#random sunny statement

[ask-sunnyfunny]

Just made a new sandwich! Anyone wanna try some? ☺️☺️☺️☺️😋😋😋😋😋😋😄😄😄

Update: My dad just ate some of the sandwich and he ran to the bathroom. I think he was sick??? What did he eat before the sandwich??? I don't know if the sandwich coulda made him sick??? 😰😰😰😥😥😥😥😖😖😖😣😣😣 Xx

[dearsnow]

A WAITING GAME

- coming from a broken family, you often had to wait for next time you would be loved. meeting your new neighbor changed that. (robert “bob” floyd x fem!reader, angst and fluff, SLOW BURN, essentially just scenes of you growing up with our favorite WSO, slight prequel to the events of top gun: maverick, includes random original characters to drive the plot ⚠️ alcoholism is a major theme, some instances of harassment from a bully, and like one sexual innuendo but nothing graphic)

word count: 20,135

a/n - ohhhh my gosh, it’s finally here 😭 it’s genuinely the size of a novella, which is insane. i really hope you guys like this bc it took so much time and effort. it’s also the longest thing i’ve ever written, which is amazing in its own right. if you’re the type to listen to music while reading, i suggest a steady stream of hozier, noah kahan, phoebe bridgers, and leith ross <3

Your whole life was a waiting game. Waiting for school to end, for school to start again, for the house across the street to finally have new occupants, for your mother to put the bottle down, for the fairies you were so sure existed to appear in your popsicle stick fairy house, for your stones to finally skip across the creek, for something, anything to happen before you drove yourself insane. And, above all else, you waited for love. It was a pitiful way to grow up, really. Just sitting and letting the days pass by so you couldn’t feel the burning ache of loneliness that writhed and spat in your stomach. You never thought that you could cease this pattern of waiting for something that would never fulfill you, until, inevitably, things changed.

The “for sale” sign that you could see so clearly from your second-floor bedroom window had been replaced by a cheery “sold” sign. Something about it excited you; new neighbors, new people to talk to and play with and bother with your incessant imagination. There was also fear, too. The fear that they would turn a blind eye to the scent of cigarettes woven into your papered walls and the nail marks on the insides of your palms. You took your mind off the notion when you saw a boy right around your age step out of the moving van.

He had glasses, sandy brown hair, a cast on his foot, and a scared little frown. You slid off your bed with a small huff, your socked feet hitting the dusty carpeted floor. This was something new, for once. The stares of the stuffed animals strewn around your room comforted your mild anxiety as you walked through your door frame and down your rickety wooden stairs. You had to move one foot down and then pull the other to match. You were too afraid of keeping just one foot on a single step, even while you clutched the peeling handrail. You hit the bottom and opened the unlocked front door, peering out into the hazy, sunny day.

You were still in your socks, but you figured it didn’t matter. They were pink and yellow striped, just a bit too small. You traipsed across your dying front lawn and across the street, cautiously watching for cars. There were none. The boy turned, his blue eyes locking with yours, and you froze. It was the middle of a hot Montana day, the dry, summery kind that makes your mouth shrivel up, but all you could focus on was how he looked at you with curiosity. Gone was the frown. You peered down, staring into the black asphalt. Oh. You were still on the road. Your feet moved on their own, and you found yourself on the sidewalk, toeing the grass of his lawn. It wasn’t dying.

“Your socks are inside-out,” was the first thing he said. His voice was quiet and kind, like he was trying not to embarrass you. He pointed at the threads hanging off of the seams.

You nervously tucked your hands behind your back. “I know. I like them to be.” He accepted the statement, pulling his hand back and planting it nervously on his hip. His one sock was right-side-in and tucked into a little orange shoe.

That day, as mundane as it was, became one of your favorites to remember.

The next day, after your introduction, you and the boy (who you quickly came to know as Bobby) went down to the creek. His mother had supplied you with sandwiches and cookies in little brown paper bags, folded neatly and marked with your names. You had never eaten out of a brown paper bag before.

Bobby was careful in how he scaled down the small, rocky hill that bordered the creek. He smartly put your lunches on a safe outcropping, to be eaten later. While climbing, he put all his weight on his non-injured foot and was sure to not step on any stray branches. You, having been down this path many times, guided him.

“Don’t step there, Bobby. That’s where the snakes are.” You said, eyeing the little gathering of rocks. He hummed gratefully and adjusted his path.

As you both made it to the bottom, he made sure to stay far enough away from the water so as to not wet his boot. You, however, didn’t really care. Your feet plunged into the soggy ground; it’s not like your shoes weren’t meant to get dirty. He picked up a stick and poked at the rivulets of water in front of him, squinting into the glare. “So, how old are you anyway?” He asked. He was crouched down to help the slightly too short stick prod into the mud.

“Seven.” You responded. You had picked up a stick of your own. “How old are you?”

He watched your movements with careful eyes. He was always watching, you noticed. Always planning. It’s like he was trying to predict every movement of the creek, every motion of your arms. You felt a shiver run down your spine. You didn’t think you could ever be so observant. “I’m eight, been eight for five months now,” came his steady voice. He furrowed his eyebrows as you waved your stick into nothingness, jabbing at something he couldn’t see. He gazed at the air like whatever you were so focused on would materialize if he stared hard enough. “What’cha fighting?”

You smiled crookedly. You could see the scene so clearly in your mind. You and him on a pirate ship, fighting off the attackers who were trying to claim your ride. You were balancing on the plank, sword ready. “Pirates. It’s real fun, you should try.” You slashed the air and saw clothes tearing, blood pooling at the wood under your feet. 

“How do I try?” He asked curiously. He stood up fully and held his stick in both hands.

“Just imagine. They’re coming from a ship across the creek, and our ship is here. I’m… I’m fighting the one with a big axe, and the one comin’ after you has a shiny sword.”

Again, he raked his gaze over the creek in front of him like he was trying to see exactly into your mind. He gave his sword an experimental swing, and you laughed from beside him. “You hit him! Keep going, we’ve almost won.” His eyes lit up, and he began fighting like he saw it too. 

He smiled, and you cheered him on, making sure to fend off your own opponent. The creek bubbled, and he could hear the ocean roaring. He could see the flag flying high above his head, the ship across the ocean, could hear the ‘shing’ and ‘swish’ of his sword. And he saw you, warm and full of life, immersed in this world you had created. He didn’t think he had seen anything quite so pretty.

In the days after that, you saw Bobby often. He never went inside your house, though, that was off limits. Instead, you went to his.

His mom was kind. She was the type of woman to greet you with a hug, the smell of warm food simmering on a pot behind her. Her apron was stained with food and love and tiny paint handprints. When you ran up to his door and knocked (you were too short to reach the doorbell), she would open it kindly and invite you in.

Bobby’s room became a kind of utopia for the both of you. For the first few days, you would help him unpack his toys and crafts and other things of the sort. He had a lot of green army men, you noticed. But after that, you played and played until his mom had to kindly remind you of his bedtime. Your favorite games were imaginary.

He would be a merchant selling his toys, each with a special magical power. You’d assume the role of a traveling knight and barter with him, finally picking out what you believed would help with your quest. Then, in a twist of fate, Bobby would invent some sort of way the magical item went wrong, leaving the both of you to dream up new methods to best your foe. Or you’d be a mermaid and he was the sailor you were friends with. Sometimes, and this was his favorite game, he would be a pilot in the military, and you would be the person giving him instructions on the ground. He would shoot his arms out like airplane wings and soar, causing you to collapse into giggles on his soft rug. You formed a bond with him like no other. By the end of the summer, you knew him inside and out, and he knew you too.

You knew he liked blueberry syrup instead of maple on his pancakes, that his favorite subject was history, how he had a little sister three years younger and an older brother who was in middle school, and the exact expression he made when things went a awry; this sort of half-pout, where his bottom lip would jut out a bit. You knew that he got his cast from slipping on a stone in a big river during a camping trip, and even though he hates not being able to move, he thinks the scar on his ankle is pretty cool. And he knew that you were the most creative person he’d ever met, there was a monster that lived in your house, you had never broken a bone, and your eyes shone if the light hit them at the right angle. 

When you finally left, as the sun was dipping down the horizon, you felt lighter.

The days without his presence were much harder.

Your mom was a hard person to pin down. She would leave early in the morning, dressed in her work clothes, and return late at night, stinking of the bar. Sometimes you’d see her periodically throughout the day, between her two main events, but she was elusive. She would stroke your hair during moments like this, eyes filled with something you only later realized was regret. 

You loved her too much to notice that the way you were living was not at all how a child should grow up. You survived off of your dingy little microwave and frozen food when you weren’t with Bobby and his family. The nights, however, were worse than being alone all day.

You would pretend to be asleep more often than not, but you couldn’t really be asleep with how much noise she made. Shouting words you didn’t recognize into the phone, slamming doors, crying, pulling the magnets off the fridge and shattering the few framed pictures that were scattered around your house. It made the pit inside of you grow larger and larger.

Afterwards, when she was done with her rampage, she’d sweep up the pieces and put everything back together. She would spell out notes for you in the fridge magnets. She would open your door, just a crack, and whisper, “I love you, baby. I’m sorry.” with a blown kiss. You knew she was sorry. You knew she loved you, that she kept the cabinets stocked with the snacks you liked from two years ago, around the time she first started drinking. There was nothing you knew more than how bad she felt for treating you like she did. In your mind, you forgave her. She was doing her best. That didn’t stop you from wishing you lived in Bobby’s little house, with his kind and loving mother and stern but kindhearted father. You wished for pirates and pilots and blueberry syrup. 

Sometimes, you just imagined you were there, tucked under his navy blue comforter. That thought filled the pit just enough to let you drift off to sleep.

As the days grew shorter and the weather chillier, school started. School was fun until it wasn’t.

The first day was always the best, in your opinion. You never really had any friends to miss if they were placed into other classrooms, and some of the other kids didn’t even know who you were. It was scary, sure, but it was new. It was a fresh start. This year, though, you had Bobby.

Luckily for the two of you, you were both in Mrs. Moore’s class. Even luckier for you, Brady was not in Mrs. Moore’s class. 

The boy had a tendency to pick on you in school. Ever since first grade, when he caught you whispering to a dandelion, he made every day in school tougher.

He would knock your books out of your hands, scribble on your drawings, and tear your flower crowns apart. You didn’t know why. He just didn’t understand your far-eyed expression and your tendency to bury your nose in books. He was loud, with a grating voice and windswept blond hair, and people liked him. He played sports and shared his lunch. That made him very, very different from you, in a way that was hard for child brains to accept. 

You were scared that Bobby would find his own trouble here. He was quiet, and that made him a target. He was too kind, too caring, too good at blending into the background. 

You walked up to classroom B8, holding your little dirtied backpack on one arm. The door was painted a sort of industrial teal, with a chipped but cheery sun done in acrylics in the middle. The title, a magnet, read “Mrs. Moore fun!”. Bobby hesitated from next to you. He held out a silent hand, and you gripped it in yours. His hands were bigger, warm and slick with a thin sheen of nervous sweat. Knowing someone else was going through the day with you was a quiet comfort, so you met his wavering eyes and smiled. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

The door swung open, and a woman with a brown bob ushered you inside. She had big pencil earrings and a pretty patterned dress. She showed you to your seats, and you were happy to learn that you were just one person away from your friend. In between you was another girl with bouncy auburn curls and freckles, whose name card read “Margaret”. You didn’t know her, but she offered you a kind grin.

“Hello, class!” Mrs. Moore began. “I know you saw my name on the door, but I’d like to learn all of yours today. How about we go around and say our names and favorite colors so I can take attendance?”

Your time in the quaint little classroom sped by like a whirlwind, barely giving you enough time to adjust to everything before you were ushered out to be served lunch and play on the sun-faded playground. Bobby’s mom had packed you both lunch today. It was like she knew that your mom couldn’t, and that you never had the money to buy the school lunch. It gave you this warm sort of emotion, like a fuzzy sweater. You and he sat on a bench shaded by a rickety old tree.

He chewed his sandwich thoughtfully as you went for the little bag of Oreo cookies first. “How do you like it here?” You asked, biting into the crumbly treat.

“It’s okay. Back in my old school, our playground had wood chips instead of sand,” he commented simply. “I like being here with you, though.”

You beamed. Bobby had lived in the town adjacent to yours before he moved, still in Montana, but with a different atmosphere. He often noted the differences, like how the cars here sputtered more and there was never quite enough shade. This, however, was all you had ever known. It was all you ever thought you could know. Your world ended after the big road that cut you off from the rest of society. Bobby made you want to wait for the day you could cross that road, in your own car that hopefully didn’t sputter, and see the world that he had known. “Me too. Most everyone is pretty great here, you’ll see. Just watch out for Brady, the one on the monkey bars. He might try to tease you.”

“Why would he?” Bobby questioned. He studied where you gestured, light eyes straining against the bright sun and wavy heat coming up from the asphalt. 

You started on your sandwich, which was beginning to warm. You didn’t mind. “I dunno. He’s just like that, I guess.”

“He must be mean,” The boy beside you said, finishing off the last bite of his sandwich. He never chewed with his mouth open, you noticed. He kept it neat and tidy. “Anyone who picks on you has got to be.”

You felt your cheeks warm at his words, so you buried yourself into eating your sandwich. “Thanks. I hope he doesn’t pick on you, ‘cuz you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Bobby’s face turned a shade of red you had never seen on him, and suddenly the hand that was underneath yours was fidgeting against the wood of the bench. “You really think so?”

“I know so. You’re nice, and you let me play with your glasses. And you’re really good at climbing, even with your boot. And you make me feel good.”

The corners of his mouth tugged up impossibly high as he handed you his bag of Oreos. He liked sweets, sure, but he liked giving them to you more. He could sit there and watch you eat forever if it meant you smiled like you were doing now. “You make me feel good too, like I can’t stop being happy.”

“Ex-act-ly!” You punctuated each syllable with a little tap of your finger on the back of his hand. When he was around, you felt like you could fly. Every dandelion, 11:11, shooting star, fallen eyelash, they all went to trying to keep him in your life. Without you knowing, he did the same thing. “Oh, do you want to see what I drew during art time?”

The conversation carried on, although there are snippets you don’t remember. Something about the stray cat that you saw down at the creek and the field trip the older kids bragged about going on. Looking back on it, that era seems so far away that it could have been another life. You were so small then, so hurt, and so innocent. You just had your neighbor and dreams, both waking and asleep.

School continued, and you and Bobby began to fall into a sort of rhythm. You would pass notes to each other through Margaret, play hopscotch and four-square and wall ball until you were tired of running around, learn until you thought your brains would explode, and walk home, laughing and bright-eyed. Even Brady couldn’t dull the shine. Bobby was, surprisingly, a hard person to make fun of. Despite being quiet, he would puff up his chest and stand strong in the face of any adversity. Mostly, though, he stood up for you. He would pick up your books, help you turn scribbles into twisting dragons, and make you new flower crowns when Brady tried anything during recess. Bobby cared. In a sense, though neither of you knew what the word really meant, he loved you. So he took care of you, and you filled his life with so much wonder and joy that he wished he could be with you forever. It was like that for a long, long time. 

The years came and went in elementary school. For once, you accepted every day that came to you as a new era, a new chance to prove to yourself that life is more than crumbling foundations. You experienced growth; you no longer waited for things to be over. Instead, incredibly, you anticipated each coming event, no matter what it was.

It took you a while to realize that Bobby was the catalyst of your change.

Your 5th grade promotion was a blur of smiles and hugs and tears from Bobby’s mom, coral colored fabric, and paper confetti. You posed for pictures, sang a song, and received a little certificate to display in some homegoods frame that most mothers buy. Other than that, it was just another day. You went home and played with Bobby some more, like you always did. 

That certificate, crumpled and browned around the edges, is now sitting in a box, deep in your closet, paper-clipped to a photograph of you and Bobby. It rests against a snapped wishbone, one whose exact wish you have entirely forgotten, but it more than likely had to do with him. There is also a crushed penny, a number of birthday cards, and a wooden rose, among other things. It’s silly, you think, to keep them after so many years, but something in you begs to keep them safe. You suppose that you can’t be rid of every memory, not when the Floyds made so many good ones for you. 

Middle school was another stage in your life, one that swirled your emotions while all you needed was stability. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it was the beginning of years of confusing feelings.

Bobby stopped being Bobby during the 1,095 days between elementary and high school. He wanted to be called Robert, and he combed his hair back, and his voice started cracking. He listened to rock and metal instead of whatever his mom found on the radio. He didn’t turn into a bad person like some of his peers, no, but he changed. You remember the first time he put in contacts instead of his big, thick-rimmed glasses.

You were sitting on the edge of his sink as he pulled his eye wide open, his fingers trembling slightly. “I can’t do it. I don’t want to poke my eye out,” he whined, setting the finger that held the contact down. “But I don’t want to wear glasses, either. I’m too old for that.”

He stared at you while you let out a short, stifled laugh. “Don’t laugh, I’m trying my best,” he groaned, but his mouth was curving into a smile, too—it just always happened when you laughed, like how he couldn’t help but smile at wedding bells. 

“Can you even see what you’re doing?” You asked. You tapped the glass reflection to the side of you, sending out a soft clink. His vision had never been the best, but his optometrist just upped his prescription. He didn’t want to be seen with the thickness of the glass he was given, no, he wanted to “look cooler”. So there he was, with blurry vision and a nearly invisible contact balancing on the tip of his finger. 

“Yeah.” He paused, considering his options, before looking down with a sigh. “No. I can see the blue, but I have no clue if my eyes are two inches or two millimeters away.” He sounded so disappointed that it sent a twinge of hurt through your heart. He liked dealing with problems on his own, namely so that no one else would have to go out of their way to help him, so that must have been a humbling experience for him.

“Let me guide you, then,” you chirped. “I’ll use your hand to put the contacts in so you can get a feel for where to stop next time.” You let the tips of your fingers brush over his hand, ghosting over the raised hairs just enough to let him sense it. Robert squinted at you.

You seemed like an angel perched on the tile counter. He couldn’t see the exactness of your details, like the curves of your lips, but you had a form that he could recognize anywhere. The shade of your hair, the sparkle in your eye. He would carry those memories for as long as he lived. What worried him was that he didn’t know exactly how far away from him you were sitting. So, because he didn’t trust himself to not miss his eyes, and because he trusted you like he trusted his heart to beat, he agreed. “Okay.”

You took his hand in yours, careful not to knock the precariously balanced contact off, and he widened his eyes. You weren’t sure if it was because of your touch or because he wanted to assist with the contact placement. You slowly brought his hand up, towards his eye, feeling his pulse under your fingers. His lips were pursed, a testament to his nervousness. He never did like things touching his eyes, but he would brave it until he unavoidably went back to glasses. With a gentle, caring motion, you helped him rest the contact on his eyeball. He flinched at the initial touch, but accepted it, blinking rapidly to shake off the contact solution. His eyes were pretty, you noticed. As messed up as they were, they had the most intoxicating shade, like a stormy ocean. 

“Want the next one?” You were already unscrewing the contact holder as he nodded slowly. He closed the eye without a contact and gaped at you.

“I can see!”

“I think that’s what contacts are for,” you quipped. He pretended to roll his one eye, but you could see the humor bubbling up from within him. The lighting was nice, he thought. The way it shone around the edges of your hair was heavenly.

“Well, yeah. Could you help me with the other now?” He probably didn’t need much help this time, given that one half of him had 20/20 vision, but he liked feeling your hand on his. He liked being helped by you. It was a revelation for him, who had always been a bit of an independent spirit. Don’t get him wrong, he liked being around people, and as a kid he would clutch at his mother’s dresses, but he preferred to do certain things on his own. You changed that.

“Definitely.”

Things took a slight turn after that. School became harder, more work and less play. Your middle school was bigger than your previous school, so it came to no surprise to you that Robert made his own friends. Namely, he hung out with a tall, dark, curly-haired boy named Aaron and a shorter, sturdier, pale as snow boy named Samuel. They were alright, in your opinion. You liked Aaron much more. Sam became bossy and annoying when you let him ramble for too long, and though both Robert and Aaron were too polite to say, it annoyed them. It’s Aaron that you still talk to now, while Sam moved to upstate New York during your freshman year of high school.

The boys were not the most popular group in school, though you knew you weren’t either. But, to your surprise, your good friend Margaret was.

You didn’t really expect to become friends with her. She was loud, happy, excitable. She was always polite in elementary, but she truly took you under her wing as Robert started spending more time with his group. She introduced you to Sarah, Charlotte, Elizabeth, anyone that you could even remember the names of. And, along with her constant joviality, she wasn’t a bad friend.

The only problem was that she was deeply in love with Robert Floyd. 

“You don’t even get it ‘cuz he’s like your brother at this point, but he’s gorgeous. He’s basically perfectly my type,” she sighed, falling back onto her plush pink bed. Her legs kicked up just a little, and her curls fanned out around her head like a halo. “I want to ask him out soooo bad. Do you think he’d like me? Wait, do you know if he’s a good kisser? That’s important, I think.” You threw the pillow you were holding on top of her face, and her laugh rang out like the chime of a bell. She was perfect. She deserved someone like Robert, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

You didn’t know why it hurt at the time. Just the idea of him dating someone else, holding hands with someone else, loving someone else, made you sick. You chalked it up to being jealous that eventually another person would take up your best friend’s heart. It was only much, much later that you realized you were in love with him, too.

Margaret tossed the pillow to the other side of her bed. “Really, you need to tell me.”

You gave a tight-lipped smile. “He'd like you, Margie. I mean, who wouldn’t?” Her smile was genuine. It hurt you to say, but you weren’t lying. You didn’t think you could ever lie about something like that.

“But is he a good kisser? Please, I need to know, I’m dying!” She prodded. You rolled your eyes, glancing up at the perfectly painted ceiling. Like everything about her, it was pristine.

“No idea. He’s never kissed anyone.” He could be good, maybe. Everything he did was soft and methodical, so just the idea of him capturing a person’s lips with his own, his calloused hand resting on the back of their head… no, you couldn’t think about it. Your eyes snapped to attention.

“I’ll have to change that.” Her tone was sing-songy, and to you, it sounded almost mocking. It couldn’t be, because neither of you knew your actual feelings, but it struck you the wrong way.

“I’m sure you will.”

Margaret tried everything to get closer to Robert. She flirted, she downloaded songs from his favorite bands, she begged and pleaded for you to invite him to every outing the two of you planned, and she talked to him constantly to try and worm her way into his heart. She never knew him like you did, though, and she hated it. 

When it was just you and him, things were different. You were the only one he let call him “Bobby” and play with his fingers when you were nervous. He even let you ruffle his hair, despite him spending half an hour in his bathroom trying to get each strand to lay perfectly. He would open his closet and pull out his comic collection without a hint of embarrassment, and you and he read them together underneath a blanket tent in the middle of the night—after his parents started letting you sleep over, of course. They gave you both “the talk” before you spent your first night there, and Robert was rolling his eyes and blushing the whole time. He would never do that with you, he assured them. You were just friends.

Friends who ultimately ended up falling asleep on the same bed, paying no attention to the blow-up mattress on the floor of his room.

In any case, you tried to get Robert and Margaret together. The time you tried the hardest was the start of your seventh grade year, when Margie insisted that she needed a boyfriend before Christmas. You, being a good friend, invited them both to go to the mall a short drive away from your houses. 

Margie’s mom drove, because she was always up for helping her daughter with her romantic interests. She knew about Robert, sending you and her daughter knowing smiles whenever he would politely answer Margie’s rapid-fire questions. You felt a little bad for the boy, who wasn’t used to so much attention.

The little car (too little, in your opinion; Margaret took the middle seat and was pressed against Bobby for the whole ride) finally arrived at the mall after a few minutes of slight awkwardness. You all stepped out, and Margie’s mom kissed her on the forehead and said she would be back in two hours on the minute. Two hours was a lot at that time. 

Your friend immediately pointed out a clothing store, pulling you along to look at flouncy dresses and colorful tops. You could tell that it made Robert a bit uncomfortable, but he went in anyway. During your usual mall trips with him, the both of you made a beeline for the comic store, or simply shared some pretzels while walking and talking. It was only rarely that you wandered into the clothing stores, and most of the time, you just looked and walked back out. You never had the money on you to buy anything more than a volume or two of a comic. “These shorts are just perfect, don’t you think?” She asked you, but her eyes were staring pointedly at Robert.

“They’re nice,” you said. He nodded in silent agreement, slipping his hand into the pocket of his jacket. He didn’t ever really have an opinion on clothes. Someone could wear the most awful outfit and he’d shrug, offering the notion that people should wear what they want, while Sam laughed at the silly combination. Margie tore through the rest of the store, giving you hanger upon hanger of clothing to hold while she rifled through the racks. Robert trailed behind. 

Just as the weight of the tops you were holding on your left arm accumulated into a painful soreness, you spotted something out of the corner of your eye. It was a dress.

Robert silently grabbed the clothes from you, following your line of sight. The dress was as close to perfect as a dress had ever been to you. The color, some variation of your favorite, complemented the tone of your skin perfectly when you held your arm up to it. The cut, the stitching, the little details sewn on—it was gorgeous. As you reached out to touch it, Margie squealed.

“That dress! I need it, grab it for me, would you?”

 You hesitated. It was the only one like it on the rack. Instinctively, you glanced back at Robert, and he had this confusing expression on his face that you had only seen once or twice; furrowed brows, tight lips, and a burning in his eyes. You looked away and took the dress down.

You probably wouldn’t be able to afford it. Checking the tag, you were right: thirty-eight dollars. Even after doing yard work and tutoring the little boy down the street, you hadn’t been able to keep that sort of sum. “Thanks,” she purred, “I’m gonna try everything on now. Wanna watch the fashion show?”

A part of you didn’t. You were envious, glowing green at the amount of things she could pick up without even checking the tag, but as a good, people-pleasing friend, you pushed it aside. So, you followed her past the door of the spacious dressing room while Robert waited outside with the clothes that didn’t fit into the ten item dressing room limit. 

She looked stunning in every outfit, but she threw most of the pieces off with a frustrated sigh. The waist wasn’t cinched enough, or the color clashed with her hair, or the pant legs were too short to cascade over the top of her shoes like she wanted. If you had the money, you didn’t think you would care. 

Then came time for the dress. It was one of the last things that she tried on, and she slipped it back over her head almost immediately after putting it on. “It just doesn’t work for my figure,” she muttered. 

You picked it off the floor gingerly, holding it up to yourself in the mirror. “Can I try it on?” You asked. She lit up with surprise, a happy glint dancing in her grin. 

“Of course! Go ahead.”

You undressed in the corner and stepped into the dress. Margie helped you smooth it out and fasten it just right, her fingers ghosting over your shoulder blades. When you looked in the mirror, your jaw almost fell open. 

It hugged you perfectly, the length stopping just where you assumed it was meant to stop. It was casual enough to be worn normally, but it had that fancy touch that made it suited for a romantic dinner date or uppity party. You almost looked like royalty. You could just imagine it, waving to crowds with a slow hand from a horse-drawn carriage. Bobby would be beside you, as always, and Margie and Aaron in the carriage behind you. Sam would be dealing with the horses. 

You were shaken out of your thoughts by a faint knock on the door. “Hey, are you guys ready? There’s a bit of a line out here,” came Robert’s voice. Margie was dressed by that point, so you opened the door, still clad in the dress.

“I just gotta change out of this and then we’ll be ready.” You gave a small twirl, and Robert choked on air. “It’s too expensive, but it’s nice to dream,” you said with a small grin. You didn’t know if it reached your eyes or not, but you knew the boy wouldn’t call you out for it. Not in public, at least.

You looked beautiful. That’s all that he could see, all that he could fathom. You slipped back into the dressing room, and he was left stunned. 

Before anything else, though, you looked happy in the dress. Sad that you had to leave it, but it made you happy. Robert was nothing if not a sucker for seeing you happy.

Your group finally checked out after a few minutes of the cashier ringing up Margie’s clothes. It was nearing the end of your mall trip, but you managed to visit the comic store and pick up a bite to eat along the way. At some point, while you were flipping through a comic book, Robert slipped away and returned with a grocery bag. It was something his mom wanted him to pick up, he said, and you didn’t feel the need to question him. You just mumbled a conversation starter into Margie’s ear and slipped away as she excitedly whipped around to relay it to him.

She never did win him over. She tried and tried, and you helped and helped, but it seemed he didn’t have an eye for her. 

Everything came to a sort of explosion near Christmas. The ground was powdered with a thick blanket of snow, the trees were bare, save for dripping ice, and houses put out beautiful, twinkling lights. There were even singing decorations from your neighbor to the left. When you breathed, the air would puff out in gentle clouds. It was, in essence, a perfect, picturesque winter. It was also one of your favorite times of the year.

Your mom always made an effort during the winter months. She came home earlier to hide in the bathroom, trying to muffle the sounds of wrapping paper and scissors. In the morning, you would see the fruits of her labor tucked under your little plastic tree. It wasn’t perfect, but she wanted you to experience some sort of joyful Montana holiday. You also spent more time indoors, snickering with Robert in the library or blowing on sweet hot cocoa by his crackling fire. It was times like these that you really felt at home.

His family knew about your situation. They didn’t make your mom feel like a villain, no, but they knew she was struggling, and they did their very best to help you out. That’s why you were bundled up on their couch on one frigid day, when Robert came home with a pinched frown.

He wasn’t mad, exactly. You had never known him to be mad. But he was uncomfortable in a way that made you want to throw your blanket over him and make him whisper his troubles to you. 

“What’s wrong?” You asked. He wasn’t surprised to see you in his home—he never was. He sat down next to you with a heavy sigh.

“Margaret asked if I wanted to date her,” he murmured, throwing his head back against the couch cushions. This piqued your interest. You knew something like this would happen eventually, but you didn’t expect him to be so uneasy about it. Margie had been talking about asking him out for ages, and you just smiled and nodded. Her bright, bubbly personality was a large contrast to his, but you figured that opposites attracted. He had never shown a hint of distaste at being around her. No distaste that you had seen, at least.

You looked at him, confusion creasing your face. “What did you say?” Maybe it was just the wrong time. If he were to crush on anyone, it would be her, not that he had ever talked about his crushes to you. That seemed like something he would only tell Aaron, despite you being his closest friend.

“I said no. I just… I don’t like her like that.” His voice came out as an almost groan as he rubbed at his eyes. He turned his head to rest it on your shoulder. The weight sent a heavy warmth through you, but you were still so bewildered that it hardly even registered.

“I thought you would. Did she do something wrong?”

He shook his head, looking up at you, and then back down at the fire blazing away in his fireplace. Slowly, he wrapped your blanket around himself, as well, sharing your heat to ward off the cold. “No, she’s nice, but I don’t feel that way about her.” You still didn’t get it. If you were him, you would jump at the chance to date her. She was pretty, funny, and her family was well off. However, something in you uttered that it takes more than that to make someone love you. And that something was a bit happy, because Robert rejecting Margie meant that you could have him all to yourself again. 

“Oh,” you breathed. “Do you feel that way about anyone else?”

That question breached the sanctity of your relationship in a way. You had never asked him about his love life, and he had never asked about yours. It was unspoken. You knew, deep in your heart, that if he asked you, you wouldn’t be able to say anyone’s name but his. 

His face was tinged with red. It was hard to see, but you knew it was there. “I dunno.”

You lapsed into a subdued silence, not knowing whether to press forward or not. You decided on the latter, just listening to the near-silent spitting of the fireplace. You knew that Margie wouldn’t be happy, and you would get an earful over the phone that night, but you knew that, like all things, this would pass.

Bobby would be your closest confidant for another Christmas.

You were right when you assumed that Margie wouldn’t take it well. You spent night after night listening to her laments, rubbing a soothing pattern on her back as she cried. You didn’t even know if she was upset that Robert didn’t like her or if she was upset that she got rejected, but you gave her a listening ear no matter what. The calls and in-person interactions only ceased when she went to spend the week of Christmas with her family in Utah.

You, naturally, spent most of your time with Robert. For the entirety of winter break, it was just you and him, which was something that hadn’t happened since elementary school. It gave you a chance to think about things—your feelings in particular.

You slowly realized that you didn’t want to just be his friend. You didn’t know it was love, not yet at least, but your heart beat faster when he was around, and you felt the need to keep him around for as long as possible. It was something further than platonic. A crush, maybe, that was only furthered by the events of Christmas day. 

You spent the rare morning with your mother, who had been given a single day off by her boss. It was odd to have her around to make breakfast, not smelling of the bar, and humming around a piece of toast. “It’s almost ready, honey. Why don’t you start on the presents while we wait?” Her voice was only slightly muffled by her food. You nodded silently and pulled out one of the three little gifts wrapped up under the tree. Two from her to you, and one from you to her. It didn’t disappoint you to not receive the dozens of wrapped boxes that your friends did; from a young age, you had realized that any gift at all was precious. You slipped your fingers beneath the wrapping paper and pulled the taped folds away gently, careful not to rip them. 

As you unfolded the creases, the box underneath revealed itself to you. It was a shoebox, and within were a pair of shoes that you had been eyeing for a while now. Your face lit up with surprise. She had really remembered? “Thank you, mom.” You grinned. She laughed, turning the heat off from under the scrambled eggs she was tending to. 

“I’m not a bad gift giver, hm?” she hummed, sitting down next to you. You pushed the gift that you wrapped for her into her grasp, and she looked down at it with a guilty expression. “I didn’t notice you got anything for me, sweet thing. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be the type of mom that doesn’t deserve a Christmas gift.”

You took her hands off of the present and wrapped them around your shoulders, her normally cold fingers giving off a soft heat. “You aren’t. You do your best, mama, and I love you all the same.” You couldn’t bring yourself to be mean to her when she had spent an important part of her paycheck on you. It was true, that she did all she could think to do, but some part of you wanted her to be better. You still hoped that she could pull herself together and make breakfast for you every day, so you wouldn’t have to microwave pizza pockets or slump over to Robert’s house for a bite to eat. But you were her child, not Georgia Floyd’s, and hoping and wishing couldn’t change that. You had come to terms with it when you saw her watery eyes undoing your sloppy wrapping.

It was a jewelry tree that she said she wanted nearly five months ago. It was expensive, sapping your meager funds, but you knew it would make her happy. 

Your mother was one for jewelry and pleasantries, when pleasantries were made to be found. You figured that she liked to feel fancy, with glass diamonds and greening gold. It was the best gift you could think to give her.

She looked up at you as tears began to stream down her face. She wiped them away hastily. “Thanks, baby. I appreciate you more than you know, more than I could ever tell you.”

Your next gift was a book you had wanted for a while but could never seem to find at the library. You thanked her profusely, and spent the next half hour eating with her and talking. Like normal families do. Normal families with normal moms. You could almost picture a man, your father, coming in from the cold outside with the mail in his hands. A roaring fire, a sibling, a pet. Maybe a beagle like Bobby had. But the illusion was shattered when she pulled herself up and wrapped her scarf around her neck, muttering apologetically about having to pick up a Christmas shift after all as she hugged you close. You needed the money, she said. That didn’t make it hurt any less.

Nearly as soon as she left, there was a quiet knock on your door. You opened it slowly, not excited about hearing from the Jehovah’s Witness that frequented your neighborhood. Instead of him was Robert. And he was carrying a gift bag.

“Hi,” he blurted, “this is for you. Merry Christmas.” He handed you the bag, careful not to put his foot through the threshold of your house. You opened the door wider, a pleasant grin spreading onto your face. 

“Come in, I have something for you too.”

He hesitated. He had never been inside your house before. You had never explicitly told him he wasn’t allowed, but you usually had some excuse as to why he couldn’t stay over. Over the years, he had learned to just stop looking past the barely cracked-open door and pull you away to his place instead. But, with your insistence, he breached the unknown.

Your house wasn’t as furnished or comfortable as his, but it didn’t really matter. There were two brooms laid against the kitchen wall and a dustpan between them, and your small couch had a tear on the seam. The cabinets didn’t exactly close right, and your faucet leaked. Other than that, it was a normal house. He marveled at a picture of you and your mom stuck to the fridge with a magnet, with the edges folded over like it used to be in a frame. You let him wander for a minute or two before pulling him into your bedroom.

It was completely and utterly you. Books, comics, and little craft projects filled much of the shelf next to your bed, and the sheets were messily crumpled on your mattress. You had a little closet and a mirror that rested against it, slightly smudged with fingerprints. There was even a poster from some movie you liked hung above your headboard. You opened your closet and pulled a small wrapped parcel out from the depths. 

You handed it to him with a shy look. “I hope you like it.”

As he took the gift from you, he could feel a significant heft to the package. “I’d like anything if it was from you. It’s the thought that counts, right?” He sat on the edge of your bed as you nodded slowly. You were still a little worried that he wouldn’t be happy, but you knew him. He would thank you profusely if you had wrapped him a lump of coal. He might have even displayed it proudly on his shelf. The thought was enough to have you stifling a laugh. “You should open yours first.”

You obliged, pulling out the tissue paper delicately. Your fingers closed in around something soft, like fabric. Through the gaps of your hands, you could see your favorite color. Your heart leaped out of your chest. “Is this…?”

Bobby nodded, beaming. You took the article of clothing out fully and almost cried at the sight.

It was the dress you had wanted at the mall. The one that had fit you perfectly, and the one that Margie had almost taken from you. You hugged it to your chest. “Thank you, Bobby, thank you. I love it so much.” Your voice was quiet, brimming with emotion. He just opened his arms, and you dove into them, the both of you uncaring of the tear marks that would form on his thick jacket. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” You exclaimed, louder this time, but still muffled by his chest. He just laughed and pulled you in closer.

“You’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome.”

That meant more to you than anything else could have. Not only did he notice what you liked, he bought it when you couldn’t. It was more than just a gift. 

Robert would’ve given up his entire stash of money, carefully tucked away in his dresser drawer, to make you react like that. It was no contest.

He opened his gift next and had to scrub the wetness away from his own eyes. It was a model plane; more specifically, a version of the Super Hornet. The plane he had heard about entering service years ago, and the plane that he dreamed of flying. He ran his hands along the wings in wonder. “It’s perfect.” He choked out. “Thank you. I’m gonna put it on my shelf as soon as I get home.” You knew he would say something like that, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling good.

He stayed for a bit, after that, talking to you about anything and everything, as you usually do. It was nice to see him lying on your bed, staring up at your ceiling. And it was nice to have this sort of alone time with him. When he reached up to pick a piece of fuzz off of your shirt, you almost melted in place. You never thought your heart could beat that fast.

After he left, you felt your joy walk out the door behind him. All you could think was that you couldn’t wait to see him again. 

You never had to wait long.

The rest of middle school went by fairly quickly, as did Margaret’s sadness. She got over her affections before moving on to the next poor sap, dragging you along with her. After eighth grade, she would always mention how nice Aaron looked in his church clothes and how pretty his eyes were. Not having to worry about someone taking Bobby away from you was just another weight off of your shoulders. You also grew a lot during that time, physically and mentally. You were taller, happier, bigger, stronger. It was in part due to Rob, as he liked to be called sometime during your freshman year, and in part due to your mother finally going to rehab.

You didn’t know it was rehab. You didn’t know much at that age, not of yourself or other people, so it was just one more thing to add to the list. She just told you that you would have to stay at Rob’s for a few months, and they accepted your presence with kindness. His mom seemed to look at you sadly during that time. You chose to ignore it, focusing on how grateful you were to have a home while your mother was away. 

High school was better. Much better, in your opinion. You felt like things were finally coming together.

You had a small, quaint, stable friend group, consisting of you, Margaret, Rob, and Aaron. They were fun. You didn’t think you could enjoy going to football games or pep rallies until they were there with you, cheering and joyful. Even studying was full of inside jokes and nudging each other with your elbows until the flashcards were forgotten and the air was thick with laughter. You started to enjoy your classes, too, because you had a clearer goal in your mind. You were going to apply to your city’s college and room with Margie, considering you both got in. So you threw yourself into school with full force, hoping that your future would be just as great.

Rob wasn’t planning on going to your college. He hadn’t told you, not yet, but he was applying to the Naval Academy. He was finally going to achieve his dreams, even if he felt endless guilt about leaving you to be on your own. He didn’t want to lose you, but the temptation of the sky drew him in until he couldn’t escape the magnetizing force.

The first year was, other than a few football games and watching Margie perform in the school play, relatively uneventful. 

Dungeons and Dragons began to reign supreme as your group’s favorite pastime, although Margaret didn’t quite understand the story that Aaron concocted. To her credit, she tried. She played an elvish ranger with long flowing hair and a past of tortured princesshood, while you decided on a sweet halfling druid, and Rob a powerful human wizard. Nothing was more fun than losing yourself entirely to the tale, drawn in by Aaron’s dark voice impressions and the little figures that danced across the map he drew. It was a more grown-up form of playing pretend, and you were entranced by every second of every session.

By the time your mother returned home, fidgety yet quiet, you had established a nice sort of life. You moved back to your house, bittersweetly thanking Rob’s family for taking you in, and you spent the rest of the school year and the summer that followed with her. 

She was different. She wasn’t like she was prior to the drinking or during the drinking, but  a new person entirely, like she shed every part of herself and started fresh. She slept in, but got ready for work as you were walking out the door. She cooked, but with a tremor in her hand that was never present before. There were no more midnight rampages, but you got the feeling that she didn’t fall into her bed until very late hours. It was odd, at best, but like always, she did what she could with what she had. You continued to support her every step of the way.

Starting your sophomore year was less exciting than transitioning to a whole new school, and the nerves that had preceded every other year had faded into the background. You were more sure of yourself. Still naive, but there was some confidence in your step. The classes were tough, but you were tougher. Of course, the people who picked on you in the past were still jerks, but it was nothing you weren’t already used to. 

You finished the year with a smile on your face and a finger linked with each of your friends. 

Summer was the same as it always was. Fun, lazy, anything you wanted to make of it. You and the rest of the group frequented the lake closest to Aaron’s house, as his older brother was no stranger to driving you around in the car he had fixed up the summer previous. It was during one of those trips that you discovered quite a few things about the people around you.

Margaret was splashing around in the lake, completely unfazed by the freezing water. Well, she was fazed at the beginning, but she quickly adapted. “Come in, it’s so nice!” she called, flicking a drop of water towards you. You blocked it with the edge of your towel, not keen on getting your book wet.

“Later, I’m still reading,” you grumbled. Rob was perched behind you, reading over your shoulder as the pages flipped. You had just returned from the water and were trying to wait out the little kids that were flailing around in the shallows. 

She made a face until she spotted that Aaron was also out of the water. Shrugging, she stepped closer to the shore, and tugged on his arm. That action sent him stumbling into the lapping waves, to her delight. 

He let out an indistinct shout before resigning himself to being wet once again. “Warn me next time, geez! I could’ve died,” he moaned, pushing a wave of water straight into Margie’s face. She just laughed in delight. 

You ignored the two as you worked on your book, delving further into the story of a girl on a mountain, traversing through the thick forest in an attempt to wake her comatose father. Rob read right along with you, keeping your pace perfectly. You never needed to ask him when he wanted you to turn the pages—it was like your eyes read at the same speed, your brains processing the same things. Among other things, that was convenient. 

The air began to grow colder as you began the second-to-last chapter, the sun casting longer and longer shadows. It wasn’t evening quite yet, but the blazing afternoon sun had softened. You looked up with a start. It had clearly been a couple hours, but where were the other two members of your group?

You turned around to face Rob. “Have you seen Aaron and Margie recently?”

He quickly scanned the area with a slight look of panic sewn into his features. The lake was empty, the shore was clear of visitors, and even the sky was barren. “No, but we really need to find them before Marcus comes back with the car.” They were simply gone. “Here, why don’t you stay with our stuff and I’ll go look?” he suggested, standing to wipe the gravel off his shorts. 

“I don’t want to split up.” You were wary of the quiet, unsure if something would come out of the land around you and take you, too. “We can hide the bags in that dry spot under the dock and come back for them later.”

He just nodded in agreement, taking the larger share of your things and helping you conceal them within the rocks and overgrown water weeds. The two of you then set off to find your friends, calling their names into the sound of sloshing water and twittering birds. 

It was almost twenty minutes later when you began to hear someone sniffling and a distinctly feminine voice trying to calm them down. Margie and Aaron. You and Rob looked at each other, then swiftly moved towards them.

Aaron was crouched down in the middle of a little clearing, his head in his hands. Margie was sitting and whispering to him, something you couldn’t quite make out. You had never heard her whisper before. It didn’t matter, though, because they quickly spotted you.

“Guys, I’m not sure it’s a good-”

“No, it’s okay.” Aaron cut Margaret off. “They can hear it.”

You dropped to your knees to get on their level, Rob quickly following suit. “What happened?” you asked, gently reaching out to brush Aaron’s hand. His face was slick with tears, his normally neat hair lopsided like he had tried to run his fingers through the thick coils. 

He hesitated, slightly, but Margie patted him encouragingly. “Margie told me how she felt.”

Okay, another confession within the friend group. That wouldn’t explain the running away or the crying, at least not him crying, so what else? Rob spoke up, voice restrained. “How did that make you feel?”

“Bad,” he muttered, looking up at the girl with guilt in his brown eyes. “Not because I don’t like her, but because I can’t.” His voice trailed off into muffled sobs once again as he sunk into Margie’s arms.

Oh. You exchanged glances with Rob.

That wasn’t exactly news to you, but you had never been able to voice your suspicions out loud. It just made sense. Margie liked Aaron, and Aaron didn’t like girls. He didn’t even have to explain fully, you and Rob just hugged his shaking form. 

There was a very hushed, heartfelt talk after that. The fact of the matter was, you and your friends loved Aaron, and that was just a new fact about him for you to love. It also surprised you a little.

You knew you would be okay with it, but Rob and Margie grew up with you. They knew your area and the opinions that floated around. You never expected them to be hateful, no, but putting aside the thoughts that were so instilled in your hometown would be difficult for anyone lesser than them. It showed you that your friends wouldn’t dream of hurting the people around them, the people they loved.

When anyone, you included, presented the group with a new side of them, they were accepted with open arms. 

Junior year was tougher than the previous. Your rocks remained by your side, but certain people pulled at the strings binding your sanity like a child with a ball of yarn. One of those people ended up being Brady, who after a couple years of a mild hiatus, began making fun of you more than ever.

He was in all the same rigorous classes as you and your friends, leading him to be able to torture you during lessons. In addition to that, his last name was similar enough to yours for him to be placed behind you in most of those classes.

The vast majority of the torture involved stealing your belongings, throwing things at the back of your head, making fun of your looks, hobbies, anything, and passing you notes that read like a stupid teenage boy’s jeers. Sexual innuendos, frankly abhorrent pick up lines, and gross questions crumpled under your fist almost every day. 

You tried to tell the teachers, the principal, anyone that would listen, but they all said the same thing: boys will be boys. Brady was too good of a student and too important of an athlete to punish. Hell, the most he got for cutting off a section of your hair was a verbal warning. Every day, you and your friends got closer and closer to punching him in the face. None of them liked him, for good reason, but even their protection couldn’t fully stop him. Everything exploded in the spring, right before your junior prom.

You sat at your desk during your English lecture, desperately trying to pay attention to your teacher who was droning on and on about The Great Gatsby. You shifted your leg a bit, just enough to feel a piece of paper pressing into the underside of your thigh. You pulled it out, confused. 

It was a thick, decorated section of stationery with a few words scrawled on it in cursive. It read, “Meet me by the gym after school,” signed by someone who called themselves your secret admirer. You looked down at the prose. It didn’t look like Brady’s handwriting, something you were quite sure of. But who else would’ve written it? You tucked it in your pocket, not wanting to decide whether or not to go right then and there.

You did end up going, which was your biggest mistake. You sat on the edge of a planter near the entrance of the gym, picking at the seam of your shirt. It wasn’t long before everyone who had gym class last period filed out of the school, leaving you utterly alone. It also wasn’t long before Brady appeared, walking towards you like he was on a mission. 

You stood up, poised to leave if he did anything other than walk right on by. Unfortunately for you, he held up a hand as if to tell you to wait. “Hey,” he grinned, “you got my note?”

You paused. “Your note?” You didn’t think he even knew how to write in cursive, much less make it as neat as it was on the stationary. You wouldn’t be surprised if he paid one of the artsy girls to write it for him.

“Yeah.” He stared down at you. There was a gleam in his eye that you didn’t like. “I wanted to ask you to prom.”

Prom? He wanted to ask you to prom? You were baffled. There were a million better fitting people at his disposal, ones that didn’t hate him with a passion. He had made your life hell that year, and multiple years previous to that. You almost scoffed at his words.

“Well, I would rather you didn’t.” You said. You turned to leave, but his hand caught your wrist in a vice-like grip. His eerily green eyes burned holes into yours. 

“What, you’re just going to leave? After leading me on for so many years, playing hard to get?”

You were stunned. You weren’t aware you were playing anything. Everything he did just seemed mean, and you responded to it like any victim of bullying would. You just balked, uttering a quiet “huh?” when he wouldn’t let go. Try as you might, you couldn’t break his grip as he ranted about you being so obviously into him. He even tried to pull you closer, until two familiar hands grabbed his arm and shoved him back.

It was Rob, and he was furious. “What the fuck? Leave her alone,” he snapped, forcing himself into the gap between you and Brady. You rarely heard him curse, and you had never seen him as mad as that. Brady just rolled his eyes with a psychotic little laugh.

“Oh my god, did you think I was actually into your little girlfriend? Shove off, dude. I was joking. Who in their right mind would want that thing hanging off them in public?” he scoffed. You couldn’t tell if he was serious about anything right then. He was contradicting himself constantly. If the prom thing was a joke, was he just making fun of you again? Or if the prom thing was serious, was he deflecting? Your mind was reeling, and you just wanted to sit down and get your head straight. The place where Brady had grabbed you was pulsing, sure to form a bruise during the night.

Rob said something you didn’t remember before he put a protective hand on your shoulder and ushered you away. All you could hear was laughter, Brady’s and a couple other boys’. You didn’t even see the other boys arrive, and if they were there the whole time, you weren’t aware. The whole walk of shame just felt like a fever dream, with you fading in and out of reality until Rob sat you down on the edge of his mattress. You couldn’t even tell how you got there. Rob tilted your face towards him, concerned, and you realized you were crying.

“Don’t let him get to you.” His voice was soothing, like he was speaking to a scared puppy. “He was just being an asshole.” 

“Did you hear everything?” You sounded pathetic, but you didn’t care.

Rob shook his head. “When I came over, he was in the middle of some spiel. I was just on my way to lacrosse practice before I saw you.” Ah, yes, he was in lacrosse. And he was usually early. The things you remembered after dissociating continued to surprise you. He wiped the tears off your cheeks with the pad of his thumb.

He hated seeing you like that. Brady didn’t deserve to make you cry. No one did, not even yourself. He wanted to pull you under his covers and let you sigh into his shirt, like always. He wanted you to forget about everything and just hold on to him.

You wrung your hands in your lap, trying desperately to process everything. The situation was just so… bizarre. You didn’t know what to believe, but at the end of the day, you figured it didn’t matter. Brady will be Brady. Out of nowhere, you started to laugh. Rob’s eyes widened, but he cracked a smile too.

You devolved into cackles on his bed, with him doubled over next to you. Hysterics, some might say. But it was all you could think to do at the time, all your tired mind could handle at the moment. Of course, you talked about it after, but the laughter was the key to getting you through the situation. 

You had waited all your life for a big confession of love, and your “first one” went to shit immediately. Luckily, like always, Rob was there to pick up the pieces. 

Prom came and went without another word from Brady. Instead of going to the dance, however, you and your friends spent the night at a diner. The place had a playplace definitely designed and designated for little kids, but that didn’t stop you from climbing up the sides and playing a good old game of tag. You were winded by the end, a cramp crawling its way down your side, but it was more fun than sitting around a bowl of punch would be. The dances were never your thing, anyway. 

Both Margie and Aaron had a curfew as the night marched towards 10:00, but you decided to go back to Rob’s house for a movie or two. He could drive, and it was the most amazing excuse for him to ferry everyone everywhere. He never minded. So you got in his car, and he let you choose the music, and you talked the whole way home. 

As you finally arrived, your voices fell to hushed whispers. His family was more than likely asleep—save for his brother, who was spending his first year in college on campus. Rob locked the door and fumbled for the TV remote in the near-darkness as you thumbed through his DVD collection.

There wasn’t much selection. His family encouraged spending time with each other instead of spending time staring at a screen, so their DVDs consisted of old children’s films, a few action movies, and The Princess Bride. You had seen every one of them countless times, but the action movies more so. Frankly, you were tired of Men in Black and The Terminator, so you pulled out The Princess Bride. It was his sister’s favorite, but you liked it enough.

Rob raised his eyebrows at the selection but accepted it, popping the disc into the player and tugging a blanket over your body, already nice and comfortable on the couch. 

The first few times you watched movies together, Bobby would be silent. He stared at the screen with rapt attention, losing himself in the plot and acting. Over time, as you both learned to remember each twist and even a few distinct lines, you started talking while the movie played. It went from movie discussion to just anything, with the film serving as background noise to your conversation. A bit of you wondered why you didn’t just pause the video or talk somewhere else, but it was familiar, and somehow far better than conversing in silence. This time, you were discussing how far you could go in your friendship before Rob would stop metaphorically saying “as you wish”.

“I feel like you would say no if I, like, asked if I could pick your nose. Which I wouldn’t do, but you wouldn’t let me, right?”

He considered it for a moment, shrugging noncommittally. “If I had a reason to believe there was something in it, I might.” You scrunched your nose in response, shaking your head to the thought of it.

“Well, I’m not sticking my finger up there any time soon.” You pushed his face away from yours with your finger, pressing lightly into his forehead. He fell back, settling into the couch cushions.

“Thank god. I really think I’d let you do anything, though.”

You sat up, following him onto his side of the couch. There was a playful smile on your lips. “Anything?”

He nodded, face flushed in the dim lighting. He blushed so easily at the slightest provocation—it would be funny if you hadn’t already teased him for it hundreds of times. “That’s fair. I’d probably let you do anything too, but within reason.”

He tensed, eyes flicking across your face. He seemed like he was considering something. He had a concentrated look on his face, weighing the pros and cons. You had seen that face numerous times in the past, but right now, it confused you. Before he could think any better of it, and before he could get in his head about his newfound impulsivity, he opened his mouth. “Is kissing you within reason?”

You paused. Don’t get ahead of yourself, you thought. It’s for the sake of the conversation. Right? It wasn’t like he thought about kissing you as much as you thought about kissing him. He was just so handsome, every day, all the time. It only got better with the years developing his features. It wasn’t like he had a major crush on you, too. “Sure.”

“Then…” His gaze dropped to your lips. He was hesitating, like you were going to shove him away and call him disgusting. But it was finally happening, and your heart beat faster and faster in your chest. 

“As you wish.” 

Your lips connected, and his hand cradled the back of your head. It was like nothing you had ever experienced before. 

Warm, soft, a bit of teeth, but that didn’t matter. You felt like you were flying. Your dream finally came true—the one where you had his loving touch, where you melted into his arms like he would be able to hold you together. You prayed to anyone that would listen to never let you wake up.

When you pulled away, Rob’s face was red and dazed. He could hardly believe that he did that, and that you let him. He had been harboring so many feelings, ones that he himself had only realized in middle school. He tried everything to deny them, to push them to the side, because he didn’t think he could make you as happy as you deserved. But he couldn’t deny himself enough to not kiss you, not when you looked so perfect, lit up by the television screen. He was a strong person, but not that strong. 

You were utterly flustered. A short silence filled the air for a moment before you opened your mouth, closed it, and then opened it again to speak. “So…”

“Can I be your boyfriend?” He blurted. That was quick. “I know it’s… weird, but I really love you, and I have for a while.” He looked away shyly, blue eyes pointed towards anything but you.

“Yeah. I’d like that,” you smiled. 

Your school year finished with an absolute flourish. You had a boyfriend for once. Margie was delighted when she found out. 

She squealed so loudly that you thought she would collapse the walls of her room, her hands immediately finding a place on your shoulders to shake you. “You and Rob, oh, I knew it! You’re perfect together.” She had matured so much after middle school, and the thought made your lips curl up into a smile.

Telling Aaron was easier. He looked at you with a knowing smile and then nodded, satisfied that you had both pulled your heads out of your asses long enough to realize you were in love with each other. As Margie was your victim while you were contesting your feelings, he was Rob’s. He knew that everything would work out better than any of you. 

Bobby didn’t quite know how to go about informing his family, so he decided on inviting you over for dinner and giving a whole, uninterrupted speech about how he wanted to let them know that you were more than just a friend now. His little sister, Jodie, just rolled her eyes and said, “We know.” He reddened under their laughter, but his hand was firm in holding yours under the table. 

Your mom was the person you were most worried about. She liked Rob, but you had never really been able to talk to her about those things. In the end, you casually dropped it during a conversation, she made some little comment about it, and you moved on. It wasn’t much of a big deal.

After the initial reactions, your relationship with him didn’t change much. You still did everything together, and you still spent hours talking with him, but there were a few sneaky kisses in between words and a few instances of hand-holding. It was heaven. 

Despite you having a similar dynamic, it felt more real, like you weren’t skirting around a touchy subject anymore. You were fully immersed in said subject, and Rob was the perfect accomplice. 

You knew him to be kind, gentle, and smart, but everything was amplified tenfold over the summer before your senior year. He held you with a special determination, never hiding how much he loved you through touch alone. He pulled you away from Brady whenever he approached, letting you hold his hand instead of looking at him. You saw a side of him that he kept carefully locked away.

 He never left behind his love of comics and flying, but he let you in on those secrets. He finally told you that he was applying to the Naval Academy (which you realized was the reason he was spending so much time at the gym, and why he was an Eagle Scout, and captain of the lacrosse team, etc. etc.), and even though he was worried that you would react badly, you tried to support him. It lifted a kind of weight off of his shoulders and let him be fully honest with you about everything. 

You had never been in a better place. He kissed you, brought you flowers, held your hand, and walked on the outside of the sidewalk. A gentleman, as he always had been. 

One of your favorite memories during that time was when he took you out to eat with his first ever paycheck. It wasn’t any place particularly fancy, as he worked a minimum wage job flipping burgers, but it was special all the same.

Rob was dressed in a polo, hair smoothed and combed (which was a whole lot better than his style in middle school, in your opinion), and glasses perched on his nose. He had taken to wearing them again as he hated getting dry eyes while working out. And, man, did he work out. He was getting a bit big for his clothing, his arms pushing against the fabric of his shirt, and chest noticeably straining against the cloth. You pulled your eyes away from his body, face a little warm when you noticed he noticed.

For once, you didn’t know what to talk about. It was your first real, proper date, and the pressure left your mouth dry. You drummed your fingers on the table before deciding to end the tension. “Do you remember when we first met?”

He blinked, but smiled fondly at the memory. “Yeah. I still had that big cast, and you didn’t have any shoes on. I was jealous, you know,” he laughed lightly, “you got to feel the ground with both your feet.”

He reached out to take your hand, but stopped just short of your digits. You closed the gap and linked your fingers. “I was jealous that you had a cast with signatures on it. Apparently breaking a bone was cool to me, until I realized it meant you couldn’t go splash in the creek or roll down a hill.”

“That was awful. I think I cried once because I couldn’t chase a newt into the water.”

“And I had to sit by the edge of the stream and hold your glasses so you could wipe your eyes!” It was like yesterday for you, hand resting on his shoulder and mouth whispering soothing words until he could pick his glasses from your outstretched hand. He didn’t cry often, but you supposed that particular day took a toll on him in a way that you could not recall.

“You’ve always been great at comforting me.”

“I haven’t done it in a while, though. Hey, maybe you should get that boot back so I can see if I still have the magic touch,” you teased. He shook his head vigorously.

“Are you kidding me? I never want to see another medical boot again.” He paused. “Well, actually, it wouldn’t be so bad if you were there. Y’know, for moral support.”

You rolled your eyes, but your mouth betrayed you as it formed a smile. “For sure. I would dote on you—cucumbers on your eyes, a warm towel wrapping your hair, anything you want. Maybe I could even carry you down to the creek and find a few newts for you.”

“Carry me? You would probably break your back.” he scoffed, somewhat shyly. You didn’t even know a person could scoff shyly, but he was the king of consistency; he did everything with that little bashful tilt of his head.

“You never know. I’ve gotten pretty strong lately.”

“Show me sometime, then we can discuss the ‘carrying me down to the creek’ thing.”

“...give me a few more years and we’ll see.”

You talked about memories for hours upon end, until the restaurant workers had to gently push you out the door. The time you accidentally ate a fly while swinging, and he consoled you as you washed your mouth out a million times. When Margie accidentally left you two locked in her closet because she didn’t want her parents to make you leave. Even when Rob’s parents sat you down and said it would be okay with them if you two dated—which was met with outward disgust and internal hope. Throughout the reminiscence, his hand was held tightly in yours, and his eyes sometimes watered. It took everything in you to not sob at the idea of not being able to form these kinds of memories with him. It was kind of your last-ditch effort to truly be with him, in a way that no one else could be, before school started up again. You knew that soon, you would be stuck in class, and after that… after that, there were but a few brief weeks until he had to leave. You hadn’t been apart from him since you met, and each new day ticked down like a massive, ominous clock. You would just have to wait for him to return, as you waited for him to arrive in the first place. 

Just like you assumed it would, time passed quickly. Senior year was packed with homework, tests, college applications, more homework, more tests, watching lacrosse matches, cheering and whooping at football games, club meetings, swinging on the local park’s swings until you got sick with laughter, driving, and breaking curfew. It was fun. Everything could be fun if it was with the right people.

After things had died down, you discovered that your college and Naval Academy decisions happened to align somewhat perfectly with each other. Margie, Aaron, and you all got your letters a few days before Rob did, and you waited to open them together. Even holding the envelopes was stressful, like your entire future rode on a few printed words. They did, actually. That made it even scarier.

“Okay, we’ve all actually got to open them this time,” Margie groaned. She had counted down from three at least four times at this point. You and the boys were too scared to rip open the seals. It was amazing that she had held back from tearing them apart herself. “Three, two… one!”

The sound of tearing paper filled Rob’s bedroom, and you all eagerly held up the letters to the soft, warm glow of his overhead light. 

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

…pleased to offer you…

You did it. You all did it. A beat of shocked silence filled the air as you took glance after glance at your own and everyone else’s papers, but it was quickly broken by Margie’s scream. She threw her arms around you, tackling you to the floor, as she yelled, “Everyone got in! Everyone got in! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!” You laughed in her grasp, everyone releasing a breath of relief that they didn’t know they were holding. Margie pulled Rob and Aaron into her bear hug as well, until everyone was in a big, happy pile. A twinge in your heart knew that these letters meant nothing would ever be the same again, but you pushed it aside for the joy of now.

Rob grinned, his glasses crooked on his face. “Good job, guys. Congrats. You all really deserve it.”

“You deserve it too, Bobby. Getting into the academy is hard, but I know you worked harder.” You gave him a peck on the cheek as Margie swooned and Aaron gagged. 

It took about two more seconds for the moment to devolve. Aaron folded his acceptance letter into a boat, which he then got stuck in Margie’s hair. Six pairs of hands worked to detangle it, but she didn’t make it any easier with the amount of giggles she was releasing. It was going to be okay, you thought. High school would end, and college would begin, but you could deal with everything coming your way. Your best friends would be with you, and your best-est friend would be an email away. An email and a million miles, but an email nonetheless. He had already created a folder just for you. 

Things changed, as they always have and always will. You would cry, and yes, you were stuck biding the time before your soon-to-be long distance boyfriend returned, but that change was beautiful.

After packing your meager belongings into a duffel bag and a half-wheeled suitcase, your mom drove you to your college dorm for move-in day. She was sad to see you go, but she joked that she could host the A.A. meetings in your room during your absence. She was okay to live on her own, she assured you. For the first time in a long time, you fully believed her.

She helped you set up, greeting Margie as well, then gave you a squeezing hug and walked back to her car. You likely wouldn’t be able to see her for a while, considering that you didn’t have your own car, but you had survived without her in the past, and you would again. 

Everything felt new and exciting, the world alight with opportunities. Every class prompted a discussion within yourself, and every party forced that discussion to present itself. You found that enjoying reality had a sort of grounding effect, even when you were clinging to a wall during a wildly chaotic frat house rager. Margie had joined the adjoining sorority, so those things were often places you could hang out. Man, did you hang out.

With (almost) complete and utter freedom, you could do just about anything. You worked at a Jersey Mike’s on campus, so you had access to free sandwiches and money; that meant the world was your oyster. You and your friends dabbled in school organizations, danced to loud music, stuck your heads out of sunroofs, and edged your way into the campus culture. The librarian ended up kicking you and your English 101 classmates out of the library after you violated the “quiet study” rule a few too many times. 

The school part was, admittedly, less fun, but it was a good experience nonetheless. You ended up switching majors twice during your first two years of college, as you were not exactly sure what would be useful or even what you wanted out of life, but you settled on something eventually. Aaron stuck straight on his path to pre-med with biology, while Margaret switched from political science to education. As the general education requirements were fulfilled and the more targeted classes began, your hangouts dulled down a little bit. Aaron was constantly stressed and no longer had time to roll down the sunroof, and even Margie had things to do. She was interning at a school district a few miles from campus. The new friends you made had less and less time to talk. It left you feeling a little disgruntled, but between harder work and dictating your newly boring life to Bob, there was no time to spare.

He started signing off his emails as Bob; whether it was to sound professional or because it was what everyone in the academy called him, it didn’t matter. You accepted it, like you did so many things about him.

One email chain in particular is now printed out on thick, bordered paper, stuck in one of your million half-filled-in photo albums. You thumb through them from time to time, just to look at the memories. 

From: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

Hello, my love!

I haven’t had a chance to read your past emails, sorry! They keep me busy here (not as busy as plebe summer though haha) and downtime is a thing of the past. I will read them in a few days, if all things go well. I’ll tell you about my past few weeks in the meantime. Well, my past few weeks haven’t been all too interesting, but I figured I’d write it down anyway.

Mickey and I have been going through the motions. The classes can be tough, but nothing compares to Ms. Norton’s gov assignments. There’s workouts, class, and a little downtime before it all starts up again. Luckily, I’ve been getting more freedom lately. That’s the perk of being a responsible student ;)

Yesterday, I saw this guy flick peas at his friend (were they friends? Possibly, maybe, I’m not sure) and get absolutely torn apart by an instructor that was watching. I had to cover Mickey’s mouth before he laughed so he wouldn’t get reprimanded. That’s the kind of “exciting” thing that happens here, by the way; I’m sure the others get up to mischief, but with the hawks watching and the stakes so high? I’d rather imagine all the trouble you get into at college instead. It softens the blow.

That being said, enough about me. I want you to send me a million (ok, maybe not a million, I’d be fine with a couple thousand) emails about everything you do. I hope that wasn’t super creepy. I just miss you a lot.

I miss your humor, your laugh, and your smile. I miss feeling your thumb rubbing the back of my hand when you get bored. I miss smelling your shampoo, and I miss kissing you. I wish I had snuck some of your perfume in with me along with the photos, but that might be too sappy of me. I’d get made fun of relentlessly if this email were to fall into the wrong hands, but I don’t care anymore. Oh, I miss home, too, so visit my family when you have the chance. Tell me everything.

Anyways, I hope this email finds you well. I’ve got to go to bed now, but I’m sure I’ll be dreaming about you. Catch you at midnight!

Love,

Bob. 

P.S.: Mickey wanted to say hi, so I let him have the keyboard for a few seconds. Bob is such a sap about u, Hometown Girl, I send my deepest sympathies. Also HELLO! -That was Mickey. Expect a message from him every email from now on, because he won’t stop threatening to tape my socks to the ceiling??

To: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

Hi Bob!! And hello Mickey. I hope he hasn’t been bringing me up too much.

Don’t worry about reading all my emails all the time—nothing too eventful ever happens anyway. And if it did, I’m sure Margie and Aaron would let you know as well. 

All the work you guys have to do sounds insane, like crazy insane. I don’t think I could ever work out and then go through a million tough classes. I die after 30 minutes at the gym. You’re lucky all the instructors like you, because I’m sure the others get a ton of flack. 

The most trouble I’ve gotten into this week was forgetting my homework and having to lie to my teacher. I told her I got frat flu and couldn’t get out of my dorm to go to the library… which was highly unethical, but you do what you have to do. As for the others, I haven’t seen Aaron in weeks because he’s prepping for his finals. We just finished midterms. He’s so studious it actually shocks me. Our favorite roommate is asleep at 7:49 PM, and I have to shield my laptop screen from shining too close to her. I’m sure she gets into trouble that I don’t even want to think about… she brought two separate guys to the room within four hours. TMI, but you’ve heard it all anyway.

Instead of a million emails, I hope a few long ones will suffice. I miss you too, so much. I hate having to wrap my arms around a pillow instead of you—it should be classified as a deficiency, honestly. A Bobby deficiency. I’m the sickest patient imaginable. 

I visited the fams on Sunday. Jodie is doing really well in high school! She’s in all the advanced art classes and is enjoying her schedule immensely. Chris was there too, with his fiance. Which reminds me: even though the wedding hasn’t even been planned yet and probably won’t be for a couple years, he wants you to be his best man!!! He asked me to warn you before the fancy wedding court invitations go out. Brotherly love and all that. You don’t have to say yes, he said, but he wants that unfortunate little buzz cut by his side on his big day.

Your parents are doing well, and so is my mom. We’re all getting together this weekend to prep a giant care package, which I hope will be well enjoyed by you and your friends. I need to finish up my stats homework (ugh), so I’ll cut this message short, but expect more after I close my textbook. I hope to see you in dream world too <3

Love,

Hometown Girl.

From: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

Good morning, Randle,

I was wondering about placing a hold on the item we spoke about over the phone. I can call again on Saturday, sometime during the afternoon. Please reach out if it’s still an option.

Thanks,

Robert Floyd.

From: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

Sorry about that last email, honey! That wasn’t meant for you. I’m just looking at a lock for my bag. Mickey likes to rifle through my things. I’ll email you more later.

Love,

Bob.

To: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

It’s alright, enjoy your lock lol.

Love,

Not Randle.

You didn’t have any reason to question his words at the time. Well, you never had a reason to question any of his words, because he could beat George Washington in a telling-the-truth competition. Now, you know that Bob’s a damn good liar—not that he would ever lie to hurt you. It’s just the nice secrets he keeps, like the one he kept the entire time he was training to be a naval aviator.

As his education progressed, though, his eyesight kept him from doing the one thing he truly wanted to do: be a pilot. He just missed the requirement, as he explained in a short, sad email after his eye test. It was crushing, to say the least, but Bob bounced back quickly. He always did. He was never one to sit and mope about a problem, no, he took the next best thing. He began training to be a weapon systems officer, and he was damn good at it.

His graduation, adorned with the markings of a star student, came with no surprise, and neither did his transition to the actual Navy. He did flight training, conditioning, and every other rigorous step to climb his way to the top; by the end, he was a new man. He graduated from Top Gun for god’s sake. Documenting his development were emails, short visits, letters, the whole shebang. 

The one thing that didn’t change was his love.

He was still goofy, nerdy, and kind. His skin may have been tougher, after years of being hardened by the world around him, but he took the time to care for the people in his life. He people-watched, just as he always did, and called you every sweet nickname that would get anyone lesser embarrassed. He still blushed like a madman, whether it was from pulling Gs or your tight hugs. And, which may just be the best thing he kept, he maintained his loyalty to the people in his past. He was a Montana kid, through and through.

You changed, he changed, the world changed. Everything was constantly moving. You maintained consistency in your waiting, though. That was the only thing that didn’t budge. You marked the dates that Bob would come back home in your calendar, counting down every second like you would miss him if you didn’t. One of those dates ended up being Margie’s wedding.

The year of weddings was upon you; Bob’s brother had just gotten married half a year before, and three of your other friends got married between then and Margaret’s wedding. Even Aaron was eyeing rings, constantly emailing you pictures from catalogs in an attempt to find the “perfect” band for his boyfriend. It came with being full-fledged adults, you assumed. Everyone was settled in their grown-up jobs or grad school, and therefore had more time to spend with their respective partners. Except for Bob, of course. He was sent everywhere under the sun. From Virginia to Hawaii, Hawaii to Texas, Texas to Nevada, and, most recently, Nevada to California. The last in-person interaction you had with him was four months ago when you flew to Lemoore to visit. There was no time for proposals, even if you had been with him long enough to be considered married in everyone else’s eyes. 

You were Margie’s maid of honor. You helped with planning, invitations, booking, buying, organizing, setting up, and pretty much all the details since she showed you the large, sparkling diamond on her ring finger. You even helped pick out her dress. It was a classic ball gown-style beauty, with delicate lace and heavy frills. It was exactly her. 

Bob was a groomsman, even though he and the groom weren’t particularly close. It was your closeness to both Margie and her fiance that brought him to the bachelor party in the first place. In the days before the wedding, you and Bob shared a room close to the wedding venue.

Being with him again made you the happiest you had been in a long time. You felt complete, like when he was gone, your heart just ached and ached until he could come plug up the holes again. Living in that small motel room was a breath of fresh air, and sharing a bed with him in complete privacy was amazing in more ways than one.

It was strange, in a way, like you didn’t really know him anymore. He had friends you had never met and a job you knew nothing about in a place you had only visited once, but he was intricately tied to your hometown through a series of souls and bonds. He was balancing between two worlds, and a part of you wondered where he would fall if the beam were to become unsteady. And another part of you hoped he would take you with him when the time came.

During the ceremony the next day, you thought that you wanted to be the one walking down the aisle next. 

The wedding went well, as most weddings did. There were tears from you, tears from the audience, tears from everyone except for the children Margie taught, as they were too young to really understand the beauty of two people devoting their lives to each other. The cake was cut, frosting smeared on the newlyweds’ cheeks, the dances flowed flawlessly, the pictures turned out perfect, and even Margie’s mother-in-law was happy. It was honestly the most beautiful wedding you had witnessed in your life.

When the time came for the bouquet toss, you were so far back in the crowd that it didn’t even have a chance of landing in your outstretched hands. You stood there for moral support, really, as the girls around you pushed their way to the front. There was a countdown, a little shove from the person next to you, and a bouquet of poppies tossed high into the air. It sailed in an arc, red and orange streaking through the air. Despite everything, despite the odds being stacked against you, it was heading right in your direction.

You reached one arm out, squished between bodies, and caught it.

The uproar of the people around you filled your ears as you pulled the flowers to your chest. The crowd parted, and Margie came barrelling towards you, wrapping you in her lacy arms. “Yes! I just knew you would catch it, I always do. You’ve got to help me plan the wedding when it happens, because I know it will, and you’re going to need the perfect dress and the perfect venue and the prettiest invitations and…”

She carried on for a while, and you smiled into the soft, decorative leaves. 

You saved the flower petals, pressed in a big dictionary under your desk. You saved every flower you had ever been given. Parts of them, at least. Your corsage from senior prom, the bouquets Bob had shipped to your door, and the marigolds your mother grew in her new garden are spread out across your bedroom. Most of your memories are tucked away in secret places, only noticeable if you know where to look.

After the wedding, you returned to your little apartment, smack in the middle of the busiest part of your town. The cars speeding by were significantly worse than Bob’s light snoring. It was the first time you had lived on your own, though, which was supposed to be important. You were free.

You could eat ice cream for breakfast, or in the late hours of the night, and you could sing loudly in the shower. You could even buy most of the clothes you saw in stores on your brand new salary and organized savings. However, you found that you didn’t necessarily want to do all that. You just wanted every day to be over already. Work was too much, waking up to an upset stomach was too much, checking your email every thirty minutes and seeing nothing was too much, and those goddamn people in the room above yours were too much, constantly blasting music and stomping around. Like always, you found yourself waiting for things to change again. You imagined you were anywhere else with anyone else, finding a sick sense of comfort in the fantasies. You thought you put those little phases behind you, but being an adult alone was so frustrating that you found yourself going back to old patterns.

Margie was caught up in the married life, Aaron was constantly working, and your frequently long-distance boyfriend was states away. The only comfort you got was periodic visits to your old neighborhood, checking up on your mom and Bob’s family. 

You stood in the middle of Georgia Floyd’s flower bed, tugging at a weed, hands adorned with thick, weathered gloves. The thing just wasn’t coming out. The little thorns were sticking to your sleeves, and you were drenched with sweat. It was the beginning of fall, and the leaves were turning all shades of fiery reds and somber oranges, but the sun was still high in the sky. The thriving asters and dahlias next to you taunted you with their beauty, bending in the slight breeze. Georgia stood in the shade of her doorway, one hand on her hip and the other holding a glass of lemonade. “Sweetheart, you’ve been workin’ so hard here. Take a drink, go home, be merry. I’ll get B… I’ll get someone else to pick up where you left off, ‘kay?”

You sighed, wiping the perspiration away from your brow with your forearm. “Yes ma’am. Thank you.” She handed you the glass and shooed you away from her flowers, making sure to take the gardening gloves you had peeled off and tucked under your arm. 

You hadn’t expected to be weeding today, but with Jodie at a friend’s house, Chris a state away on a work trip, and Bob’s father, Harold, off somewhere, she needed a helping hand. She had gotten a bit weaker over the years, no longer able to bend as well as she needed to in order to clear away the low-growing weeds, and you loved her more than enough to help out. You were her second daughter, she always said. A part of the family, no matter what. You walked across the street to your mom’s place and opened the door with your key. 

She had to go grocery shopping a while earlier, leaving you alone in the house. Given that the grocery shop was less than five minutes away by car, she should’ve been back by then. You didn’t pay it much mind, though. You just stepped into your bathroom, hung up your clothes, and took a well-deserved shower. 

After a good forty-five minutes of steam, hair dryers, and other pampering, you were ready to do absolutely nothing. The chair on your small front porch was all set up, and you held a book in your hands, ready to sit and see the yellow and orange sky cascade over the pages. When you stepped through your doorway, however, someone was waiting for you.

Bob. His hair had changed since you last saw him. It was longer but still military-issued, combed neatly, not a lock out of place. He was dressed well, too, with slacks and a slightly open button-up. You were suddenly glad that you had put on the prettiest dress in your arsenal—one he knew very well. He opened his mouth and then shut it with a look of determination.

“Bobby? What are you doing here?” you asked. He wasn’t expected back for months yet, and you certainly didn’t think he had time to visit. You were happy to see him, of course. Hell, you were overjoyed to be in his presence. But what was he doing?

He stepped forward, shined shoes crunching on a bit of gravel, and you met him in the middle. As he pulled you into his arms, hugging you tight to his chest, you breathed him in. He was really here, back home, after all that time. You finally pulled away after what seemed like eons and a millisecond all at once, and he clasped your hands in his, your book forgotten on the ground. His eyes were stormy, brimming with what looked like an onslaught of tears. You rubbed your thumbs up and down his hands worriedly. 

“Is everything okay?” Your voice came out as a tremble, slightly terrified at the prospect of something having gone wrong. Did someone die? Did he almost die? It didn’t help that he cleared his throat like he was steeling his nerves.

He put one of your hands on his chest, over his fluttering heart, and pressed a gentle kiss to the other. “There’s something I need to ask you.” You nodded, too concerned to speak. “I’ll… I’ll start with this. I love you so much it hurts me. When I first met you, years ago, I knew that I wanted to be around you forever. Your kindness, curiosity, your heart, everything just pulled me in and never let me go—not that I ever wanted to go, no, I knew you were too special to leave behind. I had to put so much in the past, but not you. Never you. I grew with you, and laughed with you, and loved you in a million ways. Throughout all that time, you waited and gave me your utmost support when my dreams took me a thousand miles away. Now, I’m still living a thousand miles away, but I don’t want you to wait here anymore. I want you to come with me and stay.” He took a breath, and his heart hammered under your fingertips. “What I’m really trying to get at is that I want to have a future with you. I want to be your husband.”

The world stopped in that moment. Did you hear him correctly? His eyes searched for a response on your face as he slid a black, velvety case out of his back pocket. He slowly lowered to one knee, keeping eye contact, and opening the box to show you the shiny contents.

“Sweetheart, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

You brought your hands up to your mouth. After all this time, the moment you dreamed of as a kid was finally happening. You nodded once, dropping down on your knees and nodding a million more times. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you,” you breathed, voice loud and quiet at the same time. Your arms found their place around him, like they had many times before, but something was different. New, in a good way. Like you were safe, completely safe.

Like while his ring was on your finger, you would never have to wait to be loved again.

You smile at the printed digital photos spread out on your bed. Bobby hugging you in 5th grade, the both of you in matching witch and black cat costumes, pumpkin buckets dangling from your fists. A snapshot of “the shaving incident”, in which you had come out with cut up legs and Robert with a cut up face. There was even a silly photo of him carrying you bridal style on your prom night, with your arm thrown over your face like a swooning princess. Your favorites, though, are the proposal photos.

Your mom hid around the corner to take pictures of your silhouettes in the sunset, while Bob’s mom pulled out her camera from across the street. They had coordinated everything perfectly, down to the fake shopping trip and weeding break. It was no coincidence that your mother washed the load of laundry that contained your favorite dress first. The meticulous planning from the people who know your routines best still makes your head spin when you think about it. They all knew about the proposal for at least a week before it happened, and they made sure it was absolutely perfect, down to the manicured background and time of day. Bob even managed to get away from work for a couple days to propose.

The ring is beautiful too. It’s the perfect mix between flashy and subtle, the main stone is cut exactly how you like it, and the band is the right amount of tight. When you asked your fiance about how he got it so exact to everything you had dreamed of, he said, “research”. You later found out from his mom that he had bought the ring while he was still at the Naval Academy from the best jeweler he could find: Randle Montgomery. Knowing that he was planning on proposing all those years ago makes it a different kind of special.

Your closet is open, the boxes and boxes of memories all pulled out and scattered around your room. The dictionary under your desk has been opened, and the flower petals and other flower material placed carefully into a container. A few minutes earlier, you even stumbled upon a written agreement you and Bob signed in middle school, agreeing to marry each other if you weren’t taken by 30. The wooden rose he gave you, also in middle school, was halfway sticking out of a cardboard holder, leaning on a series of first day of school photos Georgia took. You’ve taken to calling her Mom now, at her request.

All of your photo albums are open, with most of the pictures taken out. You’re trying to compile everything, every memory, into a new, large album. The new album is brown leather, stamped and embroidered with little inside jokes and important moments. Inside, you’ve documented every single stage in your life with Bob.

Some of the pictures even feature Margie, her husband, Aaron, Jodie, Chris, Georgia, Harold, your mom, Mickey, and everyone you’ve met along the way. Seeing the compilation of every person, every moment, that made you who you are brings tears to your eyes. 

You spend the next two hours tucking pictures, flower petals, and anything flat enough to fit into the album. By the time you’re done, your hands are coated in a fine layer of dust, and your front door is opening. 

“Honey, I’m home!” the intruder calls, and you hear the telltale jingling of him placing his keys on the bookshelf in your living room. You stand up, wipe your hands on your pants, and walk out of your shared bedroom.

Bob unzips his flight suit to the middle, letting it hang around his waist for the time being. His boots are neatly placed with the rest of his shoes; he’s tidy even when he’s tired, which is a phenomenon you don’t understand whatsoever. His hair is messy, his glasses are crooked, and he’s giving you a tired little smile. It was surely a long day for him. You open your arms, and he slouches into you like he was meant to be there.

“I was just about to get dinner started. Go take a nap, and it’ll be done by the time you wake up,” you murmur, kissing through his undershirt. He shakes his head softly. His hands hold steady on your waist, his pulse humming through the contact. 

“I’ll help. What were you thinking for tonight?”

You lead him into the kitchen, pulling out various ingredients from the pantry on the way. Pasta sauce clinks on the tile counter as you say, “Pasta. It’s quick enough. I’ll put mushrooms in the sauce, too, as a treat. You deserve it after the day I’m sure you’ve had.”

“You read my mind, baby,” he sighs, resting his head on you. “We had some rough ejections, but nothing too scary. And there’s talk of calling a few people to San Diego for a Top Gun mission, so every little mistake pulls people further away from that opportunity.”

He steps away from you for a moment. The absence of warmth sends a chill down your spine, but after he opens the box of spaghetti and turns up the heat on the pot of water you’ve placed on top of the stove, he stands behind you again. You look up from your place chopping vegetables. “Do you want to go back to San Diego? I feel like we just got settled in Lemoore.”

“Well, I’d like to marry you before moving, but I’d be honored to be a part of Top Gun again. Those missions are… dangerous, though, to say the least, so I want to have a wedding ring with my dog tags.”

You tap on his chest lightly, eyebrows furrowed. “If you do get chosen, you’d better be careful. I’m not prepared to be a widow.”

He smiles, a little sadly and a little reassuringly. “I’ll do my best.” 

When you hear the pot of water boiling, Bob drops the pasta in, and you turn your attention to the sauce simmering in your saucepan. You add mushrooms, onion, some ground beef, parmesan, and a lot of love. Before long, both parts are done, and you put a heaping portion on your fiance’s plate.

Your dining room furniture is basic, just a wooden table and two chairs. Neither of you have been able to decorate the house to your standards, considering you’re both working and you just moved in a month ago. It’s nice, though. Not permanent by any means, but nice. 

Not having any big decorations make it easier to move, you figure. By now, you know very well that living with a Naval aviator means moving from place to place until he gets a permanent station. Even then, there’s a chance they could change their minds and slap him onto the opposite side of the country. You’re just hoping that you can get married by a beach before that happens.

Speaking of the wedding, you need to do some serious planning. You swallow your bite of pasta. “I finished the photo album today.”

“Really? That’s great!” Bob beams. “I’m going to call the venue after work tomorrow to see if the date we picked out is possible. If it is, I think we can put the album by the entrance so people can look through it.”

“That sounds really good. Margie’s coming down next week to help me pick out decorations and stuff, so we need to decide on a color palette.”

“Hm… what do you think about our favorite colors? So we can represent both of us together.”

All the wedding talk makes you both excited and tired. You want to marry the love of your life and have a great time doing it, so every detail needs to be looked over again and again to ensure it goes according to plan. Bob’s a great help, despite him having so little time during the day. Living with him, finally, is like a dream come true. 

Everything is like a dream come true now. When you were little, before the Floyds appeared in your life like a fairy god-family, you prayed for something like this to happen. You begged and pleaded for your mom to get better, for you to have friends, for you to fall in love. Every part of that, miraculously, happened. Your life changed from miserable to joyous in a matter of days.

You’re going to marry the boy next door, and you’re going to be happy doing it. As you settle into bed, with his arm around you and a ring carefully placed on your bedside table, you think that all you’ve ever waited for has finally come to lull you to sleep.

Taglist: @withahappyrefrain @seitmai @winelover27 @shinzowosasageyoooo

[libraford]

So I have a question about your outlining process for your books? How detailed do you get in your outlines?

I am trying to go back to a book I started 6 years ago but had to stop cause my daughter was born and yikes this outline is almost 40 pages long cause I got super detailed.

You're gonna hate this.

My initial outlines max at like five sentences. Really, sometimes it's not even an outline, it's a title page from Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Start thinking about the scenario that excites you the most. The situation you wanna put your blorbos in.

"The flower shop gang does a wedding."

Then add conflict

"The flower shop gang does a wedding, but the client is a bridezilla."

Then add details.

"The flower shop gang does a wedding, but the client is a bridezilla and a series of complications with the project creates friction between friends, and they have to resort to shenanigans to make things right."

Add another layer.

"The flower shop gang does a wedding, but the client is a bridezilla and a series of complications with the project creates friction between friends, and they have to resort to shenanigans to make things right. But little do they know that the venue is targeted for a heist."

Start with a broad strokes statement of the plot and then narrow it down. When you go through the outline you have, ask yourself questions like "is this part of the plot or is this character development?" "Plot or world building?" "Plot or magic system?" "Plot or in-world politics."

Then take that broad strokes description and add some Pratchett asterisks.

"The flower shop gang* does a wedding,** but the client*** is a bridezilla and a series of complications¹ with the project creates friction between friends, and they have to resort to shenanigans² to make things right. But little do they know that the venue³ is targeted for a heist."

*a demigod, a thief, and a jack of all trades (see character sheet)

** high-stakes celebrity wedding

*** beauty pageant queen, see character sheet

¹a volcano eruption in Peru cuts the orchid supply

²some magic nonsense, see world building section C

³a huge public garden that includes a hedge maze, but also a historical landmark- see map on page 10.

Like, I totally get having a ton of world building. I have a binder full of random info that fits into my fiction worlds. But for the sake of sorting out the plot and actually getting to the actual writing part- keep the outline vague.

At least that's what works for me. Truthfully, Damn Good Party started because I wanted to see my gang of losers steal copious amounts of cake at a wedding expo and see what happened next.

[melkyt]

Lawlu Headcanons

Law has a bad relationship with food. It always made him sicker as a kid, and there was only specific food he could eat. Now he can't stand them. He tends not to eat off his own plate but will nibble from Luffy's.

Luffy at first didn't like that. Law ate his food, and he grew up in a big household where if you dont watch or guard your food, it gets taken, and you don't eat. Yet he also noticed that if Law doesn't do that, he just doesn't eat for days. So Luffy sets aside some food on his plate just for his boyfriend. It's a compromise he can live with.

Law likes big romantic gestures. His favorite displays of love are direct statements as he often doubts that he deserves to be loved. It's a nice reminder and makes him happy, and blushes a ton. Now he won't tell anybody this and in public will act all grumpy at such announcements but inside he is very much melting. And Luffy knows it, so he always doubles down xd

Luffy likes physical touch and gifts. He always initiates any exchange but also secretly wants someone to do a thing first for him. It's selfish, and usualy, he dont mind being selfish but not with his friends and crew. He often looks out for them first if its something he considers important to them.

Law likes to give random trinkets, a cool rock or shell that made him think of Luffy. Law is an artist, a sculptor at heart so he always seas things in nature or gift shops. He also does it because he loves to see Luffy smile and try to figure out new cool thing he got.

There is a whole room on the sunny where they keep everything people gave them over the journey. Nami, Sanji, and Usopp used it the most, but now there is a whole shelf that's full of stuff that Law gave Luffy.

Luffy has nightmares. He never let anyone know except maybe Jimbei, who was there, and he understands.

Law when he travels with the strawhats, he tends to crash either in the crows nest, that is his comfort place as it is open to the sky or next to Luffy who just makes him feel safe.

Law has woken once or twice to Luffy's nightmare and seen an uncharacteristic side to the pirate. It's rare that Luffy shows fear, but in these moments, he is vulnerable and afraid of losing more people. Law holds Luffy and just lets him talk about the little things, the small doubts that he may have or had during tough battles. He always pushes through them no matter what and moves on, but after a nightmare from the war, they tend to surface.

Law has nightmares as well, more often than Luffy, from the night on swallow island to when his town burned, to the days and days he had to spend hiding in a pile of corpses. There is no end to things that plague his mind. Things he doesn't like to talk about. He goes nonverbal right after. Luffy talks enough for the both of them, which is what Law needs, a distraction from the past. Luffy tells either Usopps wild stories, or about random islands, or even what cool bug he saw that day. Whatever crosses his mind in the moment until Law falls asleep again.

Law doesn't want biological children. Even if he could cure them, its not perfect. They could still end up with chronic pain and a billion other issues just like him.

Luffy is most likely to just pick up kids, accidental baby acquisition runs in the family, lol. He never thought about having kids of his own, but if he did, he would name at least one after Ace.

The idea of adoption had not crossed Law's mind and when it does a whole slew of other doubts surface, over how good a father he could be when he can barely take care of himself, physiclly atleast and with Luffy? Who is just as reckless? It's not a better prospect than biokids.

When the day comes and Luffy ends up taking in a kid, they both turn out to be better fathers then either expected. Luffy doesn't want his kid to feel abandoned like he did as a kid, and Law doesn't want the kid to doubt that it is loved. They and their crews spoil the child and always remind that it is wanted and deserves to live however it wants. They are very much doting parents xd. Reckless, but they teach the kid how to fight. Luffy teaches them Haki, and Law teaches them medicine and sword fighting. Their child will grow up to be stronger than both of them.

[kolyasangel]

nothin' but waves and summer sun

a/n: this is so random lmao but it's been on my mind for the past week so i had to cook something out of it

synopsis: you have an unexpected encounter with a surfer on your trip to the beach...

content: fem!reader, surfer!nikolai, fluff

It was a perfect warm and sunny day today, so you decided to go to the beach. Lately, though, it's been so hot that you felt like you were already melting from the scorching heat once you stepped outside, like a popsicle sitting out in the sun. Thankfully, the gentle breeze hitting against your skin provided some coolness while you walked along the beach. You eventually came to a stop once you picked a spot and settled, rolling your towel out and placing your belongings down.

As you soaked in the serene atmosphere, your eyes locked onto a surfer catching waves with skillful precision. A crowd had even gathered to watch in awe at his impressive show, mesmerized by the sheer skill and beauty of his movements as he carved through the surging water and executed swift maneuvers with confidence and ease.

You took off your sunglasses, placing them on your head to get a better look at him as he returned to shore, walking back to his own designated spot. He had a toned physique, and his shorts were hanging low on his waist. His hair was tied back in a braid, and his tousled, wet bangs stuck to his skin, adding to his allure. Hot damn. You swore you'd never seen someone this attractive before.

You wandered closer to the shore, where the surfer was resting after an impressive session. It took everything in you to muster up the courage to approach him and strike up a conversation. But you knew that if you didn't take this chance, you would lose the opportunity to see this heartthrob again. So, naturally, you approached him with a warm smile.

"Hey, that was so cool!" You complimented, trying to make your voice heard over the crashing waves.

The surfer caught your gaze and gave you a friendly smile, making your heart flutter. It seemed he was taking a moment to catch his breath from how he was panting and chugging water from his water bottle, a few stray droplets trickling from his chin down to his neck.

His surfboard was resting beside him— it looked custom, with a black-and-white pattern on it, presumably a reflection of his unique style.

"Thanks, beautiful." He replied with a laid-back charm, flashing you another charming smile that made your heart skip a beat. He caught your eye for sure— you couldn't help but be drawn to his striking white hair and laid-back vibe, both difficult to overlook.

You blush at his nickname. "What's your name?"

"Nikolai." He pats the spot next to him on the sand, inviting you to sit down.

He lowered himself onto the sand, his arms supporting his weight as he closed his eyes, basking in the sun's warmth. It was impossible to avert your eyes from how his body glistened under the sun, his muscles flexing with each relaxed movement. He lifted one arm to smooth through his hair, his fingers gliding through his bangs, exposing his forehead. The water droplets trailing down his sun-kissed skin stirred something within you, a warm feeling growing in your stomach.

"Do you come to this beach often, Nikolai?" You ask as you sit down, eager to engage in conversation and get to know more about him.

His eyes opened to meet yours again. "I do! I love the beach. There's no better feeling than lying down on the sand and breathing in the fresh air."

A smile tugged at the corner of your lips while you nodded, agreeing with his statement. However, you were curious about something.

"Why do you surf?"

He laughed a little at your question, clearly amused by your curiosity.

"Well, what can I really say besides it's fun? It's calming and it makes me feel free in a way, you know?" He shrugged his shoulders, though he had a smile adorning his face and a light of passion in his eyes. It was only now that you could take a good look at his eyes now that you were up close to him, and gosh, were they beautiful. Though, you didn't want to compliment them just yet since you felt a bit shy all of a sudden. Maybe another time. Your eyes darted quickly to peek at his flushed cheeks— a result of being out in the sun for a while, thinking about how handsome yet cute he looked before looking away.

You listened intently to him, burying your feet into the sand and smiling at his response. "I get that. I've never been surfing before but it seemed really fun by the way you had a smile on your face the entire time."

"Oh, you were watching me? Creep." He teased, his laughter filling the air.

"N-No, I just–!" You felt embarrassment creeping up your cheeks. Maybe you shouldn't have been so forward?

"I'm kidding, doll. I find it quite flattering actually, that people like watching me. I am fascinating after all, aren't I?" He joked with lightheartedness, making you feel at ease. You found yourself drawn to his easygoing nature and the warmth that emanated from him. With a magnetic charisma like that, there's no doubt that many people are attracted to him, you thought. It's as if his warm and friendly attitude reflects the amount of time he spends in the sun.

"I could teach you sometime if you want." He nudged your shoulder playfully.

"Really? I would love that!" You exclaimed a little too quickly, your voice tinged with excitement. Learning from him felt like a thrilling adventure waiting to happen, after all.

He only grinned, finding your determination and enthusiasm cute, gaining more interest in you. The both of you ended up chatting for a while, the sound of the waves providing the perfect backdrop to your budding connection.

Meeting Nikolai, without a doubt, added an unexpected spark to your beach day, leaving you with the sweet anticipation of future experiences and shared waves with him.

[qtubbo]

They need a mediator to let Tubbo know how Dapper feels. Dapper did try asking at Fit's birthday but Tubbo brushed him off because he didn't get that it was a serious question. If Bad says something to him, and especially if Sunny is around to hear it, I do think he'd apologize. He wants fake egg beef not a real one. Making jokes and one-upping each other with create would probably be great enrichment for both of them! There is a small chance of them meeting before/after the event this weekend but even if Bad talks to Tubbo without Dapper being there they could clear it up. Not sure how likely all that is to happen but I can hope because Dapper deserves it.

I want Dapper’s happiness first and foremost, plus yeah Tubbo wants a silly ridiculous beef because the idea of having fake beef with a kid is funny to him. If Dapper tells him directly, Tubbo as he has before will misread it as just Dapper starting something to be funny, when no Dapper is infact a child who is upset that this random guy doesn’t like her. Best case scenario is someone who knows Dapper well mediating a conversation between them and Tubbo, because then Tubbo will understand (unless he’s in a content mood those do happen sometimes…) that Dapper is seriously upset.

I think the best thing we can hope for realistically is Bad talking to Tubbo about it, and Tubbo realizing Bad is being for real about what Dapper is feeling. This is really different from most egg adult conflicts, from the fact Tubbo is purposefully making those really harsh statements but he’s doing it under the guise that Dapper is playing to.

[schismusic]

Joy Division, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love New Order, too

Spring is weird as hell because one time you have this glaring sun that powers you up like being plugged into a wall outlet, then not five minutes later clouds begin to gather and you feel like you're going to die if anything goes south. So the most obvious combination to represent two sides of this same coin, emotional and meteorological, is Joy Division and New Order.

Sometimes you need Transmission or Shadowplay for the sunny days — impassioned jolts, sparks flying everywhere. Sometimes The Perfect Kiss hits harder on a cloudy afternoon, coming back home and in need of that extra push to not fall asleep in the train. It's surprising to realize the versatility displayed by both bands, or the same band in two different iterations according to whomever you ask. Peter Hook says, as late as 1993, that the laziest member of New Order is Ian Curtis. Or again this other person, in the comments under the Atmosphere official video on YouTube, who went to see New Order (Hooky-less New Order, which might be a relevant distinction) at the O2 Arena a couple of years ago and they gave an encore, says "Those of us who stayed got the privilege of watching Joy Division perform three of their songs". Interesting outlook on the matter. I personally saw Peter Hook and the Light play both Joy Division records and, I'm pretty sure, an encore comprised of just Love Will Tear Us Apart at the Arti Vive Festival in Soliera, back when it was still free to attend some of the events. I remember being pretty mad that Hooky had stopped to take pics with basically everyone and then left exactly as I was approaching. In retrospect I don't exactly blame the man, it was like midnight anyway. I remember nothing of the back trip home.

My first contact with Joy Division happened when I was thirteen and very much in my prog era. I was in Rome staying at an aunt of mine's place for my fourteenth birthday and she told me I could get a CD, since I had gotten some money saved up over time. Some Facebook page dedicated to Pink Floyd I'd liked (yeah, Facebook at age thirteen — I literally just wanted to play a fucking Flash game, back when Facebook allowed them, and I ended up getting to be terminally online. Crazy how things turn out) used to share a lot of memes and fanart relating to the Unknown Pleasures album cover, and me being a massive Pink Floyd head at the time I thought "I mean, if these guys are pushing this band so hard, that's gotta mean something". The album cover was pretty striking, admittedly: a far cry from the paisley ass paintings that I had grown to accept as the gold standard for the music I liked, but its simplicity struck a chord closer to The Dark Side of the Moon, or perhaps The Wall. Those were records I liked a lot, probably called them "the best records ever made" to more than one person, not like they aren't but that's a very bold statement to make when your listening experience consists exactly of

Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor when I was six;

Daft Punk's complete discography (minus Random Access Memories, which wasn't out yet) when I was twelve;

Pink Floyd's complete discography, courtesy of a CD collection coming out with some Italian newspaper, that same year;

a couple random classic rock records recommended to me by older friends and relatives usually well into their fifties or sixties at the time, random people on Internet forums — which, for clarification, I did not actively attend, preferring to just lurk from time to time — and the OndaRock "milestones" page.

So browsing through the surprisingly expansive CDs section of this electronics shop in Rome, and being mesmerized by a vinyl rack in the days when Music on Vinyl was the final frontier of pretending you could re-analogue the digital ("you mean to tell me these are like CDs, but bigger? Whoever designed these truly lived in the future"), I came across that very same album art that had stricken me so hard. I had listened to the first seconds of the album on YouTube, but that weird drum sound — so echoey, so distant, ultimately not particularly powerful, meaning it didn't really sound like Bonzo: it sounded more like my own band, which at the time didn't even exist yet — I didn't really know what to make of. This store I was in had one of those preview listening machines that would scan the barcode on the CDs and give you a small snippet of the song. I pull the CD up to the scanner, the scanner lights up green, I put on the headphones and the solo from this comes up:

Clearly they had to be kidding me. I had come to know, sneaking into infinitely many rehearsals with the band from my mother's town, what it sounded like when someone tried to play lead without something else filling up the arrangement (even though I didn't really know all that, or at least lacked the vocabulary to properly express it) and, for Christ's sake, didn't these guys notice rehearsing? It sounded empty, weirdly so, and it wasn't my thing, I thought. I put that CD away and picked up a band I knew I'd like — Genesis, specifically. So Nursery Cryme became the first CD I've ever paid with my own money, the very day I turned fourteen. Not a bad pickup. I remember being very impressed with the fast blurring lead guitar on The Musical Box and digging the sweet pastoral atmospheres of For Absent Friends and Harlequin. I still think of that record more often than one would probably assume looking at this blog, or my most played on Spotify. At the time, that was the best move I could take, really: why beat my head against a record that, as your average prog nerd ballbreaker, simply wasn't speaking to me?

Then all of a sudden in August of the same year my friend's dad hands me a 16 gigabyte USB drive, full of random music from all eras of rock. A lot of it remains inscrutable to me for a really long time, most notably Tom Waits (see related post), but I spent the whole month reading random folder names, seeing if something catches my eyes, and at one point I come across the Mars Volta. Open the folder up, read the names of their first three records, and my first thought is "Christ, these guys look incomprehensible. I'm about to have some fun". Long story short: I end up having a lot of fun, the Mars Volta turns into my favourite band at the time and finding out that they had previously been called At the Drive-In makes me gain some measure of respect for punk rockers: if they tried hard enough, I must've thought, they could prog as hard as anyone. In the meantime the ghost of Joy Division remains at the back of my head. I feel like I'm missing something, for the first time in my life: it's not them, it's me. Too bad that same realization didn't occur to me when it came to the people in my life until much, much later, but that's being fourteen for you I suppose. Early King Crimson and the Mars Volta were the pinnacle of violence to me, and not even the very few Metallica songs I'd downloaded just to see what would happen scratched that itch. It felt a bit too cauterized for some reason (I would later find out I had been looking in the wrong direction the whole time: the Black Album "sucked", according to my favourite metalhead of the time, who somehow catalyzed my interest from the very second I saw him in the school's courtyard. Hard to imagine why I would imprint on people like puppies do, but what the fuck, not like I've ever outgrown that anyway, I've just gotten better at managing it). But I felt there was more than violence to this, or different forms of violence. When Christmas came around and my relatives tried to get me presents, my mother asked if there was anything specific I was interested in, and I basically told her "look, if they can get me some CDs off of this list, I'm golden". It had some bangers on it, namely Noctourniquet by the Mars Volta — it's one of their best and I will die on this hill, be warned — and The Downward Spiral, which might as well warrant its own post in an ideal world. But the best of them all I think came from a random purchase, once again with the little money I had lying around at the time.

Closer appears to be, right away, a bit more concrete, and if there's something inexperienced music fans like is a pretty packaging that conjures a strong emotional response before they've even played the record. Compare a color-inverted graph of pulsar emissions to a literal funerary monument. Opening up the booklet I was shocked to see that Genesis was used as a negative point of comparison (bad omen, I thought) by people close to the band, and I came across much more detailed information about Ian Curtis's untimely demise — at that time, something far too removed from my experience to be faced with the delicacy and attention it deserves. Atrocity Exhibition hits like a ten-ton truck, a reference which at the time I wouldn't have been able to make for obvious reasons, and Isolation exposes all the nerve tissue under the skin. Passover comes in and strips everything even barer, and then A Means to an End turns… danceable, for some reason? Big emotional moment with The Eternal and Decades, which I thought actually took them closer to my usual tastes. And yet at the same time I kept looking at Colony, Heart and Soul and Twenty Four Hours as the most compelling cuts. Geometric assault sounding like sheet metal if it were music; rhythmically driven emptiness that serves as a minimal backdrop for depressed poetry, and finally a rocking ebb-and-flow that would probably inform a lot of my interest in GY!BE-like post-rock in the coming years. Very interesting to think that the same guys who'd done Unknown Pleasures could think of this. To this day, when asked, I still do think that Closer is the best Joy Division record, but what does it even mean when the records are exactly two, compilations notwithstanding?

It was around this time that it came to my attention that both Joy Division and another band called New Order had a record called Substance out, both published by the same recording company, both coming out within a year of each other. Looking it up, it turns out it's fully intentional, because New Order is simply Joy Division minus Ian Curtis. It would turn out to be a tad bit more complex than that. Anyway, I look New Order up and kind of have to do a double-take. Synthpop? In my Joy Division? More likely than you'd think, considering Isolation exists. But yeah, that sort of seals it — I wouldn't care about this New Order for a million years. Until all of a sudden a couple of years later David Sylvian bursts like a comet in my face, which of course leads me straight to Japan, the same year as I'd come across Berlin-era Bowie, and you can probably guess where this is going, right?

Well, you'd be wrong. I still don't check out New Order. There's a whole new world open to me — vaporwave and therefore R Plus Seven come to my attention, which leads me to dissect that record like an alien tool of unclear purposes. This of course leads me onto an ambient tangent, taking me back to my Tim Hecker listens of that same year, which has the effect of renewing my interest in "pure" electronic music and the then-rising post-dubstep movement. The sheer experience of sound, the dazzling modernity and innovation, is what's in at the time. I have no time for nostalgia-pandering dimwits: the future awaits. Then all that jazz from the first Godflesh post hits, then God pulls the funniest gag in the history of viral infections to my memory, and I have some time to actually look back, a bit less prejudiced. As it turns out, synthpop is not the devil, as some of you might have surmised by now, and as I relisten to Blue Monday I realized I have never listened to either of the Substance record. I do know some, most perhaps?, of the tracks on the Joy Division one, and I do think the New Order one has the more striking cover art — not to mention I knew, by this time, that this was the one to give Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance its name, and that Your Silent Face soundtracked one of the most memorable moments in Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson. As the ultimate Hideo Kojima stan, I couldn't let this slide, so I pop the record on and get hit with this:

Way to go, guys. Holy shit. I knew that Ceremony was a Joy Division cut before they could record it, but what the hell — Bernard got it, too. It wasn't a matter of singing ability with songs like these, it's just getting it, finding the right energy. They had that right energy. And then it hit me just as many times these dudes have made Blue Monday over and over again before actually getting it right, and everytime I look into it it's funnier and funnier to realize just how many different attempts it took them to finally be Kraftwerk, but augmented — with the stellar results we all know. Everything's Gone Green, 5 8 6, Temptation potentially, all lead up to this one moment in the history of dance music where somehow three dudes and a girl hailing from Manchester managed to out-gay the Pet Shop Boys (by their own admission, apparently), to shake the whole world's collective booty, to do whatever it is they were supposed to do in this last comparison that would ideally make the previous one a bit less obnoxious but whatever, it's 3am as usual, you know how it goes by now don't you? But then after Blue Monday the record keeps going, and thank god it does, because it's banger after banger. How do these guys keep doing it?

So I spend some time with that record, then it fades down, then it comes back up last month, when the weather calls for it and its parent company. Which is when I find myself watching the Control movie for the first time, surprisingly enough seeing as I already enjoyed the work of Anton Corbijn as a photographer. Looking at all that, it is revealed to me that Joy Division never really having died is not a bug, it's a feature. Everyone is gasping, I get it, but please pick your jaws up and check this out: the band has never learned how to play their respective instruments. One might go so far as to argue they play their own stuff their own way, and that's basically it. Nothing could be further from the truth. These guys jammed, a lot; that's how Joy Division wrote songs, that's how New Order wrote songs, even going as far as having Bernard Sumner fucked up on acid so he could find the chorus to Temptation or the whole band bombed out of their minds on X in Ibiza clubs to write, basically, the entirety of Technique — and even then, not really, there's a couple jangly tracks that the X would most likely render unlistenable but what do I really know? Point being: it might now have been sparked by a music teacher or instructor, it might not have been the product of a process comparable to that within Television, which led them to organically seek out better, more "by the book" musicianship, but New Order were incredibly familiar with their instruments, had formed an element of comfort and understanding that counterbalanced the alien-ness to music terminology.

Peter Hook recently uploaded a Yamaha-sponsored video to his Instagram, which I am pretty sure has a say in running, where he jams on a Yamaha bass and, you know, it sounds like Hooky alright, but it's never a discernible bassline until he kicks into the A major strumming that opens Love Will Tear Us Apart. Before that, he just strolls around the neck, leisurely strumming away at power chords imbued with that thick chorus and reverb combo he became renowned for. I would never, in my wildest dreams, have imagined I'd find myself thinking "okay, awesome, stop talking — I want to hear you jam a bit more" referring to one of the musicians who were part of possibly two of the craziest storiest in the history of contemporary rock'n'roll, also notorious for playing the rockstar whilst carrying the minimum possible baggage of technical knowledge he could. Once again, this is nowhere near a knock to the man — quite the opposite. Ian Curtis asked "persistence, well, what does it matter?", and Hooky (and, of course, the other members of New Order) found a way to constructively answer that question. Moments before Coil, but a bit later than Israel Regardie, they said "persistence is all" and built a brand on finding a way to consistently sound like splendid, eternal, golden children: "like crystal", impassionate, tightly-knit performers with the purity of a child's heart. Ian Curtis had, in certain ways (at least artistically), the purity of a child in his heart, which some might even argue was a distinguishing feature of most of his literary idols — if you think about it, William Burroughs could be your dirty-minded classmate who walked in on his parents sharing an intimate moment in the bedroom (had his parents been gay men, the metaphor would probably fly better, but that most definitely wasn't the case). So the heart of Joy Division remains untouched, if a bit more naked. Heroes of post-punk, sons of the silent age, you can sleep soundly tonight.

[bundrops-n-fluffytops]

Welcome Home Agere Fic - Mama’s Boy

Characters: Poppy Partridge, Frank Frankly, Julie Joyful (at first section)

Setting: Poppy’s Barn (living room, kitchen)

Premise: Frank is having a hard time warming up to his caregivers in little space, but Poppy makes him feel right at home.

Authors Note: I wanna avoid anything angsty here, just cute fluff and cuddlin!! I hope my silly lil fics can bring some light on the WH agere community, lol

—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about! That is just silly!”

“C’mon Frankie, there’s nothing wrong with being a mama’s boy!”

Frank Frankly and his dearly delightful friend Julie Joyful were having a light banter and bicker as they sat for tea one sunny morning. They had gone back and forth with whatever had come to mind - what new insects Frank had discovered, the latest play from Sally, whatever Wally would have going on - and at some point, regression came to light.

“You’re making such a fuss over something that doesn’t exist!!” Frank protested. Julie was teasing the frowning fellow because, recently, Frank had been harboring a closeness to Poppy Partridge - the town chicken. When times got difficult to handle and they felt themself slip into little space, he would go towards the feathered fellow’s comforting wings and let her take care of him and love him as a small boy. It made him feel comforted and safe, and all their worries would wash away.

And here, he was denying all of that.

“Come onnnnn, Frank!”, Julie teased, “it’s so cute! I guarantee it!” Frank felt his cheeks warm in embarrassment as he leaned back into his seat, gripping the handle to his cup.

“It is not,” he muttered, “it’s nothing more than tomfoolery, buffoonery, silliness I tell you!” Julie pouted, she just couldn’t get to him.

“What’s so wrong with it? Who wouldn’t want someone who’s arms are perfect to fall into and coddle you like a baby, isn’t that what you want? It’s like a dream you can see!” Frank huffed in response, setting down their cup and crossing their arms.

“What I want is to be clear, and dear I am quite clear that this is NOT a real thing!”, he protested, turning his head away from Julie’s sugary-sweet gaze. She sighed, sipping her tea and scooting closer to the grey and gloomy fellow.

“You are quite the stubborn bull, I can see horns growing from you right now!”

Frank rolled his eyes, scoffing.

“But, I won’t push. If you insist that this doesn’t happen, then I won’t fuss you further.”

Frank turned his gaze back, his expression softening slightly. His rosie-cheeked chum simply crossed her legs, leaning in close to his ear and raising a hand close to her mouth. A whisper slipped out.

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t cute.”

“JULIE!”

—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—

“A mama’s boy, huh? What’s so wrong with that?” Frank had soon found himself sitting alongside the aforementioned pheasant, Poppy. She had noticed his unusually more sour mood than usual, and had invited him in for a short talk.

“That’s not the biggest issue with this, Poppy… she’s talking about you.” Poppy’s eyes widened after that statement. Her? A mother figure? A complete lie in her eyes.

“Oh goodness, me? A mother?” Poppy further questioned. The frowning fellow nodded, sighing. This made Poppy think for a moment. She was aware of all the times that she had cared for Frank, little or not. On days that he was big, they would talk about the flowers and the bugs that grew around them, or he would help Poppy bake some bread or any new dessert she needed help with. On days that he would go small, she would read him small random facts about any bugs that he wanted to hear about, or just swaddle and hold him for however long he wanted to stay.

In a way, Julie was right. I mean, she sure wasn’t completely right, there were a few things she got wrong. But for the most part, she wasn’t too far off.

“W-Well, if she were right, she wouldn’t be too far off,” the feathered friend noted. Frank shot her a look, his eyebrows furrowed and a small pout on his lips.

“I-I didn’t say she was!”, she frantically corrected, “I was just… hypothetical, be-because if she were, then she wouldn’t exactly be wrong! It’s not a confirmed fact, ho-honest!” Frank simply stared for a bit, before groaning and slumping back into the sofa they sat at.

“It’s just… so embarrassing to me! I don’t want people to think I’m just some innocent and naive infant that needs someone to care for me every second. Is that so hard? To be treated like an adult?” He crossed his arms in frustration, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand. Poppy hummed and nodded, hesitantly resting a wing on his back as an act of understanding.

“W-Well, I mean… you regress, r-right?” Frank nodded slowly.

“Hmm… w-well, you can still be an, um… adult but also feel comforted by someone, can you not?” The grumpy fellow raised his head a tad, looking up at the bird.

“I mean, um… for me, back when I was a chick just molting, I thought that being seen as a child was the worst possible thing, so I began to bottle up what worries I had and completely shut myself down. It worked, but only for a while, and when it ended… well, all I can say is that I sure was a mess, haha! My m-mom saw me at my worst, and was the first to comfort me. She told me that, well… being an adult is very hard, so it’s ok to cry and-and tell others that you feel bad every now and then. It doesn’t make you feel any less older or any more younger, okay?”

Frank sat there for a moment, his gaze turned away and his arms crossed, and his mind filled with thought.

“Well, even if I did want it, why is it so embarrassing? Why does it make me feel uncomfortable even if I know I need it?”, Frank questioned. It was hours only gripe, as he really wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Umm… m-maybe it’s because you were taught before that it-it was something to be a-ashamed of?”, Poppy responded, “because really, it’s nothing to feel bad over! It-It’s okay to get a hug and a kiss every now and then, heh!”

“So… it’s okay?”

“W-Well, of course!”

It was so new to him for comfort to be something to be celebratory about. All their life he was told to “grow up” and “act like an adult”, otherwise life won’t help you. However, he never really considered that this childish behavior was something to embrace rather than hide. He was shy, but rather grateful for Poppy and even Julie for helping them discover this.

Frank untangled his arms and held them in front of him on his lap, fiddling with his hands. His head felt conflicted but fuzzy and warm, and his hands felt tingly and soft to the touch.

What ironic timing to feel small. Even more ironic that Poppy noticed it.

“Frank, dear?”, she asked, “are you feeling small?” Frank shifted a bit in his seat, nodding hesitantly after a second. He didn’t know how to feel.

He suddenly felt Poppy scoop him up into her wings and onto her lap, his face now buried between her body and her fluffy feathered embrace.

“You should never feel bad about needing a break, honey. Whenever you need one, you can always come to me, okay? My doors are always open… though n-not literally because burglars could come in, hehe!”, Poppy reassured. She kept her arms wrapped around the glum fellow, rubbing his back softly and resting her head against him.

Poppy’s presence soothed Frank, he couldn’t help but melt into her, burying his face into the crook of her neck. He smiled, though it didn’t show.

“Th-thank you, mama.”

—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—

[sun-flwrr]

SECRET POLICE :: OFFICER SUNNY

working directly for the government, spying on you!

ⓘ ... she/her , twenty , capricorn , intp , gmt 0 , personal blog

ⓘ ... tags

# statements ⚠︎ — random talk

# witness reports ⚠︎ — answering asks

# city posters ⚠︎ — reblogs

# romance regulation ⚠︎ — about my love life

# mugshots ⚠︎ — selfies

@iid-smile

[ask-sunnyfunny]

@askparappa Can i come round your house so we can play Cash Banooca on your Polystation? It's my favourite game 😍😍😍😍!!! 🥰🥰🥰😘😘😘 So High tech! Xx

[comedianflagwriting]

Writing/Roleplaying Basil from OMORI Guide

I am a writer and when I was in the Homestuck fandom, the roleplay guides were a great tool for assisting me in writing the characters and helping to have all the information in one place! I’m going to try and deliver that same level of help I got from there to this fandom! @derselord is my inspiration for this guide and I will be laying out a format similar to theirs. Be sure to check them out because I felt their character analysis was amazing. 

It is also important to note that the characters in OMORI leave a ton of room for interpretation and with the release of the manga I will make a part two to this with it in mind. I am going to try to go off of the physical facts as much as I can but I will have to draw conclusions from other less cut and dry events and dialogue. 

Disclaimer: These are my interpretations and opinions. I am but a random person behind a computer so if you disagree with anything that's completely fine! There is no right or wrong way to write or express a character, especially (Emphasis on this) in fanfiction! :)

Let’s get into it.

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

Personality/Character Analysis

First, we will look at what OMOCAT has to say about her character, then we will take a look at Fanon Basil, and finally some random likes and dislikes that people may forget.

Basil’s personality as stated by OMOCAT is supposed to come off as sweet and gentle, which is something we noticed right off the bat in the game. You enter the park and instantly meet up with Mari and are introduced to a flower-crown wearing boy who is bashful and humble, often talking down his skills in photography but still has a wholesome cheer to his hope. 

“The first iteration of him was calm and gentle- the type of character that has everything under control- a little more of a perfectionist, but all of those traits ended up on Mari instead. The next Basil iteration was Rowan, who didn’t have that calmness. He was just pure angst, supercharged with anger, and easy to cry. That type of character. That didn’t work well for me either, because I thought he was super annoying. So I made Basil by mixing parts of both Flower and Rowan. He seems angelic and caring from his appearance, mannerisms, and the way he’s thoughtful. But there’s still that angst underneath, which comes out through his nervousness. Even though he doesn’t admit it, it’s still there…” (OMOCAT, artbook.)

In this statement from OMOCAT as seen in the end pages of the artbook where she discusses the game and characters alongside the other artists in the ‘artists interview’, we can see from her eyes what kind of person she intended for Basil to be. His whole thing is looking sweet and gentle but having a very angsty side to him that he doesn’t like or want to admit despite very clearly being there. It’s like he is a coin and on either side is Flower or Rowan but with the lack of having it all together and an attempt to appear calm despite being a very nervous individual. She goes on to say that in response to The Truth Basil was completely unable to blame Sunny and had a dissonance of not being able to see him as a bad person. She also mentions when making a statement on how the friends are supposed to be set up, Basil’s description is “Basil… Basil is someone who you can always count on and will do literally anything for you.”

From this artist's interview, we can infer that Basil is a very caring individual who will do anything for his friends and has a very difficult time with understanding that people really can do bad things. An interesting thing to note is that he does seem to have this view at his core that doing a bad thing can make someone a bad person. This may explain why he is so uncomfortable with the thought of having what he may see as “undesirable traits.” He himself does not want to be a bad person. He truly wants to be a good person and aims to do what a good person would do but he often ends up going too far with it that it ends up hurting himself or others.

This shows when he doesn’t want to believe Sunny is a bad person for what he did. Sunny made a terrible, diabolical mistake, sure, but at least for you and I with a bird’s eye view and the power of literally seeing inside of his mind, we know he isn’t a bad person and is haunted by his mistake. 

This leads to the thought that Basil, who has these flaws and this internal insecurity, probably has an even deeper insecurity that he is as a whole a bad person. He knows what he did, he knows he has “undesirable traits”, and he doesn’t want to admit that to himself. This is a constant internal conflict for him and may be seen from an overly nice persona to mask it. 

It’s not even that he tries to hide this monstrous identity and that he’s some great big evil, it’s more that he just is unable to accept the fact that having some bad traits, trauma, or flaws isn’t actually enough to make him a bad person. The fact that he tries to hide that is at least thoughtful for the people around him, but like he does with helping others, he takes it way too far, and this leads him to being an incredibly avoidant character who has a hard time talking to people about things that are really bothering him.

Examples of Basil being avoidant and the lack of knowledge from his closest friends.

Kel, without knowing, gives him a way out of many situations. One such example is that “He has a weak stomach” and believing he went to the bathroom on Three Days Left because he was sick. Basil takes this and runs with it without mentioning that it was actually a panic attack. Then, Kel goes on to say that “He’s always had a weak stomach” implying that this is not the first time this has happened. 

RED FLAG: AVOIDANT

It also shows it has happened since their younger years which only pushes the idea that Basil, who is already an anxious character, has likely had this issue for a very long time, and has not told Kel about it at all. Not even when they were closer. 

"Huh? Y-Yesterday?

W-What do you mean?

A-Ah... Oh, right...

Yes, I feel much better now." -Basil when being asked how he is feeling after his 'stomach ache'

Kel wanted to hangout? Basil says no?

RED FLAG. AVOIDANT

Polly tries to talk to him but he is cold and locks himself in his room?

RED FLAG- you get the point.

Aubrey seems to know more about his state than Kel and is a little more intuitive about these situations, likely from their friendship before meeting the rest of the gang and perhaps from her own experiences at home. She could sense a huge difference in him after The Incident (Which would obviously cause him to be even more nervous). It is also mentioned that he “Went to the bathroom and she found the album on his bookshelf.” Which once again goes to show the bathroom is a safe space for him. She to some extent knows he has these tendencies but does not know how deep they run judging by her bullying. I will post a separate thread on her discussing her bullying and why it was so heated other than the obvious reasons soon. Basil has a similar issue with Aubrey as he does with Sunny by still looking at her from the lens of their childhood and refusing to accept that she was a bad person. This can be seen from the Japanese version of Omori where he referred to her as “Aubrey Chan” (I believe, do correct me if I am wrong) during an argument at the park. He also tries his best to approach her despite her clearly being angry showing a clear detachment from the reality that is their current situation.

Sunny is an entirely different ballpark. While it can be argued that the incident led Basil to hermit himself and become more isolated, it can not be ignored that he has a habit of bottling his feelings and hiding his issues from his friends. Sunny was the friend he talked to the most towards the end and they grew to be best friends and shared a lot of common interests. Basil states in game that he likes taking care of things and that he sees Sunny as “the baby of the group” and that he needs to be taken care of. This could be due to Sunny’s own anxieties, reserved nature, and calmness. With someone who is quiet and calm and doesn’t really push people to reflect on themselves such as Aubrey, Sunny was likely the friend he could tell anything to without being judged. 

“Yeah! We talk about how cool and composed OMORI is all the time... Or about how AUBREY is so caring about everything…” (HS Basil during a picnic. This is kind of a sad but funny dialogue because I am sure at one point this was true but it’s also Sunny being a lil goof in his head. Then again this is hikikomori route so Sunny hasn’t exactly been outside to see the insanity.)

He appreciates all of the traits his friends bring, but Sunny and him share a special bond that feels safe. This is why I can see them growing close because both of them have that inner turmoil but neither one of them is judging the other for it (to their face). This also leads to conflict as resentment can (and did) begin to boil over from their lack of being completely truthful and upfront with each other. 

This is a difficult thing for him to do anyway due to his worries he will be perceived as a bad person by himself and others. If Basil begins to think his actions are bad, then that causes him to have to work circles on whether or not someone else is bad, and the cycle continues leading to a confusion on how he really feels because he’s too afraid to actually feel those things. 

He avoids Sunny and Kel and rejects hanging out with them and is pretty curt with the “no thank you” statement. It is in his mind that not only does he think he’s a bad person but he thinks Sunny believes this too and doesn’t want to place a burden on him. This is a common trend seen in his character, the word burden shows up constantly with him.

"But somehow... whenever I try to help... I always end up burdening you instead."

Alright dude, a little guilting but I'll let it slide.

Anyways he isn't someone to blow up a lot and he's not going to freak out. Until he does. And when he does, it usually ends up pretty intense. It’s hard to properly gauge what his emotional explosions would be like considering we see him at one of the objectively worst times in his life, but from what OMOCAT has to say about his character and his history of repressing his true emotions that he, unlike Sunny at the current time of the game, knows are there, I can’t assume it will be good. There is just too much baggage that he tries to carry and he swings from one extreme to the other and it usually takes a lot to bring him to his breaking point, but even before that point, the issues he harbors internally only get worse with time.

“Hey... I'm really sorry to bring this up, but...Something has been really bothering me…” -Headspace Basil trying to vent to Sunny but being really gentle about it.

Fandom VS Canon VS Interpretation

Basil is seen as kind of a wimp. He quick to cry, leans heavily on other people to unhealthy degrees, his emotions are extreme and everyone in the group notices, and is typically sad and pessimistic while loving flowers and talking sweetly and innocently about little things he likes. This, however, is not exactly Basil. Basil does depend on people to unhealthy degrees but he doesn’t make that known because he isn’t exactly proud of it. To some people, such as Sunny given the situation, he absolutely becomes desperate in an attempt to navigate the problem together given Sunny is directly involved and there isn’t anyone else to talk to about it. This isn’t how he is with the others though. He will hint, tip-toe, and unconfidently try to convey that he’s worried he is bothering someone with his presence but will not outright talk about his feelings unless he is at his complete limit which may come as a surprise to the person he is flipping out on. I do subscribe to the idea that he’s quick to cry though because Rowan was quick to cry and in many of his emotion profiles he is crying be it from anger, sadness, or even happiness. He doesn’t tend to cry in front of people though, he is more of the type to lock himself away in his room or the bathroom and try to organize his thoughts. He also isn’t always sad and pessimistic and most people who are suffering from mental health disorders are not either. It is seen from a majority of the flashbacks that he enjoys poking fun at his friends, having a good laugh, and enjoying the small things. In the current time, there aren't a lot of things to laugh about but this should be noted from the game.

"Hehe...

Don't worry about it. You'll find out soon enough.

Shhhh... Don't tell anyone, okay?" -Basil being devious about poker.

A big thing also is that the friends all react to him very differently. Sunny can tell when something is off but doesn’t know how to approach it (though in the end it’s hopeful he will have a better idea of what he needs to do). He is very careful with Basil and the two of them seem to be able to talk about anything. Sunny is scared of him though. I think he sees the darkness inside himself and because Basil is so close to what happened he can feel that uncomfortable feeling. He is definitely scared from the way Basil reacts when he is under intense stress and his frantic back and forths. This can be seen when he tries to leave the room. Note that it was not always this way as Basil stated he could go to Sunny about anything.

Aubrey can also tell and is seen to be very gentle with him until you meet her in the present time and she’s not happy… at all. It should be noted that her emotions can definitely get in the way of this, but shouldn’t be dismissed that she is the one who recommended the group should stay the night at his house on One Day Left. She noticed him when he was acting strange after The Incident and tried to hangout with him to the point of begging to come over, and in Headspace, she cries at the thought he may be in danger and is worried to tears. I know Headspace isn’t reliable but I do believe it is an important detail because she cried on two separate occasions and was one of the last to forget about him. This shows me that Sunny knows they were close and that she would be worried if Headspace were to be taking place for real in the timeframe he is imagining. I personally believe that based on their closeness as children they were once very close and that’s why it really hit Aubrey hard when she thought Basil was a nutcase who scribbled out the photos. It would definitely hit hard for someone you really trusted to turn out to be a big goober. In the end he didn’t do that but he also did the other thing so I guess it balances out. However she did push him into the lake so there’s that too. That’s a lot of angry feelings for one person to have about another and typically it shows how much they meant to you before for you to feel so betrayed. Similar thoughts to her relationship with Kel and Sunny but that’s for another post.

Kel on the other hand, our sweet summer child, is often oblivious. He does notice when things are off and he is afraid to make them worse, but he really does have a habit of missing the big things. He doesn’t realize that Basil is having issues even to the point of stating,

 “You just focus on going back to being your happy, carefree self!” On Three Days left. He is completely unaware of what is actually brewing underneath but is also a very ‘To Your Face’ type of person and likely assumes that is how his friend will be and that his friend will be honest with him.

One last thing to touch up on in the analysis that’s very important is his codependency on other people. He wants people to like him and to care about him but he also isn’t used to it and as a result doesn’t know how to do it to a healthy degree himself. He has his grandmother and Polly, the latter of which he is cold to. His parents had dumped him off at his grandmother’s and Polly who had been there for either two years or three months depending on which dialogue you want to go off of, had only seen them one time and Sunny never.

Which is odd because they had spent a ton of time together. Like a lot. 

From this, it can be gathered that he has some intense abandonment issues. He also may have gained a lot of (seen in general) feminine traits such as his enjoyment of hygiene (reminding Kel to wash his hands and telling his friends to white their feet off on the mat), gardening, photography, and wearing hair clips and dressing like his grandmother picks out his clothes. He is gentle and incredibly effective. Why? This guy was raised by a gardening grandma and grandma’s (most) don’t really enjoy when someone is messy or dressing weird. Seriously, my grandmother cried every time I cut my hair and would put me in these little outfits. I don’t know, this just makes sense to me.

He is also used to having his birthday missed as he assumed his friends had forgotten and was delighted to know they had surprised him instead.

“(2/18 - MY BIRTHDAY): It's my 12th birthday today! I thought my friends forgot, but they all surprised me with a strawberry cake. I feel so lucky... This year is looking to be a good year!”

He is a person who is terrified of losing anything which is why photographs are the perfect way to showcase this character. He loves his photography because he loves his friends and wants to hold them close and take care of them just like he takes care of his flowers. He is passionate about his hobbies (up until you meet him in the RW) and although there is this soft sweet side to him, there is also a side that is in VERY deep turmoil and pain that he hides.

“It's hard to remember now, but... I think... at the time... I took photos of what I was most afraid to lose.”

In summary from this little spot, Basil is often boiled down to a few different traits but in reality is insanely complex!

Fanon- He's either Flower or Rowan essentially. Find baaalance

Canon- He's a nervous Flower but with Rowan lurking underneath (generalized)

Interpretation- Whatever else you believe/headcanon

Bonus Personal Head canon: I headcanon him as having some light scars after the encounter because they were slinging sharp shears all over the place.

Random Facts and Things to Remember

It is stated by HS Aubrey that Basil is a very considerate person who wouldn’t just wander off without telling anyone. This shows that at least in the past it could be assumed that he thinks of his friends first before taking on an action such as disappearing for long periods of time.

He rejects hanging out with Sunny and Kel

He wasn't the one who scribbled out the photos and was crushed by it

He was neglecting his hobbies when we meet him in RW

In the beta it is stated his favorite food is Tofu

He AND HIS GRANDMA have a staring problem.

Snow makes him sad 

H-Huh? Oh... It's nothing!

Sorry... It's kind of silly.

I don't know why... but snow makes me really sad.

He is NOT an honest person. This isn’t to say he is a huge liar liar pants on fire, but he definitely lies. For example, he will NOT tell Aubrey that you think dying her hair pink is a bad idea if you answer “no” when prompted. This is actually kind of sweet.

What do you think, SUNNY?

Hmm... Maybe we shouldn't tell AUBREY that.

“Don't worry... I know I can always tell you guys anything.” -Basil, who is lying. 

I do think he genuinely meant he could tell his friends things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he will. Aubrey had to press him to actually answer.

HS Aubrey mentions he would not like a gambling joint.

Kel mentions he has a weak stomach

He does not like his shots being terrorized by Hector and his shenanigans 

He knows that you need a good poker face when playing the game

Kel in HS outs him for being good with a camera and puts him on the spot. He doesn’t seem to like this or have the confidence to take a photo and mumbles: “Kel… why…”

He likes spiders because they help him with his garden and Kel once again offers him up and puts him on the spot to try and calm a terrified Hero. He is once again doubtful of himself but talks at lengths of their benefits anyway.

He says “ah” All the time.

He likes things that are cute. He’s called Sunny and Mari cute as well as Aubrey. Sorry Kel.

Dude is pretty mentally strong for going so long like this but is also a very haunted person

Was planning his suicide since before we see him

It is mentioned he is a very forgiving person

Aubrey straight thinks he is helpless and needs defended (HS) In RW he needs defending from her lol.

He's somewhat outgoing and a little too optimistic but it's usually a front. Not always, but usually. He just has an innocent outlook. Picture a traumatized stuffed animal.

“Ah! I'm sorry, AUBREY. I just thought you looked cute! I'll show you when it's ready.”

(Not a fact but funny thing is he’s called her cute, Hero straight outted Kel and told Aubrey that Kel used to think she was cute, and Sunny thinks she’s cute. Possible love triangle? Jk…. Maybe. NYAHAHAHAHA)

On Writing and Roleplaying (finally)

He does stutter when he’s nervous. Absolutely and this can be shown. Just don’t go too far! His stumbling and stuttering doesn’t always happen and typically only comes from when he’s flustered or upset. This can be shown in either the dialogue itself or from a description of the dialogue. He usually only stumbles on the first couple of words and sometimes he will pause in a sentence if he feels like he is revealing too many emotions and will turn it back around to make it pleasant or less suspicious halfway through.

 He also repeats himself if he is really bent out of shape and has a very child-like way of arguing when he’s upset which showcases the lack of development from the last four years and the impact on his psyche. Another thing to note is he hides his feelings behind a smile and is very hellbent on making it work. A

"But... tomorrow... you're going away.

H-HOW COULD YOU DO THAT!?!?

That's mean, SUNNY. That's so mean!

here are you going!?

S-Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!

I don't... want to be... alone... not again.

You... can't... leave me... again...

No... You wouldn't leave me. That's not like you, SUNNY!"

__________________

"H-How are you doing, SUNNY?

Is everything okay with you?

... Okay... N-Nevermind, then."

His delusions stem from him force-feeding his brain things that he knows aren’t true and pushing cognitive dissonance down his throat. This seems to stem mostly from him secretly believing that bad traits can cause a person to be a bad person which then turns into a need for his friends to not be seen as a bad person and then deluding himself from there. He does not want to admit that someone is bad. He even hesitated on asking Kel and Sunny for help with the photo album likely because of this exact reason. When writing from this perspective, just try to make sure there is actually a reason he is losing his mind and try to see the grounds that cause this problem. The main root of it is abandonment and not wanting a friend to be “bad” and cause them to disappear. It’s the same reason he doesn’t want to be seen as a burden because he believes people will not like him if he shares his secrets which creates an endless cycle of pushing people away. People often project their own worries and he is no exception to this. 

He appears to be very close to his grandmother and it seems she was attentive to him. There’s only so much an elderly parent-figure can do though and it was likely he didn’t want to bother her with his issues either. She seemed like the only person who truly cared so my heart hurts for him that she passed away.

"H-HOW COULD YOU DO THAT!?!? That's mean, SUNNY. That's so mean!"

Basil crying in my opinion is absolutely not out of character and I am all for pushing characters to their limits and making them surprising but truth be told, he really doesn’t just spill his guts out to people the majority of the time. It is mentioned he talks to Sunny privately based on the game and based on Aubrey’s knowledge of him she probably knows more than most would think as well. Kel is the only person I’d be doubtful he’d be super open with but they both do have a good relationship. Kel is the person who puts him on the spot because he believes in him to a very high degree. This is usually counteracted with Basil being completely unsure of himself and vaguely putting himself down. 

He seems to be an easy crier if you go off of HS portraits. Again, HS is not reliable but I do feel like the developers did have the character’s natures in mind for the majority of their HS writing though of course they are Sunny-centric since it’s in his head and he wants it to be that way. He is very sentimental and it honestly seems like he is easy to get his feelings hurt but isn’t the type to admit it until he’s at a breaking point. Just make sure you have some good conflict here if he’s like, exploding.

I thought he had tears in this one but I was wrong. You can't convince me he isn't a happy crier though.

Look. See those tears welling up?

Bro is an angry crier

Look at that stream. He does wear his emotions on his face despite trying to claim he feels a certain way. LOOK AT THIS!

You are not fooling anyone but Kel bro.

 "Psh… nothing wrong over here! Just… enjoying the winter weather… Aaaah, it’s so nice…"

Bro has a blushing problem so be sure to add that if you want.

He isn’t super obsessive in the way many paint him out to be but that doesn’t mean he’s completely innocent from this tag. His beliefs and behaviors show that he does in fact get very in his head about things and kind of assumes the worst about himself which leads to him apologizing for trivial things likely in the hopes of getting reassurement, which his friends often provide. If he were a real person, this would become a regular thing as people like being reassured and if hinting and apologizing gives them that sense of comfort, they will continue to do it. He does seem to think at the current time of the game that everyone hates him and is to such a point that he is outright asking. Repeatedly. 

One thing that I don’t see addressed a lot is how he would feel towards Kel being Kel got Sunny out of his house and spent all that time with him while Basil (despite isolating himself) wasn’t able to get Sunny out. I do wonder what’s going on in his brain about that because he was super angry on One Day Left and there is bound to be resentment. He does get annoyed, we see it very rarely, but it can be seen not only during the obvious Sunny-Basil fight but also during his small remarks when being put on the spot. It seems he rejects the idea that he has any skill in anything and isn’t the type to enjoy that kind of situation. 

Ahhh... Okay, I'll try!

Look at his face when he says he will try to convince Hero that spiders are not something to fear as per the request of Kel.

He is very unamused and this is also his sad sprite. I enjoy the explanation mark at the end of his statement paired with this frame lol. 

Here’s the one with the photograph thing when Kel put him on the spot.

Agh... Why KEL...

S-Sorry... I'm not all that good... Or even trying to be really!

I just take photos for fun!

B-But... I'm not trying to sell myself…

Wanna see the faces? Lol. Here.

Completely mortified

Attempting to be pleasant and recover

*Sweats nervously praying he did that right

He is DEFINITELY the passive-aggressive type so when he gets into general arguments, he wouldn’t be the type to lay out the insults but would rather start off by being incredibly passive. It’s more of the hinting/tip toeing behavior commonly seen. He is also more likely to take things out on himself, bottle up his annoyance, and then harbor resentment if the issue persists. Such as with our boy Sunny. RIP Aubrey, she’ll probably get a couple of those small quips but he’s also the type to feel HORRIBLE about feeling ill on others and is seen to be incredibly forgiving. He is definitely the type of person to make a lake joke I think, but it would be out of the blue, one singular time, when everyone least expects it. Stuff like that.

There was definitely resentment between both him and Sunny there which I personally believe to have been mostly repaired by the end of the game. He still cares about him to a very deep level but, just as Sunny, there is some anger. This is mostly from, once again, abandonment. When writing scenes with them, a good tip for post good ending fics is to think in the way he thinks and create a little bit of uncertainty between them because they both need to have a good long talk and they both tend to keep things from the other that they fear would hurt feelings. Basil tries really hard to make things seem like they’ll be okay but Sunny isn’t a dummy and sees through this. Basil knows this, he chooses to continue hoping anyways. There’s just this thing in both of them where they know each other too well to the point it can be uncomfortable because they can tell when the other one is hiding something.

One good thing to note is be sure to show off his good traits and harbor a depth to him because all in all, it’s who he is. Some guy who is friendly and sweet but who also has a lot of emotional baggage and turmoil following him around. He is actually pretty funny but he’s usually very unassuming with it like when Aubrey called Kel a prick and he didn’t disagree or when when Kel called Aubrey stubborn and he dismissed it.

He is also compliment heavy to the point it can get uncomfortable. He finds these very unique traits that are specific to the person he’s complimenting and he makes it very well known to them when he can. He also seems to be more of a touchy-feely type of friend with the hand holding, hugging, and brushing hair thing. Kel is also in this box. He’s the type of friend that hugs you and you’re confused on why he’s doing that and a little uncomfortable but you just roll with it because that’s just who he is.

He is the type of person who wants people to care as deeply as he does but does not give them an avenue or a chance to do just that and then begins to wonder why they don’t while knowing in the end it is from his own actions.

He does try occasionally to bring up his problems mostly to Sunny but is very hesitant to do so.

He fakes his smiles but is also TERRIBLE at it and just looks kind of scary in the process haha.

His friends mean the world to him and he is willing to destroy everything unintentionally for them. He also battles with a deep inner conflict that causes him to think irrationally at times. Very sentimental and sweet this guy cries with most emotions when they are intense but you usually wont see it because he will go into a private space so he doesn't feel like a burden. Keep this in mind when writing emotional scenes. He’s also either completely straight and sharp to his point before backpedaling or he beats around the bush so he can awkwardly bring up whatever is bothering him.

Basil does NOOOT like confrontation. Not at all. Remember when we looked at how he will take Kel’s assumptions and run with them? He is very hesitant when approaching something that bothers him (of course unless he’s at his limit and even then he teeters back and forth on what he wants to say and how he feels) and he will actively avoid it for as long as he can unless he truly believes he can talk through something. An unfortunate thing was that in his situation with Aubrey, there wasn’t a whole lot he could say but he did try. He’s not completely against trying and he will attempt for as long as he can if he feels there might be some hope, but in regards to his feelings and emotions specifically, he’s pretty bad with confronting them even though he really wants to. This is a parallel to Sunny who does not want to confront his problems and throughout the game has to work to finally allow for the necessary actions to be taken for the greater good of everyone and himself. A lot of Basil’s issues do boils down to a flaw of wanting and not wanting something at the same time and not seeking avenues to mend them. He didn’t want to tell Aubrey about the photo album but he did want to talk to her about getting it back. We do not know what it is he was going to tell her the two times he tried to talk to her, but he’d have to say something if she had given him the room to talk. He didn’t want to be out on the spot about his panic attacks and he did not reveal any of it to Kel but did to Sunny once Sunny saw firsthand. It seems to be that he is very much a one on one person where he would rather talk to an individual about a problem than to talk to a bunch of people at once about the same problem that may affect everyone. Once the cat is out of the bag with him, he seems to immediately go into repair mode and try to either elicit comfort out of someone or backpedal completely. He’s very complex in this manner. I think it looks kind of like this.

Issue- He will talk to one person at a time rather than the group of friends in their entirety. He doesn’t seem to enjoy being the center of attention and he talks to each character differently.

Emotional confrontation- Either very tip toe through the tulips and hesitant to reach a conclusion or an emotional explosion after holding everything in

Internal issues- completely hidden (such as his suicidal ideations, panic attacks, anger) unless confronted and then he has no clue how to approach the confrontation and goes back and forth on how he feels because he doesn’t even know. Is quick to point out what has been pissing him off or hurting his feelings. Will state exact causes but will also break down and be confused why someone would do something mean like that.

External issues (photo album)- will try to talk it out and if it has to do with someone first and if that fails he is prone to giving up. He does seem to find a small bit of strength if there are people on his side but he is still not confident in himself.

Another thing to keep in mind is how back and forth he is. Cognitive dissonance does this to people and can be seen during the Sunny Basil fight when he’s not only verbally going back and forth on what he believes and how he feels, but his moods change at the drop of a dime as well as his expressions. It was so terrifying when I first played through. Can you imagine being in Sunny’s shoes? He was switching so fast and didn’t know what to believe. It was a pivotal moment for him. This can be expressed in writing in a myriad of ways. One thing to avoid is to make him too straight to the point and one-lane focused.

At the end of the True Ending we can see Sunny and Basil’s nothings disappearing and some may speculate Basil’s didn’t entirely disappear. A part of me is cool with this theory because he didn’t really get a lot accomplished on his end other than waking up to Sunny smiling at him. I think BOTH of them still have a long way to go but I think Sunny has finally started and is able to begin healing whereas Basil is pointing in the right direction but still needs to walk for a bit. Keep in mind when writing post good end fics that this kind of thing will leave lasting imprints forever and that people can heal but still have hurdles along the way. There are also always times people do fall down after doing good for awhile and returning to having issues. Basil is a very back and forth character and with the way the friends were so gentle with him as a child it could be thought he’s had some issues for awhile and they are aware and treat him accordingly. Be sure to reflect on this because when everyone just goes back to normal or hates each other without any of the lessons from the game it feels off in a way. Create some nuance! Give them mixed feelings. (If you believe that is what they would feel)

Talking to Characters

He talks to of the characters differently and I feel like it goes something sort of like this.

Mari- He compliments her a lot and looks very highly of her. He does seem to enjoy talking to her and Hero and it gave me the vibes of someone who had to grow up a little too fast and was comfortable talking to the older kids and understanding their wish to keep everyone from arguing with each other. He sees Mari as someone who has everything all together and that’s something he wants for himself. He’s very inspired by her.

Hero- There isn’t a whole lot of dialogue between them but I feel like it’s on par with Mari. Hero is calm and has a humble side to him that I think Basil would really enjoy. He seems to like that Hero watches over them all so they don’t get too rowdy such as when they were fighting over the Polaroid in HS which I’m sure I’d likely based on a true event because it just makes sense. I think these two would have a similar mood structure for a generalized calmness and humbleness but they also don’t have a lot of common hobbies and Hero is skilled and trophied whereas Basil hardly believes he can take decent photos. There’s more confidence on Hero’s end than there is Basil’s and that would cause a difference between them.

Sunny- Sunny is one of Basil’s closest friends leading up to the incident and he refers to him as his best friend. He deeply cares for Sunny and wants to make sure he’s taken care of. Sunny is shyer and quieter than Basil, and being that Basil has his anxious tendencies and prefers quieter hobbies, it is likely he has picked up on this and wants to make sure Sunny is heard and understood. It’s what a good friend does after all and it’s something Basil would want out of a friendship too. Sunny listens to Basil talk at lengths about his hopes, dreams, worries, and fears and they used to spend a lot of time together! He also always looks for Sunny’s opinions but generally only speaks on it if his opinion isn’t going to hurt someone’s feelings. (Aubrey’s hair, for example.) he’s a huge supporter and can seem to pick up on things very easy by seeing patterns and assuming based on expression. An example of this is Sunny’s crush on Aubrey. He picked up on this from Sunny asking to look at the picture of Aubrey and noticed a pattern in wanting to see. After the good ending, Basil is probably worried constantly about how Sunny feels about him due to the whole eye poke thing and likely still has a lot of hurt feelings to navigate through. They will definitely remain friends though. There is this deep understanding they have of each other but with their personalities being conflict-avoidant, it makes it so difficult for them to be able to fix a conflict the two of them share. Basil wants to but can’t by himself and Sunny is trying to run away from it. Basil takes it very personally and is incredibly hurt because who wouldn’t be and Sunny is terrified. Sunny picks up on Basil’s small issues easily but isn’t vocal about them like Aubrey is. He’s more of a physically be there and Basil seems to understand this and is alright with it. An example is Sunny following Basil into the bathroom or his bedroom and knowing something is wrong but being unable to say anything. In the end, Sunny had gotten the shears from Basil after popping him in the eye with his fist or something, and the two of them had a HUGE fight due to all their boiled conflict finally just exploding. This is something I feel would be common between them with smaller conflicts on a smaller scale because while they are there for each other, Sunny is terrible at talking about it which is something Basil wants and will try to force out of him because he’s making himself panic. The thing that tends to chill Basil out is talking through things essentially and Sunny’s not good at it. I feel like this would be something Sunny learns he needs to fix because at the end of the fic he finally does just that.

Kel- Kel is different when Basil and is one of the people that I feel is really fun to write for when it comes to dynamics here. The two of them are close and Kel often cheers Basil on buuuut he is loud, confident, and excited about it. I like how Basil gently talks to Sunny and cheers him on, Kel talks to Basil and SCREAMS that he’s awesome. Kel is a Chad for this. Basil, however, not enjoying being the center of attention, gets slightly irritated or nervous in response but generally caves under pressure unless he’s really unsure of himself. I feel he and Kel would have some of the best laughs but otherwise, there is a huge disconnect between the two of them. He definitely does see Kel as being an awesome person though because despite not liking being put on the spot, Basil sees the good intentions. Sunny is also very close to Kel and I occasionally wonder if there was ever a hidden nervousness around that seeing as Basil and Kel are so different and Basil is shown to be very wishful he had the “good” traits other people had. I don’t see a lot of deep talks between the two of them but I do see a lot of laughs, cheering, and an occasional very deep conversation about other characters or situations. There is just this fundamental disconnect where Basil seems to think Kel will not understand the issues he is having OR that he does not want to tell him out of embarrassment or worrying about burdening him. He does better when people pick up on his cues such as how he picks up on Sunny. The thing is though, Kel is very supportive and does have a depth to him that he occasionally brings out such as the graveyard scene. He’s just a very hyperactive person which I think freaks Basil out a little bit.

Aubrey and him have my personal favorite dynamic because it’s soooo messy. Basil and Aubrey grew up as neighbors and share a dysfunctional family dynamic and she was the one who introduced him to the group. There will be some personal interpretation here based on the contents of the game so keep this in mind. Aubrey was the person who picked up on Basil’s cues such and Sunny knew this. You can tell because in headspace, despite her HS counterpart being in love with OMORI, he didn’t wash out how much she cared about Basil. This is supposed to parallel her RW character too. She cried over him being missing, was one of the last to forget about him, talked about how she missed when he brushed her hair, lamented he wouldn’t like the Last Resort and was offended at Kel’s poor drawing, and picked up on his behaviors when he was sad. What this tells me is that prior to the incident these two were very close. Sunny either didn’t want to delete that from her character or was unable to dismiss it because it was so fundamental. Basil doesn’t usually explicitly say what’s bothering him unless promoted and Aubrey was the person that prompted him and noticed and for that she was a special person to him. She is capable of being very rowdy and loud just as Kel is, but the difference is that she also enjoys the calmness of small things, shares hobbies with Basil such as arts and crafts, and sees a side to him that he doesn’t like to share and is more than happy to comfort him. This is why I can see her drastic change being so believable because she felt like everyone abandoned her and when Basil was one of her first friends and in her mind avoided her and scribbled out all of the photos, she was blind sighted with rage and pain and thought it was more of a situation of him not caring, not wanting to be around her, being a huge nutcase, and her being completely wrong about his character the entire time than it was her just hating him to hate him. She mentions at the lake how he is the worst of all for what he had done and pushes him away. She immediately regrets this as she mutters “shoot” under her breath and in the walkthrough guide the art shows her crying as they carry him away. She is so distraught at her actions that she locks herself in her room and opens up to her old friends about their story at the end of the game. Aubrey hates rejection and when she felt rejected she took it completely to heart. She tells the group they should stay at his house that night and tries to talk to him when he locks himself away. This shows that she genuinely feels awful about it all and realizes her error in that he did care about her. How do I know it’s not just about the photo album and has more to do with their friendship? It’s obvious because she never even learned he wasn’t the one that did that. She begins crying because she feels awful and is finally humbled to the point she actually has to think about it all and approach it from an end she didn’t want to out of anger. She assumed Basil didn’t want to be around her but didn’t realize the depth of it. It was never about her as much as it was about all the other things she wouldn’t have even begin to know to think about. Her staying at his house that night is clear she knows something is VERY wrong and wants to be there to be safe. She knows a side to him that only Sunny also seems to really know and that is why she is so gentle with him (in the past) and so supportive of him. People get their dynamic as one extreme or the other so much that I feel it’s very important to talk about them because there are so many small details that are so easily missed. I feel like Aubrey and Basil’s friendship has a lot in common with Sunny and his honestly. Sunny was more in his head and Aubrey was outward. She also never hits him with the bat, even in the manga she kicks him over instead which is still diabolical. In the game though, Kim is the butt who hits him (dang it Kim) and Aubrey is more of the person who isn’t really actively doing that but does let the bullying happen.

It should also be considered that despite this she did call him names and was very cruel to him and it inspired others to do the same so I presume there is a chance she isn’t his only bully since she told Hero other’s joined in on calling him a creep and stuff. This all comes down to her wanting to not only push him away but being so resentful that he wronged her and Mari that she wants him to feel bad about it and no longer cares what he has to say to her because she feels like he is only going to lie and didn’t want to be around her when she was hurting anyways. In Aubrey’s mind she went out of her way to be around him after the incident but he didn’t want that and scribbled their history away. It’s very nuanced! They say hate is one side of the coin as love and I think that her deep friendship with him from the past is made so obvious for this exact reason. This can be said for Sunny as well who was incredibly troubled by his opinion on Basil but eventually came through and realized that he mattered so much to him that he’d do something he’d been running from so that he could fix things. I love coins.

Thanks for reading, I used the Wiki and the Omori Quote goats.dev website!!! Thank you to the people responsible. Please check out my fanfic! There are Petals All Around Us and Loser Committee on AO3, I will cry. They aren't perfect but I've really gotten into them and I have enjoyed learning how to write for these characters. I will have more character things so follow me if you wanna seeee!

-CF

[notanothermacdennisblog]

It's Always Sunny in Tarodelphia #3

more sunny analysis using tarot

moving right along...

prev reading: Mac Finds His Pride

Episode: The Storm of the Century

For: Dennis

Spread: Pentagram Spread

Generally with this one I'd use just the Major Arcana cards of the traditional tarot deck, but I'm trying out a different divination tool this time.

Deck I'm using: Charms

That's right we're divining with charms this time! I gathered all the charms I could find, from old charm bracelets and pendents from necklaces. Each charm is assigned a meaning from a book of symbol meanings I have. The ones I couldn't find entries for I gave my own meanings that I hoped would add an interesting element to the reading.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. Significator - Buttercup

(ask a random PPG episode: S6E5 A Made Up Story)

2. Earth: Security - Trebble

(ask a random song from Spotify: Blood by Babes in Toyland)

3. Air: Thoughts and Influences - Horse

Wisdom, service to others, charity

4. Fire: Intuition and Desire - Key

Solutions, success, an answer will soon come, initiation, acceptance

5. Water: Emotions and Love - Bear

Dangerous environment, beware

6. Spirit - Lock

Security, stability, safety, feeling imprisoned

*Jumped out charm - Anchor

Dependability, restriction, lack of movement, burden, stability

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

(words that appear in the reading are bolded in the analysis)

The spread really calls out how delusional Dennis has become in regard to his capabilities of actually wooing someone, something that he not only prides himself of but also sees as inseparable from his identity. One could say Jackie was just too impressive, and he was momentarily flustered, but I think this really served as a wake up call, if not for Dennis than for us as an audience.

Jackie fit all Dennis's body specifications for the "perfect" woman, yet when faced with the opportunity he so meticulously planned for he royally blew it, because while his planning was specific, it wasn't based in reality.

It boils down to he perception of women. He is the Masked Scara from PPG's A Made Up Story. He automatically plasters women with the expectation of the "trashy look" whore persona. Every woman's first thought seeing him is "how do I get in bed with him?" in his eyes. And according to Blood by Babes in Toyland, they also harbor this deep seated desire to "be abused," to be treated however he wants. Where does this end and how far is he willing to take this idea? We don't see a lot of extreme violence from Dennis on screen; there's the rumor he killed Maureen (although that would have only taken a push), and his "vicious" scratches on Mac's cheek, perhaps even his crow killing as a youth (although a crow is different from a human). It's unclear if he has the stomach to follow through on something of a more violent nature (although it doesn't take extreme violence to violate someone).

All this to say, whether or not he exercises this perceived power or merely revels in the idea of it, he believes his actions are justified because women want to be taken control of. This calls back to Dee's statement that he would bring girls back to the bunker to rape them. That accusation's validity is inconclusive based on hard evidence, but given the way he's deluded himself into thinking he knows what women want, it's not hard to assume he got this wrong too. (Unfortunately Dee is also a biased source.)

In many ways he's also so deluded he could justify that finding girls for the bunker was a charitable act: "I'm keeping you safe from the storm, free drinks, you'll have a good time." While Dennis's charity was a rouse, Charlie legitimately believed they were doing others a service, completely missing the overt sexual tones.

The dichotomy between his desires aligning with a version of success and resolution and the feelings of panic and danger from his environment is interesting. He puts so much importance on initiation that he forgets how to follow through. Instead the request comes out in a tactless rush, almost guaranteed to be met with rejection.

So is it the chaotic environment that throws him off his game? He'd like to believe that. But that so resoundingly speaks to the security and safety that fantasy provides him with. Interesting that "feeling imprisoned" is also a meaning of the lock charm, and it goes along with the restriction but stability of the anchor charm that jumped out. Many motifs of imprisonment here: the physical restriction of being locked in a bunker, the intended mental restriction of the "implication" on his chosen prey, and the way Dennis's delusions restrict him from observing and participating in reality.

(up next a reading for the boyz from the episode Mac's Banging the Waitress)

[charmac]

podcasts can air episodes that have already been recorded pre strike and one I listen to has released a new recap episode today. But another podcast I listen to Drama Queens said they won’t do recaps for support of the strike (they have at least 1 or 2 episodes pre done before strike started) but they released a Q and A episode today about random stuff instead. I wish the announcement had said it was for the strike. Or on hold while we figure how to navigate the strike

Honestly, yeah. It’s very unclear if they’re suspending TASP because they’re supporting/standing with the strike or because they’re not sure themselves if it’s strike breaking to post anything.

I would really like them to post something other than a blanket ‘we’re on hold’ statement that shows support of the strike. As of right now, Rob and Charlie have both reposted the notice to their Instagram stories, but haven’t posted anything (that i’ve seen) in support of the SAG strike.

I get it’s a weird line for them as creators, developers, and producers as well, but right now two of their full-time unions are on strike which includes as all their actor friends and co-workers. I am hoping they will clarify this statement to say they’re suspending discussion of the show in support of the union strikes. It seems right now they’re probably still figuring out what they can and can’t do.

That being said, WGA strike started awhile ago and they’ve been doing episodes since, so they clearly determined as writers they aren’t strike breaking still discussing the show. Meg isnt an actor, so let’s just get a one-woman podcast going of her talking about her experiences as an EP and a Director on Sunny (and maybe spill a few set secrets as she does)

[nobodieshero-main]

Atlas Lavore

in the simplest terms: Atlas is the man who is going to save the world. He is the hero of the story, the leader of the quest, destiny's bitch.

He was raised in a noble family, by stiff and absent parents who neglected his emotional needs and were never very physically affectionate with him. He was the only child they had, and therefore their only heir and they were like. really weird about it??

wait- okay, so, the nobility ranks in this world work a little weird because of the gods so because Ako (learning, education, teaching, knowledge) is one of the Up There gods, good educators and scholars tend to be very high up on the nobility food chain, and Atlas' family are alchemists!

It's a magical trait that had been born into the family like a thousand years ago - (*checks notes* wow so interesting how that was around the same time the royal family was stripped of magic and atlas' destiny was written, wild, wonder what that could mean) - and then just Stuck Around so now there's an alchemist based caster in every generation who then goes on to teach at the university (big deal, makes you v important.)

So you can imagine the pressure Atlas grew up with, the expectations that he carried around with him everywhere.

And yet.

Atlas looks at the world as something to be loved, be embraced, to be seen. He's an optimist and is always ready with a kind word and a warm hug, he never lets anyone feel unloved or unwanted. He's hopeful, and kind - the kind of person that makes you think "there is bravery in being soft".

(not to say he is soft, bc atlas will kill a man with his bare hands and then turn around with a bright smile and ask if everyone else is okay, and he wont feel remorse for it if he genuinely thinks it was something that needed to be done.)

He became the person he needed when he was growing up.

He's also always been adventurous kid, climbing shit, and sneaking out, and attending festivals with Cecily. He always wanted more, wanted to see beyond the city walls and experience the world. (So, you can imagine his disappointment when he wound up as an teaching assistant for alchemy at the university, instead of attending classes where he would get to learn other stuff.)

So yeah! Atlas is the hero and he is basically the sunny skies to Keikas storms; the sun to his moon, the laugh to his sullen silence, the hands tugging at his face to force his frown upside down-

His destiny had been written in Vietua's constellations long before his parents were born, and the threads of fate run through his veins like puppet strings and will continue to do so until he finishes what Vietua has planned for him.

Then he'll be free to make his own decisions.

(Well, all of that would be true in a world without Keika, because i am a SLUT for romances that spit in the face of destiny and carve their own paths.) (and technically destiny does sink it's claws back into him-)

AND THEN!

Upset in the palace.

The Prince releases a royal statement of sorts that there's an organisation attempting to find and revive the last dragon alive. which would be terrible, so hes going to reward anyone who can find the dragon and/or stop the people behind it.

And so the threads of fate start tugging.

-

okay more just random information that i know about him

the man will eat ANYTHING (food related trauma from having his diet carefully monitored by strict parents?? maybe)

he's not afraid to get his hands dirty, and he loooves doing things himself

sometimes he does not know how much things cost though, bc he WAS raised in a noble family, so Cecily handles their coin (bc Ahria impulse buys weapons and cannot be trusted)

he's got his 5 4 keys for success locked down (confidence, getting along, organisation, resilience + persistence)

he has Really Good people skills (again: raised a noble)

he is excellent at fencing

he uses talismans and potions to direct and strengthen his magic, similar to the way keika uses a flute

[kepnerandavery]

what is the secret message from jesse?

He basically said, "take it from me here at sunny Boston, you can check out, but you don't really have to leave, right?" And then my brain started theorising lol. It may have been a random statement and I could be reading too much into it. But Idk, it seemed kinda sus to me. I think that he didn't have to say that at all if he didn't want to cause it doesn't have much to do with Ellen. All I know is that he wouldn't have said that if he was completely done with greys for good :)

[eddiebabygirldiaz]

Random Tag Game

Tagged by @bigassdiaz @buckitup @panbuckley @buddiearemydads

Muah, I love you all 💖

1. The last picture you saved?

I needed this to send as a reaction to a conversation @spaceprincessem and I were having about a walk to remember

2. Song you associate with your celebrity crush?

I actually don't have a celebrity crush (and for those of you who have seen my thirsting, that does not negate my statement)

3. Your favorite color?

Smaragd green

4. The last song you listened to?

Medicine by Daughter

5. Perfect weather for you?

If I'm gonna be outside, I like it sunny and comfortably warm with absolutely no wind. If I'm gonna be inside, I like it dark and grey and rainy.

Not tagging anyone because I'm very late to this but if you see it and wanna do it feel free to count this as your tag!