#But the circumstances where she ends up caring for him are a lot less... voluntary

[dastardlydandelion]

I wish you would write a fic where Susan got to keep her baby for once.

well. hm. what would this look like in my hands. okay, okay, so in this particular scenario, i actually imagine neil was putting 2 + 2 together and finding out susan's preggo right after the move. like, even before susan does. and she's all kinds of alarmed but neil is?? oddly excited?

he's all like, "isn't this great? we get to have a new baby in this new town. what a perfect way to cement our brand new life, huh?"

and susan doesn't want to be hopeful but with neil's positive reaction, she tentatively feels hope anyway. maybe things rly will be different, right?

continues under the cut bc this got fucking long.

yeah, well, neil's good mood lasts until it's actually born and responsibilities ensue. he never had to deal with billy as a baby rly, bc billy's mom took care of that part and also, like. in this 'verse at least, billy was a low-maintenance baby. didn't cry much. maybe he did at first but like, after being dropped on the head a couple times, he just went quiet and didn't rly bother anybody after that. wouldn't get loud again until elementary age. and max didn't come into neil's life until she was even elementary age, so defo past all the baby stuff.

the new infant tho screams like a mofo. everybody in the house is on edge. sleep is hard to come by for the whole household. the care and keeping responsibilities mostly fall on susan but neil holds it against her every. single. time. he has to change a diaper or hold a bottle, as if it's some major failing on susan's part that he should ever have to do anything like this at all.

max tries to help but she can't even hold the baby tbh. it makes her v uncomfortable, she never gets it right and doesn't know what to do when it squirms!! what if she drops it!? plus she thinks baby smells weird even when it's got a clean diaper, an unappealing mashed food and powder combo with a lingering whiff of wet rubber. and billy. is billy. he has to watch it sometimes, naturally. if it's just him and baby at home, he'll blast his stereo to cover up the crying, as long as he knows its other needs have been tended to. like, yk, the "it'll cry itself to sleep eventually," approach. which works actually. metallica becomes the go-to baby lullaby.

but lo and behold, when it's like, let's say 6 months or smth, baby gets an ear infection. like babies do. won't stop wailing. just. will NOT stop. v much in pain and has no other means of communication. neil and max are home. billy is on a date. susan's stuck in a long line at the grocery store. neil had a shitty day at work and he's already aggravated. pacifier isn't working, lil thing just keeps hollering, so. in a burst of frustration, he starts throttling baby. max is in her own room but hears it the second the noises change and hurries to help, blood ice cold.

she stops neil from killing baby sibling but gets a black eye and a bloody nose for her troubles. this is what susan comes home to. i've written a lot of susan kills neil scenarios but i think this is the first one that comes to mind where in this round, it really is out of anger and not fear. both are present, ofc. but the actual act on her part is one of anger. bc she feels stupid that he ever had her the slightest bit convinced a new baby would make anything better. that neil ever made her feel like he'd be better and instead, he chose to be even worse. susan ties him to the bedposts under the guise of a sex thing, convincing neil she wants to treat him to smth special bc he's been oh so stressed out lately. bashes his brains in with a hammer at least 20 times, a la sally challen style.

alas, reality commences and susan goes to prison. ig a long time ago there was this made for tv movie abt this lady killing her abusive husband by setting the bed aflame that gave the public the misconception that women who kill their abusers are typically acquitted, but uh, that's not true. yeah, it was true for the lady whom the movie was based off of, but usually they're convicted and serve unduly harsh sentences for their "crimes." but if i get on that soap box, we gonna be here the whole fucking day, so, moving on now. susan's off to the big house. albeit both baby and max's injuries are documented and considered mitigating circumstances so her charges are reduced from first degree murder to voluntary manslaughter with the potential for early release.

billy's close to 19 so he's an adult, if only technically speaking. has custody of baby and max. i've decided baby in this 'verse is amab but will eventually come out as trans when she's abt ten yrs old. billy tries his best. max tries her best too. baby's nickname is ducky bc the rubber duck?? by far the favorite toy!! baby p much lives in the bathtub, playing with the rubber duck. billy, who would move them back to cali in a heartbeat if it wasn't so far from susan's prison, defo relates. he's also aquatic by nature.

okay, so the move back to cali does happen. over the months of her kids coming to visit her in prison susan can see how exhausted the teenagers are and she's p much just like, 'u guys gotta go. get outta this rural heckhole u hate, stop bringing urselves n my bby to this dismal place.' and they don't think she's serious but the next time they come to visit, she doesn't meet them, so. yup. serious it is. billy, max, n baby take neil's life insurance money and head off to cali.

this is a modern au, okay, inmates sneaking smartphones into the prison n all that. so susan makes deals and friends and does favors, and gets some help from the ones who are good at bitcoin and scams and counterfeiting and what have you. this enables her to do discreet online "shopping." so she gets ducky all kinds of rubber ducks, at least a handful of times a year. the ducks get more unique and less childish as ducky grows. susan apologizes almost every time she talks to the older kids on the phone for like, five yrs. max isn't rly angry with how things ended with neil tho, more so has that residual anger that susan ever got together with neil in the first place. billy doesn't rly know what to feel tbh, accepts the apologies p numbly bc he's too damn exhausted with being the primary caregiver in over his head to even think abt how he feels at the end of the day.

susan gets released on good behavior around the same time ducky comes out, announcing she's a girl. it's an adjustment for billy and max to get used to bc they never rly suspected, but they're 100% supportive. susan is...oddly excited? not for selfless reasons (tho she is earnestly supportive) but bc it's like. not only does that mean trashing the masculine deadname neil had adamantly declared for ducky, but it means all in all, she got out at the perfect time bc she gets to be introduced to the authentic version of her child along w errbody else. makes her feel less left behind, like she didn't miss out on errything despite being put away for a decade. susan moves in with all of them, obvi, in a small house by the seaside filled to the brim with rubber ducks (billy and max also contributed to ducky's collection on birthdays and holidays, the first duck billy ever got has skulls, and the first max ever got is a frankenstein monster duck). home is cluttered, awkward, and tentative but free of fear and ripe with *genuine* new beginnings.

believe me, anonymoose, i am just as surprised as u are at how fuckin long this got.

#ask box #susan hargrove #max mayfield #billy hargrove #neil hargrove #anonymoose #thanks for playing! #ask meme #ask game #child oc

[petri808]

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TW: Stalking behaviors. 

As she walked from the train station to her apartment, Lucy didn’t know if it was just her nerves getting the best of her or a real danger right around the corner. Those creepy feelings that send tingling sensations along your spine or the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention was a constant reminder that she was the lead actress in a horror movie. Every time Lucy was alone in public, her senses went on alert like prey being stalked by a predator, and she had every right to be cautious with Touka still loose on the streets.

Touka’s arrest after the movie theater incident did nothing to deter the woman from making the couple’s lives miserable. In fact, it only escalated her determination to win Natsu and get Lucy out of her way. For three month’s she’s stalked them through social media. They would block her, and she’d simply open a new account. They made their pages private, but she’d find ways to send messages. Lucy was starting to wonder if the woman was hacking into their pages.

‘You can’t get away from me Natsu...’

‘I won’t let you have him you bitch!’

‘The authorities can’t stop me...’

‘I love you more than she ever will! Please Natsu! How could you be so cruel?!’

‘Watch your back you whore!’

‘I’ll do anything you want Natsu! I worship you! Please! I’ll be the perfect woman just for you!’

Lucy bore the brunt of the harassment, being called every derogatory name under the sun, while Natsu’s were a mix of anger and pleadings to be her boyfriend. Touka was coming unhinged and desperate people could lead to desperate decisions. A woman who started off seemingly so sweet and nice had turned into a demon. Frankly, it baffled Lucy how anyone could present two opposing faces so easily, but obsession was a strong motivator. Counselors at school told them that for stalkers it’s all about control and once them feel they’ve lost it, that’s when they start to lash out. ‘Well, duh,’ Lucy rolled her eyes at that one. Tell them something they hadn’t figured out on their own.

Sometimes they thought they caught glimpses of Touka while out around town, watching them from around street corners or shop windows, blend into cafes or around shelves in stores. It was hard to confirm because when they did a double-take, the woman would disappear. The woman was also legally trespassed by Natsu’s workplace, Lucy’s school dorm, the movie theater, and the bar Cana works at. Plus, the theater attack got them restraining orders against Touka, which meant she couldn’t come within 100 yards of the couple. So far, her harassment consisted of internet messages and she’d abided by the distance order, but really, what would a piece of paper do if Touka chose to finally ignore it?

“You okay?” Natsu questions his girlfriend, “you went silent.”

“Oh, sorry, y-yeah I’m okay, just drifting into thoughts again.”

They were lucky to have a great support system. All of their friends pitched in to take turns, making sure Lucy was rarely ever alone in public. Someone would walk her to and from school. If she needed to go out, one of them would volunteer whenever Natsu couldn’t. She stayed in areas that had a lot of people, so she’d be less likely to be approached. But when no one was available, he would stay on the phone with her like now. Lucy appreciated it all, because at least she had a voice to comfort her.

“Oh, alright. How much longer till you get to the dorms?”

“Maybe 15 minutes.”

But the messages that sent the worst chills through Lucy, were the ones detailing what she was doing or where she was at when the messages were sent. It was confirmation that Touka was truly stalking every move they made, and the couple couldn’t go out in public without the fear of being confronted again. The authorities weren’t any help either and unfortunately her messages through social media were not considered a violation under current anti-stalker laws. Harassment was also difficult to prove because the woman never used her real name which left open the possibility it was some other person harassing them.

According to Levy’s boyfriend Gajeel, the police’s hands were tied unless Touka slipped up and made a direct threat to harm them. But so far, the woman had been cunning enough to stay anonymous. This was exactly why current laws did nothing to curb people from engaging in such behaviors. The counselor warned them that the only way to stop a stalker is intensive psychological treatment. But to get to that point required voluntary treatment or a court order, hence the couple’s frustrations with the system.

“Whatcha, thinking about?” Natsu breaks the silence again.

“Just the stuff Gajeel was explaining,” she sighs back. “It’s all so stupid, like they don’t even care.” Aside from Levy’s boyfriend, Lucy got the distinct impression that the cops didn’t take stalking very seriously.

“I’m so sorry this is happening Lucy. We both graduate in just six more months, maybe we could move to the other side of Japan?” She could hear it in Natsu’s voice how useless he felt under these circumstances.

“Or another country,” she mumbled back. At this point she wanted to get as far away as possible. They’d done everything they could think of, notifying their schools and the security at their homes of the potential threat. But as long as Touka was free to run the streets, short of packing up and moving far away which was out of the question because of school, there wasn’t anything else they could do except stay vigilant.

“If that’s what would make you happy Lucy, I’ll find a way to make it happen. I got a cousin that lives in the US, maybe he can get us jobs.”

Lucy thinks for a moment, “I don’t think you’ve mentioned this cousin before, what’s he doing there?”

“Sting went for college then ended up staying after graduation cause he met a guy. I think they’ve been together now for 5 years, so it must be working out,” Natsu chuckles.

His comment pulls a giggle from Lucy, “I wouldn’t mind trying out the US. We could think of it as an adventure before settling down.”

“Settling... down? As in, getting married?”

“W-What?! N-No, I mean, maybe, I mean it’s possible...” She hears the laughter on the other end and that stops her rambling.

“Hey, I was just clarifying,” Natsu’s chuckles soften. “I agree, whatever happens, it would definitely be a fun adventure.”

Her cheeks flushed by the new images floating through her mind and a silly smile now screwed onto her face. Lucy was certain that between them, they could do well, find jobs, and lead a comfortable life wherever they chose to go. Maybe a change of scenery would do them well. Certainly, her stress level would thank her for it.

“Do you really think… that would work? That we could pull it off because...” Lucy’s voice cuts off abruptly mid-sentence, followed by the sounds of a scuffle, like the phone being jiggled around.

“Lucy?!” He called out with no reply. “Lucy?! Answer me!”

A sudden scream from Lucy’s end, runs his blood cold, and he hears a familiar voice just before the line cuts off permanently. It was muffled, but clearly— “Touka?!”

#nalu #nalu au #nalu fan fiction #nalu fan fic #Natsu dragneel #Lucy heartfilia #strangers on a train #tw stalking #fairytail

[snktoughts]

As The Sun Sets, Its Light Shines

(Erehisu pairing. Takes place in the middle of ch 106. Also on AO3.)

It had been a year since he had kept the secret, one which had tormented him day and night, and had slowly eaten away his smile.

But now that the secret was out, this was the first time Eren was back at this place. At the orphanage. The place where she spent most of her time even now.

Seven Years.

“Oy, Sasha! Don’t sleep on the straw bag!”

“Mmmh shadap… what’cha gonna do about it anyway?”

“Why, you…”

Eren ignored the commotion made by Connie and Sasha behind him and kept cleaning the stable. He had more than gotten used to excessive cleaning chores under Captain Levi’s command. Enough to give him occasional nightmares when he was younger. Now, the sixteen year old welcomed the strain of the menial labors, drowning his ever noisy mind with the creaks of the shovel as it hit the ground. Rinse and repeat.

He only stopped when a hand grabbed his wrist, and he met the caring, but stern look of Mikasa.

“Eren. You’re still tired from yesterday’s mission. Don’t overwork yourself.”

Eren frowned slightly, but did not voice his protest out loud when she removed the shovel from his grasp. He barely did anything yesterday. On a better day, he would complain about her incessant mothering. Mikasa doting on him was a constant in his life since the day they met, seven years ago.

They were just normal kids at that time. Or were they really? What made one special was being born in this world. Perhaps, on the day of his tria, a year ago, a good point was brought about nine year old kids being capable to kill grownups being ‘worrisome' or ‘abnormal’, even if that was self-defense, and he never regretted his act.

He had been called ‘monster’ back then. A fitting title. Although as they all found out, this word was not only concerning him.

In truth, they had been wrong all along, had they not? About everything this world was. The monsters… the titans were not the enemy.

Instead, humanity was…

“We came to tell you we’re leaving for the camp again today.”

It was Armin who had said that, standing beside Mikasa. Armin could still smile, albeit less than before everything happened. The shorter teen was still carrying in his pocket that seashell he collected from their first time reaching the ocean. Eren knew.

Seven years for Eren. Twelve years for him.

“The prisoners of war again?” Eren ventured, brushing his long meshes away from his sweaty front, his eyes going from one of his friends to the other.

It was Armin who nodded, then glanced aside.

“Yes. I think… we’re getting a lot of progress with them. Even though you can’t come, we’ll keep you informed as always.”

Eren nodded, although he did not particularly care for the Marleyans imprisoned on his home soil, if he was honest with himself. His status meant he had more restrictions on who he could come in contact with, for obvious strategic reasons, and he had accepted that. And he was closely guarded. This was why Captain Levi's Squad members were always coming with him in his private outings.

Eren was fine with that. Armin, Mikasa, and everyone else, they were his friends. His war comrades. But he had no interest in befriending anyone from across the enemy line.

He had seen enough of what the Marley Empire was like already. Every night, there was always a chance that he would dream up another memories of them mistreating the Eldians… the true name of his people. He had seen through the eyes of both previous victims and perpetrators of war atrocities, had felt them live through him.

The Marleyans were humans. Horribly humans. Just as the Eldians would be, were they to be viewed as humans by the other races, instead of ‘the monsters who turns into titans’. Eren did not even blame the Marleyans and other countries for fearing Eldians. The people of the walls reacted the very same way to Eren the moment everyone found out he was a titan, after all.

Eren understood. Not like the world was wrong to be afraid.

“Eren?”

Eren blinked out of his train of thoughts and nodded.

“Right, well, see you later, then.”

Mikasa and Armin exchanged a look, then Armin bit his lips.

“Umm… by the way, about Zeke’s proposal… at that time, you-”

There was a heavy crash behind them, and they all turned to see Connie stuffing a struggling Sasha under a bag of hay. One stray arm hit Connie’s nose as the brown-haired girl screamed, and Connie bit back a curse, clutching his injured face.

“Ow! Quit it!”

“Hey, you two! You’re here to help, not fool around!”

It was Jean who had spoken, the taller teen had entered the barn carrying two buckets.

Following close behind him was Historia.

Eren saw the queen of the walls herself step into the barn, her golden blond hair down into a ponytail, a change from the last time he saw her, during the military council. She always kept them into a bun when in official duty. Eren did not know why his mind focused on that detail this time around.

Historia let the basket she was carrying down, and put her hands on her hips, glaring down at the mess of limbs that was currently Connie and Sasha.

“If you want to play games, there’s a group of kids outside who would be happy to join you! Don’t slack off on your duty!”

Sasha moaned and pulled herself up.

“S'not even our duty at all! We just take on extra work ‘cuze of him.”

“Oi, Sasha, stop complaining!” Connie reprimanded before standing up and dusting himself.

“What? I’m right!”

“Umm, well, I guess we should go, then,” Armin finally said, the light in his eyes dimming slightly. “Let’s talk later?”

Eren nodded, and watched Armin and Mikasa walk pass the commotion and out of the barn. Just before leaving, Mikasa gave him one last look. It would seem neutral to most observers, but Eren knew her enough to acknowledge the soft worries in her eyes.

In truth, he was used to that look from her. More than enough, in his opinion.

His eyes fell back onto Historia once Mikasa was out of view, and this time, Historia looked back at him. For one awkward moment, Eren wondered if he should look away, but he did not. He only realized the barn had fallen silent when Jean sighed and took both Connie and Sasha by the arms.

“Alright, let’s find a better thing to do for you two, then.”

He sounded annoyed, typical for Jean. All the more at Eren. During their military trainee years, the two had fought a lot. What was an ideology competition had mellowed down to lips service at this point, however. Eren was not even sure he remembered what had made them clash so much. Likely, they had both matured out of the dumb ignorant brats they once were.

Like all the survivors of the 104th, there was respect now. Respect and a certain fondness. Jean did not even look back toward Eren and Historia as he left with Connie and Sasha, and yet, Eren had a feeling the taller teen had been signaling him something.

When his eyes met Historia’s again, Eren completely forgot about Jean, and his mind came back to what had happened a few days prior.

Right. Zeke’s plan had been presented to the Military council by Yelena’s writing. Yelena, the leader of the ‘Anti-Marleyan Voluntaries’, non-Marleyan people who had been conscripted by the Marleyan Empire and dominated. People whom Eren’s half-brother, Zeke, had been uniting to come help the Eldians in Paradis Island. Supposedly.

Zeke… he was a whole other issue for Eren, one he had mulled over for a good year already. It had been hard to reconcile the memories Eren inherited from his father of a frightened five year old, with the man who wore his father’s face and had killed so many of his people with his Beast Titan power. The one who turned Connie's village into titans.

An Eldian from Marley, like Eren’s father was, growing up into the military, probably thanks to their father’s wish to use his kid to accomplish his goal of restoring the Eldia power and freeing their people.

And in a sense, Grisha Yeager sacrificed Eren for a higher goal as well. Eren knew. He had received more love and care than Zeke had, yet, Grisha’s choice gave him the same fate.

He was not really over how messed up everything he had learned about his family was, but he could usually distract himself with other topics, like…

“So…”

… Like this one.

After one word, Historia clammed up, her gaze falling on the side. Equally hesitant, Eren let his attention wander on the fallen hay bags as he scratched his head.

Damn… they usually had easier talks than this.

But today…

Historia released a breath, and walked up to a wall close to Eren. Almost automatically, Eren did the same, and they stayed side by side, staring ahead, the silence only broken by the children’s laughter from outside.

To Eren, there was something comforting with these moments. Even at this time, he felt the tenseness of his body leaving.

“… How long have you kept it to yourself?” Historia finally asked softly.

Eren did not look at her.

“Since the day we brought my father’s journals in front of the Military council. I figured it out then.”

“… All this time, huh?” He heard shuffling, but he did not look. “I see. That must have been hard for you.”

Eren made a short noise. He wanted to downplay it, but he had too much respect for her to lie. The secret was out anyway.

“I gambled that another solution would come,” he said, frowning at the opposite barn wall, “there had to be. Zeke’s plan proves that. With Zeke as a royal blood titan, there is no need for anyone else.”

Historia’s answer was a small ‘hmm’ noise. He finally risked a glance at her, and saw her thoughtful, almost haunted look. It made his stomach churn. He never liked seeing her like that. It reminded him too much of their darkest hours.

She looked through one of the empty horse stalls.

“I made my choice a year ago, after all.” Her voice was soft, and her arms crossed. “That I would play my part as the dutiful Queen within the walls. In spite of the circumstances, like you, I accepted my role, and I am ready to fulfill it to the end.”

His jaw shut with tension. The unease in his stomach increased at her words. He flexed his fingers a few times.

“Your role is to be a figurehead. You don’t have to use titan powers at all. The Founding Titan’s power would be restricted if you ate it anyway.”

“… But we’ve both been prepared for this eventuality, haven’t we?” She replied, her fingers gripping her forearms. “Back when we did not know how the oath restricting the Founding’s power worked, we both gave it thoughts, as an eventuality for humanity’s sake.”

“You rejected it back then,” he reminded her, his voice rising up slightly. “You rejected your father’s will and saved me instead. You proclaimed yourself as enemy of humanity.”

Something prompted him to shut his mouth fast after that. He was unsure what exactly. A sort of grating malaise. For some reasons, Armin’s face came to his mind.

Before he could analyze why, Historia answered.

“Yeah. I did, didn’t I? And I don’t regret it.”

There was a fondness in her voice, something which made a calming sensation swell in his chest, and a smile birth on his lips, if only slightly.

“Well… I don’t regret hiding what I knew either.”

“… I see.”

He thought she would say more, but she did not. When he looked at her, he saw the soft smile stretching her lips, and the rosy tint her cheeks had taken under the falling sun coming from the open door. Eren closed his eyes and breathed in the sensation of peace that had filled the air. Something vaguely reminiscent of the home he lost so long ago.

“Eren?”

He opened his eyes and looked at her direction. This time, she was facing away, and all he could see of her face through her hair was part of her cheek.

“Thank you, for looking out for me. I wish I could repay the favor in turn.”

He kept his eyes on her for a moment, then looked up at the window again.

For some reasons, it was Kruger and his father he thought of, then, of their memories, dreams, drives.

No holders were perfect humans. None Eren had come to know of he would say were great people. In this cruel world, Perhaps true goodness could not exist.

And yet, there was a drive to each of them that was their own. Something they cared for above the idealized notion of the ‘greater good’ his younger self would say he was fighting for.

Something fundamentally selfish. Something fundamentally dependent upon their individual will.

Something that made them ‘enemies of mankind’ of their own.

“I chose to do this because I wanted to,” he finally answered back, “there is nothing to repay me for.” He looked back at her. “Can I have an independent selfish request of my own, though?”

She looks back at him, her blue eyes filled with curiosity. He represses a dark thought by swallowing before speaking again.

Seven years.

“Live a long life on your own term.”

Her eyes widened and he caught a few of her passing expressions as she went through them. Surprised, flustered, annoyed.

...Sadness. Pity, perhaps?

Or something else. He was not sure what her face was conveying then, but her gaze was plunged into his, and he did not want to look away.

Then, she finally answered.

“If I have the opportunity. If there is a way, I’ll do it. On my own term.”

If there was a way. Right then, Eren knew of one. Right then, there was Zeke.

The military government may not trust Zeke or Yelena, for good reasons in Eren’s opinion. If Eren was thinking of humanity’s survival, he would agree that Historia was the safest choice to gain the power to shake the Earth. The safest choice for those within the walls, the one that would be the most likely to side with their survival.

But Eren did not think of humanity then. Eren thought of that girl who proclaimed her hatred of humans, and declared she was an enemy of humanity. Just so that a pathetic person like he used to feel, could live on, and stop wishing he had never been born on this Earth. For the sake of one person alone, she would turn against everyone else.

And then, as they stared at each others, and as he took all the details of her face, Eren knew who and what he would side for above anything else in this existence. As long as he had left to live.

#erehisu #eren x historia #erekuri #fanfic #snk manga #snk spoilers #ch 106

[maokokusei]

Hiya! I was wondering if you maybe could write a hc where the Organization XIII does like to tease their s/o or less?

You haven’t specified if you want a Xion insert too, so maybe I could write a hc like this for her in the future if you want?

Xemnas

─ He isn’t the type for teasings, and so, he will never think to reserve you such a treatment: don’t expect nothing like that from him.

─ If you tease him, he will never react to it like nothing just happened, continuing to do whatever he was doing.

Xigbar

─Oh god. And you’re even asking? He absolutely love to tease you;

─ Xigbar especially adore the faces you make when he do that: your frown, your eyes filled with madness…they drove him crazy, involving him to want to see more from you;

─ If you have a calm temper, he’ll eventually try to create an annoyed expression on your face. He won’t let you go so easily, so you should arm yourself with a lot of patience when you’re around him.

Xaldin

─ He doesn’t usually take the opportunity to tease you, and at first, he isn’t even that interested: he will not gain nothing from oing that, correct?

─ But then, after some time and conversation between you two, he unconsciously began to tease you in everything you say: it’s pretty funny, he thinks;

─ From now, sometimes some teasing will might escape from his mouth…but voluntary teasings. He loves the expression you make when he do that, they make him feel satisfied and amused: so why he should stop?

Vexen

─ He’s too focused on his experiments that he doesn’t even remotely think on that;

─ So, it might end up in you teasing him. Of course, he’ll just ignore you: but if you insist, the result will be not good (for him);

─ A little advice: the word “nerd” or “crazy scientist” are what he most hate. You should be careful when you use them, though.

Lexaeus

─ He’ll never take the opportunity to tease you. It is only a waste of time, for him;

─ If you decide to tease him, he’ll never react to it. Every try will be useful, keep that in mind from now.

Zexion

─ He’s not used to tease you every time, but yeah, sometimes he might let himself go…depends on what you’re saying, or doing (and the circumstances in which you are);

─ He isn’t an annoying type, so you’ll surely deal with it.

Saïx

─ “Teasing? What a useful waste of time.”

─ Don’t even expect from him a single teasing. He’s “too serious” for that kind of things, don’t you believe?

─ Other than he considers it a very stupidbehaviour.

Axel

─ He’s the master of teasing. He’ll do everything to see the flame in your eyes that was awful;

─ Jokes aside, seeing you in an angry expression only because of his actions makes him satisfied, almost remembering him how have a heart feels.

Demyx

─ This brat also loves to tease you. He will be a plague about that;

─ He especially loves to laugh at your replies, and the mad (and cute for him) faces you make in front of him makes him happy, and amused at the same time;

─ He frequently wants to see you like that, so…good luck!

Luxord

─ Let’s be serious. He’s just too old for such “childish jokes”, like he tends to call them;

─ It’s not like he’s that interested on teasing you. But if you tease him, he will be amused and will only answer with a grin, maybe with a mocking reply. But nothing more.

Marluxia

─ “Why should I waste my time on these kind of things?”

─ I mean, he’s already too worried on your relationship: are you even expecting him to tease you?

─ He’s not afraid he could hurt your feelings or so, but it’s he isn’t made for these things either.

Larxene

─ Seeing you in anger it’s one of the most funny and beautiful things she could ever see;

─ She’s a brat, and will make anything for mocking and annoying you: as we know, Larxene is the perfect girl for this work.

Roxas

─ He doesn’t especially love to tease you, or seeing you mad at him;

─ He prefers to eat a sea-salt ice cream in your company, instead of putting you against himself, even for a little joke;

─ …Okay, sometimes he might let himself go (when you’re alone): infact, he’ll doesn’t do that often.

#when i type he'll it seem i writed hell lmao #xemnas #xigbar #xaldin #vexen #lexaeus #zexion #saix #axel #demyx #luxord #marluxia #larxene #roxas #organization xiii #kingdom hearts re:chain of memories #kingdom hearts 358/2 days #kingdom hearts 2 #kingdom hearts dream drop distance #kh #videogame #square enix #imagine #headcanon #teasing

[carnistcervine]

I wasn't tagged, I stole this meme. lol

Author name: You can call me Carnist, or Yume, or Derby, or Joy(my actual name lol). I don't really care. Hell, even Slytherclaw works.

Fandoms I write for: Mostly ATLA, I occasionally write for DBH, and pokemon cross-overs. lol

Where I post: My Tumblr, and I've started posting more commonly on my AO3

Most popular one shot: Ursa et Sol

Most popular multi-chapter story: Probably 'Zuko's Invisible Friend'. Seriously, only two chapters so far and that story has blown up! lol

Favorite Story you wrote: It's a series of one-shots, but CATLA. The kitty!Gaang are just too precious.

Story you were nervous to post: 'C A I N' I really enjoyed writing it, but I always worry that I'll post something and everyone will hate me. ;w;

How you choose your titles: I usually try to pick something that has some kind of meaning to the story. I'm a sucker for layered meaning and symbolism. lol

Do you Outline? Yep. Well, usually. If it's a one-shot that I have sudden inspiration for, probably not. But for multi-chap and planned one-shots, I outline.

How many of your stories are Complete: Most of the posted ones.

In progress: 'Zuko's Invisible Friend', and 'Thoughts of Reason, Thoughts of Treason'.

Coming soon: AU where Raava possesses Zuko, my "The Storm” AU, a one-shot of the ChaosAvatar!Zuko AU(and there's also a multichap in the works, but I haven't fully outlined that one yet so shhh)

Upcoming story your the most excited to write: It's a tie between the one where Raava possess Zuko, and the one where Vaatu possess Zuko(and then eventually becomes his dad)

Do you accept prompts?: Like, if you want my take on an ATLA AU idea, sure.

Tagging: Uhh, you if you want to do this. lol

#It's a shame that I don't have an AU where Raava adopts Zuko #But the circumstances where she ends up caring for him are a lot less... voluntary #Also I'm pretty sure Zuko doesn't want a parasite for a mom #Not that he's entirely too thrilled about Vaatu adopting him either #STOP CALLING ME LARVA! I AM NOT A LARVA! #HUSH NOW LARVA. #GAHHHH #Poor Zuko

[junker-town]

What happens after you crash out of the Tour de France?

Photo by Jeff Pachoud - Pool/Getty Images

Recovering from a crash at the Tour de France is a lonely, agonizing process that only the world’s best can handle.

Jens Voigt remembers he was having a good day before the crash. He was out in the break, descending from the Col du Petit Saint Bernard, with a group that included Lance Armstrong, Bradley Wiggins, Vincenzo Nibali, Chris Froome, and his teammates Frank and Andy Schleck. He went to the back of the group to get some fresh water bottles for the boys. Then as he worked his way up to the front, he appeared to hit a divot in the road, causing him to lose his balance before landing on his face.

The next thing he remembers is being in a helicopter as it was lifting off.

The next thing he remembers is laying on a table, watching surgeons work on his hand and face.

Roughly six hours after his crash, at 10:30 p.m. in France, he was finally able to hold on to consciousness well enough to take stock of his condition. He had fractured his right cheekbone and sustained a concussion. His first thought was to call his wife and family in Germany, and tell them he was OK.

“On German television they announced, ‘The chances of Mr. Voigt to see the next morning are 50/50,’” Voigt says. “And my kids and my wife were watching.”

Voigt estimates he was involved in 75 crashes during his cycling career. He is regarded as one of the most durable riders in cycling history, having made a record 17 straight Tour de France starts, tied with George Hincapie and former teammate Stuart O’Grady.

But the 2009 crash on Stage 16 of the Tour de France nearly ended his career five years early. For six months he lost total voluntary control of his body.

“I’d go, ‘Honey, I’m completely knackered, I can’t keep my eyes open, my body shuts down, I need to lay down for half an hour.’ I never had that before,” Voigt says. “My body would just stop working, my brain would stop working, and my whole body would tell me that I need to sleep.”

Friends asked Voigt if he was going to stop riding, and he admits he felt like he had to slow down — if not for to care for himself, then to care for his family.

“Each child born slowed me down a little more. I started to break a little earlier,” Voigt says. “Because hey, I love the kids and I love the family. I want to be able to go back to them in one piece, and not in a wheelchair.”

He asked himself why he should keep going.

Photo by Lars Ronbog/FrontzoneSport via Getty Images

Jens Voigt being tended to after crashing on the descent from Col de Petit Saint-Bernard in 2009.

Stress and doubt can creep into riders as soon as a crash happens, and become magnified if they’re forced to abandon a race. The decision to stop is a tricky one that usually takes place as riders are scrambling to get up off the road, get on their bikes, and back into a race. Team doctors look for telltale signs of a rider trying to muscle through an injury that he shouldn’t.

“There’s a certain posture riders have when it’s a critical injury, a fracture versus just going down and being in pain and a little angry,” says Kevin Sprouse, the team doctor for EF Education First. “So there’s a lot that you can pick up in that first cue on seeing them: how they stand up, if they stand up, how they’re holding themselves.”

Doctors also quickly check for signs of head injury, starting with the simple questions of “How are you?” and “What happened?”

“If they can tell me with some detail what happened, that’s always a really good sign,” Sprouse says. “Riders will say, ‘I don’t know, I was just going along and all of a sudden I’m on the ground.’ That’s always more worrisome than saying, ‘We’re riding along, and there was a median, and this guy crossed over, and this guy was a little slow and his wheel crossed mine.’ When there’s a lot of detail to it, it’s a lot more reassuring.”

Sprouse says he’ll also look at balance, and the way a rider’s eyes move. Then overt signs, like bleeding — anything that might disqualify a rider on sight. Still, the stakes of the Tour de France does change the decision process. Whereas a rider might pull himself out of a lesser race with a broken bone, he might ride through it on the Tour.

“There are [injuries] that you might be able to ride through, but they’re going to cause worse damage,” Sprouse says. But if an injury is stable, “then it’s, ‘Well you want to give it a shot? Then let’s go.’”

When riders are forced to abandon — whether the decision is made immediately after a crash, or after several kilometers of gutting pain — it can be difficult to accept. Unlike in ball sports, there are no injury timeouts, no referees who might blow their whistle and bring the race to a halt. When a rider crashes out of the Tour, his rivals and teammates will simply blow right past the scene of the accident if they can.

Then when the stage ends, there’s little time for consolation. The team has to move on to the next start town, often leaving a rider all alone in a hospital, or at an airport to make his way back home.

Christian Vande Velde started 11 times at the Tour de France and crashed out twice. The isolation after being forced to abandon can wreak havoc on riders psychologically.

Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

Christian Vande Velde, riding for Garmin-Sharp, after crashing during Stage 7 of the 2013 Tour de France.

“There’s an immediate feeling of relief if you are injured and you stop, and then there’s also an immediate feeling of regret, of ‘Could I have kept on going?’” Vande Velde says. “You definitely have that feeling of isolation, and you feel like you’ve let your team down.”

That isolation is largely self-imposed. Sprouse says in the 10 years he has worked in cycling, he has never seen a rider ask to stay with the team after they’ve been forced out of a stage race. According to Vande Velde, injured riders worry about compounding their misery by bringing down their teammates.

“You don’t want to be a negative towards your team, whether it’s the way you look, or the way you feel, or your sorrows,” Vande Velde says. “Especially going back to the hotel, it’s not nice. You’re having to feel your feelings. And sometimes you have to go back to a race hotel where on average three or four teams will be there, and you just want to get out of there, you just want to get home as fast as you possibly can.”

Home is where the healing process truly begins. There, team doctors set up cyclists with specialists they can see on their own time, without having to worry about getting in the way of the team’s needs. After Tejay Van Garderen abandoned the 2019 Tour with a broken hand suffered during Stage 7, Sprouse kept in touch using Slack to make sure the rider was recuperating properly both mentally and physically.

Riders also work on declawing stress from their mind. Having a support system of friends and family aids the comedown from a hyper-competitive mindset, and helps riders come to grips with competing again.

Voigt’s decision to come back was particularly tough because of the severity of the crash. Talking it out was key.

“I felt it in too many athletes, when you stop too early there is a bitterness or disappointment,” Voigt says. “And I know myself, if that would happen to me I would become a miserable husband and a miserable father because I would be unhappy with myself.”

Voigt felt he had the right support.

“My wife, absolute legend as she is, she said, ‘Look, Jens, you can imagine what I want after this accident, but I know you, I can feel it still inside you, so I give you a carte blanche: whatever you decide, I’m behind you. It’s your decision, because you need to be happy with it.’”

There’s no good way to prepare for a crash. The circumstances unfold too quickly to react. Teams do prepare for a few contingencies — who’s going to give up their bike if the team leader breaks his, for example. But the best, and perhaps only, way to stay safe is to stifle any fear.

“When you do crash, you have that question in the back of your head sometimes — whether it’s in the peloton or going down a descent — where you don’t have that straight up confidence that you’ve had,” Vande Velde says. “That’s what the biggest problem with me was just not trusting the people around you. Because a lot of times crashes don’t have anything to do with you, you just put yourself in the wrong position at the wrong time.”

“It’s Days of Thunder, you close your eyes and you just go straight and hopefully everyone’s going to move” - Christian Vande Velde

Counterintuitively, that doubt is often strongest in veteran riders. Young riders may be more confident in their ability to recover physically, and less aware that their careers are finite and fragile. Older riders are more acutely aware of their mortality, and may be shakier in a tightly-packed peloton as a result. “When you get older,” Voigt says, “you lay on the tarmac and go, ‘What the hell, do I really need this anymore? Do I even want to do this anymore? Do I really want to go back on the bike?’”

When a jumpy rider touches another wheel, it can send dozens of riders tumbling to the ground. At that point, the best any rider can do is make peace with the situation.

“It’s Days of Thunder, you close your eyes and you just go straight and hopefully everyone’s going to move,” Vande Velde laughs. “But for the most part there’s not much you can do. You can try to avoid it and go left and go right, look for a soft spot. Let’s say you’re near the grass, try to go in the grass.”

But that’s if you’re lucky. Half the time, Vande Velde says, “You’re like Walter Payton going over the top into the end zone.”

Voigt remembers one of the few times he nearly succumbed to fear. He won the Critérium International stage race five times in his career, but there was one nervy day when he wasn’t sure he would survive a descent.

“Nobody braked. There was noise from the wind, the rain, the fog, and it was so freakin’ scary,” Voigt says. “Everything inside me was just screaming at me, ‘Brake, brake, stop and go slow.’ And there I was really so close to actually letting fear and panic take over.”

To put his mind in the right place, he gave it a logic exercise.

“I taught myself, just by the laws of physics, if 50 riders can pass the descent without crashing, then I can do it as well,” he says. “I tried to overcome my fear by logic, by telling myself, ‘It must work. One and one is two, and if 50 riders pass this, I can pass this, too. Just don’t brake.’”

After his 2009 crash, Voigt took 12 weeks off before competing again. He picked the Tour of Missouri as his first race because it seemed low stress. American roads are typically much wider than European roads, and the peloton of roughly 120 riders was significantly smaller than the nearly 200 that show up for the Tour every year. The climbs and descents were also less harrowing, which meant there wasn’t as much potential danger.

To Voigt, continuing was, again, a matter of logic. He felt that because he had such a long, relatively safe career before the accident, there’s no reason he should believe that it couldn’t continue. He also had his family to think about. He wanted to stay healthy for them, yes, but he also wanted to provide.

He references Frank Herbert’s novel Dune.

“There’s a little passage where a character goes, ‘I cannot be allowed to have fear because fear is a mind killer. Fear makes you get all nervous, fear makes you do mistakes,’” Voigt says. “You’re allowed to have respect for the descent and for the speed, but when fear and panic takes over control, you get stiff on the bike, you break too early, you break too late, you take the corner at a weird angle.

“Don’t have fear, have respect.”

Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Jens Voigt waving to fans before the start of that 2014 USA Pro Challenge, his last professional race.

Sprouse is busier at his job than he’d like to be. EF Education First has had a particularly bad run of injuries the last two years. In 2018, Lawson Craddock broke his scapula on the very first stage of the Tour de France, but bravely stayed in the peloton until Paris, and team leader Rigoberto Uran was forced to abandon with injuries he sustained on a brutal cobblestone stage. In 2019, the team lost Van Garderen, and Michael Woods rode with two broken ribs.

“I always say, ‘If I’m bored and you don’t see me on TV or in an interview, then usually things are going very well,’” Sprouse says. “So when friends back home, or family, send me a text message saying, ‘Oh, we saw you on TV,’ I’m like, ‘Ugh, that’s not good.’”

As you might expect, the Tour de France’s medical setup is robust, especially compared to smaller races. Every stage comes equipped with a cadre of emergency specialists, traumatologists, surgeons, and radiologists ready to assist team doctors in any way that they can. Near the finish there’s even a truck that can do X-rays and ultrasounds for riders as soon they cross the line.

“I tried to overcome my fear by logic, by telling myself, ‘It must work. One and one is two, and if 50 riders pass this, I can pass this, too.” - Jens Voigt

Everything is coordinated by head doctor Florence Pommerie, a badass emergency doctor who takes time off from her day job in the Paris suburbs to oversee the Tour. Team doctors always make the final diagnosis on their athletes, but Tour doctors provide an important assist.

“If there’s some scenario where I’m not in the car, they’re fantastic on the road,” Sprouse says. “I’m of the opinion that the more eyes on a problem, the better. So oftentimes in those scenarios if the race doctor is around, I’ll say, ‘Hey, what do you think? Here’s what I’m thinking.’ Ultimately the decision from a medical standpoint would be mine, but I’m never opposed to some input.”

The medical safeguards need to be so robust in part because the Tour is arguably the most dangerous race in the world. Not only are the roads themselves dastardly, but riders take more risks. The Tour is the most important race on the calendar, and so riders are less willing to yield than they are any other time of the year.

“In the first week of the Tour, it doesn’t really look that hard, but the peloton is packed with people and everybody is fighting to be at the front the whole time,” Vande Velde says. “It’s nerve wracking. And when those crashes happen you can’t really see because you’re packed in there so tight like a school of fish.”

“Nobody gives up a square inch on the road,” Voigt adds. He describes a scenario in another race when a rider might give him clearance. “The same situation the first day in the Tour de France, the same rider sits next to you, he’s going to say, ‘Jens, there’s only two solutions: either we’re both going to crash, or you’re going to brake because I ain’t braking.’”

Voigt remembers when he finally came to grips with his injury after his crash. He was laid up in a Berlin trauma clinic, reading a book on his bed, when he heard a baby cry outside of his window.

“And I looked down into the little garden we had behind the building, and I see this woman, early 20s, she’s holding a newborn baby, and she’s spoon feeding her partner in a wheelchair,” Voigt says. “The guy in the wheelchair, he was probably on a motorbike, he didn’t look like he’s ever going to recover fully. His body did not move at all.

“Moments like that, they help you recover because you go, ‘Stop bitching, stop whinging, you are still lucky.”

Voigt felt if he could compete, then he should. The team atmosphere and challenge of the Tour de France was a good reminder that life is too full of potential dangers to get hung up on just one.

“Out there, if you fall and half of the skin on your leg is gone, you just laugh and go, ‘Fuck this, I’m going to go back on my bike,’” Voigt says. “This crazy mix of emotions — relief, happiness, being proud, being afraid, being anxious, can’t wait for tomorrow, being anxious for tomorrow — this wild mix, you can hardly find it anywhere else, and that’s why the Tour de France is such a special event.

“These moments, you cannot really duplicate in normal life. You have to go there, there is no shortcut.”

The Tour de France, in short, is worth the risk.

[thaitung]

How Friendships Change in Adulthood

In the hierarchy of relationships, friendships are at the bottom. Romantic partners, parents, children—all these come first.

This is true in life, and in science, where relationship research tends to focus on couples and families. When Emily Langan, an associate professor of communication at Wheaton College goes to conferences for the International Association of Relationship Researchers, she says, “friendship is the smallest cluster there. Sometimes it’s a panel, if that.”

Friendships are unique relationships because unlike family relationships, we choose to enter into them. And unlike other voluntary bonds, like marriages and romantic relationships, they lack a formal structure. You wouldn’t go months without speaking to or seeing your significant other (hopefully), but you might go that long without contacting a friend.

Still, survey upon survey upon survey shows how important people’s friends are to their happiness. And though friendships tend to change as people age, there is some consistency in what people want from them.

“I’ve listened to someone as young as 14 and someone as old as 100 talk about their close friends, and [there are] three expectations of a close friend that I hear people describing and valuing across the entire life course,” says William Rawlins, the Stocker Professor of Interpersonal Communication at Ohio University. “Somebody to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy. These expectations remain the same, but the circumstances under which they’re accomplished change.”

The voluntary nature of friendship makes it subject to life’s whims in a way more formal relationships aren’t. In adulthood, as people grow up and go away, friendships are the relationships most likely to take a hit. You’re stuck with your family, and you’ll prioritize your spouse. But where once you could run over to Jonny’s house at a moment’s notice and see if he could come out to play, now you have to ask Jonny if he has a couple hours to get a drink in two weeks.

The beautiful, special thing about friendship, that friends are friends because they want to be, that they choose each other, is “a double agent,” Langan says, “because I can choose to get in, and I can choose to get out.”

Throughout life, from grade school to the retirement home, friendship continues to confer health benefits, both mental and physical. But as life accelerates, people’s priorities and responsibilities shift, and friendships are affected, for better, or often, sadly, for worse.

* * *

The saga of adult friendship starts off well enough. “I think young adulthood is the golden age for forming friendships,” Rawlins says. “Especially for people who have the privilege and the blessing of being able to go to college.”

During young adulthood, friendships become more complex and meaningful. In childhood, friends are mostly other kids who are fun to play with; in adolescence, there’s a lot more self-disclosure and support between friends, but adolescents are still discovering their identity, and learning what it means to be intimate. Their friendships help them do that.

But, “in adolescence, people have a really tractable self,” Rawlins says. “They’ll change.” How many band t-shirts from Hot Topic end up sadly crumpled at the bottom of dresser drawers because the owners’ friends said the band was lame? The world may never know. By young adulthood, people are usually a little more secure in themselves, more likely to seek out friends who share their values on the important things, and let the little things be.

To go along with their newly sophisticated approach to friendship, young adults also have time to devote to their friends. According to the Encyclopedia of Human Relationships, young adults often spend between 10 and 25 hours a week with friends, and the 2014 American Time Use Survey found that people between 20 and 24 years old spent the most time per day socializing on average of any age group.

College is an environment that facilitates this, with keggers and close quarters, but even young adults who don’t go to college are less likely to have some of the responsibilities that can take away from time with friends, like marriage, or caring for children or older parents.

Friendship networks are naturally denser, too, in youth, when most of the people you meet go to your school or live in your town. As people move for school, work, and family, networks spread out. Moving out of town for college gives some people their first taste of this distancing. In a longitudinal study that followed pairs of best friends over 19 years, a team led by Andrew Ledbetter, an associate professor of communication studies at Texas Christian University, found that participants had moved an average of 5.8 times during that period.

“I think that’s just kind of a part of life in the very mobile and high-level transportation- and communication-technology society that we have,” Ledbetter says. “We don’t think about how that’s damaging the social fabric of our lives.”

We aren’t obligated to our friends the way we are to our romantic partners, our jobs, and our families. We’ll be sad to go, but go we will. This is one of the inherent tensions of friendships, which Rawlins calls “the freedom to be independent and the freedom to be dependent.”

“Where are you situated?” Rawlins asks me, in the course of explaining this tension. Washington, D.C., I tell him.

“Where’d you go to college?”

“Chicago.”

“Okay, so you’re in Chicago, and you have close friends there. You say ‘Ah, I’ve got this great opportunity in Washington…’ and [your friend] goes ‘Julie, you gotta take that!’ [She’s] essentially saying ‘You’re free to go. Go there, do that, but if you need me I’ll be here for you.’”

I wish he wouldn’t use me as an example. It makes me sad.

* * *

As people enter middle age, they tend to have more demands on their time, many of them more pressing than friendship. After all, it’s easier to put off catching up with a friend than it is to skip your kid’s play or an important business trip. The ideal of people’s expectations for friendship is always in tension with the reality of their lives, Rawlins says.

“The real bittersweet aspect is young adulthood begins with all this time for friendship, and friendship just having this exuberant, profound importance for figuring out who you are and what’s next,” Rawlins says. “And you find at the end of young adulthood, now you don’t have time for the very people who helped you make all these decisions.”

The time is poured, largely, into jobs and families. Not everyone gets married or has kids, of course, but even those who stay single are likely to see their friendships affected by others’ couplings. “The largest drop-off in friends in the life course occurs when people get married,” Rawlins says. “And that’s kind of ironic, because at the [wedding], people invite both of their sets of friends, so it’s kind of this last wonderful and dramatic gathering of both people’s friends, but then it drops off.”

In a set of interviews he did in 1994 with middle-aged Americans about their friendships, Rawlins wrote that, “an almost tangible irony permeated these adults discussions of close or ‘real’ friendship.” They defined friendship as “being there” for each other, but reported that they rarely had time to spend with their most valued friends, whether because of circumstances, or through the age-old problem of good intentions and bad follow-through: “Friends who lived within striking distance of each other found that… scheduling opportunities to spend or share some time together was essential,” Rawlins writes. “Several mentioned, however, that these occasions often were talked about more than they were accomplished.”

As they move through life, people make and keep friends in different ways. Some are independent, they make friends wherever they go, and may have more friendly acquaintances than deep friendships. Others are discerning, meaning they have a few best friends they stay close with over the years, but the deep investment means that the loss of one of those friends would be devastating. The most flexible are the acquisitive—people who stay in touch with old friends, but continue to make new ones as they move through the world.

Rawlins says that any new friends people might make in middle age are likely to be grafted onto other kinds of relationships—as with co-workers, or parents of their children’s friends—because it’s easier for time-strapped adults to make friends when they already have an excuse to spend time together. As a result, the “making friends” skill can atrophy. “[In a study we did,] we asked people to tell us the story of the last person they became friends with, how they transitioned from acquaintance to friend,” Langan says. “It was interesting that people kind of struggled.”

* * *

But if you plot busyness across the life course, it makes a parabola.  The tasks that take up our time taper down in old age. Once people retire and their kids have grown up, there seems to be more time for the shared living kind of friendship again. People tend to reconnect with old friends they’ve lost touch with. And it seems more urgent to spend time with them—according to socioemotional selectivity theory, toward the end of life, people begin prioritizing experiences that will make them happiest in the moment, including spending time with close friends and family.

And some people do manage to stay friends for life, or at least for a sizable chunk of life. But what predicts who will last through the maelstrom of middle age and be there for the silver age of friendship?

Whether people hold onto their old friends or grow apart seems to come down to dedication and communication. In Ledbetter’s longitudinal study of best friends, the number of months that friends reported being close in 1983 predicted whether they were still close in 2002, suggesting that the more you’ve invested in a friendship already, the more likely you are to keep it going. Other research has found that people need to feel like they are getting as much out of the friendship as they are putting in, and that that equity can predict a friendship’s continued success.

Hanging out with a set of lifelong best friends can be annoying, because the years of inside jokes and references often make their communication unintelligible to outsiders. But this sort of shared language is part of what makes friendships last. In the longitudinal study, the researchers were also able to predict friends’ future closeness by how well they performed on a word-guessing game in 1983. (The game was similar to Taboo, in that one partner gave clues about a word without actually saying it, while the other guessed.)

“Such communication skill and mutual understanding may help friends successfully transition through life changes that threaten friendship stability,” the study reads. Friends don’t necessarily need to communicate often, or intricately, just similarly.

Of course, there are more ways than ever that people can communicate with friends, and media multiplexity theory suggests that the more platforms on which friends communicate—texting and emailing, sending each other funny Snapchats and links on Facebook, and seeing each other in person—the stronger their friendship is. “If we only have the Facebook tie, that’s probably a friendship that’s in greater jeopardy of not surviving into the future,” Ledbetter says.

Though you would think we would all know better by now than to draw a hard line between online relationships and “real” relationships, Langan says her students still use “real” to mean “in-person.”

There are four main levels of maintaining a relationship, and digital communication works better for some than for others. The first is just keeping a relationship alive at all, just to keep it in existence. Saying “Happy Birthday” on Facebook, faving a friend’s tweet—these are the life support machines of friendship. They keep it breathing, but mechanically.

Next is to keep a relationship at a stable level of closeness. “I think you can do that online too,” Langan says. “Because the platforms are broad enough in terms of being able to write a message, being able to send some support comments if necessary.” It’s sometimes possible to repair a relationship online, too, (another maintenance level) depending on how badly it was broken—getting back in touch with someone, or sending a heartfelt apology email.

“But then when you get to the next level, which is: Can I make it a satisfying relationship? That’s I think where the line starts to break down,” Langan says. “Because what happens often is people think of satisfying relationships as being more than an online presence.”

Social media makes it possible to maintain more friendships, but more shallowly. And it can also keep relationships on life support that would (and maybe should) otherwise have died out.

“The fact that Tommy, who I knew when I was five, is still on my Facebook feed is bizarre to me,” Langan says. “I don’t have any connection to Tommy’s current life, and going back 25 years ago, I wouldn’t. Tommy would be a memory to me. Like, I seriously have not seen Tommy in 35 years. Why would I care that Tommy’s son just got accepted to Notre Dame? Yay for him! He’s relatively a stranger to me. But in the current era of mediated relationships, those relationships never have to time out.”

By middle-age, people have likely accumulated many friends from different jobs, different cities, and different activities, who don’t know each other at all. These friendships fall into three categories: active, dormant, and commemorative. Friendships are active if you are in touch regularly, you could call on them for emotional support and it wouldn’t be weird, if you pretty much know what’s going on with their lives at this moment. A dormant friendship has history, maybe you haven’t talked in a while, but you still think of that person as a friend. You’d be happy to hear from them and if you were in their city, you’d definitely meet up.

A commemorative friend is not someone you expect to hear from, or see, maybe ever again. But they were important to you at an earlier time in your life, and you think of them fondly for that reason, and still consider them a friend.

Facebook makes things weird by keeping these friends continually in your peripheral vision. It violates what I’ll call the camp-friend rule of commemorative friendships: No matter how close you were with your best friend from summer camp, it is always awkward to try to stay in touch when school starts again. Because your camp self is not your school self, and it dilutes the magic of the memory a little to try to attempt a pale imitation at what you had.

The same goes for friends you only see online. If you never see your friends in person, you’re not really sharing experiences so much as just keeping each other updated on your separate lives. It becomes a relationship based on storytelling rather than shared living—not bad, just not the same.

* * *

“This is one thing I really want to tell you,” Rawlins says. “Friendships are always susceptible to circumstances. If you think of all the things we have to do—we have to work, we have to take care of our kids, or our parents—friends choose to do things for each other, so we can put them off. They fall through the cracks.”

After young adulthood, he says, the reasons that friends stop being friends are usually circumstantial—due to things outside the relationship itself. One of the findings from Langan’s “friendship rules” study was that “adults feel the need to be more polite in their friendships,” she says. “We don't feel like, in adulthood, we can demand very much of our friends. It's unfair, they've got other stuff going on. So we stop expecting as much, which to me is kind of a sad thing, that we walk away from that.” For the sake of being polite.

But the things that make friendship fragile also make it flexible. Rawlins’ interviewees tended to think of their friendships as continuous, even if they went through long periods where they were out of touch. This is a fairly sunny view—you wouldn’t assume you were still on good terms with your parents if you hadn’t heard from them in months. But the default assumption with friends is that you’re still friends.

“That is how friendships continue, because people are living up to each other’s expectations. And if we have relaxed expectations for each other, or we’ve even suspended expectations, there’s a sense in which we realize that,” Rawlins says. “A summer when you’re 10, three months is one-thirtieth of your life. When you’re 30, what is it? It feels like the blink of an eye.”

Perhaps friends are more willing to forgive long lapses in communication because they’re feeling life’s velocity acutely too. It’s sad, sure, that we stop relying on our friends as much when we grow up, but it allows for a different kind of relationship, based on a mutual understanding of each other’s human limitations. It’s not ideal, but it’s real, as Rawlins might say. Friendship is a relationship with no strings attached except the ones you choose to tie, one that’s just about being there, as best as you can.

- Julie Beck (The Atlantic)

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