accounts, a very kind and loving person. Kara has two moms, and while both have flaws, both are inherently good people (particularly Eliza Danvers, her adoptive mother).

However, in spite of the presence of some positive examples of motherhood, the relationships between all three of these pairs is heavily influenced by the three narcissistic women above.

All three of these women are dishonest, withhold affection only to give it away as a special treat, and actively manipulate their children. Yet, at the same time, the children can’t help but seek approval. Adora and Catra both feared and desperately sought approval and affection from Shadow Weaver. Lena tries to cut ties with her family, but keeps being drawn back in when Lillian admits pride at her accomplishments or that she does, in fact, care about her. Rapunzel sought affection from Gothel growing up because she was her one human contact, and, when Cassandra learned the truth of who her mother was, Cassandra desperately wanted some validation that the mother who abandoned her loved her on some level.

These mother/daughter relationships scarred 5/6 of our characters (Kara has her own hangups about her mother, but not on the deeply psychologically scarred level as the other five.) 

Adora is mockingly called paranoid by Shadow Weaver for understandably thinking the woman who lied to and manipulated her her entire life was up to something. Catra pushes everyone in her life away emotionally for fear of being hurt (only to create a self-fulfilling prophecy when they leave due to her behavior). Lena is constantly scared of being “betrayed” and manipulated. When she’s hurt by Supergirl asking Lena’s boyfriend to snoop on her, she says it was “something my mother would do.” When she and Kara first became friends, Lena was reluctant to do so because of the trust issues from her family (Lex Luthor is obviously also a manipulative, abusive jerk). Even Rapunzel, the embodiment of sunshine, has lingering trust issues. In the Season Three episode “Beginnings” she explains to Eugene that one of the reasons she likes Cassandra is because Rapunzel spent 18 years with someone who lied to her, whereas Cassandra was forthright and said what she was thinking.

Cassandra’s mother issues are a little more complicated. When she was four, Gothel abandoned her in order to kidnap Rapunzel and Cass was adopted by the captain of the guard. Cassandra has deeply repressed this memory by the time we meet her when she’s 22/23. Then, she’s given a glimpse of what life was like with Gothel:

Early in the series, Cass talks about how her father instilled in her the value of “earning my keep.” It’s clear here, though, that love as a transactional relationship had been instilled in Cassandra early in life: “And when it (love/affection) came, it came with strings.” 

This transactional view of relationships is something shared by all 5 members of our “bad moms” squad on at least some level. Adora constantly feels the need to fix things and be useful to her friends. Catra thinks if she just wins enough or is good enough, maybe Shadow Weaver will finally love her. Lena’s approach to relationships largely revolves around buying things for them and trying to unilaterally solve their problems for them without their input. Rapunzel has to go through an entire episode to learn that you can’t buy friendship through doing nice things, and that she doesn’t have to. Cass ties her self-worth deeply to her usefulness to others. They all struggle to find internal validation at times.

The other way mothers play a part in the downfalls of these relationships is the element of competitiveness. This is an issue with Adora and Catra and Rapunzel and Cassandra. As previously stated, both of these couples share a mother figure. And, in both of these couples, there is a deep resentment on the part of the non-golden haired child toward the other. Shadow Weaver did not hide that Adora was her favorite. She frequently praised Adora while berating and abusing Catra even when both had done equally well. Even when Adora abandoned Shadow Weaver and Catra for the rebellion, SW was more concerned with getting Adora back than appreciating the loyalty and accomplishments of Catra. 

Mother Gothel literally gave up Cassandra to take Rapunzel.

Both Catra and Cassandra feel completely overshadowed by the blonde in their lives, and part of them can’t help but think that, if only Adora or Rapunzel were out of the way, or had never existed, maybe they would have been chosen as the favored one.

This, of course, brings us to our next topic:

PART IV: CHOSEN ONES

I’ve never been a big fan of Ron Weasley. I didn’t read the Harry Potter books until I was in my twenties (yes, compared to many of my readers, I’m old), and I think this lead to me being less charmed by his humor or bullying of Hermione than I otherwise might have been. I found his temper aggravating and he is just...the worst...in the sixth book. Like, he purposely starts dating someone to punish Hermione who had already asked him to Slughorn’s party because Ginny pointed out that Hermione had probably kissed the guy she was dating TWO YEARS AGO. No, seriously, read that book again. That’s what happened. Then the seventh book happens and it turns out Dumbledore KNEW Ron was going to ditch the team at some point...

That being said, as I sat down to write this novel-length meta, I found myself thinking about what it’s like to be the support team for the “chosen one.” In the seventh book, Ron could have stayed at home with his pureblood family. He would still be in some danger due to their involvement with the Order of the Phoenix, but it would have been a lot safer than traveling around with “Undesirable No 1.″ Yet, because he loves Harry, he chooses to go on this mission. 

In the three pieces of media we’re discussing, 2/3 have literal chosen ones--characters with specific destinies of supernatural origin: Adora and Rapunzel. Kara also largely fits into the trope as someone sent to earth from afar to “save us.” As I somewhat jokingly said in the first part, all three of these pieces of media feature a blond super-powered person who needs to save the world.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be the best friend or “sister” of the person who’s “burdened with glorious purpose”?

On the one hand, it’s constant fear over that person’s safety and wellbeing. On the other, there’s a bit that can’t help but feel resentful. Imagine having a friend that overshadows every accomplishment you’ve ever had seemingly by virtue of just who they are.

Now, of course we know that it’s no easy road being a chosen one. There’s a lot you have to sacrifice, and it usually involves injury, near death, and a boatload of trauma. And the support teams know this. For some, it’s never an issue. But for others...

In She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Adora, to Catra, always had the presence in her life of a chosen one, even before she got the sword and became She-Ra. Shadow Weaver had sensed something powerful about Adora when she was a baby, and thus treated her as the “Golden Child” to Catra’s “Scapegoat.” 

This idea of the “Golden Child (GC)” versus the “Scapegoat (SG)” rolls a bit into this issue with “chosen ones.” In toxic, narcissistic families, parents often hold up one child as the great one while the other is the one to blame for their problems. Think Olga and Helga in Hey Arnold! (Is that reference too dated for some of you guys? Man, I’m old. Also, I remember finally being old enough to realize Helga’s mom was an alcoholic and it blew my mind.) This also usually entails encouraging a level of competitiveness between the siblings.

In some ways, it’s like a “chosen one” is the whole world’s golden child. Anyone who researches this dynamic knows it’s abusive to both the GC and the SG, which is clearly displayed in She-Ra when Adora is stressed by the pressure of expectations and the knowledge that her mistakes will most likely be taken out on Catra. That doesn’t change the fact that Catra resents the positive attention (the adoration if you will) Adora gets--that, no matter what Catra achieves, it will be nothing compared to Adora.  This resentment is a big part of what fuels the escalation of their personal conflict leading to one of the saddest pieces of animation since Fry’s dog died sad and alone on Futurama. In the Season 1 episode “Promise.” (This is, by far, the best episode of the series), Catra airs all of her feelings she’d been repressing about what it felt like living in Adora’s shadow--how it made her feel like a “side kick,” something Adora never consciously tried to do and is shocked to discover.

Cassandra on Tangled:The Series has similar feelings about her role in Rapunzel’s life. Not only is her best friend the one with the magic hair and great destiny, but she is also her boss and monarch. Aside from the two songs I included in my last post, “Waiting in the Wings” and “Crossing the Line,” this conflict is best demonstrated early in Season One in the episode “Challenge of the Brave.”

Cass didn’t suffer abuse in quite the same way Catra did (though Gothel was the worst mom for her first 4 years), but she does feel disrespected and overshadowed by Rapunzel even before learning about Gothel. In “Crossing the Line”--a song many likened to “Let it Go” when they first heard it, Cassandra lays out these feelings further:

There’s a line between the winners and the losers.

There’s a line between the chosen and the rest.

And I’ve done the best I could,

but i’ve always known just where we stood.

Me here with the luckless.

You there with the blessed.

Now, when this song first came out, there were negative reactions from some fans. How could Cassandra call someone who had been kidnapped and locked in a tower with the neglectful and verbally abusive Gothel for 18 years “blessed”? But, from Cassandra’s perspective, Rapunzel still gets everything, power, respect, etc., purely because she was born a princess while Cass has worked incredibly hard her entire life to achieve one goal, becoming a guard, and is constantly denied.

With Lena and Kara in Supergirl, the resentment, again, is mostly between Lena and Supergirl for most of their relationship. Multiple times during the show’s run, Lena has expressed concern about human’s relative helplessness in the face of aliens like Supergirl who have power. This is why Lena sees some of her shadier actions such as making Kryptonite or trying to give humans super powers as justified. She doesn’t go to the extreme levels of hatred that her brother Lex does, but that distrust in those who are naturally more powerful runs throughout the family as does the resentment that aliens have seemingly usurped the leadership role among humanity that should have belonged to the Luthors.

What makes this interesting is that, in most of her relationships, Lena, as a billionaire, is the more privileged and powerful one. This is really best demonstrated in her relationship with James Olsen, whom she orders around as his boss while buying him expensive gifts and going behind his back to fix his legal problems. And for much of their relationship, this is how Lena sees her relationship with Kara. It’s not a manipulative or cruel thing. Lena just sees Kara as her adorkable reporter friend who is hapless in the face of danger.

Then, all of these preconceived notions come crashing down when Lena learns that Kara is Supergirl. Suddenly, she learns that her hapless friend was actually playing her the whole time--that she was stringing Lena along and pretending to be only human. 

Lena’s resentment may not be as explicit in this case as Catra’s or Cassandra’s, but it is layered within all of the emotions Lena Luthor is pretending not to have.

This, of course, leads us to our final subject for today.

PART V: “ITTY BITTY BOXES”

I’ve mentioned a few times throughout this novel-length meta the word “repressed.” Catra, Lena, and Cassandra are not good at expressing their emotions in a healthy manner. Much of this can be blamed on the aforementioned mother figures and the trust and intimacy issues that having narcissistic, abusive parents can lead to. 

Narcissistic parents often place the burden of maintaining the emotional wellbeing of the family on the children. It is your job as the child to make sure they don’t get upset. It is you who has to keep the cool head and maintain the facade of positivity. Parents like Shadow Weaver, Lillian Luther, and Mother Gothel do not see it as their responsibility to help their children regulate emotion or address it. To them, “negative emotions” are character flaws.

Of course, anyone who’s watched Inside Out knows that emotions aren’t inherently good or bad and feeling, addressing, and understanding them are vital to good mental health.

Too bad Inside Out wasn’t there for Catra, Lena, or Cassandra growing up.

Instead, each of these characters has learned to bottle up and hide emotions like sadness, fear, hurt, and true, deep anger. Lena even outlines her approach to such feelings when helping Brainy, an alien who is basically like an organic computer, solve a problem:

I was not the only person that was reminded of this gem after that scene:

Putting emotions away in an imaginary box is a real technique for keeping yourself from becoming overwhelmed in a situation where you need to focus. However, “forgetting the box existed” is not the appropriate use of the boxes. They need to be opened, and the feelings addressed. 

Catra is interesting, because in some ways she’s very vocal about her frustration and anger. Yet, that surface level frustration manifests in yelling at her friends and subordinates over their job performance or just being a general jerk. It’s not an expression of her true, deep feelings. Catra doesn’t let anyone see the deep levels of hurt she feels when Shadow Weaver manipulates her to join Adora. Instead, she just almost destroys the world...as you do. Season 4 in particular features a Catra who is more mean to her friends than ever before, yet she is still repressing so much of her true feelings to the point of mental and emotional collapse.

Cassandra also struggles to express her feelings, particularly to Rapunzel. Part of it might be because Rapunzel is her princess, and it’s not Cassandra’s place, but it’s also something she struggles with in general:

The above line occurs in an episode where Rapunzel knows Cassandra is mad at her and keeps pushing her to share her feelings. As we can see, Cass is not a big fan of that. Even though they talk at the end of the episode, it’s clear that there are still some hurt feelings on Cassandra’s side that she doesn’t express until she has electric blue hair and is singing a rock ballad about “Crossing the Line.” This is also fascinating because, as previously stated, one of the reasons Rapunzel likes Cassandra is her honesty. But, like with Catra, Cassandra can be honest about surface level annoyances, but intensely represses anything deeper.

All three of these characters let their emotions fester until they become deadly infections that poison their relationships, not just with their best friends, but with everyone. Many of these relationships could have been diverted from their dark paths if there had been more honest and open communication both between the characters and internally. If Lena acknowledged the real reasons why she was hurt when learning Kara was Supergirl, if Catra had been honest about feeling overshadowed and pitied by Adora, if Cassandra had expressed the pain she was feeling in her relationship with Rapunzel, things could have been different. Instead, those feelings have turned toxic.

NEXT TIME IN THE NEVER-ENDING ANALYSIS:

Blond Bulldozers 

I Don’t Care (I ship it)

Just going to do 2, because 3 subjects were a bit much.

Hope to see you there.

[iwontstayhidden]

Inadequate.

Summary: After Putting Others First, Logan believes that the other sides have wanted him out of the picture all along. Fortunately, Virgil, Patton, and Roman help him to see how much he is truly appreciated. [We’re gonna address all of the insecure!Logan stuff that's been building up and validate him with Platonic LAMP and wholesome talks.]

Read on Ao3

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Not that any of you care, but I am unharmed, and I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just here to deliver one last fact, and then I will do you all a favor and spare you my company.”

Logan sank out with a heavy sigh. His intentions were to return to some new research on an unusual stellar explosion, but he found himself distracted by recent events with Thomas and the sides. Logan thought that by reducing his physical presence to a text bubble for the latest episode, he would decrease the likelihood of the others becoming irritated with him. But this did not seem to be the case at all, based on the evidence mounting in Logan’s mind. Roman said that he “very much did not succeed” in being less invasive. Patton expressed gratitude that Logan’s factoids (an inaccurate term that set Logan even more on edge) were optional this time. Had they always been so vexed by Logan’s facts? And as his function in the group was to provide logic, did this further imply that they are always aggravated by Logan himself? By his mere presence?

Logan found himself pacing back and forth, an activity he usually deemed futile after seeing Virgil work himself up while pacing countless times. But the more he allowed himself to review previous interactions, the more he became sure of this pattern of detestation. And the worst part was that each of the sides had generously attempted to inform Logan that they did not want to hear from him; did not require his assistance! But he was so caught up in his facts. In sharing everything he knew with those he considered to be his companions. Perhaps he had been mistaken in thinking that their feelings for him were affectionate. This certainly wouldn’t be the first time Logan was fooled by the complexity of human emotion and relationships. His friends had been clear all along…

                          “Logan? Shut your ever-flapping gobtalker.”

                                    “Oh hush, sub-astute teacher.”

                                       “Not a good time, Logan...”

                                    “Oh shut up , nerdy Wolverine.”

                             “I’m afraid this is a benched trial for you.”

Logan felt himself losing physical and mental control as these memories grew louder and more insistent. He backed up, feeling vaguely dizzy, and registered that he hit the edge of his bed.

Simultaneously, there was a knock on the door. “Logan, are you in there?” Virgil. Logan sighed, which sounded like a loud gasp for air. Perhaps Virgil might be useful in this moment, at least for temporarily grounding him and decreasing this budding anxiety. “Yes, you may enter, Virgil.” Logan thought that his response sounded quite normal, a decent cover-up for his current state of mind. He was proven wrong immediately upon Virgil’s entrance. “Are they still- woah dude, what’s up? You look like me at 2am” Logan swallowed, which felt considerably more difficult than it should, considering humans swallow saliva an average of 500 to 700 ti-

Virgil interrupted Logan’s racing thoughts. “Okay, I can basically hear you thinking, and it’s making me anxious. What the hell happened up there? I leave you guys alone for one freaking episode and you come back looking like you’re about to put me out of a job. Who do I need to punch?” Logan offered a weak smile, and Virgil raised an eyebrow. “I am- I’ve discovered- I am experiencing some...unpleasant thoughts which appear to have induced some level of physicalized anxiety” Logan rushed out, looking away. A pause. Now you’ve done it, Logan. You’re the embodiment of logic, this display of emotions is unfitting! Virgil is going to be just as baffled as you are, and he won’t fix it because he thinks you’re a freak. Let him leave now so you can continue to reflect upon how useless you’ve been to Thomas and the others.

“Logan, hey. Can you hear me? You don’t have to look, that’s okay. Can you feel what you’re sitting on right now?” Logan closed his eyes. “Th-this feels like the floor? But I wasn’t- I wasn’t here a minute ago…” Logan flushed, frustrated by his stuttering and rapid heart rate. “Yeah, you slipped down there a minute ago. L, I don’t want to freak you out but it seems like you’re having a minor panic attack. Luckily, you’ve stumbled upon the expert. Heh. Cause I’m...ok, nope, wrong time for dark humor…” Logan willed himself to glance up at Virgil and started laughing in spite of himself. Virgil joined in after a minute of half-hearted glaring. “Okay, deflections unfortunately don’t work in the long-term. It uh, usually helps me to do some deep breathing if you wanna try that?” Logan nodded, guilt tugging at him for making Virgil deal with this.

Afterwards, Logan did feel more in control, at least in a physical sense (he should have thought of that, he knows how to address a panic attack, why couldn’t he just think-) “Thank you for your assistance with this...minor anxiety attack, Virgil. I do feel badly that you had to witness and address it, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I’ll be fine from here since you wish to leave.”

Logan looked up again as he heard Virgil scoff loudly. “What the hell gave you the idea that I want to leave? Did you leave your self-esteem upstairs, pocket protector?” Logan’s breath caught in his throat. “It would be impossible to ‘leave my self-esteem upstairs’, as self-esteem is not a physical entity-” he started. Virgil held up a hand, cutting Logan off. Shouldn’t you be used to getting cut off by now Logan? He wants you to shut up! “I really don’t get why you STILL take everything I say so literally. Seriously though, what’s going on? Do I need to get Patton in here?” “NO!” Logan yelled, wincing at his voice. Virgil raised an eyebrow and left without another word. Logan sighed. Having Virgil’s company to ground him in both a literal and figurative sense had been comforting, but it also made everything more painful. Logan realized more than ever how much he would truly miss Virgil’s presence when he finally ducked out, how much he genuinely enjoyed being around the other sides…

“Heyyy there kiddo...Virgil told me that you’re kinda off right now so I wanted to check in! This isn’t about earlier, is it? You know that we care about you!!” Logan willed himself to avoid snapping at Patton, but he didn’t want to risk being vulnerable in front of another side. “Don’t worry about me, Patton, I have simply realized belatedly that I am-” Logan swallowed, looking everywhere but at Patton“-undesirable as a friend and a side of Thomas’.” Logan finally looked up, and saw what he could only describe as pity reflected on Patton’s face. Don’t be melodramatic, Logan. Just explain that you finally recognize your inadequacy and share your intentions to duck out.

“You can’t really think that, LoLo-” Patton started, at the same time that Logan said “I have realized-” Patton opened and closed his mouth a few times before nodding at Logan to continue. “Thank you for allowing me to finish, it’s greatly appreciated. I have realized that my knowledge is disagreeable to you all, and as that is both my primary function and my singular skill, it would be best that I...duck out.” Logan finished, looking up to see Patton’s eyes fill with tears as Virgil and Roman burst into the room, practically falling over each other.

"NOT SO FAST, MICROSOFT NERD" Roman bellowed. "I don’t know where you got such a ridiculous idea, but we certainly don’t want you gone!” Logan adjusted his glasses, uncomfortable. He should have expected this sort of protestation from the others, despite his accurate statements. It is unlikely that the other sides would acknowledge their true feelings about Logan to his face.

“Falsehood. Perhaps you hadn’t specifically considered my ducking out, but I am not daft, Roman. I have noticed your eye rolls and reactions to my presence. I apologize for not arriving at this conclusion sooner.” At this, Logan’s voice cracked slightly. Patton’s eyes widened. “Oh Logan, that’s not true!! Roman and you may have your little arguments here and there but it’s mostly in good fun, right Roman? We totally value all the cool stuff you bring up!” Roman nodded, eyes fixed on Logan as if he didn’t recognize the side behind his insecurities. Logan took a shaky breath, trying to count to four silently. But it was not in his nature to allow false information go without a debate. The voices in his head were pounding, growing louder and more furious, more wild, more hurt. Logan glanced up and met Virgil’s worried stare, Patton’s bewilderment, and Roman’s passionate fury.

“Falsehood, again. As I stated, it took me far too long to recognize that I am….unwanted. But I will not be lied to now in some attempt to spare my feelings...”

“Lo, we are not lying when we say we car-”

                                                      “ENOUGH!!!!”

Logan began pacing again, hands switching between combing through his hair and flailing frantically. “I have compiled specific memories of each one of you asking me to shut up, to exit conversations...for example: just today Roman, you told me that I did NOT succeed in being less invasive, and quite literally slashed my words in half, which Patton thanked you for because you had ‘cut the tension’. Patton, you just said you ‘value all the cool stuff I bring up’, but earlier appeared quite relieved that I had made my presence and voice optional, which you took advantage of by hitting my ‘skip all’ button! I am not useful in providing logic, I am...not useful as a friend seeing as I can’t read social cues or provide joy, s-so….” Logan closed his eyes as he felt tears slide down his cheeks. The barrier had broken. He tried pushing past the others to leave, but a pair of strong arms wrapped around him.

“Logan, I...apologize for what I said earlier. And for anything in the past that has made you uncomfortable. We may have our moments not seeing eye to eye, but at the end of the day you keep me, and all of us in check. You balance us out! And that- meaning YOU- is something we could never live without, you nerd. I’ll admit we have all hit some rough patches recently. Even I, your dashing prince, have been dealing with some...insecurities. So perhaps we have been harsh, and haven’t made enough room to appreciate each other. Especially to appreciate you, Logan. You are...truly amazing.” Logan looked up to see what he could only classify as genuine care and sincerity reflected in Roman’s eyes.

Patton moved to sit beside Logan and Roman, resting his head on Logan’s shoulder. He spoke after a moment, voice wobbly and eyes bright. “Roman is 1000% right, LoLo! And I am so sorry that I didn’t realize you weren’t feeling needed sooner. That is a horrible feeling...But you know what? You are a fantastic friend.” Logan interrupted, “Earlier you said that one can’t learn to care for others from a book, Patton. You were correct-” Patton shook his head, taking Logan’s hand and squeezing it once. Logan...did not hate it. “I shouldn’t have said that. But I did mean it when I said you’re a fantastic friend. You didn’t learn that from a book, Logan. You learned it from being with all of us! You show us you care in all those fun little ways that just scream ‘Logan!!’ And we absolutely love that! And we love you, exactly as you are. You aren’t giving yourself enough credit.” At that, Logan finally smiled.

Patton shot a pointed look at Virgil, who was still standing nearby. “Oh come on, I thought we agreed that my compliments are unspoken??” Several pointed looks. “Fine. Listen...I know where you’re coming from. I don’t think anyone is surprised to hear that I’ve gone through the whole ‘should I be here’ thing on basically a daily basis. But I don’t think Thomas, or these weirdos, or I could function without you. And yeah, you’re not mushy or affectionate in your friendship, which I actually relate to and appreciate because Patton’s hugs are already overwhelming enough-” “VIRGIL-” “-anyway, you show us that you care in other ways. And the fact that we’re saying we couldn’t do this without you means that you are a good friend. We just all show it in different ways.”

Logan stood up, wiping his tears quickly as he approached Virgil. They tried some combination of a hug, back pat, and hand shake before simultaneously deciding on finger guns. Patton started laughing, and they all joined in as Roman yelled “You absolute NERDS” fondly. “Do you believe us, Logan?” Patton asked after they quieted down. “I have reason to believe that these types of things take time to work through, but yes, I do find your words to be genuine and...moving. Thank you all, from the bottom of the heart that I apparently do have.” They all smiled at that, making no comment about the light blush that tinted Logan’s features.

The rest of the night was filled with BBC’s Sherlock, trivia games, and laughter. Once the others had gone their separate ways, even Janus and Remus made an appearance, and Logan found that their chaos was surprisingly comforting. He’d have to unpack that more later. For the moment, he felt content, knowing that while he still had much to learn of emotions and friendship, he actually knew a bit more than he thought. And that was adequate (at least for now).

[katsukiboom]

Touch Like Sunrays || KiriBaku

S O here we go again with another commission for the great @xpegasusuniverse! This time, it’s a sweet KiriBaku piece that I thoroughly enjoyed writing and had so much fun with the prompt. I hope you all like it! <3

If you’d like to get something like this, you can check how to request/commission right here!

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The sunrays filtered calmly through the curtains, slightly warming up the library as the students read in peace. It was one of the rare moments in UA where one could just take a breath and relax on one of the chairs in the silent room, taking advantage of the one golden rule the librarian made sure to make everyone remembered every once in a while.

Two spots in the far back of the big room, right beside an open window, were taken by a particular duo who just had to get their assignments done in time if they wanted to get a good grade, though it had been mostly Bakugou who had almost dragged Kirishima there in order for the redhead to actually do something good on the first try. The blond also wanted to get some time away from the rest of the class and just be with his boyfriend, a brand new relationship they had yet to disclose to everyone else.

He didn’t know when it happened and only noticed once Eijirou placed his hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently and awakening him. “Damn dude, I thought we came here to study,” the redhead said with a toothy grin. “If you wanted to take a nap, why didn’t we just go back to your room? We could’ve even cuddled if you needed it.”

“Shut up, shitty hair,” Katsuki said as he pushed him away as soft as he could. He quickly looked around to see if anyone was nearby but the coast looked clear, at least for the time being. “Why aren’t you studying more and keeping your damn mouth shut? I’ve already done my assignments.”

“It’s just that it’s such a nice day outside, we could, I don’t know… go study outside? I don’t want to waste such nice weather locked inside four walls while my mind fills with stuff I won’t remember in the evening,” Kirishima suggested mostly to himself but, Bakugou knew he was still trying to get his point across, even if he knew that the blond would probably not agree with him. In one of Bakugou’s softest moments, he reached out and placed his hand above his boyfriend’s, allowing a little smile to appear on his lips.

“If we finish your stupid homework in the next hour, we could go take a walk or something if we’re able,” he finally said, feeling that it would be enough to ease the worry in his partner’s mind and avoid the look of dejection he gave sometimes when his ideas were turned down.

Kirishima looked at him with half a smile that reassured him he was back to his cheery self and went back to focus on his notebook and math book, but a groan escaping from the blond’s lips made him look up again. Bakugou, once again with his eyes closed, had his head slightly leaning back and his arms crossed, the ever-present scowl on his expression deepened. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?” He asked, just soft enough to make sure only his boyfriend heard.

A sigh escaped from Katsuki’s lips as he opened his eyes again and gazed at the ceiling without saying anything for a second. “Nothing,” he replied just as quietly, “it’s just that my damn shoulders have been hurting a bit since I sparred with Pikachu yesterday. It’s nothing to worry about really.” It was Eijirou’s turn to look around and after a moment he quickly got up and walked over to Bakugou’s side until he stood right behind him, startling his partner and almost making him jump out of his seat. “What the fuck are you doing!?”

“Just as a heads-up, you shouldn’t be so loud in the library;” the redhead joked before putting his hands on the explosive teen's shoulders. “Just relax, this won’t hurt you.”

Bakugou was already used to Kirishima’s rough touch from every time he had either hugged him (he’d act too proud to admit he liked it) or grabbed him while they trained together, but there was only so much intimacy a 16 year-old can take without feeling a little bit awkward. His boyfriend’s hands on him felt soft, gentle, and it probably would’ve felt weightless had it not been for the slight pressure that was being applied to his muscles as Kirishima worked on him. Gliding across his clothed back and carefully kneading with his thumbs whenever he felt a certain strain, Kirishima said nothing as he went on and Bakugou wasn’t sure if he was the only feeling a special kind of tension around them.

Despite all of his best efforts, the little massage session had started to make him feel drowsier, his eyelids closing on their own as he absorbed a little bit more of the calming atmosphere around them. The warmth from both the spring season and his boyfriend’s sweet touch were more than enough to evoke some rather dirty images in his mind but, his expression remained unfazed as he pictured various scenarios that involved both giving and receiving, the main question on his mind being how the rough skin of Kirishima’s hands would feel like against his bare one.

His trance was broken by Eijirou cupping his cheeks and lifting his face to place a small kiss on the tip of his nose, suddenly making him aware of what was going on around him. His cheeks flushed red as he took in the sight and his surroundings again, but it wasn’t until he fixated on his boyfriend’s red eyes that he even noticed everything that had crossed his mind the last couple of minutes. “What are you doing?” He asked, but it came out much less threatening than what he had originally intended. “You know, someone c-”

“Do you still mind if people see us?”

The question threw him off guard for sure – he knew that Eijirou often fought against self-esteem issues and brought himself down for the smallest mistakes, and it was one of his goals as a best friend and now boyfriend to make him feel like he was worth the world, but seeing the little frown that was appearing on the redhead’s face made him realize he was being too sensitive to the situation. Sure, he wasn’t ready to announce they were dating yet – but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t find it in himself to make Kirishima feel as if there was only them in the world and no one else.

“Sit down,” he half-ordered without really answering the question, but an interesting idea had come to mind. He waited patiently until Kirishima was on his seat again and then he let out a loud sigh. “How do you know how to do that? I can barely feel any stinging or pain right now,” he muttered, his cheeks still flushed as he blurted out what he thought were words of appreciation.

Eijirou, still looking defeated and with his gaze fixed on his hands as he played with his pen, only replied, “I looked it up online, so I’m sorry if it was a little bit sloppy – I tried to practice with Mina before but she told me I was being too rough. I wanted to be able to make you feel better after the fighting, but if you’re uncomfortable I can stop.”

Bakugou was now feeling pissed but he knew very well it wasn’t directed towards Eijirou but rather at himself, because he was unable to properly express how happy those words made him feel even if the sensation was still a bit foreign to him. “You know,” he started as he got up and rested his palms on the table, resisting the urge to scan the area one more time as Eijirou’s puzzled gaze fell on him. “It felt fucking good, I’ve got no reason to lie,” he added while looking down. “But now, I think I want to do that for you as well.”

“O-oh, Bakugou, it’s no problem really, you don’t have to!” A nervous Kirishima replied as he watched his boyfriend coming closer, but nothing he said seemed to even reach the blond’s ears as he stood behind him, his sole intimidating aura being more than enough to make him swallow his words and straighten his body. “Are y-you sure of this?”

“The fucking Dalai Lama could come by and I would proudly tell him we’re dating – that’s how serious I am right now,” Katsuki spat out with some semblance of a smile on his lips, but all his inner confidence disappeared as soon as it came down to putting his hands on Eijirou’s shoulders. It was true; he had no way of knowing that what he was doing was correct or if he was using the right techniques, but if he could do something to make his partner feel better then he’d be damn sure to give it his all.

It started slow as he tried to repeat Kirishima’s first movements, a bit too clumsily for his liking but it didn’t seem to faze the redhead all that much. Both their breaths were calm yet Katsuki’s heart rate went up like crazy at the simple feeling of his boyfriend’s body under his touch – his shoulders were firm yet soft and even if he thought he was being gentle, he could feel a small spasm here and there as he worked around the areas he felt were tighter. Kirishima was right; he would’ve dropped everything right then and there to go have a nice cuddling session if it meant he’d get to be closer to him.

Watching as his boyfriend’s breathing went from steady to a little bit more agitated, Katsuki wondered if Eijirou was feeling the same way than he was before, flustered on the inside yet calm on the outside, yet he knew the boy was way more expressive than he was. He also wondered what it would feel like if he took ‘real’ classes, but just the thought of Kirishima’s hands on someone else’s oiled-up body sent his mind into a flying spiral of undesired images that he was more than sure his imagination was concocting just to make him feel awful.

He hesitated a bit before mimicking other things to do as he went a bit lower, taking the chance to use his whole palm to squeeze his partner’s hip just a bit harder before lowering his head to his neck, placing a soft kiss on his nape and making the other boy jump on his seat. “Dude, what was that?” Eijirou muttered without turning around and taking the time to look around. “Don’t do that if you’re afraid of getting caught.” Remembering his sad expression from earlier when it was him who tried to stay on the low, it did take Bakugou back just a little, yet it wasn’t enough for him to feel less brave.

Leaning down until his lips were right next to his ear, he knew the other boy was as red as his hair as he whispered; “Now you are the one who cares if someone sees?” A smug smile appeared on his face as he pulled back and put his hands on Eijirou’s shoulders again, this time getting to watch and enjoy the little shiver that went down his spine with every touch that even dared to graze the area that surrounded his neck. He’d make sure to remember that little detail to use later. “Try to let me know if I’m hurting you. Why don’t you try to go back to your work? I’ll take you up on going out or that damn cuddling thing if you’re done in time.”

He could feel his boyfriend’s both surprise and exasperation as he focused his attention on the papers in front of him, and Katsuki thought about teasing him just a little bit but ultimately decided it would only frustrate Eijirou a lot more than he already was – his hands moved ungraciously from one side to the other, doing his best to help with the many knots and swellings he found but, knowing his lack of experience with massaging would probably lead to many more of those appearing.

I’d take the blame, he thought, if it meant he’d get to be this kind of intimate with Kirishima again.

[halorocks1214]

the law of polarity

AO3 Link

Word Count: 11367

Summary:  The Law of Polarity states that everything is on a continuum and has an opposite. We can suppress and transform undesirable thoughts by concentrating on the opposite pole. It is the law of mental vibrations

Previous Parts (in order):  Alan | John | Virgil | Scott | You are here! | Gordon

that word count its just,,, growing BIGGER every day! i honestly don't understand my mind. 25 fucking pages. its boggling, i need better restraint my god. also: kayo you cryptic thing why are you so hard to write for helLO?? me writing kayo: guess ill die. *coughs* regardless, the next installment is here! i hope you still enjoy it. like the other ones, I'm mostly satisfied with it outside of a few spots so YEET 

“Kayo! Come on out!”

“Seriously, sweetheart, this isn’t funny!”

The 12-year-old promptly did the opposite by squirming further into her treehouse. It’s not that Jeff Tracy was a bad babysitter, or God forbid her dad was a bad dad, they were stellar. They just had to understand that there were times when a kid wanted to be left alone and that was to be respected. She shoved herself further into her corner and brought her arms around her knees.

… Okay, she was avoiding them, but she had a good reason.

Whatever this dumb thing about ‘sending her away’ was pointless and trite. She was simply going to lay low, wait for the dumb-dumbs to cool off and then they’ll realize they were being dumb-dumbs and drop this whole dumb-dumb idea!

She didn’t like what she was hearing in the first place anyway.

“Watch out for her uncle, my brother.”

“Ah, opposed to your uncle that is also your mother?”

“Jeff.”

The serious tone made both Kayo and Jeff flinch. Then, Kyrano put his foot down even more, “You know the one. You were friends, right? Hell, he’s the technical reason we met, you know what I’m talking about. Promise me to watch out for him.”

Kayo looked up at Jeff’s face from her hiding spot in the doorway to see his breathing get slightly more labored, but the way he spoke could only be described as confident, “Okay. I promise. Just like I promised to keep her safe, got it?”

Kyrano relaxed at that, though, his breathing was worse than what Jeff’s was. The man gulped and nodded his head, “Good. Now then, let’s go find her. We should explain this properly to her. She’ll understand.”

If she waited to hear her dad’s last sentence she might have laughed. As soon as the agreement was in place, she quietly zoomed away to her comfort spot to wait for the storm to pass. Too bad that storm had a homing beacon because right as she unfolded herself a little bit (she was getting uncomfy), Jeff Tracy climbed up to the window and went, “AHA! Gotcha!”

Before Jeff could explain, she was zipping down the slide and across the yard. In her panic, she broke one of her major rules when running away from something: never look behind you in any shape or form. Not only could you be focusing on something else like trying to get to your destination quicker if you kept your face forward, but you also can’t avoid anything that gets in your way if you’re not watching out for it.

Such was her father’s arms, which grabbed her around the waist and held on tight, “Oh thank God.”

Okay, she was expecting anger or at least minor scolding. She was not expecting her dad to practically cry in relief, nor for him to drop to his knees and hold onto her tightly. It froze everything about her: her mind, her body, yeah, everything. The only thing she could do in response was to awkwardly hug him back as Jeff slowly walked towards them, “See? I told you that you were panicking for no reason. Now, would you like me to stay here for this or?...”

Kyrano, who took a moment to register those words, eventually shook his head side to side while it still rested on Kayo’s shoulder, “N-No, Jeff, if it’s okay, I just need a moment with her so I can properly explain my actions. If you want, you can start packing some of her stuff to take home with you.”

The babysitter immediately backed off, hands up in a semi-surrender position, “Of course, do you know what I can get started on by myself?”

Kyrano softly took her hands into his, examining them by running his thumbs over her knuckles, thinking about what to say, “Basic toiletries, basic over-the-counter medications, some of her favorite snacks, you remember her favorite snacks, right?

The grass crinkled as Jeff walked away, his voice getting quieter and quieter due to distance, “You bet I do.”

Suddenly, she was alone with her father, who placed her hands against his chest. His breaths were shaky as he tried to find metaphorical solid ground, “Listen… I know things are changing fast and abruptly, and I’m sorry I can’t explain much of what’s happening, but you have to trust me, okay? You’re just changing houses, nothing more, nothing less. I’ll still be around often, and we’re still going to be father and daughter, you’re just going to be under the protection of Uncle Jeff, got it?”

Kayo was very quickly aware of a burning idea that hurt to think about, “Wait, are you in danger? If you’re in danger I don’t want to leave you! I can help you, Father!”

Kyrano was quick to cool the fury in her heart by placing his forehead against hers in their familiar form of comfort, “I know you can, but it’s not me that’s in danger, okay?”

And with that confession, her mouth snapped shut. She was always quick on figuring things out, and if her father wasn’t the one in danger, then that meant...

Kyrano couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped his mouth. His daughter, despite the cold-hearted exterior she tried displaying, could be quite adorable when secretly prompted, “I know. It’s scary, it sucks, and I wanna keep you here just as much as you want to be, but this is for the best. Don’t worry about me, worry about yourself just for a little bit, hmm?”

Kayo swallowed whatever nasty emotion tried worming its way out of her throat as she also kept the few, tiny tears at bay in her eyes, preventing them from rolling down her face, “Okay, Dad, I trust you.”

Kyrano visibly relaxed at how quickly she agreed, “Thank you. Alright,” Kyrano boosted himself up from his knee, “Let’s go help Uncle Jeff pack.”

He held out his hand to her, which she took with a definite level of uncertainty.

After an hour, Kayo was packed and ready to become a resident in the Tracy household. Her dad gave her plenty more kisses goodbye on the level that she became secretly glad she was leaving. Dads and their overbearing need to smother will be the death of her.

As Kayo and Jeff drove to their destination, it was silent. Jeff drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to find something to say, while Kayo simply brought her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on top of them. Just because she knew how necessary this was didn’t mean she had to like it.

Finally, Jeff figured out his words, “You did hear him mention that he’ll visit you every week, right? You two are still going to be thick as thieves until your last dying breaths. You just won’t be in each other’s presence as much.”

Kayo didn’t hear him at first, and when her mind picked up that someone was trying to talk to her, she popped her head up like a surprised chipmunk, “Huh? Oh, yeah, he told me that.” And with it, her head fell back to her knees, and Jeff was lost once more.

That is until he was reminded of his kids. A sly grin formed on his face. His confidence was always boosted whenever his children were involved, “You know, I don’t know if I’ve even mentioned this, but I do have some of my own children at home.”

This time it took a lot less waiting for Kayo to pop her head up, “Really?”

Jeff nodded, relieved he found common ground between the two of them, “Yep. Five boys to call my own.”

Kayo leaned back into the backrest and hung her legs over the edge. Now she was sitting in the car seat as one would normally, “Whoah.”

Jeff chuckled. Kyrano wasn’t kidding about her being surprisingly adorably, “Just you wait, you’ll get along with them like peas in a pod.”

She absolutely did not get along with them like peas in a pod.

The first night was okay, fine. The older ones were nice as older siblings were when there was only one parent in the house, and the younger ones at least had enough manners to be considered quaint. But then the first night became the same as the next night. Then the next. The constant noises didn’t completely stop even after being there for a few days, signifying that this was normal in the family. The first time her father came over on the weekend she was begging to go home.

Kyrano felt sympathetic. He understood that Jeff’s boys could be a rowdy group, and that was from the stories the father told himself, but the threat was still looming, and all he could do was give empty words, “I really am sorry little bug, but my hands are tied. If you want, I could talk to Jeff for you? He is their father, he could set some temporary rules in place.”

Kayo sagged at his words, knowing he was right, but then sat up straight, “No, it’s okay. I can handle them. When they mess up they’ll learn the hard way why not to.”

Kyrano chuckled and took her into his arms, “Knowing you, those words aren’t just words. Don’t worry, just 28 more days, then the GDF will give me an update and you’ll be home safe and sound.”

Kayo counted them down one by one, tallies scratched into the wooden frame of the bed they gave her.

The 26th day was the day her uncle took Jeff’s life.

And everything was thrown off-kilter.

He came to pick her up on the 30th day, and she could tell things were different. He was jumpier, more careful about what they did. He never failed at his fatherly duties, but it was obvious he couldn’t be the same. She probably never was either. They had less fun, more prep work, he was constantly looking over his shoulder and she found herself doing the same with no protest. Her uncle, her family, destroyed everything she once knew in a way that would probably never be fully recovered. This point was even more blatant with the next big shocker of her life.

On the 67th day, her father went into retirement.

That was a sign the world was ending. Her father quit his job, the one that threatened to kill him more times than she understood at her age yet he stuck with it anyway because he loved it that much, he quit.

On the 1278th day, after years of trying his best, after multiple dropping offs of his daughter to Tracy Island (she probably spent half that time in the Tracy household, much to his chagrin) as he tried finding some kind of peace of mind, he succumbed to his demons. He gave her some lessons in self-defense over that time, but then he heard of another attack that was most likely caused by his brother and he just couldn’t. The thin wire snapped, and Kyrano didn’t trust his daughter to be safe with him anymore. He couldn’t protect his best friend from his brother, how the hell could he protect anybody else, how could he protect his child? Self-defense was useless against someone like his-- that man.

Kayo, who was just trying her best to still wrap her head around everything that had happened, over how one could potentially stop being related to someone, didn’t even try any kind of fighting back as her father took her right over to Tracy Island. He looked Grandma dead in the eyes with a face Kayo would never forget and said, “Jeff said he would always be willing to ‘pick up my slack’ so… please, keep her safe. Do what I can’t do.”

Being the mother she was, Grandma sadly grinned, “Of course, Kyrano, of course.”

That’s not to say he went off the radar or he never came to see her, he just wasn’t her main caretaker anymore. She was officially a permanent fixture in the Tracy family now, and she didn’t even have the headspace to worry about that. Hell, she was still recovering from her father’s retirement announcement.

This was the first time she learned what it was like to be truly and utterly hopeless.

It didn’t help that the rest of the Tracys were completely different as well.

She saw snippets over the years when her father went out on his meditation sessions, but now that she was going to be here forever, now that she couldn’t hide away like an anxious guest at a hotel, she was fully able to take in just how broken the Tracys were.

Like she was.

Scott and John were gone often, to the point where she only saw one of them at a time, almost never together. Virgil didn’t seemingly change much outside of certain hobbies and ways he handled things, though, she probably should have picked up on the fact that changing your personality was a big sign of trauma and untapped issues. Grandma Tracy was doing her best to accommodate her living situation into theirs, and Kayo will always be grateful for the elderly lady’s (mostly) stable state of mind throughout everything.

Then there was Gordon and Alan, who started leaving her alone.

They still did their pranks and jokes and couldn’t stop themselves if there was something ‘cool’ they wanted everyone to see, but they were more reserved, more quiet. Out of all the things she wished to stop happening, Gordon and Alan annoying her were on the top of the list, but when they did, it felt… weird. Awful.

The silence she craved since the first night her father sent her here was given to her on a silver platter yet she hated it and she didn’t even know why.

Nothing was making sense anymore.

And it continued to be senseless for the next few years to come.

The only thing she could latch onto to keep some kind of gravity to her life was the sentence her father told Jeff the day she came to the island. Watch out for her uncle. He was the reason everything was as messed up as it was, and the only people that rivaled her hatred for him was the Tracys themselves. As pessimistic as the thought was, at least she found something in common with them, and it made it easier for her to hide her true heritage in the end too.

The Tracy family was family oriented. She didn’t think she would have been welcome if they found out about certain relations of hers, not after what that relation took away from them.

(Well, if there was at least one thing she would happily admit to being wrong about in the future, she was glad it was that.)

Regardless, the years went on, and she became a proactive member of the family. Trying to compensate for the whole ‘secretly-related-to-evil’ thing and all that jazz. It was the least she could do for them since they were housing her. Learning more complicated self-defense, keeping watch over the island, helping Grandma with chores and other jobs around the house, and… hell, she found herself keeping an eye out for Alan more often than not. She wasn’t sure what it was, the older ones rubbing off on her, maybe Alan himself wormed his way into her heart, who knew?

As for the night everything started picking back up, it was… interesting.

She was minding her own business when she received a call from Scott, who she was very much aware should be packing for his trip to the mainland for next week with his Grandma. Those two had a conversation about plans for the future, and from bits and pieces Kayo picked up, Scott was on his way to becoming the newest CEO on the block, which she thought was an excellent position. Certainly made more sense than the Air Force in her eyes.

She picked up the call with a hint of playfulness, but right before she could point out that he should be picking out the right color shirt to match his eyes, she felt metaphorical cold water sploosh over her back as his panicked babbling slowly made sense to her ears.

“Alan’s gone!”

Around this time as well, Scott was in the house 24/7, and she knew the general details of why. Yeah, they gave her the vague story of things. She may have only been 16, but she wasn’t stupid. Her father was a military man, Jeff was a military man as well for Christ’s sake, she knew things where it counted. Alan never tried to figure out why, though, since he was just happy he could see Scott more often. Scott was happy too, everyone was, but the eldest was reserved. Careful with his interactions. As if whatever he touched shattered in his mere presence.

13-year-old Alan? Never really picked up on that until too late.

She got snippets from Scott over the call: he was in some kind of sour mood and did the logical thing and waited it out in his locked room (it really wasn’t that logical, but all the other options were worse so he took what he got). At some point, Alan had shown up outside his door (Scott found one of the kid’s toy cars right outside his door, as well as dirt tracks only Alan could leave) and tried to get the brunette’s attention. Except Scott was pretty out of it, trying not to snap any pens in half or God forbid punch a hole in the wall, so he never heard any of Alan’s attempts to get him to come out.

Oh yeah, Scott also knew it was Alan because he noticed a small sticky note on his door with the word ‘Sorry’ chicken-scratched onto it.

Alan took the silent treatment as his fault (hopefully not deserved, Scott was already feeling shit-tastic) and scampered off somewhere. Scott was going to find his younger brother and make things right and explain his actions, but then seconds turned to minutes, and minutes turned into half-an-hour. Wherever Alan went to was a place Scott didn’t know existed apparently, and that just about made everything worse.

After nearly an hour of searching, he caved in and called for the only other help he had at the moment.

Which was her.

John was in space, and Grandma was out picking up Virgil and Gordon from their weekend off. Gordon got special tickets to something because of his gold-medal status, and Virgil was the obvious extra-ticket pick. On their way home, John would be picked up by the three of them as well. It was going to be one of the few fleeting moments they all were in the house at the same time.

Unless she and Scott got off their asses, that plan would be thoroughly jossed.

Taking a deep breath, she finally got a word in between all of his panicking, “Scott! Alright, I’m on the South-West side, so I’ll start looking here, okay? You keep searching the part you’re in and I’ll update you once I get somewhere else or if I find him.”

Labored breathing filled her ear before a rather large gulp cut it off, “Okay, sounds good.”

The call was cut and they haven’t been in contact since.

She wasn’t sure what part of the island she was on when she found him. Not usually her typical shtick, to panic without thinking, even if that panic was small, but regardless, she stepped onto a rocky part of the beach and looked around. She almost missed the mop of blonde hair sitting against the tallest one, absentmindedly staring off at the calm waves hitting the rocks further into the bay.

Making light steps, she eventually was able to sit down next to him a few inches away and watched the kid intently. She was quite familiar with the feeling of a thousand words wanting to spill out of your mouth at the same time, and she could clearly see it on Alan’s face, so she did the proper thing and waited for Alan to start.

When he did, she was caught off guard.

“I’m sorry.”

Wait, what? “What?”

Alan shrugged like it was obvious, “I don’t know. A lot of things. I wanna help out so much but whenever I do it seems like I just make it worse so that just leaves me to wonder what I need to change or if that would even matter in the long run… I just…”

As the blonde curled in on himself, still mumbling half-baked excuses (as if the kid thought he needed an excuse to feel shitty), a million thoughts hit Kayo at the same time, frying the gears in her brain with how they added up. Alan’s little display of low self-confidence reminded her of something she didn’t like to think about a lot.

She was… horrifyingly reminded of herself.

With it, she was already connecting dots between the two of them from the past few years of living together. Things like their tantrums (holy cow was she a stubborn child to her father sometimes), their eagerness to prove themselves for things that didn’t really need to be proven, their unhealthy need to lean towards silence when something is troubling them, now their seemingly poor viewpoints of themselves…

All she wanted to do was help Scott out, and so far all she was getting for it was a sudden identity crisis.

The gut reaction Kayo had was to deny it. How could she possibly have anything in common with Alan? Alan had a lot in common with Gordon, and she was the exact opposite of the second youngest. She was reminded of those transitive laws John was telling Alan about one day when it was the ginger’s turn to help with homework. A equaled B while B equaled C always meant A equaled C as well. A and B as Alan and Gordon respectively made sense, but if she was C? No sense at all, completely phony, not possible in the slightest. There were exceptions to every rule after all.

Besides, Alan had an ego to rival Gordon’s too, he never worried about things like ‘am I truly in the way or not?’. He was the youngest, the youngest never was in the eyes of good older siblings-- and the Tracys were good, good in ways she herself would probably never reach. She might have been an only child growing up but she read enough about proper family dynamics to know that.

But as the grief-stricken 13-year-old started to understand things not even some adults twice his age never fully learned right in front of her, she had to admit that the laws of physics were not to be trifled with. John was probably having a conniption over the mere thought of it. Knowing him, he felt a sudden chill for no reason because of her denial. He was weird like that. It also made her start to think about her relationship with Gordon. Maybe she held herself to too high of standards… or maybe even him.

Right, right, she should worry about the blonde in front of her. Didn’t Gordon have issues about his thoughts jumping around all willy nilly? That’s what she can at least start with when she gets there, but she should probably get there first, “Alan, look at me.”

The kid just shrunk further into himself.

This was troublesome, “Alan. Look up.”

She watched him blatantly shake his head no.

Okay, now it was exasperating. Not for the reasons she typically felt, though, it was annoying because a 13-year-old should not be shrugging off help like he was, that was the beginning of a bad habit, “Alright, Alan Tracy, you leave me no choice.”

Those words were just ominous enough for Alan to jump his head up from his knees in shock. Before he could blink the tears out of his eyes, Kayo was up in his personal space with her eyes wide due to a look of… hesitation?

Out of all the places she could have stopped, why did it have to be two inches away from his face? She wasn’t even sure why she was doing this. Sure, it calmed her down when her father did it, but her father was much more graceful about it, much more parental. If she wasn’t careful she might just give the child in front of her a headbutt right on the soft part of his face more than anything else.

Regardless, she was here, and she was on a roll with not making sense tonight. Besides, didn’t she just go over all the things they had in common? Surely this will work… hopefully. Potentially. At least a 60% chance. With a deep breath, she closed the distance and lightly placed her forehead on his. It might have been cliche, but when she saw how much he relaxed, she couldn’t help that feeling from washing over her too.

Alan, meanwhile, was strangely okay with this. It was new and weird, but it also felt… safe? Like Virgil’s hugs or Scott’s jackets, there was an air of warmth to this that Alan liked so he let it be to do whatever it was doing well. The knots in his chest were loosening up.

After awkwardly staring into Alan’s blue eyes for longer than she should, she finally figured out how to word all the emotions swirling around in her brain. It was short, it probably was only a short term fix, but at the time it worked like a charm, “I may not know a lot about things yet, but I do know that whatever you’re thinking will happen most certainly won’t. Scott isn’t angry or thought you were in the way. Honestly, he might be worried you’re not in the way enough. Trust me, Scott will just be happy to see you safe.”

Alan won’t be able to tell you what convinced him that night. Maybe her sincerity, maybe her touch, maybe he was just tired and the idea of seeing Scott again was enough to wake him up, but whatever it was, when Kayo stood up, he did too and walked right back home.

They made it back to the house right as the sun was coming up. Subconsciously gently taking his hand, Kayo made sure Alan trailed behind her a little bit. She never really figured out why, it’s not like there was anything to protect him from that night, but she still felt the need to do that. Eventually, they sauntered their way towards the kitchen, where she heard Scott rambling about his current grievances.

She froze momentarily at another voice replying to Scott’s panic.

“Scott, take it easy, it’s not like a 13-year-old could get that far anywhere on the island--”

“He shouldn’t be able to get anywhere on the island in the first place, John, that’s the point! God, why was I so fucking stupid in letting that happen? Here I thought the breathing exercises were working! Jesus--”

“Alright, first of all, if you don’t slow down I’m going to force you to do more of them, you’re practically turning purple, and second of all, this is fixable. It is, but it won’t be if you keep running around like a chicken with its head cut off. If it makes you feel better, we can call Virgil, Gordon, and Grandma back from their ‘big secret thing’ they scampered off to right as they got me home if you want. Kayo is also capable at what she does, you fricking called her yourself. Would you like to go for another round around the island?”

There were Scott and John. In the same room. At the same time. Kayo rubbed her eyes in an attempt to see if what was in front of her were just spots in her vision. Blinking away the tears that formed because of the action, she learned they weren’t. Huh, lots of things were new and different tonight.

Weird.

Scott shook his head, “No, from what you described, Gordon was excited, as well as Virgil and Grandma. This isn’t an emergency. Not yet. Let’s call Kayo. If she hasn’t found anything, we can go one more time.”

That was her cue to step in, “You know, I always wondered why Virgil said he couldn’t exactly describe what you two were like when you’re in ‘panic mode’, and I think I now see why. It’s pure chaos. Here, you worried lunatics.”

The oldest brothers jumped at the voice, and with the fury of a thousand suns, they looked over to her waist to see the ball of freckles they desperately wanted to see. Scott stood up and John turned his body to be faced to Alan, both of them taut. They took one step forward, and Alan flinched behind Kayo’s leg, which made them both falter and stop on the spot.

Slightly rolling her eyes, she kneeled down to Alan and placed her forehead against the kid’s as she did those minutes ago, “Alan, what did we talk about?”

Both Scott and John blinked at the way Alan seamlessly calmed down with the interaction. Holding their breaths, Alan took a deep one of his own and turned to look at them with newfound determination. Within the blink of an eye, Scott had a limpet attached to his legs and waist, holding him in place. It was very difficult getting down to the floor to hug him back without falling flat on his ass. Alan was holding his center of balance in one tiny spot, but if Scott has learned anything, it was how to work around four unruly younger brothers.

John, at some point, came to stand next to Kayo as they watched the scene before them. After a few seconds, Alan leaned out and sniffed, “I’m sorry, Scooter, for scaring you. I know I’m not supposed to run off without telling anyone where I went, no matter why I’m running off. I promise to not do it again.”

Scott let out a few wet chuckles and ruffled the kid’s hair, not worried about that anymore in the slightest, “Well, I’m glad you know to apologize for that, but I think I need to apologize for some things as well. I’m sorry I ignored you, okay? I didn’t mean to, and I promise to properly explain what happened in the morning when we’re not so tired.”

Kayo saw John grimace out of the corner of her eye. She never exactly figured out what in Scott’s statement he did so over.

Alan seemed to take it for the most part. Most part, being the key term there, “But I understand! Or at least some of it… Adults have adult things they need to do, which I shouldn’t have tried interrupting. Which is also why Grandma is taking you away to do that training of yours. You’re going to get another adult job like the one you had before, and you’re going to be gone because of that too, and that’s okay! I--”

Scott shushed him with a finger over his lip, “There are a few things wrong with that statement of yours, little bro. And thank you for pointing out my last job, there were a few things I did wrong with that too. I went weeks without calling any of you when I very easily could have, and with a job like that, I probably scared you all half to death. Trust me, Sprout, tonight was a good kick in the pants. Alright, I’ll at least explain this now: I’m going to handle my new job a little differently. Every day I’m off the island, I’ll be sure to send some kind of message, hopefully, a call, but a text at the least. Scout’s Honor.”

Scott did the familiar hand movement, signifying that the Scout’s Honor was in place and was not to be broken at any point. She never figured out how Scott did it. Knew what to say even if the comforting words seemed like they had nothing to do with the current topic at hand. After all, despite jumping from ‘not running off like that’ to ‘Scott’s new job’, she watched as Alan fully relaxed and leaned back into his big brother’s arms while said big brother melted all around him like a pile of protective goo. The scene was peaceful, and Kayo could feel herself tearing--

“GUYS! OH MY GOD GUESS WHAT?! I--”

And there it went.

Like a bomb, Gordon was suddenly in the area screaming about something. Right as his foot slapped the tile of the kitchen, he froze and read the room around him while breathing heavily. Looking down at a kneeling Scott hugging Alan, Gordon sobered up, “Oh. Hey Allie, didn’t you say you wanted to watch Jurrasic World at some point?”

As obtuse as Gordon could be, he was always the best at brightening up the situation.

About a fourth of the way through the movie, Gordon, Scott, and Alan were all clonked out in some weird pretzel on the couch. Virgil and Grandma were in the kitchen quietly thinking of what to get ready for Gordon (getting accepted into WASP while being a gold-medal athlete at the same time was no easy feat), so that left John and her to do everything but watch the movie.

Kayo barely registered John’s awkward coughing as an attempt to catch her attention. When he saw that it finally worked, he seemed to get embarrassed about what he was going to say, “So… that thing you did with Alan.”

Kayo blinked in confusion.

John quickly explained, “That forehead press? He was really comforted by that. I was just thinking… could you show us how it’s done? At least Scott and I, but if you could show Virgil and Gordon too that would be nice. I think Alan’s starting to form mine and Scott’s bad habit of panic attacks, so to have that gesture in our back pocket would help.”

Kayo thought about John’s words for a moment before shrugging, “Yeah, sure. My father taught yours how to do it so I don’t see why I can’t do something similar.”

The silence suddenly wanted to choke her. Suddenly looking over at John, she saw the ginger with wide eyes, “... Our dad? Why?”

Oh shit. Jeff was a sensitive subject in the house, and she tried her best to tiptoe around it until now. Especially when it wasn’t her father that was dead. Eh, she’ll hate pulling a tab from Gordon’s page in the future, but, “He wanted something special for Lucy since he wasn’t exactly the most graceful swan on the planet. My father did it with a lot of his friends he considered close, as well as my mother, so Jeff asked him the meaning behind it and viola. Your father was a slightly more refined person.”

Watching John blink a few times made her think she fucked up even more, but then he literally chuckled as he absentmindedly looked back towards the movie, “Yeah, ain’t that an understatement.”

She relaxed and copied his actions, the feeling of confidence washing over her like a warm blanket as her eyes graced the TV. She may not have fully been a Tracy, but she had to begrudgingly admit that she was too much like them for her own good. Jeff’s ‘peas in a pod’ statement was really coming back to bite her in the ass.

Gordon loudly snored from Scott’s lap, making both Kayo and John jump.

… Yeah, too much for her own good.

---

Fuse told her to run ahead and that was all she needed to start booking it down the compound towards Gordon and Virgil.

The map their uncle gave them was helpful, but it just emphasized how deep in shit they all were. Also, she had to admit she felt slightly bad. Once John convinced her that Fuse was really there to help and after she listened to their plan, maybe she should have fought it more as Scott and Gordon did. She was just so relieved to finally have something to go off of after nearly a month. When five boys left to get Jeff and only four came back…

Watch out for her uncle.

Fuse wasn’t expecting it either, so at least it wasn’t a planned trap. But still, it’s her job to prevent this shit. Not let the Tracys walk right into it.

Shaking her head, she refocused on getting to the two brothers currently closest to her position. She was part of IR, she was still good at rescuing too. It was just a small pinch in the back of her head. The only thing she wanted to do in life at the least was protect the Tracy family from anything else her uncle threw at them.

Heh, the irony.

Right before she rounded the corner, she heard something akin to ungodly screeching.

“You should have stayed dead!”

“We-hell, if there’s anything I’m known for, it’s being disappointing!” Cheeky laughter came next.

Well, that second voice was Gordon. But the first one was female, and that threw Kayo a little off. The voice was still familiar, but she was pretty sure Penelope was off getting the GDF to their location, and Grandma was back home making sure Jeff didn’t shoot out of his chair to come help them. Plus, ‘you should have stayed dead’ was something those two ladies would never say, let alone to a family member, so why did that voice sound familiar?

She took one step around the corner and--

“Havoc.”

The growl was out of her mouth before she could help it. Talk about a sight for sore eyes.

She stopped running and took in the view. Gordon was breathing heavily and grinning in that way that said he was terrified out of his mind. Behind him on the ground was Virgil holding his head. His breathing was labored too, albeit not as bad as Gordon. Considering the blunt object Havoc was holding, Kayo quickly figured out why Virgil got Alan to run.

The air must have been stuffy because as Kayo focused on her labored breathing, she watched the hacker also continue to breathe heavily, her eyes wide with craze. Kayo stomped her boot down promptly in between the boys and the nuisance in the room, “Gordon, get your brother out of here.”

Gordon blinked in confusion but then was on Virgil in a way that reminded the middle Tracy of Scott. Virgil, for once, was hoping Gordon would listen to his innate response to not follow orders. The musician’s hope was promptly squashed as he yelped when Gordon picked him up and supported him as they walked out of the room, “Hey! Gordon--”

Gordon was surprised at how easily he shrugged off Virgil’s protest. That’s probably why he listened to Kayo’s order to get him out so easily, “Yeah, yeah, save whatever you’re gonna say for the potential concussion, bro.”

Kayo could only listen as the two sauntered away, as Havoc tried leaping after them again, intent on finishing what she started. Kayo stopped the woman in her tracks with a kick, and now all of the anger was directed at Kayo herself. Good. She had some choice words for The Chaos Crew member in front of her, “You’ve made an awful amount of mistakes recently.”

The lady growled and lunged, which Kayo easily avoided. The hacker landed on her knees and looked up, “We’re they mistakes, or happy accidents?”

Kayo scowled even more, “I think you know what they were, and you liked it that way.”

Havoc shrugged, her grin becoming even wider, “Yeah, you’re right, they were wonderful accidents.”

Havoc was back on her feet and now it was Kayo’s turn to lunge. Kayo didn’t need to win, just waste enough time for everyone else to finish their parts of the plan, though, she would be lying if she said she didn’t feel satisfaction at going toe-to-toe with this lady.

She was pretty sure John was out of his mind like the rest of his family thought, but the more she saw Fuse in action, the more she understood the astronaut’s point of view. Fuse was smart when he wanted to be, if a bit oblivious, and there was no complaining about him giving them information about Alan’s whereabouts.

Plus… she was begrudgingly starting to see the appeal of Fuse himself. Of what he had been through. She was an older sister to a singular younger sibling too, maybe not the best one, but from what she was seeing, Havoc didn’t exactly rank up high on the list either.

As she continued to brawl with the lady-in-purple, she probably should have cooled her anger a little bit. The more she thought about Alan or Havoc and Fuse or her uncle or, hell, even the way Gordon and Virgil made their way to safety just a few minutes prior, the more she was reminded of how wrong this had all been, about how much more diffifcult life was made by idiots like Havoc and The Hood. How tired she was from all of it, which was another reason she should have taken a breather.

Long story short: it was making her more aggressive, less thoughtful of her next actions. She eventually started swinging without purpose, which Havoc was hoping to happen. She used an opening those actions created and knocked the female member of IR to the floor.

Suddenly, Kayo was pinned and the metal pipe was raised, and right as she closed her eyes and prepared to take the hit, a quiet voice spoke from a few feet away, preventing the hit from happening altogether.

“Sis?”

Both women froze, and both turned their heads ever so slowly at the new voice. Despite his size, Fuse was standing off in the shadows and looked incredibly small. Like she had almost been burned, Havoc jumped off Kayo and was standing up, eyes pleading for something Kayo wasn’t sure the hacker exactly wanted, “What? No, you got away! You ran! You’re not supposed to be here, it’s not--”

Kayo, who couldn’t find the energy to stand, watched with growing understanding. Watched Havoc’s wide eyes in contemplation, the woman’s panic slowly making sense. It was hard to imagine, but it couldn’t be anything else. Havoc was, in fact, scared for Fuse. He probably already pissed off The Hood, and Havoc was left to barely cool the flames lest she wanted a dead brother. Maybe that’s why she didn’t follow Fuse. She wanted to stay behind to make sure Fuse’s small chance of surviving was as big as it could be.

Huh, it was weird to think about The Chaos Crew in any other form outside of their established ‘chaotic’ selves, but maybe sibling dynamics were so powerful it was just a universal thing.

Maybe Kayo misjudged her actions like she did Fuse’s. Maybe Havoc wasn’t too bad of a sister.

Meanwhile, Fuse took her panic as anger. Betrayal. He left her behind, so of course, she deserved to be angry. He abandoned her after all, for a family they’ve been deadset on destroying for the past however long. But that was the other thing, wasn’t it? This family who he had hurt so many times before still showed him a level of decency he wasn’t aware was possible. A level of decency when siblings are allowed to be siblings and nothing else.

That’s what they thought they would get when they were persuaded by The Hood with his smarmy exterior, but now that he’s been helping out the Tracys, he realized The Hood was the exact opposite.

Despite his misunderstanding, what he said was exactly what his sister needed to hear.

With wide eyes, he looked directly at his only other family, “Camilla…” Havoc jumped, Fuse continued without hesitation, “We can be free, you know. The Mechanic got away. He’s safe on Tracy Island. I talked to him. He’s happy, we can be too, and it’s all thanks to them.” He gestured toward Kayo off to the side.

Meanwhile, the IR lady in question did what she did best: sat in silence and watched as Havoc slowly understood the situation, “... Really?”

Fuse started smiling, smiling, and Kayo had to blink before he spoke once more, “Yeah, we need to do some things and spend some time to make up for everything that we did, but it will be away from him, you know? It’s possible. I’ve seen it, experienced it, you can too. I promise.”

Havoc lost all of her edge at those words. Her insane exterior melted away into a woman who was finally realizing she didn’t have to fight anymore, that she was no longer backed into a corner, “Wow…”

Younger siblings. No matter the family, they always manage to leave their older siblings speechless.

Rolling her eyes and standing up, Kayo wiped off her pants and walked over to the entirety of The Chaos Crew. There was another younger sibling that needed to be found, “Alright, now that we got this out of the way, let’s make that pathway for the GDF. Fuse, you know what to do.”

Once Fuse registered Kayo’s words, the grin that overtook his face was no longer relaxed but giddy instead, “Come’ on, sis, you’ve said you wanted to learn how to do more of my stuff right?”

For some reason, Havoc’s grin was too, “Hell yes.”

As Kayo helped The Chaos Crew set up charges like John said to do, she also remembered another thing the ginger told her while they were preparing the last few things they needed to prepare before they went out on their big mission. He is the reason we’re probably getting Alan back. As an older sibling, it’s the least I could do for him. Little siblings, ours or not, always made us Tracys act rather irrationally.

Later, when Kayo saw Alan and Scott limp out of the hole The Chaos Crew made with and even worse looking Hood, she was also reminded of the fact of life that said John was always right.

Little siblings really do bring out the worst and best of you.

---

It only took a few nights before the obvious happened.

For once in her life, Kayo was asleep in her bed when unholy screaming filled the hallways of Tracy Island. It was autopilot with the way she threw her bedsheets off and was standing up, but she only realized what was truly happening when she reached her doorway. Alan. Instead of running and preparing to fight whatever was causing the distress, she was simply running to get to the location as fast as she could.

Now, everyone knew she was one of the fastest people on the island, it was her job, but even she had to admit that, no matter how much she loved these boys and vice versa, they would be better at the whole ‘need to comfort’ thing. At least in the form of hugs and kisses and shhshing nightmares away. She subconsciously knew to keep her strides slow and steady so her search-and-destroy mode wasn’t the first thing to be at Alan’s place of rest. Just like she wanted, when she reached the youngest’s room, John and Gordon were patiently waiting right outside while Virgil stood vigilant by Jeff to make sure the father didn’t collapse right then and there. That meant Scott was inside.

She was breathing heavily when she walked the last few feet to the family, “Any updates?”

Uncharacteristically so, John rubbed his hands over his face in defeat while Gordon was the one to explain what they knew, “No, not yet. Scooter’s in there trying to calm the flames.”

Speaking of which, there was a rather large thunk from inside the room. As the family jumped in shock, Alan’s door suddenly swung open, and as quick as it did that, it shut once more with a rather frantic Scott on the side with the rest of the family leaning against it. His hands were flat and shaking against the door, and his breathing verged on the territory of hyperventilation.

Kayo simply stared. Everything was being thrown off its axis tonight.

Again.

Gordon, who could be as tactful as his father (which was not at all), didn’t understand why Scott ran out of the room. Nobody did, but he was the only one who seemed to be willing to ask questions, “Scott, what the hell?! What’s wrong?!”

The brother in question closed his eyes, his fists clenching slowly against the closed door. He shakily exhaled as he opened his eyes to look his family in their faces, “L-Listen, I couldn’t stay in there, I j-just…”

Virgil, who was being reasonable and logical, simply stated other options like any other person would in a situation such as this one, “Scott, it’s okay if this sets off some bad memories. We might not have the magic touch you do, but we all have our own ways of calming him down. Maybe I can--”

Too bad all of his words hit Scott like a ton of bricks for each syllable, for each suggestion, “No! That’s not it, the rest of you will give him the same reaction, trust me,” his words left no room for argument, and suddenly, every throat in the hallway got dry.

Gordon needed to shut up, “What?! That doesn’t make any sense! If there’s anything that can help him right now it would be us!”

Scott’s shaking stopped. Now he was getting annoyed, but only because he didn’t want to drop the literal bomb on his family about why going to see Alan was going to make it worse, “Gordon, just believe me sincerely for once in your life”

John was trying to play the mediator like he always did, “Guys! Give Scott a second to explain, holy--”

Seriously, Gordon, knock it off, “Yeah, Scott, I wanna know why you think leaving our baby brother to his demons is such a good idea!”

Jeff, who Kayo suddenly remembered was there, finally gave his two cents, “Please stop yelling, we already had one family member scream tonight, let’s not make that number bigger.”

The idea of hitting Gordon over the head with a chair was very thrilling all of a sudden, “I won’t if Scott pulls his head out of his ass!”

Virgil had his hands up in a surrender position, “Jesus, I’m sorry I said anything.”

Really, just a good whack would do Gordon some good, “No, you were absolutely right in suggesting it, so now why--”

The voices were becoming like nails on a chalkboard even to Kayo, so God knew what torture they were for Scott. She watched Scott intently, waiting and hoping that when the straw on the camel’s back broke the explosion wouldn’t be too hard to clean up.

When it happened, she was so caught off guard by what Scott eventually blurted out that she could no longer even begin to think about metaphorical mops or hazmat suits.

“Goddammit, you want an explanation?! It was because he was scared!”

The rest of the brothers jumped at the confession. While their eyes were still wide, Scott let out a breathy curse and explained further, “He was scared of me. The more I was in there, the worse he got, okay? I’m sorry, but after everything that happened, I think he’s just going to react similarly to you guys because...” Another curse. Scott closed his eyes and moved his head so his face faced the floor.

The rest of the family immediately became downtrodden. Dammit dammit dammit. This was to be expected, but it didn’t fucking hurt any less. They were all generally aware of what The Hood put Alan through, so they had been way more reserved with their comforts than they would have been at any other time, but the fact that this was going so far as to completely prevent that same comfort after an awful night terror...

Gordon, who was too much like Alan when it came to handling shock, metaphorically grasped at the air, “But we can’t just leave him to suffer. He just woke up the ocean border of every country around us with how loud his screams were! We can’t-- he--”

Kayo, who was not a sentimental person at heart, found herself gently speaking for once in her life, “Do you… Do you think he used me?”

The brothers blinked, telling Kayo: Huh, we’re not sure.

Taking a deep breath, Kayo started towards the door, Scott reluctantly moved out of the way, and right as her hand graced the edge to open it, “Wait, Jeff, what about you? You are his father after all.”

The oldest four sons suddenly looked at him with faces that said she has a point. It would only be fair for him to have a shot as well. But before any of the sons could help Kayo’s argument, “Well, I was wondering that too, but then you suggested yourself first before anything else and I realized you, Miss Tanusha, had grown a soft spot. I don’t want to get in the way of that now do I?”

Blushing at all of their grins (the assholes, why did she like this family again), she abruptly looked back at the door, took a deep breath and descended into hell. A few of her spirits were lifted as she listened to Gordon apologize to Scott as she shut the door. She couldn’t stop the grin that fell over her face at Scott’s reassurance even if she wanted to either. We’re too much alike when we want to be, buddy, I get it.

With the door fully shut behind her, she lost her grin, exhaled that deep breath she took, looked up to fully take in the room and wasn’t sure what broke inside her first at the sight.

Curled on the floor on the other side of the bed to the doorway was a bundle of trembling sheets. From the way there were none left on the bed, Kayo quickly assumed what that large thunk was from earlier. She hoped the rest of the brothers paid attention to Scott right now. He was probably in shambles after what he must felt like he caused.

Her shoulders deflated as she carefully trotted over closer. Making sure there was at least half-a-foot between them, she kneeled in front of the pile of sheets and thought about what to say first. It took her a minute, but once she saw those trembles die down ever so slightly, “Alan, do you need me to get you anything?”

A flinch from the pile, but she held steady. After what felt like a million years, she watched as a familiar mop of blonde poked its head out from the sheets. Along with it, blue eyes and freckles for days came back to the land of the living. Was her sigh of relief obvious? She hoped it wasn’t.

Watching Alan melt into the dresser behind him with his sheets still wrapped about his shoulders, Kayo took the opportunity to sit criss-cross-apple-sauce in front of him and continue to wait silently. Suddenly, Alan closed his eyes but also started... grinning? Huh. Blinking once, she watched as Alan’s hands came out from under the bedspread and started moving, Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?

Her father already had her learning sign language because of her deaf maternal godmother, so when the boys asked her if she knew any she was one step ahead.

She too couldn’t stop the grin that fell over her face. Even after screaming his lungs out, Alan was still Alan, “I suppose I could say the same for you, you know. I was worried I would have to get a shovel to dig you out of that pile for a minute.”

Alan opened his eyes to look directly at her green ones and relaxed even more. As he sat up straighter, the sheets on his shoulders fell off just a little bit, almost symbolically representing the way a butterfly comes out of one’s cocoon, Yeah, that would’ve sucked. So, where’d you chase your creepy uncle off to? He never had the balls to be you, probably worried he didn’t have the finesse to play a woman, so--

Kayo flinched momentarily at the question in the first part of his statement. It was very small and brief, but it was certainly enough for Alan to get the picture.

Alan’s eyes widened in panic, and Kayo could clearly see what kind of thoughts were violently swimming around in his head. Oh God, that’s right, I’ve been saved, which meant that wasn’t The Hood, that was-- sugar honey iced tea, what the heck did I do?!

Kayo would be lying if she said she didn’t start panicking at the sight of Alan’s panic. Way to go. You’re doing the exact opposite of what you came in here for, idiot. The only thing that kept her grounded was the fact that Alan was on the verge of passing out, making her brain function due to the need to prioritize. Your self-deprecation was below the need to make sure Alan stayed calm, for all that it stung.

For once in her life she found herself taking a shot in the dark by placing her hand gently on his shoulder, ignoring the minor flinch he made at the contact, “Alan, it’s going to be alright, they understand that y--”

Suddenly, Alan jumped away from her contact and slightly thumped his head against the dresser behind him once more, making Kayo wince. During that whole process, Alan was shaking his head in denial and pulling the sheets tighter around him once more. Like a baby swaddling itself in its blanket. Again, Alan wasn’t signing anything, but Kayo could read his emotions loud and clear. That’s still not okay! I’m not scared of him, I’m not, yet I still flinched and jumped away from him like he was the one that continuously hurt me for the past month. They’ve been working their butts off to save me, and they did, they’ve given up so much for me and I can’t thank them without flinching or crying like a child.

As she was reading his eyes for the last sentence, he just had to go and sign it himself, Why did The Hood have to ruin me? Wasn’t I already bad enough?

John occasionally mentioned how Alan felt out of place in the rest of his family, and Gordon, Scott, and even Virgil, who was the most asinine about following protocol to a T, always cautioned her about being a little loose with the way Alan acted sometimes, but to see it so blatantly tonight tore her chest every which-a-way. It was a thing she was aware of, she had seen snippets throughout the years (their beach conversation being the worst, or, used to be now), but she selfishly hoped she never would see it when it was this bad...

Well, she had to admit that she’s never been the most tactful person. Gordon, eat your heart out.

Getting up on her knees, she shoved herself into Alan’s personal bubble, firmly placed her hands on his shoulders and made him look her directly in the eyes, “Alan Tracy, you have a grave misunderstanding of the current situation.”

The boy’s eyes widened, and before he could do anything else, Kayo continued, wondering where in the world her words were coming from, “All of you boys have been damaged in ways that won’t be overcome with a song and a dance. Your family is going to feel like shit, you are going to feel like shit, there will be emotional and animalistic reactions none of you can help after such events, even I’m guilty of them, but that’s… okay.”

Alan slowly blinked at her hesitation, suddenly aware of certain weaknesses he wasn’t sure Kayo had. She inhaled through her nose and her serious demeanor was back, “You all have insecurities that I can’t address, mainly because I’m bad at doing that for my issues as well,” Alan snorted, “But that’s okay. What The Hood didn’t wasn’t good, and you’re going to feel his wrath years after the fact, hell, there’s a chance you’ll never truly get over his words,” believe her, “But we also have ways to, not ignore it per se, but make it easier to have such hurtful lies ring around our brains. Your answer, and maybe mine as well, is the incredibly stupid, incredibly stubborn, and incredibly headstrong family waiting outside that doorway to make sure you’re okay.”

Remembering exactly how she taught these boys so long ago, Kayo gently but surely placed her forehead against his, “You boys have ridiculous amounts of love to last for days, and if I didn’t love you all as much as you love each other, I would hit every single one of you every time you lost sight of it. Believe me, Alan, that’s a lot of bruises.”

Leaning back like a gust of wind, she waited and watched as the flabbergasted look on Alan’s face slowly morphed into contemplation. After holding her breath for longer than necessary, she exhaled as she watched Alan’s hands form the words she wanted to hear, Could you… get Scott for me? I wanna say some things to him. Tonight.

With a cheeky smile, she boosted herself up on her knee and started walking out of the room, “Sure thing, Alan.”

She was pretty sure he watched her leave until she got out into the hallway and shut the door. Once she was there, she was met with five pairs of beady eyes, probably expecting something worse than what she had. With a sigh, she looked at Scott, “He wants to see you again.”

Scott jumped while the rest of the men relaxed in some way shape or form. When their motions were done, Scott’s shoulders sagged too. As Kayo moved out of the way to trade places with Scott he like did for her earlier, she quickly laid her hand upon his shoulder to catch his attention for one last word, “If the first thing that comes from his hands is “I’m sorry”, please do me the utmost favor and smack him for me.”

Blinking, Scott registered her words with a smile, “Don’t worry, it’ll be for all of us.”

With a nod, Scott was inside the room once, and the rest of the family finally and fully relaxed. Now then, her hands were on her hips, “Alright, unless you boys want to sleep out in the hallway, it’s off to bed with you all.”

The rest of the brothers (and Jeff, who was supposed to be in his 50s for Christ’s sake) widened their eyes and opened their mouths like fishes in the process of objecting. Clearly, they were willing to spend the night out in the hallway, though, she should have expected that of them. With an aggressive sigh, she stopped them in their tracks, “Unless you want Alan to feel any more guilt over things he shouldn’t feel guilty about, you should avoid the cricks in your necks while you can.”

Watching them wince, she figured she won.

After a few minutes along with some last goodnights, the boys were off to their rooms in the hope that they would find even just a little more sleep after tonight. All except for two, Virgil and Jeff, which Kayo watched as the former struggled to support the latter, exhausted with previous events. Suddenly, another seemingly out-of-character idea hit Kayo, and once again, she didn’t mind following it.

While she may not have had as much muscle mass as him, Virgil did comment once that she was just as strong as he was, “Virgil, go to bed. I can get your father to his.”

Virgil blinked, and before he could utter a word out, Jeff spoke for him, “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea. You need sleep, Jack, don’t try and fool these old eyes.”

With a playful roll of his eyes, Virgil played ‘pass the dad’ with Kayo. As soon as his father was off of his shoulder, he threw his hands up in the air. He was down the hall and facing the other direction when they heard him shout, “For the last time, I was not a beanstalk, I was reasonably skinny! Reasonably!”

Kayo and Jeff were left to chuckle as they slowly made their way to the father’s room. About halfway there, Jeff glanced over to Kayo with what was supposed to be a simple question, “So, how’s Kyrano?”

Kayo thought she would flinch at the mention of her father, but instead, she simply tilted her head and blinked as she considered the question, “He’s relatively okay. His retirement has been treating him well, at least.”

She noticed his grimace the word ‘retirement’ but stayed quiet as he began to talk, “Ah, I guess he would’ve taken my absence pretty hard. His favorite part was working with me, or more specifically, trying to one-up me. I couldn’t even get him to go home when he was running a fever, you know.”

Kayo rolled her eyes, very much aware of her father’s friendly rivalry with Jeff and how far he took it, “Well, I think he’ll have to surrender this time. Coming back from the dead would be considered too crazy. Even for him.”

Jeff chuckled, knowing she was right, “Finally pulled one over on him. Who would’a thought the day would come.”

Kayo, right before they delved into silence once more, stated something with no room for argument, “I should take you to see him. He would appreciate the surprise.”

Jeff sought no reason to argue in the first place, “I think I would appreciate that as well.”

It was a quiet trip back to his room from then on. He left the door slightly ajar, so it was easy for her to kick it open gently. As she brought him over to his bed, she gandered around the room to look at the new objects strewn about. No longer a bedroom from a magazine advertisement, it was finally more personalized. Different types of shoes were strewn about the ground, including a pair of ugly slippers, the color of the area no longer a dull grey-green but more of a deep maroon, and the small work desk in the corner had a few pictures laid atop it as well.

Most of which were his family and kids. Kayo would later deny blushing at the one of her and Gordon sparring.

She knew Mrs. Tracy took pictures that day, and she must have given Jeff that one when the father asked for some from the eight years of his disappearance

So caught up in the moment, she didn’t think as she gently set Jeff down on top of his covers, cleared her throat, and walked out of the room without a word. That was before his voice rang out in the room, stopping her in her tracks.

“Hey, Kayo?”

She stopped right in his doorway, throat tight with emotion as she looked back at him, “Yes, Jeff?”

His vision flickered around the room in uncertainty. “Thank you,” he finally said, voice husky with something Kayo wasn’t willing to describe, “For keeping them safe.”

Kayo, still looking over her shoulder, formed one of the tiniest grins imaginable, “Of course, someone had to make sure their dumbasses didn’t do anything drastic. Your mother and Lady Penelope could only do so much. Goodnight, Jeff.”

As Jeff laid back down, his shoulders sagged, “Goodnight, Kayo.”

With that, the bedroom door became shut, yet the future became wide open with millions of possibilities.

For once, Kayo looked forward to that uncertainty.

[punkscowardschampions]

Jude & Jac

Jude: [post rave] Jude: you can stop your 1 woman campaign now, freshers looks fun, I admit it Jac: That's why they give out free shit and throw these things Jac: convince people like you, good to know you've fallen for it 🎣😏 Jude: I'm convinced enough to crash Trinity's 😜✌ Jude: here on out Jac: good luck, jailbait Jac: the two years you've got left in school show 👶 Jac: you can't even grow unconvincing facial hair like the boys in my year Jude: nah they don't, why ma & da get so stressed every time I leave the house 💋👗👠 Jac: Predators enjoying the fact you think so is another issue entirely Jude: 🙄😏 Jude: can never just have a nice chat with you Jac: What do you need to chat about? Jude: what do YOU need to chat about? Jac: That was an...attempt, I'll give you that Jude: alright, here's the nudge, her name starts with S & last time she was ranked she was at like a 4 Jude: but I'm willing to bump her up in light of recent events Jac: You've reconnected and + 1 up, have you? Jac: That's nice Jude: taking a decent 📷 is good for a few points Jude: probs should lose 'em again when it's dad 👍 but whatever Jac: Very generous Jac: do appreciate you keeping your 👍 to yourself Jac: what do you wanna ask then? Jude: ikr I'm in a generous mood Jude: I'm not forcing you into a q & a Jude: I just think it's good you're mates again Jude: be a bit weird having her there & not Jude: some girl isn't gonna be there 📷 to turn her into a headless 👻 whenever shit gets awkward Jac: That your professional opinion, captain obvious? Jac: well, cheers for your blessing, like Jude: I could tell you were waiting for it so Jac: Clearly Jac: the little you think about has always been my GREATEST concern 😏 Jac: and she'll be up and over the 🌙 at her new score, of course Jude: all I REALLY wanna know is if she has a 🌾🐄 accent now, like? be honest Jude: it's still silver 🥄 yeah? Jac: Err, come on, it was NEVER Southside Jac: and even if it was, that'd count for NOTHING here Jac: so posh some of 'em it's a speech impediment Jude: so you're saying she don't fit right in with the 👸🤴 & qualifies as a bit of rough instead Jude: gutted for her Jude: her ma'd be even more 💔 wonder how she is Jac: That isn't funny, Jude Jude: not about her mum, that was well sad Jude: posh boys not thinking Sav is, is a bit though Jac: Have you ever tried engaging your brain before you speak Jac: not being completely insensitive should not be this hard for you Jude: ?? Jac: Don't ?? at me Jac: you say it's 'well sad' but you're the one that cracked a joke in the first place Jude: I didn't Jude: not about that Jac: I'm not pulling it from nowhere, it's still on my screen Jac: I don't think you realize how badly you come across half the time Jude: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come across like a massive dickhead Jude: I think Sav's alright, I'm not trying to take the piss out of her Jac: Well it's alright this time 'cos you only said it in front of me Jude: be going a bit far to check in with her Jude: not weird at all Jac: you're saying I SHOULD put it past you? Jac: you are weird Jude: I'm saying I'm not about to say it front of her as I don't talk to her, am I Jac: doesn't mean getting into the habit of saying every 'hilarious' thought that enters your head out loud is a plan Jude: yeah alright Jude: fair enough Jac: Anyway, Sav isn't interested in any boys that look like they came from 🐴s not 🐒s Jude: 🤣 Jude: you wanna be careful saying 👦🏽👦🏾👦🏿 look like 🐒 but I get you Jac: She hasn't got a boyfriend of any colour so I weren't saying that Jude: I didn't reckon so, not unless she got a lad to follow her to uni Jude: but who wants that? Jac: Her ex was holding her back hardcore but he's given that up, thankfully Jude: he sounds like a right laugh & not at all like a prick Jac: That's boys for you Jude: 😜 Jude: when do they grow up? 40s or what? Jac: Have you met our father? Jac: never Jude: oh great Jac: 🤷 Jude: it's alright for you, you can get all the 🤓 lads when you're done studying or whatever Jude: least they'll be smart Jac: smart boys are worse Jac: they want to explain everything to you Jude: really? Jude: fuck that then Jac: dumb but kind are the lofty heights you can shoot for Jude: like a 🐶 Jac: yep Jac: loyalty too, forgo the collar Jude: yeah you're right that is lofty heights Jude: maybe when I'm 40, I can find a lad that don't need one Jude: stop him going over the road & 💔 me Jac: shitting where you eat is gross but convenient, that's boys Jude: 👍 Jude: Jess is so lucky he can pick a lad or a girl Jac: Most people are undesirable Jac: gay lads will only touch him if they think he's straight and that's their type Jac: and girls are a whole different beast altogether Jude: that'll be why he's so 😒 Jac: as a rule or more than usual right now? Jude: we all know why he's 😒 right now Jude: you pissed off somewhere more fun without him Jac: I think he's just fine Jac: and he did it first, every weekend, like Jude: speaking of, his latest gig was not the one Jude: so he's probably 😒 about that Jac: like, he was shit, the crowd weren't the right one or the equipment weren't? Jude: he needs a better 🎸 but that ain't news Jude: seemed like he didn't wanna be there to me Jac: Hm, a fight with one of his girlfriend or boyfriends then Jac: meant to make him better so he's fucked up there Jude: relatable Jac: 🙄 Jac: alright Jude: don't be 🙄 @ me Jude: your dating history ain't spotless Jac: I've never dated anyone so it is Jac: 📑 definition Jude: your hook up history then, you know what I mean cos me either Jac: I don't fall in love with them like an idiot, it's entirely different Jude: I fell in love with the one, who I was dating for a bit Jude: I'm not going about falling for 'em all Jac: Still did, didn't you Jac: I can't even remember any of mine Jac: nothing came into play but proximity and timing Jude: 🏆🥇 if you want Jac: take it over your 💔 obviously Jude: yeah Jac: 🙄 I repeat Jude: whatever Jude: I was stupid, it was ages ago Jac: you brought it up Jude: it was my mistake, I can Jac: not a sounding board for your whining Jude: alright, my bad Jac: used to you Jude: you've got your own room now, get over it, like Jac: unfortunuately, that doesn't stop us sharing a family so I don't think I will, thanks Jac: unfortunuately, that doesn't stop us sharing a family so I don't think I will, thanks Jude: it's a part time one for you now, don't have to see this face til 🎄🎅☃️🎁 Jac: Unfortunately, can stay over Spring though, but there's no catering in the Xmas hol 💔 Jude: 👎 - 1 point to St Andy's Jude: is Sav going to her mum or dad for the hols? Jac: better than home, get all my meals and room cleaned for me every week so Jac: literally only just got here, who's thinking about leaving Jac: some other halls you can stay, so maybe she'll find someone there, so she only has to do actual Xmas day or whatever Jude: me now, maybe I should bother going to uni if they're gonna clean for me Jac: only if you get into a good one Jac: and pay extra, hence most people are self-cater, but what else do I need my grant, loan and scholarship for, may as well Jude: 🤔 I hear you, that's unlikely Jac: you have time Jac: two years can change everything Jude: not my 🧠 it can't Jude: my concentration ain't there unless I'm doing 🎨 Jac: you could try harder, and you know it Jude: at what? Jac: concentrating on enough subjects to get you into a decent Uni Jac: you don't need every one, just enough to boost your points Jude: sounds easy that 😤😏 Jude: if I'm only in it for the 🧹🧺 🧼🧽 & I ain't 🤓 enough for one of 'em, ain't much point Jac: It's not about being nerdy or naturally intelligent, it's about being smart with the system Jude: yeah but it's probably also about going cos you wanna learn stuff & be there not just cos you wanna leave home for a bit Jac: most people never use their degrees, so you tell me Jude: that's true Jude: what subjects then? Jac: Depends what you want to do, Art in some form, assumedly? Jac: Fuck Irish and Spanish and PE, duh, knuckle down with your rest to up your points as much as you can then absolutely ace Art Jude: Alright, I'm decent at PE anyway Jude: that'll be easy points Jac: Exactly, no need to purposely fuck them up, but focus harder on the rest, especially the ones you are less decent at without trying Jude: please tell me you've left your notes here Jac: Of course Jac: under my bed, if you haven't lit it on 🔥 Jude: it's only been a week, gimme chance Jac: well, don't reckon they'll let you get a double yet Jac: I still need a place to crash in the holidays and it certainly won't be beside you snoring your head off Jude: might do if I steer clear of lads for a bit Jude: not that I've done half as much with 'em as everyone reckons I have Jac: People find shit to chat regardless, not worth paying no mind to, no more mind to stupid lads either Jude: I don't care if people don't reckon I'm a virgin still even though I am Jude: it's not like it matters Jac: Yeah, those people will all be irrelevant before you know it Jude: loads of people are well jealous of your uni btw Jude: reckoned you'd wanna hear that Jac: Of course Jac: x2 Jude: 😏 Jac: It's more of a flex than Trinity even, and only a handful of people got in there Jude: when did you work out what you wanted? it feels like you've been going on about it forever Jude: but like actually Jac: 🤔 Jac: I can't remember a point where it wasn't my plan, honestly Jac: more abstract when I was little and didn't have the titles and disciplines to put to it but Jac: I always liked murder mysteries and shit, what makes us tick Jude: right Jude: you love a true crime podcast Jac: 😏 Jac: but I'd rather deal with the living murderers than the corpses of their victims so Jude: well yeah Jude: 🦴🦷 bit gross Jac: 🧠 are much better Jude: long as you're not cutting into it Jac: I won't be Jac: if I'd combined biology, and gone that route Jude: I won't be either, tah Jude: science is proper hard Jac: Psychology has a shit load of it involved anyway, but I can blag it Jude: you're SO excited, I can tell Jude: 🤓💕 Jac: Of course I am Jac: it's everything I've ever wanted Jude: it's weird you're so far away though, it don't feel like you are Jac: Glad my prescence and now abscence had/have such a huge impact on you Jac: we both know why though so Jude: yeah Jac: it's different now Jude: good Jac: alright then Jude: give my love to Savannah, I know she'll have missed me Jude: that's the impact I have Jac: 👌👌 Jude: 😝 Jac: Do you really have a problem with Savannah? Jude: course not, I told you I think she's alright, it's just bants Jude: why does she have a problem with me? Jac: yeah, it's a massive grudge she took all the way to Sligo and back Jac: 🙄 Jude: you know what I mean Jude: has she said that I come across as a massive dickhead too or something? Jude: I don't wanna upset her, like Jac: you haven't come up a load in conversation, like Jac: oddly enough Jac: it's that Jac: she's like my girlfriend alright so you can't be a dick about her anymore, alright Jude: alright then Jac: is that all you're gonna say Jude: I won't take the piss out of her no more, like I said, I didn't mean it anyways Jac: you can react, you know Jac: it's big news on multiple counts Jude: it makes sense Jude: I get it now, why you were like that after she left Jac: Good Jac: I want you to know that Jac: don't change how it was, but still Jude: you could've just told me you rated her 10/10 Jude: is that why she left? like her family always seemed a bit off but I didn't think they were that bad Jac: I couldn't, though Jac: no, her mum wasn't coping Jac: as we all know now, and then the Isabelle stuff went down, so their dad stepped in Jude: yeah, but I mean, that's not part of why she slit her wrists, is it? Cos Sav doesn't need that to carry Jac: it was because the dad left and then took them, to put it as bluntly and without nuance as possible Jac: but that's all on him, not the girls, her mum isn't like blaming them, their relationship is getting better Jude: at least she was alright with you too dating then, nobody needs that dark ages mentality shit Jude: she's got enough going on Jac: well, she doesn't know about that yet Jude: but you were together back then, yeah? Jac: no, it's a new development Jac: as in, like, the other night new, no one really knows, I barely do Jac: things were complicated before Jude: oh okay, soz for backtracking so hard, I just thought Jac: yeah, that was the problem Jac: shit was assumed or it wasn't Jude: what a headfuck Jude: you're okay now though, right? Like the other night went alright Jac: I guess for context, before she left, I did kiss her and it went horribly Jac: I loved her then but she didn't and then she was gone Jac: I see how it sounded like pining there but no Jac: it's good now though, things have changed, we both have Jude: I knew something happened that night when you came back early, you were like a 👻 or like you'd seen one Jac: Yeah, that was what it was Jude: it won't happen again if things are different so Jac: not as bad Jude: I'm glad Jude: that this is the ending you get, cos it's not one, it's more like a beginning or whatever Jude: you don't have to be just excited for uni Jac: I know Jac: not that there's anything wrong with just being excited for Uni, tah very much Jac: whatever happens, I think we'll be able to stay friends this time so Jude: or you'll just marry her & have all the kids she obviously wants Jac: let's not get carried away, shall we Jude: 1. you never said I couldn't have bants with you still Jude: 2. there's nowt I don't know about her life plan, she talks LOADS Jac: You only have a problem with that because you want to be the one talking Jude: course I do Jac: it cannot be overstated how much I'd rather listen to her, is the point ❤ Jude: it'd be a bit rude if you were already like nah tah 🤐 it, babe Jude: probably don't do that Jac: That's your top tip and people really think you're not a virgin? Jac: Interesting Jude: it don't work out well for the lads who TRY it with me 😏 Jude: people reckon I'm not cos I'm that 🥇 yeah Jude: & cos lads have loads to say for themselves, most of which is bollocks Jude: but you're not a sounding board for my whinging, I remember Jac: 'Bants', dear sister, 'bants' Jude: 👍 Jac: anyway, I've got to go Jac: there's this variety show that is apparently hilarious, either actually or in how bad it is so Jude: & I've got loads of 📝📚📖📏📐to do if I'm gonna have my own freshers Jude: top quality entertainment like that, literally how could I not? Jac: sure you'll want to be in it yourself 😏 Jude: you're correct Jude: 👋 then

[dasfuzzy]

This thing still exists...?

So...I guess I'll start off by saying that the main reason for this post is because I got the Tumblr app a while back and have periodically gotten the notification that someone has liked my blog (hello, by the way), so this is twofold:

1) Give an update because, y'know, I haven't touched this thing in a long time, so there's a lot to update, and

2) Find out who's been liking my blog and why. So I guess comment, message, note, or whatever the hell people do here and let me know what got you interested in my ramblings.

I guess the three main things I would discuss here were my job, my love life, and my situation in general, so those'll be the primary focus for now. I guess I'll start with my love life just to get that out of the way as it's typically the focal point and most salacious content here (and possibly the most interesting to y'all).

Well, I'm gonna tell you right off the bat that things have changed drastically since I last was here. I will say that if you're expecting me to tell all, you're gonna be disappointed. I know in the past I never really held back on my feelings and about dishing out the truth, but this is a different situation than any in the past. All I'll really say is that since August of 2017 I've been in a committed relationship with someone that I truly love and can see myself being with for the rest of my days. Our relationship hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows, however, mostly due to nagging injuries and surgeries stemming from a work-related injury on her part (she used to be a physical therapy assistant), but I've done everything in my power to accommodate her and make things work. It hasn't been easy and it's taken it's toll on me, but at the end of the day I try to remain optimistic that things will get better with time.

Regarding my job...er, jobs, I've bounced around a bit since I was last here. I think I was still at Dave & Busters, but I was able to leave there to become a preschool/toddler teacher at a highly-accredited daycare center called Bright Horizons. It wasn't the easiest job and with me being who I am (profane and a fan of mature content, a la Game of Thrones, Walking Dead and wrestling) I felt like I was walking on eggshells at times, especially because the director was a bit of a prude, but I really enjoyed it. I was one of only two male teachers in a facility of approximately 30 teachers, so the kids really enjoyed the change of pace. I learned a lot being there, especially since I only had a few early education courses under my belt beforehand and I had some great mentors guiding me along.

Unfortunately, I made the decision to leave after 18 months for a couple of reasons:

1) The landlady finally sold the house, so my mom and I had to move (more on that later), and

2) There was an incident where I might've let slip a bit of profanity on the job. Basically it was nap time and most of the children were sleeping. I was in one of the preschool rooms at the time and at that age, some children just don't want to sleep, so we have to either try to soothe them or at least do what we can to keep them quiet so they don't wake the other children up. So I'm with another, younger teacher sitting with the non-sleepers, one of which was on the autistic spectrum and had an action plan in place that inform us of what we can and cannot do in certain situations that normally wouldn't apply to other children. Anyways, that particular child was not having any of nap/quiet time and decided to start walking around the room. In my frustration, I might've uttered under my breath "what the fuck". A few days later, I get a call from the director and she asks me if I used any profanity while in the classroom. I tell her that I don't recall doing so; she tells me that another teacher informed her that I had and she would need me to type up a formal statement of what I recall from that particular event. I stuck to my guns and said that I honestly don't recall doing so and, after submitting that to her, I was put on an indefinite administrative leave. As much as I loved that job, I took that as a sign that maybe it was time to find another job, something that pays better because I knew I was going to be moving within the next few months.

On the first day of my "leave", I asked friends if they knew of any good-paying jobs that had openings. I was only making $12.40/hr, which is only $.40 over minimum wage, so I was definitely open to suggestions. My best friend told me to apply to where he worked, Fitzgerald Tile, because they were looking for warehouse workers. He said they could start me at $18, so I leapt at the opportunity. I went down that Monday and met the warehouse supervisor to have an interview. I'll give you an almost word-for-word retelling of how that interview went:

Him: "Do you know how to drive a forklift?"

Me: "Yeah."

Him: "Great, you're hired."

Me: "Oh...okay."

Okay, that might be stretching it a bit, but that was more or less how it went. Really, he outlined some of the basic duties, asked if I was able to lift up to 50lbs unassisted, know that I'm expected to work 50 hours a week, then had me fill out the application, mostly for the sake of having it on file. He told me that I would just have to meet with the HR person to finalize the paperwork and discuss pay and my schedule, then I'd be good to go. Here's the thing: I never got to talk to the HR person. Ever. I was waiting for over an hour then told that we could do it another time, so I just went home. I should've noticed how sketchy the whole thing was. I should've picked up on all the red flags, but I didn't. So I go home, call my boss, and tell her that I'm giving my two weeks notice. She obliges and I ask if I could come visit down the road. She says that it would be in the best interest of the children that I stay away so they don't get the wrong idea. Basically I haven't been back there besides one time when I stopped by after hours to catch up with my favorite colleague and mentor, Jen.

Anywho, here I am on November 19th at the asscrack of dawn starting at the tile warehouse. I meet with the warehouse supervisor (I don't fucking remember his name; he's honestly not worth remembering) and he asks if I know how to drive a forklift. Uh...we talked about that when you hired me, but anyways, I say yes. "Great. Hop on, drive around a bit, get a feel for it, then get to work." Um...I dunno about those guys, but when I was at Lowe's where I learned to drive a forklift, we had to be licensed to operate one. Not to mention if they bothered to do a background check, they'd learn that I was fired from there for getting into an accident on a forklift and causing damage to a bay door. But I do as they say; I grab an order sheet ("grab the biggest ones first", they tell me) and get to it. Basically the way they run things is they put the sheets out on a table, everyone grabs one, gathers everything up on a pallet, then drop it in the outgoing delivery area, then do it all again until every order has been filled. I should also mention that I started right as they were moving warehouses to North Reading, so after the orders were pulled, we had to get other pallets ready to ship to the new place. Remember how I said I was never able to talk to the HR person? Well, I was never given a schedule because of that, so I guess it was understood that I would come in at 7 in the morning and work until everyone was done, which typically wasn't until 8 or 9 at night. I adhered to that mindset for maybe a week and a half; after that, I started sneaking out after at least doing my 8 hours a day. One day the supervisor caught me and said that I can't do that again. I didn't give a fuck. Another day he tells me that I'm not working fast enough and need to step it up. Maybe if someone took the time to train me on the other lift that was smaller and had forks that extended, I'd be able to be more efficient, but no; the only machines I could use were the huge lifts that are barely able to maneuver in the narrow fucking aisles and the order picker, which is basically a standing lift with a small tray-sized platform that you could place stuff on and lower it back down. That thing was kinda fun because it had controlls that kinda felt like piloting a mech and it was fast as hell.

Fast forward a few days and a few hours into my shift the supervisor tells me that I'm being let go and he hands me my last check and a pamphlet for unemployment benefits. No reasoning, just that I'm gone. Probably because I was "working too slow" and would leave when I felt like it, but I could give two shits; they never cared about me and I was tired of working under those unreasonable conditions. I manage keep my composure and start heading out, telling the few friends that I made there that I was fired; they wished me well and said I'd move onto something better. No shit. Once I get to my car, I burst out crying, trying to comprehend the gravity of my situation. I text my girlfriend and she asks if I want to come over to her house; I do partly because I needed the emotional support and partly because she was only 5 minutes away and my drive home would've been about 30 minutes. Honestly, I probably could've reported them to OSHA since they were in violation of god knows how many rules and regulations (hell, during the first week at the new warehouse, someone managed to destroy an entire bay: 3 shelves with 4 pallets each, totalling I believe over $6000 worth of product), but I just wanted to wash my hands of that place entirely. Since it was mid December, I decided to just take time to enjoy the holidays before looking for a new job, especially since I had made enough money there to keep myself afloat for about a month.

So, regarding the move, mom and I spent the last few years looking for places nearby for when the time came, but a lot of places were either in undesirable towns, were too expensive (this is Massachusetts; rent prices suck balls), or didn't meet our needs/standards. Ideally we were aiming to find a small house or even duplex to move into since we'd been in a 2-story, 3-bedroom house since January 2001, but we ended up settling for a 2-bedroom apartment in a small complex in Reading. It's been a bit of an adjustment for many reasons, but we've made it work. One of the biggest annoyances is that we don't have any laundry machines in our unit or even our building, so if we have to wash our clothes, we need to bring our stuff to one of the neighboring buildings that has a credit card-opperated laundry room with seven washers and 8 dryers. Kinda obnoxious to have to go through all that trouble and pay to do it, but condidering heat, hot water, and facility maintenance and snow removal are all covered in our rent (which is $1750/month), it's a small price to pay, I suppose.

Once we got all settled into the new place, I started job hunting again. For years I've wanted to do something technical, like be a plumber or maintenance engineer, but it's nigh impossible to find entry-level jobs like that. I somehow managed to find a job posting on Craigslist for a preventative maintenance engineer at a hotel in my old hometown of Woburn (ironically it's across from my old Dave & Busters), put in an application, and about a week later I had the job. Basically what I do is go through the guestrooms and make sure everything is in working order and is clean. I do about 2 rooms a day, repairing things as needed, be it electrical, plumbing, painting, or whatever else. I started back in early February of this year and in April the chief engineer was unceremoniously fired, leaving me as the sole engineer at the hotel. We had outside help come in periodically, but generally speaking I was the one keeping the place together until we hired a new chief this past October. I had to learn how to take care of an outdoor pool and how to take readings on it daily. I had to represent my hotel at engineer trainings normally meant for chiefs. Hell, I was very close to being promoted to chief myself until they found the new guy. But my efforts weren't in vain: our scores from our guest surveys for maintenance and upkeep were always above expectations and everyone at the hotel appreciate and respect what I do there. They raised my pay as high as they could go because of the amount of work I was putting in. My boss even got me two $75 tickets to a Ring of Honor show since he was a wrestling fan like myself. I think it's safe to say that I definitely bounced back from Fitzgerald.

I guess that about wraps things up. It's currently two weeks until Christmas, so I've got that to look forward to. I'd apologize for the lengthy rant, but I think that's par for the course on my blog. Again, if you're new (or even if you're not), feel free to leave a comment, note, message, or whatever and let me know what brought you to my blog or if there's any questions, comments, or suggestions for things that I could discuss. I figure I've been away from this thing for a long time, why not be a bit more active. Anyways, that's all I got for now. Hope y'all are well; take care of yourself!

[botanyshitposts]

what if i left my finger on a sundew for like a REALLY long time? would it be able digest my finger? can they do that? i did i quick google search and didnt find an answer so feel free to ignore this ask if you have to put any effort into it cause i didnt put much effort into finding the answer, but if you happen to know like off the top of your head and it isn't a bother then like yeah what would happen to my finger?

oh fucking boy are you into a treat bc u bet ur ass i know the answer to this and its not pretty like tw: the answer to carnivorous plants eating human flesh

okay, so in the carnivorous plant community there’s this botanist named barry rice. rice is a pretty significant figure, and has written some books, is the editor of the ICPS’ quarterly newsletter, has contributed to a considerable amount of research, and is overall a pretty respectable dude who still studies carnivorous plants and does lectures and stuff. he also runs a website called sarracenia.com, where he answers a lot of carnivorous plant questions ranging from simple care ones to advanced info. 

back in 2005, Rice got athlete’s foot. he got like. really, really bad athlete’s foot, and when he finally got meds to get it under control, some dead skin had started peeling off. like, sizable chunks of flesh. so he did the reasonable thing and decided to test this to see if his venus fly traps would eat them. 

now, venus fly traps can’t eat anything that doesn’t move- the stimulation of the struggling organism retriggers the hairs inside the traps to confirm to the plant that it’s snapped onto something, and the more movement it makes, the harder the plant seals the vacuum and the more digestive fluids are released. such is life. so Rice added small earwigs to 2 of the 4 samples (samples 2 and 3) to simulate movement (but all 4 ended up eating the samples regardless). being a scientist, he also scanned in the chunks pre-being eaten, and fed the chunks to not just one venus fly trap, but to a normal venus flytrap plus three other different varieties. he then waited. he assumed that the plants wouldn’t be able to eat the skin, as he assumed that it would be too hard for them to eat (skin callouses + his resident fungal ordeal). 

when the traps finished digesting and opened a few weeks later, rice collected the carnage, scanned them in, and posted about his experiment on his website. what he found was that not only did the plants eat almost all of his toe chunks (i would estimate about 95% based on the images), but they also rejected some parts, which they had sucked all digestible nutrients out of. we see this kind of skeletonization in small animals that fall into carnivorous nepenthes pitchers, but it takes several months of them sitting in there to become fully digested, and in rice’s case, there wasn’t even any bones involved and it took comparatively significantly less time to do so. he then compared all four of them to their pre-digestion counterparts. 

now, i won’t put the full on image of the before and after carnage in this post to protect the innocent, but for those interested, here’s the photo of the pre and post digested toe chunks. the “A” samples are before they went in, and the corresponding “B” samples are when they came out. 

this is pretty interesting, because from what I can tell with my limited knowledge of human biology, it looks like the plants chose to eat away almost all the cartilage?? rice couldn’t seem to make any sense of the color change; to me it seems like they almost rejected any and all blood present in the skin capillaries (how much blood is in any part of ur body at once?? isn’t that like, a thing, where like there’s a small amount of blood touching all ur cells always?? did the plant just condense all of the trace amounts in those chunks and reject it??) but to me, that doesn’t make much sense; isn’t blood a pretty easily easily digested thing? like if you’re not an animal, you would think that that would be a pretty sweet and easy source of protein and stuff. Why would they reject that??

my other hypothesis on looking at that is that it rejected the super diseased portions. or maybe the toughest parts. maybe if it hadn’t finished its natural time-mediated cycle of digestion so soon, it would have finished digesting what was left over. maybe it had undesirable nutrients, or whatever reacted with the weak acid in the plants to produce a chemically indigestible product. idk, this is honestly an experiment i’d like to see replicated on a professional level, preferably with a pre and post examination of the chemical composition of the flesh, you know? and this doesnt even get into the differences in how the different varieties of venus fly trap ate the chunks; the first cultivar, a garden variety wild type, seemed to make the most dent in it, but also didn’t have a bug added. that being said, sample 4 also didn’t have a bug added, and had a similar digestion level to plants 2 and 3; this confirms for us that what was left over by the plants was, indeed, undigested toe chunk specifically. so why did the first variety eat the most? did it have a longer digestion period, or a stronger acid (being an unbred variety), or maybe it’s toe chunk had less of- uh, whatever the plants didn’t like? 

i wish barry had included a chart of other aspects of the plants, like their age and the size/number of the traps and stuff, and information on the cultivars, the last time they had been fed, maybe an analysis of the digestive fluid of each, etc. basically a scientific paper. yeah, i wish rice had made this into a proper scientific paper.

so anyway. I’m not sure what would happen with sundews, as those are a distinctly different plant, but a similar mechanism would be needed; you would need to wiggle your finger occasionally to keep the plant convinced that it hadn’t made a mistake. it would probably take weeks, or months, but eventually it would either 1. eat what it could wrap itself around to the bone or 2. make at least a dent in the digestible meat of your finger. eventually it would stop eating and unravel, wether it was digested or not, because these are active traps we’re dealing with. maybe it would spit out/eat around parts that it didn’t like in the process. idk man if i ever actually come across the means to test this i promise i will report here on this blog first

rip botanist barry rice’s toe chunks 2005-2005