#which like makes me wonder how id really identify if i felt like

[milksrot]

grahh!!!

[qqueenofhades]

hi there! ive always loved your history posts, and was wondering if you had any insights/directions you could point me in to learn more about a specific area of queer history?

im personally most well-read on the history of gay men in britain between the labouchere amendment and ww2, so a pretty specific area. i dont know very much at all about the history of queer women, though id think its harder to get primary sources for them as the legal records wouldnt exist in the same way?

anyway, my main question is actually about cross-gender solidarity. i notice that a lot of the men i read about operated in very gender segregated spaces, which was typical for the era anyway and ofc there are plenty of spaces today where gay men want to be with other gay men exclusively. i suppose im wondering if there's any way of investigating how much queer men in the past would have felt solidarity with queer women, and how to look at whether/how those sentiments changed over time?

i realise this is a bit more of a "how to do history" question than about history proper - any insight or thoughts you'd like to share about this would also be really appreciated! and in either case, hope you're having a great week xx

First, thanks! Glad to help.

Second, the difficulty of doing premodern queer history largely or exclusively from legal documents is that a) it gives us a distorted version of what degree of prejudice actually existed in society, on a practical and not just theoretical level, and b) it makes it even more difficult (if not impossible) to speculate on what people "really" felt, thought, or personally identified. (I currently have a book chapter about John/Eleanor Rykener in the peer-review process, which touches on some of this difficulty, since our only major source in that case is also a legal record.) We are very rarely granted direct access to the actual voices or perspectives of premodern queer people, and if it's filtered through a hostile framework that has an interest in minimizing that person's existence and/or social experience, it provides an even more excessively or solely negative picture than is probably at all the case.

However, I would gently challenge your idea that it's harder to get primary sources on queer women, since the assumption is that premodern queer men are only memorialized by their (presumably punitive) encounters with the legal system, and that society cared less about female homosexuality and thus did not attempt to police it in the same way. Both ideas have some degree of truth, but not entirely and certainly not categorically, and there are many ways to access premodern queer experience and memorialization. I don't know what particular time/region you're interested in, but since you said Britain, I will once more recommend checking out the website of gay British historian Rictor Norton. He has everything, and I mean everything, you could possibly want as a resource/starting point (his specialty is 18th-20th century British LGBT history):

He has a wildly extensive list of links to subject, region, and chronological-specific LGBT history:

He has an equally comprehensive list of links sorted by region, methodology, art/music history, thematic approaches, etc:

Now, obviously I haven't combed through all of these to see if there is something that specifically addresses the question of premodern mlm/wlw solidarity, but since queer spaces have often been a lot more gender-mixed than people tend to think, there are certainly more than enough resources to get you clicking and searching.

[rigelmejo]

Little things I did recently:

Listened to 20 minutes of Silent Reading chapter 1 audiobook, twice. Understood more the 2nd time around. But I'm relying on remembering the plot to follow the description heavy portions. The dialogue portions I can follow almost all details, so they help me identify which scene I'm listening to. Exciting and humbling. Exciting because I CAN mostly follow the audio Drama now (i listened to a bit last week) whereas in the past I was lost with nl descriptions to orient me and limited comprehension of comversations. But humbling, in listening to the audio BOOK now, because back when I was reading modu as chinese practice I was Very Familiar with the descriptive words and the descriptive paragraphs were how I guessed what scene I was listening to (compared to chinese chapters I'd already read before and looked the words up). Where now, the descriptive words have faded from my mind, and are the harder parts to grasp the meaning of now. I think that...overall, my chinese listening is Better now than it was 6 months ago. But I can tell that the reading-only vocabulary I've picked up is much rustier in my memory, and much harder for me to recognize in listening with no hanzi to look at for reference.

Read 5 panels (chapters) of 19天. Ended up looking up 聚会 because I couldnt remember the "gather" hanzi was pronounced ju. For some reason I kept thinking it was zi like purple 紫. But no, it was ju, for gather: 聚集 gather (juji), 聚会 (juhui) reunion. Again, I recommend that manhua if you like funny, physical comedy, slice of life. It's fun, and even if you can't read something then the pictures have a lot of the comedy anyway.

Watched 40 minutes of qi hun (hikaru no go cdrama adaptation) in only chinese. NO subtitles. First time I tried watching a show with zero subtitles including no chinese subs. I've been listening to audioboks with no text recently though, so I guess I felt I might as well try a show with no subtitles. Hikaru no go is on iqiyi youtube free (still free thank goodness), and iqiyi is one of the channels that has no hard chinese subs - you can turn on english or chinese subs, but they arent pre-made on the video. It was really cool to try! 1. I understood almost every detail! I got lost when Chu Ying said some "sayings" to kid Shi Guang, and when Chu Ying explained playing go I only understood him saying the size of the board/placement number choices, I was confused about the rest of the explanation.

I didn't understand a few lines kid Shi Guang said, but he's speaking like a kid muffled and quick during those lines and I got the gist. It was really exciting just being able to WATCH the scenes, my focus not half torn on the subs. To actually hear how the lines are said, without translation changes. Some words I could guess from context like xia qi 下棋 for play go, since Chu Ying keeps saying 我想下棋。 and shi guang keeps saying to stop crying ToT. But I do think I could have guessed the parts I didnt grasp, like Chu Yings "sayings" if Id had the chinese subtitles on and saw the hanzi to help myself figure out what he meant. So I may rewatch the episode with chinese subs. But since this summer is about improving LISTENING COMPREHENSION, I am just pretty exciting it went so well. Also the show is just so comforting. Id totally forgotten Shi Guang's little intro where he explains what the show/journey will be about!

I wonder if they dubbed the show? I assume they dubbed it, probably, since most cdramas do. But kid shi guang and the other kids talk pretty natural sounding (not like trying to sound "acting" if that makes sense, with clear projected enough voices), which reminds me of To Dear Myself with zhu yilong which either used audio filmed During Scenes or instructed the actors to dub themselves speaking more realistically (i dont remember which, that show just had a Very realisticly visual audio and acting feel). Adult shi guang also has a very natural sound to how he speaks, like the sound of his voice we hear is how he would sound if talking to regular close friends.

In Japanese Glossika app, I've studied 1129 sentences, done 9137 reps (repetitions of sentences), and studied 24:39 hours. Glossika labels me in High A1 14.7%. While I've still got some significant complaints about the new glossika app japanese course, my stubbornness to complete all the fucking sentences and judge for myself how good/bad it is has definitely Motivated me to Study japanese more. I've studied those 24 hours in the past 3 weeks, so a little over 1 hour a day of studying on average. Thats way more than the ZERO time per week I was spending on japanese, and its audio so I've been able to do it with my regular life schedule.

(Truly glossikas Only Unique benefit to me is the listening mode, so I can press play and it gives me new sentences and reviews at time intervals it schedules on its own, so i do not have to put any effort into figuring out what to do next or take time away from other activities to constantly click my screen for an hour... i can just click play new, or click play review, and continue on with my life knowing I'm learning some new stuff and reviewing things i need to. If anything else fucking had this feature id jump to it instead. Clozemaster Kind of had this feature - and i paid for a while just for it - but clozemaster's Radio mode did not split new from reviews and did not spaced repetition schedule the reviews so there were a LOT of days i wouldnt hear new sentences or id review the same 300 sentences instead of different ones out of the 2000+ i had studied).

I am curious if the Chinese Glossika app course is better? I know the old cd chinese course was fairly good, as learner reviews mentioned some alternately worded things but nothing worded Wrongly. So if the new chinese app course, please please please, just used ANY of their people on staff who know chinese (like the maker of it) to human translate, then their chinese app course should be one of the app courses with the LEAST errors. Since its a language they, presumably, have the most access to human translators for. And im curious if therefore i could study using it. Or vice versa, if the new chinese app course is trash id like to review how fucking far their quality has tanked. I recognize more chinese than japanese, and i'd be able to tell within 500 sentences roughly what the error rate is in the chinese app course.

[tea-and-secrets]

i might be aroace but i feel like its hard to really say for sure because i havent even seen anyone else my own age in, like, months, so it's kinda no wonder I haven't been attracted to anyone in a while. That also makes it kinda irrelevant to consider whether or not i actually am aro/ace... it's not going to affect my life in the immidiate future, so i just stop thinking about it...

i guess id be fine with identifying as asexual. i actually thought i might be years ago, then i started having crushes on people and went "oh i guess not" but then after that i eventually realsied that sexual attraction and romantic attraction are two different things (i didn't know the word aromantic back then) and honestly I can't say I've ever wanted to have sex with anyone.

I mean, I've wanted to have a girlfriend before, (both in terms of wanting to be with specific people I had crushes on, and in terms of general aimless desire to be with someone), but I've never wanted to have sex with any specific person, nor have I ever had the urge to have sex, which apparently most people, like, really really do have?

but i mean. i also get really horny and jerk off to hentai, so-

But i feel like identifying as aromantic would be more sad (FOR ME PERSONALLY. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS AS A STATEMENT ON AROMANTICISIM AS A WHOLE). I've always seen the perspective of aromantic people as just not really caring about romance, and if they felt like they were doing something wrong by not falling in love it was just because of, like, society telling them how they're meant to be and stuff. But, like, I do want to fall in love with someone. I'd like to be in a relationship. I feel like I'd be missing out on something if I went my whole life without ever being in love. But at the same time, I also feel like I wouldn't feel... that bad about it... and when people on this blog confess that they;re in love with their best friend and stuff... the way they describe it is so totally unlike anything I've ever felt about anyone....

and you know what, I really really hate how sex is, like, an expected part of all romantic relationships. Like oh, if I like someone im expected to have to fuck them like it's a duty? will they take it as an insult if I don't want to? can I not just sleep with someone (in a non-innuendo meaning) or be intimate with them without it being necessarily sexual? Is horniness even real or did one piece make it up?

oh god dont even get me started on how complciated attraction is... if i talk about that it'll be twice as long as everything ive already written so far...... how is seeing a pretty person supposed to make you feel? how much are you allowed to like someone based on physical attraction before it becomes "shallow"? how do you tell the difference between sexual and romantic and aesthetic and magnetic attraction? wherre's that damn fourth chaos emerald?

OH HEY I CAN TURN THE LETTERS PINK

(thank you for witnessing)

.

[darkmasterofcupcakes]

DHMIS Review: TV Episode 2, Death

As I said in the review for “Jobs”, most of this review is going to be underneath a read more break, simply because of how much I’m going to have to say for this episode. The shorts reviews are already on the long side, and these TV episodes are even longer so the reviews will be even longer by default.

To begin the review proper, I love how the “couch gag” has the Duck actually acknowledge what I guess was a fairly common mistake in the fandom about what kind of bird he was? I say “I guess” because I actually joined the fandom a little later than I think a lot of other people did - I think I discovered the series very shortly after the sixth short aired, for reference - so by the time I was looking at fanworks, everyone was correctly calling him a duck. 

Pretty sure this is the fastest that any of the episodes, from the shorts or the TV show, actually gets to the main subject of what the Students are going to be learning about? I mean, it takes maybe 5 seconds after the end of the theme song for Duck to just super casually announce that he’s dead. I feel like the second fastest we get to the lesson is the very first short, and that still at least felt like it took much longer for the song, and by extension, the lesson to start. 

I’ve watched this episode at least like four times by now, and I literally only just noticed what the name of the newspaper is. “Opinoin”. Which feels like a joke with two punchlines, since there’s the obvious one of the word “Opinion” being spelled wrong. But also the more subtle joke about how a newspaper, something you’d expect to give you news in a way that’s at least mostly objective....is literally named after opinions, something that is subjective by default. 

Gotta love how lightly all three of the guys take the news that Duck has apparently died. They treat it less like him being dead, and more like he just found out he got some really cool present or something, with Red Guy being jealous of him and both Duck and Yellow teasing Red over his jealousy. I guess maybe the lack of understanding makes some sense, considering the whole point of the episode is supposed to be that they learn about death....Even though, if you ask me, they don’t really learn that much about the actual subject.

Anyone else wonder if at least part of why Duck is the one who “dies” in this episode is because he’s the one of the trio who died permanently in the shorts? Or, at least, the one who’s actual death seemed to be confirmed and wasn’t undone by the start of the next episode? I mean, they all went through a lot of horrible experiences, but the Duck is the only one who was ever actually killed during the events of the webseries.

Did anyone else notice that Red Guy actually quietly asks “Is that an egg?” when the heart rolls away to form the Coffin? Just the fact that he not only apparently doesn’t realize what a heart is, but actually wonders if the Yellow Guy (the one that’s usually seen as the “dumb” one) was the one who correctly identified it is kind of funny to me.

The whole scene with Red Guy actually having a conversation with his ID card to find out if he’s dead is honestly really fun. I love how the Card just assumes they’re going to have a little mini-lesson about identity, only for Red Guy to just cut them off and ask if he’s dead. Then you have the little bits of dialogue from the Card as Red Guy shuts them away again, which as of the end of the first season don’t seem to be foreshadowing, but if we get another season....Also, did they include a little puppet of the orange from the first short, with the face and everything? If so, that’s a cute little reference.

“We Gotta Get Things Ready” might be my favorite song, at least from the TV series. My favorite part is where Red and Yellow apparently just forget what their doing and turn it into a cooking show....which I know I’m not the only one who didn’t even question it until they actually acknowledged the mix up? However, at this point I think I’ve listened more to that parody that changes the last word of every verse to “margarine”. Because that is just art. 

I’d actually kind of love to see this whole thing explored more at some point, either officially in the show if we get more seasons, or just by the fandom? Because until this point, we never really got a sense of the dynamics between the three main characters besides them all living together and implicitly being friends. But throughout this episode, we explicitly get Duck thinking of Red Guy as his best friend (to the point where he actually gets annoyed at Yellow Guy for offering to speak at the funeral because he wants his “best friend” to do it), while Red is not only shocked that he’s Duck’s “best friend”, but at least at this point almost seems to be dismissive of him in a lot of ways. While Yellow Guy not only wants to speak about Duck during the funeral, but is the most openly upset about him being gone.

I love how between the painting in the first short and his trumpet playing here, it seems to be implied Yellow Guy is actually pretty skilled when it comes to creative things? Especially music, since, as Red Guy points out, his little solo, for as short as it was, was really nice.

I never really realized it until now, but with how the Duck’s bill is...could the Coffin even actually close? I guess it’s just one of those things where how big/deep the Coffin is depends on what needs to be happening at any moment. Not like the Teachers (or the show) have ever strictly followed any sort of real-life logic, after all. I mean, this episodes starts with someone not realizing they died until they read it in the newspaper.

Not sure which makes me more confused - the scene with the Mourners or the scene with Yellow Guy and the Lamp. Maybe the Lamp scene because of a combination of it just being so weird to hear the Lamp talk so...calmly. Plus it kind of just feels like a very short fever dream, with the random thing about the Lamp’s idea of what happens after death, and then him just peacing out and that whole thing never being mentioned again.

I almost forget that when Stain is first “made” he really does come across almost like a baby? Like, he can’t really talk all that well and I feel like the way he can’t really seem to control how his form looks for a bit makes him come across as really young? Of course, the fact that he’s so young and innocent makes what happens to him in the end even worse...

Also, apparently Yellow Guy is...racist? I don’t know how else to describe it, but he seems disgusted by Stain just because he’s claymation, even before learning Red Guy is going to make him Duck’s replacement. But, I do find it interesting that, between him admonishing Yellow Guy for hurting Stain’s feelings and him actually showing concern when Brendon hurts his hand in the last episode, Red Guy actually is showing a decent amount of compassion? Not a lot of emotion, but compassion. Or at least concern.

You gotta honestly feel bad for the Coffin. Guy is not only just trying to do his job (though he doesn’t do it all that well, considering I don’t think he ever actually teaches about death outside of vaguely showing what happens at a funeral), but he got stuck with probably the worst of the three main guys to have to spend what was supposed to be eternity with - the one who is kind of narcissistic, seems to need a lot of attention, and bites for what seems to be no reason.

I don’t know what’s better about the Grolton and Hovris part - the fact that Grolton is so excited about 40 pounds, the fact that the celebration involves boiling water, or the fact that the episode apparently just stopped right there.

....Really could have done without the pee. It’s almost made worse by the fact that it almost comes across like Duck is doing it on purpose, but I think I’d tolerate it more if it was just like...an audio bit and we didn’t see anything?

I find it interesting that Yellow Guy seems to attached to Duck when even in the song, all of his memories involve Duck kind of being a jerk to him? Yelling at him to get off his bed, laughing at him when he needed help with a medical issue, calling him weak...I will say, Yellow Guy has a very nice singing voice in the Memories song.

Kind of ironic that the Teacher who teaches about death is the first one to actually die by the end of their focus episode. 

I honestly feel kind of bad for Stain? Guy was basically just born and was so excited to just live and have adventures, and maybe eventually become a banker or something considering one of his core values was finances. But then the two people who he considered family honestly treated him kind of horribly? Yellow Guy resented him from the start because he was still upset about Duck being gone, and while Red Guy started being more welcoming, it didn’t take long before he just decided to make Stain into Duck, instead of just letting the poor guy be himself. And that went horribly right, since when the original Duck comes back, I can only assume that Stain adopted his mannerisms so much that he kills the original either to avoid having to “share” the attention of the others (or the audience), or simply out of a “you or me” mentality where he assumed Duck would have killed him if he didn’t do it first.

This episode gets a 3.5/5, though it honestly would be higher if they just didn’t do the pee joke. Really hated that bit. 

[mikeyfuckinway]

anyways i hug him when we depart from each other like i do with everybody and we high five and hes fine with me like touching his arm or back on his shirt and i think thats about the limit. which as friends im fine with but if i was in a Relationship with this guy i mean the boundaries would probably push a little further but still idk if i could deal with that. if im am in a Relationship with someone im like a barnacle i need to be able to like attach myself to them when i want to and like hang off them constantly and like if we had been married for 10 years hed probably be fine w that but like not right off the bat. as of now i land in the circle where i am close and he will touch my computer and like do the thing where you high five and then hold onto their hand and shake it a bit like a sports guy so like im in His Circle but not like family is i dont actually know how he is w his family but i assume it goes like. family circle then close friend circle and then not as close friend circle and then everyone else like im a solid close friend. like last year i dont think he wouldve been as ok with like touching MY computer but now he will. i dont think he lets anybody touch his computer or phone tho i feel like he probably doesnt even like his parents touching them those are like. his two things hes very very About like he barely ever touches his phone w his fingertips he like holds it between his knuckles and uses his knuckles to press it so those two things hes like super About so those arent really good measures of how comfortable he is w someone but yeah. its enough to the point where i might not feel like my needs r being met if we were in a relationship the phone and computer thing id be like whatever abt its just the being able to touch him thing that im ishy about. i get being specific abt your objects and on that level i think we really understand each other and are like yeah you are like me about it. and he was also the first person who i like cried to when that person said those mean things to me about saying i wasnt really autistic and thats when he said "i know i have ocd like thats just a thing i know about myself" when i was talking abt how i know im autistic so hes really important to me and hes really wonderful and cares about me but i think im ok if he is just my very very close friend who i love and adore and do a lot of things with. i think i just want to 'Date' him to make sure that he stays one of my Guys bc i know i kind of do that like i feel like i want to date someone but thats just bc i really like them and want them in my life forever but i dont think abt relationships the same way other people do so like i dont want a Relationship relationship with them but i still feel something about them that is more than just my Friend but not quite Life Partner. the other guy that ive felt this way about kind of i think is more who i would want as a Life Partner like i /would/ want to live with him and come home to him and i feel like he does get the way i am about gender bc hes also kind of. like hes not queer but he also like. like he doesnt identify himself as queer but he generally shares my ideas about the world and society and understands how dont prescribe myself any label and also calls me he a lot even back when i was doing she/he he would defer to he a lot and that made me feel really bubbly right now i think my friends arent super clear on my pronouns bc i now just tell ppl he in professional settings but rlly im fine with any, im just he/him professionally bc its easier and those are the ones i like that arent she/her bc i feel like if i say she people will go oh that is just a weird woman but if i say he people will be more inclined to go oh that is a queer person which i prefer to people thinking i am a woman. so. anyways. this guy i think understands me better and he also isnt like super touchy but not in a germophobe way just in a regular im not a cuddly touchy guy kind of way but i think if it were a relationship thing he would be more ok with it and ope i hit the limit again

auuuhhg everyday of my life im like this guy and i are so incompatible. it would never work if we were to date and tbh i do not want to date him traditionally however i am deeply charmed by him and think hes one of the funniest loveliest and most interesting people on this planet earth i WANTED to listen to him talk about the beatles for an hour over lunch and he made me a beatles playlist after i made him a they might be giants playlist and hes so wonderful and i want him to be like. my best friend forever like i want him to be my guy like hes not my bestest estest friend someone else occupies that position and they always will its like that thing where u know someone for so long and your relationship has gone through so many weird phases that nothing is ever going to make you not want to be friends with them anymore like theyre my ultimate person who i will know and love forever. but like i want this other guy to be one of MY guys and. you know what i dont think i have a crush on him anymore. my friends and i were talking about love languages and i am severely physically affectionate and he is a germophobe he has ocd but like thats one of the things i like abt him bc he has things like i do like ticks and habits and we both habitually chew our nails and we are so similar but at the same time we are both so different and hes also really really straight and cis so like i dont think itd ever truly work but anyways we were talking abt love languages and hes like a big quality time guy and im very like i wanna do my things like i love you but if youre doing something im uninterested in i dont want to do it. like i have done things that i wouldnt otherwise do bc he was doing them but like it wasnt a "i dont want to do this" to a "i want to do this bc hes going to be there" it was more of a "im indifferent to this but it sounds fun im just not specifically interested" to a "i specifically would like to do this now bc it sounds fun and also he is going to be there" idk its still a thing where like. im just not a specifically quality time kind of person but since im a physical affection kind of person it can kind of come with it but i dunno oh well oh well. either way i dont think we would fulfill what the other wants out of a relationship idk maybe i would for him mostly but i dont think he would for me. unless our understanding of each other changes dramatically and he spends like a month and a half reading queer theory. then like maybe but still. my biggest problem is i need someone who will understand me and understand why i am the way i am genderwise and the thing is. the people who fully understand the way i am will also probably identify like me bc my identity is a product of my understanding of gender and society and that shit, not the other way around. i identify the way i do mostly bc of how my ideas about that shit have changed and the reading ive done about it. and like also the autism but he kind of has that too like not totally the same but like i said we have like some of the same little things but when it comes to like our ideas of ourselves i think we are very different i also have severely pathologized myself from a young age and also i hated my mom and wanted to kill myself and as far as im aware he was much more well adjusted as a child but i guess i dont really know. hm. but i met his parents when they came for family weekend and also he was like surprised when i said my family doesnt eat dinner together very often so they seem pretty like normal midwest american family and didnt seem like they had many familial issues like my household did which honestly is the least big deal thing to me. like if it was just that id be like whatever that doesnt matter but in addition to all the stuff yknow thats just one more thing that is like very extremely different about us and how we developed as people. like honestly its mostly the queer thing. and the germophobe thing like when we were talking abt it like he did say he would probably be very bad at it in a relationship like i oh wow i hit the character limit

[gray-culture-is]

Hey! I have a question about being grayromantic. I'm very into romance, i enjoy love stories and i want romantic relationships. But recently i realised that I've never actually felt proper romantic attraction.

I've never had a crush, the closest thing I've felt is alterous and/or sexual attraction. I'm also in my late teens, which is the stereotypical "crushes and highschool sweethearts" age. everyone around me is having crushes and relationships and I don't relate at all.

Also the concept of actually liking someone is really foreign to me. I see online dating and asking for strangers numbers and i think, "but how can i like someone i know nothing about?" but then i see friends and acquaintances getting together and i go,"but i'm so content and happy being friends I don't need anything 'more'?"

It's like i want to have feelings for someone but I can't fathom developing those feelings. I want to do romantic things with a hypothetical someone, but I can't imagine doing them w anyone i already know irl.

But i am still a romance nutin theory, i ship a lot of characters, i consume mostly romantic media, i want to date ppl someday. I'm cheesy and I'm weak for confessions of love and all the cliche tropes. Valentines day and roses and pink hearts is something i love, which is where my question comes in.

Most grayromantics i see are like, "yea I'm kindof into romance but not really" or "I've had a few crushes but the ides of romance doesn't rlly appeal to me" and I'm the exact opposite. I don't know, does that make me not grayaro? My love for romance and love stories. It's the only thing keeping me from using the gray aro label. I'm pretyy sure I'm grayaro but this one thing prevents me from actually using the term.

Thank you! Hope this wasn't too long and annoying

Hello! This one is actually right up my alley, but it's also quite a bit to unpack, so let's get into it. There are a lot of aspec people who struggle with their identities because of this. In fact, when I first identified with the aspec, I thought it meant I couldn't consume any romantic/sexual media and I shunned myself every time I did. But, the reality of it is, you can be aspec and still actively want and consume these sorts of things! Just as some aspec people are sex/romance repulsed and neutral, some people are sex/romance favorable! Which means that they still like/want romance/sex, despite their lack of attraction. I myself identify as both grayromantic and cupioromantic! I haven't ever really experienced romantic attraction, maybe once or twice, but regardless I still want to have romantic relationships with people! The lack of attraction does make it difficult, but just like you I hope to have someone (or multiple someones) to live out my life with/ I'm really bad at explaining things, so I guess my answer is, yes! You can totally identify as grayaro if you think it fits you. Labels and identities are made to help us find ourselves, not to push us back into more carefully defined boxes. Your identity is yours to decide, not society's ideas of what's what. So, yeah! I hope that, and the link to the cupioromantic wiki, helps. And if not, I would like to point you in the direction of the wonderful @romo-aro-culture-is! That blog is run by the wonderful Mod Emcee, and they focus mainly on being arospec and romance favorable! I'm sure you'll find whatever you need there. If anyone has anything to add, please feel free to do so in the form of a reblog!

[thisdreamplace]

ashamed to say the 3D reflects our true inner reality, yes? my ENTIRE family has turned against me, after some atrocious conflicts in which they all ganged up on me nd judged me, name-calling, very hurtful things too, provoked me. i been dealing with some serious mental uh 'issues' on my own nd when this happend i was already on the verge of a breakdown nd the good news is while the conflict happened i kept telling myself theyre only reflecting me u can get thru it etc. Later i looked at the hard facts nd realised some of the hurtful things they said were my deep secret feelings abt myself. BUT my question is why the HELL cant they talk to me like normal people? confronting one person vs whole family, why?! i felt so small nd like an object, nd not a single person defended me. am i not a part of the family?

Part 2 is simply its been a week and theyve still been cold towards me as if I yelled AT THEM ABT THEIR PAINFUL 'tRuThS' in front of EVERYONE LMAOOO. At first if i was around we'd have dinner together while they'd all talk to each other like best friends aka sickeningly overly friendly while completely IGNORING me while i sat there. i could tolerate it. I WAS PISSED AT THEM TOO Now its too painful. They're having dinner without telling me, yesterday didnt leave enough food for me knowing i hadnt eaten, serve tea/snacks without my portion. i honestly feel so unspeakably trigered nd sad. worst is these things r reminding me of deep school memories when id feel excluded like this by other kids at parties or class activities nd its like im back there. anyway im glad i controled myself a bit nd didnt counter with horrid things abt them to THEM yet they think they can say the same to me. im so hurt rn i cant even tell u lol i was okay the whole week but now its too much,, ive been crying the whole day

thing is, ik this seems like 'im a victim oh noooo they ganged up on meee'. Nope its more like how do i change myself to change them?! u could say why not talk to them how they made u feel, except whenever ive defended myself in the past regarding hurtful things they/anyone in family did, the siblings/parents would say irritating things like: "oh so YOU'RE the one hurt? Oh thats right, its because YOU'RE right! yes, yes, you're always right. Forgive me for saying anything against the perfect person u are." Or one of them says: "You?! I hurt YOU? What about me? You don't care about me! So you think what ur doing is okay?" or "no, who do YOU think u are to tell ME what to do?" it just goes in circles like this! i dont deserve to hurt myself or do smth to myself even if they dont give a damn, even if years of silent suffering of the 'mEntAL pRoBlEms' (which my lovely parents have already told me is my fault years ago, hence why I NEVER show it to them, unless im crying too much then lol they just mock me, but idc abt THAT bcoz now ik i hav a right to let out my emotions)). i mean this is worse rjan usual. its kinda insane nd when guests come they start talking to me as if nothing's wrong then when they leave, they ignore me!

this whole twisted dynamics, feelijf left out nd helpless is ig some crazy assumptin from childhood of being alone nd unable to defend myself. plus when they argye with anyone, they become overly self-righteous nd over the years its clear they can only scream, blame the scapegoat and never talk abt serious matter like normal ppl. And yes, in the past when i bring this up, they like to reply with stuff like: "no YOU'RE the one who doesnt talk to US bla bla" like, when i do u just shut me down? have belittled my mental 'issues', mocked me when im at my worst, stabbed me with cruel silent treatments nd thinking its alright "bcoz of self-righteousness blegh". Or maybe i think its okay for them to punish me? or whatev? Like law says u get what u r. if these ~~~ keep doing this to me, im doubly ashamed to say this means im the one at fault?! i let this monster assunptin grow nd now idk what to do. the worst thing imo is how i failed to tell them,even if they ignored me in the past, how i feel when anything like this or a conflict happens nd none of them stand up for me, or at least are neutral to me. bcoz now if i do, they say nope, u dont care what we do, YOUR the shameless one :! so yeah they hav the advantage of 'numbwrs' while im too afraid to stand up for myself lol. btw they never apologize nd i suspect they expect ME to apologize to TYEM bcoz everything's already ruined bcoz of 'me'..... i give up on them, i really do, but my heart hurts. Either i harden my heart, nd save up to move out, OR i try to change my self or whatev assumptins i have. But how do i do that? i try afirming: "my familys so nice to me, im respected by them" but it feels so fake tears literally enter my eyes lol

firstly i want to say, thank you for coming here to vent and being open about your feelings. it’s so important sometimes to just let it all out, without holding back. so that way you can move forward more bravely, to create the life you truly want to experience. that being said, i am going to be completely honest with you here in hopes that perhaps it may inspire you and you will be ready to do what is needed for the life you truly want to experience.

“BUT my question is why the HELL cant they talk to me like normal people?” -> “i felt so small nd like an object, nd not a single person defended me. am i not a part of the family?” here is your question, and here is your answer. i think that being completely honest when venting your feelings can actually be so helpful, because if you read back what you have said, you will be able to clearly find the patterns that are creating your personal hell. FEELING IS THE SECRET. ASSUMPTIONS HARDEN INTO FACT. the true way you feel, becomes your experience. Feelings/assumptions/beliefs come first, and the experiences come second to confirm them. That’s all that’s happening here.

i am glad that you were able to keep your reactions to a minimum! that's wonderful and as many of us know, it can sometimes be hard to do in such hurtful circumstances. but you managed to do it, this shows just a small glimpse of the power you truly hold within. although emotionally you may feel out of control, there is still the choice to choose better for yourself which you demonstrated through your reaction to them. good for you!

the truth is, you acknowledge the victim mindset to seem like you’re not engulfed in it, but no, you’re still very clearly engulfed in it. as i have said before, you can’t be a VICTOR and feel bad about it. feeling bad about taking responsibility, about everyone is you pushed out, about any of these types of concepts automatically shows a victim mindset. talking to them won’t do anything, because there are no second causes. you could talk to them nicely, you could be the nicest person in the world. but you can’t pretend your way out of your inner world. your inner world is the one and only cause of your experiences. until you change the story you tell yourself, they will stay the same. this is a hard pill to swallow sometimes. and it can feel heavily, because it’s ultimately only you’re choice. they can’t change until you do. the heaviness of the situation may make it seem impossible to turn around, but that’s just an illusion. your emotional attachment to the situation makes it seem so real and hard to change, but no. that’s just an illusion too. however, it’s ultimately your choice. Do you want to take responsibility for your life, or do you want to keep being tossed around like your lost at sea, victim to the merciless angry waves? Because we always have a choice. No one chooses your inner world, you do. No one can go into your mind and decide things for you, that’s only your job.

you can harden your heart, but who would be the one who suffers more? It won’t be your family, i can assure you. it’ll only be you. by doing that, you keep that old story alive and therefore you keep experiencing it. you keep those stories alive that are desperately showing themselves to you, saying “LET US GO.” but you remain identified with those painful stories, so you grip onto them tight. you keep on thinking of possible reasons for their behavior, but you could just read your entire ask back to yourself and you’ll see every reason. your reactions, your beliefs about them, your emotional pain. its your refusal to let those things go, and focus on what you truly want that keeps you in this state and keeps them in this state. sure it’s painful to face the responsibility at first, but it’s not a blame game. thinking its about blame is just a misunderstanding of the teachings. it’s not about they’re so perfect and you’re so not, so you have to change your ways. it’s about this is how life works here. this is about... you can ONLY ever experience self. whatever is going on within, will be reflected in your outer world. it’s about how they can’t change, UNTIL YOU DO. so instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you have to decide to give yourself the gift of a wonderful life because you have that power too. you stop deciding they can be in control of your experience, and you decide your experience yourself.

to change your assumptions, stop trying to affirm over them and actually face what’s keeping you from believing in your desires. yeah, it’s going to be painful and uncomfortable. but you need to face the pain that you’re running away from, so that it can finally be released. you have to realize, it only stayed true because you believed it to be true. and if you are to live a life free from that story, and experience a more desirable story, then you must let the pain go. give yourself love and grace as you work through it, and know that there is a more beautiful side of life that awaits for you to accept it in.

No One To Change But Self

There is Nothing to Forgive

How to Sit with Your Triggers

give yourself the time you need, it's not race. the love that you wish to experience exists, allow it in. 💖

[bisluthq]

So I 100% agree that opinions of Lena within fandom would be different if she was a tall and thin blond. That said I also don’t like Lena - I used to when she seemed like this quirky girl who didn’t try to keep up with the trends and was a writer and into mainstream and obscure stuff, she had an image that didn’t seem curated back in 2013 ish. But over the years she has said a lot of things that have made me uncomfortable and I think if I was still as old as I was when I thought she was cool, id probably brush it off as ‘people just want to make her problematic but everyone says stuff out of time and makes mistakes’ or whatever. For me, I felt like I was maturing at a faster pace than she did and things that I looked up to her for, like coming across as authentic and not pretending to love or hate something for clout - once I became comfortable in myself to be that way, I saw her as a normal person who happened to be famous (cause she was / is lol). But then some of her comments really bothered me and I was like ‘wtf I used to want to be like you, now I’m a version of myself I’m ok with and you seem like you need to grow up’. I think if I never looked up to her, I’d have just thought ‘wow celeb says dumb shit’ and be done with it though you know? I’m older than Gigi and I think because she has a young face I do see her as younger than she is, so I don’t really have an opinion on her, but I have positive association with her if that makes sense? And because she’s had the baby and kept her out of the spotlight and there’s been so much drama with zayn and her mom, I just want her to do well. Like I feel protective of her almost because I’ve had some toxic family relationships and seen clashes of the partner vs the family and how much stress that can be, so without knowing much about her, it still makes me happy to think she’s just raising her kid in private from the media and cooking pasta with Antoni and riding horses - like that sounds idyllic.

One thing not liking Lena has taught me about myself though is that it showed me when I judged women harsher than men. Like there’s the thing with her sis which everyone has a take on and honestly triggers me so much, but the other shit she’s done like complain about not being hit on and wishing she had an abortion so she could relate... they don’t seem like they were done with bad intentions? Like she seems really dumb with that shit but if she wasn’t so honest she wouldn’t say that shit? Meanwhile so many men are either saying nothing of importance and the slightest bit of allyship is celebrated like crazy, or they do worse but it blows over and no one cares. Like no one really cares about the Will Smith slap anymore. Tbh celeb men have never really impressed me much outside of their craft so I can’t be “let down” by them cause I don’t rank them enough lmao but I wonder if I felt let down by some celeb women because I was identifying with them or projecting on to them? I think I have a healthy view on the fact we never know who someone is behind closed doors, but I wonder if I was wanting Lena to be someone she wasn’t because she did these other things I thought were so cool and like me...... I mean I’ve felt let down with taylor because she positioned herself as an activist and did fuck all, but I was disillusioned cause I thought she was going to be speaking to congress and working as a unicef ambassador or something and travelling the world to give speeches and charity work stuff like Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie have done. I thought taylor was going to do that for women and queer rights. And then the positioning herself at the centre of a queer issue, it’s like ok she’s either one of us, fucking evil or fucking dumb. So I like that taylor is private now cause I can enjoy her music without thinking about all the stupid shit she’s constantly doing (thinking back to previous eras lol).

Sorry this was so long, this bit of my ask “ but I wonder if I felt let down by some celeb women because I was identifying with them or projecting on to them?” Is something I think about a lot.

I think this is a wise ass take and I agree with you on a lot. So firstly: guys, Lena is undeniably racist and weird as fuck. Like no one is saying otherwise. But I do think a lot of us are harsher to fellow women than men, and especially plainer women like her. As you say, the shit about “I wish I’d had an abortion” was fucking weird and insensitive and shit but she also has a whooooole host of fertility issues and has a bunch of fucked up vibes on that (she’s now had a hysterectomy) and like she’s campaigned for women (white women lbr but still women) for years and years and that is ignored lol in favor of dunking on her (when it should just be ignored full stop and we shouldn’t platform her) but like Harry Styles makes an offhand remark and is heralded as a champion of womankind. It’s fucked.

I personally feel all celebs are a bit dumb (but so are most of us idk) and I think we can’t expect much of them. They’re supposed to entertain and speak to the cultural moment but fundamentally like idk they’re just some attention seeking gals and boys who are doing their thing.

They can be comforting and they can be inspiring and they can be entertaining but like fundamentally idk they’re just some people.

[mithliya]

hi. you dont have to reply to this ask if you dont want to or if you do you can make it public Idm. also I dont mean to trauma dump so pls just delete this because tbh its too much. tl;dr at start Im starting to doubt my sexuality despite being in late 20s. also, tw sex, rape, csa, cocsa, etc. so, I've always known I kinda like girls and that Im more likely bi than straight. I was in love with one during highschool and I felt intense sexual attraction towards a close friend in uni. I was p far left back then so I thought this must be that demisexual thing where you only feel attraction once you get to know people LMAO. then I had some crushes on guys here and there, was virgin till 24 and then slept around way too much with guys. never had experience with a woman. now Im in proper relationship with a really nice guy. recently I started watching a show and identifies way too much with a lesbian character. like from how she acts to what she says regarding women she feels attracted to. I havent been able to sleep for past two nights and Im starting to wonder if I even feel attracted to him.

until we recently moved in together we had sex. a lot. but I had a meltdown because of past sexual trauma, all the sleeping around because of other reasons than wanting to have sex, (loneliness, low self esteem) csa and cocsa at hands of female relatives, so that also confuses me. we havent had regular sex, maybe once in a month. and last time I was hoping it to end soon and just waited it out. I dont blame my bf, hes never done anything wrong, and I was the one who told him to keep going. ofc I had told him Im bi but now Im so unsure if about what even attraction means. I honestly never felt that intense attraction towards a guy, ever. Ive felt that with several women, like random passerbyers and such. some women I couldnt take eyes off of and had to just move along because I felt like a creep (which also factors in me not wanting to look at women In That Way because thats how men look at women and its just hella confusing as a fellow woman who doesnt want to objectified by men either) Idk how much Im convincing myself I love men and society has brainwashed me. Idk what Im wishing to get out of this, Im just stressed I dont love my bf in That Way and this is just platonic love, that Ive convinced myself into doing even stuff like kissing and hugging because Thats What Im Supposed To Do.

anyway, thank you if you read it so far, thank you for your time. I would really like some advice if you have any but you also dont have to if you dont want to. btw I love your blog and if you cant tell I follow you on here. keep up the good work. <3 I hope you have a nice day!

aww that really sounds stressful and like a difficult situation anon :( honestly i think many lesbian & bi women go through some moments of doubt and confusion at least at one point in our lives so you’re not alone there. tbh i would encourage talking your feelings out with someone who knows you well and someone you trust, they can help give you perspective. sometimes we identify with something a lot that it can confuse us in many ways. and if possible, maybe experiment with women? it’s kinda hard to understand your attraction when it’s kinda just .. abstract?

to me it sounds like you may indeed be bi & maybe cycling (bi cycle) or perhaps you have a strong preference and are just realising it. however, i can’t determine your sexuality for u as i do not know you. this is why id recommend experimenting but of course you should be transparent with everyone involved (your boyfriend- idk whether you’d ask him if it’s possible to be open or something else, and whichever woman you experiment with). i overthink and doubt myself a lot and actually being with a woman definitely helped me. pushing myself to be with men to “test” whether im into them was personally highly traumatic for me so if someone thinks they’re a lesbian but has never been with a man & isn’t sure if they’re into it… id highly recommend NOT trying. getting clarity faster will never be better than not pushing your own boundaries and risking traumatising yourself. to me it sounds like you really need to be single right now and just explore yourself and try being with a woman and see how you feel from there. there’s also no shame in being unsure and not labelling your sexuality either.

also facing previous trauma like CSA especially can really make it hard to understand your sexuality, from my experience most bi & lesbian women who go through such intense confusion and identity disturbances like what u described have faced CSA too.. so you really aren’t alone there ❤️❤️ i wish you luck anon. you’ll figure it out you just need to give urself space and time

[quazartranslates]

Welcome to the Nightmare Game II - CH33

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

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Chapter 33: Star Death Reality Show (XVI)

With He Yi's intermittent narration, Qi Leren finally connected all the dots.

The amphioctopuses, a cosmic alien that could destroy civilization, would hatch once they had spread to a civilized planet and sensed nearby creatures. Generally speaking, this kind of "hatching" was slow, and it took more than half a month to break free from the outer shell of the glowing stones and begin to parasitize. However, there were also ways to stimulate the amphioctopus to incubate quickly, that is, to make an organism's body fluid—usually blood—come into contact with the amphioctopus’s shell, and the amphioctopus will complete the incubation within a few minutes and enter the parasitic state.

That smear of blood on the glowing stone in the church: apparently Annie or Mark had consciously awakened the octopus inside and made it parasitize Mark.

Once parasitized, the host would quickly lose self-awareness and become the octopus’s puppet. The amphioctopus could develop into a mature body within 20 hours, enter the breeding period, lay eggs once a day, and parasitize the surrounding creatures in a relatively closed space, where the number of prey available for parasitization was less than the total number of amphioctopuses.

The amphioctopus was an intelligent creature. The smarter its host was, the smarter it was, because it perfectly inherited everything from the host after capturing its self-awareness. It would use its brain to "think" about how to reproduce more. Its ultimate goal was to reproduce and expand by hook or by crook.

In the late night of the first day, Mark, the first infected person, appeared, and in the late night of the next day, the second infected person also appeared—by various indications, it was Xue Jiahui. The "amnesia" after she woke up was not just her forgetting because she had been parasitized, but because the octopus in her body had borrowed her brain. After thinking, it had concluded that she had better pretend to have amnesia and hide what she knew about amphioctopuses.

On the night of the third day, two new infected people appeared again: one is most likely Annie, the other was uncertain at present, and the most likely one was Lara, who was responsible for taking care of Xue Jiahui. However, Qi Leren had doubts about this, because if Lara had been parasitized, she wouldn’t have mentioned the "contagious physiological conditions" key to Qi Leren when listening to the Best of the Day that morning.

Then there was tonight. There would be four new victims tonight, and the total number of amphioctopuses would exceed that of human beings. After these larvae reached the mature stage, the eight mature octopuses wouldn’t be able to get enough prey. They were about to start a massacre in order to get enough energy, and then enter a long dormant period like the original octopus until new prey appeared.

It was preliminarily estimated that this time would be on the night of the fifth day.

"If you want to save them, time is running out." He Yi’s tone was exhausted as he looked at Qi Leren. "Are you sure you want to try? There are probably eight amphioctopuses outside, at least four!"

"We still have time and methods. I can't think of a reason not to do it," Qi Leren said.

"Methods?" He Yi frowned.

"The instrument that can identify whether someone is infected." Qi Leren remembered that He Yi had used it to confirm that he wasn’t infected.

He Yi's face changed: "No! Don't bring them in! You can go out, but don't come back after you go out. I’ll wait here until the army arrives, but I will not let the infected people enter here!"

Qi Leren frowned and thought: "Well, this research institute is very big. You can find a safe room to go in and lock it. I’ll bring some people who may not be infected to come in for testing. If there is an accident... you can close the door along the way and hide in the power room. In case the situation isn’t good, you can immediately cut off the power supply so that all the doors are difficult to open. Even if there are infected people, they cannot enter your area."

He Yi still shook his head: "No, I won't let the monster in!"

"...Well, at least let me out." Qi Leren sighed, but he understood He Yi's concerns and his frightened mood at this time. If he wasn’t an outsider at this moment, but an innocent ordinary person who was involved in this dangerous situation, he wouldn’t have been able to behave righteously as he was now.

Deep down, Qi Leren still held a wait-and-see attitude towards He Yi, and there were still many doubts about this person, so to speak. But Qi Leren didn't even ask, because it was impossible to get any useful response by questioning He Yi face to face here, and it might even startle him.

"How do you want to leave? The entrance where I came in has been completely blown up, and I can't get out. The door to the outside needs a special ID card, and there is a life detection system and a gait recognition system inside the passage. The AI will automatically analyze your walking posture, which is much stricter than any fingerprint authentication. You can't cheat at all. Once the system determines that you’re not a person in the database, the laser defense system will start until the life detection system determines that there’s no living thing inside. Are you confident you can pass again?" He Yi asked.

Without confidence, Qi Leren silently thought about how the S/L Data’s cooling time was one hour, and that it hadn’t passed yet.

And the Prophet had said to minimize the use of the S/L... Qi Leren actually had no actual feelings, but he only vaguely felt that this skill was a bit evil, and dying too much would cause him to have frequent nightmares. But at the critical moments, he still instinctively relied on this skill.

I can't. There are too many gravestones on Undead Island.

"Where is the general control room for the laser corridor?" Qi Leren asked.

"It's useless, I’ve looked for it. I suspect that the door to the defense system’s general control room can't be opened without a password, and the monitoring can't be seen. Even if we find the password and go in, this system isn’t like the equipment that checks for the octopuses. It can't be operated at all without knowing the language here." He Yi shook his head.

Qi Leren pondered over it. To go out, you had to pass through the laser corridor. At the end of the corridor, next to the door that led outside, an ID card had to be used. However, Qi Leren had experienced the danger of the laser corridor once. Unfortunately, S/L solution was still needed to pass smoothly. Was there any other way...

"I have an idea!" Qi Leren shouted and scared He Yi, who looked at him suddenly. "He Yi, I need your cooperation!"

"...Go on."

"It’s like this: I will go to the laser corridor. You will go to the power room to turn off the power, so that the laser corridor won’t start, and the gait recognition system will be the same. I will go through the laser corridor to the front door and wait for you to turn on the power again, so that the ID reader on the door will start. I can open the door and go out once it starts ago!" Qi Leren said.

"Are you sure? What if the gait recognition system or life detection system starts first?" He Yi disagreed.

"It’s more likely for the door to start first once it’s powered on, rather than the laser corridor," Qi Leren said, "And isn't there you? It took me about one minute to pass through the laser corridor last time. Please calculate the time for turning the power on. Turn off the power again after about forty seconds. Forty seconds is enough for me to open the iron door and go out. If there’s an accident, I won't be able to open the door as I’ll be blocked by the lasers. As long as you turn off the power, the lasers will be turned off again with it."

He Yi thought for a while and nodded: "This method is good, double insurance."

For Qi Leren with S/L Data, this was three insurances. What he relied on was not luck, nor He Yi’s cooperation, but his own strength. Otherwise, he would rather study how to get out of the collapsed passage that He Yi had come in through, and would not consider such a dangerous laser corridor.

The two discussed the details again. Qi Leren also took off the watch he found when collecting materials and gave it to He Yi: "You can watch the time."

He Yi took the watch, nodded solemnly, and said, "Oh, I also found the arsenal here. Heavy weapons can't be used, but you should be able to get started with weapons like a handgun and hand grenade, you'd better take some with you."

No wonder this boy has a gun in his hand. Qi Leren glanced at He Yi: "Okay, thanks a lot."

The two men went to get the weapons, which were well preserved. Qi Leren picked a few easy-to-use ones and took them apart for maintenance. He could give them to Dr. Lu for use, while he took his usual ones and tested them on the spot. He Yi, who was on the side, said faintly because of his skillful technique: "You are indeed a military person. Or did you know there would be octopuses here? Did you secretly hide the octopus in that cave?"

Qi Leren said helplessly: "Oh, I’m really not, why do you think so?"

But he really had known there would be octopuses.

"Then who are you? Is it really possible that you’re an ordinary band lead singer?" He Yi was adamant.

Of course not. My singing is terrible, Qi Leren thought.

But... Should he pave the way for his skill card? So as not to expose the skills at the critical moment, be questioned by the audience, and lead to the failure of the task? With this in mind, Qi Leren decided to add some personal settings for himself.

"Actually, I do have a special identity," Qi Leren said with a dignified face. "I tell you, but don't tell anyone else."

He Yi waited for a while, looking at him carefully: "Then wait, should I turn off the tracking camera?"

Qi Leren couldn't help laughing, which exposed the fact that he was joking. Seeing He Yi looking at him with bitterness, Qi Leren corrected his expression and asked seriously, "Do you have a faith?"

He Yi was confused by his question and shook his head blankly: "I’m an atheist."

I used to be an atheist, until I got involved in the Nightmare Game, Qi Leren thought. In fact, he couldn't be regarded as religious even now. He just thought that there must be some great and incredible powers in the world beyond their knowledge. These were what were regarded as "gods".

—You can admire and question, but don't worship blindly and slander maliciously, otherwise you’ll be doomed to be unable to surpass yourself and enter a higher level. That's what Chen Baiqi had told Qi Leren, who thought what she said was very reasonable.

Seeing Qi Leren's delay in answering, He Yi asked again, "What about you? Are you a Christian? "

Qi Leren smiled: "I am an apostle of God."

“……”

"If I’m killed, I will be resurrected immediately."

“…………”

"When danger comes, God will give me strength to become an angel and fight against evil forces to the end."

“………………”

Qi Leren showed a sage's smile full of divinity and gently stared at He Yi, who was eager to speak.

Before the show begins, give the audience a little psychological preparation.

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Editor’s Notes: [Player Qi Leren has leveled up an ability: Bullshitting.]

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[chidoroki]

TPN - Krone one-shot

Ah, another extra chapter. Shirai and Demizu are so good to us. Anyways, I was quite surprised learning more about Krone's time training at the sister academy. From what little we saw from her and Isabella's flashbacks in early chapters and season 1, we know how competitive and serious the girls are at the facility, given the extreme nature of everyone's current situation. All the girls are quite literally fighting for their own lives here, so once Cecile was introduced, I was pleasantly surprised. (this is our first time meeting her right?)

We soon learn that both were from the same GF house and as any natural older sibling would do, she steps in to help Krone avoid getting scolded by finding her missing embroidery. She then makes it plainly clear that it is best not to show any sort of weakness while at the facility. Everyone there is prove themselves worthy of becoming a sister or mother, and if they don't fulfill those qualifications, they'll be killed. 

Having a close friend in such a terrible place provides Krone with minimal comfort, as Grandma Sarah (that's her name, correct?) reveals how slim their chances are at surviving. Only one girl will survive? That's rough.. and wasteful I feel like? I know there's only four premium farms with about 5(?) houses each, so mom and sister positions are very limited, but wow. Fighting off the other girls might not be much of a challenge emotionally, but to compete against your own sibling? Well, that's different. Fortunately for Krone, Cecile has other intentions. (can i say that at this point i already love this girl?)

A hopeful idea, of course, but Krone brings up the chip they each have implanted in their hearts. You leave the facility? Dead. You somehow break the chip? The higher-ups get notified and you're as good as dead anyway. Cecile mentions how the pocket watch Grandma has doubles as a sort of gadget that could disable their chips, so all that has to be done is steal it and use it for themselves. Cecile's wealth of knowledge doesn't stop there, as she then shows Krone a map of the entire headquarters that was secretly put together by former trainees that once thought of escaping. At first, I found this a little hard to believe. One, that such an embroidery was passed down so often between other girls over an unknown amount of time and someone like Grandma never found it. Two, that there were so many girls who were willing to help each other out like this.. but then I remembered ch170 and how eager and willing the ladies were to join together under Isabella's command, so I believe it.

As their plan is set in motion, we see familiar events take place, such as the girls physically fighting with each other (because being buff is somehow a prerequisite to look after children? you know, just in case they try to escape and you need to break some legs). I re-watched Krone's flashbacks in ep8 just to see if any of the girls there could possibly be identified as Cecile, but it didn't work out well since that scene is all monochrome anyway, so no luck trying to spot her blonde hair, blue eyes or even her ID number. Seeing them work together though is great.

Honestly, I never really got attached to Krone upon my first watch of the series. Yeah her movements are very animated and fun to watch when she speaks, she's absolutely terrifying when it comes to playing tag, but she never had one of those moments where I was like “okay, I like this character now.” That, and she gets killed off so her screen-time was really limited. Having her plot against the kids was another reason I kinda pushed her aside too, but I'm still thankful she gave them the WM pen (because who knows where they would all be without it). Seeing her and Cecile just act like normal kids and talk about their dreams though, that did it for me. They're both precious!

Anyways, after Grandma forced them to watch some other girl die after a failed escape attempt, due to her heart chip, our girls proceed with their plan, as they make stealing Grandma's watch top priority, lest they end up like the poor girl who just lost her life. Krone manages to successfully claim the watch at the perfect opportunity.. only to be completed fooled.

Not only by the watch, which ends up being just a normal tracker, but by Cecile herself. Needless to say, that I also felt betrayed by this girl because damn it! How could you?! I swear, I just started to like this chick!

I had my doubts before. I knew it was too good to be true that even if these two girls had history together, that it meant absolutely nothing in a harsh environment like this, and Cecile takes great pride in reminding us of that.

It's because of this betrayal that we finally see the Krone we became so familiar with upon her transfer back to GF. Can't really blame her though. To find out that the only person you could trust suddenly turned on you for their own personal gain? Yeah, that's painful. No wonder she had to harden her heart.

I once thought of Krone's plan of taking down Isabella was foolish, (because that woman is an absolute queen and you need all the luck in the world if you wanted to accomplish that) but she had the utmost confidence she could pull it off because she has done it before to her once best friend. With survival as her main goal, Krone wastes no time in selling out Cecile as the mastermind to their escape plan.

Fantastic. She's learning how to take out her competition, thus granting her better chances at becoming a sister or mom. Good for her right? Sure, but also, wrong! TPN then decides to do what it does best: get me emotional, because poor Cecile did all of that just to help Krone survive! She saw how unguarded and scared Krone was upon joining the sister academy. She then vowed, as her older sibling, to protect and prepare her for the cruel reality of this world by teaching her how to be ruthless and survive. (though i'm sure there could've been easier way to accomplish this? like i know only one chick was gonna survive from their class but holy hell, did you have to go through such extremes?)

As if the newest member of the self-sacrifice club didn't upset me enough, they decide to give us this sky scene that is only gonna hit my feels harder whenever I decide to watch episode 8 back again..

Aahh.. I love all these extra chapters we've been getting, truly, but must they always make me feel bad for these characters? These girls deserved so much better! I'm sad. I think Cecile is great. Her methods are a bit extreme but her heart was in the right place.. and now they're both in a better place, ha.

(we're getting an extra chapter for isabella sometime in the future as well and if it's gonna be another sad backstory, then i'm so not ready for it.. i already know i'm gonna cry. i love that woman.)

[obxdrewseph]

Tik Tok - Rafe Cameron

Description: Rafe Cameron falls for a girl he often sees in a cafe and is too nervous to talk to her, so his best friend, Topper, decides to take matters into his own hands and makes a tik tok asking if anyone can identify Rafe’s crush. Of course, she sees it and confronts him. 

P.S. pretend covid doesnt exist in this LOL

---------

“Bro, just do it.”

“No.”

“Rafe, c’mon man. When did you become such a pussy?”

“Shut the hell up man, I’m not.” 

“Then ask her out!” 

“No!” 

It was your typical Wednesday afternoon-- the college cafe was bustling with students coming in and out from classes and from students mingling with their friends.

Rafe and Topper sat in the midst of all the chaos, ignoring their econ homework to stare at Rafe Cameron’s current obsession.

“How is this girl different from any other you’ve liked? Just man up and ask for her number or something.” 

Rafe Cameron. 

Notorious player on campus. And douchebag. He was the type to sleep with a girl and kick her out of his room at 3 in the morning. He never had strong feelings for a girl, which is why Topper was baffled at the fact he kept staring at the dark haired, brown eyed plain Jane in the corner of the coffee shop. 

“Look, she’s just a pretty girl. And she just looks... shy I guess.” Rafe lamely said. He didn’t know why he wasn’t just barging up to her like he normally did at parties. Of course, those girls were clawing to get to him. He didn’t have to work as hard. 

Topper sighed loudly. “Fine, fine. If you’re gonna force my hand.” 

Rafe raised a brow as Topper slowly pulled his phone from his pocket. 

He then began to film the girl and zooming in on her face. 

“Top, what are you--”

“Ssssh.” 

After 30, long, agonizing seconds for Rafe Cameron, his best friend finally stopped filming the poor girl.

“Does anyone know this girl? This loser wants to ask her out...” He spoke as he typed.

“No wait--”

“Done. Just posted on tik tok.”

Rafe’s jaw dropped.

“What?”

“Now, we wait.” 

-------

You had a long day of classes and all you wanted to do was fall in your bed. 

But no, as a history major, you had to read 250 pages (the entire book needed to be read by the end of the week, but you were spacing), write detailed notes on them, and then start on your essay that is due next week. 

You always liked to get ahead of schedule so that your work wouldn’t pile up. 

After sitting in the cafe for an hour, you had to go home to cook dinner. You hated eating at cafes since bread just wasn’t your thing. 

Once you hit your dorm room, you checked your phone that seemed to have hundreds of notifications.

"The fuck?” You whispered out loud. As an RA, you could say whatever you wanted to in your room, but you still felt weird swearing in front of others. Which is why you whispered the words to yourself.

You dropped your bag at the door and quickly opened your phone. 

GIRL, CHECK TIK TOK 

Congrats, you’re famous! don’t forget me lol

rafe cameron ?? honeyyy get itttttt 

Confusion. That’s all you felt. You quickly clicked on the link on of your friends sent you. 

You watched the video set in as Topper, the owner of the account, zoomed in on your face at the cafe you were just in. You didn’t think you looked pretty as your hair was a mess and you hadn’t showered in a couple of days. 

Not to mention you were wearing jeans and a baggy t-shirt-- the normal college attire. 

As you read the caption, you felt your heart race at an abnormal rate. 

The words became blurry fairly quickly as your stress started to build up. You set your phone down on the counter to avoid dropping it-- you were rational enough to do that. 

You kept getting texts from your closest friends saying two words: Call me. But at this point, you couldn’t even think straight. What was a hot, popular guy like Rafe Cameron doing pining over you? And apparently being too afraid to ask you out?

Honestly, you had never been hit on in your first two years of college and you didn’t think it was going to start with Rafe Cameron, the richest guy at the school. And every straight college girl’s wet dream. 

You heard your phone buzz on the counter and you checked caller ID. It was your best friend.

You took a deep breath and answered it.

“Hey, you didn’t tell me you were dating Rafe Cameron.” She joked. 

“Shut up! Tell me what to do!!” You screamed. 

“Ok, ok, I can tell you’re freaking out and nervous, but this is a good thing! A happy thing! A guy liked you so much that he put a video--”

“His best friend posted the video--”

“As I was saying, put a video out about YOU! This is your chance to finally have the romance you’ve always dreamed of, right? You’re always pining after those book boyfriends or whatever who AREN’T REAL.”

She emphasized the last part which made you cringe. Your obsession with fictional characters was justified-- if she read, she would know. 

“Dude, this is Rafe. Rafe fucking Cameron.” She gasped at your swearing, a joke both of you had because you’ve known each other since you were children.

“Exactly, it’s Rafe motherfucking Cameron, meaning, you HAVE to go after him.” 

“No, you’re wrong! He’s Rafe Cameron! If he was really into me, he would’ve asked me out already. Literally no one can say no to him nor does anyone want to.” You bit your lip, thinking of ways to get out of this. “You know what? I bet this is a prank or something.”

“A prank?”

“Yeah, like Topper trying to embarrass Rafe by making an ugly girl ask him out--”

“First of all, don’t talk about yourself like that. And second, no, tik tok is not the place to embarrass girls. They would get roasted so hard. And third, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE.”

Contrary to your best friend, you never seriously wanted a relationship. You were the type to fantasize about falling in love and hyped up all of your friends when they had crushes, but you never truly found someone you wanted to get to know or wanted to date. 

It just seemed so outlandish to you. 

Plus, you wrote off college boys when one followed all of your roommates on instagram besides you. That kinda knocked your ego down. 

“Look, I’m just going to ignore this. I don’t think it’s going to be the love story you think so I’m gonna go.”

“Wait, y/n--”

You hung up before she could finish. 

You just couldn’t deal with her hopeless romanticism right now. 

You sighed and tied your hair into a messy bun. How could you finish your homework now? 

--------

“I don’t think she saw it.” 

Topper laughed at his nervous looking friend.

“Dude, she definitely saw it. It has thousands of likes the last time I checked and I’m pretty sure people were tagging her in the comments.”

Rafe fixed his hat so it covered his face. He definitely didn’t want his friend to notice it turning beet red. 

“I hate you dude.” 

“No you don’t.” 

Once again, the two rich boys were sitting in the same cafe they were in yesterday. They had been sitting in there for two hours now, and there was no sign of the mysterious girl who did or did not know she was tik tok famous.

“I don’t think she’s coming.” Rafe commented. On one hand, he was relieved he wouldn’t have to talk to her. But on the bigger hand, he desperately wanted to see her again. He didn’t know why he was so captivated by her brightly dyed hair or the 10 pins stuck on her backpack. She seemed so normal, yet she stuck out with all the book stickers she had on her laptop. Rafe would never tell a living soul that he liked reading YA romance novels but he felt like he could confide in this mysterious girl. 

“I don’t know. It’s still early.” Topper noted. 

“Um, excuse me?” 

The two boys’ heads shot up at the dainty voice.

You were wearing black ripped jeans with a white top; it was the most simple outfit Rafe had seen you in as you usually dressed in bright colors. He would never admit it, but he even noticed when you changed your nail polish.

What Rafe didn’t know was that your best friends held an intervention last night and told you to dress “more to his style” which included simple attire. Yet, you couldn’t fully immerse in the role and wore your favorite bucket hat that was covered in white daisies. 

“Hey,” Rafe said lamely. 

Topper immediately gathered his stuff and left you two alone. What a homie.

At Rafe’s bland answer, you smiled politely. 

“Can I sit?” You asked. Rafe nodded and gestured towards the seat. He didn’t know why he was acting so weird, but you were just so much prettier up close. 

He could see the bright red earrings you wore that matched your Nikes and noticed your clumsily applied makeup (which he knew because his sister was so good at it). It only made his heart race even faster.

“Um, so I saw the video... I’m sure you know which one I’m talking about.” 

The boy blushed.

“Yeah?” He tried to act suave and calm, but his nerves were all over the place. He felt a bit calmer seeing the girl start to play with her hair: a nervous trait his sister said most girls had. 

“Um, well, I... I was wondering...” The girl trailed off, her face turning a darker red. He almost felt bad for her, but she was so darn cute and wanted her to continue.

“Look, I’m really bad at this... and I know you’re good at it, so...” 

The boy’s ego inflated slightly. 

“So?” 

This wasn’t going the way you wanted it to go. You felt frustrated that you couldn’t even get the words out that you practiced. Your eyes prickled with tears from embarrassment; you wanted to get out of the situation as soon as possible. You didn’t know what you were thinking approaching the hottest guy in campus and expect not to be tongue tied. 

And his lack of words made you think he was just messing with you. 

You felt a gentle hand on top of yours which burst your drama bubble. You looked up and saw Rafe’s bright blue eyes full of concern, and... something else.

Dammit, he probably thinks I’m a weirdo. 

“Hey, it’s ok. Honestly, it was my friend, the one who left earlier, it was his idea to put the video up and he did it without my permission. If it were up to me, it would’ve taken a lot longer to pluck up the courage to approach you...” He confessed. 

This shocked you. Rafe Cameron... tongue tied around you?? 

“Look, let’s start over. I’m Rafe Cameron, junior, business major, and fun fact: I’m on the hockey team.” You knew all of those details, but you let him give a formal introduction. You thought it was cute that he felt the need to explain all of this to you because there wasn’t anyone at your campus who didn’t know who he was.

You held out your hand.

“Y/N, a sophomore and a history major. Fun fact: I’m an RA.” His eyes brightened at your response and shook your hand with a smile. 

He had to practice his stern handshake with businessmen his father forced him to meet, but your hands were gentle and soft, like they were afraid of hurting him. It’s been a while since someone has treated him so delicately. He liked it. 

“Well, y/n, it’s a good thing I don’t live in the dorms because I definitely would’ve tried to act up to get your attention.” He teased. 

You laughed at the response because you knew a couple of the young freshmen who made a ruckus in the lounges so that you had to come in and yell at them. 

You shrugged. “I don’t know, we could’ve met sooner if you were.” 

The flirty words flowed from you naturally and you wanted to take them back as soon as they left your mouth.

But they made Rafe Cameron blush, so you let it go.

Suddenly, his watch buzzed and he swore under his breath.

“Shit, I’m so sorry, I have a business meeting to get to. Can I get your number for uhhh... for future purposes?” 

His slight fumble of words made you grin.

“Of course.” 

I guess tik tok is good for something. 

[imjustthemechanic]

A Romantic Night at the Museum

Happy valentine’s day to @tytythepilot, who wanted a Pepperony HSAU in which they start out hating each other!

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

It was a requirement for graduation: every senior at Triskelion High had to do thirty hours of volunteer work at one of a number of school-approved venues.  It was a duty a lot of students complained about, but Pepper Potts had known right away which she would choose.  There was a soup kitchen, a retirement home, a recycling centre, the humane society, and a few other places, but on sign-up day her eyes had gone right to the bottom of the list: the Empire State Museum of Modern Art.

It seemed ideal.  Pepper was planning to major in accounting, but she was interested in art and art history, and enjoyed visiting the ESMMA.  She was already familiar with all their permanent exhibits, so she probably wouldn’t even need an orientation.  The people who worked there would doubtless be impressed with her dedication.  When she put her name on the list, she did notice that nobody else had chosen the museum yet, but since she was one of the first to choose a venue, she didn’t think much of it.

On November first, Mr. Coulson the history teacher called the seniors down to the gymnasium to get the permission paperwork for their assignments, and to hand out the lanyards and tags where they would log their hours.  Pepper set impatiently in the folding metal chair while the various venues were called out. Red lanyards for the humane society were popular, as were green ones for the recycling centre.  By the time he got close to the bottom, there didn’t seem to be very many people without lanyards, and Pepper was starting to wonder if there would be anybody else volunteering at the museum at all.

As it turned out, there was one other.

“Finally, for the ESMMA,” Mr. Coulson read out at last, “Potts, Virginia, and Stark, Anthony.”

Pepper bounced to her feet and looked around, blinking in surprise.  Tony Stark?  She knew he went to Triskelion High School – who didn’t? – but so far she’d only ever glimpsed him from afar.  From the gossip that surrounded him she knew he was the son of a wealthy and powerful businessmen, that he’d dated most of the cheerleaders but couldn’t remember their names, and that his picture had been on the front of the October issue of the Triskelion Shield newsletter because he’d won some sort of state science prize.  He wanted to work at the museum?

She didn’t see anybody else standing up, though. The other students were all chatting together and comparing lanyards… maybe Stark wasn’t here today?  Pepper grabbed her canvas backpack, covered in pins and buttons for various causes she supported, and hurried to the front.  Mr. Coulson was waiting at the bottom of the stage, holding out the orange lanyard for her.

“There’s nobody else for the museum?” she asked.

“Word gets around,” he replied, ticking her off on his list.  “You and Stark were the only two who signed up.”

“Great.”  Pepper hung the lanyard around her neck with a grimace.  “I get to babysit the rich kid all by myself.”  From what little she knew of Stark, she had no illusions that he would do anything during their volunteer time.  As far as Pepper had ever been able to tell, he didn’t even do anything in his classes – she’d seen him sleeping in Ms. Hill’s Calculus course. He probably paid somebody to take his exams for him.

“Depends on where the museum needs you,” Mr. Coulson said.  “You might not even see him.”

“God, I hope not!” Pepper snorted, and turned around… only to find herself face-to-face with a boy.  He was about her own height, with unkept dark brown hair that needed trimming and brown eyes, and wearing an expensive-looking blazer over a Pink Floyd T-shirt.  She recognized him immediately, of course.  It was Tony Stark, in the flesh.

The colour drained from Pepper’s face.  How much had he heard?

“At least the babysitter’s cute,” he said.

That answered her question – he’d heard all of it.  Pepper stepped past him and walked away as fast as she could, shaking.  Now she was in for it.  The whole school knew everything Stark said and did… it would be a miracle if they weren’t all talking about her by this time tomorrow. And she was going to be stuck with this guy at the museum for two hours a week, the rest of the semester!  Maybe she could catch pneumonia or something and be excused from the rest of the school year.

Her friend Betty was waiting for her at the gym exit, wearing the red humane society lanyard.  “You’re going to be volunteering with Tony Stark?” she asked.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Pepper informed her, and kept going.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

Tony watched the girl disappear in a huff of ginger hair and oversized sweater, then turned to Coulson for his own lanyard and badge.  “What crawled up her butt?” he asked.  There were lots of girls in school who didn’t like Tony – there were lots of girls outside school who didn’t like him – but most of them at least knew him.  As far as he could remember, Tony had never spoken to that one before.

“I don’t think she believes you know anything about art,” said Mr. Coulson.

“Yeah?” Tony asked.

The truth was, he didn’t really.  Tony’s parents were patrons of the ESMMA, along with several other museums in the city, so he’d figured the employees there would be nice to him – but he wasn’t into art for its own sake.  Tony preferred things that could be quantified and figured out, while art, particularly modern art, was the exact opposite of that.  He’d signed up on the assumption that the museum would give him flash cards or something so he could lead tours and answer questions.  He could memorize things like that in a few seconds and be fine. Now, however, he’d been given a challenge.  Who was this girl to judge him when she’d never even met him properly.

“Well,” he said, “she’s gonna find out how wrong she is.”

That evening, Tony sat down in front of his computer – he’d built it himself, out of parts of several others – and pulled up the museum’s website.  With a can of Red Bull at one elbow and a package of pretzels at the other he sat up almost until dawn, going through the online collection and reading about artists, movements, and styles.  Tony could handle being called a lot of things but nobody was going to think he was dumb.

By Friday afternoon, after a couple of additional trips to both the public and museum libraries, he felt he was more than ready. He’d even dug out an old ESMMA t-shirt he’d gotten for free at one of Mom’s fundraisers, and was wearing that and his lanyard as he leaned against one of the metal pillars outside the museum entrance.  The museum wasn’t expecting them until four, but there was no way Tony was letting the girl be earlier than he was.

It worked, too – he’d been waiting nearly fifteen minutes when she finally got off the bus.  Her long ginger hair was in two braids, and her slender figure was absolutely lost under an enormous camo-green cardigan.  Tony was gratified to see her surprised to find him there.

“Afternoon,” he said.

“Hi,” she replied warily.

Tony smiled at her.  “What’s your favourite piece in the ESMMA collection?” he asked, as if making polite conversation.  “I’m partial to Csaky.  Picasso’s a little too abstract for my tastes.”

She frowned for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve never thought about it. Probably the Water Lillies.”

“Monet, cool,” Tony nodded.  “Nobody else I asked at school had signed up for the museum. It’s good to know there’s somebody else around who’s got some taste.  What do you think of Monet’s red paintings?  Are they artistically interesting, or just medically?”

The girl began to smile.  “They can be both,” she said.  “With impressionists it was all about how they saw the world, right? It was their impression. Both Monet’s cataracts and the removal of them affected that, so it should be reflected in his art.”

Tony had expected her to be squirming by now, having realized she was wrong about him, but that didn’t seem to be the case.  He tried to go a little deeper.  “What do you think of the idea that after his surgery he could see into the ultraviolet?” he asked.

“I hadn’t heard that before,” she replied.  For a moment Tony felt triumphant, but then she continued on, apparently oblivious to the fact that he’d just shown he knew more about impressionists than she did.  “I wonder what effect that would have… could we even see it?”

Tony was about to cite a Journal of Art History paper he’d read on the subject, but then one of the big glass doors opened and a man in a blue shirt and white tie, wearing an ESMMA nametag that identified him, appropriately enough, as Art, looked out at him.  “Are you two the kids from Triskelion?” he asked.

“Yes,” the girl said, reaching to took the guy’s hand. “I’m Virginia – people call me Pepper.”

“And I’m Tony,” he stepped up to do the same.

“Oh, I know who you are,” said Art, and shook Tony’s hand with enthusiasm.  “I’ve seen you here with your folks.  Come on in! We’re always happy to have kids from the school.”  He held the door open for them.  “We look forward to it all year.”

“I’ve been looking forward to it, myself,” said Pepper. “I’ve been to the museum quite often, and I know the layout pretty well.”

“And I can identify every piece in the place!” Tony bragged, not to be outdone as the followed Art inside.  The foyer of the building was spacious, with high ceilings, white walls, and abstract-shaped red couches.  “That one behind the admissions counter, for example, that’s Matisse’s Two Masks.”  He snickered. “The one that looks like a mantis shrimp wearing cool sunglasses.”

Pepper looked at him as if he’d just sprouted a second head, but didn’t say anything.

“Man, it kinda does, doesn’t it?” said Art, grinning. “Great, now I’ll never unsee that! Right this way.”  He led them to a door marked staff only, and touched his employee ID card to a panel to unlock it.  The inner side had a complicated push-bar arrangement on it, the sort that would probably set off an alarm if somebody tried to open it without permission.

“Ohhh… are we gonna be working in the off-view collections?” Pepper asked in a reverent voice.

“Sort of,” said Art.

They went down the stairs to the basement level, and through a maze of rooms full of shelves and boxes and things carefully stored in glass cases, to a door with no special signs or locks on it, just an ordinary lever handle.  Beyond that was a little room with one tiny, dingy window way high up in the wall, looking out on a parking lot, and a lot of metal shelves stacked high with what appeared to be garbage.  There were cardboard boxes full of paper, trash bags bulging with heaven knew what, stacks of old magazines, packages of unopened paper plates and plastic forks. Tony frowned as he looked around. He hadn’t seen anything like this on the website?

“Is this art?” he asked.

“This is our surplus from last year,” Art replied. “Menus and leaflets and merch.  We need you guys to sort it out – what we can still sell, what we can recycle, what we can donate, and so forth.  We save it all year so you kids will have something to do.”  He looked so proud of himself, as if he were expecting them to be excited about this.

Tony glanced at Pepper.  Her mouth was open in astonishment.

“The café and vending machines will give you sodas and snacks at half price with your lanyards,” Art said cheerfully.  “If you need anything, you can call somebody there.” He pointed to a set of buttons below a speaker on the wall.  “See you at six!”  And he walked out, whistling.

Pepper’s backpack fell out of her hands and landed on the floor.  “Word gets around,” she said aloud.  “Nobody told me.”

The look on her face and the mournful tone of her voice would have been full as hell if Tony hadn’t been feeling pretty betrayed, himself.  “This is bullshit,” he declared.  His parents had donated thousands of dollars to the ESMMA over the years.  He’d studied for this, and they thought all he was good for was sorting garbage?  “I’m going to call my Mom,” he said darkly.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

Pepper felt like the bottom had dropped out of her stomach and all her insides had gone splat on the gritty concrete floor.  She’d been looking forward to this for a month, as a chance to work in the stimulating environment of the museum, enjoying art and helping other people enjoy it, too.  Now it turned out they expected her to spend the whole time shut in the basement?  No wonder nobody else signed u for the museum! Why hadn’t she asked around? Clearly somebody was telling the seniors to avoid the assignment!

It was Stark’s statement that snapped her out of her moment of shock.  Pepper had kept her head down the last few days at school, waiting for the ridicule to start, but it never had.  It seemed like nobody had overheard the exchange, and Stark must not have told anyone about it.  She’d begun to hope that he just wanted to forget about it, too.  Her hopes had risen even further when he’d actually seemed to want to talk about the museum and the collection, and when she’d noticed his parents’ names on the big granite slab in the lobby floor.  Maybe they were going to get along after all…

Now it was clear after all that he really was just a spoiled jerk.  He was here because he thought his family’s involvement would get him special treatment and he was pissed because it wouldn’t.  Well, maybe it would do him good to live in the real world for two hours a week.

“Is that what you do every time you don’t get what you want?” she demanded.  “Go crying to Mommy and have her fix it for you?”

Stark scowled at her.  “Oh, and I guess you’re totally fine with it?  You were geeking out a minute ago!”

“I am not fine with it!” Pepper informed him.  “I am bitterly disappointed, but some of us don’t have rich parents who can make sure we get our way!”  She looked around again at the room’s ill-organized contents, then picked up her backpack and set it on a chair.  The sleeves of her cardigan wouldn’t stay up, but she made a show of rolling them anyway before she dug into the first box of magazines.

“What are you doing?” asked Stark.

“I’m doing what I was told to do!” she snarled. “Because I need the credit to graduate, and unlike some people I can’t just nap through all my classes and bribe the school to pass me anyway!”

For a moment Stark just stood there as if she’d slapped him. Then he drew himself up to his full height, which was not impressive when he wasn’t any taller than Pepper, and demanded, “what is your problem?  I never even met you until the other day, and you already hated me!  You honestly think I can’t do this?” He gestured to the piles of junk.

“I think you won’t,” Pepper replied primly.  “I mean, look at you – you’re just standing there! Your parents are so rich you’ve probably never had to do anything in your entire life!  I bet your Dad pays off the teachers to give you good marks!”

“I get good marks all by myself!” Stark huffed.  “I happen to be a genius!”

If that were supposed to make her think more highly of him, it failed miserably.  Pepper threw a magazine at him.  “You’re an egotistical twit!” she said.  “If you can work, prove it!”

“Maybe I will!” he said.  He stood there a moment longer, looking around, and Pepper wondered if he would refuse after all, out of sheer spite.  But then he grabbed a box of merchandise from a now-defunct special exhibit on Lichtenstein and started sorting them, rather violently.

Pepper smirked.  At least she’d gotten him to participate.

“You’ve got no right to pass judgment on me when you don’t know me,” Stark said after a while.

“Maybe you shouldn’t worry so much about what other people think of you,” Pepper retorted.  She opened a second box, and found it was full of old calendars.  The guy named Art had said they saved things all year for the Triskelion volunteers, but these were fully three years old.  Whoever had been conned into doing this in the mean time couldn’t have been very thorough.

“I don’t care what other people think of me,” Stark said.  He was stacking souvenir water bottles into two pyramids, one of bottles that had last year’s date on them, and one that did not.

“Obviously you do, or you wouldn’t be mad at me for not liking you,” Pepper pointed out.

She looked around at the mess, and felt her jaw muscles tighten.  This was clearly a job that desperately needed doing and, just as obviously, nobody wanted to do it.  The museum staff didn’t want to deal with it, so they left it for the students.  The students didn’t want to deal with it, so they didn’t  sign up for the volunteer work.  Pepper certainly didn’t want to do it… but that in itself awakened a weird form of rebellion in her.  Fine, then. She would do it, and she would do a spectacular job, so that nobody else could ever do half as well! She dumped the calendars back in their box, and got out a marker to write the word recycle on the side.

“I’m not mad,” said Stark.  “I couldn’t care less if you like me or not.  I’m just saying you have no right to an opinion.”

“Of course I do,” Pepper said, “and you’re not making me like you any better by whining about it!”  She grabbed another box.

“Maybe I don’t like you, either,” he retorted.

“Good thing I actually don’t care what you think of me,” sniffed Pepper.  After their interactions so far, she would have been disappointed if he didn’t hate her.  The last thing she wanted was to appeal to a spoiled brat like Stark!  She looked over her shoulder at his pyramids.  “What are you doing with those?”

“Seeing how high I can stack them,” he replied.

“We’re not here to play,” Pepper informed him.  The next box contained multicoloured stress balls. For a moment she wrestled with temptation, then she threw one at Stark’s bottles, as if they were a setup pin a carnival game.  They wobbled, then crashed down.

“Hey!” he protested.

“We’re here to work,” she told him.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘 

That interaction seemed to have set the tone for the entire evening, Tony observed.  This girl was absolutely determined to do the job they’d given her, even though it was a stupid rip-off of a job, and if Tony hadn’t been so determined to hate her back he would have found it kind of admirable.  If she had that kind of work ethic in her classes she might well end up valedictorian… and since the school was in the habit of choosing one valedictorian of each sex, that meant Tony might find himself sharing a stage with her in June.  That sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.

Art had promised to let them out at six.  He’d also told them they were welcome to go for snacks or bathroom breaks, but Pepper – why was she called that? Because of her freckles, maybe? She certainly was peppered with those – didn’t stop.  Tony was getting hungry and cranky, but he didn’t stop, either.  Pepper had thought he’d know nothing abut art and he’d proven her wrong.  Now she thought he wasn’t willing to work hard, so he was going to prove her wrong on that, too.

Six o’clock came and went.  Upstairs the museum was probably closing up, and Art would arrive any minutes.  Pepper kept at it, though, tossing vaguely cubist plush animals around like she planned to do it all night, using her phone as a flashlight to peer into dark corners of the room looking for more.  Tony wondered if he ought to say something, but if he did, she might think he was being lazy and he wasn’t going to let her have that.  He continued taking bundles of pamphlets out of their elastic bands and dumping them in the ‘recycle’ box as his watched ticked past six thirty and approached seven.

Then the lights went out.

For a moment the two of them just stood there in the dark, blinking.  A little bit of light came in through that high-up window, but it wasn’t really enough to see by.  After a few seconds, Pepper turned her phone flashlight back on, which made Tony yelp as she shone it directly in his face.

“Hey!” he protested.

“Sorry!”  She quickly moved it.  “Did you do that?”

“What?” asked Tony.  “Turn the lights off?  Why would I do that!  They probably went off because it’s way past six and the museum is closed.”  He went and moved a box so he could stand on it and look out the window.

Pepper stared at him, then looked at her phone screen. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked.

“Because you would have gone aww, is the little rich boy tired?”  Sure enough, there was nobody moving out in the courtyard.  The café tables had been put away, and he thought he could make out somebody on the opposite side locking a door.

“So you do care what I think of you,” she said, but didn’t seem interested in arguing the point.  As Tony opened his mouth to reply, she turned away and shone the light around the room.  “Which way to the stairs?”

“This way.”  Tony hopped down from his box and turned on his own phone for extra light. A fat lot of good it had done him, he thought, to memorize those museum maps.  None of them had included the basement!  But by the light of the LEDs the two young people managed to wind their way through the maze of rooms.

“Oh, Jesus!” Pepper exclaimed, grabbing Tony’s arm.

“What?” he turned around, and nearly jumped out of his own skin as he saw what looked like a winged, humanoid figure looming over them.  Then he realized what he was looking at was the shadow of a sculpture in dark stone, projected on the wall and ceiling by the light, and recognized it from the website catalogue – at least that had done him some good. “That’s Csaky’s Messenger,” he said.  A black granite cubist angel.

“I knew that,” said Pepper, relaxing her grip.

“No, you didn’t,” he teased.  “What did you think it was, Mothman?”

“Shut up and let’s get out of here,” she said. “This place is creepy in the dark.”

It had been kind of creepy in the daytime, Tony thought, with all the old sculptures covered in sheets and so forth.  When he moved his own light around the room the shadows seemed to come to life, and it did make the statues look terrifyingly animated. He tried not to think about that as they continued to the stairs.

It was an effort not to cheer when they finally sighted the red EXIT sign.  Tony took the stairs two at a time and pushed on the bar handle, not really caring if it set off an alarm.  It did not – in fact, the only sound was a dull clunk, and the door did not move.

Tony tried again, wondering if he’d simply pushed it too hard.  He got the same result.

“Now what?” asked Pepper.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t panic, it’s not like we’re gonna run out of air or anything,” said Tony, rolling his eyes.  “It’s just a locked door.”

“Yes, but that means we’re stuck in here!” she protested.

“It’s not like the museum’s empty!”  Tony put his shoulder against the door to rattle it. “Hey!  Hey, we’re locked in!” he shouted.

“Help!” Pepper chimed in.  “Anybody out there?  Help!”

They continued shouting for a few minutes, but it got no reply.  If anybody were out there, they couldn’t hear them – or they were just ignoring the cries.

“Why didn’t that guy come back to tell us it was time to go?” Pepper wailed.

Tony very much wanted to know that, himself.  “I guess he forgot about us.”  He rattled the door one last time and waited a moment, but there was still no response.

She grabbed his arm again.  “You can call your parents!”

Tony pulled free of her grip.  “Oh, now who wants to call my rich parents to fix everything?” he couldn’t resist saying.

She narrowed her eyes.  “That was a tantrum.  This is an emergency.  I’m sorry I made fun of you, okay?  Please call them.”

The apology was startling, but it didn’t change one important fact.  “I can’t,” Tony said.  “Or if I did, it wouldn’t do any  good. They’re in Vienna this week.”  He scowled.

The light on Pepper’s phone shut off with an unhappy buzzing sound, but by the light of his own Tony could see that she looked disappointed.  “So you were just ranting when you said you were gonna have your Mom yell at the museum people?”

“No, I was gonna talk to her, it’s just that it’ll probably take ages for her to do anything about it, because she’s out of the country and she doesn’t like staying up all night to make phone calls,” Tony grumbled.  “Why don’t you call your parents?  At least they live here in town.”

Pepper nodded and looked down at her phone, then swallowed when she saw the screen.  “Uh… actually, I don’t think I can.  I’ve had the flashlight on too long and the battery is dead.”

He reached into his pocket.  “You can use mine.  You know their numbers, right?”

“No,” she admitted, squirming a bit.  “We haven’t had a land line since I was twelve. I’ve always had their numbers in my phone.”

“Well, that’s just great!”  Tony kicked the door and then went to sit down on the top step. “So what do we do, just sit here all night?”

“You said you were a genius!  Can’t you figure something out?” she asked.

Tony huffed.  There she was again, thinking he was dumb.  He knew that she was doing it on purpose, and that if he kept reacting the way she wanted, she would quickly come to decide that she could make him do anything she wanted by saying she thought he couldn’t or wouldn’t… but at the same time, he couldn’t let her think she was right.  He thought back to the museum maps he’d looked at… this stairwell hadn’t been marked on any of them, which meant the public wasn’t supposed to use them.  All the exits probably locked the same way.  What he needed was a way to pick the lock, which was going to be difficult when it was inside the bar apparatus.

“Well?” Pepper asked.

“Shut up.  I’m thinking.”  Tony turned and directed the light from his phone onto the bar.  There were some screws that would be easy to take out, but they were in the push panel at the hinge end of the door… he’d need to reach inside somehow.  “Okay,” he said, standing up again.  “There’s gotta be some tools in that basement, right?  I need a screwdriver.”

“Is this a good idea?” asked Pepper.

“I won the Pym Prize for Robotics last month!” Tony reminded her.  “My picture was on the cover of the school newspaper, and you don’t trust me with a screwdriver?”

She threw up her hands.  “Okay, okay!  Do your genius thing!”

Tony checked the battery on his own phone.  With the flashlight on it was draining fast.  If they didn’t want to be in here with no light but the EXIT signs, he was going to have to find another source of illumination.  “And a proper flashlight,” he decided.

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all evening,” said Pepper, and followed him down the steps.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

Pepper realized she was being mean and snappish, but she couldn’t help it.  How was she supposed to feel when they were locked in a basement?  They couldn’t just stay here all night.  What about dinner?  Her stomach was already growling.  She’d been ignoring it earlier because she had wanted to show that she was willing to work.  Where would they sleep?  There was nothing soft down here to lie on.  And good lord, what was going to happen when one of them needed to pee?

All that nervous energy had to go somewhere and the only possible target was Stark – and he was doubly convenient in that capacity because this was his fault.  He’d noticed the time passing while she had not.  He couldn’t have said something.  If he’d spoken up, they could have decided it was time to go and done so, but he hadn’t, the staff had forgotten about them, and now they were stuck down here!

Back at the bottom of the stairs, Stark located a janitor’s closet.  This seemed a good place to start looking for emergency supplies – there was a first aid kit and a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, and on a shelf above them he found a utility flashlight.  He gave the latter to Pepper, and had her hold it while he rooted around inside a cupboard, looking for something else.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“I’m looking for tools,” he replied.  “A screwdriver.  A hammer.  Something. I’m gonna take the door apart and open the lock from the inside… and don’t ask me if I can do that,” he added, pulling his head out of the cupboard to look straight at her.  “I told you, I’m a genius.  I can figure it out.”

Pepper sniffed.  She would wait and see how he did at getting them out of the basement, but she knew one thing for certain.  “You may be a genius, but talking about it all the time still makes you sound like a jerk.  Why do you care so much that people know how smart you are?”

“Because it’s important!” said Tony, going back to his rooting around.  “Fine, I admit it: yes, I want people to know I’m smart, okay?  I’m proud of it.  Why shouldn’t I be?”

“It’s fine to be proud, but if you go around talking about it, you’re bragging,” Pepper said to his butt, which was the only part of him she could see.  “What happened to humility?”

“False humility is just another kind of lying,” he said.

“It’s polite,” Pepper insisted.  “You don’t see me go around bragging.  I could be standing here going, oh, they gave me this job because nobody else wants to do it so I’m going to be awesome at it just to show them.”

This time, he actually wiggled back out of the cupboard and sat up, frowning at her in evident confusion.  “Is that really what you’re proudest of?” he asked.  “That you’re willing to do crappy jobs?”

“I’m willing to do them well,” Pepper clarified. “The people who left all those three-year-old calendars in the box sure didn’t do a very good job of it.  Just because nobody wants to do something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it properly.  I’m a Hufflepuff,” she said firmly.  “I believe in doing things right.”

“Yeah, but that seems like a weird thing to brag about,” he insisted.

“I just said I don’t brag about it,” huffed Pepper.

“No, I mean, it’s a weird example of a thing you might brag about,” Stark said.  “Most people would say something like, I’m good at math, or I  can beat a new video game faster than anybody I know, or I’ve won prizes for my robots.  Your thing is doing terrible jobs?”

His mention to the robotics prize made Pepper wonder if all three of his examples were things he personally considered himself amazing at.  “No, they wouldn’t say that, because most people don’t go around bragging.”

“If you asked them,” Stark said, frowning in frustration.  “If you go up to somebody and ask them what are you best at they’ll always tell you something!  Like, my friend Rhodey is really good at building model airplanes.  He’ll tell you all about how he changed them to be more accurate than they were on the box.  Or there’s Janet from my physics class who’s really good at her fashion Instagram.  What’s your ‘thing’?”

Pepper winced, wishing now she’d never spoken. Everybody had a ‘thing’, didn’t they? Something they were really into. With Jane it was astronomy – everyone knew she’d been accepted to Culver for astrophysics and she could take you out on a dark night and show you three planets, nine constellations, and tell you about how people could figure out the date of supernovas from tree rings. Pepper never understood half of what she said.  With Natasha it was ballet and gymnastics, and the phys. ed teachers said she’d probably be in the Olympics someday.  Pepper was madly jealous of both of them for having something they were so good at and so passionate about… because she didn’t.

She was silent for a moment – and her very hesitation must have told Stark all he needed to know.  “Oh, come on, you must be good at something,” he said.  “How about art?”

Pepper shrugged awkwardly.  “I like art, but I can’t do it.  I took art in freshman year but I wasn’t any good at it. I never felt inspired.  I’m more interested in the history than in actually doing it, but that’s not really… not really something you can make a career out of.  I guess I could be a museum curator, but…”  She looked around the dark room, with that unsettling statue still looming in a corner of it.  “A museum doesn’t sound like a great place to work right now.”

“I hear that,” Stark grumbled.

“I’m gonna do accounting in college,” she went on, “because I’ll be able to get a good job that way.  I get decent grades in math, but they’re not any better than the grades I get in anything else.  My Dad was always one of those if you put your mind to it you can do anything people, and he’s right, because I can do a lot of things well but there’s not really anything I’d say I’m good at.”

Pepper stopped there, because… why had she told him that?  It wasn’t something she ever discussed, even with her friends or family.  They wouldn’t understand.  All of them had a ‘thing’, but Pepper was just… Pepper. She worked hard because if she couldn’t be good at something, she wanted to be decent at as many things as she could. Jill of all trades, mistress of none.

Stark was looking at her like he didn’t know what she was talking about.  He probably didn’t.  If he was so damn smart, he was probably good at everything and couldn’t imagine what mediocrity was possibly like.  What would he know about insecurity?

“Look, just find your tools and get us out of here,” said Pepper.

He crawled back into the cupboard, while she knelt down to shine the flashlight over his shoulder.  After a minute or two of sorting around amid cleaning supplies and a set of wrenches, he sat up triumphantly.  “Aha!” he exclaimed, holding high a beat-up screwdriver with an orange handle.

“Finally!” said Pepper.  “Let’s go!”

They returned to the main floor and Pepper continued to hold the flashlight while Stark knelt down to turn the screws.  He tried for a few moments, then stopped and muttered a bad word under his breath.

“Now what’s wrong?” Pepper asked.  She could feel her stomach sinking again.

“It’s a Phillips,” said Stark.

“What’s that?” Pepper wanted to know.

“It’s a Phillips head screwdriver!”  He pointed it at her like a magic wand.  “The screws are all flat heads!”

“Can’t you still use it?” she asked.  Pepper admittedly knew very little about tools but she had assembled furniture with her parents, and she was sure her father had once said she could still use a particular screwdriver even if it was the wrong shape.

Stark appeared to disagree – he tossed the screwdriver back down the stairs, and she could hear it clink as it bounced off the concrete steps.  “No. You could use a flat head screwdriver in a Phillips screw, but not the other way around.”

“The Phillips… is that the one with the plus, and the flat head is the one with the minus?” she asked.

“Yeah.”  Stark sat there for a moment, then examined the screws again.  “You got a dime?”

“Nobody carries cash in New York,” Pepper scoffed. She thought for a moment, herself, and then unzipped her backpack and started sorting through it, looking for her keys.  “Here!” She pulled them out.  “I have nail clippers on my keychain!”

“So what?” he asked, annoyed.

“So they have a flat end!”  She took them off the loop and lifted the lever to show him. “Will that fit in the screws?”

Stark blinked, then snatched them out of her hand, grinning.  “You’re a genius!” he said, and turned around to start removing screws.

“Oh, like you?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

“Maybe not quite like me,” he said, but he glanced back over his shoulder to smile at her, and something inside Pepper gave an involuntarily little flutter.  Stark was clearly joking, but when he’d said you’re a genius, it had sounded so sincere and spontaneous she couldn’t help but think he meant it.

“There we go!” Stark dropped one screw on the floor, then removed another, and took the entire bar off the door.  “Shine the light in here, would you?”

Pepper directed the beam over his shoulder, while he first peered in and then reached to feel around.  For a moment he frowned, and Pepper started getting worried again, but this time he seemed to figure out a solution quickly.

“Another equipment run!” he declared.  “I know I saw wire cutters in there… I need a coat hanger.  I’m gonna snip a length of it so I can manipulate the lock from the inside.”

“There were coat hangers in the junk room!” said Pepper. “They had a box of souvenir sweatshirts that were already on them inside the plastic!”

She pulled open one such packet, and Stark cut himself a length of wire about six inches long.  Pepper was starting to feel quite pleased with their collective problem-solving abilities.  Stark could find, or at least make, whatever tools they needed, and Pepper had a good memory and could tell him where to find things.  When they returned to the door, Stark stuck his makeshift lock pick into it, his hand disappearing into the bar mechanism right up to the wrist, and within a few second there was a clunking sound, and the door creaked open. The light that flooded in was faint, just the evening glow of the city and the fading November sky reflecting off the white walls and tile floors of the lobby, but Pepper was so happy to see it, she almost cried.

“Ta-da!” said Stark proudly.  There was a clink from inside the bar as he dropped the piece of wire.  “There we… ow!” he exclaimed, and quickly yanked his arm out… or tried to. Something clearly went wrong, because he stopped short and howled!

Pepper almost dropped the flashlight. What?  What happened?” she asked.  Her imagination offered up horrible possibilities.  Maybe there was a mouse or a spider or something in there. Maybe he was going to need her to suck the venom out.  Maybe she wouldn’t be able to do it, and she would be known as the girl who let Tony Stark die…

“I’m stuck!  I’m caught on…” he gritted his teeth and swore again.  “I’m caught on… I think I stabbed myself.”

Pepper felt herself go cold.  She set the flashlight down on the floor so that its beam would still illuminate him.  “Okay, well, don’t panic,” she said.

“Don’t panic?  You’re the one who screamed because you thought the statue was Mothman!” he pointed out.

“Only for a moment!  When you’re hurt,” she explained, “you shouldn’t panic because it’ll only make you freak out and do more damage.  Now, take a deep breath.”

He breathed in, hard.

“Let it out,” said Pepper.

It came out in a woosh.

“Now tell me what happened.”

Stark grimaced in pain.  “I dropped the coat hanger wire,” he said, “and I think it got caught on something.  When I tried to pull my arm out it poked me, and when I tried to yank it out fast it went in really deep and I think I’m actually sort of impaled right now.”

In the dim light, Pepper couldn’t see his face very well, but he sounded like he was on the verge of passing out.  She thought fast – if he did that, he would go limp, and the weight of his body would pull on that arm, and if what he’d just said was accurate, that could make things much worse.

“Okay,” she said.  “Can you back your arm up so it comes out?”

He tried.  “I don’t think so.  The bar isn’t long enough.”  Stark looked at her hands, held up in front of her as she tried to reassure him. “You’ve got small hands.  You think you can reach in there and move it?”

“I’ll try,” said Pepper.  She took off her cardigan and examined the situation… how would she do this?  Stark was right up against the door and couldn’t exactly move over to give her space. She was going to have to practically sit in his lap.  “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, moving into place.

He snorted.  “I’ve got my arm stuck in a door!  Getting ideas is about the last thing on my mind.”

She settled down, sitting on his knee, and wiggled her fingers in around his arm.  Immediately she felt something wet and sticky.  She pulled her hand back and held it in the flashlight beam, and was horrified to see the red on her fingers.  “Oohhh,” she said.

“What?”  Stark looked over her shoulder.  “Oh, no. You’re not gonna faint, are you?”

“I don’t know if I’m the best person to do this,” said Pepper.  She almost stuck the fingers in her mouth, but that wasn’t a good idea when it wasn’t her blood.  She couldn’t wipe it on her clothes, either, it might stain.  How much more blood would there be if she managed to pull the wire out?

“There’s nobody else here!” he protested.  “That’s the whole problem, remember?”

“Yeah, but…” Pepper said helplessly, and stopped there because he was right.  It was just him and her.  Like sorting the garbage downstairs, it was a terrible job but nobody else was going to do it.  It was up to Pepper.

“Right.”  She tried to wipe her fingers on the floor, which didn’t work very well, then took a deep breath and tried again.  Stark’s chin was on her shoulder watching as she stuck her fingers in between his flesh and the edge of the opening, feeling around for the problem.  She could follow the piece of wire for about two and a half inches, the length of her thumb and index finger, and then had to stop. There just wasn’t room to fit the rest of her hand inside and go any further.

“Don’t tug on it,” said Stark weakly.  “It’s definitely under the skin.”

“That’s so disgusting,” she whimpered.  The blood had been pretty awful, but she could handle it. The phrase under the skin, however, was horrible.  Pepper hated things like needles and IV lines.

“Can you get it out?” he asked.

“No,” was Pepper’s immediate reply.  “That’s as far as my fingers will go.  I’m gonna see if I can find the other end.”  She felt her way back, trying to ignore the feeling of warm, damp blood between her fingers.  The other end of the bit of coat hanger turned out to be stuck under a lip of metal at the edge of the piece next to the one Stark had removed.  She tried to pick at it with her fingernails, to no effect. “I can’t.  It’s stuck.”

Pepper wanted to pull her hand back, but realized if she did, it might be covered with blood.  For a moment, she didn’t move.

“Okay,” Stark said in her ear.  “If pulling it out won’t work, can we push it a little further in?”

“What?” Pepper asked.  “No, I’m not going to do that!  I wouldn’t do it even if I could!”

“I didn’t mean into my arm, I meant into the space!” said Stark.  “I’ll push my arm in as far as I can, and you see if you can get the other end loose and hold it there so I can get out without it getting stuck again, okay?”

“I can’t do that!” she insisted.  “What if it pierces something major and you bleed to death?” There was already enough blood on her. The idea of more made her feel ill.

“You won’t if you’re careful,” he said.  “Even if you do, I don’t think there’s any major blood vessels in that part of an arm.”

“You don’t think there are?  You mean you don’t know if there are?  I thought you were a genius!”

“That doesn’t make me an encyclopedia!” he protested. “Being smart doesn’t mean I know everything.  Intelligence is a stat – knowledge is a skill!  You have to roll a check for it!”

“What?” Pepper asked.  The statement made no sense whatsoever for the first few moments, until she realized what he was talking about.  “Is… was that a Dungeons and Dragons joke?”  His arm was impaled on part of a metal coat hanger, and he was joking?

“Yes!  I’m trying to distract us,” Stark said.  “Just do it, okay?  Stop thinking about it.  The faster it gets done, the faster it’ll be over with and we can both get out of here.”

“Right.”  Pepper took several breaths in and out, the way she’d told him to do only a few minutes earlier.  “Keep distracting me,” she said.

“How?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  Tell me about… tell me about your parents.”  It was the first thing that occurred to her.  She worked her fingers further into the space, to press the piece of wire against his skin.

Stark snorted.  “What’s to tell?  My Dad’s the smartest guy in the world and nothing I do is ever good enough for him. Have you got it?”

“I hope so,” she replied.  “I thought you said you were a genius.”

“I am a genius, just not as much of a genius as he is,” said Stark.  He moved his arm a little further, but it wasn’t enough for the wire to come loose.

“Keep going,” said Pepper.

“No matter what I do,” Stark went on, “he’s like, oh, I did that when I was younger than you, and I didn’t have all this money or this fancy edu…” he hissed through his teeth as something hurt, and Pepper began to ease off the pressure she was putting on his arm.  “No, hold it there!” he said.  “All this fancy education.  I didn’t even… oh shit… I didn’t even tell him I won that prize or that I was on the cover of the school newspaper, because he wouldn’t have… oh shit… wouldn’t have cared…”

“Am I hurting you?” Pepper asked.  The end was still, just barely, under the lip.

“No, it just hurts!” he said.  He moved a little further.

It was only a fraction of an inch, but it was enough. Pepper felt the end of the wire come free, and held it as tightly against his arm as she could.  “I got it!  Pull it out now!”

He yanked his arm out of the bar.  The door, now free to swing, fell open and dumped both young people onto the lobby floor.

Pepper held up her hands.  The lobby was semi-dark, but there was enough light to see that her fingers were smeared with blood.  It was getting sticky as it began to dry, and the metallic scent stung in her nostrils.  Her stomach lurched.

“Oh, man,” said Stark.

She knew she didn’t want to see his injury, but she turned and looked anyway.  It wasn’t as bad as she was picturing.  The end of the piece was very sharp, but it was only under perhaps half an inch of skin and so close to the surface that the dark metal was visible through the translucent layer of tissue.  It was still horrible to look at, but impaled was an exaggeration.

“I gotta… I gotta…” Stark stammered.

“Lie down!”  Pepper pushed him onto the floor.  “Don’t you dare pass out on me.  Wait right here, and I’ll be back.”

She ran back down the steps and grabbed the first aid kit out of the janitor’s closet.  When she got back, she found Stark lying there with one cheek on the cold tile, but his eyes were wide and he was still very much conscious.

“I’m gonna pull it out,” she told him.

“Tie something around my arm first, so it doesn’t bleed too much,” said Stark.

“Got it.  I think that’s what this is for.”  Pepper pulled out a stretchy strap and tied it around his arm above the injury. “There… now like I said, keep talking. Your Dad isn’t impressed by you. Is that why you want everybody at school to know you’re a genius?”  Honestly… it would explain an awful lot.

“I guess,” said Stark.  “I didn’t think about it that way, but… yeah, probably.  It’s nice to be able to brag a little without him telling me how much better he could have done it, you know?  He actually wanted to send me to boarding school. Mom talked him out of it, but he just wanted to get rid of me.”

Pepper nodded.  “You ready?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Me, neither,” she admitted.  With her left hand she held his, while gripping the wire with her right.  Should she pull fast or slow?  If she were doing this to herself she would have done it at slowly as possible, probably crying the whole time, but this wasn’t for herself… so she decided to just yank.  She held on tight so it wouldn’t just slide through her fingers, and pulled.

It came right out.  Pepper tossed the wire aside and grabbed a wad of gauze out of the kit to press against the wound.  “How’s that?” she asked.

“Way better,” said Stark weakly.  “I don’t think I could have done that myself.”

“That’s my thing,” Pepper said, her voice shaking. “I do stuff nobody else is willing to do.”

“You sure do,” he agreed.  “That’s a really great thing to be good at.  Go ahead and brag about it, okay?”

Pepper of couldn’t wouldn’t do any such thing, but she nodded, giggling a little in relief.

“What the hell is going on here?” demanded a voice.

A light was suddenly in their faces.  Pepper shrieked and grabbed Stark, as he hollered and grabbed her back.  Both of them looked up, and then relaxed again as they realized it was just a museum security guard.  He was a tall white man with a shaved head and a mustache, staring at them both in horror.

“Who are you two?” he asked.

Pepper couldn’t help it – she started giggling again. “We’re the kids from Triskelion High!” she managed in between bouts of laughter.  “We were sorting the stuff in the basement, and they forgot about us and locked us in!”

“Why are you covered in blood?” the guard asked, aghast.

Pepper looked down – she’d now gotten blood from her hands all over Stark’s shirt where she’d grabbed him, and he’d smeared it on her arm.  He was also now wiping his face, which got more blood on his cheeks and forehead, but whether because Pepper was setting him off or just because he was relieved, too, he was also laughing.

“I cut myself trying to take the door apart,” he said. “She helped me get unstuck.”

“Why didn’t you call 911?” the guard demanded.

Pepper blinked.  That was a good question – why hadn’t they?  They could have done that before they even started trying to open the door. They definitely could have done it when Stark first got his arm stuck.  Pepper’s phone had been dead, but Stark’s had some time left on it.  It just hadn’t occurred to either of them.

Stark laughed louder.  “Yeah, why didn’t we do that?”

“I don’t know!”  Pepper said.  “So much for being geniuses!”

“We’re idiots!” he agreed.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

The security guard was not laughing.  He dialed 911 himself, and summoned the janitorial staff to repair the door and clean the blood off it and the tiles.  When the ambulance arrived – along with someone who had the front door key to let them out – the EMTs bundled Tony into the back for inspection.  Since it was a chilly evening, they let Pepper sit inside with him while they slathered disinfectants on his arm.

“Are you put to date on your tetanus shots?” one woman asked him.

“Yes, absolutely,” said Tony.  “I work with metal all the time, so I keep an eye on that.”

She nodded.  “You said your parents are in Austria.  Who is your emergency contact?”

“Mr. Jarvis, my Dad’s old butler.  I’ll give you the number.”

The medic went to make the phone call, and Tony looked up at Pepper, sitting next to him.  He smiled at her, and was gratified to see her smiling back.  Apparently she… well, she obviously didn’t dislike him anymore.  He’d take that.

“I have a confession to make,” he said.

“Oh, really?”  Her thin ginger eyebrows roses.

“Well, you’re sitting there with my blood on your shirt, I figure you deserve the truth,” Tony said.  “I don’t know anything about art.  At least, I didn’t before last week.  Mr. Coulson said he thought the reason you were upset was because you didn’t think I knew anything about it, and I decided to prove you wrong, so I did a bunch of research.”

“To impress me?” asked Pepper.  “You didn’t even know me!”

“Well, as we established, I do kinda care what people think of me,” said Tony.

She shrugged.  “If my Dad thought I couldn’t do anything right, I’d probably want everybody at school to think I’m a genius, too.”

“I bet everybody at school does think you’re a genius, if you work at everything as hard as you worked at sorting that garbage.”

“Then I’ve fooled them all,” she sighed.

Tony gave her another smile.  “No fooling me,” he said, “you’re awesome.  Maybe not as much of a genius as I am, but not every girl would get covered in blood to help you get your arm out of a door.”

Pepper shook her head.  “Never ask me to do anything like that ever again, okay?” she said.  “Next week, you tell me when it’s six o’clock!”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Tony.

A car horn honked outside, and the EMT peeked back in. “Miss Potts?” she said.  “Your parents are here.”

“Tell them I’m coming!”  Pepper stood up and grabbed her backpack.  “See you next week, Stark.”

“Maybe sooner,” said Tony.  “We both go to the same school, after all.”

“Yeah, we do,” she agreed.  “Maybe sooner, then.”

He reached out and took her hand, and pulled her a bit closer for a kiss.  She ducked out of it.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, pulling her arm free. “I know what you’re like with girls!”

“Do you?”  Tony asked.  “You don’t know me, remember?  Give me a chance!”

“Pepper!” a voice called from outside.

“Please?”  He pouted and showed her his best puppy dog expression... the one that always worked on Mrs. Jarvis.

She hesitated a moment, then smiled. “Maybe.  See you on Monday, Tony,” and leaned back down.  She only kissed his cheek, and then she was gone in a hurry, her cheeks flushed as she ran off to meet her parents at the car.  Tony, however, was grinning as he watched her go. As evenings when he’d nearly stabbed himself went, that one hadn’t been too bad at all.

[thesentientmango]

The First Day We Met

Read this on A03

September ended long ago, but I said I was going to finish the prompts, and I’m not gonna break my word! I wrote this a while ago, I think October.

Prompt: Day 23 - At a certain age you switch bodies with your soulmate for 24 hours

Summary- Logan wakes up in his soulmate’s body as expected, however when he finds his own body, something’s a little off.

Ship(s) - Janus/Roman/Logan (Roloceit), Patton/Remus (Intruality)

~~~

Logan checked the letter on his bedside table for the 10th time. He should be asleep, he knew that. He had about an hour before the switch happened and everyone always said it was better to be asleep when it actually happened. Logan drummed his fingers against his leg and took a breath. He wasn’t tired. Not even slightly. Logan checked the time again, fifteen minutes had gone by.

He huffed and lied down on his bed. Maybe if he closed his eyes he would fall asleep…

Logan woke up to the sound of a bird screaming outside. Logan threw an arm over his face and groaned, what a way to wake up. He reached out towards his nightstand to grab his glasses.

Logan frowned as his hand brushed through air instead of hitting his nightstand. He opened his eyes and was shocked with many things. First, how clear his vision was. Second that he wasn’t in his own room and third, that his soulmate put up with those birds every morning.

Logan looked around the small room for any sign of whose body he was in. He was in the bottom bunk of a bunk bed, but the top bunk was empty. However it was clearly slept in. Across the room there was a piece of paper on the desk that normally Logan wouldn’t be able to see. Logan stood up and walked over slowly, he felt off balance as he walked. Probably a height difference, Logan reasoned. Although Logan wasn’t quite sure if he was taller or shorter than his soulmate.

Logan took a seat at the desk and unfolded the paper. In beautiful calligraphy writing, it read:

Dearest Soulmate,

Good morning, or good night depending on whether or not you were able to sleep tonight, I know it will be a struggle on my end. My name is Roman (he/him!)

I am a sophomore at Sanders Academy, but school is not in session yet, which makes you free to do whatever you wish today! I live with my wonderful roommate Remy (she/they/he) and my twin, Remus (he/him). I would recommend not taking anything he says too seriously. He will try to scare you. Fortunately he’s paying back his friend a favor so he won’t be around much today.

I do hope we live close enough to meet today, however if not I would hope you would leave your contact information somewhere, and I will try to do the same if my memory serves me!

My friend Patton (they/them) will be coming by at about ten am, they said that when they swapped with their soulmate it was nice to have a friendly face to show them around! Patton’s really chill though, so don’t worry about time and all that! The plans are loose!

Like always I have procrastinated until the very last moment to write this, so I hope I have provided as much information as you need! If you have any questions, Patton has known me since I was seven so they can probably answer you!

Truly yours,

Roman Enfys Pride

Oh! Ps my phone can use face ID, so you should be all good to use it!

Logan smiled as he set down the note, the note was littered with doodles, the more detailed ones were next to each of the names there was a little doodle of a person. Probably to help Logan identify them when he met them, it was an incredibly thoughtful gesture.

Well Sanders Academy certainly sounded familiar, it was where Logan was currently going to school. Logan glanced around for a clock or something to tell the time. He spotted said phone charging on the floor by the door. Logan picked it up and hummed at the time, it was nine o’clock. That gave Logan some time before his soulmate’s friend came over.

Logan looked around, there was a mirror on the desk. He walked over and examined his soulmate, the body he was in, in the mirror. Logan had to admit this Roman person was quite beautiful. His face seemed to be mostly symmetrical, besides the freckles which were scattered and almost random looking, his eyes were dark brown and deep.

There was a knock at the door. Logan whirled around and immediately stumbled slightly, he was not used to this body.

“Um come in.” Logan said. His voice felt very unfamiliar as it slipped past his lips.

The door creaked open and a person wearing a purple hijab walked in and leant against the doorframe, Logan identified them as probably Remy based of Roman’s doodles.

“Hey,” they said, “I take it you’re not Roman?”

“That is correct,” Logan said. “My name is Logan. Pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m Remy.” She said, “Are you from nearby?”

“I believe so.” Logan said.

Remy rolled their eyes, “Did Roman not write down where we are? I swear he thinks of everything but the obvious.”

“No, he did.” Logan said, “it seems we go to the same university.”

“Huh.” He said, “well cool. I’m making breakfast right now, would you like some?”

Logan nodded, “that would be lovely.”

Remy walked out leaving Logan in Roman’s room. Logan grabbed Roman’s phone, and walked over to the closet in one corner of the room. The closet was very clearly split in half, with one half all neatly hung up and the other half half heartedly strewn over the hangers and crumpled.

“Hey~”

Logan turned around at the greeting. A person who looked somewhat familiar stood in the doorway. Remembering the letter, Logan assumed this was Remus.

“Good morning. You are Remus?”

“Yep!” The person slinked into the room and sat on the desk. “Wear whatever you want from there. I’m not possessive over my clothes, and we’re the same size.”

Logan hummed, “Thank you.”

Based on how wrinkled Remus’s clothes were, Logan assumed the neater half was Roman’s. After some consideration, Logan pulled out a pair of black ripped jeans from the more crumpled side and a grey tank top and a flannel from the neater side.

Remus pointed at a drawer in the wardrobe. “His socks and underwear are in there.”

“Thank you.” Logan said.

Remus hopped off the desk and gestured to a drawer, “if you want to accessorize, that sort of stuff is in there, Roman’s got a lot of that sort of stuff. See ya!”

Logan watched Remus leave curiously, despite Roman’s letter, Remus seemed nice.

Logan got dressed quickly and grabbed a pair of sneakers as well as a pair of silver star earrings and a few necklaces he thought were aesthetically pleasing and headed into the apartment. Remy looked at as Logan walked out and Remus grinned and walked back into the bedroom. Remy handed Logan a plate with a couple of pancakes on it.

“Where is Remus going?” Logan asked.

Remy snickered, “probably to wear some of Roman’s clothes. He usually doesn’t let Remus do it normally, but he’s not here to tell Remus off, so…”

Logan smiled, “Ah siblings.”

After a few minutes Remus skipped back into the room wearing a crop top and shorts over fishnets with combat boots. “Did you miss me?” He asked as he sat down at the counter.

“Knowing your luck Roman’s gonna find out,” Remy warned.

Remus waved them off, “Oh whatever! He’ll be too preoccupied even if he does see me! And anyway we share clothes sometimes.”

As the time passed, Logan found that he quite liked Roman’s roommates. Remy and Remus were very funny and worked off each other very well. Logan could only imagine with Roman here it would be even more comfortable.

There was a knock at the door, and Remus skipped over, “I’ll get it!” Remus flung the door open and immediately hugged the person on the other side of the door. “Patton!”

“Hi love!” Patton said, before they pulled back and tried to look into the apartment, “Is today going well?”

“Yep! I’m gonna go over to Janny’s soon, and apparently Logan lives nearby!”

“Logan…” Patton glanced over and made eye contact with Logan, “So that’s your name right?”

“Indeed.” Logan said. “I would like to visit my apartment to see if my soulmate is there.”

“Sounds good! How are you Rem?” Patton asked as they stepped a bit further into the house.

“I’m good!” Remy said, “I’m going out, so you should probably take a key since Remus is gonna be at Janus’s.”

“Speaking of-!” Remus said as he pointed at Patton, “When you get to wherever you’re going text me!”

“What is that speaking of?” Logan asked.

“Well Jan would kill me if I ditched right away, but if their soulmate’s a dick I’m gonna go...”

Patton leant in and whispered something in Remus’s ear.

“I know.” Remus said, “he won’t care! It’s fine.”

“Alright, well Logan, do you wanna go see if we can find your place?” Patton said, as they smiled at him encouragingly.

Remus’s phone started to screech, and Logan clapped his hands over his ears.

“Whoops sorry!” Remus said as he checked his phone, “Oh! I’m getting a call from an unknown number! I wonder if it’s a kidnapper!”

“Or it’s Janus.” Patton pointed out.

Remus hummed, “yeah or that.”

Logan stood up and brushed his hands on his legs, “Well while you are occupied with that, I am perfectly ready to go Patton.”

“Great!” Patton said, they took Remus’s hand and squeezed it slightly, “I’ll text you when we get to Logan's. Now don’t leave Janus hanging!”

Remus winked at Patton before answering the call in a slightly over the top voice, “helllo! This is the wonderful Roman speaking~”

Through the phone Logan heard the slightly robotic cracking and a voice say, “Remus I know it’s you.”

“Aw! I can never trick you!”

Patton held out a hand towards the open open door, “After you!”

Logan knew where he was so he was pretty easily able to lead Patton through the streets. “Yes I am double majoring in Aerospace Engineering and Mathematics. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fascinating. What are you-” Logan suddenly paused, he or well his body was walking down the sidewalk towards them. “Oh I- Patton it seems Roman is coming to us.”

Patton glanced around, the only other person around was in Logan’s body, “Oh so that’s you! Or what you look like.”

“Yes.”

Patton waltzed up to them and grinned, “Hey!”

“Roman,” Logan said.

The person in his body raised an eyebrow, “I mean I knew you were a bit egotistical, but really Roman, the first thing you say when you walk up to people is your name? This is a whole new level of self importance.”

Patton laughed slightly, but it was more awkward than normal. “Right you’re Roman today.” They said as they looked at Logan. They looked back at the person in Logan’s body. “So how was your morning?”

They sighed, “Patton, Roman what do you want? I frankly have no time for this.”

“You’re not Logan,” Patton clarified, which earned a slightly strange look from Logan.

“Is this what this is about? No I am not Logan. My apologies for being such a disappointment.” Their voice was thick with sarcasm.

“Who are you then?”

They rolled their eyes, “Listen, I’d tell you who I was but frankly you don’t like me and clearly you’re friends with Logan, so by association he probably doesn’t like me much either. So I’m leaving and you need to leave me alone too. Maybe I can explain myself before he decides he hates me for certain.”

Logan heard a familiar electronic buzz and his soulmate pulled out his phone out of their pocket. They answered the phone as they pinched the bridge of their nose, “Yes?”

There was a pause before Logan’s soulmate drew back their hand and opened their eyes with a disbelieving look in their eyes, “What the hell did you do?”

They frowned, “Oh I don’t believe that for a second. They literally screamed and ran away and you’re saying you did nothing?”

They ran a hand over one side of their face as they listened to the other person’s reply, “Well that’s not nothing. But you’re right, it does seem like an overreaction. I’m on my way.” They hung up and looked back at Patton and Logan.

“I’m leaving.”

“Wait Roman!” Logan said.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” They asked, “That’s your name if you’ve… oh wait…” they stared intensely into Logan's eyes and Logan fidgeted under the observant glare of his own eyes. “You’re not Roman.”

It wasn’t a question. Logan nodded anyway and extended a hand, “I’m Logan, nice to meet you.”

“Ah… well good luck finding Roman.” They began to walk off. “And don’t follow me!” They called back.

Logan watched them walk away, after a couple of paces they pulled out their phone and Logan thought he heard them say, “Yeah it’s me again. What’s their name?” But by that point they were far away and hard to hear.

“So we follow them right?” Logan said.

“It’s your call,” Patton said. “But if it were my soulmate I know I would.”

“Come on,” Logan said, “let’s not get left behind.” They began to speed walk down the sidewalk, but they kept about fifty feet back, just to make it not obvious.

When they walked into a building Patton paused, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

‘“What?”

“This is where Janus lives.”

“That’s the person who’s soulmate Remus was going to help.” Logan said.

“Yeah,” Patton said, they sounded hesitant.

“Well I’ve come this far, I’m certainly not backing down now,” Logan said. “You don’t have to come, however I would appreciate it if you would tell me which apartment I am looking for.”

“No no, I’ll come. I just... don’t know Janus that well.” Patton opened the front door and pointed towards the stairs. “That way!”

Logan walked in and let Patton lead the way up the staircase and eventually they stopped outside a door. “This is it.”

Logan took a breath and knocked on the door. There was mumbling on the other side and then the door opened. Logan was face to face with the person in his body again.

They sighed. “You followed me.”

“I wasn’t just going to let you go,” Logan said.

They considered Logan for a moment, before stepping aside. “Come on in you two.”

Logan and Patton walked in, Logan recognized one of the two people sitting at the kitchen table as Remus, but the other one wasn’t familiar to him. However the one who Logan didn’t recognize seemed to recognize him since as soon as they locked eyes they gasped and looked over at Remus with wide eyes.

“So you weren’t lying!”

“Of course I wasn’t! I might steal your clothes but I’m not mean!”

Patton sat down next to Remus and smiled slightly, “Hey,” they whispered.

Logan was still standing awkwardly at the entrance. The person in his body glanced over, “Logan, do come in. I mean this will totally resolve by just standing there.”

“Right.” Logan said, “Um, are you Janus?”

“Yes.” They said, “That is my name. Come in.”

Logan stepped in and stood at the counter next to the person he didn’t recognize. “Hello,” Logan said, “You’re… Roman?”

He nodded very quickly, “wow I, two? I mean Remus said but- wow it’s so weird to see my body out of body like this.”

Logan smiled slightly as Roman rubbed the back of his neck, “I understand what you mean.” Logan said gently.

Roman opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it and just nodded.

“Cat got your tongue Roman?” Janus purred, “Usually you have much more to contribute to every conversion.”

Roman looked down at his hands as he fidgeted, “This just feels unreal.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw Patton nudge Remus and whisper something to him. They both stood up and tried to sneak out, although everyone saw them leave, and Remus stumbled over the coffee table.

Janus, ignoring the racket Remus was making, sighed and began to pick at Logan’s nails, “You desperately need a manicure.” They commented after a couple minutes.

“Really?” Logan said as he glanced over at his hands, “I thought I took decent care of myself.”

Janus shook their head, “Absolutely not. Do you bite your nails?”

Logan laughed slightly, “Occasionally. I try not to, it’s a hard habit to break.”

Janus hummed. “We should go out when all is said and done or I can do it your nails myself.”

Logan nodded, “I’d like that.”

After a few more minutes of silence, Logan turned to Janus. “What did you mean when you said Roman and Patton don’t like you?”

This caught Roman’s attention, he’d been relatively phased out of the conversation, and he glanced up sharply.

Janus looked uncomfortable and they sighed, “Because it’s true.” They looked up at Roman with an unreadable expression on their face. “Roman I know I’m not your ideal soulmate, I’m sure you were disappointed to wake up in my body.” Janus stared down at their hands, Logan wondered if they were seeing their hands or Logan's. The hands began to shake and Janus balled them into fists and looked away. “You might deny it, but I’ve noticed how you act around me.”

“I- I don’t hate you.”

“I never said you hated me. I did claim you didn’t like me though.”

Roman shook his head, “I don’t- why- I- What did I do that ever made you think I didn’t like you?”

Janus began to count off reasons on their fingers. “You always avoided me whenever I came over. I’ve heard you talking about me when you think I can’t hear you. Remus wouldn’t tell me what’s going on, and he has almost no filter. On multiple occasions I saw you purposely avoid eye contact with me. When I walked up to you talking with Patton on several occasions you’ve changed the subject. Not to mention the lovely nicknames. You can see how you disliking me was the only plausible conclusion.”

“Oh my god no!” Roman began to ramble, “If I knew you thought I didn’t like you I would have just talked to you or let Remus tell you, but I just had the biggest crush on you and it felt like I was betraying my soulmate, I mean your my soulmate but I didn’t know that so I had to avoid you! To, you know, like repress it? But that didn’t work, I mean now I’m very glad it didn’t work but like-” Roman took a breath, “I suppose I was just scared. And I’m really sorry about the nicknames, I didn’t realize they were hurting you.”

“I didn’t really mind the nicknames, I actually like some of them.” Janus said, “Just combined with everything else it was…”

Roman said, “I am really glad you’re one of my soulmates.”

Janus wrung their hands, “of course.”

Roman frowned, “Janus, please look at me.”

They looked up. They tried to look disinterested, but there was underlying fear in their expression. Roman didn’t seem to notice as he took a breath, “I am so sorry, and I know it’s going to take time to fix, but I promise I’m going to keep trying.”

Janus smiled, “I appreciate that.”

Roman nodded and after a few seconds he said “I can’t wait to properly meet you both.”

“Properly?” Janus asked.

“This doesn’t count?” Logan said.

“Absolutely not!” Roman said. “Tomorrow I’ll be able to look at your beautiful faces as I talk to you.”

“Well we have a full day of not meeting, so what do you want to do?” Janus asked.

“We could play some games?” Roman suggested.

“I would love to make you both dinner,” Logan said.

“You can cook?” Roman asked excitedly.

“You are way too excited about that.” Logan said apprehensively, “But yes.”

“From what I know from Remus, Roman isn’t exactly one to be trusted with cooking.” Janus frowned, “Now that I think about it I don't think I would trust Remus or Remy with a stove either.”

“Well we manage!” Roman said defensively, “but I am excited!

Logan looked between his two soulmates as they discussed the various ways in which Roman’s apartment was filled with chaos demons masquerading as people who should not be near hot objects.

He could get used to this.

[detransexual]

Im struggling with femininity at this point in my detransition. I have so many thoughts about it, ill try to not go on forever but bear with me.

I know i dont have to be 100% gender non conforming, i know a long flowy dress in summer isnt exactly anti feminist, but it certainly isnt rejecting the ideals that are already in place either. I dont like wearing makeup, it fucks with my perception of myself, but being able to cover up the ever present shadow of facial hair is really relieving. I dont like wearing bras, but a very slightly cupped/padded sportsbra makes a (surprisingly) big difference in making me look like a flatchested woman rather than a dude. I dont like the concept of plastic surgery or surgery in general, but i would love to look more normal even without prosthetics or just a bra, i would to look a little closer to what i should have been like. I miss them the most in the context of sex, and it makes me sad that i always bound and hid them from my girlfriends rather than allow my whole body to be loved and seen as acceptable. Even though im happier about my chest now than i was pre surgery, i wish it had just been a reduction, scars (even of the size i have now) wouldnt be nearly as painful a reminder than the (almost, there's still like, a little more breast tissue than a bio male with my body weight/muscle/fat ratio would have? ) complete lack of tissue.

There are things im happy about, and i was actually a bit sad to notice my body hair has gotten lighter and that my clitoris is not as sensitive or quite as "full"/big as it was on T, because im still really happy about those changes, they've both made me feel MORE comfortable as a woman and in my body.

I dont think id dislike my voice as much if people, particularly (or perhaps exclusively?) other women, still recognised me as a woman with it. Its not a bad voice, its just not really mine, and its not a voice i can freely use without thought or consequence. my voice was already quite deep, especially if i wanted it to be, so it would have been better as it was.

There's still a lot that i dont know where i stand, and since ive always been unsure of who i am and shit, and since ive been so certain in things i was wrong about, its hard to commit, its scary. Both permanent changes and coming out again are very distant, both because i need time and because it takes time to get help again.

But all of this is making me struggle with femininity, it makes it easier to pass, and in turn not be reminded of the whole ordeal, although it also makes me more focused on it, which is probably gonna turn out just as harmful as when i was focusing on the opposite in my original transition.

I dont want to buy into exploitative and objectifying behavioirs, but i feel very very isolated and alienated from other women, something ive felt since i was very, very small, but this is different.

Feeling alienated as a kid was rough, and i desperately clung to what was expected of me, trying to fit in, trying to make myself "right", and ofcourse it was painful, but it was more internal than external.

During my trans-identified years, the alienation became explainable, and being alienated from other girls and women felt like a given, ofcourse thats how it was supposed to be since i was a boy! And i didnt feel trult alienated from boys until i was in my late teens and early 20s living stealth, and suddenly i had to pretend to be someone else in order to fit in. there was a huge difference between being the tomboy friend and actually being "one of the boys". You hear and see very different things when they dont think there's any girls or women around.

But after realising i neither could nor wanted to fit in with men, i gradually realised i was no longer just feeling alienated from other women, but i actually was. Its hard to connect with other women, make friends or exist in female spaces when you're no longer seen as a woman if you open your mouth, and i know thats nothing that overt femininity would change, but i honestly dont know how else to "compensate".

Meeting other detrans women has been wonderful, and i definitely wish i knew more gnc and butch women, but i just cant seem to find any in real life, ive yet to find any real women's spaces that arent "for women and anyone who doesnt identify as a cis-man :)".

I dont want to have to be feminine to be seen as a woman, i dont want to reinforce to myself or others that womanhood=femininity, i dont want to reinforce or portray detransition as meaning becoming genderconforming or like "accepting" and falling into stereotypes or "becoming a REAL woman" through femininity and gender roles. I dont want that, but i dont know how to balance what i want for myself with what would make my own existence less painful and what i think is "right".

I want to be able to be a visbly gender non conforming WOMAN rather than being seen as a gender conforming man, but being a gender conforming woman often makes ne appear and sometimes feel more like a gender non conforming man anyway. I dont know how to balance it all, and im torn between wanting to be a boghag and wanting to perform excessive femininity.