#which is why as an adult he'd rather read magazines to pass the time

[lunarlegend]

i know it's because of the dub, but the whole "oh they made it so the jock likes to read, how original" take regarding Gladio is even more laughable when you consider that going by the traditional stereotypes the localization tried to impose on the characters, Ignis should be the one who likes to read and he doesn't

you never see Ignis with a book

anytime he's seen reading anything, it's either a magazine or his recipe notebook

he will read magazines at camp while he cooks, at diners while they're ordering food, and in hotel rooms while they're relaxing

meanwhile Gladio is the one carrying entire novels around and giving them his full attention any chance he gets

it's a disservice to both of them to assume the physically stronger of the two isn't intelligent, and that the tactician MUST be a bookworm

they are interesting characters because they're NOT stereotypes

[britneyshakespeare]

Man keeps flirting w me out of the blue lately and I have no idea why

For context, while I'm oversharing, when I sometimes make personal posts about a character I vaguely call Man, I'm referring to a guy I met just before I turned 20 when we went to the same community college. He's eight years older than me and before he pursued higher education his first career as an adult was as a male model. He wrote poetry which was submitted to the college's literary magazine which I read and edited submissions for, and I loved his poems independently before realizing the guy named ****** who writes the poems is the same gorgeous ****** I met in passing.

So once I put 2 and 2 together, I had a big stupid schoolgirl crush on him, which I knew was a big stupid schoolgirl crush. I was kinda dumb at 20 but I wasn't that dumb. I didn't hold out any hope; my crush on him was basically a joke, a silly recurring gag in the background of my life. This guy was not a friend, but an acquaintance with a lucky set of factors to make me fascinated by him. The fascination was real but I also knew it was shallow.

And then just before the pandemic shut the whole world down, we connected on social media and he was really rather forward in interacting with me, not in any ways that could be called inappropriate or disrespectful, even looking back on it now. It seemed and still does seem he has some genuine admiration for me on his own end; I know he's very fascinated by art and literature, for example, and usually when he reaches out to me it's deferring to my opinion on something related to that. He also thinks I'm funny and just generally intelligent, it seems. He has taken stock in my opinions on social-political issues and things like that before, when I don't normally offer my takes on that stuff without being solicited for them. You know. He cares what I think, so it seems.

But we are not and have never been close friends. Though much more acquainted than we were in 2019, we are still just acquaintances, really. Neither of us are the type to open up on things or be vulnerable very often.

When I had a bigger crush on him than I do nowadays, I used to look for excuses to message him about this or that, or show him this poem or tell him that joke he'd like. I can't tell you the last time I reached out to him first. Probably close to 2 years ago now, and it was getting to be much less frequent before that. At some point I know Man got a girlfriend he never really told me much about and I was always awkward when he would bring up girls to me. Which he did not infrequently, for someone that he had a somewhat (subtly) flirtatious correspondence with already.

He's messaged me out of the blue at least twice in the last week, and talked to me a lot more frequently leading up to that. It's never for very long but it's back to that needy validation-seeking he sometimes does. It seems natural that he'd suspect at one point in time I had at least a little crush on him, even if I was always shy about it. I certainly never boldly pursued him or made any first moves. Any time I ever flirted with him, I was nervously following a lead.

Does he just want attention? Is he an attention hoe? Now? Why? You not seeing anyone at the moment, ******? Do you wanna see if this old toy still has working batteries?

Either that or it's possible I do and have stuck around in his mind in some significant way all these years, which I do find harder to believe, and not just in a low-self-worth way. He might be impressed w me in some ways but he doesn't know me that well. His crush on me would only be about half as shallow as my crush on him when I was 20. I don't think he knows how little he knows about me; to some extent, too, that's my fault for always being so reserved. Maybe he knows he doesn't know me well but still wants to! Silly boy. Useless. Stupid.

I don't even really care much for him anymore but as a specimen he really is quite peculiar.