#i think it was a competition actually. i just wanted to draw it cus it was such a cool drawing kjdsfkl....... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lvlyhao · 3 years

Text

『you’re dating him but he’s not your bias』

reaction fic; NCT Dream

A/N: this is nct dream’s reaction to realizing your bias is not him (and you’re a couple). gender neutral, got way too deep at some points and was NOT meant to be this long. enjoy.

note that english is my second language and i speak mixing slang, accents and spellings from 3283928 places so i did notice there’s practice written with both s and c down there so

just dont mind it pls

also, today’s photo theme is dream looking cute in low quality shots.

𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓻𝓮𝓼: fluff (♡), angst (❆), comedy (☼), crack (⍢).

𝓦𝓪𝓻𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼: lots of swearing, my tough love for the neos, one mention of cheating that doesn’t actually happen, a couple of mentions of alcohol and drinking, some violence hidden in metaphors, me being chaotic, it got a bit more angsty and darker than i intended, but we do have all happy endings.

word count: 6.8K

pairing: nct dream members x reader ( includes mark, renjun, jeno, haechan, jaemin, chenle, jisung)

disclaimer: the characters in the story below do not reflect real people or present real facts. this is purely fictional, and you may not copy, change, translate or repost my work in any way. all rights reserved © cherry-hyejin 2021.

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Mark

oh, poor baby

i feel like he would be a little heartbroken

just a little

not so much if it’s someone from dream, because they’re his little brothers, but if it’s one of his hyungs from 127 or wayv,,,,,

boy might cry

he’s not super dramatic about it or anything but i don’t see him as being super confident about himself

so he might think like

“do they think he’s cooler than me?”

and it’s silly, yes, he knows

but it’s just something that pops up in his mind sometimes when you bring him up

so for the sake of this fanfic let’s pretend you’re johnny biased

because gods know i am

at least when it comes to 127

mark would be divided into fanboying with you and being like “YO, HE’S THE COOLEST GUY ON EARTH OH MY GOD I’M SO GLAD YOU AGREE”

and

“a h”

would constantly try to get closer to you when johnny is around, and just

showing off in little (kinda dumb) ways

complimenting you

being even more whipped than usual

like yes he’ll give you all of his watermelon slices just please don’t look at johnny like that again

i think johnny would kind of play into it with the whole “imma steal your s/o” thing

and he doesn’t do it to make mark jealous or hurt

we know he’d rather get hit by a train than ever actually upsetting his son on purpose

but we also know he’s johnny

cue “OH DUDE HE’S FLIRTING”

so yeah he might call you lil pet names (beautiful, cutie, you get it)

just to see you giggle

(and see your soul leave your body)

might say he’s taking you out for dinner when he’s just driving you to get more ice cream for a movie night with the gang lol

and winks

expect a lot of winks

anywhere and anytime

which makes mark sometimes feel like he’s intruding???

and that you appreciate johnny more than him???

he genuinely doesn’t understand how you can date him and still not have him as your bias

don’t you like, love him above everyone else or smth lol

his “showing off” phase eventually fades tho

now every time you hang you with the boys and johnny is around, he’ll be a bit more distant

he thinks he’s giving you space to interact with his friends but he’s just shying away from competing with one of his favourite people ever

and it’s a competition that Does Not Exist™

but he’s not 100% aware of that

and you’re not that dense

so ofc you notice

and you wait till you two are alone to talk to him, and he BEGRUDGINGLY admits that you being johnny biased makes him feel kinda small and unimportant

he’d never try to make you change your bias or anything

he just needs reminders that he’s your #1 boy sometimes

which is fine by you

and by him

cus now it’s you calling him pet names all the time

and hugging him

and kissing his cheek

and praising his work

and blowing kisses from across the room

and just telling him straight up that no matter what, you’ll always go to him

(not that you ever had any chance with johnny lmao)

THIS GOES TO SHOW COMMUNICATING IS KEY, CHILDREN

COMMUNICATE

Renjun

wym donghyuck is your bias lol

literally are you fucking kidding him

don’t get me wrong ok

everyone knows renjun loves haechan

they’re bffs and could not live without each other

but at the same time,,,

what is wrong with you

who did he choose as his s/o gods help him

if it was jeno, or mark, or jaehyun, or winwin, or kun, or lucas, or yuta, or taeyong, or ten, or,,,,

literally ANY of his other members

he’d understand your point and be like “ok fine”

but haechan???? hmmm bestie no

he’s not gonna throw a fit

not after the first time you told him anyways

HE WAS SURPRISED OKAY

and he just whined very loudly after having laughed for 5 minutes thinking it was a joke

if you don’t know that iconic scene, renjun had a whole ass meltdown in 3 seconds while yelling “aAAAAAH JINJJAAAAA” and getting ready to punch the living shit out of hyuck

for no reason other than the fact that it’s haechan we’re talking about and injun’s little body is filled with rage

BACK ON TRACK

would probably try to act all cool about it and be like “i don’t mind” but bruh does he mind

and it doesn’t help that haechan is such a little shit about it

he doesn’t even flirt with you

he just

constantly reminds renjun that he’s your bias—not him—and then constantly praises himself over you

“ah, y/n~ did you choose me as your bias because i’m the best vocalist? or was it because i’m the best dancer? mAYBE IT WAS BECAUSE OF MY OH SO BROAD SHOULDERS—”

(pause for injun to punch him)

(unpaused)

and ok in the beginning it was funny seeing him all worked up but now it’s just annoying to be in the same room as these two

haechan won’t let either of you live

and renjun just wants to

fight

so it eventually gets to the point where you’ll talk to renjun and jeno will talk to hyuck cus even the other dreamies are tired of it

except maybe for chenle, he always laughs his ass off when they start bickering

ANYWAY

your conversation goes something like “oh my god renjun i’m literally dating you, i don’t like haechan better or anything you little pile of fury”

while jeno sits hyuck down in front of him and jaemin and just

“bro why are you like this”

“bro”

no but renjun would apologize for going overboard with his protectiveness and jealous energy because he’s not generally like that

he’s angry all the time but never about something involving you, you know

he tries his best to treat you like the royalty you are

but something about hyuck being your bias makes him feel a bit like a castaway???

he’s very creative and as an artsy kid myself i know we’re very prone to feeling left out because we’re just different from the others

so he’d think maybe haechan really has a better voice

or better dancing skills

or he looks better

he is taller than injun after all, and has broader shoulders, and his hair is all fluffy and—

the whole thing just made him insecure about things he had settled with himself long ago

he was fine with being him

but not so much when it came to that

i don’t think you two would fight over it cus tbh i think renjun would really only get with someone who can be very understanding of him

and i think hyuck would actually apologize to renjun too

not when everyone’s around but like, maybe after dinner or something and he just needs to feel like they’re besties again

hyuck never meant for things to get out of control

he just really likes both injun and you as his friends, and aside from skinship his most prominent love language is,,,

teasing

he was really just trying (very poorly) to grow closer to the person his best friend loves so much—you—because renjun is SUCH a big part of his life it would just feel wrong to not be good friends with you as well

don’t tell them i said this but they hug it out

injun strikes me as someone that could take a bit of time to bounce back from something that hurt his pride or his sense of belonging

and his way of healing and bonding is just,,,

art

sure, keep being haechan biased, but also please read with him

and talk about his fantastic animal creations

and watch those buzzfeed unsolved alien theory videos because he really wants to discuss it and maybe even draw what he thinks the aliens look like

hyuck tones it down, you make sure renjun knows you like him for him, renjun starts to (secretly) appreciate hyuck’s talent along with you...

and now let’s take a moment to imagine the minute you watch their latest mv with injun by your side

and yes okay the first thing you see is CLEARLY how good renjun looks because holy fucking shit he’s an angel (and i’m clearly not renjun biased)

but then,,,,,,

wAS THAT A HAECHAN HIGH NOTE

(there’s always a haechan high note, just look for it)

and ok maybe he did scream a bit with you because of how good it all sounded

and you know what, it works out perfectly bc you two are my new otp and you were meant for each other

but we do have to mention the eventual happening of chenle saying like “oOoOoOoH y/N wErE yOu dRoOliNg oVeR hAeChAn AgAiN” after a special stage

and then you, injun and hyuck all attempt to choke him

i’m kidding

or not

Jeno

ah, lee jeno

aka samoyed boi

yes i do call him that no i will not stop

everyone is always writing jeno as being super protective and literally about to burst a lung if someone else ever does as much as look at you

but i just

don’t see him that way

he’s a taurus and from what i know about taurus they can be v v jealous, yes, but they mainly seek comfort

so he’s fine with you biasing jaemin

as long as you’re not ditching him or anything lol

and ok, imma be 100% honest here even if it sounds like literal no fun (jenojaem wink wonk)

jaemin doesn’t flirt with you

not any more than he flirts with

every other breathing creature

ever

he’s really only platonically interested in you, never remotely romantic or anything lol

on the other side, he is in love with jeno

basically, if jaemin is your bias, jeno is his

so nothing really changes

we know how nomin are, okay

they hold hands, they stare deeply into each other eyes, they nearly kiss at least once every time they go live

it's just them

you gotta respect it bruh

i know this is the most boring reaction ever so let’s create the one (1) instance where jeno would actually dislike that you bias someone else

i think he would feel a bit hurt if you seemed to be more supportive of jaemin’s work than his

and it’s not something big or on purpose

it’s just something like going with him to a recording session but not going with jeno because you have homework

or after a very busy practise day going to praise jaemin first

even if it’s just three words

“you did good”

and then you’re going towards him, he’s gonna feel like maybe he doesn’t deserve your praise as much as nana????

i actually feel like, among the dreamies, jeno is the least confident one when it comes to his performance

he knows he’s not an awful rapper or anything but i think it can be a bit too much, being around such bright and huge presences like the others while his nickname literally means “no fun”

his members are just so loud and full of energy most of the time

and sometimes he just really needs to be quiet and observe in silence

(yes i do know he’s chaotic and a crackhead, i’m just saying as we know he can be a bit introspective)

so what if you just

stopped seeing him?

did he become invisible to you?

did you finally fall for jaemin’s beautiful smile and stupid pick-up lines?

he’s not gonna let it show that he’s affected, though

earth signs are nearly always the ones to “stay strong” because we have this image that people are relying on us???

so we do what we do

bottle everything up and overwork ourselves bc we only got two modes

1. chill, super balanced and down to earth (ay for the pun)

2. please make us take a break we’re literally about to cry if we work for one more minute but we can’t allow ourselves to fucking take it easy

so yes you’ve guessed correctly, we’re going with 2

jeno is going to go so, SO hard on everything he does

literally every single activity you can think of from dance practice to photoshoots to cooking for the dreamies

he stays up later than usual to get that one tricky move in the choreo just right

he works out more because he thinks he has to look absolutely perfect for when they shoot the mv

jisung asked for ramen? he’s making it but you bet your ass he’s spending over 40 minutes just chopping so

many

vegetables

AND STUFF THAT JISUNG WON’T EVEN EAT

but he’s doing it anyway for the reason being that it just has to be the Best™

and it’s not like he’s competing with anyone else to be diligent

this is just about being better than he was and showing himself—and maybe you—how painstakingly hardworking and driven he can be

maybe then you’re gonna acknowledge him as much as you acknowledge nana :((

:(((((

writing this is making me downright sad, jeno is so underrated and unaware of his power UGH

and i need to point out this is NOT about making you change your bias from jaemin to him, this is solely about having you recognize his efforts, even if you already do

if you just thought jeno was like going off in work because it was asked of him to, jaemin would DEF notice and talk to you about it

turns out it’s a habit of jeno to go extra hard sometimes and he needs someone to make him take a break

so it goes down like you breaking into the practice room when jeno and jisung were practising

the first reaction is confusion

the second is oh hey babe how are you

third is

a-are you dragging jeno and his bag out of the door while screeching at jisung to order pizza and doughnuts for everyone??

yes you are and i’m proud of you

so jeno is still confused and making those cute “hUh” noises he does omg i love him so much

and you’re just rambling about how much of an amazing artist he is, and you love his voice, and he’s a fantastic dancer, and his expressions and gestures are on point, and he takes such good care of the dreamies and

he’s perfect

and he knows jaemin must have talked to you, and he feels so vulnerable to have you know how on edge he’s been

baby boy just needs some rest

and that’s exactly what you give him, with a bath full of those fancy bath bombs and flower petals and candles at your house/apt

then a quick sheet mask while you massage his shoulders and keep saying how much you genuinely admire him

the mask might be ruined cus he started crying out of exhaustion

after that’s been done and you’ve hugged for at least like 5 min nonstop, you head over to the dorms, where hyuck was in charge of setting up a blanket fort while mork and nana gather board games, jisung gets the food and chenle

well chenle just had to make sure jisung doesn’t forget to order for someone and doesn’t break like 10 plates trying to set the table lol

this is way longer than the others so imma wrap it up

make it obvious and loud that you see and respect jeno’s hard work and he’ll be alright again

and maybe make those game nights a weekly thing when possible, it would make him very happy

he’ll never again feel sad when you praise jaemin cus now he’s sure he does enough, and above all, he is enough

Haechan

haechan = full sun

why would you ever bias someone when you’re dating the goddamned sun

does not understand

but also does not care that much

actually, one out of two really depending on who your bias is

if it’s one of the members he has that tom/jerry relationship with, prepare for so

much

complaining

and clinging

AND HE’D BE SO LOUD OH MY FUCKING GOD

donghyuck please stop screaming about doyoung not deserving to be your baby’s bias, it’s 2 am

on the other hand, if it’s one of the (few) members he,,,

adores with all of his heart and is not afraid to show it

ex: sungchan, jaehyun, taeil and yang2x

then you can bet he’s going to be right beside you whenever you feel like throwing a fit because he’s just so handsome and talented

IF IT’S MARK OSHDISJD

i’m going to write you as being mark biased ok? ok

i honestly don’t know if he’d feel more jealous of mark or of you

he loves you both

a lot,,,,

and he really doesn’t like it when mark blushes when you compliment him

and he doesn’t like it when mark literally just walks past you and you trip over your feet because bro tf u doing, that’s some embarrassing shit

lowkey done with you two

but also PAY HIM SOME ATTENTION

or don’t, he’s fine either way (cue crossed arms and staring at you from across the room until you come give him a kiss)

“he’s pretty cute but i’m cuter right baby”

pouty pouty pouty if he ever feels neglected

will be so fucking annoying lmao i can’t write haechan, i love him but i do understand why renjun is always trying to beat him up

he’d be a show-off in a different way than mark because he can be so petty

will take every chance he gets to pull a one-liner

will sing everything he has to say just so you know he can hit those high notes

what do you mean dream doesn’t have a schedule today

oh man, he could swear they did

because that is the sole reason why he’s wearing his most expensive clothes and shoes + makeup to walk around the dorms, yes

no he doesn’t want to impress you

shut up

will text you like every single fancam he sees on twitter

every

single

one

and are they mark’s?

lol no, they’re his

he is so genuinely trying to make you a member of his sunflower cult

<whispers> “tell me i’m your bias”

“donghyuck what the actual hell why are you standing at the end of my bed in the middle of the night like a fucking demon child”

he really wants to act all cool and composed but he wants to be your bias so fucking bad

he’s a bad bitch all around and just does whatever

cus haechan privilege

and he tends to not care about what people say and think???

bc he knows he’s lee donghyuck

he’s fully aware of the effect he has on people

but you

not biasing him

naw, he can’t take it

will do anything and everything he can to make you say, JUST ONE TIME, he’s your bias

then you can go back to loving (his) mark

so for your sake, for his sake, for mark’s sake

just give donghyuck what he wants

i can promise he’ll keep being an ass no matter what you do

like yeah did you just buy him coffee and his favourite cake? well that’s sweet but iS HE YOUR BIAS YET

“aw babe thanks so much for taking a bullet for me but now please say i’m your bias”

if you still don’t do it, it’s time to be extra petty

will actually drop you for mark

his logic is something like: he can’t be your bias? pity, so he’s just gonna date him instead

and mark is mark so he has no idea what’s going on

everyone in 127 and dream finds this absolutely hilarious cus suddenly donghyuck seems to be doing his best to win over mark’s heart and i mean more than usual???? and he’s treating you like his bro????

<you leaving the dorms to go to uni or smth so you go to hyuck for a goodbye kiss> “no can do, i’m committed”

“i’m your partner”

“no that’s mark”

it’s not 100% a joke when i say i can see him getting down in one knee to propose to mark while making eye contact with you to

assert his dominance

and mark is just

“dude

what HAHAHA”

and you are so done, i’m so sorry you have to go through that bby

i don’t think there’s another way to fix haechan other than just admitting he was your bias for an era, or a comeback or something

like yeah with the other dreamies before him it’s bonding + healing time bc i wrote it all kinda angsty (lol sorry) but with donghyuck

“will you stop this if i say you were my bias during reload era”

“mark wasn’t in dream that era tho”

“yes i know”

i say he’s gonna take what he can get and now things can finally go back to normal

with the exception that something else comes along with hyuck being satisfied with you biasing him

he just has a full pass to fanboy over mark now too

what am i talking about?

new 127 mv is out

you: watching it beside haechan and going off about how pretty mark looks

him: going off even harder bc he’s whipped too

this is what a happy couple looks like

but now i pity mark because he has you two idiots fanboying over him irl

savemork2021

Jaemin

nana is just such a chill and fun guy

i can’t see him being actually jealous or anything if he finds out you bias someone else

and so the two of you become insufferable together

bitch, i’m telling you

he (ur bias) is not gonna have one peaceful day ever again in his entire life

cus you know the thing jaemin does where he just looks at someone doing some random shit and goes “oOoOoH sExY”

yes that thing

he’s doing it to your bias

and you’re doing it too

and your bias probably wants to run away to some very far away land

PLEASE IF IT’S JISUNG

i’m not gonna write this whole thing as if you bias him but let’s just imagine

two fully grown people

pilling on top of poor, poor park jisung playing games on his phone

“URI JISUNGIEEEEEE

MWOYA, MWOYAAAA~"

i genuinely think he would avoid being around you two at the same time

cus individually he can handle it

like yes y/n please let me go this hug has lasted for about 4 minutes now

or oh hi jaemin hyung my cheeks hurt when you pinch them that hard

but when you two are together

bruh

a power couple not bc you two are v confident or some shit but bc you can and will be extremely affectionate towards anyone that comes too close

and now let’s talk about how it would be if you biased jaehyun

jaemin loves jaehyun

they’re 2jae

2jae are soulmates

therefore,,,, it’s also kinda hellish but in a different way???

bc 2jae are on the end of that spectrum about the neos that know how in love the entire world is with them

they’re too powerful

they’re aware of their charm and they do everything they can to rub it in our faces

so the flirting between 2jae and you would be insane

and i mean insane

insane as in even johnny is kinda disgusted tbh bc

they’re doing a photo shoot with the 23 of them for some shit, idk don’t ask me

and of course, you had to tag along

but oh my god you three, please stop calling each other sexy/hot in weird voices now, the staff is staring

there are def rumours the 3 of you are a poly couple lmao

jaehyun denies everything on social media (throwback to saying “no way lol” when we asked if he REALLY slept in the same bed as jungwoo)

but every piece of content there is of you and jaemin or you and jaehyun or just them is so ridiculously flirty

you can bet there are compilations on youtube like

“y/n being in love with 2jae for 8 minutes heterosexual”

ok i was having way too much fun with that, moving on

i don’t think he’d ever be actually upset about you biasing someone else

he trusts you and treasures you a lot so he doesn’t see the problem in you also appreciating another one of his members

bc gods know he does

he’s a bit in love with everyone so why shouldn’t you be too lol

one time he would feel a bit blue because of it???

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

i think it’s possible he’d turn pouty or whiny or just kinda needy (not in a bad way, he just misses you) when he’s like

done with people

and needs some time away from everything

we know he’s an introvert, even if he acts very, very loud around the boys and it’s honestly just a matter of time until an introvert grows tired of being around humans

it depends on each person, of course, but there’s a 99% chance every once in a while he’ll start to feel too drained

and he’ll need a break to get his energy back

jaemin would probably want you around even when he feels like that, though

i see you being such a big source of comfort for him in a relationship

he enjoys taking care of people so please take care of him too

and for just this one day don’t talk about your bias that much, or don’t leave nana to go over to him to chat

and just cuddle him a lot

that will make him a smiley baby again

and then things are back to how they normally are

and by that i mean most neos hiding from you because they’re scared

i don’t have a lot to say aside from that so let’s think about the neos that would be the most intimidated by your shared thot aura

dotae would be confused in different ways lol

taeyong would be just ????????????blush/awkward smile/hahaha??????

and doyoung might actually ask what is wrong with you

<points to jeno and his s/o> “why can’t you be like them”

mark would laugh-scream and slap his knee into oblivion whenever you two are cornering him

but then go super shy and be like “dUDE DON’T DO THAT”

resident confident gay jungwoo would rejoice in the attention and make so many goddamned jokes

a literal comedian i love him

i think sicheng and renjun would be on the same wavelength of repugnance towards you lol

chenle would deadass call you weird and tell you to leave him alone

shotaro and kun might faint (or kun will panic-scold you)

taeil is as confused by affection as usual (have you seen the face he makes when haechan kisses him LMFAO he’s smiling but like wondering wtf happened on the inside)

ten is not very amused but might play into it

yangyang: that’s disgusting, man (cue flashbacks to that live with renjun after the from home stage where renjun pretended to lick his hand and slick his hair back,,, catboy injun,,, you know the one)

xiaojun and hendery are such panicked gays they just turn to stare at whoever else is around and make that “help” expression like they’re on the office

haechan is haechan, kinda doesn’t mind it

jeno is used to dealing with this at this point

lucas and yuta love the attention but while yuta will flirt right back lucas is just gonna smile and try to jop his way out of there while screaming

sungchan will go hide behind haechan and say “hyung they’re being dumbasses again”

this turned into ‘how would nct react to you and jaemin being super flirty together’ and i’m not sorry

Chenle

chenle is so fun to write i love him lmao

okay so

he doesn’t strike me as the possessive type with anyone other than jisung (bc i swear he can be a bit jelly towards his bestie but i think it comes with sungie being the sweetest bean ever, he’s just protective)

he’s such a ray of sunshine and witty jokes and dolphin laughter i love him

back to the plot

he literally couldn’t care less about you biasing someone else

b u t

i will say there’s an exception

this exception is tall, kinda lanky, very awkward and born on the 5th of february

you’ve guessed it, it’s jisung

i think most of the time he’d tease THE SHIT out of you for it because c’mon

you had 22 chances not to mess up

and you still somehow ended up biasing jisung? lol do better next time

and this is not me and chenle hating on jisung, please—

he’d just find it funny that your bias is his best friend and

hold the fuck up

your bias is his best friend

oH NO NO NO NO NO

i think after realizing that he would lowkey try to keep you two apart because he’s somehow jealous of both????

and if he can’t help it then you can bet your ass he will be screaming all along

it’s his sweet, dummy jisung

with his sweeter and dummier y/n

what is he going to do

probably has a mini-breakdown with kun because like he’s always wanted you two to get along bUT NOT LIKE THAT

kun will just sigh like the tired father he is and pet his back while saying “there, there”

and a genius idea is going to come to chenle’s mind

you know the teasing thing?

well it’s upgrade time

he’s gonna turn into such a try-hard with tmi and embarrassing shit you two have done

and he’s not trying to stop you from being friends

he just wants you to like

know who you’re befriending

bc i think since he’s really really close to jisung, he doesn’t want you getting closer to him bc you like his idol side alone

and he doesn’t want jisung getting close to you just because you’re his partner either

if you had high hopes for each other and ended up kinda falling face-first into the ground bc it was nothing like you had imagined—

he’d be so broken

because he loves you so much :((((

so like, if you can get past the teasing and annoying barrier he’s putting up, he’ll be more than happy to have two of the most important people in his life being buddies

so get ready for it

if you’re the type of person to go batshit crazy when you drink, oh boy, oh boy

so you and the dreamies are just having dinner when lele feels like it’s the perfect time to disclose some of your drunken adventures

“hey y/n”

“yeah babe?”

“remember that time you got really really drunk on vodka and candy and wanted to call your mom”

“chenle the hell don’t talk ab—”

“but then you tried using the microwave as a phone”

“...”

“or that other time you were equally as drunk and watched the make a wish mv and cried because you noticed the height difference between xiaojun hyung and lucas hyung”

yeah so now’s the part you get up to chase him around the dorms and try to land a kick

BUT WORRY NOT, HE’LL MAKE SURE TO EMBARRASS JISUNG JUST AS MUCH

he likes doing that when it’s just the three of you though

so picture this

movie night the girls boys

chenle would 100% pick the most terrifying horror movie he can find so that he could see jisung clinging to whoever’s closest to him

and then right before a jumpscare, he’d whisper like

“jisung”

“w-what”

“why don’t you do that thing you were doing while you slept last night”

(honestly, i’d be mildly scared if i heard lele say this with no context at all)

and then the jumpscare happens and jisung is nearly fainting and crying at the same time

but chenle is laughing

and trying to get out what he wants to tell you between wheezes

“he-he” <dolphin wheeze> “hE WAS SINGING CHEER UP BY TWICE WHILE SLEEPING” <more wheezes>

and look this is just gonna go on for weeks until you and jisung are over it

and stop being weird and awkward around each other

lele needs you two to be bros ok

so be bros

once you do adapt to being pals with your bias i think chenle would take the teasing down a notch just to make you more comfortable

and like he’s so happy now the three of you can hang out and there’s just no tension

happy chenle is the thing i love the most i swear to gods

and if you don’t adapt to it?

well,,,

i honestly think he’d be pretty disappointed, cus it means to him one of you isn’t ready to fully embrace the weirdness within????

and like what u scared of

jisung is a weirdo, what about it, so are you

either that or he’d think you’re maybe being judgemental

so yeah please accept jisungie and your dumbass boyfriend

then everyone can be besties

i love thinking about the three of you as just this hellbound chaotic trio

because chenji already wreak havoc wherever they go as the two of them

but now that you’re coming along,,,,

no neo would escape from your pranks ever again (and even members of other groups lmfao watch out sehun, i’m talking to you)

and it’s so incredible infuriating in a good way that it just turns to be endearing

you’re cute as fuck so no one gets actually mad with the shit you pull????

which is dangerous, someone should really keep an eye out on the three of you

we don’t need sm to be on fire

well we kinda do cus they’re pretty bad but not my point

i said somewhere above that chenle would tone the teasing down but i don’t mean he’d stop

bc c’mon guys

he’s chenle

no limits here

but sorry, i really cannot write jealous!chenle cus his heart is just too pure and filled with joy for him to be jealous for real

last scenario?

chenle after a comeback stage: ya y/n, i was gonna ask how was my performance today but you were probably more focused on jisung’s arms right

jisung is choking on water somewhere behind you

Jisung

it’s maknae time <plays i.n’s maknae on top>

i don’t mean to picture jisung as being like

ridiculously innocent or just downright naive because i really dislike it when people do that

he’s a literal 19 yo and jaemin himself has said he’s not as innocent as we think lol

however

i do see him as being quite new to all things love

i think you’d probably be his first partner and with first relationships comes a lot of other firsts

first kiss maybe, first time holding hands, first time being jealous….

first time being jealous, yes, focus on that

i don’t think jisung would be aware that like

you not biasing him is even a possibility

cuz you’re dating

doesn’t that come along????

ah poor baby i love him

if you biased chenle i think he’d be just

disgusted and weirded out but okay?? you do you i guess???

he’s comfortable enough with lele to not feel intimidated

but if it’s another member

ESPECIALLY one of the oldest ones

i think it would be a blow straight to his confidence

you biasing ten, kun, taeil, taeyong, doyoung or johnny and maybe yuta would make him feel a bit hesitant and concerned

his first thought would probably be that you don’t like being with someone as young as him

and who knows, maybe you’re even younger than him, maybe you’re the same age, but what if you actually like older guys??

what about him then???

and jisung doesn’t mean to feel so worried and insecure, ok, pls understand where i’m coming from

first relationships normally take like a very long time to build trust and acceptance of the other person’s feelings bc it’s literally a whole new world for you

and that goes extra hard for jisung because he is so fucking whipped for you it’s still hard to believe you like him as much

and it absolutely does not cross his mind that you’d cheat on him with your bias, GODS NO

he really respects you and his hyungs

so no, never

that’s not a thing that can happen

but you realize you’re too good for him and maybe see he doesn’t fit your ideal type?

well, yes, that’s what he’s thinking

probably goes straight to chenle or renjun (he talks about renjun so much asjahj) to vent and ask for advice

i think they’d be surprised to see what’s going on inside his pretty little head because it’s so obvious for everyone that you just adore jisung

and they do tell him that

however, i don’t think it would completely calm his nerves, and again, this has nothing to do with not trusting you

it’s just that

his hyungs are so cool…

HE CAN’T HELP IT OK

would probably try to mirror your bias (i’m saying it’s taeyong for the sake of what i’ve imagined ok) and like

grasp onto some of his qualities?

so in his mind taeyong is: nice, sweet, caring, amazing, perfect, smart, perfect, sexy, mature and did i mention perfect

i can see him trying some new rap styles that mimic tyong’s a bit???

like would lowkey learn his raps from cherry bomb and superm’s one and listen to recordings frequently to pick up on how taeyong does it

i think he’d also just change the way he acts in general to dodge a bit from his maknae image

so now he tries to speak with a more formal-ish language and learns random facts about things you like to seem more intelligent???

“good morning y/n, you look as beautiful as one of voiello’s paintings today :]”

“wait i thought that was a pasta brand”

he’s just trying to show you he can be mature and serious if you want him to

long story short, he’s not acting like himself (not that he’s childish, he’s just out of it) and you don’t like it, so you ask about it and wait for him to feel comfortable with sharing

when he does talk about it breaks your heart so much :((

you’re going to need some patience to try and show him you’d choose him, and not your bias, even if you had the chance

they’re completely different people and you love him BECAUSE he’s jisung, not for any other reason

please reassure him so he can go back to acting like his authentic self, i think it would be such a relief for him too

your words and affection are obviously enough for him, but if it ever happens that he feels especially low and insecure again, it would help if your bias talks to him too

and taeyong wouldn’t have a problem with it

actually, scratch that, taeyong probably knew what was going on all along

he just has that motherly 7th sense (ay) that is even more acute with the dreamies cus like

127 has him, wayv has kun, but dream has…

the dreamies

and that, my friend, is terrifying

anyway he’d come to talk to jisung asking like “what’s wrong buddy :(“ and sungie would be a bit ashamed because it sounds so silly when you say it out loud

of course tyong wouldn’t judge him, and he just really has to tell jisung what is it you and he are always talking about

it’s him

“when they come around to talk and hang out here it all goes back to you, jisungie. they can’t spend one second without mentioning your name

it’s so cute; it’s always like ‘oh jisung would love this’ or ‘jisung likes it that way’

so please be kinder to yourself and let yourself see that they’re in love with you, not with me and not with any other member they ever mention”

jisung would feel 10000000% better

and smiley

and giggly

and oh my god do you really talk about him that much

LOOK HE’S BLUSHING

would just go over to your house immediately and hug you, burying his face on your neck from behind you

and not let go

ever again

the whole situation just teaches him a lot about accepting your love for him and not questioning it

shut up i’m not crying

---

final notes: this was my first work after the humanity series and it was so fun lol i think next up is probs gonna be an ideal type scenario for ot23 (but if i really write it i’m gonna post it by subunit and its gonna be way shorter than this, don’t expect 23K words at once lmao)

if you’ve enjoyed this fic please consider reading my humanity series, which is a zombie apocalypse au with kun <3

330 notes · View notes

ancaporado · 3 years

Text

It's been difficult to process the spree killing in Boulder. I lived in Boulder for 9 years. Until 2020, when I moved to Wyoming, I lived actually just 1km from that King Soopers. My first job in college was working the night shift stocking shelves at the other King Soopers in Boulder when I was 20 years old - just like one of the victims, Denny Stong. For the rest of the time I lived in Boulder, I worked a very public facing job and all the faces of the victims are familiar to me; people I'd seen before, if not spoken to. I have mutual friends, acquaintances, and connections to almost all of the victims. I've seen in my direct social media feeds the families mourning their loses.

As I saw the initial reports roll in I tried to downplay it, thinking it was a botched robbery or mugging, with a victim or two at most. As the police presence increased through the afternoon and the media swarmed the location is became more difficult to deny that it was a murder spree, with many victims.

I remember helping an elderly man pump his gas at the station there. Dropping friends and coworkers off nearby after a shift. I had to pick up bags of ice on the way to work from that store. I ate breakfast once a week in the diner just down the street to it. I took almost all my first dates to the brewery adjacent to it. I would meet friends in the lot to carpool to climbing or skiing. I went there for groceries 2 or 3 times a week. It's a place I had been often for a long time.

I really wish that there was a way to have stopped the murderer before he opened fire in the parking lot and went into the store that afternoon. People are bringing up that the City of Boulder had enacted an ordnance banning "assault weapons" for purchase or carry inside of city limits. This ban was lifted by a court order just 10 days prior to the murders, and would have applied to the weapon which was used. I don't see how this specific law would have done anything to prevent the tragedy as the weapon and murderer originated from outside the city, in Arvada, and until the shooting started there was no crime committed.

On top of that the ordinance was dead on arrival, it wasn't enforced by the city police, compliance for registration was basically only a handful of people, out of the obvious of hundreds of local gun owners who showed up to protest the ordinance at city council meetings for weeks The ordinance was penned as a reaction to the Parkland Highschool massacre in Florida.

Many opposed to the city's law pointed to the Colorado state law about preemption of firearms regulation by the state. The intent of preemption is to prevent a confusing patchwork of contradictory laws that make gunowners criminals just for travelling or moving through the state from town to town. Ultimately, through a series of legal challenges and appeals a Judge ruled that the state's preemption law still does apply to the city of Boulder and that the ordinance was null and void. Nothing actually changed on the ground in Boulder that day except the local police department destroy the handful gun-registration records that they had generated as a grandfathering clause for existing "assault weapons" in city limits.

So would a state-wide ban on "assault weapons" have worked? Doubtful, gun parts are readily available online with no background checks. Once a receiver is either purchased, or manufactured via 80% kits that require only a power drill to complete, or even plastic 3d printed ones made at home, assembly is a bit like Lego blocks.

Background checks? The NICS is operated by the FBI and along with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) they preform mandatory background checks for all purchasers in the state of Colorado. While the suspect has a criminal history nothing actually rose to the level of disbarring them from legally acquiring a firearm. One could level the charge that the FBI and CBI dropped the ball on this one, they approved the purchase despite the warning signs. I hope they feel some guilt today, but with the ease that background checks can be circumvented it's perhaps a non-sequitur

Colorado also has a "Red Flag" law that allows friends, family, coworkers, etc.. to report individuals for emergency firearms seizure by the local police or sheriff. This is another place where, I believe close relatives or any of the people who knew him and saw the warning signs should be deeply remorseful for not acting to prevent it. This isn't that I necessarily support red flag laws, but if they were going to use them this would have been the time.

Regardless of any laws that could be enacted or enforced to prevent something like this happening I'll tell you that the government can do very little to protect you, even if they wanted to. Every single thing fell through the cracks. The world is a dangerous place no matter how many state protectors you can muster around you. The people there that day were lucky to have a police officer nearby who was willing to charge into the fire on their behalf. Police have no legal duty to protect anyone outside of their custody. Still, when that police officer did intervene they paid with their life. I've seen reports that they issued verbal commands but were unable to stop the suspect before being slain themselves.

Please, get yourself training. Learn medical techniques to stop bleeding and trauma. Learn situational awareness and a defensive mindset. Become physically fit so you can run and jump and carry and fight. And if you're prepared, purchase and learn to use a firearm, get training and keep it on you. You could save your life and others.

The day I turned 21 I purchased my first handgun in Boulder, CO and then applied for my concealed carry permit. I received that permit just a month later and began carry a loaded pistol concealed on my waist at all times for the past 7 years. Interestingly, Colorado even permits Concealed Handgun Permit(CHP) holders to carry on campus, so during my tenure at CU Boulder during my junior and senior years, I carried a loaded gun in class and at work on campus.

I carried a loaded handgun in that King Soopers hundreds of times. I train with my pistol regularly, at the range or shooting competitions practicing drawing and firing, reloading, accuracy, speed, and safety. I don't wish I was there. I don't know that I'd have been able to stop the violence, I don't know that I'd run towards it. I do know that as long as I wasn't the first person shot I'd have had a chance to wound or kill the attacker. That I had not been slaughtered but had fought.

Make yourself difficult to kill.

#guns #gunblr #marchforourlives #boulder #awb #colorado #conceal carry #edc

16 notes · View notes

yarart4ever · 3 years

Note

Heyy♡ if it's not too much trouble I was wondering if you had any headcanons for Li Shan × panda mom? Thank youuuu💝

HUN I GOTCHU!

Li ShanxLily:(name headcanon for Po's mom :3)

mind you these headcanons will be how I perceive them in my "Lotus" AU book sooo... yeah! hope you like them!

also this post is gonna get long so just read the undercut TvT

rivals-lovers. lemme explain...

when Lily was training in the hands of Oogway, she was pretty much like... Tigress if she was a panda. which meant she was smart, level-headed, a natural leader, and bad-ass, but was still very much gentle and enjoyed playful banter. this is where Li Shan comes in...

in the scene when Li was describing how "smart, and beautiful (and had a tremendous appetite)" she was, I liked to imagine that he always had a crush on her (and since they lived in a small village, they obviously knew each other since they were kids), and being the teenage boy he is, he would tease her and mess with Lily during her chi training, despite her annoyance

when they were teens, Li would always pick on her, but Lily, knowing full well it's just playful banter, would pick back, and a rivalry had commenced!

some of the adults and even Li's group of friends had suspected that they liked each other, but being the kids they are, they would always act grossed out

one time, Li took his joking around a little... too far... (I'm not going into detail how it happened bc that would be spoilers.. but I'm gonna write it down in my "Lotus" book tho so watch out for updates! let's just say Lily got... really mad for it...)

Lily was really upset and didn't talk to Li for a week, which was when Li decided to drop his "bad boy" act and make it up to Lily...

while she was reading to herself under her favorite Lotus tree (wink wink ;3) to go meditate, Li managed to climb up when she hasn't noticed and pop out upside down with a bouquet of said Lotus', in hopes it would at least try to make it up to her... unfortunately though, the weight of the branch he was balancing upside down on, did not manage to hold Li's weight... and so he fell.

Lily giggles in amusement while Li gives her a sheepish smile and says, "Okay, karma's cruel, I broke something of yours, and now I broke my back, now do you forgive me?" she thankfully does and accepts the flowers, while saying with a smirk, "with a cute face and gesture like that, who am I to say no?" "Funny..."

gosh they are so cute... sniff... I-I'm not crying okay! you're crying....

Lotus' have always been her favorite flowers (wink wink again ;3) so whenever she's reading or meditating, Li would join in and bring her the very same flower...

they also love travelling and going on adventures together! (this could also be canon! ironic huh?)

they both love reading! especially new works and dialects from the worlds beyond

Li is surprisingly a very good cook, and loves making snacks for Lily!

He also loves to draw, and while Lily is training or going about her day without noticing, he would make doodles of her. they were finally brought to light when his friends were messing around with him, and when it was shown to Lily, she didn't get weirded out like Li Shan feared, she was actually really flattered that he saw her like that, and has even made a personal request to draw her a self portrait sometime

when Lily first came to terms with her feelings, she was at first in denial, not wanting her feelings for Li to be true, for she doesn't know much about love... but after talking to her mentor, Oogway, she has finally accepted how she has felt for Li, and being the competitive leader she is, she has made it her mission to confess first!

and so she did. one day while Li was playing with his friends, Lily comes in and sweeps him away to the Lotus tree, making him very much confused. when they get to the peach tree, she grabs a bouquet of flowers and hands it to him, and before Li could ask any questions, she just straight up says "Listen, I like you! like... like you like you, you are one of my best friends, but I want to be more than that, if you want it too. Do you accept or decline?"

Li just becomes a flustered mess and this comes out, "I-gah-er-uh-mm-you-I-wow-um-y-yes?? yes I very much accept??"

yo can we get some hype for dom!Lily pls? like yes!

mind you this was them when they were like, teenagers, like 16-18, I wanna have more for them when their older but I wanna leave that to my "Lotus" book and my hands are tired ;-; I hope you're satisfied with these headcanons cus I think they're cute!

#kfp #kung fu panda #pandom #Yarart answers #Lily Po's mom #Li Shan #po's parents #headcanons #Lotus AU #Lotus #fanfics

14 notes · View notes

yourcoffindoor · 4 years

Text

Bulletproof Heart Pt. 1

Pairing: Gerard Way x Reader

Prompt: Request from Anon- “ could you write one where the reader is a rock singer and they and mcr are on warped tour together, and they both lowkey like each other but think they’re both out of each other’s league, and find out that they’re both secretly into nerdy stuff + maybe getting together? thank you so much xxx”

AN: This is a multi-part series--I couldn’t help myself! Also, I based this fic around something Gerard said in a Rolling Stone interview:

Hope its ok Anon! enjoy!

You had dreamed of this moment since you first picked up a guitar. Back then it felt like an impossible fantasy, being on stage with your band, playing in front of a crowd of screaming fans; which is why it felt so surreal when your manager Tim told you that your band, The Violent Delights, had booked Warped Tour.

"June 18th," he told you with a satisfied grin, "you're in for the long haul, kids."

Your band-mates let out a collective shriek of joy, while you planted a grateful kiss on Tim's cheek.

"You're an OK manager, you know that?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said, dramatically wiping his cheek where your lips had been. "Now you guys better get practicing. This is a good opportunity to really get your name out there. Plus you got some real popular acts to compete with."

Your interest was peaked. "Oh yeah? Like who?"

"Off the top of my head? Fall Out Boy, Dropkick Murphys, and I think a band called My Chemical Romance."

"Oh shit, My Chem?" your bassist, Gavin, piped up excitedly. "That's the band I'm always trying to get Y/N to listen to."

"I'll have to finally borrow their last album," you replied, "gotta scope out the competition after all." Gavin rolled his eyes while you laughed.

Your manager got serious. "It's three months on the road, and its gonna take a lot of energy and hard work. Quite frankly, it ain't glamorous."

"Tim, when have we ever been glamorous? I wouldn't care if it were a 12 month tour," you declared, "I wouldn't miss this opportunity for the world." Liz, your drummer, nodded in agreement beside you.

"You might be singing a different tune when you haven't had a shower in three days."

"As long as I'm singing it in front of an audience, we'll be fine."

* * *

Back at your apartment you marked June 18th on your calendar with a star, feeling invigorated with excitement all over again. This was it, you thought, the next level for our band. You were determined to give it your very best, outperforming every other band there.

After all, you had worked so hard to get to this point. Starting in friend's basements and tiny cafes, the band had slowly built up a sizable following of loyal fans. You were no longer the opening act, drawing sell out crowds more often than not. You made a promise to yourself that the band wasn't going to lose this momentum. There would be no distractions for you on this tour, just hard work and the thrill of performing. That meant no parties, and absolutely no boys. You weren't ready for another relationship, you told yourself, especially since the last one ended in disaster.

Yes, this was the moment the band had been waiting for. You let the warm excitement that this knowledge brought envelope you, and you lay your head down on your pillow, falling asleep to fantasies of what lay ahead.

* * *

Its a long road from Maryland to Ohio. Columbus was the first stop of the tour, which meant your band had 6 and a half hours to go over the set-list, make adjustments discuss their hopes and fears for the three month experience. Gavin gave you a few CDs to listen too, including My Chemical Romance's Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. You had heard their first album ages ago and enjoyed it, but there was something incandescent to the music you were hearing now. It stirred a whirlwind of heavy emotion, and you were enthralled from beginning to end. You made a mental note to see them perform at Warped as soon as possible.

When your bus arrived at its destination, you felt the unwelcome buzz of nerves building in your stomach. This was real, you thought, this was happening. You were used to performing at this point, but it was the amount of people you'd be performing for that was nerve-wracking. Not to mention the fellow artists who may be watching and judging your sound. You breathed deep and tried to push past the nervous thoughts that hummed incessantly around your head like insects.

Your band-mates were buzzing about with excitement, but you needed to distract yourself. Fresh air always helped settle you, so you grabbed your shoes and decided to go for a walk around the venue.

It looked almost like a circus with all the trailers and tents that had quickly populated the surrounding area. Merch stands and catering tents were being organizes as dozens upon dozens of vans and trailers pulled in. There were already a few fans camped outside of the chain-link fence that surrounded the area, eagerly awaiting a glimpse of their favorite artists.

You kept wandering, and you saw that a band was being interviewed in the media tent. There were five of them, each holding a microphone; but one member, a dark haired boy, was doing most of the talking. He was cute, you thought, and your stomach did little flips watching him respond to the questions that were being asked.

You watched a little bit longer from a distance, until you felt a tap on your shoulder. You turned to see Gavin and Liz, who had been doing a bit of exploring as well.

"Hey, there you are! I was talking to a few people by the catering tent. They said some bands are having a party on their buses later tonight, we should check it out." Gavin informed you excitedly.

You hesitated. No parties. "I dunno, I want us to be in good condition to perform tomorrow."

Liz chimed in. "All work and no play, Y/N. C'mon, it'll be a great chance to make some connections with other bands."

"If you don't come with us," Gavin pronounced dramatically, "we'll be far too devastated to perform tomorrow." His hand went to his forehead, as though he was about to faint.

"Somehow I doubt that."

"Pretty please?" Liz stuck her lower lip out pathetically.

"With sugar on top?" Gavin added.

You glanced at the black haired boy in the distance. Maybe he'd be there, a small voice in your head piped up.

"Ugh Fine! But I'll only stay for a little bit."

Satisfied, the pair stopped harassing you, and left you to continue wandering, promising to meet up with them later.

* * *

People spilled out from open trailers as music blared from an unknown source in the background. Some were already far gone, stumbling from place to place, or lying on the ground blacked out.

You followed Gavin inside one of the trailers. You watched as he interacted with the strangers inside with ease, a trait you envied. He managed to find you both drinks, and you grabbed the mystery beverage, sculling it in hopes that it would numb your nervousness. You may have been a great performer onstage, but offstage it was easy for your social anxiety to take the wheel.

Gavin began to walk away, ignoring your whispered pleas not to leave you. Fuck. It always felt awkward to not know anyone at a party. You clutched your red cup like a life jacket keeping you afloat in a sea of drunken strangers.

A man approached you out of nowhere, the smell of alcohol emanating from every pore on his body.

"You look lonely." He leered at you expectantly.

"Then it seems like you need glasses. I'm just fine on my own."

He laughed. "Ooo! I like you. You've got spunk. Name's Brent, guitarist from Midnite Heist."

"Can't say I've heard of you guys."

Brent was either oblivious to your indifference, or just chose to ignore it. "So how'd you end up at this party?"

"I'm in a band on the tour too. Lead singer actually."

"No way! That's awesome, we need more talented eye candy on this tour."

You screamed internally while he droned on, tuning him out as you continued to sip from your fast emptying cup.

You scanned the room, watching people laugh and dance. Your stomach suddenly flipped again as you noticed the black haired boy from this afternoon, solemn faced and quiet, silently nursing a diet coke in his hands. He was clearly not having a good time. The guitarist who had been talking you up soon saw you looking at the sullen figure and turned his attention towards him, his eyes lighting up with recognition.

"Gerard fucking Way!" he bellowed, carelessly sloshing his drink as he waved him over, causing a stream of alcohol to fall to the floor below.

Gerard seemed to hesitate before walking over. "It's been awhile man," he said softly. His eyes, a warm hazel, flicked to you repeatedly as he spoke. "you here for the whole tour this time?"

Brent laughed, his sobriety dangling by a thread. "Yeah, but still not up on the main stage, unlike you big-shots." he said, punching Gerard in the arm. Gerard offered a crooked smirk in return, his patience already wearing thin. Brent nudged you in the arm. "This is Y/N, her band is new to Warped. I told her I'd show her the ropes." He grinned at you. Ugh.

Gerard seemed to sense your discomfort. "Welcome, nice to see a new face around."

Brent interrupted before you could respond. "How come you're wasting time with a coke? I would've expected you to be the first one wasted here."

Gerard's jaw clenched, and you cringed internally at the sheer awkwardness of the encounter. "I'm sober now," he informed Brent, "I don't touch that shit anymore."

Brent laughed dismissively. "Dude, you? Do you even remember the last Warped tour? I'll give it 2 days before you're lying face down in the bushes again." he laughed as if he had just said something hilarious.

You were livid, and Gerard was on edge. You decided to step in when you noticed his knuckles turn white from clenching his coke can.

You moved slightly, ready to get between them. "Hey you know what? I'd really love a coke right now too. Mind showing me where they are?" you looked pleadingly at Gerard. He took the hint.

"Follow me."

You gave a curt wave to Brent, who looked on in confusion before continuing his drinking binge.

You stepped outside, and the sounds from the party behind you became a faint, thumping buzz in the background. You were both silent for a moment before you decided to break the ice.

"So that guy was a dick."

Gerard's scowl turned into a thin, lopsided smirk. Your heart melted a bit. "Yeah. I just realized some of these people are only tolerable when I'm drunk."

Stop. Move away. You don't need a distraction like this. You tried to scold yourself but words kept escaping from your lips, prolonging the encounter.

"This is my first time doing Warped Tour, but I'm assuming these parties are pretty much never-ending?"

Gerard pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "Oh yeah, its every night for some of these bands. You're in for an interesting experience." You looked at him for a moment, perhaps for a bit too long. You had never seen anyone look so beautiful while surrounded by clouds of smoke.

"Yoohoooo! Y/N!" you heard the hollering of a clearly tipsy Gavin call from the doorway of the next trailer. "Where'd you go? The night is young! Get back here!"

You sighed. "That's my cue. Well actually that's my bassist, but he'll never let me live it down if I don't go back in there."

Gerard turned his head to the side and exhaled. "Catch you around. Next time you need rescuing from a douche-bag just light the bat signal."

You gave him a soft smile, forcing yourself to turn away and walk back to the trailer. As you did, you whispered aloud to yourself as a reminder:

"No distractions. No boys."

#gerard way x reader #gerard way fanfic #my chemical romance fanfiction #fanfic

149 notes · View notes

calumcest · 4 years

Text

i took a walk with my fame down memory lane (i never did find my way back) - chapter three

[ao3]

hello i’m back on my bullshit aka britpop au

@tirednotflirting you are never not getting a shoutout in these a/ns i’m sorry for the constant adoration but i truly do adore you and love you for reading through this entire thing and patiently talking to me about it every day you are a trooper and basically at this point a co-writer of the fic so credit to sam for being a wonderful person and friend and beta

credit also to noel gallagher for being fit i’m so far gone on him now it’s not even funny i need an intervention can someone please fix me actually no don’t i like fancying him he’s cute. listen to hello so the little twat can pay his bills

Liam, despite - or maybe because of - the various substances coursing through his system, is the first to react.

“What the fuck?” he says, sounding somewhere between perplexed and outraged. “You fucking know this bloke?”

“I fucking knew it,” Noel says, fierce and furious and edged with humourless glee. “I fucking knew. Soon as you fucking asked me about them, I knew.” He laughs, hysterical and bitter. “God, you’re an absolute fucking cu- ”

“Hang on a minute,” Damon interrupts, looking from Michael, who’s staring at his feet, to Calum, and back again. “That’s your Calum?”

“He’s not my Calum,” Michael mutters to the floor.

“Fucking sounds like he is,” Graham remarks coolly.

“How the fuck do you know him?” Liam demands hotly, rounding on Calum.

“Why didn’t you fucking tell us?” Damon says to Michael, voice dangerously calm. “How long have you known?” Michael shrugs uncomfortably, and his right hand comes up to fiddle with his earlobe, and it fucking hurts, because Calum remembers that, remembers how Michael would nervously tuck an errant strand of hair behind his ear and play with his earlobe while his eyes flicked from Calum’s eyes to his lips and back again.

“You fucking cunt, ” Liam spits, and he sounds like he actually fucking means it, and Calum’s heart drops.

“Eeyar,” Bonehead says sharply, and puts an arm on Liam’s bicep. “Let’s not do this here, eh?” Fucking hell. Bonehead, of all fucking people, being the sensible one.

“No,” Liam says, trying to shake Bonehead’s hand off, “let’s fucking do it here. Right fucking here, Calum. You fucking tell me right fucking now why the fuck you never told me you were mates with one of the cunts from Blur.” Damon raises his eyebrows at that, looking somewhere between incensed and amused.

“Noel,” Bonehead says, pleading, and Calum watches Noel’s expression change from fuck Calum, fuck him, to shit, Bonehead’s right. Not in front of Blur.

“Liam,” Noel says, and Calum’s never heard him sound so fucking serious in his life. Liam looks at him furiously, a silent conversation happening between the two of them that nobody else can understand, all furrowed brows and twisted lips, ending only when Liam throws his hands up in the air, shoots Calum one last glare, and stomps out of the room.

“Mr Gallagher-” the photographer calls after him, and Liam spins on his heel, fists already balled, and Calum barely has time to think oh, shit before Noel’s running after him and physically manhandling him out of the room as Liam starts shouting random strings of curse words that don’t even make any fucking sense.

Not for the first time, the Gallaghers leave a stunned silence in their wake as their shouting and yelling gets further and further away, broken only when artists start sending each other uncomfortable looks and murmuring under their breaths. Calum barely even registers it, though, too busy staring at the door Liam and Noel have just barged out of, heart in his mouth. Fuck.

“Well,” Damon drawls, tone a little too casual, jolting Calum back to reality. “Think you’d better go after them.”

“Fuck you,” Calum grits out. He throws one final, desperate look at Michael, who’s still steadfastly not looking at him, and then, steeling himself, sets off in the direction of the door. He hears Bonehead and Tony echo similar sentiments at Damon as he jogs through the door, looking left and right until he sees Noel and Liam at the far end of the corridor, Liam waving his hands in Noel’s face as he refuses to listen to whatever Noel’s trying to tell him.

“...right fucking cunt, is what,” Liam’s saying as Calum gets closer, sounding indignant.

“I know that, Liam, but-” Noel breaks off as he spots Calum approaching, and takes a step back, putting a hand on Liam’s arm without even thinking about it.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Bonehead demands, catching up with Calum. Calum’s not entirely sure who he’s directing the question at, so he just shrugs uncomfortably.

“What the fuck’s wrong with me? ” Liam says, sounding enraged, and jabbing a finger at Calum. “What about what’s wrong with this cunt, eh? Didn’t fucking think to mention that he knows one of the pricks in Blur .”

“Is it that big of a fucking deal?” Tony says, and then immediately shrinks back under the weight of a double-Gallagher withering stare.

And Calum gets it, he does. If he found out Liam knew Damon, a member of their main competition, and never thought to fucking mention it, he’d be beside himself. It’s the principle of it, he thinks, guilt making his stomach roll. You choose your band first. You don’t hide things like that from your band.

“Look,” he says, and Liam and Noel both turn to glare at him.

“No,” Liam says, and makes to take a step forward. Noel’s hand tightens on his arm - a warning - and he stops halfway, still glowering at Calum. “You’re a right fucking git, you are. Why the fuck didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell me? I’m your best fucking mate, I am.” Calum swallows, but the guilt doesn’t go down with the saliva.

“I know,” he says. “I- fuck. I haven’t known for long.” It’s a poor excuse, and he knows it as the words trip off his tongue. He should have told them as soon as he found out.

“What the fuck d’you mean, you fucking arseho -”

“Liam,” Noel says sharply, and Liam huffs, but shuts up, fuming silently as Noel turns to fix Calum with a hard stare. Fucking hell. Calum fucking hates their bad-cop-worse-cop spiel.

“You’d better have a good fucking explanation for why you didn’t tell us,” Noel says, in that same dangerously calm tone that Damon had used on Michael earlier. It makes Calum’s heart constrict, because when Noel’s angry at him it’s hot bursts, heated words and blazing eyes, never this, this fucking coldness. There’s something behind it, something more to it, and he doesn’t know what it is.

Calum meets his gaze and holds it for a moment, searching through all the righteous anger and fury, watching rage and indignation and bitterness flit through those baby blues until he catches it. It’s just a snippet, just the tiniest fragment that Noel’s let slip through his scowling armour, but it’s there.

Hurt.

It makes Calum’s stomach curl up into a small ball and then unroll itself ungracefully, twisting almost nauseatingly when his gaze flits to Liam, to the same blue eyes on a different face, and he sees the exact same storm of emotions - incensed, livid, hurt. That’s what this is about. He’s hurt them.

“I do,” he mumbles, a little apologetically, and Liam throws his hands up in the air and turns his back on Calum, walks a good five steps away muttering oh, this should be fucking good, before turning back around, hovering in place, like he doesn’t quite trust himself to get any closer to Calum.

“Go on then,” Noel says coldly, and Calum sees his hands ball into fists at his side. Calum takes a wary step back, tripping on Bonehead’s foot, and holds his hands up.

“I’ll tell you,” Calum says, eyeing Noel’s fists, “but don’t you fucking deck me.” Noel considers that for a moment, just a split second, and then cocks his head.

“You’ll get decked if you fucking deserve it,” he says evenly , and Calum has to concede that that’s kind of fair.

“How the fuck d’you know him?” Liam demands, still about six feet away. Calum hesitates. He can feel everyone’s eyes on him, can almost feel the curiosity in Bonehead and Tony’s eyes boring into the back of his head and the hurt and rage in Liam and Noel’s gazes, and he swallows again.

He could tell them Michael’s his childhood best friend. It’s not a lie, after all. They’d never stopped being best friends, not when they kissed, or when they fucked, or when they fell in love. It had always been there in the background, a soft hum under Calum’s fingers in Michael’s hair, under Michael’s lips on Calum’s throat. It wouldn’t be a lie, as such, just an omission of some of the facts.

But Calum knows it wouldn’t explain everything, wouldn’t explain why he hid it for so long and why he’s acted so fucking weird about it, and he knows if he doesn’t tell the rest of them everything now, they’re fucking finished. And it’s not the band he cares about - fuck the band, give a fuck, he’ll go back to Manchester and fucking fix garden walls for the rest of his life - it’s his friendships.

Liam and Noel have been everything to Calum since he moved to Manchester. It had been sheer fucking luck of the draw that Gallagher and Hood were next to each other in the register, so, four days into his new school and completely friendless and alone, he’d been shafted with quite possibly the worst Chemistry partner anyone’s ever had. Although, he has to concede, he’s probably the second-worst Chemistry partner anyone’s ever had, and it didn’t matter anyway, because they were both interested in other types of chemistry, other chemical reactions that could be obtained with money or flirting. Once they’d figured that out, worked out that neither of them cared about school and both of them cared about getting high and having a laugh, it had been a pretty small step from eeyar, my mam’s out at work, d’you want to bunk off and nick some of her booze? to you’re the only cunt in the world I care about, you are. The only fucking one.

Noel hadn’t been in the picture, then, too busy on the road with the Inspiral Carpets (much to Liam’s endless fucking pride), and when he’d come home a year later in the middle of the night he’d scared the absolute shit out of Calum, who’d been sleeping in his bed, by leaning over and peering at him with an exhausted, irritated, and yet intrigued expression on his face.

(“Eeyar,” he’d said mildly, and Calum’s eyes had flown open as he’d shot bolt upright in the bed. “That’s my fucking bed, that is.” Calum had just stared at him, lips parted in shock, eyes wide, still too groggy to process that the eyes staring back at him were the exact same eyes as Liam’s, and then Liam had stirred, mumbled something, opened his eyes and grinned wider and happier than Calum had ever seen before.

“Noely G!” he’d said, all soft and sleepy, and Noel had rolled his eyes and huffed, but his lips had twitched in a tiny, fond smile.

“Don’t you fucking call me that,” Noel had warned, two seconds before Liam had flung himself into Noel’s arms and they’d both toppled to the ground, Liam laughing and Noel grumbling but reaching up to pet Liam’s hair all the same.)

Noel hadn’t wanted to spend much time with them, at first. Why the fuck would I want to hang out with my eighteen-year-old brother and his weird fucking Aussie mate? he’d say derisively, scoffing, but Liam always knew how to play him, knew how to wheedle and whine and praise and insult at just the right levels until Noel would break, sigh, put his magazine down and pick up his guitar and play with them.

That had been it, really. Calum couldn’t remember ever having that much fun before, ever feeling so at home before, ever feeling so safe. The three of them had just clicked, just fallen right into a routine like they were made to slot into each other’s lives. Noel and Liam felt like jigsaw pieces that nestled neatly against him, completed parts of him that he didn’t even know were incomplete. Calum and Liam were rarely apart, and Noel dipped his toe in more often than he took it out. It was Calum Liam would turn to when he was having nightmares about his dad, or when Noel had fucking breathed wrong, or when Noel had decided to move out and Liam had been so furious at him that he’d sat sobbing on Calum’s floor for a whole night. It was Calum Noel would turn to when Liam threw a tantrum, or when he wanted a hand moving furniture into his new flat, or when he wanted someone to go for a few pints with.

And so it should have been the two of them Calum turned to when he found out about Michael.

It’s not like they don’t know about his bisexuality, either. He’d come out to Liam before he’d even come out to his mum, blurting it one evening when they were headed to the pub, and Liam had just shrugged, put an arm around him and said hard not to fancy blokes when you spend a lot of time around me, eh?

Noel had been a little different. Noel had sent him looks from under lowered lashes that had made Calum’s stomach fizz in a way he’d never quite felt before, an echo of something he’d only ever felt with Michael. Noel’s hand would linger on the small of Calum’s back, or around his waist, or on his forearm, making Calum’s skin buzz with something he’d never quite been able to place. It had culminated in one night when Liam was at some girl’s house and Calum had spent the night at the Gallaghers’ anyway, listening to the new songs Noel had written for their brand new band, singing soft and sweet and clear with plump lips and darkened eyes until one of them had snapped. Calum could never remember whether it was him or Noel that had lunged forward first, pressed the first desperate kiss to the other’s lips, but it didn’t really matter, because the end result was the same; frantic kisses, fumbling hands, and pretty, really fucking pretty sounds from Noel that made Calum dizzy with want and made him think God, this is what fucking music is.

And so, Calum thinks, as his chest aches uncomfortably from the guilt pumping through his veins with every beat of his heart, he has to tell them the whole truth. They’ve been everything to him for the past four, five years, and they deserve to know.

“Well?” someone prompts - Noel, Calum realises as he’s jolted out of his racing thoughts - and Calum swallows.

“He’s my ex,” he says, and his voice cracks on the last word.

The words sit between all of them for a moment, nudging at them, testing their boundaries, pushing at the thin lines tying the five of them together, before Tony frowns, like he’s not getting it.

“Your ex? ” he says, a little sceptical, like Calum’s having him on, and oh, yeah, shit . Tony doesn’t actually know Calum’s into guys. Fucking hell. This is the last way he wanted to come out to him.

“Yeah,” Calum says. He’s not sure how to elaborate on that, so he doesn’t. Tony just frowns, like he’s still not sure whether to believe Calum, but doesn’t say anything else.

“When?” Noel says, and there’s an edge of something to his tone that Calum can’t quite place.

“Before I left,” Calum says, which is the best answer he can come up with. They’d never quite started anything, never quite stopped it either. It just was, and then it wasn’t. “We never, like. There wasn’t a conversation, or anything. We just...were. Together, I mean. He was my best mate since I was seven, so.” He shrugs again, terse and awkward. “And then I moved here.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you say?” Liam explodes.

“Because he’s in fucking Blur!” Calum says. “I didn’t even fucking know until that magazine-”

“ That’s why you-”

“ Yes , and-”

“So you’ve known for, what, three fucking mo- ”

“Hang on,” Noel interrupts. “What fucking magazine?”

“Cunt nicked a magazine from the dentist’s,” Liam says derisively, waving a dismissive hand in Calum’s direction. “Wouldn’t tell me why.”

“It had a picture of Michael in it,” Calum says.

“So, what, you nicked it for your wank bank?” Noel says irritably.

“ No, ” Calum says emphatically. “Just-” he cuts himself off. He’s not really sure what he was doing with that magazine, really. Taking it had just felt like the natural thing to do.

“I wouldn’t’ve fucking cared if you’d said it then,” Liam snaps. “I don’t fucking care that you shagged someone in Blur, how the fuck were you to know? I care that you didn’t fucking tell me.” Calum swallows.

“I know,” he says. “And I’m sorry.” Liam doesn’t say anything to that for a moment, just stares at him, blue eyes wide and angry, and then scoffs and stomps off. Noel throws Calum a look, a look that says you’ve fucked up and I’m fucking furious and a little bit of how fucking dare you upset my brother like that, and then takes off after him. Calum watches them go, watches Noel put a hand on Liam’s arm and Liam shake him off angrily, and then Bonehead clears his throat.

“Well,” he says nonchalantly. “Hope the shag was fucking worth it, mate.”

-------

The fallout from the argument is sort of what Calum had expected, and sort of isn’t.

Bonehead and Tony don’t care all that much, predictably. Bonehead’s more concerned about whether Calum wants tickets to the United Champions League qualifier in August (which of course he fucking doesn’t, meaning Bonehead’s just looking for a way to tell him we’re alright without having to say it), and, once it’s been established that yes, Calum does actually date blokes, they’re not just having him on, Tony doesn’t see what the big deal is.

(“Who fucking cares?” he says, sounding bemused. Calum puts his head in his hands.

“D’you understand either of them at all?” he says into his fingers.

“No,” Tony says. “Do you?” Calum’s silent for a moment.

“Fair point.”)

Liam snaps at Calum for a day or two, throws furious looks at him and tries to goad him into fights, but he’d been more upset when Calum had lost his favourite earring a few years ago, so Calum just waits it out. When Liam stops scoffing at every suggestion Calum makes about the Glastonbury setlist, stops making loud, derisive remarks whenever Calum enters or leaves a room, Calum takes it as his cue to sneak up behind him and wrap his arms around Liam, rest his chin on Liam’s shoulder and whisper don’t fucking knock my teeth out, alright? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. You’re my best mate, and I should’ve said. Didn’t mean to make you feel like I don’t care about you. I love you, and I need you. Liam’s over it in a flash after that, tilting his head to the side to send Calum a brilliant grin and pressing a quick kiss to Calum’s temple. Liam’s like that, Calum thinks, laughing and ducking from Liam’s attempts to keep pressing sloppy kisses all over his face. He’ll blow up, he’ll scream and shout and burn hot with anger for a few days, and then the fever breaks, and Liam can barely remember why he was so pissed off in the first place.

Noel, however, is a different story.

He doesn’t even look in Calum’s direction for three days, which is longer than they’ve ever argued, even when Calum had kissed Noel’s girlfriend last year. Which, in fairness, wouldn’t have happened if Noel had been a bit more forthcoming about exactly which ‘fucking gorgeous blonde girl’ was his girlfriend, but whatever. The point is Calum’s not used to this kind of animosity from Noel, and especially isn’t used to Noel harbouring resentment against him for this long, and to the fucking coldness of it. He’s used to Noel snapping, making snide comments, laughing loudly and spitefully when Calum fucks up, not this frostiness, this icing out.

Rehearsals are tense and uncomfortable. Bonehead and Tony refuse to take sides between Calum and Noel, which Calum had expected - he refuses to side against either of the Gallaghers if he can ever help it - but Liam refuses too, which takes Calum by surprise.

(“No,” he says sharply, when Calum sends him a look after Noel snaps at him for idly playing a bass riff while he’s waiting for Tony to finish setting his drums up. “You made your fucking bed, Cal.”

It’s true, and it’s fair, but it still feels like a kick in the teeth that Liam’s not taking the opportunity to take Calum’s side, because it means he’s taking Noel’s.)

After about a week, when the Glastonbury gig is looming over them and Noel still won’t say a single word to Calum besides can you fucking play in time? Is that really so fucking hard?, Calum’s had enough.

He waits until one rehearsal is over, when Noel’s thrown his hands up in the air and said you’re all fucking shite and stalked out of the room - their cue to pack up and go home - shaking his head when Liam slings an arm around his shoulders and asks jovially whether he wants to go to the pub.

“Nah,” Calum says. “I’m going to try and talk to Noel.” Liam raises an eyebrow, removes his arm from Calum’s shoulders, and pulls a face.

“On your own head be it,” he says, and jogs off to catch up with Bonehead.

Calum heads out of the practice room and into the corridor, heading for the room Noel often locks himself away in to write or when he’s had enough of Liam. He can hear strumming from inside, gentle humming accompanying it, and he hesitates for a split second, letting the unguarded Noel that no one ever sees wash over him for a moment. The only thing besides Liam that can break any of Noel's barriers down is a guitar, which is why Noel locks himself away when he's writing, can't stand to let anybody see him without twelve layers of defences up. It feels like Calum's intruding, though, standing here listening to Noel be at peace when he's always so turbulent, so he raises his hand and knocks on the door. The humming and strumming stop abruptly, and an annoyed voice calls: “What?”

“Can I come in?” Calum says. There’s a pause.

“No.” But there was a pause, and if Calum obeyed every single one of Noel's impulsive commands he’d be riddled with more inconsistencies than the fucking Bible, so he pushes the door open anyway.

“What d’you want?” Noel says irritably, but it’s the first thing he’s said to Calum that isn’t shut the fuck up in about two days, which is a start. Calum steps into the room and shuts the door behind him, and Noel sighs, all long-suffering, and turns back to his guitar, plucking a few strings tunelessly.

“Can we talk?” Calum says.

“Yeah,” Noel says. “Fuck off. Talk over.” Calum bites back a snarky retort and sits down on the chair opposite Noel.

“Look,” he begins, and Noel holds up a hand to stop him.

“I don’t want to have a big fucking talk about our feelings,” he says curtly. Calum sighs.

“How the fuck do I make it better, then?” he says. Noel shrugs, tight and tense.

“Time travel,” he suggests, and Calum’s lips twitch in spite of himself.

“I said I was sorry,” he says, because he did. He’s said it a hundred times, a hundred ways, through apologies and through beseeching looks and through leaving Noel the last custard cream.

“What’ve you been apologising for, though?” Noel says shrewdly. “For the fact you did it, or the fact we found out?” Calum holds his gaze, feels the blue burn hot into his brown, like Noel’s trying to tease out the worst bits of Calum’s soul.

“I’m sorry that I hurt you,” Calum says plainly. Noel blinks, a fleeting look of surprise passing across his face. He wasn’t expecting that, clearly.

“Who said that?” he says, aiming for contemptuous and coming off defensive. Calum just fixes him with a hard stare, one that says it’s written all over your face, and I’ll fucking say it out loud if you want me to. Noel blinks back at him for a moment before looking away, pursing his lips. He’s considering his options; Calum can see it in the way his eyes narrow slightly. Calum hopes Noel can't come up with any more options than Calum can - keep stewing or forgive but don't forget are all Calum's got, so there's a fifty-fifty chance he'll get what he's looking for.

“Fucking fine,” Noel mutters eventually, and Calum’s eyes flutter shut in relief, the pressure that’s been weighing on his chest for the past week suddenly disappearing. Fuck. “You’re still a cunt, though,” Noel adds, because he can’t stand not having the last word, and Calum nods, leaning back in the chair. He can live with that.

“What’s that?” Calum says, nodding at the guitar to indicate the song Noel had been playing, testing the waters. Is this a truce, or is it forgiveness?

“That?” Noel says, looking down at the guitar. “Just playing around.” A truce, then. For now.

“For the next album?” Noel shrugs.

“Maybe,” he says. “Depends. Got a lot of other fucking brilliant songs already written for it.” Calum huffs out a laugh, rolls his eyes, and Noel smiles back.

“You sorted out the Glastonbury setlist yet?” Calum asks. The smile slips off Noel’s face.

“Yeah,” he says. Calum cocks his head.

“What?”

“You look all fucking mardy, is what.” Noel rolls his eyes.

“Mardy, fucking hell,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re a right fucking Manny boy now, you are.”

“Nah,” Calum says, grinning. “Fucking true blue, I am. Why d’you think I support City over United?”

“‘Cause Liam would’ve fucking nailed your balls to the front door if you hadn’t,” Noel says, which is, in fairness, at least half of the reason Calum had decided on City.

“He hasn’t nailed Bonehead’s to any doors yet,” Calum points out. Noel pulls a face.

"Would you wanna touch Bonehead's balls?" he says, and Calum snorts. He's got a point.

They lull into silence for a moment, Noel's fingers twitching on the strings of his guitar like he's itching to play but doesn't want to in front of Calum, but he's not told Calum to fuck off yet, which is a start. Calum's going to take every inch Noel gives him, claw as many centimetres out of them as he can, so he sits back a little, eyes Noel and says: "What's the setlist, then?" Noel looks at him, like he thinks Calum’s asking him a trick question. “What?” Calum adds, a little self-consciously.

“You know Blur are playing the same day as we are?” Noel says, and his tone is flat. “Same stage, too.” Calum’s stomach plummets.

“Oh,” he says, and he can see from the sour look on Noel’s face that he’s not doing a good job of hiding the way his heart is pounding in his chest at the fucking prospect of maybe, just maybe, seeing Michael again.

“You going to talk to him?” Noel says harshly. Calum hesitates, and then shakes his head.

“You’re my band,” he says, even though it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. “You know where my loyalties lie.” Noel considers him for a moment - a long moment - and then exhales, and smiles.

That was a test, Calum thinks, as he smiles back. It was a test, and he passed.

(But his heart might not have.)

-------

Glastonbury comes around a lot fucking faster than Calum had expected.

Noel takes a few days to mull their truce over and then seems to decide that he’s extended it into a full on peace, passing Calum an unfinished song at two in the morning when they’re both high on something Liam had picked up somewhere. Calum doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to break the fragile understanding between the two of them, just pockets the piece of paper and offers Noel a grin and another bottle of beer.

The days pass in a blur of travelling and rehearsing, and they get a week off between their last show somewhere down south and Glastonbury. Noel’s definition of a week off, though, seems to be very different from everyone else’s. Calum’s looking forward to going home, eating some good food, not being woken up by Liam going for a run at seven every fucking morning, maybe even getting around to fixing that wall, but Noel’s having none of it.

(“Did you fucking hear us in Glasgow?” Noel demands, when everybody drags themselves into the tiny, cramped practice space in the basement at ten a.m., Liam still absolutely fucking steaming and clearly not having got round to going to bed yet.

“We sounded fucking fine,” Bonehead says.

“We sounded fucking shite,” Noel corrects.

“Speak for your fucking self,” Tony says, and the rest of them round on him in disbelief.

“Hang on a minute-” Bonehead starts.

“Eeyar, I sound shi-” Noel says indignantly.

“That’s a bit fucking rich-” Calum begins.

“You’re the worst fucking drummer I’ve ever heard,” Liam says, grumpy and disdainful, which about sums it up.)

Calum’s sort of glad, though, because it keeps him busy. In the little moments he does get to himself - half an hour between dinner and Liam ringing his house and demanding he comes down to the pub with him, twenty minutes when Noel’s on the phone arguing with Marcus at the record label about Live Forever again - all he can think of is Michael.

It gets worse the closer they get to Glastonbury. The first few days, when Glastonbury’s still about a week away and still doesn’t quite feel real, he can push Michael out of his mind, distract himself with laughing at Liam telling some story about Noel pushing him in the road when they were kids, ‘cause he knew I was gonna be fitter than him, I reckon. Michael crosses his mind, but it’s fleeting, and Calum doesn’t dwell on him. By the fourth or fifth day, though, Glastonbury’s looming over them and they’re being told every three seconds not to be late for the fucking bus, bus call’s at fucking six, did you hear me, that’s six, and William fucking Gallagher if you’re a second late I’ll give Noel special dispensation to murder you. It starts sinking in then, in brief moments of panic where Calum realises that fuck, in forty-eight hours, in thirty-six hours, in twenty-four hours, he might see Michael again.

A million different scenarios cross his mind. Michael screaming at him, Calum screaming back; Michael kissing him, Calum kissing back; Michael walking past and not even looking at him, and Calum’s heart breaking. He’s glad for it when Noel rings and asks him to make sure Liam gets to the bus call on time, because fussing over Liam gives him something else to focus all of his nervous energy on.

They drive through the night, and Calum doesn’t sleep. The rest of them don’t either, though, drinking and smoking (except Liam, on Noel’s orders, and much to his chagrin) and snorting what Liam claims is coke but Noel’s pretty sure is just crushed caffeine pills. By the time they’re all coming down from their wired highs, around four or five in the morning, Calum’s so exhausted that he slips into an easy, dreamless sleep, and it feels like no time has passed at all before he’s been shaken awake gently, blinking up at solemn blue eyes.

“Soundcheck,” is all Liam says, not looking tired or hungover in the fucking slightest. Calum groans, mouth dry and throat scratchy, and struggles into a seated position to find Liam’s got a cup of water and two paracetamols in his hand.

“I fucking love you,” Calum says hoarsely, and Liam laughs as Calum grabs the water and pills.

“Fucking right,” he says with a grin, and then walks away.

Calum downs the water and pills, and then hears Bonehead shout for him and yells back I’m coming, I’m coming, rolling out of bed and pulling on the first clothes he sees. By the time he’s made his way into the lounge area, rubbing at his eyes blearily and sending up prayers to various gods that the paracetamol kicks in quickly, everyone’s ready to go. It’s probably for the best that Calum doesn’t have time to eat breakfast; his stomach’s flipping like crazy, and Liam’s far too fucking buzzing to stay in the bus a minute longer, hopping from foot to foot with that kind of childlike energy that he’s always inexplicably got, counterbalancing Noel’s stiff, tense posture.

“Are we doing Walrus?” Liam asks, as they file off the bus and are led in the direction of a tiny room.

“Did you read the fucking setlist?” Noel snaps.

“You changed it seven fucking times,” Liam shoots back.

“I fucking showed you the final one this morning,” Noel says.

“Oh, fuck off,” Liam says, rolling his eyes. “What’s all this, then?” Their instruments are set out, mic stands and all, and three techs are hovering by the amps.

“Quick soundcheck,” one of them explains. “Don’t have time to do a full one for every artist. Just need to see how you want it, then we can set it up on stage when you’re on.” Liam stares at her in disbelief, and then shakes his head and turns to head out of the room.

“Eeyar,” Noel says sharply, catching him by the elbow. “Where the fuck d’you think you’re going?”

“What the fuck is this?” Liam demands, gesturing at the whole setup.

“What, you thought we’d have a full fucking half hour soundcheck?” Noel says. “It’s a fucking festival, Liam.” Liam stares at him for a minute, because he clearly had thought they were going to have a full soundcheck, and then shakes Noel off and walks back out the way they’d come in.

“Uh-” one of the techs says, but Noel sighs, loud and exasperated, and turns back to them with a shake of his head.

“Fucking let him go,” he says contemptuously. “He’s just the fucking tambourine player.”

The soundcheck only lasts ten minutes, and Noel insists that he’ll sort his own amps out anyway, because he’s a fucking control freak, and then they’re told to fuck off and come back at five.

“Well,” Bonehead says, as they file out of the room. “I’m going back to sleep.” Without waiting for any of them to say anything, he turns on his heel and heads straight back in the direction of the bus.

“The Inspirals are playing today,” Noel says, already looking over Tony’s head and craning around Calum to see if he can spot them anywhere. “Gonna see if I can find them.”

“Think I’m going to get a drink,” Tony says, and Calum sighs, because that leaves him with the job of finding Liam.

“Fine, fuck you both,” he says, and receives a middle finger and a two-fingered salute for his trouble.

He heads halfway with Noel, who peels off abruptly because that’s fucking Johnny Cash, that is, I’m fucking watching that, fuck the Inspirals, and then gets lost on the other half of the way because there are people in black running back and forth and shouting at each other and Calum keeps following them thinking they know where they're going only to end up at a portaloo.

The artists’ area is just a small tent selling incredibly overpriced beer, but Calum buys one anyway, because the paracetamol’s only half-dulled his headache and Calum’s a big believer in hair of the dog. He sips it as he wanders, eyes flitting left to right to try and spot a loud Mancunian in an oversized jumper. He can’t seem to find Liam, but sees two of the blokes from Radiohead in the distance, one of whom raises a hand at him a little hesitantly. Calum raises his beer in return, because it feels like the polite thing to do, and the guy seems to waver for a moment before heading over, and Calum groans internally. Fucking hell. Maybe Noel and Liam have the right idea, being absolute cunts to everybody in the business.

“Calum, right?” the guy says when he gets close, and bloody hell, he’s even fucking shorter than Noel.

“Yeah,” Calum says.

“Thom,” the guy says, holding his hand out. Calum stares at it for a moment, trying to process is this twenty-something musician trying to shake my hand like we’re fucking businessmen, and Thom retracts it, a little awkwardly.

“You’re from Radiohead,” Calum says, more of a statement than a question.

“Yeah,” Thom says.

“Creep’s a good song,” Calum says, taking a sip from his beer. Thom cocks his head, like he’s trying to work out if Calum’s taking the piss.

“Thanks,” he says eventually, a little suspiciously. It’s fair enough, Calum thinks, when he remembers the last time they’d crossed paths; a few weeks ago, Calum cackling as Noel and Liam screamed but I’m a cock, I’m a willy as Radiohead traipsed onto the stage to collect their award. It is a good song, though, although Calum sort of prefers the Gallagher version.

“You seen my singer, by any chance?” Calum says, figuring it can’t hurt to ask. “‘Bout this tall, mouthy northern lad. Probably getting into a fistfight, or something.”

“Liam,” Thom says, and really, Calum should have known Thom knew who Liam was. Who the fuck doesn’t know Liam Gallagher?

“Yeah,” Calum says, “him.” Thom nods.

“Yeah, saw him about ten minutes ago,” he says.

“Where?” Thom turns, points in the vague direction of a tent in the distance.

“He was having a go at the barman for the price of the beers,” Thom says, and Calum snorts.

“Sounds like fucking Liam,” he says, and can’t help the fondness that edges his tone. Thom grins at him, like he's finally finding his footing.

"They're almost three quid," he says. "It's daylight fucking robbery."

“Fucking festivals,” Calum says, a little derisively, and takes another sip from his extortionately-priced beer.

“Fucking festivals,” Thom agrees. “Anyway, I’m on in a few, so I’d best get off.”

“I’d better go and save the rest of Glastonbury from Liam,” Calum says. Thom nods, and takes a step back.

“Oh, by the way,” he adds, as Calum turns to head in the direction of the tent Thom had pointed out. “One of the guys from Blur was looking for you.” Calum’s stomach drops.

“What?” he says, a little too quickly, spinning back around. “Who?” Thom shrugs.

“Blonde one,” he says. “Don’t know their names.”

Oh, shit.

Shit.

“Cheers,” Calum says, glad for how steady it comes out, and jogs off in the direction of the tent Liam was supposedly last seen in, stomach churning.

Out of all the fantasies he’s had about this day, about seeing Michael somehow, none of them had involved Michael seeking him out. It had all been chance encounters, Michael watching the Oasis set or Calum watching the Blur set, or bumping into each other backstage, or seeing each other across the small stretch of grass outside the artists’ tent. He’d never stopped to think that maybe Michael would want to speak to him, not after how he’d acted at the awards ceremony.

“Cal!” he hears, and he whips around with a racing heart, thinking that for a moment it was Michael, the easy way the nickname would drip off Michael’s tongue, but when he turns, he sees Liam, grinning widely, holding up a can of beer that he’s clearly nicked off the tour bus and making his way over to Calum.

“You’re fucking drunk,” Calum states, when Liam gets within four feet of him. Liam raises an eyebrow, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, and nods.

“Yep,” he says happily. “How was soundcheck?”

“Noel’s not happy with you,” Calum informs him, and Liam shrugs.

“When the fuck is he?” he says carelessly. "I'm arsed. The tit doesn't want anyone to have any fucking fun." Calum just sighs and shakes his head, palms still slick with sweat, eyes flitting over Liam’s head every three seconds just in case Michael’s magically appeared behind him. Liam’s not as drunk as he smells, though, because he catches it, twisting around to look at what’s caught Calum’s attention.

“What?” he says, when he’s confronted with absolutely nothing.

“What?” Calum says, defensive and deflecting. Liam turns back to him, both eyebrows raised now.

“You looking for Mike?” Liam says, a little too knowingly.

“Michael,” Calum corrects, without thinking.

“Well, the Blur lot call him Mike,” Liam says.

“He hates being called Mike,” Calum mutters.

“Well,” Liam says, with a nonchalant shrug, "not anymore." There's no malice behind the words but they still hurt, because it reminds Calum that he doesn’t know Michael anymore, doesn’t know Mike.

“Thom from Radiohead said he was looking for me,” Calum says, and he watches Liam’s eyebrows disappear back under his sunglasses, his lips twisting in a frown.

“You told our kid you wouldn’t talk to him,” he says, and it comes out a little petulant.

“I haven’t,” Calum says, and hopes Liam doesn’t catch the evasiveness in his tone. Technically, if Michael talks to him, he’s not lying.

“Good,” Liam says, and then grins brightly. “Want to go and laugh at Radiohead?”

“Are they on?” Liam shrugs.

“Think so. Heard some whiny shite out there, ‘s gotta be them, innit?” Calum snorts, and shakes his head.

“Yeah, go on then,” he says, and Liam’s grin widens. “Anything to make you smile.”

“Soppy cunt,” Liam says, but his eyes are soft and fond, and Calum laughs as he follows him in the direction of the stages.

Anything to get Michael off his mind, too.

-------

Noel’s still furious at Liam by the time their set rolls around, and Liam plays into it, refusing to sing the second verse of Fade Away and demanding they shuffle the setlist to play Supersonic first. He cackles when Noel glares at him, grins gleefully when Noel shouts a string of curse words and stomps off, and takes an idle sip from his beer with twinkling eyes when both Bonehead and Calum throw him exasperated looks before following after Noel with ten minutes to go until they’re on stage.

They manage to convince Noel to come back - or at least to make him feel like coming back is something they’re begging him to do rather than something he was going to do anyway, because Noel always loves feeling like he’s doing them a fucking favour. He kicks Liam in the shin when he passes him on his way to the stairs leading to the stage, hard, and Liam scowls and hurls his almost-empty can of beer at him, missing by a few inches and hitting Tony instead.

The set passes in a fucking blur. The crowd actually cheer them onto the stage, which makes Calum’s stomach twist and attempt to make its way up his oesophagus in a way that’s strangely pleasant. Liam sings his fucking heart out, looking lazy and bored and effortless, but Calum can see the slight tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers are clenched around his stupid fucking tambourine. They sound fucking good, they all know they do, and when Noel and Calum both head for the beers at the back of the stage at the same time they share a quick smile, a fuck, can you believe this is real? smile.

Calum tries not to scan the crowd for Michael, he really fucking does, but he can’t help himself, and he also can’t help the little pang of disappointment when he can’t spot Michael’s telltale unruly blonde hair anywhere. It’s probably for the best, he tells himself, looking back down at his bass and really focusing on the song. He probably wouldn’t be able to concentrate if Michael were there.

Noel’s on a fucking high when they get off, kisses Bonehead square on the lips and pulls Liam into a fond headlock, rubbing his knuckles across the top of Liam’s sweaty head as Liam protests but doesn’t try to pull away.

“That was fucking mega, ” he says, grinning widely as he releases Liam, who stands up straight and shakes his hair out.

“Fucking was, and all,” Liam says proudly, slinging an arm over Noel’s shoulders. “Me and me little brother-”

“Eeyar, watch it,” Noel says, but he’s still grinning.

“-playing fucking Glastonbury,” Liam finishes. “Fucking hell. Wonder if Mam was watching.”

“‘Course she fucking was,” Noel says, a note of reassurance in his voice. “Wouldn’t miss the opportunity to see her most handsome son play fucking Glastonbury, would she, eh? And you, I s’pose.” He ducks out of Liam’s arm as Liam makes a noise of outrage and lunges for him, laughing, but Liam’s laughing too, chasing after Noel as he skips out of Liam’s reach, and the two of them start shrieking like fucking madmen and tear off in the direction of the artists’ tent, earning themselves strange looks from everyone they pass. Tony, Bonehead and Calum watch them as they disappear into the distance for a moment, each of them thinking the same thing - who, how, and what the fuck are the Gallagher brothers?

“I reckon if I ever understand those two I’d deserve a fucking Nobel prize,” Bonehead comments, and Calum and Tony both murmur their agreement.

Tony’s mate’s is in some band playing on the fucking Jazz World Stage, of all things, so he says he’s going to go and see if he can catch the tail end of their set. Calum tells him it’s a good fucking thing he kept that to himself until after the brothers had left, because he wouldn’t hear the end of it otherwise, and Bonehead grins and says gives me the pleasure of telling them, too. Tony just flips them both off as he walks away, and they return the favour.

“I’m fucking rank,” Bonehead says, not sounding all too unhappy about it, as they approach the tent.

“You are,” Calum agrees, and ducks the inevitable swat Bonehead aims at the back of his head.

“You’re not all fucking roses yourself,” Bonehead tells him, and Calum shrugs. He can live with that.

“I’ll shower later,” he says.

“You fucking will,” Bonehead says. “Not fucking getting on a bus with you smelling like that.” Calum scowls, because he knows he doesn’t smell that bad, and Bonehead throws him a winning smile as he ducks into the tent ahead of Calum.

Liam and Noel are at the bar, shouting loudly at the bartender and each other and anyone who comes within three feet of them, and Calum decides to steer well clear of that and head out of the back of the tent to the little stretch of grass.

“I fancy a beer,” Bonehead says, already halfway to the bar, and Calum shrugs - clearly Bonehead’s not seen the fucking prices - and steps out on his own.

There are a few people milling around, a few people Calum thinks he might have seen at afterparties and a few people that are clearly hangers-on, and he heads for an empty spot by the fence in the corner, not wanting to go through a conversation with any of these people. He digs around in his pocket for a cigarette and puts it to his lips, cupping his left hand around it as he fumbles with his lighter in his right, and his eyes flutter shut as he inhales the first delicious drag and holds it in.

“They’ll kill you, y’know,” a low voice says, and Calum’s eyes fly open as he chokes on the smoke currently in his lungs.

A blonde, Thom had said. A blonde from Blur.

Not Michael.

Damon.

“Gotta die of something,” Calum says, when he recovers, noting the amused expression on Damon’s face.

“Good for the nerves, too,” Damon agrees, and brings his own cigarette to his lips. Fucking hypocrite.

“What d’you want?” Calum says. Damon takes a long drag of the cigarette, eyeing Calum shrewdly. Calum’s had enough of shrewd blue eyes, fucking hell.

“To talk about Mike,” Damon says eventually, and tilts his head up to exhale a cloud of grey smoke. Calum watches it swirl for a minute, separating into wisps that the wind catches and carries away from them.

“What about him?”

“What happened with the two of you?” Damon sounds curious. Calum shrugs jerkily.

“Shouldn’t you be asking him that?” he fires back.

“I did.”

“So what are you here for?”

“Your side of it.”

“What the fuck d’you want that for?” Damon shrugs, and takes another drag of his cigarette. It reminds Calum of his own, burning right down to the filter in his hand, and he brings it to his lips. Damon has a point about it being good for the nerves.

“I care about him,” Damon says simply, after a moment. He doesn’t add anything else, but the threat is clear: if you’ve fucked with him, or if you ever fuck with him again, I’ll fucking kill you. Calum would like to see him try, because he’d have to get past both Noel and Liam first.

“Well, whatever the fuck he told you is probably true,” Calum mutters. Damon cocks his head.

“You dated?” Calum tries not to squirm.

“Yeah.”

“You fell in love?”

“Guess so.”

“You dropped him the minute you moved to the UK?” Calum’s head whips around to face Damon. What the fuck has Michael been saying? That's not true, not really. He'd kept sending letters for a year and a half, or so, hadn't he? What was he supposed to do when Michael stopped writing as often?

“Not exactly,” he says, and Damon raises an eyebrow.

“You didn’t start ignoring his letters?” he questions.

“Well, yeah, but he stopped sending as many,” Calum says. Damon’s eyebrows stay raised, and his lips quirk up in a small, almost sad smile.

“You don’t see a correlation there?” he says. Calum shrugs, and takes another drag from his cigarette before dropping it to the ground and grinding it out with his shoe.

“He never told me he was coming here,” he says. “Never told me he was in Blur, either. Way I see it, we’re even.” They’re not even, they’ll never be fucking even, but he’s not going to tell Damon that.

He starts heading back in the direction of the tent, intending to go straight to Noel and tell him Damon’s just tried to get in his head about Michael, but Damon catches his arm as he steps away. Calum turns back around and yanks his arm out of Damon’s grasp with a scowl.

“How long have you known?” Damon asks.

“What?” Calum says irritably.

“About Mike. How long have you known?” Calum stares at him.

“How long has he known?” he asks.

“A year,” Damon says, and Calum’s heart clenches. Michael’s known Calum’s in Oasis for a fucking year, and never once tried to reach out.

“Well?” Damon prompts, and Calum clenches his teeth.

“Three months,” he says shortly, and then turns on his heel and heads in the direction of the artists’ tent before Damon can say anything else, heart in his fucking mouth.

A year. A fucking year. Michael’s known what Calum’s been up to, known about him and his band, probably even known where he’s been on the odd occasion for a fucking year, and he’s never said anything, never even mentioned it to his own bandmates until his arm was twisted.

Well, Calum thinks bitterly, as he ducks into the tent to see Noel, Liam and Bonehead all laughing and grinning at the bar. At least he knows where he stands with Michael, then. And at least he’s somewhere with Liam’s drugs and overpriced booze to drown his sorrows.

-------

A few hours later, a little high and a lot stoned and even more drunk, Calum’s wandering around outside when Liam catches him, slips an arm around his waist and pulls him in for a warm, sweaty hug.

“Want to go and heckle Blur?” he asks, grinning into Calum’s shoulder, sunglasses pressing uncomfortably into Calum’s collarbone, and Calum’s heart skips a beat.

“Are they playing?” Liam pulls back and nods, and Calum shrugs as nonchalantly as he can.

“Sure,” he says, wishing Liam would take the sunglasses off so Calum can see what he’s thinking. Liam doesn’t, just grabs Calum by the arm and starts steering him in the direction of the stage they’d played all of six hours ago.

They pass by one of the other stages, a smaller one, where what sounds like a country duo are playing, deep voices booming while middle-aged men tap their feet thoughtfully to the acoustic guitars, and then the sound of guitars and a faux-Cockney accent start to drown them out. They turn the corner and then they’re there, squinting at the tiny pinpricks on the stage about a fucking mile in front of them.

“Fucking hell,” Liam complains. “Can’t even fucking see the pricks.” Without waiting for a response from Calum, he starts shoving through the crowd, shouting watch my fucking beer at anyone who jostles back against him, and Calum follows close behind before the crowd can close around the path he’s created again, until they’re about five rows from the stage. Calum’s been so focused on his feet the whole time, not wanting to trip up and spill the the fucking £2.50 beer that he’d shelled out on, that he’s not actually looked up, and when he does he’s startled by how close they actually are, by the fact that he can see the beads of sweat on Damon’s throat, the vein on his neck as he sings.

Calum’s eyes, like they’re magnets and Michael’s fucking north, immediately find Michael, who’s staring down at his guitar and nodding along to the song - something about there being no other way, if Calum’s making out the lyrics blasting out from the speakers correctly. It’s sort of catchy, but they’ve come in towards the end and it’s winding down, and it’s only about twenty seconds before the final chord rings out and Damon stands back, breathing heavily.

“Is there anyone who’s French out there?” he asks, as the other guitarist - Graham, Calum thinks idly, as some of the crowd cheer - plucks out a few random notes.

“Really?” Damon says, sounding surprised. “How many, put your hands up, let’s have a look.” He pauses. “How many Germans? Oh, that’s too many French. I don’t believe you.” He pulls the mic off the mic stand and looks down at his feet. “Okay, well. This is for you. Mon amis.”

A synth and drums start up, something slower than the last song, and Graham and Michael start playing chords on an offbeat and an on-beat. Calum watches Michael, bathed in the soft disco-ball light they’ve got going on at the moment, fingers moving lazily across the fretboard, and his heart aches. He remembers Michael struggling to switch from a C to a G back in the music room at school, remembers how he had to show Michael where to place his fingers for an E at least six times before he got it, and now Michael’s here, playing the fucking NME stage at Glastonbury like it’s nothing.

He’s not even listening to what Damon’s singing, too focused on the little crease between Michael’s brows as he nods along to the song, until Michael looks up for the first time, and looks straight at Calum.

Calum knows Michael’s looking at him, no one else, from the way he freezes, by the way his shoulders tense and his eyes widen and his lips part a little. It’d be easy for him to pretend that he hasn’t seen him, for him to look away and scan the rest of the crowd, but he doesn’t. His eyes stay fixed on Calum, half in shock, half in something that looks like grim determination, Damon’s voice providing the soundtrack to accompany Calum’s racing heart.

“Well, you and I, collapsed in love,” Damon sings. “And it looks like we might have made it; yes, it looks like we made it to the end.”

Calum’s stomach drops.

That’s about him. He knows it is, can’t put his finger on why but he knows it, and he knows when Michael sees that Calum’s realised it because he blinks, slow and sad, but doesn’t stop looking at Calum.

“What happened to us?” Damon asks, but it’s Michael’s words. “Soon it will be gone forever.” Calum can’t make out the next two lines, but it doesn’t matter, because he can see Michael swallow, can see the way his left hand is clenching the fretboard far too tightly, and knows it’s because of him.

“Well, you and I, collapsed in love,” Damon repeats, and the crowd sings along with him, and Calum’s heart feels like it’s going to splinter when Michael shifts a little, takes a step to the left, but his eyes don’t leave Calum’s. This is for you, he’s saying. This is for us.

Some kind of string instrument is playing in the background, and Damon sits himself down at a piano and plays something that Calum can’t even make out, and Calum can tell the song’s coming to an end but he doesn’t want it to, doesn’t want the moment to be broken. Damon stands back up again, grabs the mic, and heads back to the front of the stage, pulling on the wire so he doesn’t trip over it.

“Well, you and I,” he sings again. “Collapsed in love. And it looks like we might have made it; yes it looks like we made it to the end.” He lingers on the final note, and the strings swell, and Calum knows he’s only got a few seconds of Michael left, of having Michael to himself in front of thousands and thousands of people. He blinks up at him, wonders whether Michael can see whatever tangled web of emotions he’s feeling reflected in his eyes - regret, maybe, grief, definitely, yearning, possibly.

Michael’s still playing, those off- and on-beat chords, and the dim lights on the stage fade out, leaving Calum to gaze at Michael silhouetted in only the disco-ball lights. He can’t see Michael’s face anymore but can still feel Michael’s eyes on him, locked with his own, and just before the song finishes, just as they start to slow down and head into the final bar, a light crosses Michael’s face for the briefest of moments and Michael, eyes on Calum, offers him a tiny, sad smile.

The song finishes, and the crowd cheer, and Michael takes a few steps back on the stage, bending down to pick something up, and then they’re heading into the next song, an upbeat, guitar-heavy track that has everyone jumping up and down except Calum and Liam.

“This is fucking shite,” Liam shouts halfway through the song, sounding annoyed, like the fact that Blur’s music isn’t to his taste is a personal attack.

“Yeah,” Calum says, a little dazed.

“ This is our competition?” Liam’s got his arms folded, beer resting on his elbow. “There’s not even a fucking competition. We’re fucking rock ‘n’ roll, we are. What the fuck is this wank?”

“Dunno,” Calum says. Liam scoffs.

“Pricks,” he says derisively, and turns to Calum. “‘S not even fucking worth heckling. Let’s just fucking go.” Calum nods numbly, and Liam starts shouldering through the crowd again, shoving two of his fingers up at anyone who dares call him a cunt for doing so.

A third song’s started by the time they get to the back of the crowd and manage to slip out and get to the path leading back in the direction of the artists’ tent, and Liam scoffs again as he takes a long swig of his beer.

“ Parklife ,” he says mockingly, along with the crowd, and shakes his head. “Fucking insulting, that is, that we’re being pitted against them. How the fuck are they rock ‘n’ roll, eh? How the fuck?” Calum just shrugs, scuffing his shoes against the dirt path.

“What was that with you and Mike, then?” Liam says, almost conversationally, as they turn the corner. Calum’s head shoots up to look at him.

“What was what?” he says, too quickly, and curses inwardly, because he’s given himself away.

“That,” Liam says knowingly. “Fucking staring at you for the whole song, he was.” Calum looks back down at his feet, steadfastly counting the number of times his laces criss-cross on his shoes.

“Damon came and talked to me earlier,” he mutters, because he hasn’t had a chance to tell any of them yet. Or, he has, but drowning his feelings had felt more urgent, and he didn’t want to mention Michael’s name to Noel when he looked to be in such a good mood.

“What the fuck?” Liam demands. “I’ll fucking deck him, I will.” The ghost of a smile crosses Calum’s lips.

“You don’t even know what he said,” he says, but something warm is spreading through his lungs at the fact that Liam’s that willing to defend his honour.

“Don’t fucking care,” Liam growls. “Been fucking gagging for a chance to deck him. Fucking posh prick.” Well. Maybe defending Calum's honour is at least amongst the reasons for that.

“Just wanted to talk about Michael,” Calum says.

“Cunt,” Liam says venomously. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Calum admits. “Said he wanted to hear my side of the story.”

“What the fuck for?” Liam says. “I don’t fucking care what Mike has to say, do I?” Calum shrugs again.

“He wanted to know how long I’d known about Michael,” he says.

“Did he say how long Michael’s known?” Calum hesitates.

“A year,” he mumbles.

“A year? ” Liam says, sounding outraged. “A fucking year? And he never fucking told them?” Calum shakes his head, and Liam makes a scornful noise. “Fucking wanker.”

“Yeah,” Calum says, trying to quash the guilt that rises in his chest and tells him you might not have told them, either.

“Why the fuck was he eyeing you up that whole song, then?” Liam asks. Calum swallows. You know where my loyalties lie, he’d told Noel, and he’d meant it. Oasis are his band, Noel and Liam are his best friends, and Michael’s a part of his past. It doesn’t matter that his heart might still be seventeen years old; he’s got to be here, in 1994, not 1989.

“It’s about me,” he says. Liam stops.

“What’s about you?”

“That song. That’s why he was looking at me.” It’s dark, and Calum can’t see Liam all that clearly, but he can make out the way his lips twist in a thin line.

“How d’you know?”

“Just do.”

“Well,” Liam says, slinging an arm around Calum’s shoulders and pulling him in possessively. “You’ve got us. We’re not going to fucking let that bastard do anything to you.”

Privately, Calum thinks he might actually want Michael to do something to him, but he just forces a smile and wraps an arm around Liam’s waist as they head into the tent for a drink and maybe a few lines. God knows Calum fucking needs it.

-------

At about two in the morning, off his head on coke and expensive beer, Liam decides it’d be a great idea to insult one of the singers in Chumbawamba, which leads to a scuffle that Liam’s all too happy to get in the middle of and ends up dragging Noel into too, leaving them both with bruises flowering high on their cheeks and tongues probing to make sure they’ve still got all their teeth. Neither of them seem to care that much, though, probably both too fucked to feel it, and Calum watches them get shepherded away to the medical tent by their manager Alan, swaying a little as they go. Bonehead’s long gone, disappeared with some pretty ginger woman on his arm, and Tony still hasn’t come back from his fucking jazz band, so Calum’s left on his own, sipping his beer and trying to make himself as invisible as possible in the corner so that bloody Thom Yorke won’t come and talk to him again.

He gets through a few more pints, watching the crowd thin as the night wears on, before his bladder starts to kick up a real fuss at the amount of liquid he’s consumed in the past few hours and he slips off to the toilets.

The door’s locked when he tries it, and he can hear two male voices inside but can’t make out what they’re saying, and decides it’s probably for the best that way. He takes a few steps back, just in case they start fucking or fighting or whatever the fuck it is they’re doing in there, because he doesn’t want to have to listen to that, and rests the back of his head against the wall, taking deep breaths as he realises that shit, he’s a lot fucking drunker than he thought he was.

He lets his eyes flutter shut as the room starts to swim a little bit, making his stomach roll, and sags back against the wall, focusing on his breathing - seven in, eleven out, Liam always says to Noel when he’s having a bad trip, or maybe it’s eleven in, seven out? Fuck it, he can’t remember, but he’s breathing, and that’s probably what matters.

He’s so focused on inhaling, exhaling, in, out, that he doesn’t hear someone come up behind him until they make a small noise of surprise, a tiny gasp, that makes him open his eyes.

It’s Michael.

“Oh, fuck,” Calum mutters, and squeezes his eyes shut again. Maybe Michael will be gone when he re-opens them. M aybe this is just a drug-and-lack-of-sleep-induced hallucination.

Michael’s not gone when Calum opens his eyes. In fact, he’s a little clearer, not so fuzzy around the edges anymore. He’s standing about two feet away, face set in a mask of shock, staring at Calum like he can’t quite believe he’s there. Even in the dim light of the corridor Calum can make out the new lines on his face, concrete evidence of the years without Calum. He’s lived, breathed, aged without Calum, documented in the crow’s feet at his eyes, the way his laughter lines have deepened, and it makes Calum’s stomach lurch, makes bile rise in his throat to see the irrefutable evidence of a life Michael’s led without him.

“You look old,” he blurts, without meaning to, and Michael blinks at him. There’s a moment of silence, a moment where Calum’s heart skids to the brink of shattering, thinking fuck, this is it, this is fucking it, and then Michael opens his mouth.

“So do you,” he says, and Calum’s heart shudders to a halt, torn between taking that last step over the edge and giving out altogether. His voice is soft, a little tentative but with an edge of firmness that Calum’s not used to hearing from Michael, the same, familiar Australian accent now a little muted, diluted by southern English.

They stare at each other for a moment, and Calum blinks hard, trying to focus his eyes and his mind and to wade through the mist of inebriation to find that little part of him that’s sober, the part that’ll tell him how to conduct himself in this first conversation with Michael since 1989 without embarrassing himself. Liam’s weed was a little too strong, though - or maybe it was the coke, because it definitely can’t have been the exorbitantly priced beers - because Calum’s mind stays firmly foggy, no rational thoughts getting through the mist of drugs. Tomorrow, he’ll blame the next words he says on that, he thinks vaguely, as they’re already tumbling off his tongue.

“You knew,” he says, and it comes out as an accusation. Good, he thinks, a little venomously, a little dazedly. It is an accusation.

“What?” Michael says, a little defensive. He knows what Calum’s talking about, but he doesn’t want to give it away. Well, Calum thinks spitefully, thank fuck him and his singer aren't on the same page about that.

“You knew,” Calum repeats. He sways a little on the spot, and puts a hand on the wall to steady himself. “Damon said. You knew.” Michael frowns, a little crease between his brows that Calum’s itching to reach up and trace with the pads of his fingers. He clenches his fist against the wall instead, and sees Michael’s eyes flit to it, and then back to his face.

“Yeah,” Michael says, carefully even. “I knew.”

“A year.” Calum just wants the confirmation. Say it, he thinks, just in case this brand new Michael’s developed telepathic abilities on top of his confidence and guitar skills. Say you didn’t want to talk to me.

“Yeah.” Michael says it calmly, coolly, like Calum’s supposed to just take it and feel nothing. Maybe Michael feels nothing, Calum thinks wildly, and the thought almost makes him retch.

“Why?”

“Why d’you think?” Michael says. He folds his arms and stares at Calum, more confident than Calum’s ever seen him before, and it makes him feel small, pathetic, drunk.

“Because I stopped writing.” Michael doesn’t say anything to that, but Calum sees the way his lips twitch in a tiny grimace.

“Stopped caring about me,” Michael says, and Calum realises it’s supposed to be a correction.

“No,” he says.

“No?”

“No.”

“Did a pretty convincing job of acting like you did.” Michael’s tone is all hard now, diamonds and steel, and it makes Calum flinch a little. Or maybe his words do, Calum’s not quite sure. Or maybe it’s just Michael.

“Well. Thought I did,” Calum admits, because in fairness, he had. He hadn’t thought about Michael in years, really, had been too busy or too high to let any thoughts of Australia cross his mind, and that had sort of equated to well, I guess I don't care that much anymore, then.

But the fucking state of him now, and the state of him the past three months, should be all the proof Michael could ever want.

“Right.” Michael’s not convinced. Calum tries a different tack.

“Who the fuck is Mike?” he says. It makes sense in his head, he thinks, a little drunkenly. I know you, he’s trying to say. Are you still there?

“I am.”

“You hate being called Mike.”

“I’m not seventeen anymore.” Michael holds Calum’s gaze with his own hard stare, face carefully blank and guarded, and Calum feels something simultaneously bitter and delicious unfurling in his stomach. He’s not quite sure what Michael’s trying to say with that - I’m not yours anymore, maybe. Calum’s glad he’s drunk enough to pretend he can’t hear it.

“Why the fuck were you talking to Damon?” Michael asks after a minute, and his tone is still even and calm but he’s given himself away with the question. He doesn’t want Calum to talk to Damon, and he wants to know what was said, and Calum’s stomach flips as he thinks that’s something. There’s a reason he doesn’t want me to talk to Damon. I've just got to find out what that reason is.

“He talked to me,” Calum says.

“Why?”

“Ask him.” Michael’s eyes narrow, but Calum doesn't tear his eyes away, brown searching green. It’s unnerving, he thinks, not to know what’s going on in Michael’s head. It’s unnerving not to know Michael anymore, jars with something deep in his soul, like he should always know Michael and it's wrong like this.

“Your bandmates are cunts,” Michael says, like he’s testing the waters. “The brothers.”

“Yeah.” Both pride and guilt swell in Calum’s chest - pride, because those are his fucking best friends, and guilt, because he shouldn’t be talking to Michael. You know where my loyalties lie, he’d said. And they are with his band; he hadn’t been lying, but his loyalties are hidden somewhere in the murky depths of regret and love and unfinished business right now.

“You don’t care?”

“They’re my best friends.” Michael raises an eyebrow.

“For now.” The implication rings loud and clear between them - yeah, until you drop them, just like you dropped me.

“I’m not seventeen anymore either,” Calum says. I’m better now.

“Good.”

They stand in silence for a moment, and Calum shifts his weight from one foot to the other, trying to find a position that he doesn’t feel dizzy and light-headed in, but to no avail.

“You look drunk,” Michael says. “Thanks,” Calum says, like he doesn’t want to cry. God, he’s too fucking high for this. “I am.” Michael hums, green eyes flitting from Calum’s face to his chest and arms and back again. It’s no different to how girls look at him, how boys look at him - how Noel looks at him, sometimes - but under Michael’s gaze he feels like he’s burning up, like he’s suddenly ten times drunker than he actually is.

“I liked your set today,” Michael says lowly, like he shouldn’t be saying it. Calum blinks at him.

“You weren’t there,” he says stupidly. Michael frowns.

“I was,” he says.

“I didn’t see you,” Calum says, and then feels his eyes widen, because shit. He’s essentially just told Michael he was looking for him.

“Oh,” Michael says, sounding distant, and Calum thinks he might be sick because Michael knows, knows Calum wanted him to be there. Fuck. Fuck.

He closes his eyes again, breathes in deeply again, tries to focus on something - anything - that isn’t his churning stomach.

“Are you alright?” Michael asks, sounding a little curious and a little concerned.

“Yeah,” Calum manages to get out.

“You look like you’re going to be sick.”

“Might be.”

“Oh.”

Calum sinks to the floor, thinking somewhere in the depths of his mind that sitting on the ground and not throwing up on Michael is better than staying standing but throwing up on Michael, and tries to even out his shaky breathing. In, out, Liam always says, in, out. That’s all you need to do.

“D’you want some water?” he hears, soft and hesitant, and he cracks open one eye to see Michael crouching at eye-level, looking a little worried and a lot pained, like he doesn’t want to be letting his guard down but just can’t help himself. It makes Calum’s stomach flip, but not unpleasantly. It counterbalances the nausea still swirling in his stomach and throat, settles it a little bit. Fucking typical that Michael's both the poison and the antidote.

“D’you have any?” Calum says, and Michael shakes his head. Calum can’t help the slightly hysterical laugh that bubbles out of him at that, and he puts his head in his hands.

“What the fuck is this?” he mutters into his fingers, more to himself than to Michael, but he hears a small sigh from his left and knows Michael’s heard anyway. There’s a rustling sound, and then a thump, and Calum’s eyes fly open to see Michael sat next to him, cross-legged, looking a little sad.

“Water never helped you anyway,” he says, which isn’t at all an answer to what Calum’s just said, but it is, at the same time. I remember you, is what he’s really saying. I remember us. It's a concession, giving Calum something in return for the I was looking for you that his tongue had torn from his heart and offered to Michael. Calum thinks that probably means something, that Michael's admitting he remembers Calum like that, but he's too fucking drunk and high to work it out.

The words hang between them for a moment, and Calum’s stomach settles a little, and his vision sharpens again. He tries not to think about the fact that Michael's admission is responsible for the fact that he can focus on Michael now, can see every crease in Michael’s brow, every lash on his eyes, every freckle on his skin.

“You’re still pretty,” Calum says without thinking, and Michael sits back on his heels, huffing out a laugh that sounds a little surprised.

“Cheers, mate,” he says, tone unreadable, and stands up again. Calum’s eyes follow him as he goes, tilting his head up to keep his gaze trained on Michael, and Michael stares down at him, making Calum’s heart flutter strangely in his chest as a memory of the last time Michael had been staring down at him from that angle flashes in his mind. He can see it cross Michael’s mind too from the way his lips twist a little, but then it’s gone, and he’s just blinking down at Calum, and holding out a hand.

Calum looks at it for a moment, looks at the soft, pale skin that doesn’t look at all like it belongs to a fucking guitarist, before his brain registers what Michael’s offering and he reaches out himself with cold, clammy fingers, wrapping his hand around Michael’s. Michael pulls and Calum lets himself be pulled, stumbling to his feet and trying his best not to think about the way Michael’s hand feels against his, like it’s fucking made for him.

Calum sways for a moment, the room spinning, and he lets go of Michael’s hand to steady himself against the wall, blinking like it’s going to clear his vision. After a few deep breaths, though, it slows down, and Calum feels safe enough to chance looking over at Michael again. He’s still looking at Calum, and now that Calum’s feeling less woozy he can see the glaze of alcohol over his eyes, the glassiness of them, and it makes him feel somewhat more secure. Maybe Michael won’t remember this tomorrow, he thinks, pretending not to notice the edge of wild desperation to the thought.

They stand in awkward silence for a minute, and then Calum can’t take it anymore, bangs on the door of the toilet, because who the fuck is spending that long in there?

“Piss off!” he hears someone - Liam, even his drink-and-drug-addled mind can tell - yell. “Some of us are taking fucking drugs in here.”

“Without me?” Calum yells back.

“Yeah, fuck off,” Liam shouts, but two seconds later the door clicks open and Liam’s face appears, eyes hooded and pupils blown.

“Thought you were with the paramedics,” Calum says. Liam blinks at him, and then a second face appears, craning to see over Liam’s shoulder. Noel.

“We were,” Noel says, grinning toothily. “And now we’re not.” Fucking hell, wasn’t Alan supposed to be keeping an eye on them? Maybe they should have hired a teetotal manager.

“Well, fucking let me piss, then,” Calum says, making for the door, and Liam steps aside obediently but Noel blocks his path.

“Give us a kiss,” he says. Calum scoffs, trying to disguise the way his heart’s plummeting, because he can see out of the corner of his eye that Michael’s still fucking there, still standing a few feet away, a little in the shadows, sober enough to realise that making the Gallaghers aware of his presence wouldn’t be a good move.

“Fuck off,” he says, and tries to shoulder past Noel. The bastard’s stronger than he looks, though, one hand on each side of the doorframe to steady himself.

“I’ll let you in when you give us a kiss,” he says.

“I’ll fucking piss on you if you don’t let me in,” Calum counters. Noel just cackles.

“Don’t you want to kiss your favourite bandmate?” he says, eyes glittering with mirth. Calum scowls at him.

“Liam, give us a kiss,” he calls. Noel laughs again, bright-eyed and happy, and Liam waltzes over to the door, staggering a little, and presses an exaggerated, sloppy kiss to Calum’s lips.

“Now let him in, eh?” Liam says imperiously, turning to Noel, and Noel rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning as he steps away from the door. Calum almost trips over himself in his haste to get to the urinal, but, even in his desperate and inebriated state, he can’t help shooting one last look over his shoulder at Michael. He still can’t make his face out, can’t see what he’s thinking, but he hopes that maybe Michael can see what’s going through Calum’s head - sorry, sorry, sorry, even if Calum’s not quite sure what he’s sorry for; the conversation, kissing Liam, the fact he’s getting to piss and Michael isn’t, or everything else.

“What’s up with you, then?” Noel asks curiously, as Calum rests his forehead against the cool tiles behind the urinal, exhaling shakily.

“Just drunk,” Calum mutters, closing his eyes.

“Drunk?” Noel says, a little incredulously. “Off the fucking water they sell here? You'd need about fifty pints. Must be fucking broke, you.” Calum shrugs.

“Nah,” he hears Liam say from behind him. “‘S the fucking coke, innit? Told you that was quality, didn’t I?” Noel scoffs.

“You wouldn’t know quality coke if it bit you in the arse,” he says derisively. “You’d snort fucking anything.”

“Aye,” Liam says, “that’s why I know that was quality, that.”

Calum’s glad for it when they start bickering, voices rising as they start arguing in earnest, because it covers up his unsteady breathing, the way he’s still having to fight back the urge to retch.

(Privately, he thinks it was neither the coke nor the beer nor even the weed that did it, but Michael.)

taglist: @callmeboatboy @sadistmichael @clumsyclifford @angel-cal @tirednotflirting @cthofficial @tigerteeff @haikucal @queer-5sos @i-am-wierd-always @stupidfukimgspam @bloodyoathcal @pixiegrl @pxrxmoore @currentlyupcalsass @clumthood

if you’d like to be added to my taglist pls fill in this form!

chapter four

#malum #5sos fic #5sos slash #5sos fanfiction #5sos fanfic #BRO i cant believe we're already this far in #i say this far like i'm not about 6 months ahead of this now but anyway #wild...truly wild #if you're reading britpop au please know i owe you my life and my heart and my sooul #anyone whos actually reading this is truly one of my favourite people oon the planet #thank yoou for validating my self indulgence #yeah on the topic of this my o key is broken and sometimes just presses twice for no reason #and on the google doc it keeps writing nooel #which google wants to correct to noodle #it's doing my absolute nut

13 notes · View notes

incarnateirony · 4 years

Note

In what season and episode did you realised that Destiel went from subtext to actual text?

Difficult question really. I don’t exactly have a magic switch of some weird personal set goalpost I have, and frankly, wasn’t even really a shipper, just defended shippers, until... 13.5/6. I think I started slipping after 12.19 because I’m not a moron, I don’t live under a rock, I have eyes and know what the fuck a mixtape means to Gen X. But I kept it at arms reach because even Carver era was so totally subtextual-- atop all the stuff that got cut S10 after the S9 blowout, I didn’t exactly want to invest myself as much as point out shippers weren’t crazy for seeing what they saw, especially S8/9+ and even prior the resonance of the hero’s journey over our entire human civilization and historical othering of queerness made earlier readings or notices of it completely fair even if not really like, directional by the crew?

But to begin, Carver era was when I saw /intentful and meritful construction of the body of text, via subtext, to subtextually tell a story with classic queer coding./ Because a lot of what this fandom calls queer coding makes me want to hide my face behind a quantum hole of facepalms and is often like, pretty much the reverse of what should be advocated or considered. All those retro old “he’s been written as queer from S1″ make me want to kick puppies or something because oh my god it’s Not Good, most of the content there is Very Bad And Hugely Problematic, and it’s an attempt to retroactively prove what old canon was doing without any substance.

Carver era was the shift to substance, but silent substance. Subtext that’s genuinely thematically scaffolded into the storyline in a way that while the events themselves were largely cued on subtext, consideration of that subtext was critical to understanding the full body of text and people that refused to grow into and adapt with that text as the tone shifted are the ones that got more and more confused and angry.

Dabb era was the threshold crossing into (often low-visibility) text. Fandom intentionally arguing points that require complete removal from social structures (which is everything from regional meanings of major symbols, social codes, language, or why-letters-mean-things) doesn’t mean shit doesn’t mean what it means. A mixtape isn’t subtext any more than getting on one knee and popping open a box is subtext even if they don’t verbalize the words. We know what these fucking things mean and anyone who doesn’t is in DESPERATE need of going outside and experiencing the real world before making any kind of social commentary on a body of text.

When it comes to dialogue text, Last Call is where Bi Dean or at least Queer Umbrella Dean was textualized. Again, it doesn’t matter if people don’t understand the long argued history that was put to bed about repeat sexual encounters with men, it doesn’t matter what the gender of the other triplets were, literally none of that matters. It doesn’t matter if the person understands it. It doesn’t matter if they know their queer culture enough to know their arguments were already buried. It is what it is.

There’s this disillusionment that unspoken physicalized shit like kissing or sex, or verbalized ones like “I love you,” but “I love you, in a gay way, specifically and only you, and want to be romantic with you” because every other statement of the like so far has people crying or arguing about it as not enough either.

These things are nice, but it is not the only way to deliver a textual romance. These are things we want and deserve, and people aren’t wrong for wanting them, the only wrong comes in deleting other text because it isn’t the style of text they want. 100% unhelpful.

Text in AV is complex. No matter how decontextualized people try to pretend this all is, throwing pasta at the wall and calling it an argument worth validating, AV media study doesn’t just incorporate social codes on shit like dialogue -- though anyone that applies those social codes wouldn’t be arguing anyway, as per my old post on that -- but visual language and TV literacy are a long studied topic and are just as relevant as understanding of textual/verbal language and having textual literacy. People trying to eschew these in the interest of favoring fanspaces to try to keep them equal within the canon, which is NOT what fandom space equality is supposed to be about, is just... lol.

When that soap opera reporter that doesn’t even watch the show wandered in commenting on the full mise en scene of the 15.03 breakup being classical “Dark Point in the Romance” framing, that’s not subtext. In a book, characters aren’t running around on a blank canvas. Their environments are the text.

What people may draw symbolically out of an environment varies, and if someone’s /interpretation/ holds up, that’s fine. But being able to digest the entire presentation of a work, that is to say, to read an entire scene in a book and understand their setting and the relevance of that setting is simply a form of text. And when literal fucking randos can spot classic cinematography, it’s time to consider what the full cinematic framework is telling you both in incremental minutiae of texts and in the full body of work.

So basically, I acknowledged lowkey text based on the most basic understanding of social codes, by 12.19, even if I was still kinda eyerolling about it. By 13.5/6, Castiel returned to Dean in something later echoed by Eileen for the zoom shot, but the rest of the arrangement was verbatim identical to the original ending of Swan Song with Lisa, with the only difference being “Never too late” wasn’t a verbal line, but an entire sound track they applied to highlight the scene.

Despite the Swan Song parallel ending reactives went up in arms about the fact that they weren’t having big romantic moments anymore and kinda failed to wrap braincases around the fact that the endgame reunion that was literally the ORIGINAL endgame shot, which ALSO didn’t include physicality (in fact, the text read, “this isn’t sexual at all. He’s a lost soul, and she’s his home” in the script for Lisa), and this dumbass fandom would go “SEE PROOF THAT MEANS THE TEXT MEANS IT WASNT SEXUAL AND HE JUST BECAME BEST FRIENDS THAT WAS HER BEDWARMER MAYBE SHE HAS COLD FEET AT NIGHT” and that’s not how this fucking WORKS. Common sense is NOT removed from fucking discussion and what sense is applied needs to be levelly-- again, social codes.

So at 13.5/6 I had considered it textually paramount to the original endgame arrangement. S14 was just... blatant ass domesticity. Dean got his happy ending. He had his family. He got his win, his everything. They spoke frequently in the kitchen -- only vaguely over cases, more slapping around idioms, eyerolling over barbarous eating, and occasionally discussing how to raise their son. In fact, if you look at non-research-non-casework S14 kitchen scenes I’m gonna let you sit there and map out what all those domestic moments in the heart of the kitchen was, minding 13.5/6.

It was something gained. It was their life. And it was something to lose. 14.18 already advert framed it, we all saw it. Troubled family. People delete history of what is connected where to pretend “we” is vague or makes the romance any less of a canon piece and lmao guys

And season 15 is their year long run where they’re spearheading a huge part of the plot and will be a critical final resolution.

Speaking of 13.5/6 and social codes, anyone remember that Jack hadn’t met Dave Mather and looked at one nonphysical picture of them and recognized “he’s her boyfriend”? SOCIAL CODES MEAN SHIT GUYS.

So there’s no magic moment. There’s S8/9 coding and subtext. There’s S12′s tape and other elements -- tape is just the easiest to nail down but several through the year tbh -- there’s S13′s Never Too Late, and all things that followed that in waterfall. There’s S14′s established domesticity with Castiel having essentially moved into the bunker, something that wasn’t even entirely established in S12 yet even if he was more frequent there than Carver era.

Without social codes, I could argue that “Dean loves pie” doesn’t actually mean he loves pie. In fact, I could argue those letters mean nothing, because basic social codes are what even give words meanings. Without them these are just squiggly lines on a screen. If I eschew social codes, I could take a “love me some pie” line from Dean and say it means he fornicates with children and make long convoluded excuses around it instead of the observable fucking fact that Dean fucking Winchester likes goddamn pie.

Waiting for your perfect personally dreamed magic moment for a landmark to call text generally disregards the full body of the text and merit of the work. The amount of time and effort this FUCKING shipping fandom has put into -- even Destiel shippers -- bashing down and calling blatant ass text subtext because it’s not the text they want -- just because they want to argue with people that threw the logic baby out with the destiel bathwater they thought was dirty -- it’s fucking embarrassing tbqh. Imagine if people’s competitive fandom BS was muted how anyone here would be addressing this body of text.

Like. “After Carver directed Misha to play Castiel as a jilted lover in season 9, Cain through S10 escalated it into Castiel as Colette, which was confirmed by both the author and actors, seating him as a lover, as Sam was Abel the brother; by season 11, pining and connected hearts becomes the driving theme of the show, repeatedly denounced both in text and showrunner commentary that it wasn’t Amara that was that romance, and instead, a different one rose; by season 12, domestic arguments were many, mixtapes were shared, coming into rooms and playing people for things secretly stashed under pillows were a hinging plot moment, by season 13 he was the Never Too Late Big Win as a far more powerful version of Lisa, by season 14 Castiel moved in, by season 15 their giant sacred marriage euchartist ceremonies on repeat are driving the entire body of the season while overtly making the straight pairing a secondary parallel to the primary Dean and Castiel pairing by 15.09 such as the AU scene, or the ending where they mimicked the same phrase, truncated by physicality. But anyone viewing this text is an adult not competing for their preferred fandom playbox to be considered in the text, and had eyeballs, saw Sam and Eileen were clearly courting, flirting, and/or romantically engaged for a long time before this.”

Can we hope for the equality in that, sure. I want that, sure. That doesn’t erase all the other modes of text before that though.

But there, I just addressed 4 consecutive seasons of storytelling as its stands in the critical themes, without breaking down the dozens of independent scenes themselves that have already been analyzed to death and yall have scorched in your eyeballs by now like angels have prophet names.

I’ve seen people desperately, desperately try to reinterpret this text, or this story structure, in inconsistent ways that fall short. They’re never held accountable for their entire shit falling flat on their face, they just keep building new shit that falls on its face too and keep using it as a base. People can *interpret* ~text~ however they want. Anyone that tells you that “true text is inarguable” is either an idiot or selling you something for your subscription to their blog. Anyone CAN make any jackass interpretation of anything they want.

So sure. You can make some nonsensical explanation around every core theme their relationship is shadowed by, removing all social codes and context from basic elements understood by adult human beings natively, whatever. You can take 200 pages writing around it and degaying it. Generally when I see this, I see unhinged, incomplete writings with no central thread, just a thousand disembodied excuses that don’t even make a story. They’re just that. Desperate excuses. Years of it at this point. And they’re free to /interpret the text like that/ if they want. But that’s their /interpretation/ of a /text/ and as-above generally in /intentional, willful, conscious denial and erasure of the basic social codes we all understand./

Just because they /can/ warp the most left field interpretation doesn’t make it not text. If I pulled an “I don’t know I can’t english suddenly” and threw those codes out the window that doesn’t mean that the shit doesn’t mean the shit it means just because it’s inconvenient to me lmao

And this isn’t necessarily at you, Nonnie, I just feel the need to expand on this because any single time I don’t nail down these conversational stakes, someone breezes through and intentionally hotboxes the conversation to go down these very predictable manipulations and extremizations of the conversation that I really am far too tired to repeat the arguments raging in my mentions again, so I head ‘em off before the shit ever reblogs.

24 notes · View notes

smellycinnamonthundahfudge · 5 years

Text

how peter fell for mj

ok let’s do this one last time, folks. spideychelle month week 3 has a day for your fav moment and honestly one of my faves that don’t get the cred it deserves is mj’s sly subtle takedown of flash on the plane. i love that scene so goddamn much. it was literally all i needed to buy peter crushing on mj from the get go. mj cares about him and he dug that and i couldnt fucking blame him that he did, especially since he’s school outcast peter parker.

but since apparently ~some~ people have higher standards than me, i decided to fill in the blanks for them and so this headcanons post was born. (it died but i’m remaking it again instead of finishin a wip cus i dont effing want to finish it hahaha)

after hoco, peter’s decided to take his time in trying to be an avenger and just settles for now on staying on the ground as the friendly neighborhood spider-man.

since he isn’t as eager to prove himself anymore, settled on just being spidey for now, he starts to transition back to getting some semblance of his old normal high school life which meant getting back to academic decathlon.

after he actually spends more time again on academic decathlon and he actually winds up attending a competition again, that they manage to win because of him, leading to him sharing an awkward hug-shake with mj,

he’s suddenly knocked on the head by the realization... holy shit are mj and i, friends???

it just happens slowly of course. peter starts to notice mj’s blatant if you actually stop and think about it for a while observation of him and finds himself paranoid doubting himself and wondering if they actually happened at all.

think of him as being the real life equivalent of the sunny conspiracy meme in regards to mj’s lil look and glances

you know, that thing in highschool where you’re so unsure whether or not someone’s actually interested in you so you end up overanalyzing everything they do

“because i mean when i glanced at her direction, i could have sworn she was looking at me, but then i did a double take and she wasn’t anymore. it’s probably nothing, right?”

“yup” ned replies, not even taking his eyes off of the game on his phone. he’s mostly tuned out peter’s musings by now and just on autopilot replies yup and i don’t know every now and then

“but then what if it was???”

this has gone on for quite a while. one could sympathize for ned’s autopilot mode.

peter starts to notice how nice mj is to him and how they’ve actually spent quite a bit of time together what with decathlon, sitting together or around each other at lunch, and mj coincidentally being at detention every time peter is there as well

she tells him she’s there to draw people in crisis and has been doing so long before peter found himself there

but then peter stays at school a little longer than he plans to since he forgot he ran out of web solution and had to make some more, but when he passed by the detention room that time, mj was nowhere to be found

“WAS SHE ONLY THERE BECAUSE OF HIM???” peter tortures himself thinking

but seriously tho, peter finds himself at awe that mj doesn’t have more friends since she is so genuinely kind and fascinating to talk to

“she hides her kindness under a layer of dry sarcasm and deadpan jokes, but it’s there alright”

peter thinks that with his hectic double life superhero schedule, it’d be much more efficient to cut him off from the team, but mj insists that it’s fine and makes efforts to keep him updated on what happens and what he missed and what he should study up on

and honestly, peter is just at awe every time he talks to mj.

“i feel like i just binged the buzzfeed unsolved series and selection of netflix documentaries, and read the entirety of reddit, and 10 huffington post articles from just a couple of hours of talking to mj”

she knows so much more about the dark comings and goings in the world than him, an actual “superhero”

he is just so starstruck over the fact that someone who knows that much could just fly by everyone else’s radar like that

so basically i just think that peter just finally notices and responds to mj’s affection for him and because of such, starts reciprocating it and admiring all her cute lil eccentricities and quirks as well.

WAS THAT SO FUCKING HARD?????

btw this kinda goes along with my black dahlia fic. like i say there, it was inspired by me making a prev hc post that got lost huhu

#spideychelle #spideychelle is canon bitches #spideychelle month #spideychellemonth #peter parker #michelle jones #ned leeds #<3 #smhc #smh

80 notes · View notes

baconpal · 5 years

Text

pokemon isn’t for us anymore

ya that’s right it’s time for a daytime juvenile rant cus i’m angry and finally think i can put my thoughts to words,

if you like the new pokemon then this isn’t really for you, cus pokemon is still for you. enjoy it while you can. otherwise click that read more

i’ll start by making my opinion and background immediately clear, so you have something to compare to and such. I loved Pokemon as a child, and for a long while afterward. I think the series’ highest moment was black and white in terms of art and story, and the gameplay was at its best in black and white 2. Gen 5 is also the gen where I have the most competitive experience.

And my opinion is that every single thing that’s been shown of pokemon sword and shield is really, really bad. Not even as a hyperbolic statement of “wow i hate new thing!” but as a fan who wants nothing but for the series to realize its potential, not one thing they’ve done has made feel anything besides disgust and disappointment. But this is not a normal thing, this isn’t what everyone thinks, i’m not preaching to the choir by saying i hate sword and shield. I’m the contrarian, i’m the one whose saying shit nobody agrees with, and I’m the voice who will be ignored. And that’s because pokemon is no longer being made with someone like me in mind.

The question then becomes, what is pokemon now? What did it used to be? What should it be?

POKEMON AS A BRAND

Pokemon today is not a game series. It’s a brand, a franchise, something that has weight simply by existing. Of course pokemon has been more than just games for forever, the shows, the toys, the side games, everything about it is marketable and marketed. But the main line games were separate from that to an extent. They were the new bits of source material thrown out into the world without concern for how it would all fit together. A video game was made first, and was then marketed to whoever would buy in whatever form hey wanted.

Today pokemon games themselves are a tailored product. People of today don’t care about the actual video game, many wont play it, and many won’t even realize when it comes out, but gamefreak doesn’t need the game itself to sell (though it will), they just want everyone on earth to know about pokemon and to be excited about it, it’s advertising for their brand. As long as people know pokemon exists and is out there, it will make money.

So instead of holding their cards and releasing a video game to let people mess around in, the entire game is drip fed to us on social media before it’s even out. The days of korokoro leaks and blurry photos of pokemon are over, the discussion of what they might be or do is over, and a joy in the exploration of the unknown is gone. Instead, a trailer will be split up in to a chain of individual tweets, all tailored to be as easily digestible as possible. Videos or photos that require seconds of attention, and descriptions of characters and pokemon that make it easy to form a shallow attachment, enough to repost it and say “oh that’s so me” or “love this kind of character”, and that’s free advertisement. the kinds of people who live on social medias will translate genuine advertisements into a form of speak their friends will appreciate and thus engage with the advertisements further. The job is done and pokemon is making more money than ever.

POKEMONS ART DIRECTION

Again, something many disagree with, the art is fucking awful in the new games. But that’s because its not art meant to impress me, an artist with his own design sense and standard of quality, the art only needs to be serviceable, enough for someone who can’t draw to appreciate. The standard of what will be accepted is never actually very high, but pokemon no longer makes any effort to exceed passable. Fanartists will be essentially forced to draw better versions of all their characters since pokemon is once again the hot new thing, so the actual quality of the original art will not be reflected in peoples perception. The model quality as also awful, every design manages to look even worse in motion and in game. But since the goal is not to make an enjoyable game, this is again not a problem.

POKEMONS SETTING

This extends to the clothing the characters wear as well, but pokemon no longer is its own universe. It is doing all it can to act as if it takes place in the real world, and making the clothing its characters wear bastardized versions of modern aesthetics, instead of the unique and simple sudo-sporty aesthetic the other games had, where clothing was cohesive and sleek, looked fit for various kinds of weather, and seemed generally comfortable. The new gym leaders for example, wear horribly messing and unneeded sportswear based mostly on real life soccer clothing, but without any of the benefits, as they are also loaded with unneeded accessories that go in direct contrast to what they’re supposedly doing. Nessa is the worst offender to me (and what do you know she’s the most popular), compared to misty’s attempt at being part time swimmer part time trainer, nessa looks absolutely ridiculous, and not prepared to do either swimming or pokemon battles. She wears a swimsuit, but not an actual swimmer’s suit, and she’s covered in jewelry, accessories, makeup; things that would ruin any attempt to go swimming even casually. And yet she doesn’t look like she could comfortably go on an adventure or catch and raise pokemon. She is a bland aesthetic mess of what people want a cute swimmer girl to be.

Custom trainers are a whole different problem in that no game with custom characters actually has good ones. The best result you can have is funny looking characters, which is actually a pretty good goal, but gamefreak still wants everything to be samey and appeal to broad aesthetics so people can post their own characters and share some feeling of attachment.

POKEMON THE VIDEO GAME

the quality of sword and shield from a technical standpoint is clearly very low, and this is one of the few things people have been willing to call out. The model quality hasn’t improved, the animations are sparse and bad. The wild areas are a mess and run terribly, the game crashed trying to handle multiplayer bosses live on stream. The national dex has been removed for literally no reason. The gyms have been completely gutted and reduced to just the fights (which are still nothing but bland checks for type advantage) and the new gimmick is just “make your guy strong” and is obviously best used in response to the opponent using it. the pokemon wonder around the open area and yet wild grass is still there, there’s no option to approach pokemon peacefully and capture like in let’s go, so even the few out there things they’ve tried aren’t going to be used in any meaningful way. But repeat after me, the game doesn’t matter! As far as gamefreak is concerned, the game could crash 40 minutes in and they would have done all they needed to do.

THE GOAL IN POKEMON

so i’ll end this stupid rant with something the new pokemon games don’t have, even the ones I really like don’t have em. Multiple goals to achieve, multiple ways to approach the game. Even the originals didn’t truly have multiple ways to play, but they started you off by presenting you multiple goals, which were tangled together to start but by the end of the game would become 2 very seperate things, becoming champion and completing the pokedex. Johto did it best, to complete one goal, you had to make a pretty good chunk of progress on the other, it was impossible to not “beat the game” if you actually wanted to accomplish either goal, but after that you were free to tie up whatever goals you had left. It was primitive and mostly meaningless, but it was there. The shows and the manga also put a lot of emphasis on the fact that every trainer can do something different, and their own ultimate goal is completely different from everyone else.

The closest the games come now to this idea is having your rivals go off and do something else other than fight the elite 4. Some of them aren’t even actual rivals and just like pokemon, like lyra from HG/SS. But there is no pokemon game in which you, the player, are presented a goal other than to beat the game, winning the elite 4 and defeating some evil plot along the way.

For me, an ideal pokemon game would be about giving complete freedom, start off with some explanations of what all the possible goals are, completing the dex, becoming champion, winning all the contests, defeating the evil organization, exploring the world, anything. And once the player gets an idea of what they want to do, they’re set free into a world where they can find pokemon and do whatever they want, working towards whatever goal they want. Other aspects will naturally come into play, battling pokemon and making them stronger would help you catch more pokemon, learn moves for contests, explore more dangerous areas, beat stronger trainers. So no matter what goal you have, you’d still interact with many of the systems and areas in the game, and make progress on all goals at the same time, but ultimately feel satisfied when you accomplish your own, personal goals, instead of following the straight line gamefreak set for you.

Obviously that sort of thing will never happen. That’s just what I think pokemon has the potential to become, but pokemon isn’t made for me, anymore.

Thank you for reading.

#juvenile rant #pokemon swsh #pokemon #and ye that's that feel free to disagree but atleast take a moment to really think about what pokemon is to you

59 notes · View notes

rookisaknight · 5 years

Text

MBTI and the Seeds

Religious bullshit, meet personality bullshit. I took to 16personalities for a direction on this and was actually pretty convinced by the majority of the results (which is whack because 16personalities almost always gets at least one letter off), but I have an unfathomably large amount of information about this test stored in my grey matter so I’ll be hopping off a bit to fill in my own blanks. Also notable is the severe trauma each of the Seeds have been through

This is going under a cut because it's a long post and honestly might be more worthwhile as a reference for myself and how I write the Seeds, but I can’t be the only personality nerd in this fanbase.

Jacob Seed: ISTJ. The Logistician

I wasn’t sold on this one initially given that Jacob seems far more comfortable with out of control situations than most Js generally are, but I find the overall profile fits him better than ISTP. My explanation is that his time in the juvie, the military, and the foster system has forced a maturation of this particular function due to constantly feeling out of control, which makes him more open to adaptation than he would have been otherwise.

Strengths:

Honest and Direct: Notably Jacob is arguably the least manipulative Seed. He “tricks” you in a sense with the conditioning but that is more a strategic concealment than any deception. Unlike the other three, Jacob does not pretend that his actions come from any sense of love or divine calling. He is always straightforward with the deputy, even if that doesn’t restrain his cruelty.

Strong-willed and Dutiful: Basically see all of the Book of Joseph, as well as his “you think I care if I die” comments. I lump very responsible under this.

Calm and Practical: I don’t think I have to explain this part. Jacob never reacts from an explicitly emotional place. The “did you think you were free” is the closest to losing his temper I think we see from him. He has expectations, and failure to meet them will be punished. He doesn’t see a need to get emotional about it, preferring to detach himself

Create and Enforce Order: Well, culling the herd is an unconventional tactic, but...

Weaknesses:

Stubborn: As Joseph said, Jacob has been getting into it since he was a kid. Even with the brother, he’s willing to die for, he explicitly argues with him. And even in the face of his own death, he refuses to rescind his own philosophy, or even demonstrate any regret for the path he’s chosen.

Insensitive and Judgemental: Jacob’s a shithead no I will not elaborate

Always By the Book: an illegal paramilitary cult, yes, but one that holds to Jacob’s exacting standards.

Often Unreasonably Blames Themselves: Loath as I am to woobify Jacob at all, there’s a pathos to him. As Joseph says, he thinks of himself as a “weapon without a purpose. A soldier without a legacy”. As a child, he protected his siblings and as an adult, he views himself as little more than a meatshield. There’s a sense that he objectifies himself, reduces himself down to simply the function of violence and protection, and those high standards mean that he views death as simply another failure.

can bastard be a personality type

Joseph Seed: ISFP- The Observer

The test originally gave me INFP, but I find that unconvincing for two reasons. One, INFP’s are predominantly defined by an open-minded approach to life and to ideas, which doesn’t fit well with a guy so convinced he got religion right that he was willing to kidnap and murder people. Two, while Joseph is definitely contemplative and deals with the symbolic, his “visions” are not flights of fancy but are in some sense practical. He doesn’t really appear to engage in thought experiments, merely interpret sensory (or in this case extrasensory) information that he is presented with.

Strengths:

Charming: The man runs a successful church for a reason, and it can’t just be good cheekbones and dogwhistling

Sensitive to Others: Joseph has a keen insight into other people’s emotional state, which is what makes him so effective at manipulating them. He tends to meet people where they’re at with a certain deftness that would be impressive if he didn’t use it the way he did

Passionate: about the LORD. No, but I’ll give this to the man, he’s certainly got a vision, and sticks to it with intensity.

Curious: I think anyone working in the business of people has to have an inherently curious mind, and while Joseph may believe he has all the answers, his fascination with the Deputy to me indicates that he has an inherent draw to things that disrupt his world. I also think about how he would get in trouble as a child for seeking out forbidden material, such as Spiderman comics. those Satanic webs...

Weaknesses:

Fiercely Independent: He’s developed a supportive community now but Joseph has always marched to the beat of his own awful, awful drum, which has gotten him kicked out of at least one job and lost him at least one set of foster parents. He doesn’t seem to need people as much as he acquires them

Unpredictable: Sometimes with blood, sometimes with forgiveness, it's hard to say how Joseph will respond to disruption on any given day. Where the spirit leads, I suppose.

Easily Stressed: This one I’ll actually argue that his turbulent history and the demands of his job have at least taught him to cover this up, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t cracks in the armor. “yOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME!!!!!”

Overly Competitive: He’s a sore loser with a tendency to punish people for failing him (see: Faith and the statue)

Fluctuating Self-Esteem: He’s dealing with a joint worldview where he is at once God’s chosen and a “no one from nowhere with nothing”. How much of that is genuine we may never know, but I don’t think the fluctuation is outside the realm of possibility

John Seed: ESFJ-The Consul

I was a little on the fence about N vs S but ultimately found that John’s a bit more concrete than conceptual.

Strengths:

Strong Practical Skills: I mean, the man orchestrated a hostile takeover of an entire county, he knows how to get things done when he wants

Strong Sense of Duty, Very Loyal: This part is likely underdeveloped given how tempestuous forming relationships was for most of his life, but given how bound he feels to Joseph its clearly in him.

Good at Connecting With Others: He’s a shitstain, but according to Joseph he had business connections everywhere and was basically a walking secret storage bin. John can probably be very charming if you don’t know how he spends his weekends in the bunker.

Sensitive and Warm: again, underdeveloped given his background, but there’s clearly a lot of emotions broiling just below the surface given how volatile he can be and how easily Joseph can access them. Joseph also describes him as a very sensitive kid, for what that’s worth

Weaknesses

Worried About Their Social Status: The boy is a climber

Inflexible: He holds pretty firmly to his headcanons on Hope County (for fuck’s sake John Nick’s sin isn’t Greed, its Sloth) and has a very definite view on how things should be. Not to mention he seems very particular, just based on the state of his home and his clothes. He has rituals and habits, and will not deviate.

Vulnerable to Criticism: If you say anything about his future receding hairline he will cry. He just will. Not to mention I’m citing that look he gives you when you’re apparently costing him paradise by not converting

Often Too Needy: He will either get attention or he will die trying.

Too Selfless: Honestly, selfless isn’t the right word here, but I’ll copy the way 16 personalities describes it because I think it fits really well for John. “ Consuls sometimes try to establish their value with doting attention, something that can quickly overwhelm those who don’t need it, making it ultimately unwelcome. Furthermore, Consuls often neglect their own needs in the process.” John is a deeply selfish person but he does act like someone who tries to get affection by giving everything of himself, often to the point that he makes the other person uncomfortable.

I literally love this dramatic edit it's so good

Faith Seed/Rachel Jessop: ENFP-The Campaigner

I have nothing to add, it just fits. At the most, I think Faith is a little more pragmatic than she lets on (given that whole “if violence is the only language you choose to speak”) but to me, that can easily be an extension of the ENFP’s ability to connect emotionally. It means they know how to cut people off

Strength

Curious: I mean you don’t end up in a cult willingly without a little curiosity. Faith also seems mildly intrigued by the Deputy’s resistance, and while this eventually culminates in frustration with our intractability, I believe there’s a genuine investment in the journey to conversion

Observant: Faith is cued into her public perception, both from the resistance and the cult, and consciously constructs it. She also shares Joseph’s ability to tune into emotions and exploit them.

Energetic and Enthusiastic: How much of her ray of sunshine persona is constructed for the benefit of converting people will probably never be answered, but I don’t believe it can be constructed whole cloth. I think Rachel always was a person with a lot of heart and enthusiasm for her passions, even if it's not as constant as Faith Seed wants you to believe

Excellent Communicators: There’s a reason she’s regarded as the Siren. She can talk people into things even they don’t want to do. Certainly left me shook

Know How To Relax: *insert weed joke here*

Very Popular and Friendly: Again, her Siren persona may not be 100% genuine, but you can’t fake that level of charisma

Weaknesses:

Poor Practical Skills: Listen, Rachel is smart as hell (definitely smart enough to develop a drug and orchestrate mass production thereof), but her planning skills? Not great. Up until Burke gets taken out of the Bliss her plan seemed to be “talk with the Deputy over and over until they change their mind”. She kicks it up a notch after she finally gets annoyed with us but it seems a bit more “making it up as she goes”, and she falls back on strategies that have worked for her before but aren’t really effective for the Deputy. In fairness, I don’t think any of the Seeds are strong in the planning department

Overthink Things, Get Stressed Easily: Unlike with John and Jacob, Faith doesn’t really let us in to see her darker side. She prefers to speak of her flaws in the past tense. Yet clearly anxiety has been an issue in her life, given how deeply her isolation sat with her and her sense of worthlessness. Using drugs as an escape from stress also makes sense for her character, at least from my perspective

Highly Emotional: Faith communicates in emotional terms, manipulates people through emotions, and unlike someone like Jacob Faith loses her temper. She shouts at us, demonstrates her frustration very openly, even screams at us that we couldn’t possibly understand her.

Independent to a Fault: Her personal history gives her some interesting codependent issues with Joseph but based on what we hear of her from Tracey Rachel resented anyone trying to control her, even if they had her best interests at heart, and was perfectly willing to burn bridges over people questioning her choices.

If people are interested I can develop these out more. I may eventually do these for the police force members too but frankly, we’re given less to deal with for them, in particular with Joey and Staci, so who knows.

#far cry 5 #fc5 #joseph seed #jacob seed #john seed #faith seed #rachel jessop #mbti #headcanons

92 notes · View notes

thisishomenicktoonsau · 6 years

Text

Just A Typical Morning

Sophie is just the typical 10-year-old girl. Except for her family life where she grows up in a foster home with a mom, a dad, 15 older siblings, six younger siblings, and several pets. Yup. Definitely typical.

Hi, whoever is reading this. My name is Sophie Hathaway and this is my life. I am 10 years old and just moved to a new school. I’m not like other kids my age. I mean I go to school, hang out with my friends after school, I draw for competitions, I like soccer and video games but I also like stuffed animals and musicals. So I would say that I’m mostly normal.

Sophie was looking in a mirror getting ready for school in her tiny closet bedroom. She was dressed in a white tank top, a red plaid flannel shirt, jean leggings, and black converse. She tied her long curly ebony hair in a ponytail before putting her signature dark blue messenger hat on and turned to her white Maine Coon cat. “Well, Lion? What do you think?” Lion responded by lazily sprawling out on one of her shirts. Sophie rolled her midnight blue eyes and said “Thanks for the input Lion. Seriously that helps so much.” The moment Lion started to chew on the shirt she yanked it out from under him. Lion started to meow loudly in annoyance. Sophie smirked and said, “Yeah love you too bud.” She ruffled his fur and left her room her door ajar so Lion could wander in and out.

The only way I’m not normal is family wise. I live in a foster home with several other kids. I’ve lived here since I was six years old and grew up in the younger half of the family. Lion came with me because he’s been my cat since I was five though he was my original mother’s cat. I kind of have learned to thrive in chaotic situations after living here for so long.

Sophie was looking for her backpack for school. She didn’t know why it wasn’t in her room with all her other things but she could chalk that up to it getting mixed up with some other moving boxes. She looked in the closest room to her own bedroom, being her brothers Timmy and Snap’s room, and saw a familiar bag strap sticking out from under the blue bed while Timmy’s Golden Retriever puppy, Sparky, was lying on the bed. She grabbed it and pulled it out from under the bed. “Timmy Turner! Can you please explain what MY backpack was doing under YOUR bed?!” Sophie yelled.

A brown haired, blue eyed, buck-toothed boy poked his head into the room. “I needed crayons for my comic book and you have the best crayons in the house,” Timmy explained like it was obvious.

This is Timothy Turner or “Timmy” for short. He’s older than me by a few months and has been here longer than any of us. See when he was two, our foster parents moved next door and noticed something not so good. His real parents were neglecting him and Timmy had a caretaker that was abusing him. So Cosmo and Wanda, who are our parents, did what was best and called social services on them. Cosmo and Wanda eventually adopted Timmy as their son and the rest is pretty much history. The weird thing about this story though is that we think Timmy may have had a twin sibling. Keyword: Think. There were two cribs in the house although since there wasn’t any record of Timmy’s birth and no other evidence that there was another baby in the house, it’s just theory for now. Sparky was Timmy’s tenth birthday present. Mom and Dad got him in March so he’s just a puppy.

Timmy acts like what you think a “typical” ten-year-old boy is. He likes gross things like dead frogs and literally has no idea how girls work to point I’m pretty sure he thinks females have a whole different language. He can be a selfish jerk sometimes but he can be a good brother too. We play video games together a lot and he once told I’m the sister he didn’t know he could wish for.

“Dude. Stop stealing my crayons!” Sophie said rolling her eyes.

“Then buy me some fancy ones like yours.”

“Right. Like I have my own money. We are literally both 10.” Sophie said deadpanned. Sophie was checking her box for missing crayons. Okay, everything seemed in order except. Hang on. Something was wrong with her blues. “Slate, Sky, Navy, Indigo, Cobalt, Teal, Ocean, Peacock, Azure, Cerulean, Lapis, Spruce, Stone, Aegean, Berry, Denim, Admiral, Sapphire, Arctic…. Hey. Where’s my blue crayon? I have all my other blues but not the normal blue one.” Sophie said looking up from her crayon box after counting them.

“Oh yeah! Nerd-tron borrowed it for his science junk notes,” Timmy said getting his own backpack for school.

“Ugh, you gotta be kidding me with this!” Sophie groaned as she stomped to the room next door and knocked.

“Jimmy! I need my crayon! You know I hate having an incomplete box!” Sophie waited for a few minutes before Jimmy opened the door and Jimmy’s mechanical dog Goddard suddenly ran by her legs.

“Oh hey, Sophie. What did you need again?” Jimmy asked.

“My blue crayon. You stole it from Tim who stole it from me.” Sophie explained.

“Oh, that was your crayon! No wonder it was such high quality!” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, so can I have it back?” Sophie asked.

“Of course! Let me get it for you.” Jimmy said as he started to search his desk area. Sophie followed him into his and ZIM’s shared room.

That’s James Neutron or “Jimmy” for short. He’s older than me by about a year and came here shortly after Timmy did. Nobody's quite sure what happened to his parents but Mom and Dad found him just wandering in traffic and took him to CPS. They did find some of his relatives on his father’s side but nobody took him because he’s apparently some sort of “bad omen” or something, so mom and dad took him in. It was then they were like “Well we already got the two kids, why not open up a foster home for more?” So he kinda started the whole Vanguard Home for Wayward Children in a way. He built Goddard when he was around six so it was a year before I got there.

Jimmy is super smart, probably the smartest of all of us entirely being skilled in several different fields of science already. Though this can be annoying when he acts like a know it all and won’t admit when he makes a clear mistake. He stays mostly serious and doesn’t really play too much with us. Mostly because of Timmy. Timmy annoys him. However, he acts like a leader to us and takes care of us so that’s pretty good.

“Ah! Here it is!” Jimmy said holding up the crayon.

“Thanks, Jim. You’re a peach!” Sophie said as she put it in her bag.

“No problem. See you downstairs.” Jimmy said as he grabbed his bag and headed out. Sophie also started to head out starting to recount her crayons until she bumped into a teenage boy with black hair and ice blue eyes.

“Ow sorry, Danny…” Sophie said grinning sheepishly. Danny rubbed his head as he stood up with his Bulldog, Cujo’s leash in hand.

“It’s cool Soph I was just gonna take Cujo out real quick. Hold on. You got a smudge on your face.” Danny said trying to wipe it off.

“Mom c’mon stop!” Sophie whined as she tried to squirm out his grasp.

Danny groaned and said “Sophie. If you just hold still this would be over in a second.”

A high-pitched male voice called to them interrupting the squabble. “Danny! Sophie! What type of eggs do you want for breakfast?”

“Scrambled, please! And can I have hot chocolate to drink SB?” Sophie asked politely as she rushed to the banister to get away from Danny, making him sigh shaking his head.

“Of course sweetheart! Danny! What about you?” SB called back from the kitchen.

“I’ll take sunny side up SB!” Danny said as he and Cujo walked down the stairs. Sophie watched SB’s elderly cat Gary go downstairs followed by Lion and Sparky.

Those were two of my older brothers Daniel Fenton/”Danny” for short and Spencer Bob Sawyer-Patterson or “SB” for short. They both came here not too long after Timmy and Jimmy.

Danny is 14 and a freshman in high school. His parents were great scientists but died tragically in a lab accident when he was around four-ish. While his sister’s Jazz and Dani went to an all girls home Danny was not allowed to follow them making him end up here. Soon after he got here Mom and Dad got him a bulldog named Cujo to help him cope.

Danny is a really kind older brother. He’s kind of one of our parents second in command. So much so we actually call him mom because he always scolding us for doing the stupid things we do and wiping crap from our faces like you just saw. Danny always groans when we call him that even though he tells groan-worthy puns in return. Though we all know he secretly likes us calling him that as a term of endearment.

SB is 20 and currently going to culinary school while he lives here at home with us. Like Jimmy, we don’t actually know what happened to his parents. Every time he’s asked about it SB just bawls his eyes out. So we just stopped asking. All we know about his parents is that they are the ones that took SB to get his cat Gary, who has lived so long none of us know how old he is. Not even SB who got him as a full grown cat. Timmy swears he’s immortal while I’m just hoping we don’t come home from school one day and find him under a sofa “sleeping”.

SB is super sweet to all of us though he can be a little clueless and super innocent at times. Though I think he knows that strangely enough. Mom and Dad let him cook the meals for all of us cause he’s just such a good cook. He even makes all our lunches for school which takes so long he actually gets up at 4:00 AM to take his time making them. He’s definitely more of an early bird than any of us.

“Danny! Hurry up! We gotta leave in 30 minutes!” a black haired and violet-eyed teenage goth girl called from downstairs. Danny got to the bottom of the stairs with Cujo in hand and Sophie followed close behind.

“I know Sam. I just gotta take Cujo out to pee.” Danny said as he kissed her cheek before going outside.

“Morning dad,” Sophie said as she passed Sam to get to the kitchen.

“Good morning to you too son,” Sam said as she bumped the back of Sophie’s head.

Sophie went into the kitchen where she saw her brother SB with his curly dyed bright yellow hair with his original ginger hair peeking out and bright blue-eyes putting food down in front of her other older brother with dyed pink hair and dark brown eyes named Patrick. Jimmy and Timmy were already in the kitchen racing each other in an egg eating race. “Morning SB. Morning Pat-Pat.” Sophie said as she kissed both of their cheeks.

“Morning Soph-a-Loaf! Your breakfast is almost ready!” SB said cheerfully as he put down a fruit salad down for Sam who just walked in with her spider-shaped bag.

“Thanks, SB,” Sophie said sitting down next to Patrick who was scarfing down his food loudly which went along so nicely with Timmy and Jimmy’s muffled yelling. Sophie giggled as Sam pinched the bridge of her nose.

SB put a hand on her shoulder and asked “Tea?” Sam nodded quickly as SB poured her a cup of earl gray tea.

That is my sister Samantha Manson or “Sam” for short and my brother Patrick Star. They both came here about a few months after Danny and SB. Both have connections to Danny and SB too. Sam has been Danny’s best friend since kindergarten and now she is his girlfriend. Patrick has also been SB’s best friend since kindergarten.

Sam is the same age and grade as Danny. Her parents tried to force her into a life of fame and fortune that she frankly never wanted. So much so she ran away from her parents and ended up here. She and Danny just kind of clicked and got together by the end of middle school. Mom and Dad were pretty accepting of this. They just ask Danny and Sam make sure if and when they do something they are either out of the house, the entire family but them is out of the house, or lock the door which I’m still not sure what they mean by that. Do they mean kiss? Cause they’ve kissed in front of us before. Like more than once.

While we call Danny “Mom” we call Sam “Dad” a lot as an inside joke between all us. If Danny mothers us by taking care of our injuries and wiping stuff off our faces then Sam fathers us by punishing us when we do something wrong. Like when one of my older brothers, Manny, “wandered” into a Victoria Secret to see girls. Even Danny knew that he was a dead man when Sam went to fish him out. I do still look up to her as one of my female role models. I mean she so strong-willed and passionate that I kinda wanna be like her when I’m older.

Patrick is 22 and currently going through community college though he’s not that great at it. Not that he’s stupid, he’s just a little slow. His parents have been out of the picture for a while so his older sister was taking care of him. A few years later he said his sister got “lost in the tide”. Whatever that means. He also has a pet a rock named Rocky that he randomly just found in the park one day and took it home with him.

Patrick’s such a sweetheart and really tries hard for us despite his faults like him being slow and kinda lazy too. Seriously he like sleeps a lot. I think I tend to pick up habits from my siblings cause I swear I have fallen asleep in some weird places just like him. Mom and Dad depend on him to feed the pets while SB feeds us.

Patrick got up and started putting down the food bowls for the pets after scarfing down his breakfast. He put down a bowl of nuts and bolts for Goddard, three bowls of big dog for Sparky, Boodles, and Perrito, a bowl of medium dog food for Cujo, two bowls of cat food for Gary and Lion, he put some sprinkles on Rocky, put out a muffin for Minimoose, and he put out a bowl of clams for Grudge. Goddard, Sparky, Gary, and Lion were already eating. Danny came in with Cujo and Cujo made a dash for his bowl as SB put down Danny’s and Sophie’s eggs. As SB poured Sophie’s hot chocolate into a mug, a tan boy with messy brown hair and green eyes rubbing his eyes sleepily came into the kitchen.

“Morning Tak!” Sophie said chipperly.

“Subah mere pyaare parivaar.” (Translation: ‘Morning my lovely family.’ {Hindi}) Tak said obviously not being too terribly awake as he made his way to the toaster. He spent a minute staring at it before he started to hit it. “Why. Won’t. This. Cursed. Machine. Work!”

Danny promptly went and stopped Tak from hitting it. “Tak. Leave the toaster alone. If you want toast so much then just sit next to Sophie and I’ll make it for you but Tak... the toaster isn’t even on.” Danny calmly explained.

“Oh…” Tak mumbled blushing as he sat next to Sophie. Sophie giggled and kissed his cheek.

That’s my brother Tak Pupanunu. He’s 13 and came here about a year after Danny, SB, Sam, and Patrick. He was the first one of us to come from a different country which he was raised in India. As far as we know his parents gave him up at one of the shrines and was adopted by his Uncle Jibolba and his adopted older brother Lok. However, Jibolba started to get sick and had to stay in the hospital most of the time. They moved to America so Jibolba could get better care. With Lok already being of age and Tak wasn’t it was inevitable he would be put into foster care. Tak is still allowed to visit Jibolba and Lok so it’s all good.

Tak’s gotten a good grasp on English though he still isn’t used to the technology. He’s a lot more mature than people give him credit for though he has been dragged into the childish side of the family by me, Timmy, and Snap before too. I was really scared when I first got here but Tak really helped me and actually treated me like a person unlike most of the legal people I had to go through to get here.

Now, this is where stuff gets kind of complicated so listen up. There was a very short pause between when Tak came and when the next kid came. Like maybe a month or so. Then Mom and Dad got five kids in a month. Like no joke. The first week were my brothers ZIM and GIR, the second week was my brother Manny, the third week was my sister Jenny, and the fourth week was my brother Blik. All of that in a row. It’s kind of insane how it happened.

“Good Morning my HORRIBLE family!” said a boy with light green skin, lavender eyes, and black hair strolled into the kitchen.

Sam rolled her eyes as she handed Tak his toast. “Morning ZIM. Did you take your meds this morning?” ZIM paused before shaking his head no.

“Zion Issac Martinez! You are supposed to take those every day.” Danny scolded.

ZIM looked down kicking the floor and mumbled out an apology. Danny sighed as he got him the right amount of pills and a cup of juice. ZIM took them without any protest.

Sophie then realized something. “Hey ZIM? Where’s GIR?”

ZIM looked at Sophie and said, “Well I did think he was following me down the stairs.” Suddenly everyone heard a loud squeaking noise. Sophie suddenly went to the stairs and caught a little five-year-old with bright blue eyes and long curly black hair.

“Hi, mama!” GIR chipperly said. Sophie sighed as a plush moose started floating around her.

“Thanks, Minimoose. Your muffin is on the counter.” Minimoose squee-ed happily as he flew into the kitchen. Sophie carried GIR into the kitchen with her.

“ZIM! You need to watch your baby brother better!” Sophie said as he put GIR in one of three booster seats and getting a bowl of Cheerios for him to eat.

“Not my fault he can’t walk downstairs.” ZIM shot back as Minimoose somehow ate that muffin in one swift motion.

Those are my brothers Zion Issac Martinez or “ZIM” for short, Greggory Ian Ramirez/“GIR” for short, and their robot Minimoose. ZIM is 12 while GIR is only five. GIR actually came here when he was pretty much a newborn. Oh, where to begin with these two. See ZIM was born to his mom as a really sick baby and he still is kind of sick but it’s better than when he was a toddler. I think it’s a sickness that affects his stomach and his liver so he can’t eat right and makes his skin this sickish greenish hue I call ‘I’m about to puke.’ green.

Anyway, their mom died shortly after GIR was born and with no father in the picture ZIM & GIR’s cousins took custody of them. They were abusive towards ZIM and didn’t take care for GIR. Eventually they just kinda got bored of toying with ZIM and listening to GIR’s cries that they just dropped them off here and didn’t look back. ZIM soon built Minimoose to care for both of them with daily reminders for ZIM to take his meds and keeping an eye on GIR.

ZIM is a bit… much? Oh, how do I even describe him? He’s brash, overconfident, and arrogant literally thinking he’s better than every one of us and better than anyone that he’ll ever meet. I have a theory that it’s because of him being bullied for being this sickly that he just ended up like this. He’s also really smart like Jimmy he just can’t really focus on a project for too long. I think mom once said after bringing him home from his doctor that he has ADHD or something like that. ZIM is a good guy. Really he is. It's just really, really, REALLY hard to find the good in him. He does have his moments though. As for GIR well… I can literally describe him using two words. Sunshine and Sugar. Make of that what you will.

“We should probably teach GIR how to properly walk downstairs at some point,” Jimmy pointed out.

“We could probably cut his hair and he would be fine.” Timmy also pointed out as Sophie got out a brush and gasped.

“Absolutely not! His hair is a gift to society and should never be cut!” She started to brush GIR’s hair and tie it back into pigtails as GIR happily ate his Cheerios.

“So are you gonna brush his hair every single day?” Tak asked teasingly.

“I will if it means preserving his beauty!” Sophie said confidently.

“What are we talking about?” a boy with tan skin, chocolate brown eyes with a scar over one of them, and curly chocolate black hair walked in with his bag.

SB handed him a plate with a sausage smothered in hot sauce. “Soph-a-Loaf got offended by the idea of cutting GIR-Bear’s hair.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is? It’s just a haircut to make him look shiny and clean!” Patrick said clapping.

“Of course it’s a big deal! How else is GIR gonna get all the ladies in his kindergarten class? He’s stinking handsome with his hair.” The boy said ruffling up GIR’s hair as GIR giggled and the boy took a bite of his sausage.

“Thank you, Manny for seeing my point,” Sophie said.

“Anytime Mi Amor,” Manny said winking at Sophie. Sophie groaned and rolled her eyes.

That’s my brother Manuel Pablo Gutierrez O’Brian Equihua Rivera or “Manny” for short. He’s 13 years old and actually is the second one of us to come from a different country. That being Mexico. His parents got divorced when he was really little and lived with his father and grandfather. However, it was deemed an unsafe living environment for Manny to live in so he was sent here. Both his parents and grandfather do still have visiting rights so that’s good at least.

Like Tak, he adapted to speaking English pretty fast and unfortunately has developed quite a habit of flirting like I mentioned with the whole Victoria Secret incident. Also, he just likes rebelling against authority just for the fun of it. Don’t get me wrong he’s just as protective as all my other brothers but he can be a bit obnoxious sometimes.

“What? Can’t handle my charm huh?” Manny said wiggling his eyebrows.

“Yeah, something like that…” Sophie mumbled.

Manny narrowed his eyes and squeezed her sides as he said “¡Ataque sorpresa!” (Translation: ‘Surprise Attack!’ {Spanish})

Sophie let out an inhuman noise and bumped her knee on the table. “You little ffff,” Sophie growled blushing.

“Sophia. Language. Little ears are listening.” Danny said pointing to GIR.

“...fluffer.” Sophie finished with a bite in her voice. Manny laughed along with Timmy and ZIM as he high-fived them. “Why do I suffer this type of abuse in this household?” Sophie grumbled.

“Boys leave your sister alone. Just cause she’s younger than you doesn’t give you the right to pick on her just at random. At least be consistent if you are gonna tease her,” a teenage girl with red hair, blue eyes, and a robotic brace on her right arm and leg scolded as she walked into the kitchen. The boys rolled their eyes and each mumbled out an apology.

Sophie smiled and said “Thanks, Jenny.”

“Anytime Soph. Say, Jim? Can you loosen up the brace on my arm? I think it’s too stiff and I can’t really move it around that well.” Jenny explained.

“Sure thing Jen!” Jimmy said getting out a screwdriver from his backpack.

“You keep a screwdriver in your bag?” Sam asked raising an eyebrow. Jimmy just shrugged and got to work.

That’s my one of my other older sisters Jennifer Wakeman or “Jenny” for short. She’s 16 and is the oldest of us girls besides Mom. Jenny and her mom got into a really bad car crash that left Jenny’s mom paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair. Jenny wasn’t hurt nearly as bad but it left her right arm and leg paralyzed and unusable without special braces. Jenny can still visit her mom who now lives in an assisted living facility. She lived in all girls home before being transferred here.

Despite the trauma she’s been through, Jenny is a super sweet and upbeat person if not a little naive at times too. She’s usually the one who takes all of us shopping for clothes whenever we need it. She’s super into fashion and literally spends hours on the computer researching the latest trends so she can be a designer when she’s an adult.

“Finished!” Jimmy said as he pulled the screwdriver away and put it back in his bag. Jenny flexed her arm and sighed happily grabbing a granola bar to eat.

“Much better. Thanks, Jimmy!”

“No problem Jen.”

“By the way after school, we need to go to the mall for some new summer clothes,” Jenny stated munching on the granola bar.

“And who’s exactly paying for this?” a man with brown skin, black hair tied back in a man bun, and goldish eyes asked as he walked into the kitchen with a newspaper under his arm.

“Good Morning Blik!” Jenny said cheerily as she hugged his arm. “I was kinda hoping you would?” Jenny asked batting her eyes at him. Blik side eyed Jenny and it was then decided by Sophie that her sister needed help.

Sophie tugged at Blik’s pants and said in a cutesy voice “Pwease Bliky? We are growing children. We need new clothes.”

Blik blushed at the nickname, sighed, and picked Sophie up placing her on his hip. “Alright fine. I will pay for the clothes.”

That is our oldest brother Blik Cramdilly. He’s 25 and just finished college this year but moved back to help Mom and Dad take care of us all. His father ditched him and his mom after he and his brothers were born. Unfortunately, their mother passed away when they were kids and their grandmother passed away when they were teenagers. This led to them being unable to inherit their massive fortune and while his brothers, Waffle and Gordon, had family members to take care of them due to both their father's side of the family, Blik did not. This is how he ended up in foster care. Six months later he did inherit his fortune along with his two brothers before they went off to college. However, Blik remained loyal to our strange family and would come back to visit us until he graduated. He then came back home to help raise us and help with the finances.

Blik can be a real grump sometimes. And loud. Very loud too. He likes buying things for himself so he can seem very powerful to those who try to cross our family. Even though he acts like it’s the worst thing in the world I think that he secretly likes buying us things. I don’t know, he just seems like he’s in good mood after seeing me with the tablet he bought me for drawing or when SB thanks him for the new set of pots and pans Blik got for him. He also is the one who keeps track of our doctor visits and allergies surprisingly enough. I think that shows he’s at least somewhat concerned for our wellbeings.

“Ugh, do we have to go clothes shopping AGAIN? We already have okay clothes.” Tak complained.

Jenny sighed and booped Tak’s nose. “Someday dear brother you will understand the importance of fashion.”

Blik put Sophie down and said, “Alright does everyone have their backpacks?” He was met with a chorus of Yes’s, Yeah’s, Yup’s, and Duh’s.

“Alright then. SB give everyone their lunches.”

“Okey Dokey!” SB said cheerfully as he handed everyone a personalized lunch box.

The lunch boxes were hanging up on a rack in the kitchen. Each lunch box was a different color to tell who’s was who’s. Blue for Jimmy, Pink for Timmy, Green for Danny, Violet for Sam, Yellow for SB, Lime for Patrick, Orange for Tak, Magenta for ZIM, Teal for GIR, Brown for Manny, Bright Blue for Jenny, and Light Pink for Sophie.

“By the way, your sushi is in the fridge whenever you eat your lunch today,” SB said looking back at Blik who was getting coffee.

“Thanks, SB.” Blik said taking a long sip of that coffee from a ‘Nope.’ mug.

A frazzled looking woman with pink curly hair and wearing a yellow blouse came into the kitchen. “Okay! It is almost time for school! Is everyone in the kitchen? Let me get a headcount,” she said as she started silently started to count.

That’s our mom Wanda Cosma. Her dad runs a successful garbage company and she’s the heiress so we get funds from her dad. It’s pretty cool. She may run the company if she ever gets sick of being a stay at home mom which I don’t think is happening anytime soon.

She’s pretty much our responsible parent. You know the usual stuff. Stopping us from doing stupid things and making sure we don’t go to the hospital more than once a month each. That kind of stuff. She tends to play bad cop in actually disciplining us instead of letting us run wild and free. She’s actually really great at balancing all of us and making sure we get the attention we deserve and/or crave.

“Wait there is only 13 of you and Poof is upstairs with your father so which nine are we missing?” Wanda asked.

Blik looked at what lunch boxes are left. “Indigo, Aqua, Fuschia, Bubblegum Pink, Red, Gray, Bright Green, Powder Blue, and Moss Green.”

Wanda was trying to connect the colors to the kids as Sophie spoke up. “Snap isn’t down here.”

“And Boodles didn’t come in for breakfast…. so Bunsen isn’t up yet either.” Jimmy deduced.

“Neither did Perrito so Dora isn’t up,” Jenny added.

“Meaning Marinette and Tikki aren’t up either,” Sam concluded.

“Now that you mention it… I don’t remember seeing Adrien or Plagg get up either.” Danny said.

“Well, I know Vendetta and Charlotte are up,” Manny said shrugging.

“Where are they then?” Wanda asked with her hands on her hips.

“In the backyard with Grudge doing… something? I don’t know. Vendetta is a weird kid.” Manny said throwing his arms up like ‘what do you want me to do about it?’

Wanda sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as she walked out of the kitchen and into the foyer. “Snap White! Bunsen Knai’livac! Dora Marquez! Marinette Dupain-Cheng! Tikki Dupain-Cheng! Adrien Agreste! Plagg Agreste! Charlotte Winfrey! Vendetta Mortcheva! It is time for school! Come to the kitchen!” Wanda waited for a moment before she heard feet running from the downstairs bathroom and down the stairs.

From the downstairs bathroom was a pale teenage girl with blueish-black short pigtails blue eyes, and freckles carrying a five-year-old girl with fair skin, short dark red hair, and matching blue eyes. The two coming down the stairs was a very lightly tanned teenage boy with blond hair and green eyes carrying a five-year-old boy with dark brown skin, messy black hair, and matching green eyes.

The two teens nearly crashed into each other as they both said with a slight French accent: “Sorry mom!”

Wanda shook her head. “What were you doing that took you so long? Marinette? Adrien?”

“Tikki’s hair was a real mess so I’ve been messing with it so it stays flat for the day,” Marinette said as she let Tikki down to get a poptart from SB. Wanda nodded to Marinette before looking at Adrien and Plagg for their excuse.

“Plagg was being a butt and whining about going to school so he was not being cooperative this morning,” Adrien said bluntly.

“SCHOOL IS BORING!” Plagg yelled from Adrien’s arms.

“Plagg sweetie. If GIR and Tikki have to go to kindergarten then so do you. As much as you want it to be so, Adrien can’t carry everywhere.” Wanda explained calmly.

Plagg pouted and said “Fine but there better be Camembert in my lunch.”

Wanda nodded and looked at SB who was giving the Bubblegum Pink and Red lunch boxes to Marinette and Tikki. “Oh right!” SB said as he grabbed the Gray and Bright Green lunch boxes and walking over to Adrien and Plagg. He handed Adrien the Gray lunch box before kneeling down to Plagg’s height giving him the Bright Green lunch box.

“And I put extra Camembert so you can be an extra good boy today!” SB smiled.

Plagg grinned hopping up and down. “Cool! Thanks, SB!”

If you couldn’t tell the girls are Marinette Dupain-Cheng and her little sister Tikki while the boys are Adrien Agreste and his little brother Plagg. Adrien is 15, Marinette is 14, and Tikki and Plagg are both five years old just like GIR. All four of them are originally from France actually and came around the same time about a few months before Poof was born so it was a little stressful for mom but dad handled it really well. Marinette and Adrien are also dating too and follow the same rules as Danny and Sam.

Marinette and Tikki’s parents tragically died in a car crash on a really rainy night while Marinette was babysitting Tikki. Her parents always dreamed of moving to America with their daughters to start a franchise of bakeries so that’s what Marinette told her grandmother, who really was too busy traveling to take care of her granddaughters. So she came over to America with them and dropped them both off here and they stayed here ever since.

Adrien and Plagg’s story is a bit more troubling. See shortly after Plagg was born Adrien’s mother went missing and Adrien’s father became more and more closed off towards his sons. His father wanted the Agreste name to be absolutely perfect with no smudges what so ever. So he forced Adrien to be a model and controlled what Adrien did, where he would go, who he would talk to, and even what he ate. Plagg though wasn’t as treated as “nice” as Adrien was. Their father didn’t see Plagg as his son due to his skin color and locked him away in a back bedroom. Adrien was the only one allowed to care for him and this caused Plagg to become inseparable with Adrien. After Adrien’s bold move of divorcing his father, he and Plagg were moved to be closer to their mother’s friends, the Bourgeois’, who lived in America leading them to come here.

Marinette is a lot like Jenny actually. She’s sweet, outgoing, and very into fashion. She’ll be the one most likely to help Jenny shop for clothes for us. This is because the boys don’t care except for Adrien, all Sam knows is Hot Topic, I get distracted by the simplest things, Dora is still new to this “teenage girl” thing, and Tikki, Vendetta, and Charlotte are way too young to understand. Though her differences from Jenny, Marinette is a bit more awkward in social situations and way clumsier than any of us. She has her moments of confidence though. Especially when she’s sticking up for Tikki or any of us for that matter.

Tikki is the polar opposite of both GIR and Plagg oddly enough. For a five-year-old, she is incredibly calm and quiet. Like to strange level. Of course, she’s extremely kind and loving towards us. Sometimes though she just quietly follows us around. She does this for cookies. We give her a cookie and she goes away to follow someone else. We know we shouldn’t be feeding her habit but that’s literally all we can do. She won’t accept anything else. The only one that doesn’t seem to mind is Marinette because she’s used to this. Tikki is a really sweet girl though.

Adrien is definitely a people person during parties but he’s actually much of an introvert due to his father’s “brainwashing”. We’ve been helping him get more freedom though. This has turned him into a more fun loving person. Oh sure he’s still kinda serious but he’s getting better. Unfortunately, Danny has gotten him into saying puns and it’s gotten kind of annoying. Still, Adrien is an extremely kind person despite what his father has done to him over the years and is being a big help to us with the smaller kids.

Plagg apparently used to be a very silent and obedient child under his father’s rule according to Adrien. Yeah... I don’t buy it for a second. To me at his best Plagg is carefree and sarcastic, at his worst he’s a lazy and sour little kid. He has become Timmy, Manny, and Snap’s protege when it comes to pranks. It sucks but it makes him happy so why not? Plagg is also an extremely picky eater. He will not eat anything unless we give him Camembert cheese with it. It’s kinda weird.

“By the way Mari? Tikki? Where’s Dora? Don’t tell me she’s still asleep.” Wanda said.

“Oh no. Perrito was whining earlier this morning so Dora took him out earlier than she usually does.” Marinette said as she bit into a banana.

Adrien came and wrapped an arm around Mari. “I think it was like six o’clock when she left cause I was in the bathroom with Plagg.”

“Well do you know when she’ll be back?” Wanda asked. Marinette tried to remember as Tikki tugged on her foster mother’s pant leg. “Yes, Tikki? What is it?”

Tikki starred at Wanda chewing on her poptart until she finally said: “Dora said she would be back before school.” Just as Tikki said that in walked a 12-year-old girl with tanned skin, long chocolate brown hair, and brown eyes holding a leash with a chocolate lab at the end of it.

“Lo Siento mama. Perrito really had to go to the bathroom,” (Translation: ‘Sorry mom.’ {Spanish}) the girl said.

Wanda sighed and said “It’s alright Dora. Just remember to take your phone with you next time you go out with Perrito. Okay?”

“Si, mama.” (Translation: ‘Yes, mom.’) Dora said letting Perrito off the leash to get his food. “By the way Patrick, could I have one of those little cookies for Perrito? He had a hard time going outside.” Dora asked. Patrick nodded as he got a special biscuit for Perrito and put it in Perrito’s food.

“Dora! Here’s your lunch box.” SB said handing the Fuschia lunch box to her.

Dora grinned and said “Gracias SB!” (Translation: ‘Thanks, SB!’)

That’s Dora Marquez. She’s 12 years old and roughly came here about a few months after I did. Like Manny, she came here from Mexico and moved to the states when she was around eight years old with her parents, her little brother and sister, her grandmother, and Perrito. When she turned nine her parents had to go back on an expedition of the rainforest to help some injured animals so while her grandmother and siblings stayed in the city, Dora and Perrito moved in with us.

Dora is a super kind person. Like to the point that it’s almost sickly sweet and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her get angry at like anything. She is kind of a tomboy like me so I look up to her a lot and like to go on adventures with her. Though lately she’s been getting more and more girly. I mean I don’t mind it so much it’s just that I either have to go with my sisters who are girlier than I am or with the boys who can be very, very annoying. Otherwise, though Dora is probably the nicest sister I could ask for.

“Dora? Did you see Bunsen or Snap get up for school?” Blik asked as Dora turned to him.

“Well I did see Bunsen’s door closed but I’m not sure about Snap,” Dora said shaking her head.

“Oh. Snap is still asleep. At least he was when I left our room.” Timmy said casually.

Wanda and Blik both facepalmed. “Sport, if he was still asleep why didn’t you wake him up?” Wanda asked.

“I dunno. I’m not his keeper!” Timmy argued.

Blik mumbled an ‘Oh my god.’ as Wanda asked: “Can one of you please go and remind your brothers that you can’t sleep in on a school day?”

“I’ll do it!” Sophie said raising her hand and then running upstairs.

“Thank you, sweetie!” Wanda called after her.

I guess it’s my turn to tell you about me huh? Like I said at the beginning my name is Sophie Hathaway and I’m 10 years old. I used to live in Hawaii with my biological family and we were all pretty happy. That was until my mother died when I was three then our family just started to drift apart. By the time I was six years old everyone was kinda placed where they needed to be and while I was supposed to go with my uncle, he was traveling too much to take care of me. So that’s how I ended up here a few years after Blik came but before Dora, Marinette, Tikki, Adrien, and Plagg. I still see some of my older siblings often enough and my dad comes to visit us once a month with my siblings Skylar, Silas, Liv, Nate, and Stef so it’s okay I guess.

I was really scared of everyone when I first got here though. The smells and sounds were all different and while I was used to having a big family these people were basically strangers to me. Also, I spoke Hawaiian primarily in my old house and now I am forced into English daily now which six-year-old me did not approve of at all. However, they were understanding knowing I needed time and over that time I learned to trust them which was very hard for me to do. Now I couldn’t imagine my life without them.

Sophie finally made it upstairs and was pulled from her thoughts when she heard the bathroom faucet running.

“Maybe Snap or Bunsen is already up?” Sophie thought as she knocked on the bathroom door. “Hey, is someone in here?” A few seconds later a man with neatly combed green hair holding a little baby boy with a tuft of curly purple hair and purple pajamas came out of the bathroom. “Morning Dad! Morning Poof!” Sophie cooed at her little brother.

“Morning Muncha-Bunch,” Cosmo said kissing the top of her head.

That’s our dad Cosmo Cosma. He eloped with our mom! His mom never did forgive him for that but it’s fine. She stopped being mad at our mom when we came into the picture. She’s like the super cool grandma that brings us gifts like all the time.

Cosmo is our fun parent that likes to take us on trips and out to eat a lot. Though Wanda seems to rain him in when he goes too far because he can be a little careless at times but he definitely loves us. Like I said he’s the good cop to Wanda’s bad cop. He usually sneaks us dessert when Wanda scolds us too hard.

And that little baby he’s holding is our baby brother Poof. Poof is Mom and Dad’s only biological kid but despite that, they still love us equal. Poof is only like a year old so he’s the youngest of all of us

He is literally the sweetest thing. We all take turns looking after him. Except for Vendetta, Charlotte, GIR, Tikki, and Plagg. Four out the five of them should never be trusted with babies. I mean Tikki is arguably okay but everyone else is a disaster waiting to happen so just trust me on this. Don’t.

“So what are you doing upstairs? I thought you guys were ready for school?” Cosmo asked bouncing a gurgling Poof.

“Well most of us are but Snap, Bunsen, Charlotte, and Vendetta aren’t. They didn’t come downstairs.” Sophie explained.

“Well, I saw Snap was still in bed with his door open and your sisters are outside but not sure about Bunsen,” Cosmo said tapping his chin.

“Thanks, Dad! I’m gonna go figure this out.” Sophie said.

“Okay. Get your brothers up though. We are on the clock!” Cosmo said patting her head before heading downstairs with Poof gurgling.

“I will!” Sophie called back.

She made her way to Timmy and Snap’s room to see her light blond brother hugging his pillow dreaming. Sophie sat down on his bed and started to gently shake his shoulder. “Snap. C’mon you gotta get up. We gotta go to school.”

Snap groaned and gripped his pillow tighter. “Mmmm five more minutes Buckette…” He said in his thick Bronx accent.

“No, you need to get up like right now,” Sophie said sensing the urgency of the situation. “We leave in literally 15 minutes.” Snap snored loudly to indicate the conversation was over. Sophie narrowed her eyes and said, “You leave me no choice dear brother.” Sophie pulled back her covers, slipped her hands under Snap’s light blue t-shirt, and tasered his sides.

Snap flipped the heck out and made a girlish squeal before falling out of bed. “What the heck Buckette?!” Snap yelled his bright blue eyes glaring at her.

“Told you I was left no other choice.” Sophie shrugged sticking out her tongue.

That’s one of my younger older brothers, Snap White. He’s 10 like me and Timmy though he’s a few months older than Timmy. He came here about six months after Poof was born. He originally came from a foster home in Greenland before moving to the states. Specifically the Bronx part of New York City which is where he gained his accent. So his speaking is a mix of West Greenlandic and English. He didn’t really enjoy being moved again so he acted out a lot which concerned my parents. He got super mad at a teacher for telling him his superhero clothes were ridiculous and put glue on their chair which Mom and Dad were not happy about. Then one day he saw me drawing and asked me if I was an artist. I said yes and suddenly he’s super cuddled up to me. Cut to a day later and we are basically best friends. He tells me that his cape is actually his old baby blanket and it’s the only thing that makes him feel secure. I told Mom and Dad and they took care of it. Since then Snap has been one of my closest brothers.

Snap can be really stubborn about things he thinks he’s entitled to like you just saw with the sleep problem. He’s always looking for ways to get out of boring things like adult parties or school and tries dragging us along with him. He is super clingy though like in a physical sense. He’ll cling to your arm, random hugs, hold your hand, etc. I think he may have abandonment issues but I don’t really wanna say anything to him since he’s just gonna deny them to be a “real man”.

“Þú ert að borga fyrir þetta.” (Translation: ‘You are going to pay for this.’ {West Greenlandic}) Snap glared as he put on his mask and cape.

Sophie laughed and shot back in Hawaiian, “Inā 'oe makemake i wale loaʻa i loko o ka wahi mua au makemake ole i kūpono ai i loko o ka hoʻokolokoloʻiaʻana” (Translation: ‘If you would have just gotten up in the first place I wouldn’t have resulted in the torture.’)

“I’m just saying when you walk through that door this afternoon you are dead,” Snap said as he put on his gloves and boots before walking out the door. Sophie just responded by blowing a raspberry at him. Now she was going towards Bunsen’s room.

Sophie noticed the door was closed so she knocked on it. “Bunsen? You up? We gotta get to school.” After waiting for a minute Sophie quietly opened the door to see Bunsen’s St. Bernard puppy, Boodles, sitting at the door waiting to be let out for breakfast. “Okay, Boodles go get breakfast,” Sophie said pointing downstairs. Boodles barked and ran downstairs. Sophie quietly went into Bunsen’s room and shook his shoulder while he slept. “Bunsen we gotta go to school. Wake up.” Bunsen slowly woke up and grabbed his glasses rubbing his eyes.

“Sophie? What’s wrong? Why are you rushing me?”

“We need to go to school in like 15 minutes,” Sophie stated.

“WHAT?!” Bunsen screamed as he rushed out of bed and to put his school clothes on.

That’s one of the newest members of this family Bunsen Knai’livac. He’s 12 years old and originally came from Taiwan because his parents thought more opportunities would arise here. He’s still getting used to being with us and speaking English mostly instead of Chinese. He got here about two months ago but he’s made progress at least. The first thing he connected with was Boodles in a pet store so naturally, Mom and Dad got Boodles to give him some stability. He still does have panic attacks about breaking the rules cause he grew up in such a strict household. We’ve been getting really good at calming him down and he’s even joined theater at school!

People who don’t really know Bunsen would describe him very loud and excitable which I mean is true to a certain degree. However, to us, we know him better than some strangers. He has the anxiety of letting his parents down constantly on his shoulders that he wouldn’t be a real functioning member of society. He can be a total theater nerd sometimes but for the most part, he’s pretty quiet and nice with the occasional bits of snark here and there.

“Ó, wǒ de shàngdì. Wǒmen yào chídàole wǒmen de lǎoshī huì shēngqì, māmā hé bàba huì shēngqì. Nàme tāmen bù zài xūyào wǒle!” (Translation: Oh my god. We are going to be late! Our teachers are going to be mad and Mom and Dad are going to be mad. Then they won't want me anymore! {Chinese}) Bunsen ranted off quickly as he got dressed.

Sophie sighed and put her hands on his shoulders to calm him down. “Bunsen it’s okay. You made a mistake. Nobody is gonna send you away for that Bunsie Boo.” Sophie kissed his nose to drive her point home.

Bunsen smiled a little and kissed her forehead. “Thanks, Soph.”

“You’re welcome. Now finish getting ready and get downstairs.” Sophie said going out of the room.

Sophie made her way downstairs with Snap close behind. She didn’t think much of it until Snap’s hands found his way to her sides and Sophie squealed and started laughing. “Snap! What are you doing?!”

“Hefnd er mín!” (Translation: Vengeance is mine! {West Greenlandic}) Snap shouted. Bunsen passed them giving his siblings a weird look as Snap tickled their sister and Sophie laughed like a doofus and clung to the stair railing.

“Jenny! Snap is trying to kill Sophie again!” Bunsen yelled as he entered the kitchen.

Jenny poked her head out and glared at Snap. “Snap! Leave your sister alone! Look at her! She’s dying!”

Snap groaned and rolled his eyes complying with his older sister’s request. “Fine!”

Snap continued to walk down the stairs smirking as Sophie panted and clung to the railing. “Oh thank the gods he stopped.”

Suddenly a knock came from the front door. “I’ll get it!~” SB called as he opened the front door.

A 10-year-old boy with poofy blond hair, hazel eyes, and wearing a dark brown aviator jacket with a glow stick bracelet is on his left wrist was standing there with a smile.

“Oh hello, Xavier! You here to go to school with us?”

“Yup! Managed to escape my stick in the mud parents. Is Sophie around?”

“Hey, Xavier!” Sophie waved as she laid on the stairs.

“What are you doing lying on the stairs?” Xavier asked before sitting next to her.

“Snap nearly killed me!” Sophie yelled loud enough for Snap to hear.

“Not my fault you are so sensitive!” Snap laughed from the kitchen.

“I mean he’s not wrong.” Xavier shrugged sheepishly as he sat next to her on the stairs. Sophie playfully hit his arm in response.

That’s my best friend Xavier. He’s 10 years old like me and is a week older than me. While he isn’t part of the family he might as well be. His parents are kind of overbearing so he likes coming over here more. I met him when his family was vacationing in Hawaii. Since then we’ve been inseparable. He was the one who helped me with my English and helped me to adjust to mainland America. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine living without him. He’s just always there for me and gets along with the family well. He’s kind of like the unofficial kid of the family where he’s part of the family but “legally” we aren’t responsible for him. So that’s pretty cool.

He’s super intelligent in the book smart kind of way. I remember when his family visited Hawaii and we became friends, he would read on the beach and I would just listen to him. Sometimes I would even fall asleep to him reading. Xavier is also 87% of my impulse control. Like if I didn’t have him, I’d probably would've died by now from a stupid decision.

“What? I’m just saying you are and there is nothing wrong that.” Xavier said putting up his hands in a defensive position.

“Ugh, you’ve spent too much time with this family. I swear to the gods. You are starting to sound like most of my brothers. You better not start selling me out to them.” Sophie scolded. “BLIK does that enough!”

“Hey! I have never done that in the four years you’ve lived here.” Blik argued as he walked into the room

“Yesterday you sold me out for a root beer to Danny!” Sophie argued.

“That wasn’t a sellout that was a trade. Very different. Now can you please get our sisters from the backyard so we can leave?” Blik smirked.

As Xavier said “Yup” Sophie let out a less enthusiastic, mumbled “Yeah.”

Blik grinned and said “Oh Timothy!~ Sophie needs-”

Sophie immediately hit his arm. “No. Shut up. I’m fine.”

Blik chuckled ruffling up her hair. “Fine then.”

“C’mon let’s go get them,” Sophie said getting off the stairs and heading towards the backyard with Xavier in tow. They walked into a pretty big backyard which has an above ground pool, a trampoline, a small playground, some swings hanging from trees, a sandbox, and a playpen for Poof to keep himself from roaming anywhere he pleases. It also has quite a lot of trees as well. Sophie spotted two girls around eight years old huddled in a corner doing… something? Sophie and Xavier both couldn’t tell what they were doing. They could only see the backs of the short, curly blonde hair of the peach skinned girl and the long, brown hair styled in messy pigtails of the much paler girl who seemed to be holding something.

“Um, Vendetta? Charlotte? Mom says to get inside. It’s time for school and Grudge still hasn’t eaten.” Sophie said pointing her thumb to the back door.

Both girls turned their heads around revealing the blonde girl’s bright blue eyes and the brunette girl’s dimmed green eyes.

“Okay Sophie!” the blonde girl said chipperly as she skipped over to hug Sophie’s waist. “Grudge made a new friend and me and Vendetta watched it!” Charlotte said bouncing up and down happily.

“What do you mean new frien- oh my god!” Xavier shouted as Vendetta came over holding her pet raccoon, Grudge, who had a snake in his mouth. A dead snake in his mouth. Lovely.

Sophie put her face into her hands and groaned. “Vendetta. You know what mom and dad have said about Grudge… erm… “making friends” with wild snakes,” Sophie censoring herself for the sake of Charlotte.

“Stupid Raccoon wanted to make a fiend.” Vendetta stated simply in her thick Bulgarian accent. “That is not mine or Charlotte’s fault.”

“Don’t you mean friend?” Xavier asked curiously.

“I said what I said.” Vendetta shot back rather rudely.

Xavier gave a look to Sophie as Sophie sighed, “Look. I’m your big sister now so tell Grudge to drop his snake friend or fiend or whatever and get in the house so we can go to school.”

“Fine. Stupid Raccoon. Drop.” Vendetta commanded as Grudge spat out the snake.

“Yay! Time for school! Come on Vendetta!” Charlotte cheered as she grabbed Vendetta’s hand skipping into the house.

“Do not touch me you stupid blue girl!” Vendetta yelled as they both disappeared into the house.

Xavier turned his face back to Sophie and said: “I’m sorry but what the heck is wrong with your new sister?”

“Oh, so many things…” Sophie sighed shaking her head.

So like you just saw those are our new additions to the family Charlotte Winfrey, Vendetta Mortcheva, and Vendetta’s pet raccoon… yes, raccoon… Grudge. Charlotte and Vendetta are only eight years old and just got transferred here last month. They got transferred here from their old foster home in a place called Clamberg because the foster home was terrified of Vendetta and her and Charlotte are a package deal.

I’ll explain Charlotte first because really. She’s a lot easier to understand than Vendetta is.

Charlotte got put into the foster care system when she was super young. Both her parents died while attending a music festival outside of Vermont in a mass shooting, unfortunately. This caused Charlotte to be placed in Clamberg with her only known living relative, her grandmother Charlene. The sad thing is that Charlotte still doesn’t know her parents died. Charlene told her that they were both astronauts living up in a space station. Nobody has had the heart to tell her yet. Charlene got too sick to raise Charlotte so when she was six years old Charlotte was placed in the foster care system.

Charlotte is a super sweet girl. Like probably the sweetest you’ll ever meet. She loves everything in the world and everyone in it. Probably if you take her to Disney World she would be smiling the whole time and say hi to all the characters. Even the villains! She is a little… “slow”… sometimes though. She doesn’t quite understand what's happening most of the time unless someone, usually Vendetta, tells her.

Speaking of Vendetta, let's talk about her because oh boy. There’s a lot to talk about.

So as you noticed by her accent Vendetta is from Bulgaria. She moved to America when she was a toddler with both of her parents, her older sister Vasilika, and her twin sister Joanna. Soon after her parents had three more children. Vendetta’s younger twin brothers, Darian & Valko, and her baby sister Rosica. However starting after Darian and Valko were born, Vendetta’s father started to get more...abusive towards his wife and older daughters. Well, TWO of his older daughters. He never laid a hand on Joanna or any of his younger children. He did frequently hurt his wife Violetta and Vasilika but it was Vendetta who got the raw end of the deal. Vendetta’s father, if you can even call him that now, considered Vendetta his child from hell. It wasn’t just physical abuse either. When Vendetta was finally admitted to the foster after the incident (which I’ll get to in a minute) she was malnourished and was so dirty that initial reports had Vendetta’s skin and hair color way darker than it actually was.

About the incident. One night Vendetta’s “father” had been drinking quite a lot. Violetta tried to get him to stop for the children’s sake but that just made him angrier. He ended up shouting so loud he had woken up Vasilika, Vendetta, and Joanna and in a moment of panic, Vasilika grabbed the family gun. When the girls got downstairs that had found their father had just finished strangling their mother to death. When he saw his three daughters standing there witnessing him kill his wife. He was enraged and started moving towards Vasilika first and she ended up shooting him once in the head. He fell dead on the floor inches from his now dead wife. Joanna had broken down into tears. Vasilika had no idea what she had just done and just stood there in shock. But Vendetta… oh, Vendetta. She was furious. She began yelling at Vasilika for not doing that sooner. That they all could have been freed earlier if she would have thought of this. She yelled at Joanna to stop crying and blamed her for being the “perfect” one. She yelled at the corpses of her parents. Her mother for not being stronger and her father for being a complete asshole to his own wife and children. She even yelled at herself for being a ‘devil child.’ The only people she didn’t blame for this was her younger brothers and baby sister since they had nothing to do with this. Later in the early morning, Vasilika called the police and all six of them were put in the custody of CPS. Three of them scarred for life and three of them too young to understand what was happening.

After that Vendetta essentially disowned her sisters and refuses to talk to or about them. She doesn’t talk about her parents either. She still visits her younger siblings as long as Vasilika and Joanna aren’t there. When she got to the foster home in Clamberg she never played with the other kids and spent nights alone in the backyard. The entire staff and all of the children were terrified of her. Accidents started happening around the home and they blamed Vendetta but none of them could prove it. She even one night came back with a raccoon which was Grudge. He was trained to essentially be a house cat. This confused the staff for two reasons. One: Raccoons are not native to Clamberg. So where did she find this raccoon? Two: How did she even train this creature? The staff had no idea on either of these questions and they weren’t about to question Vendetta of all people so they let her keep Grudge. It was just the two of them for two years until Charlotte got there. She was the only person that wasn’t afraid of Vendetta and that struck a nerve with Vendetta. So Vendetta became Charlotte’s soul defender even though she still insulted Charlotte from time to time, though Charlotte clearly doesn’t mind.

Cut to a month ago where the Clamberg foster home had enough of Vendetta’s reign and sent her here far away from Clamberg. Charlotte just came with cause they are now a package deal.

Vendetta doesn't seem that bad as her previous foster home made her out to be. Sure she’s dark, sarcastic, weird, sometimes super mean, and cusses in Bulgarian thinking we can’t hear her when we can. She’s also super bright though and probably the smartest girl in the house. We just wish she would relax a little bit and realize we won’t let her get hurt here but we also realize she needs time and we will give her that.

...What? I told you Vendetta is a complicated creature with a complicated history.

“Let’s just go so we can finally get to school. Max is gonna chew the two of us out if we are late again.” Sophie said tiredly. Xavier nodded and followed her back into the house and into the kitchen. They stood next to Charlotte and Vendetta who was letting Grudge eat his clams from the palm of her hand. The two of them just watched the chaos conduct in the large kitchen as everybody was shouting over each other.

“Alright, kids! Listen up!” Cosmo clapped loudly as all his children proceeded to quiet down. “Okay everybody go upstairs one last time. If you have a pet put them up in your room or if the pet is in a cage in your room feed them. Double check you have everything and then proceed to the van as planned. Ready? Go!” Cosmo yelled.

Sophie picked up Lion and motioned for Xavier to follow her. She was followed up the stairs by Jimmy carrying Goddard, Timmy carrying Sparky, Danny carrying Cujo, SB carrying Gary, Patrick carrying Rocky, ZIM leading Minimoose, Bunsen carrying Boodles, Dora leading Perrito, and Vendetta carrying Grudge. The other siblings followed up the stairs to double check their rooms to not forget anything. All except Blik whose room was the garage and Poof who was safe in his mother’s arms.

Sophie lead Xavier into her room and closed the door behind them.It was a small bedroom with a tiny closet, a small bed, and a small bookshelf. When they move Sophie requested she get her own room since she was a growing young lady now and thought it be better if she didn't share a room with Timmy and Snap. Xavier flopped down on Sophie’s bed as Sophie put Lion in his cat carrier. Lion meowed in protest as Sophie answered back “I know Lion you don’t like it but it’s only for the morning.”

“Do you think he can really understand you?” Xavier asked.

“Mmm, I like to think he does.” Sophie answered as she went to her closet and pulled out a box labeled ‘Special Things.’ She rummaged through it and pulled out two books. One was was a glittery sketchbook while the other was a scrapbook with the title of ‘Family is Forever.’ She hugged them close to her chest before stuffing them into her backpack. “Okay, we can go now,” Sophie said smiling.

“Finally. You know Max is gonna kick us out of the group if we keep showing up late.” Xavier said getting up from her bed.

“No, he can’t,” Sophie said as she opened up her door and turned her light off. “First off he would have to find a new second to replace me. Second, I basically own his soul at this point. So even if wanted too he couldn’t kick us out.”

“Fair enough,” Xavier shrugged.

Sophie went to each room to check everybody was out and essentially take roll for their mother as one of her chores.

Timmy had put up Sparky in his crate as Snap fed his hamster Musty and his pet frog Wiggums. For two fifth grade boys, they could sure make a mess of everything. Sophie was glad she moved out of there.

Jimmy and ZIM put Goddard and Minimoose on chargers and left their neat bedroom. It was neat because they both pretty much spent all their time in the basement lab with Vendetta.

Danny put up Cujo in his crate as Adrien put on his mother’s ring to wear on his right hand and Plagg grabbed his black cat plush from the top bunk of his and Adrien’s bunk beds. Plagg refused to sleep with GIR and Poof in fear of losing Adrien.

SB had put Gary in his cat carrier and grabbed his clean uniform while Patrick carefully put Rocky on the side table on his side of the room. The two had shared a room every since Patrick got there and they decided to never ever switch.

Tak had fed Navis, his and his best friend Jeera’s shared guinea pig, as Manny grabbed his soccer uniform for the day. Tak wanted the room with the biggest window and Manny just wanted a huge bed so they ended up with the biggest room on the floor.

GIR had grabbed his green dog plush and Poof’s baby bag from their room as a favor for Wanda and Cosmo. ZIM didn't even want to be near GIR as he slept. GIR had his own room until Poof was born.

Finally, on the boy's side of the hall, Bunsen had put Boodles in his crate and grabbed his script for play rehearsal. Bunsen just had his own room for now until another boy showed up at the foster home.

Meanwhile, on the girl’s side of the hall, Sam had grabbed an umbrella, since it was supposed to be bright that day, and Jenny grabbed some fashion magazines for her and her best friend who was a girl, Misty, to share at lunch. Their room consisted of a lot of black, pink, and purple. The color scheme was a compromise.

While Dora had put Perrito in his crate, Marinette grabbed her late mother’s earrings to wear that day and Tikki grabbed her ladybug plush from the bottom bunk of her’s and Marinette’s shared bunk beds. As the only little girl in the house, Tikki ended up sleeping with her sister and Dora didn’t mind the extra roommate.

Finally, Vendetta set down Grudge down on her gothic styled bed, since she refused to put him in any confinements, and Charlotte fed her hamster Buttons and her bird Buttons 2 before grabbing her brightly colored girl scout uniform along with Vendetta’s black girl scout uniform. Their room was like night and day. Vendetta’s side was green and black the only decoration being her striped blanket… which was also green and black. Charlotte’s side, on the other hand, was bright blues and pinks with posters and frilly things just thrown everywhere.

Sophie counted each of her siblings going down the stairs before yelling down to her parents. “We are all ready to go, mom and dad!”

“Finally! Let’s go already!” Blik groaned as everyone went outside and piled into the large van.

“Okay, Pacific Grove High School, Summerfield Jr. High, Sunnyside Elementary, Blue River Kindergarten, Grandview School for the Culinary Arts, Seaside Community College, and then the bank. Got it dear?” Wanda asked. “Got it and away we go!” Cosmo announced as he drove away from the house.

Cosmo was driving while Wanda sat in the passenger seat. Jimmy and Timmy were arguing about something stupid again while Danny tried to break them up with Sam chuckling at the three. SB was going over some new recipes he’s learned while Patrick drooled at all of them. Tak was messing with his seatbelt as ZIM was ranting about this kid named Dib. GIR, Tikki, and Plagg were playing with Poof happily. Manny was checking himself in the mirror, Jenny and Marinette were checking their Amazon account for new deals as Adrien listened, and Blik was reading the paper. Snap was telling Sophie something cool while she listened writing in her journal, Xavier read a book, and Bunsen was going over his lines once more as Dora giggled while Charlotte talked to her with Vendetta rolling her eyes in disgust at the two.

So yeah that’s my insane family except for my brother who's in college right now. You’ll meet him later! Anyway, it’s a miracle I’ve survived this long. I’m glad I’m here though. I feel loved where I am and I know that I will always have a place with them even if it seems like nowhere will let me fit in.

15 notes · View notes

feralknights · 6 years

Text

OB64 PTS#6

Unfortunately I didn’t proofread this as much as I probably should have. But, after reading the notes, chatting with folks, getting opinions from others, and having a bit of a rough night I finally decided to put it all down: My feelings and opinions about OB64 and the current direction of Paladins: Champions of the Realm.

So if you've read the fourm post that I'd written, you'd know that at the moment I have a lot to say about Paladins OB64, and very little of it is positive. We're at the 6th iteration of the PTS, with it getting an eleventh-hour push-back another week for more bug issues, card balancing, and now the inclusion of what they're calling a "Classic" mode where the cards will be balanced as they are for Competitive.

Apparently I've garnered something of a reputation with members of the community about my essay-sized feedback; I go on and on with my points, and in almost every post I make sure to highlight and emphasize a few points: I am not a professional player, I am not a competitive player, and I try to play Devil's Advocate with everything that I suggest on any champion or item adjustment in the game, no matter how insane or unreasonable.

Early on, I expressed sentiments to members of the development team-- those I am fortunate enough to speak with-- that I often times like a shake-up of the system. Essence being reverted to gold sat all right with me, though if you remember, I was actually a staunch defender of the Essence system. Yes, it added grind, but it retained a spirit of player agency and decision-making that helped bring me in and keep me in.

Then, the patch notes were released. I spent an hour reading them again, and then again, and then again, trying to figure this out. I actually said out loud, "what is their goal here?" The most vocal components of the community across almost every platform of social media I followed the game on were crying out for a scant few things: Bugfixes, matchmaking, and balance. Vivian and Lex were the two most hated champions on the PC circuit; I was regaled with stories constantly about Skye being an auto-ban in competitive from my nephew, an avid console player.

Instead, we were served up this: Cards Unbound.

We were told that feedback complained about the complexity of a 5-card, 4-point card, 12-point deck system was just "too high" for players. We were told that this would be "more free than ever." Then we also got a really cheeky jab at Battlefront 2's decisions on how to monetize content after being a $60 buy-in game. Having spent a fair share of money on the game in the last year, I can definitely say that that particular comment left a bad, lasting impression on me; I was a Tier 3 founder within a few days of starting the game when they initially offered the pack.

The PTS iterations continued to roll on, leading us up to that 5-- PTS5, where I was hoping that they would provide us with a fair, balanced version of the Casual gameplay or just an announcement that they would scrap the system altogether. Instead, we were left with card changes, balance notes that made absolutely no sense, and a version of the PTS that was so buggy and insane that streamers from pro to casual were remarking on how bad it is. Youtube content creators practically rioting, and conspiracy theories flying left, right, and center.

I really don't want to buy into the conspiracy theories. They breed fear. They breed paranoia. People start connecting dots that aren't there. I do realize that we are in an insane world in 2017 with world leaders that lie and change lies as quickly and easily as they draw breath, but I'm a person that tries really hard to give people a second chance and asks for the data. I want to see the metrics and data; I want to know what's going on.

The things I can see: The bug fourms are riddled with people reporting bugs, but I have yet to see much more than *very faint* praise for the Cards Unbound system. At the time of this writing, the main patch notes thread is currently 122 pages, with scattered pages and posts from fans that are exasperated and tired of fighting Hi-Rez with this. The subreddit is still on fire with people upset with the changes; the OB64 additions video currently sits with an overwhelming 11k dislikes and a petition to have OB64 shelved has broken 7,700 signatures and it's only climbing.

I think this, more than anything, shows that a significant part of the recurring, constant playerbase loves this complexity. They love the depth that Paladins provides versus it's competitors. Personally, I loved throwing down at least five bucks every patch cycle or so, charging into the game and seeing what changes were lined up and how things shook out. I'm a Skye main, so not only am I a rare breed that deals with way too much shit in the playerbase, but I am one that would look at all of these changes with a critical lens, asking myself "how can I get past this one champion's buff? This new champion and this specific card combination?"

I'm not afraid to admit it: Skye is what brought me into playing Paladins in the first place, but I stayed because of the world, the depth, and the complexity. I'm borrowing and paraphrasing the words of Skillup from Youtube as I have in my prior posts, but I believe it bears some repeating:

"It's a statement to the industry that I hope other developers take note of: Gamers aren't idiots. We don't need our hands held all of the time. Complexity and depth should be embraced, not feared."

I've met more people that were intrigued by the 12-point system of Paladins and the open beta experience than driven away from it. Even friends that were afraid of the complexity acknowledged the depth and what it brought to the table in terms of customization and decision-making-- even if they weren't up for playing it, they still admired it. They admired the product, and even folks that felt burned about the Tribes treatment felt that the system was something rich and diverse and good and something that the now-flooded "hero shooter" market needed in order to remain competitive and make a name for itself.

I remember reading the Q&A responses from the subreddit, and how they felt that players that should be in competitive are in casual rather than comp, and how they wanted to encourage and incentivize people to take the step to finally playing competitive. Unfortunately, that's still not me: I don't care about comp. As dramatic as it sounds, and as I've said before, I absolutely despise draft picking with every fiber of my being. I don't care about the competitive experience in Paladins, let alone any other game, be it League of Legends, Overwatch, Team Fortress, Battlerite, or even the few fledging times people tried to make Conclave a thing in Warframe. I just don't care. I've even said as much to Hi-Rez staff members in casual conversation; the only thing that would make me even remotely consider broaching the Competitive queue would be if they added a Skye skin as a seasonal reward. However, considering she is far and away not a meta darling-- and how certain casters react when she was picked, something that still ires me to this day if only because casters should be more professional and objective-- I don't see that happening anytime in the next few years.

I remember feeling almost singled out, and even made a mockup: 'Bring back casual, make an unbound queue.' Boom, done. But even then it wouldn't be what I actually wanted, what actually kept me playing Paladins for so long even as someone that does not play or even particularly enjoy competitive, PVP-driven FPS experiences: That 12-point card system.

PTS6 almost solves that, but it still feels like something of a slap in the face.

I don't mean that to sound dramatic, either, but it feels wholly limited and punishing because I don't want to play Cards Unbound. I won't get those First Wins of the Day chests. I won't get access to Onslaught unless I put myself into Unbound mode. And then rather than simply leaving it branded as "Casual," they made the conscious decision to call this mode "Classic," as though it were the game mode that Paladins fans have known and loved for over a year-- a maneuver that was undoubtedly made for marketing purposes, as folks that come in with the Cards Unbound system would think that this is what the game always was, and what folks would eventually come to accept. Plus, I won't get the same rewards for playing "Classic Mode." Rather than treating Casual as a focal-point experience, it's being treated as a tacked-on afterthought that feels like it's meant to appease people on the fence rather than address the problems that people are having with the system.

But this all comes back to the same thing that I keep grappling with? What is the mission of Cards Unbound?

I wasn't here for the closed beta phase of Paladins. Point in fact, I came in kind of late compared to many people; I came in roughly around OB35-36, well after the era of Skye reigning supreme and champion balance being somewhat insane. Even then, through all of the ups and downs of my favorites, I loved playing the game. I didn't know about the closed beta systems and mechanics, and when I had heard them, it left me stunned that the system started with something that sounded so haphazard and unfocused and managed to sharply refine into something that was so simplistic on the surface, yet so complex as soon as you start digging into it. I understood why the pros grabbed on with both hands, why teams flocked to it, why HRX2017 was such a big deal.

Paladins actually made me give a shit about esports.

CU feels like a bold, drastic step that should have been considered-- or implemented-- during a closed beta phase or even an alpha phase. This is something that should have been done over a year ago, or an iteration of the prior level-as-you-play system from a year ago. This feels like something that should be used in a game that is specifically not Paladins. But, the company is so driven and committed to it that I don't think they're going to heed the vocal playerbase-- and to be fair, it feels like a vocal majority rather than the vocal minority-- that I doubt they're going to pull back from it right now.

I think PTS6 hits a place where I can finally sigh, throw up my hands, and say "I guess." For all it's faults, for everything I feel is wrong with it, it's at least finally offering me a balanced casual experience even if I'm being shortchanged on my rewards and the investment of my time. As a tier 3 Founder, I don't have to worry about buying Champions anymore, so again, the so-called "Classic" mode will offer me the trade of "worse advancement" for "balanced gameplay," though I still have to put the word "balanced" in those accursed quotation marks. For as much as I can say, "I guess," I still don't like it.

I really wish I had a better solution, something that allows Hi-Rez to move ahead with their system. I wish I had that much input or leeway on the company as a fan, a player, an artist, fanartist, and content creator, but I know I'm just one teeny tiny part of the machine. I just keep coming up short; I really don't have a better offering of how to balance the system, or restore trust, or even restore the player agency that a game like this actually requires in order to flourish.

What I can say, though?

Community management and public relations needs to step up. Please don't get me wrong here, either: CMs have an incredibly tough job and they have to deal with a lot of hate, flaming, and bullshit, but they can't be silent day after day. The team needs to be in front of this literally every single day, talking to the community, hosting more Q&A threads, developer livestreams, and actually showing that they're listening to the input. They may be getting positive feedback that is steering the current state of the system, but in large part a lot of this could have been avoided:

The company should have been transparent in their goals and plans for this system months in advance.

2017 has been a turbulent year for gaming and developers. Players are more savvy and less willing, especially in Western markets, to deal with developers that try to do things that they feel are short-changing or otherwise screwing players out of what they feel is a fun, fair, balanced experience. “Transparency” and “trust” are two critical, key components of free to play gaming that I feel are unjustly overlooked or treated as unfeasable. That is not the case at all. As I noted earlier, gamers aren't idiots: Transparency builds trust. Being willing to course correct because you were open and honest with your playerbase creates options, opens doors, and makes your players more willing to trust and invest their time-- and money-- in the company and the game.

The community should have been involved in shaping Cards Unbound.

This is a dramatic change. The community should have had input on how to shape this system over the course of weeks and months, rather than having an ill-conceived, ill-balanced, and frankly ill-executed system being dropped on their lap on a Wednesday afternoon. I am not against the *concept* of a Cards Unbound system, but I feel like the system would have worked perfectly well within the 5-card, 4-point card confines they currently have. I think Legendary cards having points and level values is a mistake. This is a system that, like the Wrecker change, should not have left the PTS cycle. It still should not leave the PTS cycle. Honestly, I do openly implore the development team to just release the art assets in as OB64, then for OB65 heed the needs of the community: Focus on balance. Focus on bugfixes, and be willing to list not just the most pertinent, but all of them.

Seriously. All of them. There are more people than you think that are interested in knowing what and where the bugs were. Allowing the players that level of trust to know where your mistakes are will make them more willing to quickly jump up and report the things that they see on a broader scale, and acknowledging those bugs quickly and effectively would foster a lot of trust with them.

The company should keep the "eject" button on the table for the patch.

I realize that is the crux of my personal opinion, but I feel that this is something that still needs to be reiterated, put on the table, and stated. We don't have the metrics on player retention over the last few months, we don't know what the feedback is actually like beyond a quick glance at the fourms, and most tellingly, I cannot recall the last time that Hi-Rez has sent out a player survey to email boxes or had linked in the game's main screen/UI for over twenty patches. Operating solely on what we can see-- the fourm announcements, a scant offering comment or three subreddit-- people are, bluntly, *pissed*. I realize that Hi-Rez has done a lot to get OB64 ready, and I realize that there's a lot on the line for them to push what they have, but at a certain point there needs to be a willingness to say, "Maybe we should pump the brakes."

So, with all of this, at the end, all I can really say about OB64 comes down to a scant few things: I like the skins. I like the visuals. I'm glad we're finally getting lore. I'm really hoping Skye isn't just a cookiecutter villain or spy cliche. I've heard Mal'damba might be more morally gray and pretty interesting. I just ... look at the rest, sigh, and go, "I guess."

Balance changes that don't make sense. Champions that still have innate caut at ridiculous levels. Skye having her LMB damage reduced unnecessarily while also losing her 25% movement bonus in Hidden without anything to compensate for her kit being hit so hard. "I guess."

I don't want to feel "I guess." I want to have the same feelings I had for the last twenty patches, excited, ready to go, and continuing my hatred for anyone that picks Lex and Vivian. I'm willing to give the patch a go. I want to keep enjoying Paladins, but I don't want to see the playerbase pick up and leave. I don't want to see people hating on the game. I want to see Paladins succeed. I want a Paladins Worlds 2020. I want to be there for the game, as a community creator, commentator, blogger, or more. I love this game, and I've met a lot of amazing people through it. I've had my audience explode because of it, and I value what I've been given through it.

I just... don't want "I guess."

edit 12/14/17: Touched up a little bit of the grammar and some spelling errors, sorry about that. I was having A Night!

#paladins #paladins champions of the realm #palablog #ob64 #rambling?

21 notes · View notes