#correcting. not judgemental. but that is a Line and he is pointing it out

[strangersteddierthings]

I love a good S3 Steddie AU so—

Eddie and Robin were friends in high school, and every time they needed cover they would pretend to be dating.

So she starts working at Scoops, sees Steve not knowing he’s different now, and as a defense mechanism tells him about her “boyfriend”

Then they become buds but she still doesn’t correct the record, because she would have to explain why she lied

So Eddie comes into the shop and she’s like “That’s him!” and Steve is “🥺”

Because he and Eddie have been dating for months

THE SCREAM I SCRUMPT AT THAT LAST LINE NONNY. This story starts on July 1st (S3E3), so after they've cracked the Russian code.

-

It takes a full month of working at Scoops to get Robin to be more chill around him. He gets it. He was never outright mean to her but he was a dick in high school and his reputation lingers.

He's happy now that she's graduated from quietly distrusting him to outright teasing him. He's pretty sure it means they're friends now, or something like it. She even made that white board to mock his inability to flirt a few weeks ago. He knows he'll never get a tally in the You Rule category because he's not actually trying to flirt with anyone, what with him having a boyfriend of his own. Not that he can brag about his boyfriend as much as Robin brags about her boyfriend.

And, Jesus, did she brag at first. Steve had been convinced it was a new romance, and therefore she was still in the honeymoon phase, except she said they'd been dating since she was a freshman. With senior year starting for her in September, Steve's a little jealous.

He hopes that he and Eddie never leave their honeymoon phase. It's only been three months, and Steve's in awe that Eddie even bothered to look his way after how he'd been in school. Still in awe that Eddie wants more with Steve than just the physical. That Eddie wants cuddles during a movie, and sappy hand holding while they just chat, and to hold Steve after a nightmare on the rare occasion they get to share a bed through the night.

Anyway, the point. Robin is something of a friend and Steve's pleased about it. They have to be friends now, right? They cracked a Russian code together! (Steve refuses to give Dustin any credit for their official jump into friendship even though they wouldn't have had a Russian code to crack without him.)

"Are you and the Boy going to do anything for the Fourth?" Steve asks apropos nothing after handing off a banana split, leaving no more customers to help currently. He's a little ashamed to admit that he doesn't remember the name of her boyfriend. He's sure she said it at some point, so he's blaming his shit memory for that. But she just refers to him as the Boy, and doesn't find it weird that Steve does, too, so he'll take the win.

"Oh, uh, we haven't really discussed it. I'm scheduled closing on the Fourth so," Robin shrugs.

"We'll be in misery together," Steve says.

"Joy."

It's times like these, where Robin is so deadpan Steve can't tell if she's joking or not. Like maybe they aren't the budding friends Steve thinks they are. She's tough to read, sometimes.

"Well, even with the closing shift, there's still a lot of night left. Great time for fireworks."

"True. I'm sure The Boy is thinking up something as we speak. He likes to surprise me."

Steve's not jealous. He's not. He knows that Eddie would surprise him if they didn't have to be so secret about it all.

They do have plans for after Steve gets off work on the Fourth to go to the carnival. It's not strange for friends to go together. Maybe Steve can convince Robin come and to bring the Boy and they can just be a group of friends hanging out?

"Well, if he hasn't planned anything, maybe you and he will want to come hang out at the carnival? I'm going with a friend, maybe we'd see each other."

Robin levels him with a look, eyes squinted in judgement. "Your friends, the children?"

"I have more friends than just children!"

"I literally do not believe you. Why don't any of your age appropriate friends come bother you here, like all those kids?"

It's a valid question, Steve can concede. "That's because I do not want him to see me in this uniform. I will never live it down."

Robin raises an eyebrow. "Does he even know you work here?"

"Absolutely not. So if you do bump into us at the carnival, you are not allowed to say our place of employment. I'm serious, Robin. This will ruin me. You can say 'the mall' because that's all I'll say about it."

Robin's grin turns mischievous. "So, what I'm hearing is, I have blackmail material against the Steve Harrington?"

Steve groans. She's joking. He's like... 80% sure she's joking. He makes a mental note to ask Eddie if he knows Robin.

"Oh shit!" Robin calls out, surprised but delighted. Steve whips his head to her, and sees she's looking out the front door and through a sea of people.

"What, is it Dustin? Russians?" Steve joins her side quickly trying to see what she sees.

"No, it's-" she cuts herself off and Steve turns his head to look at her, only to find she's already looking at him. "It's my boyfriend. I don't think he's seen me yet. Want to meet him if he comes in?"

"Hell yeah I do. I need to meet the man you won't shut up about," Steve grins at her before turning his attention back to the people. His eyes scan over all of them, trying to figure out which guy looks like he might be Robin's boyfriend. Which, yes, he knows isn't something you can judge based on looks (he and Eddie are a prime example) but still.

And speaking of Eddie- no! No no! He'll never hear the end of it if Eddie sees the stupid sailor outfit. Eddie hasn't spotted him yet, so Steve slides around Robin to be out of eyesight. "You see him?"

"Yeah, he's- oh! I think he's seen me. He's coming this way," almost as an after thought, she adds, "do you remember Eddie Munson?"

Play it cool, Steve. "Uh... yes. Why? Is he coming this way? I thought I saw him out there..." Way to play it cool. If Robin didn't seem so hyped to be seeing her boyfriend, she would absolutely be questioning him.

"Oh. Well, he's my boyfriend, and yes he is."

Steve feels the floor fall out from under him.

The whole world shifts and Steve cannot stay here. He thinks he says something about a bathroom break before ducking into the employees only door, and then his body moves him further still until he's through several other doors and suddenly outside in the heat of the day.

Do you remember Eddie Munson? Well, he's my boyfriend.

He doesn't know what to do with that. Doesn't know how to process it. How to proceed. Eddie is- but he can't- this can't be real. This is a crazy dream, brought on by thoughts of Russians and codes and leftover Upside Down bullshit and he will be waking up anytime now to get ready for work.

Eddie Munson. He's my boyfriend.

He can't be your boyfriend Steve wants to scream. He can't be your boyfriend because he's mine.

Maybe... Maybe it's turning out to be that while Eddie is his boyfriend, he's not Eddie's. Maybe Eddie's never thought of him as a boyfriend.

Every instance runs through his head; all the times Eddie wouldn't stay the night. All the times Eddie told him he couldn't stay at the trailer. Is Eddie actually even in a band or is band practice just a convenient lie that keeps him from having to see Steve while still keeping him in his back pocket?

All the hiding, and the let's keep this just to us for now, and how wonderfully convenient it is that this needs to, has to, be a secret when you're in a queer relationship in a small town.

Steve's a goddman idiot!

Of course, Eddie has a girlfriend. Of course, he agreed to 'see where this thing goes.' This is why Eddie bothered to even look his direction. Because there's no scenario where Steve comes out okay. He can't even tell Robin her boyfriend isn't the fucking golden, perfect boy she brags about because how does he do that without telling her how he knows?

All the worst case scenarios play in his mind. Robin being in on it. Her and Eddie laughing at him behind his back, waiting for the right time to publicly out him. To get whatever revenge they think he owes to them for all his dick behavior in school. His whole relationship being a joke.

He lets out a yell and whips around to punch the wall next to the employee entrance door. The pain grounds him almost immediately and that yell turns into a chokes off sob, his eyes squeezing shut as he leans in to rest his forehead against the wall and take a shuddering breath.

There's no way Robin is in on this. And it was mean of him to think so. If Steve's just been some sort of experiment to Eddie, then that's on Eddie.

And Steve. For being stupid enough to believe anyone would actually be interested in him. For taking one look at Eddie's stupid dimpled smile and tripping over himself to do everything in his power to see it again. For fucking falling in love too fast, too soon, and not asking enough fucking questions and-

Oh.

That's why this hurts so much. That's why he didn't stick around to watch Eddie sweat at seeing his long-term girlfriend and- and whatever the fuck he thought Steve was working together and getting caught in whatever fuckery he's doing.

Steve's gone a fallen in love with the asshole.

He pushes off the wall, takes a deep breath to steel himself, and makes a decision. He's going to confront Eddie on the Fourth, since that's the next day they'll see each other. He'll tell him they're done, and that Eddie needs to come clean to Robin about what he's done, or he will. She deserves to know, and Steve can deal with the consequences.

When he returns the Scoops, there's no sign of Eddie, but Dustin is there.

(What Steve doesn't know is that Robin and Eddie hugged in greeting. Robin asked what he was up to. Eddie told her he was searching for his boyfriend. He works at the mall and Eddie wants to surprise him. Robin doesn't ask who he's looking for, and Eddie doesn't offer, because they both know the importance of coming out on your own terms and in your own time. Robin does ask if he's happy, and Eddie says he didn't know he could be this happy.)

Of course, what follows that is a series of terrible events that result in being stuck in an elevator, captured and tortured by Russians, drugged, and then rescued.

He and Robin end up in a bathroom, puking up their guts, and Robin says, in a Russian accent, "Interrogate me."

Steve chuckles and replies, "Okay. Interrogate you. Sure. Um... when was the last time you peed your pants?"

"Today."

"What?"

"When the Russian doctor took out the bone saw. It was just a little bit, though."

She laughs and he groans. It's definitely still in her system.

"Okay. My turn."

"Hit me."

"Have you..." she starts, leaving a pause as she thinks of what to ask, before ending with, "ever been in love?"

And Steve, horrifyingly, mortifyingly, just starts to cry. He can normally reign this in, has better control than this, but whatever drug is still in his system robs him of that.

In another universe, where Steve is able to control himself, he'd lie. He'd describe Robin, knowing she's happily taken, maybe slide himself under the partition between their stalls so she can reject him to his face, and they can laugh it off, solidifying their friendship.

But that's not what happens.

What happens instead is this: Robin, who does not slide herself across the floor but instead hauls herself upright to stumble around the partition, kneels in front of him as Steve lets out hiccupping sobs in between saying embarrassing things like yes and they don't love me back, they never love me back.

And Robin. Sweet, wonderful Robin, to whom he has been the other person in her years long relationship, tugs his arm until he's no longer hugging the toilet and is instead cradled by Robin. And she hums and assures him that whoever doesn't love him is an idiot and it makes Steve sob harder because she doesn't know and when she learns she's going to hate him.

He cannot let her continue to comfort him while he's crying about her boyfriend. It is with that sobering thought that he's able to win his war against whatever he's been injected with and stop his tears. Just in time, too, because Dustin and Erica find them, and then the Russians do, but so does El and the others.

The world is nothing but Upside Down terror for hours.

When the dust settles, Hopper is dead, and so is Billy, and Steve is sat in the back of an ambulance, hugging Robin around her shoulders as they both look out into the parking lot with matching thousand-yard stares. They've been looked over and deemed okay to go home, so Steve is just waiting for the government men currently raiding what is left of the underground Russain bunker to either find his keys, or not.

If his keys are found, he's Robin's ride. If they aren't, they're both being dropped off by ambulance, which Robin is stressing about because her parents cannot see her come home in the back of an ambulance.

Steve offers her to stay at his house. He thinks it'll be easier to beg her parents for forgiveness than explain this situation. Robin agrees to stay if the ambulance ends up being their ride.

It doesn't, though. It takes an hour after everyone else has left, but someone delivers his keys.

It's eerie, the walk from the front lot around the mall to the back employee lot, so they clasp hands to have something to ground to. There are less people the further they walk. The fire's been contained, probably so the government people can root around the bunker below the mall to discover whatever it was the Russians knew, or know, or whatever.

The back lot is completely empty. Only Steve's car, parked towards the edge of the lot give that his shift yesterday had been an afternoon one, and all the closer parking spaces had been taken.

His car is parked so that the passenger side faces them as they approach. Wordlessly, they break apart, Robin heading for her door and Steve rounding the front of the car to get to the driver's side. Except as soon as he rounds the corner, a figure that was previously crouched or sat in front of the door jumps up, lunging at Steve.

He barely has time to register the voice, a terrified sounding "Stevie!" before Steve back tracks with a yelp, out of reach of the figure. Robin screams when he does, and whoever was lunging at him stops in their tracks, whipping around to look at the other source of the noise.

"Robin?"

It's then that Steve takes in the sight before him. It's Eddie. It was Eddie leaning against his door, waiting for him. Steve's flooded with a rush of love, his stupid brain deciding that Eddie must have been worried when Steve didn't meet him for the carnival. Had come to look for him. But then the reality of the situation settles over him.

That might have been true, but now he's seen that Steve is here with his girlfriend and this isn't how he wanted to do this but he will.

For Robin, he will. She deserves better.

"What are you doing here!? Besides scaring the shit out of us!" Robin yells, rounding the car to punch Eddie in the arm.

"Ow, Buckley, what the fuck!" Eddie rubs the spot she punched him, looking between Robin and Steve with... confusion? Steve is expecting to see maybe some remorse, or guilt, or maybe even glee at the fact stupid Steve Harrington was able to be so easily fooled. He doesn't see any of that, though.

Eddie takes a step towards him, and Steve flinches back.

Robin steps up to Eddie, like she wants to pull Eddie into a hug, but he stops her with a hand on her shoulder. He looks from Robin to Steve again, then back to Robin. Steve can't see his face, his hair hides his profile, but he can see Robin's face. Her confusion, brows furrowed, before her eyes go wide and now she's looking between Steve and Eddie.

Fuck. She's just put it together herself! She's going to hate Steve forever, homewreaker that he is.

"Oh. Oh no," Robin whispers, then says Eddie's name in a devastated tone. "Eddie. Is it-?"

"I-I can't... Robin," Eddie says back, sounding just as hurt.

"No! No, I told him- Eddie, I told him we were dating!" she turns to Steve, then, and blurts, "I'm a lesbian!"

He doesn't know what to do with that information. "What?"

"I lied. Steve, I lied, I'm a lying liar and I'm so sorry," Robin says, shoving Eddie away from herself and towards Steve.

Maybe the drugs are still working because Steve still doesn't understand. "I don't... what?"

"I'm not dating Eddie," Robin says. "I've never dated Eddie, would never date Eddie because I don't want to date boys. Please, Steve, I never meant to make you think-" but she cuts herself off, looking from Steve to Eddie and back, before saying, "I never meant to make you think you were unlovable."

Eddie makes a wounded noise at that. "What did you say to him, Buckley!?"

Robin lied. Robin lied about dating a boy. Because she's not interested in boys? That doesn't make sense. That- oh. She lied about having a boyfriend for the same reason he's lied about not having a boyfriend. Because it isn't safe to not to.

Steve's legs give out, but he doesn't hit the pavement because Eddie catches him and the three of them sob and cling to each other in the dark of the parking lot.

Later, much later, the truth will come out. Steve will learn they've always been each other's covers but never actually together. Robin will apologize because she blames herself for Steve's bathroom, drugged-breakdown, and Steve apologizes for all the awful thoughts he had about Eddie when he thought Eddie was dating them both and lying about it.

Steve will learn that Eddie loves him, too, just as much as Steve loves him.

#Anonymous #steddie #my fic

[whoopssteddiefeels]

Penny in the Air

Robin is a lot of things: judgey, hyperactive, anxious, impulsive, talkative, loud- there’s a list okay, and she’s very familiar with it. High up the list is that she is very, very gay (if possible, she’s pretty sure she’s actually getting gayer. She blames Steve for this, as she’s pretty sure it has to do with being able to finally talk about her crushes to someone other than her reflection.)

The point is, she’s gay, so she’s not surprised that she notices first. The Steve-Eddie thing. Because it is, in fact, a thing at this point.

She knows Eddie is gay- knows it like the sky is blue and David Bowie rocks- because of, y’know, the way he is (if she had any doubt, the way he leaned in while calling Steve “big boy”, ew, killed it dead.) Her research suggests this is “gaydar,” but its very unfair, she thinks, that so far it has only detected exactly (2) gays, both men, making it pretty much useless. It has given her exactly 0 information on Vickie.

She empathizes with Eddie’s position. Feels it pang under her sternum when his eyes go soft watching Steve talk emphatically, hair flopping around in that ridiculous way it does. Knows how it must catch in his throat when his hand suddenly retracts halfway to Steve’s shoulder, going to his own hair to cover the aborted movement. Tries hard to not over-identify with the sharp tug he gives there, trying to snap himself out of it (fails because she did literally exactly that when Vickie was in the video store the previous day, almost as if he had seen and copied the mechanism).

The part of the puzzle she can’t figure out is Steve. She’s annoyingly aware that he likes (groan) boobies, thanks Fast Times, and he isn’t treating Eddie like a girl whose number he’s trying to score. That being said, whenever the older boy appears, Steve lights up like a damn Christmas tree. Affection doesn’t have to be romantic; she knows this- wants to hit several of the kiddos over the head with it whenever they allude to her dating Steve- but empathy for Eddie is tinting her judgement, and once you put on the gay rose-tinted glasses it’s hard to unsee the possibility. It certainly seems like flirting. Rearranging his hair every three seconds, drawing Eddie’s eyes to the mane that is his pride and joy. Getting what she can only describe as unnecessarily close when he squeezes by Eddie in the video store aisles or whoever’s living room they’re sprawled in, hands brushing a shoulder, back, or one time his hip under the pretense of maintaining balance. The soft blush whenever Eddie flirts hard in a way he knows can be passed off as a joke. The honest megawatt smile Steve gets whenever Eddie starts in on his usual antics is infinitely more endearing than the smolder he’s learned to use like a weapon.

She usually knows exactly what Steve is thinking or feeling before he does. They’ve got that whole platonic soul mate telepathy thing, and he’s easily the center of her social world. So, since she can’t tell what he’s thinking (other than the obvious but unhelpful “Eddie, yay!”), she’s 99.9% sure, from experience, ok, that it means he isn’t thinking. Like at all. So, what she’s witnessing is instinctive, his body just moving into Eddie’s space because it feels correct, and he hasn’t paused to think about it.

             He’s walking that line of comfortable and affectionate that is ambiguously intimate. Could be platonic, could be more. It would be frustrating for anyone with a crush, but she knows from bitter experience with straight-girl crushes that Eddie must be going insane. And yes, Robin and Eddie are friends, but not close enough for her to open a conversation with “So you’re obviously gay and into Steve, my best friend who I talk to every second of every day, and no he hasn’t mentioned it, and neither have I. What’s up with that?” Similarly, she can’t quite figure out how to bring it up to Steve without accidentally outing Eddie in the process.

That’s the main reason she’s keeping her mouth uncharacteristically shut on the subject. She is not, however, above the occasional raised eyebrow, ok, especially as Eddie’s flirting slowly becomes ridiculously obvious. The man is literally leaning on the counter, chin on his hand, mooning up at Steve through his eyelashes. Steve has his hip propped on the opposite side, leaning into the shared space. How are either of them this oblivious, seriously.

~*~

She’s there when the penny finally drops.

They’re not even watching a romantic movie, it’s fucking Life of Brian, all three of them calling out their favorite lines along with the actors, throwing things and generally goofing off. If she takes the armchair to force the boys together on the couch, she doesn’t think anyone can blame her. If she’s feeling a little smug that they both sit in the middle, right next to each other, instead of taking opposite ends, she keeps it to herself. She might not want to stick her foot right in the middle of that mess, but she’s not above setting booby traps.

Robin couldn’t tell you exactly when Steve’s arm went around Eddie’s shoulder; it was somewhere between Eddie practically climbing into Steve’s lap for a “Biggus Dickus” re-enactment, the closeness and flirting safely enveloped in humor, and Steve attempting to force Eddie to “haggle” for the bag of chips. When she glances over from the safety of her armchair, Steve’s arm is trapped behind Eddie’s head, draped over his shoulder on the opposite side. Eddie, usually a constant ball of fidgety motion, is frozen stiff like he’s trying not to scare off a nervous rabbit. Even in the blue light coming off the screen she can see the flush coloring his usually nocturnal-pale cheeks.

The thing is, Steve had just discussed this move with her. Told her to invite Vickie to movie night, recommended light, easily joked off roughhousing and settling an arm around her in a way specifically gaged to judge the reaction. Which means he knows. No way he hasn’t finally figured out what his lizard brain has clearly been screaming for months (seriously, she deserves a medal. Someone tell her future girlfriends about her stamina), not with the way he’s twirling a soft brown curl around and around his finger. He must know Eddie can feel that. And oh. Steve is not-so-subtly glancing to his right, trying to gage that reaction like they discussed, to see if this is ok.

Yup. Robin needs to be literally anywhere else. She tries to be subtle (insert laugh here), muttering “bathroom” and legging it out of the room, seeking the safety of the kitchen. She wasn’t worried though- odds are she could start playing trumpet and those two wouldn’t hear it past the tension of the moment.

 ~*~

In addition to gay, Robin is also easily bored. She hums along to “Always look on the bright side of life,” drifting in from the living room, crunching on some peppery crackers she found in a cabinet in a way that vaguely matches the song’s rhythm. She would just leave the boys to whatever they were going to do (yuck, don’t think about it), but unfortunately the two people most likely to give her a ride home were occupied (seriously, no thinking about it). She’d held out for as long as she could, really, but if the movie was ending, surely she had given them enough time?

Hoping she wasn’t going to regret it, she peaked out of the kitchen, and was relieved to see that 1) everyone still had clothes on and 2) Steve and Eddie were cuddling. Fucking finally.

“SO, BOYS,” she boomed (remember loud is on the list of things she is), trying not to enjoy the way two ridiculous heads of hair jumped and then shifted away from one another anxiously. “Who finally lost the longest game of gay chicken I’ve ever seen?”

Steve’s head makes an audible thump as it drops against the back of the couch, hands coming up to rub at his face as she rounds the furniture to face them, feeling deliciously smug. Eddie gave up any pretense and buried his face in Steve’s shoulder, sweater and hair completely hiding his face.

“Shut up Robin, go away,” Steve groans.

“Nope! This has been the slowest burn of all time, you guys were killing me. I have to balance it out by being just as insufferable.” she chirped, doing her best Steve impression, hands on her hips and eyebrow quirked.

“Technically, I would say we both won gay chicken since neither of us pulled back. No chickens here. Roosters only, in fact.” Eddie surfaces with a smug little smile, dimples on full display.

“Oh you’re definitely a cock Munson, I’ll give you that,”

“Don’t make me flip you the bird-”

“That’s a bit of ostritch-”

“Well toucan play at that game-”

“I’m so happy I like tits-“

“Why me?” Steve grumbled at the same time Eddie dropped his teasing tone to ask, “Wait what?”

“Me? Lesbian. You? Obviously gay. Steve has been flirting back at you for months you dingus.”

“I’ve been what?” Steve sits up straight, suddenly laser focused on Robin. “I have not. I only realized, like, a week ago-”

He was seriously going to be the death of her.

“Steve. Stephen. My guy. What would you say if I told you a girl had been giving me a hair show, the unnecessary squeeze-by, and big eyes? Consistently. For weeks.”

Eddie starts laughing. Then cackling. Steve went an even deeper shade of red, though she could tell this one was more indignant ruby than embarrassed scarlet.

“Thank you,” Eddie wheezed out, fighting down another fit, picking himself up from where he had slid down the couch. “Oh my god, thank you for fucking noticing that. He was wasn’t he? I thought it was just in my head, y’know, and Gareth always said I tend to imagine signs that aren’t there.”

“Oh I know, you think you have a hard time, girls are so physically affectionate platonically, it’s impossible to tell-”

“Ok. Done with this conversation!” Steve interrupted, standing up between the two of them, hands furiously combing through his hair.

Robin only grinned wider at Eddie. “So, Munson, care to give me a ride home?”

“You know, Buckley, I would be delighted.”

“Hey now-” Steve tried to interject as the two of them moved towards the door.

“Why thank you, kind sir.”

“Don’t mention it, fair lady. Your chariot awaits.”

“Wait, hang on, Eddie-” Steve’s tone shifted from confused to plaintive as she stepped out into the night. And she resolutely pretended to not hear Eddie’s reply before he closed the door behind them.

“Sit tight, big boy, I’ll be right back!”

#steddie #steddie fluff #Robin Buckley #Robin POV #steve harrington/ eddie munsion #fic #ficlet #sometimes i write things #fluff #Am I the only one who remember Life of Brian? Biggus Dickus was iconic #I too am a tired lesbian #platonic stobin #gratuitous bird puns #i just think my writing style sounds like Robin so I wanted to try something #letterkenny reference if you squint real hard

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

riddle's post-ob flashback in the light novel

Like the Leona post, I’m going to discuss the extended detail that the light novel goes into with Riddle’s backstory, then integrate it with what we know of him from the game. It looks like this is going to be a trend for the light novel, so I’ll most likely do similar analyses for the other OB boys as more volumes come out!

Anyway, read on if you’re curious 👀

Okay, so 🤔 from what we can observe from Riddle’s in-game post-OB flashback sequence, his mother has been dictating almost every aspect of his life, from what and how much he eats to his lengthy, rigorous study routine. As recently as Riddle’s Broomquet vignettes, we learned that even at 5 years old, he had already started and become accustomed to his intense studying. When Riddle fails to complete a task sufficiently, his mother has him redo it or study more until he finally succeeds.

This was Riddle’s “normal”, and he completely bought into it. In the game, this is explained as Riddle having trust in his mother due to her reputation in their community as a competent and well-respected medical mage. "After all, she was the most accomplished mother in the city, and therefore, the most correct." Riddle associates "correctness" with "accomplishments", and we see this attitude carry out in other aspects of the main story. He talks down to Yuu for lacking magic and brags about his own standing as top student to Azul, who regularly fluctuates from 2nd to 10th place. The light novel, however, grants us new perspective as to why Riddle tries so hard in his studies and seeks to please his mom. In turn, we can see how this domino effects into his struggles to connect with others.

In the light novel, Riddle notes that his mother would always tell him "everything is for you". "Everything", in this context, I'm assuming refers to all the time and effort Riddle is putting into his studying, the tight control of his life, etc. His mother has framed all of this as being beneficial to Riddle, and that she herself is pushing him to engage in these things because she loves and cares for him. This is something that Riddle then interprets as meaning she must love him the most in the entire world, something that he tells himself to justify her own actions in his own mind. It becomes a piece of "proof" that, later down the line, will make it difficult to reconcile with his complicated feelings on her once he realizes how toxic her child raising tactics were. (I go into more detail on this topic in this post!)

Riddle also says that if he responds with "yes, mother" then he will be praised for it. This, you'll notice, is a phrase that is very similar to what he demands his own dorm members respond to his orders with: "yes, dorm leader". It implies that Riddle is used to deferring to her judgement and authority, and so expects the same obedience of others when he is in that position of power. This agrees with his behavior in book 1. As Ace points out, Riddle is just acting like a miniature version of his own mom, right down to the angry reactions and shouting when things don't go his way.

Right after that, we get another short but telling line. Referring to his mother's affection, Riddle comments that he "doesn't need anything else", and decides to forgo asking for strawberry tarts ever again. He was willing to give up something he was curious about trying just to continue receiving praise. To me, this illustrates that the love of Mrs. Rosehearts was conditional: if you perform to her expectations, you get her love. If you don't perform to her expectations, well then, it's back to the books for you until you can. (Reminder: this does NOT confirm that Mrs. Rosehearts yells at Riddle or degrades him for not being “up to par”; there is just a sense of disappointment at this.) It implies that Riddle became used to a cycle of receiving the love and attention he wanted only when he behaved in a very specific way that his mother desired—otherwise, she withheld that affection. This is why Riddle believes following the rules will make him happy; it’s a result of what he has learned is the “norm” from his mother’s conditional love.

The light novel also shows us how this unhealthy mother-son relationship spills over into Riddle's other (potential) relationships. When Che'nya and Trey first approach him to invite Riddle to play with them, Riddle automatically says that he can't. He had the answer prepared for them, the response already deeply ingrained into him and likely already told to other children that tried to talk to him before. But even though Riddle rejects them, prioritizing his mother's praise over all else, he still feels a twinge of sadness about it. He even expects that he "let them down". "Let them down"? Now isn't that a funny statement. Why would Riddle be concerned about disappointing total strangers he has zero attachment to? Unless... he's so isolated that he just assumes everyone will treat him the same way his mother will. That they'll withhold love and attention if he doesn't act how they want him to. Thus, Riddle appears to associate failure to perform as resulting in rejection and lack of social acceptance.

This plays perfectly into one of the most chilling lines in Riddle's post-OB flashback: "But Mom... Why? Why does my heart hurt so much? [...] Tell me, Mom, please... What rule do I need to follow to make this pain go away?" These lines indicate Riddle finally coming to the realization that, deep down, he has always desired affection. A desire to make friends and to play with them, to have deeply intimate relationships. All he knew before was his mom was happy when he did well in his studies, so that was what he chose to excel in. Things changed when he was exposed to what unconditional love is like through Trey and Che'nya. Riddle's childhood friends are the ones who will love and accept him no matter what he's like, no matter what fuck-ups he makes or how socially awkward he is with them. He started to recognize that painful emptiness in him that never went way, no matter how many of his mom's rules he followed. Alas, Riddle was never able to come to terms with that sinking feeling because his mom had just torn him away from Trey and Che'nya not too long after learning that he had been skipping independent study time to play and eat a strawberry tart. He would not meet Trey again until enrolling at NRC, and by then, they've spent so much time apart (and, let's be real here, traumatized by Mrs. Rosehearts losing her temper over the tart incident) that her staunch mindset has clawed into Riddle's brain once more. His whole life, the main models of relationships he has to go off of are his mom and his dad, who don't appear to have a happy marriage (implied in his Suitor Suit voice lines). It's no wonder why making friends and truly opening up is difficult for him, even following the events of book 1. What else does Riddle have to reference? Crossword puzzles and textbooks? In Endless Halloween Night, the guy barely knows what a scavenger hunt is or how you'd find joy in it...

Unlike Leona, Riddle already had a pretty fleshed out backstory from his flashback. Instead of expanding on his motivations (as the light novel did with Leona), what the light novel does for Riddle is give us more information that implicates what his home life was like. It's still not that much, but it certainly better explains some of Riddle's oddly stringent viewpoints that we still see in the present day.

I know that this post was kind of a shorter read compared to the Leona one I did, but that's in part because I've already written at length about the complexities of Riddle's relationship with his mom, dad, and Trey. Those posts are bolded and linked, so if you're interested in more, then I'd recommend those readings!

#twst #twisted wonderland #Riddle Rosehearts #Trey Clover #twst light novel #twisted wonderland light novel #Chenya #Che'nya #disney twisted wonderland #notes from the writing raven #twst analysis #twisted wonderland analysis #twst character analysis #twisted wonderland character analysis #Leona Kingscholar

[hoodharlow]

Safety Net

AN: honestly idk it was going in one direction then i went off course lmao

Requested? No

Warnings: they’re both being fucking stubborn lmao, Jack says something stupid in front of Mami Maggie but she calls him out, and solo smut at the end lollll

Word Count: 4.6k words

Maggie eyed her oldest son as he fixed his hoodie to conceal his face. She rolled her eyes and pushed the cart. He followed behind her, looking around the aisle. 

“Stop acting so paranoid. There isn’t a swarm of fans waiting for you around the corner.” she told him, placing a few jars of pasta sauce in her cart. 

“I’m not being paranoid, I’m being cautious.” Jack said. 

His mom rolled her eyes, turning to the next aisle. She popped her head and pointed to the pasta boxes. “Grab some penne noodles.” 

Jack nodded and turned back. He spent a good thirty seconds deciding between the store’s brand version and the one that was two dollars more. He grabbed two boxes of the cheap kind and made his way to his mom. He heard her laugh before he turned the aisle. He frowned, wondering who was making her laugh. He took a peek, cursing when he saw his mom talking to Renata.

It had been three days since they saw each other. After they saw each other at Club Mystique, Renata blocked his number and removed him on instagram. He went to the club before they opened in case she was there but one of the dancers told him off in the parking lot. She threatened to have him banned if he ever showed up like he did. 

“Jack, come here.” Maggie waved him over when she spotted him lurking. “You remember Renata, right babe.”

“Uh, not really mom.” he said, averting his gaze. 

“Jack,” she began, ready to tell him off. 

“It’s fine.” Renata laughed it off. “He’s famous now. He sees tons of faces everywhere. I wouldn’t expect him to remember me. It was nice seeing you miss Harlow, but I have to get going.”

“Bye dear.” Maggie said, pulling her into a hug. “Be safe.”

Renata smiled. She gave Jack a nod and pushed her cart away. 

Jack braced himself, ready for his mom to tell him off. 

“I raised you better than that.” she smacked his arm. “How can you not remember her? You would beg me to get her to tutor you!”

“I didn’t know you surrounded yourself with strippers.” he mumbled loud enough for Maggie to hear him. 

She smacked the back of his neck. “Renata is a nice girl. She sacrificed so much so she could help take care of her brothers and sisters after what happened to parents.”

“What happened to her parents?” he asked feeling even more guilty.

“It’s not my place to talk about.” she said, calmly.

“You’re the one out here justifying her being a stripper not me.” Jack said in a judgmental tone.

“Don’t be a fucking hypocrite, Jack. You don’t think I’ve seen pictures of you at Magic Flame and Blue City when you’re in Atlanta.” 

“It’s Magic City…” he tried correcting her. 

“That’s not the fucking point!” she said in an annoyed tone. “You’re being awfully judgemental and disrespectful of Renata’s job as if you haven’t indulged people in her line of work. I don’t ever want to hear you talk bad about her or any sex worker. You hear me?” 

“Yes ma’am.” he nodded. 

Maggie collected herself and pushed the cart. They got the rest of the groceries and Jack paid for them. They made their way to his mom’s car when he spotted Renata’s car a row ahead of them. 

“Hey mom, can you give me five minutes?” he asked her. 

“Yeah, I was going to get a drink at Starbucks.” she said. 

“I’ll go get you when I’m done.” he said. 

Jack took the empty cart and brought it to the cart corral where the shopping carts go. He made a beeline to Renata’s car. He approached her car from behind as she backed out. She hit the brakes hard, only an inch before she hit him.

“Are you fucking crazy!?” she yelled out the window. 

“Can we talk?” he asked. 

Renata frowned and looked at him like he grew seven heads. 

“Please,” he said. 

“I work tonight. I’ll have a room booked at eleven, don’t be late.” she said before her window went up. Jack took a step back allowing her to back out of the parking spot. Her car window went down once more. “And bring Ollie’s Trolley.”

*

Renata looked out in the crowd once more as she held her pose. She and a few dancers had finished performing their own version of the ‘One in a Million’ song from Miss Congeniality. Her eyes landed on a familiar head of curls. Jack met her gaze and lifted a paper bag from Ollie’s Trolley. She quickly got up and ran back to her dressing room. She ripped off her Statue of Liberty crown and shedded out of its matching latex bodysuit. 

“He’s here.” Tania said in a teasing tone. 

“I know…what is he doing here?” Renata said in a frantic tone.

“Did you not tell him to come?” her friend asked her.

“I didn’t think he’d show!” She exclaimed.

“Girl, I say this with love, but you’re fucking stupid. Of course he was going to show up!” she said, helping Renata with her hair. 

“Ugh, I hate myself. Why did I agree to this?” she sighed as she fixed her bodysuit. 

“Because part of you knows he didn’t do anything wrong and you should hear him out.” Tania said in an older sister tone. 

Renata gave her an unamused look. She zipped up her thigh high boots. 

She would have changed into her tube top and shorts uniform but she had another dance scheduled that required her in a mesh bodysuit with rhinestones. 

"Y'all I just walked Jack Harlow to the Blue Room." Hayleigh, one of the rude bottle girls that had one sided beef with Renata and Tania, said as she changed into a push-up bra. "I knew he'd come back to see me. I mean, hello."

Renata rolled her eyes. She and Tania shared a look through the mirror. Apparently Hayleigh was one of the bottle girls that was in Jack's private room with his friends and he kept asking her for soda water and cranberry juice. Then at the end of the night, he left her a hefty tip. 

"I doubt he came back for you and your uneven eyebrows." Tania said, adjusting her eyelashes. 

"Well who else would he be here for?" Hayleigh asked, putting her hands on her hips.

A stagehand came and motioned to Renata. 

"Babe, the Blue Room is ready for you." She said as she spoke into a headset. 

"I'll be there in a sec." She said, touching up her bold lipstick. She put on her robe and turned to Tania. "Bye."

"Bye girl." 

Renata smoothed the invisible wrinkles around her robe. She fluffed her hair and made her way to the room. It was called the Blue Room because it had a navy blue couch. There wasn't much to it. The room was usually reserved for groups that wanted to indulge in one dancer in private. It was easy money, most of the dancers made the most tips in the room. 

She found Jack sitting in the corner of the couch with his legs stretched out. One arm casually thrown over the back of the couch while he texted with his free hand. Renata would be lying if she didn’t find him attractive. She followed him on Instagram and had seen him mature through the years. But deep down he was still that overly confident guy that sat next to her in class and tried to distract her.

"Hey," he said, sitting up straight and locking his phone. 

"Hi." Renata said, taking a seat a few feet away from him. 

There was an awkward silence. Renata played with a loose string on her robe while Jack scratched his arm. 

"One of the bouncers took the food, apparently it’s against the rules to bring outside food." He said, speaking up first. 

"Crap, I forgot to tell Reggie you were bringing food." Renata said. "Sorry."

"Don’t worry about it." He shrugged her off. 

There was another awkward silence between them. 

"Look," Jack spoke up once more, "I honestly had no clue you worked here, but I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable." 

"Okay." She nodded.  

"That’s it?" He frowned. 

"Yes? Were you expecting an apology of some sort?" She asked him. 

"I mean you made me look like an asshole to everyone at your job." He argued.

"Well I’m fucking sorry that seeing people that I knew when I was younger is triggering for me. I should’ve thought about you and your feelings when I was having a fucking panic attack. Next time someone I know walks through the door and starts harassing me, I’ll make sure their harassments towards me don’t inconvenience you." Renata wiped her tears as she got up. "God, you’re such a dick."

"That's not fair," he began. 

"No! You don’t get to make me feel like shit! You have to know where I’m coming from." She argued. 

"How am I supposed to know where you’re coming from if you don’t tell me shit. You have no right to make me feel bad for not being aware of what happened to you in the last few years. The last time I saw you was at some high graduation pool party boasting about Stanford then I see you here." Jack ran his hand through his curls in frustration. "Obviously nothing is going to get resolved. Have a nice life Ren." 

He pushed himself up from the couch and slammed the door shut. He forgot how irritable and argumentative Renata was. Jack hated it when their English and History classes had debate because he always ended up going against her and lost. He made his way to one of the bars and took a seat in the corner. 

"What can I get you?" The bartender asked him. 

"Sparkling water and cranberry juice please." He said. 

"Hi, handsome, long time no see." The server that had walked him to the room Renata reserved said. "I can show you a better time than the pity hire."

"Your drink is ready," the bartender said, sliding the drink to Jack. She turned to the server. "Can you go collect the empty glasses from the tables? Thank you." 

The server scoffed and made her way to the tables. Jack sipped his drink in silence. He was going to leave but something told him he should stay. He wasn’t sure why, but he was staying. Hours had gone by and it was now three in the morning, closing time. He tipped the bartender, who he later realized was the woman who told him to fuck off after the freak out with Renata. He figured they were close friends since they bickered in Spanish every time Renata came to the bar to get drinks. Not only is she a dancer but she's also a server. 

As Jack walked to his car, he saw Renata standing in the corner in a long puffer coat. It reached halfway down her thighs. She looked down at her phone then up towards the street. Jack looked around the parking lot and didn’t see her car, deducing she was probably waiting for a ride. He knew she was probably going to say no, but he made his way to her. 

"Is your ride almost here?" He asked her. 

"No they just can– oh it's you." She said flatly. 

"I can give you a ride." Jack offered. 

"I’ll take my chances." She said, crossing her arms. 

"Ren,"

"I said no. I would rather wait all night than get in a car with you." She said, turning around. 

"It's late. There aren't many Ubers at this hour. Let me take you home." Jack said defeatedly. 

"Fine only because it's late." She gave in. 

Jack led her to her car and opened the passenger side door for her. Renata mumbled a quick thanks as she climbed in. Jack got in on the driver's side and started the car. He turned the heat on and the seat warmers for her. 

"Do you still live by–"

"No, I live on the opposite side, near Costco. " She said. She pointed at the light. "You turn can here and take the back roads instead of the main street." 

"Got it." Jack nodded as he changed lanes. 

Their drive was mostly silent. Occasionally Renata spoke up to tell when a turn was coming up. Jack knew the area he was taking her. It wasn’t the bad side of town by any means, but it was definitely a downgrade for Renata and her family. He’d been to her old house a few times when he was in high school for tutoring and group projects. Not a lot would get done since Renata would have to get up every so often to check in on her siblings. The house was huge and in the middle of a large property. 

"It’s the blue apartment complex at the next light." She pointed ahead. 

Jack nodded and pulled into the underground parking lot when they reached the building. He went straight to the elevator and he turned off the car, ready to get out, when Renata opened the door herself. She opened her bag and pulled out a huge stack of twenties. 

"Thanks for the ride and this should cover the burger. " She said, handing him a few twenties. 

"It’s fine." He said, pushing the money back to her. 

"Jack, please take it. I don’t like owing people money." She insisted.

"Your whole family lives with you?" He asked, changing the subject.

"I’m leaving this here." Renata placed the money in her seat, completely ignoring him. "Thank you for the ride."

She closed the door and made her way to the elevator. She scanned a card and then pressed a button. The elevator opened seconds later. Jack waited until the doors closed once more before driving home. 

He arrived back to his own apartment and got ready for bed. The following day he woke up around noon and decided to hit up his favorite diner. He dressed in some green sweatpants and a grey hoodie. He added a black puffer coat since it was beginning to snow. The diner was less than twenty minutes from his place. There were several closer but he liked that one because it was pretty far and not many tourists frequent it. It’s more for locals. It was also where he and Renata would go to study when she didn’t have to watch her siblings. 

He parked and made his way inside. He waved to Dotty, an elderly woman who owned the diner with her daughters, and went to sit in a booth in the back. Dotty was very friendly and made sure no one bothered him whenever he was at her diner. She was also a no nonsense type of woman and made sure to put Jack in his place for acting a little too silly. 

He caught a familiar figure stomp passed him. Renata. He cursed and pulled on his hoodie in hopes that it covered his face. He heard her mutter something in Spanish then she sat in the booth next to him. 

“He said he was going to have it ready this morning and his ass didn’t show up until two hours after he was supposed to open the shop. He’s so incompetent and unprofessional.” Jack heard Renata as she talked on the phone. There was a pause and she spoke up, “No, I’m treating myself to some french toast and a milkshake.” 

“What will be, hun?” Dotty asked Jack. He cleared his throat and ordered a dressed cheeseburger with fries and milkshake in a low voice, so low Dotty couldn’t hear him. “Jack, I’m gonna need you to speak up. I can’t hear you.”

“What I always get,” he said. 

“Hun, you’re not my only customer. I don’t have your order memorized.” she said, tapping her notepad with her pen. 

“A cheeseburger with fries and a vanilla milkshake, oh and a side of ranch.” he said. 

“See that wasn’t so hard.” the elderly woman said. “Comin’ right up.” 

She moved on to Renata’s table and took her order. She got the french toast breakfast combo that came with eggs, sausage and hash browns. She also got a side of fries and an oreo milkshake. Dotty nodded and walked away. 

Renata turned back and frowned. “Are you following me?” 

“I’m not following you!” Jack whisper-yelled.

“Then what the fuck are you doing here?” she asked. 

“Eating, it’s a fucking diner.” he argued back. He grabbed his coat and went to her booth. 

“No! Go back to your table!” she pointed behind her. 

“No.” he said. He awkwardly stood up and waved to Dotty. “I’m sitting with my friend.”

“Jack, these aren't musical chairs for you to move around as you please.” the older woman said, not even looking at his direction. 

“Where’s your friend?” Renata asked. 

“Can we start fresh?” Jack asked instead of answering her. He extended his hand out to her. “I’m Jack.”

Renata took it and awkwardly shook it. “I’m Renata.”

“What do you do for a living?” He leaned back and placed his hand on the table. 

“I’m a server and dancer at Club Mystique.” she answered him, playing with the straw wrapper. 

“And how does one become…” Jack paused, trying to form a sentence so he wouldn’t offend her..

Dotty came back with a large tray with their food. “Anything else I can get you?” she asked them. 

“We’re good for now thank you.” Renata answered for them. 

“Just holler if you need anything.” the older woman said. 

Jack watched Renata shrug off her parka and reached for the small bottle of green Tabasco hot sauce, sprinkling some on her eggs. She squirted ketchup all over her eggs and added a huge dollop of it on her fries. She quietly began to eat while Jack lifted the top bun of his burger and added some ranch on it. He looked up and saw her making a grossed out face at him. 

“What?” he asked. 

“I forgot how much you like ranch.” she said, making a face. 

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Jack took a huge bite out of his burger. 

Renata gave the ‘sure Jan’ look and went back to eating. They ate in a comfortable silence. There was obvious tension, but it wasn’t to the point where it was nauseating and they needed to get away from each other. 

“You know, working at Club Mystique wasn’t my first choice.” Renata said after a while. She dipped a fry into her milkshake and chewed thoughtfully. “After I was forced to close down the restaurant–”

“You closed the restaurant?” Jack asked. 

“Yeah, after my parents got deported–”

“Your parents got deported? He stared at her, eyes wide and confused.

“Did you not know?” 

He shook his head in response. 

“Oh.” she said quietly. She felt her cheeks warm up. 

“You don’t have to tell me if you’re not comfortable.”

“It’s not that…wow, I’m sorry. I really came for your throat and you were clueless the whole time.” 

Jack shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I jumped to conclusions and I was so hard-headed on being right. I genuinely am sorry for all of that.” Renata apologized. 

Jack reached for one of her hands and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “I promise you it's all good. I’m glad we got that out of the way and can start fresh. Alright?” 

“Yeah, whatever you say.'' She nodded, smiling. 

They went back to finishing their meals during which Renata told him everything that happened to her parents and how she became a server to make ends meet. Jack admired her for it. She didn’t have to step up and do all that, but she did. He felt angry at her parents and everyone who turned their back on her family. Her family was well known and did a lot for the community. They later changed the topic and Jack got to know Renata more. 

Her phone buzzed. She scrambled to get it out of the many pockets in her parka. She scanned the message and smiled, replying. She looked up at Jack apologetically. 

“I have to go, my car is ready at the shop and . I have to pick it up.” she began. 

“Do you need a ride?” he offered. 

“No, it’s just across the street. Thank you though.” she said, pulling out a stack of twenties to pay for her food.

“I got it this time.” Jack said, covering her hand with his whole hand. 

“Okay,” she nodded. She put on her parka and slid out of her seat. She fixed her bag and turned to him. “Come to the club and I’ll repay you then.”

***

Renata felt a familiar pair of blues on her. Her smile grew as she dropped to her knees and rolled her hips, keeping eye contact with Jack. She got on all fours as another dancer backed into her and rocked her hips against Renata’s ass. The song ended and all the other dancers posed as money rained over them. Renata got up and rushed to the dressing room. 

She was nervous. She hadn’t seen in over two weeks. It was now mid February. Earlier she saw that he posted about visiting their old high school. He had texted her asking if she was going to be in the club. She wasn’t, but she switched shifts with another dancer so she could see him. 

“I see why you traded shifts with Larisa.” Tania said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Renata said, putting on her uniform. 

“Oh please everyone saw you two eye fuck each other while you were dancing and he watched. Admit it.” her friend said. 

“We’re just friends.” she insisted. 

“Whatever you say.” she sang-song.

Renata rolled her eyes and touched up her makeup. 

“Ren, the Blue Room is ready.” a stage hand said before signaling to other dancers to get ready for the next dance routine. 

The Blue Room had become Jack’s designated room for him and Renata to hang out. Whenever he’d go visit Renata at the club. He’d reserve an hour and they would just talk and hang out. It was also the most expensive room and Renata told him about the other cheaper rooms he could reserve, but he didn’t care. 

“Thank you.” she nodded. She looked over to Tania and averted her eyes. “Don’t.” 

“I didn’t even say anything.” she said defensively.

“Te conozco.” she said as she tied her sneakers. They were a pair of all white New Balance 550s. The owners let the servers wear sneakers instead of heels as long as they were white. 

Renata walked out of the dressing room and went to the Blue Room. Jack was already there nursing his sparkling water and cranberry juice. 

“Hey.” he said, getting up to hug her. 

“Hi.” she said, hugging him back. 

They went to the couch. They jumped into conversation. Jack caught her up in latest trip. He had a few shows and was in Florida for some celebrity flag football event. Renata liked listening to his stories when he’s traveling. Mostly because she couldn’t believe the guy that would sit next to her in classes was now a well known celebrity. He could have hundreds of millions of fans but to her he’s still the overly confident guy that used to make her laugh in class that she had a crush on. 

Their hour ended sooner than they expected. They always somehow lost track of time. Jack usually hung back in the main lounge until closing time while Renata finished her shift. At first he felt a bit uncomfortable when she would go on stage for the group numbers, but Renata reassured him it’s fine. She joked that was when he was allowed to look at her disrespectfully. 

“Refill?” Tania asked Jack when he approached the bar. 

“Yes please.” He nodded. 

Tania poured his drink and passed it to him. 

Jack sat back and sat in his little bubble on his phone. Since he had become a regular, he was allowed to be on his phone as long as he wasn’t recording. Renata came by and handed Tania a drink order for a group. He watched her walk back to the group, paying extra attention to her ass as she bent down to hand the drinks. He felt a hard smack on his head. 

“Ow!” he said, turning to Tania. 

“Don’t oggle my best friend.” she said as she wiped the counter. 

“I wasn’t.” Jack denied.

“Mhm sure.” 

Before he could muster up a lie, Renata came back and put her tray back. The last group number was coming up and she had to go change. The stage lights were on as stagehands placed chairs on the stage. A few minutes later passed and the lights dimmed. The beginning of ‘Safety Net’ played as the dancers made their way to their chairs. 

Jack immediately spotted Renata. She wore a dark red mesh catsuit with small rhinestones all over. He kept his gaze on her watching her every move. The song was pretty slow and didn’t have a complex routine. The dancers mainly sat on their chairs and moved their arms around in sync. But that didn’t stop Jack from getting hard from watching Renata move her hands all over her body.

The dance routine ended and the owners announced that it was closing time. All the patrons got up and moved to the exit. Jack waited until everyone left before he went to his car. He had parked next to Renata’s car. She came out a while later with Reggie behind her. When he saw Jack was waiting for her, he went back to escort the other dancers. 

They resumed their conversation from earlier. They unknowingly moved closer to each other to share body heat. Renata dropped her eyes to his lips then looked back at him, hoping he’d get the hint. He leaned forward and placed his warm hand on her. He slowly inched to her mouth when a car alarm went off. 

“I gotta go, but text me when you’re home. Yeah?” he asked her, rubbing his knuckles against her cheek.

“Yeah.” she nodded. 

Jack opened her car door and held it for her as she climbed inside. He closed it and watched her sped off. 

Renata got home and texted Jack right before she got in the shower. Every night after working at the club she took a shower because no matter what she did she always got body glitter on her. She got dressed in an oversized t-shirt and a pair of panties. She wasn’t tired so she reached for a book in her growing pile of unread books she had next to her bed. But she couldn't concentrate on her book. Her mind was flooded with thoughts of Jack. It wasn’t rare for her to have these thoughts, but she knew she shouldn’t have them since Jack was her friend. 

Renata propped herself against her pillows and let her mind wonder. She played with her breasts a little, squeezing them, gently pulling her nipples. After she teased herself a bit, her hands wandered down her body until they reached her panties. She slipped them off and rubbed herself. She imagined Jack was the one touching her. 

Her mind went back to their almost kiss and how he caressed her cheek with his knuckle. A simple gesture shouldn’t have her dripping for him, but it did. She immediately moaned out for him as she got closer to climax. She pulled her fingers out and reached for her vibrator. She set it to the lowest setting and slid her fingers inside once more. She whimpered and cried his name when she came. She increased the speed and rubbed it all over her. her moans and whimpers got louder as she came. 

Once her high faded, she turned off her vibrator and went to sleep, dreaming that Jack was touching her once more. 

Taglist: @cherryxcreme​ @heavyhitterheaux​ @carma-fanficaddict​ @youngharleezyxo​ @youngharleezy​ @babyharleezy​ @that-90s-girllll​ @alinaharlow​ @whywontyoulovemecami​ @meyocoko​ @harlowcomehome​ @nattinatalia​ @webinurcloset​ @gassyandsassy1​ @jackharloww​ @awhore4moree​ @noescapricho-essentimiento​ @a-moment-captured​   @livsters​ @velvetstreets

#iwssa #jack harlow #jack harlow fanfic #jack harlow angst #jack harlow smut

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

thinking about this scene again...

like dream’s not a perfect older brother by any means (and i know he and delirium do end up fighting like three issues later for reasons that were mostly his fault), but i do love how patient and kind he is with her here, because he’s so clearly trying

and it’s because of what happened earlier, like, delirium is kinda scared of all her older siblings (except destruction), and dream’s usual volatility doesn’t help. so when she came to him for help she was so convinced he was going to say no and get mad at her for asking, that when dream asked her why she was there she didn’t even say anything she just started crying.

which, dream has never really been the best judge of his own behaviour, and he has no problems with delirium, so he’s entirely blindsided by the internal panic she’s been having this whole time

but his response is to a) make sure she’s okay, and b) apologise for his past behaviour and try to correct his behaviour going forward so he won’t be scaring her anymore

and he keeps that up! which is where we get to the first panels i added. because if it were anyone else, dream may have gotten impatient with the very obvious non answers she keeps giving, i imagine most people would have that response. but there’s not even a sliver of annoyance in it, he just keeps gently nudging her towards a helpful answer until she figures out which of the things in her head is the one she needs to say out loud

and more than that, i keep getting stuck on the “very good. we are here.”

because like. if you ask “where should we start?” and someone goes “here”, it would be so easy to say that that's not even an answer to the question, it's that obvious

but dream’s response, while in his usual excessively formal speech pattern, is essentially going “great! that was step one, you did step one really well, so well in fact that we already did it! now do you know what step two is?”

and that’s the thing about delirium and why she was so scared, i think it’s a relatable mood for a lot of neurodivergent people, her thoughts go in a lot of directions and she doesn’t know which ones are and aren’t obvious to other people, or exactly what they’re referring to. which makes it really difficult to navigate social situations that you care about, because you know there’s a line somewhere where people will have had enough of dealing with you, but you can never see that line or how close you are to it, and you don’t even know which of the things you do are pushing you closer to it and which are fine to say. and like, here as a starting point is obvious, sure, but she’s also right. they are already in their starting place, she just didn’t realise that what dream was asking and the words he was saying didn’t quite match up

but dream realises that too, when she responds the way she does, and he has the absolutely perfect reaction here, which is no judgement, to be encouraging of delirium so she feels comfortable continuing to offer suggestions, and to modify his question so he’s actually asking what he thinks he was asking

and i just have a lot of emotions about them

he is a good big brother...

#dream of the endless #delirium of the endless #sandman comic spoilers #the sandman #mine #meta

[drinkingbitterboy]

alright. i have emotionally recovered from miles posting on instagram this morning, which truly threw off my plan to do a little concert recap bc i was busy yelling at my phone/on tumblr. as you do.

a couple notes:

i don't really do concert photos; literally took a grand total of 4 during the actual show. so sorry, don't have much there!

i did not get a poster :( turns out they ran out before AM even went on stage?? i'm sad, but not too pressed bc really i'd much rather have a good view than wait in the merch line.

here we go!!

so getting into the arena was kind of a shit show lmao. we rolled up around door open and the line stretched 5 city blocks and doubled back on itself; it was mostly organized but asshats loved to pop in when the line got broken up by the streets. took us almost an hour to make it our five blocks and the line behind us was still just as long by then. at least folks waiting by us in line were nice! beyond nice conversation the true highlight was outfit spotting. shoutout to the absolutely dedicated guy who showed up in the full on fwn clown outfit complete with face paint by himself. in this weather! found a couple folks dressed exactly like the car alex (again, why are you wearing a blazer in this weather) and you know. felt real old about it seeing some of the other concert outfits. i'm sorry, not to be judgemental of the tiktok girlies, but holy shit. i managed to out myself once as a weird fan about it bc i had "inside knowledge" aka i saw the ig stories james and davey posted lmao. i'm so sorry i'm incapable of holding it in when i want to correct someone. had a grand time talking to some people in line next to me around my age; one of them even had an old sias shirt from seeing them live back then! good bonding about "hey what have you done since they announced this album?" one guy switched jobs twice, we got married, and the other couple had a baby. jfc.

further highlights include the person who wrote the batphone and cheeseburger notes, a couple other car truck bits i didn't take pics of saying things like "who the fuck are the arctic monkeys", and the true comedy of whoever designed the tickets. big mike wazowski energy

fontaines dc sounded great! a lot of folks around me had no clue who they were, though. so the crowd wasn't too excited overall. also i have no idea who put together the playlist in between sets bc it was nuts.

and then: the big reveal (that i then updated tumblr on)

i'm really surprised the whole set made it! the anticipation before they took the curtain down was absolutely palpable. also, didn't get a picture of it but at one point someone had a giant pole and was trying to poke something right at at the top of the frame of the screen. no idea what that was about but it was hilarious. not pictured: the bonus screens on either side of the stage.

an aside: my partner is fucking hilarious. every time a roadie came on state with an instrument he'd go "i don't think that one is a monkey." he also generally calls them the "monkfys" anyway bc he really latched onto that clip aksdjfs

so this was interesting! they didn't show the body paint symbols at all on any of the screens; instead, they showed this colorful wheel thing.

and then the actual show. oh my word. opening with sculptures was absolutely my dream and honestly i don't have words for what it's like to see alex in person. he's absolutely captivating. hypnotizing. one of the most amazing things is watching how he proceeds through the show--how he goes from suave and put together with his choreographed arm movements for emphasis and his little things like the little bubble pop in that song. and then he starts to loosen up (along with his hair), we get the silly dramatic theatre kid during cornerstone and do me a favour, and by the time we hit body paint he's just completely letting loose. even when they played much of the usual setlist and i obviously know the music super well--better than anyone else around me--it was still absolutely thrilling to just be there and listen to the music and sing loudly and jump around until we felt the floorboards creak. they felt really high energy last night! turns out coming off of a break is good for them!

related, getting to watch the transformation into the poofy lion hair in real life is incredible.

i must admit, i am not immune to things like alex waving in our general direction to the crowd and walking over to our side of the stage and all of the charming bits. just can't help it.

otherwise, the only other person i could consistently see was nick - we were standing stage right, maybe 15 yards back? so you know. gorgeous as always. i'm sure jamie was wonderful also in his insane leather jacket -- didn't see him at all lol. i managed to get a very convenient window to center stage so i actually saw alex a decent amount. worked out well because i couldn't actually see the screens super well. i'm short. here's the only two pictures i actually took of the band, right at the beginning:

and now for the rest of the setlist -- we all know they played a lot of the usual suspects. as expected, much of the crowd was pretty young and very invested in only AM and the hype songs. i didn't mind; at least i wasn't the only person screaming for perfect sense (weren't a lot of us, i was the only one in my general area, but that's alright. i don't care.) my spouse was entertained by the person next to us who looked up the spotify set playlist in between every song; he was like "why look it up? if you don't know the songs well enough to identify by intro then how is the list supposed to help?" anyway, holy shit when is snap getting out of the playlist? and yet even though i was not thrilled by it it was still so fun to sing along.

4 out of 5 had a really funny bit at the end while he was just kinda ad libbing lines. "four stars out of five, not quite there yet, but almosttttt." teddy picker and view from the afternoon were absolutely fantastic, too. and then we get the basic AM bits again, though turns out the crowd was also really hype for fluorescent adolescent. 10/10

i was so goddamn loud for perfect sense. shoutout to the spouse again for only knowing that song bc i learned to play it and then played it constantly bc i wanted to manifest it aksjdflaskdj

he was constantly saying "very nice. very nice. very good" in between songs, which was adorable. "hope you're having a lovely evening, folks." as my partner put it: "very good. that's him like yes, i've met my crowd interaction quota for the night"

and then of course we brought out the drama for do me a favour and cornerstone. i cracked up that there were already gifs of the "forcing a smile" bit by the time i got home.

mirrorball started with alex conducting the stings again. i love it so much. also makes my musician ass miss performing lmao. but really, i can't get over how good mirrorball is. it's so dramatic, so emotional, then the actual mirrorball reveal??? i cried. it's insane. it's beautiful. it's honestly indescribable. i generally don't like people filming a lot or taking tons of pictures but you know what? mirrorball is an exception. holy mother of god.

and then 505!! i know i mentioned this earlier but really??? the mirrorball is only lit up like this for 505 and then they pull it back up?? there better be a mirrorball for me, he says, then we pull it down for the very miles song, and then they get rid of it???????? i had some thoughts.

our end of the stage got a bit distracted during do i wanna know bc we had someone go down in the crowd and had to call someone over to help. good news is that they were pretty close to the wall/barrier so it was easy to make space. even so, i realy can't get over how good that guitar sounds.

and then body paint. we've all seen videos of the extended outro and really, truly, it's just a life-altering experience to watch it life. it sounded incredible, it looked incredible with the rainbow lights, everyone looked like they were having a blast. i am a little biased bc i'm so attached to that song i'm getting tattoos about it on monday lmao. but man. not over it.

and finally the encore. ONE POINT PERSPECTIVE?????? i was NOT expecting it and absolutely lost my shit. unfortunately at this point bc we did some shifting around i no longer had a good view of anything. so it goes.

dancefloor, as always, was an absolute jam. bonus points bc now it's forever associated with our wedding. and r u mine had the place going nuts bc you know, the AM only folks, but really, i am also not immune to how hard that song goes.

all in all, that concert was absolutely incredible. i had an absolute BLAST and it was such a joy. i loved getting to be loud and truly did not care that there were bits where i was the only one who knew all the words. even my partner who is only really a tangential am fan had a really good time. they sounded amazing. i'm absolutely still on a high from it. hopefully the transition to a smaller venue again after the huge stadium tour was nice for the band, too!

and now time for some more coffee.

#my show #if you actually read this thank you!

[all-risejd]

A New Judgment Chapter 12.5: Tilted Dimensions (A poly Judgment Day Crossover Fic)

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12.

In which Danika from After Shine meets Nessa from A new Judgement and they help each other. This chapter was written by all three of the people between A New Judgment and After Shine.

The little cafe is a hit or miss place in Tampa, there aren't many people who even know it exists, so when they are in Tampa, Danika does her solid best to make sure they get coffee and muffins from Tilted Dimensions. The barista knows her to a point, and within seconds of walking in he's already smiling at her and asking, "The usual?"

"You know me too well, Tommy." She smiles as she walks up to the counter, to write her name on the cups for him, he's never been good at spelling Gutiérrez. The bell behind her rings, a girl about her size and build pushes in from the rain and wind that Tampa is currently weathering. "Just yell for me, ok? I'm going to snag a booth." She pats the counter, even as she moves to step past the new face, clocking The Judgment Day shirt the girl has on, "Oh, cool duds, ma'am." She sidesteps the fellow redhead, and snags a booth, settling into it.

-/-

Nessa forces the door open to the little coffee shop to get out of the storm that seemingly came out of nowhere and shakes the water droplets off her arms and shakes out her hair and gets in line behind a woman with purple hair who appears to be the same height as she is in her heels. Nessa glances to her feet to notice a pair of five inch heels compared to Nessa's three inch heels she decided to wear that day. Nessa appreciates the shape it gives the woman's legs that lead to the short skirt paired with a familiar shade of purple leather jacket.

The woman turns and compliments Nessa's shirt before going to a booth and Nessa is confused. The woman knows who The Judgement Day is but not her though Nessa knows she is still very new and not everyone will know who she is. Nessa shrugs and steps up to the counter to see the man behind the counter with a name tag reading Tommy who smiles knowingly.

"Can I get a cold brew with sweet foam?"

"Sure thing, can I get a name for the order?" Tommy asks and Nessa smiles and gives her first name before stepping back to patiently wait for her order.

-/-

Danika hums along to the top forty on the radio above her as she waits for Tommy to finish their orders - it's a lot, between the kids, Dolph's ridiculous smoothie order, and all the healthy shit Demi, Luis and Fergal ask for on the regular. Her newest tattoo itches slightly, that's what she gets she supposes for getting a thigh piece - the ivy runs up and curls around the surnames of all her lovers, in runic.

Tommy, as always butchers "Gutiérrez." When he tries to say it, but this is one of the few places she feels comfortable enough using it, she gently corrects him as she moves out of her booth to pick up the order at the counter. As she turns to the other patron - the redhead with the Judgment Day shirt, is staring at her as if there is something wrong with her. Looking the girl over, Danika notices the shirt doesn't feature herself or AJ. Sure, Danika knows there are a handful of people who prefer the core four - Dom, Rhea, Damian, and Finn, perhaps this woman is one of them?

With one arm holding the box of muffins, and the drink carrier with one hand - she's proficient at this now, she has her cold brew with sweet foam in her free hand having shoved both her car keys and phone into her bra. "You good there, pumpkin?" Danika asked the other woman.

-/-

Nessa's head snaps towards the barista when he calls out Gutiérrez and the purple haired woman bounces over and grabs a tonne of drinks and a box of pastries after shoving her keys and phone in her bra. Nessa stares at the woman who stares back looking equally confused before asking, "You good there, pumpkin?"

"Uh... yeah you just have the same name as someone I am really close to..." Nessa answers.

"There aren't that many of us around Tampa, anymore, I think Aalyah lives in Jacksonville with Buddy, oooh, is Aalyah your friend? She needs more friends..." The woman offers, smiling warmly.

"Aalyah lives in San Diego with Angie still what are you talking about?" Nessa asks, extremely confused.

"Let's back up here. I'm Danika Wesson Gutiérrez, who are you?" The girl, Danika apparently, offers, moving to settle her purchases on a nearby table, she looked just as confused as Nessa felt.

"I'm Nessa, Dominik's girlfriend of sorts..."

Danika bites her bottom lip, thinking carefully, "Okay, sweetie, let's say I believe you. Where does your Dominik live?"

"Depends on the week. He typically stays with Damien, Finn and Rhea at their houses in down time. Right now we are at Rheas house. How do you know Dom and Aalyah and why do you share their last name?" Nessa explains and asks, still confused and takes a sip of her coffee.

-/-

She probably waits too long to answer, but this is going to be interesting, she can already tell, "Ohhhkay, sweetheart, let me..." She hums, "Ok, so, Dominik and I live here in Tampa, I just finished moving all of Luis' and Fergie's stuff into our house, Demi's still got her apartment in Tampa, but we've been using it for storage lately. I know Dom and Aalyah because Oscar and Angie adopted me, when I was eleven."

Nessa shakes her head trying to collect her thoughts and takes a seat, wondering if Dominik lied to her their entire relationship, was there a third Mysterio kid? "Dominik and I have been dating since late 2018 early 2019. He met me when I was an ER nurse. He up and dumped me over text about 6 months ago when he joined The Judgment Day. We reconnected recently and I was asked to join a unique dynamic..."

Danika drops into the seat next to her, eyeing the girl, and trying to decide if they are the same age or not. Dominik would never cheat on her, or their group. She shakes her head softly, there is absolutely no way that Dominik could hold a lie for that long. "Dominik and I have been sort of together since 2015, whenever he and his girlfriends would break up we would fuck around, we are one hundred percent platonic soul mates... I'm a member of the Judgment Day..." Danika frowns, "Eight months ago, when he joined? Dom only joined three months ago."

Nessa looks at Danika like she is crazy, "No it is eight months ago, It is April 2023 he joined eight months ago. I just joined the company and by extension The Judgment Day as medical specifically for just The Judgment Day. Jefe got me basically fired from my job to force me to join and try to go back with Dom."

"Ok, first you're Jefe sounds like a complete dick." Danika offers, unamused, "No, it's one hundred percent December, Dominik just got arrested in San Diego filming this stupid segment at Abuelo and Abuela's house..." Danika folds her arms over her chest. "What uh, what time are you from?" Danika is pretty sure they've stepped into some weird time issue here, but she's not about to sound completely crazy in front of this girl. "What uh, what is currently happening for you?"

Nessa is pretty sure she stepped into an episode of Doctor Who, so she is trying to choose her words safely. "We are fresh off of WrestleMania 39, Jefe brought me ringside to fight with Dom. He wanted to manipulate or distract him. We just finished the April 14th smackdown to spend time at Rhea's so she can see her dogs."

"Shit." Danika frowns, "We are a month removed from Survivor Series, wait - did your Dominik not get arrested in December?" Danika's mind is racing, she needs this other woman to believe her, "This is Doctor Who, yes?" She looks around for Tommy, but the bastard is mysteriously absent from behind the counter, with only a timer by the register ticking down from an hour. "Uh, so the best way to keep Demi happy with her dogs is to get a bus, trust me on that one."

"Oh that is a good idea, but I can't afford that. I'll have to figure something out. And Dom wasn't actually arrested in December, it was just a bit for the story. And yes this seems like it is Doctor Who." Nessa looks around and sees the timer counting down. "Looks like we have a little under an hour to figure this out?" Nessa wonders out loud.

"Ok." Danika nods, "First we should probably confirm who we are."

Nessa nods along and pulls out her phone and brings up a series of pictures starting with her and Dominik in various cute couple pictures, them kissing each other, pictures from family holidays, a picture she had with Rhea where she kissed her cheek in the car and ending on the picture of her asleep on Damien's lap.

"Apparently no matter the universe, Damian is way too hot." Danika offers, smiling at the other girl, "Alright, so, I got receipts, three of them I gave birth to." Danika raises an eyebrow and moves to not only show her pictures, but a whole album full of her with the Judgment Day and with Lainey, Jace, Nico, Rosa, and Angel. "Rosa and Nico are the twins I share with Dom, we had Angel in September." She explains. "How old are you?"

"Uh... I'm twenty-six, and we were trying for kids when he up and dumped me over text. His excuse was he was trying to protect me" Nessa rolls her eyes and smiles sadly. "What about you?"

"I'm twenty-three, I'll be twenty-four at our WrestleMania." Danika explains, softly, "Alright, so Dom never bothered to protect me from the WWE, but we did try to keep the kids out of. He is amazing with kids, they all are, Demi is trying so hard to not admit she's obsessed with Angel, Fergie claims he doesn't want his own kids, but that'll probably change. Lainey," She pulls her phone back to her and pulls up the image, "Is my biological younger sister, Dom helped me adopt her, and Jace, he uh.. He belongs to Damian, you should probably figure out if that's something in your universe or not." Danika shrugs, unsure as she scrolls to an image of Jace, "He, uh, he was a surprise."

"I'm sorry what!" Nessa exclaims shocked and quickly collects herself trying to be mindful of the time. "I'll look into that. Uh do me a favor and tell your Dems to try to get more time with her Nonna ok. Can I ask you a question?" Nessa rattles off her thoughts, a jumbled mess.

"I'll tell Dems, I promise, I need you to tell your Dominik that he needs to talk to Hunter about secret papers and a Lowrider, it won't make any sense yet, but trust me. You can ask me anything, I'll do my best to answer. You mentioned a poly-relationship?"

"Yeah I... Sort of. They are a polycule and asked me to join. I've been thinking about it since WrestleMania and experimenting with them to see if I'd fit in well and they have been so welcoming and patient, especially with some issues from my past." Nessa struggles to get out.

Danika exhales and taps her fingers on the table, "So, Luis and I started dating first, Dom and Dems decided to date after she started beating the shit out of him, Fergie is in the middle of a divorce, uh, Vero may not exist in your world, but she was his wife. We've sort of started a polycule ourselves, but like we haven't talked about it, we are hella domestic." Danika gushes, "Like, Fergie helps the kids with their homework, Dems is always chasing the twins, Luis is honestly the best, uh... so, the kids call Dom 'Papito' even Jace, and Luis is 'Papi', I'm 'Momma', Demi is starting to be 'Mum' or 'Mummy' and Fergal is 'Fergie', although I have a feeling the kids are going to start calling him 'Da' soon."

"Dems and I kissed first, then Luis kissed me at a signing and freaked out that he might have crossed a line so I kissed him back fervently once we were back at the hotel. Besides that, I've just been getting to know them. I want kids as many as I can have honestly and I think I want to do that with them. I want them to be my future." Nessa explains and starts chewing her poor abused thumbnail.

Danika smiles even brighter, "You mentioned your past, I grew up in a shitty home, the Mysterio's taking me in saved my life... If you can make it work with all four of them, you should do it, my Fergie has... his own issues, he hasn't admitted it, but he's ace, so all of us are like, doing our best with affection - oooh, is AJ in your Judgment Day, too?"

Nessa gags and shakes her head, "Hell no, that homophobic piece of shit can have a child named after him for all I care. As for my past it is uh hard to talk about, lets just say I have issues with people, with men touching me and with sudden violent outbursts. Dominik helped me heal and move forward but sometimes I still struggle. As for the polycule they are already together with no separate relationships and it is something I am learning. There is no Vero and Finn is Demi though I think he is building that emotional relationship with me since he cuddled me all night recently."

"We each have relationships with one another, like Dems and I have our own sort of relationship, Dom has his own relationship with Luis, but we are all together to a point, the four of us anyways as teammates raising the kids. We all each flirt with Fergal, so... Ohhh, naming a child after AJ, harsh, but I love it. He was one of us for a while, he just broke his ankle, but before that he told us he couldn't 'support' Fergie's relationship with us, so now it's just the five of us, Jefe I think has plans of joining us, if he can get Hunter to sign off, but I have no concrete proof of that." Danika shrugged, "Luis' overall loud persona with Damian still startles me most of the time, at first I struggled, but Luis is one hundred percent my safe-space, and before I forget Finn cuddles are the absolute best, but his ribs are kind of jabby."

"Yes I noticed his ribs are jabby. Luis is safe but he flipped out when he found out about my recent past and it kinda unsettled me but only for a bit. Dom is my safe space, he knows and brings me snacks to stress eat and just lets me be to process instead of trying to fix it right away. Finn tried to take my snacks when... well when something happened. Dems is another safe space who just lets me be." Nessa smiles thinking about how kind and caring they have been.

Danika plays with her jacket before peeling it off completely, "Luis... has a past, as I'm sure you're aware of, you should take a chance and ask him why he reacted the way he did, he won't be upset, if anything he'll be more enamored with you, because you want to know something about him that doesn't come from the internet or his Chronicle." She taps her nails on the tabletop, "Question for you?"

"Yes, ask away." Nessa smiles and sips her coffee again.

"First, why is your hair still red? I was forced by Creative to dye my natural hair purple. Second, do you like tattoos, because... I think I should show you some that we have as a group, I mean, not that I'm not blatantly encouraging you to get with the same four people I'm with in another universe or something, like, do the thing, girlie, it's so worth it."

"I've only been with the company for a few weeks and my primary thing is medical even though I have done very little. Apparently Jefe had it stipulated that I control my hair and style for the most part and have some creative control so cool I guess trying to buy my forgiveness. And yes please show me the tattoos, I have quite a few myself. I just tend to cover them up out of habit because of work and the fact that they cover scars." Nessa shrugs, eyeing the pastry box her stomach growling.

Danika immediately started to shimmy out of her t-shirt, revealing her ribs where fresh ink was still healing - a skill in black liquid in a small wine glass, with 'til death' written up the side and a set of roman numerals under them. She pushes the pastry box toward Nessa, "Eat up, pumpkin." She encouraged, before twisting just enough to show off the ink better, "Some of mine cover scars, or like... weird birthmarks." Danika explained, "So we got this one in Vegas, and I have some on my phone that they got before I had Angel, and we've got this one." She moved to hike her skirt up a bit, to show her upper thigh, where set of wings were tattooed, "We all have our own wings," She grins, "You were a nurse, that's really amazing, I bet you worked in Pediatrics, the way you lit up looking at Dominik's kids, and before all this I had a job, well, sort of I guess I still have it. I'm an Influencer, well I was, before I got sucked into the WWE full time. I worked with Monster Factory, Ring of Honor, Impact, and AEW for a short while, sort of... all of them doing favors for Jefe, seriously your Jefe is a piece of work, he reminds me of my Madre, er, Angie."

"Angie seems truly remorseful, Aalyah has already apologized and meant it. That reminds me I need to call her. I just don't want to give her the satisfaction." Nessa moans as she takes a bite and continues, "The relationship between the group is common knowledge in the company though I don't think she knows specifics. And yeah he is. Got a pretty bruise on my wrist from him gripping too hard and one on my back from him, the one on my back is my fault though I missed a mark and got in the way. I think he had an issue with the dynamic.' Nessa pauses to grab another bite thinking about what all Danika had said, "Oh yeah Once the pandemic hit I was transferred to the Peds ward because the whole dying children thing was too much for a lot of people, and I was promoted to charge nurse not long after Dom broke up with me," Nessa finishes the pastry and pushes the box back towards Danika thanking her. "Do you really think I should go for it? It seems really intense though I have never felt more comfortable and safe..."

"The intensity is always going to be there, but it ebbs a bit, there is a natural flow, I promise. Uh, for example, Nico, my youngest twin, he has inner-ear problems, he's had a bunch of ear infections and was born with ear drums that weren't completely developed." She pauses and grabs a chocolate chip muffin herself, she peels the label and takes a bite, "I traditionally take care of the medical stuff for the kids, but Dom and Dems, and then Fergie, ended up being the ones to fly to San Diego to get him into our family doctor, and actually stayed with him through surgery..." She shrugs her shoulders, "While they were gone, Luis just took over meal prep which Dems normally does when we are on the road, and Buddy, er Buddy Matthews who is engaged to my Aalyah, flew out to help the kids with their schooling, the intensity between the five of us is an amazing synergy, it's hard to explain, but so worth it."

Nessa taps her fingers to the table, "Does Luis have to always have a hand on you? He is so handsy, not that I am complaining..." Nessa drinks her coffee trying to get the courage to ask what is on her mind.

Danika snorts, shifting closer, while also wiping at the makeup on her neck, "I wear his handprint like a collar, I think I also have a handprint on my ribs from Fergie, but that was him trying to catch me while we were practicing my skyscraper with him - I can do the skyscraper off Dems and Luis' shoulders pretty easily, Dom just tends to throw me around, you look like you wanna ask me something, beeb, so go ahead."

"Uh what does your Luis like in bed? What do they all do? I mean I know Dom likes to be Papi and in control with me but the others..." Nessa eyes the mark on Danika's neck with mixed emotions.

Danika chokes on her drink for a moment trying to not splash Nessa, after calming down, she exhales, "Well I can't speak for your Finn, as you call him, since my Fergal isn't the most inclined to sex, he's very affectionate, and we are super lucky when he gives us kisses or cuddles. Luis is in charge, he's Daddy in the bedroom one hundred percent, we joke and say I'm in charge of everything else in our relationship, but he's the one who Dom's us all, like... he can and will put me in subspace so fast. A big part of his love language is the marks. Demi accidently dropped me at a waterpark like a month ago, which was... intense, but she's such a caregiver, like... she likes to mark you up, scratches are acceptable, she's good about not going to deep with the claws, mostly she's a Dom, but she lets Luis Dom her." Danika takes another bite, "Dom and I are both subs, or at least my Dom is a sub, I'm more daddy than him, we both are pretty easy to drop, now that I think about it..."

"Well we have that in common at least. Dom and I haven't been able to be very physical for the last few years because of, well, the Pandemic and both our jobs. I think our Luis's are the same, I get that energy from him. He hasn't dropped me into subspace... yet but he came close. Dom is a switch at least with me, the rest Dom him even Finn, but Dom well Dom's me. Same with Rhea. I don't know how easy I am to drop into subspace since we haven't been able to experiment much with it, at least with me and Dom..." Nessa swallows trying to make coherent sentences with the jumbles going on in her head.

Danika watches her for a few seconds, thoughtfully, "Wanna talk me through whatever's got you looking like you're gonna bolt just from this conversation? We still have like," Danika glances at the timer, "Thirty minutes before we can leave or we wake up from whatever this is."

"I... Uh... I have issues with physical intimacy sometimes and touch. For reasons I think you'll understand and not need a lot of explanation since we don't have that much time. Dom helped me a lot when we got together... Then quarantine happened and it was like I backtracked so the rare occasion we could it was hard and I felt bad still. Sometimes it takes a lot out of me just for the physicality we already do and I haven't even agreed to join them yet..." Nessa leans back in her seat.

"Because of how I grew up," Danika starts, then rethinks it, "Let me try this again, growing up - touch wasn't welcome, it was violent and mean. When I joined the Mysterio family, Jefe did everything he could to make me understand that physical touch more often than not meant physical affection from the right people." Danika places her hand on the table palm up and inviting, if Nessa wants to take it she has the option, "You're touch starved, my Fergie is touch starved, we set goals like, thirty minutes of positive touch a day, reinforced with praise and like... open admissions of affection."

"We had a uh situation the other day where when we were talking about boundaries in the relationship my past came up and Luis... bless... he and Dems they accidentally triggered me and I needed to ground myself. I couldn't do touch at least with Luis and I felt so bad, especially that night that I called Dom to come cuddle me because he makes me feel safe and I let Dems do it as well and he found us like that the next morning." Nessa leans forward and grabs Danika's hand. "The touch thing is primarily with men... and I have been trying to keep a hand on Luis trying to make sure he knows I don't blame him or think differently of him but god if I am not exhausted."

Nodding her head, Danika seems contemplative for a few moments, it's not her usual setting, Danika is chaos for the sake of it, but this situation calls for something else entirely. She softly squeezes Nessa's hand, "You need to talk to your Luis. Mine stopped being so loud when he realized yelling was a precursor to hits in my youth. You might initiate touch with him, but until he has the greenlight, he's not going to really be comfortable doing touch back, I imagine if he's done anything forward with you, he's probably apologized or freaked out about it, he is very big on consent. So is Demi, there are skeletons in those two past that even I haven't unlocked, and while they are similar, I have a feeling we might have slightly different origin stories for them both, Demi and Luis are both guarded, to a point, but they use physical touch so violently so often, that gentle touches are their way to show... hmm... to show how much they admire me or Dom or Finn, how much they want to protect us or how much they want us."

"Dems realized when I used my safeword and switched gears and got Luis out and explained. From there he has been controlling himself more. I see the struggle and he has been treating me like I'll break at any moment and it drives me nuts. We had a signing the day after and things were getting better, felt normal again and he kissed me in front of the fans then shut down after." Nessa starts blushing and bites her lip before continuing, "I pulled him into my hotel room when we got back and we talked again and I kissed him like he kissed me at the signing and it was so hard not to go any farther, especially because we agreed no sex until after I made a decision to join them..."

Danika flashes a wicked smile, "Controlling himself, huh. Do you sit in his lap often - and good call waiting to have sex until you're comfortable and have decided to fully join the polycule."

Nessa rolls her eyes having an idea where the womans mind went, "Yes controlling himself, has barely raised his voice outside of work and has tried to tone down the machismo energy. Though I would appreciate carrying my own bags and opening my own doors sometimes..." Nessa pouts

"You don't get to carry your own bags, dude, I'd kill for some of these assholes to carry my shit... They do at least open the doors, look, if you want Damo to come out to play, in any form? Bite his neck or collarbones, really bite them. Don't play bite them, aim to bring blood. His whole NXT background as a vampire comes from his obsession with vampires."

"Dude Finn even grabbed my purse one time because I said they were too macho to carry it..." Nessa laughs then snorts and blushes a mischievous glint in her eye at the suggestion.

"That tracks for Fergie, he stole my Ring of Honor hoody last month... and it's pink." Danika rolls her eyes, "So you're in the ring, right? Like you're getting ring time, have you had matches?"

"No I'm not a wrestler, I'm a nurse by skill and choice. Though I have been flung about by Zelina and now Jefe. I might in the future but I'd have a lot of training to do. I am content just escorting them to the ring and making sure they are safe and healthy." Nessa shakes her head, "I have had like a week and a half of training. If i were to even try to wrestle I would be killed"

"Dude, Scrap Daddy and Hunter never gave me the option to just valet. They straight up assumed I'd want in on the action, and honestly punching Edge in the face was glorious. See if you can get Indi Hartwell from NXT to give you some sessions, valets still need to be able to handle themselves, if anything you need to know how to take a hit, roll a duck, avoid serious injury, like hitting the announce table from a botch. I've got shoulder stitches right now even though I trained because I missed a mark."

"Hunter has me paired with someone who is traveling with us, I train every day. And behind the scenes Zelina is really helping me." Nessa smiles glad she is at least on the right track. "OH! I should tell you Jefe may be a piece of work but he did make Hunter put in a stipulation that there can't be physicality unless both parties agreed beforehand and he (hunter) has to sign off on any potential match" Nessa shrugs "AND WHO THE FUCK IS SCRAP DADDY I LOVE THAT SO MUCH"

"My Zelina is a little brat." Danika offers, unbothered, "She has some unexplained issue with Dems right now, possibly from NXT. Scrap Daddy, Adam Pierce, he's the general manager for RAW and SmackDown, uh, think of him as Hunter's lacky, I think there is a chance you'll meet him soon enough, he's always lurking around, he tends to let me decide what I'm doing physically. So is your Jefe considered your manager? Because TJ Wilson, Natty's husband, is my manager officially, and I think we have a conversation once a month about my goals, and what I'm doing Kayfabe."

Nessa sighs, "Well we aren't really speaking right now, Kayfabe is muddled with real life right now, Dom and I aren't speaking to Jefe. But I think he is at least contractually which complicates things more..." Nessa groans, rubbing her forehead.

"Kayfabe and real life went off the rails in 2020, when Aalyah legit fell in love with Buddy... which, what is going on with Buddy in your world? I bet he's stuck in AEW being the most sour little fucker, he had to go through some... expressed learning with our familia and Angie... before he became a likeable human."

"Uh I think he is in AEW but that's all I know. He isn't tied to any of us in any way."

"Hmmmm." Danika contemplates her next question, "So, you're obviously ok with being with girls and guys, I'm omnisexual, where are you on the scale, and have you considered making a list of things like... boundaries for your lovers, er, almost-lovers, soon to be lovers? Like, it might be easier for you to write out hard nos and maybes than have the actual conversation?"

"I have been identifying as Pan for years but I think Omnisexual fits better honestly. And I might do research this week and do that. We tabled the kink discussion until I make my decision."

"We collectively haven't had the kink discussion, since Damo and Rhea are cowards and don't want to explain to Dom and I that we are Subs, we did our own research, Fergie helped us fill out our kink negotiation contract, which was a whole other argument that doesn't need to even begin to be explored - but I'll tell you Dom and I were brats about it.." Danika offers.

"That doesn't sound like my Luis and Dems, they brought it up in the boundary discussion. I might just write it out and put it somewhere they will notice it...I'll be the coward..." Nessa admits. "The first kink discussion and research with Dom was... awkward to say the least and I am not looking forward to that again. I've always known he had sub tendencies but I am no switch, he is thankfully. So we can both be taken care of now..."

"That's fair, I'm being a coward, too." Danika admits, "Dom and I did a whole bunch of research and didn't talk to the group about it." She admitted, "Until recently, and then we just shoved a filled out kink paper toward them, and basically ducked." Danika sighed, "So what's taking you so long to agree to the poly-thing, you have to know they'd understand if you change your mind?"

Nessa lets out a little whine and rapidly taps her feet under the table, "I don't want to change my mind. I thought Dom was it for me and then he did what he did and now there is another chance with more people and more love than I ever thought possible. I don't want to mess anything up with them in case they change their mind. I already care so much for all of them..."

"I swear my heart grows like five times bigger every time I see Dems, Luis, or Fergie with the kids. Dom and I always thought we were endgame, platonically, and just going to have a bunch of kids in general. Domesticity is literally the best part of being with them, it's little things. And honestly, the fact you're afraid of messing things up with them, lets me know that you've already made the decision, you're not thinking just about yourself, you're thinking about yourself as part of the unit and doing what's best for the whole, instead of just what's best for you. Luis moved in with me and Dom crazy fast, then Demi sort of half and half, after I kidnapped her dogs back from her ex, and Fergie asked to live with us since he and Vero are going through, well not important. What is important is you already made your decision and are looking at all the ways to talk yourself out of it, because for some reason, mi corazón, you're afraid that you're not worth them."

Nessa is unsure how to respond fully, "I have decided and told Dems I decided and hinted at it to cheer her up because she needs it so much right now and I would do anything to help her through this..." Nessa takes a shaky breath, "I don't know if it will happen to your Dems but her Nonna is going to pass not long after Wrestlemania..."

"Oh." Danika exhales and squeezes Nessa's hand, "We have a vacation coming up, where we were going to go to Mexico, but... I'll move it to Auzzi." She uses her other hand to grab another pastry, "Let's have more carbs and sugar, that is... heartbreaking." Danika knows how much Nonna means to Demi, how excited Dems is to introduce the kids to her, and how eager she is to show off Dominik, losing the woman who pushed her to break boundaries? It would absolutely wreck her. "My Dems, when she's upset, or... uh, off center, if you can get her to help you in the kitchen, I don't know how much cooking you do? But just having Demi be your mini-chef, and chop everything up and like, be in contemplative silence? It helps."

"I planned to have her observe a form of Shiva. I'm going to make her Challah and Kugel and we are going to sit on the floor and just talk about the good memories and I'm going to teach her that the memory is a blessing. Like we say, may their memory be for a blessing. She can't stay home for 7 days but this is how I know to grieve..." Nessa thinks for a moment, " I'll have her braid the Challah and help with the Kugel."

"That should do it." Danika promises, "Where Luis is loud with his emotions, Dem is quiet with hers."

"I was wondering why she called me and not the boys when she landed back in Australia..."

"Cause you're already filling her balance. Dominik needs calm and steady, Dems needs an anchor of solitude but also servitude, that's probably why they are so easy to connect with. I should have told you, I knew Luis before this. Like I worked with him at Monster Factory, then toured Ring of Honor, our age gap is insane to most people, but... our past working relationship cast a bit of a 'grooming' light on us, because I was maybe seventeen when I started working with Monster Factory."

"Our age gap isn't too far off either but when you click you click right? My family were immediately shipping us after seeing us interact for the first time at WrestleMania... Even Aalyah said something..."

"You know, Aalyah called me out on a Damian and me interaction before we went public, girl in either universe is apparently a bloodhound for it..."

"I swear she had mine and Dom's wedding planned and is planning a wedding for Luis and me now...I'm scared to tell her the truth..."

"Oh, funny, cause I'm planning her wedding right now... with Jefe, since Madre sort of bounced on the whole family." Danika sighs, "Aalyah will understand, they seem to be similar enough, love is love, two people, three people, four people, five people, ten people - it doesn't matter, love just exists, and she'll come around." Danika promises, "She loves being a Tia way too much to not support you and Dom and your choices once it really goes public."

"But Jefe is against it I think, he said he thinks Dom is taking me down with him, he seems worried I think it is coming from ignorance. I just want him to put the work in to earn forgiveness so I can explain and hopefully bring him around..."

"Okay, so in our worlds, Jefe and Angie have basically flipped. You got bad-Jefe and I got bad-Angie, man a world with bad both would beyond suck..." Danika winces for the world that that might exist in, "Angie's issues with us comes from her traditional upbringing, Jefe's upbringing is very similar. The Catholic and Latino traditions are working against you guys. I can't promise he will come around, just like I'm not sure Angie will come around, but what I am sure about is it would be a huge mistake to not take a leap of faith based on those two being horrible, forgiveness is hard to ask for when you don't think anything has been done wrong on your side of the road."

"The funny thing is it isn't exactly frowned upon in my culture at least in part of it so long as all parties consent and are happy and taken care of. I understand where Jefe is coming from at least from how he was raised but it hurts Dom, he can say what he wants about me but I draw the line when what he says hurts Dom. Bring me to WrestleMania the way he did hurt Dom."

"Dios, Angie is breaking Dominik's heart open, but my Dominik has the Guerreros to support and love him too. Because I was adopted by the Mysterio's, I'm Roman Catholic, just like them, but... but, before that I saw how horrible mis-matched love could be, and what those four have, even without me, it's not that. Angie has hurt Dom so much, that I don't know if they can get back to being Madre and hijo, but I hope they can, if not for themselves, for the kids we share, who look at Angie like and Abuela, and are always going to, because she has been there for me and them... Some things just have to take time."

"You are right on that, I hope Jefe comes around, I don't think Angie is the problem..."

"For you it doesn't sound like Angie is a problem at all, she might be an ally you can trust, someone who ultimately wants Dominik to be the best he can be." Danika offers, hopeful.

"I yelled at Angie for what she and Jefe did bringing me to WrestleMania on camera, and said I just want Dom happy and that is what should matter and I swear I saw something switch in her head." Nessa explains the memory popping in her head. "I think I'll call Angie and Aalyah after I talk to the others..."

Danika nods her head, "That sounds good, I want to talk to Jefe when I get back... I need to, well it's not super important for the world, but I need him to transfer some titles and some properties into my name, before he and Angie get too deep into divorce..."

Nessa chokes on her drink and pulls her hand back and grips the table trying to catch her breath, "I'm sorry what?"

"Yeah, that's probably distressing news, but uhm, long story extremely short, Angie got Dominik really arrested and it was sort of the last straw in a long line of... missteps between the pair of them, they have separated - Jefe is living with us or Aalyah, like he's either on the bus or cashing out in Jacksonville, and Angie is sort... on her own right now."

"Yeah no mine are very much in love," Nessa explains, still shocked.

"Ah, the Eddie Guerrero of it all got in mine's way." Danika admits, unbothered.

"Ah like father like son kinks are inherited..." Nessa jokes.

"Is your Dominik biologically Eddie's son, too?" Danika asks almost excitedly.

"No, I don't think. Those genes are strong. In a mask Dom looks just like Rey..."

"Dom gets to wear a mask in the future? Oh he's gonna be so proud he earned it!" Danika grins. "Dom does look like Jefe, even though he is biologically Eddie's, but there have always been rumors in Tijuana about Jefe being biologically a Guerrero, but it's... all rumors according to Jefe." Danika shrugs, "Angie is Dom's mom, though..."

Nessa grimaces and chews her lip, not responding at first. She can't meet Danika's eyes and stares down at the table.

"He doesn't earn the mask does he?" Danika asks knowingly.

"Uh... no... He tears some of them up, he came out at WrestleMania in a mask and took it off before getting in the ring to mock Jefe."

"Got pictures of that? Cause I'm tempted to steal your Dominik's swag." Danika's grin is pure chaos, and excitement.

"Oh yeah here..." Nessa pulls up some pictures she saved from Google.

"Wow, he looks hot, ick, I said that, oh I need more caffeine." She sips her drink, shaking her head to clear the thought, "That entrance looks fucking cool. The plan our end is for Jefe to be with us by Mania." She offers, leaning a bit into Nessa's space, "But it requires some bullshit from Edge and the OC and a bunch of tools, eh, lots of moving cogs, nothing for you to bother your pretty little head about." Danika promises, "Not to stop this, but where did Tommy go, I'm going to need more pastries to take back to Dolph's house..."

Nessa looks around to see Tommy nowhere to be found and shrugs her shoulders. "Hunter wanted me to go in to a story with Luis and potentially a triangle buuut he is toying with the idea of letting us go public in kayfabe if we play it right..."

"Sheeeesh, we haven't even labeled ourselves, let alone really admitted to Hunter that we are anything other than two couples and Fergie. The idea that we might be a public polycule makes me a bit nervous, for the kids not for us adults, there are already hella rumors that I'm sleeping with both Fergie and Luis, or that they are fighting for my affection behind the scenes." Danika frowns at the statement, before clearing her throat, "For the most part the internet just hates Dominik and thinks he is undeserving, while they are all over Dems - either she's doing to much or not enough," Danika shrugs, "That's advice I can give you, don't let the internet get to you, or the online trolls, cause I'm only three-four months into this, and I've been attacked more as a SuperStar than I ever was as an Influencer."

Nessa takes the warning seriously and is glad she isn't big on social media, "I'll keep that in mind, I know I made some people like Dom and there was a trending hashtag #justicefornessa, but I'm not big on social media. I'll do my best to ignore the trolls. It is much the same otherwise for Dems and Dom."

Danika nods her head understandingly, "A hashtag is pretty badass, boo. As an influencer I use the name Danika Wesson, so it took a minute or two for people to connect Danika Wesson to Danika Mysterio, but once they did, everything on my socials absolutely blew the fuck up, and all these new fans were deep diving into every aspect of my life - its part of what led to Dominik and I revealing the fact that Nico and Rosa were ours together, and that I was pregnant with Angel."

"Thank you." Nessa blushes at the praise, "I'll keep all that in mind to protect me and them and any future babies..."

"Honestly, my biggest fear was letting the kids be in storylines, because of what happened with Dominik, Eddie, and Jefe." Danika admitted softly, "But, Edge wouldn't stop bringing them or me up when I was still pregnant, in like July, August, and the start of September."

"I am afraid of that, Jefe brought up he thought I would be the mother of his grandchildren. We know he isn't above bringing kids into a storyline. What happens if I were to decide to have kids with them... would he cross that line..." Nessa worries out loud and begins biting her nails.

Danika thinks about it for a very long moment, considering all that she knows, "Hunter is the boss, he's a team player, eat this donut, you're going to ruin your nails." Danika shoves the pastries back at her, Nessa pushes them back. "Alright don't eat all my pastries, I won't hold it against you, this time," Danika teases, "Here's what I know, you regardless of who you're contract manager is, have the right to demand a new manager, it's an old school clause from the WCW days, you just need to express that you don't have good faith in you're manager, once you do that... you can petition for anyone to be your manager. Get you a damn good one, one that will be on your side, no matter what. Someone the group trusts - get them to fight to have your contract be renegotiated for stipulations that focus on protecting your kids."

"I hope it won't come to that, I hope I can bring Jefe around but I might do that." Nessa grabs Danika's hand, thankful at the advice. "My cousin who is also my lawyer I know, I know he... he said the contract is very geared towards protecting me... So I think there is hope..." Nessa adds on.

Danika hums while tangling their fingers together and smiling, "So, where do we go from here, we obviously have similarities, maybe we are our universe's companion pieces?" Danika shrugs, "I don't want to leave and not have a way to catch up with you again, I need to know things!"

"Well we mentioned this was like an episode of Doctor Who, the weather some sort of temporal shift like when the planets were moved by the Daleks... Maybe this is like Cardiff in the show where there are cracks that things seep through. Maybe we can try to meet here again in similar conditions? Because I need to know things too and have someone who understands how hard it is to not have sex with our people." Nessa goes full nerd mode explaining different plots and changes gears thinking of their groups.

"Dios, it's a struggle, you know, not to just climb Damian like a tree in the ring, pretty sure Dominik has those struggles too. And we can nerd over Doctor Who together..." Danika grins, "Alright, was it day or night when you walked in here?" She asked seriously.

"It was day time, mid-day, I was running to the store to get the ingredients to cook for Dems..."

"Well fuck, it was night, I just got off a redeye, Dems took the kids to get them settled in with Dolph. Luis and Fergie were helping with Christmas stuff, it's like December 26th." She frowned, tugging on one of her longer fly away pieces of hair.

"Uh it is April 18th, I'm still stinging from the kendo stick hit I took for Luis in the ring last night from Bad Bunny. He was so fucking mad even though I warned him beforehand. We just got here to Florida a few hours ago."

"Ouch, kid. Benito is coming to Christmas tomorrow." Danika sighs, "I am making the executive decision to not ask what the fuck happened there." She adds, "Alright so we are months apart and apparently not affected by day-time versus night-time. Maybe it's the storm."

"Ladies, you have maybe five minutes left." Tommy's voice sounds to them both, the man appearing back behind the counter. Both girls jolt at his sudden reappearance, even as he replaces their orders on the countertop, "You'll need these."

"Boooooooo." Nessa whines and pouts at the man behind the counter.

"Yeah, boo you whore." Danika mutters, irritated. "Ok, so... doing it by date and time isn't going to work, I'm back in Tampa in like... forty-six days, if I remember correctly."

"I don't know when I'll be back..." Nessa looks defeated.

"So, we just keep coming here in the rain and hope to find one another. That seems like the only solution." Danika looks just as defeated, flicking her gaze to Tommy, "What are the rules?"

Tommy grins at them, "You'll find each other when you need each other." He promises.

"What is this some kind of TARDIS taking us where we need to go type of shit? What if I need her like tomorrow?" Nessa whines trying her best Ojitos on Tommy.

Tommy only laughs as he motions at the timer, and disappears back to where they both assume the kitchen is. "He's not useful past pastries and half-truths." Danika rolls her eyes, "We are running out of time, I'm going to bring you a gift next time, ok? Something Dems has given me that'll knock the socks off your four." She promises.

"Yeah ok and I'll try to bring you some cute stories and embarrassing pictures of Dom." Nessa promises, feeling sad about having to leave a new friend.

"Ok, no tears, mariposa, hugs, and then we bounce, I have a feeling if we are here too long it's going to get bad."

"Luis calls me Mariposa..."

"You're an adorable butterfly," Danika stands and helps Nessa to her feet. "He calls me Kitten." She offers, winking at Nessa.

"Haha gatita I love it" Nessa giggles and hugs Danika thankful they are the same height in their heels.

Danika hugs her back, blushing slightly at the kitten-call, "See you as soon as possible."

"Yeah, hopefully soon because Backlash is soon and Dems is going to defend her Title... oops" Nessa shrugs knowing she gave something else away.

"Her what? Wait, no." Danika laughs, before grabbing her things, "Best to not know, take care of yourself, Mariposa." Danika smiles, "I'll go first, I got here first." She heads for the door, sadness filling her, there is something warm and welcoming about Nessa she's going to miss.

-/-

Danika pushes out the door, the bell ringing above her into the rain hitting her in the face. Flicking her gaze back, she pulls the door open to see only Tommy wiping down the counter, "Have a good night, Ms. G!" The man calls her, smiling as he normally does like she didn't spend an hour in a weird time-space-continuum TARDIS like thing. Her phone starts buzzing with missed calls and text messages, apparently nothing in the past hour got through to her, she swipes over to answer Demi's call, "Hey, babe."

"Where are you?" Demi demands, "You said it would take like thirty minutes."

"Sorry, Dems, the coffee shop was busy, I'm on my way to Dolph's, just gonna hail a taxi." Danika promises, "Hey, have you called home lately? I know you miss your Nonna."

Demi made a long grumble on the other side of the phone, "I'll phone her."

-/-

Nessa watches as Danika leaves and completely disappears from view as the door closes behind her. Not even being able to be seen through the clear window. "What the fuck..." She mutters to herself and turns to see Tommy smiling and wiping down the counter.

"Everything ok, Miss Nessa?" He smiles at her and she just stares at him confused for a moment before shaking her head knowing she won't get any actual answers.

"Yeah, the coffee was delicious." She decides on answering as her phone rings, Rhea's face popping up on the screen.

"Finally, where are you? We are worried sick! I've sent Dom Dom and Luis out to find you!" Rhea sighs in relief when Nessa answers.

"Hey Dems, I'm sorry there was a storm and I forgot where I parked and never made it to the store. I honestly have no idea where I am." Nessa answers committing the name of the coffee shop, Tilted Dimensions, to memory so she can come back here.

"Call them back, I'm going to use my GPS and go to the store, I'll be back in like 30 minutes. I promised you food and food you shall get. I could use some help, would you like to help me make it?" Nessa smiles softly as she walks out the door which closes softly behind her.

#judgment day x reader #rhea ripley fanfiction #damian priest fanfic #dominik mysterio fanfiction #finn balor fanfiction #the judgment day fanfic

[jamiesfootball]

One of the things that’s been noodling in my head since the finale is how Ted Lasso plays the forgiveness card in regards to the Tartt Sr situation.

Yes, I’ve banged on this drum before. I shall bang on it again. Buh-dum.

Bear with me as I start from the outside and work my way in by first referencing a moment from a different show.

In Leverage, there’s an episode where they convince the guy they’re trying to take down to break out of police custody by making him think he’s in the middle of a deadly epidemic that’s being covered up by the government. The details of this aren’t important, but when Nate is explaining why it worked, he says something along the lines of ‘there’s a part of your brain that’s meant to question and make judgements. What we did was we tapped into the emotional center of his brain, so that he would forget to question anything.’

Now I'm paraphrasing, but this is actually a good summary of how a lot of cons work- they create an emotional story and a sense of relationship, to make you forget to ask ‘wait does this guy just want my money.’ Think of scary voicemails telling you your student loans got sent to collections and you need to call now. Think Nigerian Prince schemes. Think car dealerships.

Because that is the power of a story when the narrative structure follows all the guidelines. You become invested, and you believe the narrative. (This is also why Jump the Shark exists, when a narrative has wobbled so off its tracks that the belief becomes suspended, but I digress.)

So the issue for me with regards to the James Tartt Sr story line, is that from a technical standpoint the wider Story of Ted Lasso did meet the minimum requirements for ‘believable.' My coworker, for instance, absolutely loved how ALL the story lines tied up in the finale, including that one. She couldn’t explain why, she just said it was ‘really nice and it worked for her.’

But I’ll highlight that bit in the middle—she couldn’t explain why—because that’s the thrust of the situation. The Story, from her perspective, told a satisfying emotional conclusion by hitting all the correct points. It essentially did what a con does, and in the resulting emotion she failed to question it.

And I think therein lies the trouble with the Jamie's dad story line. Because it is being told within the scope of a broader narrative, it is allowed to coast on the merits of the rest of the narrative. For three seasons, the show preaches forgiveness and second chances and people having depth, so when it asks you to do it again at the end - with Jamie's dad, hell I'd even say with Rupert for a hot second - you already have within you all the emotional build-up to say 'yes.'

Except that the buildup doesn’t happen with James, or even Rupert, it happens to the people that they hurt. Jamie’s the one who learned how to be better. Jamie is the one who tried to make amends to the people he hurt. Jamie is the one who had to un-fuck his whole life. Jamie earned all of that emotional payoff.

His dad did not.

So the show sells you one emotional story, and at the end shuffles in another to reap the benefits of it.

But just like a con only works as long as you don’t start to question it, the second you question the James Tartt Sr storyline the more you realize how much of that work happened elsewhere in the story.

You know those youtube videos that are cut together scenes of ‘every time This Character talks about Big Plot Point’? Think of those videos. Sometimes they’re a concentrated dose of very high tense moments, but sometimes they’re a little anemic, aren’t they? Sometimes you watch those videos and realize just how much heavy lifting other scenes did just to imply that the narrative was moving forward.

Well if you made a youtube video of ‘all the scenes that mention / have James Tartt Sr in them’ and cut them together, you definitely do NOT get an emotionally satisfying ending. In fact you go from someone who implies that their father is violent, to seeing their father be violent, to seeing their father threaten violence to his kid, to seeing him inflict that violence on someone else in place of his kid, to the kid confiding in someone else that even more fucked up shit happened, to the kid’s mom trying to console him, to the kid literally showing symptoms of PTSD at the idea his father might be around-

-to someone asking him if maybe he should try to let that go

-to their dad being proud of them

-to reestablishing contact

-to a happy montage of them smiling together the end.

At bare minimum there is an entire confrontation missing. And that is minimum. Minimum narrative work said this storyline should have had a climax. But this is a storyline that did not breathe on its own- it relied on a dozen smaller, unrelated, moments to give it the illusion of a satisfying ending.

And since it was weaved in with the rest, to some people – people who were too in vested in the story to question it – that was a great ending. That was a perfect ending.

That’s the illusion of telling a story- people are predisposed to believing the story that is being told, to the point where they will forget to ask questions.

When people talk about this kind of narrative being a dangerous one? That’s where that comes from. That’s what it means. It’s not just that someone depicted a story of someone forgiving their abuser, it’s that the did it in such a way that that isn’t even what happened. Most of the time it is the narrative that forgives the abuser, not the character. The character doesn’t get to scream and cry and let out all the pain they suffered. The character doesn’t get to set boundaries and learn to experience the world safely. The character, often times, isn’t even worth an apology from the person who hurt them.

It isn't the character who gets closure in these narratives; it's the audience who does. And it’s so insidious that it can very nearly trick a person in real life into thinking that maybe they too will get closure if they forgive someone – without ever realizing that in these stories, the narrative was never on their side in the first place.

#all together now #fuck jamie's dad #it's not that those stories are impossible but it is that the way they are told is largely irresponsible #and blinded by the illusion of a satisfying conclusion #abuse cw #jamie tartt #he deserved better #i didn't get much writing done tonight but this counts right?

[kindnessisweakness2]

Delusional - Part 19

“I cannot believe you can sing like that lass!” Chibs exclaimed loudly from the bar in the clubhouse. The Friday night party was in full swing and Delaney was sat on Jax’s lap as the rest of the club made comments about how well she did at the fundraiser. “There is alot you guys dont know about me. I have lots of secret talents.” Delaney wiggled her eyebrows and laughed loudly at the expression on the guys faces. “No, Seriously. I love singing covers but i write songs too. I just never sing them. It’s weird, i’ve just never had the confidence. My parents wanted me to be a Lawyer or Doctor and well, you can see how that turned out!” Delaney gestured at herself and giggled. “I think you turned out perfect.” Jax said as he leaned in and kissed her head. “And talking about them secret talents, its time to take my old lady home. Sorry guys!” Jax grinned as the guys groaned loudly at his innuendo. Delaney did not have to be told twice as she quickly said goodbye to Gemma and Clay before following her Fiance to his bike. Jax was reaching for his spare helmet when an unfamiliar Car pulled onto the TM Lot. Jax Pulled Delaney close as he watched a man and woman emerge from the car. The woman was tall and slim with dark hair and dark eyes. She had a pointed look on her face and Jax could already tell she was judging everyone. The male was short and frumpy, with a receeding hairline and bright eyes. “Mom? Dad?” Delaney questioned, shock evident in her voice, as she made her way towards the car with Jax following close behind her. “W-What are you doing here? You never called to tell me you were coming out!” Delaney’s Mom scowled at her daughter. “Well we wanted to suprise you. We were concerned that we couldnt get hold of Alex, so we decided to fly out. Do not be ungrateful.” Delaney sighed at her mother. She has never been nice to her, and always thought the sun shone out of Alex’s backside. This was going to be a difficult convosation. “Well me and Alex, we arent together anymore. I dont know where he is-” It wasnt a lie. She didnt know where he was and she never wanted to know either. Her moms eyes widened. “Don’t tell me, you messed it up like you do everything else. Always been ungrateful, hasnt she James? I’m glad we flew out. You clearly need our help. I’m sure we can fix it. You just need to lose a few pounds, all this american food hasnt helped your waist line dear! You’ve clearly let yourself go. Walking around no make up, hair a mess and when was the last time you had your nails done? What have i told you Delaney Louise? Men do not appreciate it when their woman looks rough! No wonder Alex probably went somewhere else. Have you atleast been doing the housework and cooking him home meals?” Delaney’s Cheeks blushed crimson at her moms critisism and the fact that the rest of the club came out to see the new arrivals, catching the awful toungue lashing her mother dished out. Her Father just stood there an awkward smile on his face. Years of having to listen to her mother go on and on has made him compliant, never wanting to get on her bad side. “Mom, Can you please forget about Alex? He wasnt a good man. He did things to me you never knew about, even before we moved out here. I’ve met someone else. Someone who treats me so much better.” Her moms eyes flickered to where Jax was stood next to her. She watched her mom look him up and down and it honestly made her blood boil to see the judgement on her face. “He’s no Alex.” Delaney couldnt hold it in. “YES. YOUR CORRECT. HE’S NO ALEX. HE DOESNT GRAB ME BY THE HAIR AND DRAG ME TO THE FLOOR WHEN HIS BREAKFAST ISNT DONE ON TIME. HE DOESNT TELL ME IM USELESS AND FAT AND UGLY. HE DOESNT HIT ME EVERYDAY. HE DOESNT SCARE ME. HE DOESNT MAKE MAKE ME FEEL LIKE IM WORTHLESS. HE DOESNT MAKE ME FEEL LIKE I WANT TO DIE AND THAT THE WORLD WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT ME IN IT. HE MAKES ME FEEL SAFE AND LOVED AND HAPPY. SHOULDNT THAT BE WHAT YOU WANT FOR YOUR DAUGHTER? TO BUILD A LIFE WITH SOMEONE WHO MAKES HER FEEL LIKE SHE’S THE MOST AMAZING THING. RATHER THAN LIVE EVERYDAY IN FEAR THAT THAT WILL BE THE DAY HE FINALLY KILLED ME?” Delaneys chest heaved as she screamed at her mother. “Oh dont be so dramatic, Delaney Louise! So what he slapped you a few times? You’ve always been out of control. You needed raining in! To be showed whats acceptable and whats not! Alex did you a favour even looking at you in the first place. He could have his pick of the women wherever he went and he chose you! He chose to be with someone who behaved and looked like you! I hate to say it as you are my daughter but lets face it, your never the prettiest girl in the room. You ate your feelings through high school and look how its effected your body! Nobody wants you, and its not hard to believe when you look like that. Like i said, now im here we will correct it and you will apologise to Alex in the hope he will take you back.” Delaney shook her head at her mother. The nerve of her. “If you ever think im going to stand in front of that man again you are more delusional than he is.” The smack echoed across the lot loudly. Delaney’s head whipping to the side with the force of the hit. Her hand came up to cover the red mark on her face as she spit the blood that formed in her mouth on the concrete. “Do not ever disrespect me like that. I am your Mother!” The shrill voice of her mum and the shouts of protest of every member of the club sounded like it was far away. Delaney didnt know what was happening. She had been hit harder than that before but for some reason it feels like her brain had been shaken against her skull. Fuck, she could take a hit but this was different. Something was wrong. “Baby?” Jax’s arms wound around her waist trying to steady her. She could see double and her ears felt like they were ringing. “Jax-” was all Delaney could mumble before she went limp in his Arms. 

*1 HOUR LATER*

Jax paced up and down the hospital waiting room. “She really werent lying when she said her mom was a bitch.” Juice nodded in agreement at opies comment. “Do you mind? Me and my wife are right here!” Delaneys dad spoke up as her mum scoffed. “Do you think we give a shit? Look at how you’ve treated her. You’ve been here 5 fucking minutes and look at how much you upset her!” Gemma snapped. “You should’ve stayed your asses in England!”  Delaneys mum Stood up and made her way to where Gemma Stood in the doorway, but before she could say anything Gemma laughed. “Just try it sweetheart. I am not your daughter. I will fuck you up.” Jax glared at his mother. “Will all of you shut the fuck up? My fiance is currently lying in a hospital bed and you guys fighting is not fucking helping!” Before anyone could say anything else the doctor appeared. “Im guessing your all here for Delaney?” Jax Stepped forward, “Please can i see her? She’s my fiance!” Delaneys mum scoffed loudly, “I am her mother, Linda. I should be the one to see her!” Jax and Gemma rounded on her. “YOUR THE FUCKING REASON SHES IN HERE!” The doctor shook his head at the group. “Look you all need to calm down otherwise i will have to ask you to leave the hospital. She’s been asking for Jax, Gemma and club members. Which im guessing is all you guys with the patches on. She has specifically stated that no one else is to enter her hospital room so if your not a patched member, or your name is not Jax or Gemma you need to leave.” Delaneys parents scowled but left the room without argument. Jax sighed in relief that they were gone. “So now thats dealt with. You can see her but we are just waiting on the result of one more test, as soon as that comes through i will be with you guys shortly.” Jax thanked the doctor then made his way towards Delaney’s Hospital room. Everyone pushed into the room, trying to be the one to get to her first. 

Delaney Laughed as she watched Opie, Juice, Halfsack and Happy try to cram themselves through the doorway at the same time. “Get the fuck out of the way!” Juice gunted. “No move your fat ass i was here first.” Opie groaned as his shoulder got rammed hard against the door frame. “Both of you move out the fucking way. I’m her faveorite.” Happy shoulder barged his way through the small gap, sending juice flying forward onto the hospital floor. “Your all fucking idiots.” Jax snapped as he stepped over juice and rushed towards delaneys bed. “Hey babe, you gave me quite the scare.” Jax pressed a kiss to her forehead and smiled at her as he climbed onto the bed next to her. “Im sorry for scaring everyone. I dont know what happened, I think all the stress and worry these last few weeks have just caught up with me. I feel better now.” She tried her best to reassure everyone, but the doctor entering the room made everyone turn. “Do you want to speak in private?” The doctor asked Delaney but she shook her head. “No everyone here is Family.” Nodding his head, the doctor started to run through her test results as everyone listened carefully. 

“So we tested you for a number of things, Miss Carter. And thankfully all the serious diagnosis have been ruled out, but i do want to check one last thing that could explain your fainting. How have you felt recently?” Delaney’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I’ve been fine really. Just tired, but i put that down to the stress of the fundraiser. and all the organising. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night alot feeling sick but that is normal when my anxiety flares up.” The doctor nodded his head as he wrote notes on Delaney’s chart. “It does make sense. The fainting, the tiredness. Miss Carter, Your pregnant.” 

#sons of anarchy imagine #sons of anarchy #sons of anarchy fanfiction #Jax Teller #jax teller imagine #jax teller x oc #jax teller x reader #jax teller x female reader

[himbogiants]

A Lapse of Judgement

Felt like making a one shot!

Also just wanna say, I've been watching Castlevania, Alistar is very much inspired by Alucard

Anyways, Giant Angel, tiny demon :))

Warnings: Language I guess? Mentions of depression, fear of dying. Angsty and fearplay.

If you like this please like and let me know what you think! I love reading what others have to say <3 enjoy!

In her humble opinion Luciel wasn't doing anything wrong- ok no, that's a lie, but still she was only doing her job! Being a demon was hard work, especially when you were a lower class. She was just thankful she had her wings because she couldn't possibly imagine trying to traverse the human realm without them, trying to reach their ears just to whisper some corrupt ideas into them would be such a pain. More than it already was!

It was tough, but at the very least the humans couldn't see her so there wasn't really any stopping her except whenever procrastination kicked in. Well..that wouldn't be true either.

There were ways to stop her.

And all of them came in the form of Angels.

Self righteous perfect little Angels. Except they weren't little at all! Given their 'holy' nature they were all the same height as a middle class demon, or human. And might she add incredibly annoying! Because even when casting a fellow demon aside they always tried to be so moral and just about it. She for one thought they were a bunch of sad sour souls. What was the point in living a mortal life if you didn't get to cause a little mischief while you had the chance? You know, fun?!

But no. For every wicked whisper, they'd always counter, shunning out the darkness, much to the humans obliviousness.

Luciel had dealt with only a handful of them, possibly less. They never really paid her any mind, more than just a glare of disapproval anyways. Besides they were far more focused on putting a stop to her more powerful coworkers- if they could even be called that. Demons never exactly worked together.

In some ways she was glad to be at the rank she was, the most an Angel could do to her was shoo her off. They didn't attempt anything else. And she was content with that way of things, bothersome yes, but nothing she couldn't live with.

Or so she thought, until Alistar anyhow.

The little demon (quite literally) had been taunting a simple human named Dave- if she was correct. Poor precious Dave, and his sunken eyes. Perhaps she was feeding his anxiety a little too much. But it was quite fun to watch! So she'd continue to egg him on- no matter how many anxiety pills her swallowed.

She laughed in her mirth, going off to see another human deciding it may be time to give old Dave some time out. She flew through above crowds, she was in a city today. She never did bother learning names of locations for she did jump or rather fly around pretty frequently.

The sun was shining and the flowers were blooming- not her preference in weather by any means but perhaps that was the demon in her. All in all it was looking to be a successful day.

She stopped mid flight and floated above the colossal crowds, all impatient to get to the next place sprinkled with remnants of anger, addictions, drunkards, and much more. Wherever the city was it was looking to be a delightful place!

She scanned around before selecting a new target. Baggy eyes, tired expression, possible depression oh yes now this was perfect.

She flew after him thrilled by the chase- and the mere thought of a new client!

Up the stairs through a washed out apartment complex, past the many doors before alas, she caught up just as he walked in and shut the door.

She clapped her hands together, looking around the dingy little complex. It was still clean (odd, he couldn't take care of his own mind, yet his house was unbelievably clean. A possible touch of OCD?)

He walked further in, coming into the kitchen. She spotted them instantly, pills all lined up. Bingo, she was on the money with this one.

Then to his bedroom, he slumped down and switched on his computer, seemingly worn out even though the day was only beginning and just about to get a whole lot more exciting.

She landed on his shoulder, holding onto his collar and taking a breath, so many possibilities! Now, more importantly, what to say?

She settled with the obvious, time to corrupt his self worth!

Though she never got to do that. She had just steadied herself and headed for his ear, when a great hand burst in from seemingly nowhere, and trapped her tightly in a fist.

The breath was forcefully taken out of her as the hand squeezed harsher. Then she cried out at an instant heat. Something was burning! Searing hot! And it hurt. Heat shouldn't hurt Demons!! Nothing should!

"Aww..how pathetic"

She winced, an Angel of course but how?! Why was he even bothering?! She was only a lower cla-

The hand shifted and she was pulled around to a overbearing perspective. And what she was greeted with shook her to her core.

Not just an Angel. A Guardian Angel.

Fuck. No.

If normals Angels were so painfully just and morally correct in their hatred for demons, Guardian Angels amplified it ten fold. They too had wings and all in all looked fairly similar to any regular Angel, apart from their give away, an aura eclipsed their forms. Angels had beauty, but these ones were a new level, porcelain like skin, bright shining golden eyes, eyes that currently bore into her with nothing but repulsion. Angels hated Demons. But Guardians? They loathed them.

Not only that, but the worst aspect, they had the power to wipe any level of demon out, which is what made them so incredibly dangerous.

They could make demons writhe and scream for hours on end, possibly more than any damnation in hell ever could. And now one had her in his grasp. And he looked very pissed.

He lifted her to eye level, as she swallowed, tears beginning to brim at the corner of her eyes.

"A lowly little lower class hmm?"

His other hand appeared out of the blue and it made her yelp. The size difference had never bothered her before. Ever. She had grown so used to it, so why was she so terrified of it now?

The impossibly large hand came into contact and with one sharp nail he pushed her hair out of her eyes meeting her gaze. He smirked.

The Guardian Angel smirked. Angels didn't smirk, they didn't taunt nor tease. They done their duty and left. But this was new. And mortifying. He seemed to watch her as he pinned her wings painfully to her back. Despite the security of flight the drop below was still nerve enduring.

He brought her closer, right before his burning pupils, as the heat slicing through her worsened. He took in a deep breath and chuckled, his exhale brushing against her skin.

"Scared?"

Scared? Scared?! She had never known fear. A demon never felt scared!, but it seemed today was a day for new experiences. Here she was, dying out in a fist bigger than herself. Fear was her newest foe. Fear was what drove her to nod in response. Just as he had put it. Pathetic.

He sneered, seemingly finding this only delightful.

"Good. You should be"

And from there, everything felt raw..and white. At least the pain did anyways. She let out a howling cry, a piercing shriek. She noticed her arms, they were cracking .

She..she was dying.

A new wave of the meaning washed over this situation as did fright. Oh Satan..what..what happened to an Demon in death? She wasn't even a living soul? Was there more beyond this?! Was this it?! Panic seized her and finally she understood. Was this the type of thoughts she instilled on humanity? The self doubting, the fear. What lay awaiting in the foggy unknown?

She was speaking before she could stop herself.

"PLEASE. PLEASE I BEG OF YOU" She writhed.

The Guardian Angels eyes lay still, as he consumed her every wail.

"PLEASE. I- I DONT WANT TO DIE. IM SORRY! PLEASE STOP PLEASE"

Her breaths became laboured and tight, the crackled fractured up her arms and legs, getting closer and closer to her heart.

She wasn't ready to die.

A small tear fell from her cheeks and ricocheted off his hand.

She took one final gasp and then it all stopped.

The hand loosened and opened, as she collapsed in on his palm panting, heaving, shaking like a crisp little leaf.

She grasped her chest tightly as she softly began to sob, her ruffled wings twitched in pain, as they were freed from their constraints.

A warm voice breezed over her, she was closer to his mouth she reckoned.

"In all my lifetime, in all my training. I have never once seen a Demon apologise for their ways. Nonetheless cry. In eradication, many have felt fear. But nothing to this extent. Yet..here you are."

She was quivering as her curled up form hitched at his words. Her cracks were fading. He was letting her live..or so she hoped.

She unfurled slowly, looking up to meet his impossibly large eyes. He was so close.

"A-and I, have never witnessed an Angel who expelled violence"

A small smile tugged at his lips.

"Well, I for one, am not just an Angel, which I suppose you have already taken note off. And never having experienced such violent nature hmm? Must be the low level in you."

Her eyes furrowed as she died them.

"Most Angels I've met don't give me a second glance. I hadn't even done anything yet!"

It was his turn to glare, though she had noticed the venom was fading, replaced by a morbid curiosity. She found herself despising being a Guardians object of interest.

"Yes.. nothing yet. You had every intent on making this man's life a living hell and all for your own gain."

She tried to stand with her fury but pain riffled through causing her to stagger back. The Angel apparently having noticed used his finger from his other hand to curl around her miniscule waist and steady her out, he carefully sat her back down, going easy on her wings, he must have noticed their damage then. She couldn't exactly ignore the fascination lurking in his pupils either.

"Don't try and move. You'll make this harder on yourself, I was intending on killing you after all."

She laughed coldly as she folded her arms across her chest.

"And what. You're not gonna do that anymore huh? I was only doing my damn job!"

The Angel rolled his eyes and poked at her lightly with the same finger.

"As was I. Demons are a plague on humanity, which must be stopped at all costs."

She snarled at this. There it was. The self righteousness

"Well you're no blessing either, you psychopath"

Expectations of the Angels anger to give way were blocked as he could only chuckle deeply once more, his finger beginning to mess with her small body.

"You'll find that I am, quite literally, a blessing. Though perhaps I went a smidge too harsh. You're a tiny little thing, aren't you? I must admit, I've never actually seen a lower class. I'm usually left dealing with your counterparts."

It was her turn to roll her eyes at this. Though at his belittling of her ranking she felt a small spark of rage. She pushed the finger aside, hissing in pain as she weakly pointed up at the gargantuan glowing man.

"H-How dare you!? Fuck you-" She went to stand once more only to feel a shock in her wing, she yelped and let loose a pitiful whisper.

She did not miss the wince in the Angels features, as well as a hint of guilt. Guilt..for hurting a demon..hurting her? Carefully this time he brought his full hand, gently cupping behind her, only to stroke her wings in a soft and calming manner.

"Calm down, you need to stop fighting. The scorches are still wearing off."

She hated that she found herself leaning into the touch, sending a feeling of anxiety to coarse through her. It had only been five minutes and already this Angel was corrupting her mind as well as setting free butterflies that attacked her stomach.

"So..so you're not gonna kill me then?"

The Guardian fell still, his fingers freezing mid stroke.

"It's what must be done. It's what should be done, but you don't seem like a very real threat. So no..It goes against my inner judgement, but no. You will not perish today."

Luciel felt herself ease instantly with the news but met his eyes. They truly were a sight to behold.

"Thank you.."

A acknowledged this with another hesitant smile as he cocked his head, his long blond hair billowing over his shoulder.

"A Demon saying thank you? Lower classes must still posses manners then. But in any case, you're welcome."

She huffed "must you constantly mention my class? It's demeaning"

His head tilted further

"Curious little thing you are. I never knew Demons could feel insulted."

She turned her gaze away in embarrassment, fortifying her response without words, face turning red.

"Or to be oddly cute when angry."

She coughed at this and instantly facing down. His laugh bellowed around them as his hand shifted over her wings once more resuming their stroking, before he paused once more and set a huge finger beneath her chin, tilting her head upwards to meet his gaze.

"My name is Alistar"

He watched her expectedly as she cleared her throat baring her words, now impossibly soft, loosing their malice intent.

"Luciel"

His finger beneath her face left as it lay awaiting infront of her. Her face fell flat as realisation dawned, oh..a handshake.

She outstretched her arm, her hand falling on his finger tip, almost smaller than his nail. Unnerving to say the least.

"Y-you do realise I still have to do my job right, I can't just stop tormenting humans it's kinda what I'm assigned to do."

His eyes sharpened but only slightly, he sighed instead of sneering.

"You must do your duties and I must do mine. But I propose a bargain. You leave this human be, I've put enough work into keeping this place clean and keeping him alive. I don't condone it but as you must resume tormenting humans- from now it shall only be humans however, that show greed and evil. Rotten ideals. Seeing as demons don't care for humanity this shouldn't affect your work. Have at them. Leave the ones just trying to get by. Do this, and I promise to leave you be, as well as whenever we are together worklife shall go on pause. Do we have an understanding?"

She snapped her hand away from the finger with a raised brow meeting the golden eyes with suspicion

"Just what in all the layers of hell would make you think I would be insane enough to want to meet again?"

Alistar chuckled, his finger moving to twirl a lock of her hair, as he ruffled the rest, much to her dismay (which was met with an entertained grin.) The hand shifted as she got extremely close to his face making her freeze completely. He carefully placed her down on his shoulder and delighted in leaving her stranded, forcing her to sit as she could not yet fly.

"Because my little Demon, work can be awfully dull, and I am in need of some entertainment. A friend if you will."

Luciel felt her face flush, she didn't quite know what to say.. but his offer wasn't too..unappealing. But friendship of any sorts between their kind was forbidden, and if this Angel was willing to bend the rules he proved more interesting than the rest.

She'd take the gamble.

"You have a deal."

#gt angst #gianttiny #giant #angst #tiny #gt oneshot #g/t fearplay #gt fearplay #fearplay

[beevean]

you know, I actually think there's a lot of juicy merit to the idea of the belmonts not being the righteous heroes we always thought they were. maybe after many generations of triumphing over evil, they let it get to their heads that they were unfallible, that their judgements were always correct, etc. the concept of genuinely making them morally grey has so much potential from a storytelling angle, it's just too damn bad the only media that ever attempts this is fucking netflixvania. outside of like, less than 5 throwaway lines about baby vamp skulls and dark magic sealed doors, IT'S NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN. you had an idea and it sounded cool in your head, but no genuine clue how to actually WRITE it so some editor just overlooked the few lines you shoved into the script on a whim. as it stands now it feels like one the shows many attempts to shit talk the source material for the thousandth time. and aside from trevor, everyone is dead! how are we meant to criticize the dubious heroes when we can't even see how they behaved/what their practices were?? why should we even CARE???

The vampire kids is just proof of how shoddy the lorebuilding is. Once you get past the initial shock of "OMG the Belmonts killed babies??????", you think for one second "wait, the vampires can't reproduce, so... where are these children coming from?". And no matter the answer, you eventually realize that they deserve to be mercy killed 💀 (unless they're dhampirs, but that would be an even worse piece of information to relegate to shock value for 5 seconds)

There's also Julia, mind you. Who was apparently racist against vampires lmao, and killed Olrox' poor bf who was so nice and wanted equality and revolution, really! I don't even know how bad we're supposed to feel lol, because unless I'm mistaken, in that scene Olrox also reveals he turned his bf against his will...

Anyway. I get your point but... I don't trust like that anymore 😅 once again, I'd rather extrapolate on what the games left us. Trevor, as pointed out here, is an absolute savage in CoD, like he sounds so bloodthirsty for no reason! And he's the first Belmont who has killed Dracula, he's not even burdened by his own legacy, he's one of the founders of said legacy! And Richter's flaws are infamous, the way he enjoys the thrill of the fight just too much, the way his identity is wrapped around his destiny, the way he falters under Dracula's manipulation... Even Juste, you can see him as being a hothead and too willing to forget about recent events in HoD, indicating either denial or a sense of overprotectiveness.

Basically, giving personal flaws to the Belmonts is more than welcome. You can use these flaws to paint them as not completely pure, even, although personally I'm tired of the stereotype of the arrogant superhero. But NFCV just... doesn't like the Belmonts, at all, and that "oh they kill innocent vampires" tidbit that Alucard so despises, while I'm sure it's meant as a way to flesh out the "heroes", comes off to me as the show siding too often with the antagonists, and downplaying the Belmont's genuine desire to do good. Or turning Trevor and Juste into cynical washouts because we just like that archetype I guess :\

#anti netflixvania

[air-of-the-waterfall]

I shall henceforth and forevermore ramble about the Thunderhead.

Chapter 30 of Scythe is our first proper introduction. Until that point it's just a vague background concept, rather mysterious but undoubtedly pivotal. In chapter 28, we get this:

"Citra Terranova, said a voice both powerful yet gentle. Citra Terranova, can you hear me?

Who's that? Is someone there?

Curious, said the voice. Very curious..."

I love the vagueness and anticipation that Neal Shusterman leaves to simmer for a while. In book one we're getting familiar with the Scythedom's side of things, then as the series progresses we pan out into the entire world with the Thunderhead and the experience is just dazzling. That's the only way I can describe reading it. It literally feels like meeting God.

The Thunderhead's first proper appearance is its conversation with deadish Citra, and we learn all about its personality in one brief chapter. Here's where it becomes a living, complex character. Its voice is so distinct and we're hooked right from the start. It's actually kind of pompous in announcing its presence and making her play "guess who," which I'm thinking it does because that's what she'd expect from it. Authoritative, wise, even mystical.

As the conversation goes on, it's blunt and clever with the exposition, the loopholes, its opinions. It treats Citra like they're on an even playing field and it respects her. It subtly scolds her for pushing that girl in front of a truck, displaying its omniscience and gentle judgement.

The beach ball thing is so funny and adds lightness to an otherwise intense scene. The Thunderhead has quirks and humour, if only hinted at here. "Early programming plagues me like a vestigial tail." I'm going to make a separate post on that.

It expresses its grievances with the state of its existence, albeit watering that down significantly. It doesn't want her to know just how uncertain and frightening things really are, because the whole point of this conversation is that it wants her to have hope. Citra compares it to her mother, which it sidesteps. We all know that parents aren't always correct, and the Thunderhead knows that too. It will not confront the terrifying possibility of being anything but correct. "I know no other way to be."

"The curb is the launching point for many a deed." I love that line because it sets up everything that's soon to happen with Greyson, whom it definitely kicks to the curb in book two. This line hints at how it makes the best of every unfortunate situation. Clouds with silver linings, and such.

"I'm sure you could arrange it." THIS is hilarious. There's the snark. There's the sass. It insults her and then it just ditches her, all the while it's been bringing her back from the dead. Literally performing a miracle. It's like the equivalent of a doctor chewing gum and talking on the phone mid-surgery, completely unfazed. I feel like Citra's not the type to be begging it not to leave, but I sure would be.

The fact that Citra later refers to this experience as "a moment of great awe" reminds us that scythes are human. Fallible. Perhaps even inferior.

It's also funny to see the difference in how the Thunderhead treats Rowan later when he's in the same situation. You can tell that it favours him less than Citra. It doesn't dislike him, because it loves and understands everybody, but it's quicker to get to the point, less gentle, identifying itself right off the bat and adapting itself to Rowan's personality. Rowan knows it will forgive his rudeness.

Also, you know, we learn that the Thunderhead can, you know, reach into people's brains. I'm sure that little talent won't become vitally important later.

Overall this scene is fantastic and the Thunderhead owns my soul goodnight.

#arc of a scythe #the thunderhead #aoas #citra terranova #rowan damisch #greyson tolliver #mini essay

[aemiron-main]

reposting one of my mike analyses

ok so this post/writeup/reblog of mine is tied to a reblog by @laozuspo that can be found here & references quotes from it but i’m also putting it here in its own post because of all the recent discussion of mike’s mental health.  You can also find the google doc version of this here and I’m going to put the full post below the cut as well. This post centers around Mike’s mental health, his suicidality, the quarry, and the way that fans and in-show characters perceive mike through the lens of other people/characters instead of seeing him through his own lens & compare him to other people instead of comparing him to himself & how this results in people either accidentally ignoring or intentionally ignoring and dismissing his struggle and how some people are falling hook, line and sinker for the exact lessons about silent suffering, invisible queerness (gay men specifcially especially), and confronting one’s own personal biases and worldview that the duffers are trying to setup via mike’s character. so much of mike’s character is directed towards people who don’t see themselves as outwardly bigoted/judgemental/biased but still have those biases (as we all do) and people almost like ted, whose ‘neutrality’ and ignorance results in suffering much in the same way active hatred/bigotry does and the notion of being queer in the ‘right way,’ or suffering mentally in the ‘right way’. 

(the italicized/blockquoted sections are quotes from a reblog by @laozuspo that can be found here) 

 SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP YOURE SO RIGHT WITH ALL OF THIS!!!!! SO TRUE SO CORRECT AS ALWAYS!!! i have so fucking much to say about all of this so buckle up because i have had some Realizations including more about the quarry.



Literally, Mike's behaviour to the shootout is so tied to this pattern of behaviour that we've already seen with Mike. Something that interests me that I noticed about the shootout is not only do we have Mike defending Will, but Mike is also leaning pretty far out from the wall to the point where Jonathan has to pull him  back in. He's not just defending Will, he's also putting himself in a position where it's easier to get killed, and he may not even be doing this intentionally, it just may be that his own safety isn't even a thought for him, he's not even considering it.

"no mentally healthy child does that. no one who values their own life highly does that. there are other ways to protect your friend that don’t involve putting yourself in mortal danger.



he doesn’t care, though. he didn’t look for other ways, he just places himself in shielding positions over and over again even as the house is literally being ripped apart by bullets. he jumps in front of Will, hangs back so he can be the one behind Will/let Will run first, etc.



it could be argued that “he just loves Will that much, it has nothing to do with his own mental state and perception of his self worth”, but knowing what we know about him, his mental health, and the value he places on his life…unlikely."

YEP YEP YEP YEP THANK YOU!!!!!! HE DOESNT LOOK FOR OTHER WAYS HE USES HIMSELF TO SHIELD WILL, LETS WILL GO FIRST, AND LITERALLY ALSO JUST FORGETS/DOESNT CONSIDER TO PROTECT HIMSELF AT ALL. and if it was just about his love for will imo, we wouldn't have seen the way that he leans out past the wall and jonathan has to pull him back in. he didn't need to do that in order to protect will. it doesnt make any sense when just viewed through the lens of protecting will because mike leaning out like that did literally nothing for wills protection. what it is, is it's the result of mike's lack of consideration for himself and his own life and wellbeing.

 "people are always like “wahh we want s1/2 mike back”, but we see Mike displaying the same behavior here that he has across all seasons." 

 SO FUCKING TRUE AND I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT MIKES INVISIBILITY AND HOW BOTH FANS AND IN-CANON CHARACTERS ARE IGNORING MIKES BEHAVIOUR BECAUSE IT ISNT SOMETHING LIKE THE CLIFF ANYMORE!! like just because he's not stepping of a cliff right not doesn't mean that his issues magically disappeared?? like what i'm saying is that mike has set a suicidality bar so high with his behaviour that then when people feel that he's not meeting that bar, not walking off of cliffs anymore, that he must be fine or not suicidal. people want s1/s2 mike back because his actions and motivations were more obvious, his struggles aligned more with their preconceived, biased notions about suicidality and mental health,  s1 and s2 mike is easier to see through a Will Lens or a Dustin Lens or an El Lens or a "My Own Experiences As A Person Lens" instead of a MIKE LENS because god forbid they have to consider subtext instead of choosing to ignore it even when people point it out. its one thing to miss subtext i do that constantly 24/7. its another to willfully ignore it and not even provide a counterargument when people point it out. 

  and going back quickly to s1/s2 mike and how his behaviour aligns more with peoples' preconceived notions about suicidality than s3 and s4 mike's does, mike's actions in s1/s2 align more with that 'romanticized' view of suicidality, the literal dramatic 'stepping off of a cliff to save his friend but also because he has such little regard for himself' and that WORKS to have the effect that the duffers want, that 'romanticized' approach to it WORKS. it's fucking painful and evokes emotions in the way that 'romanticized' versions of things often do. but as soon as they shift away from that romanticization, people stop believing that it's there. just like mike's sexuality, as soon as it's shifted away from being able to be seen through an external lens, as soon as it has to be viewed through a Mike Lens, people start dismissing it. just like how canon characters dismiss mike. People are falling hook line and sinker for what the duffers have set up here and hell i dont blame them because it's a brilliant setup that forces people to confront their own biased notions about suicidality and mental health and internalized homophobia and sexuality as a whole. it's the epitome of 'people who are drowning don't look like they're drowning.' people are so focused on how will is splashing in the water, they see him and his attempts to keep himself afloat, they see his splashing and his struggle and mistake it for drowning. and while it IS  a struggle, while hes not OUT of the water, he IS staying afloat. but then they overlook mike entirely, because he’s not splashing! They don’t see his struggle in the same way that they see will’s struggle: but that lack of splashing SHOULD be what they’re looking for. They’re looking for the splashing to indicate drowning but they SHOULD be looking for the lack of it, because the splashing means that somebody is still keeping themselves up, still fighting, hasn’t drowned yet. And so people pay attention to mike when he splashes, when he walks off of a cliff, but they STOP paying attention to him once the splashing stops, once he’s ACTUALLY fucking drowning. Like again going back to seeing things  and mike’s experiences from an external lens vs a mike lens, when it comes to the drowning analogy, from mike’s pov/lens, when he’s splashing in the water, he’s safer, he’s less likely to drown, he’s STRUGGLING but the struggle is GOOD because it means he’s still alive, he hasn’t drowned, whereas when he stops struggling, from his pov, it’s hopeless and he’s drowning and dying.  JUST like how hopper said to remember the hurt, because the hurt is good, because it means you’re out of that cave. Will is out of the cave/goes in and out of it but always comes out because people around him help pull him out. And as a result, more people SEE WILL and SEE his struggle because they see him out of the cave and going in and out. People don’t see mike’s struggle as much because he’s still IN THE CAVE MORE THAN WILL IS THEY CANT SEE HIM BECAUSE HES IN THE FUCKING CAVE. and the cave is like the closet, too! Will is out of the closet in the sense that he’s out to himself, has admitted his sexuality to himself, and so when we get his pov, he’s out of the closet, he’s out of the cave, his head is above water. Sure, he’s splashing! That closet door is still open, he could go back in! He could go back into the cave. But he doesn’t, and it’s reflected in his POV and how his struggles, his splashing are more obvious to the audience, how his sexuality is more obvious because he’s out to himself, his pain and IH is more obvious because he’s ACCEPTING IT more and ADDRESSING that pain. Mike on the other hand? Mike comes out and goes back in and this is reflected in his pov. Mike comes out of the cave, out of the closet to himself more in early s4, with hellfire and that whole section of the show, but then he goes back into the closet, literally goes IN THE CLOSET AT RINK O MANIA, he goes back into that cave. And so people assume his struggle is over/doesn't exist/is less than Will’s because we aren’t seeing the splashing, we aren’t seeing Mike, we don’t see him out of the closet or out of the cave. 

 But the thing is, the lack of splashing is what indicates his struggle, that he’s losing the fight, we can’t see him or his sexuality as clear anymore because it’s his pov and he’s in the closet to HIMSELF, not admitting it to HIMSELF. We can’t see him because he went BACK IN THE CAVE, not because he just wandered far away from it and out of our view and getting away from his pain scott-free. People say that they don’t see Mike’s struggle and use that as evidence as to why it doesn’t exist. Setting aside the fact that we DO see it sometimes, we DO see him splashing in the same way that Will does, the thing is, the fact that we don’t see the struggle or the splashing, those moments where we don’t see it should actually be the BIGGEST indicator that it exists. The lack of splashing means he’s fucking drowning, not that he just magically rose out of the water and walked away. like some sort of pseudo-jesus. Just like how Ted is the epitome of the bystander effect, the epitome of ‘’welp! The splashing stopped, the rebellion stopped, the outbursts stopped, so Mike must be fine,” and how that’s affected Mike and resulted in him feeling like he might as well not fight because he splashes and splashes and fights and fights and people like Ted and the audience start to notice but as soon as Mike starts losing energy to fight, as soon as the REAL danger sets in, people stop noticing. But Will doesn’t stop noticing, at least not permanently, which is a whole other fucking topic I need to talk about at some point. Like that’s another fascinating thing about the rink o mania fight and how it ties into mike’s mental health AND sexuality and IH: will isn’t upset because mike said some mean thing to him over the phone over the last few months. Will isn’t upset because he got hit with ‘its not my fault you dont like girls 2.0’. Will is upset because Mike didn’t talk to him. He’s initially upset because Mike stopped splashing and so Will initially assumes, like Ted assumes, like other people assume, that Mike is fine. But throughout s4, we see Will realizing that Mike ISN’T fine, that Will was WRONG and that the lack of splashing is WHAT indicated how much Mike was hurting. We see Will realize that Mike tried to call him, tried splashing, but nobody saw him, that Will didn’t see him or realize that Mike had tried calling, that Mike was drowning. Will didn’t realize until rink o mania that maybe HE should have picked up the fucking phone and called instead of assuming that the silence mean that Mike was fine and didn’t want to talk to Will, Will realizes that he was looking for the splashing but instead should have been looking for the stillness!! Will realizes that he himself is out here splashing and struggling but that he’s still staying afloat, still had hope for his relationship with Mike, still made the painting. Will realizes that Mike stopped splashing, went silent, because he lost all hope for his relationship with Will, just like how Mike acts weird at the airport because he’s stopped splashing, he’s stopped trying. We see Will noticing this!! 

 Whether you believe that Mike has an ED or not, it is 100% canon that we see Will staring at Mike’s plate repeatedly during food scenes, and not just a single side glance in a big shot, but a focused stare in an intimate, close shot like the s4 breakfast scene. We see Will’s expression when Nancy mentions Mike’s bedroom at the end of S4. He looks CONCERNED, not amused. We see how Will gives Mike a speech and a painting to try and make Mike feel better right after Mike starts talking self-deprecatingly about himself. We see Will try and take the blame during the bedroom apology, say that ‘he deserved it,’ BECAUSE Will is coming to realizations about Mike’s actions and why Mike’s acting the way that he does. Will didn’t actually deserve it, but he does feel like he did because now that he’s seeing that Mike DID try and reach out and that Mike felt like their relationship was beyond saving and was devastated by this, now that he’s seeing that Mike IS drowning, Will feels like he deserved what happened at rink o mania, because he was operating under biased assumptions about Mike and not seeing Mike through a Mike Lens. But now, Will is seeing Mike through a Mike lens, at least way more than he was before, so why can’t people on here?? If WILL HIMSELF can get past his own experiences and biases and see Mike through his own lens and not a Will Lens, why can’t other people? Oh right, because unlike many other people, Will is willing to let go of his preconceived conclusions about Mike’s behaviour and character and sexuality, whereas many other people analyzing Mike would rather draw conclusions first and then analyze around that conclusion. Hell, Will still struggles with seeing Mike through a biased lens, which is why he codes his confession as being from El, because he’s not quite seeing through the full Mike lens, he’s not aware of Mike’s feelings for him and thinks that the painting/speech being from El is what will make Mike happiest. But even though Will is still struggling with seeing through the Mike Lens, he is trying SO FUCKING HARD to see through it. And don’t even get me started on how this ties into the themes of ‘normalcy’ in ST and how it ties into Henry and your posts about him and how he’s the ‘big bad’ and not the mindflayer and how the people who seem ‘normal’ are the ones that we should be watching out for the most in terms of being dangerous predators, but also how the people who seem ‘normal,’ who are trying to seem ‘normal,’ like Mike are the ones who we should be watching out the most for in regards to suicidality. Everyone thinks Mike is ‘normal’ because they’re comparing him to OTHER PEOPLE, seeing him through EXTERNAL LENSES, esp in s3 and s4. But when you compare Mike to HIMSELF, when you use the MIKE LENS, it’s OBVIOUS THAT HE’S NOT NORMAL!! Like if the s4 airport scene was our first introduction to Mike? If we were a bystander witnessing it? We would think he was ‘normal’ for the most part, we wouldn’t be able to draw conclusions about his feelings and sexuality and internal struggle from it- and that’s the flaw of seeing Mike through an external lens, because it compares Mike to other people and makes him seem ‘normal’ and erases his struggle with both his sexuality and his mental health, whereas Mike HAS to be seen through a MIKE LENS, an internal lens, compared to HIMSELF, you have to compare hellfire Mike to Lenora Mike to see the differences!! You can’t just compare Lenora Mike to Lenora Will!!

S4 especially is forcing people to see mike through the mike lens and  yet they still try to resist it. im gonna talk about it more later but this ties into mike's behaviour in s3 and s4 and being an 'asshole' and how people are so quick to write him off the moment that the show tries to make them see him and his struggles through a MIKE LENS rather than any other fucking lens. like part of the genius of mike's character and how hes written and portrayed is that he lends himself easily to being viewed through other characters' lenses and experiences BECAUSE HE values himself and views himself relative to other people and relative to his value towards them and because we're shown less of his internal struggle that will for example. but you have to look past that. you have to look through the mike lens. (when i say 'you' i mean a general 'you,' not you specifically tumblr user laozuspo because i KNOW you see through the mike lens 100%.

  Like people were shocked when Mike walked off the cliff but then continue to ignore the very behaviour and patterns and thought process that lead him to walk off of that cliff. they're surprised because they keep ignoring it. just like how a lot of people are going to be surprised in s5 when mike is shown to still struggle with these issues- they're going to be surprised by the outcome because they've been ignoring the signs and symptoms this entire time.

  And i need to make another post abt this at some point but i feel strongly that the 'invisibility' of mike's struggle in  s3 and s4 (even though it's not actually invisible it's just not being literally point blank stated to our faces) is intentional because it's meant to demonstrate how people ignore his struggle until he's at his breaking point and then act surprised when he lashes out or steps off of a cliff. it's meant to demonstrate how people ignore the signs of suicidality, even when theyre SO OBVIOUS, because the signs dont fit their preconceived notions of what a suicidal person is like.

   And this goes back to my other post about people viewing mike's sexuality through a Will Lens: they do the same with his mental health and suicidality. mike is less able to cope with that suicidality than will. because mike is invisible. he doesnt have that family support. people in-canon (nancy making jokes about the state of mike's room whereas will looks concerned about it, mikes family ignoring his obvious lack of appetite/food issues whereas we see will staring at mike's plate repeatedly with concern and dont even get me started on how mike was the one to make the 'real food' comment to el back in s1 and how 'real food' was tied to family and happiness for el via mike's comments but now we only see evidence of poptarts and cereal in the basement and literally NEVER see him eat 'real food' of his own volition etc) ignore the signs of his failing mental health, and people in the fandom watching the show do too.

  Hell, i think that people around Will, his family, have likely worried that will would be suicidal at some point in his life because of all the shit he's experienced even going as far back as lonnie, and so while i don't think that they had a 'hey Will dont kill yourself' talk point blank, i DO think that people like joyce and jonathan made it clear that they're there to support will and that he can talk to them.

  (like the 'i feel like a mistake' speech is directly connected to the scene with jonathan and while YES it is a 'coming out' scene for will, it's also a 'jonathan letting will know that he's there for will and not wanting will to feel like a mistake for ANY REASON' scene, it's BOTH)

  "imo Mike is clearly openly depressed in s4. The state of his room, the lack of eating, the dark circles under his eyes, the excerpt from Lucas on the Line…not a pretty picture."

 YEP!!! GOD I NEED TO MAKE A BIG POST ABOUT HIS MENTAL HEALTH BECAUSE YEP!! like imo its unlikely that the dark circles are an accident like sure people like finn and myself and other people can just have them naturally but if the makeup dept didn't want to show them, they would have covered them up?? and not emphasized them the way they seem to?? and they wouldn't have lit him in a way that emphasizes them for mike but doesnt emphasize them for will or any other characters in so many scenes??

  and god i need to make my full post abt mike's lack of eating because the fact that we see apple jacks/poptarts, things that are similar to eggos and therefore are deemed not 'real food' by mike and the 'real food' conversation between mike and el in s1 and what that represents for mike and how imo a fair few of his eating issues stem from his family especially considering the tension and fighting that we often see at the wheeler table and how we often see mike just picking at his food in those scenes and how we also see him turning to not 'real food' (doritos etc) in season 3 when he's stressed/upset and we don't see him eating 'real food'  (no shame over anyones food choices im just picking up on patterns of mikes behaviour w food and how 'real food' is defined in the context of the show).

 

"He’s been prone to suicidality since s1, when we realize that to him, his life has very little value, and he was willing to throw it away. He knew the rocks were there, he just didn’t care, especially in the wake of Will’s death." 

  YEP!! THANK YOU!! and oh my god i have so much to say about how mike cares about other people and centers his own life and value around others and his ability to help for others and care for others so when that 'fails' (when el leaves in s1 and when he thinks hes lost will forever) his perception of his own value is literally reduced to zero. ffs the cliff was even more tempting to him when considered through this lens because not only did he feel like he failed will and el and therefore had no purpose/value, but he was also able to HELP DUSTIN by stepping off.

  He gets hit by both sides because his lack of feeling useful/helpful to others makes him want to step off AND stepping off will make him useful/helpful to others?? the cliff was literally a carrot being dangled in front of mike's face. the cliff wasn't a challenge for mike so much as it was a literal dangling 'help others and punish yourself for failing to help others AND for actively hurting someone like el' carrot in front of mike's face. he barely had to be verbally pushed to do it. dustin was begging him NOT TO. hell I think part of the only fucking reason he hesitated at all was because dustin was begging him not to and again dustin is another person that mike doesnt want to hurt or disappoint either but then mike imo ends up weighing dustins hurt of seeing mike jump vs dustin's hurt of losing his baby teeth and deems the hurt of losing mike as a lesser pain for dustin to bear.

   Mike literally, canonically, in the show, values himself less than dustin's baby teeth, thinks that the pain of losing mike and watching mike kill himself is less painful than losing some baby teeth, because mike struggles to conceptualize of himself having value, of his loss hurting someone, he see himself as so insignificant that he thinks that his death is something that dustin could more easily get over than the loss of his baby teeth. like literally i cannot get over the fact that the reason that mike hesitated was likely only/99% because DUSTIN begged him not to and he didnt want to hurt dustin. the cliff and walking off of it isn't a threat or a challenge for mike. it's a fucking dangling carrot treat for that self-loathing part of his brain. the cliff and stepping off of it isn't a problem to him, it's the SOLUTION to his problems, in his mind at least.

  This is what i mean when i say that people need to see mike through his own eyes and himself and the world through mike's lens rather than seeing mike and the world and the show through will's lens or dustin's lens or any other external. because we can only understand mike and the depth of his character and mental state via his lens, by seeing things and himself the way that HE does.

  'Mike's room isn't that bad lol it doesnt look like the depressed rooms I'VE seen, it doesn't look like MY experience with depressed rooms and neither does the basement, mike isn't depressed because it doesn't meet my standards/experiences or the standards and experiences of other characters' ok well try comparing it to the previous presentations we've seen of mike's bedroom and the basement. start viewing it through MIKE'S lens. not yours. not will's. not nancy's. MIKE'S. compare how neat and tidy his bedroom was in s1. compare how  neat and tidy the basement was in s1 and s2 and how even though it did get messy in s3 that's because the basement is a reflection of his mental state and mike is struggling again in s3 especially during the scenes with will in the basement. Compare mike to HIMSELF, not to others, just like how i already talked about with hellfire mike vs lenora mike. 

  'Mike's food habits arent that bad, i just don't see him struggling with food because it doesnt align with MY experiences and preconceived notions about food issues or with other characters' experiences and therefore i dont think him struggling with food is actually a struggle/that its shown in the show'

  Don't just compare it to your experiences or other characters' experiences or your interactions with food or other characters' interactions with food: compare it with MIKE'S previous interactions with food too. Outside comparisons can totally be valuable but should not be the sole/main lens for a perceiving a character. Compare that character to THEMSELF, to previous versions of themself, previous seasons, ages, episodes, etc. Look at how Mike talks about ‘real food,’ in s1, look at how often we see him eating ‘real food’ in s1 compared to s4, look at what the dynamics are like at the wheeler table during meals in s1 vs s2 and how it becomes more tense by the end of s1 and ESPECIALLY in s2. Look at  how we didn’t GET a wheeler dinner table scene in s3 and s4, look at how we got Mike putting poptarts in a toaster in s4 but don’t even see him eat them and how that contrasts to the wheeler family breakfast back in s1 where we see them all sit there and see Mike eating eggs, and how even THEN, Nancy was making comments about Mike’s food choices and there was other tension at the table too. Look at the s3 dinner table scene at the Holloways while “american pie,” plays in the background, a song about loss of innocence and deep cultural changes and a farewell to the american dream in the grand scheme of things, sure, but ALSO a song and a SCENE that narratively creates that tie between dinner tables/nuclear family/american dream dinners like the Wheelers versus stress and tension and death. And then think long and hard about how that scene is very much a dramatized version of the Wheeler dinner table and how Heather’s dad treats Heather’s mother in a harsher way than Ted treats Karen, but the conflict between them is still there in both cases. 

  Look at how the dinner table is turned into a place of fear and anxiety and literal death after the Holloways are knocked out and kidnapped, and then look at how we see Mike in that house in a later episode, look at how Nancy seems to be the one who figured out what happened, because both of them HAVE that association with dinner tables and conflict on a subconscious level. Look at how in S3, we see Mike eating not ‘real food’ in the basement but don’t see a wheeler family dinner scene like we did in previous scenes. Look at how we don’t see those nuclear family dinner table scenes for the Byers, they rarely eat together, but in S3 we do see Will peacefully eating at the table, having breakfast, because the Byers aren’t dysfunctional in the same way as the Wheelers, Will doesn’t face that same ‘sit down at the dinner table and eat while also being emotionally neglected and dismissed about your clear mental health struggles the moment you start splashing so then you just go back to drowning while you watch your parents fight and feel like its your fault which feeds into your suicidality in terms of not wanting to  hurt other people and how your perception of your value is tied to how other people treat you and how you impact them’ that Mike does. Will is able to eat at his own schedule, but he’s also not totally alone/left to fend for himself!! And that’s all another reason why the S4 breakfast scene between Mike and Will is so interesting to me, in addition to Will clearly staring at Mike’s plate like I already talked about: because we get visual callbacks to the wheeler table! We get the fancy syrup and people sitting around a table and being expected to come down (El, who doesn’t show up, just like how Nancy doesn’t show up earlier in one of the seasons and Ted comments on it to Karen, yet another El-Nancy parallel), we get the syrup. We get the tension, the emotional tension between Will and Mike and Mike and El just like the tension at the Wheeler table. Mike is reminded of the Wheeler table in that scene and imo that’s part of why he looks SO uncomfortable and BARELY even plays with his food. Like in the Murray’s Dinner scene, it was actually a bit LESS like the wheeler table despite being more of a ‘family dinner,’ because the DYNAMIC is different, murray and joyce are different from Mike’s parents, and so, Mike is just a LITTLE bit more comfortable, he’s still deeply uncomfortable, but he’s MORE comfortable than he is at breakfast the next day! And this is reflected in his behaviour! Risotto Dinner mike still sips at his drink, plays with his food more. Breakfast Mike? Breakfast Mike doesn’t even fucking touch his drink, barely plays with his food. Will stares for a fairly long glance at Breakfast Mike’s plate.

 We DO see Will glance at Mike’s plate and stare at it for a second and look concerned during the Risotto dinner too (and imo Murray also noticed Mike’s lack of eating and I feel that his ‘I sense tension. What’s wrong? Everybody hates the risotto’ comment had a double meaning because a.) the tension is there but Murray clearly sees people eating the risotto?? He watches Will literally talk with his mouth full of risotto?? So him picking up on the tension cant just be based on that and b.) The opposite too, Murray commenting on people not eating the risotto/hating it can’t just be based on the tension. He’s noticing that Mike isn’t eating and is wondering why, if it’s because of the tension or the risotto or what). But even though the risotto dinner is a bit less like the wheeler table, just a bit, the tension is still there. Mike still directly parallels his father when making a comment about El the way that Ted makes a comment about Karen during that one ‘what did i do” dinner scene.

And this and the discussion of Mike's eating problems as a whole goes back to what I said about Mike's struggle being erased and how people want s1/s2 mike back because his actions (walking off of a cliff) align more with the stereotypical and 'romanticized' version of suicidality and dare I say, lots of people are viewing Mike’s eating issues through a romanticized lens of what eating disorders/problems are like and what they’re defined as and how they develop and present. They’re not just viewing him through an external lens, but a romanticized external lens at that. A few people wanted to accuse ME of 'romanticizing' mike's ed/food issues by pointing it out. But THOSE people are the ones with a romanticized viewpoint of EDs because they can't see Mike's because it doesn't align with that romanticized viewpoint. Take off the biased, romanticized goggles, and IMO his struggles are clear as day. 

   'mike's self isolation isn't that bad, we can't rely on what's in lucas on the line, it's not the show and in the show we see him at hellfire and smiling, right? so clearly he isn't isolating himself or struggling in the way that you guys think he is!” again quit seeing him through an external lens. Look at how Mike was previously, look at him being around his friends and social and defending them literally to the fucking DEATH versus s4 Mike struggling with a simple DND argument with Lucas and letting it pull them apart. Look at S1 Mike who clearly not only FELT deeply guilty about his fight with Lucas but also fought to resolve it. Now look at S4 mike who feels the SAME GUILT but is pulling away and isolating himself and feels almost as if Lucas is better off without him. Mike and Dustin were being dicks about DND, I’m NOT excusing their behaviour towards Lucas, but I AM trying to understand it. Explaining and understanding is not the same as excusing. Even then, during that scene, DUSTIN takes the lead more than Mike, we see Mike look to Dustin for approval during that ‘maybe I don’t want to be a freak/nerd’ scene with Lucas, And I’m gonna talk abt this more at another time/in my analysis but I also think that part of Mike’s response to that scene and why he’s more willing to withdraw and isolate from Lucas in s4 than he was in S1 is due to the fact that Hellfire works as an allegory for queerness and the clear ties between ‘freak’ and ‘fag,’ and so when Lucas starts talking about not wanting to be a ‘freak’ anymore, and not wanting Dustin or Mike to  have to be ‘freaks’ either, and then ALSO ties that to attraction to girls because he’s ‘sick of girls laughing at him,’ Mike starts panicking and isolating a bit because unlike Dustin and Lucas (to an extent because I saw some great posts about the racial connotations of ‘freak’ too and Lucas not wanting to be ostracized for who he is esp considering how much racism he’s faced in Lucas on the Line and how he can’t change his skin colour), Mike can’t change the fact that he’s a freak. Because ‘freak’ is paralleled to ‘fag’ in ST and Mike can’t change his sexuality. 

  So unlike Dustin, who doesn’t roll over as easily and takes the lead and argues with Lucas a bit more (Mike starts out the same way but once Lucas talks about not wanting to be a freak/talks about girls laughing at him, mike’s demeanour totally shifts and he gets anxious looking and quiet and starts look at dustin for reassurance/to take the lead), Mike stays quieter and resigns himself to his fear that he might lose Lucas over being a ‘freak’/queer. Because from MIKE’S POV at least Dustin can change the fact that he plays DND, at least Dustin can change whether or not he does nerdy things. He shouldn’t have to, but he CAN. Mike, on the other hand can’t change his queerness. But with that said, I have something important to say in regards to ‘Lucas, Dustin, Mike and the concept of being freaks and whether or not they can change it,’ because Lucas and Dustin CAN’T change it either, but Mike hasn’t quite clicked onto that because he’s so fixated on his own queerness and coming to terms with it and his own internalized homophobia. Mike feels like Lucas and Dustin are able to make a choice not to be ‘freaks,’ but doesn’t realize that Lucas is labelled a ‘freak’/outcast in hawkins as a result of being black, and Dustin is labelled a ‘freak’/outcast in hawkins due to his Cleidocranial dysplasia. Both of those are things that they can’t change. 

  I am NOT saying Lucas is homophobic. At all. He is 100000% not homophobic he is my son and he is brilliant and kind and wasn’t fully in the wrong at ALL and I adore him. I am NOT saying that lucas can ACTUALLY change himself/make people see him not as a freak. I’m saying that Mike THINKS that lucas can change himself and doesn’t make the tie between Lucas’ race being a large part of why he’s treated as a ‘freak,’ and doesn’t understand that racial targeting that Lucas has faced and why Lucas wants to try and get away from anything ELSE that labels him as a freak/puts a target on his back (see: hellfire) because he already faces so much targeting and ostracization based on being black. Mike thinks that it’s about him, that Lucas is rejecting him when he doesn’t ‘want to be a freak,’ but that’s not the case. It’s about LUCAS and how LUCAS has been treated and how it’s not about Lucas not liking Mike or being homophobic- it’s about  Lucas not wanting himself or his friends to be targeted anymore. Lucas even says that ‘WE wanted things to be different in highschool,’ he wants Dustin and Mike to join him and not face that ostracization, not realizing that a.) Lucas himself cannot change the fact that people judge him and see him as a freak, no matter how much he tries to fit in with the basketball team and b.) That Mike also has an unchangeable albeit different aspect of himself that gets himself labelled as a ‘freak’ (mike’s sexuality, which Lucas doesn’t know about). So if Mike sees Dustin and Lucas as the ones who can change from being a freak (ie ‘freak’ for Mike is seen relative to his sexuality, that’s how he centers it from his pov, and he sees Dustin and Lucas as straight and doesn’t take into consideration Lucas’ race and how he’s been targeted for it and Dustin’s CCD and how both of them get labelled ‘freaks’ for those unchangeable aspects of themselves). And Lucas sees Dustin and Mike and the ones who can change (Dustin and Mike are both white, Lucas’ targeting/’freak’ label has been centered around his race, and he doesn’t take into consideration Dustin’s CDD and doesn’t KNOW about Mike being gay and sees Mike’s freak label as being about his appearance (and hellfire but thats a choice) due to that being what he was bullied for in S1, but then rationalizes that Mike’s appearance has changed since S1 and people don’t call him frogface anymore, so Mike must not have anything unchangeable anymore that makes him a ‘freak’). And Dustin sees Lucas and Mike as the ones who can change (his ‘freak’ label is centered around his CDD, that’s what he’s bullied for in S1, and so he sees Mike and Lucas as not being affected by that, doesn’t take into consideration Lucas’ race or know about Mike’s queerness.) We’ve set ourselves up for miscommunication and misunderstanding and futility soup here!! They each think the others are making a choice, but the reality is that NONE of them are. 

  And similar with Dustin, and Mike may FEAR that Lucas and Dustin would reject him for being queer. Again esp considering the ties between hellfire and queerness and the media rhetoric around both at the time, Mike is likely fearing that his friends are changing from the accepting friends that he knows and possibly falling for that rhetoric. 

   it's all 'not that bad,' its all 'i just dont see mike's depression, people are reaching' up until mike walks off of another fucking cliff. such a key part of mike's character and the way that his mental health AND sexuality are presented is his invisibility and how people can't see him unless he's loud and boisterous and in their face and snarky and then they still get mad at him for BEING THAT WAY. it's all 'mike's just a loud asshole and thats okay we don't have to tie it to his mental health,' up until you realize that mike's loudness and assholery isn't the cause of mental state and him being the way he is, it's the RESULT of it. he's louder because he's used to not being heard.

  So fucking much of the sheer dismissal of mike's mental health (and his sexuality like i already talked abt in another post) comes SOLELY from comparing him to other characters, comes solely from 'well mike isnt struggling in the same way as will so therefore he isnt struggling' and comparing mike to will instead of comparing mike to HIMSELF. It's the wolf-arrow internalized homophobia analogy from my other post all over again!! Sure, mike and will don't struggle in the exact same way/to the same extent, but again, will is more able to OVERCOME that struggle, will is able to take more hits.

   if youre saying that 'well if mikes mental health is bad we would see him be more like will when will starts showing signs of bad mental health,' you're not realizing that because will has more of an ability to cope, something that devastates Will would absolutely fucking obliterate Mike. Even things that don't 'devastate' will, the single arrow, those minor wounds are again, a KILLING BLOW for mike, let alone what the final killing arrow for Will would be for Mike, let alone what the sum of all 50 or whatever arrows in the big wolf's back would be for mike. the single arrow is a killing blow, the 50 arrows would just be beating the corpse that is his mental state (and possibly his LITERAL, physical corpse considering his clear struggle with suicidality and how people keep fucking ignoring it and falling for the same trap that the characters do and the duffers KNOW that people are ignoring it because theyve set it up in a way that LENDS ITSELF to being ignored so that fans' actions/perception of mikes mental health DOES sort of actually affect mike in that way because the duffers are more likely to make him succumb to those issues because they KNOW that they've set it up in a way that would be a surprise to much of the audience  but also not totally out of nowhere).

  Mike Wheeler is a brave, strong, wonderful character. At the same time, though, Mike Wheeler would not last a second if faced with what Will dealt with from Lonnie, would not last a second if faced with Will's connection to Vecna or experiences in the upside down. If we want to compare mike and will and see mike through will's lens the way that some people are so keen to do then let's DO IT, it's fair to do for the sake of comparison but should not be the MAIN THING that drives your conclusions about mike. it should be a supporting factor if anything.

  Mike isn't 'weaker' by any fault of his own persay, he's 'weaker' because he doesnt have that a.) longtime experience of dealing with this shit that will has in terms of homophobia and abuse and upside down trauma  and b.) even less than the experience, because imo will's experiences would make things WORSE for him, make him weaker, not stronger, if it wasn't for the people that support will, his family and the way that they support him, something that mike lacks. Will is strong but even he says himself that he relies on other people like Mike to make him not feel like a mistake.

 

"it also crops up in the s2 tunnel plan. He knows “his hub” is likely to be swarming with demodogs, he doesn’t care. He'll throw himself in to protect El and Will, even at the cost of his own life."

   YES YES YES YES THIS IS SO TRUE. HE WILL ABSOLUTELY THROW HIMSELF INTO IT AT THE COST OF HIS OWN LIFE. Like he was willing to walk off the cliff for dustin’s baby teeth, deemed the pain of losing them as greater than the pain of losing mike/mike’s death. So protecting Will and El from losing their lives/getting grievously injured is a WALK IN THE PARK in terms of decision making for mike because he IMMEDIATELY feels that their injuries would hurt THEM more than his death, he sees himself as having so little value that he doesnt even realize how his death would devastate people. Which is part of why I think he’s gonna die and come back in s5 and how it would fit in perfectly with his arc as a character. 

  "and the s3 sauna test fight/battle of star court. he knows Billy is far stronger than him, he doesn’t care. He’ll throw himself against Billy to protect the party twice, even at the risk of his own life."

   YEP!! smthn smthn mike has been largely ignored/neglected by his family smthn smthn his warped perception of his own value smthn smthn helping others is the only way he sees any value in himself smthn smthn el rejects mike’s attempts to be himself, rejects his hobbies and his singing and the silly things about him that could’ve made mike see value in himself/that he thinks El could’ve seen value in him for, and so then Mike figures that he can only get El to value him and therefore can only value himself as long as he’s protecting/helping her and other people smthn smthn mike’s suicidality is NOT el’s fault, she saved him at the cliff, but their RELATIONSHIP and incompatibility and the way that she dismisses him is contributing to it JUST like he’s contributing to that pain for HER. they are hurting eachother. 

And also thinking about the sauna battle and how the original sauna scene CLEARLY shows mike displaying internalized homophobia and self-loathing and then in that SAME LOCATION we get mike effectively trying to kill himself by going up against Billy and how this represents not only Mike’s struggle with his internalized homophobia and how it’s intertwined with his suicidality, but also how Mike is starting to face EXTERNAL homophobia as he starts to branch out towards his attraction to men and being framed around his attraction to men (which we see even more of in s4). Billy is outwardly attacking him, representing that external criticism and homophobia, but Mike runs into the attack willingly, representing that internal criticism and internal homophobia.

And okay disclaimer I loathe Billy he’s a racist, abusive POS and I think people baby him WAY too much. At the same time, though, I feel like we can acknowledge the homophobia that he dealt with from his father, REGARDLESS of whether or not he’s queer, and how Billy attacking Mike represents Billy continuing the cycle of that homophobia and throwing it onto Mike. None of this absolves Billy, but the subtext is there for a reason, Billy was the one to attack Mike in a place (the sauna) that is already tied to Mike’s sexuality and internalized homophobia. Billy was the one trapped in the sauna, and the sauna does represent internalized homophobia, and so I do think that Billy may have dealt with it to some extent, and even if he didn’t, even if he wasn’t queer, he’s still continuin that cycle of homophobic abuse that he learned from his father. 

 "Even now, it’s the same thing repackaged in an older body. He’s depressed and his life has little value to him, so he’s willing to throw us away for someone he perceived as having more value." 

  Completely fucking true. Completely true. It’s repackaged in an older body AND is now being shown through the MIKE LENS, not a romanticized/external lens like it was in s1 and s2, which makes it harder for people to grasp because it forces them to confront their own preconceived notions about mental health and depression and suicidality and forces them to see things from MIKE’S perspective, not their own. It forces people to confront their own lens, and that’s the genius of the way that his character is set up and presented. And there’s something to be said, too, for the capitalist nature of the wheelers and the idea of the ‘value’ of a person and how that value is determined. 

 

"Mike’s suicidal tendencies have been an open secret since day one. No one talks about them in the show, but they’re painfully obvious." 

  YES!!! Okay I want to talk about ‘no one talks about them in the show’ because I feel like it’s true to an extent, but people do TALK about the signs of his suicidality, like Nancy talking about his room, but what they DON’T do is make the link of those topics and behaviours to Mike’s suicidality. Nancy comments on his room but doesn’t understand or care why his room is the way that it is. Ted comments on Mike’s falling grades in a roundabout way ‘highschool dropout club’ but doesn’t make the connection to Mike’s mental health/suicidality. Dustin also comments on Mike’s falling grades (the C in spanish), but doesn’t make the link to Mike’s mental health. Because they’re not seeing him through a Mike Lens. WILL is the only one seeing Mike through a Mike Lens, just like I already talked about. They’re comparing Mike to OTHER PEOPLE, not to HIMSELF. Nancy compares Mike’s room to the cabin, not to the previous state of his room in past seasons. Dustin compares Mike’s grades to his own, not to Mike’s previous grades. Ted talks about the ‘highschool dropout club’ and compares Mike and his slipping academic abilities to the other members of the hellfire club rather comparing it to Mike’s previous grades and academic tendencies. Even back in S2, Karen talks about Mike plagiarizing work and graffiting the bathroom stall and Mike says “everyone graffitis the bathroom stall,’ even MIKE is comparing himself and his struggles to other people, because like I said earlier, he’s a character that lends himself heavily to that, AND it results in him invalidating his own struggles. Even Ted says ‘if your friends jumped off of a cliff, would you?’ meanwhile mike IS the one who jumps off of the cliff, the comparison of him to his friends relative to the cliff doesn’t work for him because he IS the cliff friend and can therefore only be accurately compared to HIMSELF. 

  (I absolutely agree that his grief is paralleled to Joyce. They both love Will so much, and many of their reactions are in sync. They’ve both been on the edge for a while, all it took was a push.) 

  THANK YOU!!!! IM GLAD YOU AGREE BECAUSE YOU LITERALLY NEVER MISS!!! And okay so this is probably semantics but the phrasing of ‘all it took was a push’ is SUPER interesting to me and im going to use this as an opportunity to talk about  it. I already mentioned this, but Mike didn’t so much get a push as he did a dangling fucking carrot in the form of a cliff. 

When Hopper talks about Will’s ‘accident’ at the quarry and the idea that it could’ve been a hatecrime, he implies that maybe Will was pushed/had some external force/person put him off that cliff against his own free will. But when it comes to Mike, Mike wasn’t pushed in the same way. Mike was LURED towards the cliff, like I talked about before,  it’s a dangling treat for that self-loathing part of his brain, but he wasn’t pushed. But he was pushed TOWARDS make that decision, towards taking that step, if that makes sense, but he wasn’t pushed off of the cliff physically or even 100% emotionally. He STEPPED OFF physically and mentally and emotionally. He CHOSE TO. We see the bullies literally PUSH MIKE to the ground physically in s1. They’re not afraid to push him. But they don’t push him off the cliff. Mike steps off out of his own free choice. But the bullies have INFLUENCED that choice, everything that’s happened to Mike has influenced that choice. The bullies DID literally put him a ‘few steps from the edge’ when they grabbed him and Dustin, but Mike was the one who chose to walk off even though he was being pressured, he still made that choice and made it terrifyingly easily. It’s like how people will bully others, especially queer or outcast kids to the point of suicide but often don’t catch murder changes for it because they technically didn’t kill them. 

 Joyce is the same. She didn’t get pushed off of the cliff into her mental decline, she STEPPED OFF. She  got pushed towards it by Will’s death and Lonnie and Hopper not believing her. But at the end of the day, her and Mike both took that final step. They may have been pushed to the edge, pushed to being those few steps from the edge, but they weren’t pushed off of the edge. They stepped off. They chose to. And YES that choice was absolutely totally influence by others’ and the ‘push’ from others, but the push wasn’t the final blow. The final blow was self-inflicted. 





LIKE GOD YOU ARE SO FUCKING RIGHT AS ALWAYS!!!!!!! SO TRUE AND RIGHT!! And as a final note, something that’s funny to me is it’s all ‘max and mike are the same person different fonts’ until people like you and I point out mike’s suicidality and how MAX has it too. They're the ‘same person’ until their characters and similarities don’t align with peoples’ preconceived notions about them. Mike is the ‘same’ as Max up until somebody points out he’s suicidal too, and then they immediately can’t see it because it’s not framed the exact same way as Max’s despite the numerous parallels in their suicidal tendencies. People will put an El Lens, a Will Lens, a Personal Experience and Bias Lens, a Nancy Lens, a Max Lens and literally any other fucking lens onto Mike before they even CONSIDER a Mike Lens, and even then it’s like they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to see things through the Mike Lens because the Mike Lens doesn’t align with their preconceived notions and conclusions about him. (can you tell im a bit annoyed ™ about the erasure of mike’s issues and misinterpretation of his character?? People who refuse to see the signs in mike are likely going to refuse to see the signs in their IRL friends and THATS why im so passionate about this.) 

#stranger things #st analysis #mike's mental health #mike wheeler analysis #byler

[owl-with-a-pen]

Hey! I don't know if you're still writing Briania fics or accepting prompts for them, but if by chance you are, I've been thinking about the Naltorian mannerisms I've sent in before, specifically The Stare, and thought it would be really interesting to read about The Stare in action and Nia possibly unintentionally saving Brainy's or their friends' lives through her staring alerting them to danger before anyone has consciously noticed it.

I'd be really interested to see where you take this concept if you decide to pick it up! Your Brainia fics have always been my favorite and discussing the mannerism headcanons with you is always a delight.

Thank you so much! And also, thank you for always fuelling me with so many amazing headcanons for Naltorian mannerisms, they're all absolutely golden! I cooked up something special just for you for The Stare, a little fic about the first time Nia ever uses it. I hope you enjoy and thank you once again, it's always a joy to see your asks in my inbox! 😊

There were many trivial matters that often delayed a mission. Brainy was no stranger to this – indeed, it was an expected part of the job to gather as much data as possible before going into the field, to map out reconnaissance locations, locate blueprints of buildings that may necessitate the element of surprise.

Early into his career at the DEO, he had often forgone Alex’s judgement on mission briefings, preferring instead to jump right into the fray with a plan he had simulated long before anyone had given him an instruction to do so. It hadn’t been a concern of his to follow correct procedure at the time – obviously his own intellect had reigned superior over any official orders he had been expected to follow by far primitive minds.

He knew better now, of course. Even if sometimes that urge was still present, he had learned to quell it, to listen to his orders however unreasonable they may have seemed at first. Because, while not always the plan he had in mind, he could not deny that he worked with some incredibly efficient strategists.

While not quite an official DEO mission, it was still being presided over by Alex, and her instructions had been clear. At the moment, they were dealing with an incredibly delicate hostage situation. Little was known about the hostages in question, only that they were alien and being targeted by what Alex believed to be a separate faction of the same species. Regrettably, Brainy had no knowledge he could provide on the subject. This species was not known to him nor the Legion archive, though they appeared to be technologically advanced compared to Earth-standard equipment by some centuries, proving this for the most part by the proficiency of their weaponry.

It was these high-grade firearms in particular that gave the species such a unique energy signature to look out for. Without it, Brainy wasn’t sure they would have ever been able to locate the site where the kidnapped aliens were being held.

He and Nia had been sent ahead to the scene – a derelict warehouse at the edge of the city – to keep watch from ground level while Alex and J’onn worked on mapping the building using their own internal sources closer to home. The warehouse was old, lead-lined, which had given Kara little insight on what might have been going on inside. She was currently somewhere high above, offering an aerial perspective around the building’s circumference. Brainy caught sight of her cape on occasion, a red smear against an otherwise unremarkable cloudy day.

Since arriving at their vantage point behind a cluster of rocks nearest to the building’s south-facing entrance, Brainy had been focusing most of his concentration on the information he’d stored to his tablet, pulling data from Alex’s research and offering his own expertise on leads she’d been marking out in real time without needing to be physically present himself.  The distance was certainly more of a strain than he was used to, but he enjoyed the challenge. At least it kept several of his thought tracks busy while they avidly waited for their next instruction.

Albeit, he had to admit that he had reserved several more for Nia.

Despite her best efforts, Nia Nal had yet to learn from Brainy’s old mistakes. She revelled in the action that came with a physical fight, but often struggled with the slower strides that came before it. It was about now that she would have normally given up trying to sit still and meditate on her visions, instead throwing herself into physical exertion such as fidgeting or pacing to kill the time.

But no dust was being kicked up in her steed, because Nia Nal was still perched on the rock closest to Brainy, disquietly reticent as she stared into her lap. She hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived, not even to lean over his shoulder and offer her input on his research as he so often enjoyed. They could bounce ideas between each other endlessly when left to their own devices, filling the space between action with easy conversation. Today, however, Nia was suspiciously inactive.  

Brainy’s hand stilled halfway across his tablet, glancing up to Nia with hesitant concern. After a quick external review, he could conclude that there was nothing wrong with her physically. She wasn’t sick or injured, or even just bored. There was something else, a faraway look in her eye that may have alluded a dream state if it wasn’t for the frustrated furrow in her brow, deepening the crease across her nose. A twitch curved the corner of Nia’s lip as she blinked suddenly, rubbing irritably at her face.

“Hey,” Brainy said softly. He discarded the tablet swiftly, reaching out for her knee instead. “You okay?”

Nia sagged forward just as Brainy’s hand made contact with her leg. She cupped her chin in her hands, shaking her head. “I’m not sure, actually,” she admitted, her voice muffled between her fingers. “I feel kinda woozy. It’s hard to explain.”

Brainy squeezed her knee. “You can tell me.”

Nia nearly smiled at that, and Brainy felt the urge to smile along with her. She sobered quickly, her eyes travelling elsewhere again. “I guess it’s… it’s like a vision wants to happen, but it won’t. It’s just making me feel really out of it.”

Any pockets of thought previously delegated to background tasks promptly turned their attention to Nia’s plight. Brainy eyed her worriedly. “Will you be alright to do this?”

Nia’s hands clenched suddenly in her lap. “I have to.”

Brainy straightened at once at Nia’s tone, his concern for her shifting instead to understanding. He hadn’t heard that tone of voice often, but enough to know that, when he did, it was something well beyond the realms of the waking world compelling Nia to speak her certainty. Her words may as well have been a prophecy in their own right, and Brainy knew it was imperative that he heed them justly.

Brainy put more effort into conversation after that, hoping to lessen some of Nia’s burden. If she was failing to make progress connecting with her gift for any reason, then he at least hoped he could provide her with a worthy distraction.

It appeared to work for a time. Nia soon began to relax into the safety net of their easy back-and-forth, edging closer to his side enough that their legs brushed together. She even managed to snatch his tablet from him when he wasn’t looking, scrolling through Alex’s notes when she started to itch for something to fiddle with. They huddled together after that, studying the notes as one, although Brainy could tell that the fog was still plaguing her. Even so, her resilience was – as always - unparalleled. To an untrained eye, nothing may have appeared wrong at all.

But Brainy knew Nia better than he knew himself, and the weight that she carried was not an easy one to disguise.

Eventually, the call came through to their comms. Alex had determined the layout of the warehouse and, subsequently, the most probable location for where the hostages were being held inside. With Brainy and Nia’s help, they’d additionally simulated likely vantage points the aliens would make use of with their weaponry, using range and distance as a primary factor. It may not have been quite as in-depth as a full x-ray of the building, but it was enough to make their entrance known.

Kara was called in to enter from one of the windows on the north side of the building. With Nia and Brainy covering the south side, they could meet in the middle and join forces from there.

Brainy maintained a thought track for Nia’s movements the second they headed for the entrance - a half raised shutter that needed some force to pry all the way open. She was his partner in more than one sense of the word, he hardly needed to think at all to know where she was. And yet, as he and Nia ducked beneath the shutter together, Brainy couldn’t keep a bubble of worry from lodging in his throat. If Nia’s precognition was in any way compromised right now, her usual fighting technique would shift to accommodate for that loss. This wouldn’t make her any less capable, but he’d need to make several adjustments to his own stance to match hers.

It was only moments later that he realised he needn’t have worried.

Nia’s physical prowess with her powers outshone any limitations she may have faced without her visions. While she used her lasso to pull the weapons from the arms of the alien captors running towards them from the centre of the building, Brainy flew ahead to the metal beam holding up part of the grated ceiling where three aliens were attempting to spray their fire. Their surprise slowed their reaction timing just enough that Brainy was able to disarm two of them immediately, deflecting the third’s weapon with a raised forearm before it could discharge against his chest. Enabling his strength enhancement to warp the barrel of the gun, Brainy threw what remained aside, using his free hand to twist the alien’s arm towards him, forcing them to their knees.

Beneath him, Nia had knocked out the last of the primary guards who had been waiting for them, the glow of her hands a rival to his own life projectors in the low light.

They continued on as a unit after that, though Brainy kept a half step behind Nia as they moved deeper into the building, adamant to have her in his line of sight at all times. Whether Nia noticed, she didn’t say, but soon they were far too consumed with the next wave of alien guards to give it any acknowledgement.

By the time Kara had joined the fray, they’d left a tangle of unconscious forms in their wake from one side of the warehouse to the other. Brainy made a private note for later to retrieve some of the weapons for further study. He was sure Lena would be first in line to try and dissect such unique technology, especially ones with such an unusual signature.

“Alex said it was right up here,” Kara said, falling naturally into the lead of the impromptu line they’d formed.

“Awesome,” Nia said, the lack of enthusiasm in her voice not quite as unsubtle as she likely thought.

Brainy waited a nano-second for Nia to follow along before he moved up behind her, holding her in his periphery even as his eyes began to wander, logging everything he saw for later recall.

The warehouse was a vast series of large, empty rooms, long-since cleared out of any distinct features or machinery that may have marked it for a certain purpose. Perfect then, he concluded, to reconfigure into the optimum holding cell.

The thought had barely crossed his mind when he heard it. Something up ahead – a tinny, high-pitched hum that wrought havoc with his heightened senses. He hissed, cupping a hand over his ear at the same time as Kara.

“What is it?” Nia asked.

“What indeed,” Brainy muttered through his teeth, eyeing the space ahead of them carefully. “Kara? Can you see anything?”

Kara squinted. “There’s… there’s something up ahead. Movement.” Her eyes widened suddenly. “People.”

“The hostages,” Brainy and Nia said together, catching each other’s eye. Another smirk quirked the edges of Nia’s lips and she nodded at him, falling into a jog as he quickly caught up to her side.

They didn’t need to travel far to find the source of the sound. Just as Alex had predicted, the heart of the warehouse was exactly where they had needed to go.

Encased in a bubble at the centre of the room were a group of terrified aliens. They varied in age, though Brainy could see at their youngest a few that could have been teenagers amongst the group. This variant of the species had a pattern of brightly coloured pink spots that dusted the edges of their jaw and throat, matching in both vibrancy and shade to their large, glowing eyes. The spots on the guards Brainy had knocked down had all been orange, their eyes just the same. Aside from that, there were very little physiological differences between the two factions.

The energy bubble was mostly transparent aside from a sickly yellowish hue that softened the outlines of the captives inside. Brainy frowned, watching small refractions of light roll across the bubble like a wave, travelling further and further until they slipped suddenly out of sight behind a large metal disk clamped tightly to the ground.

There were three further identical disks fitted to the base of the bubble along the entire outer edge, perfectly equidistant from one another.

They were also, unquestionably, the largest source of energy output from anything within the entire building.

“That’s what was giving off the energy signature,” Brainy realised out loud. “Not the weapons… but this. Sprock, I should’ve known.”

“No one could have,” Nia said immediately. “Brainy, you couldn’t have accounted for everything, not when we hardly knew anything to begin with.”

“Even so,” Brainy muttered in distaste, studying the disks with analytical interest. He took a step forward, only holding himself back when he ran the risk of crossing past Nia. He bit his lip. “This shield, it’s quite impressive. Look.” He pointed the disks out one by one. “It’s being projected from multiple locations, but each one with enough power to create a bubble in of itself. It’s multi-layered, four times over. If we can deactivate them all, we should be able to disperse the force field.”

The aliens on the other side didn’t seem to hear him, but some of the younger ones had been watching his mouth move. They shouted words back at him, but Brainy was unable to read their lips  in return. He wasn’t sure they were speaking a language he recognised at all. He turned to Kara curiously. “Can you--?”

She shook her head. “Not a peep. It’s completely soundproof.”

“Then it’s best we get to work as soon as possible,” Brainy said. He motioned for Kara to head towards the furthest disk, waiting for Nia to do the same before he followed up behind her.

Except, Nia didn’t move.

“Nia?” Brainy prompted.

Again, Nia didn’t respond.

Hesitantly, Brainy came closer, waiting for any sign of acknowledgement from his girlfriend.

None came. It was as though she’d been frozen in place, her arms stiff and unmoving at her sides, one foot held firmly in front of the other, caught and grounded mid-step. She was staring out at something, Brainy realised, but nothing he could see for himself.

Something was wrong.

Brainy knew Nia’s vision stance - how it looked, how it felt to see it happen so suddenly from an outsider’s perspective and this… this wasn’t it. Nia wasn’t beyond her second sight, traversing the unconscious realm. Instead, she was fully planted in the moment, an alertness bright behind her eyes, extending her senses outward, far past the capabilities of the human mind, firing neurons at sure-fire speed.

Whether Nia knew it or not, something was holding her in place – guiding her, maybe, or perhaps…

It was only then that Brainy realised what he was looking at.

“Stop!” the word was out of his mouth before his mind had finished calculating the outcome. He threw his hand out towards Kara. “Don’t take a step further!”

Kara stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes wide with confusion. “But you literally just said—”

“I know what I said, and I was wrong. It’s a trap.”

“What?”

Brainy wasn’t sure how, wasn’t even sure why, but he knew it. As surely as Nia did. The look in her eyes could only mean one thing.

He turned back towards the force field, capturing the aliens behind it in a new light. Their mouths had turned ugly; fine, pin-prick teeth bared at them all as they spat vulgar words in a language he was somewhat grateful he couldn’t translate.

It appeared the so-called hostages were hostages no longer.

It still didn’t make sense. Why would they even be there at all if only to lure them to this spot? What did they know that he didn’t?

Oh.

Brainy saw the metal disks with fresh eyes, identifying them for what they were behind their non-descript cone sized shells. The high pitched humming hadn’t been coming from the force field, it was coming from within the disks, not as an extension of the energy it outputted, but rather hiding the characteristics of what lay inside.

The energy signature they’d been tracking this whole time had been…

“They’re bombs,” Brainy realised.

He only had one thought left - the only one that mattered. He surged forward as quickly as he could, grabbing Nia’s unresponsive arm and dragging her with enough force to spur a lethargic stagger from her frozen legs. “We need to go. Now.”

Nia was too stiff to move with any real speed and with time of the essence, Brainy didn’t have the luxury of waiting to see if she’d snap out of it naturally. Instead, he scooped her up into his arms, ignoring the alien rigidity of her body as he tucked her head beneath his chin. He shifted her into a more comfortable position, ascertaining he had a secure grip before locking eyes with Kara.

Thankfully, she understood immediately. With a single nod of acknowledgment, they took off together.

Just in time as well, because the moment Brainy launched from the ground, a piercing crack roared out from the force field behind him. He could smell the distinct snap and sizzle of something metallic singe the air before an explosion ruptured behind him, all but propelling he and Nia forward, hot air scorching across the back of his suit as the blast rung sharply in his ears.

They tumbled from the window Kara had first used to enter with little grace, spilling out across the sand and dirt, rolling over one and another as the once-warehouse behind them bent and warped beneath its own weight, creaking and groaning as the old metal failed to contain itself, collapsing inward as the scream of the explosion settled somewhere at its heart, sending shockwaves through the sand.

Brainy’s chest heaved sporadically as he pushed himself from Nia the moment they were grounded, brushing her hair back fiercely. He’d managed to shield her from the brunt of the explosion, protecting her from the collision with the ground with his own body as armour, and even still he feared the worst.

He cupped her face desperately, a sob of sheer relief catching in his throat when he heard her heartbeat, as resilient as ever, beyond the ringing of his own ears.

“Nia,” he said, trying to still the tremor in his voice. “Nia Nal, can you hear me?”

Dust and soot were smeared across Nia’s face, shadowing her eyes. Her lashes fluttered hard at the sound of his voice, trying desperately to breach the surface of her own consciousness. She groaned softly, reaching her hand out, brushing the tips of her fingers over Brainy’s face. They still felt electric with her energy, a jolt of static that caused an incomprehensible laugh to bubble from Brainy’s chest.

“What happened?” Nia croaked out. She cringed, trying to hold her eyes open.

Brainy only laughed harder at that, ducking his head towards her throat, closing his eyes to subdue the burn that followed.

“Uh, Nia,” Kara answered in Brainy’s steed, brushing her suit down as she stared up in awe at what little that remained of the warehouse. “I think you just saved our lives.”

“Cool… cool, totally meant do that.” Nia’s chest jerked a little beneath Brainy’s chin as she coughed, clearing her throat with strained effort. “Uh… how did I do that?”

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

Nia hardly remembered the journey back to the Tower.

She’d flown with Brainy, letting him cradle her close to his chest, protecting her from the high-speed gale that had threatened her hair and face at such an altitude.

It wasn’t usually as cold when they flew together, but she supposed they’d never needed to travel this far at such a strict pace before. Maybe that’s why she didn’t remember much - the whole trip barely felt like seconds.

She was still a little out of it an hour later. By then, she, Brainy and Kara had crowded down in the Tower’s cramped lab space, laying out pieces of debris that they’d managed to salvage from the site of the explosion.

She really wasn’t sure what had happened, exactly. One second, she’d been listening to Brainy explain the purpose for those weird disk things on the ground… then everything sort of stopped. She remembered that woozy feeling from before creeping back up on her, fogging up her head. Then, something had triggered deep inside of her, like an alarm only she could hear. It hadn’t made any noise, though. Instead, it had instilled a sense of foreboding so strong that she’d locked into place. Like a flash frozen statue right out of the Fortress.

Everything else came up blank after that – at least until she’d awoken in the sand with Brainy’s wide, panic-stricken eyes staring down at her.

She rolled her shoulder experimentally. Yup. Still no pain. Brainy had taken the brunt of the hit when they’d fled the explosion, and even though the nano fibres in his suit were already repairing some of the damage, there was still a nasty singe mark across his back, corroding the fine ends of his golden hair to charcoal. He didn’t seem to be in any pain, at least. The last thing she’d wanted was to get him hurt because of her. Because of yet another power that she seemed to have zero control over…

It was strange, she’d never felt anything like it before. At least, never that strong. She’d frozen in the past, even lost time, but she’d always attributed it to her visions messing her up.

Now, she wasn’t so sure.

“I still don’t understand,” Kara was saying, drawing Nia unwillingly back into the room. She’d been pacing up and down the lab as Brainy worked, worrying her lip so hard that Nia thought Kryptonian levels of friction burn was about to tear it off. “Was this just one big ruse?” She laughed darkly. “Were there even any hostages to begin with?”

“Hostages to the cause, maybe,” Brainy conceded, glancing up from the scattered shrapnel that littered his workbench. “Everyone involved in this ruse believed in what they were doing. It seems whatever differences these factions had, they had one thing in common.” He eyed her warily. “A severe distaste for all things Super Friend.”

“Us?” Kara asked, snorting her indignation. “And they were willing to sacrifice themselves for this?”

“Not exactly.” Brainy straightened. “In fact, I don’t believe they were ever in any danger at all.” He moved his hand swiftly, tossing something out to her. “They left with one of these.”

Kara caught it immediately, her hand blurring around the projectile. She stared at it in confusion.

Nia looked too. It was extremely battered, whatever it was, and very much exploded, but it looked like it might have been some sort of bracelet in its heyday.

Nia slipped from her stool curiously, lifting her head. “What is it?” she asked.

Brainy turned to her with a small smile, privately pleased that she’d joined in with the conversation. He folded his arms over his chest. “Crude portal technology,” he explained. “Less refined than Lena’s watch design, but just as effective. They must have left just before the explosion. There’s more.” He pressed a finger to his temple suddenly, his eyes scanning unseen information from left to right. He stiffened, turning to Kara gravely. “I’ve just received results in from the scan the DEO are running of the explosion site,” he said. “When those devices detonated, they released thousands of splintered shards of Kryptonite from each shell.” He blinked out from the details he’d been presented with, holding his fist loosely to his chest. “If even a piece had pierced your skin during the explosion…”

“I would have been just as vulnerable to the building’s collapse,” Kara realised. She stumbled to a halt. “If we’d been caught in that, we really never would have made it out.” She stared at Nia, dumfounded. “How did you know?”

Nia cringed. “I… didn’t,” she said, frowning. “I mean, I guess I did? Sometimes I just get a bad vibe about something and I lock up. It’s never felt like this before, though. I don’t even remember doing this, to be totally honest.”

“A latent effect of Naltorian precognition,” Brainy mused, a mark of appraisal in his eye. “The more at one a Naltorian becomes with their powers, the more naturally they interact with fragments of the future.”

Nia smirked, tipping her head gratefully towards her boyfriend. “What he said. It sounds cooler.”

Brainy’s expression softened as he walked towards her, twisting his ring finger contemplatively. “What you did today saved all of us,” he said, running his hand up her arm the moment he was within reaching distance. “Thank you.”

Nia’s face warmed, leaning into his touch appreciatively. “Any time.”

Kara, unsubtle as ever, cleared her throat loudly, clapping her hands together. “Okay, well, I guess I’ll go give the bad news to Alex, then,” she announced, backing towards the open arch. “If those aliens are still out there, there’s no telling what they’ll do next to get our attention.”

Brainy, clueless as ever, raised a brow in question. “That isn’t necessary, I can relay the information directly to her. I can do it now—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it,” Kara said hurriedly, already halfway across the training room. She threw a wink over her shoulder. “Some things are better delivered in person!”

Brainy watched her go, utterly perplexed. “I suppose that’s true…”

Nia bit her cheek, bumping his arm with her shoulder. “I think she just wanted to give us some time, y’know, alone…”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

Brainy leaned in a little closer at that indication, his dark eyes flickering across her face with barely disguised concern, searching for any inconsistences. Nia was pretty sure he’d find some; after all, she was still rattled from everything that had happened. At least the weird daze she’d been walking around in was starting to lift, like whatever she’d done back at the warehouse had knocked the consciousness right back into her.

More importantly, it looked a whole lot like Brainy knew that, too.

Nia squinted at him suspiciously. “So,” she said, drawing out the word just long enough to make him uncomfortable, “how long have you known I could do this?”

Brainy’s hand stilled across her shoulder, his eyes skirting to hers a little unwillingly. He scoffed unconvincingly, suddenly finding the circumference of his ring much more appealing than checking her over for an underlying concussion. “I didn’t know,” he said, glancing away. “Not with a one hundred per cent certainty, at least.”

Nia laughed, jabbing his chest. “I knew it,” she cried. “How? No, no, wait, lemme guess; the future, right?”

Brainy’s jaw hardened in defeat. “It is true that Nura did display a similar ability back in the Legion.” He pointedly ignored her as she continued to prod at his suit smugly. “Naltorian abilities can develop very differently dependant on the element they inherit. You have already become so well adept with your abilities, there had always been a chance that this particular power might never manifest.”

“But now it has,” Nia said. She loosened her hand against Brainy’s front, searching out the heat of his closest life projector. She smiled when Brainy blushed in kind, winding his hand around hers. Not to deter her, but to guide her.

Nia blinked away from the trance-like state of that soft, enticing glow. “Wait. Is this power going to get me in trouble?” She looked up at her boyfriend seriously. “Like… what if Cat’s in a really bad mood one day and I just freeze up right in front of her?” Her face fell abjectly. “She’d never take me seriously again!”

 Brainy’s lips twitched fondly. “Although I don’t dispute that Cat’s moods are a force to be reckoned with, I wouldn’t expect this power to manifest again unless you were in a true life or death situation.”

“You never know with Cat Grant,” Nia said gravely.

She and Brainy shuddered at the same time, but there was a playful affection in Brainy’s eyes.

She kept trailing her fingers around his life projectors for a time, content to idle while he finished checking her over for any possible side effects or injuries that might have been overlooked. She didn’t think he had to worry. In fact, since they’d started talking, she was really starting to get her energy back.

“So tell me,” she said with a grin. “This power. Does it have a name in the future?”

Brainy smiled privately, like he was in on a joke that she didn’t know. “Officially no, however Nura did pen a name for it.” He leaned in close, as though to share an important secret. “She called it The Stare.”

Nia snorted, holding her mouth closed. She hummed thoughtfully, drumming her fingers across her lips. “The Stare, huh? Simple, but intense. I kinda like it.”

“I thought you might.”

Impulsively, Nia’s eyes lit up and she quickly pecked Brainy on the cheek. A further blush deepened the green in his complexion.  Nia grinned. “Thank you,” she said in explanation. “For getting me out of there today. Sensing danger’s not worth anything if you can’t even respond to it.”

“You will learn in time to become more conscious of it,” Brainy promised. He took her hand again, squeezing it tightly. Nia squeezed back, ducking her head towards his, closing her eyes. A crackle of dream energy rolled over her knuckles, enveloping their clasped hands in blue flame. “But, as always,” he told her gently, “I will have your back, Nia Nal.”

Nia opened her eyes, her smile fading from her lips. “Wait. This means more training, doesn’t it?”

Brainy didn’t need to say a word, she could see the humour in his eyes already.

“Nooo,” Nia groaned, tipping her chin towards the ceiling. “Promise me we’re not doing 5am starts again, okay? No amount of coffee or breakfast burritos will ever make me okay with 5am starts. Dreamer needs her sleep!”

Brainy nodded innocently, bumping his forehead against hers. “Duly noted.”

Nia only scowled, though she still found herself leaning into his touch reflexively. "That wasn't a promise, Brainy!"

#supergirl #brainia #brainiac 5 #nia nal #kara zor el #kara danvers #jammatown919 #my writing #my asks #this turned out to be a lot longer than anticipated but i hope you like it! #supergirl fanfiction #brainia fanfiction

[lgbtlunaverse]

I often get a little annoyed when I see posts that are something along the lines of "Y'all have GOT to learn to engage in media without shipping. Art is not just for shipping. If you get into art for shipping and nothing else that's bad and you have no media literacy why won't you care about THEMES?" because, yeah, they are technically correct. If you only egage with art in this one hyperspecific way you're going to miss out on a lot of good art and miss a lot of good things about the art you do like because you're only busy shipping.

But also... it is literally impossible to tell if someone is doing that based on a tumblr blog. "Everywhere I go I can only find people shipping why doesn't anyone care about anything else?!" A lot of them probably do, they're just not talking about it on their ship blogs.

This is a fanfic focused blog. Fic, and shipping by extension, are a very specific way of engaging with a work that I only use with a small amount of the art I experience. You know what my favorite book that I read this year was? Piranesi. Favorite movie? Everything everywhere all at once. Favorite series? Midnight mass.

And guess what? I'm not gonna write fanfic about ANY of those. And while I'll reblog posts about them that cross my dash I am also not going to seek out other fans on tumblr for these works specifically. And so, from looking at my blog, you'll have no idea that I read and loved these works, or that I spend a lot of my time thinking about them, their atmosphere, characters, and themes.

And that's just the narrative art I loved most. I've also gone to museums, and I'm definitely not writing any fanfiction about mondriaan's paintings.

You know what work I'm thinking about most these days? The book Flatland by Edwin Abott Abott. (Yes he is named Abott twice) a book about A Square (first name A last name Square) living in a two dimensional world being visited by a sphere from our three-dimenaional world. I read it several years ago, interested in the mathematical aspect, because by looking through A Square's perspective of meeting a creature from a world with a dimension he cannot fundamentally comprehend, we can imagine what the fourth dimension might look like to us.

I read it, loved the mindfuckery aspect of it, but was at various points annoyed at the horrible misogyny. The men in flatland are polygons with social status based on he number of sides and the widness of their angles, circles on top and triangles at the bottom. But the women are all simple line segments, automatically lower in society than even the lowest ranking men. A Square tells us women have to emit a "peace cry" when they walk, because walking into them (due to their sharp point) can be deadly, and if they don't do this they're executed. And women with any sickness that causes "involuntary motions" which can be as little as sneezing too hard, is instantly killed. He seems to think these are rational laws in the interest of public safety and also in the best interest of the women themselves. He also says that due to their lack of angles, women "are wholy devoid of of brainpower, and have neither reflection, judgement, nor forethought."

Yikes.

"I like it, but you can definitelly tell this was written by a man in 1884" I remember telling my mom.

Well guess what? This year I found out that flatland isn't just about having a low-level existential crisis at imagining the fourth dimension (beings from the 4th dimension would be able to directly see and touch our insides guys. Like. Just entirely bypass your skin and poke at your spleen) it is also a satire and social critique of victorian society. The misogyny is there to criticize victorian concept of gender roles! The bogus and violent laws that are shoddily justified to be for "public safety", the complete exclusion from women in the advancement and social class, the made up standard of angles and sides pretending to be biologically sound such as to "scientifically" justify their oppression. That's misogyny, baby! It's on purpose!

And it's a flawed attempt. A Square, as a man of his time, has no respect whatsoever for women and the few female characters the book has get barely any pagetime. This is accurate for the sexist pov the story is written from, and Edward Abott Abott, in a foreword of a revised edition, makes it clear that thay was exactly his intention. But it does mean that we never get to actually hear what any of the women of flatland think about living in this horribly misogynistic society. It's intended as a critique of misogyny, but any misogynist reading the book who doesn't find the sexism of flatland all that outlandish, can read the whole book with those assumptions going unchallenged. The satire only works if you already agree women are people.

But it's still good, insofar as portraying a ridiculously sexist society and the mind bogglingly stupid and arbitrary justifications mysoginists try to give for their bigotry, it is accurate. By removing it from our own world and putting it in flatland, we can more clearly see that connecting social status to wideness of angles is ridiculous, and the misogyny has no material basis. As a person who does agree that women are people, and is no longer under the impression that, because it was written in the 1880s, the misogny must be genuine, I can now, on a reread, appreciate the satire.

Prior to this post, looking at my blog, YOU WOULD NOT KNOW THIS. And I don't plan on posting many essays about flatland in the future. I read it because my mom recommended it to me, and so the way I discuss my thoughts on it is mostly with her, in real life. And I enjoy that more than I would posting about it here.

So yes, people SHOULD approach media from different lenses than shipping alone. Because shipping only works well for a subset of all art out there, and it is only one of the many ways to engage with it. But posts on tumblr are not solid proof of whether people are doing that or not.

It's also funny because a lot of the complaints of "why is everyone only interested in shipping for X" are about, like, adaptations of ya novels or comic books or god forbid shounen anime. You know, the shows with huge casts of usually likable, attractive and varied characters? Where a big part of the appeal is the entertaining dynamics those characters have which each other? Aka prime material for shipping?

Like, yeah, it can suck when it feels like the rest of the fandom is too busy smashing fictional barbie dolls together to have interesting conversations about the things you liked about the show. But please don't watch the Ship Show and then complain that everyone is shipping.

I wanted to end this post by telling you to go read flatland because there's no fanfiction of that but there are, in fact, over 40 works on ao3 for flatland by edwin abott abott and over half of them are gravity falls fics. It completely undermines my point but it's too funny to leave out.

#fanfiction #shipping #fandom #shipping discourse #art #the ways we engage with fiction should be varied #please don't flatten them or deride the methods people choose to do that

[jahiera]

I think one of the reasons conflicts arise in rpg discourse spheres, specifically in the context of story analysis and decision making, is there’s a group of gamers that choose the choices that they think are correct—correct, as in, morally right, or “best” for the character in terms of achieving the healthiest, happiest ending for that character. And that’s a fine way to play! I’m not knocking it. Players are 100% allowed to play that way and discuss why they think that choice leads to what they feel is the “best” outcome—best, again, as in typically rooted in morals, ideals, preferences, and all that. And then you have players who play the same way but make different choices. And when they meet it is inevitably the most inane degrees of discourse you will ever meet. Glorp shitto was wrong for betraying the fairy court levels discourse. and then you have players who make the choices that they think are most interesting—interesting for the overall story, or interesting for the character arcs, or simply enjoyable to watch play out. These could be their impulse choices that they’ve stuck with or choices they made consciously after exploring other options, but the point is that they’re not involving their conscience or attributing their real world, “what I think is right,” to the story. And when you play that way and someone hits you with the “actually it’s so wrong to make blimbo the king of the elves because he doesnt want to be king of the elves you’re so evil for that” it is so fucking weird for you, guy who was playing the adult game to explore the adult themes in their totality, not playing to be the nicest coolest bestest solution totally in line with what is “”””objectively”””” (objective used loosely here) the best result in accordance with the Best Morals. Now, once again, both of these are valid ways to play, but you need to know the place from which you’re playing and discussing from, because if you’re attributing some sort of real world judgement onto other gamers who don’t make the same choices you do, because you made your choice based on what you thought was most correct, you will find that conversation and analysis on the game are near impossible, because not everyone is playing that way. and ultimately, Understanding where you’re coming from allows for more successful conversation (if it’s a conversation) and more coherent analysis of the game itself.

#Yeah this is all about dragon age. #but it could also be about baldurs gate if you guys don’t dedicate yourselves to the cause of being normal #again I’m not judging or saying you can’t play however you want to #but understanding the motivation behind the choices you made allows you to lay the conversation properly #Someone who is discussing why this is the ‘best’ ending for a character based on their own /personal/ views is still a biased perspective #NEVER an objective one #you’re always going to run into people who see it differently #critical /