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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 years ago

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I suppose it ultimately depends on whether they're enforced. The more enforced, the more negative.

If they're not enforced, they just become stereotypes, and as mentioned, stereotypes typically still have a kernel of truth in them. Sometimes that kernel is larger, sometimes it's smaller.

In Islamic countries and communities, they're enforced very strictly, and justified as the will of Allah.

In Western societies, by and large, they're not. This actually results in greater differences between men and women. For example, mothers are more likely to favor part-time work, or not working at all. That's not enforcement of a gender role, it's the freedom from other pressures, such as basic subsistence.

Where there are enforced social roles occurs in a few places people don't often recognize.

Firstly, while there are dozens of programs and scholarships to encourage women into STEM - more specifically, maths, physics, engineering, etc, and in spite of the fact women dominate in the "life" sciences, such as biology, medicine, etc - there literally zero programs or scholarships to encourage men into fields such as kindergarten teaching, dental hygiene, or secretarial careers. There are also, strangely (but also not), zero programs to encourage women into sewer maintenance, coal mining, boilermaking or roofing.

If very low female participation in sewer maintenance and coal mining is not regarded as an issue, and if very low male participation in reception and dental hygiene is not regarded as an issue, we need to stop considering slightly low female participation in maths, physics and engineering to be an issue and a demonstration of "misogyny." If theoretical physics has a "sexism" problem, then doesn't the roof-tarring industry have an even bigger problem? (Similar to how the NBA must be "systemically racist.") As long as the hurdles to enter it are fair for both men and women, stop pretending that women not making the same choices as men is a real issue, as that effectively makes men and men's choices the default.

Related, there's a weird sort of inverted gender role often imposed upon women by feminists, wherein if women aren't taking a political stand by foregoing children and climbing the corporate ladder (of the cisheteronormativecolonialistcapitalistpatriarchy, oddly), they're "traitors" or "brainwashed" or subjugated to "the patriarchy." And this isn't even only targeted at the right-wing conservative tradwife types, either. If a woman loves motherhood, or isn't rushing back to work after, or only wants to work part-time so she can focus on the kids, there's something wrong with her. It's only "empowerment" and "agency" when you do what we want you to. The same types often insist that Muslima wearing hijab is a "choice," weirdly.

Lastly, and perhaps more insidiously, is the enforcement of gender roles and stereotypes in the rise of gender ideology. A girl wearing a hoodie might be trans. A 2 year old boy who likes to play dress-ups and doesn't want to play t-ball must be trans. "Refusing to get a haircut, or standing to urinate, trying to stand to urinate, refusing to stand to urinate, trying on sibling’s clothing, playing with the ‘opposite gender’ toys, things like that." Being in "the wrong body" is about colors and clothes. This particularly targets and hurts gay and lesbian kids, and those on the autism spectrum, who are statistically more likely to be gender non-conforming.

I don't see a problem with those gender roles or stereotypes existing. As I previously mentioned, one positive thing they do is provide a rough, highly generalized rubric. Men are more likely than women to pursue higher pressure jobs, women are more likely than men to seek part-time employment and to retrain based on personal fulfilment rather than financial reward. While we can really dig right down into things, such as the "pay gap" (i.e. earnings gap) with details and statistics, high level trends, roles and tendencies help us glance over society and go, yeah, that's about what we would expect.

The question isn't whether these roles, stereotypes, averages, tendencies exist at all, it's whether they exist because people are being limited or, as the statistics suggest, they are magnified by the lack of constraint by free, egalitarian societies.

This is why fields like evolutionary psychology and developmental psychology should be guiding us, not evidence-free, faith-based theologies like "Gender Studies."

I hope that answers your follow-up.

Where does your opinion lie on the matter of sex and gender and the relationship between biological sex and gender roles/ gender prescriptions as a social construct.

We don't ask the same questions about tigers, peafowl or bees.

Sex-based behaviors (gender) are real. We can see them in other primates in a way that mirror ourselves.

Nobody wonders whether the peacock grows feathers and shows off for the females because of social expectations.

Nobody wonders whether the female mantis eats her mate because she's "fIgHtInG tEh PaTrIaRcHy!"

There are very real human sex-based averages that are derived from the evolution of our species, the pressures it has been under, the variations that have been most successful, and what each sex has needed of the other.

This means that, for example, boys are more inclined towards thing-based activities - careers, toys, pasttimes - while girls are more inclined towards people-oriented activities... on average. This is replicated cross-cultures.

Of course there are girls who want to fix trucks for a living, and boys who want to be kindergarten teachers. They are still girls and boys who will grow up to be women and men. And nobody should get in their way.

What you like doesn't define what you are. But what you are is still statistically significant, because it offers societal-wide information. The society-wide trend doesn't predict or define individuals, and individuals don't negate a society-wide trend. Which many people don't seem to understand.

Here's a good example. Average intelligence of women and men is the same.

While the means are the same, male intelligence is more variable, so you'll find more highly intelligent men at the higher end, and more really stupid men at the lower end. You possibly know at least one highly intelligent woman who is smarter than most of the men you know. That doesn't change the societal-wide trend.

This is simply a fact. You can get angry or offended, but it doesn't stop being true.

And in a similar way, men and women having different average interests, tendencies and behaviors - e.g. women tend to be more socially-oriented, men tend to be more action-oriented - makes sense in the light of evolution and the demands and pressures our primitive ancestors were subjected to by the natural world and the battle for success. And the demands males and females put upon each other.

Nobody gets angry when we mention that humans are prone to pareidolia - interpreting or perceiving meaning where it isn't there, such as a smiling or pouting "face" in the front end of a car. Evolutionarily, it makes sense. In the same way, noticing that sex-based differences are real might make people angry or offended, but that offence doesn't matter as far as what is real.

The idea that "gender is a social construct," then is nonsense. It's a denial of evolution itself, a denial of the way we came to be as a species. To suggest that the same tendencies we see in our primate ancestors - e.g. maternal instinct in female chimps carrying sticks - is some kind of social brainwashing requires believing that those tendencies disappeared from humanity's evolutionary line, then re-emerged, identically, as socially imposed roles.

That's creationism. Actually it's worse. Xian creationism simply asserts that everything is as it always was. Everything was created in its current form. Gender creationists must assert that humanity wound backwards to a blank slate state, then had the wherewithal to form a conspiracy of oppression to reinstitute the same vestigial traits back into society. Oh, and this happened either sufficiently far back in our development to precede or dispersal throughout the lands of Earth, or coincidentally every society on Earth came up with it more recently. Gender social constructivism is evolution-denying creationism.

This level of magical thinking makes me long for the days where Xians rambled about the laws of thermodynamics that they don't understand. The talking snake and donkey seem almost reasonable.

The domains that produce this kind of thinking are not science-based, they're political and ideological, such as Gender Studies. People in these fields don't study biology, they don't study demography, they don't study anthropology. They don't even study basic statistics.

Feminist theory, which is where "gender is a social construct" was really incubated as the justification for patriarchy theory, is not scientific, and is opinion (grievance)-based, not evidence based. One of the most tragic examples of this is the John/Joan case, where David Reimer was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

Finally, on 14 March 1980, Reimer's parents told him the truth about his gender reassignment, following advice from Reimer's endocrinologist and psychiatrist. At 14, having been informed of his past by his father, Reimer decided to assume a male gender identity, calling himself David. He underwent treatment to reverse the reassignment, including testosterone injections, a double mastectomy, and phalloplasty operations.

[..]

His case came to international attention in 1997 when he told his story to Milton Diamond, an academic sexologist who persuaded Reimer to allow him to report the outcome in order to dissuade physicians from treating other infants similarly. Soon after, Reimer went public with his story and John Colapinto published a widely disseminated and influential account in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1997. The article won the National Magazine Award for Reporting.

This was later expanded into The New York Times best-selling biography As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (2000), in which Colapinto described how—contrary to Money's reports—when living as Brenda, Reimer did not identify as a girl. He was ostracized and bullied by peers (who dubbed him "cavewoman"), and neither frilly dresses nor female hormones made him feel female.

Human nature is not as malleable as some people would like you to believe. You are a sexed being. How you "identify" can't change what you are. That doesn't mean you can't do what you want, express yourself how you want, but you are what you are.

This is only controversial to the people who want to push the story of humans being infinitely moldable, existing as divine gender thetans imprisoned in vulgar meat bodies.

Now, it is true that some of these tendencies and behaviors will tend to be limited or shaped by the culture of the society. But they're not constructed wholesale. For example, Japanese society is highly structured around honor. So male and female behaviors will tend to be expressed through those norms; male aggression and female agreeableness may take unique culturally influenced forms. But they're not created by them. Societies which have different pressures - e.g. in the freezing north regions of North America, vs the arid deserts of Africa - will unsurprisingly produce different cultural expectations upon men and women. Recognizing that isn't a form of bigotry, it's an acknowledgement of reality.

There's a reason stereotypes exist - because there is an element of truth in there, even if it's a tiny seed. If there wasn't, we wouldn't be able to recognize or apply them. They exist because humans are prone to cognitive shortcuts, as we have a lot of information to process and making choices or decisions doesn't always allow one to sit down and think things through methodically. Our ancestors wouldn't have had the time, and probably wouldn't have had the cognitive power.

"Girls like dolls, boys like trucks," is a very dirty shorthand. At its core is a demonstrable truth regarding societal-wide averages and tendencies that takes several paragraphs to explain more accurately (and some people will still be determined to be pissed off, no matter how you frame it). But stereotypes are not all we are, and there's no reason not to acknowledge them, but put them aside, or try to. And certainly no reason to use them to structure society itself, "fixing" girls who like trucks and boys who like dolls.

I don't know if that answers your question. Suffice to say that just as a scientific view of the world makes a god unnecessary, a scientific view of the world make social constructivism (postmodern creationism) unnecessary. We can explain the world without resorting to magic or conspiracies.

P.S. Reminder: social constructivism is a social construct.

#ask #gender roles #gender stereotypes #stereotypes #religion is a mental illness

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 4 years ago

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Writing Advice #?: Do NOT over-explain your sci fi nonsense.

The whole recent discussion about The Rules of Morphing got me thinking about how one of Animorphs’ great strengths is that is explains morphing juuuuust enough. We can follow its internal logic, but it doesn’t get so detailed that we run into the nitty-gritty of all the ways humans cannot turn into dolphins. We know that your base form “passes through a singularity... into z-space” (#45) and that the DNA of another animal “in your cells” comes to replace your base form (#49). And that’s about all the detail we get.

I think sometimes writers think more is more when it comes to explaining your fake science, because it’s tempting to go “look at all this research I did!” But you can have sci-fi mechanics informed by real science without ever explaining the real science. For example, flip to the back of some editions of Jurassic Park and you get a Works Cited with dozens of scientific papers Crichton used while writing it. HOWEVER, the actual science is introduced in-text as “bird-like blood cells contain DNA, and you can get traces of blood that mosquitoes ate, and if these are Cretaceous-era mosquitoes preserved in amber, then [mumble mumble] dinosaur clones!” Of course, that [mumble mumble] contains like 40 different reasons you can’t get enough DNA from degraded traces of blood to make an entire genome, but there’s just enough logic in the explanation to make it feel scientific.

By contrast, Starship Troopers spends entire walls of text explaining the mechanics of the characters’ armor. It’s mildly interesting, but it slows down the plot and doesn’t come up later. If it’s going to be a crucial plot device that the Jurassic Park dinos have DNA transcription errors spliced with frog genes, then include that explanation. If it’s just a cool fact you read in Stephen Hawking’s essays that will never be plot fuel, leave it in your notes.

You also risk doing more than boring your audience; you risk breaking their suspended disbelief. For example, the Twilight series has more sci-fi-esque vampires, which mostly works most of the time. EXCEPT in Breaking Dawn there’s a scene where Carlisle tells Jacob that he’s trying to figure out how to abort the vampire-human hybrid that’s growing inside Bella because it’s eating her from the inside out. That’s fine — I love reproductive horror – but then Carlisle goes on to say that humans have 46 chromosomes, vampires have 50, werewolves have 48, and the monster-fetus has 48. And the whole sci-fi reality breaks.

With a B- in high school Biology, I know that humans with 47 or 48 chromosomes exist, and that 48 chromosomes doesn’t mean “werewolf” it means “human with some congenital disabilities.” I also know that there are diseases that can fuck with epigenetics, but that altering the chromosomal structure of every cell in a person’s body is both nonsensical and unable to produce the changes (diamond skin, venom, immortality) ascribed to the vampire pathogen. I stop enjoying the scene, I stop suspending my disbelief in vampirism-as-pathogen, and I have a little voice screeching “but that doesn’t work!” for the rest of the book.

Ya know what would be a better explanation? Carlisle saying “vampires are different on a cellular level from humans. Werewolves are similar to humans, but still different. I think this fetus is physiologically vampire-like, and that’s why it’s currently ripping through Bella like she’s a wet paper sack.” How are vampires cellularly different from humans? [mumble mumble mosquitoes in amber] All you need to know is that they are, and that that’s why Carlisle is so scared of this thing.

Angel the Series has a similar plot: vampire-human hybrid fetus starts eating its host mother from the inside out, when it shouldn’t even exist. And during that whole sequence the characters don’t know where the fetus came from and never figure it out. No explanation at all is BETTER than an overly-detailed one that breaks the series’ reality. (Not to pretend Angel is perfect, given that unlike Twilight it’s quite misogynistic in its relative prioritization of mother and fetus, but “nobody can figure out how the hybrid happened” is still great plot fuel for the rest of said hybrid’s life.)

Anyway, just like it’s nigh-impossible to write a character who is smarter than you, it’s nigh-impossible to invent an impossible wheel that doesn’t already exist. So don’t get too into the mechanics of your sci-fi type of wheel, just say “it runs on singularities.” Tell us just barely enough that we’ll know what it means if one of those wheels slips an axis 100 pages from now.

#writing advice #animorphs #writing #science fiction #fantasy #morphing #angel #breaking dawn #jurassic park #starship troopers #reproductive horror #body horror #YES Twilight contains discussions of medical abortions #YES Twilight is less sexist in some regards than the Buffyverse #happy to entertain informed critiques of the twilight saga #BUT #people who try to argue it's too christian or too sexist from a stance of ignorance will be blocked with extreme prejudice #read the fucking book before you criticize it #and only then will i respect your opinion

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munsnz · 3 years ago

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TRICKS OF LIFE — STEVE HARRINGTON

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐯. — 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞? Overview: Y/N tells Mike information to help their lost friend, she also heads to the search party for Will with Victor. As they explore, the past unravels and there is an odd occurrence that happens. Navigation & Mixtape

Tag: @samiyamuntaha @thepowerstoner @ughgclden @mqyfield @cooperdaysgf

“So right by Mirkwood right?” Mike Wheeler’s voice peeped after listening to Y/N’s remark of details about what she heard at the Hawkins Police Department a few hours ago. It was around 7 pm, right around to where the girl was getting ready prone to the search party being held with a few of the residents of the town.

Y/N hummed a positive response to clearing out his doubts just in case he was confused by any means, this wasn’t going to help Mike, it was going to help Will get a faster chance to be retrieved to his home again.

Although Hopper disapproved the request of letting young people in the search, Y/N and Victor were eventually allowed to come along, “Yeah, but remember you have to be somewhat far from the real search group okay? We don’t want you to get caught.”

”Mike! What are you doing?” Nancy’s faint voice was caught on the other line of the phone, leading Mike to leave the phone out, Y/N overhearing them argue over the dumbest things.

Prior to the noises of Mike pushing Nancy out of the basement she guessed, the boy came back on the line, sighing loudly, “Sorry about that, Nancy gets so annoying, I still don’t know why you still hang out with her.”

”She could be a priss sometimes,” She responds, breathily giggling, clenching the ceramic telephone tighter, “But she’s still my friend if you could say.”

Continuing with their conversation based on the plan, it was perfectly assembled, safe with a high possibility of finding Will, even if it had been a day. Will couldn’t have gone far anyways. Y/N was about to speak, but was suddenly caught off guard as soon as she heard her dad in the hallway, getting prepared for the search.

”Oh shit! I have to go now,” Y/N hushed in a subtle tone, trying her best to keep away Hopper from listening to their discussion, “Remember to be home by 9 at least with flashlights. Stay safe Mike.”

The line went awfully silent, placing back the phone to its regular position on the handset, while it being attached to the wall. Rapidly, spinning to look at her father, trying to act as normal as possible, his brows furrowed at her.

”What were you doing?”

Shrugging it off calmly, Y/N breathily giggles while she put her hands on her hips saying, “I was just checking in with Victor, that’s all.”

Hopper’s eyes widened at her point, clicking his tongue as he started grabbing on his sweater for the frosty night ahead, “Funny, but I just called his mom to let him know that he was coming.”

”Right..” Y/N casually crossed her arms, cursing under her breath before she showed any subtle reaction to what she was up to. Play it cool.

In the silence of her looking around the messy home by the front door, Hopper sharply whistles while slinging the car keys in the air to catch them, making Y/N follow right behind me, pretending as if the few minutes didn’t occur. Feeling the breeze of the autumn air, both the relatives made their way to the vehicle, on their way to the small yet important search for this boy, Will Byers.

As the road got narrower and narrower, the car drove deeper into the dark woods, where Y/N could see the slender trees and branches surrounding them. The starry sky lit up the place with a soft tone of dim blues and grays painted across it on the chilly night. Watching out the window, Y/N squinted her eyes to see a figure from afar waving towards the vehicle, a familiar figure to be Victor. Hopper drove nearer, the headlights being able to guide him to the stop where a small crowd of people were surrounding along with the patrols.

Hopper cleared his throat, while he pushed the breaks down and turned to his daughter, “Hey kid, remember don’t be-“

Without hesitation, Y/N swung the car door open to step out of it, hustled her way to her so called “acquaintance”, Victor. It was more like a friend but she didn’t want to be that close with the boy. Victor wearily smiling at her.

“You seem tired,” Y/N creeps up next to him, watching the small groups of people around the mounds of dead leaves and twigs gathered for the search.

Victor’s voice brings the girl’s attention back to him, he clears his throat, “I mean dealing with Flo is already a lot for me to handle, so I suppose I am.” The two silently chuckled, the frost getting to their noses, “I heard there’s gonna be a chance of rain.”

”Really?”

“Yes really! Haven’t you seen the forecast? I’m even wearing a jacket!” Victor squinted his eyes, his eyewear raising up on the bridge of his nose and the girl shrugged aimlessly.

Y/N scoffed, shoving him slightly, “I think there’s way more important things we need to focus on instead of the weather.”

From afar, Hopper and the policemen indicated all the volunteers to gather around on the sidewalk, near the entrance of the forest. The flashing blue and red lights were turned off from the cars, everyone else preparing for the upcoming search.

”Okay guys!” The chief shouted to direct everyone, “We need to stay in the 5 mile radius from where Will was last scene! Everyone please be careful and remember to blow the whistle if you find anything at all!”

Heads were nodded, agreeing to the directions, Officers Powell and Callahan guided two separate groups from different directions, Y/N having to come along with the third group including her dad. Although the girl was 16, her father wanted to take the best care for her, after Sarah. He wanted to keep her as close as possible, but he knew she was getting older. It was just for today, he can protect her for today, now being aware of a kid disappearing in their town. Maybe one of them was next.

“I guess that’s your call genius,” Y/N told Victor as she pointed towards Powell’s group who were walking to the right side of the woods, the people disappearing one by one into the darkness.

Not budging at all, Victor stood his ground saying, “I think I’ll stick with you for now, there’s just soccer moms hoarding the group for Powell, he has a fan club.”

“You’re not wrong Vic,” She sniggered quietly but failed miserably, letting out a subtle loud laugh, both of the teenagers walking behind their group, down a steep hill leading to the inner nature.

Rushing down first to the bottom, the tall brunette reached his hand out for Y/N who was still at the top, to help her come down to his level, “M’lady?”

”Why thank you, what a gentleman!” Y/N sarcastically gasps, gripping onto his hand to steady herself below, after they jogged closer to the group, flicking their flashlights on to carry on.

Everyone glanced above the branches, the moon shining as the crickets chirped. The crisp wind running across their faces, making the trees shuffle loudly. As flashlights led them with its brightness, they all searched and searched, for any trace of the boy around the area.

Half an hour later, the air became cooler than usual, almost bringing a frostbite to their bare hands. The sound of branches and dead leaves crunching over the few people above them. In the silence, Y/N stayed near Victor and her father, hearing shouts for Will. The realization hit the girl, they were looking for lost Will, Will hasn’t appeared, he was probably in some sort of danger. She fastened her grip on the flashlight, looking around more closely, along with the rest.

”He’s a good student,” Someone decides to break the silence of the leaves and twigs crunching under their feet, Victor and Y/N turned their attention to him as they strolled in the woods.

Hopper cocks an eyebrow up and looks towards the teacher’s direction after the statement, “What?”

”Will. He’s a good student. Great one actually,” He elaborates, smiling sheepishly to lend his hand in front of the chief to introduce himself, “I don’t think we’ve met, Scott Clarke. Teacher, Hawkins Middle. Earth and biology.”

“Don’t you remember he was my teacher back in the day?”

Victor nods agreeing with Y/N’s statement from behind, Hopper reluctantly trying to remember his daughter’s middle school teacher, still not recalling since in those past years where fighting for Y/N’s custody between the parents, “I always had a distaste for science.”

”Well maybe you had a bad teacher,” Mr. Clarke remarks, checking if his flashlight was still operating, trudging closer to the group of three ahead of him.

”Yeah, Ms. Ratliff was a piece of work,” Hopper scoffs jokingly, Y/N doing the same as well, remembering his shitty science teacher from his past years while he studied at Hawkins High.

”Ratliff?” The teacher ponders, realizing that the same teacher still resides in Hawkins after all these years, “You bet. She’s still kicking around believe it or not.”

Victor elaborates in between them, sliding his hands onto his pockets, “I had her when I was in eighth grade a few years back.”

”Oh I believe it Victor. Mummies never die, so they tell me,” Hopper smiles, trying to get his daughter to notice but she dozed off beyond the sight of the woods, ”Sarah, my youngest, galaxies, the universe whatnot.. She always understood all that stuff. I always figured there was enough going down here, I never needed to look elsewhere.”

Y/N flickered her eyes towards her father’s direction after hearing the special name, it wasn’t so special to one, but to her, it was. Sarah, Sarah Hopper her little sister, but soon enough the teacher interrupted, “Maybe I’ll get her in my class I-“

“No, she uh.. she lives with her mom in the city,” He cuts the man off from his statement, Victor widening his eyes on Y/N’s side, knowing fully that wasn’t true.

The girl beside the tall boy looked back at his dark eyes, signaling him to be quiet, Y/N was aware of the fact that everyone in Hawkins knew Sarah’s death. Just because of her own blabbermouth, Steve told everyone including the parents her little secret the young female confessed to.

As much as her dad still wants to deny the fact the little one was gone and resting in peace, staying of his delusion Y/N wished she could have. It was a promise. A promise that everything was okay and there wasn’t nothing to worry about, almost some sort of fairy tale where everything had its happy endings with a happy family which wasn’t it.

“Thanks for coming out, Teach. We really appreciate it.” Hopper clears the air, trudging past them farther into the dark eerie woods, Y/N and Victor repeating his steps behind him.

Once they were out of the picture and range from hearing, a middle aged woman spoke up next to the teacher, in a hushed tone saying, “She died a few years back.”

”Sorry?” Mr. Clarke shifted his head in bewilderment towards the lady for any clarification from the inadequate statement given.

”His kid.”

The teacher’s eyes widened, observing the two family members mumbling inaudible words behind the brisk trees of the cool night. He didn’t know the Hoppers hid their family, they never talked much about family when it came to projects when Y/N was younger. It seemed like something ever so private not like where many kids shared experiences with their loved ones, they always kept everything about their family closed up. Almost a mystery.

Y/N could hear the soft mumbles of the quiet conversation being exchanged by the lady and her former teacher, she felt sick knowing that her father stays in the delusion of her sister being alive, lying. Lying wasn’t so hard for her, Y/N was almost a professional at it when it came to helping the party in situations. But lying to her dad was different, it was the both of them against the horrid place called the world.

“Is Sarah going to be back?” A small girl walked over to the grown adults who stood at the front door, puffy eyes showing on their faces, as they held a plastic wristband and stuffed tiger after a long day from not seeing her sister. It was already near midnight.

Without any move, the woman, who to be seen was the girl’s mother, bursted into tears, her husband catching her into his arms. The youngling worriedly watched her parents shed tears, a middle aged woman got up from the couch to comfort both of them. Whispers and mumbles being shared between the adults, bringing more tears.

”Mommy?” The girl steadily crept next to her mom’s leg, wrapping her short arms around her waist, pressing her cheek against the woman’s body, “Don’t cry, I’m here.”

Sobs were still heard from the mother, the two of the women held each other tightly while the tall man let go from their hug, kneeling next to the girl’s level, “Y/N, kid-“

”Dad, where’s Sarah?!” Y/N shakily shouted, her stomach feeling uneasy, with her sister not being found. What happened to Sarah? She knew Sarah was going to get better. Why was mom crying? So many questions filled her head, eyes welling up, her father hugging her tightly with all the hurt and love. Y/N noticed the wristband that her father was holding, she peered closely to see a sloppy handwriting shown as the name Sarah, written all over it with the date when she was sent to the hospital.

”Sarah is... gone.”

The little’s watery eyes widened, her bottom lip trembling, she threw her arms around her father, her head leaning onto his shoulder. Her little sister was gone, she was alone now, her heart crumbling into a million pieces. Sarah, Sarah wasn’t here anymore. But it seemed so surreal, it was only yesterday the two sisters laughed about one of the nurses dropping her cup of coffee while getting chemotherapy.

“Dad.. Can she come back?”

Sadly grinning, Hopper wiped the girl’s chubby face from her tears, shaking his head, “I’m sorry kid, she’s not coming back.”

”But she has to! Sarah has to come home with us,” Y/N choked in her tears, her eyes becoming swollen, grabbing the wristband from her father’s large hand, “Sarah can’t leave me alone here. She promised she would stay.”

”Y/N, I know this is difficult but your sister left us. She’s in a better place now.”

Making her cry even more, Y/N’s mother rapidly kneeled next to her husband and daughter, she sniffed, grabbing onto her daughter, “We promised Sarah we would love each other and always stay safe. Forever.”

”Promise?”

Both of the girl’s parents joined in for a tight hug, Y/N fastening her arms around the two others, “Promise. We promise you sweet pea.”

”Y/N! Y/N!” A familiar voice boasted in the ears of Y/N, she focused her attention back to the voice. There was no one beside her by the time she looked around, it was the sounds of the wind and her alone. Her flashlight flickered in her hands, she shook it vigorously to try and turn it back on, but there was nothing coming out of it, just a dimly lit tone guiding her way. Nothing else in her sight except for the trees and moonlight, she tried her best to not overthink this and make her way back to the group.

Every turn she made in the paths, it led her to nowhere, noises filled the aura. Slowly, she began to worry, she wasn’t coming back to the group. Y/N’s head filled itself with thoughts, there was no way she could be lost, last time she was with Victor, rambling about the weather. Where was she? Looking up, she felt small droplets of water dripped onto her face above, Y/N squinted her eyes to avoid the drizzle. The water fell down slowly until it started raining heavier in the air, she wiped her face to dry it off and continue to try to find her way back.

“Dad!” Y/N shouted, wrapping her arms over herself, her hair becoming soaked along the time. She kept shouting and shouting, worry filling her in. The girl was afraid. What if she went missing like Will? Oh no.

Without a precaution, a branch from behind was heard. Y/N whipped her head to the direction, seeing a small human with a white gown rapidly run off to opposite direction, the rain blurring her eyes. Was that Will? Curious, she picked up speed to follow the boy, it may be Will. A chance of relief rushing in as her adrenaline sped up, almost running faster. “Will! It’s me!”

The boy didn’t stop, sprinting faster with his bare feet. Y/N still yelled, slowing her pace down, then picking it back up, going through the trees. An idea came to her, tugging at her metal whistle to her lips, blowing on it. The sound coming off it, maybe attracting people to find her and the boy, it has to be Will. Using her arms to run faster, she suddenly trips over a thick log after not seeing below her because of the wind, sending her to the floor. She whimpers as she felt her ankle burn in a pain, whistling even more.

From the distance, few people to what she could tell came forward to her, rain soaking over her head. Thunder being heard far away, Victor came into the picture to kneel down next to Y/N.

”Hey are you okay?” He worriedly checks on her, receiving a nod. Victor looked around for any possible wounds since he found her on the ground, “We couldn’t find you!”

Y/N hardly paid attention to him and looked afar to see if the boy would turn up again. She held Victor’s jacket to pull him closer, “I think I saw Will! He was running through there I-“

”Chief Hopper coming through, excuse me,” A voice from the crowd of people called in, Hopper bringing himself forward to find his soaking daughter on the ground pointing toward another direction. “What’s wrong?”

Victor moves to tell Hopper while being next to shaking and wet Y/N, “She saw Will.”

#Steve Harrington #steve Harrington x reader #steve Harrington fanfic #steve harrington series #Steve Harrington fanfiction #Steve Harrington x Hopper reader #Stranger things #stranger things x reader #Stranger things Fanfiction #Steve Harrington angst #Steve Harrington fluff #Steve Harrington smut #Steve Harrington fanfic navigation #Steve Harrington x reader Fanfiction #Mike wheeler #nancy wheeler #jim hopper #stranger things season 1

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dailydnp · 4 years ago

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British YouTuber, presenter, and author Daniel Howell offers a practical yet poignant look into mental health – his own struggles held up as a mirror for anyone else going through the same – in his book You Will Get Through This Night.

Written in conjunction with psychologist Dr Heather Bolton, the book is an amalgamation of Howell’s own experiences and Dr Bolton’s expert perspective combined to create a reading that feels like a personal attack in the best of ways, forcing you confront, embrace and then overcome your perception of your own mental health.

Best described as, “a practical guide to taking control of your mental health for today, tomorrow, and the days after,” You Will Get Through This Night takes readers through Howell’s mental health journey, wrapped in his trademark sense of humour and nuggets of wisdom that urge them forwards in their path to a healthier mindset.

Speaking to 1883, Howell describes what pushed him to write the book, learning to question his normal, how upbringing and culture impacts one’s perception of mental health, the role that a sense of humour plays in getting the conversation around mental health started and more.

Was there a particular moment that solidified your decision to write this book?

I think it was just realizing the power that every single person has to tell their story and break down the wall. Because with mental health, it’s the thing that every single person has a universal experience of. And yet, we all like to go, ‘I’m fine,’ when we’re completely having a meltdown on the inside and it was me opening up, not because I thought it was a nice idea just because I thought I had to open up about what I was going through with my depression, my sexuality. I went through 27 years of terrible mental health, without even realizing that you’re not supposed to be that way. It’s the idea that we all think we are broken, born in a certain way and doomed to feel that way forever, and that’s fundamentally wrong. I thought I’d like to write this book because other people may see themselves in it, notice that they relate to something, and therefore maybe there’s something about themselves that they need to work on. I literally I just wrote the book that I wish I could have read, because for me it was a struggle to even find the resources and the advice I needed.

You’ve mentioned in the book, that you never questioned your symptoms and that you were taken aback when the doctor said you were suffering from depression. But where there moments before that you started questioning this perception of what was normal to you?

I think it became my normal to feel bad all the time, which sounds dramatic but it was me. I thought it was all to do with my choices, age, environment and my job. But mental health is deeper than that, it’s something deeper and it’s something that you can actually have a positive effect on, which is what I wish I knew earlier, and it only happened when I got to a point where I was struggling, so much that I couldn’t even function day-to-day. In my mind, there was either nothing or there’s crazy. I thought you just have to get over your problems or you are totally crazy, which is so ignorant but that’s just not the truth. So, I went to a doctor and he said I think you might have depression and that is a real thing. And there’s lots that you can do about it. It’s about just understanding everything to do with how your thoughts and feelings work, the relationship between your biology and how you interact with the world physically. It was such a slow and painful journey to learn all of that that I thought, I’m just going to put it all in here and the idea is that for someone who picks up this book, they can go right in. I’ll put it up on the shelf and then when I need to read it, I’m going to pick it up and open it again. So, I just wanted to be super practical.

I really liked this quote in the book “breakdown can be breakthroughs”. So, when was the last time you can think of that a breakdown led to a breakthrough for you?

Every other week, like you know, all of us. It’s just human instinct to try and stick through it and ignore the problems especially with work. It’s a great excuse to lie, “ I know I feel bad but I’m really busy.” And it goes like that until things get way too intense. For me, there were moments where I felt I simply cannot keep going in my career or day-to-day life or try to pretend like I’m funny, until I deal with the fact that I’m gay. And though there was this terrible feeling like “have I hit rock bottom?” But the thing with any obstacle is that it stops you from going in the wrong direction and when you are forced to turn around usually it means you’re confronting the truth for the first time. Usually if someone has a breakdown, if you hit that wall in your life, that point where you absolutely can’t keep going until you turn around and something scary is going to be waiting, it means you’re going in the right direction. When you have these moments of confrontation, instead of procrastinating or running away, if you face it then it’s hopefully better days ahead.

Speaking of procrastination, you talk about burnout and the five-minute rule in one section. How do you strike a balance between not procrastinating and getting things done, but also not overworking yourself?

The human concept of work is very strange and it’s just one of those great examples of something that we’ve all brainwashed ourselves to see a certain way, to put value on certain things that are ultimately probably not great and inevitably lead to another dramatic moment of self-destruction and procrastination, which are both associated with so much guilt and shame.But in reality it’s not because I’m lazy that I don’t want to start this thing, it’s probably I’m terrified of starting this thing because I know that it’s important, I don’t want to fail at it. So, think of the five minute rule as ripping the plaster off, because it’s always the fear of starting. That was me, writing this book and feel like I’m not in the mood to do that, but then moment I start then I’d just write for consecutive hours. Again, it’s just snapping out of the mindset that you’re probably on, which goes I’m doing this because it’s important, and I have to do it. You probably don’t have to do it, you’re probably just running from something else. So, whether you are procrastinating, you think you’re lazy, or you’re telling yourself that you have to put up all of your issues to deal with whatever you’re busy with, you need to flip it around and look at it, not just from in healthier way but in more honest way. I’m not going to cripple myself with guilt and shame about procrastination but I’m not going to over work myself.

You’ve also written about how one of the worst things you can say to someone going through depression is to get over it. What’s the hardest of trying to get people to understand that it isn’t something you can get over?

I think you cannot underestimate how profoundly ignorant most of the world still is about mental health and that’s not people’s fault. It’s just that science, education and culture has just not been doing the right thing even if science recently has come a long way. We’ve got hundreds of years of stigma that come from. Breaking down the barriers, by being honest, with someone one-to-one is a great way to do that. And it just telling them “I’m not going to pretend that everything’s fine. I just want to tell you that, I feel that way.” And for a lot of people who say they don’t understand depression, anxiety etc, if just say I feel bad and I want to do something about it, people usually empathize with it. I also think lot of people want not take it seriously when other people say that because they feel like where was their help when they needed it? I think that the human nature is usually to feel almost jealous that someone else is asking for help or sympathy and they want to get better but you have to talk back to that voice and say maybe this is an opportunity for me to finally, be honest about how I might have been feeling the whole time. Because at some point you have to break the cycle.

Though you’ve said how you can’t underestimate how ignorant people can be, there’s a section of the book where you talk about how you uploaded your video, “Basically, I’m gay,” and braced for negativity. But that you were surprised by all the positive responses. So, what’s the most recent instance you can think of where you were pleasantly surprised by humanity?

Something that anyone that has to admit something, they’re going through and has in common, whether that’s something that’s come out as gay or someone just admitting that they’re just really stressed or feeling very anxious, is feeling like they have to constantly explain themselves. This is just an example of how you can be afraid of what people will say but when you’re really just honest about something that you’re going through, people usually relate to it on a day-to-day level. Whenever I talk to someone about mental health or sexuality, who may think its weird at first but as I describe my thoughts and feelings, they may relate to it even if they aren’t going through exact same thing as you. For me, a year after coming out and I still have that conversation on a daily basis. As a teenager, I had that deathly fear, that I couldn’t tell anyone because it would be terrible, but now I realize that actually most people are just scared. They aren’t inherently hateful; they’re just putting up that wall because they think that being vulnerable leaves them for attack. But actually, if we’re all vulnerable we’d be a lot happier.

Speaking of vulnerability, you touch upon your upbringing in the book and how it sort of taught you to keep a stiff upper lip. When did you start learn to be vulnerable and what was the biggest challenge with that?

Being a young British man, going to an all-boys school or the comedians that I looked up to on TV – everyone was so cynical. It was about trying to be as like edgy as possible and like act tough, and not show this vulnerability in case it’s seen as weakness. I think that I carried this perception all the way into my mid-20s, it seeped into every part of my personality. A lot of the stuff that I made, when I was younger, had this cynical edge to it and it was only when I started to get more followers from around the world that I began people started questioning that cynicism. At first, I’d go “this is British humour,” but a few years later, I just started to reflect about the way I was about myself and realized it was a bit more than a joke have, I actually started to let this self-hatred and the lack of empathy towards how I feel sort of eat me up. I think because only because of the people who have followed me over the years, giving me a reflection of who I am through how they’ve perceived me that I’ve been able to break free of my default programming.

About your sense of humour and how you kind of make sense of how you’re feeling through jokes, have you ever felt misunderstood -particularly given the cultural differences of your audiences you just mentioned – like you’re trying to make light of something that a lot of people suffer from?

Yeah, there’s a weird line and there’s lots of conversations these days about what you’re allowed to joke about. What the difference between talking about something, being comfortable with it and almost glamorizing it. But I think if the biggest problem with mental health globally is people don’t even want to admit that they’re wrong. And that they don’t even know that they were wrong. A bunch of people joking about how depressed they feel could be a good thing because they have at least taken the first step. So, I think it’s good that people can joke about things in a way that breaks the ice as long as they all know, in the same way that my book might make them feel very personally attacked that just behind that joke that you put up to protect yourself, there is something that you should work on. Even if it’s painful, that it will make you happier.

You mention celebrating small wins in the book. What win are you celebrating today?

I have just moved house and I have a toilet that doesn’t flush yet. But I managed to stick a coat hanger, inside the toilet and to make it flush. I just got my own toilet to flush, and for me, that’s such a miracle. It was a perfect example of how we take so many things for granted in life, whether it’s something huge to do with your health, the state of the world, your privilege. But I now have a flushing toilet and everything else felt easy. I can handle it because I got some perspective.

You also touch on the importance of inner circles in the book. , When was the last time, you personally reached out to bring someone into your inner circle and do you remember how you did it?

I am so awkward and awful at making friends and it’s something that usually, I’ll have one of those breakdowns where I go, “I have no friends.” The next day, I’ll wake up and DM people, out of every three people I DM two-point-nine will just ignore me and I will be very embarrassed. But then one of them will say “ yes, in two and a half weeks, we will go get a pizza.” And you only have to succeed a couple times ever to make friends that you hopefully will see more than once. I know from experience, it can be embarrassing, painful and not fun to try and reach out to new people but you just start adding one person, every two years until you have a friend group.

While working on this book, I know you consulted with a psychologist for it, aside from your lived experiences. What did you learn about mental health while looking at it from an outside, expert perspective?

I think one of the biggest revelations for me while writing this book is realizing how much of it isn’t a logical thought in our head. So much of mental health is controlled by our body, and the physical things that we experience. It’s about just how we breathe, how much light, and fresh air. And the problem is in our modern world, our brains are looking at everything as a threat. As soon as you realize actually, humans are not as complicated and mysterious as we think, we’re just little animals trying not to get murdered. It was freeing to know because that meant we aren’t born with this magically broken consciousness, that’s just doomed. It definitely made me look at mental health for what it is rather than the mysterious fog of pain that I thought it was for the last 10 years that I had absolutely no control over.

You’ve said that you’re obviously not done with your mental health journey, but where are you on that journey at this moment in time?

I’m doing a lot better than I was simply because I can understand what I feel, and why, and that it’s normal now. And I honestly feel like that’s 90% of it. Most people don’t ever question their lives. If they spend too much time, feeling overwhelming you stressed or if they worry too much and they’re just not enjoying life day-to-day. But just knowing that there’s something you can do about, it gives me enough hope. From writing the book, I know everything I can do to get better.

Finally, what’s one question no one has asked you so far that you wish you were asked?

I think it’s just how do I convince the other people in my life to take mental health seriously? I realized from writing this book and now, talking about it that the biggest problem I have is that most people simply do not think the conversation about mental health, or mental health, applies to them because they’re fine. So many people think mental health is only something for people that have crippling depression or serious anxiety disorder, but it’s just how all of us, think and feel all the time. If you have bad self-esteem, if you worry about everything, if you have a way of looking at the world that’s really negative and you expect the worst, then you might not need to immediately have an intervention with a psychotherapist, but you need to understand your mental health. Even if you read this book and say you are totally fine, then you still need to know this stuff so you can understand why you are fine. There will be a point in life where you need to make yourself feel better and mental health isn’t about waiting until you snap, and then picking up the pieces and going on medication. It should be about knowing how to keep yourself healthy and happy so that you don’t have a breakdown. Everyone has mental health, and that’s the thing that I wish I could just shove into everyone’s faces.

#daniel howell #danisnotonfire #dan #phan #mine #interview

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fishmongeringstudies · 4 years ago

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forty six: stick and stick

yesterday's dessert is some kind of chilled lychee soup containing what i initially thought was exactly two lychees but turns out, i have just discovered, to be two lychees and a fuckton of nata de coco. for the uninitiated, nata de coco is a kind of compact jelly-like substance made from fermenting coconut water, a fact that i learned of fifteen seconds ago despite the fact that i have been inhaling nata de coco like a vacuum cleaner with a broken power button since primary two and probably even before that. the initial metaphor i wanted to make here was one for how we often overlook the bright spots in life because we are too busy focusing on the lychees, but perhaps the real takeaway here is that we should stop looking altogether and look things up on google every once in a while.

day six: i've figured it out. breakfast comes with some kind of fruit juice (typically orange or apple), lunch is accompanied by a liquid-based dessert like red bean soup or cheng teng, and dinner is served with a side of fruit. the same kind of protein is never brought out twice in the same day, which means a white dory afternoon will be followed by some form of the chicken, and a chicken-based afternoon will never lead to a chicken-steeped evening. vegetables. which usually means broccoli and/or cauliflower (good) and other times means carrots.

when i was a child i hated carrots because they didn't taste like crunchy water but instead had a mild and disgusting sweetness to them alongside the distinct taste of something that had risen from the earth like a mushroom or a zombie. my father would force me to eat them whenever they appeared in the wild, that is, in restaurants and at friends' houses, and i would cry and throw a tantrum and then he would hit and/or scold me, deploy the well-worn battle tactics of asian parenting, et cetera. 'just pretend you're eating something else,' my mother would reason with me very reasonably. 'yeah, well,' i would say with the kind of eloquence only an eleven year old who's read too many books from the young adult section of the library possesses. 'no.' and then i would cry and throw a tantrum and if my dad wasn't here i'd go pour myself some milk and sulk in a corner of the living room. if he was, well, you know.

so there are a number of ways to cook carrots. this presupposes of course that one cooks one's carrots, something i will humbly allow because if you eat carrots raw then you are a rabbit or a furry and i will never acknowledge your existence no matter how many fursuits you buy me. returning to the matter of the non-heathen population, you can either cook carrots very slightly by means of such technologies as 'the boil' or 'the steam', or you can cook them a lot by means of such technologies as 'the boil but harder or 'some kind of pan-frying, preferably with onions'. my point is carrots can be made to neither taste nor feel like carrots. if you have ever had japanese curry i'm sure you've had the experience of putting something chonky in your mouth and discovering that despite the deceptively similar mouthfeel, that was not a chunk of potato, but the carrot. carrots that can pass for other vegetables are not true carrots in my mind and therefore have rights. carrots that look and taste and do wushu like carrots do not have rights.

the carrots that sometimes appear in the bento boxes which some kind soul i have never had the luxury to speak to because i am in government-mandated quarantine due to potential exposure to covid while flying halfway across the globe delivers to the little table propped up outside my room at eight, twelve, and six o'clock every day do not have rights. they are barely boiled and completely unsalted, unflavored, unwanted, unicorn. they are not submerged in a homicidal sea of sauce. and worst of all, they have the mouthfeel of a fist-sized clump of dental floss baked in an oven at medium heat for five hours. to put it more bluntly: the mouthfeel. bad.

you may be thinking at this point that i am throwing away all of the carrots, but i'm not the kind of loser you think i am; i am an even greater loser. i am the ultimate loser, the loser of all losers, which actually makes me a winner, which cancels out the loser accusation, which means i am probably a real human being, and if i don't eat my fruits and vegetables my digestive system will digest itself or my primary five science teacher will be disappointed in me. this is how you eat carrots. you shove all of them in your mouth in one go like hamsters do with their mouth pouches, pinch your nose shut, and then chew like a madman until you can swallow without ripping your throat open. this doesn't erase the mouthfeel problem. but at least it solves everything else.

a confession: i fear that i will give in to my cowardice. it is day six and i have figured everything out but there are eight days to go, and history has proven that eight days can change the effective composition of the world. i know as little about myself today as i will tomorrow, and yet we try to establish the parameters of our lives regardless, plotting the graphs over and over again until our mouths are green with mildew and our skin is clear as glass, revealing veins pulsing with blood, oxygen, nutrients, whatever else secondary school biology imparted to me. we can only learn how to live life by living it, after all. so it's all right if you don't always want to look back over your shoulder. your neck might snap off, you know? you're right to be afraid. but give it a try sometimes. put that carrot in your mouth.

07.08.21

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spaceskam · 4 years ago

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being good isn’t always easy

Happy birthday @prouvaireafterdark ! I hope you have a wonderful day and I hope you enjoy this little fic!

ao3

Michael couldn’t be blamed and he refused to justify himself.

He watched Alex Manes reach up to shelve a book that was almost out of reach, fingertips tapping the spine to tuck it into place. Michael offered a little telekinetic push to slide it into place easier. Alex didn’t seem to notice, simply going to the next book in his cart. Michael bit into his cheek as he made the choice to cause a book on the edge of the top shelf to fall over. Alex huffed and went to grab it, reaching up to put it back.

He did this a lot. Probably too much. But, hey, if messing with the cute library assistant was the thing keeping him out of trouble, who could blame him? No one, that’s who.

Occasionally, Alex would look around and Michael would pretend to be invested in his book so he wouldn’t get self conscious or wouldn’t find him suspicious, but that was as subtle as he got. It was just too much fun.

Alex would eventually disappear out of sight, though, and he would have to actually focus on his homework. Stupid homework.

“What are you doing?”

Michael looked up at the voice to see Isobel standing there with that expression that said she knew exactly what he was doing. He put on his most innocent smile.

“Nothing.”

“Mm, and I’m the queen of England,” she said, sitting beside him, “Whatever you’re doing, stop it.”

“Stop doing my homework? Well, I mean, if you say so.”

“Michael.”

He rolled his eyes and dropped his chin in his hand as he looked down at his homework. It was all stupidly easy and so boring that he hated wasting his time to focus on it. Every time he’d tried to explain to his teachers that it was too easy and boring, they would simply say that he should actually do it for once. He stopped complaining.

“Help me with this, I don’t understand this shit,” Isobel said, scooting closer so he could see what she was stuck on. It was balancing chemical equations which is what he’d helped her with yesterday and helped Max with over the weekend. But he leaned closer anyway and went over it for a third time.

Halfway through the second question, though, he felt a pair of eyes on him. When he glanced up, he caught sight of Alex Manes looking through one of the stacks of books right at him. He flashed a smile and huffed a laugh when he very quickly looked away.

“Stop laughing at me,” Isobel scolded. He shook his head and wrapped his arm around the back of her chair.

“I’m not, I promise. Alright, next question.”

Michael was actually, for once, reading a whole book this time when another book slammed down in front of him.

He jumped and looked up to see Alex Manes standing there. An easy, cocky smile found his lips and he tilted his head. They never actually spoke. He just fucked with him from afar. Now, though, it felt like all those clandestine encounters were worth it.

“You fuck with my books today and I will throw you out,” Alex said. Michael’s stomach dropped and his eyes widened, his heart stalling mid-beat. “I know it’s you. It only happens when you can see me. I’m not stupid.”

“I…”

“I don’t care. But it’s annoying, so stop,” he said, sliding the book a little closer, “Peace offering.”

The book was on the pseudo-science of telekinesis and how to induce a psychic awakening. From the cover alone, Michael couldn’t tell if it was a joke book or not. It didn’t really matter. He knew. Michael had thought he was being subtle and Alex knew.

“What the fuck?” Michael breathed before he could catch himself and even pretend to play it off. Alex smirked to himself and patted the top of the book before walking away.

Michael watched him leave with even more intrigue than he’d ever had before. Which was saying something because he was usually pretty damn intrigued.

He quickly reached for the book and opened it, scanning the pages to see if it held any weight. It didn’t take long to see that it was indeed just bullshit and something that someone created to fulfil their own personal wish to be telekinetic. It wasn’t real. But… Alex still knew. Or maybe it was a joke to talk to him? Did his reaction give it away? Should he talk to him about it or would that make it worse?

Michael couldn’t find it in him to be playful as he sat there in his own head for a solid hour or so, trying to think of how to properly handle this situation. He couldn’t ask Isobel or Max because they would be so angry at him for outting himself like that. He was supposed to be just playing.

He eventually decided that he couldn’t handle this situation, not today, so he grabbed his bag and started to speed walk out of the library. His brain was too full and he didn’t know what this meant. Alex said he didn’t care, but did he understand what he was actually saying? Did he understand that this wasn’t a joke?

Michael almost made it to his truck before a hand grabbed his arm. He whirled around, eyes wide and far too on edge for all of this. Alex stood there with his hands up in surrender.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Alex said, “I’m sorry if I did or if I scared you.”

“Please don’t say anything. I’m sorry for messing with you, I won’t do it anymore, but please don’t say anything,” Michael said. Alex’s face didn’t change at all which made Michael feel even more like he was being closed in on. “I’m sorry, okay? I-I just thought you were cute. I won’t do it anymore.”

Alex waited far too many seconds before he said, “I’m not going to say anything. Why would I?”

“Because this isn’t, like, a small thing,” Michael said, “I don’t even understand how you figured it out. Like, why was that your first assumption? Are you that observative? Are you like a secret genius or something?”

“I’m not going to say anything,” Alex said again instead of answering any of his questions, “We’re all entitled to our secrets even if we’re bad at keeping them to ourselves.”

“I was subtle!”

“You made me think I was haunted for, like, a week,” Alex said, laughing softly. Michael took a slow breath. “Listen, sorry for stressing you out. How about I make it up to you by taking you for coffee?”

It took a solid thirty seconds of rebooting his mind for Michael to realize he was being asked on a date. Alex clearly wasn’t great at timing. Michael huffed a laugh and tried to relax his shoulders.

“Are you seriously asking me out after casually telling me you know my deepest secret?”

“Well, if you say yes, maybe I’ll let you dissect what my deepest secret is.”

“Is it not that you’re gay?”

“Since when is that a secret?”

“Fair enough,” Michael said, actually laughing a little despite the previous panic that still had him a little shaken up. He sniffled and looked around. “Um, can I say ask me again later?”

“Yeah,” Alex said without question, “Probably bad timing to ask you after saying I know your big secret.”

“Yeah.”

They stood there awkwardly for a minute and Michael highly considered just slamming his face into the side of the truck to make this shit a little more bearable. He pulled his sleeves over his hands and balled up his fists, trying to ease the tension in his stomach. It didn’t really help.

“I promise I won’t say anything,” he said, “You have my word.”

Michael nodded. “Thanks.”

“I’ll see you around.”

Michael watched as Alex walked back into the library. Then he very quietly got into the driver’s seat of his truck, peacefully started the engine, casually pulled onto the main road.

And then let himself scream until his throat was sore.

As it turns out, Alex actually kept his word.

Two weeks after he not-so-subtly admitted to knowing Michael’s secret, no one had said anything. No one looked at him weird, no one tried to get him to do a cool trick, and even Isobel and Max had managed not to notice that something was up. It was enough time for Michael to realize that maybe he was actually trustworthy.

It still took Michael another week to go back to the library.

He sat at his normal table and Alex was re-shelving books from his little cart. His back was turned to Michael’s table as if he wasn’t expecting him to be there. Which was fair enough. Michael tapped anxiously on the table and then focused on the book on the edge of the top shelf.

When it fell over, Alex didn’t even pick it up. He just turned to face him. Michael gave a small wave and he smiled right back, waving before he went to pick up the book. He reshelved it and Michael gave it a little push.

They did that a couple times, Michael assisting him. Eventually, though, he got fed up with waiting for Alex to come talk to him, so he stood up and walked over to him.

“Hey,” he said. Alex looked over his shoulder at him and smiled softly.

“Hey.”

“You didn’t tell anyone.”

“Wasn’t really my secret to tell,” Alex said, “And, besides, who would I tell? And, if I did tell, why would they believe me? And why would I want to? I’m not stupid enough to think there aren’t things in this world we don’t know about or that isn’t talked about. You’re just one of those things and I’m not going to ruin the fun of anonymity.”

“Oh, yeah?” Michael asked. Alex nodded, nimble fingers sliding a book into place.

“Can’t tell me vampires and mermaids aren’t real if I can convince myself that there are people like me who know and simply keep it to themselves.”

“So you think I’m a vampire or a mermaid?” Michael wondered, a playful tone in his voice. Alex look at him.

“I don’t know what you are and I don’t know you well enough to deserve an answer,” he said simply, “But I know you’re cute.”

Michael stared at him and wondered how he could even be real. Was he joking? Was this just him playing his cards right? Alex was too good to be true.

And yet… It seemed to be real.

“How about that coffee?” Michael asked.

“Mm, can I also get help with biology?” he wondered. Michael huffed a laugh and nodded.

“Absolutely.”

#malex #malex fic #michael guerin #alex manes #roswell new mexico #my fic #HAPPY BIRTHDAYYYYY

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transsexualhamlet · 4 years ago

Text

the many sins of tokyo ghoul :re

or: 13 reasons why :re is fucking terrible not clickbait

Disclaimer: I think no matter how long this post gets I’m missing something, so let’s just outline the worst ones. And I mean to be transparent, the only reason I actually read :re was so I could make this post... (and bc i wanted to see the what, five panels of hide) Well, I couldn’t stand hating it without evidence beyond hearsay and General Vibes. But I knew it was gonna be bad, I knew it was going to ruin me jesus christ. Obviously I’m not hating on people that like it, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with genuinely enjoying it (I do genuinely enjoy parts of it, and by parts i mean chapters 1-50 with exceptions and 75) I think it’s wonderful if you can derive joy from it (lmao) but I can say that through my lens in life, there’s so much fucking wrong with this goddamn fucking piece of shit manga and I feel the need to yell about it because i am ✨autism✨ so let’s get going (this is r e a l l y long just a warning)

tl;dr Ishida stay in your fucking lane

1. Transphobia and Homophobia:

alright here we are first off with the big one and if I had to choose, one of Ishida’s greatest sins here. It’s quite unusual in mangas like these to have any sort of representation for such things in and of itself, and yeah of course that annoys me, but having no represntation at all is like so much better than getting actively harmful representation. Most manga that aren’t specifically about those things shy away from those topics, and it’s tiring but it’s normal. You wouldn’t want a mangaka to try to write about something like that without experience or informed opinions. So I say if you can’t write something correct, just don’t write something like that in at all. Ishida clearly,,, does not get this.

And it’s not just the case of Mutsuki, who, well, gets it bad enough, there are three full fucking trans characters Ishida made like, just to shit on.

Big Madame- god, made like that specifically to perpetuate the predatory trans woman trope jesus christ is Ishida friends with JK fuckface Rowling. Ah yes the ugly, human trafficking, predatory, pedophilic killer that tried to make their male child more feminine? Has a dick. Really? Could you be a single bit more transparent about your fucking agenda here? I really don’t have to say much here.

Kanae von Fuckwald- Technically Ishida says here that basically this bitch was just like??? Pretending to be a guy for years just to what?? I don’t even know?? Get together with Tsukiyama? Cause he’s fucking gay or something? I don’t even get it but like i read this post yesterday and that’s a whole ass thermian argument. It’s like “oh well this is fine because well this person’s not actually trans and therefore the representation thing doesn’t apply”... it’s useless. You created the character that way and you made it intentionally to for whatever way promote this idea that people would “pretend” to be a different gender and that eventually they’ll realize that it’s a “lie” and they never really wanted it. This is what you’re saying about the real people who are,,, actually trans? Jesus christ. Also thinking that a twink like that would be trans? God yeah trans guys can be feminine but buddy that’s clearly not what you’re going for here.

And of course, Mutsuki- There’s just... so much wrong here. I mean like. Before we even get into anything about his character and what they did to him let me just discuss his entire design. Buddy like if you had to choose one person in that show to be trans that’s the least likely one. Ah yes, the feminine one. With the androgynous haircut and the shy disposition and the physical weakness compared to the others. God that’s like, a fujoshi’s take on ao3 of what character should be trans. As much as yeah of course, trans guys can be feminine, they are in no way obligated to be such and you shouldn’t make them more so to be more “believably” so. Ask any actual trans person ever. A character like that is just perpetuating the notion of trans guys being inherently more feminine or trying to pretend to be otherwise.ThEn, of course, there’s the ridiculous sexualization, infantilization and fetishization of this character, going through a thousand plot hurdles to make him constantly stripped, put in girls clothing, chased by perverts, assaulted, ET FUCKING CETERA. Give him a fUCKING BREAK. Creating this character the way he’s portrayed in canon (including so called backstory of murdering parents because of sexual and physical abuse) is perpetuating a notion that someone would be a trans guy because of internalized misogyny and/or trauma instead of because they’re just... a guy. It’s just it’s just it’s just Really bad. Plus taking his character, demonizing him and making him like, supposedly love haise (which i Really hate for a thousand reasons, god that’s like, a parent and child type relationship they have there not romantic,,, god,,,) try to like fucking murder touka and stop seeing sense, and then just... return him to being infantalized. God. Jesus christ fucking goddamn it I love Mutsuki and he deserves better.

Oh yeah and then the homophobia, this one’s smaller because... most of the trans people are here to go “it’s gay... wait it’s not Really gay so it’s ok” but I would like to leave a small note here for all the gay characters who got thrown under the bus not just in re but in the original, like, you know, Nico and shit? I really do not know shit about Nico but all the things about Jason? God if I had a thing for one person that you shouldn’t try to portray as representation it’s Jason. IDK what’s up with him and Naki but god it wasn’t healthy. (i’d like to say here that i love naki and i think naki deserves the world but honey there are better heroes than yamori) Anyway yeah I think that’s also bullshit and Ishida should stay in his fucking lane. (or her i guess, i just feel like it’s probably a guy bc of just... so much sexism)

Ok, now that we have the big one out of the way-

2. The mishandling of portrayals of various mental illnesses:

I’m not an expert on this one like I can say about the gays TM but just like in general, the whole manga’s very messy and portrays a lot of gritty stuff, and Ishida clearly attempts to throw in some mental illness for fun, but god fUcking damn it they’re bad. I couldn’t really even give you examples bc it’s pretty widespread and i’m stupid, but it was really like trump throwing paper towels “and you get a demonization, and you get an infantalization, and you get a butchered character, and you get a fetishization-”

3. Ishida having no fucking clue how science works

This particular factoid led me to have a very hard time reading this manga because it went from being about like, yknow, torture and fights and crying and stuff to weird experimentation bullshit and mutated whatever and everyone’s a hybrid now I guess. When I heard this thing about the quinxes, I thought that made no sense, because I was like “yeah but wait,,, how tf does that work didn’t Ishida say earlier that kagune literally were fueled by human meat isn’t that like the entire point the ccg is against?” and then Ishida’s explanation of how they’re not just exactly like Kaneki is that “oh yeah well there’s like, metal around it, so it’s different.” OH YEAH OK THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE NOW, THANKS.

The thing is... there’s no way of actually regulating that. You couldn’t move a kagune unless it was attached to your cells, and if it’s attached man, it’s attached and it’s part of you. Also yelling “frame two” won’t like make it any bigger lmao, either you’re gonna have it based on theoretical science in this universe or you’re going to have a dumb supernatural magic pokemon fight deal. The whole thing makes no sense. The science issue isn’t just about this either, it’s also about how the entire thing basically undermines the point of the whole story. When you blur the lines between human and ghoul with little to no real rules or basis in real science, every rule kind of just becomes cheap plot convenience.

So the Quinxes can eat human food unless they use their kagune too much, alright, but Kaneki couldn’t eat human food before he’d even ever used his though the only difference between their bodies was this,,, theoretical metal thing?? And Haise... was never really covered, before he went black hair emo bastard and like vored Eto, did he eat human food like the rest of the CCG? He certainly cooked it. And the squad that lived with him wasn’t aware he was a ghoul until he pulled out the kagune. So I’d assume so, but then how could he have a kagune, how could he survive when his body still was like that?

Is it the RC suppressents? Then couldn’t he just have taken those and lived as a human the entire time? Is that all he fucking needed, is that the only difference between human and ghoul? It doesn’t make sense and the rules are bent so much they don’t function anymore. Ishida like write down your rules somewhere even if they’re bullshit, they shouldn’t contradict each other.

Damn man I’m not even going to go into the dumbass rules of the half humans or the special fast aging thing or the fucking,,, folded up cells deal,,, or the Imagination Kagune, or the fucking,,, Dragon, or the zombie ghoul apocalypse or the “whole new species made of just kagune” i don’t even have the time it is fucking ridiculous and I can’t even with it. Physics. Laws of physics. If not biology, at least follow physics Ishida??? Please???? And if you’re not you need to do that consistently??

4. character glow ups actually being character glow downs

(with the exception of nishiki, he baby now, and akira, i think her development was valid af)

God, this one gets me every time. Touka was cool. Touka was fucking badass, she had a complex character with many motivations and wants, and in the original having her eventually kind of soften bc of Kaneki is valid. But taking her and turning her into like literally nothing but Pretty Housewife Yearning For Husband At War? God, kill me. She’s a strong person. She can like Kaneki without the guy being her only character trait. Also uh, Touka and Kaneki being a couple was valid before this change, now I honestly can’t stomach it. Like they were the kind of “both bisexual” m/f couple that we stan. No longer I guess.

She’s the most egregious example, but I’d also like to point out Juuzou, not everything they changed about him is bad, honestly we fucking stan his knife legs, but he’s kind of like a rip off L now? You got rid of his ~unhinged~, we do not stan. I’m on the fence about him bc i think that kind of is a valid transition to adulthood and I guess he’s grown up, but again, why change his fucking hair color? What is the explanation for this?

Also Hinami. I mean, I don’t really care about her a lot in general, but it’s weird to see her as like an adult when Ayato emo boy looks like exactly the fucking same and they’re like,,, supposedly the same age.

There are definitely more I’m missing here. Honestly, Hide was valid. God him with his fucking burlap sack. With a fucking lenny face on it. I can’t with him. That’s so Hide. But there were some bad ones.

5. one hair color change was my limit, enough said

black white black and white black white more white god bitch get some variety

6. Showing me great new characters and then promptly ruining them

And you can tell this one’s about quinx squad, my favorite bastard children. God, I love them. They’re the only good things about Re other than Hide and Haise and like everything else, Ishida took them and went “what if i *guts*” god why. I love these kids with all my heart. Why. Why. Why did you do that to Mutsuki. Why as soon as Haise isn’t in the room they all get themselves tangled up with pedos. Why they gotta break up the squad. Why make all of them lose all the wholesomeness and lessons they learned from Haise. Why do you ruin them all with weird unreciprocated random crushes on each other when they’re like basically siblings. Why fuckinG KILL SHIRAZU HE IS THE APPOINTED CHIEF DUMBASS OF THE SQUAD WHY HIM. WHY. WITH SO LITTLE IMPACT. YOU COULD FUCKING MISS IT SO EASILY. THAT’S NOT RIGHT. AND KANEKI JUST FUCKING ABANDONS THEM BC HE HAS HIS MEMORIES AGAIN N O ? NO ACTUALLY NO.

7. the casual racism and sexism :)

i just :) can you stop having girls constantly bring themselves down for being female :) and making them be oversexualized, less full characters :) always in some way connected to a guy :) more weak and hurt more often :) my fucking god :) also yeah it’s way less prevalent but there were a few racist caricatures thrown in there for taste if you don’t know how to draw lips just don’t

8. Ishida being too much of a pissbaby for a real death scene

Basically: undermining the impact of “deaths” fom the first series while also randomly and badly killing off new characters. Oh that character that died in the original in a really cinematic way that made you cry and think about the meaning of life and how beautifully tragic this story was? Oh lol they’re not Actually dead. (x10) Doing that with Hide (at least in the manga, not the anime, god root A really did it with him but we’re not talking about that) was valid, seeing as I love him your honor and in the manga one of the lessons that his character hinges on was like in chapter 75 to live on instead of giving up even if it hurts and all that... (this is obviously kind of the opposite from root A where his character was like more about sacrificing for kaneki since kaneki had already done so much, i think both are valid but we’re Talking About The Manga) he was done well. That was right (even though i think they should have done More of it) but there were so many characters this kind of thing was done to without the proper adjustment in the handling of the messages given here.

Like with Koma and Irimi, who,,, honestly should have stayed dead because their entire character arc kinda ended there and showed how they were sorry for their actions and this was how they were making it up. And then they just like... come back. And fight more. Really? This wasn’t the only instance either, same deal with Shinohara (though him coming back made me cry) it like, kind of undermines it if you’re going to have Juuzou derive his character development from that. Either Juuzou gets to keep his unhinged and his dad, or he loses his dad for real and he also grows up. God guys choose. What’s the message you’re playing here. (at least they kept Yoshimura dead, his death made me cry and I would have stabbed something if it wasn’t real, probably Ishida.) And even with Kaneki himself, god, if he can’t die from being stabbed straight through the fucking eye, what COULD kill him? It really diminishes the anxiety you feel about “omg is this person gonna die i want them to be ok” if they basically evade the laws of physics and their own previous character arcs 70 times. I’m definitely forgetting more of the same, Ishida can’t write a good death, he needed the anime writers to do it for him.

9. Kaneki. Just. Kaneki.

God they fucking butchered this man. I could go on about his character is weird and confusing in the manga from the beginning, but we’re focusing on mostly all his weird :re character development, the bad handling of Haise and his memories, and all his iterations.

Before I read :re, what I could glean from fanart and the occasional fic that wasn’t tagged properly was really confusing and kind of a mixed bag. I knew Haise was Kaneki but without his memories, now in the ccg trying to be a pacifist and going :DDDDD a lot yknow. And what I came up with in my own mind for that change was a deal of (this makes more sense with the anime canon tbh, the manga honestly doesn’t do any of this well) like Kaneki after The Shit Went Down With Hide (whichever canon you’d like to interpret that as) he basically realized that he really couldn’t be a ghoul, he didn’t want to be, he didn’t want to hurt people and he wanted to be happy and make other people happy instead of what he thought was right before (trying to fight to protect others on his own etc) because that mentality had gotten people he loved hurt, and well subconsciously I guess that kind of factored into his development into Haise and maybe caused his memory loss (along with the, yknow, shanked eye.) So when I started to read it that kind of checked out, this is what he’s trying so hard to be now. But then this whole bullshit of the whole other like, 37 different versions of kaneki complicated things.

Haise was scared that when he got his memories back he would cease to be, well, Haise, and he would just like revert back to what he was before everything. Which I can understand him being scared of and I think was a good point in the plot for him to worry about that, but I was like “oh honey don’t worry that’s not how it works” and was kind of vying for him to eventually get his memories back, come to terms with the fact that those were his memories, he did do those things, he was half a ghoul, and maybe come back to his original fight of wanting to bring the humans and ghouls together, still caring about his human people in the ccg and all. That development was real, and it wouldn’t just go away if he got his memories back, he learned a lot and grew a lot and he has a different outlook on life now. Right?

Fucking wrong I guess. Dude gets his memories back (very ambiguously, it was really hard to tell when that even happened tbh) and like. Turns into a flaming ass looking like ebony darkness dementia raven way. Haise gone. Fucking completely. No trace left. Doesn’t care about his kids anymore. When he’s done with that and goes white again he’s just Kaneki again and there’s really not enough left of things that like, really wouldn’t go away? He loses the flair? The dumbass? The :D? The Extra? WHY? Why would those things go away? Haise shouldn’t have been right that he would disappear when he got back his memories. That killed me. I love Kaneki and all but H a i s e. He is my b o y. H i m. With his e n e r g y s h o r t s. And his m o m. And his c o o k i n g. And his k i d s, I l o v e him. And Ishida doesn’t seem to realize that they’re... literally the same person. Haise isn’t just some stupid bastard occupying Kaneki’s body, he’s a valid part of Kaneki himself and to be honest, peak Kaneki. Should have stayed that way. Would have been great for Hide tbh. Not just having him pretty much revert to his old self, but basically respond equally to both names and balance the world between human and ghoul. I would have loved that. What happened for real? It doesn’t make sense and it breaks my heart.

Some people on the interwebz try to kind of even that whole deal out by trying to say he like, has DID, which although is obviously a valid thing, like, so does not apply to him. God I’m like so not an expert on this but I feel like it’s not that hard to tell. His 87 little Kanekis in his head aren’t separate personas, they’re metaphorical representations of his past morals, experiences, and ideologies that all conflict. Again Haise here is peak conflict because when he gets his memories back, he has all these different conflicting ideas that were all previously separate. They’re all him. Tortured Kaneki constantly yelling at him in Jason’s chamber is basically again, a metaphor for how he’s denying his ghoulhood and the trauma that he’s been dealt. It’s not that this dude still exists just the way he is ready to show up at any moment lmao. Ishida kind of dealt with that badly too because Haise really said

after his memories happened so I can see why people might, but it’s... not right, and it’s Ishida’s fault about that which is Incorrect

Also just blanket statement, black reaper Kaneki? Fuck him and all he stands for. 0% valid. I can excuse literally every other version of him. But wh y. God he leaves the room and Urie starts misusing his power and getting groomed by a pedo, Saiko is just, left behind and sad, Mutsuki gets captured by a perv and mentally destroyed again, Shirazu dies and the bitch is like like “lol it’s your fault” yeah helpful, die

10. P- the- the porn chapter-

Idk about you but that was so fucking unecessary??? Not even going off of how terribly awkward and weird it was to have it there when the opening was “i’m sad about my best friend who’s gonna get executed what do you do when you’re sad about your best friend” “i simply do not think of him or i might actually just curl up and die” “yo lmao same” “wanna fuck” Like ok um I’m biased bc i’m not straight but I like, really hated that. Even just flipping through the pages as fast as I could to get to the end of it like. God. It’s not a fucking hentai. I’m here for the plot. If you’re not gonna release the director’s cut of kaneki fucking voring hide, i don’t think i need to see 20 pages of straight fucking sex. And if you absolutely must have porn, kaneki is a fucking bottom. That man gets pegged do not try to prove otherwise. You started it out that way god I love how they’re like “oh god wait that looks kind of gay, the woman being dominant, better stop that right now” god Ishida not having a single iota of knowlege about his own characters aND THEN SHE GETS PREGNANT? NO. Excuse me. No. I just. I. Why. This isn’t. A fucking porno. This isn’t tentacle porn i swear oh my god kill me

11. Giving the wrong characters attention

Basically, redeeming characters that should have been redeemed and not going into/discussing characters that should have been redeemed/had more backstory. For example, Tsukiyama can go fucking die. I like, do not even care rich boy. I don’t understand how anyone could think he needed to be redeemed he’s just a gay attention whore who really needs to let this kid get on with his merry fucking life. I don’t care. I literally did not need to read three whole books about his dumbass hangup over eating Kaneki. Kaneki doesn’t fucking want you bitch move on. He didn’t need to be redeemed or seen to be in any way sympathetic, no one wanted it. Same with that bitch ass Furuta, he wasn’t really redeemed but he was given w a y too much time to play out his sob story. God man Rize doesn’t fucking want you. These gross ass simps. I swear.

On the other hand, I kind of liked Eto even though she’s a pile of shit, and I got mad when they didn’t really go into much about her. And you know who could have gotten much more screen time/development? TOUKA. God, I love her and she was just sitting around in the background being straight. Let her have some spicy development. Also obviously, Hide. He was... so underappreciated and underexplained? What happened with him? He didn’t just pick himself off the ground in the sewers and go ‘well i’d better get back to the ccg now’ we have a whole two years which are completely unexplained, most of which he was off mysteriously being involved in things but completely missing the eye of Haise and other major players. Where tf was he? How did he get around? What was he even doing??? I wanna know about that! Not all the characters I hate’s tragic backstories that make me feel 0% more sympathetic towards them :)

12. ARE WE ALL JUST GONNA COLLECTIVELY IGNORE THE WHOLE VORE THING???

Ok like i know i say “the entire reason I read :re was __” but like to be honest this was the turning point, I saw pictures of hide’s vore face and went like

So I was like “god fucking damn it ok, Ishida would you care to explain this to me” *cracks open re*

And then they DIDN’T.

Like. It’s actually laughable how much that entire situation was just glossed over. They gave that maybe like two pages. Like what. I. This manga has more sex scene than no homoing that. They just don’t even bother to. I feel like Ishida had that as a plot point but realized halfway in how it looked (i.e., really fucking gay) and decided that was something that he was just gonna, not deal with. Just act like that’s a completely normal heterosexual bro thing to do. Like of course anywhere would be pretty gay but Kaneki chose his face. His face. Like his face and his wholeass neck and his shoulders and nowhere else. (and assumedly like, his tongue, seeing as how the dude can’t talk... bruh) Dude really said extreme hickey. French kiss to the max. Ishida clearly did realize that generally, you can only get a bitten off face by,,, having your face bitten off, which is just inherently really fucking gay. Like, I’m just at a loss as to how it even makes sense. You wouldn’t think that the skin off his face, and specifically around his mouth, would really be the most nutritious thing to consume? I can get like the shoulders but generally you’d think something like his arm or leg would be 1.less inconvenient, and 2.much more logical and nutritious? But NO, Kaneki was like “you know what i’m gonna do? eat your Face” and hide’s like “lmao sounds cool”

(not to mention, wasn’t there another guy with a vore face somewhere? like that old guy in the ccg with the bigass turtleneck, i wanna know about him) But like... my bro Ishida went “yeah this happened but i’m going to cover it up with speech bubbles and the ends of panels guys they clearly had their socks on” Dude didn’t even TRY to explain otherwise. Like hey man, that’s pretty damn gay, you are kind of at liberty to either tell me why otherwise, or accept those implications and acknowledge them?? It’s really hilarious when you ignore it cause it’s like

kind of

pretty damn

WEAK of you to leave it at that fucking pissbaby

hmmmmmmmmm however could this happen i guess we’ll never know

13. What the fuck was even the plot omg

God I’ve been writing this post for like five hours so like, I’ll keep it short but like it made sense in the original, not to be like an anime fan but the anime made fucking sense (not re i mean like the original) this lore is so fucking stupid god, the horrors of the entire fucking dragon arc bleach my eyes, unresolved plotlines who???? (the whole ‘oh yeah also ur dying of old age’ thing etc, is kaneki like??? still doing that?? or was that randomly resolved with the whole spewing ovary bullshit i’m going to fucking kill myself) and to top it off, good job Ishida at a real fucking cheap ending.

You gave them. Fake human. Really? They just come up with artificial human at the end. Kind of undermines the entire fucking story my guy. Ah yes throw out our whole plot. That was the whole tragedy. You gotta eat human. The ghouls have to eat human and that’s tragic bc they have to kill people or whatever. Or i guess they fucking don’t well fucking ok. God you could have just had them negotiate a kind of peace where the ghouls can get dead humans and such, there are plenty of them and no one has to kill anyone then, there could be a rule system for it, it would be messy but eventually everyone would be ok with it, and I think that would work a lot better than “quick fix i made some hamburger helper human you can eat it fine” guys wtf. It’s like Ishida started plotting out the ending for re approximately 2 hours before his deadline. Anyway yes I hate re and I love yelling about it thank you for coming to my ted talk.

#tokyo ghoul #tokyo ghoul re #essay post #god just fucking kill me #rowan's hyperfixation essays

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dark-strangeson-virgil · 5 years ago

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High School AU!

Roman Ryder:

Junior, second semester

Theater kid, but has never been the lead (in his freshman year he actually got a callback for the school musical and the director told him they were seriously considering casting him in the lead role, causing Roman to panic and spend that night in his room crying)

(He ran into the choir teacher’s room the next day asking for his name to be taken off the audition list, it was the only semester he didn’t do theater)

(He was crying because he felt like he was letting his teacher down and was disappointed in himself but just the idea of being in front of so many people made him want to throw up)

Clearly has some issues with self confidence and potentially a bit of anxiety, but began seeing a therapist in his freshman year after the callback incident and has been slowly been working on building his confidence

He decided to try again his second semester and has been in every school musical since, though he’s specifically requested to not get the lead because it’s still too much for him. The director is very understanding.

His dad and brother come to every one of his performances, and he can always hear Remus’ whistling loudest in the applause during curtain call

His friends usually come too, and knowing that they’re all proud of him really boosts his confidence

(Especially when he’s standing on the stage during the curtain call and sees Virgil clapping and smiling wider than he’s ever seen, looking so genuinely proud. Roman cried backstage after seeing that his first time, which may be slightly related to the fact that he’s had a crush on the boy for a while now)

His mother manages to make it to almost all of them, even though it’s difficult considering her hectic work schedule (she’s a trauma surgeon at the local hospital)

Despite popular belief, he does pretty well in school. He has an A in every class except English (He’s barely passing with a C)

He loves writing, but he doesn’t like having his creativity stifled with the strict guidelines of the essays they’re forced to write, and the old fashioned novels with outdated concepts they’re always forced to read in his class (not the typical high school assigned novels, more obscure ones that their teacher is convinced will eventually rise to popularity)

Loves writing in his spare time, mainly short stories

Multiple short stories of his have been put on the school website, though always under a pseudonym because he doesn’t feel comfortable with the idea knowing it’s his work they’re reading (he only submitted the first one because hardly any students even check the school’s website, but he could never be too careful)

His real passion, though (besides theater/singing, of course) is photography. Loves finding beauty in the world around him. Wants to be a photographer after college, ideally for natural geographic

HE. LOVES. ANIMALS.

Like, all animals. Dogs, bats, fish, literally any animal. He’s not picky.

He and Remus own a pit bull named Emma who he absolutely ADORES

Owns and can play a guitar, but tends to only do so in the late hours of the night when he can’t sleep. Not really a super prominent hobby of his.

Only ever officially came out to his family and close friends, the first of which being Logan. (It was really awkward at the time but Roman laughs now, thinking back on how disastrous such a simple conversation became) (Logan was completely accepting, that wasn’t the problem, Roman was just a disaster and Logan was painfully blunt, but we don’t talk about it) Everyone else just gradually found out through the small pride pin on his backpack or his pride vans he wore often

Remus Ryder:

Junior, Second Semester

Is actually a pretty good artist, his emotions aren’t always super clear or understandable to him and his thoughts can be kind of erratic so it’s a good way to express what he’s thinking/feeling

Is a really good cook, usually his group of friends will hang out at his house after school and he’ll cook dinner

Sometimes he adds interesting ingredients to try and “spice up” the recipes. Usually these ingredients worry the others, but he actually ends up making amazing creations most of the time. Trust his creative process people.

(There was that time Logan had to stop him from adding strawberry jam to spaghetti. And the time Logan had been sick and Remus had ended up putting 2 jars of pickle juice into a chili recipe. They ended up ordering pizza that night.)

(Sometimes he asks Roman to help because he feels like they aren’t quite as close as when they were kids, they’re in the same friend group and talk often but it’s not quite the same as when they were younger, but he’d never admit)

(Roman pretends to be annoyed, but he secretly enjoys spending time together just as much, getting to talk about things they can’t always talk to their other friends about)

Wants to be a graphic designer when he grows up, he really enjoys making art and worries that if he just made it a hobby he would forget about it or not have the time.

He knows how much Logan likes talking about his interests, so he makes a point of looking up the things Logan talks about a lot so Logan actually feels like he’s having a conversation. (Of course, they’re all very Remus-y facts. Logan went through a HUGE ocean phase earlier on in his junior year, so Remus spent HOURS researching the creepiest fish that lurk lower in the ocean, but it’s really the thought that counts. Logan doesn’t mind his gruesome details so it’s a win-win.)

Oh and of COURSE Remus has a huge crush on Logan. Unlike the others, he doesn’t necessarily try to hide his crush. He just usually turns it into a bit of a joke, acting like he’s “jokingly” flirting with Logan because, despite his chaotic nature, one of his biggest fears is rejection so he doesn’t actually plan on confessing any time soon.

He did really well in science after freshman year. He loved Biology and Chemistry, which surprised everyone at first. That’s curently the only class he has an A in.

He drags his friends to go camping at least once every summer because he really likes camping. He can be as chaotic as he wants and there’s nobody to judge him. (Well, his friends are there but he knows that they’re not going to judge him.)

He tries to make bets with his friends a lot. Even over dumb things. He’s a money hungry little rat boy.

He’s not big on extracurriculars but he is a part of his school’s art club/honors group after school. He once did an extremely detailed painting of a green octopus, which won him first place in the district-wide art competition.

He is banned from Pixie Stix. Permanently. They used to have them a lot at sleepovers, but two separate times Remus mixed all 4 flavors and snorted them, then whined about his nose hurting for like an hour. After that they banned Pixie Stix.

Doesn’t really like traditional reading much, but he has a small collection of comic books that he goes to if he’s bored because they keep his attention much easier.

Logan Sharpe:

Junior, second semester

Is incredibly good in school but hates the public school system

Pays baseball, started in Little League as a kid as bonding time between him and his dad, then slowly began to enjoy having a way to get his energy out after spending hours sitting in desks at school and more time doing homework

He has a specific baseball bat that he’s had since he was a kid (it wasn’t his first bat since that was a flimsy plastic one, but he got it when he was pretty young) and he doesn’t actually use it often (unless he feels like he needs luck, it’s his only superstitious thing yes he knows it’s not logical it’s just one small thing iTS FINE-) but he covers it in stickers

After his friends saw it they began buying any stickers they saw that reminded them of Logan, just as small presents whenever they felt like it. His bat is almost completely covered at this point, and he’s resorted to layering stickers over less important ones, but he doesn’t care. He’s just very happy his friends are thinking of him :’)

Wants to be a vet when he grows up, for him it’s slightly less emotional than dealing with human patients but still makes him feel like he’s doing good (people tend to think he doesn’t have many emotions but he actually enjoys helping others and making people happy)

Plus he really does love learning, and the medical field allows him to just expand his knowledge even further

He has study sessions with Janus every Tuesday and sometimes Thursdays if one of them really needs it, and he actually really looks forward to them. They don’t talk much, they spend most of the time silently studying or working on homework for their own classes, occasionally asking the other for clarification on something. He has a hard time studying in big groups, especially considering his friends’ tendency to easily get distracted, so he likes being able to quietly focus.

Usually they carpool home together after these study sessions, and talk together on the way home. It’s nice having someone who he can sometimes have simple small talk with, but sometimes they have serious conversations and it surprisingly doesn’t feel weird. Neither of them are great at opening up, and sometimes having someone who’s just as unfamiliar as you with something can make it a bit easier.

Surprisingly likes baking, his dad works at a bakery (if you can’t tell he kinda looks up to his dad) so he’s been around baked goods since he was really young and has a ton of recipes memorized by now. Sometime’s he’ll join Remus in the kitchen on sleepover nights. He helps Remus a bit with the cooking, and Remus returns the favor by helping him bake dessert for all of them. Plus this way he can stop Remus from getting distracted or getting a bit too crazy with changing recipes)

(One time Remus tried to add strawberry jam to spaghetti and Logan knew he had to put his foot down. It took 20 minutes of convincing but he eventually managed to get him to put down the Crofter’s. Logan loves jelly arugably more than the others, but there’s a time and place for everything)

(Somehow it was this exact moment when Logan realizes he liked Remus as more than a friend, and he has absolutely no idea how that happened.)

Usually when his friends are sad he invites whoever it is over to bake, focusing on something else makes it easier for him to try to understand what they’re going through and give thoughtful advice. Plus both the process and the treats at the end usually help cheer everyone up)

(Yes he has gotten into a cliche flour fight with each of the others at least once, and they’re actually some of his fondest memories. He felt so carefree in those moments, just letting himself be happy without worrying about any judgement or his image.)

He actually did officially come out to his friends, but it was pretty simple. He pretty much just said, “I know that the majority of you (actually all of them but a few hadn’t quite come out at the time) have already announced the fact that you are gay, so I’m assuming none of you will be offended by the fact that I am as well. Anyways…”

He just kinda… said it and moved on. The others were a bit shocked but just went with the flow. (of course they all supported him though)

(He had actually been just a bit worried about how the others would react. Hr knew that it was illogical, considering many of them were gay themselves, but he couldn’t help worrying, so he tried to just get it out and move on as quickly as possible. Their small gestures of showing they accept and care for him, such as Roman buying a rainbow-striped tie for him for his birthday, really make him happy because it validates his feelings and helps him understand there’s no need to worry when he’s with his friends.)

Virgil Alvaro:

Sophomore, second semester

On the school’s swimming team in the spring, has the record at their school for fastest lap with a breaststroke and butterfly stroke

Best friends with Patton, they’ve known each other since 6th grade and have always been practically inseparable

Orchestra kid, he’s played the violin since 4th grade (Even with his stage fright he loves the concerts, because he can feel proud and accomplished from his work without having to be in a spotlight by himself, with all eyes on him)

Longer, black hair (like down to his shoulders) but dyed a purple-pink gradient at the tips (He was originally just going for purple but while looking for reference photos online Patton saw a purple-pink gradient and loved it, and Virgil loves making his best friend happy)

(Plus he actually really likes the colors, but don’t tell anyone)

Does debate in the fall, he likes how it helps him see sides to issues he hadn’t considered before. Some friends told him it may help with his anxiety, and it makes him feel like people care about what he has to say

Loves showing up to support his friends in their extracirriculars (usually they all go together to support each other but even if the others can’t come he tries his hardest)

Will never admit it, but he’s a theater fan so he loves going to watch Roman’s musicals (and it’s not at ALL related to his tiny crush on Roman, why would you think that? It’s not even that big a deal we don’t even need to brING IT UP-)

Is a decent student, mostly B’s with a couple A’s sprinkled in. Used to be a straight A student but eventually kinda broke down because the pressure to get good grades was making his anxiety way worse, so after talking with his parents they told him as long as we was trying in classes and he was passing they were proud of him

Yes he was one of those gifted kids who had a high school reading level in second grade and got put in all the “smart” groups, but then got burnt out at the end of middle school. It’s why he’s such a perfectionist with his own work and it was a big contributor to his anxiety.

Absolutely LOVES history class, it’s been his favorite class since he was young

Is close with his history teacher (very sarcastic old man who somehow manages to be both strict on grading and one of the most fun, relaxed teachers he’s ever met)

He isn’t always great at having difficult conversations, so instead of formally coming out he just kinda started saying “haha same” whenever one of the others would make a gay joke, or commenting on how cute a guy in one of their classes was

Wants to be a teacher after college, he enjoys feeling like he’s making a positive differnece in people’s lives, and he’s personally dealt with unsympathetic teachers who didn’t have faith in him and only made his anxiety worse, so he wants to stop that from happening to other children if he can.

Also, he hates the school system almost as much as Logan, so he’s hoping being a teacher will give him the opportunity to try and improve the way kids learn, even if it’s just in his classroom

His hoodie is a comfort item for him, if he’s feeling extremely anxious and isn’t able to reach any of his friends to help him calm down usually fiddling with his sleeves or zipper helps calm him down pretty well (even if it’s usually only a temporary solution, as one of his friends almost always comes to help)

He likes to share earbuds with either Roman or Patton. As much as he hates to admit it, he actually really likes the musicals Roman listens to and he and Patton’s music tastes actually overlap at some points (cough cough MCR) and listening to music with someone else makes him feel less alone

Patton Myron:

Junior, second semester

Everyone assumes that he’s not very smart, but he actually has mostly A’s with only 2 B’s (woith those being Gym and History, it's hard for him to memorize specific dates)

Does tutoring on the weekends, his best subjects are Science and Math since they generally involve less memorization and are easy to understand for him

He joined band his freshman year and has loved it since, is first chair trumpet

Also does marching band in the fall, and always invited his friends to come sit with him and the rest of the band in the stands (he also convinces Janus to join marching band their sophomore year because he feels like they don’t talk enough, which actually helps the two bond)

Ends up getting a huge crush on Janus second semester of sophomore year.

Uses SO MANY emojis in his texts. He thinks they’re absolutely adorable, and the others are not big fans of emojis but don’t have the heart to be annoyed by it.

Virgil started using emojis ironically occasionally, and it made Patton so happy! (Eventually it was habitual, and he’s not sure when he started actually using them unironically)

Met Virgil in 6th grade when they were paired up on a project about bugs, Virgil cried because he was scared of leaf bugs the first day of the project so Patton tried to make him as comfortable as possible to help him calm down, and their friendship grew from there

LOVES fashion, he loves trying things out even if they don’t always look good. He saw that “gay brunch” meme one time and spent the next week at school dressing up in each of the outfits. Roman caught on immediately and did it with him on the last day. (His favorite outfit was the frog one. “It’s just so adorable and comfy and I love it!”)

YES, he’s worn skirts to school. Not often, but when he does he looks amazing.

He’s always trying to get Virgil to try out more color/”spice”, as he says it, in his style. He knows standing out is scary for Virgil, so every time Vee steps out of his comfort zone Patton’s super proud of him and makes sure to let him know. (Look I’m a sucker for sweet BFF Moxiety)

He listened to Virgil’s favorite bands once to try and relate to him more when Vee was going through a particularly rough time and ended up actually liking My Chemical Romance. He gets sad sometimes even if he doesn’t talk about it, so he likes that their music discusses that, but that band in particular also seems to have songs that show you life does get better rather than just convincing you to wallow in the sadness, especially on Black Parade and Danger Days (Ex. Famous Last Words). It’s morbid optimism but he loves it.

(Virgil actually cried when Patton told him, he had been really sturggling with his anxiety and knowing his best friend did that for him and actually liked his music got him when he was feeling extra sensitive. The two of them spent like 10 minutes fixing Virgil’s makeup in the bathroom, and only the two of them know about this.)

Never exactly came out, but is very open and proud. He has Vans that he painted rainbow that he wears at least once a week, among various other pride-related clothing and accessories.

Wants to be a nurse, he wants to do his part to make the world a better place

Gets a little overwhelmed when there’s too much noise, so he carries around a pair of earplugs to help keep him calm in loud classrooms/hallways.

When he gets sad (which happens more often than he admits) he does makeup. It’s a creative outlet that lets him get his feelings out, and he’s become amazingly good at it over the years. Occasionally he does makeup on the others, usually all together at sleepovers. (His favorite look he’s done was when he gave logan a galaxy-themed blue look. He was so proud of himself after that particular makeover, and Logan actually liked it!) He has the photo of all of them together in their makeup that night hanging on his vanity mirror.

One day Roman called him “puffball” as a joke, but now that’s sort of become his nickname within their group.

Remy Somnus:

Senior, second semester

Is head of sound for the tech crew in theater, has adipted all of the younger tech kids and will fight anyone who messes with any of his children

He’s the one who goes on energy drink and snack runs during tech week because that’s the only way the crew is functioning. None of them are sleepng or eating well. He even gets some for a few of his favorite actors (Including Roman, although Roman always tries to insist that Remy doesn’t have to do that for him.)

Him and Emile have also collectively adopted all of the others in their friend group (They’re the oldest so they have the right to) and HAVE turned into protective mama and papa bear over these children in multiple cases

He plays several instruments. Bass/electric guitar, flute (he was never a band kid, he just took private lessons when he was younger), the keyboard and the drums. He helped teach Janus when he was first trying to learn percussion

Wants to be a musician when he grows up

He's a vegetarian, and has been since middle school. He's been trying to learn how to cook from Remus so he can make his own meals rather than relying on Remus and Logan to make a vegetarian friendly addition to their meal of choice for him

Is not a morning person. Despite coming into school with Starbucks in hand almost every morning, it's still better to wait around 45 minutes after school starts to try and have a legitimate conversation with him, otherwise you'll likely just get grunting and mumbling as your response.

This bitch ADORES the vintage aesthetic. He wears his vintage’ ‘50’s leather jacket almost every day along with his sunglasses, and he has a whole collection of vintage t-shirts in his closet. Oh, and his record player is pretty much his most prized possession. When his friends don’t know what to get him for a present the go-to is always a record, and he loves it every time.

He does love older music, but he also listens to modern music so basically any album will make him happy.

He really loves cinnamon. He carries cinnamon gum around with him at all times. Some of his friends hate the smell, but they’ve learned to deal with it. Luckily, Emile also loves the taste of cinnamon gum.

He tends to spoil his friends. He goes all out for birthdays or gifts of any kind, and ALL of their families attend the holiday parties at his house because they’re the best.

Is honestly a total softie. Although he loves planning elaborate, fun dates, his favorite times with Emile are when the two of them just stay in, make homemade dinner and watch rom-coms together.

He also loves when they watch horror movies because Emile gets all scared and cuddles up to him for protection and it’s absolutely adorable.

Janus Cameron:

Junior, second semester

Patton convinced him to join the band his sophomore year (he was very confused at first because although they had been in the same friend group, he and Patton had barely interacted at this point. He had actually begun to wonder if Patton just didn’t like him), he plays percussion in both band class and marching band. He doesn’t always say it but he’s glad he and Patton became closer because of it.

He’s actually had a huge crush on Patton since end of freshman year, so he’s very happy that Patton at least considers him a legitimate friend now (Can you tell I love YEARNING and PINING)

He has an addiction to hot cheetos, you’ll hardly ever find him without a bag in his backpack. He doesn’t know how it happened but at this point he’s just accepted it.

Sometimes he forgets to grab a bag before school, and usually Virgil will run to get him some during lunch because he doesn’t like his friends being sad. Even if Virgil for some reason can’t one of the others usually will.

Has ginger hair but is kinda embarrassed about it so he usually dyes it black. Only his friends know his natural hair color and they’ve only ever seen his roots.

He also has freckles like every ginger, but they’re concentrated on the left side of his face. The right side has a typical amount, while the left has an extreme abundance of freckles. Nobody knows how it happened, but it did.

Loves. Sparkles.

He’s the kind of ultra sassy, dramaic gay that would adore sparkles and would absolutely rock them. For their sophomore winter formal he wore a black glittery vest, a yellow dress shirt, a black tie and black dress pants. (Patton literally swooned when he first saw him walk in, Logan caught it all on video and mercilessly teases Patton over it any chance he gets)

He reads a lot in his spare time. It’s calming and easy to lose yourself in. (Wow I really am projecting onto all of these characters huh)

His favorite books are mystery novels because he likes all the twists and turns and the satisfaction of the final reveal. However, he HATES cliffhangers. One time a book he was reading ended abruptly and what happened was unclear and he threw the book at his wall. It left a dent, and his friends point it out EVERY time they come over.

Sometimes when Patton, Roman or Virgil can’t sleep they call him and he reads to them. For Patton and Roman it’s super soft fluffy romance novels (that’s the only reason he owns any of those novels to begin wih. He really cares about his friends, even if he doesn’t show it) and for Virgil it’s sci-fi or fantasy because it really sucks him into a world completely different from his own.

Wants to be a marine biologist when he grows up. (Like Remus, he was a big fan of Logan’s ocean phase)

He obviously has a pet snake. He got her sophomore year and he absolutely loves her. Her name is Cuddles (Yes it was Patton’s suggestion. Janus loves the name too though.)

He loves video games and has a huge collection. He doesn’t have a lot of time to play, but he still tries when he can. Whenever his friends come over they end up playing all night because he has a bunch of old consoles. (Especially Nintendo. He owns every. Single. Nintendo. Console.)

He listens to jazz! Logan’s the only other one who really likes it but they add a few jazz songs to “The Playlist” anyways. (The playlist is what they play in the background whenever they stay over at each other’s houses, whether it’s for playing video games or cooking.)

Roman’s been trying to convince both him and Virgil to join the tech crew for theater so he has more friends in theater. Virgil’s pretty sold on the idea and plans to join his senior year (All it took was Roman’s puppy eyes and he had practically melted into a puddle and agreed on the spot). Janus knows it would be difficult while also doing marching band, but he knows he could work around it especially once marching season is over so he’s actually considering it.

Emile Picani:

Senior, second semester

Does both colorguard and winter guard, is the team captain. He joined as a sophomore and has loved it ever since.

He loves marching season, but he prefers winter guard because he loves having a full, detailed show

He also loves the weapon line! Saber’s his favorite (he’s also a really amazing dancer because he took gymnastics when he was younger so he’s frequently put on the dancing line), but he just adores the sport in general

Has been dating Remy since sophomore year (sophomore year was a pretty eventful year for Emile overall), people were confused at first but at this point it’s rare to see one without the other so everyone’s very used to it

Wants to be a therapist when he grows up (wow, shocker I know), has a high sense of empathy and wants to help people any way he can. He’s seen some of the people in his life struggle with mental health and he knows how difficult it can be, so all he wants is to make some people’s journey easier.

Loves cartoons, but is kinda embarrassed about it. He wears cartoon-related shirts, but he never openly talks about it unless it’s with people he trusts. (One time in freshman year a kid in the grade above him made fun of him for his Steven Universe shirt and Remy had to be held back from going after the kid)

Gets pretty good grades, mostly B’s with a few A’s. He knows being a therapist is going to require extensive work ethic so he made sure he had good work ethic early on in school so he’d be able to get through and get his degree

Blushes so easily. Literally the smallest compliment can set his face aflame. It's honestly adorable.

He just has that soft aesthetic. He loves cardigans, sweatpants, loose t-shirts, etc. He likes being comfy.

He has a whole wall dedicated to Funko Pops in his room. He’s even customized a few Funko’s to match some of his favorite characters that they don’t make figurines for.

He ALSO has a bucket of stuffed animals in his room, all of which he loves equally. He’s one of those people who worries about giving more attention to some of his stuffies than the others, so they rotate onto his bed. (He used to keep them all on his bed but he could barely fit so he developed this system instead.)

He and Remy try to have date nights at least once a week, like an adorable married couple. They really love spending time together.

One time on a date night they spent like 3 minutes just staring at each other from across the table at a restaurant with these goofy grins on their faces. This was pretty soon after they got together. The poor waiter had to bring them back to reality when he brought them their food.

(A/N: Wow. I’m really glad I finally finished this. I had this idea that was supposed to be a short introduction to these characters in this AU and ended up writing over 5K words. This is my first time writing anything fandom-related, so constructive criticism is appreciated. Big thank you to @coconut-cluster for giving me the encouragement I needed on the Logan sticker baseball bat idea, I was nervous and didn’t know how it would go. Thank you for reading!

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gobydana · 5 years ago

Text

Have You Ever Cared?

Hi! Could I request a batfam x batsis reader fic where she’s not a vigilante and everyone thinks of her as a spoiled trust fund kid and say some pretty mean stuff to her during an argument causing her to storm out. She’s killed and nobody really does much. So when she is resurrected she stays off the grid and leads a simple life until the batfam finds he and confront her where she reveals how hurt she is.

Batsister was a lot of things, biological daughter of billionaire Bruce Wayne, Gotham’s party child, twenty-some year old with no real path in life, living off her father. Or well that is what one would think if they read the tabolids or even talked to her family. As one of the only family members not in the superhero business. The gossip columns loved to feature her. Who she was out with, where she was partying, what car did she wreck. Her family loved to get on her case. Why didn’t she go to college or do something besides chilling at home. Why waste the money on drinking, being the party persona Bruce took on for many years.

Tonight was one of those nights, only it seemed worse. Maybe it was due to the non-stop shit she got or maybe just today she didn’t want to deal with it. Either way it didn’t seem to stop and just kept coming.

“They said you were drunk and saw you driving.” Bruce about yelled as he pushed the car away.

“I wasn’t drinking.” She hollered back.

“Really? Then do you just suck at driving? Can’t find the line?” Damain added in.

“C’mon sister, we can’t have two family dissapointments. Just drunk driving?” Jason said from a top the stairs. That got him the bird.

“When are you going to grow up.”

“Father can’t get you out of trouble all the time.”

“What if you cause someone else’s injury? Did you ever think about that?

“Stop being the billboard for trust-fund child. Like c’mon can you actually use that brain in your head.”

“I can’t believe we are related. Are you sure you are Bruce’s kid.”

“Enough!” Bruce yelled among the insults shooting out. “I am very disappointed in you.” He said with the most even, cold tone he could.

With that batsister left towards the door not wanting to hear anything more. She couldn’t take it anymore. They of course wouldn’t listen to her but take the word of the press. It’s not like any of them were around enough to even get to know her. That’s why she knew they wouldn’t know where to find her.

She went to the graveyard. It was her safe place, minus certain times of the year her family really didn’t come here. She walked towards the only two people she hadn’t manage to disappoint in life: Thomas and Martha Wayne. She sunk down in defeated and started talking to the tombstones. Having the feeling at least someone would listen to her.

“Your son hates me again. Family wouldn’t even listen to. Thought I was drinking and driving all cause of some Instagram videos taken of me not driving in a straight line. You want to know why I couldn’t drive? I was crying again. Had the stupid police radio on and heard bat down. Didn’t know which was got hurt, but judging by the sling on Jason’s arm going to guess it was him. They don’t know what it’s like. Finding out the same time the public does when one of them gets hurt. Every time I am home I see a new bruise, stitches, broken bones. Don’t they care that one day I might come home and find them gone? Hell doubt anyone would even tell me if they died. I probably would find out from the press.”

“Got into that university for a degree in chemistry biology. Think I might just pack and leave. Would they even care? They give me shit cause doing nothing, but they don’t know what goes on in my life. If they did, they would know I was applying. That the press’s opinion of me hurt my last chance. Been trying so hard. I am going to pretend you are proud of me though. So at least one or two Waynes would be.”

She brushed the tears off her face. The thing she would never let her family see. Stay strong until she was alone. She was a Wayne and they were strong. But times like this she couldn’t be. After a few hours she knew she had to go. The rain was starting to come down and the moon was already hanging high in the sky. Grabbing her backpack, she walked towards the road. Starting tomorrow she was finding her own place and living a new life. Maybe move to Metropolis.

The dark night, slick roads, and her black clothes made her hard to spot. It didn’t help she was walking from the graveyard to the main road. That might be why the driver didn’t see her. The tears in her face cloudy her vision so that she didn’t see the car until it was too late. The last thing she registered was red blinding pain as the car made contact with her body at 45 mph. A driver who didn’t even care enough to stop but instead drove away.

From the shadows though stood someone who did see. Someone who recognized her and knew of her family, Both as civilians and with capes. Someone who wanted to get back at Bruce and see him suffer. So Talia stepped out of the dark and picked up the bleeding girl. Batsis had died upon impact, but that didn’t mean she had to stay dead. Her father had a way to fix that.

Green and pain was the next thing she remembered. It was almost glowing green as every injury she just suffered came flowing back. Her yells and pleas for it to stop echoes in the dark cave. Finally she found her way out towards the end of the pool where Talia and a guard were waiting. She explained everything to her and what happened.

The first thing she asked was about her family. They might have been mad at her, but truly they would mourn her at least? But when Talia showed her newspapers and camera that she hacked into the manor, it surprised her. No mention of her death or the accident. Her family was acting as if nothing happened. Just carrying on like normal. When each of her siblings died and her father, she cried for days. Often feeling like she couldn’t get up each day.

Everyday she found herself checking on her family with the same results. Talia saw the girls spirit died a little each day. After a few weeks she handed the girl a wad of cash and some new clothes. Gave her a chance that once she wanted more than anything. A do over, living a life not as a Wayne but as herself. She took that chance and left the compound to another world. It wasn’t long before she found a job and a place. Settling into life away from the family who didn’t care.

It would be months before someone found her backpack. Bruce went to the cemetery to visit his parents' grave. On the way out he saw the backpack hidden in the bushes. At first he thought it was a normal one until he saw the W.E pin that she always had on hers. Closer look saw blood that was long ago dried up. The weather got to the backpack, no doubt being there for some months. He thought she had left mad at them, to another city. But maybe it was something else. He took the bag to examine further.

Back at the cave, he emptied the contents. He was surprised at what he found. A college acceptance letter to pretious program, volunteer shirts from an orphanage the next town over, notebook and pencil, and her wallet. So much of it surprised him so much he didn’t know about his own daughter. Soon he found himself lost in thought he didn’t hear Talia come in at first. She knew he would be at the graves today and made sure he would find the backpack.

“She died you know.” She said with hands up as he stood up with a batarang in hand. “A hit and run. Her killer just drove off without a care in the world.”

He sank down into the chair with a sad realization coming over him. She hadn’t been avoiding them, she had been dead. The rest of his kids were coming down the stairs at that moment for patrol. Every single one stopped in their tracks as what she said echoed in the cave. Not one knowing.

“DId you?” He started with her only to cut him off.

“Yes. SHe is alive again and if you truly cared about her, you would stay away from her. What family doesn’t know that one of them is dead. Prioritizing cape life over your own blood? She died alone thinking you all hate her.”

With that she left. Bruce couldn’t say anything but waived the rest of them off to patrol. While they were gone he went up to what was once her room. Some place he hardly walked into since she was a child. He could still remember when she was younger and wanted it decorated pink. A pink glitter canopy hung over her bed. She was so happy to help him put it up. THat room no longer existed. Some time between now and then she painted it a different color.

On the dresser was pictures of all of them. She was younger in

most of them. Thinking back it had been a while since he had done anything with her. Between Gotham and the league, something was always pulling him away. Different college applications clouted her desk along with an old text book of his. Looks like she was teaching herself different science items. A police radio sat on the bed side table with a wrinkled sheet. On the sheet had all the code names the police used for the different bats. She must have been listening at night. Further discovery of wrinkled up tissue told him more than he ever knew.

Through out the next week, they all found parts of her around the manor that surprised them. Jason found the book he recommend she read before his death as Robin laying on her bookshelf. It was worn out and no doubt been read a few thousand times. Damian discovered that she had a sword hint half painted. It was going to be a gift for him. Dick found the old letters he use to write her when he first left the manor and started on his own. It appeared he was the one who stopped writing. Tim found his old camera and pictures in her room. Duke saw she wrote down his parent’s birthdays as a reminder for herself what days might be hard for him.

It was Bruce who went looking. Everyone else thought maybe the best thing was to let her move on. Him though, he just couldn’t give up. She was his daughter, an only child he got to raise up. He had baby pictures of her and more growing up until the pictures stopped. He couldn’t give up on her. He might have found the man who hit her and threw him in jail with a lot of bruises, but none of that could make up all he forgot.

He remembered as a child she was fascinated with France. Claimed she was going to live in southern France one day. So on a hutch, he went there. A few weeks later he saw her. It was in a small village near a university. She was working at a café. He sat across the road and watched her. The whole time, she looked genuinely happy. Something that didn’t happen in Gotham.

That night he followed her home towards a small flat where she lived with a cat. She turned around when he came through the window, just starring at her.

“Wonder if you were ever going to come. Was it better without worrying about a press nightmare living at home.” She asked.

“I didn’t know you died.”

With that she threw up her hands. Of all he could say, that is what he said. SHe exploded.

“I died and saw you all move on. You didn’t even know? What thought I just up and left. Didn’t even care to find out where? Did I ever matter to you? Because it sure as hell didn’t feel like it. I was second string to everything. Sorry missed you birthday, had to go save the world. I wanted a Christmas morning with my family? Too bad Joker broke out. I seem like I am hungover? Nope been up all night crying because the police reported one of you asses were massively hurt. Seven I wanted to go trick o treating but nope went to a fellow soliciaties party because the bat was too busy to take his child out. The damn league saw you more then me. I debated often just joining the rogues because then maybe you would pay attention to me. Nope just caused you problems that you couldn’t ignore. Put the Wayne name in the spotlight and you started paying attention to me.

“I didn’t know.”

“Is that all you can say? LIke I know you weren’t a man of many words but c’mon. How hard is it to say you are proud of me? To ask about my day just once in awhile instead of scolding me? Well guess what, I am proud of me. I am starting my degree of chemistry biology while working at the cafe. I made friends here who are friends with me not because of my family but because of me. No more wondering if I am good enough for you or good enough to be a Wayne. I am good enough for me. So there’s the door, don’t let it hit you on your way out.

That night Bruce grabbed sleep at hotel and video chat with the family. Each one of her brothers ashamed that she thought she wasn’t good enough. For the next year, they came separate and slowly got her to be at least friendly with them. No doubt they could never undo the damage done but they tried to be a family. Bruce thought has the longest road.

For the longest time he could never get the picture of her as a little girl asking for story before patrol. But over time he slowly saw her for the brilliant young woman she had become. He started talking time off from Batman to see her. Wanting to not waste more time. He almost lost her for good due to his own stupidity. Seven years later when she graduated with her doctorate, he made sure to be there with the family front row. He had missed so many memorable moments he wasn’t going to miss that one.

Over time she also started to forgive them. The sadness and loneliness that had made a permanent place in heart had finally left. She finally heard her father say that he was proud of her. That was something she never thought would happen. Also as a promise to her, he never came as Batman. Only as her father, Bruce Wayne. The family started to inform her more of when they got hurt instead of her finding out herself. ANd some days when she came home to two of her brothers crashing on her couch bickering, she couldn’t be happier.

Tagging: @the-shadow-of-atlantis @superwhoteen @speedypan

#batsister #batsis #bruce wayne #batman #dick grayson #nightwing #jason todd #red hood #tim drake #red robin #damian wayne #robin #dc comics #batman fanfiction #fanfic #i made myself cry #angst #death #talia al ghul

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insideoutstory · 5 years ago

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Inside Out - Chapter Thirteen

summary: The party ventures to Hawkins Middle to test their plan. They won’t like what they find. word count: 5.5k warnings: n/a

[ masterlist ] [ FF.net ]

Christine—Needed a bigger radio. Gone to AV club. Be back soon.

Christine crumpled the note in her hand as she trudged up the steps to Hawkins Middle School. Her legs were screaming at her to stop moving, just for a while. She was getting seriously tired of all the running around. She was gonna kill Mike Wheeler when she found him.

Walking into the middle school always felt weird. Well, it hadn’t when she was still a student. She was only a year and a half out and already the halls seemed smaller than she remembered. Had she really sat at a desk that tiny in her English class? Or was that desk the same as the one she used now, only shrunken by memories?

That was one thing that made the hallways seem weird. All those memories. Her locker had been down this hallway one year. She remembered getting the zipper of her sweatshirt stuck in the door, and Barb nearly tearing her arm off trying to get it open again. That was the side door she usually left through when it was time to go to the high school for science. There was the athletics department corkboard, still full of photos of the school’s teams. Once she’d stolen a polaroid of Steve off when she thought no one was looking. It was probably still sitting in her desk at home.

The other thing that made it weird was the people. Or rather, the lack thereof. Christine had spent the entire ride to the school thinking of excuses, prepared to run into a concerned teacher who would want her off premises. But there was no one in sight. She peeked into a few classrooms, swung by the cafeteria, only to be met by silence at every turn. No one was hanging around.

She wasn’t surprised to find the door to the AV closet locked. It usually stayed that way until it was time for a meeting. She knocked hopefully anyway, and called through the door.

“Guys? Dustin? Mike? It’s Christine. Anyone in there?”

No response.

Christine sagged, chewing on her tongue. If they weren’t inside the AV room, they must be with everyone else. Besides a fire alarm, there was only one thing she could think of that would get everyone out of class like that. And seeing as a student’s body had been found at the quarry yesterday, she was willing to bet ‘assembly’ was the winning answer.

She made her way to the gymnasium. The distorted bass of the crappy sound system was echoing down the hallway. Knowing she was on the right track, she picked up the pace.

“The school counselor will be available should any of you need to talk,” the principal announced as she drew level with the doors. “But remember. Counselors aren’t the only people to ask for help. Turn to your parents, your teachers, your peers. We can all help each other, and keep Will Byers in our hearts. Thank you.”

Christine peeked through the window, but everyone was already getting up. The crowd stormed the doors, full of indifferent students who would rather be in class than pretend to care about Will. Christine had to scramble back against the opposite wall to avoid being flattened. She inspected the crowd, looking for Dustin’s hat or Eleven’s close-cropped hair. But none of the party was in sight.

“Christine?”

She whirled on the spot, and had to hide her disappointment when it wasn’t one of the kids.

“Oh, uh—hey Mr. Clarke!”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. His pleasant surprise turned stern as he added, “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

“Um…yeah, I know,” she said, running a hand through her hair and inventing on the spot. “But with everything going on, you know, with Will I just…I just wanted to be there for the boys.”

Mr. Clarke softened. He always did, at stuff like that. He was easily one of the most compassionate teachers at the middle school. It was what made him Christine’s favorite.

“I understand,” he said solemnly. “Still, skipping class…”

“My dad already knows. And…well, between you and me, Dustin’s missed curfew a couple times this week. The boys were so sure they were gonna find Will. So, his mom asked me to keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn’t run off.”

“Well, that’s good,” he agreed. “I mean, the whole thing is horrible, but I’m glad the boys have someone on their side.”

Christine smiled nervously. Kids were still rushing out of the gym, no nerds in sight. It was getting harder to hide her panic.

“You don’t know where they are, do you?” she asked fervently.

“Oh! Um…well, I don’t see…They were definitely here—I walked them down to the assembly a couple minutes late—but they could’ve slipped past us. I gave Michael the keys to the AV room, though, so that’s probably where they’re headed.”

“Okay, great! Well, it was nice seeing…”

“Nonsense! I’ll walk with you.”

“Oh…okay…”

Mr. Clarke led the way through the sea of students. Christine was still scanning the crowd routinely, but couldn’t find anyone she recognized. She was so focused she almost didn’t notice when Mr. Clarke spoke.

“So how are things going up at the high school?”

“Hm? Oh, um…they’re good. Normal. Mostly.”

“You’re still enjoying science?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m taking physics now. It’s not chemistry, but I still like it.”

Mr. Clarke smiled proudly. “A mind like yours, I’m sure Mr. Austin’s class is no match.”

“I don’t know,” Christine said airily, her mind drifting to a certain head of brunette hair. “Physics has its perks.”

“You know, I remember watching you in biology. You were always staring out the window or—or disassembling your mechanical pencil. That’s when I knew you needed a real challenge. I always knew we made the right call advancing you. One of the best decisions I’ve made as a teacher. Oh, and one of the hardest, mind you. But I’m proud of it. That, and pairing you with Barbara Holland for your first lab project.”

Christine was glad that he couldn’t see her miserable smile. “Yeah. I think that was a pretty good decision too.”

Mr. Clarke continued to talk as they walked to the AV room, talking about their latest ham shack and what kind of students he had in his classes these days. Christine listened, interested but too tired to truly participate in the conversation. It was a relief when they got to the AV closet. He let her be with an enthusiastic farewell, and a promise to catch up when all the craziness had passed. He was just about to leave when he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I know things have been tough this week. But you’re a smart kid, Chrissy. I don’t think the boys could ask for a better mentor, or a better friend.”

Christine had been too embarrassed to muster a response. Thankfully, her bashful smile seemed to be enough. With a pat on the back, Mr. Clarke headed back for his own classroom.

It was a few minutes before the boys caught up to her.

“Christine!”

Mike skid around the corner first, grinning and out of breath. Dustin and Lucas almost collided with his back. They were giggling as well, impervious to her stern glare.

“Yeah, it’s me. What the hell is going on?”

“Aw man, it was sick,” said Dustin jovially. “We were at the assembly right? And Troy was being an asshole about Will, laughing through all of Principal Sherman’s speech. And then Mike goes up to him, right? And he shoves him over like…!”

“Not at the assembly,” Christine hissed. “I told you idiots to stay at the house! What are you even doing here? Someone could… Eleven?”

She almost hadn’t recognized her. Standing nervously at the back of the group was a small girl with light blonde hair. She wore high tube socks and a vividly pink dress, which looked at odds with her blue windbreaker. Gone were the circles under her eyes, the pale skin that almost showed her veins. It looked like she was actually wearing makeup.

Christine narrowed her eyes at the dress.

“Where did you get that? That’s not mine.”

“It’s Nancy’s,” Mike explained. “We had to go back to my house for the wig.”

“You had to—You went back to your house? Mike! What if someone had seen her?”

“They didn’t!” Lucas assured her. “We were super careful!”

“And it worked, didn’t it?” asked Dustin. “Even you didn’t notice!”

“Alright, if you were going to leave, why couldn’t you just use my clothes?”

“Cause you didn’t have a wig. Duh. Also cause Lucas was afraid to go in your closet.”

Lucas promptly shoved Dustin into the wall.

Christine sighed, rubbing her hands down her face. These kids were easily going to be the death of her. But before she could get too stressed, Eleven walked up to her side. She pulled on the sleeve of Christine’s flannel, and then pointed to her own hair.

“Same,” she said with a soft smile. “Pretty.”

The anger slipped out of her, which was very inconvenient.

“Yeah,” said Christine with a smile. She poked El on the nose, making her jump. “You’re very pretty, El.”

Lucas elbowed Mike, who rolled his eyes. “Can we get on with this now?”

Mike unlocked the door to the AV room, and all five of them piled inside. Just like the hallway, the room seemed smaller than she remembered. There were more electronics piled on the shelves. Mr. Clarke was always acquiring new toys without throwing out the old ones. However, there was one toy that stood out from the rest.

“Holy shit!” Christine was unable to contain a gasp of delight as she saw the radio on the table. She pushed through the boys, ignoring their complaints as she plopped down into the chair. “Holy shit! You guys weren’t kidding! This thing is huge! The signal alone—geez, this thing is a proper, international radio! And with technology like this? Shit, you could pick up walkies, pick up ham shacks, radios. Across oceans! You could hear anything!”

“Yeah,” Mike said sourly. “That’s kinda the point?”

“Come on, Chris,” said Dustin, easing her out of the chair. “You can geek out over the Heathkit later.”

Mike shook his head. “It’s like working with little kids.”

Eleven was ushered into the chair in front of the radio while Lucas locked the door. Then they all gathered around to watch.

“So how does this work?” asked Dustin. “Will doesn’t even have his supercomm.”

“It’s not a manual connection,” Christine explained. She leaned over the radio, powering it up and pulling El’s hand to the tuner. “She navigates the stations herself. Like she’s finding Will’s frequency, not his radio.”

She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket, unfolding it to reveal another one of Will’s missing posters. She laid it out in front of Eleven, who looked nervous.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Christine asked.

Eleven nodded stubbornly. She closed her eyes, and began to focus on the radio.

Loud static filled the room. Just like last night, the sound was enough to put her on edge. Something about it sent a shiver up her spine. She couldn’t tell if it was her anxiety, or some sixth sense that knew something unnatural was going on.

“She’s doing it,” said Mike in amazement. “She’s finding him!”

“This is crazy,” Dustin breathed.

“Calm down,” Lucas scoffed. “She just closed her eyes.”

On cue, the light over their head blew out. Everyone except Eleven jumped. Christine fixed the boys with a hard glare in the semi-darkness.

“Will the three of you shut up? She’s trying to concentrate.”

Dustin smacked Lucas on the shoulder. “Yeah, dude. She’s trying to concentrate.”

They quieted down to listen to the radio once more. It was definitely picking up something. There was a repetitive thud or—no, a clang. It sounded metallic, whatever it was. Too steady to be anything human, too slow to be much else.

Christine furrowed her brow. “What is that? Some kind of interference?”

She reached for the dial, only for Mike to grab her wrist.

“I don’t think so. Listen.”

It was quiet. Then a little louder, then a little more, like Eleven was honing in on the sound. In a matter of seconds, it had clarified to a whimper. That was unmistakably human.

“Mom?”

Just the boys’ reaction was enough to confirm Christine’s suspicions. Will’s voice pleaded from the radio, the clanging getting louder around him.

“Mom! Please!”

“No way,” said Lucas, and Christine shushed him again. But they were too frantic to listen to her.

Mike grabbed the microphone, repeatedly jamming his finger on the button. “Will!”

“Will, it’s us! Are you there?”

“Can you here us? We’re here!”

“Guys, stop,” Christine ordered. “Stop!”

“No!” Lucas yelled. Will was still pleading on the radio. “Why can’t he hear us?!”

“I don’t know,” Mike groaned. He jammed his finger on the buttons again. “Will?!”

“Guys, I don’t think it works like that,” Christine pleaded. “Will doesn’t have his supercomm, remember? This isn’t a real connection. There’s nowhere for your voices to go.”

The boys were ready to argue. But at that exact moment, the banging stopped. Will’s voice faltered, and another sound swelled in the speakers. It was…something she couldn’t place. Familiar in the way that crept up the back of your neck but didn’t quite connect in her brain. The only thing she could think to describe it was clicking, but not in the way a machine would. It was the way an animal might, if it was blind or making a call of distress. She racked her brains, trying to think of an animal that fit, but fell short.

The clicking grew into a growl, then a roar, and the boys turned to look at her in fear.

“Chrissy?” Dustin asked weakly. “What is that?”

“I—I don’t know…”

Will’s voice was growing frantic.

“Mom! It’s coming! It’s—It’s like home, but it’s so dark! It’s so dark and empty! And it’s cold! Mom? Mom, please!”

The roar turned into a high pitched screech, and all four of them stumbled back from the radio. They responded just in time. A moment later, the entire Heathkit radio went up in flames. Sparks flew out in all directions, and a cloud of smoke encircled the room.

“Shit!” Christine cursed. She scrambled around the table, pulling the kids back. “Shit, get down! Dustin! Fire extinguisher!”

Dustin was already a step ahead of her. No sooner had the words left her mouth than a stream of white shot at the desk. It kept the flames at bay, but the smoke had already triggered the alarm. Christine resisted the urge to cover her ears. She dove over Eleven instead, as if her body might be able to block her from the harsh, loud noises.

“It’s okay, El. It’s gonna be…El?”

For the second time in a matter of minutes, Christine was too shocked to finish her sentence. She knew that Eleven’s powers took a toll on her, but yesterday hadn’t looked like this. Already, she could see the blood seeping from her nose, the dark veins crawling over her head. Yesterday they’d been purple. Now, they were a dark and alarming black.

“El!” Mike was trying to elbow Christine out of the way. “Are you okay?!”

He and Lucas both let out gasps of concern when they saw her. But Eleven was completely nonresponsive. Her eyes wouldn’t focus on them, like part of her was still stuck someplace else.

“We need to get her out of here,” Christine ordered. “Now. Go! Move!”

She swept Eleven up into her arms, and the entire party fled for the door. The fire alarm was giving her anxiety, but it had its benefits. The whole school had been swept up into a frenzy. With everyone running up and down the hallway, no one looked twice at the nerds sprinting like they were being chased, or the random teenage girl carrying a sick child that didn’t even go to their school.

They had a short argument when they reached bike rack. Christine was reluctant to let go of Eleven, but Mike insisted that his bike would be better to transport El. In the end, Christine relented and gently loaded Eleven on the back of his bike. She slumped heavily against his back and Mike had to steer with one hand, the other holding her arms tight around his waist. Christine rode close behind them, just in case.

The fact that they made it back to her house without any major calamities was a miracle itself.

Christine ushered everyone through the back door, leaving their bikes toppled and askew in the backyard. She swept Eleven back up into her arms and carried her to the bedroom. Then she darted back to the kitchen, grabbing the same supplies as the night before, and returning to take care of Eleven. This was very difficult with the three boys hovering around her. Mike wouldn’t move away from the bed, and Dustin and Lucas seemed to be glued to Christine’s sides. After several minutes urging him to back up so she could wash Eleven’s face, Christine finally snapped.

“Out! All of you! Get out of my room!”

“But, Christine—!”

“Nope! Wait in the living room! You can check the windows, you can lock the doors, you can raid the kitchen, I don’t care! Just get the hell out of my room!”

She had to shove them into the hallway, and slammed the door behind them.

It was easier after that. She cleaned Eleven’s face and tried to get her to drink some water. The problem was, El was still in shock. Her arms hung like deadweight, and Christine couldn’t even change her out of the dress and into something more comfortable. The only time she got a response was when she tried to take off the blonde wig.

“No…”

Eleven couldn’t lift and arm to stop her, but she whined as Christine pulled it from her head.

“I know,” she whispered gently, running a hand over Eleven’s natural hair. “But you’ll sleep better like this. And you don’t want to get blood on it, right?”

She whined again, looking longingly at the wig.

“How about this? I’ll let you hold it, and you can keep it right here. This way if you want to put it on when you feel better, you can.”

The offer was good enough that Eleven summoned the strength to take the wig from her, and hugged it to her chest. It broke Christine’s heart in a way. This tiny girl had superpowers, but the thing she cared about at that moment was keeping the wig that made her feel pretty.

“I’m gonna go talk to the boys,” Christine said, patting the blankets. “Will you be okay for a few minutes?”

Eleven nodded. Or she tried to, but she already appeared to be half asleep. Christine waited until she’d stopped moving, checked to make sure she was still breathing steadily, and then headed out to the living room.

“Is she okay?” Mike demanded as soon as he saw her.

“She’s fine,” Christine assured him. “I told you, it drains her. I think holding the connection for so long was risky, especially after she was pushing it last night.”

She collapsed into the armchair, rubbing her temples. The boys were scattered throughout the room. Lucas was sitting on the couch, his head similarly in his hands. Dustin sat on the floor, his legs in front of him, his arms limp. His mouth was hanging open as he stared into space, like he was still trying to process everything that had happened since that morning. And Mike, of course, was pacing around the room. Christine wasn’t going to waste energy telling him to stop.

At a loss for anything else, she cleared her throat. “Lunch?”

There was no response. But what other choice did she have? So she dragged herself to the kitchen and started making sandwiches.

Christine wracked her memory for the next hour or so, but she couldn’t think of a time the party had been this quiet for this long. She couldn’t remember a time where just Dustin had been quiet for this long. It was unsettling. She didn’t blame them, of course. Not after what they’d heard. But she couldn’t figure out what to say. Any assurance that Will was fine would be sickeningly hollow. She wasn’t prepared to make anyone believe that, not when she could still hear the unearthly clicking in her ears. And she knew the others must be hearing it too.

It wasn’t until later, when the boys had picked apart their food, when Christine had tired of watching them pretend to eat, when she’d taken the plates back into the kitchen to wash, that someone finally spoke.

“Is this seriously all we’re gonna do?” It was no surprise that Lucas asked. “We’re just gonna sit here eating PB and J’s while Will’s somewhere out there being hunted?”

“We don’t know that,” tried Mike.

“Yes, we do! You heard it! I heard it! We all heard it!”

“What was it?” asked Dustin shakily.

“We know what it was. It was the Demogorgon!”

“You said the Demogorgon wasn’t real!”

“Did that thing sound real to you? Cause it sure as shit didn’t sound like anything I’ve heard before!”

“Okay, hold on,” Christine interrupted. She threw her towel down on the back of the couch, hoping she seemed more authoritative than tired. “One thing at a time, remember? We can’t help Will until we know where he is.”

“But we don’t,” said Lucas. “All of that, and we still don’t know! I mean, what was even the point of this?”

“Because El was telling the truth,” Mike said fervently. “We know she wasn’t lying. We know Will’s alive.”

“Yeah, but for how long?” Dustin asked.

It sent a chill around the group, which Christine did her best to push out of the room.

“Focus. First thing’s first. What did we learn from the radio?”

“Right,” Mike agreed. He was pacing again. “What was Will saying? Like home…Like home…but dark?”

“And empty,” Lucas added.

“Empty and cold,” said Dustin. “…wait, did he say cold?”

“I don’t know! The stupid radio kept going in and out.”

“It’s like riddles in the dark,” Dustin sighed.

“He kept calling for his mom,” Christine supplied.

Mike gave her a weird look. “What does that matter? He’s scared. Of course he was calling for his mom.”

“I don’t know. It sounded more like he was talking to her. One half of a conversation.”

“Okay,” Lucas said slowly. “But Will’s mom isn’t missing.”

Christine frowned. That was a point. If Will was…somewhere, and his mom wasn’t, how was she talking to him too? Unless she’d also found a powerful superchild to help her contact “the other side.” She wanted to ask, but she couldn’t imagine how that conversation would go. Was she just supposed to call up the Byers house and ask if Mrs. Byers had spoken to Will lately? She couldn’t even tell her about Eleven. What if Christine was wrong, and she just pushed a grieving mother to the edge? What if Jonathan picked up the phone instead?

“Like home,” Mike was still muttering. “Like his house?”

“Or maybe like Hawkins,” said Lucas.

“Upside down.”

Everyone turned to the hallway, where Eleven had reappeared. The circles under her eyes had faded a bit, but she still looked unsteady on her feet. Her wig was back in place, albeit slightly off center.

Christine would have rushed to her side, but Mike beat her to it. He grabbed her by the arm, helping her over to the couch so she could lie down. Lucas scooted out of her way, wrinkling his nose.

“What did she say?”

“Upside down,” Mike repeated. “Upside down!”

“What?”

“When El showed us where Will was, she flipped over the board, remember? Upside down!”

“Wait, when was this?” Christine asked. “The board?”

“For our campaign. We were in my basement, and she said Will was hiding. Then she flipped the game board upside down. Dark, empty!”

“Do you understand what he’s talking about?” Lucas asked Dustin, who shook his head.

“No.”

“Guys, come on, just think about it,” Mike complained. “When El took us to find Will, she took us to his house, right?”

“Yeah,” Lucas said flatly. “And he wasn’t there.”

“But what if he was there? What if we just couldn’t see him? What if he was on the other side?”

“Wait, the other side?” Christine asked, squinting. “Are we back to the ghost theory?”

Mike groaned. Without invitation, he grabbed one of the magazines off the coffee table. Then he went to Christine’s card table and grabbed the sharpie she’d been using to do flashcards. Uncapping it, he began scribbling over the back of the magazine.

“Hey! I was reading that!”

“Shut up, it’s just an add.”

He scribbled until the whole thing was black, then tossed the marker aside. He tapped on the front of the magazine.

“Look, what if this is Hawkins, and this…” He flipped it around to show them the black side. “…is where Will is? The Upside Down.”

“Like the Vale of Shadows,” said Dustin, finally catching on.

“Beyond the veil?” Christine asked. “It still sounds like we’re talking ghosts.”

“No, not ghosts. Dungeons and Dragons.”

Dustin held up a finger, running to his backpack. He pulled out a thick black binder, which he slammed on the coffee table next to the ruined magazine. Christine watched as he flipped through pages and pages, all adorned with pictures of large dragons, elves, and dark forests. Involuntarily, she raised an eyebrow.

“You carry your rulebook around with you?”

Dustin glared at her.

“Here,” he said, when he’d found the correct page. “The Vale of Shadows is a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world. It is a place of decay and death. A plane out of phase. A place of monsters. It is right next to you and you don’t even see it.”

There was a heavy beat as all four of them exchanged dark looks.

“An alternate dimension,” Mike breathed into the silence.

“But…how…how do we get there?” Lucas asked.

Dustin checked the page. “You cast Shadow Walk.”

“In real life, dummy.”

“We can’t shadow walk, but…maybe she can.”

In unison, they all turned to look at Eleven. She was dozing on the couch, still half asleep, but her eyes were open.

“Do you know how we get there?” Mike asked, and somehow Christine was still surprised by the gentleness in his voice. “To the Upside Down?”

Eleven shook her head into the pillow.

Lucas groaned, but Christine shook her head.

“Forget about getting there. How do we even find it?”

“Well it’s the Upside Down, right?” Dustin tapped the floor underneath him. “Hypothetically, you open a portal and there it is.”

“Yeah, but what if you open the portal and get the wrong one?”

“What do you mean?” asked Mike.

“Well, we’re talking about alternate dimensions, right? The multiverse?”

The boys blinked at her.

Resigned, Christine walked around to the coffee table. She kneeled next to Dustin and picked up the magazine.

“You’re talking about the Upside Down like it’s the only other possibility. But quantum physics suggests that if there’s more than one dimension, then there’s thousands of them. Infinite dimensions stacked on top of each other. And because they each exist in a relative state, there’s no definitive order to them. Kinda like this.”

Christine held up the magazine. She showed them the front, then the back, then all the pages in between.

“So the front is Hawkins, the back is the Upside Down, and in between you have infinite possible alternate universes. And every time I open the magazine, the pages are moving around. I’ve got no way to know if I’m gonna open up on Hawkins version one, twenty, or seven million three hundred and sixty-seven.”

“So how do we get to the Upside Down?” Lucas asked.

“I don’t know,” said Christine. “That’s what I just asked.”

“You don’t know?” Dustin asked incredulously. “How can you know all of this and not know?”

“This is theory, Dustin! None of this shit has been proven until now. If Will’s in another dimension, it’s the first time in scientific history it’s happened.”

“Then guess! You’re in physics, right?”

“I’m in high school physics! Not quantum physics, dumbass!”

“She’s right,” said Mike. He was looking warily at the magazine. “We need someone who knows more about this than we do. Someone who really knows their stuff.”

“Mr. Clarke,” Dustin answered almost instantly. Lucas and Christine shot him the same disbelieving look.

“Really?” Lucas asked. “You wanna ask our science teacher how to open up a portal between infinite dimensions on the forefront of scientific research?”

“Yeah. Do you have a better idea?”

Lucas turned to Christine, who shook her head. Ideas were something they were fresh out of.

“Okay,” said Mike, slipping back into plan mode. “So we bike back to school and find Mr. Clarke. Then we can ask him…”

“No one is biking anywhere,” said Christine.

“What? Why not?”

“Mike, we just set fire to the most expensive radio AV club has ever owned. Do you want to go back and face Mr. Clarke right now?”

There was a grumble as the boys agreed with her.

“Whatever you want to ask Mr. Clarke can wait until tomorrow.”

“Shit,” Dustin groaned. “Tomorrow!”

“What?”

“It’s Will’s funeral.”

Christine sighed. “Alright. So we go to the funeral, and afterwards…”

“Why do we have to go to his funeral?” Lucas asked. “He’s not dead, he’s in trouble. We can’t waste time going to his fake funeral.”

“And you don’t think it’s gonna look weird if Will’s three best friends don’t show up?”

“Who cares if it looks weird?” asked Mike. “We’ll just say we were grieving and it was too painful to go.”

“No,” Christine said again, putting her foot down. “Look, setting off the fire alarm today was bad enough. We’re not supposed to be drawing any attention to ourselves, remember? Incognito. Eleven has to stay hidden.”

“Then she can stay here with you,” said Mike. “We’ll go to the school, and…”

“Mike, you’re not listening to me. You said there are people looking for Eleven, right? The bad men? And that they have insane resources that could probably monitor even an anonymous tip to the police station and get her caught?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, don’t you think they’d be monitoring this whole town for weird things? Will is the only kid to go missing in this town for probably like a century. And if the three of you don’t keep up appearances there, it’s gonna qualify as a really weird thing. We go to the funeral, and deal with Mr. Clarke after. He’ll probably be there anyway.”

“What about Eleven?” Mike asked. “She can’t come with us.”

“She’ll be fine here by herself. The funeral will be an hour, tops.” Mike made to argue, but Christine held up a hand. “I will come directly back here, Michael. There’s no adults, she won’t go near the windows, and no one will see her. It will be okay.”

Mike turned to the other three kids. Again, they were out of ideas and options. Lucas and Dustin merely shrugged. Eleven just followed the conversation with wide eyes and no input. Finally, after staring at her for several seconds, Mike sighed.

“Don’t call me Michael,” he grumbled. “What are you, my mom?”

As the planning continued on, Christine couldn’t help but think that she certainly felt like it.

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