#sometimes discussing the things that your 1 friend does that piss you off with your other friends but then still hanging out with them | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thebrainrotsreal · 7 months ago

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NO ITS ALL GOODIE!! It was getting super duper long. AND PLEASE TAG ME ABOUT ANYTHING IN THIS AU I FUCKING LOVE IT AND LOVE DISCUSSING AND DEVELOPING IT FURTHER. I am so sorry I am going to make this long because I am a prof yapper and forever incredibly excited.

so basically they'll stay the same size for about 500 years. this is what nolan meant when he said mark would suffer…

IM CRYING SJDDKSJDSK they will this make the other’s problem or die trying. Yelling at each other to shrink. Threatening to collapse the other’s spine.

ALSO WASP KNOWING SO MANY TINY DETAILS ABOUT MARK BECAUSE HIS HATER GAME IS THAT STRONG IS KILLING ME SJDKSDK. They’re so unbelievably petty. Plus the image of Mark having to handle any/all reports because Wasp would rather bite a bitch than talk to inferior beings? Yes. Wasp simply isn't allowed.

also the petty hovering and instant competition... im crying.

WASP DOES NOT GIVE A FLYING FUCK (pun intended), he WILL NOT touch the ground. Mark considers putting weights in his shoes just to be annoying so he won't HOVER in school. Wasp takes them out of his shoes and throws them at Mark’s head. He is trapped in this dimension and no one can make this mf stay on the ground. Gnawing at the bars of this dimensional prison.

He KNOWS Mark won’t hover while Civilian Form but if he gets Mark to do it, he “wins” in making Mark embrace his more Viltramite half. Mark socks him in the throat instead.

they do not expect invincible to just fucking bite him after 8 of those comments

SDJSKDJKS EXACTLY. I think at a certain point Mark’s brain shuts off from having to deal with Wasp for more than 5 minutes at Max before he just goes back to their language of violence. He forgets the cameras and just CHOMPS.

The way public perception of Mark is changing BECAUSE of Wasp b/c Mark is cocky with villains with taunts, but IS helpful, and on the rare moments he CAN talk to civilians, he’s got a slightly nervous smile (or let's be real exhausted), but let Wasp enter the picture and again, twin terrors of heroism. Fucking Confirmed Biter. Mark hasn’t even bitten any VILLAINS (yet), it’s JUST WASP.

Also Mark saving some kid’s life from getting slaughtered because he keeps asking Wasp questions?? DJKJKFD. Mark is trying to be polite but he just ends up yelling "RUN" while Wasp goes fucking feral.

it goes from throwing cars, to throwing real life dinosaurs (mark doesn't want to talk about it) (wasp absolutely does)

Wasp just whispering, “stegosaurus” and Mark looks instantly furious. Wasp wears a Dino shirt, grinning wickedly. Mark won’t elaborate or explain why he looks like someone just pissed in his cereal. Every time Wasp tries he gets thrown out the window. Rudy is practically shaking with curiosity, and Rex drags him away for his own safety. "But-" "NO." "BUT-" "I am not explaining to your little girlfriend you died because you're just THAT nosy-"

and wasp. cries (compliment him saving somebody)

AJSKJDKS. Literally one of the best ways to get at Wasp is this. Mf looks ready to CRY on the SPOT. Haunted. Heavily considers risking the painful noise just to kill someone and even the odds. Get his hands bloody and to “wash” away that hideous sense of Doing Right Thing.

Mark fucking grins so awfully wide when he hears about Wasp saving someone too. He’s not letting this go for YEARS. Wasp tries to strangle him right than there, Mark laughs is hard he almost consciousness.

or uh. they try. sometimes they'll start fighting each other too so it's less of a 1 v 2 fight and more of a… 1v1 V another 1 fight lol

Okay but that’s also so fucking funny, the Wasp will kick Mark to the moon for TRYING to battle the bad guy Wasp already called dibs on and it makes the bad guy SWEAT because,,, “wasn’t that,, your hero friend??” And Wasp just turns back with Murder on his eyes before getting slammed into the ocean by Mark. Some bad guys just try to flee at this point because if they do that to EACHH OTHER what are they going to do to YOU? Anyways it’s a 30/70 chance for good cooperation that slowly increases as they bond.

Wasp still does the whole grabbing the bad guy by the ankle and refuses to give it to the day he dies. Menace until the grave.

unless it's to like. bring the other to their side

Mark “I NEED you have a chance to improve because that means I do, that if I ever went that far I could claw my way back, that I can STAY kind”, VS Wasp “I NEED you to submit to the need for violence, the hunger for battle, the parts you neglect and shame because I CAN’T be you, you disgust me, you weaken yourself for inferiors, you CARE, I WORKED to be this, and I DESPISE I can unravel into YOU” . Mark and Wasp "This is me at my WEAKEST." Mark and Wasp hating each other because they hate what they could be, my beloved. Mark and Wasp loathing themselves. Looking away from the mirror because the glimpse is burning, a wretched horrid thing to endure.

it's easy to start viewing them as two separate beings, but they're really. not. they're evenly matched in everything. this is why wasp likes fighting mark. this is why mark doesn't like fighting wasp

Okay I know what I’m drawing damn the imagery is fantastic, wasp's “I knew you had it in you” DAMNNNN.

But Mark? Bro is operating on hard mode, he holds back, he tries to make sure people are safe, he doesn’t have training, he has to be careful, bo is exhausted always and WANTS a fight to just fucking END. Wasp will drag a good fight out for YEARS if he could.

Also thinking about the twisted sense of nostalgia Wasp gets when he actually gets injuried in battles, when he can lose himself in the fear/excitement/adrenaline, he got good enough injuries got less and less likely back in his dimension. Now it's just scaring the people who are as tough as paper.

not all the memories from it can be bad, right?

Wasp keeping the good memories close to his chest and only dishing them out to mock mark or win an argument, because it's what he cherishes at the end of the day. It's still his. And there'ss still this version of himself who FEARS and REJECTS IT.

Wasp thinking about his Dad when he had his first kill. Nolan who soothed all his worries and his guilt. Who told him how proud he is and getting ice cream after. Nolan teaching him out to fight. How to kill. How to win. How to bury the guilt. Wasp “how could you ever make me want to hate him?” Vs Mark “How could you do anything but?" (Lies, Mark still misses Nolan. They both do.)

But if Mark ever looks at Wasp with pity (ESPECIALLY if he ever shared these memories), Wasp will try to fucking kill him right then and there. Genuinely end his life.

"your handwriting sucks, don't hold the pencil like that" etc etc etc

What makes it even better is THEYRE THE SAME PERSON. THEY DO IT THE EXACT SAME WAY SDJKF

alternate version: gasoline gets them drunk

Im crying. The image of Debbie coming home to fucking Wasp and Mark SOBBING and smelling like gasoline and just like "???" She asks if they’re okay and they just burst into tears again. They’re punching each other while they do it, but it’s with like 0 strength.

It would fucking all me if they’re both sad drunks so it’s just two sad self hating idiots that can cry over literally anything in sight.

“I hate you” “I know… I hate you too” “I know” they kick each other and fall off the couch. They forget they can fly and lay there for half an hour until one of them shoves each other again and they float against the ceiling like a balloon.

"I love flying" "you're copying me." "i am you." "no. only me. you're like some.. stupid copy." "no YOU'RE the copy. fucking evil." "fucking pussy." this goes on for hours in loops.

also WIPS VIA UR LOVELY IDEASSSSSSSS.

@thebrainrotsreal HEY SORRY FOR TAGGING(? PINGING(? U, ITS ABOUT THE AU. I DIDN'T WANT TO MAKE THE OTHER POST THAT LONG LMAO

FLYING BEING NATURAL TO VILTRUMITES MY BELOVED

ASJDAJSD MARK TRYING TO GET AWAY W SLIGHTLY HOVERING(? IN A WAY THAT IS BARELY NOTICEABLE TO ANYONE BUT HE CAN'T DO IT WHILE HE WALKS BC HE JUST, DEFAULTS TO ACTUAL FLYING

mark and wasp are the same height, and they hate it almost as much as they hate each other. even if wasp is older than mark (read somewhere he could be 20, not sure tho), he'd still look 17 bc of the weird viltrumite aging thing

so basically they'll stay the same size for about 500 years. this is what nolan meant when he said mark would suffer...

ANYWAY. That thing abt them wanting to be taller than the other made me laugh and reminded me of a shadowpeach hc i posted on 2022(? LMAO

gonna use the same hc w them too

so. they're out as invincible (they still haven't decided on a name yet. wasp says he's stronger and therefore should be called invincible, but mark points out that he's the one in charge and also that this dimension is his. mark gets to keep it. they're still arguing about what to name wasp) ("why don't you just go by "vincible"?" "no.")

mark is talking to some gda agent or a cop or smth, when he notices that wasp (who is looking at the sky w the most bored expression he can muster, bc he genuinely doesn't understand why they have to talk to such inferior beings) seems to be just, a few milimeters taller than him (he may be shit at schoolwork, but if you hate someone enough you can notice the smallest details about them)

he, w/o stopping the conversation, answers to this by floating just a little higher, barely noticeable to the human eye

ofc, i said "human" eye

wasp notices. he flies higher

mark flies higher too

eventually he's screaming instead of talking bc of how far down the cop is

wasp laughs. now mark is screaming at him

they fight

ALSO WASP REFUSING TO STOP FLOATING AS A CIVILLAIN IS SO FUNNY AJDSHFASJ, IMAGINE THE AMOUNT OF TROUBLE HE'LL GET MARK INTO

PLS. THEM TRYING TO GNAW THEIR ARMS OFF BC THEY HATE BEING NEAR EACH OTHER SM ASJFHADJFH

most normal ppl r used to mark working alone as invincible. so since wasp really doesn't do interviews and he's usually too fast to see when he fights, no one really knows what his name even is

and everyone is used to invincible being. well. invincible. sure, the news say that when he's around this guy he gets a little meaner, but it can't be that bad!

it is that bad

wasp says smth mean n sarcastic. everyone expects invincible to answer w something equally sarcastic, but not as mean (maybe making fun of how his suit looks). they do not expect invincible to just fucking bite him after 8 of those comments

wasp keeps trying to kill This One Kid, who is either super brave or super stupid and won't stop asking him questions (they go from "what's your name?" to "what underwear do you have? do you even need underwear?" in a matter of seconds) for his weird school diary thingy

he can't get close, bc mark starts pulling the other way. besides, they're stuck together, and killing people would seem awfully annoying if it's with this guy

they can't punch each other, so wasp bites him. they bite each other a lot bc of the "no punching (or kicking)" thing

"Wasp throws a car at Mark which Mark instinctively swats away and then goes flying after it to prevent it from slamming into a building. Wasp cackles so hard it gets hit by a laser beam to the throat by some other bad guy." ASJDSAJDHDSJFAH YES THAT'S SO FUNNY

they mess w each other sm

it's funny bc they do the same things to annoy each other (wasp throwing a car at mark, mark hitting him with a tree, etc) , but lose their shit when the other does it to them

they're basically this:

mark, sleep deprived, flies straight into a lamp post

wasp laughs at him. he actually laughs so hard he runs into the same lamp post

there are a lot of compilations on youtube that is just them laughing at each other mid fight and running into things or being hit w stuff the other throws at them

they grow more wild every time

it goes from throwing cars, to throwing real life dinosaurs (mark doesn't want to talk about it) (wasp absolutely does)

"Cecil remarks Mark handled something well and he looks like Cecil just told him his entire family got slaughtered."

THISSS

"you did well today. hella efficient, quick and straight to the point. who taught you that?"

mark: D:

and also,

"oh, wow. you saved an entire family and their cat from a villain that wanted to turn them into zombies while mark was off fighting the bad guys? that's great!"

and wasp. cries

"oh no, no, you think I'm gonna help you?" THIS TISHTISHTSIHIST

this really feels like smth he'd say in canon. he'd say it w a smile, half-shocked half just pretending out of amusement

he'd laugh too

it's the same type of cocky tone of voice sinister mark/wasp used when teasing angstrom

"I gotta imagine if they tackle things separately, they are also allowing each other to do they want and like to do?" YEAH!!

it's hard 'cause wasp always wants to take the bad guys on alone, but mark also likes to fight (just not w the same brutality) and he doesn't want to be just a lifeguard

it takes wasp a while (a LONG while) to stop tackling mark when he's about to attack to get to the enemy himself, or to kick mark into the next country, etc etc etc

but eventually they settle on mark getting everyone to safety while wasp stalls the bad guy. then, after he's sure no one's here anymore, they both fight the villain together

or uh. they try. sometimes they'll start fighting each other too so it's less of a 1 v 2 fight and more of a... 1v1 V another 1 fight lol

"Mark's own reaction that truly confirms it to be true"

he gets the episode 8 levels of anger and anguish

HE'S JUST SO MAD

wasp is talking shit on tv and he just loses it

he immediatly flies off and tackles wasp into fucking space

i mean, they do say that actions say more than words, right?

mark is usually making the typical superhero noises when he's fighting, but now? he's just focusing all of his anger into This One Motherfucker

wasp loves it

it's a "see? i knew you had it in you!" type of moment

he's been longing for a real fight for a WHILE

they don't kill each other but it comes close

see, the things is. they are the same person. it's easy to start viewing them as two separate beings, but they're really. not

they're evenly matched in everything

this is why wasp likes fighting mark

this is why mark doesn't like fighting wasp (never ending battles are boring to him) ( he likes to win more than to fight. i mean it's not like he enjoys getting beat up)

we could dive deeper and start talking about the self-destructive tendency these two have to getting beat up. i mean, wasp's idea of a real, actually enjoyable fight is when the other is either able to beat him, or when he can kill ppl. and mark spends sm time out as invincible, neglecting his social life and mental health to the point he quits college, and he gets beat up a lot while doing it. so yeah--

self-destructive tendencies

"-having to confront he sees the exact thing in Wasp to a slightly different degree" i will ALWAYS love making them deal with the constant reminders that they're the same person

they deal w stuff in similar ways but to different degrees and realizing that gives them psychic damage like that magic squirrel in mca so they just preted they don't exist

unless it's to like. bring the other to their side

"you like fighting too. violence is in you, it's part of you. you're always covered in blood. all that's left, would be your hands" VS "you're me, and i'm you. we have similar thoughts, and that means i- y'know. but it means you are, too. you have a chance. and get that blood off you-- you need a shower"

COMICS!! AND!! WASP!!

yeah

HIM HAVING TO CONFRONT THE FACT THAT THE DESTROYING OF HIS WORLD HURT HIM TOO

because it is, in a way, his world too

he grew up in it. raised differently, yes, but still on earth

he was always different from the rest, getting his powers at an early age and all, but it's still the place he grew up in

not all the memories from it can be bad, right?

ANDDDDD... wasp reminding ppl of how strong he is regularly

"i could pull out your spine in a second." he says that out of nowhere, in a conversation that would've seemed normal to literally anyone else. he says it like it's nothing much. "i could kill you." you know he could, but you still wonder

would he? with how he is, with his inability to escape --- would he?

also he has fun when he watches the color drain from their faces

"Rudy has psychological profiles on all his friends he regularly updates like a diary, and he has one for himself too." NO BUT THIS IS SO IN CHARACTER FOR HIM

wasp talks shit about mark to anyone avaliable and rudy is no exception. even tho he finds him deeply annoying

honestly wasp is capable of doing p much anything to mess with mark

HE JST WOULD

the self-hatred is strong with this one too master!!! (sw ref again lol)

ASDJASJDSJAD THE BETTING POOL

wasp saying mark breathes annoyingly is such a sibling thing tho. "why are you chewing like that" "stop biting your stupid fork" "the way you cut your food is so weird" "your handwriting sucks, don't hold the pencil like that" etc etc etc

ANDD "he knew what wasp was going to say" DUDE YES??

he's talking and he gets. a feeling. and he turns to wasp, who is opening his mouth, and says "don't you fucking dare"

same w wasp. mark is annoying little shit too sometimes, he's also a teenager. so he infuriates wasp too

mark calls him a hypocrite

THE TWIN TERRORS OF HEROISM I CAN'T

imagine if ppl actually start calling them that tho

one day wasp calls mark to their? his? room and is like, "holy shit look at this" and shows him their? his computer

mark doesn't understand, until he sees the title and image of the video

"the twin terrors of heroism, terrorizing the terrorists once again" and its a picture of them kicking ass

"twin terrors of-- oh, come on, really?" "yes" "they couldnt have at least called us the invincibles or something?" "that'd be even worse" "...alright, i'll give you that" "..." "...." "they think we're like the fucking mauler twins" "oh you have got to be--"

ALSO this is so funny, them being like "mark/wasp" when they show up hurt or smth. everyone just learning to accept it. i mean what are they going to do. fight against two gods??

AND YES YES YES DO TAG ME IN IT!!!! if i make anything about this au (posts, fics, drawings, u name it) i will tag u too

alcohol doesn't really affect viltrumites i think, but there has got to be something that gets them drunk

nolan could've taught wasp how to make it. if the ingredients are on earth, then he would maybe try to prepare it on mark's earth. mark shows up and sees that he's drunk. he goes "nope" and gets drunk too, maybe on accident maybe not. debbie shows up and sees her two superpowered sons sobbing over a bowl of popcorn

alternate version: gasoline gets them drunk

#get redeemed loser au #I LOVE TALKING ABOUT THIS AU MY BAD I MADE IT SUPER LONG AGAIN DFJKDJFKDF #also the way invincible makes me wanna drawwwwwwwwwww sickeningly delightful finally got an idea for this #fuck hands and fuck mark's hair but i hide them via heavy shadow <- i am a genius #invincible also making me get so good at blood jfkjfkdfd #mark grayson #invincible rotating in my mind #the brainrotsreal's art tag ✧˖°:*♡

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enderwoah · 3 years ago

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ORIGINS SMP HEADCANONS (because i love them): SEASON TWO EDITION BAYBEEE

(this is really long ENJOY :gun:)

tommy

he is phil's son smile

phil's most recent son at least

he's got like one more somewhere

he picked this one up off the dangerous streets a few years ago and he's been sticking with phil ever since

his wings are small- not too small to fly, but they're untrained to the point where it would take a lot or work to get him off the ground

but at first, he didn't really seem to want to learn all that much?

(he has three scars on his face- all from trying to learn how to fly when he was younger)

(he gave up after the third one)

("if at first you don't succeed; try, try again" is his motto, and he tried all three times)

but!! phil and wilbur are very persuasive :) and now that he knows he can fly, he's not going to rest until he does

he's a little manipulative to get what he wants sometimes, but can you blame someone that lived on the street for so long?

he had to do that to survive! it's not his fault.

(it's a great excuse.)

he laughs like a kookaburra amen

he squawks when he gets scared

he chirps. he tries not to because it makes phil go absolutely bird-brained but he does sometimes and he hates it.

tubbo

NOW'S YOUR CHANCE TO BE A B[GUNSHOTS]

god he is. so fucking annoying (/rp)

he simply does not know when to stop

he ignores social cues to see when someone is annoyed

(see: he can read social cues. he does read social cues. when you get annoyed that's when he starts being more annoying, because you're more likely to give him what he wants to get him to shut the fuck up.)

he loves talking to (at) people, especially people he doesn't really know that well

so he's trying to be friends with ranboo, but the absolute prick keeps trying to avoid any actual conversations, so that's not working

he buzzes when he gets excited-happy

his fingertips are completely blackened and horrendously sharp, functioning as ten individual stingers

they don't do any actual damage but he's working on that

techno

wither hybrid (??)

how can you be a wither hybrid?? nobody got down and dirty with the wither

he's an experiment

the reason we haven't seen him yet? he's staying away from the main area of the smp

he doesn't want to ruin its natural beauty with his withering effect, so he keeps to himself on the outskirts of the smp

which sucks

withers get health from killing things

he's not fully a wither, so he gets energy from being around people and sort of draining their life force a little bit

he feels terrible when he's with just one person because they are Literally his life support and it makes the person feel like shit

when he's with a big group of people its great!! he only has to take a little bit from everyone and its barely noticable!!

but then there's the wither part. so he has to stay away.

he's always tired

always exhausted

he's a farmer, so taking it from animals works, but god does he miss people

but he can only visit a few times and for very short

(he's afraid that one of these days he'll get so bad that the next time he sees someone he'll accidentally kill them)

(it already happened once. he's blessed that he's been forgiven, even made friends with by the victims, but he doubts he'll be able to pull that off again with no consequences like last time)

wilbur

phantlings are dead elytrians, and given that wilbur was phil's son...he's a phantling

he died in the late 50s and was a librarian when he was alive, so he's very possessive (ha) over all of his things

you should never ask to "borrow" anything from him, he will hound you about it until you give it back

it's best to just say that you want something from him to keep

even if youre going to give it back

just for your own peace of mind

phantlings can feel fear and get a genuine feeling of elation from scaring people

of course, sometimes its unwelcome (feeling large amounts of fear from someone they care about in a bad way just makes them pissed)

but for the most part, wilbur loves appearing in the corner of people's visions just to jumpscare them a few minutes later

all in good fun, of course!! it's just hilarious :)

being the lighthearted, fun guy he is, he's not particularly secretive about his method of death

"how did i die? well, it all started -- ended -- on november 16th, 1958!"

"i walked out of the library late, since i took the shift for my wife since she was feeling sick and i worked there anyways,"

"the streets were dark and only lit up by gaslamps...and out of an alley...appeared..........."

techno.

he didn't mean it. wilbur isn't at all mad at him (anymore)

he was starving. he didn't know that one touch would be enough to fully revitalize him...

and murder wilbur where he stood.

sneeg

has details on everyone on the server

you Cannot Hide Shit From Sneeg

its impossible

if you find of his any shittly little mouse holes then you're doomed

you find one and there are twenty more

he's under your floorboards while you're having your important discussion about trapping the nether roof

sucks to suck ig??

he seems to be the favourite of many, which is weird since he rarely goes out of his way to actually talk to many people

he's the only person that tubbo doesn't actively try to annoy (or maybe he just doesn't find tubbo's antics all that annoying)

he's the only person that ranboo stays around (or maybe he stays around ranboo- he and Phil seem to be the only ones not off-put by his slightly sadistic and whiny demeanour (not counting tubbo, who annoys him anyways)

phil seems to be more protective of him than he thinks is normal (he lets sneeg ride on his shoulder while travelling, so he doesn't really complain)

niki is completely protective over him (again, not complaining)

contrary to popular believe, he does not get high from sugar

if anything he gets

high-per

(get it)

(high-per)

(hyper)

he's literally just a nine-year old getting a sugar rush leave him alone

phil

take the normal "bird-brain" headcanons and multiply it by like sixty-four

and you've got origins phil

he can't see glass- or, rather, he can, but it doesn't register that 'hey, this is a solid surface i am going to slam into'

its very funny for everyone else but he's pretty sure he has permanent brain damage from the blunt force trauma

if there is ANYONE on the server who dares to chirp, bird or no, they must understand that they are signing away their privacy and giving phil the right to go absolutely bonkers over them momma bird style

(shoutout to tommy, wilbur, ranboo, and fundy for having to suffer through this)

"oh??? you don't have wings?? you don't have feathers?? omg?? then what's this im preening?? what do you mean im just braiding your hair?? nono this is preening smile"

god help you if you dare to have wings

poor tommy, wilbur, sneeg, and tubbo

phil can't help himself alright

do you think he wants to be any sort of protective over sneegsnag?

no!! but he cant stop himself!! sneeg might damage his wings if he keeps flying those super long distances!!! nnnno! carry the bug man!!!

it's weird, he's always had that protective sense over ranboo, too

but ranboo very obviously doesn't have wings, so he doesn't get it...

ranboo

yes ur a peasant

yes ur poor

yes im cooler than u

what r u gonna do about it

the enderdragon's son! partially a dragon, partially enderman, partially human (don't ask, his other mom is a hybrid), all spoiled brat!

given that he has a ton of dragon genes, he's extremely possessive over his stuff and Yes He Does Do The Hoarding Thing

he has a pile of rings and gold chains and necklaces and most of his jewellery hidden underneath his bed

(if you ask him, no, he doesn't)

not to wear

just to Have

one time, fundy stole one (1) bracelet from the hoard and ranboo was sent into a panic for a good 24 hours

he wouldn't leave his cave and kept counting and recounting as if that'd make the missing piece reappear

(when fundy had to give it back because of the guilt, he expected to get his face bitten off)

(instead, he just watched as the prince was flooded with relief, telling him to get the hell out and nothing more)

it's weird, he has so much gold and even a crown, and yet here he is

living with all those people ^^^

truth be told, the enderdragon isn't a very nice dragon

nor is she a very kind queen

nor was the other queen

nor was her son

there was a mutiny in the end, leading to the dragon queen and her wife being killed brutally by the crowd of angered people

they went after their son next, who had ordered executions and worked servants to the bone just as much as they had

they cut off his wings in the middle of the square

he was sure he was going to die until a random person (a peasant) jumped up and yelled at them for publicly torturing a child

but ranboo didn't really catch all of it, given he was delirious from pain

he got to get some stuff quickly and escape with his life

this wasn't too long ago, either, so he's still trying to...adjust...to people talking rudely to him

(he's also trying to adjust to not having wings)

(hence why he hurls himself off the edges of cliffs and then has to teleport to the bottom instead of glide. he keeps forgetting.)

#this is so long #origins smp #originssmp #ranboo #tubbo #philza #philza minecrft #sneegsnag #wilbur soot #technoblade #tommyinnit #help this is so long

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6blackfilin9 · 3 years ago

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I love your Anko fanart! Tell me, what are your views/headcannons on Anko X Kazuku?

hThank you so much for the ask, finally I can answer it

here is my big thank you for the waitng

In a nutshell, the shipp was created by accident while me and my buddy were working on our first Naruto AU in 2019, where Kakuzu and Deidara survived their shitty plotholes end eventually ended up in Konoha

Yeah

so, the shipp’s birth date is july the 1, 2019

anything like classy, aristocracy kind of tension-filled passionate gothic romance with playful, psychological games & hurt/comfort vibes with slight scent of rivalry is KakuAnko

Basically, they are: a very, very old man with absolutely horrendous background who’s trying to finally have his mother*cking 10 or 30 years of peace, and a rather young lady with a rocky youth who’s being good & noble yet has very strong antihero tendencies

You know, I think they do have potential, since, in fact, they seem to be very similar, at the core

They are both very pragmatic realists, the people of logic and reason, yet if Kakuzu’s irritability doesn’t affect him a tiny bit due to his ideal self-control, Anko’s can lead her to quite bad places, sometimes. They put their interests in the first place, and even though she tries to attach them to Konoha’s, she still has ‘personal’ things (I’ll write ‘bout it lower*). Their mindsets are so complicatedly organized that, at some point & way, it prevents them from having many close people, and makes them very hard to see through and predict

Both of them are very flexible & adaptive, independent individuals with similar outlooks on plenty of things and high intellectual level. They clearly can find plenty of traits that they would highly respect and adore in each other

Here I will speak mostly for “why and how” kind of things, bc both of them are terribly tricky to accurately figure out. But there will be some headcanons too

So, there are still some odds about them, due to the strong difference in their occupation, like, in plenty of cases they are really tricky to be brought together, because:

- Of the job

In original, Anko is a Konoha’s special jounin, and she is very dedicated to serving the country. Independently of whether she likes her job or not (depends on the plot), she orienteers at the people, at society’s gain from her work. So, accordingly, in any other AU her job is somehow connected to civil service, whether it’s something police-like, connected to science, or something like CCG in Tokyo Ghoul

Kakuzu, on the other hand, is a hitman and a persona non grata in literally all the five big countries, Konoha too (which makes it barely possible to bring them together in the original universe without hard complications or heavy drama. But still possible). He orienteers on his own gain alone, but, depending on the job, it can include others’ gain, too.

This detail makes him a saint once he holds supervising position in some company or any high position in the government (the better the working conditions of the staff now- the more money in the prospective), and the sheer nightmare once he has it on the opposite side of the law. Him as a mob boss is a complete different topic for discussion, but to get the point, in this case, the trouble isn’t him increasing the level of criminality (its rather vice-versa), but taking hold of too much control in the high and underground structures. Even as an ordinary hitman he’s rather tricky, since everything depends on the case

In most of the stories, they come to some sort of compromise, and how hard it is to reach it depends on how shitty his job is and how attached they are to each other at the moment

Like, in the above mentioned Shippuden AU and Harry Potter AU (which I also wrote with my buddy) everything went like clockwork, because there they are both more or less on this side of the law, in Tokyo Ghoul AU (which I also wrote with my buddy) it is a bit more complicated, with her being in-law and him being very much outlaw, in the Avatar AU (which I also figured out with my buddy, but we never happened to write it) it is also pretty smooth, with both of them being outlaws and then jumping out to the glory after all the shit is done, but in another Shippuden AU of mine, this all would be just a motherfucking bloody disaster

- Kakuzu is actually a hard nut to get attached to anyone

He lived too long to be truly afraid of anything, though. Its mostly because he doesn’t really need to get attached to or become close with someone to satisfy his need for communication. The man can get along with anyone once he wishes to, he can have countless acquaintances and plenty of buddies, but he doesn’t have many comrades and barely can call anyone a friend. Because he is used to lose everything and everyone he ever had or happened to have, because of his inhumanly lengthened lifespan.

It requires time for him to get used to the person, and then, eventually, in some cases, spend plenty of it to get attached

Plus, for him, due to his profession, each close connection is a really great responsibility for him. In most cases, he’d think twice of weather he is ready to take it or not

Though it of course has the personal factor, too

In Anko’s case, she has a grand privilege by being a very intelligent and keen woman, not just in cognitive plane, but in emotional, too. High emotional intellect is actually a rare trait, so she automatically stands out of the crowd for him. Even though it won’t guarantee his alliance, it will grant her his high respect and some sort of sympathy

- Kakuzu is, technically, an asshole

He does have his moral compass, which includes a great amount of common social morality, but he also has that “I am working” state

Even though Kakusu has a set of professional principles, and he still acts accordingly to what he thinks is right, one and the very same situation can be solved diametrically different once the context changes from working to casual and vice versa

This, and him being very independent and quite antisocial, makes the degree of assholeness depend on various factors

This can lead to major conflicts of interests, and if they are possible to have any compromise or not is strongly attached to the circumstances. After all, both are very, very prideful and dignified people

- In other words, the only major issue for them would be morality questions. It’s possible to make the case acceptable for Anko, since both of them ain’t truly squeaky clean, along with Kakuzu being willing enough to watch his borders

- She is provident and doesn’t really need a lot of money on a daily basis, which is much of a joy to him lol

- *they both seek for the stable ground, first of all

Taking in consideration the life conditions Kakuzu had in his youth (despite war state, he still stably had family, friends, grand respect from everyone, home, warmth and food) and how terribly he was torn out of his secured social environment, I believe what he seeks through all his bounty hunt and other money-connected manipulations is stability. Sustainability he had back then. The only way to have it in the conditions of our existent world order is to have money (and a very good mind and luck)

Anko has indeed much more altruistic motives, yet it’s still not that simple. It seems to be, on the first sight, yet considering the “Orochimaru related cases” and her very wayward behavior toward them, it’s clear she keeps her own motives and needs in mind oh so well. The service she has is very well payed, it allows her to do what she likes or believes is right, and to have the living conditions she finds comfortable. And only here, relying on the made sustainable basis, she does what she does

- Thus, they both illustrate the principle “first help yourself, next help the other” just right

- She knows she can keep an eye on him, yet it’s clear for her that her influence isn’t borderless, as well as telling him off some stuff is kind of a not wise thing to do. So in the majority of cases, she never interferes

- This is not common, yet he can actually change some plans if the situation is serious and the compromise can’t be found. He is that kind of person who works on a further prospective, and in this context, this would be the relationship with his loved one

- While Kakuzu is quite conflicted and has very reserved controversial persona, Anko is both controversial, conflicted, and sort of two-faced, on top of that

She is a very sincere, cheerful and humbly honest human being, yet she has some darker natural traits of her character that became rather strong with age and traumatic experience. Cunningness, guile, ways-depend-on-the-case and a bit of ruthlessness, that is. Moreover, she has some unsolved personal issues, which makes her even more twisted.

Like, remember the time when she confronted Orochimaru during the exam? And Kabuto, on the war? Getting rid of them is indeed beneficial for Konoha, but it’s clear that for her it is personal vendetta in the first place. She wouldn’t have tried to do this alone, otherwise, because these two are rather dangerous ones, to say the least.

She uses greater good to cover her real motives (even though it is not truly complete bullshit), and seems to have a terrible habit to keep silence about really important things, which makes her quite prone to lying, in some cases

And sometimes it very badly pisses Kakuzu off, since it makes her prone to doing useless but dangerous shit too

Yet this not any kind of separate hidden side, it is integrated into her personality, and coexists with her bright one. That’s where her violent humour comes from, for example.

But Kakuzu, on the other side, is completely monolith individual, yet sometimes his mindset can create contradictions when it comes to something important to him. but it's another topic

And seeing these layered constructions, and motives, they can pretty finely predict each other’s behavior. Not super-neatly, but they for sure see the basis. This is what helps Kakuzu to prevent Anko from doing some stupid shit, sometimes

- Anko has a role of an indicator for the people who don’t understand and see the changes in Kakuzu’s mood sometimes, since she usually reacts quite openly. Yet, when she has the same unreadable mask of cold, or one of guile, it’s a nightmare for them

- They prefer the non-verbal way to show their feelings, even though Anko is obviously the more chatty one

- They don’t say things such as “I love you”, or other sensual stuff like that really often, believing it to be some sort of cherished words that shall not be spelled mindlessly

- Anko isn’t majorly into PDA, but she fancies it much more than Kakuzu does. She has her whole moments of studying something with her hands, whether it’s a hand, scar or face. He’s more into passive display of affection, like wrapping an arm over her waist or leaning to her or something of this kind; they can allow themselves to (not sexually) kiss in public though

- She knows he doesn’t like to walk hand in hand due to considering it a youthful thing, so there are times when she intentionally walks holding on to his sleeve; generally they walk separately in order not to bother each other, but sometimes they walk arm in arm (like an old Victorian couple lol)

- Being older and wiser, Kakuzu eventually upholds some kind of mentoring position, yet he never considers himself any kind of a teacher or master to Anko, believing her to have a good head of her own. He is just insightful enough to break something through to her or give a word of advise

- This, combined with his highly powerful demeanor, also makes him have the leading position in their relationship

- Anko respects him much enough to fortify this, entrusting with plenty of life questions (like organizing the family budget), even though they make the majority of decisions together. Mostly because he is truly wise and highly experienced individual.

- This makes him one of the very few people Anko would actually listen to and take their opinion in consideration

- So basically they have equal relationship with some tendency to patriarchal order

- And it is, really, mostly economically-based disbalance, with him earning much more than she does

- Yet they never have any financial-based issues, since both of them keep in mind and respect the contributions of each

- There is major power play here, too. He has the absolute might, she has seduction. Anko loves how he makes her want to submit to him, let him have all the power, so she likes provoking him. And she knows he adores it, loves the subtle control she has over him

- They don’t have conflicts in their everyday life. Each knows how to avoid pissing one another off

- He cherishes her playful demeanor, her intellect. Combined with her cunningness, it allows her to rival him, in social sphere. The way she constructs her phrases, the way she speaks, mimics, moves, how bewitchingly it suits her feminine snaky features makes his blood boil and heart melt

- Both of them, actually, have rather specific kind of dry, dark humour. Kakuzu’s is very cynical, satirical, quite often menacing and subtly demeaning; Anko’s is very sarcastic and quite dirty, even gruesome and rather violent

- Sometimes they “fight” verbally as a form of a play. In some circumstances they may sound pretty vile, so some unobservant people mistake this for display of hate

- In general, Anko is the one to heat things up with her playful demeanor, which can include provocation and rivalry, and Kakuzu is the one to keep this energy in borders, accumulating it up to much more intense states

- They both put the comfort in the first place when it comes to household. Everything must be cozy, useful, silent and super clean

- Yet they are both very unpretentious and modest, really

- She absolutely adores when he is showing his serious, severe side, or powerful demeanor. She finds it incredibly suitable for him. She also likes how his real age is sliding out in this or that way. Like, even though he has rather young face (that of 37-40 y.o.), his eyes give away that he’ve seen oh so much more than it seems; the grumpy noises and grunts he makes, the lazy attitude in movements and the way how rapidly he finds a comfy pose once he has a chance to take a seat

- They are both rather patriotic, yet while in the most stories Anko’s feelings mostly lay towards the country she lives in, Kakuzu’s more often lay towards some places, so called small motherland.

- Kakuzu actually could be a source of deep, strong admiration and delight for her, despite all of his bullshit. The unbreakable will he has, mighty burning heart, all the wisdom, talents and mind. Being sent to fight god damn Hashirama, clearly a genius of his times, financial & management genius at the least. And, still, after all the hard times he’ve been through, he maintained the very strong sense of dignity and nobility, even though slightly twisted due to the profession and abnormal lifespan

- And the very same things can serve as the source for her chagrin: with all those traits, he could have been so much more rather than a criminal. With all the gifts he’ve got, he could have been of great use to society. He’s much easier about this, since his prospective is much wider and embraces decades (and in some universes even centuries) instead of months & years, and he knows that he’d be switching sides throughout his life, being on this and that side of the law, yet he still is a bit uncomfortable once it’s brought up

- They are deeply into science, which makes them atheists. He’s into medicine and human biology, she’s into chemistry and reptilian biology; both of them are nuts for physics, history and psychology

- They solve complicated physical and mathematical problems together time to time. She is the first one to have tea-breaks due to losing her temper over it, he tries to figure things out right until you can sense the smoke coming off his head

- Actually, they do have a stumbling stone aside from job & morality complications. And this is Anko’s attitude towards Orochimaru

What she does is basically ruins her life very-very slowly, maintaining the issues she has and planning to make him pay for all he’s done

Kakuzu knows exactly what is really going on with this attitude and why, but he can’t really do anything about it. Like, he knows he can’t make her change her mind or put something into her head

All he can do is really nothing but try to explain how those things are working, and even this option is basically a landmine field for him. At some level she does understand that he could probably be right, yet she just refuses to go back on her mind. And this is actually really dangerous, so at some moments they can fight quite badly about it

- He’s scared shitless to lose her, though; especially like that, even though he knows clearly that he will, anyway, sooner or later

- he knows that losing loved ones ends up with sheer disaster for him, yet he isn’t afraid to pay such a high price for those six, five or four decades of being with her. Because these decades are that of a paradise ones for him. Wife and family, as well as stable job, incomes and life conditions, are some sort of physical definitions of sustainability he craves. Especially family, yet it’s far ahead to plan

- The fact that he will have to bury her one day makes her rather depressed, as well as the knowledge that the only thing she can really do about it is to try to bring him as much happiness and comfort as possible before she dies

thank you, i'd say more, but it's too much already

#my art #naruto #naruto shipuden #akatsuki #naruto akatsuki #akatsuki kakuzu #kakuzu #naruto anko #mitarashi anko #kakuanko #they are very entertaining disaster

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michaels-reality · 4 years ago

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jsaghka whats wrong with ok ko?

Okay so I will spoil the whole main plot of the series with it but there are 3 main problems I’m gonna get into with this series and it’s problems with character design, jokes on child neglect, and ableism with system caricatures. And this is coming from someone who enjoys the show before anyone thinks I’m just hating to hate on it. But again, these issues are so big for me that I would not recommend this show to anyone skjhskjf.

1. Issues with character design

Alright, so first off, please look at this picture of the majority of the women of the show and tell me what’s wrong with it?

Yeah! Almost all of them have the exact same body type! I’ve seen people praise ok ko with its diverse character design but if you boil it down, almost all the women have the same cinched waist and big hips. And for the characters the characters that do have different body types, it's almost unfair to compare them to the rest of the characters, like you can’t compare Carol to Rippy Roo because Rippy Roo is an actual animal. And you can’t compare Dendy to Enid, because Dendy is a child and Enid is a teenager. And for the Ladies that have an actual difference in body type, that’s like 6 characters out of how many? And to those characters that have different body types, the Hue Troops only show up for 2 episodes and even then the main focus isn’t on them so they barely get any screen time, Punching Trudy shows up for one episode to fight Punching Judy, Pheobe shows up for 7 episodes but she’s a background character and I don’t ever remember her speaking, and then there’s Foxtail. Foxtail is probably the only female character that has a different body type that has an important role in the story and shows up for more than just background appearances.

Compared to the men in the show, there is way more diversity but even then, there is a lot of making the upper half of them bigger and giving them tiny hips and legs.

There is also the issue that kinda pisses me off is the racial ambiguity of everyone. Like most of the characters aren’t even human so whatever, but there are characters like enid that have darker skin but she has straight purple hair so what are we supposed to get from that? I mean, I guess there is some wiggle room for anyone that isn’t white to claim her but then you start to see that all these darker skinned characters seem to always have straight hair and that’s also a problem. The only character I can confidently say is black is foxtail and she has straight hair. And the only character that is said to have curls and an afro is RADICLES who is BLUE and an ALIEN! Like it makes me mad that our curly haired and black coded character is designed like this. Like, I get it, he’s an alien, he’s blue, he’s not human, BUT WHY DID HE HAVE TO BE THE ONLY ONE? WHY CAN’T THERE BE ANOTHER CHARACTER WHO IS DARKER SKINNED AND CURLY HAIRED?

It’s so ironic given that ok ko has one of the BEST racism metaphors I’ve ever seen in episode 28. Dendy says kappas don’t need pow cards to be heros but it feels nice to be appreciated but this show is not making me feel very appreciated right now sjglksjgds.

2. Jokes about child neglect/abuse

OKAY! BOXMAN! I LOVE BOXMAN BUT WHAT THE FUCK?

Okay, so in the show, Lord Boxman has robot minions that he is constantly annoyed with the performance of and punishes them and yells at them. AND I WOULDN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS IF BOXMAN DIDN’T REFER TO THEM AS HIS CHILDREN! It’s shown in the show that Boxman raised them as baby robots and they call him daddy and they have a very familial relationship. But it’s constantly joked about with Boxman saying how they never make him proud not taken seriously in the show. Like, in the second episode, one of the first things we see Boxman do is put Darrel in the furnace and Darrel says “I deserve this” BUT DON’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY CUS DARREL IS A ROBOT AND HE’S BACK 2 SECONDS LATER! The robots get emotional over any sense of approval, like at the end of “Villains Night In” Darrel and Shannon literally fall apart after Boxman gives them shirts and says to “keep up the good work”, and the end of Plazalypmics, Darrel, Shannon, and Raymond get participation trophies and are really happy with that. Like, this isn’t normal.

The whole relationship between the robots and Boxman is actually pretty toxic and kind of bothers me sometimes. The robots seem to have a very intense sibling rivalry but it’s over the affection of Boxman, which is unhealthy but most of the time it’s just played off as funny joke for the tv. And it becomes even more apparent because episodes without Boxman, like Rad likes robots, it shows them getting along fine and even worrying about each other. And in season 2, Boxman comes back from the sun and Darrel stands up to him and says he doesn’t need him anymore, but one “I’m proud of you” from Boxman and Darrel is back to wanting his approval. LIKE ITS ALMOST NEVER FRAMED AS A BAD THING OR TAKEN SERIOUSLY! I AM NOT A FAN OF HOW THEY TREAT THIS! Like, I can admit it gets better after Venomous comes into the picture and Boxman has that realization of “oh I should be proud of my kids achievements” but to me it looks like this whole forgiving your abuser plot line and I fucking hate it! And Boxman still admits to incinerating his robots after the company switches over to his and Venomous’ ownership when discussing what to do to punish them and he says “I usually see improvement in my robots after I incinerate them.”

And even if it got better, it’s still played off as a joke in all of season one and normalizes terrible behavior. Child neglect in tv shows, especially in children’s media, played off jokes and funny are never good and can be insensitive to children who are in these situations seeing it played up for laughs. You can argue that being on the villain’s side frames it as a bad thing but that kinda loses meaning in a show like ok ko where you start to see the villains as regular people and not necessarily bad, just “evil”. I just feel like this could have been treated so much better and not trivialized like this.

3. System Caricatures and ableism

Let me start off by saying, I am a singlet and I don’t have as much authority on this type of thing so feel free to correct me on anything I get wrong or add on in anyway.

With that said, KO and TKO along with Shadowy Figure and Professor Venomous are terrible system caricatures. KO is 6-11 years old is prime age to develop a system, so when shadowy figure comes into KO’s life and traumatizes him, he splits. And so we begin our little “evil alter ego”(quoting the show! using this phrasing is terrible and should never describe a system like that) stereotype.

I’ve talked about OK KO with my friends who are systems and it makes them mad that this show had so many moments to be good system rep and then it turns around and fucks everything up! Like TKO could have been written well. TKO is very clear on stating he isn’t KO and is his own person but everyone still refers to him KO and treats him like a bad thing because he isn’t KO. And when TKO acts out due to being referred to as KO and rightfully being upset, they act like it is some evil act against them and they need KO back! Like, the show misses its own point so much!!! If they treated TKO like a person (which he is!!!!!) then half the problems they have wouldn’t be a problem in the first place. And TKO has done nothing wrong other than wanting to front! KO even talks about TKO as another person but they address him as such!

The way people talk about TKO in this show makes me so mad, like when Dendy does tests on KO in “Mystery Science Fair 201X” to bring out TKO, TKO finally comes out to deal with the feelings KO can’t deal with and then they almost do it right when Dendy realizes she was the one that fucked up and then SHE APOLOGIZES TO KO INSTEAD OF TKO FSDGHSDFJ!!! And they always treat TKO as a threat as if he’s a danger! Like TKO’s a kid just like KO and acted out when the people around him upset him! Like a kid! And the last time TKO shows up in season one in the finale, TKO actually SAVES everyone in the plaza and leads the battle away from the plaza but because “oh but TKO is the evil” they go and try to stop him from saving them? Like yeah he got a little reckless but he only ended up hurting people in the plaza when Rad and Enid interfered. They treat him like a problem because they MAKE him a problem!

Also, the moments where everyone tries to bring KO back by saying “you are loved” and all that, that’s actually really manipulative! Like, they’re using positive triggers to kick TKO out of front and that’s actually a really rude thing to do. They’re trying to bring to front who THEY want to see and it’s not fair to TKO who is fronting. It also goes the other way around when Dendy is experimenting on TKO to try and get him to front.

And then even KO treats him terribly, locking him in a cage, then keeping him in his head all the time, and then when he finally lets TKO out and TKO acts out from being locked in his own head for so long, KO then traps TKO in his subconscious. Which is terrible! TKO should be allowed to front and should be treated like his own person! It’s so weird how the show almost gets it right but then does shit like this that makes it terrible again. Like KO has a headspace and he creates things in his headspace and he talks to TKO like another person and they communicate their feelings but then the show turns this all on their head when KO locks TKO away and blames him for destroying everything when he’s the one trapping him in his brain.

There is also the problem with TKO being the one with all the power and changing his appearance cus that all contributes to the system caricature. Also, TKO and KO integrating at the end of the series? ALSO VERY BAD AND HARMFUL CARICATURE! Alters are different people and they should be treated as different people and KO is not TKO all along THEY ARE DIFFERENT PEOPLE! And integration is possible but it’s usually not by choice. And even then, integration being the end goal of a story is a very ableist narrative and shouldn’t be written.

And it confuses me, why does shadowy figure have his own pow card but TKO doesn’t. Like, KO and TKO are established more as being different people than Shadowy Figure and Venomous so why doesn’t he get his own pow card? Like the end of season one, TKO fought the fight at the plaza and used his power to defeat Boxman jr but at the end KO ends up leveling up instead. And on the topic of TKO’s power, again, that shouldn’t be a thing. TKO and KO should both have access to the same power because they use the same body because that's how systems work! They use the same body!

And I know what the show was trying to do like “oh TKO is a manifestation of all the bad feelings that KO has!” but there are so many ways to do that without making a caricature of systems. Like if you didn’t make TKO a person then this would have been fine. Like if other people didn’t see TKO this could have been fine. There are ways to make a manifestation of your negative emotions without doing it like this. And the way this show did it is such bad writing, because you are meant to think TKO is this terrible manifestation of emotions but all you see is this scared kid who doesn’t know where he is and lashes out when he gets rightfully upset. BECAUSE LET ME REMIND YOU! TKO AND KO ARE BOTH 6-11 YEARS OLD! THEY ARE KIDS! THEY’RE SITUATION SHOULDN’T BE TREATED THIS WAY

And my guy shadowy figure...... bad. Shadowy Figure and Venomous’ is not only a terrible caricature but also very inaccurate. With KO and TKO, their system developed at the correct time as a child, but with Shadowy Figure and Venomous, they developed after Venomous got his snake disease. And, Venomous doesn’t even know about Shadowy Figure and that can be a result of dissociative amnesia but it’s really unfortunate. And again! the end of the series! Shadowy Figure and Venomous integrate into one entity and it’s terrible! Because they aren’t the same person and shouldn’t be treated as the same person! And again with the whole “evil alter ego”. Like Shadowy figure only exists to traumatize KO and make him split and create TKO. And the fact that they turn out to be KO’s dad??? Yikes??? Like again, these are terrible caricatures and are harmful to systems and should’ve been treated better in the show.

---

Like, I love OK KO, I used to hold this show very close to my heart and made me very happy to see this show with the amount of LGBT rep but looking back it was very bad in many ways. Like that racism episode I mentioned, that shit resonates with me! And I appreciate characters like Dendy and KO and I still love the boxbots and venomous, I just wished this show lived up to the potential that it had.

TL;DR: OK KO has a problem with misogynistic character design and colorism, normalizes child neglect, and has put out an ableist narrative with system caricatures.

#long post #racism m #colorism m #misogny m #ableism m #ok ko #malware-rants #intergration m

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libraford · 4 years ago

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We interrupt the feral celebration of ousting an oligarch to bring you a story about Yeehaw and his Branch of Mystery.

It has been a while since we last had some co-worker drama, but man- has it been a weird summer. I mean... we all had a weird summer in 2020, but I don't think I was really expecting this particular... flavor of weird?

This is a story about Yeehaw, but it starts off with a story about Aggie.

Aggie was someone we were excited to hire and part of our excitement was that it's rare to find someone with prior floral experience and we'd concluded at this point that it does no one any good to be picky about new hires in the middle of a pandemic. So finding someone who knew the difference between a carnation and a rose was a big deal for us.

I say that in jest, but saying that we do 'on-the-job training' means that we've had to explain that yes- the flower in my hand that looks like a carnation is a carnation and not some other flower that looks like carnation but is not a carnation. Floristry is a very straightforward practice and for the most part a rose is a rose and a daisy is a daisy and if someone asks for those things, you give it to them.

The hard part is, as always, making them look good together.

Which is why we were pleased with Aggie- who previously did weddings for her friends and seemed to have a basic understanding of how to do things with her hands. We were happy to have her aboard.

... until you gave her criticism.

She made her vases embarrassingly short, and if you tried to tell her how to fix it, she'd snap back with "I'm not DONE yet."

She was done until you said something.

If you gave her an order for two dozen white roses, she would take it upon herself to mix white and yellow roses together 'because it looks better.'

It did not.

Hashtag: #selftaught

When a client asks for all white roses, there is likely a reason they asked for all white. Given that 90% of our work is funerals, it stands to reason that they are asking for all white because that is a traditional color for mourning. Working with a client means doing exactly what they asked for. Doing a wedding for your friends may get you high praise from people who trust you to work in the same aesthetic as them, but in a shop setting you are being paid to follow things to the letter. Doing so shows that you can follow directions, and they may come back next time.

You don't know customer entitlement until you've been torn another asshole for leaving out a single rose.

This seemed to never occur to her, and so criticism was a painful realization that perhaps she wasn't perfect at an art that was exceptionally susceptible to criticism. There were plenty of opportunities to make something in her own aesthetic, it wasn't like she was being stifled. There was a considerable amount of downtime where she filled the front cooler with her own creations- enigmatically giving each of them their own names like "Autumn Walk" or "First Snowfall." (This is not something that we do, on the whole.)

Not very many of those sold.

But I think what bugged me the most is that she only ever designed. She didn't take out the trash, she didn't answer phones, she never helped customers. She just... did flowers. Nothing else.

Oh... and the chatter.

"Do you travel? Oh, you simply MUST go to Bali sometime! You've never been to Asia? Well, there's nothing like achieving inner peace at a Buddhist temple on a mountaintop in Nepal. They have temples here in Ohio, but it's nothing like the real thing! You say you've never even been off the continent? Well, what are you waiting for? You only live once, you know!"

Ma'am... we're in the middle of a pandemic. Ma'am... I only get paid so much...

While trying to relate, I talked about my summer in Montana and she gave me the BIGGEST stank-face. "Montana? Ew, WHY?"

Look, lady- I lived on a mountaintop next to an active, world-destroying volcano system. If that's not cool, I don't know what is.

But thankfully, she only worked on weekends. See, this was her fun job. The job she does to stay social during a pandemic and flex her creative muscles while she makes money at her much more lucrative,but boring,HR job. So I only had to see her twice a month when I was manager on duty.

Then she got fired from her weekday job and went full-time at the flower shop. Poor thing wasn't used to waking up at 7am every day. She was full of suggestions.

"I think it would be easier for me if we only opened at like... 11am."

"Don't you think we should be taking proper photos of our work? All we would need is a nice camera and a soft lighting setup. Couldn't be much more than $1000."

"Oh I know! We should be doing inventory on tablets instead of writing things down!"

Okay, you go buy those things then. It took her about a week of making those suggestions to realize that she wasn't real clear on how things worked around here and stopped. She became quiet, less enthusiastic about her 'fun' job now that she wasn't immediately the star of the show.

Enter Yeehaw.

We were excited about Yeehaw, too. He didn't just have experience with flowers- he had experience with a flower shop. He gave a good interview, he seemed like he knew what he was doing and was very passionate about flowers. He was definitely an entire hippie, but about 1/3 of all plant people are. Most importantly, we still had like three spots to fill left from our pre-Covid staff.

Hired.

There was an overlap of about a week where Aggie and Yeehaw worked at the same time. His work was... immaculate. Just... astonishingly beautiful work. You didn't even have to show him how to make anything. He just... knew.

Well, Aggie didn't like that much- we had only nice things to say about this new guy but all she ever got was criticism. And if we complimented him on something he made, he would give a little 'namaste' bow. And I could see her fuming with rage each time he did this.

One day, she rushed into the back to take a phone call and any time someone went back there for a vase she would lower her voice as if keeping a deep secret. Twenty minutes later, she called Grandpa into the back as well to discuss something. Ten minutes later, Aggie left the building with her Live, Laugh, Love bag, looking pissed.

"Where did Aggie go," I asked Grandpa.

"She got a new job," she said. "Doing HR somewhere."

"She didn't even say good-bye," Blue said, appearing unsurprised.

And so we went on with out lives without really putting much further thought into Aggie, apart from the occasional 'you simply MUST visit Bali' line thrown in for bougie emphasis.

Which brings us to the next part of the story, and that is Yeehaw.

There are some details to know about Yeehaw that are kind of difficult to fit into a story neatly. Here is a brief list that may come in handy to know later.

-He lives with his mother.

-He drives a Tesla.

-He can afford the Tesla because he was in a terrible wreck that had him hospitalized, and a lawsuit was won.

-Because of this, he has two screws in his head at the temples.

-Unrelated, he has hair that goes all the way down to his back.

- And...

"Grandpa, we need to tell you something," Blue said. "In private."

Blue and Kali pulled Grandpa aside while Yeehaw slowly put together a funeral order. "Grandpa, there's no polite way to put this: Yeehaw is drunk as fuck."

"He smells like whiskey," Kali said.

"He's stumbling everywhere."

"And he won't stop... burping."

Grandpa paused. "There's something I need to tell you," she said, and she reached for a manila folder. "Yeehaw has something called... what's it called..." She leafed through the file and produced a paper, reading from it. "Auto-brewery Syndrome. His body actually produces alcohol anytime he eats bread or sugar. If he's drunk, it's because he can't help it."

We each had a chance to go over the doctor's note, verifying that yes- that sure does look official. Everyone had questions, but it did answer the one I had about why he was sitting in the break room literally drinking peanut butter from the jar.

So that was incredibly interesting and we no longer asked about the burping or why he was so slow.

However, the fact that he was so slow was extremely frustrating. Our average number of orders runs approximately 100 per-day. This can be eased somewhat when we have a full-staff with five designers- an average of 20 designs per person in an 8-hour day, 3 per hour.

But it's a fine line some days, and if one person cannot keep up it turns into a struggle for all of us.

We did our best to accommodate. We gave him all the day-ahead orders so that we wouldn't be behind and he'd have all the time he'd need to make his gorgeous pieces.

We were willing to make it work.

A number of factors came into play one day, but most notably: Yeehaw's Tesla wouldn't start and he had to take the bus. So he was late.

I think I saw him make one entire item in the two hours that we were in the same room. He went to lunch around 12:30, I took mine around 1:00. I saw him stumble back in from lunch, looking... out of it. Just... absolutely incomprehensible- mumbling, barely upright, his hair out of the bun, quite possibly sleepwalking- who knows?

I saw him for that brief Sasquatch moment... and that was the last that I saw him that day. It was around 4:00 that Grandpa asked the question:

"Where's Yeehaw?"

And no one had an answer. We all had places that we thought we'd seen him: cleaning the cooler, in the break room, heading to the bathroom... but no one had really... seen him since he stumbled back in around 1:30.

We checked all these places.

None of them.

The person who actually managed to find him was Sarge, who noticed his feet sticking out from behind the bushes behind the building.

"Huh," he said, presumably. He gave the feet a light kick and Yeehaw slowly sat back up. "Hey dude. You... okay, there? They're lookin' for you inside."

Yeehaw mumbled something to Sarge and got to his feet, stumbling back into the shop without further interaction. He appeared into the workspace, holding a branch in front of his face for mysterious reasons. There were still twigs entangled in his long hair.

"Where were you at," Grandpa asked, concerned.

"Oh, I was in the bathroom," he lied from behind the branch of mystery. "I'm pretty tired. Is it okay if I go home?"

Bewildered, Grandpa gave him permission to leave. It was soon after he left that Scout found his phone in the empty sink. "Who's trying to wash their phone," he asked in the loud manner that is characteristic of old white men. It rang while in his hand and one of our designers snatched it from him. It was his mother.

"Hello," said the designer. "Yeehaw went home early, but he left his phone behind. Can you bring it home to him?" Mom agreed, she was just over at Trader Joe's anyhow.

We thought, of course, that we were doing something smart and nice. Yeehaw's mom looks just about what you would expect the mother of a 30-year-old hippie that drives a Tesla to look. Grandpa, in a polite way, explained that he'd fallen asleep in a bush. To which Mom seemed neither surprised nor concerned about his behavior.

"Okay. I'll be at Hallmark."

Somewhere between the bus stop and Bexley, Yeehaw must have realized that his phone was not with him and so he came back looking for it. Despite his mother being literally in the same strip mall as we were, he seemed irritated that we'd taken the initiative to make sure his phone got to him.

"Well, I bet if you just went down to Hallmark she'd give you your phone and probably give you a ride home."

He mumbled something and then left.

This seems like a decent place to pause, because him leaving the second time in the day should be the end of the story. However... at 5:00 in the evening there was still two hours left in the work day and from past experience... that is plenty of time for a lot of things to happen.

The thing to happen was a phone call.

"Hi, this is Jade from the main store. We've gotten... some... interesting phone calls. Is there... a... hmm... is there a dead body out in front of your store?"

Pause.

"We'll take care of it, bye."

Who wants to be the one to poke the cadaver on the sidewalk? A volunteer from the audience! Ms Crowe: won't you come down?!

I have had it planted firmly in my mind that Crowe certainly understands the concept of fear but does not recognize it. Apart from being one of our most reliable drivers, she is also a performer, a street medic, an activist, and most notably... a fire-breather.

You have your hobbies.

Point is- she's brave enough to check to see if the person laying on the sidewalk was dead or simply overdosed.

As it turns out, it was Yeehaw- curled up in the fetal position with his arm covering his face.

"Hey," Crowe said, poking him with her foot. "Heeeeeeey," she said again but more firmly this time. He moved, blinking in the evening the sun. "Buddy, you can't be laying around on the sidewalk. You gotta move on."

Again, he slowly got to his feet. At this time, his mother emerged from Hallmark to see him talking with Crowe. A group of four people escorted him into Mom's car while he stopped every few feet to perform another 'namaste' bow.

You think this is the end. But what have we learned?

There's always more.

He came in the next day as if none of this had happened. Conversation was difficult because we both desperately needed to know what the fuck happened and also did not want to trigger something. So we didn't bring it up. He apologized for leaving early: chronic fatigue syndrome, you know.

Other places would have fired him, but we're a very forgiving workplace. Falling asleep on company time is not, in any way, the worst thing that someone has done at this location while still keeping their job. There was Sugar and her drugs, there was the dude that used the company van to pick up prostitutes (this was before my time), there was the guy that screamed at customers over the phone... it's a long list.

The primary concern of our employers is whether or not you are a reliable person. If you routinely show up for your job and do the work, you're going to be okay at least for a little bit. And Yeehaw, for all his impeccable fuckery, at least showed up every day.

We kept this at the back of our minds.

One day, after the Day We Found Him In a Bush was behind us, one of the designers mentioned that they'd seen where Aggie works now. It was not in HR.

It was our major competitor.

Now, Grandpa knows this competitor well. She knows all her competition. It is the nature of a lot of florists to, once they've gotten sick of one place, move on to the next one and spill the beans on their operations there. So Grandpa gets the dirt on everyone.

This particular shop was very regimented. You don't wing it- you follow the recipe as listed. He's been known to pick discarded flowers up off the floor and tell you exactly how much money you're costing the company by letting it fall, to the cent. If you get so far as to make casket sprays, he will take your first one and chuck it across the room if it even looks like the stems are in there too loosely.

This is what I mean about us being an easy place to work.

Hashtag: #ohfuck.

People come in and out of your life like that, in little ways. Sometimes you just have to have a little laugh at it. But what I thought was funny was that she felt the need to keep her new employer a secret, as though we would get jealous or tattle. Curious thing.

Now that the glamour of Yeehaw's arrangements had worn off, we were starting to see more and more odd behaviors that didn't seem completely related to drunkenness.

"Did you just fart?"

"No, that was a spider barking."

Amazing.

Conversation with him was becoming... difficult. As I sat in the break room with my quick lunch and he drank soup out of a mayonnaise jar, he mentioned his area of study in college.

"Cognitive Psychology and Hindu Philosophy, huh? That's an interesting combination."

"Yeah," he said, funneling an amount of squash soup down his throat. "It'll take the rest of the world about 100 years before they catch up to where I am."

I sat, posed in front of my beef and broccoli which I was eating with a fork, trying to process a logical reason why the rest of the world will be sleeping in a bush in one hundred years. "Uh... huh."

This was followed by another thirty minutes of silence where I desperately wanted to know what he meant by that but didn't want to be the one to ask him.

People will tell you that a hippie is generally an ineffective, benign kind of person who chants 'love love, peace peace' in a circle and consider that to be an action for change. But I can say with absolute certainty that I have met some downright egotistical hippies in my life. Those were lessons in bias- which I will have to save for other times.

Eventually, Grandpa became frustrated with his slowness. We presumed that his speed of choice was a combination of his meticulous nature and his various ailments, but with the Christmas season coming upon us it was becoming much more than a series of symptoms.

Previous persons who lacked speed were chatty, would play on their phone, or get distracted. But Yeehaw... Yeehaw simply moved like a tranquilized sloth. He slowly picked off each leaf, each thorn, each guard petal and took a minute for each action. He would put in his greens and then contemplate it powerfully for ten minutes before putting any flowers in... slowly.

In the time spent doing this, I had already made something of a similar size and was starting on the second one.

It was during one of these times that Grandpa finally said something.

"Yeehaw, that spray is due in thirty minutes. Is there a way you can go any faster?"

He looked up from his greens, held one carnation to his face, and said:

"If you wanted me to move faster, you would pay me better."

Let me start by saying that we do not get paid well. We don't. Compared to other flower shops in our city, we are probably the lowest-paid. This is something that the company is starting to work on with benefits and raises, but any amount of change takes time. (And its still better paying than when I worked in retail. But that's another book.)

Yeehaw had been here for exactly one month. I don't know a single workplace that gives you a raise after one month and still lets you sleep on the clock without firing you. He knew what he was getting paid when we hired him.

So anyways, he slowly grinds down our nerves to a very fine dust- burping, farting, falling asleep on his feet, staring intensely into space, talking about how much he should be making but isn't, bragging about his enlightenment, and generally just slowing down production.

And then Grandpa had her well-earned vacation week. Blue was in charge for the most part and the week leading up to Halloween is generally pretty slow, so it was a good week for her to have a break with few mishaps.

Eh... hehe. Yeah.

Yeehaw... disappeared again. We checked the cooler, we checked the break room, we checked the bushes out back, we checked the sidewalk out front.

He was in the bathroom.

So we left it.

He was still in the bathroom an hour later.

We had one of the male drivers pound on the door to check on him. When Yeehaw opened the door to the men's room, there was a wad of toilet paper on the floor that he'd been using as a pillow.

If I may pause here to explain- our men's room is disgusting. I have deep cleaned it several times only for it to become a germ-fest once more in a matter of hours. I don't ask who is peeing all over the floor because, honestly, I have no desire to know what grown man can't aim his willy in the right direction.

So in order to fall asleep in the bathroom, you have to be willing to sleep in pee. During a pandemic.

He reappeared in the workroom, put his apron back on, looked around at all of us still working and said: "Wow, it must be really hard to get fired here."

It was at this point that Blue informed Grandpa.

"Tell him that he's fired," Grandpa said, clearly 1001% done with this.

"I'm not going to fire him," Blue said. "I don't think I can fire anyone."

So she had the driver that found him do it, which was confusing for all of us. He ended up calling Grandpa to clarify. And by 'clarify,' I definitely mean 'beg for his job back.' A synopsis of the 20 minute phone call went like this:

"What do you mean, I'm fired?"

"Just that. You're fired. I'm tired of it, Yeehaw. You don't work here anymore."

"Why?"

"What do you mean 'why?' You spend all day making a total of three arrangements and then you wander off somewhere and fall asleep."

"I can't help it if I have chronic fatigue syndrome!"

"This is a physical job. If your body can't handle an 8-hour shift without falling asleep for two hours, this isn't the job for you. Tell me: where is that fair to the girls that you do 3% of the work while they pick up the slack and you wander off to sleep on the clock?"

"I simply do not care about them."

"You don't care that you're shoving all the work on your coworkers, and that's why you're fired."

"I wish you'd given me a warning."

"Tell me, Yeehaw: how many employers can you find that will allow you to sleep on the clock for two hours and let you off with a warning?"

End of discussion.

Now, you're probably wondering where Aggie comes back into this. Just hold tight, I'll get there.

The Sunday after he was fired, he came in to pick up his paycheck. I was busy handling a minor emergency where one of our funeral homes forgot to order a spray and I had to make one as fast as I could. We held a brief conversation while I made the spray in a hurry.

"I'm here to pick up my check," he said while I greened the spray and leafed through the paychecks simultaneously.

"Here you go," I said, handing it to him without much fanfare. I presumed that he was looking for sympathy or some kind of followup or... I don't know. Sorry you suddenly care about your job?

"So what are your next plans," one of the designers asked, trying to coax more information out of him while I did the work of three people.

"It's kind of funny," he said slowly... as he did all things. "I've only ever been fired from flower shops." He paused, thoughtfully. "I think I'm going to go apply to the shop in Bexley that Aggie went to."

#as the world turnips

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imonthinice · 3 years ago

Text

The Criminal Psychology Majors, Jason Todd x Fem!Reader Part 14/?

Word Count: 2.2k

Author’s Note: Y/N - Your Name

Somehow! I decided that Y/N became more of an OC, I don't know how this happened, but I might release an AU just because I clearly can’t fanfiction Y/N lmao.

Warnings: Discussion of arrests, Mentions of alcoholism, Mentions of drug use, Mentions of Jason’s trauma, Mentions of relationships ending bad, Mentions of abuse (domestic), No beta bitch we die like Jason Todd

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) (Part 11) (Part 12) (Part 13) (Part 14) (Part 15) (Part 16) (Part 17) (Part 18) (Part 19) (Part 20)

“Your friends... all got arrested?” he paused, “Do you remember this? At all?” he questioned.

“Do you expect me to remember any of this? I was black-out drunk, Jason,” she said, “There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered now, I know that.”

“You going to worry about this now and fix it?”

“I really don’t want to deal with it. My memory of the night is non-existent anyway.”

“Getting drunk does that to you.”

“You’d think I would know that by now,” she muttered under her breath.

He chose to ignore that statement because clearly, she wasn’t prepared for everyone to know of that part of her past yet. But that was neither here nor there.

“Do you have any notes that you need to write?” he asked, trying to ease the tension. Hoping it would clearly make her feel better if he changed the subject.

“No, I can read my own notes. I only printed them out for you, Jay.”

“Well that’s very sweet of you to do, baby.”

“Got to make up for my recklessness somehow, I guess,” she laughed, “It is what it is, I guess.”

“You should be more confident in the fact that you don’t need to make up for recklessness,” he paused, “Did I ever tell you about that time I dared Dick to tuck and roll out of the car?”

“Dick mentioned it.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t tell you that he made me do the same first, actually,” he laughed, “We were with dad, he was teaching me how to drive as one does, and when we stopped so dad could answer a phone call, Dick leant over to me and said, ‘During my demo, twenty bucks if you tuck and roll out of the car.’ and me, being a stupid teenager took the deal,” he laughed, “Dad was pissed at us two and refused to take Dick on my driving lessons after that.”

“Well that doesn’t explain why you made Dick tuck and roll out of the car,” she laughed.

“I’m getting to it! So the next time Dick was going to go for a drive with Dad, probably because he wanted to tell Dad about Barbara or something, I don’t know, I said, ‘To get your twenty bucks back, you tuck and roll out of the car this time.’ Dick, also being a stupid teenager, did it,” he laughed, “And that’s why dad never takes us on car rides now.”

“Have any of your other siblings tucked and rolled out of cars?”

“You say that like it’s a daily activity people just do.”

“Well, who’s to say your family is not one of those types of people?” she joked.

“Logic?”

“Logic? In the Wayne Manor? That’s rich.” she joked.

“Like you would know!” he retorted to her before grabbing her and yanking her onto his chest as he laid down on his bed.

“You’re dating a girl who flipped off the press twice, you cannot look at me and say your family possesses logical thinking.”

“That’s valid, I won’t dismiss that,” he laughed.

They let the news play in the background as they cuddled. Jason still had his stitches in and he said it was because Dick said, “You’ve been moving too much’ and the two of them laughed, knowing that that was likely going to be the outcome. They knew what they did, they knew it was worth it. Dick probably didn’t think it was worth it, if he even caught on,

Bruce had reamed Jason out for that, because Bruce did catch on. Bruce had to play the parenting role in this all, and he knew what Jason was like. He knew Jason likely wasn’t prepared for the escapade and journey they had took.

He was right. Jason wasn’t prepared for that, he didn’t have the necessary items for it. Y/N and Jason didn’t care about that at the time, so they didn’t even bother to realize. Kids will be kids, Bruce supposed, and he hoped for the best possible outcome out of this. He knew Jason wasn’t ready, he didn’t know if Y/N was ready, but he knew if what he was scared would happen actually happened, he’d support the two of them unconditionally.

But they would continue to do their own thing as time went on, and even at 3 in the morning, no one could stop them from doing what they wanted, what they needed.

That was the beauty of the chase they had done to get to this point, the drama, the love, the pain, it all got them to the point where they were side-by-side in his bed, naked. Obviously they were going to have sex eventually, they just didn’t expect it this early on, but they also seemed to be speed running the entire relationship to the good parts, where they knew each other like the back of their hands, just enjoying the quality time they got with each other.

Yes, it was soon. But it worked for them, and that’s what mattered to all of them. Not just Jason and Y/N, it mattered to his family that even if they were quickening their pace, they were happy and understanding of sometimes it just goes a little faster than one would expect. It doesn’t mean it’s bad or doomed to fail, it just means it’s clicking in a lot of ways others didn’t.

Jason had a dating rep he didn’t like to admit. He was known for being a womanizer, a playboy, someone that dads everywhere didn’t want their daughters to be with. He was given this through the fact that he did have women come in and out of his life. He didn’t want it to be this way, but that’s how it ended up being when some women, most women, would crack under the pressure of his life. He moved fast because he thought it made up for the craziness that was his life.

So, when he found out that Y/N didn’t like the press very much, he was ecstatic. He knew she didn’t know about what was being said about him everywhere, he knew she didn’t feel scared either, when she proved time and time again that she had a backbone to stand up against the press. Was she one-of-a-kind for this trait? No. Barbara also exhibited this with Dick and their relationship. But Jason had been so shit on by women he tried to date that Y/N was a nice change.

He didn’t want the press to be her new norm, that running from them would become her life, but he also didn’t know if that bothered her for a while, until he saw the articles. The ones calling her names and insulting her every feature, physical and character traits she had shown them. He knew that of course, with the games she had been playing, that they would insult her, and with the court case going on with her attacker, they were just more vicious.

That’s why he demanded she get into Dick’s car the morning after he found out about her drinking, not because he didn’t trust her or anything, but he knew with the ongoing case that she’d be bombarded worse than before. She realized this was his reasoning eventually, probably when she was in his arms.

Her dating streak had been better, but it still wasn't the best. She had a lot of secrets she felt like she needed to hide because of how they made her feel, but eventually she would come out with her stories, the assaults, the bad men, the way they used and used her and how she let it slide.

Being assaulted was something a lot of the population had to deal with and cope with, most likely never actually telling people of their assaults and just letting it simmer, deep, deep down in their brains. Wishing it would have just not happened.

She wanted to talk about it, but she had also healed so much from it with the help of Jason. Sure, he didn’t fix all the issues she had with exes, but the fact that he didn’t treat her the way the others did, sure as hell helped.

Writing and dance also helped her cope with a lot of the bad things that had happened to her. She figured if Jason went through bad things, he had an outlet too, because he did seem torn up, but not massively affected. Maybe he was good at hiding how he felt about it all, but maybe he had a way to deal with the trauma.

She knew his parents’ stories and how he was so young during so much of it, and he hoped, prayed even, that he had coped well with those events. But she had no control over most if not all of the events that transpired and how he handled dealing with them.

Both of their minds had a thing for wandering away from them at the worst yet best moments. When she got a call.

“Hello?” she questioned into the phone, when an automated voice returned.

“This is a prepaid call from Gotham County Jail. From inmate ‘Justine Wong’, to accept this call, please dial 1.”

She did.

“Thank you for your cooperation. All inmate calls are recorded. Your account balance is $40.50.”

“Y/N?” Justine asked.

“Hey, I’m here.”

“So, we have an issue,” she joked, “How much do you remember?”

“Nothing. I don’t remember anything.”

“I figured, fuck.”

“It seems issues follow me wherever I go, huh.”

“No, no. It’s our fault, myself, Kaitlin, Thomas, Christopher, we all dragged you out of the house and got you drinking. I barely even remember how it got to where it ended.”

“Well that... that isn’t ideal, Justine. Do you know when your court date is?” Y/N asked.

“I don’t even know if the guy is pressing charges, I hope he doesn’t.”

“You can say that again,” she joked.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess, I took you to the bar that night.”

“You did, yeah.”

“I should have known better.”

“It’s... it’s not that you should have known better, man. It’s... it’s that a bunch of unfortunate circumstances lead us to this point,” she tried to say to comfort her friend. She did feel like it was Justine’s fault in a way, but she didn’t know if fighting with her over the phone while she was held in jail for bodily harm charges was the best idea.

“I feel like you’re mad at me,” Justine admitted.

“It’s not important, really. We can talk about it in anywhere from a couple months to a year, hoping you get lucky.”

“I think we all want to get lucky, Y/N.”

“I know.”

“I think we’re running out of time here, with the call.”

“We are.”

“Well, I love you, man. I’m sorry about all of this.”

“I love you too.”

Click. She paused for a second, with Jason sleeping next to her, she questioned a lot. Whether these friends were even worth it at the end of the day. She had changed so much since she last saw them, trying to cut clean of alcohol, drugs, partying. And trying to better herself,

But she knew all 3 of them were trying to do so too. They really had just ended up in a bad situation. It was 4:34am, and she was just lost in thought when Jason turned into her in his sleep. She smiled.

She played with his hair a bit while he slept, trying to just calm herself. He seemed sweaty, and clutched his bed sheets with one of his hands, She thought maybe he needed comfort right now, not her. She didn’t ever notice this behavior before these moments, and it concerned her.

He was a grown man having nightmares, she assumed, but she didn’t like it. He deserved to sleep peacefully throughout the night when he woke up in a cold sweat, clutching his sheets and having his hair stroked.

He didn’t question it and just laid on top of Y/N, and let her stroke his hair as he tried to go back to sleep. They didn’t say anything, either of them. It was just really early on a Thursday morning, and they were making the best of the situations they had been thrown in.

There wasn’t any tension between the two of them, but they knew they were a ticking time bomb, that eventually they would fight and the supposed ‘Honeymoon Phase’ would be over. They didn’t like that thought, that one day they might be at each other’s throats, forgetting that a problem in the relationship is them two versus the issue and not them vs. each other. Fighting with their s.o scared them.

Jason would fall asleep in her arms, slowly drifting away into unconsciousness. But he would exhibit the same behaviors as before. The fear in his face was palpable.

But Y/N was asleep this time, so when Jason woke, trying to scream, he slapped his hand over his mouth and cried, he didn’t want to wake her, but he also craved just telling her what had happened and how sleeping was so, so much harder for him than she thought.

People thought the nightmares had slowed, but he just got good at hiding them.

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dramaticviolincrescendo · 4 years ago

Note

Okay, what are your thoughts on Ian's relationships? With his family, his boyfriends, and Mandy (since I think that's the only friend he's had)

Oh, no. Ohhhhhhhh, no. Now you’ve done it. You’ve asked about my dear, darling favorite character on the show. My love for one Ian Gallagher runs deep, which means this answer is going to run super long. The good, the bad, and everything in between—Ian Gallagher lives rent free in my brain and always will. I derive so much satisfaction from seeing Ian interact with other people, in whatever capacity that might be. I admire and aspire to the compassion he has shown for others over the years, even and perhaps most especially those who arguably haven’t earned it. He tries so hard to be good to people, and seeing their love for him manifest when he’s reached such lows where he can’t even fathom why the love of his life would want to be with him forever? That’s powerful.

So, yeah. I said I could write essays on these characters, and that’s exactly what you’re about to get: five hours and 6k words’ worth of my thoughts. (I am so sorry. There will be text walls.)

Let’s dive into Ian’s many and multifaceted relationships—his family, his friends, and his romantic pursuits.

Ian and Family

Ian told us where he stood on this in the very first season, and it set the standard for his character for eleven years to come. Faced with a prospect that others in his position could only dream of—not being Frank’s son and having a wealthy father with a functional, prosperous lifestyle mere miles away—Ian refused to buy into it. He refused to do what might have been objectively better for his future by seeking a relationship with Clayton. In that household, he would have had access to a better public school, more financial resources, a tutor to help him where he was struggling, and less urgency for him to work so that he could enjoy being a kid. When he got sick, he would have had access to better healthcare, too. Perhaps he would have had a better shot at West Point from that background than he did at home. But that’s just it: home was with his family, and he was very clear that they didn’t live in that nice house. All he wanted—all he wanted—was to be with his brothers and sisters. He has never referred to them as only half-siblings or half-cousins; he has never even used the words, “you’re not my dad,” on Frank. That’s his family, the people he loves most in the world, and he’s always been at his best when he’s with them and at his worst when he’s not. Let’s look at each of them:

1. Frank: It is so striking to me that Ian doesn’t appear to hold the outright contempt for Frank that Fiona, Lip, and Debbie have exhibited at different points over the years. Aside from the handful of instances where they’ve gotten into physical altercations (which Frank always initiated) and kicking him out of the house on occasion, Ian is simply indifferent to him. But there are these moments, these brief glimmers of mutual attachment and loyalty, if those are the right words. In the scene where Ian famously doesn’t count to three before using the pepper spray on him, Frank starts saying how his New Gallaghers weren’t his real kids—that Ian is his real son, and Frank is his real father. It’s a passing thought uttered while trying to manipulate his way into the house that neither of them think much of, nor does the audience…until you remember that biologically, Frank isn’t his father, and he certainly hasn’t behaved like one either. Ian has more right than anyone to comment on that, but he doesn’t because Frank is his father. He’s the father that Ian idly hoped wouldn’t come to his wedding yet sat joking about with Debbie rather than getting pissed off that he was making out with some lady in front of everyone. He’s the father who sat at the table with them eating breakfast in 11x03 and claimed Mickey was the man in their relationship without Ian saying a word to him about it, and who Ian saw no issue with taking Franny to school when no one else could. In s4, as far removed from his family as he’d been for a while, Ian still went straight to the hospital when he heard that Frank was at death’s door. We focus so much on his attitude towards Monica because of how obvious it was that we frequently miss these tiny moments and their implications. It would take an awful lot of patience, compassion, and love not to write Frank off completely after all he’s done. Not necessarily our standard definition of love between a son and his father, perhaps, but a loving soul.

2. Monica: I have actually written a pretty lengthy post about his relationship with her because while their shared mental illness definitely plays a role in his feelings toward her, that grew complicated far earlier than his diagnosis. The first time we meet her, we see that he has a visceral reaction to news of her presence. He runs. When Ian can’t process strong emotions, that’s what he’s done in the past. I happened upon an interview Cameron did just after the end of s1 where he mentioned something I had already been thinking: Ian’s age when Monica left is extremely important. He was a kid in s1, but one who could roll with the punches, sometimes literally. She left them two years before that. Ian would have been in middle school, roughly as old as Debbie was when she still called Frank “daddy” and forgave him for everything he did. It’s an awkward age that once again set Ian in something of a danger zone—too old to accept an excuse or no explanation at all, but not old enough to process the situation in a healthy way. And then she’s back all of a sudden with no warning. Ian doesn’t cry like Debbie, and he doesn’t typically get explosively angry like Fiona. He can’t deal, so he runs. He hangs back. He only speaks when he has to and compartmentalizes: Monica wants to take Liam, and they need to stop her. It doesn’t have to be about her leaving. They have a goal—he can focus on that. And then she’s back a year later, saying she’s here to stay while Fiona seems to take her at her word and Lip isn’t there to ground everyone. Ian tries so hard to behave like Lip would with his biting sarcasm and attempts to stay emotionally distant in a way that seemed pretty exaggerated for Ian, but he’s also dealing with a fresh wave of guilt over Mickey going to juvie—and Monica gets it. She’s the only person to acknowledge that he’s in pain and actively try to make it better. She’s the only one who really knows at the time, but that hardly matters. This poor kid, whose mother left him when he still needed her, has her standing in front of him and saying she’s sorry and listening when he speaks and taking him dancing—just the two of them. Embarrassing as it was and harmful as it could have been, she tried to facilitate his dreams when no one else wanted him to go into the military. She was there for him when he went AWOL. She came for him when he was arrested and even wanted to make a place for him in her new life, unrealistic as it was. This goes so much deeper than them both being bipolar. Ian’s comment about her parachuting into their lives in s7 wasn’t about Mickey or her role in them breaking up. He trusted her. He wanted her. He needed her. And she’d convinced him that she would be there—until she left. Over and over again. She was there for him and unintentionally took advantage of how desperately he still needed his mother. She made him keep loving her, and that’s both a blessing that has him crying into a voluminous man’s arms when she passes and a curse that wrecked him more than once.

3. Fiona: The trust these two have for each other cannot be understated. Fiona has discussed things with Ian that she never brought up around any of the other kids throughout the entire series. In the pilot episode, she tells him about feeling needed and takes his opinion on the matter to heart. At the end of the season, he’s the one she talks to about the car because she can trust him to give her an answer even without speaking. In s2, she tells Lip that the two of them are her rocks, and we see that time and time again. That’s part of what makes their falling out over the church hit that much harder: it’s Ian and Fiona. The only time they’d been on the outs in any serious manner up to that point was when Ian was adjusting to his new reality and they were trying to find a balance between sister and caretaker. Otherwise, that bond of trust had never been severed—not until Ian literally sold himself only for it to amount to nothing in the end because she had no idea the lengths to which he’d gone to get that building. That damage gets mended, thankfully, but what a powerful period of time when those two were the only ones who’d never really been at each other’s throats. There is a downside to that trust, though. As I mentioned before, Ian was so responsible and put together when he was younger that Fiona didn’t think twice about his situation with Ned or that he ran away. Not even seventeen yet, and she was telling Debbie that she didn’t like his decision to leave but trusted him. That is one of the things I love about this show—even something like trust that we always prop up as an important factor in our relationships can betray us in the most unexpected ways.

4. Lip: I won’t go into it here, but the relationship they share is something that means a lot to me on a personal level. It’s part of how I knew that Ian would become my favorite character pretty early on. The way he simultaneously admires and envies Lip, loves and is annoyed by him, relies on him and is desperate to pave his own path in the world—what a beautiful and accurate depiction of what it means to be a younger sibling. Lip is the first person to discover that he’s gay and openly accept him for it. (I think what he tried with Karen came from a well-meaning place even if it was horribly, horribly misguided.) Lip is the one who tries to get him into West Point, hate it as he does. He helps Ian when Terry is after him, takes care of him in the aftermath of the wedding when he realizes just how deeply Ian feels for Mickey, searches the whole damn city for him when he finds out that Ian is in trouble, gets him a job, leans on him in his own time of need… He’s not perfect. He slips up, just like Ian does. Some things break my heart, like Lip insisting that he’s earned his own space when his little brother is asking him for safe harbor or Ian thanking him for being his brother outside the prison. But they love each other so much, and I just… I can’t possibly put into words how much I love their dynamic.

5. Debbie, Carl, and Liam: I’m grouping these three together because they’re further separated from Ian in age, so we see a lot of the same trends with them as a whole. Ian loves taking care of people. We know this. We also know that Fiona and Lip don’t typically want him taking care of them—they’re the ones who take care of him when he needs it, specifically Lip. With the younger three, however, Ian can be the Big Brother. He can shake his head in utter bafflement at Debbie’s obsession with holding her breath for two minutes, walk Carl through what he needs to go camping, and promise his baby brother postcards when he leaves. The difference here is that his relationship with them is so much less fraught with conflict. We don’t see him fight with Debbie, Carl, or Liam the way he has with Fiona or Lip. While Ian tends to be the voice of reason during conflicts overall, I think it’s also because he relies on his older siblings in a way that he doesn’t with his younger siblings, and the latter don’t tend to rely on him as much as Fiona or Lip as well. There’s a lack of tension in most of their interactions growing up because that pressure isn’t there. Perhaps this is where Ian’s age and standing in the family is a bit more beneficial: young enough to have people he can rely on while too young for anyone to really rely on him for more than his share of the squirrel fund.

Ian and Friends

I’ve seen it mentioned that Ian (and Mickey) not having more friends is bad or lazy writing. I tend to believe that that fails to take something into account that, admittedly, most of us don’t really have to think about: having friends is a luxury. It requires time and effort to cultivate friendships, especially lasting ones. As a kid, Ian spent a lot of his free time working or helping to manage one family crisis after another. Going AWOL, losing his health, struggling to acclimate to his illness, trying to find a new career path, spiraling into the Gay Jesus movement, going to prison, adjusting once again to normal life, getting married, a pandemic… I’m sure he’s had plenty of acquaintances over the years, but having a family to support and constant upheavals would have made it extremely difficult to really forge strong relationships with them. I think that’s part of what makes his relationship with Mandy so special and valuable to him: she’s sort of the same way.

When we met Mandy in s1, she had other friends. We saw her meet up with them and go shopping; she told Ian a story about how one was mad at her for not sharing her make-up. As the trauma in the Milkovich household reached its zenith for her in s2 and she started thinking seriously about getting out of there, we saw those friends fall by the wayside—all except Ian. He saw her and let her see him early on. That’s a level of trust and respect that nobody else in their neighborhood would have displayed, certainly not to her. But then there’s this guy who defended her against their creepy, perverted teacher and treated her like a human being, not an object. It’s no wonder she developed an obvious, unrequited crush and sought physical comfort from him occasionally. It’s no wonder she tried to repay the favor by giving Mickey a hard time in s3 and s4, misguided and rather uninformed as we know it was at the time. (It’s also no wonder that she went for the closest Gallagher to Ian, either, but that’s for another meta.)

And Ian… Ian is loyal to a fault. We have watched Ian cut out his own heart and let the blood drip down his arm to pool on the floor at his feet if it would make a damn bit of difference for the people he loves. Like Fiona and Lip, Mandy immediately accepted him for who he is and suggested an arrangement that would protect him as well as benefit her. That is enormous where they came from. To him, that had to feel like the ultimate sign of friendship: he could trust her with a part of him that he hadn’t even entrusted to most of his family yet. From that point on, she was on the List of People Ian Gallagher Would Do Anything For. Finding out about Terry and what had happened? He held a bake sale, of all things, to fundraise for her. Seeing that his brother—his best friend—was treating her like garbage? He put him in his place. Her boyfriend was beating her? He brought her home and made it his goal to find a safe place for her to stay, even if it ultimately didn’t work. She was going to move away from all of her meager support with that boyfriend? He didn’t just rally his own arguments—he brought in outside help with Lip, who he thought might tip the scales. It’s usually just a saying that true friends will help each other hide a body, but Ian literally tried to do that. Lucky for him, he has a good head on his shoulders and used it.

No, Ian doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends. We’ve seen that he has spheres of influence, if you will, and acquaintances that he can call upon when he needs them. (For example, the guys that helped with the preacher.) However, Ian has always struck me as a “quality over quantity” type of person. Being a soldier or an EMT isn’t lucrative, but they’re meaningful for someone who sees them as vehicles for helping people. Seeing more parts of the world than just Chicago has appealed to him in the past, but he seems perfectly content to carve out a spot for himself right here at home. Having only three best friends—Lip, Mandy, and Mickey—doesn’t seem like much of a hardship for him.

Ian and Romantic Pursuits

I hate to say that there were five, but from Ian’s perspective, there were. So, let’s talk about all five. Even though…there weren’t five. There was only one. We’ll save the best for last.

1. Kash: The first of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. I hope it goes without saying that I hate this man with the passion of a thousand burning suns. I hate him so much. However, their interactions taught me a whole lot about how kind and compassionate Ian really is—and how naïve. Of course, he would believe that Kash loved him. The man was buying him all sorts of expensive gifts, and that’s what we see on all the commercials and in so many movies, isn’t it? Grand gestures of affection through expensive gifts. Poor as they were, Ian still scraped together the money to buy him baseball tickets and CDs, convinced as he was that that was all part of what you did in a relationship. That desire to do things like a “normal” married couple in s11? Yeah, that starts here. Ian has always been a planner, and he’s always bought into certain stereotypes. We can see that here. What we can also see is Ian’s compassionate, kind, loving soul. He cares so deeply for other people, even ones that he doesn’t know very well, especially if they are living in circumstances that mean something to him. (For example, the mentally ill woman they tried to help at work and the shelter kids whose situations were so similar to Mickey’s.) Kash being a closeted gay man living in misery with a wife he didn’t love and two children he never meant to have clearly tugged at Ian’s heartstrings. Even after everything that happens, even though Ian behaves as though they’re awkward exes who just happen to work together, he still covers for Kash. He gives him that head start and takes it upon himself to break the news to Linda that he’s gone. He defends Kash to Lip when the latter finally says exactly what we all know: he was a pedophile who deserved to rot in prison for what he did. As with Fiona’s trust, Ian’s loving soul, compassionate heart, and desire for love outside his siblings are virtues that have done him harm in the past. This is one such instance.

2. Ned: The second of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. To be honest, I don’t believe that Ian would even characterize it that way. He seemed very aware that Ned was a distraction from his problems—from Mickey being in juvie, Monica falling into a depressive episode, the money in the squirrel fund being gone, Lip moving out, losing his shot at West Point, and getting denied for service due to his age. Again, though, Ian has always wanted to feel valued, and this rich dude was letting him stay in a fancy hotel room with anything he wanted readily available. This (disgusting predator) guy was giving him attention and a distraction with no strings attached. Then the complications roll in, and he’s once again faced with being the mistress to a closeted, married man. The difference here is that he’s not comfortable with it. He tries to tell Fiona twice, which is enormous for Ian when he has never been very good at communicating if it means burdening others with or even merely facing his own problems. But he tries to tell her. He rejects the GPS unit and tells Ned that he has a boyfriend, boxing him into a strictly sexual arrangement. (This, unfortunately, makes sense. It aligns with how Fiona viewed things: where Jimmy was concerned about it, she told him that it was “just sex.”) He is also visibly embarrassed to admit to Lip and Fiona what has been going on with Ned. By that point, Ian is a year and a half older and, while still scarred and warped in his views because of Kash, perhaps a bit wiser. Emotionally, he kept Ned at arm’s length most of the time. He used Ned not just as a distraction, but as a way to galvanize Mickey into taking their relationship a step forward. But Ian is still Ian, and Ian is compassionate to a fault. Ned played that card by asking if he could have a little understanding for a man whose life was falling apart. Sure, he can. He’s Ian, the Gallagher too empathetic for his own good at times. We know how that spirals out of control. It just goes to show that even when Ian was trying to maintain some emotional distance, his heart is simply too big and his perceptions too heavily impacted by the grooming he’d experienced with two different people by then, and so he [SPOILER ALERT] still feels enough of a connection to Ned after all these years to be mildly bothered that he passed away.

3. Caleb: The third of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. Ian’s relationship with Caleb strikes me as being similar to what he had with Ned. While more age-appropriate, Ian was very much using Caleb, just as Caleb was using him. That’s why it was so easy for both of them to walk away. Ian was in a difficult spot when they met. He was grateful to the firefighters who saved his life, but he had also just saved someone else at a moment when he was perhaps at his absolute lowest. That’s what he’s always wanted, isn’t it—to be a bit of a hero and help people? So, he’s understandably drawn there, first out of gratitude and then to be surrounded by very attractive gay firemen who helped people, saved his life, and invited him to be part of a function they were holding. But he made himself pretty clear from the start: he was interested in sex with Caleb. That was the draw. He still hasn’t come to terms with being bipolar and losing Mickey, but Ian has never not been with anyone for any extended length of time. That’s just who he is: he’s always sought some level of outward validation—from the army, Kash, Monica, Mickey, and so many others. We’re seeing him struggle with that now as he deals with the opportunities available to him as a mentally ill ex-con felon. So, he pursues Caleb as a distraction just like he did with Ned, only Caleb is a predator in his own right and can smell that his interest is coming from a place of weakness. He immediately (and initially unintentionally) preys on Ian’s desperate need for structure and order by insisting on a traditional date where Ian is very much out of his element and even goes so far as to instruct Ian on how to be intimate. It’s no wonder he mentions Mickey in these moments, as Mickey never wanted him to change, and Ian leans heavily (even slightly hyperbolically) into the fact that Mickey wasn’t a paragon of order and stability like Caleb outwardly appears.

And I think why Ian puts up with it so long—being taught like a child, being used to upset Caleb’s parents, being paraded in front of his friends to make them jealous—is because he was getting something out of it too, just like with Ned. A stable place to live when their home ownership was in flux, a place away from his family when they weren’t providing the support he needed as he adjusted to his disorder, someone who validated his desires to help people regardless of their ulterior motives, and a physical distraction from his own problems. All of these parallel his relationship with Ned very closely. It was never going to last, of course. Ian is a strong person who temporarily forgot how strong he was because he forgot who he was, and Caleb didn’t want to be cared for—he wanted a project, like all of his sculptures. Being a project, being something that others see as needing to be fixed? That’s a hard no for Ian. It always has been. There’s a moment I love later in their relationship where Caleb tells him to turn off the lights when he goes out and lightly reprimands him for leaving one on the day prior. Ian is in a better place at that point, having regained a lot of his sense of self, and stares after him with indignation at being treated like a kid. He’s then lied to and cheated on, but I think that to mention those things to Caleb when they break up is to admit weakness on his own part—that he stuck with Caleb knowing that he was being mistreated, and Ian is not one to be called a victim. So, while we know from his discussions with Lip and Sue that the cheating and distrust bothered him most, he merely focused on Caleb lying about his sexuality, which removed a lot of the emotion from the situation—just like he did with Ned. It ultimately turned out to be a bad move since Caleb, being a skilled predator, made him question even his own sexuality in return, but we’re starting to see that Ian isn’t here to be someone’s toy anymore. Not an older, married man like Ned, but definitely not anyone his age either. I’m glad this pseudo-relationship happened because it showed Ian how strong he really was and that he could be in control of his own life. Sure, it destabilized him a little in the aftermath, but he worked through it. He leaned on his family, specifically Lip, who has always been his rock without the blurred lines that Fiona represented between sister/mother-figure/caretaker. Caleb is a garbage person, but Ian was the one who pulled the treasure from the trash, not him.

4. Trevor: The fourth of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. Trevor is perhaps the first relationship where we don’t see Ian dive in. Whether that’s because of his confusion over Trevor’s gender identity or the fact that he was really beginning to fully mature as an adult by that point (ostensibly finishing his education, getting a career, being fully self-sufficient, etc.), he tried to take his time and not jump right in. They hung out, talked around the neighborhood, and yes, engaged in some casual intimacy at the club. Again, Ian might not be in a full relationship, but he’s never without someone for long. At that point in the series, all he was missing was a relationship when it comes to traditional, “normal” goals for people to have. But Trevor posed a situation he’s never been in before since, while gay himself, Ian has never been very interested in activism or engaging in the LGBT community. It’s just not in his culture or environment, so to be faced with someone he’s interested in that challenges a lot of his views of gender and sexuality is something he takes his time with. Unfortunately, Trevor is younger than him and not quite as mature, not quite as experienced. He tells Ian he has plenty of friends and doesn’t need another, which is an ultimatum that has never really sat very well with me personally because I’m generally of the mind that if a person needs time and you really care for them, you’ll let them have that time. I’m not unsympathetic to Trevor: he’s been burned before and has his own trauma stemming from responses to his identity, so it makes complete sense for him not to be patient in this regard. He shouldn’t have to be—but then, Ian shouldn’t have to rush into anything he’s not 100% certain he wants either. That’s exactly what he does, though, because Ian does for others without thinking of the implications for himself a lot of the time. They make great friends, but they don’t make great partners. Trevor treats Ian similarly to Caleb in that he’s a bit of a project. Trevor educates him on the LGBT community and incorporates him into his ventures for the shelter without ever really showing much interest in Ian’s life or family, which suits Ian just fine because for as interested as he is in helping with the shelter and as attracted to Trevor as he is, he seems to know they’re not compatible. Ian, who has been having sex since he was far too young, takes a step back from it when they run into compatibility issues. (And pushes back on the pressure to bottom with some of his own—neither of them were in the right on that.) He doesn’t ask much about Trevor’s family or try to be part of his personal life. They sort of embody the “friends with benefits” stereotype: they hang out, they have sex, and that’s really all there is to their relationship.

The reason Ian doubles down on trying to make it work isn’t because there was a future for them before Mickey broke out. It’s because he thinks he’s lost Mickey forever, he knows he’s lost Monica forever, and he’s not going to get the support he needs from his family when they couldn’t stand Monica and Fiona told him what he already knew to be true, namely that Mickey being an escaped convict would destroy everything Ian worked so hard for if he got involved. So, he does what Ian does. He needs that distraction—he needs to run from these strong emotions he can’t process, so he bottles them up and unfairly hopes that Trevor will provide some of that comfort after cheating on him with Mickey. (Had Mickey been released, I think they would have broken up. Instead, that was the first match Ian lit, but certainly not the last.) Now, the thing is, Trevor said at the start that he didn’t want to be Ian’s friend. He’s also younger and less mature in a relationship, which means he threw the concept of love out there prematurely, just like Ian thought what he had with Kash was love. The death throes of their relationship were a back and forth where Ian was spiraling and seeking comfort, and Trevor was providing some while keeping their relationship pretty amorphous. (Were they exes? Were they friends? Were they people who shared interests and danced around each other? Were they going to get back together? They never officially broke up—it fizzled and resurged, then fizzled for good.) Ultimately, whatever it was that they had couldn’t survive Mickey, Monica, or Gay Jesus. Trevor wasn’t prepared to deal with a full-blown manic episode, and based on his hands-off approach with involving himself in Ian’s life even before the Mickey-shaped bomb got dropped on them, it doesn’t seem like he really wanted to anyway. He did what he’s always done: prioritized his shelter, which I’m not deriding in the slightest. By that point, Ian was too far gone to care that he disappeared anyway. Had the situation been different and he was getting the support from his family that he needed, it doesn’t seem like he would have cared much there either.

5. Mickey: Finally. Only took over five thousand words to get here. I’ll preface this with something that anyone who knows me from other fandoms is already well aware of, namely that I don’t do romance. Ever. Never been interested. The relationships I’ve always been most passionately interested in are platonic ones, especially “found families” and siblings, which is probably obvious from the other five thousand words here. Ian and Mickey are the first relationship I’ve actively shipped or written for in a fandom. They’re the first I’ve been invested in to this extent. As such, one of the biggest pet peeves I had when I first joined this fandom was the saying, “Ian fell first, Mickey fell harder.” These two wonderful dumbasses face planted on the concrete in front of the Kash and Grab in s1 and never recovered. I could go on forever about these two, but that particular wall of text would probably be too daunting for even the most avid Gallavich stan to traverse, so I’ll keep it fairly brief. As we can see above, Ian has a very strict sense of what he “should” want in a partner. Someone who is moderately successful in their chosen field, makes enough money to at least live comfortably, and typically does something that helps other people (a doctor, a fireman, a youth counselor). These aren’t passionate people. They’re not men who operate on instinct the way most of the people in his life have always had to by virtue of their social standing. They have life goals and opportunities that he envies, and Ian has a great deal of compassion for them when they hit a roadblock or things don’t work out. The amazing dichotomy of Ian Gallagher is that he straddles a line most people can’t between the rough neighborhood that has instilled in him all of his values/behaviors and the middle-class mentality of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and aspiring to more. Ian has always aimed for what Lip said wasn’t possible for poor people: being successful without having to scam or steal. But as I said way back at the beginning of this manifesto, the South Side is his home. His family is his family. And none of the people he’s been with personify the South Side quite like Mickey—they don’t personify home like Mickey.

And I think that’s where the initial draw for Ian is. (I’m going to focus on Ian’s side since he’s who your question focused on.) The other guys look great on paper, and Ian’s brain says that that’s what he should aim for. We know better, though. We know that Ian has an enormous heart that belongs first and foremost to his family and their home. His heart says that this person—this dirty, rude, mean, violent person—is home. His heart says this person is everything about himself that he denies having, just like Ian was everything about Mickey that the latter declined to openly acknowledge for so long. I don’t like relationships built on “making each other better.” I really don’t. The wonderful thing about this is that it’s never been that way. Ian didn’t change Mickey. He’s exactly who he’s always been, but he’s grown past the fear of his own emotions and Terry’s response to them. He’s still a thief, a con artist, violent, and rude. Mickey didn’t change Ian either. He’s still rigidly conforming to certain stereotypes of what he thinks he should want, seeking structure (to his own detriment at times), and not a great communicator. The point for them is that they complement each other, not that they make the other a better person—not even that they bring something out of each other that wasn’t already there. That’s what Ian’s other relationships did. They made him shave off his edges so that he could fit a square peg into a round hole, and that’s not happiness. It’s simply what he thought he was supposed to do—what “normal” people did.

With Mickey, he doesn’t have to worry so much about what is normal or acceptable. He doesn’t have to worry about whether or not his life is objectively “on track,” not until fairly recently. Mickey is the only person he’s ever been with who has accepted him for who he is, faults and strengths alike, without the underlying insinuation that he should be aiming for something else or pretending to be whatever the other person needs him to be in order to care for them. Kash needed an escape—Ian provided it. Ned needed a very specific brand of toy—Ian played that role. Caleb needed a project to feel fulfilled—Ian went along with it for a bit. Trevor needed someone who accepted him as he was but did things his way—Ian did that. To care for Mickey has only ever meant being himself because all Mickey ever really needed was him. Mickey didn’t need an escape from his home—his relationship with his family is more complicated than that. Mickey didn’t need to be saved from his upbringing—it’s what made him the person Ian fell in love with and who he is happy to be. Mickey didn’t need someone to change who he is on a fundamental level because unless it is going to get him into trouble and separate them, Ian never wanted him to. (Even then, it’s about what he does, not who he is.) And yes, I’m sure that there’s a level of excitement that Ian finds exhilarating where Mickey is concerned, but I tend to believe it goes a lot deeper than that. What he finds exciting about Mickey is what Mickey embodies about the South Side—about home. About his own upbringing, but also Ian’s. About Frank and Monica, his siblings, school, work, ROTC—existing and surviving in an environment where it’s not guaranteed that you’ll have money to keep the heat on this winter or feed your family. They spent the early seasons living in a constant state of fight or flight. They couldn’t afford not to. And there’s excitement in that. Look at how many people say that the first seasons are their favorite! There hasn’t been a huge shift in the quality or direction of the writing, just the trajectory of the characters. They’ve gotten older, and their problems have been different. It’s not about survival so much of the time anymore, but those are the storylines that excite us. For Ian, that exhilaration in the constant battle of survival in their neighborhood is sewn into the fiber of his being just like it is Mickey’s. He saw his home in Mickey before they truly fell in love, and when that followed, Mickey became home.

In Conclusion

Ian has spent his entire life looking for the “right” path only to realize that it was laid before him: his family, his small circle of friends, and Mickey. I love that that is coming full circle this season, where [SPOILER ALERT] marriage has almost made him regress a bit to that place where there must be a right way of doing things going forward, and slowly but surely, we’re seeing him loosen up.

Good morning. It’s Ian Gallagher loving hours.

#shameless #ian gallagher #it's ian gallagher loving hours #shameless meta #well that took six hours #and I didn't get more writing done #but I feel accomplished

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mianmiansimp · 3 years ago

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mdzs au: the one with wen xu (pt 1)

>>wwx has his bisexual epiphany much sooner in life bc Reasons

>>so when he starts crushing on lwj Immediately at cr, he knows it too

>>anyway: sometime pre-cloud recesses, wx and wwx cross paths and wwx is being his usual mischievous self

>>he's very dramatic and flirty and running around on roofs

>>wx is like Hey You're Cute but doesn't catch his name

>>wwx is oblivious so he didn't know who wx was lol

>>they cross paths a few more times

>>wwx just knows wx as 'that one gongzi i see sometimes'

>>then cr happens and they meet again when wwx is heading back to cr with his alcohol

>>wx is like my how charming

>>the next morning the wens show up and wc pisses everyone off

>>and then wwx is telling him off and wc gets pissed and tries to fight wwx while also insulting his status

>>and jc is like EXCUSE YOU and draws his sword bc i'm a sucker for protective jc and will throw in as much yunmeng shuangjie as i want

>>but then wx shows up and tells off wc (bc of wwx) and tells everyone to calm down

>>wx learns wwx's name, wwx learns who 'that one gongzi i see sometimes' is, only one of them is happy with the revelation

>>wx is being weird and oily to everyone and the lans begrudgingly accept the 'apology'

>>wx is publicly weird to wwx, wwx is publicly uncomfy, jc is publicly offended and pissed and defensive and also has an inkling of where wx's head is at

>>cue jc aggressively glaring at wens and shielding wwx from them

>>nhs, who's more aware of what's happening than anyone else bc nhs, helps

>>doesn't stop wwx from adopting wn as a bestie but wn is a kitten so it's ok

>>cr arc is largely the same, wangxian shenanigans, yunmeng shuangjie shenanigans, alcohol shenanigans, you know the drill

>>except for two major things

>>one - wwx has been crushing on lwj since day one but he Knows it

>>and he gets sad sometimes when lwj rejects him

>>so jc is not only angry at the wens but he's angry at lwj's audacity too

>>lwj, who hasn't a clue about anything:

>>two - wx sometimes shows up randomly to 'check up'

>>he isn't, he just drops by to make wwx uncomfy via unsolicited gifts and flirting

>>jc usually passive aggressively intervenes

>>or nhs makes some excuse that is usually 'jc wants to see you'

>>there's an incident during a wx visit where wwx panics bc he really doesn't want to deal with him

>>and essentially bolts from the vicinity and runs right into lwj

>>lwj almost starts telling off wwx but he sees quite clearly that wwx is Not Ok

>>and then they hear wx approaching and wwx basically begs lwj to Get Him Out

>>lwj dislikes wx far more than he dislikes acknowledging his affections for wwx

>>so they quickly run into and hide in a room

>>cue bonding moment where lwj and wwx have a Talk and lwj says they're friends for the first time

>>and then immediately goes silent bc wwx is looking at him with complete adoration and he has to force himself not to kiss him lol

>>this is also the point where lwj has it confirmed that wwx very much does not like wx's presence

>>which is how lwj joins the defend wwx against wx's advances club

>>jc isn't happy about it bc wwx is mooning for lwj still but he lets it slide

>>wn actually joined the club accidentally and discretely

>>jc's like why couldn't wwx get This wen to crush on him i like him so much better???

>>lwj vinegar moment + flustered wn who just thinks wwx is really cool and nice

>>wq catches wind of what's going on and is worried about wn's involvement

>>but also greatly dislikes wx and doesn't want some random innocent boy to suffer

>>which is how she too accidentally joins the club

>>mianmian joins too but loudly bc she's friends with wwx and lwj and also wx sucks

>>jzx is friends with mianmian so he gets dragged in

>>and he might be an arrogant prat atm but he's not a bad guy and wx's behavior is very despicable

>>jzx has some um Revelations about himself and his family

>>and accidentally becomes an honorary member of the club

>>they're all kinda friends now, it truly sucks, thinks jzx with a small smile

>>xuanli engagement is not broken/salvaged much earlier on bc of this whole

thing

>>anyway that's how all the major sects' youth became so closely entwined

>>lqr was very proud that his lectures enacted firm inter sect relationships

>>lxc is just egging on wangxian while also becoming an honorary member of the club

>>waterborne abyss and stuff still happens

>>jc is even angrier at the wens and straight up completely hides wwx the next time wx comes around so he doesn't even catch a glimpse

>>wx is not happy, especially when lwj is silently passive aggressive the whole time

>>cr study ends, there's this whole lingering wangxian moment when they say their goodbyes

>>wwx and lwj are close now but also lwj can sort of admit it instead of shoving it under years of repression and gay panic

>>lwj agrees to visit at lotus pier and wwx looks so enamored that jc gags and drags him away

>>mianmian snickers and pokes lwj in jest, who actually pokes her back

>>lxc is so proud, his brother has Friends

>>wx is a bit more careful around lotus pier, but he does visit once

>>jfm greets him and is very polite but yzy is very blunt and pissed

>>jc upon getting home had immediately spilled all the info on the wx thing

>>yzy doesn't like wwx but she hates the main wen and wx was being vv disrespectful

>>so she kinda tells wx that wwx isn't here (not a lie, he's on a nighthunt) and that he can go jump a cliff now thanks

>>wx is rather irritated when he leaves

>>comes back again on a later date, but this is the day that the cr friends are all hanging out

>>which isn't really an issue bc wwx is a social butterfly, it's part of what wx likes about him, obviously he has friends

>>but he sees the way wwx looks at lwj, and happens upon a moment where they're alone

>>he is Not Happy

>>in the meanwhile the cr friends are all chilling together and making fun of jzx flustering around jyl and eating lotus pods and whatever

>>yzy for once is like not overcome with irrational rage at wwx's presence bc he did something right for once in her eyes

>>so wwx gets some peace of mind at lotus pier

>>madam jin is also very delighted at the xuanli progress and approves wwx for enacting it

>>no one outside of jiangs + cr know why exactly xuanli are doing so well

>>so madam jin assumes wwx just kinda did some wingman stuff and doesn't know about the wx thing

>>anyway, wangxian is progressing quite nicely, and jc is all the more miserable for it

>>jzx kinda doesn't care lol, the rest of the club are delighted by the entertainment, yzy is further not angry at wwx bc wangxian engagement = lan-jiang alliance = advantageous

>>fast forward and we're at the discussion conference

>>jc is scowlier than usual and is literally holding wwx's hand the whole time

>>and wwx is like bro ty and ily but also this is a bit much

>>jc eventually lets go of his hand but he is never more than a few inches away from wwx's side

>>the state of wangxian at this time means we have wangxian blatantly and publicly mooning and everyone's like :eyes:

>>wx is not happy, shows up and immediately starts seeking out wwx, everyone is uncomfy

>>jc at one point grabs wwx and shoves him into the middle of all the jiang disciples

>>kinda doing that zebra camouflage thing but with jiang disciples lol

>>whenever it looks like wx is gonna ask him about wwx he crosses his arms and scowls severely

>>wx takes his seat very unhappily and the discussion conference proceeds as normal ig

>>but the friends are all taking part in the hunt together

>>wwx and lwj have a lil competition for who snags the most shots

>>lots of flirting during the competition, much to jzx and jc's chagrin

>>wn is just :pleading_face: the whole time but he does excellently and gives everyone a run for their money

>>the wc thing goes a lil differently in that wc is more incensed about wwx's existence bc he knows wx likes wwx

>>targets wwx, it backfired bc of lwj, wc leaves in a huff

>>lwj closely attaches himself to wwx after that, jc is pissed bc that's 2 wens who are making problems about wwx

>>the ribbon incident goes a lil differently

>>it happens after the competition, in front of all the sects

>>wx basically

goes oh your ribbon is crooked and fixes it gently and smiles at lwj and lwj says nothing, just quietly nods and thanks him

>>lqr approaches qi deviation, the sects are shocked, wwx is oblivious, lwj is smug, lxc and the friends are all metaphorically eating popcorn, wx is mad, wrh doesn't care, wq is worried bc wx

>>wx actually corners wwx at one point during a banquet when wwx's alone

>>interestingly, it's jzx who steps in to save the day

>>wwx doesn't need saving tbh but there's sociopolitics to consider + he's a lil scared of wx's persistence tbh

>>and he has a crisis bc on the one hand wwx can just run his mouth and hope for the best except he realizes that wx Likes when he runs his mouth

>>so yea jzx steps in and says something about jyl and wwx is like ahaha duty calls again and yeets

>>jzx just says compliments about jyl as they walk back to the jiang under the pretense of wanting to discuss the engagement

>>wwx reluctantly decides he's ok

>>the jiang keep a firm grip on wwx for the rest of the conference after that

>>jyl uses the shijie card to her advantage to get away with dragging wwx with her everywhere

>>the conference ends and wwx is relieved

>>oh btw wwx placed first by a small margin, lwj and wn following, then jc and jzx tied

>>so the sects are leaving and ofc wwx has to say goodbye to lwj

>>and lwj is like what is your request bc you won

>>and wwx is almost like kiss me but then he Doesn't ok

>>so instead wwx is like lemme think of something interesting :wink: to cover his pining

>>and lwj says mn and Smiles at him and wwx melts on the spot

>>wx catches the interaction and is very unhappy

>>fast forward to the burning of cr

>>there's a reason why wx did it personally, and targeted lwj especially

>>fast forward a bit again, wwx is a lil mopey bc his letter from lwj should've come a few days ago

>>they're pining pen pals bc ofc they are smh :rolling_eyes:

>>at this point, news of cr's destruction hasn't spread to lotus pier yet

>>jc is annoyed and yeets him into the lake and makes him swim off the pining

>>cue yunmeng jiang lake shenanigans

>>and then mf wx shows up to personally deliver the invitation to the wen indoctrination

>>jfm and yzy simply Do Not acknowledge wwx's existence at lotus pier in front of him

>>it's a very tense but quick conversation

>>and then wx leaves and hears wwx and heads in the direction of the latter's voice

>>he gets to the lake to see the jiang disciple swimming in the lake, but no wwx

>>bc jyl knew he had come and quickly run over to the lake to warn and hide wwx

>>jc perched himself on a roof to watch wx and let them know when he was gone

>>that meal they had in cql? yea it goes differently this time around

>>it's mostly yzy hissing at the wens and also having a conundrum over whether or not wwx should go

>>jc votes no, wwx votes shut up jc i'm coming with you

>>jfm concedes, jc is irate, wwx and jc go to the indoctrination

>>but jc makes wwx promise to not ever leave his side

>>and wwx is like that's kinda the whole point?? but ok

>>and then ofc that whole opening scene at nightless city happens

>>what with them standing around and then bam an injured lwj

>>ft the cr friends being all fhkjhkjsghk (/neg) internally

>>except wwx, he's very open about his concern

>>wc shows up, spends half the time glaring at wwx

>>he was supposed to be make it hell for lwj

>>but quite frankly he'd be happy if lwj snatched wwx

>>he very much dislikes his brother's infatuation with wwx

>>so yea it's roughly the same, those first few days

>>except wn secretly visits the disciples

>>slips snacks, gives info, exchanges messages between them, and treats lwj

>>wq finds out, scolds him, and then does the same, mostly treatment

>>and then the dungeon day comes

>>by which i mean that day wwx ended up in the dungeons with the dog thing

>>it goes the same as usual, except wc is particularly harsh, and is focused on wwx

>>so it happens sooner, and only wwx is involved

>>spends the night with the wolf thing, wn comes, yk the drill

>>except he knocks out at one point and wx gets him

>>and he wakes up

in a room and wq and wn are treating him

>>he's quickly given a coded warning

>>and then wx comes

>>wc had been forced out of leading the indoctrination and someone relatively competent is in his place

>>wx doesn't really let wwx go back tho

>>just makes wwx stay with him and basically invades his privacy and harasses him

>>for like. quite some time.

>>wwx also meets wrh a few times and it is. not fun.

>>wrh makes thinly veiled threats about war and attacking lotus pier and stuff

>>and wx reveals he was the one who requested and took charge of cr burning

>>and wwx is angry at wx but then wx gets angry and snaps threats

>>and wwx quiets and realizes wx is relentless

>>and that his connections are putting ppl he cares about at risk

>>it all kinda piles up and wx's insistence gets to his head

>>and then the bell scene (which started all this) happens

>>it might seem kinda ooc this whole thing but like

>>sexual trauma is very different from standard child abuse/classic asian toxicity

>>and you have to consider wwx's position as he has to put up with wx's everything

>>am i projecting? probably, but my au my choices

>>so the bell scene begins with all the heirs and their entourages gathered at that. place

>>idk what it's called but that place from cql where wc was lecturing

>>wc's substitute indoctrinator is like so. y'all can go home now. here's your swords.

>>and everyone's like omg????? but also cr friends are like ok where's wwx :upside_down:

>>and it's a very complicated moment

>>and then they give suibian to jc

>>and he almost kills someone bc he thinks they killed wwx

>>and then they're like no he's alive he just won't need that :upside_down:

>>jc is like WHAT does that even MEAN

>>and it's about to be a whole thing but then wwx shows up

>>and it's all ok for half a second

>>bc yes he's here but he is very obviously not ok

>>and it Shows, wwx is doing such a bad job hiding how not ok he is

>>cr friends are like. what did they do. who am i killing.

>>so now we enter - The Bell Exchange

>>wwx comes forward and (very poorly) tries to lighten the mood and tease jc and is like aw did you miss me

>>jc who was very much terrified is just like yes ofc come here Now let's go home

>>and wwx has this look on his face that's summed up as love and affection but also deep apology and secrecy

>>he slowly goes to jc and his hands are shaky as he takes off his bell and grabs jc's hands to give it to him

>>and wwx is very vague about it he's just like i won't be going back it's ok you're all free to go now i'm making sure of it go back home be safe

>>and jc is having the nth meltdown rn bc wwx what did you do

>>nhs has an idea of the gist, and all the c friends are very concerned

>>and then wen xu shows up and wwx does this silent flinch but in his bones and straightens up

>>and wx is mocking the others and stuff and then wraps an arm around a very uncomfortable wwx and is like

>>"you should be grateful to my fiance for his generous nature"

>>wwx is very obviously not having a good time and is not ok with this

>>he looks like he's going to launch himself from a cliff (hehehe) to avoid this

>>everyone is silent for a minute as they realize what happened

>>a lot of the disciples here were at cr indoctrination

>>so they know at least somewhat of wx's pursual of wwx and the unrequited feelings

>>and it becomes obvious that wwx exchanged something - his freedom, hand in marriage, etc - to set all the disciples free

>>jc draws sandu and is about to go for wx's head bc how Dare he

>>but wwx stops him and tells him very firmly but desperately to not try anything, just go, tell shijie i'm sorry, it'll be ok

>>lwj does that death grip on his sword, 2 seconds away from taking wx's head himself

>>jzx is having lots of feelings about this and a lot aren't nice

>>especially with the weird sort of parallels as far as betrothals

>>also he kinda likes wwx?? they're kinda friends?? and they're brother-in-laws to be anyway

>>and even despite all that, the whole situation just Sucks and jzx is kinda an airhead but he's actually pretty noble

>>mianmian is

like So offended and enraged on behalf of everyone she's ready to throw hands

>>nhs is half horrified for his friend and half cold rage and plotting

>>what really worsens the situations is just how bad wwx is taking it

>>bc he always covers up his pain and worries, and very well at that

>>the fact that he can barely even fake a smile now, and has resolved to outright desperate pleading, not even teasing anyone, says a Lot about how bad things were while he was gone

>>they have suspicions about what wx might have done to wwx while they were alone

>>tl;dr: cr friends kinda have an idea of what wx has done and really want him dead

>>but wwx is forcing them out, and eventually they all do leave, miserably

>>they don't know what had happened for them to be let go with their swords and without consequences

>>and they don't want wwx suffering for their (not really helpful atm) stubbornness

>>jc is stiff and clenching his jaw the entire way home, trying to figure out ways to get wwx out

>>lwj is drowning in his emotions as he goes back to the burnt cr

>>mianmian, jzx, nhs are having very complicated thought processes about everything

>>nhs actually goes with lwj to cr first, to make sure he doesn't do anything dumb and to be a friend

>>drops him off, and eventually heads out after a few days (lqr is appraised of the situation)

>>and lo and behold, he happens to find lxc on his way home, and brings big bro lan back to cr

[ main . ao3 ]

#this got out of hand #yunmeng shuangjie #wangxian #wen xu x wei wuxian #mdzs #mdzs au #mo dao zu shi #mo dao zu shi au #cql #cql au #the untamed #the untamed au #not!fics

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jetsetreid · 4 years ago

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ignore me like we never met before - spencer reid x reader - chapter 1/?

Summary: Spencer Reid annoys you. Enemies to lovers with a side of BDSM (to follow -- no sex in this chapter, sorry!)

A/N: New to CM fandom, hiiii. With the s7 cast (the elite) but set post-Maeve storyline. Title from Ignore me by Betty Who.

Word Count: 2.5k

Spencer Reid was annoying. And not just in the normal ways you might find someone annoying. Spencer was annoying in an extraordinary way, that only someone with an IQ of 187 and an eidetic memory could be. The most annoying part was that he never really met your quips or participated in your banter.

It made you look like an asshole, which was completely unfair of him. Because you knew Spencer returned your feelings. You annoyed him as well. He avoided you constantly and when he did speak to you, he made sure it was case related. You didn’t sit next to each other on the jet, or at team outings. Hotch almost never paired you together. You recognized, in the back of your head, that you should be thankful for this, but you just found it to be another thing about him that annoyed you.

Despite your lack of time spent together, you couldn’t help yourself. When an opportunity presented itself, you just had to push back. It didn’t matter though, because he never said anything back. He always let you insult him and looked away without a reaction.

Your favorite pastime. Team drinks. And you were stuck sitting next to JJ and across from Spencer, with everyone else further down the double-sided booth. Spencer and JJ had been chatting all night about her kids and a film festival Spencer went to every year and had recently joined the board of organizers. If it wasn’t for the fact that Spencer was involved, the film festival might have actually sounded interesting.

Instead, it was mind numbingly boring. You tried to focus your attention on Morgan and Penelope down the booth, but they were too caught up in each other to notice your desperate attempts to strike up a conversation.

Emily showing up to team drinks was a godsend

“Emily, thank god,” you shrieked. “Sit next to me!”

Emily slid into the booth next to you and quickly ordered a drink before the two of you fell into a conversation. You were discussing Emily’s new girlfriend and how tangled up in each other they’ve been. You’ve missed her lately. This was the first time she’d actually shown up to team drinks in months.

“You know, I like Eleanor and I’m happy for you, but falling in love is gross.” You said it with no bite and a smile on your face. You were teasing her.

“Actually,” Spencer cut in, “Falling in love has a similar neurological effect as getting high on cocaine.”

You rolled your eyes so hard they almost fell out. What did boy wonder know about falling in love? And why was he involving himself in a conversation that had nothing to do with him? Spencer and JJ had been ignoring you all night. Okay, maybe JJ tried to include you in their conversation, but still.

“Another fact you read, but don’t know in practice, right?” you asked, eyeing him with spite. You were fairly new to the team, almost a year in, but you just knew there was no way Spencer Reid had been in love before.

Emily tensed up beside you and JJ fell silent as well. You figured Spencer would ignore your comment, like ways. He never ever rose to your insults.

“What about you, we all know you’ve been high on cocaine. So even though you’ve never found anyone to love you, it’s almost the same thing.”

JJ choked out a laugh. Emily smirked without meeting your eyes. All you could do was glare.

The team knew about your party days in college, although you’d never outright said you’d done cocaine. The reality is that you had and quite a bit too. Your first couple of years in college were a blur of a party until you calmed down your junior year and took academics seriously.

But Spencer never challenged you, so what made this so different? Maybe you hit a nerve. Everyone knew he was lacking in the relationship department.

“I’ve found plenty of people to love me,” you said with a smirk.

“For the night,” Spencer added, with a bite.

You should’ve been annoyed or angry, you should’ve told him to shut up, but you didn’t. Because seeing him take the bait after almost a year of digs made something in your stomach flutter. You were finally getting to him.

“Yeah, wouldn’t you like to know?”

Spencer meet you with hard, scowling eyes. Emily and JJ followed your back and forth like a tennis match.

“What’s that saying? If you caught fire, I wouldn’t piss to put you out.”

“Jesus, Spence,” JJ muttered.

“Those are Fall Out Boy lyrics,” you responded with a glare. He was such a dick.

Spencer shrugged. “Sentiment stands.”

You dropped it after that. You hated to give him the win, but another round of drinks appeared, and Emily quickly changed the subject.

Spencer didn’t stop after that. It was becoming a problem. Mostly because Hotch could shrug off your mouth before. Most of the team thought you were just teasing, and because Spencer never reacted, they all saw it as harmless.

But he was reacting now and the two of you were trading insults like siblings. You were being childish, but so was he so you didn’t stop. At first, it was almost fun. But Spencer was too quick, too smart. He didn’t even have to try.

Another case, another jet ride.

“Maybe the unsub has something on these victims. With this amount of overkill…” you trailed off, eyeing the photos in front of you on your tablet.

“Actually,” Spencer started. This was the fifth time he’d interrupted you (yes, you were counting) and you’d only been on the jet for 30 minutes.

“Oh my god,” you groaned, snapping your finger in front of his face. “Does anyone get to give an opinion on anything without you actually’ing them?”

He swatted your hand away. “That’s not a word,” Spencer sighed. “Maybe I always have to interject because like your vocabulary, your opinions resemble that of a 3rd grader.”

“Focus,” Hotch commanded. You could tell by the tone of his voice that he was absolutely done with both of you so you dropped it and you kept the rest of your opinions to yourself. The worst part of Spencer finally participating in your insult war was that he was always winning. He was smarter than you and he wasn’t afraid to let you know it.

It didn’t bother you at first, but after weeks of him always getting the upper hand, it started to. You felt stupid and you started to question your spot on the team. You absolutely hated that you let him get into your head like this.

The case wrapped up later that week. Unsub caught. Another jet ride home.

You gathered your things from the bullpen when Hotch appeared, singling for you and Spencer.

“I need to see you both in my office.”

Derek winced and Emily patted you on the back. “Try not to murder each other in there.”

“Yeah, good fuckin’ luck,” Derek added with a laugh as they both headed to the elevators.

You ignored them and started walking up the stairs, quickly followed by Spencer. You both took a seat with your eyes glued to Hotch. You knew what was coming.

“Y/L/N, Reid,” Hotch started. “I’m not happy to be having this conversation. Your behavior has been juvenile and unproductive.”

You twisted your hands in your lap. This felt like getting reprimanded by a parent and you did not like it. Your stomach twisted with guilt.

“I don’t care about whatever rivalry the two of you have going on and I certainly don’t need you to be best of friends, but your behavior is affecting the team. And I need it to end.”

You nodded, refusing to look anywhere near Spencer.

“I understand, sir,” you breathed, voice low. “Consider it ended.”

Spencer nodded, “I apologize. It won’t be a problem anymore.” You saw him looking your way out of the corner of your eye, but you refused to take your eyes off Hotch. You felt terrible, having disappointed your boss.

You both exited his office with a quiet sigh. Your heart felt heavy.

You wouldn’t admit it, but you were secretly glad Hotch put an end to things. You knew you had started all of this, but Spencer’s words were like a poison. They were all you could think about some nights, tossing and turning. Were you really that stupid? Like a 3rd grader? Did everyone see it? You often wondered how you even landed this job after the things Spencer said about you.

Hotch’s door clicked shut behind you as the both of you walked to your desks. You could tell Spencer was just as upset as you and you wanted to comfort him somehow, but you quickly pushed down the foreign and unwelcome thought.

Spencer lifted his bag over his shoulder, eyeing you finally. “Just stay out of my way from now on, Y/L/N.”

You really wanted to fight back, but instead you felt tears prick at your eyes. How fucking annoying. You absolutely refused to cry in front of Spencer Reid, but you knew he could tell how emotional you were. He was a profiler after all, and you weren’t even trying to hide it.

“Just stop, Reid,” you whispered, grabbing your purse and exiting the bullpen. You didn’t wait for him at the elevator. In front, you hit the “close doors” button rapidly until they slid shut, leaving you alone.

Weeks passed. You were quietly miserable. Spencer ignored you. Hotch watched the two of you constantly. Everyone else did as well, and it was suffocating. You barely spoke up anymore, always having to be prompted by Hotch, or sometimes Derek and Emily. Even JJ and Rossi. Anyone but Spencer. He didn’t care what you had to say and he didn’t even bother pretending like he did.

You knew you were acting unreasonable, but you still felt scolded by Hotch and now isolated by the rest of the team. Realistically, you knew that wasn’t the case, but Spencer had known them all for a decade and sometimes it felt like they all took his side. It hurt your feelings, as irritating as that was to admit.

Things boiled over in Phoenix. An unsub that the team hadn’t exactly profiled right. A mistake you made, dropping your gun and moving close. You thought you could talk him down. You were very, very wrong.

It happened so fast. The unsub grabbing you, bringing you to his front, your back firmly against his front. He wrapped his arm around your neck, applying pressure.

He was using you as a human shield. His other hand rose and you felt the cool metal of the unsub’s gun against your temple. You couldn’t speak. Why couldn’t you speak? You were trained for this, but right now you felt helpless. Derek and Spencer stood in front of you, trying to talk him down, but you couldn’t make out their words. You could tell they were panicked, and you knew this wasn’t going to end well.

The unsub – Randall Gaines – tightened his arm around your neck, cutting off your oxygen just a bit more. You felt a tear slide down your cheek. You were going to die in a shitty motel in Phoenix, Arizona. Right in front of Reid and Morgan. Bullet through the skull. They were going to walk out of here with your blood splattered all over them, but you weren’t walking out of this room at all.

You felt your grip on reality slip as his chokehold tightened, your eyes slipping shut. Darkness.

You woke to Derek crouched in front of you, breathing a sigh of relief. You were still alive. You were still in the shitty motel room.

The unsub was dead next to you, both of you on the ground. You’d passed out, but only for a couple of seconds. You were fine.

Derek helped you up, snaking an arm around you for support. He loaded you into the backseat of the SUV while you waited for backup.

The ambulance came and checked you out, the coroner carried away the unsub’s body and the three of you left. No one spoke, least of all you.

The jet ride home was not pleasant. You avoided everyone’s concerned eyes by taking a seat in the back and putting your headphones in. You didn’t even listen to anything, but it guaranteed that everyone left you alone.

When you got back to Virginia, Hotch grabbed your shoulder, leading your away from the team out into the hallway. “Take a few days, okay, Y/N?”

You nodded. “Okay.” Your voice was barely there, a rough whisper at best. The paramedic had warned you of this. Loss of voice, coughing, trouble swallowing. Red eyes, headaches, bruising. Even nausea. Although you weren’t sure if that was from the injuries or the situation in general.

Hotch eyed you, sighing. “I want you to know you are a valued member of this team. See you next week.”

You nodded again before rushing to the elevators. Which would have been great, had it not been for one Penelope Garcia.

She saw you and scurried over, pulling you into an embrace. “Y/N,” she breathed. “I am so happy you’re okay.”

Maybe it was because it was Penelope, or maybe it was just because of the day you had, but you hugged her back, clinging. She pressed a kiss to your forehead. “Movies and takeout?”

You found yourself nodding without realizing it. You had missed this. The past couple of weeks you had been so closed off, so worried about your place on this team. But now you were too tired and too distressed to worry. You followed Penelope out of the building.

Derek showed up with a 12 pack of White Claw and a bottle of white wine.

“Your favorites,” he grinned.

Emily and JJ followed with Chinese takeout. The five of you spread out on Penelope’s couch and the floor in front of it. You smiled despite the burning in your throat, the hoarseness of your voice and the bruising you were sure was developing around your throat.

You smiled and cracked open a White Claw, attention on the latest episode of Saturday Night Live. You missed your friends.

Until the door quietly opened and Spencer Reid appeared. He looked uncomfortable. He brushed his his hair behind his ear and sat down on the floor with his legs crossed next to Derek.

“I brought DVDs,” he said, holding up a handful of them.

“Thanks,” you whispered. You didn’t mean to say anything, but you didn’t take it back. You even offered him a small smile.

“Pretty boy, it’s all about streaming these days,” Morgan rolled his eyes, “but it’s the thought that counts.” And then he ruffled Spencer’s hair. You smiled again.

Even with Spencer Reid in the mix, you were happy.

#criminal minds fic #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fic #mine

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juuls · 3 years ago

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This was a comment left on chapter 11 of my fem!Tony Stuckony time travel/soulmate fic, Hanging From a Cross of Iron, and I just wanted to put a couple things out there.

First of all, I’m not mad. We’ll make that clear. I’ve received variations of this comment before and it’s rather on the mark. But sometimes both sides can be correct in how they interpret a piece of fiction, and I wanted to show that.

So… yeah. This is something I get every so often on this fic, especially around this chapter (10-12ish) and I just… really wanted to post my reply to it, if for nothing other than explaining the way my brain works and WHY I hate Captain America: Civil War so much for ruining so many good things in fandom.

I’m not putting this out there for sympathy or agreement or to start a fight or stupid shit. It’s more like a… “I’m tired of explaining myself, let me post something I feel is a semi-eloquent response to someone who was at least mostly respectful and got some things right, who I know does represent a fair portion of people who may be interested in reading this fic,” which I could then just point/link to the next time I wake up to things making me sad in my inbox on top of me being sad and feeling guilty at not having written for a while.

Stupid covid. Stupid life being dumb and depressing and draining energy and happiness from many. Just you wait. I’ll be back soon with Codega and this fic, Cross.

But here. This is my reply to the above comment:

So I don’t normally reply to critique such as this because this IS fanfiction, but you are at least part right: it IS supposed to be unfair.

This is me working out my issues with Civil War, because boy that sure as fuck pissed me off. I love Stuckony, but after CACW it was really hard to reconcile that love anymore. So this was my way to do that, and I 100% wanted to bring in the unfairness, the distrust, the favouritism, the… meanness that I saw and felt after that.

It’s also a way for me to work through my issues at the injustices I suffered at the hands of my ex-husband—I started writing this shortly after packing my bags and leaving.

I wanted a slow, somewhat realistic, non-fairytale path to even partial redemption, shared pain and circumstances and experiences, and to show that things CAN work out as long as certain lines are not crossed. I skirt the line sometimes, definitely on purpose, but that’s for ME.

I wanted to turn the tables: Steve (and Bucky) were out of their time and comfort zone in the future—Toni, in turn, needed to be out of her time and comfort zone in the past.

Plus, can you imagine a soulmate world where you’ve had a partner and you think “this is it”? Then bam! Suddenly someone’s suddenly thrust into your life.

And I wanted to play on every single issue Toni would have experienced with her family, friends, “friends”, enemies, Obie, her company, the world, etc., post-IM2.

None of them have had an easy go of it and war is goddamn hell. They ALL have PTSD. (But also, lol, the Howlies start laying into Stucky about what you’re getting mad about here too, so I’m way ahead of you!)

From the beginning, this was as much a psychological setting as a romantic one: way more so in the beginning. But it slowly crawls its way out of the murk. I wanted a soulmate story where it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. I wanted a story where they had to fight for it… or where they had a choice, shitty as it may be (they’ll NEVER choose not to have Toni, that was never going to happen). I wanted something… realistic, even amidst super soldiers, super tech, an almost unbelievable war, and soulmates existing.

I wanted it to be a fight. I wanted rejection… then them, ALL of them, to choose each other despite that, despite their past, and despite fate.

That is my goal with this fic. And since I take my own sweet time, that’s really not readily apparent so soon in this fic, even at chapter 11.

The love will be there. The unconditional love, the equal triadic love. Not just Stucky plus Toni. Because believe me, Stucky is probably one of my least favourite ships that include some of my favourite characters. Sounds ridiculous since I write them here, but as a historian I wanted to take that, take some realism, with a dash of ridiculous and hurt and pain and anger, and see what I could do with that.

The entire reason this story exists is because of a scene idea I had that doesn’t come about until the future in the 20s chapters. Leaning on each other and trusting each other because one of them was lost. Well, technically, that happens twice.

But the point is: this is a long as fuck story towards a love they have to (and WANT to, eventually) fight tor.

This fic is for me. It’s for people like me. It’s for people who don’t want an easy love story. It’s absolutely okay that you don’t like it! There are SO many fics that I dislike for a variety of reasons, and I simply close it, mark it as Did Not Finish, and don’t return. I recognize not every fic is for me.

This one’s for me. I may have sort of stalled out where I’m at in the 20s chapters, but it’s left at a pretty good place, and I’m looking forward to this dumb pandemic so I can get back to forging this love between these three idiots, as well as pick up an old Star Wars story I left 4+ years ago due to the abuse at the hands of my ex. But I’m ready to return to it now. Well, after the world calms down a little.

It’s okay if you’re done with this story—that is 100% your choice and I will never begrudge you that. I’m glad you gave it a try though! If you’re interested, you could skip ahead and see how the dynamics have changed, or I could give you clips and examples too.

My one wish (though I understand it completely) is that you had not done this on Anon. For a few reasons:

1, I would never hold this opinion against you, especially because you got tons of it right! Go you!

2, I’d love to understand you better and discuss this with you. No recriminations whatsoever.

3, But I do wonder who of those who have read my other writings left me this message. It makes me a little sad, and I will wonder which of the people I talk to have this negative opinion of me now, but that’s also my own past issues rearing their ugly heads. You have every right to remain on Anon, though it’s not so nice when you wake from a nice dream and discover anon ‘dislike’ in your inbox on a work you slaved away on, and that the dislike is specifically about the things you wrote about deliberately, hah. Sorta funny, actually, so I’ll let that one go. xD

Thank you, though, even if I disliked reading this words: it helps me to look at my own work critically and to better understand how to frame and write things going forward.

Not every fic is for everyone, and that’s okay. I’ve encountered mine, you’ve encountered yours, but I think we’ve both learned from this interaction.

Whoever you may be, even if you divulge your handle to me, my respect for you wouldn’t diminish. It’s good to have healthy discussions and to look critically upon your own work—even if I am a sensitive bean and it hurts a little, I’m fine. :P

I think the lesson to be learned here is: fuck everything after CACW!!!! Grrrrr xD

Take care,

Juuls

P.S. I may post parts of this on my Tumblr because I do occasionally encounter similar complaints about this story, and I think maybe this is the most coherent and respectful enough comment-reply response I’ve had on this topic. Thank you.

P.P.S. Happy to talk privately too!

P.P.P.S. And the offer still stands for some lovely clips from future chapters, especially if you’re not considering continuing reading this story anymore; it’ll at least show what I’m talking about and what I’ve been working tirelessly towards. It’s hard—fucking hard—work to get past CACW and still like these characters together (my fic Paper Boats is probably one of my bigger testaments to that, oof) and I admit it’s still really really hard and I struggle with it. Covid isn’t the only reason I’ve sort of stalled out on that. But that’s more because I’m like “now what?” than not seeing any love between these three.

It’s a long journey. I knew it was going to be. But I like a challenge. :)

Take care, be well, stay safe, to you and all of yours.

And may you find many fics you love!

#fanfiction #comments #commenting #comment replies #stuckony #hanging from a cross of iron #my writing #i know i don’t need to justify my writing but i am rather lacking in confidence most days #so stuff like this does suck #but it’s also helpful y’know?#not mad! not sad! seriously #i like engaging in conversations about WHY we write what we write #:)

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theydontknowaboutusimagines · 4 years ago

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This Christmas - A Harry Styles Series (Part 12)

Two life long friends. Secretly in love. Home for the holidays. Will they risk everything by telling the other how they feel? Or will they spend another year loving from afar?

Read these first

Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

Waking up the next morning alone in your childhood bedroom was a little disappointing. It was a strange feeling not waking up with the warmth of Harry by your side. The fact that it had only been a couple of days meant you were in for a rude awakening once you went back to your flat in London. Speaking of which, neither you or Harry has brought up what would happen next, but it looks like you’ll have your trip to discuss it.

After washing your face and brushing your teeth, the realization it was Christmas morning and the aroma of your mother’s traditional Christmas morning breakfast taking over the house quickly brought your spirits up. Once you were done, you went straight downstairs, still wearing your Christmas pajamas, and your mouth watered at the sight of food on the table.

“Happy Christmas!” you smiled, hugging your mother.

“Happy Christmas, honey,” she smiled. “Everything is almost done.”

“Awesome, need any help?” You asked.

“Want to grab plates and then get your father?” She asked.

“Sure thing,” you smiled.

You went over to the cabinet taking out enough plates for everyone and placing them on the table. You decided on going ahead and getting everyone drinks as well before going in search of your father, who was in his office getting the present for your mother. It was something he always did. He had to wait to put it out last minute because if she knew he had purchased something for her, she would make him take it back.

“I really think she’s going to like this one this year,” he smiled, holding the box in his hands.

“You say that every year and while she does usually like them, she still complains,” you laughed.

“True, but she only stays mad at me for a couple of hours and then she lets herself enjoy the gift,” he shrugged.

“Traditions, right?” You smiled.

“Gotta love ‘em,” he said.

After stuffing your face with all Christmas breakfast, it was time to open up presents. You all took turns opening your gifts. Thank yous, gasps, laughs, and a few tears were shed with each opened present. At the end of it all, there was nothing but wrapping paper and empty bags and boxes scattered around.

“How is that we have grown children and there’s still a mess on our floor on Christmas morning?” Your mother laughed.

“Because everyone’s a kid at Christmas,” you smiled.

Next up on the family traditions was watching another Christmas movie before getting ready to head over to Anne’s. This time you picked How the Grinch Stole Christmas. You helped your mother clean up the mess while you watched the movie and spent the rest of it cuddled up on the couch, drinking yet another cup of hot chocolate.

When the movie was over, you went up to your room to get ready. You always wanted to look nice on Christmas, spending extra time on your hair and makeup and wearing a nice outfit. However, this Christmas you wanted to look extra special. Luckily, you packed a new deep shade of green dress that fit you perfectly. It wasn’t too tight, but it still flattered your figure, which you loved.

You paired it with red heels and a deep, red lip. To add in a little extra festiveness, you put on your Christmas tree earrings. They were definitely a little much, but you loved them. When you met your parents downstairs, they both smiled at you.

“What?” You blushed.

“You look absolutely beautiful,” he smiled.

“Thank you,” you smiled.

“Okay, ready to go to the in-laws?” Your mother smirked.

“What?” You laughed.

“Well, now that you and Harry are dating, we’re all officially family, right?” She smirked.

“We’re only dating, Mum, not getting married,” you laughed.

“Not yet,” she winked.

You shook your head with a laugh before following them out the door.

Harry woke up yet again to a pillow being thrown in his face.

“Go away, Gem!” He mumbled, throwing a pillow towards the direction of his sister.

“Harry Edward Styles it is Christmas morning and it’s time for you to get your ass up,” Anne scolded.

“Mum?” He snapped up, instantly regretting the sudden movement.

“Yep. You have five minutes to be downstairs,” she smirked.

“Sorry!” He called out after her.

Harry groaned laying back in bed trying to wake himself up. He had gotten back only three hours before and he was slightly regretting his decision on sneaking out of the house. But who was he kidding, it was well worth it. Any time spent with you was worth more than lack of sleep.

Finally sliding off the bed, he goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth and wipe his face. Looking into the mirror, he noticed a few remnants from the previous nights. Your lipstick stained his lips and various places across his chest and neck. He smirked, remembering the details of each one as he took a washcloth to try and get the red smear off. He would have loved to keep them there for the time being, but he didn’t need to advertise his whereabouts only a few hours ago.

When he made it to the living room, piles of presents were separated based on the three of them. This was always their thing. All the presents under the tree would be piled together based on who they were for and then they would each take turns opening a present. It would have been easier to just let one person go and open all their presents, but it made the magic of opening presents last a little longer.

“Happy Christmas,” Gemma smiled, hugging him.

“Happy Christmas, Gem,” he smiled, hugging her back.

“MY babies!” Anne smiled, wrapping her arms around both of them and pressing kisses to their cheeks.

And that was something she has done every single year and probably will continue to do when both of her children are well into their fifties.

“I can’t believe it’s Christmas,” Gemma said, sitting down on the floor next to her pile of presents.

“I know. The fact that another year’s over, too,” Anne said.

“Okay, John Lennon,” Harry joked.

“Smart ass!” Anne laughed, throwing a pillow at him.

“For fuck’s sake, I’m taking all the pillows in this bloody house and hiding them forever,” He laughed.

“Hey, we don’t get to do this very often, so we have to make it a good one,” Gemma shrugged.

“And what’s that? Bug the piss out of me?” He asked.

“Exactly,” she smirked.

He rolled his eyes, getting himself some coffee, before sitting back down near his own pile of presents. He enjoyed getting presents, but he enjoyed giving them the most. He loved being able to buy his family things they wouldn’t be able to purchase for themselves. He was happy he was in a position to help his mother and sister whenever they needed it. Of course, being who they are, they didn’t need it quite so much, but it was there when they did.

After presents that included multiple gag gifts causing them to laugh uncontrollably, they all sat around eating breakfast and talking about different Christmas memories. Next, everyone went up to their rooms to get ready for everyone to come over. Of course he was the first one back downstairs, so he started getting things ready to cook while he waited for his Gemma and his mother to get back down.

Anne came down first and the two of them got going on the cooking. Harry’s job was to slice and dice everything, while Anne did the rest of it.

“So,” Anne said. “Are you and Y/N official?”

“Um… yeah, we are,” he smiled.

“And you’re happy?” She asked.

“The happiest I’ve been in a long time,” he smiled.

“I know,” she smiled. “I can tell.”

“I don’t even know why I’m asking this because I’m pretty sure I already know the answer, but are you happy about this?” He asked, throwing chopped veggies in a bowl.

“Honey, all I’ve ever wanted for you is to be happy and to live a life that you want,” she said. “I’ve always thought you and Y/N would be each other’s person, but I knew I couldn’t be the one to tell you that. You two had to figure it out on your own and sometimes the only way to find your way to who you’re meant to be with… you have to be with other people.”

“So, you’re saying it was probably a good thing for me and Y/N to just now get together?” He asked.

“I do,” she nodded. “Think about it Harry, when all of this… when you were in One Direction you were still so young and traveling around the world the majority of the time. You weren’t ready to have a serious girlfriend and had you and Y/N tried back then, it really could have fucked up any chance you two might have had. And then what? You two would have missed out on a life together.”

“Wow, I guess I didn’t think of it like that,” he said.

“Which is why I’m happy you two are trying not to focus on the past,” she said. “I know it’s easier said than done, but everything has its way of working out. It may not be when we want it, but it’ll come when we’re ready for it.”

Harry smiled, wrapping his arms around her, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she smiled. “And next time you want to sneak out and in the house in the middle of the night, please just use the front door like a normal person.”

“Uh… you know about that?” He winced.

“You’re needy son, I’m surprised it took you that long to sneak over to Y/N’s place,” she joked.

“I really don’t understand why everyone keeps saying that like it’s a bad thing!” He laughed.

When you arrived at Anne's house, you suddenly felt a little nervous. You weren’t sure why, but wondered if it was because this would be the first public outing for you and Harry. And it wasn’t even public, just close friends and family. You hated to know what it would feel like when you actually did accompany him in public, which is something else you would have to discuss.

Before your father could even knock, Harry had opened the door with a huge smile on his face.

“Happy Christmas!” He cheered.

“Oh boy, someone’s already had a few glasses of wine,” your mother jokes.

“I’ve not!” Harry laughed.

“Well we’re bloody in for it when you do,” she laughed, kissing his cheek. “But Happy Christmas to you, too.”

You giggled when Harry looked at you, “I don’t know if I should be offended or not,” he said.

“If you have to ask, you already have your answer,” you said.

He smiled, slipping his arm around your waist, “You look beautiful…. And those earrings… are lovely.”

“Smooth,” you laughed. “This is my Christmas earrings. I’ve worn them every year for like four years.”

“That doesn’t exactly shock me,” he said.

“I might have to get you a pair,” you smirked. “We could match.”

“I’d love to, but sadly I don’t have any piercings,” he sighed, dramatically.

“Oh, we can change that with a sewing needle and a trip to the bathroom,” you said. “It’s not stopped you before.”

“You heard about that?” He winced.

“Of course, I heard about it. You act like I’ve been living under a rock for the past six years,” you rolled your eyes.

“Sorry, sorry,” he put his hands up in defense.

“Anyway, how was Christmas this morning with your family?” you asked.

“Entertaining,” he laughed, handing you a drink. “Yours?”

“Traditional,” you joked. “And also very entertaining.”

“Maybe one day we’ll have our own entertaining tradition filled Christmas morning,” he winked.

“Can’t wait,” you smiled.

The rest of the day is filled with games, food, laughter, and drinks. You were having the best time and it felt even more special having Harry at your side. Eventually, Anne brought out Christmas Home videos and you all laughed at the memories. But there was one you had forgotten all about. It was of you and Harry probably about five or six. You two were cuddled up together, holding hands, and watching a Christmas movie.

“Who is your best friend in the whole world?” Anne smiled, pointing the camera at Harry.

“Y/N!” He smiled.

“And Y/N who is your best friend in the whole world?” She asked.

“Harry!” You smiled.

Both of you wrapped your arms around each other in a great big hug.

“That’s when I knew,” Anne smiled.

“Knew what?” Harry asked.

“That one day she would be officially a part of this family,” she smiled. “And on that day, I would give her this.”

Anne held out a wrapped box, the one Harry was supposed to have given you the other night. You looked at her confused before ripping off the paper and opening it up. Inside was a stocking with your name on it. The same exact stocking and font that match Anne, Gemma and Harry’s stocking hanging on the mantle.

“You always wanted one,” she smiled. “And now you have it.”

You smiled, tears forming in your eyes, as you wrapped her up in a big hug. “Thank you,” you whispered. “I love it.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” she smiled.

As the night died down a bit, you and Harry headed outside to the backyard.

“Christmas day is such a bittersweet feeling,” you sighed.

“How come?” He asked.

“Because once it’s here… it’s over and soon after the magic of Christmas… the feeling of Christmas is gone until next year,” you sighed.

“Well, at least we’ll have each other,” he smiled. “And we’ll know it may have been the magic of Christmas that brought us together.”

“Okay, how many Hallmark movies have you been watching?” You laughed.

“It’s true,” he laughed.

“Yeah, it is,” you smiled, wrapping your arms around him. “Whatever the reason, I’m glad we’re finally here, together.”

“Me too,” he smiled, holding you close.

And to make the moment even more romantic, it started to snow.

“Oh wait! I forgot, one more present,” he said.

“Harry, seriously, I’ve had enough,” you giggled.

“I think you’ll like it,” he said, handing you a box.

Inside the box was mistletoe, causing you to laugh.

“What’s more romantic than this… kissing under the mistletoe while it’s snowing on Christmas Night,” he smiled. “Merry Christmas, baby.”

“Merry Christmas,” you replied with a smile before pressing your lips against his.

And that is how This Christmas quickly became your favorite.

THE END! I hope you all enjoyed this series and look out for the companion series coming soon! :)

#Harry Styles Imagines #Harry Styles Fanfic #Harry Styles Fanfics #Harry Styles Fanfiction #Harry Styles Fanfictions #Harry Styles Christmas Series

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