#started reading in sixth grade all my friends fell off during freshman year of high school and i am fully a sophomore in college

[asexual-juliet]

when will god let me stop caring about keeper of the lost cities

[sad-boy-mono]

Character and Relationship Backstory and an update from me

Hey y'all! I have an update on where I've been at the end of this post for those of y'all who have been following Highschool Casualties and are wondering where I went, but if you've just stumbled across this I don't want to throw a long and random explination at ya!

Haven’t read the main story yet?

Heres the Tumblr Masterpost and the Ao3 link!

The characters

Damien Haas

16, sophomore in high school. Hardcore musical theater kid from grades 4-8. Loves to sing and shit. Got quite a few bigger roles early on. Things got busy freshman year, so he had to put things on hold.

(Favorite musical is probably falsettos or something idk I'm not a theater kid.)

(That's a lie, I'm just a bad theater kid XP)

Fucking loves superhero movies and shit because haha irony.

Favorite class is Drama, least favorite is math. Because math is hard and temporary but Shakespeare is forever.

Has an irrational fear of doctors, dentists, and needles due to some surgical mishaps that occurred when he was young. Also has a fear of the ocean.

Deals with anxiety and frequent panic attacks.

Shayne Topp

15, sophomore in high school. Really fucking loves football, but not on the team. He wanted to be, but he use to be friends with some of the people on the football team. And they... weren't the best to say the least. They were bad influences and caused Shayne to do bad things. He's no longer friends with them, but still goes to the games with Courtney and Damien to cheer on Courtny's brothers who are on the team.

Favorite class is probably woodworking, least favorite is math. Because math is hard and temporary but birdhouses are forever.

(Though he's actually really good at math, like he has the capability to take honors and do well. It just isn't fun.)

Doesn't know how to ride a bike and can't swim. Deep water freaks him out.

Has a huge fear of hurting other (because haha irony) and always puts his friends before himself.

Courtney Miller

14, freshman in high school. Loves writing and art. Has a lot of sketchbooks, but most of them are half filled. At this point she just collects cool sketchbooks.

Also love film/acting/drama but has a lot of anxiety around performing, so she ends up being on her school's tech crew. She's really good at editing, and has a passion for behind the scenes work around productions.

Favorite musical is Heathers.

Favorite class is her painting and art history class, least favorite is math. Because math is hard and temporary but art is forever.

Struggls a lot with school. Doesn't have many friends outside of Shayne and Damien, even when it comes to her tech crew. Generally on bad terms with "friends" (bullies) from middle school.

Doesn't enjoy the other people in her class. A few of them are former (or current) bullies from middle school.

Relationships

Damien and Shayne

Met in the first grade, became friends in a very first-grader-like manner.

Shayne: Hey I like your pokemon shirt

Damien: Oh thanks, you wanna play with trucks?

Shayne: Yeah sure.

They’ve been best friends ever since.

They had a bit of a falling out from mid 7th through 8th grade because of the guys Shayne hung out with. They were your average middle school douchbags but a lil worse.

Things got sorted the summer following 8th grade.

When they started high school, Shayne’s older brother would pick Damien up and give him a ride to school every morning; even though Damien was in walking distance.

But a month-ish before their freshman year, Shayne’s family ended up moving closer to Damien’s, because a tree fell through Shayne’s house during a terrible storm that hit their town. Even though it hypothetically could've been fixed, the house was old so they took it as a sign to just move.

Shayne is the only person who knows about Damien's anxiety outside of his family, and is who Damien goes to when he's having heighted anxiety or a panic attack.

They also bond over their fear of water strangly often.

Shayne and Courtney

Courtney’s family moved across the street from Shayne’s family when Courtney was in the 7th grade and Shayne was in the 8th. And after the initial family intoductions when the Millers first moved in, Shayne never talked to Courtney. Until about a month later, when he was home alone and Courtney knocked at his door.

After Shayne asked 'what's up?' Courtney asked if they could be friends.

“Do you know how to play smash?” Shayne asked.

Courtney sighed and let out a defeated ‘no’ and began walking away from the door.

“Ok, I’m gonna teach you how to play.”

They would hang out quite a bit until Shayne moved, but they still talked a lot.

Shayne later found out that Courtney would go door to door asking for friends. Shayne was the first and only person who had actually said yes.

Most people mistake them for siblings and when they find out they aren’t related, they assume they’re dating.

Shayne treats Courtney like a little sister and is very protective of her.

Shayne was fucking LIVID when he found out Courtney was being bullied. As much as he wanted to fight them, Courtney talked him down from doing so.

He still did the whole 'don't fuck with Courtney or I will fucking kill you' big brother thing. It did the trick for a while. When you're a very athletic 15 year old, it's easy to intimidate people that are younger than you.

Courtney hasn't told him about... the current bullies though.

Courtney and Damien

Met through Shayne. He made a group chat with the 3 of them that Shayne named “Operation Friendship”. Since Shayne and Damien weren't on speaking terms when Shayne and Courtney became friends they never had a chance to meet.

But they didn’t meet in person until Courtney’s first day of high school, where the 3 of them had their first class together, conveniently...

Anytime they play video games, a conversation along this happens.

"Courtney where did you learn to play this game?"

"...Shayne"

"Explains why you suck"

"HEY!"

(Shayne) "HEY!"

------

Hey! Thank you so much for reading! It's been awhile hasn't it. Yeah, I'm sorry. My life has been all over the place for the past few months and I've been struggling to find the motivation to write. I don't want to specifics because it's not only very personal, but a long story.

But to summerize why I sorta dissapeared, I had a lot of personal issues going on with both school and home and as my mental health was on this steady, but consistent, decline, it was at its very lowest in December. My home issues had reached their peak, and with the end of the quarter coming up after Xmas break and my weeks worth of late work coming back to bite me, I was too stressed to work on anything I found enjoyable without losing motivation immidiently.

Things didn't start getting better for me until some time early in semester 2 of my year. My school was transitioning back into fully in person with covid rates at their lowest in my area and things were finally feeling consistant again, but I was still getting my bearings. School still felt draining, though much less than before, and I didn't have much energy to work on things I was passionate about. I don't think I even made a new document for chapter 6 until mid-ish March.

I'm very nervious about coming back to this story after so long for many reason. First being, although I am feeling better mentally, things feel very off with writing this story. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of passion to write this story and want to see it to completion, I've just had a fluxuating interest in smosh aswell. I enjoy the channel, just not as much as I use to. And my hyperfixation on Smosh was a big drive for me writing the story. Second being that I have so much writers block around the sixth chapter of this story, and I'm worried that as soon as I try to work on it, that block will make me lose my motivation again and I'll put it off for another 6 months.

This "chapter" (idk what else I'd call this) has probably been fully finished in my drafts for about a month now, and I've been putting off posting it because of those listed anxieties, but I really want to continue writing this story so I hope you enjoyed!

Also sorry if this explination was all over the place, I just got my first covid vaccine today and am feeling kinda bleh.

[jjmaybankx]

congrats on 200!! tell us the story of all of your crushes (((;

OOOOPPPP ANON THIS ONE... THIS ONEEE okaaay y’all in for a RIDE. imma give them all codenames so it’s easier to talk about them HEHE. i’ve talked about a few of them HERE so they’re gonna have their same codenames

DAN. dan was a boy in my kindergarten class that was just adorable, other little girls had crushes on him. he was just that kid. but he was also really modest and didn’t realize people liked him like that. he gave me naruto stickers when we were in the first grade because he knew i liked naruto, which was a big deal to me just because most kids when we were little thought it was weird i liked anime. he also taught me how to properly throw a football. our moms worked together at one point and now his mom is also my dentist, she used to ask me for updates on him when we were little. we were both at our moms’ work after school once and since both of our moms were still working, my dad drove us home. this crush lasted from kindergarten to like the second grade, and then when seventh grade rolled around we were really good friends. he used to sing 5sos in class when we were doing our assignments because he knew i liked them, but we drifted after seventh because we had no classes together.

SCOTT. scott was a boy i liked on and off from the sixth grade to freshman year of high school. he was also that kid. but he was new our fifth grade year, but i had known him for years because we took kickboxing classes together. so, i was basically his first friend. everyone fell for him while i was just like “huh” but then i was like “...oh fuck” then i liked him on and off through middle school, and i had told him because i really don’t care whether people know i like them or not. he ended up moving high school because he went to a private, but he came back the end of our sophomore year. it was a huge deal to everyone that he was coming “back home” and i remember seeing him and calling out his name because i didn’t believe it when people said he was back. it was that surreal, my heart is pounding moment. we had math together for the last few months. my friend was crying outside our class one morning when he walks up and is like “good morning ladies” and hugs us and then reads the room and is like “... you two okay?” we haven’t really talked since, we don’t have the same friend group like we used to.

KENNY. kenny was a boy that i liked when i was liking scott on and off. it was sixth grade, we both liked each other, but i was well aware sixth grade is not the age where i should be dating, so i didn’t let it go further than us liking each other. he didn’t let any of our friends know he liked me back, but everyone knew either way because we were always together and practically best friends. we had this routine where every day after school i’d ask him how he is, and he’d ask me how my day was, and then we’d talk until our parents told us to get off the phone. simple, school girl crush. i ended up “getting bored” and “tired” of the fact he wouldn’t admit to his friends he liked me, but in reality i just thought scott was cuter. sorry kenny!

CAM. cam and i were a messsss, seventh to eighth grade, during my on and off liking of scott. he and i had bumped into each other and i thought he was cute, so i called him cute boy. we then met at a school dance when one of my friends told him i thought he was cute, and all of his friends asked me to hang out with them for the rest of the dance. when a boy made my friend cry at the end i had gotten up and said i had smt to take care of, and one of his friends was like “she’s fiesty, i like her” he had some mental health issues that ended up becoming my issues and then it all just went from cute to toxic. he was a closeted gay, but now he’s not in the closet and we’re friends, mutually deciding to forget about middle school. but we ended up talking again this year since we had a class together, he still has photos of us from the summer before freshman year and texted me them cuz he found them in his room. 

PETER. man oh man, i’ve talked about peter before. he’s my guy best friend. he and i had met our freshman year of high school in french class, and we had sat in front of each other. the teacher mispronounced my name and i frowned and he was like, “oh... you look so sad” and then proceeded to mispronounce my name himself. apparently, the people who sat at the table with us thought we were dating, even though that was the first time we had met. apparently, a lot of ppl in that class thought we were dating because one of the girls in my pe class asked me if he and i were fighting because her friend in my class noticed that, even though we sit next to each other, we hadn’t been talking and she had thought we broke up. and i was just like “...we’re not even dating...” and apparently her friend was like “...no... pretty sure they are.” LOL. we were fourteen and dumb, and this was my first time catching real feelings. and since it was high school, everything was dramatized and over exaggerated, i was annoying asf, he was immature asf. we didn’t talk for a few months, but eventually, everything calmed down and we became best friends. we facetime a lot, we’re each other’s 4a.m “hey are you awake” text. our families became friends, his mom loves me like her own. his friends, my friends, my family are always like “will that be a thing” and i’m always thinking it in the back of my head, but we’ve got a really good friendship going on. i secretly tell people that if we’re not married by 28 then i’m making him marry me LMAOO. i truly do hope that the person i end up with isn’t him just because i like having his as my best friend.

JOSH. this one broke me. josh was my best friend my sophomore and part of my junior year. we had a lot of mutual friends, including peter. but, when we started to become friends, right off the bat it was a toxic environment. his two best friends hating each other and he was also hanging out with my ex-best friend, who his best friend also hated. so... long story short, one of his best friends, my ex-bestfriend, me, and him all would hang out, pretending everything was fine between us. then, his best friend and my ex-best friend would fight over a fucking boy, and so he and i would kinda go off on our own. he was just always being pulled in three directions. but he lied to me the entire one year and a half duration of our friendship. we had a summer fling the summer before our junior year, and he had lied to be about his own experiences and who he was talking to. we weren’t dating or exclusive, but the fact that he had said he had no prior experiences, i felt lied to and betrayed, because it was all under false pretenses. he treated me like shit basically, and i just kept justifying it saying that i loved him so it was fine. it was def a give-take friendship, and i would just constantly provide support, literal food, literal material things, and he couldn’t even give me emotional support back. i kept trying to justify that i wouldn’t stay in this situation if i didn’t love him, but it was really just manipulation. i always had considered him my “first real love” but after finding out he had been lying for so long, i realized i didn’t love him because i didn’t even really know him, yanno? i wrote a book that was loosely based off of him, so that was what was good out of it. i came out a strong person, and honestly? i would do it all over again if it meant i would feel as strong and as good of a person as i did right now.

WREN. i work with him, one of my absolute besties. i thought he was cute for a while... and then... well, read the next person BAHA.

ALEC. Alec was a college boy who worked with my dad, our siblings also worked there together. when is started working there my sophomore year, i had met his brother first, aka Wren, we became quick friends, and i had thought he was cute. eventually, though, i had met alec. he was the mysterious one of the two, the quiet guy. we only really ever saw each other in passing, and eventually, he became a team lead. i remember the first times working with him and getting confused because he always giggled around me or my friends would say he was looking for me, but he’d never actually talk to me. so, last summer we ended up working together a lot as i got transferred onto his team, and we instantly just had a good bond. everyone, his boss, our coworkers, his brother, my dad, were just like “…soo… y’all gonna… address this… chemistry or??” we just clicked. from the music we listened to (one time he passed me and we were listening to the exact same song) to our hobbies in high school, we both took the same electives and had the same passions. he’d take me to and from work whenever i had to walk, once sent a whole team member to pick me up at 6am cuz he didn’t want me walking in the dark. he was even my escort for my debut. i feel like this one could be considered me being “in love” just because i truly cared about him and he truly cared about me, but i think it might’ve been right people wrong time perhaps? he had just met someone right before i told him how i felt about him, and our chemistry was just natural, everyone could see it. we had an “age gap” considering i’m graduating and he’s in college, but to us, we were always just both two young adults, yanno? so maybe some day he and i could revisit and actually be in love, i dunno.

and that’s all my crushes in my past 18 years and 6 months of life!

[princessmcpurpledork711]

So, I wanna know about Mason and Ryuki more.

Of course! They met in elementary school. Mason was really shy and mostly kept to himself. Ryuki came up to him and sat with him at lunch and they were practically inseparable ever since. They were both dorks. They played together, watched anime together, and drew together. They were over at each others houses constantly. It was the norm for them to be together.

It seemed natural for Fernando to assume that Mason would go to the same private middle school he sent Camille to. Honestly deep down, Mason knew his family was thinking that. But it didnt feel real until the last two months of sixth grade and his dad taking about getting the paperwork done for the transfer. No discussion, just the unspoken understanding, like it was some law he couldn't break. So Mason didnt even fight it, he just retreated. At the end of the school year, Ryuki promised him they would keep in touch. They could still hang out whenever they could. At first, it seemed that would be easy. The whole summer, they hung out at each others houses, sleepovers and text messages.

It hit Mason as soon as he entered his new school without this best friend next to him how lonely and anxious he was. Everyone at this school seemed to single out Mason, feeling his nerves and uneasiness. He was vulnerable and an easy target. He was alone and miserable. He wouldn't talk to his family about it, always responding with 'It was fine' when the how was school question was asked. He still kept texting Ryuki, but never mentioned what actually happened at school. Ryuki was used to being the more talkative of the two, and normally Mason would be grateful for that, but hearing how Ryuki seemed to be doing well, you know besides missing his friend, made Mason feel like he was the only problem he had. His responses got shorter and shorter. He retreated into himself, would only go to school and then lock himself in his room. He wallowed in his growing depression.

Ryuki did his best to get through school. It was really weird to not have his best friend with him, but he needed to adjust. He followed all his school work well, and acquainted himself well enough with classmates. But he never really stopped thinking about his best friend. He texted him every day. He wanted to make sure he was doing okay. He wanted him to remember that he was always going to be his friend. And it was fine for a bit. School got in the way of actual visits but as long as they kept communicating it was fine. But their conservations started to get shorter. And by the end of the school year, he never got another reply. He really wasn't sure what to think of it at first. What he did notice is that he would always read the messages he left. Rarely he would even see the little ... come up but eventually disappear. This just made him keep texting him every day. Just to remind him that he will always be there for him whenever he needs him. He texted him everyday, always hoping that hell reply one day.

The start of Masons eight grade year was torture. He was getting bullied, and he just stood there and took it, not caring about himself anymore. He went home and did homework. When he finished, he would do literally nothing. Ryuki kept texting him about his new friends he met this year, and he just kept thinking how he was better without him and how he was just kinda drifting through life, not sure why he still even bothers. Hes thought about dying but had no energy to act on it, even though he now slept excessively.

Meeting Stephanie was shock. His cousin was just as shy and awkward as he was, and she was an artist and getting into anime. It was probably the most he talked in a day since 7th grade. But when Steph was talking about her friends she offhandedly mentioned Ryuki and he just sat there on his bed in shock. Steph put two and two together and realize not only was Ryuki Masons only friend, but Mason was the person he texted every day with no response. It was weird, but Stephanie knew how much they both missed each other and after a ton of talking and crying with both each other, and his family and cousin Al downstairs, he decided to finally talk to Ryuki again. Steph suggested a hangout at Ryukis house the next day (a Sunday) Ryuki accepted his best friend back with open arms. After the hangout with all the friends getting to know each other, with only Mason left at Ryukis house, he finally told him about what happened. Tears were shed and hugs were given, and they promised to never lose contact again. With everyone agreeing, they all hung out together every weekend until Mason could finally go to the same school. The rest of eight grade went by well, with Mason finally shrugging off the bullying and focusing only on schoolwork and his new friends.

High school made it feel like the gang was officially complete. They were the weirdos that sat in halls drawing during breaks and lunch drawing. They were cool with that. They all became happier and comfortable with each other and that's all that mattered. Now with that said, it was obvious to everyone since that first meeting that Mason and Ryuki were crushing hard on each other. Not that anyone was gonna do anything about it. Ryuki may have been the most outgoing of them, but he was still shy when it came to that department, and Mason was a gay disaster who was bad at feelings so neither was going to confess. (No one else could push them they aren't any better XP)

It was actually in their junior year, which was last year, when they went to a con when they got together. (Luckily quarantine didnt affect this part of the story, barely. Literally it happened like two months before it started) These dorks have gone to cons since freshman year together and this year they decided to cosplay as My Hero characters. What ended up happening was that Mason went as Todoroki and Ryuki went as Midoriya and this group stans Tododeku and they kinda subconsciously ended up couple cosplaying. They didnt mean to, but walking around the con they stuck together, having fun in character and being awkwardly close together. A lot of people came up to them and asked if they were couple cosplaying. They were awkward messes (pretty in character honestly) and eventually this caused them both to ask themselves how they really felt. (As a cosplayer/roleplayer I feel my characters feelings so much that genuinely feel the hurt/anger/happiness/love) I feel like these feelings were pushed to the surface and both realized how deep they really were. On Saturday they hung around a group of BNHA cosplayers and they all decided to throw their own party in someone's hotel room (they were all minors and they wanted to nerd out and party) Usually shy these babies, but surrounded by equally nerdy people made them go for it. It was fun, snacks, music, watching the show. Then one of the cosplayers had an idea. They put on a slow song and encouraged all the OTPs to dance together. A few of the them get up, and others just dance for the hell of it. Mason and Ryuki looked at each other for a bit, but they danced. They really fell into the moment. They were really close to each other by the end of the song. Mason ended up pulling Ryuki to the balcony and awkwardly but eventually confessed. They were awkward, but happy. They embraced and softly kissed eachother. (The whole party saw them and cheered for the OTP. They were peeved, but still keeps in contact with a few of them, especially a Bakusquad they got along with, they actually seen some of their webcomic before!)

Quarantine starts two months after they got together. That sucks. But they face time every day. And they've met up maybe three times, but as safely as they can. They can't wait until they can actually be together again. Because they will never let anything come between them again.