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therenlover · 3 years

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Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk (A Young Revolutionary!Zemo x Non-Binary Reader Oneshot)

(a/n: so, in honor of barricade day, have this young revolutionary!Zemo fic, which is basically just canon Enjoltaire dynamics but with a Zemo/reader twist on it, because that dynamic is literally my whole heart. Consider this a weird twisted Les Mis au if you want to, but you don’t need to know the book or musical to enjoy this, if it can be enjoyed...)

Synopsis: Helmut recalls the story of how he came to be the ruthless man he is and, more specifically, how he came into possession of his strange purple mask.

Tags: Canon Compliant, Angst, Young!Zemo, Non-Binary!Reader, Death, Enemies to Friends With Benefits to Lovers????, Implied Sexual Content, Friendship, Pining, Revolution, Speedrunning A Slow Burn

Rating: M (+16)

Warnings: Major Character Death, Implied Sexual Content, Gun Violence, Drinking, Minor Homophobia/Transphobia (it’s one sentence near the end and it’s very vague coming from Heinrich), Swearing, Survivor’s Guilt, Really Just Death Everywhere

Word Count: 10,200~

“What’s with the mask?”

The question was innocent enough.

Sam posed it while lounging on the expensive couch of Zemo’s Riga apartment, head tilted back and eyes closed in silent contemplation.

Bucky remained silent as Zemo glanced over from his place at the counter. Outside, the sun was long gone, giving way to a stunning moonrise over the city that poured through the stained glass windows and lit up the night with its glow. It was quiet, much quieter than things usually were between the trio. Still, things being quiet didn’t mean they weren’t tense.

Clenching his teeth, he took in a long breath through his nose. “I am unsure what you mean by that, Sam,”

“The mask,” Sam pushed, “you know, the one you wore during the fight in Madripoor. What’s the deal with that?”

“Ah yes. That mask,” As if on cue, Zemo took a long swig from his glass. It burned all the way down. He didn’t speak again, though, instead choosing to let his gaze fall on the elaborate tilework above his countertops, tracing the patterns with his eyes. Anything to divert himself from the thoughts that rushed back into his mind at the thought of the knit piece of cloth that sat firmly in his inner coat pocket.

Unfortunately for him, Sam wasn’t satisfied with letting the topic fizzle out. “Come on man,” he griped, rubbing a hand over his face, “we got you out of prison, so you owe us one. In fact, you owe us a lot. So, spill. What the hell is the deal with it? Were you Sokovian batman or something?”

That urged a dry laugh from the baron’s lips as he set his crystal glass on the counter with a little more force than was necessary. “Are you always so interested in your captives’ personal lives?”

“Usually,” Bucky chimed in dryly.

“I suppose I’m outnumbered,” Zemo sighed. The bile rising in his throat was easy enough to force down as he turned himself out on his stool to face the room. It wasn’t the right time for true weakness, not yet, but he couldn’t deny that painting himself in a desirable light and offering the pair honesty might give him the upper hand. So, he folded.

Slowly he retrieved the purple mask from his coat and turned it over in his hands. It still fit after all the years it had sat gathering dust in his storage unit which was a blessing in its own right. It still served its original purpose too. That mask had seen horrors beyond imagination, had been washed clean of blood more times than could be counted. Did it hold the memories of the things it had seen within its fabrics as Zemo did in his mind? Or was it as naive as he had been at the time of its creation? He let out a bitter laugh. That was a question they would have asked him.

As he exchanged his literal mask for one entirely emotional, Zemo leaned back on his stool and managed a smile. “How educated are you on Sokovian politics?”

Sam shut his eyes again, letting his head lol back once more. “I went to public school, so I don’t think I even knew Sokovia existed until it didn’t,”

“I know enough,” Bucky added. From his place leaning against the way, ever vigilant and ready to jump into an imagined battle, he turned to face Zemo and crossed his arms. “Hydra had fingers in the government there, more so than other places. There was a big power struggle in the ’90s when the king died, right? Because people wanted democracy, and they didn’t want the little shithead prince to take over,”

“Yes,” Zemo nodded, “My cousin Emil. I’m glad you’re familiar,”

A spluttered laugh escaped Sam’s lips as he shot up. “I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this stuff anymore, but damn,”

“He and I weren’t close,” Zemo waved his hand dismissively, and yet there was a strange sadness in his eyes. It wasn’t for his cousin, though. Not in the least. “But James was correct, there were riots in the streets when the king died. They were shut down quickly by the National Guard, though, who had more than a little help from Hydra’s favorite supersoldiers once they realized just how much power the citizens held. What street were you assigned to, James?”

Bucky sucked in his cheeks, eyes falling to the floor, but before Sam could butt in and defend him he had muttered an answer. “I cleared the barricade at 18th Avenue, the second largest. Those kids fought valiantly,”

Zemo hummed lowly. “And so they did,”

“Okay, what does any of this have to do with your stupid purple mask?” Sam exclaimed.

He was sitting up fully now, face turned to where Zemo had stood from his stool and begun to round the bar. His mask still sat in a small ball on the marble. It seemed to be a member of the conversation all its own, silent and sure, drawing all three men together as it weaved a story from the past into the present with its very presence.

“That mask served me well and hid my identity when I stood against the very men that were serving my family,” Zemo muttered, letting his fingers brush the fabric gently. The names of the lost sat heavy on his very soul even if they would never pass from his lips.

Hans, Andrei, Ivan, Vladimir, Anton, Lazlo, Nicholas, little Sebastian…

Y/N.

“I was young then, too young for my own good,” he said softly, “naive and hopeful and convinced that the world was able to change for the better if I simply willed it to be… so when I discovered the connection between my family and Hydra I packed up my things, emptied my bank account, and moved into a tiny apartment with another like-minded friend, Hans Perlitch,” a soft laugh escaped him, genuine and youthful and all too honest, “We preached to the hungry masses of a world free from the thumb of the elite and all the while we would return home to a heated apartment and a stocked pantry. Still, we were well-liked and gathered a bit of a following. That was when everything changed, the early fall of 1997…”

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

“You know, for someone who claims to be as smart as you say you are, you’re quite a fool,”

The voice came from the back of the room, smoke still hanging thick in the air from the cigarettes shared by the masses of students that had packed the tiny repurposed stockroom of the bar while Helmut had given his speech for the week.

He didn’t give the interloper the dignity of his full attention as he gathered a few of his scattered notes from the table that served as his soapbox. Still, he was in a generally good mood. Almost double the usual students had shown up for the meeting and a few had even chimed in to ask questions, so he took a deep breath and resigned himself to the fact that rooting out one ignorant opposer now would mean less work in the long run. “I’ve never claimed to be smart, so I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to,”

A scoff came from the back of the room, but the person made no effort to come closer. “You can change your last name and present yourself as a member of the public all you want, but someday someone is gonna recognize that pretty face of yours, and your whole revolution is going to come crumbling to the ground,”

Now that was enough to make him pause.

“How did you-”

“How could I not?”

It was sardonic, biting and harsh in the worst of ways. Everything about the tone made Helmut’s blood boil beneath his skin. He was not one who enjoyed being threatened or outdone. Still, the play was out of his hands now, should this strange intruder choose to ruin him.

Biting his tongue, he finally turned to face them. “You have my attention, now what do you want?”

Across the room, the stranger remained unphased. They were relatively unremarkable, a bottle of cheap beer held firmly in their grip as they toasted to nothing and drank down the remaining dregs. With a smile and a chuckle, they propped their feet up on the small, round table before them. Something about that sight lit a fire in Helmut’s chest. He didn’t know who they were, or why he was there, but he was certain that he despised them already.

“I don’t want anything,” They replied, and with a certain grandness reserved for a gamin mocking the bourgeoisie, they flourished with their hands, letting their booted feet drop to the ground as they stood and bowed. “I’m just saying that if you’re trying to convince people that you’re not the missing baron while you’re pretending to be all impoverished and rallying us commoners, you might want to change more than your last name and your fashion sense,”

Helmut gritted his teeth. “So what? Did you come here just to rub my face in it, or are you going to help me make a change?”

That elicited a small snort from the stranger, but they did take the opportunity to traipse up to meet him at his table, leaning on the edge as they gazed up at him with a strange look in their eyes that he couldn’t quite identify. Their face was soft upon closer examination, alive and bright with a merriment that only came from intoxication. It made Helmut sneer involuntarily.

Licking their lips, they murmured, “Make a change? Is that what you think you’re doing?” and as they let a giggle escape their parted lips Helmut lost it.

He gasped them firmly by the front of their baggy sweater and dragged them in close. “At least I’m trying! What are you doing about it? Extorting the only person who might be able to actually make a change in this shithole of a country? That’s so much more helpful!”

Their faces were inches apart as Helmut spat his words like venom and yet the stranger never stopped smiling. It was almost dopey, the grin that made its way across their lips. Helmut couldn’t stand it.

“You know, baron,” they purred, setting down their empty bottle on the table beside them, “I like you. I might just stick around here for a little while, see what else about your little plan I can pick apart,”

Never in his life had Helmut been less thrilled for someone to join his cause.

“Why are you here anyway,” he groaned, releasing their shirt, “don’t you have something better to do with your Friday night than bother me?” and, as an extra jab, he added, “besides drinking yourself to death, of course,”

The jab didn’t land, though.

Taking it all in stride, the stranger simply grinned as if they too knew how badly they stank of cheap alcohol and was thrilled that someone had noticed. “Anton invited me. He said I should get out more, make some friends. It’s just a coincidence that I happened to recognize you while writing down an itemized list of all the things you got wrong while you grandstanded,” There was a pride in their words, a giddy energy burbling just beneath the surface of their skin, and suddenly it all made sense.

Anton was newer to their group, a poet and a free thinker, something hard to find in the slums of Novi Grad. Still, he lightened the impromptu meetings up with his smile and would often spend the hour scrawling away fervently in his notebook as he immortalized each and every word that was said “for posterity”. Helmut was sure that only someone as accepting as Anton would ever choose to spend their time with someone quite as insufferable as the person before him. Suddenly, and uncomfortably, he became aware that he didn’t even know their name.

Swallowing down a nasty barb, Helmut sighed and offered up his hand, which the stranger took after a moment of pause. “And you are?”

“Y/N,” They replied.

“Well, Y/N,” he spat their name from his mouth like a cherry pit, “I suppose I’ll have to get used to having a man like you-”

“Don’t call me that,”

Helmut cocked his head to the side. “Pardon?”

“Don’t call me a man,” Y/N replied, “and before you ask I don’t want to be called a woman either. I’m just… I’m just Y/N, at least for now I am, it’s not like I’d give a rich brat like you my legal name while we’re mixed up in all this illegal, halfway-treasonous nonsense you insist on spouting. Maybe next week I’ll be something completely different and new. Until I tell you otherwise, though, I’m just Y/N, your highness,”

“Do I dare dream that that means you might learn to respect my ideas?” Helmut sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face and choosing to ignore the sarcastic address in the hopes of letting such things fizzle and die without encouragement. Unfortunately, the goofy grin he got in return told him that was wishful thinking.

Suddenly, the door opened and Helmut jumped away from his newest tentative ally (if you could call them that) to find Hans standing in the doorway. At his side was Andrei, the third in command of their little posse and final member of the leading triumvirate. They seemed shocked at his lateness and he was quick to try to gather himself up lest they see him as undone as he had found himself while facing the smallest taste of Y/N’s antagonistic nature.

What had he even been doing when they interrupted him? It took him a moment to even gather himself together enough to remember. Scanning the room, his eyes fell on the papers

Oh yes, he had been gathering up his notes…

He was quick to finish the task as Y/N sauntered away towards the door, preparing to push past the two men who stood beyond it.

“You’re Anton’s friend, right?” Hans asked, back stiff. When Y/N nodded he did little more than give a noncommittal noise from the back of his throat. He had always been good with making things impersonal as he crunched the numbers and calculated probabilities. That was why Helmut liked him so much.

Andrei, on the other hand, provided a needed warmth to their leadership in his outreach.

He smiled warmly at Y/N and clapped a hand on their shoulder. “I hope we’ll be seeing more of you around,”

Y/N was quick to offer one of their signature grins before winking back at Helmut in a way that made his stomach turn. “Oh, you’ll be seeing plenty of me from now on,”

“We’re glad to have you,” Andrei replied as they passed.

Before they fully left, though, they turned one last time to shoot Helmut a final smile. “Till next Friday, fearless leader,”

Then, Y/N was gone, lost in the crowd of revelers beyond the small, smokey storeroom and, more importantly, beyond where Helmut’s eyes could follow. Somehow, despite everything, he missed having them there. He quickly chalked the feeling up to wanting to keep a close eye on people with the ability to thwart his best-laid plans and left it at that. Besides, he had no room in his heart for anything besides the betterment of Sokovia.

Attachments meant the possibility of other priorities, and other priorities got people killed. He couldn’t have that happening on his watch.

Thankfully, Hans snapped him out of his melancholy quickly. “Do you have everything sorted?”

Helmut gave a short nod before tapping the pile of papers against the table and setting out towards the door, abandoning his thoughts and feelings about his interaction with Y/N at the table as he exited the room and gathered himself once more into the man his friends needed him to be.

He could only hope that as long as he ignored Y/N’s jabs, they would soon grow tired and be gone within the month once they realized he was anything but afraid of their little games.

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

Much to Helmut’s abject disappointment, Y/N did not, in fact, stop showing up.

They did quite the opposite.

Instead of leaving him well enough alone, they showed up to Helmut’s meetings every single Wednesday and Friday for months, always piss drunk and happy to jeer at him from the corner, shouting their unwanted opinions and throwing off every meeting with their nonsense.

It was as if they did it just to get on his nerves, and get on his nerves they did.

As the seasons changed, from spring, to winter, to fall, and, finally, to the very beginnings of summer, so did the types of jabs Y/N decided to throw.

In the beginning it was all business, comments on the idiocy of his plans for a protest based on common police routes or mocking jokes about his unending optimism when it came to fighting the national guard on a large scale, but as things began to get more and more serious on the path towards a full-fledged revolt, they seemed to aim more and more of their vitriol towards Helmut personally.

Sometimes it was a comment on his face or voice. “Ease up pretty boy,” they’d jeer, “keep talking like that and a guardsman might just do more than knock out a few of your perfect teeth,” Other times, which Helmut found infinitely worse, they’d throw a jab at his ability to lead them to victory. “The only thing that waits for us at the end of this is a painful death, especially if you’re not joking about those fucking super soldiers they supposedly have on ice,”

The worst part was that half the time, Y/N was right.

Helmut hated to admit it but it was true. More than once he had to go back and edit his plans to take into account a valid point thrown in by Y/N that he had never even considered. Hell, if it had been anyone else picking him to nothing he would have been grateful, but it wasn’t a well-meaning contributor trying to make the world a better place, it was a drunk who seemed to have one solitary life goal: making his life as miserable as possible. Perhaps that’s why they had devolved to frantic angry fucks behind crates of wine and massive cans of chocolate spread after the worst of their arguments…

Not that Helmut cared for them.

No, he didn’t do attachments. Neither did Y/N. They hated each other, after all.

It was just a way to release their tensions at the end of stressful meetings and nothing more. They were dealing with matters of life and death after all. It was only normal to seek comfort in the warmth of a companion, if he could even call Y/N a companion.

Whether he liked it or not, though, they were they to stay, even if they rarely made themself useful to the cause.

By early June, the drunkard had become close friends with all of the remaining students that still gathered at Helmut’s location for meetings instead of ending up at the offshoots that began to form once the group got too big to pile into the storeroom. Helmut loathed thinking about it, but Y/N was probably invited to more birthdays and Saturday night get-togethers than he ever was. There was something about their smile that drew people in. It made them feel wanted, welcome. Helmut hated that he never got those smiles from Y/N, only ever the mocking, blithe kind that they handed out freely to friends and enemies alike.

He didn’t have time to think about that, though. Not with so much fast approaching as the first pears began to hang from branches down in the royal orchards, soft and ripe and ready to be harvested. Their growth marked King Hugo’s daily weakening. His death could come any day, and when it did, Helmut knew he would need to strike quickly if he truly hoped to overturn the system before the coronation of his cousin. That meant every meeting, now more frequently held throughout the week, was filled to the brim with preparations and planning.

Well, preparations and planning and a healthy dose of Y/N and Helmut yelling at each other about nonsense across the room until Anton or Laszlo stepped in to pull Y/N down into their chair once more so the meeting could resume and they could all go home before things got too late and they were questioned in the street on why they were possibly out and about at such an hour.

Things were no different on that Friday meeting on June 4th.

“Is there anyone here who isn’t already passing out pamphlets in the dorms at NVU tonight?” Helmut asked the room, scanning for a hand that didn’t belong to his least favorite member of the group. Unfortunately, none came up. “Come one now, at least one of you has to be free,”

Y/N groaned. “It’s like you don’t even see my hand waving up here, oh great one,” There they went again with the ridiculous terms of address that made Helmut’s blood sizzle in his veins. He remained composed, though. At least, as composed as he could be given the situation.

“I’m ignoring you because I remember the last time I asked your drunk ass to pass out pamphlets. What round of dominos were you on by the time I showed up to check on you, five or six?”

The scalding remark was enough to get Y/N to sheepishly lower their hand, eyes downcast. It was getting easier and easier for Helmut to manage to shut them up the more frantic meetings got, and he couldn’t say he was displeased by that fact no matter why it was the way that it was. A quiet Y/N meant less chance for mistakes which meant fewer future casualties. Fewer casualties were good, it was what he strived for.

Thankfully for Helmut, a new hand came up.

It belonged to Vladimir, the oldest of the group by a year rounding out at an even 26 years old. He was dependable, definitely the kind who could be trusted to run an errand as important as the one Helmut needed to have done. The thought that Vladimir would be the one to pick up the shipment of smuggled guns was a relief. He made as much evident while explaining their next moves.

Throughout the remainder of the meeting, though, Helmut couldn’t help but feel watched. It didn’t last long, half an hour at most. Still, there was the creeping itch on the back of his neck that told him there were eyes on him that he wasn’t aware of. Only when the group was dismissed and the feeling didn’t go away did he realize exactly who was staring at him so intently.

“I hope you know I really did intend to hand out those pamphlets,” Y/N said once they were the last one remaining, the rest of the group having trickled out to get food and drinks before heading home for the night. It wasn’t unusual for Helmut and Y/N to be the last two remaining at the end of a meeting. That didn’t mean he was happy about it though.

So, instead of offering up an acknowledgment, he busied himself with plotting out a few potential spots to barricade the roads and hunker down when things got messy in highlighter on the large, laminated map of Novi Grad that had found its home on the big front table.

Y/N didn’t let up, though. They never did. “I know you don’t believe me, why would you, but I did. I just wanted to loosen them up before I started talking about overthrowing the damn government, which is a terrible plan, by the way. Have I told you that lately?”

“Only every time you see me,” Helmut sighed.

Somehow, that made Y/N smile, soft and sarcastic and all too honest. Helmut didn’t know how they managed it. Secretly, he envied their neverending veracity. He’d never say that though. No, not while they crossed the floor and offered up a large bottle of whiskey.

“A drink, dear leader?”

“Absolutely not” He griped, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How many times do I need to remind you I don’t drink?”

“Too many,”

“For once, I agree with you,”

A laugh passed through Y/N’s plush lips and, regrettably, Helmut couldn’t help but look up at them and relish in the sight. Their hair was a bit longer than they usually grew it out, a particularly unruly piece tucked behind their ear. Helmut hated that he noticed little details like that, despised the way he had come to know the soft dip of their cupid’s bow and the warmth of their palm. It was still Y/N, after all, for better or worse. He couldn’t help but allow himself those small recognitions though. It made him feel human, or something close to it.

Still, all good things must come to an end, and they did when Y/N decided to speak again. “You know, the longer I show up for these stupid meetings, the more I think you’re actually gonna try to go up against those bastards,”

Helmut should have known the barb was coming, but perhaps his better nature, if it truly existed, prevented that. Nevertheless, he sighed into his hands as he dropped his highlighter. “If I didn’t intend to actually try to change things, why would I have spent the last year of my life living in a shitty apartment and putting up with you?”

“You’d be surprised the things people do and never finish. Not everyone is as driven as you are,” Y/N huffed. They were quick to seat themself on the table once Helmut wasn’t actively working over it, smearing the highlighter away on their corduroy pants. “Nobody would blame you if you did tap out, you know. There are plenty of ways to make a change that don’t involve trying to take down the entire local Sokovian military force until they decide to give you what you want,”

“The changes we could make without a revolt wouldn’t really be changes, they’d just be the illusion of changes. You know that as well as I do,” Helmut replied with a groan.

Two of the fingers from Y/N’s free hand, the one that wasn’t gripping their bottle like a lifeline, pointed towards the closed door behind them. “Is living under our current system and knowing they have fingers in a few less-than-savory organizations really worse than leading all of your friends to their deaths?”

That struck a nerve in Helmut’s chest.

“And who says that has to be true?”

“Come on, oh benevolent and giving baron,” Y/N’s voice was light yet pointed, like a million minuscule particles of glass flying through the air, “Do you really think we’re all gonna make it out of a fight with the big guys? And even if all of us do, can you say the same for the poor kids fighting where we aren’t?”

“I never said there would be no casualties-”

“What about Sebastian? The kid is barely 12 and I know you’re going to say that if he tries to show up, you’re gonna send him home, but I think you underestimate how many people will want even someone as young as him dead if they catch him in the street. Are you really going to let him risk his life for this? A half-assed plan for you to get revenge on your asshole relatives for making your childhood shitty?”

“You know that’s not what this is about,”

“Do I?” Y/N asked, and for just a second, no, a millisecond, Helmut wasn’t sure anymore. It was only a brief moment though, nothing more. The fact that they could make him doubt himself do deeply though… it was a problem. Calling it that was an understatement, but there was no other way to put it that truly worked.

Helmut growled lowly and nodded, pushing the doubt from his mind. He was right. He had to be right. What would he be if he was wrong? A spoiled rich boy who was leading his friends to their dooms for nothing?

No.

He had to be right, so he was. It was as simple as that.

“Is there anything else you need to critique, or can you leave me to work now?” Helmut asked. His patience had long since worn thin. That didn’t matter much to Y/N, though. They liked to wear him down thin, see just how far they could push without breaking his resolve. It was a game they were both intimately acquainted with.

They played their hand expertly. “In fact,” Y/N smiled while they spoke, another mocking little grin that made Helmut’s stomach turn in the best and worst of ways, “there is one last thing I needed to ask about,”

“I shudder to think what it might be,”

“How are you going to hide your face?”

The question caught Helmut off-guard as he leaned back on his heels, letting his forearms brace against the edge of the table, his face scrunching up in thought. “What?”

Y/N gestured absently towards his face before bringing their bottle to their lips. “I’m betting that your family will expect you to be out there whenever we actually stage our attack. If I’m right, that means the soldiers will be looking for you as their top priority, and if they find you, they’ll kill everybody around you just to get a chance to drag you back to mommy and daddy. Even if they don’t kill us on sight we’ll be charged for harboring you without turning you in to the proper authorities. So, how are you going to hide your face?”

Once again, Helmut found himself thinking that, despite their drunken stupor, Y/N might just be right, and he hated it. He hated that he hadn’t thought of it first, hated that it was a valid point, hated that he had no satisfying way to answer the question they had posed. He hated it all.

“I’ll just throw on a bandana,” He managed to grumble, and that was that.

Or, that should have been that, but Y/N scoffed at the idea, setting down their bottle and leaning in close to Helmut’s face. After a moment of contemplation, they brought their hand up to his face and let their thumb come to rest on one of his largest beauty marks, the mole that rested high on the left side of his nose. “I’m afraid that a bandana isn’t going to cover up your absolutely blinding radiance, fearless leader,” There was a softness to their voice, a gentility Helmut was unused to. It made his chest hurt. He hated that too.

“Are you going to offer a solution or are you just going to sit there telling me I’m stupid,” His words were a low groan.

Much to his surprise, though, Y/N reached into their back pocket only to pass him a crumpled purple ball. It was obviously fabric, though the outside seemed to be coated in some sort of weatherproofing, and upon closer inspection, once unraveled, two distinct eyeholes became visible.

“Is this-”

“A mask?” Y/N finished his sentence for him, “Yeah. I figured you wouldn’t think about it, so I whipped something up with some old polyester-based yarn and then I coated it so it wouldn’t be a problem if it got wet. It should still be breathable, though,”

For the first time since he’d known them, Helmut looked up at Y/N and thought that they were incredibly valuable. He still hated them, of course he did. Y/N was Y/N and he was himself and they hated each other because they were, at their basest, entirely incompatible.

At his silence, Y/N looked away, almost nervous. “I hope it’s alright,”

“It’s more than alright,” Helmut said as kindly as he could possibly manage, “I hate to say this, but owe you one,”

“Could I collect on that debt now?” Minutely, Y/N leaned closer, eyes falling to Helmut’s lips.

He swallowed thickly. “You’re drunk, Y/N,”

“I know I am. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Why would that be wonderful?”

“Because that means I won’t remember this,” And, with that, they closed the gap between the two of them and captured Helmut’s lips in his own.

Kissing Y/N wasn’t a new thing. They had kissed plenty of times during their frenzied hookups; soft kisses and hard kisses and long kisses and short kisses. Still, Helmut would never get used to the thrill of it. That was yet another thing he hated about Y/N. He could never quite get used to them. Every single interaction always felt as fresh and raw as their first.

With a fervor only he could muster, Helmut kissed back and pushed at Y/N’s hips, pressing them harder into the table below, and just as quickly as he had gained a physical mask, he had lost his emotional one.

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

In the end, that was the last time Helmut had slept with Y/N.

They had fallen together, two sweaty half-dressed bodies laid out over the laminated map of Novi Grad, and then Y/N had gathered themself up and left with little more than one last kiss pressed to Helmut’s temple. By the time he himself had gotten home to Hans, the news of King Hugo’s death was almost an hour old.

After a few phone calls to lay the final plans and keep every sect of their band of revolutionaries on the same schedules, things rolled into motion like a finely tuned machine.

On the morning of June 5th, the barricades rose and Helmut wore his mask proudly as his people fought for freedom in the streets he had walked since childhood. Y/N was beside him.

By the early hours of June 6th, they were the only barricade that remained.

Helmut should have known that once things got too challenging that the super soldiers would be released, he should have anticipated that they’d be waiting for the backlash once king Hugo passed, and yet he hadn’t. He had blindly walked into the disaster with his eyes wide open. There was no one to blame but himself.

Little Sebastian, just one month shy of 13 years old, was dead, shot at long distance when he had attempted to grab a fallen box of bullets that had toppled over the peak of the jumble of hoarded furniture and scrap metal. Anton was dead too, taken at gunpoint while he stood guard at a side street and executed with his eyes bound and a sonnet on his lips. Even Ivan, stoic and strong Ivan who bound his knuckles in boxer’s tape and sparred with Helmut when he needed to clear his head, had been caught in the initial fire and bled out over the course of the day, dying with a smile on his face as he leaned on a discarded chair.

I never said there’d be no casualties.

His own words rang in his ears, taunted him with every bullet he shot and every breath he dragged into his aching lungs. How had he ever been so naive to believe that even one life could be expendable?

The real lowest point came at almost midnight when Helmut picked up a call from a student on another barricade only to met with screaming. “Winter is coming!” They had wailed, “Winter is coming!” and then they had died, right there over speakerphone. Helmut had the good sense to hang up once it got to the worst of it, the strangled gurgled growing to be too much for the group.

As things truly settled, in those hours so early that the world still considered them night, Helmut still stood vigilant. That’s when Y/N finally approached.

They wore no smile, not like usual. Instead, their face was stoic as they came to stand beside Helmut and waited silently for a moment. He took the chance to beat them to the punch.

“You don’t have to tell me you were right. I know you were,” I hate you for it.

Y/N offered a gentle, humorless laugh. “I wouldn’t rub it in at a time like this, but yeah, I was,” I know you do. I hate myself for it too.

Slowly, Helmut brought a hand to his face, scrubbing the exhaustion away from his eyes. How had it all come to this?

“How much time do you think we have,” Y/N was speaking before he had a chance to say anything more, saving him from having to elaborate on his admission. He was grateful. Grateful to not be alone, grateful to be spared more shame, grateful to see Y/N’s gentle smile one more time. He’d never show it though. No, he was to be the fearless leader till the end.

So, he sucked in a deep breath and stared out into the starry sky. “A few hours at most. I’m surprised they haven’t made another advance after the last big push in the evening when we lost…” he swallowed thickly, “when we lost Anton,”

Licking their lips and pushing back their hair, Y/N sighed. “For what it’s worth, for a minute there I really believed you could do it,”

It was a bigger compliment than it seemed and they both knew it, but neither acknowledged it. Instead, Helmut gestured absently towards the half-full bottle of wine in Y/N’s hand. “You mind if I have a drink of that?”

A grin spread across their lips, but it was as far from mocking as was possible as they passed the bottle over.

“I never thought I’d see the day,”

Lifting the bottom of his mask to take a swig, Helmut groaned at the deep, bitter burn of it. “Don’t get used to it,” He replaced the fabric quickly before passing the bottle back.

“I’ll try not to,”

“Happy 20th, by the way,” Y/N added, “this is a hell of a way to celebrate, but it’s very you,”

Helmut froze as the realization sunk in that it was, in fact, the 6th of June, even if it had only been that way for a couple hours.

There had been a party planned. It was just an intimate thing, cake and a few card games in the afternoon with his closest friends, but that was long behind them now, forgotten in favor of the larger cause. To Y/N, though, there was never a larger cause than Helmut himself. He was realizing that slowly. In a bitter moment of realization, he laughed.

“What?”

“You weren’t invited,”

They quirked up an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“To the birthday party. I didn’t invite you,”

“Well, I’m here now, and this is a pretty good party if I do say so myself. You and me and the revolution all jam-packed together in the middle of a street. Wouldn’t it be cool if the new democracy was born on the same day you were?”

He smiled softly. “It was meant to be,”

“I got you something, you know, even though I knew I wasn’t invited to the party,” Y/N added breathlessly. “It was stupid, just some dumb sweater with a whole bunch of random ass quotes from Machiavelli all over the back, but Anton and I saw it when we visited the better side of town to hang up those fliers for the march a few weeks ago and we knew you had to have it. It’s sitting all wrapped up on my front table,”

“It’s a shame I won’t get to open it today,”

They nodded distantly. “Yeah, a real shame…”

Then, they were quiet again, staring up at the stars mere feet away from each other and yet miles apart, farther than they’d ever been.

Y/N cut through the soundless night first, but not before several silent minutes had passed, filled with only the distant chatter of their surviving friends and the gentle whistling of the breeze over the rooftops above. “When everything goes to shit… with the universe, I mean, not now. Everything’s already gone to shit now. But that notwithstanding, when the world goes kaput and the sun explodes, we’re all gonna be starstuff together, right? You and I and Sebastian and Andrei and Anton and… all of us. We’re gonna be nothing but matter and dust out there in space,”

“Is there a point to this or are you just having an existential crisis?” Helmut muttered, but there was no bite to it.

They just chuckled as their eyes scanned the sky.

“I was just thinking, if all of us are gonna be nothing more than matter and dust and star stuff, it only makes sense that someday, even if it’s a billion years from now, a little part of each of us will be together again as part of some supernova in the sky to be seen by somebody else, and, when that day comes, I think I’m gonna know, and everything is gonna be alright,”

He hummed thoughtfully, running a hand absently over the thick purple knit of his mask, relishing in the gummy softness of the coating on his bare fingertips in the cooling air. “That makes no sense,”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

“Still, it’s a pretty thought. Anton would have liked it,”

“Yeah, he would have…”

Helmut let his eyes fall from the sky to his companion. They looked so fragile, so broken, that he could barely stand himself, because, if he hadn’t made the stupid choices to lead them here, they never would have felt that way. They’d be curled up in bed somewhere, asleep and safe, far from the cold darkness of the night at his side. It made him sick.

How could he possibly put that to words? How could he apologize for denying every nudge, every chance to turn around? He couldn’t, and it made him as bitter as the wine that Y/N sipped from absently before turning to face him once again.

“Hey, Helmut,” they whispered, and his breath caught in his throat because how dare his voice sound so sweet on their lips? How dare they keep that joy, the joy of hearing his name whispered with reverence on the early morning breeze, real and caring and perfect, away from him for so long? “Do you think I could take a chair from the barricade?”

Just as soon as it had come, the joy was gone. “Why would you need a chair?”

Y/N shrugged. “I want to go sleep,”

“Why can’t you sleep out here?”

“I don’t want to be woken up,”

“We wouldn’t wake you until the fighting was starting back up again-”

“Oh, my darling fearless leader,” their voice was empty, tinny and cold, “I don’t ever want to be woken up,”

Their words pierced Helmut straight through the heart he didn’t know he had. It made him feel so much, so many emotions he had simply not allowed himself out of a misplaced sense of self-preservation. “But we’ll need every able body ready to fight when they send in the super soldiers if we even want a chance at making it out of this,”

The smile that crossed Y/N’s lips didn’t come from a place of joy, nor did it mock Helmut for his blind and dying faith. It was simply there because they did not know how to do anything else. “There’s no making it out of this. Not for me, at least. For you, though… you still have a chance,”

Denial and anger went hand in hand as Helmut sucked his teeth, grinding his molars and letting his hand ghost over his pistol hanging at his hip.

“So you’d really rather die like a coward than take a stand against the evils in the world?” he spat, harsh and cold as the air around them. “Pathetic,”

“Don’t do this now, Helmut, not after we were finally getting somewhere. I don’t want to die with things like that,”

“I’m not the one who’s giving up,” he snapped.

He just needed… something. A reaction. A reason to keep fighting when the war was already lost. Anything. Why couldn’t Y/N light the same fire in him that they’d kindled for months? The fire that had driven him to spend sleepless nights poring over maps and plans and speeches and guns. If he just pushed a little harder, just hit the right button, they’d light it again, he just knew it.

“Please,” the word fell fragile from Y/N’s lips. Not a beg, just a soft plea.

It fell on deaf ears.

“You know what? You can take your chair!” Helmut was shouting then, loud enough that the remaining students on the barricade could hear every word. “Take your chair and leave us to fight while you die in your sleep. If we make it through the day I’ll put the bullet between your eyes myself. Now get out of here! I don’t want to see you again,” There was a cruelty to it, an edge that he thought might just push them off the edge. Still, it wasn’t cruel without reason. Helmut thought that maybe, if he was lucky enough, Y/N would simply leave.

They had no stakes in the results of the revolt, no serious lasting ties that would get them hunted down in the weeks to come if things came to a gruesome end. If he bid them to leave, to disappear from his sight, there was a chance, however small, that they would disappear into the shadows with a chance to live.

Against all odds, though, Y/N smiled one of those empty smiles again and drank down the very last of their wine.

“As your baronship commands,” they whispered, before departing to gather up a chair and disappearing into the restaurant where they had met so many times before.

Then, they were gone, and Helmut was free to sink to the ground as his heart broke and mended and broke again.

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

As expected, the super soldiers arrived only a couple of hours past Y/N’s departure.

Their arrival was silent, only marked by the slow thud of retreating national guardsmen in the distance. They weren’t needed there anymore, and the less they saw the better.

Helmut watched his friends fall one by one in the panic, the barricade falling to ruin as the soldiers- if they could even be considered that, soldier seemed a far too human term for the monstrous creatures before him- pulled it apart with their bare hands. From there it was just a game of who was caught first in the insanity that ensued.

Nicholas; caught a bullet through the neck.

Vladimir; thrown against a solid stone wall at a speed near impossible.

Lazlo; impaled on a bit of broken wood as the wood exploded.

Andrei; shot 3 times point-blank in the chest as he held the door closed to buy Hans and Helmut a little more time with a love confession for his closest companion falling from his mouth.

Hans…

Helmut didn’t know how Hans died.

He had never asked. All he knew that the shots had come as he wailed Andrei’s name, and then there was a deathly silence in the golden light of the morning sun as Helmut stood alone at the back of the storeroom, taking in the 4 walls that had held the best year of his life.

What remained now?

A failed dream? A pile of bodies? A single survivor waiting for his death?

Helmut didn’t know. He couldn’t fathom it.

The two soldiers sent to finish the job were nameless and nondescript as they slipped through the door, armed with long, silent rifles and hidden by masks not too dissimilar from Helmut’s own. They did not speak, not a word. Instead, they simply raised their guns and took aim at Helmut as he closed his eyes and thought of-

“Wait!”

The word rang out heavy and made the two executioners snap to the side.

“I’m with him! I’m with the revolution! Down with King Emil! Down with the monarchy!”

There, hidden among the crates and shelves of canned goods and glass bottles, was Y/N.

They looked objectively awful, eyes rimmed red and hair mussed up and coated with oil. Still, it was the most beautiful sight Helmut had ever seen.

It was only right that they go together.

Slowly, Y/N made their way across the room to take their place at Helmut’s side. “I know you said you never wanted to see me again, but I assume you’ll make an exception for the circumstances,”

“I never meant it,” he whispered back, and Y/N smiled, “You have to know, I never meant it,”

“Even if you did, I never would have listened-”

Suddenly, one of the soldiers spoke, taking aim straight for Helmut down the barrel of their gun.

“Quiet,”

Y/N only paused for a moment before pressing their hand into his. “Kiss me, Helmut?”

Who was he to deny them?

Pulling off his mask, he pressed his lips to theirs and clasped their hand like it was the last thing he would ever do. When he pulled away, they were smiling one of their old, mocking, joyous smiles.

“Oh, fearless leader… I win,”

The words were a whisper of air against his lips. Before he could fathom the true meaning of them the pair was peppered in a spray of gunfire as Helmut closed his eyes to the world for what should have been the final time.

When he opened them, Y/N was struck dead at his feet.

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

It was their final winning move, he later realized, the checkmate to a game of chess he never believed would end.

In the end, Y/N had been as correct as they always were.

All the same, he hated them for it.

Some nights, in the darkness of his room back at the summer estate where his father has imprisoned him until further notice, he wondered if Y/N had kissed him because they wanted to or if they had done it to get him to remove his mask long enough that the soldiers would recognize him and spare him. It wouldn’t surprise him. Y/N did have a tendency to be right about things like that.

Ghosts haunted him often.

Not full specters, he would wish for something so merciful. Instead, he saw flashes in the periphery of his vision. Outside his window, he’d hear a child’s laugher and be so sure it was Sebastian until he looked out to find that it was simply a group of the staff’s children playing ball. Or, when the assigned guardsman brought him his dinner, he would glance down the hall and be so sure that a man at the other end was Lazlo, preparing to face a board of proctors as he delivered a thesis he would never write. It never was, though. It never would be.

Worst of all, when he laid awake in his bed as the clock struck twelve, he would feel them beside him.

They had never slept together in the literal sense. Whatever they had shared (love, Helmut would come to realize after many, many years with Heike, painfully hollow without the same kind of flame. He had loved them and simply never known how to show it) was purely physical and contained within that bloody, bloody storeroom that he was sure would be torn down someday soon as they glossed over the casualties and stamped out the evidence. Still, he could feel Y/N beside him in the darkness despite the fact that they had never been there.

Their head on his chest, their body pressed flush to his side, their hot breath fanning over the fabric of his nightshirt, creating a patch of damp warmth in its wake…

It was maddening, an eternal punishment he was doomed to endure for his stupidity. Nevertheless, if he let his brain wander to a better place, a different lifetime, it was almost comforting to feel their ghost wrapped tightly to his side.

When he woke, though, the loss of the dream was more maddening than living through it.

Almost a month after the failed revolution, in the hot and heady days of early July when the wasps buzzed loud at the window and the skies were filled with thunderclouds most of the time, his father finally came to speak to him.

“I trust you spent your birthday how you wished to,” Heinrich said plainly. There was no question to it, just an empty sentiment.

Mockery wasn’t nearly as pleasant when delivered by his father and not his lover, Helmut thought distantly.

“On the contrary, I spent my birthday watching everyone I cared about die,” he snapped back.

Heinrich didn’t offer any sort of commiseration. He simply shrugged and continued on with what he was there to say, not that his son minded much. The less time he spent there the more time Helmut would have to himself, which was preferable to listening to his father’s droning.

“You’re lucky to be alive. The family is on thin ice thanks to that stunt you pulled, but with time we’re all sure that you’ll become an asset if you simply learn to use that fire for something more… productive,”

Who the ‘we’ was went unspoken. It didn’t need to be.

Helmut sighed and looked out the window at the rain falling on the garden. Nicholas would have loved the gardens at this home. He would have pressed every flower at least once in the little book he kept beside him filled with the pieces of the world that he collected as he passed through it. Where would he be kept and collected now that he was dead?

“I’ve called in a favor and enrolled you for military service. You’ll be tested to find your strengths, sent where you’re best suited, and trained from the ground up. Once we know you can be trusted, you might even lead your own squadron and make some friends more of your caliber,”

It took all Helmut’s strength to clench his teeth and hold back the rage he felt in his chest. “When do I leave?”

“As soon as you’re married,”

Married.

The word struck a bolt through the rage and dissolved it, giving way to pure shock. “What the hell do you mean?”

Crossing his arms, Heinrich took to pacing a 2-foot line back and forth in front of the door. “We’ve found a suitable match from a good standing Sokovian family, and they’re willing to look past your little misstep as long as their daughter becomes a baroness and is adequately involved in society. She’ll be here in three days time and you’ll have a week to get acquainted before the wedding,”

“I never said I was going to get married,” Helmut growled, “You can’t make me get married,”

His father stared down at him from above like he was a little boy again. “I can make you do whatever I want. Don’t think I didn’t hear about what happened with that freak they shot down at your side! No son of mine is ending up with someone like-”

In an instant, Helmut had rushed across the room and punched his father square in the jaw. As blood poured down the man’s face, a hiss escaped his son’s lips.

“Never talk about Y/N like that again,”

“So it had a name!”

That earned him another punch, but Heinrich escaped Helmut’s grip quickly, cupping a hand beneath his nose to catch the redness that poured from his face. As he retreated out the door, he turned to deliver his final verdict. “You have three days to get your act together, and maybe, just maybe, if you don’t fuck this up, I’ll let you know where they dumped all your little friends to rot,” And with that, he shut the door behind him and left Helmut to pick up the pieces of his soul.

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

The tale Zemo wove was a sad one (sans most of the details about Y/N. That was a story whose finer details he would take to his grave) and as he came to a close, the purple fabric between his fingers was a tether to reality. The coating was a bit old, thinner in places than it should have been, but it had remained steady and strong for over 20 years and he didn’t know the first place to start repairing it.

Y/N would have known, they’d been the one to do it in the first place after all, but they were long gone, not even a ghost anymore. Just a name and a face forgotten to time as all the other impoverished students were, buried in an unmarked grave in a place he never learned. It was all that remained of them. The only thing that proved they were ever there at all.

“You know the rest of the story,” he added firmly. “I married Heike, climbed the ranks of the military, had my son… and they were simply lost, an unwritten page in the history of a country that no longer exists,”

Suddenly, though, a deep voice cut in through the heavy air between them.

“Ciczheni,”

“Pardon?” Zemo asked softly, pouring himself a final tumbler of whiskey and stuffing the mask back in his pocket.

“We buried them in Ciczheni,”

He nearly dropped the bottle in his hand.

Bucky was quick to continue, voice low and eyes clouded with memory in a way that only the two of them would ever truly understand. “It’s a tiny town along the border to the Czech Republic. There’s a big open field there, or at least there was, marked with a flat grave marking it as a burial site. I don’t remember the name on it, some random pseudonym, but they’re all there, all 57 dead and buried in the ground under that rock,”

Helmut gave a stiff nod. “I see,” Then, in one long gulp, he downed the whole two fingers of whiskey straight and relished in the way it burned down his throat. When the glass was empty and set down safely on the counter again he was quick to school his expression as he turned away. “I’m afraid all that excitement has exhausted me for the day. Goodnight, gentlemen,”

He was gone down the hallway into his bedroom before the pair had a chance to say another word.

Ciczheni.

As he undressed, he smiled softly, letting a few errant tears drip down his cheeks.

They had been born and raised in that tiny farming town. Sometimes, when he had let himself listen in on their conversations with some of the other members of their small, tight group, they would talk about how much they wanted to return someday, once they’d made enough money to live on for a while if they supported themself by growing a small garden and maybe keeping some chickens. The thought, even then, had always made him smile. Just Y/N and a cottage and a chicken or two.

Sometimes, if he was especially indulgent, he would imagine himself there with them. Sharing a home.

Making a family.

His biological family, the one he had created with marriage and his own flesh and blood, was something different entirely. He had loved them. God, how he’d loved them. Still, it was never the same. He was never at peace. He was never home. There would always be a bitterness there, as bitter as the dark summer wine he’d drunk the night he’d turned 20, a resentment that came with the obligation of creating a place in his heart for them when there never should have been.

For Y/N, though...

He sighed, wrapping himself in his robe and slipping on a pair of fleece pajama pants before crawling between the sheets and laying flat on his back, eyes to the ceiling.

Things wouldn’t have been happy all the time. Hell, they probably wouldn’t have been happy even most of the time. Still, they would have been where they belonged, seated firmly at his side for the rest of their long, wonderful lives.

Ciczheni, he repeated in his mind, then the memorial for Novi Grad. It was a minor detour, adding barely 2 hours more to the whole trip when he had plenty more to spare.

Ciczheni, then Novi Grad, and then, finally, peace.

Beside him, he could feel the phantom limbs wrap around his body, resting their weight firmly on his chest where the guilt and shame and terror built by the day, and for the first time in almost a decade they were not Heike’s. Perhaps, if all went according to plan, they wouldn’t be phantom much longer.

Or, if not, he would wait. He would wait a billion years to disintegrate into stardust and spread across the cosmos in search of them.

Either way, when they were together again, he’d know.

They both would.

--------

a/n: I’m not crying, you’re crying.

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#zemo #baron zemo #helmut zemo #baron helmut zemo #zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #baron zemo x reader #baron helmut zemo x reader #barricade day #zemo fanfic

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imagineitbetter · 3 years

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CTEC502 – Week 6 Reflection

Intro to Creative Technologies

How is my creative practice changing?

I just keep reminder myself, the brain never stops, you can feed it with more information, another chapter, another podcast, another documentary...

I’m more conscious of what I choose to invest my time on, I’ve changed music for podcasts on technology, science, design, I recognise the ones I enjoy the most relate to the mind and social behaviours, I’m giving Drag Race a break and instead watching more documentaries, I’ve promised Kvothe from The wise man’s fear and Sapiens from Yuval Noah I would come back soon, to finish their books, right now I’m engaged with Creative Technologies for Multidisciplinary Application.

Finally I picked up my PC’s pen and played with it.

How am I experiencing the difference between having an idea in my mind vs growing an idea in the world?

Recently I’ve been giving a better use to features that I normally would never use but are very helpful, like using the browser bookmarks to store and organised information I find useful or want to come back to, I’ve started to use my phone’s notes app to write down ideas, projects, issues that come up to my mind, for future projects and not just leaving it all on my head.

An experience I want to highlight was making my vlog video through animatron, although I wanted to do so much more but my knowledge was limited, it helped me imagine myself creating something better and fun in the future. I’m such a big fan of animated series meaningful and innovative like Big Mouth. Maybe they’ll hire me one day...

I’m developing more nuanced views on…

The meaning Technology, uses, influence, and responsibilities with it. It’s a broad understanding to grasp, but I think we must think harder on our actions around it, for example with social media, what do we want to really achieve with it, what is the purposes of having a social profile, what information do we want to share and how does it benefit in any way, how can we avoid young generation’s potential go to waste and instead optimised it. Another example is with my professional life, the opportunities that Technology offers me to fill me with knowledge and use it for good purposes, to not fall into the technological determinism trap and instead be the future shaper.

These are some things I learned this week:

Technological Determinism refers to the idea that technology dictates the future of society and not homo sapiens, however it can be argued that technology is just a human tool like any other and therefore is our responsibility to use it for our benefit and to shape our own future, but to do so it requires our collaborative work and understanding of the challenges daily presented.

APA referencing, was more of a refresher.

A strategy for problem framing, which is ask and answer the what, why, who, where and when of your project.

Bees are important pollinator insects and honey producers that also help maintaining the balance on our ecosystem and the richness of our nature (flowers, trees), fruits and vegetables.

An example of professional practice that I find interesting.

RainbowYOUTH a charitable organisation that seeks out the wellbeing, provides education, support, information, and advocacy for the LGBTIQ+ community in New Zealand.

RainbowYOUTH offer a range of support and information services for the LGBTIQ+ community as well as allies, for example offer gender and sexuality support, homelessness support, online support, awareness and support events, has multiple resources like InsideOut a free video-based teaching resource that aims to reduce homophobia, transphobia and bullying focusing in educating kids and young people in school years 7-13, although can also be used to educate adults.

I find rainbowYouth’s mission and work very important for New Zealand and an exemplar worldwide, I consider education, inclusiveness, diversity and offering a save environment for our youth and people in general fundamental for the development of our society, in our present and future; our technology is rapidly improving and so should be our thinking.

I can now see the ethical issues behind.

Social Media, has become a great tool to communicate with people, a message, promote businesses, provide information, give an understanding of the different cultures and behaviours in the world, it connect us, however it is also increasing the influence power over society in different ambits, political, social, behavioural and ethical. Unfortunately, with the among of information being streamed right now is making it almost impossible to be able to filter and identify it as truth, false, useful, good or bad influential; everyone’s opinions and interests differ, making it hard to control what the young, uneducated, naïve people, really anyone is receiving and doing with it.

Among many issues, a simple like, or watch can make you an accomplice of promoting a wrong message or supporting an influencer with unreliable or absolutely bullshit information, something you cannot take back easily.

Ethical Issues Surrounding Social Networking Sites - 922 Words | Research Paper Example (ivypanda.com)

#CTEC502

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laytonsartblog · 5 years

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How To Solve Everything

Little Spaces - Ch.2

Ch.1, Ch.2, Ch.3

Warning: This story contains violence, gun related violence, gang related violence, starvation, hypothermia, dysfunctional family themes, dysfunctional domestic themes, poverty, and homophobia/transphobia. Read with caution and at a good time for you. Take care of yourself.

Logan has a schedule he dedicates his life to.

First, to wake up at five am.

Next, is to get in the shower without a bucket. Why without a bucket? Because he's damn rich.

Y'see, when you're one of the most successful people in the country of Loríses, running a multi-billion dollar corporation on affordable apartment living and clean energy resources and steady bank loan agreements, well... you can afford some time.

That, and clean water.

Once that's all done and good, Logan likes to relax and have a nice breakfast in his humble top-apartment as he watches the news from the table.

The time didn't really matter when he woke up or finished eating because he never booked (or more accurately put, was forced to book) a meeting or council accommodation or ribbon cutting or something before eleven am.

Breakfast was his only sanctity; he made sure to have plenty of it.

With the news and breakfast over, Logan would head out to work with his classic polo and tie with a briefcase in hand, then spend about eight hours basically running around heading between business meetings and stock readings and introductory openings and apartment gatherings and- well, you get the picture.

Without a hitch, Logan'd get home at around seven-thirty pm, have some sort of dinner out with colleagues he really didn't care for, and get home to either sleep or do his favorite kind of work; charity work.

In the charity work's case?; he wouldn't get a wink of rest.

Today, Logan woke up like he would any other day, perhaps a little later than he thought he would, but that was due to his one am adoption centre charity bidding auction last night.

When he went to check his phone for any messages from his secretary for the day, he found only two from the uptight woman:

You have the day off, Mr.Corbett.

Have a nice day.

Logan looked on in confusion.

I have the day off? Why? he texted back.

His secretary immediately responded with a simple,You haven't used your vacation days at all for the past year, Mr.Corbett. If you don't use them by the end of September, you lose them. I took liberty of letting you off for the next week.

Logan was about to fight back and tell her he's coming into work anyway, but he found she's a bit faster with her hands.

You need it, Logan.

Go visit that old lady down the street, in the bookshop. Her name is Mrs.Tamry. She's my mother's sister and owns the place. She could use some company today.

Logan groaned. He wasn't moving the stubborn woman and that meant he actually had to take care of himself. Woe is he.

Logan grumpily put the phone to his bedside table before face-planting onto his bed. He groaned some more, kicking his feet and punching his hands into the pillows. Perhaps childish, yes, but Logan was never really raised to do much else than work. He didn't know what else to do.

Logan remembered the Mrs.Tamry from his secretary's messages a few minutes after his tantrum and sighed as he flipped over on the bed, rolling out of it.

After a shower he went over to his closet and picked out something a little more casual- a flannel and finer jeans -before stuffing down some toast to head to this bookowner.

Logan would admit that the bookstore part of the old woman was interesting; he's loved being read to and reading stories ever since he could recount the ABC's. It was one of the few pastimes he could be shown doing in public: his public advisor had once told him it made him look both gentle and intelligent, and the ladies would love it. Logan had just told him that he didn't care about the ladies and continued on his way to his office.

Logan finally made his way to the shop. He rolled his eyes at the name: "Book-Ends and Seller's Beggining." It was charming, if not a little corny, and Logan wasn't sure if this was really worth his time, but then he saw the little old lady through the glass sitting by her lonesome and let out a breath of air.

Dammit. Why do I have to feel so guilty?

Logan pushed his way through the tall glass doors and looked his way around, noticing the high bookshelves and neat working stations. It seemed grandma kept up with the times as Logan noticed a small table with a few charging stations attached to it, and a couple of teens doing their homework while plugging their phones in nearby. A stack of laps for rent stood on a shelf near the station.

Logan heard the old woman laugh hoarsely behind him.

"Well, now I wasn't expecting such a dashing young man in my shop so early in the morning!" Mrs.Tamry teased, still laughing. She got up from her weaved rocking chair and instead shuffled her way over to a flustered Logan. "Got some good bone structure- although the hair could use some work. A working man, hmm?"

Logan stammered at the guiding, touching hands and expert eye. "Yes ma'am, I- I am a businessman," he squeaked out.

Logan was used to just saying nothing while out in public, or worse, hosting everything and never getting a break. Having this conversation, if not an awkward one, made him sweat bullets. It was unknown territory.

"A businessman, huh?" Mrs.Tamry sang. She looked him over a few more times, noting the sweaty palms and pale face, before hollaring over to the kids in the corner, "Does this man look familiar?"

The three in the corner; a smaller, but colorful child, a tall but scraggly young fellow, and a boy with a star for his shirt all turned their heads.

The colorful kid snickered. "Nah, he looks too nervous to be any big shot I've heard of," they chided.

"Yeah, and what would he be doing here of all places if he was?" the scraggly lad questioned.

"Hey, knock it off!" the boy in the star shirt huffed. "The guy's probably super sweet and here to pick something up for his wife where they'll read fairytales to their kids and it'll be really damn cute!"

The colorful child started laughing hard; so hard, in fact, that they started tearing up. The scraggly kid did the same. The star boy just crossed his arms, looking to Logan with a much more innocent view.

Logan was sweating so profusely he was afraid he was going to faint. Mrs.Tamry just watched with a crooked smile at their imaginations.

"I am right, huh? You're just a nice guy!" the star boy asked, leaning in. The other two troublemakers got themselves together enough to lean in too, giggling.

"Yeah, tell us! Who are you?"

Logan couldn't stop himself before he even knew what his brain and mouth were going to say.

"I-I'm gay."

Well that was certainly new.

Logan realized what he said and covered his mouth with his hand, shock covering his entire face. Oh now you've done it, he roared at himself, you've told three kids and an old lady you're a disgusting pansy!

But the yelling and the chastising and the kicking-him-out-of-the-store never came. The other children looked to him in absolute glee, and the old woman just snickered.

"So what, dude? I'm like... mega gay too," the boy in the star shirt joked. He easily smiled at Logan.

Logan couldn't tell if he was being encouraged, or if he was doing the encouraging to the boy.

The other two children looked between eachother before looking to Logan. "We're non-binary. We use they/them pronouns. Could you please use them?"

Logan just barely managed a nod, his nerves in overdrive. He just outed himself and now these brave kids were coming out to him too? It was a hell of a thing to wrap around his brain. "O-Of course I will," he managed through chattering teeth.

Logan turned to the old woman last. He expected her to throw him out at first, but now he realized that she knew all this time. Now he looked to Mrs.Tamry in fear. The fact she could figure something like that out so quick was something Logan wasn't prepared to deal with, shock after shock being ran into him in the past ten minutes.

"Young man, you realize that this establishment has a 'We Accept You' sticker on the front, right?" she giggled, patting his shoulder despite him being a tree and her a stump.

Logan looked back to the glass and saw a mirrored version of that sticker on the door; clear as day.

Logan slumped his shoulders. "Oh."

Mrs.Tamry took his shoulders and guided Logan over to a seat, sitting in the one next to him with a sigh. "Ooh, that feels much better on my back."

Logan just stared at her, sweating and shaking and why had I not fought my secretary on letting me work-

Mrs.Tamry clasped a hand on top of his fussing one and smiled gently. The wild side of her had been turned down, and now something much more sweet laid itself out to the scatterbrained gay.

Logan felt himself calm down just a little.

"Now now, I've been told by my niece that her boss was coming in today to spend his day off. I'm to assume that's you, right?" she gently asked. The hand on Logan's softly rubbed it's thumb against Logan's knuckles.

Logan calmed down just a little more.

His tongue managed to unstick itself from the roof of his mouth enough to let out a small, "yes."

He didn't know why he was so freaked. Usually when he got this nervous he'd just bury it down like he had been for the past thirty something years but in this place, it felt like no matter how hard he tried, he was forced to feel everything he was feeling. Logan did not like it.

Mrs.Tamry sighed and used her other hand to tap a gentle rhythm in Logan's arm, giving him something to hold on to.

"Y'know, I didn't expect such a good man like you to be holding back so much fear. I could feel it as you stepped through that door," Mrs.Tamry commented, trying to make small talk.

Logan avoided her eyes. "Well, I haven't got much of a place to let it out."

Mrs.Tamry kept the rhythm on his arm while she hummed.

"Well that simply isn't good!" she preached. "Tell you what, if you're feeling so scared and trembling like you are now, you can always come to me, y'hear?"

Logan nodded a little. He could feel himself slowly relax, coming down from being so flustered and flabbergasted.

New places, new conversations- in which he made actual conversations instead of one-sided invites -new people, new ideas, new everything! It made his brain go into overdrive and his nerves alight. Usually he was able to handle it, bury it deep for later, but here? It seemed he couldn't stuff the feelings down.

Maybe it was Mrs.Tamry's wild but motherly approach, or the bookstore's inviting nature, or the teens he talked to earlier, but either way, Logan just sighed.

He was okay. He was safe. He was okay.

Mrs.Tamry pulled Logan up and rubbed his back while she headed him in the direction of the laptops.

"Why don't you do yourself a favor and find a game to play or- or a messaging site to talk to someone!" Mrs.Tamry then giggled cheekily. "It seems you don't have many friends, so now's a time to start!"

Logan took a seat next to the three teens with an awkward smile and a wave as he opened up the laptop. It was a little out of style, but it seemed fine enough as Logan booted it up.

"We never got your name, sir," the star boy asked politely while Logan logged in.

"Yeah! Like for example I'm Joan and that's Talyn, and he's Thomas, so now you know us!" the newly named Joan called out, tipping their beanie like a celebrity.

Talyn nodded along, playing with their colorful hair. "Homework is getting boring, we wanna know you!"

Logan turned to the three kids with a reserved smile as he signed up for a messenger site called GetAlong.

"My name is Logan Corbett."

Taglist

@amazable01 @vara-albion @sonicrainicorn @artist-of-the-moon @sparkedawg @unnipanda623 @kiibo57415 @anxious-sunflowe @thatonenerdphotographer @romanthestarstruckqueer @angels-and-dreams @midokiya @nedandn30 @chaosboitm @felicianoromano @supersoftsupersleep @icequeenoriginal

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanart #logan sanders #economic crisis au #economical dystopian #economic crisis #dystopia #dystopian #homophobia #tw homophobia

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sanderssidesfanfiction · 5 years

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We’ll Carry On - Chapter Seventeen

We’ll Carry On Tag

General Content Warnings: Sympathetic Deceit Sanders, Substance Abuse, Abandonment, Minor Character Death, Transphobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dissociation, Bullying, Homophobia

August 14th, 2016

“Mama?” Dee asked uncertainly, tapping her cheek. He didn’t want to wake her up if she was sleeping, but he didn’t think she was. Her eyes were open and moving, though she was staring at a wall that had nothing on it. “Mama, I’m hungry.”

But Mama didn’t do anything, she just continued to sit there. Dee’s stomach snarled and he felt tears prick his eyes. Mama didn’t used to be like this. Usually she would just take those stupid pills once a week, and then something changed. But ever since she was taking them more often, he’d been getting less food, less attention, less everything.

Dee crawled into her lap and imagined himself just sitting down while she was in that old rocking chair he loved to sit in, and that they were rocking back and forth, back and forth, and he would get food as soon as his favorite show ended. Instead of sitting on the uncomfortable floor, with no idea when he’d be able to get food again, he pretended he was cared for, and safe.

March 1st, 2019

When Dee first woke up, it was on a couch with a different texture than the one he normally fell asleep on waiting for Mama. He opened his eyes and looked around, finding a light-filled, open-air space that was nothing like his home, and he nearly shouted in his alarm, before he remembered. Mama sent him away.

Tears pricked his eyes and he wiped at them furiously before anyone could see. Or at least, he hoped no one saw them. “Hey,” a man said from behind him, and he whirled around. “It’s okay, Dee. My name is Remy. Do you remember where you are?”

Slowly, Dee nodded.

Remy smiled encouragingly. “It looks like we’re the first ones up for the day. I don’t know a lot of American Sign Language, but I know enough to understand yes and no, and some basic signs for food, water, the bathroom, that sort of stuff. Emile is gonna teach me more so I can eventually talk to you like he and Logan can. And I think he plans on teaching the others, too.”

Dee didn’t understand. Mama had taught him sign since he was just a baby, because she already knew it and wanted to talk to him. But people learning a new language? For him? Was he...even worth that trouble?

Remy watched him patiently for a few moments. “Is there anything that you’d like right now? A drink?” he offered.

Dee nodded. “Water?” he signed.

“Yeah, of course, let’s get you water,” Remy said, holding out his hand for Dee to take if he wanted.

Dee gently took it in one of his still-gloved hands, and followed Remy to a spacious kitchen with an island surrounded by chairs. Remy helped him onto one of the chairs and poured water into a glass filled with ice, passing it to Dee. Dee took extra care to not spill it.

Remy sat down next to Dee with his own glass of water. “So, Dee...do you want to tell me about yourself? You don’t have to, but I’m a little curious. How old are you?”

“I’m five,” Dee signed.

“Five, huh? Are you in school?” Remy asked.

Dee shook his head. “Mama didn’t take me,” he signed.

“Past...go...oh, she never took you to enroll?” Remy filled in.

Dee nodded.

Remy frowned. “Well, that’s no good. It’s a little late to enroll you in this school year, it would be hard for you to catch up. I’ll have to talk to Emile about summer school.”

Dee frowned. “Why?”

“Well, you have to go to school, Dee. It’s the law,” Remy said. “Do you know why your mom never took you?”

Dee nodded, looking away.

“I doubt I’d know enough sign for you to explain, and I won’t force you to say anything about it if you don’t want to,” Remy said. Dee was surprised, but didn’t get a chance to comment, because Remy pointed to his gloves. “I like your gloves, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Dee signed.

“Any particular reason you like them?” Remy asked.

Dee blushed and looked down. He was always embarrassed explaining the reason he liked them to strangers. But...this man, though a stranger, was married to his possible dad. A dad who had shown more care for him in one day than Mama had shown him for a month. Maybe...maybe he could explain? “It makes me feel like a villain,” Dee whispered. “Villains don’t get hurt. The hero may beat them, but they always come back. So I pretend to be a villain, to try and hurt less.”

Remy frowned, and Dee prepared himself to get laughed at, or lectured, or told he shouldn’t look up to villains. But all Remy said was, “That makes sense.”

Dee looked at Remy with a frown.

“It’s sad that you have to pretend you can’t get hurt, but I understand why you do it,” Remy said. “And I don’t blame you at all. Seriously. My parents...well, they never left me but they didn’t always provide the help I needed. So I pretended to be my favorite characters from my favorite books, who could do everything by themselves.”

Dee winced. That sounded like what he did, almost to a T...whatever that expression meant.

“Glad I’m not the only one with parents who sucked,” Logan said as he walked past the two of them to the refrigerator.

Dee jumped but Remy just chuckled. “Yeah, no, my parents weren’t one-hundred percent with it. It wasn’t fun.”

Logan sat down at the table with a glass of milk. “So today’s Friday...do I still have to go to school?”

“Yeah. We only called you in absent yesterday because we needed to move ASAP. I’ll be driving you and Roman to school today, while Emile will take Patton and Virgil later in the morning,” Remy said.

“Convenient, how the drive to my school takes just enough time that you can drop Roman off at his on the way back,” Logan said, arching an eyebrow.

Remy laughed and agreed, and Dee stared into his glass of water. He didn’t like talking. Too many people accused him of lying or being sarcastic, and he didn’t know why everyone always assumed that about him. With sign, it was easy to show sarcasm and no one misinterpreted you. So he mostly stuck to that. The only upside about talking here was that he could communicate with Remy.

Talking took a lot of effort and thought, though, too. That’s why sign was so much easier, so much better. But...even if the other kids in the house learned a little sign, would it be enough for Dee to communicate with them? Would he have to resort to talking most of the time? He didn’t want to, but he was the new kid. The new kids were the ones who listened to the rules already there, they didn’t bend the rules to fit their needs.

Logan was waving his hand gently in Dee’s direction and Dee looked up, making a questioning noise in the back of his throat.

“Why are you so sad?” Logan signed.

Dee shrugged. “I’m not,” he lied.

“I don’t believe you,” Logan shot back.

Dee huffed. “Only two people in this house know sign. I don’t want to have to talk.”

“You won’t have to talk,” Logan spoke aloud, probably for Remy’s benefit. “Nobody will make you. Mister Emile can help you during the day while Mister Remy’s at work, and whenever he’s not around, I can be your translator.”

“What about school?” Dee asked, pulling a face at the final word.

“I don’t know about school,” Logan said thoughtfully. “But I assume that they have classes for nonverbal kids, or they have interpreters that can help you.”

Dee sighed. “I don’t like talking. It’s like there’s a block from my brain to my mouth and every word has to get around it somehow. It’s not easy.”

Logan frowned. “That can happen when you’re learning a second language,” Logan signed. “But if you know both and learned both at the same time, I can’t explain that.”

Dee shrugged, eyes sliding away from Logan back to his glass. He had yet to look anyone here in the eye, but he knew he was getting close with Logan and Remy. Close was about as far as he ever got with anyone, though. The one exception to that rule was Mama, and he didn’t do it often with her, either.

There was a knock on the wall from behind them and Dee nearly jumped out of his skin again. He turned to find Emile standing there. Was everyone in this house that quiet?! “Sorry, Dee, I didn’t want to startle you,” he apologized.

Dee just shrugged. He wasn’t in a position to complain.

“But, the reason I came in. I noticed your discussion, and your description of speaking, Dee, reminds me of language disorders.” Emile leaned against the wall and worried his lip. “Now, I can’t know which one, because I’m not a speech therapist, but coupled with some of your other behaviors...well, if you’re okay with it, I’d like to take you to someone who might be able to evaluate you, just to make sure that there’s not anything we’re missing.”

Dee nodded. That was okay, he supposed. It was good to cover your bases, wasn’t it?

Emile smiled at him before glancing to Remy, tilting his head away from the kitchen. “Mind having a private conversation really quick?” he asked Remy.

Remy nodded and left the room with Emile, leaving Dee and Logan alone. Logan tilted his head to the side slightly and hummed. “Hey, Dee?” he asked.

Dee nodded, not glancing from his water but signing, “What?” all the same.

“Do you know how to read?” Logan asked.

Dee looked up at that, turning pink. He knew that was one of the things you had to learn in school, but he’d never been. And now that he knew he was supposed to have started going, well...he doubted the others would call him stupid to his face, but what about behind his back? He shook his head slightly.

“I thought not,” Logan said. “That’s quite all right, though. If you want, when I have finished my personal studies after school, I could help teach you how to read.”

There were loud footsteps approaching behind them, and the boy Dee recognized as the one who was singing Disney songs scoffed. “Personal studies? Logan? Really? Just say you have homework like the rest of us and be done with it!”

“Homework is personal studies, Roman. As opposed to shared learning in a classroom,” Logan said without so much as a shrug.

Roman opened the door to the refrigerator and rolled his eyes. “Look, it’s nice that you want to help the new kid, Logan, but I doubt you have any books he’d be interested in.”

“We don’t have to use books. We can also use captions on cartoons when he learns more basic words,” Logan said. “And if you would allow it, we could always use some of your books. The fairy tales you have as a paperback for example. We would use that, rather than the collectible you got as a late Christmas present, of course.”

Roman paused and thought. “Yeah, you could use the old paperbacks if you want. Just ask first, because I might want to read them that day.”

Logan nodded. “Naturally.”

Dee was a little shocked at this conversation. He waved his hand to get Logan’s attention again and once he had it, signed, “Why would you help me?”

Logan looked taken aback at that question. “Well...I always appreciate helping people who want to learn. But other than that...whether or not you’re related to us, you’re part of our family for now. And we don’t let our family hang out to dry. We make sure that they’re taken care of.”

Roman piped up. “I always enjoy sharing my fairy tales with anyone who’ll listen. Most people say I’m too old for fairy tales but I just say that they haven’t read the right ones if they think people just outgrow those stories.”

“Both excellent points, boys, but you’re going to have to move fast to get to school at this rate,” Emile said from the entrance to the room.

Logan and Roman finished their drinks quickly, both of them grabbing something or another from the pantry, presumably as a quick breakfast. Emile approached Dee and Dee tried to swallow his apprehension. He was still essentially in a house full of strangers, after all.

Emile sat down next to him and looked him over. “How are you holding up, kid?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” Dee signed simply.

Emile smiled at that and again, Dee was surprised. “That’s good, Dee. Now, once all the others are at school, we’re going to have to go to a friend of mine and Remy’s to get help with giving you a legal place to stay. We’re registered foster parents, so we can keep you here, but we need a couple things first.”

Dee nodded and rubbed at his cheek, grimacing. He was itching again. He needed his eczema cream.

“Oh, and we should probably get you some cream for your eczema,” Emile said, wincing. “If you come with me, can you point out what you might have used when you were with your mama?”

Dee nodded. That was easy, he could definitely do that.

There was a loud bang upstairs and the sound of two kids yelling and laughing, and Emile sighed. “I’m afraid Patton and Virgil might be a little...rowdier than Logan and Roman are,” he said apologetically. “But they’ll only be here for another hour, maybe, and then we can take them to school and get you settled in here.”

Dee nodded again. He wasn’t sure what settling in entailed, but he hoped it would be nice.

#we'll carry on #sanders sides fanfiction #deceit sanders #remy sanders #logan sanders #emile picani #our creations #danger gays

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throwawayaccountsworld-blog · 5 years

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My Ex Boyfriend

TW: Transphobia, ableism, fatphobia, bodyshaming, victim blaming, domestic abuse, death, suicide, self harm, eating disorders, gaslighting

This isn’t a “tell me to dump him” post, he already dumped me and I’m mostly just venting and laying my cards on the table, I’m sorry for how long it is but I wanted to give full context to everything, tl;dr at the bottom.

I won’t go through the entire history of my relationship with my ex (mostly because we’d be here for hours) but we were together for 4 years, when we first met I was 19 and he was in his 30’s and we hit it off right away, I’d never actually wanted to date anyone before I got talking with him (I felt that between my Asperger’s syndrome how my mood often was that I was too damaged) but for the first three years we were great together, things weren’t perfect but he made me happy and I thought I’d done the same for him.

Anyway right after we got together my sister died due to a genetic disorder and in the process I lost my best (and at the time my only) friend, I’d planned my entire life around her and suddenly I had to accept that I’d lost her, I spent a lot of nights lying awake and thinking about how I should have died instead (I know now that that’s unhealthy and that it isn’t rational to think like that) He was amazing during this, he was so understanding, so emotionally available and he’d listen to me for hours and hours as I talked, it was during this period that I realized I’d started slowly fallen in love with him.

Three years in I was in my final year of university and I got a call from my boyfriend, his mother had taken her own life, understandably he was devastated, he’d been her carer for years and we’d all wanted to believe she was making progress with her mental health. I booked a train up to be with him immediately.

I spent six weeks in a different country with him as he grieved, tried to make sense of why she’d done what she did and helped to arrange her funeral as well as settle any accounts she had left, it was a stressful time in our relationship but I was determined that I was going to support him just like he’d supported me.

During this period my boyfriend started to become very short tempered with me, he’d shout at me (usually for putting my foot in it and saying the wrong thing) but given what had just happened it was understandable, he’d just lost his mother in arguably one of the worst ways, and to make it worse he found her body so I quickly forgave him during this period.

It was during this period that I’d finally come to terms with the fact that I was transgender, I’d spent years fighting the way that I felt because I didn’t want to be a burden to my family or to my boyfriend but after a lot of soul searching I knew I had to tell my boyfriend about it, his mother had left a note and a lot of what she said was scarily relatable to me, I felt that if I didn’t get this off my chest then I may have ended up going the same way. I was terrified but I sat him down and explained how I felt and he was extremely understanding, he told me he loved me, that he’d love me no matter what I did and that he’d be right there to support me because we were partners, I knew then for sure that what we had was real.

The funeral came and went, it was an extremely emotional day for everyone and when it was over I went to give him a hug, he’d handled the funeral well but I thought he’d need the support, instead of hugging me back he pushed me off of him and said he wanted a drink, I was a bit hurt by this but I figured that he was just grieving so I decided to try and make sure he didn’t drink too much. Anyway he ended up drinking sixteen beers and calling me a “miserable Debby downer” in front of his family (I’d been diagnosed with major depressive disorder a few months back) and it stung, I tried to tell myself that he was drunk, probably thought it was just crude humor and would apologize in the morning (he didn’t)

The day before I was due to head home he decided to get drunk again, this time on a full bottle of whiskey, at first he was laughing, joking and it was all fun, then he started doing karaoke which was still fine although I was worried about the neighbors but overall everything was fine, then when we were getting ready for bed he wanted to wrestle (he’d occasionally do this to me but I was always fine with it, he was gentle and it was more of a mess around than anything) anyway he ended up putting me in a headlock and then he applied a lot of pressure, I remember trying to get him to stop but he kept going for another seven seconds before letting go and passing out.

I lay up most of the night trying to rationalize what had happened just then, he’d always stopped when I wanted him to in the past, and he’d always been gentle but just then he’d hurt me, I remember bringing it up to him in the morning and he said he didn’t remember doing that to me and that I probably misread the situation, I ended up agreeing with him before heading home.

During my stay with my boyfriend I’d put on some weight (about 14lbs) and he mentioned it to me when I was skyping with him, he said it didn’t look good with the clothes I was wearing now and that I’d look better if I dropped some weight (he kept making fat pig comments that were framed as jokes but they hurt honestly) I felt so self conscious over it that I used my student loan to get a personal trainer to help me drop the weight, instead I ended up eating under 500 calories a day and working out for three hours a day without the PT knowing, I dropped 4 stone in two months and while I felt that I looked great looking back I can see this wasn’t healthy, when my PT found out how I’d shifted the weight he was horrified and basically forced me to get help.

Around about this time I became friends with a guy I’d met via some charity work, I’ll call him Lee. Anyway me and Lee had a lot of the same hobbies and we both had major depressive disorder, he was someone I could talk to about the thoughts I was having (my boyfriend would always shut down any conversation about my mental state by bringing up the fact that his mother had major depressive disorder and that he couldn’t bare to talk about me taking my own life)

Around Christmas I ended up heading up to visit my boyfriend for a while, I’d done this every year and I felt that he could use the emotional support given that it was the first Christmas without his mother, when I got there he seemed strained and like he didn’t know how to interact with me, I found this odd but I didn’t think much of it, I figured that he was probably just upset given that it was the first Christmas since his mother passed away and that I’d do whatever I could to support him.

Anyway we got back to his house and the first thing he said to me was that I looked “pudgy” and that he didn’t like that I had to “dress like that” when coming to see him (I was wearing a pea coat, jeans and a pair of kitten heels)

I felt incredibly hurt by this and I told him as much, I told him that it was fucked up to say that when I’d travelled all that way to see him and then the whole thing descended into a screaming match where we ended up sitting in separate rooms crying.

About an hour later his sister showed up, they got into an argument, he said something truly disgusting (I’m not going to repeat it) and she left in tears, I was horrified and told him as much when he snapped at me for being “all buddy buddy” with his sister which lead to another argument, during this he grabbed me by the arms, rammed me into the wall and screamed in my face that I was a “pathetic sperg and that I was lucky he put up with me, anyone else would have dumped me” before leaving, I spent an hour in a heap on the floor crying that night.

Once I’d regained my composure I ended up confiding in Lee about what had happened and how I was feeling (whilst omitting the wall ramming) and he insisted on paying for a hotel if my boyfriend kicked me out (he’d threatened to do that at one point) along with a ticket back home, but then he cried and I ended up caving and forgiving him, but I was both frightened and angry at him still.

After I went home he started to complain about me hanging out with Lee, he started to accuse Lee of wanting to break us up, that I was interested in him and that he wasn’t going to stand for it, he said some pretty messed up stuff about Lee which I tried to ignore, but during this Lee found out about the issues in my relationship and blamed himself, he ended up self harming and drinking due to how bad he felt over the situation, as you can imagine I was horrified that my friend had done this because of me and my drama.

Anyway this all lead up to my graduation, my boyfriend had come down and he’d spent the whole time complaining and telling me how I’d put on so much weight, how I didn’t pass, how my outfits looked bad and how I hadn’t made any effort for him (I’d spent two weeks deep cleaning my apartment, bought in all his favourite food, got him an outfit for my graduation at his request and agreed to do anything he’d wanted)

Right after my graduation ceremony he nothing short of frog marched me into a taxi to get back to my place, I didn’t get to say “hi” to any of my friends and I didn’t get the chance to tell my mother what was happening before I was gone, anyway once we were home he stripped off, went to the bathroom but left his phone open when a message came through and I know what I did next was wrong but I read it, I know that was bad of me but I couldn’t help it.

He’d been cheating on me with his ex girlfriend (who he told me he was just friends with) for a year, right after I went home from supporting him during his mothers funeral he started having an affair, I can’t begin to tell you how I felt in that moment, initially I felt nothing, it didn’t seem real, I quickly deleted the message she’d sent (a simple “hey x”) and closed the phone.

It wasn’t until after he’d gone home and we were skyping that it came up, he told me he was dumping me, that she was pregnant, that I was a pathetic fat tranny who would never pass, that my sister was lucky because she got to get away from me and that I was a sperg who used my condition for sympathy, then he hung up and left me sat there on my own in the middle of the night.

I ended up drinking through all of the alcohol in my apartment before deliberately burning myself on the oven, I was crying the whole time, I sent him a long, rambling text saying that we could make it work, I’d drop the weight, I wouldn’t transition, I’d never talk about my conditions ever again if we could just go back to the way we were but he only responded by saying I was the reason his mother killed herself and that he wished I would “do the world a favour and jump”

I’m doing better now, me and Lee got together recently and I feel that this relationship is a lot healthier than what I had before, I suppose I’m just putting this out there to try and move on so that I can give him the better parts of myself, my ex and I reconnected on a distant basis recently, he’s ok, the ex of his is ok, he’s sorry but we both agreed to never date each other again.

Tl;dr – boyfriend dumped me for the woman he cheated on me with for a year and almost made me kill myself.

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garrettauthor · 6 years

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Feedback on trans rep appreciated:

If you’ve been around a while, you’ll know that I made a huge mistake with trans representation in The Mindmage’s Wrath, the second book in the Academy Journals. (If you haven’t, I did, and I apologize to you newly).

One thing I promised to do to address the issue was include a foreword in the book. I’ve now written that foreword and consulted with some trans readers in my Discord server. They suggested some improvements, which I implemented.

I’m opening it up for wider critique and input before I go to publish. Of course, there’s no obligation whatsoever to contribute. But if you’d be willing, I’d be eternally grateful. The foreword is under the cut:

FOREWORD

In this book, you’ll meet a character. Her name is Perrin of the family Arkus, and she is a new instructor at the Academy.

Perrin is also trans.

There’s a good chance, if you’re reading this, that you already know Underrealm was designed to be an inclusive and diverse fantasy world. That might be why you wanted to read it in the first place.

When I wrote Underrealm’s first series, the Nightblade Epic, I made the High King Enalyn, a trans woman. (For those who don’t know, “King” and “Queen” are gender-neutral terms, and there are kings and queens of various genders across the nine kingdoms.)

As with Perrin—or with most other Underrealm characters—her trans-ness was not a huge component of her story. It was simply a part of who she was. Many readers were pleased with the decision and liked seeing Enalyn in this world. But, too, some trans readers reached out to me with more information.

Enalyn’s experience is not universal. She is what we would call entirely “passing”—that is, you wouldn’t know she was trans if you met her on the street.

(I have to interject here: I, personally, really dislike the word “passing,” because it implies its own position towards one end of a spectrum, and the other end would be “failing.” This is a sentiment I have seen my trans readers express, and I share in their frustration. However, it’s not my word or my community. And for the purposes of this foreword, I’m not aware of another word that communicates the same idea as succinctly. I checked with readers before using it here, but it was the best any of us could do.)

Some trans people are not able to achieve a “passing” look for themselves. Others do not want to. People in both groups are entirely, 100% valid. And it seemed clear that they would like to see themselves in Underrealm as well.

Thus, Perrin. Perrin is trans, but she did not feel the need to transition to a “passing” standard. She was big—and I mean, truly big, all her life, and from her family she inherited a great, shaggy mass of hair. If you imagine a close relative of Hagrid from Harry Potter, but with a much sharper mind, you’d have a good idea of how I imagine her. Not that my imagination is anything but marginally more important than anyone else’s.

Just how far did she transition? Who knows. It’s not my business. Maybe she just shaves and wears feminine clothing. It doesn’t matter. She’s a trans woman.

And so she was introduced. Most of the readers who had come from the Nightblade Epic, and who had raised the issue with me in the first place, seemed pleased.

And then, earlier this year, the Academy Journals got a huge promotional boost online. A huge flood of readers found and began reading the series—partially because of the representation they had heard was in it.

These were brand-new readers. They had never read the Nightblade Epic, and they had never been involved in the discussion around Enalyn, and thus, Perrin.

I had made a huge mistake.

For reference, here is the paragraph that introduces Perrin:

There behind the lectern was, quite simply, the most massive woman he had ever seen. Her shoulders seemed to stretch as wide as Ebon’s arm span, and though the ceiling was at least a pace above her head, her stature made it seem that she might bump against it. Huge hands gripped the lectern’s edges and nearly enveloped it, and her dark grey instructor’s robes strained mightily to contain her frame. Her eyes seemed small compared to the rest of her ruddy features, yet they sparkled with interest even when the sunlight missed them. Ebon thought this woman looked nothing like a wizard, but rather a mighty warrior of campfire legend, stripped of armor and shrouded instead in cloth, against which her body tried to rebel.

That description made existing Underrealm readers, who cared about trans representation, say, “Oh, cool! She’s an absolute brick shithouse!” It’s a body type women aren’t often allowed to have in media. It is, I hope, its own sort of progressive statement to have a woman like this appear in a story, and never, for one second, have anyone question her identity or her femininity.

Without all of the context I’ve presented here, however, it could also be interpreted that this description is how I view trans women in general.

This point was brought up by a reader who was wonderfully thoughtful and, despite speaking in a moment of pain that I myself had caused, exceptionally kind. They were also willing to converse with me about how to remedy the situation, though they were under no obligation to do so. The feedback that they and others provided was incredibly invaluable, and I am eternally grateful to everyone who has weighed in. Yes, even those who were angry with me. Can you blame them?

I’d like to stress that I don’t want to justify or minimize this mistake. I was trying to handle a problem, and that specific problem was addressed, to the satisfaction of those who had brought it up. After the problem came up, someone suggested I change Perrin’s description, that I make her smaller, more “typically” feminine, more “passing.” I didn’t want to do that, for obvious reasons. To do so would leave some of my own readers out in the cold.

But it was my responsibility, as a creator, to foresee that my solution would create this new problem. I didn’t predict that. That’s not okay, and it’s entirely my responsibility.

After a lot of conversations with people who, again, weren’t obligated to help me, and to whom I am exceptionally grateful, here is what I promised to do to fix the situation:

Early in the next Academy Journals book, I’m going to introduce at least one other trans character who will counterpoint Perrin the same way Enalyn was supposed to.

In the next book, I will handle the “reveal” of Perrin’s transness. Now, I already decided long ago that no trans character was going to be “outed”—i.e., revealed against their will. That will still be the case. I will figure out a way for Perrin to bring it up in a conversation that is natural and which Perrin can discuss on her own terms. There is absolutely no transphobia in Underrealm, and this conversation will reflect that.

I will use the above reveal to explicitly address the concerns about how Perrin was first introduced and characterized, using it as a lesson to teach non-trans readers that the way a trans person presents is no business of anyone else and is not a refutation of their gender identity. I will, again, do this in a way that contains no transphobia, and makes it entirely a matter of Perrin’s agency.

In the books I write before the next Academy Journals book, I will ensure to include multiple new trans characters representing a variety of genders and body types to further stress the diversity that exists within the trans community.

Finally, I am going to work harder to find and work with more trans authors and trans sensitivity readers. We have some, but I could clearly use more.

As another reader brought up, while these steps may go towards addressing the problem, they still don’t help any new readers who may read The Mindmage’s Wrath without having broader context for trans people in Underrealm.

And thus, this foreword.

When you meet Perrin in this story, I want you to know that she is trans. I want you to know that her appearance, though unconventional in our world, was of her own choosing. And I want you to know that she is not the single representative of trans people or trans culture—no one is. She is part of a wide spectrum of sizes, shapes, and presentations, all of which are valid, all of which are worthy.

She is a trans woman. She is a woman.

There have been no new Academy Journals books since I made the above promises, but they are coming Soon™. In the meantime, if you want to read about other trans characters within Underrealm, I’d recommend our new series, Tales of the Wanderer. The first book, Blood Lust, can be purchased here:

https://underrealm.net/tow1

The narrator of the book, Albern of the family, is a trans man. Future books in that series will have more trans characters.

Albern is also a guest-starring character in two books of the Nightblade Epic, Darkfire and Shadeborn, as well as the short story The Man and the Satyr.

Also in Shadeborn, you will meet the High King Enalyn, a trans woman. She appears again in the novel Weremage.

And there are many more to come.

If you have been a reader for some time, thank you for your patience as I learn how to do this better. If the Academy Journals is your first introduction to Underrealm, welcome. I hope that you enjoy your time here, and that you appreciate the wide, diverse range of characters you’ll find within. I know I sure do.

Garrett Robinson September, 2018

#trans rep #trans women #trans men

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not-gae-cuz-i-like-straight-wae · 3 years

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Part 2: Here we go again

So Jeansaaa wrote another message and I don't feel like putting too much effort in my answer, because I actually shouldn't give him/her any more attention, but I think I can make things even a bit more clear this time for all other people out here on Tumblr. Also, I blocked him/her now instead, because she/he seems to be incapable of keeping me blocked... I'm gonna talk to him/her, so I'll use "you", because that's more easy and direct then him/her or they.

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You first started of by saying (in the title) that you made a response post becasue responding to a re-blog in mobile is hard (smiley included), which is not very important... Then you followed with "for context look at my re-blog below" and thereafter, your message actually started.

Before I copy-paste the first part I'm responding to, I wanna say: use punctuation, dude! Your whole message is like one long sentence with commas.

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Okay, that being said, let’s begin:

I just wanna be done with This, the reason why I texted this 🙃 (the “smiley face”) after I said “don’t worry i’ll block you” is because it was supposed to be passive aggressive, I un-blocked you by accident (because I’m a clumsy mess, and I didn’t even know I un-blocked you until after you private messaged me about it), and I told people to block you, because this kind of stuff can make people incredibly uncomfortable,(and you’re being blatantly homophobic which I’m sure nobody within the lgbtq+ Community would like to see that)

Yeah, I'm glad I decided on blocking you myself! I'm not someone who blocks others. I'm not gonna hide from someone that doesn't share my opinion. Just acting like a little child and press that block button. I'd rather have normal conversations or even discussions like not-little-kids, teens and adults do (that's why I take so much time to explain myself as much as possible), but that blocking-unblocking-blocking-unblocking started to become quite annoying.

Also, I think people can decide for themselves whether they wanna block me or not. We're not all imbeciles, you know? And probably the only reason why people would even go to your blog and see you telling them to block me, is because of me. Right now, you literally got seven posts and almost all of them have to do with me (exceptions: 2). Kinda feel honored, really, but I actually pretty much regret bringing you in the spotlight now. If I hadn't reblogged your post, I doubt it if anyone would've ever seen your blog...

no matter how much you sugar coat it, supporting straight pride is under the umbrella of homophobia,

It's not, though. Don't make up your own definitions. Homophobia is showing dislike of or prejudice against gay people.

you’re basically saying that putting up lgbtq+ posters, making lgbtq+ safe-spaces won’t work, and you’re wrong, I live in Florida, a very anti-lgbtq+ State, I’ve been a victim of homophobia / transphobia ,

Posters won't stop homophobia / transphobia. Neither people who don't like your behaviour nor people who already accept your behaviour will change their behaviour because of a poster. Or at the very least, it will only anger those "very-dangerous-straights-that-hunt-you-guys" that you're talking about, more. But I know why you like those posters. You want those posters to be hanged up because you want to be the "star of the show". And that, I have to admit, IS working.

and when I see a poster, or even just a small sticker saying, lgbtq+ safe space, it just makes me feel better about myself ,

Honestly, that you need POSTERS and STICKERS to make you feel better about yourself, already tells me more than enough about your self confidence. WOW.

and yes you’re not “victimized”or “oppressed” if you Truly think you are

Dude, I literally said I know I'm not (in real life, because online, the story is a lot different these days).

answer this , have you’re parents ever kicked you out for being straight?, have you ever been bullied for being straight?, have you been called slurs for being straight?, have you ever hated yourself for being straight?,

No, why would I get kicked out / bullied / called a slur? WHY would I hate myself? I seriously don't know how to respond to this. Just an example: if a alcohol addicted person would ask me "have YOU ever felt bad for NOT feeling the need to drink?" I'd also be like... "Err. NO."

and about the gay friends, what you said is basically the same as, “I’m not racist because I have black Friends”, it doesn’t matter what friends you have your still homophobic. (Sorry if the formatting is weird, i’m not the best at writing, but I hope I got the point across)

I hate that nasty habit of you all to make comparisons with racism in discussions with lgbt+ topics. It's not the same! I know it's a filthy trick of yours to pretend like it IS all the same, but I'm not falling for that! I'm NOT a racist! Besides, I didn't say "I'm not homophobic, because I have gay friends". It was just something I added. I did give enough actual reasons for why I'm not homophobic, though.

This time, to even clearify that point MORE (when will I ever be done clearifying myself, hahaha), I'm gonna take that alcohol addicted person (shortening it to: AAP) as an example again. I don't support people to be alcohol addicted. It's their own choice. Imagine if that AAP wants to campaign for allowing drunk people to drive. I'm very much against that. The AAP gives alcohol to his/her children (and might pass the addiction to them). I'm most definitely against that too (because it has impact on the next generation). When he's/she's in the mood, the AAP drinks him-/herself half to death. I find that disgusting. I find it inhuman. I find that this person should work on some self-control over his/her desires! Having all these thoughts about the AAP, still doesn't make me AAP-phobic, though. Because if this person encounters me (in a not drunk state, of course), I will act normally towards him/her. I might tell him/her what I think about the addiction, but I'm not being a hateful person by doing so. I don't show dislike / prejustice against people that are addicted to alcohol (I also don't know why I should have to know about someone's alcohol addiction in the first place). And if the whole world starts to campaign for all AAP's due to an agenda that's been executed and they push it all in my and everyone’s face and I'm against THAT, it STILL doesn't make me AAP-phobic. That would make me AAP-agenda-phobic. Or that would make me changing-the-world-wrongly-phobic. Or altering-general-morality-phobic. Because YES. That IS what I am. I'm not lgbtqabcxyz-phobic, but I'm most certainly against all this brainwashing and mindcontrolling that's happening nowadays. This is what I told someone recently in a similar discussion (it’s “ABC”, the person I still intend to respond to on my blog and I wrote this in our private chat too):

“Look, you just can't expect everyone to just accept everything. You can't expect everyone to alter the vision of reality. You can't expect everyone to just be a leaf in the wind. To go with the flow. I know lots of people are like that, but I'm not. If they would suddenly tell me eating through your ears is just as normal as through your mouth, no matter how many people would agree with that, no matter how many people would tell me I'm crazy for thinking otherwise, my opinion would remain unchanged. That's just me. I don't wanna be a leaf. I'd rather be a tree. Only I'd try to stay in my grounds even during thunderstorms or in a hurricane... Hopefully, you can understand that.”

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Jeansaaa’s message ended here initially, but then:

Edit: holy fucking shit, I re-read you’re response, it’s even worse then I remember, so I will add a bit more to this,

All right first of all you said being lgbtq+ was ABNORMAL, (wow that is really not helping your case) it’s not at all, it’s just as “normal” as being straight, people have been lgbtq+ for fucking CENTURIES,

Even now, lgbt+ still ISN’T the NORM in the world (I know some would love to see that differently, but I’m (not) afraid that won’t ever be the case). So that’s a FACT. And yes, a lot of people have been a lot of things for centuries, but what kind of argument is that?! That people are or do something, doesn’t make it normal. Some people are in jail. Some people are in mad houses. Some psychopaths walk around freely, but does that mean all that is normal too? No, it doesn’t. Your argument is bad. VERY bad.

even animals can be gay, if you do even the slightest bit of research you’ll see

And you know when? When they’re in ABNORMAL situations!

( but Seeing how your skull is as thick as concrete, you probably won’t ),

Thanks! I’m taking that as a compliment! I’m very happy if my skull really is as thick as concrete instead of as thin as paper (or even thinner)! Or else everyone (such as (social) media) would be able to just fill my head with whatever they want! Mold and knead me however they please! That would be one of the last things I’d want to happen. I got a brain for a reason. I got a brain to use it. To think for myself, using logic and not other people’s opinions.

now let’s move onto the second homophobic thing you said, you don’t support the lgbtq+ movement because of a so-called “ agenda”, why are you so mad?, Is it because straight relationships aren’t pushed in your face as much as it was back then?, ( magazines, Books, TV shows, billboards, straight relationships are literally everywhere and you’re COMPLAINING) you probably saw like one poster one day with a gay couple and freaked out,

Firstly, I’m not the “mad” one here. I’m angry about various things, but not “mad”. Secondly, straight relationships indeed aren’t pushed in my face as much as it was in back in the old days, but I don’t care about that. It’s lgbt+ that’s been forcefully pushed in my face CONSTANTLY (and it is) that bothers me so much!

Because NO. I didn’t “saw like one poster one day with a gay couple and freaked out”. That’s what I’ve been telling / explaining since pretty much my very first post about this! Saying this, makes me wonder if you can even read? Or else, you’ve obviously not read the parts of my posts in which I spoke about the hundreds of lgbt+ flags, many lgbt+ zebra crossings and lgbt+ wall paintings, lgbt+ public transport vehicles and to that list I can add the lgbt+ posters and stickers you spoke about, all lgbt+ promoting articles, shows and programms on the news everywhere (news papers and online) and on television, initiatives and activities of schools because of lgbt+, the countless lgbt+ campaigns that are being held, all other kinds of lgbt+ support of millions of people that just follow the herd AND the entire internet, including - of course - our most favorite straightphobic place, Tumblr (and I believe Twitter is pretty much like that (or even worse) as well). And who knows what else I’m not even aware of?! Ah, yes. And NOT to forget: the entire PRIDE MONTH. Because your kind of people are better than us straights, aren’t you?!

Really “like one poster one day with a gay couple”. REALLY.

please just stop,

I stop whenever I want...

nothing is gonna convince me that you’re not homophobic, because you’re clearly are

Nothing is gonna convince ME that you’re not STUPID, because you (not “you’re”) clearly are, stupid.

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I’m not even gonna respond extensively to the tags. They’re the stupidest things ever. I’ve never tagged my lgbt+ posts with the Arch-Illager OR Minecraft Dungeons tag, so Jeansaaa is just being a jerk for doing that anyway.

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That’s all. It turned out to be a very long response. Once I start typing, the words just flow from my head to and out of my fingers on the keyboard to the screen. And that. That was indeed a strange sentence. But... poetic... right? (No? Oh.)

#this must be #like #my longest post to date #and yeah #discussing lgbt+ again #well #as long as i get my message conveyed #it's fine

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follow-ur-heart-till-it-bleeds · 7 years

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not really headcanon more like imagine this

Nessie with her iPad in hand as she takes a seat next to Carlisle, who is grossly immersed in a book.

Nessie: Grandpa Carlisle, do you know Voltaire?

Carlisle, closing his book: Personally, no. We never had the pleasure. But I have read some of his works

Nessie: Which ones? What are your thoughts on them?

Carlisle: Are you reading Voltaire for school, or is Bella making you read it? You should read Victor Hugo’s works instead, he is a much better writer.

Nessie: So I’m guessing you don’t like him huh?

Carlisle: I never said that. I appreciate his influence towards the Enlightenment, but I disagree with some of his notions towards Christianity, which I’m sure you can understand. Don’t get me wrong, I entirely agree with his sentiment “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” we’ve seen it throughout history. But is it so wrong to be optimistic, to have some hope, no matter how ridiculous it is? Not so sure myself, but I guess that’s why I’m not a philosopher.

Nessie, nodding, not sure what he’s talking about: I wanted to show you this. The passage that’s highlighted. I wanted to know your opinion.

Carlisle, reading the passage out loud: “These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer. We never heard a word of vampires in London, nor even at Paris. I confess that in both these cities there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces.”

Nessie: Isn’t it interesting?

Carlisle: Yes, it is. I’ve read this before when it first came out. Voltaire’s definition of vampire.

Nessie: So technically we’re not the bad guys, we’re just vampires doing our thing

Carlisle with a smile: Did you read all of it? Or did you skim

Nessie shrugged: I skimmed, but I always skim. Mom’s always up my ass about it too

Carlisle: He does question if vampires were created by the devil, God, or by their own virtue. Don’t get me wrong. Vampires are not evil, I promise you. And regardless what others may think I believe none of us are going to hell. The true “monsters” or vampires as Voltaire would say, are the corrupted ones, those who use their power, or religion to justify horrible misdeeds such as murder, rape, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc and so forth

Nessie nods her head in agreement, and Carlisle gently squeezes her hand: I promise you none of us are going to hell. It is an interesting find. Show this to your father, and tell him what I told you. None of us are going to hell.

#twilight #twilight saga #carlisle cullen #renesmee cullen #voltaire's definition of vampire is very interesting

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jadinerhine · 6 years

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Hey hey hey, Sapphire fans, have another dumb hot take on our gurl, this time on a topic I’ve had thoughts on for the past few years. Because it’s potentially a hot button one, all I ask is that you read the entire thing before diving into a civic discussion about it! What am I saying, it’s tumblr, there is no such thing as critical thinking and civility anymore thanks to this hellsite.

Disclaimer #1: THIS IS MY OPINION FIRST AND FOREMOST. A headcanon, as the hip kids say around the internet. It’s not Word of God or anything like that. It’s an opinion formed by lots of reading and analyzing. If you have a different headcanon, that’s coolio too! ^_^

Disclaimer #2: this is based strictly on Tezuka manga canon. I’ve seen the PK anime on-and-off and I don’t trust my memory on elements from it.

Disclaimer #3: I don’t have my manga copy with me, so no scans of panels and such : ( But I will make sure to explain the scenes I reference, as well as include links to definitions of things.

Disclaimer #4: I researched and read about this often, but I’m pretty sure I will make mistakes. As respectful as I’ve tried to be, I am sure people out there are smarter than me about things pertaining to this topic. Let me know constructively if I messed up.

Unpopular opinion that’s actually never been mentioned so maybe it’s not really unpopular?: I believe Sapphire is intersex, more gender-fluid rather than just a minimally tomboyish girl or female-to-male transgender.

No, this has nothing to do with transphobia or any other -phobia. It’s primarily based on how Tezuka, even with the problematic views spoused in the manga, accidentally gave us aspects of Sapphire’s self that for me, lend credence to her being intersex. (Yes I know, Takarazuka influenced Tezuka and PK too, but again, only paying attention to manga lore.) I’m going to list two main facts, and within each one, state why I think the fact lends credence to my opinion. I’ll try my best to write my reasons for intersex Sapphire as best as I can.

Since this turned out to be such a long post -- longer than I thought, yipes! -- I’ll be putting it under a cut. It will be tagged “long post” too for those who have that tag or are on mobile and can finally have blacklisted tags work. Hurrah!

FACT 1: Sapphire was forced to become a boy for the sake of the throne.

Sapphire was born a girl, and as we all know, her family didn’t want to give up the throne to Silverland if it meant giving it over to Duke Duralumin, who’s basically a dictator waiting in the wings for the chance to out Sapphire as a girl. Why? Girls can’t rule in Silverland.

Solution? Keep it in the family! Make your daughter a son instead and declare him prince!

Because that will do wonders for possible gender and/or body dysphoria!

Gender dysphoria, as defined here (emphasis mine):

[GID] involves a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify. People with gender dysphoria may be very uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned, sometimes described as being uncomfortable with their body (particularly developments during puberty) or being uncomfortable with the expected roles of their assigned gender.

[...]

Gender dysphoria is not the same as gender nonconformity, which refers to behaviors not matching the gender norms or stereotypes of the gender assigned at birth. Examples of gender nonconformity (also referred to as gender expansiveness or gender creativity) include girls behaving and dressing in ways more socially expected of boys or occasional cross-dressing in adult men.

Body dysphoria, as defined here (emphasis mine):

BDD is a body-image disorder characterized by persistent and intrusive preoccupations with an imagined or slight defect in one's appearance.

People with BDD can dislike any part of their body, although they often find fault with their hair, skin, nose, chest, or stomach. In reality, a perceived defect may be only a slight imperfection or nonexistent. But for someone with BDD, the flaw is significant and prominent, often causing severe emotional distress and difficulties in daily functioning.

and here:

When you have body dysmorphic disorder, you intensely obsess over your appearance and body image, repeatedly checking the mirror, grooming or seeking reassurance, sometimes for many hours each day. Your perceived flaw and the repetitive behaviors cause you significant distress, and impact your ability to function in your daily life.

Personally, I think Sapphire suffers/would suffer more from body dysphoria, as she’s an adaptable type of person and would force herself to accept her gendered lot for the moment, as she’s done clearly. She’s uncomfortable with most expected roles of being a boy, as stated above, but she knows why she has to do it. She has to keep the kingdom away from Duralumin, protect her people. She does seem to not mind some of the princely activities she does either – she enjoys sword fighting and fencing, for one! (Was it me, or was she really into the book How to Court Women that she was reading near the beginning of the manga?)

Sidenote: When we see Friebe and Sapphire fighting together, Friebe makes the comment of why Sapphire is a girl still "fighting like a boy” alongside Friebe – but Friebe is a girl and fighting “like a boy” too! Ain’t that odd…

Sapphire’s about 15, which means she’s likely going through puberty – if she liked doing (usually) male activities, able to convince her kingdom either way of her appearance, then how would she deal with either: her body might betray her by naturally evolving into the female body she was born as, or that her body might still remain the same, due to an imbalance of testosterone/estrogen, among other factors? With the latter, she would struggle internally but be able to be king (unless her mom’s drugged and outs her due to the drug, like in the manga) but with the former? You can imagine that struggle with her future, can you?

And as much as I hate to link to anything related to the Jezebel site, this article makes a good point about not conflating the two. A passage or two (emphasis mine):

Those who suffer from body dysmorphia have a disconnection between the reality they are perceiving and how that perception is recognised in their brains. They look in an ordinary mirror, but for them, the result is something like we might imagine a funhouse mirror to look. There is an inability to recognise the body for what it is. Features seem distorted, and flaws (real or imagined) are perceived as much much worse than they are (if they even exist, and if they're even flaws in the first place)

[…]

So how is this disconnect different from the disconnect between the assignment of gender at birth and the gender identity of a person with gender dysphoria? It is substantially different in that one of the strongest aspects of gender dysphoria for many (but not all!) individuals who have those feelings is an acute awareness of what their physical features actually are and why those features do not match up with the gender presentation expected of the gender with which they identify.

and this is why hecate and captain blood are good for sapphire, and not franz charming, sorry I don’t make the rules, those two respected or ended up respecting her more, and besides her mom, would have made her feel more comfortable if this were an alternate timeline where they both diDN’T DIE

I digress. We see Sapphire constantly struggling with her identity. She wanted desperately to be a “girly girl,” so said when she wanted to go to the ball but couldn’t because she still needed to be the prince. Yet later, after Sapphire and her mother are prisoners in a tower due to Duralumin and Sapphire’s identity revealed, and after Sapphire escapes the dungeon with Tink and rides away, Tink asks Sapphire about her perception of herself. What is Sapphire, to Sapphire? That it’s Tink, the one tasked to take Sapphire’s boy heart from her, who asks this has always been fascinating – much more so when coupled with the times he tries to protect her and gives in to her having two hearts just so long as she’s able to fend for herself and survive past swordfights.

Anyway, Sapphire’s answer can be chalked up to “I’m not sure yet” and “I don’t mind myself as I am right now.” It’s a plot line that gets lost and muddied and retrofitted to fit the “proper wife model for a fifties audience” Sapphire ends up in, but it was still said. It counts!

Now, this is the part where I admit confusion when someone headcanons Sapphire to be transgender. I mean, I get it, I totally do – again, don’t mind that headcanon but in my head, I don’t think being forced to be a gender in the first place works like that, either?

Sapphire, in manga canon, initially wants to be a girl just because she wants to experience life as the person she was born as. Sometimes she is comfortable being a boy, can shift quickly to her princely mindset if she’s suddenly caught indulging in feminine “vices” – and those are all okay! But she accustomed to that fast when she realized she will never be allowed to be a girl naturally, or as a girl with male tendencies. if you were someone who were forced to conform to a rigid gendered lifestyle and activities, and were told to never express your other self, would you really want to stay as the same gender after you’re “free”?

Having said that, it’s not like intersex people can’t be transgender. (More on that below.) And I did mention that I think she’s genderfluid, definition here --

Genderfluid: Someone whose gender identity or expression shifts between man/masculine and woman/feminine or falls somewhere along this spectrum.

– and it’s because of that, because despite her own anger at this forced lifestyle, she seems to realize how much she does enjoy being good at male activities, how much she enjoys expressing her masculinity (for lack of a better word.) Equally as much as being a girl does. I feel as if, if she were in modern times, she would be comfortable being a boy one day, and a girl the next. She wouldn’t mind creating bouquets as she does in her first appearance, and wouldn’t mind strengthening her body with (usually) male-oriented exercises.

After all, according to the manga lore established by Tezuka, Sapphire’s two hearts allow her to live in two worlds at once!

FACT 2 : TWO HEARTS BEAT AS ONE

Having God decide your assigned gender by hearts was a viable candidate for suspension of disbelief enough, having a person born with two hearts sends Heaven into panic and despair! And the rest of us raise our eyebrows in collective “huh”?

The manga makes it sound as if Sapphire is the first, and only, person born with two hearts. It’s either/or for the hearts, not and/and. You’re a boy who gets to fight, you’re a girl who gets to faint, nothing more.

Therefore, a boy heart + a girl heart = a girl + a boy = Sapphire. We’ve seen it happen, when Tink takes Sapphire’s boy heart out of her in the middle of a fight, and Sapphire suddenly forgets how to fight and is all a-flutter at the idea of -gasp!- violence! We’ve seen Sapphire’s body straight-up CHANGE from a female body to a male body when she loses her girl heart near the end, when Franz sets out to find her.

The fifties, fifties Japan, fifties Japan with a manga written by a man whose starting points were Cinderella, Disney movies and the all-female Takarazuka revue, which divides its actor into female or male roles. What a delicious soup of contradictions. What a delicious soup of weirdness.

Personally, I like to believe the two hearts concept can be translated into two souls. It’s a better version to grasp than actual literal hearts that can be taken out of your body and suddenly, bam, your gender and sex change automatically. (Seriously, what?) Two souls fits the pseudo-Christian-Pagan worldbuilding aspects of the manga, and it makes sense that at times, Sapphire feels empty without one of her hearts. Granted, there was the part where Sapphire fights without her boy heart and realizes she can still fight with her girl heart – which is a great snippet of character development, were it not for…the other pieces of dialogue…and Franz…who’s quite content with Sapphire “finally becoming a woman” by story’s end.

listen, princes knight!franz is the only franz I actively dislike, I like him everywhere else, pk!franz doesn’t learn anything from his mistakes, man

Two souls also helps understand a situation like Hecate, whose mother desperately wants Sapphire’s girl heart, so Hecate can be a proper girl. Hecate, the true tomboy of the series, lacks a physical heart and yet interacts and develops like any normal girl out there. But she has a soul, she does! One that loves mischief and silly pranks, who lives and breathes just like Sapphire does. It’s just not “perfect”/traditional in her mother’s eyes.

FACT 3: Wait, this isn’t a fact, back up, you said Sapphire with a boy heart changed her body entirely????

Okay, now this is where I get to, uh, cement? state my case better? for intersex Sapphire. Man, I hope so.

Let’s say (using Tezuka’s own questionable plot devices/ignoring the literalness of the heart concept a bit) that the two souls co-exist alongside having either a girl or boy heart. The soul functions with who you are, the heart functions with your body. Similar to gender and sex, I think, if you want/need a real world simile to understand it better.

Sapphire states herself to Franz as a boy, all boy, when Franz finds him after Venus (I believe it was in the Venus arc) has taken away Sapphire’s girl heart in order for Franz to run away to Venus. Y’all can guess why obviously. Sapphire is boisterous, proud, every stereotype you can think of, and stands proudly as a boy. Sapphire also is insulted when Franz insinuates otherwise, and makes a distinct notion that everything about him is boy.

and franz is distraught because oh my god sapphire’s not a girl anymore, but also whatever man, you were awful to sapphire when you found out she was a prince and didn’t even listen to her reasons why, captain blood had to tell you, you schmuck

But of course, this is short-lived. Sapphire does get her girl heart back, only to lose her boy heart later. Presumably, if the scene above applies, then that means that Sapphire is all girl.

As stated above, a boy heart + a girl heart = a girl + a boy. If we use the soul concept, then Sapphire is a boy + a girl in both soul and body. More so body, really, because she’s the same person with both hearts, and more or less the same person with only a girl heart. (I think the difference in personality with only a boy heart was for plot reasons...she was boisterous and proud in the anime and manga with both hearts at times.)

In the real world, there are different conditions for intersex people. I have a not-solidified idea of which one applies to Sapphire, but the definition of intersex (emphasis mine):

“Intersex” is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. For example, a person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female types—for example, a girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or a boy may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY.

[...]

In the same way, nature presents us with sex anatomy spectrums. Breasts, penises, clitorises, scrotums, labia, gonads—all of these vary in size and shape and morphology. So-called “sex” chromosomes can vary quite a bit, too. But in human cultures, sex categories get simplified into male, female, and sometimes intersex, in order to simplify social interactions, express what we know and feel, and maintain order.

So nature doesn’t decide where the category of “male” ends and the category of “intersex” begins, or where the category of “intersex” ends and the category of “female” begins. Humans decide. Humans (today, typically doctors) decide how small a penis has to be, or how unusual a combination of parts has to be, before it counts as intersex. Humans decide whether a person with XXY chromosomes or XY chromosomes and androgen insensitivity will count as intersex.

and a little bit from here:

In cases of intersex, doctors and parents need to recognize, however, that gender assignment of infants with intersex conditions as boy or girl, as with assignment of any infant, is preliminary. Any child—intersex or not—may decide later in life that she or he was given the wrong gender assignment; but children with certain intersex conditions have significantly higher rates of gender transition than the general population, with or without treatment.

Before I continue, let me tackle ‘gender transition’ -- as I said above, it’s not that intersex people can’t be transgender people. Some intersex people do change their gender from the ones they were forced to be, much like Sapphire was forced to be -- and yes, in this case, it means that Sapphire can be both intersex and transgender. But sometimes it does feel as if people are in love with the idea of a princely Sapphire so much, that they forget that she was forced to be a prince/a boy in the first place, and that she is content with being a girl. Or both. (Remember her initial answer to Tink’s question!) In the words of a wise little girl once: ¿porqué no los dos (headcanons)?

There are other intersex people who are equally happy with the gender they were assigned to, just not exactly with their bodies, thanks to parents being convinced by doctors that butchering their newborn baby’s body is for the best. (Seriously, there are horror stories.) And much like gender dysphoria and body dysphoria are conflated, so are intersex and transgender people (emphasis and italics mine):

People who have intersex conditions have anatomy that is not considered typically male or female. Most people with intersex conditions come to medical attention because doctors or parents notice something unusual about their bodies. In contrast, people who are transgendered have an internal experience of gender identity that is different from most people.

Many people confuse transgender and transsexual people with people with intersex conditions because they see two groups of people who would like to choose their own gender identity and sometimes those choices require hormonal treatments and/or surgery. These are similarities. It’s also true, albeit rare, that some people who have intersex conditions also decide to change genders at some point in their life, so some people with intersex conditions might also identify themselves as transgender or transsexual.

In spite of these similarities, these two groups should not be and cannot be thought of as one. The truth is that the vast majority of people with intersex conditions identify as male or female rather than transgender or transsexual. Thus, where all people who identify as transgender or transsexual experience problems with their gender identity, only a small portion of intersex people experience these problems.

Tink gave Sapphire a boy heart in Heaven, because he wanted to help/be funny, I guess? God decided she deserved a girl heart. If you want to ignore the religious details, then nature/science gave Sapphire the body she has. (Sapphire’s mom also had a difficult birth, so that...could also apply...?) As I said too, Sapphire is/does become/should have been comfortable with her body and soul in the manga, before Tezuka and society rear their head and change everything up again for her. She identifies as male some days, she identifies as female some days. And because she has two hearts, it means her body is reflecting male and female biology/anatomy.

BUT WAIT, you say. What about Twin Knights??!

Oh, you mean the fantastic sequel that eschew the hearts plot, still maintains some fifties ideals despite playing more with gender (and sexuality, I wager but also I don’t want to stretch that with a story like Twin Knights) and concentrates on Sapphire’s sweet, sweet twins who she loves and adores?

WELL.

I can’t find much information on intersex people being able to get pregnant from medical/science places, per se. I’ve heard that it’s both possible and not possible, depending on which condition you have. This link, this one, this one and this one have more information on pregnancy and intersex people, even if one of them is sighs Cosmopolitan and two are from Quora. Cosmopolitan does have stories, as do the Everyone is Gay one, and if there’s one thing I believe in, it’s hearing/listening to stories directly from sources.

So you know, Sapphire can have children still, depending. And even if we ignore the sequel, and it turns out she can’t? ADOPT SHE CAN ADOPT, SHE LOVES KIDS. Plus, and as a final ending note to this because wow this got long, I’ll leave you with this:

A final thought: we’re all raised in a world where we’re told that, after puberty, our bodies “should” be able to do all these things. When you learn that your body, in fact, doesn’t do all these things as an intersex person, it’s easy to think that this means there’s something wrong with you, since you “can’t” do these things. I’m here to tell you that just because you don’t get a period and won’t give birth, that doesn’t mean that your body isn’t able to do something it’s “supposed to do” – YOUR BODY IS DOING WHAT IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE DOING ALL ALONG. Or that somehow you’re less of a girl or a woman because your body doesn’t do these things. Not all of us are comfortable or okay with this knowledge – especially at first – and I am not trying to minimize your feelings about this. At some point, though, after you’ve processed all this more, I’d encourage you to reframe thinking about what your body “can’t do” (= is “supposed to do”) to what your body doesn’t do. <3

and this, which is from the link in the quote:

As a fetus, I wasn’t going to turn into a girl. I wasn’t going to turn into a boy. I was going to turn into me, the whole time. To me, statements with the how-are-you-lucky-enough-to-have-gotten-away-with-this sentiment are akin to me being told by a bird that I’m so lucky I don’t have to fly around for long periods of time during migrations, or being told by a trout I’m so lucky I don’t have to try swimming upstream because it’s difficult. What the hell are you critters talking about?! I’m not a bird and never was, and never will be. I’m not a trout and never was, and never will be. I didn’t get away with not being able to do those things – I was never supposed to be able to do them in the first place, because I’m ME. Saying that I’m lucky not to do something it’s assumed my body “should be” able to do erases the realness of my intersex body. My body is only supposed to do what it was always supposed to do, and that includes not menstruating or being reproductive or bearing children. MY BODY IS ALREADY DOING WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO DO ALL ALONG. The problem is in the perception that intersex bodies are supposed to be like or do things that male- and female-defined bodies do. But not all male bodies and not all female bodies do the same things anyway. Why would we assume that intersex bodies will all work the same way as all male and/or female bodies? Would we assume that all intersex bodies, with our many variations, work the same way as all other intersex bodies, too? These perceptions need to change.

“I was going to turn into me, the whole time.” I can’t think of something that describes Sapphire better.

#Princess Knight #Ribon no Kishi #Ribbon no Kishi #Osamu Tezuka #meta #long post #I stopped myself twice from posting this and then just decided to go for the goal #go for the gusto of having a bunch of people in your asks screaming at your mistakes #but #this is a meta I'm passionate about and am always wanting to learn more #and I think having these kinds of discussions help us understand storytelling and author intentions

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missmeikakuna · 5 years

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Chad and the Incel Chapter 2

Rated: M

Fandom: Original Fiction (but inspired by the Virgin vs Chad meme)

Relationship type: Male/Male with a bit of Female/Female (the lesbians are adorable, btw) and unrequited Male/Female (in other words, the guys are bisexual).

Description: Chad is, well, a Chad, or at least he looks like one. He’s got his sights set on the cool nerd Becky and enlists the help of her shy incel ex-friend Noah, offering to help him get the gorgeous girl (Stacy) he desperately wants. Noah is reluctant to help, believing that he will be stuck in inceldom forever, but Chad’s interest in his life gives him hope. When their plans go awry, they start turning their romantic attention towards each other.

Content Warning: Given the subject matter, you can guess that this story has dark themes in it, such as suicide and self-harm (plus the mental health issues that often cause them), sexism, slut-shaming homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. There is also swearing and some mentions of sex but nothing too explicit (hence the M rating as opposed to an Explicit rating).

2nd Post: [Venting] Was invited to a Chad’s house, I want to die

Becky wore a scarf one day and five minutes was all it took for Chad to start mourning the sight of her neck. There was no training that day, so after school he headed to the library, knowing she would go there. He was right, and to his delight she took off her scarf. As she browsed the selection, he pretended to do the same thing.

A sizeable chunk of his soul yelled, ‘Creep!’ at the rest of it, but he ignored that voice and slowly encroached upon her until he stood next to her.

‘So…’ he began in a voice deep enough to show vocal fry, which was his attempt to sound casual. ‘What have you been up to?’

Becky gave him a wary stare but answered. ‘Not much. Just reading and gaming.’

‘Oh yeah? What games do you play?’

‘Well, I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 13 again. Lightning’s cute.’ As soon as she said the last sentence, she covered her mouth and coughed into it. ‘So, uh, what book are you looking for?’

‘Oh, well…’ Chad laughed nervously. ‘I kind of just wanted to see you.’ Becky rose an eyebrow. ‘Not in a creepy way! Um, I just…’

‘I’m pretty sure you saying it’s not creepy makes it worse. I’ve got to be honest- I thought you would be better at this than that. I thought you’d have had more practice.’

Chad laughed again. ‘I, uh, um.... guess it means you’re one of the lucky few who I’ve had an interest in.’

‘Whom you’ve had an interest in.’ She lifted her shoulders and covered her mouth again. She took a few deep breaths and let go of her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, but I like someone else.’

Those words pushed Chad’s heart down to the depths of his body. He froze as he felt cold shivers run down his arms and legs. It took him a while to be able to open his mouth.

‘Cool. I’ll… see you later, then.’ He forced a smile onto his face as we waved goodbye and headed out of the library. He took out his phone and went onto his contact list. He reminded himself to get a photo of Noah to add to his contact information. He then reminded himself that it would probably be hard to convince Noah to take a photo of himself. Something along the lines of selfies being ‘a way for attractive normies to show their narcissism and ugly chicks to make themselves forget how ugly they are.’ Noah had then muttered something about ugly girls still getting boyfriends while ugly guys get nothing. Chad had considered asking him for evidence of that, but he decided not to press the issue and instead let Noah’s anger subside.

Yes, Noah and Chad had had a couple of chats, though they hadn’t made any conclusive plans. The conversation about selfies had come about when they saw a student taking a photo with her food.

Outside the library, Chad leaned against the wall and sent Noah a message.

Let’s head to my place soon to figure out what we’re going to do. Are you free Saturday?

He typed his address and a possible time for Noah to come over. Noah took a while to reply.

Whatever. It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do. Won’t you be busy?

Chad raised an eyebrow before typing.

Why?

Noah’s response caused Chad to be torn between laughing and sinking into self-loathing.

Won’t you be sleeping with some chick?

Chad grit his teeth but didn’t bother replying, somehow knowing that this would result in the conversation spiralling into utter madness.

Saturday arrived and so did Noah, knocking on the door to Chad’s house. This time he wore a shirt featuring a muscular CGI man with a scar across the bridge of his nose wielding two swords. Chad considered asking who it was but he thought he sort of recognised it from a game he hadn’t played.

He led him to his room and asked if he wanted a snack, to which Noah responded, ‘Nes. I mean no! I ended up combining… never mind.’ The two stood in silence until Noah dropped his backpack to the floor and sat down on Chad’s bed. ‘So, uh, why’d you decide to call a meeting?’

Chad sat on the bed next to him before swivelling his body and lying down behind Noah. ‘Well, there’s a slight change of plans. Becky rejected me. Said she liked someone else.’

Noah stood up, looking at the carpet. ‘Okay. See ya whenever.’

Chad grabbed Noah’s arm. ‘Wait, we’ll just have to find a way to get her to notice me instead of the other guy. What kind of guy does she like? Is she more of a personality or looks kind of girl?’

Noah released a single tiny laugh that could easily be mistaken for a cough. ‘Personality? Girls don’t go for that.’

‘You think so?’

Noah nodded. ‘If she’s not interested in your looks, she’s never gonna be interested in you. But… wait… how… how exactly did a Chad like you not attract her? Maybe she’s playing hard to get.’

‘The ‘Chad’ thing again? I still don’t get how I look like a Chad.’

As he sat on the bed again and began explaining, Noah ensured that his head was turned as far away from Chad as possible.

‘A Chad, you know, those guys who are really mus… athletic and… have a strong jawline and… hunter eyes.’

Chad looked at him with the eyes of a puppy being given an unfamiliar toy. ‘What are hunter eyes?’

‘You know… hunter eyes… like, you’re able to swoop in and get any girl you want. Alpha male eyes. You understand what I’m saying?’

Chad touched below his eyes. When Noah dared to look at him his body tensed up and he instinctively took a phone and pair of headphones out of his bag.

‘Wow, rude, man,’ Chad said with a laugh.

Noah snapped out of a trance. ‘S-sorry. I… I don’t know how else I can calm… I’m not a crazy person or anything.’

Chad chuckled. ‘It’s okay, I guess. You do whatever it is you’re doing while I come up with a plan.’

He closed his eyes and stroked his chin in the hopes of getting an idea into his head. Find a way to make the guy she liked look bad? No, it could make him look bad in the process, possibly worse than the other guy. Maybe he could, instead of dragging the other guy down, he could prop himself up and woo her with a big display of love like a serenade or something like that. No, wait, was this the 80s? What if he impersonated the guy and confessed to her again?

With this last idea he started laughing so hard he sat up so he could hold his sides better. Noah seemed unperturbed.

Chad leaned over Noah’s shoulder and saw what appeared to be one of those ‘animes’ he heard about online. He found himself chuckling as a girl with a horse for a head, or at least a horse mask, hit a creepily smiling girl with a chair and sent her flying out the window.

As he pointed at the screen he asked, ‘What anime is this?’ Since Noah didn’t respond, he grabbed his shoulder, sending a wave of shock throughout Noah’s body. Noah immediately flinched and turned his head. He paused for a moment before taking off his headphones. ‘I thought anime was about, I don’t know, ninjas or something. What’s with the horse lady?’

Noah couldn’t push down his smirk. ‘Well, if you must know, this ‘horse lady’ you speak of is wearing the mask to, well, mask her tsundere tendencies. I’ve seen this show before so I know that when she starts to warm up to the other characters and show her dere-dere side, she takes the mask off. It’s a really moving use of character design to convey personality to an audience and it just goes to show how clever character designers use the visual medium of anime to say so much about-’

‘Ha, that girl grabbed another girl’s boob.’ Noah glared at him. ‘Wait, how many chicks are there in this thing?’

‘Well, it’s set in an all-girls school, so…’

Chad gave him a finger gun gesture and clicked his fingers. ‘Lesbians. Nice.’ He almost laughed when Noah’s glare strengthened.

‘Their relationship would be innocent and beautiful. Nothing ‘nice’ about it. Us mere men would be lucky to get to witness such a pure fate come true.’

‘Is it pure to grab another girl’s boob?’

Noah shifted his weight from side to side and looked back at his phone without a word. The two watched the show in silence, part of Chad wishing he could actually hear things since the subtitles were really small on the screen and he couldn’t experience the voice acting, music or sound effects. Then again, he had an inkling that Noah’s protective grip on his headphones would be like a baby’s.

He considered asking him to take the headphones out and let the audio fill the room until a scene cropped up in which one of the characters moaned while being undressed by a faceless being. Granted, in context it was all in that character’s imagination, but Chad’s parents were home.

After the episode ended with the longest ending credits Chad had ever seen, he grinned. ‘Are there any other animes like that?’

‘Anime. It’s the same whether it’s plural or singular.’

‘Oh. Okay…’

When Chad’s voice drifted off, Noah’s eyes widened and he crossed his arms with his phone still in one hand.

‘Sorry for talking so much about this kind of thing.’

How did Chad respond? By ruffling Noah’s already messy hair, of course! Yes, he managed to shock himself with his own actions.

‘Don’t worry too much about it, man. Keep going if you want. I’m probably not going to come up with any ideas, so I may as well make some use out of today.’

‘I can leave if you want-’

‘I said it’s fine. Come on, tell me about these lesbians.’ Chad laughed with his mouth closed. ‘Honestly, the words that come out of my mouth sometimes.’

Noah uncrossed his arms. ‘Well, uh, they’re not technically a lesbian couple or anything. They’re just friends. I just ship them.’

Chad stroked his chin like before. ‘Do girls grab their friends’ boobs? Or is that just a Japanese thing? Fascinating.’

Noah’s eyes narrowed. ‘Shut up.’

‘So what do you mean by ‘ship’?’

Noah talked about anime for a solid two hours, with Chad only interrupting to ask questions. After that, Chad’s mother knocked on the door and suggested that he start doing homework.

Noah left the house with a little smile, though by the time he had reached his computer, that smile on his face was replaced with a furnace within his blood vessels.

He posted to Incels.me.

Anicel1919- [Venting] Was invited to a Chad’s house. I want to die.

He was so smug, acting like he’s actually interested in learning about anime. As if. He’ll forget about me once he gets back to banging femoids. I don’t think I can take being around a solid 9/10. Honestly, if it weren’t for that pimple on his nose, he’d be a 10. And I bet he’s going to end up saying, ‘Don’t worry, bruh, just lift like me and you’ll get all the pussy you want,’ or, ‘just change your personality and everything will be fine!’ It’s too soon to tell, but he strikes me as totally bluepilled. What do I do if he keeps asking me to hang out with him?

#chad vs incel #chad x incel #bisexual #incel #romance #drama #original fiction #breaking stereotypes #lesbian #Chad and the Incel

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sanderssidesfanfiction · 5 years

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We’ll Carry On - Chapter Forty Four

We’ll Carry On Tag

March 20th, 2019

“Anxiety?” Virgil asked, tilting his head to the side. “What does that mean, anxiety?”

“You know how sometimes you get really afraid and you start shaking and having panic attacks?” Mister Emile asked.

Virgil frowned but nodded.

“Well, that’s a symptom of several anxiety disorders. Basically, even if there’s no danger around you, your body still thinks there is and it starts your fight-or-flight instincts,” Mister Emile explained. “It’s not a bad thing, but I wanted to see if we could get you diagnosed, and maybe figure out if you need therapy to help with it.”

“Oh,” Virgil said. “That’s...a thing people get?”

“Yeah. You’re not weird, Virgil. Anxiety disorders are really common,” Mister Emile said. “You’ll be fine, and I’m always here if you need any help.”

February 20th, 2020

Virgil was enjoying himself, for once. It wasn’t unheard of for him to enjoy himself, but he didn’t feel any anxiety attached to his enjoyment whatsoever, so it was noteworthy. He and Patton were currently playing on one of the laptops in the house, Virgil handling the arrow keys and Patton working the “wasd” keys, so together they could steer a rebel ship to shoot the Death Star. It was entertaining.

Once they had shot the Death Star, they cheered and high-fived, before putting the laptop away. Patton and Virgil hadn’t wanted to go out to celebrate their adoption anniversary, so instead they were going to have a movie marathon in the den. Patton and Virgil had agreed to hide in the basement for half an hour while the others got everything set up, and it had to be at least forty minutes that they had been cooped up in the basement. They walked up the stairs, Patton calling in the general direction of the den, “Is it safe to come in?”

“You’re good!” Roman called back. “We just finished!”

Patton and Virgil walked in, and Virgil gawked. There was a stack of DVDs next to the TV, and huge bowls of popcorn and candy ready to be eaten. He wasn’t sure he would be able to watch all of the movies in the stack, but he knew they were certainly going to try.

Virgil got on the couch, grabbing a bag full of M&Ms and settling down. “Do you guys have the movies picked out already?” he asked.

“Yes, we have the first one in the player already,” Dad said. “But we figured you both would like to see this one first, so hopefully we weren’t too far off in that assumption.”

Ami turned on the TV and set it to the DVD player, revealing Bolt on the screen. Patton cheered and Virgil grinned. It was no secret to anyone in the family that they both loved that movie to death. As everyone got situated on the couches, Dad pressed play and they started up the movie (with captions, both because Dee liked using them to learn how to read and because Logan focused better with them).

Patton leaned into Virgil and Virgil looked over to him. “Enjoying yourself?” Virgil signed.

He got a content sigh and a nod in return. “You?” Patton asked.

Virgil considered. “Yeah,” he signed. “I’m enjoying myself.”

“No anxiety?” Patton asked, brows furrowing.

“Not...no anxiety, but very little anxiety,” Virgil explained.

“That’s good!” Patton signed, returning his attention to the movie.

Virgil idly nodded, and wrapped an arm around Patton’s shoulders, leaning back into the couch as they watched the movie unfold. Both of them knew what would happen like the back of their hands, but the ending still got to them. Patton cried a little and Virgil wasn’t far off.

After the first movie ended, Ami got up and turned the lights in the den on, before approaching Virgil and Patton with two presents. “You two know the drill,” he said with a smile. “These might not be as big as Logan’s or as lucky as Roman’s, but we hope you’ll still like them.”

Virgil and Patton looked at each other. “You go first,” he told Patton.”

Patton nodded and opened the paper, gasping in surprise. “Oh, that’s so cool!” he said, running his hand over the cover of the book. It was an encyclopedia about animals, no doubt designed for elementary school kids, so Patton would probably need bigger books if he became a vet, but Virgil knew this still meant a lot to him. “Thank you!” Patton exclaimed.

Virgil knew this was a big deal to Patton. He had never had someone really rooting for him when it came to his passions, until they had come here. Virgil tried, but Patton always said he wanted an adult who believed in him. Now, he had two, who were encouraging him to study what he wanted.

Virgil opened his slowly. His box was a little bigger than Patton’s, but he figured that Dad and Ami made sure that the gifts were mostly even. He opened the box underneath the paper and found...“A cat?” he asked.

“I’d recommend smelling them,” Dad said.

Virgil did so, and could make out...lavender. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “This is the smell that the therapist said made me calmer when we tried grounding!”

“Yeah, she told me that you seemed to really enjoy the scent. Now, obviously, you might not want to carry a stuffed animal everywhere you go to help with grounding, but because we know your thoughts start to race when you try to sleep...well, we thought you might like it,” Dad said.

Virgil picked the cat out of the box. “And it’s weighted?” he asked.

“Just a little,” Ami confirmed. “We figured that could also help with the grounding when you start to panic.”

“Wow,” Virgil said, swallowing. “I...thank you. This...yeah. This will help.”

Logan looked him over. “You okay, Virgil? You look overwhelmed.”

“I mean, I guess I’m a little overwhelmed,” Virgil said with a little laugh. “But you know, it’s more with the fact that you guys are so considerate than with panic.”

“Oh, that’s okay, then,” Logan said with a grin.

Virgil laughed in shock. “Okay, listen, buddy—”

“Ooh, Logan’s in trouble~” Roman sang.

Logan glared at Roman and chucked a pillow at his face. Roman ducked and laughed. Virgil giggled and hugged the cat close to his chest, nuzzling the toy close. “Will the lavender scent fade?” he asked.

“Over time, yeah,” Ami said. “But don’t worry, Dad and I put a little velcro on its belly so whenever the lavender scent fades, we can replace it with whatever scent you like.”

“Cool,” Virgil said with a grin. Roman chucked a pillow at Logan but Logan swatted it away...directly into Virgil’s face. “Logan! Roman!” he yelled, pushing down the pillow so he could glare at them.

Logan looked somewhat chastised but Roman was unapologetic. “Not my fault Logan dodged,” he said with a shrug.

“This means war,” Virgil said solemnly, putting his new friend on the table, before running with a scream over to Roman, whacking him mercilessly with the pillow until Dad and Ami ripped it from his hands. “Not tonight, please,” Dad all but begged. “We need to preserve the pillows for at least another month.”

Roman groaned and Virgil grumbled, but both boys got settled back where they were before, and Patton and Virgil got to choose which movie they watched next. After a quick murmured discussion, they decided on Spy Kids and the new movie started up. Virgil snuggled his new cat and Patton snuggled Virgil.

As time continued on, Virgil could feel sleep starting to stake a claim on him. Much as he loved Spy Kids, sleep sounded really good, too. They had dinner earlier, and now the sugar rush from the M&Ms was wearing off, and Virgil wanted nothing more than to sleep. Anywhere, really. He wasn’t going to be picky.

His head rested on Patton’s and he let his eyes close, just for a minute. When he next opened them, the ending credits were rolling and Patton was gently nudging him. “C’mon, Virge, I need to get up.”

“Hmm?” Virgil hummed.

“You fell asleep,” Patton said. “And I’ll let you sleep more if you need, but I gotta pee first.” And with that, he dashed out of the room.

Virgil groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Wha’ time is it?” he mumbled.

Logan pulled out his phone. “Just about ten. And it is a school night, so I imagine Dad and Ami are going to send us all to get ready to bed as soon as they realize the movie is over.”

Virgil blinked and looked around to find a suspicious lack of the two men in question. “Where did they go?” he asked.

“If I had to hazard a guess, the office in the basement,” Logan said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “But I wouldn’t interrupt them.”

“Wait...” Roman said, staring at Logan in horror. “Last year, when you did that...you never said what you found them doing...”

Logan turned crimson and looked away. “Yes, well, it wasn’t as compromising as I’m sure you’re thinking of, but it was not...pleasant by any means. For any party.”

Roman laughed. “You caught them making out, didn’t you?!”

“No comment,” Logan hissed. “And unless you want to explain to Virgil and Dee what ‘making out’ is, I suggest you shut up, quickly.”

“Oh,” Roman said, glancing at Virgil and Dee, before clamming up.

Dee looked at Virgil, confused. “What is making out?” he signed.

“Uh?” Virgil shrugged. “I think it’s like...kissing? I’m not sure, though.”

“But Dad and Ami kiss all the time!” Dee signed. “Why would Logan be embarrassed?”

“Because making out is kissing for a long time,” Patton said, walking into the room. “Like. Kissing for more than five seconds.”

“Five seconds is a long time to kiss,” Dee signed.

“Which is why it’s got its own name,” Patton said. He turned to Logan, smiling smugly. “You’re welcome.”

Logan stared at Patton. “Where did you learn that?”

Patton shrugged. “I got to talk to some middle schoolers sometimes when waiting for Roman after theatre practice, and they said that, and I asked what it meant.”

“And they explained?!” Roman asked.

“Yeah?” Patton said, shrugging. “They said it wasn’t the worst thing I could have asked, so they explained.”

Roman choked on air and Virgil watched the exchange with confusion. Dee waved his hands and when everyone was looking at him, he signed, “Do you only make out with people you love, like, romantically?”

“Yeah, usually,” Logan said.

“So does that mean you’ve made out with Jack?” Dee asked him.

Logan turned beet red and Roman burst out laughing. “That’s private,” Logan stammered out. “Please don’t ask me or Dad and Ami that.”

“Don’t ask us what?” Ami said, walking in the room.

“We were talking about making out,” Patton chirped.

Ami blinked. “I...who brought it up?”

Roman pointed at Logan. Logan sputtered. “Excuse you, you’re the one who suggested that’s what they were doing! I just said that Dad and Ami wanted privacy!”

“And did you actually explain what it was?” Ami asked.

“Oh! I explained!” Patton said, raising his hand. “The middle schoolers explained it to me, so I explained to them!”

“Explained what?” Dad asked, appearing in the doorway.

“Making out, apparently,” Ami told him.

Dad choked on air and Roman laughed while Logan just turned a darker shade of red. Virgil just felt more confusion wash over him. “This isn’t fair,” he complained. “I know all the swear words, but nobody is teaching me this stuff!”

“Well, it’s generally stuff they don’t teach you until you’re at least ten,” Dad managed to choke out. “So that could be why.”

“You learn about making out in school?” Dee asked.

“You learn about stuff that happens when you hit puberty, and as you get to middle school, you start to learn more and more things, including making out,” Roman said.

“Among other things that definitely shouldn’t be discussed around six to eight year olds,” Logan said, still not looking anyone in the eyes.

“Logan makes a good point,” Dad said. “And it’s ten o’clock, so I think you kids need to get ready for bed.”

Virgil groaned, but Patton just laughed at him. “You seemed to enjoy sleeping just five minutes ago,” he teased.

“But then we started talking,” Virgil said. “I like getting to talk like this.”

“When it’s not ten, you’re more than welcome to,” Dad said. “Until then, bed.”

Virgil groaned but complied. As everyone made their way to bed, or to the bathroom to shower, Virgil and Patton held their gifts close and looked at each other. “I’m really happy we joined this family,” Virgil said.

Patton gave him a shy grin that, in their silent twins-only language, roughly translated to Me, too.

#we'll carry on #sanders sides fanfiction #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #our creations #danger gays

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sanderssidesfanfiction · 5 years

Text

We’ll Carry On - Chapter Forty One

We’ll Carry On Tag

December 18th, 2018

Roman shivered in the cold, but he kept running, running, running. He had slipped out the back door of the house but he didn’t know if one of the younger kids saw him, or if they would tell on him if they did. His lungs burned and he just kept going, his personal documents hidden as safe as they could be pressed against his chest in his zipped up jacket.

He looked up at the sky. It was getting dark, but it would be a while yet before he felt safe enough to find shelter for the night. He growled. He couldn’t stay at that horrible house anymore, he just couldn’t. If he stayed one more day, he knew he would have done something drastic, other than running away.

Biting his lip, he hoped he was moving in the right direction of where this Mister Picani’s city was. He would hate to have come all this way only to have gone in the wrong direction.

January 1st, 2020

Roman jumped when Dad gasped like he had just gotten scalding water poured over his leg. He was revelling in the last day before he had to go back to school, and he didn’t like it when Dad got panicked. “Something up?” he asked Dad.

“We missed it. We missed your anniversary!” Dad exclaimed.

“My...what?” Roman asked.

“The anniversary of when you showed up at our door! We missed it! How could we miss it?!” Dad asked, jumping to his feet and pacing.

Ami walked in the room and frowned, turning to Roman. “What happened this time?”

“Apparently, we missed the anniversary of when I dropped onto your doorstep,” Roman said drily.

“Oh,” Ami said with a little laugh. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Either of you.”

“Why not?!” Dad asked. “It’s an important day, Remy!”

“True,” Ami allowed. “But not as important as the day we adopted Roman.”

Dad froze in place. “That’s true,” he said, pointing at Ami. “We can have a mini-celebration on the day he was adopted.”

Roman frowned. “It’s not really that big of a deal, you know. No need to celebrate it on my account. I won’t be hurt.”

Dad stared at him like he was crazy. “That’s an important day, Roman!”

“I mean, I guess,” Roman said. Vanellope ran into the room and jumped onto his lap, and he scratched at her ears. “But I already feel like a part of the family. Adopted or not, I feel almost like I was raised here. Sometimes I still miss...” he swallowed. “Sometimes I still miss Mom. But I feel like I have a new family here. When I joined it doesn’t matter as much to me as the fact that I’m simply a part of it now.”

“We’re still celebrating,” Dad said definitively. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. We’ll celebrate it with your brothers, too.”

Roman thought about it. “When did you adopt Dee? I don’t remember.”

“Mid-March,” Ami said. “Emile, do you remember the exact date?”

“March eighteenth,” Dad said. “I remember because I was shocked the process took less than a week that time.”

“Well, we were already certified foster parents, and we didn’t have a custody battle to win,” Ami pointed out.

“True,” Dad allowed. “Still. March eighteenth, dinner for Dee. February fifteenth, Logan, February twentieth, Patton and Virgil, and January eighteenth, Roman. Yes?”

Ami stared at Dad. “You have all of their adoption dates memorized? I couldn’t do that if I tried every day for weeks.”

“Priorities,” Dad said, tapping his temple. “It’s important to me, so I remember.”

“I mean, it’s important to me too, but I don’t have it memorized, my love,” Ami said.

“Well, you have other things memorized that I don’t,” Dad pointed out. “You know Dee’s texture issues in and out like the back of your hand. You know exactly how much time it takes Logan on average to finish his homework, and you check on him half an hour later if he isn’t done. I couldn’t possibly do either of those things. Dee because there’s so many little things to keep track of, and Logan because...well...Logan holes up in his room whenever he’s done with homework, but he’ll also do his homework in his room. I can’t tell the difference.”

Ami laughed. “It’s not too hard, but I’ll let you figure that stuff out on your own, unless we’re in a rush and Dee needs good textures on clothes and something to stim with,” he said.

Roman leaned back into the couch. “You know, when I first got here, I was worried that you both wouldn’t be ready to be dads, or that you’d just ship me off to another foster home after a month or so. But you’re better dads than I could have ever imagined.”

Dad grinned and Ami smiled softly, ducking his head. “Thank you, Roman, that means a lot,” Dad said. “Is there anything you’d like when we celebrate your adoption anniversary?”

Roman shrugged. “I don’t really need much fanfare. It would be nice if I could pick out dinner, like we do for birthdays, but it’s not necessary.”

“If that’s what you want, that’s what you shall have,” Dad said. “It’s not a big deal to you, but it is to us, so we’re going to try and make it special.”

“Okay,” Roman said, feeling somewhat skeptical. “Why is it a big deal for you, though?”

Dad and Ami looked at each other. “Is this a you playing down yourself thing or a genuinely curious thing?” Ami asked.

“Genuinely curious,” Roman said, shifting on the couch as Vanellope jumped off him and ran out of the room. “I mean, I understand that anniversaries of things can be celebrated, but why this specific anniversary? Why our adoptions?”

“Well,” Ami said, sitting down on the couch next to Roman. “You changed our lives. You and all your brothers did. Neither of us ever really intended to have kids, but we were never against the thought. You showing up showed us...what we were missing out on. It showed us a look into a slightly crazier life, but one that was also incredibly rewarding. It was turning over a new leaf. It was offering us a chance to make a difference. It was...it was something amazing. And amazing things deserve to be celebrated.”

Roman supposed that made sense. Only through the lens of an adult, though, and he wasn’t an adult yet. So really, he supposed he was just taking his dads’ word for it, trusting that he might understand one day.

Logan poked his head into the room. “Hey, who’s turn is it to walk Vanellope? She’s getting antsy.”

“It’s the twins,” Roman said, standing up. “I can walk with them.”

“Yeah, go ahead,” Logan said. “What’s going on, by the way? Family meeting?”

“No, talk about celebrating the anniversary of my adoption,” Roman said with a shrug. “Apparently, it’s a bit of a big deal. They’re planning on celebrating yours, too.”

Logan blinked in surprise. “What?”

“You heard me, Pocket Protector,” Roman said, walking out of the room. “I’ll grab the twins and then head out with Vanellope.”

“Hey, Roman, I’m going to need an explanation on that!” Logan called after him, but Roman pretended he didn’t hear it.

He ran up to the twins’ room, where Patton and Virgil were both reading, and said, “It’s time to walk Vanellope, guys, and it’s your turn.”

Patton got up without complaint, but Virgil sighed. “I really like Vanellope, and most times I like walking her, but I wish she didn’t get too hyper right as I was getting to the good part in the book.”

Roman chuckled and led both the boys downstairs, before calling, “Vanellope, do you want to go on a walk?”

There was an excited yelp and the fast clicking of Vanellope’s nails as she ran full-tilt toward the door. She sat patiently for as long as it took Virgil to clip the leash on her, before she started pawing at the door and whining. Patton opened the door and all three of them were outside within seconds, letting Vanellope dash out into the yard and enjoy rolling around in the grass for a few moments.

As Patton, Virgil, and Roman started to walk down the sidewalk, though, Vanellope quickly dashed back over to them, walking a few feet ahead of them and sniffing everything, despite being familiar with the walk they took every day. She must have been really antsy for a walk. Something to do. Roman could relate to that. “So, what do you two think of our little family?” Roman asked.

“Why?” Virgil asked, sending Roman a sideways glance.

“Well, Dad and Ami are planning on celebrating my adoption anniversary soon, and it has me thinking. It has everyone thinking, I guess, but I’m wondering what you two think of our family,” Roman explained.

“I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” Patton said, letting Vanellope tug a little on the leash but making sure she didn’t go too far in front of them. “I mean, yeah, sometimes I miss Mom, but she didn’t really love me and Virgil for a while before we left, I think. At the very least, she didn’t love us the same way. And it’s a little sad, but instead of having Mom who didn’t love us as much and Charles who hated us, we have Dad and Ami, and you and Logan and Dee, who all love us. And you guys help us when we need it. Without fail. That’s...new, but nice.”

Virgil nodded. “I never thought I’d say this, but we can rely on you guys when we need help. It’s strange, for sure. But it’s also comforting. There’s so many ways the world can go wrong, it’s nice to know that there are people to be there with us through it all.”

“Huh,” Roman said, considering. “I’d never thought of it like that. For me, it was just...I saw this as a better alternative to foster care at first. Dad and Ami cared about me and they made sure I went to school and didn’t make me clean the entire house and look after other people if I didn’t want to. I didn’t think anything could be better than living with my mother, before she...died.” Roman swallowed and let himself feel the grief for a moment, before continuing. “But if this isn’t better, it’s at least as good. I don’t know if I could really compare this to that. It’s two entirely different experiences. But...I’m...happy, again. I never thought I’d be happy after that car wreck. Yet here I am.”

Virgil and Patton shared a smile, and Roman frowned. “What?” he asked.

“You should tell Dad and Ami that,” Patton said.

“They worry about you a lot, including whether or not you’re happy and if you’re just pretending to be fine so they worry less. If you tell them that you’re genuinely happy with them, I think they’d relax a little, and also be over the moon,” Virgil added.

“Well, you should tell Dad and Ami that you trust them,” Roman retorted. “Don’t think they haven’t noticed that you go to each other more than anyone else when you’re in trouble.”

Vanellope dashed between them and the end of her leash, tail wagging as fast as it could. They rounded the end of the neighborhood and started walking back to their house. “How about we agree that all of us will tell Dad and Ami how we feel about the family?” Patton proposed. “Because I bet that they’d really enjoy knowing, and maybe if we do it together it’ll be less embarrassing.”

“Sure, we can try it,” Roman agreed. He laughed. “This is definitely nothing like a fairy tale family. Which is a good thing. It’s the best thing to happen to me in a while, realizing that I’m happy with you guys.”

“Same,” Virgil said. “I don’t think anything could make me happier than this new family.”

“Not even crushes?” Patton teased.

“Nah, crushes don’t last forever. Family is with you through all the tough times, while a crush might shy away from that. Family is definitely better,” Virgil responded definitively.

As they got back to the house, Vanellope whined, and she had to be dragged more than walked back inside. Roman carried her through the house and out to the fenced in backyard, and grabbed a few of her toys to wrestle with her. Logan came out to watch Roman, and he noted, “Patton and Virgil say that you and them are going to talk about our family to Dad and Ami later.”

“They’re right,” Roman said. “We’re gonna tell them how this family helped us. Because we weren’t exactly clear about that before.”

Logan hummed. “Can I join you? Dee makes it known that he loves this family almost every day in his own ways, but I haven’t told Dad and Ami how much they’ve helped me in a while. And I mean beyond transitioning.”

Roman threw one of Vanellope’s toys across the yard and she bounded after it. “I don’t see why not. It’s showing appreciation to them. We’re not going to ban you from that.”

Logan smiled. “Thanks. Do you have a plan on how you’re going to tell them?”

“Not yet. Any ideas?” Roman asked.

Logan shrugged. “Maybe a few...”

#we'll carry on #sanders sides fanfiction #roman sanders #emile picani #patton sanders #virgil sanders #our creations #danger gays

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