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cadybear420 · 6 months

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Cadybear's Reviews- High School Story: Class Act

First of all, I should mention… this series is actually the reason I wasn’t going to include stories where my last playthrough of them was 2-3 years ago. I’ve been having a lot to say about HSS:CA for a long time, but as more time’s been going by, my memory of the playthrough diminishes more and more. As much as I want to go on and on about how disappointing this series was, I worried it might not be a good look to do so when my statements about its events could very well be uninformed.

But I would still like to discuss how I currently feel about the story, based off of what I do remember from it, plus what I’m picking up from screenshots posted by others. I’ve been writing braindumps about this trilogy for quite a long time. If and when I do eventually get around to replaying this (as with all the other stories that I haven’t touched in forever), it will certainly get a re-review, and we’ll see how well this one’s claims hold up. Will they all still stand? Will there be things I’ll change my mind on? Will there be new things I have to say? Who the fuck knows.

Now with that out of the way, let’s do this shit.

Welcome to the thirteenth official Cadybear's Reviews post! Today I'll be talking about High School Story: Class Act, which I have ranked on the "Bronze Tier" at 5 stars out of a possible 10. My last and only playthrough of this series was back in April-June 2021.

To put it briefly… this one is such a mixed bag. A kind of disappointing mixed bag.

Initially, I did fairly enjoy this series. I found the stories alright and the characters interesting, and I was happy to see more of the beloved OG characters even if it was just on the side. It wasn’t as amazing as OG was (no shit), but I still found it decent enough.

But at the same time, something was always just a bit off about all of it. It took me a while to realize this. I couldn’t quite place my finger on why (or when I think I fully realized this), but eventually… it hit me.

It had nothing to do with HSS.

I know, it seems unfair to judge this trilogy in comparison to OG HSS rather than on its own merits, but like… why even bother making it HSS then? If it wanted to be its own thing so bad, then it should have just been made as its own thing. And that’s kind of the main problem with HSS:CA– looking back on it, it entirely feels like it was written as a new different franchise and then had “HSS” stamped onto it to make it seem more appealing to fans of the original iterations. Seriously, you could replace everything HSS that appears in CA with something completely new, and nothing important about it would change.

I’m noticing that that’s kind of a phenomenon we see when it comes to sub-par spinoffs and installments of a (highly beloved and respected) franchise, such as PPG 2016 and HBO’s Velma. A fairly common critique I’ve seen about both of those infamously hated iterations is that you could easily make them as original shows and you’d lose nothing important about them, and frankly they’d have been much less hated if they were original franchises rather than installments of an already existing beloved franchise.

HSS:CA is nowhere near as abhorrent as either of those, don’t get me wrong. But regardless of how much of a desecration of the original franchise you consider it to be, it’s the exact same case here. Most of the stuff in HSS:CA either lacks relevance to and/or is a major downgrade from OG HSS. And while these aspects would still keep the series from being in the higher tiers if it was an original series, they’d be far more forgivable or negligible in that case.

I’ll be honest. HSS:CA is a cute, chill, vanilla slice-of-life high school series at best. And so if it was its own brand new thing? I’d probably rank it in the Silver Tier– which is why there’s a spot that says “HSS:CA (if you pretend it’s not a HSS spinoff)”. But the fact that it’s meant to be a continuation of the HSS franchise kind of gives it some higher standards to hold it to, and it’s hard not to judge it by that.

And in my opinion? It doesn’t hold a candle to those standards. It’s merely a shadow of its parent iterations, and even that’s an overstatement because a shadow at least has some basic connection to its source object.

It’s very difficult to go into this one without bursting into a 9 page long essay. To keep this review organized at least, let’s go by each of my 6 points for why OG HSS was great, and see how CA holds in those points as well. It’s gonna be a long one, but I do want to put my opinions into perspective.

First, the MC.

They’re not terrible by any means– in a vacuum, they’re an okay MC to play as. I don’t mind playing as an unpopular kid, and their adorakble moments and the Aunt Wendy storyline are pretty cute.

But again, this is a HSS spinoff. With that in context, CA MC is just so much more stiff than our old MC, and so it’s hard not to feel like they’re a downgrade. A fair amount of people have said that CA MC is better because they’re “more imperfect and realistic to actual teenagers” or “actually have a personality”, but it doesn’t hold much ground in my opinion. As I’ve said probably ad nauseam by this point, OG MC not having a distinct personality worked in their favor because it made them a lot more wildcard in how you could play their character– and that actually does include making them more “imperfect” to some degree.

I can make my OG MC genuinely mess up in certain areas if I want to, and it can affect certain outcomes for them. If I wanna have my MC be kind of crappy at their extracurricular and make Berry lose the big sports games, or have them be a jerk to the Hearst kids and lose their tryouts spot even if they’re actually good at tryouts themselves, I can have that! And even when you do get all the more successful outcomes for them, they can still feel pretty down-to-earth– they’re just a student who happens to become popular and good at unifying the school, rather than some OP messiah God who’s the great savior of the school and everyone worships the very ground they walk on. Is that still unrealistic? Sure. But who gives a crap? Realistic ≠ better.

(Also, if you think the OG MC was unrealistically talented and successful… well, not only is that on you as the player, but keep in mind that the MC of HSS Prime was a teenager who founded an entire brand new high school, and the whole game exists entirely around that. I’m pretty sure most people aren’t coming to HSS for complete high school realism. A lot of us already experienced complete high school realism when we went to high school IRL, and it probably sucked for most of us.)

With HSS:CA MC however, we don’t get nearly as many choices to personalize the character or affect the story with this one like we do with OG’s, and the options/outcomes that do exist are few and far between. If you replayed the story with a new name and appearance for MC and all different choices, chances are they’d probably still feel the exact same as the previous version of your MC with the exception of your LI choice.

And it’s funny– despite that this MC is pushed as the more awkward and flawed of the two, I don’t really recall any parts where we can have them genuinely screw up and face consequences. The most we get is probably the theatre productions in the first and third books, and some options in Book 2 that allow us to keep Rory/Twin’s election standings lower… but that’s about it. None of them really have the same impact or significance as the outcomes you can get with OG.

This lack of agency with MC’s character can get especially frustrating at certain times, such as how much they agonize over getting their first kiss with Rory in Book 1, or how they’re so passive with assholes like Clint and Natalie and Trevor and Amber. At least moments where they tried to force OG MC into a certain behavior or trait– like wanting to win prom crown, or wanting to matchmake Scott and Julia– were kept very minimal and didn’t push out or upstage their respective choices systems.

To add insult to injury, the OG MC is still around– but purely as a NPC background character. Which, in my opinion, fundamentally does not work for a flexible blank-slate MC like the OG MC. All it does is create the exact problem that OG HSS was trying to avoid when they wrote off Prime MC as having graduated. To make such a flexible MC that relies on how the player builds their character, into non-playable where they’re just a singular set version outside of their appearance and LI and the player has zero control over them? Especially when the new MC we get is so much more rigid and choice-less? It was very jarring and overall didn’t work, especially not in something like HSS. In fact, I’d even argue that there wasn’t any real justification for switching the MC and cast this time around… but I’ll save that for a later section.

Second, the new supporting characters.

When it comes to the new main friend group, I actually find them pretty alright. Ajay and Skye are great characters and their storylines are the strongest aspects about this trilogy, and I found the romance route with Ajay to be pretty cute (yes, I am a bit of an Ajay apologist despite my heavy criticism towards the series). Rory isn’t really much more than being “nice and attractive” and is annoyingly forced in Book 1, but other than that, they’re decent. Twin is enjoyable enough, and I did like their subplot with Amber in Book 1. Erin isn’t much more than a nice kid either, but she’s very pleasant and I would have liked her as a LI option for MC. And one thing about this group that I actually consider better than OG’s friend group is that we got a lot more opportunities to spend time just hanging out with them or the LIs.

And the family members of these characters like Ajay’s family, Skye’s family, and Aunt Wendy are interesting too, by virtue of the storylines they’re in. Another thing I do like a bit better than OG is that we get to actually meet all of the LIs’ families and know a bit more about their personal lives. OG’s LIs had great characterization and growth, but I do wish we got to see more of their family lives too. Heck, we never once even meet Caleb’s and Michael’s parents!

But when it comes to the rest of the in-school community, however? It’s nowhere near as vibrant and grand and interesting as it was in OG. I get that other characters outside of the new MC’s circle of friends are going to be less important because they’re not unifying the school like OG MC was, but everyone outside of the new main friend group is either boring and forgettable and/or an unpleasant one-note dickhead, even the returning OG characters. It wouldn’t be so bad since, obviously, not all characters are going to be pleasant or fleshed out… except for the fact that they’re constantly wanting us to interact with these characters and see them as our friends.

Like I said in my OG HSS review, I felt like I had actual reasons to care about characters like Julian, Mia, Myra, Frank, Jade, Payton, Kieran, Cameron, etc. They had range and actual purposes in the story, one way or another. Though they obviously weren’t as fleshed out as our LIs and they did have their worse moments, they did feel like actual characters and their presence didn’t bring down the story. They were all characters I could root for.

On the other hand, I don’t feel any reason to care about Clint, Natalie, Trevor, not even characters like Aiden and Michael. Well, outside of the fact that they’re from the OG trilogy and I’d rather be seeing what they’re up to– but that’s the extent of their appeal in this trilogy. None of them have really done much, if anything, to earn our new MC’s friendship or our interest as players, and all their interactions with MC really do is take up space in the story.

Even the antagonists were pretty lacking, aside from Skye’s parents. Despite that we get a few more that are less on-the-nose as antagonists than the OG antags tended to be, most of them were incredibly half-baked and felt more like cheap plot devices rather than like actual characters.

Third, the lack of any activity system.

Regardless of your opinion on CA, you can tell there was a lot less effort put into it compared to that of OG. This mainly shows with the lack of different route options and potential outcomes for MC like I mentioned before– and most notably of all, is the complete removal of any extracurricular choice system. Those choices were a key feature that made OG so memorable and immersive, allowing variance in our storyline, experience, and even our potential romance paths. CA throws that away entirely for God knows what reason… and unfortunately, there aren’t really a lot of other impactful choice systems in this trilogy that can really make up for it.

I get they were probably trying to make CA a bit different from OG, but being able to “choose your clique/group/activity” has always been a huge staple of HSS, ever since Prime. Imagine if PB got rid of the nerve score system when making ILB in order to make it “more different” from ILITW. I don’t think anyone would like that. It guts the series of one of the franchise’s biggest defining features and basically cheapens the story as an interactive VN.

What ILB actually did, of course, is that they changed up the nerve score system a bit: more consequential events spread throughout the story than just the fate trials in one of the last chapters, accounting for a group nerve score, having the characters’ scores start at zero and have to be increased. But it is still a *nerve score system*. I bring this up because CA could have done something similar. I get defaulting our MC to do theatre; that was expected from the “Class Act” part of the title. But in that case, why not adapt the “choose your activity” system to intra-theatre activities?

For example: a bifurcation of theatre jobs, where we can choose between being an actor, director, or techie/set designer (kind of like the MC options in HWU). You could maybe have different ways to customize the production and affect how it turns out based on your activity. And you’d have opportunities for extra interactions/moments with all of the LIs– Rory if you choose to be an actor, Ajay if you choose to be a director, Skye if you choose to be a techie/set designer (in Book 3, anyways).

Or if not that, then perhaps we could have a choice in the acting parts in the plays. Seriously, I feel so baited by that one scene where we could choose to say which part in the first play we wanted the most. Like, they make this big deal about how MC wants to be the prince/princess so they can get their first kiss with Rory, but really I imagined my MC as someone who would much rather be the witch (and didn’t crush on Rory either way).

Fourth, the stories.

Credit where credit is due, the subplots about some of the characters’ personal lives are pretty damn solid and probably one of the few things about the series that actually feels well-executed and fitting to HSS. I’d say the series is at its best when it’s focusing on stuff that doesn’t have to do with in-school drama. Which checks out, because most of the stuff that does take place in the school is lukewarm at best, and… kind of mean-spirited at worst, actually.

There’s nothing wrong with stories about more vanilla and mundane situations, but here it just guts the heart of HSS. Berry High in CA is not “the high school you’d want to go to” like it was in OG… which is kind of funny when you remember the HSS:CA teaser at the end of OG Book 3, where CA MC can tell Rory that they’re “so so so excited” to go to high school because “you guys have scandals and rivalries and food fights”. I can only imagine how disappointed they must have actually been when they started high school (I mean, that’s what this trilogy is, frankly), especially considering some of the bullshit they’re put through while they’re there.

No, seriously. I use the term “mean-spirited” to describe some of CA’s in-school conflicts because a lot of the stuff that happens to our new MC is more needlessly cruel than what happens to OG MC. Book 1’s storyline with MC being instantly accused of sabotage and ostracized by the theatre kids for days(?) on end is by far the worst offender, and Book 2’s storyline with MC being pulled in two directions by Twin and Rory with their election campaigns isn’t much better. Book 3 isn’t nearly as bad, but the useless one-note bully hivemind that is the Statton kids do still bring it down.

And the worst part is, I don’t feel like the characters “get anything” out of it. The characters in OG would often go through a series of pretty awful events too, such as the football game against Statton or literally everything that happened with Isa. But they’d always be able to pick themselves back up and some characters would even grow from these events, so it never felt in bad spirit. Even if you get some of the “lesser” outcomes such as losing the sports games or failing the spirit stick heist, the character development everyone has gone through still holds up. They didn’t succeed, but they tried their best and still got something good out of it, and they can still enjoy their homecoming dance.

In CA, it feels less about the characters overcoming their obstacles and a lot more like “drama and conflict for the sake of drama that we’re gonna throw at the MC, okay now it’s over with, moving on”. Like, why did MC need to suffer through being ostracized by 95% of the theatre kids or getting pulled between Rory’s and Twin’s campaigns? MC getting to kiss Rory in the play and getting the Greenhouse Ex Machina built to merge Twin and Rory’s campaigns and overtake Lorenzo’s campaign, aren’t nearly enough to amend the unnecessary crap they had to deal with throughout those respective stories.

And sure, some of those events are technically more “realistic” to the average high school experience, but again, that doesn’t make them better written. Need I bring up Prime’s MC again? Realism means fuck all to me if the conflicts are cheap, especially in HSS.

What’s funny about the “realistic” aspect though, is that despite OG being the seemingly more “corny cheesy Disney Channel high school” of the two trilogies, the teenage characters and their conflicts/drama in that one actually felt more natural and believable. There was actual tension building, and context for why characters acted irrational. I didn’t always like what happened, but it was more understandable why band and cheer would start rooting against basketball, or why Jade/Cameron/Kieran would believe MC was the one to sabotage them, or even why the characters would break out into a food fight. Again, the story gives me actual reason to care about these characters.

A lot of the events in CA felt a lot more lazy to me in comparison, like the only reason the characters act out is because “Har har, teenagers be irrational and messy!”. Which they often tend to be, sure… but characters like Clint and Natalie have no other traits in Book 1 besides being clingy Rory simps, Trevor has no other traits than just being a dickhead, the Statton kids have no other traits in Book 3 than being pretentious assnads. That's all they really have to go by, and it makes the conflicts feel painfully one-dimensional.

Sometimes an event will just straight up contradict the themes established in OG. Like how a lot of the same characters that were present during Isa’s reign of manipulative behaviors and even participated in taking her down, are also weirdly quick to reject CA MC’s discovery that Lorenzo’s kitten stunt was a sham. I have a lot of problems with Book 2’s main plot, but this is easily the biggest one. There’s teenagers being irrational and messy, and then there’s this 5-year-old hivemind behavior. And I… just couldn’t with that.

Finally, and probably the most glaring issue of HSS:CA’s lack of relevance to HSS, it does not bridge well with its past source material at all.

The returning Prime characters may have had smaller roles and their utilizations in OG weren’t all perfect, but overall, they felt very in-their-element and more like an actual part of the story. Their cameos were much more organic, like they were fellow students along with the new characters, and some of them even felt like more mature versions from how they were in Prime. They only really stand out as “the older characters” by being the soon-to-graduate senior class. All of which makes sense because, like I mentioned in my OG HSS review, it’s sort of meant to be “passing down the torch to unify Berry” to the new MC and cast. And that’s about it, it doesn’t need to shove it in your face that these are the characters from the original 2013 mobile game that you may or may not have played before.

The returning OG characters, on the other hand, are all non-characters, and their cameos only serve as nostalgia bait. I mean, I think they were kind of doomed from the start when they made the OG MC non-playable, but they could have at least tried with the other characters, no? Even in Book 3 where they join the CA gang in the musical and London trip, which should have been leagues more epic than whatever the fuck we actually got. They were just there for the sake of being there, doing nothing more than just tagging along with the CA gang– hell, Maria even straight up admits that when she says she and the other characters are only joining the musical production so they could join MC and Aiden on the London trip.

I’ll admit, those premium scenes where you could spend time with the OG characters were kind of fun. But notice how OG didn’t need obligatory special premium scenes in order to make the Prime characters relevant? Sure, there were some scenes that involved certain Prime characters, but… they had a lot more personality than just “Spend time with the Prime characters!”. The Prime characters’ cameos were more than just “Hey hey look look it’s the characters from Prime!”.

This kind of makes CA problematic both for returning OG fans and for new fans who haven’t yet played OG, when you really think about it. OG can integrate the Prime characters well but actually stand on its own two feet at the same time, whereas people who play CA before OG are probably going to be like (Patrick Star voice) “Who are you people!?!?” every time they try to push these diamond scenes.

(And yes, I know I said continuing the OG HSS after the first three books doesn’t have the problem of needing to appeal to new fans. But by virtue of making the continuation a spinoff with a new MC, they kind of did bring that problem onto themselves. No one’s going to be playing the TRH trilogy before they play the TRR trilogy. No one’s going to be playing the two “The Sophomore” books before they play the first four “The Freshman” books, they’re clearly continuations of the previous books involving the same MC and their storyline, just with different titles. HSS:CA clearly has a different MC from the OG one, so there are going to be (and have been) people who play HSS:CA first. Had they made these books a continuation of OG MC’s storyline, this wouldn’t even be an issue.)

And while I did enjoy the new main cast well enough… let’s face it. There wasn’t really any purpose for switching the MCs and casts this time around. Sure, they contrast in that OG MC is more popular and unifies the school while CA MC is more unpopular and sticks with just their theatre family, but that’s not much to go by. The Prime-to-OG switch worked because the Prime writers knew that a Choices iteration of HSS needed to be welcoming both to older fans from Prime AND to newer fans from Choices, given Choices is a completely separate app from the Prime game. It’d be difficult to continue the focus on the Prime MC and their friends without requiring players to have played Prime first, which would be very problematic considering Prime has no in-game features for replaying certain stories or quests.

HSS:CA on the other hand is a more direct continuation of OG HSS, existing on the same app (which does allow you to replay stories or chapters) and taking place the following school year at Berry after the OG HSS timeline. If the spinoff was maybe a few years after the first trilogy, when the OG characters have graduated; or if it was taking place in a different location like Hearst High, then that’d make more sense. Instead, it’s just the next year at Berry High, but this time the focus is on a theatre freshman at Berry and their friends, whose stories pretty much happen in a complete vacuum from everything else that’s happened in HSS canon. It feels very much like PB switched casts with HSS:CA for the same reason that Rick and Morty did Interdimensional Cable II: “We pretty much nailed it the first time”.

What really puts the nail in the coffin is that the finale was terribly inconclusive and soulless, and did not work as a sendoff to the franchise. Seriously, it’s ID-1-standalone-ending levels of bad and I don’t think that’s talked about enough. And even ID 1’s standalone ending at least had some emotional stakes to it. There’s no emotion in the scenes where you talk to the OG characters– in fact the writers seemed to care so little about the OG characters in this ending (and the trilogy as a whole) that they initially forgot that OG MC, Emma, Caleb, and Michael are actually a year below Aiden and Maria and not in the same grade.

And as a whole, it just ends on such a weird note– “Yay I finished my first year of high school, what’s next for me” to “And now your time at Berry must come to an end” is such a whiplash that I’m pretty sure it broke my fucking neck. I think rushed book endings like this and ATV’s ending walked so that the rushed endings of 2022-2023 Choices books could run.

There’s only one major plus of HSS that carried over well to HSS:CA, and that was the lack of smut scenes. Which is kind of expected, honestly. (Though I will say, the writing for CA was, arguably, noticeably more horny this time around… is that just me?)

Of course, CA isn’t without its other redeeming factors, which I have mentioned across each of these points. But the fact that it has these redeeming factors, these ideas that were good in concept but terrible in execution, just makes it all the more tragic as a series and it’s part of why I’m so hard on it.

See, had CA just been among the ranks of something like PPG 2016 or HBO’s Velma– a straight-up bad trilogy that butchered all the characters and everything about HSS and had no redeeming qualities and was ultimately a stain on the HSS franchise– I’d just have to go “Jesus H. Christ this sucks” and pretend it doesn’t exist.

But in actuality, it has ideas that I would enjoy to see explored as part of the world of HSS– I do genuinely like exploring Berry’s theatre department, and the idea of the OG and CA gangs going to London together. And there is some really good potential for interactions between the two groups, like Emma helping Ajay deal with his parents’ divorce, or the OG gang taking Skye under their wing as Brian’s younger sister. But it ultimately failed to handle those well and just ended up leaving me feeling empty inside. So it’s this weird tug-of-war between “I like you” and “I don’t like you”.

So I definitely wouldn’t consider CA to be awful, as it does have its share of redeeming qualities. But the thing is, those redeeming qualities are part of why the series left me feeling empty and disappointed, because we could have had something much greater for the HSS franchise. But this trilogy, as it is, probably would have been much better off as a completely new and separate franchise.

#choices stories you play #choices #choices game #choices stories we play fandom #high school story #choices stories we play #hss #choices hss #choices high school story #cadybear's choices reviews #choices high school story: class act #hss: class act #hss class act #high school story class act #high school story: class act #hss:ca #choices hss:ca

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thepoliticalvulcan · 22 days

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“Twitter Darryl” vs “Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem Darryl Cooper”

If you only just learned the name Darryl Cooper, congratulations you’re in a better emotional place. For my part, I’ve been dreading this guy getting more exposure since I learned about him last year.

My story is probably similar to a lot of people: in the wake of October 7th, we were looking for good voices to explore the context of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict beyond the settler - colonial - resistance - terrorism frameworks. Anyone with a thimble of historical awareness knows these framings are reductive and give the person wielding them permission to not care about one side’s children and non-combatants. To make bold proclamations about who really deserves the soil under their feet.

I’m no spring chicken, as an older millennial this is not my first war involving Israel and one or more Muslim entities. So I’m not precisely uninformed on October 7th but I do realize that a line has been crossed by Hamas. A bell has been rung that cannot be unrung and given historical precedent, what Israel was likely to do in retaliation was also liable to explore new depths of rage and horror that would make previous flare ups look like a tea party.

So I’m browsing the Dan Carlin subreddit because it’s one of the few places where I think I can find context, sources cited, and robust debate with nuance rather than elaborate justifications for a preferred outcome and permission structures to dismiss the suffering of the other. I see many people recommending a podcast called Maryrmade and somehow I missed the warnings first time through.

His series on Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem on the founding of Israel starting with the Russian pogroms in the late 1800s, following the thread of rising antisemitism in Europe and then, remarkably, he does something truly rare: he picks up the story of Muslims (and Jews, albeit much fewer in number at that time) in the region of the Ottoman Empire that would eventually become the Palestine Mandate and Israel and he tells the story of Muslims sympathetically. He presents Jews and Muslims as two victims of imperialism: Ottomon and European, who have been set against each other in a zero sum competition by external forces manipulating them to make them easier to exploit through division.

And some of this zero sum fighting is a consequence of tragedy, unforced error, and bitterness: oppression teaches its victims that everyone else is a potential oppressor if given the opportunity.

Now at some point, and I could not tell you exactly when, I became uncomfortable. Maybe it was some contrarian takes or weird vibes, I couldn’t tell you what exactly led me to start looking deeper into this Darryl Cooper guy. Which brings me to the Maryrmade subreddit where Cooper stans seem perpetually locked in battle with people showing up with various disagreeable Tweets from Cooper, including eliminationist sentiments towards queer people, Jan 6 apologia, and other alt right fascist crank stuff. Including a Tweet where he describes himself as a non-racist fascist. Turns out Dan Carlin even called him a fascist years ago.

The subreddit stans cling to a quote where Cooper rationalizes his Twitter usage as being a product of alcoholism and playing the troll. Which is classic alt right Schroedinger’s fascism: if you’re mad, you’re too sensitive and don’t have a sense of humor. If you’re not mad, here’s something else to move you further along the radicalization pipeline.

So that’s all very revealing. And I turn this over and over in my head. How is the creator of a definitive and humanistic history of Israel that empathizes with both sides while not trying to hide the nastiness, also so completely bought into some of the most sick and vicious pathologies of the modern era?

And I think I worked it out. He can sympathize with Muslims and Jews equally because he truly does not actually care about them as people. As an ultranationalist who seems to oppose the idea of creedal nations, his world is a Hobbesian hellscape of Volks fighting one another to be the last one standing so of course Jewish refugees from Europe wouldn’t see Palestianian Muslims as allies against Western bigotry and of course Muslims wouldn’t see Jewish refugees as victims rather than colonizers. For Cooper, tenderness towards someone outside your Volk is to be a sucker. Mercy for the other is an error.

And that is the key difference between the small l liberal or progressive or humanist vision of the world. The Darryl Coopers see competition between cultures, religions, and races as inevitable and desirable rather than something to struggle against in order to build a peaceful world. In some sense struggle is a constant but it’s because the Darryl Coopers wake up and choose to lean into the zero sum, Hobbesian hell world rather than see the struggle itself as the thing to overcome.

#Darryl cooper #Martyr made #Fascism #fear and loathing in jerusalem #humanism

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mors-et-virginem · 1 year

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Diary 08.09.23

Struggling. Burned out. Demoralized. Lonely. Sweating, endless sweating.

It all ties in to being neurodivergent and how that impacts me in the workplace. I started out at my current job doing really well, but lately I feel discouraged. I seem to be making mistakes that don’t even exist in our handbook. Every time I’m spoken to I listen to what’s said and do my best to ensure whatever happened doesn’t occur again. Then I come in to work after my day off just to be told something new that I’ve done “wrong.” It’s always something to do with my behavior. This time I was told I talk to customers too long. But if a customer asks me questions that require an explanation how do I ignore that? If a customer takes a liking to me and stays a few minutes to chat after their purchase how is that bad if there’s no other customers in the shop to help? I’m not telling them my life story or anything, it’s just usually them asking my name, thanking me for my help and me returning their thanks, a handshake and a quip about our hours if they ask. I don’t understand how this is different from what I see my coworkers doing, or my boss, who’s always interacting with customers, laughing, asking them about their lives, he obviously knows them on a personal level so why is it different for me when a customer does the same? I don’t initiate these interactions, they’re just happy with the service I provide. So how am I wrong? And this has been happening consistently for weeks. I’m never written up, but I get a lengthy lecture every time he’s displeased, at least 10 minutes long this time. My heart starts racing, I feel my skin getting hot and I want to cry. And the whole time I somehow manage to keep it together, respond with affirmations and thank him for bringing it to my attention. The week prior he lectured me in front of my coworker about things he’d heard second hand, which were absolutely untrue. Then he turned and asked my coworker if they had anything to add, and I felt like the floor dropped out from under me. My coworker brought up an occasion that happened weeks ago that I couldn’t recall and claimed I didn’t give enough information and looked like I was uninformed which wasn’t true-I was careful about the words I used because we sell products that while used for pain relief, we can’t use verbiage that would imply it’s medicinal, etc. We’re not doctors. But it was unpleasant. This coworker opened up to me about their personal life and their struggles, and I thought of them as a friend, at least in the workplace. Now I feel like I can’t trust them. I’ve also been lectured about how I speak. “I know you’re socially awkward but still.” I struggle with mixing my words up, or sometimes I do this thing where I’ll mix the first letters of a word with the second, word salad as I like to call it. It’s frustrating not being able to phrase things the way I’d like, but I take time to think on what I’m saying and correct myself if I slip up. I’ve been like this my whole life and I know it’s gotten worse over the last few years, but I can’t help it. I don’t know what my exact problem is. I was diagnosed with depression, ptsd and ocd as a child. I never really understood how it affected me until I was an adult. I’m not even sure if that’s what’s wrong with me but I don’t have the resources for a psychiatrist right now to re diagnose me as an adult.

Now when I come into work I’m always on guard. I feel like I have to be careful of what I say or do, and it feels like I’m having to shove myself into this very small box and try my best to be “normal”.

Recently I realized this is a pattern at most of my jobs. Since 2019 I haven’t had a job for more than a year or so at a time. I start strong, and leave feeling hollowed out. Not all of my jobs have left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and some just didn’t pan out by circumstance. Like when one of my jobs closed because the owner sold it without warning to a local university.

But now that I’ve seen the pattern, not just in my jobs but my personal life, I’m concerned. There’s something wrong with me, and I’m scared it’s not fixable just by trying my best alone. I’m not saying I’m the perfect employee, I do make mistakes and I own them. But this series of seemingly arbitrary infractions that are beyond the scope of our guidebook brought to my attention, the demoralizing lectures and the embarrassment of being lectured in front of others instead of privately is really getting to me. I’m looking for another job. I’m just scared I’m never going to find a place again where I fit in and I’m not having the weirdest things held over my head. Being neurodivergent and speed running through life unmedicated and largely without therapy has its consequences. There’s a lot that I’m realizing only now, and most of it circles back to how badly I think I’ve fucked up my life. I can keep it together for a while, then it falls apart again, and I just feel like it’s a cycle I’ll never be able to break, and I don’t tell anyone because I don’t want my friends to think, “Oh, here she goes again.”

I’m trying not to give in and just let it all fall down around me. Trying to hold on to hope. I just needed a place to put this down and free up some space in my mind.

#personal #text post #neurodivergent #neurodivergent struggles

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starberrywander · 1 year

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You know what I really really hate? Conversations that go like this:

Person 1: “Group A does thing B.” (Phrasing implies that thing B is a universal within group A)

Person 2: “No, they don’t.” (Refuting the idea that thing B is a universal.)

Person 1: “Yes they do. Here’s an example of someone from Group A doing thing B.” (Treating the response as an inverse universal [No one in group A does thing B] instead of as a refutation of the original universal.)

Person 2: “You’re wrong and I know because I’m a member of group A and I don’t do thing B” (continuing to refute the original universal.)

Like, person 1 is obviously prejudiced against group A if they’re trying to make sweeping generalizations of every member. They are definitely in the wrong here and potentially being malicious.

However person 2 also makes a mistake by 1) Addressing person 1′s claim instead of their prejudice, and 2) Failing to recognize what person 1 is communicating. Like, person 2 isn’t at fault for the prejudice being expressed and they aren’t a bad person or anything for this. But they are unlikely to achieve anything here and may potentially make things worse because they are making person 1 continue to argue their point. People tend to dig their heels in on a position the more they try to defend it so person 1 will likely leave this conversation even more convinced that they are right.

Chances are if you see a statement like the one person 1 made, it’s bait. The “Person 1″ may not realize it if they are just repeating talking points that they have heard, but it still functions the same way. It challenges you to refute which just turns into an argument; either further convincing them that they are right or convincing undecided onlookers that their claim has legitimacy because you can’t effectively disprove it when taken at face value.

I see this with a lot of things right but the most common right now is the “Trans people are groomers” thing. If you read/listen to arguments on this topic you will see this format of conversation every-fucking-where. It usually also turns into conspiracy theories and frustration and its just very not fun to deal with. Massive headache inducer.

I guess what I wanted to say was if you find yourself in this type of conversation try to identify which role you are playing.

If you’re a person 1, check your prejudices. You are probably heavily biased against the “group A” and likely either discriminating against them or at a high risk of doing so. Check yourself and reassess. Remind yourself that all people are people; complex individuals who cannot be fit into neat little boxes. And also remember that no group is a hivemind; the only universals are the things that define what the group is. If it isn’t in the group’s own criteria for being a member then it isn’t a universal. There will always be exceptions and variation. If someone tells you that your statement is wrong, especially if they are from your “group A”, listen to them. They are almost always right. Don’t be stubborn.

And if you’re a person 2, don’t argue at face value. It’s bait. Analyze a little closer and address the prejudice. Call out the stereotyping and describe what is happening, but don’t try to argue their point. If you make them try to defend their position they will likely just convince themselves more. Call out and describe but don’t argue. And if you’re gonna try to argue please, for the love of god, do not refute their universal with another universal. “No one is saying that,” “No one is doing that,” “That’s literally not happening anywhere,” “That never happens.” They will just use it against you. All it takes is one example for them to refute your universal and it makes their position look more credible to uninformed onlookers which is not what you want. It’s still probably best not to argue with them on it but if you absolutely must do so please remember to include nuance. And don’t forget that you also aren’t immune to prejudice so, again, don’t be stubborn. If someone calls you out on something, listen to them and check yourself instead of getting defensive.

#trans #transgender #anti-trans #prejudice #rant post #politics #debate #ugh #pride #gay #lgbt

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p1ssyellowplatypuses · 2 years

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Until I do

(Kosinsky’s POV) by Yshi Castillo

I had known, for a while now, that she had loved somebody else. I would’ve been a fool to not notice the way her eyes stared at a distance whenever we talked. When she closes her eyes as if to imagine it was not I, but somebody else. I knew I was easily replaceable. Had any other man taken my place, it wouldn’t have made any difference. But she was kind enough to let me stay for as long as I have.

It didn’t make it any less painful when she left.

The day of her departure came unannounced, and I remained uninformed until she was no longer here, beyond my reach. I realized I had lost her the moment she left.

It was a typical day, and our schedule went about our way. Some inconvenience here or there, but nonetheless it was as usual. I just finished a piece accompanied by her sweet singing voice which enamored the crowd, as it did to me some years ago when I first met her. We had lunch together along with some of our colleagues that were vacant at the time. We talked and ate the food that the Japanese waitresses, clad in a kimono and a gaily colored sash, served us in a local teahouse.

As my colleagues and I conversed, I noticed how your eyes lingered somewhere behind me. I asked you what was up but you ignored me, as if you hadn’t heard me call your name specifically and asked.

I turned around and noticed a sign in the distance, the sign which I assume was what she was looking at.

There, written horizontally as if to mimic an American sign, was the name “Seiyōken Hotel.”

I should have realized then. Why didn’t I realize then?

I found it odd that a hotel had piqued her interest. After all, she had been to so many, how different can this one be?

It was. Different

When we finished our lunch, we rode a rickshaw in pairs as we went back to our hotel. Of course, I took the opportunity to snatch the seat beside her. As the shafu raised the rickshaw, ever so slightly, she gazed into the direction of the Seiyōken Hotel with anticipation and yearning.

My mind had thought that maybe she had wanted to sing in that hotel.

Fool.

And that sometime within the day, I could offer her my companionship as both a pianist and friend she could hang out with had she needed a person to go with.

The opportunity never came. Never had a chance to begin with.

When afternoon came, I was in my hotel room reading the music sheet for my performance tomorrow. It shall be my very last performance in Japan, for now. I remembered that she had finished all of her’s. I looked at my notebook where I kept track of my schedule and her’s.

After my last performance tomorrow, I will invite her to dinner.

I thought. To celebrate the end of our shows in the hotel we stayed in at the moment. Maybe I could even extend the invitation to check out the hotel she was interested in. Maybe it could lead us into spending more time together.

I am confused as to why I felt the need to constantly stick around her lately. We had been friends and have been together for so long and yet I had never felt such a strong gravitational pull as I have now. I knew that I wanted to be by her side.

And so when I opened the door and saw her adorned in a long gray coat, a gray skirt and a white blouse, I was confused to say the least. There weren’t any shows to perform in or watch today.

“Where are you heading?”

I nonchalantly asked, trying as hard as I could to sound uninterested.

“Visiting an old friend”

“Old friend?”

“Yes, Watanabe”

“Watanabe! You mentioned him before. Is there a chance for us to meet? I shall make the most of my time in Japan after all”

“Sure, I’ll let him know. No promises though. He can be a bit stubborn sometimes”

You chuckled. I am mesmerized.

I should’ve noticed how your eyes softened by the mere imagination, how fondness emitted from your voice. But I was a fool blinded by your beauty to notice anything else.

“Uh. Ehem. I see, be careful on your way then. Travel safe, and don’t stay out too late”

I tried sounding as unaffected as I could.

You stared at me. It made me blink. Before I could even begin to think of a question, you gave me no chance to speak as you bid me goodbye in a voice so silent I almost missed it.

I stood there foolishly looking at your retreating figure. I was confused and suddenly nervous.

What in the world had just happened?

Hours later, my question was answered with a ring of my hotel room telephone.

I answered the call confused, as I expected calls to be made during busy days such as tomorrow. When the call ended, I was left devastated.

You had left and flown off to America.

Without notice and without regards to the people you have left here. To me. Suddenly I am hit by the realization that I may not have mattered. And it led to questions I was better off not knowing the answer to.

Had you even cared for anyone at all?

She did. It just wasn’t you.

And I came to learn that fact when I happened upon Watanabe after days of waiting out by the local teahouse near Seiyōken Hotel. I interrogated him as politely as I could which meant I had offered him tea and slammed the table upon hearing what he had said.

You asked him to come with you.

It irritates me to no end and I am more irritated about the fact that it affects me in this way.

Watanabe must have realized something I didn't at the time, as he stood up and left me with my own thoughts.

I had lost you.

And I realized, too late, what that had meant. I cannot deal with these overwhelming feelings. Not now that I am without you. Whatever shall I do with all these emotions without you? The only person that I want to give it to.

I shall find you and throw this unwanted love I had carelessly grown by your feet.

Someday, someone will feel for me the same way I feel for you.

I’ll stop loving you.

But until I do, I’ll run after you.

Until then, I’ll let you break my heart again.

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cello-trash · 2 years

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Some autistic Jack head canons I’ve been thinking about regarding Jacks acceptance of his autism

Bob and Alicia knew he was autistic from a very young age but don’t tell him out of a misplaced thought that he’ll be better off not knowing and that he could be “more normal” that way

They esp don’t want the press to find out bc god knows what headlines they’d write

so Jack grows up knowing he’s “different” bc of how other people treat him but not knowing why

He gets officially diagnosed right after his OD when he really starts going to therapy regularly but he feels like it’s just another thing that makes him “fucked up” so he tries to mask even harder

Jack is esp sensitive to noise and he can get overstimulated easily. This makes hockey games hard sometimes. Usually he’s so focused on the hockey he doesn’t even notice how loud the arena is, but sometimes his head buzzes and he gets so overwhelmed that afterwards he has to just lay in the dark not speaking or moving for hours after the game

When he’s home, Bitty lays on top of Jack like a weighted blanket which is one of jacks favorite things. Bitty will feed him finger food and have him drink water to make sure he’s physically fine while Jack is nonverbal

When it’s an away game Bitty gifts Jack Monsieur Bun and Jack runs his fingers over the little stuffed animal and it calms him down

Things get better for Jack when he stops thinking of autism as something that means he’s a fuck up

it’s actually bc of Bitty he realizes this. He sees just how much stim toys and accommodations help Bitty with ADHD but sees how ashamed Bitty is of using them and when he tries to convince Bitty to use them when he needs them Bitty raises an eyebrow and goes “I’ll do it if u also stop being ashamed Mr. Zimmermann” and Jack goes “…oh…”

Once Jack gets some stim toys he realizes that he’s actually been stimming his whole life to calm himself calm down when he’s overwhelmed: the way he’d rock back and forth on the bench, the way he’d chew on his mouth guard, the way he’d tap his thighs in repetitive patterns, etc.

As he starts to mask less he finds that sometimes he’ll verbally stim by reciting people’s hockey stats on the bench (he memorized the stats for most of the NHL when he was a kid but mostly these days it’s Bitty’s stats) or flap his hands around

When the press see him do this he doesn’t really respond and just stares at them blankly until they move on… he doesn’t really see how him being autistic is their business

That changes tho when some other NHL Player in their division starts campaigning for AutismSpeaks and all of a sudden Jack is checking this man really hard constantly and getting into little fights with him

Of course people notice and he gets asked about it at a press conference

And Jack goes “well he’s either an uninformed idiot who should look into the orgs he works with before he does or he’s a piece of shit who represents a piece of shit organization” and he goes on this rant about all the shitty things AutismSpeaks has done/advocated for

And when the press asks him why he knows so much about it he goes “bc I’m fucking autistic. Y’all always called me a hockey robot with no emotions I’m surprised it took you this long to figure it out.” And then he walks out of the press room

Bitty gives him the biggest hug and kisses afterwards and makes Jack his favorite pie (but not before they have hot sex)

Shitty calls him the next day and is like “bro I’m so sorry I called u a robot and made fun of u bro that was so ableist of me bro”

And Jack rolls his eyes and says “when the press called me an emotionless robot it always struck a nerve but with u it was always fond… u always stayed behind to explain jokes I didn’t get or play with my hair or whatever. U had my back and it was a joke… plus how do u know that I’m not actually a robot beep beep boop boop

Jack becomes an advocate for autism while he’s playing and then once he retires he does lots of fundraising and such

At first Bob and Alicia don’t get why he would want everyone to know that he’s autistic but after a serious talk with Jack they understand that they were thinking about it the wrong way. They were never malicious but they raised Jack during the peak of the “vaccine autism scare” and so subconsciously thought of autism as a curse

Jack jokes that thank god they didn’t actually understand that autism wasn’t a bad thing bc then they might have become Autism Parents tm and they’d have shitty puzzle piece tattoos

#i have so many more thoughts but this is already such a long post #if anyone made it this far and wants to hear more plz let me know and I’d be happy to talk more haha #omgcp #jack zimmermann #autistic jack

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httpdabi · 3 years

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Jealousy

Word count: 6,5k

Genre: Smut, romance, no quirk lol

Warnings: 18+, a little bit of choking, a little bit of daddy kink, rough sex, dom!dabi , jealousy kinda, unprotected sex, alcohol

Credit to the owner of the pic!!

✨Friends to lovers fic✨

Throwing your phone across the room, deep breath coming out of your mouth. The fact that he was coming back today made the time pass so slow it was painful. You were glancing at your phone every now and then checking what time it is, knowing he should arrive around 17PM. Rolling down on your old bed, you took a good look of your room.

Pastel pink walls, white bed, small working table in the left corner of the room. Beside your bed were photos taped on the wall. All those photos woke a memory in you. Some of the photos were of you and your friends, but most of them were of you and Dabi.

Dabi.

Your childhood best friend. You will never forget the day you first met him. Shy little Touya not wanting to play with your dolls. I’M A MAN. He screamed back then, throwing the doll away, making you cry loudly. You will never forget how scared he got in the moment you started screaming around, trying to hush you down somehow. He did everything he could hoping his parents won’t hear.

Yours and Touya’s parents were literally best friends, visiting each other almost every day. Having to face him so often, you two almost had no choice then to become friends. At the beginning none of you were impressed by each others company. But how both of you grew up, you were becoming closer and closer. At some point, you two became inseparable.

When Touya started getting piercings, you were so jealous. You wanted to get that Certilage piercing just like him, but your parents were so strict even the thought of it made their hair get up. Of course Touya being Touya, he didn’t give a two shits about their decision. Picking you up one day after school and brining you to his friend that did his piercings too. That night both families were fighting. His parents lecturing him how he is such a bad influence to you, and your parents screaming on you how you’ll never get married with piercing like that. Saying it’s not ladylike.

,, If no one marries her, I will’’ Touya said, making your heart flutter, and everyone else in the room laughed loudly, finding it cute how he was protecting you.

Of course, growing up both of you went different directions in your life. Moving out of your parents place was best thing that happened to you. Having that freedom you never had before, you were appreciating even little things.

Dabi moved out in another city, saying he never wanted to live in his hometown anyway. Of course, there wasn’t a day that he didn’t contact you. But having him so far away made things much harder for you. The only positive thing about him moving to another city was the fact that your huge crush on him would melt down, at least you hoped so.

You were so in love with him. How could you not be ? Having him around so much, such a handsome and good guy, you simply had to develop feelings toward him.

Walking downstairs, you heard Enji laughing loudly at something your father said. You visiting your parents home again, while Todoroki’s were also there, all of you waiting for Dabi to return. It made your heart warm up again, missing moments when all of you were spending time together so often.

Making your way toward kitchen, you opened the fridge looking for something to eat. Not that you were hungry, you were simply bored and something had to kill that boredom.

Taking the milk pudding, you opened it and took one spoon. You tried to multitask somehow, with one hand you were eating the pudding, while with other hand just scrolling your instagram feed.

Suddenly, a head placed on your shoulder, trying to see what you were looking at. Your parents always did that. They had to know why you were always holding that damn phone in your hands.

,, Dad, this is private, I’m not a child anymore’’ you whined, pushing your fathers head away. You hated when he does that, privacy is privacy and it has to be respected.

,, I didn’t know you were into daddy kink’’ a familiar voice whispered, making you flinch in surprise. Turning around you immediately jumped on the person standing behind you. Dabi laughed, placing his hand around your waist hugging you strongly, before he pulled you up in the air.

,, You little piece of shit, I missed you so much’’ you said hugging him back, not paying any attention to your parents in the background.

The rest of the day was all about Touya. How he was, what did he do, does he have a girlfriend and so on. Of course he liked to be the center of the attention, talking about everything. Not that you were complaining, you were sinking in every word that came out of his mouth, admiring him as always.

At the end of the day, your parents made plans that this week all of you should meet and have a super cool bbq like in the old times. Which meant one big ass sleep over, with Todoroki’s. Those nights were always amazing, so much food, so much sweets and of course so much alcohol for grown ups. That was the reason why Rei and Enji slept over after all. All of them would simply get wasted.

Dabi decided he will sleep at your place, since he never saw your new apartment, all of them agreeing, knowing that there’s a lot he probably wanted to tell you.

First both of you went to his old home, placing his suitcase and taking just few stuff to bring over. He didn’t want to waste any time, since his parents were still at your place, and he really wanted to finally see your new apartment.

Placing his bag in his hallway, he immediately went inside your living room, looking around, commenting what doesn’t look good and how he would decorate it much better. He opened the fridge, feeling like home and took one ice cream out of the freezer. Making his way toward your couch.

,, So, where’s that piece of shit called Kai’’ he asked, biting the chocolate on the ice cream. You were confused a bit, since you broke up with Kai long time ago.

,, Didn’t I already tell you? It’s been six months since we broke up’’ you laughed out. How can it be possible that you left your dear Touya uninformed about your love life.

,, Oh, that breaks my heart.’’ He said sarcastically. ,, What happened?’’ he added licking the ice cream.

,, Well, he cheated on me’’ you lied, sitting down beside him. Well, technically he did cheat on you, but the reason behind it was because he found out about your feelings about Dabi. He found out that he was only being used to forget your one sided love. Not that you didn’t like Kai, you did find him attractive, but you couldn’t force yourself to do with him stuff every couple did. Which made him cheat on you, hoping he will make you step further. But at his surprise you did something every normal person would do, broke up with him.

You did feel disappointed that you two had to part your ways like that, but you also understood him and with that you couldn’t force yourself to hate him or be that much hurt.

,, He didn’t deserve you anyway. I have no idea what did you see in him. Dude looks like he fed a whole Village in Africa, no offense ‘’ he said, making you laugh.

,, Anyway, we are invited to Mina’s birthday this Saturday’’ you said placing both of your legs on the table.

,, Aren’t we having a bbq that day?’’ Dabi asked as he placed the stick of his ice cream on the table.

,, Yeah, but we can still go tho. They’ll be really happy to see you again, I told everyone that you are back’’ you said, as he placed his head on your lap. You smiled, knowing how much he loves when you play with his hair.

,, Sure, we can do both. I am glad I’ll see them all again’’ he said making your stomach twist out of jealousy. You knew how much Yua and Akari liked Dabi. Of course you were friends, but the fact that all these two had their eyes on him made your blood boil. Even Mina was into him, until she found a boyfriend recently. They didn’t know that you liked him, but you knew very well that they weren’t happy that you had him by your side all the time.

After telling you about the city and all his experience, you two decided to go to sleep since it was already 2AM. You went to the bathroom to change into your silk pajama, coming back only to find Dabi in your bed wearing only shorts.

,, I really wanna get some tattoos too’’ you said looking the tattoos over his chest and arms, wanting to touch every single one of them.

,, Do it’’ he simply said, placing his arms under his head. You just rolled your eyes on him, he knew very well that you weren’t that brave.

,,You can sleep here, I’ll crash on the couch’’ you said ready to stand up. He was a guest after all, and for him you would sleep on the floor if he asked you to.

,, Of course you’re not’’ he said grabbing your arm and pulling you in the bed beside him. Wrapping his one arm around you.

,, Don’t get all cold with me suddenly’’ he laughed while covering both of you with your covers. Of course, you two slept together in one bed before, it wasn’t something unusual. But knowing how you feel about him, you knew that with every move like this, your feelings will grow back even stronger then they were before.

,, Touya, we aren’t children anymore’’ you said, trying to wiggle out of his grip.

,, That’s exactly what I was thinking about. Might as well do stuff adults do’’ he said jokingly, making you push him even harder. Making sure you are smiling he just held you stronger repeating that he was joking.

Once you realized that he won’t really give up, you just gave in, preparing yourself for one sleepless night with him.

Dabi placed your leg over him, slowly caressing your tight while telling you about some nonsense like he did before until you would fall asleep. Once he thought that you fall asleep, you felt his long arms around you and his lips on your head.

Having him so close to you, he didn’t know what effect he had on you. For him it was just one normal night, while for you it was something you won’t be able to keep out of your mind next upcoming weeks.

The next days it was like before. Dabi was spending more time at your place as he did home. You two would spend time together, playing games, going grocery shopping together, visiting cafes and so on. You even saw Akari in one café, and of course she was all over Dabi. You couldn’t watch it, she was touching his arm so recklessly, and the fact that he wasn’t doing anything about it didn’t’ help either.

Excusing yourself, you said that you felt sick. Dabi wanted to follow you home, but Akari was insisting how he should stay, since they didn’t see each other for such a long time. Not wanting to make any scene, you just told him to stay, not to worry and left them.

On your way home, you felt terrible. It wasn’t anything big, but yet you overacted there and had to leave. But you simply couldn’t watch or hear anything more. You were the one that was supposed to touch him like that. You wanted to touch all those tattoos, and even tho you were his best friend you couldn’t find the courage to do it. Yet, stupid Akari did it without a problem.

Knowing that Dabi will probably just come back to your place, you made your way toward your parents house, not ready to face him somehow. In that moment you wished you didn’t gave him your spare keys. You didn’t want to wait for him and think about what they were doing.

Of course your parents were more then happy to welcome you home. Since you moved out you didn’t sleep at their place that often. But they knew something was wrong, not wanting to bother you, they just let you be.

Once again the night was sleepless for you. Dabi did contact you, asking if you are ok and if he should bring something to you, but once you saw that Akari posted him on her Instagram story, you couldn’t even force yourself to text him back.

You knew that It was so childish of you, he didn’t even know how you feel about him, yet that something small would upset you so much. But your feelings were getting better of you. The whole night you were rolling around in your bed, thinking if he’s home yet, if they are fucking somewhere. You were thinking what would have happened if you just stayed. If you did, he would probably just leave home with you.

Waking up next morning, you wanted to kill yourself. The soreness in your eyes didn’t help either. You saw few messages from Dabi, asking where you are, yada yada. Seeing that it was sent around 4am, you tossed your phone across the bed. Did he stay that long with her ?

You slowly stood up and made your way toward the bathroom, brushing your teeth before leaving home. Your parents were insisting that you should stay, and spend the rest of the day with them. It was Saturday anyway, so you’ll be here later anyway.

But you didn’t want, you had to clean your apartment a bit together with your thoughts. Also it was Minas birthday today, so you had to get ready before you leave for the bbq and her birthday.

Opening the door of your apartment, you saw Dabi’s shoes placed beside yours. Slowly tip toeing, you found him in your bedroom asleep. You slowly closed the door, and started cleaning quietly, making sure not to wake him up.

You wanted to lay down beside him, and simply cuddle yourself close to his body, but because of the thought of the last night, you also wanted to grab his hair and force him out of your apartment.

Of course, once he woke up, you couldn’t be mad at him anymore. You had to act it up, and just ignore what happened, after all how could you explain to him why were you even mad ? Dabi left your place around 16PM, leaving you all alone with your thoughts once again. You whished you could tell him how you felt, you wished he would understand.

When the time came, you wore your light purple spaghetti strap dress. Since the evenings were still kidna cold, you decided to wear your oversized black cardigan that was the same length as your dress. Covering just enough.

After doing your make up and straightening your hair, you placed your small bag over your shoulder and wore your overknee lace up boots before you left. The cardigan was bothering you a bit, since you knew how hot it usually gets when you’re in club, but once the wind brushed your naked tight, you didn’t mind it anymore.

Once you got at your parents place, you helped them with all the preparing. Your mom didn’t let you prepare the food, being scared you’ll ruin your dress. But you still helped with plates and all the alcohol. Placing everything on the table outside.

When they arrived Enji and your dad immediately started with the bbq. Rei and your mom were simply enjoying the evening and sipping on their wine, waiting for their food. While both of you and Dabi were simply on your phones. Once again you were upset, all of them complimented your looks, everyone but him. Piece of shit like he looked any better, whit his simple white shirt and jeans.

Lies.

He looked so beautiful without any effort, the tattoos on his arm totally visible.

You took the wine from the table filling your glass, drinking it fast down. Just the thought of Akari and other girls being all over him was driving you crazy. You had to prepare yourself.

,, Slow down doll, I don’t want to spend the rest of my night holding your hair in the toilet’’ Dabi said taking the now empty glass away from you and laughing a bit.

,,Don’t worry about me, I’m capable of taking care of myself on my own’’ you said taking the glass back and filling it with wine again. Who does he think he is ?

When the meat was done, both of you ate and drank a bit before leaving. Dabi didn’t want to drive since he also had plans to drink. Enji was insisting on giving you a ride, but you two didn’t want to break his fun, after all the club wasn’t that far away.

,,So, who will be there tonight?’’ Dabi asked you, taking the box of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting one cigarette.

,, Mina of course, Yua, Himari, Ryohei, Hiro, Akari and Kai’’ you said, placing your hands in the pockets of your cardigan.

,, We should make your little Kai jealous, what do you think?’’ He said, placing his arm around your shoulders.

,, Nah, no need’’ you said looking down on the floor.

When you arrived the club was already full of people. Thankfully Mina waited for you two in front of the club, not wanting for you two to waste your time looking for them. You gave her the present that you and Dabi bought few days ago and graduated her. Knowing that Mina is in relationship with Hiro, so the hug she gave Dabi didn’t bother you so much.

Once you got inside, you greeted everyone and ordered your drinks. Of course Akari was giving all of her attention to Dabi, trying to get as close as possible to him.

None of you wanted to wait, so all of you ordered your drinks. You ordered Malibu with cherry juice, you were up for something sweet. Since the sweet drinks kick in much faster and that’s exactly what you needed. Dabi ordered whisky, while Kai, Hiro and Ryohei ordered pure Vodka. Rest of the girls ordered Wine.

,, Hey’’ you heard very familiar voice close to your ear. You turned around sipping on your drink, welcoming Kai with a small smile and nodding your head.

,, How are youu?’’ he asked loud enough for you to hear. Body too close to your own in your opinion.

,, I am good and you?’’ you simply answered finishing your drink, asking yourself why is he starting this random boring chat. Realizing that your friends were eyeing you and your ex down, you smirked to yourself. If they only knew, how little shit you gave about him.

,, Let’s go get another round of drinks’’ you said, and made your way toward the bar, while Kai was following every step you made.

,, You look beautiful tonight’’ Kai pointed after you ordered what everyone was drinking. Well, at least someone appreciates your effort tonight, you thought to yourself.

,, Thank you, you look cool yourself’’ you said already trying your drink, while giving the money with your right hand to the bartender. He didn’t look bad at all, wearing black button up shirt, one part of it tucked in his jeans. His typical black convers shoes. He looked good.

Once you two got back, placing all the drinks on the table, you could feel Dabi’s eyes on you. You weren’t sure if he wanted to tell you something, so you took his Whisky and went to him.

,, What is it ?’’ you asked giving him his drink.

,, Nothing at all’’ he replied eying you down. He was about to say something more, but Akari interrupted him, saying some nonsense. Not wanting to watch them together, you just left them, making your way toward Ryohei, Himari and Kai on the dancefloor.

All of you were dancing. Jumping around and waving your body to the sound of the music. You realized that Kai was trying real hard to get you to himself, but sadly your drinks didn’t hit you that much yet. Still the only person that was on your mind was Dabi. You wanted to look at him, and see what’s he doing, but you were afraid once you turn around you’ll find Akari all over him again, or even worse making out with him. It would definitely ruin your night.

After few more drinks, you finally started getting tipsy. While Mother Mother was playing, you and Himari were jumping around, making your way back toward the table to get your other drink that was already there, you two were screaming at each other ,, My daddy’s got a gun, My daddy’s got a gun, My daddy’s got a gun, you better run’’ moving your body crazily just as the music was.

,, Cheers’’ Himari screamed, once both of you placed a bit salt on your hand. Licking the salt of your hand, both of you drank the tequila fast before sucking the lemon. Making the weird face, both of you laughed preparing another shot.

Making your way back to the others, both of you were going crazy to the beat of the song you loved. With a new drink in your hand, you didn’t think about the consequences. After all the music was just so good, you simply had to drink.

Dancing around, you felt a body pressed against your. Tilting your head to the side, you realized it’s Kai standing behind you, trying to get as much of you as he could. At that moment you didn’t give a fuck anymore, just giving in and dancing with him. You saw Himari and Mina laughing at you, thinking you two will get together.

,, I’ll go smoke one fast, wanna come?’’ Kai asked. You simply shook your head giving him a sign that you'll simply wait and found yourself once again dancing with Himari. You were glad Himari was there, since without her you wouldn’t have much fun as you had now.

,, You are fast’’ you said, feeling Kai’s body behind you again. Slow down by Chase Atlantic started playing, no better song for grinding your body against someone else. Moving your body slowly, you felt his hands holding your hips firmly.

,, Are you sure you aren‘t into daddy kink doll?“raspy and deep voice made you twitch in shock. ,, What’s wrong? Didn’t expect me ?’’ he added, holding your hips stronger, not giving you any chance to move away from him.

You felt like there was no need to answer him, since Mina bought you another drink you were already busy sipping on your drink . After all, all you wanted to do was drink and get wasted in that moment anyway. So you moved your body from the side to the side, enjoying how close his body was to yours.

Realizing that you drank your drink, Dabi took it form your hand and gave it to the bartender that was passing by anyway. Turning you around to face him, he took your arms and placed them around his neck, while his own arms found their way to your waist.

,, Wasn’t the plan to make Kai jealous?’’ he asked. You could feel his hot breath on your ear. Tilting your head a bit to the left, you closed your eyes and gave him a small nod with the biggest grin ever.

The grin was long gone once you felt his hands over your ass, squeezing it tightly. ,, Then why am I at the end the jealous one ?’’ He asked giving you one more squeeze. Drunk like that you forgot about your friends and what might they think.

,, Is this how you treat your daddy?’’ he added, not giving you a chance to even progress the last question he gave you. You were never into daddy kink, but coming from his lips, you were ready to call him daddy as much as he wanted.

,, I want.. drink.. haha’’ you said laughing, hoping he will get you another one, since you weren’t capable to do it on your own anymore.

,, We are going home’’ he said. He was already tipsy on his own, but nowhere drunk as you were. He told everyone that you two are leaving, not giving you much time to greet them. Seeing disappointed look on Akari’s face made your night. IN YOUR FACE YOU BITCH ASS HOE

Dabi helped you wear your cardigan, and placed your bag over your shoulders, before he placed his hand around your waist helping you walk a bit. Well, you could walk, but with his grip around you, it was much easier.

,, I thought you could take care of yourself’’ he said once you two were outside. He placed you on the nearest bench, just to light up his cigarette before he pulled you up once again. You placed your arm around his shoulders, bragging about how you can walk perfectly fine.

,, Stop pissing me off doll, you’re hard to hold’’ he said as his grip was getting stronger.

,,Or what ?’’ You laughed, taking the cigarette from him and placing it between your lips. You don’t smoke usually, but alcohol took over you. Dabi laughed surprised, not used at the sight of you smoking.

,, My little Touya, you weren’t even born when I started smoking’’ you managed to say, while he was just laughing at the nonsense you were telling him.

Dabi didn’t know what he should do first, hold you firmly or pull your dress down, scared it was to high up for everyone else to see what’s under it.

,,Now, behave yourself, we are almost home’’ he said pulling your dress down a little, and throwing the almost done cigarette from your lips on the floor.

At his and your surprise both of your parents were still outside enjoying their time. You threw your arm up in the air ready to greet them, but Dabi stopped you fast enough. It’s not like your parents have anything against you drinking. But he wasn’t in a mood to talk with them about anything tonight. And he knew very well that drunk like that you were more then ready for a chat with them.

,, Already home?’’ Enji screamed once he saw you two. You were ready to brag about how you wanted to party a bit longer, but Dabi once again stopped you, telling them how you didn’t feel good that much.

,,What’s your problem man ?’’ You hissed at the party breaker that was pulling you upstairs to your room. Looking how your parents prepared your room made you grin. There was a mattress beside your bed prepared for Dabi.

,, They really think you’ll sleep down there’’ you grinned.

,, Obviously’’ Dabi said, placing you slowly on your bed.

,, Now, change into your pajama while I’m brushing my teeth’’ he said slowly, making sure you understand every word.

With alcohol in your system, you just lain down to rest a bit, before getting all the power and will you had to change.

Pulling your dress over your head, you started looking for your pajamas. Seeing Dabi’s shirt on the floor, you felt satisfied and just wore it. Standing there in the room, you thought if it’s his shirt he wore today, or just the one he got himself for bed. You would rather sleep naked than in a shirt he just wore in the club. Even the thought of the smell of all the smoke and alcohol made you feel dizzy.

Taking the part of his shirt, you pulled it close enough for you to sniff it making sure it’s not his shirt from clubbing.

,,What are you doing doll? ‘’ You froze. Looking to the side, you saw him leaning on the doorframe while smirk was formed on his lips. Luckily there was enough alcohol in your system to feel embarrassed in that very moment, since the view of you sniffing his shirt was weird as fuck.

,, Can’t get enough of me ?’’ he added getting closer to you. ,, You have to wear some shorts, or I’ll really be forced sleep on the mattress tonight’’ he added looking you up and down, while you just stood there speechless.

,, Come here, let’s take off your make up’’ he said, placing his hand on your back, leading the way to the bathroom.

Once you were in the bathroom, Dabi pulled you up, making you sit on the washing machine. Slowly helping you wash your teeth. Swinging your legs playfully, Dabi almost poured the water he prepared for you on the floor. Placing the glass to the side, he took your legs and wrapped them around his waist. Even tho you weren’t sober, you could completely understand the position you were in. Taking the wet wipes he started cleaning your make up carefully. You just closed your eyes enjoying his touch on your face, while he was giving his best to do it gentle as possible.

Sudden feel of a skin brushing over your nose made you open your eyes. Seeing his face not even inches from yours, made you froze. His nose brushing against your own, before you felt his soft lips against your own.

,, You are driving me crazy’’ he said, placing his forehead against yours. Not thinking twice you placed your hands on his cheeks and pulled him in for another kiss. At first you knew that he was surprised since he just stood there, but after a short second you felt him smile into the kiss, leaning in and wanting more.

With his hands under your, or better to say his own shirt, he was moving them up and down slowly. The touch of his hands rubbing your naked skin softly made you want more of him. Pulling him closer with your legs, you placed your hands on his chest , wanting to feel everything you could.

Pulling your head back breaking the kiss, you attacked his neck, leaving wet kisses all over it. Touya pulled your body up, placing his hands on your ass, making his way toward your room. Making small breaks while pushing your body against the wall trying to kissing you like his life depended on it.

Once he placed you on the bad, he didn’t waste any time, hovering over you and kissing your neck. Wanting everyone to know to who you belong to. He wanted to make sure the next time you see Kai, he will know that Dabi is the one that’s dicking you down.

,, I know you couldn’t stand the sight of me and Akari, but grinding on Kai like a little whore, making me all jealous was really unnecessary’’ he gasped between kisses. Pulling the shirt over your head he threw it over the room, leaving you only in your panties. ,, especially in that little dress of yours” he added, as he looked over your half naked body.

,, Fuck you, what did you expect of me, I was mad’’ you moaned out once you felt his lips on your breast, sucking and biting it.

,, Well.. guess what’’ he said, still sucking your boob, while squeezing the other one.

,,What?’’ you breathed out, eyes closed while enjoying his lips on your body.

,, Daddy will punish his little naughty girl’’ he said, once again leaving wet love marks all over your chest.

,,Touya, I’m really not into daddy kink’’ you said, your hands deep inside his hair.

,, But I am’’ he said, his head in front of your, making eye contact with you. ,, And tonight I want everyone to know who your real daddy is. I want everyone to know who you belong to’’ he said, wrapping his hand around your throat. ,, Do you understand me ?’’ he added.

,,Yes’’ you whispered, not breakig the eye contact.

,,Yes what?’’ he asked as his hand started to apply pressure to your throat. Not being used to choking, you couldn’t really manage to give him the right answer. It wasn’t the kind of choking where you felt like passing out because of the lack of oxygen, but you were still new to it.

,,Yes daddy’’ you managed to say somehow. Satisfied with your answer, Dabi moved his hand away from your throat, leaving small kisses over the same spot where his hand left small marks.

,, Such a good girl’’ he said, pulling your panties down. Licking his lips, as you were exposed to him. The fact that you were so valuable to him, and knowing how much power he had over you was turning Touya even more on.

Not wasting any time, he spread your thighs further apart, his head leaning down to run his tongue through your folds. Feeling his tongue piercing on your clit, something you always wanted to feel, made you throw you head back into the pillow, while grabbing Dabi’s head pulling him closer to yourself.

Licking you around your opening, the warm and hot feeling of his tongue, mixed with cold feeling of his piercing was making you shiver. You could feel him smirk against your core as he saw how much effect he has on you. You moan as his lips and tongue move against your folds, eating you out like it’s his last meal.

,,Touya please’’ you moan out, as he sucks roughly on your bundle of nerves, causing your body to jolt up, as your fingers grab his messy hair.

Flicking his tongue roughly and tugging your clit, his hands were holding your thighs firmly, as his light blue eyes were focused on you. It doesn’t take him long to make you cum all over his mouth, his name falling from your lips shamelessly. Climbing over you, he kissed you passionately, making you taste yourself on his lips.

Pulling away from the kiss, you started kissing his tattoos, something you wanted to do long time ago. Especially since he came back. Dabi breathed heavily, his head hanging low, while you were under him kissing every little line that covered his body.

He gave you the time you needed, exploring his body as much as you wanted. But once he felt your small hands pulling down his shorts together with his boxers, and licking the tip of his already erected dick, he had to stop you. At your surprise, even his dick was pierced.

,, Another time doll’’ he said, pulling you up. ,, I’ve been dying to fuck you since forever’’ he added, slowly rubbing the tip of his dick around your core. Without any warning his slammed his whole length inside making your scream both in pleasure and pain. Wiggling a little, trying to move just a bit away from him, hoping the pain will go away. But Touya couldn’t let that happened, now when he finally had his dick deep inside you.

,,Just relax baby’’ he said not moving, letting you adjust to his size. Placing soft kisses all over your jaw, then slowly moving out of you, only for him to slide back in, so slow that you could feel every vain of his dick move, together with his piercing rubbing your walls.

Dabi was moving so slow, grinding his hips against yours, as his fingers were rubbing your clit gently. Sliding out of you only until the edge of his head remains, before moving slowly again in, repeating the same move all over again. Only God knew how much he wanted to break you.

,, Touya’’ you moan out once he wraps his fingers with yours, placing your left arm above your head, while his right fingers were still rubbing your clit in circles. Your legs shake as you wrap them around him, another orgasm hitting you hard.

Dabi moans with you, as you squeeze his dick while riding of your orgasm. With you having your second orgasm, he couldn’t hold himself any longer. Your warm walls around him coated in juices were driving him crazy. All the soft and slow moves were forgotten, making his motions now much deeper and intense. Pulling out till the end and slamming recklessly into you again. Groaning in pleasure, he was slamming into you with a speed you could only imagine.

,, Touya, slow down’’ you moaned, closing your eyes, still sensitive from your second orgasm. ,, I don’t think I can take it’’ you added, trying to catch your breath.

,,Of course you can take it. Look at you, you’re taking it right now doll’’ he groaned, holding your hips in one place while fucking you hard like no one ever has before. You were a moaning mess, with every move your moans were louder.

,, Oh God, Touya’’ you moaned, fingers still connected to his. Grabbing his back with your left hand and digging your fingers inside his skin.

,, You’re takng it so well love’’ he said, groaning as he felt the pressure of your nails digging into his back. ,, Go ahead, scratch my back as much as you want’’ he added kissing you sloppily.

Once he started rubbing your clit again, you found yourself digging your nails into his back like a wild cat, finding comfort in it. ,, Touya’’ you moaned his name out as both of you were coming closer to your highs. You could feel his dick twitching inside of you, his moves becoming more deeper and jankier. His eyes were shut, while your body started shaking once again. Once again you felt your orgasm pulsing through your stomach, and there you were again squeezing his dick not being able to control yourself as you moaned his name over and over again. Dabi continued fucking you , his groans getting louder and louder, feeling your walls getting tighter and tighter while you were milking his dick down, he released. Emptying his seeds deep into you.

Both of you stayed in the same position, trying to breath normally. His thumb gently rubbing your hand, as he placed kisses all over your bruised neck.

,, You have no idea how much I wanted to be with you’’ he said between the kisses. ,,I’m so in love with you doll’’ he breathed out, making you feel butterfly’s inside your stomach.

,, Are you?’’ you asked, tilting your head just enough to look at him.

,, Don’t act like you didn’t know already’’ he said smiling, while brushing his nose against your cheek. Of course you didn’t know.

,,Fuck you, I was dying here for you, thinking my love is just one sided’’ you said hitting his chest lightly. ,, I even dated Kai hoping I’ll forget you somehow’’ you added hitting him once again, making him laugh a bit.

,, Don’t mention his name. That’s the past. You belong to me now, only me’’ he said, grabbing your jaw and kissing you. You were always his anyway.

,, All yours, Touya’’ you said, kissing him back-

,, Are you kids awake ? ´´ Enji’s head peeked inside your room, finding his eldest son naked on top of his best friends daughter. Making him choke on the air and forgetting the actual reason he was looking for you two.

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danses-with-dogmeat · 3 years

Text

Male!Companions react to waking up alone after spending the night with Sole.

Hey all! So, just a heads up, I’m also working on this prompt for the Female!Companions for FO4, and also a bunch of companions from FONV and FO3, but if you have any specific requests or want me to add anyone, just let me know! Sorry this is so damn long, but I hope you all enjoy!

Also, there is a bit of angst in here with some mentions of suicidal thoughts, so just a heads up on that!

P.S. If you’re one of the lovely folks who has sent me an ask, I am currently working on writing them up and I will definitely get them out as soon as I can, I just really like the prompts y’all gave me and I want to do them justice :)

Danse:

Danse sat up with a start, immediately trying to gain his bearings, only to find himself still in the bunker, in his own bed. He let out a shaky breath, still dazed from the heavy sleep that had claimed him. It had been years since he'd slept like that, the last time he recalled sleeping so peacefully was when he was stationed at the Citadel in the Capital Wasteland. Even more than that, he had barely slept at all since discovering his true identity. Danse shook his head, trying to clear it of its sleepy fog, he went to rub his eyes, and he felt his heartbeat increase tenfold as the memories of his night with you came flooding to the forefront of his mind. Even now he felt the heat of a blush rushing to his cheeks. He turned his head, expecting to see your peacefully sleeping form on the mattress beside him. When he didn't, he wasn't sure what to do. Immediately, a slew of emotions and thoughts ran through him, ranging from shame, to panic, to anger, and most of all, hurt. Before he allowed himself to arrive at any premature conclusions, Danse called out for you, looking around the room. Nothing. He stood up, holding the blankets around his waist to conceal himself as he made his way to the hole in the wall that allowed him to peer into the other section of the bunker. Still nothing. The slew of contradicting emotions bubbled up again, leaving him feeling slightly numb. He stood there, just staring, trying to grasp a hold of any clear thought, but they were inadvertently tumbling into his consciousness at an alarming rate.

All at once, one feeling prevailed over the others, and Danse found himself feeling extraordinarily guilty. Guilty for agreeing to last night, for jeopardizing his friendship with the one person he had left in his life by greedily pushing too far. What right did he have to you and your feelings anyway, when his weren't even real? The pain of being deserted by you was overshadowed by the knowledge that he didn't deserve you in the first place. Even when he thought he was human, he had trouble rationalizing his feelings for you, thinking you deserved better than someone like him. Someone as hard headed, as inexperienced, and emotionally ignorant as he was. But now? Now, he wondered why you even bothered to waste any of your time on him, even just as his partner, when it was proven that he's nothing but a machine. Why had you even suggested last night, when you knew the truth about him?

He simply couldn’t understand it. Why had you allowed him to be with you in such a way? To be with you so intimately? Why had you allowed him to touch you so invasively? Why had you spoken to him so softly, so earnestly? How could your gaze have been so full of admiration, of love? He was a goddamn machine, and you’d let him share a bed with you, make love to you. He didn’t even know what love was, didn’t know if it was possible for him to even feel it; and yet, you’d been more open with him than he had been with anyone before. And he wasn’t even human. He was at a complete and utter loss for any form of explanation or reasoning behind your actions.

Danse stood alone in the bunker, staring ahead with brows furrowed low at no single thought in particular. It was then that he realized his heart was still beating out of his chest, he took a deep breath, and prepared himself to leave the bunker in search of you. Because, even now, when you were at the center of his feelings of uncertainty, of guilt, of hurt, he still felt the need to seek the counsel of the one person left he could truly trust, the one whose opinions he had sought in the darkest hours of his existence. He needed you.

More than that, he needed to make sure you were safe. At least that's what he told himself as he dressed, donning his power armor, before he rode the elevator up to the surface, his iron-clad hands clenching tightly as he gripped his laser rifle.

As Danse arrived at the surface, he noted the sunlight bursting through the lone window of the bunker, indicating how late he'd slept in, and he mentally kicked himself for his irresponsibility. If he had woken at his usual hour, would you have still been beside him? Perhaps he could've spoken to you before you left, encouraged you to hear him out, begged you to stay with him. Even just as a friend, just as a partner. He felt he simply couldn’t cope with the loss of you, of the security that you provided him.

Danse shook his head in an attempt to banish these useless thoughts from his mind. He couldn't control the past, he had to keep looking forward. With that, he crossed the threshold out into the Commonwealth.

Danse returned to the bunker a few hours before sundown, feeling utterly at a loss, he'd been everywhere he could reach, everywhere you could've gone in the period of time you had had to get there. He checked every house, farm, settlement… everything in the bunker's vicinity. His limbs felt weak and numb as he approached the entrance to the bunker. He could feel heat rising up in his face as his chest ached. He felt like he needed to hit something. Tears of frustration and dejection threatened to spill over, and he brought a gloved hand up to roughly wipe away the first drop that fell. Though, through the blur of wetness, he spotted a silhouette in the doorway ahead of him.

"Where the hell have you been?!" You shouted, running from the bunker and straight into Danse's arms. For a moment, he remained still, unable to reciprocate your relief in his state of utter shock. In the next instance, his rifle fell from his grip and he was wrapping his arms around you, as tightly as he could without injuring you.

"I believe I could ask you the same question, soldier." Danse said, willing his voice to remain stable. You pulled away so that you could look up at him, your expression one of confusion,

"I thought I told you last night. I had to go to Greentop nursery in the morning and talk to the settlers about their mutant problem." He blinked at you in surprise. At least, you thought you had told him, but maybe it had slipped your mind. It didn't surprise you, given last night's activities.

"But… Why didn't you wake me?"

"Because Danse, I've never seen you sleep in, I wanted you to get some rest for once."

"I would have rather been with you." He said quietly. You opened your mouth to speak, but he continued,

"It was irresponsible of you to leave me uninformed, you should have woken me. You scared me, Sole. I thought…" he took a quick breath to steady his voice, "I don't know what I thought. I woke up and you were gone, I wasn't sure if you were in danger, or if you were angry with me, or whether or not you even meant to return."

"Danse, of course I was going to come back, I just didn't expect you to be gone when I did."

"And for that, I apologize. However, I implore you to understand--"

"Danse. It's okay, we're both here now, we're both safe. And I don't know about you, but I'm starving. C'mon." You turned towards the bunker and went to make your way inside. Danse stood a moment, watching you walk away. Feeling began slowly returning to his limbs, and for the first time all day, his heartbeat slowed to its normal rate. He reached down to pick up his rifle, a small smile spreading across his lips as he moved to follow you back into the bunker.

Deacon:

Deacon opened his eyes, only to immediately close them again, as the bright morning sun showed through the windows of Ticonderoga safehouse, and directly into his retinas.

“Damn,” He said, reaching over to grab for his shades from beside the mattress. Once they were placed onto his face, he decided it would be safe to open his eyes once again. Deacon groaned as he rolled his shoulders, and sat up, stretching his arms overhead.

God, he felt good. The tightness of his muscles serving as a reminder of the… ahem, events of last night. Last night, with you. How the hell had that happened? He almost couldn’t believe it. After so many years of being alone, of feeling emotionally inept, and unable to move on. Here you came, seemingly out of some sci-fi novel, with your futuristic, time-traveling backstory, and inhuman good looks, and for some reason, you’d thought he was, of all things, cute. That was the word you had used, he remembered it vividly, and of course he had feigned being annoyed by the use of the word to describe him, but in reality? He adored the fact that you thought so. No one had ever referred to him as such, and the fact that it confirmed you reciprocated the feelings he had for you; that was truly extraordinary. These feelings that he had tried so desperately to bury deep down, where they couldn’t meddle with your friendship, or your professional relationship, or his own crippling fear of being committed to someone again (given how well it went the first time). Now, he barely understood why he had tried so hard to snuff out his emotions if this was one of the possible outcomes of revealing them to you. He never dreamed that you could have returned the affection he had for you. However, if last night was any kind of indicator… yeah, he’d say the two of you had pretty strong feelings indeed.

At least, that’s what he had thought. Until he turned to you excitedly, looking to see if you had woken yet, and found your spot next to him quite empty. His jaw clenched at the sight, but he took a breath and resolved himself to looking around the safehouse for your belongings. His teeth worried anxiously against the inside of his cheek as he noticed the distinct absence of anything belonging to you. Deacon stood in the middle of the safehouse, bringing his hands up to roughly rub at his face.

“God dammit.” He said aloud, unable to keep something from escaping him. Deacon liked to think he had a good bit of self control, it came with the job after all, a spy with no sense of restraint and proper judgment didn't live very long. However, you had this way of making him forget everything he thought he knew about himself. There he was last night, doing the one thing he vowed he'd never do again. Falling for someone. Him! Deacon, the immature, sarcastic, dishonest, and unemotional agent of the railroad; and here he was, head over heels for a widowed, pre-war saint like you. What a pair you two would have made.

I suppose it really was too good to be true. He thought bitterly.

Deacon grabbed his things and set off into the Commonwealth without so much as a glance over his shoulder. He stared dead ahead, refusing to address the pressure he felt in his chest. Trying desperately to maintain his cool and unbothered exterior, to remain the type of person he was before he'd met you. He always knew he could change the way he looked in a day or less, but the way you'd changed his perspective of the world, of his place in it, and his future? He didn't think you could have changed who he'd turned out to be if you had all the time in the world. Deacon was firmly set in his ways, so much so, that even he couldn't change who he was. No matter how much he despised himself at times. But man, had he been wrong, all the disguises in the world couldn't mask the fact that, for the first time in years, Deacon had a priority in his life besides the railroad, and besides himself. And that scared the shit out of him.

Now he wasn't really sure what to think. If you had simply wanted nothing more than a one-night stand, you could have just told him so. At least then he would’ve been prepared for this shit. For you leaving him, seemingly without a second thought.

The sniper shook his head roughly as he kicked up the dust of the wasteland, his footfalls much heavier than they had any business being. He always had prided himself at being a good judge of character, at being intuitive, but he never would have expected something like this from someone like you. Someone who cared about the happiness of everyone else more than their own well-being, someone who was kind, and selfless, and empathetic, someone who constantly put their own life at risk for the benefit of complete strangers. Sure, he did that occasionally, but his life was worth a hell of a lot less. You were a good person, and always had been. From the moment he saw you, everything he heard about you, all of it pointed to the fact that you, even after all you’d lost, after everything you endured, you were a better person than he could ever hope to be. And now, for you to do this to him? It was completely out of character. Whatever, he thought, if this is all you wanted from me, then fine. It's all you're going to get.

As he approached the Old North Church, Deacon mentally prepared himself for the possibility that you too would be at the Railroad headquarters. He decided to simply not acknowledge your… ordeal, and act as though nothing had changed. Though, if Deacon was honest (which he rarely ever was), he would rather not have you as his partner anymore. With the way he was feeling-- the way he had once felt about you, it would be too complicated. He didn’t need complicated. The railroad missions provided enough of that.

He entered HQ quietly, and mulled about, visiting with the others and picking up missions left and right in an effort to acquire enough distractions to keep him out of the church for as long as possible. He figured that way, the likelihood of bumping into you would be decreased enough for him to get a handle on himself before having to face you. But, of course, his plans were all for naught, he realized as you stormed into the catacombs, your glowering eyes falling directly to the bald sniper in the corner of the room; the sniper who was trying desperately to make himself seem distracted as he felt your eyes burning into the back of his head. At least you had the decency to lower your voice as you approached him,

“Deacon!” You hissed, shouting his name as quietly as one could shout.

He continued staring at the blackboard, a hand at his chin as he feigned interest in what was written there.

“What the hell?” You asked, taking another step towards him, close enough that he could feel your hot breath on his cheek.

“Hmm? Something wrong?” He asked, turning his head towards you while his eyes stayed glued to the board in front of him. You took a step back, and the next thing he knew, you had extended your hand forcefully towards his face, leaving a stinging red mark imprinted on his cheek in its wake. Deacon’s head snapped back towards the blackboard at the power of your blow, his sunglasses barely managing to hang onto his face by the bridge of his nose.

I’m not sure if I deserved that or not…

He brought his own hand up to rub the spot you had just slapped, finally letting his eyes meet yours from beneath his crooked shades. He nearly gasped at your expression. Your eyebrows were knitted together above your tear-filled eyes, your mouth a straight line as your chin trembled slightly. He’d say you looked sad, but behind your eyes, all he could see was fire. The same fire he’d felt when he saw that you had deserted him that morning. Or, at least, when he thought you’d deserted him.

Almost without thinking, Deacon grabbed your hand and dragged you back to the more private area of the railroad HQ. Despite your clear vexation with him, you allowed him to lead you to the back of the church catacombs, near the emergency exit.

“Alright, you finally ready to explain yourself?” You asked, wrenching your hand from his grasp.

“Me? I’m pretty sure it was you who walked out on me, and who just slapped me in the face for asking a simple question.” Your nostrils flared at that and for a moment, Deacon thought you were going to do something violent again.

“Okay, look, I know I’ve fallen for your lies before, but I think it’s pretty damn ridiculous for you to think that I’ll believe this one. I was there, Deacon! You left me. You took all your shit and left me alone at the safehouse. I don’t care what happened the night before, even if it was awful for you, or awkward for you to see me in that way, or whatever, you still don’t abandon your partner. We agreed to that the moment I became an agent.”

Deacon’s jaw dropped to his chest at his realization, and your accusation. He had left you? When? How? When was he supposed to find that out?

“Look, Sole, I’m a liar, I’ll give you that. But I’m a good one,” you rolled your eyes at him, a scoff sounding from your throat, “so, I wouldn’t even attempt to lie to you if I could see that you absolutely knew the truth.”

“God, if you’ve got a point, make it, asshole.”

“Ouchies, no need for name calling there, slappy. I’m just trying to figure out the miscommunication issue we’ve got going on here.” You glared at him, and he was forced to continue.

“The truth is,” Deacon looked down at the floor as he spoke softly to you, feeling as though the words were being wrenched from his throat, “I only left because I thought you had first. I woke up, and you were gone. Your things were gone. I thought that was it, that you were done with our… partnership. Done with me. And hey, I can’t say I’d blame you. Especially if you’d really think I could just up and leave after spending a night like that with you.”

“Oh.” you whispered, before trying to explain yourself, “I wasn’t-- I didn’t just leave, I mean, I went up to give High Rise the MILA for Tom. I was gone for five minutes, Deacon. I was coming right back.” The two of you stood a moment, as realization washed over you. And a bit of regret, too. And a sprinkle of foolishness.

Finally, he brought his gaze up to meet your eyes. Hoping his apology was as evident on his face as it was on yours. You brought your hand to his cheek, soothing over the angry red mark that you had left earlier, and Deacon flinched slightly at your touch, his eyes falling once again to the floor.

“It really only took you five minutes to think that I had left you?” You asked gently, the anger that had once been prevalent in your voice dissolving into concern. Deacon chuckled dryly.

“Haven’t I taught you anything? When you assume the worst, it’s a lot harder to be disappointed.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But I bet it makes it all the better when you find out you were wrong.” Deacon smiled weakly at you, shaking his head.

“Yeah, no. I’m not seeing the appeal in being wrong just yet.” The hand that still rested on his cheek slid to the back of his neck, grasping firmly as you pulled his face towards yours. The pressure of your brow displaced Deacon’s shades as you crashed your lips into his. He toppled backwards against the wall of the catacombs as you pressed more forcefully into him, his arms falling behind him to steady himself against the cold brick, as your unoccupied hand slunk up to his chest, keeping him pinned between you and the wall. You pulled your head back, but kept your hands in place as you murmured,

“What about now?”

“Hmm?” Deacon’s ginger eyebrows raised above his glasses as his mind went blank. You cocked an eyebrow at him, a smirk forming on your face.

“Oh, right. I suppose so. Though, I think I’m gonna need a few reminders every once in a while.”

“Hmm,” you mused, “I think that can be arranged.”

Hancock:

The ghoul awoke with a purr, stretching one ruined arm out to blindly search for your sleeping body. He distinctly remembered curling up with you wrapped tight in his embrace before lulling off into the best sleep he's had in years. For the first time in months he didn't have the nagging ache of wishing you were pressed against him as he settled in for the night. The thoughts of you lying so close but so painfully out of reach were finally pushed from his head to make room for the sheer bliss of being able to touch you, to feel your unbelievably soft skin, to breathe in your sweet scent and relish in the closeness of your body against his.

That was of course, until this morning. Hancock opened his eyes lazily, his dark gaze sweeping over the mess of bed sheets and pillows that littered the plush mattress. The sight of the disheveled blankets bringing back heated memories of last night. Before his brow furrowed at the realization of the current situation he found himself in. Hancock slowly rose from the bed, his dark eyes searching the surrounding room for any sign of you. He found his trousers, his hat, his coat... but nothing of yours remained where they had been tossed last night. If Hancock had a nose, it would have been curling alongside the rest of his scrunched up face as he thought of you leaving in such a hurry this morning. Hancock felt a pain in his chest and immediately craved a hit of something, anything, to numb the hollow feeling that began spreading through his body.

Sunlight shone through the windows of the old state house, the beams of light diffused by the ringlets of smoke rising from the ghoul's mouth as he took yet another hit of jet, trying hard to keep his mind blank, but inevitably failing as his thoughts returned to last night's events. Coming almost in slow motion, he picked apart every movement; every touch, kiss, lick, and caress, nitpicking every action he had made and thinking about what he might've done to warrant your desertion of him. But deep down, he knew that his actions mattered little. You had assured him on numerous occasions that him being a ghoul didn't bother you, but you had never really seen him before. Not in the way you saw him last night. Had never felt his rough skin on yours, had never run your hands up his ravaged body, the softness of your touch only amplifying the harshness of his own leathery flesh. You had never uncovered the gross discoloration of his radiation-ravaged body. But last night, you had finally gotten a good, long look. And here he was, thinking that you of all people could’ve seen past that. You had been able to forgive him for his past, after all. Hadn’t you? But maybe that had been part of it too. Maybe you’d finally realized all that he really was. A reckless and cowardly poor excuse for a man, who spends his life in a haze of delirium rather than facing the pain of being alive. A pain that he had inflicted upon himself to break away from that same self-righteous fog that he’d found himself in in the first place. It’s no wonder you’re gone. Maybe you were never even really here. Maybe you were just another daydream of his, just another hallucination. God, if that was the case, he didn’t even know what he would do. After having you so close, being with you like this? He didn’t really see the point in living without you.

Hancock sighed heavily at the thought. He didn't know how long he sat simply thinking, his perception of time temporarily altered by the jet, but he had to do something to alleviate this torture, and if chems wouldn't do it... well....

"I need some air," he rasped aloud as he stood and headed for the balcony, donning his coat and hat on his way out. The mayor had to keep up appearances, after all.

He almost didn't see you as he stepped through the door, the way you leaned out against the rail, eyes closed, a soft, beautiful smile playing at your plush lips. Hancock could've stared at you until the world around him turned to dust, but you moved long before that musing could come to reality. Turning to look at him, your smile brightened further, and Hancock couldn't keep himself from touching you. He grabbed one of your hands in his, using his other to caress your pink-dusted cheek, affirming that you truly were physically there, standing in front of him.

"And what were you doing out here all by your lonesome? Trying to give a ghoul a little taste of heartbreak?" You let out a soft laugh,

"No, sweetheart," you called him affectionately, leaning into his light touch upon your cheek, "I thought that you would sleep longer. I just wanted to get out and enjoy some sunshine." You turned once again towards the morning sun, the rays highlighting every one of your perfect features. Hancock beamed at the sight of you, before turning and looking out at his city in thought,

"Hmm," he mused, "Sunshine, huh?"

MacCready:

MacCready had been lying on his back for a while now, staring at the crumbling ceiling of the dingy little room at the hotel Rexford. This certainly hadn’t been his idea of an ideal location for your first time together, but who was he to complain? It was safe, and private, and it had been a damn good night. But he’d been staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours, waiting for you to stir. He’d thought it was odd, given the fact that you always woke up first when the two of you traveled together, but he’d like to think you hadn’t yet stirred because of the way he had exhausted you last night, his chest puffed out at the thought of it and he let out a contented sigh. The thoughts of your night together spilled into his consciousness, and he stretched out his arms in front of him, snickering slightly at the soreness of his body, and suddenly, he couldn’t wait for you any longer.

“Geeze, you awake yet, sleepyhead?” MacCready rolled onto his side to face the lump under the covers. He ran his hand over the mattress, over to you, but as he reached the lump beneath the blankets, all he felt was plushness. He withdrew the covers from atop you, only to find… pillows? Just a pillow, and a blanket. MacCready’s body spasmed as he jolted out from under the covers on his side of the bed, his head flying from side to side as he looked for you.

“Sole?” He cocked an eyebrow at the empty hotel room, and as he noticed your absence, his expression quickly changed from confusion to one of anger. You had left? But why? Had he done something wrong? He didn’t think so… but maybe he just... wasn’t everything you expected from him. Feeling like he’d been punched in the stomach, MacCready climbed from the bed, grabbing his trousers from the floor and stomping around the room in pursuit of the remainder of his clothes, not failing to notice how everything belonging to you was no longer in the room either. Heat rose to MacCready’s face as he pulled on his duster, but he wasn’t sure if it was from embarrassment, or anger, or heartache, or some combination thereof.

What the heck? He thought, you were the one to suggest doing this, why would you do that if you were just gonna leave me like this? Right when MacCready had thought he’d found the one. The person who could help him move on from Lucy after everything he’d been through. You were perfect, not just for him, but for Duncan too. You were selfless, and kind, compassionate, resourceful, sometimes you were a bit of a sarcastic ass, but he loved that about you. You were a parent and a spouse, just like he had been. You were both lost, and broken when you found each other, just a couple halves that had made each other whole. You were his future... Or so he’d thought. But who was he kidding? You were so out of his league, the two of you weren’t even playing the same damn sport. He should’ve known this would be the outcome. But then, why the heck did you let it go this far? Sure, he was the one who had poured all of his feelings out onto the table, but he didn’t know what he’d expected you to do. He just felt like he would explode if he held them in any longer, especially when the two of you spent so much time together. He saw you every damn day, and all he wanted to do was hold your hand, he wanted to sleep beside you and hold onto you through the night, to have you run your fingers through his hair and tell him that you felt the same way. MacCready never imagined you’d do something like this to him, never thought you’d get his hopes up, dangling the future he'd always dreamed of having right in his face before ruthlessly snatching it away.

He rolled his eyes at his own ridiculous train of thought and groaned as he bent down to grab his rifle.

“At least you paid for the room up front.” he mumbled as he placed his hat on his head and made his way to the door.

MacCready’s footsteps fell heavily onto each stair as he headed down to the lobby, wondering where he’d go from there. He considered going and looking for you, but what was the point? Clearly if you wanted to see him, you wouldn’t have freakin left. Was he really petty enough to seek you out just to tell you how messed up it was that you’d left him the way that you did? Maybe… but he needed a drink first. To the Third Rail it was, then. What was it, 10am? He could drink at 10am. He could do whatever the heck he wanted, especially now that you were gone.

MacCready reached the bottom of the stairs, looking straight past the small crowd of people that were gathered in the lobby as he made his way to the exit. Just as his hand reached the door, he heard his name being shouted. His body shuddered at the sound of your voice, and he stood stock straight as he decided what to do. One fist clenched as the other hand pushed the door open and he crossed the threshold into Goodneighbor. The door never closed behind him, and he felt an iron grip on his forearm as he tried to head towards the Third Rail.

“Ow, hey!” He spun to face you, face slightly contorted in his confusion. What was he supposed to think now? He was still angry and hurt, but should he be? Ugh.

“Wait, Mac. I know how it must’ve looked, but really, it’s just a misunderstanding.” He stared at you, his deep blue eyes clouded with suspicion. He didn’t say a word, not wanting to ruin anything by making false assumptions or accusations. Instead, he waited for you to explain, wrenching his wrist from your grip as he folded his arms over his chest.

Before you could continue, Rufus came up from behind, asking quietly if he could go through the doors.

“Come on,” you urged, “let’s get out of the doorway.” You herded MacCready to one of the couches in the lobby, seating yourself next to him.

“Alright. Explain.” He said, brows still furrowed. You almost snickered at how put-out the sniper seemed. You couldn’t quite tell if it was an act or not, but knowing MacCready… yeah, probably not an act.

“Rufus was having some trouble with Drinkin’ Buddy.” You told him, “The bot shut down and no one could get him to turn on again. This morning, some sort of warning light started flashing, so he came up and asked if I could help him fix it. I would’ve asked you to come along, but you were still asleep, and I know how you hate being woken up…” You trailed off, waiting for him to say something in response.

Man, MacCready felt moronic. Why had he been so quick to assume the worst? Okay, maybe not the worst, the worst would’ve been… Well, that’s not important. He shook his head, finally letting himself breathe deeply again.

“You sure that was it?” He asked, uncertainty coating his tone as he narrowed his eyes at you.

You leaned forward, smoothing a hand up his chest to the back of his neck as you brought your lips to his. Your fingers fiddled with the hair at the base of his neck and held him to you as your mouth moved against his, trying to answer his question without having to use your words. This was better, anyway. You felt a hand move to your waist as he relaxed into the kiss, his strong grip pulling you nearly into his lap as he returned your fervor. Only when you needed air did you pull back from him, your heartbeat still racing as you watched his gorgeous eyes flutter open.

“Did that answer your question?” You asked cheekily. He smiled, face still pink from the heat of your kiss.

“I don’t know, boss, I may still need some more, ah, reassuring.” You snickered at that, and glanced back at Clair’s desk.

“Any more convincing and we may need that room again. You think if we go now, we won’t have to pay the hotel for a second day?”

God, I think I’m in love. MacCready thought as he nodded to you, a boyish grin spreading across his lips. At that, both of you scrambled off of the couch, quickly making your way towards the stairs and up to the hotel room.

Nick:

The synth didn't sleep, but he didn't mind it. He stayed awake beside you in bed, replaying memories of the night over and over in his mind. Although he wasn't sure how comfortable it could be, he had his arms curled around you, holding you tightly to his synthetic chest while the memories of his favorite night (in either of his lifetimes) were running through his mind. You snored softly in his embrace, utterly at peace, as he gazed affectionately at your soft features. Nick didn't often feel blissful, and he never would've imagined himself in this situation, being completely content with the person he admired, and adored so adamantly, safely wrapped in his arms. He should've known it wouldn't last.

Without a sound, he felt as you slowly and gently pried his arms off of your body, climbing off of the shared mattress. Nick figured that you would give him an explanation; perhaps once you were out of bed? When you went to go and dress yourself? Before walking through the door? But you were silent throughout, even as he heard the door click shut behind you. Nick closed his eyes tightly, sighing to himself and wondering if the pain in his chest was substantial enough to cause him to short circuit. What had he done wrong? Even if it was nothing, he would understand why you had left. Even at his best, Nick could hardly amount to what any average human could give you, and he could never give you everything you wanted. Everything you needed, and deserved. He wasn't real. So he wouldn't blame you for leaving, hell, if he hadn't been so caught up in his own blissful feelings, he might've encouraged you to go. And he had, before last night had truly begun, he recalled asking you if he was what you really wanted. Then, you had seemed so eager, almost laughing at the thought that he couldn't be enough, after all this time the two of you had spent together, and all your pining over him. These thoughts circled through the synth's mind as he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. He willed himself to grab a file and get to work, to do something, anything, to distract himself from the pain, but it was as though the weight in his chest was too much to bear. The height of his earlier high only amplifying the depths of his current low.

Every attempt to look through a case file was a failure, his yellow eyes roaming the first few lines of writing before his mind drifted off. To thoughts of where you could have gone, whether or not you would come back, and thoughts of last night. At the way you made his pistons fire at triple times their normal rate, the way you made his metal heart flutter in his chest, and the way you had come so beautifully undone in his arms. That was it. The moment he needed to remember for the rest of his days on this ruined earth. At that very moment, nothing else seemed to matter. He was sure he'd been foolish before, thinking you could never care for him in such a way. How foolish he'd felt then... it was nothing compared to now. The synth brought his metallic hands up to his face, the tips of his fingers displacing the worn hat on his head. He imagined tears flowing from beneath the heels of his hands as he dug them into his eye sockets, but of course none came. Would that have been acceptable? If he had been able to shed real tears, like a real human being, would you have stayed after last night? If he had been able--

The door to the agency burst open at that moment, interrupting the old detective's thoughts, and sending his head shooting back to see who had busted in so aggressively, his hat flying from its usual place atop his head.

The fact that the synth couldn't breathe didn't matter in this moment as he huffed a massive sigh of relief at the glorious sight of you, the light of the early morning sun casting a warm glow around your body.

"Oh doll..." the words escaped him as a smile began to spread across his synthetic lips, "for a moment there, I thought you were an angel." You giggled at that, your flushed smile causing the whirring in his chest to increase exponentially.

"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you, I was just about to open up a missing person's case on ya." You finally closed the door and made your way to his desk, leaning down to give his cheek a chaste kiss as you smoothed your hand over his chest, stopping to grab at his tie and pull him up towards you.

"Always the professional, hmm detective?" You smirked at him and he gave you a crooked smile before bringing his good hand up to stroke his thumb over one of your soft cheeks.

"Although," you continued, teasingly bending down to pick his hat up from the floor, "your uniform doesn’t seem to be up to the usual standards."

"Oh? Is that what you think?" He said, reaching for the hat before you held it behind your back, a mischievous grin forming on your lips,

"Sure is. You don't have your hat.”

“Oh? And whose fault is that?” He interjected playfully.

“And” you continued, “look at this coat, full of rips. It’s practically in shambles." you ran a finger down his side, allowing the tip of your fingernail to catch at the tiny holes littering the worn fabric.

"Hey now, my coat's always looked like that. You didn't seem to find fault in it when you were cold last night." You shook your head,

"Nope, I'm sorry Mr. Valentine, it's all in disarray, I'm afraid we'll just have to scrap the whole thing."

"Well now, if that’s what you were after, you could've just told me, darling. No need to insult--" His sentence remained unfinished as you tightened your grip on his tie, pulling him in for a kiss that was anything but chaste. He had so many questions left unanswered, but for reasons unknown, he couldn't seem to think of a single coherent inquiry to voice to you in this instance. Looks like it will just have to wait until later.

Preston:

Preston felt uneasy. His eyes had opened slowly when he had awoken, his heartbeat had remained consistently calm, dapples of sunlight shone through the holes in the curtains beside the bed, indicating that he had slept through the night. Why did everything feel so… so peaceful? No nightmares, no panic attacks, the usual insomnia Preston tended to face in the wee hours of the morning had never reared its infuriating head.

Then he remembered.

It was all because of you. Amazing, incredible, infallible, irresistible you. Heat flooded to his face as a coy smile touched his lips. Suddenly, he felt he had to be near you, he had to see you to believe what his mind told him had happened last night.

“Mhm, good morning," he sighed, as he turned to face your side of the bed, "how are you-- ?" Preston's eyebrows creased as he noticed your absence, his voice trailing off as he realized his question had no recipient.

"Sole?" He sat up, rubbing his awakening eyes before glancing around the room of your Sanctuary house.

"Sole?!" Preston said, louder than the first time. Perhaps you had simply gone to the washroom? Or to the kitchen maybe? Rising from the bed, Preston fetched his trousers from the pile of clothes that rested at the foot of the bed, trying not to dwell too much on the thoughts that it inspired.

But... only my clothes are here. He reflected, feeling a pang in his chest, before reminding himself that you might want to be clothed, wherever you’d gone, even if it was just in your own house. He released a bit of his anxiety in a quick breath, before heading for the bedroom door, he opened it gingerly, glancing down the hallway before making his way to each of the rooms in search of you. He did so slowly, hesitantly, in fear of what he might find. Or, rather, afraid of what he wouldn't find.

Preston stood in the empty kitchen, numb, his fear utterly realized. He collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table, afraid to let himself think, but unable to do anything else in his current state. Why, why, why did he have to act on his feelings for you? He just had to tell you how you made him feel, he had to be vulnerable and had to “put himself out there.” He just had to be intimate with you, he had to ruin everything. Why couldn’t he have just been happy with the way things were, with you as his friend? There he was, his life in danger, unable to help the people who needed him most, the Minutemen in complete disarray after having failed those they vowed to protect, and there you were. Here to save their asses, to turn his disaster of a life into one full of hope, full of light, and now, you were gone. You had left because he was an inarticulate, inexperienced, greedy, fool of a man who couldn't keep his mouth shut and just settle for having you as his general, and as his best friend. Why had he needed more? He didn't deserve more, not with you, hell, the whole damn world didn't deserve you, so how did he ever think you could want to be with him?

But you told me you did. You said you cared about me and-- No. Actions speak louder than words, and your absence after the first night you two had spent together… that spoke volumes.

Maybe you finally realized that I'm nothing special. Not compared to you. Maybe you realized that, next to you, and without you, I'm nothing at all. Preston balled a fist and pounded it weakly against your worn kitchen table, the dull thud resounding through the empty house. He sighed, sliding the chair back with a groan as he rose to his feet, heading once again to the back of the house. Entering your room without you felt like a crime, but he figured he might as well remove his things, and put on the remainder of his clothes, before leaving.

He stared down at the pile of tousled fabric at the foot of the bed, slowly untangling each individual article, secretly hoping that, if he took long enough, you would eventually make your way back into the room. That you would give him some inconsequential excuse for your absence, and he could forget all of the confusion and uncertainty of the morning. As Preston gingerly began to re-dress himself, thoughts came unbidden to the forefront of his mind. The way your soft, gentle fingers had undone each of the buttons of his shirt, the pressure tickling his neck, then his chest, down his stomach to his naval, your hands wasting no time as they moved upward to push the silky material off over his shoulders. He recalled the feeling of the smooth fabric of his scarf, as it unraveled slowly around his neck, a chill creeping onto the sensitive skin before you had chased it away quickly with the heated touch of your sweet lips. He remembered the breathy gasp that had escaped from you as your hands grasped tightly at the lapels of his coat, his mouth colliding with yours over and over again as his mind screamed for him to stop, to slow down, to ignore the fire blazing beneath his skin.

This is your general! It had told him, this is your friend, your recently widowed friend, your friend that you desperately need to keep in your life! If you screw this up, how will you ever be able to forgive yourself?

He should have listened to his head then. Why hadn’t he? Preston was sure that, if he had, it would have spared him from the awkward discussion he was bound to have with his superior officer in the near future. It certainly would have saved him the pain he was feeling now.

At the same time though... Last night had been the best night of Preston’s life. Did he really regret having those memories now? Yes, he had to. After all, what did last night matter if it hadn’t made you happy?

Preston shook his head, releasing a breath he was sure he’d been holding since he left the kitchen. Pulling up his boots, he grabbed the remainder of his things and left the room, glancing back at the empty bed one last time before placing his hat atop his head and pulling the door shut softly behind him.

The beams of morning sunlight chased away the fog that had settled in the streets of Sanctuary, bits of bright blue sky peeking through the gaps in the clouds. Looks like it’ll be a nice day. He thought somberly, trying desperately to perk himself up, lest he bump into any settlers on his patrol. He wouldn’t want to worry anyone with his troubled expression, and he certainly wasn’t prepared to answer any questions about his current state. Preston started towards the bridge, planning to begin his patrol of the perimeter from there. He was so focused on his destination, he nearly failed to notice the hand waving him down from the side of the street. When he did turn to look, his breath caught in his throat.

“Sole!” He exclaimed, much too loudly, as he noticed you, nearly dropping his laser musket. A wounded settler was seated on the curb, you were kneeling next to him on one side, wrapping a bandage around his arm, with Sturges standing on the other, an empty stimpak in hand. As soon as he processed what he was seeing, the Minuteman lieutenant tried desperately to compose himself, a blush inadvertently creeping up his cheeks as his eyes met yours. He adjusted his grip on his musket, and cleared his throat, trying to hide his embarrassment.

“Is everything alright over here?” He asked, making his way over to the group, “What can I do to help, general?” you gave him a small smile, assuring him everything was alright, and finished tending to the settler who, as Preston found out, was a new arrival who’d run into a pack of mongrels on his way to Sanctuary. When they were all certain the settler would be okay, Preston quietly asked the general if they had a moment to talk, much to Sturges’ amusement.

“I’ll leave you two lovebirds to it, then. And don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me,” Sturges slapped Preston on the back as he passed by, snickering to himself. Preston felt heat rising to his face again and quickly motioned for you to follow him behind the house, hoping to get a little privacy. He took in a sharp breath, before releasing it slowly, and you smiled warmly at him. That’s a good sign, I suppose.

“How are you feeling?” He asked you quietly. Your eyes looked past Preston, almost as though you hadn’t heard him, and he felt a pang in his chest. Turning your head slightly, you glanced to either side, ensuring no one else was looking on, before turning back to him, looking into his eyes as a flush touched your cheeks.

“If I’m honest?” you started, and Preston’s breath caught in his throat, “I’m a little sore.” you said with a little smile, and Preston felt his knees wobble as his legs nearly gave out in relief.

“Heh, if I’m honest, me too.” He said, shyly looking down at his feet as he felt heat rise to his cheeks. “So, about that,” he continued, “last night, I mean. Did you, ahem, did you like--”

In an instant, your lips were on his own. The kiss was soft, but forceful, affirming all that Preston was uncertain of.

“Last night was… amazing, Preston.” You told him after you had pulled away, your hands resting on his shoulders, keeping his body pressed to yours.

“Then, when you left this morning ... ?”

“Sturges was looking for you when he found the settler on his patrol this morning, but he obviously didn’t find you in your bed, so he came to find me and--”

Preston groaned, an embarrassed smile forcing its way to his lips,

“He didn't see anything, did he?” You giggled at that,

“No, honey, he didn’t see anything.” You rolled your eyes playfully, before pulling at his shoulders, urging his ear to your lips, “But someone did. And I hear they really liked what they saw. You know who it was?” you whispered.

“Who?” you heard him breathe.

“Hmm, you really don’t know?” You sneaked a peek at his face, noting the goofy grin that spread all the way to his warm, chocolate eyes, and you couldn’t help but lean further into him. Preston drew an arm around you, his hand on your lower back, keeping you anchored to him, and all apprehension following this morning’s events seemed to be forgotten.

“You might just have to remind me.” He said cheekily, pulling you into another kiss.

X6-88:

The tightness in his chest was the least of the courser's worries as he woke to find himself utterly alone. You were gone, that, he knew. But where-- no, how? How had you woken and readied yourself without also waking him?

He never should have agreed to last night. Not only was it completely inappropriate, given your future position in the Institute, but it had distracted him from his main duty. The most important mission he'd ever been assigned: to watch over his charge, to keep them safe. To protect you. He had grown distracted, and now you were gone. The future director of the Institute, someone he respected and idolized, a person he cared about, more than anyone he'd ever come across in his existence, was just gone. His loyalty to you was akin to his loyalty to the Institute itself, and that was non-negotiable, unbreakable, hard-wired into him. You had won his devotion on your own, which made it that much more meaningful. And that much more painful when he realized that you might not feel the same loyalty for him. But why would you? And why did he care? He was allowed to feel allegiance towards you without you needing to return it, was he not? But … if you had felt this loyalty for him, you surely wouldn't have left him alone, correct? At least that's what it seemed like, but X6 wasn't particularly knowledgeable when it came to this subject. He didn't know, these thoughts confused him, and normally you were the one to help him make sense of his more... human tendencies and emotions, but clearly in this instance, he was on his own. You had treated him like no one ever had, like a real person, and so he thought he could start acting like one. Feeling like one. But he was wrong. X6 wasn't wrong often, and he hated the feeling. In his current state, every feeling he had was a negative one. He decided to shut it out. These feelings weren't helping him protect you, which was still his mission, reciprocated loyalty or not. Sitting around, contemplating his emotions didn't help him to find you.

The courser sat up and climbed off the mattress, grabbing his clothes that he had folded neatly beside the bed last night, noting that only his were present. After you had fallen asleep, X6 had untangled his body from your own as gently as he could, so as not to wake you, and had placed your clothes beside the bed in preparation for the morning. He had retrieved his courser uniform from the floor, with the intent of dressing himself and sitting on watch for the night, but you had stirred, sleepily requesting he return to the space beside you. He remembered hesitating, before folding his coat and placing it on the table beside your own clothes and doing as you had asked. Sliding beneath the covers, he had laid on his side, placing an arm around your waist. He remembered wondering if what he had done was correct, if he was doing this all right, but you had seemed happy, and that was all that mattered to him. So, if he had done nothing wrong, why had you left? Taken your clothes, and your bag, and your gun, and vanished without a trace? And when had he started caring about your happiness? Your health, and your safety, yes, he should certainly care about those, given the nature of his orders. But now he cared about how he made you feel. He wanted you to be happy, and he wanted to be the one to make you feel that way. But why?

X6 shook his head, attempting to clear it, and grabbed his rifle from the top of the dresser. It was distracting thoughts like these that had forced him into his current predicament, he wasn't about to make that mistake again. Placing his shades onto his face, he prepared to head through the door, and out into the wastes to search for you.

X6 surveyed the surrounding area outside of your home in Sanctuary: the gas station, Abernathy farm, Tenpines bluff, even the inside of Vault 111. Yet, there was no sign of you. He returned to Sanctuary and found your house still empty, the hollowness growing in his chest as he realized that your leaving really had been intentional. Elsewise, he would have stumbled across you, or some sign of you, by now, right? He stood in your old kitchen, his knuckles paled at the death grip he held on the edge of the counter, his jaw clenching as he tried to hold his emotions at bay.

How could he have agreed to last night? And why would you have presented the idea if you had meant to do this to him in the end? With a groan of frustration, X6 pounded a hand against the countertop, leaving a small indent in the shape of his fist. Not only had you left him, you had done so without warning, without explanation, and now he couldn't find you. He couldn't find you. That's what he did, he was a relentless hunter, a cold pursuant, he completed all of his missions efficiently, he followed Institute protocol, he followed orders. What he didn't do was get wrapped up in human emotions, he didn't throw caution to the wind and give into his most base desires. He was a synth. He didn't yearn, or want, or love. Or at least he hadn't.

Not until he met you.

The courser sighed, fists still clenched in frustration. He didn't know what to do, you were his mission, but if you commanded him to leave--? But you never actually had ordered him away... In his eyes, there was only one option for him to consider.

"Unit X6-88, ready to relay back to the institute. Alone."

A flash of blue, and he was back. No one asked him to report in, and he didn't offer. He started straight towards the SRB, wondering what the consequences would be for his behavior. A memory wipe would be the best outcome, especially if... Oh. But if they saw the memories from last night, what would happen to you?

X6 stopped in his tracks, turning quickly to go up the stairs that ascended to the residential portion of the Institute. Once again, he was at a loss. He didn't want to lose those memories, but more than that, he didn't want anyone else to see them. You were the first person he's ever met that treated him as a human, saw him as one, made him feel like one, and he couldn't bear the thought of what the Institute scientists would say about you, say to you, or do to you, if they saw what you had done with him. The courser looked down at his feet as he walked quickly, moving instinctively towards your quarters. He turned down the hallway, and recoiled at the figure that appeared as your door dragged open. X6’s eyes widened beneath his shades, and he cleared his throat to keep himself from gasping in surprise as your eyes met his.

"There you are! I was wondering when you would finally turn up, I finished with the meeting hours ago. I was just about to go out and look for you. Don't tell me you slept in this late?" You said with a grin that spread all the way to your glorious eyes. X6 couldn't form words, he just stood gawking at you, his mouth half open, looking like a complete fool. Right, the meeting with Father. How had he forgotten?

"Is everything okay?" You asked, your smile being replaced by an expression of concern. The courser didn't answer, he still couldn't keep his thoughts in order; instead, he stepped forward until his chest pressed against yours, urging you to back into your quarters. You did so rather hesitantly, a confused expression causing your brows to crinkle. When the door had closed behind him, X6 slowly reached out his arms, wrapping them tightly around you, just as you had shown him last night, he pulled you to his chest and held you firmly. The warmth of you, your soft hair and sweet scent calmed his strained nerves, and he finally allowed himself to take a deep breath and close his eyes, just for a moment. As quickly as he'd initiated it, he pulled away from the hug, squaring his shoulders and straightening his posture,

"I'm glad you're safe, ma'am/sir."

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yiling-daddy · 4 years

Text

Yes, that was me! I can definitely expand on my thoughts re: how Madam Yu’s behaviour reads differently to me due to my traditional, Chinese upbringing.

There is a lot of subjectivity as to whether Madam Yu can be read as abusive, and this reading is often influenced by culture—hence you often see completely off-base takes floating around. However, to me, the way that cultural context influences the reading will actually change depending on the relationship, so I will discuss each one separately. Most of the culturally insensitive takes are about her being an abusive or uncaring mother (she’s not), or that she’s a spurned woman (it’s more complicated than that), so you can skip down to the JC, JYL, and CSSR sections for that.

Madam Yu and Wei Wuxian

As a trend, I think western fandom tends to simplify Wei Wuxian’s dynamic with the Jiang family into an entire adopted family. Consequently, Yu Ziyuan gets perceived as this two-dimensional, evil stepmom figure—but I think this doesn’t capture the truth.

There’s a bit more variability among Chinese audiences when they read the Jiang family dynamic, partly due to our deeper familiarity with wuxia tropes, but mostly because there's a mediocre Netflix translation colouring the western interpretation. Though many Chinese fans do view them all as a sort of family unit and read Madam Yu as a stepmother, I do not. To me, Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Yanli view Wei Wuxian as family—but Madam Yu does not. Madam Yu views him as a servant, a disciple of the sect, and an outsider at the dinner table—and it’s not wrong for her to do so. It’s not gracious, but it’s not unfounded. I don’t think Wei Ying ever gives any indication that he views her as a mother, either.

If you agree that they don’t have anything like a mother-son relationship, all these insults/complaints that Yu Ziyuan levels at him—that he’s the “son of a servant”, that Jiang Fengmian is weird for openly favouring Wei Wuxian over his own son, etc.—these start to make sense? Like, it’s shitty to listen to, but none of it is wrong. Suddenly it reads less like pointless insults and more like actual points.

Additionally, if we consider that Wei Wuxian is a disciple of the sect who goes around and raises the ire of the Wen clan, corporal punishment suddenly looks very normal (again, within the culture). Hence, when I watched the donghua and CQL, I hated seeing Wei Wuxian getting whipped, but I didn’t perceive this as abuse—especially because of the political nature of the decision.

But it is definitely still possible to mistreat a disciple.

In CQL, you see Madam Yu throwing an unnecessary amount of vitriol at Wei Ying. In the novel extras, it's revealed that she regularly whipped him but never whipped the other disciples, indicating that it wasn't normal corporal punishment. She also whipped him for absurdly stupid reasons. To me, this signals that she tended to abuse her authority over him. Even if you don’t view her as an abusive mother to Wei Ying, it's fair to read her as an abusive authority figure.

Importantly however, "abuse" is a loaded word suggesting a violation of social norms, and again, the situation is complicated because the social norms of the setting don't match those of the modern world. Madam Yu is not overstepping her bounds as master of Lotus Pier—hence, people do not think very much of this treatment in-universe, including Wei Ying himself.

Madam Yu, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli

Okay, when I first watched CQL, I cringed when Madam Yu started dragging her family because she sounded like My Actual Chinese Mother. I felt for a second like I had transmigrated into Jiang Cheng’s body and I was experiencing his agony firsthand!

Madam Yu reads very realistically, and I think this is why it gets personal for a lot of Chinese people when this fandom discusses her character. Yes, she belittles and hurts her children for their perceived failures, but many Chinese people can tell you that this is just a common parenting style. And while it might look like bullying to an outsider, this behaviour is usually motivated by love. It is often also motivated by fear that the child’s future will be substandard. This is textually obvious when you consider what exactly Madam Yu yells about:

She snaps at Yanli to stop peeling lotus pods, because she shouldn’t act like a servant. If Yanli keeps behaving so passively, what kind of role is she going to fall into in the future—especially given that she is not a cultivator?

She berates Jiang Cheng for always being inferior to Wei Wuxian no matter what he does. If Jiang Cheng is constantly overshadowed by Wei Wuxian, what will that mean for his future as sect leader? Or his future status and reputation among the sects?

I can do these Chinese Mom Translations because parents in real life will actually say things like this out of concern for their children (insults included), in an attempt to motivate them... and it really does light a fire under our asses. I attribute many of my personal successes to this parenting style. Thus, when I see posts like “Madam Yu didn’t show any sign of caring for others” or "Madam Yu was a purely selfish and arrogant person" or “Madam Yu is an abusive mother and nothing else"—well, I can tell most of these people are not Chinese, or if they are, then they likely did not have a traditional upbringing.

While I don't think these uninformed readings of Madam Yu are necessarily racist, I do think they they are unpleasant for Chinese fans to constantly see. For those of us in the west that had this type of upbringing, we often struggle with trying to frame and process our relationships with our parents. For me, this was partly due to the emotional baggage of my upbringing (Jiang Cheng winning!!!)... but it was also because white society kept telling me that my parents didn't give a shit about me when obviously they did. That’s fucked up to experience. It reeks of cultural imperialism. Thus, when I see Chinese people getting annoyed at these Madam Yu takes, I’m not surprised. This is unfortunately a fictional discussion that very much resembles a real one for us.

Yu Ziyuan, Jiang Fengmian, and Cangse Sanren

A lot of people view Madam Yu as a spurned woman and assume that is her motivation for constantly antagonizing Wei Wuxian and her husband. But because I assume that a lot of her chaotic yelling stems from her concerns as an Actual Chinese Mother, my take is different.

Remember the scene where Madam Yu catches Jiang Fengmian scolding Jiang Cheng just after praising Wei Wuxian? She drags Jiang Cheng up to his father and, in both CQL and the donghua, says something to this effect (paraphrased from memory):

This is your son, the future master of Lotus Pier! Even if you don’t like him because he was born to me, his surname is still Jiang!

And in CQL, she also says this right after berating Jiang Cheng for not measuring up to Wei Wuxian:

But it’s not your fault. Your mother is no match for his mother.

Yu Ziyuan isn’t angry about Cangse Sanren because she’s jealous; she is angry about Cangse Sanren because she thinks Jiang Fengmian’s feelings for her are jeopardizing his competence as a father to Jiang Cheng. Viewed in this light, it also makes sense why Yu Ziyuan is hostile to Wei Wuxian in a way that alienates him from the family—constantly calling him the son of a servant, pointing out the rumours about his parentage, etc. She’s not doing this because she hates Cangse Sanren or Wei Wuxian; she’s doing it because Wei Wuxian’s presence in the family is threatening Jiang Cheng’s future in her eyes.

Bonus: Did Yu Ziyuan love Jiang Fengmian?

Yes! In both the donghua and CQL (I ashamedly admit I don’t clearly remember the novel), I thought their final moments made it quite evident that they cared for each other. They fought together, died together to protect their home, and reached out to one another in their final moments.

But when I rewatched Madam Yu’s scenes in CQL and the donghua, I realized we got other hints that westerners probably missed. I'll focus on CQL:

Right before Jiang Fengmian sets off with Yanli for Lanling, Madam Yu sees them off. She gives Yanli some snacks and then—without making eye contact with Jiang Fengmian—says that she’s also giving them medicine in case someone gets a headache. Jiang Fengmian pauses, because it’s obviously for him.

This is recognizable behaviour for a lot of Chinese people. I can’t tell you how many times my mother got apoplectic at me, and then the only follow-up was her going out of her way to make me my favourite meal. The chaotic yelling you see between Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan is also pretty typical to many Chinese parents, and again, the follow-up in my household was often one of them going out of their way to do something for the other.

This is just how the culture is in a lot of families. “Sorry” isn’t expressed in words; it's expressed in actions. “I love you” isn’t expressed in words; it’s expressed in actions. In Chinese culture, the dominant love language is acts of service. It's fleeting, but we get glimpses of that kind of love between Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian.

#the untamed #cql #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #yu ziyuan #madam yu #jiang yanli #cangse sanren #jiang fengmian #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #damn i guess its madam yu loving hours here #my meta

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wisteria-lodge · 2 years

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badger primary (bird model)

Oh no. Here we go. I am a bird primary. I know it. Everything about me is constructed. Any belief i have is because it makes sense. From the foods i eat to the principles i follow. My life has been well thought out and i love discussing everything. Dissecting why i think the way i do, why i do the things i do, why Other people think and do things. I want the answers to the big questions. My carefully constructed (yet always mutable) values and morals guide me. I am a bird!

Except… except this one teeny tiny part. This part that screams Universal Badger. All living things are equal. This can sometimes even extend to plants. Ever since i was young, i was like this. This was never something that i discovered. It wasn’t constructed. It is the core of my very being.

One time, when i was very little, my parents had to cut down a willow tree and i had a nervous breakdown because i felt like this beautiful tree was being murdered before me. I bawled my eyes out. Its simply a part of who i am.

But i hate the idea of groups! And i don’t want to be part of one. Groups separate us from one another. They tribalize us. I don’t belong anywhere and i am happy with that. I am one with the planet gosh darn it! And when the planet is harmed by those who would gain from doing so, i go into a moral rage. If any of my beliefs harm living things, i carefully reconsider them and maybe tweak my lifestyle to do less harm. I, of course, have to be practical though. If i didnt harm ANY biologically living thing, i would starve. There’s always fruitarian, I suppose… but what about all the other things that need to eat to survive? Its the circle of life, man. And we are lucky to be a part of it, if only for an infinitesimally small amount of time.

Doctor Isley! It’s so good to hear from you. I hear Wanye Enterprises has gone green recently, that’s fantastic news. (Bet you had something to do with it ;) ☠️ 🌿 Say hey to Harley for me, and congrats on the new HBO show.

(Not too much to say about this submission, apart from that I’m loving it.)

Speaking of time… fuck that shit. I hate time. You know, i think this bird part was kind of forced on me. I’ve always been quirky. Set apart from others. But not necessarily birdy.

Every night, starting when i was about 15, my dad would debate me. About politics, mostly. But this was before i could just go on a phone and look up anything i wanted and say, “ha! Gotcha!” I couldnt really prep for a debate and i was fairly uninformed, simply because, well, dial up. I can still remember that noise vomit dial up made. Good times. But yeah anyways so i had no way to really defend my position. All i had to go on was my universal badger. But you cant win with that and my father and i have naturally opposing views. He made me explain to him my position to convince him. I realized that if he heard me use logic, he would approve and maybe, just maybe, i could get through to him.

I see your dad being a *really* intense Bird primary… and I see some young Badger primary in that need to keep the family community strong.

Maybe i could win. BUT i was still sorely uninformed about the things he wanted to debate. My end game plan was to construct my positions AROUND my badger reasoning. I tied all my arguments back to that. I was able to frame them in a way that sounded logical, while not betraying my badger morals. Useful skill to have.

The debates would often get heated, but it was only after my patience wore down and he started threatening the world with his words. At least, he did in my view. All muslims are evil terrorists? Uh, no! That’s stereotyping. Categorizing. Clumping them all in to a GROUP of undesirables. Maybe thats why i hate groups so much. Lets all just hold hands and sing “you are my sunshine” or something instead. But… i love this bird of mine too. This is also an integral part of me. In fact, my partner and i fell in love through our birds. We can discuss things for hours.

But i get scared when he touches on topics that threaten humanity. I know he is simply toeing the line and it doesn’t mean anything. He doesnt believe these topics. In fact, hes one of the most honorable, good people i know, but it makes me dreadfully uncomfortable and squirmy inside sometimes.

Yeah, don’t worry about that. He’s just playing. Birds like to try on crazy hypotheticals for fun sometimes. But as a felt primary, deep down, I see how that could get to you.

So, in conclusion i think i MAY be a badger that hates groups and traditions and societal standards, but loves the whole world and everything on it. With a REALLY strong bird model that is basically my primary unless the world is threatened. Does that make sense?

#shc #sortinghatchats #bird primary #badger primary vs bird primary #wisteria sorts #sortme

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dollslayer · 4 years

Text

Botanical Interest

Soft!Mob!Steve Rogers x reader

Summary: You’re a florist working the wedding of Brooklyn’s most respected mob boss when you catch the eye of his best man.

W/C: 1557

Warnings: Allusions to violence, swearing, copious amounts of blushing

A/N: My second ever fic! I wrote this as an entry to @stargazingfangirl18 ‘s Soft Dark 5k Challenge (congrats!) using dialogue prompt 9 (bolded) with a Mob!AU. No smut, just fluff. While I’m a sucker for Soft!Dark I thought I’d keep it light and fluffy! Might enter a second one with some darker themes.

I’m brand new to writing and the fandom so if you want you can check out my first fic (also a Mob!AU!) and please reach out with any and all comments or thoughts! I’m eager to know!! Cheers!

Botanical Interest Masterlist I Main Masterlist

_______________________

The first time you saw him you didn’t actually see him because you ran square into him while you were looking the other way. Stubbing your nose right into his chest and nearly spilling the contents of the box you were holding.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I wasn’t looking where I was going and I’ve got so much to do so I’ve been running around and I just didn’t see you I’m-“

“Forgiven. You’re forgiven, sweetheart” a smoky voice with confidence and amusement informed you.

You loved being a florist but you were short handed for this wedding and needed to get a move on. You wouldn’t have taken the job but the infamous Bucky Barnes, King of Brooklyn himself was getting married. It would be great exposure for you but when a man like him asks something of you you don’t exactly have a choice. In all the chaos of it you didn’t watch your step.

Cheeks still burning with embarrassment, your eyes met those of Barnes’ right hand man, Steve Rogers. Now you weren’t just embarrassed you were nervous.

Taking a step back and shuffling the box in your hands you sent him a sheepish smile. “Right, well, sorry again. I’ve really got a lot to do before the ceremony, so...” trailing off you started to walk away. Just distract yourself with the work and try not to worry whether you’d just offended a member of the mob.

—————————————

Steve nodded and gave you a small smile, letting you return to the task at hand. There was some issue with the venue and the owners were being stubborn but the wedding planner was busy putting out a different fire. So, being the best man that he was, he decided to come down and use his ‘persuasive skills’.

He almost forgot what he was there for as he watched you walk away. Sure, you looked a little crazed in your work but you were cute. Frazzled but determined as you tinkered with the centerpieces, he let himself be distracted for a moment.

Sighing as his phone buzzed asking for an update on the venue, he shook his head. With a scowl he straightened his posture and clenched his fists as he set off in search of the property manager. Poor bastard.

—————————

30 minutes, 2 punches, and one very credible threat later Steve was leaving the manager's office. He held the door and looked at the man one last time, “And I think I’ll stay to make sure you don’t get any ideas about going back on the agreement.”

At least that was his excuse for sticking around. He still had some time before he needed to get changed so he ambled around until he spotted you across the large room. Planting himself against the wall, a tiny smile on his face as he watched you place each stem with care.

You still looked a little pressed but he could tell you were really enjoying what you were doing. He liked to see a woman hard at work and good at what she does. He liked seeing you so flustered earlier when you ran into him. The heat flooding to your face told him you knew exactly who he was. Good.

Bending to reach a stray peony he took a moment to admire your body. He had to wonder if the blush on your face earlier would be the same one you’d have when he’d whisper dirty things into your ear.

Letting his imagination wander a little bit he didn’t realize you’d gone outside. Maybe it was a good time for Steve to step out and have a smoke.

———————————

You felt some relief as you saw him take off in another direction and felt relief. Finally letting yourself relax a bit you started on the arch. You heard yelling from down the hall but decided to ignore it, you didn’t have time to worry about it.

Some time later you were still working on the arch when you noticed something in the corner of your eye. Taking a moment to look up you saw that it was Steve. What was he doing? Whatever. He said he forgave you just focus on the arch. You worked the best you could to not let his presence bother you.

Finally done with the arch, you needed to go back to the van for more supplies and finishing touches. Letting yourself forget about your unexpected company you climbed into the back of the van and hauled out some boxes.

“You need help with that, sweetheart?” He offered.

You hadn’t expected him out here and let out a shriek. Jesus Christ is he following me now? Steve casually walked over to you with a quirk in his brow waiting for an answer.

“I- Uh, no. No, I’m good. I’m great, actually. My assistant is somewhere around so I don’t need help so you can just, uh, go, I guess. Thanks though.” How you managed to get the entire sentence out only stumbling slightly in your words was beyond you.

“Alright. Well if you need some muscle or a strong set of hands... I’ll be around for a while.” He responded while sporting what you were sure was his signature grin.

You watched him make his way back inside and let out the breath you definitely knew you were holding. Just finish the flowers and get out. You can do this.

—————————

The reception was winding down and you waited for the last guests to leave before you started disassembling things. Waiting out back with the van and your assistant you thought back to your awkward interactions with Steve.

You knew he was dangerous, or at least what he did was dangerous. He didn’t say one threatening word to you and he still had your palms sweating. Hopefully the wedding party would be long gone and you wouldn’t have to see him again.

The lights were starting to come up and you put yourself to task but before you did you took a moment to really admire the arch. Hours of work, hundreds of peonies and ranunculus and so much greenery all put together in one beautiful piece. You couldn’t help but snag a picture.

“It really is gorgeous. Not as gorgeous as you though.” That voice again, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Jesus Christ!” Startled for the second time by him that night your anger got the better of you. “What’s your deal huh? Why are you watching me? Am I on some list now?”

He barked out a laugh in response. “I swear I didn’t mean to start watching you, it just sort of... happened” He admittedly almost sheepishly. “You’re cute when you’re focused, you’re also cute when you’re mad.”

You could only blink at him. What do you even say to that? ‘Thanks, I find you terrifying’? “Um, thanks, I guess.” Good enough.

He held his hand out to you. “Steve Rogers.” You held your hand out to shake when he took it and kissed it instead. You stated your name as calm as you could. When he released your hand you noticed some bruises on his knuckles. Lest you forget who he is.

He seemed to notice you caught that detail. “Don’t worry. I don’t hurt anyone who don’t deserve it, certainly could never hurt a pretty face like yours.” You blushed at the compliment and turned your head.

“I… should probably get back to the flowers. Don’t wanna be here all night.” You shifted your attention to the arch and began the process of dismantling it.

“I wouldn’t mind it. Here, Doll”. He noticed you searching around for your tools and handed them to you. “Let me help you, these things look heavy”. You really shouldn’t. A piece of you kept placing this warning around him but every time he opened his mouth he was so sweet. How could you say no?

____________________________

So that’s how the big scary mobster found himself surrounded by flowers and skipping out on the after party. He asked you about yourself, how you got into floristry, he listened to you geek out about flowers. You asked him about himself and he did his best to answer while trying not to scare you off. Something about how confident you were in your work but how shy you got reeled him in. He didn’t care who saw him grinning like an idiot at you.

As he helped you load the last of your things and close the back doors of your van he leaned against it. “So, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is just around the corner from my place but I’ve never been. Think a professional like you could spare some time for an uninformed punk like myself?”

______________________________

Was he asking you out? You couldn’t fight the growing smile on your face. You know what he does is… less than ideal but talking to him you really felt good chemistry between the two of you. He was funny and genuine and those moments where he was a little shy telling you about growing up as a scrawny kid had you feeling like you were peeking in on a side of him that you’d never expect. You looked up at him still smiling.

“Oh what the hell? When are you free?”

#siris5ksoftdarkchallenge #steve rogers x reader #mob!Steve rogers #Mob AU #Mob!Steve rogers x reader #Soft!Mob!Steve Rogers #fluff #marvel fanfic #mafia!steve rogers #mafia!AU

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alltheselights · 2 years

Note

I think some Larries aren’t quite getting why some people are mad about Harry’s comments. Yes, some people are saying Harry’s queer baiting and he’s not queer at all and they are saying it loudly, but what other people are saying is that whether Harry is queer or not isn’t the issue. The issue is that his comments are insensitive, show little understanding of the fact that it is still illegal to be gay in places all over the world, and even if it’s not illegal, you still risk a lot in being out and queer. His comments about gay sex and gay love were also uninformed, and almost ignores the previous depictions of gay relationships and love in queer films and TV shows, media which were groundbreaking and paved the way for more representation. They sound like the kind of things someone who hasn’t had gay sex would say. So I do think some Larries aren’t quite understanding the issue. Of course Harry doesn’t owe anyone explanations of his sexuality. He doesn’t have to be out to be queer. But when he does have a public image rooted in a queer aesthetic and has years of making comments about sexuality which can be seen as insensitive to the queer community, it isn’t hard to see why some people might find him disingenuous. Harry will be fine, I feel, because his fans will defend him (look at how Harry’s fans went for Billy Porter over his comments about the Vogue cover, which I hated, Billy was only pointing out some truths about the realities for BIPOC) and the general public will forget about this. Harry does have a team good at their job, I’m sure there will be good press about Harry any day now. And his comments about publicly being with someone are ridiculous when his public girlfriend is in the same interview talking about their relationship. And there are public pictures of him being seen kissing the women he was publicly dating. It just feels dishonest, especially to the average person who can only go off of what they see, and like he’s playing all sides. And Harry did say that Camille Rowe broke his heart or something in an interview, didn’t he? I don’t remember now but I think that relationship was referred to a bit more. It’s also annoying to see some Larries almost blame Louis, as if he should have read the article before it was printed and put a stop to it. Harry has to take responsibility for how comments publicly attributed to him, a 28-year-old man who has been in the industry for over a decade now, and Larries actually need to let that happen. Harry is not 16 anymore and it feels like fans forget that. Defending him is fine, but don’t turn it into Louis’ fault. I feel like there are more and more Larries who I really don’t like every day.

Yup, I totally agree with you. I haven't seen anyone trying to criticize Louis for this, thank god, but that doesn't surprise me either.

You know, what's really unfortunate about this Rolling Stone stuff is that it was very easily preventable. I feel like a good publicist or manager would have read over some of his responses and realized how they could be perceived, but I actually think even Harry's team has bought into the idea that he's untouchable. And as popular as Harry has become and as well-loved as he is, celebrities are never, ever untouchable. The sad truth is that the world is always waiting for an opportunity to drag celebrities down, and Harry's poorly thought out and worded responses were a great one.

#asks

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nice-kill-tanaka · 4 years

Text

🌄Kyoya + Rival Fiance🌌

Summary: Had you two not been paired off since you were young, your intellectual spats would have been much more...uncouth...to say the least. But, being maritally connected might be the needed push for you to realize your collective potential.

A/N: Outlet for needless unresolved sexual tension™️?? Yes please!

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

👓Kyoya Ootori👓

You met Kyoya when you both were around twelve years old

Your respective fathers had reached a long-lasting stalemate in their efforts to merge their companies in a way that was satisfying to both sides. And this was a last ditch effort to successfully complete the deal crucial to your father’s company in particular

Your parents were reluctant, as you were their only child. But, cautiously decided to go through with it after you gave your (albeit, slightly uninformed) consent

It was a dinner for yours and the Ootori families alone. One to finalize the deal. One to introduce the young future “lovers”

You sat across the table from one another, exchanging glances of matching intensity and analytical intent

You knew next to nothing about the quiet boy in front of you. But, you did know that he, just like you, were used to being the smartest person in the room. And, if not the smartest, the most observant

Your first words at that dinner never went beyond greetings and farewells. Very suffocatingly cordial for what was supposed to be two young and bright kids brought together for what their parents described as the “greater good”

Make no mistake, you both knew that this arrangement held more benefits than a successful business deal

But, something about your future husband made you want to intellectually step on his neck (Lovingly of course ❤️😚🔪). And it was the same sentiment vice versa

Up until you and Ootori (The name you insisted on using to address him) started attending the same school, neither of you could pinpoint why the competitive tension between you two was so strong

But, you and Ootori do figure it out eventually, through learning about each other’s pasts

I’ll put it like this:

Unlike Ootori, your gifts were never overshadowed by well-off or talented family members. Though praise wasn’t a frequent thing either. You were always subconsciously told to improve though. Through that, you were almost always the one on top. And you knew it. You liked it there, sure, but you were never complacent. You wouldn’t be caught dead being surpassed because you didn’t bother to try

You were the monarch, and you stayed that way through working, soaring to higher levels than your adversaries could ever imagine

Kyoya, being the eclipsed moon to virtually everyone’s sun, had to learn how to flourish in the background. He knew that a lot of the time, he was the most capable person in the room, but other people didn’t recognize that. So, he had to make his mark through craftier methods

He was the one with his sights set on your throne. The only one able to conquer it. And you knew that

In summary your relationship is a constant back and forth between Kyoya using his silent cunning to surpass you, and you reclaiming your place with pure drive and spite. You were the one he wanted to overthrow, and he was the assassin you wanted to outsmart

“Hm, I wouldn’t have expected the fleeting top student to score so far below me. I suppose this is part of another big plan, Ootori?”

“Well, L/N, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that the class average is unusually higher than normal. You’ll have to work a little harder next time to maintain your far lead won’t you?”

Or:

“That’s the third time you’ve eaten lunch with the Tsuin sisters this week L/N. I didn’t know you were looking for new friends.”

“Networking is never a bad thing Ootori. I got their parents’ company to invest in our fathers’ partnership in less than a week. But sure, call it ‘looking for new friends’.“

Something like that 😂

The thought of becoming personally involved outside of social performances never left your minds. But, the lack of cooperation between you deemed the option unnecessary

You and Kyoya were still strictly rivals when you both met Tamaki Suoh

You, for one, never quite understood Tamaki and his motives. Especially when he proposed an idea he had for what he called a “host club”

When Tamaki spoke to you individually, he suggested that you become the club’s manager, since you politely declined becoming part of the act

The second time you spoke with Tamaki, it was with Kyoya, and you quickly realized what was going on

Though, you weren’t sure what made Tamaki think you and Kyoya would make a good team. You knew the potential was there, but pride was another big hurdle to clear

But, through a bit of convincing (and Tamaki’s puppy dog eyes), you and Kyoya agreed to partner up in running the technical business aspects of the host club. Kyoya as the vice president, you as the manager

Things were a little rocky for the first week or so of business. Both you and Kyoya had the same end goals in mind, but the friction was in how to go about it

Your approaches were more straightforward. Practicality and efficiency were what mattered to you. Sure, you didn’t mind playing the long game. But, if you didn’t have to, you wouldn’t

Kyoya’s approaches were intricate and methodical, designed for the sake of the long game. He was willing to wait for everything to fall into place, even if it wasn’t the best for the short term

But, since you knew Tamaki wouldn’t be much help to your dilemma, you and Kyoya had your first genuine conversation

“We do get things done eventually. But, only after a disagreement on our approach.”

“I suppose you’re right, L/N. Functioning the way we are now would only hurt us long-term.”

“So, is that an agreement to collaborate?”

“Of course. Besides, if we’re to be married one day, working as one unit is something we’ll need to learn.”

Kyoya gave you a cunning, yet teasing smile as he walked away. The club, undoubtably hearing what he said to you

You raised an eyebrow and gave a dumbfounded glance at your rival, who you just let stalk away without hearing your reply

This was the first time either of you verbally acknowledged your arranged marriage. Or, at least, met it with something other than dismissal and a nasty look towards the other person

Your ears and the skin between your eyes burned with heat, though you were sure it was only from Kyoya exposing your arrangement to the entire club. You had never felt so flustered by him, and you weren’t sure if you wanted to welcome the feeling yet

Kyoya on the other hand, wondered why he said what he did. It was something that slipped out in an attempt to make you all hot and bothered with no chance to reply. A small victory for him. But, what did he actually think of marrying you?

...Well, to be honest, he kind of liked it

Being able to marry someone on his intellectual level meant things would never be boring. Especially with you being so self aware

Besides, two minds for business meant neither of you needed to inherit something to be successful. You two could build your own economic empire from the ground up and still have time for vacationing on the weekends

((Ignoring the fact that Kyoya also finds you physically attractive. So, you guys would legit be the prettiest couple in Ouran))

From then on, your relationship became like a shiver of sharks. Dangerous individually, but when you see them together?

Pick a god and pray.

With your combined cunning and observational skills, no one can pull a fast one on the host club

Your little jabs at each other slowly became more playful, leaving the other with a burning face and a ghost of a smile

Even Honey-Senpai began religiously shipping the two of you

“Kyo-chan, Y/N-chan, can I be the ring bearer at your wedding?”

To which you both stare down at the cheeky little boy, then back at each other, aware of what he was doing. You smirk with endearment, and speak first:

“Well, that’s a big responsibility, Honey-Senpai. You think you can handle it?”

“You can’t get any cake on your suit, remember?”

Honey-Senpai faltered immediately at Kyoya’s last statement

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

[🌌Take this for your travels, bud. Don’t worry about paying me or anything, everything’s on the house! Though 🍁likes🍁 and ☘️reblogs☘️ are appreciated!🌄] — Reagan

#extra supplies #caravan commodities #ohshc #ouran high school host club #ohshc x reader #ohshc headcanons #kyoya ootori #kyoya ootori x reader #kyoya x reader #ootori x reader #sorry this is kinda long 😅

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jerardeusebio · 3 years

Text

Privy: A Bedroom Tour

Prologue

The house I grew up in was built by my great grandfather, Lolo Juan, in the '80s. When I say built, I don't mean he sat by the construction site and looked at the construction workers as they toiled away with their spades and trowels. With his own hands, he raised from the ground what would become his wedding gift to my parents. And though that house went through an expansion in the late ‘90s (construction work was so major we had to move out of it for a few months), the idea still amazes me to this day, every time I notice the original walls—thick and uneven in places—ever so conspicuous to a trained eye. These days I still see those walls, when I go there to eat and spend time with my family. I have to “go” to this house because I moved out of it in 2005.

When my family pooled enough funds to renovate the other house (we call it kabila)—an older, slightly smaller building within our family’s compound—adjacent to our home, I didn’t realize it was going to change things for me permanently. For many years, we had leased it to a lovely and dear family, but since my cousin from Mindoro, Jelina, and I were about to start attending the university here in Los Baños, we felt it was time to reclaim the space. And because adding an extension to the first house was out of the question, the grown ups decided to renovate this other house. We soon found out, Jelina and I, that we were not just getting a bedroom each, but a fully functional house with living and dining areas, a kitchen, two baths, and even a ping-pong area. (Our family does not play with college.) I felt that I was just the lucky tag-along because Jelina and I were thick as thieves. This is the short version of why I presently have a house of my own, and why I live one rambutan tree away from my parents’ house. Jelina has since become a lawyer and a mother. As for me, well, I stayed in our house.

It has been 17 years since I moved into my bedroom, meaning it has also been that long since I started the task of transforming it, making it my own. This compulsion to transform spaces is characteristic of me, an established fact known by those who peopled my formative years. I imagine, though, how it could be new or perhaps confirmatory to casual acquaintances and friends. To illustrate: the first real dream I had for myself was to become an architect and/or an interior designer. (As a kid, I did not know the difference between the two.) And while this dream was short-lived, ceremoniously dashed by financial and logistical limitations, I never stopped being a frustrated interior designer. In fact, when we finally got cable when I was about 13, it was the Lifestyle Network and the HGTV specials, which aired on it, that I was glued to. And every so often, I would be moved by inspiration into sprucing up our home, a place totally unspruced by an electrical engineer and a physicist who seemed, to my uninformed eyes, beleaguered by other unworthy concerns. So as a child, I rearranged furniture, pointed to our good china and brought in potted plants whenever guests were expected. And for my visions that I couldn’t make real, I drew. I drew and fantasized about spaces and pretty things. Some of my fondest childhood memories come from being able to gussy up what little space I could, to make a thing of beauty out of the seemingly random things we owned.

This flare for design was what I used as the strongest motivation to stay in my undergraduate program, BS Agriculture. I struggled with it at the beginning, but in the end was able to specialize in Landscaping. I felt that that was the closest thing I could get to an education in designing. The thought was potent enough to see me through graduation and even some recent passion projects. And this flare would never subside.

It took almost two decades and venerable strides to financial independence in order to fund this transformation, which really was a journey in itself. I initially wanted to just share the photos and leave it like that, without any of my narration, but I soon felt that this sharing was more than just a reporting of the present.

All about the journey, this is an account of the past and an ode to the future. I’m only capturing my space right at this particular moment, a blip along the long in-between. It just so happened that, now, my room is at its closest to looking and feeling like a reflection of my taste and personality. It feels like a good moment to pause.

Here, I hope to make you privy to my personal space and the stories about the things I willed to stay near.

Though my house was wielded into existence for two college students, those two college students didn’t really get involved in its planning. We were just too young and couldn’t prospect enough to know better. In hindsight, though, it would have been nice if the two bedrooms were a lot bigger, even at the cost of a having smaller living area and kitchen. I say this because if asked today, I’d prioritize bedrooms over entertaining space. It is, after all, the one room in the world where we shed layers of ourselves and be completely vulnerable in, a liberating and frightful idea. But alas! The concrete has been dry since 2005, and my room has kept its original dimensions: 3.0 x 3.5 meters.

At the center of the room is the bed. It’s there because I don’t like sleeping too close to the windows (scary stories from childhood leave their marks), and I have two windows: one facing the north and the other west. The bed’s location has worked for me in the long run. It’s made me feel centered, even as I sleep. The placement also gives primacy to what the bedroom is really most for. Having stuck to this idea, I wake up and the first thing I do is fix my bed. This is a source of pride for me. It becomes the first task and accomplishment of the day. As William McCraven once said about making one’s own bed, “If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.”

The bedstead was my gift to Dylan, back when we kept a flat in the city, when we were both still working in Makati. In our city days, Dylan and I slept on a foam mattress. This was something I didn’t prefer, being that I’m a child of one Rose Eusebio, who engraved in my mind pithy expressions like, “You spend a third of your life sleeping, invest in your sleep.” So the mattress under these navy blue Akemi sheets is new. It’s orthopaedic and so is, as the word “invest” suggests, one of my most expensive purchases from last year.

Next to my bed is a wall of photographs, arranged to give a semblance of a family tree, though, it really isn’t. I do feel like an elaborate arrangement like this takes away from the focal point of a bedroom. Not a smart design choice. It also adds to the rooms “museum” feels, as one of Dylan’s colleagues put it. But I justify it, to myself at least, using my sentimentality.

This wall of photographs is my favorite spot and my most personal display. Here are descriptions of the images, from top to bottom, left to right: my parents at Christmas 2006; my brother Marky with our first dog Jana (Yuh-nuh); me eating dinuguan for the first, and most likely the last, time (what can I say, it was an event); a portrait of my sister Thea taken by me; a photo from the day of my baptism in Adelaide, 1989; my 25th birthday portrait; me with my late Grandma Sally; the males of the family in our garden, c. 2004; the females of the family in Lucban, Quezon, c. 2004; me next to my late Grandma Lety and a Mer-nel’s cake in honor of my First Communion; a faded photograph of me on my 2nd birthday next to my late Ninang Gloria; and, lastly, a photograph of me and my mother.

Below the wall of photographs is a desk. I consider it to be a prized possession for a handful of reasons. For starters, I painted it its cream color in 2013. I also added the gilded scallop detail on its front and the similar gilded trimmings on either side (unseen). I was told this used to be my grandfather’s typewriter table. This means it’s old, which to me translates to being storied and precious. And because its height is odd (lower than a work desk should be), it has prevented me from working on it. This is desirable. I believe, more than ever, that work should stay outside the bedroom, especially if it could be helped. So the desk acts as my nightstand, holding books I am or should be reading, this champagne colored lamp (my only source of light at night), and a framed photograph of me on my mother’s lap. The image was taken by my father, when I was less than year old in Adelaide, South Australia.

I am also told that the desk came with this chair. Both of these pieces were originally brown. But unlike the table, the chair was almost a goner. One could have been easily forgiven for dismantling it, using its parts for kindling. But I refused do that, repairing and refurbishing it with the vigor of a procrastinating graduate student. I painted it to match its desk, and even upholstered it myself with this bird and orchid canvas from The Fabric Store. Today, I sit there to read or write down notes in my planner. In the photo, on the chair is a teddy bear, which I rescued from being thrown away. Dylan and I named it Akemi (after the bedsheets) as a joke, really, but for some reason it stuck. I saved and kept Akemi because he reminds me of one of the first (and saddest) books I’ve ever read as a child in the school library, The Velveteen Rabbit.

If you’re still reading up to this part and haven’t yet picked it up , then let me just come clean: I am cloyingly sentimental.

More proof of this comes next, with what I choose to keep above my head when I sleep: a framed copy of my first broadsheet publication. “A beautiful heart” was written and published in 2011, back when I was still working in a basement laboratory (my first job!). Its coming out into the world proved to be a pivotal point in my life. Just this one essay connected me to so many people who would later be instrumental in the shifts and changes in my life, and the overwhelming response I received from friends and strangers who read it was what pushed me to decide to get an education in creative writing. I had none of that whatsoever when I wrote the piece. Because of its significance, the essay is honored this way. Every year, on its anniversary (October 1), I read it here and reflect on the growing number of years between then and now.

Across the desk would be the reading nook. As a personal rule, this space is dedicated to reading books and materials for leisure, though in my line work, the distinctions blur every now and then. The bookshelves were built and installed around 2008 by an exceptionally skilled local woodworker we called Mang Roland. It’s pretty high, and one needs to stand on a chair to access the books, so I really only store books that I’ve read there. My favorite ones, which I usually also use as references for my creative writing classes, are either on the living room shelves or at the office.

The posh looking seat here, “The Chair” as I’d like to call it, is the newest addition to the nook and the room. I got it a few days before Christmas 2021, and I’ve just been smitten with it. As a kid obsessed with Mariah Carey and her infamous MTV Cribs episode, I feel like pieces such as this epitomize glamor, and I’ve moved past caring about being perceived as pretentious or gaudy or colonized. Looking at “The Chair” everyday since it arrived has given me much joy, and mostly for what it signifies I do have now: financial stability and independence. And “The Chair” being in my cart for a good four months before I decided to, you know, live a little, is proof enough that I really weighed things before I decided for it.

I consider reading to be a form of traveling, and so on the walls of this reading corner are two of my favorite travel photographs with Dylan. The left picture was taken by his brother, when we traveled to Samar in 2016. You can’t tell it at first glance, but we’re actually holding hands. The photograph on the right was taken on Christmas Eve 2017. We were touring the Angkor Wat Complex in Siem Reap as part of our unforgettable Indochina tour, and I just needed to frame the moment this way.

In between the framed travel photographs and the books is a special shrine. It’s what me and my friends call my Mariah Altar. Basically, it’s my Mariah Carey collection of concert tickets, mementos, and the CDs of hers I’ve amassed since I got my hands on Rainbow (1999)—my first official Mariah Carey CD—back in 2001.

I credit Mariah for a lot of things, like pioneering rap artists and verses on mainstream songs and having had a number one single every year from 1990 to 2000. Oh, and she has also saved my life countless times. Apart from what I just mentioned and many more that I can’t possibly get into right now, she has also influenced my sensibilities, language, and style. Outside of my family, Mariah has had the most impact on my life. Her music has literally been the soundtrack to my whole life. And I giggle to admit that my bedroom’s decor is a budget, developing-country version of her Tribeca apartment in New York, photos of which appear in the November 2001 issue of Architectural Digest and November 2007 issue of Glamour.

Because my bedroom is probably only the size of one of Mariah’s bathrooms (no doubt), I can’t really have a walk-in closet. Not that I would want or even need one. When it comes to clothing, I believe, my sensibility and Mariah’s finally diverge.

Along with the built-in bookshelves, Mang Roland also created a custom armoire for me. I designed the entire thing, from the moulding outside down to the interior’s layout and measurements. Unfortunately, the wood-borers got to it. And after only about seven years, it had to go. I had to say goodbye to it, as I did Mang Roland, who passed away shortly after.

Because the custom armoire was irreplaceable, I went for another built-in wardrobe. This time, I designed a bigger built-in steel frame. I used steel so, just in case the wooden parts get infested again, the structure could still stand. It was fabricated in 2019. Shortly after, the sliding mirror doors were added to it.

The most common compliment I get when I pull these doors open for family and friends is about how organized all my things are. (The only preparation I had to do before taking photographs of my room was to clean the mirrors.) Related this, I want to share two of my secrets: First, I read and applied Marie Kondo’s philosophy and techniques. And here I have to thank Dylan who seems to be always ten steps ahead of most people. He shared Marie Kondo’s books years before she even had her own Netflix show.

The second secret is my key takeaway from Marie Kondo’s books as well as the conclusion to many of my reflections on Stoicism and Buddhism: letting go. Right after I read Marie’s book, I gathered all my clothes, embraced and thanked them one by one, and then proceeded to let go of the items that no longer served a purpose to me. I still do this occasionally. I found that what happens next is that these things are given a chance to find their purpose and a home elsewhere, and that I’d end up with items that all have their purpose and proper place with me. This, ultimately, is how I have avoided clutter in the spaces I keep, and in my life as a whole.

On the right side of my wardrobe hangs my short-sleeved and patterned shirts. On the shelves below are the pamabahays—top and bottom matched and folded as one unit (another trick I learned from Dylan), all arranged in old shoe boxes. One side is for me, the other is for Dylan. On the middle shelf are the folded t-shirts arranged by color, and folded using a folding board. For this, I repurposed plastic certificate holders. (I got a ton of those during my first year as a UP faculty.) Doing this allows them to take consistent shape and form, and so stacking them is so much easier. The effect is also pleasing to the eyes.

The lowest shelf is for shorts and pants, which I prefer to store in rolls. I use the same technique for my towels and bedsheets, which are stored in another room.

Though not really by design, the left side of the wardrobe has become the more formal side. Just like all of my clothes, the plain shirts are arranged by color.

My brother Marky, in one of our many heated and passionate discussions, claimed that at least half of all my dress shirts are from him. I vehemently rebuked his statement only to find myself frowning in the mirror and at the truth, and admitting as much to him days later. It’s not a family secret that my brother has too many dress shirts. I’ve proposed multiple times about how convinced I am that it’s probably a clinical disorder. But while the discussion is not yet broached, I am the willing recipient of shirts he feels could help my style. (“You’re a UP professor, and should dress the part," he would say, and I’d remind him to concentrate on the “UP” part of his statement.) Caught in this photograph are thirteen shirts, eight of which are from him. To my credit, I did spend a considerable sum having them altered for my svelter frame, and at least now I’ve publicly acknowledged it.

Under the shirts are these native boxes I got towards the end of 2020, through a Facebook seller, back when I was too ignorant to check out what Lazada was all about. That transaction was a first for me. I had drive to a gas station (and through a bit of downpour) along SLEx to get them. And it was interesting, too, because the sellers were therapists.

Now I have seven of these to hold various group of things like toiletries, underwear, socks, and out-of-season shirts. Having these boxes work for people like me (here’s another tip) who want to maintain the appearance of order. Things could stay chaotic inside these boxes and it won’t show. Managing an anxiety disorder for more than a decade has taught me clutter often triggers my anxiety.

I have two bigger versions of these native boxes below. They have lids, and so in them I’ve stored my backpacks and some older bags I use for travel. On top of these native boxes are displayed several bags, majority of which I received as gifts after finishing college and graduate school. As a reformed bag fiend, who once accumulated more than 20 bags and addressed the ridiculousness of it all by donating a dozen of them to charity, I’m proud to have held on to only these. Most of the year, particularly during the rainy months, I keep these bags in cloth bags for protection.

As you can tell by now, I’m a huge fan of using photographs to decorate my space. I believe I have amassed more than a hundred picture frames since 2005, some of which are next door and others are stored for ‘seasonal’ use. This is another testament to my sentimentality. (It’s becoming clearer and clearer that my sentimentality will be the ruin of me.)

Beside the cologne bottles is a photograph of me and my Ninang, Mary Lou, who’s also had tremendous influence in my life. She’s influenced my taste, my style, and has also given me access to hard-earned wisdom, culture, and material things, specifically ‘Stateside’ stuff, like the bags and scents I have, and all the other finer articles of clothing I keep in my wardrobe, at least the ones I didn’t get from Marky.

Far right is an ornately framed photograph of my family in a park in Australia. It’s one of the first photographs ever taken of us as a family. The golden butterfly ornament thingy is actually a face cream holder, and belonged either to my late Grandma Lety or Ninang Gloria. I keep it in near to remind me of both them.

On the side of my wardrobe are more framed photographs with the ribbon details. This series shows more tender moments in my life arranged, top to bottom, from younger to older. It’s the first thing one sees when they open the door, and it’s sort of a tribute to time.

On the other side of my bed is this vanity stool that once belonged to Ninang Gloria. I reupholstered it to match the typewriter table’s chair. Below the seat is more storage space, where I keep my pandemic staples: alcohol, masks, and disinfecting wipes. On the seat are the books I’m currently reading and a basket to hold products I use at bedtime.

One of the newer features in the room would be the Bluetooth speakers, cleverly hidden on either side of the bed. (A portion of is captured in the photo below, one will just need to zoom in a bit.) The placement and speakers were Dylan’s early Christmas gift, and we’ve already tested when we watched a horror flick over the holiday break. On the weekends or after a long, rough weekday, I play Mariah nonstop. Of course.

Epilogue

These days, whenever I contemplate my room, I can’t say I feel like I’ve made it. There are still so many things I wish were different or could be better about it. I still wish the room was bigger. There isn’t one great photograph of the whole space here because the camera I used, with its fixed 35mm lens, wasn’t capable of capturing everything from any angle. And there also aren’t any pictures of the windows because what we have are louvre windows, a design choice by the grownups I’m still trying to reconcile with. I dream of tearing down the north wall so it could lead me to an indoor garden. And so many days of last year were spent complaining about our rowdy neighbors and the business of the street nearest the bedroom. I’ve known for quite sometime now that the it does not exist. Or if it does, it is an ever-moving target.

I also don’t think that I’ve accessed some level of “success,” although maybe I have, at least relative to Little Jerard. What I do think of, almost daily at meditation, is about how all of this is headed to chaos and oblivion. Daily, I accept this to be the truth. I bring to mind so many things: Lolo Juan’s house and how it has changed beyond recognition; our dear neighbors who gave up their lease; Jelina, who’s now on a different island; my BS degree; all my old clothes and bags; Mang Roland’s armoire; and just all the people I love, gone and never coming back, their faces forever frozen in photographs in my room. Bringing to mind all these—everything and everyone I have ever loved and lost—I marvel and cower at life’s mysteries.

One of the reasons I decided to write this entry was to catch and honor this particular moment, a point in my life where I recognize an overwhelming gratitude for the space I have created for myself. I’m writing this while I can still jot down these bits of stories and thoughts, while I have the memories as fresh as they’ll ever be. I do this because I am certain that I and all of this—we—will have to go one day. And that’s fine.

Not to say I don’t often ask questions like, “Who will take care of this room when I’m gone? Who will guard these mementos? Who will keep these ribbons dusted, glued, and 3M-ed to the wall?” For many, the worst answer to these questions would be “no one.” But I’ve long accepted this to be the most likely answer. I can’t see how I’ll have an heir, apart from my younger sister. And she may not even want to keep the room as it is. However it’ll be, all of these things I have collected and curated so painstakingly will, piece by piece, be disposed of. Maybe not in a day or a month, maybe not even in a year, but they will all eventually get there.

Meditation has helped me confront and embrace grim thoughts such as these by accepting them as possible, as happening. And then I lead myself to see how these thoughts ultimately—fortuitously—don’t and won’t matter at all. Coming to terms with life’s impermanence and our brief stay in places—some we even get to call home or my room—and embracing them all the same, has allowed me to be most grateful for what I have, both fleeting and lasting, and be most content with where I find myself presently: here and now.

#literature #photography #mariah carey #interiors

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