#this is not the first taz au i’ve made i fear

[apollos-boyfriend]

hear me out,

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Untamed TAZ Balance AU? Don't have to write anything, just consider that (is Wen Ning Lucretia in this or is he too nice for that)

NHS IS LUCRETIA, NHS IS ABSOLUTELY LUCRETIA, I HAVE THOUGHTS, my girlfriend yelled at me for these thoughts.  Hell this got long, I’ve literally been saving it in my drafts until Tumblr fixed the Read More issue.

WWX is Taako, JC is Magnus, WQ is Merle, JYL is in the umbrella (became a lich to keep her brother from doing it), WN is the Red Robe (became a lich because he thought it seemed reasonable), NHS is Lucretia, XXC is Davenport, LWJ and LXC are mutually Kravitz (LXC sets his bro up with the death criminal wizard), Wen Zhuliu is John Vore, LSZ is Angus but also a baby Reaper

ONE

So Wei Wuxian isn’t really a wizard, is the thing.  Like, he does the wizard magic, and apparently he has strong Wizard Vibes because wherever he travels, people ask him if he can solve their magical bullshit problems, but he’s, like, barely a wizard.  He’s an inventor, technically, except that a few years back some stuff went explosively awry while he worked with this traveling show and–yeah.  So he’s working as a wizard because, hey, he can cast Magic Missile and he needs to eat and he’s an Evocation specialist, anyway, so it’s not like he’s out here making food from rocks.  He’s hired on with a couple other random jackasses, a fighter who took a dislike to Wei Wuxian right off the bat and a cleric with a bad temper and an itchy Sacred Flame finger, and they’re doing a job for some dwarf, or whatever.  The dwarf has a guy hired on as muscle, but he doesn’t look like much, all wide eyes and baby face.  He calls himself Qionglin, no last name, and stares at Wen Qing like he’s never seen a cleric before, and Jiang Cheng spends the entire trip to Phandolin messing with his whip, which is the stupidest weapon Wei Wuxian has ever seen.

Well, then everything immediately goes horribly wrong, though, and turns out that Jiang Cheng is pretty okay with that whip.  Qionglin (Wei Wuxian spoke to the man all of one time, but he was sweet, if a little awkward) gets himself kidnapped by a bunch of goblins, and their employer is gods-know-where with whatever a Black Spider is, and suddenly this very boring escort mission is a very not boring rescue mission.

There’s a skeleton in the cave.  Wei Wuxian takes an umbrella from it, and it crumbles into dust beneath its red robe.  There’s a very annoyed man with a sword who calls himself Song Lan and speaks in static, and he’s somehow not the weirdest part of this whole day.

Phandolin doesn’t survive its brush with the Zidian Gauntlet, and neither does Qionglin.  Wen Qing screams when he dies, and Wei Wuxian grabs her under the arms with Jiang Cheng and books it for the empty well in Song Lan’s wake, and they just hide.  

And then they go to the goddamn moon, apparently.

TWO

The goddamn moon is run by an older man with hair still a glossy black, toying with a beautifully painted white fan in his hand.  He calls himself the Director and–after some testing–hires them more or less on the spot.  Something flickers over his face when Wen Qing, bemused by her own upset, makes an offhand mention of a man named Qionglin who died when the Gauntlet brought down so much lightning that it turned Phandolin into black glass.  But it’s not Wei Wuxian’s problem, so he doesn’t worry himself over it too much.  He takes the payment offered to him by the Director’s aide, a blindfolded, stunningly handsome man in Bureau blue and white who rests his hand on his own chest and says “Xiao Xingchen” and not another word.

The Bureau is–weird.  They’ve got a giant jellyfish and a store run by–something Wei Wuxian Does Not Trust and a dorm.  Wei Wuxian laughs and kicks Jiang Cheng cheerfully in the ankle and says “Just like college, huh?” and Jiang Cheng gives him a dark look and snaps “I never went to college.”

“Yeah,” Wei Wuxian says, blinking.  “Me neither.”

Whatever.  They go on a train adventure and there’s a kid, a kid who blinks and stares at Wei Wuxian like he’s seen a goddamn ghost and immediately walks up to introduce himself as Lan Sizhui, boy detective.

Wei Wuxian fucking loves this kid.  He’s not sure why this wide-eyed fifteen-year-old latched onto him so hard, but he’s smart, funny, loyal, and extremely easy to pick on.  13/10 child rating, in Wei Wuxian’s book.

(Sizhui, for his part, more or less kicks down the door to his father’s offices in the Astral Plane the second the Reclaimers are gone and shouts “I HAVE A LEAD ON WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WORLD.”)

(His father, Lan Wangji, the Grim Reaper, is very interested to hear all about it–especially when his son casually name-drops three of the biggest bounties that the Raven King, his adoptive elder brother, has ever sent him after, with the exception of that absolutely insufferably sweet-tempered lich Wen Ning.)

THREE

So…the Crystal Kingdom.

Is it Wei Wuxian’s finest hour, shouting obscure tentacle-related threats at the second crystal construct they’ve seen in the past twenty minutes?  No, probably not.  But it’s been a stressful day, they’re already down one Regulator and Song Lan is fuck-knows-where with Mianmian and, again, this is the second menacing crystal construct they’ve seen in twenty minutes.  Or maybe it’s the same one? 

Whatever, doesn’t matter.  They’re here to hunt down Meng Yao, a scientist who’s been dicking around with some seriously ill-advised necromancy and also the Philosopher’s Stone, and a crystal construct or two isn’t going to stop them.

Wei Wuxian actually physically cannot help himself, though, when the Reapers appear in the mirror, a matched set of beautiful men, and he grins broadly at the one glaring at him most viciously.  They get let go on a technicality, along with a conduit still containing Meng Shi’s memory of a vision beyond the cosmos, and Meng Yao leaves with his life and not much more.

Later, Lan Wangji is absolutely betrayed by the realization that his brother willfully set him up to be the primary go-between for the completely breathtaking deeply irritating wizard-by-way-of-death-criminal.  And that’s before the whole lich revelation.  (He does get a kiss, though, after he watches his brother pulled under by the Hunger.  That’s nice.  He hopes Wei Wuxian will mitigate the death crimes now that they’re dating.)

FOUR

The seven Relics are as follows:

The Zidian Gauntlet, which can generate a lightning blast so powerful that it can obliterate an entire city.  (Jiang Cheng–he watched the others try to lay in protections, try to make their Relics harmless, and he knew it wouldn’t work.  All the Gauntlet does is damage.  It can melt a city down to black glass, but it can’t be twisted, it can’t be made into any more of a nightmare than it already is.  He’s a fighter.  He knows all about damage, knew all about what he was making.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t kill him by inches to watch it leave a path of destruction–so much that his beloved jiejie tried to seal it away.)

The Oculus, which can make any construct real.  (Xiao Xingchen–Nie Huaisang didn’t take everything.  He doesn’t remember the mission, or his own past.  Something strange got confused in the process, and he lost most of his speech.  But he remembers how to fight, handles his sword as cleanly and effectively as ever, and he remembers that he doesn’t think much of Nie Huaisang’s combat skills.  Or maybe it’s just really obvious that Nie Huaisang isn’t much of a fighter.  Regardless, Xiao Xingchen insisted on accompanying him, before–before.  Then they went into the Felicity Wilds, and…Xue Yang is honestly delighted.  He’s never managed to ruin someone so badly on the way into Wonderland before.  It’s just a shame that Nie Huaisang sent Xiao Xingchen away before they reached the doors.)

The Healer’s Sash, which can manipulate natural forces like the wind, the tides, and tectonic plates just as easily as it can manipulate a heartbeat or a pair of lungs.  (Wen Qing–she prays to Pelor, the Dawnfather, the healer and Lord of Light, but she’s long since lost her faith in him as anything but a contracted boss.  It’s a shock to everyone including her when she’s granted a right arm made of glass and magic after losing it.  She was so determined to make a Relic that could be used for good, but–well.  She supposes she should have known better.)

The Philosopher’s Stone, which can more or less transform anything into anything.  (Jiang Yanli–she’s a Transmutation wizard, she’s been feeding the crew of the Starblaster for a hundred years on whatever she can pull together.  If the right person found the Stone, it would have ended world hunger.  The wrong person found the stone.  Jiang Yanli tried her damnedest to hunt it down, but she found the Gauntlet first, and, well–she already became a lich to stop one younger brother from doing it.  It’s not a struggle to decide that she’s going to take responsibility for saving Jiang Cheng from his own guilt.  Then things go horribly wrong, and she spends the next twelve years in an umbrella.)

The Temporal Chalice, which offers complete control over time.  (Wen Ning–he was a strict scholar until his sister was contacted about the IPRE’s creation, but he always did want to travel, and his theories about bonds were too good for Xiao Xingchen to pass up having on his crew.  Everything he’s done since they lost their home system has been about trying not to leave his family, about trying for second chances, he became a lich for them, he’s done everything to stay with them, of course his Relic is a second chance generator.)

The Animus Flute, which offers control over the spirits of the dead and, in the hands of a sufficiently competent expert, the living.  (Wei Wuxian–he’s watched his brother, his sister, his friends, die so many times.  He’s terrified of immortality, but he’s most terrified of being alone.  He meant to make something that could keep the dead present, so that they would never have to fear being left behind again.  Watching it rip Jiang Cheng’s soul clean out of his body in Xue Yang’s hands is the worst thing Wei Wuxian can remember, even after everything is over.)

The Bulwark, which Nie Huaisang never did explain to anyone, but took the shape of a hand-painted fan.  (Nie Huaisang lost the only person who mattered to him when the Hunger ate their home, and then as he slowly, painstakingly, rebuilt something like a family, he had to watch them suffer and die for a hundred years.  And then he watched them win, and grieve like dying all over again for the winning.  He’s sorry they suffered for his actions.  He’s not sorry for what he did.)

FIVE

Wen Zhuliu didn’t mean to make his whole plane give up.  But he had spent his whole life being used, and it all just seemed so pointless.  It all just seemed so pointless.  There was always someone stronger, always something bigger, always a rule he couldn’t break, always something, and he started talking, started telling people as much, and--

Wen Qing is about the farthest thing in the fucking world from a peacemaker by nature, if you ask her, but she’s a healer first, last, and most of all.  And, she thinks as she watches the sun sink with a very tired man crumbling away at her side, she might be the only person in the worlds who ever noticed that Wen Zhuliu needed a healer.

(They aren’t from the same plane, but--some of the others have found distant family, on their new home.  It’s an unanswerable question, if they might have been family, a few dimensions removed.  Wen Ning still thinks about it.)

[adventuresloane]

For the ask thing: Hurley!!

Oh FUCK yes thank you!!!

first impression: I saw fanart of her before I started listening to the show and thought she seemed adorable and scrappy and like a butch icon tbh, but uhhh I think when I actually got introduced to her at the start of PTTM I remember being surprised that she was a cop lmao. But man, “Sloane, you’re not a killer” was an epic first line (still one of my all-time favorite lines in TAZ). It just made her seem so strong and full of good faith that I couldn’t help but kind of like her right away.

impression now: STUNNING. BEAUTIFUL. STRONG. SUNSHINE GF. She really is just so full of love and loyalty that it makes my heart ache sometimes. Most importantly, I see her as the type to never give up on anyone or anything, and isn’t that what we all need, really? Someone who always assumes good will and is the very definition of ride-or-die? I value loyalty a lot so I really admire her. Also I’d say she’s almost too perfect but she’s so incredibly chaotic that it’s impossible for her to be boring.

favorite moment: I already mentioned her incredible first line but I also really love the moment after she drives off the cliff and Griffin makes sure we know that she’s screaming the entire time, but out of excitement and delight rather than fear. (Also when she’s giving the THB their masks and gets pissed at Magnus for mansplaining about owls to her.)

idea for a story: I’m really in love with the AU idea I’ve seen around where she and Sloane are alive and well at the end of PTTM and join the Bureau as regulators. Obvs she’d take a particular shine to Angus because who wouldn’t (also I see her as really liking kids, even if she doesn’t want any of her own), and maybe working together they’d catch onto what the Director is hiding earlier on in the game. Also it’d be v cool to see her regain her memories of the Relic Wars, ‘cause I wouldn’t put it past her to have been a young soldier before she became a cop…

unpopular opinion: I feel like there’s this common perception that she was fairly straight-laced and rule-abiding all the way up until Sloane seduced her and like…y’all…she was born a disaster lesbian. Became a cop partly for the adrenaline rush and then started to secretly defy her superiors when that wasn’t enough. Shit, if anything she loves racing even more than Sloane does and you bet she was sneaking off to scope out some battlewagons before she even met Sloane. They’re BOTH rebels and don’t you forget it.

favorite relationship: Sdlgnjsbgbdlavb literally just look at my blog…

favorite headcanon: She comes from a big, tight-knit halfling family and is the oldest of many siblings! That’s where she gets some of her protective streak from. Also Sloane lowkey gets unofficially adopted into her family once they start dating.

[felixvanhuss]

I don’t have a title for this

I was rereading Satan and Me for the 100000th time after reading @sonorofserendipity ‘s When Skies Are Gray soulmate AU (I highly recommend it and all their other fics to anyone who likes TAZ and getting their heart broken) and I had a thought. In that AU you literally have a piece of your soulmate’s soul in your soul and if you lose that piece you forget them every time you look away from them. You know where I’m going with this.

~

Natalie McAllister didn’t know where she was, what she was doing there or who the guy standing in front of her was but she did know that something inside her felt very wrong. There was some sort of hole inside her and somehow she knew that it had something to do with her soulmate.

Everyone had a soulmate, someone who had a piece of your own soul was a part of theirs and vis versa. A lot of people claimed it was nonsense but there were people who could see souls and being a bit of a romantic she had gone to see one. According to this person her soulmate was…For some reason Natalie couldn’t remember what exactly they had said. That was alarming, she’d treasured whatever that piece of information was and Raphael had later confirmed it, though with an odd look on his face. Come to think of it, how had Natalie met the angels? They were just suddenly in her life one day and for some reason she doesn’t remember being all that surprised. Her memory was filled with holes and it was scaring her.

A large hand on her shoulder snapped her out of her thoughts and she looked up to find the man looking at her, worry plain as day on his face.

“Stop breathing so fast, girl.” He said, roughly but not unkindly.

“I’m sorry. I just….Where am I? Who are you? My head feels wrong.” Natalie asked.

She wanted to take his hand off her shoulder but wasn’t sure if that was a good move. The longer she looked into his eyes the less empty her memories felt. She still didn’t know how she knew him but she suddenly felt like she at least recognized him from somewhere.

“I’m..” He hesitated, “Stan. We’re in a hotel on our way back home. You got knocked around a bit and are suffering memory loss. Doctor said you’d be fine but this is not even close to the first time I’ve explained this.”

She supposed that made sense, at least it’s would explain quite a lot but…..

“Do I know you?”

It was probably a trick of the light but it almost looked like his earrings had gone from red to purple for a second there.

“Yeah. Yeah, you do.” Stan left it at that and went to go stare out the window, seemingly lost in thought.

Natalie watched him. She couldn’t explain it but the longer she watched him the clearer things felt. She was now sure that she’d had that conversation before at least. Remembering that she’d apparently been injured quite badly Natalie quickly took stock of her body. Strangely enough, she felt totally fine physically. Mentally she was scrambled and spiritually she felt empty. Emotionally she had no idea how she felt. She knew she should be more frightened than she was but the more she stared at Stan the calmer she felt so she decided not to take her eyes off him. If he found it weird she’d just blame it on her mystery head injury.

And then something in her mind clicked.

“Lucifer.” It was barely a whisper but it was more than enough to get his attention.

Lucifer rushed over to her, hand hovering like he was afraid of touching her, his face the most heartbreaking thing Natalie had ever seen.

“Why couldn’t I remember you?” She managed to ask, tears beginning to fill her eyes.

Apparently the was enough to break whatever spell Lucifer was under as he collapsed to his knees and gripped her arms, now kneeling between her legs.

“They brought you back wrong. I’m going to fix this, Natalie. I swear I will everything in my power to fix this.” Lucifer’s earrings were now glowing purple.

“Brought me back?” Natalie was confused, she remembered being at the casino and being pretty sick but everything from then until this moment was a blur.

“You died.” Lucifer’s voice breaks as he says this which is somehow more alarming than the news she’d died, “You died and I thought they fixed it but a part of your soul is still back there. For some reason that means you can’t remember me.”

“I can remember you now.” Natalie pointed out, the idea of what it meant that she couldn’t remember him was to much to focus on right then.

Lucifer started shaking his head, “Once you look away from me you’ll forget me again.”

“But….Wouldn’t that mean….” Natalie started, unable to ignore it.

She remembered now what the woman had said to her about the piece of her soulmate’s soul that was inside her. How whoever it is is so incredibly lonely. How they were represented by a beautiful rainbow feather. How Raphael had looked at her weird on that bridge. It all added up, Lucifer had to be her soulmate. Wouldn’t her paster be so proud?

“That….I don’t think I have a soulmate, kid.” Lucifer said, bringing her back to the conversation.

“But….It makes sense.” Natalie tried but he just stubbornly shook his head, “Ok, well, you fix me then we’ll ask Raphael and he’ll say I’m right. For now we’ll focus on that first bit for now though.”

Natalie tried to smile but Lucifer continued to look so broken. She could feel her heart breaking the longer she looked into his eyes but she couldn’t look away. She couldn’t stand to forget him.

“What if I just never looked away from you?” She suggested in a small voice.

“You have to sleep sometime. Not to mention you’re so easily distracted.” He tried to joke but it fell flat.

“I love you.” She said.

Lucifer closed his eyes and shook his head so slightly she almost missed it.

“I do, I love you. I love you and I trust you to fix this, to fix me.” Natalie insisted.

“Please don’t.” Lucifer’s voice was so quiet she almost missed it.

“Ok. When you fix me I’ll say it all the time though.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

“You better.”

They sat in silence for a couple moments. Natalie realized that even though she desperately didn’t want to forget Lucifer now she was more sure that he was going to find a way to fix this than she’d ever been sure of anything in her life. Then she remembered something….

“You said you couldn’t bring people back from the dead?”

He lifted his head to look at her again, “I can’t. Death can. I made a deal.”

“What sort of deal?” Natalie tried to keep the fear out her voice but she doubted she succeeded.

“Just a couple rarer items. Don’t worry about it.” He said, worrying Natalie further.

“I’ll worry about it after you fix me but I’ll worry about it, ok?”

He just nodded.

The exhaustion from the day and all the emotions she’d just gone through began to take hold of her. She didn’t know how long a blink would count as looking away from Lucifer but with every passing moment it got harder and harder to fend off sleep.

“I think I have to sleep, Lu.”

He just nodded and got up off the floor to finally sit next to her on the bed.

“I love you.” She said again, needing him to hear the truth in those words, needing him to know that even if she forgets him she loves him.

“I know. I’ll fix you, Natalie.”

She wanted nothing more than to kiss him at that moment but instead settled for laying her head on his shoulder, carful to keep her eyes on him until finally she closed them and let sleep take her.

Lucifer let her sleep on his shoulder for most of the night, trying not to let her forgetting him for the twenty third time since she’d first woken up break him. It was a useless fight, he knew her waking to ask who he was was going to break him even further than he was already shattered.

As the sun began to rise he gently lay her down on the bed and went to the corner of the room to think. There had to be some way to fix this. He really wasn’t allowed any happiness, he pondered. When Raphael had told him so long ago before that fall that his soulmate was a sad but overwhelmingly kind human represented by a softly glowing flower Lucifer had scoffed and written the idea of soulmates off. Humans were so far beneath angels after all. But then Natalie happened. Somehow she always saw the best in him, trusting him for some reason. Suddenly the idea that she was human wasn’t insulting, it was terrifying. Humans are so easy to break and so terribly mortal. She’d survived a lot but she couldn’t survive it all, then what? Lucifer had been doomed to despair since the beginning when for some reason his father chose a human for his soulmate. Not to mention, Natalie deserved so much better than him.

He was so lost in thought he almost didn’t notice when Natalie woke up but no matter how he wished it, it would be impossible to miss the heartbreaking question she asked.

“Who are you?”

[wavemaker9]

Me: Kyle and Mel having a good close friendship that makes them both happy Also me: Make them fight and have kyle jeopardize that like everything else he loves

(it got long sorry)

So Kyle doing the cornered, ‘animal in a case’ thing with mel. Unlikely if she won't press but if it did happen that'd prolly hurt mel so much if the thing she values most about her friendship with him is not feeling judged, just feeling like a lot of her perceived flaws are accepted without question. Because I've mentioned when kyle argues back defensively, he gets nasty. Just like Austin will lash out physically if pushed hard enough, if Kyle feels cornered in a convo, even if it’s only in an attempt to help him, he will turn on them verbally to get them to back off. He's not always aware of everything (see his relays with summer/doug that he dismisses the aggressively negative behavior yet his relay with art who he's frustrated with for just not displaying that art cares in a way that kyle gets), but he's pretty good at spotting people's insecurities and then using them during heated arguments without thinking about it. He wouldn't genuinely mean anything he said, he just knows. Well, his insecurities and/or fears are being brought up and he wants out of the convo more than anything, so if he does the same to them, they'll back off too. Again, Mel not being the type to press or call out specifically because she doesn’t want it back, so it's not like Cami or something where it'd be relatively likely, but if it did ever happen, suddenly this second person ever that mel has had that hasn't judged her is listing every problem and flaw she has, searching for the topic that gets the sharpest reaction and focusing on that. I remember Khep and I discussed this with Cami and Kyle and then other stuff too (during the 2p event in Hetalr, Austin said some mean stuff to Cami because he considered all the 1p nations imposters trying to fuck with them so that plus her refusing to leave because this is her friend but like super wrong finally irritated him enough that he asked her how alone she had to be to be desperate to spend time with him. basically he hopes to never see this woman again so who cares about being polite when she won’t listen to his requests), she ended up just popping him in teh face and storming off, and I have to imagine it’d be like that at least. Mat least those first few moments of accusation and betrayal and /hurt/, there’s gotta be a surge of anger that bubbles up enough to swing at least one punch his way, yeah?

Which actually speaking of that, that might be more likely to make kyle and mel clash like that since if his mood dips hard enough he’ll also get instigatory without being provoked first. It’s another self-destruction method. He gets a mindset that he deserves punishment for fucking up so badly about something and getting beat up in a fight works for that. How does he get someone mad enough to kick his ass? Make them furious with him, make them /hate/ him. And of course he doesn’t think about long term ‘do i really want them to hate me forever? No! Will they understand i was just being the world’s biggest dick to them because i was in a low place? Probably not, especially if I don’t tell them!’ so he’ll regret it later but he’s not thinking clearly now, his brain is full of bad time thoughts right now, so that’s all he can focus on, especially since in that headspace if he /does/ consider it, his brain justifies it away that he doesn’t deserve them anyway and he’ll finally send them off which will be doing them a favor and blah blah blah

Actually actually, even when he’s not in a bad place, like if he feels someone’s holding back in a fight, even if it’s just sparring, he’ll try to push them and provoke them because when he’s angry, he’s willing to fight harder, so clearly the same must be true for them. I think it was mentioned the same is kinda true for mel and that she instigates or at least instigated stuff with austin a lot in the hope it’d get him to fight her. He’s very much teh same. If he can piss them off, they’ll actually fight and that’ll be more fun than them going easy on him (I had this thought because of the taz xover since griffin had said avi was so nice he went easy on the thb when training against them and that’d annoy kyle quickly. You’re my friend and I love you but if you don’t fight me with your all that’s at best a weird unneeded secret about what you’re capable of and at worst an insult in that you think I can’t handle it, and i won’t stand for either. Gimme your hardest punch, damnit. )< ). He’s usually less emotive and fight-or-flight-y there, though, so he’ll be more careful about what he says in that he won’t aim for the comments he knows would cut deep, but he’ll reach for a lot of more shallow careless insults then and that can still get irritating very fast.

Anyway, Kyle is always super regretful and apologetic afterwards once his fight or flight reaction eases, but the problem is that he's already said those things and cannot take them back. He can apologize to mel all he wants and assure her he doesn't believe anything he said before and she shouldn't either, but he still said them. Even if mel recognized at the time that this was him being aggressively defensive, that doesn't ease the hurt of still hearing it. If she thinks about it logically, she could probably figure it didn’t mean anything and was him just being a childish asshole, but it’s hard to be 100% objective with this sort of thing. He can tell her he didn’t mean it but that doesn’t undo the hurt she felt when he said those things. It's something I never want to make canon for any of kyle’s relays because he does seriously like fuck up these good things of trust he has and that can’t easily be undone, but it’s always interesting to consider. Pushing away people he loves is something he's very good at.

Also, the one person that doesn’t tend to happen with is ivan and I think that’s very much a case of ivan never wanting to make kyle mad so he’d back off before things got that far. If he sees either of them are genuinely frustrated, he’ll back off until things cool down or switch to seeming more accommodating so that kyle doesn’t feel the need to fight as much. Besides, ivan probably would forgive kyle even if kyle said some mean shit. There might be a limit but Ivan’s super good at forgiving kyle. On the other hand, kyle would do the same if it was reverse and ivan said some super mean shit. Honestly, no matter who said it, kyle would 100% forgive the person eventually if he even remotely liked them. again, kyle took like months after being cheated on and manipulated in an old rp to even consider for longer than 3 days that maybe he should leave the relay. you have to /try/ to push him away. He wouldn’t really get past the hurt either, but it wouldn’t be a betrayal of trust or anything like I feel it would be if he was the one attacking them. Doug has gotten him really used to constant criticism and just blatant insults and has conditioned him to see that being ‘honest’, so if another friend spent 5 minutes suddenly tearing into him. Like it’d hurt and crash his mood but he’d never blame /them/. It’s /his/ fault for being so shitty. If he were better, they wouldn’t have anything to talk about, he can’t be mad at them for telling the truth, what kind of asshole does that? (see him when anyone who /isn’t/ a friend suddenly criticizes him; he’s the kind of asshole who does that) And like, he rarely fully trusts that a person 100% genuinely likes him so hearing someone suddenly flip and be overly aggressive to a hurt point like. He knew that was coming, he’s surprised they didn’t reveal how annoyed they are with him sooner. It’d never come back to the other person; it’d shake the relationship up badly enough but, unlike the reverse in at least some cases, it’d get back to where they were, and if the person showed enough effort to apologize, he’d treat them and view them exactly as he did before, no blame on them. Again, though, the exception to this is if he didn’t already like them before hand in which case it falls to the grudge level. As i’ve mentioned, poor ludwig in hetalr criticized kyle once during a bad mood time (and that time it was just genuine issues not even just aggressive argumentative callouts) and kyle has never forgiven him.

Other stray thoughts! If he did end up doing that to mel, not just mel fucking pissed off at him, but micha when he finds out what kyle did. Two friendships one stone, whoops. Micha probably even worse? Like Mel’s probably not happy with kyle but suddenly dealing with a lot of self-critical thoughts again. Micha wasn’t the target though, not dealing with that, just full on ‘how dare you make my sister feel like that’ anger. Remember that ‘bitch was talking shit, now bitch can’t talk no more’ ask micha had a while ago? That. Micha 100% killing kyle brown, fucking finally. Even if mel recognized why kyle did that and eventually got even partially past that, i feel like micha wouldn’t ease up on that even after some time because that wasn’t at him, that was at mel. He liked Kyle, a part of him still wants to like him, but that man hurt his sister terribly and so Kyle can suck a fucking big one.

Also, less expected, but like. austin would def kind of side with mel, too. Mainly because he’s just so annoyed by kyle constantly, it’s very much the burr vs hamilton ‘i just want him to stop talking and acting so confident, that’s what i’m here for’ thing, but also. Like in family au especially, kyle gives /a lot/ of shit to austin. Like /a lot/. I’ve made at least a couple posts about how kyle knows how to get under austin’s skin and knows austin doesn’t have the strength to get him back so he fucks with austin constantly. Austin’s in a bad combination zone in that he’s family so teasing/being a dick as a form of showing love is acceptable to kyle, and austin’s cold and selfish personality makes him seem like a dick to kyle + he’s not trying by kyle’s standards so it falls under ‘the asshole has it coming’ category. Austin tries hard, just like mel, or kyle, or anyone else. It’s not always obvious and there are some times sure where he’s not trying as hard as he could, but more often than not, austin actually is doing his best to just manage here. he’s not an overachiever or anything. when he cares, it’s barely and surprising, but just because he’s not putting his all into it every second doesn’t mean he isn’t trying at all. But he’s cold, he’s selfish, he’s asocial and solitary, he’s not charismatic or kind or loyal or empathetic, he’s passive and he takes for granted the things /kyle/ sees as austin’s best assets in life (his family), he’s all the things kyle looks down on, and there aren’t many things kyle /does/ feel like he can look down on, so kyle looks downon them extra hard. I said how kyle is very much the ‘as long as you’re trying your best, that’s fine!’ person, but the catch to that is that /he/ has to accept that you’re trying your best. Just like how he’ll not always catch on that someone loves him as much as they do because they’re not showing it in ways he recognizes as affectionate or caring, he also is clueless to the idea of someone trying in a way he doesn’t recognize. It’s really something i guess most if not all teh australias show, but while with aus and aud, that conflicts with people like mel, for kyle, he wouldn’t get aus or aud. That’s why he totally gets mel is trying, it’s very much in the same way he is. But austin’s trying is by being reserved and proper, and it doesn’t make sense so clearly austin just /isn’t/ trying. Kyle is very aware of only the things he can recognize. He understands that people have different views and ways of handling things like scientists understand how the brain works. He knows it’s technically there, and he understands parts of that to a point when given the chance to learn, but if you really look at how much he gets that, it’s surprising how little he actually understands for how open minded he tries to be sometimes. Which is another thing i don’t like about him. I gushed before and said i was too hard on him but right now nah i remember why i don’t like him, i’m probably about right in how hard i am on him.

Anyway, austin deals with kyle’s shit constantly and, as i’ve mentioned in the hp au talk, he’s well aware that kyle’s charisma and charm and loyalty and people-pleasing nature all make people like him more. He’s obnoxious and irresponsible and reckless and instigatory and has about a billion double standards that are shitty as fuck, but kyle tries to make friends and is passionate enough to win people to his side, so people tend to not acknowledge kyle’s shitty behavior as much when he’s an asshole to austin. They're easily swayed by the ‘he was an asshole and had it coming. Besides, we’re cousins so it’s fine’ argument. He knows Kyle has his ‘good’ sides, but he also is aware of kyle’s negatives, sometimes seemingly more so than kyle is. Which makes the ‘austin’s not trying’ conclusion kyle reaches even worse because austin’s trying specifically to keep his more negative sides on lock, like his bad temper. Kyle lets that shit run free and then has the nerve to criticize austin for not trying?? And I don’t think austin would be annoyed in any cases where mel and micha befriend kyle. Again, he expects that, and while mel and micha are his best friends, he doesn’t fully see them as such and certainly not in a ‘tehy’re /my/ friends, you can’t have them’ way. They’re adults, if they want to befriend kyle great. Maybe they can distract him so he stops trying to hang out with austin all the time, that’d be nice. But austin probably mentioning that to mel when she and kyle are first going to meet. She’s an adult and can choose her own friends but kyle is (“objectively” austin says which he isn’t but to austin he is) terrible and she should have all the information and understand how fucking annoying kyle is sometimes before she meets him. Of course he’s bad at clearly listing all the reasons why with examples, and he complains about everything, so it probably comes off as a ‘oh he’s just annoyed because kyle’s all energetic and fun and austin hates fun’ thing. 

But then kyle reveals the shitty child he is underneath and it turns out austin was actually somewhat right? I also think, if mel was confronted by just how aggressively hurtful kyle can be in his worse moods, that’d surprisingly not be an ‘I told you so’ moment from austin (provided she didn’t make a huge deal of dismissing any early comments he made. If she did, she’d get a little ‘i told you so’ then). Because again, people being charmed by kyle happens all the fucking time, it’s not their fault they made a shitty friend. If he wasn’t asocial and totally aware of how bad to be around kyle can be, he’d probably like him more too. It’s not an ‘i told you so’ thing at this point, it’s just a ‘finally someone else sees what a jerk he can be sometimes thank god. Unfortunate it was from him messing things up again but silver linings and all that’. Austin that’s a silver lining for you, not for mel, cmon. Though on the other hand, It might be an ‘i told you so’ at /kyle/. Mel didn’t do anything wrong by befriending him, but austin’d absolutely use this as a ‘hey, get off your high fucking horse and acknowledge that you’re a piece of shit!’ thing which is relatively ironic coming from austin. I mean, just because austin’s trying doesn’t make him any less of a piece of shit too, since he doesn’t actually regret a lot of the hurtful things he does to people and, as mentioned with the cami thing, he’s willing to do hurtful things if he feels they’re necessary to his best interests, he just also doesn’t pretend like they don’t exist. Austin thinks the positives of his personality outweigh the bad, sure, but he still has some bad he knows about and tries to handle and he’s also fully aware not everyone would view all those positives as positive. He knows he has a bad temper so he avoids things that irritate him and 90% of the time it’s /kyle/ pushing him into those situations that set him off. Kyle should recognize by now how aggressive he himself gets when defensive, how much he can hurt people, but does he try to avoid those cases? No, of course not. That would take being responsible and mature! Half the time, kyle purposefully tries to provoke people as some self-destruction attempt that he doesn’t care about dragging someone else down with him on.

I think i’ve mentioned before that this is why i prefer austin to kyle despite, weighing the pros and cons of their personalities, how kyle would more likely be the ‘better’ person than austin is. Kyle has a lot more pros and they are to a far higher extreme, but the negatives are equallly as low and he ignores them completely. Refuses to acknowledge them, very irresponsible about that. Even when called out, he gets dismissive or instigatory or that ‘can’t you take a joke’ bullshit that I think I still hate most about his personality. Austin is a dick but he’s usually aware of it, knows he’s not a total victim in life. He’s more responsible and part of that is accepting bad behavior in oneself. Changing bad behavior is usually the best option, but neither boy does that. Austin at least accepts and acknowledges it and tries not to go out of his way to let it affect others. He’s polite in most cases if he has to socialize with someone, and besides that he does try to stay on his own most of the time. That’s also, again, the asocialness, but he sees it as a win win for everyone. I’m going to be annoyed by them, they probably won’t appreciate me, it’s best we keep to ourselves. Kyle hides it before springing it on someone and, again, I know that’s not 100% his fault, it’s very much a side effect of his childhood and a nasty combination of disorders he’s struggling to deal with, but that doesn’t make it 0% his fault either. Cool motive, still murder, except not murder of course, just being an asshole, but i still very much like that phrase for that kinda thing. It’s great that he has a reason to explain why he feels the need to behave like that, but he’s not unaware. It may feel hard or impossible not to choose that option, like, say, staying up late again for 2 weeks in a row when I definitely know I need more than ~5 hours of sleep a night- but that’s still me failing to go to sleep on time. i might have to fight myself on it some nights, but i’m still making that choice, y’know? 

In most au’s, someone points it out to him at some point, and he refuses to change that bad behavior and worse, it’s often times not even a ‘i’m trying but I can’t’ situation, he just doesn’t want to acknowledge another flaw of his and that is. That’s why he drives me up a fucking wall sometimes. He always tries to portray himself as super friendly and understanding and accepting and good, he tries so hard to be good. like i said, when he cares, it’s so much and over the top and to the point of sacrificing at a moment’s notice, but he can get a holier than thou mentality on morals and yet either isn’t aware enough or just doesn't care to see both the attempts other may make using methods he’s not used to as well as how necessary it is to address and try to change his own major and friendship-threatening flaws. I have my own high standards for others that I myself don’t meet, but I don’t fuck over people who don’t meet those standards either, y’know? I go ‘maybe we’re both shit’ and I move on with my day. He’s literally the ‘when he’s good he’s great’ line except instead it ends with ‘but when he’s bad i wanna kick his fucking ass’