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dramaticviolincrescendo · 4 years ago

Note

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

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

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

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

Ian and Family

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian and Friends

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

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

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

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

Ian and Romantic Pursuits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Conclusion

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

Good morning. It’s Ian Gallagher loving hours.

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

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anywhozits · 5 years ago

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All I Really Want Chapter 3

Rating: T

Pairing: Kristanna (at some point lol)

Verse: 90s High School AU / frozen retelling

Chapter Summary: A look into Kristoff and Anna's best friend Friday night tradition.

Notes: I apologize in advance for my dumb sense of humor ;)

Read on Ao3

Kristoff and Anna sat at their favorite hole-in-the-wall and somewhat ramshackle diner, Oaken’s House, on a decidedly crisp but also unseasonably warm March evening. It was windy, a little bit at least, so they opted to sit indoors.

The food was… decent. Only once had they gotten food poisoning and they’d since decided to never mention that again. Or was getting food poisoning even once a bad thing?

Oh well. They loved Oaken’s anyway.

And tonight, they were back with gusto. In his typical fashion, Oaken had welcomed them with a huge smile and his adorable sing-songy voice before leading them to their favorite inside table.

They sat on the diner’s signature extremely uncomfortable white plastic chairs and then they ordered their usual—a combination of something so gross but also so perfect that they came to the reasonable conclusion that they could never deviate. Absolutely any time they found themselves at Oaken’s House on a Friday night they ordered mozzarella sticks plus an Oreo milkshake.

Two delicacies that on their own sounded pretty normal... but Anna and Kristoff were the type to assure absolutely everyone they ever came in contact with that they were far from normal. So naturally they dipped those mozzarella sticks in the milkshake. Hardcore. At least five dips a stick. And the dairy overload was enough to send them over to an entirely new level of friendship since Anna always got super gassy after these nights and Kristoff of course cared absolutely zero.

The best tradition. Their favorite tradition.

Mouth already half full of milkshake covered mozzarella stick, Anna spoke, “Hans and I are going to Five Crowns tomorrow.”

“Ooh. Fancy.” Kristoff raised his eyebrows.

“Mmhmm,” Anna said, already prepping her next bite by dipping, dipping, and dipping it into the milkshake. “I’ve only been there once for my dad’s birthday, too. It was a whole six-hour affair and I totally cried because it was so boring. Like.” She popped it into her mouth. Chew, chew, chew. “So. Boring.”

Kristoff gave her a sympathetic smile. A smile she appreciated. Because... there were a lot of people in her life she felt she could never dish about her parents to. Never, ever. It was like…

She had much to be thankful for, sure. She didn’t have to worry about money the way Kristoff did. She didn’t have to worry about much at all, really.

So sometimes she felt guilty complaining.

But Kristoff… Kristoff never made her feel guilty. Kristoff made her feel like every single eye roll, every single annoyed grumble, every single ounce of negativity that coated the relationship with her family was completely founded.

And that meant the world to her.

She was thankful for him—always. Every single day. Even if it meant she was just a little sister in his eyes. Yes, she definitely still shuddered at that thought. But.

Even if…

It was worth it. Because she had him. She had Friday nights at Oaken’s House.

And… she had him.

She had someone who would talk with her and listen to her and really understand her.

She had him…

“What’s the latest on your status with Hans? Are you um… boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever?” Kristoff’s voice snapped her out of her train of thought. Her head jerked a little bit at the jarring sensation of rejoining reality and a piece of mozzarella stick fell from her mouth to the table.

Both Anna and Kristoff laughed. Classic Anna.

And when she shrugged and popped the fallen mozzarella stick back in her mouth, Kristoff laughed harder.

“I’m sorry, Kris. I think I blacked out there for a second.” She giggled again. “What did you say?”

“I was asking,” he started. “About Hans. You know—what you’re—um… if you’re boyfriend and girlfriend—”

“Oh. No. He hasn’t said anything about that. I think we’re just…” She didn’t want to say friends. Because they weren’t really just friends. In fact—just friends was exactly what Anna and Kristoff were. And Hans and Anna had a much different relationship than she and Kristoff had…

Like… there was no way in the literal seventh ring of hell that Anna and Hans were at the same stage in a relationship as Anna and Kristoff were. Because—well, she and Hans were in love with one another. Literally in love. For real in love. Not the friendship love she had with Kristoff. That maybe teetered on romantic love sometimes. But not all the time. And…um. Never mind.

Back to Hans. She loved Hans for real. 100% of the time she had romantic love for Hans. Plus they’d said they loved each other probably two hundred times since the night they met. So they loved each other. Duh.

But… maybe they were just friends. Friends with… benefits? Okay. Benefits. Yes. That was what set her relationship with Hans apart. Those two words. With. Benefits. She had no benefits with Kristoff.

She gulped. “I think we’re just friends.”

“But… you love him?” Kristoff’s face contorted into a scowl as he chomped on another sweet and oozing mozzarella stick.

“Mmhmm,” she said, slurping up some of the milkshake.

“You loved him after one night?”

“Mmhmm.” Anna giggled a little bit. They had definitely talked about this before. Kristoff loved bringing up the whole I-love-you-on-the-first-night business.

“Shit.”

And he always reacted the same way. So judgy, Kristoff. For someone who didn’t know anything about love or relationships or... other stuff like that.

Anna pouted playfully. “What gives, Kris? Haven’t you ever heard of love at first sight?” She made a show of batting her eyes when she said this.

But Kristoff was far from amused. He crossed his arms over his chest and jutted out his bottom lip. “Sure I have. I just don’t believe in it is all.”

“Okay,” she huffed. “Fine.”

“He says he loves you too?”

“He said it first. If you remember. I told you all this like, the morning after.” And probably six or seven times since then… he couldn’t let it rest.

“Yeah.”

Anna sighed. He seemed grumpier about this than usual. “Are you trying to use some super coded Kristoff-speak to tell me you don’t like him or something?”

“He’s whatever,” Kristoff mumbled.

“So, you don’t like him.”

He didn’t answer for a bit; his sustained silence already proving her point. They’d never bridged this part of the Hans conversation before. It always stopped after Kristoff denied the existence of love at first sight and abruptly changed the subject.

But eventually, he spoke up. “Does it matter what I think?”

“You’re my best friend.”

“But does it matter?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “I like him all right. I guess. But… I don’t really know him. I don’t really know anything about him at all. Wait—how much do you even know about the guy?”

Oh, snap. Was he jealous? Why did Anna get the sense that maybe he was jealous? Or... maybe he was just concerned. Not jealous. Because he cared about her. Because he was her best friend. That made sense. That definitely made the most sense.

Not jealous.

“I know you’re worried, Kris. It’s cute. I appreciate it. But I can deal with it myself, okay?”

His eyes were downcast onto the plate. He played with the mozzarella stick a little bit. “Okay.”

“Seriously. Thank you,” Anna said cheerily, reaching out to tug on the sleeve of his gray Volcom hoodie so he looked up at her. “Thanks for always looking out for me.”

And then she impulsively grabbed his free hand and held it, noting and admiring the fact that the weight of his big, calloused hands made her feel a healthy mix of safe and comforted and respected. He smiled softly at her, squeezing her hand.

Her heartbeat quickened, butterflies unleashed themselves in her belly, and she pulled her hand away, kind of terrified.

They’d held hands before… as just friends. But she’d never had this visceral of a reaction to it.

She had Hans. She loved Hans. She needed to focus on him. Not get way too attached to someone who would never like her back.

The second she gathered her thoughts, though, she heard the loud and unmistakable sound of her breaking wind. Cutting the cheese. Whatever.

She giggled. “Oops—my bad—gassy!” And then she started laughing uncontrollably, covering her face in her hands.

Kristoff joined in, unrestrained laughter making tears pool in his eyes.

But then Anna reached for the milkshake, gearing up to take a few more sips. Kristoff furrowed his eyebrows, still laughing, still crying and yelled, “Anna!”

“What? You gotta get used to my gas, man. Comes with the territory.”

“Oh, I’m plenty used to it.”

“Good. Now pass me another mozz stick.”

And he did.

Mouth once again full, Anna decided to change the subject. “So how are things going with Pissed Off Kids?” Pissed Off Kids was the band Kristoff and his other best friend Sven had founded in the fifth grade as one of the action items on their long list of ‘ways to stage the ultimate rebellion.’ They played their music in Sven’s garage and took breaks to skateboard. It was all incredibly cliché.

“We’ve got a gig next weekend. If you wanna come. It’s at this random place in Anaheim, but they’re paying all right. I doubt many people are gonna make it out there—”

Anna rolled his eyes. “As if, Kris. You’re gonna pack the place and you know it.”

His cheeks flushed red. “Well, um… either way it should be fun. Gotta test out some of our new stuff.”

“Covers or original?” Anna seen enough of his shows to know Pissed off Kids’ typical cover song rotation. Usually any number of songs off of Green Day’s Dookie, The Offspring’s Smash, or Blink-182’s Cheshire Cat. Nirvana was deemed too holy to even attempt to replicate. Kristoff’s words, of course. RIP Kurt Cobain.

“Both.”

“Awesomesauce,” Anna beamed. She loved hearing about his music. He was just so passionate about it—literally everything related to alternative and grunge rock. If he really got going, he could talk her ear off about the intricacies of the movement itself, how it had grown, how each of his favorite bands added their own flavor and their own perspective. She loved it. Every single second of it. “Tell me about the new ones you wrote.”

“Ah, well… there’s only one of those.” He popped another mozzarella stick into his mouth. “It’s called When. Mostly written by Sven.”

“Ooh it’s all rhymey and poetic already.”

Kristoff laughed. “I guess I wrote most of the chorus, though. Come to think of it.”

“Of course you did. Because you’re the best songwriter slash guitar-player slash singer who’s ever walked this earth.”

“I bet there are a lot of other people who deserve that title.”

“No,” she said. “Just you.”

“Kurt Cobain, for one.”

She ignored him entirely. “So… When, huh? Sounds so… emo?”

Anna raised her eyebrows at Kristoff, trying to gauge his reaction. Was she hot or was she cold?

His left eyebrow twitched ever so slightly. Confirmed. His new song was definitely emo.

“Okay, right. No duh it’s emo. Noted. But… that’s obvious coming from you,” Anna said. Kristoff chuckled softly in response. “All right! I’ve got a great idea. Let me guess the chorus. Okay?”

He laughed again. “Okay. Have at it.”

“Ummm…” she scrunched her lips together tightly, thinking, thinking, thinking. “When… will my best friend stop insisting we drink milkshakes every week because they make her fart up a storm?”

Kristoff laughed. “Nope. Try again.”

Anna furrowed her eyebrows in concentration. “When… will Anna give in to my begging and decide she wants to learn how to skateboard, so we can finally go to the skate park together?”

His laughs intensified as he reached to take a sip of the milkshake. “No!”

“Huh. Weird. I really thought those made the most sense…” Now she laughed. “OH! I’ve got it this time: When will my best friend in the entire world finally get it through her head that she’s not someone who can make the word dude work?”

Kristoff started laughed so hard that he couldn’t catch his breath. Soon enough, a little bit of Oreo milkshake shot out of his nose and then trickled down his upper lip.

Noticing this, Anna lost it. Completely.

The sight of white liquid with chunks of black cookie rolling down his face paired with the sight of him clutching his face in an unfortunate brain-freeze like state sent her into a frenzy.

Kristoff shot only-somewhat playful daggers at her. “You can’t make me laugh when I’m drinking a milkshake!”

“Well, you shouldn’t drink a milkshake when I’m being funny!” Anna grinned. “Which is all the time, really. So guess milkshakes are out. I’m too gassy and you’re too… into-my-jokes.”

“Not funny,” Kristoff said. “That kinda hurt. It was like… one big brain-freeze.”

“Um—dude? Chill out.”

He smirked. “I stand by it. You can’t pull off dude.”

“Would’ve been an epic song lyric, though,” Anna offered, but Kristoff shook his head. “So what is it, then? Your big brilliant title-sequence chorus lyric thingie?”

“It’s…” Kristoff took a deep breath, a flash of drama overcoming his face as he began to speak, “When will the clouds finally part?”

“Ah.” Anna nodded. “See? Emo.”

“I guess.” Shrugging, Kristoff looked down at the table, bashful all of a sudden.

“I can’t say I’m not disappointed, though. It’s been awhile since you’ve written one about me.”

Kristoff looked back up and caught her gaze. “I’ve never written a song about you, Anna.”

“Mmhmm,” Anna teased. “A likely story.”

“I’m serious!”

“So am I!”

They both burst out into uncontrolled laughter. Kristoff clutched his face in a futile attempt to keep the milkshake very much out of his nose which only made Anna double over in the chair, hyperventilating with giggles.

Kristoff’s laughter was contagious. Anna could laugh for hours and hours only answering to Kristoff’s unamused smirk but when Kristoff laughed… it was like everything in Anna’s soul shifted into place. She didn’t have to think about anything but that moment—their relationship. The warmth and kindness that his laughter evoked made Anna’s heart swell.

She would do just about anything to hear that laugh.

Once they both calmed, she took a moment to look at him. He smiled so widely that his eyes crinkled. That also made her heart swell. “You said your show’s next weekend?”

“Yeah. Saturday night at 11.”

“Ah, well,” Anna shrugged, trying to hide her growing smile. “That’s past my bedtime.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Hey! You stole my punch line! I was gonna say ‘That’s past my bedtime…NOT’ but then you have to jump in with your whole Grumpy McGrump Buzzkill business.”

“I’m sorry, feistypants,” he said, chuckling.

“Thank you.” She smiled again. “And I was kidding, seriously. You know I’ll be there.”

His eyes crinkled again as he grinned widely, sincerely, softly. “I know.”

And she would. She’d always be there for him. Be there with him. Always.

#kristanna #frozen #fanfic #fanfiction #myfics #90sau

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last-of-the-jaded · 5 years ago

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Cheng has always been very visceral when expressing his anger at Wuxian, his tongue quick to cause pain and pick at people’s faults. I think the reason he is so quick to get upset - about Wuxian finally visiting the burial hall at Lotus Pier after the 16 year time skip - is that he knows at the very least two of the people represented in that hall would have forgiven his adoptive brother in a heartbeat. Both Yanli and his father would have welcomed Wei Ling back with open arms, and realizing that irks Cheng—it makes his rage more potent and personal.

“You have already been kicked out of our family. How dare you enter here and face MY parents, and MY sister.” His words are pained, and create separation between him and his brother in a manner that I can only imagine is super painful to all involved. It’s like a child spitting and punching to get a reaction—they don’t know how to admit fault or repent. It hurts to watch. Cheng has always felt lesser to Wuxian when it came to their family, and although he was the son with birth-right, I think his jelousy is exceedingly obvious within this scene. Cheng has massive issues with his self-worth and I think he never learned how to deal with those in a healthy manner—and in turn those same issues passed down to Jin Ling.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #the untamed #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #wei ling #the untamed spoilers #mdzs spoilers #little scene analysis #i think the actors did a good job conveying emotions

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poepoe-thebunny · 5 years ago

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Trigger Warnings: Poverty, food trauma, mental health, eating disorders (last one maybe?)

You know, I've never been able to completely out into words how inconsistent eating as a kid messes you up. Like, I'm not sure how to explain it's not just a mental thing, but a physical thing too. Even when I'm in a better place now, 18 ish years worth of poverty doesn't just go away.

Like, learning how to eat properly and portion things is so difficult, and feeling guilty about eating more than once a day is so deeply ingrained. I don't know how to tell someone that the scent of food, ANY food, sends this drive of hunger that borders on panic and that I have to EAT NOW when the food is there because I don't know when I'll get any more. Like, my body physically recognizes the need to MAKE THIS URGENT because my body recognizes it's not getting food at regular intervals. And even now, it's like my body's immediate reaction hasn't changed.

I don't know how to explain to someone that even things like dry and powdered goods are useful, but that full regular meals at regular times isn't something that happened. I don't know how to explain that if you have the money now, buy the food now, because if you try to save it and something else comes up you need to use that money to pay for it. Because you know if you have a late fee, or need a new tire, missing ONE payment can set you back months of work and if going without buying food for a few weeks means you're not in debt then that's what you do. Because you know the alternative is way worse, so fresh food that gets cooked every single day for most meals isn't something you get. You get things that last, things that feed you when the money inevitably runs out. I don't know how to explain that the one time I misplaced my wallet I had a near break down because my immediate reaction was this visceral fear of "God no please I don't want to be hungry again!", I didn't want to drink glassfuls of water to fill my stomach or deal with hunger pains that were so bad I couldn't sleep and left me exhausted.

I don't know how to explain the struggle to eat healthy. How even though I plan, and replan and budget meals for the week I'm constantly rechecking the numbers or the bills, putting less and less towards food "just in case", cause I know the trap of poverty and I can go with a little less food, I've done it before. How eating more than one apple or orange or peach a day makes me feel bad because I KNOW the value of food, and I have to make it last because I don't know when I'll be able to get more so I don't eat. And then I don't eat some more. And it becomes this vicious cycle of not-eating or eating as little as possible until the hunger becomes to bad and I eat as much as I can. I don't know how to explain to people that this is what my mind and body consider normal.

I can't explain how I couldn't even properly control myself once I got to a place where more food was available. My freshmen year of college I had a meal plan, and my college has a buffet style meal hour. It wasn't tasty, but it was food, and I went from being able to eat once a day-ish to being able to eat consistently, three times a day, as much as I wanted to within that hour. I don't know how to explain the absolute HELL those first 6 months were as my mind and body struggled with this transition, because I had a lifetime of training for inconsistent food and I didn't know what to do once the good was actually THERE. I didn't know how to get rid of the fear, how to say "It's ok if I don't get more now, there will be more later", my body was wired to eat like the food wouldn't be there and kept going like that even when the food was.

I didn't realize how much of my everyday life wasn't normal as it pertains to food. How lack of sleep or very little energy because I hadn't eaten wasn't something I was supposed to feel everyday. How when winter break came around I wasn't excited, because two of my meals came from school and I knew I wouldn't get it for a while. How wanting more makes me feel selfish, how the first time I spend the night over at a friend's house and their mom told me to get snacks and food whenever I wanted, I had to be explicitly told to do so because I wouldn't take food from another family. Not because of pride, but because i didn't realize having so little wasn't normal and I didn't want to take away what they already had. I would have waited until I was home to eat because I didn't want to be rude. I didn't want my friend to go hungry.

Poverty comes with so much trauma, and I don't know how to explain that to people who don't understand. How what they consider "eating a few leftovers" is "stretching one meal for multiple days because we need to eat and can't get more". How one meal can be made and remade into 3 different things over the course of a few days, and how lots of times you only account for that one meal because chances are you won't be eating much the rest of the day anyway.

I don't know how to explain it. I don't know how to tell people that getting out of poverty isn't just about money, it's about learning to cope with all the trauma that it gave you. Having to relearn habits and thought patterns for BASIC THINGS because those things had never been available to you before. I have friends who will go hours without eating and make themselves sick because of poverty related trauma, I know people who believe they deserve LESS because "I've don't it before."

I don't know how to explain all of the trauma and fear and resentment and agony that formed my childhood right down to the food I eat. I don't know how.

#gonna put on my masterlist don't mind me

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samaraclegane · 6 years ago

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I saw your call for Good Omens prompts! What about if Aziraphale brings Crowley a plant as a gift and then we get some Crowley plant obsession (he’d be excited to show Az his collection but trying to still be cool)? Flirting in the plant room! 😍 Plus I like the idea of them over at Crowley’s flat for a change.

author’s note: what a sweet little prompt! thank you so much haha, I’ve been wanting to write about Aziraphale interacting with Crowley’s plants. hope this is good enough for you, I’m a little unwell at the moment so apologies if not! it was good fun for me to let my mind run regardless, so I thank you! (love the profile picture by the way! very cool :))

-it’s around five in the afternoon when Crowley hears a knock at his door. it takes him by surprise: he’s usually purposefully too rude to avoid getting visitors, especially those that would call at such a usual time. no demons are out and about before midnight, and angels... well, angels are entirely unpredictable.

-he’s hesitant as he walks over to the door, using the peephole to inspect the person stood on the other side. he can’t help but sigh as he recognises almost instantly at who stands there: Aziraphale.

-of course it is. this is the time that, presumably, is just after Aziraphale’s closed up the bookshop for the day, and he’s the only being in existence that would have the audacity to turn up out of the blue at Crowley’s flat. undoubtedly everybody else would assume they’d be obliterated in doing so.

-he reaches for the doorknob and turns it, swinging the door open, revealing an ever-pleasant angel. his friend’s gaze goes straight to him, looking at him through light eyelashes, and he’s never managed to look more positively angelic in their entire history together.

-”Aziraphale,” he addresses him, leaning against the door-frame as though posing for a Renaissance painting, “what are you doing here?”

-”oh, you know, I was just in the neighbourhood and thought I’d pop in,” the angel says sweetly, as though his appearance hadn’t interrupted Crowley’s long, gruelling plans of doing nothing at all, pretending to act malevolently, “may I come in?”

-”you and your... friend, I take it?” Crowley nods to the plant in Aziraphale’s hands, bright green and almost as healthy as his own. despite his natural cynicism, he moves aside to let the angel in, and closes the door behind him.

-”this,” Aziraphale moves towards him, then stretches out his arms, imploring Crowley to take the plant, “is for you.”

-”for me?” Crowley asks incredulously, unable to keep the patronising tone out of his voice, no matter how much he hates it when he hears it, “whatever did you do that for?”

-”I thought you’d like it,” Aziraphale sounds dejected and his arms fall a little, making Crowley’s stomach sink, as though he knows he’s hurt the angel, “I thought you kept them. I saw them the last time I was-”

-”yes, yes, alright,” Crowley pulls his usual trick of avoiding admitting his guilt by interrupting Aziraphale, then ushering him into the adjacent room, the one filled tastefully with flora.

-he follows soon after his friend and, though he’d rather bathe in holy water than admit it, he finds he rather likes the unusual presence in this room. this room, the one that he so often becomes protective over. this room that he takes so much personal pride in, yet never lets another soul see. this room that now contains not only himself and his plants, but a celestial body, too.

-he feels childish as he thinks it, but seeing Aziraphale in the hall of his famed plants makes him feel giddy. part of him hopes foolishly that the angel likes his work and, judging by how his blue eyes sparkle as he admires the perfectly green plants, Crowley believes he’s succeeded.

-”Crowley, this is...” he trails off slightly as he turns, his plant still in hand, gazing up at the vibrant, giant plants with their countless leaves - old and newly sprouting. he catches Crowley’s eye, then a slight smile spreads across his features. “beautiful.”

-it’s then that the demon begins to feel violently ill. well, perhaps it’s not so much violently ill as it is nervous with cannibalistic butterflies filling his stomach, but the two sensations feel rather similar to him then.

-to avoid this, he breaks their eye contact and saunters into the middle of the room, feeling the angel’s eyes follow him for a short while as he moves. by the time he turns back around, however, Aziraphale is once more occupied by the looming, leering plants that surround him.

-Crowley can sense that Aziraphale feels his gift is inferior. as soon as he receives confirmation of this in the form of the angel looking between Crowley’s plants and the one he can hold in one hand, the demon springs into action.

-”place it anywhere you like,” he tells him, casting a casual eye around the room to make sure there’s a sufficiently pronounced space for the potted plant. thankfully, there is.

-”oh, right, of course,” Aziraphale begins to move suddenly again and fumbles about the room, unsure where to put the plant. he first places it beneath one of Crowley’s prized shrubs, but realises soon enough that this will not provide it any light to grow. he then puts it across the room, then realises yet another one of Crowley’s plants is blocking the light from the skylight, so swings around and looks at Crowley for help, looking almost apologetic.

-the demon takes the hint. he crosses the room, shaking his head slightly, and plucks the pot from the angel’s hand. there’s a brief moment where their fingers touch and, with the way the pair of them flinch in sync at the touch, the plant almost goes crashing to the ground, dead before it had a chance to live and thrive.

-Crowley instantly knows exactly where the plant is going. there’s an unused table he’s been keeping for a reason unbeknown to him until that very moment. he pulls it from its hiding space in the corner and makes room for it in the centre of the room, then proudly puts Aziraphale’s plant atop of it.

-”oh, Crowley, are you sure?” Aziraphale sounds sincerely distressed by the choice. Crowley casts his eyes back over to him, in a questioning of what’s the matter? “I just mean- isn’t that a little too... important? for such a small plant, you’d better put a bigger one on that table.”

-”your plant fits there just fine,” Crowley insists, then looks over at the plant, that looks almost grateful at hearing his words. “it’s... good. it looks good.”

-”but look at it!” Aziraphale cries out, looking somewhere between bemusement and tears, “it’s so... small! you’d better move it, right away.”

-Crowley can feel himself about to break his own vow before he does it. he’s always sworn to be cruel to the plants, to show them tough love, to encourage them to grow better and instil fear into their very cores, because this is how he believes nature works best.

-however, even with this in mind, as he looks over at the look on Aziraphale’s face and how utterly embarrassed he looks, face flooding red as a tomato, he can’t suppress the kind words. without thinking any further, he speaks.

-”it’s lovely,” he declares, “it’s sweet, humble, and it fits the room perfectly. it’s the kindest gesture anybody’s ever shown to me, and frankly I don’t know what I’d do without it.”

-by the end of his brief monologue, he doesn’t know if he’s still talking about the plant or something else entirely. either way, the look of gratitude that spreads across Aziraphale’s features makes the sacrifice worth it. he smiles just slightly, tipping the corners of his lips upwards, then looks over at the plant. he could almost swear the plant has grown two inches since he started speaking.

-”oh. well, then, if you say so,” Aziraphale’s slight smile is evident in his voice, the joy oozing from his tone. he changes the subject, heading towards one of Crowley’s plants instead. he gently tips up one of its leaves and looks to him, asking, “what’s this one called?”

-Crowley quirks an eyebrow, so that his expression is visible above his tinted glasses, but responds, “I dunno, really. I don’t give them names. maybe I will do, one day, as a reward. that is, if it ever stops being miserable and grows how I want it to.”

-he’s only half-joking, but Aziraphale’s reaction is immediate. there’s no time between the words leaving his mouth and the angel’s face dropping. he looks truly distraught, and he turns his attention back to the green plant in his grasp.

-”no!” he cries out sincerely, “don’t say that, Crowley. oh, it’s a beautiful plant. how could you say such a thing?”

-Crowley shrugs him off, not quite believing what he says. “it’s good enough, I suppose. it does alright for now, but if it gets any sort of disease-”

-”oh, hush!” Aziraphale sounds almost like a mother scolding her rebellious child, “it’s a beautiful plant. it’s grown so well, hasn’t it? I think it deserves a name, don’t you? I think they all do.”

-Crowley can’t be certain whether the questions posed are directed to him or the plants in the room themselves, but he doesn’t respond. he merely nods his head, thinking that perhaps this is how Aziraphale loses his marbles, but absently runs a painted fingernail along a nearby leaf. he considers it, but doesn’t come to any sort of conclusion on the matter.

-”I do love them, Crowley,” Aziraphale suddenly speaks to him, and the directness with which he does so takes the demon by surprise. he looks over at his friend, who still looks angelic as ever, “even if you don’t.”

-Crowley couldn’t quite tell if the two of them really were moving closer together or if his mind was simply playing tricks on them, though it certainly felt like the former. it felt too real, to visceral to be the latter and, though he couldn’t feel his feet moving, he had to believe as such when the two of them were suddenly so much closer than they had been.

-”do you really mean that?”

-he’s beginning to highly suspect they’re speaking in metaphors and yet, because he’s not convinced, Crowley’s voice comes out barely above a whisper, as though if he’s wrong the angel would miss his words and not a single thing between them would change.

-Aziraphale’s smile is barely-there, but Crowley sees it. the angel looks up at him with kind eyes - much kinder than he deserves, and in a way that he’s certain Aziraphale will regret sooner or later, if he meant it at all.

-Crowley’s almost ready to let himself give into temptation (which, he recognises, is possibly the greatest irony in all of history) before he snaps back into himself and realises what he’s risking if he does so. he can’t let himself dip his head down and kiss the angel, not if it means losing a six thousand year old friendship.

-”thank you for stopping by,” he says, forcing himself to take a step back, fearing what he might do if he doesn’t. Aziraphale doesn’t look disappointed, at least he doesn’t think he does, so Crowley figures he’s done the right thing.

-”my pleasure,” Aziraphale smiles at him, and the demon chooses to ignore how it looks a little forced, “are you going to name your plants now?”

-”maybe just the one.” Crowley smiles at him, and feels the action reach his eyes. he hasn’t felt such peace in his entire life, even before he fell from heaven. he thinks the angel just brings that paradise to him.

-”it’s progress,” Aziraphale resigns, and the tangible, electric moment is gone. their connection dissipates into the air, leaving them standing silently for a moment, before Aziraphale begins to move towards the door, signalling him taking his leave while the going’s good, “I’ll see you soon, then.”

-”see you soon,” Crowley responds as the angel opens the door, stepping through and closing it promptly afterwards. it feels stilted, somewhat awkward, but that’s not what Crowley is focusing on now.

-now, he’s looking rather intently - almost too intently - at the additional plant in his indoor-garden room. it’s petite, brightly coloured, emanating light as though performing its reverse role in nature.

-for some strange reason, even though it looks out of place and, realistically speaking, he shouldn’t like it, he does. he really does, instantly, and he has the overwhelming urge to protect it, as though something bad were immanently happening.

-it’s a passing thought, of sorts. he thinks he’s done on the topic, ready to return to his much-ado-about-nothing couch, but then as he passes the plant a name pops into his head. he knows it fits it, knows exactly why it comes to his mind, and even being who he is he can’t deny it’s the perfect title for it.

-Aziraphale, he decides to call it.

-and, perhaps it’s unoriginal, but it best suits it. perhaps it defies every code Crowley’s made about caring for the plants, but then again it’s only right for ‘Aziraphale’ to make him change his tone. after all, history does so often repeat itself, and that’s all this is, right?

#good omens #ineffable husbands #send me stuff #send me anything #send me asks #send me questions #SEND ME REQUESTS #send me prompts #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #aziraphale x crowley #crowley x aziraphale #mine #prompted writings #prompted work

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feelingbluepolitics · 6 years ago

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This is ignorant, visceral racism, dressed in wannabe-emperor's threadbare, see-through robes, by determined hate-filled people constructing justifications and denial. It is putrified politics built on bloated rancid reshuffled belief systems.

These concepts were never noble carriages, and are never going to be. They are nine-month old moldering pumpkins with collapsed frightful faces, rotting on conservatives' front steps, birthing new slimy growths from trump's toxic spew.

As follows:

"Monday saw a panel on immigration featuring Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who has been the subject of academic controversy in recent years for remarks over the 'superiority' of white Anglo-Saxon norms. In her talk at the panel, Wax stated that 'many, indeed most, inhabitants of the third world don’t necessarily share our ideas and beliefs. Others pay lip service but don’t really comprehend them. There are exceptions, of course, but most people are not exceptional.'

"'These are toxic topics,' she continued, 'that lie outside the Overton window in polite society, as evidenced by outraged reaction to [t]rump’s profane and grating question, ‘Why are we having all these people from shithole countries coming here?’ '

"The audience laughed.

"'That needs to be regarded as a serious question and not just a rhetorical one.'

"Wax offered an answer to it. There are two nationalist schools of thought on immigration and assimilation, she said. The first is an inclusive nationalism, which posits that immigrants from any background can assimilate into American culture and take on an American identity, provided that they are willing to declare, in her words, 'fealty to abstract ideas, concepts, and principles such as human rights, property rights, the rule of law, honest government, capitalism, et cetera.' This was derisively called the nationalism of 'magic dirt'—a put-down of the implication that immigrants can transform themselves simply by living on American soil. The more sensible school of thought, she argued, was 'cultural-distance nationalism,' which presumes the unsuitability of certain immigrants 'based on the insight and understanding that people’s background culture can affect their ability to fit into a modern advanced society.' To Wax, this means 'being honest about the homegrown conditions and failures that hold countries back: kleptocracy, corruption, lawlessness, weak institutions, and the inability or unwillingness of leaders to provide for their citizens’ basic needs.'

..."'Let us be candid,' she concluded. 'Europe and the first world, to which the United States belongs, remain mostly white for now, and the third world, although mixed, contains a lot of nonwhite people. Embracing cultural-distance nationalism means, in effect, taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.

..."[t]rump, for all the invective he’s levelled at nonwhite immigrants these past few years and this past week, and for all his comments on shithole countries, has never made this case quite so straightforwardly.

..."In a panel session, the best-selling author J. D. Vance specifically urged conservatives to put the nurturing of families at the center of their agenda. 'There are a lot of ways to measure a healthy society,' he said. 'But the way that I measure a healthy society—the most important way to measure a healthy society—is whether the American nation is having enough children to replace itself.' [*Meaning white babies, or stolen, fostered facsimiles, at a stretch.]

..."[T]he tension between desiring a strong common national identity and respecting the integrity and independence of particular communities and families is resolved, in national conservatism, by the belief that the American nation ought to be uniformly composed of the same kinds of people—the conservative nation desired by national conservatives will assist the parts so long as those parts are majority white, Christian, and, naturally, conservative. This will be a hard country to bring about, despite the best efforts of the [t]rump Administration. It’s now commonplace to say that his policies and rhetoric do not reflect who we are as a country. This is true not just in a creedal or spiritual sense but in a sheer demographic sense. The United States is irreversibly diverse. Nonwhite American citizens will not be spirited out of the country by tweet or by incantation. The right may lash out at them in rhetoric, or policy, or violence, but nothing will create for conservatives a country of people mostly like themselves. The best they can hope for is that they might continue to govern a country filled with people they despise. Only time will tell whether national conservatism is a politically viable vehicle for doing so."

Note the very basic incomprehension of "assimilation" among these conservative "intellectuals." They understand it to mean a processing of darker skinned nouveau white people, who think and believe as Christian white conservatives do.

This is why, unable to comprehend an "assimilation" as weaving rich new strands into the brilliant, diverse, abstract tapestry that is the reality of America, they scoff at the idea of people simply arriving and growing their lives forward, calling this the "magic dirt" theory.

Their own concept is evidently the Nazi "blood and soil" chant that made its comeback in the streets of Charlottesville, where Heather Heyer was murdered by a hater sentenced to four centuries imprisonment as a measure of social rejection.

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mezzomercury · 6 years ago

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Bohemian Rhapsody in Blue Chapter Two: You Take My Breath Away

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: Pregnancy, Doctor’s office

*******************

September 4, 1985

Munich, Germany

A couple days before his 39th Birthday Extravaganza, Freddie invited Jim and Nadia to stay with him in Munich for a couple weeks, as Queen was recording their new album A Kind of Magic at the Musicland Studios before they would resume in London within the next month. While he was hard at work as always, he desperately missed his husband, as well as the woman carrying their child, whom both men had grown quite fond of and developed a fast friendship with ever since she accepted the offer to become their surrogate. Being away from home meant having to miss a lot of milestones in Nadia’s pregnancy, which he felt guilty about every passing moment. Therefore, having them visit would be the perfect opportunity to touch base on everything he missed, as well as celebrate his birthday with the people that mattered most to him.

Everything about their visit seemed ideal, except for the fact, which Nadia pointed out, that they would be missing their 20 week ultrasound if she and Jim were out of town. This hadn’t occurred to Freddie in the slightest before talking on the phone with her about it, but he quickly dismissed her concern and assured her,

“I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry, it will happen wherever we are.”

This unfortunately put him in a difficult predicament, and now he had to find and ultrasound technician that spoke English fluently, via looking through a phonebook entirely in German and trying to make an appointment in a language he did not speak at all. After giving up and slamming down the phonebook in frustration one day, he sought help from Queen’s producer Reinhold Mack, who was a Munich native in addition to being a father of three. Mack scheduled an appointment at a clinic on his behalf, which unfortunately was on the complete opposite end of the city, but Freddie figured that beggars couldn’t be choosers. All he needed to do was obtain Nadia’s medical records and send them prior to the appointment, then the rest would hopefully be easy.

It was now the day before his birthday, the day of their appointment, and Freddie, Jim, and Nadia arrived at a small clinic after trying to find it for more than an hour, their limo driver losing their way multiple times in the process. The three of them were full of excitement, as this would be the appointment where they would see their baby again, and hopefully find out the gender of their little bundle of joy. Freddie took a moment before they entered the office to observe Nadia. Her baby bump had grown significantly since he left London, and her figure had become curvier and more feminine, complimenting her statuesque, six-foot-tall frame. She was currently wearing a loose-fitting summer dress, as Autumn had yet to arrive, and had an absolutely radiant glow on her face that never seemed to leave. Of course, his days of being romantically attracted to women were long gone, but Freddie couldn’t help but admire the sun-kissed Maghrebi beauty that was standing before him and his husband, carrying cargo that was way too precious for words. Pregnancy suited Nadia well, and it was just an added bonus that it was his and Jim’s baby that she was carrying. If it’s a girl, I hope she looks like her mum, Freddie thought to himself with a small smile, now being hurried off with the other two members of his group into an examination room as soon as they walked into the clinic.

The technician assigned to them was luckily a British expat living in Munich, a middle-aged woman with kind eyes and an almost maternal manner, thoroughly answering all of Jim and Nadia’s questions with informative care. Freddie found himself not having any of his own to ask, as he was far too nervous and in his own little world to come up with anything. He involuntarily reached out for Nadia’s hand as she sat down in the chair, which she accepted and squeezed assuringly to the nervous father-to-be. Jim looked on at his husband in concern, knowing how anxious he was, and wishing he could say something that would help.

The moments leading up to the three of them seeing their baby seemed unbelievably slow, or perhaps it was due to Freddie’s current child-like impatience. His anxiety levels seemed to exponentially increase as he watched Nadia lift up her dress to expose her belly and the technician squeeze some weird gel onto the exposed area before waving around the transducer on it to try and get an image onto the screen in front of them. Freddie’s eyes were completely glued to the screen, sweating bullets as he was waiting for an image to appear, worrying that nothing would show up and there would be no sign of a baby in sight.

All of the sudden, as if some higher power had taken notice of his worries, the image of a small, potato-like figure appeared on the monitor, immediately causing all three parents to gasp in unison. Jim stuttered to speak, trying to get a confirmation from the technician,

“Is that….” he found himself stopping, too busy focusing on the little blob that was his future child,

“Yes, that’s your baby.” she answered happily, glancing at all three of their reactions.

Nadia seemed to be amazed that this little thing was growing inside her, while Freddie looked like he had just seen a ghost, but had the beginning of tears forming in his eyes. It hardly looked human, Freddie thought, save for the outline of a head, feet, and a spinal cord that resembled a string of pearls, but it was his baby. His smile got even wider as he watched it move its little limbs around, finding himself wanting to touch Nadia’s belly to see if he could feel the movements for himself, but alas, he would have to wait until the appointment was over to try his luck. Still, he found himself tuning out his surroundings and focusing only on the image in front of him, as if it were the only other thing in existence.

Time seemed to stop as Freddie continued carefully watching the monitor, not registering that the technician was taking measurements and getting snapshots of the screen to print out for later. Freddie’s eyes found themselves quickly darting over to meet Jim’s, sharing a moment of pure bliss. Their relationship had gotten so intense and so loving at this point that they could communicate to each other with just a single glance, and now they were repeatedly saying to each other, That’s our baby. I can’t believe we’re going to be fathers. Their moment was interrupted when they started to hear a faint whirring sound in a pulsating pattern coming from the doppler that was just placed on Nadia’s belly. The baby’s heartbeat. They heard it before when they had first found out that Nadia was pregnant, but this time is was much louder and stronger. Freddie had to fight the ongoing urge to cry now, nearly hyperventilating and squeezing Nadia’s hand even harder than before. It was by far the most beautiful sound he ever heard. Every other sound seemed to pale in comparison to the tiny thuds that signified the life he helped create.

“Everything looks really good so far.” the technician assured them as she continued waving the transducer around, “Very healthy and happy.”

This came as a huge relief to everyone else in the room. Nothing was more important to them than the baby’s well-being. Finally, it was the moment they had all been waiting for:

“Would you like to know the gender?” the technician asked.

Nadia glanced at both Freddie and Jim to see their reactions, both of them excitedly giving the confirmation for the big reveal. Freddie found himself ridden with anxiety again. Part of him wanted to wait and be surprised, but he just had to know if it was a boy or a girl. He watched eagerly as the technician kept moving the transducer around, but the little blob on the screen wouldn’t uncross its legs.

“Already such a stubborn little thing.” Jim joked, trying to relieve the tension in the room.

Freddie was starting to get a bit frustrated and tried to calm himself down, but found himself accidentally saying, “Come on, little one. Don’t be shy.” out loud, much to Jim and Nadia’s amusement, both knowing he didn’t intend for anyone to hear that.

Then, as if the baby somehow heard its father’s gentle pleas, it uncrossed its little legs and gave the answer to the question everyone was looking for. The technician immediately zoomed in on the screen to see if she could find any visible genitalia on the baby and happily declared,

“Looks like you’re going to have a little girl. Congratulations.”

All time stopped again. Those words rang through Freddie’s head like the colossal bell of Big Ben. He kept repeating silently to himself I’m going to have a daughter over and over until he couldn’t keep his composure any longer and broke down in the room in front of everyone. His heart felt like it self-destructed in his chest and he was drowning in emotions that he previously forbid himself to have for the longest time. He didn’t even have the time to try and suppress these visceral feelings, and he had reluctantly surrendered and let everything go right then and there. As he covered his face as not to reveal hot and heavy tears, Jim rushed over to his side and tenderly kissed him on the cheek. He also had tears of pure joy leaking from his eyes, but didn’t even try to pretend they weren’t present.

“You were right, Freds. We’re having a little girl. She’ll be so beautiful.” he whispered to him while cupping the back of his neck in the way that Freddie so enjoyed.

As the technician finished up the ultrasound and left the room to get the photographs that were printing out, Freddie and Jim spent a couple more minutes holding each other tightly, both in disbelief that soon they would be fathers to a little girl. Everything about her seemed so real now. She wasn’t just an abstract concept to them anymore. She didn’t have a name yet, but there was no doubt that both her fathers would move heaven and earth for her even now. Once Freddie regained enough composure to have at least one coherent thought, he got up out of his chair and embraced Nadia as tightly as he possibly could, his breath still hitching in his chest and the tears he shed now stained on his cheeks. He wanted to say so much to the woman whom he believed to be an angel on earth, the woman who said yes to the most outrageous proposition, and as a result was now giving him and his husband the greatest gift they ever could receive, but all he could say at that moment was,

“Thank you, darling. For everything.”

Even though Nadia was more than a decade younger than him, her maternal instincts kicked in and she started to lightly scratch Freddie’s back, trying to soothe him as if he were a small child.

“I should be the one thanking you,” she replied, “I have no doubt that she will be the most loved and adored child in the world, given her two dads.”

Jim blushed and helped Nadia get up back into her feet once she and Freddie broke apart, also giving her a tight hug.

Fast forward to nearly twenty minutes later, as the trio sat in Freddie’s private limo on the way back to their home. Nadia and Freddie sat next to each other with Jim sitting across from them, as Freddie was now completely glued to the expectant mother’s side ever since they left the clinic. He was quietly fixated on the sonogram photograph, which he hadn’t stopped looking at since the technician gave it to him. He held it in one hand, while the other gently rested on Nadia’s tummy, his thumb slowly and absentmindedly fanning the spot below her belly button. If he was previously in disbelief that his daughter was growing in there, he was even more now. Jim looked at the two of them in awe, knowing how excited and over the moon his husband was. He knew that Freddie would be the perfect father, no matter how much he vocally doubted it during late nights after drinking a little too much. This would be something that would completely change his current lifestyle, but he gradually seemed to welcome it with open arms. After all, he finally found the love of his life, and was convinced they could get through anything as long as they were together.

Amongst this scene was a calm silence, with only the sounds of the limo driving through the old Bavarian cobblestone streets, the driver trying not to cause any feelings of turbulence for the passengers behind the partition. This silence was broken when Nadia gently sighed and rested her head on Freddie’s shoulder, causing him to chuckle and bring her in closer, his hand still protectively on her belly with no plans of letting go anytime soon. In a rather bold but not unwelcome gesture, he lowered his head as best as he could so that he could gently press his face into her bump and started quietly speaking to his daughter; Something he started doing shortly before he left for Munich but hadn’t done again until now,

“Your Papa and I can’t wait to meet you, sweet girl. I already love you so much.”

Nadia looked down at him in awe and added in,

“Happy Birthday, dear Freddie.” to which he smiled and sat up, gazing lovingly at his dear friend, and then at Jim.

“This is undoubtedly the best gift I have ever received.”

***************************

Permanent Tag List: @siriuslovesmarlene, @r-ahh-mi, @unknownauthor, @yousaycoke-isaycaine, @ramibaby, @rami-malek-trash, @britishmoonchild, @onexlittlespark, @rami-hoe, @xtrashmammalstefx, @wanderlustnightwanderer

#bohemian rhapsody in blue #freddie mercury x jim hutton #bohemian rhapsody #freddie mercury #jim hutton #freddie mercury imagine #queen band #queen imagine #bohemian rhapsody imagine #queen fic #micaela's fics #my stuff

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farfromsugafanfic · 6 years ago

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glitteringconstellations interview

Before we get started with the interview, do you mind introducing yourself (whatever name you are comfortable with) and telling us a little about yourself?

Hi everyone! I’m glitteringconstellations, Glitter or GC for short. I’ve been writing fanfiction for well over 15 years now, though I only started sharing it around 2005. I minored in Creative Writing in college and I love writing in pretty much any capacity! When I’m not headcanoning one new story or another, though, I’m either adulting (ugh, adulting) or playing video games. These days it’s mostly Skyrim. I’m fluent in Korean and passable in Japanese and Spanish. I drink way too much pop to be healthy and I hate most fruit (though, give me any kind of melon and I’ll be a happy girl). Oh, and I’m a fledgling figure skater! I’m just a hodgepodge of random hobbies haha!

Q1: What kind of fan fiction do you normally write? Have you ever written fan fiction for other fandoms other than your current one?

A1: I tend to gravitate toward angsty fics. It’s long been my outlet of frustration, to put the character I love in harm’s way. The more pain, the better, haha! Though I do love the hurt/comfort aspect of it. Recently (as in, the last year lmao) I’ve been writing for the Voltron fandom almost exclusively (and sometimes YURI!!! On Ice), but before that I was in the k-pop ficdom (Super Junior, for the most part) for a looooong time, nearly 10 years. I won’t be opening that particular can of worms, though--I have Feelings and Opinions lmao. Before that I jumped around from anime to anime.

Q2: I see in addition to fan fiction that you do commissioned fan art! I’m not an artist myself, so I find it really interesting and cool. Do you want to talk a bit about that? And, feel free to plug yourself!

A2: This is actually a common misconception--I can’t draw to save my life!! I took commissions for fan fiction back in late June as a last resort to pay my rent. Typically though I’m horrible on a deadline so I don’t like to do it too often because I feel terrible making my commissioners wait. The art you’re referring to is the comic spread for The Parting Glass, if I’m not mistaken? I actually commissioned another artist by the name of Cota (@ccooooostuff on tumblr, go check her out she’s amazing at what she does and super sweet!) for that comic with the money I got for my birthday this year.

Q3: Do you write anything outside of fan fiction?

A3: I do! I journal a lot, or I try to anyway. This year I’m hoping to tackle an original novel for Nanowrimo, but more than likely, that particular project will start as fanfiction and we’ll see if I turn it into original fiction or not. I spend more time thinking about the things I want to write than… actually… writing them lolsob. My notes will be this gigantic document but when it comes to putting things together in a cohesive manner? Haaaaaa….haha…. The blinking cursor mocks me, I swear.

Q4: I see on your profile that you are 26. I think when most people think of fan fiction writers they think of someone younger, usually a teenager. Do you encounter younger writers a lot? What do you think of this assumption?

A4: I do encounter younger writers a lot! Surprisingly, though, most writers I know are either in their late 20s or late late teens (say, 15~19). Most people tend to think I’m young anyway just because I look a lot younger than 26, but as far as fandom goes, it doesn’t really bother me if people think I’m younger than I am. Usually I’m pretty forward with how old I am on my profile anyway! But yeah, I’ve been around the fanfiction scene a while. The k-pop fandom in particular had a way of reminding me just how long on a pretty frequent basis lol.

Q5: Why did you begin writing fan fiction? If it was for a fandom, why did that particular thing make you begin writing? And, for your current fandoms?

A5: I used to tell myself stories to get to sleep or on long car trips as far back as I can remember, and most of the time they involved characters from my favorite shows of the day. Pokemon and Digimon were two big ones for me before I hit those fun preteen years. As far as what got me started actually putting those stories to paper, it was born of frustration with shows not going the way I wanted them to, so I’d write the ending I wanted to see. For Voltron in particular, it’s just SUCH a fun sandbox to play in, be it by utilizing the incredible world-building or the plethora of interesting characters to play around with. So many possibilities! *3*

Q6: Do you ever want to be published in a professional capacity one day?

A6: Yes and no. I flip flop on this ALL the time. I’d LOVE to see my stories on shelves, but I’m actually very insecure and sometimes the thought of people reading my stories makes me want to die of embarrassment and sink to the center of the earth. That said, if I win Nano this year, I may run it by some publishers, even if only to get feedback. (Although if you want to get TECHNICAL I am officially a published journalist; I was an assistant editor for one of The Big 3 kpop news sites for a while. The one that starts with S. Also another can of worms.)

Q7: Has writing fan fiction taught you anything? About writing? Reading? The fandom? Etc.

A7: Oh absolutely. I definitely would not be the writer I am today without fan fiction. I wouldn’t say I’m super skilled, but the critique I’ve received over the years has helped me more than I have words for, honestly. Not even just in the capacity of writing fiction; my academic and professional writing has improved too. Also, just like reading anything in high volume, reading fanfic has helped me learn to read like a writer, how to pick out things that authors do that I admire and try to emulate that, and conversely what doesn’t work for me so I can avoid those things.

As far as fandom goes, fanfiction can be quite polarizing, as I’m sure you’re well aware. Just in my experience by and large it can be kind of toxic, to be quite honest. The particular issue Voltron faces that I experienced to some extent in other fandoms but not quite to this degree, is fandom policing. I find that certain members of the fandom (which, in my experience, tends to actually be mostly among those younger demographics, though not exclusively so) see certain topics as morally wrong and therefore anyone who writes those topics are 1) romanticizing said topic and 2) automatically a disgusting, horrible person and they have no problems telling you about all about it. The number one thing I try to put out there in my interactions is live and let live, ship and let ship. If it makes you uncomfortable, that’s okay! But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong, and it’s definitely not okay to go around purporting hate in the name of “morality.” Sorry, didn’t mean to go off on a tangent there haha...

Q8: What is a piece you’ve written that you’re most proud of?

A8: Just in the Voltron fandom, I’d say the fic I’m most proud of is The Parting Glass, by far. Funny story about that one; I’d never heard the titular song before I came across a cover of it on Facebook one day around St. Patrick’s Day, and let me tell you something. The reaction I had was almost a spiritual experience, it was so visceral. I was in tears when I heard it, and the story came so hard and so fast that I wrote it in 2 days. It stayed with me until I got it down in writing. It was an interesting challenge for me, exploring the grief part of a character death fic while almost entirely omitting the actual dying part. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had such a vivid vision of exactly how a fic is going to go from start to finish and I’m quite happy with the way it turned out. Which is why, when I had the money to do so, I commissioned Cota to illustrate what had to be the hardest and yet my favorite part to write. She brought the scene to life so beautifully too, I’m really happy with how it turned out. Months later I still go back and stare at it!

Q9: Do you notice any stigma surrounding fan fiction or fan fiction writers?

A9: Without a doubt. People hear “fanfiction” and they think one of two things: the pudgy neckbeard who lives in his parents’ basement, or the rabid tween/teenage fangirl. It’s a rather unfortunate stereotype, because some works of fanfiction are truly works of art, more masterfully crafted than some novels I’ve seen published. Yet they get dismissed simply on the basis of being fanworks and not “original” (which, let’s be real, nothing is truly original anymore). One such example that comes to mind of a beautiful fic is those glittering instruments in the EXO fandom, which was based on the real-life destruction of the Library of Alexandria. If you can find a copy of it floating around the interwebs I HIGHLY recommend giving it a chance no matter what fandom you’re in!

Q10: If so, how do you feel about this stigma?

A10: Like I said, it’s really a shame. The thing, too, is that as young girls we’re often shamed for the things we’re passionate about, like boy bands and, well, fan fiction, while boys don’t get that kind of shame to such an intense degree (at least, not about the usual suspects, like sports and girls and such). Not to say that it doesn’t happen, but there’s something terribly sad about seeing more young people afraid to talk about a hobby that makes them happy because they’re afraid of being perceived as weird or gross or something like that. Hell, even to this day I have very few friends from outside the fandom sphere that know I write fanfiction, because they still talk bad and make mean jokes about fic writers. It’s such a silly thing, because a lot of famous works are derivative fiction and people don’t even realize it! So I hope the day comes soon that we can get over this silly stigma and just enjoy what people share (for free!! Seriously!! FULL NOVEL LENGTH WORKS. For FREE.)

Q11: Is there anything you’ve ever wanted to talk about or be asked that no one has asked you about or given you the opportunity to talk about? (And if so, feel free to answer/talk about it).

A11: I really had to think about this one! I couldn’t really pick one topic that I’ve really wanted to talk about that I haven’t already discussed, but no one has ever asked me if I was okay with having fanart of my work. Which I would answer with a resounding YES. I am more than okay with it QuQ

Oh, I guess I do have something!! It’s unrelated to writing (well, I guess it could be related, depending on how you look at it) but since I have your attention, if you’re an American citizen GO OUT AND VOTE. The midterm elections are one week from today in the USA and it’s important you go vote!! I won’t tell you who to vote for (a third can of worms I’m not opening up. WHY DO I HAVE SO MANY WORMS) but I assure you, your vote matters, now more than ever. I believe in you!! Go vote!!!

Q12: What is your prefered site for writing/posting fan fiction?

A12: These days I prefer to use AO3. It’s a work in progress, but it’s far and away the superior fic platform of the time. Back in ye olden days (circa 2010~2012) Livejournal was my platform of choice, and FF.net before that. A surprising number of people prefer to post their fic on tumblr, to which I say, are you out of your flipping MIND?!?! Tumblr is soooo temperamental, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to restart a post or go into the HTML editor because the rich text editor decided to be stupid. Noooooo thank you. I’ll stick to AO3 thanks ahaha!

Check out Glitter’s Tumblr and AO3.

Interviewer Note: Glitter used her free question to encourage everyone to vote and I would just like to stress the importance of this, especially if live in the US. Young people are the demographic that votes the least, despite being the demographic that will have to live the longest with the outcome of the vote. If you are currently not registered, please register as it is important for all of our futures. And, remember the deadline for the upcoming US election is Nov. 6th, so make sure to get to those polls and/or turn/send in your ballot. If you need information on how to do any of these things, do not hesitate to reach out to my page and I will point you to trustworthy resources.

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whatsyourcolor · 7 years ago

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Dragnet - Ch2- The Detective

Hello. Here’s the second chapter of Dragnet. A million flowers and thanks to @lucidink for helping me edit.

Chapter 2 – The Detective

An open book rested on his chest as the first rays of dawn filtered through the blinds, stealing him from the elusive and vacillating hours of sleep. He laid in absolute stillness—the hand over the book—dressed in tailored pants, a white shirt and a slightly loosened tie; a posture that to any outsider would resemble that of a dead man in his funerary and elegant tranquility.

But he did open his eyes, and dreams about cases, numbers and suspicions dissipated from his view and memory. Just as he had conquered (through relentless forbiddance against what he perceived to be his faults) the crags of rigorous discipline—that is, through a carefully designed routine that allotted brains and muscle the time and energy demanded, needed—the trivial merited the same type of sharpness and obsessive precision. Setting the book aside, he stood and fixed the wrinkles on the covers of his bed. The bedroom’s décor was minimalistic: a bed, bare walls, an old sofa and a nightstand to hold books and cigarettes.

Like most mornings, he went to the kitchen to prepare himself a modest breakfast and ate while watching the MWPSB sanctioned news on a holographic screen.

So, they decided to keep the media in the dark about the case, he thought, when a commercial for hue-clearing vitamins interrupted his train of thought.

After putting the kitchen back to its tidy state, he headed for the other room in his apartment. As a detective, he had become aware early on of the paradoxical nature of his job; at once rigid and fluid; requiring a sharp memory and an ability to forget. He had wondered back then—when he was younger—if he’d ever be able to develop what Masaoka called a “detective’s intuition.” Not the habit to predict that hindered so many inspectors, but the ability to smell and to follow that smell.

The door opened to a smaller room with a desk and three tall bookcases replete with paper books. On the wall hung a large board with notes and drawings—spirals, waves, lines—over pictures, names, numbers, coordinates and maps. He sat at the desk where stacks of files stood in irregular towers. Other documents were placed carefully on the floor in a calculated arrangement, discernible only to him. When he managed to find free time or in his off days, he’d sit to read on a cushioned green seat nestled between the shelves: it was his favorite place in the apartment.

It was as though this room held what he rarely allowed himself out of it: the pangs and sparks of random inspiration, the license to be more visceral than rational for a while and, even at times, the short flashes of madness that came with lucidity. Doubtless, it was his discipline that kept that chimera controlled and his Psycho-Pass clean: he could dwell without letting his thoughts seize him and drag him down.

Many of the paper books he owned—most well-thumbed; the oldest failing to hold together—had come from his father and grandparents’ library. Even though he never met his father, he could piece the man together, the ghost of him, by sorting through his literary collection, the only legacy left of him. But most of his collection had come through Sasayama and his connections (to whom or what, he didn’t care to know): random titles—both local and translated to Japanese—that told stories in more ways than words. There was the big fat dictionary with different dates scribbled on its end papers (the oldest one dating to 2015); the mystery novel that had pages chewed off by some animal and the love dedications written on poetry books with aging pages. What surprised him the most was the notion that there was still a market for such rarities, not only virtually obsolete, but the type that could cloud your hue.

Patiently, he began to study the files; his personal observations for the cases of the MWPSB. Soon after, it was time to shower and head to work.

“We’re back where we started. The suspect says she was given hue-clearing drugs and sent to work at a factory for a measly salary. She’s an unregistered and latent criminal. There’s no lead as to who the seller is and there’s no match for the name she gave us.” Ginoza summarized in a humdrum tone, impatient with the delay of the closing in this case.

“Five days after she was taken into custody, the body of an unregistered man was found in a small textile factory in a different part of the city. The cause of death is still to be determined, but—” Kogami clicked a button and a picture of the holo projection of the body appeared on the screen, “the open sores found around his neck and his bloated extremities point to a reaction to a certain type of chemical ingested. We still haven’t determined if it’s an adverse reaction to the drug. As for the woman, it doesn’t make sense that if she was up to her ears in illegal hue-clearing drugs, her Psycho-Pass would suddenly cloud. There must be something we’re overlooking.”

“What you’re overlooking here is that the drugs she was given may have been counterfeit,” Sasayama muttered through his teeth, trying to lit up his cigarette.

“Sasayama! Didn’t I tell you not to smoke here?”

“Okay, okay, Gino-san! Calm down, will ya? Don’t want to kill your little cactus with those pitch-dark vibes of yours,” Sasayama replied, a little startled by the loud reprimand, putting out the cigarette.

“If the drugs are counterfeit, then how do you explain the fact that she worked undetected for a whole month? As soon as she’d come out of the abolition block the cymatic scanners would’ve detected her,” Kogami countered.

“There’s two possibilities: the sellers use a hook dose that’s effective temporarily, then replace the dose with a counterfeit. Or, second, the drugs have some sort of expiration date that renders them useless after a while.” Sasayama replied, with his usual overconfident satisfaction, smirking.

“But what’s the point of selling drugs that don’t work?” Kogami asked.

“That’s the question, Ko.” Sasayama said, smile wide now. “I’m sure from the business point of view there must be something to be gained.”

Kogami held his chin in his hand, deep in thought. But it doesn’t make sense, even from the business point of view.

“Don’t think so hard, Inspector. Your Psycho-Pass may cloud,” Yayoi softly told Kogami. “Also, there’s still the matter of how these drugs are being transported undetected to different places in the city and if there are additional unauthorized people working elsewhere. And we don’t even have a sample of the drug to have Shion analyze it.”

“If people realize that unregistered or illegal aliens are working alongside them, it could cause a Psycho-hazard. Not to mention the fact that most of them may be latent criminals. Hordes of criminals could be walking the streets amongst healthy citizens.” Ginoza turned to look at the screen behind him. On it, there was the image of a woman in her forties, sitting in an interrogation room, still dressed in the factory uniform. Her hands were wringing her shirt nervously and she appeared distressed. “Still, let’s not rule out that the defect in the drug could be a mistake on the part of the manufacturers.”

“Could be. But even if that’s true, there’s still an organization that’s in the business of drugging unregistered people and putting them to work or even killing them,” Masaoka said, receiving in reply a glacial stare from his son.

“We checked the logs of the factory and they followed the hiring protocol. Since her Psycho-Pass was clear, they didn’t pay attention to some irregularities, like her birth date. I don’t think we’ll get much more than that since the Ministry of Economy isn’t willing to cooperate,” Ginoza said.

Let’s focus then on the possible routes they’re using to transport the drugs between abolition blocks. Look for reports of hues suddenly clouding and transpose them onto the city map for now,” Kogami ordered.

By force of habit, in stressful days like this one—days in which they could not even say they were stalemate, since no opponent or game had been identified—Kogami and Sasayama ended up having a smoke in the balcony of their floor. The golden city around them shone as the sunset mirrored on the buildings circumambient. It almost seemed like this city could never be dark.

“So, what’s new with you, Ko?” Sasayama asked casually, attempting to have a talk that carried some semblance of levity, after a whole afternoon of grim faces.

“I was just thinking…” Kogami said, taking a drag while hunching over the glass panel of the balustrade, “it’s evident that they wouldn’t risk moving the drugs on the streets of the city, even if they were using the drug themselves. It’s too unstable and their hues could suddenly cloud. If they know about the side effects, that’s even a bigger reason not to use them.” Sasayama rolled his eyes hearing him speak. “You know, on the night I lost my dominator I met—”

“Oh, you’re still on that? All we’ve achieved so far with these underground crackdowns is stir up the pot for a bunch of maladjusted teenagers and crash their little parties. But we may have found new rave enforcer material, for sure!” He grinned mischievously. “Don’t tell Kunizuka that I said that. She already wants to murder me.”

“And we didn’t find any trace of the drug,” Kogami continued, still engrossed in his thoughts.

“True, but we found lots of alcohol that got confiscated and are probably being consumed by old man Masaoka as we speak, the undefeated champion of the ancient game of ‘elbow-raising,’ if you know what I mean,” he said, half-laughing.

Kogami was finally dragged out of his thoughts.

“Don’t worry, he’ll call when he’s ready to share his loot. He always does anyway.” He snickered, amused.

“Yeah, but you stopped joining us after that night.” He looked at him from the corner of his eye, his wide grin biting the cigarette in his mouth. “The fateful night in the enforcers’ lounge when you got so drunk you were slurring your words and tried to wrestle me because I beat you at Mahjong.”

“Because you cheated,” Kogami replied in a serious tone, exhaling smoke.

“And the arguing with old Masaoka about women, and beauty and death and all that nonsense? You two wouldn’t shut up!” he laughed. “I’d never peg you for the philosophical yet violent type of drunk.”

“You won’t ever let me forget it,” he muttered in a low complain, averting his eyes.

“Don’t worry, you are a karaoke legend now in the enforcers’ lounge. After all, it did take three men to rip the microphone off your paws and even after that, they were terrified that you might bite them!” Sasayama was now bending over the balustrade, laughing shamelessly.

“And you still expect me to come back?” Kogami said, red in the face but it was unclear if from embarrassment or irritation. “Forget it. I’m never drinking again.”

“Don’t blame the alcohol, Ko. Sake is one of those poisons that makes you dance on the line between lucidity and foolishness. It’s your own fault you went down the path of foolishness.”

“Says the person who ended up throwing up in the bathroom,” Kogami sneered.

“Well, when it comes to my vices, I can’t help but be foolish. I’m… what do you call it? A hedonist. I live for sake and—“

“Women. Yeah, we’ve heard it all before a thousand times. Half the time getting shitfaced and the other half getting slapped by the women you supposedly revere,” Kogami said, trying to bite back.

“Supposedly? Okay, now this is personal. One day, Kogami Shinya, you will understand! All your drunk talk about beauty and women is nothing but abstract cynicism that you use to keep people at bay; crap you’ve read in your books,” Sasayama said, and even though both knew he was teasing, there was an unmistakable sting in his words.

“You’re crossing the line, Enforcer.” Now Kogami was pissed off. He put out his cigarette and threw it in the garbage can, walking away.

“Hey! You’re still the most liked Inspector of Division 1!” Sasayama shouted to him as the glass doors closed. Kogami gave him a sarcastic thumbs-up gesture without looking back.

“Shit. I always hit his sore spots without meaning to,” Sasayama mused with a shrug, unconcerned.

Leaning back on the chair of his station, arms on the back of his head and a cigarette in his mouth, Kogami Shinya was absorbedly staring at his computer screen. Everyone had already left and, though he was tired, he knew that if he went home he wouldn’t catch any sleep. A map of the city of Tokyo flashed back at him from the screen.

Illegal hue-clearing drugs sold to unregistered latent criminals wanting to work. Two cases in different parts of the city seemingly related to the drug. Worked for months… but then their Psycho-Pass clouded. The drugs stopped working. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have loyal consumers than kill them with the product? That sure throws whatever prospects of new customers out of the window. This doesn’t appear to be the classical drug crime confined to the abolition blocks either.

The face of a young woman talking about tunnels appeared in his mind.

“This is a tunnel that hasn’t been mapped yet.”

He sat up on his chair.

It would make sense for the sellers to use the old tunnels to transport the drugs. That woman was familiar with the tunnels and understood the marks on the floor; maybe even made them herself.

He typed some words into his computer and the website for the MLIT blinked in front of him.

Those old structures stopped being used more than 25 years ago as the city went an infrastructural remodeling under the Toyohisa construction company per commission of the MLIT. According to the company, those tunnels have been perpetually closed or destroyed. No common citizen, even less someone in an abolition block would have access to that information. Unless the old tunnels weren’t destroyed and someone was…mapping them out for criminal use.

The face of the girl was becoming more and more vivid in his mind.

What was her name? Could she be involved with…?

He brought his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes to recall what he saw before she kicked his dominator.

Tsu…Tsugawa… no. Tsubaki? Tsumita? Tsu… Tsu…

He remembered those incandescent golden-brown eyes, staring at him with anger.

“Tsunemori!” He spat out loud, typing away in his computer.

“Tsunemori. Age 20 to 24. Female. Short. Dark hair.”

He skimmed through various pictures in the citizen database of Sibyl. Quickly scrolling through blonde, brunette, long haired, freckled women until, finally, there was her.

Or at least, someone that looked like her.

No, it was her. As he remembered: short brown hair and two locks falling along her cheeks framing a pale face. But her countenance was decidedly different; softer, even innocent. The faint trace of a smile still rested on her lips, as if someone had said something amusing seconds before snapping the picture. The sparkle in her brown eyes held something delightful, hopeful.

Her doe-eyed look would certainly fool him on a different day, had he not been on the receiving end of her fierceness. Her profile read:

Tsunemori, Akane. Age 22 Graduated from Hongou Higher Education. 2112. Currently employed at Fioira Restaurant. Roppongi.

Wait, this punk works at a restaurant in broad daylight?

Her boot brushed the dusty wooden floor while her body laid suspended in a hammock in a dim shop. A small monkey eating a piece of fruit sat on her stomach as she played with its hair, captivated by the animal—a real one, not a drone pet. In the corners of the room, old artifacts in disuse laid accumulated in random piles that could fall at the slam of a door. The only thing suggesting that this was something akin to a shop, were the two run-down barber chairs with peeling leather cushions and the old mirrors facing them, so old, that you’d think you were looking at yourself as through a thin fog.

“Well, you look much better than the last time I saw you,” Tanaka-san said as he entered his shop, sending a serious glance at the intruder romancing his monkey.

He was a bald old man with a few unruly wisps of white hair hanging from behind his ears; he had the habit of licking his fingers and stroking them to set them down. Dressed in an odd attire—something not uncommon to those living in abolition blocks—he wore sweatpants and sneakers under a dilapidated kimono that had been feasted on by hungry moths.

He unrolled a piece of cloth over a small table and began to organize his tools: the straight razor, the comb, the shave brush, the scissors. He cleaned the relics in the same ceremonial fashion that Akane had seen in those who, anachronistic and useless in Sibyl’s world, strived to preserve a sort of pride in their bygone knowledge.

“Well, I can’t be sad forever, right? Also, Salsa makes me happy,” she answered to his concern, her finger caressing behind the ear of the little monkey who hooted agreeably.

“You should know, that monkey eats better than me nowadays,” the old man said, glaring at the hairy face that stared at him, chewing open-mouthed.

“No worries, Tanaka-San. I also brought something for you.”

She moved her hip to grab the container on her side and the monkey quickly gobbled up what was left of his fruit, hoping to be treated to this banquet too, raising his arms to make a reservation.

“No, Salsa! This is for me!” the old man quickly snatched the container, hiding it from the monkey.

“The best ramen in all of Tokyo!” Akane said eagerly, hoping to reanimate the spirits of the grim old man. She stretched her arm to retrieve the fruit container from a chair and gave another piece to Salsa.

“So, is Ryota coming or what?” the old man said, taking out his metal chopsticks from a drawer and sitting down to eat.

“Yeah, he should be here soon.”

“Good. There’s a group of unregistered that needs to be moved.”

#psycho-pass #fanfiction #dragnet

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soy-em · 8 years ago

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Wincest Writing Challenge: One King

Written for @wincestwritingchallenge Round 12: Richard Silken

Prompt: I swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth.

Pairing: Wincest

Partner: @ilostmyshoe-79

Rating: E/NC17

Summary:

Dean's confusing porn with reality again, and he's really got to stop.

What happens when the Winchesters are forced to share a bed.

On A03

Sequel to Two Queens

It doesn’t work.

Dean knows he has a good ass. He’s been told so by more people than he can count - most of those comments very much unwelcome at the time but enough to leave him in happy confidence that his backside is pleasing to people.

But dropping his pants and showing it off hasn’t worked. Sam remains as utterly indifferent to Dean (and his ass) as he always seems to be.

Dean tips his head back in the shower and shakes his head. He doesn’t know what to do any more; maybe he should just give up. Water pounds down over his head; the excellent pressure might turn out to be the only good thing about this motel, and Dean finally starts to thaw out, tingles radiating from his fingers and toes as he warms up. He forces himself not to linger; Sam needs this bliss as much as he does.

When he leaves the bathroom, he’s confronted with the kingsize bed. It’s like something out of a porno, he thinks; two hot guys forced to share a bed and huddle together for warmth. In the porn world, it would only end one way, even if the men were brothers; but as Sam’s said many times, he shouldn’t confuse reality and porn. The likelihood of him and Sam getting it on tonight is miniscule. He needs to resign himself to that.

He hops into bed and scoots to one side, leaving enough space for his brother. When he finally emerges from the shower, Sam looks utterly horrified at the thought of sharing with Dean, and that’s more than enough to crush all of Dean’s hopes.

Rolling over, Dean does what Winchesters do best, and thinks about something else until he falls asleep.

***

Waking in the middle of the night, Dean is surrounded by a warmth and rightness that he hasn’t felt in over four years. Sam is not just close, Sam is within touching distance, within breathing distance, within kissing distance and that’s just exactly where he should be. Dean luxuriates for a moment, Sam’s familiar breath hitting his cheek and his little almost-snores tickling Dean’s ears.

There’s enough dim artificial light trickling through the thin motel curtains for Dean to see his brother. Sam looks so peaceful asleep, as if the trials of the past few months have washed away; the frown on his forehead smoothed out and his lips gently parted. He’s beautiful like this too, of course, he’s always beautiful; but Dean is struck with how relaxed he looks. It highlights the strain Sam carries during the day, the grief of losing Jess mixing with the guilt of not being able to find their Dad, and it’s only now that it’s gone that Dean is seeing the impact.

Dean is awash with love in that moment; the love he’s felt all his life, from the moment the tiny bundle was first placed in his arms, supported carefully by a soft embrace he can barely remember; right through to the desperate hug at a wet bus stop as Sam set off into the unknown, and most recently felt through the crash of Sam’s body fighting against him in a dark room, before a girl in tiny pyjamas flicked on the lights.

Jess. Dean had been stunned when he saw her; not just because she was hot (so hot, well done Sammy), but because it was just a little bit like looking into a mirror. Light hair, luminous eyes, freckles; Dean had seen himself and hoped. And there’s the looks, sometimes; the way Sam’s eyes follow him; the frown that deepens across Sam’s forehead as he watches Dean flirt; the almost painful intensity between them when they avoid talking about Stanford. Just occasionally, Dean wonders if Sam feels the same way.

But Sam’s grief over Jess has shown his brother’s true feelings and Dean’s been forced to let go of that.

Except he hasn’t really. Twisting onto his side carefully, he looks at his brother again and his heart clenches. There is literally nothing he wouldn’t do for this boy, even give him up to college and a better life. But Sammy’s back now and all Dean’s feelings, ruthlessly suppressed over the past four years, have come roaring back. Dean wants everything of Sam; every moment, every thought, every feeling and every breath of Sam is important to Dean; he wants to know them, understand them, share them all.

It’s not healthy - he’s known that since he was nine and found Sam’s first day at school harder than his brother; since he was fourteen and wanted to fight all Sam’s battles for him; since he was nineteen and saw Sam’s long legs in a different light for the first time. But he wants, and he can’t help himself, and he needs to realise it’s never going away and make his peace with that. It’s just harder at times like this, when it would be so easy to reach across the bed and kiss Sam into wakefulness.

Trying to regain control of his feelings, he rolls back the other way and shuts his eyes firmly. As Sam said, the sooner he goes to sleep, the sooner it will be morning and he can find them a motel with two beds.

***

It’s light when Dean wakes again, his body still heavy with sleep. Trying to move, he realises that he can’t; he’s pinned by a heavy, warm weight across his waist and legs. Blinking sleepily through his feeling of contentment, it takes him a while to realise it’s Sam. His brother has pressed up against him in the night, sprawling across Dean and most of the bed, so that Dean is almost hanging off the edge.

Fucking sasquatch, he thinks, and tries to shift into a safer position. As he moves, he becomes aware of two very concerning issues: one, that he himself is hard, Sam’s leg pressing warm against his morning wood; and two, that Sam’s even harder, a small wet patch forming against Dean’s hip where Sam’s slotted tight against him.

Shame flushes through Dean’s body. He’s never been a prude about sex, and he’s been aware of his feelings for Sam for years, but still; finding himself aroused by his baby brother’s warm, sleeping, unaware body gives him the kind of guilt trip he could do without. Its drowned out almost immediately though by a different kind of heat; Sam is hard against him, and although it’s probably just a natural morning reaction, or even a dream about a different warm body, Dean still can’t control his visceral reaction.

He must unknowingly tense his body, because suddenly Sam’s squirming against him, waking up. Dean’s still too sleep fogged to react fast enough; before he can think to move, Sam’s awake, body going stiff beside him.

“Dean?” Sam asks, voice quiet. He sounds almost fearful. “Dean, I’m so sorry.” It takes Dean a moment to realise Sam’s trying to extricate himself from the tangle of their limbs, and yet more time passes before Dean’s aware that he’s making that impossible by not moving his leg.

“Dean,” Sam says, voice insistent and more high pitched than normal, a slight edge of panic creeping in. “I need to get up.”

Dean will never know what possesses him to take the risk, but he rolls so they’re face to face, legs still caught up, and rocks his hips forwards. He can feel the hard press of Sam’s cock against his own through their boxers, and the puff of air on his face as Sam gasps, his hands clutching tight onto Dean’s arms. There’s no rejection, so Dean does it again, rolling his hips fluidly into Sam’s, watching his brother’s mouth go slack with pleasure.

“Sammy?” he asks, putting as much emotion as possible behind that one word in the hope of not having to talk about his feelings in more detail.

“Yes, Dean,” Sam agrees fervently, and that’s enough for Dean to lean in and seal his mouth onto Sam’s in a deep, intense kiss. Sam should taste sour but his mouth is the sweetest thing Dean’s ever experienced. It doesn’t take long for them to start rocking against each other, Sam’s leg curling over Dean’s hip as if to trap him in place and never let him go. Dean winds his arms around Sam’s neck, pulling their heads together so that they’re sharing every tiny gasp and moan between them, no space for the outside world. He knows he should get his hand down between them and pull their boxers down at least, so that they’re skin on skin; but he’s wanted this for so long that he’s not going to have time. Everything feels so good, and he’s so sleep-fogged that he can feel his orgasm rocketing through his veins far faster than he’d like; his body speeding up and toes curling. But Sam’s in no better state, his ever-changing eyes focused on Dean’s as their noses brush together.

Sam bites down hard on his own lip, head tipping back as he comes while he’s riding Dean’s leg; and the sight is enough to end things for Dean too. He comes with a gasp, forehead knocking against his brothers as they both try to draw in a breath. It’s only a second before Sam’s kissing him again, uncoordinated but so eager, licking into Dean’s mouth as if he never wants it to end.

They make out lazily for a while, neither caring about the mess in their boxers. Dean could stay here forever, happy to ignore the consequences of their morning. Rain is still pounding against the windows and they’re probably stuck here for the day anyway, he thinks.

Eventually, though, Sam pulls back. He slides to the edge of the bed without a word, and Dean feels his heart drop. The disgust he’s been expecting all morning is obviously kicking in and Sam wants to get away from him. It’s going to break his heart; he’s lived through Sam’s rejection once, and survived, just barely. He doesn’t think he can do it again.

Pushing himself out of the bed, he fumbles for his jeans, pulling them up harshly and disregarding the mess in his boxers. He’ll sort it out at the first service station. Casting around, he sees his t-shirt on the other side of the room and strides across to pick it up.

“Dean?” Sam’s voice is small and confused; he’s standing in the bathroom door, still in just his boxers and a t-shirt. Looking incredibly young, Sam visibly takes a deep breath. “I get it if you want to leave, Dean, I’m disgusting. But wait until it’s safe to drive again, at least.” Sam turns away. “I can wait in the bathroom. Or go to reception.”

Dean’s head actually spins for a minute, dizziness threatening to send him to the floor. Sam thinks he’s disgusting? Dean’s the one who’s corrupted his little brother. Worse, Sam thinks Dean is leaving him and he’s upset?

It all takes Dean a minute to process, and in that time Sam’s gone back into the bathroom. Dean can see him, perched on the edge of the grimy bath, cradling his head in his hands. Dean hates stuff like this, hates having to work through his emotions, but this is Sam; it will be worth it. He approaches his brother softly, still-bare feet making no noise as he crouches down in front of his brother.

“Sammy,” he begins. “I don’t think you’re disgusting.” He pauses. “I am, but not you. You’re perfect.”

Sam’s eyes peek through his hands. “I’m disgusting. I made you do that.”

“I made you do that,” Dean counters. “I’m the big brother.”

There’s an interminable moment of silence. Sam’s the first to break it, taking the risk that Dean can’t quite bring himself to chance. “Did you want that?” he asks softly, and Dean nods emphatically, heart in his mouth.

“Oh thank fuck,” Sam breathes, and collapses forwards into Dean’s arms. Dean barely catches them in time, lowering them both to the cold bathroom floor. Sam’s peppering kisses against his face and it takes Dean a moment to get him to stop, framing Sam’s face with his hands.

“I take it you did too?” he asks, voice a little dry, and this time its Sam who nods, laughing.

“Yes, yes.” They’re kissing against, messy kisses across each other’s faces as they miss their mouths, Sam’s teeth nipping at his lips, his ears, his neck. Dean’s laughing too, happiness bubbling out of him. Eventually their mouths reconnect properly and Dean’s swallowing down Sam’s joy alongside his moans, his heart beating sure and fast where it’s pressed up against Sam’s, right where it should be.

#wincest #wincestwritingchallenge #sam winchester/dean winchester #sam winchester X dean winchester #ilostmyshoe-79 #season 1 #my writing #bedsharing #cliche

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jackiebluzer-blog · 5 years ago

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The Middle Ground Between Fat Phobic and “Conscious Choice”

The Superpower to End Binge Eating

Both diet and anti-diet cultures have become as divisive as politics. There is no agreeing to disagree. One of the issues I have with either culture is black and white thinking. Healthy, diet, overweight, and fat are examples of terms fraught with controversy. Those that differ are blatantly lambasted as fatphobic.

Your Fat Friend wrote an insightful article on Medium entitled “Just Say Fat.” It is a fantastic achievement to own “fat” and be comfortable physically and emotionally; not all of us can. It is my issue that I cannot. A little background: I grew up as dare I say, an overweight child from preadolescence and struggled with it straight into adulthood and throughout. Insulted by children at school, left for last in gym class, and shopped in the chubby section at department stores. Well-meaning parents offered me money to lose weight. “Fat” is tricky for me to internalize; I admire that Your Fat Friend can, but my reaction to it was visceral. Is it sacrilege for those of us who cannot own it?

After years of yo-yo dieting and the typical unequivocal thinking of either binge or starve, I have found a middle ground. I eat with “Conscious Choice,” forethought without obsession.

“Conscious Choice” has alleviated my bingeing, no deprivation, no off-limits food, but I do not eat without discretion. I enjoy several snacks a day, and I have found comfort food that satisfies without deprivation. I love chocolate chip cookies, but not every day and not the whole box.

Tools of the Trade

I see “Intuitive Eating” as a tool. When I mentioned this on Instagram, I was bombarded with messages. There is no concrete path to self-acceptance. “Take what you need and leave the rest,” is a 12-Step motto which I adhere to. Implementing the principles from “Intuitive Eating” and “Health at Every Size” is helpful. Do you have to assume all 10 “Intuitive Eating” beliefs as gospel? Can you accept where you are but balance nutrition and comfort food to over time find a natural body size for your frame and individual body chemistry?

Way before “Intuitive Eating” was a thing, Geneen Roth wrote a book entitled, “Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating.” This book changed my life without the precepts surrounding “Intuitive Eating.” Her book suggests cramming your home with all the food you have avoided. I found it to be revolutionary. As with “Intuitive Eating,” some will gain weight at first. I lost weight, but most importantly, I was empowered by the ability to walk into a store, buy what I desired, and not have the need to make an excuse for it.

“Conscious Choice” in Practice: The Hamburger Deluxe

This classic menu item available at all diners is heavily laden with all kinds of calories, and what most would consider no-noes. If you are craving it, then you should have it, but negotiate accordingly. Reconsider a short stack of pancakes gushing with butter and syrup for breakfast or lunch. To plan beforehand is not the same as a meal plan.

• The typical deluxe is a hamburger with a seeded bun, French fries, garnished with two onion rings on top, lettuce, tomatoes, raw onions, pickles, and, coleslaw.

• What is most important to satisfy your cravings?

• If it is the French fries, consider leaving the onion rings and the bun or have one half of the bun.

• Dying for the onion rings — have them, eat fewer French fries, and half the bread.

• If sinking your teeth into the burger and bun with tomatoes, onions, and ketchup, is the end-all for you, do it! Can you give up the onion rings or eat fewer fries?

Dig into a little of everything, and after sated, get a take-home box for later, or the next day.

I hear it now coming at me from all ends of the Twitter-sphere, THAT’S A DIET! I do not consider consuming whatever is vital for your daily survival to avoid bingeing a diet. How you arrive at a comfort level is all you. Getting there does not entail:

• Restricting food. Hunger will lead to the eventuality of binge eating. Never go hungry.

• Counting calories or points is labor-intensive. Although I have an aversion to any food with the word “skinny,” I will eat lite items to satisfy my fancy.

• Weighing grams. If you eat to satisfy and not overeat, there is no need to weigh food.

• Skipping meals. Forfeiting one meal to feast later does not work. See restriction of food above.

Anticipation relieves my anxiety and stress over food, dining out, visiting friends, and family. When I was attending Overeaters Anonymous, a member suggested praying for the food to show up; I say pack and carry when necessary.

Are you going to weigh short stack over hamburger deluxe regularly? Most likely not. Is it dieting to consider eating less bread for lunch when you want to have pasta for dinner? Is it dieting when you have pizza for lunch but a salad with protein later? Is it a diet if asking for dressing on the side, ordering the hamburger without the bun or salad instead of fries? Perhaps folks who are not compulsive overeaters do not question those choices. “Conscious Choice” almost feels like a superpower when it serves to abate bingeing food frenzy.

My book, “Food Frenzy: My Fight Against Diet Culture,” will soon be available on Amazon with a brutally honest and humorous account of my trip down diet lane and tools on how I overcame binge eating.

#fatphobic #fat #dietculture #antidiet bingeeating eatingdisorders

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ribbonthief · 7 years ago

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el x hopper meta post: why El, is in fact, not a brat (or really, why she is behaving like one)

In rewatching their fight scene in 2x04, El’s line, “You promised, I go” caught my attention. In their previous riff, El makes it clear that she’s asked Hopper if she can see Mike twice before and he’s responded to these pleas by telling her, “soon.” Here though, we’re learning that he has promised her she will “go”.

"Soon” is of course deliberately ambiguous but “go” is more meaningful to me, and more problematic. Mainly because the word 'promise' precedes it but also because it's the verb, it's the action she wants to take that he has apparently given to her as a potential possibility. I’m taking her “you promised, I go” line literally in the sense that he said those exact words to her at one point. If you think about those two interactions side by side, the argument over breakfast and then the argument after her field trip, you realize that he’s been placating her need to go (and see Mike) by giving her a loose time frame but never following through with it all throughout her time at the cabin.

I've been interpreting El's initiative and intelligence as being on a high-ish level. Her lexicon is limited (and actually broader than I think she gets credit for), but she's incredibly fast at picking up on new words and understanding semantics. She got herself to Aunt Becky's, she got herself to Chicago and back and she was, however poorly, surviving in the woods for weeks. So given her history, and this level of intelligence, that’s an extraordinary amount of trust and self-control she’s exhibiting considering she never tried to sneak out of the cabin before. Teenagers are bratty, but El's a cooped up, emotionally and mentally tortured socially desperate and restless one. Who has reached her breaking point. Who isn't being properly communicated to about why she's being confined for so long by the only person she's interacting with. Which is essentially what it is, it's not the way Hopper views it, and I understand why he doesn't and that his grief and control issues permeating from that grief limit his ability to be able to do that but objectively speaking, El was being confined.

My headcanon is that El did leave the cabin over those 353 days, because of the way the third rule was worded, “don't ever go out alone, especially not in the daylight.” I like to think that she went with Hopper for brief walks around the woods, more so when it was dusk or night time. These walks gave her the chance to get some fresh air, and the opportunity to somewhat interact with her environment on a basic level which would be helpful for her emotional stability and health. Regardless of this being the case, and there's a high chance that it isn't, her only source of social engagement and general interaction with the world, not even primary but only, is Hopper. On top of that, she has to trust that he won't effectively turn her over to the lab. Which is why his threat to take her back there, "one phone call, I can make that happen" during their fight and her reaction to that threat was so visceral because while she has powers, he holds a significant, specific power over her that he just threw in her face.

So she's trusting Hopper quite heavily, she's relying on him quite heavily but she's having to watch Hopper leave in the morning and return at night, that he is ‘free’, knowing that he is socially interacting and even interacting with the people she is craving.

Something I've also been trying to understand is how El feels about Hopper initially and then over the course of their time together. I know that the way they feel about each other is mutual at the end of S2 but we don't get a ton insight into the way El sees Hopper throughout the season, other than what she says in their fight, "you are like papa". Cognitively, I think she knows that Brenner and Hopper aren't doing the same thing to her and that their intentions and care of her are drastically different but I totally see how on some level, emotionally, they feel the same to her. Hopper chose El but El didn't really choose him, he just happened to be someone she briefly knew and was showing her signs of his interest in her wellbeing. So this person who's taken her in creates a list of rules for her safety that results in her confinement but won't be truthful with her about when this confinement will end, is sometimes late, can't always be there, is a person who was not her first choice. That’s a lot for her to contend with emotionally.

And although I think she can see and feels that Hopper has an affection for her, it's limited physically, which has got to contribute to her intensifying restless behaviour and attitude dysfunction. Most people and most children generally need physical affection for positive development, and Brenner only gave this (and a very limited amount of it) to her when she performed well as his experiment and removed it severely when she didn't. And El seems to be fairly tactical in nature and was finally exposed to healthy physical affection during S1 by numerous people giving it to her, and her either initiating it or her reciprocating it. But in S2 with Hopper, because he's her only form of contact and because obvious boundaries need to be there, she's back to physical affection being very limited or nonexistent. It isn't removed the way it was as a punishment but it's not there.

So I can fully understand and appreciate her view and feelings about Hopper as changing drastically and that she effectively grows both closer to him and far away from him until towards the end of the season when we see them have their resolution. I think the two of them, within that year, formed a lasting, indefinite connection but I hope that a continuous part of their dynamic and El's storyline, is her ability to express choice and freedom.

So overall, I find issue with her behaviour being labelled as ‘bratty’ because that’s looking at it too simplistically, there’s so much going on for her and so much she’s expected to put up with. Why she responds to him the way she does when he doesn't signal and when he gets home late, why she acts out, why she takes her field trip, are all behaviours and reactions that are endlessly understandable for me.

#stranger things #stranger things meta #eleven x hopper #eleven #jim hopper #a rambling mess really #because this ass just can't quit #el x hopper #otf: it was you...you were my ghost

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chiisana-sukima · 8 years ago

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I made a new post to continue this one, about Gadreel, because the old one is getting so unwieldy, and when I tried to edit it down to size, x-kit failed me somehow and wouldn’t let me post.

And I’m also only dealing with one tiny portion of all the awesome stuff on the chain, so I apologize, and also might have to go back and follow up on other things in a separate post. But I wanted to say right off the bat that this is the best chain of meta I’ve seen on Gadreel ever. Really A+ effort from everybody involved. @zpublicizes, I cut your whole meta chain out, but I agree with so much of what you wrote in it, and I feel all warm and fuzzy about the super-high-quality discussion. (´∀｀)♡

@idontneedasymbol wrote:

and also Gadreel stuff yeah okay i cannot shut up about this

Heh, welcome to the hell pit, we’re having tea and cookies at noon. More company is *always* welcome.

I think the concern about Dean’s culpability is about more than assigning blame. It’s largely (at least in my case) about understanding the character.

Yeah, I agree that’s completely valid. And the extensive discussion about blame is even totally valid and important too. I think this is kind of an area where sociological forces are so powerful that there’s a limited amount of free will in how any individual person or group of people even approaches the topic. This is what we have to talk about, because this is what is here.

Even for Carver et al, to a certain extent, they had to structure the narrative the way they did because that’s just how narrative is written [by middle-to-upper class modernist/post-modernist white dudes, and hence by all of us, in the West]. I guess that’s why fic is (imo) such a radical act- it’s the one place we can talk and think about and absorb into ourselves what isn’t there in the same depth we do with what is.

I do think the argument could be made that we don’t get much focusing on the recovery is that Sam, as the injured party, didn’t require that much – that the Gadreel experience wasn’t anything new for Sam, and wasn’t worse than a lot of what else he’s gone through.

I won’t argue this at all as a matter of canon. I think indeed that’s the intended reading- that it was a bad experience, but not (comparatively, for Sam) all that bad. Sam got angry, vented, and then they moved on. There was an awful unintended consequence (the MoC), but it didn’t have anything to do with Sam’s original injury, which was small enough that it resolved on its own with Dean’s semi-apology and a little push from ghost!Kevin.

I think a big piece of how hard it is for some of us to let it go is that we have a really uncomfortable visceral counter-textual reaction to the implications of some of the information presented, that the writers probably didn't think through, or possibly did but decided to ignore and pretend it never happened. Which is that Gadreel appeared from the storyline to have accomplished something even Lucifer didn’t with Sam: make him unable to know what’s real and what isn’t about his life, implicitly (but never acknowledged textually) forever.

In Sam’s post-Hell storyline, Sam has what amounts to partial amnesia about a discrete time period (during the Wall part of the story), and then hallucinations and time-limited flashbacks (during the Hallucifer part), neither of which are a walk in the park. But the longest he goes without being able to distinguish external reality from internal mental states is fairly short. His hallucinations follow him around for (iirc) about 1-2 months and bother him and look and act entirely real, but he knows they’re not (with two exceptions, each for a fairly brief period, and each of which he copes with in a definitive way). Maybe in the Cage, Lucifer played those kinds of tricks in a more global and lasting fashion, but if so, it’s entirely extra-textual.

But Gadreel takes away Sam’s memories and inserts new ones, and at least once, puts Sam in an entirely manufactured situation that is apparently convincing enough for Sam to believe, and Sam never gets out of any of it on his own. Yeah, he ejects Gadreel, but only because another force is inside his head disputing Gadreel’s version. Gadreel has near-complete control of Sam’s grasp of reality for an extended period (~ 6 weeks), and unlike the “stone one” thing in S7, we’re never given any method by which we know that going forward, Sam can determine for himself what’s real and what isn’t. How does Sam know Gadreel is gone? Gadreel could have manufactured that memory. How does Sam know anything? What, logically, he would know from the experience is that he can’t be sure.

And I think that on balance, even though an extended period of horrible pain and cruelty (Hell) would probably irl be worse than losing one’s ability to understand the narrative of one’s own life (Gadreel), the truth is I’m not sure. I think it’s a close call. Narrative integrity is the thing that allows people to come through pain relatively intact. Torture (Hell) after all is, sure, partially about cruelty for it’s own sake, but mostly what it’s actually for is the destruction of narrative integrity. In a way, Gadreel is a better torturer than Lucifer. He causes less unnecessary discomfort and gets more thorough results.

I think for me, the thing that is most troubling about how the denouement of the Gadreel arc is written, is that in the SPN long haul, the audience is reassured that what Sam went through with Lucifer was not only evil, it was like, the ultimate evil. But with Gadreel, we the audience are just supposed to not look too closely at it and go on as if it never happened.... which, it turns out, is exactly what Gadreel wanted from Sam too. And that- having the audience go through an encapsulated version of what the character did- is a really powerful narrative technique, that I assume the writers’ don’t realize they’ve employed.

I do want to emphasize that I think the “correct” reading of the Gadreel storyline is yours. Not only is it (imo) the intended reading, but it’s also the reading that lets one continue to enjoy the story in a positive way and like... get on to other parts? I guess, in medical terms, it’s a more functional reading? At least for me, and I think largely for some other fans too, if you can’t get past the problem of Gadreel having long(ish)-term control of Sam’s understanding of his own narrative, it kind of destroys the integrity of SPN entirely. If you can’t help letting that situation bother you, then it’s such a fundamental fracture that the failure to address it infects everything that comes afterwards.

But there’s a serious negative to reading the narrative “correctly” too, which is that I think it’s- ugh, “corrupting” is not the right word, but it’s as close as I can think of. It’s a demand by the text for a partially willful ignoring of a non-value-neutral disjuncture. Its 1984ish in a way that makes me really uncomfortable. (I absolutely dont mean this part as a judgement about the act of reading the text as intended- that’s like, the natural way to take text, and reading things counter-textually is a giant drain on mental health that people just cant manage all the time, so we have to pick our battles. I mean it as a judgement on the text for demanding that people do it in order to continue to engage with it without substantial anger.)

I think I have kinda lost my train of thought here, which is probably just as well considering the length, lol, so I’ll just stop without any real conclusion or anything. ¯\(°_o)/¯

(@ameliacareful, I am tagging you, because I know you’ve thought a lot about this issue too. And shoutouts to @ameliacareful‘s The Paper Asks Nothing which also deals with this issue [but it might be a hard/unfulfilling read for you, @idontneedasymbol, because even though much of it is Dean’s POV, it’s pretty critical of Dean too, so take that under advisement]

@ameliacareful, I’m also curious to know have you read Wake? If so, what did you think? What about you, @zpublicizes, have you read Wake?

@idontneedasymbol, when I recced Wake before, you weren’t reading wincest, so allow me to rec it again, because it has some light wincest in it, but it’s my favorite story about fixing the Gadreel mess. It’s Dean’s POV, and I think is fair to the bleakness of the situation as I see it while still also allowing the relationship to be a healthy one that ends okay).

#gadreel #critical textual readings #long post is long #for filtering purposes- wank #fic recs at the end

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olusegundare · 6 years ago

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A Growing Love

Introduction

Love is defined as a feeling of strong affection and concern toward another person, as that arising from a kinship or close friendship; it could also be defined as a strong feeling of affection and concern for another person accompanied by sexual attraction. Online Wikipedia says that love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection and to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a spouse, which differs from the love of food. Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment.

The love that I have in mind talking about is the love between opposite sex and this could also be extended to other kinds of relationship.

The Parties

Love, usually, involves two people, when a third person enters such may no longer be called love but a crowd, like a proverb in this part of the world that says, two people make a very good friendships but when it involves third person the friendship may not be so good again.

You may want to ask that what about those that have many friends. Those who have many friends there would be one of them who will stick closer, one of them they will understand themselves better than the rest. One of my friends would say, if you have twenty friends you will have twenty minds. This is because each one varies from one another, the mind with which one will deal with friend Zee would be different from the mind with which one would deal with friend Bee. Each friend has its peculiarity, that is why one will have different manners, different means of approaching each of them.

Agriculturist’s Eyes

Having seen the parties involved, I will want us to see a growing love in the light of a farmer’s eyes. That is, one sees Love as a seed. A seed would remain as it is, alone, if not planted. When a seed is planted, it would germinate, grow and bring fruits in different kinds of folds.

A farmer is defined by online free dictionary as a person who operates a farm or cultivates land. A farmer who will cultivate land will need something to be planted in the cultivated plot of land. What would be planted in the tilled land is called seed.

Requirements

The agriculturists and or biologists make it clear unto us some of the needful for a seed to germinate, grow to maturity and bring forth fruits for people.

Some of the essential requirements for such include:

1. Good soil,

2. Adequate temperature,

3. Water-adequate one,

4. Oxygen,

5. Nutrients: macro and micro etc.

The Soil: since we are looking at love like a seed, we know that seeds would be planted in the soil. Therefore, before love would be planted, there is need for a soil on which the love would be planted in. The soil that love would be planted in, in this sense is the human's heart. When this special seed called love is planted in the human hearts which is the soil in this contest, such heart must be ready to accept the seed of love that would be planted in it. A soil that does not want to accept the seed, it is sure that the seed would not germinate on the heart and fruits should not be expected from such soil during the harvest session. A heart that is not receptible to the sown love proposals, it thence means that the seed planted in the heart would neither germinate nor grown on the heart. Therefore, the sower should not at any time be expecting anything from such heart. We thence, need to pay attention to how receptive a heart is to what we are sowing there.

For a seed to grow on a soil, the soil must be good, must be the type that would accept the sown seed into her.

Temperature: this is the degree of hotness or coldness of a body or environment. Any seed planted in the soil requires adequate temperature for its germination and growth. The temperature must not be too hot or too cold for the seed. It is the same with the love planted in the heart, actions and reactions to issues by both parties should be adequate, it should not be too hot or too cold. Therefore, people who are in love relationships are usually being enjoined that “one should be goat and the other be sheep” this invariably is saying that one of the partners must ensure that she or he is tender hearted when his or her partner is blowing hot. When both are blowing hot at the same time, things would not be settled, it would rather escalate.

In the love relationships, there will always be times when a partner will see things differently from his or her partner when such happens, this may want to generate frictions among them and we know that frictions usually dissipate energy, the energy generated is often time wasted, but when they could give room for the possibility of differences among them, the generated heat instead of being wasted would be constructively used.

In the case of a seed that has just been sown in the soil, we know that the temperature must neither be on the high side nor on the low side, therefore the temperature must be maintained at a level that would keep the seed growing. This requires for us to learn check and balance in our actions and reactions to issues. When we sense hotness, there may be need for withdrawal from a partner not because of weakness but because we want the temperature to be within the range that will allow for the growth of the love in the partner’s heart.

We should know that what our partner does not see now that want to heat up the love environment such a partner may see it tomorrow, that is if we can allow for the temperature to be within the range for its growth by withdrawing into our shell as the snail withdraws its visceral stalk and foot into its shell. Some considers this an act of weakness, but I do not so see it like that.

The bible on another note admonishes that both parties be sheep. Sheep all over the world is known for its action, they are not as troublesome as goats do. When both parties could be sheep-like in attitude, the friction that wanted to generate would be quickly doused.

This means, when lovers have misunderstandings among themselves this will be settled within hours if not minutes that is how sheep interact, they are always together.

Water: it shouldn’t be too much or too little, it should be moderate. Neither the germinated seed nor the seed of love should be in a water-logged environment. Water is said to convey the nutrients, minerals and in fact the digested food are being carried by water to where they would be used in the body of the growing plant. This water permeates all aspects of the body of the plant and animal. In the same vein is this water permeating all aspects of the lovers’ lives.

I will want us to view water as the lovely atmospheres created between lovers. Those created jokes, those romantic moments, those things that would make the home lively are those things that should permeate our love life. When we want to correct each other, this should be done in love not with the mind of whatever will happen let it happen.

Oxygen: This conveys life, the life of all relationship is in the genuineness of the relationship. There won’t be a genuine relationship if both partners are godless, then there is need to have God in our relationship. God will drive that relationship to the desired heaven. God will make the relationship alive and healthy always if we allow Him in our relationship.

You may want to say what of those who do say there is no God but who yet live a goodly healthy life in their relationships. My answer would be, were such people to have allowed God, their relationships would have been much better than what it is now. In other words, they are far below what the Lord has for them in relationship assuming they give in to God's leadership,

Nutrients: (a) Macro: These are physical things, these are what could be seen. How many physical things have you gotten for your lover? How many surprises have you gotten him or her? You may not be rich, but yet you are in love, you can surprise her or him by getting him or her small things e.g. buying her a new pant, buying him a new boxers, sending credit to your love's cellular line, cooking his best meal (ironically sadly some do not know the best foods of their lovers) etc.

(b) Micro: These are the unseen things that makes love grow. You should be praying together regularly do not make it once in a while habit of praying together for that is what some people do, doing this will not help the situation. After praying together, you should also cultivate the habit of praying for your partner in your closets, praying for him or her in your heart, do not forget that our hearts are always open unto the Lord. We should be ready to share with our partners some of the things we have received from the Word of God. As the head of the family like a farmer sowing the seed, we shall need to be teaching her some things.

When these things are in their right proportions, the agriculturists say the seed would germinate, grow well and be established to be yielding fruits to the sower. Doing these things will equally help our love to germinate and grow and when such love begins to grow, it will be like a seed planted by the rivers of water which brings forth its fruits in its season, its leaves will not wither and whatever (they do) he does prospers simply because they are mutually compatible.

“And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” (Psalms 1:3)

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