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qveerthe0ry · 3 months

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Lions Ain't the Kind - Part One

Summary: Frankie hasn't dated in years, but now he knows what he's looking for. He's just not so good at asking for what he wants, and you're willing to help him work on it. Word Count: 8,156 Pairing: Frankie Morales x NB/Gender-fluid! AFAB! Reader Rating: 18+ Explicit Warnings: 18+ mdni, subby!Frankie, soft dom! reader, talks about gender non-conformity, sickening fluff, Frankie is way too cute and sweet for his own good, kissing, making out, handjob (m receiving), anal fingering (m receiving), dirty talk, Frankie has a praise kink, no use of y/n, no physical descriptions of reader Beta: @perotovar (my angel ilysm) A/N: Sorry for talking about this for a month straight without posting it lol! The title is from the song (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear by Elvis Presley which I admittedly haven't listened to but I saw the lyrics and knew immediately it was my Frankie. I hope you enjoy, and I'm always open to criticism and thoughts and thots!

Frankie hasn’t dated in years. He hasn’t really had the time, between his first child being born and navigating co-parenting with his ex, along with healing some very deep trauma and getting and staying clean.

It just hasn’t been on his mind, if he’s honest. He’s been busy finding himself, as Pope calls it. And he’s not wrong. It’s taken a long while for him to be comfortable in his own skin, to come to terms with the things he’s done and the baggage he can now store in an overhead bin, rather than carry it around with him at all times.

But now, he’s ready. He knows himself, and as a result, he knows what he’s looking for.

Someone kind-hearted and down to earth. Someone who’s independent and established, but not just looking for a hookup. Someone with a sweet smile and a desire for enjoying the little things in life.

Someone like you.

He’d swiped right and left dozens of times on men and women alike, but as soon as he saw your profile on whatever dating app he’d downloaded, he was hooked.

You were gorgeous. He felt the heat from your smile through his phone screen, so happy and genuine and sweet.

You were funny, the answers to those weird icebreaker questions full of witty remarks.

You were smart, clearly, from your shoutout to your alma matter and the ‘boring’ job you mentioned in your profile.

He honestly figured he had no chance at all. His face is only getting more wrinkly, and his hair more gray, and he’s never been the sharpest or funniest guy in the room.

So when he swiped left and you matched, he was stunned. He was even more shocked when you messaged him before he could even think of what to say to you.

Hi cutie 🥰

Despite the fact that he was home alone on his couch, he had the sudden urge to look behind him, as if you’d be talking to someone else. The back of his neck got so warm, and your boldness only made him more into you.

So he messaged you back

Hi :) how are you?

I’m surprised we matched, honestly. Pleasantly surprised 😊

Same here :) Why the surprise though? I’m sure you match with everyone

Not at all, it’s hard to find people whose type I am on here. I usually use the queer dating apps but I opened this one out of boredom. What are the chances?

What are the chances, indeed, Frankie thinks, as he gives your profile another look over. Frankie doesn’t understand how you aren’t everyone’s type. He feels a little bit like he’s talking to a celebrity, looking at your pictures and just a snippet of who you are on this reductive dating app.

I like the odds :)

——

As your conversation continues normally over the next few days, Frankie learns a lot about you. He also learns a lot about himself.

It’s been so long since he’s played the field, so to speak, that he’s rusty as all hell and a bit awkward. He’s afraid to flirt too much, every message deleted and re-written at the risk of sounding too cheesy or too forward or too much.

You aren’t afraid to flirt. You send ‘good morning, handsome’ and ‘sweet dreams, pretty boy’ texts every day and night. You tell him your day would be better if you could cuddle someone, you tell him when you’re taking a relaxing bath that you wished he were there to join you.

And to say that Frankie likes it is a massive fucking understatement.

He adores it, he thinks about you constantly, all day long while he works without access to his phone, all evening long while he waits on your replies, all night long, when you’ve bid each other goodnight out of nothing but courtesy for each other’s sleep schedules.

You lead him along like a timid puppy on a leash, showing him new things with patience and care and it drives him insane. He wants to meet up with you so bad, or even just call you on the phone to hear your voice. He thinks about it, late at night, if it’s higher or lower in register, if it’s smooth or raspy. He wants to learn everything about you.

That being said, he’s not sure if he’s ever met someone who’s ‘non-binary/gender-fluid’ before. He doesn’t get out much, he hardly talks to anyone who he hasn’t known for years.

So he googles. It doesn’t really help. He understands what it means, but he doesn’t know what it means to you. He wants to ask you a million questions, but is afraid to bring up even one, and ruin the moment, or sound like an idiot.

You’re so kind though. So he bites the bullet.

Can I ask you a question?

Your response comes almost immediately, now that it’s evening time, both finished with dinner— his takeout vs. your leftover spaghetti.

Of course, pretty boy ❤️

He still flushes deep when you call him that, heat spreading all throughout his face and neck and chest.

How did you know you were non-binary/ gender-fluid?

He frets over the text a bunch before he sends it, making sure he worded it the same way you did in your profile. His heart pounds as he waits for your response.

I’ve always just kind of known I didn’t feel like a man or a woman. I used to think everyone felt somewhere in between, and it was just normal to not feel like I checked either box, but then I realized no one else around me felt the way I did. And then I learned all the terms and whatnot, later on, and knew that’s what I am. Just kinda in between, neither and both, sometimes one and sometimes the other. If that makes sense?

His smile splits his cheeks as he reads your in-depth response, eating up every bit of information you’re willing to give him.

That makes perfect sense to me. Thank you for sharing :)

It doesn’t scare you off?

Frankie scoffs, as if anything about you could scare him off. At this point, you could show up on his doorstep with a dead body in a bag, and he’d throw it in his trunk, dispose of it, and then ask if he could maybe kiss you.

Not at all. Nothing about you scares me :)

——

It’s a few more days before Frankie works up the courage to ask for your phone number. You tell him you were wondering when he was going to finally ask for it. It makes him itchy to think about you waiting for him to ask, making him be the one to do it. In a good way. In a way that kind of makes him stiffen up in his briefs if he thinks about it for too long.

But now, as he settles in from a long day at work, his grin splits his face from ear to ear as he reads your text.

Can I take you out tomorrow night?

He likes it… a lot. He feels so fucking new to all this, like a fumbling newborn calf taking its first steps, and how forward you are eases him so thoroughly.

I’d love that :)

Meet me here at 5 for dinner. Casual dress, but I’m sure you’ll be handsome in anything 😘

It’s the longest 22 hours of his life, and it’s the shortest, all at the same time. Texting you, making funny jokes like his bones aren’t about to creep right out from under his skin with all the nerves buzzing his body. Thinking about you, dreaming about you, one right after the other. When he wakes in the morning it’s like he didn’t get a wink of sleep, his anxiety drumming up a million different scenarios of how it could go right and wrong.

Calling Santi mid-morning on a Saturday when he knows he’s spending time with his family, because if he doesn’t talk to someone about this he may just float off into the ether.

“I’m so fucking nervous, Pope, what do I do? How do I act? Can you just stake out at the bar and feed me lines through an earpiece?”

“Pendejo, fucking— grow a pair man. You’re cute and funny, you’ve got this.”

Reading your texts with pupils shaped like hearts:

I can’t wait to see you tonight, cutie ❤️

and

I finally settled on an outfit

and

Is it weird that I’m not even nervous? I’m just excited to finally meet you

It is weird, Frankie thinks, but doesn’t dare tell you. It’s weird how he can’t even eat the plain toast he made for lunch without feeling bile rise in the back of his throat, and you’re just excited. It’s weird how he’s never, ever felt so gone over someone, and you haven’t even met yet.

It’s not weird, it’s sweet :) I’m excited too <3

It’s not a lie, but he’s omitting the truth a bit. He’s excited but he’s nervous, picking meticulously through his closet to find something casual but not too casual, something he likes the look of himself in, something he thinks you’ll like the look of.

It only gets worse as he stares at google maps. The restaurant is 2.6 miles away, 11 minutes from his house. It’s 4:30, and he wants to leave already, but thinks maybe it’s better to deal with the anxiety in the comfort of his home rather than the parking lot, in case you’re there early too, and you can see how much of a fucking wreck he is.

He watches the minutes tick up in the corner of his phone screen. At 4:36, he gets up, fusses in the mirror one last time, and leaves.

When he parks in the lot in front of the bar & grill, you’ve already texted him.

I’m here a little early, got all green lights. Saved us a table near the back. See you soon!

It’s 4:52.

He takes a deep breath through his nose, closes his eyes as he lets it out gently, counting just like his therapist taught him. And again. And one more time, and finally that anxious tingling in his fingertips is muted a bit and his heart rate is only slightly above normal.

4:54.

He pulls the key from the ignition, gets out of the car, and makes his way to the door.

He finds you instantly.

You’re looking at him, and you’re smiling, and getting up from your chair as he approaches you. He barely even hears you greet him with all his blood rushing in his ears.

“Hi, Frankie,” you say, and your arms stretch out to invite him in for a hug.

He melts into your arms, his strained “hi” muffled in the crook of your neck. You squeeze him tight to you, and he hears you chuckle next to his ear.

“Knew you’d be even cuter in person.”

He huffs out a laugh as you release him, and the tips of his ears burn. But you’re smiling so sweetly at him that it eases his nervous bones.

“You look— can I call you handsome?”

Fuck, he thinks, so fucking awkward.

But your grin gets even wider.

“Only if you mean it.”

“I do,” he sighs, “like straight out of the cologne ads I’d rip out of my older sister’s magazines.”

He holds his breath as you react, the flutter of your eyelashes and the quivering of your lips and your laugh, bubbly and bright and soothing.

And he isn’t lying, not even a little. You’re rugged but soft, romantic and alluring, and he can’t take his eyes off you.

Even as you take your seats across from each other, and the waiter comes to take your drink orders, and as your gorgeous eyes flit across the pages of the menu. He can’t stop looking, watching your mouth curve into a smile as you talk about your week and ask him about his.

It’s pathetic, really, when the waiter asks if you’re ready to order, and you ask if he knows what he wants, because he hasn’t taken a single glance at the menu himself. He just hopes to god the dim lighting of the bar hides his flushed face and tells you to order first while he skims the menu.

He ends up ordering exactly what you got, and floundering when your hand finds his on the tabletop. He watches your fingers trace his own from his nails to his knuckles, and flips his palm up for you to rest your hand in his.

“I’m glad you came out with me tonight,” you tell him.

His eyes flicker up from your joined hands to your smiling face, and his nerves completely melt away from the heat of your gaze.

“Thank you for asking me,” he says.

“Would you have asked me, if I hadn’t asked you?”

He bites the inside of his cheek, and there’s a teasing glint in your eyes.

“Eventually,” he nods, “I mean… probably.”

Your eyebrows turn up in question, and he realizes how that sounds, jumping to backtrack.

“Not like that! I just mean— You know… You’re uh… well, I feel like you’re way out of my league. And so maybe I’m a little… intimidated.”

You smile, then, and sigh, and squeeze his hand as you call him a sweet boy. It makes the room feel like it’s a hundred degrees warmer, like Frankie’s clothes are suddenly two sizes too small.

“You aren’t so good at asking for what you want, are you?”

He laughs then, and shakes his head.

“Not really, no.”

“We’ll have to work on that, then.”

He clears his throat, and tugs at his collar with his free hand, breaking his gaze away from your face as you chuckle. He looks to find a waiter, or maybe an HVAC guy that could crank the AC to sub-zero temps for the remainder of the date.

No luck.

The rest of the date goes well. Surprisingly well. Frankie was worried that he’d be so out of practice that he’d freeze up, or say something stupid, or do something stupid, like knock over a drink or get food stuck in his teeth.

But you’re just so easy to talk to, to click with. Of course, you’re the one who facilitates the conversation, asking him about his favorites— movies, TV shows, music, time of year.

But he likes to think that he keeps the ball rolling well enough, is aware enough to remember to ask for some of your favorites— holiday, food, cocktails.

By the time the check comes, he hardly realizes you’ve both had empty plates in front of you for a while, talking and laughing through your meals like you’re just catching up with an old friend.

He protests when you grab the check, because of course he does. You’ve given him this incredible night, your comfortable company, your sweet smiles, and he feels like his offerings pale in comparison.

“I asked you out, Francisco,” you tease him, having just learned his full name a mere 20 minutes ago.

And he can’t really protest anymore, what with the shiver that’s tingling his spine and the goosebumps he tries to hide by gripping the chair underneath him. So he lets you pay, and thanks the waiter, and feels a rush of sadness when they come back with the check to sign. He really doesn’t want this evening to end.

The apprehension falls second to the sensation of your hand on the small of his back, leading him out to the parking lot.

“Where’s your car? I’ll walk you there,” you say, your thumb pressing a soothing circle into the base of his spine.

So he walks to his truck, a little self-conscious about the out-of-dateness of it, and how he didn’t think to run it through a car wash before this. But mostly he’s just nervous about ending this date on a good note.

“This is me,” he says, barely above a whisper, stopping at his driver’s side door.

You smile at him when he turns to you.

“Thanks again for coming out with me. I really did have a great time.”

This makes him smile through the unease, even as your hand drops from the small of his back.

“I did too. Would you uh… wanna hang out again soon?”

Your face lights up, and Frankie wants to capture it in a bottle and take it home with him. Keep it at his bedside to use as a nightlight.

“Are you asking me on a date?”

He chuckles and looks down to his feet like maybe it’ll redirect the flush in his face. You grab his hand, hanging by his side, and luckily you don’t make him speak again because he doesn’t know if he’s even able.

“I’d love to. Really.”

He smiles when he looks back up at you, only briefly, because you drop his hand and take a half step back.

“Call me about it.”

“Wait!”

Your brow arches at him, because you weren’t really going anywhere, but Frankie’s mind is running a thousand miles a second. He thinks back to all the times you’ve goaded him into asking for what he wants, so far, and how it hasn’t bit him in the rear yet.

“Can we— I… Can I kiss you goodnight?”

Your smile softens, and you take that little half-step back closer to him, and he feels all the tension leak from his shoulders.

“Yes, you can. Thank you for asking.”

He huffs, and smiles at you, and you’re reaching out to cup his jaw and grab his hip, and Frankie closes his eyes far too early, but it’s okay, because he feels your body heat and then your lips.

He can’t hold back the hum that rumbles from deep in his chest, or the way that he goes a little boneless in your grasp. He finds your forearm and squeezes it, and your bicep too, anything to ground himself as your lips part and your tongue teases the seam of his lips.

But then you’re pulling back, and it’s over far too quickly, and Frankie is also acutely aware of how tight his jeans feel. His face feels like it could melt right off of his skull.

“Call me soon, Pretty Boy.”

He nods, speechless, and watches you disappear between the cars of the parking lot. On his way home, he’s already fretting over whether or not he should text you tonight, and what kind of date he should plan, and if his breath was okay when you let him kiss you.

——

Frankie is perfect.

You’re still not sure how you found this diamond in the rough that is Tinder. You thank every god you know the name of that you got bored and opened the app on auto-pilot that night.

First of all, he’s so cute. He’s handsome in such a boyish way, with his dimples and unruly curls and patchy beard.

But he’s also so kind, the way he talks to you like it’s a privilege, the way he asks careful and curious questions about you like he truly wants to know the parts of you that are deeper than what’s on the surface.

Every simple text from him makes you smile, the way he always tries to make you laugh or cheer you up when you’re overwhelmed with the demands of life, as you often are.

And meeting him in person solidified everything you thought about him.

He seems like the textbook definition of a golden retriever boyfriend, if you ever get to call him that much. You hope you do.

In fact, it seems like it’s moving quite quickly in that direction when Frankie asks if you’d be down for a movie night. Some blockbuster he missed in theaters is finally streaming, and he thinks you’ll like it.

You don’t tell him that you didn’t miss it in theaters, or that you thought it was just okay.

You do tell him you’d be down to watch it, only if he came to your place, where the walls are thin and your surrounding neighbors all know you and watch out for you. Just in case he’s really good at acting like a sweet, safe guy.

You find yourself giddy as the weekend approaches, daydreaming at work about how the night will turn out. You tell him to come in comfy clothes, because you’ll be damned if you wear jeans in your own home, even for this sweet man. He doesn’t seem to mind one bit, that’s my favorite kind of outfit :) is his cute response.

You get everything ready the day of; your coziest blankets hang off the arms of your sofa, your fridge is stocked with fresh fruits and your pantry with candy and microwave popcorn and chips (I’ll eat whatever you get :) his answer to your questioning of his favorite movie snacks, of course.)

And then you sit around and wait, excited nerves coaxing your body to straighten things up that have been straightened up a million times already. When Frankie texts you his ETA, you park yourself on the couch by the door and stare at it until there’s a knock on it.

You may count to ten before you get up to open it, just to hide how eager you’ve been to see him again.

Your throat does get a little dry when you answer it to find him in a dark blue t-shirt that hugs his arms and light gray joggers that hug… Other things.

“Hi handsome,” you smile, pushing down all the nerves and the less-than-PG thoughts.

“Hi. I um… I brought these. I noticed you ordered them on our uh– well, at the restaurant, and I didn’t want to show up empty handed.”

You watch a flush break out on his face, and his neck, and wonder how far under his collar it actually spreads.

He’s holding up a six pack of your favorite beers, and he’s smiling so shyly, and you have to crowd in closer to him to press a kiss to his heated cheek.

“That’s so thoughtful, thank you.”

He giggles— giggles, Jesus Christ— and you take them from his hand to let him come through the door.

You set the beers in your fridge to let them chill as he kicks off his shoes. You watch him from the kitchen as he takes in your place with his pretty brown eyes.

“It’s really cozy in here,” he tells you as he fiddles with his own hands.

“Snuggle up, get comfy, I’ll bring us some snacks.”

He nods, so obedient, and hovers by the couch before settling on the seat in the middle.

Sly move, you think, and you can’t hide your stupid grin as you gather some snacks.

When you turn off all but one lamp and deposit the junk food on the coffee table, you notice he’s inched himself closer to the arm of the couch, like he was second-guessing himself. That just won’t do, you think, as you settle in right next to him, so close that the length of your body is pressed against his.

He doesn’t look at you, just stares at the Roku City scrolling across your flat screen. For a second you think he might be uncomfortable, but the way his breathing is uneven clues you in on his nerves.

You reach over him to grab the blanket in the arm of the couch, and you feel his muscles tense up when you press against him.

“Frankie?”

“Huh? Sorry, yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head and sighs, heavy and long, before looking at you.

“I’m so nervous.”

He smiles in spite of it, lopsided, dimples so cute that your lips quiver with the urge to kiss them.

You smile back, and drape the blanket over both of you, patting his leg through it.

“Nothing to be nervous about, Francisco.”

It gets a laugh out of him, a huff through his nose, and his shoulders lower the tiniest bit. You slowly reach up to cradle his jaw in your palm, careful not to spook this little baby deer of a man, but his face leans into your touch.

“If it helps, I think it’s really sweet that you’re nervous.”

“Thank you… I think?”

You laugh at him, and watch as your reaction makes his eyes brighten. You want to kiss him. You want to smooch the absolute daylights out of him, but there’s still 3 hours of a pretentious movie to watch, and there will be plenty of time, if he’s amenable.

So you just pinch his cheek before you let go, and try not to look so smug at the heat that consumes his face as you get the movie up and running.

Fifteen or so minutes into the film, Frankie has relaxed into the couch, though he’s stock-still beside you with his arms glued to his own sides. You just want to cuddle, at least. You’ve been thinking about it for weeks— getting his warm, solid but soft body against your own.

You’re certain he won’t be the one to initiate it, but that’s all fine and dandy. You rearrange yourself a bit, and sling an arm over his shoulders. He looks away from the movie towards you, and you give him a smile that must be comforting.

He sinks lower on the couch, and leans against you, his messy curls pressed against your shoulder while his arm drapes over your lap. You think you hear his satisfied hum under the dialogue of the characters, and you let your head rest against his.

This is nice. Frankie’s so warm against you, the most comforting weight all lax against your side. Your hand creeps up from his shoulder to his head, and his hair is so silky when you finally work up the gall to run your fingers through it.

You can feel the way it affects him when he shivers and presses even closer into you. You watch the movie like that for a while, snacks untouched, fingertips stroking his scalp as his soft curls slip through your digits. Every once in a while his head tilts to look up at you, piercing brown, and each time you smile back down and ruffle his hair.

It’s just after the first big conflict of the film when you feel Frankie shift against you. His arm moves in your lap, and you watch his thick fingers grab your thigh over the blanket.

It shocks you how such a simple gesture makes your temperature rise. You hum and let your nails scratch more firmly against his head. You can hear him gasp, and feel him move impossibly closer, like he’s trying to fuse the two of you together. You glance down at him, past the curls you’ve lost yourself in, and his eyes are closed. Further, the curve of his nose and pout of his lips, his chest that’s heaving with his excited breaths, you notice a suspicious tent in the blanket, and you don’t want to assume, but the context clues are all there.

Frankie is hard.

You can’t blame him. You’ve been aroused since you pressed his body against yours, a slow simmering underneath the surface that’s made you feel so comfortably warm and relaxed.

You shift, and you swear you hear a barely-there whine leave his lips. You move just enough so you can press your free hand to his chest. Under your palm, you can feel his heart beating, a pace that’s concerningly higher than appropriate for sitting and watching dialogue in a movie.

His head turns toward you, his hair slipping through the grasp of your knuckles. He looks up at you with those puppy eyes and his pupils are so dilated that it makes you take a deep breath. He turns his body toward you next and there it is the hard line of his cock pressed against the outside of your thigh. You see him shudder at the friction, watch his eyes grow droopy as they flicker down to glance at your lips.

“Can I kiss you again?”

And he asks so sweetly, voice a little hoarse from the silence, that you couldn’t dream of denying him.

“Yes, Frankie.”

His lips tremble until they meet yours, so soft and chaste, a stark contrast to his scruffy beard and mustache. His breath hitches; you can hear it and feel it. His chest shudders under your palm and pushes air out to gust against your cheeks. You feel his prick, too, twitching against your thigh as your tongue peeks out to tease his pouty bottom lip.

He pulls back so much quicker than you want him to, but it’s also such a reward to look at him this close. His lips shiny, his cheeks flushed, his irises completely usurped by his pupils. His mouth hangs open and you can’t help yourself as you slide your hand from his chest to his jaw and pull him into you once again.

A surprised little noise works its way out of his throat, and his hips jerk forward, and then he’s groaning as his cock throbs against the outside of your thigh. The noise makes that feeling in your gut draw deeper, lower, and you make one of your own in response.

His hand rests dutifully still on your thigh, but you can feel his fingers twitching as your taste buds rub against his– a friction that has no right to be as delicious as it is. You want him to feel you up, to touch you all over, to give in to the desire that’s blatantly pressed against you. You want to hear these noises he seems to be holding back, the whimpers that just barely make it past his vocal chords before he cuts them off.

You pull away this time. Pride swells in your chest as you look at what you’ve already done to him. His curls are even messier now that you’ve run your fingers through them over and over. His eyes are all glassy when he looks at you, pouty lips slick and red.

He sits so still, aside from his heaving breaths, like he’s waiting for your command.

“Tell me what you want, Frankie.”

His eyes widen and christ, if they get any wider they’re going to suck you in like a supermassive black hole.

“I– I’m okay, I like this.”

You raise an eyebrow at him. He nods, trying to convince you, as he not-so-subtly pulls his erection free from its trap between his body and your thigh. His eyes cast downward, but you swiftly grab his chin in your hands to bring them back to you.

“Francisco,” you mumble, “ask for what you want.”

He gasps and bites his plush bottom lip, hard enough that there’s little indents when he opens his mouth. He shuts it again, and squirms against you, and finally opens it once more.

“I want you to touch me.”

His request comes out hardly above a whisper, all broken and breathy, and his gaze settles somewhere behind you.

“Is that all?”

He nods quickly, eyes snapping back to you.

“I swear– I just wanna feel your hands on me.”

Your smile widens as his face gets so serious, eyebrows knitting together.

“That’s good, that’s really good,” you mumble.

The shudder that visibly rolls through him is like a shockwave, sending every one of your nerve endings on-edge. You huff, an amazed little breath at this fucking guy in front of you, so responsive and timid and utterly fuckable.

“You like that? Like being good for me?”

He nods again, more apprehensive this time, but he can’t hold back his whine when his hips press against you. The possibilities of all the things you could do to this man stretch far and wide; it’s entirely overwhelming.

“Sweet boy,” you whisper, because he is, “c’mere.”

You pull the blanket off of you both, and Frankie reaches down to adjust himself so it isn’t so obvious, like you haven’t felt his cock twitching against you this entire time. It’s so endearing you think you could cry, but you’re much too turned on for sentiment at the moment. Instead, you guide him to straddle you, hands on his slender hips until his thighs cage your own.

For a moment you just watch as he sits patiently, obediently, waiting for your next words like his cock isn’t leaking a pretty little damp patch into his sweatpants. His chest heaves with every breath, and his tongue licks and bites at his swollen lips, and his eyes stay trained on your mouth in anticipation.

“So pretty,” you whisper.

His long eyelashes flutter at your compliment, and he turns his head to try and hide his reaction, but it doesn’t mask the way his prick twitches under gray fabric. Your hands find his waistband and tease the edge and you delight in the way he shivers.

You need to feel more, so you press your hands under his shirt and hum at what you find. A soft tummy and smooth skin that makes way for a small trail of wiry hairs. It’s all revealed to you a moment later when you hike his shirt higher, reach for pecs that are more solid than you imagined, and the smallest nipples you think you’ve ever had your hands on.

You look back up to his face for permission with a quirked brow, and he nods eagerly, grabbing the back of his collar to shed the material and bare himself and it’s so lovely. There’s so much tan skin, hardly any of it is obstructed by hair, just the errant freckle here or there. And you can’t help it, you have to lean forward and take one of his nipples into your mouth.

He gasps your name, but one of his hands finds the back of your head to keep you in place. You hum around the little nub, so small you have trouble getting your teeth to bite down on it, but you do and then he groans, his hips jerking in your hold on them.

“Is this how you wanted me to touch you?”

You lean your head back to look him in the eyes, to watch a pained expression flit over his face as he tries to come up with an answer he thinks you’ll like.

“I like this too,” he nods, “but I, um… fuck–”

He cuts himself off to hide his face in his hands. He is so cute and so sexy at the same time, it’s making your brain go haywire.

“Tell me, Frankie. Be good for me, Pretty Boy.”

He shifts on top of you as he looks up at your ceiling. You soothe your hands up and down his flanks and wait patiently for him to find the words.

He drops his hand from his face, fists clenching down by his sides, but he finally looks down at you and smiles, shy and sweet, just a hint of that dimple you adore rearing its head.

“Touch my cock? You got me so hard.”

You smile bright at his request, and nod, and press a kiss to his sternum.

“Anything you want,” you mumble, “just gotta ask. Just like that.”

He looks pretty proud of himself. There’s a twinkle in his eyes as you look up at him, and you take a playful bite of his skin and savor the gasp it coaxes out of him.

“Let’s get these off, yeah?”

Your fingers sneak under his waistband and his skin is so hot under there, searing. You only have a few moments to bask in the warmth before he stands up to remove his pants and briefs in one bashful move.

Jesus.

He’s so gorgeous, bare for you, vulnerable, excited. His foreskin is all pulled back, revealing a delicious looking string of pre-cum from his slit. You desperately want to lean forward and taste— but he didn’t ask for that, and you won’t give it to him unless he does.

Stunned a bit silent, you pat your lap, urging him to settle back over it. Much to your delight, he does, quick and obedient. An approving hum bubbles up out of your chest, and he preens as he sits on your thighs.

There’s a very wicked feeling in you as you stare at him, completely naked, while you haven’t shed a single layer of clothing. Control, and trust, and power. It’s overwhelming in a way that makes your lungs feel too inflated for your rib cage, to know you could take advantage of it, and to know you never ever would.

“Good boy,” you whisper, finally, testing those waters.

Frankie’s dick twitches between you two, and you huff and smile and wonder how something so perfect and precious has literally landed right in your lap.

He’s been more than good, and so with one hand you grab his hip to steady him, and the other takes his cock as gentle as ever. A sharp inhale inflates his chest as you stroke the smooth skin, a teasing, feather-light touch that makes his legs tense up in your lap. You watch him disappear and reappear through the loose circle of your hand, watch another clear droplet bead from his slit when you squeeze him tighter.

“Does this feel good?”

He’s watching your hand work when you look back up to his face. He nods, a jerky movement that seems to shake his entire body, and he’s so on-edge. You feel it in the way he shifts his weight on top of you.

“Words, Frankie,” you urge, a soft smile on your face.

“So good.”

You hum, taking in the way his eyes flutter open and closed, the way his adam’s apple pokes out when he leans his head back.

You reward him by speeding up your strokes. You squeeze his hip with your free hand, kneading at the soft flesh there, while you lean forward to press kisses into his virtually hairless chest. His skin is so hot it feels like it could burn you, flushed such a pretty color, just like you knew it would be.

He whines when you gather up more pre cum with your thumb and gently massage it into his frenulum. You look up to find him staring down at you with glassy eyes, bottom lip tucked tight between his teeth.

“Can we kiss more?”

His voice is breathy, and you nod, and a fresh wave of arousal flushed through your system when his lips eagerly meet yours.

It’s sloppier, this time. Noisier, too, as you tighten your grip on his cock and begin to properly work your hand up and down his length. You steal his breath and his noises straight from his lungs, feel every shudder he pushes out when you twist your wrist just right or squeeze tighter.

His hips start to meet your thrusts, rutting into your hand, such a desperate little thing on top of you, all for you. You want to encourage him to take his pleasure from you, and so you slip your hand back from his waist, find the perfectly pert globe of his ass with your palm.

“Haa— shit.”

His words muffle into your kiss as his hips stutter in rhythm and you lean forward to smirk into the bald patch of his beard.

“Yeah?”

A gasp wrecks through his heaving chest as he nods.

“Please, fuck— please.”

You hum into his jaw and squeeze his cock and his ass respectively.

“Please what, Pretty Boy?”

He leans back. You watch him squeeze his eyes shut and shake his head from left to right.

“Tell me what you want, Frankie. Know you can.”

A big gulp of air, and then he opens his eyes to look at you, then blinks them shut again as his head lolls back in his shoulders.

“Touch me there. I— I can’t—”

“Shhh,” you take mercy on him, bringing your hand up from his backside to cradle his jaw in your palm. He tilts his head into your touch and opens his eyes.

“I got you, sweet boy,” you remind him.

He nods in understanding, shifting to kiss the heel of your palm. You let him rest his lips there as he catches his breath, feel them quivering every other upstroke of your hand on his prick.

But as he makes to move, you hold his jaw steady in your hand. His eyes flicker back to your face, and you wonder if you look as wrecked as you feel, if he can tell how beside yourself you really are.

Slowly, so he can pull away if he wants, you trace the pad of your middle finger along the seam of his lips. You’re awestruck at how they instantly fall open for you, greedy, something you’re definitely looking forward to exploring more later.

For now, you watch with hooded eyes as he takes it into his mouth, tongue curling and lapping at it. You briefly wonder if fingers are erogenous zones, beyond turned on at how warm and wet the inside of his mouth feels, how he suckles and releases, bobs his head over and over until you snap out of it.

“Good boy. Fucking perfect,” you sigh.

He gets a cocky little goofy grin on his face at the praise, but his prick twitches against your grasp. You squeeze it for good measure, and more of his pre-cum dribbles over your knuckles.

You lean into him again, and he leans into you, holding each other up. Your mouth finds his pebbled nipple once again as his prick drags across your shirt and saturates it. He hisses at the friction, then gasps when your hand grabs his ass cheek again.

You pull it as best as you can with one hand. It isn’t too difficult with how it fits so perfectly round in your palm. You squeeze it, massage it, note how the littlest hint of peach fuzz feels against your clammy hand. You wonder how it would feel under your tongue, too, how it would taste, how the fatty flesh would feel between your teeth.

His hips stutter forward when your finger, slick with his saliva, strokes the very top of his crack. And you don’t mean to tease too much, but his jerky movements and satisfied sounds when you do are like music to your ears.

Finally you find his hole, fluttering around nothing, so little and tight, all for you.

“Ohmygod.”

Frankie sounds pained, so much so that you look up from nuzzling his chest to watch his face. His brows are drawn tight with how his eyes are squeezed shut, and his mouth is hung open, slick with a little drool around the corners of his lips. Without context, maybe he would look pained, too, but the way his cock throbs and dribbles in your hand paints a completely different picture.

And what a pretty picture he is, gulping for air above you, thrusting his hips back into your finger and forward through your fist, like he’s so out of his mind that he can’t even make it up.

You apply more pressure to his impossibly tight pucker and sink your teeth into his skin at the way he whines for you. You do it again, and again, a patient little rhythm until it relaxes and the very tip of your finger slips into his warmth.

He groans, clenching tight around you.

“Okay, Frankie?”

He laughs, a little puff of air, and you feel it where you’re inside him.

“Gonna make me come,” he chokes.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, don’t— fuck— please don’t stop.”

You hum into his chest, squeeze your hand tighter around his prick as you speed up your strokes. He’s groaning now, deep and low and constant, like he couldn’t hold it back if he tried.

You wiggle your finger against his rim, tugging him open for you, toying with the elastic muscle. He’s so pliable everywhere, opening up to you, happily taking what you give him.

In a stiff moment you think he isn’t into it, because he freezes up and goes silent. You make to slip out of him, but his warmth just drags you in.

And then his cock jumps in your grasp, and his hole clamps around your finger as he gasps your name, and he’s coming.

He shakes with it as he soaks your shirt and drips over your hand. You stroke him through it and marvel at the way he feels in your grasp and around you, violent waves of pleasure that you can sense where you touch him.

You look up to watch him tremble through it and he’s gorgeous. Sweat drips from his messy curls at his temple and paints a glimmer down his neck, all pulled taught as his head hangs back. His chest tastes salty under your tongue where it heaves, you can’t get enough of the flavor, or the wicked beating of his heart under your lips.

And his noises, fucking delicious, wrung-out curses that just keep tumbling from his red lips. His stomach trembles with his shaky breaths, and he sounds so wrecked as the last bit of his orgasm tricked down the back of your hand.

His whispered chants of “fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” slow to a stop just as his joints unlock and his muscles relax. You take it as a sign to loosen your grip on his spent cock and carefully slip your finger back out of him. It earns you one last whimper before he sags into you, a boneless little heap in your lap.

You unhand him to hold him against you, wipe your hand on the discarded blanket beside you so you can stroke his back with one hand and his fuzzy little buttcheek with the other.

You tell him how good he was for you, how pretty he is when he comes, how much you loved getting to do that to him.

It takes a while for him to catch his breath, and his huffs tickle that sensitive spot on your neck just below your ear.

“Holy shit,” he sighs.

You nod, because he’s correct. Holy shit, indeed.

His voice is a little hoarse, and you’re conflicted. You want to hold him as long as he’ll let you, but you know you should get him some water and at least a towel.

You shift under him and he whimpers, wraps his arms tighter around your shoulders.

There goes that idea.

You hold him closer, and smirk at the contented sigh that leaves him.

“I think… I think I just imprinted on you.”

It startles a laugh out of you, and he chuckles too, a tiny happy sound against your collar bone. You turn to kiss his heated cheek, and he lets you, before he turns his own head to fuse his lips to yours.

This kiss is lazy, unhurried, and the adrenaline from making him fall apart is slowly making way for more of that sticky-sweet arousal from earlier.

“I wanna make you come,” he mumbles against your lips.

You shake your head, but kiss him some more, as to not give him the wrong idea.

“Another night, Pretty Boy.”

He makes a disappointed sound, but continues to kiss you until you have to part for air. His brow is turned upward in question when you pull away.

“Did I do something wrong?”

You’re shaking your head before he even finishes his question.

“Not a single thing, Frankie. Just wanted to take care of you tonight.”

His shoulders relax at that, but his face is still confused. It’s a cute look on him, with his pouty lips and big brown eyes.

“You’d tell me right? If I made you uncomfortable? You can tell me. I don’t wanna upset you.”

And christ, you feel your heart melting and oozing through your rib cage at how earnest his voice is.

“I promise, I’ll tell you.”

That seems to quell his nerves, as he sinks back into you again with his sweaty curls pressed against your shoulder.

You’re sticky in more ways than one, and Frankie’s only getting heavier in your lap the sleepier he gets, but a giggle bubbles up out of you when you realize you’ve never been more comfortable than you are right now.

Frankie huffs in response, and you press him even tighter against you.

You don’t know where one-and-a-half dates and one sickeningly hot orgasm places the two of you. And maybe it’s greedy to think about with a handsome, sweet man in your arms, but you can’t push down the overwhelming feeling of wanting more.

next part

#x reader #sub! frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #nb reader #gender-fluid reader #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal fanfiction #frankie morales #frankie morales fanfiction #ppcu fanfiction #pedro pascal cinematic universe #frankie morales smut #triple frontier fanfiction

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callsigndragon · 2 years

Text

Better than me | Jake 'Hangman' Seresin

Pairing: Jake 'Hangman' Seresin x Air Force!Pilot!reader (gender neutral)

Summary: Jake and his ego hurt his s/o

Word count: 1.4

Warnings: jake needing an ego check, talking about past missions, reader gets mad, someone gets slapped, alcohol, drunk hangman... and fluff at the end

A/N: Not my best work, i didn't really know how to fit the request here, cause anon wanted hangman embarassing reader in front of the squad and then fluffity fluff but... well anon, i hope you like it!

Tag list: @tayrae515 @alexxavicry @xoxabs88xox @mercurio23 @shrimping-for-all @abaker74

(if you want to be in the 'All TGM' tag list, send me an ask!)

Being a member of the Air Force had never been easy. You’ve faced criticism during your whole career. Look, it’s not your fault that basic training is easier for your military branch than for the rest. That didn’t make the job any easier.

You’ve been in Afghanistan several times, the last time trying to evacuate as many people as possible. It was one of the hardest things you’ve ever had to do.

Right now, you’re enjoying a few days off with your boyfriend Jake and his friends. You traveled all the way to North Island to be with him and his squad, who you haven’t actually met before in person, only through FaceTime or videos that Jake sent you.

“So, Y/n, Jake didn’t tell us your call sign!” says Coyote handing you a beer. “He’s really mysterious about it.”

“Told ya, if you want to know, ask them. Not me” Jake says, sitting next to you after his turn at pool. He had enough drinks already, and you think it’s time for you to go home, but you and the squad are having such a good time that you don’t want to take away from them this bonding time after all they’ve been through these past weeks.

“It’s Falcon. Yes, like the Marvel superhero.”

“And why Falcon?” this time it is Phoenix who asks.

“I dressed as him for Halloween” you shrug.

“Bullshit. They do BASE jumping in their free time”

“What? Oh my god, Hangman, you’re dating a badass” Fanboy is already impressed by your abilities. You smile at him, he’s one of your favorite members of the Dagger squad.

“Well, you have to look for a bit of action outside the job when working in the Air Force, you know?” Jake says, making every member of his squad stop moving and look at him, with widened eyes.

“Oh yeah?” you ask, leaving your beer at the bar. “How so?”

“C’mon, babe. You fly people to the target and then go back to base. It’s like being a commercial pilot” he says, laughing. You hope he’s joking because it’s not funny to disrespect your job like that.

“All right, I think we should get ready to leave. Why don’t we go to that dinner we went to last week?” Payback tries to stop the argument when he sees the look in your eyes, but you’re not going to stay quiet. Not today. And it doesn’t matter how drunk he is.

“Do you remember I went to Afghanistan and rescued thousands of people?” you cross your arms, standing in front of him.

“You know a drone could have done that same job?” he retorts.

“Says the man whose only air-to-air kill was a museum piece from the Korean War. Well, at least you have new material to use now, with that fifth-gen fighter” You can be mad at him right now, but you have to admit that he is a good pilot. Nothing can take that away from him. Even him being an asshole right now.

“Well, at least I’ll still have a job in three years. What about you, honey? Will you still have a job?”

The slap can be heard in every corner of the room. Penny, who had been serving drinks, turns around to find the source, and it’s a bit flabbergasted to see it was you who has slapped a man. And your man, to be more precise.

“Guys, it’s been an honor to meet you at last, but I think it’s time for me to go” you pull the keys of Jake’s house out of your pocket and throw them to the owner. “I’m staying at a hotel tonight”

“Babe, it was a joke. C’mon, don’t be like that!” Rooster stops Hangman from chasing after you. “Bradshaw, let me go”

“Not tonight, buddy. You sober up, and you talk to them tomorrow”

It takes Jake a few hours to find you the next day, but he finally finds your car parked outside one of the hotels next to the base. You are not answering his calls, not even his messages and he’s worried he had fucked up for good the most important thing in his life: your relationship.

See, he’s not going to lie. He is a fucking idiot and an asshole when he gets drunk. That’s why, usually, Rooster stops him from drinking too much, just so they don’t get into trouble for his behavior. He is always trying to prove that he is better than the rest of the world when he has a few more drinks than he should. He remembers how he said a month ago, how Maverick needed an ego check.

Now he’s absolutely and completely certain that the one who needs it, it’s himself.

He walks into the hotel, just in time to see you returning the keys to your room. You haven’t seen him yet, but he can see enough of your face to know that he has hurt you more than you would ever confess. He can see the heartbreak written all over your face.

There was only one thing that hurt you more than anything, and it was people discrediting your job. And Hangman doesn’t know if he can make it up to you.

When you turn around, you’re ready to just walk past him and leave him there, but then you realize what he’s wearing, and you think it’s the most ridiculous thing ever.

“Where did you get that from?” you ask, signaling to his blue t-shirt. It has ‘Proud Air Force Boyfriend’ written in white letters.

“I bought it a while back, actually. I just didn’t have the chance to wear it before” he says.

“Do you mean it or is it just because you don’t want me to be mad anymore?”

He raises a finger, and then pulls a cap from the back pocket of his jeans. It has your call sign embroidered in the front, with the Air Force logo. “I was planning on wearing this after you came back from your last mission, but I was deployed and well…”

You sigh, knowing that you won’t be able to stay mad at him for much longer. “Jake, what you said… it really hurt”

“I know, babe, I know. I was drunk, and I tried to make your job seem less important than mine because I think you’re better than me. Better than any of us. How many times have you been deployed? And you had your fair share of terrible experiences. But you wake up every morning, you smile, and you go to save the world, one day more at a time. And I… I take down aircrafts from the Korean War”

“It was from the Cold War, babe” you correct him.

“See? I hurt your feelings and here you are trying to make me feel better. I don’t deserve you”

“No, you probably don’t. But I love you, and you are out in public with an air force supporting t-shirt in a hotel that is surrounded by relatives of naval aviators. And they’re all looking at you”

Jake looks at the people in the lobby, but he couldn’t care less. “Darlin', the only person I want to look at me, it’s you. Let me make it up to you, please” he is practically begging.

“Well, hmmm…. You’re gonna make me a big breakfast”

“You haven’t eaten breakfast yet? Honey have you seen the ho-”

“I’m telling you the things you need to do if you want to get kisses again from me, you sure want to discuss the lack of food in my body right now?”

“Nope. Go on, please”

“Well. Breakfast in bed because I couldn’t sleep last night without you. Then, we’re going to see Pearl Harbor. I’ll fall asleep, and you will cuddle with me all day until I’ve had enough. Then we’ll shower, and you’ll invite me to the best restaurant around here. And I will need many kisses”

He gets close to you, his hands on your hips. “Why Ben Affleck?”

“Cause his face is better than yours” you joke.

“Yet, you want me to kiss you”

“It’s your punishment. Take it or leave it, Lieutenant”

“Sounds like a good punishment, First Lieutenant” he says, and you have to smile. “What?”

“It’s Captain”

“Always trying to be ahead of me” he kisses your forehead, your nose and then your lips.

“Because I’m better than you”

“Of course you are, honey”

#top gun #top gun x reader #top gun maverick #jake seresin fluff #jake hangman fic #jake seresin x reader #jake hangman x reader #jake hangman seresin #hangman seresin #hangman x reader #hangman fanfiction #jake 'hangman' seresin #top gun fanfiction #top gun maverick fanfic

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scintillyyy · 1 year

Text

why i fully believe tim drake has a fundamentally secure attachment style

so here it is. i am explaining my thoughts fully as to why i believe tim drake, contrary to popular belief, actually has a fairly secure attachment style and what that means.

now to preface this: i am not an attachment expert by any means. i have just done a lot of reading and research into attachment theory because it's fascinating to me. it's v interesting and so misunderstood.

and another preface: i will largely be using general terms of mother and primary caretaker throughout this meta. this is mainly because the vast majority of initial attachment theory research focuses in on the mother/child relationship where the mother is the primary caregiver and because it's easier to relate the research to tim's experience growing up of having a mother and a father. obviously, not all attachment has to stem from a mother/child relationship and mothers don't have to be the primary caregiver, and aren't always. there are so many different family dynamics out there that aren't just heterosexual marriages and that's fantastic! kids can have more than one mother! kids can have more than one father! infants can and will form attachment with a primary caregiver regardless of sex or gender. just for the sake of this meta i'll be using those terms interchangeably. it just makes things a little easier for me.

anyways buckle in, cause once i start talking about attachment i am incapable of shutting up.

so what is attachment, exactly? i'll start by telling you what it's not. it is not synonymous with love or affection. attachment is not a measure of how much a child likes someone or loves someone. it's not a measure of how much time is physically spent with a child. a child's attachment style isn't even a measure of how good or bad of a parent someone is. it's possible for a child to be securely attached to somewhat emotionally distant parents or parents who have to be physically away due to jobs for weeks or months at a time, or insecurely attached to very loving and present parents. (this is why i love it so much, it's so interesting what it really is)

this study defines attachment as one specific and circumscribed aspect of the relationship between a child and caregiver that is involved with making the child safe, secure and protected.

so attachment isn't necessarily about how we personally feel about another person, but about how we feel about and conceptualize our relationship to another person and how that relationship in turn makes us feel. it's a general sense of security in the relationship with the primary caregiver. a general sense of trust that the relationship the child has with his primary caregiver is a fundamentally safe one that will usually meet the infant's needs. a relationship that the infant can fall back and return to when he starts to interact with and explore his environment.

and the important relationship that the infant learns to conceptualize between him and his primary caregiver is that the caregiver is a secure base from which the child can explore from and return to as needed and that the caregiver in turn will meet the child's need for connection when the child asks for it.

attachment is primarily formed in the first year as an infant and then the next few years as a toddler. and the attachment formed in those early years is a foundation for the child's future relationships - when the child's initial relationship with his primary caregiver is secure, it allows him to extrapolate that security and general sense of trust to his future interpersonal relationships. and once attachment is formed in these critical years...it largely doesn't change. it can, of course (usually more negatively than positively based on experiences as an older child or adult), but these core ideals of how infants learn to feel about relationships through their initial relationship with their primary caregiver largely stays very stable through their lives.

and it's important to note here that the caregiver's constant physical presence isn't required to create this attachment or be considered the infant's secure base by the infant. ainsworth herself noted that even mothers who returned to work (so long as the child were generally well cared for when the mothers were gone) were still the secure base of their children. it's mostly about the maternal sensitivity to the relationship when she is present versus always being physically with the child.

now, i know, i know. this doesn't exactly sound like the drakes (it definitely doesn't sound like jack, but honestly. jack's terribleness doesn't matter so much when it comes to this. that's it's own set of issues i'm not going into.) this is more about janet, and how it's possible that janet was able to be not a great parent yet still manage to give her son a secure attachment style. it's possible.

so, now we need to swerve and really dig deep into what is attachment theory, to better our understanding. attachment theory is a theory concerning relationships between humans and the idea that young children/infants need to form a bond with at least one primary caregiver for normal social and emotional development. created by john bowlby who was working with orphans after wwii and noticed that young orphans without a loving mother substitute after losing their parents were just intensely emotionally suffering from the loss. they were truly traumatized by the loss of their mothers in the war and those who were sent to live with loving family who had a mother substitute after the loss of their own fared much better than those who ended up in orphanages, he had this idea that maybe, just maybe, children formed these very deep and meaningful relationships with their mothers, and they needed this warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with their mothers for their overall health and security. and that it was the need for this relationship that had this immense effect on these children versus everyone within the family unit being their own, individual island whose relationships didn't have much importance or effect on them was a big idea. and not just this, but there needed to be enjoyment (we'll come back to this) as a requirement for healthy relationship development.

and this radical idea was a huge, huge departure from what was traditionally thought of children at the time. i'm serious. people did not believe him at first. the prevailing idea was that parental love was fairly insignificant to their children, and children were driven primarily by need for food. they didn't love their parents because they were their parents, need for physical fulfillment was simply masquerading as love. this idea that children were almost acting to love their parents because they would get their physical needs filled in return. under this idea, there would be no difference between children sent to orphanages and children sent to family because it wouldn't matter, so long as they were fed and clothed basically. the idea that children had these more complex emotional need for an ongoing relationship with a primary caretaker for their mental health and that it was the relationship versus individual state of mind that was important was laughable.

anyways, mary ainsworth joined bowlby's research team at the tavistock clinic and though she initially thought he was full of shit, she quickly came around to his ideas. so when she followed her husband to uganda (he was working on a project of his own. he was also an asshole and they eventually got divorced but that's neither here nor there) she did a longitudinal field study on 26 Ganda mothers and children, initially planning to look at a weaning practice she had heard about where they send the child away to live with family for a few days until they "forget the breast" and thought she might compare traumatic versus nontraumatic separation of the child from the parent to better understand bowlby's idea of attachment. this weaning practice ended up not being quite like she had been told and instead she ended up unintentionally giving us one of the most important study on mother/child relationships ever created, the precursor to the basic underpinning of the entirety of attachment research and gave us our fundamental attachment patterns.

side note: mary ainsworth was extremely well loved by the families she studied. she had a ton of respect for them and their culture, learned their language so she could communicate with them. the way she wrote about them was filled with loving, attentive detail. she had a ton of affection for the families she worked with.

anyways, together, ainsworth and bowlby completely revamped how we understand mother/child relationships and how we understand children and how they learn to relate to the world around them (saying goodbye to popular freudian ideas of parent-child relationships, bye you won't be missed)

so in uganda, ainsworth found something astonishing. watching the mothers and children interact it was clear to her that she was watching a two-way relationship form. the baby attended to its mother and the mother attended to the baby in return. the baby didn't just go to the mother for food, but simply because he wanted to. she watched how the babies themselves reached out for connection and how the mothers would reach back and react to their babies overtures in return!! she realized that, amazingly, this mutually pleasing, deep, fulfilling relationship was forming between baby and mother.

so when she followed her asshat husband to baltimore after they were done in uganda, she was determined to sort through and analyze these mother-child bonds that she studied so closely. she went through her hundreds of hours of notes and observations and eventually realized that she found about 3 different relationships styles that formed between mother and infant. 57% were what she deemed securely attached, babies who knew how to use their mothers as a secure base as they explored the world around them. 25% were insecurely attached, babies who found it difficult to rely on their mothers. the rest were what she deemed not yet attached (though she would later change this classification). she also discovered that the mothers of babies she deemed securely attached tended to be excellent informants (ones who had the most insight about their children) and that the mother's overall experience of and positive feelings towards her role as a mother were some of the most important factors towards creating a secure attachment. things that didn't matter as much to attachment? things like warmth of mother or whether there were multiple caretakers, external or easily observed behaviors like feeding, playing, cuddling or discipline. what mattered most above all that was the mother's attitude, her feelings toward the relationship with her child (!!!).

ainsworth decided she wanted to test this more and decided to see if she could replicate her observations in the US. she found 26 families and she and her assistants observed them from 3 weeks on, every 3 weeks for the first year of the child's life, watching exactly how these mother-child relationships formed and how exactly the infant would behave with relative strangers compared to his mother, seeing if it was true that infants could form this special secure relationship with their primary caregiver. (side note again: these families also grew to love ainsworth quite a bit). her baltimore study was groundbreaking. not just collecting data points, this was observation and collection of relational events that they would be analyzing. and when they looked at what they found, they found that the american children had the same attachment behaviors as the ganda children, in almost the same ratio of secure to insecure. The only difference was that the american babies were less overt about their attachment behaviors than the ganda ones, which ainsworth attributed to the ganda babies not being as accustomed to strangers (especially scary white strangers like her) and thus were under more stress when she was around, activating more overt attachment behaviors. so she decided. if she wouldn't be able to observe the attachment behaviors of the infants well in the home due the the baby generally feeling safe around strangers in their own home, she'd make the situation strange and she what she could observe there. absolutely revolutionary.

thus the strange situation was born. a way to observe how infants (age 1) have learned to attach to their mothers and what they have learned to expect from their relationship over the course of the first year of their life.

It goes as follows:

The mother and baby enter the room.

The mother sits quietly on a chair, responding if the infant seeks attention, but otherwise leaving the infant to his own devices.

A stranger enters, talks to the mother then gradually approaches the infant with a toy. The mother leaves the room.

The stranger leaves the infant playing unless he/she is inactive and then tries to interest the infant in toys. If the infant becomes distressed this episode is ended.

Mother enters and waits to see how the infant greets her. The stranger leaves quietly and the mother waits until the baby settles, and then she leaves again.

The infant is alone. This episode is curtailed if the infant appears to be distressed.

The stranger comes back and repeats episode 3.

The mother returns and the stranger leaves. Reunion behavior is noted and then the situation is ended

(above taken directly from the strange situation scoring guidelines)

so what does it measure? not love. not affection. it takes into account infant temperament, but doesn't even measure that. it simply looks at how exploratory the child is in the strange environment when with the mother vs with the stranger. it measures how the infant responds to his mother, what their reunion behavior is. is the baby able to be soothed by the mother? does the baby even ask for soothing? that's what matters, not whether or not the baby cried or how much the baby appears to love his mother or if the mother was warm or anything. all it looks at is does the baby feel safe to explore with the mother present and does the baby seek comfort in his secure base in a stressful situation. and through the strange situation she settled on three separate attachment styles: ABC.

A attachment style is deemed anxious-avoidant type. the infant will ignore or avoid the mother when she returns and will not treat the stranger as different from the mother. B attachment style is secure attachment, an infant who will explore freely when the parent is present, engages with the stranger while the parent is present, is distressed when the parent leaves, and happy when they return-is able to be soothed. C attachment style is anxious-resistant. the infant will be very distressed when the mother leaves, but ambivalent when the mother returns. within these groups, ainsworth also had multiple subtypes (2 for A, 4 for B, 2 for C) that accounted for differences how security or insecurity appeared in babies. later, a 4th classification D for disorganized attachment style was added. ainsworth gave her blessing to this but cautioned that we need to be careful when classifying attachment solely as disorganized, because the subtypes of the original three classifications do account for possible disorganization within those three attachment styles. meaning, you can be fundamentally securely attached but still have disorganization (!!!).

so why are some infants securely attached and others not? ainsworth determined two big factors in creating an ultimately secure attachment. the first was maternal sensitivity within the first year. and this sensitivity isn't traditional sensitivity. it's more...an attunement to what the child needs/wants from the mother. a sensitive mother, for instance, will listen to her infants cues. when the infant wants to be let go to play and roam int he room, the mother will put the infant down to let the infant do that. when the baby is hungry, the mother will feed him. when the baby is tired, the mother will try to put the baby to sleep. an insensitive mother on the other hand, might try and feed the baby when the baby actually wants to play, for example. or think the baby is bored and try to play with the baby, when the baby is actually tired and wants to sleep. this attunement only really needs to correctly occur about 50% of the time (i've seen some numbers that indicate that moms only need to get their infants cues correct as little as 30% of the time for the infant to feel as though in general, his wants and needs will be met appropriately) in order for the infant to learn to trust in the relationship. the other big factor was this idea of mutual delight in the mother-child relationship. which. is just. so good. so amazing. my beloved. mutual delight? it's no surface level happy to see you sort of deal. it can't be playacted. it's not always being happy to see someone or always liking someone. it's not necessarily effusive emotion or big fanfare. it doesn't have to be excessive, it can be quite sedate. it's this idea of feeling just this pure genuine satisfaction and pleasure from the connection of the relationship. it happens during specific behaviors and situations with the baby and it's not pride. it's just...delight. the child delights in the caregiver and in turn, the caregiver delights in the child and attachment forms. it fucks me up on every possible level.

so, we now knew that children were capable of creating this special relationship with a primary caregiver. and what did this secure attachment mean? securely attached children were more likely to be healthier. confident. better able to coordinate friendships. increased self agency. empathetic. and grew up to have this sense of tenacity - an ability to believe in onself, stay on task, not get as frustrated. children with secure histories were more likely to believe that, much like in infancy, they can get their needs met and goals achieved through their own efforts (!!!). this idea of "grit" - achievement is a long term process, perserverance is important, the ability to continue on a trajectory despite disappointment.

now, none of this is to say that securely attached children are perfect. securely attached children experience life as well. they can have a general sense of trust in themselves and their relationships and still have insecurities about these things. they can have self doubt. they can be securely attached and have some disorder in that attachment: the subtypes B2, B3, B4 are all types of securely attached infants who do show some disorder in their reunion episodes. a B2 infant, for instance, might be resistant to reunion at first but eventually seeks reunion with his mother and accepts contact and soothing from mother well, but doesn't necessarily fight being put back down after being picked up for soothing. a B3 infant will actively seek contact with his mother during reunion and then actively resist being put down, fighting to maintain contact with mother after separation, having increased stress over separation as a whole. a B4 infant is similar to a B3, in that they actively want contact but are less competent at asking for it from their mother and seems more preoccupied and anxious through the strange situation, though he is able to be soothed by his mother showing that there is effective co-regulation occurring and an ultimately secure attachment despite difficulties.

so obviously there are benefits to having a secure attachment but what does having secure attachment as an infant really mean for older children and adults? as infants grow, they lose their need for their secure base and have less need for this one special relationship with one specific caregiver as they enter into the world at large. so how does having a secure attachment as an infant translate into the relationships formed from childhood through adulthood?

well enter mary main. she was a student of ainsworth and she helped to create the adult attachment interview. prior to this, attachment was only able to be observed through behaviors - and it's hard to observe attachment behaviors as children get older as their emotions and feelings and ability to interact with the world gets more complex and harder to discern. with the adult attachment interview, we were finally able to see the inner workings of attachment - determining adult attachment through a person's self evaluation, through their inner informant and how they were able to conceptualize their past experiences as an adult. more so than the idea or fundamentally good or bad experiences, they were looking for how these experiences were described. did the adult interviewee have good coherence of mind when discussing their experiences? how much detail were they able to provide? how excellent (consistent in time, relevance, insightfulness, freshness) was their inner informant about their probable experience? and with this, they were able to classify three types of adult attachment (secure/autonomous, insercure/dismissing, and insecure/preoccupied) that were very analogous to the three main types of infant attachment. and what they found by doing this was amazing - attachment is largely inter-generational. attachment style is vertically transmitted from caregiver to child. a secure adult is most likely to have a securely attached child (an adult's attachment interview can predict a child's attachment style anywhere from like 67-75%). fascinating.

so secure children largely grow up to be secure adults (it's possible for attachment style to be positively or negatively affected by significant experiences, but will usually remain the same throughout life) who then go onto have secure children in a cycle. what's interesting is how the secure child extrapolates their childhood security to adulthood. once again...attachment is not really a measure of positive or negative experiences. what it is is a measure of how the child conceptualizes relationships within the world which turns into how adults perceive and trust relationships within the world. when determining if an adult is securely attached, the adult must value attachment itself, find meaning in attachment itself. avoidant or resistant adults won't necessarily do this.

so, reading all this, i'm sure you're wondering - why do i think tim has a functionally secure attachment style? none of this describes the drakes. his parents sucked and didn't love him (not true, btw) and never showed him any affection. they left him alone 2 days after he was born and were only present for about 2.5 days in his entire childhood before he wandered over into wayne manor and found his favorite person in the world jason todd and then they went to jail forever due to criminal child neglect (it physically pained me to write this btw and i am just poking fun. i really don't hate fanon that much, it's just fun for me to poke fun at).

and i won't deny that jack. well. sucked. in many ways. but even if he was neglectful and emotionally abusive...that doesn't necessarily mean that tim wouldn't be able to develop a secure attachment style. because attachment isn't about that, necessarily. and honestly, of course jack wouldn't be tim's secure base. he's jack.

janet, on the other hand. there's actually a lot of room around canon janet to be tim's secure base as a infant and toddler allowing him to develop a fundamentally secure attachment style. let's look at them at the circus - this is our best view of how tim was potentially as a toddler (his age being nebulous anywhere from 2.5-5 years, 5 years in canon, younger based on how you prefer your timeline) and he comes across as...incredibly secure. now let's look at janet's overall sensitively to tim's needs at the circus: she was afraid he'd be scared, but was incredibly accepting that he wasn't, allowing him to enjoy the circus rather than holding him tight and creating anxiety in him due to her own fears and anxieties around the situation. as far as a delight perspective? well, she certainly seems delighted that he is delighted by the trip. i think there's a lot of room here to say that it's entirely possible that janet was excited and happy and delighted in him when he was showing her he was excited and happy as an infant, that she would respond correctly when he reached out for connection as a baby allowing him to create a secure attachment style. she was, at least, somewhat attuned to his wants and needs when he was younger (not fully, though, clearly. there's a lot that she would later miss or be unaware of...but she was clearly at least aware of some things about him. and as discussed, we don't need 100% attunement for the child to feel a general sense of security with the parent figure. and janet also clearly saw tim as his own person with his own wants and needs, as evidenced by her encouraging him that he could be like dick if he wanted to. in another panel, he's shown running ahead them to get to the circus from the ticket booth - which again, to me reads as incredible security on his part: the ability to feel safe to run forwards into and explore a potentially strange and scary situation really is something only a truly secure toddler would do. he can do that because he knows his secure base is with him!!

and now i want to look at after janet was killed and jack was in his coma. here we have tim at his father's bedside. what's important to me is what tim is saying. he's telling his father how scared he is. he is REACHING OUT for connection in the way a secure child fundamentally would in the wake of a tragedy. obviously, jack can't reach back...coma, you know? but the important piece is tim, here.

it's just. super important to me. so tim at 13/14 with his empathy, confidence, tenacity, ability to persevere through disappointment (tim going to save batman and vicki vale from scarecrow even knowing it could cost him robin since he's still on probation and batman told him not to but it's the right thing to so he does it anyways knowing it could cause him great disappointment comes to mind) shows a lot of traits that are generally associated with securely attached children.

and tim, when recollecting his parents, actually shows a lot of clarity, detail, and excellence when discussing time spent with his parents

now, obviously, the memory is not super fantastic, though not terrible, and actually does point to his parents misunderstanding his wants and needs, but the way he's able to recall and and discuss it imo point to a secure attachment style. the reporting is detailed excellent, which is more important that the subject matter because again. this is not about how good or bad of parents the drakes were, but how tim valued his experience and relationship with them and the importance he placed on their relationship despite their failings. that's attachment. the importance of the relationship.

now i definitely think that tim wasn't a perfectly securely attached B1 baby or child. i would say that it's likely that he does have disorder in his attachment style from his upbringing (long physical absences by parents, emotional neglect, abuse from jack) that certainly increased due to his experiences as robin, but despite that his attachment style can still be secure at its heart. this disorder means that, yes, he does have insecurities about his personal relationships and he does have trouble reaching out for emotional connections at time and he might feel like he has to earn love or affection. but despite this, i see tim as someone who fundamentally values attachment and values his relationships.

or, as bethany saltman would say in chapter 28 of her book strange situation:

(psst: if you have any interest in attachment science, this book is an amazing jumping off point. this entire book is my main citation for the first half of this meta, i summarized a lot of key points and information about ainsworth from here)

ayways, why do i feel like despite his personal insecurities, tim values attachment and relationships so much?

well, he clearly does. core characteristic through his series is how important he believes connection and relationships are imo. but also. you know.

(i can't help myself). hi. enter dick grayson. if there's anything that proves to me that time has a fundamentally secure attachment style it's his entire post-crisis relationship with dick grayson. tim feeling secure enough to reach out to dick whenever he needed to at first. the amount of trust tim is able to put into his relationship with dick, the amount of value tim puts into their brotherhood relationship, how important tim thinks it is? it absolutely points to a fundamentally secure attachment style, that tim is able to create such a strong an secure relationship (he also does this with helena, with young justice...it's a running theme with him, the secure connections he's able to make).

and the rockiness from early red robin to their eventual re-connection and affirmation in RR#12 is absolute proof of the security of the dick and tim relationship. because even when there's rupture in the relationship - the absolute trust in and valuing of the relationship remains. and that's what secure attachment is - the ability to trust in and value a relationship, even if things aren't going that well on a personal level. and tim shows his overall security in this run actually exceedingly well despite, uh, how not great he's doing. when he returns to gotham he REACHES OUT FOR CONNECTION with dick when he asks dick to trust him anyways after janet died dick became tim's secure base. he REACHES OUT FOR CONNECTION with his friends, trusting in their relationship, trusting that they will meet his expectations of their relationship and help, reaching back to him because reaching out. and THAT is a fundamentally secure attachment style right there.

tim <3 attachment <3 i could probably go even longer about his various different relationships but this is long enough already

general citations for this: the strange situation's scoring guidelines, bethany saltman's book strange situation, mary ainsworth's patterns of attachment

#tim drake #batman #dc #attachment science my beloved #you know what #dick and tim #because that relationship is so important to me #and is a big part of why i think the way i do about tim's attachment style

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mywingsareonwheels · 2 years

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On how to treat performers you don’t know personally. Or, some things that really should not need saying.

Actors are real live human beings. This means they deserve privacy and boundaries and safety, as we all do.

Most actors don’t go into the profession to become famous. Almost all actors *don’t* become famous and they are well aware of this. They go into acting to act, not because they want to be celebrities. However, even those who do want to be famous are still human beings, see above.

Most actors are not multi-millionaires. It’s not a highly-paid profession overall and it’s very insecure. Assuming an actor is extremely rich because you’ve heard of them is ridiculous, especially if they haven’t done any Hollywood blockbusters. You cannot and should not believe those websites claiming to tell you how rich an actor is.

A real live human not being explicit about what their sexuality is is not queerbaiting. Even if they have played a queer character. For Fuck’s Sake.

You can comfortably assume that those actors who are out as queer are the tip of the queer iceberg in the profession. It’s still a queerphobic industry and a queerphobic world, and people have a right to be in the closet, always.

Harassing an 18 year old because you want to know whether or not he’s queer is obscene. Harassing anyone of *any* age is more than bad enough. Turning up at the house of an actor you don’t know personally or sharing their address etc. is extremely creepy.

Taking photographs of someone without their consent is extremely creepy.

No actor owes you any information about themselves, their relationship(s), their sexuality, their health, or indeed anything. If they share that, that’s an act of generosity. You don’t get to demand it. You don’t get to be shitty about what they do share. FFS think about how you would feel in their situation.

Sending death threats, suicide-baiting, and other violent words to anybody is always wrong in all situations. Including to famous people who have fucked up in some way. (Yes, even to people who do genuine concrete horrible harm in the world, but even more to those who have just done something stupid and inconsiderate and crappy or handled being called on something in a cowardly manner.) Calling out or boycotting someone’s work is one thing; harassment and a deliberate intent to harm is quite another.

Even at the less extreme ends, it is horrible that so many actors (and not just major Hollywood stars, I’m talking UK tv actors here) don’t feel comfortable going out in public (even to the pub or a restaurant etc.) because of the risk of being stared at, photographed, having their day interrupted however tired and busy etc. they are. Also? Body-shaming anybody is always wrong in all situations. My Gods how am I even needing to say all this?! The weird possessive/hyper-critical/resentful attitude that I see in a lot of spaces inc. tumblr towards actors owes its origin to a cultural trope that dates back to ancient Rome and which comprised classism, some xenophobia, slut-shaming, the maintenance of patriarchal gender roles, and homophobia (well, bottom-phobia, strictly speaking). You look at the attitudes towards actors in the last few hundred years of UK history, e.g.? Exactly the same damn thing. If you dislike or are extra judgemental towards actors (inc. famous ones) purely for being actors (or for being famous/successful actors), that is the heritage you are participating in. Which shouldn’t be a surprise given we all know that this bullshit is used most ferociously against actors who aren’t cishet white thin gentile abled non-immigrant men (although Gods know even the actors who are all those things get it badly enough).

(Disclaimer: I’m actually not talking here about the writing or drawing of RPF, provided of course you never under any circumstances share it with or make it easily findable by the people in question. So long as you keep it well away from them, know that you are talking about fictionalised people not the real people themselves, and don’t let it influence how you treat them if you ever interact or talk about them, I’d say RPF is pretty damn benign (and yep, full honesty, I have both read and on one occasion written it ;-) ). Certainly compared to everything else on this list.)

This post is partly prompted by my sheer rage and sadness over what’s happened to Kit Connor. But it’s also about things that have happened towards so, so, so many other actors, from Mat Baynton to Jameela Jamil to Olivia Coleman to Sebastian Stan to Chadwick Boseman to Lee Pace to Letitia Wright to to to. It’s gross, it’s obnoxious, it’s everywhere. It’s worst on Twitter, but I saw the same attitudes in even the Guardian and the Independent growing up (let alone the right-wing English newspapers which were and are just disgusting about everyone in the arts). And it’s seriously bad on tumblr too, let’s face it. Fandom relies on the work of actors. Can we please ffs start treating them better? :-S

AND FINALLY: Again this should be darn obvious: please don’t treat anyone else in those ways either! In so many spaces these days there’s a “one strike and you’re not a human being any more” attitude when people mess up. It fucking sucks. We all deserve better and need better. All of us.

Ahem. Here endeth the rant. ;-)

#tw suicide baiting mention #tw harassment culture #tw forced outing #tw queerphobia #kit connor #actors are human beings #tw death threat mention #tw harassment #tw stalking #long post

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blackstarising · 2 years

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sometimes i don’t like making takes. and no one needs my take, honestly. quite frankly, i’m like a sponge when it comes to anxiety so whenever Big News™️ hits? listen, i love y’all, but i simply Cannot Be Here for a minute.

but i also have this big, honking ‘christian’ sign on my blog. and i still am, totally unironically. i know i don’t talk about it much, but the last few years have been uhhh rough, especially as a girlie of color.

so with all of that being said, i fully disbelieve the overturning of roe v wade is a win. it’s not a win, it’s not a fight for the children, it’s not a win for Christ. and i am speaking as someone who ascribes to a whole life theology.

but, to some of my literal siblings in Christ, we have to critically examine how the current political pro-life rhetoric is patchy at best. why are race and lgbtq rights ‘political’ and shied away from at service but abortion (let’s say each syllable) deserves a chunk of pulpit airtime? why can some of us only offer a ‘oh, let’s adopt more’ in response to this and not consider that the way that some of us vote against things like universal healthcare, contraception, sex education, tax credits, food access, are entirely antithetical to our supposed esteem of children? why do people mistrust the crisis pregnancy centers we set up? why does the rhetoric change when we discuss babies of color in addition to white babies?

this decision wasn’t made with discernment. it wasn’t made with wisdom. it was made for a clear disregard for the vulnerable, a population that God has commanded us to protect from the beginning. we are attempting to legislate the affairs of God, something that Jesus took the religious leaders of the day to task on when he walked here. we love to say smugly that ‘we’re not Pharisaical’ when we read the Gospels. are we sure about that? are we really on Jesus’ side, reaching the untouchable, the ones disenfranchised, unable to protect themselves? or are we the ones with cold stones in our fists, struggling under the weight of our own bounds we created, looking for anyone who walks free of them to step on?

i grew up with white men telling me, every sunday, that we need to ‘take back this country for Christ’, that ‘the family is under attack’, that ‘we need to protect family values’. fellow Christians, these were not pushes for His witness, these were the fighting gasps of white Christian nationalism. and here were are, one step closer to it. there is no interest in protecting anyone with overturning roe v wade. it is about domination. and that is NEVER how God has tried to work with us. and because we keep trying to go this route, we are actively damaging our witness.

so, this is bad. what do we do?

first of all, VOTE. vote to codify our civil liberties into law. inform yourselves about candidates, and make your voice heard. i am not saying that the candidates are perfect, i’m not saying you have to agree with them, but we are not working with 31 flavors, we are working with 2. you have to understand that the moral majority have been working ruthlessly and for decades to get to this point. we don’t have the luxury of errata. change is not instant, but we have to start somewhere. if you’re so online that you think that it’s not worth it to vote at all, it’s already a lost battle.

understand that this is a multifaceted issue. we don’t know how to talk about abortion well, and the truth is, it’s complicated. we can split it into a binary, but people on both sides have a panoply of emotions and motivations. people have different principles and convictions that inform them as well. faith, gender identity, values, race, income level. not everyone under the umbrella of pro-choice legislation feels comfortable with the ethics of abortion or would choose one themselves, for example. and we haven’t even stepped into the medical sphere yet, which makes it even more complicated. but it’s not a binary. be mindful of the diversity of thought when you’re talking to others.

white people especially, be mindful about how much oxygen you’re taking up in the conversation. i know, i know, when will we take the microscope off y’all, but I’m serious, you guys. yes, this affects white people. but we also have to understand that, even with our struggle to talk about abortion, our point of reference is usually a white cis woman with disposable income. the image needs to be expanded. to people of color. to trans people. to low income people. to non-binary people. to people of different faiths. to people of different immigrant statuses. and so on.

white people, your voice is necessary and valued because people will listen to you. don’t forget that. but also! y’all GOTTA stop with the white liberal existential dread. y’all gotta stop with the fatalistic takes. y’all gotta stop with the handsmaid’s tale costumes. it doesn’t mean that this isn’t distressing but yes, America doesn’t always act in its people’s best interests, welcome to the club. many minority populations have been dealing with this, our own apocalypses, for way too long. and there’s a time to mourn, but there’s also a time to get up and do something about it. your whiteness will automatically allow you to be centered in many cases, but if it’s all distress and sucking up the oxygen in the room, we won’t go anywhere. yes, it’s hard, unforgiving work. but it needs to be done.

finally, if you’re of faith, pray. pray for the protection of our freedoms. pray for protection of the vulnerable. pray that we find leaders with good judgment and compassion. pray for true justice.

#adwoa blahs

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indri-on-ao3 · 2 years

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When you get this you have to answer with 5 things you like about yourself, publicly. Then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool)❤️❤️❤️

This got long. TLDR: science, friends, helping, art, queer. I want to follow up with 5 things I don't like about myself, but that is against the spirit of the ask.

I’m a pretty good applied scientist. I have a reasonable grasp of the relative importance of things, but also an ability to focus on detail when it’s needed—the combination is a useful one. These days I’m more of a science facilitator. I talk with people who need science done, work out the critical and achievable questions, find researchers with the right skills and the funding bodies looking for projects, then persuade everyone to work together. It can take years of patience and frustration, but when it happens it’s fantastic. I love it.

I have a lot of friends, many of whom I’ve known a long time now, all of whom are superb people. This means a lot to me, as I had few friends at school. I was still wary when I started making friends at uni, uncertain as to whether they actually liked me or just found me useful or inoffensive. Eventually, the evidence that they liked me for myself became insurmountable and I had to accept it. What’s more, I keep making friends: there are many compatible and fascinating people out there and I keep finding them. But I’ve retained the core friends from my late teenage years; we’ve seen so much together and most of us are still close.

I’ve been able to help and mentor junior scientists since I became a bit more established. Sometimes I introduced them to a field they came to love. Other times, they faced serious—undeserved—difficulties and I could support them, like helping them find a new job. And once an excellent person had to leave science for the sake of her mental health, and all I could do was say that her life and happiness was worth more than whatever projects she was working on.

I’ve become a great supporter of amateur and semi-pro artists, especially local ones. I give substantial financial support to a studio for diverse visual artists. I regularly turn up and pay money at tiny cupboard venues to see comedians, musicians, cabaret artists, acrobats and drag queens. I go to art exhibition openings in cafés and the backs of sheds. I used to edit an amateur fiction magazine. Online, I give kudos to AO3 authors and reblog Tumblr commentary and art. All of these forms of self-expression are worthy and fascinating, if sometimes a little raw. Their value under capitalism is not an indicator of their artistic value. Wanting to make and share something is a fundamental human activity and I am here to be your audience, except when I’m busy making something myself.

I persevere in being queer. When I was a young adult, I was unable to find any support for bi+ people—my identity was invalid and my peers invisible (even when, as we later discovered, we had been standing right next to each other). Then I got into a long-term relationship with a lovely different-sex partner, and I thought my straight-passing privilege outweighed the heterosexism and biphobia. But it did not. I now know that bi+ people in straight-looking relationships have terrible statistics for mental health and life outcomes: we’re sometimes missing something vital. I found myself gravitating to hobbies and venues where the gender of my partner didn’t matter, for who wants to feel that their welcome is conditional? And now that times have changed a bit, I’m trying to be more visible and I’ve joined a committee to help others and I’m still working out what more to do. And yes, I joined Tumblr so I could obsessively reblog pictures of Loki and the Valkyrie and sometimes other bi+ pop culture characters because it comforts me somehow, I’m retroactively trying to tend the hapless teenager I once was. I always knew I was real, but it still shocks and shakes me when someone else acknowledges it. I scared but I’m still moving.

#i got an ask!

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treadmilltreats · 11 months

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Words can hurt you...

So this week, I wanted to talk about healing past wounds. The best advice I got out of AA is that you first must admit you have a problem to fix the problem.

This was my problem.

There is an old saying “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me” That song is not true, and it was obviously made up by someone who was never verbally abused.

Words can cut you to the bone just as surely as if you were cut with a knife. The scars from the abuse will last a lot longer than the scars from an actual beating. They scar your heart and haunt your mind for years.

Even when you think you have moved on or changed your life, something will bring you right back to that moment, and you will remember their words as clearly as if they said them to you yesterday. You will second guess yourself. You will start believing all they have said to you and about you, even years later.

Sometimes the words will haunt you forever “You are stupid, you can't make it without me, you can't do anything right. Why do you always twist my words around. I was just kidding, can't you take a joke, or one of the worst, your worthless”

These words and many others change who you are. It doesn't matter if you're a college graduate, a high school dropout, a business person, or a blue collar worker, verbal abusers don't see color, gender or education.

They are bullies, and they want to have control over you and your life and will stop at nothing until they get it. They break you down little by little until you wake up one morning, not knowing who you are, not liking who you are and believing all that has been said about you is true.

According to the CDC, they released a study in 2008 that surveyed more than 70,000 Americans, and the results were staggering. These are the results of that survey.

23.6% of women and 11.5% of men reported at least one lifetime episode of intimate-partner violence.

In households with incomes under $15,000 per year

35.5% of women and 20.7% of men suffered violence from an intimate partner.

Harvard University put out their own study on verbal abuse. They went on to say:

Scolding, swearing, yelling, blaming, insulting, threatening, ridiculing, demeaning, and criticizing can be as harmful as physical abuse, sexual abuse outside the home, or witnessing physical abuse at home.

The report suggests that, when verbal abuse is constant and severe, it creates a risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, the same type of psychological collapse experienced by combat troops in Iraq.

Other researchers have associated childhood verbal abuse with a significantly higher risk of developing unstable, angry personalities, narcissistic behavior, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and paranoia.

“Verbal abuse may also have more lasting consequences than other forms of abuse because it’s often more continuous,” “And in combination with physical abuse and neglect, may produce the most dire outcome.

There are always signs, yet we chose to ignore them. Here are a few

Do they...

*Make derogatory comments about a group you belong to

(gender, career, religion, etc.)? This comment might end with "I mean them, not you."

*Make fun of or insult your ideas, behaviors, or beliefs?

*Make negative comments about people, places, or things that you love?

*Do they say, "What? It was just a joke!" to dismiss a remark that offends you?

*Do they ask you questions about something that just happened and reply to your answers, "Do you care to think about that and answer the question again?" or just sit there, staring at you, in a way that lets you know your answer wasn't "right"?

*Do they engage you in long conversations about things on which you disagree until you reach the point of wanting to say, "Okay. Whatever. You're right!" Or insist that you repeat what they said and then, later, claim, "You agreed with me then!"

*Do they break you down until you say you're sorry about a fight you clearly are in the right about?

These are signs of how you feel when you are with them

Do you feel…

*Nervous when approaching them with certain topics?

*Do you need to "tell on yourself" about innocent events in case the person hears about it later?

*Do you feel misunderstood for the most part in your relationship?

Do you doubt...

*Your sanity, intelligence, or communication skills because of difficulties relating to them?

*Do you doubt your memories when it comes to recalling conversations or events with the person because their take on it is so different from your own?

Ask yourself these questions and be brutally honest with the answers because these are the signs of verbal abuse. They poison your thoughts with confusion and doubt.

One study of physical health consequences of physical and psychological abuse concludes:

Verbal abuse is strongly associated with chronic pain, migraine and frequent headaches, stammering, ulcers, spastic colon, and frequent indigestion, diarrhea, or constipation along with many stress-related heart conditions.

The psychological effects of verbal abuse include:

fear and anxiety, depression, stress and PTSD, intrusive memories, memory gap disorders, sleep or eating problems, hyper-vigilance and exaggerated startle responses, irritability, anger issues, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide, self-mutilation, and assaultive behaviors.

There are many other studies out there that will give you facts and numbers, but they can never truly know the pain you feel when you are a victim of verbal abuse. You feel you will never do anything right, that if “only” you could make them happy, and you are constantly walking on eggshells, not knowing what person they will be that day.

You wonder how they can say they love you yet treat you this way? If they are your parents, you wonder why they don't love you. You're constantly running after their love and acceptance, and you will take it into adulthood and, a lot of the time, continue the vicious cycle. You feel unlovable and unworthy, and you question everything you do and say.

Until the day you realize it is about them and not about you, this is their issue, not yours. No matter how “ good” you are, how “right” you do things, it will never be enough for them. They will find fault even in perfection. They need to put you down in order to make themselves feel better. They are lacking, but they put the spotlight on you, so you don't see their faults. This has nothing to do with you.

Get out, get help, do research, talk to others who have been there, and slowly start to love yourself again.

You are worthy of being treated well, and until you realize this, they will continue to have power over you even 40 years from now. Trust me, I know. But I also know that change is possible, and as I always say at the end of every blog…

Only you can be the change you want to see.

@TreadmillTreats

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pashterlengkap · 1 year

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Dylan Mulvaney calls out “cruel” attacks on her over the Bud Light beer cans

Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney just released a video to tell her followers that she’s alright after being the target of a hurricane of abuse from the right this past month. Mulvaney has been documenting her transition on social media for over a year. On April 1, she posted a video to Instagram with some custom Bud Light cans that had her face on them. Bud Light sent her those cans for the sponsored video and to celebrate her recent 365 days of being a girl. --- Related Stories John Oliver blasts Anheuser-Busch for lackluster response to brutal Dylan Mulvaney backlash Oliver said the company’s new ad caters to anti-trans trolls and feels like “the results of feeding an AI program the prompt ‘America freedom I’m sorry.'” --- In the weeks since she posted that 50-second video, conservatives lost their minds, posting videos as they dumped out Bud Light beer and shot up cases of Bud Light with semiautomatic rifles. Elected Republicans claimed that Mulvaney was a pedophile (without any evidence at all) and that the global balance of power would be upset by Mulvaney’s Instagram video, while others saying that they were boycotting Bud Light, often switching to other LGBTQ+ friendly brands. Mulvaney stopped posting to social media for a few weeks as conservatives continued to work out their rage against her in sometimes embarrassing ways. But now she’s back, responding to the outrage in a video for her followers. “It’s day 9,610 of being a human,” she said. “And I’m going to try and leave gender out of this since that’s how we found ourselves here.” She said that she has been reading the criticisms of her, which she called “so far from my truth that I was like hearing my name, and I didn’t even know who they were talking about sometimes. It’s a very dissociative feeling.” “I decided to take the backseat and just let them tucker themselves out,” she said. But she explained that she had to start speaking publicly again to get some control over the narrative about her. “I’ve been having crazy deja vu because I’m an adult, I’m 26, and throughout childhood, I was called too feminine and over-the-top,” she said, citing a few things that right-wingers have been saying about her. “Here I am now, being called all of those same things, but this time it’s from other adults.” “If they’re going to accuse me of anything, it should be that I’m a theater person and that I’m camp. But this is just my personality, and it always has been,” she said. Mulvaney called out some of the more extreme attacks on her character. “I think it’s OK to be frustrated with someone or confused, but what I’m struggling to understand is the need to dehumanize and to be cruel. I don’t think that’s right,” she said. “I’m embarrassed to even tell you this, but I was nervous that you were going to start believing those things that they were saying about me, since it is so loud,” she continued. “But I’m gonna go ahead and trust that the people that know me and my heart won’t listen to that noise.” She said that she wants to make content on social media that has nothing to do with her identity. @dylanmulvaney Love ya ♬ original sound – Dylan Mulvaney http://dlvr.it/SnFvlY

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chaotic-history · 1 year

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Source? I'm genuinely asking. Everyone is talking about JKR being a terf but they never provide sources. I've tried looking myself and found no such thing. What has she actually said or written???? (Again, genuinely asking. In my country nobody knows what she's up to and she's irrelant. Due to cultural and language barrier I'm struggling to find it and want to be fully informed)

Hey Anon,

I'm going to assume this ask is in good faith. There's a lot of online articles about Rowling's transphobia, but I've gone through and found some of the more obvious examples of it.

First of all, she said she was "triggered" (yes, she actually used that word) by hearing about Scotland's gender recognition bill, which just allowed for lowering the age for applying for a Gender Recognition certificate to 16 instead of 18, removing the requirements to have lived and been out for 2 years as your correct gender and to have a medical diagnosis for gender dysphoria. As Rowling puts it, it means "that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one". Which of course she's criticizing, but that's exactly why the bill is good for trans people. Only an incredibly miniscule percentage of people detransition, and an even smaller due to genuinely going back to identifying as their agab. To be triggered by someone being acknowledged as what they say their gender identity is is incredibly transphobic. She also goes on to say that the government is "playing fast and loose with womens and girls' safety" by doing this. But literally nothing is changing here except a person's legal gender identity. If it's the bathroom thing, then anyone can walk into any bathroom anyways, it's not like anyone is out there checking what the govt says your gender is.

In the same article (that she wrote) she says this: "It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity." ...Because apparently supporting trans people is just stupid woke nonsense that people are forced to do in order to conform, as though trans people aren't being literally fucking murdered just for being brave enough to be themselves.

Then of course there's this: "I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it" because what's a terf without making broad statements that all trans women are just sexual predators? Also she's very conveniently ignoring all of the involvement trans women have had in the feminist movement.

She also described transitioning in a tweet as "conversion therapy for young gay people" that they were somehow being forced into, despite the fact that gender affirming surgery and hormones often take incredibly long to get access to and have about a billion hurdles to jump through in order to even be considered for it. No one is forcing young people into transitioning, and like I already mentioned, 98% of trans people don't regret medically transitioning, and only ~.4% regret it for reasons outside of facing bigotry for it. The whole narrative that young confused kids are being pushed into transitioning is literally just a way to invalidate young trans men, because there is absolutely zero evidence behind it. She also writes that "Many health professionals are concerned that young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery when this may not be in their best interests.” Which. No. No health professional who actually knows anything about trans people is concerned about this, because like I said, it is not happening. Anywhere. Under any circumstances. There are people who DIY hormones through incredibly dangerous means because they can't get access to them. There are people who have been on waiting lists for 3+ years. There are people who kill themselves because they can't access hormones. Absolutely no one is being 'shunted towards' them.

And then of course she wrote Trouble Blood, about a male serial killer who dresses up as women to kill cis women. Okay, it's been done before, but in context with everything else Rowling's said, her message is pretty clear, and it's that she sees trans women as predators who only transition to prey on cis women.

Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson, and Daniel Radcliffe have all spoken out against Rowling's transphobia, and Redmayne said that "As someone who has worked with both J.K. Rowling and members of the trans community, I wanted to make it absolutely clear where I stand. I disagree with Jo’s comments. Trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary identities are valid." These are people who have worked closely with her, and they're acknowledging that her beliefs are incredibly transphobic.

So yeah. She's absolutely a terf, and the things I've compiled here are just a few examples, if you look up "jkr transphobia" I'm sure you can find many more. Or just read her tweets, it's not hard to find.

All the quotes are from her tweets or her personal website.

#jkr

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purplespaceace · 3 years

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very few characters actually have adhd in media, and when they do, what people mean by that is just that they fidget a lot, not that they have adhd. the only character with adhd I can think of where I’ve watched/read it and I’ve gone, “oh, this character actually has adhd” is Jake peralta from Brooklyn 99. so, here’s my take on how to write adhd, with examples from Brooklyn 99.

I’ll do the best I can to separate them into three categories; the three things people look for in adults with ADHD, which are rejection sensitivity dysphoria, an interest-based nervous system, and emotional hyperarousal.

I’ll also randomly bold and italicize bits so people with ADHD can actually read it.

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, or RSD

Rejection sensitivity dysphoria makes people with ADHD overly sensitive to criticism, even if they perceive a rejection and there actually isn’t one. Their emotions are also very strong generally. Because of RSD, people with ADHD become people-pleasers and can develop anxiety because they’re so eager to please.

For me, RSD makes me cry an embarrassing amount for any little reason. in your writing, make your characters overdramatic, criers, and/or people-pleasers. They’ll have trouble saying no. They may also be over competitive, as their perceived rejection may include losing.

how does Jake show this in b99? When Jake comes up with a catchphrase and Rosa says it’s terrible, jake is far more hurt than he should be. He hates losing, and he gets overly upset whenever someone says they don’t like him or don’t trust him, etc. he’s also a people pleaser who has trouble saying no.

An interest-based nervous system

An interest-based nervous system includes hyperfocuses and an inability to pay attention. It stems from the fact that we can’t make as much dopamine as neurotypicals. This means that while neurotypicals get dopamine after completing a task, people with ADHD don’t. That means that people with ADHD don’t have any reason to do tasks, especially those they don’t like. This leads to executive dysfunction—people with ADHD will know they have to or want to do something, but they can’t seem to do it. people with ADHD hyperfocus on things that bring them dopamine. I was obsessed with warrior cats for three years. But hyperfocuses can also last a short amount of time—I’ll have a drawing idea in the middle of class and won’t be able to concentrate on anything else before I finish it. this is where our impulsiveness comes from. we can leap into things we think will give us dopamine without thinking, which can lead to injury. We also tend to tell people personal things they don’t want to hear because of this, and don’t have very good boundaries. We sometimes say whatever comes into our head, which can also result in us being rude on accident. Our voices can also get very loud or we can interrupt people frequently because we’re so impulsive. When people with ADHD hyperfocus, they can forget about anything else. I’ll forget to eat if I’m busy reading a Wikipedia article about feminism in the 1850s, and won’t go to the bathroom or drink water either. It’s also important to note that taking away distractions doesn’t help, because we can do things like pick at our skin and daydream—something that people with ADHD do a lot of. Because of executive dysfunction, people can call people with ADHD lazy or irresponsible.

people with ADHD can also be extremely indecisive because ADHD affects our executive functioning, and making decisions requires planning and prioritizing, and task initiation, which are both executive functions!

people with ADHD also have poor memory for important things, but tend to remember random bits of trivia. Poor memory leads to object permanence problems, which means people with ADHD can forget to call a friend back for weeks, forget that they need to read library books in a closed cabinet, or forget that the vegetables they got will go bad. People can sometimes say that people with ADHD don’t care about anything because of this.

people with ADHD can also be prone to depression because of under or overstimulation. Boredom feels painful for people with ADHD. If we’re overstimulated, we can experience sensory overload—if things are too bright or too loud, if too many things are touching us at once—often it’s not because the thing is too intense, but because too many things are happening at once.

We also have something some people call dolphin brain, where we jump from one thing to another. From the outside, it looks really random, but I find that when I’m talking to another neurodivergent communication is generally easier. For instance, someone with ADHD might see a bee at a baseball field and tell their team about the time they saw whales at seaworld because their little brother was also stung by a wasp there. people will see no connection on the outside, but it makes perfect sense to the person with ADHD.

people with ADHD can also be overachievers, either because they hyperfocus on schoolwork or their RSD makes it so that failing at something isn’t an option. people with ADHD can also be very controlling and stubborn, probably because we hyperfocus on something and cant handle it being any different, and any change to our plans can be seen as rejection.

we can also have a hard time ordering our thoughts or doing stuff like math in our head. a lot of the time I number my thoughts like, 1. this reason, 2. this reason, etc. even if theres only two or sometimes I just need the 1. as a transition for my brain. when I don’t write it down or organize it like that it feels like I’m trying to grasp ropes that have been covered in oil (it’s not going to happen) and then my brain gets all jumbled and I have to restart at the beginning. this is probably just me, but it feels the same way when I’m reading long paragraphs of something uninteresting, or even short bits of historical documents because the way they phrase things is really pompous and hard to process.

also, stuff like caffeine calms us down and helps us focus. people who don’t take medication (me) often drink coffee or caffeinated sodas to focus.

another random tip, but if your character with ADHD also is genderfluid or genderflux, they might have a hard time figuring out their gender sometimes, because we can be known to have a hard time putting our feelings into words or our brains will just go, “nope, not thinking about that right now” and move on, which can be pretty frustrating.

people with adhd also have a trait called time blindness, where we have no idea how long something takes and therefore can’t manage our time very well. this often results in us being late or just sitting around the house because we got ready way too early.

we also have something called consequence blindness—we do things and are completely unaware of the consequences. if I don’t brush my teeth, I get cavities. but I don’t think about that when I’m deciding I’m too tired to brush my teeth.

in b99, jake regularly stays up all night solving cases and watches documentaries on random topics. He’s also very distractible—when they’re trying to find the person who sent Captain Holt death threats in the train yard, Jake says he and captain holt should take a train trip together sometime. Jake says that he’ll forget Amy if they don't work together because he’s like a goldfish.

Emotional hyperarousal

This is the only thing people tend to include when writing characters: the fidgeting. People with ADHD tend to need more stimulation than others, so we’ll do things like draw during class and chew on pens.

people with ADHD can also have apd, or auditory processing disorder. we tend to watch shows with subtitles on and may take a second to process what you’re saying, or hear it wrong. The subtitles thing may be partially do to creating just the right amount of stimulation, but if I don’t have subtitles, me and my other friends with ADHD will watch tv with the volume turned up very high. People with ADHD also can have a hard time interpreting other people‘s tone and have a hard time controlling their own. They can be bad at social cues and have poor manners because we don’t pick up on that stuff.

people with ADHD also tend to observe everything or nothing at any given time, mostly based on the amount of stimulation they have—if they dont have a lot in their main task, they’ll need to take in something else at the same time. Likewise, if I’m hyperfocusing on something I often don’t notice anything else, like if someone asks me a question.

in b99, Jake fidgets with things a lot. In the intro, he’s picking up and examining a figurine on his desk, likely because he was bored with paperwork or some other task.

#adhd #writing #writing adhd #brooklyn nine nine #b99 #brooklyn99 #Jake peralta #Adhd Jake #neurodivergent #writing tips #adhd problems #adhd misconceptions #nd #neurodivergence

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charlie-rulerofhell · 3 years

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An interview with Måneskin: “It's not about out bodies, it's about our music”

Heyo, I'm back with another translation. This time the article is from the German Rolling Stone website who met with Måneskin after their TikTok performance at the Schwuz, Berlin, and posted the interview yesterday. Again there were some interesting questions asked (and the pictures they added to the article are quite nice, though severely lacking some Ethan content, but check it out!).

Again, I hope that no one has already gone through the effort and translated it or is currently working on a translation. Also this is an official invitation, if you stumble across any articles or video interviews in German that you would like to have translated just message me and I'll get to it! (or if you just wanna chat about Måneskin, my inbox is always open :))

Have a great day everyone!

Full article under the cut.

-----------------------------

An interview with Måneskin: “It's not about out bodies, it's about our music”

Jose-Luis Amsler

July 6, 2021

Måneskin are just what this generation has been missing. Passionate, corny, and full-on honest. In an interview with Rolling Stones, the ESC winners explain to us why they would never work in a normal job and why the hype for their appearance is sometimes going too far.

Damiano, Victoria, Thomas and Ethan are entering the nearly deserted dance hall, before they wait on stage in a red-blue spotlight. They are wearing glittering fish net tops, black tape across their nipples, leather pants, heels and make up. The camera men who are filming in portrait format (9:16) suitable for TikTok are whirling up the haze of the fog machine.

Måneskin are [in] Berlin to give a TikTok concert. A TikTok livestream of this scale has not been done often – tension is in the air. The four Italians don't know at this point that due to the stream the few people present are not allowed to clap or cheer. In complete silence and with slight uncertainty the four are crossing Neukölln's club Schwuz. A few puzzled glances are exchanged. Finally, Måneskin are striking the first chord.

Then the rich sound of Ethan's bass drum is tearing through the silence. It's almost as if someone has flicked a switch somewhere. There it is, the rock star presence that is hovering over everything they do, with an ounce of arrogance (in the best sense of the word). Singer Damiano is dancing lasciviously on his heels, and during an especially ecstatic solo guitarist Thomas is throwing himself down on the floor in a way it can only be done by a passionate 20-year-old musician who had never had to worry about the looming doom of an artificial knee joint [for 'passionate' the interview is using the term 'besessen' which means 'possessed', and although I think it's rather supposed to describe the way Thomas is 'possessed / obsessed' with the music, thus passionate for the music, you never know if they didn't mean to say that the way he dances looks 'possessed' … I mean, they might be on to something here ;)]. Around half an hour and about 120 decibel later, Damiano says their goodbyes with an almost shy-sounding “Okay, bye.” After the performance, we do our interview in the Schwuz.

Rolling Stone: It was a little bit weird, right, when you went on stage today?

Damiano: Yeah, that was really strange (laughs). They only told us after the performance that the audience was instructed to stay silent for the stream.

Vic: But at least they weren't silent because we were shit (all laughing). We are slowly getting used to playing without a live audience. I mean we are doing this now for more than a year.

RS: What do you think about these new kinds of concerts such as the TikTok livestream today?

Damiano: Well, at the moment it is the only option to perform anyway, so it's alright. But of course you cannot compare this to a proper concert.

Thomas: But it's pretty cool that so many people can experience our concert live.

Vic: Also we're gonna start touring again soon. Right now we are arranging some festival and gigs. In December we will be touring Italy and afterwards we are planning to go on tour through Europe. But we don't have anything fixed yet, there is just a lot going on at the moment.

“A lot going on”. Quite an understatement considering the recent journey Måneskin has made through the past weeks after their ESC win. Their singles “Beggin'” and “I Wanna Be Your Slave” went through the roof (also thanks to Social Media) and are currently dominating the international charts – lately they were also number one in Germany. There is barely a radio station that isn't playing the band on heavy rotation [would love to know what stations they listen to, have never heard Måneskin played in German radio tbh :( ], and everyone opening Instagram or TikTok these days is flooded by Måneskin content. Every second a new fanpage with the name of 'maneskin_obsession' or 'damianos_slut' is springing up like a (virtual) mushroom. It sounds like a cliche, but Damiano, Vic, Thomas and Ethan became international stars over night.

“Of course it's nice to get compliments. But sometimes they definitely cross a line.” – Damiano David

RS: How has your life as a band changed since your win at the ESC in Rotterdam?

Vic: I think we don't even notice a lot of what's happening. Right after the ESC we went to a studio in the countryside where we made music the whole day long. So at first we didn't realise that so many things were happening all around us – and that we had so many new fans. We're just now beginning to learn what's going on. We were at Sony yesterday, there were so many fans waiting for us. That was crazy.

RS: A large part of the attention you are getting now is about your outer appearance, your style, your attractiveness. Is that getting a little too much sometimes?

Damiano: Of course it's nice to get compliments (laughs). But sometimes they definitely cross a line. Especially when we just talk about our music or about a social or political topic that we care about. In those moments it's just completely inappropriate to reduce us to our appearance. Sure – when I'm posting a half-naked picture of myself on Instagram I know that I will get these kind of comments. And then it's totally fine, I mean in the end I'm posting the picture to show myself. But sometimes it's not the right place for it.

RS: And also you should be allowed to wear what you want without being sexualised, right?

Vic: Yes, absolutely. We are wearing these outfits because we feel good in them, not to put the focus on our bodies. And in general it shouldn't always only be about how you dress. We are musicians – so first and foremost it should be about our music. But I think it will still be a long way until we will reach that point.

“That the boys are wearing make up does not tell you what gender they are attracted to. Those things should never be equated with each other.” – Victoria De Angelis

RS: But still you are sending a message with your style against stereotypical gender roles. I guess it's also not only coincidence that we are in the Schwuz today, which is normally a party location and safe space for the LGBTQ community.

Vic: Yes, that is all part of the positive message that we try to send. We want to give our audience the feeling that they are free. Free to wear whatever they want to wear, be how they want to be and love whom they want to love. It's unbelievable that there is still so much intolerance in our times. That has always been really important to us so we try to talk about these topics. We also believe that the narrow-mindedness of society is an educational problem. When you grow up with people all around you telling you how you should be, you will never feel completely free. The more people are talking about it, the sooner things will change.

RS: Some artists who are advocating for these topics are accused of 'queerbaiting', that they are only pretending to be a certain way to gain more support from the queer community. Have you also been faced with those allegations?

Vic: Yes, a few times. But of course we never pretended to be anything. Some people accuse of us queerbaiting because we look and act the way we do. But that's flawed thinking. We don't believe that clothes are connected to a person's sexuality. That the boys are wearing make up does not tell you what gender they are attracted to. Those two things should never be equated with each other.

RS: This courage for free self expression that you are conveying is mainly lived by our (young) generation through Instagram and the like. What is your relationship to social media?

Damiano: For me it was almost scary at first. The more we grew, the more people were trying to twist all of my words. But over time you start to understand that with more fame you also get more criticism. The happier you look the more hate you will get. It's not only like that for celebrities. If you are brave enough to show the things that make you happy there will always be people that support you, but they are also those that envy you. Of course, this should never lead anyone to not express themselves openly but that's easier said than done.

Vic: We are also trying not to spend too much time on social media. In the end we just try to be honest with our fans and to avoid negativity.

[caption under the picture of Damiano: 'Is already being compared to icons such as David Bowie']

It's actually surprising how little power a win at the ESC holds in most cases. Almost 200 million people are watching this shining spectacle every year – and still, a few months afterwards it is hard to remember who those people were that got covered in confetti during the award ceremony. It's the well-known curse of a casting show that rests on the winning bands. When just next year a new sensation will come to marvel at, how much impact does a win have then? There are exceptions of course, like Lena who is until this day, 10 years after her win in Oslo, a part of the more famous music scene of German pop music. With their charisma, their unusual sound at least for our modern standards, and their contemporary message Måneskin could become such an exception, too.

It's likely also helpful that the band already had a standing in the Italian music scene prior to their ESC participation. Their first album 'Il ballo della vita' already achieved platinum in 2018, three years prior to Sanremo and the ESC. And then there is also the long way that led the four schoolmates to this point that helped them gain the necessary persistence. Because contrary to what some people might want to believe Måneskin are not a phenomenon that has just been deliberately bred to be this way by the entertainment industry for Eurovision.

“I have worked [in a 'normal' job] for a whole month in my entire life – it didn't really end well.” – Damiano David

RS: You were all raised in Rome, the capital of the catholic church. What was it like to start as a young progressive band in such a conservative environment?

Damiano: In the beginning, when we started as buskers, no one gave a damn about us anyways (all laughing). But of course … Once we got a bit bigger there were a few people who had a problem with us. For example when we went to Sanremo, there were quite many people who thought that the way we looked and acted we shouldn't be allowed to represent Italy. They didn't even want to listen to our music first.

Vic: Especially when it comes to appearance and sexuality, Italy is a little more backward than other countries. The church probably also has an influence there. They are often quite conservative of course, so many people grew up with such a [conservative] mindset.

RS: You once said that the song 'In Nome Del Padre' is an answer to exactly those people. What does the song mean to you?

Damiano: Back in the beginning [of our career] we had to deal with a lot of problems. They didn't want to let us play in clubs because we would take too much space as a band or because they didn't like our (fashion) style or because they didn't want to pay us. Italy isn't a good place for bands. Our musical style was also criticised a lot. Many people were telling us: Don't do that [rock music], you won't get popular with that in Italy, you will never achieve anything with it. Of course those comments were hurtful but they were also a good reason for us to continue with what we did. And we turned our sadness into anger. With that song we wanted to tell those people from back then: Fuck off and look at us, we did it!

RS: Did you ever consider working in a nine-to-five job and live a 'normal' life?

Damiano: Nah, not really. For one month in my life I worked [in a 'normal' job] – it didn't end well (all laughing).

Vic: We all made music since we were kids. It's a huge part of us, that we couldn't just ignore. And the most important thing is that you do something that makes you happy. At least that's what we believe. So we started from a young age to put all our time and energy into music.

Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Ever since we were in school together we always made music. That has always been our main focus and it is until today. We play and play and play because it is the only thing that …

Ethan: … we live for.

Damiano: Music has also something very therapeutic for us. Even when we are in a bad mood or fight with each other – yeah, that happens, too – then all of that is gone the moment we enter the stage. Maybe that's the beautiful thing about music – that it allows you to forget everything else. You're just standing on stage, having fun with your friends.

From most bands you wouldn't buy such a corny love letter to music. Mostly it just sounds like an empty phrase, a well-practiced quotable line. But when there is something that defines Måneskin and that becomes more and more evident during our conversation it's their uncompromising honesty. The four of them are definitely not lacking a sense of humour but they take their music very seriously. Which should not be taken for granted in a generation that has mainly produced sarcastic cloud rappers and has made cynical twitter comedy a national sport. And maybe Måneskin are exactly what this generation was lacking all along.

Still, the four musicians, all in the age of 20 to 22, are also prone to the constant need for self-expression, that has become an intrinsic part of today's life. This does not only reflect in the outfits of the band (always 'on fleek') and their Instagram profiles, but also in their lyrics. Their latest record 'Teatra D'Ira – Vol. 1' shows a clear theme: The album is an ode to individuality, accentuated by fast and hard sounds.

Sometimes this message fitting for a Disney movie [really? guess I have been watching the wrong Disney movies my whole life …] is wrapped in a contrasting loud and forceful packaging, but never so much that it becomes inauthentic or self-caricaturing [note: I'm honestly not entirely sure what they wanted to say with this sentence since it uses a lot of rhetorical devices that could be interpreted in different ways, but I'd say this sounds the most plausible]. And in the end, the thing that makes Måneskin so interesting is their unification of the spirit of this time – between TikTok hedonism and an omnipresent political statement – with the music of past generations.

“When you are twenty, you start to think about what the future will hold.” – Damiano David

RS: Your musical style is often described as classical 70s rock, but in fact there are many different influences in your music. Sometimes you groove almost into funk, sometimes it's more rapping than singing. How did this mixture come to be?

Thomas: It's just that we all have our own individual influences and then we meet somewhere in the middle. And we always try to stay open for experiments.

Ethan: Yes, we are very experimental in our song writing process.

Vic: We also don't want to limit ourselves to what is regarded as typical rock music. If rap fits better at some point then we just add that in. It just happens naturally without us thinking too much about it.

RS: So why was it still rock music in the end?

Vic: Because it's the style that we feel most represented by. But actually we just play the music that we enjoy playing. That's really important to us so that we can show something real on stage. We don't want to pretend to be something that we aren't or mock those people that really enjoy our music. You should always be proud of what you're doing and never fake anything just to sell more records.

RS: Is there something like an Italian rock music scene?

Vic: There are quite a lot of bands – but the most of them are much older than us or they are more going in the direction Indie rock. There isn't really a young rock scene, which we think is a pity. But ever since we got more famous people are telling us that they started listening to rock music because of us or that they bought their first guitar and such. That's incredibly nice!

RS: So you're saying that you also want to show this style of music to a younger generation. And you capture this contrast quite well in the song 'Vent'anni', which is a typical rock ballad but lyrically portrays the thoughts of today's youth. Where did the motivation come from to write that song?

Damiano: With the song I wanted to show that I'm just a normal guy, a really typical 20-year-old. I experience the same things that other people in my age are experiencing, I'm just doing another job than them. Also I wanted to describe this age as a whole because I think it's a really special age. At 20 you start to think about what the future will hold. I think it's one of the most important stages of your life. Since we (the four of us) are all in the same age, I then started to mix our experiences together. In the end the song shows what it means to us to be 20. There is a lot of good things – you are quite carefree and are looking at life enthusiastically. But on the other hand you're too young to do certain things and too old to do others. Some people are treating you like a full-grown adult, but …

Vic: … not entirely.

Damiano: Exactly. It can get pretty frustrating at times. We wanted to show our audience: Hey, we're also just 20 years old, and we're going through the same things as you. We understand you.

RS: Except that you are the ones who are becoming a world-wide phenomenon right now. How do you want to maintain this honesty?

Damiano: I think that we could just reach this point because we have always been authentic – for better or for worse. Also we are just trying to have fun with what we're doing together. That's something special that we don't want to lose. In the end we're just four friends who started to live their dream. It's actually pretty simple. Of course – we go on stage, we get a lot of attention, we give interviews – but when we come back home we're just four friends.

#måneskin #maneskin #måneskin interview #my stuff #esc #again if you ever want anything to be translated just hit me up i'm free most of the time #ig my blog is slowly turning into a måneskin fanpage for translations and shitposting #but tbh i'm not complaining #have a great day everyone and happy waiting for sooooon

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Text

Curse-breaker (Chapter 4/4)

- ao3 -

“You know him, right?” Jiang Cheng asked Lan Xichen. He was trying not to appear as nervous as he felt in asking, but he was pretty sure he was failing. “Nie-gongzi?”

Lan Xichen smiled. “I do. And thank you for calling him that, he prefers it.”

There were those that had started calling him Curse-breaker, as if it were a proper title; Jiang Cheng had heard it said a few times, and while he didn’t personally disagree with the moniker, which seemed appropriate, he also knew better than to just drop it into a conversation.

Luckily. He was trying to make a good impression here.

“What’s he like?” Jiang Cheng blurted out, then immediately wanted to kick himself. “I mean – it’s just – I didn’t see him much when he visited the Lotus Pier –”

He was making it worse.

It was only that he’d never quite met anyone with so much presence as Nie Mingjue: taller even than Jiang Cheng’s father, with that strange eye that seemed to see everything and anything. His features were generally set in a neutral expression that made him seem almost unworldly, like some god untouched by human concerns, but which sometimes softened a little when he approved of something – or someone.

Jiang Cheng could feel his cheeks going red, and tried to suppress it.

“Mingjue-xiong liked you,” Lan Xichen said, and Jiang Cheng lost the battle at once, his whole face heating up until it felt unbearably hot. This was worse than the time that Nie Mingjue had come to the Lotus Pier and told his parents to value Jiang Cheng more or else, and then his father had come in with a smirk and a snarl and somehow made them do it. “He said so.”

“He did?”

“Oh, yes. He said you were talented and faithful, with a good heart, and that we’d see great things from you.”

Jiang Cheng was going to die.

“That’s nice,” he said, with an effort. “I thought very highly of him, too. He’s…great.”

Wow. ‘Great’. Was that really the best he could do?

Lan Xichen studied him for a moment, then nodded. “He really is,” he said, and sighed. “I had the same reaction, you know. He’s…a lot.”

Jiang Cheng felt seen. “I know,” he said effusively. “He’s just – you know?”

“I do,” Lan Xichen said. “Just –”

He waved his hand in the air. Not even making some sort of gesture, just a meaningless sort of wave, but for some reason Jiang Cheng understood him completely.

There really just weren’t words sometimes, when you wanted to describe things or people that inspired feelings that went beyond the merely describable. Nie Mingjue was one of those – Jiang Cheng had known that Lan Xichen would understand, and sure enough, he did.

And to think that Wei Wuxian liked Lan Wangji better!

Really, his shixiong might be more talented than Jiang Cheng in many ways, ways that were often a matter of jealousy, but Jiang Cheng clearly had better taste.

“Oh, there you are,” a voice said, and Jiang Cheng tensed and turned to look – but it was only Wen Qing, so that was fine. “Lan-gongzi, Jiang-gongzi, I was sent to spend some time with you.”

She probably meant that she was sent away so that the adults would have time to talk about issues they thought were too sensitive to involve the younger generation, or else they just wanted to start drinking earlier in the afternoon than usual and didn’t want her judging them from a medical standpoint. Either might be true – Wen Qing was widely acclaimed as one of the most talented in their generation, as terrifying with her needles as other people might be with their sword, from more or less the first moment she’d finally been allowed to join the rest of them on equal grounds.

They greeted her, trying to stand up to be polite, but she waved them down irritably and took a seat instead. “What are you two talking about?”

“Nie Mingjue,” Lan Xichen said, and Jiang Cheng nodded. “We were just commenting on his many admirable qualities.”

Jiang Cheng nodded a second time, even more emphatically.

Wen Qing looked at them both with that critical eye of hers for a long moment.

Then she sighed in a huff. “He’s really all that and more, isn’t he?” she said.

“He is,” Lan Xichen said.

“He’s just –” Jiang Cheng tried the same gesture as Lan Xichen earlier, and was gratified when Wen Qing started nodding herself in total agreement. “Right?”

“Right.”

Nie Mingjue was aware that many people liked to stare at them, but they had assumed it was because of how unusual they were – even putting aside the eye, which was their most obviously not-normal feature, their behavior was not always in line with regular people’s. They didn’t show their emotions on their face as easily, being more naturally inclined towards sternness, and their manner was both sharp and incisive, straightforward and blunt; they had missed critical years of social development while lost in what amounted to seclusion, too busy solidifying their sense of self, consolidating their we into an I.

(They were still trying to figure out gender, a process complicated by the fact that it hadn’t made much sense to either of them to begin with. They were starting to suspect it would be better to just give up on it entirely.)

It turned out, according to Nie Huaisang, that that was not why all those people were staring.

“When you say they like me…”

“Sexually or romantically attracted, usually both,” Nie Huaisang said. “You have a lot of would-be suitors. Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng, Wen Qing, Wen Ning, Jiang Yanli –”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to use their names directly like that,” Nie Mingjue said, though they weren’t sure about that. They’d forgotten more etiquette than they’d ever learned. “Also, isn’t Jiang Yanli getting married to Jin Zixuan?”

“He’s another of your admirers. As is Meng Yao…no, sorry, Jin Ziyao. You know he secretly thinks that you killed Jin Guangshan for him, right?”

They’d killed Jin Guangshan because he was rotten through and through, and he didn’t even have a qi deviation or a tormenting heart demon to blame for it. He just thought of people as things, even the ones he supposedly liked, and acted accordingly…they hadn’t really thought through the consequences of killing him when they’d done it, having long ago forgotten the concept of political considerations, but it was really amazing what could be covered up or excused if multiple sect leaders put their minds to it while the rest just breathed a sigh of relief that Jin Guangshan was gone.

“That seems like too many people,” they said. “They can’t all be my…admirers.”

“You think that’s it? I haven’t even gotten to Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian – both at once, if that’s your preferred flavor – and even that feral child Jin Ziyao found in Kuizhou…you know just the other week, he loudly declared that you were better than sweets and the entire room sighed all at once in agreement?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not. There are even rumors that say that Sect Leader Wen might be interested…”

They shrugged.

Nie Huaisang squinted at them. “Da-ge. Did you know about that one?”

“Sect Leader Wen is not subtle,” they said dryly. “But if it makes you feel better, his interest is purely a matter of cultivation, and also our father has already hit him for even making the suggestion.”

Nie Huaisang didn’t look impressed. “Are you sure it’s purely a matter of cultivation? Would you be able to tell if it wasn’t?”

Nie Mingjue considered how little they’d recognized any of the other people who were purportedly interested in them. “No,” they admitted.

“Hmm. What about Teacher Lan?”

“What about Teacher Lan?” they asked, suspicious.

“Nothing, nothing. Just something I read somewhere…”

Probably one of those spring books that he was always sneaking around, they concluded.

“Though…you have been going out of your way to meet up with Teacher Lan more often recently…”

“He’s helping me figure out some of the bureaucratic intricacies of changing succession,” they said. “He’s had the most experience, having to do it twice – once to get his brother out of the line of succession, and another to get him back in. He’s a good teacher.”

He was, too. For all of Nie Huaisang’s tall tales about Lan Qiren’s strictness and overly-rigid insistence on orthodoxy, the man himself had a very calming presence, still and tranquil. It made them think of a musical instrument and, using the Nie cultivation method as a base, start to think strange thoughts…

Though not the sorts of thoughts Nie Huaisang had in mind.

“I mean, I guess. Even I learned eventually, and – wait. Why do you need to know about how to change succession? You’re already the heir.”

“That’s the problem,” Nie Mingjue said. “I need to figure out how to abdicate my position in your favor.”

Nie Huaisang gaped at him.

“No, I’m not joking,” they said, because they knew their little brother. “I’m not suited for politics. I don’t think I ever was, and after everything that happened, I’m even less suited.”

They really weren’t. Too blunt, too sharp, too concerned with justice, too inhuman – they were good at fighting, in the sense that they knew how to be a saber as well as a human and could wield sharpness in the same way, a slash from their fingers being enough to cleave a man in half, but that wasn’t what being a sect leader was about.

No, Nie Huaisang would be much better at it.

“Da-ge, you can’t do this to me!” Nie Huaisang wailed. “Do you know how much work it’d be? Anyway, you can’t – our father’s already promised all of Qinghe Nie to your future spouse! So there!”

“Then I just won’t ever get married.”

“What?!” Nie Huaisang waved his hands wildly. “You can’t do that! You – you – do you know how many hearts you’d be breaking?!”

“So you’ve informed me,” Nie Mingjue said dryly. “It’s all right, Huaisang. I rather like the life Teacher Lan has made for himself, traveling all around and coming back every few seasons to teach something. I want to fight evil, and there’s a lot more evil out there than there is in here.”

Or, at minimum, there was more evil of the sort they were allowed to just stab. That was apparently frowned upon, in politics – there was a reason they said they weren’t suited for it.

“You’re not suited for fighting evil with a blade,” they added while Nie Huaisang was still spluttering. “But you can do wonders with people, if you’re given enough time to plan it. Being sect leader will put you in the position that will let you fight evil best, in your own way.”

“Not everything is about fighting evil, da-ge!”

“Isn’t it?”

Nie Huaisang didn’t seem to have a good answer to that.

After a while, he finally said, “…you really think I’d be good at it?”

Nie Mingjue pulled their younger brother in for a hug.

“You’ll be magnificent,” they promised.

They liked travel, just as they’d suspected they would.

People always recognized them – the eye was very distinctive, and they were also very tall – and immediately rushed over to share all their problems. They were very happy to help. Some of them they could fix personally, generally the ones that were stabbable, while they had a wide enough set of acquaintances to deal with many of the others: those who needed healing to go to the Lan sect or Wen sect, depending on whether problem was mental or physical; those that needed advancement to the Jin sect or Jiang sect; mysteries to be solved to the newly established Wei sect over in Yiling; and anyone with anything more abstruse than that over to Nie Huaisang personally to sort of.

Their little brother liked a good puzzle.

As for Nie Mingjue’s part, they liked fighting evil, and they liked helping people, too, if they could manage it, so it all worked out quite well. The road could be a little lonely at times, all alone with no one around, but it wasn’t really that bad. They were welcome at just about every cultivation sect and most of the other places they’d passed by, so it wasn’t like they were lacking for company if they wanted it.

It was only sometimes that they wished that there was someone else who might want to share this type of life with them.

It was a difficult life, always roving and never satisfied, intent on fighting evil for an eternity and prizing the doing of it over normal things, everyday things; they knew that they couldn’t ask someone else to take on a mission so absurd as stamping out all evil in the world, and so they didn’t. Who would be so foolish as that? Not everyone could leave behind all their responsibilities and ties to the world the way they did, passing instead through their beloved one’s lives by chance like a leaf tossed in the wind – nor should they, if those ties gave them joy.

Take their current mission, for example. One of Nie Mingjue’s earlier trips had taken them from Yiling to the Baixue Temple, with the highly unorthodox Wei sect’s equally unorthodox head disciple, Xue Yang, tagging along with them so that they could – in Wei Wuxian’s words – beat some sense into his head, and it had been on that trip that they had met Song Lan, who was thoroughly charmed by the idea of a sect established on principles of brotherhood rather than blood.

He'd also been rather charmed, they thought, by Xue Yang himself, and the interest had been mutual.

(They were getting better at recognizing that sort of thing.)

So Song Lan had gone off with them, with Nie Mingjue dropping both him and Xue Yang back in Yiling, and when he’d gone back again another time they had seemed very happy. But Song Lan had been thinking about his master and martial brothers back at home, and he’d asked if Nie Mingjue would be willing to carry along some letters that he didn’t dare trust to the post.

Nie Mingjue, suspecting a request regarding marriage was involved, had readily agreed. Sure enough, once they’d dropped it off, the entire Baixue Temple had all but exploded in excitement – they’d barely managed to make it out of there in time to avoid being dragged into all the fuss.

And now they were wandering around nearby, shaking their head in amusement at all the noise they’d left behind, looking for something more interesting to do. Some evil to fight, or something like that.

They found both.

“Well, that was exhilarating,” they commended to the cultivator in white that had worked together with them to defeat a rather astounding number of evil creatures in an effort to save some rogue cultivators who’d gotten in over their heads. Nie Mingjue’s reputation was already ridiculous, and was only going to get worse, they knew, but really this was a lot even for them. They wouldn’t have been able to manage it without help.

“It was,” the cultivator said, and smiled at them. “My name is Xiao Xingchen, disciple of Baoshan Sanren. Who are you?”

“Nie Mingjue,” they said. They thought they’d heard of Baoshan Sanren before, but they weren’t entirely sure – they had a tendency to forget things that weren’t that important to them. They thought it might be something to do with Wei Wuxian’s mother –something to do with the immortal mountain, and a doom that fell on those who descended from it…?

“If you don’t mind me asking, why did those rogue cultivators call you Curse-breaker?” Xiao Xingchen asked.

They thought about it for a moment, then shrugged.

Xiao Xingchen laughed.

It was a warm sound.

“Where are you going?” Nie Mingjue asked. “I can escort you, if you like.”

“Don’t you have things of your own to be doing?”

“Not really,” Nie Mingjue said. “I want to eradicate all evil in this world, a task that’ll take me a lifetime – and evil can be found anywhere. Why not with you?”

Xiao Xingchen ducked his head. “I don’t have a destination either,” he admitted. “I came down from the mountain because I wanted to help save all the people in the world.”

Nie Mingjue blinked. That was nearly as stupidly idealistic a goal as theirs.

“Well, then,” they said, and smiled. “In that case, why don’t we go together?”

It would be nice to have company, unrestrained by any obligations tied to the mortal world, and in return they could show Xiao Xingchen everything there was to see – introduce him to all the people, eat all the food, fight all the battles. And if in the end it turned out that that doom people talked about in regards to the mountain really was a thing…

Well, they’d see about that.

After all, Nie Mingjue had a bit of experience with curses like that.

#mdzs #nie mingjue #jiang cheng #lan xichen #wen qing #xiao xingchen #my fic #my fics #cursebreaker #hey remember when I asked for help in deciding the ship

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