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#it is just messy and real and just. 'who am i'
emphistic · 17 hours
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hi emm! Since it’s prom season could u make basketball sukuna reacting to someone from the team asking you out for prom?
A/N: hii! i actually received a vv similar request a long time ago and i deleted it because i didnt know how to write it, so maybe this is a sign from God — my redemption time, LMAO
PS: sorry to all my readers who are actually jelly lovers, i am not one of you
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“So,” Gojo started, while shoving fries into his mouth, “have you got a date yet? Prom’s comin’ up real quick, y’know?”
The basketball team had just won their last game of the season, and all the players were eating out together in celebration. Sukuna was planning on just spending the rest of the night celebrating with you, like usual, but Gojo dragged him away and you only gave a thumbs up in encouragement. What a girlfriend you were, Sukuna scoffed, handing off your dear boyfriend to Gojo Satoru.
“Why do you care?” Sukuna grimaced at Gojo’s messy eating habits. How could one dare to speak while stuffing their face? Sukuna thought Gojo grew up wealthy, and, hey, aren’t rich people supposed to be, like, super into decorum? Where is this man’s etiquette?
“Sheesh, sorry for asking. I just wanted to know if my friend here,” he nudged Sukuna with his elbow, “needed some help getting a date. No need to be ashamed, Captain. I could hook you up with one of Utahime’s friends.”
“Yeah, no. But since you’re so curious, Satoru, I do have a date, actually.”
“No way, seriously? The big, bad, captain of the basketball team, has a date? For prom? I have to tell Suguru this.” Gojo whipped out his phone and, with his sauce-covered fingers, started typing like a madman.
Sukuna cringed, looking away and biting into his burger. This did not taste as good as your cooking. Why oh why did you let Satoru take him away? he thought. Sukuna would much rather be with you right now, even if it meant having to sit through one of your godawful rom-coms. Any of those would be better than Gojo fucking Satoru.
“I cannot believe he is missing this because he’s sick. Sick! That’s actually sick of him. Haha, get it?” Gojo leaned back in his chair, and Sukuna wished he would slip and fall backwards.
“There’s nothing shocking about me having a date, Satoru. I’m not some kind of loser.”
“Yeah, well. Yorozu’s not attached to your arm right now, so I thought—”
“I told you, I don’t like her like that. I don’t like her at all, matter of fact.”
“She’s, like, obsessed with you, dude.”
“I know,” Sukuna ran a hand down his face. “Just wish she would leave me alone, I’ve been trying my best to avoid her. And I haven’t seen her as often, so I think it’s working.” If Yorozu didn’t take the hint sooner or later, Sukuna would make your guys’ relationship known to the whole campus if he had to. Hell, Gojo didn’t even know yet. No one did, actually.
“Damn, so cold. You just gonna ignore her and break her heart?” Gojo laughed, but that quickly came back to kick him in the butt when he started choking on a fry.
“If you’re not joking, that fry will be the last thing you eat. I swear on your life, I do not want anything to do with that bitch.”
Gojo continued coughing and choking and shaking, but when all subsided and the white-haired man regained most of his posture, he posed the question, “So, you’re not gonna, like, ask me?”
“Ask you what? Ask you to prom? The fuck?”
“No, no, no. I mean, unless you wanted to,” Gojo tucked an overgrown strand of hair behind his ear, a stupid expression on his stupid face. “But, I’m talking about what I asked you. So, you gonna ask me if I have a prom date?”
“I don’t give a fuck if your lame ass has a date or not,” Sukuna spat out.
“Have you any idea how hurt I am now, because of you? Ehuhwaaa,” Gojo let out the fakest ugliest cry Sukuna had ever heard. “You think my ass is lame? Do you know how many would pay to see even a glimpse of my tush?”
“No. And I hope it stays that way.”
“I—how dare you.”
That night, Sukuna had to run away from Gojo in the parking lot of an In-n-Out. Otherwise, Gojo would’ve probably never left him alone. And, you might be thinking, Gojo is a fast runner. How did Sukuna get away? Well, it may or may not have been because Gojo had scarfed down three double-doubles prior. And he could barely stand upright without having to lean against Sukuna.
But, fear not, Sukuna did make it home, into your arms. And even though he did have to sit through your stupid rom-coms, he was so fucking glad to finally be away from that white-haired idiot.
Unfortunately for Sukuna, that peace and tranquility was short-lived. The next morning, he was woken up by your overly obnoxious doorbell. Seriously, when were you going to replace it?
Sukuna groaned, whispering into your hair, “Didn’t know you were expecting visitors, babe.”
“Hm?” Your voice was muffled; your face pressed impossibly close into Sukuna’s bare chest.
“Visitor, sweetheart. Someone’s at your door.”
“Huh?” You stuck your head up from your human pillow, and though missing the warmth, you were quite confused. Visitor? Since when?
It’s safe to say you were even more surprised to see Gojo Satoru outside when you opened your door. But you weren’t the only confused one, not for long, at least. Gojo raised his brow when he saw Sukuna emerge from behind you in all his glory: shirt nowhere to be found, hair unruly, and sweatpants hanging low on his hips.
“Captain? What are you—?” Gojo cleared his throat, “Whatever. Anyway, will you, Y/N, do me the honor of being the jelly to my peanut butter and going to prom with me?” Gojo flashed a smile so bright Sukuna almost fell backwards.
“Uhh, I’m sorry—”
“She doesn’t even like jelly, dumbass. And what’s with this horrendous sign? That’s seriously the best you’ve got?” Sukuna gestured with his chin at the poorly drawn and colored peanut butter jar and jelly. Not to mention, Gojo was also dressed as a sandwich, with two slices of bread on either side of his body.
“What the hell? How would you know if she liked jelly or not?”
“Because I’m her prom date.”
“And—and, what are you doing at her house?”
“I’m her boyfriend.” Sukuna glared at the white male, and slung an arm around your shoulder, out of spite.
Gojo paused, finally putting the puzzle pieces together. “Ohhh. So that’s why you didn’t want to come eat with us yesterday. And that’s why you were so desperate to go home. And that’s why I haven’t seen you with another girl in months.”
“Uh huh.”
“Anywho,” Gojo turned back to you, shoving his sign all up in your face. “Will you go to prom with me?”
“Dude.”
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seat-safety-switch · 2 days
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The scientific method solves all our problems, but it's kind of boring. You have to set up all these little experiments, decide what you're going to focus intently on, and then get upset when it doesn't work.
We're taught to only change one thing at a time and look for a different result. Maybe that's too abstract for some of you who were abducted by absent parents and committed to some kind of always-on-the-run childhood experience, and I'm not allowed to discriminate against you anymore with the latest court orders. Here's something more concrete.
Imagine I'm fixing my headlights. They don't work so well. I come up with a list of things it could be: the bulbs. The wiring. The switch in the dashboard. I try fixing all those things one at a time, and testing again after each one. The headlights continue to suck, ignorant of my efforts.
A real scientist would be disappointed, sure, but then propose some more things that it could be. The socket. The battery. The wiring from the battery. The headlight relay. And so on, until one change makes the lights pop on. Then, in a great big book of science, they can finally, at long last, write down "when your headlights aren't working, maybe the idiot I'm doing this with didn't turn the car on."
This can be a trap. At what point do you stop doing more experiments, and just burn the car down instead? Life is messy, and you're not blessed with infinite time or money to chase down a problem like this. Maybe you'd be just as happy duct-taping a Coleman lantern to the hood so that you can still drive at night.
Thing is, I'm not just as happy when I throw in the towel. I have done many such "good-enoughs" in life. Each and every time, I feel guilty for abandoning the scientific method. In the eyes of my public-school mentors, I am living a lazy and unexamined life, incomplete without the delight of figuring out what that weird noise is instead of just turning up the stereo.
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You Call It Madness But I Call It Love
Chapter 15: What Do You Know About Love?
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Pairing: Soldier Boy x f!reader, Reader POV
Summary: When the reader left Payback 40 years ago after a falling out with her childhood best friend she never looked back, but when two men show up to her apartment and start asking her questions about the past, the reader begins to think those things can’t stay hidden and starts to question what’s real and what’s fantasy.  This is a re-telling of The Boys Season 3, where the reader is a supe who's known Soldier Boy since 1927. The chapters will fluctuate between past and present. This is chapter fifteen of my "You Call It Madness But I Call It Love" series. (I'm so bad at summaries please forgive me!)
Word Count: 6.5K (I got carried away again)
Warnings: References to sex, Cursing, Angst, Crying,  Soldier Boy might be, is, really, absolutely, a little OOC, Soldier Boy is really all you need as a warning.
Note: This is told from the Reader's perspective. Any references to the reader is made using you or your. There is minimal use of y/n. I tried my best to proofread, but nobody's perfect. Reader is described as "curvy" occasionally. If you don’t like, don’t read, but if you do like, you’re my favorite!
Internal Monologue is in first person and is in italics
Series Masterlist
Masterlist
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Present Day *Reader POV*
The shopping bags that hung from your arms would have been heavy for the average person, but for you it seemed like a bag full of pillows. It was the day after you saw Rosemary and said goodbye. Despite the almost excruciating hangover you had this morning, because it'd been almost forty years since you last had a drink, you dragged yourself to the mall to try and find outfits for your trip to Russia. You were satisfied with the few outfits you found, but you were worried because the plane left in a few hours and you were no where near ready.
Mentally or physically.
As much as you wanted to go help Ben, you still were apprehensive about the whole situation, not just about going in blind, but wondering what the hell you were going to do when you saw Ben. You wanted to hold on to your anger, but you were afraid that the moment you looked into his green eyes you would forgive him.
I am not going to forgive him. I'm going to break him out then tell him to fuck off and I never have to see him ever again.
Despite your apprehension, you knew that you had to do this, that you had to go help him even if you still hated him because you couldn't bear the thought of the boy you grew up with being tortured over there all alone. It was the alone part that hurt the most. You knew how much Ben hated being alone. He never had to say it out loud, but all the time you'd spent together in your bedroom before and after the injection spoke volumes.
Of course you still had no idea where you were going, but figured that if you went to the Kremlin you could get some answers, which meant you'd either have to lie your way in or just kill anyone in your path. Which would be messy, but necessary. You try to shake off the guilt of exposing yourself again and what that could mean for Rosemary and Lou. You made sure that Rosemary knew to pack a bag for herself and for Lou and told her to wait for your call.
You wanted to be there to escort them out of the city, didn't want to split up and have them get snagged while you were waiting for them at the rendezvous point, so you told Rosemary to take a few days off and lay low.
When you get to the outside door of your apartment building toting the bags, you notice that it's been broken, as if someone tried to pull it off its hinges.
Well that's great. Hopefully the building manager noticed that.
Your mind drifts back to Ben as you step into the elevator.
What if he isn't alive when I get there? It was an unwelcome thought, but it meant that you wouldn't have to talk to him.
 Maybe if I knock him out when I get there and just leave him in a Russian motel somewhere, I won't have to talk to him. You pause. Will he want to talk to me? 
The memory of the last time you spoke flashes through your mind bringing an unmeasurable amount of rage and heartbreak back over your body. The dam you built to keep out everything that happened was reaching capacity, especially given the recent events with Countess, and you knew that the moment you saw Ben it was going to burst open. You hoped that you'd be able to keep it together long enough to get out of the lab or wherever the hell he was being held, before you lost it. But it was doubtful.
As you walk down the hallway to you apartment, you notice that your front door is open and you stop walking. Apprehension spikes at the back of your mind as you examine the door. The lock is broken and  door is cracked just enough for you to hear people talking inside in hushed tones. You creep forward and look through the crack.
You've got to be kidding me. You groan to yourself noticing Butcher and Hughie standing in your living room.
Great. Just what I need. Right when I'm going to leave they show up. Guess that explains the mystery of the broken door downstairs.
You think about walking away, of going back down the elevator and hoping that by the time you come back they would be gone, but you knew you had to face them and you still had to pack. So you push open the front door of your apartment and step into the room.
"You know when I called saying that I had something else to say about Soldier Boy, I assumed you would call, not break into my apartment." You sigh before moving to the right side of the counter that divides the room between the living room and the kitchen and depositing the shopping bags on the stainless steel top.
"Maybe you shouldn’t leave your apartment unlocked poppet. Anyone could walk in." Butcher replies with a grin.
"Hmm. Sure. You guys here for more coffee?"
"Go shopping did you?" Butcher ignores your snark eyeing the bags.
"Yeah I needed a few new outfits for my art show next month." The lie is easy, but you know that the sudden appearance of the two of them probably meant you were caught red handed. Of course now with everything that happened with Countess, you didn't care anymore if Butcher and Hughie knew who you really were. "You doing okay there Hughie?" You raise an eyebrow as you notice how his heartbeat has spiked since you entered the apartment.
"Good." He says, but he looks uneasy.
Well, guess he's afraid of me now.
"Huh. And here I thought you were replacing your jacket." Butcher throws your ruined jacket onto the floor between you.
You look from the jacket to Butcher. You hadn't bought a replacement and hadn't wanted to throw it out. You were still hoping that the scorch marks looked like you had "distressed" it. It didn't and you knew that, but you loved that coat so much.
"See, I think it’s a big coincidence that Countess got right fucked after we came and talked to you." Butcher smiles.
"Probably the same coincidence as Gunpowder dying before you showed up here the first time." You breeze with a tight-lipped smile.
Where was he going with this? Was he here to kill me? You think about what Legend said about Butcher killing supes.
"That looks bad." Butcher gestures to the jacket. "You have a little spat with your good friend?”
"Let's just say she said a few things that upset me." Your eyes skate from Butcher to Hughie sizing them up. "If you're here to kill me, you're welcome to try. Oh sorry,  'arrest me'." You make air quotes around the words. "But we both know you're not government agents, you reek of Compound V and the last time I checked there was that whole, no supes in the government thing."
"Wouldn't it have been easier to get this out of the way the first time?" Hughie asks.
"I didn't want to be involved." You shrug your shoulders.
"Then why you'd buy a plane ticket to Russia?" Butcher takes a step towards you, but you hold your ground.
You weren't afraid of him.
"I hear it's nice this time of year. Not too hot, not too cold. Very pleasant." You snap back at him eyes narrowed, before you look down at the antique watch on your wrist. "Look I'd love to have a heart to heart, but I just don't have time to do this little dance with you. So we can either get to the part where you try to kill me or-" You raise your gaze from the watch to glare back at Butcher, but then your eyes focus on the hallway behind him and your heart stops.
Ben is standing there in the shadows looking at you the same way he always has, with those wonderful piercing green eyes that makes all other memories of them be put to shame. He's dressed in modern clothes, wearing a dark green shirt that hugs his perfect muscular chest and is the same color of his suit, your favorite color and the one you can never look at without thinking of him because damn it, it's also the color of his eyes. He looks the same, but different. His hair is longer and darker than it was the last time you saw him and his cheeks are covered by a trimmed but thick beard. It was unusual given that you'd never seen him with more than just a little bit of stubble and annoying because it makes him look even more ruggedly handsome, but despite the piercing way his eyes follow you, you can see a haunting memory of the last forty years.
You're upset that the one of the first thoughts you'd had beside staring at him open mouthed is that you wished you were wearing something more flattering than one of your pairs of paint splattered overalls over an old band t-shirt. You were going to Russia to get him and yes maybe you were shopping for things that you could move in, but you had picked out a particular revenge outfit that you believed would make Ben regret everything he did to you and also might have been paired with a particularly badass set of boots that made your legs look very long. The outfit that made you feel beautiful and sexy was unlike the one you were wearing at the moment. Also because you hadn't brushed your hair today and had just stuck it up in a messy bun at the back of your head.
You're struck with the urge to run to him and kill him at the same time, but you can't move and you can’t think.
Apart of you believed that you would find him dead in Russia, a sad thought but it meant that you wouldn't have to relive everything all over again. Everything that went to shit the last 24 hours you spent together that you relived with Countess the other day and now you were reliving when you looked at him standing there looking better than he should.
Because damn it, only Ben could be tortured in a lab for the past 40 years and walk away looking like a GQ model. I've never hated anyone more.
"Ben?" Your voice is no more than a hoarse whisper.
Ben pushes past Hughie and Butcher, taking careful steps towards you like he doesn't want to scare you away. "Y/n." The sound of your name on his lips fills you with an inescapable amount of warmth.
Traitor. You think to yourself at your body’s reaction.
He's standing so close to you now that you can smell the same shampoo and aftershave he always used and it brings back memories of the nights he spent in your bed with you laughing and talking like nothing had changed making you feel alive again for the first time in forty years. Before everything went into the blender set to puree.
Ben's eyes trace your body like he can't believe you're standing in front of him making you wish again that you're wearing the outfit you picked out so that you could look as good as he does. And just as he raises his hand towards your face you remember why you hated him, remember that night, remember what Countess said that caused her to lose her head.
Your hand flashes out so quick you don't think Ben notices it until it lands with a resounding slap against his cheek that sends him reeling back from you. Your strengths were similar, almost identical, and if he hadn't been invulnerable it would have ripped his perfect jaw from his face.
"What the fuck was that for?" Ben snaps, green eyes blazing as he looks back at you.
"You've got some nerve coming back here after all these years." You spit, the anger rising in your chest with wings of fury that beat against your ribcage. "Did you really think that you could just say my name again and make me forget everything that happened Benjamin? I am not one of those trashy women that you used to fuck and the fact that you think you can show up here, give me the fucking puppy dog eyes, and think that I’ll swoon, is ridiculous!”
There goes the dam.
Your gaze levels on Hughie and Butcher who look just as stunned. "And you two. Why did you bring him here? I didn’t want any part of this!”
"Why did you pretend to be dead!" Hughie shouts back.
"Did you think that maybe that was me trying to tell you that I didn't want to be involved? Or are you two just that fucking stupid?"
"Why did you buy a plane ticket then?" Butcher asks again, raising an eyebrow.
Ben is watching you with anger burning in his eyes. It's difficult for you to look at him. Every time you do you think about your last night together, the morning after when he pushed you away, and finally the night where he ripped out your heart and stomped all over it.
How did I ever think I could look at him again when I got him out of Russia?
"Because even though I hate him. He doesn't deserve that. The Ben I knew would have come to get me, and I wasn't going to leave him to rot in some fucking Russian prison." You snap back. "Now get out of my apartment."
"Sweetheart-" Ben begins to say.
"No. No. No. I don't want to hear it from you. Nothing you can say can make this better. I’m glad you’re free or whatever, but go. Get out." You push past him, but Ben's hand flashes out and grabs your wrist with enough force that you feel the bruising of your skin.
"No." He towers over you.
"Let. Me. Go." Your eyes narrow shifting to bright purple. The entire room begins to tremble, the glass windows shake in their panes and the glass jars full of paint brushes on your studio table begin to clink against one another. But he doesn't remove his hand.
"Not until you listen." Ben's own green eyes have hardened into a emerald.
You latch onto the wrist that is holding you and break his grip, before spinning and throwing him backward across the room away from you. Ben's body flies past Hughie and Butcher who watch with wide eyes as he hits the back of the couch and pinwheels over it with a loud thud as he lands on the cushions. You would have rather thrown him into the brick living room wall, but you restrained yourself.
"I don't want to hear anything you have to say Benjamin. You said enough that night and apparently you were saying lots of things to Countess about me. So get out." Your eyes skate across Butcher and Hughie. "All of you."
Hughie is still watching you with wide eyes, like he can't believe that just happened.
Join the club kid.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Ben shouts, standing from the couch and straightening his clothes. You don't need to be a psychic to know how angry he is. In fact, you're surprised he's not throwing you out the window or at least throwing a punch. Ben didn't tolerate it when anyone put him in his place and it definitely looks like it's taking him an extreme amount of effort not to attack you, given the way his hands are clenched into fists and the way his jaw is tensed so tightly you can see the muscle flexing.
"She told me what you said about me. That you threw me a pity fuck because you felt sorry for me, that you were bored when we had sex because I was so inexperienced."
"It's not true."
"Isn’t it?" You're trying desperately not to cry, but the angry tears have already begun to well up in your eyes. "The last thing you sad to me was that I was pathetic and that you never would love me, never could love me. That you fucked me because you felt bad for me and you wished I would just fuck off. That I was just another warm pussy and that I meant nothing to you. So forgive me for not believing you."
"Oh shit." Butcher mutters under his breath.
"Damn." Hughie echoes.
"I know what I said to you, Y/n. I've spent the past 40 years regretting it-" Ben begins to say, but you interrupt him.
"Oh I'm so sure. The Great Soldier Boy actually has a conscience, let me just alert the media." You spit back. "Oh wait, sorry you wouldn't want that getting out would you Ben? Because that would mean you aren't a man."
"Y/n-" He growls.
"You don't get to come in here and apologize and act like you did nothing wrong. You're not here because you feel sorry, you're here because you want me to dote on you, to follow you around and give a shit like I did for 40 fucking years.”
“Y/n-“
"Stop saying my name like that!" You shout and the glass sugar dish on the counter flies off the counter and smashes into the floor sending shards of glass everywhere.
Hughie flinches.
"Like what?" Ben exclaims.
"Like you care." You cross your arms over your chest staring him down because you don't want to keep crying.
"I do fucking care about you-" Ben snaps running his hand through his dark hair frustrated.
"No you don't. You never did. You’ve made that perfectly clear.”
"Yes I do."
"Please stop talking."
"What else do you want me to say?" Ben shouts back, moving towards you. "I'm trying to fucking apologize-"
"I don't want you to say anything and I don't want to hear your half-assed apology! I want you to leave. You and your creepy friends." You gesture back to where Hughie and Butcher are watching with open mouths, who are unsure if they should leave or watch the show.
"They're not my friends."
"And neither am I! Which means I don’t have to listen to anything you have to say!”
"Y/n please-" His teeth are gritted together.
“I'm not some fangirl Ben. I was your friend, your friend before any of this. Before any of this fucking supe shit. I cared about you. I had been in love with you since I was 8. I had taken care of you since the night we met." More tears squeeze down your cheeks as a lifetime of happy memories before everything went down the drain wash over you. The wonderful times you'd shared together at the park, in your bedroom back in Philadelphia, dancing in the dancehall,  at baseball games and Ben walking you home all the while you wobbled down the street drunkenly and sang off key. All the blissful little moments that you thought maybe he felt the same way about you and then followed by the moments you spent together the night of your birthday, when you felt more special and loved than you'd ever had. It makes the knife he stuck in your back even sharper. 
"That night we spent together meant everything to me. I thought it was special and I thought you loved me. But you don't. You just fucked me because you were bored and you found the first person who said yes.” Your body turns away, but he grabs you by the shoulders to make you look at him.
"I do love you damnit!" He shouts. "I didn't want to-" Ben's jaw clenches in frustration, looking back at Butcher and Hughie. "Can you two just fuck off?"
"I wish you all would." You say, trying to loosen his grip on your shoulders, but he doesn't let go. You think about throwing him across the room again, because it made you feel a lot better.
"Fine. We'll be outside." Butcher says tugging Hughie away.
"Are you sure?" Hughie asks looking from you to Ben as if he's worried to leave the two of you alone.
"You want to be here? Because they're either going to kill each other or start fucking." Butcher responds.
"We are not going to start-" You begin, but they're already out the front door of your apartment leaving you alone with Ben, who is still holding on to your shoulders.
"Please listen to me." Ben says looking deep into your eyes. "When you said that you loved me it-" He stops looking for the right word as if he can't say the next ones that come out of his mouth. "Oh fuck it, it fucking scared me. Okay?  It scared me, Y/n, and damnit I'm not a pussy! I'm not afraid of anything!"
“Oh no you could never be a pussy could you? Soldier Boy could never admit that he had real feelings for someone.” Your voice wobbles, tears trailing down your cheeks as you poke him in the chest to emphasize every word. “And now you’re just saying what I want to hear, because you want to have another quick fuck!” You push your hands against his chest trying to push him off of you, but he won't let go. "You're just saying it because its been forty years since you had sex and you thought, huh might as well find the most pathetic person I know, Y/n won't say no if I pretend to be everything she wanted again."
He doesn't mean it. He doesn't love me.
"I’m not lying to you! And I’m not pretending! I wasn't pretending that night either!” Ben roars so loudly you flinch. “That night I felt things with you that I had never felt with anyone else. It wasn't cheap sex or a quick fuck-" His jaw tightens as if he's embarrassed to admit it. "Damn it.” His teeth are gritted together. “We made love. I understood that when I woke up the next morning and I was happy to be there with you. I knew that I loved you and I wanted to tell you, but I fucked it all up instead. I fucked Countess because I was scared of what loving you meant. But I’m ready now, I’m not scared anymore. I love you!”
He's saying everything you always wanted him to, but you're scared. Scared that he's just saying it, that he thinks it's what you want to hear and this is the only way that he can get you back into his life because he needs someone to follow him around, because he can't be alone.
You stand there for a minute taking in his stance. His head is slightly bowed in shame, shoulders tight, body leaning towards you. But then you catch his eye, you see the sorrow, frustration, and pain in his gaze. Ben was not big on sharing feelings and for him to admit all of these things aloud was shocking enough without the obvious emotions flashing in his eyes. It was so different than the stoic or pissed off attitude he usually had when he was Soldier Boy. The look in his eyes is so earnest and Ben has never been a good liar, not to you anyway. You always knew what he was thinking.
If I forgive him then what does that mean? I forget the past 40 years like they never happened? I forget all the tears when he broke my heart? Forget how broken I was? How broken I still am?
You think of all the times you missed him, all the times you forgot about what he said to you and remembered the good, all the times you wanted him there with you and Rosemary because you knew he would love to be there. All the early memories together, all the missions, everything that lead up to the falling out and Ben’s supposed death. Ben's admission of guilt and his confession of love for you was shocking. Especially because the Ben you knew 40 years ago would have rather dropped dead than say the words "make love."
No. I won't give in. I can't do this, I can't do this all over again. I was better, I was moving on, he doesn't have the right to come here and mess up my life all over again.
"No." You shout, shoving him away with all your strength. Ben stumbles backward, his eyes wide as if he wasn't expecting you to push him away, because of course he wasn't. “You don’t know anything about love. You’re just saying that because you know it’s what I want to hear, what I’ve always wanted you to say to me.”
He still doesn't understand how much he hurt me. And he doesn't deserve my forgiveness.
“I’m not just saying that, it’s true. Please y/n-“
"I don't believe you. And when I said I never wanted to see you ever again I wasn't lying. So get out Ben!" You shout.
"No. I love you and I'm not leaving." Ben says back determined.
You weren't prepared for what those words did to you. You weren't prepared for the floodgate of emotions that exploded the moment those words passed through his lips or the way it felt like you were being tugged in two different directions. Because despite wanting to throw him across the room again, those three little words made you want to run into his arms and hold him close, made you want him to take you to bed and make you forget all the shitty things that happened forty years ago, make it like he never left.
But you couldn't do it. As much as you wanted to forgive him, you couldn't because you didn't trust him anymore, you didn't trust that he could give you what you wanted.
“Too bad! I won’t do this to myself again. All I did was care about you, help you. I stood by you and made excuses for the person you became and I held on to this picture of the boy you used to be. The one I fell in love with. The one that used to climb in my window when things were hard. The one that took me to my first baseball game. The one who danced with me. The one that made me feel like less of a freak because he understood me. And the one that begged me to leave Howard and everything I knew and come with him. That night we were together I saw that boy again.  I loved that boy. I would have done anything for him and I did. But he’s not here anymore. And I hate myself for holding on to him as long as I did.”
"But I told you I loved you!" Ben exclaims.
“Just saying that isn’t enough, not after everything that happened!” You shout. "You're forty years too late Benjamin. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m exhausted and I’m going to go to bed. And I don’t want you to be here when I wake up.”
"Y/n please-" You hate how he sounds when he says it, like he's broken, because Ben has never once sounded that way in all the years you'd known him. You hate how he looks. How his dark hair is falling forward into his face and he looks so much like the boy you used to love that it makes you want to scream, because you wanted to believe that he was gone, but all you see when you look up at him is that boy. There is not one shred of Soldier Boy in the way he looks right now and you hate that. You hate that you wanted to forgive him, that all it took was him looking like at you like that. But you still can't do it.
"Just go." Your throat thickening as you say it, fresh tears trailing down your cheeks. "I don't want you here. I never want you to come here ever. I never want to see you again.” You lie pushing past him and walk down the dark hallway, slamming and locking your bedroom door behind you. Your body sinks to the floor as you pull your knees up into your chest, sobs shaking your body and tears pour from your eyes.
How many tears can I spend on one man? How do I still have any left after all these years? How could I have been stupid to think that I was over him? That I could just go to Russia, break him out, and then push him out of my life so easily? None of what just happened was easy.
Your face presses into your knees. You want to call Rosemary, call her and tell her what happened, but your phone is still on the counter and you couldn't go back out there, because you knew he was still there. Standing in your living room looking too perfect after all these years and saying all the things you always wanted him to and you don’t want to go out there and forgive him.
So you stay. Your back pressed against the door, crying into your knees and hoping that this will just all end.
Because it’s got to one day right?
***************************************************
*Soldier Boy POV*
He hadn't meant to reach for you, but all he wanted was to feel the gentle swell of your cheek beneath the palm of his hand, the smoothness of your skin against his rough fingertips, and to memorize the planes of your face with his touch. You were even more beautiful than he remembered. Your curves perfectly accentuated by a pair of cute paint splattered overalls that made him smile, and your hair pulled away from your face in a messy bun but still made you look effortless and striking. When he saw you standing there, it was like taking a punch to the gut. He knew that he missed you, but seeing you there warm and alive made him want to crush you against his chest and never let you go ever again.
He had laid himself bare before you, allowing himself to push through the urge  to shove all his emotions back beneath the surface as his father taught him, and spoke, instead, the words he wished that he had said all those years ago.
Ben's shoulders tense when he thinks of what you shouted back at him, how broken you looked. His heart falls into the pit of his stomach when he remembers the tears in your eyes. Ben hated it when you cried. He also hated that the first time he saw you in forty years he made you cry, again.
He didn't know how to fix this. Ben thought that his apology would be enough to make you at least try to forgive him, but it hadn't. You had shoved him away from you, refused to let him touch you or comfort you-
Why is she so damn stubborn? I apologized! I told her that I loved her! Isn’t that what she wanted?
He grits his teeth together thinking about how you threw him across the room like he weighed nothing. If anyone else had done that to him, Ben would have killed them, but he knew that he deserved it. He knew you would be mad, but he thought that you would at least want to hear everything he had to say instead of cursing him out and slamming the door in his face.
When you slammed your door behind you, he had stood outside of it for an hour listening to you cry, heard your soft muffled sobs. At one point he leaned his head against the door and wished you would let him in so he could hold you while you cried, even though the thought made him feel like a pussy. He wanted to comfort you. He wished you had forgiven him, allowed him to take you to bed, allowed him to show you how sorry he was and how much he loved you. He wished that you let him help you forget the last shitty forty years that you spent without him, forget what he said and what he did to you that night. 
The harsh words you yelled at him make him flinch, when you told him that you didn't want him there and never wanted him to come back. They were the words that he always feared you would say to him when he climbed in through your window at night or when he showed up at your apartment when you were still on Payback. And hearing you say those words felt worse than anything those Russian fucks did to him. Because Ben didn't know where he belonged if he wasn't with you, he didn't know what to do if you weren't in his life, you were the only thing that mattered.
How could I fuck this up this much?
Ben looks back at the clock on the wall in the kitchen which shows he'd been there for three hours waiting for you to come out of your room, but you hadn't. He knew it was because you fell asleep, he could hear your heart beat, your soft breath against the pillows, and the almost silent sounds you made when you slept. They were exactly the same as when he would fall asleep next to you and damn it he didn't realize how much he missed them until this exact moment.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. How do I fucking fix this?
Ben stands from the couch and walks down the hallway for the millionth time to stand outside your door preparing to knock, but he didn't know what to say. He thought that he'd said enough, but judging by your reaction he hadn't.
The thought of saying anything else was difficult for him to swallow. It was hard enough to say what he had to you, but he was realizing he was going to have to delve even deeper to make you even look at him again or want to be around him. 
Finally he goes to the front door of your apartment before he looks back down the hallway. He didn't want to leave, didn't want you to wake up and him not be there despite what you said about wanting him to leave. He wanted you to understand that he wasn't going anywhere and that he was never going to leave you ever again no matter how hard you tried to push him away. But he needed to leave now, not for long, just long enough for him to get what he needed.
He had seen the florist shop on the corner when Butcher drove up. As Ben walked down the street in the direction of the florist he remembered the conversation he had with Butcher after you slammed your door in his face. Convincing Butcher to let him remain in the apartment was difficult, but finally when Ben threatened to rip Hughie in half, Butcher relented stating that he would give Ben one night with you before he came back. That was the deal anyway, Ben had lied, because like hell he was going to leave now that he'd found you again.
Ben wasn't planning on leaving and  even if you couldn't stand to look at him, Ben would not go. Even if it meant sleeping on that shitty couch every night.
He would never leave you again.
The smell of the flowers wafted out of the small shop when Ben opens the door, his eyes skating across the numerous bouquets, each one more extravagant than the last. Other women would swoon over them, but not you. His eyes fall first on roses, but he turns away. He knew that you didn’t like roses, although many believed them to be classic, Ben knew that you thought over the years that roses had become generic and overused. He of course had sent some to numerous women over the years, but he liked that you were different. He always liked that about you. He rolls his eyes when he remembered when Howard bought you some every week.
Because of course that asshole didn’t know what y/n liked. No one knows her as well as me.
The man behind the counter eyes him when he walks in. "Can I help you find something sir?"
"No." Ben says gruffy looking at the displays again, but then he sighs. "Do you have any lavender?"
"Lavender?"
"Yeah." Ben knew it was the only thing that you would accept, knew that it was your favorite because it reminded you of the house your family rented over the summers up North. Ben hated those summers. He'd break into your bedroom and sleep in your bed while thinking of you and reading the letters you sent him over and over again, the ones that you pressed fresh lavender into and the ones that made him realize just how much he needed you.
Those of course weren’t the only letters you ever sent him. When he went to boarding school he’d wait for you to send him a letter and one of your doodles or a small painting. He kept every one in a cigar box under his bed. It was why he was kicked out of boarding school number nine, a fight he had with another student began because the student had found the box and then proceeded to mock Ben endlessly by passing around the letters you sent him. Ben had never told you what the fight was about.
Ben stops as he realizes how he’s going to get you to listen to him.
“Here you are sir.” The florist reappears at the counter holding a large vase of freshly cut lavender.
“Do you have a phone I can borrow?” Ben asks.
“Sure.”
The object the man hands him is not a phone, well not a phone that Ben’s ever seen before.
“I said a phone-“
“That is a phone?” The man looks confused.
“How do I fucking call someone with this?” Ben sighs shaking the black rectangle in his hand and looking for the buttons.
The man takes the object and swipes his fingers across it before handing it back to him so Ben can see the numbers to dial. “Just push what you want and hit the green button.” The man says, looking at Ben like he's crazy.
“Oh. Thanks.” He mutters, before dialing the number and holding the phone up to his ear.
Legend answers on the first ring.
“Hey it’s me. Do you still have all my old shit from my apartment?”
“Somewhere.”
“I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”
******************************************
N/A: Why not end on a cliffhanger? This chapter is a bit longer, because this week is CRAZY for me and I'm not sure when I'll be able to write the next chapter. But I'm not giving up on these two. They deserve the world.
Thank you so much for reading! Let me know what you guys think. If you'd like to be added to my taglist, please let me know :)
Taglist: @roseblue373 @anundyingfidelity @cheynovak @cassiecasluciluce @muhahaha303 @deans-spinster-witch @kayleighmeister @demodemo909 @fruitfacess @bobbobbobinogs @bughill126 @simplyfixated @sleepjam @tiredstrangerr @freefallthoughts @onlyangel-444 @lov3vivian @mxltifxnd0m @mayafatimakhan @marvel-mistress @my-obsession-spn @lifeonawhim @soldirboy @liuope @brynanna @abramswife @xxannyxx @babyinatrench-coat1 @the-gentle-spirit
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technicalthinker · 15 days
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ok so I was already going through it after the preview but the ep doubled down and continued to explore buck's feelings in a way that was so surreal how messy and relatable and real it was. the way it portrayed his first gay dating experience as a bi adult: the nervousness and the overthinking and self-criticism and identity crisis and just mess that can come with it.
He is on-guard and ultra-aware. He is analyzing not just his surroundings but himself. He lies and hates it. He avoids telling Maddie, makes an effort of not saying it's a guy he dated, but when confronted he tries to downplay it: "Could be very much the point" VS "It shouldn't be though right". Because Buck knows that liking a guy isn't a big deal and should be normal etc but he feels and acts like a mess?? So he feels like a fraud. There are too many thoughts about expectations that clouds his thoughts. "I dont think you're a fraud, i just think that maybe you're not sure of your own feelings yet" Maddie says and it helps. The moment when Eddie makes that comment about him being single and he gets that distant look in his eyes and realizes this is the moment of no return as he embraces the words that he has been afraid to say out loud. The way the tension starts to loosen once it has been said, the way he can breathe. Buck deciding at the end to just allow himself to be and let himself crush on Tommy and see where that takes them, because he knows he likes Tommy, and that's enough.
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bitchthefuck1 · 2 months
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Tom's line about Shiv being selfish and "find[ing] it very hard to think about me" is actually so telling because while it's absolutely true that she rarely takes his position into consideration, Tom never once thinks about what he can do to help Shiv unless it also benefits him.
Every single time he makes a move or sacrifice that might help her, it's always something that he thinks will give him a leg up. He volunteers to take the fall for cruises, not for Shiv, who is in no way implicated, or even for Waystar, but because he thinks it'll ingratiate him to Logan, and the second it seems like he might have to actually follow through on that, he immediately tries to get out of it and even throws Shiv under the bus. Meanwhile, for all that Shiv disregards his interests, there are a number of things she does that only help him, and she's the one who actually sacrifices something and undermines her position with Logan to beg him not to let Tom go to jail.
It just makes it so clear that no matter how much he might love her (and I think he does, in his own compromised way), for him their relationship was always built on the underlying assumption that it's her job to prop him up, but it's not his job to help her.
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givehimthemedicine · 7 months
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some of the footage the lab is feeding El in NINA is of a MIRRORED Rainbow Room.
continuing off my recent post about why NINA has 4 cameras inside of it watching El. some more realizations:
those six screens around the sides are actually just the same three video feeds doubled. the only unique feed is the center one.
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which gives us a total of FOUR feeds in NINA even though there are seven screens.
and one of them is backwards.
in reality, if you're standing at the mirror, the benches-and-drawing-tables side of the RR is on your right - as it appears, correctly, in the red feed and green feed. their footage makes sense coming from the cameras I've circled here (not the events within, I'm just talking about the angles these cameras see)
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but the yellow feed has been flipped horizontally:
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if we are SEEING the drawing/chess corner of the room in the yellow feed, that means it was filmed by the camera in the other corner - over by the plinko/puzzle table. that is the camera circled in this shot of El playing plinko. except we're seeing the wrong side of the room behind her.
"oh Nat, that's all so normal. I wish this was harder to understand." I GOTCHU
we get another shot where the yellow feed IS oriented correctly! like, in the shot where you see all the NINA screens at once, the yellow is wrong. but in the subsequent shots where El is looking woozy at individual screens, that version of the yellow is correct. that is what this camera should see.
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and both are the same footage flipped horizontally.
well. the same footage except one of them is a wider angle where you see a lot more of the plinko board on the right but shh I'm too tired to think about that
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anyway maybe this helps explain the moving bodies/blood locations, specifically the cases where I swear the sides of the room keep getting conflated.
the live massacre scene is unreliable because it's poor El's brain's mashup of the doctored / contradictory footage she's being shown. El doesn't know which way the RR really was. she doesn't remember it at all. so all footage is given equal weight, rather than her brain autocorrecting the wrong ones.
the RR is so hard to mentally map because it's a mind-numbingly-almost-symmetrical room, and we're frequently shown it via its mirror reflection, which confuses our perception further. El is canonically just as confused.
(I need to dive deeper on the details of this idea when I get more time. @aemiron-main iirc you're the lead investigator on the changing bodies/blood thing so you'd know better off the top of your head - would you say a room mirroring accounts for many more of the discrepancies? certainly not all)
finally, back to the center feed -
I believe this is correctly oriented (you can see a sliver of the mirror on the extreme left, which tracks with where the plinko game is situated, and Little El(?) is operating it right-handed which is consistent with Big El.)
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BUT, don't worry, there's still a weird problem with this footage!
this is a close-up low shot behind El(?) which was not filmed from any of the corner-mounted RR surveillance cameras like the other feeds. it would've had to be filmed from one of those tripod ones.
and they do keep a tripod camera in that area of the RR, but it's visibly not where it would've had to be in order to film this footage which causes El to "remember" One in the plinko scene.
btw, why is this the only footage filmed in portrait mode? if it was landscape, we could have seen One sit next to her. as it is, he wouldn't be visible in it at all. maybe that's why.
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so why are they flipping just that one feed?
well, since they showed right and wrong versions of the yellow feed, I suspect they sometimes flip the other feeds too. I just only caught them once. they only seldom give us glimpses of what's going on inside NINA.
is the center feed important because it's unique?
the lab hasn't made sure El is watching that one right-side-up. you can see in the reflection in her eye that she's watching the center screen landscape.
which means the one and only of seven screens El is actually watching right-side-up is this one:
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why wasn't NINA designed like this, with all the screens the same way, if you just want the viewer to watch and comprehend all the footage?
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because NINA isn't for remembering or comprehending.
having all the screens side by side and right-side-up makes it easy to compare footage and spot discrepancies between them (is that why Brenner is watching multiple screens of the same event?).
the NINA weird screen angles is exactly what stopped me from spotting the mirrored RR problem until right now, and I've been scrutinizing this, and I'm not drugged like El is. with a bunch of screens of boring, redundant-looking footage at random angles, your brain tends to just kinda be like "eh, I don't feel like mentally righting that, I'll take your word for it. seems legit."
what's on the center screen when El banishes One?
they don't want me to know. I wish I did.
every time we see El in NINA, her body breaks the water surface in such a way that prevents us seeing a reflection of the center screen. which apparently tends to display the only unique feed.
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is it fair to call this footage-flipping onscreen proof of NINA being not merely a memory-viewing machine but a memory-altering / memory-implantation / machine? so, a brainwashing machine?
which has major implications for the Henry and Victor Creel contradictory memories situation, as long suspected by folks smarter than I.
so the "memories" we experience live with El are actually a meshing of either: A) real events and doctored / fabricated elements B) real events but from 4 different timelines C) por qué no los dos?
not sure whether this "creates" a new timeline in any way besides in El's mind, but even if it were just that, that is valuable enough - to make arguably the strongest superpowered person on the planet remember whatever events you want them to.
but just that doesn't explain the 4 cameras inside NINA, does it?
El using her current mind in past memories
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don't forget we have a whole scene of Big El, while immersed in a NINA memory, conversing with current Brenner about the events she's experiencing being a memory and not real.
which means Big El is talking while floating in the tank, or else current Brenner wouldn't know to respond by microphone.
and if she can access her current mind/knowledge and apply that inside of past (real or fake) events.... doesn't that mean she can also use her current powers in past events?
YES. HERE SHE IS DOING IT:
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El very very rarely bleeds from both nostrils. two-nostril jobs are very strenuous in relation to her current power level (killing the cat guards and closing the gate are the only other times I remember).
which indicates she's doing something HUGE even in relation to her newly HIGHER THAN EVER power level.
I just find it funny that she also bled from both nostrils in the exact event she was remembering while bleeding from both nostrils.......
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also Brenner and Owens see her EEG spiking at that moment, which they've shown us repeatedly throughout the show reflects power use. she's DOING SOMETHING.
so.... Iots I need to chew on.
did the massacre go down wrong and the lab needs to trick El into remembering it differently, and using her current powers inside of the "memory" to somehow actually either change the past, or switch/unswitch timelines, or merge timelines, or something?
is there a timeline where One kicked Little El's ass, or killed her, and the lab needs her to go back and win in that one instead? did little El banish the wrong guy and the lab wants them switched? something like that?
there's something more time machiney going on with NINA even beyond just brainwashing, I swear.
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seraqhites · 10 months
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need the nastiest sloppiest head after this shift
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takiki16 · 1 year
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so what’s the deal with your new blorbo? assume 1. i know how football works (used to actually watch) but not how/why some players get famous; (2) i know nothing about messi except that he. exist; (3) feel free to go bananas to your heart’s content if you decide to answer this.
fuuuuUUUUUUUQ ME. Can litchrally any Argentinian, any FC Barcelona supporter, ANYONE who has followed fuutyball for more than *checks watch* TWO WEEKS spot me for this one?!?! I am GROSSLY underqualified to answer this question Cunningham's law is about to hunt me for SPORT.
Okay. LIONEL MESSI. I can't summarize everything about this Guy who is currently one of the Main Characters of the most watched sport in the world, but I CAN summarize how he has started cooking my brain!!!
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(that is him!!!! my guy!!!! HIM JUMP)
I have been trying to read a book with @rhaeneystargaryen for at least a couple years now, but somehow never had the spoons or the right overlapping interest. And then she told me that she was reading this:
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I figured I would give it a try! I wanted something low effort, low investment, something I didn't care a whole lot about that I could put down at any moment bc work has been hell lately. And then I hit THIS line in the introduction, and I could literally FEEL the cursed hyperfixation key in my brain start to turn:
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GUESS WHICH ONE IS MESSI!!!!!
I'm not a twitter stan, I swear. I am AWARE there is a media layer here. These people are real, actual human beings with documented flaws and mistakes, I am WELL AWARE that they are ungodly wealthy pro athletes and not "stars who are just like us!!! ✨✨✨." It's also obviously reductive and unfair to view anyone solely through a comparative lens - no living being could live up to the marketing hype that has been generated around Messi, Ronaldo, or indeed any pro athlete in the elite leagues.
BUT GOTDAM IF THIS FUCKER DOESN'T MAKE IT HARD!!!!
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Bare bones: Lionel Messi is a football player born in Rosario, Argentina, who at 13yo moved to Spain to play for FC Barcelona. He joined the adult team at a whole ass 17 years old. Ensue absolutely RIDICULOUS teen prodigy meteoric rise, with both Messi and Barcelona winning all the Best Football Awards ever and Best Individual Sports Achievements in Everything. I have spent the last two weeks spending FAR too much time reading football books, and all the gotdam graphs look like this:
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People talk about Messi being the player who made them fall in love with "the most beautiful game," and I can SEE WHY!!! HERE I AM!!!! A CLOWN!!! ALSO FALLING IN LOVE!!!! I am googling sports highlight reels of his plays like a CHAD FOOTY HOOLIGAN!! WHO AM I, I AM HAVING AN IDENTITY CRISIS. It is just so much fun to WATCH him! Listening to commentators screaming "Eight, ten, IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY DEFENDERS THERE HE GOES THROUGH THEM!!! MESSI GOAAAALLLLL"
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What makes it WORSE is the whole fukken rivalry business the book was about. Cristiano Ronaldo was another super-gifted player who debuted at about the same time and had a similar prodigy teen genius rise. He signed for a rival club in the same league at the same time Messi was playing with Barcelona. The story reads like a gotdam Hollywood sports drama, on both an individual and a team level!! I cannot IMAGINE what it was like watching this unfold as it was happening!
For starters: on an individual level, they were constantly thrown up against each other for every award imaginable. The Ballon d'Or awards list, which crowns you King of Soccer for the year, has looked like this since 2008:
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(there is obviously talk that Messi is up for an EIGHTH award this year, but I don't think about the future bc it is bad for my cooked brain 😊)
On a team level, there was (and IS) of course the clubs. I am ABSOLUTELY not qualified to get into the weeds on this, but the rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid has deep, deep political, historical, and cultural roots going back (among other things) to Catalonian oppression under the fascist Franco regime in Spain. Josep Suñol, then-president of FC Barcelona, was shot in 1936 by Francoist troops.The matches between the two clubs and the two players with their drastically different teams and styles at the time were super-charged - an ACTUAL QUALIFIED Barcelona supporter is going to have to get in here and explain the history and emotion behind the Clasicos bc THAT IS SEVERAL BOOKS IN AND OF ITSELF!!!!!
The whole point of THIS particular book was not, in fact, a blow-by-blow comparison of the players. The point was that by being WHO they were and WHEN they were, Messi and Ronaldo changed the shape of the game forever in terms of marketing, branding, team strategy, finances, etc etc etc. It's an interesting read (if not entirely unbiased on all points), if you enjoy the absolute blood and oil-soaked clown show that is professional football money!
But ANYWAY.
AFTER I finished the book Messi ended up cooking my brain bc (1) all of the context above re: rivalry in league football, and (2) his PERSONALITY. Someone made him in a lab to ruin my life!
I mean, the club loyalty gets me. For his entire professional career, Messi has played for exactly two teams - Barcelona and his homeland Argentina NT. He only left Barcelona in 2021, VERY much against his will (per him, his agent, his friends, his family, AND FC Barcelona) due to an absolute hot mess of a league financial situation that is apparently still sorting itself out. I don't know how common it is for pro athletes at his level to move around, but I feel like it's more common than that!!! THE CLUB LOYALTY gets me, the HOME LOYALTY gets me!!!! Especially as he's gotten better and better, and there's been more and more pressure on him to keep delivering even in the absence of anything else!
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The gotdam STOICISM also gets me!!! Call it shyness, call it humility, call it down-to-earthness or reservedness or whatever you want - what everyone kept mentioning about him in the books (and what certain French marketing departments are still probably saying about him) is how QUIET he is. Journalists would complain about how he "made it to age 30 without ever uttering an interesting sentence in public." A Nike exec who lost a bid with his agent for a sponsorship waved it off by saying "Imagine how much trouble we would be in if Messi had a personality." Relative to his peers in the elite football world, he doesn't have a flash lifestyle with a huge entourage. He doesn't do a lot of press. He doesn't try to push a personal brand, even though it's a big chunk of income for wherever he plays. Even though he obviously COULD, he doesn't go around talking about Greatest Of All Time (TM). When he DOES give interviews he doesn't even talk super loudly. He keeps to his immediate family and his closest circle of friends.
AND YET. AND YET. ON THE PITCH, HE PLAYS LIKE HE DOES. He creates not just for himself, but for his TEAMMATES the way that he does! I realize that NO ONE gets an award for being a team player in a team sport, or for "not being as much of a dick as you could have been," but HE STILL HAS HIS HOMETOWN ACCENT!!! He dedicates his goals to his GRANDMOTHER! He met his wife when he was FIVE YEARS OLD, he has never had a relationship with anyone else ("It has always been Antonella, for me"), he has three beautiful kids, his teammates keep apparently falling in love with him and doing Intricate Rituals, I AM ENDEARED I AM ENDLESSLY ENDEARED
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Did I mention he is also very short? Allow me to mention that. 5"7 / 1.7 meters in pro-athlete world is PICK-UPABLE SIZE. Multiple reels out there of his teammates celebrating goals just by PICKING HIM UP it MAKES ME SO FOND
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(on an Intricate Rituals note, Messi's size and his evasive style of play has caused a lot of opposing team's strategy to be "make a cage, kick him as soon as you can and tackle often," which has in turn prompted a lot of specific protection strategies for him as a forward and also over-protective teammates :)))). WHICH OF COURSE COOKS MY BRAIN EVEN MORE YOU KNOW HOW IT IS.)
And that isn't even STARTING on his saga with the Argentina NT, which reads like YET ANOTHER HOLLYWOOD SPORT DRAMA that I cannot believe actually happened!
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Again, I am begging ANY Argentine to jump in here, I AM GROSSLY IGNORANT as to the history of this sport I got here two whole weeks ago how is this HAPPENING to meeeeeeee
My very basic understanding of the situation is that Messi has played for the national team ever since 2004, whenever he was on break from Barcelona. Over the years since then, Argentina (with Messi) has tried again and again to win the World Cup (and the Copa America), but consistently failed despite regularly advancing to finals. BECAUSE Messi was on the team, Argentina routinely and perhaps unfairly got billed as "favorites" to win, with criticism in the press being focused disproportionately on Messi when they didn't. I don't know how bad the situation in Argentinian media got, but even the western English outlets were picking it up. "Messi plays better for Barcelona than for his home country, Messi isn't Argentinian enough, Messi keeps too much to himself and doesn't sing the anthem,etc etc etc". Maradona famously commented that Messi was "a great person, but had no personality," and that it was useless to try to make a leader out of him because he caved under pressure (referring to Messi reportedly being sick from nerves before the world cup games).
(note: gotdam rivalry. Of the people named who would be better and more stylish leaders, Cristiano Ronaldo was up top )
The pressure DID get to Messi in the end - he issued a statement in 2016 saying he would retire from international football, but there was a huge home campaign to get him to come back to the team. Argentina still didn't win the 2018 World Cup (players of opposing teams said that their strategy against Argentina was not letting them pass to Messi). And so on, and so forth.
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AND THEN!!!!! 2021!!!!!
I THINK I HAVE POSTED FAR TOO MUCH ALREADY about the current Argentina NT for someone who, as I said, JUST ARRIVED AT THIS GOTDAM SPORT, but I'm going to make everyone look at these quotes again. These are quotes the team has given ABOUT MESSI HOW IS THIS REAL????
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Argentina would go on to win the Copa America - and then...well 🥰
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I DON'T KNOW IF I'VE EXPLAINED THIS ADEQUATELY!!! I DON'T KNOW IF I HAVE SUFFICIENTLY REPRESENTED THE DEGREE TO WHICH MY BRAIN IS COOKED!!! Did that mean anything to anyone???? I don't know!
HELL
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etchedstars · 5 months
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hi i just wanted to drop a ss of the comments i wrote on my notion page for captured ghosts because im about to reread and i think this fic deserves all the recognition in the world it slays so hard and you should know the absolute anxiety and simultaneous joy you caused me!!!
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HI OH MY GOD ?!?!??!?!? thank you asufaudsf this is so so nice the joy THIS brought me?????????? immeasurable ty <3333
(ps theres a lot of thoughts in the tags w captured ghosts spoilers for those who may or may have not read my will byers gets haunted multichaptered fic!!)
#if youre thinking hmm i should read captured ghosts!! dont take it from me take it from tumblr user romainlettusdinnerparty :)#okokok so !!! authors thoughts#one of the biggest problems i have with media and especially in fics is when characters just have. the worlds most perfect inner dialogue#which clearly. bc they are fifteen years old. they will not be perfect they wont think coherent thoughts#human emotions are messy and indecipherable and ESP w the st characters someone who has gone thru as much as will has. hes gonna be angry !#i do my best to walk the line between good writing and realistic writing LMAO so im glad that came across :)))#ok abt joyce. this was less of a 'i think this is how joyce would be' and rlly just me being annoyed w my own mother tbh#i also wasnt a huge fan of her when i first wrote cg bc i thought she was way too paranoid over will and not caring much abt jonathan#so that is why shes Like that. im gonna be real i dont think id change it if i rewrote but i also dont think i wrote her fairly#and finally !!! im very sorry i lied about the rewrite. its not gonna happen bc i am so so swamped and i have nothing and i wrote it last y#but for the record will was supposed to be in the same sort of coma max was in and they were supposed to find each other and will#was going to promise max hed find her way out and then boom he was going to wake up there was going to be some jealousy w lucas and mike an#he makes it out alive max makes it out alive vecna doesnt fully leave etc etc. the end#anyways if youve read this far thank u and thank you for leaving this ask and this comment :))))) i havent gotten anything abt my fics in a#while tbh so knowing that like . They Still Exist and people still like them means so so much to me :')))) ok bye this was super long#overdue gets some asks#captured ghosts#happy chemical
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unhingedselfships · 1 year
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In The Tags/Reblog Game
Describe yourself in the most EBONY DARK'NESS DEMENTIA RAVEN WAY My Immortal manner you can.
Feel free to stick as close to the original description format, or go completely off the rails.
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vegaseatsass · 1 year
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Theory of Love is definitely one of the hardest BLs to take seriously that I've watched so far (NOBODY SPOIL ME PLS I am up to ep6 and hoping we're gonna switch at some point from Gun POV to Off POV and turn the perspective on its wet-from-water-bottle-showering head, but I don't KNOW for SURE so don't tell meeee) but one thing I'm really vibing with is just how well it captures the sheer disastrousness of disastrous gay friendships!!!
I don't love watching a bunch of dudes be toxically masculine @ every girl that walks past them (though I understand that this performance is the sibling to the boy craziness I performed at all the girls I was in love with in grade school), but I just love the dynamic within the friends group of like WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? WHY ARE OUR FRIENDS SUDDENLY ALWAYS MAD AT EACH OTHER??? WHERE IS ALL THIS DRAMA COMING FROM?????
The drama is coming from Disastrous Queer Friendship. From two friends who cannot/will not communicate how they feel for each other or why "just" friendship is not working. There is no escaping it my guys all you can do is ride the ship through the storm at your bros' side
#and to be very fair to bone and two they ARE doing their level best to ride that ship through the storm so far!!#no idea what's happening one minute to the next who is in love with who who is mad at who whose side to take#but they are gonna stay in it with their bros!!! support whoever has a crush on whoever!! keep the Gang together through hell or high water#i'm watching this very quickly for me b/c i neeeed that pov switch lol i am going to be fr disappointed if we don't pov switch#BUT DON'T SPOIL ME!!!!!!!!!!#theory of love#dear diary#it's jsut interesting because if i watched this idk 10 years ago i'd be very annoyed w/ both third and khai for a lot of their behavior#third being sooooo bitter every time khai kisses a new girl khai treating third's housework and support the way a spoiled kid does his moms#but it's all just so real in a Disastrous Gay Friendship (tm)#it is so hard to unblur and untangle all the different blurred tangled lines and actually communicate past the giant feelings#when third was like 'i meant to be the third thats his friend but i once again ended up the third thats in love w him. i'm angry at myself'#SO REAL!#he knows he is being unfair but he cant HELP it he doesnt know how to navigate his way out of the role he's caged himself in#friendship isn't a cage but it's real easy to convince yourself it is when you see your queer feelings as a threat to that friendship#and it's real easy to see queer feelings as a threat to friendship if you live in a society!!!!#lol this is prob all self-evident but i am just truly enjoying the messiness#back at it again in the shower with my clothes on. bawling.
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poorlittlevampire · 1 year
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i also. clearly have not learned ever from any of the extremely similar situations i’ve been in before. but god i do not know how to set and keep boundaries lmao
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woahajimes · 1 year
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stoppp a costumer snitched on me wtf
#it was 1:14 i ended 1.15 ok. customer comes in with the mother of all fucking carts#like it was HUGE#except he was looking for a lane and we made eye contact and i was like no please#and he laughed and i was like noo dont do this to me but like in a light tone#anyways of course he fucking comes to my lane#anyways it is a long transaction so of course i dont fucking ifnish and its 1.24 when i finish and the guy didnt fucking help me like atall#and i was like fucking pissed not only bc i should have been going HOME. but he didnt help me whatsoever#and he had a real messy cart too#btw this is all heavy stuff for businesses so its not like usual groceries so i gotta punch in a buncha codes and stuff and lift if necessa#ry? anyways. i finish and he's paying and of course im mad and then he makes a joke and i remember that i am a comic personality so#i play along and im like omg haha yeah at whatever he said right#and he's just finding this so fucking funny and i want to hit him#anywyas i was like ''i was supposed to end like 4 minutes ago''#and i followed with ''but its alright dont worry about it'' and the usual ''have a great day'' or sth#anyways i leave im free i go home#apparently some fucking customer snitched on me. don't know if its the fucking guy or some other nosy bitch#and its the manager that obviously fucking hates me and im so fucking mad guys like who tf was it.#im so mad guys what the actual fuck#or. or i beet it was that girl after me (she came in at 1.15. she is a 60 yr old woman)#GOD I BET IT WAS. she's such a snitch she's done it before#but she also didnt help me#im so mad rn#lol i told my mom abt the customer (not the snitching part bc i found that out rn) and shes ike girl just quit and find a job closer#like god i am tempted. but i like my job i just hate my fucking manager#aparently she played it off as ''oh she's just being silly'' but ik she's mad mad#anyways i dont work till friday so idc
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namorian · 3 months
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worf 🤝 patahk refusing to mend any fences, do anything good and stop being bitter racists
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