#which makes the whole thing really frustrating - bc it's impossible to put all the pieces together

[ansu-gurleht]

dude i loved death stranding but that shit just doesn’t make a lot of sense. like even once you get past the kojima-isms naturally involved and you actually understand what the game is telling you, the shit the game tells you contradicts itself and doesn’t make sense half the time.

like what the fuck was up with amelie at the beginning? you’re told she’s held captive by the homo demens, but for some reason she’s allowed to communicate with anybody she wants while in captivity. it’s not like she’s doing it behind the demens’ back, she says specifically that they’re allowing her to. and in the same fucking conversation she says all this, we learn that she doesn’t even have a physical body! she lives on the beach! how did the homo demens, who live on earth, capture amelie, who lives on the beach? how is she supposed to be stuck at edge knot city? 

like, spoiler alert, we find out later none of this makes sense bc it’s all a lie, but it doesn’t make sense when we’re first being told it anyway! what’s the point of that? to drive home that sam is just really stupid and loves his sister so much he’ll believe some shit like that? but we know he’s an extremely skeptical person, that’s the entirety of his arc in the beginning of the game, not wanting to trust bridget, or deadman, or fragile, or die-hardman, etc. how does he not put those pieces together? we’re never at any point told why this might make sense, like if there’s some mechanic about how amelie’s existence on the beach works that might make this plausible. it just doesn’t make sense.

and like, i might be willing to accept that yeah, it was a lie to rope sam into setting up the chiral network, even though up to that point we’re not given any indication that sam is that gullible. but this isn’t the only thing in the story like this. the entire existence of the beach and the death stranding is like this, too - being told like five contradictory stories that don’t really add up. i really love this game but i feel like parts of it weren’t very well written or planned out imo

[buckleyblueyes]

buddie + laughter

(send me a word and a ship and I’ll give you a head canon)

Uhh so this turned into a ficlet?? I don't know what happened but there's dialogue in it and I putting it under a cut. It's angsty bc it's a post 4x14 recovery thing, but also very fluffy.

Buck first notices it a week after Eddie comes home from the hospital. He hasn't laughed. Not once. There have been a few smiles, a handful of chuckles. But he hasn't actually laughed. And Buck understands the trauma of it all, knows the nightmares that are keeping Eddie up at night and the anxiety that is thrumming under his skin at all times. He's been there, after a ladder truck exploded on him, after a tsunami tried to wash him away, and he's there again, if he's honest, after watching Eddie get shot right in front of him. So, he understands what Eddie is going through. The last thing he wants is to make Eddie feel like he has to act happier than he is--Eddie deserves space to process and feel his negative emotions.

But, the thing is. Buck loves Eddie's laugh. And even before the shooting, it was a rare thing to get a full, unguarded laugh from Eddie instead of a chuckle or a giggle. Buck prides himself on the fact that of all the people in the world, he's one of three people who can get that kind of laugh out of Eddie (the others being Christopher and Abuela), and he also just. Really misses the sound of Eddie's laugh. Not to mention the fact that Christopher has picked up on Eddie's mood and has himself been laughing less.

(If Buck is truly honest with himself, he's been laughing and smiling less, too. But this isn't about him.)

He decides he has to do something. He knows he can't make it obvious to Eddie what he's doing, so he focuses his energies on Christopher first. Everytime he sees Chris (which is often, since he's practically living on the Diaz couch for the time being) he makes sure to come prepared with a joke. Always cheesy and silly and almost impossible not to crack a smile at.

How do cows greet each other? They exchange milkshakes.

Why did the student eat his homework? The teacher told him it was a piece of cake!

Knock Knock. Who's There? Tank. Tank Who? You're Welcome.

And it works. The jokes, silly as they are, do manage to elicit giggles from Christopher, and fond eye rolls from Eddie. Buck keeps at it, and after a couple of weeks, Christopher starts to have jokes of his own, many of which are at Buck or Eddie's expense. Buck decides he would be the butt of a thousand jokes to make Christopher and Eddie laugh. Some of the jokes they exchange even get a smile or a chuckle out of Eddie, much to Buck's delight.

Eddie's recovery progresses, physically and emotionally. He goes to the department mandated therapy, and then, to everyone's pleasant surprise, he decides to keep at it. Buck is there every step of the way with encouragement, and a few corny jokes. He's not sure when he moves from only targeting Christopher, to telling them to Eddie as well, but he knows that it helps.

When Eddie is frustrated with his physical therapy, angry and tired of fighting with own body, Buck cuts the tension with a "Knock knock. Who's There? Woo. Woo Who? Glad you're excited!" which Eddie begrudgingly goes along with. When Eddie is annoyed because he can't lift something/open something, Buck swoops in with a "need a hand, or maybe an arm?" and a wink. When Eddie emerges from his bedroom early in the morning with dark circles under his eyes, Buck nudges him and says "You should go back to bed. The early bird gets the worm, but the late worm doesn't get eaten." and every time Eddie rolls his eyes and shakes his head and bites his lip to keep from smiling. It's not a laugh, but it's something.

As the months go by Buck gets more and more of a reaction for his troubles. A lip bite turns into a half smile turns into a full smile turns into a grin turns into a snort turns into a chuckle. Eddie is clearly doing better, and so is Christopher, who has turned the whole thing into a competition to see if he or Buck is funnier. But Eddie still hasn't let out a full, deep, belly laugh since before the shooting. It makes Buck's heart ache because he knows Eddie only laughs like that when he is truly relaxed and unguarded, and knowing that Eddie hasn't been able to reach that level of calm in months, that he's been on edge this whole time? It's awful.

Finally, finally, a week before Eddie is supposed to start work again, it happens. Buck finally makes Eddie laugh. It's just...not on purpose. He's over for movie night, having moved back to his own apartment by that point. He gets up to refill the popcorn bowl and trips over something Christopher left on the floor. He falls, the plastic bowl goes in the air, and lands right on his head. Eddie just loses it.

"I'm sorry--" [laugh] "Are you--" [laugh] "--okay?"

Buck glowers. "Fine, thanks."

It's not until Buck's back on the couch, fresh bowl of popcorn in his lap, Eddie running his fingers through his hair checking for bumps (because, sure, Eddie likes slapstick, but he also has to be sure Buck isn't actually hurt), and Christopher asleep up against his dad, that it occurs to Buck. "You laughed!"

"Uh. Yeah?"

"No, I mean," Buck swallows. "You haven't laughed, since..."

"Since the shooting?" Eddie finishes. "Is that what all the jokes were about? You wanted to make me laugh?"

Buck shrugs. "I know it's been hard, and you're allowed to feel however you feel. But I just...I wanted to make you happy."

Eddie's hands are still in Buck's hair, and he turns Buck's head in his hands until Buck is facing him. "You always make me happy, Buck."

Buck can't even begin to respond to that.

"You're right, things have been difficult," he nods. "I've been on edge. But having you here? The way you've taken care of Christopher, taken care of me, for the past few months, it's not nothing. In fact," Eddie hesitates, taking a deep breath, for a second before pressing on. "Buck, it's everything. You're everything."

Buck feels like the wind has been knocked out of him, just like he always feels when Eddie says these deeply meaningful things to him. There's no one in this world I trust with my son more than you. You act like you're expendable, but you're wrong.

You're everything.

Buck swallows. Glances at the movie they're supposed to be watching. Glances down at Christopher. Finally, meets Eddie's eyes, gaze heavy with anticipation. "Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"I love."

"I love who?"

"I love you."

[a-libra-writes]

🌸⛅🥊💋💖🏥 for Ramsay boy 😏 (sorry if it's too much, lol, I don't know if I can send several at the same time, you can just choose one, I just really liked these 😅😅)

(oh my, this is a lot! tho tbf I didn’t give a limit! 😂 okay, putting this under a cut bc its a long boi)

🌸 Kissing

Ramsay kisses you like he wants to steal your breath. It’s always so sudden, so rough, and he brings you close to him like you might run away. It’s crushing, really, so you have to push him back and breathlessly tell him to slow down.

... Does he listen? Not really. 

You usually end up pressed against his firm chest and the cold wall, holding onto him as he bites at your lips and eagerly takes your lips. He’s just as breathless as you as he bites and kisses down your neck, and you wonder what’s gotten into him this time.

In bed, it’s just as desperate, but he’ll leave hickeys and rough kisses across your neck, breasts and thighs. He’ll bite where he pleases, even drawing blood if that makes you cry out and gasp louder. 

If you sleepily give him a chaste kiss in the morning, or a sudden one on his cheek in the day, he isn’t sure what to make of it. He’ll try to initiate something deeper sometimes, but other days, he looks at you with those intense eyes, trying to puzzle you out.

⛅ Sunset

Dreary as the Dreadfort was, it was still a proper castle, and you could climb to the top of the ramparts to watch the sunset, like you used to do at your old home. When you first married Ramsay, it was one of your many escapes. You hid in one of the older parts that was crumbling and wasn’t guarded well. You could disappear for hours up here.

Ramsay ended up finding your little hiding spot, though by that point, you had learned to handle him and live with him. He didn’t understand the appeal of just sitting still and watching a sunset. He was more interested in watching you.

He used to say and do things just to upset you, to annoy you, to make you cry or scream, but you never rewarded his behavior with a response. He hated when you would ignore him, and when your attention was taken away by a sunset, he became agitated and impatient.

“Just go back to the hall, Ramsay. I’ll be there shortly for dinner.” Gods, he was so stubborn, but you wouldn’t let him take this from you.

Finally, you lost your patience and took his hand. You command him to sit and put his head in your lap. He was confused, but finally obeyed. Like a spoiled child - maybe dog was a more accurate word - he was content to sit there while you pet his hair and freely watched the sky again. You can’t believe it worked.

Sometimes that didn’t work, and he brought his bow up to shoot targets he set up below. You weren’t sure when he did that. It was hard not to be impressed with his skill, especially considering how far away they were, and he was always pleased when you paid attention to his abilities. 

🥊 Exercise/Workout

You already know the sort of things he gets up to in the forest, and you’ll have no part of it. As a result of his wild upbringing and those “hunting trips”, he’s very fit and athletic. Ramsay has a lot of energy, you learned. Not even the rain and snow will keep him cooped up.

He would be so insistent on teaching you how to use a bow. If you already knew, he’d be delighted, demanding you show him and hunt with him. But if you didn’t ... You’d find yourself in the middle of several private lessons that were almost impossible to squirrel away from. Ramsay would stand behind you, giving you surprisingly clear instructions as you learned to notch arrows and aim just right. He’d even have a bow made for your size and strength.

A good way to keep Ramsay in good spirits was to endure the lessons and shoot with him. He preferred you to kill something, like a rabbit, but shooting targets was fine enough, especially as you began to improve. 

Roose didn’t think a lady should learn such things, but you were keeping his bastard out of his hair, so he didn’t complain.

💋 Intimacy 

He is rough and there’s rarely a reprieve from that. He always holds you a little too tight, kisses a little too hard, leaves one too many marks along your neck and collarbone. It doesn’t help that he has the energy level of a terrier, so he wants to keep going well after your legs are jelly. 

It surprised you how close he wanted you, how he wanted your hands on him - he’d put them there himself if he had to. He’d want you to kiss him back, to bite him, drag your nails down his back until he bleeds. Almost like with the kissing, it was like he worried you’d just disappear into the air if he let you go for a moment.

His favorite is when you’re facing him or in his lap, so he can trap you and keep you from squirming away. He doesn’t care about children or heirs, so if you don’t want him finishing inside you, he’ll listen and do it elsewhere which is fine because he likes to lick it off you.

When you try to slow him down, try to be a little more tender, it confuses him. He gets an uncomfortable knot in his stomach, and he wonders what to do. When you hold his face gently, or brush his hair away from his sweaty brow, or gently apologize for the bright red scratches you left on him... He doesn’t know what to do. It isn’t familiar... It isn’t bad, but ... 

The nights you’re most in control is when he’s utterly exhausted, totally physically spent, but still insists on being intimate with you. That’s when you can push him on his back and tell him what you want, and he’ll go along, too intrigued and tired to argue with you.

💖 Pregnancy

No surprise, Ramsay doesn’t heed his father at all when Roose goes on about producing an heir. Seven hells, he’s only a lord in title, it’s you and Roose who are doing a majority of running the Dreadfort. Roose often directed his frustrations at you - should you fail to do your duty as a proper wife, he’d find a way for you to be ... replaced.

It’s not like it was difficult to end up with child, given how often Ramsay wanted you. It happened, and when you told him, he was confused for only a moment. Ramsay simply shrugged, saying his father would finally stop bothering the two of you about it. So that was that.

He continued to not think much about it, but then you became tired. You were so tired, so fatigued, and often forgetful. You had even less patience for his shenanigans, and when he went looking for you, a handmaiden would inform him that you retired early. As you began to show, and your fatigue increased, Ramsay finally began to accept the reality. He still didn’t think much of what it meant, he thought of it more as “Y/N will be back to her regular self once that damn pup is out of her.”

(Honestly, he had so little parental love growing up, the entire idea of parenthood and children was just ... foreign. Something he couldn’t imagine.)

Ramsay hates seeing you in distress and pain. He doesn’t understand it, and it angers him that he has these feelings, but it’s true. So when you begin to really get along in the third trimester, he frightens the servants and handmaidens into making you completely comfortable, not upsetting you, walking and talking quietly, getting you whatever you need. He’d busy himself with even more hunting, getting food you especially liked, making sure it was totally cooked so the smell wouldn’t make you sick.

Roose was surprised, but pleased. At one point he made a cold, off-hand comment about how you could die in childbirth - but as long as you had a son, it didn’t matter. Ramsay turned on him so quickly, a guard almost stepped between them. Roose blinked, unaffected, but made a mental note to ensure the maester had all the tools and supplies he needed.

🏥 Taking Care of Injuries

As stated before, Ramsay hates you being hurt. He hates that he hates this. Sometimes it makes him so angry, he has to walk away. He doesn’t understand the sick feeling he gets when you’re hurt. 

The first time you cried, he was startled. For all the times he tried to do it himself, it happened when you took a bad fall from your horse. The maester was tying your ankle, worried it was broken, and you were quietly crying as he wrapped it. Ramsay was so upset, he barked at the maester to move and did it himself. 

Ramsay is very adept at first aid, actually. He has steady hands to sew up injuries, he knows how to disinfect and change out bandages or stitches. It helped keep his victims alive, after all.

When your hands were blistered from all the archery lessons, he took them in his rough, totally calloused hands and carefully popped the blisters. You flinched and tears sprang to your eyes, and he fought back the angry bile in his throat as he patiently cleaned them and bandaged them. 

Now that you thought about it, tending to your wounds was the only time Ramsay sat still and quiet.

When you pricked your finger badly from a sewing needle or a small knife, he’d hear your quiet curse and instantly go to your side. Ramsay just had to take your finger in his mouth. He always did, looking at you with those mischievous blue eyes the whole time. 

Whenever you have a bruise from something silly, like hitting a piece of furniture, he likes to press on it. He likes the discoloration on your skin, but he doesn’t like the frown you give him. So he kisses it, playing at being sweet, only to kiss up the rest of your body and take you in a needy kiss.

[viostormcaller]

Thinking about it, it kinda sucks just how little new horizons has.

Like... I love the game to pieces and maybe this is just bc im in a shitty mood (which i am) but like... god this is gonna be long and ranty and I'm sorry in advance that mobile tumblr doesnt have the read more feature

For starters, holidays are all scheduled on the company's terms, meaning in 7+ years or so there will be no more in-game holidays because by then they'll probably be thinking about/getting ready to release the next installment of the series on whatever console is out at the time and they won't want to update new horizons anymore. And adding onto this, you need the internet to download the updates. What happens to the players who don't have internet?? Can they just never experience the holidays like bunny day and toy day and turkey day? That takes a HUGE part of the fun of the series out right off the bat. Sometimes making everything rely on the internet is a bad idea. Idk if anyone can like tell me if having no internet means you can't take part in the holidays, but like... god if that's true thats really sad.

They recently took out the hybrid flower and big fish islands, which makes no sense whatsoever why they would do that to a game that has so little, but ok?? It's not like that feature was hindering the gameplay any

There's a lot of furniture but Not a Lot of Furniture, you get me? They took out EVERY set except the classic set (renamed "antique") that you can buy for an insanely high price, and the log and wooden block sets that you can craft, but other that that it's all unrelated items that aren't part of any set, aside from the cute set and diner and throwback sets which as far as I can remember are the only other sets you can buy in the game. No alpine, no ranch, no minimalist, no princess or gracie, no modern or sleek, none of that. And 90% of all the buy-only furniture in the game is just the color variants. You can't even customize them! And it's hard as fuck to find the color variants you want, much less for completing a furniture set

And speaking of which, your starting villagers don't get their default house interiors. Your first three + your two starters from the tutorial days have the same generic layouts. You NEVER see what their houses are supposed to look like, and even if you give them the wallpaper and flooring they're supposed to have (if you figure that out online somewhere), their house doesn't change (I tested this with Sherb and was kinda disappointed).

And stuff is so EXPENSIVE. I know it adds a challenge but my final loan was NEVER 1 mil+ bells in New Leaf. And you can't even expand the extra first floor rooms you get. I'm literally getting less for WAY more. The biggest rooms you get are the basement and upstairs rooms. The first floor rooms aside from the main room really don't have a lot of space and with the different furniture they DO offer, I don't have a lot of room to put things in. But it's not like I can even afford it anyway -- just a freaking air conditioner was 63,000 bells. In New Leaf it was 2500. That's a MASSIVE jump. And the kitchen items are so freaking expensive, as well.

And speaking of houses, for someone who was literally in the real estate industry in the last game, tom nook adds very few house exterior options. And the even more shitty thing is that a lot of the colors straight up don't match. They couldn't even add a plain white roof.

God and the fucking DIY recipes. I know I've said this before on my other tumblr but the RNG for this game is the worst I've ever fucking seen. There is no reason why, two months into the game, I can be given a recipe for a simple DIY bench, which EVERYONE LEARNS IN THE TUTORIAL. Who the fuck am I giving it to?! No one, because literally every player knows it already, and you can't gift diy recipes to villagers! And I keep getting repeats of recipes. My villagers give me fruit DIYs all the time, it's so rare for me to get any new ones. And two days in a row I've gotten the recipe for the deer head mount thing from the same villager. New recipes should 100% take the priority before repeats. This game is slow paced, sure, but that's just frustrating. It doesn't make me excited to learn more recipes, it makes me feel like I'm never gonna learn any new ones because I'll get the same fruit DIYs for a week straight.

And speaking of which, you can't put trees, bushes, or flowers in your storage, which to me makes literally no sense. I can fit a giant ass fountain in my storage but I can't put a flower plant? Really? And speaking of storage, for a game that added 300 whole slots for mail instead of the usual 10, I will never understand why they decided to halve the amount of items a player can order a day from the nook shopping, AND make it so that it takes a whole day to get there instead of making deliveries at 9 am and 5 pm like in New Leaf.

And the fact that they made it so hard to get non native fruit and flowers and shit??? Like they at LEAST added Lief so flowers aren't as much of an issue anymore, but you actually have to travel to other people's islands just to get all the fruits?? I know you have to do the same thing in New Leaf but the reason why this is an issue for me is because you have to pay for online access, meaning most of those nook miles for planting all the fruits are locked behind a paywall unless your villagers can gift them to you. And your mom, when you first start the game, has a chance of giving you the one fruit that's on the non-native fruit mystery island, meaning you'll only get ONE new fruit and not two separate ones (for example, my sis got pears from mom but her non native fruit islands have cherries i believe. I got pears from mom and my fruit islands also have pears. Doesnt help that that's the one fruit i hate lmao). They also took OUT a bunch of fruits, like mangoes, durians, lemons, bananas, lychees, persimmons...

And the fact that your nook miles rewards are ISLAND LOCKED. That is the WORST SHIT. Not everyone has the ability to play with others, bc no internet or no money for the subscription every month. Not everyone WANTS to play with others bc maybe they get social anxiety (like me, which is why i havent asked for things that are impossible for me to get even though i want them for my island or house), or maybe they simply just don't want to. But the fact that each island has their own color variants of the same goddamn rewards that CANNOT BE CHANGED makes me so upset. I do not want nor should I have to rely on others to get the items I want because my game doesn't have my preferred color variations. And it's not like I'm far enough in the game to have anything worth trading for said items, nor do I have the bells.

And Isabelle does next to fucking nothing and I'm really irked about how they made her character in this game. Yeah she's cute, but that's ALL she is. She became more ditzy than anything else. She doesn't let you know about visitors in the town or the plaza or if a bridge or incline was built bc of a completed donation goal. Like really useful info to know would be if Flick or CJ is in town or who is selling stuff in the plaza. Flavor text is nice but if that's all you say 24/7 it loses its charm. In New Leaf she was helpful and hardworking and super focused and on top of things. Idk why they changed that aspect of her. I know her role in New Horizons isn't as big as it was in New Leaf, but still.

And then there's glitches that STILL haven't been patched (as far as I know anyway), like the game-breaking villager corruption glitch (which you'd think nintendo would have made a priority but they're too busy removing other features it seems) or the house exterior glitch.

And it's bad enough that your game saves to your fucking system a la Fantasy Life. But even WORSE, no one can have separate islands on one console. It's not enough to own two copies of New Horizons. Each player has to own one copy of the game and a whole new Switch just so they can play on their own islands. Parents can't usually afford that (aka $360 for each kid give or take) so for a game marketed towards kids, I don't know why they thought that was a smart move (well, I DO know, and that's because money, but still). And to top it all off, cloud saves are not supported normally. If you lose your game or your switch and aren't subscribed to nintendo online, well, it looks like all your progress is gone! And there's nothing you can do about it. And they directly claimed that they did this just so people can't manipulate the game because it's supposed to be played in real time. But people can still fucking time travel by setting the system's clock! They achieved nothing except to make the players frustrated!!! If you make a game you need to accept that the player is going to play how THEY want to. You shouldn't try to make everyone conform to the way YOU want them to play. That just makes you a controlling asshole and the game loses a lot of its fun.

This game was 60 bucks and they took so long to make it and we ended up with less than we got in New Leaf. The main thing they gave us was a shit ton more clothing items (which I really like). Like I said, I love this game to pieces and it's actually one of my favorite games right now. There's so much I love about it -- I certainly don't hate it or anything. But this game has SO MANY flaws, a lot of which are needless. And I think the kid in me just misses the days where you can pay for a game and get the whole game right away. No updates in tiny batches, no content locked behind paywalls, no day one patches, no reliance on internet connection and multiplayer... mainstream companies have all gone really downhill with that shit and it just disappoints me to no end. But because Nintendo is kid-oriented, I think that's where it hurts the most. It was supposed to be accessible, family friendly fun like back during the days of the Wii and the DS. But companies get so wrapped up in competing with each other and trying to make the most money that they forget about all that. I dunno. It just sucks.

If you read all this, god damn I'm surprised XD I got super ranty and I apologize. But I'm in a sad mood and I after learning about features they've taken out I just had to get all this off my chest. It's been weighing on me since the game released, especially since for months prior this game was all I could think about and I was really looking forward to it. It just let me down in a lot of ways, I guess.

[luthienne]

How does one let go? Of another, of one's self, of the life you thought you were living. Do you know any fitting poems or quotes describing the phenomenon of moving forward?

I’m not sure that I’ve ever let go of anything in my entire life. This Anne Carson quote always seems to sum up my thoughts in four succinct lines:

I find the phenomenon of letting go so inextricably tied with the idea of healing or recovery, perhaps because that’s what the desire to “let go” and move forward looks like for me. How do you let go of something that happened to you or within you, something that has altered your conception of the world from one day to the next, that has altered your own perception of yourself, of who you thought you were or could be, of what you thought your life would be? How to come to terms with the reality that there is no return to who you were before? 

For me it’s less a deliberate choice to brush my hands together and “let go”, but more simply putting one foot in front of the other every day until I find myself in a (perhaps even just slightly) different place than before. It’s allowing myself to grieve what I thought my life would be, and also allowing space to hold gratitude for what my life contains. It’s waiting for everything inside of me and around me to shatter, and meanwhile still moving forward. It’s allowing myself to realize that I’m still here and I’m still a whole person, even if the pieces of me have shattered and rearranged themselves into something I don’t necessarily always recognize. It’s sitting alone with myself, with the silence that sometimes makes a home of my throat, with the restlessness beneath my skin, with the fear that who I am becoming won’t be enough, and moving anyway in any direction but back. It’s sitting with grief and shame and bitterness and groundlessness, and understanding that these feelings are temporary, and not things be used to validate my fears or distortions.

I think the deliberate choice involved for me is the one to allow space for growth, to not cling so tightly to past hopes or ideas that there is no longer any room for anything else, anything new, anything different. It’s allowing myself the belief and compassionate understanding that I can be something other than I thought or hoped I would be, and it’s ok. I think sometimes we deny ourselves chances to grow or change because of the shame we feel that we have failed, and to deny ourselves those opportunities for growth would be the real shame. What others believe does not matter—that we have invested ourselves utterly in a relationship that failed is no shame on us, that we have invested ourselves utterly in a dream or a hope that just didn’t work out is no shame on us. I think the worst thing is to remain in a place that is no longer serving us for fear of appearing the failure to others. There is so much opportunity to be had in letting go of one thing, anything, to make room for something else.

I don’t know that this compilation of poetry, essays, literature, and letters will offer any insight, or comfort, or guidance. Letting go must surely be an intensely personal process, an intensely personal thing, a different kind of animal for everyone—but still there seem to be some universal experiences. So these are some of the words that came to mind for me—whether they touch on grappling with the impossibility of letting go and moving forward, the hope of it, the desire for it, the loneliness of it, or the frustration with it (bc of course it’s something that cannot be forced, only something that can be allowed):

“What could I have grown up to be? What kind of human woman, what kind of simple, happy thing? If I had never been broken on a bird’s wing. If I had never seen the world naked. I want to be myself again…I want to stop knowing everything I know.”

Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“On the surface, I was poised, cool, indifferent. […] The discrepancy between what I would show the world and the chaos I felt grew steadily more intense.”

Louise Glück, Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry

“There were glimpses, moments, breathing spaces of calm, but all the rest of the time it was like living in a house that couldn’t be cured of the habit of catching on fire, on a ship that got wrecked every day.” 

Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay”

“Words can’t describe the wound. / Perhaps more importantly / words alone / can’t heal the wound.”

Emily Pettit, “Hands Like Lighters”

“But sometimes words are the only hands / we have to touch a bruised memory / or cleanse a wound that never healed / or lift a body we carried for years / at last to the pyre of shared grief.”

Fred Dings, Eulogy for a Private Man

“I sat on a gray stone bench / and placed my grief / in the mouth of language, / the only thing that would grieve with me.” 

Lisel Mueller, Alive Together: Poems

“I am not myself, and cannot ever be / again. I am my own emptiness, trying to fill my emptiness / with words.”

Robert Kroetsch, “Letters to Salonika”

“Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I? / Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk.”

Mary Oliver, from Blue Iris

“Can I never escape this interminable mourning for myself?”

Susan Sontag, from Reborn

“The light of the moon poured down; its beauty, / its radiance. / And I grieved and grieved. I grieved for so long.”

from Phoebus was gone, all gone, his journey over (tr. Eavan Boland)

“When will, when will, when will it be enough, / the saying and lamenting?” 

Rainer Maria Rilke, Uncollected Poems

“…she was only trying to smooth out something she had been given years ago folded up;”

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“It seemed increasingly impossible to remember a time when I had been fully alive, impossible to imagine a future in which I would live that way again.” 

Louise Glück, Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry

“Everything is so fragile. I feel so lost. I live off secret, radiating, luminous rays that would smother me if I didn’t cover them with a heavy cloak of false certainties. God help me: I have no one to guide me and it’s dark again.”

Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life

“Make a place for yourself in the darkness and wait there. Be there.”

Denise Levertov, To Stay Alive

“Losing is also ours; and even forgetting has its shape in the permanent realm of change. Things we’ve let go of circle; and though we’re rarely at the center of these circles: they trace around us the unbroken figure.” 

Rainer Maria Rilke, “For Hans Corossa” (tr. Edward Snow)

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. / It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”

Mary Oliver, “The Uses of Sorrow”

“Things take us hard, no question. / How do you make it, all the way from here to morning?”

Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck

“Following a fearful night I do not quite / remember came a kind / of dawn, not light, / But something we could see by.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Dream of Saba”

“Afterward, you go back to the old place—all that remains is char: blackness and emptiness. You think: how could I live here? But it was different then, even last summer. The earth behaved as though nothing could go wrong with it. One match was all it took. But at the right time—it had to be the right time. The field parched, dry—the deadness in place already so to speak.” 

Louise Glück, Averno

“…the longing, not for something distant or remote, but for what is lost forever, something that can never return.”

Henia Karmel, A Wall of Two

“When a thing’s gone, it’s gone. It’s over and done with. Let it go then! Ignore it, and comfort yourself, if you do want comforting, with the thought that you never do recover the same thing that you lose. It’s always a new thing. The moment it leaves you, it’s changed.”

Katherine Mansfield, “Je ne parle pas français”

“I cannot go back now. […] For me to go back is impossible, now or later.”

Marina Tsvetaeva, from a letter to Boris Pasternak

“There comes a day when the trees / refuse to let you pass / until you name them.”

Lisel Mueller, Second Language: Poems

“Anyway, it’s in grappling with things at the source that you can tell best whether a thing is worth continuing or not… In other words, everything is worth investigating, wasting time over, if it interests you. There is always a deep, unconcealed reason why it interests you.”

Henry Miller, from a letter to Anaïs Nin 

“We only live by somehow absorbing the past—changing it. I mean really examining it and dividing what is important from what is not (for there is waste) and transforming it so that it becomes a part of the life of the spirit and we are free of it. It’s no longer our personal past, it’s just in the highest possible sense, our servant. I mean that it is no longer our master.”

Katherine Mansfield, from a letter to J.M. Murry

“…only one thing is urgently needed: to attach oneself with unconditional purpose somewhere to nature, to what is strong, striving and bright, and to move forward without guile, even if ithat means in the least important, daily matters. Each time we tackle something with joy, each time we open our eyes toward a yet untouched distance we transform not only this and the next moment, but we also rearrange and gradually assimilate the past inside of us.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Adelheid von der Marwitz

“Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.”

May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

“One must let life run its course. The human being destroys so many things on his own, and it is not in his power to restore anything. Nature, by contrast, has all the power to heal as long as one does not eavesdrop or interrupt it.” 

Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Anita Forrer

“Do not try to be saved, but let redemption find you, as it certainly will. Love is its own rescue; for we, at our supremest, are but its trembling emblems.”

Emily Dickinson, from a letter to T.W. Higginson

“To take things easy, not to fight against the ebb and flow of life, but to give way to it—that was what was needed. It was the tension that was all wrong.”

Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay”

“If you find yourself disappointing—drop self-expectations. What you are turning into you cannot expect to know, but you can trust it, and believe that if it is other than you planned, it will also be better than you planned—however different.”

Kahlil Gibran, from a letter to Mary Haskell

“To live in this world / you must be able / to do three things: / to love what is mortal; / to hold it / against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it; / and when the time comes to let it go, / to let it go.”

Mary Oliver, “At Blackwater Pond”

[camimcndcs]

two tiny hands, a pair of eyes

TAGGING: KJ @itskjapa​, Cami.

LOCATION: Vancouver, BC.

TIMEFRAME: October 7th, 2020.

NOTES: Talia Lua Apa is born.

Cami: Today was going to the day, she could just feel it. Camila had reached her due date and woken up to KJ’s lips brushing against her cheek as he headed out for work. With her due date looming in the air, she’d stopped working mid-week last week and had been spending her time preparing for their daughter’s arrival. When Camila finally left the comfort of her bed an hour later to eat something she felt a tightness in her belly that seemed more painful than the Braxton Hicks she’d been experiencing for the last couple of days. Reaching for her phone, Camila called her mom, asking her to come upstairs to help her figure out what was going on. Another contraction hit about 10 minutes later when her mom and Tessa walked through the door of her apartment. Once she had finished her breakfast, Camila took a quick shower and then sat on an exercise ball after getting herself dressed. Just as she sat down on the exercise ball, she felt liquid trickling down her leg. “I think my water just broke,” she exclaimed, almost instantly feeling the pain stretching from her back to her stomach as a contraction took over her body. “Can one of you call Kaje?” she asked, closing her eyes and practicing her breathing as she carefully held her stomach. The look on Tessa’s face after she had tried his phone a few times told Camila everything she needed to know. It was likely he was filming a scene and didn’t have access to his cell which was unfortunate. Luckily, Timena and her girlfriend had joined him on set today, so there was someone else they could call with a direct line to KJ. Once they reached Timena, her contractions seemed to be getting closer and closer together and intensifying. The whole process seemed to be picking up speed. Once KJ’s mom explained everything to her daughter, she was off to find her brother and pull him off of the set. She promised they’d call so Camila could talk to him once they got to the car where they would be driven off of the set. It was going to take them at least an hour to get to the hospital, so Camila wasn’t really in much of a rush, but it seemed Talia had other plans. Another contraction ripped through her tiny body causing Camila to reach out for her mom, tears springing into her eyes due to the pain and her fiancé being an hour away from her. “Take a deep breath, meu amor, it’s all going to be okay,” her mother reassured her, rubbing her daughter’s lower back. “He’ll call once he’s on his way,” Tessa added, smiling softly at her future daughter-in-law. 

KJ: Despite everything he had read on the pregnancy, nothing had been able to prepare KJ regarding the tense days leading up to the arrival of their daughter. His efforts to make Camila feel better seemed to be in vain, no matter how much she tried to reassure him -- witnessing her being this uncomfortable had been taking its toll on him as well. He could only ponder on the way she actually felt herself, although it was quite clear the one thing she wanted was to reach that long awaited day. Like each morning, he had quietly gotten through his usual routine before softly kissing her goodbye; something she had insisted upon a long time ago. She was constantly tired these days, but always needed to be made aware when he left their home. Meeting up with his sister and her girlfriend in front of the studio, he took them on a quick tour of the new sets they had built for the season and directed them to his trailer when the time had come for him to get ready -- going through the usual makeup necessities before putting on the clothes he had done a fitting for the previous day. Never failing to be his joyful self and entertain the crew even under such grueling circumstances. A few takes later as a brand new Archie Andrews handling a fire station, he slowly made his way back to Timena only to see her rush toward him at full speed; phone in hand and an anxious expression crossing her features. "What's going on?" he questioned, halting his motions as fear gripped him -- a sensation deep inside of his being screaming that something had surely happened with Camila. The words his sister uttered were barely registered, though quite enough to realize he needed to leave right now. Which is what he did without looking back, the sound of steps following close and explaining the situation to the people they encountered. Timena had enough common sense to not allow him to drive, forcing his eager self to the passenger seat and throwing the phone in his lap. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." he muttered under his breath, fingers trembling as they brushed against the screen. They had talked about this moment so many times, but they had never expected it to happen this way. Even if the possibility had often been brought up. "It's me-- I, yes. Please, let me talk to her." KJ knew his fiancée was surely in a stressful state and he willed himself to calm down so he could comfort her -- even as they were so far away from one another. "Hey, baby. Looks like our little girl is ready to be with us, aye. Should have known she was going to be a pain like her mum." Making a joke was his default mode, though he also hoped this would perhaps be able to distract her.

Cami: When Tessa’s phone rang ten minutes later, Camila was breathing through another contraction from the front seat of the car. She’d had another one as they made their way down to the car and it had stopped her in the lobby. Both of their dads were going to meet them once she got checked in just so it wasn’t too overwhelming. She loved her parent and future in laws, but having all four of them worrying about her in close quarters with KJ forty minutes away would’ve stressed her out. Pressing the phone up to her ear, she willed herself not to cry as the sweet voice of her fiancé filled her ear. “Hi, babe,” she whispered, her free hand resting on her stomach in a protective way. “Yeah, a real pain,” she breathed out, giggling at his teasing remark. Normally she would make a stink about him teasing her, but right now she was thankful for the nice distraction. “We just got into the car and we’re on our way to the hospital, so you’ll just meet us there, right?” she asked, looking out the window to calm herself down. “I love you, I’m okay, it hurts, but I’ll be okay,” she whispered, watching the people and buildings that passed them by before another contraction hit. She could hear a hint of stress in KJ’s voice, but she needed him to remain calm for her and for his sister who was currently navigating the roads to bring him safely to her. “Don’t give Timena a hard time, you’ll be at the hospital before you know it and I need you in one piece,” she said sternly. She was about to say a quick goodbye when another contraction ripped through her body making it almost impossible for her to speak. Camila closed her eyes and practiced her breathing, feeling bad that KJ had to hear her in pain over the phone when he couldn’t get to her. “I love you, baby, I’ll see you soon,” she breathed out as the contraction ended. Camila made kissy noises into the phone before handing it back to his mom in the backseat who reassured her son that his future wife was in good hands and would be okay.

KJ: The sound of her voice appeased him and increased his anxiousness all at once. Simply being able to hear it was quite enough for relief to wash over his body, eyes fluttering closed as he imagined for a brief second that she was within distance -- giving him the strength to sit still and not urge his sister to press her foot harder on the pedal. She seemed to be going too slow for his liking, but KJ knew deep down Timena was doing her best. At the same time, he was unable to not take notice of the light tremor in her voice that she disguised as soon. Surely for his sake. Perharps for her own too. He was willing to play along, especially since they wouldn't be able to see one another for at least a good forty minutes. "Of course, baby. Right now I just gotta deal with being in this car." he uttered with a harsh chuckle following suit, the frustration present despite the playful tone of their conversation. But he was quick to brush it off. "Mine would totally be out there like the flash, aye." The redhead barked out a laugh when his fiancée still found it in herself to reprimand him regarding the comment he had made on his sister's driving skills; the first genuine smile ever since he had stepped into the vehicle painting itself on his lips. A short lived moment when he heard through the speaker the current pain filling her. How he wished time could be toyed with so he could be by her side right now. "I love you. Be there before you know it, I promise." After what had felt like a lifetime, and thus an empty promise, the hospital came into view -- the car hadn't even fully come to a stop that he had rushed in the direction of the sliding doors. The harsh beating of his heart thumping in his ears. He was caught off guard by his mother as he reached the front desk, dragging him in a tight embrace before she quickly led him toward Camila's room. At least she wasn't awkwardly waiting on some chair for someone to take care of her. "How is she? Good? What did I miss?"

Cami: Once they arrived at the hospital a nurse quickly checked Camila over and got her checked into a private birthing suite. She was making her way to the bathroom in the suite to change into the hospital gown they had given her when she heard KJ entering the room with his mom. “Baby! You’re here!” she exclaimed, reaching her arms out to him as he made his way over to hug her as tightly as he could with her belly getting in the way. “I’m so much better now that you’re here,” she whispered, pulling back from his embrace to grip his hands. “Would you help me get this hospital gown on?” she asked, dragging him towards the bathroom with her. Once they were inside she shut the door and lifted her arms so he could get his own t-shirt off of her body. She hadn’t even worn a bra because she hadn’t seen the point. Camila caught sight of herself in the mirror and smiled, “I can’t believe we’re going to get to meet her today,” she whispered, tears welling up in her eyes as she looked at KJ. He helped her out of her leggings and underwear, moving onto getting the gown on her when another contraction ripped through her body. “Fuck,” she cried out, gripping her fiancé’s shoulders as she bent over. His hands moved from her waist to her back as she did her best to breathe through it. This was the first real contraction he was experiencing in person and part of her wanted to assure him that she was okay, it just really hurt. After the minute-long contraction came to an end, she looked up at him with a smile. “They’re going to see how dilated I am and then someone should be by for the epidural,” she said, turning around so he could tie the gown in the back. They then exited the bathroom and the redhead helped her into the hospital bed. A few more minutes passed and a nurse arrived to see how dilated she was. "You're at 4 centimeters, only 6 more to go," she explained with a smile adding that she'd go get the anesthesiologist if Camila wanted an epidural which she nodded in response to.

KJ: A string of questions were thrown at his mother on their way to the room Camila had been checked into -- the worry making him act like an addict who was eager to get his fix. The little voice in the back of his mind finally gave him peace when his brown eyes settled on his fiancée, a content sigh tumbling from his mouth when they both found solace with one another. "I'm here." he repeated, his voice quiet but firm, to reassure her of that fact. He had been so scared to not make it in time, to not be present for her just like she had been needing him to; and not having the joy to witness his daughter making her big debut into this world. With a nod, he followed Camila to the bathroom and carefully helped her out of the t-shirt she had been wearing -- the one that was supposedly his but she wore more than he ever did -- trying not to stare too hard at the bump that would soon disappear. "Our little angel." The emotion filling her eyes was matched in his own, a small grin etched on his features as he stared at the woman who had changed his life. Still so in awe of her person and the strength she exuded on the daily. The brunette slowly resumed his motions, getting rid of the rest of the clothes and wrapping her into the gown -- the powerful contraction that followed urging him closer. There was not much he could do, despite the need to, but he stood by her side and forced himself to be the kind of support system she was seeking. Swallowing his own fears and concerns. Time had slowed down, or at least it felt as such for KJ as they waited in the room afterward, the nurse coming along explaining how things would unfold. "How long does that usually take?" he questioned when she announced how many centimeters were left in order for them to proceed. "I know not everyone's the same, aye. But you could probably like give us an idea." His hold on Camila's hand tightened slightly as he looked her way with a small smile, reassuring her once more of his presence.

Cami: Watching the nurse’s face as KJ questioned how long it would take for Camila to get to 10 centimeters, she knew there was no real answer. Not even an idea of an answer to appease the redhead. “I’m afraid it’s hard to tell, some women progress rather quickly and for some, it can take hours,” she explained. “The anesthesiologist will be by soon and then I’ll be back in to check on how you’re progressing, in the meantime, you could try walking around the room to maybe speed up the process” she added with a soft smile, leaving the couple and her mother alone again. KJ’s hand was wrapped tight around her own and she brought it up to her mouth to press a kiss to it. “She’ll get here when she gets here, baby, there’s not much we can do about it,” she whispered, feeling surprisingly calm for the first time since her water had broken. Another contraction came and her hands tightened around her stomach, once it passed through her she lay back in the bed, taking a few deep breaths. “Is Papi on his way?” she asked her mother, hoping to distract herself from the pain. Her mother nodded, explaining he was on his way with KJ’s father and once she got the epidural they could each visit her one by one if she wanted them to. “Let’s try walking around the room while we wait,” she suggested, pushing herself up and taking KJ’s hands to guide herself off the bed. She knew that there wouldn’t be much walking happening after the epidural and at that point, she might want to take a nap, so this was the time to get up and active. Holding on tight to KJ’s hand and arm they slowly began to walk around the room as Camila practiced her breathing in between contractions as well as during them. They walked around for a good 20 minutes or so, pausing only when she would experience a contraction. The anesthesiologist still hadn’t come for the epidural so her mom went to go get her some water to drink which left the couple alone for the first time since he’d kissed her goodbye this morning.

KJ: There was an obvious disappointed expression painting itself on his face as the doctor gave him the kind of answer he had clearly not been waiting for -- yet had expected in some way. KJ had been a dutiful pupil during the pregnancy, reading carefully through the one book Camila had gotten for him as a present and she had swore would be easy enough for him to retain the most important information. Right as always, of course. But he had hoped their doctor could give them an inkling of the time they might have to spend in this room; she knew them better than a book that was bound to generalize most situations. He simply nodded to acknowledge the words she had uttered before directing his attention toward his fiancée once more when she addressed him. "I know, babe. It was worth a try though, aye." he chuckled with a sheepish smile before helping her out when it became clear she needed to do more than just lay around -- at least until the anesthesiologist would come along for the epidural. Thankfully the room was spacious enough for them to make long strides and not feel as if they were lions trapped in a cage. As her mother left minutes later in order to get Camila a bottle of water, the redhead leaned his body against the nearest wall; allowing his fiancée to rest her heavy frame upon his strong one. They had been pacing this space for over twenty minutes now and with how stressful the morning had been, they both deserved a little break. "Remember sex is pretty damn efficient, babe. I'd take you right now-- like this. Ain't ever seen you this sexy." he teased with a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth, his fingers tucking a damp strand of hair behind her ear while his thumb grazed along the pink tint adorning her cheek. "Ask me to get you preggo again. I betcha you're gonna want me to avoid cumming inside of you for a while." A soft laugh flew past his lips as he tilted her head to look into her eyes. Needing to see her smile in this moment.

Cami: As KJ leaned his body against the nearest wall, allowing Camila the chance to lean into him. The laugh that flew from her lips at his words was a welcomed sound in the space that they occupied. It felt good to laugh after the stress of the morning. “Sorry to disappoint, babe, but I think that window of opportunity has been closed. I appreciate you calling me sexy though,” she whispered, closing her eyes as he tucked a damp strand of hair behind her ear and let his thumb graze against her cheek. “We’re not having any more babies anytime soon,” she giggled again this time the smile on her face grew as he tilted her head to look into his eyes. “You’re crazy, Keneti,” she breathed out, gasping slightly as another contraction had her almost doubling over in front of him. “Fuck,” she called out, moaning in pain in response to the tightening in her stomach. “I need that epidural,” she whined, burying her face in her fiancé’s neck as her mother reentered the room. “I just spoke with the anesthesiologist in the hall, he’ll be right in,” the older woman spoke in a calming tone which was just what Camila needed right now. “You should keep walking around until he’s here because you won’t really be allowed out of bed after they give you the epidural,” her mother added, flashing a sympathetic smile KJ’s way. Camila gripped his hand and continued to pace the floor of the birthing suite. 10 minutes and one contraction later, a middle-aged man entered the room ready to administer the epidural. Making her way to the bed with KJ’s help, she pressed a quick kiss to his lips before they wheeled her off to the labor and delivery room down the hall. KJ followed beside her and her mom was behind them carrying Camila’s hospital bag. Once they were settled in the new room, the raven-haired girl sat straight up so they could put the epidural into her spine. She winced at the feeling of the needle, but other than that it was mostly painless in her opinion. The doctor explained that it would take about 20 minutes for the full effect to set in, but she should be good to go. Camila thanked him before laying back in the bed to help herself relax. 

KJ: It was without a doubt the best view he had gotten to witness all day, aside from very early that same morning when he had kissed Camila goodbye and her tired self had mumbled the three words that never failed to make his heart skip a beat. Seeing her smile at him right now, along with the laugh she had graced him with, almost made him forget exactly why they were here in the first place. "Damn. Can't believe I passed right by that window and didn't jump in." he muttered with an exaggerated frown, unable to hide the amusement still etched on his features. But like a blink of an eye, the sweet moment was cut short when another contraction hit her like a bowling strike -- fast and sharp. He was quick to hold her closer than previously, the hand lingering on the small of her back gently massaging the naked flesh he was able to get in contact with through the gown she was wearing. "It's gonna be fine, babe. You've heard your mum, aye. He'll be there soon and then things will be so much better." It all seemed rather futile as the words tumbled from his mouth in a comforting manner, but his fiancée seemed to appreciate them nonetheless. As another person stepped into the room after a dozen more back and forth strides, KJ carefully watched the way he attended to Camila -- staying alert in case she needed him to intervene. It somehow made him feel useful, to know there was a possibility she might need him for something. Anything. "Do you want a magazine? I could like check if they've got Cosmo or whatever other girly shit you like to read." he suggested, having caught sight of a kiosk ealier in the hallway they had gone through. "I was thinking of getting something for myself and your mum will be right here-- plus I ain't going far. You'll see me come back running to see firsthand your drugged self." He chuckled softly, the sound too contagious for her to resist. Just as he had planned. "Or I can stay with you. Tell me what you need, baby and it's yours."

Cami: The epidural was already starting to slowly settle into her system as soon as the doctor left the room. Camila couldn’t help the lazy smile she sent KJ’s way at his suggestion to find a magazine to help occupy her time. She stifled a yawn as he chuckled. “I might end up taking a nap, since I sure as hell won’t be sleeping during delivery,” she giggled, reaching out her hand to give his a squeeze. “Go find yourself something to eat and check in with our family,” she added with a smile, even though they weren’t all officially family just yet it felt like they’d all been one big happy family since the moment he’d asked her to be his wife and they’d found out she was pregnant. Camila was hopeful that after a nap, she’d be farther along in dilation and they could get Rachel, Lili, and Cole over to the hospital before Talia’s arrival. Now that her contractions were less intense thanks to the epidural, she’d be able to sleep for at least a couple of hours. Camila pulled his hand to her mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles before sending him on his way to get some food in his system and to check in with their family. Her mom appeared in the seat he had occupied, running her fingers through her daughter's hair and singing to her in a whisper just like she had when the raven-haired girl was a child and she’d woken up from a bad dream. Camila drifted off, scooting closer to one side of the bed so KJ could slide in behind her when he got back. Before they knew it, Talia would be gracing them with her presence and their whole worlds would be turned completely upside down. In these final quiet moments of their world being mainly the two of them, she wanted him as close to her as possible. 

KJ: Two sandwiches and a couple of snacks later, KJ had made his way back to Camila as quietly as possible — sliding in the bed she was laying upon with his hand instinctively settling on her belly. The months had passed them by and everything had seemed more real during that time, but not as much as in this moment. They were going to have a baby. A little human being who would seek their attention in a way nothing else ever had before; someone who was going to count on them no matter what. “Did you see your dad? He was looking for you.“ Lifting his head as the words reached his ears, he smiled at Camila’s mom and nodded, having seen the older male previously while he had been devouring a sandwich. “They went home to get me a change of clothes— I’m just not sure I’ll have time for that.“ The redhead was after all still dressed as Archie Andrews, but it was the least of his worries. His primary focus was Camila and their daughter — not the fact that this could literally be a scene taken straight out of an episode of Riverdale. A knock on the door made him jump slightly and carefully extracting himself from the embrace he was in, KJ got on his feet only to be greeted by the nurse that had been assigned to them and was nice enough to allow him to properly wake his fiancée up from her nap. “Hey, baby. The nurse is back.“ he whispered softly as he hovered above the bed, gently massaging her scalp and smiling when her eyes fluttered open — meeting his own tiredly. As they waited while she checked how dilated Camila was by now, hands clasped together tightly, he raised his eyebrows when she looked back at them with a wide grin; keeping quiet for a handful of seconds that seemed ever lasting. “Ready to have this baby?“ He scoffed lightly at the words, more surprised than anything before a grin of his own found place on his features. Brown eyes skimming back to Camila in acknowledgement of what was currently happening. This was it. The moment they had been waiting for. “Ready.”

Cami: She’d slept for at least two hours and it was now mid-afternoon. Waking up to the gentle sound of KJ’s voice brought a tired smile to her face. Camila felt his fingers gently massaging her scalp which relaxed her even more, but she perked up a bit when his words reached her brain. Sitting up in the bed, Camila moved her legs so the nurse could see how dilated she was now that she had slept for a couple of hours, clutching KJ’s hand tightly in anticipation. What the nurse revealed to them wasn’t what she had been expecting. The raven-haired girl had assumed the laboring process would’ve last longer, but to her surprise the nurse was grinning at the both of them and asking if they were ready to have this baby. A look of panic washed over Camila’s face as she sought out her mom. “It’s now or never meu amor,” she whispered, joining them at her side. Her face found KJ’s in that moment — dressed head to toe like Archie Andrews which made her laugh, her eyes sought out his and she nodded her head. “Ready,” she breathed out at the same time as the word fell from his lips. The nurse paged the doctor and other team members that would be helping in the delivery process. Tears formed in Camila’s eyes as she looked from her mom to her fiancé, “We’re going to meet our baby girl,” she whispered as they transitioned the bed into a birthing bed by removing the end. The doctor explained that they would try some practice pushes before the real thing, stating that when it was time they’d count to 10 during each push so she knew when to stop and taken a break. Camila’s mom propped up one of her legs as a nurse took the other. KJ stood right up by her head, holding her hand next to the nurse who had a hold of her leg. After a few practice pushes the doctor informed them it was time to begin. “When you feel a contraction you need to push, Cami,” she explained with a smile. Camila nodded her head and focused in on her breathing, gripping the sheet of the bed as she felt a contraction, bearing down with all of her strength as they encouraged her to push.

KJ: The emotions surrounding them took the best of him, tears pooling in his eyes as he leaned forward to press his forehead against the side of her head -- breathing in the comforting scent of the perfume she hadn't failed to put on despite the events of the day. KJ couldn't help but chuckle softly as it invaded his nostrils, appeasing him better than any medicine or pep talk ever could. There were many things that he wanted to say, but most of the words were caught up in his throat and unable to come out. Which is why he settled for simply being quiet and listening intently to the new people that had stepped into the room. He watched anxiously as everything started to unfold before his gaze; regrettably letting go of Camila's hand when the nurse moved his way but quickly reaching out for her once more as soon as she was in place. The hold on her hand strong and firm -- giving her all the support and strength she needed to give birth to their daughter. First came what they had deemed as practice pushes, although he didn't truly understand the need for them in the first place. Still, he kept quiet regarding the matter and focused on his fiancée; gauging her reaction to every new command or motion. Acting like the bodyguard she clearly didn't need but would nonetheless do anything for her. The next contraction came along and it took everything in him to stay put by her side. She seemed to be in so much pain from one push that he couldn't imagine having to go through this a dozen more times in order for Talia's little frame to come out. "You're doing great, babe." he tentatively uttered in a shaky breath, being as lost as he looked on how to proceed. "She'll be there in no time, aye. Just a few more like this and that'll be it-- right?" The last word was directed at her mom as he seeked some kind of reassurance that would not only help Camila but himself. But all she offered him was a tilt of her head before she spoke to her daughter once more. Shit.

Cami: When preparing for this day, Camila had read that the pressure she’d feel building up down there would still be painful even with the epidural and that was for sure the case right now. Even after just one push, she felt completely exhausted. When the doctor had counted to ten she laid back on the bed, sweat already building up on her chest and forehead. Her mom wiped at her head with a damp washcloth, brushing her hair behind her ear to comfort her. KJ’s nervous tone almost made her cry, knowing how worried he was. But then she felt the overwhelming need to push again and she didn’t feel so bad for him anymore. Gripping the sheet again and squeezing her fiancé’s hand tight, Camila pushed as hard as she could, closing her eyes as if that would make it feel better. After ten minutes of pushing and laying back in the bed, exhausted, the doctor told her they were starting to see their daughters head. It felt like she’d been pushing forever, but it also seemed to be flying by. One of the nurses asked if she wanted a mirror to see her daughter coming out, they added that this might encourage her to push harder when it started to wear her out, as if it wasn’t wearing her out already. Camila nodded her head and they brought a full length mirror not a second later. When she felt the urge to push again, they were all cheering her on to start getting Talia’s head out, she could see exactly what was going on as she kept her eyes open through the pushing. “This sucks, this sucks, this sucks,” she cried out. “I just want to be done, I can’t do this...” she whined, looking from KJ to her mom. She laid back on the bed before they’d even gotten to ten, gripping KJ’s hand. When he tried to encourage her she just grumbled at him. “Fuck you, you did this to meeee...” she groaned.

KJ: The time spent in the room felt endless as they went through the same motions relentlessly in hopes of witnessing Talia's head making her way out. Soothing words and an iron grip were all KJ could offer currently -- his eyes venturing from the doctor to his fiancée each time there was another push. Hoping deep down this would be the one that would finally allow them to move forward. Unfortunately for Camila, the minutes passed them by without any break through. The exhaustion etched on her beautiful features breaking his heart. "It's okay, baby. It's okay, you can do this. I've got you." he whispered in a defeated tone despite his best efforts to appear hopeful regarding their situation. Though he mostly felt like a liar with each sentence that flew past his lips. After what had felt like an eternity, their daughter felt inclined to acknowledge the fact that people were awaiting her arrival and decided to grace them with the top of her head; something he was able to witness along with the rest when a mirror was placed before Camila's lower body; the sight leaving him speechless. The redhead was torn between being so amazed at being able to see this little bundle of joy on her way to them and the fact that he was actually looking at a baby coming out of a vagina. His baby though, and that alone made all the difference. "No, no-- you're too close, babe. You can't give up now, she's right here." he frantically told her when she felt like giving up, squeezing her hand tighter to share more of his strength. The answer he got regarding his encouraging words was not expected, but it left a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. With a sharp laugh, KJ leaned forward close to her ear in order to give them more privacy, even if he was quite aware anyone in the room could hear them anyway. "Fucking you won't help much right now, babe. But in six weeks..." he trailed off, pressing his lips against her cheek before seeking her gaze. "Let's welcome our daughter, aye."

Cami: The laugh that fell from her fiancé’s mouth after she had cursed at him almost had her shooting daggers his way before he was leaning down in an attempt to whisper something to her. “Keneti!” she exclaimed, glancing over to her mother who had definitely heard what he had to say. Camila couldn’t be mad at him though when he was pressing his lips against her cheek and laughing like an idiot. A quiet chuckle escaped her own lips before she got serious again, looking into his eyes with a look of determination on her face. “Yes, let’s welcome our daughter,” she repeated, taking a deep breath before bearing down once more with all of her might. “Almost there, Cami, one more big push and her head will be out,” the doctor explained. One look at the mirror was all the inspiration Camila needed to bear down once more when she felt the urge to push. Everyone was cheering her on and even though it hurt, she knew that there would only need to be about five more minutes of pain for a lifetime of happiness with their baby. As she fell back against the bed to catch her breath, she looked at KJ with the biggest smile on her face. “We’re going to meet our baby,” she whispered, squeezing his hand as he helped her take a sip from her cup of water. Just a few minutes later the doctor was explaining that she’d probably be able to get their baby out with one final push. Soon enough there would be a little tiny version of herself and KJ laying on her chest. The thought brought tears to her eyes as she leaned forward to push one last time. Letting out a groan as she felt and watched their baby emerge completely from her safe and warm home for the last nine months, into this bright new world. “Oh my god, oh my god,” she cried as the doctor pulled Talia up to show her off. “It’s a girl!” she exclaimed, handing the screaming baby to a nurse to place on Camila’s bare chest. “Kaje, it’s our baby…” she whispered, wrapping her arms around the tiny little human squirming around on her chest.

KJ: He couldn't explain where such bold words had come from when her mom was literally right next to them, but it had felt right in that moment -- as if it was exactly what he needed to say in order to bring Camila back onto the right track. The atmosphere surrounding them had been so heavy for too long, and they needed that little spark once more. It warmed his soul to see her chuckle once she had gotten over the fact that her mother was present and the determined look on her face was everything he had hoped for. A promise she wouldn't give up when their future was within reach. As he looked up and met his mother in law's gaze, a deep blush crept his neck and spread across his cheeks; the embarrassment finally getting to him. Though he rapidly directed his attention back to his fiancée and willed his mind to focus on the one thing that mattered the most. It was as if a new breath of life had surged through her as she pushed yet again; giving it her all until a powerful cry made the world stop altogether. The redhead could only look on as a tiny human being was held up, his heart hammering against his chest the way it usually did for the one person it was beating for. Never in his life had he seen such perfection -- seemingly so fragile and small as she was comfortably settled on Camila's chest. He was almost afraid of getting too close, of doing something that could hurt her in any way. "It's our baby." he finally breathed out as a tear came running down his cheek, others following suit before he wiped them away with a quiet laugh. "You've got one job, dad. Here-- take this." KJ was caught off guard by the nurse addressing him until he was holding the scissors in his hand, remembering what had to be done. Despite the nerves, the process was easy and quick -- soon enough all that was left was to properly greet their little girl. And he did just as such as he leaned forward and brushed his fingers over the dark hair on her head. "Welcome to the world, Talia Lua Apa."

Cami: Looking from KJ to the tiny human on her chest, Camila’s eyes flooded with tears as she watched one silent tear fall from the redhead's eyes, many more following suit. “Our baby…” she whispered, running her finger across their daughter's features, admiring everything about her. The look of pride on her fiancé’s face as he cut the cord made her heart swell and soon enough he was properly greeting their little angel. Hearing her full name out loud for the first time and watching as KJ brushed his fingers over the dark hair on her head, Camila felt completely on top of the world. Everything leading up to this moment had been worth it, it was truly the hardest thing Camila had ever done, but it had given her this precious life to take care of for the rest of her life. The raven-haired girl's mother had taken a step back to let the happy couple enjoy this special moment with their daughter, but she made her way back over once things seemed to have settled down. “Hey mama, meet your neta,” Camila whispered, using the Portuguese word for granddaughter to introduce the two. Watching her own mom reach out her hand to hold Talia’s little one made Camila’s heart soar even more. She could already tell that introducing Talia to their friends and family was going to be so exciting. A nurse reluctantly reappeared to interrupt the sweet moment, “The doctor needs to get your daughter cleaned up and you stitched up,” she explained to which Camila nodded her head and looked over at KJ as they took Talia from her chest. “I love you,” she whispered, puckering her lips so he would lean over for a kiss before following the nurses with Talia. Camila’s mother stayed by her side as the doctor checked for tearing and began to work on stitching her up explaining that the stitches would dissolve in one to two weeks.

KJ: There was nothing else in this world that mattered more as he kept on gently trailing his fingers along her scalp, marveling at just how soft and tiny she appeared to be. His hand almost as big as her little head. Love at first sight wasn't foreign to him -- it was only fitting that such event had happened with the two girls he was currently looking at. While Camila introduced Talia to her mother, he used his free hand to softly tuck the damp strands of hair behind her ear; the exhaustion still present on her features although there was an undeniable glow that widened the smile etched on his lips. Happiness had never looked so good on a person before. He was almost tempted to ask for more time together when the nurse came along to take Talia away, but held himself back from sounding too needy. They would get their moment soon enough, but that didn't mean he had to stay away altogether. Pulling back to follow them, he quickly looked back at his fiancée and gave her a firm nod -- a silent promise that he would make sure she was in good hands. "I love you." he whispered in kind, a lingering peck following suit before he left her side. It was with arms crossed, making his frame even more impressive, that the redhead kept watch over the numerous tasks the nurses were assigned to regarding his daughter; ignoring the teasing words thrown his way for taking this so seriously. Once he was certain she would find her way back to Camila, he swiftly walked out of the room and to the waiting area to find their loved ones either pacing or talking amongst themselves. "Waiting for someone?" he asked playfully, a deep chuckle rumbling in his throat as he was tackled from every side with so many questions. "Cami's good and the baby too. She's just-- beautiful, aye. So perfect." There was no shame in how smitten he already was and from the looks of it, despite not meeting her yet, they all felt the same way. "We're gonna take some time together first and then we'll come get you."

Cami: Watching as KJ followed the nurses, arms crossed, already being the most protective dad ever, Camila couldn’t help but smile. This was a role he was truly born to play and she was so thankful to have a part in it with him. The stitching up didn’t take too long and before she knew it, KJ had left to go announce Talia’s arrival to their friend and family in the waiting room while her mom also slipped out. The nurses placed Talia in a little baby bed and whisked both off them off to the birthing suite where Camila had been only a few hours before when her daughter was still inside of her and the world hadn’t looked as bright. Now there was this tiny little beaming light in her life that she swore to protect every day. Once they were settled in the room, a nurse placed Talia in Camila’s waiting arms letting her know that in an hour or so a lactation consultant would be in to help her nurse. The raven haired girl thanked her and then sat quietly with her daughter while they waited for KJ to return. She would’ve been lying if she’d said she wasn’t exhausted, but there was also this random burst of energy within her after that final push when their daughter had entered the world. Looking down at her daughter with tired eyes, she pressed a kiss to her smooth forehead, so thankful that she was finally here. When KJ entered the room, there was this look of pure love on his face that made her heart melt. “Look Tal, your daddy’s back,” she whispered, propping the baby up in her arms so her fiancé could get a good look at her. “I think it’s time he holds you in those big strong arms of his, what do you think baby girl?” she added with a smile, leaning forward to offer the little girl up into his arms and reaching for her phone at her bedside to take a video and some pictures.

KJ: After departing from the waiting area, KJ had stopped by the gift shop and gotten a small teddy bear that Talia could probably hold onto -- something that would watch over her just as much as her parents would. A souvenir of this memorable day that was her birth. Knuckles raking along the surface of the door when he reached the suite they had occupied earlier, he popped his head in with a bright grin; brown eyes settling on the heartfelt sight of Camila holding their daughter. "Missed me?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow playfully before slowly separating the distance between them. The bear hidden behind his back. Daddy. The word had been used in many different circumstances that were far from innocent, but right now it had another meaning altogether. This little human being that had been brought into the world would one day call him as such and he already couldn't wait to hear it from her. When his fiancée urged him to take Talia into his arms, the redhead finally revealed the present he had grabbed earlier -- chuckling softly as he let it plop down onto Camila's lap before reaching carefully for their daughter. Every motion was done in slow motion and for a brief moment, he held his breath; gauging her reaction while he held her close to his chest. Eyes full of wonder and joy. "She's really a mini you, aye. Look at her-- so beautiful. Am I doing okay? I ain't hurting her like that, right?" KJ couldn't help but be fearful of doing the wrong thing, though there was nonetheless an ease that washed over him as he kept her in his arms. Soon enough, it felt as if he had done this his entire life. As if his arms had been made for this precise moment. "If you scoot over a little bit, we could join you on the bed." he suggested, taking his eyes away from Talia for the first time ever since she had been placed in his arms. The expression crossing his features blatantly showing just how much love and gratitude he held for his fiancée. The mother of his child.

Cami: As KJ finally revealed whatever he was clutching behind his back, Camila couldn’t help the smile on her face as the teddy bear landed in her lap. “Daddy brought you your first present, baby girl,” she cooed, stroking Talia’s cheek as she placed the baby in the redhead's arms. As he gently took her in his arms with so much love and care, Camila could feel her heart bursting at the sight of her two favorite humans together for the first time. As he held their daughter close to his chest, Camila noticed he still had not changed out of his Archie Andrews clothes from being on set earlier in the day. “I hope you haven’t wreck Archie’s clothes,” she giggled, watching as he didn’t take his eyes off of Talia. It was so sweet to watch him look at their little girl who was already such a perfect mixture of the two of them. “A mini-me? You think so?” she whispered with as her cheeks turned rosy from blushing at his compliment. No matter how many times he told her she was beautiful it always reminded her of the first time and she always blushed. “You’re doing great, baby,” she replied when his voice turned just a little bit panicky. “She’s so safe in your arms,” she added, taking a few more pictures, reminding herself to share them with their family later on. At his next suggestion, Camila slowly moved over, taking her time because she was still sore from the events of the morning and afternoon. “You mean I get to cuddle my two babies?” she gasped, smiling as he finally looked up from Talia to glance at her. As KJ carefully sat down beside her, Camila leaned her head on his shoulder as Talia looked up at both of them, her eyes were moving all over because newborns weren’t really able to focus until they were at least 2 or 3 months old. She almost looked a little cross-eyed which made Camila giggle. “My cuties,” she breathed out, leaning forward to press a kiss to Talia’s cheek and then one to KJ’s. The raven-haired girl pulled out her phone again to take a few selfies of the three of them before putting it away to enjoy a moment of silence with her little family. “This is truly the best day of my life,” she whispered, looking at KJ with tears in her eyes.

KJ: As Camila shuffled on the bed where she was currently resting, allowing enough room for him to slip in, he did just as such — slowly sitting down on the mattress with Talia still fitting perfectly in his arms. She had been crying like a champion earlier but had been pretty quiet ever since; only soft sounds tumbling from her mouth as she got accustomed to the world surrounding her. “Already a legend, aye.” he whispered, eyes fluttering closed for a brief second as his fiancée’s lips found their way to his cheek. Never had he felt this content in life. With both of his loves as they shared the kind of moment they had talked about so many times during the pregnancy. When everything would finally fall into place and their little family would be complete — at least for the time being. KJ couldn’t help but chuckle to himself at the thought of bringing up the idea of more kids when the experience was still so fresh. Especially for Camila. Not that it would prevent him to joke about it at some point during the day. Though right now all he wanted to do was to bask in the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him. The words she spoke prompted his brown eyes to meet her own; filled with so much adoration amidst the dampness. “Mine too. But it’s only the beginning, babe.” Finding her lips, the redhead softly kissed her, brushing their lips in lazy motions before drawing her closer against his side as he wrapped his arm around her form. There was nowhere else he wished to be as the three of them embraced each other without a care in the world — turning a page in order to reach the next chapter of their lives together.

[charismastaticarchive]

HC: dr. maruki takuto | mental health practioner representation

when i first finished persona 5 royal, i had the thought to myself that the game was almost comically anti-therapy. here is the one of the only pieces of media i have ever seen with an active, important counselor character, and.... to be honest, to begin with, it honestly feels like his social link is more you (a high school student) counseling HIM about his academic research paper. couple that with him ‘just wanting everyone to be happy and ignore reality’ and his boss fight where, instead of talking him down (bc who needs to talk about their problems, right), u fight him literally just fist fighting ur therapist in a denny’s parking lot basically (paralleling the fight with jose the actualization eggboy where instead of talking to jose about his feelings, u fight so u can both ‘vent your frustrations’), it seemed clear to me that SOMEBODY on the team had a problem with their therapist, or their guidance counselor, or both, and they had no intention of showing mental health practioners in a positive light

but then. i remembered something. while therapy CAN be a healing experience----therapists are still fallible people with personal problems, that make bad ethical calls that negatively effect their clients all the time. they are given a position of authority over another person’s very mental state, their thoughts and feelings, and their job to their client is to treat their innermost desires and feelings with not just care and kindness---but a clinical, ethical, standard-practice tried-and-true treatment. and the reality of mental health practices is that it is a constantly evolving field in which fallible mental health practioners with busy lives outside of their clients can fall prey to pop psych theories and their own emotions and experiences instead of doing their actual job, maintaining boundaries and ethical standards. and for the history of mental health services----mental health practioners have largely done a lot of harm to their patients.

one specific example i would like to use because it parallels kasumi and dr. maruki perfectly is the case of ‘sybil’---or, the two people in reality and not just the fictionalized account of it---dr. cornelia b. wilbur and shirley ardell mason, who popularized the ‘multiple personality disorder’ diagnosis.

shirley ardell mason was a woman who had been abused in her past, who had depression, and anxiety, and was very clearly mentally ill, and desperate for any kind of approval. dr. wilbur was her psychiatrist---who basically saw symptoms within shirley that COULD be multiple personality disorder, and suggested it to her patient so strongly that shirley started to act out the multiple personalities in order to make her doctor happy. she later was so scared of telling dr. wilbur that it was all an act that she left a note at her office explaining----dr. wilbur said that the note was merely written by one of her alternate personalities, and continued treatment. together, dr. wilbur and shirley went through a process of ‘reintegrating’ the personalities that would supposedly cure shirley of all the trauma, anxiety and depression that plagued her pretty much he whole life, a process that you can just see on tumblr that is widely hated for people with actual dissociative identity disorder, that they want no part in, and in the process of doing so, shirley became basically a ‘professsional patient’ as she had no means of paying dr. wilbur for their sessions other than sleeping on her psychiatrist’s couch and selling her life story as ‘sybil,’ which later became a tv movie that like 60% of every household in america saw. she became completely financially and emotionally dependent on dr. wilbur.

this is a real thing that happened and that led to further misdiagnoses as more and more people were coaxed into the diagnosis in the same way as shirley was, and is not any less real than any positive experience i’ve ever had with a therapist. and i’ve certainly had negative experiences with psychiatrists and guidance counselors and nurses and therapists alike.

dr. maruki literally takes whatever ideas he has or wants from people, and warps their realities to his desire for them. does ryuji really want to be on the track team? by the end of his social link, it seems that yeah, it’d be nice in another life, but it’s not the end of the world if he’s not on it. dr. maruki takes his own ideas about other people and amplifies them, changes them, pretty much preys on them to further his own ideals for an impossible ‘true’ world where no one suffers, when a lot of humanity had already accepted their suffering and were dealing with it in the healthiest manner they possibly could. but more damning than that instead of being a guidance counselor and guiding people towards their own ACTUAL goals instead of just what dr. maruki thinks would be their best possible life----dr. maruki abuses his position as a doctor and an authority figure in everyone’s lives to use them to make his own paradise in a way that affirms his worst fears and doubts about himself (that he doesn’t deserve to be a human being with feelings and has to be a completely selfless martyr of a being, that he doesn’t deserve to be happy with other people and that he must always remain outside of them, that he doesn’t deserve love in that respect, and that he can never have a true equal or a partner or even a real friend), without taking other people’s wishes into account as he claims to, and then making them completely reliant on him. he makes himself a god, he warps people into forgetting themselves and their actual goals so they can be ‘happy’, and in doing so---he has to continue this role of ‘god’ and ‘happy person’ forever, to the point where it’s very obvious no person in his world can be indepdent or make thei own actual decisions.

and yes, he does it out of kindness. maybe dr. wilbur really thought she was helping shirley. after all---it has to be appealing, as a pyschiatrist, to be able to diagnose someone with a disorder as multiple personality disorder was thought of at the time, in which you can ‘fix’ for them, reintegrate them, make them whole and happy and cured. but reality isn’t so simple. trauma isn’t so simple. being a mental health practitioner is a lot harder work than being a god---it’s being a human person, with their own human opinions, who has to constantly go to conferences and seminars and read books to stay up to date on on the latest information, it’s long hours of dealing with people in crisis who may never get out of crisis, when you still have to go home at the end of the day to rest and recharge yourself. it’s work, and it doesn’t pay well, and it doesn’t always seem to matter in the long run how much work you put in---but recognizing yourself as a fallible human being is the first step to getting better at being a mental health practioner. it’s how you can make sure you’re not doing stuff that harms your clients, or yourself. and it’s also how you become a better and more fulfilled person like, in general.

so. the final verdict on persona 5 royal’s representation of therapists is. it’s actually very realistic. and i hope people are not dissuaded by it to not to go to therapy. but that they know that some therapists, and some people, will be kind but ultimately misguided and wrong. and it’s always best to like. ya know. shop around when going to therapy for the first time. maybe don’t go to the first person that offers you snacks. like maybe see if they can tell you the framework in which they operate and if they say ‘fruedian’ or ‘cognitive pscience’ just uh. get the hell out of there lol

[donheisenberg]

Top 20 TV Shows of 2017:

So this is the bit where I talk about how difficult it is to write a top 20 list because of peak TV, yada, yada, yada. If you are into TV criticism you have read it all before several over the last few years, the thing is while it might feel like a cliche it is totally true and with every year it become more true. Trying to watch everything out there is impossible and trying to then narrow down what you have watched to a list of 20 is almost as difficult. Every show on this list had an outstanding year as shown by some of the shows I left off of the list. In any other year the likes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Americans would be givens even if they just had middling seasons but not this year. It was truly a great year for TV and here are my top 20 shows of 2017.

Shows I Did Not Get Around to Watching/Completing That May Have Made My List: The Deuce The Handmaid’s Tail (to watch) Legion (to watch) Better Things Search Party Difficult People

Honorable Mention: Rick and Morty (season 3): Shout out to Review as well, which was excellent but just had to few episodes for me to really count it. In terms of Rick and Morty it was often in the news (or at least the twitter news) for the wrong reasons this year as a group of its fans decided to act like complete dickheads for a period of time. All of which deflected from the fact it had its best season ever. I’ve always had issues with the show and basically how pro-Rick and his asshole behavior Harmon and co seem to be and this year didn’t necessarily dissuade me of that but on a week to week basis it was crafting, ambitious and well thought out stories, at a rate the show had never before.

No 20: Fargo (season 3): As many observed this was not Fargo’s finest year and it maybe took a while to get going. It is also the case that 3 seasons in it is tougher for a show as idiosyncratic as this one to surprise us. When a seemingly major character dies in episode 1 it is less of a shock than it should be because that is what happened in season 1. Yet at the same time I so enjoyed this season and the performances by the likes of Carrie Coon (more on her later), Ewan MacGregor and David Thewlis and you still had episodes as excellent as The Law of Non-Contradiction.

No 19) Veep (season 6): Similar to Fargo this was a just slightly below average year for Veep, but even then the quality of the ensemble is so far above any other comedy out there and the quality of the writing/jokes/insults is again just of the highest order. There are few shows I enjoy more than Veep.

No 18) Master of None (Season 2): In my review I did write about how aspects of MON did frustrate me. For it’s social awareness, it is a show that wants me to desperately feel sorry for the man with seemingly the nicest/most privileged life in the world. The extent to which the show is essentially lifestyle porn at times can be a problem and the extent to which the show never questions Dev’s actions can also be a little off-putting. Yet having said that the good outweighs the bad and then some. The show crafts so many beautiful fully realized episodes and months after watching it is episodes like Thanksgiving that stick with me, more than the show’s flaws.

No 17) The Young Pope (Season 1): I’m not sure I get The Young Pope. I love it but I’m not sure I get it. Even in this age of weird TV there is something truly odd about this show. So difficult to write about because it does not conform to any conventions or labels and that’s why it makes this list. Having said all of this I’m not quite sure the show ever hit the heights of its pilot (even if it remained excellent throughout) and that’s why it is not a little bit higher.

No 16) Brockmire (Season 1): Brockmire is exactly the sort of gem that can get lost in this golden age, but for those few of us who did see it we know that it was one of the most raucous, hilarious and endearing comedies out there. I don’t know or care about baseball at all but I do love Brockmire and can’t wait til it comes back.

No 15) Brooklyn Nine Nine (season 4/5): Just as Brockmire can get lost in a sea of amazing shows, B99 is the sort of show that you can take for granted so easily but 5 seasons in and it is still full of heart and brilliant gags. More than that though this year on a couple of occasions we saw the show break-out of its comfort zone with episodes about Terry being racially profiled and more recently Rosa coming out to her less than progressive parents. Those episodes showcased a different side of the show and demonstrated how B99 is not just a great sitcom but an important one. Nine Nine!

No 14) Preacher (Season 2): Parts of season 2 of Preacher were as good as anything on TV. The opening scenes of the first two episodes, as well as standout episode Sokosha plus a whole host of other moments, showed how Preacher could execute some of the most ambitious TV out there to near perfection. It was not all perfect and the season might have benefited from being 10 episode long rather than 12 but nonetheless I love this show and it seems to only go in one direction. Bring on season 3.

No 13) GLOW (Season 1): GLOW was sort of the perfect summer show. It was funny and likable and so binge-able. Netflix makes a lot of deeply serialized shows, designed to be consumed in one sitting so as you find out what happens next. Glow was not that. What GLOW was, was a show that quickly established an ensemble of distinct and interesting characters who you wanted to spend time with and for that it was a standout show.

No 12) Better Call Saul (Season 3): It pains me to put BCS at number 12, in any other year this could be a contender for my number 1 spot but here it does quite make the top ten. Part of the reason why it is a little lower than you might have excepted is that at this stage I don’t have to tell anyone how good this show is. Into it’s third season and BCS was possibly better than ever. Certainly episodes like the chilling Lantern and in particular Chicanery mark series high points and some of the finest TV I’ve seen all year.

No 11) American Vandal (Season 1): American Vandal is a curious show. It is ostensibly a parody, yet by the time you finish it you look back and think that was funny but not funny enough to be making this list necessarily. What it was though was the most engrossing show of the year. And it all centred on the question “who drew the dicks?” Yet for the silliness of the premise I could not have been more intrigued. AV found new ground for the most tired of sub-genres, the mockumentary and in the process delivered an absurd but in many ways tragic story of a stupid but well meaning kid in high school whose life goes array for reasons that have little to do with him. Defining the pleasures of the show may not be straight, but boy was it insanely watchable-the Netflix model at its best.

No 10 )Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 3): Similar to B99, UKS is the sort of consistent joke machine that you can take for granted, and that many have, but for me this year there were few shows enjoyed nearly as much as it. I thought the show delivered its best season. The work of Ellie Kemper and in particular Titus Burgess can match any comedic performers on TV. Again though amidst all the laughs is a very human character study piece of an abuse victim and maybe where the show’s genius thoroughly lies  is in the way the show balances these two sides of itself.

No 9) Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Seasons 2/3): Rachel Bloom’s musical comedy/drama goes from strength to strength. Like many shows of this list it perfectly balances cartoonish sensibilities with discussions on mental health and never more so than in the first half of season 3. In addition to that though are the musical numbers. At times I’m just in awe of how spot on and clever their parodies, my favorite this year being “Let’s Generalize About Men” and for that it had to make my top ten.

No 8) Bojack Horseman (Season 4): In its 2nd and particularly 3rd seasons Bojack became a show that delivered some of the most outstanding individual episodes of television, possibly ever. Escape From LA, Fish Under Water and That’s Too Much Man are just incomparable half hours of TV. Season 4 did not deliver a single episode of quite that standard. What season 4 did do though is deliver quite possibly the show’s most consistent, revealing and hopefully season. Something we all needed at the end of the show’s previous season.

No 7) Catastrophe (Season 3): Okay it was only 6 episodes along, but I ask this question every year, is there a better written show on TV? There might be snappier dialogue out there, there might be more profound existential musings on some other show, but there is no show with more wonderfully naturalistic dialogue on now or possibly ever. Also there is not really a couple of TV I root for quite as much as Sharon and Rob and I really just want to watch the two of them on screen together as much as possible.Plus the final episode of season 3 was just the perfect send-off for Carrie Fisher and for that alone it deserves it place on my list.

No 6) Jane The Virgin (Season 3/4): Now four seasons in Jane the Virgin still has the power to surprise and hit me emotionally as much as just about any show on this list. I would go as far as to stay no episode of television this year hit me as hard as (spoilers) Michael’s death which was absolutely devestating. But when it comes to Jane the Virgin it is not just the big gut-punches that count, it is the smaller moments as well. The other scene that sticks with me most from its episodes this year is when Rogelio (often the show’s most comic presence) opens up to Xo about how he hasn’t been able to grieve properly for Michael, who was his best friend, because he knew he had to be strong for Jane while she was grieving. It is a comparatively small moment but every bit as resonant. I can take or leave all the intrigue concerning the Marbella but week after week the show delivers moments that really effect me, which even in this golden age can’t be said of too many show.

No 5) Twin Peaks (Season 3): It seems to me that Twin Peaks has either been number 1 or completely absent from every critics list. And I can understand both positions. Twin Peaks was fascinating in a way that television and art more generally rarely is. It was also incredibly and deliberately frustrating at times. I’m almost reluctant to point out how obviously frustrating parts of the revival were because I feel like I might be missing something. On the other hand because its Lynch and because he is a widely and rightly acknowledge genius I think some critics have been too forgiving of some pretty blatant narrative issues, that on another show they would have lambasted. Ultimately though it was the TV event of the year and nothing quite engaged me on a week to week basis like it did. More than anything though there were certain moments, particularly toward the end of the season, that were greater than anything else on TV this year. Moments I completely lost myself in, in ways that are quite difficult to explain and for that I won’t be forgetting the revival for a very long time.

No 4) Mr Robot (Season 3): If season 1 was clinically perfect, in a way no show since Breaking Bad has been, season 2 was an over-ambitious, definitely fascinating, mess. I was a bit of an apologist for the largely disliked second season-but even I was somewhat disappointed after the heights of season 1. Season 3 not only got the show back on track but it found a balance in the ensemble that neither season 1 (which was almost all Elliot) or season 2 (which felt like very little Elliot) had. It also starting making sense again and the show successfully battled the urge to be overly opaque or to have unnecessary twists. All of which meant that we got some of the show’s finest hours yet specifically the thrilling fifth and sixth episodes as well as the surprising and heart-warming eight hour, not to mention the finale which had a bit of everything. And for all its pessimism few shows made me happier this year, because I was so delighted to see this great show prove all the doubters wrong.

No 3) The Good Place (season 1/2): Michael Schur has secured himself a place in TV history with The Office, B99 and in particular Parks and Rec, already but with The Good Place he has gone one further. We all knew he could craft wonderfully funny and likable sitcoms, but here he has delivered a show as twisty and as engaged in huge philosophical issues as any prestige serialized drama. The Good Place is not necessarily a sad-com like many of the show’s on this list but it is possibly the most plot driven network sitcom ever. The thing is the plot has real stakes and is completely unpredictable as well. The huge twist at the end of season 1 showed that even in the age of Reddit you could pull out the rug from underneath your audience and I did not think that was possible. I don’t know how much longer they can continue it but as of now The Good Place is just about a perfect piece of television. 

No 2) Halt and Catch Fire (Season 4): Without spoiling what is number 1 on my list, when it aired I thought nothing would come near it but Halt and Catch Fire came very very close. Back in its much derided first season Halt was a jukebox spitting one antihero cliche after another. In some ways it never strayed too far from the conventions of the antihero drama but what made it different was that at a certain point it just wasn’t about antiheroes. Sure all the characters were deeply flawed, none more so than Joe, but their constant strive for something more, for some kind of connection felt so human you could not help but love them. The final four episodes were TV drama at its best and when it ended I really struggled with the notion that I would not be spending more time with these characters, but if anything made it okay it was how well they stuck the landing. Speaking of which..

No 1) The Leftovers (Season 3): No show has ever made quite the impact in such a short space of time. The Leftovers conclude its mere 28 episode run this year, just 28 episodes yet about half of them are nothing short of masterpieces. That includes just about every episode in this final run. It’s tough in just a paragraph to breakdown what made The Leftovers such a transcendent piece of television-so to be glib I’ll say it took the ambition and phantasmagoria of Twin Peaks and combined it with the heart and focus on character of Halt and Catch Fire. LOST-one of my absolute favorite shows of all time-will define Lindelof’s career but The Leftovers is ultimately a more complete and mature piece of work. The writing, performances and direction coalesced to give us something often hilarious and surprising and always deeply powerful. There may never be a show like The Leftovers again and for those reasons it was always going to be my number 1. 

[lunasaturnine]

Surprising Resurrection

Two easters ago was the dopest easter ever. I had just spent a whole season acclimating to the Episcopal church schedule and the sense of a lil spiritual community. Enough immersion so that Lent and its pared down services with less music and no flowers and stuff like that really affected me. Then I did all the holy week shit which is all super dark and spare, getting more and more somber as the week goes. Including the night services. And then, Easter BLOOMED, so many fucking flowers, gorgeous amazing huge music, candles, incense, and taking communion... I don’t want to make a LONG post about it here but it was like, I really felt the potency of the ancient Church of England bringing hope to the poor wretched Europeans, distributing this beneficience and this promise of a welcoming world beyond this one... ok side note in the context of wretched old Europe, the notion of heaven was necessary because the way life was, was just so freaking bad and low-quality. Life was filled with so much suffering. Humans caught glimpses of the divine in love, music, humor, etc. but so much sickness and poverty... even rich people lived terrible and uncomfortable and uncertain lives. Sewage dumped in the streets. All those babies dying all the time. The promise of a life beyond where things are good, means a promise of an existence where things are good period. It had to emphasize mortality to get to the idea of goodness. Anyways, whatever. I really felt the ancientness of the ritual at play, the generosity of it, the big machine, the circle of the people giving the communion goblet as we poor sinners all knelt in surrender... it was DOPE. I was very affected by it on a somatic level and was spiritually hung over the next day.

Easter last year was covid easter. We got out of choir for spring break and never came back. So many people we never saw again. Lent had just started. We made jokes thruout the year about how long lent was lasting... I submitted a video for the easter service of me battling a bach prelude. DIdnt watch the service. God I would never watch a church service of my own free will

Easter this year...

Last night I was feeling blue and I wept a little, remembering the easter of two years ago. How much lent had allowed the rose of easter to bloom, how much the steady meeting of the church community allowed for the rhythmic wheel to turn of the church seasons. During covid, no communities were meeting (in my life). No wheels were turning. It was more than a long lent. I didn’t stay penitent during the “long lent.” I didn’t stay anything. I just released and got fat eating cheese and coping. I was too fat for my cute easter dress. I was/am also premenstrual, last night, and I wept a little at how Easter was not going to be in a rhythm. And I wept at how much had been let go of. How disoriented and numb I felt. Partially because I was so fat and bleary from cheese. Partially because of covid. An entire year feeling released in some ways from the wheel of... the world we build together. I reminded myself other people feel it so much more than I had felt it. People who love being in the world, who have the energy for a lot of things like that.

One thing that didn’t change was the rhythm of the earth. Funny how the Christian holidays ride this rhythm and also sorta try to deny it, try to make the Christ story the driver of it all. At my church the rector really likes botanical metaphors and alludes comfortably to the turning of the seasons - it aint so bad at all - it’s just, come on, those are clearly the primary things. Pagan ritual is so fun because it’s tied directly to that. Solstices, equinoxes, and those fat mid-season celtic holidays in the fixed signs.

At its core, church should be people gathering regularly to honor what is sacred. And, I think it would be nice, if ... life revolved around it. If one’s life work had the rhythm of preparing what to bring to the sacred festival as part of it, and then release from it, and then do it some more. Because, we want community, we need community, and church’s best function is a way of creating an artifice for community interaction w/ each other, and its second best function is creating/celebrating/sculpting a shared value system (second best bc it’s dysfunctional usually). The pagan way is pleasantly neutral. If your community chooses a certain style or set of divinities... there might be cliquey responses but there’s no sense of blasphemy. It’s tied fundamentally to the earth. It’s sensual in that way.

Here’s what easter was this year. This is particularly good because it was inspired directly by the sermon that the rector gave. He is a smart good-minded dude who is finding his stride. His 9AM service was better than his 11AM one he didn’t emphasize it in the 11one come on dude. He talked (among other things) about how the ladies who went to jesus’s tomb went expecting to find him there, dead, even though they had heard him say over and over that his body would be resurrected. He said it wasn’t bc they were dumb, it was bc we are not fully capable of comprehending the idea of resurrection. He talked a lot about the impossibility of resurrection.

I sat with that while I looked at the trees and shit (outdoor service ftw). Our bodies know death. Our bodies know death. Our bodies know death. Our flesh is mortal. They know it really fundamentally. Our spirits are immortal, and know immortality. They do the death process, but for them it is not a spookery thing at all, it is just a transition. So there’s this wild dissonance in the human existence. I thought about how lent comes in the context of the church cadence to create a sense of a fast, a sense of quiet, a sense of death. It’s like those old fashioned mystery rites when you go into the cave of ceres or whatever. You are repeating ideas of death with your mercury words so that they imprint on your spirit, and your body likes to resonate with your spirit. And it’s also enforced by the darkness in the church and the darkness of those rituals... so you are using all of your resources and harmonizing to the mortality part of you, the idea that death is indeed real, you embody death you live out death. The quiet the sorrow the misgiving the mourning. And THEN, YOU EMBODY THE LIFE. And not just new life. Not birth of a baby so the cycle continues. YOU EMBODY THE ETERNALNESS OF LIFE! YOU EMBODY ETERNAL FUCKING LIFE! HE IS RISEN!!!! It’s the GOOD NEWS, when you talk to Christians who really believe it it’s the BEST NEWS THEY’VE EVER HEARD, THE BEST NEWS THEY COULD EVER TELL YOU, and when the church believes it and gives it to you, they are being the most generous as its possible to be... you embody the eternal nature of the soul that your spirit knows is true. You glow on both sides of the yin yang... This is the main focus of Christianity and Christian alchemy. It’s... COOL. 

What happened this easter was, there were services inside and outside. The music director put me and my 2 favorite people in a thread and told us to come up with the music. I did, and they acquiesced. I picked just like a bunch of my favorite music from Mozart operas, plus a couple other pieces that I liked (turned out to both be by Aquarius composers). One of the pieces was a hymn to Isis and Osiris but it turns out sometimes Christians put “When I beholdthe wondrous cross” to it so that worked :)))) Ummm... the whole process was so easy, everyone respected me and each other, no one fought, I practiced but not too hard, I played ok but not too great hahaha, the others played very well, we all cooperated, we all saw all the community, we all picked up right where we left off. I didn’t feel the incense eternal life high I felt two easters ago. But, everyone was there, the weather was beautiful, nothing was the matter. Without any sense of cycle or attachment to a wheel, without stress and labor, resentment drama expectation criticism strife... it was simply, a wonderful musical time, that I was given to create and enjoy, and I really enjoyed it, and we all three got a hundred bucks. It was the type of experience that I’m used to trying to plan, but get frustrated and it turns impossible... and look, it was just Given to me. And. I didn’t believe in it yesterday. I didn’t believe in Easter’s promise last night. I thought the magic of the world was broken or wounded. I sat with my sorrow and embodied it with my bleary fatness on my meditation cushion. I couldn’t see or feel anything clearly... just a sense of being a broken toy. And it was beautiful. Mild. Meaningful. And just right there. So accessible. 

I have to tell my church I’m leaving them for the other church. It feels fine... it still feels like the right thing. It feels like it’s going to be a growth of this energy. All the welcoming open feelings are even stronger at the other church. And I think it will open the door to even more collaboration, b/c collaboration is already starting to happen. I think it will be fine I just gotta rip the bandaid off.

[sumigakure]

we’re getting the band (back) together

To: @modernart2012

From: @arrowsbane​

Title: we’re getting the band (back) together

Rating: T

Wordcount: 1486

Prompt: Pacific Rim AU. Preference for MadaTobi, but I’m open to any pairing, romantic or otherwise. Doesn’t have to follow the movie, can follow the comics.

Notes: I went very AU with this, but right now Idek bc I swapped prompts halfway through, and this is what my brain came up with.

Summary: “We’re getting the band back together!” Jiraiya crows exuberantly. Tsunade, of course, is just there to knock some heads together; and Orochimaru… Orochimaru hates them both. He’d rather being science-ing in his lab right about now.

After the shinobi villages formed, when the clans finally came together in order to stop the wars, the worst thing anybody really had to worry about was politics and conflicting missions…

And then… everything changed.

When the Zetsu first began attacking, it was the Samurai who came up with the concept for the Jaegar Project. It was a great idea, two people piloting a giant, fifty foot mechanical robot to combat the threat… until, of course, the Shinobi nations took one look at the machine and started to laugh.

The Project wasn’t scrapped – it couldn’t be scrapped, not with the panicked civilians’ screaming en masse at the politicians. Instead, it was made the public face of international defence.

Instead, the Parabatai Project was designed – which in turn spawned the Cerebus Program as the years passed; implants inserted directly into the spinal column and interfacing with the CNS and brainstem, wirelessly connected to partnered hubs.

The implants enabled the user to link-up with others, and essentially become one mind simultaneously piloting and co-ordinating multiple bodies. If used by an ordinary swordsman, it would be lethal… used by Ninja… well, that was just inspired.

And so began the evolution of the ninja villages – Senju Tobirama and Uchiha Madara paved the way, demonstrating the deadly efficiency of two compatible genii able to share a hive mind-set. The land of Fire was set ablaze in their attempt to wipe out the Zetsu, but even their combined might was not enough. 

Genin teams were put together for balance, but ninja were assessed again as Chunin, and often reassigned to different units in order to test flexibility and search out the best ‘fit’. Partners were usually set around the age of sixteen, once puberty had evened out – chakra helping to stabilise the mind and body ahead of civilian standards.

When Sarutobi’s Genin team were slotted together, nobody had really expected much of them – well, they had expected them to become brilliant ninja… separately… in their own right… but nobody had foreseen the titans that they would be in the field.

The implants stung at first, they always did – Jiraiya bitched, Orochimaru scowled… and Tsunade… Tsunade was smug, because the idiots had ignored the opportunity to learn the healing techniques she’d used on herself within five minutes of leaving the Cerebus Centre.

Sarutobi shook his head and sighed, directing them to training ground twenty-three, and settling in to watch the no-doubt hilarious show that would be the three of them (re)learning to navigate while sharing headspace with minds that weren’t their own.

“Ouch!”

“Out of the way!”

“Ow. Ow OW OW TSUNADE!”

“Mooorrrooon.”

Sarutobi found himself dropping the rice ball and hastily intervening as Orochimaru’s words began to slur together in the telling manner that threatened the destruction of the whole training ground… or the village being swamped in snakes. Again.

The Sannin weathered so many storms, so many encounters with the Zetsu over the years before the cracks begin to show.

Time isn’t kind, nor is life. Some grow close, some grow apart… and constant expectations of high success rates, expectations of perfection, of setting the bar, of succeeding in an impossible war…

Tsunade lost her brother and fiancée, Orochimaru’s humanity slipped further and further from his grip with every passing year, and Jiraiya buried years of pain and disappointment beneath a wide grin and creased-closed eyes.

And then the cracks met in the middle, and the team shattered at the seams.

The Sanin were no more.

Time ticks on, and the Zetsu keep coming.

New teams step up to the plate, nations rise and fall in the leaderboards for ‘have killed the most useless monsters’… and eventually the Hokage throws his hands in the air, sighs, and sends his ANBU out to drag Jiraya away from the Hot Springs and into his office – by the ear if necessary.

“Enough,” He tells the wayward brat – fifty years old or not, he’s a brat – “Enough. This has gone on for long enough.”

Jiraiya, of course, scowls.

“I’m not the one who left,” He grumbles, crossing his arms and ducking his chin, the picture of an angry pre-teen. Sarutobi sighs and rubs the crease between his brows.

“No,” he replies, “you are not; but that doesn’t mean you can’t go after them.”

Jiraya, tellingly, doesn’t answer. He sits there in sullen silence for a long while, and then slinks out of the office. Sarutobi has a sinking feeling. This will not end well.

Tsunade is drinking in a bar when he finds her, flushed pink from the alcohol, and halfway to falling asleep on a bill she won’t ever pay.

“No,” she says before he can even open his mouth, before he’s even in her line of sight – like she knows what he’s there for – and she does, because she’s still got the implants, and he would never give his up.

“But–”

“No.”

Jiraiya sighs, and flops down into a seat next to her, raising an arm to the bartender who nods and sets down a bottle of Sake and a cup in front of him.

“Kampai,” he mutters in a subdued tone.

Fuck. Now he remembers why he never chased after them before now.

The next morning dawns bright and clear – the sun is shining, the birds are singing… the local castle is exploding in a cloud of dust and rubble.

The fuck?

Jiraiya bolts upright, and groans, supressing the urge to drop back down into bed as the force of his hangover – and Tsunade’s, shit, how did he forget about that perk of the bond? – hits him smack in the cap of the skull, and his eyes feel like they’ve been burnt out of his head.

Goddammit, what was that?

He squints out against the morning glare, wrenching the window open and pushing off of the sill with practised ease, zoning in on the source of the noise.

Boom usually equals bad in his books.

And he’s right. He’s not the only one there though – Tsunade and her apprentice (Shizue? Torune? Shizune?) follows them, carrying a pig of all things.

Not only that, but looming out of the dust and snarling with frustration is–

“Orochimaru?” Jiraiya yelps. He hadn’t sensed the snake nin nearby. How had he not sensed the man when he’s lit up like a fucking chakra beacon?

“What did you do?” Tsunade screeches angrily, staring at was once a piece of local cultural history and is now a mass of stone and dirt.

“It wasn’t me,” Their wayward teammate snarls back at her; and as one, they turn to see a writing white mass melting into nothingness. But of course, where there’s one Zetsu, there’s dozens more.

“We’ll talk about this later,” She orders, ignoring Jiraiya’s whine of pain, and smashing a chakra-coated fist through the head of a Zetsu that had been trying to sneak up on her.

“Sure, “Orochimaru snipes backwards, “Sometime after the two of you have drunk your weight in sake again I suppose?”

“Please,” Tsunade snorts, kicking another Zetsu into a group, and the lot of them go down like bowling pins. “I’d need a lot more than that to handle your crap.”

Jiraiya tunes them out, focusing on using their connection – something he hasn’t done in over ten years – to handle the situation, although the back of his brain feels the familiar to-and-fro of death threats and general snarking.

He’s missed this.

When it’s all over and done with, and they’re standing in the wreckage of the battlefield, Jiraiya lets his shoulders slump, and turns to his old friends with a grin on his face – a grin he’s not worn in a long time.

“That was fun,” Tsunade admits as they make their way down to the town. She’s going to need sake to get through the rest of they day.

“Yeah, it was.” Jiraiya agrees happily, and Orochimaru snorts. “Oh don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it.”

“I didn’t hate it…” Orochimaru acquiesces, stepping over a large chunk of stone and mortar.

“Aww, I love you too.” Jiraiya latches onto his teammate like a limpet on a rock.

“Get your hand off of me, Moron.” Orochimaru hisses, flipping his hair over his shoulder and trying to squirm out of Jiraiya’s grip.

“You’re both idiots.” Tsunade grumbles, shaking out her clothes.

“But we’re your idiots.” Jiraiya tells her cheerfully.

“You’re certainly something,” She grumbles, and then freezes as a thought passes through Jiraiya’s head.

“No,” She says.

“No.” Orochimaru agrees with her.

It’s too late though, they both know he’s not going to let them go again.

“Don’t say it,” Tsunade groans, rubbing her aching temples and Orochimaru groans.

“We’re getting the band back together!” Jiraiya crows exuberantly. Tsunade, of course, is just there to knock some heads together; and Orochimaru… Orochimaru hates them both. He’d rather being science-ing in his lab right about now.

If you enjoyed this piece, why not take a look at other pieces written by the same author on AO3.

[wri0thesley]

y'know that one post where it's like *best friend calls me and asks abt what color my dress is for prom so he can get a matching tie and i asked "since when were we goin to prom and he's all like "fuck i forgot"*? how about that but with josuke bc i can totally see that happening with him, sweet precious babby (please and thank you, i need more josuke fluff in my lif e)

Having a crush on your best friend isn’t easy.

Having a crush on your best friend, who happens to be one of the most popular boys you’ve ever met, who has girls falling over his feet and friends hanging on his every word and a cool and mysterious aura that makes people just want to be around him - that’s even harder.

You’ve long since accepted that Josuke Higashikata would never be interested in someone like you. You’re awkward and he sees you as a friend and sometimes when he looks at you too long you blush and pray he doesn’t notice - he treats you like he treats Koichi and Okuyasu. You don’t think he’s ever imagined you in a romantic way in his whole life.

Still, it doesn’t stop you from dreaming. You think about holding his hand and going out for ice cream together, about running your hands through his hair when he takes it down from the pomp and playing with the zippers on the front of his shirt. Sometimes he puts his hand on your shoulder and it’s so warm that you feel like you’d die if you ever got to cuddle him. Sometimes he smiles so widely it makes your heart hurt.

Josuke Higashikata is a ray of sunshine in your life and you’d never, ever tell him how you really felt in case it makes him act . . . strangely around you. Sure, it hurts a little that you’ll never get to feel quite how soft those full, pillowed lips are, but it’s worth it to be able to call him a friend. Josuke’s the best friend anyone could ever ask for.

You know it’s hopeless, but as prom approaches you can’t help but think about what it would be like to walk into the room on Josuke’s arm, as his date. You think about wearing little golden peace clips in your hair, about how handsome he’d look in formalwear, about it would be to kiss him whilst you slow danced--

After you’d found the date, you’d tried to teasingly lead Josuke into revealing who he was planning on taking to prom and what he was wearing. You’d mention it and he’d go pink, mess with his hair, try and laugh it off - after a week, you’d dropped it. Maybe he wasn’t going at all? It wouldn’t be like Josuke to miss a party, but you guess he probably did have girls begging him to accompany them--

For the past three months, he’s mentioned prom exactly once, when he’d sent you a text saying he wouldn’t be able to meet you for lunch at the cafe like he’d said because he was going prom suit shopping with his mother. Your heart had done a funny little twist - he’d just out and out told you he was going, and he was taking it seriously enough to buy a suit, and you had no idea which girl was about to be on the lucky end of Josuke Higashikata’s presence. It had stung a little that he hadn’t said, but you guessed you got it - maybe he didn’t want the poor girl to be the object of jealousy.

He’d added a smiley face to the end of his text so you’d added one to yours, telling him it was fine and you’d take a raincheck, and then you’d bought a pint of ice cream on your way home and watched a sad movie and kidded yourself you were crying because the impossibly pretty lead actress had just been dumped.

You buy a deep purple dress without even realizing it because apparently you have Josuke on the mind.

* * *

It’s two in the afternoon and you’re still in bed, but when your phone starts ringing you groggily begin to grasp around for it, hands closing around nothing a couple of times before you locate the source of the noise.

“H-hey?” You mumble into it, without even checking who the caller is. “Hey?”Josuke’s voice comes through the speaker, chipper.

“Hi!”

You’re instantly awake hearing his voice, a smile obvious in his tone even though you can’t see. The way he talks just makes you imagine an excitable puppy on the other end of the line.

“Oh! Josuke! Hi!”

He says your name with a light laugh that’s almost teasing, and repeats a greeting to you in a way that’s affectionately teasing and makes your heart twist with desire to hold him and tell him how you feel.

You don’t know when you turned into such a romantic sap or what it is about Josuke Higashikata that makes you act like your brain and heart have both turned to jelly, but whatever it is they should bottle it and sell it in stores.

(You think about the first time you’d teased him, when you’d first met him, about the way he’d blushed when a pretty upperclassman had asked him if he was alright and how he’d blushed and held up his hand and protested; “N-no! I’m not like that! I’m a love kinda guy!”)

“Why are you calling me?” You ask him. “Not that I mind! But aren’t you supposed to be out with shopping in S-City today?”

“Yeah! I’m out right now! I bought the best new pair of Bally shoes to wear from prom, I can’t wait to show you them--”

“Josuke,” you say, laughing, “come on. I know you didn’t call me to tell me about the shoes. I know you well enough to know that you’d wait until we were all together to make a big deal and bask in our adoration.”

“They’re really good, in fairness!” He says, cheerfully. Josuke always manages to be cheerful.

He’d mentioned he was going shopping with Tomoko this weekend, to pick up some final bits and pieces and because his Dad had sent over some money from the US to celebrate him getting good exam results.

“Come on, then, Fashion Boy,” you say, “what’s the situation?”

His tone takes on a shyness.

“I. . . uh. I guess I forgot to ask you? Or I forgot what you told me. Um.”

“Spit it out!” You say, shaking your head and grinning. His unsure voice is so fucking cute. You think about the lucky girl who he asked out to prom and how she got to hear that voice directed to him and you want to die. Does she even know how lucky she is?

“I forgot what colour your dress is and I need to get a tie to match so uh-what-colour-is-it?”

His words all come out in a garbled rush, so quickly that at first you think you must have misheard it.

“Josuke?” You ask, and he makes a frustrated noise. “I. . . don’t understand?”

“What colour’s your dress?” He asks, again, obviously trying to be a little slower. “I want to get a matching tie.”

“Josuke,” you say, eyebrows drawing in in confusion, “That’s. Generally a couples thing?”

“Yeah? I know! That’s why I’m askin’!”

“Josuke,” you repeat, trying to process. “You should probably maybe call your date and ask her? We don’t all like, convene to plan dress colours? She might be wearing something entirely different to me.”

“I’m talkin’ to my date right n--!” He starts saying, frustrated, but then his voice cuts out. You hear a very soft; “Shit.”

In the distance, Tomoko rebukes him for bad language.

There’s a moment between you two where nothing happens and you can practically see Josuke in your mind’s eye, biting on his plump lips and toying with the tails at the back of his pompadour, cheeks beginning to flush red.

“Josuke?” You ask, as the silence begins to get too much for you.

“Shit.” He repeats. “I can’t believe I didn’t ask you--”

“Ask me what?” You say, even though a traitorous part of your mind has already begun to celebrate. This can only mean one thing, right? Is Josuke going to--

“Willyougotothepromwithme?” Josuke says, voice out in a rush, words tumbling over one another so quickly you can barely make them out. He takes a deep breath. “Sorry. Will you go to the prom with me?”

You bite your lip to stop the smile from sounding too obvious over the phone, even though you’re longing to beam out to the world what just happened to you. This kind of thing doesn’t happen outside of a romance movie cliche, does it?

“It’s deep purple,” you say, and then promptly slap your hand over your mouth to stifle the excited giggles that seem to want to issue forth. “A-ahh,” Josuke says, “I-is that a yes?”

You want to scream out. Of course it’s a yes. Anyone who said no to Josuke would be a fool. But instead you just make a coy little noise of agreement and you swear you hear the whoosh of air moving quickly as Josuke presumably fist pumps.

You hear one last thing before he disconnects the call - the voice of who is unmistakably Tomoko, Josuke’s mother hissing;

“You FORGOT to ask her?”

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Please tell me all about your complaints with BBC Merlin, bc I too have Many Complaints (ft. Miscommunication and Secrets Are Good For Drama to a Maximum of One Season and Certainly Not Five; Morgana is a Terrified and Oppressed Woman Who Is Made Evil for Being Terrified and Oppressed and Does Not Deserve It, Much Like All Mages; and Everyone Has A Serious Case of Forgetting Their Character Growth when The Plot Requires.

*deep breath*

Honestly I think my ultimate complaint about Merlin is that it suffers from an absolutely crippling case of narrative cowardice, which is a concept you might recall from my Inevitable Tirade About SPN.  Basically: if you open your show with a large portion of it predicated on a conceit that has to be drastically altered in order to accomplish the ultimate goal of the plot (in the case of Merlin, switching from uther’s Camelot to Arthur’s Camelot), you can’t be a shit about it and you have to actually goddamn do it.  CHANGE YOUR PARADIGM, YOU LIMP NOODLES.

No, I’m dead serious, all their problems basically boil down to a critical inability to change the paradigm.  Let’s do an experiment to prove it.

Merlin’s magic, obviously.

Two things here.

First, Merlin hiding his magic.  At the beginning, Merlin can’t tell anyone about his magic on pain of death, because Uther.  This implicitly sets up the eventual transition into Arthur’s Camelot as a shift into a ‘safe’ Camelot for magic users in general and Merlin in particular, because we all know a little bit about Arthuriana and we know that Merlin becomes Arthur’s trusted adviser, magic and all.  So in order to accomplish that transition, what ‘should’ happen (by ‘should’ I mean, ‘the thing that makes intuitive sense to someone waiting for the plot to advance’) is that Merlin’s presence and involvement in Arthur’s life gradually makes Arthur more comfortable with magic, until finally a crisis forces a reveal in which Merlin comes clean and puts Arthur in the position of deciding once and for all where he stands.  Plot and precedent in every other Arthurian legend requires that Arthur decides, at the very least, that Merlin is not evil and that consequently magic can be used for good.  This would by virtue of necessity put Arthur and Merlin against Uther, and moreover mean that it would be the two of them scheming together in order to save the kingdom every couple weeks, which would be an excellent way to develop their relationship and progress toward Arthur’s Camelot.  Instead, by trying to uphold the ‘secrecy’ conceit, the plot is forced to relapse to Square One every couple of episodes, and therefore when Arthur’s Camelot does come ‘round, it’s not safe for Merlin to come clean, Merlin still doesn’t really trust Arthur, Arthur’s playing checkers on a board where the other side is playing chess, and We The People feel pretty fucking cheated.

Second, Merlin’s magic in general.  FRIENDS.  COMRADES.  IF YOU ARE GOING TO GO TO GREAT LENGTHS TO SET SOMEONE UP AS THE MOST POWERFUL MAGE IN HISTORY, I WANT TO SEE THEM BE THE MOST POWERFUL MAGE IN HISTORY.  Honestly by about season 3 there’s no point to Merlin being worried about coming clean, because we’re told repeatedly that he’s powerful enough to not worry about being burned at the stake or whatever.  According to what we’re told, Merlin should have the raw power to walk into Uther’s courtroom and announce “Hello, all, I am a warlock and I dare you to mess with me” and then go back to his business.  But since we never see him actually carry that out–y’all he fucking killed Nimueh with lightning, why didn’t we see that again?–Merlin’s power level is mostly an Informed Attribute, which leaves the viewer frustrated and confused by a lot of the tension the show sets up regarding threats to Merlin’s life.  We see Merlin demonstrate multiple times that it would be almost impossible to execute him by traditional methods, and yet we’re still supposed to agree that it’s too dangerous.  Like.  Listen, my friends.  Here is a pro tip.  It’s actually not a narrative-ending problem to have a ludicrously OP character (which is what Merlin would be if the writers were consistent with his abilities), but you have to acknowledge that they develop a whole different set of obstacles than someone who isn’t ludicrously OP.  It just takes some creative thinking.

Morgana!

Morgana is horribly mistreated by the narrative and I’m not gonna question you there, but moreover, a lot of the problems with her magic plotline are, again, about a fear of changing the paradigm.  So, like, okay, let’s all agree that it would make infinitely more narrative sense for Morgana to go to Arthur, her foster brother and trusted friend, in distress and tell him that she thinks she can do magic, which Arthur would tell his servant Merlin.  The two of them recommend that Morgana keep it under wraps, and maybe that’s how Arthur starts to come around on the magic thing, rather than Merlin’s influence.  Sure, super chill.  Instead of just doing an about-face on the whole loyalty thing because…what…she’s not the heir?  (It’s been A Minute since I put myself through this show.)  Instead of that whole mess, maybe Morgana comes to Merlin when Uther is wounded and begs him to help her find a way to heal him, because surely, surely, if his beloved ward (and daughter) uses magic for something so pure and innocently good as healing the king, it can’t be evil.  When that inevitably backfires, Uther banishes Morgana from Camelot, and Arthur tells her to go because it’s safer.  Morgana, betrayed by Uther and perceiving herself to be abandoned by Arthur and Merlin, turns on Camelot in a rage and allies with her sister Morgause.  This plotline gives Morgana more agency, avoids the rather unsavory “madness leads to murder” overtones, minimizes the predatory vibe of Morgause’s plotline, and actually contributes to developing Merlin and Arthur as leaders and characters alike.

The problem, of course, is that this plotline hinges on Arthur’s character not being a static piece of shit that would honestly fracture under even the most minimal paradigm shift.  So instead, Morgana draws the short straw for a sudden face-heel turn so that there can be a motivation to enforce Arthur’s hatred of magic and Merlin’s fear of telling the truth, and then she disappears for half a season only to show up again crazy and homicidal, which…honestly there’s not a lot of emotional punch there.  At no point in time did I sympathize with Morgana because, update, I do not believe that fratricide and patricide are legitimate responses to her situation in the show.  But since they presented it as a problem that should have been sympathetic, I was mostly just angry rather than disinterested.

Merlin and Arthur’s friendship!

Honestly this should be pretty blindingly obvious, but Merlin and Arthur…I actually don’t super care for their relationship, because there are so few occasions when Arthur counterbalances his constant insults and judgement with the kind of do-or-die loyalty Merlin shows him.  And like on the one hand it’s clearly meant to be largely in good humor, but there are plenty of times when it’s Clearly Not.  But the worst part is that I can’t even hold it against Arthur because Merlin is not telling him the truth, which in turn I can’t hold against Merlin because Arthur is pretty much a narrow-minded magic-hating prick, which never changes because Merlin isn’t telling him the truth, because Arthur has never given him reason to think he’d stand by Merlin against Uther, and so on down the line.

And you expect me to believe that relationship develops into something strong enough to build a kingdom on?  To build a legend on?  I think the hell not.  In order to develop that relationship into something that feels as last-gasp-devoted as the show tells you it should, someone’s paradigm has to shift and it basically has to be Arthur because See Above and, again, the showmakers are fucking cowards.

Arthur’s personality AS A WHOLE

Once again: I am existentially exhausted by the whole Arthur Is A Dick thing.  And I don’t blame Merlin for starting it, but it’s definitely a peak concentration of the whole phenomenon, and I fucking hate it.  I eventually stuck it out and watched three seasons and change and I did genuinely enjoy a lot of things, but I attempted the first episode three times and had to stop because I was so fucking aggravated with Arthur’s character.  And basically, in order for him to move firmly out of Spoiled Rich Prick With Issues into Competent Merciful Leader With Tragic Backstory That Panned Out Well In The End, he needs to acknowledge in-narrative that he’s been, A, contributing to the persecution of magic users and that’s something he’ll never truly be clean of, and, B, he’s been not only mocking but actively penalizing Merlin for what Arthur does not realize is saving the country.  Basically, it would require Arthur to grow up, not just in his status as king but in and of himself as an individual, in his relationships as well as in his throne, become more than a war hero with more courage than is healthy.  It would require Arthur to spit out an apology that sounded like an apology, and start trusting Merlin’s word as an adviser rather than a conveniently intelligent servant.

And like.  That paradigm shift would probably have made the showrunners shit their pants on the spot.

If you, like me, couldn’t move past these issues but still want(ed) to enjoy the characters and universe, I have a solution for you!  Here is the most magnificent series rewrite I have ever seen in my life, and as far as I am concerned the One True Merlin Canon.  The link is to the Season 3 rewrite, which is where it goes hard AU and solves a lot of problems. 

In conclusion: fuck this noise, everyone go watch Legend of the Sword instead, @Guy Ritchie please make at least one sequel.

[yuanstuff]

Chaotic Interfaces @ Babycastles

The Babycastles gallery is only open on Saturdays from 12 PM -6 PM and Mondays from 6 PM -12 AM. Already very chaotic of them. On Friday night, I texted one of my friends: 

wanna go to babycastles tmrw? theyre a video game gallery and have an exhibit rn called chaotic interfaces 

I have never been more intrigued by the name of a gallery in my life omg. is it expensive bc im poor

my ta from last semester cofounded it and theyre strongly anti establishment and read a lot of communist theory so i think its free

AMAZING

We met in front of Babycastles at around 3, or as in front of it as we could, considering it was in the basement of an apartment building. It took us a minute to figure out how to ring the basement, but we eventually got in. We were greeted by a volunteer who had the misfortune of having to set up all the pieces and make sure they worked. He offered to help if weren’t sure how to play any of the games, but admitted that he wasn’t too sure how some of them worked either. Not all of them came with clear instructions, and they were meant to be chaotic, after all. 

We didn’t get to play a few games, sadly, because they were out of order. It gave me IMA show flashbacks. Of the ones we did play, though, I have some opinions. We started from the back and worked our way back to the entrance, so the first game we played was this:

I forgot to get a picture of the staging, which is unfortunate because even though they were mostly just props, they added a lot to the feel of the game. There was a little table with an ashtray filled with cigarettes, an old radio, and the other trappings of an old-fashioned detective. You controlled this game with only your voice, so you had to speak into a microphone. The voice recognition was pretty good, and it caught what we were saying even if we weren’t speaking super clearly. The objective of the game was to find a 4-letter code hidden in a photo. It took us a few rounds before we were able to figure out the best strategy to win, which was to tell it to “enhance” before moving around or resizing the picture. After that, it was pretty easy. I quite liked this game – the visuals were appealing, and it made me feel pretty smart each time I found the code. The fact that it eliminated physical interaction was also interesting. It’s kind of comparable to the Nintendo DS microphone that some games made you speak or blow into. It was impressive on a technical level, but I think the fact that it relied on just voice recognition meant that it was pretty restricted in terms of play. It’s fun until you get the gist of it and rounds start to last about half a minute. I feel like this could be taken a step further if it were made into something like “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes”, where it’s multiplayer and everyone has a little bit of information that they need to communicate to each other in order to win the game. 

The next game we played was a bit like QWOP, but much much worse and also very good, and the volunteer said that the file for it was just called “butt game”:

You had to sit on a big box that you could kind of rock around on, and that’s how you controlled the torso-less body onscreen. It was agonizing, and I was very bad at it. Neither of us got past 2 meters. Still, we kept coming back to it. It was fun! Even if we kept failing, which was kind of frustrating but still fun, probably because of the visual of a butt and legs rolling around on screen after you fell. It had to be recalibrated at some point, so I caught a glimpse of a Wii Fitness Board at the bottom. Revolutionary. I thought they’d used a tilt sensor or a 6DOF or something, but it was a Wii Fitness Board, and it just made it so much better. It was like I was witnessing a rebirth since it’s essentially a technological relic at this point that I thought no one really thought about anymore. But here it was, and someone had made a game with it. You could argue that the play was even more restricted than the last game, so why did I seem to like this one more? Part of it might have been the weird visuals, and the Wii Fit Board definitely captured my attention. But it was mostly just fun in how ridiculous it was. It’s great to watch your friends shake around furiously on a big box, and we did come up with a few different ways of playing it: rocking side to side or back and forth, or getting up and holding the sides of the box instead. None of them worked super well. I assume you can “win” the game by reaching 100 meters or something, but there was something freeing about playing a game that’s almost impossible to win.

I wasn’t able to get a good photo in the dark, but this game was pretty great too:

This one had a name: “tussletron 2038″. The controller is just an old PC trackpad duct-taped to the back of a controller that had been ripped apart. The game is played in Chrome between two people. It is an abomination. And it was great! You won by clicking the other player’s icon until their HP hit 0. Why is it so much fun to fight over a cursor with someone else? Since it was in Chrome, you could also resize the screen/images so you could get to the other person quicker or keep the other player away from you. I’m not sure if this was an intended part of the gameplay or something that was emergent, but it added a layer of strategy? to a game that was just about clicking?? and fighting over a cursor??? the whole thing was strangely mesmerizing and strategic. Something my friend and I both ended up doing to thwart the other person’s attempts to click was to move the cursor around erratically so they couldn’t keep track of their own movements until we could steal it back. Video game developers keep trying to make games more and more complex, but humans just like to click things and mess around. This game is really low-fidelity and looks kind of dumb, but it’s a good demonstration of the engineering fallacy in games, the idea that once we’ve reached the height of technology, games will be perfect and high art. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the exhibit. While I wish we could have gotten to play more of the games, I had fun with the ones we did play, and I got to experience some unexpected forms of alternative controllers and physical computing that reminded me of the importance of elegance in creative endeavors. I guess it’s oxymoronic to describe an exhibition called “chaotic interfaces” as “elegant”, but I think that for the most part it’s the aesthetic that’s chaotic. At their core, a lot of the games relied on simple controls that led to interesting experiences. In my own projects, I tend to be pretty extra and put a lot of “stuff” into it, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; however, it does mean I have trouble conveying messages with subtlety. I want to work on taking some of that fluff out and putting my efforts towards figuring out what would make an interaction really meaningful instead.

[sovonight]

a palindrome number! how nice! 

and oh gosh, im like, a third of the way through? i pulled out a stronger blacklight to use bc i was impatient and now my eyes kinda hurt. just like the real thing!

opinions so far:

i’ve taken my pause to rest on the plaidypus page and if art hasn’t yet been done of those 5 steps i’ll do it myself (please link me some if it has been done)

judging by all the invisible ink splatters ford is very messy, but hey, the guy’s life is in like, constant flux and danger. can’t judge him.

i haven’t done a complete read-through since the first time i got my hands on the regular journal 3 so there’re a lot of things i didn’t remember, one being that ford prefers keeping clean-shaven to the point of always having a pocket razor. ford might forego showers but he will not forego shaves

i immediately put my hand over ford’s handprint. immediately. all thoughts of archivist gloves left my mind

which reminds me: why did ford stick his whole hand in what is “technically poison”??

^ on that same page, i very much appreciated that the voice actor jokes are, as per usual, absolutely endless

i also appreciated that dipper decoded blendin’s entire message, and wrote it down! (only, i’d already spent the time to type it all up and decode it when i got the regular journal. still, convenient!)

what i did not really appreciate is that when the photos unstick, they rarely stick again, slipping and falling off of their page. im a little nervous about losing them, and nervous about trying to re-stick them with a gentle piece of washi tape

i also feel a little silly to be treating the book so delicately when ford clearly took zero care of his journals, but i paid 90 real life bucks for this! when i do eventually damage it i’ll just comfort myself in the knowledge that ford would’ve eventually damaged it there anyway

“I OFTEN SEE STRANGE THINGS IN THE CORNER OF MY EYE. NEW THEORY-- DOES THE CORNER OF YOUR EYE ACTUALLY SEE AN ALTERNATE PLANE OF REALITY?“ this one line has changed the way i will portray ford forever bc if he calls this a theory, no wonder he missed his Grand Unified one for six years

“THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE THING TO DECODE IS HUMAN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR“ on one hand, i get it, really driving the socially inept thing home, but on the other, ford seems to do rather well? not just post-portal, but pre

something that this repeat read through has reminded me of is just how.. thorough he likes to be. like, the purist in him wants to build the portal from scratch, he’s a stickler for being complete on a subject-- it’s a thing that i both admire and would be a little frustrated by. also it just makes me smile

anyway. pausing to pace myself and rest my eyes a little. which reminds me, a staring contest with a literal eyeball? how did he manage seven hours (no, not several, actually seven. FORD.)

[spacednp]

When You Wish Upon a Star

WATTPAD AO3

TW: NONE I DONT THINK besides swearing but that's legit all my fan fiction lmao wait I think I mentioned condoms once but again legit all my fanfics at this point

SUMMARY: PARENT PHAN TAKES CHILDREN TO DISNEY WORLD IM SO EXCITED TO WRITE THIS WTF

ADDITIONAL NOTES: p a r e n t p h a n i s m y k I N K

I DIDNT MAKE THE KIDS CALL PHIL DADDY BC THATS DANS JOB K? K

no but really Phil being daddy is too real

this legit is my favorite thing I've ever written asdfghjkl

WC: 3.7k

"Winne I swear to fucking Jesus if you don't stop moving for three seconds so I can put on your fucking socks I will fucking bash your head in you little shit," Dan hissed at the wiggling toddler in his lap. He loved his little girl, but she was also a brat, and that wasn't a good thing for the easily frustrated 30 something.

"Daniel! Watch your language in front of the children!" Phil chided his husband, covering their older child, Dillon's, ears.

"Papa, I'm seven and a half whole years old!" Dillon protested. "I already know all the naughty words!" Phil gasped at this and sent a glare at Dan that went unnoticed as Dan was preoccupied with the annoying little bundle of joy crying about not wanting the socks on.

"I'm no wanna!" Winnie cried, flailing her arms about. As Winnie was still learning how to speak, she had a few quirks and speech impediments. One of those was "I'm". The young child never used "I", it was always "I'm". When loud footsteps filled the house as Winnie ran about, she would scream, "I'm run!", which neither Dan nor Phil had the heart to correct her on. Winnie was their only baby. They adopted Dillon when he was 5, so they missed out on all the baby years, which they didn't want to miss again, so Winnie was born from a surrogate. Now Dan and Phil loved Winnie a hellova lot, but she was a fussy little brat.

"Goddamn it Winnie!" Dan spat as he grabbed onto the child's foot in a vain attempt to still it enough to get her foot in the sock. Dan let out a frustrated groan as he shoved Winnie's foot into the pale colored sock. "Philllll," Dan whined as Winnie kicked her sock off and caused it to fly across the room. Phil smiled slightly as he crossed the room to pick Winnie up off of Dan's lap, setting her on his hip and looking down lovingly as his very frustrated husband who was leaning back into the couch, almost melting into it. Dan smiled up at Phil and blew a curly hair out of his pink face.

"Thank you, babe," Dan said as he stood up and whipped off his sweaty palms on his dirty black jeans (they were clean, and then they found out that Winnie did NOT like peaches).

"You're welcome, Bear. Go help Dil get packed and ready," Phil said as he plopped down on the couch Dan had left unoccupied, laying Winnie down next to him. "Looks like its a sandal type of day, huh Winnie?" He asked his daughter, causing the two year old to giggle, sharp blue eyes full of happiness. God, he was going to die when she got old enough to date, he just might have to buy a gun.

Phil somehow managed to get the squirmy toddler into some white sandals with little pastel flowers decorating them that Dan said were "too fucking adorable". The family was rushing about trying to get ready as it was the day of their first trip as a family, and just like every other basic non-American family, they were going to Orlando.

"Philly!" Dan cried from Dillon's room, sounding frustrated. Phil laughed lightly, looking down at Winnie.

"Looks like Daddy is having some problems with Dil, huh Winnie?" Phil asked his little daughter as he picked her up and walked to Dillon's room, the toddler just giggled the whole walk, like she always did. As Phil entered the room covered in dinosaurs (because "they're the coolest things ever!"), he was greeted by a flustered Dan and a suitcase full of dinosaur toys, some stuffed and some plastic. Phil laughed at the mess and his upset (but still adorable) husband.

"Oh dearuh!" Winnie exclaimed in her sweet baby voice, causing even the very frustrated Dan to crack a smile. Phil rubbed Winnie's back as he looked around for Dillon, only to find him angrily crossing his arms in the corner.

"Yes, Winnie, very oh dear," Phil agreed as he met Dan's eyes. "What happened?" Phil asked his husband. Dan just shrugged his shoulders and sighed.

"Dil is being difficult," Dan said, gesturing to the suitcase full of dinosaurs and the fuming child. Phil smiled weakly and set Winnie on the ground before walking over to Dillon and crouching down to his level and looking him in his anger filled sea green eyes.

"What's up buddy?" Phil asked, aware of Dan fangirling in the background, as he always did when Phil acted all "Dad like". In the end Dan was just Phil trash #1, in any situation.

"Dad won't let me bring all my dinosaurs," Dillon grumbled, pouting slightly.

"Okay, but you need room for your clothes, how about we just bring two dinosaurs?" Phil offered, knowing Dillon would try to bump it up to three and that they could compromise like that.

"Three," Dillon countered just as Phil thought he would, to which Phil pretended to be iffy on for a minute.

"Okay then, three," Phil finally said, standing back up to full height and looking down at his now smiley son.

"Thanks, Papa!" Dillon yelped, throwing his arms around Phil's middle/waist area. Phil let out a small 'oof!' before patting his son's head and letting him hug him. Eventually Dillon pulled away and ran to pick his dinosaurs. Dan quickly replaced Dillon, wrapping his arms around Phil, causing the older man to giggle and wrap his arms around Dan's waist.

"Thank you," Dan muttered into the crook of Phil's neck. Phil loved the moments like that, when he was reminded of the years before, like in 2009 when he held Dan in the train station, like in 2012 when he told Dan they'd stay together, just times when their bodies were pressed together, two people oblivious to the world and content and happy in each other's arms, two pieces of a puzzle that fit together perfectly, as cheesy as it was.

"You're welcome," Phil replied, enjoying the warm cinnamon smell of Dan's body wash. Eventually the boys untangled themselves from each other's arms and went back to packing.

"Philly," Dan said from where he was squatting next to Winnie who had one of Dillion's dinosaurs sticking out of her mouth. Dan quickly pulled the toy out of her mouth and tossed it to the side before Dillion caught of glimpse of what his sister was doing. The two loved each other, very very deep down. Dan and Phil knew it, but they also knew that if one even looked at something that belonged to the other, it would result in all out war, and no one had time for that when they were about to be stuffed together in close proximity for hours as they flew to America.

"Yes?" Phil asked as he folded Dillion's clothes and neatly set them in the suitcase. Most of which were tee shirts with various graphic designs on them, mostly dinosaurs. The prehistoric reptiles just fascinated Dillion, which always made his father's break into grin. After all, how could someone not find that adorable? It was near impossible.

"You have kid duty, I have to finish our packing, okay?" Dan asked as he made his way out the door, not really giving Phil an option. Little did Dan know, he had a shadow. A small, wiggly, sticky, chubby cheeked, little shadow.

"Ha, looks like you also have Winnie duty," Phil called after Dan, setting down the green dinosaur jumper in his hands to watch Winnie speed crawl after Dan. She could walk... kind of. It was more of waddling, so she mostly crawled around as her main method of transportation. Dan turned around and looked down at the tinny bag of giggles and put his hands on his hips, a stupid grin on his face.

"Where are you going, Winne poo?" Dan asked in a voice a little higher pitched and softer than his usual voice. It was the voice he talked to babies with, everyone had that kind of a voice.

"Wit Dadda," Winnie replied, still on all fours like a dog. Her pastel pink and white sported dress was flipped over so it showed her entire stomach and diaper, which made Dan wonder if they should of put shorts on under it. Dan decided it would be fine, it was only a two year old's diaper anyway.

"No no, Winnie poo, you gotta stay with Papa," Dan argued softly, gesturing to Phil who had gone back to helping Dillion pack and wasn't paying any attention to his husband or daughter.

"No no, I'm go wit Dadda," Winnie said, pulling herself up with Dan's still sticky and gross jeans that he really needed to change. She grabbed Dan's hand and waddled away, like she was trying to get Dan to come with her. Dan followed, like the good Dadda he was.

When they reached the stair case Dan scooped Winnie into his arms, and she didn't protest. She knew better. Both kids did. No one was aloud up the stairs without permission, which helped with the kids being safe and Dan and Phil being safe to do whatever they please in the privacy of their room. Plus, it was funny to watch the kids try and find a loop hole around the whole "no upstairs" rule, like "what if I have to pee and both the downstairs bathrooms explode". That one had to be Dan's favorite.

"Let go uppie!" Winnie sung, waving her chubby arms around in glee. She loved uppie, well, she did when it was somewhere she wanted to go, if Dan or Phil picked her up to go to her bedroom for sleepy time, she threw a fit. Their daughter was as much of a night owl as her fathers. Dan remembered one occasion when he picked her up in the store because she threw a temper tantrum (Dadda didn't get her the candy), and it only made it worse. Dan was so angry that he yelled at his daughter, but regretted it the second her saw how sad it made her. He was so tempted to just buy her the damn candy because he loved her so much, but he held strong, until later that night when he cried in Phil's arms. He couldn't help it, he loved Winnie an awful lot, and seeking her unhappy physically hurt him. She was his baby.

"Yay, uppie!" Dan cheered, wondering how in God's name he was going to pack for both he and Phil and watch Winnie to make sure she didn't get into anything she shouldn't be in. He knew he'd forget something, he just hoped it wasn't watching his daughter, he had no idea how he'd be able to explain to Phil how Winnie managed to swallow a condom. That would traumatize everyone involved, including Dan.

"Are you sure we have everything?" Phil asked for the millionth time. Dan nodded, trying to fiddle with his keys to lock the door. It was hard when you had a wiggly child and about a thousand bags in your arms. Okay, it was two bags, and Phil and even Dillion were carrying more, but still, they weren't carrying a Winnie.

"Yes, love, we have everything," Dan assured his husband.

Turns out they didn't have everything, in the rush to get packed and ready quickly, they forgot toothpaste. Now, since they were spending a week in Florida, they needed toothpaste. So, after hours of kicking and screaming and embarrassment from the flight, Phil had to go to a nearby Walmart and buy some toothpaste. Dan was at the hotel with the kids while Phil went, mainly because there was no way in hell Phil was being left alone with them that moment. Phil loved his kids and was even more patient with them than Dan, but the man needed a break. Even if it was just for 15 minutes, he enjoyed it. It was rare that he was the one who got a break, usually it was Dan before he actually murdered one of their kids.

Phil rushed through the rows upon rows of shelves, many of which were filled with things that seemed less than useless. (Seriously America? Who comes up with a stuffed animal that turns into a demon faced beast when you press a button?) He kept his head low, hoping he wouldn't be noticed by anyone. Usually he loved the fans and didn't mind being recognized and taking a few pictures with them, but he wasn't looking very great at the moment and would rather there not be dozens of copies of a photo where he had greasy hair and stained jeans on covering every social media cite.

Phil finally made his way to the personal hygiene area and scanned the shelves for the toothpaste he and Dan typically used. He found it and grabbed it, making his way to check out. He almost got out of the store without being recognized, until Maria behind the counter wanted a picture. Dammit. The fact that he didn't manage to go the entire shopping trip without being noticed bothered Phil, nevertheless, he took the picture with the girl and gave her hugs. She asked how Dan and the kids were and Phil said they were great and then he left, head down in embarrassment. He probably should of showered and changed before leaving the hotel, but he didn't.

Soon enough he was back in the hotel room, happy to find both Winnie and Dillion happily asleep in their shared bed. They had gotten two twin sized beds in the hotel room and hoped Winnie and Dillion would be okay with sharing, and thank goddess they were or else Phil might just cry. He walked towards the bed of his sleeping children and kissed each of their foreheads lovingly.

"Good night," he whispered to the sleeping forms as he turned to the door. He jumped a little to see someone standing behind him, but soon saw the curly fringe that belonged to his husband and felt relief fill him. Dan had his arms crossed across his chest and a loving smile across his face.

"They were very tired from being little shits for so long," Dan said, gesturing to their children on the bed. Phil giggled a little bit, Dan wasn't the most poetic person. For a boy who knew more words than anyone else Phil knew, he sure seemed to have his favorite words, which were just profanities.

"I'm sure they were, must be hard to embarrass your parents for hours on end," Phil said with a yawn. It was only eight in Florida, but in London it would be one in the morning and it had been a very long day. Dan soon joined Phil in his act of yawning and cursed at Phil for making him tired, though Phil knew it was just Dan being difficult and his words had no vicious intent.

"Let's go to bed," Dan said, giving Phil no real choice and dragging him to their bed. Phil shook his head and pulled out of Dan's grasp.

"Pajamas first," Phil ordered in a hushed voice (suddenly remembering that his kids were sleeping and not wanting to wake them), gesturing to his tight jeans. Dan, on the other had was already in his pajamas and looking very comfortable. Dan rolled his eyes and plopped down on the bed, quickly getting comfortable and tucking himself under the sheets.

Phil walked over to he and Dan's open suitcase (they decided to share because in all honestly neither knew which clothes were even his at that point, but hey, "what's mine is yours" and other shit that comes with marriage) and flipped through the mess of clothes until he found some pajamas. He didn't even bother going into the bathroom to change because his kids were fast asleep and it wasn't like it was anything Dan hadn't seen already. As he pulled off his shirt in one quick motion he heard Dan give a low two toned whistle from their bed and he just rolled his eyes. You'd think that after years of marriage Dan would give up on that cat calling, you'd be wrong. The boy was a massive flirt and since he was married Phil received all of Dan's flirting needs. Sometimes it was sexy but most times it was bloody annoying. Phil quickly shuffled out of his pants and pulled on his pajama shirt and pants before running over to check if the door and all the windows were locked. Once satisfied that they wouldn't be brutally murdered, raped, and/or kidnapped in their sleep, he crawled into bed next to Dan.

"Night night you sexy motherfucker," Dan muttered as he laid his head on Phil's chest, earning a snort of laughter from Phil.

"Night night," Phil replied, wrapping an arm around Dan's waist while using his other hand to pull the blanket over them both. Lots of sex, drugs, and death happened in hotels and Phil quite honestly had to force himself to not think about that to ever sleep in one. Having Dan next to him made it a little better, but bottom line hotels were disgusting and Phil hated them.

Slowly but surely Phil drifted off to sleep, happy that the next morning he and his beautiful family would enjoy the day at Disney World.

"Philly, I shouldn't have read all those Disney horror stories last week, you were right, I'm fucking terrified of this goddamn ride and holly shit I swear that robot just moved," Dan said in one breath, scooting as close as possible to Phil while squeezing his husband's hand so hard it hurt both parties. Phil meanwhile, was only half paying attention to Dan as he was terrified himself, but only because one of his kids, Dillion, was three rows away and he didn't want to lose his. Now, Phil wasn't all that over protective, okay, maybe a little, but any responsible parent would be afraid when their child(ren) could be in harms way, and his baby was so far away! God, Phil was going to have such a hard time sending either of his kids off to uni.

"Love, you'll be fine, they're supposed to move," Phil said, reacting over Winnie and patting Dan's knee with his free hand that wasn't caught in the death grip of a very terrified man. He stretched himself up a little to get a better look Dillion, who seemed to be having a blast. Winnie was laughing her head off in Phil's lap (it was the only way she'd be aloud on the ride and Phil knew the first chance Dan got he'd throw her like a grenade at the first thing that moved) and Dillion seemed to be screaming the lyrics to "It's A Small World". Phil was really happy his kids were having fun, but he still worried. He wished Dillion could of just sat closer to his fathers but nooo he was too cool for that. The little shit.

Eventually the ride was over and Dan was shaking too badly to hold Winnie, so Phil just set her down and told Dillion to hold her hand. Dillion was going to refuse but Phil gave him the "I swear to God if you don't do what I told you, you're grounded until you go off to uni" face and he obliged.

After a few rides where Phil and Dillion went on alone while Dan stayed on a bench nearby with Winnie, the color started to come back to Dan's face and they could go on a few more rides as a family. Then, Dillion and Winnie managed to get their fathers to get some ice cream eam (or 'i cweam', in Winnie's case), and they stopped by a nearby Dip-n-Dots cart.

"Winnie Pooh, you like your ice cream?" Dan asked, holding the now empty spoon Winnie had just taken a bite off of (Dan was feeding her because Winnie didn't really understand the concept of hot and cold yet, or spoons for that matter). Winnie nodded eagerly, a trail of melted pink ice cream falling down her cheek that Dan quickly whipped away.

"I cweam!" Winnie exclaimed, clapping her somehow-sticky hands to show her excitement. "Yum!"

Dan smiled affectionately at his daughter and felt a cold kiss on his cheek from Phil. "I swear to got Phil if you got fucking ice cream on my cheek I'm getting a divorce," Dan said, a smile on his face because there was no way he'd actually divorce Phil. He turned to his husband who had a huge grin on his face.

"Ops," Phil said, licking his thumb and rubbing it on Dan's cheek where he'd just kissed him. Dan scrunched his eyes in disgust.

"Ewie, 'pit!" Winnie cried, slapping her hands over her eyes in disgust.

"Exactly Winnie, 'ewie 'pit'," Dan replied, pushing Phil's hand away from his face and replacing his thumb with a napkin, like that would magically make the DNA on his face disappear.

"Stop with the PDA!" Dil said from across the table. "You guys are gross!"

Both Dan and Phil laughed at that, because somewhere down the line they'd become the gross couple that's always hugging and kissing in public with two adorable kids that were messy as hell. At that, was the dream. They were living the dream, a wish they wished many years before, before they even met, and as they say in the land of dreams, "when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true".

[lovelylunarwriting]

Hufflepuff!Joshua and Slytherin!Jihoon Hogwarts Headcanons

HUFFLEPUFF!JOSHUA:

Literally the sweetest boi, I cri

When he was put in Hufflepuff no one was surprised because he spent the whole train ride there being his gentlemanly self

Helping people with their luggage if he saw them struggling or having a hard time carrying their things

Holding doors for everyone- the ladies and  gentlemen

Because let’s be real- Joshua Hong don’t care about your gender he just wants you to be happy and comfortable

The lady with the snack cart rolls around to his section of the train and asks if he wants to buy anything

And he’s like “oh no thank you, but hi what’s your name”

Cue Joshua befriending the lady and learning her life story and the names of her 6 kids

The lady is like “can I give an award to your parents for raising you to be this way”

And Joshua is like !!! “My parents are great I’ll tell you why!”

He tells the lady everything about his family and is so happy and  enthusiastic and the woman is almost in tears she’s so touched

She’s all “if you need anYTHinG don’t hesitate to find me”

She low key leaves him a bunch of snacks without charging him

And he’s like “oh she must’ve left these, how nice” and shares with the other students around him and adfghjk  can you tell I love Joshua Hong because I do like who doesn’t

I stg it’s impossible not to love him

BUT ANYWAY

FLASH TF FORWARD

You know he’s one of the Prefects for Hufflepuff because like who else is more qualified? Soonyoung? No ma'am. Not unless we want a dance party every time people are trying to study in the commons room. 

Is really helpful and caring over the younger students and if he sees they’re getting frustrated/sad/homesick, he’ll just go full out dorky and get them to laugh

Student: *is sad*

Joshua: “Wanna see how high I can sing?” *SCREAMS*

Student: *not breathing enough because of how hard they’re laughing* 

If anyone questions his prefect method of handling things (which is usually in a casual and memey way) he’s just responds like “well it’s a good thing they didn’t make you prefect, you obviously have no idea what you’re doing”

*air horn noise x1000* KILL EM JOSH

if he’s really worn out or just generally feeling down after a long day, he’ll go to his bed and slide his guitar out from the space under his bed frame and play really relaxing and beautiful melodies and sing along

And EVERYONE KNOWS JOSHUA DOES THIS BC IF YOU HEARD THIS ANGEL DO MUSIC THINGS WOULD YOU KEEP QUIET? nope

So if someone hears Joshua playing in his dorm room from the commons room it’ll be a chorus of shuffling and whispers of “he’s playing again! Everyone hush and listen!” Until everyone literally stops what they’re doing to listen to his beautiful voice and rhythmic guitar playing. 

Joshua wonders why he finds most of the Hufflepuff kids asleep in the commons room the next morning like “how did you all manage to fall asleep here?? Why wouldn’t you go to bed?”

And Seungkwan and Hoshi are all “wELL yOU know these couches are so comfy ahaha”

And Joshua is just like “ …k good to know”

Everyone knows that if Joshua is ever up late playing pretty music it’s because he’s feeling down so they make like an organized system so that the next day, everyone is nice to him and only good things happen. 

Someone’s clumsy owl is flying straight for Joshua? Hoshi jumps and grabs it out of the air and then runs tf away so Joshua doesn’t notice anything happened. 

Some jerk looks like they’re about to start a fight with him? Seungkwan “accidentally” drops a vial of newts urine on the jerk. 

Seungkwan: *hair flips* “hmm… sorry bout that” *walks away*

Joshua: “??? Are you okay? Let me help you”

Joshua would literally help the guy clean himself up OBLIVIOUS TO THE GUY’S ILL INTENTIONS TOWARDS HIM and the guy would be like “WHY DID I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS ANGEL, I MUST PROTECT HIM” 

And this is how everyone comes to love Joshua

Because how can you not?

ALSO

Joshua was talking with some random Hufflepuff kiddo about Naruto and a pureblood Hufflepuff walked by and was like “wtf is a naruto”

And joshua was like “bro its an anime how do you not know this”

And then the pureblood kid was like “wait what is anime?”

Joshua immediately calls for a Hufflepuff house meeting

“Okay guys it’s come to my attention that some of us aren’t aware of a certain reALLY awESoME thing called anime so we’re gonna have a marathon of a handful of them. I chose Fairytail, One Piece, and Haikyuu for tonight, let’s do it!”

Half the kids are like “hECK YES”, and the other half are like “??? If it makes Joshua happy then sure I’ll stay”

Some kid: “what about Yuri On Ice??”

Joshua: “what ABOUT Yuri On Ice?”

Another kid: “wait doesn’t Jeonghan kind of look like Victor?”

Joshua: “omg, you’re right. no one tell him about it but let’s Photoshop his face onto Victor and fill his dorm with copies of it”

The kids: “Joshua aren’t you supposed to be nice”

Joshua: “I’m nice to you now hush Natsu is about to breathe fire”

A couple of days later Ravenclaw!Jeonghan (at this point in time his hair is dyed silver and is longer like in the Mansae era) storms up to the Hufflepuff dorms with hands full of crumpled Victor posters, demanding to see Joshua

Joshua is just like “oh it must’ve been one of your ravenclaw kids, us Hufflepuffs know not to start trouble”

Jeonghan: “what do you mean you don’t start trouble, you have Seungkwan and Soonyoung in your house”

Seungkwan: “LISTEN VICTOR GO BACK TO YOUR DORM”

Jeonghan dyed his hair black and cut it shorter the next day

All the Hufflepuffs were snickering and Joshua was like “doN’t make fun of him”

Joshua: “hey Jeonghan nice hair” *knowing smirk*

Moral of the story, everyone just wants this memey boy to be happy and loved, and he definitely is. Even by Jeonghan.

SLYTHERIN!JIHOON

Don’t make fun of his height unless you want to be hexed. 

Literally the other Slytherins call him “Prince of Hexing”

He really likes hexes the best because they’re worse than jinxes but not at bad as curses

They’re just the right amount of “don’t fuck with me, I dare you”

Is also a prefect like Joshua,  but more because he’s really smart and good at handling situations that require leadership (like who could be the leader of a subunit with memes like Seungkwan and DK and not be a good leader smh)

The other houses are like “woah this guy is hardcore”

But his Slytherin kids know he’s a softie :)))

Jihoon: “hey quit running in the hallway, who do you think you are”

Actual translation of his emotions: “don’t run in the hall because someone’s gonna get hurt and I’ll be upset if you guys are in pain”

He’s soft. But disguises it well. 

NO ONE TELLS HIM THAT HE’S SOFT UNLESS THEY WANNA BE HEXED THOUGH

Unless you’re like already good friends with him and just picking fun at each other and are like “aww you’re a cutie, ya know”

Jihoon’s cheeks will flush brighter than a tomato

Also the sleeves of his robes are a lil too long for his arms so he has constant sweater paws and it’s the cutest thing

I’m not saying that he has a prank war with Gryffindor!Seungcheol but that’s exactly what I’m saying

All the stereotypical negativity between Slytherins and Gryffindors has been channeled into pranking each other. 

For the most part it’s Slytherins Jihoon, Jun, Minghao, and Chan vs. Gryffindors Seungcheol, Vernon, and Mingyu.

This war was initiated in the dining hall on one fine day *ba dum tss*

Seungcheol may or may not have slipped a love potion into Jihoon’s drink (literally just for shits and giggles like he had no real reason to, he just wanted to see what would happen)

the next person to go talk to Jihoon was Hufflepuff!Soonyoung

Let’s just say that after a very accidentally romantic conversation between the two, that Soonyoung still has a crush on him lol (who wouldn’t)

Soonyoung: “SEUNGCHEOL THANK YOU”

Seungcheol: “??? You’re welcome?”

Meanwhile Jun, Minghao, and Chan who were at the Slytherin table at the time never let Jihoon live it down

So Jihoon is like “alright revenge time”

So he plans to hex Seungcheol because like. that’s just what he does, he’s Prince of Hexes. 

He goes to the stadium one day because he left his bag behind when he was leaving quidditch practice (his position on the team is beater) and was like “oh God my homework is in there, what if it rains???”

What a cute studious boy

But yeah he’s getting his bag from the stands and thought that no one else was in the stadium but there he is. Choi Seungcheol. Out on his broom practicing (He’s the captain of the Griffindor quidditch team). 

Jihoon is like “welp it’s now or never”

But he finds himself hesitating.

he realizes that if he hexes Seungcheol, the role model for the Gryffindor kids, how is that going to reflect on their opinion of Slytherin kids?

And Jihoon does NOT want anyone fucking around with his kids. 

So instead of putting a painful hex on Seungcheol, he turns Seungcheol’s originally black hair, very very pink. 

And he just leaves the stadium. 

Seungcheol meanwhile has no idea that this has happened, because he’s intensely practicing and there’s no mirrors around because it’s a stadium

He only finds out when he walks into the Gryffindor commons room, vry tired from practice, and goes up to his dorm which he shares with Mingyu. 

Mingyu sees him and loSES IT

He can’t even say why he’s laughing because he’s laughing so hard

Seungcheol is literally about to throw hands when Mingyu just shoves a hand-held mirror in his face

Seungcheol stops moving and just thinks really hard. 

And he knows that it was Jihoon. he knows in his sOUL that it was Jihoon. 

Mingyu is like “its okay man do you want me to fix it?”

But Seungcheol is like “no. let’s have the rest of the school see what he did”

Mingyu: “pffft okay, princess bubblegum”

Seungcheol: “right back at you, Cheeto”

Mingyu: :/

ANYWAY BACK TO JIHOON

The next day in the dining hall (because yes this is a high school, it’s just for magic and stuff, so like all high school dramas/movies, shit is gonna go down in the caf)

Seungcheol walks right up the Jihoon who’s sitting at the Slytherin table and is like “like my hair? ;)))”

Jihoon is like “yeah, it really suits you”

And Seungcheol

My boy, Seungcheol

We know how he gets a lil reckless when he’s competitive

So Seungcheol says “I’m surprised you could even see the color from all the way down there”

Before Jihoon can stand up or react or do anything, Seungcheol’s pink hair is covered in an apple pie

An apple pie that Slytherin!Minghao just happened to be taking to Jun who was sat further down the table

Jun: *yelling at Minghao in Chinese* “omg my freaking pie!!”

Minghao: *yelling back in Chinese* “it was fOR A GOOD CAUSE”

Seungcheol is just standing there. And on the inside he’s thinking “fair move, Slytherin”

And he just turns and gives Mingyu and Vernon a certain look full of determination and a lil bit of craziness tbh

They know what Seungcheol wants them to do

Cue Mingyu’s look of horror and Vernon’s biggest smile

Vernon stands on the Gryffindor table and yells loud enough for everyone to hear:

"FOOD FIGHT!!”

And metaphorically speaking, shit hits the fan. Literally speaking, Minghao is immediately pied in the face by Jun.

Minghao: *still yelling in Chinese* “WE’RE ON THE SAME SIDE”

No but for real everyone in Gryffindor and Slytherin are throwing food across the cafeteria at each other. 

And you know how in the dining hall there’s just four really long tables, one for each house? Well the Slytherin and Gryffindor tables are the outside tables. 

Which means they are throwing food OVER the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. and a lot of food begins to hit these two houses too

Jeonghan and Joshua just make eye contact and nod and then everyone is in this fight

It lasts for about fifteen minutes until the professors can get it under control

When the professors ask who started it, everyone knows about Seungcheol and Jihoon’s feud, so the finger is pointed at them. 

While sitting in Dumbledore’s study, its dead silent but Jihoon and Seungcheol are shooting glances at each other every couple of seconds

Until they finally make eye contact and bust out laughing

“did you see Seungkwan get knocked out of his chair because Vernon threw a whole chicken at him?”

“Of course but did you see the look on Jeonghan’s face when Wonwoo smeared peanut butter into his hair?”

Dumbledore walks in and is like “I see you don’t regret your actions, but you’ve made a special bond with one another, so I’ll let you off the hook this time around”

Seungcheol: “wow, really?”

Dumbledore: “lol no, you two get to clean up the whole dining hall, without using magic. But that’ll give you two more time to get to know one another and realize you’re more similar than you think”

So Jihoon and Seungcheol spend the whole night cleaning, but they also talk the whole time, too. 

By the end of the night it’s like they’ve know each other their entire lives. 

The next day, Jihoon sees Seungcheol in the dining hall and smiles at him and everyone is like “…what. Jihoon just smiled at someone. and it was seuNGCHeoL. Are they friends now?”

But everyone just goes along with it and no one holds any grudges. 

Except for Minghao @Jun lmao