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thecollegefootballguy · 4 years

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2020 PAC-12 Coaching Power Rankings

Hello folks, it’s time to bust out the power rankings once again. I’ll be rating coaches against their peers conference by conference. Remember, with power rankings I weigh both recent and overall career success. I’ve adjusted my metrics a bit since last time so there might be more movement here than usual.

Let’s see where each man stands.

Check out last year’s rankings here.

The PAC-12 has spent the last few years in the doldrums, the conference went from being a consistently strong Power conference to being one of the worst. Basically the only thing keeping the PAC-12 from the bottom is the dreadful ACC, who still have a national title contender in Clemson. There’s nothing approaching that out West.

Making matters worse, the league lost some incredible talent in the past few months. The shocking retirement of Chris Petersen at Washington was a huge blow (he was the #2 coach in the rankings last year). Petersen was leading one of the hottest programs in the league and it could spell further disaster for a conference so depleted of talent. Mike Leach’s (#4) exit for the SEC means two of the top five coaches have departed from the PAC-12. Mel Tucker leaving for Colorado after one 5-7 year isn’t quite the same in terms of importance, but it’s not great that Western coaches can get poached by other conferences who can pay much better.

Honestly, I’m pretty pessimistic about what’s going on in coaching circles for the PAC-12. As a whole, I might rate the league dead last among P5s in terms of head coaching talent. There are flashes of brilliance here and there, but a lot of programs are spinning their wheels.

12. Jimmy Lake

First time head coach

Movement: N/A

Washington DC (ha) Jimmy Lake inherited the position upon the retirement of Chris Petersen. Lake has big shoes to fill, but the Huskies are a well oiled machine and should lead to a smooth transition.

11. Karl Dorrell

Overall Record: 35-27

Movement: N/A

Karl Dorrell makes a surprise jump back into the college game. The former UCLA head coach has spent most of the last decade bouncing around the NFL. As head man of the Bruins, he led a mostly mediocre team that had a breakout season in 2005 before reverting back to mediocrity. It feels like a pretty uninspired hire if I’m being honest, but Colorado had to scramble to find a new coach well after the coaching carousel had ended.

10. Jonathan Smith

Record at Oregon State: 7-17

Movement: Up 1 spot

Oregon State improved from 2-10 to 5-7 in Jonathan Smith’s second year. The rebuild in Corvallis is going a bit ahead of schedule if you ask me. I’m curious to see how much more OSU improves next season. I think a bowl is well within reach, especially if UW and WSU take a step or two back.

9. Nick Rolovich

Overall Record: 28-27

Movement: N/A

The third newbie to the PAC-12 is very familiar to West Coast football. Nick Rolovich spent the last four years rebuilding Hawaii football back to respectability. The Rainbow Warriors won the Mountain West’s West Division last season, a huge improvement from their place as a league bottom feeder before Rolovich came home. Now Rolovich is off to face a new challenge, and keep the ball rolling in Pullman after Mike Leach’s departure. Nobody has won in Pullman for an extended period of time, and there basically has never been two successful coaches at Wazzu in a row. Let’s see what happens.

8. Kevin Sumlin

Record at Arizona: 9-15 Overall Record: 95-58

Movement: Down 1 spot

You know, things could be going better for Kevin Sumlin and Arizona. It seemed like a strong hire, but the Wildcats really haven’t played any good football since Sumlin took over. He’d be lower on the list in other conferences, but with so much turnover in the PAC-12 and the strength of his tenures at Houston and A&M he kind of coasts along, only dropping one spot this year.

7. Herm Edwards

Record at Arizona: 15-11

Movement: Up 3 spots

Some things are going well in the state of Arizona. Herm Edwards has shocked more than a few people, myself included, with the job he’s done in Tempe so far. The Sun Devils finished 3rd in the PAC-12 South with wins over ranked Michigan State, Cal, and Oregon teams. The win over the Ducks drove the stake in the heart of Oregon’s Playoff hopes. It’ll be interesting to see if ASU can take the next step and seriously contend for the division.

6. Justin Wilcox

Record at California: 20-18

Movement: Up 2 spots

Something is brewing in Berkeley. The Cal Bears have been steadily improving for the past three seasons since Wilcox came to town. Most importantly, he brought the Axe back across the Bay for the first time in ten years, avenging loss after loss to Stanford. Things are looking up.

5. Chip Kelly

Record at UCLA: 7-17 Overall Record: 53-24

Movement: Up 1 spot

I don’t know man. Chip Kelly going up 1 spot despite two losing seasons speaks to a few things. First of all, his time at Oregon was going so well because it’s doing some heavy lifting here. Secondly, it’s that the PAC-12′s coaching is pretty depleted because going 7-17 over two years should put him much lower no matter what he’s done. Lastly, two coaches in the top four left and he only moved up one spot, so there is a bit of hilarious justice there. God damn he really did well at Oregon, look it up. I really wonder what’ll happen if he can turn things around at UCLA.

4. Clay Helton

Record at USC: 40-22 Division Championships: 2 (2015, 2017) Conference Championships: 1 (2017)

Movement: Up 1 spot

Most USC fans actively hate Helton and want him gone but he moves up a spot because Petersen and Leach left. For Helton’s part, the 8-5 record was tied for the third best in the PAC-12 last year, so hey, that’s something right?

3. Mario Cristobal

Record at Oregon: 21-7 Overall Record: 48-54 Division Championships: 1 (2019) Conference Championships: 1 (2019)

Movement: Up 6 spots

Ok now we’re getting to the seriously good coaches. Mario Cristobal’s Oregon stormed back to the top of the PAC-12 in 2019, winning the conference and the Rose Bowl. With Petersen’s retirement and USC and Stanford spinning their wheels, there is a lot of optimism in Eugene that the Ducks can really stake their claim atop the league for a long time.

2. Kyle Whittingham

Record at Washington: 131-64 Division Championships: 3 (2015, 2018, 2019) Conference Championships: 1 (2008)

Movement: Up 1 spot

Kyle Whittingham stands alone as the old man in the PAC-12. He’s spent 15 mostly successful years as the head man in Salt Lake City and it seems as though the Utes are in the middle of another period of strength. The past few years has seen Utah dominate the South Division, though they still haven’t been able to win the league outright. It doesn’t look like anything is gonna change anytime soon.

1. David Shaw

Record at Stanford: 86-34 Division Championships: 5 (2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017) Conference Championships: 3 (2012, 2013, 2015)

Movement: Same

David Shaw suffered his first losing season ever as a head coach in 2019. Yeah injuries played a part, but Stanford has seen a slight decline in quality for the previous few seasons. Shaw doesn’t fall in the rankings, but he was probably only saved by Petersen’s retirement from losing his spot on top. His considerable lead over the field is starting to shrink. I’m curious to see where things go from here.

#college football #Washington Huskies #Colorado Buffaloes #Oregon State Beavers #Washington State Cougars #Arizona Wildcats #Arizona State Sun Devils #California Golden Bears #UCLA Bruins #USC Trojans #Oregon Ducks #Utah Utes #Stanford Cardinal

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lemonaderaid · 6 years

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hufflepuff-rave, abuse, and the missing husband thing: from her ex friend’s point of view

this is about whole “abusive wife”/”missing husband” situation, and what i know about mel (dillon’s abuser and wife) through being her close friend for 5+ years. it’s a long post, so there’s your warning.

here’s another ample content warning for abuse, misgendering, gaslighting, and general...drama? i guess? here we go kiddos!

after this post, particularly with this reblog went pretty viral both on here and on facebook recently, i figured it was my time to step up along with my friend, @jackstoney , and personally come out in support of all of the abuse accusations that have been made against mel, as i was one of her closest friends for 5+ years.

as jack did in his post, i’m simply going to be referring to her as “mel” because i would prefer that she NOT get stalked, harassed, doxxed, etc. as i said, i used to be her friend, and thus i still do have some regard for her and her mom’s personal safety and privacy despite the fact that they’re bad people.

to make my stance on dillon himself quite clear from the outset, i was always fed really varying information about him from mel herself. as exhibited by her blog, if you go and search “dillon” and scroll back a bit far, you’ll see that she has wildly varying, black and white perspectives about him. that’s how it was when we talked, and that’s how she is about seemingly everyone; particularly her ex boyfriends. if you search “brayden” or “jackson” on her blog, you’ll get pretty similar posts. the point is that i don’t know what’s true or false about dillon’s life and personality, i just know the information she’s told me or that i’ve seen on her facebook or tumblr. as i said, we were friends for 5 years, and i knew her before she ever met dillon.

as jack explains pretty sufficiently in his post, which i linked above, mel has a very obsessive, very clingy and overbearing personality, and a high probability of mental illness associated with the drastic lengths she’ll go to to keep someone trapped in really any kind of relationship with her. THIS IS NOT INHERENTLY A BAD THING. i’m not a professional, and i won’t make an armchair diagnosis based on what i know about her, but i will say that she’s never mentioned to me anything about trying to improve and work beyond her numerous issues. (unlike how she is presently trying to pin a schizophrenia diagnosis on dillon after only speaking on the phone to a doctor herself, ONCE.)

i felt this way when i was friends with her, very much so. this sideblog of hers, particularly these three posts (1 , 2 , 3) are about me, and the fact that, while we were friends, i decided to do matching icons with my still-current boyfriend on facebook. this happened on a couple of occasions because we found neat looking icons and, since we were, yknow, partners, we figured it’d be cool to match for a couple weeks. as you can see by the posts i linked, mel didn’t like this. at all

here’s another sideblog of hers that she made for dillon to post about her...let’s just call it unhealthy obsession, as shown pretty well by this particular tag. WARNING: some very nsfw stuff is on here

here are a few texts i have from her to me talking about how, despite having NEVER ONCE spoken to my boyfriend and actively refusing to talk to him even though i said i’d like them to meet, she’s extremely “possessive” of me

little unimportant note: she refers to herself as kyle and me as stan because she was really into south park, and she saw those two characters as having a similar relationship to ours

coming from a person who has bpd (me), this all, to me, rings very familiar and relatable bells in my head. keep in mind i’m not accusing her of having it, but coming from someone who is very overprotective of their friends and datemate(s) (frank and i are poly), this all sounds like the reasoning my brain tries to do with itself when anyone befriends a person who gives me “bad vibes”. the thing is that i don’t actively silence my friends or whoever from talking about a person that makes them happy just because of the fact i don’t know them. this is something she NEVER tried to avoid doing. she was always upfront with me about how much frank unnerved her, despite never meeting them and ignoring their attempts to try and assure her that they weren’t trying to take me away.

the following screenshots are about the decision jack made to break up with her shortly after he’d gone back to california to try and look for a job (his post has more necessary context, but the idea is that he was basically trying to make more efforts to get his life to be stable and not go completely broke, and needed to break up with her seeing as her clinginess made him incredibly worn out).

unfortunately, i don’t have that message i sent to the group chat anymore, and i’m afraid i don’t remember what i said, but i know it was a pretty long message about how her coping methods to get over jack (i.e.; getting back with dillon) wasn’t actually helping her and i could see her mental state going to shit

now would also probably be a good time to mention some of the other things she’s done, but i don’t deem to be as relevant to this particular situation such as purposefully misgendering me (using the wrong pronouns, calling me her “sister”, making and getting me heavily gendered gifts she knew i was uncomfortable with), and frequently trying to make people stop talking about their interests and focus on ONLY hers instead, at all times. i do have screenshots of one particular instance of this, but this post is long enough and i feel that those complaints about her character would detract from the main point

long story short, as i’m sure you all are confidently aware at this point, mel is a horrible, manipulative, abusive, and toxic person and SHOULD be avoided at all costs. though I myself am concerned for dillon’s safety at the moment, as no one’s really quite sure where he is, I think that ultimately he would’ve been more unsafe if he stayed with her, judging by these screenshots of his brother’s comment on mel’s facebook post:

EDIT: i forgot to blur out his brother’s name when i originally posted this, and an anon pointed out to me that i probably should, so i did! please respect dillon’s family’s privacy!

i’m very happy that dillon chose to try and run and escape. i’m concerned for his safety right now but i hope he turns up soon, safe and sound, and away from mel forever.

i’d like to personally apologize to dillon, if he ever ends up reading this post somehow, for being extremely judgmental and distrustful of him because of the information mel was feeding me. i don’t know how much of it is true or untrue, but despite everything, i hope you find peace wherever you choose to go. i’m happy you got out. i’m proud of you, i’m proud of jack, i’m proud of myself, and i’m proud of anyone who chooses to break away from an abuser to start over. it’s hard, but you can fucking do it.

if you ever see this, please feel free to get in touch with me if you need help. i’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot, if you even knew very much about my existence to begin with; but i sincerely hope you’re doing alright now. -bre

oh yeah, and to mel,

fuck you.

in closing, i’m gonna leave you with the final message i sent to mel to cut off our friendship, cuz i feel like it might end up helping someone going through a hard time with their abuser? idk, but i can always hope. here it is

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wavemaker9 · 5 years

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So far I think Toni has like 4 potential ships for him? Remind me if I’m forgetting anyone but so far I think it’s just Cami, Mel, Gil, and Ivan who’ve gotten a focus on.

I also think I already touched on how Cami’s the best for Toni in the same way that Mel is for Austin and Ivan is for Kyle, so I prolly don’t need to go too deep into those two. I will say I had the thought the other day of like a need vs want thing with the three boy’s ships, and like. I think it was that Austin needs Mel but doesn’t usually want her right away, Kyle both wants and needs Ivan like right at the start, and like. Toni needs Cami a little but I do think he wants her more than he needs her. Mainly just cause like. We’ve discussed this in discord but not on here so basically for a written record, We were talking about Cami being a source of character development for Toni in GTA AU but then countered that because in GTA AU he really doesn’t develop any from his relay with Cami. He does for a little bit I guess but then regresses right back to normal because he’s a dumb idiot who learns nothing from his mistakes. It’s the same thing with the issue with Gil, he doesn’t come away from that going “I need to value and trust my friends more because we care about each other and I’ve known them long enough to not only recognize that, but /recognize it in a way that adjusts my behavior accordingly/”. He doesn’t. Like. If you talked him through the whole thing with Gil and Francis, you could get him to quickly admit he genuinely doesn’t believe there’s any way that Gil or Francis would, unprovoked, betray him. But then also be like “But technically there’s some way, so gotta be prepared.” HE’S THAT BATMAN LINE. THE DUMB ONE ABOUT “IF TEHRE’S A .1% CHANCE HE COULD BE OUR ENEMY WE HAVE TO TREAT THAT AS A 100% CERTAINTY!” Dumb idiot. I think it’s just that like. Because Toni wants to be prepared for everything so that he can handle everything, he has a hard time prioritizing probability over possibility. And that’s probably true in any AU but especially in ones like GTA where he has more to lose and has learned to be more paranoid. He knows the probability of Gil betraying him is like so small it’s basically 0%, but also Toni can think of ways that would force Gil to pick a side and have Toni be that losing side. Threatening Ludwig is the biggest one (and I’d assume there’d be an equivalent for Francis of “if someone threatened X if Francis didn’t betray me, he’d have to pick X”), but Toni probably also assuming that if it came down to a thing of picking Francis or him, Gil’d pick Francis. Similarly, Toni assumes Francis would pick Gil if Gil forced Francis’ hand, while not also considering the fact that if your two causes are “Francis would betray me if Gil made him” and “Gil would betray me if Francis made him” and you don’t have any other factor that would prompt either Francis or Gilbert to make that move to push the other in the first place, then those aren’t really possible/probable causes are they, Toni? Even if the other cause is “Someone threatened Ludwig/X to make Gil/Francis betray me, but he doesn’t want to fight me directly so he’s then convincing Francis/Gil to do it.” like. His independent mentality doesn’t even have him consider “They would come to me and the two of us could work out how to save Ludwig/X together.” He just assumes betrayal because that’s how shit works in Los Santos, and because he assumes betrayal even in the .1% chance this extreme event happens, he feels he has to be prepared for it and won’t fucking chill about it. And even when it’s pointed out to him “Do you realize how unrealistic this is,” that’s not what he cares about. He knows it’s unrealistic, but that doesn’t make it impossible. It’d be like always wearing a life jacket 24/7 in case your house floods. You can point out how unlikely the flooding is at any given time, but he’ll just counter “and then what if it happens and then I don’t have a life jacket????” Like I guess you’re technically prepared, sure, but at what cost. Ugh, Toni’s the worst, I can’t believe I took this character I liked the best out of my three and made him the worst in his inability to learn a goddamn lesson.

Similarly, GTA Toni doesn’t learn a goddamn thing from what happens with Cami either. He doesn’t learn to communicate better, he doesn’t learn to trust people and put more faith in their choices, he doesn’t learn not to lie needlessly. To him, it’s not a factor of “Things would be better if I HAD told the truth” and more “Things would be better if I’d BEEN ABLE to tell the truth” because he’s still in some dumb mindset of unintentionally not respecting Cami’s (or anyone’s, really) autonomy. He /couldn’t/ tell Cami the truth, he /couldn’t/ 100% trust Gil and Francis. Again, he’s not realizing that these were actual choices he made and are specifically his fault. They are what /had/ to happen because, given his own knowledge and no other input, they were the best option at the time and thus the only thing he could really do. Even after Cami snaps at him about how much his break up with her and everything hurt her, he laments factors that were outside of his control instead of recognizing the choices he made weren’t good. If only he hadn’t gotten into the crime business, if only he’d met Cami earlier in his life, if only X, if only Y, blah blah blah. He recognizes that he made things worse here, but it still feels to him like “cami would have been better off if she never met me or if she’d met me before I got into crime” vs “cami would have been better off if I’d treated her with more actual respect and not this romanticized old version of respect where I pull her chair out for her but don’t ask for her opinion on major life decisions”. All of it basically boils down to ‘this wasn’t solely on me because I did what I /had/ to do given the circumstances. Nevermind that I could have changed the circumstances by discussing /anything/ with /anyone/. *hanzo voice* I do what I must.’ I touched on this in the fic with him and Gil, but Toni leans on excuses a lot more than he likes to think he does. During mel’s fake death, he calls out Kyle for not planning ahead and being aware of the consequences his actions have until they’ve already happened, but Toni has the exact opposite problem of /always/ trying to plan ahead to a harmful level and only being aware of the connection any consequences that happen may have with his actions until he actually does the thing and then any mistakes were a flaw in fate itself really, he did his best.

Anyway, fuck, that was supposed to be 1 paragraph about the generic dynamic of cami and toni, not multiple trainwrecks about what a trainwreck I turned that boy into in GTA AU. Back to the point. A lot of that is lessened in the handful of other AUs where Cami and Toni end up together even briefly, so that’s good at least. I mentioned to Khep the other day the idea of a similar thing happening with Toni in Color Coded AU of him having an interest in Cami after meeting her thanks to investigating her for PRISM, but when seeing how truly kind she is, him trying to step back because, while he does value PRISM for the help it gave him with his powers, he recognizes it’s shady and manipulative towards coders at best and doesn’t want Cami involved in that world. PRISM keeps a close eye on every one of its heroes, even those that leave/retire if it can, and Toni probably believing that while Cami could stay under the radar if staying on her own, any serious involvement with him would put her more at risk of PRISM’s lasting attention and she doesn’t deserve them watching over her and possibly deciding when she should and shouldn’t join. But in that one, he’d actually talk to her. Instead of spending his YA years as an independent and pseudo-paranoid crime leader, he spends them in a large community and as the leader of a team where communication is key. This Toni /knows/ that it’s important to ultimately trust people with information in order to better protect themself, and the only reason he’d hide info from Cami while trying to break things off would be at the very start since it’d probably take a little effort to find a way to communicate with Cami where he could be sure PRISM wouldn’t be keeping tabs. In other more chill AUs he tends to be better about that shit, too. Firefly AU was brought up since that’s another Toni that learns to lie with priority, but they don’t really end up together in that one so agreeing with the point there fo it not being as much of a thing? Mel and Gil feel like bigger factors into his development there than Cami does. Honestly, I can’t remember many other AUs where they even interact let alone date, now that I think about it tho? There’s the one happy one where they’re both single parents but that always felt more like a focus on the interaction between the kids/kids+parents vs between the parents, like honestly the TonixCami factor there was definitely back burner whenever I thought about it. Ugh, there has to be other AUs, right? Okay and I just went through my page of AU/Xover lists and it seems like no. Wait OUAT, I forgot that, but that’s also a bad one but not my fault. God we really do need better AUs for them. But honestly there aren’t many AUs for any of these ships we’re here to talk about so I guess I’ll be as assuming here as for the others.

I do feel like a non-GTA and the like AU where Toni and Cami can end up together is good. I’m still standing behind what I said in discord the other day of like. Toni is not necessarily the best end for /Cami/ if the AU has anyone else like Cian in it. I’ll also add something new of like. Even though Cami is probably the best of the options so far for Toni, she’s not the /ideal/ match either. Which, tbf, the same is true for Austin and Mel, honestly? It falls back to the need vs want thing. Kyle lucked out and got someone who helps him better himself while also being the type of person he absolutely adores. Austin’s best option would be someone who challenges him similar to how Mel does, but in a more reserved way and someone he has a bit more in common with. Someone he could start off wanting, instead of learning to want after a long while. (That’s also part of why Aud is a better fit for Mel too, since Aud is a bit more open and accepting of challenges and such due to her past vs Austin who is really not here as much to be significantly challenged; Aud isn’t /looking/ for a challenge either exactly, but she won’t back away from one as quickly as Austin will). For Toni and his ideal, there’s obviously the thing of like. Usually a relay with Toni isn’t great for her either since it’s just. Their relationships always feel very romanticized but not super realistic? I could see them having a long term relay and being happy, especially in more chill/neutral AUs like the adopted family AU one, but I think it takes them both a medium to /long/ while to relax around each other. Which isn’t… the worst, but also, it just feels a little unhealthy having to try /to that level/ in a relationship. Like trying in a relay is good, trying to seem perfect in a relay isn’t so much, and it’d probably take a few years to a decade or so before toni starts to feel comfortable not trying to the max 24/7. And that’d be exhausting, and that’s for Toni who is used to and honestly lowkey thrives in a challenging environment, because Cami would in turn likely also feel the need to always be at her best regardless of Toni’s reassurances, and that’d be even worse for someone like her who is NOT already confident and believes herself as being at the best level already. Eventually they could settle into a really nice comfortable life together, and I think it’d be very good for both of them at that point, because they’re both very caring and passionate people at their cores, but it’d probably be rough to start off with.

Mel is next on the list and honestly a very good match for him, too, although probably not as challenging as he would need to key points. I’ll cover this more for Gil and Ivan later on but I picture Cami and Gil are better at challenging Toni in ways that he could use given his flaws, where as Mel is more middle ground and. God, Ivan. We’ll get to Ivan. With Mel, it’s not that she wouldn’t be capable of challenging him or anything. She’s honestly probably the most prepared for that and can probably shut down a lot of shit the first time she sees it and knows it’s bad. Toni doesn’t talk to her about something important and just does X thing and her confronting him immediately on it. Same with like the one fic I did for the rarepair thing. She sees he’s not honest about who he is and what he likes, and she talks to him right away to kind of address that and why it’s important to her that that change even a little if they’re going to stay together. Really, they are a good match in that they either compliment or contrast each other well. They’re both active worker types who enjoy fighting and such, and though there’d have to be some competition between them, I could imagine it being treated as more playfully competitive than full on “I have to be the best” aggressive. Toni’s more diplomatic and that helps Mel with socializing some times and kind of getting her to take a hot second when angry to calm down and think through her reactions so she doesn’t get too mad and make more enemies than friends. They really do work very well together when they try and it’s not like having each other wouldn’t help better them. Honestly the main reason I don’t move Mel up to the highest potential pairing is just that I don’t picture Mel as the sort that would inspire him to naturally want to change on anything that’s a major issue for him. Like he wouldn’t naturally want to fix the communication thing, he’d just see that mel doesn’t like this so he’d fix it. One of the things that causes Cami to appeal to him most is her being so nice and sweet leads to him trying to be a naturally nicer person and just genuinely care more about people. Tone down that pride and judgement and be more open minded and selfless. The other thing, as we’ll get into with gil, isn’t something he thinks he needs as much initially but would probably learn to recognize a need for more, and that’s just chilling the /fuck/ out for once and just having a breather. Again, he thrives on challenge and stuff, he loves putting 110% into everything if he can, but like. Just relaxing and being chill and not being the best is okay too? And that’s not like “do the work, take a nap, get back to work” that’s like “I don’t have to be prepared to defend my non-existent title on everything to impress people. I can just relax and be myself genuinely and it’s probably fine.”

So let’s just move onto Gil then since that’s the big pro when Toni gets to date him. Honestly, at least atm, I think Gil is the only person Toni ever knows that he feels like he can 100% relax with? Francis is close in most AUs, probably like 95% in more chill scenarios, but Gil has a much more natural way about him where he’s just so honest, it’s infectious to Toni. It really is why he likes Gil so much. Francis is arguably cooler and more fashionable and confident, but Gil seems to have this fucking ultimate zen thing going of owning who he is so completely which even Toni hasn’t mastered yet, and Toni thinks that’s the coolest. Great humor and confidence is a big factor into Toni befriending Gil so closely. Gil can always make Toni relax and laugh and forget his worries for a bit and Toni has such a chill genuine fun time when with Gil, and, again, for someone like Toni who feels like he has to try 110% minimum at all times, feeling comfortable in the moment enough to not feel like he has to impress and watch himself is really nice. Honestly? I feel like there are a lot of things Toni likes that he’s just kind of filtered out of his personality because of reputation, and it’s only when hanging out with gil or the full group that he’ll find himself doing that kind of shit again because he feels like he can get away with it more when with gil and/or francis. Like in a lot of AUs Gil’s probably the first one to get out of Toni that he does like being called Toño more, to the point of I don’t even know if Toni often fully realizes it until Gil gets him to stop and consider it. Like there’s just a lot of stuff like that where Toni doesn’t even think about it anymore. He found ‘Toni’ was the name people found easiest growing up (usually) in America, so he went with that until it felt like his preferred name. God, honestly I think there’s just a lot of Toni’s personality that might not really be his personality and who knows what is or isn’t at any given time? He probably doesn’t on a lot. I sure don’t, I’ve never had this boy down pat. Hell, there’s already the thing of him naturally wanting to swear a lot but training himself to cut that out so he really only does it around Francis and Gil. Like. Maybe dressing up in high business casual all the time is just something he’s convinced himself he likes? What if I say he actually hated tomatoes as a kid and just whoever his guardian is in each AU loved them and made them a lot so he eventually tricked himself into liking them?? I can do anything with this new power, incredible! But yeah, maybe that’s another factor of liking hanging out with Gil too is not just “oh I get to relax and enjoy things I don’t normally allow myself too” but also “sometimes I remember I enjoy things I haven’t done in years and that’s nice”. Fucking Gil one day just questioning “Hey how come you say ‘probably’ or ‘probably not’ a lot when I ask if you like a thing instead of just yes or no?” and then through a slow convo of having to break down toni’s answers because even toni doesn’t realize fully that he does this, that finally coming out and gil just baffled once things click. Gil showing up the next day with a bunch of foods from the store for toni to try and actually see if he likes them. Toni like I don’t think this is how it works, Gil. Gil teasing back ‘maybe you’ve just convinced yourself you don’t think this is how it works when the REAL toni would love my idea? It’s impossible to know!’ and toni just laughing but conceding, sure, yeah, sounds 100% legit and not at all bullshit, what’s first on your goofball buffet, bud?

Okay, distracted again, back to the point. Toni relaxing is good, but I think it’s better as a friendship thing longer term? Toni relaxing every once in a while is a good break, but his morals and priorities and such slip when he’s not careful. Which leads us to the last boy on the list, Ivan. ...Listen. I /love/ the compare and contrast factor between Toni and Ivan because they really do have a surprising amount in common for not seeming like they would at a glance. A couple of terrible smile boys, love them, /but also/. Not the greatest influences on each other. This is especially true in verses like GTA and Nationverse with baggage. Toni tries to be a better person and move past his bloody history, but given who he is, it requires a /lot/ of maintaining. And like the pro with Gil is that I think Gil would still mostly be a good enough influence where even while encouraging toni to relax more, he’d still be a more good than bad influence in almost any AU. Like even GTA, Gil is a chaotic good sort, and that’d be important. But Ivan is decidedly not in those sorts of AUs, and pairings between him and Toni have the potential for being the worst in those. GTA (and probably Nationverse too?), Ivan loves prying at that mask of Toni’s and so tries to instigate him more, that would lead to Toni then pushing back, and like. A long term relay between them in those AUs would be hard. You factor in that Toni’s trust issues are worse in those and his darker instincts are way stronger from his history + Ivan also probably very similar on a lot of those points too and also just has not learned to respect human life at all tbh? Toni’s trying to respect human life, but yknow sometimes it’s hard???? (anyone else: I find it’s not hard at all not to murder people. I often go long periods of time without killing anybody! | toni and ivan: we all have our draughts) I just picture in those AUs they are too much of a chaotic force when together and it would be damaging for themselves and/or others. Plus the idea came up once between Avi and I of the GTA fling between them becoming more romantic but god you’d have to find the perfect storm to really make that happen to be honest? It’s not /impossible/ but it’s very unlikely. Toni doesn’t trust ivan enough to let himself become that close to him really, and if he couldn’t allow himself to let down his walls for cami, it’d be damn fucking hard to get him to do it for ivan in turn. He’d pull himself back before he did, and that could be another factor of ivan trying to pry at toni and see how much he can push him, see if he can pull him back in, but that would just further sour any possibility of an actual romantic relationship. In better AUs where they aren’t both bad kids, it’s a little more possible, but I still think even then, they wouldn’t be /great/ influences on each other. Definitely better! They both learn to try and be on better behavior, but. yknow. The bar was set low; there’s only so many AUs that aren’t better than gta au.

#ignore this #the boss kid #amusing muse musings #hey you au #crossovers! unlimited crossovers!

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traitor-boyfriend · 6 years

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why do you think kyman is so popular? (ew)

okay so this has been sitting in my inbox for about a week or so now and i really just need to answer it and get it over with. really i think this is the most i’m ever going to say at length about kyman so here we go. also i’ve been drinking a little so i apologize in advance if my thoughts aren’t as cohesive as they could be lmao

to answer the initial question, i honestly have no idea. i have a few theories, but no real concrete answer as to why kyman as a ship is so popular; i’m speaking as someone who has had an intimate awareness of this fandom from the time i was ten, which is literally half of my life. i can’t recall kyman being a big ship, or even one of the more common rare-pairs 10 years ago – back then the major ships were style, creek, and k2 (almost pretty much in that order).

kyman, as i know it and have observed it since i’ve re-familiarized myself with the show and its fandom, is more a development that’s largely happened within the past five years and i think the main contributor to this is that, within that same time period, there’s been a noticeable shift with how kyle and cartman’s dynamic has been written; in the beginning seasons, kyle and cartman are shown to equally despise each other. the cartman of seasons 1-4 isn’t exactly the cartman we know now – he started off as kind of a stereotypical fat little neighborhood bully, but he’s always been narcissistic, racist, selfish etc. just not to the same extent he is now. and back then, kyle and cartman interact as enemies would; they argue and fight constantly, openly express their disdain for each other to anyone who will listen, and actively conspire against the other. kyle and cartman were direct foils to each other.

this has changed in the recent past. cartman and kyle aren’t really considered enemies anymore, but instead as rivals which i think is an important thing to note. now, they’re even occasionally on the same side of a conflict or event (such as tfbw). there has been a lot of focus in the past five or six seasons in the ways kyle and cartman are similar; they’re both temperamental and very angry people, incredibly competitive, both very driven and committed when they set their mind to something. kyle, to a lesser degree, also shares one of cartman’s worst traits; they’re both over-reactive and allow themselves to think the world is out to get them. obviously – and i cannot stress this enough – kyle has in no way the victim complex cartman has, but it is there nonetheless. the running theme with season 21 has been self-victimization, and while i don’t entirely agree with their idea that the potential destructive effects of habitual othering and alienation is, like, a concept of personal responsibility or individual desire to be a victim, other than heidi, kyle is a great example of this. for the last three seasons kyle has been the whipping boy in that no one wants his speeches, no one wants his moral lesson; no one wants his opinion. and kyle indirectly and without meaning to spearheads canada being bombed because he allows his emotions to dictate his action. there’s too many instances of cartman doing this exact thing with obvious malicious intent, but “the list” is another notable episode where kyle does the same thing; he feels slighted and estranged when everyone thinks he’s ugly, and instead of listening to reason from either stan or abraham lincoln, he decides the best choice of action is to burn down the school. my point is, kyle and cartman share quite a few personality traits and their interactions in recent seasons tend to highlight and expand on this rather than to treat them as divisive, opposite characters.

they’ve done a lot more as well to show that kyle, unlike his very early characterization in-series where he couldn’t give less of a shit if cartman died, now cares for him on – at the very least– a humanistic level. whereas kenny and stan are still mostly indifferent to cartman and what happens to him, kyle now often objects to directly conspiring to hurt or let cartman put himself in danger, even if he still despises him as a person. this started around season 8 or so with “up the down steroid” and i think this quote from kyle when he goes to cartman’s house best sums up what i’m talking about:

“I know that I often have serious moral objections to the things that you do, but… this time I think you really need to reconsider. Because if you do this, I believe you will go to hell. So I feel it is my responsibility, as your friend, to tell people what you’re doing, and to put a stop to it.”

kyle’s constant drive to put a stop to cartman’s increasingly deranged and morally depraved antics are largely driven by a dedication to his ethics, yes, but this also shows that kyle does consider cartman a friend and objects to his behavior as such because he cares about what happens to him despite kyle routinely being repulsed and disgusted by who cartman is. he also is the only one to initially object to destroying cartman’s stuff in season 20, even though kyle is cartman’s most vocal and frequent critic, and is also shown to feel an inordinate amount of guilt than the other boys comparatively; this is a combination of kyle’s generally guilty personality as well as remorse for having done something to hurt a friend. there’s also the jewpacabra episode where, even after being pathologically belittled again for the millionth time on the basis of his being jewish by cartman, kyle still goes out in the middle of the night to unchain cartman, take him home, and put him in his bed. i worry this is beginning to sound like rationalization or even evidence on the kyman ship’s behalf that kyle has feelings for cartman in anyway, because it isn’t; it’s just elaboration on kyle’s character. kyle is a very sympathetic person, and that extends even to someone who he doesn’t like. there are plenty of examples of kyle being absolutely thrilled to see cartman be delivered a comeuppance or get the shit kicked out of him or be proven wrong, and more often than not, kyle genuinely hates cartman – there just are not as many recent examples, which is the time-frame i’m trying to stick to while talking about this ship.

there’s a lot to be said of cartman as a character. like, a lot. he’s incredibly complex, and while it makes him interesting as a character study, it makes him insufferable to watch. he’s always been terrible. that’s his appeal, i think, and what makes him so popular. cartman is the complete and utter embodiment of human id; he has no sense of the world outside himself, no remorse, and acts consistently in his own self-interest with little to deter him. and part of it is satisfying sometimes to see just how far cartman is willing to denigrate himself and others in pursuit of what he wants, because it’s that same morbid desire a normal person might occasionally feel but suppresses because of their conscience – something cartman does not have.

i’d argue, given the inherent chaos and destruction and amorality the universe of south park exists in, that all of the main boys are traumatized to varying degrees. but i don’t think it’s all that controversial to say cartman exhibits the most outward signs of childhood trauma. plenty of people much more observant and intelligent than myself i’m sure have written about this before so i’m going to keep it brief, but a lot of cartman’s behavior can be explained this way. there’s been a few allusions to his having been sexually abused, inappropriate sexual contact with family members, the fact that he wets his bed or cries at night b/c he doesn’t have a dad are all things we learn when he can’t control what he says in “le petit tourette.” his physical and verbal aggression, emotionality, distrust of others, conniving behavior etc. are all common symptoms of adverse childhood experiences. he’s controlling and insecure, and cartman thrives off any and all attention – positive, which he often gets from his mother, or negative, which is usually provided by literally everyone else, especially kyle, which is what i think makes him so infatuated with kyle in that he’s an easy, reliable source to match his own aggression, to feed that desire for attention. unlike what a lot of kyman shippers think, it’s pretty obvious that this is why he goes to such lengths to save kyle in “smug alert”. butters doesn’t fight or push back against cartman the way he does, therefore cartman isn’t receiving the attention or reaction he wants.

there’s also the matter of cartman’s racism and anti-semitism. and to deny that cartman does not possess genuine confidence in his own deluded beliefs, or to excuse it b/c of his age is a major cop-out. he’s had moments where his racial hatred is founded in classic white-supremacist talking points, so he clearly espouses this shit of his own volition. because he’s attracted to power cartman idolizes conservative christian figureheads in pop culture (mel gibson ring a bell to anyone) and authoritarian dictators, of which racism is often a major component of such ideology, and this only emboldens his bigotry. there’s a couple instances in the very early seasons (i’m talking, like, pretty much exclusively 1 and 2) where cartman alludes to his racist tendencies stemming from liane, but i don’t really consider it fair to cling to that as a canonical source b/c one, it’s almost always for shock value as a quick joke, and two, they have since done a complete 180 on liane. they don’t harp on the joke about her being a whore the way they used to, and instead she’s shown to be a single mother who works two jobs and who loves her son unconditionally. but she’s also very lonely, and treats cartman as her friend instead of her son; she has no boundaries set with him and often entertains his schemes or delusions; she’s a classic over-indulging parent. which does a lot of harm without her meaning to.

honestly, the entire relationship between cartman and his mother mostly just makes me sad, especially after the “tsst” episode; it’s the only time we see liane disciplining cartman in a firm but loving way, acting as a parent and not a hostage, and we see, in my opinion, what was the only instance wherein which cartman was capable of any meaningful or permanent change. and it’s all destroyed when liane realizes cesar and her’s relationship was purely professional and nothing more. even in group of moms, liane isn’t really considered one of them. her only friend is cartman, so she defaults to giving in to his every whim b/c she’s terrified of him resenting and leaving her as well. it’s like.. a really tragic situation. but that episode is important as it exemplifies the fact that, unlike the other boys, cartman incapable of change. his transformation is mostly superficial and incredibly short-lived. there’s a lot to be said of the nature of evil – whether some people are born that way, if it’s entirely nature vs. nurture – but cartman is obviously a combination of both; no one who doesn’t have some kind of genetic pre-dispostion to incalculable levels of cruelty and disregard for the suffering of others could plot to have someone’s parents killed, steal their bodies, grind them into chili and feed it to the child of those parents over sixteen dollars.

and this is what makes the cognitive dissonance that surrounds thinking kyman isn’t an abusive ship is astounding to me, because cartman is an inherently abusive person. he is incapable of the vulnerability or the selflessness or the compromise a relationship requires. i mean, christ, we just got an entire season that highlights how he acts within the confines of a romantic relationship with heidi – an entire season of cartman manipulating, gaslighting, and machinating events to have someone he supposedly loves killed or abducted. there’s an argument made pretty often among kyman fans that this wouldn’t happen to kyle, that kyle is capable of fighting back against cartman and would refuse to make himself vulnerable the way heidi did, but i have no idea how someone could says this after “ginger cow.”

kyle is by far the most frequent recipient of the proverbial short stick (passion of the jew, le petit tourette, tonsil trouble, pee, humancentipad, imaginationland, cartman’s incredible gift, etc b/c the list goes on and fucking on) and though cartman is not always the one directly spearheading the events that lead to kyle being put in those situations, he usually is. but the way he treats kyle in ginger cow differs so greatly from past events – a lot of cartman’s mistreatment of kyle can be viewed as him feeling he’s delivering punishment or retribution to a someone who he feels (wrongly) deserves it, but “ginger cow” just really epitomizes cartman’s complete and utter sociopathy. what he does to kyle in that episode is so far beyond mere humiliation; it’s dehumanization. cartman actively derives joy from breaking kyle down as a person, forcing him to be submissive, causing kyle to lose any sense of self. the kicker comes at the end of the episodes when stan’s misguided attempt to help ends up backfiring, but not really, because the prophecy of the red heifer had actually been true all along! yet cartman refuses to tell the truth; kyle’s suffering means nothing. and cartman, in true cartman fashion, makes a snide joke, farts into his hand, dollops whip cream in his palm and smears it in kyle’s face, walking off very satisfied with himself. even thinking about the episode makes me viscerally ill.

i think just as troubling for me is the culture that surrounds people shipping the two of them; there is so, so, so much casual anti-semitism – people who think it’s cute when cartman accosts kyle for being jewish, people who use the word “jew” in a flippant, casual way as if it’s a term of endearment while completely ignoring the historical context of disparagement in a non-jewish person calling someone “a jew.” people who excuse cartman’s anti-semitism, who act like he hasn’t repeatedly been shown to adore hitler and emulate him, going as far as to rally the town behind him to lead in the effort to exterminate the jews and shouting nazi rallying cries. not to mention the fact that not only does there exist any one singular kyman fic centered around kyle being a holocaust victim during world war ii, there are a ton! which is so disgusting and disrespectful and so obviously amoral i can’t believe i just had to type that! and in the same line as fiction, it is so upsetting to me a prominent trend that occurs w kyman fics is cartman basically hatefucking kyle through the entire thing, physically and verbally abuses him and gets off on it, and kyle is this submissive, simpering slave to him – not to mention the plethora of straight up rape/non-con kyman fics. it a lot of either that, or kyle is some conduit for a shitty cartman redemption arc, and. ugh.

anyway, this is the most i’m ever going to say about kyman. the tl;dr version of this is that i think kyman is so popular b/c recent seasons have focused more on amplifying the ways in which kyle and cartman are similar as well as quite a few jokes being made about some weird sexual tension between the two of them. and not to harp on this, but i don’t ship kyman, and i don’t support it or even remotely tolerate it, really. the entire concept of those two together makes me quite literally physically ill lmao.

#i have no idea what to tag this as tbh #south park #kyle broflovski #eric cartman #little tip: if you're a diehard kyman shipper about to come in my inbox let me save you the trouble: don't!#:-)#anonymous

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staytheb · 3 years

Text

White Day Festival

Genre: college!au, slice of life, slight fluff Word Count: 4,014 Summary: A month later the two pair of sisters are roped in to assist with the White Day Festival to celebrate White Day thanks to their friend, Gina.

Day Festival masterlist.

Warning: semi-proofread.

oh, hi. i’m taking advantage of my mood to write and sharing whatever i do end up finishing writing. lol but yeah, just like Red Day Festival it’s with the NCT boys in mind and short bits of a series i guess you could say. not sure if people like this, but i sure do. anyways, i don’t think there’s anything else to share, but please anticipate more and hopefully i don’t lose the motivation to write as well lol. but yeah, happy reading and kthxbai, Admin Lia~

A month later it was the White Day Festival in celebration of White Day and it was in full swing with students carrying gifts around the campus of Seoul University just like the Red Day Festival. Once again the pair of sisters somehow found themselves as performers for the White Love Stage event at eleven in the morning. Gina had convincingly roped them into the event as another sort of volunteer credit for extracurricular activities once again. Serena, Jasmine, Katherine, and Melanie were standing in the quad wearing white long-sleeved dresses, long white wigs, and feathered white eye masks with different colored accents to differentiate one from the other. Again, Serena with green, Jasmine with yellow, Katherine with purple, and Melanie with blue.

"This is bogus man." Serena complained in a tired tone while straightening out her mask and outfit. "I mean White Day's on Sunday, yet we're here two days before to celebrate it. Boo."

"It was the same thing as last time." Katherine countered before sighing loudly. "I just got done with my seven A-M and have another one after this. It's really gonna be a long day."

"Well, luckily I just got only one and it's an actual class that I like." Jasmine added with a laugh.

"Must be nice." Melanie interjected with a frown. "I was in the middle of one and Gina had pulled me out for this thing."

"Gina really knows how to get us to do her bidding." Serena stated with a deep sigh as the other agreed.

"Yeah, she sure does."

"But, if we're a part of this, doesn't that mean we don't have to attend the other classes, too, and still get credit?" Katherine recalled, but wasn't sure.

"We do." Melanie confirmed. "So, after this is over, I'm done for the day."

"Okay, cool."

Just then said person came up to them with a bouncy demeanor directing their attention onto their friend.

"Thank you so much ladies for doing another favor for me! I am here on behalf of Hyukyung and Moonhee as they're busy at the Love’s Helpers booth to organize all the items, but they really do appreciate your cooperation to make this White Day Festival a success due to last minute changes." Gina announced and thanked them with a grin knowing full well that they were not all that pleased to be doing this.

"Yeah, you're not welcome, Gi, but the twins are happy to help for sure." Melanie responded first with a neutral tone as Gina chuckled while nudging her friend.

"Your enthusiasm overwhelms me, Mel."

"Anyways," She handed the quartet a piece of paper, "These are the songs y'all are performing."

"Again, just like you did during Red Day Festival when Jiwon and Milo were in charge of it. We somehow ended up helping you with that favor to save the Red Day Festival for them, too." Jasmine inquired with a look as Gina chuckled with a nod.

"You want us to do songs you've chosen that we haven't even practiced?" Katherine questioned with a frown.

"Oh, no. You've practiced these before, ladies. Just like last month with all the arrangements and what not. Y’all will nail it like the Red Love Stage event and will definitely do the same for the White Love Stage event."

The quartet skimmed the sheet in confusion before realization hit them that their friend was right.

"Seriously?" Melanie shot Gina a bored look. "I bet you planned this from the get go."

"Yes I did." Gina confirmed with a proud smile. "Y'all have always been my backup slash go to group when something goes wrong and y'all always pull through. Besides it's not like these are the actual songs that you're gonna do for the Sing In May showcase, anyways."

"Not really, but it's not like we were planning on participating either." Serena countered. "You knew that since winter break."

"About that," Gina cast them a cheeky look. "I've already entered you guys and so don't be late for auditions in like less than two weeks. Haji and team are looking forward to y'all's audition. Okay, thanks and you'll do great."

Jasmine and Katherine tried to grab a hold of her, but Gina evaded their hands and laughed while skipping away.

"Anyways, Kyle will cued y'all in when to start while Haru gets the four of you settled too like last time. Okay thanks and bye!"

Gina ran off before her friends could strangle her just as Haru arrived to prep them for their performance knowing the whole ordeal with a smile.

"Thank you for joining us this morning." Gina greeted those that were present on the campus' quad.

"I hope that everyone is having a wonderful time with the White Day Festival today."

The crowd cheered as Gina smiled.

"Good to know. Anyways, I'll hand this off to Moonhee and Hyunkyung since they're the ones supervising this event."

Gina motioned to the two as they joined her before she walked off leaving them to take control.

"Hello guys!" The paired greeted the crowd as Moonhee spoke first.

"Today we have a special performance set up by these lovely ladies behind me."

Moonhee gestured to the quartet behind her as the four females politely waved at the crowd while continuing their stretches.

"While these ladies are performing, Love's Helpers will still be accepting requests for deliveries so please don't miss out!"

Hyunkyung glanced behind him to see if the four girls were ready before facing forward again with a smile.

"Last month during Red Day Festival we had Cupid's Angels helping us," Hyunkyung announced happily, "So this time around we have Love's Angels honoring us with their performance! So please welcome these lovely ladies to the stage!"

Hyunkyung clapped along with everyone else before he and Moonhee walked away leaving the quartet to start their so-called gig.

"Hello everyone!" Jasmine greeted the audience as the group's de facto leader once again. "One, two..."

"We're Love's Angels!" The quartet sang in unison before introducing themselves with similar stage names as Love's Angels.

"Taro Kitty!" Serena announced followed by Katherine, Melanie, and Jasmine introducing herself last.

"Honey Turtle!"

"Guava Koala!"

"Sugar Tiger!"

The crowd cheered as Jasmine continued speaking.

"I hope you enjoy our performances and that your feelings reach the person or persons that you want to convey them to! So don't give up. Anyways, please watch over us kindly."

The crowd clapped and softly cheered while the quartet glanced over at Kyle to let him know that they were ready to began.

"Alright, our first song will be Glass Shoes. Please enjoy."

Kyle gave them a silent countdown using his fingers before pressing something on his laptop that began playing the song that Jasmine just introduced. Love's Angels sang and danced to the lively song while plastering smiles onto their faces. They just didn't think they would find themselves doing this so early in the morning or at all today. Then again, it was just like last month when they last performed as Cupid's Angels. After that they took a moment to introduce the next song.

"This is for the girls, or guys, awaiting for that special moment to happen!" Serena announced with a chuckle. "So all of y'all, please don't give up. You got this! Anyways, the next song is To Heart!"

Once again, Kyle cued for when they should start as the girls rotated in standing formation to circulate their blood. The arrangement was already made from a while back to accommodate their smaller group. Once again they plastered on smiling faces and try to convey nice thoughts and vibes for the event. When the song came to an end it was Melanie who spoke next.

"Alright, alright. We having fun so far?" She asked as the crowd cheered.

The group took a breather as they drank some water and Haru came to fix some of their attire if it was askew before leaving. Melanie continued to speak.

"We hope you're all getting in the mood and enjoying the performances so far. The third song is something that will make your heart race," Melanie chuckled as she swept her gaze over the crowd, "So we hope that this song can help you settled that pit-a-pat within your heart and mind. Please enjoy DKDK!"

Love's Angels got into formation when the song started and the choreography was done once again as four people compare to the original of nine like the previous ones they've just done. Once the song ended did they take another moment to fix some technical issues that Haru had to come aid them before introducing the fourth song.

"I hope you're all having fun!"

Katherine spoke this time around with a laugh as she tried to catch her breath.

"This is pretty tough. Luckily we don't do this for a living and it's just a hobby. Anyways," Katherine moved on after her humor moment, "The next song relates to those that may have someone already in their heart! So, maybe this song will get it ticking and get things going. Let's have a LOVE BOMB!"

The song began to play and the quartet got into their positions and performed while enjoying themselves without actually thinking about it. Despite being roped into the whole thing like last time the four found themselves becoming energized. After the song ended did they announce their final song and that it would be their last stage.

"Thank you so much for listening and watching us thus far. We really hope that with our covers that it made your day and week. So thank you for allowing us to sing and dance for y'all early in your day." Jasmine thanked the group as she was the one to give the final ment.

"Yeah, we also liked to give major props to Haru and Kyle for coming in clutch with signaling when to start and looking amazing." Melanie stated while motioning at the said two people.

"Also, can't forget Moonhee and Hyunkyung for setting up White Day Festival this year and making it a great success!" Katherine chimed in with a grin while motioning at the said two people. "They worked hard along with the rest of the student council members to make White Day Festival another great success like the Red Day Festival!"

Katherine shot Serena a playful look.

"What about you, Taro Kitty? Any last words?"

"Uh," Serena stalled as having been caught off guard, "Well, thanks for all the love and hope everyone's having a fun time today, too. Thanks to everyone today! Now, back to Sugar Tiger!"

Jasmine chuckled before speaking.

"Yeah, major thanks to everyone to make White Day Festival the way it's going now. Anyways, " Jasmine looked over at the other three and they nodded to signaled to do their final greeting.

"One, two..."

"This was Love's Angels!" They sang once again while waving as Jasmine announced the final song.

"Anyways, thank you all once again. Our last song for this lovely day of the White Day Festival. With much love it's LOVE RUMPUMPUM!"

And one last time Kyle cued the girls once they got into their positions and happily performed the song in their own quartet version compared to the original. Once the song ended did Love's Angels waved at the crowd just as Hyunkyung and Moonhee appeared to take over once more.

"Please give a round of applause to the lovely ladies behind us!" The pair exclaimed as they clapped enthusiastically along with everyone else.

The quartet bowed to everyone as they waited to be dismissed so that they could change out of their outfits and resume their day like nothing had happened.

"Thank you so much, Love's Angels, for a wonderful performance." Hyunkyung thanked the quartet once more with a happy expression. "You definitely helped out the Student Council with your awesome performances!! So thank you once again!"

"Before you go though, there are a few people that would like to thank you!" Moonhee announced as she and Hyunkyung cast one another secretive looks which caught the quartet off guard.

"Anyways," Hyunkyung began, "Before Love's Angels go, there are a few people that would like to thank you!"

Before the quartet could question what was about to happen, Moonhee and Hyunkyung motioned for a group of people that wanted to gift some things to the quartet. Love's Angels slightly panicked, but remained calm when they just noticed that several of the students came up to them to hand them presents in thanks. They took the gifts and thanked their fellow classmates out of politeness and wondered if this was Gina's doing as well.

Jasmine and Katherine were waiting for the other pair of sisters at their usual table once classes were over for the day. The twins were going through their things while talking about all the presents they've received throughout all day today. Serena showed up a moment later with a sour face as she plopped herself onto one of the empty seats and unloaded all of her own gifts onto the table.

"Wow. Did someone make a confession to you this year?"

Katherine mused upon seeing all the things that Serena had carried tripled in size compare to last year.

"Well, I would hope so though." Jasmine stated with a chuckle while pointing at each of the floating white balloon-like bouquets tied around Serena's wrists. "Because those are the second most expensive gift out of the others."

Katherine frowned as she raised her eyebrows upon glancing at the other items.

"Which one is the most expensive one then?"

Jasmine picked up one of white bear plush that held a white rose, a white balloon stick, and a small white box of chocolate.

"This one."

Serena groaned as she lied her head onto the table due to the amount of items she had received throughout the day.

"I have no idea who sent these and it was such a bother to carry them around campus." Serena explained. "I tried giving them away, but no one wanted them."

Serena lifted her head and glared at the items while removing the strings from her wrists and transferred each of them onto one of the stuffed bears.

"I mean the gifts from earlier was okay, but it got annoying when more showed up and having everyone gushed about it."

She glanced at her friends with a tired look.

"Please tell me that you guys suffered the same thing, too, right?"

Before the pair could answer Serena, another load of White Day gifts joined the pile on the table. This pile was just as large as Serena's or maybe even more. Their eyes quickly moved to see Melanie in the same state, but her expression was equally sour to that of Serena yet there was a dark aura surrounding her unlike Serena.

"I personally did nothing for Red Day Festival and yet I received all this stuff. Like why?" Melanie grumbled to no one in particular as she plopped down on to the other empty seat and removed the strings of her balloon and attached it to one of her bear plushies.

"Very true. I feel you, girl." Katherine agreed also eyeing all of her own gifts given earlier today.

"Anyways," Jasmine interjected wanting to change the topic, "Did someone make a confession to you, too?"

"Huh?" Melanie asked confused.

Jasmine pointed at the stuffed bears that now crowded the table.

"Because someone or maybe it's more bought you quite a lot of these bears holding gifts."

"I have no idea." Melanie answered with a tired sigh. "There were no letters or anything of the sort to indicate who sent them. And if they did, I doubt that they would actually confess to my face. How about you guys?"

"Well, before you came, Serena suffered the same way, too, but not as much as you." Katherine informed with a laugh. "But Jasmine and I got a lot of things, too, but not as much as you guys. So we didn't suffer all that much."

"Oh, wait. Don't forget about how we both received the wrong items and confessions thst came with it." Jasmine added as the other two looked at them confused. "You what?"

"Oh yeah." Katherine remembered. "Jasmine and I were confessed to, but by the wrong person."

"You're lying." Melanie gasped in disbelief. "They did not."

"Yeah they did." The twins confirmed in unison before Jasmine spoke a second later.

"Do you guys remember Alex and Youngjun?"

The other pair of sisters nodded as Jasmine continued.

"Yeah, well Alex thought I was Katherine while Youngjun thought she was me and it was such an awkward encounter."

"No doubt." Serena agreed as Katherine added more.

"The funny thing is that they told us to keep the item anyways and that either twin was fine. How fucked up is that?"

"Fucked up." Melanie stated with a surprised face. "That's hella fucked up. I would've punched them."

"Yeah, that's really messed up." Serena agreed with a frown. "Reminds me of the Hitachiin twins of Ouran High School Host Club when girls would confessed to them, but couldn't tell which twin was who and said either one was fine."

"Wow that is messed up." Jasmine said with a disbelieved look. "Anyways, we kept the stuff and told them to fuck off."

"Yeah, well my words weren't that aggressive." Katherine said with a laugh.

"Yeah, very true." Melanie agreed with a chuckle before looking at Jasmine expectantly. "Anyways, any progress with Johnny?"

Jasmine suddenly turned shy with the thoughts of Johnny floating around in her head.

"Oh, boy."

Came Katherine's response as Serena and Melanie looked at her weirdly.

"Did something happen?" Melanie inquired.

"Let's just say that every gift received she thought it may have been him."

"Aww, you should really confess, Jasmine."

This snapped Jasmine out of her trance and shot Serena a pointed look.

'I'll do it if you confess to Taeyong."

"Ooohhh!"

Came the other two responses. Serena frowned.

“Look, me confessing to Taeyong ain’t gonna do shit. The same with Melanie and Jaehyun as well as Katherine and Taeil. So not happening.”

“Boo. Why you gotta drag us in your persona problem?”

Melanie shot her sister a look as Katherine nodded.

“Yeah.”

Serena rolled her eyes and and instead of responding she directed the topic elsewhere.

"Anyways, let's go home then. Honestly didn't think we would stay to attend the rest of classes after thinking of not going due to the council exection or whatever. Sleep sounds so good right now."

"Not yet, bro. Besides, it was better to spend the day learning then not. Also stop running away." Melanie declined while looking over at the twins. "So what's the plan for today?"

"I dunno, I feel like sleeping, too." Katherine answered upon remembering Serena's suggestion. "That does sound nice."

"I told you." Serena remarked.

"No way. It's Friday. We should do something." Jasmine disagreed while shooting them a knowing look. "We can go clubbing."

"Nah. Not about that life." Melanie declined. "We can try this new restaurant that opened up a few months ago."

"Do we have to dress up?" Serena asked with a face. "I hate dressing up."

"It won't hurt you."

"Says you. Last time y'all made me wear heels and then both heels broke later on."

The other three broke out in laughter upon the incident.

"Yeah, you're right."

Melanie laughed while going through the items and finding a small bag of white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies.

"These are my favorite."

"Probably a stalker that got you those."

Serena also went through the pile and grinned upon finding a yogurt covered pretzels in the mix.

"Thanks to them, but I don't know who would even give me stuff when I barely talk to anyone in class or around campus."

"Isn't it because you always says you're a loner and hate people?" Jasmine asked while also going through the pile.

"Even though I think she's lying about it." Katherine countered also finding something in the pile to snack on.

"That's very true. I do hate people." Serena agreed.

"But she loves me, doesn't she?"

A male voice interjected as arms suddenly wrapped themselves around Serena's shoulders from behind as she shrank into herself due to the sudden skinship.

"Isn't that right, darling?"

The male rubbed his cheeks affectionately against Serena's and she shied away from the familiar touch while trying to lift his arms off of her.

"Stop your shit, Lucas, or your little fanclub is gonna get jealous and murder me this time around." Serena warned him as she smacked his arms this time since the male continued his hold on her.

"Hello, ladies." Lucas greeted while still maintaining his position much to the dismay of Serena.

"Hi." The others greeted.

"Wait, y'all know Lucas?" Jasmine asked looking from Melanie to Serena.

"Yeah. Through Ten." Melanie answered with Serena making a face.

"Unfortunately, yeah. Hey. Let go. Jerk."

Lucas chuckled as he finally removed his arms from around Serena and took the seat right beside her.

"Anyways, you'll be fine since you changed your hair color since the last time I saw you."

He playfully ruffled her hair in the process and she swatted his hand away in annoyance as she tentatively fixed her newly dyed ash lavender locks.

"Some day I think she's gonna murder you, Lucas." Melanie remarked with a laugh before remembering something.

"I bet it was y'all that gave us all of these, huh?"

Melanie swept her hands at the items with a pointed look while Lucas nodded as he also glanced at the gifts.

"Ten told us to do him a favor."

"Wait, did that include us, perhaps?" Jasmine asked a bit hopefully.

Lucas over at her.

"I think so. There were two other names besides theirs. Are you guys Katherine and Jasmine then?"

“Yeah, that’s us.” Katherine confirmed with a confused smile. “Although I don’t get why, but it was nice of him to include us.”

"Aww, tell him thanks. I’m happy to know that he wanted to treat us, too, despite not having met us." Jasmine grinned as she picked up one of the stuffed bears that belonged to her originally.

Katherine smirked.

"Oh, boy. You just added another step for her."

"For what?" Lucas asked curiously.

"Don't worry about it." Serena dismissed the topic and returned back to the previous topic.

"Not like I even need any of this stuff in the first place. There's so much."

Serena grumbled while Lucas cheekily nudged her and wriggled his eyebrows.

"Did you wished it was only me giving you these instead?"

She rolled her eyes.

"No thanks."

Lucas chuckled before turning his attention towards Melanie.

"Anyways, Ten wanted to make sure you two and company had a good one in part of what occurred last month."

"What does he mean by that?"

Lucas shrugged.

"Dunno. He didn't really say. Just something about the red goodie bags we received on Red Day Festival."

"He's such a brat." Melanie mumbled, but shot him a thankful smile.

"Thanks though. Anyways, how did you know we were here?"

"Ten looked up your location." He nonchalantly answered as Serena scoffed. "This is why I'm Team Android."

"That stalker." Melanie muttered as she looked at the male. "So, then what does he or you want?"

Lucas cast her a sly grin while sweeping his gaze at the other three.

"Are you guys busy right now?"

After three of the four telling him that they weren’t save Serena telling him she was busy. He called her a liar. So the quartet found themselves being treated out by Lucas and later meeting up with Ten when they reached the designated spot for a late lunch and basically a day of hanging out. Then again, it seemed like both males were such charming gentlemen throughout the whole thing despite treating out four women. Melanie and Serena couldn’t help but teased both of them by calling them a player much to Lucas' amusement and Ten's annoyance.

#staytheb #nct scenarios #nct u #nct 127 #nct dream #nct 2018 #wayv #nct 2020 #superm

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joshuahyslop · 6 years

Text

HOUSE SHOW TOUR 2017

Once again I’ve been out on a run of dates (house shows and venue shows) across Canada and, once again, I’ve returned home with a load of stories, new friends and a full heart.

A very special thank you to: The Larsen-Nantel’s - This was the first house show of the tour and it was such a great way to start things off. I’ve been friends with the hosts for a while so not only did I know them, but I also knew a few of the attending guests as well. It was a great night and I left feeling excited for the rest of the tour. The Capitol Ballroom - This was the first venue on the tour and the first time I’d played live with a drummer and a bass player accompanying me in almost 4 years. We had a great time playing and meeting everyone after the show. We thoroughly enjoyed the opening band Ocie Elliott as well. It was great to be playing back on the island again.

The Fox Cabaret - We made it back to Vancouver the next day for another show as a trio. Despite my nerves we had a great time playing for everyone. A huge thank you to Darren Parris and Ali Siadat for playing with me on those two shows. I hope to be performing with a band a lot more in the future!

The Dream Cafe - After a few days off my friend Dave Warne and I headed up to Penticton for the next show. I played two 45 minute sets to a full room of great folks. I had a terrific time and was pleasantly surprised to find out that we were being put up in the suite above the venue for the night. Great food, great people, good show.

The Almanac - We drove to Edmonton for the next show and shared the night with some incredibly talented artists. Cory Danyluk started off the evening, Barry and Michelle Patterson with their son Sam were next, then Steph Cameron played. They all played solid sets. It was great to get to listen to everyone play. I had an amazing time and I hope I get to come back again soon.

The House of Commons - Next was a house show in Calgary. The House of Commons is a great little spot where a group of people live together and are very active in their community. They put on house shows, they have free dinners for the homeless, and they just do life together. I’d played there years ago on a tour with my good friend, Zaac Pick and it was so nice to be back again. We spent the night and headed off the next morning - back towards Edmonton.

The Hoffos’ - My second cousin and his family live just outside of Edmonton and they were kind enough to come to our show at The Almanac and then put Dave and I up for two days even though we weren’t performing at their place. We had such a blast spending time with them. They are an amazing family and our two days together just flew by. Apart from the scotch, card games, great food, jam sessions, swords, and hot tubs, we also got to join my cousin in a high school science class where we saw real cow lungs being inflated and a dissection of a cows heart! It was awesome.

The Brandon’s - Our next show was back in Calgary. I’d played at this home twice before so it was great to be back again. Our host is amazing at making people feel at home and has said that she wants her home to be like a B&B for traveling musicians. Dave and I had a great time playing for them and, when they surprised us by insisting on a second full set we happily (read: nervously) obliged! It went super well and we had a great time with everyone. The McKenzie’s - We had another house show in Calgary the next night. We arrived to find a house full of lovely and welcoming people. We ate a great dinner, played the show, and had a few drinks. Even though it was our first time meeting the McKenzie’s, they quickly put us at ease and made us feel like old friends. Great folks, and a really lovely night.

Elliot Home + Lifestyle - We drove to Medicine Hat for our next show. We played in a lovely little shop on a cold windy night. The show was opened by the amazingly talented, Kyle Church (check him out!), and then we took the stage. Everyone was so attentive, it was such a fun show. We stood around afterwards swapping stories and meeting everyone before heading off and driving through the night to make it home the next day. The Parker’s - After a few days off at home, Dave and I flew out to Toronto and met up with the Parker’s. They’d also hosted me in the past so it was great to get to see them again. We played the show at their friends place where I met two of my biggest fans - the sons of our host who were around the ages of 6 and 8. We had a great time playing for everybody before heading back to the Parker’s to watch a movie in their famous garage/theatre. It was another good night. The Dakota - The next night we played a show at The Dakota in Toronto. We played two sets and had a wonderful time. We met a lot of new people and saw some old friends as well. It was such a fun night. The crowd was great, the staff were great and we just loved getting to play for everyone. Jesse Milns - The next day was a day off but my record label had been able to schedule a photoshoot with a very talented young photographer in the city. I was hesitant as I really don’t like pictures of myself but Jesse was a breeze to work with and we actually had a lot of fun. I was immediately put at ease with him and we had a great time. Chris & Heather - We didn’t play a show at their house, but Chris and Heather are friends of ours and they kindly let Dave and I stay with them for the two nights we were in town. It’s amazing how much of an impact getting to stay with friends has on you when you’re on the road. Not only does it save you the cost of a hotel, but it also helps your overall mental state. I can’t thank them (or the rest of our friends who have put us up on this tour, or any other) enough. Maxwell’s - Our next show was in Waterloo. We arrived to find a great room and lovely staff. Our opener was a really nice guy named Ryan Valentine who played a great set before we took the stage. It was a solid turnout and I was happy to get to meet just about everybody at the merch table after the show. I hope we get to come back and do it again soon. The Rosewood Room - We drove to London for our next show. I’d never been to The Rosewood Room so I didn’t know what to expect but it was a great little venue and the crowd was awesome. The openers were two local acts (Cameron Jericho and Brock Laroque) and we enjoyed listening to them before we played our set. It was so nice getting to meet everyone afterwards. Tonhof Productions - Next we made our way to Listowel for a house show. Jasmin and Tracey (the two halves of Tonhof Productions) had hosted a house show of mine on the last tour, but I’d had to leave right after the show to catch a flight back in Toronto. It had been disappointing to have had to leave right away and it had stuck with me so I was very happy when they booked another show and I knew that we didn’t need to leave right after the performance. We had a great time playing the show and were treated to a delicious dinner and breakfast the next day before heading out. They were great. The Blacksheep Inn - Our next show was in Wakefield, Quebec. I’d never been but I’d heard really good things about the town and also about the venue in particular. Once we’d arrived it became obvious why that was. The staff were amazing and the venue was incredible. We had a terrific turnout on a Sunday night and were thrilled to get to play for everybody. It was such a fun night meeting everyone, seeing a few old friends and getting to play at a wonderful spot. I hope we can do it again soon! Mel & Mark - A couple of Dave’s friends who I’d never met before (but who I’m claiming as my friends now, too) put us up in town after the show and fed us dinner and breakfast. It was so kind of them and it meant so much to me. Zach & Brie - We had the next two nights off in Montreal and had the chance to stay with more lovely friends. We stayed up late at Dieu Du Ciel enjoying some amazing beers, we went to a Nordic spa on a boat, and we got to see a bunch of our pals who live there. It was perfect. The Young’s - We drove from Montreal to Cape Breton for our next show. I was fighting a cold but we arrived to find that we’d be playing a house show in an amazing house right on a lake. The host and I had been trying to book a house show for years so I was very happy that we’d managed to finally make it happen. But I felt really bad being sick. We played the show and everyone was so kind. It was a lot of fun but I’m determined to do it again healthy! Pam, Mark, Rodney & Celeste - The next house show was in Sydney, NS. We were playing in the town firehall. Our hosts were two amazing couples who were some of the most hospitable people I’ve ever met. My cold was getting much worse and they gave me water, whiskey, Buckley’s and tissues. We played two sets that night and had a great time - but again, I felt so bad being sick, I am equally as determined to come back and play another show for them when I’m healthy! We ate like kings before heading to bed and left the next day already excited to come back. The Carleton - The next show was supposed to be in Halifax but I woke up on the day of the show and my voice was almost a full octave lower than normal. I couldn’t sing when I tried and I was very saddened to have to cancel the show. I hated letting the folks down who were planning on coming to the show but it just wasn’t possible and my health was not improving. I spent the next 2 days in a hotel eating chicken soup, drinking litres and litres of water (with some Buckley’s as well), and sleeping as much as possible. My deepest apologies again for any inconvenience cause by the cancellation of the show in Halifax. The folks from the Carleton were incredibly understanding and so kind about the whole thing. I’m already looking into how I can come back asap and make it up to everyone! Grimross Brewing, Roots & Soul Music Promotions, and Side Door - Our next show was in Fredericton. Our host was a great guy named Eddie who somehow transformed a warehouse into the most intimate room with a great vibe. It was my first time ever playing there and I was very excited for the show. I wasn’t fully better yet, but I was determined to play the show and get back to performing. Dave and I loved getting to play for everyone and the crowd was fantastic. There were a lot of friends there as Dave had gone to University in a town close by so we got to see a bunch of familiar faces and meet a bunch of new people as well. It was great. Also, Side Door is a company that puts on house shows and they were fantastic to work with. It was a good night. A big thank you to Preetam Sengupta for a great opening set as well. Greg & Linda - More amazing friends who were willing to put us up for the night. We headed out the next day for a long drive from Fredericton to Inkerman, ON. Greg and Linda were old friends of Dave’s but it was my first time meeting them. We stayed up a bit, having some drinks, telling some stories and playing some music. It was an absolute pleasure meeting them and I was so grateful to them for letting us stay over. The Keon’s/MacFarlane’s - If you’ve read any of my previous house show updates or thank-you’s then you’ve probably read about the wonderful and crazy adventures I have had with these lovely folks. Even though they weren’t scheduled to host a house show, they were willing to put us up for a night before we had to head out to Toronto the next day. We got there around 7 and had dinner before sitting out by a fire in the backyard. We had some drinks and Dave and I ended up sitting in the back of a 6-wheeler with some more beers while our host drove around the property looking for wild turkey’s nesting in the trees. It was fantastic. We didn’t get to bed until almost 4am, but it was well worth it. Chris & Heather (again!) - We drove back to Toronto and our amazing friends put us up again for another two days. I had to do a video shoot on one of our days off, but they were super flexible and accommodating. We had a great time seeing them again and the two days went by too fast. It was so kind of them to put us up. David Schuurman (Ball of Yarn Films), The Field, Nettwerk, Amber Amar, & Sarah Davidson-Gurney - All of these amazing folks came together to make it possible for me to be able to shoot two music videos on a day off while we were in Toronto. It wouldn’t have been possible without each of them and I am very grateful to everyone involved for making it happen! It was a similar thing to working with Jesse. I don’t like being on camera, but David and his team made it really easy and it went well! I can’t wait to share the new videos. Jonathan, Jon & Season - We played a house show in Toronto next and it was another great night. We had dinner with the hosts and a few of their friends and then hung out with them before the show. We had a great turnout and everyone was so kind - it was a pleasure to get to perform for them. We had lots of great conversations before heading out and staying with our friends, The Mighty River, who were also playing in town (check them out, too!). The MacDonald’s - Our next house show was in the small town of Tavistock. We met our host and had a lovely dinner with her before her guests arrived and we played the show. We stayed up talking and laughing and telling a few ghost stories - it was a lot of fun. Pyung, Scotty, & Danny - We played our next house show in London, ON. Our hosts were a couple young guys who were all attending the local university and we had a great time meeting them, playing for them and hanging out as well. There might’ve been some beer pong involved later on in the night. I can’t remember who won though.. The McPherson’s - This was a special show. It was the 4th time these lovely folks had hosted me for a house show and it was so nice to see them all again. We had a great time playing for them and their guests and it was so nice getting to see some familiar faces in the crowd. We hung out for a little while afterwards before heading out and getting some sleep. Hopefully we get to do it again at the cottage next time! The Boyle’s - This was the 2nd time I’d played a house show at this host’s home. It was another beautiful night. Our host has a knack for surrounding himself with truly amazing and loving people and that really shone through on this night. It was so good to see him again and so good to get to play for him and his friends/family. Plus, mimosa’s and jazz for breakfast the next day was pretty classy. The Huston’s - We drove to Strathroy for our next show and arrived to find a shed next to the house full of chairs, Christmas lights and a wood stove nicely warming the room. Immediately the place had a very good feel to it. I was really blown away by the hosts hospitality and their kindness - and also by the kindness of their guests. It was like stepping into a very special community and immediately being made a part of it. They’ve been putting on shows in their shed as a part of their #shedconcertseries for a little while and it was an honour to get to join the list of musicians who have played there. A special night and one I hope we can recreate again in the future! The Jillard’s and Side Door - Our next show was in Hamilton in the home of a local luthier. This was the 2nd Side Door show on the tour and we had a great time playing it. We played the show to a lovely group of folks and then the host and I stayed up for a bit sipping whiskey and having a really great conversation. It was good for the soul. Miriam, Glenn and Side Door - We headed to Peterborough for our next show. We met our hosts and set up for the show. We had some delicious Thai food for dinner and spent most of the meal laughing and taking turns telling stories. After dinner the guests arrived and we had a great time playing to everyone. It was a really nice night. The Hall’s - Our last two shows on this tour were at the Equator Coffee shops in Almonte and Westboro. The owner is related to me and she and her family were kind enough to put Dave and I up for the whole time we were in Ottawa. We had a great time at both of the shows and it was so nice to get to end the tour with family. Dave Warne - Lastly, I would like to thank my dear friend Dave for joining me on this long tour. Dave and I had never toured together before this run of dates and I haven’t spent a lot of time playing my songs with other musicians. Whatever nerves I had about our performances or about being stuck in a car with one other person for seven weeks were not just put to rest - they were blown away. Dave is a fantastic musician and a great guy but, much more than that, Dave is a very good friend. I wouldn’t have been able to make it all the way through without him on this one. Also, there’s not a long list of people who are willing (or able) to jump onto a seven week tour across Canada with less then a months heads up - to sleep in strangers homes and sketchy motels for 50 days, learning all the songs on the fly and living out of a bag the entire time, but Dave just nailed it. I can’t say thank you enough to all my hosts and the venues and to everyone else who was involved in this tour. Coming out to a show, buying some merch, sharing my songs, streaming my music or just offering a kind word means so much. It’s how I get to keep doing this and without you all I wouldn’t be able to, so.. THANK YOU! I hope to do another house show tour in 2018. More soon, -joshua

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lynchgirl90 · 7 years

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#TwinPeaks’: David Lynch Talks About Reviving the Iconic Series

"Cable television is a new art house, and it’s good that it’s here," says Lynch, who talks Showtime, inspiration and the red room.

He dressed like a G-man.

When he arrived for his interview with Variety, David Lynch wore a black suit, a white shirt, a black tie, and wingtips. His hair was styled the same way as always, but what had once been jet black was now mostly white. The only pop of color on Lynch was incongruous; it emerged when he sat down for the interview. As he gestured while talking, a yellow plastic watch peeked out from the sleeve of his white shirt. It was the only item that didn’t make him look like his “Twin Peaks” character, FBI official Gordon Cole.

Lynch was as affable an interviewee as I’ve ever come across, but his answers were concise: His art may rely on the creation of a mysterious atmosphere, but in talking about his return to the world of “Twin Peaks,” he couldn’t have been more unequivocal and direct. When he disagreed with the premise of a question, which was not an uncommon occurrence, he did so in the friendliest possible way. The single longest answer — and it was an impassioned one, at that — revolved around his thoughts on the state of non-tentpole cinema.

The director is nothing if not attentive; he actually closed his eyes at several points in order to focus as completely as he could on his answers. At times, he would knead his hands together as he spoke, eyes closed, focused inward. That intensity seemed appropriate, given that he spoke about how his work is often inspired by images that float up from the deepest parts of his subconscious. Lynch doesn’t take credit for the existence of the strange moods and disjunctive tableaus that fill his work; he says he just channels what he sees, and puts that out into the world.

One more unequivocal thing: Lynch hates the idea of spoiling the experience of watching one of his creations. So in the conversation below, which was excerpted in this feature story on the drama’s return, there are no details about individual episodes of the “Twin Peaks” return, which arrived May 21 on Showtime.

When you’re on the set, are you a director who wants to have a very exact rendition of what you’ve envisioned?

Yes.

Down to line readings?

Yeah, it has to be very specific, or it has to be something that works just as well. If it doesn’t work in the line of things, then you have to talk and adjust things.

Are you looking for the actors to collaborate with you and bring you an idea that they think might execute your vision?

Not really. You know, it’s mostly — they tune into pretty much to what it is, and if they don’t, it’s pretty quick to explain the thing. Then there’s some that are good and some that are great line readings. You just keep working until it feels correct to you.

Kyle MacLachlan has said that you have such a close working relationship that you often don’t even need to speak. Is that something that develops over time?

Yeah, I think so, but I think I’ve known a lot of people as long as Kyle. We’re real close and sort of on the same page. So if I have any kind of doubt, he’ll pick up on that and think about it and he’ll know why. He’ll play back in his head something and say, “Well, off we go again.” We don’t have to say anything.

Because he’s so in tune with what you’re going for?

Yeah, the character is a certain way and Kyle knows what that way is, so he knows if he veered off at any time.

When you were envisioning this return to “Twin Peaks” — actually, I’ll back up a bit. In a more general way, is it images that come to you?

No, an idea holds everything, really, if you analyze it. It comes in a burst. An idea comes in, and if you stop and think about it, it has sound, it has image, it has a mood, and it even has an indication of wardrobe, and knowing a character, or the way they speak, the words they say. A whole bunch of things can come in an instant.

When you began to consider returning to “Twin Peaks,” did you receive flashes of those things, and then it was a matter of finding ways to join them together?

Yeah. I work with Mark Frost, so we talk and we get ideas. We kick around those ideas, and they get more and more specific, and something starts talking to you, and they know the way they want to be, and then there it is.

When you say “they know,” you’re saying the characters know?

No, the ideas. You pick up on the way they want to be. That’s what I always say, it’s like fish. You don’t make the fish, you catch the fish. It’s like, that idea existed before you caught it, so in some strange way, we human beings, we don’t really do anything. We just translate ideas. The ideas come along and you just translate them.

And transmit them to other people.

Yeah. You may build a thing, and then eventually it gets finished, and you show it.

What were lessons learned from the first two seasons of “Twin Peaks” that you wanted to carry forward into this new experience with it?

For me, I wanted to be involved with all the writing and I wanted to direct all of them. Not that other directors didn’t do a fine job. But, it’s passing through different people, it’s just natural that they would end up with [something] different than what I would do. That’s what I learned.

In a perfect world, would you have loved to have directed all of the first two seasons?

Oh yeah.

Showtime first announced this project in October 2014, and now here we are in 2017, so it’s been a very…

Long time. And we were writing before that [he and Frost began collaborating again in 2012].

When you sat down with Mark again and decided to do this, what was it that made you think, “Yeah, we definitely need to do that.” You had an accumulation of ideas?

No.

No pile of fish that you’d caught?

No. It was 25 years later, which was [a time frame mentioned] in the original thing, and that’s one thing. Another is a love for the world and the people in the world. Then, as soon as you start to focus on that, that’s when ideas start coming.

The experience of working with ABC, do you look back fondly on that?

Sure. I mean, I didn’t really know that side of it. I just remember loving the pilot. The pilot to me is the thing. That sets the mood and the characters and the feel of “Twin Peaks.”

I can actually remember the quality of the light in the room the day “Twin Peaks” premiered, because it’s so imprinted on me. Watching it again, that atmosphere in the pilot is still so effective and mysterious. I understand that the ideas come to you and you want to transmit them, but are you also trying to access an emotional state in yourself, or reproduce that in the viewer?

No, it comes with the idea and … emotion is a tricky thing. A bunch of elements that need to come together to conjure that feeling and have it go over into other people. I guess, like Mel Brooks said, “If you don’t laugh while you’re writing the thing, the audience isn’t going to laugh.” If you don’t cry or feel it while you’re doing it, it’s probably not going to translate.

At times, “Twin Peaks” is also a very funny show.

It’s a bunch of things. That’s the thing. It’s like life, actually — you could be crying in the morning and laughing in the afternoon. It’s the way it is.

Were you surprised when it came out how popular it was?

Yeah. You know, TV executives, I guess they worry, so they have some tests they do on shows, especially a pilot. Apparently in those days, it took place in Philadelphia, and there was a room full of regular people. On a scale from one to 100, it did a 52. It didn’t do terribly, but they didn’t have really any idea. Something happened between that test screening and the air date. Something went in the air.

Showtime Gary Levine, who was at ABC then, talked about how it was held for mid-season — people in the media got to see it and some of the buzz started that way. The interest built over time, and people began to hear about before it came out.

People hear about lots of things.

But there were fewer things to hear about 27 years ago. There was a lot less TV being made.

That’s true.

Why was it important to revisit that “25 years later” time frame?

Well, I had a thing happen to me [during the making of the] pilot. A pilot is open-ended. But in case the pilot flops, they ask you to do a closed ending — they call it the European version. Partway through shooting the pilot, people would say, “Remember David, you have to do a closed ending.” I had zero interest in doing that and no time to do it anyway. No ideas. Mark was not having any ideas.

In the editing process, one evening about 6:30 p.m., I think — it was very nice weather. Warm, and it was a nice sun, low in the sky. Me and [editors] Duwayne Dunham and Brian Berdan went out into the parking lot from the editing room, and we were talking about something. I leaned up against the roof of a car, like this [he folds his arms out in front of him, as if resting on a car roof]. The roof was so warm, but not too warm. It was just a really good feeling, and into my head came the red room in Cooper’s dream. That opened up a portal in the world of “Twin Peaks.” A super important opening, and it led to [the idea that it] took place 25 years later — that dream.

Were you worried about what network the new season would end up at and how it would be received?

No. You see the thing is, there are plenty of things to worry about, but it’s so enjoyable. If nothing happens, it’s still okay. This whole trip has been enjoyable.

You and Mark did ended up settling on Showtime. Why was that?

Well, a lot of reasons, but the long and the short of it is now I’m really happy to work with Showtime and [CEO] David Nevins and [president of programming] Gary Levine and [executive] Robin Gurney and all the people there.

So you brought Showtime the entire script in one 400-page binder. What was it like talking about that with them, getting their feedback?

I think, if you asked 100 people to read something, you’d get 100 different things. Like they say, never turn down a good idea, but never take a bad idea. You stay true to the ideas and you can’t veer off from those things.

I talked to David and Gary from Showtime about the problems that occurred in April 2015, when you said you were going to step away from “Twin Peaks.”

What did they say?

David Nevins said that, once it was explained to him what you wanted, he thought you were making a reasonable and rational request to potentially be able to expand what you were doing. But it wasn’t fitting the normal pattern of what business affairs was used to. That’s where he thought the hitch happened.

Basically, that’s it.

And as soon as he could, he and Gary went over to your house and you all drank coffee.

Gary brought treats for me. Some cookies.

So in the main, what’s your relationship been like with Showtime?

Solid gold.

When you went into production and were shooting it, what were some of the most exciting parts of it?

Every day was exciting. Every day. It’s supposed to be that way. It’s like, this is a day you work with this character, and they do this, and it’s this is part of the story, so it should be exciting. It should be a really great feeling when you get it. Each day you try to get it. I always say, in the morning, you have a glass bridge that you’re supposed to cross. It’s so delicate, you wonder if it will break apart. As you go, it turns to steel. When you get [what you want], it’s a steel bridge. Getting it the way you want it to be, that’s a beautiful high, and it’s a high for everybody. It’s difficult to go home and go right to sleep. And it’s murder to get up in the morning.

Did you feel like you had a bit more freedom with Showtime? Although I know you’ve said that ABC didn’t really place too many limits on you in terms of Standards & Practices.

No, we pretty much did what we wanted to do. [We did] what the story wanted. You don’t think, “Oh, I can do this now.” The story tells you what’s going to happen.

Would you do another season?

I don’t know. You never say no. You don’t know what will happen. It depends on a lot of things.

When I think about Agent Cooper, I see him as an optimistic man. He seems like someone who is excited to meet the challenges of life. How much of who he is is reflective of who you are?

Well, I believe in intuition. I believe in optimism, and energy, and a kind of a Boy Scout attitude, and Cooper’s got all those things. I think a real good detective has those things. He’s got more intuition than more detectives, though.

Was he an Eagle Scout, though, like you?

Was Cooper an Eagle Scout? I never thought about it. I don’t know.

Well, that could be season four, then — a prequel. In the main, do you watch much TV?

I watch some news. I watch the Velocity Channel. It’s about cars. That’s my new love, this Velocity Channel and the different shows where they customize cars and restore cars. It’s pretty great. These car guys are real artists, some of them. Some of these cars are so beautiful.

Do you watch any scripted TV?

I loved “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men.”

Are you still going to make feature films?

Feature films are suffering a kind of bad time right now, in my opinion, because the feature films that play in theaters are blockbusters. That seems to fill the theaters, but the art-house cinema is gone.

If I made a feature film, it might play in L.A. and New York, a couple of other places, for a week in a little part of a cineplex, and then it would go who knows where. I built [“Twin Peaks”] to be on the big screen. It will be on a smaller screen, but it’s built for the big screen. You want a feature film to play on a big screen with big sound, and utilize all the best technology to make a world.

It’s really tough after all that work to not get it in the theater. So I say that cable television is a new art house, and it’s good that it’s here.

“Twin Peaks” airs on Showtime Sundays at 9 p.m

link (TP)

#Twin Peaks #David Lynch #Kyle MacLachlan

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myautisticpov · 7 years

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New review! I told you I was coming back from hiatus!

This time it’s AUTISM RUNS AWAY, the second book in the School Daze series.

Review Summary:

Overall Opinion: 4/5 Clarity of Autism: 5/5 Stereotype or Person: 2/5 Accurate Autism: 3/5 Storylines: 2/5 Respect 4/5 Total: 3/5

Script is below:

Continuing on with the School Daze series, can the second book live up to the first?

*Intro*

If you haven’t seen my review of the first book, I would recommend checking that out before continuing.

This second book continues to follow the character of the first, though there is a greater focus on Ben’s sister, Ellie, as well as a new teacher, Rob, and a new autistic child, Ethan.

It follows a lot of the same beats as the first book, with the opening even being almost identical, only with Ellie misunderstanding Rob’s teaching methods, instead of Ben misunderstanding Mel’s.

Overall Opinion

**** - Like the last book, it’s a reasonably enjoyable read. Though it definitely lacks the cohesion of the first book. The only arc that really gets resolved is the romance between Ellie and Rob, and there’s not the same resolution to Ethan’s arc that Kyle had in the last book. But more on that later.

Clarity of Autism

***** - Stated in the text.

Stereotype or Person

** - It’s time to talk about what I have been referring to as The Jeff Problem.

If you remember from the last book, Jeff is Mel’s adult autistic brother. In the first book, he was a very minor character who mostly gave Mel motivation for her career choice. He had no character development or arc. He was just there.

“But wait,” I hear you say. “Didn’t he get a job despite his parents wishes? Wasn’t that an arc?”

Yeah, but not for him. That was another arc for Mel and mostly dealt with Mel’s relationship with her parents.

The easiest way to figure out if a character has an arc is to ask “Can you identify their Disney Princess I Want song?” and do they make progress towards that goal?

Jeff doesn’t have any wants, according to the narrative. Mel asks him if he wants things to change, and he says things are fine.

Mel then takes matters into her own hands and pushes Jeff and gets him a job. Because she’s determined that that’s what’s best for him, and that’s what he really wants.

Now, Jeff was a side character in the first book, so I let this slide. After all, most side characters aren’t as well developed in most books. But the second book only continued this trend.

I swear, Jeff has less personality than a female character in a shonen manga. Or worse, a Michael Bay movie.

So, let’s break down my main problems here, because there are a few:

He's a walking teaching tool. Seriously, everything he does is a Teachable Moment, and it’s outright stated as such by the characters who interact with him. He does something quirky and they learn not to judge him. How Disney of them. I’ll come back to this in the respect portion. In the end, Jeff ends up lacking the nuance of actual adults with autism. He’s still making the kind of mistakes that most people grow out of. Especially those with Jeff’s history, which I’ll get to in a moment. Also, the allistic characters zone in on social mistakes so quickly. I get that the narrative wants to draw attention to Jeff’s autistic traits, but it shows. Most people don’t care that much about a stranger’s quirks. Not unless they’re coded as “insane”, where the first explanation would be mental illness or disability. Mostly they’re just ignored or easily explained away and they're not as frequent.

He's completely oblivious to how his parents treat him. Like, completely. Which is part of this quite outdated and harmful stereotype that autistic people don’t know when people around them are hurting them. To be honest, it’s quite easy to read Jeff’s parents as emotionally abusive. It would explain why they refuse to let him gain independence and why he’s so reluctant to rock the boat. It’s not that he doesn’t care about getting a job, it’s that he’s scared of the consequences. But the narrative has done nothing so far to support this, so it is firmly in the territory of a honeypot. Especially since this book avoids the topic if abusive parents like Superman avoids Kryptonite.

So, I get that this is a book for Autism Parents™ to educate them on how to do better. And the problem with Autism Parents™ is that dealing with them ends up being much like being a hostage negotiator.

Most people’s first instinct when the perp answers the phone would be to tell them to get fucked.

After all, they are a terrible piece of shit.

But no hostages are getting out alive in that situation.

Instead, hostage negotiators have to approach the situation from a place of empathy and compassion - not because the perp deserves it, but because that’s how you resolve the situation peacefully.

You know, without dead hostages.

But while I can appreciate this rationally, it doesn’t make that compassion easy to find for those of us who are triggered by the kind of abuse Autism Parents TM inflict upon their children.

All of it is, instead, being used up on the kids.

And therein lies the ultimate problem. We want the hostages out alive, but the optimal approach doesn’t take long to emotionally crush us.

Which is one of the reasons why it took me so long to finish this book. The attitude was that all parents love their children and therefore aren’t capable of emotional abuse. There was one particular line where the teachers reassure a group of parents by saying that children are forgiving and will understand their mistakes.

And don’t get wrong, that’s an important message for non-abusive parents. And even abusive parents need to be gently brought around if they’re hearing this in a voluntary situation. But there’s no bringing them around here. It’s just “don’t worry, everyone makes mistakes”. Which… Yeah, I get why it’s like this, but it’s horrifically common for parents of disabled kids to be abusive. I know that this book is meant for those who aren’t, but a lot of the rhetoric seems like it would just be giving abusive parents a free pass if they read it because it is incredibly sympathetic towards parents whose actions hurt their kids, with very little regard to the psychological trauma that it can cause. Yeah, kids are resilient, but only so much. There is a reason why Jeff’s lack of anxiety as an adult is unbelievable. Speaking of...

Jeff’s autism informs everything about his character, and nothing else does. This is most obvious in the complete lack of comorbid conditions, most notably anxiety. Like, Jeff’s parents’ behaviour, in refusing to let him pursue independence, is explained by Jeff having been bullied by his boss at his first job. Which… explains his parents behaviour, but not his? Seriously? But no. No sign of anxiety. Like, at all. Not even at a work environment. Or around strangers. Yeah, I don’t buy it. That’s not how that works.

He sounds like Drax the Destroyer. Seriously. Which, again back to the anxiety thing, is a problem because our pov in the Jeff chapters is a complete stranger to Jeff. That’s not how that works. You don’t just openly admit “I don’t understand the phrase you just used” to a stranger. It paints a target on your back for bullying, which Jeff would know because we are told that he has had experience with that kind of bullying in the workplace. You nod, you work out the meaning from context, or you just make vague non-committal noises and hope that they weren’t asking you something important.

Asperger's - it's a defunct label and shouldn't be used so heavily. Like, Jeff corrects people who say that he has autism. And here’s the thing, the main difference between the labels is always touted as “did you speak before you were three?” but once you’re an adult, that’s bull. It’s largely “can you pass as NT or not?” Which Jeff clearly can’t. So why it’s used so heavily and insisted upon is beyond me, besides good old ableism. “I’m not like those other autistics.” I would cut it slack in other books for realism (because a lot of people do cling to Asperger’s out of internalised ableism), but this book is meant to be an educational tool, so no slack here. Especially not when that internalised ableism is never addressed.

In the end, Jeff isn’t a character. He seems more like a patchwork of different stories about autistic people, but put together in a way that doesn’t make sense. He’s all anecdote, and no substance. Just a collection of Teachable Moments. Just like taking a baseball bat with the word autism written on it and bashing you over the head with it. Metaphor. Seriously, Sheldon Cooper has more going on beneath his inane catchphrases. Sheldon mother-flipping Cooper.

Accurate Autism

*** - would be 2 stars if it was just Jeff, and it honestly just scraped three. There is a single scene in this book that saves it from complete annihilation by my internet reviewer powers. This scene is told from Ethan’s point of view.

I’ve spent so much of this review going on about Jeff, I haven’t even really talked about Ethan. But that’s not without reason. Ellie and Rob are the two main pov characters in this book, and they’re both very secondary figures in Ethan’s life. Rob is his teacher, and Ellie met his mum once at her bakery? As such, we’re missing the same narrative cohesion regarding Ethan that we got with Kyle and Ben.

So, as the title of the book suggests, Ethan has a problem with running away when meltdowns loom. We’ll get to the narrative arc of this more in the storylines section, but for this section it’s enough to say that in the final chapters, there is a scene from Ethan’s point of view where he runs away for the final time in the book.

This scene is really well written. It avoids the usual “autism voice” that is so, so common for autistic point of views in books. It also does a really good job of explaining things from Ethan’s point of view.

This scene is the only thing saving this section from a two star rating.

Storylines

** - They’re barely treated as human and just there to further other people’s plots.

Jeff and Ethan don't have arcs. They're there as teaching tools for the other characters.

So, I said I was going to talk about Ethan’s narrative arc here. The thing is, it’s not Ethan’s arc. It’s his teacher’s and his mother’s. It’s about his mother learning not to worry to the point of making things worse for her son, and yet even this barely has any resolution.

The arc is basically that Ethan runs away when he reaches the point of meltdown and his previous school couldn’t deal with it. They kept calling his mother, and his mother is always terrified that something is going to happen to him.

But now he’s at the school from the first book, only a year up from Mel’s class, since time has passed since the first book. His teacher is a new introduction in this book, Rob.

Rob uses his experience to help Ethan’s mother run through tactics to help avoid Ethan running away and he works to get her more at ease with Ethan being at school and visiting friends and stuff.

But that’s it.

I mean, that’s literally it. He tells her what to do, she makes some attempts, but doesn’t quite manage it.

And then Ethan runs in front of a car and Rob is injured saving him.

That… What?

I mean, I have seriously thought over this, and I can’t possibly see the resolution to Ethan’s arc. In fact, this end point should be the “all is lost” moment. The only thing that gets resolved is the romance between Rob and Ellie.

The only possible angle I think the author was going for was the fact that Rob wasn’t angry and didn’t blame Ethan? And kind of disapproved of Ethan’s parents being hard on the kid about it. But he just showed it by firmly stating that it wasn’t Ethan’s fault. Yeah, that’s not going to do anything in that situation.

Like, I came away at the end just terrified for Ethan. Especially when his dad seemed complete devoid of understanding about his son’s behaviour. Just embarrassment and anger.

That’s just… Nope. All I can picture is Ethan hiding in his room without dinner, and having all of his special interest things taken away, doing everything he can to remain silent to avoid verbal abuse from his father.

From the information given by the author, I literally cannot imagine any other ending to this scenario.

But even without that imagined resolution, the resolution we’re given is weak, and not really about Ethan as much as it’s about his parents and Rob.

Respect

**** - Pretty decent, but there are some slip-ups

While the books do well with conscious shows of respect, the subconscious ones can be just as powerful in imparting lessons.

How well can the “treat autistic people like people” lesson be imparted when the story doesn't treat autistic characters as characters. They have no arcs or character development. Allistic characters have that, but autistic ones don't.

I think the unsaid lessons can be just as powerful - if not more so - than the said lessons.

AUTISM RUNS AWAY reveals some of the inherent problems of this approach to educating people about autism. It doesn't replace a textbook, and it's not education through good representation.

Is there room for this kind of education? Maybe. But it's not a question I think I’ll be ready to answer until I look back on the series as a whole.

Overall, AUTISM RUNS AWAY gets three stars. It’s not necessarily bad representation it’s certainly shallow. Hopefully the series will pick up from here.

#actuallyautistic #actually autistic #aspergers #autism #aspie thoughts

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artificialqueens · 7 years

Text

It's all about Barbie - Chapter 1 (Trixya)- Djoodi

A/N: hey guys, it’s Djoodi here! I had this idea and thought it was really cute so I wrote it for you guys! Both of them are cis-girls, by the way. I don’t have any idea of how many chapters this will be, but let’s see!

Quick summary: Trixie is a single mom who once dreamed to be a star in New York. Katya just moved from Russia to her High School BFF’s apartment because things didn’t turn out the way she planned.

Once again, sorry for the mistakes I probably did >.< English is not my first language. Hope you guys enjoy it!

“But how did you tell her?” Violet said while Trixie painted her eyebrows “That you are lesbian.“

“Barbie?” the blonde girl asked “I mean, I never told her like ’Honey, I’m lesbian’. I think she knows, though. Remember when I met Pearl on Tinder and thought we could be something but we ended up just becoming best friends? I’m pretty sure she was aware of what was going on. Stop moving, goddammit, your brows will end up looking like third cousins."

"You’re not helping me, Mattel." the purpled haired girl sighed.

Trixie just rolled her eyes "Isn’t your sister, like, fourteen or something? I thought she had caught you and Pearl on the sofa the other day."

"Yeah, she just turned fourteen. And she didn’t caught us, she almost did. That’s why I want to tell her. I mean, I don’t want to hide from her anymore, you know? But I don’t know how to say it like ‘Hey, Jamie, Violet likes girls. Women. Vaginas.’ or something like that.” Violet grabbed the small mirror on the top of the counter to take a look at herself “I look good as hell, fuck. Well, I always do. Thanks, Tracy.”

“You’re welcome.” the girl looked around the store to see just a small amount of people, with no one being on the MAC counter.

She took a deep breath. Another day working as a makeup artist/counter in a freaking mall in Massachusetts. She could have been a star if it wasn’t for teen pregnancy. And, although Barbara was her favorite person in the whole world and the love she had for her was infinite, Trixie couldn’t help but imagine how things could have been different if she had went to college in New York.

“Fuck, five missing calls from Kyle.” she panicked when she saw her phone, and rushed to the employees lockers “I need to go, Vi. See you tomorrow. Good luck with Jamie."

She grabbed all her things and went to the parking lot where she entered her car and called Kyle.

”Answer, answer…“ the girl whispered before hearing a Hello from the other side of the call "Fuck, sorry I missed your calls, I was busy, are you still with her?”

“Where the hell are you, Trixie? Waiting is not part of our deal.” the boy answered “She’s here with me inside the car.”

“I’m on my way. Still on the mall’s parking lot, though, but it is not far.” Trixie snorted “By the way, you are her father. If you can’t stay with her for twenty minutes more than what we agreed with, I don’t know who will.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t prepared for it. I’ll let her in the playground, there are a couple of kids here. I have, unh, something to do. Bye, Trixie.”

“Kyle, you can’t just…” Trixie tried to say something, but he hang up “Such a dick.”

***

Katya sighed. Three months ago she would not have imagine herself going from an athlete in Russia to an unemployed, babysitting for her best friend who was kind enough to let her live with her in Massachusetts.

She wasn’t complaining about it. She loved America. People where much better then the Russians when talking about sexuality, for example. She even liked babysitting Melanie, although she wasn’t a big fan of kids. Since Ginger was so nice letting Katya stay with her, the least she could do was help with the kid.

Melanie was quite nice, to be honest. She definitely didn’t look like Danny DeVito, which means she looks a lot more like her father rather than like Ginger, but she had the personality of her mother. Katya would have full conversations with the six-year-old about anything.

Melanie was a big fan of Adele, enjoyed old-school movies and really liked the Spice Girls, since Ginger named her after the band. Katya taught her how to do some macaroni necklace and the both of them even had matching bracelets.

They would go get ice-cream and even go to the mall sometimes. This was the first time Melanie took her to the park, and Katya was low-key enjoying it. It was a shame that she couldn’t take a smoke on the playground area.

“Katya!” Melanie screamed, taking the woman out of her own thoughts.

“Да?” she looked at the ginger girl in front of her, full freckled face and a big smile really showing off her dimples.

“This is Barbara, she’s from school.” Katya stifled a laugh before she saw the girl. Barbara was the name of one of her four vaginas. It was a joke she made with someone in the past, but she still thought it was pretty funny.

“Stacey, Catherine, Barbara and Leslie.” she thought to herself “And they all hate each other.”

“Hello Barbara.” the Russian woman gave the girl a sympathetic smile before taking a look at her. Short blonde hair, baby blue dress with hot pink coat. A pink headband. The girl reminded her of a Polly Pocket, or something “How are you?"

"Barbie!” she heard a voice and saw the little girl open a huge smile. It was the moment when a actual Barbie Doll - only thicker - appeared. The young girl hugged the woman, who was wearing a coat very similar to her.

“So there’s an actual Barbie Girl who takes care of the young Barbie Girl?” she asked, and the woman smiled “Is she your older sister, Barbara?”

“No, she’s my mommy.” the little girl, giggled, and they saw the surprise in Katya’s eyes.

“Wanna go home, sweetheart?” the mother asked “Daddy let you here when he turned the phone off?"

"I wanna play with Melanie a bit more, can I?” Barbie asked, giving the woman her small backpack, and her mom nodded “Thanks, mommy. Love you so much."

"Love you too. Wait, take you coat off, you don’t want it to get dirty or something.” the woman whispered, before sitting by the Russian’s side. She saw her little girl and the ginger one rushing to the play ground, and couldn’t do anything other than smile.

“She really looks just like you. This is a compliment, by the way.” Katya said “My name is Yekaterina Petrovna Zamolodchikova, but you can call me Katya.”

“Thank you, I guess.” she smiled, unsure if that was an attempt to flirt with her “Beatrix Mattel. Call me Trixie.”

“So her name is Barbara Mattel? Now that’s a good name."

"I wish girl, I’m all about this Barbie thing…” Trixie sighed “She’s actually Barbara Krueger, it’s her dad’s last name.”

“You look so fucking young.” the Russian covered her mouth right after saying it, which made Trixie laugh “I’m sorry if this is invasive."

"No, that’s fine. I’m 23, I had Barbie with 17.” she grinned “How about you? Judging by your accent, you’re not from here, are you?”

“Oh, hell to the no.” Katya laughed out loud “I’m Russian, actually. And 26, babysitting my best friend’s kid. But, girl, you are so young! Are you married?"

"God, no. I…” Trixie then realized she was about to tell a complete stranger about her whole life, and decided not to “I’m not married at all. Barbie was, like, the only thing we did together.”

“Oh… That’s something. So you’re the one who takes care of her?” she could see that Trixie was kind of uncomfortable with the question “I’m really sorry for being invasive, Trixie, you don’t need to answer it. I, like, totally forgot we just met.”

“You don’t need to be sorry.” the younger woman half smiled “I think it’s just a tricky subject to talk about, really. He’s a rich boy, if he wanted to raise her by himself he could. But he is an asshole. Especially when he found out that he got a lesbian pregnant.”

“He’s homophobic?"

"He’s more of that ’I’m not homophobic, but…’ kind of guy, which sucks even more, to be completely honest.” Trixie sighed, and Katya nodded.

“My parents think just like him. But, hey, shit happens.” the Russian woman shrugged and took a look at the two young girls “I’m lesbian too, you know.”

“Mommy, we need to go home! The Barbie TV special begins in 30 minutes!” Barbara rushed to her mom’s lap.

“Oh, of course sweetheart! Say goodbye to Melanie and Katya, then.” Trixie stood up, grabbing the pink backpack.

“Goodbye Katya, goodbye Mel!” she said quickly, putting her coat back on.

“Wait, are you coming here tomorrow?” Melanie asked. Katya was braiding the ginger curls.

“I’m here everyday after school, silly.” the blonde girl smiled, grabbing her mother’s hand.

“Are you coming here tomorrow?” Katya asked Trixie.

“Well, I don’t know. It depends on my job, really.” she saw that the Russian woman went a little disappointed “I’m here almost everyday, though. Once in a while my friend Kim comes to get her, when I can’t. But she’s here everyday, Kyle takes here from school and let her here so he doesn’t need to go to my house.” she rolled her eyes “It was a pleasure to meet you. Let’s hope that we can meet again tomorrow or something."

"Of course.” Katya smiled, and they saw both blondes making their way to the car.

A while passed and Katya was still braiding Melanie’s hair. That little girl had way too much hair for a six-year-old. She couldn’t help but think about the beautiful blonde Barbie Doll she had just met. She knew that Trixie for sure wasn’t on Tinder - she had spent way too time on the dating app to know who was and who wasn’t there.

“Are you into Barbara’s mom?” Mel asked when she stood up “Because I think you are.”

“Shut up, you’re six.” Katya stared at the girl, and then stood up too “Let’s go home, I kind of want to watch the Barbie TV special now.”

***

Trixie’s apartment wasn’t big at all. It had two rooms - hers and Barbara’s -, a living room that connected with a kitchen, and two bathrooms. It had the size they needed (and also, it was what she could pay for). But it was so well decorated that it took off from the fact that it was so small. And the only people who would often attend there were herself, Barbie and Kim. Pearl and Violet would also go there on especial occasions.

Kim was Trixie’s best friend since third grade, when they were the only girls who already used makeup. She was tall, Asian and chubby, looked like a sweet heart but could read any one for filth. She worked at a cafe and lived in the apartment on top of Trixie’s with her roommate Naomi, although she spent major time in Trixie’s place.

“It’s bedtime, sweetie, you need to sleep.” the blonde woman said to her kid, who was laying on the living room’s carpet while watching some random show at Discovery Home & Health.

“I actually don’t need to sleep.” Barbie said, slowly sitting up “Caitlyn from school told me that we can stay eleven days without sleeping. She even searched it on Google."

"Caitlyn is coming for you, Trix, if I were you I would watch out for this little bitch.” Kim whispered, which made the blonde giggle and roll her eyes.

“Yeah, but Caitlyn is not your mom, I am. So it is time for you to sleep.” Trixie watched her daughter make a puppy face “C'mon, Barbie, I let you stay awake for 10 minutes more than what I normally do.”

“Fine.” the young girl snorted “Goodnight mommy, I love you so much."

"Love you too.” the blonde kissed Barbie’s forehead, while hugging her.

“Goodnight, Kim.” she said on her way to her room.

“Hope you have some nice dreams.” the pink haired Asian said, and they both watched the “Now tell me about the park girl you said earlier.”

“Oh, okay.” Trixie sat up “When I arrived, Barbie was talking to this little ginger girl, and this blonde woman was there too. She thought we were sisters at first, which is fine.”

“It’s because you dress like a 12 year-old.” Kim laughed.

“Shut up. Anyways, Barbie and the little girl went to play and she started talking to me.”

“How was she, though?” the Asian girl asked “Like, appearance.”

“Well her clothes were definitely something out of this world. Like, she was wearing boots, a knee length denim skirt and a really ugly sweater with hideous pattern.” Trixie told her friend, who laughed “She was wearing her hair in boxer braids - is this the name of it? I don’t fucking know, that braid hairstyle that the Kardashians think they invented."

"Who the hell is this person, Trix. Literally, you are describing a cowgirl or something.”

“Look, I know it sounds weird, but… It kind of really suited her?” Kim frowned “I don’t know, bitch, it just did. And she didn’t look like a cowgirl at all. She had beautiful cheekbones, I must say. It would be fun to paint her. Her makeup was, like, fine. Nothing crazy like yours or mine, really black eye-shadow and red lips.”

“But you thought she flirted with you?”

“Girl, I don’t know if she was flirting with me. It gave me that vibes, but, like, the last time I had an experience with flirting was with Pearl, literally a year ago. And we know this ended up with me and her laughing and binge watching America’s Next Top Model. I don’t know if I’m desperate or some shit, but I think I secretly wished she was flirting."

"You are so thirsty, girl."

"Bitch, I haven’t properly hooked up with someone since fucking High School!” Trixie pointed.

“Girl, look at who you are talking to. I haven’t properly hooked up with someone since my mom gave me birth.”

***

Katya was sitting at Ginger’s dinner table in her pj’s while watching her friend’s daughter sleep on the couch. She was already smoking her third cigarette while listening to her Spotify playlist, which consisted in basically in a song called “The Same Parts” by some beautiful young girl whose name she didn’t bother to know, and also some old movies soundtrack.

You could tell Ginger was from Florida just by taking a look at her place: it only had pictures of her and her family in Gatorland, Kennedy Space Center and Disney World. There was also a plaque with “WELCOME TO FLORIDA, THE SUNSHINE STATE” written on it.

Some of Katya’s best memories were with Ginger, back in the day when she used to live in Florida too. They both met each other on High School, when they were skipping classes to smoke, although Ginger was two years older then Katya. After that they became inseparable, they even had matching tattoos of the yin yang symbol, where Katya had the black part and Ginger the white one. Also, Ginger was the first person that Katya came out to.

After High School ended for Katya, she moved back to Russia to work on gymnastics. Ginger on the other hand, got married to a man who lived in Boston, who made her move from Florida to Massachusetts with him. Unfortunately they got divorced and her ex-husband left the country. Now, Ginger lived with her six-year-old daughter, and her High School BFF.

When she heard the sound of the front door being unlocked, the Russian woman immediately left her cigarette on the ashtray and rushed to the door.

“Honey, I’m home.” Ginger giggled, leaving her purse on the floor when she saw the blonde waiting for her “Girl, with this hairstyle you’re looking like fucking Pucca or some shit like that.”

“First of all, it’s very nice to see you.” Katya opened a big smile “Second of all, Pucca is a badass girl who is much stronger than any guy that lived in her village. So, if my two little buns are good enough for Pucca, they are good for me too."

"I can’t believe you let Melanie sleep on the couch again, bitch.” Ginger rolled her eyes “She drools when she sleeps."

"It’s not my fault that she wanted to wait for you to come home, hooker.” the Russian replied.

“And it’s not my fault that I need to work to pay this fucking bills."

"Touché."

"Go put her in bed, please, I’m asthmatic and overweight so I can’t hold this child.” Ginger asked while sitting at the table where Katya was before she arrived.

“Won’t she wake up or something?”

“She sleeps like a log, don’t worry."

"Fine then.” Katya said, picking the little girl up “She’s not heavy at all, fucking bitch.” she watched the other woman laugh at her before she let Mel in the girl’s bed.

“Is she sleeping like a little angel?” Ginger asked, joking.

“Fuck off.” the blonde woman snorted, sitting on the chair next to her friend “Hey, I need to ask you something."

"I won’t shave your back, if that’s what you wanting me to do.” the redhead answered, making Katya burst out laughing.

“You fucking bitch, that was not what I wanted to ask. And by the way, I don’t have a hairy back.” she said, while she stopped laughing “But on a serious note, I do have a question.”

“Bring it on, I’m all ears.”

“Do you know any of Melanie’s school friends’s parents?”

“I know some of them, yeah. Some divorced moms like myself and some hoes who think no one know they are cheating on their husbands with another man. There are some dads too.” she took a sip of water “Why, do you want to know someone specific? Please don’t tell me you are hitting on married heterosexual woman, I know you are gross but please say you are not that gross.”

“I’m not hitting on nobody yet. Or maybe I am, but she’s not married. Or straight.” Katya spilled, and saw the curiosity on Ginger’s face “Her name is Beatrix Mattel.”

“Barbara’s mom?”

“You know, I almost cackled in front of the kid and Melanie when she told her name, because Barbara is how I named one of my four vaginas.” the Russian laughed “But anyways, yep, Barbara’s mom.”

“Well, she’s a very sweet girl. The bitch is, what, 23? She works with makeup or something like that and always wears pink.”

“Yeah, she mentioned that her daughter’s dad is a homophobic asshole who got her pregnant when she was 17.”

“When did you met her?”

“Earlier today when Mel and I went to the park she was there. We talked a bit.” she smirked “She’s really cute.”

“Stop liking my daughter’s friend’s mom, that’s creepy.” Ginger said, and Katya laughed.

“I don’t like her, girl, we literally met less then 24 hours ago. I just think she’s a really interesting figure who also happens to look very beautiful."

"You should add her on Facebook, her makeup jobs are good as hell. I always watch her little video tutorials, I guess that’s the name of it, I don’t fucking know. I only watch it because it’s beautiful, but I can’t do fucking mascara without looking like a potato that went wrong."

"Wait, do you have her on Facebook?” Katya’s jaw dropped, and Ginger nodded “Give me this fucking phone right now, bitch.”

***

“I think I should go up, Naomi is probably waiting or something. And you look tired.” Kim stood up from the couch they were sitting on.

“I sure am.” the blonde walked towards the front door, unlocking it “Goodnight, Kim. See you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight.” the pinked hair woman waved when entering the elevator.

After closing the door, Trixie went to grab a glass of water for herself before going to bed. She was really tired, as always, specially because it was already 2 in the morning. It was all so quiet that, when she felt something holding her legs she almost had a heart attack.

“Holy fuck!” she gasped, putting a hand over her chest to feel the fast heart beats “Barbara, you almost killed me!”

“I didn’t want to scare you, I’m so sorry!” the little girl rushed to apologize.

“It-it’s okay honey, just please don’t do it again, okay?” Trixie bent so she could be at her daughter size “You were suppose to be sleeping, sweetie, why are you still awake? Were you waiting for Kim to leave?”

“No, but I just had a nightmare. Can I please sleep with you? I promise I won’t disturb."

"Barbie, this is the third time this week that you want to sleep with me, is there something going on?” the woman asked, concerned.

“No, nothing! I just feel better sleeping with you.” the girl said.

“Fine.” Trixie didn’t full believe that there was nothing going on, mainly because Barbie was never like that. But she pretended to.

They both went to Trixie’s room and lied on her bed. The woman stroked her daughter’s hair until the 6-year-old finally fell asleep.

“Love you.” Trixie whispered, before kissing the girl’s forehead and falling asleep by her side.

#it's all about barbie #trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #trixya #lesbian au #fluff #djoodi #rpdr fanfiction #submission

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thornburgrealty · 6 years

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wavemaker9 · 5 years

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warning for talk about self-harm/attempted suicide; nothing detailed but yknow, started thinking more about how mel’s (believed) death would affect both kyle and others in los santos

it’d be unlikely that at least some others wouldn’t hear rumors that mel had died and when she’s not showing her face around town, it’s hard not to believe.There might be some people in the city who live under a strict “if i don’t directly see the body, i have no proof” mindset, but the bottom line is that people die alone in gutters all the time in the city. people disappear off the map constantly. and some move away or retire to better lives, but some people just end up dead. I think Toni’s the closest of my kids to that just because A, there’s always the risk that someone could have faked their death so it pays to lowkey be even a little prepared, and B, he saw gil do it first hand so yknow. But also Toni’s a realist and recognizes that sometimes people do just get killed, or they die from some dumb stunt, or they overdose or otherwise get themself killed. it’s not impossible, and spending all your days insisting on having that proof directly is a waste of time. And I do think other people besides Kyle and Ivan would hear about mel’s death sooner or later. Austin could hear from Kyle directly, and toni could hear it either from ivan directly or maybe down the chain from Kyle (kyle > austin > oliver > toni).

Austin probably hears from kyle just because. Well, kyle’s mood fucking drops following both mel’s death + his specifically being blamed for it. That was one of his best friends and it hits him hard. I think at first he’s just trying cope using his vices, but either by overdosing with that, having a particularly reckless stunt go bad, or just having things get rougher until he falls to more direct methods of harm, austin finds him directly following that. After fixing him up as best he can/getting him to someone who can do it better, depending on how he got hurt, austin confronting kyle about it and kyle trying to avoid the questions. Austin’s able to get out that mel died, but can’t get much more from Kyle before it leads into a shouting match. Austin unintentionally admits his frustration over all the shit kyle does like this, being ungrateful for the help austin gives him, putting himself in dumb and dangerous situations all the time, and refusing to just talk about things when they’re clearly /greatly/ bothering him, before storming off to give them both time to cool down before he tries again. Of course, it’s kyle, and austin should really know better and prolly would if he hadn’t gotten mad, because when he tries to come back to talk to him again, kyle’s outta there.

Austin ends up finding kyle again after another, seemingly more serious attempt, and having to take him to the hospital. And the pro of that is that it makes it much harder for kyle to bail, especially with austin not taking any second chances this time around. With enough pressing and kyle knowing he’s caught, him finally admitting the issue, that it’s not just that mel’s dead but he feels responsible and for a bullshit reason of them just fucking around like they normally do and it going bad. The two able to talk about it more without so much yelling this time, and austin admitting he appreciated amelia’s skill and work effort but, compared to kyle, amelia’s not worth it. Kyle arguing that, of course she is, but austin standing firm, he refuses to lose kyle over this. Kyle can drink and whatever else he does normally to cope, but he needs to move past this without sacrificing his whole life for it. Yes, his reckless behavior got someone killed, and maybe he’ll take this and learn how to not put the people he cares about in such risk- austin himself would /love/ for kyle to learn that. But Kyle needs to learn his lesson and move on, not wallow in this. Adds the classic case that austin wouldn’t expect amelia to really want kyle to die for this, no matter what happened, and kyle’d also be leaving ivan behind as well and imagine how well that would be taken.

It’s a combined effort of points that’s enough of a pull back to get kyle off the edge for a bit, getting him to ease back closer to the range of ‘struggling but managing’. Still fucking, rough for him, mourning is never easy for anyone and particularly not for Kyle, but like. Still, it’s something. However, around that time is when Toni hears the news and isn’t happy. Amelia had a lot of promise and he was interested to see where she took that. I think he’s less angry specifically that Amelia /died/ and more that she died /like she did/. Like he would have been fine with her going down a more impressive death, hell he’d have been chill killing her himself in a fight. But like. However he hears it from, he probably also hears even vaguely that it was something that went wrong connected to Kyle and Ivan, and just. The promise she had, she didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve to die because /those fucking two hazards/ dropped a ball. Like A, this reignites the anger for Ivan that had been starting to cool over the years since Gil was first injured. Because fucking Ivan can’t learn how to mind himself and what damage he causes for 2 fucking seconds?

And /Kyle/. Like Ivan’s a goddamn danger in the worst of ways, clearly, but at least he does something for the city, too. At least he’s made a name for himself and counters the bad shit he does with impressive shit and at least he puts in a fucking effort. It pisses Toni off that he can’t learn to play by the rules a little more, but that’s nothing compared to Toni’s opinion on the fucking useless menace that is Kyle Brown. The most Kyle’s been doing since Toni learned about him is minor jobs, fucking around and pissing away his time and energy on shit that don’t really mean nothing in the long run. Kyle does what he wants and shows no tact or respect and pull stunts & causes chaos without thinking through his actions and how they affect others. And Toni /told/ Amelia when he found out about her tie to Kyle that knowing him was a mistake, that she’d be wasting her time or needlessly putting herself in danger by staying too connected to him, and it seems like that turned out to be more than true. Toni plans to have a fucking talking with Ivan as well, but he sets something up with Kyle first to basically call him out on his shitty behavior and what a waste of space Toni thinks he is. That Mel /was/ worth more than Kyle,/easily so/, that she had the drive and motivation that Kyle lacks, so why is /he/ still alive when Amelia is /dead/? He calls out a lot of small but foolish mistakes Kyle’s made since moving to the city, things Toni’s taken note of as jobs/tasks/etc that Kyle only apparently managed to survive because of luck or help instead of relying on his own strength like Amelia did, like all people who are worth something in this city do. His final note is that, the way Toni sees it, Kyle does nothing but make mistakes, to the point of getting respectable people killed over them, while the only mistake Mel made was being associated with a useless fuck up like him.

And Kyle usually doesn’t care about Toni’s opinion in the slightest, but it is a laser-guided hit to an already shaky house of cards that is his recovery path, and he spirals back down /hard/ following it because yeah. A part of him wants to believe Austin over Toni, obviously, but also like. What was he thinking believing Austin saying that he was worthwhile or that he doesn’t deserve to die. What a fucking idiot he is. His whole mood crashes hard all over again. Luckily, following the previous shit, even with kyle’s slow improvement, Austin would be keeping a close eye on him. Insisting on one of them staying at the other’s place, trying to remove/hide any dangerous items like knives, insisting on driving Kyle places. He probably does a milder form of this during lesser depressive episodes of Kyle’s*, but clearly this is bad and following the previous attempt, takes no chances. So him catching onto Kyle’s change in mood before he has the chance to do anything drastic, pressing on what brought it about and doing his best to counter it. And he himself is /very/ mad when he hears it’s Toni who caused it because ughhhh this fucking guy. The worst guy. Austin’s had maybe one good interaction with Toni, /barely/ if ever, his whole life. Hate that guy.

Austin considers just focusing on Kyle, but like. Austin’s already sick of the shit Toni pulls on himself, but undoing what progress he managed with Kyle is bullshit. Like was shown with Austin suddenly standing up to Ivan over his parents, he has very few people he actually cares about but he cares about them a /lot/, so him requesting Oliver set up a meeting between Toni and himself, he has some things he needs to discuss with Toni. It’s a reluctant action, he really doesn’t wanna deal with Toni ever, but god Toni needs to know that fucking with Kyle isn’t okay and hopefully get him to help correct what he said to Kyle or at least back off, and if Austin has to be the only one to make that happen, then /fine/. He didn’t make it as far as he did by backing down immediately when things got too tough, after all, and toni’s main complaint about him anyway is not having enough backbone, so maybe this’ll get toni to chill on that, too. /Does/ request it in the Jawbreaker’s office though to dissuade Toni from trying anything bad if the convo does get heated. Austin’s not stupid, cmon.

And Toni shows, already very amused on what Austin thinks he has to say to him. Austin basically arguing he had already addressed kyle about what happened in a way to hopefully teach him to be more careful, without making him full on spiral, and toni’s messed that up now by once again thinking he knows best all the time when he doesn’t. Toni dismissive of any criticism though, it’s not his fault if kyle can’t handle the consequences of his actions. He shouldn’t make the mistakes if he’s not prepared to struggle with the guilt over them. This can be good for Kyle if he learns to take that pain and make something of it, and if he doesn’t, well then nothing of value /really/ lost. Austin clearly angry at that, but holding himself back. Insisting he’s upset about mel to a point too, but getting kyle to kill himself over an accident when austin had already been working on getting kyle to be more careful won’t do any good for anybody. If anything, it might do worse for the city, given all of kyle’s little connections to different crews. he’d expect someone like toni to recognize that. Toni pressing back, he doesn’t want to dismiss Kyle’s talents, but kyle ain’t /really/ important in this city. He’s talented and lucky, but anyone who works with him could replace him in a day if they needed to, and probably be better off for it. kyle is reckless, dangerously so, clearly. He doesn’t think through his actions, doesn’t care about making enemies, doesn’t care about protecting himself or those around him. Him getting someone killed by his refusal to take charge in his life was only a matter of time, it’s just a shame it had to be this person. The way toni sees it, kyle’s death might help the city, actually. It certainly couldn’t /hurt/ los santos any.

Austin’s eyes thinning at him at this, at toni so blatantly stating his opinion on kyle’s /life/, before he questions if a death to help the city stabilize wasn’t supposedly the same reasoning the Grazhdane had when they put Beilschmidt in a-? Toni’s eyes snapping onto Austin with a fucking fury the moment toni recognizes where he’s going with this, standing immediately and storming across the room to grab austin by the throat before he can continue, pinning him up against a nearby wall, telling him to finish that sentence, /please/. Give him a reason to let oliver find a better Second for his crew, he is /begging/ austin to. Austin able to make a move on toni to get him to have to pull back for a moment, but toni’s able to just full on out-strength him on austin’s next attempt to pull free more. Chuckling, though in a way that is more bitter amusement than anything else, Toni asks where austin learned that. Austin, still trying to get free, answers kyle taught him it, proof that kyle’s worth more than toni thinks after all. Toni laughing further, countering that teaching austin a move or two to keep him alive a second longer is not putting anything good into the city because austin barely puts anything worthwhile into the city either. Austin questioning back what good /toni/ puts into the city, then? what do any of them put there? They’re criminals, that’s the point. But of all of them, he figures Kyle is one of the ones who puts more /actual good/ in the world, certainly more than /toni/ does.

Toni pinning austin further, showing a sliver of that anger before catching himself and letting austin go, crossing back across the room, telling him to relax, they both know he wouldn’t do shit here; he assumes that’s why austin requested the meeting here, too cowardly to talk shit outside of his own home. Austin still rubbing at his arm, trying to steady himself, but acknowledging that was his idea, yes. Toni doing the little roll of ones eyes when they’re disappointed but not surprised. Him brushing himself off slightly, 95% for show to signify him feeling they’re done here, before stating flatly and firmly to austin that he doesn’t regret the things he said and he’s /not/ going to take them back, to kyle’s face or not, because they’re /true/. Austin may only be comfortable criticizing his cousin when his life isn’t on the line, but the fact of the matter is that both of them are embarrassments to the city, and he won’t feel bad about calling out that fact, because someone needs to. Austin clearly still frustrated, but knowing he’s not going to get anywhere further. Toni’s stubborn when he wants to be, he’s heard that from oliver and seen it in the handful of times they’ve interacted. Especially after Austin let his temper slip and insulted Gilbert in such a way, he’s not going to make any progress with Toni tonight. So him waving Toni off, the meeting’s over, just stay away from Kyle in the future. Toni laughing, waving off austin didn’t have to bother trying to order him to do that. Clearly kyle’s dangerous to be around, Toni’ll be staying as far clear as he can from that boy. As he starts to leave, him reaching out to grab Austin’s shoulder, though, telling him he might want to consider the same. Kyle’s a drowning dog no matter what mood he’s in, and he’ll drag down anyone who reaches out to help him; it’s all that people like him know how to do. He gives a slight pat to Austin’s shoulder which Austin very roughly pulls free from, with Toni leaving after that.

I will say a pro to Kyle’s teetering emotional state is that probably when Ivan realizes how bad Kyle’s doing, that’s something to focus on besides his own anger over Mel’s loss. Though god, Toni trying to call a meeting with Ivan over this shit, especially if ivan figured out about toni’s meeting with kyle. imagine /that/. About 5 times more fighting and no hate sex at the end, it’d probably be bad. Probably Kyle’s being guided back to managing and is even starting to get back to in sights of normal when Mel finds him, and that is a whole new emotional whiplash because he is at once wholly and deeply relieved when he sees her and believes that she’s alive, and also fucking /furious/. I love him trying to take a swing at her because his immediate reaction to anger is to fight the source of said anger because that’ll fix it, obviously, but his resolve is crumbling by the second and he has zero heart into trying on that actual strike, so even if she’s still recovering some, her easily stepping out of the way and him barely managing to stay standing, before immediately turning around and moving at her again, though this time both arms up and just dragging her into a clinging, sobbing hug.

The most infuriating thing about kyle is his just. For being so sympathetic and even to a point generally empathetic, he’s so unaware of trying to be empathetic in a way that’s not natural to him that most shit he doesn’t immediately consider/agree with flies right over his head. Like he would need it pointed out very plainly that maybe he shouldn’t be super angry at mel’s mom because like. Compared to how upset he was, imagine how upset she would have been if mel actually died and remember how upset she was just as the risk of her dying. Doesn’t that make sense she’d try to protect her daughter, even if it was done like this. Hell, I feel like Kyle’s even angry after the initial moment at mel because she should have known they didn’t know she was alive or they would have been there. Kyle’d have been at her side if he knew he could be and she should have known that so why did it take so long for her to realize and come find him. >( Once Kyle grasped things, though, that’d probably be better then because he could help talk Ivan down from being mad at bea when he finds out mel’s alive. Mel desperately trying to get these boys to understand the concept of her mom being worried about her and the constant dangerous shenanigans they pull.

Also fucking /god/, Mel finding out from kyle or austin that toni called kyle out over her death in the way he did and her going to speak to him to be like hey? Fuck you??? Kyle’s a menace but he’s my menace, compared to you who’s neither my boss nor my friend, so what gives you the fucking right to judge him like you did at all, fuck you. Which honestly is less of an insult to toni but more disappoints him because for her to go back and defend Kyle even after that scare shows a perceived weakness in her judgement he feels he must have missed before. Just ‘oh good to see you didn’t die after all, but also I expected better from you??’ Toni can you /chill/????

#ignore this #the thief kid #the suit kid #the boss kid #amusing muse musings #crossovers! unlimited crossovers!#crossovers gta edition #i could read through this one last time to edit before posting but i'm not gonna do that

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survivordivergent · 7 years

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EPISODE 11 (PART 2) - “ FIRST YOU GET THE IDOL. THEN YOU GET THE IMMUNITY. THEN YOU GET THE WIN.” - ED

http://insidesurvivor.com/sarah-lacina-retrospective-25209

Huh I ctrl-f'd "truth" "honesty" and "trust" but they weren't there. Weird. It's almost like she wasn't any of those things, just a flop on a power trip. But you know whatever. Who needs an idol anyway, no one ever votes for the goat.

I'm suddenly ALIVE

WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS GAME WANT ME TO FUCKING QUIT I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT TWO FUCKING TIMES I MAKE A BIG MOVE AN IDOL PLAY I WORK ON IT SO MUCH AND BAM FUCKING FAKE TRIBAL TRIBAL DOESNT FUCKING COUNT THIS IS SO UNFAIR TO ME I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE ITI HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT ITS SO FUCKING UNFAIR ITS SO FUCKING UNFAIR ITS SO FUCKING UNFAIR MY AUCTION ITEM WASNT EVEN ACTUALLY USED

FUCK YOU HOSTS. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD, I WOULD HAVE FUCKING WON, BUT FUCK Y'ALL.

I am still SHOOK about this whole simulator thing. We didn't lose Melissa, Payton exposed their self as a snake, and we have majority. What was really interesting was that Payton tells our alliance that she had the Amity idol, that it was in 2 halves and you had to combine them in order to use it. AND THEN IT GETS PLAYED AT THAT TRIBAL COUNCIL!! There was no effort for secrecy, and it didnt seem too thought out because even if Melissa had gone, it still would have been 4-3 with Lucy, Geo, and Payton in the minority. This definitely gave the game some flavor. I just hope there is still a way for me to make it to the end

youtube

I'm literally just going to tell peolpe to vote me off lol

I hate immunity and most of all, I fucking hate Lake. You didn't need to say my name when you did you bitter asshole. Calm the fuck down, at least I'm TRYING to play a game instead of hiding behind Eliza and hoping I somehow get to F2.

Meet the new round, same as the old round. Minus the whole fractured BH5 group, natch.

Won reward again, check. Got the Candor idol again, check. Won immunity again, check. Lake is threatening to leak false information to Lucy and it's a bad look for me if she runs with it, because then Payton likely chooses to run with that and idols the wrong person. That'd mean it's likely Payton going. And while that would be easiest for my game, by far... I'm super not comfortable with that. She's been my ride or die since the hop. It'd be terrible form to abandon her as soon as a plan doesn't work out.

On the other hand... I've gotten fairly tight with BH5. Melissa, especially, but Eliza and Jill are rad as well. I can't wait to find out who they really are, because I feel like we're all fairly in lock-step as far as this game goes.

Not feeling the Lake love, though. I get why he was pulled in, but he's running directly contra to mine and Payton's best interests. And he's leaks info like whoa. It's like BH5 is a boat and Payton was busted drilling holes in it. And now, the leakiest option is here to patch the hole.

I don't think I truly needed this immunity. But it's another feather in my cap if I can make the end. The fact that I won both competitions twice proves that it wasn't a fluke (even though it totally was.) Editing two videos for the All-Stars music video comp meant that I was more or less disengaged from the trivia from 4pm until 9. And my Internet at the office is so bad that in the time it'd take for a Google page to load, the question would already be answered and awarded. So hey, good thing I built myself up such a buffer.

I'm caught between a rock and a hard place here. Usually the right move shines through at me, but right now everything is murky. A part of me wishes the girls would just lie to me and blindside Payton, so I could have the ignorance to fall back on. I almost wonder if they wouldn't deliberately give me the wrong target out of fear it'd get back to Payton. But they can't afford to be wasting votes they have, can they?

I also can't just do what Payton did and flip. It'd be game suicide right now. Payton probably got Otto's vote at the end, and maybe Dani's, at the expense of the BH5 girls. But hey, it was a plan she wanted to put in motion, and it could've had some net positives if not for the Divergent sim reset.

I think my best bet is to make the end with Payton. We've been seen as this inseparable duo since the start, but I can win against her because, while I think her social game may have been better, her only REALLY visible strategic play backfired. She'll undoubtedly try to throw me under the bus for knowing about it, at which point I can say that I set myself up to be okay even if it failed. And then of course, comp wins. The trick will be convincing people that it wasn't a #boring way of playing.

If not Payton, then Melissa. We've been more or less on the same page strategically, but my comp game has been undeniably better, and I think the one point where my game's been weak – the blindside courtesy of Dani that was offset – would be cancelled by Melissa's blindside courtesy of Payton that was offset.

I don't think I can beat Eliza or Jill. Both have incredible social games and, I think, are seen as the driving strategic forces in BH5. And I think I can beat any of Lucy, Lake and Geo.

The more I write this out, the more it makes sense for me to flip. I think I can beat everyone on one side of the coin but not the other. So why am I so attached to a bunch of sockpuppets that I can't envision directly flipping on them?

The easiest solution this round would be a literal repeat of last round, albeit without Mel taking the fall. Let's do the same as last week only take out Lake first. That would be so much easier to deal with.

The more I think about this, the more I think I'm screwed either way. My jury management sucks.

Of those on jury now, I might get Kyle. Maybe Dani. Not Otto. And then either I get to the end with BH4, which means Payton (and by extension Geo and Lucy) are probably upset at me. That's three votes I probably won't get, plus Otto... that's a loss.

OTOH, if I flip on BH4 now? That's Jill, Eliza and Melissa I probably lose. Them plus Otto... that's a loss.

The only way out of this is if BH4 gives me (I can somehow convince Payton that I was fed) false information and the P/G/L side idol the wrong person, causing her to go home.

Otherwise, my game is over this round. The downsides of playing both sides it that it can really come to bite you in the ass when everyone is sure you're with them.

Never before have I hoped more that someone doesn't trust me as much as I think they do.

So Jill or Lake is going home next, we know that. It just depends on who Jill plays her idol on :)

None of those fuckers are getting my vote at ftc if I go home today, especially ed bc he'd have lied to me.

Let's be honest I'm probably dying again. A lot is happening as a result of Payton flipping and a new idol being in play and of course my death. Lake is supposedly on our side now, feeding us information about Lucy. Let's be real, I don't trust it but I need him to think I do. I used my vote sneak on Lucy to see where she goes, and Jill says she'll use her idol this week if necessary. Right now it's 90 minutes until tribal and Lucy hasn't voted yet. And I NEED her to vote to know what I'm doing from there. All of this is just an effort to make f7. I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do from there but what I've been asking for since the very beginning has finally happened. The game got real.

Listen, this better be an episode title. We're playing the idol on Lucy, praying she's actually the target. If this goes right, it's #samegamedifferentname. If it goes wrong... I'm going home.

I think I'm leaving so I'm voting Lake in case what Ed says is true and it's lucy, and in case jill plays her idol. Bye world

I hate lake

I'm probably going home this week. i went to lake with a plan to vote out payton just so i was the one who didn't get votes, and now he seems to think he has melissa and eliza on board with his plan but i don't know why they would do that and i honestly don't think they take him seriously enough as a player idk.. honestly i really just want one of them gone and i want to try and flip my position in this game but idk if this week is the week to do it. i also really don't trust ed and i want him out and i feel like cutting payton would be a good move to getting him out since they're besties. OK SO I JUST DECIDED. IM GOING TO VOTE PAYTON, AND NOT USE MY IDOL. OR I AM GOING TO VOTE JILL. IDK I AM SO STRESSSSSSED <<<<<

I'm taking credit for erring those two idols and Payton out of the game I put in the work and it paid off. This round went perfectly.

#iwillbecomesomethingelse

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wavemaker9 · 5 years

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/Someone/ asked for audrey/austin kink list so yeah, let’s talk about all the kids, yeah? I think for this i’ll cover the same kinks for everyone and just explain if they’re into it or not. Also I’ll be talking more about the guys but list any differences for the girls as they come up

Kyle:

Somewhat vanilla but can easily be led into some more kinky things depending on what. He’s verse with a top preference. He enjoys topping more but is willing to bottom if desired, though I think is a little more chill with bottoming for guys than girls because. Y’know, kyle brown and his lowkey sexism. Also has a more dominant than submissive pref, and is less okay with playing sub to someone. Can be convinced to, but he doesn’t like it as much, and even when he does it, he’s not really so much submissive as just /not/ dominant. Has to really like/trust a person to play any sort of actual submissive role and even when doing it, li ke. He’ll never get to diego levels. No one can get to diego levels.

Knife/blood play - In human verse, he’ll often try it out but be very ~~~ doing it and feel really bad afterwards. It’s not something he gets to enjoy, usually, he’s doing that for his partner. In Nation verse, he’s a little more okay with it if his partner is also a nation since he knows they’ll come back. I think he’d be more worried doing it to a human if they asked though because he’d worry he’d fuck up and overstep because of the difference in what their bodies can go through.

There’s a running thing lingering from the days in prev rp group where kyle was dating a yao where like. A lot of people in the group kept just assuming, either based on old headcanons, prev australias they’d interacted, or whatever, that he had a pain kink. And i’ve brought that up of that commonly being a thing that he gets mistaken for having a lot. It’s something i think was also brought up as true for mel of being mistaken as it being a kink thing? That seeking out pain as a coping mechanism isn’t the same thing as seeking it out for sexual pleasure and that it frustrates him a lot when people assume the second is true just because the first is. Because pain during sex often isn’t a turn on and usually is either a hard turn off he won’t even try or something he’s only willing to do to make his partner happy. The difference being that part of the reason he’s putting himself into those situations is like. A mix of giving him more control over his life. That’s not all the reason, but it’s a factor for sure, and so if you suddenly have someone else causing that pain instead, especially in a situation where there’s a vulnerability to a point, it has a one two punch of taking that control he needs away from him as well as putting him back in a situation of someone /else/ hurting him, which i brought up in diego’s post makes him uneasy at best because he /grew up/ dealing with that. That’s /why/ he needs his coping mechanisms in the first place. Like again, he’s more willing to roll with being hurt by someone he trusts, by someone who eases him into it and is careful and attentive and checks with him regularly and does their best to help keep him calm and happy too. But just average people like oh you hurt yourself all the time, you must have a pain kink, haha. It makes him almost unreasonably mad? He tries to be such a chill boy but that always sets him off.

Also sometimes it’s not even a coping mechanism? He’s got pretty good luck but sometimes he /did/ just have an accident and he didn’t mean to hurt himself. That’s part of why when he was growing up, it was harder to confirm if he really was in a physically abusive home for a lot of people, because kyle was full of energy and didn’t think things through and would just do things because they seemed exciting and not think about the danger and then get hurt. There was plenty of proof that a lot of the injuries he got /were/ his own doing from just being too much of a rambunctious kid. At school or sporting events or play dates or parties or parks or etc etc etc, there were plenty of times people /saw/ kyle hurt himself. And usually it was minor but sometimes the whole class sees kyle try to climb on top of the slide in the school playground and fall off and break his arm and they know yeah no no one did that to him that was just an accident. And like. He never blamed summer for anything when he was younger, mainly because if she /did/ punish him with anything, she always blamed it to him on something he did. He misbehaved in some way and /that’s/ why he deserves this. Because she really was sweet most of the time to him when he behaved. Sometimes there was a general bitterness, especially after the divorce in any AU which always tends to make things worse for kyle, but most of the time he only dealt with her worse shit when he did something against what /she/ wanted, which to her, was misbehaving. And it wasn’t until his late teens that he started to really separate “me doing a stunt and hurting myself” blame vs “someone said i did something wrong and so hurt me” blame. Every injury he got as a kid/young teen he admitted to being his fault because he thought it /was/. And I think that’s another factor of like, why pain kinks aren’t fun for him? Some small part of his brain always says, “If someone’s hurting you, it’s your fault because you’re bad” and like. ...like that really, really sucks? Ugh, this section got dark, sorry guys.

Bondage - can be into when done to others. It’s not a specific kink he looks for, but he’ll enjoy it if his partner is into it. Another hard turn off if someone tries to do it to him. Even just holding his wrists with your hand can make him uncomfortable, though pinning him at other points like the shoulders is usually acceptable as long as he can feel/trust that there /would/ be give enough to pull free if he wanted. He has to /really/ trust a person to even consider allowing them to do it and even then he’ll be real anxious the whole time so it’s not super fun for him anyway. It factors into his claustrophobia, he just feels so uncomfortable being restrained.

Breath play - another he can be ~ to okay with when done to others, but has to be eased into by someone he trusts if they want to try it on him and can make him /exceptionally/ anxious if not just panicking him into having to stop early. It’s similar to the bondage where you have to restrict him by holding onto his throat in some way to do it so it makes him ~~~ about at best.

edging/orgasm control/etc etc etc - he’s not super into for himself but often loves it for others. Bit of a power trip, having that control over the other person + hearing the noises they make in growing desperation. Same with like over stimulation, all that shit he /loves/ doing to his partner.

Pegging - would do it for his partner but again, he always prefers to top if he can, so. If partner really wanted to top, he’d do it for them, though. He’s not against it, just goes against preferences. Sometimes he’ll surprise offer to bottom for special occasions though so very likely to happen if he knows his partner would like it.

Power play - his fave as long as he’s the one with the power. Another one where he can be okay with playing sub rarely for someone he really likes, and then it’s still like a very basic level. He likes the feeling of the power though. A royalty roleplay thing came up a couple times between kyle and ivan during hetalr after some prompting factor (i think it was kyle winning CAH), and both were surprised by how much kyle enjoyed it and got into the role after a little bit. He likes being able to tell people what to do on shallow matters and have them look up to him as if he’s the be all. That’s prolly a fave manifestation of power play.

praise/begging - doesn’t like to beg but likes being begged to. Loves praise whether giving or receiving. Both likes to talk about how great partner is but also. God there’s this quote mako says in counter/weight that’s part of the list of why i always put kyle in that role in that xover, what was it? Oh! This group tries to recruit mako for a job because of his skills and he’s like oh thank god i’ve been wanting to talk about how good I am at this + “Will you keep telling me that I’m doing a good job [if I work for you]?” god i can’t believe mako trig has a praise kink. I. no, yes I can. Yes i absolutely can. Anyway, yeah that’s kyle, please tell him he’s good at everything or even just at anything, he needs to hear that so desperately please.

Rough play/spanking/slapping/biting/etc - as covered, some he’s okay with doing, some he’s not. Choking can be fine as long as he doesn’t have to do it too hard (relative to durability, like with nationverse). I think he’d be more okay with spanking someone than slapping someone. Pulling their hair he can do easily, etc etc. Much less okay with a lot of the stuff being done to him, though a part of me is continuously tempted to give him a slight hair pulling kink to go along with the ahoge things from nationverse. Speaking of, i refuse to change the idea that both nationverse!kyle’s ahoge and eyebrows are sensitive. It’s too fantastically dumb of an idea, i won’t part with it.

Biting - I don’t think most AUs have this (not that he’s /against/ it, it’s just not specifically a kink) but just a friendly reminder that hybrid au kyle is /very/ into biting but also /very/ anxious about asking his partners if it’s okay because most people don’t want shark teeth digging into their skin. Lucky for him ivan is not most people. I think kylee might be some kind of snake or lizard or something in hybrid au. Listen idk if the one she’d be would be into biting like the grey nurse shark is, but also in comparison with kyle smiling and ivan just seeing sharp jagged shark teeth like hell yeah. Kylee smiling and asya seeing sharp fangs. Oh kylee with a snake tongue! Hey, hey guys! Kylee with a snake tongue tho! Kylee doing the snake tongue dart out thing sometimes.

Maybe lizard because if anyone should get to be a snake it’s probably Al. though i feel like he was a bison too in prev drawings. Not sure if that’d change now that all the kids are being made their own people. I guess tehy could also just both be snakes too, dif types or whatever. God okay but kylee with the scales in the cool color patterns on her skin.

Austin:

The most vanilla. Honestly since he’s ace-spec, he doesn’t really have any kinks that he’s particularly into, it’s just whether he’d be willing to try it for partner and how. When he does have sex, more verse. He doesn’t have enough experience to either prefer or be good at either top or bottom one way or the other. It’s just kind of what his partner wouldn’t want to do. Also would be more likely to lean on the submissive side earlier on, though with more experience he could get confident enough to take on a more dominant manner if preferred. He wouldn’t be like. Aggressive or passionate, even as he got more confident. You’d have to rile him up (either getting him angry and /then/ leading into sex or just teasing him enough where he gets upset about it past being able to keep his emotions in check) or something to get a reaction like that. Even if like, asked to try by his partner, i think he might if he cared about them enough, but it’s tough for him because expressing strong emotions like that makes him feel so uncomfortable. To him it’s a sign of weakness in him, he should be /better/ than that, he should have a good check on his emotions, he tries /so/ hard to keep a good check on his emotions because he knows sometimes he can snap and lash out, and any time he can’t, it just further upsets him until he has to withdraw. Even when /trying/ to act more emotive, it still either feels like a strain and an effort if he’s faking it and pushing this thing that’s much farther than what he’s normally comfortable with, or like being too risky, encouraging negative behavior that any other time he’d stamp down in an instant. Again, would still make the effort for someone he loved if he knew it was important to them, but it would have to be a rare thing and it’d be clear to see that like after the fact he was really uneasy about it happening depending on how rough he ended up getting, and I think at that point anyone he cared about enough to try that with would be like hey i don’t want you making yourself uncomfortable with that for me (mel, i’m thinking of mel and her kink for rough aus that she’s super embarrassed about early on). I do thing there’s a middle ground, especially later game, where you can get him to be a little more pushy without edging him too far into an uncomfortable area, but you’d have to be careful. On the bright side, the more comfortable and confident he does get, the more likely you /could/ get a pretty good display when he tops of like. him doing the long build ups, slow, deep, actually catching hands to intertwine fingers. almost sensual if that's the right word; a bit of passion that way, maybe. Again, that’d also be more likely late game, though. Honestly it probably takes a while of mediocre sex to get him anywhere decent.

Knife/blood play - really not into it. Could /maybe/ be convinced to do it to a partner, but hard pass for it done to him and he’s not super comfortable doing it to partner either if he’s being honest. the whole thing is just kind of weird to him.

Bondage - could be convinced for himself or partner, though would only be okay with light bondage on himself vs anything more.

Audrey might be less okay with bondage on herself. Or rather like would be okay with less, willing to try but say austin would be tolerating of all limbs being tied up more easily than audrey would. I think it’s just part of that thing with her needing to be more independent than him, she doesn’t like to be restrained and isn’t as comfortable with it.

Okay. listen. Because of him often being tied to vines and shit, there’s always a part of me like lol vine tentacles, but like. If he ever /did/ use vine tentacles in an AU, bondage would be a big thing to focus on doing for him.

I know her powers are acid based instead of plant based in most cases (there’s always dc au) but @ nyo for your consideration if you haven’t already thought about it, aud using vines on mel.

Breath play - Same as knife/blood play. Maybe a little more willing to do it to partner though. It’s not quite as squicky but still not a thrill point for him. Also like. No real arm strength so that’s not as great either.

edging/orgasm control/etc etc etc - i think he’d allow it to be tried out on him if partner really wanted it but would quickly enough be like hmm not a fan. Sure, the more extreme feeling is better but the build there is quickly anywhere from uncomfortable to painful and he’s not thrilled about that. He does this so rarely and mostly for partner, so.

Pegging - again, he’s fine being the bottom, so he’d be fine with it.

Power play/praise/begging - mm, not a big pro for him if he’s expected to act super submissive. He can play the sub just from like, he’s not often as experienced as his partner so if they want to take the lead in this, good! but actually being expected to play the Sub ™ © ® is not his cup of tea and he wouldn’t enjoy it. Same with like begging he wouldn’t want to do either. Most times he’d go to a begging mentality in life it’d be to avoid danger so that’s not sexy to him and wouldn’t be fun? and i think he’d take a while to grasp a concept of someone wanting to beg for something but not be given it right away, so others begging him also isn’t perfect. Praise is the most well received, with his ego, he loves being told he did well because he does strive to do well and he likes that confirmed. Wouldn’t want it over the top, “you did such a good job, i’m so proud of you”, like, idk that’d be a little ~ to him, i think it’s just too much for him. But something simple like a short “Very good job” or something he could enjoy. Praising others he’d be willing to do but it’s also austin so he’d probably need some practice working out how to praise in a way that sounds good .

Rough play/spanking/slapping/biting/etc - i think it’s just generally a no. again, could be convinced to give it a try, but all of that is a little ~ to him. Either he doesn’t want it done to him or it’s got a bad/weird connotation for him doing it or it’s just, idk, weird to him. Like he could try spanking but a part of him is going to react to it weird, it’d take getting used to before anything like that could be seen as sexy to him and he doesn’t want to have to get used to it first.

Toni:

Most kinky outside of diego and rosa (though i think carmen’s more kinky than toni just because she lets herself indulge in that more frequently). Preference is a more dominant top, but can be a sexual chameleon since he cares more about making his partner happy. Like truly, his fave thing is just focussing on his partner during foreplay to the point of near overwhelming them with pleasure. It’s a combination of knowing he has that low level control over their pleasure, showing how he’s so fucking good at yet another thing, and just getting to see someone he cares about unraveling from how good they feel especially because of him.

knife/Blood play - The classic. His favorite kink but also the one he’s def shamed by the most. Very rarely gets to indulge in it so it’s always a treat when he can, even if he feels bad about it later. i think carmen has it too but to a lesser extent maybe (though her probably being less embarrassed by it).

Bondage - would also be into on others. Less thrilled about it on himself, especially in nationverse AU, but he’d be more willing to with certain partners than others. On others, it just makes the aforementioned overwhelming the other that much easier. Even without actual bondage, i think that’s something he tends to. If he’s going down on someone, he’ll love to hold their hips in place and keep them there so they’re just left to deal with it when he actually starts to work on it. It’s a control thing.

Breath play - Would be more into it with the right partner (Ivan, Gil, maybe Arthur). It’s not something he’s as into when on the receiving end, but again, with the right partner, it can still work, he’d just much rather be the one on the choking side versus choked. With that right partner group, would be more okay with just letting it come up naturally in the moment whereas with others who he’s less experienced with them being into pain/etc, he’d need to be expressly asked and would check with them more frequently, and probably go a little easier on them, too. Could be convinced not to go easy on someone if they made it clear they could handle it/would let him know if they couldn’t, though.

edging/orgasm control/etc etc etc - he would enjoy doing that to someone a lot, like I said, he likes to do things that combine being exceptional, pleasing his partner, and having a bit of control over them, and this would tick all those boxes immediately. Favorite of this category would probably be getting multiple/dry orgasms out of his partner from overwhelming them. The writhing & squirming, the loud moans and screams, the fingers or nails digging into his arms or back or hair. It’s a good aesthetic he loves to see.

Pegging - similar to aus, would be fine with it to the same level that he would be bottoming for a guy, not a real difference to him either.

Power play/praise/begging - Similar to the blood one, he can be a bit more wary of indulging in this one because he knows he has a bad habit of letting his overconfidence get away from him when he’s not careful, but honestly, he loves power play shit? Maybe more than kyle? Probably more than kyle. He’s not particularly affected by a praise kink to him, he already knows he’s great, thanks for just confirming he guesses? He’s probably very good at it to others, though; usually knows just what to say on how well they’re doing, how he’s so in awe of them, how amazing they’re proving themself to be in this moment just like every other one, etc etc etc. He’ll beg in the moment if it’s part of the atmosphere but prefers to be begged to. There’s really little he could not /love/ about power play as long as he’s the one with the power, though again, can roll with the other having power instead.

Carmen is less good at praise kink towards others and it has no effect on her, how fucking dare you assume your compliments mean anything to her when she already feels you should be honored to sleep with her??? She also would /really/ have to be smitten with someone to try begging with them if she were the one doing it, but is as into the other person begging/her being in the position of power as toni, maybe more. Also doesn’t try to hide interest in this like toni might. Even more so than diego sometimes, you couldn’t kink shame her if you tried. Like I made a chart comparing passion vs confidence for the kids and carmen was the only one with a full score on either and it was on both. She’s basically Final Pam. Confidence 10, Drive 10, and the other two points we can throw right away. next time you invite carmen

Rough play/spanking/slapping/biting/etc - I’m. upset. By the fact that I think toni would enjoy spanking someone? I think he has to though. I think he has to be about spanking someone compared to diego who definitely is cool with being spanked, that tracks too much for their characters. Mm, :\. Yes though, uh, same as like choking/knife play, doesn’t like to be as open about enjoying it, will indulge more fully with some people while take it easy unless specifically prompted not to with others, etc etc etc. I don’t think he’s as in to slapping either way and probably not as into being spanked which I’m sure feels like a shame to at least some of the people he sleeps with given dat ass, though he’d be willing to try it out if partner was really into spanking. Biting would be good both ways, same with other shit like scratching, pulling hair, pushing around, etc. Again, wouldn’t be as open about this and would go easier on most people even if it did come out, but it’s another indulgence kink for him for sure.

#ignore this #the thief kid #the suit kid #the boss kid #amusing muse musings

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wavemaker9 · 6 years

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Hey time to make things worse!

I started trying to think of what would be said if dal did insist on talking to s!austin. I think she’d have to find a way to sneak in to talk to him at some point. I know for a fact that if mel didn’t say she couldn’t, kyle would. He doesn’t know what’s up with austin right now, but the man did try to actually choke him to death, and given the glares he’s shot dal so far too, until they know what’s up enough where they can rule him hurting dal out as a possibility, he doesn’t let his niece go in the same room as austin. He wants to believe austin wouldn’t hurt dal, he really does, but better safe than sorry

Like he really does want to give austin the benefit of the doubt, he grew up with that guy, he knows that guy. Austin’s gotten violent when really mad sure, but austin hasn’t lashed out /at/ him since they were younger and kyle did some /really/ bad pranks at him. Not only has the guy gotten better at directing his anger away from people, but also. Well, part of the reason austin stopped fighting kyle when kyle fucked with him was as they got older, kyle got stronger physically and austin was a nerd and read. They both knew that by their teens, kyle could have kicked austin’s ass at any time if they wanted and that even if austin /had/ wanted to fight kyle, he was going to lose. And that’s another thing like. Y’know how the reason s!kyle and s!mel are like ‘this can’t be our austin because our austin doesn’t have a heart so he can’t fake caring about people’? F!kyle is like ‘my cousin’s idea of an intense workout is a light jog around the block and he doesn’t even know how to throw a punch right. He curls his thumb in his hand half the time and throws all his weight into it it’s embarrassing. There’s no /way/ he should have been able to take me.’ and that’s probably also a factor for him being more willing to at least somewhat buy austin’s story later. They can say stress did it or suggest other ideas like DID but stress doesn’t suddenly give you fighting experience. He knows vaguely that DID’s supposed to have certain personalities knowing things others don’t or whatever but he’d severely doubt that it can suddenly give you years worth of fighting practice + understanding how your cousin fights when the only times you’ve ever seen him fight were briefly and never in such a desperate situation. If it weren’t for the viciousness, it’d have felt like he was fighting an old training buddy, someone he’d fought against multiple times, for him to have a grasp on how kyle moved at the level austin did. So like later on being told ‘oh yeah that’s because you were fighting someone who’d been fighting against you for a long while’ would be like ‘i guess that makes more sense’. Like basically what’s more logical? That alternate universes exist and austin’s mind was swapped with a version of himself that wants to kill kyle? Or that austin secretly knew how to fight kyle /really well/ this /whole time/ but was hiding that knowledge until he could try to kill him for no good reason with a bunch of their family in the next room over? Kyle wants to say the first one. They’re both dumb but one’s dumb and also clears his cousin’s name, so.

Anyway anyway, got off topic. Kyle wants to believe that austin wouldn’t hurt dal, but he also assumed austin wouldn’t have tried to kill him and dal’s safety is more important than siding by the cousin who tried to kill him, so. Dal either having to at some point sneak by at least kyle if not mel and others to talk to him or /really/ convince someone to let her through and keep an eye while she talks to him. And the main thing i hate is you /know/ at some point s!austin tells her she shouldn’t exist. That the very concept of him ever even liking amelia as a friend, let alone loving her or having a child with her, is ridiculous, and that dal’s being here is a mistake. And when he says it, he means it in a way of ‘this whole world is wrong and shouldn’t exist’, he’d say it in the same way he’d say his being related to kyle is a mistake or his parents being alive is a mistake. That that’s not how the world should be. It’s a mistake that this is what things are like now.

But on the other hand. I mean it’d probably have had to come up to dal by that point that her birth /was/ accidental. That mel and austin hadn’t meant to even be together let alone have a child, and they’re so glad now that they have her, but at the start, yeah, i mean it’s a fact she wasn’t planned for like at all. And dal was probably a little upset about it at first, but i can see her getting past it soon enough with the support network she has. Even if her parents didn’t originally want a kid, they do clearly want her now, she knows they both love her so much, they’re glad they’re her parents and she’s glad to be their kid, too, so even if it’s a little disappointing, it’s fine now because her parents make it clear how glad tehy are to have her. No deep concern can last too long because even if her parents hadn’t wanted her originally, they both make it clear however they can how much they /do/ want her now. Also when kyle finds out she knows, him also throwing in his point of ‘the universe wanted you to exist so much it put two totally opposite people who hated each other together just so you could be your super cool self today, so like. That’s kinda cool (playful wink)’ also maybe just him admitting to her he wasn’t planned either, and /he’s/ super cool right? (dal teasingly doing an exaggerated thinking noise and him ‘oi!’ before her laughing and agreeing yeah yeah okay uncle kyle, you’re super cool and him /thank you very much/) now they can be super cool accidents together or whatever, it’s chill.

So dal pretty reassured by that point that just because she wasn’t planned doesn’t mean she isn’t loved, but it still hurts a /lot/ for someone who looks and sounds like her dad to so callously call her a mistake. She probably tries to deal with it in the moment, not let it show how much that hurts to hear, but she also is still just a teen at oldest so probably not that great at hiding that. And worse is it’s clear he doesn’t /care/ about her reaction. It’s not even that he’s glad she’s hurting or something, she just means nothing to him except being annoyed she’s even there. Like honestly? S!Austin probably not even talking to her at first, finally saying when she keeps pressing that she doesn’t deserve a response. Maybe that’s why he says it. The same thing of his parents pushing him into why he’s so harsh and cold to them and finally getting out ‘you should be dead’. her trying to get him to explain why he won’t even just talk to her, what’s he so afraid of? And him finally countering at that that he’s not /afraid/, she just doesn’t deserve a response. She doesn’t even deserve to be here. She’s a mistake, she doesn’t deserve his time or effort. Not sure what else would come up after that, though i think I did see nyo suggesting dal asking who he is since he can’t be austin and he’d answer at that that she should /know/, because again, he assumes this is all some weird trap against him. He surely wouldn’t even be here if they didn’t know who he was; don’t play games with him. But to her without context that can just end up coming across as ‘you should know because i’m your dad’.

God okay and after this. Like i said, dal tries to play tough about it but that’d have to really hurt to hear. I think her trying to push off talking about it but eventually going to like mel or maybe kyle about it. Mel because mom but kyle also an option because they /were/ accident buddies and also her probably more worried her mom’ll be mad about her sneaking around than kyle would, unless mel wasn’t as against dal speaking to austin as kyle was for whatever reason. I doubt that but i dunno. Either way, her looking to them for some reassurance again though and probably having to explain why and either of them just fucking furious upon finding out. I don’t know who austin thinks he is now but how fucking /dare/ he tell my daughter/niece that she’s a mistake.

Idk how mel’d take that fully, but kyle’d go in to talk to austin again if he found out he said that. Look trying to kill him is one thing. He did some stunt that almost got himself killed every other day when he was younger. He’s cut that shit out after getting the twins but like it’s him, you can’t legally make kyle brown 100% value his life fully, it’s impossible. But you don’t fucking talk to his niece and /your daughter/ like she’s a goddamn abomination or something, that’s where we cross the fucking line, mate. And austin’s just as dismissive as ever again, if he says anything, it’s to ask why not since she might as well be, maybe even saying all of this should be. Oh fucking. Oh /no/. Austin saying she might as well be, kyle too, trying to pass off as family like he is. And he doesn’t! He means it as just “we’re not family, we’re enemies. Your little game of trying to convince me otherwise to- I don’t know, make me feel sorry for trying to kill you -won’t work!” but in the context. Like this austin probably doesn’t even /know/ this kyle was born thanks to an affair. The insult isn’t even one he can intentionally make i don’t think. /maybe/ depending on how far back he looked into s!kyle’s background and if that kyle is also the same situation, but like you /know/ that’s not where his brain goes to. He has absolutely no intention of citing that with the insult, it’s just the face value “we’re not family and you trying to convince me otherwise is wrong in a ‘what is natural in the world’ way”. But yeah it def comes across in context of ‘Dal’s a mistake because of how she came to being born and so are you.’ And there’s really barely anything austin /could/ have said to not make kyle angrier at this point, but that /definitely/ isn’t it.

Kyle’s anger is never quite as sharp as austin’s. When austin gets really angry, he does lash out and just snaps something. Throws a glass, slamming a plate onto a counter, does that arm shove to push things off a table, etc. something that breaks the item, usually. Kyle i think crushes things, like snapping a pencil that was in his hand by accident. Or he’ll like punch a wall or something, something more blunt. Something that is fitting between the two austins is like, when they do lash out and strike at a person without any weapons, it is usually the throat they go for if they can reach. Kyle’s the type to grab at clothes, though. If he’s angry enough, he’ll also try to throw a punch, but he gets that hold on the clothing first, not the person. Or he just does that venting yelling thing and like storms off to punch a pillow. I think since he did deal with more physical abuse as a kid, he’s tried to make it instinct to /not/ go directly to hurting a person first. Grab their shirt, not them. Hit the wall, not their face. Gripping hard on something is less likely to break it than just smashing it against something. Again, if you really push him, he can’t- given how emotional he is, he can easily go over the edge anyway, but the pro there is that he has that experience and has slowly learned how to handle more extreme anger than austin has. Both still get mad and can get violent, but kyle at least can recognize the slow build of anger, that boiling over that he starts to express more in rougher dialogue and hand movements or whatever. He sees when that anger starts to come out more physical and can try to start redirecting it. Austin, meanwhile, tries to bottle that up, keep bottling it, keep it all contained, concealed, hidden, until he very suddenly can’t and he snaps and the cup has already shattered against the far wall before he realized he even threw it. Kyle’s a dam that starts to leak first, whereas austin breaks all at once.

However, the insult kyle hears in those words is pretty close to the all at once, so when kyle’s anger finally pushes past the line and boils over, he grabs for austin’s collar, sure, standing and dragging him up out of his chair as well, but he does /also/ life his hand up to punch austin square in the jaw. A part of him just wants to snap out for austin to fucking get his shit together, to remind him that he told him before he wouldn’t let austin’s shitty personality and behavior hurt dal and just because he thought he could stop worrying about that when austin stopped being a fuck up as a dad doesn’t mean that warning went away. However, a, he’s too mad in the moment and the more emotional part of him is falling back on actions over words and ‘punch your suddenly terrible and attempted murderer cousin in the face until he cleans up his act again’ feels like a real good action. B, before he can get too far into either action, austin’s snapping his hands forward as well, and his hands go for the neck again. There’s probably a momentary struggle again, another attempt of austin trying to squeeze kyle’s throat but this time around kyle’s trying to hit austin actively instead of just trying to largely defend himself; he’s fucking /sick/ of this shit and he’s going to kick austin’s ass until he remembers how not to be a fucking cunt!

Luckily for both, i assume ivan has been hyper aware of Kyle’s location since he was first attacked, keeping an eye on him and especially wanting to stay near whenever kyle had to be near or especially in that room. So ivan having moved to stand at the door at some point and the moment austin’s hands land on kyle again, he is moving to cross the room, pulling the two apart and shoving austin over against the far wall face first. Probably says for kyle to leave the room before he’ll even consider letting go of austin, and is reluctant if not downright refusing to budge when kyle tries to say to let him go, he was handling it. That’s very nice that you think you were, radost’, but on the other hand you two were trying to kill each other again and i /did/ promise that if he attacked you again, i’d break him in half, so. Like. This is ivan being nice considering he could have austin in a fucking stranglehold or something, see how /he/ likes being choked. And another dif between f!austin and s!austin. It’s like only because s!austin is super confident he’s not in any real danger because either this is all fake or this is real and htere are real murder laws + a lot of angry family this ivan would have to deal with, but austin doesn’t like plead or anything. Other austin got put into ivan’s grip and was desperately begging not to be hurt. This austin just stays quiet and lets ivan pin him to the wall. It’s not worth fighting back without his powers when he doesn’t think this is a real concern + and he still thinks all of this is fake somehow anyway. Just rubs his shoulder or whatever parts were grabbed/bent to pin him when released and continues glaring. He’s largely checked out of most of this and is only really answering questions when the answer is too blatantly obvious where he /has/ to make sure they know. My enemies have to know they’re wrong.

Also that being something that comes up between dal and austin once the austins switch back. At some point during one of the times they’re allowed to see each other, dal sitting next to him and asking to confirm that he doesn’t think she’s a mistake, right? And him surprised before quickly insisting no, of course not. Who told her she was a mistake? Which she takes as evidence for something like DID or a fugue state or something when she has to remind him it was him, or maybe she says ‘the other you’ did depending on how she wants to label it for coping reasons, but still. Then there’s the look of confusion, realization, horror and disgust and anger and disappointment across his face, as it all clicks. Him carefully putting an arm around her shoulders, apologizing for whatever he said when he was like that. He promises, crosses his heart, everything, that she’s not a mistake. That if he ever said that, he was /so/ wrong and he’s determined for her to know that. Before and even after all this, probably talks honestly with her on the accident thing, but like. So was fucking penicillin and look how important that is to the world? That’s not bad, that’s just a fact. She was an accident, sure, but not a mistake, y’know? He might even usually admit that it took him longer than it should have to see the value in having a kid, but again, by the time she’s old enough to be talking to him about it, he’s at a point where he doesn’t let her doubt for a second that he is /so/ pleased to have her. She got him to come around on the subject and he could not be more grateful for that. And like. Hearing him say the same thing now doesn’t completely erase what she heard before, but it helps settle some of those doubts at least a little bit, especially, again, given how caught off guard and then angry and guilty austin looked to find out /he/ said that insulting thing. It’s still not great, but it helps resolidify this idea in her mind that that wasn’t /really/ her dad, y’know?

#ignore this #the thief kid #the suit kid #amusing muse musings #hey you au #au swap edition

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wavemaker9 · 6 years

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So I realized the first people on the Oasis that Toni doesn’t really get along with are Austin and Kyle and that’s really good?

Bffs with Mel, that strong war tie. Then Ivan joins and Toni’s a little iffy about Ivan but Ivan proves to be good at his job, friendly and respectful if not a little awkward (both feeling awkward sometimes + also occasionally doing things that aren’t standard society-wise so causing awkwardness), and determined to prove himself on the crew. Then Cian joins and Cian’s super friendly and chill but also knows his stuff and even if Toni doesn’t have quite as much in common with him, they’re still pretty good friends. Cami and Gil both join and Toni ends up befriending them the most, he’s absolutely charmed with Cami and Gil makes him laugh and relax in a way he realizes he hasn’t in a while, and Mel will always be his best friend on the ship, it started with the two of them and it’ll end that way, he’s sure of it, but Gil and Cami fall into slots 2 and 3 pretty quickly. Micha probably Toni isn’t immediately impressed with, but Mel insists on letting him on the ship so Toni isn’t going to argue her letting her family travel with them and I’d imagine they’d get along in little ways. Probably the least close of toni’s relays, but /please/ imagine any conversation where Micha and Toni are left to their own devices to sass anyone else + talk about how great mel is. He likes everyone and then… who joins but Kyle and Austin! I’ve made it no secret that Toni likes austin here about as much as any other AU. Austin acts like he doesn’t want to be on the ship half the time and like he doesn’t want to be around Kyle the other half, despite the fact that the Oasis is doing /him/ a favor more or less and that from what he can see of them, Austin needs Kyle just as much as he needs Austin. Like I don’t think Toni /hates/ either one of them but man is he just constantly irked by austin’s whole existence. The only thing they have in common is pride in their own beliefs and that’s not the only thing you want in common between two people. And like Kyle's better but barely. He has more natural talent but less refined skill, he has more drive and determination but less focus. I think I mentioned in a GTA post that Toni tends to see Kyle as wasting potential and that’s not to the same level here but like. still kind of legit. I just very much like him bringing that up to mel when they first join and haven’t really become a part of the team yet. Like are we sure we’re keeping them to the next job? I heard this next planet is a really good place for fresh starts! Of course that eases up and then stops the longer they’re on the ship, but i like this starting period where these two just invade this nice perfect ship of all these people toni liked right away.

OH! But another possible scene in an AU of Austin and Toni actually getting along for two seconds, though: I kind of like Toni overhearing Austin’s conversation with Kyle after the whole Doug thing and like. Actually impressed? Oh look, Austin can grow as a person just like he gets his plants to grow, who’d have thought. I like him not confronting Austin immediately after the whole ‘kyle’s dead’ thing, which I would assume happens before the doug thing. At least not directly. A brief discussion to explain himself, he didn’t mean to be a total asshole, but Austin has to show his appreciation for others, specifically kyle, outside of when the man is dying or he might miss his opportunity. Food for thought! Then fast forward to this and Toni surprising Austin one evening with a specially made meal. I think I want it to be something where the group had to talk about favorite meals once, maybe even like if you could have any meal ever, what would it be. like the convo started and everyone went around in the group until it got to kyle who described some big delicious meal of like super good meats cooked just right and the best beer he can imagine and blah blah blah, before elbowing austin all tin your turn, what would you pick if you could eat any meal in the verse! Austin trying to pass before being pressured into giving an answer and him stumbling before offering one that’s like super simple, like a small ice cream sundae with strawberry syrup, or whatever the future equivalent is. When pressed on that not really being a grand meal like most others gave or that he doesn’t usually seem to like sweets, he won’t get into details why he’d pick that and just tries to go back to his book, with only Kyle seeming to get anything about what Austin’s talking about but deciding not to speak up when he catches Austin shoot a look at him as he starts to explain his brother’s answer for him. When it was clear neither would explain why a simple sundae was the one meal Austin would want to eat out of anything he could dream up, Toni at the time had playfully called out a ‘boo! Next person!’ to move the topic on because of course austin’s answer would be boring, let’s hear about cool thing X would pick instead! But in the present, Austin trying to read in some more secluded area and toni just showing up with a little sundae with strawberry syrup. Insists austin not worry about how he found the things and didn’t let the crew know about it where they could eat it up first, just enjoy. Austin is /very/ suspicious, like if i eat this is it going to make me sick? Make my mouth or insides look/feel weird? Or will you just cut to the chase and poison me? What are you up to? And toni laughing in surprise before asking if Austin really thinks he hates him that much. Austin like no, I /know/ you hate me that much. You told me my brother was dead when he wasn’t. You don’t do that to someone you /like/. Toni admits he might have overstepped himself a little bit there (Austin: /Might?/) and apologizes, reiterating with more details how he was trying to help Austin learn a lesson, and maybe he was a bit of a harsh teacher, but also, Austin hasn’t forgotten said lesson, has he? Austin unimpressed, still not eating the food, like oh yeah, I definitely still remember the time /you told me my brother was dead/, good job, professor fernandez. Toni letting out a mix between a chuckle and a sigh, before declaring he was wrong. Not just about that. He saw how Austin tried to help the crew with dealing with Doug, how he tried to protect Kyle from a threat Austin knew Kyle would fall victim to, how he did his best to help make Kyle understand his worth. He took action and showed determination on this in a way he rarely has, he worked with the crew and helped protect them from a potentially large loss in a way he rarely has, and he made how much he values Kyle crystal clear in a way he rarely has. Toni was starting to think Austin was incapable of a lot of that, especially all at once, but he was wrong, so… consider this a Sorry Sundae. He really did underestimate Austin; not much, but enough to warrant an apology for it. Austin still skeptical for a moment before waving off Toni’s comment. He decidedly doesn’t say anything to forgive toni or say it’s alright, but more justifies what he did with the doug issue was what he needed to do and was also for his own peace of mind as well, it’s not as impressive as Toni’s making it out to be or whatever. Toni chuckling, shaking his head before starting to stand up, at least offering that he should eat the sundae before it melts. Austin hesitates before asking again that it’s not poisoned or something, saying that Toni has to remember that Camille and Amelia probably won’t be thrilled if he poisons their main source of flowers and fruits. Toni laughing again, crossing his heart that the most dangerous thing in there are the calories, jajaja. Austin quiet for a beat before offering a thanks and taking a bite, actually smiling at the taste. As Toni starts to leave, Austin asking if he cares why Austin picked this meal as the best meal he could ever have? Toni stopping at the door, quiet for a second as if in consideration, before nodding, genuinely answering that yes, he is, if austin’s willing to tell him. Austin 100% considers just being like “I’m not; thanks for the sundae, have a good night.” but he does actually tell toni and it’s basically like. Nostalgia. Literal comfort food. When he was little and in a bad mood, his dad would make two ice cream sundaes with strawberry syrup and they’d sit together talking as they ate their treats until austin felt better. Austin had mentioned that to Kyle when they started to become friends, and in the year after Austin’s parents died, that following birthday of Austin’s, Kyle took some money to buy supplies to make ice cream sundaes for them just like austin’s dad had. and austin had cried about it and for once kyle just let them sit in peace until austin’d calmed down and he told him it was fine even when austin was really embarrassed, and then he took all the blame when his mom got mad at him for ‘wasting her money’ on that. Then later, the night after she’d taken all their remaining funds and left them, Kyle stole supplies to make sundaes again, and they sat out on the porch, watching the stars, eating their ice cream, and trying to figure out what to do next. It’s a simple treat, he knows, he gets that. He could wish for a whole mountain of ice cream if he wanted to, but he /doesn’t/ want that. To him, the sundae just means... family, he guesses. It just means ‘I’ve got your back, I’m with you, you’re not alone’, and even as a loner, knowing he has /someone/, whether it was his parents or Kyle or even, and he lifts the sundae Toni made, this crew… it’s important to him. After a beat and Toni’s surprised silence, he sighs and waves off what he said, thanking Toni again for the sundae, it’s very good. After another beat, Toni suddenly starts back towards austin, stopping next to him and leaning in close to look Austin in the eye and put a hand on his shoulder, telling him firmly, “Austin Brown, listen to me. I know you ain’t exactly trusting of the things I tell you anymore, but if you’re only gonna ever believe one thing I say, make it this. /You are a part of this crew/. Sundae or not, we will /always/ have your back. We’re a family and no matter how we get along, we look out for each other, no questions asked. As long as you are on this ship, as long as you are in this crew, you will /never/ be totally alone.” and it’s Austin’s turn to stare back in surprise for a moment, before slowly nodding and giving a half-stunned, “I-... th-thank you.” at which point Toni smiles and warmly says, “Of course! Now enjoy your sundae and have a good night.” before patting his shoulder and turning to leave. Austin still completely caught off guard even once left alone, but it’s a better night getting to enjoy the treat as he returns to his book.

I think this should also be after the one thing of austin being captured and not expecting anyone coming for him until he’s surprised they did. If that was following this, I think he’d have a half-hope tehy might come for him, whereas him being totally surprised then and then this being the confirmation later on that that wasn’t just “we didn’t want kyle to come alone” or “mel didn’t want to lose her veggie source” or some other shit but instead was “you’re important to this crew and we weren’t going to abandon you no matter what” is way way better.

#ignore this #the thief kid #the suit kid #the boss kid #amusing muse musings #hey you au #au firefly edition

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