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dustofbrokenheart · 3 years

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The Covenant: Top Anon

Pogue Parry x Reader

Word Count: 2,288

Summary: You have a loyal follower who comments on every post under your food blog. Just who is your favorite follower and why is the new grocery boy kinda cute too?

It was a new year and the start of a new you. Well, that is, a you who was trying new things.

In the past, you always made resolutions, but that spirit ran out before the month of January was even done. But after the particularly rough time of the past year, you swore that this time would be different, that you would make a serious effort to do something new.

It was that determination that led your current situation—your kitchen countertops were covered with ingredients and cooking utensils, your cell phone resting on a near by tripod for filming purposes.

The goal for this year was to try running a blog, and since you were a bit of a foodie, it made a lot of sense to center the blog around cooking and food. The idea came to you quickly; the hard part was deciding on a name, which took a while.

Eventually, you settled on The Foodiest. Naming was not one of your strong suits, but it was enough to get the point clearly across to potential viewers.

Choosing the layout design was on the same level of easy as deciding and didn’t take more than a day or two to implement on your site. Thank goodness for the existence of pre-made layout templates that saved you the effort of having to code everything yourself.

With of the work on that end finished, the day had finally come for you to actually cook something to post about. Seeing as how January was a cold, winter month, you chose to make mashed sweet potatoes. Not only was it one of your favorite winter side dishes, it wasn’t hard to make either, giving you the confidence that even if your writing was lackluster, at least the food would look good.

Most of the blogs you were familiar with used a combination of text and photos for readers to follow along with, but you were going to try video in place of images. You sometimes struggled to copy based on what was shown in the photo, especially when you first started cooking, so you hoped video would make it easier on budding chefs who came across your content.

Luckily, the video would be sped up and lapsed for the final post to spare people from having to watch the monotonous parts in full length.

Hands on your hips, you surveyed everything one last time to make sure it was all ready. With a satisfied nod you reached forward to tap the large, red record button on the phone.

You debated whether or not to talk while filming but decided against it. You were nervous enough posting to the blog without having the added stress of talking.

Everything happened in its regular order: you started by peeling and chopping the potatoes, a basic step, but you took your time doing it, paranoid as ever that you would cut yourself with the knife. Next you boiled the bright orange chunks in a pot of water; then put them in a mixing bowl once they were cooked. And finally used an electric mixer to blend it all nice and smooth, adding in milk, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

Swiping your pointer finger through the finished product, you hummed with delight at the delicious, sweet taste. You pulled out a presentable bowl from the cupboard and spooned some orange fluff into it for the final reveal. Reaching blindly towards the far end of the counter you grabbed a bag of pecans to top off the mashed sweet potatoes. You scrutinized it and added more pecans for good measure.

Doing something in front of a camera was very different than doing the same thing on a normal day. Tension leeched out of your shoulders and you exhaled loudly with your head leaned back. A sense of pride warmed your chest, especially as you returned your gaze to the picturesque bowl. It looked great and tasted even better.

There was a large portion of leftovers because the recipes you used were collected from family and meant to feed small armies of people. You did your best to eat what you could and made plans sharing the rest with friends and coworkers later.

A few days after you published the post, you decided to check the stats on your account dashboard to see what the public response to it was, if there was any at all. Google analytics was useful for counting the total number of views it received while the blog site itself tracked the likes and… a comment?

Initial shock gave way to a bolt of excitement that had your fingers tingling with energy. You clicked to read it, wondering what it may say. Fingers crossed it was something good, whether it came in the form of a compliment or some constructive criticism.

Anonymous: wow good job

The chair creaked as you sat back slowly. You didn’t know how to read that, there wasn’t a whole lot to go on. Wow good job, said sarcastically? Wow good job, said excitedly? It didn’t help that the commenter didn’t believe in using punctuation either. And since it was submitted anonymously, there was no easy way to track down who sent it.

But maybe you were being too paranoid about it. You decided to take it as a compliment and cracked your fingers before firing off a response.

Foodiest: Thanks anon! I had a lot of fun with this dish. Hope you tune in for the next one :)

Anonymous never followed up with that particular exchange but they commented on every post without fail for the next two months.

Anonymous: nevr had white chili before it was good

Anonymous: the stuffed pepper were good

Anonymous: good call with the shrimp

Of course, all of the messages were sent as anonymous, so there was no 100% guarantee that it was the same person, but your gut feeling told you that it was. Who else had no respect for grammar rules and religiously used ‘good’ as their only descriptor?

You grew to expect, and enjoy, the weekly comment left by anon and made sure to leave a nice response in return. It was hard not to feel a connection to someone who took the time to try your recipes and leave a nice message. If only you could figure out who it was or at least have a name for them besides anonymous.

Foodiest: I’m glad you liked the recipe! My gramma swore by mayo when making grilled cheese. Thanks for always liking my stuff, if you ever want to talk more feel free to message me!

There. Maybe that would make them feel comfortable to give you their name you thought as you powered down your laptop for the night.

You spent the next couple of days leading up to the new post planning on what recipe to cook. Yep. Definitely not hoping for more information about anon.

For this newest post you decided to make some Indian curry, one of your favorites. Even long after you finished cooking, taping, and cleaning, the potent scent of spices was still heavy in the air, like aromatic nirvana that had your mouth watering even with a full stomach.

You tried your best not to refresh the post every few minutes to see if anon commented but it was tough. It turned out that you didn’t have to wait long as they left a comment within twenty minutes.

Anonymous: havent cooked this yet but looks good. Never really had indian before so have to go buy the stufff first – po

Anon finally gave up a name! You let out a happy noise and read it again. Po… short and to the point, just like all of the previous responses had led you to think about them. There was no time to waste, you hurried to write back, initial typos all over the place as the words out-paced your fingers.

Foodiest: Hi Po! It’s nice to have a name to put with your words. I would recommend going to an Asian Market for the spices, they’re more likely to carry them. Let me know how it goes for you :)

Since that conversation, Po and you chatted frequently about the weekly recipe choice, whether or not it looked good and if Po had plans to make it themselves, which they often did. Po seemed to like all types of food; vegetarian, meats, drinks, desserts, even ethnic dishes from places as far off as Bolivia and Morocco.

And the longer you two talked, the more frequent the messaging became. Whereas in the beginning Po would only submit a compliment that you would follow up with a ‘thank you’, it had turned into lengthy back and forths that took up a majority of the comment section for each post. More followers joined as the months went by and you hoped that they weren’t intimidated by your blatant favoritism but it was just so easy to talk with Po. If you were being honest with yourself though, it wasn’t only that it was easy… you genuinely liked talking to them.

Every time you made a new post it was difficult to not refresh the page every few minutes to see if they had left a message. And when they did, it was like a shot of electricity straight into the system where your heart would jolt and your face would flood with heat. You were hesitant to say it was a crush given that you didn’t know what they actually looked like and the computer screen barrier made it so you were content to define it as friendship.

Pushing those thoughts aside, you grabbed your wallet and keys while putting on shoes so you could make a quick run to the store. You had big plans to make some buffalo chicken wings for the blog this week and you needed to stop by the store to pick up some ingredients that you didn’t have, namely Frank’s Original Red for the buffalo sauce and blue cheese for the dip. Being an adult and responsible for your own grocery shopping was a chore at times.

Luckily, Winter had thawed out into Spring so there was no need for you to warm up or car or scrape your windows. You just hopped in and drove the four blocks it took to get to the store. The plan was to cross the stuff for the wings off of your list first and then browse around for some good snacks to tide you over for the next week or so. Things were going according to plan until you saw him.

A tall boy wearing an employee apron stood in front of the cracker section, his jaw line and soft looking long hair catching your eye. Then he reached up to the tallest shelf to restock some boxes his arms flexing slightly to show off his heavy biceps and his shirt rode up, exposing deep cut ridges in his lower abdomen. To put it simply, you were starstruck.

He finished with the boxes he had in-hand and went to grab more from the cart at his side when you noticed your blatant ogling. Rather than confront you about it he merely smiled and moved out of the way so that you could get to the brand that you wanted. Choking from embarrassment, you kept your head down and threw a box of Goldfish into your shopping cart, speeding to get out of the aisle and his presence.

The store was a small local business and you frequented enough to know most of the workers there but you didn’t recognize this one, meaning that he must be new. What a way to make a first impression on him. Clearly your constitution was no match for his rugged, good looks. Then he was polite enough not to comment on you objectifying him which somehow made you feel even worse about it.

You decided to end the shopping trip almost immediately knowing that you were too spooked to continue shopping lest you run into him again.

You rolled the shopping cart into an open check-out lane and started putting your things on the conveyor for the cashier to scan. It just so happened that you knew the cashier—she was a middle-aged lady who’d been at the store for nearly two years. “Hi, Y/N. Find everything you needed?”

“Hey, Eva. Yes, I did.” You tried to steady yourself. Eva had a notoriously sharp eye and wouldn’t hesitate to question you if you looked off.

She left you alone today, engaging in normal chit chat, until she had trouble scanning the bottle of Frank’s hot sauce. Eva frowned when it didn’t want to scan and tried again but the bottle slipped from her hands and the neck of it shattered. Eva cursed and huffed, hurrying to throw the bottle into the trash before more leaked onto the register.

“I am so sorry, hun! I’ll get you another.”

“It was an accident,” you assured. “I can get it myself—"

“Not a problem,” she assured you with a wink. She pulled a walkie from her hip and spoke into it. “Hey, bring me a bottle of Frank’s Original Red Hot Sauce. Quick.”

You barely had time to don your awkward smile as she talked about how her neighbor’s dog kept pooping in her yard when the guy from the cracker aisle walked up behind Eva and handed a bottle of hot sauce to her. She took it and patted his back to get him to move forward.

“Thanks, hun. Y/N this is the new grocery boy—”

“Pogue,” he interrupted. “My name is Pogue.”

_______________

Another fic where they know each other but don’t know that they do. This time featuring Pogue and his fandom accepted interest in food. I picture him to have bad messaging skills — his fingers struggle with those tiny phone buttons.

#the covenant #pogue parry #pogue parry x reader #imagines

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lavendersage · 3 years

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Your blog is a great source of comfort for me. While I know that the workings behind it is just a kindhearted person selecting tender content in their free time, there's something almost fae about the calm it gives me.

I hope it's not the wrong choice, but for a while I've wanted to try something. I come to this blog everyday for some peace -- sometimes I don't even check the rest of my feed, I just come straight here. This year has been dreadfully taxing on everyone, and I'm one of those everybodies.

I hope it's okay, but for a while I've had this idea of writing my heartbreak down and dropping it here, almost like letting it go on a scrap of paper in a stream. I havent been to the woods in a while; I'm a teen in a city that's been beyond ravaged by covid.

But still, I found time for a little #longing. Let's call her Jay. She's smarter than a whip. Math prodigy, piano prodigy, in line to be valedictorian. I, one might say, am nöne of those things. Someday she'll have a PHD, and all I'll have is my ADHD. I'm the class clown, a freelance dunce, but due to some stroke of luck, the same perfectionism that drives Jay's brilliance doesnt allow her to relax easily. I can make her laugh. She values that in me. I found a currency for which I could pay for her time.

I've loved her for years, Lav. And what hurts more is that I know she loves me too. The kisses I've stolen light a fire in my stomach at the thought of them. The memory of closing the distance between us in the big guest room bed when I used to go to her house to sleep over is what's keeping me from going mad during this third round of total lockdown. When we are alone, she is mine, and I am whole. But like I said, if Jay is anything, she's a perfectionist. We were once scolded for being too "flirtatious" at a dance -- the only instance of discipline she's recieved all high school (meanwhile, I have a desk in the detention hall that literally has my name on it). She's desperately closeted, and terrified of losing her image. That's the thing about people who study until they sweat blood so that they never fail: the only thing they never learn is that failure isnt the end of the world the way us flunkies do.

I keep asking her to be mine, publically. Or, perhaps not fully publically, but at least socially. Our peers have more than caught on to what's going on between us and are overwhelmingly positive. And while we'd still have to hide from the adults, that would be accomplished whether we did it totally and miserably, or with room for partial sunshine. My heart and my honor cannot stand the sneaking, the slinking. I am not a secret to be kept. But Jay isnt ready, so I suppose I can learn to behave as if ashamed of my love for her sake.

I fold this message up, and drop it in your stream, Goddess of The Pure Calm. Grant me peace.

first, i just want to say that i can neither confirm nor deny that i am fae 🧚‍♀️ i am so glad that you visit my blog so often and that it grants you peace throughout the day. it always boggles my mind to hear things like that from you guys 🤧

and please, as always, take my words with a grain of salt--i’m not an advice blog (i’m not even sure if advice is what you’re looking for), but i will do the best i can 💚

my heart breaks for you, friend. my teenage years may be behind me but i still remember how hard it was to exist in that stage of life. it’s hard in a way that adulthood isn’t.

i was a lot like you. i was always “the funny one” and never really stuck out academically. i was friends with a lot of people whose intellect and ambition intimidated me to no end. to be in love with someone like that must feel like something else entirely.

that being said, i can feel how much you care for jay just in the way you talk about her. “i can make her laugh. she values that in me. i found a currency for which i could pay for her time.” this made me tear up a little, i won’t lie. and darling, i’m sure she values you for far more than your ability to make her laugh. but i get it--people like us use humor for a lot of things, maybe to make up for something we think we lack, or as a way to get other people to see us as worth keeping around. i assure you, love, you’re worth keeping around if you’re the funniest person alive and you’re worth keeping around if you never utter another joke again. your presence in your friends’ lives is valuable. your presence to miss jay is valuable. your presence on earth is valuable.

it must be incredibly hard to be in love with someone who reciprocates your feelings, but be unable to move forward with your relationship. you don’t want to be a secret, you don’t want to sneak around. of course you don’t, love. i’m so sorry that you have to wrestle with those feelings.

however...i’ve also been in jay’s place. back then, i wasn’t necessarily concerned about my image, or my reputation, but before i was out, i was terrified of what my family and friends would think of me if they knew the truth about who i was. i lost my chance to be with someone i really cared about because i was too afraid to go public, and they weren’t willing to wait. i simply wasn’t ready.

i of course don’t know her personally, but it sounds to me like jay isn’t ready, either. it’s great that your peers are positive about your potential relationship, but there are probably some of outside factors that are scaring her out of wanting to go public. it doesn’t mean she’s ashamed of her feelings. it doesn’t mean she’s ashamed of you. she simply isn’t ready. and for plenty of folks, it takes time to reach that point.

i can only speak from my own experience and what i’ve witness in my friends’ lives, but darling, once you’re out of high school and move into adulthood, so much changes. you get the freedom to more deeply explore who you are. i cannot even begin to stress how much change you will go through in your late teens and twenties. i don’t even recognize the person i was back then, and chances are both you and jay will have plenty of time to grow into the people you’re meant to be.

i don’t want to turn this into an “oh, it gets better when you’re older” type of response, because that’s redundant and it isn’t even always true, but there is a lot of value in the freedom that comes with leaving high school and getting out into the world. you will experience it. so will she. give it some time.

jay may decide that her feelings are more powerful than her fears, and she may need more time to reach a point where she’s comfortable sharing that part of herself with the world. i truly hope that she comes to that decision in her own time, at her own pace.

i also wish you well, friend. i will keep you in my thoughts as you wrestle with these feelings of longing and frustration, and i will keep jay in my thoughts as well. if your situation changes, feel free to let me know. my inbox is always open.

lots of love to you both, and stay safe 💚💚💚

#asks #long post #if any followers have kind things to say feel free to comment!

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kewltie · 4 years

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anyway, abo au where alpha prohero ground zero decides it's time to start a family of his own but he doesn't have a mate and neither does he want one so he signs up for an omega surrogate program & meet his former childhood friend who will now carry his baby for him.

izuku is a male omega w/ v v v high fertility even for his secondary sex and a strong body which make him an ideal surrogate to give birth healthy babies. w/ the program izuku contracted, izuku had given birth to several babies for various ppl over the years & babies are all happy and that's all that matter.

being a surrogate wasn't ever part of his dream but izuku is an omega & quirkless in a world that doesn't exactly appreciate either. one day when he was fruitlessly working at his 9 to 5 job, a rep from the company approached him w/ a pamphlet about surrogacy. the paid is v v good, the prenatal care & pregnancy compensation is all taken care of by the clients and his company, and he can select and choose which jobs to take. many families and ppl in the world cant have kids of their own for various reasons and izuku is HELPING THEM ACHIEVE THEIR DREAM. in his own way izuku is helping these people!!!! He may not be saving lives has a hero that he always wanted to be but he's giving them their hope and dream in a child they all want so izuku does his job proudly. the only sadness he gets from it that once it's over the baby isn't his anymore bc he's contracted to sign over his parental rights to his clients.

so he tries desperately not to fall desperately in love w/ each of the babies he had. it's... tough but he loves them all the same. the good point is that some of his clients will let him talk and meet w/ their child’s birth parent so izuku isn't deprived of that connection.

it's a quiet and unconventional job, but izuku is happy w/ this lifestyle that he had chosen even as it make DATING AN ABSOLUTE pain. how do you explain to ppl that no you're not marry yet or date anyone but you have several kids floating around all over japan in various household??? lol /o\ this made him feel terribly alone thinking how he wants a family of his own one day after seeing how he's making his client so happy w/ their new baby in their arms. happiness wrapped in a surreal sadness as he watched his babies w/ their new family wishing for that happiness for himself one day but while izuku is settled in his bubble of melancholy an solitude, katsuki BUSTED DOWN THAT DOOR when he made a requested to have a surrogate. NOT JUST ANYONE WILL DO, the best one you FUCKING GOT: experience, results, good health, strong quirk, smart, and not some fucking easy omega.

the qualifications and requirements are obscene and ridiculous lolol but he paid through the roof to get the absolute best for his future child. izuku hits every one of these markers except... for the quirk one. the program hesitate to bring the two to meet but katsuki is impatience. he had been delayed and delayed over and over again for months as they try to match up a good surrogate partner for him. every one of them he had quickly rejected v v loudly and walked out on the meeting. izuku is literally their last hope as katsuki throws another fit.

katsuki is getting older now, close to his 30s annd still stuck in singlehood while all his colleagues and friends settle down with a family of their own. his parents, esp his old hag, has been relentlessly nagging him to GIVE HER A BABY ALREADY SHE WANTS TO BE A GRANDMA BEFORE SHE DIE so w/ all kind of pressures, he said fuck it, i'll give you a fucking BABY but i dont need a mate to do it but in truth he earnestly does want a baby for his own bc the idea of raising a tiny human w/ all the trails and errors and potentially fucking up is humbling & huge responsibility. he thinks he’s up for it like the pro-stage where he's standing at the top now, he can conquered it w sheer force and effort as he does w/ any challenge that he face. Parenthood will be his greatest battle and hurdle he has to overcome and he's going to fucking ACE IT. so katsuki is 10000% in this and he wants the best surrogate for his baby.

the program finally have izuku & katsuki meet after wasting 5 months of trying to find katsuki a suitable partner that he won't reject right away. so their first meeting go something like this: multiple slam doors, a table is flipped, and a lot of yelling.

it went great because izuku is hired right away. Just kidding.

katsuki had thought it was some giant fucking joke the moment izuku had walked through that door. "Who the fuck set this up?!" he demanded, kicking a coffee table over. so furious that his hands were shaking bc the idea of the length he'd went through and hoops he'd jumped over to get here JUST SO HE CAN BE MAKE A FOOL OUT OF, he'd stormed out a sec later, slamming doors violently on his way out and they had to dragged his ass back w/ the fervent promise that no IT'S NOT A PRANK AND WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO W/ CHARGEBOLT OR RED RIOT, PLS PLS LISTEN TO US.

he came back to izuku's unperturbed face as he took a sip of his coffee and katsuki snapped defensively, "i hope you won't fucking be drinking that piss when you're pregnant with my baby."

Unimpressed, Izuku replied, "good thing im not pregnant yet bc who said i would agree."

Flustered and red in the face w/ anger bc THE AUDACITY OF IZUKU TO REJECT HIM WHEN KATSUKI SHOULD BE THE ONE TO DOING IN THE FIRST PLACE!! izuku was the one who doesn't deserve to carry his child!! but the director of the program hurriedly assured him that izuku IS THE *BEST*. he got a pages of recommendation/referral, glowing reviews, and every client of his had never been happier bc of him. all his pregnancy were carried to full term and the babies are all good & strong. izuku himself go the gym when he's not on the job, keeping a healthy lifestyle. he doesn't drink or smoke (which katsuki emphasized in his requirement) and his family doesn't have any record any genetic disorder. he may not have finish college but he test high in his IQ and he take his job v v v seriously. the only problem was... he's quirkless.

it's a thing izuku always make it point for all his clients to know what they could potentially get w/ their children if they chose him. some walked away but most stayed with bc izuku is THE BEST OF THE BEST and they want kid more than they want a manufactured perfect child.

"will that be a problem?" izuku asked, meeting his eyes dead on. "does the thought of having a quirkless child anger you?"

katsuki bristles, clenching & unclenching his hands at his side. though no much had change over the years, he's older now, not that dumbass kid anymore, misguided by his own sense of pride and arrogance and warped by prejudice and the superiority of his quirk. He had left that behind in UA, who happily beaten the idiocy out of him. now, he doesn't care if his child is quirkless or not bc they're his and he'll raise and love them all the same. if the world treat his kid crap for being quirkless, he'll teach them to fuck the world up till it bow down and kiss their ass bc they're a bakugou and they don't settle for anything less, which brought back to the point that izuku REALLY IS THE BEST THEY GOT.

so he shook his head and said, "it doesn't matter whether they're quirkless or not bc they're mine and i always take good care of what's mine."

Izuku's eyes widen and for fraction of a second his cool mask of difference crack under katsuki's heartfelt and sincere words. They havent seen each other since middle school, that’s over a decade, and katsuki truly have grown up into someone the entire world can admire and hold up on a pedestal as the no. 1 hero in the country.

"And what about you? you're okay with me?" katsuki retorted. "with the kind of volatile *history* that we shared."

Izuku paused, and then, he said quietly, "i'm not that petty to deny you a child bc of our past bc neither of us are the kids we were back then."

katsuki stood up. "get him the paperworks and have him sign it. i want him and nobody else."

Izuku jerked up in surprised. "that's it? you dont want to ask me anything else? don't you want to go through my records and background to make sure that im the right fit for you."

katsuki stared down at him and it was like pinned under glass before he said, "we may have changed, but something are still the same. you still want to help ppl even if this is a roundabout way to do it. i trust my instinct and my instinct is screaming at me to give you a fucking chance." He looked away, scratching the back of his head as he continued, "if there's one thing that is made clear to me now is that you're a good person and i was a shittyass kid for not realizing that sooner."

izuku's breath hitched. it's not an apology but it's damn close.

and with that he left izuku dizzy with a confusing cocktail of warmth, shock, and something far too nebulous and strange for him to put a finger to yet. when he first realized it was katsuki who was looking for a surrogate, he'd steel himself of the rejection & lashing out to come. izuku had spent his entire life rejected one way or another, so he was mentally prepare for this to be added to pile esp from the man who had hurt him repeatedly before. when katsuki had left for U.A. and izuku in the dust, they rarely have anything to do w/ each other after that even as he'd followed katsuki meteoric rise to the top, his blazing trajectory that placed him as the current no.1 bc despite everything, katsuki truly is amazing and deserved his place. he just never thought they would meet again in the sort of situation where a baby is the bargaining chip.

izuku was prepared for everything that katsuki would throw at him... but not his fervent agreement. now, izuku got to face the fact that for a year they're going to spend in each other pocket as izuku tries to carry not only katsuki's baby but his hope and future too. it's going to be either a total nightmare or some v v surreal dream bc it's bakugou katsuki with all that fame and temper and strong armed will and izuku is just... plain old izuku. he never had a client w/ such power and weight to throw around and so high profile that every know his name.

oh what did he sign up for, izuku thought as the door to the meeting room was slammed open again and katsuki glared at the director. "wait i want it all to be done today," katsuki said. "put my sperms in him as soon as possible."

izuku dropped his face into his hand and sighed.

the process of getting izuku impregnated is all v clinical and boring. izuku goes under a pseudo heat simulation that fool his body to think he's actually going into heat so his fertility up even more so during this period and he get artificially inseminated w/ katsuki's sperm. this is actually a process and takes several days & even weeks to prepare bc waiting for izuku's most fertile window during his heat period is v v important to have higher chance of success NORMALLY but w/ advance tech izuku can go under a pseudo heat that trigger release of eggs so they can get it all done pretty quickly and dont have to wait for nature to set it up for them.

katsuki already provided enough sperm to last a fucking lifetime bc he's an overly prepared asshole and it's three days later when they meet back at the clinic to start the process. all of this is under the watchful care of doctors and nurses to make sure everything go right. izuku had done this many times before for his previous clients so this isn't new to him at all but it's the first time that a client specifically demand to be part of the entire process.

izuku stares him down and tells him in no uncertain detail bc it's already weird enough to be the one to carry his former childhood friend's baby but to have him watch izuku get inseminated w/ his sperm?? YEA OK, no. katsuki glowers bc he just want everything to GO SMOOTHLY. his micromanagement & obsessiveness drives the clinic insane but izuku kinda finds it funny and cute?? maybe bc he's aware that it's just katsuki's nerves acting up since this is so terribly new and terrifying for him and HE DOESN'T LIKE IT WHEN THINGS ARENT UNDER HIS CONTROL.

neither katsuki or izuku is alone this bc surrogacy isn't about either them it's about the baby and the ppl who helps make it possible and that's both of them. the surrogate who carries the unborn fetus and donor who gives a part of themselves to make it all possible. izuku hesitates before deciding screw it & reaches out and holds katsuki's hand in comfort AS THOUGH KATSUKI THE ONE GETTING THE PROCEDURE DONE TO HIM. "i'll be fine," he insists. "i've done this plenty of times before and dr. abe even longer than that with 20yrs of experience so i'll be ok."

"I'm not worry," katsuki snaps, even though he squeezes Izuku's hand hard enough that izuku is afraid his bones might crack under the pressure. "i know you'll be fucking fine, wont he dr. abe?" he stares down at the doctor with the full force of his wrath that the doctor shifts nervously.

"o-of course, bakugou-san," dr abe is quick to assure him. "our best ppl is on the job."

izuku rolls his eyes bc while heat inducing artificial insemination isn't exactly a new tech but there's a risk to any kind of medical procedure. it's low though and izuku isn't worry.

katsuki lets him go and izuku just sends him a quick reassuring smile over his shoulder even as katsuki can't take his eyes off of the entire trip to the surgical room. the process takes around 1-2 hours max & izuku comes out of it mostly woozy & still under heat related stress.

he needs to rest the next few days as he lets nature and w/ the help of science takes it course. izuku rests up at the clinic that provide him 24hrs care to make sure everything is alright which is all normal and part of the procedure. what surprise him is that katsuki visiting him DAILY. he actually bring izuku's home cooked meals that are carefully & thoughtfully prepared (healthy food choices!!) that it silences him for a moment.

"you know im not pregnant yet," izuku points out helpfully. "do you want me to explain how biology work in case UA didn't go over it in their curriculum?"

"shut your face and just eat," katsuki says with a glower, and watches intensely as izuku eats every bite and not leave a single piece behind. while there he harasses izuku's nurses and doctors, asking for izuku's vital stats and probing questions about the surgery & his health.it's so annoying and overbearing, but izuku can't help the smile threatening to break through his defense bc that's just like katsuki shoving his business into everything and dominating the entire process even though it is IZUKU who is going through it all. it's dreadfully cute.

izuku is fully recovered after several days of rest as expected and he is, once again surprised, to see katsuki is right there every step of the way as he is release from the clinic. katsuki who took a short shift today just so he can pick izuku up, which IS SUPER RARE. katsuki is a total workaholic and married to his job kind of pro hero so for him to take half a day off is beyond shocking for everyone?? bc HE GOT ENOUGH VACATION/SICK DAYS TO TAKE SEVERAL MONTHS OFF w/o any worry, but he came to take izuku home and make sure everything is in order.

it's not that izuku didn't have any clients wanting to be so involve in the whole surrogacy/pregnancy process but katsuki takes it into a whole new lvl w/ how much he inserts himself into izuku's life like it's not just the baby he care about but izuku too. he delivers izuku home and make sure izuku have his emergency contacts at all time in case ANYTHING, ABSOLUTEY ANYTHING HAPPEN and he wants izuku to text him daily with updates even for stupid things. he's obsessive and demanding and nervous, and izuku thinks it's funny as hell.

so for the next several weeks, izuku flood katsuki's phone w/ commentary about his days that HAS NOTHING TO DO W/ his chance of being pregnant. since izuku full time job is just being a surrogate, he mostly spend his days wandering around the city, reading, volunteering, etc. izuku updates katsuki on his daily activities and while he doesn't always get a reply immediately but his updates are always left on read and sometimes katsuki would leave some *encouraging* word like 'yea,' or 'okay' and izuku doesn't know why but he finds them comforting all the same.

when he wanders around the city, he'll text katsuki his coordinates bc katsuki is paranoid &wants him to keep away from dangerous area or area under villain attack, he would take pictures of the heroes he see and katsuki would have a snarky comments on each & every one of them. it's in this moments that the two of them really come alive. izuku get a glimpse of the world that he could have had if he had a quirk and pursue his dream of going pro hero and insights on what it's like to be bakugou katsuki, the man standing at the pinnacle of the pro hero scene.

At this point katsuki is even more engaged in izuku's text now. he becomes interest in the books izuku is currently reading, the outreach programs izuku super passionate about esp for young and disenfranchise quirkless youths. then there are izuku's rowdy neighbors and their hilariously complicated love life that izuku is terribly invested bc of his lack of one.

"i think higa-san is going to break up with him today," izuku would update him one day, after watching his neighbors have another blow out.

katsuki texts back an hour later: "yea right, the guy is spineless coward. he wouldn't ever go through it."

izuku lets out a smile as he stares down at the text. it's the most fun izuku ever had in the middle of a job that he forget they're not friends at all but client and surrogate. this is a job for him and izuku is an end to a mean for katsuki. it doesn't mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything. Why is he even trying?

Izuku has been doing the job for seven years and carried his pregnancy to full terms five times. he knows the routine even though each client he had were different from one another and not all pregnancy are the same, but he knows what to expect and prepare. nothing truly surprised him anymore. Or at least they shouldn’t. ,his world didn't suddenly change w/ katsuki's arrival in his ordinary life. izuku is still very much the same person, but all the same he wake up everyday w/ renews energy and lightens heart, looking forward to seeing the text notification from katsuki popping up on his phone screen.

he finds himself looking forward to their interaction the most throughout his days. a glimpse into katsuki's world and what it means to be a part of his life again however temporary it is bc izuku knows there is a time limit to this. he's only allow to talk like this w/ katsuki bc he's doing him a favor, a job, an obligation in exchange of money. they're in a relationship artificially made, they're not friends or colleagues and izuku may be carrying katsuki's baby in the future but he's not a parent w/ katsuki.

He’s an incubator.

these thoughts feel tangibly familiar to his past cases where he had carried the fetus to full term and had to part ways with his baby and the client/parents and separate himself from their lives after the birth but it had never hurt in this way like the thoughts alone would cut his heart into pieces now. it's beyond selfish to get attach and izuku tries to maintain a careful distance w/ katsuki bc they're client and an employee, but katsuki is relentless. he won't settle for just for pieces of izuku and his life. he wants it all. Izuku may be weak enough to give it to him…

he invests himself into izuku's life, his interest, his worries and thoughts. to katsuki, izuku isn't just an incubator but someone who shares the other half of his baby's genes so of fucking course he IS INVESTED BC izuku is just as important as the fetus he could be carrying right now but izuku has a hard time wrapping his head around it bc while izuku was w/ his other client they were all kind and caring to him during his surrogacy but never to this length. they weren't interest in him as a person but someone who is a means to an end, a tool to make their dream come true.

izuku isn't hurt by that regard bc he knows getting involve w/ your surrogate can be a hot mess & confusing for the baby growing up so izuku knows how to keep his distance and careful to keep his heart walled up but katsuki has a habit of breaking things. He’s so very, very good at it, especially distubring the peace of izuku’s heart.

katsuki may be relentless w/ his attention & dedication but izuku's walls went down embarrassingly easy as though he was waiting for katsuki to reach out toward him after all the years apart and shake him loose from his bubble of solitude. katsuki doesn't realize how affected izuku is by his clumsy and gestures, but izuku won't tell. He’s too embarrassed to ever bring it up because even after all these years katsuki still has such a sever effect on him.

so izuku lends himself to enjoy this upcoming months as much as he can bc once it's over they will part ways again as though they exist solely in different space and the only chance he'll get to see katsuki and the baby is through the screen of his tv. it doesn't bring him any comfort but it's manageable. izuku can deal with it. he got years to get used to it by now. It’s not gentle but it’s a blunt kind of truth that mend with time.

several weeks after since izuku did the procedure, he doesn't feel any different but izuku wakes up one morning and he could feel a strangeness settling over his body. there are a lot of old wives tales about pregnant omegas and women and most of them are false, standing against scientific knowledge but izuku been going around this block five times already, so he realizes there may be some truths to a few of them.

he gets out of bed and makes breakfast before making sure to send a text and photo to katsuki about his meals bc katsuki is ANAL about making izuku eat right. katsuki motherhenning him miles away even as he is out on patrol is still the most hilarious and weirdly sweet thing, izuku finds. it doesn't feel suffocating at all to him. sometimes he when the thought slip out of him unconsciously he thinks this is what it's like to have an alpha of his own, but katsuki isn't his by any means.

izuku forgoes his favorite breakfast meal this time and go for something he rarely eats. a food that he normally doesn't chose but it feels right this time. it all clicks. the signs were all there several days back. the frequent bathroom usage, his breasts throbbing, and cramps. he'd seen it already but this morning it lines up perfectly like it was all meant to be, like everything is built up just for this moment right here.

so with a bounce to his steps, he waits for katsuki's text back. It takes a few mins when katsuki get back from his morning run bc he got a routine and is terribly predictable in that regard. his following texts rip into izuku's choice of food bc IT ISN'T HIS USUAL at all and katsuki have colorful words about the kind of junk izuku force feed into his body and DOESN'T HE KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF HIMSELF. HOW THE FUCK DID HE SURVIVES ALL THESE YEARS ON HIS OWN.

izuku smiles down at his phone even though katsuki is blasting him and everything he choose to be, but HE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT ALL MEANS. it's kinda adorable so when katsuki get into a slow rant about food group and healthy life choices, izuku cuts in:

me: oh btw im pregnant :)

he didn't get any get any respond from katsuki for the next five mins so during that time izuku makes fresh cup of juice to drink while katsuki works to settle down his panic. when he comes back fifteen mins later, it's to a series of angry keymash and texts.

kacchan: a;sjdasdf

kacchan: as;dlifucccck

kacchan: fuck fuck fuck

kacchan: are you serious?!

kacchan: DONT FUCKING JOKE WIHT ME DEKU

kacchan: i'm coming over right now

kacchan: you better be sitting down

kacchan: don't fucking move even an inch

kacchan: YOU HEAR ME

me: ok

izuku sits there peacefully, enjoying his cup of juice as he waits for katsuki's arrival. one of his hand rests over his stomach carefully & though he hadn't taken any test or get his bloodwork done, he knows, instinctively & intimately that there is a life growing inside of him.

it's all very silly and unproven since there's no concrete evidence to support any of it, but maybe it's his omega instinct, maybe it's his experience as a carrier who brought five children into this world, or maybe it's just wishful thinking on his part, but he knows and this is a truth that won’t be brought down.

izuku takes his job v seriously bc people's happiness hinged on his ability to give them a child they earnestly had wished for so he of course he would want to be pregnant as soon as possible, but--izuku looks down at his stomach, this time even more so he wants it to be real.

he wants to be the one to fulfilled katsuki's earnest wish and give him the child he desired. it's as much a part of his job, his duty, but also something he selfishly wants for himself. this baby, this child will be his only connection to katsuki once his job his completed. they'll part ways after this--no more late night phone calls, morning texts, and silly anecdotes they exchange to each other everyday bc izuku is unlikely to ever see him again. their worlds are just too far apart, like the two planets stuck in orbit but never meeting but at least with this child, izuku knows there is always a piece of him w/ katsuki always. so more than anything, this child will be his gift to katsuki.

he picks up his phone & sends katsuki a text.

me: if you dont mind, could you pick up a pregnancy test just to be sure?

izuku knows himself & his body, but he wants to be 110% sure for katsuki's sake. he doesn't want to get katsuki's hope up only to crush it later. katsuki's respond back is quick and telling.

kacchan: will three do?

kacchan: do you need anything else?

kacchan: i'll get them

izuku pauses, frowning hard as he looks down at his phone.

me: please don't text and drive

me: also, try stay below the speed limits

me: i dont want you to die before you see your child.

this time it takes longer to get a respond back.

kacchan: dont fucking talk to me about the speed laws kacchan: im not a reckless idiot

kacchan: my entire job description is to uphold the law so degenerates dont fucking run amok

kacchan: ... im not driving right now

izuku's brows furrow in thought before a smile cracks across his face.

me: kacchan... did you pull over to the side just to yell at me?

me: that's so terribly cautious and cute of you :3c

me: you're already on your way to becoming a great dad.

kacchan: FUCK YOU!!!!!!

Izuku laughs, light and so tinged with joy that it feels so strange to him to be this happy about something silly as this.

me: not a chance but thanks.

me: dont forget to buy my pregnancy test and i dont need anything else. just come here as soon as possible afterward

and he leaves it that. katsuki doesnt text him back anymore, leaving izuku to wait for his arrival with anticipation. he should get up and clean the apartment so it's presentable at least to katsuki. he hadn't had a guest in a while so this would get a good change but katsuki's warning still loop in his head. getting up to clean the apartment would constitute moving around and izuku is barely into his first trimester so, it's not like he's straining his body or anything. katsuki is just being an overbearing anxious new father.

izuku had seen that before in his past clients, who constantly fret over izuku's health but they're not THE GROUND ZERO and he has the nagging suspicious that he doesn't want to test katsuki's thinning patience with him. it's fun to tease him like this but he knows his limit. so izuku continues to sit there & waits, playing w/ his phone as he scrolls through the hero news site to check any interesting updates. izuku may have long let go of his dream but he can't disconnect from it completely. it's how he stay in the loop w/o actually being a part of it.

izuku's eyes widen as he spots a tweet on the #groundzero tag on twitter that sits atop of all others: "no jokes, guys i think i just a saw #groundzero stormed into my store and headed toward the omega’s hygiene care aisle. he bought a bunch of stuff before heading out.”

it already got a several thousands likes and retweets, with a flood of comments that ranged from "what?? sounds fake lol" or "okay, who would have guess gz would be the one to secretly keeping an omega on the side" and others are filled with more confusion and disbelief.

izuku makes a face. his contract binds him to confidentially and assurance that his identity remains quiet. he never had any problem with his identity being exposed w/ any of previous clients but then again he never had such a famous client before. this--is going to be a headache. he chews down on his lower lip in thought as he shuts down his phone. he's going to have to remind katsuki to be more careful next time lest they figure out what katsuki is up to... and who izuku is to him. not his friend, not his sweetheart, not his omega but his surrogate.

just as izuku ponders about doing damage control, there is a series of loud insistent knocks on his apartment door. izuku blinks and hurriedly to the door w/o any thought who is on the other side bc somehow he knows it got to be *him*.

he opens to door to katsuki's scowling face.

"i told you to not fucking move," katsuki scolds, and pushes his way inside w/o any invite, carefully moving izuku to the side like izuku is made of glass which make izuku annoyed right away but also painfully fond in that . he's an overprotective idiot but he's trying and that's--*something*.

"how else would i let you in then," izuku retorts, rolling his eyes as he leads katsuki into apartment. "im only couple of weeks pregnant at most and you're already asking for miracles."

katsuki scoffs but doesn't argue as he hands izuku a full plastic bag. "okay, start peeing."

"I--" Izuku opens the bag and looks inside, staring down at the pregnancy tests stuffed to the rim of the small bag, all eleven boxes of them, "I dont have enough pee for this."

katsuki frowns. "drink a lot of water then," he suggests.

Izuku shoots him a glare. "that's not funny," he snaps.

katsuki's frowns deepen. "i'm not being funny," he says.

Izuku sighs and just digs his hand into the bag to grab a handful of the boxes. "i'll do only two so dont even." he throws the rest of the bag at katsuki and heads toward the bathroom.

it horrifyingly takes them all 30mins to be done w/ the tests bc katsuki v loudly insisted that he should do more than two, kept on banging on the bathroom door to let him know that. izuku gritted his teeth and took three more and really DID RAN OUT OF PEE AFTER THE FIFTH ONE.

the wait for the test results which only take a mins or two is ramped up by katsuki anxiously pacing back and forth in front of izuku until izuku grabs him by the sleeve of his shirt and drags him down to the sit next to him in the couch. "it'll be okay," he assures katsuki.

katsuki scowls and brushes off his touch, but he seems to breathe a little easier after that. the first three tests gives them a positive, the fourth is a negative, and the fifth is a positive. izuku frowns at the result. he knows in his heart that is w/o a doubt pregnant and the majority of the results support that but, he casts a nervous glance katsuki whose face is seemingly troubled, that's probably not enough for katsuki who spend a load of money to afford izuku's time, commitment, and body. Izuku is expensive but so is katsuki’s time and investment.

he definitely wants more than a dubious result that isn't 100% guarantee that izuku's pregnant and even if izuku tells him that he is truly pregnant bc izuku knows his own body, that may not go well either. "we can get the bloodwork done tomorrow to check for sure," izuku tries to assures him. Sometimes science speak louder than a parental instinct.

katsuki stares at him, eyes so intently focus on izuku that he feels like's a butterfly pinned under katsuki's gaze. abruptly, he reaches a hand out and grabs Izuku's own, giving it a quick and purposeful squeeze. "Move in with me," he says, sounding so grave and serious.

izuku gets up from his seat. "Do you want something to drink?" he asks, already heading toward the kitchen. "suddenly, im parched."

"did you hear what i just said?!" katsuki demands, trailing after him like a yapping puppy on his heels. "And sit the fuck down! let me get it."

abruptly, izuku stops and turns around to face katsuki with a glower on his face. "im just pregnant and not an invalid," he snaps, annoyance prickling at him. he had been doing this longer than katsuki could even imagine. "And i can get the drinks myself in my *own* home thank you." katsuki's eyes widen slightly at the sharp tone izuku had quickly adapted and heaves a sigh, carding a hand through his hair in frustration like izuku is the one being purposely difficult here. "I--fuck--" He frowns, face scrunches as he search for his next words. izuku waits it out, patient and silence against the inner turmoil that must now be swirling inside of katsuki.

katsuki's gaze drops to the floor, hands balling at his side. his breathing even out as he grimaces. "sorry," he finally settles on with a quiet mumble.

Izuku steps back in surprise. shock, really. "w--wait can repeat that again because i just thought i heard you apologized without any prompting."

katsuki flushes, ducking his head. "shut the fuck up. im not going to repeat myself," he rebukes, but the damage had been done.

Despite the years tempering his recklessness out he can't help wanting to poke the hornet's nest. "i honestly didn't think sorry was in your vocabulary, kacchan," he teases, grinning.

katsuki flinches back as though struck, surprising izuku once more. the words were said in jest, meant to ease katsuki into a laugh or close to it at least but something like pained flickers across Katsuki's face that immediately izuku wants to take it all back, but katsuki's expression had already closed up.

Izuku's heart hurt, thinking that he'd lost him. he'd pushed too hard. they're aren't friends, barely acquaintances really. just a client-employee dynamic that izuku should have been careful of. he always know where to toe the line of the boundaries of his job and with his client, but--they were doing so well that he'd hoped. been so hopeful because it had almost feels like they were sort of friends again.

izuku and katsuki had always orbit each other's world but childish pride, anger, and superiority had torn them apart and izuku was pushed out of Katsuki’s life. now that they're older, izuku is no longer that child blindingly infatuated with this remarkable person before him. he knows what he's capable of and katsuki had certainly earned his place at the top of the world but he won't be cowed either. so it's fine if katsuki doesn't want to fall back into a some kind of make shift friendship with him. it's fine if he just want to think izuku is just a walking incubator for his child. izuku will survive. He had survive this long without katsuki ‘s looming shadow after all.

katsuki hunches over as he grits his teeth. "fuck."

izuku blinks.

"i'm not that shitty fucked up kid anymore," katsuki nearly growl out, pinning izuku with a look of full intent. "I'm," he swallows, hesitant, wary, "i'm trying to be a better person, a friend, a son, and most importantly a father now that we have a spawn coming our way."

Izuku's heart quickens at the 'we' usage even though it probably means nothing. nothing at all. katsuki was only just opening himself to him. this is something that startling new and truly welcoming experience for katsuki and izuku shouldn't mistake it for anything else. he can't be too greedy. so he steps forward, wanting to reach out and touch katsuki to affirm of his existence, but he doesn't. not when katsuki is like an exposed wire right now--twitchy, nervous, and just a little shy of imploding from carving himself open for izuku to see all his true feelings and motives.

izuku smiles.

"If i didn't think you were a good person then i wouldn't have entrusted this child,” he touches his still flat stomach, knowing life is stirring underneath his palm, "with you." katsuki truly had grown up. he'll be a good father, izuku muses but it's a bittersweet feeling. "i still want my independence though," he continues. "i've done this many times before so you can stop treating me like i'm going to break if you breath the wrong way. thousands and millions of omegas and women have been doing this a lot longer than me and they're fine. im fine, so breathe."

katsuki's presses his lip together into a grim line. "I know that," he shakes his head, "but you dont have to this alone. i'll want to be there with you every step of the way even if it mean you need someone to run to the grocery store for some shitty midnight craving. I want to be the first person you think about when you need any kind of assistance not because you're weak or helpless but because you just need someone, so let me be that person for you," he finishes, looking on in pained after spouting such sweet sentiments.

it makes izuku want to laugh, but he doesn't think that would be welcoming right now because katsuki still got his pride after all. "I'll think about it," he acquiesce, heart warming several hundred degrees as though he's standing under the direct sunlight of bakugou katsuki.

katsuki grimaces, clearly unhappy with izuku's non-answer but he relents anyway with a long heave. "ok, ok, i can deal with that," he says like the words alone was hard enough to swallow, "but if you change your mind at any moment just let fucking know!"

Oh, no, izuku thinks helplessly. he wants to give katsuki a treat for being so annoyingly overbearing but considerate in his own clumsy ways. "well, if you behave yourself, i might even consider taking you with me to my OBGYN doc this thursday," he says casually with a shrug.

Katsuki scowls, but he stands up straighter. "I'll--" he looks away, flushed with an earnest yearning spread across his face, "be good, okay?"

Izuku quietly tucks a smile between his pressed lips before it break through even though this is terrible for his weak, weak heart.

#bakudeku #not!fic #surrogate au #hi SORRY im back now #i got distracted by uh reading some stuff so i didn't keep up with my post QQ

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mollydollydreams · 3 years

Text

Im avin a thought ere and I wanna try make it words

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

I find the whole "slut but only for him" thing kinda weird. Not in a way that I think it's inherently wrong or people shouldnt do/want that, I think everyone should do what they're comfortable with and for some people that's what's it. But I do think it's worth examining why we want certain things in romantic and sexual relationships and this is one that sometimes strikes me as a little off.

Like historically women havent been allowed to enjoy sex or anything lest they be labelled a slut which is of course inherently ~bad~. We have the whole madonna/whore thing where men are supposed to be horny all the time and want to be sexual with 'whores' but they also need a 'madonna' to be their wife and homemaker. So if a woman displays any indication that she might actually want male attention or enjoy sex at all, she's automatically placed in the whore category and therefore an outcast and not marriage material. You gotta stay a virgin til marriage and all that.

🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡

The way I see it, "slut but only for him" is just the current iteration of that same thing. It's men realising they shot themselves in the foot with that binary and that they could actually have a wife who also loves sex, and women realising 1) any man may end up looking elsewhere if his sexual needs arent met or his fantasies are offered elsewhere, even one who appears to be faithful and good otherwise and says hes looking for that "pure" woman; and 2) there's now a socially acceptable way to (more) openly enjoy sex and not be outcast for it.

But in the end you're still having to hold yourself to this one man's standards, ie your (potential/future/current) husband. You're still basically "saving yourself til marriage" or whatever. You still arent allowed to admit you have a past, or if any of it was enjoyable. You still have to like...keep yourself hidden away from other men in case it looks like you might enjoy sex or anything vaguely sexual somewhere else. You're not allowed to say where you learned your tricks or if you still talk to any of your exes or any of that.

💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛

Idk just people have pasts and currents and just as much as a woman should be allowed to enjoy sex with a committed partner, she should also be allowed to just be a slut. In the past a woman was branded Un-Respectable if she admitted to wanting sex at all, now it's just the point at which you get that brand is different. Like how we can still be shamed when someone else shares consensual nude photos and videos.

The number of times I've been talking to someone and I can feel their perception of me shift as soon as there's any indication I might like sex and not be totally ashamed of it. Whether it's disdain and judging me a bad person, or (a man) trying to hook up with me and no longer seeing me as anything but a sex object. As if I'm not the same person they were just talking to a minute ago about something else. And suddenly whether they'll continue to talk to me or not is wholly dependent on whether they're trying to fuck me, but either way they've stopped treating me like a person.

💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚

It's one of the reasons I generally refuse the idea of monogamy (though that's not the only way to do it). I feel like a man telling me to only be a slut for him is still trying to own me and my sexuality in the same way he would be if he expected me to be "pure" and whatever. He's asking me to allow him to become complacent and stop trying, because he already has me. I once read somewhere that often men tend to take on occasional/irregular tasks that can be started and completed - eg fixing a broken shelf - and women tend to have more maintenance focused tasks that need to be done regularly - eg washing dishes. I feel like this applies to relationships a lot as well.

I don't want to promise my best sluttiness to a man who then thinks he has me and that's that. It's not a gift or reward that I give; nor is it something anyone can take. It's something he can coax out of me and inspire, if that makes sense. It has to be coaxed and inspired each time, and I go with that purposefully or not at all. A situation where the expectation is that I'm "a slut but only for him" feels like expectations on my behalf but not on his. Like I'm the shelf he fixed once and not the dishes that need regular attention.

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

I think I got sidetracked in there somewhere but my point was...something about accepting that people are whole human beings regardless of gender. And that in the case of "slut but only for him" it often comes off to me like just another way of being Kept, with no acknowledgement of what should be done in order to keep someone in that way. And then that goes into the tenets of bdsm and such and...maybe I'll just stop here before I ramble any further

(but standard disclaimer that I made a lot of generalisations and I'm not saying it applies to everyone blah blah notallmen etc)

#mine #text #uncooked ramblings

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keith-is-not-an-emo · 5 years

Note

which fics are you reading atm if you don’t mind sharing? ty!

Oh boy anon, oh boy.

You don’t know what you’ve done.

There will be E rated fics but they won’t solely be smut fics or too extreme.

edit: it seems like you can’t access the post from your dashboard so you have to be on my blog to see it *sighs* good job tumblr, like always.

star-crossed by realfakedoors (or anything they write, you’ll be seeing a lot of that here)

They said, once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a peaceful and prosperous kingdom, rich in romance and tradition. They said the Prince would host a ball, and choose his spouse, and they would live happily ever after.Well, they lied.

–

Keith is a Prince, and Lance lives with his shitty extended family. Neither of them are very happy, and when they meet, they’re surprised to have so much in common. Strangers, to friends, and then, well…

Meanwhile, Hunk is a sweetheart, Pidge is an iconic asexual, Shiro is a supportive Knight Dad™, Allura isn’t here for anyone’s crap, and there’s some political shit going on that forces them all together.

okay so how do i say it? it might be fave kl fic atm. this is my dirty laundry, my on thin ice. i love eveeery thing about it. i literally drop anything im doing if i see it updated. Also the last chapter? got me Shook.

also i KNOW about that big E rating there but the smut is in only one chap and i think the author marked it so it’s totally complementary and doesn’t add anything to the story so don’t worry.

breakfast on the moon by DairyFarmer (also very very recommended author!!)

Future Prom King, student body president, and all around hottie Lance McClain is abducted from his home in Arizona in 1997.

He is found decades later in the clearance section of an Earth paraphernalia store by the Paladins of Voltron.

another one of my big faves atm. everyone is very attentive of lance which is *clenches fist and wipes tear* very good. also it screams future langst and i cant wait :) (im kind of a langst hoe sorry not sorry)

let’s play pretend and hope it comes true by fevered_dreams

The Kingdom of Altea was quickly heading towards ruin. At least, it had been until the Royal Family’s eldest daughter had been born as an alpha. The people had rejoiced at her birth, and there was hope yet for a new ruler and a future secured. Even the fact that the second Royal Child had been born a beta couldn’t dampen their spirits.

Except Lance was not an beta. He was just an omega, trying his best to keep the charade going with a set of spells, pills, and all the tinctures he could brew because being an omega was dangerous. Being an omega made him something to be had, a rusted tool of barter worth less than scraps in return, and Altea couldn’t afford to let him go.

But, if Lance’s luck would have it, Prince Keith of the Blade wouldn’t mind being lied to too much.

okay okay in my defence, this one STILL doesn’t have smut. only kinda steamy make-out sessions. also don’t let the a/b/o scare you, there is talk about the dynamics but not so much in the sexual way, u’kno?

anything by BleuSarcelle, but if i have to chose one, let’s go with Of Pink Freckles and Green Moles

Lance now can see the boy’s face and he can only stare at the pretty color in the boy’s eyes before he’s suddenly being squished by two hands.

“Papa!” the boy shouts happily back at the adult that makes his way other them hurriedly. The boy hardly notices, still too fixed on squeezing Lance’s cheeks for a second longer before he giggles. “Papa, ugly!”

“Keith, no! Oh my god -”

“Ugly,” the boy repeats obliviously, patting Lance’s cheeks with a proud gleam in his eyes. “Ooh-gly!”

Lance doesn’t know what that word means but for some reason, it makes him cry harder.

[Or the one where Keith and Lance meet when they are two and three years old respectively and spend their entire childhood going through charity contests. Lance says they are rivals, Keith only hears ‘best friends’.]

super cute G kidfic.

Ground Control to Major Tom by yourfavoritetsundre

A year after Keith and Lance have a big falling out, Lance is…well, he’s not missing. He’s fine. He’s just not telling anyone where he is. Keith decides maybe the best way to apologize for being an absolute monster is to track him down.

Following Lance’s path of self-discovery, Keith starts to remember all the things about Lance he had buried years before. Because of the war, because of the Blade, because of Allura. And he starts to realize that maybe he’s to blame for more than he thought.

Meanwhile, Curtis just wants to plan his quiznacking wedding.

post-s8 fic

Written in Sand by MuseofWriting

Lance wakes up in a hospital on Earth to discover he has been missing for four months, with no memory of Voltron or the Galra. Drawn inexplicably to the desert where they found him, he discovers a hut full of research and notes that may provide the key to his missing memories. With secrets and conspiracies surrounding him, and the Garrison potentially hiding far more than he could ever have imagined, Lance grows to trust the notes in the desert - but he may not believe the person who claims he wrote them.

this one has been around for a while (a year to be precise) and i thinks its pretty aknowledged in the fandom but *shrugs*

until we get there by starlightment

Sometimes his mind is cruel. He’ll wake in the dead of night, drowning in his sweat, choking on his tears. He’ll clutch at old bedsheets until his knuckles fade to white. He’ll shiver in the darkness, and the light blue marks beneath his eyes will start to burn, and his lungs will heave, aching for a breath that just isn’t there.

And sometimes Keith comes to visit.

Those are the best days, Lance thinks.

Those are the days when it’s easiest to breathe.

—

Or: Lance loses himself a little bit, but Keith is there to help him find it again.

post-s8 fic. i think i dont even need to present they author since they’re better know for writing something blue (i heard wonders abt it but havent found the chance to read it yet). also i cant fucking wait for their new fic like im vibrating here on my seat bc i LOVEEEE the trope of jock keith / nerd/prep lance dont judge me

sunflower by xintong (uuh i think i dont have to introduce this author either lmao)

On the morning of their first summer back on Earth, Lance receives a gift of sunflowers. A confession, a rejection, and the passage of time, all leading to the one person who’s always been there for him.

another post-s8 fic because honestly i needed healing at that time okay. super soft and cute and uuughhhh i cant deal

Pretty Ob(li)vious by msmooseberry

Lance loves make-up and being pretty while wearing it. Unfortunately, even in the world where Earth becomes one of the main centres of intergalactic communication and home to many races, his hobbies are still largely frowned upon. He never wanted other cadets at the Galaxy Garrison to find out, especially not his half-Galra crush, but that is exactly what happens. Lance prepares for the hate or ridicule at best, but the reaction he gets is something else entirely. Who knew Galra viewed lilac sparkly lips as a betrothal symbol?

keith finding lance the most beautiful being ever? uuh yeah? gimme that shit

Chestnut And Onyx by MilkTeaMiku (great author too!)

If his eyes weren’t deceiving him, Keith looked a little flushed. He crossed his arms over his chest, wings all puffed up and ruffled like he was preening. “I didn’t know you were that flexible,” he said. And then he looked angry, and his wings puffed up even more, and he stormed away. -Lance thinks his wings aren’t all that pretty, but Keith has other ideas. If only Lance knew.

langst wing-fic. what could i ask more for?

you’re lucky that’s what i like by zenstrike

Lance rescues a hamster from certain doom.

or, Lance has Keith wrapped around his little finger and doesn’t even realize it.

just. take the whole fucking thing. just take it

aaand these are the ones that appear on my feed that have been updated recently since most of them aren’t finished (sowwy). the bad thing about reading a lot of fics and having bad memory is that i already forgot half of my fave fics, probably, lmao.

#klance #fic rec #mod nayo #Anonymous

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studiobeebo · 6 years

Text

Slowly/Surely

I FINALLY FUCKING WROTE SOMETHING FOR TETSUTETSU AND TSUKIKO!! theyre lowkey my favs so idk why this took so long jgjhg. it might get a second part but i havent decided yet oh well. but ye its super cliche and self indulgent of my love for them but hope someone enjoys anyways jgjhg

This was something Monoma would surely be ashamed of and honestly, Tetsutetsu wasn’t feeling too hot about this either.

It seemed he was on a roll of being pathetic, starting with being too much of a wuss to even introduce himself to the cute girl he’d practically been dreaming about ever since he noticed her cheering him on during the sports festival despite not even knowing him. It took Kirishima noticing how his words would trail off and his eyes would latch onto Tsukiko whenever she walked by to figure out that he had a thing for her, but Tetsu couldn’t tell if Kirishima just happening to be best friends with her was a good thing or a bad thing. Even after Kirishima had practically forced him to eat lunch with him and his friends ‘just this once so he could meet Kiko’, he still wasn’t all that sure about how forward Kirishima was about it. Hell, he practically had to punch him in the face while he sat with them to keep him from blurting out that Tetsu had been silently pining over his horned friend for weeks.

Despite the struggles of Kirishima having a big mouth, it was actually nice to finally meet the girl he’d been thinking about and god was she just as awesome as he imagined she would be. She was bright as the sun and sweet as honey, plus she had to be one of the cutest girls he had ever seen and her small stature just made him want to pick her up and hug her. Yeah, he was a tad bit lovestruck, and no matter how loud the side of his brain that was saying ‘Gross! Man up and get rid of all these mushy thoughts!’ got, the side that was absolutely smitten with this girl he hardly knew was so much louder.

Still, he bided his time, telling himself he was just waiting for the right time and place to start talking to her, but that never happened. Perfect opportunity after perfect opportunity to speak with her was placed out before him, yet he could never bring himself to take those first steps. All it took was the sound of her cheerful voice yelling a happy ‘Morning Tetsutetsu!’ from across the hall when he’d see her and his heart was already a wreck, seeming to have sealed his lips, maybe to keep him from saying something stupid, and instead send an awkward and pretty lame wave her way before she was off. He was starting to get sick of himself, to be completely honest, and that was the reason he found himself awkwardly lingering around the classroom entrance to class 1-C.

While his focus may or may not have been on Tsukiko the day he had eaten lunch with Kirishima and all his friends, he did talk to everyone else and take note of a few things, one of those things being that Tsukiko and the American girl ‘Maile’ seemed to be pretty close. They weren’t nearly as close as the other, more aggressive and slightly threatening American seemed to be with Maile, but he could tell by their vibrant chatter that they got along pretty well. Even outside of class when he would see some other 1-C or 1-A students, he noticed that if Tsukiko wasn’t with Kirishima, she was usually with Maile. So naturally instead of, you know, just starting a conversation with the lighthearted girl herself, he decided his best course of action was to ask Maile about her instead. As a few students began to trickle into the classroom that morning, he was starting to realize how weird this was because of the odd looks he was given for just waiting outside a classroom that wasn’t his own, but he was happy to finally catch sight of that blonde hair that stood out pretty well. Unfortunately, however, he barely had a chance to open his mouth before he was shoved to the side by someone he hadn’t even seen beforehand.

“Get lost b-list loser.” An annoyed voice rang out only for him to look down and realize it was the less pleasant ‘other American’, who’s name he had forgotten, as she moved past him into the classroom.

“Sorry, her alarm went off early and she couldn't sleep so now she’s extra grumpy..” A kinder, more familiar voice reached him and he was happy to look up to see an apologetic face.

“That’s okay, she’s kinda...always like that, right?” He questioned, honestly not knowing much about the girl other than what Kirishima had told him.

“Yuup, give or take. It just depends. Were you looking for Mr. Yamada?” She asked, moving off to the side so she wasn’t in the way of the other people trying to get into the classroom and watching as he followed suit, noting the odd blush that bloomed on his cheeks that definitely didn’t match the weirdly determined and serious look on his face.

“I was actually looking for you!” He somewhat yelled, as if he were currently physically forcing the words to leave his lips as he continued. “Er, I guess I was going to ask you about something.”

“Something?” She questioned, finding this encounter to be becoming weird and weirder since she’d only ever really talked to him once or twice, so she couldn’t think of anything he would have to ask. “Go ahead I guess.”

For a moment he seemed to hesitate as she sat patiently waiting for his response only for him to lean down a bit and speak in a tone that she was guessing was meant to be a whisper, but it really wasn’t. “I was going to ask you about, uh, Tsukiko. About the kinds of things she likes and...stuff..” He faltered, trailing off as he realized he didn’t really know exactly what he was asking for. Maybe it was dumb to ask, but he just felt like if he knew what to say or what to talk about when speaking to Tsukiko, then maybe he could actually work up a conversation with her without getting too nervous.

Maile hummed, not even thinking about the implications of his question at first, but as she went to ask why he didn’t just ask her himself, the puzzle of a blushing face, hushed voice, and heartfelt determination that stood before her suddenly made sense. It was ironic considering how Kiko could have easily been his biggest fangirl in the school without even knowing him and here he was not even knowing just how often she would gush about a boy she had only met once, so it was hard for her not to laugh. Still, seeing the look of embarrassment grow on his face made her realize he was probably already nervous enough and laughing at him definitely wouldn’t help as she simply shook her head and smiled.

“I guess I could help you out a bit. Though it’s probably gonna take longer than the amount of time you have to stand in front of our classroom before she gets here.”

As if on cue, the sound of the rather loud conversation shared between Kirishima and Tsukiko could be heard from the other end of the hallway. The first thing Tetsu thought was that he would have killed to have a connection with Tsukiko like Kirishima had, he made it seem so easy after all, but Maile was right about his bad timing. e got the first step of his ‘plan’ out of the way though, now all that was left was the hard, or harder, part.

“Right! I guess we could talk at lunch!” He said, a more genuine smile that wasn’t as nervous lighting up his face as he gave her a thumbs up.

“Sure, sounds good to me. Talk to you later then!” She responded, returning the thumbs up before making her way into the classroom and to her seat, somewhat ignoring the rude questioning of Mira asking what ‘the lame version of Kirishima’ wanted.

While it wasn’t much of a conversation, he had to admit he did feel a bit better about the whole situation and had hopes that maybe this would help settle his thoughts and emotions. That was, until he turned around to head to his own class only to run right into the girl in question.

“Oh hey Tetsutetsu! Sorry ‘bout that, what’s up?” She asked, that same sweet smile gracing her lips as she took a step back to make some space between the two before her face got too hot.

“I was..I had to talk to Kirishima about something!” He blurted out, stating the first name that stupidly popped into his head and regretting it only seconds later.

“Oh! Well he’s..in Class 1-A, this is 1-C.” She spoke politely, trying not to make him think she was treating him like an idiot, she had just assumed he knew what class Kirishima was in by now.

“Right, I..forgot. About the classes I mean. Like where they are. Er, I mean where- where Kirishima’s classroom is...but I remember now, so..” He sputtered out, doing a perfectly horrible job of covering for himself, but the small laugh his words earned from Tsukiko made it somewhat worth it.

“Ohh, okay! I guess I’ll see you later then, have a good rest of your day though!” She said, giving him one last smile before finally moving past him and letting the giddy smile on her face grow to its full potential once she was out of his view.

Okay, so his meeting with Maile really hadn’t helped much with settling his emotions, judging by how hot his face now felt. Still, he was now on square one, which was one square ahead of where he was before, so all that was left was to keep moving, maybe slowly, but surely forward until there were no squares left to step on.

#mha #mha oc #my oc #tsukiko kojima #tetsutetsu tetsutetsu #tetsukiko

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thedapperrabbit · 4 years

Text

She-Ra Rewatch: season 3 and onwards through season 4, and boatloads of Introspection time!

So Ive been rewatching She-Ra with my partner, because sharing Entrapdak is caring. I could probably squee on about that for a century or more (because eeee, sharing things i love with people i love AND THEY EVEN PAY ATTENTION TO THE THINGS AND REMEMBER THEM!)...but ill spare you, kind internet strangers who for some reason find my thoughts mildly interesting enough to be reading this. This is going to be a lot. Like, a LOT. A lot especially from a stranger that youve probably only seen a notification from due to me sticking a heart on your content or for reblogging something lovely youve made in pictures or words. I dont think anything is going to be violently trigger-y because im not always great at judging that stuff and also ive yet to feel quite comfy enough to be fully open-posting specifics about my own past trauma, other than a vague allusion to self-harm and distant-ish unspecified abuse aaaand the usual childhood garbage truck of assholes....but i suppose you could possibly draw some darker potential conclusions from the content im focused on. Also, my ADHD makes it incredibly hard to keep to a straight and non-branching narrative so...ramble-y bits and expressions of brain frustration ahoy. Either way...you are forewarned, just in case. Sorry in advance, this is going to be a small booklet by the time Im done explaining, and thinking, and then attempting to stick words to abstract feels which sometimes im great at, and then others i fucking suck at...but at least this is all written and not me trying to say this to any of your faces! Thats....a mercy all of its own. Haa... Anyway, while rewatching with my partner, I realized just how much more painful parts of it are to sit through now...they were the first time, and each time since, but NOW having spent a while mulling over the series as a whole a bunch, and reading a lot of other peoples writings on here and finding myself largely in agreement with most Entrapdak fan’s assessment of things, I just....feel like all the air is ripped out of me during some moments, watching with keener insight. And despite thinking i had myself reasonably well figured out by my age, its all also made me further consider a few things about myself as well. Particularly my notable internalized fury response to chunks of it which have been consistent through all my viewings of SPOP. With Hordak at least, its way easier to understand my reactions. For me at least. Maybe not so much for the people around me. And, shittier due to intensity and subject matter, but still easier in the long run because...the broken bits in me that he resonates with are fresher and sharper and still more recent, like within the last ten years, and thus more towards the front shelves in my head, compared to things that resonate with Entrapta, which are all old, lifelong dull aches at this point. I feel like nothing i can point to is fully sufficient to fully express my feels involving Hordak. But, maybe the best representative moment is with the crying i do every damn time I see his face looking up at Prime just after he glimmer and catra were beamed up...because ive seen that face in the mirror. I HAVE MADE THAT FACE. That same. Goddamn. Face. I may not have gotten a jab to the back of the neck directly from the person I made it at...but they often seemed to silently goad me to harm myself in an attempt to jolt my brain out of getting stuck in re-looping through what theyd just done/said to me. Likewise, much of his interactions with Entrapta are very...very weirdly familiar in feeling, but in a good way. Watching the stuff with Hordak hurts because fuck me if it isnt frequently like watching myself back in 2008ish to 2013, which was the duration of the worst parts of that particular circle of hell i parked my ass in. So...that makes sense. Hes so well written in those moments, it occasionally gave me PTSD flashbacks (still does a little, but now im prepared and braced for it and can shrug it back off....thanks, lifetime of therapy and years of studying abnormal psychology! Still totally not an expert, just very passionate...just, as a disclaimer). Entrapta though...Entrapta is a different story. Mostly, I see Entrapta and in her free expressions of delight and joy and her bouncy enthusiasm I am reminded of a younger, less discouraged me in some ways, and in others, a “me” I could have been, but...well, extremely early-onset anxiety and depression made me insanely self-conscious super-super early on...not that i was great at hiding or...i guess the term people seem comfy with is “masking”? Which was a huge problem, or so it was in the 80s when far less was understood of such things. Id do so for a bit and then would forget to, in a way (because id forget long enough to go and trust again reflexively) and would get badly bullied and would squish everything down until id feel a crumb of safety again, and then almost instantly ADHD would pop that mask right the rest of the way off aaand it would start all over again. Ad nauseam until my teen years, where the depression sort of “fixed” that, and made it much easier to destroy my desire to share much of myself freely at all, save for with one or two people, and to a less deep extent a broader circle of nerd friends. Course, then i hit 30 and ran out of the majority of fucks I used to give. Or I became so damaged and salted with anger that parts of me dont grow any fucks anymore? Either way, plowshares to swords, WHEEEE!) And, maybe thats where this time while watching, I started to really think back to all that, and to how i see Entrapta treated by the other princesses, or really just in general except by Hordak...and why it burns my biscuits so badly. Every time I see someone roll their eyes at Entrapta’s beautiful unbridled enthusiasm or try to make it seem distasteful or at least weird and unwanted and uncomfortable for them but then dont even bother to try coming to terms with why they feel that way... or how they seem to feel free to grab and manhandle her without her consent, or the way they try to lessen her contributions because shes non-normative? Like its the fucking least she can do to make up for being weird in their space (...okay, that might just be the anger kicking in..but i dont feel like its an entirely innacurate assessment, is it?) All of that...seeing it inflicted upon someone, It feels like someones punched me right in the damn sternum, but because its a hurt that im so desensitized to, it seems to have a much different effect than the sharp, violent crushing pain that i feel when I relate to Hordak a little too well for comfort. Again, i could go on, but its nothing more eloquent people on here havent already spoken volumes on. And my first gut reaction is always “I dont understand! why is that their reaction to her?! it doesnt seem logical at all, i dont seem to be able to parse it correctly, how is this acceptable? I HOPE SHE IMMOLATES YOU ALL.”. Which...I suppose isnt entirely usual for me (the silent wishing that people be immolated, I mean...i blame my past years of working in retail. And devouring too much Warhammer 40k contentl). (oh gods...and this is going to be the most clusterfucky part cause i can feel my meds kicking in and thats gonna be hard to keep coherence on but i gotta get this all out of my head or ill forget it or get too scared of you fucking BRILLIANT insightful smart people on here and then ill continue to live scared and regretful that i never said..anything, and just sat here like “noticeme, entrapdak sempais!” Ehhn...which is to say, if this is a garbage dump from here down, dont worry, when i wake up ill fix it...but hopefully itll at least make a tiny bit of sense ) But I realized something...something I hadnt ever rememberd much about due to the shitty neuronormative (apology if thats wrong term) behaviors continuing over years and years but in less and less directly aggressive ways as i grew older and was more prone to losing my shit in , (and likely because I got excessively lucky and managed through...uhhh...agonizing determination? Sheer stubbornness? Alleviatory rebalancing of universal karma? fuck if i know --to curate a surprisingly supportive circle of other castoffs and misanthropes.) That was exactly how people used to treat me. OKAY THISLL BE EDITED LATER to add in the rest of what i was gonna say...im...too full of Ambien sleep meds and damn write it anymore...and im aing trouble separating realigty and dream...an i k apawing at the kybord...not safe Lov yous for reading this far. Il fix it later, swears.

#should i tag this?#im not sure if i like it #berres #psyhcology of pop culture chraracters #psychology of the writer/author

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bronzeflower · 7 years

Text

Who The Fuck Writes A Ten-Page Rant?????

Also on ao3

-----

Chapter 10: Romantic Advice And The Greatest Rap Battle In History

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

CG: HEY, DAVE. CG: I TRIED TO TROLL YOU YESTERDAY, BUT IT SAID YOU WERE IDLE. CG: ARE YOU HERE NOW?

TG: you bet your bottom dollar im here TG: sorry for not answering yesterday btw TG: got distracted by a bunch of other people pestering and trolling me

CG: IT’S FINE. CG: WE ALL GET BOMBARDED BY OTHERS AT SOME POINT OR ANOTHER. CG: WHO DID YOU TALK TO?

TG: some of my friends who you also apparently know or knew TG: i learned a lot of shit yesterday TG: namely that all of my friends know who you are TG: jade knows who you are TG: john knows who you are TG: terezi knows who you are but that was kind of expected but i did not expect that you were friends with her since fucking kindergarten TG: and then also aradia apparently was friends with you in middle school????

CG: WHAT? CG: YOU TALKED TO ARADIA? CG: GEEZ, I HAVEN'T TALKED TO HER IN AGES. CG: HAS SHE DIED YET?

TG: not that i know of TG: as far as i know she is as nice and cheerful as ever

CG: CHEERFUL? CG: CLEARLY WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE SAME ARADIA.

TG: so you arent talking about aradia megido here

CG: I AM, BUT CHEERFUL IS PROBABLY THE LAST WORD I WOULD USE TO DESCRIBE HER. CG: SHE WAS ALWAYS KIND OF CREEPY, AND SHE ACTED DEAD HALF THE TIME. CG: SHE ALSO DID A BUNCH OF CRAZY SHIT AS IF SHE COULDN'T DIE. CG: IT WAS, FRANKLY, EXTREMLY CONCERNING.

TG: that doesnt sound like the ara i know at all TG: except for the crazy shit part TG: she still does crazy shit TG: the ara i know is super fucking cheerful and happy TG: wait when you say she acted dead what do you mean

CG: I MEAN SHE ACTED LIKE EVERYTHING WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN. CG: IT WAS HONESTLY SUPER CREEPY. CG: THE ONLY TIME I REMEMBER THAT SHE SHOWED SOME EMOTION WAS WHEN EQUIUS TRIED TO ASK HER OUT. CG: TO BE FAIR, HE DIDN'T EXACTLY DO IT IN THE BEST WAY. CG: HE KIND OF DESERVED TO GET BEAT UP.

TG: holy shit TG: i dont know who the fuck equius is but what was the damage

CG: HE HAD A BROKEN BONE OR TWO, AND HE ALSO HAD TWO BLACK EYES. CG: WHICH WAS REALLY FUCKING IMPRESSIVE SINCE HE WAS SUPER FUCKING BUFF AND KNEW MARTIAL ARTS.

TG: can a middle school child be buff

CG: YES. APPARANTLY. CG: AND, AS MUCH AS NEPETA THOUGHT THE PAIRING WAS CUTE, SHE WAS ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE TO ADMIT THAT THE WAY EQUIUS ASKED ARADIA OUT WAS CREEPY.

TG: how did he even ask her out

CG: IT'S A MEMORY I PREFER TO KEEP REPRESSED.

TG: that bad

CG: YES. CG: IT WAS HORRIBLE TO WATCH, AND THEN ARADIA GOT SUSPENDED FOR AN AMOUNT OF TIME.

TG: she did it at school???

CG: SHE DID. CG: SHE ALSO DIDN'T OFFER ANY MERCY. CG: THE ONLY REASON THAT SHE STOPPED BEATING UP EQUIUS IS BECAUSE A TEACHER MANAGED TO PRY HER OFF HIM.

TG: jesus christ TG: i wasnt even sure that aradia was capable of being angry TG: she was clearly a very different kind of person when she knew you

CG: CLEARLY.

TG: also i dont know who nepeta is either

CG: SHE WAS EQUIUS'S MOIRAIL. CG: SHE STILL IS, AS FAR AS I KNOW. CG: I TALK TO HER SEMI-OFTEN. CG: I SHOULD PROBABLY TALK TO HER MORE.

TG: how many of your friends from middle school do you still even know and talk to

CG: WELL, I STILL TALK TO NEPETA, KANAYA, TEREZI, SOLLUX, AND ERIDAN. CG: SOMETIMES I HAVE THE DISPLEASURE OF TALKING TO EQUIUS. CG: GAMZEE STILL CONTACTS ME SOMETIMES, BUT I TRY TO AVOID TALKING WITH HIM BECAUSE OF THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN THE PAST. CG: I'VE BARELY HEARD ABOUT VRISKA SINCE SHE WENT TO JAIL FOR SOMETHING. CG: I CAN'T, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, REMEMBER FOR WHAT, BUT I THINK IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FOR STEALING SOMETHING. CG: AND THEN I DON'T REALLY TALK TO FEFERI, TAVROS, OR ARADIA ANYMORE. CG: I THINK THAT'S BASICALLY EVERYONE I WAS FRIENDS WITH IN MIDDLE SCHOOL.

TG: holy shit thats a shit ton of people TG: when i was in middle school i was only friends with john jade and rose TG: and rose was my fucking twin and john and jade lived miles and miles away from me TG: and you still talk to a bunch of them TG: even if i dont know who most of them are but will probably find out eventually TG: i think john once dated a girl named vriska TG: dont know if it is the same one

CG: WAS SHE WEIRDLY OBSESSED WITH SPIDERS AND THE NUMBER EIGHT?

TG: she was actually

CG: THEN IT WAS THE SAME ONE I KNEW.

TG: shit TG: john still has lingering effects of her influence TG: like typing out eight characters when drawing words out

CG: WELL, SHE WASN'T DATING JOHN WHEN I MET HIM, SO SHE MUST HAVE GOTTEN OUT OF JAIL.

TG: well i guess that development is settled TG: i apparently know a fair amount of the people you knew TG: who would have guessed

CG: PROBABLY ANYONE WHO KNEW BOTH OF US CG: ALSO, COULD I ASK YOU FOR ARADIA'S TROLLHANDLE? CG: I WAS BEING SERIOUS WHEN I SAID I HADN'T TALKED TO HER IN AGES. CG: AND I DON'T KNOW IF SHE STILL HAS THE SAME TROLLHANDLE.

TG: sure thing dude TG: her trollhandle is apocalypsearisen

CG: I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S STILL THE SAME. CG: I COULD HAVE CONTACTED HER AT ANY FUCKING TIME.

TG: i wouldnt worry about it that much TG: you probably just didnt want to risk contacting someone super weird who you didnt actually know anything about

CG: I GUESS, BUT STILL.

TG: besides it is super hard to get a hold of her at all so i only really ever talk to her like once every few months TG: she does all this archeology shit so half the time she is in a place with no internet

CG: OH. CG: I GUESS THAT MAKES SENSE. CG: ARCHEOLOGY IS PRETTY COOL THOUGH.

TG: yeah she gets to lead expeditions and shit now its pretty fucking awesome TG: going around licking shit to see if something is a rock or a bone

CG: WHY THE FLYING FUCK WOULD YOU GO AROUND LICKING RANDOM THINGS TO SEE IF IT IS A ROCK OR A BONE?

TG: because if it is a bone then your tongue will stick TG: thats how you know its not going to be useless if you shove it into a museum

CG: THAT'S REALLY WEIRD.

TG: you havent even heard about licking some thousand or something year old honey to see if it was still good TG: spoilers TG: it was because honey never spoils

CG: THAT SOUNDS LIKE BULLSHIT.

TG: no man its one hundred percent true TG: complete and absolute fact

CG: I'M STILL GOING TO CALL BULLSHIT.

TG: dont say i didnt warn ya TG: one day youre going to be arguing with someone and then youll both look it up on wikipedia to see whos right TG: and low and behold you were wrong TG: you will have to live with that humiliation for the rest of your life

CG: I THINK I'LL GET OVER IT.

TG: wow okay

CG: ANYWAY, I'M GLAD ARADIA IS DOING SOMETHING THAT SHE PRESUMABLY ENJOYS WITH HER LIFE. CG: SHE DOES ENJOY HER JOB, RIGHT?

TG: hell yeah she does TG: every time i contact her we trade stories about things that have happened in the past few months TG: sometimes really dumb shit happens that we tell to our other friends TG: while others are closely guarded secrets that we only tell one another and they never see the light of day

CG: WHAT KIND OF SECRETS?

TG: secret secrets TG: the most secrety kind of secrets you could ever conceivably have and share with another living thing that has the capability to tell others your secret TG: except that you trust them enough not to tell anybody about it

CG: ARE YOU SURE YOU ONLY TALK TO HER ONCE EVERY FEW MONTHS?

TG: yeah i would like to talk to her more but she is a busy person and so am i TG: our schedules dont always line up TG: particularly because of her going to places where she doesnt have internet and is therefore unable to contact anybody

CG: THAT SOUNDS PRETTY SHITTY. CG: I CAN'T IMAGINE NOT TALKING TO KANAYA FOR MONTHS AT A TIME.

TG: its a system that works just fine for aradia and i TG: it would be nice to see her in person every now and then tho

CG: WAIT, I HAVE A QUESTION. CG: HOWEVER, IT MAY BE KIND OF PERSONAL, SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER IT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO.

TG: ill answer depending on the question so go ahead and shoot

CG: ARE YOU MOIRAILS WITH ARADIA? CG: BECAUSE A LOT OF THE STUFF YOU DESCRIBED TALKING TO HER ABOUT SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING YOU WOULD ONLY EVER TELL YOUR MOIRAIL.

TG: oh um TG: moirail is like the intimate best friend right TG: like pale and shit

CG: YES. THAT IS THE QUADRANT I AM TALKING ABOUT.

TG: ... TG: i actually have no idea

CG: OKAY, SO IF YOU TWO AREN'T OFFICIAL MOIRAILS YET, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT HER?

TG: shit man i dont know TG: i just kind of think that shes a cool person who i would prefer to hang out with more TG: but like i know that her job is important to her

CG: YES?

TG: i dont know its just like TG: it would be nice to hear more from her TG: just to know that shes alive and doing well and safe and shit TG: you know

CG: YES, I DO KNOW. CG: BECAUSE I HAVE A MOIRAIL, SO I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE FEELING RIGHT HERE.

TG: oh TG: huh TG: i feel like my previous definition is an intimate friend was kind of correct then TG: but like also kind of not TG: im not exactly sure how serious this kind of relationship is though

CG: IT JUST DEPENDS ON WHO YOU DECIDE TO BE MOIRAILS WITH. CG: FOR SOME PEOPLE, IT'S A VERY SERIOUS COMMITMENT, BUT, FOR OTHERS, IT'S MORE CASUAL. CG: SOME EVEN WANT TO HAVE AN OPEN RELATIONSHIP, WHICH IS MORE COMMON WITH HUMANS, BUT WHATEVER. CG: REALLY, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY TALK TO ARADIA ABOUT THIS AND TELL HER HOW YOU FEEL. CG: IF THE TWO OF YOU HAVE BEEN SHARING SECRETS LIKE YOU SAID YOU WERE, THEN SHE PROBABLY FEELS THE SAME WAY. CG: ALTHOUGH, THE RELATIONSHIP MAY BE DIFFICULT TO MAINTAIN BECAUSE OF DISTANCE. CG: ON THE OTHER HAND, YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH HER HASN'T BEEN DIMINISHED FROM TIME AND DISTANCE, SO IT MIGHT HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO TURN INTO A STRONG MOIRALLEGIANCE.

TG: i think im going to think on it for a bit longer TG: but thanks anyway for the relationship advice

CG: OF COURSE. CG: ROMANCE IS MY FORTE.

TG: speaking of romance though TG: talk to me about your novel TG: it sounds pretty interesting from what little i have heard about it TG: and based on the amount of writing i have read from you its really good TG: so you should totally yell at the top of your lungs about it TG: shout your passions to the world and if anyone gives you shit about it punch them

CG: I DO THAT ANYWAYS. CG: I HAVE PUNCHED MULTIPLE PEOPLE. CG: THERE IS REALLY NO NEED TO ENCOURAGE IT.

TG: thats the spirit TG: so novel time TG: lay out your outline of novel in amazing detail for me TG: or whatever amount you feel comfortable with TG: really there isnt any pressure or anything

CG: FINE, IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE SO INSISTENT. CG: THE BASIC SETTING OF MY NOVEL IS THAT TWO INDIVIDUALS MEET WHILE IN COLLEGE. CG: THEY MEET IN A TEA SHOP BECAUSE I CAN DO WHAT I WANT. CG: SO ANYWAY, WHEN THEY FIRST MEET, THEY FUCKING HATE EACH OTHER. CG: THEY'RE JUST COMPLETE OPPOSITES, BUT IT TURNS OUT THAT A BUNCH OF THEIR FRIENDS ARE FRIENDS WITH EACH OTHER, SO THEY END UP SPENDING MORE TIME TOGETHER. CG: THE MORE TIME THEY SPEND TOGETHER, THE MORE THEY REALIZE THAT THEY ACTUALLY LIKE THE OTHER PERSON. CG: WHICH EVENTUALLY LEADS TO THEM FALLING IN LOVE AND BEGINNING TO DATE.

TG: that sounds super interesting TG: infinitely better than that bullshit in romance novels where they fall in love with each other instantly and then spend most of the novel skirting around each other and beating around the bush TG: i havent actually read any romance novels but im pretty sure that is how it goes

CG: THAT'S PRETTY MUCH HOW IT GOES USUALLY. CG: AS MUCH AS A LOVE ROMANCE BOOKS AND MOVIES, THAT TROPE IS PRETTY FUCKING ANNOYING. CG: IT'S LIKE, JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER, YOU COMPLETE DOUCHNOZZLES! CG: OKAY, SO I MAY NOT BE THE BEST PERSON TO SAY THAT, BUT STILL! CG: I GOT BETTER! CG: I ASKED OUT KANAYA, AND IT WAS GREAT!

TG: really

CG: YES. CG: PEOPLE ALWAYS SEEM TO THINK THAT KANAYA WAS THE ONE WHO ASKED ME OUT, BUT THAT IS NOT THE CASE. CG: I GATHERED UP THE NERVE, AND I TOLD HER THAT I WAS PALE FOR HER. CG: YEAH, *SOME* PEOPLE MAY CALL MY APPROACH A TAD BIT EXTRA, BUT I WAS TRYING TO BE ROMANTIC, GODDAMNIT!

TG: how exactly are you supposed to be romantic with pale romance

CG: I GAVE HER SOME FLOWERS, WHICH CAN BE USED TO EXPRESS FEELINGS FOR ANY AND ALL THE QUADRANTS. CG: TYPICALLY PEOPLE JUST WRAP THE BOUQUET OF FLOWERS IN A COLORED WRAP THAT REPRESENTS THEIR FEELINGS. CG: RED FOR RED, PINK FOR PALE, BLACK FOR BLACK, AND GRAY FOR ASHEN. CG: I HAPPENED TO ALSO CHOOSE FLOWERS THAT WERE MEANINGFUL AS WELL, SO THE BOUQUET OF FLOWERS I GAVE KANAYA HAD YELLOW ROSES, AND IT ALSO HAD SOME CHRYSANTHEMUMS.

TG: what do those mean

CG: YELLOW ROSES MEAN FRIENDSHIP, WHILE CHRYSANTHEMUMS MEAN SUPPORT. CG: I TRIED TO AVOID ANY FLOWERS THAT MEANT LONGEVITY AND STUFF LIKE THAT BECAUSE THOSE CAN MAKE YOU LOOK DESPERATE. CG: YOU ONLY GIVE THOSE SORTS OF FLOWERS TO SOMEONE WHO'S BEEN YOUR MOIRAIL FOR A REALLY LONG TIME. CG: IT IS ALSO TRADITIONAL FOR THE BOUQUET OF FLOWERS TO BE TIED WITH TWO RIBBONS, ONE WITH YOUR BLOOD COLOR, AND THE OTHER WITH THE OTHER'S BLOOD COLOR. CG: SOME PEOPLE DO DIFFERENT KNOTS TO REPRESENT DIFFERENT THINGS, BUT I WON'T GET INTO THAT.

TG: this all sounds really fucking complicated

CG: YEAH, WELL THAT IS PROBABLY WHY PEOPLE CALLED ME EXTRA. CG: BUT, IN ADDITION TO THE FLOWERS, IT IS ROMANTIC TO BRING THE PALE ROMANTIC INTEREST THEIR COMFORT FOOD, ALONG WITH ONE OF THEIR FAVORITE MOVIES OR BOOKS. CG: IT SHOWS THAT YOU ALREADY KNOW THE PERSON FAIRLY WELL, AND WOULD LIKE TO PURSUE A PALE RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM. CG: SO, I BROUGHT KANAYA HER COMFORT FOOD AND HER FAVORITE BOOK.

TG: i assume she responded positively since you two are now moirails

CG: YES. CG: WE HAD A VERY ENJOYABLE DATE.

TG: are there any nuances about the other quadrants i should know about

CG: IT DEPENDS ON WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE WILLING TO DO A BLACK OR ASHEN RELATIONSHIP. CG: MOST PARTICIPATE IN THE MORE RED QUADRANTS, BUT MANY FEEL WEIRD ABOUT THE DARKER ONES. CG: TO BE FAIR, THEY ARE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO KEEP UP BECAUSE THEY REQUIRE A PROPER RIVALRY. CG: THE BASIC STIRRINGS OF BLACK FEELINGS IS A FEELING OF RESPECT FOR THE OTHER PERSON. CG: YOU CAN'T HAVE A PROPER RIVALRY IF YOU DON'T RESPECT THE OTHER PERSON AND RECOGNIZE THAT THEY HAVE GOOD TRAITS. CG: THE MORE MAJOR FEELINGS THAT TEND TO GET UP PLAYED ARE THE FEELINGS OF ANIMOSITY TOWARDS THE OTHER PERSON. CG: HOWEVER, PEOPLE SEEM TO FORGET THAT THE RESPECT PLAYS A HUGE PART IN BLACK ROMANCE. CG: THE ASHEN QUADRANT IS EVEN MORE DIFFICULT BECAUSE IT TAKES THE BLACK QUADRANT AND ADDS ANOTHER PERSON TO MAKE SURE THAT THE KISMESISES DON'T KILL EACH OTHER. CG: SOMETIMES, THE HAPPENINGS OF A PITCH RELATIONSHIP IS DEPENDENT ON HOW GOOD THE AUSPISTICE IS. CG: AND THERE ARE VERY FEW GOOD AUSPISTICES, MUCH LESS PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY INTERESTING IN BEING ONE. CG: KANAYA IS ONE OF THE FEW PEOPLE I KNOW WHO ACTUALLY HOLDS AN INTEREST IN BEING AN AUSPISTICE, SO SHE KNOWS MORE ABOUT IT.

TG: well thats a shit ton of information TG: i think i need my info a bit more spread out and a bit more simply worded TG: although it might just be because i have a hard time wrapping my mind around this black romance stuff TG: i think ill stick with the red quadrants thank you very much

CG: WELL, IF YOU EVER NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT QUADRANTS AND THE ROMANCE ASSOCIATED WITH EACH OF THEM, THEN I'M THE PERSON TO GO TO.

TG: i think i got that with the first word about quadrants that decided to waterfall out of your mouth

CG: THAT IS BECAUSE I AM SUPERIOR WHEN IT COMES TO KNOWLEDGE ABOUT QUADRANTS.

TG: yes you are TG: bow down to the great king of quadrants everybody TG: his greatness and might are too glorious to behold TG: youve got to fuckin look in the corner of your eyes to even begin to behold his beauty and glory TG: all hail the king of the quadrants

CG: FUCK YES. CG: BOW DOWN TO ME, PEASANTS, FOR I AM YOUR GOD. CG: QUIVER BEFORE MY MIGHT.

TG: they quiver before you my liege TG: they are fearful of the power you possess

CG: OKAY, THIS IS SOUNDING WAY TOO MUCH LIKE ONE OF NEPETA'S ROLEPLAYS, SO I'M GOING TO PUT A STOP TO IT HERE. CG: JUST, STOP.

TG: oh shit if nepeta does this kind of roleplay shit im going to need a way to contact her

CG: WHY THE FUCK WOULD I EVER WANT TO GIVE YOU THE MEANS TO TALK TO HER.

TG: because you want your friends to meet each other

CG: NOT REALLY. CG: ANYTIME THAT HAPPENS, THE TWO END UP GETTING ALONG INSUFFERABLY WELL, AND THEY END UP MAKING ME SUFFER.

TG: i guess ill just have to find another way to get her contact information

CG: GOOD FUCKING LUCK WITH THAT. CG: BUT SERIOUSLY, IF YOU END UP TALKING TO NEPETA, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO TALK TO EQUIUS AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER. CG: THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS EXTREMELY SERIOUS. CG: THE TWO ARE SO PALE FOR EACH OTHER IT'S ALMOST SICKENING. CG: YOU MIGHT END UP WITH A BROKEN HAND.

TG: what for talking to nepeta TG: that seems like a dick move

CG: NO, IT WON'T BE FOR TALKING TO NEPETA. CG: IT WILL JUST BE FOR MEETING HIM. CG: HE HAS A REALLY STRONG HANDSHAKE. CG: DO NOT USE YOUR DOMINATE HAND WHEN GIVING HIM A HANDSHAKE.

TG: ... TG: ill keep that in mind TG: btw i want to know something TG: has rose pestered you yet

CG: WHY WOULD SHE PESTER ME?

TG: so she hasnt TG: she found out it was going to be kanayas bday soon and she was freaking out about it TG: because she didnt know what to get kanaya TG: i told her to contact you since you are moirails with kanaya

CG: KANAYA WOULD BE OVERJOYED JUST BEING GIVEN A GIFT FROM ROSE. CG: I DON'T KNOW WHAT ROSE IS FREAKING OUT ABOUT.

TG: thats what i said TG: but yeah you should probably message her just to make sure she hasnt gone into solitude about it

CG: HAS SHE ACTUALLY GONE INTO SOLITUDE FOR THINGS LIKE THAT?

TG: no TG: she mostly goes into solitude near a book deadline TG: but still TG: it is a concern of mine

CG: ALRIGHT. CG: I'LL TRY TO TALK SOME SENSE INTO HER. CG: WHAT'S HER HANDLE?

TG: tentacletherapist

CG: I GUESS I'LL GO MESSAGE HER NOW. CG: I'LL TALK TO YOU LATER.

TG: see ya my dude

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

You begin to brainstorm ideas for possible videos for your channel in the future, and you kept this up for about an hour before someone started messaging you.

-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

GA: This Is Dave Correct GA: I Am Kanaya Just In Case You Did Not Recognize My Handle

TG: yep this is dave TG: whats up kanaya what do you need

GA: I Do Not Actually Need Anything From You GA: I Simply Wanted To Make Sure That I Had The Handle Right Before Contacting You In The Future GA: However I Would Not Be Adverse To A Conversation

TG: well lets see what could we possibly talk about TG: there are a shit ton of potential topics we could discuss TG: and yet my brain is coming up blank TG: despite all my swank this shit aint ready to bank TG: the topics at hand are inside the void TG: were reaching for them grabbing at them TG: but we miss more than a storm trooper droid TG: we pick up a topic and were like oh shit we grabbed it TG: only for it to slip out of our hands and end up cracking it

GA: Do You Happen To Partake In The Art Of Slam Poetry

TG: thats like the troll way of saying rap right TG: hell fucking yeah i do TG: do you want to do a rap battle with me

GA: I Do Not Do This Sort Of Thing Very Often But I Would Like To Accept Your Challenge GA: Would You Rather You Or I Go First

TG: if youre feeling up to it you can go first

GA: If You Insist GA: Here I Go GA: The World Was Created A Long Time Ago GA: And Yet It Has No Time For Your Parlor Tricks GA: All They Do Is Make Us Sick GA: The Stars Align And They Make Me Shine GA: Far Brighter Than The Sun That I Have Claimed As Mine GA: You Seem To Have The Belief That You Are Better Than I GA: But I Regret To Inform You That I Will Make You Cry

TG: holy shit that was great TG: but frankly i have to reiterate TG: my rhymes are slick and holding to a beat TG: theres not a lot of thinking that goes into what im bringing TG: theres no time to think no time to meet TG: just listen to the words here that i here am singing TG: youve got to have more than rhymes to kick my ass TG: and frankly based on that youre not gonna last TG: cause my beats are sick so sick in fact TG: that my old raps are practically some cool artifact

GA: That Youre Raps Are An Artifact You Have Correct GA: But I Have To Inform You That You Need To Double Check GA: What You Think It Means At Least GA: For I Believe They Were Thrown In The Garbage Yesterday GA: You Should Feel Horrid If That Is The Case GA: That Is Where They Were Meant To Be Anyway GA: Mine However Are The Hottest You Ever Will See GA: And If You Say Otherwise All Will Disagree

TG: my rhymes may be trash but theyre ironically shitty TG: just wait and see if you can reach my level of petty TG: my beats made of coal and with enough pressure and heat TG: my beats will be the most beautiful diamonds on the street TG: ill be forever engrained in the earth TG: youll be the one always waiting around for a rebirth

GA: Im Going To Have To Say I Agree Your Rhymes Are Shitty GA: Theyre Gritty And Im Pretty GA: And Im Worth More Than Being Just Petty GA: Youre Admitting That Your Trash GA: You Might As Well Be Ash GA: Ive Won Already So I Hope That You Are Ready GA: Your Diamonds Are Fake As Is Your Declaration GA: Just Pack Up Your Bags Youre Leaving The Station

TG: okay okay i yield TG: leaving the station now TG: didnt even pack my bags thats how roasted my ass got TG: your rhymes are too sick for me to handle TG: like holy shit where did you learn to rap like that

GA: I Dabble In The Art Of Slam Poetry And The Art Of Poetry Alike GA: Not As Often As I Would Like Though GA: Perhaps We Can Do This Again Another Time

TG: i will totally take you up on your offer TG: its been a while since ive had a worthy opponent TG: especially one that beat me into the ground so soundly

GA: I Will Continue Honing My Skills

TG: and ill do the same over here

GA: It Was Enjoyable Talking With You GA: Or In This Case Slamming With You GA: I Will Contact You In The Future

TG: wait hold on before you go TG: karkat mentioned a friend named nepeta and i want to get her contact info TG: do you have this information

GA: Her Trollhandle Is ArsenicCatnip GA: However I Do Not Know Why Karkat Would Withhold This Information From You

TG: i think he might have been worried how well we would get along

GA: I Still Do Not Understand GA: I Should Be Going Now GA: I Will Message You Again In The Future

-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

Well, you guess it’s time to message Nepeta for the first time.

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering arsenicCatnip [AC] --

TG: yo youre nepeta right TG: i heard about you from my friend karkat who is also your friend TG: i got your handle from kanaya tho because karkat refused TG: he said he didnt want to bring the powers that we have together TG: well i said fuck that and so here i am pestering you

AC: :33 < i am nepeta, but who are mew?

TG: oh shit TG: i guess i completely forgot to introduce my awesome self TG: im dave TG: nice to meet you

AC: :33 < its nice to m33t you too! AC: :33 < how did you and karcat meet? AC: :33 < he doesnt really talk to anyone outside his furiend group

TG: i met him at his work and i kinda rambled a shit ton like i always do TG: and i made him laugh and i gave him my chumhandle

AC: :33 < ! AC: :33 < you made him laugh? AC: :33 < i almost nefur hear him laugh beclaws he just wants to be all grumpy all the time

TG: it might of just been because he was at work and didnt feel like risking yelling at me TG: which he does all the time TG: anyway i heard you like roleplaying with people

AC: :33 < i do! AC: :33 < would mew like to rolepurrlay with me?

TG: hell yes

AC: :33 < i usually rolepurrlay as a cat AC: :33 < what would mew like to be?

TG: shit if were going to be doing animals and shit then i want to be a crow TG: crows are the shit TG: you can start if you want to

AC: :33 < *ac crouches behind some bushes, watching her unsuspecting prey*

TG: *tg stands there pecking at the ground or some shit*

AC: :33 < *when ac is sure the crow isnt suspecting it, she pounces!*

TG: *tg squawks as ac attacks him he is completely fucking oblivious to how this could have possibly happened*

AC: :33 < *ac successfurlly holds the crow in her claws, purrparing to eat her dinner*

TG: *tg begs that ac does not eat him over and over he shouts to not be eaten by her*

AC: :33 < *ac carefurlly considers not eating the crow* AC: :33 < *in the end, howefur, ac opens her maw and asks if the crow would like to watch a documentary about animals!*

TG: *tg stares in disbelief at his tactic of begging actually working* TG: *not wanting to give ac any reason to eat him he accepts her invitation* TG: *he says that he would love to*

AC: :33 < *ac says that this rolepurrlay was furry fun!*

TG: *tg says ditto and would like to do this again sometime*

AC: :33 < *ac agrees but must go now so she will troll you again in the furture*

-- arsenicCatnip [AC] ceased trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

Well, that was pretty fun. Soon enough, you both will be able to use your powers for evil. And by evil, you mean to annoy Karkat, at least a little bit. Maybe you could invite them both out at some point.

You hear the doorbell ring, and you go to the door to find a package at your doorstep. Sweet. More stuff to review for your channel. As if you didn’t have enough shit already.

You set up your recording stuff and start recording. You open the box in absolute silence and slowly pull out the merchandise. It’s a rug. A very, very soft rug.

“The first carpet industry was made in 1791 by a dude named William Sprague in Philadelphia. However, it isn’t the United States that make the best rugs. Eastern counties actually have the best carpets, like India. They make a hell of a lot of rugs. This rug isn’t from India though. It’s just a really soft rug. Look how soft that shit is. Softer than the nicest goddamned silk in the world.”

You rub the carpet against your face.

“Just be sure to take off all the tags so you can get the full sensory experience of the rug. Now, of course, I can’t just keep rubbing my face against this lovely carpet. I’ve got to put it on the floor where it can do what it’s supposed to do. Be a rug.”

You place the carpet on the floor and step on it. You wriggle around your toes.

“Still just as amazing on my feet as it was on my face. Though, you might not want it to rub your face against it once you’ve rubbed your feet on it. Unless you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not judging. But you might want to wash it.”

After a few more minutes of rambling on about the texture and color and other sensory stuff about the carpet before stopping the recording.

Time to edit the fuck out of this shit. After you find a place for the pink carpet you bought. It was way too nice to throw away, and pink is a great color.

#davekat #aradave #pale aradave #karkat vantas #dave strider #homestuck #kanaya maryam #nepeta leijon

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tanely · 5 years

Text

Being a cancer survivor is literally the weirdest life long thing a person goes through. You have it and the people who you already know either stop talking to you, become over affectionate (suddenly people are calling you best friend havent talked to you in a year but ok), are chill or just never will address it ever. And it’s like k do I talk about it or do I not. Cause that’s now super significant (not to mention long lasting. My mental health was already poor. Now it’s deff not better lol. But it’s all tied into a jumble with physical illness) And then you meet new people....but oh no when is it appropriate to share that info!? So your urge is to say it all the time because if you don’t you feel like your lying!? As if it’s something people need to know. And trust me I’ve given so many awkward inappropriate blurt outs And then you figure out that no one is entitled to your medical history but now every new relationship you have to determine the right place time and relationship status to tell them. Is it casual!? Off hand comment!? I’ve mastered the “vague unless asked” lmao I’ve had friends for years before I’ve just assumed they’ve known and they didn’t cause I just assume now you’ll figure it out (which tbh fits well for me. Just oh yeah that happened btw) And then when people discuss you it’s either in terms of “inspiration! Awe inspiring!!” Or “oh poor angel” like ok thanks for that extra pressure. Can’t just live my life as a regular person? No? Ok. Survivor angel becomes a persona people make for you. But when it comes to dating...........I found dating hard to begin with now I have an extra road block it feels like. It makes me super uncomfortable. It’s made me very unsure of intimacy. Anxiety already plays a role in my life now I have an anxiety of intimacy related to my physical health. Every potentional relationship is now weighted by “can they handle that personal information?” “How will they react?” “could they handle if it resurfaced?” “Would they still want to see me?” It’s exhausting like every potential relationship is placed on a balancing act of trying to figure out right time and right place it makes online dating so frustrating where small talk is not an option. I feel like I’m back to “HERES THIS INFO RIGHT NOW!! OK OR NO!?” And it’s just....I haven’t been truly interested in anyone for so long and now this guy at work I have a massive crush on. And I’m back to this shit....this crippling anxiety of when and where. On top of just even trying to communicate as a human being. So in my head that I can’t even get convos to last more then a minute. I’ve never been hard for conversation but I feel like I’m not succeeding with any basis of convo. The frustration is so real and infuriating. I constantly flip between “I must accept that love may not be realistic and that intimacy might not be right for me” and “GOD DAMN I WANT THIS” The mood swings are so real and intense I’m giving myself whip lash. Throw in anxiety and I’m like “omg it’s me I’m just awkward” and then my frustration “no he’s awkward!” It’s just a mess and I’m a mess and it’s hilarious people think I have my shit together. Like my ass is a dumpster fire that I’ve managed to hide with a curtain especially at work because I’ve mastered superficial convo without devulging personal shit But then certain people I lay all the personal shit on because if I didn’t I’d be screaming into a void alone. Then I’m back to guilt and anxiety. Because I’m not alone in the world and I hate dominating a convo with my own bs. So now I’m just....so conflicted where locking myself inside my room and never re-emerging feels like the best option but not realistic

#Personal

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we-johnnygonzalez-blog · 5 years

Text

What Happens When SEO and CRO Conflict?

Posted by willcritchlow

Much has been written and spoken about the interplay of SEO and CRO, and there are a lot of reasons why, in theory, both ought to be working towards a shared goal. Whether it's simple pragmatism of the business benefit of increasing total number of conversions, or higher-minded pursuits such as the ideal of Google seeking to reward the best user experiences, we have many things that should bring us together.

In practice, though, it’s rarely that simple or that unified. How much effort do the practitioners of each put in to ensure that they are working towards the true shared common goal of the greatest number of conversions?

In asking around, I've found that many SEOs do worry about their changes hurting conversion rates, but few actively mitigate that risk. Interestingly, my conversations with CRO experts show that they also often worry about SEOs’ work impacting negatively on conversion rates.

Neither side weights as highly the risks that conversion-oriented changes could hurt organic search performance, but our experiences show that both are real risks.

So how should we mitigate these risks? How should we work together?

But first, some evidence

There are certainly some SEO-centric changes that have a very low risk of having a negative impact on conversion rates for visitors from other channels. If you think about changing meta information, for example, much of that is invisible to users on the page—- maybe that is pure SEO:

And then on the flip side, there are clearly CRO changes that don’t have any impact on your organic search performance. Anything you do on non-indexed pages, for example, can’t change your rankings. Think about work done within a checkout process or within a login area. Google simply isn’t seeing those changes:

But everything else has a potential impact on both, and our experience has been showing us that the theoretical risk is absolutely real. We have definitely seen SEO changes that have changed conversion rates, and have experience of major CRO-centered changes that have had dramatic impacts on search performance (but more on that later). The point is, there’s a ton of stuff in the intersection of both SEO and CRO:

So throughout this post, I’ve talked about our experiences, and work we have done that has shown various impacts in different directions, from conversion rate-centric changes that change search performance and vice versa. How are we seeing all this?

Well, testing has been a central part of conversion rate work essentially since the field began, and we've been doing a lot of work in recent years on SEO A/B testing as well. At our recent London conference, we announced that we have been building out new features in our testing platform to enable what we are calling full funnel testing which looks simultaneously at the impact of a single change on conversion rates, and on search performance:

If you’re interested in the technical details of how we do the testing, you can read more about the setup of a full funnel test here. (Thanks to my colleagues Craig Bradford and Tom Anthony for concepts and diagrams that appear throughout this post).

But what I really want to talk about today is the mixed objectives of CRO and SEO, and what happens if you fail to look closely at the impact of both together. First: some pure CRO.

An example CRO scenario: The business impact of conversion rate testing

In the example that follows, we look at the impact on an example business of a series of conversion rate tests conducted throughout a year, and see the revenue uplift we might expect as a result of rolling out winning tests, and turning off null and negative ones. We compare the revenue we might achieve with the revenue we would have expected without testing. The example is a little simplified but it serves to prove our point.

We start on a high with a winning test in our first month:

After starting on a high, our example continues through a bad strong — a null test (no confident result in either direction) followed by three losers. We turn off each of these four so none of them have an actual impact on future months’ revenue:

Let’s continue something similar out through the end of the year. Over the course of this example year, we see 3 months with winning tests, and of course we only roll out those ones that come with uplifts:

By the end of this year, even though more tests have failed than have succeeded, you have proved some serious value to this small business, and have moved monthly revenue up significantly, taking annual revenue for the year up to over £1.1m (from a £900k starting point):

Is this the full picture, though?

What happens when we add in the impact on organic search performance of these changes we are rolling out, though? Well, let’s look at the same example financials with a couple more lines showing the SEO impact. That first positive CRO test? Negative for search performance:

If you weren’t testing the SEO impact, and only focused on the conversion uplift, you’d have rolled this one out. Carrying on, we see that the next (null) conversion rate test should have been rolled out because it was a win for search performance:

Continuing on through the rest of the year, we see that the actual picture (if we make decisions of whether or not to roll out changes based on the CRO testing) looks like this when we add in all the impacts:

So you remember how we thought we had turned an expected £900k of revenue into over £1.1m? Well, it turns out we've added less than £18k in reality and the revenue chart looks like the red line:

Let’s make some more sensible decisions, considering the SEO impact

Back to the beginning of the year once more, but this time, imagine that we actually tested both the conversion rate and search performance impact and rolled out our tests when they were net winners. This time we see that while a conversion-focused team would have rolled out the first test:

We would not:

Conversely, we would have rolled out the second test because it was a net positive even though the pure CRO view had it neutral / inconclusive:

When we zoom out on that approach to the full year, we see a very different picture to either of the previous views. By rolling out only the changes that are net positive considering their impact on search and conversion rate, we avoid some significant drops in performance, and get the chance to roll out a couple of additional uplifts that would have been missed by conversion rate changes alone:

The upshot being a +45% uplift for the year, ending the year with monthly revenue up 73%, avoiding the false hope of the pure conversion-centric view, and real business impact:

Now of course these are simplified examples, and in the real world we would need to look at impacts per channel and might consider rolling out tests that appeared not to be negative rather than waiting for statistical significance as positive. I asked CRO expert Stephen Pavlovich from conversion.com for his view on this and he said:

Most of the time, we want to see if making a change will improve performance. If we change our product page layout, will the order conversion rate increase? If we show more relevant product recommendations, will the Average Order Value go up? But it's also possible that we will run an AB test not to improve performance, but instead to minimize risk. Before we launch our website redesign, will it lower the order conversion rate? Before we put our prices up, what will the impact be on sales? In either case, there may be a desire to deploy the new variation — even if the AB test wasn't significant. If the business supports the website redesign, it can still be launched even without a significant impact on orders — it may have had significant financial and emotional investment from the business, be a better fit for the brand, or get better traction with partners (even if it doesn't move the needle in on-site conversion rate). Likewise, if the price increase didn't have a positive/negative effect on sales, it can still be launched.

Most importantly, we wouldn’t just throw away a winning SEO test that reduced conversion rate or a winning conversion rate test that negatively impacted search performance. Both of these tests would have come from underlying hypotheses, and by reaching significance, would have taught us something. We would take that knowledge and take it back as input into the next test in order to try to capture the good part without the associated downside.

All of those details, though, don’t change the underlying calculus that this is an important process, and one that I believe we are going to need to do more and more.

The future for effective, accountable SEO

There are two big reasons that I believe that the kind of approach I have outlined above is going to be increasingly important for the future of effective, accountable SEO:

1. We’re going to need to do more testing generally

I talked in a recent Whiteboard Friday about the surprising results we are seeing from testing, and the increasing need to test against the Google black box:

I don’t see this trend reversing any time soon. The more ML there is in the algorithm, and the more non-linear it all becomes, the less effective best practices will be, and the more common it will be to see surprising effects. My colleague Dom Woodman talked about this at our recent SearchLove London conference in his talk A Year of SEO Split Testing Changed How I Thought SEO Worked:

2. User signals are going to grow in importance

The trend towards Google using more and more real and implied user satisfaction and task completion metrics means that conversion-centric tests and hypotheses are going to have an increasing impact on search performance (if you haven’t yet read this fascinating CNBC article that goes behind the scenes on the search quality process at Google, I highly recommend it). Hopefully there will be an additional opportunity in the fact that theoretically the winning tests will sync up more and more — what’s good for users will actually be what’s good for search — but the methodology I’ve outlined above is the only way I can come up with to tell for sure.

I love talking about all of this, so if you have any questions, feel free to drop into the comments.

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carmineclock · 5 years

Text

> Once upon like a lifetime ago

Scratch 11/11/2018

And so a hush descends upon the city. A shared humbling sending all the dogs - and cats, back home to lick their wounds. You should feel glad for the quiet, it might mean you can finally get some sleep. But despite the wave of temporary peace, you feel unsettled. Theres something in the air. The smell of change, and you dont like it. Its partially your fault, of course. You should have crushed this particular seed of hate a long time ago. At first it seemed like the playings at a relationship, so you'd written it off. But things have progressed far beyond what you expected. How petty do you have to be to hold a grudge for so long. Ahem. Anyway, you have been preparing for the night with your favorite bow tie. The whole Nepeta, Fin, Trace 'thing' has been so volatile you'd really not wanted to go near it with a ten foot pole. As long as they did as their job. But now. You're pissed. A message was sent out to the three regarding Nepeta, inviting them into your office for a discussion. Despite your earlier invitations, this was more like a summons. So you set about preparing the tea, a glass for each of them, three chairs set meticulously in front of your desk for a nice friendly conversation. As an afterthought, you leave the door ajar, a little test to set the mood. That done, you wait.

Trace 11/11/2018

The summon was to be expected. Yet, you really hoped it would be long in coming. But no such luck. Well, fortunately a wheelchair seems to exist. That makes things much easier, even if the stairs are still... a challenge. But you all manage somehow and eventually you get Nepeta down to Scratch's office, where you just quietly push her inside.

Nepeta 11/11/2018

You had been expecting it too, yes. Or to put it more accurately: dreading it. Of course Scratch would eventually talk to you personally about this, you are not stupid. You are aware you only got off the hook so easily last time because of Snowman. Seems that you luck is running out. You are visibly nervous and uncomfortable on the way to his office, seeking out the hand of one your sharks at all times. But eventually you do reach the office and you are not foolish enough to face Scratch while holding hands like a silly little girls. You gulp and try to steel yourself for what's to come. Not like you have much of a choice.

Fin 11/11/2018

The first thing in your head is “i shouldn’t be here” and you really shouldn’t , for once you did nothing wrong but you are sort of worried about Nepeta and Trace because of course he will be worried about her so it’s a chain of people being worried for each other. ”It’s going to be fine, he will probably bark to you for the Droog shit, demand you to stop and be done with it” you shrug trying to diminish the importance of whatever will happen behind those doors. “I already got a bottle of wine waiting for us in the room after this if shit goes bad” You sigh loudly before stepping into the office.

Scratch 11/11/2018

You are sitting at your desk as they walk in, doing your best to look as calm and welcoming as possible. Tonight isnt just about punishment, its about improvement. Kicking someone while they're down rarely motivates, its about reshaping. Its what you'd hoped would happen under Snowman's tutelage. Not to say she did poorly, of course. She did her best. This is solely in the hands of the young troll, the potential she has that hopefully hasnt been thrown away. "Please, sit. You may move aside the chairs." For Nepetas wheelchair. As amusing a spectacle it would be to see Trace lift her and put her into the chair, or for Fin to try, better to just leave well enough alone. "I'm sure you know why you're here. Lets try not to draw this out with unnecessary drama, if it can be helped. Who would like to start."

Trace 11/11/2018

As soon as he gives permission, you go to work and move some of the chairs aside so you can push Nepeta inbetween them. "Start with what exactly?" you ask as you take a seat yourself. "How Droog can't leave his dirty fingers off her? First he kidnaps her for petty reasons, which - mind you - are mostly me, then back at the festival he can't help provoke her until someone finally makes him shut up, and not this." You gesture vaguely at Nepeta and the wheelchair. "A vicious backstabbing in a moment of mutual hardship and asssistance. He had a chance to end this and very much refused." Yeah, Nepeta can definitely speak for herself, but you know she's just as anxious about this as you, if not more. Plus, if Doc gets mad at anyone for talking back, you'd rather that one be yourself. "I know you're trying to tell us this needs to stop, but the thing is she never started any of this. So the question should rather be how you intend to keep this sadistic bastard away from us." Despite your words, your voice is fairly calm. Not much need to fake there, either, since the events have left you fairly tired and exhausted.

Nepeta 11/11/2018

It's a good thing that Trace is talking. You are not sure if you could, words were never your biggest talent. Where he has his way with them you usually prefer action... Which is exactly why you are here isn't it? You almost want to stop him, you raise your hand and open your mouth even, but nothing comes out. What do you even have to say? You just want this meeting to be over. "I'm...I'm sorry for all the trouble I have caused, Sir." It's not much. Your voice is far too quiet to really belong to you. You feel like a kid facing their mad parent, and in a way you are. Trace might be able to talk to Scratch like this but you? You are terrified of him. And you know did wrong.

Fin 11/11/2018

You take a seat and cross your arms over your chest, your entire body is in a position of bitch i will fight everything you say so you rather leave the talk to Trace, he is the one with the big words in this relationship. “Yeah because knowing that leech he won’t stop sucking until she’s dead” you add. “and it’s not fair we have to stand here and watch.”

Scratch 11/11/2018

You listen quietly as each takes their turn to speak, studying them as you sip your tea. Always so defensive right away. You havent accused them of anything yet. "To start off with, check your tone, Three." You shoot him an icy look. " I havent told you anything yet. In fact I would say I've been almost lenient in regards to this quarrel you have. All three of you. I've stayed well and truly out of the way because it was absolutely going to end up a mess. And here we are. Let me ask. Is there a good reason to kidnap? You cant justify amoral things based on your own code of ethics and expect others to adhere to them. So thats how it started. Nepeta was made his victim and you blamed yourself so you got involved. I assume Five was made to be involved just for being connected to her. The question isnt, actually, how am I going to keep him away. Because the answer to it is too simple. I cant. I may be a man of many talents, but Diamonds is outside my realm of influence. The question, similarly, is not what do I now do with a troublemakers and their grudges. The question that needs to be asked is actually, why did it ever get this far. Ah, see, now theres a far more interesting answer, dont you think?"

Trace 11/11/2018

"Why don't we invite him over so he can tell you? I thought I already explained as much. He's not letting off despite several warnings, and unfortunately the Crew's second-in-command isn't killed that easily, so here we are." You give Fin. Such. A look. What happened of acting like we're not out for blood. You sigh. "Fin is right. This isn't fair."

November 12, 2018

Nepeta 11/12/2018

It's funny, you aren't usually timid by any stretch of the imagination. But right now? Facing Scratch? You are not the fierce predator you want to be. You are reduced to nothing but a scared kitten under his cold stare. The fact that you are vulnerable physically and mentally right doesn't help one bit of course. Fin and Trace are so much louder than you but you do mumble an answer. "I..I lost my temper last time, sir. It won't happen again." The fact that you are apologizing despite the fact that you were already harshly punished by the loss of your legs doesn't even occur to you. You are just scared to get kicked out or worse.

Fin 11/12/2018

Trace’s look reminds of you the plan yourself set for the two. Damn. Well you can’t take those words back now, at least try to act like it’s not a big deal that you really think ain’t fair but you won’t do anything about it, so you look back at him and shrug then lean back on your table and nod at Nepeta's words. You really don't have much to add.

Scratch 11/12/2018

"I forget when the world was ever fair. I didnt realize we dealt in justice and fairness. Is it fair that a perfectly good warrior wastes her formative years on hate when she is brimming with potential? Is it fair that Diamonds started it and now wont finish it, preferring to play with the shattered pieces of what remains?" The sentence ends sharply,with more heat than you wanted. You sense yourself getting worked up and ease it back a bit. "No, its not. And as much as it hurts, life goes on." You're speaking more directly to Nepeta now, though you're still facing Trace. "You've made your cases. I want a word alone with Ms. Leijon."

Trace 11/12/2018

You grimace some at his response. While it is nice and somewhat rare to hear a compliment like that from him, especially for your beloved girlfriend, it's.. kinda bittersweet, considering the situation. There's more things you want to say, more questions you got for him, especially about what options there are for her now. What plans he got, if any. But you realize these are things you may be able to ask either of them afterwards, so you nod quietly and raise from your seat. You give Nepeta a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder in passing, then leave the room, where you will wait right next to the door.

Nepeta 11/12/2018

Was that...A compliment? You certainly did not expect that at all. Scolding, a punishment, getting thrown on the streets, sure, but a compliment? You don't exactly know what to make of it. You gulp when he asks Fin and Trace to leave. You really don't want to be alone with Scratch, but it's not like you have a choices. Trace's gestures is appreciated but can't exactly ease the anxiety you are dealing with now.

Fin 11/12/2018

Really was that all?. This makes you even more worried for whatever he gotta tell her in private, was he just trying not to make it look like a big deal and will lash out to her when you two are gone or are you just being dramatic as always. You sigh and get up but before you go you give a quick smooch to Nepeta’s cheek and a pat in the head then leave the room to join Trace outside. Time for the bouncy leg show as you wait.

Scratch 11/13/2018

The prey have gone, leaving only the preditors remaining. So you'd like to think, anyway. Once youre alone, the door closing sharply behind them, you stand. A slow movement, non aggresssive. Despite your distaste for cats, you know their behaviors. You move around your desk and take a seat in a vacated chair across from her. Eye level, face to face. "May I be frank, Ms. Leijon. I dont want this to come off as just another scolding. You've exceeded all expectations, and with the right guidence you could become something fierce. Thats what I wanted for you when Madam Snowman took you under her wing. And it makes me wonder why someone like you would want to waste so much energy on a grudge. Its clear you realize what you're doing is wrong, so why cant you move on. How much more are you going to let this revenge war take from you?" Its a genuine question. You hope your words come across as somewhat genuine. How you must look in her eyes to make her cower so.

Nepeta 11/13/2018

You don't think you've ever gotten this close to Scratch. It's a weird feeling, to have his attention all on you. Despite being a cat you feel more like a mouse. Trapped. At the mercy of a far bigger predator. It's funny, physically there's no question that you are stronger than him, perhaps even in your current state. Mentally though? And that's the kind of game you are playing here. With Scratch it always is, isn't it? You don't quite trust his words. You are used to far harsher words, not just from him. But to be told you have potential? That you are useful? You want to believe that's sincere. In a way you have to. It's hard to look him in the eyes though. "I know... I know this can't go on. I know this can't keep on escalating or it will destroy us..Me and Fin and Trace. I know that." You do. You had plenty of time to think about it in the past days. "But he wronged me. He hurt me, he used me to hurt them. And the he mocked me for my anger. Tried to play it off as some cute little game we play, tried to push me into some weird black situation." It's hard to hide your anger when you talk about him. Your face twists into and ugly scowl and your anxiety is almost forgotten. "I know it was wrong. I just wanted.. No I needed to show him that I'm not just his toy. I'm not going to play his shitty games anymore. I'm not going to just let him get away with it. I can't do that. I can't let him."

Scratch 11/13/2018

You listen in silence until she finishes. So much pain in her voice for someone so young. Diamonds is as much to blame as Nepeta is, of course. Such a waste of time and effort on a silly game. "I know. He wronged you, and the humiliation you felt being helpless at his hands was something you never want to feel again. And you tried to show him, and maybe sometimes you did, but he eggs you on. And you eat up his every words because your hate is blinding you. Of course you hate him. But let that push you to be better. Smarter. Look at your enemy and study their weaknesses. Look at your own limitations and strengths openly. Are you as strong as Diamonds now? No. But one day could you be?" You sit back in your chair, relaxed posture. Let her have a think on that. "As far as Droog is concerned, you are his toy. Because every little provokation gets a response. Something to stir the pot with. Is it fair that your honest emotion is used against you? No. But we learn. We grow. Every time you let that anger get the better of you,you give Droog everything he wants."

Nepeta 11/13/2018

That...all actually makes perfect sense. It's something to think about indeed. It's obvious you are doing just that by the way you knit your brows and chew on your lips. "You are right Sir. And I've been trying. I've been trying so damn hard to ignore him. Even when I met him at the festival, I tried to keep it low but then...He just had to show off his damn trophies. And I just lost it. I just..." You make a frustrated sound somewhere between a groan and a growl. "I want him dead. I want to be the one who ends him. That's my end goal, not...Not what has been happening lately. I know it's not the time to kill him yet. That's why I didn't, even when I could have. " You sigh. "I know I have to work on this. Channel my anger into something more useful. For myself, for them. It's been... It's been hard."

Scratch 11/13/2018

You're getting there. Slowly, you're unraveling this complicated web of emotion and hate, and laying it before you in neat, workable strands. Its been a while since you deigned to work one on one with someone, after the whole Itchy thing you'd been working on for years went up in smoke. It was always going to be volatile at best. "I do understand, you know. How hard it is. Learning to adapt in any environment can be difficult, but trying to adjust yourself in the midst of those two acting like you're infallable and that nothing is wrong. Getting contrasting validation for emotions you think you have no control over. And you're right. Nepeta, you cant control your emotions." Its a lesson you try to teach all your children. Not that she has suddenly joined those ranks, of course, but its worth her knowing. "You cant control your emotions, that is why they are emotions. They happen naturally, without warning or apology. You cant ignore Droog because to do so is to tell yourself that your emotions arent there, and we must never do that. We have to take agency over what we can control, which is our reaction to our emotions. Be honest with yourself. Accept that these emotions are there, and that you know theyre strong, and that they hurt, but that you can move forward even with the pain. Tell your heart that your brain hears and understands whats its going through."

You put a hand to your chest, where your heart would be, and sigh quietly. You cant bear to see youth wasted, thats the whole reason for this in the first place. Its why you take in kids and reshape them. They end up lost, otherwise. Like Nepeta. Hopefully its not too late for her. "Learn to control your reactions to your emotions, while still accepting theyre there and so powerful. Its okay to get angry, but if you let the anger consume you, you lose yourself. It becomes all you are, all you ever will be, and I speak personally when I say that is not something I want to happen. More importantly, though, nothing will stick it to Droog more than seeing his 'little toy' stay cool under his pressures for an explosion."

Nepeta 11/13/2018

He just has to keep making sense doesn't he? You listen to everything he says, the feeling of guilt clearly written on your face. He's right and you know it. You feel ashamed that you have to be told all of this but he is right. It takes a you a moment to reply. "I will... I will work on it, sir. " You don't quite want to admit out loud to Scratch that you think he is right abut Fin and Trace's role in this too. It's true, you have been fueling each others rage instead of calming each other down. That's not what Moirails are supposed to do and it just now starts to dawn on you. "I can't let Droog ruin us like that, I know that. He doesn't deserve that privilege. And in time... We will get our revenge. Good things come those who wait yes? " You hope that is what he wants to hear. Both because you suddenly feel like you care much more about his opinion and because you want to avoid possible punishment. You won't ever not want Droog dead but you know the Felt are going to be the winning team in this war. You have to believe that after all. The alternative isn't something you even want to spend a thought on.

Scratch 11/13/2018

She has the right idea, anyway. All of this emotional nonsense only matters if the person involved is willing to put in the effort to change. Its not enough to just know what you have to do, its having the strength and willpower go through with it. No matter how difficult. Now if you were her teacher...well, it depends on the pupil as well. Some just refuse to be taught. "And while we're waiting, we can plan. I know what you must think of me, Ms. Leijon. I dont make myself very easy to like, and I apologize if my men gave you the wrong idea about me. I am here to support the Felt, which you are very much a part of. I want you to be the best you can be, and I know how to help you become that. If you'll allow me, I can start you down the path that will lead to your future. And if you decide that future holds a Diamonds-based revenge, then so be it." You put up a hand at the end of your sentence, a little sharply, but mostly for effect. You want her to take her time with this one. "Don't give me your answer now. Consider everything I've said. Consider how you are right now, and what you want to be in the future. If you cant picture it, ask yourself why. Take the next few days to really think about my proposition. I may not be able to offer you everything you want, but I can give you anything you need. If you dont want my help, you have to find a way to show me you're serious about becoming a better version of yourself."

This is the turning point. You've set the line out after successfully detangling the scenario. At this point you're almost more mad at Trace and Fin for their roles in this. A girl is traumatized by a kidnapping to the point she has to spend her life on payback to cope with the pain and fear she felt, and these two idiots are sitting there encouraging her instead of trying to calm her rage. "Until you have an answer, you're temporarily shelved. You may continue to live in the mansion because my philosophy is to generally take pity on the differently abled,plus you match the carpets, but I wont have you going out into the field where your actions represent and threaten my entire business. I will not continue waste any more medical equipment or personnel, or time on this. No flashy punishments, just a cut off. I'd say your own actions have punished you far more than I ever could. And if you do manage to find a way to fix whats been done, consider it a gift not to be wasted."

Nepeta 11/13/2018

You open your mouth to protest the whole shelving thing but...You can't really protest that at all can you? He's right about everything. You are useless right now in any event, so it's not even a big difference. But your need to be useful is just so damn high it barely slips anyways. You swallow the protests down and answer. "Yes, sir. I have...I have a lot to think about." Mostly about what you think of Scratch and your relationship with Fin and Trace. You never expected to get out of this talk with some sort of? Respect? For Scratch budding in your mind. Or that you would begin to question how stable your pale relationship is. It really is quite a lot to process.

Scratch 11/13/2018

Good. You hope she will think about it, and not let the opinions of those around her sway her choices. This all could have gone far worse, so you're glad for that. Maybe she'll listen. Maybe she wont. But the offer has been handed across the table, nothing left to do but wait. "Yes, you do. Now, as far as those two are concerned, you may tell them as little or as much as you wish to. Just make sure whatever you bring to me as your answer is because of your choices, not theirs." That said, you pat her twice on the head, smile, and stand. Back around the desk you go, taking your seat for the continuation of the trial. "Alright, gentleman, you can come back in." You call to your door, knowing full well that theyve been standing outside the entire time. With ears pressed to the wall, no doubt.

Trace 11/13/2018

You didn't listen in, at least not on purpose, and they've talked fairly quiet most of the time (which is as much unsettling as it is relieving). But you trust Nepeta to tell you all that is important. (Though, you also know well Scratch can play with someone's mind and you worry about all the subtle things he may try put into her head.) Anyway, you give Fin a nod and open the door again and walk up to right behind Nepeta, eyes on Doc. "Anything else?"

November 14, 2018

Fin 11/14/2018

You would usually be the kind to even bring the glass to not miss a word but not right now. You figured that Nepeta would bitch all about it later and the sound of your bouncy leg on the floor was enough to keep you entertained for the time beings. You go in and stand next to Nepeta hand on her shoulder. Somehow it feels strange that the air is not filled with either fear or anger or any of the sort. Makes you regret not to have listened with more attention.

Scratch 11/14/2018

"Nepeta has been shelved. Until such a time as previously discussed between us, she will not partake in any field work. Along with that, until then, I am barring her from Felt resources in regards to any future problems with Droog or otherwise. And let me just say this plainly, as I'm sure you and I will be speaking privately soon, Trace. Shame on you. Shame on both of you. Choosing to care about your own emotions over whats best for you partner. And if you didnt know, or chose not to realize, then you're idiots. Dissmissed, all of you."

#logs #posts this here because I noticed I don't have this yet

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blog-optimisticcoffeestuden-blog · 6 years

Text

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