#who's actually interested in those thoughts). no pressure though!!' as if i've not been given the greatest gift (an excuse to oc post)

[carriehobbs]

Please tell me all about your Thicker Than MCs (no pressure!!!).

i would love to talk about my thicker than mcs!! 💕💕 i've done all the romance routes, but i don't have really solid mcs for all of them (sometimes i'm just inputting the first name that comes to my mind so i can see what a route has to offer without really getting attached to or thinking about a character, if that makes any sense). the mcs that i do have also all have some similarities (because i find thicker than (and blood moon too) has a fairly strong semi-set personality for the mc), so i'll try and focus on what makes them different from each other

isabelle

isabelle is my minimum wage schmuck (path of the master) and her whole thing is about power and control. she went from being completely powerless and exploited in her shitty job to being powerless and exploited as blackwell's thrall and now she's finally got a chance to turn the tables and make sure she's never subjugated like that again. she revels in the power that she gets from being a vampire lord. i waffle back and forth on whether or not she makes fledglings pay rent (she doesn't care that much about preserving human lives) or if she kicks them out entirely (it would give her a status boost and, arguably, more power and prestige that way). when she was human, people used to call her izzy but she always hated the name, so when she became a vampire she chose to reinvent herself a little bit and started going by isabelle (she thought it sounded more mature). her relationship with marcel is really interesting because there are major themes of power and control in his romance route. given that isabelle is all about never being exploited again, the amount of trust she places in marcel in their romance is incredibly significant. she's rather submissive to him in the bedroom, but it's this incredibly meaningful gesture that says i trust you with my body. i trust you with my safety. i trust you not to hurt me in any way that i don't ask for. when you drink my blood, i trust you not to take more than i can give. she also super gets off on the fact that marcel is nominally in control, but she knows that she really wields a lot of the power in their relationship (i think a lot about the kiss after the sword fight in chapter 4, where marcel insists on drinking from you first because you're a fledgling and he's older than you, but then gives you back more of his blood than he drank from you originally). isabelle is also incredibly jealous and possessive (the money heist scene in chapter 7 always makes me laugh because marcel brings james, one of his fledgling retainers, and isabelle gets sooooo huffy about it. like what do you mean you brought this fucking fledgling here to help you. i'm your fledgling. you're not allowed to have other fledglings. marcel kill this guy). this also means she's very attached to who she considers to be "her" people and will do just about anything for them and will go after people who try to harm them because they're hers. don't touch her stuff. she's so shacked up with marcel, they're going to spend eternity together (unless they die first lol) 💕

june

june is my gambler (path of the master). june isn't really about ideals or hard work and (prior to vampire prison) was really more interested in enjoying being a vampire. she likes the power and freedom being on the night court offers her (compared to other fledglings), but she doesn't really care a lot about amassing power for herself. she's not a big schemer (she's more than happy for tracy to handle a lot of the actual running and politicking of her domain) or a planner (she kind of reminds me of astarion in bg3 if you ask him about his plan to kill cazador and he's like "well, first we find cazador, then we kill cazador, and maybe we kill some other people too, i don't know, i'm not a details person" (paraphrased)). she also definitely still has problems with risk-taking from her gambling days: when she's presented with a gamble, she has to take it, even if it is bound to end poorly (for example, when you meet nathan in chapter 5 and he tries to kill you if you've not been a good little vampire, she made every single dumb decision that put her in danger and risked her getting shot just in case it gave her the upper hand). my rule for playing june is that, if i'm presented with a set of decisions, i have to pick the one that seems the riskiest. june is romancing iliya, so she's having a great time as of the last few updates lol. i think they both share a lot of similarities in that they really like parts of being a vampire, and a lot of what drew her to him is that she finds him fun to hang out with. she just enjoys being around him. his betrayal in chapter 8 was very rough for her, because she's kind of in love with him (whoops, she didn't mean for that to happen), and she's still really hurt by it. she's trying to forgive him, though, because in her mind, starving in vampire jail for five years with her is both a) punishment enough and b) pretty good proof that he cares about her too and is sorry. so she's trying to move past all that

lucas

lucas is one of my criminals (path of the beast) and he has a daughter named ella ("ella" was originally a placeholder kid name while i thought of something better, but then it stuck, and now if my mc has a kid they're automatically a daughter named ella. it feels weird to have the kid be named something else now, even if it's for a different mc). lucas's whole thing is that he looks like (and thus everyone expects him to be) all brawn and no brain, but he's actually one of my more strategic mcs. he's cautious and thinks things through from multiple angles and deliberately lets people assume that he's less intelligent than he is so that he can use their assumptions to his advantage (he reminds me a lot of iliya, who actually is his bff - weirdly enough, they look kind of similar, too). lucas cares a lot about making his domain a safer place for humans because he hopes (or hoped, after the last few updates, lol) to be able to one day bring ella into his domain so that he could watch over her (without being indebted to marcel) and know that she would be safe. he's romancing freya and they're really rather sweet together. he liked her instantly, mostly because when they met, she was one of the first people to really know him and still treat him like a person. most people either knew he was a vampire and treated him as one (or, worse, knew he was blackwell and treated him like a lord) and had all these expectations for him, or they didn't know he was a vampire and treated him as they would any other human. freya, however, knew he was a vampire, and treated him as if he was a person anyway. being with her was this piece of normalcy where he didn't have to pretend to be something he's not (either a lord or a human), and he could just be himself. prior to vampire jail, he also privately held hopes of introducing freya and ella to each other. on lucas's end, freya is someone he can be soft for and take care of. she gives him an outlet for his desire to care for and (to a much lesser extent) provide for someone (see the scene with freya in chapter 7 where you take her back to your place after her debacle with the ghost and get her food and insist she rests - lucas wants to be able to protect and provide for and take care of the people he cares about).

jackie

jackie is one of my divorcees (path of the shadow) and she was actually the first mc i made for thicker than, and in her first iteration she was a super-pathetic 40-year-old divorced dude named jack. the goal for jack was to be just an incredibly pathetic, cowardly, self-serving person, and while you can get a lot of that in the game, i found the feel of the dialogue really didn't fit the particular kind of pathetic feel i was going for with him. but then i realized i could age jack down a bit so that the dialogue would feel more natural and then her gender got swapped (mainly because i found the thought of the scene with tracy in the bathroom in chapter 5 to be really compelling when i imagined blackwell as a woman) and jackie was born. i took the "you're a loser" opening very seriously with her and imagined her as a character who went almost overnight from being a loser with no power, no friends, a bad relationship with her ex, and nothing going for her, to being a vampire lord (and, personally, i think the power's kind of gone to her head). she doesn't really care much about human life, and, prior to being in vampire jail, leaned hard into the power and prestige being a vampire lord gave her. now she mostly wants to tear lucius a new one and, if the rest of the night court goes down with him, that's fine by her. i think she and tracy share a kind of mentality where they prioritize self-preservation over other (what she would call) lofty ideals (e.g., preserving human life, etc.)

kate

kate is my doctor (path of the shadow). her entire thing is that she has a very strong code of ethics and strongly prioritizes human life. she trained for years to be a doctor to help and save people's lives, and she's not going to let some asshole decide to kill her and change all of that. she has a lot of anger towards the previous blackwell and the night court (it's not just that blackwell murdered her, but that he asked permission from gaius to do it. gaius made an executive decision about whether or not kate should live or die as if she was just some object, because her life meant so little to them, and then blackwell murdered her). she hates the night court and always felt trapped and unable to leave it (because being in the night court offered protection that fledglings normally don't have), and the second she met nathan, she jumped on his offer to help him destroy the night court. kate is romancing nathan, which works really well with their mutual hatred of the night court and desire to protect humans from vampires. he also brings out a kind of teasing, playful side of her that she doesn't normally get to indulge in anymore: she used to joke around more as a human, but being murdered and turned into a vampire and forced to become a lord all while trying to simultaneously maintain as normal a life as she can have doesn't really leave you with a lot of humour left. but she finds it so fun to pester him and get under his skin, and being with him makes her feel more human (and not just because she can mimic him). she also really admires nathan, his commitment to fighting against vampires who hurt and kill humans, andnthe way he turned the pain he experienced into a driving force that allows him to try and do good. i think she recognizes that instinct in herself.

ken

ken is my other criminal (path of the beast), also with a daughter named ella (they're attempting to romance minjo - we all know that's not going well right now). she's also my only mc who has a tag (even if there are only 2 posts in it right now, lol)! ken is nonbinary and uses they/she pronouns (even if the game defaults to they/them). ken is fun because they're genuinely kind of a mess. they're have pretty poor impulse control, have no filter, and can be really irreverent. i think they're gaius's favourite of all my mcs because they will not act deferential to him (which, after hundreds of years of posturing courtiers, entertains him). most likely to be murdered by werewolves after saying something stupid. ken's very much the kind of person to say "what could go wrong?" and then fuck everything up so extremely badly. ken, like lucas, is driven to keep her domain safe for humans out of a desire to bring ella into their domain some day and become a bigger part of her life. they appreciate pete for trying to take care of ella and keep her safe, but they also would not hesitate to kill him if given the chance because he pisses them off so badly lol. they're currently trying to work things out with the werewolves because they feel really bad about everything that's happened with minjo (bailing on them for 5 years and the other thing. if you've read the most recent chapter 11 update you know) and they want to be able to work things out with her, but they really don't expect to be able to. however, if anyone could get werewolves to accept the world's weirdest vampire in their pack, it would be ken.

abby

abby is my divorcee (path of the shadow) who has a good relationship with chris (mostly because she's romancing them). abby was only recently promoted from the amorphous ooze where all the other "mcs" who just have names and exist only to show me romance scenes from other routes live and is gradually growing a personality, so i'm kind of studying her like a bacteria culture and i don't really know what she's going to turn into yet. she is trying to get back with her ex and co-parent their child (ella!! i wasn't kidding when i said all my thicker than kids are named ella) together and, though they've hit some stumbling blocks, she remains optimistic! abby, like lucas and ken, is driven to keep her domain safe for humans because she wants her domain to be a safe place for chris and ella, but she does still care about the well-being of all humans (they're just not as important to her as chris or ella). abby is generally a pretty positive person who tries to avoid conflict (cue her disappearing on chris pre-divorce, which caused a lot of problems in their marriage) and has, over the past few years as a vampire lord, changed for the better, oddly enough. she's become more confident, more assertive, and more willing to fight for what she wants (whereas, in her pre-divorce marriage with chris, she was avoidant, petty, and argumentative, and willing to use her positive thinking to ignore problems chris tried to raise in their relationship). however, her five years in vampire prison have changed her too, and she's finding herself to be a little more brutal and cut-throat than she used to be.

[tora-the-cat]

How would you have preferred Inner Sakura as a concept to have resolved? Honestly, I think no matter what the idea, it would've been so much more impactful than just having her quietly drop off like she did in canon!

I always kinda assumed that, canonically, Sakura came to grips with her inner self the same way Naruto did in the "Waterfall of Truth", except it took place off-screen in her brain somewhere. Though the DID/Ino Mind-Transfer Shenanigans is waaaaayyyyyy more interesting a thought, in my humble opinion. Maybe Ino even helping Inner Sakura and Outer Sakura compromise and live together in one body? The possibilities...

Speaking of Inner Selves, wouldn't it be kinda funny if Kabuto also had one too given his hefty identity issues? Maybe for his sake it's better if he didn't, because his brain would be like a bumpin' nightclub lmao😅

(Also, please feel free to speak on this matter as much as you'd like! I love reading through your posts while I'm drinking my coffee! :>)

Okay. Okay. So. There are like....several answers to these questions lmao.

CANNONICALLY, Inner was resolved in the most annoying way possible. Sakura never referances having an 'inner self' in shippuden (to my memory), but she does say that training with Tsunade helped her work through her 'emotional issues'. I've always taken this as implying that the INTENDED reading is that Inner was just an inner diolouge Sakura had with herself of all the thoughts and emotions she repressed due to social pressure, and Inner is gone post time-skip because Sakura doesn't repress those anymore, she punches mountains in half. No longer having Inner is supposed to symbolize character growth.

But this, of course, would ALMOST make sense, were it not for. Ino Yamanaka. Who, after doing the mind transfer jutsu in the premils, confirms something that most viewers weren't even really considering until that point; Inner is NOT a personified inner diolouge in Sakura. She's a seperate mind. She is another soul INSIDE Sakura's body that operates even without Sakura's input.

And girls have to be strong to survive.

SO. That said. My read on cannon is that Sakura realized Inner wasn't normal and basically locked her in a mental box in the back of her brain for the rest of her life and refuses to think about her, because she's worried that Tsunade wouldn't see her as a worthy student if she was Crazy (because she thinks. she's Crazy). I don't think she had a waterfall of truth moment, cause that would require Sakura THINKING about Inner, which she. does not want to do.

As far as how I would have PREFERRED Inner Sakura being handled?

Kishimoto could, tomorrow, wake up and write a chapter of Boruto with my propisition that Inner is in a box and, once let free, would kind of just chill while Sakura lost her shit, and have a little side arc where Sakura works through that and DOES reconcile with Inner and stuff. He never WILL do that, but, yeah, I think that would work fine enough for finally tying off the 20 year old loose thread of Inner's disappearance. They've resolved stupider shit for less in Boruto.

This may be a surprising take from me but, honestly, I don't hate 'sakura realizes inner is real and immediately banishes her to the darkest corner of her mind so she never has to actually confront her existance'. I think that's ETREMELY in character for miss 'will DIE if she takes responsibility for ANY action EVER', especially at 14 years old. If I could rewrite naruto JUST to sneak Inner more neatly into it, I think I would still have Sakura box her away during the timeskip, with the caveat that we would like....actually get a vauge flashback scene of her actually repressing Inner just after she starts her training with Tsunade, and occasionally Sakura would say and/or think something a little weird that just gently reminds you that Inner is a thing, every once in a while- kinda like what little we see of Gaara before he looses shukaku but after him and naruto become friends. We would only get the Inner release/full reveal of what's going on with Sakura after she's hit an emotional breaking point and needs to let Inner out to help her regulate her emotions- I'm thinking around the time she does the whole fake confession scene with Naruto, but if we wanna give the plot point some breathing room it could just be an emotional spike as sharp and sudden of her hearing one too many people talk shit about Sasuke WITHOUT getting hit, or Ino daring to ask 'hey. what happened to the second soul in your body? how's she doing?' and Sakura trying desprately to change the subject because she has been NOT THINKING ABOUT IT for like 3 years thank you VERY much.

Honestly, I'd settle for Inner just continuing to be a running joke. Sakura fighting with her internally now that she has the confidence to ALSO be loud and angry, Inner having more emotional intelligence and transparency and Sakura never listening to her cause she's still in denial about Inner being a Person with anything worth listening to. Sakura thinking she's SO normal even though she's been muttering to herself about how she does NOT want to kick Ino's ass (Inner does. a lot) on and off for like 3 hours. Things of this nature. I think a lot of this is repeating what I've said about already so I'll stop here but like....I love you forever inner sakura they can NEVER make me hate you inner sakura <3

As far as what I think Inner 'is': it being a training mishap where Ino accidently split Sakura's soul in half as kids is SO much fun and especially has some steller InoSaku potential, but I personally just....Like the idea of sakura just. being like that lmao. I usually write it as Sakura being born a twin and Inner being her stillborn twin sister who's soul went into Sakura cause it had no where else to go (it's a LITTLE more complicated then that cause I think about her. a lot. but basically). Sakura WAS just born this way!!!! NORMALEST GIRL EVER!!!

On a similar note; I don't really EVER write Inner as a DID alter, because DID is like....real. DID manifests (to my understanding, I'm obviously not a doctor or anything) when a child is in such traumatizing circumstances during their developmental years that they dissociate frequently enough to fracture their psyche into different conciousness, so they can compartmentalize their trauma and remain a mostly-functioning person. You almost always have more then one alter, and often (without therapy) can't clearly draw the lines between 'you' and your alters cause. well. the point is that you're so chronically disocciated that you have trouble being 'all there' in the first place. LOTS of people have DID and don't recognize that's what it is for a long ass while, cause they think it's as simple as, like, that one stupid shamalan movie.

Canon Sakura almost CERTAINLY does not have DID, unless she went through some SHIT that was never even mentioned in cannon- which, to be fair, WOULD map on to DID because. she would NOT remember it lmao that's probably what Inner is FOR. But, for the story that Naruto is and the character that Sakura is, it doesn't really read. Sakura's supposed to be an insanely driven girl who drags herself from the mediocrity of her civilian upbringing to be the second coming of Tsunade, so, for all that you can read into and joke about Inner's existance and Sakura's low empathy generally and how Sakura seems concerningly releived that her parents are dead in RTN (all of which I LOVE doing), in order for her to work as a character she can't have too much of a tragic backstory in canon. Outside of canon is another matter of course, but idk. you can write an interesting plurality dynamic without calling it DID, especially in a world of ninja magic bullshit.

ON THAT NOTE THOUGH. Yeah. Kabuto has DID <3 <3 <3 LOOK AT HIM. LISTEN TO HIM TALK. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. YOU ARE RIGHT. HIS BRAIN IS BUMPING LIKE A NIGHTCLUB. AND HE IS NOT INVITED TO THE PARTY!!!!!

[batsplat]

in the early days of his career, obviously before casey entered motogp, i wonder if he ever lay in bed before falling asleep, imagining scenarios of him and vale on the track…

https://www.tumblr.com/kwisatzworld/768392840044789760/speaking-of-meeting-with-all-the-colleagues

(link) unfortunately this ask only reached me after I'd already answered and scheduled the previous post, feat. embedded video and transcription, so those are 10-15 minutes of my life I'm not getting back. alas, we live and we learn

but actually, y'know what, it's been long enough since I've brought most of this stuff up... let's do a quick round up of the state of play with regards to young!casey's admiration of valentino. we know they shared some pre-2006 pressers (three pixel screenshot on the left is from assen 2004):

and here's casey chatting to valentino's crew chief jb while watching valentino, who's celebrating one of his many victories in 2005:

rocking up to one of valentino's podiums and chatting to his crew chief?? noticing. perceiving. thinking. ofc paddock gossip held that if valentino were to swan off to f1, jb might have looked to link up with the promising young australian kid. it was also rumoured that jb was interested in getting casey to yamaha, though that obviously didn't end up panning out (whether by valentino's hand or not)

and as extra confirmation that valentino and casey had a rapport of some kind during casey's year in 250cc (the phrase 'except maybe for one or two riders' is doing so much heavy lifting it would make atlas wince):

we also know that casey has been following valentino "with admiration" early in his career, from 125cc era onwards - which, well, this is going to leave an impression on him. and of course we can bring in what casey has said in general over the years about his respect/admiration for valentino:

(think it's always key to note with the autobiography that it was written at the lowest possible point of the vale/casey relationship - and some of casey's rhetoric inevitably reflects the immediacy of his emotions at the time)

of particular interest I feel is what he said about 2006 - that his respect had grown, that "at that moment I thought he was someone almost impossible to beat". obviously this is kind of a funny thing to say given that valentino rather memorably did not win the 2006 title, but you know what he means - on merit, valentino was the best rider that year and even getting it to a final round decider would have felt like a crazy accomplishment at certain stages of the season. the whole thing thing made valentino even more impressive in casey's eyes (which may be why casey was watching back the title decider and concluding valentino had been sabotaged by Big America)

as a little bonus, let's also quickly bring in some more documentation of their 2006 on-track encounters (plus a cameo from catalunya 2007):

how much of this is casey retroactively forming this narrative about 2006 vs stuff he already felt strongly at the time - who knows. but to return to casey's early assessment of valentino as a rider... I'll say it, I think it's very theoretically possible to be a fan of valentino ONLY because of what a great rider he is but... casey's only human. "great sportsman" "looked up to and aspired to be" "the sort of people I wanted to become like"... this isn't just about valentino winning a lot of races. I refuse to believe an eleven year old is watching 125cc valentino and only making notes on his corner entry technique, come on. though speaking of - casey saying in 2021 he thinks motogp would be better with valentino at the front of the field!! because at the end of the day, he isn't wholly opposed to valentino's particular brand of fun. he enjoys watching valentino even when he doesn't always like competing with him

and... well. to understand young casey, it's crucial you never forget just how much pressure he was under, how terrified he was of failing, how he had this immense burden on his shoulders. I agree with mr motomatters on this (and also here, plus here) --

-- like it was unfair and it was unbearable. and I think when you're in a situation like that, you have to tell yourself it's going to be worth it. casey feels like this had never been his dream, that it was his parents' dream - but he had been convinced that he wanted this, even if by his late teenage years he was beginning to doubt it (x, x). he had to believe there would be light at the end of the tunnel... that at the end of all of this, the political machinations would stop, the financial insecurity would fade - and everyone would give him the credit he deserved. that everyone would acknowledge how good he was. he had an image of his head of a version of the sport that never existed - that could never exist unless the world was a very different place indeed - but he needed to have that image to keep himself going during all the hardship and toil and turmoil. and in the midst of all that, the most prominent face of the sport (certainly after the retirement of his other hero, doohan) was a bloke who made riding look like so, so much fun. who always looked like he was having a fantastic time racing. if you're a teenager in that situation, don't you think you might start associating valentino with your hope for what the sport might one day do for you? how can you not look at what valentino was doing and hope your life might end up looking a bit more like that? not exactly the same - casey was always clear on how he didn't want to become the next valentino rossi. that's not who he was. but just... just fun. just that

and he arrives at the pinnacle of the sport and he's winning and he's enjoying his success... but he's still not happy. obviously the job security and the financial security will have made a massive difference, of course things are far better now. but you can have a secure job and a stable income and essentially be winning in all the ways that matter... and it still might not be enough to magically dispel your malaise. it probably won't be. you can still be stressed and frustrated and lonely... you won't just be fixed. all the hardship casey has gone through to get to where he was could not suddenly be erased - and he held the sport to a standard it was never going to meet. at the end of the day, if we're being honest with ourselves, valentino's behaviour towards casey ranks well outside of the top ten causes for casey's discontent in 2007. valentino cools off towards casey because he is a title rival - which casey recognises to some degree, but that doesn't mean he could accept it. what valentino does that year falls entirely within the realm of completely normal behaviour of a top level professional competitor (albeit one who indirectly benefited from the entire sport already adoring him)... it takes until laguna 2008 for valentino to meaningfully cross any line with his conduct - and if anything he's still perfectly willing to lay it on thick where the interpersonal charm is concerned in the run-up to that race. no wonder, then, that laguna feels like such a monumental betrayal. valentino might not have been the root cause for casey's relative misery, but he was certainly the most easily identifiable face of it. just like valentino may have once represented casey's hope, so now he symbolised casey's disappointment and disillusionment (further discussed here)

so where does all of this leave us... well, you're right, anon. casey at last got to "share the track with him in an enjoyable way", something he says he "would have wanted to do" in his early career... whether he's talking about competing with him in motogp in a way that could actually be FUN for him, or whether he's thinking of this kind of out-of-paddock leisure time activity... tbh, maybe there even was an element of wanting the latter - hardly unheard of back in the day, cf valentino and sete training together in 1998 at kr sr's ranch. and there's no particular reason why something like qatar 2007 wouldn't have been an enjoyable experience to casey, given he himself gave glowing reviews of valentino's post-race conduct on that particular occasion. (or indeed something like catalunya 2007, for all casey's insistence that he didn't even particularly rate his own performance in that race... it's possible to make yourself miserable even when everyone's praising you and your hero is hailing you as a god - if the voice in your head telling you that you could have done better can never shut up.) in 2007, casey described the early season as 'fantastic' but felt it was no longer so once valentino 'stopped talking' to him... surely it will have been more than valentino's behaviour that could make casey feel so differently. in any casey, whether casey wanted more fun in motogp itself or outside of it - what matters is that he wanted to share something enjoyable on a track with valentino. once upon a time

when casey visits the ranch, a part of him is thinking back to a time when he could have imagined few things sweeter than that sort of recognition and acceptance from his hero. for all of casey's resentment and bitterness towards valentino, for all that he knows how unpleasant life can be as valentino's designated foe, he has always understood the joy that valentino represents within the sport - precisely because that emotion has so often been alien to him. maybe he really did dream of having that kind of fun on the track, imagine it in bed before falling asleep - like valentino, with valentino. when casey goes to the ranch, he is met with unconditional recognition and acceptance on valentino's part. valentino has all in all never been particularly shy in acknowledging casey's talents... it's not just anyone he'd say was 'riding like a god'. still, of course he was a little more careful with casey back in the day, committed first and foremost to figuring out this tricky new puzzle, to besting casey in competition... now, by contrast, valentino can let casey know how much he respects him without any reservation - and casey is ready to listen to what valentino is saying. it's bittersweet because it's what casey always would have wanted. and it's also come too late

[prongsfish]

sigh

im post blocked

anyway

FISHALICIOUS

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE EVAN ROSIER HEADCANONS

(ive been asking everyone because he's slowly becoming my favourite)

just now realising you asked this nearly a month ago i'm so sorry i don't know why i struggle with answering asks so much!! but anyways evan headcanons i will GLADLY give. my characterisation of him is less concrete than characters like barty or regulus but i think about him loads still i love him...

this is a classic ofc but i will always see him and pandora as twins!! i love siblings in media so much and i think it allows for suuupper interesting dynamics between them, even in canon

in muggle aus my go-to career for him is either a piercer or something in the medical science field. i can just picture him as this mildly off-putting medsci student who goes on to be a forensic pathologist or something, he's really intrigued by the human body and how it functions in various ways. could definitely also go the way of unlicensed surgeon or mad scientist who performs fucked up experiments on people but that sort of thing doesn't quite fit into every fic lmaoo

i've always thought of him as more of a piercings guy than a tattoo guy (which is the opposite to barty). he'd definitely have both but i associate him more with piercings if that makes sense? i imagine he'd have a labret, bridge, stretched lobes (~7/8"), stretched septum (~0g), eyebrows (normal and middle placements), and high nostrils. all symmetrical!! plus probably some other non-facial piercings

he'd love sci-fi, thriller, and horror (especially psychological) films. anything super tense and probably confusing

when he was a child he and pandora would trap and kill insects. they'd spend ages examining little bug bodies and dissecting them with sticks and stuff... as he grew older he became more and more interested in bigger animals. occasionally he would kill animals himself but more often he'd search for those already dead, especially roadkill. once he was finished with any given specimen he'd carefully remove, clean, and reconstruct their skeletons to give to pandora. she didn't like the organs stuff as much as he did but she loved collecting bones and taxidermy insects, in exchange one year for his birthday (10-14th, maybe) she spent ages searching to buy him a surgical set from an antique store

waaay scarier than barty. if you don't know them you might be more initially scared by barty but while barty is loud and crazy and violent and laughs at pain/danger, evan is creepy. he knows way a million and one ways to kill someone without leaving behind any evidence. he knows every single pressure point on the human body. someone mentions a medicine they've taken their whole life for the first time and when someone else asks what it is he can explain in minute detail exactly how it works to the point where not even the person who takes it knew even half of what he says. he's super quiet moving without even meaning to be so he scares the shit out of people all the time. he doesn't blink as often as he should but just often enough that you don't notice until you're paying attention. and this is all revealed gradually, whereas barty's most "scary" traits are purposefully the most surface level things about him

he loooves medical dramas. he's watched tons of them. he HATES the good doctor though, purely on principle because once someone said that must be his favourite because he's autistic. his actual favourite is house

he runs cold and NEVER wears shorts. lots of beanies and jackets

these were so random and i went on a few tangents but oh well i did like five other things between writing these so it's a bit of a mess LMAO

[cheerscoops]

Wherever You Point To I’ll Find ~ Steve Harrington x Chrissy Cunningham

Nobody expected a budding romance between Steve and Chrissy when they were invited on this graduation road trip. But, as the two spend more and more time together away from the pressures their families, they just might find that they’re the perfect match.

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Tags: modern au, road trip, mutual pining, fluff, angst, discussion of mental health and body issues, eventual smut, adult themes and swearing throughout

Word Count: 12.3k

A/N: It's been far too long since I've updated this story, so thank you all for your patience with me. Specifically, thank you to @quinnkeerys for reassuring me about my writing abilities when I was feeling down about the lack of interest in my writing and encouraging me to keep writing. This is their story as much as it is mine, and I'm so excited for you all to see what's going to happen next.

Chrissy woke up cuddling with the gator plushie that Steve had gifted her the day before. She was still having trouble believing that that had actually happened. She hadn’t even realized that he’d seen her considering it before deciding that her parents would think it was a waste of money if she bought herself any more cuddly toys. They barely tolerated her attachment to her Fozzie Bear plushie and regularly told her that she was too old to rely on a stuffed animal for comfort.

Steve hadn’t known any of that though. He’d just seen her smiling at it and bought it for her without her noticing. This, of course, only brought up more questions that Chrissy just didn’t have the answers to. Jason had very rarely bought her any sort of surprise gift, and the few gifts he gave her tended to be more for show - a pendant with his initials, his letterman jacket - things that were meant to scream that Chrissy was his and only his even when he wasn’t around to act overly possessive of her. He’d certainly never given her a stuffed animal just because. So, what did it mean that Steve was surprising her with a gift when he barely knew her?

Of course, she had an inkling that Steve was maybe flirting with her. It felt obvious after the conversation they’d had the night before. He'd kept her pictures because he was jealous of hypothetical men that she hadn’t even met yet. That had to mean that he was at least a little bit interested in her. And she was definitely a little bit interested in him. She just didn’t know if she was ready to jump into something right now. She was going to be going off to college soon, and the idea of starting something new when she was about to be in a big transitional period of her life scared her more than she was willing to admit. She liked the idea of putting Hawkins behind her and starting fresh without anything holding her back.

But then she thought about the way Steve looked at her when he told her she was beautiful, and the idea of being tied to something in Hawkins didn't sound so bad.

"Can I ask you something kind of personal?" Chrissy asked as she leaned up against the open bathroom door. Nancy was already up and ready for the day, and she was just putting the finishing touches on her makeup.

"Depends on the question, but go ahead."

"Was Steve a good boyfriend when you dated him?"

"I wouldn't have stayed friends with him, and I definitely wouldn't have come on this trip with him if he hadn't been."

"But did he include you in things? Like, did he invite you to parties with the basketball team and actually talk to you during them? Did you feel like he really wanted you there?"

"I mean, I didn't exactly want to go to most of those parties, but I was always invited, and he always made sure I felt included in the conversation when I did go. Why do you ask?"

"No reason. Just curious, I guess."

Nancy glanced over at Chrissy who was staring down at the bathroom floor and seemed entirely too invested in the tile pattern. She could pretend she didn't know why Chrissy was asking her about Steve all she wanted, but the answer was obvious: Chrissy was into him, and she was trying to figure out if being into him was a good thing or not.

That wasn't what stuck with her the most though. It was the way that Chrissy seemed nervous whenever she spoke. It was like she was afraid of what Nancy was going to tell her, and that's when everything clicked for her.

She'd always known that Jason wasn't exactly great to Chrissy. Eddie had complained about him and his treatment of her enough that Nancy was well-versed with how horrible he was even if she didn't know the full story.

There had been some overlap between her relationship with Steve and Chrissy's relationship with Jason, and she couldn't remember seeing her at any of the team parties she went to. She couldn't count the number of times where Eddie had told her that he was hanging out with Chrissy or that she was joining them for a movie night because Jason had ditched her or told her that none of the guys from the team were bringing their girls to the party, so it would be best if she stayed home. Nancy had never given it much thought at the time, but this had clearly had a lasting negative effect on Chrissy. She wondered what else had stayed with her, but she didn’t think it was her place to pry.

Maybe it was a little presumptuous of her, but if Chrissy was asking these questions about Steve, Nancy couldn't help but think it was because she'd been right about something starting between the two of them. And, if that was the case, she knew that Chrissy was probably just making sure that she wasn't getting into a relationship with another asshole jock who wouldn't treat her the way she deserved to be treated.

"You know, Steve's a really great guy," Nancy said as she set down the mascara that she'd just finished applying and turned to face Chrissy. "Even when he's pursuing someone that he's so clearly wrong for - like me - he has this way of making you feel so special. Like you're the most important person in every situation. I never felt left out or like I wasn't wanted when we were together, and if I had, he would have done everything in his power to let me know I was the only person he cared about. You could do a lot worse than Steve Harrington."

"Oh, I'm not trying to be with him or anything like that," Chrissy insisted. "I was just curious is all."

"If that's what you need to tell yourself to finish this road trip with him, then I'll let you keep believing that. But that blush of yours is telling me an entirely different story." Nancy moved to exit the bathroom.

"Bathroom's all yours," she said. "We're supposed to be down at breakfast in about twenty minutes and we wouldn't want to keep Eddie and a certain someone that you totally aren't interested in waiting."

After that, Chrissy found herself rushing through her morning routine. She was so embarrassed that Nancy had seen right through her, but she was eager to spend more time with Steve. Everything was telling her that she could trust him with her heart, but she wanted to get to know him a little better before she did anything about this crush. No amount of reassurances from Nancy about how great of a guy he was could change the fact that she barely knew him. She had to figure out if she was actually interested in him or if she was just enjoying the attention he was giving her.

She had almost decided what she wanted to talk to him about when Nancy approached him and held out her hand.

"Keys, please," she requested. "I'm driving."

"Why?"

"Because you look exhausted, and I'm perfectly capable of driving us for a couple hours. You can sit in the back and try to get some more sleep."

Steve reluctantly handed over his keys. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate Nancy's offer. He'd slept terribly the night before - probably from the guilt about making Chrissy feel bad about herself even though he’d apologized and attempted to make things right - and he really could use the extra rest. It was just that he'd never been able to comfortably sleep in the car, so he knew he wasn't actually going to sleep in the back, and he much preferred driving to being a passenger anyway.

He tried to make himself comfortable in the backseat, but there was a moment where Nancy hit a speed bump, and he was soon grimacing as his head thumped against the side of the car.

"Are you okay?" Chrissy asked.

"I have a hard time sleeping in cars if I have to sit up. It's okay though. I promise I'm fine."

"You can lay down if you want to. I mean, I wouldn't mind if you used me as a pillow."

"Are you sure? I wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable."

"If you're comfortable, I'm comfortable," she told him.

They shared a small smile before Steve moved to curl up on the seat with his head resting against Chrissy's thigh. As soon as he was comfortable, Chrissy threaded her fingers through his hair and started lightly scritching at his scalp.

"Is this okay?" she asked.

"Mmhmm. Feels nice," he replied as he started to melt under her touch.

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

“Never.”

Chrissy wasn’t sure how long it took Steve to fall asleep, but the second Eddie noticed the soft snores coming from the backseat, he turned around to talk to her.

“You’re looking awfully cozy back there,” he said with a knowing smirk.

Chrissy shushed him before looking down at Steve to make sure he hadn’t woken up.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She did her best to speak softly. She didn’t know if he was a light sleeper or not, and she didn’t want to risk waking him up so soon after he’d finally started to rest.

“You know, if you’re trying to convince yourself that you’re not interested in him, playing with his hair while he sleeps isn’t gonna do it for you.”

“I will repeat: I have no idea what you’re talking about. This is a purely platonic gesture, thank you very much.”

“Uh huh. Sure. Because everyone thinks that head scritches are the most platonic of platonic gestures.”

“Is this you confessing that you’re secretly in love with me?” Chrissy asked, trying to do whatever she could to change the subject. “Because I seem to recall you giving me head scritches when I stayed over after Jason - well, you know.”

“That was a completely different situation, and you know it.”

“Sure. That’s just what you want us to think. How can you openly admit that you’re interested in another girl right in front of your girlfriend? Don’t you have any common decency?”

“Yeah, Eddie,” Nancy continued with the teasing. “How could you do this to me? I thought we had something special? And I thought she was your sister? How messed up is that?”

“If I didn’t think it would wake up Steve, I’d start playing ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ right now.”

“Deciding that you two should be friends is maybe the worst thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.” Eddie slumped down in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest.

Chrissy covered her mouth with her free hand to keep her giggles from spilling out. She was trying to contain her laughter as much as possible because she didn’t want to be the one to accidentally wake Steve.

"Since we're on the topic of crushes," Nancy started after they'd had a moment to calm down. "Chrissy, did I ever tell you that Eddie has the biggest crush on Taika Waititi."

"No, he does not!"

"Oh, but he does. We had to stop watching ‘Our Flag Means Death’ because his bi panic was too intense."

"I just don't know if I want to be him or be on him, okay? He's weirdly hot as Blackbeard, and I was not mentally prepared for that."

"You wore your bandana on your head for a week trying to emulate him," Nancy teased.

"That's why you did that?" Chrissy asked through her giggles.

"I was unaware that my girlfriend and my best friend actually hate me and only keep me around to make fun of me, and I don't think I'll ever recover," Eddie pouted. "Also, Nancy has a crush on Aubrey Plaza. Tease her now."

"Nice try, but I'm not embarrassed by that."

"What about Chrissy's most embarrassing crush then?" Eddie asked.

"Hey! You've been sworn to secrecy on that!"

“Well, if we’re all talking about our embarrassing crushes, it’s only fair that we talk about yours, too. And yours ties in perfectly with Nancy’s. In fact, you could experience your crushes together if you really wanted to.”

“We could?” Nancy asked.

She was going to strangle him. The only upside to this situation was that at least Steve was still asleep, and he wasn’t going to be an audience to her embarrassment.

“Why’d you stop?” Steve asked, startling Chrissy and making her realize that she’d stopped giving him head scritches in her urgency to stop Eddie from talking.

So much for that positive.

“So needy,” she said with a small smile. “Did you really wake up the second I stopped?”

“Maybe,” he replied. “It just felt really nice is all.”

Before Chrissy had a chance to respond, Eddie piped up from the front seat again.

“Welcome to the party, Steve,” he said. “The girls seemed dead set on discussing my most embarrassing celebrity crush, so now we’re talking about Chrissy’s.”

“No, we most certainly are not,” Chrissy protested. “And you’re breaking the best friend code by bringing it up.”

“I’m only bringing it up because you and Nancy were bullying me first. I’m the real victim here, Steve.”

“Can it really be considered bullying if we’re doing it because we love you?” Nancy asked.

Steve moved to sit up, and Chrissy missed the weight of his head in her lap immediately.

“Depends on how embarrassing the crush is,” he said as he re-buckled his seatbelt.

“Eddie’s is Taika Waititi, and mine is Aubrey Plaza,” Nancy replied. “But I’m not embarrassed about it the way Eddie is.”

“Fair enough.” Steve turned to face Chrissy. “You don’t have to say it if you really don’t want to, but I’ll tell you my most embarrassing one if you tell me yours.”

“I don’t know. What if your crush isn’t even that bad? It’s probably something really basic like Ryan Reynolds or Margot Robbie,” she teased.

“Why would he be embarrassed by that?” Eddie asked. “Everyone has a crush on Ryan Reynolds.”

“Even you?” Nancy asked with a quirked eyebrow.

“No comment. Besides, we’ve moved on to Chrissy and Steve now. Leave me out of this.”

"Two words: Chris Motionless."

"That doesn't even count because you like him, too. And Ricky. And probably Vinny too if it wouldn't send Gareth into a panic thinking he'd have to fight you for his affection."

“I promise it’s not basic,” Steve told Chrissy, ignoring whatever was going on with Nancy and Eddie teasing each other in the front seat.

“You have to go first, and then I’ll decide if it’s juicy enough for me to tell you mine.”

“No way. If I tell you mine, you have to tell me yours. That’s the deal.”

He held out his hand, and Chrissy hesitantly gripped it and shook.

“Deal. But you still have to go first,” she said, not letting go of his hand just yet.

“Laura Dern."

"The mom from Little Women?"

"I mean, I was thinking of her as Dr. Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park, but yes. Now yours."

"I can't," Chrissy said, shaking her head. "Yours was nowhere near as embarrassing as mine."

"That wasn't the deal."

Chrissy started to pull her hand away, but Steve tightened his grip and gave her hand a small squeeze.

"Nope. You went back on our deal, so this hand is mine until you tell me."

"I guess you're just gonna have to hold my hand all day then."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

Chrissy didn't have time to react to Steve's blatant flirting because Eddie had turned around in his seat again.

"She has a crush on Sonic the Hedgehog," he said with a grin that rivaled the Cheshire Cat.

"I do not!" Chrissy could feel her cheeks burning with embarrassment. She was past strangling him. He was getting thrown from a moving vehicle now.

"That's not what you told me."

"I don't have a crush on Sonic," she said as she stared down at her hands - one of which was still in Steve's grasp. "I have a crush on the guy who voices Sonic. There's a difference. I just really like his character on Parks and Rec is all. He's funny and cute."

"Why is that so embarrassing?" Steve asked.

"I don't know. It just is."

That was a lie. She knew why. She just didn't want to admit it out loud. Like so many other things that made her feel bad about herself, this all stemmed from her relationship with Jason. Every time she showed an inkling of attraction towards anyone in anything they watched together, she was made to feel like she was weird for finding that person attractive, or there were subtle digs about how silly it was to pretend she had a chance with someone like that. It broke her to the point where she didn't feel comfortable joking around about celebrity crushes the way that her friends did, and she didn't know if that would ever change.

"Well, I don't think it is," Steve reassured her. "I mean, I don't really know who that guy is, but c'mon. Funny and cute? He's gotta be the total package, and I say this as someone who is also obviously funny and cute."

"You are? Since when?" Chrissy teased.

“Since always,” he teased right back. “Haven’t you noticed?”

Chrissy could feel her cheeks heating up again because of course she had. She would have to be blind not to have noticed, but that wasn’t exactly something she was ready to say out loud just yet.

“Can I have my hand back now please?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, technically, Eddie told me and not you, so you didn’t fulfill your half of the deal which means I think you’re just gonna have to hold my hand until we’re done at the museum later.”

“Oh no. My worst nightmare,” she said through her giggles.

And Steve stayed true to his word. The second they got out of the car to stop for lunch, he was jogging around to her side and holding out his hand for her to take. The fact that he seemed to be offering his hand rather than forcing her touched her. He wanted her to be in on the joke with him. When she took his hand in hers and he laced their fingers together, she couldn’t help but think that this felt right.

Other than letting go of her hand so she could eat lunch and run to the restroom with Nancy, Steve held Chrissy’s hand every moment that he could. He even let Nancy drive again after their lunch stop.

“How am I supposed to hold Chrissy’s hand hostage if I’m driving?” he’d asked. “That just feels unsafe for everyone involved.”

Chrissy laughed along with him, and it wasn’t like she actually minded having to hold his hand anyway. She realized that she felt safe with him in a way she hadn’t really expected, and her heart melted a little bit whenever she felt him absentmindedly rubbing his thumb against her own. She knew that this was just him joking around with her, but when he offered her his hand again when they got out of the car, she couldn’t help but think that she wouldn’t mind it if he made her hold his hand for the rest of the trip.

Their next stop was the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Shocking no one, this was another one of Eddie’s requests. He’d spent enough time joking about how his goal in life was to be weird enough that he became known as the trailer park cryptid that it only made sense that he’d want to spend time at a museum dedicated to the history of his own favorite cryptid.

Typically, this wouldn’t have been something that either Chrissy or Steve was interested in, but they made it fun for each other. Every so often, he would lean over and whisper the headlines off of the different newspaper articles and the words off the plaques in increasingly ridiculous ways leaving her giggling both from the silly voices and the fact that his breath was tickling her ear.

“Stop it,” she said through her giggles as she turned and pressed her face into his shoulder. He had to know the effect that he was having on her.

"I'm sorry," he said with a smirk. "Am I being too funny and cute for you to handle?"

"You're being a menace actually, Stephen," she told him, using what she assumed was his full name to emphasize her point.

She peeked around where she was hiding her face in his shoulder and looked up at him, and he felt that same grip in his chest that he’d felt when she was making faces at him the day before. If he wasn’t convinced she’d hide her face again or ask him to delete it immediately, he might have pulled out his phone to take a picture of her just to save this moment forever.

“And being cute won’t get you out of your punishment early, Chris,” he said as he gave her hand a small squeeze.

“Would you mind not calling me that?” she asked. “I don’t really like that nickname.”

Jason had always insisted on calling her Chris, and she’d always loathed it. But, no matter how many times she asked him to stop, he never would and insisted that it was their thing. He liked calling her that, and that was all that mattered to him. Forget her feelings or the fact that being called Chris made her skin crawl. His preferences were more important. 

Now, in addition to the distaste she originally had for the nickname, it had a cloud hanging over it in the form of a guy who never really loved her. She just hoped that Steve was the kind of guy to respect her boundaries and not call her that when she said she didn't like it.

"Sorry," he said as he gave her hand another little squeeze. "I won't use it again. Permission to try out other nicknames until I find one we both like?"

"Permission granted. You better come up with some good ones though. I'm very picky about what I’ll let people call me.”

“I’m up for the challenge.”

They made their way into the small gift shop next, and Chrissy was immediately drawn to the little mothman plushies on display.

“He’s so ugly,” she said with the biggest grin on her face. “I love him.”

"You do?" Steve asked.

"I do."

"But you just said he's ugly."

"That's why I like him. He's weird."

"Then, he's yours," he said as he pulled one of the plushies off the shelf.

"You really don't have to do that. I don't need another stuffed toy."

"I know I don't have to. I want to. Think of this as a reward for being such a good sport about your punishment."

He punctuated his statement by giving her hand a small squeeze.

"I thought we'd determined this wasn't a punishment," she said as she squeezed his hand back. "And even if it was a punishment, isn't the whole point of a punishment that it's the opposite of a reward?"

"Quit using logic and let me be nice to you."

Chrissy could feel her cheeks warming, and she moved to hide her face from him again. She wasn’t used to this kind of treatment, and she didn’t know how to respond. But, more importantly, she didn’t know how to thank him properly. The few times Jason had given her a gift, she’d given him a kiss along with her thanks and then snuggled up to him until he inevitably got angry at her for being in his personal space without being willing to put out. She couldn’t exactly do that with Steve. This could all be a purely platonic gesture of friendship on his part, and she’d hate to make things awkward just because she’d misinterpreted everything.

And it wasn’t like she could buy him a gift either. Even if there had been something in that gift shop that he would have liked, she was trying to spend as little money as possible on this trip. Her parents weren’t exactly supportive of her chosen major, and even with her various scholarships, she was afraid that she was going to be left on her own to pay for everything when her parents inevitably decided to stop throwing away money for something as frivolous as they thought her dreams were.

These thoughts stayed swirling around in her head as she let Steve pull her over to the counter to pay for her gift. When he handed her the plushie, she hugged it to her chest with her free arm.

“I wish there was something more I could do than just saying thank you.”

“My gifts aren’t conditional,” he said with a shrug. “You don’t have to do anything other than what you’re doing right now.”

Chrissy could feel herself starting to blush again as she smiled up at him. He was just so genuine in his kindness towards her, and he was acting like it wasn’t a big deal when it was to her. She just didn’t know how to tell him that without making things awkward.

Meanwhile, Steve was trying to play it cool, and he felt like he was failing miserably. Before they’d even entered the gift shop, he’d told himself that he didn’t need to buy anything there. The only person in their group that needed a souvenir of their trip to the Mothman Museum was Eddie, and Steve certainly wasn’t going to buy one for him. But then Chrissy said she liked the weird looking cryptid plushies, and he was rushing to buy her one in the hopes that he’d get to see her smile again.

That was how she could thank him. Just keep holding his hand and smiling at him and looking at him like he was a much better person than he thought he was. She had to realize that he was flirting with her at this point. He felt like he was being so obvious about it, but she was still so closed off with him. Even if she was joking around with him and smiling at him, he could tell that she was hesitant to really form a connection with him. He didn’t know why that was. All he knew was that he wanted to find a way to prove that he was a safe person for her, and he was willing to do whatever it took to make that happen.

Out of the corner of her eye, Chrissy spotted Nancy and Eddie looking over at her and Steve. They were huddled up together and talking, but their attention was clearly on the other couple. Chrissy started to feel self-conscious about what they must be thinking about her. How she’s being so obvious about enjoying her punishment and taking advantage of Steve’s lighthearted fun. In theory, she knew her best friend would never judge her like that, but she couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable with them watching her, and she was desperate to not be the center of attention.

“Does you giving me a reward mean that my punishment is over?” she asked.

She didn't really want it to be over, but she felt like if she let it go on any longer, she'd never let him go, and that wasn't something she thought she was allowed to do.

"It can be," he replied as he loosened his grip on her hand.

He didn't want to let go of her, but now he was questioning if he'd gone too far with the whole hand holding thing. She hadn't acted like she'd disliked it, but maybe she'd just gone along with it to avoid hurting his feelings. Those thoughts only made him feel worse about the whole situation. He watched as she let go of his hand and hugged her new plushie to her chest, and he couldn't help but think he'd just bribed her into being okay with him pushing her boundaries. There was no way he could have known that she wanted to be holding his hand as much as he wanted to be holding hers.

Maybe he should have just left things there, but he had to check in with her about this and make sure she was okay. So he placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled her to the side away from the cashier in order to give her the illusion of privacy.

"I know this teasing and the hand holding and everything was all supposed to be for fun," he started, "but I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You seemed alright with it in the moment, but I don't know. You just got kind of quiet on me, and the last time that happened, it was because I'd made you feel uncomfortable. That's the last thing I ever want to do, so you can tell me if I overstepped at all, and I won't ever do anything like that again, okay?"

Chrissy hugged the plushie to her chest a little tighter and smiled up at him.

"I liked holding your hand, Steve," she reassured him. "I'm just not used to anyone paying this much attention to me, and I'm definitely not used to people caring about my comfort over their own. Me feeling overwhelmed had everything to do with me and nothing to do with you."

"Are you sure? You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"

"I promise you didn't do anything wrong. I will happily hold your hand again in the future - as a punishment or not. I just needed a moment to feel invisible."

He simultaneously felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest and like he needed to go fight someone. He had a pretty good idea about who made Chrissy feel like her comfort wasn't important, and the idea of Jason pushing at her boundaries made his blood boil. He didn't know how he'd do it, but he was going to make it his mission to help her realize she was worthy of being the center of attention sometimes.

Before he could say anything else to her, they were rejoined by Eddie and Nancy.

"How do you feel about cryptid hunting tonight?" Eddie asked them.

"Cryptid hunting?" Steve asked.

"What Eddie means is who wants to go camping tonight?" Nancy asked. "There was a brochure advertising a campground that has tent rentals, and we were thinking it might be fun to do that instead of finding a hotel for the night. My family used to go camping every summer when Mike and I were kids and Holly hadn't been born yet, and Eddie's been loads of times with his uncle, so it's not like we'd be going into this blind. What do you think?"

Steve was against camping. He didn't see the point of sleeping on the ground when beds existed. He was about to voice that opinion, but Chrissy spoke up first.

"That sounds like fun to me," she said. "I always wanted to go camping when I was little, but my parents aren't exactly outdoorsy people. But going with you guys would definitely be more fun than that would have ever been. I say we do it."

"Sounds fun to me, too," Steve agreed. If Chrissy wanted to go camping, he'd pretend that he wanted to go too. This was their graduation trip anyway. He was just along for the ride, and if they all wanted to do something, he wouldn't be the one to stop them. Plus, he wasn't going to be the one who kept Chrissy from doing something she wanted to do. Especially when he'd just decided that he wanted to make her see that her wants were just as important as everyone else's. He could put up with sleeping on the cold, hard ground if she wanted to try it out.

So the group made a quick stop at a camping supply store to pick up sleeping bags and any other equipment that Eddie thought they'd need as well as a grocery store to pick up whatever they needed to make dinner and breakfast, and then they were off to the campsite.

Since they had tents of various different sizes, Eddie and Nancy decided that they'd get a two-person tent to share, and Steve and Chrissy each chose smaller, single-person tents for themselves. They made quick work of setting up their campsite with Eddie helping out the less experienced members of their group to get their tents erected.

Steve tried to be as useful as he could, but setting up tents and starting fires weren't exactly his forte. He wasn't the outdoorsy type by any means, and it was hard to feel like he was really contributing when all he could do was hold things in place while Eddie did all the real work. He wished he could be more helpful, but he was so out of his element.

But, just when he was starting to feel completely inadequate, Chrissy chose to sit down next to him while Eddie and Nancy got to work on starting a fire for them.

"I feel so useless here," she said as she smiled up at him. "My only camp experiences are from cheer camp, and those had zero really outdoorsy elements to them."

"You'll be the first we go to if we're in need of any backflips then."

"You sure about that? Eddie might try and beat me to the punch."

"He can do a backflip?"

"Oh, he can barely do a somersault, and he'd probably break his neck if he tried. Doesn't mean that'll stop him though."

"Sounds about right. For the record, I probably feel just as useless as you do. This isn't really my thing either," he told her.

"Maybe so, but I'm sure you have plenty of skills that could be useful out here. I mean, you spend a lot of your time entertaining those kids, right? I bet you're great at telling scary stories around the campfire."

"Oh yeah. The king of keg stands and scary stories."

"I'm expecting something pretty impressive from you then," she said as she nudged him with her elbow. "I don't scare easily, so you better make it really good. I want to have nightmares."

"I'll do my best."

And, just like that, he didn't feel so useless anymore. Somehow, she was able to say exactly the right thing to wash away all of the insecurity that he was feeling, and he felt better just sitting next to her. She rarely left his side for the rest of the evening almost as if she could tell he wanted to have her around.

She stayed sharing his space as they made their dinner, and she let him convince her that she would be doing herself a disservice if she didn't have a second s'more. She laughed at his jokes and seemed genuinely interested in everything he had to say. He'd made it his mission to make her feel better about herself, and here she was doing exactly that for him.

When they were done eating, Chrissy was the first to suggest that they tell scary stories around the crackling fire, and she urged Steve to get up and be the first to perform. And he did just that. 

Truthfully, it wasn't even his story. It was one that Dustin had told to the party during a sleepover at Steve's. Something about monsters in the woods that prey on their victims' worst fears and contort their bodies into pretzels made of broken bones as they grow stronger at the sounds of their screams. It had even shaken up Max who prided herself in being unaffected by anything scary, so he figured it was the perfect one to tell Chrissy when she said she didn't scare easily.

He put everything he had into that story, and the fact that Chrissy seemed completely enthralled by him only urged him to be bigger and bolder in his storytelling. Anything to keep her attention on him.

When his story came to an end, Chrissy could feel the goosebumps prickling her skin. She was about to say something - maybe congratulate Steve for successfully spooking her - when Eddie snuck up behind her and grabbed her waist causing her to shriek.

She jumped up from her seat as she pulled Eddie's wiggling fingers away from her sides.

"You jerk," she pouted. "Why would you do that?"

"I needed to get back at you for ganging up on me earlier."

"Why didn't you scare Nancy then? She was the one who started it."

"The last time I tickled Nancy, she almost broke my hand, so I figured scaring you was the safer option."

"Leave her alone, Eddie," Nancy said as she beckoned for him to sit back down next to her.

Eddie crossed back over to sit with her and wrapped his arms around his girlfriend to half pull her into his lap.

"What kind of brother would I be if I didn't mess around with her on occasion?"

"A nice one," Chrissy said as she sat back down in her original seat.

Eddie scrunched up his nose and shook his head.

"Could never be me," he teased.

Steve moved to sit back down next to Chrissy and fully turned his attention on her.

“I didn’t freak you out too much, did I?” he asked.

“I’m okay. Some people just like to mess with me a little too much for their own good,” she said as she gave Eddie a very pointed look.

"I'd suggest we stick something gross in his tent while he's sleeping, but that would also punish Nancy, and she definitely doesn't deserve that."

"It's fine. I don't need to get revenge. Not tonight at least."

"You sure you're okay then?"

"I promise. I told you that I wanted to be scared, and you delivered."

"And here I was hoping that you'd want to hold my hand again for comfort."

"I guess you'll just have to wait until I go back on my word again for that."

Their night wrapped up shortly after that. Nancy was starting to get tired, so she and Eddie put out the fire before she dragged him over to their tent with Steve and Chrissy retreating to their own tents shortly after.

It was only once she was alone and fully enveloped by the darkness of sleeping outside that Chrissy really started to feel spooked. She hadn't realized just how dark and isolated it was going to be alone in her tent when she'd said she wanted to go camping. She had almost calmed herself down enough to sleep when she heard a few twigs snap entirely too close to her tent for her comfort, and she was putting herself into a panic again.

Part of her wanted to go to Eddie since it was his fault she was so worked up to begin with, but she didn't want to punish Nancy for his bad behavior. She just didn't think she was ever going to be able to fall asleep if she stayed in her own tent by herself, and that meant her only other option was to go to Steve. She just hoped he wouldn't be annoyed by her intrusion.

When she poked her head out of her tent, she noticed that Steve's tent was still lit up by his lantern, so she figured she at least wouldn't be waking him if she went to him. She was still trying to decide if that was a good idea or not when she heard another twig snap, and the next thing she knew, she was gathering up her sleeping bag and pillow and racing over to Steve's tent.

"Steve?" she said from outside the tent.

"Chrissy?"

That was all she needed to hear before she pulled open the tent flaps. When she could see inside, she was surprised to find Steve wearing glasses and holding a book open in front of him.

"Oh. You're reading?"

She hadn't meant it in a negative way. Honestly, she hadn't. That just wasn't something she'd expected from him. The Steve that all of the other cheerleaders talked about just didn't seem like the type to spend his free time reading novels. But the hint of surprise in her voice was still enough to hurt him.

Steve was used to people treating him like he was just another dumb jock. He'd been hearing digs about his intelligence from everyone in his life for as long as he could remember. His parents, his teachers, even his closest friends - they all had something to say about how stupid he was. But Chrissy hadn't said anything like that to him in the short time he'd known her. She never made him feel dumb.

And yet, she was standing there surprised because how could someone as dumb as Steve Harrington even know how to read in the first place. Maybe it was dumb of him to think she was different, but that didn’t stop the pain in his chest from growing.

“Yeah. I do that on occasion.”

“Of course, you do,” she stuttered out. “I never said you didn’t.”

“Sure. Did you want something or can I get back to this?”

He was being short with her, and he regretted it instantly when he saw the way she flinched at his words, but he didn’t have the patience to deal with yet another person who thought the mere idea of him reading was ridiculous.

“It’s nothing,” she said, staring at the ground to avoid looking at him. She didn’t understand why he was being so cold to her all of a sudden when they’d been fine an hour ago, but she didn’t want to bother him and make things worse if she had somehow ruined things between them. She should have known that she was nothing more than a nuisance to him. “I’ll be fine. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

It was only when she turned to leave that he realized she was carrying her sleeping bag and pillow with her. As hurt as he was feeling, he couldn't let her walk away. Not when it seemed like she was looking for somewhere else to sleep.

"Wait. What happened?" he asked. "Are you okay?"

"It's stupid. I just - you know how I said I don't scare easily? Well, I lied. I love scary stories, but I can't handle them, and Eddie grabbing me like that only made it worse. Put me on edge even more. And I thought I was going to be okay, but then I heard something in the woods, and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. I thought about getting Eddie and making him sit with me until I calmed down, but I didn't want to bother Nancy, and I can't keep stealing her boyfriend from her just because he's my best friend, and he gets me. And I was just going to deal with it on my own, but I saw your tent was lit up, and I thought maybe you'd be okay with me staying in here with you just until I could calm myself down. Or maybe the whole night even though that would make it kind of crowded in here since this tent isn't really made for two people. I don't know. I just know that was apparently the wrong thing to do because you're clearly upset with me, and I'm probably making it worse right now. So, again. I'm really sorry I bothered you. I'll just go back to my tent and leave you alone."

She was practically shaking as she spoke, and he could tell she was close to tears. It broke his heart to see her this way, and he couldn't help but think that it was primarily his fault since he'd only told that stupid story in the hopes that it would impress her. Even if she'd hurt him, he couldn't let her go back to her own tent. Not when she was this upset.

"You can stay here if you want," he told her.

"Are you sure?" she asked. "I really don't want to impose and take up too much of your space."

"There's plenty of room in here for you. It's fine. I promise."

Chrissy let herself the rest of the way into the tent and started to set up her sleeping bag. She attempted to keep her space as far away from Steve as possible since she was pretty sure that he was only letting her stay there out of pity, and she didn't want to invade his space any more than she actually had to. It was such a small tent though, and she found herself practically on top of him anyway.

"Thank you," she said as she crawled into her sleeping bag. She was still a little on edge, but she already felt safer just sharing Steve's space. She didn't know why, but she was certain nothing bad would happen to her while he was there.

She didn't want to bother him anymore, but now that she was already there, she was curious about what he was reading. If Steve Harrington was a reader, she needed to know what kinds of stories he was interested in.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

Before Steve could respond, Chrissy heard a crunch of something outside the tent, and she flinched again. He wasn't exactly interested in starting a conversation about his book when he was pretty sure that the mere idea of him reading was ridiculous to her, but with the way she was curling in on herself at every little sound, he figured that she could use a distraction.

"The Princess Bride," he told her. "Eddie threw it at me last week and said I needed to expand my horizons and open my mind to one of the greatest stories ever told."

"He's been telling me the same thing for ages. I've never gotten around to it though."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. School and cheerleading and everything else just seemed to take up all my time. I'm sure I'd like it if I ever actually sat down to read it. I just haven't. Is it any good?"

"I'm not very far into it, but I'm liking it so far."

There was another noise outside the tent, and Chrissy flinched again.

"I could read it to you if you want?" he offered. Anything to take her mind off of the noises outside the tent and help her calm down a little.

"You don't have to do that. I don't want to impose on you any more than I already have."

"I wouldn't have offered to do it if it wasn't something I was willing to do. Sometimes people do things just because they're nice and they want to, you know?"

It wasn't that simple for Chrissy though. She'd spent so much time being told that doing anything for her was a chore that she was always second guessing whether people actually wanted to be around her and were genuine in the kind things they said and did for her. It had taken her months to come to terms with the fact that Eddie genuinely wanted to be her friend. How could she be expected to understand Steve's motives so soon after meeting him?

He seemed genuine though, and she felt like she could trust that he was telling the truth right now. Even still, she couldn't let him burden himself for her.

"You're already a decent way into the book, and I'd hate for you to restart it on my behalf. Especially when I'll probably fall asleep soon now that I feel safe. You don't have to do anything special for me."

It wasn't lost on him that she said felt safe now that she was in his tent. After she'd been so afraid in the car the day before, all he'd wanted was to make sure she knew that there was no reason to be scared around him, and now she was seeking him out for protection. It made him feel a little bit better about himself.

"So I won't start over," he told her. "I just feel like you could use the distraction, and if I'm reading out loud, it might drown out the noises outside the tent and help you get to sleep a little easier. And I can always go back to reading silently after you're asleep. It doesn't have to be a big deal."

"Okay. You can read to me."

Steve picked the book back up and began to read to her. In the passage he was currently on, the lovers had just been reunited, and Westley was waxing poetic about how beautiful Buttercup was. But, then she asked what he thought of her mind, and all of a sudden there was no time to talk about anything because they had to get moving. Chrissy felt a pit growing in her stomach the more she thought about it.

How many times had she been told that being beautiful was her only real skill? Jason had only cared about having a beautiful, popular girl on his arm. All of his compliments had been about her appearance, and there had been the subtle digs when he felt like her beauty wasn't up to his standards. He hadn't cared about anything she'd ever had to say or her thoughts and feelings. And maybe Westley hadn't meant it that way in the story, but his dismissal of Buttercup's request to hear what he thought of her mind put her right back into her relationship with Jason and that constant nagging feeling of inadequacy.

She was close to a full on hate spiral when she was broken out of it by a rustling of leaves and the sound of a twig snapping outside the tent. She flinched and moved closer to Steve, and he paused in his reading to make sure she was okay. She just looked so small and scared. He finally understood what she meant when she said Eddie had told her she looked like a bunny rabbit when she was frightened.

He wished there was more he could do, but his reading to her clearly wasn't enough on its own. The more Chrissy clung to him, the more he wanted to help her. He had to find another way to distract her.

"She remained unconscious for a very long time," he continued reading. "Westley busied himself as best he could, cleansing the Snow Sand from ears and nose and mouth, and most delicate of all, from beneath the lids of her eyes."

As he listed the features of Buttercup's face in the book, he traced those same features on Chrissy. A finger trailing down the bridge of her nose. Caressing the shell of her ear as he pushed her hair back behind it. The swipe of his thumb along her lower lip. Gently using his index and middle fingers to close her eyelids. And as he did this, she seemed to relax beside him. She curled up close to him and rested her head against his shoulder. Her hands rest against his arm right where his t-shirt hit his bicep. She clung to him not because she was scared but because he was a source of comfort for her.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Don't mention it."

He kept reading aloud for only a little bit longer - only until he was certain she'd fallen asleep - and then he set the book aside, took off his glasses, turned off his lantern, and drifted off to sleep along with her.

"Chrissy is missing," Nancy said as she climbed back into the tent she was sharing with Eddie.

"What are you talking about?" He was still half asleep, and it was way too early in the morning for him to fully comprehend what she was telling him.

"When I came back from the outhouses, I noticed Chrissy's tent was open, but she wasn't in there and neither was her sleeping bag."

Eddie pushed himself up into a sitting position.

"Her sleeping bag was gone? I have an idea of where she might be."

Eddie left the tent with Nancy following close behind him.

"Five bucks says she's in there with him," he said as he crept over to Steve's tent.

Nancy placed a hand on Eddie's arm and pulled him back slightly.

"Maybe we don't bother them. I don't hear anything, so they're probably still asleep. Why don't we go back to our own tent and wait for them to wake up?"

"But I want to bother them about it now."

"For someone who's supposed to be Chrissy's best friend, you're terrible when it comes to knowing how she'll react to things. If we ambush them now, she'll be too embarrassed to say anything, and I know Steve. If she's embarrassed and doesn't want to talk about what happened between them, he's not going to say anything either just because he won't want to do anything to upset her further. We need to let them leave the tent on their own terms, and then we can divide and conquer to find out what happened last night."

Eddie sighed.

"Why do you always have to be right?"

"Because one of us has to be." Nancy reached up to kiss Eddie's cheek. "Now get back in our tent. I don't want them to overhear us."

Meanwhile, back inside Steve's tent, Chrissy was just starting to wake up. Camping wasn't exactly what she'd hoped it would be, and she was a little stiff from sleeping on the ground. It took her a moment to remember that she wasn't in her own tent, but it was hard to forget that she'd slept next to Steve when she was still curled up against his side. She tried to put a little distance between their bodies, but when she moved away from him, he stirred.

"G'morning," he mumbled as he rolled over to face her.

"Good morning."

"How'd you sleep?"

"Okay. Thanks to you."

"I told you not to mention it. It's no big deal."

"It might not be a big deal to you, but it is to me. So I will mention it, and I will thank you. I know I was maybe a little irrational, but you calmed me down and made me feel safe. Most guys wouldn't do that."

"You must not know many decent guys then."

"I didn't. Not until this trip at least."

And she meant it. Steve was clearly one of the good ones. Not the type of guy who only said he was a good guy until he was actually presented with the opportunity to be a decent human being and failed. No, Steve was genuinely a good person. Last night proved that she didn't have anything to be afraid of when it came to opening her heart up to him.

"Should we get up?" she asked. "I'm sick of laying on the ground."

"Me too. Remind me to never go camping again unless it involves an RV so I can sleep in a real bed."

"Only if you remind me to never try to sleep outside again. I need real walls and a door that locks for my peace of mind."

"Deal."

The two got up from their sleeping bags and readied themselves to exit the tent. Before they could leave, Chrissy stopped them.

"I meant to say this last night, but I was a little preoccupied. I just wanted you to know that I really like your glasses. They suit you."

"I only really need to wear them when I'm reading, but I try not to wear them when anyone else is around. You don't think they make me look like a dweeb?"

"A very handsome dweeb."

"Oh, so you think I'm handsome now?" he asked with a teasing smirk. "I feel like that's a step up from funny and cute, don't you?"

"I think I need to stop complimenting you. Your ego is going to get too big to fit in that car with us," she teased right back.

He reached out and gave her hip a tiny pinch which earned him a giggle from her as she flinched and swatted his hand away before exiting the tent. He followed close behind her, and they'd barely been outside for a full minute before Eddie was bursting out of his own tent and racing over to Chrissy.

"Chrissy, come take a walk with me," he said as he started to pull her away from Steve. "I saw the most amazing tree last night, and I need to show it to you. Right now."

Chrissy let herself be dragged away by her best friend, but that didn't stop her from being confused.

"Alright, Evan Hansen," she started. "Since when have you been interested in trees?"

"Since always," he replied. "But a better question would be is there anything you want to share with me about last night?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

“Oh really? So nothing happened between you and Steve?”

“Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

"Sure you don't. Then why was your sleeping bag not in your own tent?"

"Well, I'm not sure if you know this, but my best friend is kind of a jerk, and he scared me half to death last night even though he knows I scare easily and don't do so well with that kind of thing. And I couldn't very well go bother him without punishing his girlfriend who did nothing wrong, so I asked Steve if he wouldn't mind me sharing his space for the night. Nothing happened in that tent other than sleeping."

"So you didn't snuggle up with and smooch his face off?"

"What are you? Five?" Chrissy asked through a laugh. "No. Nothing happened between us, and we kept our hands to ourselves the entire time."

That wasn't exactly a lie. Eddie just didn't need to know about the way that Steve was finally able to get her to calm down. She'd never hear the end of it if she told him about every gentle touch of her face or the way that she gripped his bicep for comfort as she tried to fall asleep. Some things were better left between her and Steve.

"That's a shame," Eddie replied. "Because I was thinking that he'd make a good temporary replacement for that Fozzie Bear plush of yours. They're practically twins when you think about it, what with Steve being so hairy and all."

"Don't you dare bring that up in front of him. Any mention of the Muppets around him, and I will never forgive you."

That's how Eddie knew that Chrissy was actually starting to have feelings for Steve. Her love of the Muppets wasn't exactly a secret, but she didn't broadcast it to the world, and he knew for a fact that she'd never told Jason about it. She'd said that it would make it impossible for anyone to be attracted to her if they knew that she watched every piece of Muppets media that she could get her hands on, and it would be doubly impossible if they knew she drew comfort from a rather sizable Fozzie Bear plush. So, if she didn't want Steve to know about this, it meant that she wanted him to be attracted to her. She wouldn't have cared if a guy that she just wanted to be friends with knew about it.

Meanwhile, back at the campsite, Nancy was being much more direct with her interrogation.

“Did you spend last night making out with Chrissy?” she asked as soon as Eddie and Chrissy were out of earshot.

“Excuse me?” Steve practically choked on air.

“You heard me. She very clearly slept in your tent, and I need to know what happened.”

“How do you know she slept in my tent? Were you spying on us?”

“What? No. You didn’t zip up your tent when you left it this morning, and I can clearly see that there are two sleeping bags in there.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” he insisted.

“Steve, I know you, so I can tell when you’re lying. I just want to know if I need to keep Eddie from murdering you over you taking advantage of his best friend.”

“Jesus. It was nothing like that,” he promised. “Chrissy was spooked by something in the woods, so she asked if she could stay with me. She just didn’t want to be alone, and she slept in my tent in her own sleeping bag. Literally nothing happened.”

Nancy could tell that Steve was telling the truth. He’d never really been the best at lying, so she could typically see right through him. However, she could tell that he wasn’t telling her the full story. She figured that he wouldn’t tell her anything else, so she’d have to see what Eddie was able to find out and then see if Chrissy was more willing to fill her in on what happened.

She found her opportunity shortly after they’d finished their breakfast. They had a long day of driving ahead of them if they wanted to get to Myrtle Beach before they were all too tired to function, so Steve wanted them to get on the road as soon as possible.

“Why don’t Chrissy and I start bringing the bags to the car while you and Eddie return the tents?” she suggested. “That should save us a little time.”

She didn’t wait for anyone to respond. She just grabbed some of their bags and started ushering Chrissy towards the campground’s parking lot.

“So, I hear someone slept all snuggled up next to Steve,” she teased.

“Did he tell you that?” Chrissy asked, her eyes going wide.

“No, but I think you just did.”

“Oh, it wasn’t like that. Those single person tents are just so small that it's hard not to be right up next to someone if you're sharing."

"Well, I hope you weren't too close to each other for your sake. Just because Steve is really ticklish along his sides, and I would hate for you to be on the other end of his flinching."

Of course, Nancy knew that Steve wasn't sensitive enough to flinch at every little touch. He was only really ticklish when you actually tried to tickle him. However, she also knew that you didn't go around tickling just anyone, so she was planting a little seed of a way that Chrissy could flirt with him if that's what she was trying to do.

Chrissy could feel her cheeks warming at the mere idea of being that close to Steve and touching him in that way. She had an inkling that he would be open to goofing around with her in that way from the little teasing and poking at her that he'd done so far. She just needed an opportunity to arise where it wouldn't be weird for her to touch him in that way.

Meanwhile, Eddie was having his own similar conversation with Steve as they walked back from returning the tents.

"So, have you kissed her yet?" he asked.

"What is with you and Nancy having this weird obsession with whether or not I've made a move on Chrissy? Which, for the record, I haven't. I doubt that's something she'd want anyway, so nothing is happening there unless she makes the first move."

"You're kidding right?"

"Why would I kid about something like this?"

"I don't know. But she's clearly interested in you, so I also don't know why you'd think she wouldn't want you to kiss her."

"She doesn't think I'm good enough for her."

"You're full of shit. Why would you think that?"

Steve sighed.

"When she came to my tent last night she was surprised that I was reading. Like she was audibly and visibly shocked that I was smart enough to read, and that stung. A lot."

"Did she actually say that she didn't think you were smart enough to read?" Eddie asked.

"Well, no, but it was all in her tone. The idea of me holding a book was ridiculous to her."

Eddie placed a hand on Steve's shoulder and stopped him from walking any further.

"I promise you that Chrissy's not like that. She would never outwardly judge someone like that. I'm living proof. She may have threatened to kick my ass if I didn't graduate, but she never made me feel bad about myself for struggling with school. I don't know what you think happened, but she wasn't judging you."

Steve shrugged.

"Whatever you say. I'm still letting her make the first move. I don't want to make the rest of the trip awkward if we're both wrong about her."

"I could talk to her if you want. Put some feelers to see if she's open to kissing all over that pretty face of yours."

"Don't. I think I've got this handled on my own."

"If that's what you want. The offer's still there though."

Once the group was back together, all talk of whatever was starting between Chrissy and Steve ceased. They got back on the road, and Chrissy abused her aux cord privileges by using them to allow Nancy to put on her personal metalhead playlist. They were making good time, but they didn't want to have to make too many stops if they didn't have to, so the group consensus was that it would be best if they just pulled through a drive-thru for lunch.

Of course, this only made Chrissy self-conscious of her eating habits again. She was trying to ignore the little voice in the back of her head that said she was too fat to enjoy fast food, but no matter what she did, it was still there.

When it came time for her to order, she got a children's order of chicken nuggets and a side salad with no dressing. It wasn't exactly an ideal lunch, but it would do in a pinch. And, since she ordered two items, maybe no one would notice that her lunch seemed so small compared to everyone else's.

Steve noticed though. He was the one placing all of their orders, so he knew exactly what each person was getting, and that meant he was well aware of how pitiful Chrissy's lunch was. She was the only person in the car who didn't ask for fries, and he knew that if it was him who hadn't ordered fries, he'd regret it as soon as everyone else had their food and he saw what he was missing out on.

So maybe he ordered extra fries for himself. That way he would be able to find a way to offer her some.

"Alright, I have another very important job for you as my passenger seat rider," he told her after they had their food and were back on the road.

"Lay it on me."

"I need to keep my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road, so I need you to be my official fry feeder if you're up to it. Your reward for doing this very important job is that you can have as many of my fries as you want. I think I ordered way too many anyway."

"I think I can do that."

Chrissy fed Steve fries every so often. Mostly when he prompted her to, but occasionally she would just know when he was ready for another and have it waiting for him when he turned his head. She knew he told her to help herself, but she was struggling with whether or not it was okay to have them.

But she was on vacation. That was what Steve had told her the other night when they got ice cream. There was nobody there to tell her that the fries were bad for her, and it wouldn't kill her to have a little treat. Plus, her lunch wasn't exactly filling, and the fries were right there. She could let herself enjoy just a few right now and then choose something healthy for dinner. It was all about balance.

So, after feeding Steve another fry, she snagged a couple for herself and allowed this one tiny indulgence. The smile on Steve's face when he saw that she was eating went completely unnoticed.

"Pull over at the next rest stop," Nancy said from the backseat. "I need a bathroom break."

"Me too," Chrissy agreed.

Steve pulled in at the next gas station, and the girls ran off to get the restroom key from the gas station attendant.

"I'm gonna go grab a drink while we're here. You want anything?" Eddie asked.

"Nah. I'm good. I'll just stay here and keep the air running while you're gone."

Eddie started to make his way towards the gas station entrance, but he got distracted by a sign by the door. After a quick investigation, he was running to meet the girls by the bathroom door.

"Come with me if you wanna see something that has the potential to be really cool," he told them before leading them back behind the building. Waiting for them there was a small structure with a sign that read 'Museum of Weird Things.'

"Can we go in?" he asked practically bouncing with excitement.

"Only for a little bit," Nancy said. "I don't want to throw us too far off schedule."

Eddie practically pushed the girls into the building. None of them really knew what to expect, but it was actually a pretty interesting little shack. Sure, some of the weird things were random rocks that were supposed to look like celebrities and obviously photoshopped pictures of cows levitating because of UFOs, but there were some genuinely interesting weird things in there along with the laughable ones. The centerpiece of this roadside shack was a taxidermied squirrel with two heads and three extra arms. Eddie was the most fascinated by it, but Chrissy and Nancy thought it was pretty cool as well.

As they were examining the squirrel, Chrissy couldn't help but feel like something was missing, but she couldn't quite place her finger on what. Just as she had that thought, her phone went off in her hand. She checked her notifications, and the most recent one was a text from Steve in their road trip group chat. It was a selfie of him sitting in the car with a very forced and awkward smile, and he'd captioned it with 'having so much fun on this road trip with all my friends.'

"Oh no."

"What is it?" Nancy asked.

"We forgot about Steve."

"Shit," Eddie muttered. "Let's just go back to the car. He's probably pissed."

"No," Chrissy said as she stopped him from leaving. "You guys stay here, and I'll go grab him. The least we can do is allow him to give this place a look after coming here without him."

They let Chrissy run off, and as she approached the car, she couldn't help but feel guilty. She hadn't meant to forget about him waiting in the car. She'd just let herself get wrapped up in what Eddie wanted to do, and now she felt awful.

When she got to the car, she knocked on the driver's side window and got Steve to roll it down for her.

"I'm so, so sorry," she said as she leaned forward and rested her forearms on the car door. "Do you want to go see a squirrel with two heads and five arms?"

"I don't know," he replied. "Are you sure I'm wanted? Feeling pretty forgotten and lonely out here."

Steve was content to keep up the bit and play the jilted friend stuck waiting in the car, but he also really wanted to see that squirrel. She could see through his act though. If he wanted to play, she could play, too. She stuck out her lower lip in a pout and batted her eyelashes.

"Please come see the shack. For me?" she pouted. "How can you say no to this face? You can even hold my hand hostage again as a punishment again if you want."

Steve was not immune to how cute Chrissy was. There was no way that he could say no to her. Not when she was looking at him like that and offering to hold his hand again.

"I thought we agreed that me holding your hand wasn't a punishment?" he asked with a knowing smirk.

"So, I'll owe you one then. Two actually since I still owe you for sharing your tent with me last night. Now, will you please get out of the car and come with me?”

Steve rolled up his window and turned off the car before climbing out.

“I’m only going with you because I want to see the squirrel. I reserve the right to give Eddie and Nancy the silent treatment for as long as I want until they sufficiently make it up to me.”

He held out his hand for Chrissy, and she took it happily.

“Go easy on them,” she told him. “The squirrel is cool enough that you’d forget all about us, too. And maybe you could take a picture of Mister Fibbley with it? That might be cool, right?”

He gave her hand a small squeeze.

“I like the way you think.”

[thedeal-if]

Not gonna lie here, but something kinda died inside of me, when i saw that Nathan is pretty much allergic to children(cause i adore them irl), but it made me wonder about two things.

Oh and i can completely understand why certain ROs are just not made to have childeren.

1: I was wondering why can't angels get children, considering that irl there are beeings like nephilim/cambions described in Myths, Tales, Books etc.. Does that mean that in this universe there are no halfbreeds(not meant in a derogatory way), between different species?

2: Following up with the ask about kids, how would the ROs react(those who actually can get children in a biological way), to accidently becoming a parent? Answer only if comfortable

I have to say that maybe I worded it wrong but Nathan isn't allergic to children, dw anon!! He has always had very important things on his plate and it has never left him any time to think about anything else. It's kinda sad but Nathan only began to truly live his life the moment he started to Fall.

When it comes to children, if his partner asked he'd be like "Oh, that's right, those exist" and just *shrug*. Nathan has never given having kids any thought but he could be convinced ^^

He is very much allergic to being responsible tho... But who knows? People evolve, they can change. They can meet good influences, bad influences. Really, who knows?

1. Okay, td lore! I'm trying not to mention much and I'm crossing my fingers not to get asked about my worldbuilding because I cave to pressure too easily and will definitely gush lol. Tbh I thought it'd be much more fun for people to realize this as they play, finding out things alongside MC and all that. But maybe some explanations are in order 🕴️

To clarify: Christian/Catholic/Judaism/etc lore is, of course, the foundation of my own, but don't expect me to follow the Bible to a t 🫂 I always meant for The Deal to be a reimagining of religion as we know it, but I've included many more layers in terms of... everything (ex. Lovecraftian lore)! I think it's pretty interesting to take the core of a topic and rewrite some of it to make it more exciting.

Needless to say, I don't mean any disrespect towards religion in any way shape or form but sticking to it blindly has always rubbed me the wrong way as a person who isn't and has never been religious.

Now, the answer to your question (sorry for the rant 😭💕) ik about Nephilim and cambions (as someone who's read superstition a billion times), and Nephilim aren't a thing here. Cambions are tho!

When it comes to Angels... Think of them as one of those automated machines in factories. They fulfill their function and are scraped or thrown away when broke beyond repair. That's kind of how the Gods see Angels.

I've promised myself to say nothing about Genies until MC at least meets Aliyah. But let's just say she can't procreate either.

2. As for the accidental parent scenario I'll leave it below the cut (dw btw I'd say it's pretty hard to make me uncomfortable lol I'll answer anything)

Dante, Lilith, Josh, Victor, and Eden can have biological children! Villanelle is technically on that list but she's very much sex repulsed and won't ever be in this situation🫂

Though Dante isn't stoked at the thought of children this kind of changes when he thinks of that kid as his. He's not that taken aback by surprises—even if they're major ones like having a child—Dante likes taking challenges with a smile. If he feels like it's his choice and his partner isn't forcing the idea of parenthood on him, Dante would accept his role with a very positive outlook ^^

Doesn't mean he'll be a good dad tho lol

Lilith feels deeply troubled by her nature and thinks that it'd be best not to create any more beings of hell. She has ingrained a very cataclysmic point of view about any potential children she might have. To Lilith, motherhood is a dream. But not like that.

She'd be such a good mom tho💕

Josh feels like he's been punched in the gut lol he can't handle unexpected turns of events. If it's something his partner is excited about Josh would try not to bring the mood down, he'd want to see it as a positive thing. Definitely would read parenthood blogs for hours during the entire pregnancy.

Victor would be so excited I think he'd forget about any complicated situations and all his problems as soon as his partner told him. It's always been one of Victor's deepest and most profound dreams, and to have his partner fulfill it— he would never dare to even consider it an accident. Much like Josh he'd be the World's most prepared Upcoming Dad™ lol

Eden doesn't typically panic but he would lose his mind lol. I said he kind of leaned towards preferring not to have children but for the entire situation to be forced on him like that would be overwhelming. If the situations are right, if Eden feels like he has the specific kind of support he would need to parent a child... He might change his mind and not be so negative about it ^^

[chiefwritesbook]

Writeblr Q&A

I have been tagged by @scifimagpie (ty for tag) so I shall attempt to answer these questions lezzgo

1. What motivates you to write?

The soup brain has too many thoughts & I have to get them out. Also spite because my asshole 8th grade English teacher said my writing assignment was only worth a C (he was the ONLY one btw I got consistently vv high grades before him) & my Chinese immigrant friend got marked down for not being good at English. Fuck you Mr English teacher

2. A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

(idk have this one from early chapter 2 I guess)

“You mean to say that I was bait,” Talin said.

“Not the word I would use, but in a way, yes,” Red Wolf confessed.

“Why?”

“You have been on the throne for less than a year. If someone wants you dead this quickly, something is amiss. I’d like to find out what.”

3. Which OC makes you smile every time you think/talk about them and what are they like?

My boy Red Wolf. He's just...yes. Autistic werewolf puppy. Could definitely kill me without hesitation or talk me to death with weapons knowledge. I would thank him if he punched me.

4. What process of writing do you enjoy the most?

I like not writing.

5. What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

Worldbuilding, no doubt. I am simultaneously the best and worst at worldbuilding. You want a 2000-word essay on how languages & regional dialects evolved over time? I gotchu covered no problem. Want me to stop elaborating on how Hellhound magic is linked to the moon & actually write my sequels? Absolutely not.

6. What is something in the writeblr community is most enjoyable?

I think the writeblr community is chill. Like y'all are just here for a good time and I can 100% respect that & get behind it. I get to write unhinged answers to these questions & not feel bad about it bc I don't have to self-impose ridiculous societal concepts such as 'maintain a professional image on social media'.

7. A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

Scrivener? Am I allowed to say Scrivener even though I use at most like 2% of their features. I am the kind of person who if given nothing but a notes app & a two-hour uni class to sit through will hammer out a full chapter in those two hours instead of paying any attention to class. On the other hand if you want me to actually write during my free time I'm sorry I'm too busy procrastinating writing with art & procrastinating art with gaming.

8. A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

This is not a wise question to ask me (see: question 5) unless the goal was to make me sit here for ten minutes typing out an entire essay's worth of worldbuilding word vomit, in which case well played. However for the sake of my own free time & sanity:

The legal system in Kies Tor is probably the single greatest thing I've ever constructed & it plays a crucial part in the plot & was built off the early British/European court system as well as my own special interests in law & criminology. In short it's trying its best but it's also deeply fucked up and I love making the fucked up parts fuck up my characters.

9. What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

Don't feel pressured to write. If you're staring at the same thing for weeks/months on end of course it's gonna get stale. Heck this Q&A post is the most I've written in weeks.

10. Tag some people whose works you love/have been your biggest supporters:

@witch-king-of-angstmar ofc (no pressure to answer tho) but other than that I never know who to tag. I have social anxiety what is an interacting. If you see this on your dash consider yourself tagged

[molecularhomosexual]

wanted to add some thoughts on this thread. i've seen a lot of responses from professors and educators who care quite a bit for their students and create space for them to be able to put effort toward understanding things--and this latter perspective synergizes with being against using AI for essays at school. i wanted to add some more thoughts onto this with the context of: getting to work in teaching and learning shops at universities, i've found a huge variance between the care and patience that professors have for their students with essay-style assignments.

higher ed seems to be becoming quite interested in checking for ai-based plagiarism in essays (might be happening in k12 spaces too, i'm just not familiar with it as much). turnitin, the company that does the whole plagiarism checking software for schools and colleges, now has an ai detection tool that clients can purchase (that also, in our testing, pulls up far more false positives and false negatives than what they advertise to clients). the company always publicly claims that the turnitin similarity checker (this is the main "plagiarism detection" tool) is not exactly a watertight tool, it is a tool that can help with starting conversations about academic integrity with students, and it needs to be paired with instructor expertise on the topic. this ends up conflicting with a common-enough attitude among some faculty that turnitin is getting a perfect match on whether a student has plagiarized or not. combine this move in higher ed with:

depending on how a course is run, the fact of activities being graded in those courses can add a great deal of pressure on students that may not be conducive to learning. i think Jesse Stommel has some compelling stuff to say here through his concept of ungrading: he notes how grading systems have become increasingly comparative and numerical over time, he notes that grades in and of themselves aren't great incentives for learning or the best indicators of feedback in learning, grade-based education tends to favor (or at least be more amenable to) the banking model of education over critical pedagogy--and he backs this up with in-class experiments and experience. i've noticed that creative writing programs have often been at the forefront of finding alternatives to grading systems that are more supportive for their students (Asao Inoue talks about labor-based grading contracts as more equitable than grading systems that connect grades to an evaluation of quality, though I do think even this system could cut out the grading component altogether and still retain its interventional value).

these two points can lead to the following: students often have to do two tasks in an essay being graded: a) write an essay in and of itself, with its intent of critical thinking, effort, analysis; and b) get a good grade, because regardless of the actual material efficacy of grades in getting future work outside of the university (this will cash out differently sometimes based on the field you're working in as well), there will be students who feel a pressure to get good grades (for a variety of reasons). multiply one essay in a course with taking 4 or 5 more classes (common in undergrad) and working a job at the same time (common at my alma mater at the very least), and we're creating a recipe for students to feel absolutely unsupported in the academic environment to actually work on practicing analysis without additional outside pressure.

i think the current conditions across a lot of academia help create conditions for students to use cheating as a strategy to get a better grade: "i can either put all the extra work in to doing this right and possibly get a bad grade anyway, depending on how my professor is deciding to grade the quality of essays; or given that i have a shift to run to after this and family to take care of at home, i can see if there's a quicker solution to take, even if that could also have a risk of ruining my grade. what's worth it, to me?" and in response to this, academic integrity offices will start wondering how to discourage students from cheating, and in happy and hawkish response, academic integrity software companies can get new product contracts on their ai detection tools, that instructors, in their variance of usage of plagiarism tools, can use to either have conversations with students about work in the best case scenario, or punish students through grading them poorly in the worst.

i dunno. i am a philosopher at the end of the day--in my experience with the kind of writing philosophy demands, i don't think that AI writing passes muster in the first place (i imagine this is the case with... most any field that involves any amount of creative writing). but i just want to keep in mind that in my experience working at the university space, for every professor who is genuinely interested in their students' learning and who does everything within their capacity to set them up for success, there is a professor who, regardless of interest, generates a great deal of distress for their students by dispensing with punitive measures in the learning space.

i think that this is likely a reason why some teaching and learning shops have tended to build guidelines for how to use or discuss AI writing with students instead of recommending faculty to discourage its use by students altogether: even though i think a shop should ideally be able to recommend the latter, that doesn't do a lot for the reactionary portion of a faculty community who will consider the shop backwards for making such a recommendation, then continue on with teaching practices that are harmful to students' learning and well-being. (i think the defensive position also comes from not having any deciding power over the business contracts for AI software happening with leadership doing kingdom-building far away from the rest of us [unionize, anyone?], where if there's an evaluation that there's nothing the institution can do to prevent AI usage, then it makes sense to have a damage mitigation strategy to do the least harm to students as possible).

i would have been lucky to have any of the teachers on this thread as my own when i was going through undergrad. unfortunately, what i faced far more were instructors who didn't care very much--either from being tenure-track researchers who weren't particularly committed to teaching, or from (understandably) reacting against being overworked adjunct lecturers who didn't have the capacity to care as much as they should have. what i faced in undergrad quite a bit, barring some notable exceptions here and there, were instructors who didn't care anyway whether i could think critically about something or put effort into writing about a certain perspective. what i faced in undergrad, primarily so, were instructors who were just checking if i could say the correct thing back to them in the correct way--and instructors who would punish me or my peers for failing to do this, no matter how much work they put into an assignment.

if universities as an institution want students to not use AI for essays (something that i'm generally aligned with), they need to give adequate resources to faculty and students alike to be able to focus on essays without fear of academic punishment and without generated lack of capacity from overwork. (but of course, universities is an abstraction here--faculty/staff unions and student worker unions do push for those resources, because university leadership isn't otherwise interested in granting them, because it's not particularly profitable to care about the conditions of learning.)

[ratralsis]

I've been struggling to write lately. It's frustrating, because I'm actually doing more writing lately than I have in a long time, but a lot of it is rewriting, and even more of it is reading, which isn't writing at all, not really, though I can make the argument that it helps with the writing.

I read the book "Scene & Structure" by Jack M. Bickham. It's a good book for idiots like me who don't understand how to write scenes well. It's solid. It lays out the fundamentals in a way that makes them crystal clear even for someone who never took a single writing class in high school or college. You have a scene: a character declares their goal, they enter into conflict with someone to try to achieve that goal, and then disaster strikes and they don't achieve their goal. Then you have what Jack M. Bickham calls a sequel, but which I've never called a sequel: the character has an emotional reaction, then a rational thought based on that emotion, then they make a decision, then they take action. Then you roll into the next scene. That's the formula. Scene and sequel, over and over. Sometimes there are scenes within scenes. Sometimes sequels get delayed until after two scenes in a row. Sometimes you skip parts. You mess with the formula, but that's the formula.

Nobody'd ever explained it to me that way before. I appreciated that explanation. It helped.

I've written the story I wanted to write. Wrote it two years ago, actually. If my goal were to write to an audience of one (as Neil Gaiman put it, “You are a people,” when asked how to deal with the pressure of writing for other people when I saw him in person in May of 2022), I have succeeded. I've done it. But it's not enough to write for me. I need to write for other people, too, because I want other people to read what I write.

Still, as Dwight V. Sullivan put it in "Techniques of the Selling Writer:"

Does this mean that you should consciously slant your story to a certain reader? Yes. But not to any reader. The one you want is the one who shares your tastes and interests. For you, too, are individual. You can’t change yourself at will to suit a given public. You must accept yourself the way you are. Then, seek out an audience that sees the world the same way you do. Can you be sure such an audience exists? You can. Individual you are indeed; and different. But not that different, for you’re human also.

That depends on you: your skill as a writer.

You can argue that this isn't that different from what Neil Gaiman said, though he said it more succinctly. I would argue that it's extremely different. What Neil Gaiman seemed to suggest was that so long as the thing you write satisfies you, that's good, it means other people like you will also like it. What Dwight is saying is that you still have to actually fucking get good at writing, which is a thing I'm trying very hard to do despite a lack of natural talent and a lack of training in my youth. I'm trying very hard to make up for a lot of lost time so that I can tell my dumb fantasy stories.

I went to a meet-up a few weeks ago of a bunch of local authors. Met seven different authors. None of them wrote fantasy. One wrote historical fiction. One wrote poetry. The others all wrote modern-day stories. One was horror. One was suspense. One was romance. But none of them wrote fantasy or science fiction. It was a bit disheartening, to be honest.

It's tiring, writing and rewriting my scenes and my chapters and my subplots to try to raise tension, raise stakes, keep readers on the edges of their seats. I wish I could say that it's making the story better, at least, and maybe it is. Probably it is. But it's frustrating. It's not the story I want to tell. It's the story that will sell better than the story that I want to tell.

The story about Marigold and Kevin from a couple of months ago is a story I like telling. Wanted to tell. Would love to tell better. But I wrote it for me. I like the story of those two kids. When I think of how to improve it, I don't think of things that would make me like it more. I only think of things that might get a hypothetical reader to like it more. I like keeping these kinds of stories simpler, not more complicated.

One piece of advice from my tutor that I'm trying in this third draft is to add a new character to the first quarter or so of the book who wasn't in earlier drafts. He's there to add an emotional hook and to try to convince the main character not to do the thing he's going to go do for the rest of the book. I don't like him much, but he might make the story more interesting for another reader.

Every obstacle, every time I think of what would work "better," just makes me want to quit, and I suppose that's why so many people do. For all the hundreds or thousands of books being self-published each year, they're a drop in a bucket compared to the number of people who never write a novel at all.

I've said before that it's bitter work, and that's the simple truth. My tutor is off this week, though, so I've just been reading like crazy in between all these rewrites of summaries to send to her for review when she's back. I don't know if it's good or bad to do so much reading. All these authors of books on how to write books agree on roughly half of what they say, and wildly disagree on the other half. It's incredible, really.

I have tickets to see the livestream of Neil Gaiman's Bard lectures on the 12th, 13th, and 14th. I don't think he'll tell me anything new, but I also think I need to hear him say it anyway. Just to remind me, I guess. He's one of those wildly successful authors who never went to college. He just figured it out as he went. Got good. Got real damn good at writing. Had to. It was his full-time job and determined whether he would make money or starve. I'm not gonna be able to do it like he did; I'm about twenty years too late, for one thing. And I'm not good at figuring things out on my own. Never have been.

So he'll tell me what he knows, and what I already know he knows. How storytelling matters in today's world, and probably a bit about how you have to show and not tell will be worked in there somewhere.

But, at the end of the day, what I really need is someone like Jack M. Bickham to look at my work and tell me a formula to use. Don't we all?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all artistic creativity was that simple? If we could just take a story we have in our heads and plug it into an algorithm and get an engaging piece of prose that would get readers to feel about the world the way that we do?

Because I can tell you that the novel I'm writing is the story of three people who survived a war ten years earlier and are each working through their PTSD in their own ways as they navigate a world that has left them behind, in nations run by governments that have no further use for them in a time of peace, and that's true, and that's what it's about. Or I can tell you that it's about broken people who think they know what they need to do to make themselves happy in a world where they've been cut off from that thing and how they can never ever do that thing and so they have to figure out what would actually make them happy instead, and that's also true. Or I can tell you that, by the end of the story, the main character marries a big orc woman and they have a kid together, because that's also what it's about.

It's about a lot of things. Probably too many things. Probably it's a bad story that will never sell, no matter what I do. That's what I keep thinking, as I add twists and turns and raise the stakes and find ways to keep the audience engaged in my story about a war criminal who feels, just, SO bad about what he did in that war, golly he feels awful, and he just wants this woman who was affected by his crimes to forgive him, and she never fully does, not really, but also she marries him, so I guess she does after all, but why she even marries him exactly isn't as clear as it should be, because I keep writing him to be worse and worse and their conflicts to be more and more intense in order to raise the stakes and the tension, because isn't that what audiences want? Isn't that what a reader will want to read? Won't they be bored if I don't do that?

There's no objective measure here. All I can do is my best to try to write something engaging and interesting, and I think the fact that I've never even cracked 100 followers on this blog proves I don't know how to do that.

[0thsense]

8/8/2023

It's my birthday tomorrow. Everybody has left the south bay now. Martin, Reggie, Alex are all gone. I guess Steve is still here but he doesn't really hang out with us, or rather me anymore. I don't really know what to type here, as I haven't been thinking too intensely about too many things. The times when I'm doing worse are the times I'm more intensely in thought, so I guess I fail at thinking positively.

Anyways, I'll be 28 American years old tomorrow. My 27th year was better than my 26th year I guess. Definitely still in my bottom 5 years overall but hey its the first upward year in a long time. Maybe since college. I've managed to keep up gym and I've even started running which is slightly surprising. It's good because who knows what may have happened if I wasn't able to keep up gym. I'm planning to run my first 5 miler tomorrow. I have to wake up in the morning because I'll be eating with my family in the evening up in SF, mostly out of a feeling of obligation. I wonder if they know. I'm letting the fact that I'm not being lazy on my birthday feel symbolic.

One thing I've been telling myself is that I'm god's strongest soldier. Obviously that's not actually true, but motivationally it helps. It's one of those things that there's no harm in believing in the moment, and it brings me joy. Speaking of another thing that brings me joy, Lily and I agreed to go climbing sometime soon. She's willing to come down from SF for me, and seems genuinely interested in hanging out with me. I need to keep my mindset that I'm just trying to be there for her, though it seems I overestimated how depressed she was. Well, better safe than sorry.

I visited Yan a couple weeks ago along with Gerald. It was a spur of the moment thing, and the flight was expensive as a result. I honestly felt a little pressured into going. We did a lot of activities involving physical exertion and also hung out with his church buddies a lot. Yan is super into the culture there it seems. His lifestyle as a chad in NC honestly bothered me a little bit. He has more pride and ego than I remember and also some strong ideals about what it means to be a man, which I don't really agree with. I may be making judgments too hastily but I was disappointed at his treatment of Jeremy, a dude in his small group who seemed a little autistic. I wasn't able to express this to him. At the same time I'm glad he's obviously doing well for himself out there. According to society, I probably have no authority to judge someone who's found a lifestyle that works for them.

My next step should almost certainly be to make my sleep schedule really consistent. I'd like to sleep at 1-2am every day. The deadline for working on the game is fast approaching. I have less than 4 months left, and I've told too many people about the new york deadline. Sigh... I certainly have some mental block about coding. When I open the IDE my mood instantly sinks. I had the strange idea of treating coding like working out, doing reps of opening the IDE lmao.

Wow I thought this post would be short because I didn't feel like I had much to write about but here we are. I went to Ralph's wedding last weekend. It made me realize I've made a mistake, choosing the jolly group over Ralph's group. I just respect Ralph's close circle so much more these days than the people in jolly. They are more considerate and more secure, and jolly isn't even dank anymore. At the end of the day jolly has now devolved into a bunch of individuals who are either troubled or successful but unkind people. Obviously this is a bit of a generalization. Maybe I wasn't good enough to join Ralph's group anyways, or maybe the grass is always greener on the other side. I might as well try though, since jolly in the south bay is pretty much dead.

Finally there's the issue of getting more involved with Austin's church. Unfortunately my experiences visiting Yan have turned me off even more from Christianity, but I really haven't given Austin's church a fair chance. The demographics are obviously very different so maybe it'll be a better fit, though so far my instinct tells me it's only a small chance. It'll give me something to do I guess.

[codegeassfacts]

50 Questions to Lelouch // Newtype Romance February 2007 // Canon

These are 50 questions asked to Lelouch in the Newtype Romance; While it's not that much interesting, it's still quite fun;

** @rainfall-tumbles already translated those, so please visit and reblog her link !

My observations will be noted as such by **Italic thoughts**

What's your Birthday ? December 5th

Blood Type ? Type A.

**Blood type is very telling about the personnality for japanese people**

Your height is? 178 cm

Favorite color? Violet. Because it is a refined color, and it has the greatest mysterious appeal.

**It was either Violet or black** Hobbies ? I like making things by myself , sort of do it yourself stuff

**handmade stuff actually**

Liberal arts? Sciences? Or are you more the athletic type? What a meaningless question.

What's your best subject? Mathematics. What are your grades like ? I think they're quite high, but I'm not sure/ don't care

Your dream for the future? To destroy Britannia.

Please describe your personality in between two characters and six. Rock. In other words, I don't let small things get to me. Yes I do? Don't be absurd.

**Quarelling with the journalist ?**

Please tell us what your strong and weak points are. I've never really thought about that.

Favorite foods? Creamy food, or tender texture food. Like shrimp, or pudding.

Your least favorite foods? Gooey/gummy foods. Things like natto, or grated yam.

**He seems more focused on texture taste that actual taste** After you wake up, what's the first thing you eat/drink ? Coffee. Morning person? Night person? Night person. I'm like the owl of Minerva. Which do you prefer, baths or showers? I tried using a narrow bathtub for the first time after arriving Japan. As long as it's just once in a while, it's nice enough. **He has a real bathtub at his disposal in Ashford though, does he barely use it ?** When did you first fall in love? (And with whom?) I'd rather keep that to myself. **Incest. It's complicated to describe.** Your greatest failure? When I couldn't protect my mother and sister. How do you vent your frustrations?

I determine the root reason of my frustrations and take care of it. Then there's nothing to vent anymore.

Who would you say is your personal hero? My mother. **Obviously this interview happened before R2** Indoor type? Outdoor type? I won't bother thinking about that, as I can't imagine the interest of this categorization. What's in your wallet?

There is no cash. I use credit card.

Special skill?

I suppose you can say I'm clever with my hands.

How do you go to school?

I live on campus.

When have you been glad to be a man? I've never imagined what it would be like to be a woman. **impressive given he had to cross dress quite a few times** What do you most want to eat right now?

Curry Udon. This food surpasses cultural barriers.

Describe your ideal family situation.

In traditional Japanese architecture, there's this concept of a central pillar. A single pillar that supports the entire house. I think the head of a household should be like that. **This is so Lelouch like, it's the very fondation of how he acts with the one he loves, he had to endure everything.*

Favorite season?

Winter. Because it helps me keep focus. I don't really like summer, it brings back unpleasant memories.

Do you get up easily in the morning, or is it a struggle? I kind of struggle. I have low blood pressure, after all. How many hours of sleep do you get on average? Approximately three ? But, with some naps throughout the day, it might be more like six hours. Your last dream? I dreamt a meteorite landed on and crushed me. I blame C.C.'s atrocious sleeping posture.

**He never actually accepted to sleep on the floor right ? I can totally see C.C. kicks him in the guts while dreaming**

How much time does it take you to get ready in the morning? I've never paid attention. Do you have anyone you admire? Arthur. Please tell us how you spend your holidays. Holiday? this concept is unknown to me (He never takes holiday)

Western food or Japanese food? What is western food ? Oh, a generic term? Then, western, I guess, I like Italian. **I never would have imagined Lelouch craving italian food, I hope it's not again because of pizza hut, this is not italian food** If you could be born again, what would you like to be? Arthur.

What have you been really into lately? Creating an organization, I suppose. Your favorite animal? Cats. They're lithe and beautiful. Like a waltz. Even if Arthur is more like a pop song.

Of the necessities of life (clothing, food, shelter), which is the most important? Shelter. It's a person's base of operations, as well as their place of refuge; It is fundamental to any country.

**Ahh Lelouch...** Sorry to spring this on you, but what is love? Something given unconditionally. **Something he indeed gave unconditionnally at the end of the anime ** Please take a guess at what you'll be like 30 years from now. I'd like you to pray for me that my hair won't become anything like that man's… *....*

If you could travel through time, when would you go back?

I guess, if I would still remember what I actually know, I'd be able to prevent all of it from happening…

Favorite book? (Or what magazines do you read frequently?) Lord of the Rings, The prince of Machiavel, Hamlet… **Of course they had to mention the prince, but the lords of rings ? One might wonder who were his favorite characters and what he loved about this story** Your preferred type of woman? A soft person. You know what I mean ?

*Fuwa fuwa na ito >> As a toughtful blogger reminded me, Lelouch said person, not woman ;) ; Fuwa fuwa with the "you know what I mean ?" can actually means something more ecchi than soft girls, so it's either soft (sweet girls) or soft (ecchi sense) girls, or both (or boys, no gender preference over here). Lelouch could have been more hormonal than we knew**

Is it better to devote yourself, or to have someone else devote themselves to you? I find it more fulfilling to want than to be wanted.

**Why not both Lelouch ?**

Did you receive any Valentine's Day chocolate? How much?

I will not answer that. …"probably none ?" I got some! Not as many as Nunnally, though, for whatever reason.

**Now that is surprising, wasn't the whole school head over heel in love with him ?**

What would you do with a million yen? (Like if you won the lottery?) I'd invest them and make ten times the ammount. What type of person is Suzaku? Softhearted to the point of turning stupid We've already reached the forty-ninth question. Are you getting tired? I've been tired since question 5.

What do you want for Christmas? A sewing machine. I plan to update my cloak and mask.

[pencileraser1]

i tried to reblog this in the tags bc you both brought up good points but tumblr shuffled all my tags around and i wanted to say more so here???????????? it is i guess

desire mona tags:

#OUGH!!! was hoping youd add onto this u spearheaded the neils mom thoughts in my mind#depression is actually very commom with 50s housewives or housewives in general just due to to nature of their work paired with a lack of ac#knowledgement#so that makes sense#and it being treatment resistant would explain why it persists even after she doesnt need to perform any motherly duties while neils at scho#ol#aaaaaand passing that onto neil#but considering the way mental health was treated back then im sure it wouldnt be used as a BECOME A DOCTOR thing but it could#i was thinking more physical health like cancer or smthn similar#oncology? james?#oncology james

i'd kind of been interpreting it as depression cause then neil inheriting that would possibly be a thing. (hysteria was only discredited fully as a diagnosis in the 80's if i'm correct also, and i don't think depression on it's own was considered to be hysteria but still, i doubt mrs. perry being depressed would be taken seriously) but depression + something else Also makes a lot of sense. could go either way with this!!!

good merits accumulated tags:

#but i think there was a short discussion a while ago about how neil's dad is a little anxious financially?#and as they don't seem to be anything less than well off. it might be posited that the anxiety is class-focused#they're upper class but are they upper class enough for welton THE rich boy school. etc#in that frame neil becoming a doctor becomes another way for the family to gain some status#while also being kind of the 'best' job he's ever going to be able to do#like realistically he's never going to be able to break into those upper business echelons the way that many welton alumni#will be able to do#(because nepotism etc. etc.)#so medicine is his best shot#dead poets society#it's half 7 so if this doesn't make sense. blame it on the clock

ok so this is like. something i'm extremely interested in for some reason sorry if this is a lot.

side tangent first: i think neil being pressured to be a lawyer instead could hypothetically sort of make sense?? bc while it's probably easier with nepotism, it likely wouldn't be impossible. doctor does make a bit more sense though, although i think there's probably several other reasons Why doctor other than financial reasons and how possible it would be for neil.

neil definitely isn't welton level upper class. there's a few things, "we aren't a rich family like charlies," but also the deleted extracurriculars scene. knox gets asked about a new house his family is moving into, cameron (and charlie in the script) gets asked how his father is. knox is in the "sons of alumni" club, charlie, cameron and todd are all in the service club, neil is in neither. the service club is nothing definitive, however because welton is Welton i kind of suspect that most of the service that is done depends on the student's families being able to give money to the school. i've always sort of theorized that neil was on a partial scholarship. it would make sense for him specifically given that he is one of welton's top students, this line from the script has been stuck in my brain since i read it, "NEIL PERRY stands. Whereas some boys have two or three achievement pins an the lapels of their coats, Neil has a huge cluster of them on the pocket of his jacket." plus him being set to go to harvard, (at the point when the movie is set i don't think he could know for sure but given everything about him his chances are probably pretty good) even though the majority of welton students go to the ivy leagues, this is still pretty important to welton. welton depends on its students being successful out of school, thats how they continue to get students. so giving neil a partial scholarship, who is near guaranteed to be extremely successful as an adult (at least they assume so) would be a smart decision on their behalf cause after he graduates they can then use neil to convince more people to enroll their students.

Anderperry fans hyper-analyse ever micropixel in dead poets society by watching it 12 times a day then try to find a reason why there is no happiness in their lives.

'Comfort movie' what comfort?

[nightswithkookmin]

Jimin is a pretty bOY

This is a continuation of our discussion on my last post. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me, I think I agree with all of it.

Not sure how I feel about the calling eachother out bit or near scolding of others in the comments. Please let's be welcoming and respectful of others's thoughts regardless of whether or not we agree with it. It's ok to hold diverse views. We do after all come from different backgrounds and have accumulated different experiences and I think it plays out in how we see things. Everyone's opinion is valid. Plus, I purple yall.

Now, do I think he is trying to pack on muscles........? Yes. He said so himself in Festa when he said he would rush to the mirror when he thought he had gained some muscle only to find out his biceps looks like a muscled kindergartner.

He also said lately he's into exercising and staying in shape which is true because for quite sometime now since early this year he has been talking about how "weak" he is in their Vlives and have even given instances of him not being able to do certain things- certian simple and easy tasks- which is typical of him I'd say. He's always talking about how "weak" he is especially around JK and juxtaposing that with "but JK is so strong" which I'm sorry but I have to smirk at right now cos it's such a typical gay pick me simp thing to do. We've all been there.

Do I think he's trying to be a muscle bunny or revert back to his body shape around debut? Absolutely not. But I do think he is straddling the line of toxic masculinity which is what the conversation is about.

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to stay in shape or even enjoying work outs. Last night I ran downstairs because I had left my stew on the stove and now this morning I called renew my gym membership because I discovered running can be actually fun to do... No. No it's not. The gym instructor would have to come for me kicking and screaming.

RM have said even though JM looks skinny and fragile he is one of the strongest within the group. Besides, this is not the first time he's expressed interest in working out and building his body- hello, on Era?

I remember people complaining he looked too buffed up in that period on SNS and PJMs quickly jumping in to clear the searches for it. The choreo for On required agility and endurance and required the members- not just JM build up some definition in their muscles.

We've seen them go through all that. So it's not simply a matter of black and white staying in shape or doing it because he feels pressured to do so. Especially, when you consider that he's undertaken some pretty unhealthy measures in the past in attempts to lose weight or soften out his body post these muscle building, weight gaining periods and we've always chalked it up to his dance and how as a contemporary dancer he has to look a certain way or this or that to try to justify and make sense of it. Next you, know there are six chapters of break the silence of him talking about all the dark places he's been, the pressures to look his best for his fans or for his job and all these other painful stories he's shared with us over the years. And it's like, but why? Why do this to yourself?

I'll never forget the look he gave JK when JK was talking about wanting to build muscles in one of the interviews for the promotion of Be- I think I made a post on it. When JK noticed JMs disapproving glare he backtracked saying he would want to stay skinny after gaining all that muscles.

I mean if I'm to be honest, he was bound to crack at one point. The signs were there being surrounded by all these men who adhere to the traditional aesthetics of a masculine body- from Namjoon to Taehyung.

I wish y'all will steer the conversation in this direction and make it more about gender norms and expressions and breaking stereotypes and diversity in the body aesthetics of men.

Jimin is a man too. He just isn't what people traditionally will label masculine. Androgynous is more an apt word in my opinion. How many times have I said, I think Jungkook hetero passes because his body aesthetics is quintessentially what most associates with a masculine man?

Breaking gender barriers is not just about embracing feminine apparels- that teeters on cross dressing quite frankly and can be a bit performative and baity. Then you have to consider their culture in itself has an inherent pro gender diversity feel to it.

Now, let me explain my problem with the Klout ad campaign a little bit.

Do you see how Tae stands out? And I'm not saying this to fuel the "Tae was their fav" debacle. It's the 007 feel... I'll explain in a bit.

Most often, alcohol advertisers as well as most advertisements intended to sell to men often try to appeal to men's internalized ideals of masculinity or try to shape and define what a man or masculinity should look like. These ideals are so often toxic and detrimental to men and mostly women too.

Take a look at these ads for example. All I had to do was google search ads for men.

Real men drink milk and look at the image they present as real men. This blatantly implies if you don't look like this, if you are not a strong cliff climbing man with abs you are not a real man.

The second image is subtle. I call it the 007 slash Kingsmen-esque ideals of masculinity. It portrays men as sexy cool badass- works out but isn't too buff, filthy rich or middle class, wears Rolex, designer clothes, is kind but has a mean exterior and is every 13 year old wattpad girls's dream of a man. In fiction, you see this kind of masculinity in characters such as Edward cullens to Christian Grey. And a lot of ads for men alternate between these two ideals of masculinity.

Do you see how they modeled Taehyung in these ads after this kind of masctheme? Tae looks the same in almost all the ads. 007 sexy cool badass.

Now, I may not be a makeup beauty guru or MUA or whatever, but one thing I've picked up on especially when it comes to makeup for men- BTS and Kpop idols mostly is that, they soften out the harsh features on their faces and make them appear more androgynous or effeminate to suit the Kpop look and they ditch it entirely in different settings.

So for instance, Tae and Kookie's natural hawkish eyebrows tend to get softened around the arch and edges- don't know how the fuck they do that- but it appears less in your face intense most times when they wear make up in kpop related contents.

However, in certain other contents that lean towards a certain gender theme those features are emphasized. Not to say hawkish features are masculine features. Just saying in men, Kpop idols, my observation is they soften those features out with makeup or surgery.

Now, take a look at JM in these ads and look at everything from his posture, make up, hairstyle and brows. It's as if someone took an eraser to his androgynousity and erased his feminine side. Take a look at his photo above and compare it to the ads.

I am not a man. But I feel the gender look they went for, intended to appeal to men, tapped into a rather outdated stereotype of what man and masculinity should look like.

What is a man?

What should a man look like?

What aesthetics of masculinity is Jimin gravitating towards now? And I'm not talking clothes, I'm talking the expression of his gender. Time and again, he's talked about how looking a certain way made him uncomfortable in the past because he was constantly fighting his feminine side. He is androgynous. Sometimes he leans more into his feminine side. Other times he leans more into his masculine side but this is the only time he's leaning into his masculinity that makes me uncomfortable to watch because like I said it bothers on toxic masculinity.

He's said whoever he was, the version fighting to look masculine, that wasn't him. So forgive me if I worry whenever i see him suppressing his feminine side and acting like 'one of the boys.' Him staying in shape is not synonymous with him erasing a valid part of himself or suppressing it. He can stay in shape, celebrate his masculinity and still be FILTER.

What I'm saying is, this not a conversation about him exercising. This is a conversation about an ad erasing his feminine side and boxing him into a narrow expression of his gender and how that might be affecting his view of himself especially in the way he's been gravitating towards a certain masculine aesthetics and how that could be toxic.

Tae has said the same thing and BTS have agreed the JM as of 2019 was the real JM according to them.They said he was that way- suppressing his feminine side, because there weren't much songs and choreos that suited him and so he had had to bend himself to fit with the others.

And so when I see him leaning a certain way I tend to wonder if his exterior environment is playing a role in that. I hope you can understand that.

He is a contemporary dancer and strength and flexibility are prerequisites for his craft. The company go out of their way to incorporate contemporary dance in their choreos for JM's sake which helps solve that problem of him trying too hard to look a certain way.

May be I'm projecting. May be my little brother is effeminate and I've always recommended Jimin as a role for him to tell him not to try to look different just because other boys look different. May be I've seen him try one too many times to kill himself in the gym trying to build on muscles and getting frustrated with himself because he ends up looking like someone else. You can't gym the queerness away. Society will never let you be who you want to be so you might as well flip it the middle finger.

These boys are being shaped by their environment. I hate to say this but the environment they are in isn't exactly progressive and the longer they stay in there cut off from the outside world...

Flying out helps. Meeting different people and being exposed to different cultures and conversations on gender expression helps.

Anywho, these are just concerns I have. Will have them till I see that's not where he is headed towards. But let's not act like these ad campaigns do not and can not psychologically impact these boys especially as these advertisers are not looking to tap into their own definition of gender and masculinity but shape it and redefine it to appeal to the demographic they intend to market to.

I think this is just a grey area for me. Rather than try to change JM to look a certain way in order to sell alcohol. I think the ground breaking thing would be to have a man who looks like JM show us how someone like him would sell a can of drink. I think that would be revolutionary.

Signed,

GOLDY

[the-composer]

"Oh, him. Yeah, I think I've spoken to him a time or two before. I don't know him very well, but... Well, I know he isn't human. Reminds me of a dream I had once about a blinding light. And it's like... I almost feel like I'm physically unravelling when I'm around him, like, you know, like an amigurumi doll? Just coming apart. But... I dunno. Seems lonely sometimes, that guy. Or maybe... Alone with his thoughts? Something empty there. I don't know what's going on with him, though. Reminds me of that café guy that might actually be two guys. The Hanekoma guy? I feel like they're... Something else. He's scary, but he sure is interesting!"

thinking out loud . . . accepting (on or off anon)

His preternatural abilities grant him the advantage of picking up and tuning into thoughts and voices from an unseeable distance. This person has clued in to the fact he isn’t human -- not that Joshua goes to great lengths to hide it. What he does find interesting is the clear indication that this person is sensitive enough to feel the pressure of his proximity. Even lowering his frequency in the RG, extended exposure to him will wear on the Soul and put strain on the psyche. The average person may feel inexplicably exhausted, and stressed. Those who are more plugged in may be more vulnerable to destabilization.

Suffice to say, it’s a reminder that he’s getting too close to people again. 

And as if on cue, the reasons rise: lonely. Alone. Empty.

All three would be right at any given time. He internally recoils from that like his Soul’s been burned (and burned it did), but fortunately the musing drifts to Hanekoma Two guys. They’re noticing. Intriguing.

He giggles to himself.

Yeah, they’re something else alright.

[meadow-dusk]

I've been having a difficult time lately reconciling the place of music (and everything else) in my life. Of course, I want it to be more. I wish I could travel through time and enter that world when everything was congenial and creative, sharing my time and talent, my thoughts and my spirit with like-minded people. But I can't. Whatever that industry is now isn't something I have any interest in, and the amateur circuit could be fun but it's nearly impossible to access given the circumstances and safety of going out nowadays. Besides, the grass is always greener.

I usually find comfort knowing that here, together, we share the ache for that time gone by, settling for the roles of harbingers of those emotion that music brings to us, and we can briefly escape into the world of these artists and see them as young, ambitious, and in the most fertile period of their creativity. But sometimes, we get a glimpse into the life of a real life person who is actually satisfied with what they have, and that’s when this facade can come crashing down: the harsh reality of passed time, the pain of loving something or someone so deeply even though it’s completely unattainable, the torment of wondering why we can't be happy enough instead of imagining this much, much better fantasy world we’ve carved out in our niche of the internet. Personally, I sometimes feel a very real pressure to want the "normal" things that society values: a steady job where I’m motivated by income and a healthy retirement fund, a family (or at the very least a partner), and stability in a physical location. I feel pressure that I should have it all figured out by now, or at least be on my way. But I find myself at this juncture of life more confused than ever.

So I took some time away to think about all these things and I finally reached a breakthrough: maybe I'm not unsatisfied because I don’t have those things. Maybe I don’t have those things because I'm not satisfied by the concept of them. This music I've fallen so deeply in love with (it's not even the right term, but what else captures the intensity of this connection) has made me reconsider everything, from what I want for myself, to what I'm doing to help people and the planet, to the person I have the capacity to become. These are heavy thoughts, and in a fragile mental state, they're too much. But I'm grateful I get to have them, and I'm grateful to the artists who shared so much of themselves and made me want to meet them there.

I have been saying for a long time that this is my favorite of Neil's songs, based more on a feeling than a conscious decision. Now I think I know why. It's all in the lyrics. The music is obviously beautiful and does everything at all the right times to support the poetry, but the words themselves stir up such strong imagery, and I believe they capture exactly how it feels to grapple with the unease of existentialism in a world where everyone else seems happier or more at peace. Right from the start, the line describing someone trying to come ashore into unwelcoming ports in darkness is so isolating, so pitiful. You know it can't be done: he has no choice but to stay on the changing sea amidst the storm: “still the searcher must ride the dark horse,” the one no one saw coming. It's like an admission, that, if you want to find something actually worth finding, you're probably going to be alone, and you’re probably going to be afraid. And these “arrangements” that are so hard to make with ourselves…since age apparently weighs into the equation, I think are the concessions or the lies we tell ourselves that things are going well, that our situations are actually fine, but they're so hard to believe because all the while we know time is passing and whatever it means to be “young enough to sell” won’t be worth selling anymore someday soon. And I know there's a whole separate verse to unpack but that’s for another day (or one of you can take it 😉).

Those deep, dark places of our minds that open up when we listen and connect to music like this can be absolutely terrifying, and they rarely provide immediate comfort or gratification, if any. But I hope I can trust the process and understand that if I want to figure out what can bring me my own version of peace and satisfaction, I've got a lot more broken harbors to sail my hardships through.

[lavenderbexlatte]

Hello!!! Welcome to 🦋 anon's probably-way-too-overthought analysis on the m&m series in light of the new part. I have stopped crying and had about 24 hours to think, and I have discovered I have many thoughts, and this will probably be way more detailed than it should be.

The first thing I would like to address are some of the accusations Chan made at the end of the most recent part. (While I understand that they're supposed to not quite be accurate because of their obvious root in insecurity, and a lot of what I'm saying may just be like "yeah, obviously," I still would like to tell at the character a bit but I can't so this is what I have.)

Claim #1: "You fucking came at us at that party with your little girl-dom agenda and the guys fell for it, hook line sinker!"

This one's fairly self explanatory, no she didn't. They literally came onto her, even him, with his "There’s that pretty blush," and "Whatever you want it to be," lines. (And while yes, it's very likely that he was just trying to play it cool, but there's no way she could've known that, I'll come back to this later.)

Claim #2: "Nobody fucking asked me what I wanted!" "Nobody asked if I was sure that I wanted…"

Also mostly false, but he does have a tiny bit of a point. Yes, reader did grab his hair without asking, which is a little iffy, but she didn't actually rough with him until he goads her on. But I would argue that the reader is actually the ONLY one who asks him what he wants, if he's okay with things. While there may have been a little bit of discussion on the decision to approach the reader that we didn't see because of perspective (him saying this is kind of telling me that there wasn't, or at the very least not enough, maybe even some pressure for this to be the moment), or maybe Changbin said something while reader is with Jisung on the couch, after that, we don't see Jisung and Changbin check in with him at ALL, and there's not really an opportunity any other time for it just not have been noticed by the reader. As his partners, and the ones in the situation who have the full knowledge of Chan's situation, it should've been their responsibility to make sure he was alright throughout the process, even if they're not the ones in control for this situation, ESPECIALLY if they're going to keep this information from their Domme for the night (which really, I would say, wasn't a good idea, but no one is required to out themselves so I'll leave it alone).

HOWEVER, the reader does check with him, several times. She asks for boundaries/hard limits/etc before they even start anything, and while again, he's not required to say "hey, having a sexuality crisis, first time with a girl, kinda nervous," and he may not want to tip off Jisung and Changbin that something's wrong, that would be the time to say something like "I'm not feeling anything rough tonight, if you could be gentler that would be great." She asks them if there's anyone that doesn't actually want to fuck her. Also, she implements a safeword system (which she specifically calls him out to make sure he's okay with), which they weren't even going to USE, and asks them at least twice throughout the scene for their color, and Chan specifically if he's okay at least two more times besides that. Actually Chan almost makes fun of her for asking so many questions, so I think this claim is just another part of his insecurity-fed delusion that she's conspiring to ruin his life, or something, but again I'll come back to that. My point is that despite being the only one who doesn't know his situation, reader is also the only one who checks in with him.

There are a few other things he said that I took issue with, but those are the main two.

Next; Chan's delusion that reader is like conspiring to ruin his life. (Really like how you depicted this by the way, though I may be thinking wayyy too far into this.) I remember watching some video when I had one of my mental health/disorders hyperfixations. The video was about schizophrenia, and while I definitely don't think Chan has schizophrenia, one of the things the video talked about was types of delusions, and this kind of reminded me of one of them. I don't remember what it's called, but it's basically a delusion based around one idea, and then you force the world around you to fit into that idea. One example of this that I can think of is Azula from ATLA. Towards the end of her arc in the TV series, she starts seeing hallucinating her mother everywhere, and you get a peek of her fixed belief that her mother is behind everything that has gone wrong in her life, which is expanded upon a little bit in the books. Obviously Chan's not experiencing delusion to the extent that she did, but I did see some (albeit much less intense) parallels that were interesting. See, if he only talked about how his boyfriends seemed to like the reader more than him, that would be one thing, but he brings up his mother as well, which even though they did speak, it's a little out there to say that your mother likes someone she's talked to once more than you. That, combined with his insisting that the reader is playing some sort of game makes me think of that a little.

Of course this was only at first, when I was like "wtf, where is this 'my boyfriends like you more than me' thing coming from?" And then I reread the first few parts for this monstrosity of an ask that I'm writing rn. While at first I thought that this was entirely out of left field, when I read through the first few parts, especially the second one, with the knowledge that he felt that way, I noticed a few things you had put in there.

For the majority of the scene, or at least the first good chunk, the reader deals with Jisung and Changbin alone, leaving Chan by himself to watch. Obviously, as we see the reader's perspective, we know that it's because she found Chan's attitude intriguing and wanted to be able to deal with that one on one (at least that's what I got from it), it's easy to see now how to someone who's already insecure about their relationship and themselves, that would read as someone replacing you. Especially when Jisung, with no ill intent, but still, outright rejects his help in favour of the reader, and once again, he is left out, only this time it's accompanied with the sting of knowing (or at least feeling) that your partner didn't want you involved.

Now I kinda want to go character by character, and idk, talk about what I think they did wrong? We'll see, I'm not going to edit this so here we go.

Jisung and Changbin : Honestly, looking back on 3racha's first encounter with the reader, they really should have done better as Chan's partners. Like I said earlier, as the ones who knew Chan's situation, and the ones who likely pressured him slightly into he whole ordeal, it was really their responsibility to make sure Chan was okay with everything that was going on. That, and them feeling the need to sneak around with reader behind Chan's back doesn't sit right with me. I get that they have an open relationship, but there's a difference between having an open relationship and hooking up with someone your partner doesn't like, and actively trying to hide that you're hooking up with them. Their relationship boundaries may be fine with that, but idk, something feels off about it.

(I couldn't figure out where to put this and you may have already addressed this but it's my little theory/headcanon that Chan actually suspected it was reader at Jisung's place, and when there wasn't anyone there, he kinda gaslighted himself afterwards, idk. With the new knowledge it feels likely.)

Also, knowing that they were together for a while before Chan joined the relationship I think explains so much about the communication issues they seem to have with him. While I do think Chan has trouble communicating his feelings about things, I think their established communication and knowing eachother really well doesn't help. I may just be making things up at this point, but I feel like they have trouble with communication with Chan specifically, maybe forgetting that he doesn't have the same time/experience thy have with each other? If that makes sense?

Chan : oh boy. I've gone into a lot of detail already, so I'll try to keep this brief. Obviously, I think he has a looooottt of insecurity he needs to work through. If I were reallllyyy analyzing this I would say maybe a past cheating partner(?), but unless that's relevant to the plot I'm not sure if that's just me reading too much into this. Also mentioned before, COMMUNICATION ISSUES. One thing that would prevent half of the issues with this series is Chan communicating with his partners, though I suppose that wouldn't be near as much fun to read. Or just communicating I'm general, like I said, he had a plethora of opportunities to communicate to reader if he wanted something different, and didn't. So, yeah. Honestly I think he causes most of his own problems, but I feel like we knew that.

Reader : Now. I spent most of this series completely on the reader's side. Last night after reading part six, I was like "oh my god. He's right!" But then I took a while and thought a lot about it (as you can see), and honestly, I think reader probably did the least wrong out of everyone. Yes, the hair thing was a little iffy, like I said earlier, but once I went back and realized that he was actively participating and egging her on, I don't think that's necessarily something she did wrong. Beyond that, she did the most in regards of communication (at least during sex, after is another story), even more than the partners themselves. I think she did the best she could with the information that was given to her. She saw three guys approach her as a unit, and while yes, she didn't ask before engaging with Chan, I don't think it's really her fault for assuming that they were all interested as a unit as well. She had no reason to question any of their sexualities, why would she? She sees three partners approach her in unison, why wouldn't she assume they were on the same page? Anyway, all that to say, I think reader is the most innocent of all the main characters so far, though I may feel different after sitting on this for more time.

Anyway, here's this unedited brain dump, loved the new part, enjoy. Or not ig - 🦋

i've been sitting on this for like a week bc it's just so long and amazing??? and i have no idea what to say?? 🥺🥺

the bit about chan having a sort of delusion that reader is out to ruin his life in a pointed, conspired way is VERY interesting. their dynamic is actually something that i pulled from myself, in a way. i'm really superstitious about dumb things. i hate, like, bumping into someone or accidentally saying something that hurts someone's feelings bc i know that that karma/vibe/intention (whatever you wanna call it, i'm not spiritual just paranoid) is gonna come back around.

reader is the opposite. she's just walking around doing things and thinking about herself, and then being shocked when there are equal and opposite reactions to the stuff she does. i overthink everything, so reader doesn't think nearly enough.

but lemme say

that the best thing you said is how jisung and changbin are absolutely not the innocent bystanders that everyone seems to think they are 🤐🤐 most readers LOVE those two. but think about it...what are they trying to accomplish, here? 👀