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lauraluna98 · 3 years

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Why Little Witch Academia didn’t need a new season

A thing that I find pretty common among the great majority of the LWA fandom is how most persons want so much a whole new season for the anime even with the ending that was more likely a conclusion ending than a cliffhanger to another season or more adventures

To be honest when I firstly entered into the LWA fandom I was thinking that this wish for another season was more like a meme or something because of a ending like that, why did people want so much about a new season? But I’m not going to say about that because I already know the reasons most people want

Here we are with 14 reasons why there’s no need for a new season and I’m open to see if someone has a answer to that and why is better to just leave the show the way it was

1- The ending is already a conclusion

I have already said about that but here I am to say it again just to clarify this. The ending was something that put a conclusion to everything that was a “problem” on LWA World plot, they solve everything, like the tension among witches and politicians, the humans starting to think that magic is cool, the “Spirit bomb” like kinda of power which beat the main threat and everyone sees that, now the whole problem with people who doesn’t believe in magic is solved on the anime

2- The show is written to be simple

A thing that I find a lot when people say that they need a new season is that the World of LWA is very complex and well build… And well, they’re right, but that doesn’t mean they would have a proper writing to be a completely masterpiece for a lot of seasons, the intention is only to be about Akko fulfilling her dream and this part is already done, remember that this is a Studio Trigger anime, the writers there aren’t that good and most of the animes have the “Don’t give up” message and is written around that

3- Its a waste of time and money

This isn’t a secret to anyone that LWA has one of the most beautiful and well made animations in the world and its all handmade, now imagine to do a whole season with 24 episodes like the one we already have just think ho w much frames they would take to make with the same level they did with the anime and how much time and money they needed to bring just to pay the animators just to make a whole new season for an anime that already have a proper ending just because some fans wanted. Animations tend to have around 30 frames per second, now imagine a 22 minutes episode

By the math we have 30 x 60 x 22 = 39600 frames for each episode and if we multiply by 24 episodes we have an 950400 frames anime

Imagine doing almost a million frames of a concluded anime that has a pretty solid story because the fans want while they could use all the time and money to focus on other shows and even release one that is as good as the show you love so much

4- They need to change the ending

Nice now they want to have a new season, but here we are, how they need to keep the plot keep going, they have a completely “it’s everything fine and done” ending, a conclusive final to the series, with all of the things solved, they would need to bring something to the plot happen without being forced or nonsense and even more complicated than that. Is that they needed to maintain with the same simple written and the whole message of “Don’t give up on your dreams” and the whole motivational writing, they would need to change what happened to the ending to bring a reason to the plot to happen

5- You want Diakko

I’m a Diakko shipper myself and I know pretty much that the LWA fandom is about Diakko and Diakko is the thing in LWA fandom being what it is and I know that the fandom want a new season to the Diakko happen

And don’t say “No, no you’re wrong we don’t want the romance we want just the new season”

Don’t be an Hypocryte, you guys want the Diakko a lot and what if the season comes out you guys are going to post parts without context saying “OMFG DIAKKO EZ REAL LOOK HOW THEY ARE GAY” like the Diakko already do with the Official arts without knowing that Official art ≠ Canon

And I pretty much know that what if came out people would complain saying “NOOO THE DIAKKO ISN’T HAPPENING THIS SEASON IS TRASH AY WANT ANOTHER” and I pretty much know that the Diakko is gonna be a huge queerbait if the show have another season, they would tease a lot and in the end they would simple “Screw you we don’t want romance” The producer has already stated that they don’t want romance

So don’t have the hope that Diakko will be canon, is sad to say that but is the true, at least isn’t another season of queerbaiting

6- “But Akko story is finished and they want to explore other characters like Amanda or Diana”

No they won’t going to explore Diana and Amanda story, since both already have their time to be developed and to be honest LWA is Akko even tho she’s not that well written character, LWA is about her, she’s the main character and the one who make the plot happen, like everyone changed because of Akko and that’s it, Akko is the main character and they aren’t going to simple put Diana or Amanda as the main characters even if they are more liked than Akko sometimes, they didn’t have the weight and aren’t as addicting as Akko and I’m saying that being a 100% Diana stan

“But the director and the producer said that on a interview in the past”

Yeah and a interview confirms that Akko is lesbian too

Oh for the nine lesbian witches, I need to say that you guys are picking a interview and putting out of the context to just being a reason to be right into a discussion even tho the context could be another. And I pretty much know that they could say that to be more like a concept idea rather than really making a second season focused on Diana or Amanda

For Amanda we have only that manga story about their parents and she wanting to be expelled from Luna Nova since she hates magic, but then she starts to like the magic because of Akko

For Diana we have more and most things are already done for her to the point of even Daryl being less asshole with her, but we mostly could have an story about her childhood and how she overcome her nerf (plus giving Bernadette an husband ewww), how did Daryl side of the family start to hate Bernadette’s side since is already shown that Daryl didn’t care about Bernadette (she simply sell everything that Bernadette want to keep) and she simply let their daughter and even her bully Diana for liking Chariot, but even that we don’t have a proper longer story, this is a story that could fit well on an 50min OVA, nothing more than that.

So we have that Akko story is already over so a new season isn’t needed to happen

7- The nine witches and Chariot’s past

This is another thing I’ve seen some persons saying that there’s some things that they could well develop like the nine witches and Chariot’s past

And I’m going to be clear here

Do they need?

Are you guys going to watch it?

They could fit the whole Chariot’s past with a 53 minute OVA

The Nine witches they could fit on a OVA or even with an 9/10 episode season but how did they would develop a story about them? They only have Woodward and Beatrix (and maybe Jennifer) the other seven (or six) are unknown they didn’t think to give names to her they only think to put hats on the headmistress room and just to mention that there’s nine witches who founded Luna Nova

And I don’t think that would be as addicting to watch with the fans as an new season that would be a sequel with Diakko queerbait (I would love to see it)

Just see the LWA fanfcitions

Mostly are just Diakko, you can count on your fingers on how much LWA fics are made about Chariot’s past and the nine witches together, even the kudos could be counted on the fingers and even that fics are some of them written with that both concepts being the main story and even when they put that being the main plot you could simply count that with just one hand

So yeah would be a waste of time and money doing things about the nines and Chariot if nobody was going to see it and even if they see this isn’t gonna give any profit to the show

And I say it again

Did it was needed?

LWA is about the whole journey about Akko becoming a witch like Chariot and is written to be about that even with the whole complex universe with a lot of concepts.

8- We could get Gainax’d

Well before it was Studio Trigger it was Gainax

We all know that

And we could simple get trolled in the whole anime

Or with a worst ending (than the one we already have)

Or with a completely Queerbait get trolled

making everyone straight, Diana have a boyfriend which was Thomas from the OVA appearing again, giving shitty generic episodes (like beaches and hot springs and I need to say that a hot spring episode could kill Trans headcanons? Making all characters explicit Cis), Akko and Andrew are together (for the happiness of the Ankko fandom), all that in the ending of LWA, or even killing everyone at the ending, etc

Gainax/Trigger isn’t good at ending of their shows (just see how they rushed to finish LWA plot) and LWA is the least worst ending

9- Manga and light novel are out of question

Nobody was going to buy a expensive light novel which came out only in Japan (and maybe in English) or a Manga because this is a Trigger show, Trigger shows are made to be only anime and the Manga is made by other creators based on the original one, so they are official but not canon (or canon in their continuity)

And why pay a mangaka to do an alternative story which the fans aren’t going to consider canon ?

10- Fanfiction

This is simple, you guys want a new season? Go read it

Made by fans

Fanfictions aren’t only NSFW shit with all that kinda of things that make the people reject the humanity and is gross forbidden to the society

Fanfictions are fanmade stories

And isn’t that hard to find one with a solid plot and a well developed story than the original LWA show

This isn’t hard to find and there’s even some AU’s which explore more than just the original universe like ones that they made with no magic at all, some about the past, some even longer than the whole bible (like mine), fixing the plot holes or even making the characters more human, well developed and likeable (like Hannah). Or even a more mature plot where the characters say curse worlds talk about more mature stuff where they can’t in the original or even about LGBT themes more deeply than just teasing

“Oh but I would prefer an official than a fanmade story would feel better”

Well you have your preferences

But I’m here to also give just one advice, the Official plot wouldn’t be as good as fanmade plot since the screenwriter has passed out and even they hire one to be on her place it still isn’t gonna be as good as the original show or fanmade plot. Studio Trigger shows aren’t knowing for writing but for their good animation

Just stop with your prejudice against fanfiction think that is only about teenagers writing about smut, because this is just stereotype about fanfictions while there’s some written by adults and even teenagers who can give a proper plot even better than the original show and think even more that they are doing that for free, you’re getting a book with awesome things of your show plus an awesome story where the writer put their commitment, time and effort to do it (I’m writer myself and I take like 6/7 hours a day to write a chapter of my stories to reach the word count and keep the daily updates)

11- Another shows and proper game adaptations are better

Just leave the anime alone and want more shows with this kinda of stuff or even a proper game adaptation (not that crappy Chamber of Time game), with a better gameplay, more addicting to play and stuff like that

A proper game would be very welcoming

They already have an awesome world to develop a game if they hire a proper team to make it they could do a proper game not that early ps2 era graphics crappy RPG

12- An OVA or an Extra Episode is better than a whole season

This contradict a little about my arguments but I’m going to say that is better to just do an OVA or an Extra special episode rather than a 10+ episode season or even a 25 episode season like the original part

Even tho would be just a generic and relaxed special since there’s nothing more to develop in plot after the ending rather than a Slice of Life special

13- This will create the “At least we have it” type of fan

If the season isn’t as good as the original, some people will complain and say that isn’t as bad and at least we have it

And to be honest I hate that type of fan

Because they like every single crap made by the corporation but not for real, they just lie saying that is great and at least we have it some even contradict to the point “oh its bad but at least we have it and look these separated moment is good and compensate the shit the rest of the show is

Or if the show is average they will say everything to make everyone think that is a masterpiece

And this type of fan is what the creators love because they could make the anime being crappy written and there still persons who would still give money and will like and some of them would say to the others which complained saying is bad that isn’t bad as they say.

14- Wouldn’t be that good

This is the final argument I have and I say that would be just average or just bad or simply not as good as the original one

They don’t have the plot to continue the story and keep going

So will be a forced plot to make a reason to the story happen

With an Generic villain with an generic reason to be evil

And Now I finish with 14 reasons why LWA didn’t need a new season and is just better to leave the show alone

#LWA #LWA JP #LWA 2nd season #New season #LWA New season #akko kagari #Diakko #Little Witch Academia #Little Witch Academia new season #3rd season #2nd season #LWA OVA #LWA discussion

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indyerstraits · 3 years

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THE PRODIGY ▶ JAMESON ‘JAMIE’ DYER

I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere Fell behind on my classmates, and I ended up here Pouring out my heart to a stranger But I didn't pour the whiskey

CONNECTIONS. PINTEREST. PLAYLIST.

August 10th, 1999 - Leo ♌︎

Jamie was born twenty-five minutes after his twin brother, Johnnie, who embodies the spirit of the lion they were born under. His mother always joked that Jamie was waiting for Autumn to come out when she realized that one of the twins was much less exuberant than the other. No one in the family understood that Jamie was just as dramatic as his brother was, because no one understood the depth of his sarcasm.

likes: horror movies, ghost stories, algebra, reading, long naps, being warm, praise, cats, clean bedding, the quiet, solving puzzles, conspiracies, vodka sodas, milk, taking apart things that don’t need to be taken apart, carb-heavy foods, anchovies, star gazing, arguing

dislikes: instruction manuals, plot holes, the taste of cigarettes, calculators, people who talk during movies, drugs, apathy, authority figures, people who don’t finish their food, people who can’t calculate their tips, people who don’t leave tips, most people in general, large bodies of water, sex scenes in movies, sticky bar tops, doing laundry, carrots

The Dyer family who lives on the brink of poverty…

tw: mentions of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, gang violence

Margaret Dyer: Estranged Mother. Margie was the hurricane that blew in and out of the Dyer household, bringing with her the hope of the Dyers ever becoming a real family again. A hard woman to pin down, Margie had always marched to the beat of her own drum and her cadence drew her to a life of partying and drugs that she was never able to leave behind. Although her love for her husband and her kids was genuine, it was hard for any of them to reconcile with it when she was always determined to chase whatever high she was feeling at the moment. The highs in the family depended on whether Margie was in the mood to make things right and the lows almost always involved her leaving.

Jonathan Dyer: Deadbeat father. Once an intelligent and promising young man, John has long since shirked all responsibility for the family in favour of drugs and alcohol. The early days of the Dyers were filled with grand ideas of love and family. John and Margie were two kids from the opposite ends of town, attempting to outrun the judgmental eyes and skepticism with parties, booze and pills. Their reckless foray into marriage resulted in a house and kids that they weren’t prepared to take care of when their teenage fun had evolved into addiction and arguments. John is a loving husband, but an awful father who spends most of his time slinging whisky sours, wallowing in self-pity, and ranting about the injustices done upon him by society and his bipolar wife.

Jimmy Dyer: Older brother. The first born of the Dyers had many perks and many downfalls and Jimmy is a direct result of the tumultuous imbalance. He’d been the one to witness the love their parents had to offer and was also the first to feel the effects of losing it. As the eldest, Jimmy had a choice on whether to sink into his role as family protector or let it all disintegrate and he chose to leave it behind in favour of his much cooler uncle after Margie left the first time. Whatever happened in Frank’s trailer, Jimmy never talks about, but the result of it was him joining The Revenants upon adulthood. He’s an angry, resentful man who haunts the town as his uncle’s shadow. Jimmy’s known for violence and attributes it loudly to his shitty family.

Johnnie Dyer: Older Twin. Johnnie and Jamie might’ve shared the same face, but that’s just about all they have in common. Johnnie was always louder, more charismatic and more demanding of affection, much like Margie. He played baseball and was popular in high school, doing his best to pretend like everything was normal at home. Never seen without a girl on his arm, there’s something to be said about how quickly Johnnie goes through relationships and how miserable he was without one. Johnnie is a mechanic at Cid’s and contributes to the family’s finances as much as Jamie does, but he’s never been good with money when his popularity called for him to put it where his mouth was.

Stella Dyer: Younger sister. Stella was raised by her brothers and it shows. She’s a down-to-earth tomboy who’s wiser than her years, appearing to have a level head for a teenager. Having little recollection of their mother, Stella’s experience with the Dyer parents is mostly in the warnings her brothers give her whenever Margie is around and she’s taken it as gospel. However, her youth is evident in her easy compassion for her parents despite what they say. Yearning for parental affection was a trait all the Dyers seemed to have.

Jack Dyer: Youngest brother. Jack is a troublemaker. Despite only being in elementary school, Jack’s reputation among the neighbourhood kids is one of great fear and reverence. Often left unsupervised, Jack was raised on media and TV and has an eerily low sense of empathy due to it. He enjoys setting fires and destroying public property, bullying other kids and general mayhem. However menacing he may be, Jack comes to heel easily when it comes to family.

Kahlua Dyer: Youngest sister. Kahlua was born into controversy like a true Dyer. Only two years old and the topic of much conversation between housewives and neighbours who loved speculating about Kahlua’s real father. The Dyer kids, however, have never considered her anything but their sister.

Frank Ward: Uncle. Always covered in soot, grease and a looming sense of dread, Frank Ward may be the pinnacle of ghouls in Gravewood. Having worked in the mines far outside of town for most of his life, Frank was once a contributing member to Gravewood’s economy but the years of neglect by the mayor and his in-laws has left Ward disillusioned. Now leader of one of the notorious gangs in Gravewood, the Revenants, Frank Ward is a man out to regain his power in any means possible, even if it means tearing up the town he once worked so hard to build.

if you knew Jamie in childhood, you knew…

A precocious boy who stood out for pointing out contradictions and asking prying questions. Jamie was an odd-looking child with bruised knees and eyes bigger than his head, always donning a stupid wooly kitty tuque because his mother couldn’t remember which twin he was without it. He learned to read early on and never stopped, always caught with his nose in a new book.

While Jamie was more reserved than his brothers, he was a troublemaker in his own way and was always picking apart things he shouldn’t have. He had a natural curiosity that had him wandering aimlessly through the neighbourhood after school, flipping over rocks and peering into the neighbours’ windows. With absent parents, he was given free reign to explore and do whatever he wanted like a stray kitten.

Jamie didn’t have a lot of friends, most kids finding him a little odd with the way he rambled about things they didn’t understand. Often, Jamie could be found trailing around behind his brothers and their friends, telling fanciful stories about kingdoms and beasts to anyone who would listen.

memorable moments: During a moment of clarity, Margie enrolled Jamie into the cub scouts with Johnnie in hope of starting over with the family on the right foot. His run in the cub scouts only lasted as long as one summer, but it was enough to put him into the periphery of the people in Gravewood when rumor circulated that a kid at camp had memorized an entire chart of constellations and the stars that made them.

if you knew Jamie as a teen, you knew…

tw: suicide, bullying

A prodigy. In high school, there was no more denying Jamie’s brilliance when it was laid bare in all the accolades he acquired from his school work. From Math to English, there wasn’t a subject that Jamie couldn’t excel in. His brain worked faster than others, his memory a steel trap. He recognized patterns and solved logical problems with the kind of ease that MENSA would’ve fawned over. Jamie’s capacity for learning and his smart mouth earned him a reputation as more than just a troubled Dyer kid.

Jamie was a skittish kid but nervy, emboldened by affirmations from the adults at school. He always sounded proud of being smart, like his IQ was a brand new gadget he’d gotten for Christmas. It was the happiest Jamie’s ever been, if anyone could call his dramatic soliloquies an expression of joy.

However, the glow of recognition couldn’t withstand the onslaught of drama his parents brought home and Jamie’s moods swung with the door his mother came in through.

During Christmas break of junior year, Margie came back from her latest sabbatical and brought with her the gift of family. For a week, the house was vibrant and alive, his father lucid and pleasant. Jamie really thought that he’d be graduating with his parents in the front row seats by the way things were going.

Everything came crashing down when Margie entered a drug-fueled psychosis and attempted to take her own life the week after.

It was the last time Jamie ever got his hopes up for anything.

memorable moments: The death of Jamie’s naivete was swift and punishing. When Jamie returned to school the next year, he was desperate for a semblance of normalcy. Wanting to be a teenager instead of a crash-test dummy for dysfunctional families, Jamie accepted an invitation to a party with Gravewood’s elite. Unfortunately, teenagers didn’t care about whether Jamie could ace AP Calculus, deeming him too much of a nerd to consider cool and too much of a prick to consider a friend. The kids threw him into the pool for laughs, sinking both Jamie and his ego when he was left to flounder in the water until a classmate fished him out. He walked home alone that night, drenched like a rat.

if you knew Jamie after high school, you knew…

A frustrated, stressed out kid who was feverishly trying to salvage the pieces of his life from the wreckage his parents made it. Senior year puttered out like a dying engine for Jamie. Despite his bright start, the accumulation of pressure from all sides had him miserably dragging his feet through his exams. He picked up a second job at the Windsor Rink and worked longer hours at Marie’s to cover the cost of raising a household full of kids and his GPA suffered for it.

Jamie's eyes were always heavy with bags but the determination in them never disappeared. After all, he’d always had a plan B: he had been picking up gigs and hustling schemes to contribute to a savings account that he kept for a rainy day. Although he didn’t graduate with a shower of scholarships and grants like he wanted, he hadn’t lost faith in his own ability to fix a bad situation. Most of all, Jamie hadn’t lost faith in himself yet.

memorable moments: An explosive argument on the Dyer lawn rang out in September after Jamie graduated that drew the eyes and ears of all the neighbours. Gossip around town said it was about drugs, while others said it was about money. All anyone could agree on was that the Dyers had raised a terribly awful boy who could yell at his own mother the way he did that evening. Margaret wasn’t seen coming back to the house for a while after that.

if you knew Jamie half a year ago, you knew…

tw: alcoholism

Lost potential. Jamie never recovered from having his life savings stolen when he was drowned in the debt his parents left behind. He grew jaded, only then coming to the realization of just how futile his life was. It didn’t matter how high his IQ was or how many times he could pivot if he was born with his feet cased in cement. Margie was going to continue to be Margie and John was going to continue being a leech.

Jamie had been stealing sips of beer from the fridge since he was ten, but his drinking reached a peak when the sweet abyss of intoxication became the only reprieve from his daily grind. A night cap became a day cap, became an all day cap. He was rarely found without the smell of alcohol on his breath and was starting to look a lot more like his dad.

memorable moments: During a bender, Jamie redecorated the side of the town hall with a wordy manifesto and a picture of a big penis before falling asleep beneath his work. He spent the evening in the drunk tank before being released with a misdemeanor on his record and a hefty fine for vandalism. It’s the most reckless he’d ever been with himself and money, but he couldn’t say that it didn’t feel good to let off some steam.

Jamie now…

Jamie is exactly where he’s been all his life. Working at the same places, wearing the same clothes, drinking the same drinks. Jamie’s a bug trapped in amber with no way out of the endless cycle his parents had started for him. He’s settled into worrying about other people’s problems over trying to tackle his own in fear of upsetting the tenuous balance of his sanity. The uncertainty of when his mother will return and bring chaos leaves him with little option but to stay and protect his siblings from being subjected to the same rollercoaster of disappointment he has.

Despite the monotony of his life, his innate ability to devise plans and problem solve has given his siblings a chance at a semblance of normalcy for however long it'll last.

#apurgintro

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deadweight-at7am · 3 years

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I’ve now seen Dune twice, I did not watch the old movies but read the books in high school. At least I read Dune Messiah, I didn’t finish Children of Dune. I was geeked for this movie from the get-go and wasn’t disappointed. I can’t say more on my thoughts of people’s reactions because, uh, spoilers for the second movie. But also, these books are like 60 years old. Go read them, damnit. Chalamet was a good choice imho and I liked all the casting, the score was amazeballs and I think the constructed world was so much better than I imagined it to be. So, A+ go and see it.

I’ve been on Tiktok for some time now and I’ve made an observation. There is a huge amount of young adults and millenials on that app trauma bonding. One dude in particular puts his drug-addict mom on blast and the people in his comment section are all relating to it. I really have to sit back and realize like, oh yeah, I liked my childhood because it was SEEMINGLY normal. No one else feels the same as me about their childhoods because they were fucked up beyond belief. I’ve asked all my close friends if they’d go back to being a kid again if they could and almost all of them are like “No, not ever”. And a lot of those people had really shitty parental figures. Thank goodness for my mother. My sister loves to chime in that “mom wasn’t like she was when I was a kid” and loves to tell me she was “different”. Yeah surely, she was younger but I almost want to hit her upside the head and be like “you think you’d be as successful as you are if we had a parent like some of these other people?” WOO BOY. The most scandalous thing my mother ever did in front of me was picked me up from a friend’s house when I was 17 after having two glasses of wine, asked me to drive on the way home and went “WEE!” when we hit the speed bumps in the neighborhood.

Addiction has such a choke hold on society in general, it’s wild. I’m sorry to anyone who had to experience less than stellar parents growing up. You deserved better.

#personal #movie #dune

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wroughtbetwixtfanfic · 4 years

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Wheels Set In Motion, Ch 1.

Fandom: The Society.

Summary: As the situation in New Ham takes a dark, mysterious turn, Campbell is faced with a threat he never saw coming. With few allies and the past coming back to haunt him, he is forced to deal with a world that is crumbling fast, and choices with grim consequences.

Rating: Explicit.

Tags: Minor Character Death, Canon Divergence, Mental Health Issues, Addiction Recovery, Unhealthy Relationships, Teen Pregnancy, Past Rape/Non-con, Campbell Isn't The Dad, Brother Feels, Attempted Murder, Supernatural Elements, Gay Sex, Resolved Sexual Tension, Campbell has mild ASPD and is actively trying to not be awful

Word Count: 5654

Part Three || Ch 2 || Ch 3 || Ch 4 || Ch 5 || AO3

A day passed, then two. Grizz was gracious enough to take care of Campbell. He kept an eye on him when he could, making sure to let him have time to go to the bathroom, stretch, get food and water, and he gave Campbell a pillow to lean his head on at night. Luke and Clark took shifts when Grizz needed a break, and they were far less accommodating. They put water inches away from where he could reach, laughing while watching him struggle.

"Knock it off," Grizz snapped when he saw it happen. That was the last time they tried it. "Christ. I'm sorry." Campbell fought against the burning, sharp feeling in his chest. "It's whatever. They just need some way to feel powerful. Fucking wimps." Grizz didn't argue. Day two oozed by, and Campbell's shoulder had gone from aching, to throbbing and painful, to numb. His legs cramped and he was dizzy from a lack of sleep. Thankfully, Allie decided to visit him that evening. For a moment, Campbell had hope that she was letting him free; that hope evaporated when he saw the look in her eyes. "Allie, it's been days. Is all this really necessary?" he still tried, jiggling the handcuff. "Just uncuff me and lock the door or whatever. I'm not gonna jump out the window." Sitting on the bed, Allie shrugged. "Maybe." "I'm going to get pressure sores or something." "Yeah. That's what we should be worried about." "It is. I had nothing to do with killing Cassandra." "That's all you have to say?" Campbell gave an exasperated groan. "What else is there? Goddamn it, Allie, this is ridiculous. Your sister and I were cousins. Family. We were friends." He gestured to the air. "Besides, what do you expect? Huh? I can't prove it didn't happen. Can he prove it did?" "I can't tell you that." "I've barely spoken to Dewey our whole lives. Harry doesn't even like him, not that I can remember, anyways. He's always been a fucking asshole who just hangs around for scraps." "Then why did he accuse you?" "Are you really that fucking dense? You know my reputation." Oh, she knew his reputation all too well. Allie's eyes blinked a little too fast. A nervous response. "Answer the question." "I was the most obvious pick. It was a desperate move. You asked him if he had help, didn't you?" Campbell leaned back against the radiator. Allie wasn't as outwardly icy as Cassandra, but she was equally ruthless. It was hidden under the surface, waiting for just enough power to roar to life. "What did you promise him if he named names? What did you say would happen, if he didn't?" "That has nothing to do with--" "It has everything to do with it. People will tell you anything if they think their life is in danger. Big fucking duh." "I need to know what happened that night. Just tell me." "He killed her. It's that simple." "Alone? Because I don't think so." Allie leaned forward. "If not you, then Harry." Campbell snorted. "Harry? No, no." "Then who?" "Are you asking for my opinion?" When Allie stood and began to pace, Campbell rolled his eyes. Oh, that was rich. She imprisoned him and then wanted his insight. "Harry's a scared little puppy. Too bold for him. Too much effort. He can barely get out of bed these days, and he didn't really hate Cassandra like that, anyways." "Who do you think did it, then?" Humoring her, Campbell gave the question some thought. He examined everyone on the party list, and even the town populace in general. He couldn't think of anyone else who would have been that desperate for Harry's approval. "No one. Dewey did it alone. Just an entitled white boy who hates strong women. Pretty much the story with any shooter." "Classic misogyny," Allie mumbled. She chewed on her thumbnail. "Was that really all it was?" Campbell tried to shift to a more comfortable position, but there wasn't one. Everywhere hurt. They hadn't let him have any visitors-- not even Sam-- and her was starting to go from bored to annoyed. If she hadn't chained him up like a rabid dog, maybe he'd have been more sympathetic, but the only one who had his sympathy was in the ground. Everyone else was just grinding on his last nerve, but he couldn't escape to calm down. "Allie, are you gonna let me go?" "I haven't decided yet." "But if I'm innocent--" Allie's mouth pulled into a little smirk. "You think so? Maybe you didn't do this, but that doesn't mean you're innocent." "You're joking." There was no way in hell she could just detain him for some personal grudge. He felt his adrenaline start to kick in, but goddamn it, all he could do was tug uselessly at the handcuff. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Sitting back down, Allie rested her chin on her hand and stared at Campbell. "Are you scared of me?" A big mistake on her part, saying that. Campbell perked a little, stopping to analyze that question. Are you scared of me? She'd mistaken his desire to get the fuck away from her as fear. And she wanted him to be scared. She wanted him afraid of her... because she'd always been afraid of him. Hate, fear. It made people do terrible shit. Like, for example, threaten to keep one's cousin locked up-- or worse-- just because they'd been a prick. That, combined with Sam's story, must have made Allie afraid. Campbell smiled, relaxing into the handcuff and focusing his gaze on her. "You have no evidence against me. I didn't do shit, and you know it. So, let me guess. You're keeping me here because you're all scared of me." He grinned as her expression froze. "And, what? You finally have a way to deal with your Campbell problem? I'm guilty of being fucked up in the head, so I deserve to be locked up? Or worse? Is that it? I'm the kind of weirdo it's acceptable to pop in the head and get rid of." "I didn't say anything about killing anyone." He laughed. "Let's drop the act and stop being coy, Allie." Campbell's smile faded as he dug through his memory for every little bit of information he had on Allie, and her personality. Every little thing that made her weak. "The thing is, if you do that, you're gonna have to be the one to pull the trigger. That's how it is, as the leader. But you don't like to make tough choices, do you? You're not Cassandra." Her nose twitched in disgust. He had her. "Fuck you." "You can't kill me and not Dewey. That wouldn't make sense. So then you, you've killed two people. And Allie, you might be all kinds of fucked up, too. I don't know. But I do know you're not like me." "So what? I don't have to be." "Yeah, you do. How are you gonna sleep at night, knowing you're a murderer? Knowing that you killed your own family just because people are ignorant and afraid? Because you're ignorant and afraid?" "I..." "You'll never get rid of me, cousin. We'll visit you," he whispered as he leaned forward, close enough that he could see the tears springing up in her eyes. "Cassandra and I. Every night in your sleep." Allie swallowed, standing quickly and walking towards the bedroom door. She stopped, her hand on the doorknob. "Maybe I'll just have to live with that." But the calm in her voice faltered, and that was all he needed. Campbell chuckled, and Allie retreated out the door, shoving her way past Sam and heading downstairs. It was enough to soothe that ache in his chest, in his fingers, that commanded him to rip and tear and make her suffer. But then he saw Sam looking at him with that look, and Campbell felt the wind leave his sails just a touch. "Are you Plan B?" Campbell asked as Sam came in the room. "No. I'm not supposed to be in here." Sam sat next to Campbell on the floor. He tucked his knees up to his chest, and signed slowly. A small mercy, considering Campbell was operating on a total of twenty minutes of sleep. "I just wanted to see you." "You know I can't stay locked up like this." "I'm going to see what I can do. It just doesn't look very good right now." "If she decides to kill me..." Sam's signing turned sharp, angry. "I won't let her do that. I won't." "How do you plan to stop her?" "I'll get Grizz to let you go. I'll take you home, stay with you until she backs off." "Thanks for the sentiment." Campbell glanced at the watch on Sam's wrist. It was just past midnight. Day three had begun. "Go get some rest, Sam. You look almost as shitty as I do." Because he hadn't been sleeping, either, Campbell realized as Sam rubbed his face and gave a long, weary sigh. "Goodnight, Campbell." "Night, Sam." Campbell waited until Sam was gone before kicking over the empty soda can Grizz had brought in at dinner. It was bullshit. They locked him up for days without any proof at all, besides the words of a convicted murderer, chained to a radiator like a fucking animal. Allie outright threatened that she would keep him like that even if he didn't do it. And to put all that on not only him, but Sam? Sam was innocent. He didn't deserve to worry like that, especially not over Campbell; was Allie really that desperate for revenge? Sleep that night went the same way it had since he'd been arrested. Trying to get comfortable, but the metal of the handcuff chaffed and bit into his wrist, the radiator coils pushed into his neck and back and shoulders, and the hard wood floor made his hips ache. He could hear noise from other rooms. He could hear when everyone went to sleep, and then there was just silence. Silence, except for the creak of the floor outside his room when whoever was guarding him moved around. Creak. Campbell startled awake out of the half-sleep he'd just slipped into. He tried again. Ten minutes, twenty minutes went by. Creak. He woke up again. All night long, and eventually, Campbell gave up like he had before and settled into a sort of zoned-out trance. Grizz came by and made sure he had lunch. "It's nothing fancy," he said as he gave Campbell water, a cheese sandwich, and dried cranberries. "But I know you don't like meat and you're on prison rations until Allie makes up her mind." "How's that looking?" Campbell wondered, poking at the food. His own hand didn't even look real anymore. "Any progress?" "Not much. People are starting to whisper." "People have been whispering. They're starting to get pissed." Grizz peeked out the door. "I'm worried she's gonna lose it. People want answers, leadership, and I believe in her but she doesn't believe in herself. People are gonna notice that." "It's because she has to want it." "She doesn't want it." And there was the problem, right there. A teen girl suffering the loss of her big sister, forced to step into her shoes, with the responsibility of an entire society on her shoulders. Campbell knew what their family was like. The pressure there was to be perfect, to compete against one's sibling, to see one's parents pick a favorite when one couldn't live up to the high expectations. It was a lot to try and handle. Allie, forever in Cassandra's shadow, unable to be the perfect little baby that her parents wanted. Campbell could understand how it felt, but at this rate, she was gonna snap. And then someone would take things from her. Oh, no. What a shame. Except it would be, because everything Cassandra worked for would be gone, if things landed into the hands of the wrong person. There were footsteps on the stairs, and Grizz ducked back out of the room before they were seen talking. Luke's voice rose up from outside, muffled. A better guard than Clark. Luke, at least, would come in every so often and ask Campbell if he needed anything. He still didn't stop Gordie from hovering near the door and glaring. Maybe if Allie didn't try and do him in, one of the others would. It wouldn't be surprising. What was surprising was, later that night, Campbell heard shouting from downstairs. Grizz had returned to his post at Campbell's room, but quickly shut the door once the yelling began. Campbell strained to hear, but he could only tell who was arguing, not so much what they were arguing about. He could hear Will and Luke, faintly, but Allie moreso. It didn't last long, whatever was happening. Soon, the door swung open and Allie stomped in, slamming the door behind her. "You're right." Campbell tensed as Allie sat down across from him. She looked angry, with her jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed. "What?" "I've been scared of you my whole life. And for just one second, I wanted you to know what that felt like." She crossed her arms. "But you didn't, did you?" "I'm not scared of you. I'm worried about what you might do." "And what did you think I was going to do?" "You know what I thought." Allie studied the floor. "I thought that maybe I'd keep you here, locked up, to teach you a lesson. Some people have told me it'd be easier to just get rid of you. That it'd be safer for you to be gone, before you actually do anything to hurt people." "And?" He kept his tone even, but he felt his heart begin to slam harder as his brain tried to figure some way out. "What did you decide?" Standing up, Allie reached into her pocket and pulled out a key. She unlocked the handcuffs and waited for Campbell to get to his feet. She latched onto his wrist and led him out the back door, away from where everyone else was. Allie opened the door and shoved him onto the back porch. "Get out." It hurt to walk, and his legs felt like lead and jello at the same time, but Campbell didn't wait around for her to change her mind. He didn't even think to text Elle or Harry; he just raced home as quick as he could. Campbell could hear the piano playing from inside. Who was that? The playing stopped when he entered the home. Elle's voice floated through the silence. "Who's there?" Campbell felt a wave of relief as he turned the corner and saw Elle. It was a new sensation. A little spark of joy, a feeling of being home and safe. She was there, and she was alright. They all were, for now. "I'm free." "How..." Elle stood, stammering. Her eyes were wide. "How did you get out?" "I didn't do anything, so she let me go." "Oh." Tilting his head, Campbell walked up to Elle and stroked her cheek. She looked more like a deer in the headlights than a concerned girlfriend. "Are you okay? I thought you'd be happy to see me." Elle threw her arms around Campbell's neck, burrowing her face into his shoulder. "I am! So much." She kissed his cheek, running her hands through his hair. "So much. We were so worried." We. Campbell glanced up, seeing movement behind Elle. Harry stood in the doorway of the room, dark circles under his eyes and a blanket curled tightly around his shoulders; he kept his distance, but once Elle had left for work, Harry followed him upstairs. Campbell knew it was inappropriate for Harry to sleep beside him, but Campbell was too tired to stop him. That was the excuse Campbell made for himself, anyways. Harry sunk his fingers into Campbell's shirt, nestling close. Campbell fell into a heavy sleep, finally comfortable in his own bed. When he woke up, Harry was still there, sniffling softly with red-rimmed eyes. He didn't seem to notice Campbell was awake. Not until Campbell lightly wrapped his arms arms around Harry, anyways; Harry jumped a little, but then leaned into the embrace. "I thought they were gonna..." His voice broke. "Fucking dicks." Campbell softened his voice. "Hey, it's okay. They didn't do anything to me. We're going to be okay now, alright? Everything is going to be okay." "How do you know that? If they try again--" "Then there will be hell to pay." Campbell knew it was an idle threat. If Allie and her minions came for him again, no one would be able to stop them. Elle and Harry didn't have enough power to stop them. Still, Harry relaxed a little at the words. "Trust me." Harry's mouth twitched at the corner. "Never." "Smart boy." The house was cooler than usual as the sun went down; clouds were forming, and there was a breeze, heralding the chance of rain. Campbell was loathe to move away from the warmth of their blankets and shared body heat, but Elle would be home soon and they had their own jobs to get to. Harry bit his lip and gave Campbell a look that was almost pleading-- not yet, just a few more moments-- but Campbell stood and threw on fresh clothing. He couldn't give in to the desire for closeness. Neither of them could, especially not now when tensions were already so high. Maybe once things calmed down... If they calmed down. Elle gave Campbell a quick peck on the cheek as they passed one another on the porch. Campbell was tempted to say fuck work, and just stay home with Elle to make some coffee and watch a movie, but he had to try to be on good behavior. He couldn't give Allie a reason to fuck around with him again. But it sucked, like it always sucked, and he was happy when it was time for dinner. Elle joined him and Harry for it, and after a bit of clean-up, they could go home. Campbell was glad to get home and finally get a shower, but a closer look in his closet revealed something that made him pause. He hadn't noticed before, but there was a familiar pair of jeans and a shirt hanging there that hadn't been there before. He knew, because those were the clothes he wore the night Charlie disappeared. There was still a trace of blood on the jeans. Neither Harry or Elle had asked about them. It could have been either of them that washed the things, but Harry's idea of putting clothes away was tossing them on a chair and hoping for the best. No, the meticulous one was Elle. "Hey, babe?" Campbell asked Elle when she came back to the bedroom. He held up the shirt and wiggled it. "Where'd you find these?" Elle gave them a quick glance before heading into the bathroom to brush her teeth. "Under the bed. I did the laundry while you were gone." A pause. "There was blood on your jeans. Are you okay?" Fuck. Campbell followed her into the bathroom, kissing her shoulder. "Oh, yeah. It's just allergy season. I get nosebleeds sometimes. Sorry, I didn't want you to worry." She couldn't say anything with a mouth full of toothpaste, but Elle nodded. Campbell thought he saw a flicker of... something, but his eyelids felt like lead and his body was sluggish. He needed sleep, and Elle snuggled up to him just as close as usual, so what was there to worry about? He was just tired, and letting his disorder run off with him like it often did. He was home. He was safe. Campbell was just crawling out of bed when the text came in. Allie had made a decision; she was calling everyone to the church at 8am. Half an hour. Elle was already stumbling around getting dressed, and Harry had fallen asleep in the clothes he wore the day before, so they made it to the church with a handful of minutes to spare. They hadn't eaten. Elle looked like she wanted to be ill, and Harry was silent and shaking; neither looked hungry, and Campbell wasn't going to force himself, either. When they got to the church, Campbell stopped a few yards away. "Go in without me," he said. He remembered the shouts and cheers of the people when he got arrested. Campbell could picture their snide, smug faces in his mind. "I'll wait here." Harry stopped, while Elle went inside. "Are you sure you'll be alright out here?" "Of course." The real answer was actually of course not, and Harry knew this. Still. Harry followed Elle into the church; he was nothing if not obedient. Campbell tucked himself into a shaded spot, out of view, and waited. The air was thick and warm already, the start of a hot day. Campbell had just started to doze off when the church doors slammed open, and Dewey was dragged out kicking, screaming, cursing. Campbell only heard one sentence-- fuck you, you goddamn bitch-- before Dewey was stuffed into the guard's SUV. When Allie came out a few moments later, she looked stoic. The guard members at her side were less so. Grizz was hard to read, but there was a little wrinkle between his eyebrows, and Luke had his eyes fixed on the ground like somehow he wanted to sink into the concrete. Campbell stood and approached. Everyone but Grizz tensed, but Allie muttered something to her herd and they backed off. "Campbell," Allie said. She shoved her hands in her pockets. "You weren't at the meeting." Campbell shrugged. "Being there wouldn't have helped any, right? Anyways. Thought it'd be a good idea if I gave you some space this morning." "Then why are you here?" "For the same reason I was there for Cassandra. I knew it'd be hard for you." Allie stared hard at him, before turning her gaze a little over his shoulder. She was ashamed of her choice. Or, rather, of what she felt she had to do. "We're executing him tomorrow." "Solomon." Campbell tilted his head. The closer he looked at Allie, the more she looked away from him. "You're actually splitting the baby." That made her look at him. Allie pursed her lips, defiant. "I did it for Cassandra." "I know you did. I would have done the same thing." A dig, just to make Allie squirm. Campbell would have enjoyed the queasy look that flitted across her face, if it hadn't been about Cassandra. "Good luck." Maybe she sensed that he meant it, that good luck, because for a single heartbeat of time she looked at him like maybe he wasn't some sort of monster. But then she turned on her heels and headed off, with her lapdogs at her heels. A better reception than he expected, anyways. Campbell turned his attention to Elle and Harry, who emerged from the church and headed towards him. "I can't believe it," Harry mumbled. "She's really going through with it." Elle's lips were pressed into a thin line, but her tone was even. "So what?" She shrugged. "He murdered Cassandra. People who do terrible things deserve what they get." "Maybe, but..." Campbell walked a few paces ahead of them as they went home, trying to tune them out; it wasn't something he wanted to discuss. He knew that, in the end, what he said to Allie had almost been true. It was so very tempting to take the easy route, and Campbell was very sure that the death penalty was the easy route-- easier than having to watch over an inmate for fuck knew how long, anyways, and have him using up resources. That didn't mean he agreed with the death penalty, especially since Cassandra had been against it, and Campbell had heard all the arguments against it from her. In normal society, it didn't deter crime at all, it was more expensive than life without parole, and innocent people sometimes were killed. But this wasn't normal society. The society they were in now was tiny, brittle, and scared. Resources were finite. The guard was already stretched thin. Regardless of what Cassandra would have wanted, regardless of what should have been true and factual, they were playing by different rules now. He didn't care to hear moral debates about it. Most people didn't, it seemed like. Lunch, work, and dinner were quiet. Somber. There were some whispers, but it wasn't surprising that there was so much gossip. It was an execution. Campbell could see Harry sink further into himself with every comment, though; Campbell couldn't exactly offer him comfort, not with everyone else watching them like hawks. It seemed that even with Allie declaring them innocent-- or, well, not worth punishing-- people still were eager to find some excuse to condemn them. They were halfway home when Harry just... stopped. Campbell turned back, following Harry's line of sight. He was staring down the street, towards the spot Cassandra's body had been found. "It's my fault," Harry said. He sounded far away. Faint. "I killed them both." "What are you talking about?" "If I hadn't opened my fucking mouth, if I hadn't said what I did..." Campbell slid his hand under Harry's chin and turned his head so that Harry was looking at him. "No. You're not gonna do this. Just because someone says something fucked up doesn't mean someone else has the right to go murder someone over it." Campbell cut Harry off before he could protest. "It was Dewey's fault. He chose to do what he did." Harry gazed at Campbell, the pulled away and kept walking. He didn't say another word, not until they got home. Muttering to himself, Harry went to his room; Campbell followed, wondering what the hell was going on in Harry's mind this time. Harry dug out all the pills he had left, and a few bags of other drugs. Heading into the bathroom, Harry threw open the toilet, dropped the baggies in it, and flushed. They both stood there, watching the drugs vanish. Once they were completely gone, Harry looked up at Campbell. "Will you help me?" There was no question about it. Campbell went through the house and dumped all the alcohol down the drain. It pained Campbell a little. Some of the bottles were old, expensive, and it's not like he'd personally planned to go completely sober himself. Harry needed it, though. Harry needed Campbell and his support. Campbell was in no way sober, and never would be. He'd given up on that idea. But he could try to be, for Harry's sake; he knew what it was like to give up drugs, especially ones like cocaine, and Harry would need all the help he could get. "Thank you," Harry said when they were done. He frowned as he looked around the kitchen, as if unsure of what to do now that it was all gone. "I just... I can't anymore. You know?" "I know. It's gonna be hell for a while. Are you ready for that?" Harry shook his head. "No, but I can't go through this again, Cam. I don't have it in me. If I keep going on like this, one of these days I'll just..." He hesitated, then gave Campbell a weak smile. "Anyways. I think I'll go to bed." Campbell didn't want to leave. It was gonna be a rough night, and it was only going to be rougher for the next week or so. What if it was all a big show, and Harry was going to do something foolish the minute Campbell left him alone? It happened, sometimes. Professionals always said that it was when depressed people started acting better to worry most, because them being calm could be a sign that they'd decided to end their lives. Harry didn't seem calm, he just seemed ready to try and help himself. Still, if-- Harry was staring at him with a knowing look; he stepped closer, and leaned his forehead against Campbell's shoulder. Of course he'd seen the look on Campbell's face, and read it for what it was. He didn't say anything. Campbell didn't, either. It was a brief, wordless comfort, and then Harry ducked into his room and shut the door. Elle was in her pajamas by the time Campbell got upstairs. "Is everything okay?" she asked as she took her make-up off in the bathroom. "Sounded busy down there." "It's fine. Harry's decided he's gonna get off the drugs and the alcohol." Campbell sunk onto the bed and tossed his shirt into the laundry hamper in the corner. "I was helping him dump the alcohol in the house." "Really?" "Yeah, I mean, he kinda lives here now, too. I didn't want him to be tempted." Rinsing off her face, Elle turned off the bathroom light and flopped next to him in bed. "I guess it's a good idea. We don't really need alcohol. Too bad we couldn't have used it in the garden next spring though, to keep the slugs away." "Pretty sure Harry would have mainlined it all by then." "Good point." Campbell watched Elle as she fiddled with her necklace. Her hands kept slipping. "Do you need some help with that? Here." "It's okay," Elle said quickly, ducking away from his hands. "My hands were just damp still." "Are you feeling alright? You've seemed kind of on edge all day." "It's been a rough day, Campbell." "I know, I just... Do you wanna talk about it?" "No. I'll just be happy when it's over and we can move on." Elle tucked herself in and turned off her bedside lamp, but she stayed sitting up n the faint half-light, her eyes on Campbell. "You looked uncomfortable earlier. Don't you think people who hurt others deserve to be punished?" Campbell felt a cold trickle down his neck and spine. "What do you mean?" It was a strange question, and the fervid look in her eyes made him want to just stand up and leave the room. "Is this about us? Because I've been trying really hard to be better, and I know that doesn't change what happened before, but--" "I was just talking to Becca about it, during work." "Becca?" "She thinks it's true." "I don't doubt it. She's always been pretty passionate about her beliefs." Whatever he said, it triggered some sort of change in Elle's attitude. "Yeah." Rolling over, Elle laid down and pulled the blankets over her. "Sorry, I guess I just need some rest. Goodnight, Campbell." Campbell sat up a little longer, then laid down, too. Weird. Weird, but no one seemed to be getting good sleep lately. Maybe, after tomorrow, people would be less... whatever the hell was happening to people. He just wanted things to go back to how they were only a little while ago, sipping lemonade on their porch and admiring the work all three of them had done together. He just wanted to get his head right with Grizz's help, and try to heal things with Sam, and make sure Harry stayed safe and healthy. Campbell wanted to prove himself to Elle. All this death and murder and trial business was making people senseless. The phone rang at 4am. Picking it up, he slipped out of the bedroom and into the hall. "Hello?" "I can't do it." Allie's voice was strained. Whispering. Campbell shut the bedroom door, and headed across the hall to Elle's bathroom. "Too late for that, cousin. If you back out now, you'll look weak. Weak leaders don't survive long." "How can I?" Allie rasped. "How can I take someone's life?" Campbell sat down roughly on the bathroom floor, leaning back against the cool, tiled wall. "Not lightly. But we both watched Game of Thrones, Allie. You remember what Ned Stark said at the very beginning. The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword." "You're quoting a television show?" "Am I wrong?" A long silence, and a sniffle. "No. I guess not." "Well, then." Campbell traced the small cracks in the floor. He tried to think of something soothing, but there wasn't anything to say. "Do you want me to do it?" "Campbell." "Allie, answer the question. Do you want me to kill him for you? You and I could go out there together, without anyone else around. You don't have to even tell anyone it was me. No one would have to know." "You'd tell them." "I wouldn't." "Why? Why are you offering?" "Why are you calling?" "I..." Allie gulped. She didn't answer, not for a long while. "I don't know. I thought maybe... I guess I just wanted to talk to someone who wouldn't waver." "There you go, then." "I can't ask you to do it. I have to, don't I?" Campbell had never been close to Allie, and while the despair in her voice didn't stir any pity in him, he could acknowledge that it was a shit situation. "You passed down the sentence, Allie. You gotta swing the sword. Even if it fucking sucks." Allie let out a short, shaking breath, and hung up. Campbell waited for a few minutes, then got up and went back to bed. He didn't fall asleep. The best he could manage was laying down with his eyes closed, listening to Elle's soft snoring, and try to clear his mind of everything that had happened. Impossible, but he could sleep once it was over, done, and there was closure. Once it had been laid to rest, literally, everything would start to heal. A lie, probably, but it was a comfortable one.

#the society #the society netflix #the society fanfiction #the society netflix fanfiction #the society fanfic #the society netflix fanfic #the society fic #the society netflix fic #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #writing #campbell eliot #sam eliot #harry bingham #elle tomkins #grizz visser #allie pressman #cw: minor character death

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mrsrcbinscn · 4 years

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Franny Sor Framagucci Robinson Character Sheet

Dear Mom and Dad, I'll send money, I'm so rich that it ain't funny It oughtta be more than enough to get you through - (x)

Archetype — The Creator

Birthday — January 17, 1980

Zodiac Sign — Capricorn

MBTI — ENFJ-A (The Protagonist — 93% Extroverted, 56% Intuitive, 60% Feeling, 60% Judging, 83% Assertive)

Enneagram — Type 3w2 — The Charmer

Temperament — Sanguine

Hogwarts House — Slytherin Primary, Hufflepuff Primary model, Gryffindor Secondary

Moral Alignment — Lawful Good

Primary Vice — Pride

Primary Virtue — Charity or Diligence

Element — Air

Song — A Better Son/Daughter by Rilo Kiley

Overview:

Government name — Darareaksmey Francine Sor Framagucci Robinson Name — Franny Robinson/Franny Sor Robinson Mother — Sophea “Sophie” Sor

Father — Adrien Framagucci (stepfather, legally adopted her), Peter Boyd (biological father)

Mother’s Occupation — Restaurant owner

Father’s Occupation — Construction worker

Family Finances — grew up in poverty, insanely wealthy now

Birth Order — Youngest

Brothers — stepbrothers Gaston and Art Framagucci (mother legally adopted them, if you say ‘step’ Franny will kill you), claims no others but has biological half brothers from Peter Boyd; John-Curtis “JC” Boyd, Timothy “Timmy” Boyd

Sisters — claims none, but has biological half sisters by Peter Boyd; Sarah Boyd, Stacy Boyd, Shyann Boyd

Other Close Family — spreadsheet

Best Friend — Daniel Maitland, Molly Vaughn (deceased)

Other Friends — Lora Lopez, Serghei Anton, Delia Weiss, Vanessa Pham, others

Enemies — most men on principle

Home Life During Childhood — It was a good childhood. Working the restaurant was normal to Franny so she didn’t realize it was abnormal at first. Her parents tried not to let the kids realize how poor they actually were.

Town or City Name(s) — Payne Lake, Georgia

Any Sports or Clubs — In high school she was in drama, show choir, orchestra, National Honor Society, and on the quiz bowl team

Favorite Toy or Game — Franny honestly loved hide and seek well into her teenage years because she was small enough to fit it the weirdest places to hide, and in the 80s and 90s in a small town in Georgia there wasn’t much to do so her friend group played Extreme Hide and Seek. Everyone wears all black like some kind of cult. Turn off all the lights in the house. Go crazy.

Schooling — K-12 in Payne Lake, Georgia ; B.A.s. in Musical Theatre Performance and Jazz Studies at NYU; M.A. in Jazz Studies at Pride U

Favorite Subject — Anything that wasn’t math or chemistry

Popular or Loner — Popular, has always been magnetic

Important Experiences or Events — Her first time on stage, getting enough scholarship money to justify going to NYU, quickly growing to love the nerd she hit up to buy her waffles and never letting him go, the accident that changed her life, marrying Cornelius Robinson, finding the magic singing frogs, adopting Wilbur, discovering the severity of her fertility issues in 2008,

Nationality — American-Cambodian (born American, given Cambodian citizenship in 2019)

Culture — Franny identifies most strongly with Cambodian, followed by broadly Southeast Asian sometimes with Buddhist attached, and that’s tied with ‘Rural Southern (USA)’ sometimes with POC attached. Franny feels pretty detached from “American Culture” in general. She more closely would identify with Southern USA culture in general than with general American with no modifiers. She also feels a little detached from Asian American culture in general because even though she grew up right outside of Atlanta and is familiar with Atlanta, she didn’t grow up in one of the big hubs of Asian American culture like LA, San Francisco, or NYC. White American and Black American culture surrounded her, and the Asian cultures surrounding her were immigrant or first-gen cultures that hadn’t really developed an American flavor yet. Franny understood more about Vietnamese and Thai culture than she did about general Asian American culture for a long time, because immigrants straight from Southeast Asia were the only Asians she grew up around. And she grew up in the 80s and 90s where Asian representation was yellowface and Long Duk Dong. She didn’t meet any Asian Americans who didn’t speak or at least understand their heritage language until college. And the experience of POC as a whole in the South is very different to the experience of a white person, so sometimes Franny feel disconnected from her white southern neighbors and more closely relates to black or non-white Latinx southerners in ways she doesn’t relate to white southerners, or Asian Americans from LA or NYC.

Religion and beliefs — Buddhist

Languages spoken— Khmer, English, Vietnamese, French, Italian, (less fluently) Portuguese, Spanish, (can understand some) Thai, Lao, (impressive tourist) German, Dutch

Physical Appearance

Face Claim — Elodie Yung

Complexion — Tanned skin, pale brown

Hair Colour — Black

Eye Colour — Brown

Height — 5’5

Tattoos — Yes, a few. Wilbur’s adoption date over her heart, most notably

Piercings — Lobe, upper lobe, tragus, helix, and cartilage on both ears, and an anti-tragus on her left ear. And a nose piercing she got in college

Common Hairstyle — typically keeps her hair long and done nicely but she cuts it and donates it from time to time so will also rock short hair

Clothing Style — vintage-inspired but not proper vintage

Mannerisms — Biting the pads of her thumbs, gesturing wildly, narrating her actions sometimes in song, if she’s looking for scissors she walks through the house making a scissors motion with her fingers

Usual Expression — she’s got resting bitch face

Health

Overall (do they get sick easily)? — No, her immune system is the real MVP and when she does get sick she’s like ‘I’m dYING’

Physical Ailments — Infertility

Neurological Conditions — Depression, Cyclothymia (rapid cycles of depressive and hypomanic episodes)

Allergies — none

Grooming Habits — Typically rinses her body daily, uses soap on the armpits daily, but proper washes her body every other day. Washes her hair every two or three days as needed, but if she was extra sweaty that day it gets washed. Waxes leg hair and eyebrows.

Sleeping Habits — she generally gets a decent amount of sleep but it isn’t usually all at once. She’s a champion power-napper, and if she has three days cleared she’ll often sleep mainly all at once except have like a 2-3 hour period of wakefulness and productivity and then go back to sleep for two more hours, then take an hour nap later in the day.

Eating Habits — She’s a grazer. She doesn’t usually sit down and eat three times a day she’ll sneak like five small meals a day

Exercise Habits — works out at least three days a week somewhat because she’s really sensitive to when people comment on her body so she’s afraid to give people a reason to say a negative comment. Like. She’s body positive, big supporter of you don’t gotta be skinny to be beautiful or healthy. But when people say things like “oh Franny you got a little jiggle in those thighs” it’s never said like a good or neutral thing. She had a lot of body image issues throughout high school and college, and came dangerously close to developing an eating disorder freshman year at NYU but kind of logicked herself from the ledge

Emotional Stability — generally emotionally stable, like for someone with her mental illnesses she does great

Body Temperature — runs hot

Sociability — A social butterfly

Addictions — None; did abuse adderall in college but when she quit cold turkey she didn’t like. Suffer cravings. She wasn’t addicted, but she did abuse it to the point she realized “oh I need to...stop”

Drug Use — occasional use of drugs to make her trip, like acid, shrooms, but this is very rare, she doesn’t do it at home, usually if she’s on the road with other musicians or has gone to LA or NYC or London for a few days to have a songwriting session, the group will sometimes partake. Even then not every time. Used to experiment with drugs more in college, but still it was never...a TON.

Alcohol Use — More than occasional less than frequent

Your Character’s Character:

Bad Habits — swearing, next to no filter, temper when it comes to perceived injustices, tends to overload herself

Good Habits — Keeps a detailed planner, is a maniac about drinking lots of water, is vocal about her needs and boundaries

Best Characteristic — her warmth! She really is friendly and easy to get along with and wants to be nice. But she will not be walked over and will not allow her kind, marshmallow husband to be walked over so she will flip a switch to protect herself or her boys.

Worst Characteristic — unforgiving

Worst Memory — it’s a tie between her experience with sexual assault, and the time her biological father’s wife found out Franny was his biological child, and came into her mother’s restaurant when she was visiting with her pretty new HUSBAND, and Nancy Boyd proceeded to beat up Franny and her mother

Best Memory — Adopting Wilbur! It WAS marrying Cornelius but sorry Neil it’s her baby boy now

Proud of — Her husband, she is so proud to be Cornelius Robinson’s wife. She proud to be her mother’s daughter. And she’s proud of her accomplishments in music and philanthropy

Embarrassed by — Nothing, she’s great

Driving Style — Oh, aggressive. She’s an offensive driver. Cusses.

Strong Points — she doesn’t quit, she’s the walk through hell and keep going type of person

Temperament — generally she’s pretty even-tempered. It’s easy to set her off in an instant though if you’re being racist, sexist - any type of shitty person tbh, or being shitty toward her husband or son, but for the most part she’s pretty chill. She deff has crazy bitch energy just under the surface though and you can tell

Attitude — Franny’s not particularly bitchy, but you know, she can be

Weakness — can’t do basic math, very overly self-critical, perfectionist

Fears — Something happening to Wilbur tbh. That’s her greatest fear, losing her son.

Phobias — Franny does not throw up. She refuses. She will literally feel nauseous and horrible all day to avoid puking. It makes her so anxious, she will nOT.

Secrets — None really? Like she doesn’t blab her life story to everyone but Cornelius knows everything about her. She has no secrets from her husband.

Regrets — Not adopting more children when she and Cornelius got married knowing they both wanted a big family; ever meeting up with her biological father

Feels Vulnerable When — She cries in front of people. Franny hates doing it. She’d rather die tbh

Pet Peeves — when people are rude to wait staff

Conflicts — She sometimes feels a surge of resentment for her husband during her depressive episodes because she kind of feels like she’s pulled most of the weight in their marriage from Day 1 as far as running the home, and feels like although he purported to also want a big family he never even offered to take HIS turn pulling back from work so they could adopt a second child when it became clear it wasn’t gonna happen for them biologically, but then Franny hates herself for that because Cornelius is the kindest, most loving, most wonderful husband and father and she feels so privileged to call herself his wife and...yeah they just need to have a long talk about it tbh

Motivation — to be the best at everything she does; to force space for herself where she and people like her have previously been excluded, to be so great that you can’t ignore her

Short Term Goals and Hopes — have a baby, but she’s 40 now and knows its not gonna happen

Long Term Goals and Hopes —she’s...kinda done everything she ever set out to do other than have lots of children

Sexuality — Bisexual, leans toward women, but had more experience with men because compulsory heterosexuality in the US in the 90s and early 2000s, and genuinely fell in love with a man are has been with just him for twenty years now

Exercise Routine — Doesn’t spend much time on cardio because she gets enough cardio walking around town and Pride U. Mainly works on her core, legs, and strength training so if a man tries to grab her she can kick his ass

Day or Night Person — Would be nocturnal if she could be

Introvert or Extrovert — Extrovert

Optimist or Pessimist — She’s naturally pretty cynical but she’s worked for like twenty-five years to have a more optimistic outlook on things. It’s 50/50 now I’d say

Likes and Styles:

Music — there isn’t really a genre she doesn’t like - like her initial fame was in jazz, but she has an equal affection for jazz and bluegrass/classic country/folk music. She also is in an indie band, Seoul Hanoi’d. And like rap music - usually old school Atlanta rap, but she likes Kendrick Lamar and some other current rappers.

Books — She likes to read or listen to audiobooks about pretty much any subject except music and musicians.

Foods — Cambodian food!!

Drinks — She likes sweet tea, aaaand her alcohol of choice is Anything

Animals — Possums :3 She wants a pet possum so bad, she follows pet possums on instagram and cries at their cute posts

Sports — She played tennis in high school, that’s the extent of her sports knowledge

Social Issues — all of them. Climate change, racial justice, intersectional feminism, VACCINATE ALL THE CHILDREN UNLESS THEY MEDICALLY CANNOT BE, de-mining, Green New Deal, punch Nazis, hey maybe don’t put children in cages, Myanmar can you please not do that genocide you’re doing that would be swell, poor people deserve access to healthcare and education, housing-first approach to homelessness, the good stuff

Favorite Saying — “Hoes mad”, usually said dismissively when she receives a death threat after a political tweet, or after a racist one for just being an Asian woman in the public eye

Clothing — Franny prefers skirts, dresses, and jumpsuits/rompers to shirt + trousers

Jewelry — She never takes off her wedding ring. She’s married af

TV Shows — Schitt’s Creek, Kim’s Convenience, a lot of Canadian TV she really thinks is funny

Movies — She’s a big nerd that loves a good documentary or otherwise educational movie

Greatest Want — More children, including one biological child because her mother always talked about pregnancy and childbirth like it was the most humbling and empowering experience she’d ever had, and Franny wants that. But she’s 40 and knows she won’t have that.

Greatest Need — a baby lmao

Where and How Does Your Character Live Now:

Home — In a big-ass house in the wealthiest part of town, maybe even the biggest house

Household furnishings — Not overdecorated. A lot of people live there, but Franny’s very much the lady of the house, and even more so than her husband is the head of the household. She’s not a dictator, like her mother-in-law and other relatives have added their touches to the home decor, but it is very much Franny’s Home with notes of the others. She’s very particular about her kitchen, but is very flexible with the rest of the common spaces.

Most Cherished Possession — Family photographs of her mother and her family before the Khmer Rouge. Franny bears a striking resemblance to her Aunt Kesor, who was the older sister her mother had idolized, but who died during the Khmer Rouge years. Franny only knows of the resemblance from photographs.

Neighborhood — The rich people part of town

Town or City Name — Swynlake, England

Details of Town or City — lol

Married Before — Cornelius is her first and only husband and unless he cheats on her she’s never ever leaving that man

Significant Other Before — nobody important

Children — Wilbur Robinson, wants/wanted more

Relationship with Family — Close! Both to her in-laws, biological maternal family, and stepfamily

Car — 2020 Nissan Qashqai

Career — Singer, song-writer, musician, composer, musical actress, actress, university music professor

Dream Career — Musical actress

Dream Life — Married to Cornelius, with lots of kids, living her best life

Love Life — Happily married to the love of her life, her sunshine, the jelly to her fish, Cornelius Robinson

Talents or Skills — music, cooking, acting

Intelligence Level — High? Like she can’t do basic math but everything else. She’s a musical genius, is good with languages, and is pretty perceptive

Finances — Loaded

Your Character’s Life Before Your Story:

Past Careers — restaurant worker, event staff

Past Lovers — nobody worth mentioning

Biggest Mistakes — “I don’t make mistakes”

Biggest Achievements — Grammys, induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, being the first Cambodian person to win a Grammy, International Bluegrass Music Association awards, ASCAP awards, and being awarded the national medal of the arts by Barack Obama in 2015

#&&...hc #meet the robinsons

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myfandomrambles · 5 years

Text

Rory Gilmore Character Analysis (Expanded)

Facts

raised by a single mom

basically abandoned by her father

grew up in a small town who adore her. Functionally like an extended family

huge reader

Family financially struggled when she was little

highly devoted to education

Goal oriented when she is young

Wants to be a journalist and travel

Highly obsessed with media of all kinds, a shared interest with her mother

Somewhat of a wallflower as a teen

attended an elite preparatory school for last three years of high school

Tends to do whatever is asked of her, most common with her grandparents going against her upbringing and mothers lifestyle

deeply competitive with her main Rival in school (Paris)

Excellent in academic settings

Displays a willingness to be in unhealthy relationships with her BF’s

Believes in a strict pattern in her life and rejects changes

Has visceral reactions to rejection, like with Mitchum

Learned to fit in well with an elite culture

Struggled in her work

Analysis:

Rory overall was a combination of natural gifts, communication issues, commitment, perfectionism, and a girl who faced very little criticism.

Rory’s relationship with her mother Lorelai is the deepest defining connection. Her taste in media and food come from her mom, as well as her struggles to form competent romantic connections. Lorelai instilled an independent identity as well as a fun-loving idea and a love of laughter. Lorelai also shaped Rory by acting as much of a friend as a parental figure, part of this was having trouble ever telling Rory “no”, or that anything she did was wrong. Rory was to some extent a parentified child. She helped run a lot of the boring but important parts of living and was the main emotional support for her mother. Lorelai and Rory also had a relationship that lacked normal boundaries between parent and child. Lorelai did love and support Rory. Lorelai would do everything she could for Rory and worked her ass off to give Rory everything she could to be happy and successful. Rory did know that, and it was important in her best characteristics.

Rory grew up with a very strong extended family in the form of stars hollow. Mia was a grandmother figure more than Emily when Rory was very young. Sookie acted as an aunt figure to Rory often, was at all the parties, baked the birthday cakes etc. Lane was her very close friend throughout her childhood. Lane appreciated Rory and Lorelai as an escape from her strict home life. Rory was influenced her in musical taste by lane, as well as her seeming to be Rory’s only friend around her age in stars hollow.

Luke was a large part of Rory’s life way before he dated Lorelai, often playing a fatherly role. He consistently made meals, helped with birthdays, giving presents, taking care of Rory when she was ill, fixing up the girls house, being deeply protective and attending her big events. Rory struggled with her lack of a father but seemed to really appreciate Luke even going to him when she was struggling during her and her mother’s huge fight. He was awkward and sucked as much as the girls in proper communication, but tried as best he could to support her. Luke is just as protective as her own father, and present way more often.

The rest of the town: Ms Patty, Babette Dell, Morey Dell, Fran Weston, Bootsy, Gypsy, Taylor Doose, Mrs Kim, Jackson Belleville, Andrew & Kirk Gleason were all very important in Rory’s upbringing teaching her different things, keeping her in books. The town at large loved Rory as a kid and into her adulthood. They all come to birthdays and throw her a bon-voyage party.

Being surrounded by a large extended family in the form of the town gave Rory a kind of cushioned experience with how people treat one another. Even if she wasn’t intensely popular at school the town at large prop her up, told her she was wonderful and basically never told her that she was wrong. She was the darling of everyone. Rory was deserving in some senses, she was kind and helped with the town but she struggled to learn how to deal with other people realistically, expecting things to always go well and others not to take advantage of her.

Rory's relationship with her grandparents becomes extremely close after 15ish years of almost no interaction. They love Rory but are controlling in a way that causes strain. Another problem they often have is they are also navigating around the fallout of Lorelai and her parents' history. Emily and Richard want to "fix" what went "wrong" with Lorelai. Rory is their second chance, placing an unfair expectation. They also feed Rory's need to be perfect and expectation of getting it. One reason I do think they click is they do in a way give her more traditional parenting. Lorelai struggled to balance her want to be friends with Rory and Parent, Emily and Richard are always parents. I do think even with headstrong, stubborn and independent person like Rory to have people care for her and not force decisions on her. But this becomes toxic when she lives with them and she suffers the stifling aspect of emotionally controlling and abusive nature of the Gilmores.

Dean was her first love and an important part of her life for a long time. Her relationship with Dean was fine enough in the beginning but Rory overlooked the part of that that wasn’t healthy. The unhealthy behaviours grew overtime instead of exceeding good parts, this ultimately leading to them having an affair and Dean hurting his wife. Rory was supported in this relationship when she was younger by most of the people around her. Rory wanted him to be the one and only but it was an unrealistic goal. Their second try at a relationship began as cheating and ended when Dean realised she had more to her life than being his girlfriend.

Her relationship with Jess started off as a kind of forbidden romance against the wishes of society and the feelings started while she was dating someone else. the relationship was strained for a lot of the time because they both sucked at communication. She was also the only person besides Luke Jess ever had, it's hard to experience a healthy relationship when you are really the only person the other one has. They did care deeply for each other though, and end up helping the other be a better person through their deep understanding of each other, even if their romance didn't work out.

Logan and her relationship was mostly healthy in terms of making each other happy and was the best communication, though that is a low bar. In slightly less productive he was also a large part in her embracing the partying lifestyle. He also enables worse impulses like leaving Yale, he doesn't force them but his lack of care and Hakuna Matta lifestyle making it easy. Their disagreements like the others come mostly from lack of communication and being hyperemotional people. Rory expects him to be the worst he can be, and he doesn't take time to think through what he doesn't. They also have similar family lives which cause strain, though the handle it differently, Rory tries to be the perfect Gilmore while Logan bucks the system. Logan also has aa implied Alcohol addiction problem which of course strains their lives, as it always does.

Rory's relationship with Paris Geller is another huge one in her life. They start off pretty much enemies in school. Paris is so obsessed with being the absolute best she hates that Rory is able to match her skill and standing in the class. She spends much of the first year playing games to have more success and power. Rory is also a perfectionist and has the same natural skill and usually, the same time and work put in. Rory ends up seeing that Paris is deeply insecure and has even worse family relationships then she has ever had. It's hard for them to hate each other when they are both struggling to be as best they can, working together. They end up being more "frenemies" for the last two years of high school and in college. They push each other forward a lot and support them as time goes on. Paris's intensity and propensity to think everyone is acting against her, and their inherent need for competition keeps them going back and forth quite a bit. But they stay friends for their whole adulthood seen in AYTL.

Rory slid into higher society better than her mother ever did. She was close to her grandparents that might have been healthy they expected a better Lorelai and in many ways, that’s what they got. Rory learned the functions well, attended elite schools and dated a Huntzberger. Rory, in the beginning, so conflicts averse she did as she was told, and then adopted much of that lifestyle by choice later. This society allowed her intellect to continue to be praised as well as her looks and luck of birth.

Rory’s friends and family viewing her as usually flawless has always been the best, and truly being naturally gifted academically made it very hard for Rory to deal with any rejection. She is so deeply perfectionist that losing is unexpected and quickly hugely destabilizing. We see this when she isn’t perfect at college and then in extreme form with Mitchum Huntzburger.

Rory broke down twice around not living up to her and others expectation. The second time landing her in jail and listless in her purpose. This dates back to her never being told know and perfectionist tendencies.

Inbetween the end and AYTL we see she burned out early and was fine cheating on her boyfriend (who she treats real shitty) by sleeping with an ex who was engaged. She falls back on her most destructive tendencies forgetting that even with her natural gifts she had actually done the work when she was, young.

Overall Rory is generally kind and willing to help others, her lack of communication and relationship skills were often detrimental to her. Her overstated belief in her own raw talent and tendency to deny the obvious made her professional life struggle as well.

ADHD:

RSD

hyperactivity

hyper interest

hyper fixating

needs a schedule to function

attempts organization but has trouble sticking to it

outbursts of emotion

rambling

impulsivity often masked my anxiety

difficulty in social settings

struggles to understand her emotions

Bolting

GAD:

An overwhelming fear of failure

easily overwhelmed by stimuli

easily stressed out

escapism through books

fear of expressing emotions causing bottling up till it spills over

needs things done in one way

Obsessive behaviours, organization and studying

panic attacks when she is older

people pleaser to avoid conflict

perfectionist

rumination

struggles to define her needs in relationships

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rabbitindisguise · 5 years

Text

I feel like sometimes people talk about the social model of disability and stop short of like, disabilities like mine. Chronic ones. Ones without a cure, especially with pain involved.

Like, for ADHD they (inclusive activists, I'm well aware of ableism) can clearly see classroom problems from having an inflexible system as clearly a problem of society, one that can be fixed and adjusted

But the fact is, yeah!! I don't want to be in pain. That sucks! I hate that. But I'm not in pain because my disability

I'm in pain because doctors refuse to treat it.

And sure, lots of pain medication probably won't be as effective because my biological makeup. But that just means the Scary, Addictive medication is the only option left for some patients. And this is the primary reason, probably, why I'm still not diagnosed- keep in mind I'm non-medicated. For a reason. I probably would ask to not be medicated because it sounds like a pain in the ass. Yet just because people with EDS or hypermobility usually have chronic pain, just asking for a diagnosis is considered a red flag.

(Hell, maybe this is part of the opioid crisis branding)

So like, yeah, even the "worst" and "most painful" disabilities are still fit within the social model. Even when there's no physical way to stop all pain, that doesn't stop the obligation doctors have to fix what they can, or do whatever the patient prefers with their treatment. It's not a non-issue just because there are certain levels of pain medication can't solve.

Because like. Everyone experiences some degree of pain. Someone that gets muscle soreness from exercise is still in pain even if they take one advil as directed and don't feel anything anymore. I feel more pain than a lot of people, and there are lots of people in more pain than me. But I find that with my pain I'm not medicating my pain itself usually, but rather the unusual spikes. There's no point in taking an Advil for my chronic headaches, because they just happen. But I'd take it for a migraine. And I'm sure, if I had chronic migraines, I would take it for extra special migraine pain.

Also I'd feel less shitty about it if people took me seriously in general because it turns out the only worse thing than being in pain is being in pain and getting told "no you're not" or "not enough for me to care"

TL;DR even chronic pain is a social model type disability to me based on my experiences

#personal #disability #ableism #Capitalism #classism #medication

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andihowl · 5 years

Text

Polyamory is queer.

Or rather, Polyamorous folk are queer if they self-identify as such.

Below, I’ll be explaining why any attempt you make to deny that is by definition gatekeeping, and why you need to stop. This will be added to / updated as I talk to more polyamorous folk and hear more of their stories. This is not a debate, I will liberally use my block button, I’m just sick of repeating myself over and over in group after group because polyphobic assholes think they can throw polyam folk under the bus and we won’t say anything. Read. Think. Do better.

Given the shared premises that “queer” is being used in it’s non-pejorative, reclamative usage as an umbrella term representing sexual and gender minorities who have been marginalized and oppressed as a direct result of their identities, and that gatekeeping members of it is an inherently shitty thing to do (goodbye swerfs, terfs, aphobes, etc.), the main reasons I see for people denying polyamorous folk into queer spaces, or into queer discussions generally read like this:

why are we even having this discussion, omg, wtf, gtfo

it’s only used by skeezy heterobros who are looking to get a second girlfriend

it’s only used by skeezy “bi” couples who are unicorn hunting

there are oppressive countries around the world who are practicing polygamy and that’s certainly not good

it’s a kink

it’s a choice

it’s a practice, not an identity

it’s a relationship dynamic, not a sexual orientation or gender identity

everyone wants to be polyam anyway, it’s not an oppressed class.

I'm personally polyamorous, and I don't see it as an identity

I'm uncomfortable with cis-het-allo folk claiming the term queer

These arguments can be categorized more or less into the following main sections:

The Disregard

why are we even having this discussion, omg, wtf, gtfo

By disengaging conversation about this, you are preventing the growth and learning of the community, and you need to knock your shit off. Only through critically assessing our own behavior and the behavior of the community with which we engage can we ever hope to make ourselves, and our world, any better.

The Bad Actors

it’s only used by skeezy heterobros who are looking to get a second girlfriend

it’s only used by skeezy “bi” couples who are unicorn hunting

This is one of the weakest arguments against this, and one of the quickest debunked. Simply put, all identities have bad actors. I've certainly interacted with gay men who haven't taken no for an answer. I've certainly met bisexual people who have used their sexuality as an excuse to cheat on their partners. Just because bad actors exist within a community, does not invalidate the entire identity. You cannot hope to have such a diverse group of people from such diverse backgrounds and upbringings and mental health statuses and economic statuses and expect them all to behave and think the the same homogenous way. Not all gays are alike. Not all trans folk are alike. Not all polyam folk are alike. Deal with it, move on.

Conflation

there are oppressive countries around the world who are practicing polygamy and that’s certainly not good

it’s a kink

Polyamory =/= polygamy. Stop conflating the two. Polyamory (when referring to the practice) is the egalitarian ethical practice of non-monogamy between consenting adults. Polygamy is an authoritarian tool used by patriarchal societies to oppress and silence women, most often without consent. Stop conflating, and move on.

Also, Polyamory is not a kink. To call something a kink, you are tacitly and wilfully admitting that the behavior in question is and should be seen as deviant in society, and derives sexual pleasure out of that deviancy. Polyamory is not, at least not in any healthy relationships I've seen, practiced in such a shameful manner. If you're equating the two, maybe you should address your own underlying phobias regarding polyamory rather than gatekeeping others.

The Choice

it’s a choice

it’s a practice, not an identity

it’s a relationship dynamic, not a sexual orientation or gender identity

These are a bit trickier of a discussion. No, the United States, nor any other country offcially recognizes polyamory as a valid sexual orientation to be protected under federal law. And yes, some people feel they opt-in to a "polyamorous lifestyle". There have been studies conducted on this, and while many respondents to do not classify their polyamory as an orientation, many others did respond saying that they felt they were wired that way, that they felt they were that way since childhood, that monogamous relationships always felt wrong for them.

The polyamory community houses both types of folk, those who feel it's a lifestyle, as well as those who feel it is deeply engrained. As polyadvice writes (specifically toward other polyam folk):

Is polyamory an orientation? Why do we care? Why are we so caught up in whether the way we love other people is a way of being or a way of doing? Why do I get this question so often, and why are we all so invested in the answer?

If you experience your polyamory as an innate part of your self, as something you are rather than something you do, great. It’s part of your orientation. We can split semantic hairs and say it’s a “relationship orientation” as opposed to a “sexual orientation.” Some people don’t experience it that way, and that’s fine too.

What’s not fine is if we start fighting about it and make it some big political or identity-political issue within the [polyam] community. Because you know what? The rest of the world doesn’t care nearly as much about the nuances of our definitions. They’re prepared to deny us health insurance, child custody, media representation, hospital visitation, and plenty else regardless of whether we sort this out amongst ourselves. If we start turning on each other, there’s no one to have our backs.

Simply put, it's none of your damn business if it's an orientation or a choice. Even if it is a choice, as Michael Carey with Slate wrote:

We are all human first. Everything else—nationality, sex, race, orientation—is secondary, and irrelevant to our fundamental rights. As Brian D. Earp recently argued in “Future Tense,” even if homosexuality becomes a choice, mutable under pharmacological “treatment,” it should still be regarded as part of the normal range of human behavior. We should agree on the principle that anyone pursuing consensual, loving, respectful relationships, forming happy families, and participating productively in society should be welcomed, not ostracized in the name of irrational, ossified stigma.

Not Oppressed

everyone wants to be polyam anyway, it’s not an oppressed class.

Hooooooooold up there partner. Y'all gotta be kidding me. Let's put aside the fact that one of the most common thing's polyam folk hear when they come out to people is "well, that's nice, but I could never do it myself". Let''s put aside the comments/sneers of "so you just sleep with whoever you want?", or the automatic assumption that polyam folk are sluts/skeezes/sex-addicts/cheaters.

The fact of the matter is, for someone who is polyamorous, there are no legal protections for them, whether they be for housing, employment, or medical care (in any of the 50 United States or any other country that I'm aware of). That means if someone is outed at work, they can be fired on the spot for that reason. They can be kicked out of their apartment, lose their home, or be denied medical coverage because of it. Polyamorous relationships are not recognized as valid spouses in hospital situations, they cannot receive tax benefits for their relationship, and they are routinely denied next of kin rights and inheritance. Loss of child custody is common, as family courts do not recognize polyamory as a valid responsible child-rearing environment (which experience and common sense can tell us otherwise)

It's bad enough that Ann Sweeny argued in 2010 in favor of legally expanding the definition of sexual orientation to include polyamory to help protect polyam folk against these kind of grievances (you can download the original pdf argument at that link, it's a long but interesting read). An excerpt:

... polyamorists risk custody loss, workplace discrimination, loss of friends, alienation from their families, and ostracism from spiritual and other communities as a result of revealing their polyamory. In addition, their children often face discrimination at school. Indeed, in one study, nearly half of [polyam] respondents reported having experienced prejudice as a result of their polyamory. Additionally, Emens has noted that the “social hostility [against relationships involving more than two people] sustains various legal burdens on polyamorists, including two-person marriage and partnership laws, adultery and bigamy laws, [and] residential zoning laws.” Furthermore, Rambukkana documented negative reactions to the formation of an on-campus polyamory group that included the university newspaper’s public ridicule of the group on the basis that the group was comprised of “a bunch of ‘culty’ sex maniacs” and the suggestion that the group was a “recruitment machine” that sucked people in “‘with promises of sex and more sex.’”

She goes on to argue:

These forms of discrimination are considerable, and they have the potential to impose severe, indeed devastating, burdens on individuals who espouse polyamory... The many ways that monogamy (as represented by marriage) is privileged under the law, while non-monogamy is burdened, demonstrate that non-monogamous persons, including polyamorists, are oppressed under an “organising principle of inequality” and therefore that they meet Cooper’s test for extension of legal protections.

Honestly, go read that article. It lays out a lot more than I could ever hope to properly summarize here, and outlines pretty succinctly why polyamory is an oppressed class.

What goes for me goes for everyone

I'm personally polyamorous, and I don't see it as an identity

First off, wonderful! Thank you for being polyam and for demonstrating your courage and representation in a world that wants to erase you. Full stop.

Second off. It's fine if you don't feel like your polycraft is inherently part of your identity. That's allowed. Many Nonbinary folk don't feel trans describes their experience; many gay men don't like to use the term queer. That's fine, that's your biz. That doesn't mean that holds the same for everyone else, though, and you shouldn't be limiting the voice and power of others because you have enough privelege to disregard opression you may experience. They do deserve a voice, they do deserve rights, and you consistently chiming in saying "Well I don't" isn't helping the conversation, it's distracting and beside the point.

One person's experience with a community is not necessarily representative of an entire identity's experience with it, and you don't get to claim the right to silence the voices and experences of others in your community.

The Personal Appeal

I'm uncomfortable with cis-het-allo folk claiming the term queer

Well, I'm sorry you are uncomfortable. Honestly. It sucks. However dealing with an expanding and inclusive community is and should be uncomfortable. It should force us to ask questions we didn't want to ask. It should make us rethink things we once thought were firm and held dear.

But just as -allo was added to cis-het bring light to the added axis of identity and oppression that is the asexuality spectrum, it's about time we added -mono to that, to bring to light the fact that being polyam, and being polyam + other identities, brings with it unique problems and unique pride that is deserving of attention, and deserving a seat at the table.

Included Links and Additional Resources

CW: some of these links use the nickname "poly" for "polyamorous" rather than "polynesian". Inclusion here is not an endorsement of that kind of usage, as I have tried to refrain from that usage here and in my everyday conversation. Additionally, I have replaced its usage in the above quotations with [polyam] to prevent further crawlers linking to it.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-polyamorists-next-door/201610/is-polyamory-form-sexual-orientation

(http://polyadvice.tumblr.com/post/114048167048/this-might-be-a-question-you-get-often-but-is

https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/10/is-polyamory-a-choice.html

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1632653

https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/10/polyamorous-excluded-queer/

https://polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/2013/12/dan-savage-is-poly-queer.html

https://www.autostraddle.com/six-queers-on-polyamory-and-identity-419254/

#polyam #polyamory #queer #gatekeeping #don't @ me #i will block you

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silenthillmutual · 5 years

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the two things that i think were undeniably tetsuo’s fault and his alone were:

- the three girls he brought in to be sex slaves - killing yamagata

i mean both are obviously Plot Points but the first was a kinda clunky one bc it was obvious it was put in there to introduce Kaori as a character because it never gets brought up again. i’m assuming a lot of women were killed or died off-screen because various guys always react with shock to seeing Kei, but it’s never really explained.

and then Yamagata dying was to show how far off the deep end Tetsuo had gone in a short span of time

things that were in no way tetsuo’s fault:

- akira’s first or second explosion (both were the fault of warring factions, primarily the government before the start of the Neo-Tokyo Empire) - takashi’s death and the death of miyako’s three psychic children (directly the government and the revolutionaries) - his general shitty life situation: being abandoned by his biological (and potentially also his foster) family, his (biological? foster?) parents saying in front of him that they don’t like or want him, being bullied at school, becoming a drug addict (post-accident), gaining psychic powers that would inevitably lead to a complete loss of his personality, having abusive teachers at school, generally being labeled at the age of 15 (14 in the movie) as worthless and being treated as such by society

things that were partly but not entirely tetsuo’s fault:

- kaneda getting involved in the plot (initially, he gets dragged into the plot because of Takashi attacking Tetsuo; later on because Tetsuo kills Yamagata and then because Tetsuo has absolutely lost his shit) - kaori’s death (you could probably argue that he’s indirectly responsible bc of the situation but his aide was really just a power-hungry fuckface like neszu and would have raped or killed her regardless of how the situation turned out) - drinking/doing drugs before the accident; kaisuke confirms that the drugs on the streets were put there by the government in the first place, a flashback implies that caved to peer pressure and honestly who the fuck was peddling drugs to kids to begin with? - in general the entire Neo Tokyo Empire, which would have happened with or without him, given that different factions were at war well before Akira’s second explosion ever happened and would have continued to fight whether Akira and Tetsuo awoke or not - the fates of Miyako, Kiyoko and Masaru, since Miyako is the one who told Tetsuo to stop taking the drugs to begin with in order to reach his “full potential” know full well that they would not only destroy his personality and remaining sanity but would lead to his body mutating and destroying what was left of the city, so she could use him to combat Akira instead of just telling him why Akira was dangerous when they actually knew exactly why and easily could have told him (and telling him might have lead to him putting up less of a struggle; his end fight shows he did not want to hurt Kaori and never wanted to hurt Kaneda to begin with and did not even want to hurt Kei, since he not only does not fight back but specifically tells them to run when his mutation began, it’s entirely possible Tetsuo would have just sent Akira off and isolated himself instead of flipping out like he did)

#nori talks #i know i know ''nori shut up about tetsuo''#no!!!!!!

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buffernie · 6 years

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Become a Mental Health Advocate in Ten Seconds or less

On some kind of social media that I’m not sure what it is, someone named Madison (aka @https_mads) wrote the following:

“Stop dropping the suicide hotline every time someone commits. People who are depressed don’t want to talk to a random stranger they want your support and love. We know the hotline exists. It’s a Google search away. If you really care you’d fucking check on your friends.”

Original post seems to have been penned on 6/5/18 at 8:25 PM

I originally saw a picture of this post on facebook and was eager to see the comments but quickly became dismayed to discover how little people understood. For whatever reason they had, they were calling quote selfish, self-focused and several other things. Losing courage, I called my mom for a pick me up only to discover that she felt the same way as those who were against Madison’s brilliant post. My mom believes very much in family—which is great—but believes that once someone is IN a relationship, especially if they have kids, I am to assume their friendship “commitment” to me is to lessen as they have other, new priorities. I was really upset and here are my concerns.

1. PROFESSIONAL CARE IS NEEDED, YES, BUT DOES NOT PROVIDE THE TENDER TOUCH

2. Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder: WHATEVER THE ISSUE IT IS REINFORCED BY ISOLATION

3. AM I QUALIFIED TO HELP

WHAT PROFESSIONAL HELP CAN’T DO

You might be wondering why I’m so “stuck” on this as my mom would say. Here’s why. I’ve got possibly the best therapist I’ve ever had at this point (I’ve been super blessed that way) and I have a doctor who is very good and cares marginally about my well being. Why isn’t that enough? Easy: Partially because I am paying them. It is like hiring an escort and feeling loved. Unlike an escort, my therapist can’t hold me while I cry. My doctor isn’t available on long nights when the voices are telling me to take my own life. BUT YOU—the one who works odd hours? Could totally field a call and just listen or even talk for a sec about yourself and make me laugh. YOU—who has your kids all day—could totally invite me over for tea or coffee while your kids run amok around the house. YOU—who has a really shitty band with a great name—could try to get me out of the house even just for your practice. YOU—who has a dog and knows I love them—could recommend a play date for our pups. YOU—who works at a bakery— could bring me three left over bagels because you know how hard it is for me to eat breakfast. YOU—who loves the outdoors—could invite me for a short walk. YOU—who ANYTHING—all day at any time could do anything to let me know you care. I told a “friend” a few years ago I was depressed and she promptly informed me that she wouldn’t be able to be in my life. I was heartbroken. But what I told her was there are so many ways to reach out to a friend who is hurting. It is as simple as sending a cute meme to make me smile. Literally. That simple. It says: Hey, I thought of you, I know your heart hurts and I want to make you smile. SO SIMPLE. Not difficult. Not time consuming. But you just did it you magnificent asshole. You just ministered to a mentally ill person. Look at you, soaring far above the blindness of society about this horrific group of illnesses by doing nothing more than sending a text (which you’re doing every day, anyway).

AM I QUALIFIED TO HELP?

Hell to the yeah you are. We all are. “But I don’t know anything about ______”. Oh yeah? Here’s an idea. If you care about your friend as much as you say you do PICK UP A FUCKING BOOK. That simple. Trouble reading due to time? No problem! There’s this great tool called the internet and it’s not too difficult to discern sites that are reputable. Even better, sit down with your friend. Ask them to tell you what they are feeling. Do they feel like meds are helping? Do they need help finding a doctor? What are they scared of the most right now? BOOM. YOU JUST WENT FROM STUPID TO ADVOCATE IN LESS THAN 20 SECONDS. If I were there I’d put a pin on your lapel.

DISEASE OF ISOLATION

Much like addiction, those with mental illness struggle with isolation whether self-imposed or societally-enacted. We’ve all heard the general list of things that are hard to do when you’re depressed like showering or other self-care, getting out of the house, etc. etc. Every time I’ve been suicidal and started making a plan to end my life, 9 out of 10 situations involved me being lonely. Of thinking no one cares. That I am a drain on society. And that both the national budget and my friends would be happier if I were gone. At 34, I’ve finally come to believe that some of my friends really do love and value me; that they would be upset to lose me. Use of semi-colon on purpose. Because that has been a real game changer. But I was diagnosed at 17 and never believed it until now. So now when I think about suicide I cry because of how I know it would make them feel, but in those moments, the pain is so intense, my desire to escape it is very real.

TL;DR SYNOPSIS: it takes less than ten seconds to be there for someone who is hurting.

#mental health support #friendship #isolation

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joeltaylorredden · 3 years

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I had died every day waiting for you and it scarred me, and you too from what you’ve told me. I’ve loved you for thousands of years and all along I believed I’d find you. The one, the TRUE one. You’re the one I was always searching for by not settling for anything less than love. Like shit, I didn’t know what love was at the time but I went through trial and error figuring out what it wasn’t. I spent countless months to years afraid of settling for anything less than pure magic in such slim hopes to one day find the one with the other half of my heart or die completely alone. I’ve believed there was that ONE in this world of 7 billion with the other half of my soul/heart since I first learned what “love” was and that’s my idea of a fairytale because what are the odds? I was going to find that one or die trying. Because that’s always been the driving force to get me to keep standing, because everything else in this life seems so empty if there’s no one there to speak your language, view the world through the same eyes. Find interests and passion in the perfectly right things. Someone that will never let you feel alone in this full but yet so empty planet. How did you manage to fill all the missing pieces in my heart from the moment I met you. It wasn’t simply hope because that isn’t promised and Personally it would be a disgrace to try to explain the way it felt to meet my 1 in 7 billion with emotions. Because it isn’t a fleeting feeling when you meet the one. It’s a feeling that will never leave. People talk about what’s inevitable but the only thing In this whole life I’ve been 100% sure of is the moment it turned from grey to color. I’ve done almost every drug out there but none could replace the feeling I feel in her presence when she would laugh behind that beautiful voice while saying something along the classy lines of “go fuck yourself” and close in on me reminding me with her brushing touch that comforted me in new weirdly odd fulfilling way like a small healthy meal that fills you up better than a heaping load of junk food can. I’ve never experienced physical comfort like that because I’ve always hated hugs since I can remember. With a look in her eyes that spoke to me in a language only I was built to decipher to read “you are home ” because I’ve come to learn that actions speak louder than words ever will. I can now start to understand looking back, she loved me way more than I realized. Because the whole time its all really up in the air we all know the best moments are the ones that are happening without knowing

Or putting a title on it, and when we met and starting talking a huge sign didn’t appear in the sky saying “YOU FOUND YOUR SOULMATE” that would of made it too easy and it just doesn’t work like that because it would mess up a huge section in the journey and steps of passion we experienced like a game of “poke the bear” okay alyvia did have some bear alpha energy but probably not the best simile but we can just say we’d both been in constant back to back to back “relationships” that were truly nothing ideal to the romance we have had imagined and dreamed of growing up watching lion king and Cinderella, where there’s no cheating, no lieing , no abuse just pure faith and trust and fun in the one who caught their eyes and it was truly a remarkable beautiful story.

Welllll I wanted that faith and trust love story shit since before I could even remember

I was I true romantic inspired by the one and only Taylor swift.

But through the years I just loved and loved and poured every ounce of my faith in a girl and in return I got zilch, given up on, bored of , felt as if I was some freak show for conveying real emotions feelings and care.

So I learned after the third strike out and crying my eyes TF out in my dads basement at 16 after visualizing a whole 30 year plan talking getting married and kids and the house with a girl that barely knows my last name…

Heartbreak hurts when it’s the first pretty girl that you thought was out of your league gives you a chance has a car and even gives you your 2nd kiss and totally just disappears when I thought we were gonna get engaged and be high school sweethearts. This generations majority became to shy away from the high school sweethearts thing so they could just have a free for all “having fun” to find their spouse in college so it’s “less work more fun”

As for me, I wanted my princess. The one that would commit & follow our dreams happily together no questions. It doesn’t have to be that hard right? Just find a pretty girl and be cool enough for her to want to stick around.

I tried that andd I found out I love wayyyy too hard . I would date girls that I didn’t think were all that great but I had hope, like no butterflies in any sense. No connection just a beginner at this “I’ll be your Prince Charming stuff” and I thought every guy just picked girls they saw potential in and they both just grew together from scratch as long as they both agree to commit and work on it it’s gonna go somewhere.

Welp I found out pretty fast i didn’t feel like Prince Charming regardless how hard we worked on the relationship like it was a boat we each took turns working on and both hopped in. anything deserving to be called Romantic was all just for the movies at this point in my life because I would Find myself either bored out of my mind with a girl that I didn’t vibe with In any category expect the fact She was a girl I was a boy. Gave up on the L train it became just a waste of time and was pretty draining.

And on the other side of things I go for a girls just for their looks because I didn’t really understand personality and morals back then so I’d get totally turned inside out by some girls who were totally lost for love because james kissed lainas best friend in 5th grade now she doesn’t trust fuckboys” and hooks up with any male or female that gives her attention that one night and THAT SHIT starts a domino effect of everyone wants to have fun but not get close to anyone so they’re heart won’t get broken, the first few hookups might get hooked but male or female will just move on within the hour or week with someone new because one “just wasn’t feeling it”

I saw this all play out before me before I had ever “Hooked up” (had sex) with a girl and I swore I wasn’t going to be like any of them because I’m a romantic and I’m gonna “fall in love” with the girl I first have sex with like how could I not. So skip the bs I date a girl she’s never had sex just like me. So she’s head over heels for me and I think she’s beautiful but she’s just different, like we gotta different vibe going on internally but since we’re both 8s and we could atleast look romantic together we’re just gonna look like hoes if we breakup and move on to someone else.

Also this is my first real intimate gf that’s on the same energy as me and attraction that I’m not scared of or bored she just looks good and we had an alright when we’d hangout, but my shitty ass friends at the time got it stuck in my brain I had to have sex soon with someone or I’ll be the “loser” so my eyes were on one prize and that’s where I lost my dignity I believe. We ended up getting closer and closer to booking up every time and then finally did, on the floor so my bed wouldn’t squeak with my stepmom upstairs and the door open. It was pathetic.

Felt good for a second but I was pictured it being so much better than, that…

So the people I was hanging out with at the time made fun of me for talking to that girl so what does any 17 year old do trying to have a reputation for a bunch of nobodys that think they can run other people’s lives morals and fantasies by embarrassment.

I break up with her. find a new girl bring her to a kick back and take her upstairs to this old

Guys water bed and have a 8 sec ride looking back it felt like 8 minutes 😂😂 but hell naw it was 8 pumps if that 😂 we go back downstairs and I expect to chill all night with this girl w her on me at the party like she was my date. But naw she hooked up w one person I came with in less than 30 seconds of me coming down stairs with her. That doesn’t feel good either…

Plus one more guy after him…

I had it, I was done feeling with my heart and thought it was time to just feel with my you know what, so since I left my morals on the floor in my basement I would wait for any people I would hangout with to bring a girl around and I’d swoop her up because it had been done to me.

I came to realize some shit doesn’t feel good regardless if there’s a reward with it.

Because now that I’m texting my homies date behind his back that made my conscience eat at me twice as hard and then I got my turn and fell for the girl who was obviously for everybody but i was new so I believed whatever her preying cute face would tell me and get me to do for her. Because this generations relationships became a scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours till we get bored type of deal and you dont want to be caught dead as a hopeless romantic in this fucked up society of hos and manhos or you’re gonna go under and never come back because drinking is a high school over the counter medication for depression or sadness, and if you were cool enough you’d do coke once or twice then three times and shit I’ll do four and five I already came this far anddddd then a gram a night then an ounce and then selling the cocaine and it’s a lot bigger deal than realized and jail happens. Then it’s a spiral of fucking bullshit.

From friends dying of overdoses to getting clamydia to being insecure about what the people at school heard about what happened over the weekend. The people who said They had you forget when your face down in the dirt and they talked you into doing drugs that would start a new chapter of my life

Called love isn’t real ,fuck bitches ,be broke and homeless with three new addictions and no sign or thought of a future because I just want to get fucked up to not feel sad anymore cause of that girl and my I thought all bestfriends/ brothers just did me sideways for the 20th time I was so obvious that some people really aren’t genuine and don’t even know what a real friend is because all they know is the next face is either a liability or an asset. I hate it. I can say I played a part in the dumb shit and wasn’t the true me and looking back now I was very lost and that’s why I decided to start keeping record of the ones who do the things that friends don’t do and mark em off the list regardless of who they were because I was so ready to live a real life with real friends because I’ve only been surrounded by traiters and I’m not buying it anymore, only very strong willed people can become something better then the way they were raised up and the morals that were put in place and I haven’t really met many at all so I just am gonna take the easy route this time and gonna stay away off in my own lane.

I shoulda done it way earlier, coulda learned from j cole 3 times and fuck the peace sign.

I just wanted some friends cause there was no family for me at home regardless of what I did.

Never good enough , got what a thought was a dream girlfriend who was my ride or die for 5 years but did things out of spite to me like hookup with my friends I called brothers literally. I don’t think I ever loved her truthfully she was just really pretty and chill kinda just rode with the good but didn’t have too much of a plan or dreams like I did and that is another sign I should of taken more serious, because one thing I’ve learned is no one ever grows from the way they came so don’t wait for someone to go back to the way they were because it’ll never happen everything In this world is either evolving up or there are things diminishing down if someone has changed the chances of fully restoring them after life experience it’s a absolute 0% unless you have a memory eraser device but even then if there’s a change there’s no way we can go to exactly exactly the way it was, even the world is evolving every moment, so if someone misses the “old you” that was a thought of you just a mere figment of their imagination. Its better if you move to bigger and better things and if you wish for them to be in your life don’t dwell on it too much because if they are good for you and that means they believe in the best you, they’ll take the step forward to initiate the relationship again, but if you’re doing great and they still can’t find the peace of mind to love you exactly for who you are it’s time you get what you’ve always deserved and put your focus forward or your blessing that is twice as worth the time than your backwards or you’re gonna lose them all going back down to who you evolved from!

I finally found closure when she reminded me of my dad. Not on my team and just a boring ass time anytime we’d be together she literally was just pretty and that’s all she was to me, she didn’t know how to entertain or have a relationship, there might of been some downs but if you love someone you adapt to whatever situation conflict and confession then I met this girl who interested me and I spent a lot of time with her but the fact she wasn’t willing to put her pride aside fucked with the relationship, I was used in ways by her and she was caught up in another guy when I confessed that I was really really into her but the sad thing is she just didn’t respect her self enough, and I was on and off with her for a while and she fucked with my heart because it was my first try at something real after a while of being scared of commitment and being totally played by the long term ex, then one night the newer girls friend maya decided to link me with her friend in Denver so we could go to her boyfriends work and we pulled up at her house in bfe Denver to me at the time

And it’s hard to remember all the full details of the night but I remember that I was single for once in my life like actually single and committed to being that

but then I met her…

right now because mine read those words only to her and it feels as if these eyes were made for the sole purpose of .

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afterpartyhq · 6 years

Note

What do you think about the DLC for the new Blazblue crossover?

It’s pretty fucked up. Not too long after Cross Tag Battle was first announced, I jokingly called the game Arc System Works Fighting Evolution. It seemed to fit given that this and Capcom Fighting Evolution are both piecemeal 2D fighters cobbled together from a hodgepodge of preexisting assets in an obvious attempt at an easy cashgrab that exploits players’ nostalgia. With the new DLC plan, however, BB:CTB has managed to become worse than CFE, which was at least a complete—if irredeemably bad—game. ASW is literally trying to sell people half a game, with the remaining half locked behind any number of digital paygates. That’s the pricing structure for a freemium mobile game, not a full retail release from a major developer. It’s a new low for an industry that has sunk to previously unimaginable lows in recent years.

What’s sad is I understand why ASW decided to do this. It makes enough sense from a business standpoint that even with all the negative publicity they’ll still probably score a respectable revenue bump (even more so now that they’re tossing folks the RWBY thots for free). Chalk it up to their customer base being miserable.

Mind you, I don’t mean that as a slam against gamers or anything. I just mean that consumers in general tend to be aggressively unhappy human beings. Most people seem to fit that description nowadays. Hell, they probably always have and we just didn’t get our faces rubbed in it the way we do here in the information age.

You live long enough and you realize what every successful corporate officer figures out at some early stage in their career: life sucks. We’re born into a world where everything from weather systems to microscopic bacteria is capable of suddenly ending our lives and the lives of everyone we love and care about. Simply existing requires an exhausting amount of effort, while the ability to thrive even temporarily is largely a matter of random chance. Our steady march toward inevitable doom includes coming to terms with the awful truth that our concepts of fairness and justice are based on fantasies built to preserve the illusory sense of order we refer to as “sanity,” during which at least the majority of people, places, and things to which we form an emotional attachment will cease to exist.

So what do you do? Religion has been a historically popular refuge, but with our modern awareness of all the horrible shit that happens around the globe every single hour it’s no huge surprise that the number of people capable of believing in a benevolent god is on the decline. Likewise, the myth of assured happiness in monogamous relationships is becoming unraveled as we watch divorce rates climb to dizzying new heights. Even forging meaningful platonic relationships is tough when you live in a society where every conceivable demographic is locked in a perpetually-escalating arms race to be the most persecuted and underprivileged, waging war against their peers who differ on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, or whatever bullshit identity politics dominate the narrative trending on social media that particular week.

Maybe drugs and alcohol look like a way out, except you’re too afraid to go down that road because you watched them kill someone close to you—or transform them into a monster. The people in that boat single-handedly keep therapists in high demand across civilization. And jeez Louise, you gotta be pulling down some serious bank to be able to abuse prescription meds these days.

Maybe you try to rise up out of the muck and throw yourself into charity work. Try to make the world a slightly better place and feel a little well-deserved self satisfaction in the process. Maybe that even works for as long as it takes before interacting so intimately with the victims of evil begins to wear you down and steal what hope you had left for mankind. Then the day arrives when you visit that one valley of old-growth forest burned down to black earth by some asshole’s discarded cigarette…

You hold that one tortured, dying animal starved and abused by someone who’ll get in less trouble than if he’d hawked a loogie on the windshield of a police cruiser…

You serve a bowl of soup to that one veteran who toiled all his life only to end up living in a soiled cardboard box under a bridge while down there in Silicon Valley the richest men in history make more money every day than the average Vietnam draftee earned working in factories for forty years…

You meet that one battered zombie of a housewife, that one shivering teenage crack addict, that one weeping parent cradling a little bald girl with IV tubes coming out both arms of her Minnie Mouse pajamas, and it’s one too many. And just like that you’ve given everything you have to give, and Earth is still a bleak, uncaring chunk of dirt floating somewhere inside an infinite void, and you realize everything you were ever told about one person being able to change anything was nothing but other people’s wishful thinking mutated into impossible expectations.

So what do you do? If you’re a member of the target market for BB:CTB, you plop down utterly exhausted in front of a screen and fork over a piece of your shitty little paycheck to unlock twenty new characters in the latest 2D fighter you bought on impulse. Because you know it’s stupid and exploitative, but it’s the one thing that gets to be easy. And by god it’s worth it, because now you get the whole grid of character select portraits glowing bright and colorful, and for that one beautiful moment, something in your life gets to be flawless and perfect and complete.

That’s the secret behind why these sorts of marketing tactics always work. Every successful company knows its audience and what motivates them, and the people who make fighting games are no different. They know the appeal of simulated combat isn’t about aggression or violence; it’s about getting the chance to feel powerful enough to make you briefly forget none of that power is real.

#anonymous #video games #fighting games #blazblue #cross tag battle #arc system works #dlc

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ssaalexblake · 7 years

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What's your opinion on Karen Page? AJAKSKKSKS

I have some random half formed opinions on Karen, and the Daredevil narrative for her in general. And maybe how the defenders writing didn’t really mesh with how she’d been portrayed before, and if it did, then it showed her in a vaguely hypocritical light.

Also, she’s a legit straight up murderer and it’s kind of vaguely hilarious in an ironic way that she now works for a living digging up other peoples dirt, because she honestly wants to see justice done. She’s not somebody who wakes up in the morning thinking something malevolent, she’s by all accounts, somebody who has aspirations of goodness. Her moral grayness her so much more interesting in that light, tbh.

(but, like, honestly, I neither like nor dislike Karen, she doesn’t particularly grab me but i don’t you know, hate her or anything, i’m just personally not captivated).

Anyway, I’ve been listening to a podcast lately hosted by 2 bona fide behavioural analysts (jim clemente and Laura Richards) and honestly, hearing them talk about it, while simultaneously watching S2 of Daredevil, was thought provoking.

We know that Karen murdered a man, afterwards she was traumatized by his actions (the kidnapping and threats against her) and that she was even more traumatized by her own actions, she just gunned him down, The End. The show could have painted this in a number of ways, but imo it clearly painted this as a murder, to be honest. I mean, he was victimising her at the time, but this shock killing was not narratively described as a valiant bid for freedom where a woman shoots herself out of a hostage situation. It’s painted as Karen shooting him, and her being left alone in a room with a gun and a blood soaked body.

She’s terrified she’d get found out. I haven’t seen that season for a long time now, but also, i think it’s relevant that a chunk of her fear after this was fear about what Fisk would do if he found out she did it, and for her own safety thereafter, rather than the action of killing a man.

In that light, fashforward to season 2 and the intro of Frank Castle. Karen is the character in the entire show who is the most okay with Frank. She sees Frank’s honour code and understands it, she isn’t afraid of him harming her despite him being genuinely terrifying. She also isn’t nearly as bothered by his methodology as the others. Frank believes killing the wrongdoers is the apt solution to Hell’s Kitchen’s problems (and anywhere, really).

It’s interesting, because, throughout the whole time Nelson and murdock are defending Castle, she is trying to convince Matt and Foggy of the merits to his actions. She’s trying to justify it. This is why I mentioned the podcast, because in it, they explain that people who have thoughts and feelings that are generally considered by society to be abhorrent or wrong (and i mean, actual fucked up things, not shitty bigotry) they will attempt to find the same behaviour in others they trust and respect, to prove to themselves that they’re not Bad™.

Karen, with both Foggy and Matt, the two she is closest to in Hell’s Kitchen (in the world really), BOTH get this line of questioning from her, where she tries to get them to admit that hey! maybe killing bad people is okay and fine. This, to me, seems that Karen is looking for some kind of absolution. Not the kind where she denounces what she did, or what Frank did, but the kind where others prove her ‘correct’ and absolve her of her sins by justifying them. The kind where she doesn’t have to feel bad or be in trouble for her actions.

In the end, Matt and Foggy, having no clue all the while that this is personal to her, brush off every justification she gives, both of them basically going ‘what the hell! no! bad!’. Because while matt is a vigilante, he’s also one who does not approve of being judge jury and executioner. Foggy was even less likely than Matt to play part to that line of thinking, because he thinks Matt goes too far, let alone Castle. Them doing this, rejecting her without even knowing it, leads Karen smack into the figurative arms of Frank Castli, who is obviously intimidating to her, and goes too far in her eyes, and freaks her out, but he’s the one she’s most in tune with. Her philosophy is far closer to his than it is to Matt and Foggy. Frank even says it himself, he knows she’d have taken the shot, she means business, even if it’s lethal.

I have no idea what to say about Karen and Matt. Narratively it’s never made sense to me, and i honestly thought that her reaction in the defenders to him needed a hell of a lot of background filling out between daredevil s2 & this show to make sense. It needed background we weren’t given, but Karen’s /always/ been pro daredevil, we needed a filler to tell us what happened in that gap of time to cause her to treat matt’s vigilantism as an addiction. Foggy, Foggy it made perfect sense because there was background, with Karen who had always been pro devil, it needed explaining. As it is, it kind of came across as Karen being pro vigilante as long as it’s not her friend, which is kind of harsh? It can ruin somebody else’s life but not somebody who i like? Which they could have done, but i’ve also never really thought of karen as selfish in that type of sense, either.

But, honestly, i feel like the main facet of Karen’s character, her absolute defining trait, is curiosity.

Karen’s curiosity knows no bounds, and i mean that. No bounds. Karen got into trouble in the first place in episode one because she saw something and didn’t let it go (she continues to not let it go the whole season, even when she’s warned, even when it’s dangerous, through everything). It’s interesting, because Karen’s curiosity doesn’t appear to have much more ground than wanting to know things, she’s a Ravenclaw type, you know? Her curiosity isn’t really tied to morality, or special interest, he is just curious.

Unfortunately, her curiosity isn’t necessarily tempered by a hell of a lot of forethought. She drags Ben to a nursing home because she dug something up, and when i say drag, i mean lies and tricks!!! Ben there with her, being pretty damn underhand tbh, i mean, it was low. And then Ben’s name ends up in the log book and then because of that, Ben is murdered.

That was an example of Karen being driven by her curiosity, bullheaded, and not thinking it though. In S2, the person she gets in trouble at the end of the season is herself. She does it again. Curiosity with no heed to consequence. She is merely lucky Frank saved her.

I mean, narratively, Karen ending up a reporter is perfect for her as a person, i’m not surprised we ended up there. She is bullheadedly curious, she is tough as nails (hello that kidnapping by the hand), and will legit do any dangerous thing to get her story. She also is curious for curiosity’s sake, so her boss doesn’t really run the risk of her only researching one thing or causing a moral shitstorm.

I’ve never really seen the show as portraying Karen as a moral goodness or whatever cliches come with the blonde noncombatant tropes in these types of stories, to me, Karen’s never really been the goodness personified in the show. To me, that is Foggy. I like it, to be honest, because lets be real, the blonde haired blue eyed ~angelic looking woman, not being the epitome of goodness???

I wouldn’t call Karen moral, i would call Karen curious, with aspirations of goodness. She wants to be a good person, but she’s thoughtless and chaotic and sometimes just kind of… amoral. No other real way to put it. I’ve also never really seen the show as portraying her as the goodness centre, i mean, i can see how the other characters would think it about her, but the audience? We know more about her than them.

Foggy and Matt don’t know she killed somebody. Her boss doesn’t know that. The stuff with Ben? that’s for us to know, too. We’re the keepers of Karen’s secrets, not the other characters. As such, the way they treat her as special and good in the show doesn’t bug me too much, from their pov, it probably looks that way, it’d annoy me if she got a good job and the show tried to tell me it’s because she’s a ~good~ person and deserved it, but imo, the show has not done that.

Her ~aspirations of goodness are all the more interesting, imo, because she does not appear to have them as some kind of attempt at penance. That would make it redemption, or an attempt at it. She’s not trying to redeem herself.

tldr, , i think Karen is curious, chaotic, wants so hard to be good, but finds herself coming up short and is scared of it. I also think the only person in the universe who accurately has her number is Frank. And also, that even if Matt’s vigilantism hadn’t destroyed their personal relationship, that in the end, the total polar opposite creeds they both have would have done the same thing in the end.

#defenders spoilers #idk how to tag this lol #reids-curls #idek if u meant to send me this but it was fun t b h #i like talking about other things #i do have karen opinions #i just don't really like her as a person much?? but yes as a character #anyway #karen page #for my own tagging #also notably claire is a bastion of goodness #but her goodness like... overpowers her shady #with karen it's the other way

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a-notanotherfitnessblog · 5 years

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Social Media is like crack and crack my friends is WACK.

In my 23 years of life the world has gone through a time of huge technological advancement, I remember dial-up internet and now everyone has an iPhone X, and you can get WiFi in the tube, which to me is still weird. And during this we witnessed the birth of what came to be called Social Media, starting with Facebook and MySpace, then Blogger and Bebo, now Instagram and Pinterest, how many incarnations of these platforms have we lived through already? It all came from this deep primative urge we humans have to socialise and connect with others, these platforms were built for exactly that to create connections between us. Facebook’s slogan was “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” More hilarious and I think apt options for Facebook slogans can be found here. The funny thing is although made with this purpose in mind, social media has been found to do the exact opposite, it pushes us away from each other and into our devices. It may have been the creators intention but “Connection” is not a word I would use for SM now, the more accessible all these platforms have become to us the less time people spend actually connecting. Which is where my first issue with SM lies, it’s removing us all from the MOMENT, instead of letting an event or feeling happen, we have to tweet it or capture it and post it. When this comes to health and fitness it means you’re distracted from the actually doing of the fitness and more interested in putting up an Insta-story of you post-workout shake. Outside of fitness, I mean come on, how many times have you been sat in with friends and they’re all so sucked into their phones they aren’t even listening, it’s maddening how involved and invested we’ve become with something that’s not even real. Psychology Today which is a great website for any of you who like geeking out about everyday things has a great article linked here all about the different ways social media ruins everything, which sounds extreme but their reasons are pretty accurate.

Being the first generation of teens to be ‘plugged in’ and living with social media, I have experienced first-hand how much all this tech can impact your self-esteem and if anything this fact has only become more apparent with ‘influencers’ and bloggers showing you exactly what your life “should” look like, it’s hard to not take a serious self esteem hit every time you go online. Working in the fitness industry it’s hard to not feel that pressure of what your life should be like, if it’s not the fittest and healthiest life, one where you train every day, constantly motivated, getting a great night’s sleep every night and eating 100% clean. And that’s pretty hard to keep up when you remember that we’re all actually HUMAN and trying to balance living and surviving in London, attempting to maintain a social life, maybe even a relationship and stay sane. Some days it’s completely impossible.

Specifically I find that “Fitness” and “Wellness” accounts are the worst culprits of this, out of all the people you follow, how many tell you about how sh*t their workout was yesterday or how this morning they couldn’t fit in their yoga class because they just couldn’t sleep last night, I would hazard a guess at less than 1 out of every 100. It’s not hard to assume that only a hand full are transparent about how they’re training, how much they’re training and how they really feel day-to-day. I’d also like to point out that fitness accounts on social media is very clone-like, if you’re not super lean blonde tall tanned and head-to-toe in Gym Shark, then you’re not fit. I call BS. Fitness is not a size, a skin colour, a hair texture, a height, a body fat %, it’s just not. And that’s not to say that if you are a person who is naturally quite lean, or you’re blonde, or you wear gymshark that I’m sending for you because I’m really not, more power to you, but what I am trying to highlight to everyone is that COMPARISON WILL NEVER BRING YOU JOY ON YOUR FITNESS JOURNEY.

Now don’t get me wrong I think social media can be used as a great tool, if used in a productive way and I’m not perfect up here on my soap box, I’ve followed people who I know made me feel shitty about myself because it’s almost addictive to scroll infinitely through beautiful images of beautiful people. And I caught myself completely craving that gratification we seem to get from likes and comments on new photos. But if unchecked it can wreak havoc on our mental health. So, if you’ve never done this before I am recommending a social media PURGE. Go through each stream that you have be them Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and UNFOLLOW every single person that makes you feel even vaguely bad about yourself, your body, face, life, fitness level, all of it, get them OFF OF YOUR FEEDS. Because that is the first step to reclaiming your social media as YOUR OWN.

Social Media is just a highlight reel, most people on their especially those who are getting paid to post or advertise are not showing you a full well rounded version of their lives, they’re showing you the best bits. Thankfully, we are learning and children in schools now are being taught how to manage themselves online and keep themselves safe. A study found that the mere presence of a phone while people are talking interferes with their ability to feel levels of closeness, connection, and communication, so we’ve got to check ourselves, have NO TECH days, make your friends leave their phone in their BAG while you’re having dinner, make your partner turn their devices OFF on Date night, because we don’t have anyone to teach us this, we missed that boat, we’re having to figure that out for ourselves and it’s not going to be easy.

We live in an age where the infinity scroll gives you constant distraction but also gratification, where the number of likes we get reflects directly on to how we feel about ourselves. But guess what, your self-worth cannot be quantified by how many likes you get on your smoothie bowl picture and uploading a picture of said smoothie bowl doesn’t undo the pizza and McDonalds you ate last night after leaving the club and although you’re currently hungover your followers think you’re living your best life, eating well and being #fitspo.. do you see what I’m getting at? So, before you find yourself getting bogged down by social media and start question your real life and why it isn’t just like that girl on the beach in Bali with no under-eye bags, perfect hair and 6-pack abs with about 3 filters and Face Tune on it, remember that they’re probably uploading that while in their pyjamas, eating yesterday’s left overs with toothpaste on their jumper, or at least that what I’ll probably be doing when this goes up, but you’ll never know HAHAHAH. This is all to say you’re doing great, do a little social purge and keep hustling. If you’re interested in reading more about Social Media’s role in our lives and have some more science stuff thrown at you i would highly recommend “Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life” by Katherine Ormerod, you can get it on Audible, it’s a great book with loads of really great observations on our societies obsession with SM.

Signing off, lots of love,

xox

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evilpixiea · 7 years

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In your omegaverse, we saw Jay and Dick deal with a lot of assumptions from others about their relationship as an alpha/beta couple which made it difficult for them in social settings (like being called 'bondbreakers', etc). My question is, is this generally what alpha/beta or beta/omega couples have to deal with? Is it harder/easier for most in comparison to JayDick's experience and, basically, what does life as a couple of that caste dynamic look like in comparison to an alpha/omega couple?

Oh boy. Buckle in, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be a long one.

Due to the population disparity between alphas and omegas it is generally accepted that not every alpha will find an omega. Some (a large number of them) will miss out. Those that do either stay single and devote themselves totally to their packs, become what is known as a ‘lone wolf’, or pair off with betas. While an alpha/beta relationship isn’t widely praised or encouraged it is (to a degree) tolerated for this reason.

That said, there still is lingering social stigma towards betas in these relationships and even more for betas who actively seek out alphas or claim to be attracted exclusively to alphas. They’re seen as sexual deviants in a way the alphas aren’t. Why? A few reasons.

Many people believe the alphas partnered with betas would have had a more conformist relationship if they had a choice. Betas on the other hand appear to have the choice between an alpha an a beta and are choosing the alpha. Eg, the betas are seen to be choosing the non conforming lifestyle while the alphas are just in it out of circumstance.

Alphas are allowed to be sexual creatures. Betas, on the other hand, are expected to remain more in control of their sexual desires and sexuality. A beta expressing their sexuality, especially if it’s a non-typical sexuality, is seen as a little vulgar. More about crazy wild sex and less about mating/babies/families/etc.

Alphas are stereotyped as big, strong… and a little bit dumb. They’re still good leaders. They can still solve problems, inspire others, and maintain respect. However, many betas think alphas aren’t as good as betas when it comes to the finer details. They’re like omegas; hormonal and (if you know how) able to be guided and manipulated… especially by betas. Alphas trust betas. Therefore, many betas see an alpha with a beta and think that beta has manipulated that alpha into thinking they like betas more or are happy with a beta.

So, recap. Alpha/beta relationships… tolerated to the extent that they’re not going to be denied service or anything… but not welcomed into society as much as they could be either.

And the beta in that relationship is still going to be called (by some) a ‘bond breaker’. A sexual deviant and manipulator who may have denied this alpha a mate bond. The alpha might get some flack but not as much.

But, when people use the word ‘bond breaker’ in a derogatory sense, what jumps to mind are betas in relationships with omegas.

Omega attracted betas really get the short end of the stick. They have the same problems as alpha attracted betas but worse. People will still see them as sexual deviants but also paint them in a much more predatory light. They’re believed by many to be manipulating omegas who are (like alphas) seen as hormonal, naive, and quick to trust a beta. But omegas are precious and need more protection than alphas. They also aren’t thought of as having as much agency as alphas and thus the betas attracted to omegas are often seen as ‘going after the weak and vulnerable’ to fulfil their ‘perverse oversexed’ sexual fantasies.

The fact that there aren’t enough omegas to pair off with every alpha means these betas are often also thought of as something akin to kidnappers, stealing omegas away from potential alpha mates.

In short, betas who like omegas get a lot of shit hurled their way and the omegas that love and want to be with them are often characterised as the victims even thought statistically an omega is safer with a beta partner than an alpha.

However…

Not everyone does view betas with atypical sexual attractions as ‘bond breakers’ just like not everyone thinks of gay people as ‘fags’. There are still a lot of shitty people out there but there is accepting people too… and despite all the batpack’s flaws they’re pretty damn accepting of the whole thing. Bruce doesn’t give a shit that Dick is attracted to alphas just like none of the others gave a shit knowing that Bruce (an omega) had had sex with Selina (another omega).

That was never a secret and - frankly - with everything else that the pack has to deal with no one is going to stop to gossip or giggle over the fact that the boss had a gay fling.

The only people who do have some internalised issues with his are, perhaps ironically, Dick and Jason. Dick has been called a ‘bond breaker’ before and this has hurt him even if he doesn’t always let on. He’s also had a few bad experiences like when he disguised himself as an omega and got slapped by an alpha when the alpha found out.

Jason, on the other hand, grew up in a rough household and heard certain opinions expressed that - while he doesn’t actually believe - sometimes jump out of him without even thinking. Eg, when Clark called him ‘a little queer’ he automatically said ‘fuck you’ despite the fact that he had more than accepted his desire for Dick above, not just omegas, but everyone else.

I feel like I am rambling and I don’t know if any of this has made sense. I hope it has. Thanks so much for the awesome ask! I love love love talking about this shit. Thanks for facilitating my addiction.

Edit!

I would just like to remind everyone that there are alphas and omegas out there that are attracted to betas. Plenty of them. It’s not the norm but it’s not super uncommon either, especially among alphas.

However, there is often a little bit of shame associated with these sorts of desires and while low level and even some mid levels alphas can often say with some confidence ‘omegas don’t like me, I am dating betas’ and not be shunned too much by their alpha peers an attractive high level alpha who is attracted to betas sometimes doesn’t come out of the closet until later in life.

Why? Because they will be looked at a little bit more thoroughly than their low level alpha peers for dating betas. They can’t hide behind the ‘can’t get an omega’ excuse as easily. When they date a beta they more or less have to say ‘I prefer betas’ which is a bit more ‘gay’ than some young alphas are comfortable being.

Dick struggled to find a high level alpha who wanted to date him… in his age group. A lot of alphas that wanted to be with him (young, sexy, beta) weren’t yet confident enough to go after what they wanted.

In the same way a lot of guys who like BBW in our world don’t fess up to their desires until late twenties or early thirties, a lot of the high level alphas who like or even prefer betas won’t admit that until a little later on.

#omegaverse #my omegaverse #jaydick

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