#even though i literally already know my dad used to frequently hang out at gay drag bars

[sickmachete]

#me trying to figure out how risky it would be to drop the she/her pronouns about an ex #even though i literally already know my dad used to frequently hang out at gay drag bars #i have so many vague memories of coming out to him but im never Sure bc HES never sure its like memory problem-ception #and hes always talking to me about Boys and Boyfriends and like SQUINTS. OLD MAN. DO YOU OR DONT YOU KNOW SKDJFHGDHSJ #damn the adhd #idk why i made this into a poll #txt #. if you guys make me lose im cancelling pride

[dramaticviolincrescendo]

Okay, what are your thoughts on Ian's relationships? With his family, his boyfriends, and Mandy (since I think that's the only friend he's had)

Oh, no. Ohhhhhhhh, no. Now you’ve done it. You’ve asked about my dear, darling favorite character on the show. My love for one Ian Gallagher runs deep, which means this answer is going to run super long. The good, the bad, and everything in between—Ian Gallagher lives rent free in my brain and always will. I derive so much satisfaction from seeing Ian interact with other people, in whatever capacity that might be. I admire and aspire to the compassion he has shown for others over the years, even and perhaps most especially those who arguably haven’t earned it. He tries so hard to be good to people, and seeing their love for him manifest when he’s reached such lows where he can’t even fathom why the love of his life would want to be with him forever? That’s powerful.

So, yeah. I said I could write essays on these characters, and that’s exactly what you’re about to get: five hours and 6k words’ worth of my thoughts. (I am so sorry. There will be text walls.)

Let’s dive into Ian’s many and multifaceted relationships—his family, his friends, and his romantic pursuits.

Ian and Family

Ian told us where he stood on this in the very first season, and it set the standard for his character for eleven years to come. Faced with a prospect that others in his position could only dream of—not being Frank’s son and having a wealthy father with a functional, prosperous lifestyle mere miles away—Ian refused to buy into it. He refused to do what might have been objectively better for his future by seeking a relationship with Clayton. In that household, he would have had access to a better public school, more financial resources, a tutor to help him where he was struggling, and less urgency for him to work so that he could enjoy being a kid. When he got sick, he would have had access to better healthcare, too. Perhaps he would have had a better shot at West Point from that background than he did at home. But that’s just it: home was with his family, and he was very clear that they didn’t live in that nice house. All he wanted—all he wanted—was to be with his brothers and sisters. He has never referred to them as only half-siblings or half-cousins; he has never even used the words, “you’re not my dad,” on Frank. That’s his family, the people he loves most in the world, and he’s always been at his best when he’s with them and at his worst when he’s not. Let’s look at each of them:

1.      Frank: It is so striking to me that Ian doesn’t appear to hold the outright contempt for Frank that Fiona, Lip, and Debbie have exhibited at different points over the years. Aside from the handful of instances where they’ve gotten into physical altercations (which Frank always initiated) and kicking him out of the house on occasion, Ian is simply indifferent to him. But there are these moments, these brief glimmers of mutual attachment and loyalty, if those are the right words. In the scene where Ian famously doesn’t count to three before using the pepper spray on him, Frank starts saying how his New Gallaghers weren’t his real kids—that Ian is his real son, and Frank is his real father. It’s a passing thought uttered while trying to manipulate his way into the house that neither of them think much of, nor does the audience…until you remember that biologically, Frank isn’t his father, and he certainly hasn’t behaved like one either. Ian has more right than anyone to comment on that, but he doesn’t because Frank is his father. He’s the father that Ian idly hoped wouldn’t come to his wedding yet sat joking about with Debbie rather than getting pissed off that he was making out with some lady in front of everyone. He’s the father who sat at the table with them eating breakfast in 11x03 and claimed Mickey was the man in their relationship without Ian saying a word to him about it, and who Ian saw no issue with taking Franny to school when no one else could. In s4, as far removed from his family as he’d been for a while, Ian still went straight to the hospital when he heard that Frank was at death’s door. We focus so much on his attitude towards Monica because of how obvious it was that we frequently miss these tiny moments and their implications. It would take an awful lot of patience, compassion, and love not to write Frank off completely after all he’s done. Not necessarily our standard definition of love between a son and his father, perhaps, but a loving soul.

2.      Monica: I have actually written a pretty lengthy post about his relationship with her because while their shared mental illness definitely plays a role in his feelings toward her, that grew complicated far earlier than his diagnosis. The first time we meet her, we see that he has a visceral reaction to news of her presence. He runs. When Ian can’t process strong emotions, that’s what he’s done in the past. I happened upon an interview Cameron did just after the end of s1 where he mentioned something I had already been thinking: Ian’s age when Monica left is extremely important. He was a kid in s1, but one who could roll with the punches, sometimes literally. She left them two years before that. Ian would have been in middle school, roughly as old as Debbie was when she still called Frank “daddy” and forgave him for everything he did. It’s an awkward age that once again set Ian in something of a danger zone—too old to accept an excuse or no explanation at all, but not old enough to process the situation in a healthy way. And then she’s back all of a sudden with no warning. Ian doesn’t cry like Debbie, and he doesn’t typically get explosively angry like Fiona. He can’t deal, so he runs. He hangs back. He only speaks when he has to and compartmentalizes: Monica wants to take Liam, and they need to stop her. It doesn’t have to be about her leaving. They have a goal—he can focus on that. And then she’s back a year later, saying she’s here to stay while Fiona seems to take her at her word and Lip isn’t there to ground everyone. Ian tries so hard to behave like Lip would with his biting sarcasm and attempts to stay emotionally distant in a way that seemed pretty exaggerated for Ian, but he’s also dealing with a fresh wave of guilt over Mickey going to juvie—and Monica gets it. She’s the only person to acknowledge that he’s in pain and actively try to make it better. She’s the only one who really knows at the time, but that hardly matters. This poor kid, whose mother left him when he still needed her, has her standing in front of him and saying she’s sorry and listening when he speaks and taking him dancing—just the two of them. Embarrassing as it was and harmful as it could have been, she tried to facilitate his dreams when no one else wanted him to go into the military. She was there for him when he went AWOL. She came for him when he was arrested and even wanted to make a place for him in her new life, unrealistic as it was. This goes so much deeper than them both being bipolar. Ian’s comment about her parachuting into their lives in s7 wasn’t about Mickey or her role in them breaking up. He trusted her. He wanted her. He needed her. And she’d convinced him that she would be there—until she left. Over and over again. She was there for him and unintentionally took advantage of how desperately he still needed his mother. She made him keep loving her, and that’s both a blessing that has him crying into a voluminous man’s arms when she passes and a curse that wrecked him more than once.

3.      Fiona: The trust these two have for each other cannot be understated. Fiona has discussed things with Ian that she never brought up around any of the other kids throughout the entire series. In the pilot episode, she tells him about feeling needed and takes his opinion on the matter to heart. At the end of the season, he’s the one she talks to about the car because she can trust him to give her an answer even without speaking. In s2, she tells Lip that the two of them are her rocks, and we see that time and time again. That’s part of what makes their falling out over the church hit that much harder: it’s Ian and Fiona. The only time they’d been on the outs in any serious manner up to that point was when Ian was adjusting to his new reality and they were trying to find a balance between sister and caretaker. Otherwise, that bond of trust had never been severed—not until Ian literally sold himself only for it to amount to nothing in the end because she had no idea the lengths to which he’d gone to get that building. That damage gets mended, thankfully, but what a powerful period of time when those two were the only ones who’d never really been at each other’s throats. There is a downside to that trust, though. As I mentioned before, Ian was so responsible and put together when he was younger that Fiona didn’t think twice about his situation with Ned or that he ran away. Not even seventeen yet, and she was telling Debbie that she didn’t like his decision to leave but trusted him. That is one of the things I love about this show—even something like trust that we always prop up as an important factor in our relationships can betray us in the most unexpected ways.

4.      Lip: I won’t go into it here, but the relationship they share is something that means a lot to me on a personal level. It’s part of how I knew that Ian would become my favorite character pretty early on. The way he simultaneously admires and envies Lip, loves and is annoyed by him, relies on him and is desperate to pave his own path in the world—what a beautiful and accurate depiction of what it means to be a younger sibling. Lip is the first person to discover that he’s gay and openly accept him for it. (I think what he tried with Karen came from a well-meaning place even if it was horribly, horribly misguided.) Lip is the one who tries to get him into West Point, hate it as he does. He helps Ian when Terry is after him, takes care of him in the aftermath of the wedding when he realizes just how deeply Ian feels for Mickey, searches the whole damn city for him when he finds out that Ian is in trouble, gets him a job, leans on him in his own time of need… He’s not perfect. He slips up, just like Ian does. Some things break my heart, like Lip insisting that he’s earned his own space when his little brother is asking him for safe harbor or Ian thanking him for being his brother outside the prison. But they love each other so much, and I just… I can’t possibly put into words how much I love their dynamic.

5.      Debbie, Carl, and Liam: I’m grouping these three together because they’re further separated from Ian in age, so we see a lot of the same trends with them as a whole. Ian loves taking care of people. We know this. We also know that Fiona and Lip don’t typically want him taking care of them—they’re the ones who take care of him when he needs it, specifically Lip. With the younger three, however, Ian can be the Big Brother. He can shake his head in utter bafflement at Debbie’s obsession with holding her breath for two minutes, walk Carl through what he needs to go camping, and promise his baby brother postcards when he leaves. The difference here is that his relationship with them is so much less fraught with conflict. We don’t see him fight with Debbie, Carl, or Liam the way he has with Fiona or Lip. While Ian tends to be the voice of reason during conflicts overall, I think it’s also because he relies on his older siblings in a way that he doesn’t with his younger siblings, and the latter don’t tend to rely on him as much as Fiona or Lip as well. There’s a lack of tension in most of their interactions growing up because that pressure isn’t there. Perhaps this is where Ian’s age and standing in the family is a bit more beneficial: young enough to have people he can rely on while too young for anyone to really rely on him for more than his share of the squirrel fund.

Ian and Friends

I’ve seen it mentioned that Ian (and Mickey) not having more friends is bad or lazy writing. I tend to believe that that fails to take something into account that, admittedly, most of us don’t really have to think about: having friends is a luxury. It requires time and effort to cultivate friendships, especially lasting ones. As a kid, Ian spent a lot of his free time working or helping to manage one family crisis after another. Going AWOL, losing his health, struggling to acclimate to his illness, trying to find a new career path, spiraling into the Gay Jesus movement, going to prison, adjusting once again to normal life, getting married, a pandemic… I’m sure he’s had plenty of acquaintances over the years, but having a family to support and constant upheavals would have made it extremely difficult to really forge strong relationships with them. I think that’s part of what makes his relationship with Mandy so special and valuable to him: she’s sort of the same way.

When we met Mandy in s1, she had other friends. We saw her meet up with them and go shopping; she told Ian a story about how one was mad at her for not sharing her make-up. As the trauma in the Milkovich household reached its zenith for her in s2 and she started thinking seriously about getting out of there, we saw those friends fall by the wayside—all except Ian. He saw her and let her see him early on. That’s a level of trust and respect that nobody else in their neighborhood would have displayed, certainly not to her. But then there’s this guy who defended her against their creepy, perverted teacher and treated her like a human being, not an object. It’s no wonder she developed an obvious, unrequited crush and sought physical comfort from him occasionally. It’s no wonder she tried to repay the favor by giving Mickey a hard time in s3 and s4, misguided and rather uninformed as we know it was at the time. (It’s also no wonder that she went for the closest Gallagher to Ian, either, but that’s for another meta.)

And Ian… Ian is loyal to a fault. We have watched Ian cut out his own heart and let the blood drip down his arm to pool on the floor at his feet if it would make a damn bit of difference for the people he loves. Like Fiona and Lip, Mandy immediately accepted him for who he is and suggested an arrangement that would protect him as well as benefit her. That is enormous where they came from. To him, that had to feel like the ultimate sign of friendship: he could trust her with a part of him that he hadn’t even entrusted to most of his family yet. From that point on, she was on the List of People Ian Gallagher Would Do Anything For. Finding out about Terry and what had happened? He held a bake sale, of all things, to fundraise for her. Seeing that his brother—his best friend—was treating her like garbage? He put him in his place. Her boyfriend was beating her? He brought her home and made it his goal to find a safe place for her to stay, even if it ultimately didn’t work. She was going to move away from all of her meager support with that boyfriend? He didn’t just rally his own arguments—he brought in outside help with Lip, who he thought might tip the scales. It’s usually just a saying that true friends will help each other hide a body, but Ian literally tried to do that. Lucky for him, he has a good head on his shoulders and used it.

No, Ian doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends. We’ve seen that he has spheres of influence, if you will, and acquaintances that he can call upon when he needs them. (For example, the guys that helped with the preacher.) However, Ian has always struck me as a “quality over quantity” type of person. Being a soldier or an EMT isn’t lucrative, but they’re meaningful for someone who sees them as vehicles for helping people. Seeing more parts of the world than just Chicago has appealed to him in the past, but he seems perfectly content to carve out a spot for himself right here at home. Having only three best friends—Lip, Mandy, and Mickey—doesn’t seem like much of a hardship for him.

Ian and Romantic Pursuits

I hate to say that there were five, but from Ian’s perspective, there were. So, let’s talk about all five. Even though…there weren’t five. There was only one. We’ll save the best for last.

1.      Kash: The first of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. I hope it goes without saying that I hate this man with the passion of a thousand burning suns. I hate him so much. However, their interactions taught me a whole lot about how kind and compassionate Ian really is—and how naïve. Of course, he would believe that Kash loved him. The man was buying him all sorts of expensive gifts, and that’s what we see on all the commercials and in so many movies, isn’t it? Grand gestures of affection through expensive gifts. Poor as they were, Ian still scraped together the money to buy him baseball tickets and CDs, convinced as he was that that was all part of what you did in a relationship. That desire to do things like a “normal” married couple in s11? Yeah, that starts here. Ian has always been a planner, and he’s always bought into certain stereotypes. We can see that here. What we can also see is Ian’s compassionate, kind, loving soul. He cares so deeply for other people, even ones that he doesn’t know very well, especially if they are living in circumstances that mean something to him. (For example, the mentally ill woman they tried to help at work and the shelter kids whose situations were so similar to Mickey’s.) Kash being a closeted gay man living in misery with a wife he didn’t love and two children he never meant to have clearly tugged at Ian’s heartstrings. Even after everything that happens, even though Ian behaves as though they’re awkward exes who just happen to work together, he still covers for Kash. He gives him that head start and takes it upon himself to break the news to Linda that he’s gone. He defends Kash to Lip when the latter finally says exactly what we all know: he was a pedophile who deserved to rot in prison for what he did. As with Fiona’s trust, Ian’s loving soul, compassionate heart, and desire for love outside his siblings are virtues that have done him harm in the past. This is one such instance.

2.      Ned: The second of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. To be honest, I don’t believe that Ian would even characterize it that way. He seemed very aware that Ned was a distraction from his problems—from Mickey being in juvie, Monica falling into a depressive episode, the money in the squirrel fund being gone, Lip moving out, losing his shot at West Point, and getting denied for service due to his age. Again, though, Ian has always wanted to feel valued, and this rich dude was letting him stay in a fancy hotel room with anything he wanted readily available. This (disgusting predator) guy was giving him attention and a distraction with no strings attached. Then the complications roll in, and he’s once again faced with being the mistress to a closeted, married man. The difference here is that he’s not comfortable with it. He tries to tell Fiona twice, which is enormous for Ian when he has never been very good at communicating if it means burdening others with or even merely facing his own problems. But he tries to tell her. He rejects the GPS unit and tells Ned that he has a boyfriend, boxing him into a strictly sexual arrangement. (This, unfortunately, makes sense. It aligns with how Fiona viewed things: where Jimmy was concerned about it, she told him that it was “just sex.”) He is also visibly embarrassed to admit to Lip and Fiona what has been going on with Ned. By that point, Ian is a year and a half older and, while still scarred and warped in his views because of Kash, perhaps a bit wiser. Emotionally, he kept Ned at arm’s length most of the time. He used Ned not just as a distraction, but as a way to galvanize Mickey into taking their relationship a step forward. But Ian is still Ian, and Ian is compassionate to a fault. Ned played that card by asking if he could have a little understanding for a man whose life was falling apart. Sure, he can. He’s Ian, the Gallagher too empathetic for his own good at times. We know how that spirals out of control. It just goes to show that even when Ian was trying to maintain some emotional distance, his heart is simply too big and his perceptions too heavily impacted by the grooming he’d experienced with two different people by then, and so he [SPOILER ALERT] still feels enough of a connection to Ned after all these years to be mildly bothered that he passed away.

3.      Caleb: The third of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. Ian’s relationship with Caleb strikes me as being similar to what he had with Ned. While more age-appropriate, Ian was very much using Caleb, just as Caleb was using him. That’s why it was so easy for both of them to walk away. Ian was in a difficult spot when they met. He was grateful to the firefighters who saved his life, but he had also just saved someone else at a moment when he was perhaps at his absolute lowest. That’s what he’s always wanted, isn’t it—to be a bit of a hero and help people? So, he’s understandably drawn there, first out of gratitude and then to be surrounded by very attractive gay firemen who helped people, saved his life, and invited him to be part of a function they were holding. But he made himself pretty clear from the start: he was interested in sex with Caleb. That was the draw. He still hasn’t come to terms with being bipolar and losing Mickey, but Ian has never not been with anyone for any extended length of time. That’s just who he is: he’s always sought some level of outward validation—from the army, Kash, Monica, Mickey, and so many others. We’re seeing him struggle with that now as he deals with the opportunities available to him as a mentally ill ex-con felon. So, he pursues Caleb as a distraction just like he did with Ned, only Caleb is a predator in his own right and can smell that his interest is coming from a place of weakness. He immediately (and initially unintentionally) preys on Ian’s desperate need for structure and order by insisting on a traditional date where Ian is very much out of his element and even goes so far as to instruct Ian on how to be intimate. It’s no wonder he mentions Mickey in these moments, as Mickey never wanted him to change, and Ian leans heavily (even slightly hyperbolically) into the fact that Mickey wasn’t a paragon of order and stability like Caleb outwardly appears. 

And I think why Ian puts up with it so long—being taught like a child, being used to upset Caleb’s parents, being paraded in front of his friends to make them jealous—is because he was getting something out of it too, just like with Ned. A stable place to live when their home ownership was in flux, a place away from his family when they weren’t providing the support he needed as he adjusted to his disorder, someone who validated his desires to help people regardless of their ulterior motives, and a physical distraction from his own problems. All of these parallel his relationship with Ned very closely. It was never going to last, of course. Ian is a strong person who temporarily forgot how strong he was because he forgot who he was, and Caleb didn’t want to be cared for—he wanted a project, like all of his sculptures. Being a project, being something that others see as needing to be fixed? That’s a hard no for Ian. It always has been. There’s a moment I love later in their relationship where Caleb tells him to turn off the lights when he goes out and lightly reprimands him for leaving one on the day prior. Ian is in a better place at that point, having regained a lot of his sense of self, and stares after him with indignation at being treated like a kid. He’s then lied to and cheated on, but I think that to mention those things to Caleb when they break up is to admit weakness on his own part—that he stuck with Caleb knowing that he was being mistreated, and Ian is not one to be called a victim. So, while we know from his discussions with Lip and Sue that the cheating and distrust bothered him most, he merely focused on Caleb lying about his sexuality, which removed a lot of the emotion from the situation—just like he did with Ned. It ultimately turned out to be a bad move since Caleb, being a skilled predator, made him question even his own sexuality in return, but we’re starting to see that Ian isn’t here to be someone’s toy anymore. Not an older, married man like Ned, but definitely not anyone his age either. I’m glad this pseudo-relationship happened because it showed Ian how strong he really was and that he could be in control of his own life. Sure, it destabilized him a little in the aftermath, but he worked through it. He leaned on his family, specifically Lip, who has always been his rock without the blurred lines that Fiona represented between sister/mother-figure/caretaker. Caleb is a garbage person, but Ian was the one who pulled the treasure from the trash, not him.

4.      Trevor: The fourth of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. Trevor is perhaps the first relationship where we don’t see Ian dive in. Whether that’s because of his confusion over Trevor’s gender identity or the fact that he was really beginning to fully mature as an adult by that point (ostensibly finishing his education, getting a career, being fully self-sufficient, etc.), he tried to take his time and not jump right in. They hung out, talked around the neighborhood, and yes, engaged in some casual intimacy at the club. Again, Ian might not be in a full relationship, but he’s never without someone for long. At that point in the series, all he was missing was a relationship when it comes to traditional, “normal” goals for people to have. But Trevor posed a situation he’s never been in before since, while gay himself, Ian has never been very interested in activism or engaging in the LGBT community. It’s just not in his culture or environment, so to be faced with someone he’s interested in that challenges a lot of his views of gender and sexuality is something he takes his time with. Unfortunately, Trevor is younger than him and not quite as mature, not quite as experienced. He tells Ian he has plenty of friends and doesn’t need another, which is an ultimatum that has never really sat very well with me personally because I’m generally of the mind that if a person needs time and you really care for them, you’ll let them have that time. I’m not unsympathetic to Trevor: he’s been burned before and has his own trauma stemming from responses to his identity, so it makes complete sense for him not to be patient in this regard. He shouldn’t have to be—but then, Ian shouldn’t have to rush into anything he’s not 100% certain he wants either. That’s exactly what he does, though, because Ian does for others without thinking of the implications for himself a lot of the time. They make great friends, but they don’t make great partners. Trevor treats Ian similarly to Caleb in that he’s a bit of a project. Trevor educates him on the LGBT community and incorporates him into his ventures for the shelter without ever really showing much interest in Ian’s life or family, which suits Ian just fine because for as interested as he is in helping with the shelter and as attracted to Trevor as he is, he seems to know they’re not compatible. Ian, who has been having sex since he was far too young, takes a step back from it when they run into compatibility issues. (And pushes back on the pressure to bottom with some of his own—neither of them were in the right on that.) He doesn’t ask much about Trevor’s family or try to be part of his personal life. They sort of embody the “friends with benefits” stereotype: they hang out, they have sex, and that’s really all there is to their relationship. 

The reason Ian doubles down on trying to make it work isn’t because there was a future for them before Mickey broke out. It’s because he thinks he’s lost Mickey forever, he knows he’s lost Monica forever, and he’s not going to get the support he needs from his family when they couldn’t stand Monica and Fiona told him what he already knew to be true, namely that Mickey being an escaped convict would destroy everything Ian worked so hard for if he got involved. So, he does what Ian does. He needs that distraction—he needs to run from these strong emotions he can’t process, so he bottles them up and unfairly hopes that Trevor will provide some of that comfort after cheating on him with Mickey. (Had Mickey been released, I think they would have broken up. Instead, that was the first match Ian lit, but certainly not the last.) Now, the thing is, Trevor said at the start that he didn’t want to be Ian’s friend. He’s also younger and less mature in a relationship, which means he threw the concept of love out there prematurely, just like Ian thought what he had with Kash was love. The death throes of their relationship were a back and forth where Ian was spiraling and seeking comfort, and Trevor was providing some while keeping their relationship pretty amorphous. (Were they exes? Were they friends? Were they people who shared interests and danced around each other? Were they going to get back together? They never officially broke up—it fizzled and resurged, then fizzled for good.) Ultimately, whatever it was that they had couldn’t survive Mickey, Monica, or Gay Jesus. Trevor wasn’t prepared to deal with a full-blown manic episode, and based on his hands-off approach with involving himself in Ian’s life even before the Mickey-shaped bomb got dropped on them, it doesn’t seem like he really wanted to anyway. He did what he’s always done: prioritized his shelter, which I’m not deriding in the slightest. By that point, Ian was too far gone to care that he disappeared anyway. Had the situation been different and he was getting the support from his family that he needed, it doesn’t seem like he would have cared much there either.

5.      Mickey: Finally. Only took over five thousand words to get here. I’ll preface this with something that anyone who knows me from other fandoms is already well aware of, namely that I don’t do romance. Ever. Never been interested. The relationships I’ve always been most passionately interested in are platonic ones, especially “found families” and siblings, which is probably obvious from the other five thousand words here. Ian and Mickey are the first relationship I’ve actively shipped or written for in a fandom. They’re the first I’ve been invested in to this extent. As such, one of the biggest pet peeves I had when I first joined this fandom was the saying, “Ian fell first, Mickey fell harder.” These two wonderful dumbasses face planted on the concrete in front of the Kash and Grab in s1 and never recovered. I could go on forever about these two, but that particular wall of text would probably be too daunting for even the most avid Gallavich stan to traverse, so I’ll keep it fairly brief. As we can see above, Ian has a very strict sense of what he “should” want in a partner. Someone who is moderately successful in their chosen field, makes enough money to at least live comfortably, and typically does something that helps other people (a doctor, a fireman, a youth counselor). These aren’t passionate people. They’re not men who operate on instinct the way most of the people in his life have always had to by virtue of their social standing. They have life goals and opportunities that he envies, and Ian has a great deal of compassion for them when they hit a roadblock or things don’t work out. The amazing dichotomy of Ian Gallagher is that he straddles a line most people can’t between the rough neighborhood that has instilled in him all of his values/behaviors and the middle-class mentality of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and aspiring to more. Ian has always aimed for what Lip said wasn’t possible for poor people: being successful without having to scam or steal. But as I said way back at the beginning of this manifesto, the South Side is his home. His family is his family. And none of the people he’s been with personify the South Side quite like Mickey—they don’t personify home like Mickey. 

And I think that’s where the initial draw for Ian is. (I’m going to focus on Ian’s side since he’s who your question focused on.) The other guys look great on paper, and Ian’s brain says that that’s what he should aim for. We know better, though. We know that Ian has an enormous heart that belongs first and foremost to his family and their home. His heart says that this person—this dirty, rude, mean, violent person—is home. His heart says this person is everything about himself that he denies having, just like Ian was everything about Mickey that the latter declined to openly acknowledge for so long. I don’t like relationships built on “making each other better.” I really don’t. The wonderful thing about this is that it’s never been that way. Ian didn’t change Mickey. He’s exactly who he’s always been, but he’s grown past the fear of his own emotions and Terry’s response to them. He’s still a thief, a con artist, violent, and rude. Mickey didn’t change Ian either. He’s still rigidly conforming to certain stereotypes of what he thinks he should want, seeking structure (to his own detriment at times), and not a great communicator. The point for them is that they complement each other, not that they make the other a better person—not even that they bring something out of each other that wasn’t already there. That’s what Ian’s other relationships did. They made him shave off his edges so that he could fit a square peg into a round hole, and that’s not happiness. It’s simply what he thought he was supposed to do—what “normal” people did. 

With Mickey, he doesn’t have to worry so much about what is normal or acceptable. He doesn’t have to worry about whether or not his life is objectively “on track,” not until fairly recently. Mickey is the only person he’s ever been with who has accepted him for who he is, faults and strengths alike, without the underlying insinuation that he should be aiming for something else or pretending to be whatever the other person needs him to be in order to care for them. Kash needed an escape—Ian provided it. Ned needed a very specific brand of toy—Ian played that role. Caleb needed a project to feel fulfilled—Ian went along with it for a bit. Trevor needed someone who accepted him as he was but did things his way—Ian did that. To care for Mickey has only ever meant being himself because all Mickey ever really needed was him. Mickey didn’t need an escape from his home—his relationship with his family is more complicated than that. Mickey didn’t need to be saved from his upbringing—it’s what made him the person Ian fell in love with and who he is happy to be. Mickey didn’t need someone to change who he is on a fundamental level because unless it is going to get him into trouble and separate them, Ian never wanted him to. (Even then, it’s about what he does, not who he is.) And yes, I’m sure that there’s a level of excitement that Ian finds exhilarating where Mickey is concerned, but I tend to believe it goes a lot deeper than that. What he finds exciting about Mickey is what Mickey embodies about the South Side—about home. About his own upbringing, but also Ian’s. About Frank and Monica, his siblings, school, work, ROTC—existing and surviving in an environment where it’s not guaranteed that you’ll have money to keep the heat on this winter or feed your family. They spent the early seasons living in a constant state of fight or flight. They couldn’t afford not to. And there’s excitement in that. Look at how many people say that the first seasons are their favorite! There hasn’t been a huge shift in the quality or direction of the writing, just the trajectory of the characters. They’ve gotten older, and their problems have been different. It’s not about survival so much of the time anymore, but those are the storylines that excite us. For Ian, that exhilaration in the constant battle of survival in their neighborhood is sewn into the fiber of his being just like it is Mickey’s. He saw his home in Mickey before they truly fell in love, and when that followed, Mickey became home.

In Conclusion

Ian has spent his entire life looking for the “right” path only to realize that it was laid before him: his family, his small circle of friends, and Mickey. I love that that is coming full circle this season, where [SPOILER ALERT] marriage has almost made him regress a bit to that place where there must be a right way of doing things going forward, and slowly but surely, we’re seeing him loosen up.

Good morning. It’s Ian Gallagher loving hours.

#shameless #ian gallagher #it's ian gallagher loving hours #shameless meta #well that took six hours #and I didn't get more writing done #but I feel accomplished

[datninjalyfe]

Stay, Part 1: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Self-Destruction in 3...2...1

The dance was a week away and all Katsuki could think about was what Yoyo had said.  Maybe he was attracted to Izuku and maybe he wasn’t. He had no idea.  But he found it incredibly hard to concentrate on his school work, that’s for sure.  He had Izuku’s number and would occasionally try to text him, but when he would type something out, he would delete it immediately.  But once he had finally had a chance to sit down and convince himself to do homework, he suddenly got a notification on his phone.

He practically threw his pencil down.  He held his breath, thinking that it may have been Izuku.  He didn’t even stop to think, but when he looked at his phone, his phone fell from his hands.  “Fucking hell,” he mumbled picking it up and unlocking the screen.  It was just Camie, who had commented on one of his posts: Dayyyumm lookin like a snack boiii.  He rolled his eyes but liked the comment anyway.  He really wanted to see if Izuku would like it.  He did look good in the post—he was unzipping his U.A. jacket when Mina asked him to do it again after training one day in the gym.  His skin glistened with sweat and she yelled at him how to pose.  He found himself actually liking the picture and asked her to send it to him so he could post it.  It got more likes than he originally thought.

He and Camie had also talked a lot more since she agreed to come to the dance.  To Kirishima’s demise, Katsuki had actually grown to like her, even if she was a total airhead.  They texted back and forth, in between classes and outside of normal school hours. She was really flirty and seemed super easy, which is Katsuki’s case, was exactly what he needed.  Something, or someone, to take his mind off of Izuku.

She had texted him right after she commented and it read: you plus me equals YAS PLEASE!  He shook his head and laughed.  He asked her what she was going to wear to the dance to which she responded: depends I want to match you so wear something hot and here’s a hint…red’s my color.  He got the gist of it.  They’d likely have sex.  One way for Katsuki to realize if he actually had feelings for Izuku for not.  

Katsuki heard some of the other students outside of his door.  He wished he could get a little quiet, but they were running up and down the hallways. There were study rooms in the dorms that had soundproof walls, so he thought that maybe he could get some quiet to just think.  He went into a drawer and pulled out another notebook.  This one was a journal, a sort of diary.  He was a pretty angry kid and his dad thought that getting him a journal would help calm his nerves.  Truthfully, it did and he kept the original that his dad got for him.  Back then, he wrote in it every day.  He got new ones, but wrote in them less frequently and after reading through them recently, he mostly got over whatever insignificant problem he was facing.  But the original had in it his quirk and how hard it was to understand what was really happening to his body.

But he had a feeling that this entry he’d want to keep for a while, but he couldn’t write in it with all the noise from outside his room.  He stuffed it down his pants and left the room, locking the door on his way out. He noticed a few of the girls in the hallway and Kirishima.  How could he think girls stare at me when he’s literally hanging out with almost every girl in the class?  He put his headphones in and started to head downstairs into the basement.  Once he got to the study room, he looked around before pulling out the journal and opened the door.  There was no one in there.

Except Izuku.  

They were totally alone in this room.  Just the two of them.  No one could hear what was happening outside.  And they wouldn’t be disturbed inside.  His heart dropped and heat boiled in his chest.  Dammit, what is wrong with me?  Izuku was muttering to himself before he heard Katsuki close the door.  

“Kacchan!” Izuku said, looking nervous.  He laughed a little and said, “The girls were being kind of loud and it was hard to concentrate, but I want to get my homework done before the weekend starts.  It’s okay, though, if you want the room to yourself.”  Izuku started to pack up, stuffing his notebook into his All Might backpack that was falling apart.  Katsuki didn’t mind that he was in here with him.  Just that they were in the room alone together.  What are you talking about, nothing will happen!  He didn’t know how to make him stop packing his things.  That he wouldn’t mind if Izuku stayed in there with him.  That he was thankful it was him in here and no one else.  

“You can stay if you want, I really don’t care.  I was just—” he stopped him before saying he wanted to write in his journal.  He didn’t want to seem—

What, gay?  Is that the word you were thinking, Katsuki?  Those thoughts raced around in his brain.  Sometimes he was totally sure he wasn’t.  Other times, he was sure he was bisexual, but only when Izuku was around, but those thoughts came before drifting off into a deep sleep.  It’s not like they had done anything, so Katsuki couldn’t know for sure, right?  “—those assholes outside my room are being loud and I’m finding it hard to focus on anything.”

Izuku stared at him for a second and opened his mouth.  But right when it opened for him to say something, Izuku closed it again and pulled out his notebook.  “If you’re sure.”

Katsuki nodded, but then added, “Just don’t be too loud, nerd.” without thinking about it.  He clamped his mouth shut.  And to his horror, Izuku smiled at that and went back to his work. Katsuki’s heart started to pound against his chest.  They had one of their first real conversations in a while.  Barely, but a full conversation, nonetheless.  Katsuki sat down in the seat furthest from Izuku and put his headphones in.  He was worried about what to write about with Izuku being right there, but decided the hell with it and jotted down some stuff like: Pros and Cons of being Bi…pro, you can make everyone your little bitch…con, people would judge…pro, maybe you’d convince Deku to love you…con, maybe he’d laugh at you…the list wasn’t very extensive, but he didn’t need it to be too deep right now.  He just needed to get all of his thought down on the piece of paper.  

 “Um, Kacchan?” a little flute said.  Katsuki’s head shot up at the sound and Izuku was standing over him, tapping him on the shoulder.  Katsuki hovered over his notebook, trying to cover up what he was talking about without raising suspicion, but Izuku looked down at Katsuki’s desk.  Katsuki slammed the notebook shut forcefully.  They looked at each for a few moments before Izuku said, “S-s-sorry to bother, but I d-d-definitely need some help with the physics problem in the homework.  Number 10, did you get it already?”

 Katsuki nodded.  “Yeah, lemme take a look.”  He got up and followed Izuku back to the desk.  Izuku sat down and Katsuki leaned over next to his shoulder.  Izuku didn’t reek of cologne like Kirishima did, but instead a subtle citrus scent that tickled Katsuki’s nose, like a certain lemon tea Katsuki likes to drink.  The curls in his dark green hair were tangled together and as Izuku tried to discuss the problem, all Katsuki could think about was running his fingers through Izuku’s hair, but tried to shake away that thought away.  Don’t you fucking touch him, he thought to himself.  But as Izuku explained the problem he was having and what he tried to do to solve it, Katsuki was hardly paying attention, only looking at the way his lips moved when he spoke.  Katsuki leaned in, actually trying to focus on what Izuku was saying, but when he went in closer, Izuku’s voice filled his ears, almost like he was talking directly into them.  Katsuki could hear him pause to inhale occasionally.  All Katsuki wanted to do was pick him up, slam him against the desk and make passionate love to him.  

Wait, no.  No, no, no.  Don’t think that!  He told himself loudly in his head.  He couldn’t look at him, just focus on the problem.  This problem.  What subject was Deku studying again?  

He glanced down and instantly remembered it was physics they were talking about.  He saw Izuku’s mistake and pointed at it.  “This should be negative and shift around the formula a bit to find the answer.  So divide the 3, but because of the distributive property, you have to do it to both of the stuff in the parenthesis.”  

Izuku got quiet for a moment, muttering and repeating what Katsuki said a few times, staring intently at the problem.  Katsuki could see the wheels in Izuku’s head turning and when the lightbulb went off and he got it, smiling.  “Oh, right! T-thanks for the help, Kacchan.”  

Katsuki went to thank him, but instead accidentally looked at him.  His tangled mess of hair fell in front of his green eyes that pierced though him, but he couldn’t look away.  Heat rose through his entire body and he picked Izuku up out of the chair by his shirt.  “Kacchan!”  Katsuki saw Izuku reach internally for One for All.  Use it, put me in my place!  He pushed Izuku up against the wall.  Their gaze never left, both boys baring their teeth at one another.  Katsuki growled for a moment, an involuntary sound coming from deep inside his chest.  “What the hell I found the mistake, it was stupid, I’m sorry—,”

“Shut the hell up, you fucking nerd.” Katsuki said.  Katsuki pushed him backward against the wall, making Izuku squeak slightly.  “Christ, I can never get a fucking moment’s peace when you’re around!”

The door suddenly burst open. Iida and Uraraka stood in the doorway. “Bakugou, put him down this instant, this is not a training area!”

Guess this place isn’t exact 100% sound proof.  But when looking over at them, he saw Todoroki standing in the doorway as well, looking worried.  He gently put Izuku on the ground, but didn’t take his eyes off Todoroki.  “Oh look, Deku—,” he said, laughing menacingly. “—it’s your prince.  He’s come to fucking save you.”  Everyone looked confused, but Katsuki couldn’t help himself. The words flew out of his mouth as he shouted, “I heard you two in the locker room.  Going to ride the train home together.  What the fuck for?  Can’t take care of yourself, Deku, you need his protection—?”

“That’s none of your fucking business.” Todoroki said coldly.  His gaze didn’t leave Katsuki either.

Katsuki turned and let out a few small sparks of an intense red explosion.  Uraraka ran off seeing the two of them, but Katsuki paid her no mind. “I’ll blast you back to fucking hell, icy hot bastard!”

Todoroki’s left side ignited, his flames causing a slight gust of warm wind at that.  “You’re no match for me.  I could freeze your blasts in an instant, asswipe.”

The heat from Katsuki’s quirk rose into him.  He had some of the same power that Todoroki had and assumed that Todoroki felt the same heat on his left side flowing through him.  Todoroki, in the same way Katsuki threw his blasts, Todoroki threw his flames like a wall at the two of them.  Izuku was about to jump out of the way, but Katsuki absorbed his flames.  He called this move, “Eating fire” despite it being with his arms.  He let the feeling Todoroki’s quirk run through his body.  Fuck, this is hot.  But he stood his ground, unfazed by the flame wall, as was Izuku. Todoroki was a formidable opponent, but only because of his ice.  He smiled at the contest, and held up his hand.  Like popcorn, the sweat in his hands snapped, but Todoroki true to his word, blocked it with an ice attack, but Katsuki quickly threw two more blasts—one to break the ice Todoroki just created and the other to blast Todoroki backwards.  The bomb detonated and Todoroki was quickly thrown back against the wall.  

“ENOUGH!” Mr. Aizawa entered the room and it went completely quiet.  Katsuki was breathing heavily and Mr. Aizawa’s hair went straight up, looking at him in his eyes.  They were angry that much was certain, but after eating Todoroki’s fire, Katsuki was sort of glad to be cooled off a little as the heat from his quirk left his body.  

Sort of.  

“You—,” Mr. Aizawa pointed at Todoroki.  “And you—,” at Katuski, “and fucking you.” at Izuku.  “Come with me.  NOW.” He bellowed.

“Midoriya?  He had nothing to do with this fight—,” Iida started to say, but Aizawa looked at him, his hair still straight in the air.  Iida shut his mouth and bowed respectfully at the faculty member and the three boys followed him out of the study room.  

They walked for a solid five minutes up the stairs, taking each one step at a time, not speaking to each other. Halfway up the staircase, Katsuki felt his quirk return to him and he could finally breathe again.  They reached the third floor and Aizawa opened a door.  “Inside.” He commanded and they obeyed.  

It looked like a small apartment. There was a large kitchen that connected to a living space.  Within the living space was a small tv and a couch.  Off of the kitchen was a tiny dining room where there was a table.  Eri sat at the table, coloring a picture. She looked up and saw the three of them. “Oh no, Deku—,” She got up, but Aizawa raised a hand.

“They are fine, Eri.  I just need to scold them.  Did you want to go ahead and watch some TV?” Aizawa asked. She nodded, getting up from the table. She made her way through the kitchen and into the living room, passing by the boys.  

“Don’t scold them too much, okay?” Eri told Aizawa and he smirked.

“Not at all, just enough so they never fight in the building again.  Go on, now.” Aizawa gestured her into the living room, where she sat down on the couch and turned the TV on, staring at a cartoon Katsuki used to watch as a kid.  “You three, at the table.” They all went over to the table, their heads down.  They sat next to each other, with Izuku in the middle, and Aizawa sat on the other side of the table.  “Can someone tell me what happened?”  When the three boys started talking at once, Aizawa’s hair shot up again, but even though he still felt the heat of his quirk, Aizawa’s intense stare was enough to shut them all up.  “Midoriya, what happened?”

Izuku thought for a moment. “I, um, well.  I asked Kacchan to help with a problem in my homework—,”

Aizawa’s eyebrows went up. He looked extremely surprised. “Bakugou was in there with you?”

The three boys nodded and Midoriya continued, “He helped me with a problem, but I must’ve said something that upset him because, well—he got really angry with me and that’s when Iida, Todoroki and Uraraka showed up.”

“Who started the actual fight?”

“I did.” said Katsuki and Todoroki at the same time.

Aizawa studied them for a moment. “Fine.  The two of you are on house arrest for 3 days.  I’ll give the cleaning staff the days off—,”

“I’m supposed to go home and get my stuff for the dance this weekend, though.” Todoroki started.

But Aizawa shook his head. “You two will not be going to the dance.”  Bakugou opened his mouth to fight, but then closed it.  He knew better than to argue with Aizawa.  “The two of you will stay in the dorms and write apology letters to each other.  Understood?” The two boys nodded.  “Todoroki, you can go.  Midoriya, you can leave too.  But you—,” Aizawa reached in his pocket and unfolded Katsuki’s notebook. “I assume this is yours?”  Katsuki went to reach for it, but Aizawa’s hair shot up.  “We’ll be discussing this in length.  Go ahead boys.”

Katsuki did his best to fight back tears, but it was too difficult.  Aizawa had clearly read what was inside.  Did he think him weak now?  His shoulders moved with his inconsistent breathing.  “Kacchan.” the little flute said, like a hand reaching out with its voice.  

“He’ll be okay.  Go on back to your rooms.  And behave yourselves.”  Aizawa told them warningly.  They waited until they heard the door close and Katsuki cried into his hands.  

“Are you hurt?” a voice asked. Katsuki sniffled, peeling back his hands.  It was Eri. She was so tiny, looking up at him. Katsuki shook his head as Eri reached out and touched his face.  “Don’t be sad.  It’ll all be okay.”  

“Thanks.” Katsuki said to her, genuinely meaning it.  She bowed to him and went back to her TV show.  Katsuki looked at Aizawa.  “I assume you read it?”

Aizawa’s eyes narrowed.  “Not on purpose.  I assumed it was homework for one of the three of you.  But when I glanced at the opened page, it was hard to.”  

“You must think I’m weaker than before.” Katsuki said.  

“Weaker?” Aizawa said.  “Why would I think that?  Because of what you wrote?  In truth, I thought it was Midoriya’s.  But now looking at this, at all of this—,” he nodded but looked at Katsuki with the strong stare.  “Being different doesn’t give you the right to be mean to people, Bakugou.”

“I just…I can’t help it.  Especially when—,” sniffle, “—he’s around.  I get filled with heat so intense it actually feels like it’s going to sear my skin off.”

“So, you got mad at him and threw his friend against the floor?” Aizawa said, shaking his head.  “That doesn’t seem like the way to win someone over, does it?”

Katsuki thought for a moment. He thought about telling Aizawa that he didn’t like Izuku.  That is was all a big misunderstanding. “You think I’m weak now, don’t you?”

“I don’t look at you any differently than I did before.  Because you’re still a snotnose little shit.”  A small smile crept across the teacher’s face.  “But you’re strong.  Maybe use the extra heat he gives you as fuel.  It might help you control your quirk instead of losing control of it.” Katsuki was quiet.  He’s heard a lot of honest words for the past few days now.   “You are trying to turn yourself into something you aren’t and that will drive you crazy.  You were able to stop Todoroki’s fire and after he used his ice, you were able to use your quirk to get him on the ground.  I wouldn’t say that’s weakness.  Though—,” he smirked.  “—you need to work on your technique.”

Katsuki smirked back.  He missed Aizawa as his teacher and in that moment, wished he could come back.  “Yeah, alright.”  He yawned. “I should head to bed now. Just…don’t tell anyone for now.  I want to get things figured out.”

Aizawa nodded, got up and held the door open for Katsuki.  As he passed, Aizawa handed him his journal.  When Katsuki left, the door closed behind him and Katsuki went back to his room.  It was dark, but he was too tired turn on the lights, so he used his phone as a flashlight to take his clothes off, put on some new underwear and was about to climb into bed when his phone vibrated in his hand.

It was a text from Camie: ‘actually scratch that not red…maybe blue? Or purple?  I think purple would look so hot on you!’ Bakugou looked at the text and reread it, unsure of how to tell her he could no longer go, but thought the best to at least be honest: ‘I got into a fight and now I can’t go.’ A few minutes past before he got another text: ‘Bummer!’  He sighed.  It was a fucking bummer.  ‘What happened?’ She asked.  He responded with: ‘I got into a fight.’  Camie sent a text so quickly, Katsuki was sure she hadn’t even read it.  ‘Damn you are a bad one, aren’t you?’  Katsuki laughed and replied, ‘You have no idea.’

A few minutes past before Katsuki looked at the time and figuring she fell asleep, he closed his eyes before he felt the phone vibrate once more against his chest: ‘Let’s find out how badddd you really are.  Wanna meet up?’  He thought about it for a moment, thinking of replying that he was too tired, but was he really?  ‘Sure, when?’  She responded almost immediately with, ‘Right now asshole.  Meet up at The Rage.  It’s halfway between where I am and you are.’    She sent the address and it was two hours away by train, which was the only way for Katsuki to get to her.  But by the looks of it, it would take her two hours too.  ‘Whoever gets there first owes the other one!’  He piled out of bed, putting on a tank top and some jeans.  It may have been a little too warm even for that, but what did he care?  Before leaving, he went into the bottom drawer of his dresser and pulled out a box of condoms, sticking one in his wallet.  And like a thief in the night, he left, texting her, ‘see you there.’

---

From the train, he finally reached the stop that he was supposed to get off at and left the station.  It was just him and some guy at the end of the car who was snoring loudly.  He was really thankful to be able to get off U.A. campus, even for just a moment. He’d seen teachers use an entrance and figured that was the way to get in and out without tripping the alarm. No cops were called, so he figured he was right.  They certainly would have followed him on the train, but he was the only one riding at 1AM. He exited the car at the correct stop and started walking towards the club.  

“Turn right.” said his phone, giving him directions loudly in his ears.  

He didn’t care that he was breaking the rules.  

He opened the door to an establishment called The Rage.  It was dark inside, with lights flashing different colors all around.  It was enough to give him a headache and wake him up from the train ride all at once.  He suddenly felt someone touch his arm.  

“Aha!” said a voice.  “Beat you!”

He turned and she stood there, looking hot as ever.  She wore a pink shirt that was cut at the bottom, showing off her tiny waist line. She clearly wasn’t wearing a bra and was also in jeans like he was, but hers left nothing to the imagination.  

“Come on!” she said.  “You owe me since I beat you here!”  

He smiled playfully and pulled her in close as people crowded around the dance floor.  “Tell me what you want.” he said in her ear.  She turned around, pushing herself up against him.

“How about I show you what I want instead.” Camie said through a long kiss.  He kissed her back, closing his eyes.  She opened his mouth with her tongue and licked his teeth.  She pulled away from him, but then grabbed his neck and pulling him down, looked at him in his eyes and said, “Let’s play first!”

She grabbed his shirt and pulled him out to the dance floor where there was a mob of people, all grinding and dry humping each other like animals in the pit of the club.  She bent forward and he pushed against her, rhythmically moving to the beat of the music.  It felt good, but it was just a tease.  He grabbed her waist and grinded against her.  After a few songs, she pulled on his shirt and he followed her into a dirty bathroom.  Not like he cared.  She locked the door behind her and right when she did that, he spun her around and hoisted her up onto the sink.  He kissed the top of her chest, and when he motorboated her, she smacked him and he playfully bit her ear.    

“I didn’t tell you to stop.” she told him and he leaned down, kissing her hard.  He pulled off his shirt and pushed himself against her.  “You still owe me, you know.”  

She took off her shirt and looked up at him.  Even with her hoisted on the sink, he towered over her.  “What did you have in mind?”

“Let me show you.” she whispered.

Licking his teeth, he pushed her hips towards him.  She leaned her head back, exposing her bare neck.  “You ready?”  

“Hells yeah.” came her response and she didn’t need to say anymore.

---

“I normally say this a lot, but this time, I actually mean it: that felt amazing.  Want a second round?” she asked.  

But he was too tired and had already been way out past curfew as it is.  He pulled off his condom, flushing it down the toilet.  He grabbed his pants and the two of them got dressed. She leaned over to kiss him and when she did, he felt nothing for her.  It was a good fuck and he’d for sure want to do that again, but the kiss wasn’t anything special.  When Katsuki opened the door, he was met face to face with someone who screamed at him for taking too long in the bathroom.  Katsuki put his headphones in and piled his hair back into his beanie, but the guy grabbed his shoulder and yelled, “Dumbass, I’m talking to you, asshole!”

Katsuki looked at the man’s hand and back at him.  “Move your hand or I’ll move it for you.”

Camie came out of the bathroom and when the man saw her, he laughed and said, “Damn, can’t keep it in your pants, can you?  Not that I blame you, she’s definitely—,”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll end you.” Katsuki warned him.

“Ha!  I’d like to see you try!” the man whistled at Camie.  “Come here, baby, and I’ll show you a good time—,”

It only took one blast for Katsuki to send this man flying through the walls of the club.  The music kept playing, but all the sudden, he was tackled to the ground and being yelled at by security.  They pushed him down and placed handcuffs on him.

‘Shit,’ he thought as he was dragged out of the nightclub.  He turned around to see Camie had vanished. ‘How the hell am I going to explain this?’

(previous) (next)

#bakudeku #bakugou x midoriya #mha bakugou #mhadeku #katsudeku #katsuki x izuku #izukatsu #izubaku #myficstay

[dominicvail]

in another world, ncis:la feeds us with actual Au episodes every now and again, but our world is imperfect and we just have to imagine this stuff here, but like, if this did happen i would Require these au’s;

A Bowling Au. Everything is played with exactly the same tone as the actual show, so it’s usually laughable but Sometimes super dramatic except instead of like, a terrorist attack, a rival team bowled a strike. Sam used to be on a super militant and well respected team and hasn’t gotten over that half the time people don’t know the name of this new one. He believes bowling balls should be polished before repacking, Every time, that Deeks just shoves his in the same reusable plastic bag he’s had for 8 years Pains him. G’s back story is Identical to the show except this isn’t a spy genre anymore so ppl just think he’s like, the super above it all edge lord because of it all. 

Teacher AU. Sam teaches all kinds of advanced math, G is a gym teacher who acts really stupid all the time to stop people giving him responsibilities he doesn’t want. Despite this, he is often dragged in to cover for language classes because somebody figured out he’s a language like, genius or something. He covered a drama class one time, too, and was scarily good at it. Deeks actually Is the drama teacher, the kids all Love him. Kensi teaches all kinds of physical design classes, like, anything to do with engines, she does woodwork, things like that, she’s not As liked among the student body (i mean, the boys and gays love her, but her jokes are Weird) but she isn’t classed as one of the asshole teachers. Eric teaches IT or whatever u call computing, he’s friendly, won’t put up with crap, but like, next to nobody understands him because he’s not good at dumbing things down. Nell doesn’t teach at first, was just an administrator dealing with all the complicated things, but sometimes substitutes, she’s tiny and Scary and is not a substitute u can walk all over, the ones who tried can’t figure out How she got them to behave??? but it happened. Mr Deeks and Ms Blye are the ‘will they or won’t they’ teacher couple of the school only for deeks to accidentally let slip that his wife is better at long distance running than he is and they all work it out that they’ve been married the whole time. Mr Beale and Miss Jones become the next will they won’t they couple except it embarrasses them so much all they do is blush at each other now. Hetty is the principal/head teacher. She is rarely seen, to be feared, but always watching. 

Star Trek AU; Hetty is the captain of the ship they’re on, but the show is more about the main away team. Is the team’s reputation as bad as section 31 (the shady(tm) part of starfleet), No! Is their reputation necessarily good? No. In fact, they frequently butt heads with section 31 (we’re calling them the equivalent of the cia in the show, they can be friends but... yeah), however their results are rarely questionable and they save many, many lives. It is highly unlikely anyone will ever be promoted. Sam is a Vulcan, calm waters... except if you make him snap, Vulcans have deep running emotions. Deeks is just. The Most Obnoxious Human to him Ever. G is half betazed, it’s why he’s so good at reading people.  Eric is a member of a species that is super social but have few social graces similar to humans so is always super awkward. Kensi has a tragic backstory where she thinks the borg got her dad when she was a kid but it was a Cover Up. I would make Nell non human also, but i will be honest, i am running out of trek aliens i can make her (klingon nell is a Hilarious concept tho). Hetty is Bajoran. 

James Bond AU. Everything is the same except they all use bad english accents the whole way through the episode. 

I am a massive fan of alternate takes on soulmate au’s, i don’t like romantic soulmate au’s, but unusual takes on them are my Jam. In this one, people have soul marks from people who will have the most profound effects on them in their lives on their bodies. This doesn’t necessarily mean the effects will be good, just profound and altering. The team realise they all have marks from each other on their bodies, and are elated to find out all those marks are Positive effects. 

Though i will admit the ‘see in colour when you meet your soulmate’ one would be hilarious with legitimately Any of the partners on the show. Kensi: See’s deeks, learns what blue is. Kensi: spirals into deep denial and yells at him a lot. 

Queer Eye AU where the Fab 5 are called in when Hetty nominates her team for a makeover! Bobby redecorates the boat shed, is asked by hetty to keep what is already bulletproof, bulletproof. And to keep the trap door. And not to worry about any bloodstains and how they got there. Tan’s discovers how hard it is to style around Sam’s muscles. Tries very hard to stop Nell from mixing prints. Experiences horror at Eric’s wardrobe, Nell is shown in BG laughing. Every single man exhibits true, actual horror at the idea of JVN changing their hair and pack into Sam’s car and run away to hide in the woods. Nell and Kensi enjoy the salon appointment in their absence. Karamo manages to negotiate getting paid literally twice his previous rate by just having to try to fix these idiots’ lives and deserves every penny. Antoni trying to teach them to make fun and not disgusting food doesn’t end well. Deeks can cook but likes to Experiment and 97% of his food is awful. Sam can cook, but it’s all bland muscle building/health food. The rest of them are incompetent, set the kitchen on fire, are caught ordering chinese on the sly, ruin 5 pots and pans with burn marks. They open the new boatshed design by interrogating a criminal they just picked up on a case, he points out how fabulous the decor is as he’s led to the interrogation room. Everybody cheers. The team provided snacks in said interrogation Could be considered a torture technique, tho. 

The team go on jeopardy. I have never seen this game show and have no idea how it works, but i bet it would be funny so it is a bullet point. 

Buffy the vampire slayer au, Kensi is a vampire slayer who Happens to just be an ncis agent. She does her normal job but also tries to keep the vampire world a secret from her team mates. Callen: uh, kensi... why do you spend so much of your free time hanging around cemeteries? Kensi: uh... Bat watching???

Superhero AU but they all have really dumb powers. Sam can raise the temperature of any body of water from a lake to a puddle by ten degrees in temperature whenever he wants. G can spontaneously grow and un-grow his hair, if he gets drunk and makes it super long he has ringlets. Deeks can hover exactly one foot in the air, no higher, is designated ‘grab that off the high shelf’ guy. Kensi can sense sugar. This helps in no ways but essentially makes her a human version of one of the medical alert dogs for diabetics. Eric can make anybody around him mildly sleepy if he wants to. He never wants this. It doesn’t even send them to sleep, they just yawn more often and that makes Him yawn more. Nell can speak to cows, since she lives in the middle of Los Angeles, this is not helpful. Plus, cows mostly just talk about grass and are really very boring. Granger could create rainbows out of thin air which was obviously in perfect sync with his personality. Hetty can detach her toes at will. This is only useful in the case of uncomfortable shoes, but can be awkward if somebody routinely searches your bag and finds them in there and arrests you for being a creepy toe cutting off serial killer. 

i would watch it, s’all i’m saying.

#text #la team #la cast #this is the most epic feat of procrastination i've managed for a while ngl

[heedra]

OK ITS FINALLY EXALTED SECRET SANTA JOURNAL TIME

@ my secret santa: i am so so so sorry for the ref delay. you already deserve sainthood in advance for dealing with it. without further ado here they are, two of my favorite bastards

Daia Shan- Serenity Caste Sidereal

Once just a troublesome junior bureaucrat in the halls of Yu-Shan, Daia truly gained infamy upon her selection to accompany a strike team of Exalted heroes on a mission into the depths of the worldbody of the Yozi Oramus, and her subsequent escape and return from that impossible prison, nearly a thousand years later. The experience left her profoundly changed; even now, the spite of Oramus hangs like a mantle around Daia, ensuring that the waking world she fought so hard to return to will never feel like anything more than a dream. And then, of course, there is the matter of the power she took from the Sevenfold Peacock willingly… and how that power might be changing her still.

Daia is a somewhat petite woman, belying an athletic build. She is ethnically from the Blessed Isle, with dark grey hair that she prefers to wear up, usually in a bun or a knot. Her face, which she tries but fails to keep free of stress and worry lines, is usually found bearing a smirk or an expression of dangerous faux-politeness. Her eyes bear the iconic starry blue of the Serenities caste, but are also shot through with bands of a strange prismatic iridescence. She bears a large pair of bull horns atop her head, a mutation received during her time inside the Worldbody. The nature of the power bequeathed to her by Oramus is such, though, that her very nature is beginning to blur around the edges, and it is not unusual for her day-to-day appearance to fluctuate strangely as mutations come and go like glitches. She is a bit of a fashionista, favoring blues, dramatic and sharp femme looks (she avoids ruffles and prefers sleeker outfits), and jewelry of all sorts (a lot of it). She rarely wears the same exact outfit twice, so do not feel obligated to stick to the reference- you can get creative! She wears makeup, but prefers cool colors and an understated application.

Daia’s most important accessory is her longfang, the Sevenfold Peacock’s Tailfeather. Forged from starmetal, orichalcum, and a crystalline shard of Oramic essence, the weapon contains knowledge of every martial arts technique known by every user to have ever wielded it, and seems to hunger for more to the point where its obsession has bled over into Daia herself. Even more potently, it bears deep within its core the secret to a martial art concocted by the Dragon of Not himself, whose charms grant the power to ignore the limits of impossibility at the cost of making the wielder more and more alien to the waking world. It is a temptation that Daia has drunk deep of, despite all signs pointing to that being a very bad idea. Daia sees the spear as a trophy stolen from her greatest nemesis, but it’s very possible the Yozi himself sees it as a clever snare for hubristic Sidereals. The blade of the weapon is prismatic crystal that resembles a jagged bird’s beak, the pole is jet black starmetal shot through with an orichalcum starmap of constellations, and the orichalcum pommel is fashioned to look like seven golden peacock feathers woven together into a sphere.

While her exaltation may brand Daia a chosen of the Maidens, the elder Sid is a loose cannon, an agent of Heaven in only the most general of terms. She is mercurial, theatrical, fond of causing petty chaos, and utterly disinterested in the politics of the Bureau, unless there is way for her to stir up drama. She has tendency to get ahead of herself with her schemes, and the vast majority of her ‘downfalls’ can be traced back to her own hubris. Beneath all that, she is a lonely woman who feels adrift in a world that no longer feels real to her. She’s a terrible flirt, a huge showoff (especially where martial arts are involved) and has a weak spot for dangerous women. She’s Creation’s wildest and worst gay aunt.

Side Note: Daia is partially deaf, due to an old and potent supernatural injury. She employs the use of what magic/technology she can to aid her, but relies as well on sign language and interpreters. She’s very used to it at this point.

here’s the link to a better-resolution version of this image bc tumblr kinda fuckt it

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Avenging Phoenix- Dawn Caste Solar (Formerly Ravenous Vulture Picks Clean the Bones of Creation, Dusk Caste Abyssal)

Orphaned at an early age, Phoenix was adopted by a Guild mercenary and raised as such. He spent his later mortal life as a city guard captain in Thorns, where he exalted during the fateful siege itself, disillusionment and rage at the circumstances of his death making him an easy recruit for the Mask. His path has weaved far and wide since then, a slow painful crawl from rebellion to eventual redemption; a journey that ultimately gave him a place among the saviors of Creation. Along the way, he played a role in liberating a group of orphaned children from the clutches of the Dowager, and now finds himself settling into the role of an adoptive dad to them, hanging up his metaphorical (and literal) axe and trying to live a gentler life. It’s not always easy. Violence and trauma etched in that deep doesn’t just smooth out perfectly over time. On top of that, he has impostor’s syndrome when it comes to his redemption by the Sun, and still feels uncomfortable thinking of himself as a peer to the other members of the Solar Host. Still, as long as his soul is on this side of Lethe, he is determined to fight against the Void- not because he considers himself antithesis to it, but because he has known it and survived it. And while some days it’s hard to know how to separate that fight from the taste of blood, other days it feels like, maybe, fighting against the void can be planting sunflowers for your children on a sunny spring afternoon.

Phoenix is of Western descent, very short, fat, and beefy, with warm brown skin and a round, open face.  He keeps his burgundy hair closely shaved, not fond of dealing with the mess of wavy curls it becomes when allowed to grow out. His eyes are dark brown, almost black, the outside of the iris rimmed with the faintest edge of golden yellow. His nose looks like it has been broken multiple times in the past, and never properly healed. Due to unfortunate wyld misadventures his tongue has been mutated to resemble and function like that of a frog’s, though this is only really apparent when he opens his mouth to use the damn thing. Frogs and toads are a definite motif for him in general- small, grumpy-looking, and round as they are.

Phoenix’s casual clothes tend to be simple, comfortable, loose, and in sharp contrast to his prickly combat garb. He enjoys floral patterns, and the color pink. He’s got a very ‘open hawaiian shirt and flip flops dad’ vibe, basically. He does not dress fancily unless pressed to for big occasions, and in those cases usually grudgingly follows the fashion direction of the one twisting his arm. When he’s on actual exalt business, he’s most frequently found wearing his armor; black jade full plate embellished with cruel-looking spikes, and occasionally a shaggy grey fur cloak made from the pelt of some hunting trophy. A horned skull helm, made from the skull of a nephwrack’s war-body, often completes this ensemble. The helmet is a minor artifact: when worn, it causes his eyes to glow balefully behind its sockets and makes his voice gravelly with deathly menace. He is reluctant to take it off unless he feels at ease in a situation.

Phoenix is somewhat bumbling and gruffly soft-spoken, with tendency to look more tired than he feels. Beneath this is a talent for strategic leadership and a stoic determination that gets fiercer as the going gets tougher. On the battlefield, he is utterly terrifying when he needs to be, but would much prefer to be at home in his garden than on a battlefield these days.

His anima banner starts as burst of gold-and crimson fire that solidifies into the form of a fierce and predatory-looking phoenix, with aspects of a garda bird and a lammergeier both. It moves as he does across the battlefield, swooping and rising with each swing of his axe, its fierce eyes focused on his prey. Additional refs:

what he looked like as an abyssal | his grand grimcleaver looks like this except made outta fiery golden light | rough sketch of his skull helmet

#extremely sorry abt the excessive thoroughness i can't write short paragraphs at all #exalted secret santa #daia post #pho post

[archivederedblog]

timestamp post (don’t bother to read it, it’s just my about)

Full name:

Meredith Queen Miller (Ered). Might have requested to be called Ered for her ‘codename’ to be like her gay dads and it probably just stuck. For now? I’ve decided for the ‘hinted’ backstory to Ered’s that she was allowed to change her middle name, and my Ered being as self-absorbed as she is? Wanting to feel better about herself after finally ditching her blood parents? Chose Queen.

Ethnicity

Slavic-Russian with Welsh and Russian background.

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Personality:

Aloof, quiet, relaxed, extremely selfish, conceited, lazy, yet blunt and truthful, but overall stoic. Ered is not actively malicious but is very self serving and manipulative toward others for her own goals. She’s shown to be friendly however, and even concerned such as when Nikki almost died because of Neil. Though… she made no attempts to stop him. Most likely a bit spoiled considering how she uses others to do her dirty work for her. Despite these traits, she’s a thrill seeker by nature with her love of extreme sports. Can be extremely merciless when wronged under the right circumstances so far as being ‘okay’ with violence and murder, as shown in episode 4, s1. Granted Nikki rallied them to kill space kid? Ered did not lift a finger to stop them, most likely even understanding the ramifications better of such actions as presumably the eldest.

However, she has shown to be a girl of passion and has a soft spot to things that manage to get close to her. Showing pride and even a sense of paternal tenderness. She is either passionate with someone or completely nonchalant, or uncaring- it can vary between the two.

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Physical and mental traits:

Seems rather athletic, but overall her physique is unknown, though she seems to be at least well toned if not outright muscular for a teen. If anything, Ered is most likely built for speed, dexterity, and endurance rather than outright strength. Though I imagine she could and would put up a fight if need be if she had no one else to do it for her. Seems to be overall able to endure a lot of physical punishment and heals extremely quick on almost supernatural and cartoon logic levels. She doesn’t seem to be slow-witted or dumb, but her report cards would say otherwise, I imagine she just doesn’t care however.

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Looks:

Long blonde hair with a large and small purplish-pink streak in it. Has a slender and tall frame, pinkish skin and ears, and most notable facial feature is her eyes: being either gray, or a blue-gray. Appears to be in early-mid teens or at least late pre-teens. Has a leather jacket, a yellow shirt with light purplish boots. Wears torn jeans. Overall aesthetic appears to be a tough, cool, yet very feminine appearance. Has either very nice looking eyes or wears makeup and is considered canonically beautiful.

Age specific details:

Ered is around 5'5 to 5'6 for in camp verse in comparison to her height to the adults Gwen and David for the canon age which is most likely 12-13.

Age outside of Camp Camp interactions:

Ranges in at about 6 to 6'2 ft for her current, present real time age at 17 going on 18. Is beginning to bulk out due to her muscles starting to fully develop.

Height as a fully grown adult? Probably ranging in at about 6'6 or maybe even 6'7-8ish. Has an amazon-esque build.

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The Millers.

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Gerald Jr, J Miller. (Is called Jay-jay by his lover as an affectionate name).

Gender: male

Age: N/A

Ethnicity: African american with french and germanic descent.

Is an intelligent thinker, calm and collected for the most part with a deep sense of empathy and sensitivity. Professional in how they carry themselves along with their husband. Has a great sense of sincerity along with a cool demeanor.

( Gerald is a masculine German given name meaning “rule of the spear” from the prefix ger- (“spear”) and suffix -wald (“rule”).

John (Johnathan) Alexander Miller. (Is called Champ by Gerald)

Gender: Male

Age: Unknown.

Ethnicity: Caucasian with English and Scottish background.

Is more of a philosophical thinker, while calm and collected? He is more brash to action unlike his husband, yet has a great sense of control, empathy while being sensitive of others though not as great as Gerald, however he is quite generous and unselfish. Professional in how they carry themselves along with their husband.

The name Johnathan is a Hebrew baby name. In Hebrew the meaning of the Johnathan is: Jehovah has given. In the bible Jonathan son of King Saul was noted for manliness (That chin of his j e s u s); generosity and unselfishness. He saved David’s life when Saul would have killed him.

Alexander being an obvious reference to Alexander the great, a great ruler of most of the known world in ancient times.

Reasons for names: Mainly to mesh with Ered’s true name.

The name Meredith is a welsh baby name. In Welsh the meaning of the name Meredith is: Guardian of the sea. Great chief. Great ruler. This name can be given to children of either gender, but is more common among girls.

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Pets: a Rottweiler she got as a puppy from the sky in a storm. A ball python she’s had even before her dads adopted her.

The dog is named Patti, after a famous skater girl named Patti Mcgee, heralded as one of the first female professional skate boarders. A well trained dog due to the insistence of her dads. Goes outside through a dog door on their own to use the restroom, follows Ered when she’s home. Was taught to ride a skateboard by Ered with a specially designed helmet for dogs.

The ball python is named Monty. A semi-affectionate snake that likes neck rubs and hanging out with Patti or Ered, often coiling around either one of them.

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Character analysis on traits and major actions: (greater detail into Ered’s character)

Ered as a character is an introverted teen, considered canonically cool, beautiful, popular, tough and smart (most likely not taking her academic knowledge into account, as it is seemingly poor) despite her stoic, spoiled, and aloof behavior: she is adored or liked by nearly all the campers except Max and potentially Neil.

Ered as an individual appears to mostly keep to themselves unless something or someone of interest appears to them, or is receiving positive attention. Otherwise, she most likely isn’t concerned or is indifferent to set object or person in question. Ered frequently uses others that mean nothing to her or even if she likes them, though is extremely upfront about it and even outright admitting to a girl (who still admires and looks up to her) that she was using her, like it should’ve been obvious. Even going as far as putting her in a fight against one of her friends after manipulating her to her side when she took over her camp as its leader.

A lot of Ered’s character points to being hinted strongly at being conceited or at the very least enjoying positive attention immensely. As any dirty work may be seen as beneath her unless forced into acting to which she has always responded in a cruel manner.

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This will cover parts of Ered I have not really elaborated on in this blog and give people a better idea of what she’s capable of and what she’s willing to do.

As mentioned near the very above: Ered has a very merciless streak to her if wronged under the right circumstances. As for example? She may have not have ordered it, but the kids of the camp rallied to ‘murder’ Space Kid in one instance after only making Ered SLIGHTLY mad. Her only reaction was literally no reaction other than just acting as if this was normal, displaying a very concerning behavior of just, ‘it wasn’t a big deal’. This meaning: Ered has little to no qualms to violence and potentially murder if wronged or pushed into the right circumstances. However, she prefers to have others do her dirty work at her core, even though physically more able than most if not all of the campers (Other than Nurf’s extreme hulking strength yet seemingly low pain tolerance compared to Ered’s).

After much debate and analyzing older episodes? If she can get away with it in a rare circumstance? I’ve decided she can and will get violent on her own volition under rare circumstances and have the means to do it, though it really depends if she’s just playing around or not. Like, she’s a big girl for her age, probably 13-14 for the canon one and probably didn’t put TOO much thought into ramming Nerris in the Christmas special. She didn’t seem intending to hurt her or thinking she could handle it or just did not care altogether (That’s the most likely one tbr so that’s why lol)! But do keep in mind and to make this clear she’s probably just going to be messing around more often than not if she gets physical, I imagine it’d take an extreme situation for her to get physically violent to actually hurt someone on purpose in my canon verse.

So yeah, I’ve concluded that she dislikes fighting, perhaps maybe from knowing how much she can actually mess someone up on accident? It’s hard to say, but probably can as I already hc her knowing self-defense arts due to her dads. Because why would they not teach her l o l? As there’s no reason not to considering it could help her build self-confidence from being heavily hinted to have been abused, keep her safe and so on. So yeah, expect her to fight back if attacked and rather well actually.

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Potentially has connections due to maybe her two dads, the Mr. Millers:

Mainly being that Ered canonically used two of the other kids and a dump truck to make herself look good. It was in one scene in the final episode of S1 when the kids were trying to impress David to get their prize. It begins with Preston literally somehow removing all the dirt in the forest trail and making it appear unnaturally smooth, to which David is distressed and asks immediately for it to be put back. Hearing Ered’s voice in the distance of saying, “I’m on it!” Space Kid appears driving a dump truck in reverse: dumping all the dirt onto Preston to which Ered shortly appears afterward at the top of the dump truck, mounting her skateboard and riding down the dirt pile and giving one of Preston’s hands a high-five as she descends to David, promptly asking for some hoverboots as her reward.

After that scene ends, it displays several abilities of Ered: she managed to receive and sneak a dump truck into the camp in less than a day, perhaps a few hours and managed to teach an eight year old how to drive it. She manipulated the both of them to make herself look good in front of David, showing her stupidly high charisma once again. And also displaying a bit of high, spoiled expectations for rewards, as a pair of hoverboots would range in millions of dollars.

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Examples of her physical abilities:

Ered’s endurance to physical punishment and abilities are near or on superhuman levels: being able to crash through wooden half-pipes unscathed without a scratch or suffering serious injuries potentially at first glance while revealed to remaining unharmed. Being in a full body cast after a base jumping accident to which given the duration of summer camps? Potentially only wore it for a week or even just a few days before being completely fine, shrugging it off in its entirety with no signs of scars or permanent damage.

Cartoon logic plays heavily into Camp Camp and especially Ered’s character, so it’s clear that this is most likely intentional to her as a concept.

Ered will have knowledge in self-defense and hand to hand combat, along with the knowledge of how to use a fire as I imagine her gay dads are probably the reason she might be so physically competent along with her deadly aim, along with other secret stuff. Though Ered is still clearly gifted by herself, but I had actually considered the scenario of Ered being a junior agent due to her connections of getting a dump truck seemingly from nowhere in the season 1 finale of episode 12, along with knowing subterfuge and manipulation, so that might actually ring true.

Ered’s aim has been displayed to be incredibly precise, managing to make a bullseye with a hook prosthetic from the Quartermaster of the Camp. Mind you, being in a relaxed position on a couch while hurling it from the side of it is no easy task.

Has shown to be skilled in driving vehicles due to her most likely teaching Space Kid and even so far as repairing them such as thrashing the competition in motorcycle repair in one episode. Perhaps even being skilled as far as building them if given enough time. Most likely has a permit to drive due to her social status and potential influence.

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Random cool kid facts:

Age ranges from 13-16 considering her height. She is either 15-16, or a very tall 13-14 year old.

Extremely good aim, managed to land a bullseye on the first try using QM’s hook with the attachment still apart of it.

Most likely the eldest kid other than Nurf at the camp.

Has only ever said anything profane once, which is ‘pussies for life’.

Signed up for extreme sports camp.

Real name is probably Meredith according to Nikki.

Her real name means great lord or sea-lord, which is also a contributing factor to how my default tag is named properly, along with her being an Orca Siren in the monster AU. It is welsh in origin.

Most likely skilled at hackiesack.

May like the wind blowing in her hair.

Likes the colors pink, purple and purplish pink.

Has potential access to motorcycles on the camp grounds due to episode 11 when they did motorcycle repair. I doubt they brought in random motorcycles. This is most likely due to her extreme sports camp and is probably using her own.

Likes people in super good shape potentially or just for looks for that #aesthetic.

Is 0% or 200% with people. It’s yeah or nah. She’s a girl of passion with the few that manage to get close however.

Has a soft spot toward things/kids/people she considers her own dudes.

Can’t gauge well potentially what other dudes can handle compared to herself in terms of sustaining damage.

Is a free spirit.

May or may not know all of the campers’ actual names, except for ones that have shown to be cool/useful such as Harrison or Nikki. Or at least the ones she doesn’t care about, considering she calls Neil ‘nerd kid’, even referring to Harrison and Nerris as ‘magic’ dudes before Harrison’s episode where he did a bunch of ‘cool’ things.

Has two gay dads in the FBI.

Potentially a junior agent with the abilities she’s shown or at least taught by her two gay dads regarding certain things, such as her aim and self-defense. Perhaps they simply honed her abilities with their own expertise.

Ered might be her own cute little ‘codename’ to be like her gay dads from the government.

Ered hates being around ‘sick dudes’.

Relatively muscled and strongly toned, able to hold even Nikki up with ease with one arm.

Has some form of resistance to illness, able to be bitten by an infected Nikki and only entirely infected after getting swarmed by three people.

Uses vulgarity with minor innuendo in one situation but avoids outright cursing, perhaps from her own dads’ influence.

Has been confirmed to be an older sister-like figure.

Has reference Cowboy Bebop on the show in, ‘Whatever happens, happens’. Strangely enough I’ve had her reference Cowboy Bebop before that junk was said in S3 Episode 6 somewhere on the blog or in a stream.

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Headcanons:

Disclaimer:

Some these headcanons are a little old when I was still nervous of revealing my Ered being a transitioned demigirl about two years ago (I just said she was transgender at the time but now I have a better idea what exactly to call the label). So that’s why it’s a bit constrasting or doesn’t make sense.

Concepts and ideas:

Click me.

Anything here is not to detract or change the character in personality, looks, or general demeanor, but more or less add onto to Ered as a character and to reflect canon and the kids (most of them anyway) in how they break the norms. Such as Neil being an unshy nerd, Nikki being a wild adventure girl that likes dirt, Nurf being an intelligent and articulate bully and so on. With that being said, I actually won’t tolerate being harassed about any of them and will result in an immediate block and or me just turning off anon. You may question me on them regardless, as I will provide answers if you so desire them. I just like the representation behind them and overall how they can fit into Ered’s character. Her parents are actually part of the LGBT+ community to begin with? So one of them is completely valid, and still would be regardless or not.

Headcanon #1: Ered being a high-functioning sociopath has been heavily hinted in the show, though she’s not portrayed as a monster or demonized like in media. There have been numerous studies into sociopaths and overall Ered herself has shown more than one instance of being a sociopath. In reality? I know for a fact that it’s just a personality disorder that CAN be treated and overall aided to learn how to function in society, but not really fix her as a person as there’s really nothing to be fixed? Personality disorders in my own personal experience and studies into them are just a different set of filters that detract from the norm that are often misunderstood.

Headcanon #2: Read this before I actually say what this headcanon is, as this is important. There’s a lot of info for this one, so sit tight as it has been a part of my blog since the beginning. Let me just say this. Being canonically accurate 100% or even close to it is impossible. As only the creators themselves actually know how a character’s personality, their aspirations and what their dreams are down to a science as it is their character, not yours. So never act like it is to be honest. With that being said, it might not be canon, but neither are the hundreds of ships, headcanons, or even your own potential ‘canon’ speculation and thoughts on a character or even your actual portrayal.

And with that being said and hopefully making some people aware, as I said earlier in how I liked the representation? This has actually been a part of my blog from the very start, but I’ve received overwhelming support behind it so I thought I’d actually post the info about it onto here. Well, my Ered is a transitioned demigirl. Why did I add this onto her you may ask? It adds further depth to Ered’s character in how she breaks the norms in being a stoic, introverted, cool pretty girl that’s considered tough. Furthermore, it adds more representation onto the character herself, as it doesn’t actually change her in anyway other than being a demigirl, which really doesn’t change her in the first place. And for online interactions, I’ll let you know ooc if Ered has or have her tell you ic that she’s a demigirl as she is considered ‘passing’ if not more so.

With that out of the way, I realize some of you might unfollow, not follow in the first place or even outright oppose me over this, but before you do. Re-read the above of the bolded text that says, ‘Read this’. And continue reading please, I have more to say. So with that in mind, I can safely say in any argument as the same as, ‘oh well it’s not canon’. I could say the same thing about her being cis as it’s not confirmed regardless, and even if it was? That really doesn’t matter actually. And if you’ve been paying attention to any of my disclaimers or the like, you’d understand why by now. But if you do question me on this, I ask you be respectful and not try to change my mind in any way, as that’s being transphobic rather than having an opinion at that point. As you can disagree with it or even just unfollow/ignore me, but actively trying to change/opposing something for other than the fact she’s just an unaltered transitioned demigirl but still a girl? Is being transphobic, period.

Headcanon #3: Started a highly specialized treatment as a trans demigirl at a very early age before her teens, resulting in her developing completely like a ‘normal’ demigirl growing up all the way to 17, as this kind of treatment is usually unavailable to the average civilian generally due to constraints, but with her money and resources and being spoiled to get w/e she wants. It was no problem with her connections. It’s mainly to make a statement of being an unaltered transitioned demigirl and as an almost canon megalomaniac that she can be the prettiest and coolest girl there is without corrective surgery. As she considers her body completely perfect, just she wanted to develop in what she considered pleasing and the realest her there was.

Headcanon #4: Ered is slightly bulkier in terms of muscle mass when she’s at full growth yet holds an elegant looking body due to her specialized treatment. She stands at a whopping 6′4-6'7 at full height (might be subject to change later if she turns out to be even younger than I thought in the show). This doesn’t change really what I hc’d her as an adult, but it takes less work for her to build muscle that way and provides less health risks with her own healthcare and money.

Headcanon #5: My Ered was born with the name Meredith. And kept it as more or less to just fuck with transphobes as my Ered is a transitioned demigirl. Kinda why I hc why she goes by Ered though also just a code-name maybe to imitate her gay dads.

‘what’s ur R E A L name?

‘Meredith.’

“the one you were b o r n with.’

‘Meredith.’

#ooc #timestamp

[mensuckalways]

Okay so if I could get some advice from you guys that’d be great..

So my dad has been stressing me tf out majorly recently for several reasons:

-tells me im of no use to him if i cant do chores when im here at home

-constantly tells me about my mom and sometimes throws it in my face that im acting like her

-really controlling

-doesn’t want me to get a job Uptown where i can use public transport to get places because he thinks its too dangerous but I cant work in the neighborhood surrounding our house because he already complains about having to take me shopping for anything and he just works too much to be a dependable source of transportation

-wont let any friends he disaproves of or friends that are gay or black come over because hes racist and homophobic

-if i dont answer the phone he panics and calls all my friends because he requested to have their numbers in case of an emergency, but he treats every time he cant get in touch with me immediately like an emergency.. even though he can see my location AND battery percentage 24/7 through an app we both have on our phones

-if im sick he comes up with any reason to tell me why i just need to get over it and unless im burning up with fever and chills he’ll go so far as to yell at me because i wont get out of bed

-he basically is forcing me to go to UNO in the fall because he doesn’t want to take out any more loans for my college even though they’re technically my loans but since they’re parent plus loans they’re his responsibility

-he basically is trying to exhibit control over every aspect of my life yet expect me to have complete control over my situation, but when I start falling back beause of all the stress he is putting on me he blames it on me ‘always laying down’ and being lazy

-he also nags me about being on the phone constantly

-hates bringing me back and forth to my dorm room even though he constantly wants me to come home, basically doing everything in his power to keep me at home constantly, even though I have no car or bike access right now so going home for me means being trapped in the house all day during his 12 hour shifts doing chores and taking care of all these puppies my dog had 

-on top of that, when he gets home in the evening,  he wants to ‘rest’ aka lay down on the couch for an hour because hes tired from work, which i get, but then blames it on me if I wake him up too late

-wants me to stop seeing psychiatrist as much once I get on his insurance and off medicaid and food stamps, even though hes the one giving me no choice in whether i live at home or not and get on his insurance(because i cant be on medicaid living with him and his income), so basically once i stop getting free psychiatrist and therapy visits i have to only go maybe once a month because despite him making like 70k a year he says we cant afford frequent visits, even though we can afford weekend visits to the beach twice a month and going out to eat every weekend: aka, my mental health isn’t important

-he hates me taking public transport to my psychiatrist because I have to walk like two blocks down a really dangerous street but every time he brings me to an appointment i have to hear about how much of a nuisance going to my psychiatrist is because he literally tells me everything else he could be doing instead

-finds a reason to blame symptoms of my being tired or stressed out on my meds every time and occasionally asks when I’m going to get off my medication, which he knows I hate/keep in mind the only reason i even got tested for ADD and went to a psychiatrist to get medication for my anxiety, depression, and ADD was because my mom brought me behind his back because he would scream at me every time i would ask

-compares me to the ‘mentals’ on the street he sees as a policeman sometimes 

-we see a family counselor but the one appointment we went to where i opened up and told him im not trying to point fingers or criticize him like my mom would but rather i was just talking about things he did that would bother me, and a few days later he threw everything i said back in my face on the car ride back to my dorm, where i was going to hang out with someone, but because i wouldn’t sit there and argue and was just being quiet he wouldn’t drop me off, he just kept driving down the street where he would have to turn until i talked to him and basically stressed myself out fighting with him while he nagged at me about everything, and when he did finally bring me back to campus he sat at the bottom of my building and even went inside after i did asking some kid to let him in, and hugged me in the lobby crying because he was upset, basically almost making a scene while i was waiting to get on the elevator

-tells me he shouldnt have to do ‘womens work’ around the house and that i should be doing it

-if i didnt mention it already, he keeps me at home as much as possible, where he refuses to let me lock my door even when im getting dressed (he even demands i let him crack the door open just so he can ‘talk to me’ but he says he’s not looking) and he controls which friends come over, and most of my friends are on campus anyway so i havent hung out with any friends in weeks not because i dont have any but because im always in this prison referred to as my house

-wont let me be myself, i cant tell him i think im bisexual, i cant talk about any friends that arent white or he asks why im friends with them, i cant play music sung by anyone that isnt white or else he calls it ‘n***** music’, 

I just am so tired of dealing with this and people tell me i need to not let him affect me or let him stress me out so much but just typing all of this out is making my hands shake and is making me want to cry

I love my dad and im trying to be there for him but he just makes me feel like im a huge nuisance in his life

He even told me the other night that he just wants to die and that he hopes he gets shot at work

Like why do i have to hear all of this

I havent even broken down balling even though I get the urge to practically every night because im trying to keep it all together and ‘not make excuses’ but my dad is literally driving me insane yet everyone expects me to cater to him and take care of this grown ass man because my mom left him

wonder why

#personal #rant #abuse #verbal abuse #mental abuse #financial abuse #psychological abuse #abusive parents #im only tagging all of these things because i dont even know if this is mental abuse #but it sure feels like it #gaslighting

[rascallyraven]

I know Pride Month is over but

I've been thinking a lot about all the people who've come out to the world as some part of the LGBTQ+ community, including a couple of my friends and my favorite YouTubers. I normally don't express my personal thoughts and opinions on any serious topic (especially on the internet), but this last month has really made me wonder how I really think and feel about these lovely people and their community. It was honestly more than that, though; I felt like it would be a good idea if I just made a draft of this post but wait until I had the missing piece, whatever it was, before I actually posted it.

Literally the day after I made the draft for this post, my 14-year-old sister came out to me as bisexual. When we were hanging out, I felt prompted to show her what I'd been working on. I knew she was passionate about Pride rights and so I wanted to make sure what I said made sense and was respectful. Her response was coming out to me. My initial assumption was that she felt safe enough with me to actually tell me this, but I made sure to get an actual response and she confirmed what I wrote was a positive thing. We had a very nice discussion, with her telling me about her story and how she came out to my dad and one of my other sisters already and they, using her words, lectured her. (My family is one that very much loves to talk when we are trying to make sense of things, among other things.)  I made sure not to do that, even though I wanted to; let her know that I will always love her; and that I will do all I can to make sure she knows I will support her best I can, even if I don't understand her feelings.

My first inclination is to tell my own story and experiences. To give some background, I was born in Utah in the United States. For those who don't know, Utah is known for having the primary religion named "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" and the nickname given to the people of this church was "Mormons." (We don't use that nickname anymore, which is another story.) I grew up in a family of this faith and have lived this faith my whole life. Long story short, I never even heard of people who were gay, lesbian, queer, etc until I dated my first boyfriend when I was 18-years-old. He identified as transgender and asexual. I'm embarrassed to say I think there was another term he used but I don't remember. I didn't understand that part of him AT ALL. I asked him what it meant, as this was the first I'd ever heard of such a thing, and he explained he felt like a girl trapped in a guy's body. I still don't get it but he introduced me to a whole world I never knew existed. We parted ways after a couple months and I didn't think about it again until a friend from high school came out as gay a few months after. I tried being his friend but I didn't know how; I asked a lot of questions but I just couldn't comprehend how he could feel attraction to the same gender. Eventually, he stopped talking to me completely. I still don't know why; I never called him to repentance or said he was an evil sinner; I never even thought his sexual preference was a sin. Whatever the case, we haven't spoken since then. But as the years passed, I was becoming more aware of the gay community as some of my more liberal friends started talking about it.

But then the question comes up: Why am I, a straight white girl, posting about something that I don’t completely understand?

My stance is that we are all children of our Heavenly Father and he made no mistakes when he created us. If you are gay or straight, you are loved and are here on this earth for a purpose, which is to have joy. While I may not agree with people of the community about pursuing same-sex relationships, switching genders, etc, I know having those feelings aren't wrong to have. Also, having same-sex attractions doesn't define who you are, just how being straight doesn't define who I am. I don't make most decisions that I do because I like boys, or like the shows I do because I like boys. If you like anime, especially the same anime I do, I immediately consider you my best anime buddy!

So, anyone reading this who's part of the Pride community, I say this: If you want to get anything out of this post, it's that I love you and will try to support you best I can as a person.

I've tried to be as clear about my thoughts as possible and I hopefully used the correct terms. If not, I apologize, I mean no offense by any of this. If anyone would like to ask any further questions about this post, I welcome them as long as they are kind and thoughtful. I will answer them to the best of my ability; I will answer them using quotes from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints mixed with my personal thoughts. I completely agree with everything the Church says about it and I know it's inspired by the Lord. In the meantime, I'm including a link to help you better understand where I'm coming from:

https://mormonandgay.churchofjesuschrist.org/articles/frequently-asked-questions?lang=eng

While many, or most, of you may not be "Mormon", I believe this article is applicable to all of you. (And by "you" I mean anyone who reads this, whether or not you’re from the Pride community.) It may also answer a lot of your questions about life and your purpose in it while also having same-sex attractions.

I also will include this link with an article that talks about coming out to parents or loved ones, among other questions for parents, and how to be loving and respectful:

https://mormonandgay.churchofjesuschrist.org/articles/ten-tips-for-parents?lang=eng

In the meantime, please be safe and drink water! :)

#sorry for the tldr #gay #lesbian #lgbtq #lgbtqai #lgbtpride #transgender #trans #asexual #bisexual #bi #lds church #Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints #churchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints #I love you #you are loved #you are not alone #you're amazing #you are amazing #dontgiveup #drink water #please #love you sis

[scarletwelly-boots]

Books Read 2017

I read 35 books this year. I'm about halfway done with #36, so I might make a smaller post later if I finish it before the New Year. I will also make a follow-up with the top ten so you don't need to read this whole thing. This post will briefly review each book (and damn I slacked this year; last year I got through 39 books).

As last year, each entry will include the title, author, and the entry of this year's reading challenge that it fell under.

1. All the King’s Men, by Nora Sakavic (A book that’s been on your TBR list for way too long). This is book three of the All for the Game trilogy, and holy shit you have to read this. It’s the best book in the trilogy. It is a series about a college sports team who play a made up sport called Exy, which is basically a more violent version of lacrosse. I’m not a huge sports fan, but the way she writes Exy matches had me on the edge of my seat. The team is made up of all “at-risk” students, the main character being a kid on the run from his mob boss dad. Trigger warning for the series for violence, sexual assault/rape, abuse, drug use, I may be missing some things. It was so good though.

2. Chopsticks, by Jessica Anthony (A book of letters). This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I kind of cheated on including this for this part of the challenge. It’s not entirely epistolary. It’s more mixed media. The story is told through pictures, letters, newspaper articles, notes, etc. It was good. It’s about a girl who’s basically this piano prodigy who meets a boy and falls in love.

3. East, by Edith Patton (an audio book). This year was going to be the year I reread books I haven’t read since junior high, but I kind of fell through on that, so I think this might be the only one I actually read. It’s a retelling of the Scandinavian fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon, which in turn is basically a version of Beauty and the Beast. I was obsessed with Beauty and the Beast retellings (and fairy tale retellings in general) when I was fourteen. The book certainly holds up over time. I definitely recommend it.

4. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz (a book by a person of color). Guys, everything you have heard about this book is true. It is so cute, and beautifully written. Two very different boys meet at a swimming pool when they are fifteen, and almost immediately become inseparable best friends. Also, if you can, the audiobook is surprisingly cheap on Amazon and read by el amor de mi vida, Lin-Manuel Miranda, so the book has that going for it too. 11/10 would recommend.

5. The Summer Palace, by CS Pacat (a book with one of the four seasons in the title). This is a short story in the Captive Prince series, and while it is absolutely adorable and so sunny, you need to read the trilogy to understand and appreciate it. It’s so sweet, with Laurent and Damen finally allowed to get to know each other and explore their personalities without the immediate threat of death hanging over them. Definitely recommended, but only after you read the trilogy, which I also obviously recommend.

6. The Course of Irish History, by TW Moody &co (a book with multiple authors). This is like 800-page textbook-grade Irish history, from the Ancient Celts to the Celtic Tiger economy in the 2000s. It is the leading book for Irish History courses, as I understand it. Guys. I loved this book. It took me forever to read, but I love Irish history books. It’s almost the only nonfiction I can sit through. Will you like it? Probably not. Do I recommend it anyway? Absolutely. 

7. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire (a book with a cat on the cover). Might’ve cheated on this entry too. Okay, listen. I have zero interest in reading the other books in the series and I’m sorry, but the musical was ten times better. However, there are several things about this book that I love. (And I read this in January so how accurate my memories are is questionable.) Elphaba is absolutely bi/pan in this and you cannot convince me otherwise. There are two munchkins who aren’t in the musical but who are absolutely gay as the Fourth of July. I’m pretty sure I remember someone who could be read as trans. This book was very queer. I just have no attachment to the characters that I know will be in the other books. If you want to read it, I’d recommend it. If you have the opportunity to see the musical instead, go with that option even if it’s the more expensive choice.

8. Fence, vol. 1, by CS Pacat (a book by an author who uses a pseudonym): CS Pacat is back, this time with a modern sports comic about fencing. This is a literal comic book guys, so it was really short, but vol. 2 is out soon so it’s okay. I liked it. I like fencing and CS Pacat, so I enjoyed it. Too short, but I know that’s how comics work. Yeah, go read it and support comics.

9. The Raven King, by Nora Sakavic (a bestseller from a genre you don’t normally read). “This was a bestseller?” Yeah, okay, so I cheated a lot this year. It should have been a best seller. This is book two in the All for the Game series. I already explained this series above, but guys read it, it’s so good!

10. Turtles All the Way Down, by John Green (a book by or about someone who has a disability). Yay, John Green wrote another book! Yep, it’s a Green book all right. But it was really, really good. Yes, this is coming from someone whose favorite book is still The Fault in Our Stars, but listen. The main character has anxiety like crazy, and Green, having anxiety himself, writes it so well. Almost too well; the character’s anxiety was starting to give me anxiety. I loved it. Read this book.

11. A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson (A book involving travel), this is a classic. Bryson goes to hike the Appalachian Trail, which is very very long. He takes along his somewhat stupid friend from home. Another nonfiction book, but it was good and had no Ireland at all in it. It was really funny, too. I recommend the audiobook, because it’s really fast to get through, but good. 

12. The Immortal Irishman, by Timothy Egan (a book with a subtitle). I know, but it’s got a subtitle actually but I just can’t remember what it is. Guys, I know it’s Irish history again. This book is whole leagues above The Course of Irish History. It’s not a textbook, and doesn’t read like one. It’s a biography on Thomas Francis Meagher, a revolutionary in Famine-decimated Ireland trying to free his dying and oppressed country from the English. It doesn’t go well. He’s imprisoned and sentenced to death. But instead of dying, he is transported to the Penal Colony in Australia, where he lives and works to free Australia from Britain’s clutches as well, before he escapes to the United States just in time to be a general in the Civil War. It’s really good.  

13. Weird Ireland, assorted authors (a book that’s published in 2017). A very small, independently published book about paranormal, supernatural, and extra-terrestrial sightings in Ireland. It was okay. I finished it in two hours. I knew everything that was in it, and some of it they even got wrong. Even if you’re crazy-obsessed with Ireland like me, you can skip this one.

14. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the movie script, by JK Rowling (a book involving a mythical creature). Did you see the movie? Then you’re good, you don’t need to read the script. Bye.

15. Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones (a book you’ve read before than never fails to make you smile). Did I say TFiOS is my favorite book? Sorry, I meant this one. Did you see the movie? Don’t care, book’s better, go read it. This may be my most frequently read book on my shelf. It’s sooo good!

16. Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt (a book with career advice): I hate to say this about a fellow Irishman and a celebrated author, but Frank McCourt? not a great guy. The book was good, because I’m also a teacher, so some of what he was saying was relatable to me. But the guy teaches high school English, and even though the book follows him from his thirties to like his sixties, he’s kind of salivating over the high school girls and it was making me very uncomfortable. He never actually does anything about his attraction (at least not in the book), but I was still like this is wildly unprofessional please stop. 

17. Loki: Agent of Asgard vol. 1, by Jason Ewing (a book from a nonhuman perspective): This was the second-ever graphic novel I’ve ever read guys. Yes, I had a weeabo phase in junior high like everyone else, so I did read manga, but comics were never really that interesting to me. So I was Thor: Ragnarok six times this year. Why did I see it six times? I love Loki and their genderfluidity, even if the MCU won’t acknowledge that my love so obviously gf. So I decided to read all the comics where it’s canon that Loki is genderfluid. This book was so good, please read.

18. Graceling, by Kristen Cashore (a steampunk novel). Cheating again, sorry. This was more fantasy than steampunk. It was also a junior high favorite I’m reading again. In this world, there are people born with two eye colors that signify they have special abilities. Some are benign, like being an amazing baker or the ability to tell someone is lying to you, but some are more sinister. The main character, Katsa’s grace is for killing. It’s a good book.

19. The Irish Civil War, by Tim Pat Coogan (a book with a red spine). A very short book highlighting the Irish Civil War 1922-1923. I liked it, because the civil war is basically the only section of Irish history I was still a little foggy on, so it was helpful. Will you like it? Only if you’re into Irish history like me. This is not Immortal Irishman.

20. Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan (A book you loved as a child). We read this with my fifth graders last year. I loved this book when I was ten, but I got so much more out of it this second time around. It’s a really good book, even if you’re not a child. Esperanza starts out the daughter of a wealthy rancher, but when her father dies under shifty circumstances, she and her mother are forced to flee to America, where they live with their servants’ relatives in a migrant worker camp in California, facing hardship, discrimination, and immigration laws. It’s very good.

21. Cupid, by Julius Lester (a book with a title that’s a character’s name). This was okay. I thought I’d read it in junior high, but I had no memory of any of it. It’s a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, which is very similar to East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The author tried to be tongue-in-cheek in a few places, which I didn’t appreciate, but overall it’s a pretty good YA novel. 

22. Loki: Agent of Asgard vol. 2, by Jason Ewing (a book with an unreliable narrator). Loki? Unreliable? Since when? Still good, still queer, Freyja pissing me off as always.

23. Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel (a book with pictures): Okay, I guess I lied, since this book was a graphic novel and I read it before Loki. It was really interesting. It’s autobiographical of Bechdel’s life and relationship with her dad.

24. The Pirate Queen, by Barbara Sjoholm (a book about an interesting woman). Not only was this about my favorite person ever, Grace O’Malley, stone in Britain’s imperial sandal, but also talked about the relationship between Atlantic-dwelling women and the sea. It covers goddesses, fisherwomen, pirates, adventurers, and sea-witches from Ireland, Scotland, the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland. It was really interesting and I recommend it. 

25. Timekeeper, by Tara Sim (a book set in two different time periods). Cheated here, too, don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, this is a steampunk novel in which clock towers actually control time, which means that if there’s a flaw, it affects time itself in more literal ways. It’s about a clock mechanic and a clock spirit who lives in one of the towers and watches over the clock. They are adorably gay, but that’s more of a subplot because someone has been sabotaging the towers and throwing time into chaos. The sequel comes out in January. Good for a debut novel.

26. Across Five Aprils, by Irene Hunt (a book with a month or day of the week in the title). This is about a ten-year-old boy growing up in rural Illinois during the Civil War, so it talks about how it affects him and his family, as well as covers the course of the war in a more general perspective. It was interesting, and well written, but I think I prefer Hunt’s Up a Road Slowly.

27. The Adventures of Charls, by CS Pacat (a book written by someone you admire): Another Captive Prince short story that should be read after The Summer Palace. Where Green But for a Season (the first CP short story) was sad, and Summer Palace was passionate and cute, The Adventures of Charls is hilarious. Charls, the cloth merchant, was such a great side character in the CP trilogy, and telling the story from his perspective was great. It doesn’t have to be read after the Summer Palace, but at least the trilogy should be read first.

28. Wonder, by RJ Palacio (a book that’s becoming a movie in 2017). Did you watch the movie? Whitewashed, go read the fucking book. I read this with my fifth graders last year too, who loved it. It’s a very sweet story, and the movie was good, but it goes too fast and leaves out some scenes that I liked. Highly, highly recommend.

29. The Foxhole Court, by Nora Sakavic (the first book in a series you haven’t read before). First book (obviously) in the All for the Game series. What are you still doing here? Go start this trilogy!

30. Symptoms of Being Human, by Jeff Garvin (a bestseller from 2016). I think I cheated again, but this book should have been a bestseller. Quality of the story gets a solid 7/10, but this is the only novel I know of that has a canon human genderfluid character, and representation is so important and for a cis dude, this guy wrote genderfluid shockingly well. Characterization and representation gets a 10/10 because I just ignored the “I’m a whiny teenager, no one likes me, my parents don’t get me, woe is me” chorus. Some of it was justified, because they were being bullied, and they weren’t out to their parents, but still, the book was written very young adult-y. 

31. The Story We Carry in Our Bones, by Juliene Osbourne-McKnight (a book about an immigrant or refugee). The subtitle describes the book best: Irish history for Irish-Americans. Down side: very watered down Irish history because it’s a small book and just an introduction to Irish history. Up side: More information and context of the history of the Irish in America, because my personal studies have pretty much entirely skipped over that aspect of my heritage. If you’re Irish-American and looking to learn a little more about your ethnic past, but don’t want to dive headfirst into the deep end of Irish everything like me, you should read this book. If you’re willing to study more in-depth Irish history, skip this book and I have some better recommendations for you. 

32. Loki: Agent of Asgard vol. 3, by Jason Ewing (a book from a genre you’ve never heard of): Cheated; I know what a comic book is. This is the last volume in this series. My only qualm is a spoiler, so I’ll give it 8/10.

33. Original Sin: Thor and Loki in the Tenth Realm, by Jason Ewing (a book with an eccentric character): Who is more eccentric than Loki “Always-Extra” Laufeyson? This is the first comic I’ve ever read, and I have to say it was very good. Featuring genderfluid!Loki all the way, actual Father-of-the-Year this time Odin, Freyja’s shockingly shitty parenting skills (maybe this is a theme in the comics, but coming from actual-angel!Frigga in the MCU, this was upsetting for me), and Thor abandoning the Avengers in a fight to start another battle in another realm because Thor is a fucking over-dramatic bastard. 

34. Huntess, by Malinda Lo (a book that’s been mentioned in another book). I read Lo’s Ash a few years ago and loved it. Huntress, while okay, didn’t quite live up to the hype I’d applied to it after reading Ash. It was good, and had a very mythical Ireland feel to it that I liked, and it was very gay, but I don’t know, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. 

35. Ever, by Gail Carson Levine (a book based on mythology). I read this book when I was fourteen, too (guess I did read a lot of books from junior high). I love this book. It’s about a young god who meets a monotheistic mortal girl and they fall in love despite the differences in their religion. I didn’t love it as much as I did in junior high, but it’s still good. Levine also wrote Ella Enchanted, which is very good and more well-known than Ever.

#books #book recommendations #book recs

[davidfostercomedyblog]

The Things We Take for Granted

As a child I always wanted to be poor and black. As an adolescent I was criticized for this seemingly preposterous desire, but if anyone thought about it, it was quite logical. All of my heroes were poor and black: Rappers, many favorite actors (and the characters they portrayed), and most athletes (prior to signing their contracts) were poor and black. And what child doesn’t want to emulate their heroes?

Growing up my family was “comfortable” by white, American standards - filthy fucking rich by planetary standards. We didn’t attend private school, nor summer in the Hamptons, but my brother and I each had our own bedroom and Mom didn’t have to work. If you can claim the same and are under the impression that you’re not rich you’re probably a bad person.

 In 1994 the tides turned as Dad was let go by his company, who discovered a “loophole” in his contract that would transform his promised $100,000/year pension into a $0/year pension, and the house wasn’t close to paid for. Mom had to go to work, Dad had to go back, and if I ever wished to again be “comfortable” I’d have to earn it, which is hardly something to whine about, still a factor in my reality.

 I’ve lived in a million shit holes. In 1998 I was paying $440/month on West 15th St.

 Do you know what you get for $440 on W. 15th Street? A room, literally nine feet by six, that happened to offer a great view of the Empire State Building. It was an “SRO” – single room occupancy, which means no kitchen or living room, no nothing, but a miniature refrigerator if you’re lucky, and a dingy-AF bathroom in the hallway to be shared with whatever other college kids or miscreants caught in some life transition (or perpetual non-transition) happened to live on the floor. At the time I was the former, in love with alcohol and psychedelic drugs, and it was the best time of my life. One night my friend, Tre got locked out of his car and had to sleep over, which we executed brilliantly, each of us curled into fetal position at opposite ends of my futon single and I’m confident no spooning took place. Tre decided to take some magic mushrooms from my stash, leaving crumbs of them on the sheets as if they were late night cookies, but the next day he claimed they “didn’t really work.” Incidentally, I got a better night’s sleep than I probably would now by myself on a king-sized pillow top. Ah, youth.

 Eventually I upgraded to another SRO on 13th and 3rd Ave. for $600/month, which boasted over twice the square footage, and Tre ironically coined, “The Palace.” The Palace was (barely) able to fit a full-sized futon, parallel to a “coffee table” and perpendicular to a single bed, which made Tre’s sleepovers twice as comfortable and ten times as frequent. Infestation was worse than at the previous domicile, if for no other reason than the aforementioned law of probability as it pertains to literal space. What are the chances of mice and cockroaches as much finding their way into a box as specific as 54 square feet in a New York City building? We’d mostly hear the mice shuffling at night in the dark, but ironically saw roaches in the light, fearlessly perusing the sink or climbing the walls, and I don’t think I’ll ever again laugh as hard as I did when Tre pointed one out and muttered in a weed-smoked stupor: “Room service is here, nigga. You wanna place an order?”

 Summers in SRO’s were tough, as air conditioners were forbidden, because capitalism works and life is fair. I’ll never forget one morning the heat was so intense that it woke me up early, so I got up, grabbed my things and bought one ticket to an early morning showing of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I’d already suffered through one showing of the cinematic vomit, but figured the air conditioned theater with an awfully uninteresting dialogue and plot as backdrop was the perfect setting to finish my night’s rest. I was right.

 No doubt the most interesting part about my time in The Palace was the ongoing mystery of who on my floor was responsible for the intermittent appearances of explosive diarrhea sprayed across the shared bathroom’s walls. One day they would be perfectly clean (relative to SRO’s), and the next day, Wham (literally)! It was everywhere, on the wall behind the toilet and beside it, on the floor as well as the trashcan, and at the still unshakeable age of 22 I was often as impressed by this poor soul’s range and diameter as I was grossed out by it being all over my home. The one thankful, but equally disturbing part of it was there was almost never any shit on the actual bowl. Who was this fascinating beast, first of all with some great gastrointestinal power, that insisted on ruthlessly shitting all over his own home and the home of others, but simultaneously considerate enough to never filthy the seat that his neighbors had to share? We had our suspects, but never got a conclusive verdict.

 I graduated from SRO’s to futons in friends’ living rooms, one of which was directly above the loudest and most volatile gay bar in Chelsea, The Rawhide. Instead of unbearable August humidity, it was techno music and the sounds of masculine rejoice that disrupted my sleep, sometimes from below, other times from my best friend’s room. He was more successful than I with drunk girls at parties, thus serving as an in-house reminder of my failures and frustrations in the middle of many nights. The majority of our time at The Rawhide was okay, though it ended poorly, with a break-up from my two best friends (Tre included), typical when cramming three besties into a two bedroom for four years.

 I’ve lived everywhere, dawg.

 For a few years I had my own studio apartment on one of Washington Heights’ most drug-infested blocks, which is kind of like saying the “most volatile gay bar in Chelsea.” One time a girl I was dating asked me to go outside and find her a bag of weed and I didn’t even make it to the bottom of the staircase before scoring. Location, location… I then moved cross country into a studio in the heart of Hollywood, Los Angeles, then to a dark and dirty converted two-bedroom with two Filipino women in Koreatown for two years, and to this day I have no idea whether or not they were a gay couple. It didn’t matter if they were; I just thought it curious that after all that time and interaction I remained curious. The worst part about that spot was just having to regularly concoct white lies about why I couldn’t join them at weekly Bible study, and each morning waking up to the sounds of urination through the thinly constructed bedroom wall.

 “Why don’t you just borrow money from your parents and get a better place?” a friend asked in one of the classic erroneous assumptions made by privileged people:

1.     Everyone may not have money, but their parents do at least. False.

2.     Hard work = financial success. I’ve never taken a vacation and I have nothing, which is half the reason why I’ve never taken a vacation.

3.     Intelligence = financial success. Donald Trump is President.

 I moved back to New York with the same complete void of resources that I’d gone to L.A. with, but got hooked up with a room in a real 2Br in Harlem for $678/month! No contract and right in my price range! What was the catch?  

 Never in my life had I seen such infestation.

 I’ll repeat that for the cheap seats and ears deafened by our over-stimulated society of idiots exploiting non-literal superlatives in order to garner attention: Never in my life had I seen such infestation. This includes homes I’ve lived in, as well as every one I’ve ever visited or even passed through just to get a quarter pound of weed in 1995. In my first week there I would come home at night, turn on the kitchen lights and see anywhere from 3-10 of the filthy insects fleeing for safety across the sink and countertop, in much greater numbers and more cowardly fashion than the apathy with which room service used to creep up The Palace walls. Roaches were so much tougher in the 90’s.

 Thankfully I barely ever saw them in the bedroom, but they absolutely owned the kitchen and bathroom. We were just renting, mere visitors in their home where they ruled, they roamed, and I didn’t bother to inquire as to whether the roommate would mind if I doused the place in bleach, taped and calked up all cracks in the floors and walls, and bought a new kitchen garbage… With. A. Cover.

 Within a month I was victorious in defending the wall, and the wildling little creatures were gone. I’ve been on HBO and Showtime, won comedy festival competitions and earned a Master’s degree in Chinese Medicine, and this was truly one of my greatest achievements in life. Unfortunately my new abode’s other obstacle would prove an impossible hurdle, and one I’d have to stand down to for the 15 months to come: El Bano.  

In order to successfully flush I had to hold the toilet handle down for anywhere from 5-12 seconds, making for the longest I’ve ever had to hold a toilet handle down for. Some toilets are stubborn, requiring a hold of 2-3 seconds, max. The next time you flush a toilet hold the handle down for 12 seconds. It’s an eternity.

 The seat was disgusting and I immediately decided that no square inch of my skin would ever come into contact with it. To be honest I didn’t even like the idea of my anus hanging above it. I thought about purchasing and attempting to install a new seat, though my brother brought up a good point.

 “Considering the apparent hygienic standards of your roommate, will you freely sit on the bare seat if you buy a new one?”

 “No.”

 “Okay then.”

 To cover up the impenetrable stains of funk and musk I instead resigned to spray paint the seat white, and continued to cover it with paper each time I sat down.

 Supposedly we couldn’t call the super for repairs, as part of the reason our rent was so cheap was because the apartment was rent controlled from a time before even my roommate lived there. Neither of our names were on the lease. The bathroom would remain as is, which could only be described as fucking disgusting.  

 I don’t know that I’d ever before smelled the smell, “putrid,” or even “rancid,” and if I had it was only in passing, only in that split second of sensual recognition before we clench our orifices in sheer panic and flee the scene for cleaner air, greener pastures. The smell emitted from my new, old bathroom’s pipes was putridly rancid, and if it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever smelled it was at least the worst I’d ever smelled regularly. Many times while going to the bathroom I would try covering my nose with my shirt, but the thin layer of cotton was no match for this entity that surely required some kind of exorcism to defeat its demonic potency. Googled gimmicks such as baking soda and vinegar offered only brief reprieve, and for the first time in my life I was brushing my teeth everyday in the (newly exterminated) kitchen.

 Unfortunately, neither the odor nor the Zen toilet flusher was my biggest gripe with the room. I would have easily tolerated either of these were it not for the worst Goddamn shower I’ve ever taken in my life. I took 500 of them if I took one.

 The water dribbled out in pathetic pressure and took forever to get warm, and these were the unit’s only two familiar flaws from prior shit holes. Additionally delayed was its response to temperature adjustment, so if I came back after waiting the allotted 5-10 minutes and found the water to be scalding hot I couldn’t just adjust the knobs and expect it to adjust. There was a consistently inconsistent wait time between turning the cold water knob and when the water actually got cooler, or if it got cooler at all. Often times I’d get impatient and make it too cold before the defunct pipes were able to catch up and the water suddenly turned to the opposite extreme. Every shower was a non-stop guessing game, concurrent with a waiting game and usually a physical dance, as I’d err mostly hotter instead of colder, and had to dance in and out of the stream to rinse off suds but also avoid getting burned. The worst instances that brought me to exclaiming expletives while naked, wet and alone were surely at the end of long workdays in the winter. I’d bend over to wash my legs and feet and suddenly the erratic unit would turn from a tolerable temp to either ice cold or boiling, spraying my lower back, transforming what all my life had been a relaxing, therapeutic experience into a frustrating battle; a daily reminder of the impoverished outcome of all my hard work. Who’d ever think showering would become something I’d dread?  

 The good news is that next week I’m moving out, moving on up, not to the east side, thank God, but into my girlfriend’s apartment, who besides being lovely and beautiful, brilliant and hilarious, has a functional shower in an odorless bathroom with a toilet that flushes when you flush it. Amazing! I’ve never seen a cockroach in her place, and if she’s ever had explosive diarrhea it’s remained a secret, surely aimed and disposed of appropriately. I promise never to take such luxuries (nor my girlfriend) for granted again. For the first time in 21 years I’m comfortable. I may just miss being able to leave the toilet seat up.

#shitterwasfull #nationallampoons #manhattanapartments #bathroomlife